Just days ago President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the military operation in refugee-packed Rafah “should not proceed” unless civilians are evacuated first.

Yet at the same time, the Biden administration is preparing another major weapons transfer to Israel. Not only is Washington pushing for another ceasefire (ostensibly at least) but Biden recently called the Israeli operation in Gaza “over the top” amid the soaring civilian death toll.

All of this serves to highlight that the White House is talking out of both sides of its mouth – on the one hand seeking to deflect international and domestic criticism by issuing statements warning over the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, but on the other directly fueling the Israeli war machine.

On this latter point, the Wall Street Journal has detailed in a fresh weekend report:

The proposed arms delivery includes roughly a thousand each of MK-82 bombs, KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack Munitions that add precision guidance to bombs, and FMU-139 bomb fuses, the officials said. The arms are estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. The proposed delivery is still being reviewed internally by the administration, a U.S. official said, and the details of the proposal could change before the Biden administration notifies congressional committee leaders who would need to approve the transfer.

Since the Hamas terror attack of Oct.7, the US administration has given Israel 21,000 precision-guided munitions to Israel, an estimated half of which have been used.

This new proposed transfer is valued at “tens of millions of dollars”. Already the bulk of Israel’s arsenal is supplied from the US, also given it has historically been the biggest recipient of American foreign aid.

The WSJ says that even now, with a reported over 28,000 Gazans killed and a massive refugee crisis, the Biden White House is not expected to attach any conditions to the use of these weapons:

An assessment of the proposed arms transfer drafted by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, said the Israeli government requested “rapid acquisition of these items for the defense of Israel against continued and emerging regional threats.”

The assessment said there were no potential human rights concerns with the sale. “Israel takes effective action to prevent gross violations of human rights and to hold security forces responsible that violate those rights. In the past, Israel has been a transparent partner in U.S. investigations into allegations of defense article misuse,” the assessment says.

Below: an example of Biden’s change in rhetoric toward sharply criticizing Israel…

Biden’s full answer on Gaza. He calls the response from Israel “over the top,” says he got humanitarian aid into Gaza adding “there are a lot of innocent people are starving. Lot innocent people or in trouble and dying. And it’s got to stop” pic.twitter.com/EZM01RP9HX

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) February 9, 2024

But again, strangely Biden himself has highlighted the humanitarian disaster, and has warned Israel. This is yet another example of Biden’s contradictory policies and statements, while apparently having no long-term plan. The current policy is tantamount to Biden telling Netanyahu to stop killing so many civilians, while simultaneously handing him more guns and military hardware ‘with no strings attached’. Biden’s progressive supporters are taking note going into November too, and he’s likely to lose some of his base.

Authored by William Brooks via The Epoch Times,

Peaceful and productive human societies depend on the maintenance of judicial principles that are consistent and impartial.

During the 12th-century reign of Henry II, the English king began to establish a more trustworthy system of legal decision making. The king’s judges were asked to consider verdicts that had been reached in similar cases.

Throughout the following centuries legal decision making was based on tradition and custom. This unified system of justice became known as “English Common Law.”

The legal principle, commonly known as “stare decisis,” discouraged dishonest plaintiffs from seeking unprecedented settlements for specious allegations against parties whom they disliked or sensed they could take advantage of.

The adoption of English common law in America made the United States particularly attractive to free, hard-working people who sought to engage in honest commerce, acquire capital, remain secure in their persons, protect their property and reputations, participate in public affairs, practice their religion, and live well-ordered lives.

When jurists feel compelled to make fair comparisons with precedent-setting cases, justice is generally well served.

Transforming American Justice

Things don’t always change for the better.

Over several generations Marxist intellectuals have been transforming the American justice system. They regard a commitment to neutrality as a way of disguising “colonialist” and “patriarchal” power structures. Since the 1980s this has led to fierce partisan disputes over the nomination of judges and serious doubts about impartiality in American courts.

Marxism is a conflict-oriented ideology, and Marxists view liberal conceptions of freedom, democracy, and justice as instruments of “oppression.” The American left defines pro-American descendants of European colonists as “oppressors.” More recently, this status has expanded to include African American conservatives, legal Hispanic immigrants, election fraud protesters, concerned parents, practicing Catholics, Jews, or anyone else President Joe Biden chooses to call a “MAGA extremist.”

Cultural Marxists imagine victims of oppression at all levels of American society. The “oppressed” can include university-educated elites, radical militants, anti-American identity groups, drug addicts, homeless vagrants, habitual criminals, and millions of illegal migrants. “Social” as opposed to “actual” justice requires that people with victim status receive special protection while alleged oppressors are summarily prosecuted and punished.

