Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist and songwriter Roy Lee Johnson. Enjoy!

“As long as they killed people with conventional rather than nuclear weapons, they were praised as humanitarian statesmen. As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had been going on since the end of the Second World War, which was surely “World War Three.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

News and Opinion

Much more at the link, worth a full read:

Daniel Ellsberg Explains Why Now Was the Right Time to Release Top-Secret File on Nuclear Weapons

“The whole idea is to kill the bastards,” Gen. Thomas Power, commander of America’s nuclear forces from 1957 to 1963, once said about the use of atomic weapons. “At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win.” The hold this nuclear lunacy had on the top of the U.S. government is terrifyingly illuminated in a top-secret study of U.S. war plans newly publicized by famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The document, produced by the RAND Corporation and copied by Ellsberg at the same time he exfiltrated the Pentagon Papers from RAND, examines the U.S. response to the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis. The study’s contents were first reported on May 22 by the New York Times.

The crisis, now completely forgotten, began when China attempted to seize several small islands off its coast from Taiwan. The study shows American generals enthusiastically planning for the use of nuclear weapons against China. It is not simply that the officials looked with equanimity on the possibility of killing millions; rather, many seemed frustrated that there were any delays forced upon them by the rest of the government. If China had not changed course, civilization could have ended then and there.

Ellsberg is now speaking out about the study, he said in a phone interview, for a straightforward reason: “I got scared.” The issues that led to the 1958 crisis between the U.S. and China have never been resolved; both countries are now ramping up confrontational rhetoric; and most importantly, the strategic rationale that led the U.S. to consider nuclear war then remains exactly the same today. “You shouldn’t be confident that the current calculations are any less crazy,” Ellsberg said.

His apprehension about the potential use of nuclear weapons is intimately linked to another of his key concerns: the Justice Department’s accelerating use of the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute leakers. Its chilling effect on potential whistleblowers makes it less and less likely that Americans will even know what their government is doing, much less be able to do anything about it. Ellsberg hopes his latest revelation will prompt a cultural and perhaps legal reckoning for the Act.

'Not Another Nickel,' Says Progressive Jewish Group as Israel Plans to Request $1 Billion More in US Military Aid

A progressive Jewish advocacy group said Tuesday that the U.S. should not send "another nickel" of military aid to Israel amid reports that the nation's leaders intend to ask Biden administration officials for an additional $1 billion to bolster the Iron Dome missile defense system and purchase more precision-guided bombs.

Citing unnamed Israeli officials, Axios reported Tuesday that the military aid request "will be the focus" of Defense Minister Benny Gantz's meeting later this week with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

News of the planned request comes just days after Israel ceased its latest bombing campaign in the occupied Gaza Strip, an 11-day assault that killed more than 240 Palestinians, displaced tens of thousands, and further decimated the territory's civilian infrastructure. Some of Israel's attacks in Gaza during the most recent bombing—including its leveling of a building that housed media offices—were carried out with U.S.-made weaponry.

"Not another nickel. Not another dime," Jewish Voice for Peace Action tweeted in response to Axios' reporting. "No."

The $1 billion in aid would add to the $3.8 billion in military assistance that the U.S. sends Israel each year under a 10-year deal inked in 2016 by the Obama administration, in which U.S. President Joe Biden served as vice president.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now, wrote sardonically on Tuesday that "$3.8 billion in annual taxpayer gifts to enforce Israeli apartheid and rain terror on Palestinians just doesn't cut it."

"Every dime to Israel adds to America's complicity," Whitson added.

Arab American Institute founder James Zogby called Israel's request "unconscionable."

"It would be even worse if we give it," Zogby tweeted. "Bad enough that we're Israel's cheerleader, this would make it clear we are also an accomplice and gun-reloader."

