The Evening Blues - 11-17-21
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Jazz multi-instrumentalist and singer Slim Gaillard. Enjoy!
Slim Gaillard
"No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from."
-- George Eliot
News and Opinion
America's Terrible God Is a Weapons-Maker
Who is America's god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn't serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.
In God We Trust is on all our coins. But, again, which god? The one of "turn the other cheek"? The one who found his disciples among society's outcasts? The one who wanted nothing to do with moneychangers or swords? As Joe Biden might say, give me a break.
America's true god is a deity of wrath, whose keenest followers profit mightily from war and see such gains as virtuous, while its most militant disciples, a crew of losing generals and failed Washington officials, routinely employ murderous violence across the globe. It contains multitudes, its name is legion, but if this deity must have one name, citing a need for some restraint, let it be known as the Pentagod.
Yes, the Pentagon is America's true god. Consider that the Biden administration requested a whopping $753 billion for military spending in fiscal year 2022 even as the Afghan War was cratering. Consider that the House Armed Services Committee then boosted that blockbuster budget to $778 billion in September. Twenty-five billion dollars extra for "defense," hardly debated, easily passed, with strong bipartisan support in Congress. How else, if not religious belief, to explain this, despite the Pentagod's prodigal $8 trillion wars over the last two decades that ended so disastrously? How else to account for future budget projections showing that all-American deity getting another $8 trillion or so over the next decade, even as the political parties fight like rabid dogs over roughly 15% of that figure for much-needed domestic improvements?
Paraphrasing Joe Biden, show me your budget and I'll tell you what you worship. In that context, there can't be the slightest doubt: America worships its Pentagod and the weapons and wars that feed it.
'We Need to Get Our Priorities Right': Bernie Sanders a 'No' on $778 Billion Pentagon Budget Vote
On Tuesday, the eve of a likely U.S. Senate vote on the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would vote against the legislation because it enriches the military-industrial complex at the expense of desperately needed social programs and climate action.
"Many of my colleagues tell the American people, day after day, how deeply concerned they are about the deficit and the national debt," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "They tell us that we just don't have enough money to expand Medicare, guarantee paid family and medical leave, and address the climate crisis to the degree that we should if we want to protect the well-being of future generations."
"Yet, tomorrow, the U.S. Senate will be voting on an annual defense budget that costs $778 billion—$37 billion more than [former President Donald] Trump's last defense budget and $25 billion more than what President [Joe] Biden requested," he continued. "All this for an agency, the Department of Defense, that continues to have massive fraud and cost overruns year after year and is the only major government agency not to successfully complete an independent audit."
"Isn't it strange," added Sanders, "how even as we end the longest war in our nation's history concerns about the deficit and national debt seem to melt away under the influence of the powerful military-industrial complex?" ...
Sanders further criticized the 2022 NDAA for an amendment—the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—aimed at countering the rise of China, as well as for containing "$52 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, for a handful of extremely profitable microchip companies."
"This bill also contains a $10 billion handout to Jeff Bezos for space exploration," he noted, referring to the Amazon.com founder's Blue Origin private orbital tourism venture.
"Combining these two pieces of legislation would push the price tag of the defense bill to over $1 trillion—with very little scrutiny," Sanders continued. "Meanwhile, the Senate has spent month after month discussing the Build Back Better Act and whether we can afford to protect the children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the future of our planet."
"As a nation, we need to get our priorities right," he added. "I will vote 'no' on the National Defense Authorization Act."
Pentagon Chief Orders Briefing on 2019 Syria Airstrike That Killed Dozens
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered the military’s top commander in the Middle East to brief him on details of a U.S. airstrike in Syria in 2019 that killed dozens of women and children, the Pentagon said on Monday.
The Pentagon’s top spokesman, John F. Kirby, said Mr. Austin, who became secretary this year after the Biden administration took office, requested the briefing after reading an investigative report published over the weekend by The New York Times detailing the strike and allegations that top officers and civilian officials sought to conceal the casualties.
Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, which oversaw the air war in Syria, will “brief him more specifically on that particular airstrike” and its handling, Mr. Kirby told reporters.
Mr. Kirby would not comment on details of the strike, a bombing at Baghuz, Syria, on March 18, 2019, that was part of the final battle against Islamic State fighters in the last shard of a once-sprawling religious state across Iraq and Syria. It was one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the yearslong war against ISIS, but had never been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military.
“I’m not going to relitigate a strike that happened back in March of 2019,” Mr. Kirby said.
