“The world’s largest shopping event, Singles’ Day, was again held Nov. 11 in China – though the online bargains began weeks earlier, as is the case with Black Friday sales in other parts of the world. This year, however, the event was not just a commercial gala. China’s annual shopping spree, which began in 2009 in earnest, no longer focuses on singles. (The date 11.11 resembles ‘bare sticks’ in Chinese, an idiom for being unhitched.) The unofficial holiday of mass consumption is now a key economic indicator: Whether or not the world’s second-largest economy will fall into a downward spiral of falling prices, or deflation. Early reports from China’s giant e-commerce firms suggest spending for Singles’ Day was not enough to trigger a rise in retail prices and thus help end more than two years of declining prices.” (11/14/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“There are no easy fights in the struggle against the empire. Lots of losses and no clean wins. You spend years protesting the genocide in Gaza, and you get a fake, shitty ‘ceasefire’ deal that’s just designed to shut you up while Israel continues creating hell for the Palestinians and carving off more pieces of their territory. Humanity manages to avoid nuclear conflict at the most dangerous points of the Ukraine war, but the country continues getting torn apart for years in an idiotic bloodbath that could have been easily avoided with a little diplomacy and common sense. Assange gets free, but only after he agrees to plead guilty to doing journalism, and only after years of cruel treatment have made an example of him for all the world to see.” (11/16/25)
“Federal officials confirmed Saturday that a surge of immigration enforcement in North Carolina’s largest city has begun, as agents were seen making [abductions] in multiple locations. ‘Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal [sic] aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,’ Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. ‘We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed.’ Local officials including Mayor Vi Lyles criticized such actions, saying in a statement that they ‘are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty.’ ‘We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives,’ the statement said. It was also signed by Mecklenburg County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member Stephanie Sneed.” (11/15/25)
“The media wants America to panic over another government shutdown, as if life stops when Washington is not spending money. But let us be clear from the start: the shutdown is not the crisis; Congress is the crisis. The true emergency facing this nation is not a temporary pause in government operations; it is a federal government that refuses to stop mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren. America now owes more than $ 37 trillion, and Congress is adding roughly $ 25 billion to the debt every single day. We now pay over 1 trillion dollars a year in interest alone, more than our entire national defense budget. That is not normal. That is not sustainable. That is national betrayal. This financial disaster was not built by one political party alone.” (11/15/25)
“Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas turns 90 on Saturday, still holding authoritarian power in tiny pockets of the West Bank, but marginalized and weakened by Israel, deeply unpopular among Palestinians, and struggling for a say in a postwar Gaza Strip. The world’s second-oldest serving president (after Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya), Abbas has been in office for 20 years, and for nearly the entire time has failed to hold elections. His weakness has left Palestinians leaderless, critics say, at a time when they face an existential crisis and hopes for establishing a Palestinian state, the centerpiece of Abbas’[s] agenda, appear dimmer than ever. Palestinians say Israel’s campaign against Hamas that has decimated Gaza amounts to genocide, a view echoed by many international legal experts, organizations and other countries.” (11/15/25)
“Israel’s allies worldwide are desperately scrambling to help Tel Aviv reestablish a convincing narrative, not only concerning the Gaza genocide, but the entire legacy of Israeli colonialism in Palestine and the Middle East. The perfect little story, built on myths and outright fabrications (that of a small nation fighting for survival amid ‘hordes of Arabs and Muslims’) is rapidly collapsing. It was a lie from the start, but the Gaza genocide has made it utterly indefensible. The harrowing details of the Israeli genocide in Gaza were more than enough for people globally to fundamentally question the Zionist narrative, particularly the racist Western trope of ‘the ‘villa in the Jungle’ used by Israel to describe its existence among the colonized population.” (11/15/25)
“Brazil’s federal police formally accused President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s former human rights minister Silvio Almeida of sexual misconduct after he was fired over the allegations last year, a police official said Saturday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly speak about the case. Prosecutors will now decide whether to press charges. If they do so, the Supreme Court will either throw them out or accept them, in which case Almeida would face a trial. Local media outlets reported that police had formally accused Almeida on Friday. He has not commented since then, but has previously denied allegations of wrongdoing. Lula fired Almeida last September after MeToo Brazil, an organization that defends women victims of sexual violence, said that it had received complaints of sexual misconduct by the former minister.” (11/16/25)
“The debate over affordability is now truly and fully joined. Ahead of next year’s midterms, Democrats are coalescing around a cost-of living message that makes more sense than their anti-Trump obsessions (not that we aren’t going to hear a lot about those). For its part, the White House has concluded that the affordability issue is a vulnerability, and President Trump has thrown out a raft of proposals to address it — from $2,000 tariff rebates to 50-year mortgages. Health care will be a major front in this fight, a traditional Democratic policy strength that the party emphasized during the just-concluded government shutdown. In isolation, the Democratic demand to extend Obamacare subsides in perpetuity shouldn’t be sustainable.” (11/14/25)
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to ‘overhaul’ state-owned energy companies, after a major corruption scandal engulfed the country’s energy sector. Around $100 million (£76m) has been embezzled, anti-graft investigators said, causing outrage in a country where Russian attacks have resulted in crippling power outages. ‘Alongside a full audit of their financial activities, the management of these companies is to be renewed,’ Zelensky wrote in a post on X on Saturday. Energoatom, the state nuclear company at the heart of the scandal, will have a new supervisory board ‘within a week,’ he added. Several of those implicated in the scandal have close links to the Ukrainian president. The scandal is unfolding against the backdrop of escalating Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities, including substations that supply electricity to nuclear power plants.” (11/15/25)
“Just one week after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to cut up to 10% of their flights from 40 major U.S. airports, the Trump administration is scrapping a Biden-era policy that made getting refunds from airlines a lot easier. On Friday, the Department of Transportation withdrew the Airline Passenger Rights policy, which regulates compensation standards for airlines and requires cash payments when airlines are responsible for flight disruptions. A federal filing obtained by SFGATE said the move was in line with the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’s Deregulatory Agenda.'” (11/14/25)
