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This evening's music features The Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith. Enjoy!

"Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear – that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls."

-- Herbert Marcuse

News and Opinion

Our Rulers Are Literally Driving Us Crazy

It’s probably worth noting that the empire doesn’t actually lose anything from our society’s increasing mental health problems, and in fact actually benefits from them. Which is probably why everything in this dystopia is pointed at making everyone crazier and crazier.

In a society that is guided not by the pursuit of human thriving but by the pursuit of profit, there is no downside to all the underlings being depressed, anxious and overwhelmed all the time, so long as they’re still showing up to work and still consuming products. As long as the gears of capitalism are still being turned, it doesn’t matter whether the people turning them are enjoying their lives.

As luck would have it, it turns out that their depression and anxiety are themselves actually wonderful sources of profit. If the pressures of life in this dystopia make people miserable, you can load them up with lucrative products from the pharmaceutical industry to get them just functional enough to return to the office. Additionally, miserable people are reliably the best consumers, because their discontent drives them to spend their lives trying to feed the hungry ghosts inside themselves with an endless river of products.

We see this dynamic playing out in real time in the so-called “psychedelic renaissance”, with billionaires working to get psychedelic substances legalized not so that human consciousness can be liberated from its illusions and allow us to achieve our full potential, but so that compounds can be patented and prescribed for mental disorders in the same way as other substances in the pharmaceutical industry. The push is to use these drugs to treat ailments like depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder so that people can become functioning cogs in the capitalism machine again, not so they can become self-actualized or realize that everything they’ve been taught about the world is a lie.

That’s just one example of a dynamic that’s ongoing throughout our entire society due to the way all our systems are set up so that human behavior will be driven by the pursuit of profit rather than happiness and health. Literally everywhere we’ve seen the interests of psychological wellbeing come into conflict with the interests of profit, profit has won out every time.

We see it in the way advertising for the beauty and fashion industries is geared to erode women’s self-image so they’ll buy products and services in order to feel adequate. We see it in the way social media apps are designed to be as addictive as possible in order to commodify their users’ attention and consciousness. We see it in the way the entirety of advertising is structured around artificially inflating demand by psychologically manipulating people into believing they have lack and deficiencies they never knew they had, and creating cravings they’d never previously experienced.

The entire profit-seeking structure of this civilization is stacked against mental health — and that’s before you add in the psychologically devastating effects of domestic propaganda.

There are no studies in academia on these effects, since the demonstrable fact that western consciousness is continuously attacked by domestic propaganda remains unacknowledged by mainstream institutions — but there’s no way those effects aren’t there. There’s no way people’s sense of reality can continually be assaulted and twisted in the way that it is without having a psychologically destructive effect. Constantly being manipulated and gaslighted into accepting obvious absurdities like “slaughtering people at mass scale is normal and acceptable,” “Israel’s actions in Gaza are perfectly reasonable,” and “the system is working fine; if you can’t handle it there’s something wrong with you” will stretch the human mind to the breaking point.

So our minds are being constantly accosted by advertising and propaganda that’s making us crazier and crazier, all while living in a society that’s getting more and more inherently stressful to survive in. Technological innovations could have been used to liberate people from the need to work and given us an abundance of leisure time, and instead they’re being used to turn millionaires into billionaires and billionaires into trillionaires while everyone else scrapes and struggles to get by.

We’re being encouraged to take anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications to survive in this kind of society, when really the best anti-depressant and anti-anxiety prescription a doctor could write for most people would be a giant pile of cash and more free time.

Our minds are being squeezed and squeezed harder and harder by the people who rule over us, our consciousness punched and kicked this way and that by a nonstop barrage of manipulation and abuse, and it’s costing us everything, and it’s costing them nothing. In fact, they actually benefit from our becoming more crazy.

A stressed out and depressed person who’s struggling to get by isn’t going to have the time and energy to research the abusive nature of the systems they live under and form a revolutionary worldview. If they do somehow find the time and energy, they’re not going to have the inner clarity necessary to sort out fact from fiction, and often stumble into rabbit holes of conspiratorial power-serving propaganda operations like QAnon and Russiagate which appeal to their cortisol-soaked consciousness without ever actually challenging status quo politics or ruling power structures.

The more crazy and confused we are, the less clarity we have, and the less clarity we have the less likely we are to notice how badly we’re being screwed over by our rulers. The ruling class gains everything by circulating crazymaking advertising and propaganda while perpetuating the crazymaking exploitation of workers, consumers and rent-payers, and it loses absolutely nothing by doing so.

