---

---

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Cow Cow Davenport

---

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Alabama blues and boogie woogie piano player Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport. Enjoy!

^{Cow Cow Davenport - Cow Cow Blues}

"That was a close one. America came an inch from having two presidential candidates with no brain."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

---

News and Opinion

The Biden Administration Has Exposed The Brain Rot Of Western Liberals

At the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday the US president referred to Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin”, referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump”, and said he is “following the advice of my commander-in-chief” on important military decisions.

This man’s brain clearly does not work. It is done. Finito. No mas. Dementia has sunk in the rear naked choke, and Joe Biden’s neurology is tapping.

Americans are watching live proof that their country does not require a president with functioning gray matter in order for decisions to get made and policies to be enacted in the Executive Branch of the US government. The wars and militarism have ticked on uninterrupted, the authoritarian agendas keep getting rolled out, and the same political status quo continues to be advanced. You could not ask for more conclusive proof that for all the fuss that gets made about US presidents and presidential elections, it is nothing more than a figurehead position for an empire that is not actually run by its official elected government.

And it’s only fitting that the US president’s brains should be leaking out his ears even as the brain rot of the ideology which gave rise to him is exposed in front of the entire world.

There is a kind of poetical beauty in the fact that the so-called “moderates” of western liberalism are cheerleading for the re-election of a half-dead dementia patient while his administration facilitates an active genocide in Gaza, perpetuates a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine, prepares for war with Lebanon, and militarizes with increasing aggression against Russia and China, all while killing the earth’s ecosystem and contributing to the poverty, sickness and oppression of the American people at home. The brain rot of their worldview has a guy with an actual rotting brain as its official representative.

The Biden administration has completely discredited every value that western liberals claim to uphold. Peace. Justice. Human rights. A free press. Opposition to racism. Opposition to tyranny. These freaks just plum forgot that genocide is a bad thing on October 7, and probably won’t remember again until the imperial propaganda machine needs to use that accusation against the next government that the empire has targeted for regime change.

The “moderates” and “centrists” of the western world are in reality violent extremists, and not just violent extremists but the most murderous and destructive extremist group on the face of this planet. Not one group on Washington’s list of designated terrorist organizations has a body count that’s even a tiny fraction of what the US empire has racked up just in the 21st century alone.

This is the political ideology that Biden has aligned with throughout the entirety of his far-too-long career, from when he was just a baby swamp monster elected to the Senate at the age of 30 all the way until now as he watches all the cognitive flotsam and jetsam of his decades of Beltway soul-selling blur together like oil paints on the palette of his ruined cerebral matter.

This is who Joe Biden is. This is who western liberals are. They are the carnage, starvation and disease in Gaza. They are the biosphere strangling to death under the boot of ecocidal capitalism. They are the nuclear missiles being rolled into position around the world. They are a dying brain and a dying heart on a dying world of their own making.

Hopefully the death of this toxic, omnicidal ideology won’t be too far behind the death of Joe Biden.

Israel delays negotiations with new Gaza massacres

Dozens of Palestinians killed in latest attacks on Gaza City, say officials

At least 31 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50 wounded in fresh Israeli bombings across the Gaza Strip, rescuers and health officials have said, as conflicting reports emerged over whether Hamas was withdrawing from ceasefire talks after the targeting of the group’s top military commander.

Four attacks in various parts of Gaza City in the early hours of Sunday morning occurred less than 24 hours after Israeli forces said Mohammed Deif, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the 7 October attack on southern Israel, was the target of a strike in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza that, according to the territory’s emergency services, killed more than 90 people and injured 300 others.

Another 14 people were killed in a strike on Sunday morning near a UN-run school being used as a shelter for displaced people in Nuseirat, central Gaza, journalists at the scene said. Israel said Hamas militants were present in the area. Sunday’s bombings add to what was already one of the deadliest weeks of Israeli aerial attacks on Gaza since the war broke out nine months ago. ...

Killing Deif would provide a much-needed morale boost for Israel, which in almost 10 months of fighting has so far failed to take out any of Hamas’s top leadership despite remarks from Netanyahu that the men were “marked for death”. ...

