Source: Common Dreams
by Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler
“Every single moving mouth and face I see in the media seems to be obligated to stress the barbarity and illegitimacy of the Maduro government to establish some acceptable moral clarity even before they can carry on with any analysis of the current political situation, or the current political conditions in the world. Likewise, each personality seems obligated to make similar statements as a prerequisite to speak on the Iranian regime and the religionists controlling the country. Each is evil they must claim, and that they expressively disagree and denounce them in all shape and form. Each is beyond the specter of acceptable civilization, they must state. Each has no inkling of morality, but is simply obsessed with power and control. This was the same in any discussion of Hamas in Gaza.” (01/22/25)
“Of course it’s possible to insist that climate change isn’t a thing, if it is it’s of no matter, or that we’re not doing it. It’s also true that whatever the truth of any of that society as a whole insists it is, it is and we are therefore something must be done. At which point we should have had a carbon tax …. At which point we would be done. Lower petrol tax and raise, modestly, taxes elsewhere and we’ve solved climate change. All of which is, of course, just a repeat of the grand lesson of the 20th century. Those places which tried to use planning, direction and insistence as a method of economic management remained poor. All of those that used markets and prices to achieve the same end, that of economic management, became grossly rich by global or historical standards.” (01/22/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Tourism might have exacerbated Spain’s housing problem, but it’s not the root cause. The gap between sluggish supply and explosive demand has resulted in a deficit of around 700,000 homes. As a result, rental rates have doubled and house prices risen by 44% since 2020. In its last Financial Stability Report, released in November, the Bank of Spain identified historically low construction levels as a key factor in the deficit. … Still, it’s easier to blame tourists.” (01/22/26)
“Trump’s assault on the Federal Reserve demands a structural solution: rules-based monetary policy that protects central bank independence whilst delivering better economic results.” (01/22/26)
“The Trump predation does not mark a departure from Western history; it signals the end of its traditional justifications. For centuries, Western ruling elites relied on intricate theological and philosophical frameworks to justify predation—the taking of foreign resources through force, deception, or coercion. During President Donald Trump’s tenure, these frameworks are no longer necessary. Predation persists, but its rhetorical disguise has been stripped away. What remains is the U.S. asymmetric power advantage, openly asserting itself against weaker targets like Venezuela, while remaining cautious around stronger foes like China. To understand Trump’s predatory stance toward Venezuela, Greenland, and possibly other targets, one must resist the urge to see it as abnormal.” (01/22/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Corynne McSherry & Rory Mir
“In the Netflix/Spotify/Amazon era, many of us access copyrighted works purely in digital form – and that means we rarely have the chance to buy them. Instead, we are stuck renting them, subject to all kinds of terms and conditions. And because the content is digital, reselling it, lending it, even preserving it for your own use inevitably requires copying. Unfortunately, when it comes to copying digital media, US copyright law has pretty much lost the plot.” (01/22/26)
“Trump has this bizarrely durable ability to win by losing. He can be so appalling in his behavior, so simultaneously aggressive and craven, demanding to get his way in everything one minute then desperate for a deal — any deal — the next that one might easily forget whether he’s actually achieved any objectives at all in substantive terms. More often than not he does nothing but set his own declared aims back — and yet his domestic opponents, trying to block him as he lunges about, often wind up in such contorted positions themselves that with the next lunge he can push them over.” (01/22/26)
“Popular historian Joseph J. Ellis’s latest book, The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding, examines the persistence of slavery in the wake of the American Founding and the American Revolution’s impact on American Indians. Expulsion of the British from the Thirteen Colonies and John Jay’s diplomatic masterstroke yielding the Mississippi River rather than the Appalachian Mountains as America’s western boundary would have effects on blacks, Indians and ultimately the American Union that no one could have foreseen. This is what Ellis considers ‘the tragic side of the American Founding.’ What is new about Ellis’s telling of this tale is that he apportions responsibility differently than has become customary in recent years.” (01/22/26)
“President Trump is making big moves the world over. From nabbing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to threatening the conquest of Greenland to pushing for a Ukraine-Russia cease-fire, Trump’s foreign policy plate is full. The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, is still buzzing about it. Overshadowed by these bigger headlines but no less important is Trump’s newly minted Board of Peace. The board is designed to implement the president’s 20-point peace plan for the war-torn Gaza Strip, as endorsed verbatim by the UN Security Council in November. Notable critics, including French President Emmanuel Macron, assert that Trump … is trying to supplant the United Nations as part of a wider overhaul of the international system that, in the wake of World War II, produced the UN, NATO and many of the other organizations that are steadily losing relevance today.” (01/21/25)
