“The lack of shame exhibited by the US government as it lies about Iraqi improvised explosive device (IED) attacks that killed thousands of American service members to justify its new war on Iran is breathtaking. President Trump led off his press conference today, the first since the attacks began Saturday morning, with this lie. Trump’s proxies on cable news, in the newspapers and online have been repeating it non-stop. The lie is essentially that American soldiers were killed and wounded in Iraq at the orders of the Iranians. That the people responsible for blowing up American vehicles and sending home US soldiers in caskets or without body parts were Iranians, not Iraqis. The reality, of course, is that responsibility for those deaths and mutilations belongs to George W. Bush and every politician, general, government official, journalist, pundit and citizen who supported that war.” (03/04/26)
“This will be a brief post, with some bad news and some good news. The bad news comes in two parts. First, any hopes that this war might be extremely brief are fading. … Second, war in the middle of the world’s most important oil-producing region — which is also a key source of liquefied natural gas — inevitably has major consequences for energy prices.” (03/04/26)
“Mega-MAGA might be trying to purge them, but Tucker Carlson and other conservatives have their fingers on the real pulse after this week’s Iran strikes.” (03/04/26)
“A Supreme Court case illustrates the potential for trans-partisan alliances between critics of gun control and critics of the war on drugs.” (03/04/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Cláudia Ascensão Nunes
“The law classifies user identities at the operating system level. Once embedded, that regulatory architecture of control is easy to expand and difficult to roll back.” (03/04/26)
“In my epidemiology coursework, many years ago, I was taught that the smallpox vaccine had eradicated that dreadful disease. It was common knowledge, so I did not question the claim. They did not tell me about favorable time trends in the natural course of other infectious diseases for which there was no vaccine, nor about the correlation of those trends with improved living conditions, sanitation, personal hygiene, and nutrition. The unexplained transition from the severe form of smallpox (variola major) to the mild form (variola minor) in the Western world was not mentioned. All the credit was given to the smallpox vaccine. Of course, no randomized trial of that vaccine was ever conducted. There was, however, a natural experiment in Yugoslavia in 1972—a short-lived outbreak of smallpox with a total of 175 infected people and 35 deaths.” (03/04/26)
“Months before overturning the scientific determination behind federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin restated his plans for the agency at an auto dealership in Indiana, saying, ‘The Trump EPA is proposing to end 16 years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers’. The reality is that the Trump EPA has abdicated responsibility for the agency’s quintessential mandate of protecting human health and the environment. The EPA has elected not to contest climate science, instead relying on legal arguments that appear to be tweaked versions of what the Supreme Court rejected in its landmark 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. ‘To state the obvious, this White House doesn’t give a damn about clean air or clean water,’ Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) said in an interview with the Prospect.” (03/04/26)
“Power is felt, attributed, invisible, all-important, descriptive, without shape, and so much more. There is personal power, governmental power, and the collective power of the people. Power can be bought, sold, traded, bestowed, even rescinded. It can be good or bad, positive or corrupt. However you might wish to describe power, one thing is clear: how it’s used depends on the society in which we live. At present, of course, our society is one in which President Donald J. Trump is the quintessential seeker of power, a man who needs power the way most of us need food. And as it happens, he has at his beck and call not just the entire military establishment, but ICE (and so much more). With him in the White House, power is distinctly in fashion.” (03/04/26)
“In short, there are experts, and they want to make health decisions for you. And no matter how many times they are wrong, their ignorance and arrogance are inexhaustible. How dispiriting it is to have to defend basic freedoms against these medical .bullies. Read on and see what is true about decision-making by experts.” (03/04/26)
