The Evening Blues - 4-23-21



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Wet Willie

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues rock band Wet Willie. Enjoy!

Wet Willie - Keep On Smiling

"There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that's happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy, and how far we want to protect it and from whom."

-- Sonia Sotomayor


News and Opinion

U.S. Marshals Used Drones to Spy on Black Lives Matter Protests in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Marshals Service flew unmanned drones over Washington, D.C., in response to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act show.

The documents — two brief, heavily redacted emails — indicate the Marshals flew the drones over Washington on June 5 and 7, when nationwide protests against police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder were at their height. The surveillance flights occurred just days after the Trump administration ordered the mobilization of the near entirety of federal law enforcement against Washington’s protesters. The aggressive physical crackdown against Black Lives Matter rallies, particularly in Washington, D.C., spurred its own wave of outrage as police beat, chased, and chemically dispersed largely peaceful demonstrators. Less visible law enforcement responses to the rallies also drew intense criticism, including the use of social media surveillance and, in particular, the use of aerial surveillance over multiple cities by the Air National Guard and Department of Homeland Security. Government aircraft monitored 15 cities during the protests, according to the New York Times, filming demonstrators in New York, Philadelphia, and Dayton, Ohio; a Predator drone was deployed over Minneapolis. ...

Marshals Service spokesperson James Stossel confirmed the flights to The Intercept but declined to answer any questions about their purpose or what data was collected, stating, “The USMS does not release details of operational missions,” and denying that the Marshals flew drones over the city on any other dates. Asked how the robotic aerial surveillance of protests conforms with the agency’s narrowly defined mission, Stossel said, “The Marshals Service conducts a broad array of missions as authorized by Federal Law which may include ensuring the rule of law is maintained during protests.” Press reports from this period describe the protests in question as peaceful. ...

Experts say it’s still unclear why the U.S. Marshals are even in a position to conduct these flights in the first place. “How did it become part of the mission of U.S. Marshals Service to engage in aerial surveillance during a protest movement?” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “It’s hard to know with all the secrecy, but it looks like once again, powerful high-tech tools sold to the public for use against the worst criminals are now being deployed against peaceful protesters and activists.”

Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Intercept that the fact there’s a Marshals Service drone program at all is indicative of how thoroughly crime-fighting agencies in the United States now resemble war-fighting forces: “The Marshals service has drones for much the same reason that many local police departments have tanks,” Guariglia said. “The slow militarization of local and federal law enforcement as a result on the war on crime, war on drugs, and war on terror have created dozens of desperate law enforcement agencies with advanced technology and bloated budgets.”

Biden Is NOT ENDING Afghan War After All

Montana Becomes First State To Pass Resolution Against Unconstitutional Wars

The Montana state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan and unprecedented resolution Tuesday calling on the federal government to end endless wars. The resolution passed 95-3 in the House and 47-2 in the Senate.

House Joint Resolution 9, sponsored by Rep. Ron Marshall (R-Hamilton), is the first of its kind to be introduced by any state and is currently being used as a model for other states across the country.

The resolution specifically urges President Joe Biden and the United States Congress to “end the endless war in Afghanistan,” repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, resist sending U.S. troops into combat without a declaration of war from Congress or specific authorization to do so, and to “execute a prudent foreign policy.”

Concerned Veterans for America, a veteran-run organization, endorsed the resolution and plans on utilizing it at the national level.

Israel confirms Syrian missile landed near Dimona nuclear reactor

Israel has acknowledged that its air defences failed to intercept a missile fired from Syria overnight that traversed 125 miles of its highly protected airspace and landed near its secretive Dimona nuclear reactor.

The surface-to-air missile was believed to have been fired by Syrian air defences against Israeli jets that were bombing a site near Damascus, but the path it flew initially led to speculation that Israel’s most sensitive site may have instead been a target.

The defence minister, Benny Gantz, claimed the missile had landed in Israel as a result of errant Syrian anti-aircraft fire. In doing so he raised concerns about the effectiveness of his country’s vaunted air defence capabilities, which have been entrusted to counter such threats.

Gantz said Israel’s anti-missile systems had attempted to intercept the SA-5 but were unsuccessful. “In most cases we achieve other results. This is a slightly more complex case. We will investigate it and move on,” he said.

