“The modern international order rests on a contradiction rarely examined in full daylight. Western states present themselves as guardians of international rules, democracy, and self-determination, yet the historical record of their behavior abroad tells a different story — one written not in treaties or speeches, but in classified cables, deniable operations, and shattered political systems. Covert Regime Change, first published in 2018, matters because it documents, with unusual rigor, how this contradiction became a governing method. Lindsey A. O’Rourke, Associate Professor at Boston College, does not ask whether covert intervention occasionally went wrong. She demonstrates that it became a routine instrument of statecraft, one whose predictable consequences were political collapse, mass violence, and long-term instability.” (04/27/26)
“During the second Iraq War, General David Petraeus famously asked in his book: ‘Tell Me How This Ends.’ No question could be more relevant to Operation Epic Fury and the ill-advised and potentially disastrous undeclared war against Iran. Since the Korean War, no administration other than George H.W. Bush’s learned the lesson that while the U.S. military was proficient at winning battles, the U.S. was incapable of winning wars. The first Iraq War and operations Desert Shield and Storm were textbook examples of how to respond to armed aggression. And those who criticized the first President Bush for not marching to Baghdad in 1991 found out how catastrophic that would have been when his son, President George W. Bush, did precisely that. At some stage, someone will write the definitive story of how this misguided and misjudged misapplication of American blood and treasure occurred.” (04/27/26)
“A plaque on the Statue of Liberty features Emma Lazarus’s words urging the world to ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ In his farewell address, then-President Ronald Reagan referred to the United States as a ‘shining city upon a hill’ and added that in his vision, ‘if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.’ But despite its continuing success, the U.S. is becoming a less attractive destination for people around the world. Currently-ascendant nativists want to close America’s doors and turn away the huddled masses, and the message is being received loud and clear.” (04/27/26)
“[I]n 2013 the Department of Justice and FDIC began pressing banks to cut off services to certain ‘high risk’ industries, like the gun industry. The initiative was called — with laudable candor — Operation Choke Point. … The Trump administration first sought to end this practice in 2017. But the urge to censor and punish viewpoints, including by debanking, resurged during the Biden administration. In 2025, President Trump, in his second shot at heading the executive branch, issued a new executive order directing federal agencies to review the situation and issue new regulations to protect customers. It was to be made clear to banks that despite the impression conveyed by other administrations, so-called ‘reputational risk’ — which boils down to hostility to certain views and enterprises — is not a warrant to fire customers.” [editor’s note: In the absence of binding contract, the only “warrant to fire customers” any business should need is its desire to not to business with them – TLK] (04/27/26)
“George Monbiot once said that I claimed to have invented the word ‘privatization.’ Nothing could be further from the truth, in common with many (if not most) of George’s claims. I have gone on record several times to point out that the word was in use before I was even born, which in my case is a very long time indeed. I did say that I preferred to spell it with a ‘z’ rather than an ‘s,’ as is do with most ‘ize’ endings. The word privatization, specifically the gerund ‘privatizing,’ first appeared in English in April 1923 in the New York Times. It was used within quotation marks in a translation of a German speech regarding the potential for American companies to purchase German state railroads. While that was the first recorded instance of the word itself, its development as a technical term followed a more complex path.” (04/7/26)
“‘He has dug a hole and hollowed it out; he has fallen into a pit of his own making.’ (Psalm 7:15) The Southern Poverty Law Center, famous for battling ‘hate groups’, helped stoke hate by funneling millions of dollars to the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other extremists and engaged in criminal activity to cover it up, according to the Justice Department. Announcing an indictment with 11 counts Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that from 2014 to 2023, the SPLC paid big bucks to leaders at the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, the National Socialist Movement, the Aryan Nation Motorcycle Club, the National Socialist Party of America and the American Front.” (04/27/26)
Source: Expression
by Greg Gonzalez & Adam Goldstein
“California lawmakers are considering two bills that would make ‘anti-hate speech training’ a requirement. Assembly Bill 1803 would require employers with five or more employees to incorporate such training into existing, already-mandated sexual harassment prevention programs. Under Assembly Bill 1578, a similar training would be mandated for all state and local elected officials. … But ‘hate speech’ includes speech protected by the First Amendment — speech the government has no business trying to snuff out with legal mandates. But also, it has no clear or consistent definition. Because of that vagueness, efforts to regulate ‘hate speech’ risk giving the government sweeping authority to suppress views it doesn’t like.” (04/27/26)
“Sometimes, something that seems too absurd to be taken seriously really should be taken seriously. As Paul Krugman argued a couple of days ago, Trump backers’ sense of betrayal by Trump may actually explain much of the negative attitude being reported by surveys of consumer sentiment.” (04/27/26)
“AI companies are beginning to entertain the possibility that they could cease to exist. This notion was, until recently, more theoretical: A couple of years ago, an ex-OpenAI employee named Leopold Aschenbrenner wrote a lengthy memo speculating that the U.S. government might soon take control of the industry. By 2026 or 2027, Aschenbrenner wrote, an ‘obvious question’ will be circling through the Pentagon and Congress: Do we need a government-led program for artificial general intelligence — an AGI Manhattan Project? He predicted that Washington would decide to go all in on such an effort.
Aschenbrenner may have been prescient.” (04/27/26)
“Right at this moment, we are witnessing an unprecedented shift of resources from domestic investments in the United States to the military-industrial complex (aka the war machine). The only comparable period in our history was the buildup to World War II, when the United States confronted a powerful adversary in Nazi Germany with designs to control not just Europe, but the world. The current buildup is breathtaking in scope and will certainly prove devastating in its impact — not just on this country’s foreign and domestic policies but also on the economic prospects of average Americans. When, in 2023, my colleague Ben Freeman and I first conceived of our book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, we viewed it in part as a cautionary tale about just how high the Pentagon budget might rise in the years to come (absent pushback from Congress and the taxpaying public).” (04/26/26)
