“It was a ‘f–k you’ heard ’round the world. Brazil’s first lady Janja Lula da Silva, 58, set off a diplomatic firestorm after she delivered an expletive comment to Elon Musk at a panel on disinformation and regulating social media at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday. After a ship’s horn sounded, she made what was apparently meant to be a quip, saying: ‘I think it’s Elon Musk. I’m not afraid of you, f–k you, Elon Musk.’ The comments reminded her audience of the bitter battle waged between the tech billionaire and Brazil’s Supreme Court over free speech on Musk’s X platform earlier this year, which saw it banned in the country between August and October.” (11/19/24)
“The Washington Post couldn’t get through an article about Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya without using the F-word. The sub-headline from Saturday read, ‘The Stanford physician was excoriated by NIH’s director in 2020 for his ‘fringe’ ideas on Covid. Four years later, he’s poised for power in Trump’s Washington.’ …. If Donald Trump creates the position, I volunteer to be Secretary of Feeding People to Komodo Dragons. The first round of tossings into the lizard-pit will involve ‘experts’ who still use grossly snobbish terms like ‘fringe’ and ‘contrarian’ to describe beliefs held by most of the population.” (11/18/24)
“One century ago, when Western European powers were planning to carve up the Arab East, the US attempted to convince them to take a different path. Supporting the belief that the peoples recently freed from colonial rule should have the right to self-determination, the US sent a commission of prominent Americans to survey Arab public opinion to discover what they did and did not want for their future. The commission concluded that the overwhelming majority of Arabs rejected division or partition of their region, European mandates over them, and the establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. What they hoped for was a unitary Arab state. The commission report also warned of conflict if the planned partition moved forward. The British Lord Balfour rejected these findings saying that the attitudes of the indigenous Arab population meant little to him, especially when weighed against the importance of the Zionist movement.” (11/18/24)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The New York Times reports that the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range missiles to strike Russian and North Korean military targets inside Russia — yet another dangerous escalation of nuclear brinkmanship in this horrific proxy war. The Times correctly notes that authorizing Ukraine to use ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, has long been a contentious issue in the Biden administration for fear of provoking military retaliations against the US from Russia. This reckless escalation has been authorized despite an acknowledgement from the anonymous US officials who spoke to The New York Times that they ‘do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war.’ As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes, Vladimir Putin said back in September that if NATO allows Ukraine to use western-supplied weapons for long-range strikes inside Russian territory, it would mean NATO countries ‘are at war with Russia.'” (11/18/24)
Source: Fox News
by Andrew Cherkasky & Katie Cherkasky
“Powerful forces are out to derail Pete Hegseth’s bid to become secretary of defense and carry out President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to reform the Pentagon. The Army veteran and former Fox News host has been hammered by a stream of inflammatory accusations in recent days, from past allegations of sexual assault to absurd and baseless claims that his faith-based tattoos reveal him as a white supremacist. Hegseth, of course, has never faced criminal charges, has never been connected to any white supremacy groups or activities and has never deviated from his loyalty to country — so these preposterous attacks merely reveal the desperation of those seeking to subvert his confirmation. Why? Because, after a groundless 10-year war in Iraq and a 20-year stalemate in Afghanistan, the US military is embroiled in a culture war — another war it seems to be losing.” (11/18/24)
“The incoming president of the richest country on Earth believes climate change — the deepest challenge that our species has faced — is a hoax. This obviously has endless policy implications, which we’ll spend the next four years working through — but the simple fact is what’s so amazing. Every single one of the structures we’ve built over the centuries to help us understand the world, from the National Academy of Science to the land-grant universities with their huge labs, to NASA with its satellites keeping an eye on planet Earth, have told us the same thing: Fairly simple physics means that burning fossil fuel is warming the Earth, a warming now painfully confirmed in rainfall totals, melting ice, rising sea level, and deadly heatwaves.” (11/18/24)
“It’s high time to shatter the myth of Nancy Pelosi as a master strategist. Nobody deserves more blame than the ridiculously self-titled ‘speaker emerita’ for the Democrats’ $1 billion electoral collapse. Under her ruthless leadership, her party lost the White House, the House, the Senate and the popular vote. You can’t say that enough. Voters rejected the Dems from coast to coast, even in Pelosi’s deepest-blue home city of San Francisco, which saw a 7-point swing to Donald Trump. She’s the only speaker in history to have lost control of the House twice. She’s finished. The empress emeritus has no clothes (perish the thought). Yet she still has the nerve to reward herself with another term, filing the papers last week to run for re-election in 2026, at the tender age of 86!” (11/17/24)
“Organic and baby carrots sold at grocery stores across the US have been recalled after an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person. So far, 15 people are in hospital and 39 cases have been reported across 18 states, the US’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said. The recall covers bagged carrots sold by Grimmway Farms to big supermarket names including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods’s 365, Target’s Good & Gather, Walmart’s Marketside, Wegmans and others. Officials say that impacted products are likely no longer in store but may still be in homes, and should be thrown away or returned to stores for a refund if so. Most of the infected people live in New York, Minnesota and Washington, followed by California and Oregon, according to the AP news agency.” (11/18/24)
“Senior Republican Party officials announced Monday that they are filing 12 lawsuits in Pennsylvania as part of an ongoing effort to ‘aggressively’ defend their pickup in the closely watched Keystone State Senate race. Speaking to reporters on a call Monday, GOP officials said they have been working closely with Republican candidate Dave McCormick’s campaign in an effort to protect his Senate win over three-term incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Casey, who has refused to concede defeat and has secured a statewide recount. Both national and state Republican parties have filed lawsuits in four counties across Pennsylvania, urging the courts to not count mail-in ballots with either incorrect or missing dates, in accordance with a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling this month.” (11/18/24)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China. The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly ‘stalemate war’ that needs to be ‘brought to a conclusion.’ But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.” (11/18/24)
