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"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

-- Patrick Henry

News and Opinion

Real Change Is Impossible While Our World Is Shrouded In Secrecy

I saw a video clip of Julian Assange speaking in London in 2010 where he made an important observation while explaining the philosophy behind his work with WikiLeaks. He said that all our political theories are to some extent “bankrupt” in our current situation, because our institutions are so shrouded in secrecy that we can’t even know what’s really going on in the world.

“We can all write about our political issues, we can all push for particular things we believe in, we can all have particular brands of politics, but I say actually it’s all bankrupt,” Assange said. “And the reason it’s all bankrupt, and all current political theories are bankrupt and particular lines of political thought, is because actually we don’t know what the hell is going on. And until we know the basic structures of our institutions — how they operate in practice, these titanic organizations, how they behave inside, not just through stories but through vast amounts of internal documentations — until we know that, how can we possibly make a diagnosis? How can we set the direction to go until we know where we are? We don’t even have a map of where we are. So our first task is to build up a sort of intellectual heritage that describes where we are. And once we know where we are, then we have a hope of setting course for a different direction. Until then, I think all political theories — to greater and lesser extents of course — are bankrupt.”

It’s an extremely important point if you think about it: how can we form theories about how our governments should be operating when we have no idea how they are currently operating? How can a doctor prescribe the correct treatment when he hasn’t yet made a diagnosis?

Political theories are in this sense “bankrupt”, because they are formed in the dark, without our being able to see precisely what’s happening and what’s going wrong.

The nature of our institutions is hidden from us, and that includes not only our government institutions but the political, media, corporate and financial institutions which control so much of our society. Their nature is hidden not only by a complete lack of transparency but by things like propaganda, internet censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the fact that all the most loudly amplified voices in our society are those who more or less support status quo politics.

The fact that all the most important aspects of our civilization’s operation are hidden, manipulated and obfuscated by the powerful makes a joke of the very idea of democracy, because how can people know what government policies to vote for if they can’t even clearly see those policies? How can people know what to vote for when everything about their understanding of the world is being actively distorted for the benefit of the powerful?

Democracy is impossible when the public is flying blind, and so is any other means by which the public might impose their will on existing power structures. You will never see a collective uprising of the masses against their rulers when the dominant message being inserted into everyone’s mind is that everything is basically fine and if you don’t like the way things are you can change it by voting. If the veil of secrecy was ever ripped away from the US empire’s inner workings and everyone could see the full scale of its criminality in the plain light of day you’d probably have immediate open revolution in Washington. Which is precisely why that veil exists.

We can’t form solid political theories while everything’s hidden from us, and even if we could we’re unable to organize any means to put those theories into action for the same reason. The fact that the nature of our world is being so aggressively obfuscated from our view keeps us from knowing exactly what needs to change, and keeps us from effecting change.

For this reason I often argue that our most urgent priority as a civilization is rolling back all the secrecy and obfuscation, because until that happens we’ll never get change, and we’ll never know what should be changed. I have my ideological preferences of course, but I’m just one person taking their best guess at what needs to happen in a world where so many of the lights are switched off. Not until our society can actually see the world as it really is will we have the ability to begin, as Assange says, “setting course for a different direction.”

And those who benefit from our current course are lucidly aware of this. That’s why we’re not allowed to see what they’re up to behind the veils of secrecy, that’s why our entire civilization is saturated in nonstop propaganda, that’s why the internet is being increasingly censored and manipulated, and that’s why Julian Assange is in prison.

We can only begin fighting this from where we’re at. None of us individually have the power to rip the veil of secrecy away from the empire, but we do each individually have the ability to call out its lies where they can be seen and help wake people up to the fact that we’re being deceived and manipulated. Every pair of eyelids you help open is one more pair of eyes looking around helping to get an accurate picture of what’s going on, and one more pair of eyes helping to open the eyes of others.

Once we have enough open eyes, we will have the potential for a real course of action.

House Passes $886 Billion National Defense Authorization Act

The House on Friday passed its version 2024 National Defense Authorization in a vote of 219-210, which largely fell along partisan lines due to amendments added by Republicans relating to social policies in the military. ...

The Senate still needs to pass its version of the NDAA, then the two chambers will negotiate the final version that will go to President Biden’s desk. The Republican amendments packed into the House version will set up a fight between the two chambers as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other Democrats will reject them.