U.S. and Its Allies Are Fueling Worldwide Erosion of Democracy, Analysis Shows
Recent internal attacks on democracy and human rights by the United States and many of its allies—which often portray themselves as exporters of such ideals—are driving an overall erosion of democracy worldwide, according to a new analysis.
The New York Times analyzed an annual report released earlier this year by V-Dem, a Swedish research institute that collects data on democracy and autocratic governments around the world, finding that the United States and several of the countries it's considered allies in recent decades have shifted substantially away from operating as democracies—with attacks on voting rights, judicial independence, and the rights of the media among the factors driving the erosion.
The U.S. and its allies drove increases in "democracy scores," according to V-Dem's reporting, throughout the 1990s, accounting for 9% of democratic growth around the world. But in the past decade, the Times' analysis showed, 36% of all democratic "backsliding" has happened in the U.S. and U.S.-aligned countries, including Turkey, Hungary, and Israel.
"Much of the world's backsliding is not imposed on democracies by foreign powers, but rather is a rot rising within the world's most powerful network of mostly democratic alliances," wrote Max Fisher at the Times.
V-Dem's report, titled Autocratization Turns Viral, pointed to the arrests of Turkish journalists for their reporting on the coronavirus pandemic and the detention of "hundreds of citizens for discussing the issue on social media" as examples of democratic erosion that has intensified in the last year.
"The decay in freedom of the press, academia, civil society, and increasing spread of false information in Turkey predates 2010 but has continued since, with legal restrictions to further limit civil society activity and freedom of expression," the report notes.
The group pointed to an assault on the judiciary and the press in Hungary as evidence of the deterioration of democracy, "dating back to as early as 2010 when [the] right-wing government led by Viktor Orbán and his Fidez party enacted several media laws that curtailed media freedom substantially."
The Times' analysis comes amid an intensifying assault on voting rights and elections by the Republican Party in the U.S.—and the failure of the Democratic Party, which controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, to eliminate the legislative filibuster to allow the passage of far-reaching voting rights legislation.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, state-level congressional maps drawn by Republican legislatures could give the party "a 13-2 advantage among representatives to the U.S. House," while the conservative takeover of the federal courts including the U.S. Supreme Court has put reproductive rights in peril. ...
V-Dem's findings and the outlet's analysis left critics of American exceptionalism and U.S. foreign policy—including numerous wars which both Democrats and Republicans have claimed were aimed at "spreading democracy"—asking how the U.S. will continue to claim authority on democratic ideals.
"If the U.S. actually undermines democracy, how else shall we justify U.S. primacy?" tweeted Dr. Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute.
Israeli firm’s spyware linked to attacks on websites in UK and Middle East
Researchers have found new evidence that suggests spyware made by an Israeli company that was recently blacklisted in the US has been used to target critics of Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes, including some readers of a London-based news website.
A report by Montreal-based researchers from Slovakian company Eset, an internet security firm, found links between attacks against high-profile websites in the Middle East and UK, and the Israeli company Candiru, which has been called Israel’s “most mysterious cyberwarfare company”. ... The Eset report revealed new information about so-called “watering hole attacks”. In such attacks, spyware users launch malware against ordinary websites that are known to attract readers or users who are considered “targets of interest” by the user of the malware.
The sophisticated attacks allow the malware user to identify characteristics about the individuals who have visited the website, including what kind of browser and operating system they are using. In some cases the malware user can then launch an exploit that allows them to take over an individual target’s computer. Unlike NSO Group’s signature spyware, which is called Pegasus and infects mobile phones, Candiru’s malware is believed by researchers to infect computers. The company appears to be named after a parasitic freshwater catfish that can be found in the Amazon.
The researchers found that the websites that were “known targets” of this kind of attack included Middle East Eye, a London-based news website, and multiple websites associated with government ministries in Iran and Yemen.
Germany suspends approval for Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
Germany has suspended its approval process for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which would double its reliance on Russian gas following growing geopolitical pressure to scrap the project.
Energy markets across Europe surged after the German energy regulator suspended its certification process, in a big setback to Kremlin-backed Gazprom’s plans to extend Russian gas dominance via a new pipeline across the Baltic Sea. UK gas prices for next month surged 9.3% on Tuesday to 223p a therm, an almost three-week high, while the Netherlands – which is one of the biggest gas markets in Europe – suffered an increase of 7.9% to 88.05 euros a megawatt hour.
