“Section 702 was added to FISA in 2008 with a provision that requires Congress to periodically reauthorize it. The measure allows national security agencies like the NSA, FBI and CIA to collect and monitor – without a warrant – any electronic communications sent to and from non-US persons ‘reasonably believed to be located’ outside the US. Notably, Americans who send messages to people abroad may likewise have their data surveilled. Law enforcement agencies have consistently abused this loophole to spy on US citizens in clear violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.” (04/29/26)
“Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels taught us that capitalism is a system primarily characterized by private control over the means of production. In other words: Factories and banks are privately owned. Business decisions are guided by whether they generate surplus value that can be appropriated as profit by the owners. Workers become a commodity, one that must, however, market itself and generate exchange value. In this context, the state’s primary role is to safeguard these relations of production and balance the interests of the various factions of capital. In doing so, the construction of neoliberal ideologies sought to minimize state benefits for the poorer strata of society, destroy the protective mechanisms of poorer societies, and simultaneously transfer state resources to capitalist oligarchies. Those who demanded the elimination of subsidies were, in fact, the very ones who benefited from them.” (04/29/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“[T]he question hanging over the present war is whether we are witnessing the reassertion of American dominance or the continuation of its gradual displacement. The United States is still the meanest dog on the block. No nation can match our ability to destroy things, literally to erase a whole society off the face of the earth if we really wanted to. Even without our archipelago of bases worldwide, the U.S. can launch untouchable B-2s and other bombers from Missouri, bomb Tehran, and return them home safely. That is not the same as shaping what comes after — that is, primacy. The way the Iran War plays out says in part whether the U.S. is indispensable in reacting to nascent nuclear states or directing events on the very largest scales possible, as was envisioned in the postwar world.” (04/29/26)
“John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration is widely regarded as a foundational text of religious liberty. For centuries, thinkers have praised its clarity, moral confidence, and rejection of the coercive religious politics that prevailed in early modern Europe. On the surface, Locke offers a simple and powerful claim: the state has no authority over the salvation of souls, and therefore it ought not to coerce religious belief or practice. But this framing, so often viewed as self-evident, rests on claims that are highly contestable.” (04/29/26)
“The idea that artificial intelligence could usher in a ‘post-money’ world — and that such a world would also render firms obsolete — rests on a misunderstanding of what firms are and why they exist. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the highly implausible premise that money would disappear beneath an AI/robotics explosion of superabundance, it does not follow that firms would disappear with it. Firms are not artifacts or by-products of monetary exchange; they are organizational responses to coordination problems, uncertainty, and the costs of markets.” (04/29/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Rory Mir
“If you want to overthrow Big Tech, you’ll need Section 230. The paradigm shift being built with the Open Social Web can put communities back in control of social media infrastructure, and finally end our dependency on enshitified corporate giants. But while these incumbents can overcome multimillion-dollar lawsuits, the small host revolution could be picked off one by one without the protections offered by 230.” (04/28/26)
“Because politicians win by working their base into a lather, there currently exist within American politics no incentives to be wrong with decency. Every opponent must be an enemy, every disagreement a threat. I helped in my small way to create that mess; I’m resolved to help in a similarly small way to fix it. This doesn’t mean no longer speaking to what I believe to be good policy even on questions where bad policy is non-catastrophic to our republic. It does mean not strategically catastrophizing them, and not vilifying their adherents. … the only way to get incentives pushing back in that right direction is for enough people to decide they don’t care about differences on policy when those differences do not radically reshape the world.” (04/28/26)
“The United Arab Emirates (UAE) shocked the world on Tuesday when it announced that it’d be leaving the world’s largest oil cartel this week. While there’s no immediate impact for the US, in the long run it’ll mean lower gasoline prices and much-needed relief for American consumers. For decades, the UAE has been part of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which has artificially limited global oil supplies and thereby put upward pressure on prices. … The idea behind the cartel was simple: gather all the major oil-producing countries into a room and agree to act like a monopoly, thereby maximizing profits at the expense of the rest of the world. But as other nations began discovering and pumping more oil of their own, it became increasingly difficult for a dozen or so countries to control global prices.” (04/29/26)