That’s why everything’s getting more and more stressful and maddening in this dystopia. It’s because it directly benefits the people who rule over us whose decisions shape our lives.

Biden GREEN LIGHTS Israel Invasion of Lebanon

Israeli defence minister flies to US for ‘critical’ talks on Gaza and Lebanon

Israel’s defence minister has flown to meet senior Biden administration officials in Washington for what he has described as “critical” talks over the twin conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Yoav Gallant, accompanied by the Israel Defense Forces’ deputy chief of staff, will meet the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, as well as the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Joe Biden’s special envoy, Amos Hochstein.

Gallant’s visit came as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, repeated his claim that the Biden administration was presiding over a “dramatic drop” in arms shipments to Israel in recent months, a charge that has angered US officials, who have described it as “perplexing”.

In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu reiterated his resistance to ending the war in Gaza – one of Hezbollah’s conditions for de-escalation – while Hamas is still in place.

Describing his visit, Gallant said: “During these meetings I plan to discuss developments in Gaza and Lebanon. These [discussions] are particularly important and impactful at this time. We are prepared for any action that may be required in Gaza, Lebanon and in additional areas.” Some Israeli officials have linked a push into Rafah, the southern area of Gaza, where it says it is targeting the last battalions of Hamas, to a potential refocus on the border with Lebanon, where escalating exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have increased fears of a wider war there.

Gallant appeared to make the same link in his statement. “The transition to phase C in Gaza is of great importance. I will discuss this transition with US officials, how it may enable additional things, and I know that we will achieve close cooperation with the US on this issue as well,” he said.

Israel’s Iron Dome risks being overwhelmed in all-out war with Hezbollah, says US

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile batteries risk being overwhelmed in the opening strikes of any significantly escalated conflict with Hezbollah. The assessment delivered by US officials late last week, echoing recent analysis by experts in Israel and the United States, comes amid fears that a war with Hezbollah could be a far more dangerous undertaking than the devastating 2006 second Lebanon war, when Israeli bombing caused huge destruction in Lebanon.

The US and France are leading diplomatic efforts to avert a wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, amid fears that escalating rhetoric and exchanges of fire across the border could lead to full-scale war.

On Friday, Kuwait’s foreign ministry warned its citizens to avoid travelling to Lebanon and urged those already in the country to leave. There are also reports that officials in the Biden administration told an Israeli delegation in Washington that America would offer security assistance in the event of a wider conflict, while António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, called for “reason and rationality” to avoid potentially catastrophic consequences for the region and the world.

Since 2006, Hezbollah, the world’s best-armed non-state group, has significantly expanded its arsenal and capabilities, including acquiring suicide drones which Israel has struggled to counter, an anti-aircraft missile capability and a widely expanded array of missiles which experts now believe number between 120,000 and 200,000. ...

“The expectation of the public and of a significant portion of the leadership, that the Israeli Air Force and effective Israeli intelligence systems will succeed in preventing most of the rocket attacks on Israel, will be shattered,” the report said. “This is also the case regarding the public’s belief that the threat of Israeli retaliation or a substantial Israeli attack on significant Lebanese assets will force Hezbollah to cease fire or significantly impair their ability to continue attacking Israeli territory.”

Hind Rajab Killing: Analysis Finds Israeli Tank Fired 335 Bullets Into Car at Close Range

An Israeli tank or tanks likely fired the bullets that killed five-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab and six relatives as they sat in a car in northern Gaza in January, according to an analysis released Friday that adds to evidence of the Israeli military's role in an indiscriminate killing which galvanized anti-war protests around the world earlier this year.

A tank had to have been positioned between 13 and 23 meters from the family car when it fired the shots that killed Layan Hamada, Hind Rajab's 15-year-old cousin, and it's "not plausible that the shooter could not have seen that the car was occupied by civilians, including children," wrote the authors of the analysis, which was completed by U.K. research agency Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, with Earshot, an NGO, and Al Jazeera journalists.

The investigators found 335 bullet holes on the body of the Kia Picanto the family was using.

An Israeli tank also likely killed the two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics who came to the scene, the analysis found. The new analysis refutes Israel's contention that its forces were not responsible for the killings, which caused an international outcry. ...

The new analysis broadly fits with findings of an in-depth investigation of the family's killing conducted by The Washington Post in April, adding new details and strengthening the case that Israeli forces were culpable. Following the new release, Medhi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo News, argued that those who continue to support the killing of Palestinian children are sociopaths.

'They've Done It Again': Israeli Strikes Kill Dozens in Tents Near Rafah

The Israel Defense Forces on Friday yet again shelled tents of displaced Palestinians near the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 25 and wounding another 50, local health and emergency officials said.

