“Under Milei, inflation has dropped massively. The poverty rate has gone down. Public spending has plummeted, and budget surpluses have appeared. Housing supply in Buenos Aires has totally turned around following the repeal of rent control laws.
…
But “the policy of managing the currency has become a trap,” adds The Economist. “Even after he partially floated the peso in April alongside an IMF [International Monetary Fund] bailout, he has sought to maintain its level artificially high. Defending the exchange rate has cost Argentina billions of dollars in scarce foreign-currency reserves and has pushed interest rates sky-high, creating a drag on growth. Jobs, rather than inflation, are what now worry voters the most.”
Milei had to get a credit swap from the U.S., to the tune of $20 billion (which he must pay back, though the terms of the deal have not been made clear to the public). He secured a similarly massive IMF bailout back in April. He keeps needing emergency credit lines to keep the peso strong, but it’s not clear that this policy is totally working. It makes sense why he would pursue it in the first place: Prices have historically spiraled out of control, and the central bank is not trusted by the people. In order for some of Milei’s less-popular social safety net cuts to be palatable, the people needed to feel like there was some legitimate stability and predictability in their monetary system, lest they revert to favoring Peronism.
…
“Under the exchange rate system that Milei implemented earlier this year, the peso floats freely within a band,” writes Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós for the Cato Institute. “When a government tries to maintain a fixed but adjustable exchange rate, it creates perverse incentives. If markets perceive that the currency is overvalued, expectations of devaluation are created, prompting speculators and citizens themselves to take their capital out of the country to avoid losses. To defend the exchange rate, the central bank must use its international reserves, but these are finite.” Reserves are limited; speculators can easily take advantage.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/mileis-moment-of-truth/
“A few scenarios are possible. One is that the U.S. really is striking narcotraffickers, and that either their families don’t know their dead relatives are narcotraffickers or are obfuscating. Another possibility is that the U.S. is striking innocent fisherman and calling them narcotraffickers. There could, of course, be a mix of smugglers and fishermen.
But the U.S. government is almost definitely acting illegally here. These people are not combatants. We don’t know if they’re affiliated with groups designated terrorist organizations. Congress has not approved these strikes, and Trump doesn’t even appear to be seeking retroactive approval. When some senators did try to check Trump via the War Powers Act, it didn’t go all that well. And rest assured that Petro, Maduro, and all other who stand to profit are going to keep milking this for all it’s worth, using Trump’s inevitable screw-ups as a means of distracting from their own misbehavior.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/20/did-the-u-s-just-kill-a-random-fisherman/
“Backed by funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has entered into contracts with companies to provide surveillance capabilities like facial recognition algorithms, an iris-scanning identification app, controversial spyware on smartphones, and a real-time smartphone location and social media tracking system. In September alone, ICE racked up $1.4 billion in new surveillance technology contracts, the highest in at least 18 years
…
These contracts are in addition to any privately owned surveillance networks to which ICE has access. Flock Safety, for example, has allowed ICE to access over 80,000 of its AI-powered license plate reader cameras installed nationwide, according to 404 Media. The expansive—and growing—mass surveillance camera network captures the license plate number, make, model, and any distinctive features of all passing vehicles, making it possible to track cars and, by extension, drivers, often without a warrant.
Although ICE has sold its surveillance campaign as necessary to locating and deporting undocumented immigrations, the Trump administration has signaled that the technologies will also be used on American citizens.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/ice-is-mounting-a-mass-surveillance-campaign-on-american-citizens/
“on one hand, the president believes he’s helping American cattle farmers by imposing tariffs on imported beef—particularly beef from Brazil, which is now subject to a 50 percent tariff. (Amusingly, that tariff is officially for “national emergency” reasons, but in reality, it exists simply because Trump got mad at the current government of Brazil for prosecuting his buddy, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.)
Leave aside the question of whether American cattle farmers are actually happy about this. Let’s just think about the mechanics of what Trump is describing. He says the cattle farmers are “doing so well” because of the tariffs. Presumably, that’s because they can now raise prices. That’s what tariffs do: by making foreign goods more expensive, they benefit domestic producers, largely by allowing them to raise prices in an environment with less competition.
