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"Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism."

-- Sam Shepard

News and Opinion

Stella Assange The Situation is Critical

Transcript:

Most of you are probably aware that my husband Julian is in a very precarious position right now. The High Court, England, has made the completely inexplicable decision to not even allow him to appeal to the High Court. He made an application to appeal in September of last year, and it took a single judge 10 months to issue a three page decision, which, without engaging in any of the arguments, said that he is not allowed to appeal.

He still has one final opportunity to go to two different High Court judges. But the situation is now critical. And you might say, well, this is different to the censorship industrial complex, but it is not. These are two sides of the same coin. Whereas all of you have experienced and seen the censorship that occurs on social media as time goes on, seeing this kind of change, you get paranoid. Is it really happening?

We now know, thanks to you guys, that we have the evidence that it was happening and it is happening; how it’s happening. But in Julian’s case, this is the overt side of censorship. This is a publisher, someone who received information from a source. Chelsea Manning was a U.S. soldier in Iraq. Posted in Iraq, an intelligence analyst who witnessed, who was reading reports showing information about civilian killings in the tens of thousands; of civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Evidence of war crimes, including a video that was released as Collateral Murder in 2010, showing how a helicopter gunship mowed down civilians, literally picking them off, including two journalists, and critically injured two children and mowed down the rescue vehicle who came to try to bring one of the dying journalists to a hospital, and killed them all as well, except the two children survived because their father threw his body on top of them. They were severely injured, but they survived.

Collateral Murder, it’s age restricted on YouTube because it might hurt your sensibilities to witness a war crime. Well, Julian and WikiLeaks put that into the public domain and the records of tens of thousands of civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan and evidence of torture and evidence of how the U.S. government was using its embassies to inhibit and derail the investigations in Germany and Spain and Italy; of C.I.A. renditions; to stop the people who are responsible for being brought to trial, from having their day in court, because it is an enforcement of impunity.

And the case against Julian is of impunity against accountability. And the fact is that Julian is in prison because he published the truth, because he exposed the criminality of the country that is trying to extradite him. And that country also plotted to assassinate him when Pompeo was head of the C.I.A. How can this country, the U.K., possibly extradite him to the United States, the country that plotted his assassination, the country that he exposed committing war crimes, for whom no one has been held accountable?

There has been a campaign of smearing Julian for years in order to pave the way to his incarceration. Julian is a symbol. He’s a deterrent. He’s a a message to every journalist to not publish the truth. Do not publish the truth as it angers sufficiently powerful people, because they’ll come after you. That is the message. But that’s also a message to all of you.

That’s the general message that is being sent out. And we have to push back. We have to regain our rights. It’s not something about going back to, you know, like hoping for a pre-COVID war or a pre war on terror existence. We have to fight back. We have to organize because the other side is organized and they’re abusing legislation. They’re abusing the complacency of the public in order to get their way.

Please follow Julian’s case. Like, get engaged. It’s critical. Now we’re at the endgame. He could be extradited. He’s facing 175 years in the U.S. under the Espionage Act. There’s no public interest defense. He can’t say why he published what he published. He can’t say that it was war crimes, that the U.S. government was responsible, etc.. He has no defense. The last defense is decent people around the world here in the United States defending the truth.

On Saturday there’s a concrete thing you can do, which is to come here at 1pm. There’s going to be a statue here in Parliament Square [London], somewhere, of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian, and there’s an empty chair next to them. They’re standing on chairs, the statues. There’s an empty chair. It’s called Anything to Say? You can stand up and say whatever you need to say. We all need to speak out. You need to use our speech, because our speech is the only thing that can shape the world we live in.

Ukraine Jailing American Journalist WITH U.S. PERMISSION!

From The Guardian's propaganda catapult:

Wagner rebellion reveals ‘cracks’ in Putin government, says Blinken

A day after renegade Wagner mercenaries almost sparked a civil war in Russia, the top US diplomat has said the uprising showed “real cracks” in Vladimir Putin’s government and may offer Ukraine a crucial advantage as it conducts a counteroffensive that could influence the outcome of the war.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said the upheaval triggered by the aborted advance on Moscow by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries on Saturday was far from over. Neither Prigozhin nor Putin have been heard from since coming to a last-minute agreement on Saturday to avert clashes near Moscow between mercenaries and regular Russian troops.

