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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Robert Parker

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans singer and songwriter Robert Parker. Enjoy!

^{Robert Parker - Let's Go Baby (Where The Action Is)}

"I have said that all the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? I also said that the tsar of Russia, the emperor of China and Japanese imperialism were all paper tigers. As we know, they were all overthrown. U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atom bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger."

-- Mao Tse Tung

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News and Opinion

Brazilian President Lula da Silva Calls For Freedom For Julian Assange

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has called for freedom for Julian Assange and denounced the lack of concerted efforts to free the journalist.

Lula spoke to a group of reporters in London Saturday while in town to attend the coronation of King Charles III.

Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has spent four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison while fighting extradition to the United States.

“It is an embarrassment that a journalist who denounced trickery by one state against another is arrested, condemned to die in jail and we do nothing to free him. It’s a crazy thing,” Lula told reporters. “We talk about freedom of expression; the guy is in prison because he denounced wrongdoing. And the press doesn’t do anything in defense of this journalist. I can’t understand it.”

“I think there must be a movement of world press in his defense. Not in regard to his person, but to defend the right to denounce,” Lula told the reporters. “The guy didn’t denounce anything vulgar. He denounced that a state was spying on others, and that became a crime against the journalist. The press, which defends freedom of the press, does nothing to free this citizen. It’s sad, but it’s true.”

Also, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday he too was frustrated over the continued detention of Julian Assange: "enough is enough."

"I know it's frustrating, I share the frustration," Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. from London for the coronation of King Charles III.

"I can't do more than make very clear what my position is, and the U.S. administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government's position is. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration."

"Enough is enough, this needs to be brought to a conclusion, it needs to be worked through," said Albanese. ...

Albanese said Australians cannot understand why the US would free the source who leaked the documents, Chelsea Manning, while Assange still faces life in prison.

President Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists around the world, while he actively seeks the extradition of Assange to face American espionage charges.

Russia Storming Bakhmut, Prigozhin Says Surovikin in Charge, Russia Repels Drones, Bombards Ukraine

Russia launches mass strikes across Ukraine injuring five in Kyiv

Russia launched a large-scale wave of strikes on Kyiv and across Ukraine, causing widespread destruction and injuries, as Moscow prepares for its Victory Day holiday that marks the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. At least five people were injured in attacks on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, while Russian missiles caused a huge fire at a foodstuff warehouse in the Black Sea city of Odesa. Blasts were reported in several other Ukrainian regions early on Monday morning. ...

Reuters’ witnesses said they heard numerous explosions in Kyiv overnight, with local officials saying air defence systems were repelling the attacks. It was not immediately clear how many drones were launched on Kyiv.

In the Black Sea port city of Odesa, the local military administration posted images of a large structure fully engulfed in flames, in what he said was a Russian attack on a foodstuff warehouse, among others.

Air raid alerts blared for hours over roughly two-thirds of Ukraine, while there were also media reports of explosions in the southern region of Kherson and in the Zaporizhzhia region in south-east.

Russia’s Wagner group signals it will stay in Bakhmut after threat to quit

The head of Russia’s Wagner group appears to have ditched plans to withdraw his forces from Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, after receiving promises overnight that they would get all the arms needed to capture the devastated city.

Yevgeny Prigozhin announced on Friday that his fighters, who have spearheaded the months-long assault on Bakhmut, would pull out because he said his men had been starved of ammunition and taken “useless and unjustified” losses as a result.

Prigozhin, who has publicly heaped scorn on Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and army top brass over their conduct of the war in Ukraine, said officials in Moscow consumed by “petty jealousy” were holding back crucial supplies to his men.

However, in an audio message posted on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Prigozhin said: “Overnight we received a combat order, for the first time in all this time. We have been promised as much ammunition and weapons as we need to continue further operations. We have been promised that everything needed to prevent the enemy from cutting us off [from supplies] will be deployed on the flank.”

The battle for Bakhmut, which Russia sees as a stepping stone to capturing other cities in Ukraine’s Donbas region still beyond its control, has been the most intense of the conflict, costing thousands of lives on both sides in months of grinding warfare.

Biden team dims Ukraine counter-offensive expectations

Prominent Russian Novelist Injured in Deadly Car Bombing

Zakhar Prilepin, a prominent Russian novelist and supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, was injured in a deadly car bombing in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod oblast on Saturday.

Prilepin said Sunday that he broke two legs in the attack, and his driver was killed by the blast. Moscow blamed the bombing on Ukraine’s intelligence services and said the US was also responsible.

“Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with the Ukrainian authorities, but with their Western patrons, in the first place, the United States,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Russian authorities claim a suspect detained for the bombing has admitted to working for Ukrainian intelligence.

Arab League readmits Syria as relations with Assad normalise

Arab League foreign ministers have adopted a decision to readmit Syria after more than a decade of suspension, consolidating a regional push to normalise ties with President Bashar al-Assad.

The decision, which means Syria can resume its participation in Arab League meetings immediately, also calls for a resolution of the crisis resulting from the country’s civil war, including the flight of refugees to neighbouring countries and drug smuggling across the region.

It was taken at a closed meeting of foreign ministers at the Arab League’s headquarters in Cairo, said Gamal Roshdy, a spokesperson for the Arab League’s secretary general.

Japanese PM expresses sympathy with Korean victims of colonial rule

Japan’s prime minister has expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced labourers during Japan’s colonial rule, as he and his South Korean counterpart renewed their resolve to overcome historical grievances and strengthen cooperation in the face of shared challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Comments by the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Sunday during his second summit in less than two months with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, are being closely watched in Seoul.

Yoon has faced domestic criticism that he had preemptively made concessions to Tokyo without getting corresponding steps in return. Kishida’s statement, which avoided a direct apology over the colonisation but still sympathised with the Korean victims, suggests he felt pressure to say something to maintain momentum for improved ties.

“And personally, I have strong pain in my heart as I think of the extreme difficulty and sorrow that many people had to suffer under the severe environment in those days,” Kishida told a joint news conference with Yoon, referring to Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.

“Japan and South Korea share various history and development, and I believe it is my responsibility as prime minister of Japan to cooperate with President Yoon and the South Korean side as we follow through the effort of our predecessors who have also overcome the difficult times,” he said.

US banking crisis: Warren Buffett says bosses should face ‘punishment’

The billionaire investor Warren Buffett has said executives who led the US banking system into crisis should face “punishment”, as the American economy grapples with the worst series of bank failures since the 2008 financial crash.

The owner of the investment firm Berkshire Hathaway said US bank directors “should suffer” when they run into trouble, adding that he was wary of most banking stocks because of “the messed-up incentives”. ...

Speaking at Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting, Buffett criticised how politicians, regulators and the press had handled the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, saying their “very poor” messaging has unnecessarily frightened depositors.

He said “the CEO and directors should suffer” when the banks they run get into trouble. Otherwise, it “teaches the lesson that if you run a bank and screw it up, you’re still a rich guy, the world still goes on … That is not a good lesson to teach the people who are holding the behaviour of the economy in their hands.”

Yellen warns of 'constitutional crisis' in US debt ceiling showdown

Democrats Will Never Fight Or Use Leverage To Help You

How Pundits’ Inflation Myth Crushed The Working Class

One year ago, as price hikes were becoming a major national concern, the world’s third-richest man touted his newspaper columnist asserting that corporate profits were not a driving force behind inflation — blaming temporary COVID-19 pandemic aid instead. While Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and others were trying to steer the inflation discourse away from a focus on business profiteering, there was already data showing that most of the price increases Americans were experiencing could be attributed to larger corporate profit margins.

Those figures were hardly surprising: Corporations that had been permitted to grow into oligopolies during the era of lax antitrust enforcement were now able to leverage their outsized market power to hike prices — and to do so with less fear of competitors undercutting them. It’s a reality that has since been recognized by a Federal Reserve study, a top economist at UBS, European central bankers, and, most recently, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

And yet, corporate media outlets ignored the available data, choosing to publish and platform pundits who scoffed at accusations of what they derisively called “greedflation” and who insisted that the problem is workers being paid higher wages. That decision delivered devastating consequences for America’s working class.

As with the WMD lies used to justify the deadly Iraq war, and financial deregulation triumphalism leading to the 2008 financial crisis and bank bailouts, the fake media narrative about inflation became conventional wisdom, was echoed by lawmakers, and justified specific policies. In this case, the narrative provided government officials justification to cut off pandemic aid, block new spending, abandon any push for a minimum wage increase, and raise interest rates with the express goal of driving down workers’ wages.

The results: a sharp increase in the number of Americans who can’t afford to pay their bills, and now mass layoffs amid a slowing economy. ... The discourse manipulation helped stall momentum for anti-price-gouging legislation, higher taxes on the wealthy, and an excessive corporate profits tax. The propaganda also provided a justification for companies to keep jacking up prices as the government inflicted economic pain on workers and families.

Can Justice Clarence Thomas Be Held Accountable for Secret Dealings with Billionaire GOP Megadonor?

'Corruption. Plain and Simple': Ginni Thomas Took Secret Payments Ahead of Landmark Voting Rights Case

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas are under fresh scrutiny as yet another revelation, this one reported by the Washington Post on Thursday evening shows Ginni received tens of thousands of dollars in off-the-book compensation from a powerful right-wing nonprofit shortly before the group "soon would have an interest before the court"—a pivotal voting rights case.

Based on documents reviewed by the Post, right-wing judicial activist Leonard Leo used his role as an advisor to the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, to ask GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway, later a top aide to President Donald Trump, to pay Ginni Thomas a large sum but keep her name off the financial records.

"Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges," the reporting explains, "told Conwaythat he wanted her to 'give' Ginni Thomas 'another $25K,' the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have 'No mention of Ginni, of course.'"

In response to the new revelations, Kyle Herrig, president of the public interest advocacy group Accountable.US, said "Leonard Leo has written the definition of court corruption. These shady schemes are a call to action to bring about ethics reform at the highest levels of the judiciary."

Jordan Neely killing: lack of arrest highlights racial disparities in charging

As New York City authorities continue to investigate the killing of an unhoused Black man who was put into a chokehold by a white transit passenger, anger and frustration mounted over the lack of an arrest in the case, reinforcing longstanding racial disparities over who gets charged for crimes in the city and nationally.

“His killing is a reflection of deep racial bias in our society,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Guardian on Friday. “And the way he was treated after death is a reflection of other biases with regard to people who suffer mental illness.

“This is about the devastating intersection of bias and failed policy. This is not just about New York City. New York City shapes society or reflects it.” ...

Criminal justice experts also told the Guardian that the lack of an arrest in this case also illuminated broader disparities embedded in the US criminal justice system’s treatment of certain people, whether Black, impoverished or struggling with a disability.

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FBI Whistleblower Says Biden GUILTY Of Bribery

Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema vows to never join Republican party

US senator Kyrsten Sinema has vowed to never join the Republican party after she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent late last year.

In an interview aired on Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Arizona senator said that she is “absolutely” done with the country’s two-party political system.

The show’s host, Margaret Brennan, asked: “Now that you’re an independent, you’ll never become a Republican?”

“No,” said Sinema, who has been accused of actually being a Republican after past legislative actions that have been hostile to Democrats’ agenda. She added: “You don’t go from one broken party to another.”

MSNBC BRAGS: NO DEBATES In Dem Primary

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US food pesticides contaminated with toxic ‘forever chemicals’ testing finds

Some of the United States’ most widely used food pesticides are contaminated with “potentially dangerous” levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, new testing of the products finds.

The Environmental Protection Agency has previously been silent on PFAS in food pesticides, even as it found the chemicals in non-food crop products. The potential for millions of acres of contaminated food cropland demands swifter and stronger regulatory action, the paper’s authors say.

“I can’t imagine anything that could make these products any more dangerous than they already are, but apparently my imagination isn’t big enough,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which co-authored the study. “The EPA has to take control of this situation and remove pesticide products that are contaminated with these extremely dangerous, persistent chemicals.”

The groups last Monday submitted the test results to the EPA and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, asking them to remove these products from use until contamination can be addressed.

Canada: Alberta declares state of emergency over wildfires

EPA Report on Neonics Proves US Has 'Five-Alarm Fire' on Its Hands, Green Groups Say

A newly published assessment from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns that three of the most commonly used neonicotinoid insecticides threaten the continued existence of more than 200 endangered plant and animal species.

"The EPA's analysis shows we've got a five-alarm fire on our hands, and there's now no question that neonicotinoids play an outsized role in our heartbreaking extinction crisis," Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said Friday in a statement.

"The EPA has to use the authority it has to take fast action to ban these pesticides," said Burd, "so future generations don't live in a world without bees and butterflies and the plants that depend on them."

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Also of Interest

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

Dennis Kucinich: WWIII on the Installment Plan

The Kremlin Did Not Kill Itself: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

“Russia Bombed Themselves” Says U.S. Media w/ Straight Face!

Turkey Rejects US Request to Send S-400 Air Defense System to Ukraine

Ukraine’s Big Mistake

US vs. Gonzalo Lira

China’s war chest: how Beijing is using its currency to insulate against future sanctions

Taibbi: Who Helped Overturn the "Pentagon Papers Principle"? The Washington Post and New York Times

Vive la révolution! But is France ready to establish a Sixth Republic?

4 US Banks Crash in 2 Months: Banking Crisis Explained by Economist Michael Hudson

Revealed: modern humans needed three tries – and 12,000 years – to colonise Europe

‘Rimmed with fire’: rare butterfly genus named after Sauron in Lord of the Rings

Tucker Declares WAR On Fox News With Megyn Kelly Backing

Tucker Carlson Going SCORCHED EARTH On Fox News?! Report Alleges Fmr Host Declared War On Network

TROUBLING Precedent Of Proud Boys Conviction

Biden Polling DISASTER: Most Americans Think POTUS Lacks ‘MENTAL SHARPNESS,’ Trump LEADING By 7%

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A Little Night Music

Robert Parker - Mash Potatoes All Nite Long

Robert Parker - Twistin' Out Space

Robert Parker - All Night Long

Robert Parker - Everybody's Hip Huggin

Robert Parker - The Scratch

Robert Parker - Happy Feet

Robert Parker - Soul Sister

Robert Parker - Funky Soul Train

Robert Parker - You Shakin' Things Up

Robert Parker - Barefootin'

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