On May 23, a fighter jet intercepted Ryanair Flight 4978 as it was about to exit Belarus’s airspace en route from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania. Citing a supposed bomb threat (apparently contrived by regime agents on board the plane), Belarus air traffic control ordered the Boeing 737 to turn around and land in Minsk.

On the ground, regime police entered the plane and abducted opposition journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Belarus’s state media reports that the hijacking/abduction was carried out on the personal orders of President Alexander Lukashenko.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (rightly) called the operation a “shocking act.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, tweeted (correctly) that it was “outrageous and illegal” and that Protasevich “must be released immediately.” That’s hard to disagree with.

Unfortunately, neither the US, nor several EU regimes, have any business grandstanding on the matter. They’ve pulled the same kind of stunt before, at least as recently as eight years ago.

In July 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane left Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport en route back to La Paz.  The Dassault Falcon 900 FAB-001 was forced to land in Austria after being refused entry into French, Italian, Portuguese, and Italian airspace.

Why? Because while in Russia, Morales had indicated (in an interview with Russian state media) his willingness to offer asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The US government, in the words of Jen Psaki (currently White House Press Secretary, but back then a State Department spokesperson) had  “been in contact with a range of countries across the world who had any chance of having Mr. Snowden land or even transit through their countries.”

Austrian authorities claim they searched the plane for Snowden. Bolivian authorities say that Morales refused to allow a search. But either way there’s little doubt that several EU regimes, at the request (implicit or explicit) of the US regime, colluded to force a plane — and not just any old regular plane, but a diplomatically protected plane — to land in an effort to help abduct a political refugee.

No, I’m not defending Lukashenko. He’s not very defensible. I hope that he can be pressured into freeing Protasevich and Sapega alive and unharmed.

But if the “leaders of the free world” didn’t act exactly like Lukashenko whenever it suits them or serves their interests, they’d be in a much better position to mobilize global action to achieve that outcome.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On May 5, Hamas commander Mohammed Deif issued a warning to Israel’s government: Unless Israeli police and troops stopped attacking Palestinians in Jerusalem — including not just those protesting against the regime’s theft of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on behalf of Israeli “settlers,” but also worshipers at al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s most sacred sites — rockets would fly.

On the same day, the Biden administration notified Congress of its approval for Boeing’s sale of $735 worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions to the Israeli regime.

The Israelis ignored Deif’s warning and continued their abuses. The rockets flew. And, in the name “self-defense,” prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the war he badly needs to distract from his recent election defeat and his ongoing corruption trial.

As I write this, more than 200 Palestinian Arabs (including 59 children) lie dead in Gaza, as do ten Israelis (including two children).

President Biden says he supports a cease-fire, but his UN ambassador blocked a UN Security Council resolution calling for one.  And those Boeing munitions are presumably on their way to help keep up the carnage for as long as possible.

Let’s at least be honest about those weapons. The Israelis aren’t really  buying them. You are.

Each year, the US government dispenses $3.8 billion of your money in “military aid” to the Israeli government. The string attached to that aid is that the Israelis have to use it to buy American (rather than, say, Russian or Chinese) arms.

In fact, that’s one of the main arguments that supporters of the aid put up when people object to the US government handing out such big welfare checks: It’s not really aid to the Israelis, they say, it’s actually just corporate welfare for American “defense” contractors, creating jobs right here in the good ol’ US of A.

This is supposed to make you feel better about the whole thing, I guess. You shouldn’t , though. If you think about it, every dollar funneled into artificially “creating jobs” in the “defense” industry is a dollar that could have instead been used by you to buy the things you actually want and need, creating real jobs providing those goods and services in the process.

But even if the corporate welfare angle did make sense, it also reveals that you, the American taxpayer, are financing the half-filling of body bags with the the bodies of children.

Yep, that’s your tax dollars at work, saving the political neck of Israel’s answer to Saddam Hussein.

I suspect that may not be what Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he told us that “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” If you share my suspicion,  let “your representatives” in Washington know.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Elon Musk is a man of many skills. He didn’t just make electric cars sexy, he sent one to space. Perhaps chief among his talents is the ability to roil markets by running his mouth. Lately, he’s aimed that talent at cryptocurrency.

In February, one of Musk’s companies, Tesla, announced that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin; in March, that it would  accept Bitcoin for purchases of its cars.

Then, in Mid-May, Musk announced that Tesla was suspending vehicle purchases in Bitcoin over “increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions” (while mentioning that “we are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction”).

Naturally, the price of Bitcoin in dollars crashed — back to the terrible old level of February, only twice what it was worth in December.

And, naturally, the cryptocurrency naysayer chorus emerged from its groundhog hole to yell “told ya so.” Just like they’ve been doing every other week since May 22, 2010, when Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoins (current value, nearly half a billion dollars) for two pizzas.

Sorry, guys. Bitcoin’s probably not going away, and cryptocurrency in general certainly isn’t.

Yes, Bitcoin mining (the computer activity involved in processing transactions) is energy-intensive.

No, not all Bitcoin is mined using fossil fuels. In fact, many serious mining outfits specifically look for locations with cheap, plentiful hydroelectric power.

And no, not all cryptocurrency mining is nearly as energy-intensive as Bitcoin mining.

So, what’s Musk up to? Is he just having fun upsetting apple carts? Or is there business method behind his madness?

Financier (and former Trump White House Communications Director) Anthony Scaramucci thinks he knows. Scaramucci suggests (with a small hypothetical wager of  1/200th of a Bitcoin) that Musk’s next big cryptocurrency play will be to send Tesla’s energy subsidiary into “super clean” Bitcoin mining.

That would be a smart move from both directions. It would reduce the financial and environmental costs of mining, while giving solar and wind power a boost in their fight to displace fossil fuels generally.

The technology underlying cryptocurrency is sound. It will survive, and it will become dominant. The only question is whether it will completely displace, or be at least partially co-opted by, government monetary schemes. Hopefully the former. Getting government out of the money business would be a gigantic leap for human freedom and prosperity (and, maybe even a step toward getting government out of business entirely).

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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