The Evening Blues - 8-18-23
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features rock n' roll piano player Little Richard. Enjoy!
Little Richard - Lucille
"I've had some wonderful ideas for getting the dominating going. I've got some extremely subtle advertising slogans that should get the public behind us. Things like "Vote for EL Wisty and lovely nude ladies will come and dance with you." It's a complete lie, of course, but you can't afford to be too scrupulous if you're going to dominate the world."
-- Peter Cook
News and Opinion
Rename The Secretary Of State The Secretary Of Hypocrisy
US Secretary of State Tony Blinken tweeted in celebration of Pakistan’s preparations for “free and fair elections” on Wednesday, a week after it was revealed that the US pressured Pakistan to oust its popular democratically elected prime minister Imran Khan last year.
“Congratulations to new Pakistan Interim Prime Minister @anwaar_kakar,” tweeted Blinken. “As Pakistan prepares for free and fair elections, in accordance with its constitution and the rights to freedom of speech and assembly, we will continue to advance our shared commitment to economic prosperity.”
An article published by The Intercept last week titled “Secret Pakistan Cable Documents U.S. Pressure to Remove Imran Khan” revealed evidence that the US State Department which Blinken heads had placed pressure on the Pakistani government to remove Khan from office in March of last year. A leaked document reports that State Department official Donald Lu issued blatant threats to Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States that “it will be tough going ahead” for Pakistan if Khan wasn’t ousted but “all will be forgiven” if he was, saying the US and its European allies didn’t like the prime minister’s “aggressively neutral position” on the Ukraine war.
The following month Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote, and he now sits in prison, officially barred from politics for five years.
Congratulations to new Pakistan Interim Prime Minister @anwaar_kakar. As Pakistan prepares for free and fair elections, in accordance with its constitution and the rights to freedom of speech and assembly, we will continue to advance our shared commitment to economic prosperity.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) August 16, 2023
The authenticity of the document has been begrudgingly confirmed by Pakistani officials opposed to Khan, yet prior to its publication by The Intercept the US State Department had denied what was revealed by its contents on multiple occasions. Last month State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said unequivocally that “the United States does not have a position on one political candidate or party versus another in Pakistan or any other country,” which is plainly contradicted by the revelations in the document.
Obviously if you’ve got officials from the world’s most powerful, violent and destructive government telling your country “it will be tough going ahead” if its prime minister is not removed from power but “all will be forgiven” if he is, that’s brazen interference in the democratic processes of that nation. Yet here is the head of the State Department babbling about the wonderful “free and fair elections” in Pakistan.
Earlier this month the State Department put out another doozy on Twitter (or whatever we’re calling it now), quoting Blinken saying “Governments that violate human rights are almost always the same ones that flout other key parts of that order — such as invading, coercing, and threatening other countries, or breaking trade rules.”
All of which the US government of course does regularly.
Such glaring hypocrisy is standard for US secretaries of state, because their job entails continually using concepts like democracy and human rights not as values that they wish to promote, but as political cudgels to be used against their enemies.
This was explained in stark detail in a leaked 2017 State Department memo in which warmongering swamp monster Brian Hook was seen explaining how the US government views “human rights” to then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson — a newcomer to the DC underworld at the time. Hook told Tillerson that human rights violations should be forcefully criticized in America’s enemies, and overlooked in nations that bow to the dictates of Washington.
“One useful guideline for a realistic and successful foreign policy is that allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries,” Hook wrote, naming China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as examples of adversary nations who should be aggressively criticized for human rights violations, and naming Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines as examples of US-aligned nations where human rights violations should be overlooked.
The memo was labeled “SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED”, which is a good designation for information about something that isn’t really a secret in Washington but they’d still definitely prefer people didn’t pay much attention to.
Since we know this is the established orthodoxy in the US State Department, it’s no wonder that secretaries of state are always speaking in ways that run directly counter to the actions of their own government. The US empire doesn’t care about democracy or human rights, it cares about power and control. Paying lip service to democracy and human rights is just one of the ways they manufacture the illusion of moral authority while diplomatically undermining the governments they don’t like.
For this reason it would perhaps be better to refer to the State Department as the Hypocrisy Department, and the secretary of state the secretary of hypocrisy. Or maybe the secretary of hypocritical finger-wagging, if you want to get fancy about things.
