The Evening Blues - 2-7-23



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Henry "Son" Sims

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features delta blues fiddler Henry "Son" Sims. Enjoy!

Son Sims Four (Vcl & Guitar - Muddy Waters) - Ramblin Kid Blues

"Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly."

-- Stanislaw Lem


News and Opinion

Hedges, worth a full read:

Chris Hedges: Woke Imperialism

The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by five Black Memphis police officers should be enough to implode the fantasy that identity politics and diversity will solve the social, economic and political decay that besets the United States. Not only are the former officers Black, but the city’s police department is headed by Cerelyn Davis, a Black woman. None of this helped Nichols, another victim of a modern-day police lynching. The militarists, corporatists, oligarchs, politicians, academics and media conglomerates champion identity politics and diversity because it does nothing to address the systemic injustices or the scourge of permanent war that plague the U.S. It is an advertising gimmick, a brand, used to mask mounting social inequality and imperial folly. It busies liberals and the educated with a boutique activism, which is not only ineffectual but exacerbates the divide between the privileged and a working class in deep economic distress. The haves scold the have-nots for their bad manners, racism, linguistic insensitivity and garishness, while ignoring the root causes of their economic distress. The oligarchs could not be happier. ...

We live under a species of corporate colonialism. The engines of white supremacy, which constructed the forms of institutional and economic racism that keep the poor poor, are obscured behind attractive political personalities such as Barack Obama, whom Cornel West called “a Black mascot for Wall Street.” These faces of diversity are vetted and selected by the ruling class. Obama was groomed and promoted by the Chicago political machine, one of the dirtiest and most corrupt in the country. “It’s an insult to the organized movements of people these institutions claim to want to include,” Glen Ford, the late editor of The Black Agenda Report told me in 2018. “These institutions write the script. It’s their drama. They choose the actors, whatever black, brown, yellow, red faces they want.” Ford called those who promote identity politics “representationalists” who “want to see some Black people represented in all sectors of leadership, in all sectors of society. They want Black scientists. They want Black movie stars. They want Black scholars at Harvard. They want Blacks on Wall Street. But it’s just representation. That’s it.” ...

Identity politics and diversity allow liberals to wallow in a cloying moral superiority as they castigate, censor and deplatform those who do not linguistically conform to politically correct speech. They are the new Jacobins. This game disguises their passivity in the face of corporate abuse, neoliberalism, permanent war and the curtailment of civil liberties. They do not confront the institutions that orchestrate social and economic injustice. They seek to make the ruling class more palatable. With the support of the Democratic Party, the liberal media, academia and social media platforms in Silicon Valley, demonize the victims of the corporate coup d’etat and deindustrialization. They make their primary political alliances with those who embrace identity politics, whether they are on Wall Street or in the Pentagon. They are the useful idiots of the billionaire class, moral crusaders who widen the divisions within society that the ruling oligarchs foster to maintain control.

Diversity is important. But diversity, when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed, is window dressing. It is about incorporating a tiny segment of those marginalized by society into unjust structures to perpetuate them.

UN chief fears world is heading towards ‘wider war’ over Russia-Ukraine conflict

The head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned that further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict could mean the world is heading towards a “wider war”.

The secretary general laid out his priorities for the year in a gloomy speech to the UN general assembly that focused on Russia’s invasion, the climate crisis and extreme poverty. “We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any in our lifetimes,” he told diplomats in New York.

Guterres noted that top scientists and security experts had moved the Doomsday Clock to just 90 seconds to midnight last month, the closest it has ever been to signalling the annihilation of humanity. The secretary general said he was taking it as a warning sign. “We need to wake up – and get to work,” he implored, as he read out a list of urgent issues for 2023.

Top of the list was Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is approaching its one-year anniversary. “The prospects for peace keep diminishing. The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing,” he said. “I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open.”

US, Germany BLOCKED Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal: Former Israel PM Bennett

More Evidence That The West Sabotaged Peace In Ukraine

Days after the war in Ukraine began it was reported by The New York Times that “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has asked the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to mediate negotiations in Jerusalem between Ukraine and Russia.” In a recent interview, Bennett made some very interesting comments about what happened during those negotiations in the early days of the war.

