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“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”

-- William Shakespeare

News and Opinion

The Reckless Brinkmanship With Russia Just Keeps On Escalating

It’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the warmongering of the western empire these days.

In response to the frightening steps that NATO has been taking to allow western-supplied weapons to be used by Ukraine to strike Russian territory, Vladimir Putin warned last week that these escalations can lead to “serious consequences”.

“This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences,” Putin said. “If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the US behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? Hard to say. Do they want global conflict?”

We can get a more concrete idea of what Putin was talking about from the blatant threat Moscow formally made to the UK last month, saying that Ukraine using any British weapons to attack Russian territory could result in direct Russian attacks on British military targets in Ukraine “and beyond”, which would place Russia in a profoundly dangerous state of hot warfare with NATO forces.

On Friday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg dismissed Putin’s warnings, saying, “This is nothing new. It has … been the case for a long time that every time NATO allies are providing support to Ukraine, President Putin is trying to threaten us to not do that.”

This cavalier attitude toward nuclear brinkmanship that empire managers have been demonstrating lately was addressed on Monday by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who said the US is close to making a “fatal” miscalculation.

“I would like to caution American officials against miscalculations which may have fatal consequences. For some unknown reason, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive,” Ryabkov reportedly said.

“I am urging these officials who seemingly are not bothered by anything, to take some time away from playing computer games, which is apparently what they are doing, given their light-hearted approach to serious issues, and take a closer look at what Putin said,” Ryabkov added.

American officials appear to be doing the exact opposite of what the deputy foreign minister recommends, with White House spokesman John Kirby telling the press on Monday that the Biden administration is open to discussions about expanding the use of US-made weapons further into Russian territory.

Asked about President Zelensky’s complaint that US permissions to conduct limited strikes on Russian territory weren’t enough and comments from Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggesting a greater range of Russian territory may soon be authorized, Kirby said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Zelensky wants more, and that the US will keep talking to Ukraine about the possibility of US-backed strikes deeper into the Russian mainland.

“And so we’ll have those talks, we’ll have those conversations with the Ukrainians,” Kirby said. “Absolutely, we will. And whether it leads to any additional policy changes, I can’t say at this point, but we’re not going to turn our back on what Ukraine needs. And we’re going to continue to try to, again, evolve our support to them as the battlefield evolves as well.”

I wrote just the other day that Biden’s authorization for limited strikes on Russian territory with US weapons would immediately be followed by a push for even more escalations with strikes deeper into Russia, and here we are. Every time the warmongers get one escalation, they immediately start pushing for another.

There is a limit to how many escalations Russia will tolerate before taking drastic action against NATO to re-establish deterrence credibility, and nobody really knows exactly where that limit is. They seem bound and determined to find it however, and when they do we may already be on an irreversible free fall toward nuclear armageddon.

This all comes as the Dutch foreign minister publicly gives the green light for Ukraine to use F-16s to attack Russian territory. As Antiwar’s Kyle Anzalone notes of this news, F-16s are nuclear-capable warplanes.

It’s important to push back against brinkmanship with Russia well before we go over the brink into nuclear war, because obviously by then it’s too late for anyone to do anything — and indeed a full-scale nuclear war between NATO and the Russian Federation could mean that nobody will ever do anything ever again. Nuclear armageddon is the one foreign policy mistake that you can’t course-correct for after you make it, so it’s extremely urgent to course-correct long before we get to that point.

The biggest risk for nuclear war isn’t that either side will knowingly choose to enter into one, but that one will be set off by miscalculation, miscommunication or technical malfunction in the chaos and confusion of soaring tensions, as nearly happened numerous times during the last cold war. The higher tensions get, the more likely such an incident becomes, and the more hair-trigger everyone’s nuclear systems will be.

It’s a lot like a standoff where people are pointing guns at each other, like the end scene of Reservoir Dogs. The more guns there are and the more tense the situation becomes, the more likely it is that someone will make a move that sets the whole thing off and gets everyone killed.

And that’s why it’s very disturbing that these tensions are being ramped up so casually by the empire with no resistance from anybody — not from western governments, not from the media, and not even from ordinary people in any meaningful numbers.

