The Evening Blues - 2-15-24
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player Elmon "Driftin' Slim" Mickle. Enjoy!
Drifting Slim (Elmon Mickle) - My Sweet Woman
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
-- William Shakespeare
News and Opinion
The Killing Fields of Gaza
In Washington there currently resides not the leader of the free world, but a man engaged in an exercise of trying to cover his own arse. Biden’s cognitive decrepitude is only matched by his moral turpitude; his lack of scruples only matched by his surplus of hypocrisy.
In providing Netanyahu with a blank cheque in Gaza in terms of military aid, while at the same time urging restraint, his is an administration with an ocean of blood on its hands and a desert of credibility. “Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” Shakespeare warned in words that are eminently applicable now, today, as these words are being written.
What Israel’s genocidal slaughter has done, over and above the destruction of Gaza and its people, is pull back the flowery curtain of human rights, democracy and international law to reveal the savage beasts of hegemony, militarism and white supremacy that in truth underpins the West’s engagement with the rest of the world, particularly the global South.
“The last Christian died on the cross,” Nietzsche claimed, and who could possibly argue that the most prominent misanthrope in world philosophy was wrong in that assertion?
Joe Biden could quite literally pick up the phone and put a stop to this now. With the requisite political will and basic common decency, he could halt the arms transfers to Israel and order an immediate ceasefire.
That instead he is allowing this madness to go on is a grim legacy that will forever define both him as a man and his tenure as president of the United States.
Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Armageddon Coming in the Middle East?
Seven civilians killed in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon
Eight people, all but one of them civilians, have been killed in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon, official sources said, while the Israeli army said it lost a soldier in cross-border rocket fire.
While the rocket attack was not immediately claimed, the exchanges of fire – and the worst single-day civilian death toll in Lebanon since cross-border hostilities began in October – raised fears of a broader conflict between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah.
On Wednesday evening, four civilians from the same family “including two women” were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the city of Nabatiyeh, a Lebanese security source told AFP, updating an initial toll of three dead. “The residents of the apartment targeted have no links to Hezbollah,” added the source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Earlier, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Israeli warplanes targeted a house in south Lebanon’s Sawwaneh, killing three members of the same family, identifying them as a Syrian woman and her child, aged two, and stepchild, 13.
The agency said another Israeli attack targeting the village of Adshit killed one person, who Hezbollah announced was one of its fighters, and wounded 10 others, destroying a building and causing significant damage nearby.
Israeli Invasion of Rafah Would Lead to "Massive Bloodshed." Will Biden Take Any Action?
Netanyahu vows to press ahead with Rafah offensive as ceasefire talks continue
Negotiations involving multiple countries and high-level delegations on a Gaza ceasefire deal have entered a second day in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, as mediators struggle to make progress in the face of a threatened Israeli offensive on Rafah, the Palestinian territory’s last place of relative safety.
Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to press ahead with an offensive, but only after civilians are allowed to leave the “battle zones”. The Israeli prime minister did not make clear where the trapped civilians would be permitted to go, and what safeguards, if any, would be put in place to protect them. More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in the city.
The UN coordinator for relief operations, Martin Griffiths, warned that an offensive “could lead to a slaughter in Gaza”, and in a phone call with Netanyahu, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the Gaza death toll was “intolerable” and insisted the Israeli offensive “must cease”.
Diplomatic efforts continued meanwhile, with the aim of salvaging a new hostage and ceasefire deal that would forestall the offensive. Representatives for the Palestinian militant group Hamas were expected in Cairo on Wednesday, and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arrived on his first visit to Egypt after more than a decade of tensions between the regional powers over support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan said discussions with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who came to power in a 2013 coup, would focus on Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
On Tuesday Israel made a last-minute decision to send a delegation led by its heads of intelligence, David Barnea of the Mossad and Ronen Bar of the Shin Bet, which met US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Doctor Narrates Bombing of Nasser Hospital Just Before Israeli Troops Storm Complex
Journalist Reports from Rafah: “I Always Imagine Myself Being Blown Up”
Ireland and Spain demand EU reviews Israel trade deal over rights obligations
The prime ministers of Ireland and Spain have implored EU leaders to take action over the “deteriorating” situation in Gaza, demanding an immediate assessment of whether Israel is complying with human rights obligations that are stipulated in a trade deal with the bloc.
