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Journalists and activists are reporting alarming encounters with federal agents, suggesting a coordinated effort to silence American voices critical of Israeli policies.

The post Why Did the FBI Show Up at Alison Weir’s Door? Critics of Israel Say They Know the Answer appeared first on MintPress News.

Set for Christmas Day, the Doctor Who Christmas Special "Joy to the World" will drop on Disney+, BBC iPlayer & BBC One at the same time.

My inbox is full of lament (and encouragement). My Instagram feed is full of anger and “the arc of the moral universe bends slow but…” My Facebook brims with exhortations to focus on the positive, on what we can control, on the next fight. I live in a poor Democratic stronghold in southeastern Connecticut. Kamala Harris won our state by more than 200,000 votes. Our seven paltry electoral votes went blue. Here, Jill Stein got a lot more votes than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but nowhere near enough to swing the Nutmeg State red. I didn’t plant a Harris/Walz sign on my front walk. I didn’t knock on doors in Pennsylvania. I didn’t give any money in response to the... Read more

Source: A Final Speech from the Great Disrupter appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

It’s all part of the show Season 2 of “The Apprentice Goes To Washington” will be filled with characters whose major qualification is television experience. In Season 1, Donald Trump hired only “the best and most serious people” for his administration. And them he fired them one by one. See, it’s not good TV to fire them all at once. You have to build the suspense, keep the audience coming back week after week to see who goes next. That’s how you keep your ratings up. For Season 2: “Trump Unbound,” the aging actor elected to play a president on TV hopes to bring higher production values to the show by casting more television veterans (The New York Times): President-elect Donald J. Trump, whose rise was fueled by reality TV stardom, is once again turning to television to recruit the key cast members of his new administration. The latest was Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former syndicated TV host, who was picked by Mr. Trump on Tuesday to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. Dr.

“President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Linda McMahon, a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive who served in the first Trump administration, as his pick to lead the Education Department.” – NBC News

I am honored to accept President-elect Trump’s nomination as the next United States secretary of education. In a world ruined by “gentle parenting” and participation trophies, I am proud to know I have earned this nomination.

It makes total sense for this to be happening.

After all, while you may know me as the multi-billionaire co-founder of the WWE, there’s so much more to my background that makes me uniquely qualified to oversee a national public school system that serves forty-nine million children. For example, fifty years ago, I majored in French, and in the decades since then, I have been rich.

As I said, day one, Russia was going to win this war if it wanted it enough. Russia’s advance is slow, but it is certain and it is NOT going to be reversed unless the US declares war, which is NOT going to happen. The Ukrainian army is finally nearing collapse, which I’d expect some time next year. The war will last another two years at most, I’d guess.

Peace will be made under the terms Russia wants, or the war will continue. Ukraine is still fighting, but everyone with the least lick of sense knows it is going to lose. Ukraine will have to accept the terms imposed on it, because if it doesn’t Russia will just keep going.

The three generations of scientists dedicated to knowing a small sliver of Earth, one flower and one hummingbird at a time

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

There’s more talk of decolonisation than ever, while true independence for former colonies has faded from view. Why?

- by Lydia Walker

Read at Aeon

Discovering I have aphantasia helped me understand my response to being assaulted and why I wasn’t debilitated by PTSD

- by J B Smith

Read at Psyche

Hundreds of millions were wasted on contracts with zombie companies which vanished before any taxpayers' cash could be recovered

As I noted yesterday, last evening I accepted an invitation to speak on a panel at a – Rising Tide – event, which is part of the massive – People’s Blockade – of the port of Newcastle that is running from November 19-24, 2024. The Blockade is a threat to the mining corporations and the…

Sanders’s resolutions to block arms sales to Israel gained momentum, but ran headlong into White House opposition.

The post Bernie Sanders Lost Vote to Block Arms for Israel, Says U.S. Is “Funding the Starvation of Children in Gaza” appeared first on The Intercept.

This is what people are saying on Fox News in the wake of Mike Johnson passing a law that bans transgender Rep. Sarah McBride from using the women’s bathroom: I can’t properly convey how horrified I am by this grotesque bigotry. It is reminiscent of what I heard people say about Black people living in the south in the 1960s. And frankly, I don’t think anyone would have said this out loud on Fox News even a few months ago. Their evil is unleashed. I fear for the safety of Sarah McBride, right there in the US Capitol. They’ve lost all sense of humanity.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

The “right to choose” remains popular and abortion has been decriminalised in every jurisdiction across Australia.

The post Are we facing a new attack on abortion rights? first appeared on Solidarity Online.

JV Last at the Bulwark discusses the fact that lefty influencer/podcaster Cenk Uyger (with whom I once had a passing acquaintance back in the early blogger days) seems to be cozying up to right, specifically Elon Musk. I won’t attempt to question what his motives might be — it could be any number of things. But Last makes an observation with which I totally agree out of hard won experience: You know about horseshoe theory, right? It’s the idea that the political spectrum is not a straight line but a U-shape, where the far left and far right end up nearly touching. Usually when people talk about horseshoe theory, it’s in terms of policy preferences—how the policies of the far left and far right can start to overlap. But I think it’s driven much more by temperament. If you are the kind of person who tends toward conspiracy theories, you will gravitate toward the far end of the horseshoe. The same is true for people who are driven by grievance. And also for populists.

You know all those new regulations requiring that airlines pay you for cancellations and advertise the full price of fares upfront, including mandatory fees and taxes? They’re very popular and seem to have made the airlines more responsive. Well, the airlines are very happy that Trump is promising to roll all that back: The chief executive of Delta Air Lines says the incoming Trump administration will be a “breath of fresh air” for airlines after what he called government “overreach” under President Joe Biden. The airline industry has chafed under consumer-protection regulations imposed by the Biden administration. And Delta is facing a federal investigation into its slow recovery from a global technology outage this summer. […] On Monday, the airline industry trade group praised Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy. Duffy, a former reality TV star who is co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business, lobbied for U.S. airlines and their unions during a dispute with Persian Gulf carriers.