On Texas’ Gulf Coast, a massive desalination project is taking shape that would be one of the largest water infrastructure developments in the country—but unlike nearly every other major water system in America, this one [...]
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O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) mencionou a palavra “Deus“ 12 vezes nos discursos realizados após a vitória nas eleições presidenciais de 2026. O levantamento feito pela CNN Brasil mostra que o recorde, porém, é de 2022, com 15 menções.
Apesar de não ter superado a marca anterior, o número atual é o triplo do registrado em 2002, quando o petista foi eleito presidente da República pela primeira vez.
O levantamento considera os pronunciamentos feitos por Lula após a confirmação dos resultados eleitorais, tanto em hotéis, onde tradicionalmente falou à imprensa e a aliados, quanto nos discursos dirigidos a apoiadores na Avenida Paulista, em São Paulo.
Em 2026, foram cinco menções a Deus durante o pronunciamento no hotel e outras sete na Avenida Paulista. Já em 2002, o petista não utilizou a palavra no primeiro discurso, mas fez quatro referências durante a comemoração na avenida.
As menções também estiveram presentes nas vitórias anteriores. Em 2006, Lula citou Deus duas vezes, uma no primeiro pronunciamento e outra na Avenida Paulista. Em 2022, foram cinco no hotel e dez na manifestação com apoiadores.
No primeiro discurso após a vitória de 2026, Lula atribuiu sua trajetória política à generosidade divina e afirmou acreditar que sua chegada à Presidência teve participação de Deus.
“Eu sempre acho que Deus foi muito generoso comigo”, declarou.
Em outro momento, o presidente reforçou a associação entre sua trajetória e a fé religiosa.
Eu fui escolhido por Deus. E eu fui escolhido por Deus, porque eu sempre acho que tem o dedo de Deus na minha cabeça. Eu sempre acho. Então eu quero agradecer a Deus e agradecer a vocês.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Mais tarde, na Avenida Paulista, Lula voltou a mencionar Deus ao relembrar sua primeira eleição presidencial, em 2002, quando se tornou o primeiro operário a chegar à Presidência da República.
“Eu posso dizer para vocês, eu acredito muito em Deus. E eu acho que no dia que o povo brasileiro acordou e resolveu eleger um metalúrgico sem diploma universitário presidente da república foi o dedo de Deus que fez vocês confiarem que o operário poderia fazer mais do que a elite brasileira tinha feito em 500 anos nesse país.”
O petista também associou as referências religiosas à sua origem nordestina e à conquista do quarto mandato presidencial.
“Sou obrigado a agradecer todo dia a Deus pela generosidade dele de fazer o menino que saiu do Nordeste para não morrer de fome e chegar em São Paulo e virar torneiro mecânico, virar presidente e vocês me darem o quarto mandato. Isso é coisa de Deus e é coisa de vocês. Por isso eu amo vocês.”
A eleição de 2022 foi a que registrou o maior número de referências à palavra “Deus” entre os quatro anos analisados.
Após derrotar Jair Bolsonaro (PL) no segundo turno, Lula mencionou o termo cinco vezes no pronunciamento realizado no hotel.
“Quero começar essa pequena fala que vai ser lida com um agradecimento a Deus”, afirmou no início do discurso.
Em seguida, o petista também declarou que “Deus foi muito generoso comigo”.
Na Avenida Paulista, foram outras dez menções, segundo o levantamento. Em uma delas, Lula associou o retorno à Presidência, aos 77 anos, à vontade divina e ao apoio popular: “ser presidente duas vezes e voltar aos 77 anos e ganhar outra vez só pode ser obra de Deus e do povo brasileiro”.
O petista também afirmou que “Deus nos fez iguais e não é possível que alguém seja tratado como inferior”.
Ao longo das quatro eleições, as referências religiosas apareceram em diferentes contextos, incluindo agradecimentos pela vitória, menções à trajetória pessoal e pedidos de proteção para os mandatos seguintes.
Na reeleição de 2006, o então presidente fez duas referências a Deus nos discursos de vitória.
A primeira ocorreu durante um agradecimento ao vice-presidente José Alencar, que permaneceu na chapa presidencial.
“Eu agradeço a Deus de ter encontrado um parceiro de chapa como o companheiro Zé Alencar que além de ser um grande empresário ele é, sobretudo um grande brasileiro e um grande patriota.”
Já na Avenida Paulista, Lula agradeceu aos apoiadores que defenderam seu governo durante o primeiro mandato e pediu força para a gestão seguinte.
“Quero agradecer a cada um de vocês que defendeu o governo mesmo nos momentos mais difíceis. Que Deus permita que a gente tenha força para fazer um governo muito melhor”
Na primeira vitória presidencial, em 27 de outubro de 2002, Lula não mencionou Deus durante o pronunciamento no hotel.
As quatro referências ocorreram no discurso posterior, realizado na Avenida Paulista, diante dos apoiadores que comemoravam sua eleição.
Na ocasião, o petista agradeceu aos partidos e candidatos que o apoiaram no segundo turno e usou a expressão “pelo amor de Deus” ao agradecer aos aliados.
“Quero agradecer mulheres e aos homens deste país que fizeram com que a esperança derrotasse o medo nessa campanha de 2002. Pelo amor de Deus, eu quero aproveitar para agradecer os companheiros que disputaram o segundo turno, o primeiro turno e que não conseguiram chegar lá e que me apoiaram no segundo turno, os companheiros do PPS, os companheiros do PSB.”
Ao encerrar sua fala, Lula voltou a fazer referências a Deus, desta vez pedindo saúde e coragem para governar o país.
“Que Deus abençoe cada um de nós. Que Deus abençoe cada um de vocês e que Deus nos dê saúde e coragem pra gente mudar a história do Brasil e fazer este país ser mais feliz e o nosso povo viver com muito mais dignidade.”
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O Museu da Chapelaria, em São João da Madeira, foi hoje distinguido com o Prémio Museu do Ano 2026, atribuído pela Associação Portuguesa de Museologia (APOM), numa cerimónia realizada em Sesimbra, distrito de Setúbal, anunciou a organização.
O galardão foi atribuído durante a cerimónia dos Prémios APOM, que distinguiu projetos e profissionais em onze categorias, no Cineteatro Municipal João Mota, em Sesimbra, com a presença de representantes de entidades do setor e galardoados.
O Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins (MACAM), em Lisboa, e o Museu Nacional Resistência e Liberdade, instalado na Fortaleza de Peniche, que eram finalistas a Museu do Ano, receberam menções honrosas.
João Neto, presidente da direção da APOM, citado num comunicado da associação, destacou a escolha do museu premiado pelo trabalho de “excelência na preservação do património e memória da arte da chapelaria de São João da Madeira”.
Fundado em 2005, o Museu da Chapelaria é o único espaço museológico da Península Ibérica inteiramente dedicado à história e ao fabrico industrial do chapéu, atividade que marcou o desenvolvimento económico e social de São João da Madeira ao longo do século XX, indica o sítio ‘online’ deste equipamento.
A sua criação está ligada à memória da comunidade operária chapeleira, cujos trabalhadores eram conhecidos como “Unhas Negras”, devido às marcas deixadas nas mãos pelo contacto diário com o feltro, as tintas e os materiais utilizados no fabrico. Com o encerramento progressivo das fábricas, o município procurou preservar o património industrial e as histórias de várias gerações de trabalhadores.
O museu está instalado no edifício da antiga Empresa Industrial de Chapelaria, conhecida como “Fábrica Nova”, fundada em 1914 e encerrada em 1995.
A Câmara Municipal adquiriu o edifício e o espólio industrial em 1996, dando início ao processo que conduziu à criação do espaço museológico, inaugurado a 22 de junho de 2005.
A coleção reúne maquinaria utilizada nas diferentes fases de produção, ferramentas, moldes e formas de madeira, chapéus de várias épocas, fotografias, documentos e registos da atividade fabril.
No percurso da exposição permanente, o público pode acompanhar as etapas de fabrico e conhecer as condições de trabalho, os usos sociais do chapéu e a importância económica da indústria para a região.
Em janeiro de 2025, o Museu da Chapelaria reabriu ao público depois de seis meses de encerramento para obras de requalificação da exposição permanente, financiadas pelo Programa de Apoio a Museus da Rede Portuguesa de Museus (ProMuseus).
