Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“Advocates of foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel are patting themselves on the back after the passage of a $95 billion bill that includes $61 billion to Ukraine and $26 billion to Israel. They’re saying that such aid demonstrates how good, caring, and compassionate America is. In the case of Israel, the aid supposedly demonstrates that America is not 100 percent antisemitic because the aid to Israel helps to cancel out the thousands of college protesters who are protesting the Israeli government’s military killing machine in Gaza, which, it is said, automatically means that the protestors are antisemitic. Is it possible for an American to oppose the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza without being considered antisemitic? Not according to proponents of foreign aid to Israel.” (04/25/24)

https://www.fff.org/2024/04/25/whats-good-about-aid-to-ukraine-and-israel/

Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson

“Most corporate profit consists of unearned economic rents of various kinds — returns on absentee-owned land and natural resources (the title to which, directly or indirectly, mostly derive from past expropriation), patents and copyrights, regulatory barriers to entry (mostly legislated at the behest of the regulated industries), etc. That is the very definition of a zero-sum relationship, in which one party’s profit comes at the expense of the others. By far the largest sufferer from such zero-sum exchange is the working class, whose bargaining power is gravely weakened by the concentration of property in the means of production in the hands of an absentee class of capitalist owners. The founding act of capitalism, in the late medieval and early modern periods, was the expropriation of commoning rights and other communal peasant claims to the land.” (04/25/24)

https://c4ss.org/content/59568

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Anatol Lieven

“President Emmanuel Macron is pursuing an old Gaullist dream: a militarily and geopolitically autonomous Europe under the leadership of France. The present strategy by which Macron is pursuing this goal is to present France as the military vanguard of Europe in the defense of Ukraine, through the suggestion that French and other NATO troops could be sent to that country …. When this idea was immediately rejected by other NATO governments, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, Macron doubled down rhetorically by accusing the Germans and others of cowardice. Some have dismissed this as mere cosplay, Macron dressing up as de Gaulle, just as British politicians are incapable of resisting the temptation to pretend to be Churchill. Others have suggested that it is chiefly motivated by domestic politics.” (04/25/24)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/emmanuel-macron-troops-ukraine/

Source: The Pamphleteer
by Tyler Hummel

“‘Your kids have been turned into mindless vassals who look up to some twit instead of looking up to Thomas Jefferson,’ screams Alex Jones into the camera. ‘Kids! Magellan is a lot cooler than Justin Bieber! He circumnavigated, with one ship, the entire planet! He was killed by wild natives before he got back to Portugal!’ His face reddens and his fists begin to pound the air. ‘That’s destiny! That’s will! That’s striving! That’s being a trailblazer! Going into space! Mathematics! Quantum mechanics! The secrets of the universe! Life is fiery with its beauty!’ He finally explodes, ‘And they want to shutter your mind talking about Justin Bieber!’ This might sound like the ramblings of a madman (and it is), but as presented in the decade old original viral video, it is one of the funniest clips on the internet …” (04/25/24)

https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/consider-alex-jones/

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“One of the most common arguments against AI safety is: ‘Here’s an example of a time someone was worried about something, but it didn’t happen. Therefore, AI, which you are worried about, also won’t happen.’ I always give the obvious answer: ‘Okay, but there are other examples of times someone was worried about something, and it did happen, right? How do we know AI isn’t more like those?’ The people I’m arguing with always seem so surprised by this response, as if I’m committing some sort of betrayal by destroying their beautiful argument. The first hundred times this happened, I thought I must be misunderstanding something. … But people keep bringing it up, again and again. Very smart people, people who I otherwise respect, make this argument and genuinely expect it to convince people!” (04/25/24)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/desperately-trying-to-fathom-the