Justice Must Be Done and Seen to Be Done

Legal scholars once insisted that “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.” Everyone should be able to expect a fair trial that’s accurately covered by public news organizations.

But unbiased judges and honest reporters are in short supply. While Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is facing unprecedented indictments, journalists are still insisting that American justice is fair and impartial.

The left’s recourse to “lawfare” requires judges and journalists to conceal the truth rather than expose it. Legacy news organizations say there’s no evidence of the “weaponization of justice” or a “two-tiered” legal system. But, as specious allegations come before American courts, folks can’t help noticing that the so-called “oppressed” usually win.

For example, in 2019 American advice columnist E. Jean Carroll suddenly accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump vigorously denied the allegations, but Ms. Carroll was permitted to sue him for defamation and battery.

One could have guessed the outcome of this case before it began. The left views Donald Trump as an arch-oppressor, and E. Jean Carroll was seen as an “oppressed” victim.

In May 2023, a New York jury found the former president liable for defamation and sexual abuse and awarded E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages. In January of this year, Mr. Trump was found liable in a second defamation suit, and Ms. Carroll was awarded an additional $83.3 million. The second award was unprecedented.

Late in January, Breitbart News reporter Hannah Bleau Knudsen revealed several facts about this case that she said the establishment media didn’t want the public to know.

First, there were no witnesses and no surveillance video of the attack, which was alleged to have occurred in a downtown New York department store.

The plaintiff came forward with her story while promoting a book titled “What Do We Need Men For?,” which featured a list of “The Most Hideous Men of My Life.” The dress she claimed to be wearing during the alleged attack was not for sale in the year she initially claimed the event occurred. Despite her public reputation for being very open about sexual matters, she didn’t accuse President Trump until some 30 years after the alleged encounter.

Her entire story was very similar to a 2012 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode, titled “Theatre and Tricks,” in which an individual talks about a rape fantasy in Bergdorf Goodman. In a November 1993 edition of Elle, before the alleged abuse, Ms. Carroll had made a joke associating sex with Bergdorf Goodman.

E. Jean Carroll’s case was financially backed by anti-Trump Democrat mega-donor Reid Hoffman. One of her lawyers is Roberta Kaplan, whose wife is a Democratic Party activist. In fact, her lawsuit was only able to proceed after New York Democrats created a 2022 “Adult Survivors Act,” which allowed judges to overlook the usual statute of limitations for such charges.

Judgments in cases that are tried in partisan-charged venues such as New York City or Washington DC, have almost become forgone conclusions.

A steep decline of common law principles will not bode well for the future of the American Republic. Who would have thought that in 2024 American citizens would be witnessing a partisan special prosecutor seeking the U.S. Supreme Court’s permission to put the opposing party’s presidential candidate on trial months before a presidential election.

Truck drivers transport between 70% to 73% of all freight in the United States. Therefore, when truckers begin discussing plans on social media to boycott loads to progressive hellhole New York City, it’s important to pay attention. 

X user Chicago1Ray, who appears to be a Midwest truck driver, shared a video late Friday night detailing that a number of truck drivers will begin denying loads to NYC on Monday. 

“I don’t know how far across the country this is – or how many truckers are going start denying loads to NYC – but I’ll tell you – you f**k around and find out,” Chicago1Ray said. 

He continued: “We’re tired of motherf**king leftist f**king with Trump. Okay … Motherfu**ers start to get tired of this shit. Our bosses aren’t going to care if we deny loads. We’ll go somewhere else.” 

“You know how hard it is to get in and out of NYC?” the trucker emphasized. 

I’ve been on the radio for over an hour and I’ve talked to at least (10) Truckers who are gonna start refusing loads of Monday for (NYC) …I talked to (3) guys that I work with who texted the boss and told him no (NYC)

Truckers are (95%) Trump… it’ll get overturned on appeal… pic.twitter.com/qVzx4RKUmd

— Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) February 17, 2024

By Saturday morning, the video had amassed nearly 3 million views. This comes after a New York judge handed former President Trump a penalty of $355 million plus interest on his civil fraud case. 

Here’s what X users are saying about the potential trucker boycott of NYC:

If truckers start denying loads to certain regime-controlled cities, it’s going to get spicy.

— Albert Latham (@albert1776) February 17, 2024

Boycot New York!

— Mississippi RN (@TraceyOFlynn3) February 17, 2024

God bless our truckers. The people need to show their power. Enough. Bud Light for NY it is.

— Nomuck (@MagaNomuck) February 17, 2024

Perhaps truckers in America have learned something from revolting farmers in Europe. 

Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World,

• Banks, governments, and businesses would face failure due to the essential role of fossil fuels in the economy.

• Critical infrastructure like electricity, internet, and trade systems would collapse without fossil fuel support.

• Agriculture and home heating would become inefficient and inaccessible to many, leading to widespread social upheaval.

It is now popular to talk about leaving fossil fuels to prevent climate change. Pretty much the same result occurs if we run short of fossil fuels: We lose fossil fuels, but it is because we cannot extract them. Practically no one tells us about the extent to which the current system depends upon fossil fuels, however.

The economy is extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels. If there are not enough fossil fuels to go around, there is likely to be fighting over what is available. Some countries are likely to get far more than their fair share, while the rest of the world’s population will be left with very little or no fossil fuels.

If losing fossil fuels completely, or nearly completely, is a risk for some of the world’s population, it might be useful to think through some of the things that go wrong.

The following are some of my ideas about things that change, mostly for the worse, in a fossil fuel-deprived economy.

[1] Banks, as we know them, will likely fail.

Before banks fail in areas with virtually no fossil fuels, my guess is that we will generally see hyperinflation. Governments will greatly increase the money supply in a vain attempt to get people to believe that more goods and services are being produced. This approach will be used because people equate having more money with the ability to buy more goods and services. Unfortunately, without fossil fuels it will be very difficult to produce very many goods.

More money will simply provide more inflation because it takes physical resources, including the proper types of energy, to operate machinery of all kinds to make goods. Creating services also requires fossil fuel energy, but generally, to a lesser extent than creating goods. For example, the pair of scissors used in cutting hair is made using fossil fuel energy. The person cutting hair needs to be paid; his or her pay needs to be high enough to cover energy-related costs such as buying and cooking food to eat. The shop where hair cutting is operated will also need to pay for the fossil fuel energy required for heat and light, assuming such energy is even available.

Banks will fail because too large a share of debts cannot be repaid with interest. Part of the problem will be that while wages will rise, the prices of goods and services will rise even faster, making goods unaffordable. Another part of the problem is that service economies, such as those of the US and eurozone, will be disproportionately affected by a declining economy. In such an economy, people will get their hair cut less often. Instead, they will spend their money on essentials, including food, water, and cooking supplies. Service-providing businesses, such as hair salons and restaurants, will fail for lack of customers, leading to defaults on their debts.

[2] Today’s governments will fail.

With failing banks, today’s governments will also fail. Partly, they will fail because of attempts to bail out banks. Another problem will be declining tax revenue because fewer goods and services are produced. Pension programs will become increasingly difficult to fund. All these issues will lead to increasingly divisive politics. In some cases, central governments may dissolve, leaving states and other smaller units, such as today’s provinces, to continue on their own.

Intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, will find their voices becoming less and less heeded before they fail. Getting sufficient funding from member states will become an increasing problem.

Dictatorships ruled by leaders who wield absolute power and aristocracies ruled by leaders with hereditary rights are the types of governments with the least energy requirements. These are likely to become more common without fossil fuels.

[3] Nearly all of today’s businesses will fail.

Fossil fuels are essential for all kinds of businesses. They are used in the extraction of raw materials and in the transportation of goods. We use fossil fuels to pave roads and to build nearly all of today’s buildings. Without fossil fuels, even simple repairs of existing infrastructure become impossible. Without adequate fossil fuels, international companies are especially at risk of breaking into smaller units. They will find it impossible to operate in parts of the world with virtually no fossil fuel supply.

Fossil fuels are even used in making solar panels, wind turbines, and replacement parts for electric vehicles. Talking about solar and wind as “renewables” is to a significant extent misleading. At best, they can be described as fossil fuel “extenders.” They might help a problem of a slightly low fossil fuel supply, but they are far from adequate substitutes.

[4] Grid electricity and the internet will disappear.

Fossil fuels are important for maintaining the electrical transmission system. For example, restoring downed power lines after storms requires fossil fuels. Hooking up solar panels or wind turbines to the electric grid requires fossil fuels. Home solar panel systems may operate until their inverters fail. Once their inverters fail, their usefulness will be greatly degraded. Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture new inverters.

Fossil fuels are also important for maintaining every part of the internet system. Furthermore, without grid electricity, it becomes impossible to use computers to connect to the internet.

[5] International trade will be scaled back greatly.

At this time of year, many of us remember the story of the three kings from the East coming to visit the baby Jesus with precious gifts. We also remember stories in the Bible of Paul traveling to distant countries. From these and many other examples, we know that international trade and travel can continue without fossil fuels.