The German energy regulator said it would not continue its approval process until the Nord Stream 2 company, which is registered in Switzerland, transfers its main assets and staffing budget to its German subsidiary. “A certification for the operation of Nord Stream 2 will only be considered once the operator is organised in a legal shape compliant with German law,” the regulator said.
Germany’s decision to delay Nord Stream 2, which bypasses current pipelines that run through Russia’s nearest neighbours in Ukraine and Belarus, follows calls from western leaders to scrap the plan or risk destabilising the region.
Ukrainian government deploys armed drones against separatists
Despite its obligations under the signed 2015 Minsk Accords peace agreement, the Ukrainian government is continuing to ramp up its military capabilities against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. In late October, it deployed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones there for the first time ever. In response to an ostensible shelling by separatists, Ukraine used the TB2 drone to destroy a Russian-made howitzer, provoking the deployment of Russian troops to the Ukrainian border and the renewed risk of a full-scale war between Moscow and NATO-backed Kiev.
The attack in the separatist-controlled village of Hranitne, which was reported on favorably by the New York Times on Tuesday, is another demonstration that the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky is committed to a policy of escalation as it seeks to reintegrate the breakaway provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
For the past year the Ukrainian ruling class has sought to deepen military ties with the Turkish government, with both powers seeking to diminish Russian naval control over the strategic Black Sea region. The Ukrainian government offered Ankara advanced missile technology and in exchange received the coveted Turkish-made armed aerial drones.
Drones played a pivotal role in Azerbaijan’s defeat of Russian-backed Armenia last year in the Nagarno-Karabakh war, and the Ukrainian oligarchy quickly became enamored with their potential use against its own Russian-backed separatists. Kiev received the first shipment of drones in July and plans to purchase approximately 50 of the TB2 drones. In September, the two sides signed a memorandum to create a joint drone training and maintenance center in Ukraine.
Russia has predictably reacted with hostility to the use of drones in Ukraine, which could spark a new wave of targeted bombings and assassinations by Kiev in the more than seven-year-long war that has claimed the lives of over 14,000. Speaking Saturday on Russian state television about drones and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin accused the Zelensky government of violating the 2015 Minsk accords, which specifically ban the use of aerial weapons:
“Now the current president cheerfully reports they’re using Bayraktars, that is, unmanned aerial vehicles. Europe said something incomprehensible and the US even supported it and officials in Ukraine openly say that they used them and will use them further.”
Fascist wants a nicer prison:
Proud Boys leader asks for early release over jail conditions
The leader of the Proud Boys far-right group has asked a judge to free him from jail in Washington DC, complaining about poor conditions. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is serving a five-month sentence for stealing and burning a Black Lives Matter banner from a historic Black church in the capital, after Donald Trump’s election defeat.
On Monday, Tarrio asked a judge to release him, arguing that he has been exposed to inhumane conditions. Asking that his sentence be reduced or that he be allowed to complete it under house arrest, he claimed to have been harassed by correctional officers and said his cell regularly floods with dirty water from a toilet in a neighboring cell.
“I’ve been to jail before and what I’ve seen here, I’ve never seen anywhere else,” Tarrio said in a video testimony. “This place needs to be shut down immediately,” he added.
Tarrio described abusive guards, smoke-filled hallways and medical neglect, saying he witnessed a prisoner have a seizure who lay for a half hour before help arrived. “I’m deathly afraid that something is going to happen to me,” Tarrio said.
According to his attorney, Tarrio has endured “serious abuses of his rights on a daily basis”, including jail employees repeatedly ignoring his requests for medical treatment, throwing cold, often inedible meals into his cell and denying access to running water.
Rittenhouse jurors return for Day 2 of deliberations
Kyle Rittenhouse trial: sense of unease amid wait for verdict in Wisconsin
After the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who as a 17-year-old fatally shot two men and wounded a third, finally closed and the jury was sent out to deliberate its verdict, a crowd of supporters stood outside the Kenosha county courthouse volleying chants in the cold November dark.
“Black Lives Matter!” one group shouted.
“Self-defense is not a crime!” the other responded.
The dueling chants crystallize what the trial has come to represent for the millions of people watching the case in Wisconsin and across America. To some, it’s a case of a gun-wielding teenager who responded to racial unrest by taking justice into his own hands and shooting three anti-racist protesters – two fatally. To others, Rittenhouse used his weapon in self-defense after he was attacked by members of a violent crowd.
As the sun rose on Tuesday above nearby Lake Michigan, the case headed to the 12 jurors who will determine what it represents in the eyes of the law. It has not unfolded smoothly, as the prosecution seems to have botched some of its witnesses and arguments and the presiding judge’s behavior has been erratic and at times betrayed an apparent sympathy to the defense.
Meanwhile, the city of Kenosha remains on standby hoping to avoid the violence that erupted in August 2020. Last week, Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, mobilized 500 national guard members to assist local law enforcement should they be needed.
Mayor Pete, Kamala GO TO WAR Over 2024
Kim Iversen: GOP Supporting Weed, UBI, Public Option. How They’re Taking Back The Working Class
Dems Are Giving The GOP Another Political Bailout
The last time Democrats held the presidency and Congress, the party spent its first year in power enriching big banks that had cratered the economy and then letting public money subsidize the Wall Street bonuses of their campaign donors. The spectacle gave Republicans a political bailout in the 2010 midterms, allowing the GOP to depict itself as anti-establishment populists challenging an elitist government. Twelve years later, history is rhyming. Democrats were vaulted into office on popular promises to tax the wealthy, but they are now generating national headlines about their proposal to provide new tax breaks narrowly targeted to enrich their affluent blue-state donors, just as a new survey shows nearly two thirds of Americans see the party as “out of touch with the concerns of most people.” And now the Republican machine is already gearing up to demagogue the issue in 2022.
The situation is like a storyline from Veep satirizing blue-state elitism: As millions of voters are being crushed by health care costs and higher energy prices, and as Democratic lawmakers have abandoned a $15 minimum wage, Democratic leaders are pushing a regressive proposal to allow wealthy property owners to deduct more of their their state and local taxes (SALT) from their federal taxes. This initiative, which would provide almost no benefit to the working class, isn’t some small tweak. After Democrats gutted their wildly popular initiatives to expand Medicare and lower drug prices, the tax initiative has now become one of the most expensive provisions in the entire Build Back Better legislation.
The whole initiative seems deliberately sculpted to hand the American Right a weapon to bludgeon Democrats ahead of the election. Indeed, you can imagine it being Fox News’ latest “Entitlement Nation” segment — only rather than dishonestly bashing poor people, Fox could accurately cast entitled blue-state yuppies as the ones being enriched by this Democratic policy. ... The GOP seems to sense the opportunity already. Its media and political apparatus is already weaponizing the SALT proposals ahead of the 2022 elections.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Heritage Foundation are deriding Democrats for trying to give new tax breaks to the wealthy. Similarly, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) recently tweeted, “The Democrats’ SALT tax deduction is almost exclusively a tax cut for the rich. They’re out here yelling ‘tax the rich’ while crafting handouts for the wealthy behind closed doors.” ... If Democrats instead follow through and enact their current proposal, the GOP rhetoric is likely a preview of what’s to come in the 2022 election. It could be a redux of some of the Tea Party’s most effective clarion calls during the 2010 midterms.
Only this time around, the GOP claims that Democrats are secretly working to enrich their elite donors would actually be true — and it will be boosted by millions of dollars of television ads designed to enrage swing voters. Many of them are already frustrated about Democrats’ betrayals. Democrats now leaning into a tax policy easily caricatured as elitist threatens to turn that frustration into yet another midterm shellacking.
Ari Berman: With Extreme Gerrymandering, the Republicans Are Rigging the Next Decade of Elections
'Lighting the Fuse on a Massive Carbon Bomb': Biden Rebuked on Eve of Drilling Lease Sale
Climate and environmental campaigners on Tuesday took President Joe Biden to task on the eve of his administration's scheduled oil and gas drilling auction of 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico—a move that comes just days after the U.S. leader pleaded for "every nation to do its part" to combat the climate emergency at the U.N.-backed climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Biden administration's first offshore fossil fuel extraction auction—Lease Sale 257—is scheduled for Wednesday morning, and would break the president's campaign promise of "no more drilling, including offshore."
The sale would also mark the end of a pause in federal fossil fuel leases implemented by executive order during Biden's first week in office.
In resuming U.S. lease sale auctions, the Resist Line 3 coalition accused the Biden of "actively selling away our futures."
Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement that "the Biden administration is lighting the fuse on a massive carbon bomb in the Gulf of Mexico."
"It's hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit," Monsell added.
Forget Any COP26 Promises Your Heard. Just Look at the $6 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies
It sounds incredible: while politicians have been cackling about the climate emergency and profiling in empty promises to halt it, they have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers' money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.
Add to this that governments will double the production of energy from these very same, highly dangerous, global warming generators.
In a 2021 study: Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that globally, fossil fuel subsidies were 5.9 trillion US dollars in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And that such subsidies are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025.
According to the study, 8 percent of the 2020 subsidy reflects undercharging for supply costs (explicit subsidies) and 92 percent for undercharging for environmental costs and foregone consumption taxes (implicit subsidies).
Mexican environmental campaigner missing after attack on villagers
A Mexican environmental campaigner has been declared missing barely a week after a savage attack on indigenous villagers displaced from the lands she was defending against illegal logging.
Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the indigenous Mixtec (ñuù savi) people who worked to protect forests in southern Oaxaca state, was last heard from on 27 October. She was scheduled to attend a virtual meeting so she could join a state mechanism for protecting journalists and defenders, but did not attend, according to Rosi Bustamante, a US-based activist who had been in close contact with Galindo.
Earlier that same day, Galindo attempted to present a petition to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the National Palace in Mexico City, but said she was turned away.
“There aren’t any government officials who will go and see how we live … They only send in money that is used to buy weapons that are used to kill us. If there are organizations or groups that want to help us, they end up being criminalized, threatened and harassed,” Galindo wrote on her Facebook page just before her disappearance. “Where does this end? What follows?”
Galindo’s disappearance reinforces Mexico’s reputation as a country where environmental campaigners are frequently targeted for murder. The Mexican Centre for Environmental Law counted 65 attacks on environmental defenders in 2020 and 18 murders – a sharp increase from the 39 attacks in 2019 – with “structural and generalised violence against those who defend nature, land and territory”, according to the report.
Canada confirms fatalities from floods and landslides after Pacific north-west storm
Search and rescue officials in British Columbia have confirmed multiple fatalities after a deadly storm hit the Pacific north-west, destroying highways and leaving tens of thousands of people in Canada and the US without power.
Canada’s largest port was cut off by flood waters, as emergency crews in British Columbia announced on Tuesday that at least 10 vehicles had been swept off a highway during a landslide. “We’re hopeful to find people alive. But obviously that diminishes with time, the nature of the slide activity. People being caught up in mud and debris, it certainly diminishes as time goes by,” said David MacKenzie, the Pemberton district search and rescue manager, to the Globe and Mail. ...
Although the high winds and the rains caused by an atmospheric river – a huge plume of moisture extending over the Pacific – began easing in the region, most of British Columbia remained under either flood watch or flood warning.
South of the border, tens of thousands of households and businesses remain without power in Washington state. Nearly 50,000 Washington state electrical customers still had no power Tuesday after days of heavy rain triggered mudslides and floods and forced the closure of the west coast’s main north-south highway near the Canadian border, officials said. ... The Washington governor Jay Inslee declared a severe weather state of emergency in 14 counties and said the state emergency management division, with support from the Washington national guard, would coordinate the response.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the Inability to Think in Terms of Principles
'Reckless' FDA and Big Pharma Greed Blamed for Medicare Premium Hike
Another Humorous Substack Panic
New US war on Nicaragua's Sandinistas: OAS rejects elections, Biden imposes sanctions
Bhaskar Sunkara: Finding Commonplace Solidarity
Ryan Grim: Jeff Bezos And Big Tech Are Coming For Your Car
NPR Tweet DEVOID Of Substance On Ideology & Race Laments Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's Election
A Little Night Music
Slim Gaillard - Hit That Jive Jack
Slim Gaillard Trio - Scotchin' With Soda
Slim Gaillard - Yip Roc Heresy
Slim Gaillard - Flat Foot Floogie
Slim Gaillard - Potato Chips
Slim Gaillard - A Well A Take 'Em A Joe
Slim Gaillard - Walkin' & Cookin' Blues
Slim Gaillard Quartette - Atomic Cocktail
Slim Gaillard - Communication
Slim Gaillard - How High The Moon
Slim Gaillard - Hit That Mess
Comments
pentagod is an funny concept
taken on faith the military budget is believed to drain the resources of this country
the stability of the planet is hiding in some generals devotions
worshipping hellfire missiles
Slim's Atomic Cocktail
sounds appropriate
thanks Joe!
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
evening qms...
i dunno. funny yes, but armageddon tired of pentagod.
have a great evening!
It is the World Toilet Day 2021 either today or tomorrow
I will celebrate that day, considering how much shit is produced .
Many thanks for the EB and Slim Gallard. Music is our savior.
Have a good night all.
https://www.euronews.com/live
now flush those ideas from your mind
meine Freundin
truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security
evening mimi...
wow, a day to honor the work of thomas crapper? who knew?!? i'm sure that he'd be flushed with pride.
have a great evening!
