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Ralph welcomes infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Osterholm to discuss his new book “The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.” Then, Ralph shares some quick takes on current events.
Dr. Michael Osterholm is a professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. In November 2020, Dr. Osterholm was appointed to President-elect Joe Biden’s 13-member Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. He is the author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, and he has a weekly podcast called The Osterholm Update which offers discussion and analysis on the latest infectious disease developments. His latest book (co-authored with Mark Olshaker) is The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.
What we’re concerned about now is we’re primed for an influenza pandemic someday where a new influenza virus will emerge. And when it takes off, it’ll rapidly spread through the people. And wherever it came from (whether a bird species or another animal) will not be that important because now it’s transmitted among humans.
Dr. Michael Osterholm
I want to be really clear about one thing: There will be an influenza virus that will cause a pandemic in the future. And the pandemic clock is ticking, we just don’t know what time it is.
Dr. Michael Osterholm
Instead of building from a base of modest preparedness from the prior administration (and I emphasize “modest”), they’re going backwards. Also, with quackery positions on a whole variety of issues that is dividing the population, feeding the misinformation on the internet, and general chaos of information transmission.
Ralph Nader
I will just make one prediction here today: There is going to be a large, huge, overwhelming crisis that is going to occur eventually around an infectious disease issue in this country. And it’s going to happen because Mother Nature herself does that to us—just like hurricanes are not optional, these large outbreaks are not optional. What’s optional is how well we respond to them and limit their impact. And we are at a point right now where we have very, very limited impact on these things. So I think the public needs to be aware, we’re in a very different setting today for public health response to a crisis than we’ve ever been in my 50 years in the business.
Dr. Michael Osterholm
News 10/31/25
* Our top stories this week concern U.S. saber rattling in Venezuela. First, a new piece in published Drop Site news, coauthored by Ryan Grim, Jack Poulson and Saagar Enjeti of Breaking Points, takes readers “Inside Marco Rubio’s Push for Regime Change in Venezuela.” This piece deconstructs the Trump administration claims tying the Maduro government to fentanyl trafficking, quoting a senior U.S. official who unequivocally states that “U.S. intelligence has assessed that little to none of the fentanyl trafficked to the United States is being produced in Venezuela.” Another key point is that the Maduro government apparently offered to turn over oil resources to the United States in exchange for cessation of hostilities. Instead, in an echo of the Iraq War, Trump has apparently been, “swayed by arguments from Rubio that the best way to secure Venezuela’s oil reserves was to facilitate regime change in Venezuela and make a better deal with a new government.” As with Iraq, regime change in Venezuela is likely to end up with a chaotic power vacuum in the country, destabilizing Latin America in turn. One would have hoped the U.S. had learned its lesson. Apparently not.
* The administration does however seem to favor covert schemes to oust Maduro as opposed to an outright U.S. invasion. Back in 2020, the Trump administration backed Operation Gideon, which utilized American mercenaries and Venezuelan dissidents to try to capture Maduro. This week, Venezuela claims to have foiled another such attempt. Democracy Now! reports “Venezuelan officials say they’ve captured a group of mercenaries tied to the [CIA]. In a statement, the government of Venezuela said, ‘This is a colonial operation of military aggression that seeks to turn the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and US imperial domination.’” This report goes on to state, “Earlier this month, President Trump acknowledged that he authorized the CIA to secretly conduct operations in Venezuela.” Meanwhile AP reports that over the past 16 months, a now-retired federal agent named Edwin Lopez sought to turn Maduro’s personal pilot – Venezuelan General Bitner Villegas – and have the aviator deliver Maduro into U.S. custody. In exchange, Lopez promised to make the pilot a “very rich man.” This plot, hatched under President Biden and continuing under Trump, ultimately failed. Yet, as these half-baked covert ops go up in flames, it seems increasingly likely that the administration will resort to brute force. That same Democracy Now! piece reports that on Sunday, a U.S. warship arrived in Trinidad and Tobago. With no diplomatic solution on the horizon, it seems only a matter of time before the shelling begins.
* As all of this unfolds, Congressional Republicans are shirking their oversight responsibilities. On October 23rd, Axios reported that Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho said the committee will not hold hearings regarding the lawless strikes on Venezuelan boats “at this time,” adding that he has been “briefed on it and feel[s] comfortable with where we are.” As if mocking the Legislative Branch, that same day Semafor reported a quote from “a person close to the White House” who said Trump won’t coordinate with Congress until “Maduro’s corpse is in US custody.”
