“Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general whose actions during the Balkan wars of the 1990s led to him being called the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ and who was held responsible for Europe’s deadliest massacre since World War II, the killing of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, has died. He was 83. His death was announced on Thursday by Serbian state media. Mr. Mladic was captured on May 26, 2011, in a farming village north of Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, after almost 16 years as a fugitive, ending one of the longest manhunts in modern history. His 2017 conviction by an international tribunal on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes marked the end of a dark and bloody chapter.” (08/27/26)
“You have to have something to recycle. Which, if you’re building Civilisation 1.0, you don’t. It’s only when you’re building Civ 2.0, or 3.0, when you tear down the previous one and now have a pile of something that can be recycled to build the next version. The currently rich nations – US, UK, say – require very little virgin steel and actually export considerable amounts of scrap steel from those previous versions now being torn down. We’ve not checked the numbers but would certainly be willing to believe that demand for primary copper in both places is pretty minimal given the abundance of secondary. It’s places building out an urban environment for the first time – recently China, likely soon India, say – that require vast amounts of the new stuff.” (08/27/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“While the tenor of U.S.-China relations cooled somewhat from the hysteria of Donald Trump’s first term and the Joe Biden years, recent events have made clear how thin that veneer of stability remains. President Trump’s May 2026 state visit to Beijing and the planned September 24 White House meeting with Xi Jinping briefly suggested a shift toward ‘strategic stability.’ Reciprocal visits returned to the agenda, and open talk of full decoupling subsided. That moment already looks precarious.” (08/27/26)
“It is widely said that you are nothing but a political hack who sold out your previously professed beliefs about free expression and the rule of law for the short-term goal of being named FCC chairman, that you corrupted the agency’s nonpartisan purpose by focusing its efforts on punishing perceived critics of the Trump administration, and that you regularly prostrate yourself with cringe-worthy displays of servility to soothe the president’s fragile ego. All these things may be true. But the criticism is terribly unfair because it fails to acknowledge your substantive accomplishments. When the dust settles, it may turn out that you have done more than any FCC chairman since the agency’s creation in 1934 to advance full First Amendment protection for the broadcast medium.” (08/27/26)
“An ICE [gang member] charged in connection with a shooting that wounded a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis has been released from a jail in Texas. A Texas federal judge denied Minnesota’s request on Wednesday to compel the extradition of Christian Castro. Thursday’s release from the jail in Brownsville, Texas, came as the 90-day clock on Castro’s detention expired …. Castro is accused of shooting at Julio Sosa-Celis through the door of a north Minneapolis home on Jan. 14 in the course of his duties as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [gang member] during Operation Metro Surge. He had initially told FBI investigators that Sosa-Celis and others had attacked him, using a snow shovel and a broom handle as weapons. Video evidence of the shooting contradicted his sworn statement, and Castro was placed on leave as the U.S. Department of Justice investigated whether he lied under oath.” (08/27/26)
“Andrew Day, Luke Nicastro, and Spencer Neale discuss the Trump administration’s new economic strategy to force Iran’s capitulation. Then, they talk about recent elections and whether the Democrats will sweep the midterms.” (08/27/26)
“A clear indicator that Trump sycophants realize that they are caught in reality’s snare is how they respond to any question about current economic difficulties. Their first sentence almost always contains the word ‘Biden’, as they make the false claim that things were worse under Joe Biden, or that Biden somehow caused all of our current problems (including high gas prices and depleted munitions), or that Biden left an economy in shambles. Call it a bad case of Biden derangement syndrome, a desperate and utterly transparent attempt to shift the blame for the gratuitous mess that Trump and his minions have made.” (08/27/26)