The State Department was originally meant to be the counterpart to the War Department. The War Department (later renamed the Department of Defense to keep things from being too obvious) was meant to focus on war, and the State Department was meant to focus on diplomacy and peace.
What ended up happening, as the US power structure morphed into a globe-spanning empire dependent on endless violence and aggression, is that the State Department wound up focusing more and more on manufacturing interventionist narratives on the world stage to gin up international support for starvation sanctions, proxy wars and war coalitions.
So in practice the US ended up with two war departments: the Department of Defense and the State Department. Which is why you’ve seen the nation’s secretaries of state becoming more and more jingoistic and psychopathic, to the point where some sort of antisocial personality disorder is almost a job requirement for the position.
But that’s just what the US empire is at this point in history: a giant, planet-sprawling bully with a severe personality disorder. The US empire has all the personality characteristics of a malignant narcissist — it sees people as resources to exploit instead of as humans to relate to, it communicates to manipulate and control rather than to connect and understand, and anyone who doesn’t center its desires as a priority above all else becomes its enemy.
Couldn’t ask for a better face to place on that operation than Antony John Blinken.
US reportedly approves sending F-16 jets to Ukraine from Denmark and Netherlands
The United States has approved sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from Denmark and the Netherlands as soon as pilot training is completed, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says in a letter seen by the Reuters news agency.
Washington will expedite the approval of transfer requests for F-16s, the letter – sent to Blinken’s counterparts in Denmark and the Netherlands – was reported to say. The US must approve the transfer of the military jets from its allies to Ukraine.
“I am writing to express the United States’ full support for both the transfer of F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine and for the training of Ukrainian pilots by qualified F-16 instructors,” Blinken said in the letter. ...
The US president, Joe Biden, endorsed training programmes for Ukrainian pilots on F-16s in May. In addition to Denmark, a training centre was to be set up in Romania. Russia responded to the endorsement by claiming that providing F-16s to Ukraine posed a “colossal risk” to western nations.
Rus Storming Kupiansk; Ukr Last Ditch Attack Save Offensive, US Intel Doubts Success; China Economy
Congressional Ukraine Caucus Co-Chair Says War May Not Be ‘Winnable’
Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), a co-chair of the congressional Ukraine Caucus, said this week that he’s not sure if the Ukraine war is “winnable” and called for the US to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue peace talks.
Harris is also a member of the Freedom Caucus, which has many members who have opposed US support for Ukraine. But Harris has been a staunch supporter of the proxy war against Russia throughout the conflict.
“Is this more a stalemate? Should we be realistic about it? I think we probably should,” Harris said at a town hall on Tuesday night, according to POLITICO. Discussing the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Harris said, “I’ll be blunt, it’s failed.”
Report: Ukrainian Leadership Divided on Stalling Counteroffensive
Newsweek reported on Wednesday that Ukrainian leadership is divided on what steps to take amid Ukraine’s stalling counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Citing sources familiar with the discussions, the report said that officials within the presidential office want to consolidate Ukraine’s small gains and prepare for a Russian offensive that’s expected in the fall or winter. Officials within the military high command, including Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny, want to keep pressing forward. ...
The source said that some Ukrainian officials felt the military misled them about their chances of success. “There’s a sense that they were misled by the military in terms of how well this counteroffensive would go, that they were provided with overly rosy assessments from the military side,” the source said. “And they’re unhappy about that.”
US Considers Ways to Keep Its Military Presence in Niger
The Biden administration is considering ways to maintain its military presence in Niger following the July 26 coup that ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
Niger serves as a platform for US operations in the Sahel region as it hosts about 1,100 troops and a major drone base that cost over $100 million to build, known as Air Base 201.
The US has not formally declared the situation in Niger a coup since that would require cutting off aid and other types of support to the Nigerien military. CNN reported Thursday that one option being considered to maintain the US military presence in the country is issuing a waiver to allow US operations to continue in Niger if a coup determination is made.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that another option for the administration would be to stop short of declaring a coup and working out an arrangement with the junta to continue counterterrorism support.
