“Calls to ban the development of superintelligence have gained traction among some technologists, pundits, and even a few policymakers. They argue that an artificial intelligence system so powerful that it could outthink humans would pose an existential threat to civilization. But this idea rests on unsubstantiated fears, not evidence. A government prohibition on advanced AI would not make the United States safer, but it would make it weaker. Such a ban would forfeit economic and technological leadership, undermine national security, and betray America’s founding commitment to liberty and progress.” (12/04/25)
“Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress. And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.” (12/04/25)
“President Trump’s Cabinet meetings are a masterclass in postmodernism, a forum in which nothing is said yet everything is revealed. His most recent back-slapping session gave center stage to a clutch of White House quislings so preoccupied with propping up Trump’s fragile ego that they have lost even a passing interest in actually governing. … As Trump spends his second term eating dinner in bed and treating the presidency as a largely ceremonial job, feckless MAGA bros like Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are stepping in to fill the gaps — with predictably disastrous results. If Trump’s directionless Cabinet meeting was meant to clear the air about who is really running the country, the public got its answer loud and clear: absolutely no one.” (12/03/25)
“For five months, Daniel Sanchez Estrada was the prisoner of a government that has branded him an ‘Antifa Cell operative.’ He was accused of moving a box of anarchist zines from one suburb of Dallas to another after a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On the day before Thanksgiving, he was released without warning or explanation. He walked out to a jail parking lot relishing the fresh air — and watching over his shoulder. During the week that followed, Sanchez Estrada savored his time with family members and worried that his release might have been an accident. Apparently, he was right.” (12/04/25)
Source: The American Prospect
by Shoaib Mir & Parthu Venkatesh P
“Sitting outside his modest house in India’s eastern state of Bihar, Sudeshwar Singh, 48, scrolls on his smartphone through the recent Global Tuberculosis Report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) last month to check India’s status. Just eight countries account for 67 percent of global TB cases, according to the report, with India contributing 25 percent of the total, topping the chart. Seeing India leading in global TB disappoints Singh. As the day starts to fade, he puts on a jacket with a ‘Stop TB’ logo, packs a few copies of handbooks and pamphlets in a tote bag, and starts walking toward a nearby village. Singh, himself a TB survivor and a renowned health advocate, has been a guide for a network of TB advocates in the region, working toward a global commitment to end the epidemic by 2030 under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.” (12/04/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Christoph Schmon & Thorin Klosowski
“After a years-long battle, the European Commission’s ‘Chat Control’ plan, which would mandate mass scanning and other encryption-breaking measures, at last codifies agreement on a position within the Council of the EU, representing EU States. The good news is that the most controversial part, the forced requirement to scan encrypted messages, is out. The bad news is there’s more to it than that.” (12/03/25)
“If the systems governing the targeting of a small boat—confirmation of targets, visual identification, proportionality, and discrimination—broke down, then the failure was not caused by fog. It was caused by the inability to penetrate ‘fog’ through disciplined process and the rule of law. Modern militaries are designed precisely to prevent rapid-fire decisions based on guesswork or emotion. If operators identified survivors and those observations were either missed, dismissed, or overridden, that is not fog. That is a breakdown in leadership and moral judgment. Here is where the danger grows. By invoking ‘fog’ as a catch-all excuse, the secretary risks creating the conditions for blame to be pushed downward onto the very service members who executed an order under pressure. If he was the senior person in the room during the initial strike, he was in charge and responsible.” (12/03/25)
“Most Americans are unaware that President Abraham Lincoln implemented a much more centralized and authoritarian government than the one he inherited. He overthrew the original union, which was very libertarian in policy, eradicating a union of consent and replacing it with a centralized state—a dictatorship set above the people. The government would no longer serve us, but we were to serve it. Not just the federal government, but the states as well, became vastly more authoritarian because of Lincoln. Few of our modern governmental abuses occurred before Lincoln—he originated big government, and our current nationalist and democratic views of both the Constitution and centralized government’s power.” (12/03/25)
“The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) posits that market prices accurately reflect all available information. There are three forms of the EMH: weak, semi-strong, and strong. Each form supposes different sets of information that are fully reflected in market prices. The weak EMH information set consists of historical prices, the semi-strong form includes all publicly available information, and the strong form encompasses information privately held by individual investors or groups. Essentially, no one believes that the strong form holds completely, and most economists believe that the weak form generally holds.” (12/04/25)
“Immigration – both legal and illegal – is a hot topic in Western nations. Governments are taking measures to restrict the flow. And citizens are debating how to maintain a national identity while integrating those bringing different cultures and values. In the United States, the issue has gone from boil to broil in the wake of two recent events – the shooting of two National Guard members (one of whom has died) and revelations of large-scale fraud in the use of Minnesota’s pandemic relief funds. The alleged perpetrators are from communities made up largely of legal immigrants: An Afghan national, who served alongside American troops, has been charged in the shootings, and the large majority of those arrested in the fraud case have Somali roots.” (12/03/25)
