“The Trump administration has announced that it is abandoning its ‘surge’ — you’ll remember that term from the Iraq War — in Minneapolis. Other than two dead Americans, millions and millions of dollars in economic losses, and the further erosion of trust in armed federal agencies, what exactly has been accomplished? … at least one observer who had been very skeptical about the wisdom of so-called sanctuary city policies is now a little more sympathetic to those arrangements — and surely I am not the only one.” (02/13/26)
“Covid-19 gave everyone a harsh lesson in the power of exponentials, and that memory haunts any analysis of artificial intelligence. Sure, everything looks fine — now. But then, everything also looked fine in early March 2020. By the end of the month, we were locked in our houses with our strategic reserves of toilet paper. In a viral essay on X this week, Otherside AI founder Matt Shumer draws the parallel explicitly. ‘I think we’re in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid,’ he writes, before launching into a description of what’s already here for coders: AI agents building ‘usually perfect’ software from a plain-English description. He’s predicting a world soon in which AI blows up software development and moves on to every other profession.” (02/13/26)
“The general public’s awareness of Epstein’s heinous crimes came with political baggage. However at this point, the question we all should wonder is: How does redacting the names of the men who helped fund Epstein’s operation benefit either political party? It may be good for the rich and powerful men trying to avoid accountability, but it’s not exactly a campaign platform. … We have seen Congress kept out of session to avoid voting on the release of the Epstein files; we have heard equivocation about whether Epstein was a pedophile. We know Epstein’s island was a place where evil resided. The investigation, or lack of investigation, into Epstein’s fellow abusers should not be seen by anyone as a political quandary in which the object of the game is to keep your party in power.” (02/14/26)
“The latest critique of capitalism from Jason Hickel and Yanis Varoufakis …. ‘Capitalists are the ones who determine what to produce, how to use our labour and who gets to benefit. The rest of us – the people who are actually doing the production – do not get a say.’ This is simply factually wrong because markets. Capitalists might try to direct our labour into the production of things that we out here, we consumers, might not want. The Ford Edsel, say. But when we don’t want it then the capitalists stop so directing our labour into the production of what we do not want. For if they don’t they then go bust — as the death of four out of five new attempts at capitalism show. … This is not a complicated logical proposition but it’s one that seems to entirely escape two university professors here.” (02/14/26)
“The rumors of discussions on Russia’s return to the dollar system sparked speculation about the strength of the financial alternatives deployed to bypass sanctions. While the central bank denies being involved in such talks, the Kremlin clarified that Russia never left the dollar: it was excluded.” (02/15/26)
“‘American Independence was then & there born. John Adams wasn’t talking about July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence. He was referring to the beginning of the real American Revolution that kicked off years earlier in February 1761. That’s when James Otis Jr delivered a fiery 5-hour speech railing against the writs of assistance. While the Declaration of Independence was a seminal moment in the Revolution, it was the culmination of more than 15 years of radical changes in the minds and hearts of the people that started with Otis’s speech.” (02/13/26)
“With Vladimir Putin’s war machine sputtering, it’s time to push the Kremlin even harder to force an end to his war on Ukraine. President Donald Trump’s moves such as seizing ‘shadow fleet’ tankers and piling on new tariffs on importers of Moscow’s oil are plainly hitting hard: You can tell because Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is whining that Washington won’t make Kyiv agree to de facto surrender (e.g., Russian control over Ukraine’s post-war government) as he claims President Donald Trump had agreed to do. Why does Russia need America’s intervention, if it’s winning on the battlefield? ‘The United States has effectively declared a goal of economic domination,’ Lavrov cries — a clear sign that Putin’s feeling squeezed.” (02/14/26)
“Donald Trump’s new national security strategy placed greater emphasis on the homeland (unneeded and even ominous for the health of the U.S. republic) and the Western Hemisphere (potentially beneficial) at the expense of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Since World War II — starting with the 40-plus-year, worldwide, grandiose Cold War instituted by Harry Truman and the subsequent war on terrorism — the U.S. superpower has worried more about threats to Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East than the countries in those regions. The tragic result was unneeded wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and two wars with Iraq. And those are just the largest quagmires the United States got itself into during that period; countless smaller military interventions were conducted in far-flung countries.” (02/14/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy
“Grattan highlights the propagandistic tricks that were directed at those who were neutral or critical. A lack of transparency was one of the tricks that left people unsure of the facts and so unable to argue effectively against war. Closed-door negotiations epitomized this secrecy for Grattan. Why We Fought discusses in detail the secret agreements that pushed America in the direction of war and prevented effective pushback against it. For example, the American diplomat Edward Mandell (Colonel) House negotiated a covert deal with England and France by which America pledged to intervene on the side of the Allies, although the official line was neutrality. This deal became known as the Secret Treaty. Months before the agreement was finalized, however, Wilson had campaigned and won the 1916 presidential election based on the claim that he had kept America out of the war and the promise that he would continue to do so.” (02/13/26)
