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This evening's music features Chicago blues saxophone player A.C. Reed. Enjoy!

"If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side."

-- Orson Scott Card

News and Opinion

Democrats Are Pigs

Author Stephen King has a new viral tweet featuring a picture of himself wearing a Kamala Harris t-shirt modeled after an Obama campaign sticker captioned with the words “I’M SPEAKING” — a phrase with which she drew headlines and severe public outcry last week by using it to shut down anti-genocide protesters at a campaign rally in Detroit.

That’s right: they’re using her condescending shutdown of pro-Palestine demonstrators as a fun girlboss campaign slogan now.

God damn it I hate Democrats so fucking much.

pic.twitter.com/yDG1STTJPK

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 15, 2024

The only way to believe Democrats are significantly better than Republicans or vice-versa is to both (A) be unable to distinguish actions from words and (B) to completely ignore foreign policy.

(A) means you have to look solely at your preferred party’s platform while ignoring the actions they actually take, which are not drastically different from the actions the other party takes relative to the 99.99% of policies and systems they leave in place from administration to administration.

(B) means you have to pay zero attention to all the violence, tyranny and abuse the US government inflicts upon populations around the world, of which there is no meaningful difference between parties at all. The overwhelming majority of American violence, tyranny and abuse is directed not at Americans but at people outside the United States, so by excluding this from your analysis you are excluding almost all of the evils of your preferred party when claiming it is morally superior to the other.

The ICJ Finds That BDS Is Not Merely a Right, but an Obligation

Israel and its lobby have, for years now, been engaged in a frenzy of activity to further insulate Israel from accountability by using their influence in the West to effectively outlaw organized opposition to Israel. Foremost among these efforts has been the Israeli campaign to penalize calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its gross violations of human rights. As a result, countless laws and policies are now on the books across the U.S. and the broader West, trampling on core constitutional principles and internationally guaranteed human rights in defense of Israeli impunity. But an advisory opinion issued last month by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should help to turn that around.

In its historic ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to divest from any existing economic relations there.

Because the court was bound by the parameters of the request from the UN General Assembly that triggered its findings, it did not address duties and obligations relating to activities inside the 1948 Green Line. However, the court’s authoritative statement of the requirements of international law makes clear that proponents of BDS have not only the moral high ground but also a firm grounding in international law.

Miko Peled: Inside Israel’s ‘Insane Society’ that Systematically Tortures and Rapes Palestinians

One Palestinian killed as Israeli settlers attack West Bank village

Dozens of Israeli settlers, some wearing masks, attacked a Palestinian village near the city of Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, burning cars and killing at least one person.

The Palestinian health ministry said one Palestinian was killed and another critically wounded by Israeli settlers’ gunfire during the attack in the village of Jit, the latest in a series of attacks by violent settlers in the West Bank. Footage shared on social media showed cars and houses on fire after the attacks.

The Israeli military said police and army units intervened and arrested one Israeli. It condemned the attack, which it said diverted security forces from other responsibilities. It said it was examining reports about the death of the Palestinian. ...

Palestinians regularly accuse Israeli security forces of standing by and allowing groups of violent settlers to attack their houses and villages and the attacks have attracted increasing concern internationally.

Violence in the West Bank has surged since the Gaza war started on 7 October and Israeli settlements there – considered illegal under international law – have also hit new records.

40K+ Palestinians Killed; US LAISSEZ-FAIRE Approach Will Hurt CEASE-FIRE Talks: Trita Parsi

New round of Gaza ceasefire negotiations begin without Hamas

A new round of negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the war in Gaza and preventing the fighting from escalating into a region-wide conflict got under way in Doha, as the death toll in the Palestinian territory reached a grim milestone of 40,000 people, according to local health authorities.

Mediators from the US, Qatar and Egypt met an Israeli delegation in the Qatari capital on Thursday afternoon, with talks expected to continue into the next day. Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is not directly participating in the talks, meaning expectations of a breakthrough are low.

While Hamas and Israel agreed in principle last month to implement a three-phase plan publicly proposed by Joe Biden in May, both sides have since requested “amendments” and “clarifications”, leaving talks at an impasse. Gaps include the continuing presence of Israeli troops on the Gaza-Egypt border, the sequencing of a hostage release, and the return of civilians from southern to northern Gaza. ...