Hamas said Israel’s claim it had targeted leaders of the Palestinian militant group were “false” and aimed at “justifying” the attack. A senior Hamas official told AFP on Sunday that the Palestinian militant group had withdrawn from talks on a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Gaza war because of what it called Israeli “massacres” and its attitude in negotiations.

Freed by Hamas from Israel's jails

David Lammy to call for Gaza ceasefire in talks with Benjamin Netanyahu

David Lammy is to call for an immediate ceasefire during talks with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his first visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as foreign secretary. Lammy said he would push for the release of all hostages as well as an increase in aid into Gaza, announcing a new £5.5m humanitarian and medical assistance package.

Echoing the calls for a ceasefire made by Keir Starmer to both Israeli and Palestinian leaders upon entering No 10, Lammy said the UK wanted to play a “full diplomatic role” in bringing about a lasting end to the conflict. ...

Lammy will also raise the issue of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank when he meets Netanyahu. Lammy is to meet the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, as well. The British aid package will go to UK-Med, a frontline medical aid charity that includes many NHS medics who are in the region to support field hospitals in Gaza and the emergency department at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.

“The death and destruction in Gaza is intolerable,” Lammy said, before the visit. “This war must end now, with an immediate ceasefire, complied with by both sides. The fighting has got to stop, the hostages still cruelly detained by Hamas terrorists need to be released immediately and aid must be allowed in to reach the people of Gaza without restrictions.”

Scores of bodies found as Israel withdraws from Gaza City's Shujaiya

Around 60 bodies were found under the rubble of Gaza City's Shujaiya neighbourhood, officials in the territory said Thursday, after Israel's military declared an end to its operation there. ...

Mohammed Nairi, a Shujaiya resident, told Reuters he and others returning to the neighbourhood had seen "immense destruction that defies description. All the houses were demolished."

Israel's military said on Wednesday it had completed its mission in Shujaiya after two weeks, but bombardments and fighting continued to shake Gaza City.

Witnesses said tanks and troops had moved on to other parts of the city.

Christians in occupied Jerusalem see marked surge in Israeli settler attacks

Settler attacks on the Christian community in occupied Jerusalem have surged since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, according to Hebrew reports.

Hebrew news outlet Channel 13 reported on 12 July that over the past three months, there have been at least 36 recorded incidents of violence or abuse against Christians.

This includes 17 incidents of Israeli settlers spitting on Christian worshippers, nine acts of vandalism, five assaults, and five cases of verbal abuse – all under police protection.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been imposing taxes on Churches and Church property. The Israeli government claims the taxes are routine financial matters, yet the Christian community has accused Tel Aviv of a “coordinated attack on the Christian presence in the Holy Land” and a violation of a centuries-old status quo.

“In this time, when the whole world, and the Christian world in particular, are constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves, once again, dealing with an attempt by authorities to drive the Christian presence out of the Holy Land,” wrote the heads of the major Christian denominations in a joint letter to Netanyahu late last month.

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Says There Have Been Attempts To Assassinate Putin

On Saturday, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed that there had been several attempts at assassinating Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There have been [attempts to assassinate Putin], but as you can see, they have been unsuccessful so far,” said Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, known as the GUR.

Budanov didn’t offer any details about the alleged assassination attempts. He has previously made similar claims, and other officials in the GUR have threatened that Kyiv was preparing to target the Russian leader. ...

One former US intelligence official described the GUR as “our little baby.” The report said the SBU and the GUR have been involved in dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in Russian-controlled Ukraine, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, and Russian officials and civilians deep inside Russia, all while maintaining US support.

US missiles in Germany

China’s leaders to meet for third plenum with kickstarting the economy on the agenda

Top Chinese officials will gather in Beijing on Monday, with all eyes on how they might kickstart lacklustre growth at a key political meeting that has historically seen officials unveil big-picture economic policy changes. The world’s second-largest economy is grappling with a real estate debt crisis, weakening consumption, an ageing population and geopolitical tensions.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, will oversee the ruling Communist party’s secretive third plenum, which usually takes place every five years in October, though Beijing has offered few hints about what might be on the table. State media in June said the delayed four-day gathering would “primarily examine issues related to further comprehensively deepening reform and advancing Chinese modernisation”, and Xi has said the party is planning “major” reforms. ...

Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said the meeting was “intended to generate and discuss big, long-term ideas and structural reforms instead of making short-term policy adjustments”. The third plenum has previously been an occasion for the party’s top leadership to unveil major economic policy shifts.

In 1978, then-leader Deng Xiaoping used the meeting to announce market reforms that would put China on the path to rapid economic growth by opening it to the world. More recently, after the closed-door meeting in 2013, the leadership pledged to give the free market a “decisive” role in resource allocation, as well as other sweeping changes to economic and social policy.

This year’s conclave will begin the same day China is due to release its growth figures for the second quarter, although authorities have in the recent past delayed the publication of GDP results if they coincide with big events – as they did during the Communist party’s 20th national congress in mid-October 2022. Experts polled by AFP expect China’s economy to have grown, on average, 5.3% year-on-year between April and June. Beijing has said it is aiming for 5% growth this year – enviable for many western countries but a far cry from the double-digit expansion that for years drove the Chinese economy.

Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi’s unlawful marriage convictions overturned by Pakistan court

A court in Pakistan has acquitted the former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife on charges of unlawful marriage, just a day after his party won the majority of reserved seats in the supreme court. Syed Zulfi Bukhari, an adviser to Imran Khan on international affairs and media, said: “The court has not only thrown out the case but the judge has ordered for the immediate release of Imran Khan and his wife.”

Khan and Bibi were sentenced to seven years days before the general elections in February by a local court in Pakistan, which found them guilty of breaking Islamic law and failing to observe the required interval between Bibi’s divorce and their marriage. Khan was sentenced in four big cases including the unlawful marriage and another involving allegations of leaking state secrets and has been imprisoned since last August. He has been acquitted in all cases or granted bail.

Khan’s supporters and close aides were celebrating the acquittal of the unlawful marriage allegations, known as the Iddat case, hoping it would pave the way for his release. But minutes after Khan’s acquittal order, local media reported that an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan had issued written orders for the arrest and questioning of Khan in cases related to 9 May violence during his arrest last year. Soon after his arrest, violence erupted across Pakistan when Khan’s supporters attacked military installations and buildings in protest. Khan has been accused of being the mastermind of the unrest.

Bukhari said: “Now all of sudden we are just hearing that Khan has to be questioned in cases related to 9 May violence and also his wife in a corruption case. It is a mockery of justice but we know these fake cases won’t stand in the court of law.

“The courts are releasing Imran Khan but the administration and military establishment are putting fake cases one after another to put him in prison. Why were these cases not brought before?”

Oklahoma identifies first victim in Tulsa race massacre mass grave

A veteran of the first world war has become the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa massacre of the Oklahoma city’s Black community, the mayor said on Friday.

Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of CL Daniel – from Georgia – were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Mayor GT Bynum and lab officials. Daniel was in his 20s when he was killed. ... “His remains show no signs of gunshot wounds. They were identified purely due to the expertise of our team of experts and give us hope that other remains found in similar circumstances could be those of other victims.” ...

The breakthrough for identifying Daniel came when investigators found a 1936 letter from his mother’s attorney seeking veteran’s benefits. Alison Wilde, a forensic scientist with Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Forensics, said the letter provided by the US’s national archives convinced investigators that Daniel was killed in the massacre.

In a statement released on Friday, Tulsa city officials said:

“In part, the letter states, ‘CL was killed in a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921’. Receipt of this letter confirms that CL … is a Tulsa race massacre victim not previously identified.”

---

---

Judge Aileen Cannon THROWS OUT CLASSIFIED Case Vs TRUMP

Biden urges US to reject ‘extremism and fury’ after Trump assassination attempt

Joe Biden on Sunday forcefully condemned political violence and appealed to a nation still reeling from the assassination attempt of Donald Trump to reject “extremism and fury”. In a primetime address from the Oval Office, Biden said Americans must strive for national unity,” warning that the political rhetoric in the US had gotten “too heated” as passions rise in the final months before the November presidential election.

