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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Hubert Sumlin

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin. Enjoy!

^{Hubert Sumlin - Down the Dusty Road}

"We live in a post-democratic society."

-- Craig Murray

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News and Opinion

The Empire Knows It’s Pouring Ukrainian Blood Into An Unwinnable Proxy War

In a new article titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Michaels reports that western officials knew Ukrainian forces didn’t have the weapons and training necessary to succeed in their highly touted counteroffensive which was launched last month.

Michaels writes:

“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.

“They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum.”

This is as close to an admission you’re ever going to find that the establishment has been lying to you massively about the Ukraine war. pic.twitter.com/XumqqccHLz

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) July 23, 2023

The claim that western officials had sincerely believed Ukrainian forces might be able to overcome their glaring deficits through sheer pluck and ticker is undermined later in the same article by a war pundit who says the US would never attempt such a counteroffensive without first controlling the skies, which Ukraine doesn’t have the ability to do:

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” the U.S. Army War College’s John Nagl told WSJ. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following on the latest WSJ revelation:

“Leading up to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which was launched in June, the Discord leaks and media reports revealed that the US did not believe Ukraine could regain much territory from Russia. But the Biden administration pushed for the assault anyway, as it rejected the idea of a pause in fighting.“

So the empire is still knowingly throwing Ukrainian lives into the meat grinder of an unwinnable proxy war, even as western officials tell the public that this war is about saving Ukrainian lives and handing Putin a crushing defeat whenever they’re on camera.

This attitude from the empire is not a new development. Last October The Washington Post reported that “Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.”

Now why might that be? Why would the western empire be so comfortable encouraging Ukrainians to keep fighting when it knows they can’t win?

We find our answer in another Washington Post article titled “The West feels gloomy about Ukraine. Here’s why it shouldn’t.“, authored last week by virulent empire propagandist David Ignatius. In his eagerness to frame the floundering counteroffensive in a positive light for his American audience, Ignatius let slip an inconvenient truth:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

Anyone who believes this proxy war is about helping Ukrainians should be made to read that paragraph over and over again until it sinks in. The admission that the US-centralized power structure benefits immensely from this proxy conflict is revealing enough, but that parenthetical “other than for the Ukrainians” aside really drives it home. It reads as though it was added as an afterthought, like “Oh yeah it’s actually kind of rough on the Ukrainians though — if you consider them to be people.”

Experts Say Demining Ukraine Could Take Hundreds of Years
Washington Post reports Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world and US cluster bombs will make situation worse
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Ukraine #ClusterBombs #ClusterMunitions https://t.co/MnDS3ML6Ma pic.twitter.com/jndFZh5h7a

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) July 23, 2023

The claim that this war is about helping Ukrainians has been further undermined by another new Washington Post report that Ukraine is now more riddled with land mines than any other nation on earth, and that US-supplied cluster munitions are only making the land more deadly.

That’s right kids! We’re turning Ukraine into an uninhabitable wasteland of death and dismemberment to save the Ukrainians.

We should probably talk more about the fact that the US empire is loudly promoting the goal of achieving peace in Ukraine by defeating Russia while quietly acknowledging that this goal is impossible. This is like accelerating toward a brick wall and pretending it’s an open road.

The narrative that Russia can be beaten by ramping up proxy warfare against it makes sense if you believe Russia can be militarily defeated in Ukraine, but the US empire does not believe that Russia can be militarily defeated in Ukraine. It knows that continuing this war is only going to perpetuate the death and devastation.

“Beat Putin’s ass and make him withdraw” sounds cool and is egoically gratifying, and it’s become the mainstream answer to the problem of the war in Ukraine, but nobody promoting that answer can address the fact that the ones driving this proxy war believe it’s impossible. In fact, all evidence we’re seeing suggests that the US is not trying to deliver Putin a crushing defeat in Ukraine and force him to withdraw, but is rather trying to create another long and costly military quagmire for Moscow, as western cold warriors have done repeatedly in instances like Afghanistan and Syria.

Wanting to weaken Russia and wanting to save lives and establish peace in Ukraine are two completely different goals, so different that in practice they wind up being largely contradictory. Drawing Moscow into a bloody quagmire means many more people dying in a war that drags on for years, with all the immense human suffering that that entails.

The US does not want peace in Ukraine, it wants to overextend Russia, shore up military and energy dominance over Europe, expand its war machine and enrich the military-industrial complex. That’s why it knowingly provoked this war. It’s posing as Ukraine’s savior while being clearly invested in Ukraine’s destruction.

It is not legitimate to support this proxy war without squarely addressing this massive contradiction using hard facts and robust argumentation. Nobody ever has.

Russia Breaks Through Ukr Defences Kremennaya, Advances to Oskol River; Prepares Future Offensive

Two drones downed over Moscow, says Russian defence ministry

Two drones crashed into non-residential buildings in Moscow in the early hours of Monday morning, Russian officials said, with one crashing close to the defence ministry in the city centre. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said the drone strikes in the Russian capital hit buildings around 4am local time, adding that there were no casualties.

Officials said the drones, which they described as Ukrainian, hit a business centre on Likhacheva Avenue and another building on Komsomolsky Avenue, less than 2 miles from the defence ministry’s headquarters.

“A Kyiv regime attempt to carry out a terrorist act using two drones on objects on the territory of the city of Moscow was stopped,” Russia’s defence ministry said. ...

Images of one crash site showed damage to the top floors of a high-rise glass office building and damage to the roof of a low-standing building at the other.

Russia hits Reni port. No ATACMS. Can you ring your dad? Sanctions fail to stop Russian travel.

North Korea fires missiles into sea hours after US submarine arrives in the South

North Korea has fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, adding to a recent streak of weapons testing that is apparently in protest against the US sending naval assets to South Korea.

In its third round of launches since last week, North Korea fired the missiles from an area near its capital, Pyongyang, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said early on Tuesday local time. It said the missiles travelled about 250 miles (400km) before landing in waters off the Korean peninsula’s eastern coast. ...

The South Korean joint chiefs of staff condemned North Korea’s missile launches as a “grave provocation” that threatened regional peace and stability, and said the South Korean and US militaries were working together to tighten their monitoring of North Korean military activities.

The launches came hours after South Korea’s navy said a nuclear-propelled US submarine, the USS Annapolis, had arrived at a port on Jeju Island. That underscored the allies’ efforts to boost the visibility of US strategic assets in the region to intimidate the North.

Last week, the USS Kentucky became the first US nuclear-armed submarine to come to South Korea since the 1980s. North Korea reacted to its arrival by test-firing ballistic and cruise missiles in apparent demonstrations that it could make nuclear strikes against South Korea and US naval vessels deployed in the area.

Iranian Oil Stolen by the US Stuck on a Tanker Off the Coast of Texas

US federal prosecutors are struggling to sell off a shipment of stolen Iranian oil being carried by a Greek tanker off the coast of Texas, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The US Justice Department seized the Greek tanker Suez Rajan in April under the pretext of sanctions enforcement and forced the ship to head for Texas instead of China. The Suez Rajan is carrying 800,000 barrels of stolen oil and is currently off the coast of Galveston.

According to the Journal, the US can’t sell the oil because the companies that would unload the oil are worried about Iranian retaliation in the Persian Gulf. “Companies with any exposure whatsoever in the Persian Gulf are literally afraid to do it,” a Houston-based energy executive involved in the matter told the paper.

US Sending Marines, More Warships to Middle East Over Iran Tensions

US Central Command announced on July 20 that the US was deploying a Marines Corps unit and additional warships to the Middle East amid heightened tensions with Iran.

The command said in a press release that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the deployment of an Amphibious Readiness Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU), which typically consists of about 2,200 marines and three amphibious warships.

CENTCOM said the deployment was ordered in response “to recent attempts by Iran to seize commercial ships.” Iran seized two vessels in the Persian Gulf region after the US seized a tanker carrying Iranian oil in the region in April. Since then, the US has announced it was conducting more patrols and sending more military assets to the Middle East, including fighter jets and a guided-missile destroyer.

‘No place in prison’: French police chief’s comments spark outrage

Israeli parliament votes in Netanyahu’s controversial supreme court changes

Israel’s far-right, ultra-religious government has succeeded in passing a key part of the coalition’s judicial overhaul, seven months after introducing the legislation, in the face of widespread, sustained opposition from protesters.

The bill abolishing the “reasonableness” clause that allows Israel’s unelected supreme court to overrule government decisions was passed into law by a final vote of 64-0 in parliament on Monday. Every member of the coalition voted in favour, while opposition lawmakers abandoned the Knesset plenum in protest, shouting “Shame!” as they left.