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been accused of sabotaging the talks for political gain, but reportedly expanded the negotiating team’s mandate before it flew to Doha on Thursday morning.

In a statement on the eve of the talks, Hamas reaffirmed its demands, including that negotiations should focus on implementing the Biden plan rather than allowing Israel to “stall for time”.

Gaza rubble likely to conceal untold horrors to swell 40,000 death toll

Dalia Hawas was 24 years old when an Israeli airstrike flattened the apartment building where she lived in February, burying the young mother with her 10-month-old daughter, Mona. They are not listed among Gaza’s war dead, because their bodies were trapped too deep beneath the rubble for rescue teams to reach them.

Ten months into Israel’s war on Gaza, the death toll has passed 40,000, according to health authorities there. Most of the dead are civilians and the total represents nearly 2% of Gaza’s prewar population, or one in every 50 residents.

But even that figure does not tell the full story of Palestinian losses. “This number, 40,000, includes only bodies that were received and buried,” said Dr Marwan al-Hams, the director of field hospitals at the Palestinian ministry of health. “New procedures are being tested to include those who are missing or known to be under the rubble on the list of the dead, but they have not yet been approved.”

About 10,000 airstrike victims were thought to remain entombed in collapsed buildings, Hams said, because there was little heavy equipment or fuel to dig through steel and concrete ruins looking for them. ...

Another group of Palestinian war victims do not show up in the official count, which only registers those killed by bombs and bullets as war dead. ... “People who died due to indirect impacts of war, including diseases, starvation and the collapse of the healthcare system, are not included [in the war dead],” said Hams. “A committee will be formed to count these [victims], which will start work immediately after the end of the war.”

The REAL Hezbollah – With Lebanese Journalist Ghadi Francis

Support for War in Lebanon Grows Among Israeli Officials

There is growing support among Israeli officials to launch an offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The report comes as Israel is anticipating a major response from Hezbollah to the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a high-level Hezbollah military commander who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on July 30.

While the Israeli military and Hezbollah have continued to trade fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since Shukr’s killing, Hezbollah has not escalated things beyond the rocket and drone attacks it’s been launching since October 2023.

Current and former Israeli officials told the Journal that an escalation from Hezbollah could be the pretext for Israel to launch a full-blown war in Lebanon. One senior Israeli official said a major Hezbollah attack could “lead to an Israeli attack that will lead to a new reality on the northern border.”

Mark Sleboda: Putin drops bombshell on NATO - Ukraine's Kursk Offensive Collapses

Biden Says US in ‘Constant Contact’ With Ukraine About Kursk Offensive

President Biden said on Tuesday that he was in “constant contact” with the Ukrainians about the invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, signaling deep US involvement in the invasion of Russia.

“I’ve spoken with my staff on a regular basis probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days,” Biden told reporters when asked about the fighting in Kursk. ...

A US-backed invasion of Russia marks a significant escalation of the proxy war and risks a major response from Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed the assault on Ukraine’s Western backers, saying on Monday, “The West is waging war against us using Ukrainians.”

Kursk information war. Donbass reality

Russia’s Parliamentary Left Calls for Assassination of Zelensky and His Cabinet

In a statement from Sergey Mironov, the leader of the Just Russia – For Truth Party, representing the socialist left in the Russian state Duma or parliament, the veteran politician said that in response to strikes on the Zaporozhskaya Nuclear Power Plant, “it is necessary to eliminate with pinpoint strikes the terrorist leaders in Kiev”.

“The attacks on the Zaporozhskaya NPP should be regarded as an attempt to use weapons of mass destruction against Russia,” Mironov said, arguing this gives the Federation every right to return fire with nuclear weapons. “If the Kiev regime and its masters continue nuclear escalation, then this can be regarded as the use or readiness to use weapons of mass destruction against Russia”.

He concluded his statement by noting it’s not necessary to use nuclear bombs, but rather simply to assassinate those responsible for escalating to the brink of their use.

The statement captures the pressure that Vladimir Putin is under from multiple sides of his government to “take the gloves off,” to use Western parlance, and move to total war.

Has the Mystery of the Nord Stream Pipeline Bombing Been Solved? Ukrainian Suspect Flees Arrest

Who will be Japan’s next PM? Ruling LDP set to begin ‘especially chaotic’ party election

After a week in which Japan’s citizens braced themselves for a possible megaquake, the biggest seismic shift came from its political epicentre, as the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, announced his decision to step down next month.

