“On a podcast this spring, Ivanka Trump described how she and her husband Jared Kushner came upon Sazan Island. A friend’s boat, a stop to swim, a captivation that would not release them. ‘We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.’ … Sazan’s coastline is so forbidding that sailors gave it a name: Gryka e Xhehenemit, the Gorge of Hell. The slopes are studded with some 3,600 concrete bunkers, most of them one-man domes built to survive a nuclear blast, threaded together by ten miles of reinforced tunnels and a buried command center. In the water around the island lie World War II artillery shells, anti-submarine mines, and tons of undetonated ordnance, enough that the area is mapped as a hazard. Nobody walks barefoot up that.” (06/10/26)
“Rep. Josh Gottheimer [D-NJ] predicted on Tuesday that Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner will be ‘off the ballot soon’ even if he wins the primary election. Gottheimer, who has criticized Platner for his scandals in the past, called support for far-left candidates like him a ‘major concern’ for the Democratic Party and encouraged people not to support him during the primaries. While he stopped short of supporting Platner’s presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. Susan Collins, Gottheimer told ‘CNN News Central’ that he would call for Platner to step down regardless of how the race goes. ‘What I would suggest is that Graham Platner get off if he wins today, which I assume he will, because there‘s no one actively campaigning against him, that he get off the ballot and let another Democrat step in, that the Maine Democratic Party puts somebody else in,’ Gottheimer said.” (06/09/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“It is hard to see how Trump could possibly reach some lasting peace agreement in the near future that all sides will abide by. Just about anything the Iranians are willing to agree to will be a political disaster domestically, but so is any prolonged closure of the Strait if Trump can’t deliver something the Iranians will accept. And everything that even appears like a step towards ending the war rather than restarting it will probably be resisted, if not sabotaged, by the Israelis — barring some major escalation against Hezbollah that Iran would never agree to or allow. Trump is in a genuinely difficult position. But it’s important to remember that it’s entirely his fault.” (06/10/26)
“A Florida man was wrongfully arrested for attempting to illegally lure a child after police relied on a face recognition match that was inaccurate, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, even though he lived more than 300 miles from the scene and says he had never set foot in the city where the crime took place. Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old commercial crabber from Fort Myers, was arrested after FACES — a face recognition system operated by Florida’s Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office — matched his face against a photo of a man on a computer screen taken with a cellphone. … ACLU says Dillon’s case is one of at least 15 known wrongful arrests in the United States attributed to face recognition technology.” (06/10/26)
“Solar energy just provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record — marking a milestone for the rise of renewables in America. While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8 percent of the nation’s electrons in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2 percent. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20 percent.” (06/10/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by Sidney Plotkin & Bill Scheurman
“Woody Guthrie proudly sang ‘This land is your land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island,’ but, in fact, the conversion of vast public resources and wealth to private property is one of the defining dynamics of American history. The political economist Thorstein Veblen called this process ‘The American Plan:’ the conversion of public resources into private hands as fast as possible.” [editor’s note: There are no “public resources and wealth” — if it’s not “private property,” it’s unowned – TLK] (06/10/26)
“It’s the original purchases that are costing the taxpayer money …. the loss was baked in when the Bank of England bought all those bonds back when. Buying gilts with 1/2% and the like coupons just was/is going to lead to a loss. A loss that can be taken in one of two ways but a loss which is going to be taken in one of those two ways. … The loss comes from having done Quantitative Easing, not from the clean up that is Quantitative Tightening. Sorry, there is no free money.” (06/10/26)
