Citizens defeat billionaires (for now)
Solano County voters have used local power to stall a proposed tech billionaire city called California Forever. They even beat Gavin Newsom
War in the name of God
The heroes are all gone. We should not miss them.
Israeli Jets in UK: Correspondence with MP and MOD
Query sent to Jessiva Asato (Member of Parliament for Lowestoft) via TheyWorkForYou on Monday 26 January 2026 Dear Jessica Asato, Re: Use of RAF Base […] The post Israeli Jets in UK:…
Opinion Piece Published in The Hill!
I just placed an opinion piece at The Hill: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/6152338-protect-children-maha-agenda/Make America protect children again: EPA’s silence betrays the MAHA…
The Libs Must Be Owned
Clarence Thomas' judicial philosophy is rooted in extraordinarily bad faith
Your Virtual Front Page, Thursday, October 16, 2026
Time we had one of these again: Senators Demand Investigation Into Ukraine Satellite Disruption — NYT — The key word in this lede is “bipartisan.” Here you go: “A…
Wunderline turns to farce, and accountability collapses
In the Newsletter this weekElsewhere this week: Solutions for Flensburg - PadborgAnalysis: Wunderline turns to farce, and accountability collapsesBullshit Meter: Croatia - Greece trains on an EU…
The seams of the law: Brazil's Whole Statute Book, Read at Once by Agents
AI agents read 323,868 Brazilian norms at once. The statute book is mostly not rules and has no small skeleton, and its value sits at the seams, where the law treats equivalent situations differently…
As costuras da lei: Toda a legislação do Brasil, lida de uma vez por agentes
Agentes de IA leram 323.868 normas brasileiras de uma vez. A legislação, na maior parte, não é regra e não tem um esqueleto pequeno, e seu valor está nas costuras, onde a lei trata de maneira…
Tell Me Who To Vote For (Portland Edition 2026)
I'll confess, I haven't been following local politics as much as I should. Like many, I'm frustrated with the gridlock and dysfunction on the city council, which seems to be a majority view (though…
Make Shift
In his soon-to-be-released book Vaporware, Inc, political scientist David Karpf argues that Silicon Valley is no longer in the business of inventing new technologies, building new products, or…
What the Green Party needs to do now
The Green Party must stop relying on electoral politics alone and start building a mass movement for real democracy. Here is a concrete plan to mobilise people and put power back in the hands of…
Conference season
The future of Britain is wide open. With three parties close in the voting intention polls and a very tight Left/Right split 46% to the Right (Con+Reform+Restore) and 50% to the left (Lab+Lib…
596: First Chinese nuclear weapon test (1964)
Date: 16 October 1964 (3:00 PM China Standard Time) Code name: 596 Type: plutonium fission Yield: 22 thousand tons of TNT Location: Lop Nur, Xin Jiang, China
Billionaires suck
I was listening to a podcast yesterday on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine, how Trump has completely sold out Ukraine again and that it’s all for trying to unfuck his dumpster fire of endlessly…
The solution to all our problems, maybe
The big news this week that other planets exist in the cosmos that could support life gives a person hope that Elon Musk will think beyond the moon and Mars and his SpaceX geniuses will build a…
France Is The Future Of The Progressive Project
* Probably, you have read about the recent round of riots in France. They began in late September, and are now in their fourth week. * This round of riots features mostly students, and the stated…
Note published on October 16, 2026 at 1:41 AM UTC
This WSJ investigation exposes yet more Tether-related corruption at the White House, revealing that they paid Bo Hines' consulting firm millions as he was ensuring the Genius Act stablecoin law…
What Theodore Roosevelt Can Teach Us About Reform in 2026
October 2026 Imperfect UnionThis past week, I visited the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library to speak on a panel about presidential biographies at their conference, #TeddyCon. I had the best…
Let me make this clear
Here's my two cents and a an agender queer person. He donated to the the Trevor project and distanced himself from politics altogether. After how people on the internet treat people here, crucify…
Chinese Mine Warfare Surface Drone (USV)
 Better images have emerged of a new Chinese Navy (PLAN – People’s Liberation Army Navy) uncrewed surface vessel.It is somewhat smaller than the type paraded in…
Divesting from the genocide in Gaza is on the Council's Monday agenda
On Monday the Council will consider a policy to divest from companies complicit in the genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestinians. It’s going to be tough policy to pass, so here I’m going to…
Have we reached the end of the Golden Age?
The Age I’m thinking of is the Golden Age of The Gazillionaire Delusion that anything can be bought. What I’m reading and sensing is, Citizens United and subsequent decisions gave…
Autonomy and the Left
I’m pretty clearly a Leftist. However, the Left has one major bone to pick with it — otherwise I’m just a “big tent” person who doesn’t mind so much what values any…
Freeland endorses “Why Great States Fail”
My next book, Why Great States Fail, is now forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press. We are aiming for publication in April 2027. The book is based on my March 2026 Corry Lecture for…
Conversations in Bucharest
I’ll visit Bucharest on November 12-13 to participate in conversations on Romania’s national strategy framework organized by the University of Bucharest and the Secretary-General’s Office…
From rage to renewal – tracking the unfolding American drama
The USA’s upcoming midterms elections are certain to bring drama, – and not just the familiar, nail-biting drama of counting the votes. In the run-up to the election we are likely to witness…
How Communities Are Fighting AI Data Centers and Winning
“There’s so much power in this fight,” says Saul Levin.
