“It is wholly true that there is no such thing as a ‘free market’. All interactions between humans are intermediated by culture, the law, geography, language and so on and so on. Which is why we neoliberal types normally don’t mean that version of free. Rather, we mean a market that someone is free to enter. You’ve got a new idea, can you set up and try it out? Yes, obviously, there will be constraints, can you gain finance, planning permission, find the staff and on and on. But all of these things run along a spectrum, we can talk of markets that are freer to enter than others. And, our – most neoliberal, we confess – contention is that the freer to enter the more such markets will serve consumers.” (08/26/26)
“It now appears that instead of continuing bombing campaigns, the United States is relying on economic warfare and a naval blockade to secure Tehran’s capitulation. For Washington, this would minimize the risk to its forces and the pressure on its munitions stockpiles. For Tehran, in turn, this disparity of costs represents a challenge. As a result, Iranian political and military figures have called for Iran to respond with a more offensive military doctrine. They argue that Iran should now take steps to change the situation and make the United States pay much more for keeping the blockade in place.” (08/26/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“This year, 136 communities have rejected or banned the technology, and citizens are outraged, as evidenced by over two dozen states taking direct action against 193 camera installations. Mass surveillance fails the practical test because it treats every law-abiding neighbor as a perpetual suspect while government expands the network with automated police drones. Genuine public safety depends on focused, accountable law enforcement rather than dragnet data collection.” (08/26/26)
“Some political pitches are more challenging than others. And some, like the pitch the Republican Party will try to make to midterm voters in two weeks, are damn near impossible. The Republican National Committee is hosting a ‘midterm convention’ on Sept. 9 and 10 in Dallas ‘to celebrate the accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump, showcase the strength of the Republican Party and its slate of candidates, and unite Americans around a bold vision for the future.’ If that sounds disconnected from reality, then you are probably in close touch with reality. Trump is so deeply unpopular that the convention platform and attention that he clearly covets could backfire for his party. … This is the state of the Republican Party, distorted by Trump into his own MAGA image, always boasting with blustering bunk, always eager to deny the truth that everyone can see and hear.” (08/26/26)
“At the height of World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t want the military’s independent newspaper to become a propaganda tool. He expected his subordinates to keep their ‘hands off’ Stars and Stripes. More than 80 years later, the Pentagon has fired the newspaper’s leaders after they publicly defended that very principle. Last week, the Pentagon fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, for ‘insubordination.’ Slavin says he was fired for telling CBS in a recent interview that it would be a ‘red line’ if the government told him, ‘Don’t run a perfectly accurate story. Run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon.'” (08/26/26)
“Amidst the tragifarce of President Donald Trump’s apparently off-the-top-of-his-head war on Iran may lie a silver lining for the 2028 presidential election—a silver lining that comes with two big ifs. One, of course, is the if that goes with everything involved with the race: If there is a fair election. The if specific to the hoped-for silver lining is if there is a candidate willing and able to make use of it. Ever since Gallup started public opinion polls, when it has come to questions of war, they’ve shown the American public favoring every one at the start, until now, with Donald Trump launching the first war to encounter immediate objection from a majority of the American public.” (08/26/26)
“Henry Kissinger famously (if apocryphally) said, ‘It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.’ This may be the year the world finally got the message. President Donald Trump said he wanted his legacy to be ‘the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.’ It won’t be. Instead, he will be remembered by history as the president who squandered trust in and respect for Washington and brought the post–Cold War era of American hegemony to an end.” (08/26/26)
“David Hume thought philosophically about politics. If he had not, John Witherspoon, the Princeton educator who taught a future president, a future vice president, as well as future judges, senators, and representatives, would not have recommended his writings to his students. Thomas Reid, the Scottish philosopher, would not have developed an entire system of thought—taught in Scotland and the United States for the next century—as a direct response to Hume. Theologians, such as Jonathan Edwards, and college presidents, such as Timothy Dwight, Edwards’ grandson, would not have wrestled with and publicly commented on Hume’s philosophy. Had Hume not thought philosophically about politics, we would not be reading about him today.” (08/26/26)
“In 2014 the French bank BNP Paribas pleaded guilty to processing transactions for Iran, Cuba, and Sudan and paid an $8.9 billion settlement, its dollar-clearing business barred for a year. No French court convicted it. No French statute was broken. A European institution was fined nearly nine billion dollars by a foreign government for conduct that was legal where it occurred. Every treasurer in every bank outside the United States understood the message, and has behaved accordingly ever since. It was not meant to be this. When the dollar emerged from the last world war as the axis of global settlement, its dominance was a matter of commercial convenience—the currency everyone happened to hold because everyone else held it too. Convenience hardened into infrastructure, and infrastructure, in the hands of a state that noticed what it possessed, hardened into leverage.” (08/26/26)
“Strip away the diplomatic briefings, Congressional hearings and the endless cable news loops about centrifuges, regional proxies and cyber attacks, and you hit a raw unvarnished nerve. What truly disturbs the United States about the Islamic Republic is not its policies, its rhetoric or even its nuclear ambitions. It is Iran’s audacity to exist completely outside the American orbit; and make it work.” (08/26/26)