* Turning to the federal government, reclusive billionaire Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon fortune, has donated $130 million to the Pentagon to offset military staff salaries during the government shutdown. While $130 million is a drop in the bucket for the American Military-Industrial Complex – this donation will amount to about $50 per troop this pay cycle – it would appear to be blatantly illegal under the Antideficiency Act. The Hill explains that under this statute, “federal agencies are barred from ‘obligating or expending federal funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation, and from accepting voluntary services.’” In part, this statute was adopted to avoid just such a scenario – the president circumventing the Congressional Power of the Purse by soliciting outside donations. Unfortunately, Trump’s subservient Congressional allies are unlikely to do anything about this outrageous usurpation of their power.
* On the regulatory side, the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scales in favor of David Ellison’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. A New York Post report quotes a senior administration official who says “Who owns Warner Bros. Discovery is very important to the administration…The Warner board needs to think very seriously not just on the price competition but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done.” The Post adds that “rival bidders are likely to face stiff hurdles from US regulators.” Ellison, son of Trump billionaire ally Larry Ellison, has had his eye on Warner Bros. Discovery – which owns CNN – since his recent acquisition of Paramount and its subsidiary CBS News. Critics have long warned of the dangers of consolidation in the media sphere, particularly news, but this would truly be an unprecedented upset of the media landscape.
* Turning to consumer news, a new article in the Lever focuses on the fast food chain Shake Shack. According to this piece, the chain, “recently updated its terms of use agreement to include a binding arbitration agreement and class-action waiver denying customers their legal right to take companies to court.” Now, corporations sneaking binding arbitration agreements into their terms of service is not a new phenomenon, but this method is novel. This article explains that Shake Shack, and other fast food chains, are “extending restrictive contracts to consumers through the rapid expansion of online services such as websites, mobile apps, and automated self-service kiosks.” In other words, these automated services are becoming a ‘triple-threat’ for these companies to exploit, simultaneously cutting labor costs, harvesting consumer data, and now forcing customers into these restrictive legal agreements. When will regulators take action to protect consumers from such rampant abuse?
* One bright spot, so to speak, for consumer protection is emerging in the United Kingdom. The BBC reports the British Department for Transport will begin a review of the increasingly bright, bordering on blinding, LED headlights that have become commonplace in automobiles. The new guidelines are to be unveiled in the forthcoming Road Safety Strategy document being prepared by the government. Many drivers in the United States have complained about this issue as well – noting how dangerous it is for drivers to be blinded by oncoming headlights while on the road – and certain states like Hawaii and Massachusetts have taken action, though there has yet to be a federal response.
* In more positive news from abroad, the Economic Times reports China has enacted an anti-misinformation law dictating that, “if you are an influencer and… want to discuss ‘serious’ topics – such as finance, health, medicine, law or education – you must provide proof of relevant professional credentials.” This law will also ban “advertising for medical products and services,” which also covers supplements and health foods. Other reports indicate that the fines for violating this law could be as high as ¥100,000. The proliferation of medical misinformation has become a major issue for governments the world over and in the U.S. has incubated a vast underworld of medical conspiracy theories and dubious health products. It is heartening to see something being done to protect consumers’ health and safety.
* Speaking of someone doing something, Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh made headlines a month ago for blocking vehicles outside of an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, where she is running for office. Now, NBC reports she has been indicted by a special federal grand jury, “alongside five other people, including two other political candidates.” Abughazaleh responded to the indictment, writing “This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.” Her lawyer, Josh Herman, added, “This is a political prosecution that tries to turn dissent and First Amendment opposition to the Trump administration’s cruel policies into a conspiracy…Kat has steadfastly opposed those policies and she will fight these charges with the same principled determination.” The defendants have not been arrested but will surrender to the court next week.
* Finally, Palestine Legal has scored a major victory. The group reports that “The First Circuit…[has] ruled that pro-Palestinian slogans, encampments and criticism of Zionism is protected by the First Amendment — tossing out a Zionist complaint targeting pro-Palestinian organizing at @MIT.” Furthermore, the court found that “Slogans such as From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, intifada revolution, and calling Israel’s actions a genocide — and more — do not target Jewish or Israeli students on the basis of their identity… but target Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.” This is a win for the David side of the David and Goliath struggle between pro-Palestine student groups and the universities where they are organizing – which are themselves under immense pressure from the Trump administration to stifle pro-Palestinian speech. Hopefully, this gives organizers the necessary breathing room they need to regroup as the Trump-brokered ceasefire grows ever shakier.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
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Image by Laurentiu Morariu.
