Source: The UnPopulist
by Chris Edelson
“Lincoln faced a real insurrection and still did not go as far as this president.” (10/06/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-is-destroying-the-us-constitution
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Peter C Gøtzsche
“It has been surprisingly difficult to get an answer to a simple and highly relevant question: Is aluminium in vaccines harmful? After having studied the best evidence we have, the randomised trials, in great detail, I conclude that the answer is yes. Like lead, aluminium is a highly neurotoxic metal. We will therefore expect vaccines containing aluminium adjuvants to cause neurological harms if the aluminium enters the nervous system in neurotoxic amounts.” (10/06/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/aluminium-in-vaccines-is-harmful/
Source: The American Prospect
by Robert Kuttner
“After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the government began cracking down on hidden transfers of wealth. The purpose was to prevent money laundering that might finance terrorism. Some of this was codified in the USA PATRIOT Act. After the financial collapse of 2008, other safeguards were added. All this strengthened the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), with the side benefit of helping regulatory agencies track down other uses of concealed wealth, whether or not they are related to national security. But in the ensuing quarter-century, extreme wealth became ever more concentrated, and oligarchs became ever more crafty at hiding the true ownership of wealth through trusts and corporate forms that are utterly opaque to financial regulators, the IRS, and the national-security establishment, much less the public.” (10/07/25)
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-10-07-how-scott-bessent-enables-oligarchy/
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Carol Daniel-Kasbari
“In Deir al-Balah, a mother told me her son now counts the seconds between blasts. Policy, to her, isn’t a debate; it’s whether trucks arrive and the night is quiet. Donald Trump’s 20-point plan promises ceasefire, hostages home, Israeli withdrawal, and reconstruction. It sounds complete. It isn’t. Without enforceable mechanics, maps, timelines, phased verification, and real local ownership; it risks being a short-lived show, not a durable peace.” (10/06/25)
Source: The Honest Courtesan
by Maggie McNeill
“The way people of later times view a dark age is, due once again to the lack of reliable records, not at all the same as the way people living in such an age view it; the only people who are in a position to recognize that they’re living in such an age are those who understand what the term means in the first place. So it’s doubtful that the authoritarian rulers of countries like India and the United States recognize (or care) what they’re doing to future history; what’s important to this discussion is that they are using modern computer technology to do it. In the last century, it would’ve been impossible for a Trump, Modi, or Xi to eliminate every single instance of a fact or opinion they disliked …. when physical media are no longer the norm, universal censorship of a work enters the realm of the possible.” (10/06/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Throughout history, there have been tyrannies that have been imposed on the citizenry through non-democratic means. Monarchies have been one example. Another example have been communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Cuba. Still other examples have been U.S.-supported national-security-state coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. What many Americans fail to realize, however, is that it is entirely possible to have tyranny with a democratically elected system.” (10/06/25)
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“When John Searle exposes the errors of materialists, dualists can only be delighted. Searle and dualists, both minorities in academic philosophy of mind, have something crucial in common: Namely, they agree that mental states as standardly conceived exist; they are not ‘really’ illusions, behavior, functions, or computer programs. Denial of the reality of the mental, rather than being the necessary implication of science, is in fact a profoundly unscientific attempt to say that reality can only contain what our theories adequately account for. Despite these points of agreement, Searle’s solution to the mind-body problem is avowedly anti-dualistic; and even if he requested admission to the dualist camp, it is likely that they should be uneasy to receive him.” (10/06/25)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/solving-the-mind-body-problem-dualism
Source: Reason
by CJ Ciaramella
“When the second Trump administration issued an order threatening to strip federal funding from K-12 schools that teach children ‘anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies’ related to gender and race, it was lifting from Florida’s playbook. Likewise, the administration’s campaign against universities on such issues as anti-Israel protests, transgender athletes, and critical race theory were all preceded by Florida, where a powerful executive branch, Republican-controlled Legislature, and conservative state Supreme Court allowed Gov. Ron DeSantis to apply intense pressure to public universities and school districts. … In March, Maria Rojas, a Texas midwife who operated four clinics for low-income women in Harris and Waller counties, became the first person in the state arrested for allegedly providing illegal abortions. Rojas'[s] case was the first opportunity for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office to flex its new criminal and civil powers under a trio of anti-abortion bills passed in 2021.” (for publication 11/25)
Source: CounterPunch
by Jeff Cohen & Richard Eskow
“Parts of the plan are uncontroversial. All sane people want the war to end quickly. And few would object to point 18, which calls for ‘an interfaith dialogue …based on the values of tolerance and peaceful co-existence.’ And yet, I wonder how many Americans noticed that #5 calls on Israel to release the 1,700 people it has seized from Gaza since 2023, ‘including all women and children …’ How many Americans even knew that Israel routinely imprisons children before they saw that sentence? Our media doesn’t mention it much. … Under international law, the United States and other countries should condemn this child abuse and demand that the children be released. however, the Trump plan uses this longstanding criminal practice as leverage, saying that the children will only be released when Hamas accedes to the demands in this proposal.” (10/06/25)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/06/the-trump-peace-plan-is-itself-a-war-crime/
Source: TomDispatch
by Alfred McCoy
“In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat ‘discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, [and] became convinced … that the only livable life was one of show.’ In amassing unchecked power spiced with unimaginable cruelty, that fictional dictator extinguished any flicker of opposition in his imaginary Caribbean country, reducing its elite to a craven set of courtiers. Even though he butchered opponents, plundered the treasury, raped the young, and reduced his nation to penury, ‘lettered politicians and dauntless adulators … proclaimed him the corrector of earthquakes, eclipses, leap years and other errors of God.'” (10/06/25)