These freaks are playing chicken with armageddon weapons, and nobody’s got a foot anywhere near the brake pedal. They’re not even looking at it. They’re not even thinking about it.

At the very least we’ve got to find some way to get people thinking about this. This would be such a damn stupid way for humanity to annihilate itself.

Col. Karen Kwiatkowski : Unravelling and Secession

Biden: ‘every reason’ to believe Netanyahu is prolonging Gaza war for political gain

Joe Biden has said that there is “every reason” to draw the conclusion that Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza for his own political self-preservation. Biden made the remarks about the Israeli prime minister in an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday morning, drawing a sharp response from the Israeli government, which accused the US president of straying from diplomatic norms. ...

Time asked Biden whether he believed Netanyahu was “prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation”.

“I’m not going to comment on that,” the president said in response, but added: “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.” He went to discuss some of the internal political problems Netanyahu was facing before the war.

Over the course of the wide-ranging interview in Time, Biden was also asked about the allegations, under investigation by the international criminal court (ICC) and the international court of justice (ICJ), that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. The president gave an ambivalent response. “The answer is it’s uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves,” he said. “The ICC is something that we don’t recognise. But one thing is certain: the people in Gaza, the Palestinians, have suffered greatly, for lack of food, water, medicine, etc. And a lot of innocent people have been killed.” ...

Asked specifically if Israel was using “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”, a charge being pursued by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan. “No, I don’t think that,” Biden said. But he then said: “I think they’ve engaged in activity that is inappropriate.”

Netanyahu's TANTRUM Over Gaza Cease-fire THREATENS Biden’s Reelection Effort

ISRAEL Wages DIGITAL War, TARGETS US Lawmakers With FAKE Social Media To Bolster Military Aid: NYT

42 House Dems Help GOP Pass Bill Targeting ICC Officials Over Israel

Human rights defenders on Tuesday decried the U.S. House of Representatives' passage of a bill that would sanction International Criminal Court officials over the Hague tribunal's pursuit of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders—legislation critics warned would undermine the court's independence and could be weaponized to silence Americans' free speech.

House lawmakers voted 247-155 in favor of H.R. 8282, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act. Forty-two pro-Israel Democrats joined all but two Republicans who voted "present" in approving the bill, which was sponsored by far-right Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

"The idea that they would issue an arrest warrant for the prime minister of Israel, defense minister of Israel, at the time where they're fighting for their nation's very existence against the evil of Hamas as a proxy of Iran is unconscionable to us," said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), according toThe Hill. "And as I said a couple of weeks ago, the ICC has to be punished for this action."

However, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said on the House floor ahead of Tuesday's vote that "we need the ICC" because "in the last 241 days, thousands, thousands have been victims of unimaginable atrocities, and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's violations of international law have threatened the peace of the world." ...

Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said passing H.R. 8282 would fuel international allegations of U.S. hypocrisy.

"I am already being challenged to explain U.S. double standards every time I meet with representatives of foreign governments," McGovern said on the House floor ahead of the vote. "What better gift to China and Russia than for us to undermine the international rule of law." ...

Meanwhile, congressional leaders have invited Netanyahu to Washington, D.C. for the rare honor of addressing a joint session of Congress. The prime minister has reportedly accepted the invitation, although no date has been set for his speech.

U.S. President Joe Biden was accused of double standards for condemning the ICC's targeting of Israeli leaders—whose conduct is under investigation in the ICJ genocide case—while applauding its March 2023 arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova for alleged crimes committed during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The White House said Monday that it "strongly opposes" the ICC sanctions bill, but Biden has not said whether he would veto the legislation in the unlikely event it is taken up—and passed—by the Senate.

Tuesday's vote has already had consequences, as the youth-led progressive group Path to Progress said it would not endorse Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) as expected in their respective U.S. Senate races due to their approval of the bill.

This isn't the first time that Congress has targeted the ICC. In 2002, lawmakers passed and then-President George W. Bush signed the American Servicemembers Protection Act, also known as the Hague Invasion Act because it authorizes the president to use "all means necessary and appropriate" including military intervention to secure the release of American or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC.