“This is an unfolding story and I think we’re in the midst of a moving picture,” Blinken told the CBS News programme Face the Nation. “We haven’t seen the last act.” ,,,

With no word from Putin or Prigozhin throughout the day, it was unclear whether Russia’s immediate crisis had passed, let alone what implications it had for the vast country’s longer-term stability. Wagner troops abandoned the positions they had held in the city of Rostov-on-Don and near Moscow, while Russian officials claimed to have dropped criminal charges against Prigozhin and reopened Wagner recruiting centres.

Putin Talks Erdogan re Prigozhin; Reassures China; Ukr Standstill; US Calls Xi Jinping Dictator

Western Officials Say Ukrainian Counteroffensive ‘Not Meeting Expectations’

Western officials told CNN that Ukraine’s bloody counteroffensive is “not meeting expectations on any front” as Ukrainian forces are struggling to break through Russia’s defenses.

The report said that according to Western assessments, Russia’s lines of defense have been well fortified, and Russian forces have been able to bog down Ukrainian armored vehicles with missile strikes and minefields.

One official said Ukraine’s forces were “vulnerable” to Russia’s minefields and described the Russian defenses as “competent.” The officials stressed that the counteroffensive was still in its early stages and said they remained “optimistic” that Ukraine could eventually regain some territory.

Ukraine Blocks Journalists From Front Lines With Escalating Censorship

After Ukrainian forces regained control of the port city of Kherson last November, following eight months of Russian occupation, some journalists entered the liberated city within hours. Without formal permission to be there, they documented the jubilant crowds welcoming soldiers with hugs and Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian officials, who tightly control press access to the front lines, responded by revoking the journalists’ press credentials, claiming that they had “ignored existing restrictions.”

In the months since then, as Ukraine has sought to liberate more territory occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government has intensified its efforts to control the narrative of the war by tightening journalists’ access to the conflict. “After that, things started getting worse. … They have tried to place more control on journalists,” Katerina Sergatskova, editor-in-chief of Zaborona Media, an independent Ukrainian publication, told The Intercept. “Now it’s really hard to make reports from Kherson, for example.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, Ukrainian authorities have threatened, revoked, or denied press credentials of journalists working for half a dozen Ukrainian and foreign news outlets because of their coverage, the news outlet Semafor reported earlier this month. In one recent example, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense did not renew the press credentials of a Ukraine-based photographer who accused the country’s security services of subjecting him to interrogations, a lie detector test, and accusations that he was working against Ukraine’s “national interest.” Government officials restored Anton Skyba’s accreditation last week, following a pressure campaign by colleagues and press freedom advocates, who have been denouncing tightening restrictions on media access to the front lines. But the episode put a spotlight on tensions between Ukrainian authorities and the journalists covering the conflict that have quietly escalated in recent months. Veteran war correspondents, for their part, are accusing Ukrainian officials of making reporting on the reality of the war, with rare exceptions, nearly impossible.

“I’ve covered four wars, and I’ve never seen such a chasm between the drama and intensity and historic import of the reality of the conflict on the one hand, and the superficiality and meagerness of its documentation by the press on the other,” Luke Mogelson, a contributing writer for the New Yorker, told The Intercept. “It’s wild how little of what’s happening is being chronicled. And the main reason, though not the only one, is that the Ukrainian government has made it virtually impossible for journalists to do real front line reportage.”

Obsessed with the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Republican Bill Would Reaffirm That NATO’s Article 5 Doesn’t Override Congressional War Powers

On Thursday, a group of Republicans introduced a bill in the House and Senate that would reaffirm NATO’s Article 5 does not override congressional war powers. The effort was led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Warren Davidson (R-OH).

“I introduced a resolution reasserting that Article 5 of the NATO Treaty does not supersede Congress’s responsibility to declare war or authorize military force before engaging in hostilities,” Paul wrote in Responsible Statecraft.
NATO’s Article 5 outlines mutual defense commitments of the 31-member alliance but does not automatically mean the US must intervene militarily if a NATO ally comes under attack.

Counteroffensive exaggerated. Macron, Russia is fragile. Prigozhin 'coup' cover story.

Russian Natural Gas Flows Through Ukraine May Stop In 2024

Pipeline gas supplies from Russia via Ukraine to Europe may come to an end next year when the transit contract between Moscow and Kyiv expires, the Ukrainian energy minister has told the FT.

According to German Galushchenko, the chances of the two sides negotiating a new contract are slim to non-existent. This means that the flow of gas will stop, ending Ukraine’s transit fee income and the supply of gas to countries such as Austria and Slovakia. ...

The Ukrainian route accounts for some 5% of Russian gas exports to Europe or rather accounted for that 5% before most other routes were shut down last year by Gazprom. Still, the gas shipped via Ukraine supplies about half of Austria’s gas, per the latest data for May, cited by the FT. Slovakia relies on that pipeline for as much as 95% of its gas imports.

China slams rare U.S. Coast Guard ship's Taiwan Strait sailing after Blinken visit

A U.S. Coast Guard ship conducted a solo sailing of the Taiwan Strait earlier this week, the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said in a statement Thursday, with China criticizing the U.S. side for its alleged hyping of the transit.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s national security cutter Stratton made a “routine Taiwan Strait transit” on Tuesday “through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law,” the 7th Fleet said in a statement.

The rare solo passage of a U.S. Coast Guard vessel through the politically sensitive, 180-kilometer strait that separates China from Taiwan, came just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken became the first top American diplomat to visit the Middle Kingdom in nearly five years.

The 7th Fleet said the ship had transited through a corridor in the strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state.

Germany far-right victory: AfD party wins first governing vote in Sonneberg district

Greece general election: Kyriakos Mitsotakis wins second term

New Greek PM vows to press ahead with ambitious reforms

Greece’s new prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, vowed to immediately press ahead with his ambitious reform programme after winning a decisive victory in the general elections on Sunday. The New Democracy leader said his commanding 24-point lead over the leftist main opposition Syriza party had given him a “strong mandate” to modernise a country long seen as resistant to reform.

“The people have given us a secure majority,” the centre-right politician said in a televised address as jubilant scenes unfolded outside his party’s headquarters. “Major reforms will go ahead with speed.”

With more than 96% of ballots counted, New Democracy had 40.5% of the vote, a result that will allow Mitsotakis to control 158 seats in Athens’s 300-seat parliament. Syriza, led by his main opponent, Alexis Tsipras, clinched 17.8%, a rout even worse than the 20% it achieved in elections last month. The social democrat Pasok came in third with 11.9 %, followed by the communist KKE party, which garnered 7.6 % – in both cases improved performances on their showings in May.

Pelosis Exercise MILLIONS Worth Of Stocks As Pelosi Supports SCOTUS Ethics: Report

Alito Could Deliver Another Ruling For Billionaire Benefactor

The hedge fund of Justice Samuel Alito’s billionaire benefactor has been using a recent Alito-backed Supreme Court ruling to try to pressure federal regulators to back off new financial rules designed to fight fraud, according to documents reviewed by The Lever.

The hedge fund, Elliott Management, has been arguing that the rules are unconstitutional, and could ultimately try to bring a case before Alito to strike down the new regulations if they are enacted. The high court is currently considering a petition to hear a separate case involving the same firm.

ProPublica this week reported that Elliott Management founder, president, and co-CEO Paul Singer provided an undisclosed private jet flight to Alito, and has been a major donor to the Judicial Crisis Network, a dark money group that has funded campaigns to install conservative judges throughout the judiciary — including Alito. The justice has declined to recuse himself in past cases involving the hedge fund.

Elliott’s efforts to weaponize a recent Supreme Court case to block anti-fraud rules — and to potentially use the high court to kill them — spotlights how judges are in key positions to help billionaires who provide them with gifts and other largesse.

One Year After Dobbs, GOP Bans Have Largely Failed, Support for Abortion on the Rise

Billionaire-Funded Group Attacking Direct Democracy Across US

When Ohio voters go to the polls in August for a special election to decide on the threshold needed to pass a constitutional referendum, they will be voting on whether to weaken direct democracy in their own state—but the push to do so is coming in large part from a Florida-based right-wing group whose biggest donor is Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein.

As The Guardian reported Thursday, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) originally focused its efforts on influencing state policy but in recent months has testified, issued legal memos, and posted on social media about proposals in a number of states to raise the threshold needed to amend state constitutions by referendum.

Uihlein, a key promoter and funder of lies about the 2020 presidential election, has donated $17.6 million to FGA since 2014, contributing to its efforts regarding ballot initiatives as well as its attempts to block ranked-choice voting in states and towns and ban outside financial support for under-resourced election offices.

In Ohio, Arkansas, South Dakota, and other states the FGA has promoted the passage of requirements for a supermajority—rather than a simple majority—to enact ballot initiatives. In Ohio, Republican legislators have pushed for a 60% majority to amend the state constitution, with the GOP aiming to impose the new rules before the November election in order to thwart the passage of an amendment codifying abortion rights in the state.

FGA and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project (OSP), have lobbied lawmakers, testified, and taken other steps to promote the passage of supermajority requirements in at least four states, The Guardian reported.

Dominion Voting Machines ARE Vulnerable To Vote Switching! – New Report

Republicans’ enduring fealty to Trump on display at conference after his indictment

Republicans’ enduring loyalty to Donald Trump was on vivid display at a conservative conference this weekend, convened just two weeks after the former president was indicted on 37 federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Addressing this year’s Road to Majority conference Saturday, Trump lashed out against federal prosecutors, who have accused the former president of intentionally withholding classified documents from authorities and obstructing justice in his efforts to keep those materials concealed. Trump, who could soon face additional charges in Washington and Georgia, told the friendly crowd that he considered each of his two indictments so far to be “a great badge of courage” as he ran to unseat Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.

“Joe Biden has weaponized law enforcement to interfere in our elections,” Trump told the conservative audience. “I’m being indicted for you.”

Trump was among several Republican presidential candidates to speak at the conference, held in Washington and hosted by the rightwing evangelical group Faith and Freedom Coalition.

His message was echoed by some of his presidential primary opponents, several of whom used their conference speeches to attack the allegedly politicized department of justice.

Hunter Biden Whistleblower: FBI KNEW The Laptop Was REAL All Along; McCarthy To Impeach Garland?

ANOTHER Train Derailment In Yellowstone

Montana officials testing Yellowstone River water at site of rail bridge collapse

Authorities on Sunday were testing the water quality along a stretch of the Yellowstone River where mangled cars carrying hazardous materials remained after crashing into the waterway following a bridge collapse.

The seven mangled train cars that were carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur when they fell Saturday morning remained in the rushing river on Sunday near the town of Columbus, about 40 miles (roughly 64km) west of Billings. The area is in a sparsely populated section of the Yellowstone River valley, surrounded by ranches and farmland.

Water testing began on Saturday and will continue as crews work to remove the cars, Andy Garland, a spokesperson for train operator Montana Rail Link, said in a statement on Sunday. Montana Rail Link was working with the state’s environmental quality department and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the cleanup, removal and restoration efforts, he said.“Montana Rail Link remains committed to addressing any potential impacts to the area as a result of this incident,” he said.

Meanwhile, EPA’s contractors monitoring the air downwind of the derailment have not detected any toxic gases, said Rich Mylott, a spokesperson for the agency’s regional office. Contractors working for Montana Rail Link were doing the water testing, he said. The amount of cargo that spilled into the river and the danger it poses to those who rely on the river for drinking and irrigation is still not known, said David Samey, the head of Stillwater county disaster and emergency services. Samey said the water testing was being done by the EPA and state regulators.

BOMBSHELL: East Palestine Sacrificed for Profit

US honeybees suffer second deadliest season on record

The US’s honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found.

But by using costly and herculean measures to create new colonies, beekeepers are somehow keeping afloat. Thursday’s University of Maryland and Auburn University survey found that even though 48% of colonies were lost in the year that ended 1 April, the number of US honeybee colonies “remained relatively stable”.

Honeybees are crucial to the food supply, pollinating more than 100 of the crops we eat, including nuts, vegetables, berries, citruses and melons. Scientists said a combination of parasites, pesticides, starvation and effects of the climate crisis keep causing large die-offs.

Last year’s 48% annual loss is up from the previous year’s loss of 39% and the 12-year average of 39.6%, but it’s not as high as 2020-2021’s 50.8% mortality rate, according to the survey, which was funded and administered by the non-profit research group Bee Informed Partnership. Beekeepers told the surveying scientists that a 21% loss over the winter is acceptable and more than three-fifths of beekeepers surveyed said their losses were greater than that.

“This is a very troubling loss number when we barely manage sufficient colonies to meet pollination demands in the US,” said former government bee scientist Jeff Pettis, president of the global beekeeper association Apimondia, which wasn’t part of the study. “It also highlights the hard work that beekeepers must do to rebuild their colony numbers each year.”

Greenhouse gas emissions from global energy industry still rising – report

Greenhouse gas emissions from the energy industry continued to rise to new highs last year despite record growth in wind and solar power, according to a comprehensive review of global energy data. The report, undertaken by the Energy Institute, found that fossil fuels continued to make up 82% of the world’s total energy consumption in 2022, in line with the year before, causing greenhouse gas emissions to climb by 0.8% as the world used more energy overall.

Global energy consumption is expected to rise further in the year ahead, potentially bringing higher greenhouse gas emissions, after China ended its strict Covid restrictions on travel this year that had previously kept a lid on jet fuel consumption.

Juliet Davenport, the Energy Institute’s president, said: “Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again. We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris agreement.”

The report, which is published in partnership with KPMG and the consultancy Kearney, found that renewable energy sources – excluding hydro power – met just 7.5% of the world’s energy demand last year. This represents an increase of nearly 1% over the previous year, driven by record growth in wind and solar energy. Solar generation climbed by 25% in 2022 while wind power output grew by 13.5% compared with the year before. However, the renewable energy boom was eclipsed by a modest rise in global energy consumption of 1.1% last year – compared to a 5.5% increase in 2021 – which meant more oil and coal was burnt to meet demand, the report found.

US navy accused of cover-up over radioactive shipyard waste

The US navy is covering up dangerous levels of radioactive waste on a 40-acre former shipyard parcel in San Francisco’s waterside Hunters Point neighborhood, public health advocates charge.

The land is slated to be turned over to the city as early as next year, and could be used for residential redevelopment. The accusations stem from 2021 navy testing that found 23 samples from the property showed high levels of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope that replaces calcium in bones and causes cancer.

The Environmental Protection Agency raised alarm over the levels, but the navy in 2022 said its testing was inaccurate and produced a new set of data that showed levels of strontium-90 lower than zero, which was dismissed by environmental health experts as impossible.

The EPA initially said the new testing “reads as if the navy is suppressing data results it doesn’t like”, but the agency has since been silent on the issue, and the Navy’s Office of Inspector General has refused to investigate, said Jeff Ruch, an attorney with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) nonprofit, which has called on the inspector general to investigate.

“It’s like the navy doesn’t care what they say, and we thought it was egregious enough that the IG should look at it,” Ruch said. “Without any external examination, senior navy officials can lie to local officials and the public with impunity, knowing that there will be no negative career consequences.”

Also of Interest

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

Can Europe Break Free of Atlanticism?

The Truth Will Set All Of Us Free

Elections Are Like A Toy Steering Wheel For Babies: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Prigozhin Headed for Belarus After Ending ‘Insurrection’

From Pugachev To Lebed – The Muzhik Rebellion Fizzles Out Without Bloodshed, Prigozhin to Exile

Fog of Prigozhin: His Bizarre and Surely Doomed Military Revolt

‘Let the world know’: elderly survivors of the Tulsa race massacre push for justice

Farmers on frontline as Dutch divided by war on nitrogen pollution

JFK’s Most Amazing Speech On Peace

Earpods That Read Your Thoughts Being Used By Employers!

Pastor FINED For Feeding & Housing The Homeless!

A Little Night Music

Joe Carter and his Chicago Broomdusters - Treat me the way you do

Joe Carter - Mama Talk to Your Daughter

Joe Carter - It Hurts Me Too

Joe Carter - Dust My Broom

Joe Carter ~ Rock Me

Joe Carter & His Chicago Broomdusters - Blow Wind Blow

Joe Carter with Big John Wrencher - You're The One

Joe Carter & His Chicago Broomdusters - Sloppy Drunk

Joe Carter ~ Joe's Boogie