Yair Lapid faces deadline to form new government

Author of Wall Street Journal “Wuhan lab” story wrote lies about Iraqi “Weapons of Mass Destruction”

On May 23, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin.” Citing unnamed “current and former officials,” it claimed that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak” of COVID-19. Two days later, on May 25, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, speaking at the United Nations World Health Assembly, demanded a “transparent” investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

The next day, On May 26, US President Joe Biden called on the “Intelligence Community” to investigate whether COVID-19 arose “from a laboratory accident” and “report back to me in 90 days.” Media reports by NBC, CNN, and the New York Times followed. All of them claimed that the Biden Administration’s actions were triggered by the “new evidence” presented in the Wall Street Journal article. Within 24 hours of publication of the Journal’s report, all of these publications declared that the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory was “credible.”

But the article published by the Wall Street Journal— beyond being totally unsubstantiated and presenting nothing fundamentally new in terms of “intelligence”—is presented by a lead author who happens to have helped fabricate the most lethal lie of the 21st century. The lead author of the Journal piece, Michael R. Gordon, was the same man who, along with Judith Miller, wrote the September 8, 2002 article falsely asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

That article, entitled “U.S. says Hussein intensifies quest for a-bomb parts,” claimed that “In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.” The claim was a lie, funneled to the Times by the office of US Vice President Dick Cheney.

China confirms first human case of H10N3 bird flu strain

A 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu, although health officials in China said the risk of large-scale spread remained low.

The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, went to hospital on 28 April after developing a fever and other symptoms, China’s national health commission said.

He was diagnosed as having the H10N3 avian influenza virus on 28 May, the commission said though it did not give details about how the man had been infected with the virus. The man was stable and ready to be discharged from hospital. Medical observation of his close contacts had not found any other cases.

H10N3 is a low pathogenic, or relatively less severe, strain of the virus found in poultry, and the risk of it spreading on a large scale is very low, the commission added.

Somebody hacked Big Meat. Must've been Russia!

White House contacts Russia after hack of world’s largest meatpacking company

A ransomware attack against the world’s largest meatpacking company that has disrupted meat production in North America and Australia originated from a criminal organization probably based in Russia, the White House was informed on Tuesday.

The attack on Brazil’s JBS caused its Australian operations to shut down on Monday and has stopped livestock slaughter at its plants in several US states.

The ransomware attack follows one last month on Colonial Pipeline, the largest fuel pipeline in the United States, that crippled fuel delivery for several days in the US south-east.

The White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said JBS had given details of the hack to the White House, that the United States had contacted Russia’s government about the matter and that the FBI was investigating.

Google collects location data even after users deny permission - court files

New Report Shows Amazon Workers Injured More Than Twice Industry Average

A new report out Tuesday accuses Amazon of having an "abysmal health and safety record" as a result of its obsession with production speed, pointing to worker injury rates that are far higher than those across the warehouse and shipping industry.

The analysis, Primed for Pain: Amazon’s Epidemic of Workplace Injuries, was released by the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a collection of four labor unions, and comes amid sustained scrutiny over the company's mistreatment of workers amid soaring profits.

The report is based on data Amazon provided to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and covers the four-year period 2017-2020.

"Every day is just go, go, go," said Safiyo Muhamed, a former worker at an Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota for two and a half years who suffered a slipped disc in her back while lifting a heavy tote.

"Amazon wants you to work like a robot, like a machine," she said in a statement. "Every week they rank you, they monitor you through the computer. You have to be so fast. Humans aren't able to do it."

Muhamed's assessment is unsurprising given the report's assertion that "Amazon's obsession with speed in every part of its business has been a key element of its growth strategy."

"But the company's obsession with speed has come at a huge cost for Amazon's workforce," the report states.

Amazon's workforce grew from 208,764 workers in 2017 to 581,624 in 2020. There were injuries at 191 facilities in 2017, and at 658 facilities in 2020.

The data showed "substantially higher rates of workplace injuries" for Amazon workers compared to those in the same industry at other companies, the analysis found.

In 2017, Amazon had 11,883 recordable injuries—about 87% of which were injuries that made workers unable to perform their regular job functions (light duty) or forced them to miss work (lost time).

