“Has this ever worked? Kind of famously, yes — at least for a while. In the 1930s, as fascist movements stomped across Europe, popular fronts emerged to block the spread. In France and Spain, leftists, centrists and anti-fascist liberals joined forces to beat back the far right, sometimes literally. In the United States, the Communist Party helped bring broad, anti-fascist politics into public life, forming coalitions among Black writers, labor organizers and progressive cultural workers. As historian Bill Mullen writes in Popular Fronts, the period saw ‘an extraordinary rapprochement’ between Black and white members of the U.S. Left — not just in protest, but in culture, art and publishing. ” (10/29/25)
“More than 90 Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli strikes in Gaza on Tuesday night, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency and hospitals say. The Israeli military said it struck ‘dozens of terror targets and terrorists’ in response to violations by Hamas of the US-brokered ceasefire deal. Israel’s defence minister accused Hamas of an attack in Gaza that killed an Israeli soldier, and of breaching the terms on returning deceased hostages’ bodies. Hamas said it had ‘no connection’ to the attack and was committed to the deal.” (10/29/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The ultimate expression of ‘everyone is twelve now’ theory is in the mainstream worldview promoted by western pundits and politicians which holds that the world is full of evil villains doing evil things simply because they are evil, and that these Bad Guys are opposed by the virtuous Good Guys of the US-led world order. You think Hamas killed Israelis because they’re a bunch of monsters who hate Jews? Of course you do, you’re twelve. You think Trump is trying to get rid of Maduro because Maduro is an evil dictator who wants to poison Americans with fentanyl? Hell yeah homie, you’re twelve. You think Putin invaded Ukraine because he hates freedom and democracy and wants to conquer the world? Bless your heart my twelve year-old buddy.” (10/28/25)
“I first heard the expression ‘strategic incompetence’ in El Salvador in December 1993. Along with my partner and two friends, I’d been recruited to do some electoral training there. We were working with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a coalition of leftist parties that had led a long-running guerrilla war against a series of U.S.-backed autocratic governments. I’d visited El Salvador once before, during the 1989 elections, when armed troops were overseeing the voting. I remembered watching as people deposited their ballots into transparent plastic bags, their choices clearly visible to the world — and to the soldiers. (Not exactly what you’d call a ‘free and fair’ election.) A new round of national elections was scheduled for early 1994, and, for the first time, instead of boycotting it, the FMLN was running its own candidates.” (10/28/25)
“Politicians in Washington have the shortest memories. Maybe that’s why they so seldom learn from their sometimes catastrophic mistakes. It was less than 20 years ago that the U.S. economy was flattened by the mortgage and banking crisis. Anyone remember? The experts said that the odds were tiny that the housing market could crash; that the federal housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would never need a bailout; that mortgage-backed securities were as good as gold. Then they crashed overnight spectacularly and devastatingly. Banks made riskier and riskier housing loans to subprime borrowers — and the government covered the bets with essentially 100% loan guarantees. … One reason depositors and investors were paying no attention to the big banks’ high-risk lending strategy is that everything was guaranteed.” (10/28/25)
“It’s understandable that Trump’s team likes to pretend that his random ramblings and angry acts of revenge are all part of some grand strategy, but why would anyone not on his payroll play along with this obvious absurdity? To anyone paying attention, it should be pretty clear that Donald Trump is clueless about the economy. Just to take an obvious example to make the point: Trump has repeatedly promised to lower drug prices by 800, 900, or even 1,500%. As he rightly says, no one thought it was possible. It wouldn’t be a big deal that he got confused once or twice and forgot that you can’t lower prices by more than 100%, unless you envision drug companies paying people to use their drugs. But Trump has done this repeatedly, over many months.” (10/28/25)
“‘Pastor, have you ever read Thomas Sowell on this high school?’ Elaine asked me as we stood outside Paul Laurence Dunbar High School — or Dunbar, for short — in Northwest Washington, D.C. I told her that was why I made a point of making Dunbar a stop on my Walk Across America to revive merit and the American Dream. I had asked her, a mother of two kids in the school, what it was like, and her verdict was sadly negative. ‘Sowell said Dunbar was an example of excellence back in the day. What happened?’ From 1870 to 1955, this all-Black public school drew ambitious families from across the country — parents relocating just to enroll their kids for the best shot at life. Sowell described these families as ‘aspirational,’ meaning they sought to overcome any obstacles.” (10/28/25)
“Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping plan to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system, which includes closing a prison built in the 1800s, moved forward Tuesday with bipartisan support despite complaints from Republican lawmakers that their concerns weren’t being addressed. A bipartisan subcommittee of the state building commission approved spending $15 million to proceed with planning for the Evers proposal. The full building commission, which Evers chairs, was expected to green-light the spending later Tuesday. Evers in February presented his plan as the best and only option to address the state’s aging facilities. Problems at the lockups have included inmate deaths, assaults against staff, lockdowns, lawsuits, federal investigations, criminal charges against staff, resignations and rising maintenance costs. Republicans have opposed parts of the plan that would reduce the overall capacity of the state prison system by 700 beds and increase the number of offenders who could be released on supervision.” (10/28/25)
“Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has spent more than a decade warning that the world was on the brink of unimaginable peril due to rising global temperatures, now says climate change ‘will not lead to humanity’s demise’ in a stunning reversal. Gates, 70, who has sunk billions of his vast fortune into initiatives ostensibly meant to combat global warming, penned a lengthy blog post this week urging a shift away from the ‘doomsday outlook’ many climate activists have adopted to terrify nonbelievers into seeing things their way. ‘Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,’ he wrote. ‘People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.'” (10/28/25)
“Prior to 9-11 the US fought proxy wars and launched coups throughout Latin America, supporting autocratic regimes. In Indonesia it helped kill about a million leftists. During the Vietnam War, it killed several million. Since just 9-11 the US invaded or bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Yemen, Iran, Somalia, and Niger. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, US wars since 9-11 killed 4.5 million people and cost over $8 trillion. The US aided war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. The US has occupied one-third of Syria, the parts with oil, since about 2015, with help from a proxy army, the SDF. The US allied with al-Qaeda-linked extremist groups in Syria, as reported here, here, and here. It killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians through brutal sanctions. The Trump administration is now bombing Venezuelan boats and is preparing for a land invasion.” (10/28/25)