"According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense first responders in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about the shelling at two locations in a coastal area that has become filled with tents," The Associated Press reported.

"The locations of the attacks provided by the Civil Defense appear to be just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone," the news agency noted. "The Israeli military said the episode was under review but that 'there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF' inside the safe zone, using an acronym for the Israeli forces. It did not offer details on the episode or say what the intended targets might have been." ...

The Friday attack follows a pair of bombings that killed dozens of Palestinians and injured hundreds in and near Rafah late last month. Like with the attacks last month—which analyses suggest involved U.S.-supplied weaponry—there were swift calls for the Biden administration and other governments to cut off support for the Israeli assault on the Hamas-governed enclave.

"Israel has run out of buildings, schools, and hospitals to bomb and is once again targeting displaced civilians in tents," said AJ+ senior editor Kareem Yasin. "Any Western government excusing or denying these intentional attacks is complicit."

IDF investigates soldiers who tied Palestinian man to vehicle’s bonnet

The Israel Defense Forces have said they are investigating an incident in which soldiers strapped a wounded Palestinian man to the bonnet of a military vehicle during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday. A video circulating on social media showed a man, variously identified as Mujahid Azmi or Fayyad, from the Jabriyat neighbourhood between the towns of Burqin and Jenin, tied to the front of an off-road vehicle that is seen passing two ambulances.

According to Azmi’s family, there was an arrest raid, during which he was injured, and when the family asked for an ambulance, the army took him, strapped him to the bonnet and drove off. Medics at Jenin’s Ibn Sina hospital said Azmi was being treated there.

The UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, condemned the incident and accused the IDF of using the wounded man as a human shield. “Human shielding in action,” she wrote on X. “It is flabbergasting how a state born 76 years ago has managed to turn international law literally on its head. This risks being the end of multilateralism, which for some influential member states no longer serves any relevant purpose.”

The Israeli military said its forces were fired at and exchanged fire, wounding a suspect and apprehending him. Soldiers then violated military protocol, the statement said. “The suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle,” it said. The military said the “conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to” its values, and that the events would be investigated.

‘They miscalculated’: Gaza’s floating aid pier failing to deliver

A floating pier built by the US military for seaborne humanitarian deliveries to Gaza has proved itself to be fragile in the face of rougher seas than expected, and the future of the whole $230m project is now in question. The pier has been usable for just 12 days since it began operations on 17 May. On most of those days the assistance arriving by sea has had to be left on the beach as there have been no trucks to distribute it to warehouses in Gaza, because of lack of security.

The scheme has fallen far short of initial expectations. When he announced it in his state of the union speech on 7 March, Joe Biden said the temporary pier “would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day”. It took more than two months to put together the two structures required, a floating dock anchored a few miles out to sea and a floating pier to be attached to the Gazan coast. ...

Over the entire course of the pier’s operation so far, however, only about 250 truckloads of food and other humanitarian assistance (4,100 tonnes) have arrived by the planned maritime corridor, less than half of what would cross into Gaza in a single day before the war. Much of the aid that has arrived so far is stuck at the foot of the pier on a marshalling yard established on the beach.

Since 274 Palestinians were killed by Israel Defense Forces in the course of a hostage rescue mission on 8 June, the World Food Programme (WFP) has suspended the convoys that were supposed to take pallets of aids from the marshalling yard to warehouses and then to the 2.3 million people of Gaza under bombardment and facing famine. The WFP says its security review is still in progress.

Egyptian exports to Israel double in 2024, UAE and Jordan exports also surge

Egyptian exports to Israel doubled in 2024 compared to the previous year despite Israel's devastating war on Gaza since October, according to a new report by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. The data published on Thursday showed that Egyptian exports in May 2024 stood at $25m, double that of the same period in 2023.

Despite increasingly fraught relations, energy and security cooperation between the two countries has intensified since October, with Israeli natural gas exports to Egypt sharply increasing in the last year.

Meanwhile, exports from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Israel also increased to $242m in May 2024, compared to $238.5m in May 2023, the report said. Jordanian exports to Israel also continued to rise in 2024, reaching $35.7m in May 2024 compared to $32.3m in the same period last year.

In contrast to Egypt, the UAE and Jordan, Israeli statistics found that Turkish exports to Israel dropped by over half in 2024 compared to the previous year amid the Turkish trade ministry's restrictions on exports to the country over the war in Gaza. In May 2023, Turkish exports to Israel amounted to $376.6m, a value that plummeted to $116.8m in May 2024.

