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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: James Brown

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features The Godfather of Soul James Brown. Enjoy!

^{James Brown - Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, I Feel Good}

"The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world."

-- M. Scott Peck

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News and Opinion

US Policy: Let Israel Escalate Against Iran, Then Tell Iran Not To Escalate Back

In an article titled “U.S. Warns Iran of ‘Serious Risk’ if It Conducts Major Attack on Israel,” The Wall Street Journal reports that officials within the Biden administration have been warning Iran not to “escalate” against Israel in its planned retaliatory strikes for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran.

“The United States has sent clear messaging to Iran that the risk of a major escalation if they do a significant retaliatory attack against Israel is extremely high,” an anonymous US official told The Wall Street Journal, adding that “there is a serious risk of consequences for Iran’s economy and the stability of its newly elected government if it goes down that path.”

As we sit awaiting Iran’s planned reprisal attack and hope dearly that it doesn’t lead to a major new war in west Asia, one can’t help but read such reports and think it sure would’ve been nice of the Americans to issue these kinds of warnings to Israel against escalating before it went on its insanely escalatory assassination spree in the capital cities of Iran and Lebanon.

You’ll never see western officials so enthusiastic about the idea of de-escalation as they are in those time periods when their side has just severely escalated tensions with an extreme act of aggression, but the other side has yet to retaliate. They remind you of a parent who lets their kid run around clobbering other children at the playground, then when another child goes to hit them back they rush in and start yelling about the need to play nice.

They’ve been doing this song and dance for the last few days, ever since it became clear that Iran was going to retaliate for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was a guest on their territory.

“Earlier, Vice President Harris and I were briefed in the Situation Room on developments in the Middle East,” President Biden’s Twitter account posted on Monday. “We received updates on threats posed by Iran and its proxies, diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, and preparations to support Israel should it be attacked again. We also discussed the steps we are taking to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing.”

“Further attacks only raise the risk of dangerous outcomes that no one can predict and no one can fully control,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed on Tuesday.

“Further escalation in the Middle East is in no one’s interests,” tweeted UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Tuesday. “I spoke to Iran’s acting Foreign Minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, and cautioned that any Iranian attack would have devastating consequences for the region. Iran and all parties must urgently and immediately de-escalate.”

Israel’s powerful western backers are happy to let it run rampant throughout the region without making any meaningful warnings against its criminal actions or imposing any consequences on it whatsoever. But as soon as it becomes clear that Israel has crossed a red line and is about to get hit, these western empire managers turn into a bunch of hippies who just want peace and love.

When Iran does whatever it’s about to do, we may be certain that the western empire and its propagandists in the mass media are going to frame it as an unprovoked and outrageous act of aggression and start babbling about “defending” Israel against its “attackers”. Imperial history always begins right after Israel’s aggressions, and starts the clock as the retaliations for them emerge.

That’s how the imperial spin machine operates: reversing victim and victimizer, aggressor and defender, claiming to always be acting in self-defense while existing in a continuous state of attack. When the inevitable blowback from these aggressions turns up, they stare with Bambi-eyed innocence and call it an unprovoked attack launched by deranged madmen with hatred in their hearts, and use it to justify even more mass military slaughter in the parts of the world where they already wanted to inflict it.

Are you not tired of having your intelligence insulted like this? I know I am.

Iran may rethink reprisals against Israel over killing of Hamas’s leader

Iran may be rethinking the scale and format of its planned reprisal against Israel after the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, but is not likely to be put off by the absence of explicit support from Muslim states for an Iranian military response, officials have suggested.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials have reportedly concluded that the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is determined to carry out an attack in the next few days in response to Israel’s killing of senior commander Fuad Shukr, but the degree to which it will coordinate with Iran is unclear.

US and Israeli sources have reportedly said in recent days that Tehran is still deciding on the scale and scope of its response after significant diplomatic pressure to avoid civilian casualties. Iran appears likely to target those responsible for the attack, specifically the Mossad and its agencies, rather than civilians.

At a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah this week, there was a unanimous condemnation of the killing of Haniyeh, with members stating it was in flagrant violation of international law and of Iran’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security.

But no formal collective support for an Iranian attack on Israel was issued, and Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, in his remarks called for cool heads and perseverance with a diplomatic path – saying that the assassination must be avenged but that “we must not fulfil Benjamin Netanyahu’s design for a wider war”. He said the Israeli prime minister was seeking to set a trap.