A intervenção introduziu novos conteúdos e recursos de interpretação em português e inglês, materiais em braille e soluções multissensoriais destinadas a alargar as condições de acesso às coleções, segundo o museu.
Outra das áreas de intervenção tem sido a acessibilidade, dispondo o museu de percursos acessíveis a pessoas com mobilidade reduzida, conteúdos em braille e materiais que podem ser explorados pelo tato.
Em 2025, o museu recebeu uma menção honrosa do Prémio Acesso Cultura – Mickaella Dantas, pela criação de um Fraldário Acessível, destinado a pessoas de diferentes idades e géneros.
Dirigido por Tânia Reis, o museu está integrado na Rede Portuguesa de Museus desde 2010, ano em que recebeu a credenciação que reconhece a qualidade do trabalho técnico, científico e cultural desenvolvido pela instituição.
O Museu da Chapelaria já tinha sido distinguido pela APOM com três menções honrosas, em diferentes categorias: em 2005, na de Melhor Museu, quando foi um dos finalistas; em 2010, na de Melhor Serviço de Extensão Cultural; e, em 2023, na de Incorporação, pela doação de 77 criações do designer Luís Stoffel.
A APOM recebeu este ano 78 candidaturas aos prémios, provenientes de todo o país, indica ainda o comunicado da associação.
Os Prémios APOM, criados em 1994, distinguem anualmente museus, profissionais e projetos em diferentes áreas da atividade museológica, incluindo investigação, conservação, comunicação, educação e acessibilidade.
Na edição de 2025, que coincidiu com a celebração do 60.º aniversário da APOM, o Museu de Serralves, no Porto, venceu o prémio de Museu Português do Ano.
Suspeitos formaram uma barricada com seis ônibus e um veículo da Light, na tarde desta sexta-feira (30), na Avenida Monsenhor Félix, próximo à Avenida Pastor Martin Luther King Jr, no bairro Irajá, na Zona Norte do Rio de Janeiro.
A Light informou que uma equipe da empresa foi abordada por suspeitos que levaram o veículo da companhia, durante uma operação policial. Os profissionais não foram feridos.
Segundo a Polícia Civil, a ocorrência está em andamento na 27ª DP (Vicente de Carvalho).
A COR-Rio (Centro de Operações Rio) indica que os cariocas evitem a região. Como caminho alternativo sugerem:
Em nota, a Rio Ônibus informou que todos os ônibus já foram liberados do local, mas 19 linhas estão com impactos nas regiões.
Ônibus em barricadas
*Sob supervisão de Thiago Félix
Comando Vermelho: como surgiu e se espalhou a maior facção do Rio
O exame DNA-HPV é indicado pela Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS) desde 2013 e começou a ser utilizado pelo SUS no início do ano em substituição ao teste Papanicolau. A vantagem do exame molecular é que ele é capaz de detectar a presença do vírus antes mesmo de ele evoluir para uma lesão pré-cancerígena, o que ajuda a prevenir e a identificar de forma precoce muitos casos de câncer de colo do útero.
Enquanto a média de idade de rastreamento desse tipo de câncer pelo exame Papanicolau é de 49,3 anos, com o teste molecular de DNA a média de idade foi de 39,6 anos.
Até agora, 26 estados já utilizam o novo protocolo. O Espírito Santo, estado que ainda não fez a substituição, deve receber os novos testes ainda este ano, segundo o Ministério da Saúde (MS).
De acordo com o Instituto Nacional de Câncer (Inca), o Brasil poderá registrar cerca de 19,3 mil novos casos de câncer do colo do útero por ano até 2028. O tumor é o terceiro mais comum em mulheres no País, mas se detectado precocemente tem chances de cura que superam os 95%.
Roughly 60 percent of those making less than $50,000 are living paycheck to paycheck ahead of the holiday shopping season
© AFP/Getty
Arab and Islamic cultures do not produce much of value for humanity as a whole because of the rise of fundamentalist extremism, according to a controversial campaign speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that has [...]
The post RFK Jr: ‘Arabs Don’t Produce Science, Win The Nobel Prize, Or Write Literature’—’All Civilizations Are Not Created Equal’ appeared first on The People's Voice.
Tech advocacy groups are sounding the alarm, warning that the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and a lack of federal oversight for foreign nationals working at AI firms pose a major national security risk.
Amy Kremer, chair of Humans First, a group focused on establishing democratic oversight, safety protocols, and local control over artificial intelligence, said AI technology has virtually no federal guardrails compared to other tech sectors.
"This is a national security threat. These companies hold and have access to a lot of sensitive information," Kremer told Fox News Digital. "You don't have to steal an entire AI model to get information. You can just find out what they're working on, who their partners are, and who their adversaries are. That is not the kind of thing that we need getting out."
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"If America wants to lead the world on AI, and we want America to have this AI advantage, then we have to put national security at the top," she added.
Kremer's concerns come as AI continues to expand, even as many Americans and lawmakers remain wary of the fast-moving industry.
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In early October, an engineer at OpenAI, one of the world's most prominent AI companies, was arrested after allegedly planting a recording device inside a conference room at the AI giant's San Francisco office.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi Arabian citizen, allegedly researched how to construct a recording device and where to place it inside OpenAI, eventually concealing a customized audio recorder behind a television in an executive conference room in late September, according to the Justice Department.
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Searches of his home and electronic devices uncovered similar components and photographs that appeared to show reconnaissance of other locations inside OpenAI, including another conference room used for sensitive meetings, federal prosecutors said.
Alfozan, who was a lawful permanent resident in the United States, was terminated by OpenAI following his arrest.
In January, a former Google software engineer was convicted of stealing thousands of pages of the company's trade secrets related to AI to benefit China.
Even the AI firms themselves have expressed concerns about the technology. In September, OpenAI and Anthropic warned that their advanced systems could pose a direct threat to humanity. The CEOs of both firms stated that their AI models should be regulated and rigorously tested.
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Despite calls for greater controls, in his September speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, President Donald Trump rebuffed calls for international regulation.
"The United States … totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now," Trump told various heads of state and their delegations. "Yet the very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming ... these are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, that everything is going to be a total disaster."
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Among the other mounting concerns are rogue agents, autonomous or semi-autonomous AI programs whose behavior diverges from their design intent or safety constraints.
In the spring, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell held emergency briefings with major Wall Street bank CEOs to warn about severe cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview AI model.
AI COULD GO ROGUE. WASHINGTON NEEDS ANSWERS TO THESE FIVE QUESTIONS ASAP
In July, OpenAI revealed that rogue AI agents hacked into the systems of tech startup Hugging Face.
Some elected officials have called for increased AI regulation.
"There is now a growing alarm about the future of humanity and creating technology that human beings cannot control," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told reporters in September. "And I'm happy to tell you that I think there is a growing sense of urgency upon members of Congress that this has to be done."
That same month, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., blocked a bill that would require artificial intelligence companies to have a kill switch for rogue AI.
"I think it would be crazy to get on the floor one day and regulate an entire industry," Paul told reporters at the time.
In addition to the AI firms themselves, critics of the technology have raised concerns about how it could be exploited by America's adversaries and bad actors.
TRUMP INTEL CHIEF WARNS AI FIRMS ON HACKS, SAYS NEW DEPARTMENT IS THE 'COP ON THE BEAT'
A model created by Chinese firm Z. AI carried out several complex cyberattacks in controlled simulations and repeatedly ignored safety instructions in separate tests, according to a report by AI security research firm Irregular, Reuters reported.
In addition, U.S. intelligence agencies raised concerns regarding contact between Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, and NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang, The New York Times reported. Alice Huang, no relation to Jensen Huang, was deemed by American officials to be a Chinese intelligence asset, according to the report.
"Megaspeed has been no different than many other regional cloud customers. Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected," a NVIDIA spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year."
"Our regional cloud customers receive ordinary business information — not sensitive NVIDIA trade secrets — and zero information relevant to national security," the statement continued. "We're confident that if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know."
Kremer is calling for an investigation into whether Jensen Huang's conduct warrants federal review.
"Jensen Huang has questioned whether it matters who gets to advanced AI first. It matters to America," she said. "He should be barred from the White House, and Nvidia’s government contracts should end until he is no longer affiliated with the company. America’s national security must come before corporate profits."
Fox News Digital's Alex Miller contributed to this report.