In a televised address on Monday night, Netanyahu described the bill as “a necessary democratic act” that would “return a measure of balance between the branches of government.”

The prime minister called for fresh dialogue with the opposition and pleaded for national unity. As he spoke, Israeli TV showed a split screen with a police water cannon spraying crowds of protesters, as demonstrations continued late into the night. Police said they arrested a driver who hit a group of protesters in central Israel, injuring three people. ...

At least 19 people were arrested in protests around the country by late afternoon, as police used water cannon – and for the first time, skunk gas – to disperse people blocking roads, while malls and businesses in many cities closed their doors in solidarity.

‘We are winning’: Are US Jews who oppose Israeli settlements finally getting somewhere?

Mike Levinson has been pushing back for 40 years and finally thinks he might be getting somewhere. “There’s a change and the politicians see it. I think it scares them,” said Levinson, holding a sign demanding “Stop Israeli settler violence” as he marched through New York on Thursday. “There’s a tremendous change going on in the American Jewish community. There are a lot of Jews, especially young people, who are not so quick to automatically and unconditionally support everything that Israel does. People are accepting the fact that it’s OK to be Jewish and criticise Israel.” ...

Opinion polls suggest Levinson is right. A Gallup survey earlier this year found that for the first time more Democrats were sympathetic to the Palestinians than the Israelis by a margin of 11%, a significant shift from a decade ago.

In 2021, a Jewish Electorate Institute poll found that 58% of American Jewish voters support restrictions on US military aid to prevent Israel using it to expand West Bank settlements. One-third agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States” and one-quarter said that “Israel is an apartheid state”, numbers that shocked some Jewish community leaders.

Part of the shift has been driven by social media and the wide circulation of videos such as Israeli assaults on Gaza and the West Bank, the large-scale forced removal of Palestinians from the South Hebron hills, and armed Jewish settlers rampaging through Palestinian towns.

In addition, the repudiation by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of a Palestinian state, and far-right members of his latest government openly advocating annexation, have undercut Israel’s longstanding defense that its policies are a response to terrorism. That has given traction to claims by Israeli and foreign human rights groups that Israel has imposed a form of apartheid on the occupied territories.

19 GOP Attorneys General Seek Private Medical Records of Patients Who Obtain Out-of-State Abortions

Ohio OVERWHELMINGLY Backs Pro-Choice Amendment

Today Marks 14 Years Since the Last Federal Minimum Wage Increase

The federal minimum wage in the United States would be $42 an hour today if it rose at the same pace as Wall Street bonuses in recent decades.

But it hasn't.

Monday marks 14 years since the last federal minimum wage increase—the longest stretch without a boost since the late 1930s, when the national wage floor was first established.

Since 2009, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour, pay that's currently not livable in any state in the U.S.

While dozens of states, cities, and counties have raised their minimum wages since the Fight for $15 movement began in 2012, 20 states still have wage floors in line with the federal minimum, which is at its lowest value in nearly seven decades amid elevated inflation.

"The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees," the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., said Monday. "$7.25/hour, in 2023, is a poverty wage."

DoJ sues Texas governor over refusal to remove anti-migrant buoys from river

The US Department of Justice has sued the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, over his refusal to remove a floating barrier placed on the Rio Grande to stop migrants entering the US from Mexico. The move is the latest in a growing political spat between Abbott and the Biden administration, heightened by Republican attempts to scaremonger over immigration as the 2024 presidential election looms.

The lawsuit filed by the federal government asks a court in Texas to force the state to remove the roughly 1,000ft line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns.

The suit also says Texas unlawfully installed the barrier without permission, near the border city of Eagle Pass. The suit was filed on Monday, after Abbott refused to comply with instructions to remove the barrier.

“Texas will fully utilise its constitutional authority to deal with the crisis you have caused,” Greg Abbott wrote to Joe Biden in a letter reported by CNN and other outlets. “Texas will see you in court, Mr President.”

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Hunter Biden Business Partner Says VP Biden JOINED Phone Calls With FOREIGN Investors

Never Trumpers get ‘brutal wake-up call’ as Republican candidates flounder

For Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas, there were boos and chants of “Trump! Trump!”. For Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami, there were jeers and cries of “Traitor!” And perhaps most tellingly, there was no Florida governor Ron DeSantis at all. The recent Turning Point USA conference brought thousands of young conservatives to Florida and there was no doubting the main attraction: former president Donald Trump, who made a glitzy entrance accompanied by giant stage sparklers. In a less than rigorous poll, 86% of attendees gave Trump as their first choice for president; DeSantis, who polled 19% last year, was down to 4%.

Events and numbers like this are cause for sleepless nights among those Republican leaders and donors desperate to believe it would be different this time. The Never Trump forces bet heavily on DeSantis as the coming man and the premise that Trump’s campaign would collapse under the weight of myriad legal problems. But six months away from the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, none of it seems to be working. DeSantis’s campaign is flailing and leaving some with buyers’ remorse. Hutchinson and Chris Christie, outspoken Trump critics, are polling in single digits, sowing doubts about voters’ appetite for change. Never Trumpers have reason to fear that his march to the Republican nomination may already be unstoppable.

“They’re experiencing a brutal wake-up call that the party is not interested in hearing critiques of Trump,” said Tim Miller, who was communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign. “The Trump challengers’ candidacies have been astonishingly poor and learned nothing from 2016. When the leading candidate gets indicted and all of his opponents besides Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson just echo his fake persecution complex talking points, it’s going to be hard to beat him.” ...

As the 2024 election looms, there is no coordinated plan on how to derail the Trump train or alter the trajectory of a race that is still his to lose. Even critics admit that the external events many were counting on to thwart his candidacy have not hurt his standing. Indeed, criminal indictments in New York and Florida have led some voters who were entertaining an alternative to return to Trump’s fold while handing him another fundraising bonanza. His campaign announced that he raised more than $35m during the second fundraising quarter, nearly double what he raised during the first three months of the year and well ahead of his competitors.

Trump’s opponents within the party are running out of time and ideas. Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, said: “They were all hoping that Trump’s legal troubles would kick him to the side of the road but every indictment or potential indictment just strengthens him among the base, eats up all the oxygen in the room and makes him the likely nominee. They’re probably as frustrated as can be.”

RFK Jr BANNED From Dem Ballot?! Progressive Group Fundraises Off Push To BLOCK Kennedy From Primary

Democrat Attack Dog IN BED WITH Jeffrey Epstein

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Lawsuit says US environmental agency ignores harm of biofuel production

The US biofuel program is probably killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges.

The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation. The agency has twice ignored court orders to study the impacts and is probably dodging the requirements because ethanol production “props up” the corn industry, which has a politically powerful lobby, Hartl added.

“The Biden administration failed to even modestly reform this boondoggle and crumbled again in the face of political pressure from powerful special interests,” Hartl said. “Our streams and rivers will choke with more pollution and coastal dead zones will continue to expand.” ...

While the fuels are designed to decarbonize the transportation sector, their production eliminates wetlands and prairie land that act as carbon sinks, Hartl noted. The EPA in 2018 estimated that up to 7m acres (2.8m hectares) of land had been converted to grow corn for ethanol fuel. Ethanol production also pollutes water. Regulations around pesticides and fertilizers used in corn grown for ethanol fuel are much looser, which means much higher levels of dangerous chemicals run into surface and groundwaters. The pollution probably plays a significant role in dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico after pesticides flow down the Mississippi River, Hartl said.

Still, the EPA has failed to adequately scrutinize those issues, he added, and has failed to fully comply with the Endangered Species Act. It requires the agency to complete consultations with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to address harm to endangered species from land conversion, pesticides and fertilizer use.

Property insurance disappears for Louisianans – but not for gas facilities

Residents of coastal Louisiana are facing growing risks from flooding and extreme weather, with options for home insurance vanishing as insurers leave the state. But the fossil fuel industry operating nearby has no such worries. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals have been springing up along the fragile Gulf coast, securing insurance even as their product contributes to the climate crisis and its growing risks, including more intense hurricanes and increased coastal flooding that are driving away residents.

For large projects such as LNG terminals, risk is spread among many insurers; no one company is exposed to all of a terminal’s potential losses. The same is not true for insurance companies whose business is built around residential policies where hurricane damage can lead to millions of dollars of claims at once. ... Damage from Hurricane Ida sent Louisiana’s property insurance market – already rattled by three major hurricanes in two years – into a full-blown crisis. By the end of 2022, nearly two dozen insurance companies had either left the state or gone under. Residents scrambled for new, dramatically more expensive coverage or went without.

Meanwhile, just a few miles south of Ironton, a giant $20bn liquefied natural gas terminal is rising on a wedge of land between the Mississippi River and encroaching wetlands. Plaquemines LNG is one of eight terminals built or planned along Louisiana’s coastline. ... The three parishes in Louisiana where LNG terminals are concentrated have all seen significant population decreases in the past two years, primarily driven by hurricanes.

As more residents leave, the parishes are less able to invest in the infrastructure that makes coastal communities livable, including schools, driving even more people away. “Over time it will diminish the fiscal capacity of the parish in terms of tax revenue to even recover next time,” Jesse Keenan, a professor of sustainable real estate at Tulane University, said.

Fish Near Fukushima Contained Radioactive Cesium 180 Times Over Japan's Limit

With the Tokyo Electric Power Company planning to begin a release of 1.3 million tonnes of treated wastewater from the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan next month, reports of radioactive fish in the area have raised alarm in recent years—and new reporting on Sunday revealed that the problem is far from mitigated, prompting questions about how dangerous the company's plan will be for the public.

The plant operator, known as TEPCO, analyzed a black rockfish in May that was found to contain levels of radioactive cesium that were 180 times over Japan's regulatory limit, The Guardian reported.

The fish was caught near drainage outlets at the plant, where three nuclear reactors melted down in March 2011 during a tsunami.

Rainwater from the areas surrounding the reactors flows into the area where the fish was caught.

The high level of cesium—which, depending on the level of exposure, can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bleeding, coma, and death in people who eat contaminated food—was discovered as TEPCO prepares to begin the discharge of treated wastewater which has been used to cool fuel from the melted reactors. The wastewater has mixed with rainwater and groundwater since the tsunami.

TEPCO has acknowledged that fish near the drainage outlets have been unsafe for consumption, as the concentration of cesium in seabed sediment in the area has measured more than 100,000 becquerels per kilogram. The maximum legal level is 100 becquerels per kilogram.

"Since contaminated water flowed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station port immediately after the accident, TEPCO has periodically removed fish from inside the port since 2012," an official for the company told The Guardian.

A fish was detected to have high levels of radiation near Fukushima in January 2022, with authorities positing that the fish had escaped from the drainage outlet. Shipments of black rockfish caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture were promptly suspended and have not been resumed.

More than 40 fish with cesium levels over the legal limit were found in the plant's port between May 2022 and May 2023, and 90% came from the inner breakwater where water flows from the area around the melted reactors.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have both given their approval of TEPCO's plan to release the wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, which it says it needs to do to secure space for decommissioning the plant. The discharge process, using an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), would take decades to complete.

While the IAEA said earlier this month the plan will have a "negligible radiological impact to people and the environment," Paul Dorfman of Ireland's Radiological Protection Advisory Committee said Monday that reports like the one about the contaminated rockfish are likely "far from over."

"Believing [and] pretending some things are not harmful because it is convenient is literally killing the planet," said American University sociologist Celine-Marie Pascale, comparing the ecological and climate crisis to authorities' insistence that the water discharge is safe. "Corporate interests triumph at global expense once again."

Officials in Hong Kong have said they will ban food imports from 10 prefectures in Japan if the release moves forward in August, and some Chinese wholesalers have stopped accepting seafood imports from the country.

In addition to concerns about cesium, TEPCO has admitted that the ALPS it plans to use may not eliminate isotopes including ruthenium, cobalt, strontium, and plutonium. The system is also not able to remove tritium, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

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Also of Interest

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

The Failed State Effort Of Indicting Trump

A Helpful Suggestion

Punch The Empire In The Fucking Face: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The True Symbol Of The United States Is The Pentagon

Craig Murray: Democracy’s Demise

The Church Of Leonard Leo

Marielle Franco: new suspect arrested over killing of Rio city councillor

How “Big Ag” Pollutes America’s Water, and Makes Money Doing It

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A Little Night Music

Hubert Sumlin & Howlin' Wolf - Smokestack Lightning

Hubert Sumlin - Pickin'

Hubert Sumlin (ft. Keith Richards) - Still a Fool

Hubert Sumlin - Sometimes I'm Right

Hubert Sumlin - Killing Floor

Hubert Sumlin - Blues is Here to Stay

Hubert Sumlin - A Soul That's Been Abused

Hubert Sumlin - I Don't Want To Hear About Yours

Hubert Sumlin - Rock Me (Live)

Hubert Sumlin - Hidden Charms

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