Early this year, legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate introduced resolutions that call upon the U.S. government to lead a global effort to halt and reverse the nuclear arms race. Co-sponsored by 36 members of the House and five members of the Senate, H. Res. 317 and S. Res. 323 urge the U.S. government to pursue nuclear disarmament, renounce the first use of nuclear weapons, end sole presidential authority to launch them, cancel plans for new, enhanced nuclear weapons and delivery systems, maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing explosions, and provide a just economic transition for impacted communities.
The context for these antinuclear measures is an escalating nuclear arms race that is rapidly spiraling out of control. In recent years, Russia and the United States, which together possess 87 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, have scrapped nearly all their nuclear arms control agreements. The only exception is the New Start Treaty, which is scheduled to expire in February 2026. Meanwhile, all nine nuclear powers (Russia, United States, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) have committed themselves to dramatically upgrading their nuclear arsenals. The U.S. government, for example, at the enormous cost of $1.7 trillion, is currently engaged in revamping its entire nuclear weapons complex and building an array of new, more devastating nuclear weapons.
This worldwide nuclear weapons buildup has been accompanied by a revival of public threats by the leaders of nuclear-armed nations to initiate nuclear war―threats that have been issued, repeatedly, by Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin. Not surprisingly, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists currently stands at 89 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.
The House and Senate resolutions seeking to halt and reverse this race toward catastrophe are primarily the product of the Back from the Brink campaign. Founded in 2017 by the leaders of two U.S. national organizations, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists, Back from the Brink has emerged as an impressive coalition of organizations, individuals, and public officials working together to create a world free of nuclear weapons.
At this point, the Back from the Brink campaign has secured the endorsement of a significant number of additional national organizations, including peace and disarmament groups like the American Friends Service Committee, the Federation of American Scientists, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, and Veterans for Peace, religious organizations like the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the United Church of Christ, environmental groups like 350.org, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club, political activist groups like the Hip Hop Caucus and Indivisible, and governmental organizations like the United States Conference of Mayors.
In addition, the campaign has attracted the support of hundreds of local peace, academic, civic, environmental, health, policy, religious, and other organizations, as well as endorsements from 78 municipalities and counties, eight state legislative bodies, 488 municipal and state officials, and 53 members of Congress.
Despite this array of support, Back from the Brink’s immediate prospects are not good. Its antinuclear resolutions, now awaiting action by the Republican-controlled House and Senate, seem unlikely to pass, as not a single Republican legislator has signed on as a co-sponsor of them thus far. Nor is it likely that President Donald Trump, who seems enamored with U.S. military “strength,” will champion halting, much less reversing, the nuclear arms race.
Longer term, however, the prospects are brighter. Unlike the Republican Party of recent decades, the Democratic Party has championed a variety of nuclear arms control and disarmament measures. Thus, if the Democrats do well in the 2026 midterm elections and, thereby, retake control of the House and the Senate, there is a reasonable chance that they will pass Back from the Brink’s antinuclear resolutions. Also, if the Democrats hold on to Congress and win the presidency in 2028, it’s quite possible that nuclear arms control and disarmament will appear once again on the U.S. government’s public policy agenda.
Of course, even if there are public policy advances along these lines, as there have been in the past, it will not end the immense danger of worldwide nuclear annihilation―a danger that emerged with startling clarity in 1945 with the advent and use of nuclear weapons to obliterate two Japanese cities. Ultimately, a secure future for civilization will be attained only when these weapons of mass destruction are abolished.
Is that feasible?
It’s certainly a possibility. After all, when directly confronted with the issue of human survival, most people have displayed an appropriate concern for it by demanding an end to the nuclear menace. And that goal could be attained by seeing to it that all nations sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. That landmark treaty, which was hammered out painstakingly at the United Nations in 2017 and which entered into force in 2021, has already been signed by 95 countries (a majority of the world’s nations) and ratified by 74 of them.
Admittedly, the nine nuclear powers, still clinging doggedly to their nuclear weapons, are not among them. But, if there were a mobilization of substantial public pressure and the development of international security guarantees enforced by a strengthened United Nations, the reluctance of these holdouts could be overcome and a nuclear weapons-free world established.
Meanwhile, to provide us with the time it will take to get to this state of affairs, we do need to focus on turning back from the brink of nuclear war.
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I have been informed by the leadership of what might best be described as the “black consciousness movement” of Azania (South Africa) that a formal call to include Israel in the “cultural boycott” of South Africa will be issued from inside South Africa within the next few weeks.