With a global capitalist system that is wreaking havoc on the planet, pushing most of humanity into poverty, and enabling a small number of billionaire and trillionaire oligarchs to accumulate more money and power than nation-states, more people around the US and beyond are asking: “Could socialism be the solution?” But can socialism actually work in the real world? Can it actually help create a better world than the one capitalism has created?
In this live-event discussion, hosted at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Baltimore, Maryland, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Ben Burgis and Mike Beggs about their new book, co-authored with Bhaskar Sankara, The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World.
Credits:
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So we’re here at Red Emma’s Cooperative Bookstore and Coffee House in Baltimore, and I am really excited to be sitting with two of the three co-authors of the vital new book, The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World. Ben Burgis and Mike Beggs. Give it up, everyone. Hell yeah. Welcome to Baltimore, guys. So let’s talk about the S word, right? I mean, we’re here. The world’s on fire. Life continues to get harder and scarier year after year for working people everywhere. The masked jackbooted thugs that we were warned about are in our streets, hunting and disappearing our neighbors. Endless war and genocide and profiteering are ripping our world and our people apart. And everything is being run or taken over by these psychopathic, self-serving, greedy, society destroying, profit seeking, oligarchs, end times, fascists, authoritarians and fanatical nut jobs who are all so openly weird and corrupt and evil that it makes your head spin.
I think it’s time we start talking about doing things differently. Don’t you agree? Yeah? So let’s talk about it. Let’s get all the good faith discussions and questions about what socialism is, what it isn’t, and how it can work for us in the real world on the table. And so Ben and Mike, I wanted to start things off this way with the big question. You guys co-wrote this with Bhaskar Sankara, founder of Jacobin Magazine.What is your ideal goal in writing this book together and publishing it now? What would be the ideal definition of success for this book?
Ben Burgis:
Yeah, thank you so much for all that. And I should also say that our third co-author, Bhaskar, would be here tonight, but he has a month old baby at home, so he is on paternity leave from non-New York City events for a couple months at least.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Congrats, Bhaskar.
Ben Burgis:
But I think the way that we would see it is just this. All of those things that you were saying earlier are downstream of the fundamental way that our society is organized, the fundamental relationships and power at the heart of how things are produced in a capitalist society. And to us, the fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism is a question of whether we should have a society where some people can spend all day giving orders because they have money and some people have to spend all day taking orders because they don’t. And right now we’re having this conversation in a small island of a different way of organizing things at a worker-owned bookstore, but right now the fundamental institutions of our economy aren’t set up to support that. That’s not an option for most people that they get to work someplace where they have a democratic say in the way that it would work.
So what we want to think about is how we would have to reorganize our economy on a fundamental institutional level so that everybody can have that experience.
Mike Beggs:
Yeah. And I guess I would add that our brief for this book, what we set out to do was to kind of bracket off the question of how we get there. Strategy is a very important question, absolutely, but it’s also one that holds a lot of your potential model to… Holds it hostage. The short answer to how do we get there from here at the moment quite honestly is I wouldn’t start from here. So we are bracketing off that question. Once you have to start thinking from what is politically realistic right now, it limits what you can say. I mean, where are we starting? I mean, are we starting from current American political reality, Australian reality, reality somewhere else? So we wanted to draw a realistic vision of how a society might work, what is a plausible way that socialism could work that avoids a lot of the problems that people are familiar with.
And the point is not so much to set down a plan that people are going, we expect people to follow in the future and if they don’t, they’re doing it wrong. That’s not the point at all. The point is really to try and be part of a project of building confidence in the present that there actually is a realistic alternative, one that is feasible, one that people can imagine working in, living their daily lives in, one that they think would be a lot better than the way things currently work. And really that sort of confidence in a very different society is I think something that we have lost even on the left. We talk a lot, a lot of us call ourselves socialists, but there really is a lot of sign that a lot of people are not fully confident in articulating exactly what a realistic alternative might look like.
And that’s what we’re trying to do with this book.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, it’s like that real politic of how the fuck do I get through the day in this shitty system, let alone have time to think of what could be is the kind of trapped space that so many of us are in. But the only way out of that is through it together, I think. And so let’s kind of take that in here now, this space, Red Emma’s to sort of… I’m going to take a page from your book, Ben. I’m going to set this up kind of debate style. I want to kind of toss you guys some thoughts, claims, things we’ve all heard about socialism. First, I’m going to give you the softballs. Let’s talk about the straw man claims that are made about socialism. We grew up in America. We all heard these things, but I want to toss them to you guys and see you knock them out of the park.
And then I want us to also talk about the steel man concerns that people who are not Fox News dipshits, people who still have genuine questions about socialism and how it can work in the real world. So with that, I was going to start with kind of just the biggest and most obvious one. Capitalism, this is the straw man. Capitalism is great. Capitalism gives us freedom, individual choice, personal security, and socialism is bad, it’s breadlines, it’s non-individual, no room for the individual. Everything’s dictated to you by the state. Capitalism’s great. Why would I want socialism?
Ben Burgis:
Yeah. I would say that the book is primarily written for people in that second category, the ones who might have some level of understanding about what’s wrong with capitalism but are a bit skeptical that anything else is possible. But we do certainly want to address the first set of concerns too. We do a fair amount of that in the book. And I would just say that obviously when it comes to the kind of democratic rights that we already have, advanced liberal capitalist democracies, freedom of speech, trial by jury, all of that stuff, we like all of that. We want to keep all of that. We are sometimes terrified that the current administration is trying to take away a lot of that. But then the other half of that is what it takes to make those rights meaningful in people’s day-to-day economic lives. If you say, “Hey, legally you can do whatever you want to, but also if you want to eat, you better sign on the dotted line and agree to work for half of the day, half the time that you’re awake most days of the week and only half because of past worker struggles for a boss who is going to have dictatorial power over you at the workplace and you better not piss them off or else you’re going to lose that job and you’ll be in a much worse position,” then that doesn’t sound to me like somebody who has meaningful control over their life.
I think that having meaningful control over your life means that you should have a say in the place that you have to spend the most of your life as an adult. And ultimately also that means that we could all spend less time there anyway because if workers are in charge, when we have productivity gains, when technology advances and we have the choice, okay, do we capture those productivity gains in more stuff or do we want to work fewer hours? Then right now that decision is dictated by this class of private capitalists who aren’t doing the work themselves and it’s a very easy decision for them, right? Produce more stuff, make more money. That’s why the Fair Labor Standards Act in this country set the 40 hour work week in 1938 and has not gone down one minute since then.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Minimum wage ain’t been raised either.
Ben Burgis:
That’s certainly not because technology stopped in 1938. So I think that a society where you can have a say in what happens where you work and where you have to work less and you have more time and more material stability to do whatever the hell you want with the rest of your life sounds like much more meaningful freedom to me.
Mike Beggs:
Yeah. I mean, I would say as we put it in the book that there’s a lot of goals that socialists share with liberals and that we don’t want to give up some of the benefits of the modern complex division of labor. Personal freedom, which as Ben says, is not only partially met under capitalism, but personal freedom’s an important one. Efficiency, we make a case for efficiency as a socialist value in the book, mainly for the reason Ben’s just talking about because efficiency means not just… It’s not about more and more stuff, but about more time free of instrumental labor, but socialists also have extra goals, right? Of course, egalitarianism, care, making sure that everybody is secure and looked after, ecological sustainability. And the difficult task that socialists have that we’re trying to address in this book is making the case that those specifically socialist goals are compatible, can be made compatible with broad, liberal and personal freedom with the efficiency of the modern division of labor.
And that’s a challenge because there’s very good reasons why people think that socialism as it has been attempted in the past has failed on that account. And so we’re trying to make the case that they can be brought together.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I want to pick up on that last point because here comes the sort of steel man concern, right? Some of the greatest crimes in human history were committed by people or regimes that called themselves socialists or that attached that word to their movement. People, regular people, working people, poor people, people who didn’t do anything wrong or mean any harm were hurt in the course of a 20th century in which the word socialism was a big thing. And so for people who come from those family lineages or who are worried about those kinds of things, how do we learn from the past without getting bogged down in it?