Crisis-hardened Lebanese stockpile food as war looms

The bargain bins of the upmarket grocery in the Achrafieh area of eastern Beirut are filled with offers that are unusual for its high-end clientele. On sale: 40 rolls of toilet paper, 6-litre jugs of water, 10kg bags of powdered detergent, 5kg of sugar. Shoppers are ignoring the French cheese and heading straight to the canned goods. Their carts are stuffed with nappies, cartons of UHT milk and dried beans.

As warplanes boomed across the city, the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was giving a speech, vowing revenge against Israel. Both the Lebanese militant group and Iran have said a “strong” retaliation against Israel is imminent, blaming Israel for last month’s killing in Beirut of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, and the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas.

How and when that retaliation will come remains unclear, with US officials twice revising their predictions of an Iranian response. As diplomats scrambled to defuse the conflict, Nasrallah said on Tuesday: “Israel’s week-long wait is part of the punishment and retaliation.” The anticipation is also weighing on the Lebanese people, who, despite 10 months of brinkmanship after Hezbollah’s opening of the northern front with Israel, feel that this time a full-scale conflict is possible.

Ruling Challenges Media Stance on Palestine

Major international media faces a dilemma over whether to adapt its reporting to the World Court’s judgment last month that Israel is an apartheid state illegally occupying Palestinian territory or continue to reflect a dominant narrative giving Israel ideological succor. The legal opinion followed a request in December 2022 from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on the legal status of the occupation, as the United States and its sub-imperial allies continued to dispute international law on the matter.

Western media outlets have for decades been wary of calling the occupation illegal, largely due to international law being disputed by Israel and its Western backers. Instead, a passive lexicon has until now been employed, obscuring the colonial and illegitimate nature of Israel’s violence as a belligerent occupying force. But that has now changed. The blatant nature of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza over the past 10 months has helped to nevertheless expose that violence, with many seeing past media coverage that represented Israel’s actions as a “war on Hamas” following its Oct. 7 attacks, justified by reference to an erroneous right of self-defence.

The rule of international law and rule of U.S. hegemony stands diametrically opposed and the non-Western world sees it, a reality Western media thus far has studiously avoided to represent to its own increasingly skeptical audiences. ...

Western news leaders now have a choice, assuming they are not themselves as deluded as those wielding power, making rational choice impossible. Either continue as is, or attempt to achieve a semblance of credibility by aligning descriptors in reports with determinations of the U.N.’s top judicial body. The decision will ultimately come down to whether any moral agency remains within those institutions, but more likely, whether those states funding them change their diplomatic settings in the way that the ICJ advisory opinion requires.

US To Let Israel Restart Military Operations in Gaza After First Phase of Ceasefire Deal

The US is ready to guarantee that it would allow Israel to restart the genocidal war in Gaza after the first phase of any hostage and ceasefire deal that might be reached with Hamas, according to Israeli media reports.

Hostage deal talks have been stalled since the Israeli killing of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, and it’s unclear when they will resume, but the US and Israel have been discussing potential proposals.

According to The Times of Israel, a proposal that’s been discussed would involve three phases where Israel would halt its military operations and Hamas would release hostages. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a guarantee that he’ll be able to restart military operations after the first phase, which is when negotiations will be held on implementing the next two phases.

International Campaign Targets Tanker Supplying Israeli War Planes With Texas oil

An oil tanker scheduled to carry 300,000 barrels of military-grade jet fuel to Israel has been prevented from docking in Spain and Gibraltar following pressure from activists. The oil is expected to be used in Israeli Air Force’s F16 and F35 jets as part of the country’s genocidal assault on Gaza.

The Overseas Santorini was supposed to dock in Gibraltar on July 30, but it did not stop and is currently traveling northeast in the Mediterranean. It’s unclear if the failure to dock was connected to the protests. Gibraltar confirmed that the vessel requested to stop and an official told the Gibraltar Chronicle that no services were supplied to the tanker. The government says the decision not to bunker was made by the company.

The effort to block the ship from docking is part of the No Harbour for Genocide campaign, which was launched by a coalition of groups including Progressive International, Disrupt Power, the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, Valero out of Corpus, the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature, and the BDS National Committee. In a public statement, the coalition called states with ports in the Mediterranean Sea to prevent the docking of all vessels carrying military fuel to Israel, in compliance with legal obligations to prevent genocide and other international crimes. ...

