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This evening's music features blues saxophone player and bandleader Grady Gaines. Enjoy!

"True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion."

-- Charles Bukowski

News and Opinion

Revolution Is Now

People are always asking me what we can do to fight the tyranny and depravity of the empire and create a healthy world.

“But what can we do?” they ask. “You always talk about the problems, but we need solutions! How do we solve the problems you keep pointing to?”

It’s especially common during US election season, because I tend to spend a lot of time pointing to the fraudulent nature of western electoral politics and saying Americans will never be able to vote their way out of their problems.

Which is of course fair. If I’m saying “Not that way, it’s a dead end,” it’s only fair that I should be asked which way actually leads to the exit.

Trouble is I talk about solutions all the time here, and I’m always practicing what I preach and leading by example; some people just can’t seem to hear what I’m saying. It goes in one ear and out the other, because I don’t have any solutions that are as easy and immediate as “Cast your vote for Donald Trump, he’ll fight the Deep State” or “Cast your vote for Kamala Harris, she’ll stop fascism.”

The truth of the matter is that in the here and now there are no easy and immediate solutions to the problems we face in our world. The system is far too deeply entrenched, and people are far too deeply indoctrinated with propaganda to be persuaded to fight against it right now.

And I emphasize the words “right now”. My solutions might not be easy or immediate, but unlike voting for Trump or Harris in November, they will actually work if put into practice in sufficient numbers.

An effective solution that we can all begin applying in the here and now is working to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist by spreading awareness of the depravity and deceit of the empire. The primary obstacle to real change is the fact that far too many people are far too brainwashed by propaganda to rise up against our rulers, so our first task is to begin working to wake people up out of that propaganda-induced coma so they can see how desperately real change is needed.

The tyrants won’t end their tyranny until they are forced to, and they can’t be forced to as long as enough people are propagandized into believing things are fine. That’s why so much energy goes into narrative control measures like mass media propaganda, censorship, government secrecy, the war on journalism, and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation. They wouldn’t pour so much energy into protecting that part of the imperial machine if it wasn’t very vulnerable to attack.

So we attack it. We cultivate a habit of small acts of sedition, trying to do something every day to de-normalize the abuses of the empire in the eyes of the public. Our historically unprecedented ability to share ideas and information around the world in real time makes circulating unauthorized materials much easier than it used to be, and much more democratic. This is something we can all dedicate ourselves to.

The machine is far too big and powerful for us to take down on our own, but if enough minds can become unplugged from the narrative matrix, we can definitely bring it down together. Once enough minds are pointed at this project, more concrete solutions will emerge and begin gaining traction in our collective consciousness.

It’s too early for an uprising right now. Ever seen Les Miserables? The part with the barricade? That’s what it would look like if we tried to take the machine head-on right now. The people wouldn’t come. It would be unwinnable. History is full of such failed revolutions. So in the here and now we dedicate ourselves to the project of making sure there will be many others joining us at the barricade, in whatever form that direct concrete resistance might wind up taking.

The good news is this brings the revolution into the here and now, since right now the revolution looks like something we can all start doing today. Each and every one of us.

None of us can do everything, but we can all do something. Anything you can do to help open the next pair of eyes to the horrors the empire is inflicting upon our world, the injustices our rulers are imposing upon us in our society, and the lies we’re being told to justify it all.

You can do this using any means at your disposal. Talking to people. Distributing literature. Making videos. Making TikTok skits. Making tweets. Making art. Making memes. Writing on the wall. Writing blogs. Printing zines. Writing letters to the editor at your local paper. Anything you can do to help get unauthorized ideas into eyes and ears which may not otherwise have encountered them, using your own unique set of skills and personal conditioning.

The more eyes are opened to what’s going on, the more hands we will have working toward the task of waking up the others. This allows for the possibility of nonlinear growth, which means things could move very quickly from looking impossible to looking inevitable.

All positive changes in human behavior are always preceded by an expansion of consciousness, whether you’re talking about changes of the behavior in an individual or changes in the behavior of our entire species. So let’s get to work expanding it.

It is my sincerest wish that one day before too long what I do here will be seen as nothing special, because there are so many others doing what I do that I no longer stand out in the crowd in any way. And ideally this project here will then fade into total obsolescence, as we create a healthy world together which makes it completely unnecessary.

"Beyond Catastrophic": U.N. Issues Dire Warning on Gaza as Israel Hinders Polio Vaccination Drive

Israeli Rights Group Leader Tells UN It's Clear Netanyahu 'Does Not Want' a Hostage Deal

The head of a leading Israeli human rights organization told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that Israel's far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, obviously "does not want" to reach a hostage-release and cease-fire agreement with Hamas.