Trump wants cattle farmers to be able to charge higher prices. Well, OK, what he really wants is the cattle farmers to appreciate him for creating the conditions in which they can charge higher prices—but same difference.
But, wait. Trump says he also wants those same cattle farmers to “get their prices down,” because consumers are unhappy about beef prices hitting record highs.
My dude. How is this supposed to work?
I understand that Trump sees tariffs as effectively a magic wand that he can wave around to accomplish literally any policy. But even by that standard, this is a wild set of claims to make in consecutive sentences. The cattle ranchers are supposed to applaud Trump for letting them charge higher prices, and then also save him from the direct consequences of his own policies, I guess?”
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/trump-says-he-wants-higher-prices-and-also-lower-prices/
“A Washington, D.C., resident who was handcuffed and detained in September for mocking National Guard soldiers by playing “The Imperial March” from Star Wars on his cellphone is suing the soldiers and police officers for their stormtrooper-like behavior.
…
Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote in 1987, in a ruling striking down a Houston ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer, that “the freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”
…
According to his lawsuit, O’Hara was released after 15 to 20 minutes without charges.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/a-d-c-man-was-arrested-for-mocking-national-guard-troops-with-star-wars-imperial-march-now-hes-suing/
International law shouldn’t be regarded as a Western construct. Its creation involved many non-Western countries and its maintenance benefits everyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSSD2d9005k
Russian – Still a world language?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qBdWPKy5Gg
China uses military forces to kill the Philippines and other neighbors by a thousand cuts, slowly encroaching on national waters. China is aggressively using military forces to take territory from its neighbors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TszXa5GsIw
Islamists are slaughtering Christians in Nigeria.
The persecution of Christians and other religious minorities is common in Muslim countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEE3VZqOv4s
“Colombian President Gustavo Petro says one of the “narcoterrorists” recently killed by U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean was a “fisherman” who had “no ties to the drug trade.” That man’s death, one of at least 32 ordered by President Donald Trump, therefore qualified as “murder,” Petro declared on Saturday.
That much would be true even if the dead man, whom Petro identified as a Colombian citizen named Alejandro Carranza, really was smuggling drugs. Trump’s new policy of summarily executing drug suspects simultaneously corrupts the mission of the armed forces, erasing the traditional distinction between civilians and combatants, and violates long-standing principles of criminal justice, imposing the death penalty without statutory authorization or any semblance of due process.
On September 15, U.S. forces blew up a boat that Trump said was “in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics,” killing three men he described as “confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela.” But according to Petro, the attack that killed Carranza happened in Colombian waters, and the target was a “Colombian boat” that “was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure.”
Trump reacted angrily to that charge on Sunday, calling Petro “an illegal drug leader” who is “strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs…all over Colombia.” He said the U.S. government would punish Petro by ending all “payments and subsidies” to his country.
Notably, Trump did not actually contradict Petro’s claim that Carranza had been erroneously identified as a Venezuelan “narcoterrorist.” And Trump has repeatedly acknowledged that his bloodthirsty anti-drug strategy could threaten innocent fishermen.
After the first strike on an alleged drug boat in early September, Trump joked about the potential for lethal mistakes: “I think anybody that saw that is going to say, ‘I’ll take a pass.’ I don’t even know about fishermen. They may say, ‘I’m not getting on the boat. I’m not going to take a chance.'”
…
Trump claims drug traffickers are “murdering” Americans because some of their customers—about 82,000 last year—die after consuming their products. By the same logic, alcohol producers and distributors, who supply a product implicated in an estimated 178,000 deaths a year in the United States, likewise are guilty of murder.
…
The Trump administration also argues that the U.S. government is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which makes the boat strikes consistent with the law of war. That claim, Cardozo Law School professor Gabor Rona says, is “utterly without precedent in international law.”
Geoffrey Corn, formerly the U.S. Army’s senior adviser on the law of war, agrees. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he told The New York Times. “This is shredding it.”
Trump, in short, is killing people without a legal justification. There is a word for that.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/22/trump-allegedly-misidentified-a-colombian-fisherman-as-a-venezuelan-narcoterrorist/