The problem is that without fossil fuels, some parts of the world will have very little to offer in return for goods made with fossil fuels. Countries with fossil fuels will quickly figure out that government debt from countries without fossil fuels doesn’t really mean much when it comes to paying for goods and services. As a result, trade will be scaled back to match available exports. Exports of goods will likely be very limited for parts of the world operating without fossil fuels.

[6] Agriculture will become much less efficient.

Today’s agriculture has been made unbelievably efficient using large mechanical equipment, generally powered by diesel, together with a huge number of chemicals, including herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. In addition, fences and netting made with fossil fuels are used to keep out unwanted animal pests. In some cases, greenhouses are used to provide a controlled climate for plants. Using fossil fuels, specialized hybrid seeds are developed that emphasize characteristics that farmers consider desirable. All these “helps” will tend to disappear.

Without these helps, agriculture will become much less efficient. Figure 1 shows that even with the small cutback in fossil fuel use in 2020, the share of employment provided by agriculture rose.

Figure 1. World employment in agriculture as a percentage of total employment, as compiled by the World Bank.

Employment in agriculture is essential. These workers did not get laid off, even as workers in tourism and workers making fancy clothes lost their jobs, so agricultural jobs as a share of total employment rose.

[7] Future labor needs are likely to be disproportionately in the agricultural sector.

People need to eat. Even if the economy is operating in a very inefficient manner, people will need food. The share of people in agriculture (including hunting and gathering) can be expected to rise considerably.

Some people hope that a shift to the use of permaculture will solve the problem of the dependence of agriculture on fossil fuels. I see permaculture as mostly a fossil-fuel extender, rather than a solution for getting along without fossil fuels, because it assumes the use of many fossil fuel-based devices, such as modern fences and today’s tools. Also, at best, permaculture only partly solves the inefficiency problem because it requires a huge amount of hands-on labor.

Figure 2. Comparison of US employment in agriculture as a share of total employment, with a similar ratio for the UN Least Developed Countries based on data of the World Bank.

Today, there is a wide divide between the share of employment in agriculture in the United States and in the same statistic for the UN group of least developed countries. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. They use very little fossil fuels.

The US share of employment in agriculture has recently been about 1.7%. In the part of Europe using the Euro, the share of employment in agriculture has recently averaged about 3.0%. In either the US or Europe, it would take a huge change in employment to get to 70% in agricultural employment (as seen early in the 1990s for the UN least developed group), or even to 55% (as experienced recently by the same group).

[8] Home heating will become a luxury item available only to the wealthy.

Without fossil fuels, wood will come into high demand for its heat value. Wood will be needed for cooking food; it is very difficult to subsist on a diet of all raw foods. Wood will also be in demand for making charcoal, which in turn can be used to smelt some metals. With these demands on wood, deforestation is likely to become a major problem in many parts of the world. Wood in general will be quite expensive, given the considerable cost of harvesting and transporting it over long distances without the benefit of fossil fuels.

People living in sparsely populated wooded areas may be able to gather their own wood for home heating. For other people, home heating will likely become a luxury, affordable only by the very rich.

[9] Living alone will become a thing of the past.

Without enough heat, and with barely enough wood for cooking, people (and their animals) will have to huddle together more. Homes housing multiple generations, built over a place for keeping farm animals, may again become popular. It will be more efficient to cook for large groups than for one person at a time. People in cold areas will huddle together with each other in beds to keep warm. Or they will huddle together with their dogs, as in the saying, three dog night, meaning a night that is cold enough to need to have three dogs to keep a person warm.

Even in warm parts of the world, people will live together in groups, simply because maintaining a household for a single person will become impossibly expensive. Food and fuel for cooking will take up a huge share of a family’s income. There will be little left over for other expenses.

[10] Governments and their laws will shrink in importance. Instead, new traditions and new religions will play a greater role in keeping order.

Governments have made dozens of promises, but without a growing supply of fossil fuels (or an adequate substitute), they will not be able to keep them. Pensions will be gone. The ability of governments to enforce ownership laws will likely disappear. Without any good substitute for fossil fuels, mass disorder is a likely outcome.

People crave order. Without order, it is impossible to conduct business. We know from recent experience that “sustainability groups,” put together by people with a common interest in sustainability tend not to work well enough to provide order. They tend to fall apart as soon as obstacles arise.

What has seemed to work to provide order in the past is some combination of traditions and religions. With a changing world, both traditions and religions are likely to need to change. In the book, Communities that Abide, by Dmitry Orlov et al., the authors point out that having a strong (non-elected) leader, and a shared set of religious beliefs, helps keep a group together. In fact, it helps if the group is somewhat persecuted. Fighting for a common cause is part of what keeps the group together.

