“A long, long time ago (27 years, to be exact), my boss (the inimitable Mark Melcher) and I predicted that the European Monetary Union would be the death of the EU. The Euro, we wrote for our clients at a now-defunct big brokerage house, would be a disaster and would destroy everything that the post-war Europeans had spent the previous several decades working to build. Specifically, we wrote: ‘Psst! You wanna know a secret? The Euro, and the mess it represents, is going to be a social, economic and political catastrophe. Indeed, we think it is probable that the adoption of the Euro will be to 21st century Europe, what the killing of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to 20th century Europe …” (08/03/26)
“In 1925, John Maynard Keynes dismissed Marx’s Capital as an obsolete economic textbook that no serious economist would still assign. He was not being contrarian. By the time he wrote that, the marginal revolution of the 1870s had already done the intellectual work: Jevons, Menger, Walras, and later Wicksteed, Marshall, and Böhm-Bawerk had dismantled the labor theory of value that Marx’s entire economic system rested on. Among economists, the argument was over, and Marx had lost it. So why does Marx remain one of the most cited authors in the humanities and social sciences, a century and a half after his death, in fields far removed from the one where his core claims were actually tested?” (08/03/26)
“The popular rightwing network spent months building a case for the Iran War. Now they are invested in keeping up support, even if hosts have to deny reality.” (08/03/26)
“The desire to ban speech, in any form, is an example of insecurity inside society and government. Knowing that certain words or images may in some way draw revulsion and offense is a risk an individual must take. Not everyone will experience the same offense or revulsion, and some may even find arousal or delight in such words or images. It’s what makes the human experience unique and it is why free expression is a sacred thing.” (08/03/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s saying you endorse all the violence, exploitation, ecocide and abuse of the current order. Politics are always happening all around you in every moment of every day, whether you are ‘into’ it or not. Everything you do in your everyday life is pervasively shaped by local and national laws, by economic systems, by oligarchy, by propaganda, by war, by militarism, by imperialist extraction, by government regulations and the lack thereof. Saying you don’t feel like paying attention to these factors is just saying you’re fine with the way they are presently happening..” (08/03/26)
Source: Foreign Policy
by Samuel Bendett & Maria Snegovaya
“Among the various challenges that Russia has faced since its ill-conceived full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the most acute has been a severe labor shortage. Russia’s deepening demographic crisis, combined with mass emigration and recruitment of hundreds of thousands of men into the army, has sharply exacerbated the problem. … By 2030, Russia will need to bring 10.9 million people into the workforce, according to Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov, with more than 90 percent replacing retiring workers and roughly 800,000 filling newly created positions. The rapid expansion of defense production has drawn workers away from civilian sectors, intensifying competition for an already scarce workforce. … The Kremlin’s response has rested on three pillars: mobilizing underutilized domestic labor, expanding prison labor, and increasing labor migration. Each proves to be either insufficient or self-defeating. When it comes to Russia’s labor shortage, the cure is worse than the disease.” (08/03/26)
“The entire premise of democracy is based on a fallacy that is as ignored as it is ubiquitous: that a majority is always right, and that a committee is somehow smarter and wiser than any individual. When tied to the idea that government has power over the lives of people that it should have, it creates a truly monstrous evil. So what does this mean to lovers of liberty? It is more than just the tyranny of the majority, and how that so typically results in riding roughshod over individuals and their lives and liberty. It is more than just the cost of such ‘democratic institutions’ or even the way money destroys the meaning of free elections in so many ways. Democracy survives only by propaganda that extolls it and therefore government. The result is that government is made into an absolute essential for any society.” (08/02/26)
Source: Washington Monthly
by Suzanne Gordon & Steve Early
“Encourage veterans, including those with PTSD and brain injuries, to join law enforcement after they leave the military. What could go wrong?” (08/03/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“President Trump recently halted his proposed strikes against Iran in favor of regional diplomatic talks; he has the right instincts, and while this is the right thing to do – favor diplomatic talks and engage in free trade – he is under pressure by war hawks all around him. He’s been engaged in this ‘on again — off again’ war talk since February, at the behest of Netanyahu and Israel. All of this is happening with little input from Congress, which has the power to give him the ‘go ahead’ to engage in a war with Iran. It seems that, over the last several decades, Congress has abdicated its power to declare war, giving it up to the Executive branch so they do not receive flak from their constituents blowing up in their face.” (08/02/26)
