“President Trump is reportedly considering an order requiring financial institutions to check customers’ citizenship, a curious departure from the administration’s professed concerns about the burden of bureaucracy and debanking. … Customers unnerved by the order might move their money from chartered depository institutions to informal family, religious, and community-based financial networks. … Federal statutes forbid financial service companies from alerting customers when surveillance reports are sent to authorities. But being asked to prove citizenship on everyday occasions is an intrusion people are sure to notice.” [editor’s note: Singleton’s wording implies that she MAY think moving money from state-surveilled institutions “to informal family, religious, and community-based financial networks” is a bad thing. I disagree. I consider it an essential precursor to restoring economic freedom, even though I also oppose the prospective “order” – TLK] (03/07/26)
“A very old type of information warfare – spreading false narratives to rattle an enemy’s population during a conflict – now has a new and vital adversary: fact-checkers. On March 3, for example, a video went viral showing Israel’s second-largest city, Tel Aviv, in flames from multiple strikes by Iranian missiles, four days after the first Israeli and American attacks on Iran. It attracted more than 14 million views. ‘The video is AI-generated, and features multiple errors consistent with AI clips,’ posted BBC Verify senior journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh. ‘It’s not real.’ After spotting many similar fake images, Mr. Sardarizadeh concluded: ‘This war might have already broken the record for the highest number of AI-generated videos and images that have gone viral during a conflict…. Welcome to our brave new world of AI misinformation.'” (03/06/26)
“Who keeps insisting that no one look too deeply into their claims? It’s the Southern Baptist Convention, who covered up their rape crisis for decades. It’s the leadership of the rape cult that is Evangelical Christianity. It’s the Catholic Church. If sexual shame and stigma kept vulnerable people safe from rapists we’d have gotten rid of rape by now. Instead, where sexuality is most repressed, you see the highest rates of sexual abuse. This. Is. Not. A. Coincidence.” (03/06/26)
“Land acknowledgements have become de rigueur at commencement ceremonies, film and music award events, and other programs. Something like this: ‘We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the stolen and occupied territory of the Indigenous First Nation People who stewarded the land through many generations before White European colonialists seized it.’ Many take these acknowledgements quite seriously. Indeed, professors and employees have been disciplined for mocking them, because employers find mockery ‘offensive’ and ‘disruptive’ – unlike their reactions to ‘mostly peaceful’ Antifa, BLM and pro-Palestinian harassment and riots. When accepting her Grammy, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish used her onstage opportunity to criticize Trump’s immigration policies, saying ‘no one is illegal on stolen land’. Unless, of course, someone tried to enter her gated community and assert ownership over or enjoy a sandwich in her million-dollar mansion.” (03/07/26)
“OpenAI says Americans shouldn’t worry about the ethics of its new Pentagon contract. You’ll have to take their word for it (and Pete Hegseth’s).” (03/08/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“Historians have long noted that demands for unconditional surrender have worked to prolong conflicts rather than shorten them, leading to needless death on both sides. After all, Trump is essentially saying that the Iranians should put themselves in a position of accepting whatever terms the United States seeks to unilaterally impose, including the total dissolution of the Iranian state, plus sanctions, punishments, occupations and other humiliations. What government would accede to this? Very few would, which is why only very weak, small, and relatively unarmed regimes can be forced into accepting unconditional surrender after anything less than a protracted war. Iran, however, is not weak, small, or relatively unarmed. And, geography is in its favor.” (03/06/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“The United States has once again launched a war in the Middle East based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US assault on Iran rests on allegations that international inspectors have already debunked. But beyond the false pretext lies an even more pressing question that few officials in Washington seem willing (or able) to answer: What is the US exit strategy from its war on Iran? President Trump has justified the attack by claiming that Iran refuses to renounce nuclear weapons. As he prepared to launch the war, Trump repeatedly claimed, ‘We haven’t heard those secret words: “We will never have a nuclear weapon”.’ Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded by reiterating Iran’s long-standing policy, stating plainly: ‘Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.'” (03/07/26)
“Every new war that the U.S. wages — at least over the past six decades — is accompanied by a series of official lies, shifting and inconsistent claims about the war’s goals, and constant exaggerations about the grand progress toward glorious victory. Now, a full week into the Iran War started by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partner, the American President Donald Trump, this war already equals, if not surpasses, the brazen war propaganda that instigated and fueled those prior ones.” (03/06/26)
“President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into an open-ended war with Iran, lacking clearly defined and achievable objectives, a discernible endgame, or a viable exit plan. This is a war of choice — Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and the White House is now scrambling to devise a strategy for a war already underway and proving more difficult than anticipated. The war will likely escalate as Iran digs in and hawkish voices push Trump toward maximalist — and largely unachievable — aims. By setting this crisis in motion, the Trump administration is repeating the same failures that have long defined US Middle East policy. Absent a course correction, the United States is on the path to another forever war.” (03/06/26)
