Imagine the perfect political and intellectual weapon. It would disable your adversaries by preoccupying them with their own vanities and squabbles, a bit like a drug so good that users focus on the high and stop everything else they are doing.

Such a weapon exists: It is called political correctness. But it is not a weapon against white men or conservatives, as is frequently alleged; rather, it is a weapon against the American left. To put it simply, the American left has been hacked, and it is now running in a circle of its own choosing, rather than focusing on electoral victories or policy effectiveness. Too many segments of the Democratic Party are self-righteously talking about identity politics, and they are letting other priorities slip.

African-American politics are, it is often supposed, monolithic. Since the late 1960s, following the signing of landmark civil rights legislation by a Democratic president, the Democrats support of The Great Society, the anti-Civil Rights Act campaign of a Republican presidential nominee in 1964, the adoption of the "Southern Strategy" by Republican operatives in the latter part of the decade, and the decline of the Northeastern liberal wing of the GOP, black voters have emerged as the most reliably partisan voting bloc in American politics. They are the cornerstone of the Democratic coalition. This near monopoly of African-American party affiliation however does serve to obscure broad and diverse fissures within the philosophical landscape of the black community. There is wide-ranging discontent with the status quo of African-American politics and relatively little passion for the establishment liberalism that guides it. The question is, could this diversity of opinion allow for the realignment of political forces within the black community? Or are these dispersed frustrations inalterably resistant to meaningful coalitional rearrangement?

On October 11 2018, rapper Kanye West visited Republican president Donald Trump in the Oval Office. He was joined by Jim Brown, an NFL legend who has been revered in and beyond the black community as an icon of the civil rights era. During that meeting, West launched into a series of abstract policy musings and philosophical flourishes (punctuated with some profanity, swipes at liberal critiques, and effusions for President Trump) that left many fans and observers upset and bewildered. That Kanye West, erstwhile arguably America's most popular African-American artist, could wholeheartedly support a president whose politics and rhetoric seemed to fly in the face of the perceived interests and sensibilities of the black community has mystified many in the commentariat. Indeed, West may have reasons for supporting the president that are inscrutable.

But one plausible explanation for his support also serves to illustrate the basis upon which a broader axis of contrarian sentiment towards the institutional mainstream of black political culture persists. That is the simple fact that the trend of social and economic progress in the black community during the decades of this hegemony has been, relative to all other ethnic groups, scantly positive and, in certain keys areas, dramatically negative. One does not have to spend any great amount of time reminding people where the black community resides on the scales of topline social statistics. African-American men constitute roughly 35 percent of the prison population while representing 7 percent of the total population. They average a life expectancy roughly 5 years below the average of all other American males. African-Americans graduate high school at a mere 69 percent nationwide and do so at the lowest rate of all four major racial groups in America in all but 11 states (where they slightly exceed Latinos).

At least 11 people, including six children, have been killed as a result of an explosion in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Sunday, on the second day of parliamentary elections in the country, spokesperson for the provincial governor said in a statement obtained by Sputnik.

"A total of 11 Afghans, including one woman and six children, have been killed as a result of the explosion of a car that was laden with an improvised explosive device," the statement said.

The attack was carried out in the province's Achin district, which is believed to be the main stronghold of the Daesh terrorist group in the east of the country.

Nations across the globe are beginning to suffer from waste build-up, after China stopped importing recyclable garbage this year. Japan has become the latest country reporting severe recycling industry overload.

China's ban on imports of 24 types of solid waste materials, such as soda bottles, mixed paper, recycled steel and newsprint, has impacted the recycling chain across the globe. Japan, which last year exported about half of its 1.5 million tons of annual plastic waste, is now piled higher and deeper in its own garbage, with many local governments struggling to cope with the problem.

About a quarter of 102 local governments surveyed reported seeing accumulated plastic waste, which in some cases overreached sanitary norms, Environment Ministry data showed this week. At least 34 municipalities noted that they are failing to find new destinations to outsource their plastic after domestic costs of processing waste shot up.

China's refusal to accept more garbage is overstretching the Japanese recycling industry, with 34.9 percent of companies limiting or considering restricting the quantities of plastics they can accept. To deal with the problem, the Japanese ministry said it will expand domestic capacity to process plastic waste. The government also wants to introduce measures to prevent illegal dumping and expand the use of bioplastics, which are biodegradable.