West African bloc prepared for military intervention after Niger coup
A west African regional political grouping has reiterated it is prepared to intervene militarily in Niger following last month’s coup, describing the country’s detained president, Mohamed Bazoum, as a hostage. Ecowas’s commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, Abdel-Fatau Musah, made the comments as military chiefs of staff from the bloc met in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on Thursday and accused Niger’s military junta of “playing cat and mouse” with the grouping by refusing to meet its envoys.
The meeting in Accra, which had originally been planned for last weekend, was called to discuss details of the standby military force authorised by Ecowas when a deadline to release Bazoum and restore democracy expired. ...
Musah strongly criticised the junta’s announcement that it had evidence to put Bazoum on trial for treason. The UN, EU and Ecowas have all expressed concerns about the conditions of his detention. ...
Musah added that all of the blocs’ members, except for those under military rule and Cape Verde, had agreed to provide troops.
Despite the strong language, a number of key countries that have said they would supply forces are facing domestic political pushback over the proposed intervention, including Nigeria and Ghana. Nigeria’s senate has expressed objections, while opposition parties in Ghana have questioned the legal basis for an intervention under the country’s constitution.
Another stumbling block is the African Union. The AU’s peace and security council met in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Monday for talks on the crisis in Niger. There were reports that a reportedly “difficult” meeting had rejected the proposed Ecowas intervention, with southern and northern African countries said to be “fiercely against any military intervention”, according to a diplomat who spoke to French media.
Family of pregnant woman fatally shot by Colorado police sue
Destinee Thompson was supposed to be on her way to lunch with her stepmother in August 2021 when Colorado police, mistaking her for a robbery suspect, fatally shot the pregnant mother as she fled in her minivan. Frustrated by the district attorney’s decision last year not to charge the officers, Thompson’s family filed a wrongful death and excessive force lawsuit on Tuesday against five officers from the Denver suburb of Arvada who were present when she was killed.
“I want their badges,” said Francis Thompson, Destinee’s father. “She’s 5ft tall, seven months pregnant ... You’re a grown man and you’re threatened by that? You don’t deserve to be able to wear a badge.” They allege Destinee Thompson’s race – she is part Hispanic and part Native American – played a role in her being targeted. Officers were looking for a suspect described as white or Hispanic.
“If this was an affluent white person getting into her vehicle, they would never have stopped her,” said Siddhartha Rathod, an attorney representing her family.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Arvada police department said the family’s lawyer has mischaracterized the events surrounding Thompson’s death, and the agency plans to mount a vigorous legal defense.
10 Bay Area police officers arrested in FBI corruption probe: Officials
FBI arrest California police officers involved in racist text messages scandal
The FBI arrested nine current and former California police officers on Thursday as part of a major criminal investigation into racist text messages of dozens of law enforcement officials, prosecutors said.
Early-morning federal raids, first reported by the Bay Area News Group, rounded up officers from Antioch and Pittsburg, two cities east of San Francisco, after they were charged in four grand jury indictments.
The arrests come after revelations that Antioch officers sent violently racist, misogynistic and anti-gay text messages between 2019 and 2022. The hateful messages emerged as part of an inquiry by federal officials and local prosecutors investigating claims of widespread civil rights violations, excessive force and falsification of records.
Officers were exposed referring to Black people as “gorillas” and bragging about beating up local residents and fabricating evidence. Some group texts included supervisors. In April, it was revealed that more than 45 officers, representing nearly half of Antioch’s police department, were implicated in racist behavior. ...
As of Thursday afternoon, six of the defendants had pleaded not guilty and were released, most with $100,000 bonds, the newspaper reported. They are facing 10 to 20 years behind bars on most of the charges.
Biden Used FAKE NAME To Talk To Son Hunter’s Biz Partners & Make Secret Calls: Report
Hillary & Rachel Maddow Tell The Biggest Lie Of 2023!
Hey, looky! Billionaires are worse for climate change than cows or farms! Perhaps Klaus Schwab should look to eliminate billionaires instead of farms ... can billionaires own nothing and be happy? I don't think so ...
Wealthiest 10% of US Households Responsible for 40% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The richest tenth of U.S. households are responsible for 40% of all the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, a study published Thursday revealed, underscoring what progressives say is the need for regulations and taxes on carbon-intensive investments.
