Trump is promulgating tariffs on imports from a range of countries and blocs presently major trading partners with the USA. Canada and the EU, to name but two. China, too.
As many are pointing out, tariffs reduce trade, because they make imported goods (and/or services) more expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff.
Looked at from a different point of view, there are reasons why Trump’s tariff barriers might be positive for the USA, mainly because they might allow American industry, in decline for half a century, to revive.
“The tariff has been used as a political tool to establish an independent nation; for example, the United States Tariff Act of 1789, signed specifically on July 4, was called the “Second Declaration of Independence” by newspapers because it was intended to be the economic means to achieve the political goal of a sovereign and independent United States.[93]“
[Wikipedia].
In the short-term, Trump’s tariff’s may well cause domestic prices (within the USA) to inflate. In the longer-term, however, those tariffs may also create American jobs, and also increase America’s long-term security.
The USA is one of the few economies capable of being an autarky [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky]. Others would be Russia and mainland Europe (the EU, presently).
There is little doubt, though, that in those countries that produce items exported to the USA, the Trump tariffs will cause economic damage, possibly severe damage. That in turn will cause political fallout.
The USA is a huge and vibrant economy. If turned inward, that may be able to create the prosperity and job security so lacking at present in many American communities. The USA should have been isolationist in the 1940s and afterwards, as it had been in the 1930s. It seems to me that that would be a good policy now for the USA. Economic isolationism allied to political isolationism.
The USA should build up purely defensive military and naval power, but avoid doing what it has done, particularly, since 1941, i.e. interfere all over the world. If that is done, American security will thereby be increased.
Tweets seen
This has been going viral on other platforms. Sadly, there’s a lot of truth to it. We need to turn our country around and make it work for hardworking Brits. pic.twitter.com/gozdMLkm0G
Yvette Cooper, the Labour Friends of Israel expenses cheat, has been wanting to be a dictator for many years. May she suffer the fate of so many dictators.
Is Starmer working for Beijing? First the Chagos Islands, then the Chinese Embassy, now this. It’s not ok. https://t.co/VOXrHVktcS
The Russian army’s units have destroyed the infrastructure of military aerodromes and fuel storage facilities used in the interests of the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian Defense Ministry reported:https://t.co/mBPKQOQ2gHpic.twitter.com/gRS3br6t3Q
Finally, there are very real differences between nationalities in how visas are used and abused. For example, for the 4,000 EU citizens on health & care visas, there were 0.23 dependants per worker; for 1,800 Australians, 0.39. This is much more likely to be fiscally sustainable. pic.twitter.com/GbJcrIidR0
Apparently Labour is setting up an “anti-Reform unit”. They’re right to worry. Of the Top 100 seats for Reform in 2029 64 are Labour held. Of the Top 50, 33 are.
That really is alarming. I have commented previously on the blog about Chinese and other androids and also other types of robot etc.
Israeli troops carry out massive explosions in the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank, destroying an entire residential area pic.twitter.com/zUOksT2hPu
Keywords might be “genocide”, Lebensraum, and Greater Israel. They plan to settle the Gaza Strip with Jews. The same is true of the West Bank, southern Lebanon, parts of Syria etc.
Entrance to the office of the Governor of Montana, USA
Zelensky is amazed – he doesn't know where American billions have disappeared. Volodymyr Zelensky does not know what the $200 billion in military aid that Washington provided to Kiev was spent on. Ukraine received only more than $75 billion from the United States, claims the… pic.twitter.com/HUmxJjW1bx
“The rise of ‘woke‘ thought and digital currencies are among the warning signs that Western civilization could be about to collapse, said investor and expert Doug Casey.
Casey’s book ‘Crisis Investing’ topped the New York Times nonfiction chart, focusing on the looming crisis facing Western civilization.
In subsequent books and podcast interviews, the veteran speculator has focused on signs that he sees as warnings, based on his study of historical events such as the fall of Ancient Rome.
The rise of ‘woke‘ thought and digital currencies are among the warning signs that Western civilization could be about to collapse, said investor and expert Doug Casey.
He told DailyMail.com that there are now seven clear signs that he believes show that Western civilization is facing an end.“
[Daily Mail]
Worth looking at.
There is one factor which dominates in the UK, which is the fact that “nothing works properly any more“. I started noting it on the blog years ago, and noticed (after a couple of years) some msm outlets saying the same.
Part of the decline in services and standards is, of course, caused by the migration invasion, meaning both the strain put on all services and facilities by the extra numbers and the nature (i.e. poor quality) of those entering the UK.
Then there is the decline in real education (not meaningless “degree” diplomas handed out like confetti).
The repression on free speech is another major factor.
The box-ticking culture in administration as well, combined with the “Common Purpose” and allied cancers.
When Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP took power, they were initially voted for, in 1932, by 33% of the people, which grew to 44% in 1933, yet the NSDAP vote had been only 2.6% in 1928. Quite an upsurge in only 4-5 years.
The reasons given for the upsurge in support for the NSDAP have been examined by many. The Great Depression in the USA, which spread around the world, was of course key.
The Jewish influence too, but that, after all, had existed for a long time in Germany, and had been especially prevalent after the defeat of 1918. The NSDAP had spoken against it for over a decade without, at first, having gained much traction.
There were other factors as well, but I think that what clinched Hitler’s triumph was the perception that things generally, in all areas, were not working properly.
The same was obviously true in the Russian Empire in 1917, after at least two lost wars, and with the ruling cliques of the Empire mired in corruption and scandal. Russia as a state was not working for the people in any way whatsoever.
Reverting to the UK in 2024, not so dramatic, true, but there has been a slow-motion train crash going on for the past ~25 years. It becomes hard to ignore the fact that the UK, in many ways, is now ceasing to work properly.
Government must, above all else, function.
Deadhead MPs and ministers, repression on free speech, official policies seemingly designed not to work (mass immigration, migration invasion, energy, foreign policy, NHS, social security etc), and the fact that ordinary everyday life becomes a tangled mess by reason of the pointless hoops that have to be jumped through: you name it— NHS appointments, and medical care in general; parking a car; getting through to anyone who can help with any given problem, whether at commercial enterprises, in local government, central government, or wherever.
The UK’s voters are tiring of the existing mess, and may be inclined to clutch at the Reform UK straw, in the short-to-medium term, but later, after 2029, may support a truly radical social-national alternative, which may exist by then.
If not, then “le deluge“… It will then be a matter of taking to the lifeboats.
There emerges an uneasy feeling that our present world system is not going to be around for much longer, the way things are internationally.
“Daria Platonova Dugina — A Theory of Europe: A View of the New Right.
In a world increasingly levelled by homogenisation, Daria Platonova Dugina retrieves the vibrancy of European culture by delving into the intellectual renaissance of the French New Right.
Exploring the pioneering work of figures like Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, Dugina traces their groundbreaking and provocative reimagining of identity, tradition, and belonging, where the spirit of ideas transcends the conventional boundaries of Left and Right.
Through a “Gramscianism from the Right” approach, she analyses how the New Right’s critique of universalist ideologies and its visions of civilisational revival present a cultural counter-hegemony that values rootedness and organic community over the globalist paradigm.
In this unique collection of lectures, essays, and interviews, Dugina highlights the complex intersections of New Right thought with currents like National Bolshevism and Eurasianism, investigating the philosophical and geopolitical frontlines of the fracturing world order.
Dugina takes readers on a far-reaching journey beyond the standard ideological spectrum, inviting a deeper understanding of identity politics in the contemporary age.
Here, philosophy meets praxis, inspiring those searching for alternatives in today’s monotone world to revisit the foundations and peaks of Europe’s intellectual heritage.
Daria ‘Platonova’ Dugina (1992–2022) was a Russian philosopher, political analyst, journalist, and artist. Dugina studied philosophy at Moscow State University and Bordeaux Montaigne University, specialising in Plato and Neoplatonism. The daughter of Alexander Dugin, she was an active member of the International Eurasian Movement and collaborated with the French New Right. Her life was tragically cut short by a car bomb on the night of 20 August 2022.“
Not that I think highly of everything Dugin himself says or writes. His views are sometimes risibly simplistic, even puerile. Certainly not always, but sometimes, especially when it comes down to concrete realities and facts.
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Absolutely not. You do not touch the disabled and we need tourism. This woman is an idiot – completely messed up a stable inheritance, changed the rules to suit her agenda, hammered pensioners and tanked the economy. Get rid of her. https://t.co/XqjlsZoxAB
I rarely if ever repost anything by the above tweeter (the ex-wife of a former Conservative-Party MP), but (with the exception of “stable inheritance“) this has to be right. “Rachel from Accounts and Customer Relations” is a joke, a bad joke, a very unpleasant Labour Friends of Israel joke.
“That AIPAC purchased the seats of about 90% or more of our current congress.
JFK famously wanted them registered as a foreign agent right before he was shot and thus they changed their name and never registered.
Why are we letting a foreign lobby buy off our congress?
That Israel was obviously the state sponsor of Jefrey Epstein, whose handler was Ehud Barak, ex head of Israeli military intelligence, his funding was Les Wexner one of the worlds richest Zionist ‘philanthropists’ and he was accused by ex Mossad assets of being Mossad.
Not to mention the Maxwell connection. (They had blackmail on Clinton, and many, many more.) He who holds the blackmail holds the leash- just ask J. Edgar Hoover.
That Israel is the only nation who has a defacto sanctioned, yet actually secret and unsanctioned nuclear program. A program that they stole from the United States- look into the Apollo affair, NUMEC, the Dimona nuclear facility.
That jews, muslims, and christians lived side by side in peace in Palestine before the Rothschilds purchased the country from Britain during WW1 (see the Balfour declaration) and began their colonial program.
That the groups that founded Israel, Lehi, Irgun, and Hagannah, were declared terrorist organizations by Israel itself because their tactics were so deplorable (bombing British and Palestinian civilians) yet these three ‘paramilitary’ groups rebranded to form the IDF and their leadership became the leadership of Israel for the following thirty plus years.
That Israel is a foreign nation halfway across the world that has no business receiving my tax dollars. Why are we sending them billions of dollars of our tax money while our country burns, is overrun by illegal immigration, etc?
We are told Israel is our ‘greatest ally’ so why would they have had a massive spy network targeting US government agencies leading up to sep 11, 2001 – see the Israeli art students DEA report for copious evidence of Israeli surveillance all across the continental US.
This is an official government report that cites hundreds of incidents of observed Israeli surveillance teams documented by US government agents all across the continental US. And we still have received 0 answers why there were numerous fake Israeli moving companies positioned all across the eastern seaboard leading into September 11, 2001 and we have multiple eye witness reports, as well as hard photographic evidence that they knew the attacks were coming at least a day before they did and that they were positioned at a vantage point to photograph the attack up to a half hour before the first plane hit. Never got any answers- but you can read the official FBI reports about the incident. I’ve broken them down live on X before.
That’s just a small list of some of the best documented reasons why I, as an American, dont want Israel receiving any of my tax dollars. And I didn’t even mention my obvious objections to the collective punishment, mass surveillance, forced starvation, bombing of refugee camps, brutal murdering of women and children that’s been going on in Gaza and the West Bank for years, decades- which you can watch in graphic detail right here on X.
And that’s not to mention that somehow we let congress pass laws outlawing ‘antisemitic’ speech, despite our own first amendment. And we have anti-boycott legislation in multiple states, despite the fact that it’s perfectly legal to boycott American companies… just not Israeli ones.
Every content creator knows the fastest way to get demonetized, banned, and slandered is to be critical of Israel. I figured you would have realized this too after what they did to you and tried to do to X last year.”
[Ian Carroll, replying to a tweet by Elon Musk]
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🚨BREAKING: Do you support Mel Gibson's plan to expose pedophiles and human traffickers in Hollywood, including revealing the Epstein and Diddy lists?
“Fuming locals have raged at a council planning to build thousands of homes on green belt surrounding one of England’s oldest market towns.
St Albans Council sent its proposal to use land including 800 hectares of green belt to build 15,000 homes by 2041 to Labour’s Planning Inspectorate at the end of 2024.
Homeowners in the area slammed the ‘diabolical’ plan by developers who ‘don’t give a s***’ to destroy the countryside and said the extra homes would put local services under unbearable strain.”
[Daily Mail]
Very sad. Mainly caused by mass immigration. That, and profiteering by both farmers (selling land— look at the report; ONE FIELD sold for £38M!) and housebuilding companies.
As for housebuilders building tracts of housing and then refusing to adhere to agreements guaranteeing services (roads, parks, shops etc), if they do that, their precious “developments” should be blown up by the State, then rewilded; the companies should also be fined, very heavily. The directors should then be put to hard labour.