The Black Consciousness Movement was started under the leadership of Steve Biko (whose life and murder by the Pretoria regime was the basis for the film “Cry Freedom”) and was the first organization to call for a cultural boycott of South Africa.
This call, sent out especially to pop musical groups, eventually generated the formation of “Artists United Against Apartheid.” The cultural boycott of South Africa was probably the first major effort successfully to draw pop and rock musicians into an anti-racist campaign.
The next logical step, which some of us have been struggling to implement, has been the inclusion of the racist, colonial, settler, Zionist regime of Israel in the cultural boycott.
Recently, a British pop-reggae band called UB40 spent some time here in Hawaii. Known for the radical political content of many of their songs, UB40 had a song go to no. 1 on the pop music charts in the US in 1988.
UB40 has agreed to cancel their Israel tour (a loss of over $500,000) in protest of the racist policies of the Zionist occupation forces in Israel and in support of the intifadah of the indigenous Arab youth of Palestine. Finally, the lines have been drawn. With UB40 setting an example, the call will be going out to all the major pop and rock groups to honor the cultural boycott of South Africa-Israel or risk being “boycotted” themselves.
UB40 has taken a very courageous stand. Those of us familiar with the music business know only too well how dominant outright Zionists and supporters of Israel are in the industry, Many of us remember the near destruction of Miriam Makeba’s career some 20 years ago when she took a stand opposing Zionism and supporting the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
What we are saying is, from the frontlines of South Africa to the frontlines of Palestine, apartheid-Zionism is racism. Support the cultural boycott! Say “no” to Israel and Apartheid South Africa!
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“The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”—the caption of Goya’s 1799 etching—was a warning against moral blindness, against reason stripped of empathy. It may not apply neatly to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, but his rise has had the same somnambulant quality: less a climb than an inheritance.
Installed in the White House by marriage rather than merit, he became his father-in-law’s most indulged adviser—a diplomatic novice handed the Middle East peace portfolio because family outranked expertise. Between 2017 and 2021, this young and slightly mysterious man who once said he relaxed by looking at buildings oversaw the administration’s “peace plan,” culminating in the highly transactional Abraham Accords—deals that normalised Israel’s ties with Gulf monarchies while leaving the Palestinians conspicuously outside the frame. Jordan, as I wrote at the time, kept its caution.
When the first Trump years ended, Kushner did what many former officials only dream of—he turned his address book into a balance sheet. In 2021 he founded Affinity Partners, a private-equity firm based in sun-slapped Miami. Within six months he had secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose personal approval overrode internal misgivings. Reuters later reported additional Gulf-state backing, the Senate Finance Committee since noting that Affinity has collected roughly $157 million in management fees—a tasty afterglow of office that would trouble almost anyone but the man himself.
Since leaving Washington, Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism in 2009, have kept a calculated distance from Donald Trump—part image management, part tactical retreat. The separation read as both self-preservation and positioning: close enough to profit from future influence, far enough to escape the chaos that once defined it. It is an image carefully sculpted, not slapped on like wet clay.
By 2024, as Gaza burned, Kushner re-emerged. “Gaza’s very valuable waterfront property,” he said—a phrase that landed like a Freudian slip, reducing catastrophe to real estate. He offered advice on Gaza’s reconstruction even as he pursued mega-deals such as the $55 billion Electronic Arts “take-private”—much to the chagrin of EA gameplayers—with the same Saudi fund that seeded his firm. In October 2025, amid a fragile cease-fire, the Associated Press credited Trump-era envoys—including Kushner—with quiet, back-channel involvement.
Photos of Affinity’s Miami offices show a family office disguised as a global fund: muted décor, small staff, white walls, and the steady hum of expensive air-conditioning. Tom Wolfe would have had a field day. Visitors describe Kushner pacing barefoot during long calls, gesturing with his phone. Meetings, people suggest, often end in polite vagueness rather than decision. The manner is frictionless—calm, confident, faintly antiseptic. Former colleagues recall the same vibe in Washington: rarely angered, never hurried, convinced that numbers could soothe politics. Even so, Kushner’s struggle to secure a permanent top-level security clearance was widely cited in Washington as a red flag.
He also surfaced in the Mueller investigation, his meetings with Russian and other foreign figures serving as a case study in the perils of mixing business, diplomacy, and family inheritance.
To admirers, he is unflappable and visionary; to others, a kind of avatar of polite ambition. In Gulf business circles, he is said to speak the language of return multiples and megaprojects—a dialect, I’m assured, native to sovereign-fund culture.