The letter was sent amid mounting international calls for Israel to drop plans for a military assault on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1 million Palestinians from the north and centre of the territory have fled seeking safety. At least 74 Palestinians were this week killed in an Israel rescue mission in the city in which two hostages were freed.
“Given the critical situation in Rafah, Ireland and Spain have just requested the European Commission urgently review whether Israel is complying with its obligations to respect human rights in Gaza,” Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, wrote on X.
The joint letter from Sánchez and Leo Varadkar, from Ireland, to the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, published on Wednesday, is a highly unusual move, even for the two leaders who have come to be the strongest champions of Palestinian rights in Brussels.
Sources said the letter was designed to prompt Brussels to seek official legal opinion on human rights compliance in the war and add to pressure on Israel over Rafah. “We are deeply concerned at the deteriorating situation in Israel and in Gaza, especially the impact the ongoing conflict is having on innocent Palestinians, especially children and women,” the letter said. “The expanded Israeli military operation in the Rafah area poses a grave and imminent threat that the international community must urgently confront.”
The three-page letter, which threatens to cause further divisions in the bloc over Israel, has demanded a review of the EU-Israel association agreement that came into force in 2000 and is the main basis for trade ties.
Israel STORMS Gaza Hospital, MURDERS American Teen in Palestinian GENOCIDE
Gaza women describe Israeli kidnapping, interrogations
Israel Jails Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer Diala Ayesh Without Charge
A young Palestinian human rights lawyer has been jailed by Israel for nearly a month without charge or trial after starting a group that trains female attorneys on how to visit the unprecedented number of Palestinians held in an Israeli prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Diala Ayesh, 28, was arrested on January 17 by Israeli occupation forces at a checkpoint near Bethlehem, according to the rights group Front Line Defenders. Another group, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, said that on January 25 Israeli authorities "issued an arbitrary administrative detention order" for Ayesh through May 16.
Addameer said that Ayesh "was subjected to assault, threats, and insults by occupation soldiers during her arrest." She was initially jailed in Hasharon Prison in Even Yehuda "in a cell of very poor conditions with an open window despite the cold weather" before being transferred to Damon Prison in northern Israel.
As Israeli authorities began arresting and jailing thousands of Palestinians in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Ayesh started a volunteer group that trains female lawyers on how to visit Palestinian prisoners and monitor their treatment by occupation forces. Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank have died in Israeli prisons since October 7, with some of the victims showing signs of torture and other abuse.
Front Line Defenders said Ayesh "has dedicated her work to advocating for the freedom and fair treatment of Palestinian political prisoners, focusing on ensuring fair trial guarantees and promoting freedom of expression."
"Additionally, she has actively engaged in monitoring and documenting the conditions of Palestinian political prisoners within the Israeli military prison system," the group added.
Ayesh formerly worked at Lawyers for Justice, a group that provides free legal aid and monitors human rights abuses by Palestinian authorities in the occupied territories. For this, she said she was detained, beaten, and sexually assaulted by her own people.
Addameer attorney Tala Nasser told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that that Ayesh's imprisonment is part of a "violent mass arrest campaign" in which more than 7,000 Palestinians have been jailed, most of under Israel's regime of administrative detention.
"This campaign includes activists, human rights defenders, and political leaders," said Nasser, who called the arrests "an attempt to silence them and prevent the exposure of the occupation's crimes across the whole country."
Men, women, and even children are jailed under this form of arbitrary indefinite detention without charge or trial that has been condemned by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights groups.
The International Observatory of Lawyers, an initiative of several European bar associations, said that Ayesh is one of at least 10 Palestinian lawyers being held under Israeli administrative detention.
"The observatory strongly condemnsthe arrest and unlawful detention of the lawyer Diala Ayesh, as well as the terrible conditions of detention to which she has been subjected," the group said in a statement last week urging Israeli authorities to "immediately and unconditionally release" all jailed attorneys.