Trump flirts with treason
Bad enough to sell out Ukraine by sending millions of dollars to Russia in hopes of reducing diesel prices before the mid-terms, but POTUS is now throttling the country's access to Starlink, which…
A Vote for Kindness
Dear readers; With so much tension swirling around us as the U.S. midterm elections near, I thought it was a good time to bring back this blog. Vive la kindness revolution! -Kathy Some people think…
The Unjust State
“Forget justice, it’s much too expensive and time consuming. Plus if you take the government to court, you will have to spend your own money, and we are saving you from that”. That…
Why Democratic Leaders Keep Waging War on the Young
I DISAGREE! GET ON MY LAWN, KIDS!I have an essay in this month's print edition of The Nation about why Dem leadership (and I don't just mean electeds, I mean people with influence, donors,…
It’s not often that I’m shocked…
Trump has now posted an AI-generated video of himself winning a fight with a tiger following the incident at Yorkshire Wildlife Park this weekend just gone. Where does one even begin to…
Podcast 97: Reversing Brexit, not quite as easy as some people think
Many voted to stay in the EU. Rejoining the EU may sound simple, but the Europe Britain left no longer exists. With a string of major elections approaching and far-right nationalist parties surging…
To SIR with Love or Hate: Why SIR has worked in Punjab, and how Didi sabotaged it in West Bengal
There is something perverse in a political posture where one can target the Election Commission of India (ECI) is abusive language for conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral…
“I hoped the system would have had more capacity for institutional reform than it has.”
Those are the words of Mike Bracken, the former head of the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service (GDS), as he reflected on his departure back in 2015. “We now have a different set of…
The awful photo of a huge tree chopped down…
Almost immediately, I thought of Saruman wrecking the beautiful gardens of Isengard. And then I thought, Ents. The Ents will come. What a wayward, destructive bad seed Trump is! His only monuments…
Democrats Should Run in Every Office in every Red State
It’s important now more than ever for Democrats to run for office in red states at every level, from the town dog catcher to governor, senator, and Congress. The DNC should be funding a…
Elon Musk isn’t an engineer or manager. He’s an influencer and lobbyist.
I’ve been hearing about Starlink Mobile. From Big Wireless stocks tanking to one of my mom’s stocks (American Tower) rising. But while I don’t go on LinkedIn often, I heard…
Turkey, Israel, and the United States: A relationship triangle in the changing Middle East
This episode of This Week in the Middle East features Dr. Galia Lindenstrauss, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and an expert on Turkey. The conversation…
OFAC Penalizes Small Freight Forwarder for Screening Error
Pegasus Worldwide Logistics, a small company with about a dozen employees, agreed to pay a penalty of $175,015 for arranging a shipment for a U.S. customer of a sugar-packet filling machine valued at…
Teardown of a 1000$ voting machine
In Italy, Lombardy spent 24 millions for thousands of voting machines, used them once, then they ended up in the grey market. What’s inside them?
What power plants are people trying to build? MISO edition
On September 30, the Senate released a draft of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA), a 417-page beast of a highly technical bill. BAAJA would overhaul, in deep and…
Paxton-Trump Gun-toting War on Mail-in BallotsViolence as vote suppression
The war against mail-in ballots, crucial to Black, Hispanic and American tribal voters, is turning in to an armed conflict. But, as Edward Ward says, in the latest installment of Jim Crow Reloaded,…
The Fear Machine, the Data Center, and Who Profits When the People of Appalachia Looks Away
Week after week, Americans are urged to fear their neighbors. Political rhetoric targets immigrants, transgender people, Muslims, educators, drag queens, political opponents, banned books, and anyone…
Photos and Report: The 45th Monthly Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure
26 photos from, and my report about the 45th “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and worldwide on…
The NIS2 Compliance Illusion: Why Your Supplier's PC Dealer Is Now Your Board's Problem
The easy story about NIS2 goes like this: it’s yet another bureaucratic Brussels regulation; the CISO handles it, a consultant delivers a binder before the auditors arrive. Executives could hide…
What to do with your Trump Bribe
politics
Governments should provide online spaces like they do community centers
I use Facebook like 32 million other Canadians out of the 34 million who are 15 or older. I don’t like the platform; it’s a cesspool. The feed is just slop to capture attention at any…
Trump Supporters Have Failed The Human Test.
This week, an alarming video surfaced of a woman being assaulted at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for wearing a shirt that said, “Release The Epstein Files’ while heckling the President as a…