“In the last days of East Germany, when government officials detected that their power was unraveling, they ratcheted up enforcement of the nation’s reporting laws. The reporting laws made it a felony to know of a crime and fail to report it. It was also a crime to tell the person of whose crime you learned that you had done so. There was no right to privacy and there was no freedom of speech. This Orwellian tangle resulted, of course, in many false reports of crimes. It also resulted in many prosecutions for failing to report crimes or for warning others that they were being spied upon. As of this past weekend, we in America are headed to the same authoritarian place.” (04/25/24)
“This week, Congress moved closer to passing four separate bills with $95 billion in funding for Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific allies, and the domestic submarine industrial base. This funding has been debated for months, with much of it intended for wars that have been going on — and likely will continue — for a while. In other words, it’s not new or surprising. Yet once again, it will be labeled ’emergency spending,’ a tool allowing legislators to double down on their fiscal irresponsibility.” (04/25/24)
“The phrase ‘accidental shooting’ is usually a contradiction in terms. There are, in the normal course of events, only two kinds of shootings: Intentional and negligent. An intentional shooting occurs when a competent individual intentionally loads, points, and fires a properly functioning firearm. A negligent shooting occurs when a competent individual fails to do his or her job. That job includes: 1. Knowing what’s in a firearm’s chamber or magazine before pointing it. 2. Taking care not to point a firearm at anything the shooter doesn’t want to hit. 3. Taking care to not pull the trigger if there’s anything or anyone other than the intended target in front of the firearm. 4. Taking care to secure the firearm such that people who shouldn’t have access to it DON’T have access to it. Truly ‘accidental’ shootings are incredibly rare.” (04/25/24)
“Bitcoin, emerging as a defiant symbol of financial sovereignty, operates on a decentralized ledger that transcends global borders, eluding state control and its punitive tax regimes. It epitomizes the Agorist principle that true market operations require no state intervention. In stark contrast, CBDCs represent the state’s attempt to cloak its insidious control in the guise of modern financial innovation. By mimicking the technology behind cryptocurrencies, governments aim to seduce the public back into the fold of regulated financial systems, under the pretense of improved efficiency and security. However, this maneuver is fundamentally flawed. The very essence of blockchain technology, upon which Bitcoin thrives, is its ability to operate beyond the reach of centralized control.” (04/25/24)
“There simply is no justification for risking the lives of Americans, including military personnel, in Burma. Overthrowing the regime would be costly and transfer responsibility for Burma’s future to America, creating an unpredictable, probably violent long-term commitment. Supporting an insurgency is tempting but could go bad. The U.S. would become responsible for the outcome — and war is rarely a good humanitarian tool.” (04/25/24)
“A historical term in geopolitics – the Great Game, or when big powers fought to control the heartland of the Eurasian supercontinent – may need to be retired. Over the past two years, many countries in Central Asia and the Caspian basin have seen a flurry of investments and friendly diplomacy from around the world, reflecting the region’s emboldened streak of independence from foreign intervention. The latest example is an April 22 summit between Russia and Azerbaijan. The focus was mainly economic – how to finish building a road-and-rail corridor across Eurasia, one of several transportation projects in the region. That was in sharp contrast to news just days earlier when Russia, weakened by its war in Ukraine, started the withdrawal of some 2,000 peacekeeping soldiers from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, a remnant of Moscow’s previous clout.” (04/25/24)
“Health care presents unique challenges to elected officials. Without some public regulation, market failures will lead to consequences many voters would find unacceptable, as Kenneth Arrow explained long ago in a seminal essay. Among the problems that inevitably arise is the collision of risk aversion among consumers, which leads them to seek insurance protection against expensive medical services, with the ability of insurers to steer clear of potential customers who can be identified as high risks because of their health conditions. … Public regulation and subsidies are the tools all countries use, including the US, to address this unavoidable problem. But these challenges in the market do not mean that the only viable system is one based on full governmental control, which itself carries risks owing to the predictable failings of regulations written and overseen by politically sensitive officials.” (04/25/24)
“A long time veteran of [National Public Radio], Uri Berliner, wrote an essay lamenting that the organization has gone from and admittingly left-leaning but still rigorous and fair journalistic enterprise to a politically driven monoculture that lets ideology drive its reporting. … Berliner resigned shortly thereafter. Naturally this got a lot of attention, and people have recently started highlighting a TED talk given by Katherine Maher, NPR’s new CEO and former CEO of the WikiMedia Foundation – the parent organization for Wikipedia. In her TED talk Maher made the following comment: ‘For our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.'” (04/25/24)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s just a tough situation, with victims on both sides. On one side you’ve got people being slaughtered in droves by genocidal massacres and siege warfare, while on the other you’ve got people whose feelings get hurt when these atrocities are opposed. Hard to say which is worse. … I have dedicated every day of my life to the project of spreading awareness of the depravity and deceitfulness of the western empire, but I will never write anything more effective toward this end than what the empire is doing itself on university campuses right now. I mean, you kind of have to wonder what they’re thinking. ‘Yeah, that’s it. Violently quash pro-Palestine protests at universities, ban TikTok to ensure the suppression of pro-Palestine content, and saturate the boomer media with obvious propaganda. That’ll make the kids love Israel.'” (04/25/24)
“Fortunately for both Biden and Trump, November won’t be a popularity contest. Biden is the more fortunate of the two, but only slightly so. According to Real Clear Politics average of national polling, Biden trails Trump 44.2 percent to 44.5 percent in a two-way rematch, while his unfavorable rating is 55.1 percent to Trump’s 53.7 percent. In such adverse circumstances, November will be about getting supporters to the polls: Here Biden’s disadvantage looms larger still. … One telling element that is only starting to emerge is the divergence between polls of registered and likely voters. This difference is only starting to emerge because pollsters are only now beginning to differentiate between the two potential voting groups: those eligible to vote and those indicating a greater inclination to vote.” (04/25/24)
