Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Gunmen on motorbikes have shot dead 22 people, most of them attending a baptism ceremony, in an attack on a village in western Niger, reports say. A resident told the French news agency AFP that 15 people were killed at the ceremony in Tillabéri region, which borders Mali and Burkina Faso, before moving elsewhere and killing seven others. … Niger’s military government has struggled to contain jihadist violence in the region, carried out by groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.” (09/17/25)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce863x3g7jko
Source: The Bulwark
by Philip Rotner
“How ambiguities in the law gave Trump power he could seize — and what a future Congress can do about it.” (09/17/25)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/reining-in-rogue-presidents
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Jerry Greenfield has retired after nearly 50 years, accusing the United Kingdom-based parent company Unilever of silencing the ice cream brand’s social mission, particularly regarding Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, according to his business partner Ben Cohen. … Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s have clashed since 2021, when the Vermont-based company said it would stop sales in the occupied West Bank as doing so was ‘inconsistent with our values.’ The brand has since sued its parent company over alleged efforts to silence it and described Israel’s war on Gaza as ‘genocide,’ a rare stance for a big US company.” (09/17/25)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/17/ben-jerrys-cofounder-leaves-firm-amid-dispute-with-unilever-over-gaza
Source: Underthrow
“From Totalitarianism to Panarchy with Aviezer Tucker.” (09/16/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9RNxmQJ0tE
Source: Persuasion
by Alex
“Last week, I had coffee with someone who works at a big consulting firm. She spent twenty minutes explaining her role to me. Not because it was complex, but because she was trying to convince herself it existed. ‘I facilitate stakeholder alignment across cross-functional workstreams,’ she said. Then laughed. ‘I genuinely don’t know what that means anymore.’ She’s not alone. I keep meeting people who describe their jobs using words they’d never use in normal conversation. They attend meetings about meetings. They create PowerPoints that no one reads, which get shared in emails no one opens, which generate tasks that don’t need doing. The strangest part: everyone knows.” (09/16/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-death-of-the-office-job
Source: Fox News
by Eric Patterson
“The major election year 2026 kicks off with a new mayor taking over Gotham on Jan. 1. From Sacramento to Minneapolis to New York, some candidates are peddling Karl Marx. The most glaring example is Zohran Mamdani, who pledges innumerable freebies and has called for ‘seizing the means of production’. What are we to make of this ‘pop Marxism?’ What is its appeal? It is ‘pop’ in two senses of the word. It is popular and populist: popular in that it is shallow while presenting as novel and exciting, and populist in a braying pretense of familiarity, with its calls for costless gratification and its gratuitous attacks on the status quo.” (09/17/25)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-62-young-americans-falling-pop-marxism
Source: Fox News
“Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa on Tuesday implemented a 60-day state of emergency in an attempt to quell massive protests that broke out following his surprise removal of a diesel subsidy last week. The decree was issued across seven of the nation’s two dozen provinces following ‘severe internal disturbance’ and mobilized armed forces and national police. … Footage of the protests showed Ecuadorians clashing with police forces in the capital city of Quito on Tuesday as protesters dismantled fences and barriers while police fired tear gas in the streets. … The ongoing clashes came after the government on Friday announced it would eliminate the nation’s diesel subsidy starting Saturday and redirect the funds to social programs in an attempt to alleviate the country’s straining finances.” (09/17/25)
https://www.foxnews.com/world/state-emergency-declared-violent-protests-rock-south-american-nation-over-diesel-price-hikes
Source: bloggingheads.tv
“Tribalism and the Charlie Kirk Killing | Robert Wright & Glenn Loury.” (09/16/25)
https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/69008
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Aaron Terr & Angel Eduardo
“We get it: not everyone is a free speech expert. A huge part of our job at FIRE is educating the public about their First Amendment rights, the scope of free speech law, and the foundational principles that make free expression so important. Most people don’t have the time to get in the weeds like we do, so it’s understandable for the average American to sometimes get things wrong about free speech. But when you’re the attorney general of the United States, like Pam Bondi, you really should know better.” (09/16/25)
https://www.thefire.org/news/why-everything-pam-bondi-said-about-hate-speech-wrong
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
“The identities of two women once listed as potential co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein will remain sealed for their safety and privacy, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. In a written decision, Judge Richard M. Berman rejected an NBC News request to make their identities public after lawyers for the women and the U.S. Justice Department opposed the unsealing request. He wrote that threats to the safety of the individuals persist and releasing their names would threaten their safety and privacy. … Prosecutors acknowledged that their names had been publicly associated with Epstein and his alleged sexual assault on girls and young women over two decades. Epstein obtained protection for both individuals in a nonprosecution agreement he signed with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2007.” (09/16/25)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/09/16/epstein-co-conspirators-identities/