The Ten Commandments in the Bible are interpreted in a way that strongly suggests that they are rules for behavior within the group, not for behavior in general. For example, “Thou shalt not kill,” applies to other members of the group; wars against other groups were very much expected. In those wars, killing of members of another group was expected. This would seem to allow Israel’s killing of members of Hamas, today. Without enough fossil fuels to go around, fighting becomes more frequent.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the problem the world is facing today is like one that smaller economies have faced, over and over, in the past: The population has become too large for the economy’s resource base, which now includes fossil fuels. Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening.

As I see the situation, the world needs to scale down its use of fossil fuels because, ultimately, the laws of physics determine selling prices for fossil fuels. We extract the inexpensive-to-produce fossil fuels first. The problem is that fossil fuel selling prices cannot rise arbitrarily high. Prices must be both:

• High enough for producers to make a profit, with funds left over for reinvestment and for adequate taxes for their governments.

• Low enough for consumers to afford to buy food and other consumer goods produced with these fossil fuels.

If we assume that all the fossil fuels that seem to be under the ground can really be extracted, climate change from burning them may indeed be a problem. But it is hard to see that they can really be extracted, given the affordability issue. Politicians will hold down prices to get voters to vote for them if nothing else.

Researchers have been working diligently to find solutions, but to date, their success has been poor. Every supposed solution requires significant use of fossil fuels. So, we need to think through what might happen if we are forced to get along without fossil fuels and without an adequate substitute.

Embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis – who gave her lover Nathan Wade’s law firm five Fulton County contracts totaling nearly $1 million, has “badly tainted” her case against Donald Trump, according to the former president.

“It is so badly tainted. There is no case here,” said Trump in a statement to Fox News while Willis was giving a trainwreck testimony last week in a Georgia courtroom over allegations that she had an “improper” relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, her lover.

“By going after Trump, she’s able to get her boyfriend more money than they ever dreamed possible,” Trump continued.

Several of Trump’s co-defendants in the case have moved to disqualify Willis over the relationship.

“The case will have to be dropped,” Trump continued. “There’s no way they can have a case. The whole thing was a scam to get money for the boyfriend.”

Willis claimed that her relationship started in early 2022, after Wade was hired. But Robin Yeartie, a college friend of Willis who remained friends for several decades (even renting Willis an apartment), testified that the romantic relationship began “shortly after” Willis and Wade met at a 2019 municipal conference.

Yeartie, who says she stopped talking to Willis sometime in 2022 after she was told to resign or be fired from the Fulton County DA’s office, directly contradicts testimony by both Willis and Wade.

Ms. Yeartie said she had “no doubt” the pair were in a romantic relationship from 2019, adding that she saw them “hugging” and “kissing” that year.

President Trump told Fox News that Thursday’s courtroom testimony shows Ms. Willis is “disgraced” and that Mr. Wade’s trips to the White House add to signs that the case is another example of “election interference” meant to thwart his 2024 bid for the presidency. –Epoch Times

Trump co-defendant Micahel Roman has alleged that Willis’ relationship with Wade allowed her to benefit from taxpayer funds, after Wade took her on several lavish vacations.

Willis claims she reimbursed Wade in cash for everything, so there was no benefit to her.

On Monday, Judge Scott McAfee said that Willis could be disqualified from the case if the evidence shows “an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” adding that the purpose of Thursday’s hearing was to determine “whether a relationship existed, whether that relationship was romantic or nonromantic in nature, when it formed and whether it continues.”

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has notched a victory in his legal battle against alleged government censorship of statements he made on social media that were critical of the COVID-19 vaccines.

A federal court has granted a preliminary injunction against the White House and other federal defendants in a lawsuit brought by Mr. Kennedy Jr. that accuses the Biden administration of orchestrating a campaign to pressure social media platforms to censor vaccine criticism.

Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued the ruling on Feb. 14, stating that Mr. Kennedy Jr. has demonstrated a strong likelihood of success in proving government infringement on his free speech rights.

The injunction prevents the defendants—which include the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI—from taking any actions to coerce social media companies to remove or suppress content containing protected free speech.

The injunction remains on hold for the time being, however, as the proceeding in Mr. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit has been consolidated with the case of Missouri v. Biden, which is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. The freeze will be in place for 10 days after the Supreme Court rules in Missouri v. Biden, which is based on the same evidence.

The defendants have, in prior public statements, denied illegally leaning on social media companies to stifle protected free speech.

Rather, they have said they only ever flagged objectionable content, such as that they claimed was “misinformation” and “disinformation” and that it violated the companies’ own terms of use.