Yuli Novak, the CEO of B'Tselem, said in an address to the U.N. body that the Netanyahu government is "cynically exploiting our collective trauma" in the wake of the October 7 Hamas-led attack to "violently advance its project of cementing Israel's control" over Palestinian land.

"To do that, it is waging war on the entire Palestinian people, committing war crimes almost daily," said Novak. "In Gaza, this has taken the form of expulsion, starvation, killing, and destruction on an unprecedented scale."

In August alone, the Israeli military has bombed 5 schools in Gaza City, killing at least 179 people. pic.twitter.com/9TdJtbJy8W

— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) August 17, 2024

Amnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel's 'Wanton Destruction' in Gaza

Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the "war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment" over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza's border with Israel.

"Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques," the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.

Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza's eastern border.

"In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background," the report states.

The Israeli military’s campaign to significantly expand a “buffer zone” along the eastern perimeter of #Gaza should be investigated as the war crimes of wanton destruction and collective punishment.

Read @Amnesty’s new investigation here: https://t.co/RNB6e6hpWj pic.twitter.com/5U71BCd65p

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) September 5, 2024

Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza'a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.

Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza'a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that "around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left."

"I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now," he added. "Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home—where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son—was completely destroyed."

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: "The Israeli military's relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable."

"Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area," she continued. "These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area."

"The creation of any 'buffer zone' must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods," Guevara-Rosas added. "Israel's measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment."

Other experts—including United Nations officials and scholars—have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history."

In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel's obliteration of Gaza's civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine's entire annual gross domestic product.

Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.

"International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict," Amnesty explained Thursday.

The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly," is a war crime.

Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that "no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed."

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple "indiscriminate" and "disproportionate" IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.

“We’re Happy To Know Palestinians Are Suffering” - Say Israeli Podcasters

Gallant Says Israel ‘Mowing the Lawn’ in the West Bank But Will Need to ‘Pull Out the Roots’

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday that the Israeli military was “mowing the lawn” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but will eventually need to “pull out the roots.”

“Mowing the lawn” is a term the Israeli military used for its bombing campaigns in Gaza pre-October 7. The idea is that the raids would reduce Hamas’s military capability but not eliminate it, and it would eventually grow back, requiring another bombing campaign.

“The process is an attack to prevent terror. We are mowing the lawn, [but] the moment will also come when we will pull out the roots, that must be done,” Gallant said.

Palestine Action Co-Founder on Protesters Arrested in U.K. Under Terrorism Act

Scott Ritter: Free Speech & The DOJ attack on Independent Journalism

US Close To Agreeing on Long-Range Cruise Missiles for Ukraine

The US is close to reaching an agreement on giving Ukraine cruise missiles that could hit targets deep inside Russia, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.

The officials said the US is expected to include Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package that will be announced for Ukraine this fall. But first, there are technical issues to work through to ensure they can be fired by Ukraine’s Soviet-made fighter jets.

An older version of the JASSM can hit targets over 230 miles, and there are newer versions that can fly over 500 miles. Reuters said it was unable to establish which kind the US is considering sending to Ukraine. Providing the older, shorter-range version would put less strain on US military stockpiles.

The comments suggest the administration is preparing to give Ukraine the greenlight to launch long-range strikes inside Russian territory using US-provided missiles, which would mark another significant escalation of the proxy war and risk a major response from Moscow. Russia has said it’s altering its nuclear doctrine in response to Western escalations in Ukraine.

European irrationality in Ukraine - Michael von der Schulenburg, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Macron names Barnier to lead right-wing French government backed by neo fascists

Yesterday, after an unprecedented seven weeks of talks with members of the parliamentary parties since the July 7 elections, President Emmanuel Macron named Michel Barnier prime minister. Barnier will now try to select a ministerial cabinet that can win the support of the majority of the National Assembly. Macron’s selection of Barnier, a member of the discredited, right-wing The Republicans (LR) party, tramples upon the elections and installs the far right at the center of official politics. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP) won a plurality in the July 7 elections, with 182 seats. Macron’s Ensemble coalition won 163 seats, and the far-right National Rally’s (RN) 143, only because the NFP endorsed Ensemble candidates, supposedly to stop a RN victory.

Having preserved his party from collapse with Mélenchon’s support, France’s widely-hated president has now named a right-wing prime minister who would rule with far-right support. LR and Ensemble together control only 233 seats in the Assembly, and Barnier is well short of a 289-seat majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. Yesterday, however, RN officials indicated that they played a central role in selecting Barnier and would, at least initially, support his government.

A Macron-Barnier government would impose violently right-wing policies and, sooner rather than later, provoke mass opposition in the working class. It is committed to policies that face opposition from an overwhelming majority of the French people, above all in the working class—notably escalating the NATO war in Ukraine by sending troops to fight Russia, and continuing attacks on pensions and social spending.