It’s easy enough to picture how a man in Kushner’s position might profit from peace. Hypothetically—emphasis on the word—he could collect management fees on MENA funds for postwar reconstruction; take equity in Gaza–Israel infrastructure once the dust settles; invest in “coastal regeneration,” energy, logistics, or tech ventures that depend on a cease-fire to function. None of this is necessarily illicit. It simply shows how private equity transforms diplomacy into deal flow—how peace becomes another line item in a prospectus. As Hannah Arendt warned, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Palestinian officials have long rejected this logic. In 2019 they boycotted Kushner’s Bahrain conference, calling its promises of investment a bribe for silence. More recently, critics have said you cannot build a riviera on the bones of the dead. The discomfort is universal: profit may rebuild what bombs destroyed, but it also risks sanitising the destruction.
To allies, Kushner remains a believer in capital as cure—a man determined to prove that investment can succeed where diplomacy failed. To critics, that is the delusion of his career: the faith that liquidity can redeem dispossession. The moral deficit, not the financial one, haunts every discussion of Gaza’s reconstruction. Sympathy never appears on a spreadsheet.
Between Miami (where fellow billionaire Steve Witkoff is a neighbour), Riyadh, and Tel Aviv, Kushner moves easily, fluent in that grammar of patient capital. In Washington, investigators and former colleagues see something plainer: not vision but access monetised—and a family’s privilege refashioned as a global business model.
“There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism,” Walter Benjamin once wrote. In the end, Kushner’s story isn’t just about one man’s knack for turning proximity into capital; it’s about a political culture that treats proximity itself as capital. His calm, his polish, his euphemisms for ruin—all belong to an era in which the line between service and self-interest has blurred into consultancy. The mirage in the desert is not really there. What unsettles people is not simply that he might profit from Gaza’s resurrection, but that such a prospect no longer shocks anyone at all.
He said recently, without irony, “Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, you chose to be exceptional—you chose to stand for the values that you stand for, and I couldn’t be prouder to be a friend of Israel.”
Not long after, a Palestinian aid worker told the BBC, “We can no longer recognise ourselves as human beings.”
And now Kushner is hailed by some as the new Kissinger, presumably forgetting that Kissinger was labelled a “war criminal” by so many people due to his involvement in controversial foreign policies that led to significant human suffering, such as the Vietnam War and actions in Latin America.
The Goya etching is from Los Caprichos, a series of 80 satirical prints exposing the social and political follies of late-18th-century Spain. It depicts a man—often read as Goya himself—slumped asleep at his desk as owls and bats swarm behind him. It was on this desk that the artist engraved the warning: “The sleep of reason produces monsters.” In his notes, Goya clarified this: “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.”
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New York, October 2, 2025 – The Committee to Protect Journalists demands Israeli authorities immediately and unconditionally release the humanitarian crew of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, which includes at least 32 journalists, after the vessels were seized on October 1 and 2.
“Detaining members of the press while reporting on a humanitarian mission is a clear violation of international maritime law and a dangerous escalation in Israel’s pattern of attacks against journalists,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ Regional Director. “World leaders must act now to defend press freedom, protect journalists, and demand accountability”.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, the largest maritime aid convoy of its kind to date, set sail to Gaza from Spain on August 31, with the aim of breaking Israel’s naval blockade of the territory and delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians amid famine conditions that have taken hold under Israel’s months-long closure of crossings.
It includes around 50 vessels carrying between 500 and 700 activists from more than 40 countries.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said on X that all but one vessel was on its way to Israel, and all detained activists would be deported to Europe.
CPJ has identified 32 journalists on board the vessels, but it remains unclear which of them were detained, apart from Yassine Al Gaidi, Hayat Al Yamani, Lotfi Hajji, and Anis Al Abbassi.
Suhad Bishara, the director of the Adalah Center legal department, which is defending the activists, told CPJ that her legal team is in the Israeli port city of Ashdod, following up on their detention.
“Currently, the picture is not complete. Regarding deportation or any legal proceedings, it could be this evening after the Immigration Authority begins the process, and it could take several days,” she said.
Since September 15, Israeli authorities have published multiple posts accusing the flotilla of being “a propaganda tool for Hamas jihadists,” claiming its leaders and spokespersons have ties to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other groups. The organizers have staunchly rejected these allegations.
CPJ emailed the IDF’s North America Media Desk to request comment on the detention of the journalists, but did not immediately receive any response.
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