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This evening's music features soul singer Al Green. Enjoy!

"Julian was not released because the courts defended the rule of law and exonerated a man who had not committed a crime. He was not released because the Biden White House and the intelligence community have a conscience. He was not released because the news organizations that published his revelations and then threw him under the bus, carrying out a vicious smear campaign, pressured the U.S. government.

He was released — granted a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, according to court documents — in spite of these institutions. ... Britain and the U.S. [had] to give up. I do not say to do the right thing. This was a surrender. We should be proud of it."

-- Chris Hedges

News and Opinion

“Julian Is Free”: Assange Back Home in Australia After Taking U.S. Plea Deal in “Espionage” Case

Even as Julian Assange's Release Celebrated, Deep Worries Remain for Press Freedom

Amid celebrations that a plea deal with the United States resulted in the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from a British prison, press freedom advocates on Tuesday continued to raise serious concerns about the damage done by the U.S. government's pursuit of a journalist who helped expose state secrets and evidence of war crimes.

"Julian Assange faced a prosecution that had grave implications for journalists and press freedom worldwide," said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, following news of the deal.

"While we welcome the end of his detention," Ginsberg added, "the U.S.'s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. This should never have been the case."

After spending seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom and then five more in the London's Belmarsh Prison, Assange agreed to plead guilty to one felony to avoid more time behind bars. The 52-year-old Australian was fighting against his extradition to the United States, where he faced 18 charges under the Espionage Act and a federal computer fraud law for publishing classified material and could have been locked up for the rest of his life.

"We are hugely relieved that Julian Assange is finally free—a long overdue victory for journalism and press freedom. He never should have spent a single day deprived of his liberty for publishing information in the public interest," said Rebecca Vincent, Reporters Without Borders' director of campaigns, in a statement.

"Nothing can undo the past 13 years, but it is never too late to do the right thing, and we welcome this move by the U.S. government," she added. "We will continue to campaign in support of journalists around the world who find themselves targeted for national security reporting, and for reform of the U.S. Espionage Act, so that it can never again be used to target journalistic activity."

Vincent's group is among several press freedom and human rights organizations that had long called for the U.S. Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange—and after news of the plea deal broke, several others warned of what is to come.

Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard celebrated what the deal will mean for the WikiLeaks founder and his family—including his wife Stella Assange, who plans to seek a pardon for her husband, and their young children—but said Tuesday that "the yearslong global spectacle of the U.S. authorities hell-bent on violating press freedom and freedom of expression by making an example of Assange for exposing alleged war crimes committed by the USA has undoubtedly done historic damage."

"Amnesty International salutes the work of Julian Assange's family, campaigners, lawyers, press freedom organizations, and many within the media community and beyond who have stood by him and the fundamental principles that should govern society's right and access to information and justice," she added. "We will keep fighting for their full recognition and respect by all."

Not all journalists and media outlets defended Assange, despite the precedent that his conviction could have set, and multiple Monday headlines—including at The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post—highlighted his guilty plea. According to the BBC, Assange plans to return to Australia after finalizing the deal in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth.

"A plea deal would avert the worst-case scenario for press freedom, but this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world."

Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, emphasized that "with today's guilty plea, Julian Assange stands convicted of practicing journalism, and all investigative journalists now face greater legal peril."

"Exposing government secrets and revealing them in the public interest is the core function of national security journalism," Wizner continued. "Today, for the first time, that activity was described in a guilty plea as a criminal conspiracy. And even if the current Department of Justice stays true to its assurances that the Assange case is unique and will not provide a precedent to be wielded against other publishers, we can't be confident that future administrations will honor that commitment."

"The precedent set by this guilty plea would have been far more dangerous had it been ratified by federal courts," he added. "But make no mistake, the vital work of national security journalists will be more difficult today than it was yesterday." ...

In a Tuesday opinion piece for The Guardian, FPF executive director Trevor Timm wrote: "Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they've already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act. Trump, after all, has been out on the campaign trail repeatedly opining about how he would like to see journalists—who he sees as 'enemies of the people'—in jail. Why the Biden administration would hand him any ammo is beyond belief."