Biden Pushes House to Approve Bill with $14B in Military Aid to Israel, Cuts UNRWA Funding
Biden signs order to shield Palestinians in US from deportation
Joe Biden has signed an order shielding several thousand Palestinians in the United States who need protection from deportation for the next 18 months, the White House said on Wednesday, citing deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
The move grants “deferred enforced departure” to an estimated 6,000 Palestinians, a Biden administration official said.
In a statement, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that following “the horrific October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, and Israel’s ensuing military response, humanitarian conditions in Gaza have significantly deteriorated”.
Sullivan said the US president’s decision would give Palestinians in the US “a temporary safe haven”. Anyone who voluntarily returns to the Palestinian territories would lose their protections, he added.
Russian SPACE NUKES?! 'Ntl Security Threat' Is Kremlin Plan To WEAPONIZE SPACE
Senior US official warns of security threat amid reports of Russian nuclear capability in space
The head of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, has called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”, which was later reported to involve Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space. In his statement, Turner, an Ohio Republican, gave no details about the supposed security threat.
Talking to reporters at the White House later on Wednesday, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, expressed surprise at Turner’s statement saying he was due to meet the “gang of eight” (congressional leaders with special security clearance for classified briefings) on Thursday. But Sullivan did not give any details of the planned meeting.
ABC News and the New York Times cited unnamed sources as saying that the security threat Turner was referring to involved the Russia’s potential deployment of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space. The New York Times said US allies had also been briefed on the intelligence, which was not deemed to represent an urgent threat, as the alleged Russian capability was still in development.
It is not clear whether the new intelligence alert is connected to a Russian launch on 9 February of a Soyuz rocket carrying a classified defence ministry payload. “Russia has been conducting several experiments with manoeuvring satellites that might be designed to sabotage other satellites,” Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, said. He pointed out that any such deployment of nuclear weapons in space would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which Moscow is a signatory.
“The issue is not so much about an increased nuclear weapons threat per se but that it would increase the threat against other countries’ space-based nuclear command and control assets. It would be highly destabilising.”
Australian parliament passes a vague motion on Julian Assange
In an attempt to assuage continuing popular outrage over the 15-year persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Australian House of Representatives yesterday voted 86-to-42 for an ambiguous resolution.
The motion did not call for the dropping of the reactionary US Espionage Act charges against Assange. Instead, it said that the House “underlines the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia.”
This is the latest in a series of efforts by the Albanese government and a “cross-party” group of parliamentarians, including from the Liberal-National opposition, as well as the Greens and others, to put on the appearance of seeking Assange’s freedom, while not criticising, let alone opposing, the protracted operation by the US and UK governments to lock away Assange for life.
The resolution was proposed by independent MP Andrew Wilkie with the evident agreement of the Labor government, whose ministers and other members voted for it. The move appeared to be carefully orchestrated. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was seen congratulating Wilkie on the floor of the assembly.
Tracking of Planned Parenthood Visits 'Should Terrify Every Single American'
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and privacy rights advocates this week are sounding the alarm about an anti-abortion group using cellphone location data to send misinformation to people who visited hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
"If a data broker could track Americans' cellphones to help extremists target misinformation to people at hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations across the United States, a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail," Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement Tuesday.
"Federal watchdogs should hold the data broker accountable for abusing Americans' private information," he added. "And Congress needs to step up as soon as possible to ensure extremist politicians can't buy this kind of sensitive data without a warrant."
Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade with its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, anti-choice state policymakers have ramped up attacks on abortion rights, elevating concerns about patient privacy.
Wyden explained in a Tuesday letter that his office launched an investigation after The Wall Street Journalreported last May that the Veritas Society, a nonprofit established by Wisconsin Right to Life, hired the advertising agency Recrue Media for an anti-abortion ad campaign targeting clinic visitors, whose locations were tracked by the data broker Near Intelligence.
Chicago scraps gunshot detection system accused of racial bias
Chicago will not renew its ShotSpotter contract and plans to stop using the controversial gunshot detection system later this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office announced on Tuesday.
