05/12 -- Report: UAE secretly launched strikes on Iran, attacked oil refinery; Are We all Libertarian-Adjacent Now?
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Thomas L. Knapp
May 12, 2026, 6:09:51 AM (13 days ago) May 12
to Freedom News Daily
Freedom News Daily, 05/12/26
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Report: UAE secretly launched strikes on Iran, attacked oil refinery
2) Trump says he aims to suspend gas tax “for a period of time”
3) Ukraine: Officials name Zelenskyy’s ex-chief of staff as suspect in money-laundering probe
4) SCOTUS temporarily maintains block on order banning mifepristone by mail
5) EU rejects Putin call for Gerhard Schröder role in Ukraine peace talks
6) ICC unseals arrest warrant for a prominent Philippine senator over drug war killings under Duterte
7) Shein accuses Temu of “industrial scale” copyright breaches in UK legal battle
8) UK: MP backs down from Starmer challenge but urges him to go by September
9) EU imposes sanctions over helping Russia abduct thousands of Ukrainian children
10) CA: GM agrees to pay $12.75 million in “consumer protection” extortion racket
11) Israel: Two soldiers sentenced to military prison for desecration of Christian statue in Lebanon
12) Nigeria: Military Denies Reports of Civilian Deaths After Airstrikes in Niger State
13) Portrait looted by Nazis found in home of Dutch SS leader’s descendants
14) White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect pleads not guilty in federal court
15) Norway: Court to deliver verdict in rape trial of crown princess’s son on June 15
16) Iran: Regime suspends sentence of hospitalized Nobel winner Narges Mohammadi
17) Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million over use of her image on TV boxes
18) Philippines: Presidential hopeful Sara Duterte impeached, awaits Senate trial
19) OK lawyer: Tulsa Race Massacre reparations is “soul-redeeming work for the US”
20) Former Polish Justice Minister Ziobro flees to US
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Are We all Libertarian-Adjacent Now?
22) An Ode to Low-Skilled Workers
23) Trump’s “Unacceptable” Answer
24) The Problem with Liberal Empire
25) Why Does America Keep Testing Failed “Decapitation” Strategies?
26) The Revolution in Direct Democracy in America
27) Europe Shrugs Off Trump’s Latest Threats
28) Quantum Vibe, 05/11/26
29) How Closing the Strait of Hormuz Has Sparked a Wider Energy Debate in Europe
30) Government backfires
31) Trumpland Is a Man’s World: Now You See Them… Now You Don’t
32) However you feel about their creator, TrumpIRAs are sorely needed
33) As Israel’s Hasbara Budget Soars, Netanyahu Stresses Need For More Propaganda
34) Iran Has Nuclear Energy, Not Nuclear Weapons
35) If Trump wants out of war he needs to stand up to Israel on Lebanon
36) The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater
37) Angry Left plots to purge Virginia’s high court
38) The Viciousness of the Twin Evils on Iran
39) Protectionism Won’t Feed North America: Don’t Scrap the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
40) Living Under the Weight of Keynes’s Shadow Wealth
41) Like Suez Canal for the Brits, Could Strait of Hormuz Spell Doom for US Empire?
42) Democracy, Democrats & the Constitution
43) Welcome to the New World Order?
44) What Makes a Man Shoot Serial Killers: On Refusing to be Shocked by Political Violence
45) Left weaponizing women’s misplaced empathy, and it threatens all of us
46) Comparative AI: Exploring the Nuanced Differences Between the Major AIs
47) Trump rejects traditional conservatism, embraces a Republican version of socialism
48) Seats of Power
49) Surveillance Reform Hinges on How Congress Defines “Query”
50) Ted Turner, Entrepreneur of His Age
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Roundtable, 05/11/26
52) Rising, 05/11/26
53) Free Speech Future, episode 3
54) Decoder with Nilay Patel
55) Fountainhead Forum, episode 447
56) EconTalk, 05/11/26
57) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 05/11/26
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/10/26
59) Pink Flame of Liberty, 05/10/26
60) Free Talk Live, 05/10/26
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Report: UAE secretly launched strikes on Iran, attacked oil refinery
Source: Times of Israel [Jerusalem]
“The United Arab Emirates carried out military strikes on Iran, making it the only other country to join the United States and Israel in their war against the Islamic Republic, according to a Monday report. The strikes, which the UAE has not publicly acknowledged, included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The attack took place in early April, according to the report, which said it was around the time US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, but did not specify if it was before or after the declaration. Iran acknowledged at the time that the site had been attacked by an unspecified enemy, then responded by firing missiles and drones at the UAE and Kuwait, the Journal noted.” (05/12/26)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uae-secretly-carried-out-strikes-on-iran-including-on-oil-refinery-report/
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2) Trump says he aims to suspend gas tax “for a period of time”
Source: CBS News
“President Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News Monday morning that he aims to suspend the federal gas tax ‘for a period of time.’ … Gas prices have soared over 50% since the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28, hitting a high of over $4.52 on Sunday, according to AAA. … suspending the excise taxes — 18.4 cents per gallon on gas and 24.4 cents a gallon on diesel — requires an act of Congress, and pausing it would cost [sic] the federal government about a half billion dollars a week. Following the president’s comments, Reublican Sen. Josh Hawley said Monday that he would introduce legislation to suspend the federal gas tax. And GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida also said she plans to introduce a bill in the House …” [editor’s note: Not stealing that money doesn’t “cost” the goverment anything, any more than not mugging someone “costs” the mugger the contents of the prospective victim’s wallet – TLK] (05/11/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-interview-suspending-gas-tax-iran-war/
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3) Ukraine: Officials name Zelenskyy’s ex-chief of staff as suspect in money-laundering probe
Source: The Hill
“Two national agencies fighting corruption in Ukraine have named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff as an official suspect in a major graft investigation. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office announced late Monday that Andriy Yermak is suspected in an alleged 460-million-hryvnia ($10.5 million) money-laundering scheme. Investigators said in an announcement on the Telegram messaging app that the investigation is ongoing. The move is a step short of formally charging Yermak, who resigned in November.” (05/12/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-international/ap-ukraine-officials-name-zelenskyys-ex-chief-of-staff-as-a-suspect-in-money-laundering-probe/
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4) SCOTUS temporarily maintains block on order banning mifepristone by mail
Source: NBC News
“The Supreme Court on Monday maintained full access to the abortion pill mifepristone while it continues to mull how to rule in a case that could limit availability of the drug. The court on May 4, via an order issued by Justice Samuel Alito, had provisionally blocked a lower court decision that would have prevented the pill from being administered by mail. Alito on Monday extended the pause until 5 p.m. on Thursday, giving the court another three days to consider its next steps.” (05/11/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/temporarily-extends-full-access-abortion-pill-mulls-legal-challenge-rcna344618
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5) EU rejects Putin call for Gerhard Schröder role in Ukraine peace talks
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The EU has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that the Kremlin-friendly former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder could serve as a European mediator in peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Russian leader put forward Schröder – a longtime ally – as a possible figure to help restart talks with Europe, saying he would ‘personally’ favour the former German leader for the role. Schröder, 82, previously held senior positions in Russian energy projects, including work on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and a seat on the board of Russian oil company Rosneft. … There is little prospect of Schröder emerging as Europe’s representative with the Kremlin. His record of defending Moscow has repeatedly put him at odds with mainstream European opinion.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/11/eu-rejects-putin-call-gerhard-schroder-role-ukraine-peace-talks
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6) ICC unseals arrest warrant for a prominent Philippine senator over drug war killings under Duterte
Source: Yahoo! News
“The International Criminal Court unsealed Monday an arrest warrant for a prominent Philippine senator linked to the deadly ‘war on drugs’ overseen by ex-President Rodrigo Duterte, which allegedly involved the extrajudicial killings of suspects. The warrant, originally issued confidentially in November, charges Ronald Marapon dela Rosa, a former Philippine national police chief and a Duterte ally, with the crime against humanity of murder of ‘no less than 32 persons’ allegedly committed between July 2016 and the end of April 2018. Duterte, dela Rosa and other police officials have denied authorizing the killings of drug suspects, who, they said, were shot dead after allegedly threatening law enforcers. Duterte openly and repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death while in office.” (05/11/26)
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/icc-unseals-arrest-warrant-former-150533606.html
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7) Shein accuses Temu of “industrial scale” copyright breaches in UK legal battle
Source: Yahoo! Finance
“Online fast-fashion platform Shein accused Temu of copyright infringement ‘on an industrial scale,’ while Temu countered that Shein is using litigation to stifle competition, as a trial opened at London’s High Court on Monday. The case is part of a global legal battle between the fast-growing rivals, with potential implications for platform practices, supplier relationships and the enforcement of intellectual property rights across global e-commerce. Shein alleges Temu used thousands of its photos to advertise copies of Shein’s own-brand clothing on its website, to ‘piggy-back’ on a more established competitor. … Temu – owned by PDD Holdings – has counter-claimed, seeking damages after it had to remove thousands of product listings when Shein obtained an injunction.” (05/11/26)
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/shein-accuses-temu-industrial-scale-121251120.html
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8) UK: MP backs down from Starmer challenge but urges him to go by September
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Catherine West, the Labour MP who announced a challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership, has changed course to say she instead wants the prime minister to set a timetable of September for his departure. West, the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet and a former Foreign Office minister, announced on Saturday that she would seek to gather the 81 Labour MPs’ names needed to formally challenge Starmer, saying this was just a device to tempt others to stand and that she did not wish to take over. In a statement released after Starmer’s speech on Monday morning in which he said he would fight on despite terrible results for Labour in elections last week, West called for an orderly process for Starmer to depart.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/11/labour-mp-keir-starmer-leadership-challenge-catherine-west
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9) EU imposes sanctions over helping Russia abduct thousands of Ukrainian children
Source: ABC News
“The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on 16 officials accused of helping Russia to abduct tens of thousands of children from Ukraine and force many to change their identities or be put up for adoption. Sanctions were also slapped on seven centers suspected of indoctrinating the children or training them to serve in the armed forces, either for Russia or pro-Russian militias inside Ukraine. Over 130 people and ‘entities’ are now under EU sanctions over the abductions.” (05/11/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/eu-imposes-sanctions-helping-russia-abduct-thousands-ukrainian-132843530
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10) CA: GM agrees to pay $12.75 million in “consumer protection” extortion racket
Source: Engadget
“Following its settlement with the FTC earlier this year over its sale of drivers’ data to brokers, General Motors has now also reached a settlement in California. The company agreed to pay $12.75 million in civil penalties to settle the lawsuit led by Attorney General Rob Bonta on behalf of the people of California, and is banned from selling driving data to consumer reporting agencies for five years. The lawsuits came after a 2024 New York Times report revealed that GM collected consumers’ driving data through its OnStar program and sold this information to data brokers Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which in turn could market the data to auto insurers.” [editor’s note: The article doesn’t mention any restitution to the drivers; it’s just a “nice store ya got here, be a shame if it burned down” payment – TLK] (05/11/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2169135/gm-agrees-to-pay-12-75-million-to-settle-california-lawsuit-over-misuse-of-customers-driving-data/