‘Destructive, Coercive Threats’

Mr. Kennedy Jr., along with plaintiffs Children’s Health Defense and Connie Sampognaro, a health professional who says she was harmed by the government’s censorship campaign, have alleged in their class action complaint that the Biden administration violated their right to free speech.

They accuse President Joe Biden and other federal defendants of systematically and repeatedly using “destructive, coercive threats” to force social media platforms to censor protected speech.

The Biden administration is also accused of entering into “collusive partnerships” with social media companies and working with them to censor constitutionally protected expression.

Mr. Kennedy has argued that the defendants harmed him by censoring him on social media—in some cases deplatforming him entirely—and so preventing him from gathering vaccine-related news and passing it along to his hundreds of thousands of followers.

Children’s Health Defense has also made the same argument but, additionally, it claims that its many members were deprived of information and ideas about the safety and efficacy of alternative COVID-19 treatments.

Ms. Sampognaro has alleged that the Biden administration’s actions have harmed her as a health care policy advocate by depriving her of complete, accurate information about COVID-19 and possible treatments.

The complaint also asked the court to certify the case a class action to cover all people who consumed news related to COVID-19 or U.S. elections on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, at anytime from January 2020 to the present, and so who would have been harmed by government censorship of related facts.

‘Willingness to Coerce’

The lawsuit singled out several of the “countless examples” of the Biden administration’s alleged censorship campaign.

One was the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media ahead of the 2020 presidential election, with the complaint calling it “an act of censorship that deprived Americans of information of the highest public interest” and that “may even have swung the outcome of that election.” Polling has indicated that many voters would have picked a different candidate had they been aware of the laptop’s contents, which included information suggesting President Biden was involved in his son’s overseas business dealings, contrary to his repeated denials.

Another was suppression of reporting or expression of opinion that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese regime lab in Wuhan.

The third example was online suppression of facts and opinions about COVID-19 vaccines “that might lead people to become ‘hesitant’ about COVID vaccine mandates, again depriving Americans of information and opinions on matters of the highest public importance.”

In his order, Judge Doughty found that Mr. Kennedy and the other plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits that the defendants colluded to influence the actions of private social media companies “by ‘insinuating’ themselves into the social-media companies’ private affairs and blurring the line between public and private action.”

He also sided with the complaint in determining that the Biden administration’s actions represented a “substantial risk of harm” to Mr. Kennedy and the other plaintiffs.

“And it is certainly likely that Defendants could use their power over millions of people to suppress alternative views or moderate content that they do not agree with in the upcoming 2024 national election,” Judge Doughty wrote.

He said that Mr. Kennedy has proven that the Biden administration has shown “willingness to coerce” or at least give significant encouragement to social media companies to suppress free speech with regard to COVID-19 vaccines, national elections, gas prices, climate change, gender, and abortion.

In July 2023, Judge Doughty also granted an injunction in the Missouri v. Biden case, which is now pending before the Supreme Court.

More than 50 officials in the Biden administration across a dozen agencies were involved in efforts to pressure big tech companies to censor alleged misinformation, according to documents released in 2022.

The State Department has formally designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization, which gives Washington new powers to thwart the group’s access to the global financial system.

The new label of Specially Designated Global Terrorist group against the Yemeni Shia rebel militia backed by Iran was implemented Friday, coming weeks after a mid-January warning was issued by the State Department.

It also comes following months of Houthi drone and missile attacks on both commercial vessels and Western warships patrolling the Red Sea. 

On Thursday in the latest response, the US military struck three Houthi anti-ship cruise missile systems that US Central Command (CENTCOM) said were preparing to launch.

The new designation is controversial among some humanitarian aid groups working in Yemen, as detailed in The New York Times: 

Last month, Mr. Blinken announced the State Department’s intent to return the Houthis to its terrorism list, but delayed the action for 30 days. The pause was intended in part to give humanitarian aid groups working in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen time to ensure that their work does not run afoul of new sanctions from the United States that will punish anyone who provides support to the militant group. Some aid groups have warned that their work will inevitably be constrained in a country with dire humanitarian needs.

The Houthis were removed from the list in 2021 after they were first designated previously under the Trump administration, also given they have long been armed and backed financially by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A move by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s February of 2021 had taken the Houthis off the list. “Effective February 16, I am revoking the designations of Ansarallah, sometimes referred to as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)…,” the US top diplomat said at the time.

Blinken had said the removal was in “recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen. We have listened to warnings from the United Nations, humanitarian groups, and bipartisan members of Congress, among others, that the designations could have a devastating impact on Yemenis’ access to basic commodities like food and fuel.”

Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired missiles at the British oil tanker Pollux in the Red Sea amid ongoing attacks on commercial shipping.

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/LCscISHYXA pic.twitter.com/buD2tEDOJg

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 17, 2024

This new reversal presumably means the already dire humanitarian situation in the country is about to get a lot worse once again, though long largely ignored in Western media headlines.

Authored by J.G. Collins via The Epoch Times,

When I first moved to New York City in the mid-1970s, cab drivers – or “hacks,” as they were called once – were a skilled profession.

The Checker Taxi Cab, once ubiquitous on NYC Streets, is now a rare sight and hired now mostly for weddings, bar mitzahs, and period movie shoots. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Many of them were sole proprietors, and owned their cab and taxi medallion—the costly city license that allowed them to pick up fares hailed on the street. They took pride in their taxis, kept them clean, and many festooned them with family photos, religious icons, custom dashboard decorations, and other objects.  These men—and just a handful of women—worked hard and knew the city like you know your Social Security number. They knew the fastest way to get you where you were going by the time of day (“Second Avenue will get you to Wall Street faster than the FDR; it’s morning rush”…) And they knew obscure streets like Freeman Alley, Stone Street, and Hunts Lane.  And if you were conversant, they also dispensed some of the best opinions and advice one could garner, gleaned from years of workaday life and speaking to thousands of people a year.

But in the 1980s, taxi medallions soared in value to nearly—and past—the half-million dollar mark and were scooped up by investor groups who leased them to a polyglot corps of  independent drivers, mostly recently arrived to New York, who rented the cabs, bought their own gas, and had few other options for work. 

Soon the medallion-owning taxi owner/operators sold out and retired or found other work.  In the 1980s, you were lucky to find a taxi driver who spoke English, let alone one who knew how to get to Katz’s Deli in the days before the movie “When Harry Met Sally” turned it into an overpriced tourist destination.

Today, anyone with a hack license issued by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, a clean driving record, a late-model vehicle, and a mobile phone can drive for Uber or Lyft and start doing what the old hack drivers took years to learn. They can simply start driving using one of the half-dozen navigation apps one can download for free on their telephone or the apps provided by the ride-share company once they sign up. 

And those old taxi medallions that once sold, in their heyday, for over a million dollars? Well, they now sell, often in bankruptcy, for less than a quarter of that.  And not a few of the independent medallion taxi owner/operators who bought in at the high end and found themselves desperately upside down on their medallion mortgage, ended up killing themselves; there were three in 2018 alone. I relate the story of the medallion taxi drivers to highlight an example of how technology can disrupt long-standing businesses and industries. (NYC taxi medallions have been issued since 1937.)

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in our economy, it’s important to remember that it could become a massive disrupter of existing businesses.

In the service space, especially, it has enormous potential to displace millions of skilled workers.  

Or not…

“New” technology is always hyped by its proponents. The Segway, when it was introduced in 2001, was reported by one outlet to be “a more significant invention than the personal computer.” Twenty years later, its leading customers were  tour companies whose clients couldn’t walk the mile or more to highlighted destinations and mall cops who were similarly limited. (The Segway even became a feature in the “Paul Bart: Mall Cop” movie comedies.) The original model is no longer produced, and most of the market has been replaced with an array of battery powered scooters. 

Tourists on Segway Scooters visiting Washington, D.C., on Aug. 21, 2008. (Xesús Cociña Souto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)

So, how do we separate the hype from the facts?

I’ll have to leave that to people far smarter than I am. If you had told me 20 years ago that Elon Musk would return a rocket booster from space to land, upright, on a platform at sea, like a rocket landing on Mars in some 1950s’ sci-fi movie, I would have called you a liar. But here we are; Musk has done it. (For a deeper dive into the “hows,” “whats,” “whos,” and “whys,” particularly on the hardware elements of AI, I suggest the article “What Is AI Hardwire?” on VentureBeat.)

If AI lives up to its billing, then millions of clerical, repetitive, and routine jobs will go the way of telephone booths and AAA road maps. It could be a massive disruption, for some, or a massive opportunity for others.  We’ll have to wait and see. 

But adaptation will be necessary to some greater or lesser degree. Luddites seldom (never?) win. The good news is that AI will likely take several years to “learn” the routine, clerical, and repetitive jobs it will likely replace, although higher-paying skills are most likely to be “learned” first.

The Market Effect

I am more concerned about the likelihood markets will see an AI bubble and bust, much as we saw in the  “dot-com” boom and bust at the flip of this century. Those of us old enough to remember the late 1990s can recall when pretty much any business having a “.com” after its name practically guaranteed an avalanche of investor money being dumped on it. By the time the markets had sorted the likes of Amazon.com and Booking.com from their less viable brethren, billions of investor money had been lost with an enormous effect on the larger macro-economy and the securities markets.   

I fear there may be a similar boom and bust in AI.

An exchange-traded fund, for example, that invests only in the so-called Magnificent 7 stocks—Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—is up by nearly 50 percent in less than a year. In addition to the Magnificent 7,  AI stocks, who are all involved in AI to a greater or lesser degree, there are a number of “pure play” stocks and start-ups. A number of “silly season,” purely speculative “meme” stocks (i.e., a stock which has gained viral popularity) have been bid up by Wall Street, as well as blockchain digital assets like crypto coins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—unique digital assets like artworks. 

It’s important to remember that much of this value appreciation has occurred because Federal Reserve policy and Biden administration deficit spending has caused a lot of money to be sloshing around the financial markets.

Much of that money—or “excess liquidity”—is looking for a place to nest.

If too much of it nests in the aspirational AI, and those dreams come to be dashed, or simply take too long to be realized,  it will have an enormous effect on the markets. For that reason, fund managers and market regulators – as well as the “plunge protection team” (formally, the Working Group on Financial Markets) at the White House – should all be on heightened alert and run robust risk-management strategies to ameliorate market risks. It will be a massive and crucial undertaking.

They may even want to create an AI algorithm to do it.  

The Biden administration is reportedly considering easing tailpipe emissions regulations, a move that was designed to force Americans from gas and diesel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles, according to The New York Times, citing three people familiar with the plan. This potential policy adjustment is in response to concerns from major automakers and labor unions and comes amid sliding EV demand, recently prompting companies such as Ford Motor Company to reduce EV production and lay off workers. 

“Instead of essentially requiring automakers to rapidly ramp up sales of electric vehicles over the next few years, the administration would give car manufacturers more time, with a sharp increase in sales not required until after 2030,” the people said.

This policy change comes after 3,900 auto dealers penned a letter to President Biden at the end of 2023, warning the president to reconsider the pace of EV mandates, citing a severe decline in demand for these vehicles. 

“Currently, there are many excellent battery electric vehicles available for consumers to purchase. These vehicles are ideal for many people, and we believe their appeal will grow over time. The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers said. 

They warned: “Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots which is our best indicator of customer demand in the marketplace.” 

Last month, Ford Motor’s electric vehicle sales ran out of juice as the automaker was forced to slash production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning to April “to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability.” 

A recent note by RBC analyst Tom Narayan said the EV slowdown is far from over:

“Key takeaways thus far from earnings season are that the EV slowdown is not showing any evidence of an inflection, Level 4 autonomy headwinds continue to persist, and fears over supplier inventory overbuild are likely overblown.”

Analyst Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley suggested consolidation is coming to the industry:

The EV bubble is no match for elevated interest rates, and no fiscally conservative American is trying to survive the era of failed Bidenomics with a +$1,000 EV car payment. 

Plus, Toyota’s chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, will likely be proven right: EV cars will never dominate the global market, adding hybrids are the future. 

If the alleged climate crisis is as urgent as portrayed by radicals in the White House and woke corporate media, then why does the Biden administration feel the need to move the transition goalposts if banning gas cars saves the planet? 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

I have written about the disastrous policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson for Chicago. 

As a native son, it is hard to watch this wonderful city undermined by Johnson and radical allies in the city council. Some initiatives like reparations and state-funded grocery stores will cost money but will not impose nearly the costs of Johnson’s dismal record on crime and taxes.

However, this week saw a particularly confusing moment when, after calling the anti-crime program ShotSpotter “racist,” Johnson asked the company to extend its contract beyond the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So Johnson will put an end to this supposedly racist program but only after the Democratic luminaries (and the most violent summer months) have passed.

Johnson was elected in a close race against an anti-crime candidate. The teacher-union backed politician has never enjoyed widespread support in the city, but he is now polling at just 28 percent popularity.

In his latest baffling position, Johnson first declared that ShotStopper was racist because it spots more shots in minority neighborhoods and is used by police to justify unsupported investigations or charges.

The program has been widely credited for reducing violence and crimes.

The Democratic National Convention presented a problem for Johnson.

He is already under fire for continuing Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city despite the struggle to support the current number of undocumented migrants and the opposition of most Chicagoans. Only 39 percent favor Johnson continuing the status.

So ShotSpotter is now being extended for seven months. Johnson says that the police will then be transitioned away from the technology. Critics say that the city will then return to operating without the system of alerts at a time when people are demanding more action on gun violence.