The 2024 NDAA is for a record $886 billion, the same amount President Biden requested. The debt ceiling deal reached between House Republicans in the White House did not limit military spending and put no caps on emergency supplemental funds, which is how the US has been spending on the war in Ukraine.

Crimea bridge hit. Grain deal ends. Annalena; no holiday, blame Putin. Yellen magic mushrooms

An excellent piece by Jonathan Cook - worth a click and a full read:

Nato isn't defending Ukraine. It's stabbing it in the back

The Nato summit in Lithuania this week served only to underscore the utter hypocrisy of western leaders in pursuing their proxy war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia and oust its president, Vladimir Putin. Both the US and Germany had made clear before the summit that they would block Ukraine’s admission to Nato while it was in the midst of a war with Russia. That message was formally announced by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fumed that Nato had reached an “absurd” decision and was demonstrating “weakness”. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace lost no time in rebuking him for a lack of “gratitude”. The concern is that, if Kyiv joins the military alliance at this stage, Nato members will be required to leap to Ukraine’s defence and fight Russia directly. Most western states balk at the notion of a face-to-face confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia - rather than the current proxy one, paid for exclusively in Ukrainian blood.

But there is a more duplicitous subtext being obscured: the fact that Nato is responsible for sustaining the war it now cites as grounds for disqualifying Ukraine from joining the military alliance. Nato got Kyiv into its current, bloody mess - but isn’t ready to help it find a way out. It was Nato, after all, that chose to flirt openly with Ukraine from 2008 onwards, promising it eventual membership - with the undisguised hope that one day, the alliance would be able to flex its military muscles menacingly on Russia’s doorstep.

It was the UK that intervened weeks after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and presumably on Washington’s orders, to scupper negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow - talks that could have ended the war at an early stage, before Russia began seizing territories in eastern Ukraine. A deal then would have been much simpler than one now. Most likely, it would have required Kyiv to commit to neutrality, rather than pursuing covert integration into Nato. Moscow would have demanded, too, an end to the Ukrainian government’s political, legal and military attacks on its Russian-speaking populations in the east.

Now the chief sticking point to an agreement will be persuading the Kremlin to trust the West and reverse its annexation of eastern Ukraine, assuming Nato ever allows Kyiv to re-engage in talks with Russia. And finally, it is Nato members, especially the US, that have been shipping out vast quantities of military hardware to prolong the fighting in Ukraine - keeping the death toll mounting on both sides. In short, Nato is now using the very war it has done everything to fuel as a pretext to stop Ukraine from joining the alliance.

Seen another way, the message Nato has sent Moscow is that Russia made exactly the right decision to invade - if the goal, as Putin has always maintained, is to ensure Kyiv remains neutral. It is the war that has prevented Ukraine from being completely enfolded in the western military alliance. It is the war that has stopped Ukraine’s transformation into a Nato forward base, one where the West could station nuclear-tipped missiles minutes from Moscow.

Worth a full read:

Seymour Hersh: Fear and Loathing on Air Force One

Let’s start with a silly fear but one that does signal the Democratic Party’s growing sense of panic about the 2024 Presidential election. It was expressed to me by someone with excellent party credentials: that Trump could be the Republican nominee and will select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his running mate. The strange duo will then sweep to a huge victory over a stumbling Joe Biden, and also take down many of the party’s House and Senate candidates.

As for real signs of acute Democratic anxiety: Joe Biden got what he needed before the NATO summit this week by somehow turning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inside out and getting him to rebuff Vladimir Putin by announcing that he would support NATO membership for Sweden. The public story for Biden’s face-saving coup was talk about agreeing to sell American F-16 fighter bombers to Turkey.

I have been told a different, secret story about Erdogan’s turnabout: Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit would be extended to Turkey by the International Monetary Fund. “Biden had to have a victory and Turkey is in acute financial stress,” an official with direct knowledge of the transaction told me. Turkey lost 100,000 people in the earthquake last February, and has four million buildings to rebuild. “What could be better than Erdogan”—under Biden’s tutelage, the official asked, “finally having seen the light and realizing he is better off with NATO and Western Europe?” Reporters were told, according to the New York Times, that Biden called Erdogan while flying to Europe on Sunday. Biden’s coup, the Times reported, would enable him to say that Putin got “exactly what he did not want: an expanded, more direct NATO alliance.” There was no mention of bribery.

Ukraine BOMBS Crimean Bridge

Russia seizes control of shares in Danone and Carlsberg subsidiaries

The Russian state has taken control of French yoghurt maker Danone’s Russian subsidiary along with beer company Carlsberg’s stake in a local brewer, according to a decree signed by president Vladimir Putin. The decree published on Sunday says the Russian state would “temporarily” manage shares belonging to Danone Russia and to Baltika, which is owned by Carlsberg. The move comes after the Russian subsidiaries of Germany’s Uniper and Finland’s Fortum were taken under state control in April.

The Kremlin warned at the time it could seize more western assets on what it said was a temporary basis in retaliation for foreign moves against Russian companies abroad.

Danone said it was investigating the situation and “preparing to take all necessary measures to protect its rights as shareholder of Danone Russia, and the continuity of the operations of the business in the interest of all stakeholders, in particular its employees”.

Baltika is a leading brewing company in Russia, with approximately 30% of the market share. Carlsberg announced in March that it would sell the entirety of its activities in Russia, where it employed 8,400 people.

Burisma emails and Biden Ukraine escalation

Israel's Jenin operation amounts to war crimes, say experts

Legal experts have said that Israel's military operation in Jenin earlier this month, which killed 12 Palestinians and wounded 100 others, fits into the parameters of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

Susan Akram, a clinical professor at Boston University's School of Law, said the raid on Jenin clearly amounts to war crimes for a number of reasons, including intentionally attacking a civilian population and attacking medical units.

"The Geneva Conventions include as war crimes during occupation, willful killings, willfully causing great suffering to an occupied population and extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity," Akram said during a webinar on Thursday hosted by the Arab Center Washington, DC.

"There's no doubt that what Israel carried out in Jenin constitutes war crimes."

The other panelists on the webinar, Daniel Levy of the US/Middle East Project and journalist Dalia Hatuqa, agreed that Israel's actions in the West Bank amount to war crimes.

Muslim activist banned from France as ‘threat to public order’

The director of the campaign group Cage was detained in Paris for almost 24 hours last week and then sent back to London after the French government accused him of spreading conspiracy theories about “Islamophobic persecution”

In 2020, Cage, which campaigns on behalf of communities affected by the “war on terror”, overturned a French travel ban for its director, Muhammad Rabbani. But on arrival in Paris last Tuesday for meetings with French journalists and civil society leaders, Rabbani was told that the interior ministry had imposed a new travel ban preventing him from entering the country. He was questioned and then sent back on a flight to London. ...

The ban was imposed a month after Rabbani criticised the French government for “terrorising” its Muslim community in what he said was a “racist government agenda”. During a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Poland in September 2022, Rabbani also accused France of joining China and India in launching “religious persecution” against Muslims. ...

Rabbani said: “France has banned me for delivering a speech at the OSCE conference, the world’s largest regional security intergovernmental organisation, exposing the systematic obstruction policy – a maximum repressive policing strategy that overwhelmingly targets Muslims – in September last year.

“The French government is clearly threatened by an NGO holding them to account. Our interventions and critiques are echoed across the board. Singling out a Muslim human rights defender for a ban smacks of the very same Islamophobia they are so offended to being accused of.”

Progressives press Chicago mayor over pledge to end controversial policing tool

Progressives have vowed to hold the new Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, to his campaign pledge that as part of crime-control efforts in the city he will break with the controversial gunshot detection contractor ShotSpotter.

Johnson gave the keynote speech this week at Netroots, the largest annual gathering of progressives in the country, taking place in Chicago, and amplified his campaign talk about a wider approach to safer streets. “Many people will make you believe that the only way in which you can have safe communities is by simply engaging in politics of old, by believing that the only answer to public safety is policing. That’s a failed strategy,” he told the gathering.

However the progressive Democrat did not repeat his campaign trail commitments to pull the plug on ShotSpotter when the city’s current contract is up next year. For more than a decade, Chicago has used the company’s nearly 30-year-old gunshot detection system, deployed in high-crime areas and designed to direct police to shootings, but that in recent years has faced intense criticism for its methodology and the impact of its technology on communities of color.

“He’s a rising star in progressive politics and we’re going to hold him accountable,” Granate Kim, campaign director at MPower Change, a Chicago-based Muslim digital advocacy organization, told a panel held at Netroots. Kim added that if Johnson did not break with ShotSpotter: “We would be very upset and take him to task nationally.”

Johnson emerged as the unlikely winner from the left in the mayoral race in April, defeating former Chicago public schools CEO Paul Vallas, who had received an endorsement from the right-leaning police union. The two men had faced off after mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election.

'Get Back to the Negotiating Table,' Says Teamsters as UPS Trains Scabs for Strike

After negotiations between the United Parcel Service and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters broke down last week, UPS on Friday announced "business continuity training" to prepare for a potential strike by 340,000 union members next month.

"We remain focused on reaching an agreement with the Teamsters that is a win for UPS employees, our customers, our union, and our company," the shipping giant said. "While we have made great progress and are close to reaching an agreement, we have a responsibility as an essential service provider to take steps to help ensure we can deliver our customers' packages if the Teamsters choose to strike."

"Over the coming weeks, many of our U.S. employees will participate in training that would help them safely serve our customers if there is a labor disruption. This temporary plan has no effect on current operations and the industry-leading service our people continue to provide for our customers," UPS added, claiming that such activities "will not take away from our ongoing efforts to finalize a new contract" with union workers.

Meanwhile, the Teamsters toldThe Associated Press on Friday that "UPS is making clear it doesn't view its workforce as a priority."

"Corporate executives are quick to brag about industry-leading service and even more quickly forget the Teamster members who perform that service," the union said. "UPS should stop wasting time and money on training strikebreakers and get back to the negotiating table with a real economic offer."

As the Teamsters explained earlier this month, the union is fighting for a deal that "guarantees better pay for all workers, eliminates a two-tier wage system, increases full-time jobs, resolves safety and health concerns, and provides stronger protections against managerial harassment."

Last month, 97% of UPS workers represented by the Teamsters voted to strike if there is no deal by July 31. The union has been holding practice pickets, including one in Brooklyn, New York on Friday that was joined by Sean O'Brien, the Teamsters general president.

Biden LOW ON CASH As Dem Donors Search Alternative

Democratic Party FREAKING OUT Over Cornel West; 45% Of Dem Voters OPEN To 3rd Party Candidate

Smear Job On RFK jr., Glenn Greenwald & Jimmy Dore Turns Out Funny!

Kerry Nixes US Climate Damages for Poor Countries

John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, made clear at a congressional hearing last week that Washington has no intention of compensating impoverished countries for the destruction wrought by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency despite playing an outsized role in creating it and continuing to accelerate it.

During the United Nations COP27 summit held last year in Egypt, delegates agreed to establish a “loss and damage” fund through which rich nations can provide poor ones with financial resources to help cover the escalating costs of extreme weather disasters, which are growing in frequency and intensity due to unmitigated greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution.

Although developing and low-lying countries bear the least responsibility for causing the climate crisis, they suffer disproportionately from its deadly consequences and remain most vulnerable to future impacts.

Asked by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability on Thursday, whether the U.S. would allocate money to eligible nations harmed by increasingly common and severe droughts, storms, floods, and other climate change-exacerbated catastrophes, Kerry emphatically rejected the idea.

“No, under no circumstances,” said Kerry.

The U.S. diplomat is preparing to travel to Beijing in the coming days to discuss the climate crisis with Chinese officials, including plans for the upcoming COP28 conference hosted by the United Arab Emirates.

Last year’s agreement to establish a loss and damage fund was hailed as a positive step forward even though it coincided with yet another failure by policymakers to commit to a swift and just phaseout of coal, oil and gas — the primary sources of further devastation. Fossil fuels are estimated to cause more than $5 trillion in unpaid damages around the globe each year.

Details of the fund — including which governments will be expected to pay and which will be eligible to receive as well as how much financing will be provided and how it will be distributed —are still being worked out.

Denmark, the first U.N. member to pledge loss and damage funding, promised to allocate just $13 million to Africa’s Sahel region and other areas. At the time, critics warned that a significant portion of the paltry sum is structured in a way that could enrich private insurers at the expense of those most in need.

Global justice advocates who pushed to create the fund have stressed that the U.S. — by far the world’s largest historical emitter of heat-trapping gases — and other wealthy polluters have a moral obligation to provide grants, not interest-bearing loans or other predatory instruments, to help alleviate the burdens they are imposing on billions of vulnerable people who have done little to unleash climate hell.

A loss and damage fund was deemed necessary because a certain amount of destruction has been locked in due to extant emissions and atmospheric concentrations of GHGs. But it is not the U.N.’s first foray into climate-focused redistribution.

Developed countries agreed at COP15 in 2009 to disburse $100 billion in green finance per year to the developing world by 2020 and every year after through 2025, at which point a new goal would be set. However, only $83.3 billion was mobilized in the first year, and governments are not expected to hit their annual target, which has been criticized as woefully inadequate, until this year.

An analysis published last year showed that the U.S. is the biggest reason for the shortfall. If Washington were to give at a level commensurate with its cumulative contribution to global GHG pollution, it would allot $39.9 billion of the $100 billion pledge each year. That’s $32.3 billion more than the estimated $7.6 billion it actually shelled out in 2020.

With his comments on Thursday, Kerry signaled that the U.S. has no plans to reverse course and start providing its fair share when it comes to the emerging loss and damage fund.

Not only have the U.S. and other rich countries refused to adequately fund climate action in the Global South, but they are also actively moving to expand fossil fuel extraction and combustion — ignoring the international scientific consensus and eliciting condemnation from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who has described existing policies as a “death sentence” for humanity.

In addition to rapidly slashing planet-heating emissions, progressives have emphasized that canceling impoverished countries’ external debts would free up trillions of dollars that can help close the widening chasm between what science and justice demand and what policymakers are currently doing.

“The Heat Will Kill You First”: Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell on Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble

It was probably the Earth’s hottest week in history earlier this month, following the warmest June on record, and top scientists agree that the planet will get even hotter unless we phase out fossil fuels. Yet leading energy companies are intent on pushing the world in the opposite direction, expanding fossil fuel production and insisting that there is no alternative. It is evidence that they are motivated not by record warming, but by record profits, experts say.

“The fossil fuel industry has massively profited from selling a dangerous product and now innocent people and governments across the globe are paying the price for their recklessness,” Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University who studies the oil industry, said.

Oil majors have, over the past several years, rolled out pledges to decrease oil and gas production and slash their emissions, citing concerns about the climate crisis. But more recently, many have walked those plans back. Amid record-shattering warmth this February, BP scaled back an earlier goal of lowering its emissions by 35% by 2030, saying it will aim for a 20 to 30% cut instead. ExxonMobil quietly withdrew funding for a heavily publicized effort to use algae to create low-carbon fuel. And Shell announced that it would not increase its investments in renewable energy this year, despite earlier promises to dramatically slash its emissions.

Climate-fueled extreme weather persisted through spring and summer. But fossil fuel companies have only doubled down on their oil- and gas-filled business models. Shell promised to cut oil production by 20% by 2030, but then this year said it already met that goal by selling off some operations to another oil company –thereby not reducing emissions in the atmosphere. BP has also expanded gas drilling. And Exxon’s CEO, Darren Woods, told an industry conference last month that his company plans to double the amount of oil produced from its US shale holdings within the next five years.

A Shell spokesperson said the company believes “society needs to take action on climate change”, and said that the company had made “no fundamental change” to its climate pledges and was making progress toward those goals. “It remains our view that global energy demand will continue to grow and be met by different types of energy – including oil and gas,” he said. “In that scenario, a balanced energy transition plays well into our portfolio – one that delivers more value, with less emissions by focusing on performance, discipline and simplification.”

Millions in US under warnings as record heat expected to continue next week

More than 100 million people, around a third of Americans, were under extreme heat advisories this weekend and that record-breaking heat was expected to continue into the new week.

There were advisories from coast to coast, with the south-west and parts of the west hard hit and officials warning that conditions could get worse in Arizona, California and Nevada.

Residents were warned to “take the heat seriously and avoid time outdoors” by the National Weather Service, which said it was “potentially deadly to anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration”.

Cooling centers extended their hours in some cities and emergency rooms prepared to treat more people with heat-related illnesses.

In Phoenix, Arizona, the forecast for Sunday was for 118F (47.7C) and it was expected to be the city’s 17th consecutive day of 110F (43.3C) or higher. The record was 18 days, in 1974, which the city seems likely to pass on Tuesday.

Also of Interest

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

A Transatlantic Trend: Banks in UK and US Are Closing Customer Accounts With Little to No Warning Or Explanation

Syria Outmaneuvers 'West', Regains Legitimacy

Assange Exposes The Empire’s True Face: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

James Bamford: The NSA Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Idaho abortion ban takes toll on medical providers

More than 50 pilot whales dead in mass stranding on Isle of Lewis in Scotland

A Little Night Music

Little Willie John - I'm Shakin'

Little Willie John - All Around The World

Little Willie John - No Regrets

Little Willie John - My Love Is

Little Willie John - Leave my kitten alone

Little Willie John - Talk To Me

Little Willie John -Suffering with the Blues

Little Willie John -Fever

Little Willie John - Take My Love