Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Chubby Checker. Enjoy!

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."

-- Benjamin Franklin

News and Opinion

US Moral Authority Is Dead And Buried

Seven progressive Democrats from the House of Representatives have signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for the Biden administration to drop the charges against Julian Assange and cease seeking his extradition.

It’s a good letter as far as these things go. It lists the major press freedom advocacy groups and human rights watchdogs who have called for Assange to be released, correctly identifies the threats this case poses to press freedoms around the world, and avoids sneaking in any of the classic smears against Assange that normally work their way into high-level mainstream objections to the persecution of the WikiLeaks founder. It’s an undeniably good thing that this letter happened.

That said, I’d like to bump this portion of the letter into the spotlight for a moment and highlight a some bits for emphasis:

The prosecution of Julian Assange for carrying out journalistic activities greatly diminishes America’s credibility as a defender of these values, undermining the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and effectively granting cover to authoritarian governments who can (and do) point to Assange’s prosecution to reject evidence-based criticisms of their human rights records and as a precedent that justifies the criminalization of reporting on their activities. Leaders of democracies, major international bodies, and parliamentarians around the globe stand opposed to the prosecution of Assange. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer and the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović have both opposed the extradition. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the U.S. government to end its pursuit of Assange. Leaders of nearly every major Latin American nation, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentinian President Alberto Fernández have called for the charges to be dropped. Parliamentarians from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, have all called for Assange not to be extradited to the U.S.

This global outcry against the U.S. government’s prosecution of Mr. Assange has highlighted conflicts between the America’s stated values of press freedom and its pursuit of Mr. Assange. The Guardian wrote “The US has this week proclaimed itself the beacon of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world. If Mr. Biden is serious about protecting the ability of the media to hold governments accountable, he should begin by dropping the charges brought against Mr. Assange.” Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald editorial board stated, “At a time when US President Joe Biden has just held a summit for democracy, it seems contradictory to go to such lengths to win a case that, if it succeeds, will limit freedom of speech.”

This to my mind is the most impactful part of the letter, in the sense that it’s the part that’s most likely to actually grab the attention of those responsible for Assange’s ongoing persecution. Indeed, it appears to have been deliberately crafted to do so.

Imprisoning Assange in Belmarsh while working toward the unprecedented step of trying a publisher under the Espionage Act does indeed undermine the United States’ moral standing on the world stage, and does indeed grant governments the US doesn’t like the ability to dismiss Washington’s hand-wringing about human rights as cynical performative hypocrisy. But while the authors of the letter to Biden’s attorney general frame this as something illegitimate that is done contrary to facts in evidence, in reality the moral authority of the United States to criticize the human rights records of foreign nations has been irreparably destroyed. Not just within the reality tunnels of foreign propagandists, but in actuality.

When people talk about “moral authority” it’s often in an abstract, philosophical way, like it’s a matter of logical coherence: “You’ve no moral authority on this subject because you are a hypocrite and your stated position contradicts your own actions.” Like it’s just an argument about whether the correct intellectual checkboxes have been ticked, and if they have not it means you get to wag your finger at them and declare a mental checkmate. But the question of moral authority boils down to something much more tangible than that.

Moral authority is a measure of one’s qualifications for leadership on moral matters. If I am known as a moral person who makes moral decisions, it makes sense for people to look to me for leadership on questions of morality. If I am known as an immoral person, then nobody’s coming to me for moral guidance, because they understand that I do not have the qualifications for that role.

So when people try to frame Assange’s persecution as a matter of public perception and fighting foreign narratives about the US, they are incorrect. The issue is not that Assange’s persecution makes the US look bad, the issue is that it proves the US is bad.

And of course we didn’t really need Assange’s persecution to figure that out for ourselves. The US is the only government on earth who has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars for geostrategic dominance, who’s been strangling populations with starvation sanctions and blockades around the world, who is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases with the goal of global domination, and who’s been continually increasing the risk of nuclear armageddon with its rapidly escalating agendas geared toward securing unipolar hegemony. Assange’s case just makes its complete lack of moral standing much clearer.

