“Every two years, the 183 Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) meet for the Conference of the Parties (COP). This is the treaty’s governing body: a closed-door diplomatic forum where decisions are made on global tobacco policy, regulatory guidelines, technical documents, and the political direction of the treaty system. … The most revealing episode from COP11 was not about taxes or liability. It was the campaign against a small group of countries—Saint Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, New Zealand, the Philippines, and others—that dared to raise an uncomfortable but obvious point: safer nicotine products exist, millions use them, and the treaty should look honestly at the evidence.” (11/27/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing there’s nothing we can do. Nothing we can do to fight the machine because it’s too large and entrenched, and nothing we can do to change our own personal circumstances because the deck is stacked so unfairly against ordinary people. It’s a strong illusion because at a surface glance it appears to be true. Our political systems are locked down by the rich and powerful to ensure that our votes don’t inconvenience them in any way, and any new political movement which challenges establishment power structures will find itself facing sabotage from the outside and from within. Our voices are kept marginalized and our countrymen have been turned into mindless empire automatons by a lifetime of propaganda indoctrination. And at first glance we appear to be just as powerless in our personal lives as well.” (11/27/25)
“Elliott Abrams has resurfaced with familiar instructions on how to ‘fix’ Venezuela, a country he neither understands nor respects, yet feels entitled to rearrange like a piece of furniture in Washington’s living room. His new proposal is drenched in the same Cold War fever and colonial mindset that shaped his work in the 1980s, when U.S. foreign policy turned Central America into a graveyard. My childhood in Venezuela was shaped by stories from our region that the world rarely sees: stories of displacement, of death squads, of villages erased from maps, of governments toppled for daring to act outside Washington’s orbit. And I know exactly who Elliott Abrams is, not from think-tank biographies, but from the grief woven into Central America’s landscape.” (11/27/25)
“It is important to celebrate victories for economic freedom as they emerge, even when they come in the most peculiar of places. One such place is the racing world. In October, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein signed into law HB 926, called the ‘Right to Race’ law. This new measure shields racetracks from noise-related nuisance lawsuits if the facility existed and was permitted before nearby properties were developed. This is an incredible win for economic freedom against NIMBYs demanding to silence roaring engines after making the decision to move next to a racetrack.” (11/27/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Susan Hammond & Sera Koulabdara
“Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides over southern Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, and parts of Cambodia. Nearly two-thirds was Agent Orange, later discovered to be contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) — a potent, long-lasting dioxin. TCDD is a known human carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor, linked to cancers, reproductive disorders, and birth defects that can span generations. By the letter of the CWC, Agent Orange is not classified as a ‘chemical weapon.’” If you ask a Vietnam veteran suffering from Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease, or any of the 19 types of conditions the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) associates with Agent Orange exposure, you’ll hear a very different story. To them, it was every bit a weapon designed to destroy life and health.” (11/27/25)
“What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is not to the government that assaults our freedoms and steals our wealth but to God, who gave us our freedoms and our ability to earn wealth? What if, on Thanksgiving Day, our gratitude is for life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the exercise of free will and human reason? What if these are integral to our humanity despite the government’s assaults on them? What if, on Thanksgiving Day, we recognize the evils of a government that is blind to the consequences of its killings, borrowings and assaults on freedom?” (11/27/25)
“Let’s set aside the controversy over what Walmart’s shrinkflation of its annual Thanksgiving feast bundle might suggest for the recent trajectory of grocery prices. The good news for which we can be thankful is that the share of their incomes that average Americans devote to paying for food has fallen steeply over the last 100 years.” (11/27/25)
“In most sectors of the American economy, we celebrate the moment when insiders break away to build something better. Engineers start their own firms. Chefs open their own restaurants. Innovators leave incumbents and test their mettle in the market. Only in US healthcare do we treat that entrepreneurial impulse as a threat worthy of prohibition. Section 6001 of the 2010 Affordable Care Act froze the growth of physician-owned hospitals (POHs) by barring new POHs from getting paid by Medicare and Medicaid, and by restricting the expansion of existing POHs. … The POH issue illustrates how, in a mixed economy, controls beget controls.” (11/27/25)
“Black Friday used to be ugly: Articles about people camping in parking lots on Thanksgiving night. Stories of retail workers being subject to abuse by rowdy customers. Videos of people elbowing and punching their way to a bargain on a new TV. Not a good look for capitalism. Fortunately, things have changed. Now people don’t expect to see customers shoving each other on Black Friday. In fact, they don’t expect to see them at all. People can shop online, at a discount, from the comfort of their own homes. They also spread out their holiday shopping more than in the past, making the single day less important. In other words, people are doing capitalism every day instead of taking Black Friday off.” (11/27/25)
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“The contrast between George Washington’s first Thanksgiving proclamation and the state of the nation today reveals how far we have drifted — and how low we have fallen — since Washington called upon early Americans (a nation of immigrants) to give thanks for a government that protected their safety and happiness, and for a Constitution designed to safeguard civil and religious liberty. But how do you give thanks for freedoms that are constantly being eroded? How do you express gratitude for one’s safety when the perils posed by the American police state grow more treacherous by the day? How do you come together as a nation in thanksgiving when the powers-that-be continue to polarize and divide us into warring factions?” (11/26/25)