New 9/11 Tapes EXPOSE Official Narrative Lies

Alastair Crooke: Putin Reshaping the American Mood

Nigel Farage claims Russia was provoked into Ukraine war

Nigel Farage has said the EU and Nato “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding eastwards, as the Reform UK leader was challenged over a series of policies and beliefs in a sometimes combative TV interview.

Speaking to BBC’s Panorama on Friday evening, Farage also said Brexit would have benefited the UK economically if he had been running the country, and that many of the Reform candidates criticised for saying offensive things had been “stitched up in the most extraordinary way”.

Challenged on his beliefs over the invasion of Ukraine, and his stated admiration for Vladimir Putin, Farage said he disliked the Russian president personally but “admired him as a political operator” because of the extent of his control over Russia.

On why Putin invaded Ukraine, Farage said: “I stood up in the European parliament in 2014 and I said: ‘There will be a war in Ukraine.’ Why did I say that? It was obvious to me that the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason … to say: ‘They’re coming for us again,’ and to go to war.” He added: “We provoked this war. Of course it’s his fault, he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.”

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have long accused Farage of being an apologist for the Russian president.

Crimea attack, one step closer to US-Russia war

The Muñoz case: Biden administration joins forces with far-right Supreme Court majority to dismantle democratic rights

In a 6-3 decision Friday, the US Supreme Court upheld the Biden administration’s assertion of unrestricted powers to separate married US citizens from their immigrant spouses. The decision prepares the way for a vast escalation of attacks on basic rights. What was done to Sandra Muñoz and Luis Asencio-Cordero is one of countless injustices perpetrated by US immigration authorities on a daily basis. Muñoz, a US citizen, married Asencio-Cordero, originally from El Salvador, in 2010. Because Asencio-Cordero had originally entered the US without documents in 2005, the couple was required to undergo a protracted and arduous process for him to acquire lawful immigration status.

Muñoz and her husband met all the deadlines and checked all of the boxes, including the degrading requirement that they prove that their marriage was “bona fide” or genuine. However, as a condition for obtaining a visa, the government required Asencio-Cordero to travel to El Salvador for an interview in 2015. When he did, authorities refused to allow him to return—and refused to tell the couple why. After years of bitterly contested litigation, the government was finally forced to state a reason for denying Asencio-Cordero a visa. His tattoos, officials claimed, were gang-related. But as Muñoz and her attorneys proved in court, her husband was never in a gang, he has no criminal record, and his tattoos (including Catholic religious imagery and a portrait of Sigmund Freud) have no plausible connection to anything illegal.

The government’s position remained unchanged throughout the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. Asencio-Cordero has been forced to remain in El Salvador ever since, unable to live with his wife or to be a part of her daily life. It was not until 2022 that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finally ruled that Muñoz’s rights had been violated by the government’s refusal to give any reasons for the visa denial for so long. If the Biden administration had taken no action at that point, the family could have been reunited by now. Instead, the Biden administration took the vindictive step of appealing the Ninth Circuit decision in order to keep the family separated and to prevent any diminution of its allegedly unchallengeable powers over immigration. The Biden administration’s petition to the Supreme Court took the most authoritarian positions possible, which the Supreme Court ratified in its decision Friday.

Many prominent reports in the US media following the decision Friday downplayed its significance, framing the case as a question of “tattoos” or suggesting that Asencio-Cordero was, after all, a gang member. Contrary to these misleading reports, the case was about whether the government had to give Muñoz and her husband any reason at all for denying his visa. ...

The basic argument advanced by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Muñoz case is that all rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, and which according to the far-right majority are not otherwise “deeply rooted” in national tradition, have no constitutional protection. Christian fundamentalist Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, concluded on this basis that “a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the three dissenters, countered with a citation to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 ruling that protects same-sex marriages, which states, “The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition.” Even more importantly, Sotomayor observed, the majority’s tendentious logic is a departure from decades of precedent, clearing a path for a vast expansion of efforts to weaken or abolish other basic democratic protections.

Research reveals toxic PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ accumulate in testes

New research has found for the first time that PFAS “forever chemicals” accumulate in the testes, and the exposure probably affects children’s health. The toxic chemicals can damage sperm during a sensitive developmental period, potentially leading to liver disease and higher cholesterol, especially in male offspring, the paper, which looked at the chemicals in mice, noted.

The research is part of a growing body of work that highlights how paternal exposure to toxic chemicals “can really impact the health, development and future diseases of the next generation”, said Richard Pilsner, a Wayne State University School of Medicine researcher who co-authored the study. “We’ve always been concerned with maternal environmental health effects because women gestate the babies … but this research is really saying there is a paternal contribution to offspring health and development,” Pilsner added. ...

