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"We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian."

-- Lionel Trilling

News and Opinion

Propaganda Isn’t Something That Only Happens To Others: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The dream for automation was that it would be used to eliminate the need for human toil. In practice so far it’s only being used to increase inequality: generating more profits for the ruling class while leaving normal people poorer and more desperate. Market forces only encourage more of this.

Apologists for the status quo are basically coming right out and telling us that automation will be used to increase income and wealth inequality, and they’re absolutely correct. That’s what’s been happening, and it will continue until it is made to stop.

You asked for $25 minimum wage

You get: First fully automated McDonalds in Texas pic.twitter.com/hd5AsBTOwX

— E (@ElijahSchaffer) December 22, 2022

Meanwhile we’re seeing the steady normalization of increasingly militarized robots, which will eventually become capable of suppressing domestic uprisings without the annoying human tendency to refuse to fire upon their countrymen, or even switch sides and join the revolution. So we appear to be headed for tremendous poverty and injustice if we don’t force a change in the trajectory we’re on, and if we don’t force it soon they’ll have robotic security systems to stop us. The robots will either be made to work for us, or they’ll be used against us.

This is the trajectory we’ll be on as long as capitalism remains in place and the class which rules it retains control of automation. Vastly unequal tech dystopia where the people are controlled by AI and weaponized robots is the final stage of capitalism (before death by ecocide).

How the war machine took over the Democrats w/ Dennis Kucinich

Russia Launches Missile Strike, Hunts AD System, Prepares North Donbass Offensive, Putin Xi to Speak

Dominating Everyone Everywhere All At Once

Terminology is so important. There was a time when America spoke honestly of a Department of War. But not everyone is keen on war, even Americans, so in 1947 the national (in)security state slyly changed its name to the Department of Defense (DoD). And who can be against “defense”?

The problem is that America’s fundamental vision is offensive. We speak openly of global reach, global power, global vigilance. We never speak of regional or hemispheric defense. Regional power? Forget about it! Everything has to be “global.” Indeed, not just global but soaring above it into space. And not just outer space but virtual space and inner space, into one’s mind, so-called information dominance. For that’s what “full-spectrum” dominance is all about. To be safe, to “defend” us, the DOD must dominate everywhere, so we’re told.

This vision serves to generate yearly budgets that consume more than half of federal discretionary spending. It’s used to justify 750 military bases around the world. It’s consistent with dividing the globe into commands headed by four-star generals and admirals, e.g. AFRICOM, CENTCOM, NORTHCOM, and the like. It generates U.S. involvement in wars that few Americans know anything about, e.g. Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. It’s a vision consistent with a state of permanent warfare driven by imperial ambitions.

I don’t think there’s ever been a military more ambitious and vainglorious than the US military and its various straphangers (industry, congress, intelligence agencies, the media, academe, think tanks, hence the term MICIMATT). No wonder its “thought” leaders keep demanding and getting more and more money: at least $858 billion for FY2023 alone. The DOD is supposed to be a means to an end. Clearly, it’s become an end in and of itself; it may yet lead to the end of everything.

Bloodthirsty War “Experts” Say Ukraine War Is A Bargain

PR spin and peace proposals. Medvedev to oversee military industry

Israel helps Ukraine whitewash its Nazis

Representatives of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion have been touring Israel to drum up support for the unit’s imprisoned fighters. They have been meeting with Israeli politicians and soldiers. Azov intelligence officer Illia Samoilenko was released in a prisoner exchange with Russia in September. He had been one of the hundreds of Azov fighters who surrendered in May at the end of the long Russian siege of the eastern city of Mariupol.

“Israel values freedom, values strength, Israel values honor. It’s the same things that we also value,” he told Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week. Samoilenko also told The Times of Israel that “he sees Israel and Ukraine on the same side, the civilized battling the uncivilized in a struggle for the future of humanity,” the outlet summarized. “We have prosperity, beautiful, prosperous, beautiful civilization, and they have medieval cavemen,” he said. It seems the “they” in this case are the Palestinians and the Russians, who Samoilenko regards as “uncivilized.”

Along for the Israeli tour with Samoilenko is Yulia Fedosiuk, the wife of an imprisoned Azov fighter and a far-right activist in her own right. Both were on a charm offensive this week, as part of a wider push to whitewash Azov’s image in the West.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it was widely acknowledged that the Azov Battalion promoted Nazi ideology. The Anti-Defamation League, a major Jewish communal and Israel lobby group, for instance, warned in 2019 that Azov was a “Ukrainian extremist group” with “ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists.”

But now with Western governments arming Ukraine, including the Azov Battalion, in a proxy war against Russia, there is a concerted effort to hide this ugly reality from public view.

[Much more at the link. -js]

Zelensky appoints sexologist pyramid schemer as ambassador to Bulgaria

High end jewelry, hypnotism and multi-level marketing are not qualifications typically associated with international diplomacy. But these skills are featured prominently on the resumé of Ukraine’s new ambassador to Bulgaria, Olesya Ilashchuk.

Since her December 23 appointment by Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky as Bulgarian ambassador, Olesya Ilashchuk has locked her Facebook account. At the time this report was filed, only the “intro” section of her Facebook page was visible. It listed some educational experience and contained the following professional fields: “Clinical psychologist, Systemic family therapist, Gestalt therapist, sexologist-consultant.” Ilashchuk was reportedly posting updates to her page on subjects related to gestalt therapy and sexology “until recently.”

Ilashchuk’s dearth of diplomatic qualifications is so glaring that even the British government-funded BBC has branded her appointment “scandalous.” As the mockery grows, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has fired off a statement defending the political novice as an expert in international relations and noting her fluency in English – not the official language of Bulgaria. ...

In what other nation can a comedian-turned-president appoint a sexologist pyramid schemer as a high-ranking diplomat? Perhaps the same one where Hunter Biden was handsomely compensated for his oil and gas expertise.

Serbia-Kosovo tensions ease: Serbs start removing barricades in northern Kosovo

A Map Showing The Two Main Geopolitical Blocs

It really is the imperialist West vs. the entire world

This is how they voted on a UN resolution calling for a new international economic order based on equity, sovereign equality, and cooperation, opposing unilateral sanctions and advocating for debt relief for the Global South https://t.co/veNO3uMdC5 pic.twitter.com/wy6amH7TUm

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 15, 2022

This is pretty much the map for UN resolutions aimed at Russia, too.

As I’ve noted before the bottom line is that if you are a developing country, China offers cheaper loans and cheaper and faster development work like ports, airports, hospitals, roads, railways, schools and even cities. If you aren’t close to them, they don’t care about your internal politics, either.

I remember reading an interview with a minister of an African state who said approximately, “every time a western minister visits us we get a lecture, every time a Chinese official visits we get a new hospital.” ...

And that’s why this map is fairly close to what the cold war map will look like. A few “green” countries will cut deals with the West, but most will go with China and Russia. And why wouldn’t they?

Clashes in Bolivia: Police detain opposition leader Camacho as tensions flare

Bolivian opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho arrested on ‘terrorism’ charges

Bolivian police have detained prominent opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho on charges of “terrorism” in a move that significantly escalates tensions between the national government and Camacho’s Santa Cruz base.

Bolivia’s state attorney’s office confirmed the detention on Wednesday of 43-year-old Camacho, the governor of Santa Cruz who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020. The office said the arrest was connected to the toppling of former leftist president Evo Morales in 2019. An October arrest warrant accused Camacho of “terrorism” without giving more details.

Camacho, who was transferred from the city of Santa Cruz to a police station in La Paz, is the second high-profile political figure linked to Morales’ ouster to be detained. Ex-president Jeanine Áñez was jailed last year after being found guilty of orchestrating a “coup”.

Video of Camacho’s arrest shared by local news outlets showed him handcuffed on the side of the road with broken windows in the car he was travelling in. It was not immediately clear who recorded the video. Protesters gathered at Santa Cruz’s Viru Viru airport in an apparent attempt to prevent Camacho from being transported.

The arrest follows week of unrest in Santa Cruz, led by Camacho. Protesters blocked streets and halted trade, angered over the national government’s delay in carrying out Bolivia’s population census. A new census would likely result in Santa Cruz – an affluent farming region that has long butted heads with La Paz – securing more tax revenues and seats in Congress.

Netanyahu government makes West Bank settlement expansion its priority

Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hardline government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, vowing to legalise dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory as part of its coalition deal with its ultranational allies.

The coalition agreements, released a day before the government is to be sworn into office, also included language endorsing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people on religious grounds, as well as generous stipends for ultra-Orthodox men who prefer to study instead of work.

The package laid the groundwork for what is expected to be a stormy beginning for Netanyahu’s government and could put it at odds with large parts of the Israeli public and Israel’s closest allies abroad.

Its lengthy list of guidelines was led by a commitment to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel”, including “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical names for the West Bank.

Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future independent state. In the decades since, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements there that are now home to about 500,000 Israelis living alongside about 2.5 million Palestinians.

Economists TOTALLY WRONG On Inflation Predictions

Live from the land of freedom ...

A dying cancer patient used cannabis to ease pain. His hospital called the police

Hospital staff in Kansas called the police on a man dying of cancer who was using cannabis products to cope with his symptoms, in an incident that has since sparked outrage and renewed calls to rethink the state’s strict cannabis laws.

The encounter took place in mid-December, when police in the city of Hays say two officers showed up at the cancer patient’s hospital room to issue him a citation for a drug violation. Police also took away a vaping device and cannabis product that hospital staff had already confiscated.

While the police department later dropped the citation, which would have required the cancer patient to appear in court, reports of the incident fueled debate over the continued criminalization of cannabis in Kansas, one of the three US states that has not legalized the product in any context.