"So if the Biden administration is looking for plaudits for ending this case, they should get exactly none," Timm asserted. "Now we can only hope this case is an aberration and not a harbinger of things to come."

Assange’s Release “Averted a Press Freedom Catastrophe” But Still Set Bad Precedent: Jameel Jaffer

Assange Is Free, But Justice Has Not Been Done

Julian Assange is free. As of this writing he is en route to the Northern Mariana Islands, a remote US territory in the western Pacific, to finalize a plea deal with the US government which will see him sentenced to time served in Belmarsh Prison. Barring any shady shenanigans from the empire in the process, he will then return to his home country of Australia a free man.

Importantly, according to experts I’ve seen commenting on this astonishing new development it doesn’t appear that his plea deal will set any new legal precedents that will be harmful to journalists going forward. Joe Lauria reports the following for Consortium News:

“Bruce Afran, a U.S. constitutional lawyer, told Consortium News that a plea deal does not create a legal precedent. Therefore Assange’s deal would not jeopardize journalists in the future of being prosecuted for accepting and publishing classified information from a source because of Assange’s agreeing to such a charge.”

I’ve obviously got a lot of big feels about all this, having followed this important case so closely for so long and having put so much work into writing about it. There’s so very, very much work to be done in our collective struggle to liberate the world from the talons of the imperial murder machine, but I am overjoyed for Assange and his family, and it feels good to mark a solid win in this fight.

None of this undoes the unforgivable evils the empire inflicted in its persecution of Julian Assange however, or reverses the worldwide damage that has been done by making a public example of him to show what happens to a journalist who tells inconvenient truths about the world’s most powerful government.

So while Assange may be free, we cannot rightly say that justice has been done.

Justice would look like Assange being granted a full and unconditional pardon and receiving millions of dollars in compensation from the US government for the torment they put him through by his imprisonment in Belmarsh beginning in 2019, his de facto imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy beginning in 2012, and his jailing and house arrest beginning in 2010.

Justice would look like the US making concrete legal and policy changes guaranteeing that Washington could never again use its globe-spanning power and influence to destroy the life of a foreign journalist for reporting inconvenient facts about it, and issuing a formal apology to Julian Assange and his family.

Justice would look like the arrest and prosecution of the people whose war crimes Assange exposed, and the arrest and prosecution of everyone who helped ruin his life for exposing those crimes. This would include a whole host of government operatives and officials across numerous countries, and multiple US presidents.

Justice would look like a hero’s welcome and a hero’s honors from Australia upon his arrival, and a serious revision of Canberra’s obsequious relationship with Washington.

Justice would look like formal apologies to Assange and his family from the editorial boards of all the mainstream press outlets which manufactured consent for his vicious persecution — including and especially The Guardian — and the complete destruction of the reputations of every unscrupulous presstitute who helped smear him over the years.

If these things happened, then we could perhaps argue that justice has been served to some extent. As it stands all we have is the cessation of one single act of depravity by an empire who’s only backing off to make room for newer, more important depravities. We all still live under a globe-spanning power structure which has shown the entire world that it will destroy your life if you expose its criminality, and then stand back and proudly call this justice.

So I personally think I’m just going to take this one small victory in stride with a quick “thank you” to the heavens and get back to work. There is still so much to do, and vanishingly little time to do it.

The fight goes on.

Washington rolls out the red carpet for war criminal Gallant, as US imperialism prepares to endorse Israel’s war in Lebanon

The visit of war criminal and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to Washington demonstrates once again American imperialism’s support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza as part of a region-wide war targeting Iran. Gallant, who infamously labelled the Palestinians “human animals” as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, held discussions on securing more US weapons and expanding the war to confront Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Gallant arrived in Washington almost exactly one month after Karim Khan, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, applied for arrest warrants for him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges. He has overseen the inhuman blockade of all basic necessities into the Gaza Strip, which has led to the spread of hunger, disease and misery on a horrific scale. On the second day of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, he declared, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” ...