Published in PLOS Climate, the study—which was led by University of Massachusetts, Amherst sustainability scientist Jared Starr—analyzed 30 years of U.S. household income data and the greenhouse gas emissions generated in creating that income.
"We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines," the paper notes. "In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households."
"Among the highest-earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15-17% of national emissions), investment holdings account for 38-43% of their emissions," the publication continues. "Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution."
The study's findings are consistent with research published in 2021 by the Institute for European Environmental Policy and the Stockholm Environment Institute that estimated the wealthiest 1% of humanity was on track to produce 16% of all global CO2 emissions by 2030. Additionally, a 2022 Oxfam report found that a single billionaire produces a million times more carbon emissions than the average person.
Drinking water of millions of Americans contaminated with ‘forever chemicals’
The data shows that drinking water systems serving small towns to large cities – from tiny Collegeville, Pennsylvania, to Fresno, California – contain measurable levels of so-called “forever chemicals”, a family of durable compounds long used in a variety of commercial products but that are now known to be harmful.
The water of as many as 26 million Americans is contaminated, according to an analysis of the new EPA data performed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington DC-based non-profit. ...
Scientists and environmental advocates have increasingly warned about the harms of chemicals like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in recent decades, leading to an agreement between the the EPA and chemical manufacturers such as DuPont and 3M to phase out PFOA by 2015.
However, lasting pollution of the environment and human bodies with forever chemicals continues. Studies show nearly all Americans have some level of PFOA, PFOS, and similar chemicals, scientifically known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), circulating in their bodies. Additional analyses calculate that hundreds of millions of Americans are probably exposed through drinking water contamination.
Plantation Disaster Capitalism: Native Hawaiians Organize to Stop Land & Water Grabs After Maui Fire
Worth a click and a full read:
Why was there no water to fight the fire in Maui?
All over Maui, golf courses glisten emerald green, hotels manage to fill their pools and corporations stockpile water to sell to luxury estates. And yet, when it came time to fight the fires, some hoses ran dry. Why? The reason is the long-running battle over west Maui’s most precious natural resource: water. That’s why, on Tuesday 8 August, when Tereariʻi Chandler-ʻĪao was fleeing the fires in Lahaina, she grabbed a bag of clothes, some food – and something a little unconventional: a box filled with water use permit applications.
Despite her personal calamity, Tereariʻi, a grassroots attorney, already knew that the fight for Maui’s future was about to intensify, and at its heart would not be fire, but another element entirely: water. Specifically, the water rights of Native Hawaiians, rights that a long parade of plantations, real estate developers, and luxury resorts have been stifling for nearly two centuries. As the flames approached, Tereariʻi feared that, under cover of emergency, those large players might finally get their chance to grab west Maui’s water for good. She also knew something else: that the only force with a hope of stopping that theft would be organized grassroots communities – even though those very communities were already stretched to breaking point saving lives and searching for lost loved ones. ...
Disaster capitalism has taken many forms in different contexts. ... It’s always a little different, which is why some Native Hawaiians have taken to calling their unique version by a slightly different term: plantation disaster capitalism. It’s a name that speaks to contemporary forms of neocolonialism and climate profiteering, like the real estate agents who have been cold-calling Lahaina residents who have lost everything to the fire and prodding them to sell their ancestral lands rather than wait for compensation. But it also places these moves inside the long and ongoing history of settler colonial resource theft and trickery, making clear that while disaster capitalism might have some modern disguises, it’s a very old tactic. A tactic that Native Hawaiians have a great deal of experience resisting.
Which brings us back to what was in that box that Tereariʻi rescued, and the place of water in this fateful moment. For over a century, water across Maui Komohana, the western region of the island, has been extracted to benefit outside interests: first large sugar plantations and, more recently, their corporate successors. The companies – including West Maui Land Co (WML) and its subsidiaries, as well as Kaanapali Land Management and Maui Land & Pineapple Inc – have devoured the island’s natural resources to develop McMansions, colonial-style subdivisions, luxury resorts and golf courses where cane and pineapple once grew.
