“U.S. arms sales to Israel aren’t really sales, at least not in the typical sense. Israel’s position as purchaser in these weapons deals isn’t synonymous with funder. This is made clear in the arms sales notifications themselves. Consider the four most recent notified arms sales to Israel published in the Federal Register: $740 million for armored personnel carriers, $1.98 billion for tactical vehicles and accessories, $3.8 billion for attack helicopters and related weaponry, and $150 million for utility helicopters and parts. After ‘Prospective Purchaser,’ all these notifications list Government of Israel. After ‘[Funding Source,’ all list Foreign Military Financing — or FMF, the U.S. military aid program through which Israel receives at least $3.3 billion a year. In practice, FMF functions as a gift card for Israel to spend on weapons. U.S. taxpayers are stuck paying for the gift card.” (04/06/26)
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“My own ideal theory is a classical liberal (libertarian) theory based on toleration. The view is necessarily very thin as it accepts that each person should be free to choose and act on their own conception of the good and thus live very different sorts of lives. All of those are to be tolerated unless they involve harm to others. … Importantly, having an ideal theory does not mean thinking we ought to stop with ideal theory. … I must recognize that there will be scenarios in the real world that challenge my own intuitions about what ought to be permitted when people would have difficulty exiting even when their right to do so is protected and figure out how to respond to that.” (04/06/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“At this point if you’re in the US military you have a moral obligation to start refusing orders. Desert. Become a conscientious objector. Ideally, get everyone together and launch a full-scale military coup. We’re in ‘Mad King’ territory. Someone’s gotta do what needs to be done. Promoters of this war told the world it was about liberating the Iranian people from tyranny to bring them freedom and democracy. Now that they got their war it’s about bombing them ‘back to the Stone Age,’ stealing their oil, and blowing up their bridges and power plants. The only people dumber than Americans who bought into Trump’s ‘ending the wars’ shtick are the Iranians who believed the United States was going to bring freedom to their country.” (04/06/26)
“This global race for AI dominance through abundant, scalable power and computation is already underway. Yet much of our domestic debate fixates on scarcity as if the pie were fixed forever, which leads to moralized calls about who then gets to use the limited resources we have. Once electricity becomes a hierarchy of virtue, you may not like where you land. This reflex is bipartisan. On the right, suspicion settles on coastal tech elites siphoning power from ‘real Americans.’ On the left, it gathers around corporate excess and environmental harm. When confidence in builders erodes, it does not leave a vacuum: Gatekeepers step forward. … Once you decide the pie cannot grow, an authority must divide it, looking for villains, assigning virtue, declaring some uses essential and others indulgent.” (04/06/26)
“In a 1961 speech, President John F. Kennedy captured the imagination of the people. He asked the world to see a man on the moon. Back then, such could only be a feat of technocracy — the idea that officials can work wonders if they have enough experts and largesse. And they did it. But, the moon landing had been peak technocracy — pushing the limits of what could be achieved in terms of expense, tax funding, and complication. Prior to that, though, Kennedy had put a symbol in people’s minds.” (04/06/26)
“On March 13th, buried in the New York Times’s coverage of the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict was a headline that would have been easy to miss amid the din of war coverage: ‘As El Niño Simmers, Scientists Warn of Weather Extremes Starting in Late Summer.’ Many readers may not even have noticed it, but that article noted that scientists at the Climate Prediction Center, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had raised their estimate for an El Niño event this summer from 60% to about 80%. Admittedly, in this strange world of ours, that hardly seemed like an earth-shattering revelation. But if you had read the piece more closely, your alarm bells should instantly have gone off.” (04/05/26)
“Content-focused policies risk censoring speech without fixing the underlying business model that pushes noxious material where it will do the most damage.” (04/06/26)
“Perhaps Donald Trump was persuaded—by his generals, by his buddies in Silicon Valley, by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—that American military superiority would make quick work of the Iranian military. In addition to the aircraft carriers, the Stealth bombers, the Tomahawk missiles, and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, Trump could also call upon the assistance of Claude and his buddies.” (04/06/26)