Barnier is a 73-year-old European Union (EU) bureaucrat known mainly as the EU’s representative in Brexit talks with Britain. He is a partisan of strict austerity and corporate tax cuts. He denounces social spending for creating “entitled people,” and opposes renewable energy. He has proposed a further one-year rise in the retirement age, beyond the two-year increase to 64 that Macron imposed in 2023, despite overwhelming popular opposition and mass strikes. ...

Yesterday, RN officials made clear that they played a key role in the selection of Barnier, and that they would keep his government afloat, as long as it carries out policies acceptable to them. RN leader Marine Le Pen told a press conference at the Assembly: “We demanded a certain number of conditions, namely that we have a prime minister that would respect RN voters. … I believe that Mr. Barnier fulfills that criterion. As for other things, on substantive issues, we will wait and see what the statement of general policy of Mr Barnier will bring, and the way in which he carries out the necessary compromises on the upcoming budget.”

Why Does the US Not Want Mexico to Vote for Their Own Judges?

Medical provider to US jails failing to keep its patients alive

When Isaiah Trammell experienced a mental health episode while detained at Ohio’s Montgomery county jail in February last year, he pleaded for a blanket, a mat and a phone call. He was denied them because he was on suicide precautions.

Trammell screamed and banged his head on the jail cell door. He couldn’t calm himself – the 19-year-old had autism spectrum disorder and was stimming due to the overwhelming stress of being confined in jail without access to his family or his medication. He told officers he had autism and ADHD. In turn, they ridiculed him and told him he was behaving “like an ass”, forcibly placing him in a restraint chair twice.

Jails around the US regularly contract private healthcare companies that are oftentimes paid for by taxpayers to meet the needs of people in their care. NaphCare, a $1bn company, has been paid tens of millions of dollars to provide medical and mental health care at the Montgomery county jail. But they did not do that for Isaiah Trammell.

A sheriff’s office information report found that an officer requested mental health officers to speak with Trammell to “deescalate the situation”. Video footage of the 10 hours that Trammell spent at the jail showed an on-duty healthcare worker attempting to speak with him – but gave up and was quoted as saying: “OK, I’m done.” Trammell died three days later after hitting his head against his unpadded jail cell wall. Officials ruled his death a suicide. ...

Trammell’s experience forms part of a larger history of deaths, legal settlements and other substandard care issues involving NaphCare. Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, the company operates in dozens of jails in 32 states. And jails where NaphCare is contracted have seen the highest death tolls compared with any healthcare provider in the country, according to a 2020 Reuters investigation. In 2022, the company was forced to pay nearly $27m to the estate of a woman in Washington state who died after being denied anti-seizure medication while in its care in a wrongful death settlement.

Pavel Durov: Telegram founder says France arrest is ‘misguided’

The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, under investigation in France, has said that French authorities should have approached his company with their complaints rather than detaining him, calling the arrest ‘“misguided”.

Durov, writing on his Telegram channel early on Friday in his first public comments since his detention last month, denied any suggestion the app was an “anarchic paradise”.

The Russian-born multi-billionaire said the investigation into the app was surprising in that French authorities had access to a “hot line” he had helped set up and they could have contacted Telegram’s EU representative at any time.

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” he wrote.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

Hunter Biden pleads guilty in federal tax case after day of back-and-forth

Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax charges in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday, after a day of legal wrangling and in a dramatic move that will avoid a potentially embarrassing trial for Joe Biden’s son.

Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges on a day of courtroom twists and turns, after prosecutors earlier objected to his surprise intention to enter an “Alford” plea, an unusual legal maneuver where a defendant pleads guilty but does not acknowledge wrongdoing. Following prosecutors’ objections, lawyers said Biden was ready to change course and enter an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.

In court on Thursday afternoon, Abbe Lowell, Biden’s attorney, told Judge Mark Scarsi: “Mr Biden will agree that the elements of each offense have been satisfied.”

Biden quickly responded “guilty” as the judge read out each of the nine counts. The charges carry up to 17 years in prison, but federal sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a much shorter sentence.

DOJ PUSHING Narrative RUSSIA Is TAMPERING With US Election; IT ISN’T: Ken Klippenstein

Oil firms vow to fight judicial review of North Sea oil and gas projects

Two of Europe’s biggest oil companies have vowed to fight two legal cases brought by environmental campaigners against their plans to develop new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

Shell and Equinor have said that they will defend their plans to develop new North Sea projects despite Labour’s decision to withdraw government support for the plans, which were approved by the Conservatives over the last two years.

Greenpeace called for a judicial review of the government’s go-ahead for the Jackdaw gasfield, operated by Shell, which received approval in 2022. It also, alongside the campaign group Uplift, called for a judicial review of Equinor’s plan to develop a giant oilfield at Rosebank, which was approved last year.