“There is no place in America for this kind of violence – for any violence. Ever. Period. No exception,” the president said. “We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.” Biden ordered an independent review into how a gunman was able to get onto a roof overlooking a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, and fire shots at the former president.

The attack, which is being investigated as an attempted assassination and a potential act of domestic terrorism, left Trump injured at the ear, but it killed a bystander and critically injured two others.

“We cannot, we must not go down this road in America,” Biden added, citing a rising tide of political violence. The president pointed to the assault on the US Capitol, the attack on the husband of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a kidnapping plot against Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. Biden said investigators were still searching for the motive of the 20-year-old suspect, and did not yet know the shooter’s “opinions or affiliations” or whether he had support.

Larry C. Johnson & former FBI HRT Sniper Chris Whitcomb on the Failed Assassination of Donald Trump

Questions mount over shooter’s ability to access roof despite security presence at Trump rally

Demands for answers were mounting on Sunday as to how an armed man was able to get into position on a roof overlooking a rally and fire shots at Donald Trump – the 2024 presumptive Republican nominee – despite federal and local law enforcement presence and witnesses reportedly alerting police. National lawmakers expressed shock at the apparent security lapses. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, said the chamber would conduct a “full investigation”. ...

Bomb-making materials were found in the vehicle and home of the suspect, officials said. Trump was bleeding from his right ear and later described a bullet whizzing by while he was speaking at the rally. An attendee was killed and Secret Service agents then shot dead the suspect, with eyewitness reports that someone outside the rally had told police they’d seen the armed suspect heading to the roof but it appeared that officers did not respond.

“How was it that someone could get [in position] on a roof … with a weapon and try to assassinate [Trump]?” Congressman Mike Turner, the Republican chair of the House intelligence committee, told CNN’s State of the Union show on Sunday morning, adding: “The fact that people knew there was a man with a rifle and were trying to get the police’s attention is a cause for concern.”

Dems GIVE UP On Dropping Biden After Trump Attempted Assassination

---

---

‘Goldmine’ collection of wheat from 100 years ago may help feed the world, scientists say

A hundred years ago, the plant scientist Arthur Watkins launched a remarkable project. He began collecting samples of wheat from all over the globe, nagging consuls and business agents across the British empire and beyond to supply him with grain from local markets.

His persistence was exceptional and, a century later, it is about to reap dramatic results. A UK-Chinese collaboration has sequenced the DNA of all the 827 kinds of wheat, assembled by Watkins, that have been nurtured at the John Innes Centre near Norwich for most of the past century.

In doing so, scientists have created a genetic goldmine by pinpointing previously unknown genes that are now being used to create hardy varieties with improved yields that could help feed Earth’s swelling population.

Strains are now being developed that include wheat which is able to grow in salty soil, while researchers at Punjab Agricultural University are working to improve disease resistance from seeds that they received from the John Innes Centre. Other strains include those that would reduce the need for nitrogen fertilisers, the manufacture of which is a major source of carbon emissions.

“Essentially we have uncovered a goldmine,” said Simon Griffiths, a geneticist at the John Innes Centre and one of the project’s leaders. “This is going to make an enormous difference to our ability to feed the world as it gets hotter and agriculture comes under increasing climatic strain.”

Houston swelters in punishing heat as 800,000 without power after Beryl

Nearly 800,000 Houston residents remain without electricity five days after the category-1 Hurricane Beryl downed power lines across the city. The outages come as the city is under heat advisory, with heat index values over 100F (37.8C). Residents have described insufferable heat, sleepless nights, and fear for the wellbeing of elderly parents, young children and disabled relatives amid scorching temperatures. ...

Soaring demand for cool hotel rooms has driven up prices, with the state attorney general’s office receiving complaints of price gouging, according to local media. ...

It’s the second time in recent months that Houston has faced widespread power outages. In May, an intense storm left about 1 million people without power for several days. CenterPoint Energy, the city’s primary utility company, said weakened trees, which have fallen on power lines, are to blame. But data from Whisker Labs, which tracks power outages, found the utlity’s grid is one of the most unstable in the US, with outages occurring at a rate more than twice the national average.

