Everybody's crying justice, just as long as it's business first
Here's a picture of my Second Life avatar in a sexy gown, just to spice things up.
I hope no one's forgotten that Common Dreams is about as close as you can get to reading something that feels like a sane newspaper. No deep dives or heavy think pieces, but just plain major news stories delivered as if human life and democracy might actually matter. The algorithms are back-paging them and they are treated as either wildly left-wing or else non-existent by most media mouthpieces, so they don't get the traffic they used to, but if you miss the days when you could pick up what you once believed was a reliable newspaper from your front step and have a handle on what's going on without having to get too deep into the weeds (and maybe see which issues you'd like to look up for more in-depth coverage), they're really a good, non-toxic source. And they could use your support, especially now. Here's a look at today's top headlines:
• "'Contrary to Law': Judge Orders Halt to Trump's DC Military Takeover: 'Normalizing the use of military troops for domestic law enforcement sets a dangerous precedent,' said DC's attorney general. 'This federal overreach is not normal or legal.'"
• "Trump Ripped Over 'Reckless' Plan to Drill for Oil Off California, Florida: 'Donald Trump and Doug Burgum are once again trying to sell out our coastal communities and our public waters in favor of corporate polluters' bottom line.'"
• "Sanders Denounces Trump-GOP Healthcare Proposal as 'Absurd'—and Deadly: 'Trump's approach would lead to more medical bankruptcies, more unaffordable care, and more Americans dying unnecessarily in the richest nation on Earth.'"
• "'Potent Metaphor': Fire Forces Evacuation of UN Climate Conference: 'Between the booths flooding and a fire breaking out in the Blue Zone, feels like maybe someone is trying to tell us something at COP30,' said one journalist."
• "Top Military Lawyer's Objection to Trump Boat Bombings Off Venezuela Were Sidelined: Report: 'There is no world where this is legal,' a current judge advocate general said."
• "'Maybe It's Time to Pick a Fucking Side,' Says Murphy After Trump Calls for Execution of Lawmakers: 'Clearly, Trump has learned something from his good friend MBS: If you don't like what your political opponents say, execute them,' said Sen. Bernie Sanders. 'Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, that's not what we do in America.'"
• "Executive Order Attacking State AI Laws 'Looks a Lot Like' Industry Dictating Trump's Policies: 'Big Tech companies have spent the past year cozying up to Trump,' said one critic, 'and this is their reward. It's a fabulous return on a very modest investment—at the expense of all Americans.'"
• "'Time for Them to Leave': Charlotte Communities Rise Up Against ICE Invasion: 'I want to keep my neighbors protected because they deserve protection and they deserve to live in a world where they're not scared,' said one woman patrolling the streets of Charlotte with a whistle."
Paul Krugman is Talking With Margaret Sullivan about the current state of the media. Things don't look good. Which is another reason to remember Common Dreams when you're in a gift-giving mood.
Also Krugman, "The Plutocrats Who Cried 'Commie' [...] Seriously, the reaction of plutocrats to the Mamdani campaign — histrionic freakout before the election, with promises to flee the city if he won, followed by a big 'never mind' when he did — can teach us a couple of things. First, ignore billionaires when they threaten to take their marbles and go home. The big money always responds to threats of tax hikes, or even mere verbal criticism, by threatening to go all Ayn Rand and move to Galt's Gulch. In reality, they won't even move to Florida."
"Feds Tell Faith Leaders 'No More Prayer' Outside Broadview Facility: In a possible violation of the First Amendment, federal officials instructed demonstrators to stop holding religious gatherings outside the immigration processing facility in suburban Broadview after faith leaders were denied entry to the building for the third time on Friday." This is either off-brand or on-brand, depending on what you think their brand is.
"How Many People Were Charged After DHS Claimed Chicago Building Was Filled With 'Terrorists'? Zero.: Late at night on September 30, over 300 federal agents stormed an apartment building in one of Chicago's lowest-income neighborhoods. After descending from Black Hawk helicopters, they broke down residents' doors, destroyed furniture and belongings, deployed flash-bang grenades, and dragged sleeping people—some naked—out into the cold evening. Dozens of people, including children and American citizens, were held in zip ties and detained for hours. As part of the highly publicized raid at the South Shore complex, which was filmed and edited into a miniature action film by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), at least 37 Venezuelan residents of the apartment complex were taken into custody. [...] The report found that contrary to the government's claims of their rampant criminality, federal prosecutors have not filed criminal charges against a single person who was arrested. They have also not provided any evidence that two of the men arrested were part of the Tren de Aragua gang."
Epstein had connections everywhere, even to Iran-Contra. Murtaza Hussain has been going through the evidence and has unearthed a number of interesting stories for Drop Site News:
• "Jeffrey Epstein Helped Israel Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d'Ivoire"
• "Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War"
• "Jeffrey Epstein Helped Broker Israeli Security Agreement With Mongolia"
• "Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan"
Weird story hour: "Starmer's backers never meant him to be prime minister – his leadership was doomed from the start: His alliance with the party's anti-Corbyn faction was a shotgun marriage that totally lacked vision. Now Labour is paying the price. Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of rightwing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grownups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured. But no one reckoned with Covid, Tory turmoil and the collapse of the SNP. Suddenly Keir Starmer wasn't going to just lead Labour to a better defeat and a springboard for victory next time. Against the odds, he was going to win. Just as Jeremy Corbyn was Labour's accidental leader in 2015, Starmer was the party's accidental prime minister in 2024. It was not a marriage made in heaven. Starmer and the Blairites made awkward bedfellows. Under their breath, the Blairites despised Starmer because he had aligned himself with the Corbyn project. While Streeting and Rachel Reeves stayed firmly on the outside, right up until the protracted Brexit negotiations that began in 2018, Starmer had remained loyal to the party leader, whom the Blairites loathed even more than him. But they needed Starmer as the only person who could break the grip of Corbynism precisely because he had promoted it. What the membership wanted was a professional version of Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer was the man. But it was only meant to be a temporary deal. [...] It was not a marriage made in heaven. Starmer and the Blairites made awkward bedfellows. Under their breath, the Blairites despised Starmer because he had aligned himself with the Corbyn project. While Streeting and Rachel Reeves stayed firmly on the outside, right up until the protracted Brexit negotiations that began in 2018, Starmer had remained loyal to the party leader, whom the Blairites loathed even more than him. But they needed Starmer as the only person who could break the grip of Corbynism precisely because he had promoted it. What the membership wanted was a professional version of Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer was the man. But it was only meant to be a temporary deal."
And speaking of Starmer, here's a book review of The Fraud: "How Keir Starmer conned the British electorate [...] As with 'Get In', the central focus is on Morgan McSweeney, protégé of the disgraced Peter Mandelson and now Starmer's chief of staff. Before 2020 McSweeney was head of Labour Together, a think tank which posed as an innocent forum for debate while working assiduously behind the scenes to undermine Corbyn and replace him as leader with Starmer. It did so using hundreds of thousands of pounds in undeclared donations from hedge fund managers and supporters of Israel. The Electoral Commission fined Labour Together just £14,250, apparently accepting the omission was accidental. Holden argues convincingly that this is unlikely. The failure to declare funding enabled Labour Together to fly beneath the radar as it conducted polling and established the astroturf organisations that were used to destroy Corbyn. The story of how Labour Together and others encouraged and covertly exploited what, for many, was genuine confusion between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is now painfully familiar to those who were victims of it. [...] What emerges as particularly distasteful is the frequency with which Jews were targets. The Labour Files exposed Euan Philipps, head of media at Labour Against Antisemitism, who adopted the Jewish sounding name David Gordstein to file antisemitism complaints to the Labour Party. The activities of this faux Jewish activist, revealed by Holden for the first time, encapsulate the surreal absurdity of the antisemitism hysteria. In 2019 the celebrated London School of Economics professor David Graeber wrote an article complaining non-Jews were spreading 'rancour, panic and resentment' in the Jewish community with unfounded allegations of antisemitism. The actor Miriam Margolyes shared this on her Facebook page. Unlike Philipps/Gordstein both Margolyes and Graeber are Jewish. Holden reveals that, with no apparent sense of irony, 'David Gordstein' immediately fired off a complaint to the Labour Party accusing Margolyes of antisemitism. On this occasion no action was taken. Other targets were not so fortunate."
Bonnie Raitt with Mose Allison's "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy"
02:17 GMT comment
I'm just a wandering on the face of this earth
Very seasonal photo of a tree near Glastonbury Tor by Mike Jeffries.
"Trump's Blueprint to Crush the Left Draws from Decades of Counterterrorism Policy: Trump's NSPM-7 is a pivotal policy endangering free expression in the United States. [...] It was in this atmosphere that the Trump White House issued two pivotal policies for the future of free expression in the United States. On the evening of September 22, Trump signed an executive order designating 'Antifa' as a 'domestic terrorist organization.' Antifa is short for 'anti-fascist.' It refers to an ideology. Although there may be groups that would classify their beliefs as 'anti-fascist,' there is no singular or central 'Antifa' organization. Nevertheless, on some parts of the right, the mythical Antifa has started to play the role of boogeyman formerly reserved for the Communist Party. Whereas Communists were argued to be the hidden driving force behind everything from Civil Rights to peace activism, the nonexistent Antifa is now fingered as the secret, sinister mover of domestic protest—and the legally dubious move of declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization has become a major rallying point on the right."
The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, and his restoration, was a great opportunity for Matt Stoller to talk about media monopolization and what to do about it, so he had a good natter with David Dayen on the Prospect Weekly Roundup, where they discussed his article at Big, "On Jimmy Kimmel: It's Time to Destroy the Censorship Machine and Repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996: In 1996, Bill Clinton set the stage for what Donald Trump is doing now by creating a censorship machine of consolidated media, broadband, and tech firms. It's time to break it apart. [...] The second problem is that the tools exist for Trump to engage in a coercive censorship regime because Bill Clinton and a Newt Gingrich-led Republican Congress helped consolidate the media with the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which supercharged a wave of media and telecom consolidation kicked off by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. As More Perfect Union noted, 'In 1983, 50 companies controlled 90% of the U.S. media market. That number is now down to 5.' If the ability to wield power over content exists, it will likely be purposed, and Trump isn't the first one to do it."
"Citizens Unlimited: The Inside Plan To Deliver Citizens United 2.0: The Trump Justice Department is reversing the federal government's Supreme Court defense of longstanding campaign finance laws and is now urging justices to strike down some of the last remaining limits on election spending."
Local Portland station KATU decided to illustrate how "war ravaged" Portland is to justify Trump's invasion, so they set up a 24-hour webcam outside ICE HQ.
"Recognition of Palestine is a repeat of the West's Oslo 'peace' fraud: Britain's Keir Starmer is already pulling the rug from under his own grudging declaration. The only hope of change is of the unintended consequences variety." The "state" Starmer is talking about is the same one Israel has "offered" and Palestinians have rejected for decades — one with no sovereignty, no right to self-defense, no contiguous lands, and no control of their air apace, borders, or water. Bantustans within Israel's control.
Hamas has a question: "Senior Hamas Leader Mousa Abu Marzouk on Trump's Gaza Plan and the Future of Hamas [...] 'President Trump said 25,000 members of Qassam were killed,' he said, adding that this number is equivalent to public estimates of the total size of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing. 'Israel also recently announced that most of Hamas's military capabilities were destroyed—they said 90% of Hamas's capabilities were wiped out. So if they destroyed 90% of Hamas's military capabilities and killed most of Qassam's fighters, as President Trump says, whose weapons are you going to disarm and where are the weapons you claim you'll remove when you already destroyed them?'"
Like Atrios says, "The idea that widespread voter fraud could exist, let alone does, understandably persists in the minds of people likely doing it." "MAGA's Top 'Voter Fraud' Watchdog Votes in a Swing State. He Doesn't Live There. A long paper trail shows that Jack Posobiec votes in one state and lives in another."
Drop Site News has a story on how the Mamdani campaign is handling media smears that try to paint him as some kind of anti-Jewish activist, "Inside Zohran Mamdani's Campaign [...] Andrew Epstein, Zohran's communications director during the primary, vividly recalls his reaction to Politico's Holocaust smear. 'I said, "Wtf?" and started firing off texts and emails,' explained Andrew, who is in his late thirties and lives near Zohran in Astoria. Along with Mamdani's then-political director Julian Gerson and the campaign's media strategist Morris Katz, Andrew is Jewish."
"What the general election campaigns against Larry Krasner and Zohran Mamdani say about the Democratic Party [...] 'The reason Larry Krasner won is because the people like his policies,' Gavio said, pointing to Krasner's embrace of criminal justice reform and his attacks on Trump. 'What moderates who are running in the general election are basically saying to the Democratic base is: We don't support these policies that you support.'"
"Elon Musk's SpaceX Took Money Directly From Chinese Investors, Company Insider Testifies: The newly unsealed testimony marks the first time direct Chinese investment in the company has been disclosed, raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of America's most important military contractors." The very idea that any part of your country's defense should be in the hands of an internationally-owned company is insane. (And that goes for your water supply, too, dammit.)
David Loftus has been back on his beat of trying to disabuse people of the myth that Portland was burned to the ground during the BLM police riots, and he thought the issue was improving in search results, but then he had a terrible realization. "The Age of AI = No Right Answer."
Imagine my surprise at seeing the very first sentence in an MSN article: "British historian explains why he was 'shaken every day' during US visit: Feminist Avedon Carol, a Maryland native who has lived in London for many years, once commented that the United States has an even closer relationship with the UK than it has with its neighbor to the north, Canada. UK media, from the BBC to the Times of London, typically cover U.S. politics extensively — and British historian Timothy Garton Ash explains why he is so worried about the U.S. in a Guardian column published on September 16." (Via Ansible.)
RIP: "Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, dies aged 91: [...] The Jane Goodall Institute announced that she had died of natural causes while in California as part of a US speaking tour. 'Dr Goodall's discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science,' the statement read. 'She was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world.' Born in London in 1934, Goodall began researching free-living chimpanzees in Tanzania in 1960. In 1977 she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which works to protect the species and supports youth projects aimed at benefiting animals and the environment."
RIP: "Moody Blues singer and bassist John Lodge dies aged 82 [...] Lodge, who was born in Birmingham, played on some of the group's best-known songs including 'Nights in White Satin', 'Question' and 'Isn't Life Strange'. [...] 'John peacefully slipped away surrounded by his loved ones and the sounds of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly. We will forever miss his love, smile, kindness and his absolute and never-ending support.'"
RIP: "Diane Keaton, Oscar-winning star of Annie Hall and The Godfather, dies aged 79." I remember when the whole gang went to see Annie Hall together and for months we were quoting it. And of course, that iconic Marshall McLuhan moment.
Radley Balko has started posting a series on how a brave informant exposed widespread police malfeasance in, "Collateral Damage: In 2006, a 92-year-old Atlanta woman was gunned down in her own home by police during a drug raid. The police initially claimed the woman was a marijuana dealer who fired a gun at them. The story might have ended there. But an informant bravely came forward to set the record straight. Subsequent investigations and reports revealed that the police had raided the wrong home, killed an innocent woman, then planted marijuana in her basement to cover up their mistake. In the ensuing months, we'd learn that the Atlanta Police Department's narcotics unit routinely conducted mistaken raids on terrified people. The problem was driven by perverse federal, state, and local financial incentives that pushed cops to take shortcuts in procuring warrants for drug raids in order to boost their arrest and seizure statistics. Most of those incentives are still in place today. The raids haven't stopped. And neither have the deaths."
"The Myth of the Campus Snowflake: The students I encounter as a university president aren't afraid of free speech—quite the contrary. [...] Critics of universities might counter that, even if true episodes of campus censorship are rare, what matters is that students are afraid to express themselves. In making that claim, however, they rely on poorly constructed polls, typically produced by advocacy groups, that paint a misleadingly dismal picture of student attitudes toward free speech. For example, a common question asks students whether they feel comfortable expressing their opinion about controversial topics. 'Comfort,' however, is the wrong metric for judging a free-speech climate. Speaking up is often hard, especially in a setting where professors and peers may challenge your viewpoint. Justice Louis Brandeis, one of the great figures in the history of American free speech, wrote in Whitney v. California that the Constitution's First Amendment presupposes a 'courageous, self-reliant' people. The point of college should be to build that courage, and to teach the skills that enable people to listen to and learn from one another. That should feel uncomfortable."
The right wing can build its own youth movement because they're more willing to pay their youths. It's a little different on the other side. "The Right-Wing Millennial Machine: Conservatives are building an army of fired-up young people. How? By offering them salaries. After he graduated from college, it took Nathan two years, three unpaid internships and six bartending and retail jobs before he got his first paid gig in progressive politics. His employer was a small, millennial-focused outreach nonprofit, and his job was to supervise four interns — young kids, fresh out of school, working the same day job/night job, 80-hour-a-week cycle he had just exited. Nathan, who wouldn't give his real name out of fear of retaliation, asked his boss if he could start paying the interns. 'I didn't think I was going to get them federal minimum wage — that's impossible in Washington,' he said. 'But at least they could get a stipend.' His boss refused, without offering much of a case for why they couldn't afford to pay them." If only George Soros was half of what they say he is.
The American Prospect doesn't usually do this kind of thing, but they have a piece up called "Why Winning Is Bad for Democrats" by Anonymous Democratic Consultant: "Oh, you want life to get better now, do you? Do you even understand politics?
The Moody Blues, "I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)"
06:23 GMT comment