By rights, Gallant and his entourage should have been arrested immediately after exiting their aircraft and transferred to the ICC for prosecution. But the defense minister had nothing to fear during his trip to Washington. Far from being held accountable for his barbaric crimes, Gallant was welcomed in the cockpit of world imperialism with open arms by fellow war criminals drenched in the blood of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Ukrainians and Russians. These war criminals never tire of invoking the precepts of international law to denounce the targets of US imperialism’s wars of aggression, but they refuse to be bound by any such restraints as they and their allies pursue the defense of the “rules-based international order.”

Gallant held meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Biden administration’s special envoy for the Middle East Amos Hochstein and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Graham remarked following his discussion with Gallant that any attack by Hezbollah on Israel that breaches the Iron Dome defense system would be “considered an Iranian attack against Israel.” He continued:

The world must hold Iran accountable for the actions of its proxies, including Hezbollah, at this crucial moment in the life of the State of Israel.

It must be made crystal clear to Iran that if they try to use Hezbollah to destroy Israel, we’re all coming after the Iranian regime.

Gallant’s consultations in Washington have the character of a war council plotting precisely how best to expand the war throughout the Middle East, a prospect that is viewed by multiple international players as imminent. Following the IDF’s announcement last Tuesday that the operational plans for a war in Lebanon had been “approved,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stated Monday, “The risk of this war affecting the south of Lebanon and spilling over is every day bigger. We are on the eve of the war expanding.”

Yves does an excellent analysis. Here are a couple of bits to get you started:

Despite Warnings, Israel Looks Set to Jump Off Lebanon Ledge

More and more, Israel is becoming a case study in national pathology. It keeps relentlessly and savagely killing Gazans and oblitherating their social structures, apparently in case their genocide-in-progress falls short. It is defiant despite its near-complete global isolation, seemingly secure in the idea that the US will always come to its rescue, when it finally may have come to a nexus where the US can’t bail them out.

High on its hubris, Israel looks determined to go to war with Lebanon, a conflict that many experts say that Israel will not only lose, but could lose so badly that it will jeopardize Israel’s existence as a state. After the IDF announced that it had approved war plans for a Lebanon operation, Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Brown said directly that the US might not be able to defend Israel in a war with Hezbollah. ...

No amount of Israel Lobby arm-twisting can surmount the fact that the US is overextended and can’t do much beyond bolstering Israel’s air offenses a bit and air defenses a bit less, when Israel’s key opponents are well bunkered and have also become expert at attritting US and Israel firepower on the cheap.

As readers may recall, the immediate cause for Israel action is that Hezbollah started shelling northern Israel after October 7. Hezbollah has said it will stop the attacks when Israel enters into a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, which is a non-starter. Hezbollah’s campaign has succeeded in driving at least 60,000 and by some estimates as many as 200,000 settlers out of the border area. Israel regards this situation as intolerable. At a minimum it is costly, since any economic activity in that area is kaput and the residents are beign housed at government expense. Israel and the US emissary, who is also an Israeli citizen, Amos Hochstein, have been trying to pretend that their proposal, that Lebanon pull back its forces to the Litani River, which is tantamount to ceding that part of Lebanon to Israel, as reasonable. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has said Lebanon will not surrender any of its land to Israel.

Israeli court rules ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted for military service

Israel’s supreme court has ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jewish men must be drafted into military service, a politically explosive decision that threatens the stability of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. The unanimous ruling on Tuesday, from an expanded panel of nine judges, upheld an interim decision last month that the state had no authority to offer the current exemption for ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, men. It found that yeshivas – Orthodox seminaries for Torah study – should be ineligible for state subsidies unless students enlisted in the military.

The court ruled the state was carrying out “invalid selective enforcement, which represents a serious violation of the rule of law, and the principle according to which all individuals are equal before the law … In the midst of a gruelling war, the burden of inequality is harsher than ever and demands a solution.”

