“Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global has decided to divest from yet more Israeli companies. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest, with total investments in Israel once estimated at $1.9 billion. The decision to divest was taken gradually but is consistent with the Norwegian government’s growing solidarity with Palestine and rising criticism of Israel. … Israel is the recipient of $3.8 billion of US taxpayer money per year, according to the latest 10-year Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016. Equally, if not more valuable than this large sum are the loan guarantees, which allow Israel to borrow money at a much lower interest rate on the global market. … Now that Israel has become a bad brand, affiliated with unethical investments due to the genocide in Gaza and growing illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank, the US, as Israel’s main benefactor, has stepped in to fill the gaps.” (09/01/25)
“We all want to live in healthy, safe, and thriving communities. We expect our tax dollars to serve the common good, and we want to trust that government represents our interests. But today, the federal government falls far short of this goal; only 22% of Americans trust it. Local governments, in many places but not all, continue to deliver for their residents. They are leading the fight against climate change without federal support. They took charge in their immediate and ongoing responses to Covid-19. And they continue to resist, creating sanctuary cities to protect immigrant communities threatened during the first Trump administration. Today, local governments prepare for a difficult future shaped by the policies of the current Trump administration, including the unnecessary deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles and Washington, DC.” [editor’s note: Trust in government reduces prosperity – TLK] (08/31/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“The state and capital have, quite together, managed to hollow out true society, the kinds of community organizations (often volunteer-run, informal, controlled by neither government nor capitalists) that create a vibrant and diverse social ecosystem and collective culture. Without this intermediate social sphere, the popular masses become even more politically and economically atrophied and dependent, losing the strength and know-how to organize and bring out liberatory change. Perhaps the local, the tangible, and the practical can’t ever truly match the splendor of the state, with its stirring songs and symbols. And this may give us a plausible explanation of why it is that people continue to invest in the state (emotionally and in every other way) and to see it as an anchor of community, despite its history of mass murder and hateful disregard for human life.” (08/31/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by Robert Wyllie
“Mystery cults that formed around émigré professors in postwar America are sometimes accused of influencing politics, even as we leave the 20th century far behind. On the left, ‘cultural Marxist’ expatriates associated with the Frankfurt School, especially Herbert Marcuse, allegedly invented identity politics. On the right, the students of Leo Strauss, another refugee from the Third Reich, supposedly masterminded the Iraq War. Perhaps less well-known but more indirectly influential is René Girard, whose lectures about desire at Stanford University in the 1980s convinced Peter Thiel to invest in Facebook during the infancy of social media. Among these postwar émigré-professor scapegoats for our 21st-century problems, Girard is most like the classic cult leader who gathers disciples around a single apocalyptic insight. He also has much to say about scapegoating.” (08/31/25)
“The District of Columbia is our nation’s capital, where foreign leaders go to meet our presidents at the White House. On the way, these leaders do not see a shining city on a hill as they peer through the windows of their motorcades. Instead, they see a crime-infested dump riddled with drug addicts, disturbed homeless people milling zombie-like around their tents and gangs of thugs in stolen cars who yearn to target innocent residents. The D.C. legal system is an utter disaster. Richard Nixon won approximately 20% of the D.C. vote in 1972 in his landslide over George McGovern, the most ‘success’ any Republican presidential candidate has had since D.C. has been part of the Electoral College. In his three presidential elections, Donald Trump topped out at a whopping 6.6% of the vote in 2024, and the lowest performance by a Democrat was Hillary Clinton’s 90.9% in 2016.” (08/31/25)
“President Donald Trump’s tariff regime is making everything from American-made steel weights, imported yarn, and Amazon’s ‘everyday essentials’ more expensive while his immigration crackdown is causing worker shortages in key industries. These policies will work in tandem to slow down already expensive deliveries of your favorite goods.” (08/29/25)
“It’s perhaps hard to imagine now, but in the 1960s, comics were essentially anesthetized. Under the Comics Code Authority, formed in 1954, publishers were effectively banned from showing sex, drugs, and excessive violence — or anything that might ‘corrupt young readers’ — since distributors generally rejected comics without the Authority’s seal. Superman couldn’t so much as flirt with Lois Lane without a marriage license! Then along came Crumb.” (08/30/25)
“In 1934, a federal law was passed that banned any entity except the USPS from placing items in any mailbox. That is the law that limited UPS and, later, FedEx, to parcel delivery. Even your neighbor is not allowed to put that party invitation in your mailbox. (If you are the type of person who reports neighbors who do so to the USPS, you probably don’t receive many party invitations in the first place.) Until recently, the best defense of the post office monopoly was that, in all honesty, it worked fairly well. Sure, it was a monopoly that somehow managed to lose money each year, but at least the post office did a good job at its primary job of delivering the mail. … That is, unfortunately, no longer the case.” (08/29/25)
“Sometimes, events turn on the bravery of ordinary people. On Thursday, hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) demonstrated outside their agency, all risking their jobs, to give a grateful send-off to three senior officials who had finally had enough and resigned in protest. The three were Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who headed the center that oversees new diseases and vaccine safety; Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s chief medical officer; and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious disease specialist who led the center that reviews respiratory illnesses such as COVID and issues vaccine recommendations. These senior scientists were the heart of the CDC. All objected to statements by new members of the agency’s vaccine advisory panel, which made clear that they would try to reduce access to several vaccines.” (08/29/25)