Protests in Spain have already prevented the tanker from docking at the port of Algeciras. The tanker is supposed to dock in Cyprus in early August, but activist groups in that country have also joined the campaign to block the boat. A coalition of Italian Palestine solidarity groups has also joined the campaign by issuing lookout notices and demanding that coastal authorities disclose whether the boat has requested to dock at any Italian ports. Italy is the third exporter of weapons to Israel.

The Overseas Santorini was loaded at the Bill Greehey refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, with oil from Valero Energy Corp, which is based in San Antonio.

US warns Turkiye of ‘consequences’ over military trade with Russia

Washington has warned Ankara that it will face “consequences” if it does not restrict its exports of US military hardware to Russia.

The US assistant commerce secretary, Matthew Axelrod, met recently with officials in Turkiye to discuss efforts to halt Ankara’s “illicit trade” with Moscow, the Financial Times (FT) reported on 7 August.

He warned Turkiye that it must work harder to prevent the flow of microchips and any parts to Russia that could be used in the war in Ukraine.

“We need Turkey to help us stop the illicit flow of US technology to Russia. We need to see progress, and quickly, by Turkish authorities and industry or we will have no choice but to impose consequences on those that evade our export controls,” Axelrod told FT.

He referred to the issue as an “urgent problem,” urging the Turkish government to “adopt and enforce a ban on the transshipment of US-controlled items to Russia.” He also accused Moscow of “trying to exploit Turkey’s trade policy” to gain access to US-made hardware.

Normal person: Genocide is bad

Crazy person: DO YOU WANT TRUMP TO WIN

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 8, 2024

Uncommitted voters respond to Harris-Walz ticket with hope and reservations

Leaders of the “uncommitted” campaign spoke with Kamala Harris and her newly announced running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, before a rally in Detroit on Wednesday to discuss their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with the Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo”, the organization said in a statement.

But a Harris aide said on Thursday that while the vice-president did say she wanted to engage more with members of the Muslim and Palestinian communities about the Israel-Gaza war, she did not agree to discuss an arms embargo, according to Reuters. Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, also said on Twitter/X that the vice-president did not support an embargo on Israel but “will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law”. A spokesperson for Harris’s campaign confirmed she does not support an arms embargo on Israel. ...

The uncommitted movement, a protest vote against Joe Biden that started during the presidential primary season to send a message to the Democratic party about the US’s role in the Israel-Gaza conflict, began in Michigan and spread to several states. In Walz’s Minnesota, it captured 20% of the Democratic votes.

Harris’s announcement of Walz as her running mate on Tuesday was met with celebration and even hope by many different parts of the Democratic electorate. But those in the uncommitted movement are still weighing their response, and hoping for a presidential campaign that will comprehensively address the mounting death toll in Gaza.

“[Walz] is not someone who has been pro-Palestine in any way. That’s really important here. But he is also someone who’s shown a willingness to change on different issues,” said Asma Mohammed, the campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, and one of 35 delegates nationwide representing the uncommitted movement.

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JD Vance’s investments reveal potential contradictions with his political persona

JD Vance’s investments reveal potential contradictions between the political persona he has sought to project, his history as a venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte, and his status as a hard-edged tribune of the so-called “new right”.

Companies he has invested in include a firm that carries out medical testing of therapies that may include stem cells in scientific research to tech firms with records of harvesting data. Vance and some of the people behind the various firms he is involved with also exhibit an obsession with references to the mythology around The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy world. ...

Several Vance investments involve cutting-edge biotech startups, whose research and commercial activities may conflict with Vance’s stated Catholic religious beliefs, and his advocacy of positions like total abortion bans. Perhaps the most controversial of these to date is AmplifyBio, a startup founded in 2021 to develop “next generation cell and gene therapies”.

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Cello-playing climate activist arrested at New York Citibank protest as crackdown escalates

A 63-year-old climate activist and professional cellist faces up to seven years in prison after being arrested on Thursday while performing a Bach solo outside the headquarters of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel financier Citibank in downtown New York. John Mark Rozendaal, a former Princeton professor, and Alec Connon, director of the climate nonprofit group Stop the Money Pipeline, were arrested for criminal contempt in the public park at the bank’s global headquarters as the crackdown against nonviolent climate protesters escalates. ...