Ostensibly, the court decision ends a decades-old cultural and societal row over the importance of Torah study in modern Israeli life, and who should bear the burden of conscription. But the timing, in the midst of the war in Gaza and as Netanyahu struggles to hold together a rightwing coalition that includes two ultra-Orthodox parties, is more likely to inflame existing tensions between secular and religious elements of society.

The powerful ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) parties, key Netanyahu allies, have often threatened to quit his coalition and force new elections if draft exemptions for their communities were ended. Netanyahu, facing corruption charges he denies, is believed to view remaining in office as his best chance of avoiding prosecution. As such, he is seen as hostage to the demands of his coalition partners.

Mandatory army service for Jewish citizens is a large part of the Israeli national ethos, but longstanding legal compromises have to date exempted Haredi men, who instead continue full-time study of religious texts funded by government stipends. Whether Haredi women serve is viewed as less controversial, as women are much less likely to be drafted into combat units.

MIT Nuclear Expert DIRE WARNING On Ukraine Escalation

A totally unbiased article from The Guardian (not). Here are the useful parts:

ICC issues arrest warrants for Russian officials over alleged Ukraine war crimes

The international criminal court (ICC) at The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Russia’s ex-minister of defence and current army chief of staff for alleged war crimes in Ukraine after a missile campaign targeting Ukrainian power plants and other civilian infrastructure during the full-scale invasion. Ex-minister of defence Sergei Shoigu and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, are accused of the war crimes of directing attacks at civilian objects and of causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects. They are also accused of crimes against humanity.

The Hague issued warrants for their arrest, but they are unlikely to be able to serve them as the pair are in Russia, which is not a party to the ICC and has denounced the court. Ukraine is not a member of the ICC but has given the court jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes committed on its territory since 2022. Shoigu was removed as the minister of defence last month but has remained a senior government official as the head of Russia’s security council.

Announcing the warrants, the court wrote there “are reasonable grounds to believe that the two suspects bear responsibility for missile strikes carried out by the Russian armed forces against the Ukrainian electric infrastructure from at least 10 October 2022 until at least 9 March 2023. During this timeframe, a large number of strikes against numerous electric power plants and substations were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine”.

The court said it had “reasonable grounds to believe that the suspects intentionally caused great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health, thus bearing criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of other inhumane acts”.

Russia has argued that electrical infrastructure in Ukraine represents a legitimate military target.

Trying to sow division in Dagestan

International scheme to tax billionaires’ wealth technically feasible, study finds

An international scheme to tax the wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires is technically feasible and could net up to $250bn (£197bn) a year in extra revenue, a new report says. A study by the French economist Gabriel Zucman concluded that progress in finding ways to tax multinational corporations meant it was now possible to levy a global tax on individuals – even if not every country agreed to take part. ...

The report said billionaires were currently paying an average of 0.3% tax on their wealth – less than the rates paid by workers. Zucman said the average wealth of the top 0.0001% of individuals had grown by 7.1% a year on average between 1987 and 2024, increasing the share of global wealth of billionaires from 3% to 14%.

Describing his plan as a top-up to income tax so that billionaires paid an annual tax bill worth at least 2% of their wealth, Zucman said progressive taxation was a “key pillar of modern societies”.

International cooperation was needed to prevent a “race to the bottom”, he said, but it was not necessary for every country to sign up for the idea to get off the ground. ... Zucman said valuing the wealth of billionaires would be relatively simple because most of it was held in the form of shares. His report said it could be enforced successfully even if all countries did not adopt it, by strengthening current exit taxes (levies on rich people taking their money to a non-participating jurisdiction) and implementing “tax collector of last resort”. This would involve extending to individuals rules that allow participating countries to tax non-participating countries’ undertaxed multinationals.

