Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The dolphins are getting Alzheimer’s from algae blooms caused by warming waters and toxic runoff / and you could see the bloodstains in Sudan from space. / The cobalt is mined by children and the music is made by robots / and the grownups are wondering
where the fireflies went. / It is an elephant with an eyepatch and a prosthetic leg. / It’s a freshly emptied bed in the nursing home. / A hand offers you pills to numb the dissonance, / but you swat it away and howl naked in the thorns. / Somewhere there’s an ibis on a piano in a junkyard in the rain. / Somewhere else there’s a small boy who has just learned the word ‘treasure’. / ‘Look! Buried treasure!’ he tells his dad. / ‘No. That’s just glass worn smooth by the sea.’ / ‘Is that treasure?’ / ‘No, that’s just a shiny candy wrapper shimmering in the sun.’…” (11/17/25)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/11/17/treasure/
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“France Tuesday promoted Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain wrongly convicted of treason in 1894, to the rank of brigadier general as an act of reparation in a notorious case of anti-Semitism that has caused outrage for generations. … Dreyfus, a 36-year-old army captain from the Alsace region of eastern France, was accused in October 1894 of passing secret information on new artillery equipment to a German military attache. … Despite a lack of evidence, Dreyfus was convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment in the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana and publicly stripped of his rank. … Only in 1906, after many twists, did the high court of appeal overturn the original verdict, exonerating Dreyfus. He was reinstated with the rank of major and decorated with a Legion d’Honneur award. He served during World War I and died in 1935, aged 76.” (11/18/25)
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251118-france-promotes-jewish-soldier-dreyfus-130-years-after-scandal
Source: Antiwar.com
“UN Places Gaza Under Control of US-Led Board, Trump Won’t Rule Out Troops to Venezuela, and More.” (11/18/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5xS6R_vgYg
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“The 60-vote supermajority the United States Senate needs to end debate and vote on legislation is a small‑r republican measure, not a small‑d democratic one. Reasonable people can disagree over its merits, certainly, but I like the greater consensus it requires. What I don’t like is that the party in control of the Senate can at any time change the filibuster rule in any way it wishes, including ending it altogether. Rules shouldn’t be this easy to junk. Make the Senate filibuster not just a rule, but constitutional law.” (11/18/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/11/18/constitutional-defects/
Source: SFGate
“Tanzania’s president on Tuesday said her government may lose access to the international funding that largely keeps the nation afloat after the worst election violence in the country’s history. ‘We have to look for funds internally using our God-given resources,’ President Samia Suluhu Hassan said. The East African nation’s Oct. 29 elections were marked by three days of protests during which the opposition asserts that more than 2,000 people died. Hundreds of others were arrested and charged with treason. The president later asked for some to be released. Hassan was declared the winner with over 97% of the vote after competitors from the two main opposition parties were barred from running. On Monday, she announced her new cabinet, which includes her daughter and son-in-law. On Tuesday, Hassan urged it to find local money to fund development projects.” (11/18/25)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/tanzania-s-leader-says-election-violence-could-21194734.php
Source: The American Conservative
by John J Mearscheimer
“Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today.” (11/18/25)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mearsheimer-europes-bleak-future/
Source: New York Times
“Cloudflare, a company that helps websites secure and manage their internet traffic, experienced issues with its global network, the company said early Tuesday, disrupting service for many websites and apps.
‘Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers,’ the company posted in a status update shortly before 7 a.m. ‘We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem.’ In an update about 20 minutes later, it said disruptions had begun to ease, but said it was continuing to investigate the issue. … The outage hit nearly a month after Amazon Web Services experienced problems with its service, disrupting a wide range of online services for hours.” [editor’s note: Rational Review News Digest was down for several hours due to the Cloudflare problems, but it remains the best CDN/caching solution I’ve found – TLK] (11/18/25)
https://archive.is/W356P
Source: Quillette
“Ancient Christianities: The First 500 Years.” (11/17/25)
https://quillette.com/2025/11/17/podcast-312-ancient-christianities-the-first-500-years/
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“Terrorism is indiscriminate violence intended to sow fear, thereby advancing political objectives. Drug trafficking is for-profit commerce. ‘Narco-terrorists’ is a self-contradictory neologism coined to turn crime (drug trafficking) into war, thereby enabling lethal kinetic stuff by the war secretary. … Channeling his inner Humpty Dumpty (”When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — nothing more nor less”), Donald Trump has decided that this hypothetical fentanyl from Venezuela might be a ‘chemical weapon’ (like mustard gas or sarin?). An odd one, that Americans pay for and ingest.” (11/17/25)
https://archive.is/232VZ
Source: Town Hall
by Stephen Moore
“The buzzword of the month is ‘affordability,’ and based on the election results from New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, voters think that’s declining. Democrats think they’ve found a winning issue here to win back the hearts and minds of voters after the Trump sweep last year. It’s true that people are angry about prices. Steaks and hamburgers are more expensive than ever. So are coffee and rents, and medical care. Many Americans are about to see a 10%-20% increase in their health care premiums starting in January. But who’s to blame? President Donald Trump said he would bring prices down; that hasn’t happened. His tariffs have nudged up prices on certain products like coffee and cars. But since Trump came into office in January, the inflation rate has fallen.” (11/18/25)
https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2025/11/18/want-lower-prices-more-affordability-move-to-a-red-state-n2666589