The incident follows the publication of an analysis in an Iranian newspaper at the weekend that called for the Dimona reactor to be targeted to avenge an apparent Israeli sabotage operation at the Natanz nuclear site in Iran a fortnight ago.

President Zelensky says Ukraine “ready” for war with Russia as tensions mount

Amid mounting tensions in the Black Sea region, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared on Tuesday night that Ukraine is “ready” for war with Russia. He warned that the country would “stand to the last man” in the event of a war. Zelensky also signed a law allowing the Ukrainian army to mobilize its reservists without notice within 24 hours. Those avoiding the draft will be subject to criminal prosecution. The new law had been proposed by the Ukrainian General Staff.

Zelensky’s aggressive declarations came amid reports of growing NATO activity near Russia’s borders. On Wednesday, the Russian press reported that two NATO aircraft, an American P-8A Poseidon and a British RC-135W, and an American drone had conducted reconnaissance flights for several hours near the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea. A French military aircraft carrier was spotted off the Romanian Black Sea coast, and several NATO aircraft took off over Estonia, Latvia and Poland on Tuesday to intercept and escort Russian reconnaissance aircraft, fighters and bombers over the Baltic Sea. On April 19, Ukraine and NATO-member Romania had conducted joint military exercises in the Black Sea.

The Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that more than 20 American F-16 and F-15 fighters had been suddenly deployed from the UK to Poland. It quoted a Russian military expert who indicated that two American missile destroyers, USS Donald Cook and USS Roosevelt, were “now in the northern part of the Aegean Sea [just off the Black Sea], participating in the maneuvers of NATO Rammstein Dust II 21.” Last week, the US canceled the deployment of two warships to the Black Sea at short notice but just days later, the UK sent two warships to the region. ...

Over the past few weeks, the Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky has aggressively lobbied the US and EU to accelerate Ukraine’s admission to NATO. However, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have refused to support Ukraine’s NATO admission at this point. The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany has threatened that the Kiev government is considering the acquisition of nuclear weapons “on its own” should its request to join NATO not be granted. According to Russian press reports, the Ukrainian parliament is now also preparing a letter to the US Congress to request the status of “major non-NATO ally” (MNNA). On Wednesday, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba revealed that he had asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to provide Ukraine “powerful means of electronic warfare” for its stand-off with Russia. He also said that he had called upon EU Foreign Ministers to cut Russia off the SWIFT system, an international communication system for banks and other financial institutions. Such a step is understood to potentially lead to the complete collapse of the Russian financial system. ...

Well aware that the continuation, let alone expansion, of the war in East Ukraine, is deeply unpopular, the Ukrainian ruling class is seeking to mobilize the country’s far right. Neo-Nazi forces have already played a central role in the 2014 coup and the subsequent civil war. Last week Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs, a man close to the far right and one of the country’s most powerful politicians, appealed to these forces on Facebook. Calling them “patriots” and using fascistic language, he asked them to prepare for war and protect the “Motherland.” Avakov suggested that Ukraine would fare better than it did in 2014 due to the over $2 billion in military aid and equipment it has received from the US since.

Matt Taibbi: Rachel Maddow Is The NEW Bill O'Reilly

Top general concerned about Afghan forces after US troops leave

The top U.S. general in the Middle East expressed concern Thursday about Afghan forces’ ability to fend off the Taliban after U.S. troops withdraw from the country.

“My concern is the ability of the Afghan military to hold the ground that they're on now without the support that they've been used to for many years," Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan air force to fly, in particular, after we remove the support for those aircraft," he added.

Pressed later in the hearing on continuing to fund Afghan forces when U.S. troops withdraw, McKenzie said that without "some support," the Afghan forces "certainly will collapse."

McKenzie’s testimony marked the second time this week he has expressed concern about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan after President Biden announced last week he was ordering U.S. troops to pull out by Sept. 11.

Joe Biden set to formally recognize Armenian genocide, officials say

Joe Biden is expected to formally recognize the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the first world war as an act of genocide, according to US officials.

The anticipated move – something Biden had pledged to do as a candidate – could further complicate an already tense relationship with the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Administration officials had not informed Turkey as of Wednesday, and Biden could still change his mind, according to one official who spoke to the Associated Press.

Lawmakers and Armenian-American activists are lobbying Biden to make the announcement on or before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which will be marked on Saturday.

One possibility is that Biden would include the acknowledgement of genocide in the annual remembrance day proclamation typically issued by presidents. Biden’s predecessors have avoided using “genocide” in the proclamation commemorating the dark moment in history.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during the first world war, but contests the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

Big Pharma's 'Appalling' $26 Billion in Shareholder Payouts Could Fund Vaccines for All of Africa: Report

Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca—three of the world's top coronavirus vaccine manufacturers—have paid out a combined $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders over the past year, a sum that could fully fund the cost of inoculating Africa's entire 1.3 billion-person population.

That's according to an analysis released Thursday morning by the People's Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of advocacy organizations campaigning to end massive inequities in the distribution of life-saving coronavirus vaccines.

Unveiled just ahead of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson's annual shareholder meetings on Thursday, the new report notes that Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are projecting revenues of $33.5 billion this year from their mRNA vaccines, which have largely been sold to rich nations.

"One of the reasons Pharma companies have been able to generate such large profits is because of intellectual property rules that restrict production to a handful of companies," the report notes, alluding to an international agreement that bars generic manufacturers from replicating vaccine formulas.

Wealthy countries, including the U.S. and European Union members, are standing in the way of an effort to temporarily waive the rules at the World Trade Organization.

"These vaccines were funded by public money and are desperately needed worldwide if we are to end this pandemic," Heidi Chow, senior campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. "It's morally bankrupt for rich country leaders to allow a small group of corporations to keep the vaccine technology and know-how under lock and key while selling their limited doses to the highest bidder."

The new analysis estimates that Pfizer and BioNTech received a total of $2.5 billion in public funding for their vaccine, and that Pfizer has paid out $8.44 billion in dividends over the past 12 months. Johnson & Johnson, which received $1.5 billion in public money, paid out $10.5 billion in dividends.

Maaza Seyoum, who is leading the People's Vaccine Alliance's Africa campaign, called on President Joe Biden to "put the health of all of humanity and shared economic prosperity ahead of the private profits of a few corporations" by ending U.S. opposition to the proposed intellectual property waiver.

"Big business as usual will not end this pandemic," said Seyoum. "This is clearer now more than ever."

As wealthy nations swallow up much of the existing supply, developing countries are left largely without access to vaccines as coronavirus infections continue to surge globally, fueling warnings that vaccine-resistant strains could spread widely and prolong the deadly pandemic.

David Sirota: Inside Dem Plan To Give MASSIVE Tax Cut To The Rich

New Hampshire’s Democratic Senators Are Quietly Resisting a Minimum Wage Hike

A week and a half after the Senate rejected an effort by Vermont independent Bernie Sanders to attach a minimum wage increase to a coronavirus relief package, his neighboring Democratic senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, gathered with constituents for a teleconference.

The New Hampshire senators were joined on the March 15 call by Tom Boucher, who was recently appointed to the board of the National Restaurant Association, known in Washington as “the other NRA.” Boucher also serves as a trustee on the association’s Education Foundation and is CEO of Great NH Restaurants, Inc. Boucher laid out for the senators just how perilous the past pandemic year had been for the restaurant industry and profusely thanked them for their help in thwarting the minimum wage increase, telling them they had prevented countless restaurants from closing down.

Democratic state Rep. Maria Perez said that, during the call, she was stunned by how similar Boucher’s rhetoric sounded to that of the senators and that she had heard the same arguments coming from their staff when she had lobbied them to support a wage increase. “The language that I heard from the senators is the same language I heard from the Restaurant Association,” Perez said. ...

James Haslam, executive director of Rights & Democracy, a local progressive organization which operates in both New Hampshire and Vermont, said that Hassan’s and Shaheen’s staff have told him repeatedly that they have gotten a high volume of letters from service industry workers opposed to raising the tipped wage. Haslam said the senators appear not to understand, or willfully misunderstand, that employees in the service industry are under intense pressure to repeat the talking points of their bosses. There are essentially no unions for service staff, and restaurant bosses have an extraordinary ability to make or break a server, both through the power of scheduling — Saturday night and Tuesday afternoon are likely to bring much different paydays — and the power to assign servers to particular sections, some of which are far more lucrative than others. ...

The effort to phase out the tipped wage has received far less national attention than the fight for $15, and given the skepticism of holdouts like Shaheen and Hassan, it’s not hard to see service staff getting stiffed in a final compromise — if one is ever reached.

Krystal Ball: REPORT, Department Stores On "Brink Of Extinction"

New Oklahoma law targets protesters while protecting drivers who hit them

A new Oklahoma law protects drivers who unintentionally injure or kill demonstrators from any liability, while simultaneously subjecting protesters who block roadways to jail time and hefty fines. Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, signed HB 1674 on Wednesday, even as advocates excoriated their elected officials for undermining democracy.

“They are targeting groups of protesters who are just wanting to use their freedom of speech, passing bills that will intimidate them in the hopes of keeping people from using their first amendment rights, passing bills that decriminalize the murder of protesters, which is absolutely insane,” said Adriana Laws, founder of the Collegiate Freedom and Justice Coalition.

Because of HB 1674, a driver “who unintentionally causes injury or death” while exercising “due care” will not be criminally or civilly liable if they reasonably believe they’re “fleeing from a riot” where they will be harmed. Obstruction of a public street, highway or road will now constitute a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in a county jail and fees as high as $5,000. Anyone who commits the offense will be liable for damages.

Legislators passed HB 1674 following historic protests against police brutality and racial injustice last summer, both in Oklahoma and across the country. The mass demonstrations – most of which were peaceful – faced sharp criticism from Republicans, who decried property damage and violence by some protesters.

Meanwhile, cars have become a weapon among those hoping to disrupt demonstrations, or drivers who get flummoxed and enraged. People drove their vehicles into protests more than 100 times last summer, and at least two protesters were fatally struck, according to USA Today.

Funeral Held for Police Shooting Victim Daunte Wright in Minneapolis

LA activists protest mayor’s police budget increase

Los Angeles activists denounced a budget proposal by the mayor that includes increases to the law enforcement budget, one day after the conviction of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis fueled renewed scrutiny of police across the US.

Protesters who gathered outside a local police union building near downtown LA on Wednesday celebrated the rare guilty verdict in a police murder case, but also called for systemic changes locally, including the defunding of the LA police department (LAPD).

“The people taking to the streets got us guilty verdicts yesterday … not the system. The system isn’t for us,” said Stephanie Luna, the aunt of Anthony Vargas, a 21-year-old killed by LA sheriff’s deputies in 2018. “[The verdict] gave us a lot of hope – we need to bring some of that down to California.”

Mothers in the crowd cheered while holding signs with the names of their children killed by LA police, as others waved “We keep us safe” flags and banners callingfor the dismantling of powerful law enforcement unions.

In the face of intense pressure, LA’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, last June agreed to some reductions in LAPD funding. But this week, Garcetti outraged advocates and civil rights groups with his proposed 2021-22 budget, which seeks to allocate $1.76bn for LAPD, a 3% increase.

US supreme court declines to limit life without parole sentences for minors

The newly conservative-leaning US supreme court has declined to place new limits on sentencing juveniles to life in prison with no chance of parole, marking a break with the court’s previous rulings which had been gradually moving towards more leniency for minors over the past two decades.

In a ruling that illustrated the the impact of the appointments of three justices by former president Donald Trump, the high court ruled to reject arguments by Brett Jones of Mississippi, who was convicted of killing his grandfather at age 15 and is serving a sentence of life without parole. The court’s six conservatives were in the majority, with the three liberal members dissenting.

The justices rejected arguments by Jones, that his sentence violated the constitution’s eighth amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment because the judge in his trial had not made the finding that he was “permanently incorrigible”.

The “argument that the sentencer must make a finding of permanent incorrigibility is inconsistent with the court’s precedents”, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was controversially appointed to the bench in 2018 under the Trump administration, wrote for the majority.

In a scathing dissent, the liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the high court’s decision “guts” precedents that had strictly limited juvenile life sentences without possibility of parole. She added that the ruling was attempting to “circumvent” legal precedent and was “fooling no one”.



the horse race



Arizona Republicans to begin auditing 2020 ballots in effort to undermine election results

Nearly five months after Joe Biden was declared the official winner of the presidential race in Arizona, state Republicans are set to begin their own audit of millions of ballots, an unprecedented move many see as a thinly-veiled effort to continue to undermine confidence in the 2020 election results.

The GOP-controlled state senate ordered the audit, set to formally get underway this week, which may be one of the most absurd and alarming consequences to date of Donald Trump’s baseless lies about the 2020 election. It will be executed by a private Florida-based company. It also reportedly will be supported from far-right lawyer Lin Wood and observers from the far-right news network One America News Network.

The audit will be solely focused on Maricopa county, the largest in the state and home to a majority of Arizona’s voters. Biden narrowly defeated Trump in the county, a crucial battleground that helped the president win Arizona by around 10,000 votes. The audit will include a hand recount of all 2.1m ballots cast in the county, a process expected to take months. ...

Alarm over the audit has escalated in recent weeks after Republicans announced the firms that would be leading the effort. The company that will lead the audit, a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas, is led by Doug Logan, who supported several baseless conspiracy theories about the election. In December, he retweeted a post that questioned the validity of Maricopa’s ballot count and falsely said Trump may have gotten 200,000 more votes than were reported in Arizona, according to the Arizona Mirror, which first reported his involvement in the audit.



the evening greens


Biden Vows to Cut Emissions, But U.S. Continues to Subsidize Fossil Fuels Amid Climate Crisis

Biden vows to slash US emissions by half to meet ‘existential crisis of our time’

Joe Biden has called upon the world to confront the climate crisis and “overcome the existential crisis of our time”, as he unveiled an ambitious new pledge to slash US planet-heating emissions in half by the end of the decade.

Addressing a virtual gathering of more than 40 world leaders in an Earth Day climate summit on Thursday, Biden warned that “time is short” to address dangerous global heating and urged other countries to do more.

Shortly before the start of the summit, the White House said the US will aim to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 50% and 52% by 2030, based on 2005 levels. Biden said the new US goal will set it on the path to net zero emissions by 2050 and that other countries now needed to also raise their ambition. ...

Faced with the task of coming up with an ambitious but feasible goal, the new US target does not match that of the UK and the EU but is still among the strongest pledges to date. António Guterres, the secretary general of the UN, said that a 50% reduction by the US was needed to help stop the planet slipping into a climate “abyss”, with scientists warning the world must slash emissions in half by 2030 if it is to curb calamitous heatwaves, wildfires, floods and societal unrest. ...

“It is very ambitious, even if one considers that US greenhouse gas emissions have actually been declining already since 2007,” said Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist at Cornell University, of the new US target. “Is this new pledge enough? Probably not, but this also depends on what other major emitters will do this decade.”

Japan To Dump Radioactive Waste Into Ocean -- Not Kidding

Changes to giant ocean eddies could have ‘devastating effects’ globally

Swirling and meandering ocean currents that help shape the world’s climate have gone through a “global-scale reorganisation” over the past three decades, according to new research. The amount of energy in these ocean currents, which can be from 10km to 100km across and are known as eddies, has increased, having as yet unknown affects on the ocean’s ability to lock-away carbon dioxide and heat from fossil fuel burning.

One expert said the changes described in the research could affect the ability of the Southern Ocean, one of the world’s biggest natural carbon stores, to absorb CO2.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, analysed the temperature and height of the ocean with the help of data from altimeters on satellites from 1993 until 2020. Like clouds and storms in the atmosphere, eddies are like weather events in the oceans happening from the surface down to a depth of several hundreds metres. The research found that eddies were intensifying in places where they are known to be most active.

Dr Janet Sprintall, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, who was not involved in the research, said the findings were “a great step forward.” She said: “The world’s oceans soak up most of the carbon dioxide that humans dump into the atmosphere. The Southern Ocean in particular absorbs about 40% of the entire ocean uptake and much of that uptake is achieved by ocean eddies.”

Any change in the ocean eddies in the Southern Ocean, she said, can “potentially impact the carbon sink and the ability to uptake carbon that we might continue to emit in the future”.

NYC Sues Big Oil for 'Systematically and Intentionally Deceiving New Yorkers'

As the world celebrated Earth Day, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio and Corporation Counsel James E. Johnson on Thursday announced that New York City filed suit over Big Oil's decades of lies about fossil fuels and the climate emergency—just the latest addition to over two dozen similar cases launched by U.S. communities.

Like many of the other cases throughout the country, this lawsuit (pdf), filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in the County of New York, names fossil fuel giants BP, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell as well as the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry trade group, as defendants.

A statement announcing the suit accuses the defendants of "systematically and intentionally deceiving New Yorkers" in violation of the city's Consumer Protection Law. The complaint says they engaged in "deceptive trade practices" including "false and misleading greenwashing campaigns."

"Climate change is very much on the mind of New Yorkers. Overwhelmed with the idea that there is nothing they can do, consumers are looking for ways to help, including by spending money on fossil fuel alternatives and rewarding companies that seem green," Johnson explained.

"The defendants in our lawsuit have spent millions to persuade consumers that they present a clean, green choice. But they don't," he continued. "They say they are making meaningful investments to protect the environment. But they aren't. They would like us to believe they are good faith partners in the drive to reduce fossil fuel consumption. And we don't."

Asserting that "consumers are entitled to clear, accurate information about products they may choose," Johnson added that "we are bringing this litigation to protect that right. The defendants' deceptive practices are squarely prohibited by New York City law and cannot be allowed to continue."


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Ilargi: Ukraine Warheads

The Ukraine Crisis Recedes - But A False Narrative Of It Leads To Bad Conclusions

Politico Story Alleging Russian ‘Energy’ Attacks Quickly Debunked

Venezuela’s Guaido Taps $152 Million in Funds Stolen by US

All B-1B Bombers Have Been Grounded

We’re All Weird Naked Murder Monkeys

Health Insurer Pressured Employees To Fight State Public Option

“Today’s Rates, the Lowest in 4,000 Years, Harm Savers, Advantage Speculators, Misdirect Capital, and Perpetuate the Unnatural Lives of Failing Businesses…”

The Pattern of Over-Policing Drivers

Voting Rights Advocates Demand Senate Pass DC Statehood Bill After Historic House Vote

Pipeline tells Black Memphis landowners: sell us the rights to your land or get sued

Rising: CNN Ratings Drop 60 PERCENT In Key Demo

Saagar Enjeti: MILLIONS Turn Off Mainstream News As New Journalism Rises

Rising: K-Hive CAUGHT Using Bot Farm In Misinformation Campaign


A Little Night Music

Wet Willie - Shame, Shame, Shame

Wet Willie - Grits Ain't Groceries

Wet Willie (feat. Ella Brown Avery) - Mama Didn't Raise No Fool

Wet Willie - Shout Bamalama

Wet Willie "Everything That 'Cha Do (Will Come Back To You)"

Wet Willie - That's All Right

Wet Willie - Red Hot Chicken

Wet Willie - No Good Woman Blues


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Comments

enhydra lutris's picture

So the K hive uses bots. Of course they do, they'll use anything and everything they can, even poison if they can figure out how to pull it off and not get caught. The mainstream DNC could teach Machiavelli volumes, as well as the dark lord himself Their claim to be the lesser evil is false humility.

Significant information point buried in the B-1B news; the damn thing was, of course, not designed for continuous action. No weapons system is. They need a rest as much as we and the people of the world do, but the oilgarchs and MIC, not so much.

Be well and have a good one. Have a super good weekend while you're at it.

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15 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

heh, i am shocked, shocked to find bots in here. i am also shocked to find out that some hugely expensive military plane turns out to be poorly designed.

have a great evening!

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12 users have voted.

Happy to see you covering that Biden is going to/may be going to declare the Armenian genocide for what it is. It doesn't quite follow the more familiar genocides we know so well because it was the Muslims of Turkey attempting to rid themselves of the Christian minority. Not the white imperialists murdering all the rest.

900,000 people systematically killed or removed from their homes qualifies as genocide in any fair accounting, doesn't it? If genocide is about power it is like all the others.

Two Rising stories are related but appear separately: Department stores are closing and Cable TV news viewership is tanking at quite a rapid pace. Not unrelated are the surveillance articles and the militarization of local police forces. Not to mention the "ending of the Afghan War" which is not an ending. We are leaving thousands of contractors---paid mercenary forces---- and our drones, etc aren't being mothballed.

The world is changing in ways we see and acknowledge and ways we prefer not to understand.
I do not believe that a better one is being born.

de Blasio is suing fossil fuel companies because they lie about their so-called green clean energy? Seriously? End of term whimsy, I guess. 8 months left on his I am the Mayor clock and he seems unburdened and happy. Go for it, Big Guy.

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NYCVG

@NYCVG My best friend in high school (way back in the day) was an Armenian American whose parents whose mother was first generation and a father born in Istanbul. I used to go over for dinner and off to side on a sofa was his maternal grandmother. Very old. She was constantly shaking and calling strangers god dam Turks.

Her story. Turks came into her village when she was about 12-13. Turks executed her uncle and brothers in front of her. Her mother wrapped her growing breast area and dressed her as a boy so the Turks would not rape her. They went on a march but survived and made it to America where the young woman met a young Armenia man in Detroit.

A Jewish friend told me told me an acprophal story about how Hitler's staff was discussing the genocide of the Jews and were worried about world opinion. Hitler off to the side and looking like he was not listening suddenly asked "who remembers the Armenians?."

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@MrWebster had it right.

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NYCVG

joe shikspack's picture

@NYCVG

it sounds like biden is going to go through with finally acknowledging the armenian genocide, bloomberg is reporting that biden has notified erdogan that the u.s will recognize it.

i guess deblasio wants to get on the bandwagon to burnish his environmental credentials. i think that new york state is already part of a lawsuit against those same companies for knowingly causing climate change, so i guess he had to come up with the consumer angle.

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Evening Joe and thanks for all the news and blues you put together for us to read and contemplate. Spent three nights camping in Pedernales Falls State Park in Texas and we were fortunate to have no internet coverage and therefore no news or other blather the mainstream media call news. Got to sit outside and enjoy the birds, bumblebees and butterflies. Discovered the trails are not really suitable for bikes, at least for me!

News from Montana is great on the end endless war front but not war on the wolves. The Governor killed a collared Yellowstone wolf that had left the boundaries of the park and of course to the wolf hunters was fair game. Sad to see this continuing to happen.

Hope all have a wonderful evening!

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

@jakkalbessie

congratulations on your successful news fast! it's really good to disconnect from time to time. i'll be unplugging this weekend and getting my second vaccination. depending on how i feel the day after, monday night might be music only.

sorry to hear about the gun-toting idiots in montana are after the wolves. i guess they are too stupid to enjoy the benefits of a more fertile ecosystem that restoring the top predator would produce.

have a great weekend!

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mimi's picture

@joe shikspack

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joe shikspack's picture

@mimi

pfizer. i didn't really have a choice, but i suppose it's okay.

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mimi's picture

@joe shikspack @joe shikspack
tell us, when you feel better, about your experience. Over here daily life gets pretty complicated if one has a lot or stuff to do and not being able to get into most stores and stumble over one restriction, regulation after the other, and them all changing daily. People are overloaded with information that does only one thing, causing confusion, frustration and resignation.

So, for me gardening and physical work outside is the thing that keeps me healing.
Let us know how you will be doing on Tuesday. I wish you all the best. And thanks as always for news that are indigestible and music that goes down like honey. go dow
ahem, I lied. the music didn't go down like honey, i should listen before I just post something that was meant nice.

Be well.

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Also in Europe.

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11 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

heh, there seems to be no limit to our military's bombing ambitions. and for anybody who doesn't know this piece - minot is a place where nuclear warheads are dispatched from for delivery by aircraft.

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7 users have voted.

@humphrey is our 1) Climate pollution problem and our 2) war without end preference.

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8 users have voted.

NYCVG

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11 users have voted.

@humphrey for me to be able to agree with my Senator.

Schumer gets this one right.

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5 users have voted.

NYCVG

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr21/lost-faith4-21.html

"The People Have Lost Faith in the State, and the State Has Lost Faith in its People"

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10 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

joe shikspack's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

there are a number of good insights in the article. i have a bit of a niggle with this, though:

Since the state (all levels of government) concentrates wealth and power via taxation and a monopoly on force

the government has much larger means for concentration of wealth than taxation and, in fact, taxation is frequently over-scrutinized while other methods (for example, the machinations of the fed - a quasi government agency actually owned by private banks) are often ignored. this gives a lot of regular people the mistaken impression that all that has to be done is for taxes to be cut and everything will be great.

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10 users have voted.

@joe shikspack
How can the government give wealth through taxation?

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2 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

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13 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

pretty good!

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7 users have voted.

It might cut into their profits.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/550053-regulators-give-states-gree...

Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccinations can resume immediately, federal regulators said late Friday, agreeing with a recommendation from a federal advisory panel that the shot's benefits outweigh its risks.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which had jointly recommended a nationwide pause 10 days ago, accepted the recommendation from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Vaccination sites across should be able start administering the shots as early as Saturday morning.

There are about 9.5 million doses of the vaccine sitting on shelves across the country that could be deployed immediately, and states were already reacting in the hours after the panel's vote.

Pharmacies and hospitals were also preparing to resume giving the J&J shot. CVS said it would make appointments available at its pharmacies next week. A spokesman said "all warnings and precautions will be communicated throughout the vaccination process."

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9 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

seems like a good thing. a lot of folks prefer a single shot and with a one in a million or less risk of complications, it sounds like a reasonably safe bet.

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7 users have voted.
dystopian's picture

I hadn't heard Keep on Smilin' in decades. Good song. Was played to death on L.A. radio in 74 or so.

Thanks for the news and blues... that Koko Taylor was awesome...

Have a great weekend off!

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7 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

heh, yeah, i ran across keep on smilin the other day. they played it til i got sick of it when it was first released, but the band had some other good bluesy stuff that didn't get near as much airplay.

koko taylor is definitely one of the greats.

you have a great weekend, too!

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6 users have voted.

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9 users have voted.

@humphrey @humphrey can rot the entire barrel.

People who say "one bad apple" as if it is exculpatory probably know very little about apples. And history.

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4 users have voted.

NYCVG

I visited a memorial to the Armenian genocide when I visited there. It was very emotional. I am glad Biden is recognizing the atrocity for what it was. Getting Turkey to side in with us for various wars or potential conflicts always played a big role in calling a spade a spade. Turkey must be misbehaving. Again.
TLOML hasn't seen the Rockies, so I booked us a fun trip in September. We will rent a house, stay away from crowds as much as possible. Meanwhile, he is going to burn some more CD's for our drive to Miami and the Keys and Glades next week. Thanks for giving him some ideas!
I have friends and clients that got thrown for a total loop on their second shot, so be prepared to take it easy for a few days if you have a bad jab reaction.
Thanks for all you do, joe!

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

estes state park in colorado is spectacular, i think better than rocky mountain national park. also, if you get a chance, take him to grand teton national park. pound for pound it is one of the finest parks in the u.s. - beautiful mountains, fabulous wildlife and if you're in the mood for a nice restaurant while you're on the road, nearby jackson hole has some really nice ones. best of all, no gators. Smile

everybody i know who has had the vaccine has had a down day or two after the second jab. my first one was just fine, a little soreness in the arm for a few days, but really nothing to complain about. i'm hoping that i'll be fine, but i'm prepared for a couple of days of laying around and moping. Smile

have a great weekend and a great trip!

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6 users have voted.

@joe shikspack I toured it back in the 80s. I think we can do a day trip to Estes.
We are going to try to make the home we rented our launch, but I have bit of play, and we can stay a couple of days longer, but at motels.
A friend goes up to Colorado Springs every month, says the drive is easy. 12 hours, but easy and doable in a day if we take turns.
But only mountain goats, elk, no gators. Dammit.
Just plan on La La Land for a couple of post-jab days, then go forth, and prosper.
Good luck!

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3 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@joe shikspack gave me No symptoms except for an arm so sore for several days that I'd groan every time I put my coat on or took it off. That was in February so it shouldn't be much of an issue for you now.

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3 users have voted.

NYCVG

orlbucfan's picture

That is going back a few decades. Rec’d!!
Smile

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4 users have voted.

Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.