Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“Among the torrent of publications continually inundating the policy community and reading public, few are worth reading — between banality and bad ideas, most would have been better left unwritten. A notable recent exception to this general rule, however, is Dr. Ivan Eland’s most recent offering A Balance of Titans: Peace and Liberty in the New Multipolar World, recently published by the Independent Institute. … Coming in at a trim 130 pages, Eland quickly moves from summarizing and critiquing what went wrong, from playing global policeman, the doctrine of responsibility to protect, waging unwinnable wars, et cetera, to presenting an older, alternative way to view Washington’s place in the world, and to presenting a quantitative breakdown of what this might look like.” (10/16/25)
“The Trump administration is working on an additional $20 billion [bailout] for Argentina. If completed, it would bring the total price tag of a U.S. [bailout] for Buenos Aires to $40 billion. ‘It is a private-sector solution to Argentina’s coming debt payments,’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said of the latest round of funding Wednesday. Bessent said the United States would arrange funding commitments from banks and sovereign wealth funds to cover the second $20 billion tranche. … Faced with a currency sell-off, the Trump administration recently began purchasing pesos to stabilize their value.” (10/16/25)
“Absence can be louder than presence: art as scar tissue, a kind of civic PTSD etched into the building’s DNA. You don’t stand before it so much as recoil from it — as if the courthouse itself were guilty, caught in the act, trying to scrub the blood off its own hands. Yet the spot remains. And maybe that’s the real exhibition — not the art itself, but the cleanup. The ritual of erasure. Because from London to Los Angeles, from Gaza’s rubble to Spain’s granite roundabouts; power’s first instinct isn’t to confront its reflection, it’s to sandblast it. Empires launder their conscience like they launder their money: offshore, and out of sight.” (10/16/25)
“Cambridge’s promise to protect lawful speech has now been tested. Earlier this month, it was reported that the university had dismissed all 58 student complaints alleging that philosopher Nathan Cofnas’s views amounted to discrimination or harassment. The decision is the first substantive application of Cambridge’s new Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech and an early measure of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act’s reach. Cofnas has drawn controversy for years. In 2020, he published a defence of free inquiry on taboo topics in a respected philosophy journal and a number of philosophers promptly mounted a campaign against him. When he arrived at Cambridge in 2022 as a Leverhulme Fellow in the faculty of philosophy, cancellation attempts followed almost immediately. But his latest troubles began in February 2024, when he published an essay titled ‘A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution’ on his personal blog.” (10/16/25)
“A recall affecting more than one dozen cinnamon brands has been expanded by safety chiefs. Batches of the spice have been recalled due to fears they have been contaminated with lead. Shoppers have been told to stop using the cinnamon products as matter of urgency. Lead contamination can have adverse effects on young children, in particular, including brain and developmental damage. It can also cause slowed growth, hearing and speech problems. The recall was first issued in the summer and 16 products have been impacted.” (10/16/25)
“It can’t govern itself. But the UK, eager to govern the United States, is trying to impose fines on the loose-talk website 4Chan for ignoring British censorship demands. Preston Byrne, a lawyer representing 4Chan, has responded to UK regulator Ofcom’s attempt to impose the fines — more than $26,000 to start — with instructions to get lost.” (10/16/25)