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11) Israel: Two soldiers sentenced to military prison for desecration of Christian statue in Lebanon
Source: Seattle Times
“Israel’s military said Monday that two soldiers will spend weeks in military prison for the desecration of a Christian statue in southern Lebanon. One soldier, who stuck a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary, was sentenced to 21 days and a soldier who filmed the incident was sentenced to 14 days, a military spokesperson said. … The incident came days after images of an Israeli soldier wielding an ax against a fallen statue of Jesus on the cross in the southern village of Debel sparked widespread condemnation. Soldiers who participated in hacking down the crucifix also received time in military prison.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/6DhYJ
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12) Nigeria: Military Denies Reports of Civilian Deaths After Airstrikes in Niger State
Source: US News & World Report
“Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters on Monday denied reports of civilian deaths from airstrikes on suspected bandits in the northern Niger state, saying the strikes were intelligence-led and hit only militant targets. Defence spokesperson Major-General Michael Onoja said drone strikes carried out overnight between May 9 and 10 targeted the villages of Katerma, Bokko, Kusasu and Kuduru in the Shiroro district after intelligence indicated that armed gangs — known locally as bandits — were gathering to plan attacks. The denial came in response to reports in Nigerian media alleging civilian casualties, underscoring longstanding concerns about the impact on local communities of airstrikes in Nigeria’s conflict zones.” (05/11/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-05-11/nigerian-military-denies-reports-of-civilian-deaths-after-airstrikes-in-niger-state
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13) Portrait looted by Nazis found in home of Dutch SS leader’s descendants
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A painting stolen from a Jewish art collector by the Nazis during World War Two has been found in the home of descendants of a notorious Dutch SS collaborator, an art detective has said. Portrait of a Young Girl, by Dutch artist Toon Kelder, is believed to have hung for decades in the home of Hendrik Seyffardt’s family, Arthur Brand said. It had belonged to Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who died while fleeing the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, leaving behind a collection of more than 1,000 paintings. The case was brought to Brand’s attention by a man who told him he was a descendant of Seyffardt and that he was ‘disgusted’ to learn his family had kept the artwork for years. Seyffardt was a Dutch general who commanded a Waffen-SS unit of volunteers on the eastern front before he was assassinated by resistance fighters in 1943.” (05/11/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgmpj0p9k08o
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14) White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect pleads not guilty in federal court
Source: NBC News
“The man charged with allegedly attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month pleaded not guilty at a Monday arraignment in federal court. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, wearing an orange shirt and trousers, was handcuffed and shackled as he was brought into the courtroom in D.C. federal court. His handcuffs were attached to a chain around his waist, which clanked as he was led to the defense table. Speaking on behalf of Allen, federal public defender Tezira Abe said her client ‘pleads not guilty to all four counts as charged,’ including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States, in connection with the April 25 incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel.” (05/11/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting-suspect-pleads-not-guilty-f-rcna344509
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15) Norway: Court to deliver verdict in rape trial of crown princess’s son on June 15
Source: SFGate
“A Norwegian court said Monday that it will announce its verdict next month in the trial of the eldest son of Norway’s crown princess on charges including rape, following proceedings that cast a shadow over the royal family. The Oslo District Court said that the verdict in the case of Marius Borg Høiby will be delivered on June 15. During six weeks of court proceedings that ended on March 19, prosecutors sought a prison sentence of seven years and seven months for Høiby, who denies the rape allegations. Høiby, 29, is the son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit by a previous relationship and the stepson of Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to Norway’s throne. He is charged with 40 offenses in total, including four counts of rape between 2018 and 2024.” (05/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/norwegian-court-to-deliver-verdict-in-rape-trial-22252606.php
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16) Iran: Regime suspends sentence of hospitalized Nobel winner Narges Mohammadi
Source: United Press International
“Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has had her long prison sentence suspended and is now in a Tehran hospital, her foundation announced Sunday. Narges, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison on charges of spreading ‘propaganda’ against Iran’s Islamic regime, was granted a suspension of her 18-year sentence and transferred by ambulance from a hospital in Zanjan to Tehran Pars Hospital where she will be treated by her own medical team, the foundation said.” (05/10/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/05/10/iran-Nobel-Prize-winner-Narges-Mohammadi-sent-jail-hospital/6211778462896/
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17) Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million over use of her image on TV boxes
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Pop star Dua Lipa has filed a $15m (£11m) lawsuit against Samsung, alleging it used her image on packaging for its televisions without permission. Lipa alleges that Samsung prominently used a photograph of her face without consent on various television models sold across the US, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Samsung’s packaging was ‘designed to improperly capitalize on Ms. Lipa’s hard-earned success to promote and sell Samsung’s products,’ the filing said. The BBC has contacted Samsung for comment. The lawsuit includes allegations of copyright infringement, trademark infringement and misappropriation of Lipa’s likeness and image. According to the lawsuit, the image was taken during the singer’s 2024 Austin City Limits Festival performance and Lipa owns the copyright to the photograph.” (05/11/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9pvp210zdo
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18) Philippines: Presidential hopeful Sara Duterte impeached, awaits Senate trial
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Philippine lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly backed the impeachment of Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio, setting the stage for a trial in the Senate that could end her hopes for a presidential run in 2028. The petition was backed by 255 of 318 lawmakers on Monday, surpassing the one-third threshold required. A House justice committee had last month found probable cause for her impeachment in a petition from activists accusing her of misusing public funds, accumulating unexplained wealth and threatening the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, his wife and the former House speaker.
With her ally-turned-enemy Marcos limited by the constitution to a single term in office, Duterte-Carpio is the clear favourite to succeed him in 2028, but the impeachment could derail her bid.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/DvE26
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19) OK lawyer: Tulsa Race Massacre reparations is “soul-redeeming work for the US”
Source: SFGate
“It wasn’t until his junior year of college that civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons learned about a devastating massacre that took place in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His African American studies professor lectured about what is known today as the Tulsa Race Massacre — the days in 1921 when white mobs carried out a scorched-earth campaign against an outnumbered Black militia protecting the fabled Black Wall Street, a prosperous all-Black community. ‘I actually told a teacher, ‘I’m from Tulsa. That’s not true,” Solomon-Simmons recalled. ‘And of course, I was wrong.’ That day planted a seed for the then-aspiring attorney, who went on to lead a reparations campaign for the living survivors of the massacre and their descendants. Nearly 105 years later, no one has been compensated for what they lost, and none of the culprits have been held accountable.” (05/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/tulsa-race-massacre-reparations-is-soul-redeeming-22252272.php
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20) Former Polish Justice Minister Ziobro flees to US
Source: Politico
“Fugitive former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro is now in the United States courtesy of a visa from President Donald Trump after fleeing Hungary. Ziobro had been in Hungary since 2025 after former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán granted the disgraced minister asylum. New Hungarian leader Péter Magyar, however, promised to launch extradition proceedings against Ziobro upon taking office. Ziobro is wanted in Poland over the alleged misuse of public funds and the deployment of Pegasus spyware against political opponents. He has consistently denied the charges, calling the investigation a political vendetta from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.” (05/10/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/ex-poland-justice-minister-ziobro-flees-us-hungary-orban-magyar-tusk-trump/
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Are We all Libertarian-Adjacent Now?
Source: Chris's Substack
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
"[O]ne implication of [Matt] Zwolinski’s work is that there is no single, coherent libertarian project to speak of, that libertarianism is a Big Tent, which includes many, sometimes conflicting projects offering substantially different interpretations of the world and starkly different proposals on how to identify and resolve the social problems they encounter. How adjacent these proposals are to libertarianism is a key issue here because when the definition or even description of a term becomes so fluid that it encompasses virtually <em>everything</em>, it ultimately signifies <em>nothing</em>. This isn’t about asking those in libertarian and adjacent spaces to hand in their club cards. It’s a question of how 'adjacency' can morph into ideological complicity and outright support for the very power structures that most libertarians have sought to dismantle." (05/11/26)
https://chrismatthewsciabarra.substack.com/p/are-we-all-libertarian-adjacent-now
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22) An Ode to Low-Skilled Workers
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Social Desirability Bias aside, ‘Low-skilled workers are terrible’ is absolute lunacy. Most obviously, we’d starve without low-skilled workers, because they grow almost all of our food. The vast majority of construction and infrastructure workers lack college degrees, and without them, we’d be living in tents. If we’re lucky, because tents are made by low-skilled workers, too. … if the economy had to lose either Jeff Bezos or his driver, we’d be better off with Bezos. But the economy is, fortunately, not a Trolley Problem. We almost never choose between Bezos and his driver, or between any high-skilled worker and any low-skilled worker.” (05/11/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/an-ode-to-low-skilled-workers-version
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23) Trump’s “Unacceptable” Answer
Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison
“The president curtly rejected another Iranian proposal yesterday: ‘President Trump on Sunday rejected the latest offer from Iran to end the war with the United States, declaring that it was ‘TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.” As many observers now acknowledge, the U.S. has lost the war. Trump cannot bring himself to accept that he is responsible for that defeat. He appears to have believed that he could win a great victory over Iran in a matter of days, and he can’t cope with the reality of his monumental failure. … the U.S. should jump at the chance to extricate itself from the mess it has created before the damage to the global economy gets far worse. It may not exactly be a return to the status quo ante, but that option isn’t available. This is probably as good of an offer as the U.S. is likely to get.” (05/11/26)
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/trumps-unacceptable-answer
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24) The Problem with Liberal Empire
Source: Law & Liberty
by Christopher Coyne
“If Enlightenment thinkers and Hayek are correct, then the government’s projection of power intended to achieve order will crowd out and potentially destroy emergent orders. In this case, what are presumed to be the means of bringing about order are actually a source of disorder. In addition, the association of order with top-down state control creates a false sense of overconfidence in technocratic solutions, encouraging more, rather than less, government intervention. Failures are not viewed as issues with the abuse of human reason, but rather as failures to plan well enough. … Liberal empires do not stay liberal.” (05/11/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-problem-with-liberal-empire/
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25) Why Does America Keep Testing Failed “Decapitation” Strategies?
Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño
“The United States has long operated under a seductive strategic fantasy. Remove the leader of an adversary organization, whether a drug cartel, a terrorist group, or a sovereign state, and that organization will collapse, enabling American interests to fill the resulting vacuum. However, decades of academic literature, hard empirical data from Mexico’s drug war, and the lived consequences of America’s post 9/11 targeted killing campaigns all tell a damning story many in the DC ruling class refuse to acknowledge. Decapitation strategies are, at best, tactically satisfying and strategically hollow. At worst, they escalate violence, radicalize successors, and produce precisely the instability they were designed to prevent. The ongoing U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran represents the most ambitious test of this doctrine in history. The results so far are deeply troubling.” (05/11/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/why-does-america-keep-testing-failed-decapitation-strategies
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26) The Revolution in Direct Democracy in America
Source: Town Hall
by Barry Poulson
“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to petition their government. Petitioning government is part of our DNA. We benefited from British institutions of direct democracy that can be traced back to the Magna Carta. In the New England colonies direct democracy was the foundation for government, citizens could petition their government in town meetings and annual election ballots. At the national level, petitioning Congress peaked in the 19th century but has declined since then. In the 19th century disenfranchised citizens, including women before suffrage, free blacks, and indigenous peoples were able to petition the federal government to address issues and enact reforms that Congress was unwilling to initiate. The decline in direct democracy over the past century is due to several factors.” (05/11/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/barry-poulson/2026/05/11/the-revolution-in-direct-democracy-in-america-n2675838
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27) Europe Shrugs Off Trump’s Latest Threats
Source: Foreign Policy
by Rachel Rizzo
“When U.S. President Donald Trump reentered office last year, European leaders felt that familiar sense of dread. And indeed, Trump launched back into his first-term habit of harping on Europe for everything from defense spending to trade imbalances. Vice President J.D. Vance turned the knife even deeper with a speech at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, blaming Europe for its own demise for things such as government impingement upon free speech and uncontrolled immigration. European leaders, for their part, initially responded to these provocations with a familiar mix of panic, unease, and warnings that the trans-Atlantic relationship was doomed. But Trump’s latest threats against European countries — in response to their refusal to go all in on Washington’s war with Iran — don’t seem to be eliciting the same response from the continent as before.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/PFoEw
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28) Quantum Vibe, 05/11/26
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser
Cartoon. (05/11/26)
https://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2588
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29) How Closing the Strait of Hormuz Has Sparked a Wider Energy Debate in Europe
Source: The Nation
by Stanley Reed
“For the second time in less than five years, a politically driven energy crunch is buffeting Europe, leading to soul-searching about how to avoid these damaging episodes in the future. In 2022, Russia, while invading Ukraine, slashed natural gas supplies to some European countries …. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key conduit for oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf region, means that Europeans face the threat of disruption of energy supplies, including aviation fuel, and a rise in prices that were already high. … For some European politicians and clean energy executives, the lessons from these shocks are clear. Europe, they say, must accelerate already robust efforts to shift to clean energy technologies like wind and solar power not only to mitigate climate change but, increasingly, to avoid blackmail and preserve independence.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/2eurm
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30) Government backfires
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie
“The UK government’s imposition of VAT on schools will raise less money than they calculated, and might well cost them money. Private schools now charge VAT at 20% on fees, and the government collects that revenue. On paper, this looks like a straightforward tax windfall. But several offsetting effects erode or potentially reverse the gain. Families who can no longer afford fees pushed up by 20% are withdrawing their children and placing them in state schools, which the government must fund. Estimates run as high as one in ten leaving private education. Each additional state school pupil costs roughly £7,000-£8,000 per year. If enough pupils switch, this spending can outweigh VAT receipts. Private schools, now VAT-registered, can reclaim VAT on their own purchases such as building work, supplies, etc., something they couldn’t do before. This reduces the net VAT take.” (05/11/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/government-backfires
-----
31) Trumpland Is a Man’s World: Now You See Them… Now You Don’t
Source: TomDispatch
by Karen Greenberg
“It’s been a tough couple of months for women officials in Washington — or, more accurately, in Trumpland. In early March (Women’s History Month, by the way), in a Truth Social post, the president fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the second woman ever to hold that title. Weeks later, also in a social media post, he fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, the third woman ever to serve as head of the Department of Justice. While in the first year of his first presidency, Trump 1.0 had fired numerous officials, this time around, Bondi and Noem, who ran the two largest law enforcement agencies in the country, were the first cabinet officials to be dismissed. Both — no surprise — were replaced by men. And just as I was writing this piece, Trump removed another female cabinet official, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer.” (05/10/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/now-you-see-them-now-you-dont/
-----
32) However you feel about their creator, TrumpIRAs are sorely needed
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Teresa Ghilarducci
“As a progressive economist, I wrote a paper in 2021 with a generally conservative colleague, Kevin Hassett, who now directs the National Economic Council in the Trump White House. We agreed then on the basic arithmetic of the American retirement crisis. We still do. That’s why people like him and people like me can all say: Trump’s executive order establishing TrumpIRAs, signed last month, is simply the right move for American workers.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/ZiPW8
-----
33) As Israel’s Hasbara Budget Soars, Netanyahu Stresses Need For More Propaganda
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“In a fawning softball 60 Minutes interview released Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the importance of winning ‘the propaganda war’ on social media. This comes as Israel moves to quadruple its propaganda budget to $730 million a year. Major Garrett (which apparently is a real name belonging to a real guy who works for 60 Minutes) told the CBS audience that ‘Netanyahu attributes the reputational harm to Israel almost entirely to social media, which he calls the eighth front of the war.’ ‘This is yours, right?’ asked Netanyahu, picking up Garrett’s phone. ‘You’re not immune either. Because you can penetrate this machine, you can penetrate this little instrument, and you can say about Major Garrett anything you want. And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.'” (05/11/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/05/11/netanyahu-stresses-the-need-for-more-propaganda-as-israels-hasbara-budget-soars/
-----
34) Iran Has Nuclear Energy, Not Nuclear Weapons
Source: Antiwar.com
by Chris Ernesto
“According to the White House website, Trump warned Iran against having nuclear weapons on 74 occasions prior to the war. Since the war began on February 28, 2026, Trump has discussed Iranian nuclear issues in at least 20 documented public appearances, based on the Senate Democrats’ Trump transcript archive and Roll Call’s Factbase transcript database. … But Trump’s claims are not supported by the record. In fact, official statements from U.S. intelligence, the State Department, the IAEA, and others state that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not currently building one, and does not seek to build one.” (05/11/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/chris_ernesto/2026/05/10/iran-has-nuclear-energy-not-nuclear-weapons/
-----
35) If Trump wants out of war he needs to stand up to Israel on Lebanon
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Paul R Pillar
“Tel Aviv has controlled the talks from the beginning and as a result Hezbollah is stronger. Time for Washington to learn from history and take the reins.” (05/11/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/lebanon-talks-trump-israel/
-----
36) The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joseph Varon
“A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis. … A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon. Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own.” (05/11/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-hantavirus-panic-machine-when-rare-diseases-become-media-theater/
-----
37) Angry Left plots to purge Virginia’s high court
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Turley
“After the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the results of the recent Democratic effort to effectively wipe out Republican representation in the state, Democratic pundits and activists have latched onto a proposal by Michigan State law professor Quinn Yeargain to gut the court by forcing the retirement of the current justices, appointing liberal activists, and then reversing the opinion. It is extremely telling that some are pushing the raw muscle play to retake power in Washington, particularly in light of the calls to pack the United States Supreme Court once the party is back in control. … Under this plan, Virginia Democrats would adopt an absurdly low age for retirement in a gut-and-pack scheme: Yeargain suggested that they could set ‘the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.'” (05/10/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-angry-left-plots-purge-virginias-
-----
38) The Viciousness of the Twin Evils on Iran
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The common assumption is because the Iranian regime is engaged in evil, that makes the U.S. government’s war on Iran something good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here we have a classic case of evil versus evil. That’s what all too many Americans still can’t come to grips with — that their very own government is engaged in evil while combatting the evil actions of the Iranian regime. Twin evils — that’s what we have here.” (05/11/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/05/11/the-viciousness-of-the-twin-evils-on-iran/
-----
39) Protectionism Won’t Feed North America: Don’t Scrap the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Source: The Daily Economy
by Larry Martin
“Calls to weaken or abandon USMCA overlook how interconnected US, Canadian, and Mexican agriculture has become. Trade barriers hurt farmers and families in all three nations.” (05/11/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/protectionism-wont-feed-north-america-dont-scrap-the-us-mexico-canada-agreement/
-----
40) Living Under the Weight of Keynes’s Shadow Wealth
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Matt Hisrich
“While reading The Wealth of Shadows — Graham Moore’s excellent historical novel about pre-World War II global finance — I couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of unease regarding the current state of international economics. Set just before the United States enters World War II, the book follows the adventures of a plucky group of Treasury Department employees unofficially working to undermine the German economy while officially maintaining the US position of neutrality. Two figures outside of the US loom large in the narrative — Hjalmar Schacht in Germany and John Maynard Keynes in England. … part of the mystery in Wealth of Shadows is how governments can circumvent the price inflation that comes from excess printing — to have their cake and eat it, too, so to speak.” (05/11/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/living-under-weight-keyness-shadow-wealth
-----
41) Like Suez Canal for the Brits, Could Strait of Hormuz Spell Doom for US Empire?