The system, which relies on an artificial intelligence algorithm and network of microphones to identify gunshots, has been criticized for inaccuracy, racial bias and law enforcement misuse. An Associated Press investigation of the technology detailed how police and prosecutors used ShotSpotter data as evidence in charging a Chicago grandfather with murder before a judge dismissed the case due to insufficient evidence.
Chicago’s contract with SoundThinking, a public safety technology company that says its ShotSpotter tool is used in roughly 150 cities, expires on Friday. ... Johnson, a first-term mayor, campaigned on a promise to end the use of ShotSpotter, putting him at odds with police leaders who have praised the system.
They argue that crime rates – not residents’ race – determine where the technology is deployed. ...
Community public safety groups argued that the system sends police officers to predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods for often unnecessary and hostile encounters. Problems with accuracy, for instance when the technology has mistakenly identified fireworks or motorcycle sounds as gunshots, have prompted cities including Charlotte, North Carolina, and San Antonio, Texas, to end their ShotSpotter contracts.
Mississippi prison delayed woman’s cancer diagnosis until it was terminal, lawsuit says
A Mississippi prison denied medical treatment to an incarcerated woman with breast cancer, allowing her condition to go undiagnosed for years until it spread to other parts of her body and became terminal, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Susie Balfour, 62, alleges that Mississippi department of corrections (MDOC) medical officials were aware she might have cancer as early as May 2018, but did not conduct a biopsy until November 2021, one month before she was released from prison. It was not until January 2022, after she left an MDOC facility, that a University of Mississippi Medical Center doctor diagnosed her with stage four breast cancer, according to her federal complaint.
Her lawsuit and medical records paint a picture of a prison healthcare system that deliberately delayed life-saving healthcare and for years repeatedly failed to conduct follow-up appointments that the MDOC’s contracted clinicians recommended.
Advocates for incarcerated people in Mississippi say Balfour’s experience is common. Her lawyers allege there are at least 15 others incarcerated at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, her former prison, who have cancer and are not receiving necessary treatment.
US presidential candidate Cornel West: 'Biden is a war criminal'
Our Revolution Backs 'Uncommitted' Campaign Against Biden in Michigan
Our Revolution is backing the movement urging voters to select "uncommitted" on the Michigan Democratic primary ballot in an effort to persuade President Joe Biden to stop enabling Israel's war on Gaza.
The group, which grew out of the effort to elect Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016, is planning to send an email on Wednesday to its 87,000 members in Michigan and around 225,000 national members asking them to vote "uncommitted" on February 27, The New York Times reported. Their efforts will join those of grassroots initiative Listen to Michigan, which launched the uncommitted campaign on February 6 and plans to contact 80% of 128,000 voters in its database. The aim is to send a message to Biden that voters "strongly reject" his "funding war and genocide in Gaza."
"We're on a mission to send Biden a message on Gaza in Michigan," Our Revolution posted on social media Wednesday. "Pledge your support for Vote Uncommitted."
Former Michigan Democratic Rep. Andy Levin, who has endorsed the call, told The New York Times that he thought the effort could be a necessary corrective for the Biden campaign.
Putin Says He Wants BIDEN Over TRUMP, GOP Launches Probe into Biden's Age 'Don't Care What We Find'
Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn
Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could hit a tipping point by 2050 as a result of water stress, land clearance and climate disruption, a study has shown. The paper, which is the most comprehensive to date in its analysis of the compounding impacts of local human activity and the global climate crisis, warned that the forest had already passed a safe boundary and urged remedial action to restore degraded areas and improve the resilience of the ecosystem.
Bernardo Flores of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, the lead author of the study, said he was surprised by the results, which projected a potential shift from slow to rapid forest decline earlier than he had expected. The forest was already becoming weaker and more homogenous, he said. “By 2050, it will accelerate rapidly. We need to respond now. Once we pass the tipping point, we will lose control of how the system will behave.”
This requires international action because even a local halt to deforestation would not prevent collapse without a global reduction in the CO2 emissions that are disrupting the climate. ...
Concerns about an Amazon tipping point have been discussed for the past two decades, with previous models suggesting this could come when 20% to 25% of the forest is cleared. The new study, published in Nature on Wednesday, went further in its complexity, analysing evidence for five drivers of water stress and identifying critical thresholds that, if crossed, could trigger local, regional or even biome-wide forest collapse.