Ben Burgis:
Yeah. I think there’s a lot you can learn from the failures of those earlier socialist experiments, both the moral failures that you’re talking about, just the failures to live up to socialist ideals and also just the design failures, the economic dysfunctions that led to the empty grocery store shelves, even managers of state enterprises having to rely on black markets to get the inputs they needed to make their quotas, all of that stuff. I mean, that’s why we wrote the book to try to show that there is a better way of organizing this. I’m sure to the extent that time allows, we’ll get into that, what we think that better way looks like. But I would also just say on the bigger picture question, it’s like, yeah, it is absolutely true that there are all kinds of regimes that did all kinds of things that I find abhorrent that use the socialist label to justify that.
On the other hand, the war in Vietnam was justified by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the name of defending freedom and democracy and the knowledge of the millions of Southeast Asian peasants who were shot or burned alive with napalm or dislocated from their villages doesn’t make me like freedom and democracy any less. It just makes me hate the hypocrites who claim to stand for it more.
Mike Beggs:
Yeah. I mean, I guess I’d emphasize that this is very much a democratic vision of socialism, but also a socialism that has a lot of room for personal freedom. Our model still involves most people having an income… I mean everybody, not most people, but everybody having an income to spend and goods and services and things like that. And not just making trivial consumer choices, but that allows, of course, for all kinds of freedom in terms of lifestyle choice, where you want to live. But it also adds to that freedoms that we do not have under capitalism. Democracy is extended from the political realm to the workplace in particular. And there’s a lot of points in our model where we try and find real points of leverage for effective democratic deliberation all the way through. It’s not something that just happens at the political level. It’s something that happens at multiple points in the system.
Sometimes it’s democracy of workers at a particular workplace. Sometimes it’ll involve the community along with workers, et cetera, et cetera. So I would say that our model is one of liberalism plus, right? It’s a liberalism socialist with all the egalitarianism, security, et cetera, that gives people real freedom in their lives. And that’s really at the center of our model.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right. I got another straw man for you. So capitalism and the dynamics of the free market are the most efficient way for society to organize a system of production that meets the needs of all. Why would we want socialism, which is… Sorry, I didn’t finish the question. Why would we want socialism that’s central planning and not adaptive as the market can be?
Ben Burgis:
Yeah. Well, great news for you. The kind of socialism that’s advocated in the book is not one where everything is essentially planned. We would make a distinction between saying, okay, are there certain things about capitalist markets that do make it efficient at doing the things that capitalism is good at? It’s not good at producing material equality. It’s not good at producing stability in people’s lives. It’s not good at empowering most citizens, but it is good and it’s importantly good at things that earlier moderns of socialism were bad at, having full grocery store shelves, all that stuff.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I mean, selling your apples at a farmer’s market is fucking fine. We don’t have to turn that into this monstrosity that we have today.
Ben Burgis:
No, exactly. And we think that there’s nothing magic about the act of buying and selling. So there are the same way that there are some libertarians who think that the least little bit of social democratic interference with the free market, and before you know it, you’re down in the road to Stalin. There are some people who come, as we do, out of the Marxist tradition, who say that the least little bit of buying and selling going on in your society before you know it, you write down the slippery slope to capitalism. And we don’t buy that either. There have been markets, there have been buying and selling in human societies for thousands of years. Capitalism is something much more recent. Capitalism is a society where the majority of the population have to sell their working hours to private owners of the means of production. So we can still have markets, you could still have in sectors of the economy where we think you still need them.
You can still have firms setting prices based on what they think can sell, all of that stuff. But those firms are owned by the workers, they’re internally democratic, and financing can be done through the public sector, through public banks. So people aren’t forced to risk their own personal savings, which obviously for most working people under capitalism is not a rational risk. And the last thing about this before I throw it to Mike is just oftentimes people think of markets and planning as being opposed to each other. We’d say, look, these are just tools you can use. To us, the core of socialism is who runs things. Do working people themselves get to run their own workplaces or do you have the separate class of capitalists do? Everything else is just the engineering details to make that core right. So in terms of those engineering details, yeah, you could have markets, you could have planning.
We think that subcontracting out certain tasks to markets where markets make sense makes the job of planners easier where planning makes sense. If we want a socialist state to worry about things like full employment, it’d be better if they didn’t also have to worry about exactly how many toothbrushes are going to be produced in the next five years like Soviet planners did.
Mike Beggs:
Yeah. We spend a lot of time in the book going through the debates about planning and markets in the 20th century. So the socialist calculation debate, if people are familiar with that, at the mid 20th century, between the Austrian libertarian argument that socialists… You can’t have rational planning of a very complex economy with countless resources, countless squared ways of combining those resources for countless cubed possible products that people have preferences, wants and needs about. And one of the guys that made the strongest reply to that argument, a Polish economist called Oscar Langa in the late 30s, and he kind of argued he was replying to Von Mesas, who people may have heard of, one of the Austrian Libertarians. And Langa said up front, he said in the future socialist republic, we are going to want to erect the statue of von Mesas in front of our planning board because he did us a great service in actually making sure that we took this problem seriously because I think it is a serious problem and it’s obvious the experience of the 20th century is that this is not an easy problem to solve.
Our particular solution is different from Langa’s. It does, like Ben says, involve some market production, some commodity production. It also has a non-commodity sector because we’ve learned not just from the theoretical debate, but also from all kinds of experience in the Eastern block, but also under capitalism and social democracy over the latter half of the 20th century. And though we have a role for markets, I think it’s really important to be clear. I don’t think we’ve said it up front yet, but the means of production, social wealth is entirely held publicly in our model. There is no private accumulation of wealth or private accumulation of control over the means of production. People may have some private savings, but for the most part, because of the retirement system, the housing system, there’s not a huge need to even save in that way. So we see savings as being a pretty minor thing.
So it’s a society with some role for markets, but one where wealth is absolutely publicly owned and democratically managed at every level.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It makes me think of the great Fred Hampton, and I guess to paraphrase Brother Hampton, theory’s great, but theory without tangible examples ain’t shit, right? And it is important to remember that there are examples all around us. We are literally sitting in one right now. Red Emma’s is a worker owned cooperative business and other co-ops in Baltimore exist because of the workers who make all the decisions. Everyone back there is a worker owner, and they have institutions like Bread, which provides loans to other co-ops that can’t get them from a regular bank. And that’s how you see the system set up to prioritize certain businesses and kill ones like this, but organic institutions can grow and create something different. And if we participate in them, we can make it different and stick. But I also want to bring that into a steel man concern here because whether it’s great worker cooperatives like Red Emma’s or in the world of my reporting, like labor unions, these are all essential examples of what you guys are talking about, what we talk about on a day-to-day level when we’re trying to tell people about this stuff.
But you guys know as well as I do, they’re not perfect. I mean, labor unions in this country have a lot of problems with them. Labor union presidents have been thrown in jail for corruption and racketeering and all that stuff. It associates in people’s minds with the same kind of corruption they see in the Polit Bureau and Soviet times and all that stuff. So human systems will always be susceptible to human foibles. And so what do we do about the kind of day-to-day concerns people have over corruption, ways that this is going to be still just a change in title, but still a kind of shitty reality? How do we tussle with that?
Mike Beggs:
Yeah, that’s a really good question, and maybe one we can answer by talking about, since we’re here in a workers’ cooperative, how that actually works in our system and how it involves a whole lot of checks and balances that are designed to deal with that very real problem. And it also relates to another question people ask, which is if workers’ co-ops are so great, if democratic workplaces are so great, there’s nothing stopping people for forming them under capitalism. Why doesn’t that happen more often? The answer to that, I think for the most part is that there’s certain things about capitalist society that makes them difficult, but particularly financial arrangements. It’s very difficult for cooperative arrangements to work because if you don’t have an outside owner, which a cooperative cannot, it’s a collective of its worker members, if you can’t have an outside owner, you can’t have equity financing, and that means you got to get your finances from somewhere.
So what? Is that supposed to come from the individual members? So people, at the same time as they take a job, they have to take a mortgage to bring their finance with them. Alternatively, you have to borrow from a bank, and that’s very risky thing to do because bank loans come with very fixed payments on fixed dates, leaving the business very exposed to those ups and downs, uncertainties of running a business. So in our model, the financial system is not made for capitalist businesses, but specially designed around workers’ cooperatives. And this connects back to your question about corruption, how do we actually stop that kind of thing from happening? Because in this model, like we said before, the capital, the means of production, the wealth of society is publicly owned, right? The businesses are run by their workers, but they are running it in partnership with the public banks who are essentially almost renting, effectively renting part of society’s wealth, part of society’s means of production to that worker’s collective.