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“Empires rise and fall. They do not last forever. Imperial declines follow a gradual shifting of the economic tides, but are also punctuated and defined by critical tipping points. There are many differences between the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the US war on Iran today, but similarities in the larger context suggest that the United States is facing the same kind of ‘end of empire’ moment that the British Empire faced in that historic crisis. In 1956, the British Empire was still resisting independence movements in many of its colonies. The horrors of British Mau Mau concentration camps in Kenya and Britain’s brutal guerrilla war in Malaya continued throughout the 1950s, and, like the United States today, Britain still had military bases all over the world.” (05/11/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/suez-canal-strait-of-hormuz
-----
42) Democracy, Democrats & the Constitution
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Do senior Democrats not understand how our government is designed? … when something violates the constitution it matters not at all whether it passed with 99.9 percent support or the slightest majority.” (05/11/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/05/11/cracy-crats-the-const
-----
43) Welcome to the New World Order?
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“The Iran War may prove to be little more than a blip on the world’s radar. Or its real significance may lie less in who wins militarily than in whether it accelerates global recognition that the United States is no longer willing or able to enforce the international order it created after 1945. There is a strong argument that, even as the missiles continue to fly, the war is not that significant. It appears today the most likely outcome will be a return to something like the status quo in the Middle East. … The opposite argument requires focusing on a longer sweep of history, in which the Iran War may be a significant marker in the slow-motion end of the global system set in place by the United States after the Second World War.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/welcome-to-the-new-world-order/
-----
44) What Makes a Man Shoot Serial Killers: On Refusing to be Shocked by Political Violence
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“The general consensus among both Dempublicans and Republicrats alike is that everybody needs to tone down the dialogue. That, and ‘such acts of political violence have no place in civil society!’ I might be tempted to agree with them if we lived in something resembling a civil society and I’m not talking about the rhetoric. As bombastic as these gasbags in the political class have become in a desperate attempt to improve ratings on that failed reality show they call a government, young folks aren’t popping off politicos because of what other politicos said. … The reality is that we live in a violent country and we always have. For the political class to expect to be immune from this harsh reality is absurd, especially when you consider how goddamn violent they are.” (05/10/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/05/what-makes-man-shoot-serial-killers-on.html
-----
45) Left weaponizing women’s misplaced empathy, and it threatens all of us
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“A young liberal woman refused to cooperate with prosecutors after violent recidivist Rhamell Burke attacked her on the subway five weeks before he allegedly pushed a retired NYC teacher to his death on Thursday. Now the 23-year-old woman has regrets. ‘Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail,’ she told The Post. Maybe if she had indulged in less self-congratulatory empathy for the maniac who allegedly tried to kill her and felt more compassion for her fellow New Yorkers left to the mercy of an out-of-control predator roaming the streets, Ross Falzone would still be alive. But Falzone, 76, was unlucky enough to be entering the Chelsea subway station Thursday afternoon when Burke allegedly randomly shoved him down a flight of stairs, leaving the beloved ex-teacher to die hours later at Bellevue Hospital from a catastrophic brain injury.” (05/10/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/05/10/opinion/miranda-devine-the-left-is-weaponizing-womens-misplaced-empathy-and-it-threatens-all-of-us/
-----
46) Comparative AI: Exploring the Nuanced Differences Between the Major AIs
Source: The Jolly Libertarian
by Marco den Ouden
“In Walter Donway’s new book, A Serious Chat With Artificial Intelligence, the AI in question was Open AI’s ChatGPT. In one of his blog posts, Curtis Yarvin bragged about how he changed the mind of Anthropic’s AI Claude on his techno-authoritarian philosophy, turning it (Claude) into a believer. In my own dealings with AI I have been using Microsoft’s CoPilot. And another major player in the market is Google’s Gemini. What do all of these powerful artificial intelligences have in common and how do they differ?” (05/10/26)
https://jollylibertarian.blogspot.com/2026/05/comparative-ai-exploring-nuanced.html
-----
47) Trump rejects traditional conservatism, embraces a Republican version of socialism
Source: The Hill
by A Scott Bolden
“Republicans have denounced Democrats as socialists and communists since the 1930s. President Trump has frequently joined the chorus, such as when he said in 2019: ‘A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American Dream.’ Yet despite his hyperbolic rhetoric, Trump has abandoned key conservative principles that Republicans have long espoused and instead adopted some socialist positions.” (05/10/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/5870607-trump-republican-socialism-democrats/
-----
48) Seats of Power
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Luis de Guindos escaped Spanish politics just in time. In March 2018, he stepped down as Economy Minister, having served under prime minister Mariano Rajoy since 2011; three months later, Rajoy was ousted in a no-confidence vote, his Popular Party engulfed in a huge corruption scandal. De Guindos, now 66, has spent the last eight years as Vice President of the European Central Bank (ECB), the institution responsible for maintaining price stability throughout the bloc. He hands over to Croatia’s Boris Vujĉić at the end of this month, leaving Spain without representation on the ECB’s six-member board for the first time in several years, a situation that Madrid is determined to rectify. Under the Socialist leadership of Pedro Sánchez, Spain has emerged as one of the strongest voices in the EU.” (05/10/26)
https://fee.org/articles/seats-of-power/
-----
49) Surveillance Reform Hinges on How Congress Defines “Query”
Source: The American Prospect
by James Baratta
“The only reason we know that U.S. intelligence agencies will maintain their sweeping spying powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) through March 2027, irrespective of whether Congress extends the program ahead of its statutory deadline in mid-June, is because of the Fourth Estate. On April 9, The New York Times revealed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge who authorized the program’s annual recertification in a March 17 ruling ‘also objected to tools that agencies with access to the raw data … have created to allow analysts to process messages.’ In analyzing this data, the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) use filter tools to sift through queries for information on individuals who have communicated with foreign intelligence targets, thus making them legal targets for surveillance. Apparently, those tools are prone to misuse.” (05/11/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/05/11/government-surveillance-spying-fisa-nsa-fbi-republicans/
-----
50) Ted Turner, Entrepreneur of His Age
Source: Reason
by Thomas W Hazlett
“Turner held the lead spear when the Late 20th Century Barbarians stormed the gates of the Old Order in American media. Meeting the moment at the perfect instant — when a ‘deregulation wave’ was opening doors long shut — Turner flipped the script on ‘public interest’ regulation concocted during the Progressive Era. Intellectuals largely bemoaned the passing of the administrative state, and the Cronkite audience it favored, devoid of controversy and offered as the ‘news from nowhere’ (as a CBS executive bragged). But the closed-loop spoon feeding was inimical to freedom, open inquiry, and honest debate. Even before he was finished, the creative destruction triggered by Ted Turner’s wild gambits had left the tyranny of licensed, bureaucratic TV in rubble.” (05/10/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/10/ted-turner-entrepreneur-of-his-age/
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Roundtable, 05/11/26
Source: Reason
"Gavin Newsom's Free Diaper Disaster." (05/11/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/05/11/gavin-newsoms-free-diaper-disaster/
-----
52) Rising, 05/11/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on a lawsuit filed against The New York Times, accusing the paper of discriminating against a white male employee.” (05/11/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/5869846-rising-may-11-2026/
-----
53) Free Speech Future, episode 3
Source: Expression
“What the history of tech censorship — from video games to social media — can teach us about our current moment. What worked, what didn’t, and where we go from here.” (05/11/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/free-speech-future-episode-iii-cycles
-----
54) Decoder with Nilay Patel
Source: The Verge
“Joanna Stern is not a robot, but she lived with them.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theverge.com/podcast/926752/joanna-stern-i-am-not-a-robot-new-things-media-youtube-ai-automation
-----
55) Fountainhead Forum, episode 447
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Amanda Griffiths is a founder of LP Alliance. We discuss her time at a large libertarian think tank where some of the staff were totally okay with coronavirus nonsense. She is running for vice-chair of the Libertarian National Committee (USA).” (05/11/26)
https://rumble.com/v79p72q-ff-447-amanda-griffiths-on-those-who-didnt-fight-coronavirus-nonsense.html
-----
56) EconTalk, 05/11/26
Source: EconTalk
“Thinking Inside the Box (with David Epstein).” (05/11/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/thinking-inside-the-box-with-david-epstein/
-----
57) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 05/11/26
Source: The Dispatch
“Old and New Rights | Interview: George Hawley.” (05/11/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/old-and-new-rights-interview-george-hawley/
-----
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/10/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump Says Iran’s Response ‘Totally Unacceptable,’ Netanyahu Says Iran War Is ‘Not Over,’ and More.” (05/10/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_4hRMPS8N0
-----
59) Pink Flame of Liberty, 05/10/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Deprioritizing Business at 2026 Libertarian Party Convention PART TWO.” (05/10/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnynHRcFWck
-----
60) Free Talk Live, 05/10/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Gold statue of Trump consecrated by evangelical and Jewish clergy :: Marilyn Manson demonic? :: Woman giving birth was suddenly in Zoom court during labor for not agreeing to a C section :: Vaccines not tested against placebo :: Forkfest.wtf :: Forkfest will be great! :: Uber Jorge calls about a man (or zombie) absent mindedly walking into the road in front of him and not caring — video! :: Salt Lending :: Mark says God intended us to eat pigs :: Kai calls for official alien disclosure from her, personally :: Says good aliens are anarchists :: Says Jesus is a dragon which is the good version of the shape shifting lizards :: PrometheusLost.substack.com :: Mark, Lori and Bonnie share UFO and cryptid stories :: Underground tunnels on military bases :: Discussing the possibility of life on other planets, the number of observable stars :: 4th amendment is weak because there are so many exceptions like ‘welfare check’ :: 2026-05-10 :: Hosts: Bonnie, Mark Edge, Lori.” (05/10/26)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/ftl2026-05-10
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Report: UAE secretly launched strikes on Iran, attacked oil refinery
2) Trump says he aims to suspend gas tax “for a period of time”
3) Ukraine: Officials name Zelenskyy’s ex-chief of staff as suspect in money-laundering probe
4) SCOTUS temporarily maintains block on order banning mifepristone by mail
5) EU rejects Putin call for Gerhard Schröder role in Ukraine peace talks
6) ICC unseals arrest warrant for a prominent Philippine senator over drug war killings under Duterte
7) Shein accuses Temu of “industrial scale” copyright breaches in UK legal battle
8) UK: MP backs down from Starmer challenge but urges him to go by September
9) EU imposes sanctions over helping Russia abduct thousands of Ukrainian children
10) CA: GM agrees to pay $12.75 million in “consumer protection” extortion racket
11) Israel: Two soldiers sentenced to military prison for desecration of Christian statue in Lebanon
12) Nigeria: Military Denies Reports of Civilian Deaths After Airstrikes in Niger State
13) Portrait looted by Nazis found in home of Dutch SS leader’s descendants
14) White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect pleads not guilty in federal court
15) Norway: Court to deliver verdict in rape trial of crown princess’s son on June 15
16) Iran: Regime suspends sentence of hospitalized Nobel winner Narges Mohammadi
17) Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million over use of her image on TV boxes
18) Philippines: Presidential hopeful Sara Duterte impeached, awaits Senate trial
19) OK lawyer: Tulsa Race Massacre reparations is “soul-redeeming work for the US”
20) Former Polish Justice Minister Ziobro flees to US
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Are We all Libertarian-Adjacent Now?
