Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“Nock was persuaded by Franz Oppenheimer’s theory that people acquire wealth in one of two ways: either through work and exchange or theft. The first, Oppenheimer called the economic means, the second, the political means. States are the manifestation of the political means, the embodiment of a predatory class that coercively feeds off and controls its productive captives. Within the American state the occupants change periodically, and many people believe the troubles we’re experiencing are due to voting the wrong people into office. Better people would produce better government. There are several shortcomings to this idea.” (03/30/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/once-again-crisis-raises-question-why-does-state-exist
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“There is nothing more infuriating to a frustrated air traveler delayed for hours by the Democrat shutdown than to see senators strolling smugly by with VIP escorts. The worst offender last week was Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who hightailed it out of DC on Friday morning, hours after stitching up a duplicitous 2 a.m. deal to end the shutdown by caving to Democrat demands to defund ICE and border enforcement, at least for the time being. Elements of the Department of Homeland Security were funded in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, but Thune’s deal freezes out immigration enforcement and border security functions that are all-important as we go to war against the world’s largest sponsor of Islamic terrorism.” (03/29/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/29/opinion/miranda-devine-cowardly-gop-senators-run-home/
Source: TechCrunch
“Bluesky has launched an AI assistant called Attie that allows users to design their own social media algorithms and create custom feeds within the company’s AT Protocol ecosystem. And let’s just say the response has been heated. Attie debuted this weekend at the ATmosphere conference, which Bluesky sponsors. But Bluesky’s userbase did not embrace the new product. Instead, about 125,000 users have already blocked Attie’s Bluesky account, making it the second most blocked account on the network, according to open source data. Attie only has 1,500 followers, meaning that about 83 times more users have blocked the account than followed it. The only account with more blocks than Bluesky’s AI agent is Vice President J.D. Vance, with about 180,000 blocks — Attie even surpassed the White House account (122,000 blocks) and the ICE account (112,460 blocks).” (03/30/26)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/30/blueskys-new-ai-tool-attie-is-already-the-most-blocked-account-other-than-j-d-vance/
Source: The Scott Horton Show
“Jason Jones on Helping the Innocent Victims of Israel’s Violence.” (03/29/26)
https://scotthorton.org/interviews/3-26-26-jason-jones-on-helping-the-innocent-victims-of-israels-violence/
Source: Foreign Policy
by Reza H Akbari
“For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, calls for an enemy’s total capitulation have carried enormous symbolic power in U.S. political culture. ‘Unconditional surrender’ seems to promise a total and morally unambiguous victory. Crucially, the power of the narrative does not end with surrender. In its most compelling form, it extends into a transformative vision of defeated societies not only accepting their losses but being liberated and remade in the American image, emerging as stable, prosperous democracies. In practice, however, even the most decisive military victories seldom translate into anything resembling the absolute defeat of a country’s body politic, its bureaucratic institutions, or its underlying ideological foundations, all of which tend instead to endure, adapt, and reconstitute themselves in ways that complicate the finality promised by the language of unconditional surrender.” (03/30/26)
https://archive.is/B1hZf
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo
“Dimona is not an ordinary town. It lies adjacent to the Negev Nuclear Research Center, widely understood to be central to Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Located deep in the Naqab desert, the facility has long been treated as one of Israel’s most sensitive strategic sites, associated with plutonium production and long-term weapons capability. That context gives the strike its meaning. The Iranian attack on Dimona came hours after a renewed US-Israeli strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility earlier the same day. … The sequence is not incidental. Natanz was struck in the morning; Dimona was hit later the same day. Even without an exact hour-by-hour timeline, the proximity establishes a clear operational logic: a nuclear facility in Iran is answered with a nuclear-adjacent site in Israel within hours.” (03/30/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2026/03/29/iran-gone-wild-in-dimona-is-tehran-using-israel-us-madman-doctrine/
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“The ties that bind Hungary, Russia, European neo-Nazis – and MAGA.” (03/30/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-america-and-the-axis-of-autocracy
Source: United Press International
“The U.S. Department of Labor proposed a new rule on Monday that would allow people to invest alternative assets like cryptocurrency into their 401(k) plans. The department seeks to open 401(k) retirement investment up to assets like cryptocurrency, real estate and private-market assets. … There are already no restrictions on including alternative assets like cryptocurrency, real estate or private-market assets, though fiduciaries have treaded lightly on them out of fear that those assets may be challenged legally. The Labor Department’s proposed rule would create a ‘set of process-based safe harbors’ for plan fiduciaries, legally shielding them when they implement alternative assets.” (03/30/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/03/30/labor-department-alternative-assets-401k-plans/4461774881909/
Source: Libertarian Institute
“The Cargo Cult of Martial Belief, Wishcasting and Bloodshed.” (03/30/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/cgpodcast/ep-080-the-cargo-cult-of-martial-belief-wishcasting-and-bloodshed
Source: Responsible Statecraft
bvy Annelle Sheline
“President Donald Trump’s war on Iran is almost a month old, and, as expected, the countries most affected are the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The question now is whether these six governments will see no other option but to risk all by entering the military fight alongside the U.S. and Israel.” (03/30/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/saudi-arabia-war-iran/