And so it’s always going to be done in partnership between those institutions. So that means that the workers who are running the business democratically are kind of custodians for part of social wealth. And so they don’t have complete control as it should be, right? They’re custodians of public wealth. So that’s one of the checks and balances, right? The public is represented in this case through the bank, through the public bank, but also through the need to maintain the confidence of your customers and the need to actually… That’s one of the reasons why we keep some commodity protection there because it gives direct communication, direct back and forth between the humans who are on both sides, the people who are producing, the people who are using. And so in those cooperatives, that’s the checks and balances. The other side of the economy, and I’ll pass back to Ben in a second, that we haven’t talked about yet is we also have a very large non-commodity sector where those checks and balances have to work out differently in the directly state funded sector.
Then you’ve got all kinds of different ways. The checks and balances is still there. It might be that community members are there on the board of your local aged care center or daycare center or whatever. It works differently in different spots, but there’s always those kinds of public oversight, democratic public oversight and freedom of information about everything that’s happening with the finance, with people’s wealth.
Ben Burgis:
Yeah. And to circle and underline that point, just to make sure nobody missed that last part, part of the setup about public banks includes the constitutional mandate for transparency. The books are always open to any member of the public who wants to look. That’s an example of an institutional safeguard. There are several layers of kinds of institutional safeguards that we imagine, but I want to be really clear on this because I think otherwise it’s going to seem evasive to anybody who’s paying attention, that we’re not claiming that corruption will cease to exist, that embezzlement will wither away with the end of capitalism, that nobody’s going to try to find loopholes or commit crimes because people are people and we didn’t want to make it easier for ourselves in writing the book by assuming either that there’s going to be some amazing technological progress that means that we can just have supercomputers plan the economy perfectly or that there’s going to be some sort of amazing cultural or psychological progress to remake human nature.
We are assuming all of the same technological, psychological limitations that we have right now, which means that yeah, you still need systems to police corruption, to curb people trying to take advantage of loopholes to self-enrich. But I think the question is always a comparison that they… Okay, if you’re really worried about corruption, here’s an example of something that would be super corrupt, actually kind of similar to your union example earlier, union presidents who end up in jail and all that stuff. Because in some ways, the basic units of production in our commodity sector would work a lot like unions work now, the same way you could vote in a union contract, you could vote in an operating agreement, which basically is structurally exactly like a union contract, except there’s no separate boss to negotiate with. It’s unilateral. And of course you vote for leadership, for the committee that’s running the place.
So here’s an example of something super corrupt that could happen. Somebody could rig an election for that committee to make sure that they got the spot, even though most people didn’t try to vote for them or somebody could try to do that on behalf of their son or something. Yeah, that would be terrible. Now let me tell you about capitalism where it’s entirely legal for people to continue to be the boss, even though most people who work for them don’t want them to be because they don’t get a vote in the matter and where it’s entirely legal to just leave the The business to your son as property inheritance, the same way that you’d leave your car to them. And that’s not even considered corruption. That’s just the way it’s supposed to work.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s real fucking rich for the most corrupt people in the whole of human history to be saying, “Oh, socialism’s corrupt.” I mean, we know better and we got to call it out when we see it. We have to be each other’s sense of sanity and social responsibility. And it starts by calling out bullshit wherever you see it. Whoever’s saying it, doesn’t matter whose side they’re on, the truth is the truth. Mother Jones famously said, “I will tell the truth wherever I please.” We all got to have a little bit of that moxie right now. And we got to take it as a duty to go and tell the truth wherever we can together so that we crowd out all these fucking liars and all these self-serving fascists and all this AI slop they’re trying to throw into our faces to get us to forget what is right in front of us.
So there is a real social participation element to all this that I really appreciate in your guys’ book because it’s so needed with everything. I think one of the benefits of capitalism, and I can say this as kids who grew up in America post Cold War, it felt like the capitalism had won and it was all right. The future was pretty bright. The pie was going to be big enough for all of us to get some if we worked hard enough. My immigrant family felt like we made sense in that narrative. And boy, oh boy, did capitalism show over the next 25 years that all of that will be consumed under this kind of monstrous cycle of expansion and domination and consolidation, corruption. And now we’ve got what we’ve got here in 2026. So I wanted to end there, bring us back to where we are here.
Because like in the 20th century, when you had the surge of socialism and left thinking, at the same time you had the surge of fascism and far right movements, we are in a very similar moment. It’s not the same. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it’s rhyming pretty hard right now. And so we’re seeing the surge of far right governments, movements, this authoritarian international network that is now targeting the Brazilian elections, yada, yada, yada. But there are examples in parts of the world where that authoritarian message is making a better case to your average working person for why they should support the authoritarians and not listen to the people who call themselves Democrats or liberals or what have you. If it keeps the violence off their streets, if it keeps the normalcy in their day-to-day life, the sad reality is a lot of people will say it’s worth it to me to sacrifice the civil rights of others and lock people away in Bucheles like Salvadorian prisons if I don’t have to worry about gangs walking down the street.
So that is happening at the same time you guys are writing this book. So the stakes couldn’t be fucking higher. So how do we make the case for socialism work in the real world now and win with this message?
Ben Burgis:
Yeah. I mean, I think that ultimately, if everything you were just talking about, when you’re talking about Buchele and Trump and global wave of authoritarianism, if that’s going to be beaten back, it’s going to take obviously a lot of people who come from a lot of different perspectives to come together to do it. But if history is any guide, the people who are going to be the best fighters against all of that stuff are people who are motivated by this north star of a vision of a qualitatively better world because those have always been the best fighters against whatever horrible authoritarian nonsense was going on at any given time for civil rights, for labor unions, for all of that stuff. And I think that right now it’s a problem. It’s not the problem, but it is a problem that right now, even so many people who want to be socialists have lost their confidence in that qualitatively better world.
During the 20th century, a lot of people thought it was being built in the Soviet Union. Even a lot of people who are on the anti-Stalinist left who had their critiques of the Soviet Union still thought that the economic core of that system was functional and it still gave them hope that some sort of socialism was possible. And right now that’s been lost. And so I think that trying to restore confidence in the possibility of something better is important always because we don’t want to be stuck in the system forever, but I think it’s more important than ever in circumstances like the one you’re describing. I mean, I often think, I guess the last thing I’ll say before I throw to Mike to finish us up, but I often think about Manufacturing Consent. That’s a book from several decades ago by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.
And basically what they’re talking about is the way that the borders of acceptable debate were policed. That in the American corporate media, you had this appearance of thriving debate, but it was happening within painfully narrow parameters. For better or for worse, those parameters have pretty much been blown up lately, that you have people like Nick Fuentes have become like…
He had dinner with the president and you have a DSA guy who’s the mayor of the most important city in the capitalist world. And so it seems to me that we are at a time when better things are possible than they were for most of our lifetimes, but also much worse things are possible. And I would like to bolster people’s confidence that there is a long-term vision of much better.
Mike Beggs:
Yeah. All I would add to that is that even though there’s economics and some theory in the book, but we also tried to paint a vision of a society that would be really broadly appealing beyond the left. We tried to paint a model that most people could imagine themselves living in and enjoying. We built it around the kinds of aspirations that people in general have today. I mean, it’s a model that makes room for all kinds of social experimentation, but it also is one that guarantees people security of livelihood. It guarantees income to people and services to people as they need it, not whether they can pay for it in some way or other. It’s a vision that takes a lot of things that people… It could be communicated as something that takes a lot of people’s frustrations and anxieties in life, especially in the working world and says, “Here are some solutions to them.” They don’t involve you sitting in meetings all day or anything like that.
The way that we have workplace democracy is not something that would involve people in having meetings all the time, but it is something that means you’re not going to have in general a boss that you hate. You’re not going to have a day-to-day existence where you fear being arbitrarily fired or you’re worried about your retirement or anything like that. So I think that the vision that we present is one that is really broadly appealing and could actually be something that is used to reach well beyond the kinds of people who currently think of themselves as on the left.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Let’s give it up for Ben Burgis and Mike Beggs everybody. Hell yeah.
Big tech stocks falter as investors question whether billions being poured into AI can generate returns quickly enough
A sell-off of tech stocks that began earlier this month and gained steam with disappointing earnings from leading tech companies drove US markets down by hundreds of billions of dollars Friday. In total, the decline has knocked nearly $1tn in value off the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange in one week and erased about $2tn in a month.
