Nausheen Husain

this isn't the worst of the Democrats' statements, but statements like this are a stark reminder that to many people, the real issue with the Iraq War was that Americans died. everything else is a footnote.

the war is unpopular but it's also illegal but it also doesn't serve any purpose but it also undermines diplomacy but it also is set to produce the opposite outcome as intended but it also already has hundreds dead and threatens more but it also will not make anything better for anyone but it also

A child’s illustration, made in what appears to be crayon, of more than a dozen figures standing together. It’s titled “Mi Familia” and credited to “Luisanney Toloza, 5 años.”

4/ “Mi Familia,” by 5-year-old Luisanney Toloza from Venezuela, who had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border

ohhh ‘democracy dies in darkness’ was aspirational

ICE Threw Thousands of Kids in Detention, Many For Longer Than Court-Prescribed Limit Former immigration staffers argue ICE is choosing to detain families for prolonged periods to speed deportations and compel them to leave.

We don't really know how many children are in immigration jail. A few thousand. Many are being held long past the permitted time (20 days, which, ...). Some are babies.
www.themarshallproject.org/2025/12/17/c...

When you focus on the regular people showing up magnificently in all of their flawed beauty, it helps you to keep going.

FBI raids home of Washington Post reporter in ‘highly unusual and aggressive’ move Agents searched Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home and seized devices in inquiry tied to a classified materials case

The warrant allowing the FBI to raid Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home is "outrageous," FPF's Seth Stern told @richlusc.bsky.social and @jeremymbarr.bsky.social.

"The administration may now be in possession of volumes of journalist communications."

When they talk about chickens coming home to roost, this is what they mean.

The war always comes home.

Imperial boomerang.

"Polishing impunity only comforts the unaffected. It’s true that many federal agents are sloppy and unprepared, but years of organizing against police violence have taught me that more training doesn’t stop violence. It just makes the death-making more respectable and more expensive."

When ICE Comes To Your Baby's Daycare A dispatch from Chicago

I talked to a mom whose daycare teacher was grabbed by ICE. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Bong Joon Ho took a characteristically radical approach when questioned on his thoughts around the rise of Al technology at the jury press conference of the Marrakech Film Festival on Saturday. The Korean director, who is president of the jury, gave two responses, one measured, the other deeply personal. "My official answer is, Al is good because it's the very beginning of the human race finally seriously thinking about what only humans can do. But my personal answer is, I'm going to organize a military squad, and their mission is to destroy AI," he said.

Bong Joon Ho hit me up for the squad you legend deadline.com/2025/11/bong...

I’m more active on Substack than I am on here. If you’d like to follow my work, please support by subscribing! In my latest article, I look at the breadth of suffering inflicted on Palestinian children and what kind of a world we have created.

open.substack.com/pub/sanasaee...

Why is Mainstream Media Ignoring Overtly Racist Attacks on Mamdani from Congressional Republicans? Non-stop Islamopbohic vitriol, threats of deportation, and virtually no coverage from CNN, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post.

Congressional republicans have been spewing racist attacks on Mamdani for weeks and it’s almost never mentioned in our media. Not only that, the person leading the hate campaign—Randy Fine—is treated by the same media as a good faith expert on antisemitism. I wrote about this obscene double standard

Mamdani with his wife and parents on the stage after his victory speech.

Deeply moving to see this first family.

"No hell is hot enough or eternal enough for Dick Cheney. Any discussion of his works must begin with the 2021 assessment of Brown University’s Costs of War Project that found, conservatively, that the War on Terror killed between 897,000 and 929,000 people across five of its battlefields."

Dick Cheney is dead now, but his legacy lives on. The damage he did is still unfolding. The hegemonic, hypermilitaristic ideology he promoted has become the baseline norm.

we ended up where we are now for a number of reasons, but one was that Dick Cheney realized he could go on camera, lie about saying things he’d previously said on camera, and TV interviewers would just sputter

Post-9/11 wars have contributed to some 4.5 million deaths, report suggests Researchers attempt to calculate the number of deaths attributable to the war on terrorism, across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Not sure how many Cheney obits will mention this murderous legacy of his.

White words on a black background read: 50+ Immigration agents have the authority to detain whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino. ~130 Agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers. ~20 Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer.

Hi, I'm the ProPublica reporter who's been tracking an unusual stat: U.S. citizens grabbed by immigration agents.

I did it because the government isn’t.

This is what I found.

Journalist must be safely allowed into Gaza as this transition is occurring.

A free press is the only guarantee that every day people will be protected.

A free press is central to knowing the rules are being followed.

A free press is essential to peace.

Photo by Heidi Levine (July 30, 2025) showing an aerial view of Gaza destruction, taken during a Royal Jordanian military flight for a humanitarian aid mission.

BREAKING: The post-10/7 wars have killed or injured at least 236,505 people in Gaza alone. The U.S. has spent over $31 billion and counting in the wider region since Oct. 7, 2023, where millions have been displaced, according to new Costs of War research. [THREAD]

Photo Credit: Heidi Levine, 2025

Killing the story: Journalists speak on Palestine in U.S. newsrooms October 7 Panelists Aline Batarseh Abdallah Fayyad Eman Mohammed Sana Saeed Hosted by Laura Albast

📢Join us for Killing the Story, a virtual event on Oct. 7, 1pm PT/4pm ET!

Palestinian, Arab, & Muslim journalists give firsthand accounts about how media manufactures consent & silences dissent as we approach 2 years of the Israeli-imposed & U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza.
tinyurl.com/killingthest...

JUST IN: Chicago journalistsa re suing DHS and ICE over force used against reporters:

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

A pumpkin with a very large thumbs down carved into it

Very Large Thumbs Down

If you're interested in Paramount, CBS News, the Free Press, or the right-wing takeover of the media, please help spread this around and let's see if we can find out anything interesting :-)

I’m so incredibly proud of my colleagues at other indie and nonprofit media orgs across the city, when I say this city is extraordinary these are the folks I’m talking about

Anyway, alternative media fascinates me so please hit me up if you have found gems like this or know where I can find more alternative/independent, historical publications and archives.

At the bottom of the same page of this issue of Kaleidoscope:

The Tribune headline, according to this piece, was "You Can Feed A Family On A Welfare Budget," and this piece's critique includes the fact that the four people interviewed for the article were *not* on welfare and "boasted" that they could live on a welfare budget, which was $5.37 weekly per adult.