In 2020, there were 27,178  recordable injuries, 90% of which forced workers into light duty or lost time. That rate is more notable, the report said, because the coronavirus pandemic forced Amazon to make "massive operational changes" in 2020 that likely lessened speed.

While the warehouse industry is notoriously dangerous, the report says that Amazon's injury rate was still well above those of other warehouse employers.

"In all four years for which data are available, Amazon's rate of injuries per 100 warehouse workers is substantially higher than it is for non-Amazon employers in the general warehouse industry," the report states.

In 2020, for example, there were 6.5 injuries per 100 Amazon warehouse workers and just 4.0 injuries per 100 at all other warehouses.

What's more, the injuries suffered by Amazon workers are more severe. Singling out 2020 again, the report says there were 5.9 serious injuries per 100 Amazon workers—a rate that's about 80% higher than those of other warehousing industry employers.

Briahna Joy Gray: How Progressives Can FINALLY Push Biden

Memphis exhumes body of Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from city park

Workers have begun digging up the remains of a Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and moving the former slave trader’s body from a park in Memphis, Tennessee, to a museum hundreds of miles away. Crews prepared to remove the graves of Forrest and his wife from Health Sciences Park in the busy medical district, a space which used to bear the name of Forrest, an early Ku Klux Klan leader, and a statue of the cavalryman on a horse.

Workers must dismantle the remaining pedestal before they can disinter the Forrests and move them to a Confederate museum. The process is expected to take weeks. The Sons of Confederate Veterans pressure group is overseeing the move, which a judge approved last year, ending a long legal battle.

Cities and activists have taken steps to get rid of statues and monuments to figures from Robert E Lee, a general, to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, which fought and lost the civil war between 1861 and 1865, in defence of slavery.

Forrest sold enslaved people in Memphis and was a cavalry general. In April 1864, his troops attacked Fort Pillow in north-west Tennessee and killed between 200 and 300 Union soldiers, most of them Black. Northern newspaper reports called it an atrocity. Historians say Forrest later became an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Many call him a violent racist.

As Biden Marks 100 Years Since Tulsa Massacre, Calls Grow for Reparations to Close Racial Wealth Gap

Joe Biden calls for US to confront its past on 100th anniversary of Tulsa massacre

Joe Biden has used the centenary of the Tulsa race massacre as a rallying cry for America to be honest about its history, insisting that great nations “come to terms with their dark sides”. On Tuesday Biden became the first sitting US president to visit the site where, on 31 May and 1 June 1921, a white mob murdered up to 300 African Americans and burned and looted homes and businesses, razing a prosperous community known as “Black Wall Street”.

In an emotional speech punctuated by intense applause, Biden pleaded for America to confront its past and admit that a thread of hatred runs from Tulsa through more recent displays of white supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia, and at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January. He also drew a connection to a Republican assault on the voting rights of people of colour and announced that Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president, would lead the White House effort to resist it. ...

Knowledge of this violent attempt to suppress Black success in Greenwood, Tulsa, fell victim to a decades-long conspiracy of silence. The atrocity was not taught in schools, even in Tulsa, until the mid-2000s and was expunged from police records. Those who threatened to break to the taboo faced disapproval or death threats. Even many Black residents preferred not to burden their children with the story.

Biden said: “For much too long the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent it doesn’t mean that it did not take place and, while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they can’t be buried, no matter how hard people try. So it is here: only with truth can come healing and justice and repair.” ...

The president noted that, while Greenwood’s Black community recovered, it was marginalised again by housing “red lining” and urban renewal projects including highways – a pattern seen in many American cities. He promised that his administration would address racism at its roots, expanding federal contracting with small, disadvantaged businesses, investing tens of billions of dollars in communities like Greenwood and pursuing new efforts to combat housing discrimination.

Very telling that as soon as Democrats could no longer blame their inaction on Republican obstruction, they began pointing to an all-powerful, malevolent rules goblin that no one even knew existed until last year https://t.co/G3PVqRs9ZE

— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) June 2, 2021

Which Nina Turner Will Show Up In Congress?

