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This evening's music features r&b singer Betty Everett. Enjoy!

"All these wars are similar in the way ideology is being used. It's the ideology of so-called humanitarian intervention. We don't want to do this, but we're doing this for the sake of the people who live there. This is, of course, a terrible sleight of hand because all sorts of people live there, and, by and large, they do it to help one faction and not the other."

-- Tariq Ali

News and Opinion

We’re Taught About Liberal And Conservative Bias In Media, But Not US Empire Bias

One of the biggest problems with the urgent push for “media literacy” we’ve been seeing in the west these last few years is that everyone’s being taught about liberal bias and conservative bias in media, but they’re not being taught about US empire bias.

Your average western news media consumer will have some general awareness that Fox News has a conservative bias and MSNBC has a liberal bias, and if you try to use one of them to prove a political point to someone of the opposing ideology they’ll probably hasten to inform you of the biased nature of your source. A somewhat smaller but still very large percentage of the population will be aware that an outlet like RT is going to have a bias in favor of the Russian government, and if you try to cite RT to prove some point about Ukraine or whatever you’ll probably get called out on that right away.

That’s about as far as “media literacy” goes among the general public in the western world, which just so happens to work out very nicely in favor of the western empire. The radius of awareness extends just far enough to pose no threat to the empire’s information interests, and stops there.

What relatively few westerners are aware of is that the entirety of mainstream western media — both liberal and conservative — are so biased in favor of the US and its empire-like global sphere of influence that they are almost worthless for forming an accurate understanding of what’s happening in the world.

Every foreign policy agenda of the US and its allies is reliably facilitated by the western media, because the western media do not exist primarily to report the news, they exist primarily to administer propaganda. The New York Times has reliably supported every war the US has waged. Western mass media focus overwhelmingly on foreign protests against governments the United States dislikes while paying far less attention to widespread protests against US-aligned governments. The only time Trump was universally showered with praise by the mass media was when he bombed Syria, while the only time Biden has been universally slammed by the mass media was when he withdrew from Afghanistan. US media did such a good job deceitfully marrying Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks in the minds of the public in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq that seven in ten Americans still believed he was connected to 9/11 months after the war began. To name just a few obvious glaring examples of far too many to list.

Kids aren’t being taught about this type of bias in school. Websites like AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check set up to help improve “media literacy” and teach people about media biases focus only on biases of ideological partisanship, not international conflicts and foreign policy.

You’ve probably seen charts like this one from the Media Bias section of the AllSides website, where the biases of outlets are ranked from “Left” to “Center” to “Right.” [Click link to see graphic. -js]

What you’ve never seen anywhere is a chart that ranks outlets in terms of how sympathetic they are to the US-centralized empire, with outlets like The New York Times, The Guardian and Fox News being listed on the extreme end of one side and more US-critical outlets like Consortium News, Mintpress News and Antiwar toward the other side. Notice how the above chart is so completely uninterested in foreign policy that it lists militarist smut rag The Atlantic in the same category as outlets that are often critical of US foreign policy like Jacobin and The Nation.

Here’s what the Media Bias/Fact Check profile on my (currently malfunctioning) website looks like as of this writing. [Click link to see graphic. -js]

It places me on the far left ideologically, which is of course fair, but it doesn’t tell you anything about my attitude toward the US and its allies, which consumes a huge amount of my focus and commentary. Am I one of those “yay NATO” lefties or am I a “boo NATO” lefty? Am I one of those lefties who focuses on domestic issues and pretends foreign policy doesn’t exist? In international conflicts do I tend to side with the US, side with some other government, remain neutral, or some mixture of the above? It doesn’t say.

t doesn’t say for anyone else either. The New York Times is listed as having a “left-center bias” with a credibility rating of “high”. The New York Post is listed as having a “center-right” bias with a “mixed” credibility rating. It’s all about where they can be placed on the left-to-right ideology scale and some arbitrary determination about how “credible” they’re found to be, without any mention of the fact that they are both fiercely loyal to the US empire.

This is entirely by design. The whole push to promote “media literacy” and improve online information has never actually been about training people to see and understand the biases of media outlets, it’s been about training people not to see and understand them. At least not where it matters.

Foreign policy is the single most consequential aspect of government behavior when it comes to the US and its allies, because it affects the most people to the greatest degree. Domestic policy has very real consequences for the kind of life people will have under the US power alliance, but you’re talking about questions like whether they’ll be able to afford healthcare or purchase legal cannabis, not whether they’ll be bombed, starved by crushing economic sanctions, or killed in a nuclear war. And yet our entire society is being trained not to look there when determining the biases of the sources we look to for information.