It estimated that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazonian forests would be exposed to compounding disturbances that might trigger unexpected ecosystem-wide transitions and have an adverse knock-on effect for regional climate change. To prevent this, the study found that a safe boundary, which included a buffer zone, would be needed to keep deforestation to 10% of the Amazon region, and to keep global heating within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But overshoot has already happened. The study found 15% of the Amazon had already been cleared and another 17% had been degraded by human activity, such as logging, fires and under-canopy extraction. A further 38% of the Amazon may be weakened as a result of the prolonged droughts over the past decade.
Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, study finds
Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals – shedding light on the highly polarized attitude toward global warming. Additionally, denialism is highest in the central and southern US, with Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science.
Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed over 7.4m tweets posted by roughly 1.3 million people on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) between 2017 and 2019. The social media posts were geocoded, and classified as “for” or “against” climate change using a large language model, a type of artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.
“Over half of the tweets we looked at simply denied that climate change was real, that it was a hoax,” said Joshua Newell, co-author of the study and professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “It wasn’t surprising but it was disappointing, I would hope that more and more Americans would believe in climate change and the importance of addressing it.”
Donald Trump emerged as one of the most influential figures among climate change deniers. His tweets around a cold snap in Texas in December 2017, as well as his missives rejecting the 2018 IPCC report released at the Cop24 UN conference, were some of his most engaged social media posts among climate change deniers.
“Public figures such as Trump are highly influential,” Newell said, “when they use these events to trigger disbelief in climate change among social media users.”
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Escalation In Northern Palestine
Cameron urges US to aid Ukraine and not show ‘weakness displayed to Hitler’
Why Voting For The Lesser Evil Is Strategic Imbecility
Biden-Trump Rematch Is the Perfect Showdown for America's Cadaverocracy
University of Pennsylvania president denounces lecturer for anti-genocide cartoons
Israel STORMS LARGEST Gaza Hospital
VILE! IDF Photoshoot In Kitchens of Starving Gazans
THE BUTCHER': Ukraine Sends Troops To MEAT GRINDER To Prevent Retreat
Yes, Israel Is An Apartheid State & Here’s Why! w/ Aaron Maté
Ukr Disaster: Ukr Avdeyevka Troops Surrounded, Fronts Collapse, Rus Missile Strike, Zelensky Abroad
A Little Night Music
Elmon Mickle - Lonesome Highway
Elmon Mickle - I Got To Get Some Money
Drifting Slim - My Little Machine
Elmon Mickle - Jackson Blues
Elmon Mickle - Flat Foot Sam
Model "T" Slim (Elmon Mickle) - 15 Years My Love Was In Vain
Model T Slim (Elmon Mickle) - Oh Babe
Driftin' Slim & His Blues Band - Mama Blues
Driftin' Slim & His Blues Band - Hoo-Doo Man Blues
Comments
I couldn’t have said it any better
.
Shitlibs still say that Biden is the most empathetic president ever. One person says it and the echo chamber agrees. No mention of ending the child tax credit. Kicking millions off of Medicaid while people still need treatment for the Rona, the jabs and the paxcovid which Pfizer has jacked up bigly. And now Biden’s CDC says that people only need to stay home 1 day after fever is gone. Hey remember when delta airlines asked Biden to cut the isolation time from 10 days to only 5 because too many people were missing work?
Most empathic my left buttock!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Dear Biden
I should have said this in my previous comment, but why in hell does anyone think that Biden has any empathy for anyone? One only needs to look at his record in congress to see that is a total fabrication. Biden has always been against the working class and for his numerous donors and especially for Israel who has given his numerous campaigns over $4 million. And Biden ruined the man’s life when he blamed him for his wife’s death. He said that he ran into her car when it was she who ran a stop sign.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
yeah, apparently, biden has figured out how to fake sincerity in a way that is compelling to some people. go figure.
