Chris Brown given suspended eight-month prison sentence over nightclub attack

Source: BBC News [UK state media]

“US singer Chris Brown has avoided jail after striking a man twice in the head with a glass tequila bottle in a London nightclub. The R&B star was given an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, over the attack at private members’ club Tape in Mayfair, in the early hours of 19 February 2023. Brown’s vocal coach, rapper Omololu Akinlolu, who joined the attack, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months. Both men, who had pleaded guilty to affray, were also ordered to pay £1,500 costs. Judge Tony Baumgartner said Brown’s use of the glass bottle to hit the victim twice over the head ‘was plainly dangerous’, adding that the violence of the attack was ‘intense’. The sentence means Brown will not be imprisoned unless he commits another offence during the 12-month period of suspension.” (10/26/26)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq3dje4g4d5jo

Parents shouldn’t need Congress to see their children’s school curriculum

Source: Fox News
by David L Bernstein

“Philadelphia parents noticed troubling signs in their children’s social studies curriculum and asked to see all the materials. They couldn’t get them. Now those materials have been brought to light in a congressional investigation. A new majority staff report from the House Education and Workforce Committee documents how a small group of school personnel turned Philadelphia’s social studies curriculum into a political platform for extremist causes. When those parents approached my organization, the North American Values Institute (NAVI), asking for help, we tried to find out what the district was teaching but we also hit a wall. Eventually, a teacher shared the curriculum with us with considerable trepidation. She asked that we protect her anonymity. That alone should give us pause: A teacher feared sharing public school instructional materials with people seeking to understand what children were learning.” (10/26/26)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/parents-shouldnt-need-help-congress-see-children-school-curriculum

Trump Exempts Some Canadian Products From Section 338 Tariffs—But His Illegal Trade War Continues

Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Ilya Somin

“In addition to illegally usurping congressional power over taxation, the Trump trade war against Canada damages our economy and poisons relations with a key ally. Courts should strike it down, just as they did with the IEEPA tariffs and the more recent Section 122 tariffs. They should also invalidated the massive Section 301 ‘forced labor’ tariffs, which have been challenged in three cases currently before the US Court of International Trade.” (10/25/26)

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/10/25/trump-exempts-some-canadian-products-from-section-338-tariffs-but-his-illegal-trade-war-continues/

Arms Control, Not Ukraine, Should be on the Superpowers’ Agenda

Source: CounterPunch
by Imran Khalid

“Asked at the White House whether he would sit down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next month’s APEC summit in Shenzhen, Donald Trump steered the conversation from Ukraine to warheads. ‘We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization,’ he said. Russia, he added, ‘has been fine on Ukraine.’ In the same exchange he suggested it was time for someone other than Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate for Kyiv. Two proposals now ride on one invitation.” (10/26/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/10/26/arms-control-not-ukraine-should-be-on-the-superpowers-agenda/

SpaceX closes $40 billion debt deal for AI chips, Elon Musk says

Source: CNBC

“SpaceX has closed $40 billion in debt financing to buy graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to power artificial intelligence systems. In a post on X on Sunday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said it had closed the financing, adding that the company was investment grade and generated revenue from its Starlink satellite internet and rocket launch businesses. In a follow-up post, he added that the financing primarily consisted of callable debt for graphics processing units, which are expected to arrive in the first and second quarters of 2027. In a regulatory filing Monday, SpaceX said it signed a binding commitment with an Apollo-managed entity for roughly $40 billion in GPU financing.” (10/26/26)

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/26/spacex-closes-40-billion-debt-deal-for-ai-chips-elon-musk-.html

The Grindhouse is the Opera of the Oppressed

Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid

“The American grindhouse has long been a playground for fomenting radical notions among thrill seeking proles with a few bucks to spare and a taste for something right to the point. The high-brow critics call this exploitation cinema and wag their bony fingers at such fare for indulging in spectacle and bad taste and they aren’t totally wrong. The problem is that modern late-capitalist civilization has reduced us all to a slumbering horde of flesh-eating zombies and the spectacle of ‘bad taste’ or transgressing our prescribed bourgeoise sensibilities is the only thing that will ever wake us. I know because it has before and not that long ago. The neon bathed grindhouses of pre-Giuliani Time Square achieved this goal with a rash of garish subcultural revolutions while Godard sold out and every new wave became assimilated into Spielbergian Hollywood dreck.” (10/25/26)

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-grindhouse-is-opera-of-oppressed.html

Trump says he ordered frivolous DOJ lawsuit over Alaska US Senate race

Source: SFGate

“President Donald Trump on Friday said he told his administration to file its lawsuit to block certification of the U.S. Senate race in Alaska if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, kicking off what many fear could become a lengthy battle between the government and states over certifying an election where the president’s party is struggling. ‘I’m the one that said do it,’ Trump told reporters as he landed for a campaign rally in Florida. The lawsuit, filed late Thursday, centers on one of the president’s longstanding complaints in the Senate race — the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan …. The second Sullivan, who is Daniel J. Sullivan from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg, has said he decided to run on his own, but Republicans have contended he is a Democratic plant to siphon votes away from their candidate.” (10/26/26)

https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/trump-s-administration-sues-block-possible-22490957.php

Taking Our Country Back

Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon

“Much like the phrase ‘will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood,’ the phrase ‘we’re taking our country back’ is an interesting one for its implications. It presupposes 1) there is a group collectively understood as ‘we’; 2) this group once had possession of the United States; 3) this group no longer has possession of the United States; 4) because it was taken away by another group; and 5) it must be taken back. This is all interesting stuff for sure, especially when one considers that the ‘we’ implicit in the phrase is, if you interrogate it long enough, white people—specifically white Christian people, specifically white Christian men, specifically wealthy white Christian men. Especially when one considers that this group, as a matter of political and institutional reality, is the most over-represented, over-coddled, over-defended, and over-privileged group in the nation, maybe in human history. ” (10/25/26)

https://www.the-reframe.com/taking-our-country-back/