This historical and modern plantation economy has taken a tremendous toll on water in particular, draining Indigenous ecologies of their natural moisture. Lahaina, once known as the Venice of the Pacific, has been transformed into a parched desert, which is part of what has made it so vulnerable to fire. Plantation skimming wells dried up Mokuhinia, an at least 15-acre freshwater fishpond, that nourished Mokuʻula, an island within the pond that was the seat of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In the early 1900s, the plantation filled Mokuhinia with dirt, and eventually a baseball field and parking lot appeared over the sacred site.
Even long after most of those original plantations closed, the infrastructure and dynamics of water theft remained. Today, many Native Hawaiian communities, who have lived in Maui Komohana since time immemorial, remain cut off from water for their basic needs, including drinking, laundry and traditional crop irrigation. For instance, Lauren Palakiko, whose family has resided in Kauaʻula for centuries and has priority water rights under the law, last year testified at a state water commission hearing that she had to bathe her baby in a bucket because not enough water reached her home. That’s because the streams that once flowed through their valley are diverted for luxury subdivisions, which often occupy plantation-controlled lands. It’s a situation that has left many Native families with no access to county water lines (which also means no fire hydrants) as well as no paved roads to escape the fires that increasingly threaten their homes and lives.
Head of Maui emergency agency resigns after defending not sounding sirens
The head of the Maui emergency management agency, who has been under fire for not activating disaster sirens during last week’s wildfire response, resigned Thursday, citing health reasons. Richard Bissen, the Maui mayor, accepted the resignation of Herman Andaya, the county of Maui announced on Facebook.
“Given the gravity of the crisis we are facing, my team and I will be placing someone in this key position as quickly as possible and I look forward to making that announcement soon,” Bissen said.
As the wildfire death toll rose to 111 on Wednesday, Andaya defended not sounding sirens as flames raged. “We were afraid that people would have gone mauka,” Herman Andaya, Maui emergency management agency administrator, said at a news conference, using the Hawaiian directional term that can mean toward the mountains or inland. “If that was the case then they would have gone into the fire.”
There are no sirens in the mountains, where the fire was spreading downhill. The system was created after a 1946 tsunami that killed more than 150 on the Big Island, and its website says they may be used to alert for fires.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Why This Ship Was Allowed To Leave Ukraine
‘The Greatest Fighting Force in Human History’ – The Perpetual Wars You Aren’t Supposed to Notice
Is Industrial Society on the Verge of Collapse?
WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group
Florida’s coral at severe risk of bleaching after ‘unprecedented’ heat stress
90% of Great Lakes water samples have unsafe microplastic levels – report
Fossil fuel firms move to dismiss climate lawsuit in Hawaii as Maui faces wildfires
Inside the Smithsonian's "Racial Brain Collection" & the Eugenics Project Behind It
Cops REBUKED In Insane Kansas Paper Raid
A Little Night Music
Little Richard - Tutti Frutti
Little Richard - Rip It Up
Little Richard - Good Golly Miss Molly
Little Richard - She's Got It
Little Richard - Freedom Blues
Little Richard - Greenwood, Mississippi
Little Richard - I Saw Her Standing There
UPSETTERS (Little Richard) - Every night about this time
The Girl Can’t Help It
Little Richard - Jenny, Jenny
Comments
Good golly
methinks the 'sure likes to ball' part is a throwback to when
that meant dancing. Ah, simpler times.
Thanks for the blues joe!
question everything
evening qms...
yep, good golly, people did like to dance back in simpler times. maybe they still do.
have a great evening!
We're totally going to vote-shame Biden to victory!
Because, you know, if we were REALLY scared of Trump, we'd have chosen something better than this:
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
evening cass...
yep, this election is shaping up to be a crapshoot where the general public is asked to pick their favorite deeply corrupt, demented old man to run the country. do you choose the one who can't speak and does awful things or the one that can speak and does awful things?
choices, choices, choices. what to do?
Shush! It is a secret. But there are plausible rumors.
The rest of the tweet:
evening humphrey...
is there any information that shows that people from that base were deployed to ukraine? just curious.
Even if they were I find highly unlikely that there would be
an official announcement of troops being deployed. Any previous fatalities were ex soldiers serving as mercenaries. Wink! Wink!
Naomi Klein is back
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/17/hawaii-fires-maui-...
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
yep...
i saw that and it's actually a good article, so it's included upstairs in the evening greens.
This from Scott Ritter about transforming from U-tube
to Rumble ..