Sabo, a conservative street artist, replaced a photo of killer Michael Myers with one of the congresswoman.

A billboard advertising the new Halloween movie opening Friday was altered after a street artist swapped out an image of serial killer Michael Myers and replaced it with one of Maxine Waters.

The gigantic billboard at Pico Boulevard in West Hollywood remains intact, only the congresswoman is now holding the sharp butcher knife in her right hand, looking ready to plunge it into an unsuspecting victim. The phrase "#Uncivil Democrats" has also been added.

Eighteen people were killed and at least 160 others injured on Sunday when one of Taiwan's newer, faster trains derailed on a curve along a popular weekend route, officials said.

The Puyuma express train was carrying more than 366 passengers from a suburb of Taipei toward Taitung, a city on Taiwan's southeast coast, when it went off the tracks at 4:50 p.m., the Taiwan central government said in a statement.

The National Fire Agency cited the Cabinet spokesman's office as saying 18 people were killed and 160 injured.

Some passengers were crushed to death, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Chen Chung-chi said. "Their train car turned over. They were crushed, so they died right away," Chen said.

Soldiers have been removing bodies to identify them, he added, but nightfall was complicating rescue work.

Industry executives and university advocates have successfully duped nearly every reporter, editor and anchor nationwide about the scale and purpose of the H-1B professional outsourcing program.

The journalists-and Americans-have been kept in the dark while universities and many allied name-brand companies have quietly imported an extra workforce of at least 100,000 lower-wage foreign professionals in place of higher-wage American graduates, above the supposed annual cap of 85,000 new H-1Bs.

Less than one-sixth of these extra 100,000 outsourced hires are the so-called "high-tech" computer experts that dominate media coverage of the contentious H-1B private-sector outsourcing debate.

Instead, the universities' off-the-books H-1B hires include 21,754 professors, lecturers and instructors, 20,566 doctors, clinicians and therapists, 25,175 researchers, post-docs and biologists, plus 30,000 financial planners, p.r. experts, writers, editors, sports coaches, designers, accountants, economists, statisticians, lawyers, architects, computer experts and much else.

See here for an NPR story on H-1B outsourced jobs sought by young American female scientists.

These white-collar guest-workers are not immigrants - they are foreign professionals hired at low wages for six years to take outsourced, white-collar jobs in the United States. Many hope to stay in the United States, but most guest-workers return home after six years. The universities have zero legal obligation to recruit Americans for the jobs given to the foreign professionals. There's good evidence that the H-1B graduates cut payroll costs, and there's little or no evidence that they create additional jobs or file additional patents.

A Ryanair passenger was captured on camera verbally abusing a black woman who had the misfortune to be seated near him. In video of the incident, the man unleashes a torrent of racist abuse as other passengers look on in horror.

Footage of the outburst was shared by passenger David Lawrence who filmed the incident on Friday on Ryanair flight FR9015 from Barcelona to London. It has been viewed nearly 2 million times on Facebook and shared by over 24,000 social media users.

The clip shows cabin crew attempting to calm the irate passenger down as he continues to hurl racist abuse at the woman, calling her an "ugly, black b*****d".

"I tell you what, I hope someone sits there because I don't want to sit next to your ugly face, your ugly f*****g face," he shouted. When the woman attempted to respond quietly he screamed: "Don't talk to me in a f*****g foreign language you stupid ugly cow."

An Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician got himself in hot water over photos of his "pilgrimage" to Hitler-related sites. The party acknowledged the existence of the pictures, adding that the politician had already resigned.

The photos were obtained by the Thuringer Allgemeine newspaper, which reported the scandalous affair. The explosive pictures date back to 2015, when the right-wing politician and his colleagues made a "pilgrimage" to sites associated with Adolf Hitler.

More than half of Germans living under Merkel's open-border regime want to leave their homeland, according to Die Welt, citing a YouGov survey commissioned by financial services provider Transferwise.

It was conducted between September 19 and 21, and included 2109 adults who were asked the following questions;

• Would you like to live abroad sometime (outside Germany)?
• Compared to two years ago - is it more or less likely that you will live abroad, or is there no difference?
• Which of the following are reasons why you want to move abroad? (Multiple answers possible).