The green groups’ campaign against new North Sea oil and gas projects received a boost earlier this week after Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, withdrew government support for the companies’ plans. Miliband has also ruled out further licensing rounds for new projects in the North Sea.

The government’s decision came months after a supreme court ruling, known as the Finch ruling, appeared to lend support to judicial reviews by finding in a separate case that the full emissions impact of burning fossil fuels should be taken into account before approving new oil and gas projects.

University funding from fossil fuels slowing switch to green energy

Fossil fuel companies’ funding of universities’ climate-focused efforts is delaying the green transition, according to the most extensive peer-reviewed study to date of the industry’s influence on academia. For the study, published in the journal WIREs Climate Change on Thursday, six researchers pored over thousands of academic articles on industries’ funding of research from the past two decades. Just a handful of them focused on oil and gas companies, showing a “worrying lack of attention” to the issue, the analysis says.

But even that small body of research shows a pattern of industry influence: “The academic integrity of higher education is at risk,” they write.

During the past two decades, non-profits, campus organizers and a small group of scholars have sounded the alarm about oil companies’ influence in academia, drawing parallels to tobacco, pharmaceuticals and food producers who have also funded scholarship.

In the new study, researchers found that out of roughly 14,000 peer-reviewed articles about conflicts of interest, bias and research funding across all industries from 2003 to 2023, only seven mentioned fossil fuels. When the authors broadened their search to look at book chapters, they found only seven more.

But even by combing through the small body of existing scholarship, the authors identified hundreds of instances in the US, UK, Canada and Australia where oil and gas interests had poured funding into climate and energy research while sitting on advisory or governing boards, endowing academic posts, sponsoring scholarships, advising curricula or otherwise influencing universities. “We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry,” the authors write.

Loss of bats to lethal fungus linked to 1,300 child deaths in US

In 2006, a deadly fungus started killing bat colonies across the United States. Now, an environmental economist has linked their loss to the deaths of more than 1,300 children. The study, published in Science on Thursday, found that farmers dramatically increased pesticide use after the bat die-offs, which was in turn linked to an average infant mortality increase of nearly 8%. Unusually, the research suggests a causative link between human and bat wellbeing. ...

The crisis for bat colonies began in 2006, when a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans hitchhiked from Europe to the US. P destructans grows on hibernating bats in winter, sprouting as white fuzz on their noses. It can extinguish a bat colony in as little as five years.

When Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, learned about the disease, called white-nose syndrome, he realised it provided a perfect natural experiment to demonstrate the value of a bat. Bats eat 40% or more of their bodyweight in insects every night, including many crop pests. What would their disappearance mean?

In infected areas, he found, farmers compensated for the loss of bats by significantly increasing their use of insecticides – by 31.1% on average. Next, Frank looked at infant mortality – a metric commonly used to judge the impact of environmental toxins. Infected counties had an infant death rate 7.9% higher, on average, than counties with healthy bats, despite pesticide use being within regulatory limits. That equates to 1,334 extra infant deaths.

Frank tested other factors that might plausibly explain the rise in deaths: unemployment, the opioid epidemic, the weather, differences among mothers, or the introduction of genetically modified crops, but none explained the increase in pesticide use or the rise in infant deaths. He spent a year “kicking the tyres on the study”, and the results held. It provided “compelling evidence”, he said, “that farmers did respond to the decline in insect-eating bats, and that response had an adverse health impact on human infants”.

Also of Interest

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

Why Israel is attacking the West Bank

Girl killed by Israeli sniper in West Bank was looking out the window, father says

Will UK Ministers Now Be Held Liable for War Crimes?

Abandon Biden Becomes Abandon Harris, Focuses on Battleground States

FBI raids three top aides to New York mayor Eric Adams and police commissioner

Common food dye found to make skin and muscle temporarily transparent

Stonehenge tale gets ‘weirder’ as Orkney is ruled out as altar stone origin

The vanishing mangroves of El Salvador: ‘All our efforts may only slow the destruction’

Kamala CAVES To Billionaires On Capital Gains Tax

Israel’s Sadistic Frenzy of Hate and Revenge – with Israeli activist Sarit Michaeli

A Little Night Music

Grady Gaines and the Texas Upsetters - Let Your Thing Hang Down

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Something On Your Mind

The Upsetters w/ Jimi Hendrix - K.P.

Grady Gaines & The Texas Upsetters - Looking For One Real Good Friend

Grady Gaines & The Texas Upsetters - Mr. Blues In The Sky

Grady Gaines & The Texas Upsetters - Jumbo

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Hard Times Blues

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Baby Work Out

The Upsetters w/ Jimi Hendrix - Cabbage Greens

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Midnight Shuffle