YouTube, Censorship, and the American Way of Life
https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=6892&post_id=136208469...
sorry, I don't know how to embed
question everything
I suppose this doesn't work
https://rumble.com/embed/v360dtg/?pub=4
ne well and have a good one
there is some javascript but I don't like to include JS in anything
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
testing...
i found some iframe code on rumble:
I didn’t see you had posted this
I excepted some below.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Groan!
.
Rachel: The system of democracy at its heart is the idea that the people get to decide how we are governed and if we no longer believe that our will is affectionately through the system, if bad actors tell us that every election is stolen and the only way it’s trustworthy is if they come out on top of it…..
What utter bullshit. I remember when democrats rigged the primary against Bernie and then Obama made all of Biden’s opponents drop out except for Liz Warren because she was needed to take votes away from Bernie. And how did Hillary sit there with a straight face instead of cracking up and rolling on the floor laughing her ass off after she has spent the last 5 years saying that Putin rigged the election against her. And she got the intelligence agencies to make up facts that proved he did. That’s all I could stomach of both Rachel and Kurt.
And Stacey Abrams (Adams?) has said that she won the governorship and she still hasn’t conceded the election? There are numerous other accounts of democrats who have said they didn’t believe the election results going back decades.
I didn’t watch the rest of what she said because I can’t stand how she has sold out. Or maybe I liked her days at Air America because she was bitching about Bush. Maybe she would have been different if she was there when Obama was president.
The b*tch has never apologized or taken her tweet down after she reported that people with gunshots couldn’t get into the emergency room because so many people had OD'd on ivermectin.
The military organization that is run by a Jewish man wants Fox News not to be shown on air bases because of the xenophobic rhetoric against Jews and Muslims, but doesn’t seem to have a problem with MSDNC and its xenophobia against Russia. Hey dummy…it’s the media’s job to create division to keep us fighting each other instead of focusing our ire on the PTB.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
evening snoopy...
if rachel actually believes that in our demockery the people choose their representation, she is dimmer than i thought.
Scott Ritter has an excellent op Ed on his utube banning
https://www.rt.com/news/581415-scott-ritter-youtube-ban/
Remember that the CIA works with an Ukraine intelligence agency that puts people critical of Ukraine on their kill list including many Americans. I think that is taking censorship to a serious extreme. But apparently no one in government sees any problem with it.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
heh...
i'm glad that ritter has found a home on rumble. i hope that some smart folks are building out the next home(s) when the u.s. government shuts down rumble.
Good evening Joe, et. al. Thanks for the EBs, Joe.
That article
Really misrepresents the case against those cops. Yes, they did exchange racist and homophobic text messages, but that simply started what turned out to be a 2 year, multi-state investigation into, basically, one or more police gangs. There's a long list of wrongdoing, and, in many or most cases, conspiracies to do so. Excessive and unnecessary force, including at least one outright assault where they conspired to track down some guy who flipped them off and beat him, shit like that. Also defrauding the departments they worked for and falsification of logs and records, cover-ups and at least one attempt to destroy evidence. I also got the impression that these guys are just the tip of the iceberg.
Thought that I'd note in passing that F-16s are nuclear capable. Just sayin'. Don't expect them to actually fly out of Ukr, so who is going to take it on the chin? Romania?
and don't forget the Mămăligă !
have a wonderful weekend
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
to be fair, there was more to the article than i quoted, i picked some highlights because, well, it would not be fair use to take the whole thing. some of the information you mention was in the article.
anyway, yep, f16's are nuke capable, but only a madman (or john bolton, but i repeat myself) would give nukes to ukraine.
i don't think that we have to worry much about the f16s, though. i'm pretty sure that they won't last long, nor will the places that they fly out of. you have to wonder if the europeans are as crazy as brandon and the neocons are.
It's appropriate
...that Responsible Statecraft address this topic amid the fanfare of the fantasy at Camp David.
Camp David summit: A trilateral march toward instability?
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/08/18/camp-david-summit-a-trilate...
This article recounts the illusory rapprochement that has allegedly occurred between South Korea and Japan in order to please the US. There really was no negotiation by Yoon with Japan, he basically unilaterally made concessions to Japan which for its part, yielded virtually nothing.