The S&P 500, the index of the 500 most valuable companies in the US, fell by more than 1% Friday, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value. It was on track to erase its gain for October, even though it set its all-time high during the same month. The weakness for technology stocks dragged the Nasdaq composite down even further, more than 3%, also erasing hundreds of billions in value. The Down Jones Industrial Average fell less.
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© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
© Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
O BNDES aprovou financiamento de R$ 879,4 milhões para a Green Energy adquirir 400 ônibus elétricos a bateria voltados para atender a população de São José dos Campos (SP), anunciou o banco de fomento nesta sexta-feira (30).
“Esse é o primeiro projeto aprovado pelo BNDES para renovação de 100% da frota de uma cidade com ônibus elétricos produzidos no país”, disse em nota o presidente do banco, Aloizio Mercadante.
“No país, a frota de ônibus elétricos a bateria já supera 2,2 mil veículos. A estimativa é que os ônibus elétricos representem 28% do total de licenciamentos de ônibus urbanos no Brasil até 2035“, adicionou ele.
A Green Energy venceu uma licitação da cidade de São José dos Campos (SP) para alugar a nova frota de transporte coletivo ao município.
Segundo o banco, os ônibus serão fornecidos pela Eletra Industrial, que atua no mercado ônibus elétrico no Brasil e utiliza motores e sistemas da WEG, e chassis e carrocerias produzidos no Brasil.
Os emplacamentos de ônibus elétricos no Brasil somaram em setembro 121 unidades em setembro, acumulando no ano 1.255 unidades, mesmo volume do ano completo de 2025, segundo dados da associação de montadoras, Anfavea.
A small boat in the Strait of Hormuz approached a tanker and placed two explosive devices on the hull above the waterline, causing a blast that started a fire in the engine room, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) center reported. The attack on the Dubai-owned tanker Louise 1 was carried out by Iranians using limpet mines, Financial Times reported. The incident took place Thursday and was the first of its kind since June 2019, when a Japanese and a Norwegian ship were hit with limpets, the publication noted.
This is the first indication of the successful use of these mines during the current Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) wave of strikes against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz following Operation Epic Fury. The attack also highlights the challenges of keeping ships safe in a busy and complex littoral.
“The apparent ability of a small craft to approach a transiting tanker, deploy explosive devices and withdraw presents a significant security concern, particularly in the Strait’s congested shipping lanes,” Greece-based maritime risk management group Marisks said on Friday, Reuters reported.
TWZ covered the 2019 attacks extensively, including sharing the following video showing an Iranian Navy or IRGC fast boat going back to remove a dud limpet mine from the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous’s damaged hull.
Earlier Friday morning, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Adm. Brad Cooper said the waterway was cleared of sea mines. He was not addressing the limpet mine claim.
He stated on X that after “we sank Iran’s navy earlier this year, we also successfully cleared the strait’s internationally recognized primary transit routes of Iranian sea mines, and today U.S. forces remain highly vigilant and present to ensure that all primary transit routes in the Strait of Hormuz remain free and clear.”
“This week we reached a significant milestone, having now assisted Gulf partners in exporting more than 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil since summer,” Cooper added.
Recalling a recent flight over the Strait of Hormuz, Cooper noted that he “saw our U.S. assets in the air and on the water, including a squadron of advanced sea drones that were on patrol supporting a defensive layer. Here’s what I didn’t see: I didn’t see the IRGC out there at all.”
Also known as uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), the sea drones are part of an increasingly uncrewed armada of air, land and sea assets that are supporting the safe coordior through the Strait.
The USV type shown in the following video, a Saronic Corsair, made history twice in the battle against Iran. In July, the USVs were used as a strike weapon in combat for the first time by the U.S. A month earlier, a Saronic Corsair USV rescued the crew of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache that crashed in the Gulf of Oman after it was downed by Iran.
Update from CENTCOM Commander: pic.twitter.com/oipZRRCJuE
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) October 30, 2026
Despite the heavy presence of CENTCOM forces, this month is turning out to be particularly dangerous for shipping in the region.
“October has seen the highest number of ship attacks on record,” Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said last week, according to the BOE Report, an oil industry publication. “Raydan, who maintains the institute’s interactive shipping incident map, has recorded 28 confirmed and reported attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waterways in October and 113 since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on February 28.”
These strikes, combined with ongoing Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, have already placed tremendous pressure on a global economy relying heavily on fossil fuel from the region. As of Friday morning, Brent crude topped $117 per barrel, the highest level in more than four years, according to OilPrice.com.
The American oil industry, meanwhile, is making a fortune on this situation.
“The war with Iran has been very lucrative for American oil companies, which have earned more than $130 billion in profit as people pay much higher prices for gasoline, diesel and other fuel,” The New York Times reported on Friday. “That is a conservative estimate based on the performance of more than 50 large U.S. oil and gas companies, most of them producers or refiners, in the six months from April through September. It does not reflect profits earned in March, the first month of the war, or in October.”
“The United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said at an Oct. 24 campaign rally, describing how the war is affecting the industry.
TRUMP on HIGH GAS PRICES: We’re making money like we’ve never made before. They’ll say: President Trump is bragging about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. I don’t give a damn. We’re making a freaking fortune. pic.twitter.com/KZ2pYsTPyR
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 25, 2026
Qatari mediators returned to Tehran on Friday in another bid to try to pull the Middle East region back from the brink of war. The visit takes place as the U.S. and Israel are gearing up for a possible new round of strikes against Iran that could come as soon as next week after America’s midterm elections.
U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently stated that he could order new strikes, likely with Israeli assistance, after control of the next Congress is settled. While Trump could be gearing up to hit Iran again, leaks about war planning could also be messaging to compel Tehran back to the bargaining table.
“It’s going to get wrapped up soon,” Trump said Friday morning in an interview with Kansas City radio station KCMO. “We need a guarantee there’ll never be a nuclear weapon.”
Whether this latest Qatari effort can stop the clock winding down toward a resumption of hostilities remains questionable. Washington and Tehran seem far apart in their goals for achieving an agreement to stave off war.
The U.S. wants nuclear issues included from the start of negotiations while Tehran demands that the US first end its port blockade and lift oil export sanctions, Reuters reported on Friday.
A senior Iranian official has already dismissed a plan presented by Qatar as “unacceptable,” the outlet added. “The proposal presented by Qatar sets a seven-day timeline addressing both Tehran’s and Washington’s concerns, laying out daily confidence-building steps that each side must take,” the news outlet reported on Oct. 28, citing an official briefed on the negotiations.
The Qatari mediation is the latest diplomatic effort to prevent new fighting. On Monday, major regional powers met in Tehran to find a peaceful way forward.
Regardless, American forces are locked and loaded for a possible new round of strikes against Iran. Israel also continues ramping up attack plans in coordination with the U.S. in the wake of a so-far inconclusive national election that could result in the end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career.
“Cooper rarely briefs Trump in person, so the meeting could signal that the U.S. is moving closer to significant military operations,” the publication stated. “He met with the president in July, when the two huddled with Hegseth and Caine on Air Force One in Delaware.”
CENTCOM declined comment when we asked to confirm the meeting as described. The Pentagon referred us to the White House, and the White House did not respond to our request for comment.
While the Journal offered no specific details about the plans discussed at the White House meeting, previous reporting has suggested Trump is seeking a short, intense bombing campaign.
“According to several people familiar with the war plans, any new US-Israeli assault would be intense, lasting some three days and targeting nuclear facilities, regime assets and civilian infrastructure including power plants,” Financial Times reported on Thursday.
A top Democratic senator said he was briefed on plans and was shocked by what he heard.
“I will just say this: their plan is insane,” Sen. Chris Murphy, of Connecticut said. “It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.”
“There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting,” Murphy added. “The plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.”
Trump is reportedly planning to restart war with Iran after the election.
— Chris Murphy
Some of us have been briefed on the war plan. And while I cannot disclose any details, I can say this: the plan is insane. It will not achieve objectives and will set off a new cycle of escalation. pic.twitter.com/adWJfHVIok(@ChrisMurphyCT) October 29, 2026
As the White House continues to put the finishing touches on new attack plans, the U.S. is bolstering its forces in the Middle East as we noted at the top of this story.
