“Thierry Breton, one of the European Union’s more obnoxious bureaucrats, is visiting social media companies in the U.S. to check on their readiness to comply with a controversial — indeed, deeply troubling — new E.U. law regulating online content. That law commits private firms to apply E.U. rules to broadly defined ‘illegal content’ and whatever officials consider to be ‘disinformation.’ While they probably won’t do it, tech company executives should tell Breton to get lost and work to insulate themselves from Europe’s control freaks.” (06/05/23)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The US military has released video footage of a Chinese navy ship cutting across the path of an American Destroyer in the Taiwan Strait over the weekend, reportedly forcing the US vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. … Now, I know what you’re thinking: what is a Chinese navy vessel doing in the Taiwan Strait, right where US and Canadian warships are peacefully conducting routine navigation exercises? Well I don’t know if this news will be as shocking to you as it is to me, but it turns out that China has somehow managed to place its country immediately adjacent to the Taiwan Strait, and is now only 100 miles from Taiwan itself.” (06/05/23)
“Yesterday marked the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Not in China, where the Communist Party (CCP) has always clubbed down any public remembrance of the thousands murdered on that day by the bullets from the so-called People’s Liberation Army. While Hong Kong long witnessed massive June 4 vigils — even under COVID restrictions — that changed after the draconian National Security Law in 2020. Still, this year public silence required the Chinazis to arrest more than 30 Hong Kongers, some for ‘suspicion of carrying out acts with seditious intent.'” (06/05/23)
“Some concepts in political economy operate like a Rorschach test. When someone defines them, you often learn more about them than about the concept. Democracy, fascism, capitalism, liberalism, conservatism, neo-anything, and socialism often mean different things to different people. I make no claim to being exceptional in this sense. Nonetheless, in this essay I want to offer a functional definition of socialism. This definition definitely reflects my own intellectual interests. But it also illuminates some central features of socialist systems and how they operate. Since I tell my students not to write mystery novels when presenting an argument, here is my proposed definition: socialism is the prohibition of free entry into markets.” (06/05/23)
“Citizen activism to bring about changes in how brutal wars are conducted is extremely difficult, but not impossible. Citizens have successfully pushed through the United Nations General Assembly treaties to abolish nuclear weapons and to ban the use of landmines and cluster munitions. Of course, countries that want to continue to use these weapons will not follow the lead of the vast majority of countries in the world and sign those treaties. The United States and the other eight nuclear armed countries have refused to sign the treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. Likewise, the United States and 15 other countries, including Russia and China, have refused to sign the ban on the use of cluster bombs. The United States and 31 other countries, including Russia and China, have refused to sign the treaty on the ban on land mines.” (06/05/23)
“On Friday, some angry parents gathered to protest at Saticoy Elementary School in Los Angeles because they were horrified about a Pride-themed assembly and a book-reading of ‘The Great Big Book of Families,’ which teaches that families come in different forms. There are families headed by heterosexual couples, single-parents, same-sex couples and so on. The horror. … The protest included the usual indicators that the angry parents spend way too much time online. … The ‘groomer’ panic on the right is just the latest incarnation of extreme homophobia and transphobia that’s been around forever. More directly, it implies that any teaching that there are people who are attracted to the same-sex is part of an attempt to ‘groom’ kids for sexual abuse. Which, to anyone with common sense, is an insane position rooted in paranoia and bigotry. And that’s being charitable about it.” (06/04/23)
“There are Christians who avoid the culture wars because they are too toxic, fearing that any involvement will only turn LGBTQ-identified people away from the faith. ‘Let’s just love them like we love everyone else,’ they reason, ‘building relationships with them, not being offensive in our speech or conduct, and leading them to Jesus.’ There is much that is right in this approach. There are other Christians who say, ‘Our children are being indoctrinated and our most fundamental freedoms and rights undermined….’ There is much that is right in this approach, too.” [editor’s note: Despite the “Christianist” rhetoric, this raises some very valid points for discussion – SAT] (06/05/23)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jon Miltimore
“The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once offered a bit of stoic wisdom about the importance of being grateful for the things we have. ‘Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent,’ Aurelius wrote in Meditations. ‘Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them.’ I thought of Aurelius’s quote after watching Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the latest movie featuring the fairytale furball DreamWorks introduced in Shrek 2 (2004).” (06/05/23)
“Today was supposed to be the actual X-date, upon which the federal government would run out of money. Instead, Congress passed and the president signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), suspending the debt ceiling for two years. So we’re using today to round out our series on this absurd few weeks in American politics. We hope to never again have to create a pop-up newsletter to cover the threat of a catastrophic deliberate default on the nation’s [sic] debt, but since this deal did nothing to extinguish that possibility, we will save the X-Date logo for 2025. We have discussed in detail what the FRA will mean for public policy …. But since the centerpiece of this deal is a spending cap, we’ll close X-Date by explaining how it is not likely to be a cap at all.” (06/05/23)
