Top News: Bill Would Enable Trump to Attack Nonprofits... Like Common Dreams CORPORATE MEDIA LIES: ISRAELIS PROVOKED ATTACKS IN AMSTERDAM!

Monday, November 11, 2024 ■ Today's Top News  Trump Cabinet Picks So Far Decried as 'Nightmare Fuel' "The good news is, we can win these types of fights," said one campaigner. "We helped drive out three Cabinet secretaries from office last time, and we can do that kind of thing again." By Brett Wilkins US House Urged to Stop Bill Enabling Trump to Attack Nonprofits "The bill could usher in repression on a massive scale," one critic warned. By Jessica Corbett 57 Groups to Senate: Vote to Block Weapons for Israel "Despite clear evidence showing that Israel is committing war crimes and blocking humanitarian aid, the U.S. is still unconscionably selling billions of dollars of offensive weapons to Israel," said one advocate. By Julia Conley 20+ Children Among Scores Killed by IDF Strikes in Gaza and Lebanon Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump "see eye to eye" on the Iranian "threat." By Brett Wilkins As Biden Adviser Speaks at COP29, Green Groups Say Act Before Trump Takeover "President Joe Biden must reject all pending LNG export permits and stop the expansion of fossil fuels." By Jessica Corbett Climate Campaigners Demand COP29 Free of 'False' Finance Solutions "We are hurtling toward 3° of warming; human rights can't withstand dangerous distractions," said one climate justice advocate. By Julia Conley JOIN THE MOVEMENT As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover the issues the corporate media never will. Your contribution supports this bold media model—free, independent, and dedicated to reporting the facts every day. Stand with us in the fight for economic equality, social justice, human rights, and a more sustainable future. JOIN WITH US TODAY ■ More News The Amsterdam 'Pogrom' That Wasn't: Corporate Media Fails To Tell the Whole Story Thursday night, Israeli soccer fans clashed with Amsterdam residents before and after a Europa League soccer match between their team Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam. Clashes occurred outside the Johan Cruyff Arena and across the city on Thursday night. Police on Friday said five people had been taken to hospital, and 62 arrests had been made. The violence reportedly started when the far-right Israeli soccer hooligans began chanting racist and violent anti-Arab slogans, attacked Arab and Muslim residents, and vandalized houses and businesses with Palestinian flags. Al Jazeera reported: In one video, Israeli supporters were heard singing: “Let the IDF win, and f*** the Arabs!” referring to the Israeli army’s offensive on Gaza. Another video captured a fan screaming: “F*** you terrorists, Sinwar die, everybody die,” in reference to the Hamas leader who was killed last month. The Israeli fans instigated the violence after arriving in the city and attacking Palestinian supporters before the match, an Amsterdam city council member said. “They began attacking houses of people in Amsterdam with Palestinian flags, so that’s actually where the violence started,” Councilman Jazie Veldhuyzen told Al Jazeera on Friday. “As a reaction, Amsterdammers mobilised themselves and countered the attacks that started on Wednesday by the Maccabi hooligans.” Yet the corporate media - both in the US and abroad - portrayed the events as one-sided "anti-semitic" attacks on helpless soccer fans: US President Joe Biden, his Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer were quick to echo Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that the events in Amsterdam were unprovoked anti-semitic attacks reminiscent of pogroms or the Kristallnacht. However many social media posts reported the context of the violence that was missing from corporate media reporting: 'Ready to Fight' for Climate, Students Walk Out Over Trump As DOJ Unseals Murder Plot Charges, Fears of Trump Iran Policy Mount Trump's Planned Immigrant Purge Sends Stagnant Private Prison Stocks Soaring The chairperson of a leading U.S. private prison corporation on Thursday gushed over the "unprecedented opportunity" presented by the prospect of Republican President-elect Donald Trump delivering on his campaign promise to begin the mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants on his first day in office. As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Trump's campaign confirmed that "the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants" ever is set to start immediately after the former president returns to the White House on January 20. GEO Group stock surged more than 56% from the close of trading on Tuesday, Election Day, to Friday's closing bell. Competitor CoreCivic shares skyrocketed 57% over the same period. By contrast, GEO Group stock saw just a 21% rise in the three months preceding Election Day. CoreCivic inched up just 11% over the same period. "The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company's [and] country's history, and the opportunity that it will bring," GEO Group founder and chairperson George Zoley said during a Thursday earnings call call in which he hailed the "unprecedented opportunity" ahead, according to a company statement and coverage by HuffPost. "While our third-quarter results were below our expectations due to lower-than-expected revenues in our electronic monitoring and supervision services segment, we believe we have several potential sources of upside to our current quarterly run rate, with possible future growth opportunities across our diversified services platform," Zoley continued. "We have 18,000 available beds across contracted and idle secure services facilities, which if fully activated, would provide significant potential upside to our financial performance," he noted. "We also believe we have the necessary resources to materially scale up the service levels in our [Intensive Supervision Appearance Program] and air and ground transportation contracts." Zoley added that "as we evaluate and pursue future growth opportunities, we remain focused on the disciplined allocation of capital to further reduce our debt, deleverage our balance sheet, and position our company to evaluate options to return capital to shareholders in the future." According to a study published last month by the American Immigration Council, deporting the estimated 13.3 million people in the U.S. without authorization in one massive sweep would cost around $315 billion, while expelling 1 million undocumented immigrants per year would cost nearly $1 trillion cumulatively over a decade. On Thursday, Trump insisted "there is no price tag" on his deportation plan. He dismissed concerns that such an operation would require the use of concentration camps like the mass detention centers—which one Trump official euphemistically compared with "summer camp"—of his first administration. The private prison industry has also thrived during the Biden administration, which is on pace to match the 1.5 million people deported during Trump's previous presidency. Although President Joe Biden signed an executive order "on reforming our incarceration system to eliminate the use of privately operated criminal detention facilities" early during his tenure, the directive did not apply to detainees in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The number of immigrants detained by the Biden administration doubled between 2021 and 2023. In July 2023, more than 90% of immigrants detained by ICE each day were locked up in private facilities. In January 2020, the last month of Trump's first term, 81% of daily detainees were held in private lockups. In 2022 a bipartisan U.S. Senate probe corroborated allegations of staff abuse against migrants jailed at facilities owned by LaSalle, a private prison company that claims to be "run with family values." Whistleblowers and others have also revealed abuses from torture and medical neglect to sexual assault of children and forced sterilizations at privately run immigration detention centers. VIEW ALL NEWS ■ Opinion What to Expect From Trump’s Foreign and Military Policies: Old and New Dangers What do we really know about Trump’s foreign and military commitments, about his acolytes who are jostling for position and influence, and what do we think the tyrant will actually do? By Joseph Gerson At COP29, Let’s Demand Accountability From the Military-Industrial Complex Exempt from transparency requirements within U.N. climate agreements, the military sector is, in fact, the leading institutional driver of the climate crisis. By Aaron Kirshenbaum,Melissa Garriga On Armistice Day, Veterans Call for an Armistice in Gaza and Beyond One hundred and six years after the end of World War I, another such deadly concoction is brewing. War is permanent. Genocide is on TV. A desperate empire is pushing human civilization toward a tragic end. By Gerry Condon VIEW ALL OPINION Call 207.775.0488 to donate by phone or mail a check to: Common Dreams · PO Box 443 · Portland, ME 04112-0443 · USA Common Dreams is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your contribution is tax-deductible. EIN: 20-3368194