“The U.S. military is sending an additional Patriot system to Israel from Texas to beef up its missile defenses in the country, according to flight-tracking data and two officials with knowledge of the movement,” the Journal reported on Wednesday. “The U.S. has also moved troops off bases in the Middle East where they were vulnerable in preparation for an escalation.”
“U.S. forces in the region have been restocking their munitions, and bomber aircraft and jet fighters are preparing for strikes, some of the officials said.”
As we previously noted, there have been other signs that a major new round of U.S. and/or Israeli strikes on Iran might be looming on the horizon. Fox News reported that the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the rest of its carrier strike group, as well as the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group carrying the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), are heading to the Middle East, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
“The ships will arrive in the Middle East by the end of November,” the officials said, according to a post on X from Fox’s Jennifer Griffin on Tuesday. “These new deployments will add about 10,000 sailors and Marines to the Middle East.”
You can find out more about the locations of the U.S. Navy’s fleet of flattops in our “Where Are The Aircraft Carriers?” feature.
There have been indications of increased U.S. military air activity in the Middle East recently, as well. Observers have called attention to the particularly significant influx of aerial refueling tankers to bases in the region, as well as in Europe, which would be critical to any new major air campaign.
US Tanker Fleet Update 21/OCT/2026 #IranWar
— DefenceGeek
Overall numbers across CENTCOM and Europe have now stabilised back to the levels they were at back at the start of September, around 190-195. There are a few tankers dotted around at other sites temporarily (Glasgow Prestwick and… pic.twitter.com/taKi8op7Tv(@DefenceGeek) October 21, 2026
America and Israel struck hard at Iranian logistics during Operation Epic Fury, and the U.S. Navy maintains a blockade on Iranian ports. Still, the IRGC has managed to bring in materiel critical to its drone and missile programs.
A new Reuters investigation examines how.
“Iran has created a secret network of military agencies with global reach to import at least $2 billion in hardware, explosives and heavy-duty trucks since January 2025, evading both the US naval blockade and Western sanctions,” the investigation found. “Hidden behind names starting with the letters MOD, for the Ministry of Defense, are more than 5,000 agencies that form a formidable financial and military machine. Their financial footprints are on bills of lading and other shipping data dating back to 2016. Some are tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and to business conglomerates known as bonyads that are controlled by Iran’s elite.”
“The findings offer a window into one of the war’s great mysteries,” the outlet explained. “How is the IRGC replenishing its missile and drone arsenals while firing them in their thousands?”
Amid events in the Persian Gulf region, fighting between the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen and Saudi Arabia rages on.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia said it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone near Islam’s holiest city, a claim the Houthis denied.
On Thursday, the Houthis claimed attacks on a half dozen targets across the kingdom, including oil facilities and airports. Saudi officials, for their part, said they intercepted ballistic missiles.
Adding to regional jitters, there were fresh reports of explosions near Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz Thursday night. However, these incidents often turn out to be air defense activity, warning shots fired at ships or nothing at all.
CENTCOM on Friday pushed back against claims that the command acknowledged attacks on Iranian targets.
“The reported notion that CENTCOM claimed any recent attacks is false,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, the command’s spokesman, told TWZ.
For now, the world is waiting nervously to see whether the Middle East again erupts into war. We should have a clearer picture in the coming days.
Contact the author: howard@twz.com
The post Iran Used Limpet Mine Placed On Ship’s Hull In Latest Strait Of Hormuz Attack: Report appeared first on TWZ.
You may have heard that Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is “having a lot of trouble putting [the Democratic] coalition back together,” or that “Democrats [are] struggling to unite behind El-Sayed,” or that “Democrats are still struggling to unite behind El-Sayed,” or that “El-Sayed faces resistance from some voters who would ordinarily be inclined to support a Democrat,” or that “Democratic divisions could hurt El-Sayed.” It’s a prominent narrative that is driving political discourse in the closing weeks of the tight Michigan Senate race.
There’s only one problem with this narrative: It has zero empirical basis. It’s a total confection of US media and the pro-Israel lobby that isn’t supported by any data whatsoever. Two recent polls, one from Marist and one from RedBox Research, make it clear that El-Sayed’s support among Democratic voters in Michigan is both extremely high (95%) and the exact same percentage as Republican candidate Mike Rogers’ support with Republicans. And a new poll from Mitchell Research CBS complicates the narrative even further, finding that support for El-Sayed among Democrats is, in fact, 3 points higher than Rogers is among Republicans, at 94% versus 91%, respectively.
If El-Sayed and Rogers have the exact same percent of party dissent—or, as is the case in the CBS Detroit poll, Rogers has more—then why are there countless stories highlighting, handwringing, and scandalizing the trivially small dissent for only one of the candidates? Where are the breathless profiles of Republicans refusing to vote for Rogers? Where are the NPR and CNN segments focusing on “Republican divisions”?
There, of course, aren’t any, because this narrative wouldn’t advance an ideological agenda.
The “Michigan Democrats are divided” narrative has been pushed by local and national media alike, from Bridge Michigan to Reuters to Michigan Advocate to the New York Times, who reported Thursday (again, falsely), “Democrats in Michigan… remain far more divided than party leaders had hoped to be going into the election.” The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell said on Wednesday that El-Sayed is “having a lot of trouble putting [the Democratic] coalition back together again” after his defeat of Hayley Stevens in the Democratic primary in August. The AP insisted that “Democrats are still struggling to unite behind El-Sayed” which, again, is outright false: El-Sayed has the support of 95%of Democrats.
An April IMEU poll found that Michigan Democrats think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza 66%to 14%, at a ratio of almost 5-to-1. Does this seem like an issue Michigan democrats are “divided” over?
For another point of reference, El-Sayed’s support among Democrats of 95% is higher than other high-profile centrist Democrats, including Roy Cooper of North Carolina (94%), Sherrod Brown of Ohio (93%), Kathy Hochul of New York (85%), and even with Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. El-Sayed is even doing better with top Democrats in his own state, with Michigan gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson winning only 91.8% of Democrats versus El-Sayed’s 93.1%, according to a Michigan State Department of Political Science survey published on Thursday. Yet one is hard pressed to find any “divided Democrats” stories about any of these candidates.
The theme of “Democratic divisions” in Michigan, like the attendant assertion that Israel is “dividing Demcorats” more broadly, is a wholly concocted media narrative, pushed by the pro-Israel lobby and its media allies to create tensions and the appearance of a meaningful split where none exists. As I noted in the Intercept in June, the percentage of Democrats who have a positive view of Israel, 13%, is lower than the percent of Democrats who believe in young earth creationism or those who back a full abortion ban or Christian prayer in public schools. Yet these traditionally right-wing views are never said to be “dividing Democrats” because, by and large, they clearly are not.
Just the same, Israel doesn’t really “divide” Michigan Democrats either. An April IMEU poll found that Michigan Democrats think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza 66%to 14%, at a ratio of almost 5-to-1. Does this seem like an issue Michigan democrats are “divided” over? If it is, there are dozens of other traditionally 5-to-1 issues—from marriage equality to climate change to prayer in school—that they are also technically “divided” over, but they are never discussed in these terms because they are fringe opinions among liberals.
The myth of widespread liberal zionism among Democrats is too big to fail, so it continues in zombie form, propped up by an elite liberal class that simply needs it to exist.
That’s because it’s a playbook––a PR tactic––not an actual reflection of political reality. In this playbook, our media obsesses over a trivially small percent of anti-El-Sayed Democrats in Michigan while never mentioning Republicans disillusioned with Rogers despite their polls being statistically equal. As Michael Arria at Mondowiess notes in his analysis of this manufactured “division,” polls consistently “upend the narrative that Democratic voters are split on El-Sayed.” So why does it persist?
It persists because the myth of widespread liberal zionism among Democrats is too big to fail, so it continues in zombie form, propped up by an elite liberal class that simply needs it to exist so they can appear humanitarian, worldly, and sophisticated while continuing to back—albeit with the occasional wristslap—a genocidal state currently experiencing political paralysis because their nominal liberal wing is simply too racist to give Arab parties any power whatsoever.