In a new article titled “Former Israeli PM Bennett Says US ‘Blocked’ His Attempts at a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday that the US and its Western allies “blocked” his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.

On March 4, 2022, Bennett traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. In the interview, he detailed his mediation at the time between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he said he coordinated with the US, France, Germany, and the UK.

Bennett said that both sides agreed to major concessions during his mediation effort. ...

But ultimately, the Western leaders opposed Bennet’s efforts. “I’ll say this in the broad sense. I think there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin and not [negotiate],” Bennett said.

When asked if the Western powers “blocked” the mediation efforts, Bennet said, “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.”

Bennett says the concessions each side was prepared to make included the renunciation of future NATO membership for Ukraine, and on Russia’s end dropping the goals of “denazification” and Ukrainian disarmament. As DeCamp notes, this matches up with an Axios report from early March that “According to Israeli officials, Putin’s proposal is difficult for Zelensky to accept but not as extreme as they anticipated. They said the proposal doesn’t include regime change in Kyiv and allows Ukraine to keep its sovereignty.”

Bennett is about as unsavory a character as exists in the world today, but Israel’s complicated relationship with this war lends itself to the occasional release of information not fully in alignment with the official imperial line. And his comments here only add to a pile of information that’s been coming out for months which says the same thing, not just regarding the sabotage of peace talks in March but in April as well.

In May of last year Ukrainian media reported that then-British prime minister Boris Johnson had flown to Kyiv the previous month to pass on the message on behalf of the western empire that “Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with,” and that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”

In April of last year, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that “there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia gets weaker.” Shortly thereafter, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the goal in Ukraine is “to see Russia weakened.”

A September Foreign Affairs report by Fiona Hill asserts that in April of last year a peace deal had been in the works between Moscow and Kyiv, which would presumably have been the agreement that Johnson et al were able to sabotage:

According to multiple former senior U.S. officials we spoke with, in April 2022, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.

In March of last year Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson reported that sources in the US and UK governments had told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in order “bleed Putin” and achieve regime change in Moscow. Ferguson wrote that he has reached the conclusion that “the U.S. intends to keep this war going,” and says he has other sources to corroborate this:

“The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

All this taken together heavily substantiates the claim made by Vladimir Putin this past September that Russia and Ukraine had been on the cusp of peace shortly after the start of the war, but western powers ordered Kyiv to “wreck” the negotitations.

“After the start of the special military operation, in particular after the Istanbul talks, Kyiv representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals,” Putin said. “These proposals concerned above all ensuring Russia’s security and interests. But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kyiv was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.”

Month after month it’s been reported that US diplomats have been steadfastly refusing to engage in diplomacy with Russia to help bring an end to this war, an inexcusable rejection that would only make sense if the US wants this war to continue. And comments from US officials continually make it clear that this is the case.

In March of last year President Biden himself acknowledged what the real game is here with an open call for regime change, saying of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Statements from the Biden administration in fact indicate that they expect this war to drag on for a long time, making it abundantly clear that a swift end to minimize the death and destruction is not just uninteresting but undesirable for the US empire.

US officials are becoming more and more open about the fact that they see this war as something that serves their strategic objectives, which would of course contradict the official narrative that the western empire did not want this war and the infantile fiction that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked”. Recent examples of this would include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s speech ahead of Zelensky’s visit to Washington in December.

“President Zelensky is an inspiring leader,” McConnell said in his speech ahead of the Ukrainian president’s visit to Washington. “But the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests. Helping equip our friends in Eastern Europe to win this war is also a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies, and contest our core interests.”

In May of last year Congressman Dan Crenshaw said on Twitter that “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.”

Indeed, a report by the empire-funded Center for European Policy Analysis titled “It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia” asserts that the “US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment.”

In May of last year US Senator Joe Manchin said at the World Economic Forum that he opposes any kind of peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, preferring instead to use the conflict to hurt Russian interests and hopefully remove Putin.

“I am totally committed, as one person, to seeing Ukraine to the end with a win, not basically with some kind of a treaty; I don’t think that is where we are and where we should be,” Manchin said.

“I mean basically moving Putin back to Russia and hopefully getting rid of Putin,” Manchin added when asked what he meant by a win for Ukraine.

“I believe strongly that I have never seen, and the people I talk strategically have never seen, an opportunity more than this, to do what needs to be done,” Manchin later added.

Then you’ve got US officials telling the press that they plan to use this war to hurt Russia’s fossil fuel interests, “with the long-term goal of destroying the country’s central role in the global energy economy” according to The New York Times. You’ve also got the fact that the US State Department can’t stop talking about how great it is that Russia’s Nord Stream Pipelines were sabotaged in September of last year, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the Nord Stream bombing “offers tremendous strategic opportunity” and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland saying the Biden administration is “very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

The US empire is getting everything it wants out of this proxy war. That’s why it knowingly provoked this war, that’s why it repeatedly sabotaged the outbreak of peace after the war broke out, and that’s why this proxy war has no exit strategy. The empire is getting everything it wants from this war, so why wouldn’t it do everything in its power to obstruct peace?

I mean, besides the obvious unforgivable depravity of it all, of course. The empire has always been fine with cracking a few hundred thousand human eggs in order to cook the imperial omelette. It is unfathomably, unforgivably evil, though, and it should outrage everyone.

Netanyahu Says Israel Will Study Supplying Ukraine with Iron Dome System

Israel will study the possibility of supplying Ukraine with the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, Israeli rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s latest comments during an interview with the French LCI channel are the latest such statements about Israel’s willingness to support Ukraine in its war with Russia,

“The issue of arms supplies was considered and rejected by the previous Israeli government. I will study this issue and answer this matter in the most adequate manner,” Netanyahu said.

Russia Controls One Third Bakhmut, Ukraine Losses Unsustainable, US Arms Deliveries Dwindle

GOP Rep. Mike Rogers: Pentagon budget cuts are on the table

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) promised to cut Pentagon spending during his first meeting as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

“We will closely examine programs to determine if they actually provide the capabilities we need to defeat the threats we face,” Rogers said, noting that wasteful programs would be cut. “I expect we’ll find a lot of savings at the Pentagon.”

In an interview with the Hill, Rogers added more details about which programs could be on the chopping block. “We’re going to cut money that’s being spent on wokeism, we’re going to cut legacy programs, we’re going to cut a lot of waste,” he said.

The comments are an early indication that the new HASC chair will try to implement a January deal whereby Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reportedly agreed to freeze federal spending at 2022 levels to earn Republican support in his bid to become speaker of the House. In practice, this would reverse the $75 billion boost the Pentagon budget received for fiscal year 2023.

“China Is Not Our Enemy” – Says Top General Mark Milley

The balloonacy continues:

War of words over downed Chinese spy balloon continues as US recovers debris

The diplomatic row has escalated over the Chinese high-altitude balloon that flew across the US before being shot down, as the first wreckage was salvaged off the Atlantic coast. Beijing on Monday accused the US of “overreaction” and the “indiscriminate use of military force” in shooting down a Chinese balloon, warning of damage to bilateral relations. ...

The Pentagon said the first bits of debris had been found on the ocean surface off the South Carolina coast, while work continued to find the bits and pieces that had sunk to the sea bed. It called on the public to report any fragments that washed up on shore. The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said the United States was able to study the balloon while it was flying and officials hope to glean valuable intelligence on its operations by retrieving as many components as possible.

The head of North American Aerospace Defence (Norad) Command, General Glen VanHerck, described the balloon as being 200 feet (61 metres) high, with a surveillance payload the size of a regional passenger jet.

Balloon-gate. China trolls Biden White House

‘Catastrophic’ earthquake in Turkey and Syria kills at least 4,300 people

International rescue missions were rushing to Turkey and Syria on Monday after one of the most powerful earthquakes to hit the region in at least a century left more than 4,300 people dead, thousands injured and an unknown number trapped in the rubble. The early-morning quake and dozens of aftershocks wiped out entire apartment blocks in Turkey and heaped more destruction on Syrian communities already devastated by over a decade of war. ...

The magnitude-7.8 quake, which hit in the darkness of a winter morning, was followed by a second, 7.5 quake in the middle of the day on Monday, as rescuers in both countries were still attempting to search for survivors.

By the early evening, the death toll in Turkey stood at 2,921, the the country’s emergency services said, and more than 14,483 people were recorded as injured. Yunus Sezer, who heads Turkey’s disaster relief agency AFAD, said nearly 15,000 search and rescue personnel had been deployed to the region. At least 1,444 people were killed in Syria, according to figures from the Damascus government and rescue workers in the north-western region, which is controlled by rebel groups. ...

The quake struck at 4.17am local time at a depth of about 11 miles (18km) near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is home to about 2 million people, the US Geological Survey said.

French pension reform: Tens of thousands of demonstrators held a third round of strikes and protests

Anti-abortion group to pay Planned Parenthood nearly $1m over protest at clinic

An anti-abortion group has been ordered to pay almost $1m in fines to Planned Parenthood, over demonstrations outside a clinic in Spokane, Washington state. According to its website, the group, Church at Planned Parenthood, was formed to stage “worship service at the gates of Hell”.

It also calls itself a “gathering of Christians for the worship of God and the corporate prayer for repentance for this nation, repentance for the apathetic church and repentance of our blood guiltiness in this abortion Holocaust”. In September 2021, a judge permanently banned protesters from the group from loudly demonstrating outside the Spokane clinic.

The judge, Timothy Fennessy, wrote: “Reasonable minds can only reach one conclusion, that Covenant Church [which founded the Church at Planned Parenthood group] intends to interfere with access to or safe and effective delivery of healthcare services” the Spokesman-Review reported. Fennessy said the demonstrations created increased increased pain and other psychiatric symptoms for patients receiving care inside the clinic, KXLY, a Spokane TV station, reported.

Last month, a Spokane county judge ordered Church at Planned Parenthood to pay approximately $960,000 to Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, for violating state law by noisily demonstrating and interfering with patient care. According to the Spokesman-Review newspaper, the group was required to pay $110,000 in civil damages and $850,000 in attorney fees.

COINTELPRO 2.0: How the FBI Infiltrated BLM Protests After Police Murder of George Floyd

US woman and neo-Nazi leader plotted to attack power grid via sniper – officials

A Maryland woman conspired with a Florida neo-Nazi leader to carry out an attack on several electrical substations in the Baltimore area, officials said on Monday. The arrest of Sarah Beth Clendaniel, of Baltimore county, was the latest in a series across the country as authorities warn that electrical infrastructure could be a vulnerable target for domestic terrorists. It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday whether she had a lawyer to speak on her behalf.

She conspired with Brandon Russell, recently arrested in Florida, to disable the power grid by shooting out substations via “sniper attacks”, saying she wanted to “completely destroy this whole city”, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Monday. The complaint also included a photo of a woman authorities identified as Clendaniel wearing tactical gear that bore a swastika and holding a rifle.

Authorities declined to specify how the planned attack was meant to fulfill a racist motive but suggested the defendants wanted to bring attention to their cause.

Russell has a long history of ties to racist groups and Nazi beliefs, as well as past plans to attack US infrastructure systems, according to the complaint. It also wasn’t clear on Monday whether he had a lawyer.



the horse race



New Polls Spell DOOM For Biden Ahead Of SOTU

Criminalizing MEMES? Biden DOJ ARRESTS Man For ONLINE SATIRE About Elections



the evening greens


Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s Marina Silva

Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.

In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.

The president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently declared an emergency after photos emerged of emaciated children and elderly people in the region and the Sumaúma news platform revealed 570 Yanomami infants died from preventable diseases during Bolsonaro’s term, an increase of 29% on the previous four years.

In a wide-ranging interview, Silva said Bolsonaro should be held accountable. “I think he should be investigated for committing genocide,” she said. “The ministry of justice itself is already forwarding the action.”

The crisis is the first big test of Lula’s commitment to restore the health of the forest and its guardians. After the 8 January attempted coup in Brasília by a far-right Bolsonarist mob, it is also a chance for the new centre-left government to demonstrate its authority and willingness to defend the Amazon.

'Collapse of habitats': 40 percent of animals in US at risk of extinction, says report

Leaked video footage of ocean pollution shines light on deep-sea mining

Video footage from a deep-sea mining test, showing sediment discharging into the ocean, has raised fresh questions about the largely untested nature of the industry, and the possible harms it could do to ecosystems as companies push to begin full-scale exploration of the ocean floor as early as this year. The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian mining firm that is one of the leading industry players, spent September to November of last year testing its underwater extraction vehicle in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone, a section of the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii.

But a group of scientists hired by the company to monitor its operations, concerned by what they saw, posted a video of what they said was a flawed process that accidentally released sediment into the ocean. The scientists also said the company fell short in its environmental monitoring strategy, according to documents viewed by the Guardian. As the push for deep-sea mining intensifies, experts are increasingly concerned that companies will kick up clouds of sediment, which could be laden with toxic heavy metals that may harm marine life. At least 700 scientists – along with France, Germany and Chile – are calling for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. ...

Experts and critics caution that the incident highlights the relative uncertainties surrounding deep-sea mining. Companies are scrambling to scavenge the ocean floor for valuable metals, used in electric vehicle batteries and a host of other technologies such as green energy production, amid a global fight for stable supply.

“What we’ve seen is an unauthorised release and, in terrestrial mining, this would have consequences of some sort. And the company says they told the regulator as a courtesy? This is bizarre,” said Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada, adding that the incident runs counter to the assurances from companies that sediment won’t be released near the surface of the ocean.

Chile firefighters battle blazes amid warning that wildfires could get worse

Chilean firefighters are battling to hold back forest fires as authorities warned that persistent hot and dry weather could potentially exacerbate what are already the deadliest blazes in the country’s recent history.

The fires, which have consumed 270,000 hectares (667,000 acres) of land, have killed 24 people so far in south-central Chile and already made 2023 the second worst year in terms of hectares burned after the so-called “fire storm” that hit the country in 2017.

The state National Forestry Corporation reported that as of Monday morning there were 275 active fires, of which 69 were currently being fought.

Chile is in the grip of an over decade-long period of dry weather, which the World Meteorological Organization called a “mega drought” last year, adding that it was the longest in a thousand years and marked a major water crisis. The heatwave and strong winds have caused a rapid spread of the flames during the southern hemisphere’s summer season.


Also of Interest

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

US-Laid Trap for Russia Has Trapped West Instead

The Economics of the Ukraine Proxy War with Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai

Saudi minister warns energy sanctions may lead to supply shortage

Indian refiners purchase Russian crude in Emirati currency

Germany Open to Theories That a Western Country Attacked Nord Stream Pipelines

NYT Plants False Claims Over China's Balloon Communication

Negotiators make breakthrough in Northern Irish protocol dispute

Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier in plea for clemency after 47 years in jail

Georgia officials condemned for labeling ‘Cop City’ protests domestic terrorism

Family of Forest Defender Killed by Police Demands Answers

Pink dolphins and reformed Colombian rebels turn no-go zone into ecotourism hit

Is Rep. Ihan Omar an imperialist?


A Little Night Music

Son Sims Four - Pearly May Blues

Son Sims Four (Vcl & Guitar - Muddy Waters) - Rosalie

Henry Sims - Tell Me Man Blues

Son Sims Four - Joe Turner Blues

Henry Sims - Farrell Blues

Henry Sims / Charley Patton - Be True Be True Blues

Henry Sims / Charley Patton - Come Back Corrina

Muddy Waters + Son Sims - Burr Clover Blues

Charley Patton + Henry Sims - Elder Greene Blues


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13 users have voted.

Comments

head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has warned... further escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict could mean the world is heading towards a “wider war”.

No shit Sherlock. So does that mean your august body of ineffectives will do something
besides ring the alarm bells? Didn't think so. Just posturing.

Hey, thanks for the Henry Sims!
Enjoying the Burr Clover Blues

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9 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

the u.n. used to have some moral authority, but it has pissed it away over the last couple of decades. now it's just a grumbling society where governments dispatch their deputized clowns to point fingers at other nations and honk their squeaky toys at them.

glad you enjoyed son sims. i always kind of wonder if people enjoy the scratchy old blues records as much as i do.

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8 users have voted.

the (slightly) insane US House of Repressors are suggesting it is time to make
socialism an unacceptable alternative to imperialism. Proffering a resolution
to cleanse the history of disaster capitalism, they are trying to tell us to ignore
consequence and just stick to 'murican ideals.

https://www.rt.com/news/571115-us-congress-anti-socialism-resolution/

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8 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

i guess those clowns haven't yet figured out that if you get rid of the socialist-style programs of government that it is absolutely useless to the working class who will eventually be delighted to drown it in the bathtub, thus ending the phony-baloney jobs of the anti-socialists.

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7 users have voted.

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8 users have voted.

@humphrey

my question would be how many Ukrainians actually hear this?

thanks

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9 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

it's good of him to state the obvious, perhaps he should have found somebody to translate it into ukrainian.

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5 users have voted.

or neither side figures they can win.

At the beginning of the war it looked like only a matter of time until Ukraine was taken over in its entirety. Then Ukraine took back their airfield, drove Russia's entire northern army out of the country leaving behind battalions of fully functioning tanks. Ukraine no longer had a reason to negotiate. Also public opinion in Ukraine hardened after they found what had occured in occupied areas.

Then Ukraine took back thousands of square kilometers of territory.

For now, Ukraine figures it might well win, or at least be in a much better position for negotiations after taking back large amounts of territory. Who knows, there might be regime change.

Putin isn't ready to give up the ghost by a long shot. He has millions of people he can send into the war, and Ukraine doesn't.

Imagine how it would go if you put the whole thing up to a vote of the soldiers fighting the war. Ukraine still has more volunteers than they can train.

Bennett's time ran out, things changed. Ukraine is thinking beyond peace to the next time Russia starts a war.

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0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@ban nock

in the East that Ukraine will never get back and was very important to everything being done in Ukraine outside agriculture and it will never get back Crimea and possibly Odessa leaving Ukraine a landlocked country. But sure if you ignore all that then yay for Ukraine winning the war. Plus Russia has destroyed hundreds of tanks and other equipment so I guess those 14 German tanks will really give them the edge huh? Especially when they don’t have an air force to protect them because Russia destroyed it too. Good grief where are you getting your information? Propaganda central it looks like. Lots of people are going to be very surprised by how this war ends up. One thing for sure is that Ukraine will not win it. Russia will never allow Nazis on its border. Not after what the Nazis did to Russia during the Great War. And Ukraine is full of them.

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9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

the ocean of MSM psyops being floated
I guess it might be an attempt to correct our thinking
to glide along with the stream without critical analysis
save us from our discriminating ways perhaps?

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8 users have voted.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg @snoopydawg Moon of Alabama has a great piece up on how the NY Times is backing away a bit at a time. Here is a sensational comment from MOA:

"I keep saying empire is in desperation mode and I think this latest NYT "reporting" is another example."

With a hat tip to another commenter from yesterday, "Empire is reaching inflated balloonacy and might pop soon or get shot down. Blinken's canceled trip is just another one of the tells."

Inflated balloonacy I say! That is what we have here! Inflated balloonacy!

Some of us here have been predicting this exact moment since February 24.
Kabul/Kiev
When the grift is less profitable the US folds it tents and pulls out.

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10 users have voted.

NYCVG

snoopydawg's picture

@NYCVG

and it’s telling you to find an off ramp because what you’re doing is only hurting yourself then you know that you made a bad decision. Even Milley the chairman of the joint chiefs is saying that Ukraine cannot win and that they will never push Russia out of Crimea. And look at how many people are coming out of the woodwork to say that the west killed the peace agreements that could have saved a lot of lives.

I would have thought that after seeing China and Russia coming together and lots of countries ditching the dollar the neocons would have noticed that they screwed up badly. Instead Nuland is out there running her mouth and bragging about nordstream being slag at the bottom of the ocean. Smooth move, lady.

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@ban nock

I am not so sure about that???

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8 users have voted.

@humphrey

-elensky must have a dictated quota of men in arms
just getting tougher to meet those numbers

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7 users have voted.
ggersh's picture

@humphrey working wonders for recruitment also

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/02/05/life-expectancy-for-undertrained...

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9 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Pricknick's picture

@ban nock
your sources.
Nah. Already dumped msm years ago.

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7 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

joe shikspack's picture

@ban nock

negotiations will happen.

ukraine will lose. the only question is how much and how many will be sacrificed.

there were previous negotiations. they were promising and ukraine would have been in a better position. the west persuaded ukrainian leaders to end the negotiations. ukraine is in a worse position now.

i guess we'll see how this all turns out and if the west is further drawn into the war by its idiot leaders.

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8 users have voted.

@ban nock Putin stated in a speech that one purpose of the special military operation was "“We will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine,..." And right now the Russian army is fighting a war of attrition and not one of grabbing and holding terrority if it means heavy loses. However, the Ukrainians are fighting a war of territorial gains as their major objective. Ukrainians are paying an enormous price holding on to territory where better options are fighting retreats. Even as Russians retreated in several areas they inflicted heavy casualties on the Ukrainians while suffering much smaller numbers of dead and wounded.

t

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6 users have voted.
ggersh's picture

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11 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

an excellent twain quote!

sometimes i think that the world is being run by people who are too clever by half.

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6 users have voted.

Their demands seem to be quite reasonable.

https://rageagainstwar.com/#Demands

List of Demands

Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine
The Democrats and Republicans have armed Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in weapons and military aid. The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and is pushing us toward a nuclear WW3. Stop funding the war.

Negotiate Peace
The US instigated the war in Ukraine with a coup on its democratically-elected government in 2014, and then sabotaged a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in March. Pursue an immediate ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war.

Stop the War Inflation
The war is accelerating inflation and increasing food, gas, and energy prices. The US blew up Russian gas pipelines to Europe, starving them of energy and deindustrializing their countries. End the war and stop increasing prices.

Disband NATO
NATO expansion to Russia's border provoked the war in Ukraine. NATO is a warmongering relic of the Cold War. Disband it like the Warsaw Pact.

Global Nuclear De-Escalation
The war in Ukraine has brought us to the edge of WW3 and nuclear war with Russia. US intelligence agencies estimate a one in four chance of nuclear war, which would plunge the world into nuclear winter and kill almost all life on Earth. Adopt a no-first-strike nuclear policy. Drawdown nuclear weapons worldwide.

Slash the Pentagon Budget
Half of the federal discretionary budget goes to Pentagon. The military budget is $857 billion per year, and the Pentagon just failed its fifth straight audit. The Pentagon can only account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets. Cut the military budget in half and return those funds to the American people.

Abolish the CIA and Military-Industrial Deep State
The CIA and deep state are an unelected permanent government of intelligence agencies that run our country outside of constitutional and democratic control. They surveille Americans, manipulate the media, curtail free speech, blackmail politicians, infiltrate activist organizations, torture people, overthrow governments, and assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Abolish the CIA and deep state and restore a government of, by, and for the people.

Abolish War and Empire
War and empire subjugate billions of people around the world to enrich a small group of elites. In just the past two decades, the US has waged and backed wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Ukraine, and other countries. End all US wars and regime change. Stop all military aid to other countries. End drone strikes. Close all US military bases abroad. Bring all US troops home. Build a world that guarantees every person freedom from war and empire in place of the collapsing US hegemonic world order.

Restore Civil Liberties
Restore the constitutional liberties taken from us in the name of war and empire, including freedom of speech, the press, and assembly. End mass surveillance, repeal the Patriot Act, and restore the right to privacy and habeas corpus.

Free Julian Assange
The US is charging Julian Assange with espionage and criminalizing our right to publish information that challenges the military-industrial deep state. He is imprisoned in the UK and being extradited to the US. The CIA plotted to assassinate him for exposing US war crimes. Free Julian Assange and all political prisoners.

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10 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

Never did answer the question. Kamala’s word salads don’t either. Might be because she cracks herself up before she can.

