Global
There’s nothing good about the latest retreat by the Supreme Court on voting rights as they temporarily allowed the Trump administration to move forward to use the postal service to somehow police and restrict mail ballot delivery for the coming midterm election. It doesn’t take much imagination to envision the chaos since one-third of US voters now mail their ballots.
New and existing suits may derail these anti-democratic efforts. A whistleblower report indicates that in trying to obey Trump’s executive order, the postal service is working on a program that would foul an entire batch of mail ballots, numbering in the hundreds or thousands, if one ballot comes up without a match to the list. This is disenfranchisement at an entirely new level.
Possibly trans judges are woke-quashing Big Trump’s efforts to save genders from more genders. Migrants are being kidnapped to random countries while Geo Group purchases a lease on their torture. And Congressional Middle East policy has been handed by the Schumer-Jeffries Party to Israel First Last and Only, Inc, dba AIPAC.
Canada and the United States have frequently maintained that they have a special relationship, characterized by the world’s longest undefended international border, peaceful interaction, common values, and a close defense partnership through NATO.
Nevertheless, the two nations are currently locked in an increasingly destructive battle.
People who believe capitalism is working out great are just sloppy thinkers who’ve fallen victim to survivorship bias and the just-world fallacy.
Survivorship bias is when your analysis focuses on those who made it while ignoring those who didn’t. You got a decent job, bought a house, and are now living comfortably, which means the system works fine and there must be something wrong with anyone who can’t thrive under it.
Yair “Little Bibi” Netanyahu, the eldest of the two sons of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—Israel’s “Crime Minister,” as some of his critics call him—was reportedly “urgently” evacuated from Miami after what was described as a “significant threat.” Oh, the irony.
On August 29–30, 2026, Al Jazeera reported that Israel’s Shin Bet security service confirmed that Yair Netanyahu was urgently evacuated from Miami to Israel because of what it called a “significant threat” to harm him. Benjamin Netanyahu had complained a couple of days earlier that Iran had a plan to kill one of his sons. Days later, Israeli media reported that the threat was Iran-linked. However, Shin Bet has not publicly released details about the specific plot, suspects, or evidence.
I wonder why.
Why is there apparently no similar threat to Bibi’s other son, who lives quietly in England? Little Bibi had to leave Miami immediately, reportedly without even having time to pack his belongings? It reminds me of the old sailor returning home after a year at sea, only to be greeted by his pregnant wife.
This essay examines whether political mechanisms historically associated with fascism are necessarily dependent upon secular nationalism, or whether analogous mechanisms can emerge within a religious revolutionary state. The Islamic Republic of Iran provides a particularly important case because its political order combines theocratic authority, revolutionary ideology, institutionalized coercion, restricted political competition, militarized power, and extensive regulation of society. The question is not whether Iran is simply another version of Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany. The more consequential question is whether political structures and mechanisms historically associated with fascism can be reproduced under a radically different ideological foundation.
Criticism of the Islamic Republic's authoritarian political structure should not be interpreted as an endorsement of American hegemony or Israeli military policy. Conversely, opposition to American or Israeli power does not require political or moral justification of the Iranian state. These are analytically separate questions.
The US has joined the UK in adding the activist group Palestine Action to its list of designated terrorist organizations.
The UK proscribing Palestine Action was already arguably the most insane attack on free speech in recent western history, and now it’s the official position of the US government as well. Western support for Israel is poisoning our entire civilization.
The US has also made the unprecedented move of adding the Italian tech support collective Autistici/Inventati to its list of banned terrorist groups, not because they’ve been accused of any crimes, but explicitly because the company allows people to communicate with each other while staying “anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law.” Americans are now strictly forbidden from any transactions with the banned company.
In this dystopia, mass surveillance is now so normalized that you can be designated a terrorist for helping people avoid being surveilled.
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Last Monday the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director (DCI) John Ratcliffe and his retinue boarded a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster transport plane at Joint Base Andrews airfield in Maryland, stopped presumably to refuel at the Riga airport in NATO member Latvia, and then flew on to land at Vnukovo International Airport, one of the four airports that serve the Russian capitol Moscow. The plane touched down on Tuesday at 9 am local time. The trip had been unannounced and its purpose was somewhat of a mystery. Ratcliffe and company departed the airport security zone in a diplomatic motorcade of armored vehicles that either were being transported in the plane itself or drawn from the US Embassy and CIA Station’s own supply of administrative vehicles. One source speculates that the vehicles were being carried in the large transport aircraft because they were equipped with secure communications that would enable them to connect with Washington without the Russians having the ability to intercept what was being said.