Thirteen other climate activists, who had linked arms in a circle around Rozendaal to protect him as he played Bach’s suites for cello, were detained for alleged obstruction of governmental administration, a misdemeanor criminal charge. ... Since 10 June, climate activists have been peacefully protesting against Citibank’s record financial support for new fossil fuel projects as part of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign. At least 3,700 people have participated in the nonviolent civil disobedience, repeatedly blockading the entrance to its global headquarters. More than 475 people including faith leaders, scientists and elders have been arrested while calling on Citi to stop bankrolling new coal, oil and gas.

Citi is the second largest financier of fossil fuels and the largest financier of fossil fuel expansion since the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to the latest Banking on Climate Chaos report.

The latest arrests come as climate advocates accuse Citibank and the NYPD of coordinated and escalating efforts to suppress nonviolent protests in retaliation for drawing attention to the banking giant’s key role in funding fossil projects globally. (Citi declined to comment on the allegation. The NYPD told Inside Climate News that there was no escalation in law enforcement’s response and individuals had not been targeted.) Over the course of five days in July, four high-profile “summer of heat” organizers and activists were arrested on what they say are bogus charges targeting campaign leaders – an escalation condemned by hundreds of celebrities, scientists, lawmakers, students, nonprofits and climate activists.

Peel those apples: washing produce doesn’t remove pesticides

A new scientific report lends weight to consumer concerns about pesticide residues on food, presenting fresh evidence that washing fruit before eating does not remove various toxic chemicals commonly used in agriculture.

The paper, published on Wednesday in the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters, comes amid ongoing debate over the extent of pesticide contamination of food, and the potential health risks associated with a steady diet that includes pesticide residues.

In May, Consumer Reports said it had determined that 20% of 59 different fruit and vegetable categories carried pesticide residues at levels that posed “significant risks” to consumers, based on an analysis of data gathered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The central aim of the new paper is to share the technical details of a process the authors developed for enhanced trace detection of pesticides in foods. But the underlying finding about the ineffectiveness of washing fruit is important for consumers who may be relying on food safety practices that are insufficient, the authors said.

Traditional “fruit-cleaning operations cannot wholly remove pesticides”, the paper states. When using the technique to examine an apple, for instance, the researchers said the “imaging results prove that the pesticides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer”. Using the technology they developed, the authors said they found the pesticide contamination diminished when the apple peel was removed along with some of the pulp layer.

July ends 13-month streak of global heat records, but experts warn against relief

Earth’s string of 13 straight months with a new average heat record came to an end this past July as the natural El Niño climate pattern ebbed, the European climate agency Copernicus announced on Wednesday.

But July 2024’s average heat just missed surpassing last year’s July, and scientists said the end of the record-breaking streak changes nothing about the threat posed by the climate crisis.

“The overall context hasn’t changed,” Copernicus’s deputy director, Samantha Burgess, said in a statement. “Our climate continues to warm.” ...

The globe for July 2024 averaged 62.4F (16.91C), which is 1.2F (0.68C) above the 30-year average for the month, according to Copernicus. Temperatures were a small fraction lower than the same period last year.

It is the second-warmest July and second warmest of any month recorded in the agency’s records, behind only July 2023. The Earth also had its two hottest days on record, on 22 July and 23 July, each averaging about 62.9F. During July, the world was 2.7F (1.48C) warmer, by Copernicus’s measurement, than preindustrial times.

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Also of Interest

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

From Aaron Bushnell To “I’m Speaking” In Five Months

Ray McGovern: Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit in Journalism

On the Call Not to Protest in Chicago

Police hunt for Puigdemont as pro-union MP takes Catalan presidency

Thousands of senior citizens are dying homeless in Los Angeles

Massachusetts court rejects Satanic Temple’s free speech case

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A Little Night Music

James Brown - Get on the Good Foot

James Brown - Funky Good Time

James Brown - Get Up Offa That Thing

James Brown - Soul Power

James Brown - Night Train

James Brown - Cold Sweat

James Brown - Talkin' Loud And Sayin' Nothing

James Brown - Make It Funky, Parts 1, 2, 3 & 4

James Brown - I Got The Feeling (Internationales Rockkonzert gegen Apartheid, June 26, 1988)

James Brown - Living In America / Mother Popcorn

James Brown Live Paris 1968

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