There is no such thing as the fake "Pubiic Option"
The government can only subsidize fully public healkthcare, meaning it cannot be optional. Also the healthcareservice has to actually be public meaning not comercial at all in the country, it also has to predate the WTO rules that bar itr, meaning it has to have been in existence in 1995 or 1998, in essentially the form it is today.
Thuis would only apply to a few countries, like Canada. Other countries, like the UK dont pass the test. (Because they have commercialized health insurance. Sorry, maybe there is reincarnation and our next lives will be in a country with public healthcare. Until then only for profit services are WTO-legal. No the government cannot help peeple any more than the most least restrictive possible way. Those helped cannot pbe people who could buy even the cheapest service available because it cannot harm business, a all. Thats means that the kind of changes literally all the naive people of America want isnt legal under WTO rules. We already promised foreign investors that business and the jobs. If this makes you angry, once a year there is a tour in Geneva of the WTO bulding. Resevrations book up quickly. No people dont have a vote at the WTO. There are 164 countries and the US corporate interests have pretty much nailed down the US's vote. So all you have to do is convince he other 163 countries to vote your way. Many other countries were promised jobs so yopu'll have to convince them you offer them more. All they have to do is bid to do the jobs cheaper. And be qualified, say as a construction company or infrastructre company. Or a education and teacher supplier, or whatever you want to do. Public services are no longer likely to be public and instead the work is going to help the workers whose firms win the work in the lowest wage countries, rewardning them for keeping their workers wages low. So there is a big change happening. You'll be in competition with 7.5 billion potential workers.
evening zed...
we are the exceptional nation. we don't need no stinking badgers.
the u.s. generally exempts itself from treaties it has signed when it is inconvenient to follow the rules. it has been this way pretty much since the founding of the nation, i can't think of a single major treaty made with native americans that has been fully honored by the u.s. government over time, can you?
what really matters is whether there is an enforcement power that the u.s. has to worry about.
good afternoon Joe, thanks for the news and blues.
Slim is always a kick to listen to (and watch). The news, of course, is what it is. Iverson's piece opens the window on a whole different world. If the GOP go far enough into that terrain, it will be interesting to see whether the self-styled liberals of the Democratic faithful have enough to realize who is on their side on the issues.
be well and have a good one
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 --
evening el...
well, the parties have flipped constituencies before, so i suppose that it is possible. i mean, how many parties of the rich do we really need?
i wouldn't bet that the current crop of liberals would catch on any more than the vast majority of republicans have figured out in all these years that their party really doesn't give a damn about them and is just pandering.
have a great evening!
Hey all ...
Arizona Report
Arizona's 'QAnon Shaman' given 41 months for role in Capitol riot
I think that sentence is too long and I hope Dude can get some time off for good behavior.
If he gets out in time to run for US Senate, I'd vote for him before I'd vote for Kyrsten Sinema.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
evening azazello...
i assume that the shaman will get credit for time served. the sentences so far for 1/6 seem to be about making an example of the people who participated in it, presumably on the theory that it will deter future such events.
i would also presume that there's the usual possibility of early release/probation/home detention for good behavior.
Harris is an exciting 2024 candate!
So is Mayor Pete!
If you are a Republican, that is.
Interesting articles, joe.
Thanks for bringing them to our attention.
Stay safe and healthy, bluesers!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
why, i'm so excited i can hardly wait to go cast my vote for whoever the greens put up.
have a great evening!
I am widju
I hope you have some family plans for the upcoming food fest holiday celebrating thanks for incredibly wrong reasons. (Don't get me started on Columbus Day.)
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
ayup...
the shikspacks plan to chow down. picking up the organic turkey this weekend. even the dog is gonna have a food coma.
i hope that you guys have a good one coming up too.
Kiss Nord Stream 2 good bye for at least a year (or more)
A large company purchased the place where I currently work. The goal was to have my current company become a fully rebranded division in the larger one. Process took three years. Maybe the legal process is simple to move everything to a German subsidiary. Probably not.
At a recent session of the Valdai group, an American moderator/reporter kept asking Putin about Russia using gas to black mail Europe (basically she just asked State department questions). Putin repeated over and over that Russia has increased its gas exports to Europe. During this period he claimed, the US has lowered energy exports to Europe (in favor of Asia).