His three years in office will end in late September when his ruling Liberal Democratic party [LDP] selects a new president, who is assured of being approved as Japan’s next prime minister in the LDP-controlled parliament. Kishida’s decision paved the way for one of the most unpredictable contests for the LDP presidency in recent years.

“By stepping out of the race, Kishida has cleared the way for an especially chaotic LDP election, turning what was already looking like a competitive race with a vulnerable incumbent into a free-for-all with numerous plausible contenders but no obvious favourite,” said Tobias Harris, founder of the Japan Foresight political risk advisory firm.

The list of likely successors includes party insiders, maverick ministers and, unusually for Japan, two MPs under the age of 50. The potential inclusion of two women in the race raises the prospect – albeit an unlikely one at this stage – that the country will appoint its first female prime minister. ...

Kishida’s withdrawal from the race has been attributed to the fallout from a string of scandals that have blighted much of his premiership: revelations about his party’s ties to the Unification church in the wake of Shinzo Abe’s assassination in July 2022 and, more recently, public anger over a fundraising scandal that spelled the beginning of the end of his time in office.

Congressional Candidate TAKES ON AIPAC: Jen Perelman Vs. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating

In a remarkably candid essay in the journal Nature this March, one of the world’s top climate scientists posited the alarming possibility that global heating may be moving beyond the ability of experts to predict what happens next.

“The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, a British scientist and the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

If this anomaly does not stabilise by August, he said, it could imply “that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated”.

Many in the science and environment community read these words with alarm. Was the leap in temperatures over the past 13 months, which has exceeded the global heating forecasts of experts, a sign of a systemic shift, or just a temporary anomaly? If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost?

With August now here, Schmidt is a fraction less disturbed. He said the situation remains unclear, but the broader global heating trends are starting to move back in the direction of forecasts. “What I am thinking now is we aren’t that far off from expectations. If we maintain this for the next couple of months then we can say what happened in late 2023 was more ‘blippish’ than systematic. But it is still too early to call it,” he said. “I am slightly less worried, but still humbled that we can’t explain it.” In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Schmidt, said records were beaten last year by a surprising margin and predicts 2024 is also likely to set a new peak, though the trend may nudge closer towards expectations.

Revealed: Shell oil non-profit donated to anti-climate groups behind Project 2025

A US foundation associated with the oil company Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal.

Fourteen of those groups are on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint proposing radical changes to the federal government, including severely limiting the Environment Protection Agency.

Shell USA Company Foundation sent $544,010 between 2013 and 2022 to organizations that broadly share an agenda of building conservative power, including advocating against LGBTQ+ rights, restricting access to abortions, creating school lesson plans that downplay climate change and drafting a suite of policies aimed at overhauling the federal government.

Donees include the Heartland Institute, a longtime purveyor of climate disinformation, which published a video on YouTube in May stating incorrectly that “the scientific data continue to show there is no climate crisis”. Other groups that have received donations include the American Family Association, which claims that the “climate change agenda is an attack on God’s creation”, as well as the Heritage Foundation, the lead organization behind Project 2025.

Also of Interest

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

The FBI ‘Visits’ Scott Ritter

Journalists Demand Blinken Back Israel Arms Embargo

Is the Ukraine War Spilling Into Africa?

FT Reports A Ukrainian Warcrime

FOIA Files: Did Special Counsel Robert Mueller Rely on Clinton Campaign Operatives to Point to Russia?

Crater formed from Earth’s extinction event produced by carbon-rich ‘C-type’ asteroid, scientists suggest

Maurice Williams singer and founder of the Zodiacs dies aged 86

A Little Night Music

A.C. Reed,Stevie Ray Vaughan - These Blues Is Killing Me

A. C. Reed - That ain’t right

A.C. Reed & Albert Collins - I Got Mad

A C Reed And His Spark Plugs – Howlin' For My Darlin'

A. C. Reed - I Got Money To Burn

A. C. Reed - She's Fine

A.C. Reed - The Things I Want You To Do

A.C. Reed & Earl Hooker - Crying Blues

A.C. Reed - My Baby's Been Cheating

A.C. Reed And His Spark Plugs – Things That Get Me Off

A C Reed - Roadhouse Blues