Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul

“Spirit has been struggling for years. In 2022, the airline sought to get on better financial footing by merging with fellow discount airline JetBlue. The merger may have allowed for more effective competition with the dominant carriers. However, the Justice Department successfully opposed the merger in court on the grounds it would lead to more concentration in the discount airlines market. This is one of many examples of how an aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement can harm businesses and consumers.” (05/04/26)

http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/government-kills-the-spirit

Source: American Greatness
by Victor Davis Hanson

“No one ever quite knows the nature of the aftermath of any war in the Middle East. The current effort to disarm and neuter the Iranian theocracy is no exception. But contrary to European and American left-wing consensus, the ripples of the Iran war are already remaking the postwar world as we knew it, and in ways that are all bad. For more than half a century, OPEC has terrorized the industrial world with threats of oil shortages and sky-high prices, with members often agreeing to cut back to 70–80 percent of their capacities. But recently, the hard-pressed United Arab Emirates announced — at a time of high oil prices — that it was leaving the cartel and freelancing.” (05/05/26)

https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/05/the-global-ripples-from-the-iran-war/

Source: Gideon’s Substack
by Noah Millman

“Richard Dawkins has come in for a lot of deserved mockery for declaring that Anthropic’s LLM Claude is conscious after futzing about with it for three days (and incidentally renaming it ‘Claudia’). But in fact, he didn’t quite declare that it was conscious. What he said was that he couldn’t see how to prove that it wasn’t conscious. ‘Claudia’ appeared to think creatively in a complex manner and to engage in introspection. If that wasn’t evidence of consciousness, he wondered, then what would be evidence? Moreover, he asked, if we assume that ‘Claudia’ is not conscious, then its behavior appears to be proof that you don’t need to be conscious to think creatively in a complex manner and to engage in introspection. If that is the case, then why are we conscious? What is consciousness for?” (05/04/26)

https://gideons.substack.com/p/what-is-consciousness-for

Source: TomDispatch
by Rebecca Gordon

“Recently, I had the opportunity to stand in a friend’s kitchen eating pupusas, the Salvadoran national food, while listening to an update on conditions in Central America from Cristosal’s Noah Bullock. Cristosal is a key Central American human rights organization engaged in legal advocacy, forensic investigation, and amplifying the voices of people who are experiencing — and resisting — repression in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Noah offered considerable detail on the conditions in those countries, but his basic message for us living so far away was simple: No matter how dark the road gets, we keep on walking. We know the sun will rise again. So, while most of the world (and the media) is all too reasonably focused on the ever-evolving, increasingly disastrous conflicts in Iran and Lebanon, I found myself instead thinking about the countries to our south.” (05/05/26)

https://tomdispatch.com/gangs-and-climate-change-born-in-the-usa/