… special edition, that is. It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the United States. That generally means slow news days and not a whole lot of opinion publishing, but we’ve put together a short edition (five news stories, five opinion pieces, three audio/video links) to tide you over until Monday. Enjoy!
As always, we’re thankful for our readers and for their financial support during our annual fundraiser. Today, we’re ESPECIALLY thankful for DJ and GKL, whose $110 in contributions yesterday bring that fundraiser total to $2,103!
We’re now past the 80% point on the way to our goal — only $472 away from reaching the $2,575 mid-point (after which supporter GL will generously “match funds” to get us to $5,150 and the finish line).
Please help us wrap up this fundraiser by Monday! Finishing up means I can stop talking about money entirely for the rest of the year (and mostly until next October). Everybody wins! You can make that happen at:
“Hours after being tapped as Sweden’s first female prime minister, Magdalena Andersson resigned Wednesday after suffering a budget defeat in parliament and her coalition partner, the Greens, left the two-party minority government. The government’s own budget proposal was rejected in favor of one presented by the opposition that includes the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats. The Sweden Democrats, the country’s third-largest party, has roots in a national neo-Nazi movement, but has since disavowed fascism. The vote was 154-143 in favor of the opposition’s budget proposal. Andersson, leader of the Social Democratic party, decided it was best to step down from the post more than seven hours after she made history by becoming the first woman to lead the country. ‘For me, it is about respect, but I also do not want to lead a government where there may be grounds to question its legitimacy,’ Andersson told a news conference.” (11/25/21)
“How can I eat turkey and stuffing with a smile, when Columbus massacred the Arawaks? When the English forced the Wampanoags off their land and made many convert to Christianity? When Lincoln told Horace Greeley, ‘If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it?’ How? Maybe because you’re more than three years old, and don’t need fairy tales to be real in order to enjoy dinner with family and a football game? We don’t ask Russians how they can sit around the yelochka every New Year and open presents knowing that Ivan the Terrible used to roast prisoners in giant frying pans, or how they can smoke Belomorkanal cigarettes knowing the real White Sea canal is filled with the bones of slave laborers. I think even most MSNBC anchors would agree, that would be stupid. But we do this to ourselves all the time now, and every year it gets worse.” (11/25/21)
“Bitcoin (BTC) shed almost $5,000 in a single day on Nov. 26 as bulls faced fresh disappointment. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it headed toward $54,000 at the time of writing amid intense volatility. Holders saw major selling pressure after coming within inches of $60,000 late Thursday, the latest attempt to beat resistance nonetheless ending in retreat.” (11/26/21)
Source: Libertarian Policy Institute
by Nicholas Sarwark
“One of the first things you learn in computer science is the concept of cruft, the remnants of old projects, failed design attempts, temporary fixes, and emergency debugging done ages ago. It all had a reason, a need, an absolute requirement to be written at some point in the past and it has no reason to continue to exist. Cruft is a special type of entropy in human endeavors, the memory of the myriad ephemeral things that were once important to us. The cruft accumulates over time on everything, like moss and bromeliads on everything along the Gulf Coast of Alabama. Speaking of the Gulf Coast of Alabama, it’s where I am spending this Thanksgiving, living in a camper trailer for weeks at a time, missing my family and helping the Libertarian Party of Alabama gain ballot access. … The whole concept of ballot access restriction through physical signatures is a type of political cruft.” (11/25/21)
“Security services in Kyrgyzstan say they have detained 15 ‘active members’ of a coup plot involving lawmakers and former officials ahead of a parliamentary vote at the weekend. The detained were part of a plan to get ‘1,000 aggressive young people’ to protest against the results of the vote, the state committee for national security said in a statement on Friday. ‘After the announcement of the results of the upcoming parliamentary elections … this group planned to organise mass protests in [the capital] Bishkek and subsequently to aggravate the situation, provoking clashes with the forces of law and order and further violent seizure of power,’ the statement said.” (11/26/21)
“Dr. Phranq Tamburri = Post Trump Report — Tyranny Report, Tyranny Report, Kyle Rittenshouse acquittal, Trump and Rittenhouse, social engineering, healthcare industry, medical tyranny, medical freedom, Hollywood and wokeness, Happy Thanksgiving, etc.” [MP3] (11/25/21)
“An ‘honest mistake’ is buying your partner the wrong perfume or copying someone into an email chain by accident. It is not firing a drone missile at a car, killing 10 civilians — and doing so when a small child was clearly visible moments earlier. And yet, a supposedly ‘independent’ Pentagon inquiry this month claimed just such a good-faith mistake after US commanders authorized a drone strike in late August that killed an Afghan family, including seven children. … The ‘honest mistake’ is a continuing colonial narrative western nations tell themselves, and the rest of us, when they kill civilians. When western troops invade and occupy other people’s lands — and maybe help themselves to some of the resources they find along the way — it is done in the name of bringing security or spreading democracy. We are always the Good Guys, they are the Evil Ones. We make mistakes, they commit crimes.” (11/26/21)
“A Russian cargo ship departed the International Space Station early Thursday (Nov. 25) to make room for a new docking port that’s already on its way to the orbiting laboratory. The automated Progress 78 cargo ship, also known as Progress MS-17, undocked from Russia’s Nauka science module on the station at 6:22 a.m. EST (1122 GMT) and is doomed to a fiery disposal in Earth’s atmosphere. Its departure clears the way for the arrival of Prichal, a new Russian docking port module, that launched to the International Space Station on Wednesday (Nov. 24).” (11/25/21)