Residents criticized CenterPoint for what they said was an inaccurate power restoration map and lack of communication about the timeline for power restoration. “The new map, that CenterPoint only released after being flamed in the national press for having no outage tracker, looks like someone traced the streets on the city map using a tablet with a digital stylus like an Apple Pencil,” saidMatt Micik, 30, who lives in midtown. ...
Rebecca Gregory, who lives in Cypress, a suburb in north-west Houston, has two children under two, and said she feels she cannot rely on CenterPoint or local government any more. “I think the lineman crews are doing a great job and they had nothing to do with the power outages,” Gregory, 30, said. “However, on a management level, I would have thought the freeze from February 2021 and the major power outages we experienced two months ago would make CenterPoint, the state of Texas, and the city of Houston, take a closer look at the problem – some people even lost their lives due to the loss of power.” She added: “It just seems that each year it keeps getting worse. But it’s a reality we’re living in now and we need to be prepared for the worst.”

Climate crisis has impact on insects’ colours and sex lives

An ambush bug with a darker-coloured body is better at snagging a sexual partner than its brighter counterpart when it is chilly. Darker males can warm up more easily in the early mornings, and therefore get busy while everybody else is still warming up. This is one of the many examples of how temperature affects colouring in insects, and in turn can affect their ability to mate, according to a new review article published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

But scientists are still trying to work out what will happen to insects’ sex lives now that human-induced climate breakdown is raising temperatures to unprecedented levels.

“On the one hand, we could be rejoicing, saying: how are the insects? They are responding to climate change. We don’t have to worry about them,” said Mariella Herberstein, a behavioural ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who is one of the authors of the study. “And then we could wake up the next day going: Oh, damn – they can’t find each other any more because they have lost really important identification colours that help them find a mate.”

The prevailing theory among scientists, says Herberstein, is that when temperatures increase, insects largely evolve to produce less of the melanin pigment that regulates their hue, becoming lighter and brighter in colour. That is because darker objects absorb more heat and heat up quicker, while lighter objects reflect more incoming irradiation and can stay cooler for longer. ...

Cracking this conundrum could play a crucial role in figuring out exactly how insects might be able to weather climate breakdown, said Michael Moore, an integrative biologist at the University of Colorado Denver. Moore was not involved in the latest research but in 2021 spotted that male dragonflies were losing their wing colour patterns where the climate is hotter, and is trying to establish whether that makes it harder for the dragonflies to find their mates. “One thing that really sticks out to me is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all rule,” said Moore. “We have a lot more work to do – we haven’t solved this one yet.”

---

Also of Interest

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

NATO Summit: Not a Shield But a Bloodied Sword

The Corporate News Media at Work

The US Came Close To Having TWO Presidential Candidates With No Brain

The Mainstream Worldview Is A Mass-Produced Artificial Psychosis

‘Constant anxiety’: hundreds of Palestinians face eviction threat in East Jerusalem

Netanyahu Reverses Key Israeli Concession Made in Ceasefire Negotiations

US Launches Heavy Strikes in Yemen

Destabilizing the US-Russian Nuclear Balance

Chris Hedges: Statement on Attempted Trump Assassination

Chile’s stolen children: a new effort offers hope to Pinochet-era international adoptees

Contempt, gagging and UN intervention: inside the UK’s wildest climate trial

Is Keir Starmer a British intelligence asset?

Morning Joe YANKED OFF Airwaves, MSNBC Worried Anti-Trump Anchors Would EMBARRASS Network

'STAGED BY PUTIN': Top Dem CAUGHT Floating Trump Conspiracy After Shooting

Judge / Johnson / McGovern : Assassination Attempt of Donald Trump

---

A Little Night Music

Cow Cow Davenport - Texas Shout

Cow Cow Davenport - Chimin' The Blues

Cow Cow Davenport - State Street Jive (Take B)

Cow Cow Davenport - Mama Don't Allow No Easy Riders Here

Cow Cow Davenport - Jim Crow Blues

Cow Cow Davenport - Alamabama Strut

Cow Cow Davenport - Slow Drag

Cow Cow Davenport - I've Been Hoodooed

Cow Cow Davenport - That'll Get It

---