PFAS alters sperm DNA methylation, which is a process that turns genes on and off, Pilsner said. The methylation patterns can be inherited at fertilization and influence early-life development as well as offspring health later in life. The interference can alter genes in a way that affects how the liver produces cholesterol, which can lead to elevated levels. Researchers also found the chemicals affected genes associated with neuro-development, but the study did not check offspring for potential impacts.

Youth activists win ‘unprecedented’ climate settlement in Hawaii

Hawaii officials have announced a “groundbreaking” legal settlement with a group of young climate activists, which they said will force the state’s department of transportation to move more aggressively towards a zero-emission transportation system. ...

Under what legal experts called a “historic” settlement, announced on Thursday, Hawaii officials will release a roadmap “to fully decarbonize the state’s transportation systems, taking all actions necessary to achieve zero emissions no later than 2045 for ground transportation, sea and inter-island air transportation”, Andrea Rodgers, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case, said at a press conference with the governor. ...

The June 2022 lawsuit, Navahine F v Hawaii Department of Transportation, was filed by 13 young people who claimed the state’s pro-fossil fuel transportation policies violate their state constitutional rights. By prioritizing projects like highway expansion instead of efforts to electrify transit and promote walking and biking, the complaint says, the state created “untenable levels of greenhouse gas emissions”.

As a result, state officials harmed the plaintiffs’ ability to “live healthful lives in Hawaii now and into the future”, and violated the right to a clean and healthful environment guaranteed by the state’s constitution, the litigation argued. ...

The plaintiffs, most of whom are Indigenous, alleged that by contributing to the climate crisis, the state hastened the “decline and disappearance of Hawaii’s natural and cultural heritage”.

‘Multiple disasters all in one day’: New Mexico’s brutal week of fire and flood

It’s been a harrowing week of fire and flood in New Mexico. Just days after a pair of fast-moving fires roared across drought-stricken landscapes and into communities, a tropical storm swirled north, unleashing downpours and golf ball-sized hail over scorched slopes that had only just burned. As the dueling dangers of two weather extremes converged, charred debris flowed into neighborhoods, crews were temporarily evacuated from the firefight as emergency officials pivoted from fire support to flood rescues, and strong winds swept up dried soils to create one of the largest dust storms the state has ever seen.

Across the arid south-west, where fire risks typically rise with the temperatures in the spring before they are doused in a summer monsoon, weather patterns like these aren’t unheard of. But the climate crisis has supercharged extreme conditions, setting the stage for new types of catastrophes that are increasing in both intensity and frequency. ...

The South Fork and Salt fires are still burning and remain at 0% containment and communities across the south of the state are bracing for more rain. After erupting on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, the blazes burned hot and fast, sweeping across more than 23,400 areas collectively and leveling neighborhoods. ...

While the infusion of moisture from Tropical Storm Alberto – the first named storm in what’s expected to be a heavy hurricane season – helped slow the fires’ spread and bumped local humidity, it also caused chaos. Emergency management crews had to quickly shift gears from fire support to water rescues as curtains of rain inundated the burn scar. Up to 8in of rain poured on villages in the central part of New Mexico – more rainfall than some parts of the state typically see in a year.

Also of Interest

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

Endless War, Not 'Total Victory': IDF Wants to Leave Gaza, but Netanyahu Has Other Ideas

Largest European Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers – Report

Texas woman allegedly tried to drown Palestinian-American girl, aged 3

British Government Invents Phantom Skripals to Refuse to Testify in the Novichok Inquiry

‘Mother of all battles’: French left join forces to beat far-right electoral threat

A National Cartel Fixing Rental Housing Prices: The Scandal Continues to Grow

False Climate Solution of Geoengineering Could Cause Heatwaves Thousands of Miles Away

How a lunar ‘standstill’ is shining new light on Stonehenge

Meet Maha Hussaini, Gaza Journalist Whose Courage Award Was Rescinded After Smear Campaign

Biden PANICS As Dems BOYCOTT Bibi Speech

Larry Johnson : US Wasting Its Missiles

A Little Night Music

Bessie Smith - Back Water Blues

Bessie Smith - Do Your Duty

Bessie Smith - The Yellow Dog Blues

Bessie Smith - I've Got What It Takes

Bessie Smith - Careless Love Blues

Bessie Smith - Alexander's Ragtime Band

Bessie Smith - Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out

Bessie Smith - My Kitchen Man

Bessie Smith - Lost Your Head Blues