And this is exactly because foreign policy is so immensely consequential. Those who run the empire don’t care whether women can have an abortion or whether marginalized groups are abused by police, so they’re happy for the biases of their propaganda organs to be highlighted on such matters and for everyone to pour all their energy into debating them. What they absolutely do care about a very great deal is the operation of the globe-spanning empire, which is held together by nonstop violence and abuse and the threat thereof.

So we are indoctrinated into supporting the US empire’s agendas of war, militarism, manipulation and resource extraction around the world, and we are trained not to look at the fact that we are being indoctrinated by sources of information who are all wildly biased in favor of that empire.

By keeping the western media’s US empire bias out of the spotlight, imperial spinmeisters shrink the Overton window of acceptable opinion down to those foreign policy views which are promoted by mainstream information sources whose only criticisms of the empire come down to minor quibbles about the specifics of how the empire should be run, instead of whether a globe-spanning power structure should exist at all.

This is just one of the many sly little ways our perception of our world is tilted toward the interests of our rulers. It’s what Chomsky was talking about when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

A passive and obedient populace is exactly what the empire wants, so the imperial media keep the debate restricted to things like culture war issues and electoral politics, with the edges of the Overton window eclipsing out issues like capitalism, militarism, oligarchy and empire. In this way we are kept barking and snarling at each other, without ever turning our gaze upon our rulers, and without ever noticing how many more there are of us there are than them.

Russia Counterattacks Vremevka, Advances Kupiansk, Oskol; West, Nigeria Mull Intervention Niger

Worth a click and a full read:

Patrick Lawrence: The Bidens’ Burisma Bribery

My mind went back to those first Russiagate days last Thursday, when the tabloid that reported the Hunter Biden computer story just before the 2020 election dropped another in a series of big ones on us. “Biden $10M bribe file released: Burisma chief said he was ‘coerced’ to pay Joe, ‘stupid’ Hunter in bombshell allegations” was the headline on this latest New York Post piece. ...

We already knew V–P Biden intervened back in 2016, when Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor general, was at the front end of an official investigation into corruption at Burisma. Hunter was by then taking home $50,000 a month —the Post says $83,000 — for sitting on Burisma’s board and doing nothing other than being his father’s son. Joe stepped in to get Shokin fired — alleging, perversely, that Shokin had to go because he was corrupt. This was in 2016, when Joe was recorded in that infamous video bragging, at the Council on Foreign Relations no less, that he threatened to withhold $5 billion in U.S. aid if Shokin wasn’t removed. “And, son of a bitch, they fired him,” was Joe’s punchline on that occasion.

The just-released document now tells us pretty precisely what happened when the son of a bitch serving as Obama’s point man in Kiev made full use — fully corrupt use, I mean — of Washington’s leverage in post-coup Ukraine.

By February 2016 Shokin had warrants enabling him to seize Mykola Zlochevsky’s apparently extensive property holdings in Kiev. Zlochevsky, the corrupt jillionaire who founded Burisma Holdings in 2002, indeed wanted Shokin off his back and out of his books. He went to Hunter with this project, whereupon Hunter did his job and went to Pop. Whereupon they both let it be known — both, got it? — that getting the job done would cost Zlochevsky $10 million, $5 million apiece for Biden père et fils. Biden arrived in Kiev in March 2016, a month after Shokin got his warrants to go after Zlochevsky’s real estate. Shokin was dismissed on March 29.

Zlochevsky — who, being a Ukrainian oligarch, seems to have been at ease discussing his own corruptions — related all this to an F.B.I. informant who had worked for the agency for more than a decade and earned, in addition to six figures in fees, an excellent reputation for reliability. The informant met or spoke by telephone with Zlochevsky on four occasions beginning in late 2015 or early 2016 and running through 2019. Some of these encounters occurred near Kiev; at least one took place at a Vienna coffeehouse. It was during the latter exchange, in 2016, that Zlochevsky told the F.B.I. informant, “It cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” as this conversation is recorded in the F.B.I. file, which is designated FD–1023 and which, everything it reveals notwithstanding, contains redacted passages.

FD–1023 is rich with evidently authentic reporting from the agency’s informant. Describing the 2016 encounter in Vienna, the file quotes the informant thusly:

“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden (on Burisma’s board) ‘so everything will be okay.’”

It then continues: “The source,” meaning the F.B.I. informant,

“asked whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should ‘retain’ the younger Biden; Zlochevsky allegedly replied, ‘They both did.’”

...

Zlochevsky, as he recounted the Bidens’ bribery scheme, told the F.B.I. informant he had 17 recordings of conversations he had with Hunter and Joe as they arranged to take care of the Shokin matter and take Zlochevsky’s money for the favor. This is a smart guy. Zlochevsky also told the F.B.I. man he had “many text messages” and two written documents, financial records of the payments the Bidens received. Zlochevsky, by the F.B.I. informant’s account, considered this documentary proof of his “coercion.” There appears, then, to be a body of evidence awaiting examination and verification.

How the Biden family preyed on Ukraine corruption

The West sells out Ukraine as counteroffensive flops

Top US adviser to attend Saudi talks in bid to attract support for Ukraine plan

Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, is expected to attend a meeting in Saudi Arabia this weekend at which Ukraine and its allies will try to persuade countries from the global south to back Kyiv’s proposals for ending the war. According to officials involved in planning for the meeting, it is primarily aimed at drawing neutral countries such as Brazil and India off the fence in their approach to the Russian invasion.

The meeting has been called by Ukraine, and it is hoped the Saudi venue might attract Chinese participation, but there is so far no confirmation Beijing will send any representatives.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the planned talks, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine have invited 30 countries, including Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Chile and Zambia. ...

“We expect attendees will discuss the principles for peace and how we can achieve a just and durable peace in Ukraine,” a US official said.

US Announces $345 Million in Unprecedented Military Aid for Taiwan

The White House on Friday announced a $345 million military aid package for Taiwan, marking a significant escalation in US support for the island.

The US has sold weapons to Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 but has never financed the purchases or provided arms free of charge.

The $345 million weapons package is being provided through the presidential drawdown authority, the primary way the US has been arming Ukraine. The authority allows President Biden to send weapons directly from US military stockpiles.

The White House said the $345 million includes “defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Taiwan.”

Niger coup leaders accuse France of plotting military intervention

The military junta that seized power in Niger has accused France of plotting military intervention to reinstate the deposed president, Mohamed Bazoum, as tensions in the region continued to grow in the wake of the coup. The junta said on national TV that France was searching “for ways and means to intervene militarily in Niger” and had held a meeting with the chief of staff of Niger’s national guard “to obtain the necessary political and military authorisation”.

The French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, denied any alleged intention of military intervention in the west African country. “It’s wrong,” she told BFMTV news channel on Monday night, adding that it was still possible to return Niger’s democratically elected president to power. “And it’s necessary because destabilisation is perilous for Niger and its neighbours,” she said.

Bazoum, an ally of western powers, was toppled on 26 July in a coup by Niger’s elite presidential guard. Gen Abdourahamane Tchiani declared himself leader but his claim has been shunned internationally. On Monday, Bazoum’s party said several ministers in his ousted government had been arrested, including the mines minister. Niger is the world’s seventh-biggest producer of uranium, the radioactive metal widely used for nuclear energy and treating cancer. ...

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has given the junta a week to give back power, warning in a statement that if Bazoum was not reinstated it would take “all measures” to restore constitutional order, which “may include the use of force”. ECOWAS has suspended all commercial and financial transactions, while France, the EU and the US, which has about 1,000 troops in Niger, have either cut off support or threatened to do so.

Germany suspended financial aid and development cooperation, and UN humanitarian operations have been put on hold. Russia called for the swift return of “the rule of law” and “restraint from all parties so that this doesn’t result in human casualties”.

Did Western Military Presence Help Foster Coup in Niger, Where U.S. Has Drone Base & 1,000+ Troops?

Niger Coup Leader Joins Long Line of U.S.-Trained Mutineers

brig. gen. Moussa salaou barmou, the chief of Niger’s Special Operations Forces and one of the leaders of the unfolding coup in Niger, was trained by the U.S. military, The Intercept has confirmed. U.S.-trained military officers have taken part in 11 coups in West Africa since 2008.

“We have had a very long relationship with the United States,” Barmou said in 2021. “Being able to work together in this capacity is very good for Niger.” Just last month, Barmou met with Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, at Air Base 201, a drone base in the Nigerien city of Agadez that serves as the lynchpin of an archipelago of U.S. outposts in West Africa.

On Wednesday, Barmou, who trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the National Defense University in Washington, joined a junta that ousted Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s democratically elected president, according to Nigerien sources and a U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A U.S. official tracking the coup, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed Barmou’s relationship with the U.S. military and said he was probably not alone. “I’m sure we will find out that others have been partners, have been involved in U.S. engagements,” he said of other members of the junta, noting that U.S. government agencies were looking into the matter.

U.S.-trained officers have conducted in at least six coups in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali since 2012. They have also been involved in recent takeovers in Gambia (2014), Guinea (2021), Mauritania (2008), and Niger (2023).

Yellow trucking firm lays off its 30,000 US workers as it ceases operations

The embattled US trucking company Yellow ceased operations on Sunday, and it has laid off all 30,000 of its workers. Yellow, once one of America’s dominant shipping companies, intends to file for bankruptcy, said the Teamsters union, which represents employees of the firm. The filing would come after Yellow failed to reorganize and refinance more than a billion dollars in debt.

The company, whose customers included Walmart and Home Depot, has been financially imperiled for years. It received a $700m pandemic relief loan from the federal government in 2020, which loaded further debt on to a struggling service. Earlier this month, Yellow averted a threatened strike by 22,000 Teamsters-represented workers and last week it said it was exploring opportunities to divest its third-party logistics company.

“Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government,” the Teamsters general president, Sean O’Brien, said in a statement.

Much more at the link.

Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils

Big-business lobbyists, including big agricultural and construction groups, are pushing to water down or stymie efforts at the federal and state levels to implement workplace heat protection standards.

This summer, millions in the US have been exposed to some of the hottest days on record, inciting renewed urgency for federal protections from heat exposure for US workers. The Biden administration has proposed federal heat protections for workers. But those rules face stiff opposition and could take several years to be finalized under current rule-making processes and laws. They could even be scrapped depending on the outcome of 2024’s election.

Business groups and lobbyists have aggressively opposed efforts at state and federal levels to enact heat protection standards for workers, claiming employers already practice what a standard would mandate, expressing concerns about the burden on employers, and claiming the efforts take a “wrong approach”.

Business groups and lobbyists have aggressively opposed efforts at state and federal levels to enact heat protection standards for workers, claiming employers already practice what a standard would mandate, expressing concerns about the burden on employers, and claiming the efforts take a “wrong approach”.

Between 2011 to 2021, 436 workers died from heat exposure according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but that is most likely an undercount because heat-related deaths are often attributed to other accidents or health conditions. At present, no federal law protects workers specifically from extreme heat. Farm workers and advocacy groups are also pushing to include heat protections for farm workers in the 2023 farm bill currently being considered by Congress. But with Republicans in control of Congress, such a measure is unlikely to pass.

Texas prisoners say heatwave turns cells into ovens

In Texas, animal shelters are obliged by law to ensure that their ambient temperature does not rise above 85F (29C) for more than two hours, a measure designed to protect dogs and cats from extreme heat and provide for their “health and wellbeing”.

If only humans were so lucky.

Across the state, in prisons that have no cooling systems, up to 100,000 incarcerated people are baking in concrete and metal cells that act as heat traps. Inside temperatures are estimated to rise regularly above 115F (46C), and have even been recorded to reach as high as 149F, pushing individuals to the point of mental or physical breakdown, or even death.

With Texas set to enter the hottest part of the year over the next two weeks, and with a brutal climate-crisis-fuelled heatwave pummeling the US south, conditions inside its dilapidated and overcrowded penal institutions are reaching crisis point. Inmates have told the Guardian that they are stuck virtually around the clock inside cells they described as ovens. ...

Texas is one of at least 13 states without universal prison air conditioning. About 70% of its units have partial or no cooling systems.

Amite Dominick, president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates (TPCA) which works with inmates and their families, estimates that at capacity there would be more than 100,000 inmates baking in dangerously hot cells.

Dems ACCIDENTALLY Admit Biden LIES On Hunter

Trump increases Republican primary lead despite swirling legal peril

Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is “ready to go” with indictments in her investigation of Donald Trump’s election subversion. In Washington, the special counsel Jack Smith is expected to add charges regarding election subversion to 40 counts already filed over the former president’s retention of classified records.

Trump already faces 34 criminal charges in New York over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Referring to Trump being ordered to pay $5m after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, a judge recently said Carroll proved Trump raped her. Lawsuits over Trump’s business affairs continue.

Yet a month out from the first debate of the Republican presidential primary, Trump’s domination of the field increases with each poll.

On Monday, the first 2024 survey from the New York Times and Siena College put Trump at 54% support. His closest challenger, Ron DeSantis, was at 17%. No one else – including Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley – was higher than 3%.

DeSantis’s hard-right campaign is widely seen to be out of fuel and on a glide path to destruction. Trump dominates early voting states and in national averages leads the Florida governor by more than 30 points.

U.S. War Machine Is KILLING The U.S. Middle Class – RFK Jr.

US climate change reforestation plans face key problem: lack of tree seedlings

In an effort to slash carbon emissions and provide relief from extreme heat, governments across the nation and globally have pledged to plant trees. But the US is not equipped with the tree seedlings to furnish its own plans, according to a new study. US tree nurseries do not grow nearly enough trees to bring ambitious planting schemes to fruition, and they also lack the plant species diversity those plans require, according to research published in the journal Bioscience on Monday,

For the study, 13 scientists examined 605 plant nurseries across 20 northern states. Only 56 of them – or less than 10% – grow and sell seedlings in the volumes needed for conservation and reforestation. The team, led by two scientists at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, also found that forest nurseries tend to maintain a limited inventory of a select few species of trees, with priority placed on trees valued for commercial timber production. As a result, nurseries suffer from an “overwhelming scarcity of seedlings” that are well-suited for climate plans, the authors write.

“Despite the excitement and novelty of that idea in many policy and philanthropy circles – when push comes to shove, it’s very challenging on the ground to actually find either the species or the seed sources needed,” said Peter Clark, a forest ecologist at the University of Vermont, who led the new study.

The research comes as swaths of the US face relentless heatwaves. Phoenix, which has experienced record-shattering heat this summer, has said it intends to plant 200 trees a mile in select areas, and has invested $1.5m into the plan. Many US municipalities have made similar tree planting pledges.

On the federal level, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided money for the US Forest Service to plant more than 1bn trees in the next nine years. And the World Economic Forum also aims to help plant 1tn trees around the world by 2030. But trees that can thrive amid local ecological and climate conditions are crucial to meeting such plans, and many nurseries the researchers examined had no stock available of seedlings that have adapted to local conditions. The researchers also found a dearth of “future-climate-suitable” varieties, or varieties that will survive amid worsening heat and extreme weather conditions.

PROOF The Establishment Doesn’t Actually Care About Climate Change!

Huge wildfire explodes in southern California and spreads into Nevada

A huge wildfire burning out of control in California’s Mojave national preserve is spreading rapidly amid erratic winds and high temperatures. The York Fire erupted on Friday near the remote Caruthers Canyon area of the wildland preserve. It crossed the state line into Nevada on Sunday and sent smoke further east into the Las Vegas Valley.

The fire is one of two major blazes burning in California as the region faces hot and dry weather. Firefighters said they had made progress battling the other blaze, the Bonny fire in Riverside county.

The York Fire was mapped at roughly 120 sq miles (284 sq km) on Monday with no containment.

Back in the Mojave desert, wind-driven flames that reached as high as 20ft (6m) in some spots charred tens of thousands of acres of desert scrub, juniper and Joshua tree woodland. The fire had scorched 120 sq miles by Monday and was at zero containment.

The US west has seen an unusually quiet fire season so far, as wet weather improved the devastating drought levels that have plagued the region and delayed the onset of fire weather conditions. But experts have warned that the reprieve would not be permanent. A historic heatwave began blasting the lower south-west US in late June, stretching from Texas across New Mexico and Arizona and into California’s desert.

Phoenix’s record streak of temperatures above 110F ends after 31 days

Phoenix’s record stretch of daily highs over 110F (43.3C) ended Monday as cooling monsoon rains slightly tempered the dangerous heatwave that suffocated the American south-west throughout July.

The region, from Texas across New Mexico and Arizona and into California’s desert, has been grappling with historic heat since June. Phoenix and its suburbs sweltered more intensely than most, with several records including the 31 consecutive days of 110F days. The previous record was 18 straight days, set in 1974.

The streak was finally broken Monday, when the high topped out at 108F (42.2C), the National Weather Service reported.

But the reprieve was expected to be brief, with the forecast calling for highs again above 110F for several days later in the week. And National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Hirsch said August could be even hotter than July.

Also of Interest

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

Max Blumenthal SLAMS Biden After Admin REJECTS Australia's PLEA To Free Julian Assange

US admits to pushing Ukraine into a fight it can't win

Ukrainian Soldiers Tell Of High Losses For Little Gains

Mutiny Against the World Order

Chris Hedges: The Forgotten Victims of America’s Class War

Humans Might Be About to Break the Ocean? Don’t Stop the Presses

Quick Takes 5: The Year Climate Change Became Undeniable

Paul Reubens, actor best known for playing Pee-wee Herman, dies aged 70

A Little Night Music

Betty Everett - You’re No Good

Betty Everett - I've Got A Claim On You Baby

Betty Everett - Until You Were Gone

Betty Everett - I Can't Hear You

Betty Everett - I'll Be There

Betty Everett - My Love

Betty Everett & Jerry Butler - Love Is Strange

Betty Everett - Chained To Your Love

Betty Everett - The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)