22) An Ode to Low-Skilled Workers
23) Trump’s “Unacceptable” Answer
24) The Problem with Liberal Empire
25) Why Does America Keep Testing Failed “Decapitation” Strategies?
26) The Revolution in Direct Democracy in America
27) Europe Shrugs Off Trump’s Latest Threats
28) Quantum Vibe, 05/11/26
29) How Closing the Strait of Hormuz Has Sparked a Wider Energy Debate in Europe
30) Government backfires
31) Trumpland Is a Man’s World: Now You See Them… Now You Don’t
32) However you feel about their creator, TrumpIRAs are sorely needed
33) As Israel’s Hasbara Budget Soars, Netanyahu Stresses Need For More Propaganda
34) Iran Has Nuclear Energy, Not Nuclear Weapons
35) If Trump wants out of war he needs to stand up to Israel on Lebanon
36) The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater
37) Angry Left plots to purge Virginia’s high court
38) The Viciousness of the Twin Evils on Iran
39) Protectionism Won’t Feed North America: Don’t Scrap the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
40) Living Under the Weight of Keynes’s Shadow Wealth
41) Like Suez Canal for the Brits, Could Strait of Hormuz Spell Doom for US Empire?
42) Democracy, Democrats & the Constitution
43) Welcome to the New World Order?
44) What Makes a Man Shoot Serial Killers: On Refusing to be Shocked by Political Violence
45) Left weaponizing women’s misplaced empathy, and it threatens all of us
46) Comparative AI: Exploring the Nuanced Differences Between the Major AIs
47) Trump rejects traditional conservatism, embraces a Republican version of socialism
48) Seats of Power
49) Surveillance Reform Hinges on How Congress Defines “Query”
50) Ted Turner, Entrepreneur of His Age
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Roundtable, 05/11/26
52) Rising, 05/11/26
53) Free Speech Future, episode 3
54) Decoder with Nilay Patel
55) Fountainhead Forum, episode 447
56) EconTalk, 05/11/26
57) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 05/11/26
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/10/26
59) Pink Flame of Liberty, 05/10/26
60) Free Talk Live, 05/10/26
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Report: UAE secretly launched strikes on Iran, attacked oil refinery
Source: Times of Israel [Jerusalem]
“The United Arab Emirates carried out military strikes on Iran, making it the only other country to join the United States and Israel in their war against the Islamic Republic, according to a Monday report. The strikes, which the UAE has not publicly acknowledged, included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The attack took place in early April, according to the report, which said it was around the time US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, but did not specify if it was before or after the declaration. Iran acknowledged at the time that the site had been attacked by an unspecified enemy, then responded by firing missiles and drones at the UAE and Kuwait, the Journal noted.” (05/12/26)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uae-secretly-carried-out-strikes-on-iran-including-on-oil-refinery-report/
-----
2) Trump says he aims to suspend gas tax “for a period of time”
Source: CBS News
“President Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News Monday morning that he aims to suspend the federal gas tax ‘for a period of time.’ … Gas prices have soared over 50% since the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28, hitting a high of over $4.52 on Sunday, according to AAA. … suspending the excise taxes — 18.4 cents per gallon on gas and 24.4 cents a gallon on diesel — requires an act of Congress, and pausing it would cost [sic] the federal government about a half billion dollars a week. Following the president’s comments, Reublican Sen. Josh Hawley said Monday that he would introduce legislation to suspend the federal gas tax. And GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida also said she plans to introduce a bill in the House …” [editor’s note: Not stealing that money doesn’t “cost” the goverment anything, any more than not mugging someone “costs” the mugger the contents of the prospective victim’s wallet – TLK] (05/11/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-interview-suspending-gas-tax-iran-war/
-----
3) Ukraine: Officials name Zelenskyy’s ex-chief of staff as suspect in money-laundering probe
Source: The Hill
“Two national agencies fighting corruption in Ukraine have named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff as an official suspect in a major graft investigation. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office announced late Monday that Andriy Yermak is suspected in an alleged 460-million-hryvnia ($10.5 million) money-laundering scheme. Investigators said in an announcement on the Telegram messaging app that the investigation is ongoing. The move is a step short of formally charging Yermak, who resigned in November.” (05/12/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-international/ap-ukraine-officials-name-zelenskyys-ex-chief-of-staff-as-a-suspect-in-money-laundering-probe/
-----
4) SCOTUS temporarily maintains block on order banning mifepristone by mail
Source: NBC News
“The Supreme Court on Monday maintained full access to the abortion pill mifepristone while it continues to mull how to rule in a case that could limit availability of the drug. The court on May 4, via an order issued by Justice Samuel Alito, had provisionally blocked a lower court decision that would have prevented the pill from being administered by mail. Alito on Monday extended the pause until 5 p.m. on Thursday, giving the court another three days to consider its next steps.” (05/11/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/temporarily-extends-full-access-abortion-pill-mulls-legal-challenge-rcna344618
-----
5) EU rejects Putin call for Gerhard Schröder role in Ukraine peace talks
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The EU has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that the Kremlin-friendly former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder could serve as a European mediator in peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Russian leader put forward Schröder – a longtime ally – as a possible figure to help restart talks with Europe, saying he would ‘personally’ favour the former German leader for the role. Schröder, 82, previously held senior positions in Russian energy projects, including work on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and a seat on the board of Russian oil company Rosneft. … There is little prospect of Schröder emerging as Europe’s representative with the Kremlin. His record of defending Moscow has repeatedly put him at odds with mainstream European opinion.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/11/eu-rejects-putin-call-gerhard-schroder-role-ukraine-peace-talks
-----
6) ICC unseals arrest warrant for a prominent Philippine senator over drug war killings under Duterte
Source: Yahoo! News
“The International Criminal Court unsealed Monday an arrest warrant for a prominent Philippine senator linked to the deadly ‘war on drugs’ overseen by ex-President Rodrigo Duterte, which allegedly involved the extrajudicial killings of suspects. The warrant, originally issued confidentially in November, charges Ronald Marapon dela Rosa, a former Philippine national police chief and a Duterte ally, with the crime against humanity of murder of ‘no less than 32 persons’ allegedly committed between July 2016 and the end of April 2018. Duterte, dela Rosa and other police officials have denied authorizing the killings of drug suspects, who, they said, were shot dead after allegedly threatening law enforcers. Duterte openly and repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death while in office.” (05/11/26)
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/icc-unseals-arrest-warrant-former-150533606.html
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7) Shein accuses Temu of “industrial scale” copyright breaches in UK legal battle
Source: Yahoo! Finance
“Online fast-fashion platform Shein accused Temu of copyright infringement ‘on an industrial scale,’ while Temu countered that Shein is using litigation to stifle competition, as a trial opened at London’s High Court on Monday. The case is part of a global legal battle between the fast-growing rivals, with potential implications for platform practices, supplier relationships and the enforcement of intellectual property rights across global e-commerce. Shein alleges Temu used thousands of its photos to advertise copies of Shein’s own-brand clothing on its website, to ‘piggy-back’ on a more established competitor. … Temu – owned by PDD Holdings – has counter-claimed, seeking damages after it had to remove thousands of product listings when Shein obtained an injunction.” (05/11/26)
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/shein-accuses-temu-industrial-scale-121251120.html
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8) UK: MP backs down from Starmer challenge but urges him to go by September
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Catherine West, the Labour MP who announced a challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership, has changed course to say she instead wants the prime minister to set a timetable of September for his departure. West, the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet and a former Foreign Office minister, announced on Saturday that she would seek to gather the 81 Labour MPs’ names needed to formally challenge Starmer, saying this was just a device to tempt others to stand and that she did not wish to take over. In a statement released after Starmer’s speech on Monday morning in which he said he would fight on despite terrible results for Labour in elections last week, West called for an orderly process for Starmer to depart.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/11/labour-mp-keir-starmer-leadership-challenge-catherine-west
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9) EU imposes sanctions over helping Russia abduct thousands of Ukrainian children
Source: ABC News
“The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on 16 officials accused of helping Russia to abduct tens of thousands of children from Ukraine and force many to change their identities or be put up for adoption. Sanctions were also slapped on seven centers suspected of indoctrinating the children or training them to serve in the armed forces, either for Russia or pro-Russian militias inside Ukraine. Over 130 people and ‘entities’ are now under EU sanctions over the abductions.” (05/11/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/eu-imposes-sanctions-helping-russia-abduct-thousands-ukrainian-132843530
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10) CA: GM agrees to pay $12.75 million in “consumer protection” extortion racket
Source: Engadget
“Following its settlement with the FTC earlier this year over its sale of drivers’ data to brokers, General Motors has now also reached a settlement in California. The company agreed to pay $12.75 million in civil penalties to settle the lawsuit led by Attorney General Rob Bonta on behalf of the people of California, and is banned from selling driving data to consumer reporting agencies for five years. The lawsuits came after a 2024 New York Times report revealed that GM collected consumers’ driving data through its OnStar program and sold this information to data brokers Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which in turn could market the data to auto insurers.” [editor’s note: The article doesn’t mention any restitution to the drivers; it’s just a “nice store ya got here, be a shame if it burned down” payment – TLK] (05/11/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2169135/gm-agrees-to-pay-12-75-million-to-settle-california-lawsuit-over-misuse-of-customers-driving-data/
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11) Israel: Two soldiers sentenced to military prison for desecration of Christian statue in Lebanon
Source: Seattle Times
“Israel’s military said Monday that two soldiers will spend weeks in military prison for the desecration of a Christian statue in southern Lebanon. One soldier, who stuck a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary, was sentenced to 21 days and a soldier who filmed the incident was sentenced to 14 days, a military spokesperson said. … The incident came days after images of an Israeli soldier wielding an ax against a fallen statue of Jesus on the cross in the southern village of Debel sparked widespread condemnation. Soldiers who participated in hacking down the crucifix also received time in military prison.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/6DhYJ
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12) Nigeria: Military Denies Reports of Civilian Deaths After Airstrikes in Niger State
Source: US News & World Report
“Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters on Monday denied reports of civilian deaths from airstrikes on suspected bandits in the northern Niger state, saying the strikes were intelligence-led and hit only militant targets. Defence spokesperson Major-General Michael Onoja said drone strikes carried out overnight between May 9 and 10 targeted the villages of Katerma, Bokko, Kusasu and Kuduru in the Shiroro district after intelligence indicated that armed gangs — known locally as bandits — were gathering to plan attacks. The denial came in response to reports in Nigerian media alleging civilian casualties, underscoring longstanding concerns about the impact on local communities of airstrikes in Nigeria’s conflict zones.” (05/11/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-05-11/nigerian-military-denies-reports-of-civilian-deaths-after-airstrikes-in-niger-state
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13) Portrait looted by Nazis found in home of Dutch SS leader’s descendants
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A painting stolen from a Jewish art collector by the Nazis during World War Two has been found in the home of descendants of a notorious Dutch SS collaborator, an art detective has said. Portrait of a Young Girl, by Dutch artist Toon Kelder, is believed to have hung for decades in the home of Hendrik Seyffardt’s family, Arthur Brand said. It had belonged to Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who died while fleeing the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, leaving behind a collection of more than 1,000 paintings. The case was brought to Brand’s attention by a man who told him he was a descendant of Seyffardt and that he was ‘disgusted’ to learn his family had kept the artwork for years. Seyffardt was a Dutch general who commanded a Waffen-SS unit of volunteers on the eastern front before he was assassinated by resistance fighters in 1943.” (05/11/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgmpj0p9k08o
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14) White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect pleads not guilty in federal court
Source: NBC News
“The man charged with allegedly attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month pleaded not guilty at a Monday arraignment in federal court. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, wearing an orange shirt and trousers, was handcuffed and shackled as he was brought into the courtroom in D.C. federal court. His handcuffs were attached to a chain around his waist, which clanked as he was led to the defense table. Speaking on behalf of Allen, federal public defender Tezira Abe said her client ‘pleads not guilty to all four counts as charged,’ including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States, in connection with the April 25 incident at the Washington Hilton Hotel.” (05/11/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/white-house-correspondents-dinner-shooting-suspect-pleads-not-guilty-f-rcna344509
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15) Norway: Court to deliver verdict in rape trial of crown princess’s son on June 15
Source: SFGate
“A Norwegian court said Monday that it will announce its verdict next month in the trial of the eldest son of Norway’s crown princess on charges including rape, following proceedings that cast a shadow over the royal family. The Oslo District Court said that the verdict in the case of Marius Borg Høiby will be delivered on June 15. During six weeks of court proceedings that ended on March 19, prosecutors sought a prison sentence of seven years and seven months for Høiby, who denies the rape allegations. Høiby, 29, is the son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit by a previous relationship and the stepson of Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to Norway’s throne. He is charged with 40 offenses in total, including four counts of rape between 2018 and 2024.” (05/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/norwegian-court-to-deliver-verdict-in-rape-trial-22252606.php
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16) Iran: Regime suspends sentence of hospitalized Nobel winner Narges Mohammadi
Source: United Press International
“Imprisoned Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has had her long prison sentence suspended and is now in a Tehran hospital, her foundation announced Sunday. Narges, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison on charges of spreading ‘propaganda’ against Iran’s Islamic regime, was granted a suspension of her 18-year sentence and transferred by ambulance from a hospital in Zanjan to Tehran Pars Hospital where she will be treated by her own medical team, the foundation said.” (05/10/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/05/10/iran-Nobel-Prize-winner-Narges-Mohammadi-sent-jail-hospital/6211778462896/
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17) Dua Lipa sues Samsung for $15 million over use of her image on TV boxes
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Pop star Dua Lipa has filed a $15m (£11m) lawsuit against Samsung, alleging it used her image on packaging for its televisions without permission. Lipa alleges that Samsung prominently used a photograph of her face without consent on various television models sold across the US, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Samsung’s packaging was ‘designed to improperly capitalize on Ms. Lipa’s hard-earned success to promote and sell Samsung’s products,’ the filing said. The BBC has contacted Samsung for comment. The lawsuit includes allegations of copyright infringement, trademark infringement and misappropriation of Lipa’s likeness and image. According to the lawsuit, the image was taken during the singer’s 2024 Austin City Limits Festival performance and Lipa owns the copyright to the photograph.” (05/11/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9pvp210zdo
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18) Philippines: Presidential hopeful Sara Duterte impeached, awaits Senate trial
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Philippine lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly backed the impeachment of Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio, setting the stage for a trial in the Senate that could end her hopes for a presidential run in 2028. The petition was backed by 255 of 318 lawmakers on Monday, surpassing the one-third threshold required. A House justice committee had last month found probable cause for her impeachment in a petition from activists accusing her of misusing public funds, accumulating unexplained wealth and threatening the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, his wife and the former House speaker.
With her ally-turned-enemy Marcos limited by the constitution to a single term in office, Duterte-Carpio is the clear favourite to succeed him in 2028, but the impeachment could derail her bid.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/DvE26
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19) OK lawyer: Tulsa Race Massacre reparations is “soul-redeeming work for the US”
Source: SFGate
“It wasn’t until his junior year of college that civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons learned about a devastating massacre that took place in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His African American studies professor lectured about what is known today as the Tulsa Race Massacre — the days in 1921 when white mobs carried out a scorched-earth campaign against an outnumbered Black militia protecting the fabled Black Wall Street, a prosperous all-Black community. ‘I actually told a teacher, ‘I’m from Tulsa. That’s not true,” Solomon-Simmons recalled. ‘And of course, I was wrong.’ That day planted a seed for the then-aspiring attorney, who went on to lead a reparations campaign for the living survivors of the massacre and their descendants. Nearly 105 years later, no one has been compensated for what they lost, and none of the culprits have been held accountable.” (05/11/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/tulsa-race-massacre-reparations-is-soul-redeeming-22252272.php
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20) Former Polish Justice Minister Ziobro flees to US
Source: Politico
“Fugitive former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro is now in the United States courtesy of a visa from President Donald Trump after fleeing Hungary. Ziobro had been in Hungary since 2025 after former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán granted the disgraced minister asylum. New Hungarian leader Péter Magyar, however, promised to launch extradition proceedings against Ziobro upon taking office. Ziobro is wanted in Poland over the alleged misuse of public funds and the deployment of Pegasus spyware against political opponents. He has consistently denied the charges, calling the investigation a political vendetta from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.” (05/10/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/ex-poland-justice-minister-ziobro-flees-us-hungary-orban-magyar-tusk-trump/
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Are We all Libertarian-Adjacent Now?
Source: Chris's Substack
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
"[O]ne implication of [Matt] Zwolinski’s work is that there is no single, coherent libertarian project to speak of, that libertarianism is a Big Tent, which includes many, sometimes conflicting projects offering substantially different interpretations of the world and starkly different proposals on how to identify and resolve the social problems they encounter. How adjacent these proposals are to libertarianism is a key issue here because when the definition or even description of a term becomes so fluid that it encompasses virtually <em>everything</em>, it ultimately signifies <em>nothing</em>. This isn’t about asking those in libertarian and adjacent spaces to hand in their club cards. It’s a question of how 'adjacency' can morph into ideological complicity and outright support for the very power structures that most libertarians have sought to dismantle." (05/11/26)
https://chrismatthewsciabarra.substack.com/p/are-we-all-libertarian-adjacent-now
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22) An Ode to Low-Skilled Workers
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Social Desirability Bias aside, ‘Low-skilled workers are terrible’ is absolute lunacy. Most obviously, we’d starve without low-skilled workers, because they grow almost all of our food. The vast majority of construction and infrastructure workers lack college degrees, and without them, we’d be living in tents. If we’re lucky, because tents are made by low-skilled workers, too. … if the economy had to lose either Jeff Bezos or his driver, we’d be better off with Bezos. But the economy is, fortunately, not a Trolley Problem. We almost never choose between Bezos and his driver, or between any high-skilled worker and any low-skilled worker.” (05/11/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/an-ode-to-low-skilled-workers-version
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23) Trump’s “Unacceptable” Answer
Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison
“The president curtly rejected another Iranian proposal yesterday: ‘President Trump on Sunday rejected the latest offer from Iran to end the war with the United States, declaring that it was ‘TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.” As many observers now acknowledge, the U.S. has lost the war. Trump cannot bring himself to accept that he is responsible for that defeat. He appears to have believed that he could win a great victory over Iran in a matter of days, and he can’t cope with the reality of his monumental failure. … the U.S. should jump at the chance to extricate itself from the mess it has created before the damage to the global economy gets far worse. It may not exactly be a return to the status quo ante, but that option isn’t available. This is probably as good of an offer as the U.S. is likely to get.” (05/11/26)
https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/trumps-unacceptable-answer
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24) The Problem with Liberal Empire
Source: Law & Liberty
by Christopher Coyne
“If Enlightenment thinkers and Hayek are correct, then the government’s projection of power intended to achieve order will crowd out and potentially destroy emergent orders. In this case, what are presumed to be the means of bringing about order are actually a source of disorder. In addition, the association of order with top-down state control creates a false sense of overconfidence in technocratic solutions, encouraging more, rather than less, government intervention. Failures are not viewed as issues with the abuse of human reason, but rather as failures to plan well enough. … Liberal empires do not stay liberal.” (05/11/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-problem-with-liberal-empire/
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25) Why Does America Keep Testing Failed “Decapitation” Strategies?
Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño
“The United States has long operated under a seductive strategic fantasy. Remove the leader of an adversary organization, whether a drug cartel, a terrorist group, or a sovereign state, and that organization will collapse, enabling American interests to fill the resulting vacuum. However, decades of academic literature, hard empirical data from Mexico’s drug war, and the lived consequences of America’s post 9/11 targeted killing campaigns all tell a damning story many in the DC ruling class refuse to acknowledge. Decapitation strategies are, at best, tactically satisfying and strategically hollow. At worst, they escalate violence, radicalize successors, and produce precisely the instability they were designed to prevent. The ongoing U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran represents the most ambitious test of this doctrine in history. The results so far are deeply troubling.” (05/11/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/why-does-america-keep-testing-failed-decapitation-strategies
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26) The Revolution in Direct Democracy in America
Source: Town Hall
by Barry Poulson
“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens the right to petition their government. Petitioning government is part of our DNA. We benefited from British institutions of direct democracy that can be traced back to the Magna Carta. In the New England colonies direct democracy was the foundation for government, citizens could petition their government in town meetings and annual election ballots. At the national level, petitioning Congress peaked in the 19th century but has declined since then. In the 19th century disenfranchised citizens, including women before suffrage, free blacks, and indigenous peoples were able to petition the federal government to address issues and enact reforms that Congress was unwilling to initiate. The decline in direct democracy over the past century is due to several factors.” (05/11/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/barry-poulson/2026/05/11/the-revolution-in-direct-democracy-in-america-n2675838
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27) Europe Shrugs Off Trump’s Latest Threats
Source: Foreign Policy
by Rachel Rizzo
“When U.S. President Donald Trump reentered office last year, European leaders felt that familiar sense of dread. And indeed, Trump launched back into his first-term habit of harping on Europe for everything from defense spending to trade imbalances. Vice President J.D. Vance turned the knife even deeper with a speech at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, blaming Europe for its own demise for things such as government impingement upon free speech and uncontrolled immigration. European leaders, for their part, initially responded to these provocations with a familiar mix of panic, unease, and warnings that the trans-Atlantic relationship was doomed. But Trump’s latest threats against European countries — in response to their refusal to go all in on Washington’s war with Iran — don’t seem to be eliciting the same response from the continent as before.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/PFoEw
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28) Quantum Vibe, 05/11/26
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser
Cartoon. (05/11/26)
https://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2588
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29) How Closing the Strait of Hormuz Has Sparked a Wider Energy Debate in Europe
Source: The Nation
by Stanley Reed
“For the second time in less than five years, a politically driven energy crunch is buffeting Europe, leading to soul-searching about how to avoid these damaging episodes in the future. In 2022, Russia, while invading Ukraine, slashed natural gas supplies to some European countries …. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key conduit for oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf region, means that Europeans face the threat of disruption of energy supplies, including aviation fuel, and a rise in prices that were already high. … For some European politicians and clean energy executives, the lessons from these shocks are clear. Europe, they say, must accelerate already robust efforts to shift to clean energy technologies like wind and solar power not only to mitigate climate change but, increasingly, to avoid blackmail and preserve independence.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/2eurm
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30) Government backfires
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie
“The UK government’s imposition of VAT on schools will raise less money than they calculated, and might well cost them money. Private schools now charge VAT at 20% on fees, and the government collects that revenue. On paper, this looks like a straightforward tax windfall. But several offsetting effects erode or potentially reverse the gain. Families who can no longer afford fees pushed up by 20% are withdrawing their children and placing them in state schools, which the government must fund. Estimates run as high as one in ten leaving private education. Each additional state school pupil costs roughly £7,000-£8,000 per year. If enough pupils switch, this spending can outweigh VAT receipts. Private schools, now VAT-registered, can reclaim VAT on their own purchases such as building work, supplies, etc., something they couldn’t do before. This reduces the net VAT take.” (05/11/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/government-backfires
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31) Trumpland Is a Man’s World: Now You See Them… Now You Don’t
Source: TomDispatch
by Karen Greenberg
“It’s been a tough couple of months for women officials in Washington — or, more accurately, in Trumpland. In early March (Women’s History Month, by the way), in a Truth Social post, the president fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the second woman ever to hold that title. Weeks later, also in a social media post, he fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, the third woman ever to serve as head of the Department of Justice. While in the first year of his first presidency, Trump 1.0 had fired numerous officials, this time around, Bondi and Noem, who ran the two largest law enforcement agencies in the country, were the first cabinet officials to be dismissed. Both — no surprise — were replaced by men. And just as I was writing this piece, Trump removed another female cabinet official, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer.” (05/10/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/now-you-see-them-now-you-dont/
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32) However you feel about their creator, TrumpIRAs are sorely needed
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Teresa Ghilarducci
“As a progressive economist, I wrote a paper in 2021 with a generally conservative colleague, Kevin Hassett, who now directs the National Economic Council in the Trump White House. We agreed then on the basic arithmetic of the American retirement crisis. We still do. That’s why people like him and people like me can all say: Trump’s executive order establishing TrumpIRAs, signed last month, is simply the right move for American workers.” (05/11/26)
https://archive.is/ZiPW8
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33) As Israel’s Hasbara Budget Soars, Netanyahu Stresses Need For More Propaganda
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“In a fawning softball 60 Minutes interview released Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the importance of winning ‘the propaganda war’ on social media. This comes as Israel moves to quadruple its propaganda budget to $730 million a year. Major Garrett (which apparently is a real name belonging to a real guy who works for 60 Minutes) told the CBS audience that ‘Netanyahu attributes the reputational harm to Israel almost entirely to social media, which he calls the eighth front of the war.’ ‘This is yours, right?’ asked Netanyahu, picking up Garrett’s phone. ‘You’re not immune either. Because you can penetrate this machine, you can penetrate this little instrument, and you can say about Major Garrett anything you want. And I can paint you as a monster. And if I say it often enough, enough people will believe it.'” (05/11/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/05/11/netanyahu-stresses-the-need-for-more-propaganda-as-israels-hasbara-budget-soars/
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34) Iran Has Nuclear Energy, Not Nuclear Weapons
Source: Antiwar.com
by Chris Ernesto
“According to the White House website, Trump warned Iran against having nuclear weapons on 74 occasions prior to the war. Since the war began on February 28, 2026, Trump has discussed Iranian nuclear issues in at least 20 documented public appearances, based on the Senate Democrats’ Trump transcript archive and Roll Call’s Factbase transcript database. … But Trump’s claims are not supported by the record. In fact, official statements from U.S. intelligence, the State Department, the IAEA, and others state that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not currently building one, and does not seek to build one.” (05/11/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/chris_ernesto/2026/05/10/iran-has-nuclear-energy-not-nuclear-weapons/
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35) If Trump wants out of war he needs to stand up to Israel on Lebanon
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Paul R Pillar
“Tel Aviv has controlled the talks from the beginning and as a result Hezbollah is stronger. Time for Washington to learn from history and take the reins.” (05/11/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/lebanon-talks-trump-israel/
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36) The Hantavirus Panic Machine: When Rare Diseases Become Media Theater
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joseph Varon
“A disease responsible for approximately one thousand confirmed cases over three decades in a population exceeding 330 million does not constitute an existential societal threat. It is neither comparable to Covid-19 nor does it justify widespread public alarm. However, contemporary media systems are structurally ill-equipped to present rare infectious diseases in proportionate terms. Fear increases engagement, which in turn drives revenue, and dramatic narratives consistently overshadow measured epidemiological analysis. … A disease can be both dangerous and exceedingly uncommon. Contemporary public discourse frequently fails to differentiate between these two concepts. This distinction matters because exaggerated risk perception carries consequences of its own.” (05/11/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-hantavirus-panic-machine-when-rare-diseases-become-media-theater/
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37) Angry Left plots to purge Virginia’s high court
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Turley
“After the Virginia Supreme Court rejected the results of the recent Democratic effort to effectively wipe out Republican representation in the state, Democratic pundits and activists have latched onto a proposal by Michigan State law professor Quinn Yeargain to gut the court by forcing the retirement of the current justices, appointing liberal activists, and then reversing the opinion. It is extremely telling that some are pushing the raw muscle play to retake power in Washington, particularly in light of the calls to pack the United States Supreme Court once the party is back in control. … Under this plan, Virginia Democrats would adopt an absurdly low age for retirement in a gut-and-pack scheme: Yeargain suggested that they could set ‘the mandatory retirement of justices and judges after they reach a prescribed age, beyond which they shall not serve, regardless of the term to which elected or appointed.'” (05/10/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-angry-left-plots-purge-virginias-
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38) The Viciousness of the Twin Evils on Iran
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The common assumption is because the Iranian regime is engaged in evil, that makes the U.S. government’s war on Iran something good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here we have a classic case of evil versus evil. That’s what all too many Americans still can’t come to grips with — that their very own government is engaged in evil while combatting the evil actions of the Iranian regime. Twin evils — that’s what we have here.” (05/11/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/05/11/the-viciousness-of-the-twin-evils-on-iran/
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39) Protectionism Won’t Feed North America: Don’t Scrap the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
Source: The Daily Economy
by Larry Martin
“Calls to weaken or abandon USMCA overlook how interconnected US, Canadian, and Mexican agriculture has become. Trade barriers hurt farmers and families in all three nations.” (05/11/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/protectionism-wont-feed-north-america-dont-scrap-the-us-mexico-canada-agreement/
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40) Living Under the Weight of Keynes’s Shadow Wealth
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Matt Hisrich
“While reading The Wealth of Shadows — Graham Moore’s excellent historical novel about pre-World War II global finance — I couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of unease regarding the current state of international economics. Set just before the United States enters World War II, the book follows the adventures of a plucky group of Treasury Department employees unofficially working to undermine the German economy while officially maintaining the US position of neutrality. Two figures outside of the US loom large in the narrative — Hjalmar Schacht in Germany and John Maynard Keynes in England. … part of the mystery in Wealth of Shadows is how governments can circumvent the price inflation that comes from excess printing — to have their cake and eat it, too, so to speak.” (05/11/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/living-under-weight-keyness-shadow-wealth
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41) Like Suez Canal for the Brits, Could Strait of Hormuz Spell Doom for US Empire?