re climate change
of course it’s changing
always has the issue is
what’s Causing it
co2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere
that’s 4/100ths of One Percent
check the green-ing of australia
more people die of cold than heat
like- by multiples not to mention
shifting poles
weakening of magnetic field
cme-s
and since it’s ‘panic mode’
in the news now the amoc
AtlanticMeridional Overturning Current
is a drastic Cooling Event
question; what happens to billions of acre/ft
of Flowing water when the end Stops(dammed)?
have your rescue boat ready qms
hey, the weather channel just used
day after tomorrow(movie) as an
example of one possibility
ya lays yer bets
and takes yer chances
thanks for the ebs joe
love to all!
peace
edit to add example
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
No one in government is talking about the hunga tunga volcano
that blew up last year sending tons of hot water into the atmosphere and it has spread across the globe and is raising temperatures. Nor how the oceans are warming because of what’s leaking from the earth’s crust. Dunno if I can find the link to this again, but I posted it months ago.
If the WEF can get the CO2 down as much as they want to then we go back to the Stone Age, but with less plants and things like that.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Yup!
but I was trying
to be brief- could’ve mentioned
temp sensors located in
urban heat sinks
more moisture in the air means
more clouds means greater albedo
effect I mean there are reasons
the earth was a snowball completely
for millions of years
and they want to Ban Farming
on planet Dirt
No
just f@cking no
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
not positive on this
-
-
have dealt with angry oceans and rivers both
when they get together, all hell breaks loose
not sure the life raft is quite up to that task
perhaps the plastic debris on the surface
could calm the clash ?
question everything
RESCUE
not life raft
old school late 19th
early 20th century
coastguard rugged mofos
ya feel me?
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
evening tb&u...
heh, perhaps it's not a "climate crisis" in the same way a shoe is not too small, your foot is too big. so perhaps it is a crisis of the failure of humans to evolve and adapt rapidly enough.
bruddah
I’m more worried about
the Pollution nuclear biological
and Chemical clear cutting Trees
to put up solar/wind ‘farms’-gtfohwts
cow farts vs nordstream?
vs private jets? these folks
can come back when they
grow the fuck up
absurdities/atrocities happening Now
people
the alarm clock is buzzing
snap the fuck TO
eot
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Don't know if this was mentioned in the national news
....but, China has won the chip war.
(The GPS war is up next.)
President Xi Jinping’s November meeting with President Joe Biden at the APEC summit in San Francisco came amid simmering tensions between China and the US. Technology has been at the heart of those strains, particularly Washington’s efforts to restrict Chinese access to key semiconductor innovations.
Huawei’s August unveiling of a new smartphone was a blow to America. The Mate 60 Pro appeared to be more advanced than should have been possible, given import controls imposed by the US Department of Commerce. Bloomberg commissioned the first teardown of the handset, by the analysis firm TechInsights. The findings raised questions about the effectiveness of the US-led controls.
Meanwhile, those new chip plants in the US have been delayed.
00:00 Introduction
01:14 US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s Beijing trip
02:32 Behind the Bloomberg Mate 60 Pro teardown
04:37 How Huawei and SMIC pulled it off
05:57 Limits of China’s approach
.
.
The US semi-conductor blockades against China, and its tariffs and sanctions meant to harm China's technology gains and its economy — only serve to highlight the US inability to compete successfully in global trade (unless the market is rigged). The US has become the Tonya Harding of free markets and International Trade Competition.
As usual, the unintended consequences and blowback will roil the US economy instead. US trade wars against Russia and China have permanently hiked the cost of living across the board for Americans — who must pay the billions of dollars of tariffs collected by their government out of their own pockets, because they are added into the costs of the goods they buy. The government calls it "inflation" and never reimburses the people.
Thus, China was forced to develop its own advanced semiconductor chip industry, since they could no longer purchase those chips from the West and its allies. The Chinese chip breakthrough was quietly orchestrated by Huawei, a technology giant that the US thought they had largely destroyed. Huawei's newest cell phone is powered by a cutting-edge 7-nanometer CPU, a sign that Beijing is gaining headway in a national campaign to evade US efforts to undermine its development. The new phone sold out completely on the first day, and now outperforms the Apple iPhone in China. Huawei is a 'communist' style corporation; the company is owned by its empoyees.
