Eight decades after the “Anglosphere” powers (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) codified their World War intelligence sharing protocols in the 1946 UKUSA Agreement, the “Five Eyes” alliance — named for a  “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US Eyes Only” classified information designation — may finally find itself retired.

In early March, the Trump administration “paused” sharing intelligence with Ukraine, also forbidding the four other partners from passing along US-gathered intel. Rumor has it that Trump may also want the Canadian “eye” plucked out as one of his trade war tantrums. That, along with Trump’s recent “pro-Russia” lean, has the other four “eyes” considering a separate intelligence-sharing apparatus minus the US.

As an American, I’ve got limited skin in the game on the matter of whether the “Four Eyes” should continue absent US involvement … but I do think that Americans would benefit from the US regime’s withdrawal or expulsion, for several reasons.

First, the US regime massively subsidizes the other four partners. The publicly disclosed US intelligence budget exceeds $80 billion per year and likely comes to far more than that. That’s at least ten times the publicly disclosed intelligence budgets of the other four regimes combined. Even assuming those other regimes operate far more effectively and efficiently, it’s just not a very good deal.

Second, access to intelligence from other “Anglosphere” regimes feeds Washington’s bad habit of, as John Quincy Adams put it, going “abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Those other four regimes are essentially crack dealers who service the US regime’s addiction to a globally ruinous imperial foreign policy.

Third, the arrangement has also been long-known to expose US regime secrets to foreign adversaries, going back at least as far as the 1950s, when British spy Kim Philby passed information to the Soviet Union on US plans and operations in the Korean War.

Finally, the Five Eyes arrangement empowers the domestic US surveillance state that Edward Snowden revealed to the public more than a decade ago. US intelligence operators are legally forbidden to cast their Sauron-like gaze on Americans. They ignore that prohibition themselves … likely with quite a bit of help from the signals intelligence the other four “eyes” provide.

US withdrawal from the Five Eyes, or better yet its complete dissolution, wouldn’t cure the above diseases, but it would reduce the inflammation and ease the symptoms, while leaving all four regimes free to share information at need rather than wholesale.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) 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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It happens twice a year, every year. I complain about it — often to you! — twice a year, every year. It’s the semi-annual switch between “Standard Time” and “Daylight Saving Time.”

Fall back! Spring forward! In most of the United States, we just did the latter. Again.

The clock on my desktop computer and the clock in my brain are announcing two different times, an hour apart, and my body just doesn’t want to accept the differential.

As usual, that makes me grumpy.  But I’m one of those lucky people for whom grumpiness is pretty much the maximum negative side effect.

I work from home, and  in theory I set my own schedule. In theory, I could just ignore the fake time change. The various things I do would look like they were an hour “off”  to the world, if the world watched me closely, but it doesn’t watch me closely and there aren’t any damsels in distress, tied to tracks and counting down to meetings with trains that I mustn’t be late to interrupt or anything like that.

In fact, ignoring the switches between “Standard Time” and “Daylight Saving Time” would impact even my boring, semi-house-bound, life.

I’m married. I’ve got kids. I’ve got friends and co-workers. I occasionally, grudgingly, shop offline at physical stores with set hours of business. I’ve even been known to visit a bar now and again. Ignoring the fake time changes would put me out of phase with all those people and things. It would disrupt morning coffee with my wife, screw up planned interactions with my kids, get me to stores, happy hours, and medical appointments early or late, etc. So I grimace and comply.

Others have it far worse. Every year, tens of commuters die in excess car accidents because the fake time changes throw people off their bodies’ preferred adherence to circadian rhythms. Others show up late or tired to work, reducing productivity to the tune of billions of dollars.

If a natural disaster or terror attack had that kind of impact, Congress would pass yet another disastrous and ineffectual version of the USA PATRIOT Act and social media would provide a whole new category of “never forget” memes.

The Daylight Saving Time scheme isn’t a natural disaster, but it is a century old semi-annual terror attack.  Congress and the president COULD address this particular attack effectually, by picking a single version of time (“Standard” or “Daylight Saving”) to stick to year-round.

A month before his second inauguration as president, Donald Trump promised his party would use its “best efforts” to eliminate the fake time changes:  “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

Now in office, he’s unwilling to address it after all, calling it a “fifty-fifty issue …. I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark.”

So much for strong-man “leadership,” I guess.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) 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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“Social Security is the biggest Ponzi Scheme of all time,” Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan on the latter’s podcast. “If you look at the future obligations of Social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue.”

Cue outrage.

“Billionaires like you to pay the same amount into Social Security as a truck driver,” US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) whined, failing to mention that billionaires like Elon Musk also receive the same maximum monthly Social Security check as that truck driver.

“He’s going after the elderly, the disabled, and orphaned children so he can pocket it in tax cuts for himself,” said US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s disgusting.” AOC apparently thinks people won’t notice that Congress has “borrowed” nearly $3 trillion from the Social Security Trust fund, and that she’s voted for much of that “borrowing.”

For the most part, Musk is correct to refer to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. It pays out benefits from newer revenues, not by investing Social Security taxes in profitable ventures.

There’s one respect in which it differs from the traditional Ponzi scheme, though.

In the “private sector,” Ponzi scammers try to hide what they’re up to. Investors are led to BELIEVE their money is being used profitably, when in reality their “dividends” come from luring in new investors until the con collapses and the perpetrator either flees with his ill-gotten gains or goes to prison.

Social Security, on the other hand, has transparently operated in a facially Ponzi-like manner for decades — and the US Supreme Court publicly declared, 65 years ago, in its ruling on Flemming v. Nestor, that no one is “entitled to” any payout at all: “The noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits are based on his contractual premium payments.”

Politicians still pretend that Social Security is retirement “insurance,” but it’s neither actuarially based nor guaranteed to provide any “return” at all.

Nor is it an “investment.” It’s just a tax you and your employer have to pay, loosely linked to the possibility of getting a check in the future … if Congress doesn’t change its mind.

Social Security was a Depression-era welfare program that its primary backer, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said in 1935 “ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.”

The distinguishing feature of a Ponzi scheme is that it defrauds presumably unsuspecting victims.

The sad truth that Musk didn’t bring up is that the victims have known — or at least should have known — they were being scammed since at least as early as 1960.

Apparently most Americans would rather remain scammed, and hope for the best, than admit the truth to themselves.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) 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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