I have a conspiracy theory that Ukraine/Poland will destroy the pipeline once it gets going. And then blame Putin.
evening mr w...
i would imagine that the germans are under enormous pressure to dump the nord stream project. i am not surprised that they are now getting cold feet. heh, i bet a lot of europeans are going to have cold feet this winter and they can thank their idiotic governments kowtowing to the united states and the ukraine.
If you want more info on the Canadian floods
Pakalo has a good diary on it. Whole freeways have been destroyed and train tracks wiped out which will add to the supply problems. Farms are under water too. But hey look at how well the PTB addressed climate change just a few weeks ago. Biden’s taking it seriously by opening up millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico. What could go wrong?
Here’s a taste.
And instead of lowering the age for Medicare he’s raising premiums instead. Yeah I’d say that democrats are going to get wiped out in the midterms. I think they are trying to because of what they are doing with full control of government. Yippee. Remember to VBNMW kids.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
i hear that vancouver is totally cut off from the rest of canada by land and the stuff that i've been seeing in the news looks really bad.
current governments are not really making a case for their continuance at this point.
if things keep going the way they are, i suspect that shellacking will seem an understated term for what is going to happen to the democrat party at the polls. but one has to assume that it is what they want since they refuse to do anything that would change their fortunes.
fucking masochists.
Tarrio and DC 'Gitmo'
I don't have any evidence that indicates Enrique Tarrio is a fascist - and I'm betting that you don't either.
In any case, conditions where he is being held are - as now acknowledged by DC political leaders - as being horrific - and have been for years. That it took pressure exercised on behalf of the 1/6 political prisoners to finally draw attention to and get some movement toward dealing with the situation may be ascribed to 'white privilege', but what does it say about the black and Democratic leadership of the District of their failure - for decades - to do anything to resolve the problems when the inmates were mostly poor and black?
The idea that most 1/6 protesters even deserved pre-trial detention is itself absurd, and the belief that their treatment is ideologically motivated is reinforced by the comparatively extremely light treatment which 2020 'Summer of Love' rioters received.
In addition to the appalling physical conditions of the DC jail - the political detainees have been greatly hampered in their ability to even communicate with their lawyers and numerous other forms of abuse.
Consider these accounts from detainees Jonathon Mellis
and Nathaniel Degrave
*Nobody* of whatever race/gender/economic situation - especially in pre-trial detention - should be subjected to conditions like that.
Largely on the basis of intervention by the US Marshall's Service, over 400 inmates have been ordered transferred to other facilities - unclear how many of these are 1/6'ers and how many other...
Even DC Mayor Muriel Bowser admitting conditions are unacceptable and vowing to fix them. (Wow, I think I just glimpsed a formation of flying pigs pass over!)
Non-event for the MSM, but covered by Epoch Times:
here you go:
wikipedia:
southern poverty law center on the proud boys (whom tarrio leads):
west point (us military):
Like I said...
No evidence.
An impressive compilation of assertions, innuendo, guilt by association, though.
FYI - although the SPLC functions admirably as a money mill for its leaders and punches well above its weight in spewing pro-Establishment propaganda, it ceased to be a credible source of reasonably unbiased information somewhere around the first Bush administration.
I wonder how interested Tarrio - Afro-Latino heritage - and the various Asian, black, Latino, gay, Polynesian, & etc. Proud Boy members actually are in pursuing that SPLC asserts is the central goal of 'white supremacists': a white ethnostate?
I wonder too, if you took away all the Fedcops and informants, if you could fill a high school gym with all the white supremacists in the entire country?
Even if Tarrio were serving a sentence for murdering and eating his grandmother (instead of for a BS charge of possessing/selling a couple of 'high capacity' magazines - which would have been perfectly legal a couple miles away in Virginia) neither he, nor anyone else should be subject to the conditions people have been under in DC jails.
And pretrial detention should never be employed as punishment - which it clearly often is, and graphically so in the case (nearly all of) the 1/6 detainees.
thought so...
thanks for the information.
No, they were not.
They were part of a mob burning my home town. That is not a death penalty offense, and it sure as hell ain't up to a teenager with a weapon of war looking for a thrill-kill to sort.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
"Thrill Kill"???
Rittenhouse was threatened with and actually subjected to imminent, life-threatening
actions on the part of the people he shot.
Self-defense is a fundamental human right, if Rittenhouse hadn't exercised his, he would likely be numbered among the numerous other casualties of last summer's 'demonstrations'.
Thrill Cleaning:
Yes, thrill kill.
He put himself in Kenosha with a gun knowing the high likelihood of deadly confrontation. He was lookin for a gun fight.
Yes, thrill kill.
It was his luck that there were others dumb enough to take up his challenge and it was his luck he got the drop on 'em.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
That's my assessment also.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Based on...
what?
BTW - if you've been keeping up, what do you make of the performance of the prosecution/defense/judge in the trial?
Being a defense attorney 36 years
I personally might not call it thrill kill, more like spoiling for a fight.
The prosecutors were awful, the defense attorneys did a good job, the judge is just worthy of a book of what makes a judge bad.
From my life in this legal profession, particularly coming from an open carry, zealous 2nd Amendment state, I have had clients who felt they needed to show their deadly weapon as a valid reason for self-defense. And they accomplished their mission.
I discount and ignore the racial aspects of this case, and also the identity politics of the respective protest sides.
I do zero in on that issue that the persons bearing arms were mentally and emotionally pumped and armed to protect property they do not own. And that they were openly announcing their willingness and ability to shoot. I have seen the same sort of adrenaline rush to the fight in gang members I have represented.
I do not care if the punk ass wins or loses. What I care about is that a not guilty verdict result will set a precedent that protests in the future will never be safe.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I agree w your comments OTC
What is it called when 2 people decide to fight and one kills the other? Manslaughter? If that's the term, that seems to me the right call. We shall see in the coming days.
I hope no more people die here over this issue - from the cops, from each other.
I hope my home town doesn't get burned again.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
Self defense
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Nuances. That is what gets to reasonable doubt.
I cannot imagine why a child, not considered an adult until their 18th birthday, wanted to protect someone else's property.
I concede he can go anywhere, and I concede to his 2nd Am. right. What the issues are for me are his choice of weapon, and his reason for being there is the first place.
That is why I think he was spoiling for a fight, and prepared to win against a little pistol.
17 year olds typically care for property? Like, it is worth them getting killed or killing over a destroyed car belonging to a stranger?
I don't want to broach the subject of the right to bear arms.
I am way more interested in the right to travel, to freely assemble, and to protest. I hate that this case may prevent the remaing freedoms we are supposedly guranteed.
This kid, if not guilty, changes lots of things for us. If he is a murderer, he is ruined. If he is not a murderer, what does he become? What will he think of himself and others for the next 60 or so years? Is he mature enough to recognize he ended 2 lives? What will he be next year? The anti-protester exemplar?
I have a gun for self-protection. I plan and make sure I do not go to unsafe places, or engage in unsafe activities. I don't wave it, as a "dare me" weapon.
This kid set himself up to get in a shot before he shot, in my opinion.
Motive for the shootings is one thing, but motive for his imperative for being there armed is another.
May justice prevail.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The media once again lied about lots of aspects of
this case. From what I’ve read he didn’t just go there to start a fight. He was a paramedic and took not only a gun but a first aid kit. He did not travel across state lines armed to the teeth nor did his mother drive him there. He worked in the city and was there doing clean up before the protests started.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rittenhouse-verdict-medias-social-just...
There’s a link to another article I read that has more information on it. Not every person who was there a white supremist nor an outraged BLM supporter. I have no dawg in this fight, but I’m tired of the media forcing a narrative down my throat that is based on false information. I think the article is worth reading. But from the testimony, Kyle didn’t just murder 2 people. He was chased down and attacked first. Your view might be different and that’s okay. I think he will be found not guilty. I don’t think it bodes one way or another in future conflicts. Just my opinion. I’m glad I’m not on the jury tho.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Agree 100%. Until the trial testimony I had no idea that
anyone else was armed, never mind pointing a gun at the defendant. These powerfully relevant details were scarcely, if ever, reported on by most sources. The media propagandizing of the public is out of control.
Yes we have
Acquitted on all charges.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
Manslaughter has different definitions.
It is more of a criminal negligence thing. "I didn't intend to run over the guy in the street, but I did intentionally get drunk, resulting in the guy's death." In this instant case, the kid intended to kill, or kill before someone killed him.
Again, I am interested with little things.
So, not accident, but with some limited attribution of intent.
I am still wondering why 2 or 3 adults, 2 of whom are dead, shot first. They are dead, can't testify. Of course. Can't ask a corpse if they were scared, but the armed survivor did say he was in fear for his life.
Crazy, crazy times.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
The armed survivor also admitted that he pointed
his gun at Kyle first.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
I am trying to imagine myself
I didn't look at videos, read much about testimony in this case.
What I am interested in is future protests. This will affect them.
Other than that, I have been bored by crying defendant stuff.
All that interests me AT ALL about this verdict is the future of peaceful protests.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981