EU centrists’ deal paves way for von der Leyen to return as commission president

Ursula von der Leyen looks likely to clinch the nomination for a second term as European Commission president under a deal by EU leaders from the three pro-European political groups that sews up the bloc’s top jobs. According to the agreement made by the centre-right European People’s party (EPP), the Socialists and the Liberals, von der Leyen will be nominated for a second five-year mandate at the head of the EU executive at a Brussels summit on Thursday.

The serving Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, would become the EU’s chief diplomat and the former Portuguese prime minister António Costa would take on the presidency of the European Council, making him responsible for chairing EU leader summits.

The deal was struck on Tuesday by six EU leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, and his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, represented the EPP; Spain’s Pedro Sánchez joined Scholz for the Socialists, while the outgoing Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, spoke for the centrist Renew group alongside Macron. Together they represent three pro-European groups that won 399 (55%) of the seats in European elections earlier this month. ...

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, reacted with fury. “The deal that the EPP made with the leftists and the liberals runs against everything that the EU was based on. Instead of inclusion, it sows the seeds of division. EU top officials should represent every member state, not just leftists and liberals,” he wrote on X.

The decision is also likely to disappoint the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who looked visibly annoyed at a dinner meeting of EU leaders last week to discuss the top jobs. Meloni’s nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists group has overtaken Macron’s liberals to become the third largest in the European parliament, but that has so far not translated into greater influence.

Bowman CRUSHED In NY After AIPAC Cash Flood

Pro-Israel Group COVERUP In Key Election

New York judge partially lifts Trump’s gag order in hush-money case

The New York judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush-money trial has partially lifted a gag order that has been hanging over the former president since he was convicted of the accounting fraud charges last month. Under the revised order by Judge Juan Merchan, Trump is now free to criticize trial witnesses, who include Stormy Daniels and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, but must maintain restrictions on his comments about individual prosecutors and others involved in the case.

Trump’s lawyers argued in court motions that the broad gag order stifled his campaign speech, and could limit his ability to respond to Joe Biden when the two meet in the first presidential debate of 2024 on Thursday. They also argued Trump’s political opponents were using the restrictions as a “political sword” and that Trump was unable to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels.

The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said limits imposed on Trump’s speech about witnesses were no longer needed, but they had urged Merchan to keep restrictions on Trump’s comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors “at least through the sentencing hearing and the resolution of any post-trial motions”. The gag order, in its totality, will be terminated after “the imposition of sentence”.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement on Tuesday that the order “leaves in place portions of the unconstitutional Gag Order, preventing President Trump from speaking freely about Merchan’s disqualifying conflicts and the overwhelming evidence exposing this whole Crooked Joe Biden–directed Witch Hunt”, according to NBC News. Cheung added it was “another unlawful decision by a highly conflicted judge, which is blatantly un-American as it gags President Trump” and vowed to appeal it.

Railroad wrongly burned chemicals after East Palestine derailment, agency says

The National Transportation Safety Board said that Norfolk Southern and its contractors unnecessarily burned toxic chemicals - including vinyl chloride – from its tank cars during the freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February, unleashing hazardous fumes into the air. In a board meeting on Tuesday, the NTSB said that an overheated wheel bearing caused the derailment, adding that Norfolk Southern and its contractors “misinterpreted and disregarded evidence” in reaching its decision to execute a controversial controlled burn over concerns that the vinyl chloride could potentially explode.

Following Norfolk Southern and its contractors’ decision to vent and burn the chemicals, plumes of black smoke filled the air of East Palestine for days. The derailment and fumes prompted between 1,500 and 2,000 of the town’s approximately 4,900 residents to evacuate. It also triggered what residents describe as various health issues including nausea, diarrhea and headaches due to the chemical exposure.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, the NTSB said that OxyVinyls, the manufacturer of the vinyl chloride, informed Norfolk Southern that there was no risk of explosion as the chemicals were being stored in tank cars that were sturdy enough to withstand crashes, according to Politico. The outlet further reported that the vinyl chloride had been stabilized to prevent any chemical reactions. However, Norfolk Southern and its contractors did not inform the local fire chief about not needing to burn the chemicals. Other hazardous chemicals released during the derailment included butyl acrylate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol monobutyl ether.