In 2020, the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump—who is expected to challenge Biden in November's election—imposed sanctions on then-ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, the court's prosecution jurisdiction division director, in retaliation for a probe of alleged war crimes committed by American troops in Afghanistan.

Last month, Khan condemned "all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence" ICC officials. Later in May, the Israeli media outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, along with Britain's The Guardian, revealed that the head of the Mossad, Israel's main foreign intelligence agency, spent nearly a decade attempting to intimidate Bensouda into dropping an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.

Incessant IDF Strikes Making Gaza Aid Deliveries 'Virtually Impossible': Oxfam

A leading global humanitarian group said Tuesday that the Israeli military's relentless bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip and continued obstruction of aid operations there have made efforts to deliver food, medicine, and other assistance to desperate Gazans "virtually impossible."

Oxfam International noted in a statement that two-thirds of Gaza's population—roughly 1.7 million people—is now packed into less than a fifth of the occupied enclave, often in areas with little to no access to the meager humanitarian assistance that Israel has allowed to enter in recent months.

According to the latest United Nations figures, the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted by 67% since Israeli forces launched their ground assault on Rafah last month. More than a million people have fled Rafah since early May, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said Monday.

The World Food Program (WFP) wrote on social media Tuesday morning that the families that fled Rafah are "now in areas with insufficient clean water, medical supplies, fuel, and limited food assistance." The organization said it has been forced to "provide reduced rations" to ensure badly needed aid reaches as many Gazans as possible.

In its statement Tuesday, Oxfam said that "a lethal combination of closed border crossings, ongoing airstrikes, reduced logistical capacity due to evacuation notices, and a failing Israeli permission process that debilitates humanitarian movement within Gaza, have created an impossible environment for aid agencies to operate effectively."

Israeli forces shut down Rafah's border crossing with Egypt—a critical entry point for humanitarian aid—nearly a month ago, further hampering efforts to prevent famine conditions from spreading. Oxfam noted that "Kerem Shalom is the only crossing that thousands of humanitarian aid trucks queued at Rafah could be rerouted to use, but inside is an active combat zone and extremely dangerous."

UK Foreign Office Revolt Over Gaza

Amid Britain’s ongoing complicity and support for Israel’s “plausible genocide” in Gaza, an increasing number of staff in the Foreign Office, I’m told up to 300, have formally raised concerns with ministers, seeking a change of course. They are questioning ministers’ actions and policy in relation to Gaza and asking to see the legal advice they received that this is based on — advice that they have so far refused to publish, despite calls to do so from some in Parliament.

But Foreign Secretary David Cameron has not responded to these concerns directly. Instead, he sent the Foreign Office’s political director, Christian Turner, to have a meeting with a small contingent of those raising concerns about U.K. policy and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.

The meeting, which took place in person at the department’s King Charles Street head office, was not minuted and participants were not allowed to take notes. This may appear benign, but not having notes of a meeting in the civil service is highly unusual, never mind a senior civil servant telling officials they aren’t allowed to take notes. Notes are taken as a record of decision making and discussions, so it raises concerns that this was actively stopped in this case.

This meeting was part of the effort to silence legitimate concerns from a range of officials from across the department, including any potential individual accountability for civil servants working on issues related to Israel and Palestine. Some staff are even rejecting requests to work on the crisis due to concerns of complicity in war crimes.

Biden, Social Platforms CENSORING Pro-Palestinian Content; MSM FAILS To Report

Nagasaki Mayor Withholds Israel's Invitation to Peace Ceremony

The mayor of Nagasaki said Monday that he is withholding Israel's invitation to the annual peace ceremony commemorating the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack on the Japanese city and will call on the country's far-right government to accept an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

"Given the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and international opinion, there is a risk of unpredictable disruption occurring at the ceremony," said Mayor Shirō Suzuki, according toThe Asahi Shimbun.

"The situation is changing day by day, so we have put sending an invitation letter on hold," Suzuki explained. "We need to carefully monitor the situation as it develops."

The ceremony is held each year on August 9, when at 11:02 am local time in 1945 a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped a single nuclear bomb over the city, killing tens of thousands of people instantly and dooming many thousands more to slow death by radiation-induced ailments.