China's sudden advance in chip production will hurt Apple sales in Eurasia, and will ripple out to other US companies.
.
...for example.
evening pluto...
the u.s. economic policy over the last couple of decades which has presided over greedy capitalists exporting u.s. manufacturing overseas to drive down labor costs has left the government taking desperate measures to maintain some sort of competitive edge with china. the u.s. managed to defeat europe as a competitor by cutting off their access to cheap energy from russia, but china has plenty of capacity.
I hadn't even taken into account, editorially, the relevant
....points you bring up, like the greedy US hegemon putting its own allies out of business if it moves the US toward Supreme Empire status.
The greedy Wall Street capitalists and modern Robber Barons (still grieving over the loss of slaves) couldn't wait to collapse the labor class. Expanding their wealth by off-shoring factories, sales, and customer services to countries where wage theft is the norm was a move so bold that no Democracy could stop it. In the process, they also off-shored the manufacture of ordinary "necessities," which would soon turn basic household items into costly "imports."
We really do have a powerfully corrupt "Political Class," for lack of a better term. That's what I think of when you say "government." The Neoliberal Swamp in DC is thick with them in the form of Intelligence operatives, media worm tongues, politicians, appointed grifters, influence peddlers, and embedded bureaucrats. They are the ghouls who haunt the Capitol. I give them credit, at least, for knowing where the nation's money is being printed and passed around.
What bothers me most is the asset stripping of the American people (we knew it was coming) by way of fake inflation events caused by US trade-war tariffs and unilateral sanctions. All of it taking place in order to provoke war and cause economic damage to powerful equals such as Russia and China, who will in time form a more just and cooperative world, which the world is demanding. It's bad enough that the taxes collected from the People are used to pay all war costs and debt that is incurred. But those war expenses are also the source of wealth for the Political Class in DC — where the money laundered through insider trading, Industry bribes, Family Foundations, vote peddling, campaign contributions, and crony contracting. Eventually, it is moved around the world in Diplomatic Pouches.
The worst people in the world have already won.
We've seen astonishing transformations in our lifetimes, but we won't see the end of this.
Maybe China used chips taken from washing machines
like Russia is accused of doing? I’m seeing people repeating that they stole the machines to get chips to build their weapons. I respond by telling them that Americans have to get a ride to the space station on Russian ships because America doesn’t build them anymore.
One thing I don’t get is why Russia is still selling us gas and especially diesel after we have not only armed Ukraine with long range missiles, but also blew up their nordstream pipelines and all the other support we’ve given them. Ukraine bombed Belograd again yesterday and killed 6 civilians. They killed 28 there last month. Tell me how any of this makes sense. Oh yeah and we tried to crash their economy through sanctions. Why would you keep selling your enemy your products? Putin has wanted to be included in the rest of the world since he first became president only to be rejected time after time.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
russia is
fighting a slow attritional
war on every front basically
rope a doping- trying Not to panic
anybody into pushing buttons
seems to be working
we’re still here
look at chatty cathy
quick to the bong cave!
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
I understand that Russia is going slow
and they are meeting their objectives, but that doesn’t explain why they haven’t stopped supplying their enemies with their products. I’d think they would have stopped selling gas to America after they blew up the pipelines.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
So, were the chips taken from Samsung washing machines?
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 --
Dunno
but shitlibs think that actually happened and they drew graphics of washing machines. Don’t know where the story originated either. Just keep seeing them saying it.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
This is the punchline of a joke, I believe.
It's way too dumb for most people to take it seriously. There were dumb Russian chip jokes back the Cold War era. I remember one about Russian Scientists who held a Press Conference to announce that they had finally produced the world's largest computer chip! Hahaha. Get it?
There are many reasons why the notion is too dumb to fool an intelligent person. For example, Russia isn't a key producer of commercial electronics for the global market, the way China is. So a restricted chip supply wouldn't have much impact on the Russian economy. In fact, Russia announced recently that it would be producing its own semi-conductors to meet its needs until 2030 or so — thus disconnecting itself from the chip supply rat race. On the other hand, Russians are great mathematicians and engineers, so their concurrent announcement that they are developing an advanced generation of supercomputers during that same period, comes as no great surprise. The US appears to have a severe inferiority complex when it comes to scientific innovation.