I used to spend occasional weekends at Sopwell House, which is walking distance from St. Albans. That was back in the early/mid 1990s, 30 years ago (incredible, to me).
Britain is slowly (?) becoming a multikulti slum where nothing works, and from where every English/white person wants to escape, either to the relatively few areas of the country unaffected by the spreading floods of ghastly ugly new housing —and immigration—, or overseas. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Walz: US wants Greenland for national security and to counter Russia HARRY TRUMAN OFFERED 046. FOR THE WORLD'S LARGEST ISLAND – 100 MILLION DOLLARS pic.twitter.com/1da33TPG0C
Africa is currently experiencing more conflict than at any time since 1946 , according to data from Uppsala University and the Norwegian Peace Research Institute in Oslo. In 2024, the institutes recorded 28 state-level conflicts in 16 of Africa’s 54 countries—more than in any… pic.twitter.com/AEKaaAOtzN
Massive protests erupt in the capital Bucharest after the court annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election. pic.twitter.com/fiHZJMhlAb
If Britain had a real government, the police would shoot them down in the street.
Whole thing stinks, from MPs down. In Bradford, ‘when a child "married" her abuser in a traditional Islamic wedding, her social worker attended the ceremony’. Elsewhere, after a young girl was found naked and drugged with seven men, the girl was arrested, for being drunk. Madness https://t.co/pJstiMF8VR
This (read that report) is a trend that has been going on for 2-3 decades now. I could recount numerous examples from my own experience. One of the least egregious would be that involving a pupil in my own chambers in Exeter (in the early/mid 1990s, I was practising in London, but after working and living in various places overseas from 1996-2002, returned to the practising Bar in SW England in mid-2002).
The pupil to whom I refer (and who shall be nameless, partly out of courtesy but equally because I have actually forgotten her name), was from Northern Ireland.
Now I have to say that I find the Northern Irish accent one of the most difficult in the UK to understand easily but, in addition to that, the girl in question had a pretty bad speech impediment.
You might ask why on Earth someone with a bad speech impediment wanted to go to the Bar in the first place, or was not sidetracked into other career options at an earlier stage, but there it is. Of course, not all barristers spend much of their time in court.
Now, said girl pupil was, like many Bar pupils, far more obliging and pleasant when a pupil (and no doubt trying to get along pleasantly with members of chambers) than she was once taken on as a tenant or —as I think she was, cannot now recall exactly— squatter (a quasi-tenant but with no rights of tenure). I myself only saw her in passing, really, but did note that, once she was actually working as barrister, she seemed rather abrasive, judging admittedly by the very few times I saw her at (though not in) court. I never had any trouble with her myself, and in fact saw little of her.
Now the interesting thing was that not only did chambers (notably in the person of the main Clerk to Chambers) champion that young woman, but claimed that instructing solicitors loved her. Well, maybe. Seems strange to me that someone with both a speech impediment and an accent that was more like a gargle could be at the English Bar doing court work, but there we are.
I harbour a suspicion that people tend to bend over backwards to be nice, so to speak, to the physically-disabled, as many do also to some of the ethnic minorities. That is fine as far as it goes, but not when it amounts to a kind of lie.
Incidentally, I seem to remember that the person noted above returned, in the end, to her native Ulster, and maybe left the practising Bar.
Digressing further, I happened, out of curiosity today, to look at the website of the successor chambers to the one to which I belonged in Exeter from 2002-2008 (and which, an amalgam of two or three sets, is now the largest in the South West outside Bristol). I saw that several people that I liked are still there, and I saw that not only (as I knew already) is my old head of chambers now “His Honour” (a Circuit Judge) but that someone else I knew in chambers, a former magistrates’ clerk, with an encylopaedic knowledge of some aspects of (in particular) criminal law, is now also “His Honour”. Unless it is just someone with an identical name, but I think not.
That last was a nice little man, very polite and pleasant, who wore his considerable knowledge lightly. I seem to recall that he had written a well-received book on sentencing. Glad to see that his knowledge and diligence has been rewarded.