Suzuki said he would extend an invitation to Israel once it's clear that doing so won't cause any problems. Palestine's envoy is invited to attend, although Japan is one of a global minority of nations that do not formally recognize a Palestinian state.

"Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept": Meet the Palestinian Lawyer Censored by Columbia and Harvard

BDS founder hails campus protests for taking Israeli divestment mainstream

The student-led protests demanding universities cut financial and academic ties to Israel have led to unprecedented support for the Palestinian liberation struggle, and have propelled the divestment debate into the mainstream, according to the co-founder of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights defender who helped launch the BDS movement almost 20 years ago, said the students’ solidarity had helped educate the world about the Israeli occupation and “apartheid” while exposing the hypocrisy – and repressive tendencies – of some of the world’s most prestigious universities with investments in corporations which put “profit before people and the planet”.

“The current student-led uprising on campuses in the US, Europe and globally is a sign of Palestine’s South Africa moment, as the support for ending complicity in Israel’s genocide and underlying 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid is reaching a tipping point in the struggle for Palestinian liberation … the ‘B’ and ‘D’ in BDS have gone much more mainstream than before.

“This student uprising has been a crash course on Palestine for millions in the west in particular, undoing many years of silencing and erasing Palestinian voices, Palestinian history, Palestinian culture [and] aspirations … it gives us hope and inspiration in these dark times of Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip,” Barghouti told the Guardian as Israel continued to defy a ruling by the UN’s top court to stop its assault on Rafah – the southern city of Gaza where Palestinian refugees have painted messages of gratitude to the students on their tents.

Barghouti was a student at Columbia University in the 1980s, when anti-apartheid protesters blockaded Hamilton Hall for three weeks as part of a campaign to force the Ivy league school to divest from South Africa. Launched in 2005, the BDS movement is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle and US civil rights movement. The recent pro-Palestinian student protests grew after the president of Columbia University authorized New York City police to forcibly evict the student encampment in April, which ended with more than a hundred arrests and several students suspended.

With few exceptions, university administrators have called in police, who have been accused of using excessive force against students and faculty. “The violence deployed by police to repress the student-led protests has been shocking, yet indicative of the power of these mobilizations. Such grave violations of freedom of expression, academic freedom and the civic right to peacefully protest attest to the fertile potential of this uprising to pave the way to cutting ties of complicity with Israel’s regime,” said Barghouti.

NATO Escalation & Propaganda - Glenn Greenwald, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

French military instructors in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate target’, Russia says

Any French military instructors in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target” for Russian armed forces, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on Tuesday during a tour of Africa, where frustration with the west has swayed several countries toward Moscow.

Lavrov made the remarks at joint news conference with the Republic of Congo’s foreign minister, Jean Claude Gakosso.

“As for the French instructors, I think they are already on the Ukrainian territory,” Lavrov said, referring to the military instructors that France could send to train Ukrainian troops. “Regardless of their status, military officials or mercenaries represent a legitimate target for our armed forces.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “instructors who train the Kyiv regime’s troops don’t have any sort of immunity, and it doesn’t matter whether they are French or not.”

Ukraine’s top commander said last week he had signed paperwork allowing French military instructors to access Ukrainian training centres soon. But France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said last week he would not comment on “rumours or decisions that could be made”. He said he would elaborate on France’s support during the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-day later this week.

Modi expected to lose parliamentary majority in Indian election

Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party looks likely to lose its parliamentary majority, dealing an unexpected blow to the prime minister and forcing him to negotiate with coalition partners in order to return to power. The party appeared to have lost more than 60 seats, bringing its total down to about 240, below the 272 required for a parliamentary majority.

It is the first time since Modi was elected in 2014 that the BJP has not won a clear majority on its own. Nonetheless, together with its political allies, known as the national democratic alliance (NDA), its win amounts to about 292 seats, which is enough to form a majority government to rule for the next five years and return Modi to office for a third term.

