Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem has finally declared that Israel is committing genocide, as has the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights. The Israeli organizations join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, and the overwhelming majority of leading authorities on the subject of genocide in their conclusion. The debate is over. The Israel apologists lost. And we are seeing this reflected in mainstream discourse. Pop megastar Ariana Grande has started speaking out in support of Gaza, telling her social media followers that ‘starving people to death is a red line.’ This is a new threshold. Opposing Israel’s genocide is now the most mainstream as it has ever been. MSNBC just ran a piece explicitly titled ‘Israel is starving Gaza. And the U.S. is complicit,’ featuring a segment with the virulently pro-Israel Morning Joe slamming the mass atrocity.” (07/29/25)
“Neither President Franklin Delano Roosevelt nor British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, nor any of their senior military or political advisors, saw the Japanese attacks of late 1941 coming. The forces of Imperial Japan achieved total surprise across the Pacific. The intelligence failures in the U.S. leading up to Pearl Harbor were catastrophic. So was Great Britain’s general underestimation of the threat from Imperial Japan. The U.K.’s fortress outpost in the Pacific at Singapore was thought to be, if not impregnable, than as close to it as possible. Almost all Americans know the disaster of December 7, 1941. The Battle of Singapore lasted seven days. The British forces surrendered Singapore on February 15, 1942. No one had thought to fortify the peninsula’s ‘back door,’ assuming the Malayan jungle to be impenetrable. It wasn’t.” (07/29/25)
“By popular thinking the budget deficit reduces national savings, whilst a budget surplus is seen as contributing to savings. National savings are defined as the sum of private savings (the after-tax income that households save) and public savings. By generating budget surpluses, so it would appear, the government generates wealth, thereby strengthening the economy’s fundamentals. This argument would be correct if government activities were of a wealth-generating nature. This is, however, not the case.” (07/29/25)
“American political parties are in disarray. Instead of being the engines that organize and drive our politics, their roles have been supplanted by partisan social media influencers, nonprofit political groups, super PACs, and the billionaires who fund them and consultant groups they hire. A few generations ago, it was the political parties that organized politics. In many communities, there was an organic connection between the parties and their members. The parties provided structure and access and some benefits to those who belonged to and participated in their work. That is no longer the case for most Americans. Today, the parties have become ‘brands’ to which voters are asked to identify, and fundraising vehicles raising money for party operations and the consultant groups who now provide the ‘services’: message testing, voter data files, advertising, and communications.” (07/29/25)
“There is widespread angst over the cost of housing, and it is understandable that the downwardly mobile elite would share it. But this group does manage to put a roof over their heads. It may not match the grandeur featured in their social media feeds, but honesty demands acknowledging that in the quest for ‘affordable housing,’ they are pricing the non-elite out of theirs. The government services that some of these elites want and imagine the left can provide do cost money. The potentially bad news for them is that they have, to the outside world, rather impressive earnings.” (07/29/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“The impacts of a two-year-old law are finally being felt in Britain — and, as the United States looks to pass its own Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), it should watch the unfolding situation with fear. The Online Safety Act (2023) was passed by the previous Conservative government under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. But the legislative process began in February 2022, under Sunak’s predecessor-but-two, Boris Johnson. Implementation was delayed for an extensive period of time, largely due to controversy and logistics surrounding the law. The Office for Communications (Ofcom) laid out a roadmap for enforcement in October 2024, a full year after the law was passed. As is usually the case, a law steeped in respectable aims—protecting children from harmful content—has rapidly revealed itself as a nefarious tool of control.” (07/29/25)
“The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a landmark law to increase government accountability, is falling short in its aim to improve transparency with American citizens, according to a recent report from Open the Books. FOIA gives the public the freedom to request government records from federal agencies, with the exception of certain information involving the White House, congressional records, confidential financial information, national security matters, and law enforcement records. In recent years, government-caused inefficiency has increased wait times for FOIA requests, which ‘have become so long they undercut the accountability FOIA is meant to provide,’ per Open the Books. … While understaffing at federal agencies may be partially to blame, Open the Books found cases of government officials deliberately delaying FOIA requests.” 907/29/25)
“Save the cities, save the country … Reclaiming American cities, by whatever means necessary, needs to be a part of every candidate’s platform at the federal and state levels. Currently in Nashville, you have a state government actively working around a dysfunctional Metro government to implement things like license plate readers (supported by locals) and cut a deal with the Boring Company for a tunnel connecting downtown to the airport (more on that below). But these are shallow solutions compared to the systemic issues plaguing the city, which, without international immigration, would be shrinking. The number one way to ensure that families will stay in a Metro area like Nashville is to aggressively reform the public schools and double down on funding the police department. The state of Tennessee has made efforts to pursue both of these recently.” (07/29/25)
“Trump often makes allusions to card playing when discussing his negotiations on various issues, but in the case of trade, it seems he is the one missing cards. He has a much worse hand than he imagines as he attempts to extort our trading partners into make concessions on various issues. Our trading partners benefit from selling us stuff, or they wouldn’t do it. Trump apparently thinks that gives us enormous leverage in negotiations. What he somehow seems unable to understand is that the United States benefits from buying things from our trading partners.” (07/29/25)
