“For most people, the story of the medieval world was one of cramped cities, constant violent crime, and episodic outbreaks of deadly plagues—the dividends of unclean urban conditions, rotting food, fouled water, open sewage, and unchecked rats, fleas, and lice. Most of each day was spent simply trying to survive until the next. Castles and walls dotted the landscape to protect kingdoms from marauding tribes and foreign invaders. City gates were usually closed at dusk to keep out nocturnal marauders. Public executions drew massive crowds. And religious schisms and conflicts often turned deadly. In other words, it was not altogether unfamiliar to the world we are becoming today. Yet meanwhile, science advanced quietly among true elites at universities, courts, and monasteries, producing windmills, mechanical clocks, and eyeglasses.” (09/01/26)
“The conviction of Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis in Las Vegas has brought an end to one of the world’s most famous unsolved murder cases. He was found guilty of the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, who died when the black BMW he was travelling in was sprayed with bullets in a drive-by shooting in 1996. ‘This is huge. It was a tough case. It’s a cold case,’ former prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the BBC. ‘We’re talking about the greatest rapper of all time, an icon, and not a single arrest or prosecution for 30 years.’ The conviction gives closure to Shakur’s family, and has prompted questions from observers as to what it could mean for an almost identical case – the unsolved murder of Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, also known by his legal name of Christopher Wallace.” (09/01/26)
“A new academic year began across Congo on Tuesday despite concerns by parents and teachers that the country’s Ebola outbreak still poses risks to children in the epicenter. The resumption of classes comes in the middle of what authorities say is the fastest-growing outbreak of the disease ever, with 2,950 killed among the 6,100 cases confirmed so far since mid-May. The union representing teachers in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, had called for a delay in restarting classes, but the government pressed ahead. UNICEF said it is supporting the authorities to prevent transmissions in schools. Some schools in Ituri, especially those owned by the government, recorded low turnouts. Authorities in Ituri did not respond to a request for comment on measures to ensure a lack of transmission in classrooms.” (09/01/26)
“‘I want to be President of all Americans,’ said Joe Biden. Barack Obama said something similar about there not being red Americans or blue Americans, only Americans, or some such garbage. It’s garbage because in pursuit of that job, and in the execution of it, they do not speak to half the country at all. They want to control you, not talk with you. During his presidency, Barack Obama barely ever gave interviews to Fox News. Occasionally, he would do the Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly, but that was all that really comes to mind. At his press conferences, Obama would work off a printed list of pre-screened reporters in something with all the choreography of a Broadway show. No surprise, or even challenging, questions were allowed or even attempted by the sycophants with press credentials.” (09/01/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of South America, famously observed, ‘The United States appear(s) to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty’. For 200 years, US leaders have never proved him wrong. In the early 1800s, Bolivar led what is now Venezuela and five other countries to independence from the Spanish Empire. But the United States still refuses to recognize the independence of other countries in the region. Wannabe emperor Donald Trump even refers to Canadian prime minister Mark Carney as a ‘governor’, as if Canada was merely another US state. The US-backed despots replacing popular democratic and socialist governments across Latin America today are indeed doing so in the name of liberty, as Bolivar warned.” (09/01/26)
“Milo Yiannopoulos, the Gamergate reporter who exposed the Left’s attempt to push feminism, LGBT and diversity into gaming; the Breitbart enfant terrible who called himself a ‘virtuous troll’ among corporate media types; the bête noire of campus lecturers, the jokester who mocked the wokesters before becoming a woke joke himself; the gay ‘conservative’ who became a straight far-right (?) influencer; the celebrity-turned-obscurity who turned everyone off, the wannabe podcaster who grifted where he could; the flimsy buddy to white nationalists who betrayed them when their association stopped paying the bills; Kanye West’s former PR guy who failed at his own PR, the guy who was ‘super-hot back in 2015, 2016 and… kind of disappeared’ according to Ben Shapiro; the male version of Sue Mengers, bad taste but lacking class, connections, common decency, or relevance; and a chief cheerleader for deporting all illegal aliens (and the above-mentioned Shapiro, disturbingly enough), has been deported.” (08/31/26)
“On the one side, conservatives are frustrated because, to them, the Arday case is emblematic: universities today are overwhelmingly leftist; leftists dominate the humanities and liberal arts faculties, and leftists are rewarded for poor or even fraudulent scholarship simply because it reinforces the preexisting beliefs of their contemporaries and superiors. On the other side, progressives and other leftists insist that the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment is definitionally a left-leaning enterprise, at least in contemporary society. Of course, leftists are overrepresented in academia; leftists seek awareness and understanding, while conservatives are simply less inquisitive and less interested in attaining knowledge, both temperamentally and practically, the latter for fear of learning that what they perceive as fairness and equality is, in reality, prejudice and discrimination.” (08/31/26)
“On NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) added his voice to expand the Supreme Court to a ‘baker’s dozen’, or thirteen members to allow Democrats to add justices who agree with him and Democratic members on how the law must be interpreted. In the meantime, as discussed earlier, court packing is being pushed as the new litmus test for any Democratic candidates. Clyburn’s ‘baker’s dozen’ is a telling description of an effort to bake in partisan views on a Court expanded to create an instant liberal majority. In defending this hostile takeover of the Court, Clyburn bizarrely insisted that the failure to do so might lead to a return to antebellum conditions when blacks were being given fewer rights than whites.” (08/31/26)
“A full 45% of American adults identify as political independents. That’s far higher than the share – 27% each – who say they are either Democrats or Republicans, according to a 2026 report by Gallup. Nationally, according to another source, one-fifth of voters ‘are so independent that they do not vote consistently for one party or the other.’ Yet only three out of 535 members of Congress are independents – two senators (one each from Maine and Vermont) and one representative (from California). This growing gap between public preference and the composition of Congress has prompted a retired senator, Joe Manchin, and his daughter Heather to launch an initiative to spur more election bids by candidates not tied to a party. The aim of their Independent Leadership Council is to mentor, fund, and otherwise support independent candidates for Congress.” (08/27/26)
“It’s the fall of 2028. A debate moderator turns to two presidential nominees who spent their governorships fighting over data centers. ‘China’s AI lead is now a fact,’ she says. ‘In 2026, you decided to restrict data-center construction, and the machinist in Youngstown, Ohio, watched his job follow the servers to the Gulf. What do you tell him? Which of your policies would you take back?’ That reckoning is two years away, but the choices that will decide it are being made now. Rising electric bills deserve a real fix, but not one rushed for political expediency that leaves the people it’s meant to help worse off down the road. The pressure to do something is building.” (08/31/26)