Meanwhile, the opposition alliance, which goes by the acronym INDIA, far outperformed expectations, collectively winning more than 230 seats. The alliance, formed of more than 20 national and regional opposition parties, had come together for the first time in this election with the aim of defeating Modi.

Despite the tight race, Modi insisted he had been given a mandate to lead again in a victory speech. Addressing voters at the BJP headquarters in Delhi, Modi said he was “very, very happy today”.

US Media FREAKS As AMLO Ally SWEEPS Mexican Elections

Oceans face ‘triple threat’ of extreme heat, oxygen loss and acidification

The world’s oceans are facing a “triple threat” of extreme heating, a loss of oxygen and acidification, with extreme conditions becoming far more intense in recent decades and placing enormous stress upon the planet’s panoply of marine life, new research has found.

About a fifth of the world’s ocean surface is particularly vulnerable to the three threats hitting at once, spurred by human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, the study found. In the top 300 meters of affected ocean, these compound events now last three times longer and are six times more intense than they were in the early 1960s, the research states.

The study’s lead author warned that the world’s oceans were already being pushed into an extreme new state because of the climate crisis. “The impacts of this have already been seen and felt,” said Joel Wong, a researcher at ETH Zurich, who cited the well-known example of the heat “blob” that has caused the die-off of marine life in the Pacific Ocean. “Intense extreme events like these are likely to happen again in the future and will disrupt marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world,” he added.

The research, published in AGU Advances, analyzed occurrences of extreme heat, deoxygenation and acidification and found that such extreme events can last for as long as 30 days, with the tropics and the north Pacific particularly affected by the compounding threats.

Climate scientists have been alarmed by the relentless onward rise of heat in the ocean, which has hit extraordinary heights in recent months. “The heat has been literally off the charts, it’s been astonishing to see,” said Andrea Dutton, a geologist and climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who was not involved in the new research. “We can’t fully explain the temperatures we are seeing in the Atlantic, for example, which is part of the reason why hurricane season is such a concern this year. It’s quite frightening.”

Climate Groups Call for Rich to Pay More as International Meetings Begin

Advocates on Tuesday issued strong calls to action on climate finance for developing countries and an international agency released a report on the need to ramp up renewable energy production as the Bonn Climate Change Conference continued in Germany and G7 nations prepared to meet in Italy next week.

At the conference in Bonn, Friends of the Earth International pushed for more rich-country financing to pay for the rising costs of climate impacts in the Global South, while Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the 2015 Paris agreement, called for the global rich to pay their share through taxes and consumption levies.

Meanwhile, two organizations warned that countries aren't on track to meet targets they set just last year. Oil Change International (OCI) published a briefing showing that G7 nations are expanding oil and gas commitments that undermine goals set at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) meeting in Dubai, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report showing that the world's nations are not on track to meet their Dubai pledge to triple renewable energy production by 2030.

"The world is on fire because of decades of inaction by rich countries on reducing emissions, and their failure to pay the climate finance they owe to developing countries to transition to renewable energy systems for all, and to pay for rising costs for loss and damage and adaptation," Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International program coordinator, said in a statement. "What is on the table to date is scales of magnitude away from what it needed. This year must be a year of breakthrough on climate finance."

Also of Interest

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

Did The Houthis Hit The USS Eisenhower May 31st?

Biden's Red Line Is Covered in Blood

Internet addiction alters brain chemistry in young people, study finds

"My Journey of Loss": Gaza Twin on Death of Mom, 14 Relatives & Continuing to Flee Israeli Bombs

Netanyahu Gov COLLAPSING Over Gaza Ceasefire

Anti-War Activist Passport Confiscated & Pulled Off Plane By State Dept. - Scott Ritter

Ray McGovern : How Dangerous Is MICIMATT?

A Little Night Music

Walter Horton – Hard Hearted Woman

Shakey Horton - It's Alright

Walter Horton – Walter's Boogie

Shakey Horton - Gonna Bring It On Home

Big Walter Horton & Carey Bell – Have A Good Time

Big Walter Horton & Carey Bell – Avenue Stomp

Walter Horton – I Cry for You

Walter Horton – Don't Get Around Much Anymore

Big Walter Horton's Blues Harp Band – Rockin' My Boogie