This will all still be the case even if Assange is released. The US empire will still have spent years imprisoning a journalist for the crime of good journalism, will still be the world’s worst warmonger, and will still be the world’s most egregious violator of human rights. Its moral standing is dead and buried, and the world should stop following its lead in creating a just and ethical world. It simply does not have the qualifications to do so. In fact, no power structure on earth is less qualified.

Diplomacy Watch: Biden administration in ‘damage control’ after intel leaks

The intelligence leaks that have rocked Washington for the last week included documents that revealed the Biden administration’s internal stance on the future of the war in Ukraine, and disclosed what could be more serious disagreement between the the United States and Ukraine than their public stances would indicate.

One leaked document, reported by The Washington Post on Monday, said that given challenges confronting the Ukrainian military, its planned counteroffensive could come up “well short” of its original goals. The most likely outcome, according to the top secret document, is that Kyiv makes only “modest territorial gains.”

Another document, from the Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that the war “is expected to bleed into 2024 with neither side securing victory yet both refusing to negotiate an end to the conflict,” even if Ukraine manages to win back “significant” territory in upcoming months, according to another Post report.

Ukrainian officials were reportedly upset with the assessment, insisting that it continued a pattern of underestimating Kyiv’s military. “The same people who said Kyiv would fall in three days are now leaking harmful and equally ridiculous information ahead of an offensive critically important for the entire free world,” said a person in regular contact with senior officials in Kyiv, according to Politico’s NatSec Daily newsletter. That person went on to say that the leak gives officials “grounds for suspicion” concerning Washington’s commitment to the Ukrainian cause.

Politico reported that the leaks and subsequent response from Kyiv pushed high-level officials in the Biden administration into “damage-control mode.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken affirmed the country’s “ironclad” commitment in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart.

Zelensky Skimmed $400 Million In U.S. War Funds! Reveals Seymour Hersh

Germany Approves Poland’s Request to Send MiG-29 Fighter Jets to Ukraine

The German government has approved Poland’s request to export five Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine that originally came from Berlin’s stockpile.

Poland and Slovakia have already delivered some MiG-29s to Ukraine, making them the first NATO countries to provide Kyiv with fighter jets, an escalation of military support that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously warned against. ...

While the MiG-29s are not the Western-made aircraft Kyiv has been demanding, the provision still marks a significant escalation of NATO military support.

Russia Grinds Forward Bakhmut, UK Experts Doubt Offensive; Putin Meets China Defence Minister

Ukronazis always look to find ways to increase western direct involvement in the war:

Kyiv calls for NATO to secure Black Sea, integrate Ukrainian defences

NATO should play a bigger role in security in the Black Sea, and integrate Ukraine's air and missile defences with those of alliance members, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Thursday.

The Black Sea and its Ukrainian coast have been crucial theatres of war since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year.

"The Black Sea is instrumental for making the whole of Europe peaceful and future-oriented," Kuleba, speaking via video link, told a Black Sea security conference in Romanian capital Bucharest.

"Sadly, it is also a showcase of how rapidly things can deteriorate if one neglects threats. It's time to turn the Black Sea into what the Baltic Sea has become, a sea of NATO."

Media Spins Pentagon Leak As RUSSIAN OP

There seems to be a lot of (dubious) information in the recently leaked mixed bag of material that is perhaps just what the deep state would like the american public to believe.

Russians boasted that just 1% of fake social profiles are caught, leak shows

The Russian government has become far more successful at manipulating social media and search engine rankings than previously known, boosting lies about Ukraine’s military and the side effects of vaccines with hundreds of thousands of fake online accounts, according to documents recently leaked on the chat app Discord.

The Russian operators of those accounts boast that they are detected by social networks only about 1 percent of the time, one document says. That claim, described here for the first time, drew alarm from former government officials and experts inside and outside social media companies contacted for this article.

“Google and Meta and others are trying to stop this, and Russia is trying to get better. The figure that you are citing suggests that Russia is winning,” said Thomas Rid, a disinformation scholar and professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He added that the 1 percent claim was likely exaggerated or misleading.