The illusion of mending the rift is also set out in the WP, NYT, CNN, etc. RS attempts to explore the weaknesses.
One caveat on the discussion is that the 1965 Japan South Korea Agreement didn't settle personal claims for injury,* and at the same time was never an arms length agreement/treaty that bound anyone but the subsequent dictatorships to its commitments. The reasons are two fold. 1) The dictator Park Chung-hee was a former agent of the Japanese Imperial Army and 2) he and his cronies were bribed to enter into the agreement. Park was supported politically by Japanese funds. The position that the agreement barred personal claims was adopted later by Japan. The original intent, was the position ultimately adopted by the South Korean high court, during the Park Geun-hye administration, such claims are permissible under the agreement. Yoon basically repudiated the judicial branch's decision, humiliating himself before the Korean people.
*Individual Claims Not Covered by 1965 Treaty: Documents
https://www.donga.com/en/List/article/all/20100315/264613/1
Recent Developments in Korean-Japanese Historical Reconciliation, Apr 26, 2010
William Underwood and Hankyoreh, posted in APJJF
https://apjjf.org/-William-Underwood/3348/article.html
Excerpt from Respnsible Statecraft-
Yoon didn't "calculate" anything. He's a rabid red baiting anti communist and a corrupt authoritarian figure. He routinely accuses his opposition of being communists in disguise and prosecutes them on this and other spurious bases. The article goes on to state that Yoon wants to "lock in" this "progress." This is what the US wants, not South Korea. The language about Yoon's "audacious initiative" toward North Korea, and "bold decision" to resolve Pacific War issues with Japan is simply US propaganda. There is no "audacious initiative" toward North Korea. The bold decision is regarded by South Koreans as a national humiliation on a level with the "Traitors of Eulsa." The article also states incorrectly that Japan wants to resolve issues with North Korea, especially the Japan North Korea abduction issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the nominal issue that defeats Japan-North Korean relations which like the US policy is aimed at interminable division on the Korean peninsula. The underlying far greater issue likely never to be resolved in light of Japanese intransigence to the present day on its responsibility for war crimes is the matter of slave labor, conscription, and sex slaves from the North Korean region as well during the Pacific war. So much for "shared values."
President Yoon portrayed as Lee Won-yong, the infamous traitor of the Treaty of Eulsa (1905), who sold his country out to Japan.
Thanks for the EBs and news roundup Joe!
語必忠信 行必正直
evening soryang...
that's interesting language in the rs piece regarding "locking in" policies unpopular with the average citizens:
yoon apparently wants to do what his u.s. masters want him to do and his u.s. masters have had years of success at imposing unpopular policies on its own citizenry so i guess they assume that it can be repeated abroad.
Exactly!
During the former Moon Jae-in administration which was taking a diplomatic approach to North Korea disapproved by the US, they were repeatedly told by US diplomats to get in "lock step" with the US position on North Korea, and that there should be "no daylight" between the US position and South Korea. Now the phrase du jour is "lock in." I think I heard Rahmbo use this phrase as well.
During the Moon administration, which demonstrated a lot of ingenuity in its approaches to North Korea, the US I'm sure threatened their diplomats behind the scenes with sanctions, whenever they wished to proceed with some limited initiative, like family re-unions, rail line surveys, re-opening of Geumgangsan, etc. Stephen Biegun was ostensibly the US Special Envoy to North Korea. I called him the South Korea control officer. VOA Korea often criticized the Moon administration's policy.
語必忠信 行必正直
Kunstler has a way with words
.
Link
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
heh...
so, kunstler expects the shit to hit the fan at the end of august? interesting. i would have thought that all this would take a while longer to reach a fever pitch. i guess we'll see.
Hey, joe!
Crooked cops? Really? Surely not! s/
The video with the white crowd watching Tutti Frutti being performed, and INTERPRETED by the fabulous black dancers, is just a treasure! They couldn't get their bodies or minds to grasp and react! Lol!
Little Richard rocked the house while I was a little kid.
Hope you and everyone else here is safe, sound, and keeping some optimism that we 99% will come up with a miracle plan to strive and thrive in the future.