Biden ‘finishing the job’ my administration started, Obama says

Joe Biden is “finishing the job” begun by Barack Obama, the former president told the New York Times in an interview released on Tuesday.

“I think that what we’re seeing now, is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job,” Obama said. “And I think it’ll be an interesting test.

“Ninety per cent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about, whether it’s the Affordable Care Act or our climate change agenda and the Paris [climate deal], and figuring out how do we improve the ladders to mobility through things like community colleges.”

Joe Biden CALLS OUT Joe Manchin And Kyrsten Sinema

In Tulsa, speaking to a Black audience, Biden calls on voter registration groups to double their efforts to get people to vote in 2022. However, Black people are calling on Biden to triple his efforts to pass policy in order to give Black people a reason to vote in 2022.

— Tezlyn Figaro (@TezlynFigaro) June 1, 2021

Corporate Subsidy Quietly Dies in Texas — Topping Off Bad Week for Big Oil

When organizers set out to overturn Texas’s giveaway program for the oil and gas industry, they had a long game in mind. Over 20 years, the tax exemption program known as Chapter 313 had delivered $10 billion in tax cuts to corporations operating in Texas — with petrochemical firms being the biggest winners. This year, for the first time in a decade, the program was up for reauthorization. Organizers decided to challenge it for the first time. At the beginning of last week, as Texas’s biennial legislative session approached its end, the aims of organizers remained modest. “We thought it would be a victory if the two-year reauthorization passed so we could organize in interim,” said Doug Greco, the lead organizer for Central Texas Interfaith, one of the organizations fighting to end the subsidy program.

At 4 a.m. last Thursday, it became clear that something unexpected was happening: The deadline for reauthorization passed. “The bill never came up,” Greco told The Intercept. Organizers stayed vigilant until the legislative session officially closed on Monday at midnight, but the reauthorization did not materialize. ...

Texas’s Chapter 313 program allowed corporations building new facilities to apply to local school boards for a property tax waiver. The school boards hardly ever said no — likely because the local school district didn’t stand to lose money. Instead, the property tax money that was waived would have gone into a state fund, which should have especially benefitted overstretched urban school districts. An analysis by Central Texas Interfaith found these urban districts to be the biggest losers: Houston and Dallas school districts have each lost more than $20 million annually from the tax exemptions. Oil, gas, and petrochemical industries unambiguously won big. Two liquid natural gas companies, Corpus Christi Liquefaction, a subsidiary of Cheniere, and Freeport LNG topped the list with more than $55 million each in subsidies annually.

The subsidy program was designed to attract businesses that would not otherwise make their homes in Texas. In deciding approval for waivers, one prerequisite was that the subsidies be a determining factor in whether a company would build in-state. However, an analysis by the Houston Chronicle showed numerous examples of companies, such as the pipeline giant Energy Transfer, announcing a project before even applying for the waiver. And many of the subsidy recipients were doing Texas-specific projects — outgrowths of the state’s fracking boom in thethe Eagle Ford and Permian shale formations, using Gulf Coast export facilities — so they were unlikely to situate ventures elsewhere if subsidies did not come through.

The program’s returns were also unimpressive. If measured by job creation, the program cost the state at least $211,600 per job, according to a calculation by the Houston Chronicle.

Biden suspends Trump-era oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge

The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by Donald Trump and reviving a political fight over a remote region that is home to polar bears and other wildlife – and a rich reserve of oil.

The interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in office. Biden’s 20 January executive order suggested a new environmental review was needed to address possible legal flaws in a drilling program approved by the Trump administration under a 2017 law enacted by Congress.

After conducting a required review, interior said it “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives” required under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.

The remote, 19.6m-acre refuge is home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities, for drilling. Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.

Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican plan to allow drilling in the refuge in 1995, when he was president, and the two parties have been fighting over the region ever since.