What an effing maroon!

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

heh, i think that the biden spokesdroid is doing a great job of expressing joe biden's thought process.

in my town there is a really good chinese restaurant and the waitress who usually waits on me seems to know my preferences, to the point that she usually says "shrimp toast?" when she looks over to take my order. i generally say yes and then she asks, "cashew chicken or happy family?"

can somebody ask mr. pompeo if she has reported my food preferences to xi jinping? Smile

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9 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

does that mean that we won’t try to protect Taiwan from China’s fantasy invasion? How many times has China said that it has no intention to invade Taiwan? Not quite as many times as Iran has said that they won’t build nuclear weapons, but it’s getting close. Maybe America should clean the wax out of its ears? Same thing with Bibi.

Great now I’m craving Chinese food! Thanks a lot.

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

with the idiot neocons that run our foreign policy, failure is only a cue to double down. failure of this test means that the u.s. must redouble its efforts to provoke a fight over taiwan.

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10 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

Sleepy Joe speaks tonight. Meanwhile, the state of the unions is piss poor, and somebody who claimed he was going to be a big friend of labor hasn't been. I really have no clue what he can brag about except maybe downing that balloon but that would set him up for a "The buffoon and the balloon" headline, so he probably won't. Think I'll pass.

be well and have a good one

Edited to add: "Broccoli beef chow fun"

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9 users have voted.

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

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

biden has nothing to brag about and much to apologize for. i can't bring myself to listen to his drivel tonight.

have a great evening!

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

But here he’s just flat out lying and saying that it’s the bad republicans who want to cut social security.

First time someone said "You lie" was during Obama’s speech and here’s republicans saying it to Biden.
Hey Joe the tapes don’t lie. You’ve been talking about doing it since you arrived in congress 50 years ago.

I’d LOVE TO see it!

But seriously did Biden make it illegal for people to walk across town to get a better wage at another burger joint? Well if nothing else this is the rowdiest SOTU I’ve seen.

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7 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

glad to see that there's a contentious environment. sadly, i suspect that biden's biggest whoppers won't be called out.

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8 users have voted.

Putin tried to bring peace to Syria, and Western powers rejected him.

West 'ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Syria's Assad step aside'

As the article states:

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

How many lives would have been spared in Syria and Ukraine if the Western powers simply talked it out.

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9 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

perhaps the thousands of deaths were what the west really wanted.

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8 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

FDR actually passed bills that lifted Americans out of poverty. Biden didn’t raise the minimum wage. He let the child tax credit expire. He doesn’t let poor kids have free lunch. Promised to veto MFA. Refused to make equity landlord vampires to stop gauging people on rent and is overseeing lots of people getting evicted…I could go on, but he ain’t no fcking FDR.

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

that's some stupefying stuff they're smoking. i wonder how they can get up off the floor to type their demented thoughts.

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9 users have voted.

https://www.rt.com/news/571144-china-requests-us-return-balloon/

China wants its balloon back.

Beijing has called for the US to return debris from its alleged surveillance aircraft, which was shot down over the Atlantic

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has requested that President Joe Biden’s administration return debris from the air balloon that the US military shot down off America’s east coast on Saturday, saying the aircraft “belongs to China.”

Speaking at a press briefing on Tuesday, ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning was asked whether Beijing had asked for the balloon debris to be returned. “The airship does not belong to the US,” she said. “It belongs to China.”

Ning’s comments came three days after a US fighter jet shot down the balloon – alleged by American officials to be a spying aircraft – off the coast of South Carolina. The Pentagon claimed to have detected the balloon on Wednesday. Biden faced fierce criticism for allowing the balloon to cross the continent, passing over a nuclear missile site and other sensitive military assets, before bringing it down.

The balloon was a civilian meteorological research airship that entered US airspace inadvertently after being blown off course, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday. Ning said some US politicians and media outlets “hyped” the incident to “attack and smear China.” She declined to provide any more details about the airship on Tuesday.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

return it? hell, our political dunces have only begun to hyperventilate.

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6 users have voted.

@humphrey

OK China. Will trade your balloon for Taiwan.

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6 users have voted.