I was amused to see that two people who had rather more than a spat in chambers are now both members of that set. I liked both of them. One was a then-young man who was very eager to progress chambers (my wife called him a “Young Turk” for his enthusiastic diligence, but in these dumbed-down times, I suppose I shall have to explain that he was not a real Turk!). He was married to a pretty young woman whom I believe I met once at some chambers reception or other.
The other barrister, also young, was an ex-solicitor whose grandfather had founded one of the largest firms of solicitors in the South West. A very pleasant person.
Those people, with others in chambers, used to go shooting together, an activity of which I thoroughly disapproved. I disapprove of all hurt done to animals, particularly for sport or “fun”. I even disapprove of shooting humans, under most circumstances. Ironically, most of those I liked best in chambers were the shooters.
Anyway, one day, those two members of chambers were out shooting when a pheasant fell onto the head of the wife of the “Young Turk” and knocked her out in the field. Whether that preceded or not the affair that she apparently had with the other young barrister, I know not. It later transpired that, after much bad blood, I was the only member of chambers to be unaware of the feud that ensued, my mind being occupied by other matters (or as my wife would say, “in the clouds”) and, also, the fact that I was, by then, only spending half the month in the UK, the rest in France and some other countries.
I suppose that the two former antagonists have either buried the hatchet or (and/or) come to the realistic conclusion that that set is more or less “the only game in town” (in Exeter) now. Time heals all wounds, they say (though I remain doubtful of that, speaking generally). The events in question were after all some 15 or 16 years ago now.
Really heartened by solidarity in response to this. I was one of the women he harassed when I was very young and my DMs were full of male journalists who could tell I didn’t have a support network/ was vulnerable.
— TheEndOfEverything (@EternalEnglish) June 9, 2022
A ‘reset’ is meant to be a return to something that existed previously. The general idea being that doing so makes things better – fixes some problems. The ‘Great Reset’ is not that. It’s a total transformation to something entirely new. It is wholly destructive, not corrective.
The Independent witnessed losses being inflicted on the Ukrainian military and the lack of long-range firepower to fight back; one soldier interviewed has since been killed and another three injured
At last, a reality check in the otherwise useless and in fact often deliberately untruthful UK msm.
I was blogging months ago that the forces of the Kiev regime would soon be running short of military resources, particularly fuel and ammunition.
J.H. Brennan
I discovered today that J.H. Brennan, whose early 1970s books Astral Doorways and Experimental Magic I owned from 1978 (when I was 21-22 y-o), is still alive, now aged 81: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Herbert_Brennan.
A pretty good writer, in my opinion, with an easy-reading style (judging by the few books of his that I have read).
More tweets seen
Since 2008, politicians and bankers have kept recession at bay by pretending it wasn’t happening. That strategy is beginning to unravel.@willydunn explains why the ostrich economy is heading for a reckoning.https://t.co/TiNChSZPHr
The explanation was that someone (us) would have to pay for the deficit incurred by the banks, but the reality was that by removing the single biggest spender (the government) from the economy, they hampered recovery.
With monetary policy keeping financial markets on steroids, speculative investment led money towards whatever seemed to carry the most risk: companies with a failed business model, or ones that had actually gone bankrupt.https://t.co/r1noQATezn
Worse still, the high energy prices and inflation of commodity prices caused by the pandemic would provide the Russian kleptocracy with the money to conduct a brutal invasion of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine was the first item on a list of factors that the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects predicted were likely to lead the world into a new global recession. pic.twitter.com/Xa9uIH8ypN
No one wants to accept that the world faces a “decade of despair”. While the World Bank and financial institutions are reluctantly beginning to agree, central bankers are still holding out hope for a “soft landing”.
And politicians are happy to let them do so, because the longer the ostrich keeps its head in the sand the more it can be made a scapegoat when the hurricane arrives.
Interesting analysis, and I can agree with much of it, though I do not accept that neurotic bighead, Gordon Brown’s, bailout of the bank swine was right at all— better to have let them go bust, imprison the wealthy bankers, then step in to help those with say £200,000 or less on deposit; and let the affluent and wealthy go smoke.
I agree that the “austerity” nonsense of the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne was disastrous, causing misery to millions without in any way dealing with the real problems of the financial sector and “national debt”.
Trudeau's Justice Minister David Lametti has just announced that people don’t have an “absolute right to own private property” in Canada‼️☝🧐🙏👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/YPuSD31UGL
Ian Robert Millard 