Paul Stancil, an NTSB hazardous material investigator, reportedly also said during the board meeting: “Norfolk Southern’s contractors, who were in control of the derailment scene assessment, compromised the integrity of the vent and burn decision by withholding complete … information from the incident commander,” as reported by Politico. Stancil added: “Norfolk Southern and its contractors continued to assert the necessity of a vent and burn, even though available evidence should have led them to re-evaluate their initial conclusion.”

Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise

A newly identified tipping point for the loss of ice sheets in Antarctica and elsewhere could mean future sea level rise is significantly higher than current projections.

A new study has examined how warming seawater intrudes between coastal ice sheets and the ground they rest on. The warm water melts cavities in the ice, allowing more water to flow in, expanding the cavities further in a feedback loop. This water then lubricates the collapse of ice into the ocean, pushing up sea levels.

The researchers used computer models to show that a “very small increase” in the temperature of the intruding water could lead to a “very big increase” in the loss of ice – ie, tipping point behaviour.

It is unknown how close the tipping point is, or whether it has even been crossed already. But the researchers said it could be triggered by temperature rises of just tenths of a degree, and very likely by the rises expected in the coming decades.

Sea level rise is the greatest long-term impact of the climate crisis and is set to redraw the world map in coming centuries. It has the potential to put scores of major cities, from New York City to Shanghai, below sea level and to affect billions of people. The study addresses a key question of why current models underestimate the sea level seen in earlier periods between ice ages. Scientists think some ice sheet melting processes must not be yet included in the models.

Trouble near Paradise again.

Wildfire breaks out in California near Paradise, site of state’s deadliest blaze

A wildfire is threatening a community in rural northern California near Paradise, where the state’s deadliest wildfire struck six years ago. The blaze, dubbed the Apache fire, broke out on Monday and had grown to more than 600 acres (243 hectares), prompting evacuation orders.

Firefighters battled the blaze on Tuesday with the aid of improved weather conditions, with containment levels reaching 15%, according to the fire captain Dan Collins. Winds subsided and marine air brought some cooling, which made “the conditions are favorable for us this morning”, he said. The cause of the wildfire was under investigation. ...

Palermo, with a population of 9,400 people, is located about 65 miles (105km) north of the state’s capital in Sacramento. It is part of Butte county, which has seen numerous catastrophic fires in recent years that have permanently altered the region.

The 2018 Camp fire leveled the town of Paradise, about 30 miles from Palermo. The fast-moving blaze, California’s deadliest, killed 85 people, destroyed 14,000 buildings and displaced the vast majority of the town’s 26,000 residents for years.

Elsewhere in California, lightning strikes sparked several new fires in the Fresno area on Monday, while in Oregon, a wildfire that grew to more than 1,000 acres over the weekend prompted evacuation orders for nearby homes and campsites. In New Mexico, residents of a village that was destroyed by fast-moving wildfires last week returned to survey the damage, searching for the remains of people who are still missing.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: You Saved Julian Assange

Patrick Lawrence: Putin — Behind the Shoji

Death toll rises to 20 after gunmen attack Russia’s Dagestan

Ukraine SitRep: State And Military Continue to Deteriorate

Washington Frets As Chinese Company Cosco Wraps Up Construction of South America’s Largest Deep Sea Port

The Fed’s “Chicken Run”: Why Sticking with High Rates Will Crash the Economy

Julian Assange Saddled With MASSIVE Debt Upon Return To Australia

Will Trump VANQUISH the Deep State in 2025?

Matt Hoh : Assange To Be Set FREE!

A Little Night Music

Al Green - Driving Wheel

Al Green - Funny How Time Slips Away

Al Green - I Can't Get Next To You

Al Green - Love and Happiness

Al Green - Oh, Pretty Woman

Al Green - I've Never Found A Girl

Al Green - I'm A Ram

Al Green - Right Now, Right Now

Al Green - A Change Is Gonna Come