Key species at risk if planet heats up by more than 1.5C, report finds

Corals will bleach, penguins will lose their Antarctic ice floes, puffins around the UK coast will be unable to feed their young, and the black-headed squirrel monkey of the Amazon could be wiped out if the world fails to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Beyond a 1.5C rise, many species will face increasing problems finding food or surviving, according to a report from WWF on the effects of climate breakdown on 12 key species across the world.

In the UK, puffins are facing increasing threats from warming seas. Sandeels form a large part of the seabird’s diet, and the sandeels depend on crustaceans called copepods. Now, however, warming seas mean copepods are blooming before the sandeels hatch. As the sandeels miss out on their meals, there are fewer for puffins to catch, and entire colonies can fail as a result. WWF found that between 2000 and 2016, copepods were blooming nearly 20 days earlier than sandeel larvae were hatching, a mismatch likely to widen at higher temperatures.

The report found that the effects of global heating, which has already reached more than 1C above pre-industrial levels, could already be seen in the UK. For instance, mountain hares in the Highlands of Scotland grow white coats for camouflage in winter, but the snow is melting earlier, before their coats have returned to brown, leaving them exposed to predators.

While warming of 0.5C above current levels may seem small, the report found the effects would be harmful to a wide variety of species, including snow leopards, hippos, monkeys and frogs, sea turtles and coral. Leatherback turtles are sensitive to even slight changes in temperature, as the sex of the turtle is determined while the egg incubates in the sand – hotter sand means more females and not enough males, and can mean eggs fail to hatch at all.

Poacher suspected of killing 70 Bengal tigers captured after 20-year pursuit

Bangladeshi police have arrested a notorious poacher wanted for 20 years and suspected of killing about 70 endangered Bengal tigers. Saidur Rahman, the local police chief, said that Habib Talukder – nicknamed “Tiger Habib” – lived next to the forest and would flee whenever officers raided the area.

“Acting on a tipoff, we finally succeeded and sent him to jail,” he said.

Talukder’s hunting ground was the vast Sundarbans mangrove forest area straddling India and Bangladesh that is home to one of the world’s largest populations of Bengal tigers. The cats’ pelts, bones and flesh would be bought by black market traders who would sell them in China and elsewhere.

Talukder, 50, started out collecting honey from wild bees in the forest and became known for his exploits hunting the big cats and evading arrest.

Also of Interest

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

Thomas Frank: If the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis is true, expect a political earthquake

Just How Rigged is the "Rigged Game"?

Why Did 72% of Israelis Want Attack on Gaza to Continue?

Eritrean soldiers killed 19 civilians in latest Tigray atrocity, locals claim

How the ‘good war’ went bad: elite soldiers from Australia, UK and US face a reckoning

Drivers Of The New UFO Narrative Keep Absurdly Saying They Could Be Dangerous ETs

The Empire Strikes Back Against Mexican President AMLO

How USAID created Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista media apparatus, now under money laundering investigation

The Squad and Kabuki Votes

Arizona Plans Executions With Same Gas Used by Nazis at Auschwitz

Amazon US customers have one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

‘There are ghosts in the land’: how US mega-dairies are killing off small farms

‘This is a spectacular chorus’: walk into the cicada explosion

Lindsey Boylan EXCLUSIVE: Women Are TOOLS To Andrew Cuomo

Ryan Grim: The Construction Attorney Who Upended The NYC Mayoral Race

A Little Night Music

Roy Lee Johnson - Black Pepper Will Make You Sneeze

Roy Lee Johnson - When A Guitar Plays The Blues

Roy Lee Johnson - Busybody

Roy Lee Johnson - Nobody Does Something For Nothing

Roy Lee Johnson - My Best Just Isn't Good Enough

Roy Lee Johnson - Too Many Tears

Roy Lee Johnson - Take Me Back And Try Me

Roy Lee Johnson - Love Birds

Roy Lee Johnson - I'm So Happy

Roy Lee Johnson - Boogaloo Number 3