Music: Julian Shore — ‘Back Home’
Fascism is here. How are we going to fight back?
The Democratic leadership needs fighters willing to embrace an economic populist message that takes on the billionaires and Donald Trump’s fascist march. The masses can rise up and demand that change. In this conversation, author Jared Yates Sexton and Wajahat Ali discuss how we can fight back and defeat fascism top down and bottom up.
Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 cash from undercover FBI agents. Trump’s DOJ shut it down
MSNBC reports: In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC. The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once…
ICE just spent millions on surveillance technology that was banned by Facebook
Forbes reports: In 2021, Meta banned a surveillance company called Cobwebs from gathering intelligence across all its platforms. Its security staff had discovered Cobwebs, founded by former members of Israel’s elite cyber intel agencies, was using hundreds of accounts to snoop on Facebook and WhatsApp users, many of them activists, opposition politicians and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico. Since then, ICE has spent over $5 million on the company’s tools, with one $2 million purchase made this week…
Pentagon imposes censorship restricting how reporters cover the country’s largest federal agency
Politico reports: The Pentagon on Friday said reporters who cover the agency could access the building only if they agreed not to publish certain information, an unprecedented move that demands media outlets hand the department vast control over what they publish. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, in a Friday evening email, said journalists could continue to enter the Defense Department only if they sign a note saying they will not publish classified information or some less sensitive documents that are not…
Poland scrambles jets as Russia launches a massive aerial attack on Ukraine
CNN reports: Polish and allied military aircraft were scrambled early Saturday after Russia launched a massive aerial assault on Ukraine including strikes that targeted near its western border with Poland. It came hours after NATO intercepted three Russian jets over Estonia’s airspace and with Europe on heightened alert following a series of Russian airspace violations in eastern countries. “Due to the activity of the Russian Federation’s long-range aviation, which is carrying out strikes on the territory of Ukraine, Polish and…
Trump regime proposes selling nearly $6 billion in weapons to Israel
The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration has told Congress it plans to sell nearly $6 billion in weapons to Israel, a fresh surge of support for the U.S. ally as it faces increasing isolation over its war in Gaza. It includes a $3.8 billion sale for 30 AH-64 Apache helicopters, nearly doubling Israel’s current stocks, and a $1.9 billion sale for 3,200 infantry assault vehicles for Israeli army, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the…
Bill McKibben says cheap solar could topple Big Oil’s power
Yale Climate Connections reports: Bill McKibben is like that old culture of yeast you revive when you want to start a new batch of sourdough. He makes movements rise. McKibben is a cofounder and senior adviser of climate activist group 350.org, the founder of Third Act – a climate and democracy group led by U.S. residents over the age of 60 – and the principal instigator behind Sun Day, a nationwide community celebration of solar energy on September 21. His…
Music: Gianni Brezzo — ‘Flower Rain’
David Remnick: When Putin came to power, the first Russians he silenced were comedians
Stephen Colbert talks to The New Yorker editor, David Remnick, about FCC chairman Brendan Carr and the assault on free speech and press freedom. As Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post, Remnick reported on the demise of the Soviet Union and Russia’s emergence as a fledgling democracy.
FCC chair’s actions ‘right out of Goodfellas,’ says Ted Cruz
Politico reports: Sen. Ted Cruz on his podcast Friday admonished Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr for demanding ABC suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show over comments regarding Charlie Kirk — calling Carr’s actions “dangerous as hell” and “right out of ‘Goodfellas.’” “If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like’ — that will end up…
Big Law firms finally have to hold up their end of a Trumpian bargain
Matthew Wollin writes: Big Law firms have never before done free work for a sitting president, let alone “pro bono” work, which the American Bar Association generally defines to mean work that is “designed primarily to address the needs of persons of limited means.” Moreover, these are some of the most powerful and capable law firms in the country. Skadden Arps is ranked as the third-most prestigious firm in the US, while Kirkland & Ellis is the single largest firm…
Russia ‘testing’ NATO with warplane incursion, Estonia warns
Politico reports: Estonia is calling on its Western allies to show unity in the face of growing aggression, the Baltic nation’s foreign minister said Friday after three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace. Speaking in an interview with POLITICO, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that the incursion showed Russian leader Vladimir Putin has no interest in peace. “This was a heavy violation by Russia — three fighters, MiG-31s, entered NATO airspace for 12 minutes,” he said. “NATO acted very…
Israel is waging a holocaust in Gaza. Denazification is our only remedy
Orly Noy writes: Gaza City is engulfed in flames, as the Israeli army embarks on its long-threatened ground offensive after weeks of relentless bombardment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already facing an international arrest warrant on suspicion of crimes against humanity, described this latest assault as an “intensified operation.” I urge you to watch the footage streaming out of Gaza, and see what this euphemism really means. Look into the eyes of people gripped by a terror unmatched even in the…
Israel massacred 31 journalists as it destroyed newspaper offices in Yemen
Committee to Protect Journalists: Israel’s targeted strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which killed 31 journalists and media support workers on September 10, signal that its deadly pattern of attacking reporters and newsrooms on the grounds that they publish “terrorist” propaganda has spread firmly across the Middle East. Yemen’s September 26 newspaper was the first to name the 31 killed by multiple strikes on its office and that of the Yemen newspaper, both in the government’s Moral…
The math of climate change tipping points
Gregory Barber writes: In the 1960s, the Soviet climatologist and mathematician Mikhail Budyko set out to investigate the potential future of a planet on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. He started by looking some 600 million years into the past. Back then, some scientists claimed, the ancient planet was an iced-over snowball. Most researchers considered that a crackpot theory. Ice over the equator? Please. But Budkyo developed a mathematical model to back it up. If sea ice had been able…