The undated analysis of Russia’s effectiveness at boosting propaganda on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Telegram and other social media platforms cites activity in late 2022 and was apparently presented to U.S. military leaders in recent months. ...

The revelations about Russia’s improved misinformation abilities come as Twitter owner Elon Musk and some Republicans in Congress have accused the federal government of colluding with the tech companies to suppress right-wing and independent views by painting too many accounts as Russian attempts at foreign influence.

Biden Looking at Expanding Internet Surveillance After Discord Leaks

The Biden administration appears poised to increase internet surveillance in response to the leaked Pentagon documents that appear to have been posted on the messaging platform Discord.

NBC News reported on Wednesday that the administration was looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chat rooms.

The report cited an unnamed senior administration official and a congressional official who said the administration wants to “expand the universe” of social media sites that US law enforcement and intelligence agencies monitor.

According to the congressional source, the report said the “intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future.”

China likely to rapidly achieve air superiority over Taiwan, US leaks say

China would probably establish air superiority very rapidly in any attack on Taiwan, according to leaked US intelligence assessments that raise disturbing questions about the self-ruled island’s military readiness.

The documents, part of a series allegedly leaked by the US air national guardsman Jack Teixeira, emerged as G7 foreign ministers met to discuss a common China strategy and Beijing briefly halted flights over part of the East China Sea on Sunday.

The classified documents seen by the Washington Post reveal that Taiwan’s military leaders doubt their air defences can “accurately detect missile launches” and that only about half of the island’s aircraft are capable of effectively engaging the enemy.

The documents also said Taiwan feared moving its aircraft to shelters could take up to a week, leaving them vulnerable to missile strikes, and that China’s use of civilian ships for military purposes was hampering US intelligence’s ability to predict an invasion.

Pentagon analysts concluded China’s air force would find it far easier to establish early air superiority than Russia did in its invasion of Ukraine.

Slovakia bans imports of Ukrainian grain after Poland, Hungary

Russia's Gasoline Exports Jump As African Buyers Replace Europe

Russian gasoline exports surged in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2022, as Moscow placed growing volumes of fuels with African customers after the EU embargo on seaborne imports of Russia's fuels.

Russian gasoline exports were estimated at 1.9 million tons in the first quarter of 2023, up compared to 1.3 million tons exported in the same period of 2022, per Refinitiv data cited by Reuters. Analysts at Kpler have estimated that Russia's exports of gasoline surged to 2.2 million tons in Q1 2023, from around 1.5 million tons for the same period a year ago. ...

Ahead of the EU ban on Russian petroleum products, Russia began to divert its oil product cargoes to North Africa and Asia.

North Africa has become a key export outlet of Russia's diesel and other petroleum products, while Russia is also boosting exports of its diesel to Latin America.

So far, tanker tracking suggests that Russia has been relatively successful in placing most of its fuels in markets other than Europe, even though Moscow has been forced to divert cargoes to distant markets to maintain export volumes, Gibson Shipbrokers said in a market report a month after the EU embargo on Russian fuels came into effect.

Macron signs controversial pension changes into law after months of protests

French president Emmanuel Macron has signed his controversial pension reform into law, defying three months of protests and pleas from unions not to implement the legislation.

The alterations became law on Saturday, after the text was published overnight in France’s official journal. This followed the approval on Friday by France’s highest constitutional court of the essence of the legislation, including the banner change of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Unions called for mass Labor Day protests on 1 May, and some violent demonstrations erupted in several cities overnight after the verdict was announced.

The battle to implement the law has become the biggest domestic challenge of Macron’s second term, as he faced widespread popular opposition to the changes but also sliding personal popularity.

The nine-member constitutional council ruled in favour of key provisions of the reform, including raising the retirement age to 64 and extending the years of work required for a full pension, saying the legislation was in accordance with French law.

Montana legislators pass bill banning TikTok from operating in state

Montana lawmakers gave final passage on Friday to a bill banning the social media app TikTok from operating in the state, a move that is bound to face legal challenges but also serve as a testing ground for the TikTok-free America many national lawmakers have envisioned.

The measure now goes to the Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, for his consideration.

The state house voted 54-43 to pass the bill, which goes further than prohibitions in place in nearly half the states and the US federal government that prohibit TikTok on government devices. Montana already bans the app on state-owned devices.

A TikTok spokesperson, Brooke Oberwetter, said in a statement: “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and first amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”

The bill’s supporters “have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill’s constitutionality will be decided by the courts”, Oberwetter said.

Clarence Thomas CAUGHT Hiding Billionaire Real Estate Payment

South Dakota governor says her two-year-old grandchild has several guns

South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.

While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.

During her remarks, Noem spoke about her grandchildren: Addie, who is almost two, and Branch, who is a few months old. Noem then said that Addie already had a shotgun and a rifle.

“Now Addie, who you know – soon will need them, I wanna reassure you, she already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles too. So the girl is set up,” said Noem.

Shining city on a hill.

Man found dead eaten by bed bugs in Atlanta jail

An Atlanta man died in a local jail after being eaten alive by bed bugs, alleges a lawyer representing the man’s family.

The family of Lashawn Thompson, 35, is calling for a criminal investigation into Thompson’s death and for the closure and replacement of a local jail after alleging that Thompson died in custody from bed bugs in a squalid jail cell.

Thompson was incarcerated at the Fulton county jail in Atlanta on a misdemeanor charge. Jail officials had placed Thompson in the facility’s psychiatric unit after determining that he had mental health issues, but noted that he was physically healthy.

On 13 September 2022, three months after being arrested, Thompson was discovered dead inside a dilapidated cell covered in grime and insects. The cell was so filthy that an employee wore a hazmat suit upon entering, the Washington Post reported.

“They left him there essentially,” said Michael Harper, a lawyer representing the Thompson family, to Insider. “And they had a plan to take him to the medical observation unit, but their plan never happened, and they found him dead, eaten by these bed bugs.”

Mike Pompeo says he will not run for president in 2024 election

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he will not run for president in the 2024 election.

After saying he was weighing a run in January, the former Trump administration official and CIA director released a statement on the decision. “To those of you who this announcement disappoints, my apologies,” he said, calling it a personal choice.

“And to those of you this thrills, know that I’m 59 years old. There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary.”

Joe Biden says he will announce 2024 presidential run ‘relatively soon’

Joe Biden left Ireland in the early hours of Saturday vowing to run again for president, promising to formally announce his decision to run for a second presidential term “relatively soon”.

Speaking to reporters in Ireland before leaving Ireland West airport on the last leg of his four-day visit to Ireland, Biden was asked whether the last few days had changed his calculus on when to make his announcement on his plans to run.

“No, no I have already made that calculus. We will announce it relatively soon,” he said.

“The trip here just reinforced my sense of optimism about what can be done. I told you my plan is to run again.”

Biden approves Alaska gas exports as critics condemn another ‘carbon bomb’

The Biden administration on Thursday approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a document showed, prompting criticism from environmental groups over the approval of another “carbon bomb”.

The US energy department approved Alaska Gasline Development Corp’s (AGDC) project to export LNG to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, mainly in Asia. Backers of the roughly $39bn project expect it to be operational by 2030 if it receives the required permits.

The project, for which exports were first approved by the administration of Donald Trump, has been strongly opposed by environmental groups.

“Joe Biden’s climate presidency is flying off the rails,” said Lukas Ross of Friends of the Earth. Ross pointed out this was the second US approval of a “fossil-fuel mega-project” in as many months.

The Biden administration last month approved the ConocoPhillips $7bn Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, prompting criticism of Biden’s record on the climate crisis.

Plan to Dump Wastewater From Indian Point Into Hudson River Paused After Local Outcry

Clean water and public health advocates in New York's Hudson Valley applauded Thursday as the energy technology company Holtec International announced it will not move ahead with plans to dump wastewater next month from the former Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, following intense pressure from local communities and state lawmakers.

The company had initially planned to complete its first discharge of wastewater from pools that were used to cool spent nuclear reactor fuel rods late this summer, but recently announced that in May it would discharge 45,000 gallons of the water into the Hudson River, which at least 100,000 people rely on for their drinking water.

The company ultimately plans to release one million gallons of wastewater into the river.

Holtec International said it was taking a "voluntary pause" in the plan to better explain the process of decommissioning the plant, which was shut down in 2021, to the local community and elected officials. ...

Riverkeeper and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) are among the groups that have raised concerns about the presence in the wastewater of the isotope tritium, which can be carcinogenic and is harmful to pregnant women and developing fetuses. Advocates have called on Holtec to store the water in tanks on the Indian Point site until a safe alternative disposal method can be found.

California’s ‘big melt’ has begun and could bring perilous flooding with it

Spring has offered California a welcome reprieve from the record rains and historic snowfall that hammered the state in recent weeks, but a new danger wrought by the warming weather looms large. The state’s enormous snowpack will soon begin to melt – and communities are bracing for waters to rise yet again. Trillions of gallons of water packed within the record level of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada range are expected to rush into rivers and reservoirs as the weather heats up, heightening flood risks in areas already saturated by the state’s extremely wet winter.

The snowpack, which stands at 233% of the 1 April average, contains enough water to fill downstream reservoirs “multiple times over”, said climate scientist Daniel Swain in an online briefing this week. “That’s a big deal,” he added.

Conditions could be perilous even without a big heatwave or late-season warm rain, Swain said. The combination of spring’s warmer weather and sunny skies could be enough for a rapid runoff.

It’s a challenge facing many states across the west, which have all had to grapple with an extreme shift in conditions after years of devastating drought. The climate crisis, which intensifies extremes, is expected to fuel broad swings into the future.

A rapid spring snowmelt is already wreaking havoc from the south-west to the Rockies. Emergency crews in New Mexico have had to perform water rescues from submerged vehicles as Arizona residents spent days working to stave off flood waters from their homes.

Also of Interest

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

What to Know About the Coming Fight in Congress Over Mass Surveillance

Matt Taibbi: The Crackdown Cometh

Blair’s Former Allies on Trial for War Crimes

Crimea Has Become a Frankenstein’s Monster

The Increasing Number of Trial Balloons for Polish Intervention in Ukraine

'Leaks' Pinned On Russia And Other Issues With Them

Larry Johnson and Other Former Insiders Debunk Air Guardsman-as-Pentagon-Leaker Story as Press Cheers Arrest

Why the Media Don’t Want to Know the Truth About the Nord Stream Blasts

Saudis Aren’t Afraid of US Anymore

How NATO states sponsored ICC prosecutor’s Putin arrest warrant

Russia Leaves Neoliberal West to Join World Majority

The IMF’s ‘Austerity Drive’

Will Turkey’s elections finally spell the end of Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

Ron DeSantis: Yet Another Cog in Guantanamo's Torture Machine

Regulators Stiffed Low-Income Communities In SVB Bailout

New Bombshells Filed in Court in the Jeffrey Epstein/JPMorgan Child Sex Trafficking Case

Big Ag, Big Oil & Biden’s Colorado River Plans

DC DEBATE: Is Pentagon Leaker A HERO Or TRAITOR?

Big Bank Economist: Greedflation Could END Capitalism

France pension reform: Macron to address Nation since signing of disputed law

Australian TV ACCIDENTALLY Shows The U.S. War Menace

Biden POWER GRAB—Feds Want to Spy on CHATROOMS to Track Intelligence Leaks

A Little Night Music

Chubby Checker - Dance The Mess Around

Chubby Checker - Let's Twist Again

Chubby Checker - The Fly

Chubby Checker - Toot

Chubby Checker - Fishin'

Chubby Checker - Mashed Potato Love

Chubby Checker - Pony Express

Chubby Checker - You Just Don't Know (What You Do To Me)

Chubby Checker - Karate Monkey

Chubby Checker - Peppermint Twist