While he was glad the charge against his father was dropped, Lee Bretz, the patient’s son, said the incident was “humiliating” for his father and left him “pretty upset”. His father, who has terminal, inoperable cancer, was issued a “must appear” citation for drug possession, Bretz said. “He can’t make it to court. He’s bedridden. He can’t move his legs.”

“You’d think they would have shown a lot of compassion and not done anything,” his son said of the officers who responded to the incident.

Donziger Files Response to 'DOJ's Disastrous Decision to Side With Chevron'

The legal team of human rights attorney Steven Donziger is challenging what he describes as the U.S. Department of Justice's "disastrous decision to side with Chevron and back private corporate prosecutions."

At issue is the DOJ's recently submitted brief in opposition to Donziger's pending appeal of his widely criticized contempt of court conviction. Donziger's reply to the Justice Department's December 16 brief was filed Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court. ...

Donziger has received support from United Nations human rights experts and nearly 70 Nobel Prize Laureates, including 1997 peace prize recipient Jody Williams, who argued in May 2021 that Donziger's house arrest and the criminal contempt case against him was a "gross miscarriage of justice" meant to dissuade others from challenging corporations' human rights violations and ecological crimes.

Along with dozens of other Nobel prize winners, Williams asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Donziger's predicament, writing that "a high-level review will reveal that the case clearly is a violation of Mr. Donziger's rights and the rights of the affected communities in Ecuador."

Garland's DOJ, however, refused to reassert main jurisdiction over the case. ...

When Donziger was behind bars late last year, nine House Democrats implored Garland to "take immediate action" to secure his release.

"Donziger sits in a crowded federal prison because a Chevron attorney made it so, without executive branch supervision or ever seeing a jury of his peers," the lawmakers wrote. "As the United States is a party to the district court case against Mr. Donziger, we request that you act immediately to reclaim control of this case, dismiss the charges, and free Mr. Donziger from his imprisonment."

The DOJ declined to intervene on Donziger's behalf. So too did U.S. President Joe Biden, who was asked by more than 100 human rights groups to pardon Donziger.

An appeals court upheld Donziger's conviction in a split decision this June, two months after he was released. In September, Donziger appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, arguing that the DOJ's lack of supervision during his prosecution violated the U.S. Constitution's separation of powers.

Less than two weeks ago, the Justice Department filed a brief in opposition to Donziger's pending Supreme Court appeal, prompting the environmental lawyer's Tuesday response.

The mission to return jaguars to the US

Somewhere among the rocky pinnacles of southern Arizona’s Chiricahua mountains roams the last known jaguar in the US. The dark-spotted big cat, a male known as “Sombra” to wildlife researchers, wanders between three mountain ranges, hunting for deer and piglike javelinas and, perhaps, searching for a mate. The last known female jaguar north of the Mexican border was shot by a hunter in 1963, so Sombra’s chances of producing offspring to continue the US population are near zero.

This month, conservationists called on the federal government to stop big cats like Sombra from going extinct in the US by reintroducing jaguars to the region and increasing protections for the animals’ habitat. The non-profit Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to create an experimental population of jaguars in the Gila national forest, a sprawling, rugged 3m-acre wilderness in New Mexico dotted with pinyon pines. They also called for protections for millions of acres of wildlands in New Mexico and Arizona, including the tracts where Sombra currently lives.

“Jaguars evolved in North America eons ago and lived here until people killed them off for their beautiful pelts and to eliminate a threat to livestock,” says the petition. “Over 50 years since the jaguar was placed on the endangered species list, we should not be facing the realistic prospect that this sole jaguar in Arizona will be the last.”

Researchers believe the cats, known for their reclusive nature, once populated a huge swath of North America, stretching from the Carolinas to California. Now, a small, struggling population lives in northern Mexico near the border and the sleek, long-tailed cats have been known to wander north into the US. But this population has little genetic diversity and faces its own risks of extinction, the researchers say.

Meanwhile, the jaguars’ ability to venture into the US is hemmed in by barriers, including highways and the US border wall.

Thailand: Yellow-band disease ravages coral reefs

Also of Interest

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

Think the war in Ukraine is the world’s deadliest conflict? Think again

Ukraine SitRep - Counter Artillery War - Financial Disaster

The Ukraine Crisis Is a Classic “Security Dilemma”

Israel Put Over 600 Palestinian Children in House Arrest in 2022

Rosneft Refinery in Schwedt as a Microcosm of Europe’s Sanctions-Induced Energy Mess

State Officials Warned Buttigieg About Airline Mess

Scientists develop blood test for Alzheimer’s disease

A Little Night Music

Louis Armstrong - Where the Blues were born in New Orleans

Louis Armstrong - Basin Street Blues

Louis Armstrong - Dinah

King Oliver - Riverside Blues

Louis Armstrong - St. James Infirmary

Louis Armstrong - St. Louis Blues

Louis Armstrong - Sweet Georgia Brown

Louis Armstrong Hot Seven - Wild Man Blues

Louis Armstrong - All That Meat And No Potatoes