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“Empires rise and fall. They do not last forever. Imperial declines follow a gradual shifting of the economic tides, but are also punctuated and defined by critical tipping points. There are many differences between the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the US war on Iran today, but similarities in the larger context suggest that the United States is facing the same kind of ‘end of empire’ moment that the British Empire faced in that historic crisis. In 1956, the British Empire was still resisting independence movements in many of its colonies. The horrors of British Mau Mau concentration camps in Kenya and Britain’s brutal guerrilla war in Malaya continued throughout the 1950s, and, like the United States today, Britain still had military bases all over the world.” (05/11/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/suez-canal-strait-of-hormuz
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42) Democracy, Democrats & the Constitution
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Do senior Democrats not understand how our government is designed? … when something violates the constitution it matters not at all whether it passed with 99.9 percent support or the slightest majority.” (05/11/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/05/11/cracy-crats-the-const
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43) Welcome to the New World Order?
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“The Iran War may prove to be little more than a blip on the world’s radar. Or its real significance may lie less in who wins militarily than in whether it accelerates global recognition that the United States is no longer willing or able to enforce the international order it created after 1945. There is a strong argument that, even as the missiles continue to fly, the war is not that significant. It appears today the most likely outcome will be a return to something like the status quo in the Middle East. … The opposite argument requires focusing on a longer sweep of history, in which the Iran War may be a significant marker in the slow-motion end of the global system set in place by the United States after the Second World War.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/welcome-to-the-new-world-order/
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44) What Makes a Man Shoot Serial Killers: On Refusing to be Shocked by Political Violence
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“The general consensus among both Dempublicans and Republicrats alike is that everybody needs to tone down the dialogue. That, and ‘such acts of political violence have no place in civil society!’ I might be tempted to agree with them if we lived in something resembling a civil society and I’m not talking about the rhetoric. As bombastic as these gasbags in the political class have become in a desperate attempt to improve ratings on that failed reality show they call a government, young folks aren’t popping off politicos because of what other politicos said. … The reality is that we live in a violent country and we always have. For the political class to expect to be immune from this harsh reality is absurd, especially when you consider how goddamn violent they are.” (05/10/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/05/what-makes-man-shoot-serial-killers-on.html
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45) Left weaponizing women’s misplaced empathy, and it threatens all of us
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“A young liberal woman refused to cooperate with prosecutors after violent recidivist Rhamell Burke attacked her on the subway five weeks before he allegedly pushed a retired NYC teacher to his death on Thursday. Now the 23-year-old woman has regrets. ‘Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail,’ she told The Post. Maybe if she had indulged in less self-congratulatory empathy for the maniac who allegedly tried to kill her and felt more compassion for her fellow New Yorkers left to the mercy of an out-of-control predator roaming the streets, Ross Falzone would still be alive. But Falzone, 76, was unlucky enough to be entering the Chelsea subway station Thursday afternoon when Burke allegedly randomly shoved him down a flight of stairs, leaving the beloved ex-teacher to die hours later at Bellevue Hospital from a catastrophic brain injury.” (05/10/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/05/10/opinion/miranda-devine-the-left-is-weaponizing-womens-misplaced-empathy-and-it-threatens-all-of-us/
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46) Comparative AI: Exploring the Nuanced Differences Between the Major AIs
Source: The Jolly Libertarian
by Marco den Ouden
“In Walter Donway’s new book, A Serious Chat With Artificial Intelligence, the AI in question was Open AI’s ChatGPT. In one of his blog posts, Curtis Yarvin bragged about how he changed the mind of Anthropic’s AI Claude on his techno-authoritarian philosophy, turning it (Claude) into a believer. In my own dealings with AI I have been using Microsoft’s CoPilot. And another major player in the market is Google’s Gemini. What do all of these powerful artificial intelligences have in common and how do they differ?” (05/10/26)
https://jollylibertarian.blogspot.com/2026/05/comparative-ai-exploring-nuanced.html
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47) Trump rejects traditional conservatism, embraces a Republican version of socialism
Source: The Hill
by A Scott Bolden
“Republicans have denounced Democrats as socialists and communists since the 1930s. President Trump has frequently joined the chorus, such as when he said in 2019: ‘A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American Dream.’ Yet despite his hyperbolic rhetoric, Trump has abandoned key conservative principles that Republicans have long espoused and instead adopted some socialist positions.” (05/10/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/5870607-trump-republican-socialism-democrats/
-----
48) Seats of Power
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Luis de Guindos escaped Spanish politics just in time. In March 2018, he stepped down as Economy Minister, having served under prime minister Mariano Rajoy since 2011; three months later, Rajoy was ousted in a no-confidence vote, his Popular Party engulfed in a huge corruption scandal. De Guindos, now 66, has spent the last eight years as Vice President of the European Central Bank (ECB), the institution responsible for maintaining price stability throughout the bloc. He hands over to Croatia’s Boris Vujĉić at the end of this month, leaving Spain without representation on the ECB’s six-member board for the first time in several years, a situation that Madrid is determined to rectify. Under the Socialist leadership of Pedro Sánchez, Spain has emerged as one of the strongest voices in the EU.” (05/10/26)
https://fee.org/articles/seats-of-power/
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49) Surveillance Reform Hinges on How Congress Defines “Query”
Source: The American Prospect
by James Baratta
“The only reason we know that U.S. intelligence agencies will maintain their sweeping spying powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) through March 2027, irrespective of whether Congress extends the program ahead of its statutory deadline in mid-June, is because of the Fourth Estate. On April 9, The New York Times revealed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge who authorized the program’s annual recertification in a March 17 ruling ‘also objected to tools that agencies with access to the raw data … have created to allow analysts to process messages.’ In analyzing this data, the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) use filter tools to sift through queries for information on individuals who have communicated with foreign intelligence targets, thus making them legal targets for surveillance. Apparently, those tools are prone to misuse.” (05/11/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/05/11/government-surveillance-spying-fisa-nsa-fbi-republicans/
-----
50) Ted Turner, Entrepreneur of His Age
Source: Reason
by Thomas W Hazlett
“Turner held the lead spear when the Late 20th Century Barbarians stormed the gates of the Old Order in American media. Meeting the moment at the perfect instant — when a ‘deregulation wave’ was opening doors long shut — Turner flipped the script on ‘public interest’ regulation concocted during the Progressive Era. Intellectuals largely bemoaned the passing of the administrative state, and the Cronkite audience it favored, devoid of controversy and offered as the ‘news from nowhere’ (as a CBS executive bragged). But the closed-loop spoon feeding was inimical to freedom, open inquiry, and honest debate. Even before he was finished, the creative destruction triggered by Ted Turner’s wild gambits had left the tyranny of licensed, bureaucratic TV in rubble.” (05/10/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/10/ted-turner-entrepreneur-of-his-age/
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Roundtable, 05/11/26
Source: Reason
"Gavin Newsom's Free Diaper Disaster." (05/11/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/05/11/gavin-newsoms-free-diaper-disaster/
-----
52) Rising, 05/11/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on a lawsuit filed against The New York Times, accusing the paper of discriminating against a white male employee.” (05/11/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/5869846-rising-may-11-2026/
-----
53) Free Speech Future, episode 3
Source: Expression
“What the history of tech censorship — from video games to social media — can teach us about our current moment. What worked, what didn’t, and where we go from here.” (05/11/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/free-speech-future-episode-iii-cycles
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54) Decoder with Nilay Patel
Source: The Verge
“Joanna Stern is not a robot, but she lived with them.” (05/11/26)
https://www.theverge.com/podcast/926752/joanna-stern-i-am-not-a-robot-new-things-media-youtube-ai-automation
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55) Fountainhead Forum, episode 447
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Amanda Griffiths is a founder of LP Alliance. We discuss her time at a large libertarian think tank where some of the staff were totally okay with coronavirus nonsense. She is running for vice-chair of the Libertarian National Committee (USA).” (05/11/26)
https://rumble.com/v79p72q-ff-447-amanda-griffiths-on-those-who-didnt-fight-coronavirus-nonsense.html
-----
56) EconTalk, 05/11/26
Source: EconTalk
“Thinking Inside the Box (with David Epstein).” (05/11/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/thinking-inside-the-box-with-david-epstein/
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57) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 05/11/26
Source: The Dispatch
“Old and New Rights | Interview: George Hawley.” (05/11/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/old-and-new-rights-interview-george-hawley/
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58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 05/10/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Trump Says Iran’s Response ‘Totally Unacceptable,’ Netanyahu Says Iran War Is ‘Not Over,’ and More.” (05/10/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_4hRMPS8N0
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59) Pink Flame of Liberty, 05/10/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Deprioritizing Business at 2026 Libertarian Party Convention PART TWO.” (05/10/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnynHRcFWck
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60) Free Talk Live, 05/10/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Gold statue of Trump consecrated by evangelical and Jewish clergy :: Marilyn Manson demonic? :: Woman giving birth was suddenly in Zoom court during labor for not agreeing to a C section :: Vaccines not tested against placebo :: Forkfest.wtf :: Forkfest will be great! :: Uber Jorge calls about a man (or zombie) absent mindedly walking into the road in front of him and not caring — video! :: Salt Lending :: Mark says God intended us to eat pigs :: Kai calls for official alien disclosure from her, personally :: Says good aliens are anarchists :: Says Jesus is a dragon which is the good version of the shape shifting lizards :: PrometheusLost.substack.com :: Mark, Lori and Bonnie share UFO and cryptid stories :: Underground tunnels on military bases :: Discussing the possibility of life on other planets, the number of observable stars :: 4th amendment is weak because there are so many exceptions like ‘welfare check’ :: 2026-05-10 :: Hosts: Bonnie, Mark Edge, Lori.” (05/10/26)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/ftl2026-05-10
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