Fountainhead Forum, episode 420
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Tatiana Czarnecki on Javier Milei’s speech to La Libertad Avanza on 26 June 2025.” (02/10/26)
Author: Thomas L. Knapp
Cato Daily Podcast, 02/10/26
Source: Cato Institute
“Why Globalization Wins on the Field.” (02/10/26)
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-podcast/why-globalization-wins-field
The persecution of Jimmy Lai
Source: spiked
by Elisha Maldonado
“Hong Kong once prided itself on a free press and an independent judiciary. Before the 1997 handover from British to Chinese rule, the city had been promised that its liberties would endure. Yet now a newspaper publisher faces the rest of his life in prison merely for doing his job.” (02/10/26)
Amazon’s Creepy Normalizing of the Surveillance State
Source: Coyote Blog
by Warren Meyer
“You don’t sell surveillance out of the gate with a system that tracks down a person in the neighborhood behind on taxes or child support. No, you sell it as a system to find that adorable lost dog (notice not even generic pets or certainly not cats because dogs are the new children for this generation). They can fight all the backlash by saying, ‘Oh come on, who can be against finding lost dogs?’ Then, months or years later, the terms and conditions have morphed and broader search capabilities are enabled without the user even knowing …. When it really gets scary, they are not even going to tell you about it. I do not believe this is just a marketing mistake — Ring appears to have adopted neighborhood surveillance as their core business model.” (02/10/26)
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2026/02/amazons-creepy-normalizing-of-the-surveillance-state.html
Grand jury refuses to indict US pols for telling military personnel to obey the law
Source: The Hill
“A grand jury on Tuesday refused to indict a coalition of Democratic lawmakers over their participation in a controversial ‘illegal orders’ video last fall. The failed federal indictment was pursued by the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, as first reported by The New York Times. The lawmakers urged military servicemembers and intelligence community personnel to defy illegal orders in a joint video statement released in November. The video followed the Trump administration’s decision to carry out deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean. … The Times reported that federal prosecutors were seeking to indict lawmakers for breaching a law forbidding interfering with the U.S. military’s loyalty, morale or discipline.” (02/10/26)
Two Universities. Two Posters. One First Amendment Problem.
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Education
by Amanda Nordstrom
“Public universities don’t get to pick which political viewpoints are safe to express. But administrators at two major universities are trying to do just that. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, administrators treated the College Republicans’ pro-ICE political message like a civil rights violation. … At Penn State, an anti-ICE poster discovered outside the student center on Jan. 29 sparked heated reactions across the ideological spectrum. When some people raised the call to identify and punish whoever created the poster, Penn State responded by condemning it and announcing that University Police and Public Safety were investigating. These incidents are two sides of the same coin: administrators using official investigations to police protected political speech, in this case, on opposing sides of the immigration debate.” (02/10/26)
https://www.thefire.org/news/two-universities-two-posters-one-first-amendment-problem
Trump Watch, 02/10/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Cuba and the Evil of Sanctions.” (02/10/26)
Russia: Regime restricts access to Telegram
Source: CNN
“Russian authorities have begun restricting access to Telegram, one of the country’s most popular social media apps, as the government continues to push everyday Russians toward its own tightly controlled alternatives to foreign tech platforms. On Tuesday, the government said it was restricting access to Telegram for the ‘protection of Russian citizens,’ accusing the app of refusing to block content authorities consider ‘criminal and terrorist.’ Russia’s telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor said in a statement that it would continue to restrict the operation of the Telegram messenger ‘until violations of Russian law are eliminated.'” (02/10/26)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/10/europe/telegram-ban-russia-web-block-latam-intl
Semaglutide: Artificial Shortage Is Novo Nordisk’s Business Model
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“Novo Nordisk recently introduced Wegovy in pill form, at a price of about $150 a month. Hims & Hers had planned to offer the same chemical compound, without Wegovy branding, for about $50 a month. The whole POINT of Novo Nordisk’s attempt to enforce its patent is to CREATE a shortage of semaglutide in pill form. Why? Money. The patent, if enforceable, allows Novo Nordisk to charge customers AT LEAST three times as much for its pill as the market says it can be sold profitably for. Hims & Hers wouldn’t offer it for $50 if it expected to lose money doing so.” (02/10/26)
Arabian Sea: Indian pirates steal three tankers
Source: Bloomberg
“The Indian Coast Guard seized three tankers that it said were involved in oil smuggling, the first sign of the country getting tough on the so-called dark fleet. The three ships were taken in the waters off Mumbai on Friday by the coast guard, which said in a post on X that it had ‘busted an international oil-smuggling racket’ and that the vessels had been known to ‘frequently change identity.’ It’s the first time New Delhi has taken such action, according to people familiar with the Indian shipping industry, and comes as the US and Europe lead an effort to get tougher on vessels moving sanctioned oil.” (02/10/26)