“To house people more affordably, we need to make homebuilding more efficient. But a deeply entrenched overregulation of land use and the building trades keeps homebuilding firms small and backward. Other industries — aviation, computing, agriculture, containerized shipping, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and so on — have raised productivity through deregulation, big business, innovation, automation, standardization, and scalability. Homebuilding needs to follow suit.” (11/24/25)
“This week, top leaders of Africa and Europe gathered in Angola in an attempt to answer this question: Can ethical business practices win out in the global race to extract Africa’s vast mineral resources? The moral tone for the summit was set last month by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In a speech, she said Europe seeks critical materials for its China-challenged industries but ‘not just for Europe’s needs – but with local processing and added value [in Africa].’ In other words, can European mining companies help Africa process its raw minerals into consumer and industrial goods while also boosting local jobs and local skills? For some countries in Europe, that would mean a shift away from how it often treats former colonies. As President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic put it in September, ‘The era of Africa’s dependence is over.'” (11/24/25)
“Many organizations and federal agencies involved in censoring Americans under the guise of mis/disinformation have shut down in the last couple years. Racket’s Twitter Files exposed the level of censorship slime oozing from organizations such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Project, and the Virality Project. On the government side of things, there was the Global Engagement Center, the Foreign Influence Task Force, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which still exists but is no longer involved in mis/disnfo work. That’s not to say America is perfect when it comes to free speech, but as Sen. Rand Paul said in September, ‘throughout government, the censorship apparatus that Biden had put in place is gone.’ However, if you look to Germany, the strongest economic power in the European Union, it’s easy to see where America was going.” (11/24/25)
“Recent movements in short-term loan markets are a timely reminder of a forgotten truth: The Federal Reserve is not the master of credit conditions. It can influence interest rates, but it cannot dictate them. Interest rates ultimately reflect supply and demand conditions in the broader financial system. When those conditions shift, the Fed’s administered rates give way to market realities. That’s precisely what we’re seeing in the repo market now.” (11/24/25)
“In late October, Hurricane Melissa (that should have been called ‘Godzilla’) battered western Jamaica with 185-mile-an-hour winds. It tossed the roofs of buildings about like splintering javelins, demolished municipal buildings and hospitals, snapped telephone poles like matchsticks, flattened crops, and dumped torrential floodwaters everywhere, leaving $8 billion in damage. That Category 5 storm’s unprecedented ferocity was driven by an overheated Caribbean Sea, produced by 275 years of industrial civilization that has spewed obscene amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. The same week that U.N. officials spoke of an ‘apocalypse’ in Jamaica, American billionaire Bill Gates expressed a certain unease about officials and scientists concerned with climate change who, he thought, were being hysterical.” (11/24/25)
“For years, the idea of geoengineering — artificially lowering global temperatures through technological means — has been met with skepticism. Only a handful of dedicated and much-criticized scientists have argued for researching it at all, and when others weighed in, it was generally to trash the idea. This September, in a study published in the journal Frontiers in Science, more than 40 experts in climate change, polar geosciences, and ocean patterns warned that geoengineering was extremely unlikely to work and likely to have dangerous consequences. … As the actual predictions for Earth’s future have become more dire, scientists are starting to agree. More than 120 of them signed on to a response to the Frontiers paper that argued that more research into geoengineering was, in fact, ‘urgently needed.'” (11/24/25)
“Lawfare, when weaponised, can pose a double threat to democracies. Domestically, the rule of law is an integral component of the theory of liberal democracy, and it underpins the institutions and practices of democratic governance. The expansion of the role of the state in regulating an increasing range of individuals’ and private entities’ behaviour has led to a proliferation of lawfare that can frustrate the ability of governments to govern and, in turn, lessen their legitimacy. In its international dimension, the rule of law should tame the exercise of power by states and mediate relations between the strong and the weak and the rich and the poor. However, illiberal states have no scope for activists using law to rein in their excesses, and no effective checks can be exercised on the strong behaving badly.” (11/24/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It should be against the law to use generative AI to deceive the public. I’ve got absolutely no problem with outright government censorship in this case, and I say this as an aggressive and outspoken proponent of free speech. AI products which deceive people should be illegal in the same way fraud is illegal. I want it to be illegal to knowingly circulate AI video footage and pass it off as real. I want AI companies to be severely penalized if they don’t prevent people from using their products to generate fake videos that get passed off as real.” [editor’s note: When you say you have “no problem with government censorship” in ANY case, you are by definition not “an aggressive and outspoken proponent of free speech” – TLK (11/24/25)
“The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 in London as a socialist organization committed to gradual change rather than violent revolution. It has served as the primary think tank of Britain’s Labour Party, which means it’s steeped in so-called democratic socialism. Their original logo is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Fabian Society took its name from Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, known for wearing down enemies through patient, deliberate tactics rather than direct attacks. The name is meant to reflect the society’s commitment to gradualism. No violence. No gulags. No famines. Just slow ‘permeation.’ But a wolf is still a wolf. And socialism is still a predatory project.” (11/24/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Cláudia Ascensão Nunes
“The European Union has just unveiled the so-called European Democracy Shield. The name, while promising, claims to ‘protect’ democracy on the basis of two pillars which, on principle, should raise concerns: combating ‘disinformation’ and ‘foreign interference.’ To that end, the EU will create a new European Centre for Democratic Resilience, intended to collect data from Member States on information manipulation; foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI); and phenomena classified as disinformation. The same package also includes a European network of independent fact-checkers and a European Digital Media Observatory, which will be endowed with monitoring and analytical capacities during elections or moments of crisis. Regarding free elections and the risk of foreign interference, the Commission additionally proposes to finance ‘independent journalism.’ The irony that journalism financed by political institutions can never be genuinely independent seems lost on the Commission.” (11/24/25)