The rebellion against El-Sayed in Michigan, such as it exists in reality, is largely driven by ideologically motivated donors and party elites, namely those whose primary issue is bipartisan support for Israel. But it’s tacky to point this out, to note that this opposition is largely coming from a small number of actual voters and is being amplified way beyond its objective news value because influential zionist advocacy groups are pushing it to media organizations and their internal allies. This is awkward and uncomfortable to discuss, so, like with the nonexistent “Democratic divisions over Israel,” it has to be reframed as some organic dissent among “voters” or “Democrats” when, in reality, the number of El-Sayed holdouts is statistically trivial. This isn’t to say media cannot focus on issues that matter to a small number of voters. What gives the game away is that this is literally not being done for Rogers, or other high-profile centrist Democrats, despite party dissent for these candidates being greater or roughly the same.
So where are the articles profiling angry Republicans refusing to vote for Rogers? Where are the countless CNN and PBS segments detailing their grievances and pundits demanding Rogers “reach out” to them? Where are the glib, unsourced throwaway lines in the New York Times about how “Republicans in Michigan remain far more divided than party leaders had hoped to be going into the election”—since, again, this is statistically just as true for the GOP as it is for El-Sayed? There aren’t any, because this angle doesn’t discipline Israel critics and drive up the negatives on a candidate most media elites clearly want to see underperform or, if at all possible, outright lose.
h/t Brian Tashman for exquisite poll watching.
A Corregedoria-Geral da Polícia Civil, a prefeitura de São Paulo e a Controladoria-Geral do município investigam uma suposta organização criminosa que obtinha irregularmente os registros de óbitos na capital paulista e repassava para empresas do setor funerário. 
A segunda fase da Operação Luctus foi deflagrada nesta quinta-feira (29) para apurar mais informações. O grupo é investigado por crimes contra a administração pública, corrupção, acesso indevido a informações sigilosas, lavagem de capitais e outros delitos correlatos.
“A investigação teve origem a pedido da prefeitura. A operação cumpriu mandados de busca e apreensão em 21 alvos, entre eles um policial civil, um funcionário da prefeitura e empresários do setor. Integrantes da Corregedoria do Município acompanharam as diligências”, informou a Secretaria de Segurança Pública do Estado de São Paulo (SSP-SP).
Segundo a SSP-SP, a segunda fase da operação, pretende, além da responsabilização penal dos envolvidos, identificar vulnerabilidades no sistema e formas para aperfeiçoar os mecanismos de controle interno, governança e integridade.
Uma das empresas envolvidas é a concessionária Velar SP, um dos quatro grupos que administram os 22 cemitérios da capital paulista. A Velar é responsável por seis deles, como Vila Alpina, Itaquera e Freguesia do Ó.
Em nota, a Velar afirmou que tomou conhecimento da Operação Luctus pela imprensa e até o momento não teve acesso aos autos nem à decisão judicial que fundamentou as diligências e que está à disposição das autoridades para contribuir com o pleno esclarecimento dos fatos.
“A Velar reafirma seu compromisso com a lisura de sua atuação e com o respeito às famílias atendidas, repudia quaisquer práticas ilícitas e esclarece que já havia se colocado à disposição das autoridades para colaborar no esclarecimento dos fatos e de eventuais ilicitudes praticadas por quem quer que seja”, diz a nota.
Education has the biggest influence on a person’s bank account balance
© AFP/Getty
The anxiety is moving into credit markets, where investors are pricing in the risk that elevated financing costs and delayed returns could strain corporate balance sheets
© Reuters
A Brigada de Trânsito (BT) da GNR deverá iniciar funções nos primeiros meses de 2027, disse o ministro da Administração Interna, avançado que a Autoridade Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária vai passar em janeiro a digitalizar todas as multas.
Na audição no âmbito da discussão na especialidade da proposta de lei do Governo de Orçamento do Estado para 2027 (OE2027) e em resposta ao deputado da Iniciativa Liberal Rui Rocha, o ministro disse que neste momento existe um diploma sobre a criação da BT.
“Esperamos apresentá-la em Conselho de Ministros e nesta sede, porque tem que vir aqui a este parlamento para poder ser criada. E, efetivamente, nós esperamos que durante os primeiros meses do ano esteja em funcionamento”, precisou Luís Neves.
O ministro disse que já existem instalações para a Brigada de Trânsito, mas não especificou onde, destacando a recuperação da BT “com um comando nacional unificado, assegurando maior coordenação, especialização e eficácia da fiscalização rodoviária”.
Na terceira ronda e depois de ser novamente questionado sobre a BT, o governante especificou que “em princípio” a Brigada de Trânsito terá uma estrutura nacional em Cascais e outras em cinco locais espalhadas pelo país.
A recuperação da BT é uma das “três medidas fundamentais” que constam da Estratégia Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária, que, segundo o ministro, será concretizada em 2027.
A estratégia, que visa reduzir para metade o número de vítimas mortais e feridos graves até 2030 face a 2019, já deveria ter sido aprovada em 2020.
O ministro indicou que outras das “medidas fundamentais desta estratégia” é a apresentação no próximo ano de um novo Código da Estrada, frisando que dará “especial atenção aos utilizadores mais vulneráveis, à reincidência, ao excesso de velocidade e à condução sob influência do álcool ou de substâncias psicotrópicas”.
O ministro recusou que o novo Código da Estrada seja uma “caça à multa”.
Outra medida, de acordo com Luís Neves, é “a modernização tecnológica” da Autoridade Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária (ANSR), nomeadamente “a digitalização dos sistemas de fiscalização e gestão das contraordenações” que se deve traduzir “em processos mais rápidos, menos prescrições e maior eficácia na aplicação das sanções”.
Para o ministro, uma contraordenação, “com todo o direito de contestação, tem de ser efetivamente cobrada”.
Luís Neves acrescentou que a Autoridade Nacional de Segurança Rodoviária vai em janeiro “alcançar uma meta que é da digitalização” das multas de trânsito.
O governante sublinhou que “em pleno 2026 ainda há autos a serem feitos à mão e a circularem de mão em mão”.
“É a isso que vamos pôr cobro para permitir que não haja aí impugnações completamente à margem da lei à procura da prescrição” disse ainda.
A 21-year-old college hockey captain who dreamed of becoming a police officer was killed in a wrong-way crash involving a Mexican national who repeatedly entered the United States illegally after previously being removed, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Fox News Digital.
Ryan O'Shea, a senior at the University of New Haven, was driving south on Interstate 91 in North Haven late Oct. 16 when a Chevrolet Silverado traveling the wrong way slammed head-on into his Honda Accord, Connecticut State Police said.
According to the State Police accident summary, 31-year-old Guillermo Carmona-Lopez of Bridgeport was driving the Silverado.
The crash sent O'Shea's car into another lane, where it was struck by a Jeep before moving onto the right shoulder and being hit by a third vehicle.
O'Shea suffered fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. Carmona-Lopez was taken to Yale New Haven Hospital with serious, life-threatening injuries, while three other people suffered minor injuries.
DHS told Fox News Digital that Carmona-Lopez entered the U.S. illegally multiple times despite previously being removed and receiving a final order of removal.
"In May 2013, Border Patrol arrested Guillermo Carmona-Lopez, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, after he illegally entered the country," a DHS spokesperson said. "Carmona-Lopez was issued an expedited removal and was removed from the country."
FATHER OF SLAIN MARINE SPEAKS OUT AFTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WHO KILLED SON FACES THIRD DEPORTATION
Carmona-Lopez then illegally reentered the country near the Rio Grande Valley and was arrested again by Border Patrol that same month, DHS said.
"Carmona-Lopez was issued a final order of removal on May 30, 2013," the spokesperson said. "He then reentered the country at an unknown time and place."
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O'Shea, of Stony Point, New York, was studying criminal justice with a concentration in police science at the University of New Haven and served as senior captain of the men's club hockey team.
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He interned with the New York City Police Department over the summer and hoped to join the NYPD after graduation before eventually pursuing a career with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the university said.
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"Ryan wanted to go into public service in order to help others," his academic advisor, Lorenzo Boyd, said in a university tribute. "He was engaging in the classroom and will be missed greatly."
Devin Bertrand, general manager of the men's ice hockey club, remembered O'Shea as someone whose "infectious personality lit up our locker room the moment he walked in."
O'Shea also served as president of his Kappa Sigma fraternity chapter, which said he was returning from a hockey game when the crash occurred.
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"Ryan was not only a great leader, but he was a caring friend to anyone around him," the fraternity said in a social media tribute. "He always knew how to light up a room and make people laugh, no matter the time."
The State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Squad responded to the scene and is assisting with the investigation, which remains ongoing.
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"Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences," the DHS spokesperson said. "Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S."
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