Author: nick
Introduction: The Fraying Fabric of an Empire I look at the world in 2026, and I no longer see a beacon of liberty, but a dying empire stumbling toward its own ruin. This is not a sentiment born of pessimism, but of cold observation. The American project, hijacked by a nexus of central banking, perpetual war, and crony capitalism, has embarked on a suicide mission. The endpoint, I am convinced, will not be a soft landing into mediocrity. It will be a violent descent into widespread poverty, social chaos, and despair. The evidence is no longer in the periphery; it…
Wind turbines near Goldendale, Washington. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. While we wait to see whether Trump will restart his war in Iran, we can take a moment to look at the positive side. Trump has done more with this half-baked war to spur the transition to a green economy than anything Kamala Harris could have realistically hoped to accomplish if she had been elected. Trump’s war has sent oil and gas prices soaring. Even if he gets an agreement soon, which will be difficult now, since he has shown he is not a trustworthy leader, and the Strait is reopened,…
Image by Duncan Kidd. America’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been receiving lots of scrutiny right now from journalists and ordinary citizens like me — and for good reason! Detaining people en route to their kids’ schools, in hospitals, or at work shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind these days when I think of “freedom,” “civil rights,” or “America.” Nor should spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild warehouses so that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, can hold people without charges in subhuman conditions. What do you think? In all of this mayhem, it’s easy to overlook new human rights…
In Texas, a judge sentenced former Dallas Police Sergeant Thomas Fry to 28 months in federal prison for possession and sale of a stolen firearm. As part of his guilty plea, Fry admitted he had stolen three department-owned service weapons in June and July 2022 and sold them to a pawn shop in Oklahoma. The post Brickbat: Don't Take Your Guns to Town appeared first on Reason.com. Source link
Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain For most of American history, ethics. morality and law have served as important guardrails in the exercise of foreign relations. In recent years, however, political morality (applying moral judgments to political actions) has bowed to presidential overreach and political power. We are witnessing the possible demise of political morality. The most egregious breach may be found in the IDF bombings of Palestinians in Gaza that have killed more than 70,000 people (mostly women and children). Since the so-called ceasefire of last October, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Gazans and have continued their…
The happenings of the political elite have an incredible habit of morphing into pieces of fiction. From the comedy of Yes Minister to the dark, sordid tales of one George R. R. Martin, this monstrous fiction morphs into one gargantuan sketch that repeatedly defies reality. How you believe a scenario should play out in a private setting is the opposite of how they play out within government institutions. The people are adjusted to a reality that is not real at all. Fakery is widespread, and applying the rules of reality to politics is simply unfeasible. This seems awfully coincidental. The…
Photo by Marija Zaric As World Press Freedom Day (May 3) nears, it’s a good time to step back and assess how journalists and news outlets are faring in our current media climate. President Donald Trump came back to the White House and picked up right where he left off, insulting and attacking the press on an almost daily basis, suing media outlets, and taking a number of concrete actions to restrict press freedom. Against this backdrop, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will release its 2026 World Press Freedom Index on April 30. Every year, RSF scores and ranks 180 countries and territories…
“Tell me how this ends,” a young General David Petraeus asked early in the Iraq War, after Saddam Hussein’s army had largely been defeated. The United States is extraordinarily good at the first half of wars and far less capable in the second. So how does this one with Iran end? The Gulf War was fought on mostly contrived grounds. Saddam thrived in power in Iraq in part due to U.S. support; he certainly survived the 1980s Iran–Iraq War due to behind-the-scenes U.S. involvement. But by 1990 Saddam had morphed into a bad guy invading Kuwait, and the U.S. went…
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Here are three separate instances of generative AI being used to promote propaganda for the U.S.-Israeli war agendas. Deep Fake. (ApolitikNow/Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) By Caitlin JohnstoneCaitlin’s NewsletterListen to Tim Foley reading this article In the last few days I’ve seen three separate instances of generative AI being used to promote propaganda for the U.S.-Israeli war agendas which are worth paying attention to. Firstly, an Israel-based company called Generative AI for Good has been creating deepfakes of supposedly real women who say they were sexually assaulted by government forces in Iran. The Canary reports: “An Israel-based AI firm, Generative AI for Good,…