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Wow:  Authorities were investigating Monday after early morning fires were set in ballot drop boxes in Portland, Oregon, and in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where hundreds of ballots were destroyed. The Portland Police Bureau reported that officers and firefighters responded to a fire in one ballot drop box at about 3:30 a.m. and determined an incendiary device had been placed inside. Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott said a fire suppressant inside the drop box protected nearly all the ballots; only three were damaged, and his office planned to contact those voters to help them obtain replacement ballots. A few hours later, across the Columbia River in Vancouver, television crews captured footage of smoke pouring out of a ballot box at a transit center. Vancouver is the biggest city in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, the site of what is expected to be one of the closest U.S. House races in the country, between first-term Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican challenger Joe Kent.

In a new MintCast interview, Lowkey discusses the Israel lobby’s campaign to shut him down and why his latest album tackles Gaza, Assange, and mass surveillance.

The post “Soundtrack to the Struggle 3” Drops Amid Censorship Attempts: Lowkey Talks to MintCast appeared first on MintPress News.

An assessment of how anarchist movements are grounded in the principles of non-capitalist structures, decentralisation, anti-patriarchy, and non-hierarchical organisation that offers a lens through which to evaluate the effectiveness and sustainability of anarchist practices.

The post How to Assess Anarchist Movements? Five Key Socio-economic Dimensions appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Regulatory holes and lobbying pressure are obscuring the industrial toxins left behind by disasters like Hurricane Helene — and a Trump victory could make matters worse.

Israel has three great assets:

• Its air force;
• Its spies;
• America.

What it doesn’t have is a good army:

After nearly five weeks of intense fighting, Israeli soldiers have managed to enter several border villages, advancing a maximum of just under two kilometres in some areas. However, they have been unable to establish overnight positions. These forces have resorted to widespread destruction, levelling homes and mosques along the border to create “scorched earth” zones. This tactic, however, exposes Israeli tanks, making them vulnerable and preventing adequate concealment as they cautiously advance through Lebanese villages. Consequently, Israeli casualties have surged

He’s a real pip. And Trump loves him: He’s also a grifter, profiting from his reputation as a rank xenophobe. In a piece from the Texas Observer called, “Border 911: The Misinformation Network Profiting Off the ‘Invasion’ Narrative: Dark money and charity organizations led by former intelligence officers and ex-feds have been spreading propaganda and laying the groundwork for presidential election challenges” you can see that Homan has been in on the planning for a Trump restoration, win or lose on November 5th: For a retired federal employee, Tom Homan, an acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration, is a very busy man.

Excerpts from Side A of this year’s worst-selling Halloween cassette tape. To listen to the audio versions of these sketches and others, click here.

1. Running into an Ex You’re Still in Love with at the Grocery Store

LAURA: Dave, is that you?

YOU: Babe! I mean, Laura. How… how are you?

LAURA: So so good. I haven’t seen you in, what, over a year?

YOU: Seventeen months. Yeah, it has been a while. Crazy, crazy. But you look great. Are you still seeing… never mind, not my business. I, um, see you still like hummus.

LAURA: What? Oh, yeah, got some Sabra in my cart. I still like hummus, I guess. Listen, we should grab a coffee sometime…

That’s Elon Musk’s group America Pac. Apparently, it’s run by 12 year old boys. They have removed it from X, but it still exists on Facebook for now. Warning: This ad contains multiple instances of the ‘C Word.’ Viewer discretion is advised. Kamala Harris is a ‘C word.’ You heard that right. A big ole ‘C word.’ In fact, all of the other ‘C words’ think she’s the biggest ‘C word’ of them all. That’s right. She’s a tax-hiking, regulation-loving, gun-grabbing communist. And the worst part? She’s proud of it. Kamala Harris: the ‘C word America simply can’t afford. See you nationwide Tuesday, November 5th. This is where we are people. Update — Oh look, more C-word. Apparently the Trump campaign stopped that rancid comic from saying it during Trump’s rally last night: [F]our top campaign sources said it could have been even worse. “He had a joke calling [Vice President Kamala] Harris a ‘cunt,’” a campaign insider involved in the discussions about the event told The Bulwark.

Today’s model of delegation has much to recommend it. But it should not be cloaked in euphemism. It is an abrogation of democratic sovereignty for pragmatic reasons, conditioned on the one hand by deeply entrenched and unflattering assumptions about electoral politics and, on the other, on an unquestioning acceptance of the private organization of credit […]

After the 2016 election once everyone recovered from the shock, the analyses of what happened started to gel into a conventional wisdom that said Donald Trump won because a bunch of non-college educated white people were feeling “economic anxiety.” Thousands of stories and features followed with reporters being sent out to rural Pennsylvania diners and Iowa church socials to figure out what those voters really want. But the fact was that it was an extremely close electoral college victory that could have gone either way with just a handful of votes in a couple of swing states. The main data guru at the time, Nate Silver, did a post-election analysis which showed that whenever there was an event such as Hillary Clinton collapsing briefly at a 9/11 event or the Washington Post reporting of Donald Trump’s gross commentary on the Access Hollywood tape, there would be a slight drop in the polls for the affected candidate but they would rebound to the usual stasis within a couple of weeks. Trump was still struggling to recover from the Access Hollywood scandal at the end of October of that year and Clinton was ahead in the aggregated polling by about 6 points.

Former VA officials warn that another Trump term could irreparably damage the health care system for millions of veterans.

The post Trump’s Cronies Threw the VA Into Chaos. Millions of Veterans’ Lives Are on the Line Again. appeared first on The Intercept.

My interview on my new book with Andrew Keen has just been released. Please find it on the link below: https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2229-robert-skidelsky-worries

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Below is my speech on Ukraine in the House of Lords on the 25th of October. Unfortunately, time constraints forced me to leave out two bits of my argument which I will put in brackets in the text. “My Lords, I am usually put last on the speakers’ list in any debate on this topic, … Continue reading Speech in the House of Lords – Ukraine

Donald Trump/Tom Homan/Stephen Miller/Project 2025 dream I’m reposting this “60 Minutes” clip of Tom Homan again to make sure no one misses it amidst the Trump rally coverage. CBS News: Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has said it would be reasonable to deport a million people a year. And Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year that deportees would be removed from the country in a massive military air operation. “You grab illegal immigrants and then you move them to the staging ground and that’s where the planes are waiting for federal law enforcement to then move those illegals home,” Miller said at the conference. “You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement.” Homan said he doesn’t use the term “raids,” but immigration enforcement operations at worksites would be needed.  Deeper into the realm of ethnic cleansing From the clip: Cecilia Vega asks: “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” “Of course there is.