On January 22, according to a White House press release, US president Donald Trump “ratified” the Charter of the Board of Peace, promising “a secure and prosperous future for Gaza that delivers lasting peace, stability, and opportunity for its people.”

I’ve seen a lot of media coverage regarding things like Trump’s $1 billion membership fee demand for countries wanting a seat on the board, which regimes are willing to pony up and which aren’t interested, etc. But a commenter — pseudonym “Skywalker” — on a website I work with (Antiwar.com) called my attention to some far more interesting details.

TL;DR: Donald Trump chairs the board, for life or until he doesn’t feel like chairing it anymore, enjoying absolute authority and choosing his own successor.

Longer version, in Q&A form with answers as direct quotes from the charter:

Q: Which states are represented on the Board of Peace?
A: “Membership in the Board of Peace is limited to States invited to participate by the Chairman” (who also has the power to remove those states).

Q: How will the board make decisions?
A: “Decisions shall be made by a majority of the Member States present and voting, subject to the approval of the Chairman.”

Q: How will subcommittees be chosen and operate?
A: “The Chairman may establish subcommittees as necessary or appropriate and shall set the mandate, structure, and governance rules for each such subcommittee.”

Q: How are disputes concerning the meaning or application of the board’s charter settled?
A: “[T]he Chairman is the final authority regarding the meaning, interpretation, and application of this Charter.”

Q: Who is the Chairman?
A: “Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural Chairman of the Board of Peace …. Replacement of the Chairman may occur only following voluntary resignation or as a result of incapacity, as determined by a unanimous vote of the Executive Board [remember, the Chairman gets a vote, and all actions of the board are subject to his approval], at which time the Chairman’s designated successor shall immediately assume the position …”

It’s not difficult to figure out what’s going on here.

The new organization is not a “Board of Peace,” it’s a “Board of Piece … of the Action for Donald Trump.”

We’ve already watched Trump knock down billions in new wealth as president, billing taxpayers for use of his own properties and tapping family and friends as proxies for everything from corporate takeovers to insider trading to cryptocurrency scams.

Now he’s setting himself up as all-powerful chairman for life of an organization that will handle — and hand out contracts disposing of — untold additional billions in Gaza aid.

Guess who will get those contracts?

Oh, for the good old days of the Biden family’s mere “10% for the Big Guy.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told the world’s self-designated elite in a January 21 speech. “[G]reat powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

Carney delivered his musings to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, days after visiting China and striking a major trade deal with its regime.  That deal represents both a “rupture” with Canada’s former first-line trade partner, the United States, and a “transition” to something else.

Why the rupture? Why the transition?

Under US president Donald Trump (and, to some degree, Joe Biden), we’ve seen all the things Carney complained about in his speech.

When your main buyer (or, rather, the lord and master of your main buyers) becomes reluctant to buy from you — even if it means he (or, rather, his serfs) have trouble selling to you — you eventually start looking for other buyers and sellers. That’s the transition.

And, eventually, you find those new buyers and sellers and, to at least some degree, swear off coddling the old ones. That’s the rupture.

Writ large, Canada’s move away from the US and toward China is just  the latter part of Mike’s answer, in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises — “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly” — to the question of how he went bankrupt.

Which, in turn, is just a waypoint in another transition. In Mike’s case, it was all downhill from the bankruptcy. In America’s case, who knows?

It’s easy to just blame Trump for all this craziness, but it’s also a little bit lazy.

Yes, Trump’s trade and economic policies seem purpose-built for the task of dismantling American prosperity at home and power (“soft” and “hard”) abroad.

In reality, though, the American empire and the supposed global “rules-based order” have been in continual decline pretty much since that happy accident 80 years ago, when World War 2 ended with most of the world’s industry wrecked, but America’s untouched.

It’s all been downhill from there … gradually.

We may have finally reached the “suddenly” point.

We were always going to.

It may be that with Trump, as William Lowndes Yancey said of Jefferson Davis upon his arrival in Montgomery, Alabama in 1861, “the man and the hour have met.” You may remember how that turned out. In both cases, the man’s identity was unimportant. There was going to be a man,  there was going to be an hour, there was going to be a rupture, and there was going to be a transition.

I consider myself lucky, in many ways, to have lived the bulk of my likely lifespan during the “gradually” phase. Americans, including myself, have had it fat and happy  for a very long time. That time is nearing its end.

I just hope America can find its way to a better transition than Mike managed.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Nearly a decade ago, the phrase “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” entered the public conversation via a World Economic Forum essay by Ida Auken (“Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better”).

Auken lauded “shared services” as an increasingly normal way of life. Why “own” a car, a refrigerator, or even your own clothes, when you could just pay a monthly subscription fee and let others worry about tire wear, blown compressors, jeans going out of fashion, etc.?

We’re already well into the era of “subscription” versus “ownership,” starting with digital media. Movie, TV shows, and books have largely moved off of VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, and paper and into the cloud. Even if you “buy” them, even if you download them, they tend to be bound to particular devices and/or particular subscriptions, and to terms of service with fine print that lets them be taken away at will.

With physical hardware, the “subscription” era seems to have started with industrial and farm equipment (no “right of repair” — you pay John Deere for that, or your tractor sits there and does nothing), then moved on to cars. We’ve all heard the howls from e.g. Tesla “owners” over pretty much everything their cars can do depending on them continuing to pay Elon Musk a little something every month for life.

I’ve had my quibbles with all of the above for some time, but the unhappiness of owning nothing really got to me this morning as I watched a video from Fortnine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4Ebv2HWyw) about the latest, greatest electric motorcycle.

I love two-wheeled vehicles. I love electric vehicles. I used to ride electric bicycles, but switched to internal combustion motorcycles for reasons of range and speed. I’ve kept my eye on electric motorcycles, waiting for falling prices and rising performance to meet at a point my budget allows. By the time it gets there, will I really want it anymore?

The  battery-powered Stark Varg boasts 80 horsepower and a 50-113 mile range (50 for wide open road, 113 under urban low-speed, stop-and-start conditions). Nice bike for its class.

BUT! If you want the bike to do everything the bike CAN do, you’ll pay Varg $15 a month, every month, for as long as you “own” it (unless they change their monthly rate) — and you’ll pay $12,500 (at the moment) to “own” it.

In my opinion, if I pay to own something, I’ve paid to own all the things it can do … assuming I can figure out how to make it do those things.

The manufacturers of “‘owned,’ but with subscription-only features” goods, though, frown on homebrew tinkerers jail-breaking those products instead of forking over cash in perpetuity. And they’ve got “intellectual property” law on their side. They don’t have to care about your happiness.

Until we dump the pernicious fiction of “intellectual property,” we’ll just have to hope the market undercuts these perpetual subscription rackets with “you bought it — it’s yours — enjoy!” alternatives.

And I suspect the market will do exactly that.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY