“When the US-Iran conflict escalated earlier this year, the immediate concern centered on oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz. But the real danger was never confined to crude oil. The crisis has evolved into a broader energy, logistics, fertilizer, food and financial shock. What began as a regional conflict has become a structural drag on the global economy.” (06/11/26)
“What if your favorite thing in the world was in the hands of a ghoul? Like the damsel in King Kong’s hand, the FIFA World Cup is a thing of rare beauty in the grip of a monster. The tournament is disfigured by its prefix: FIFA, football’s cartoonishly evil world governing body, a cartel of such rapacious vice its perfidy almost — but never quite — obscures the luminescent glory of el mundial. … Every four years, the World Cup plants a flag in my life, transforming the boring middle-aged fart I’ve become back into the awestruck eight-year-old with a heart broken at the hands of Paolo Rossi.” (06/11/26)
“Global Witness is telling us all that the things put in place to make sure that coltan (columbo-tantalite, a source of tantalum for mobile phone capacitors) does not come from slave driven mines aren’t working …. We agree, slave driven mines are a bad thing. It’s just that this problem was brought up before and a solution imposed. We disagreed with the solution imposed at the time as well, while Global Witness, Global Justice Now and the like all argued, vociferously, for that solution to be imposed. … In normal life something that’s an abject failure stops being done. In politics abject failure just carries on to the impoverishment of everyone — costs imposed that achieve nothing.” (06/11/26)
“In the early days of the republic (back when government was really small), tariffs were the primary means of both raising revenue and doling out ‘rents’ to businesses that organized and lobbied for them. The wonderfully named Tariff of Abominations (1828) was heavily influenced by Northern textile and iron producers. The post-Civil War decades were a golden age of tariff rent-seeking, with the U.S. iron, steel, wool, and sugar industries essentially writing U.S. tariff schedules. As I’ve documented at Cato and as Dartmouth economic historian Douglas Irwin thoroughly chronicles in his great book, Clashing Over Commerce, 19th-century tariff lobbying was in many respects an incubator for the entire U.S. lobbying and interest-group machine that exists today. And it began because American trade policy was openly auctioned off to the highest bidder. Offer the rents, and the rents get sought.” (06/11/26)
“Tim Kaine and Rand Paul made a shocking revelation last week about the U.S. military’s boat strikes in the East Pacific and Caribbean — attacks legal experts agree are illegal. In questioning Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Foreign Relations Committee hearing, they revealed that the targeting decisions about which boats would be attacked did not take into account whether they had drugs or arms aboard. In other words, the military may have attacked — and may attack in the future — a boat that carries neither drugs nor weapons, yet somehow, according to the Trump administration, constitutes a military threat to national security. … This is a ludicrous position. At the very least, insurgency and asymmetric warfare have to include some warlike activity, and merely sailing a boat through international waters is no more inherently warlike than taking a walk in the park or eating a hamburger.” (06/11/26)
“The Trump administration is preparing to deport nearly two dozen people to the Central African Republic on Thursday, including at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States, according to lawyers and a government official. The flight, which is also expected to include migrants from Afghanistan and Syria, would mark the first such deportation to the Central African Republic, a deeply impoverished country that has been plagued by conflict. The country is so dangerous that the U.S. State Department states on its website, ‘do not travel for any reason.’ At least some of the migrants have received court orders in the United States prohibiting their deportation to their home countries because of the threat of persecution or torture, their lawyers said. … The Trump administration is working to find ways to deport people despite these court orders.” (06/11/26)