Even little kids understand that there is a great deal of difference between a chip used in a washing machine, and chips that would be used in a self-driving car or a new release cell phone. So, the suggestion that Russia had to harvest chips from washing machines for some other low-level purpose is a supremely silly notion. A punch line, indeed.
An even bigger joke, however, is that you know some dopey people in the real world who actually think this is a news item. Hahaha. Is it Putin Derangement Syndrome? Or something new?
Just to be sure, I ran it through one of my A.I's for some perspective:
(Feel free to use what follows if you ever get into an argument about this issue.)
…..
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
On the 10 inch binder that has been missing ever since
.
Trump left office. Remember that cnn wrote about it a few months ago and said that it’s full of top secret information about how Russia interfered in the election and that he colluded with Trump to beat Hillary. Taibbi has a written about the new revelations that the FBI told foreign intelligence agencies to spy on 26 people who were in his campaign. Obama’s hands are all over this.
CNN has another story on it now.
Trump wanted a declassified and released, but Gina Haspel and others blocked its release. It’s sad to be the smoking gun on how Obama and friends tried to overthrow Trump’s presidency. Much bigger than Watergate and especially because WG was a psyop on the country to get Nixon removed from office…
"I’m not a crook!"
Taibbi's articles.
https://public.substack.com/p/cia-had-foreign-allies-spy-on-trump
https://public.substack.com/p/us-government-is-hiding-documents
Both are paywalled, but the preview is long enough to get most of the story.
Hopefully this will get some legs, but unless the republicans take power Biden’s doj won’t do anything about it. Probably because Biden was just as involved as Obama was.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
uh, oh...
i foresee taibbi and shellenberger testifying again before a house committee and being smeared by democrats for doing it.
Psy-ops 101
-
why would Putin endorse Biden?
People hate Putin more than they like Biden.
Therefore they vote Trump to spite Putin.
Hee hee.
question everything
On your comment from last night
I think Caitlin has explained what you meant.
I’ve said that Israel’s actions are making Jews less safe and today the UK says that anti semitism there is higher than it’s ever been. But I also took that with a grain of salt because of how Israel thinks any criticism of its actions is that.
I haven’t heard that any Jew has been shot down in cold blood or anyone is targeting people who are pro Israel.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Look for it.
You will see the violence against Jews sooner, rather than later.
Thanks, Bebe.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
No doubt
but it’s not happening now. I’m surprised that America hasn’t gotten any blowback for killing millions of Muslims and the only reason we’re getting some now is because of our support for Israel’s genocide.
Hey remember when Israel blew a Russian jet out of the sky and killed 20 Russians and nothing happened? And Israel keeps bombing Syria and yet Russia doesn’t allow Syria to use its air defense systems that Russia gave them nor has it told Bibi to knock it the hell off? Goes back to the question I asked above…
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
Part 2
.
William Shryver on Carlson/Putin
Here is part 1
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt
thanks for the link...
it seems to me a pretty good analysis.
Good evening Joe, et. al. Thanks for the EBs, Joe.
Saw a buncha stuff this morning about a ukie drone strike on a Rus Landing craft, which I find to generally be an indication that the ukies got thumped somewhere somehow and are pounding their chests to distract from it. Sure enough, Alexander says Adeyevka is now surrounded. You could almost make book on some of this stuff.
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...
yep, i reckon that putin had better take more care with his black sea fleet or perhaps put out some decoys to give the ukies a feeling of success.
Oh they certainly did
A huge group of Ukrainian troops who were supposed to go into Advika got blown up by a Russian bomb. The iskandler was used for the first time and there were up to 1,500 killed. Many were neo Nazis who were seeing combat for the first time too. Russia is set to conquer Advika, but just like Bakmut Zelensky keeps trying to protect it. Hundreds of Ukrainians are dying daily. And for what? Very sad.
Sputnik has an article on how Ukraine will be devoid of babies because all the men are dead.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt