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"
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