“As Steven F. Hayward lays out in his forum lead this month, the environmental legal and activist movement that started in the 1960s, and which is best known culturally for the first observance of Earth Day in 1970, is rapidly coming to an end in ways that its advocates are just beginning to realize. While the underlying motives for modern environmentalism — primitivism, naturalistic fallacy, power lust, and an atheist/materialist hatred of humanity — will likely always be with us, their combination into an allegedly benevolent political movement is well past its effective peak.” (10/08/25)
“The Department of Labor’s new rule cutting farmworker wages bluntly states that souped-up immigration enforcement has devastated the agricultural workforce and created a significant ‘risk of supply shock-induced food shortages,’ according to a document filed in the Federal Register last week. The document also indicates that American workers are simply not interested in and do not have the skills to perform agricultural jobs, at odds with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s claim that the farm workforce will soon be 100 percent American. ‘The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers,’ the document says, adding that ‘this threat will grow’ given new federal funding for immigration enforcement under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (10/08/25)
“‘It is essential that we (CIA/NSA/FBI/ODNI) be on the same page and are all supportive of the report,’ wrote former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, ‘in the highest tradition of ‘that’s OUR story, and we’re sticking to it.” Clapper wrote that in a recently declassified email from late 2016. It’s about RussiaGate, which his inter-departmental team had concocted out of Clinton oppo campaign research leading up to Donald Trump’s unexpected win that year. … Do you remember where that phrase came from?” (10/08/25)
“Ten years from now, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and countless others who enabled or excused the destruction of Gaza will almost certainly be dead – perhaps passing away peacefully one night during a restful dream. What they leave behind, however, is a legacy shaped not only by their actions but by how those actions are remembered. History books may brand them as monsters or war criminals – or, just as easily, frame them as leaders caught in a ‘complicated’ era, sanitizing their complicity.” (10/08/25)
“In the stock room at Division Vapor in Portland, Oregon, a sign affixed to a metal rack holding various nicotine solutions reminds employees to ‘Censor Before [You] Stock!’ The sign alludes to state regulations that require merchants to obscure allegedly child-enticing images and words before displaying vaping products to their adult customers. The law that authorizes those bewildering rules, which in many cases require covering almost the entire label of products sold in stores that do not even admit minors, is at the center of a case that the Oregon Supreme Court is considering today. The case illustrates how concerns about underage vaping have become a pretext for overriding the rights of adult consumers and the businesses that serve them, including the right to communicate and receive information about potentially lifesaving products that offer a harm-reducing alternative to conventional cigarettes.” (10/08/25)
“Calling in the National Guard and federal law enforcement isn’t a solution — it’s a signal that the system has cracked. Chicago is learning the hard way what happens when outdated police hiring practices collide with political cuts. Since 2019, more than 2,100 police positions have been eliminated, while the city added layers of bureaucracy. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) still has 795 unfilled vacancies, compounded by 833 position cuts under Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and 614 by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The result: President Donald Trump is now sending in the National Guard to cover gaps created by years of slow hiring pipelines, endless vacancies and deliberate downsizing.” [editor’s note: Snider is correct that military occupation of American cities isn’t a “solution” — to crime, anyway – TLK] (10/08/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“Whenever I criticize GDP, I am pressed as to what I’d replace it with, and many critics of GDP do indeed eagerly pitch their new and improved versions to equally clueless wonks and academics. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m not even a little bit interested in such a nasty project, and a central pillar of my criticism of GDP is that it tries to measure the economic health of a country with a single test, even if an aggregate one. I’d suggest instead that no power center, state, or other authoritarian apparatus steering from the putative top should dictate or endorse a single standard of how communities or individuals assess their own wellbeing or economic outcomes.” (10/08/25)
“My childhood haunts of eating breakfast at Bickford’s — a pancake house chain serving stale, microwaved pancakes — and the two styles of ‘ethnic’ food in my suburban Boston home of Norwood, Massachusetts — sub-par Greek-style pizza and my childhood Chinese food restaurant, also sub-par — have all gone out of business. The culture has been ‘ruined’ by the emergence of authentic Mexican, Indian, Ethiopian and Thai restaurants (all unheard of in my teenage years). Eek! They’ve overrun our culture! By all means, let us give up tacos and go back to America’s historic culture of boiled dinners.” (10/07/25)
“Since Israel recommenced bombing Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel — unleashing what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, a United Nations commision and the consensus among genocide scholars all agree is a genocide — U.S. corporate media has reduced Palestinian participation in the discussion about their own extermination to mariginal or token appearances. In the context of the Sunday morning news shows that set the agenda for Washington, DC, Palestinians have been excluded almost categorically. Last December, I detailed for The Nation how the major Sunday morning news shows were an object lesson in the ways corporate media has centered U.S. and Israel perspectives in the war on Gaza over that of Palestinians whose voices are systematically shut out of mainstream news coverage.” (10/07/25)