Thanks for the great eb!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
heh, i'm just glad to see a few of them arrested and charged. that's a pretty unusual thing to watch and i've got the popcorn ready.
little richard's early stuff is some of the greatest rock n' roll ever made, it's always a pleasure to listen to it.
yeah, uh, still waiting on that miracle plan.
have a great weekend!
Whatever Miracle Plan
manifests will have to circumvent cbds. And facial recognition. And existing serveillance. And crooked cops.
Uh, the sooner, the better.
Let's see if the indigenous in Maui show us how to do it.
We are having the final fun weekend before heading home from a fairly long (for us) vacation. We will dine out at Lulu's tomorrow evening, Dear One gets his sea food fix, and we both get entertained by a duo that performs late 60s, 70s rock and soul. At some point, they will perform a Jimmy Buffett song, else his sister, Lulu, might not hire them again.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
HI all, Hey Joe,
HI all, Hey Joe,
Thanks for the Little Richard! He was awesome. I loved him from the first time I saw him. Which must have been on the Ed Sullivan show in the early 60's. The music was great, he was wild, I thought it was awesome. I think my folks were worried about that...
I was too young to know anything but the music and show, which were great. He could rock a house.
So the people making the polluting items, are the biggest polluters? Whooda thunk?
Thanks for the great soundscapes, and have a great weekend!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
evening dystopian...
heh, i think my folks might have been concerned about little richard, too. but then again, they had already gotten used to me listening to records by mississippi john hurt and son house that i had brought home from the library, so perhaps they weren't that surprised.
heh, the people making the wef policies on climate change are the biggest polluters by orders of magnitude, which should tell all of us something important.
have a great weekend!
I got lucky on the parents thingie.
Music from that era, all those great artists, roared from our radios and tv. I think my parents would have worried if I and my brother had disliked it! Go dance, kids!
We were surrounded by blacks when I was growing up, and remain so to this day. They were our friends, our neighbors, fishing and hunting buddies, they often worked on our farm, it just seemed so natural. We also loved their gospel music. This is my current vibe, except for the farm/ranch thing. I gave that up in 1999. My folks liked Chuck Berry better than Sinatra or The Beatles.
Fun story: It never occurred to my parents that Mom would have a girl. Well...Anyway, they wanted me to be named David Wayne plus my last name. Years later, our ranch foreman's wife gave birth to a son. They asked my father to name him. Well, they got their David Wayne.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
On MoA today
.
U.S. Sanctions Syrian 'Moderate Rebels' It Had Previously Armed
Because why not? Don’t we usually turn on our allies when we don’t need them anymore? How many previous leaders that were once our ally are dead now? Lettuce count them….
ETA
Be ends it with this:
One wonders how long it will take until the U.S. will sanction the fascists militia it has and is now arming and sponsoring in Ukraine.
Probably around the time our trustworthy Nazi friends start doing terrorist things in Europe with the weapons we have provided them. You’d think that after all the times our terrorist allies have turned on us that we’d be more hesitant to arm them. Unless there are alternatives motivates built in…wait, what?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
heh...
perhaps once the ukronazis figure out that they have functionally disarmed europe and run them out of ammo, they will decide that it is easier to start overthrowing their neighbors' governments and taking over than to defeat russia.
Lol…
I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens. Zelensky seems to have grown into his britches since the war started. He’s been ordering countries to do this and that with no authority to do so.
This is beyond words if true.
Naomi Klein thinks that disaster capitalism happens after a catastrophic event, but what if it was the plan all along? Why in hell has the disaster in Maui been handled like it was just after Katrina? Was it always happening everywhere and we just didn’t see it?
I’m sure that poor woman can find somewhere else to live with the fcking $700 that Biden might send her if she qualifies. And of course give up everything else that she should be entitled to. I hope that the response to the fire removes the blinders from so many people’s eyes!
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
I absolutely have to share this! LOL
Some great news?
.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50712808/appeals-court-strikes-down-utah-oil...
The oil train bomb has been cancelled for now. This project should have never been approved in the first place. And especially since we are still seeing one train derailment daily.
Of course there are lots of people bitching about the decision because of course they are. They have been told to object to everything that would hurt corporations profits. Unions. Living wage and universal healthcare.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
another cool song
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
with gratuitous Bill Haley Cameo at about 1:20 no less.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --