The Evening Blues - 10-30-24



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: The Coasters

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b vocal group The Coasters. Enjoy!

The Coasters - I'm A Hog For You Baby

"Per the rules of the western empire you are a religious extremist if you want to fight against an occupying force who has been abusing you your entire life, but you are not a religious extremist if you want to carpet bomb the middle east to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy."

-- Caitlin Johnstone


News and Opinion

UK Snubs Council of Europe Over Assange Inquiry

Britain’s Home Office is making a “grave mistake” by ignoring a call from the Council of Europe to review its treatment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has warned. The council’s parliamentary assembly, of which the U.K. is a member, passed a resolution earlier this month designating Assange as a “political prisoner”. ... His treatment has outraged the Council of Europe, which was created in the aftermath of World War II with strong backing from Winston Churchill.

Its resolution urged the U.K. authorities to conduct a review “with a view to establishing whether he [Assange] has been exposed to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, pursuant to their international obligations”.

It found the U.K. authorities

“failed to effectively protect Mr Assange’s freedom of expression and right to liberty, exposing him to lengthy detention in a high-security prison despite the political nature of the most severe charges against him.”

The demands of the parliamentary assembly are not binding on European governments but they are “obliged to respond”.

Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, told Declassified the Home Office is making a “grave mistake” in refusing to heed the Council of Europe’s call. She said:

“We know that the Crown Prosecution Service has disappeared key documents relating to Julian’s imprisonment and refused to provide information, first to a journalist, and now to the court, that might shed a light on the political side of Julian’s persecution in the U.K..

“It is one thing for rogue elements in the CPS to collude with foreign governments to persecute a publisher and attempt to cover their tracks. It is quite another for the U.K. government to stonewall in this manner in the wake of an independent report by the Council of Europe and a vote by the overwhelming majority of the chamber calling on the U.K. to carry out an investigation.”

She added:

“The U.K. government is effectively partaking in the cover-up, in a way that only a guilty party would.”

Pfffftttt!!! Performative bullshit...

US calls on Israel to tackle ‘catastrophic humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza

Israel is not addressing the “catastrophic humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, the US envoy to the United Nations has said as a deadline imposed by Washington looms for the Israelis to improve the situation or face potential restrictions on military aid. “Israel’s words must be matched by action on the ground,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the security council. “Right now, that is not happening. This must change – immediately.”

The US told Israel on 13 October that it must take steps within 30 days or face consequences including the potential stopping of US weapons transfers. “The US has stated clearly that Israel must allow food, medicine and other supplies into all of Gaza – especially the north, and especially as winter sets in – and protect the workers distributing it,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

Her remarks came as Norway said it would seek clarification from the international court of justice (ICJ) over Israel’s aid obligations after the Knesset vote banning any cooperation with the UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, as world leaders and international organisations voiced fears for aid deliveries to Gaza. Israel will seek to impose the measures voted for by Israeli MPs on Monday – including a ban on new visas and work permits for foreign Unrwa staff who must enter via Israel – within 90 days. This means western diplomats have a brief window after the US elections to try to force it to step back.

Sanctions on Israeli government members and reviews of trade ties are also under consideration among some countries if the vote is implemented.

Thomas-Greenfield said there was no alternative to Unrwa for delivering aid to Gaza and Washington had “real concerns” about the laws. Unrwa is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians, including health and education services. ... The Knesset decision was also set to be condemned by the UN security council, where there is a strong view that the UN collectively cannot afford for a member state to act unilaterally to destroy an agency set up by a general assembly resolution.

Max Blumenthal : Israel’s Abuses Continue

With Israel's Move to Ban UNRWA, 'A New Way Has Been Found to Kill Children'

Humanitarian groups and United Nations officials issued dire warnings Tuesday about the potentially catastrophic consequences of Israeli lawmakers' vote to ban the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the body primarily responsible for delivering lifesaving aid to the people of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said Tuesday that if the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is unable to operate due to the measures passed overwhelmingly by the Israeli Knesset on Monday, "it'll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza."

"So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children," said Elder.

The legislation that Israeli lawmakers passed in a 92-10 vote bars UNRWA—a frequent target of Israeli smear campaigns and military attacks—from operating or providing "any service" within "in the sovereign territory of the state of Israel."

Israeli lawmakers also passed a measure declaring UNRWA a "terror" group, barring Israeli officials from engaging in any contact with the agency.

The Guardian noted that the newly passed measures—which are set to be implemented within 90 days—are "expected to lead to the closure of UNRWA's East Jerusalem headquarters and would effectively block the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza via Rafah."

"The severing of diplomatic relations would preclude Israel from issuing entry and work permits to foreign UNRWA staff and prevent coordination with the Israeli military to permit aid shipments," the newspaper added.

Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, warned in a statement Tuesday that the measures represent "an outright attack on the rights of Palestinian refugees."

"It is clearly designed to make it impossible for the agency to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory by forcing the closure of the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem and ending visas for its staff," said Callamard. "It amounts to the criminalization of humanitarian aid and will worsen an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis."

"This appalling, inhumane law will only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinians, who have endured unimaginable hardship since the horrific attacks by Hamas and other armed groups in southern Israel one year ago, and whose need for global support is greater than ever. The international community must be quick to condemn it in the strongest possible terms and exert any influence they have on the Israeli government to repeal it.”

The U.N. General Assembly established UNRWA in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, and the agency is central to humanitarian operations in the famine-stricken Gaza Strip—a role that aid groups described as necessary and irreplaceable. According to a World Health Organization official, roughly a third of the healthcare workers assisting the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza work with UNRWA.

"UNRWA plays a critical role in serving civilians in desperate need in Gaza," the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said Tuesday. "Humanitarian actors rely on coordination with UNRWA to deliver aid and alleviate suffering. UNRWA cannot be replaced by NGOs like IRC."

"The bill passed in the Israeli parliament is an unprecedented attack on a U.N. agency and, if implemented, would only worsen the humanitarian catastrophe," IRC added. "We strongly urge that this legislation is not applied. We continue to advocate for an immediate ceasefire to get aid in, to release the hostages, and to meet the growing and dire needs of the civilian population."

Sam Rose, deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, said in a CNN interview that "the entire humanitarian system" in the Palestinian enclave "relies every minute of every day on UNRWA to deliver services to 2 million people living in the worst possible conditions."

‘No one is coming to save them’: blackouts hide horrors of siege of north Gaza

When internet connectivity returned to Jabaliya in northern Gaza after yet another blackout last Thursday, Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif took to his social media accounts to let the world know what happened during the hours the area was offline. Israeli airstrikes had hit several houses on the same street in the al-Hawaja neighbourhood, he said, killing or wounding an estimated 150 people – but no one knew for sure. The ever-tightening Israeli siege of Jabaliya and several other parts of northern Gaza – enforced by tanks and ground troops – meant that civil defence teams and medics could not come to rescue those trapped under the rubble. No reporters could make it either, other than al-Sharif, who lives nearby. “No civil defence, no coverage, nothing but death and destruction,” he said in a video from the quiet, dark street. “No one is coming to save them.”

Several days later, there are still no official or comprehensive accounts of the strikes on al-Hawaja, a situation replicated across northern Gaza as movement and communication become increasingly difficult after four weeks of a renewed Israeli offensive on the area. Israel has routinely jammed Gaza’s phone and internet networks during its year-long campaign against Hamas triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s attack on 7 October 2023. Networks are also often offline because of damage to infrastructure or a lack of electricity or fuel for generators.

Civilians, humanitarians, medics and media workers on the ground in north Gaza, however, say the problem is getting worse, affecting efforts to save lives, as well as journalists’ ability to report the news. Communication between hospitals, health workers and aid agencies is becoming sporadic, and ground fighting has made travel increasingly dangerous, making it hard to coordinate care and treatment and accurately collect casualty data. The civil defence service suspended activities last Wednesday after crews were attacked by Israeli forces and tank shelling destroyed their last fire engine. ...

Israel’s new aerial and ground operation in northern Gaza has killed at least 800 people, according to medics and the health ministry in the formerly Hamas-run territory. On Tuesday morning Palestinian officials said at least 93 people had been killed in another Israeli strike in Beit Lahia.

The estimated 400,000 people clinging on in the north say that the conditions are the worst of the war to date: Israel has attacked hospitals and shelters, and food and water are running out because of a blockade on aid deliveries and sieges focused on Jabaliya, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun. Several people the Guardian spoke to said clean water ran out more than a week ago, and they were drinking small amounts of wastewater a day to survive. The Israeli military denies systematically trying to force Palestinians from the area to flee to the relative safety of the south of the strip.

Iran and Israel, is the escalation over?

'Not for Long,' Says Israeli Defense Minister After Hezbollah Names New Leader

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday on social media that Hezbollah's pick of Naim Qassem to lead the Lebanon-based political and paramilitary group would be "temporary"—a remark seen by many as an assassination threat.

Hezbollah tapped Qassem, its longtime deputy chief, to lead the group following Israel's assassination of former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last month.

"Temporary appointment. Not for long," Gallant said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, in response to Hezbollah's move.

The state of Israel's official Arabic X account said Qassem's "tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization if he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors."

"There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force," the account added.

Since earlier this month, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion accompanied by a massive ongoing bombing campaign against Lebanon, nearly 2,800 Lebanese have been killed and more than 12,700 others injured, the country's Ministry of Health said Tuesday. The ministry added that 82 Lebanese have been killed and another 180 injured over the past 24 hours alone. ...

Responding to Gallant's threat, Somali-Australian journalist Najat Abdi said on X that "the road to your arrest and The Hague won't be long either, you genocidal war criminal."

Media SHOCKED To Learn Of Targeting Of Journalists!

Gaza Is the Horror That Can't Be Denied. But Israelis Will Try

No matter how much photographic, eyewitness and real-time documentation we see, the battle over the truth rages full force. And nothing inflames the debate more than the word "genocide." For Palestinians, genocide is a descriptive fact – anything else is a lie. For international courts, it is a legal convention, the International Court of Justice is deliberating South Africa's charges, according to a high bar of evidence, while ruling that Palestinians have a plausible right to be protected under that convention. For many Israelis, the word is an antisemitic plot and a lie.

Israel's government already flatly denies lesser charges – war crimes, ethnic cleansing, a second Nakba. But the worse things get in northern Gaza, the more Israeli society activates its long-term modes of denial. Nations rarely want to face their crimes. Israel has made long and elaborate efforts over the years to deny it worst deeds. It's already clear how this will work in the years and decades to come when thinking about the present. ...

Denialism kicks in when events are too terrible to admit. Headlines have shifted to Iran, but Israel is still starving, bombing and expelling the population of northern Gaza. Many suspect it is implementing the "General's Plan," which seeks to empty northern Gaza of Palestinians. Developed by former security officials, the plan orders the exit of 300,000-400,000 civilians, then calls to end humanitarian aid alongside bombardment to destroy remaining combatants – or anyone. ... Both Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the IDF spokesperson claimed Israel is not implementing the General's Plan. But officers on the ground in northern Gaza told Haaretz the plan was being implemented openly. ...

The IDF says it has expanded the humanitarian zones for Gazans, but Tania Hary, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli NGO working on human rights in Gaza and the petitioner, rejects that term: "There is nothing actually humanitarian about the humanitarian zone ... there's not enough aid or shelter for people there, and airstrikes still take place in the zone," she said in an email. The conditions in Gaza are "fit only for human animals." She adds: "Calling it the 'humanitarian zone' is a clever way of masking the reality for people who might be troubled if they understood what's really happening there." ...

Earlier this month, a group of Israelis wrote an open letter calling on the countries of the world to pressure Israel with all possible sanctions, because "we are horrified by the countless war crimes that Israel is committing ... the constant massacres and destruction must be stopped immediately!" Over 3,000 Israelis signed as of this writing. That letter was written largely by longtime anti-occupation activists. A different petition is now going around social media groups written by education professionals and democracy activists. They observed the accumulation of evidence of war crimes, starvation, expulsion, the "Israeli media obfuscation of the atrocities," and closed with a plea: "The blood of the children, women, the youth and the elderly of Gaza, who are not Hamas members, will haunt us for generations. We call upon the government of Israel and the IDF: Do not commit war crimes in Gaza."

Video shows Phoenix police burning man during arrest: ‘Like acid on my skin’

On 6 July 2024, a day when temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, reached 114F (45.5C), Michael Kenyon was walking to his local store to buy a soda when two officers of the city’s police department stopped him. They hastily told him he was being detained, Kenyon recalls, without clearly stating why. Two more officers arrived. Surveillance footage from across the parking lot, which was viewed by the Guardian, shows the 30-year-old on the pavement soon after, with several officers on top of him and holding him down. Once they lift Kenyon off the ground after roughly four minutes, he appears limp.

Kenyon had been burned – severely burned – on the hot city pavement. Medical records indicate he suffered third-degree burns, and hospital photos show deep burn scars and skin peeled off across his body. Kenyon has not been charged with a crime and a police spokesperson confirmed he was not the suspect that officers were seeking as part of a theft investigation. ...

It’s not the first time residents in the city have accused police of burning them on the pavement. In 2019, Phoenix police department officers held Roniah Trotter, then 18, on hot pavement on a 113F day, leaving her with second-degree burns. Earlier that year, a 28-year-old man died in police custody after officers held him down on hot asphalt for several minutes. To Steve Benedetto, a civil rights lawyer representing Kenyon, the case illustrates that the Phoenix police department has systemic problems requiring outside intervention.

In June, the US Department of Justice accused the police department of routinely discriminating against people of color and killing civilians without justification, proposing that the force be subjected to independent monitoring. The department has pushed back, asserting that it is a “self-correcting agency” that doesn’t need oversight. Earlier this month, however, the department again faced scrutiny after footage showed two white officers repeatedly punching and deploying a stun gun on Tyron McAlpin, a 34-year-old deaf Black man with cerebral palsy. ...

Benedetto, the lawyer, said: “A guy was walking to the store to get a soda and then minutes later he’s wondering if he’s going to die, and that’s really endemic of where this department is at. This is a department that presumably should be on its best behavior with the DoJ looming … This is the impact of their policies, procedures and training that we’ve seen over and over. There’s never any real accountability.”



the horse race



Washington Post cancellations hit 250,000 – 10% of subscribers

Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.

The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.

A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.

The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.

The Washington Post has not commented on the reported numbers.

Trump BANISHES Fmr Opponent Nikki Haley, DISREGARDS Her Voters

'This Is Just the Traceable Money': $2 Billion Pumped Into 2024 Election by Billionaire Families

A new analysis out Tuesday shows that 150 of the nation's wealthiest families have poured nearly $2 billion into this year's U.S. election—the latest evidence bolstering calls for new taxes on the super rich and an end to unlimited campaign spending.

The new report from Americans for Tax Fairness, published Tuesday, shows how spending by 150 of the richest families in the U.S. has smashed campaign spending records, with $700 million more spent than the $1.2 billion that wealthy donors poured into the 2020 campaign.

Republicans, including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, have been the biggest beneficiary of spending by these billionaire families, including those of Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson; SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk; and far-right activists Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein.

Trump "benefited from over $450 million of billionaire donations—more than three times as much as Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, who was the beneficiary of $143 million of billionaire contributions," reported ATF. "That's a 75%-25% split in Trump's favor."

Of the $1.9 billion that was spent on all federal campaigns by the richest families in the country, 72% or $1.36 billion went to Republican candidates, and 22% or $413 million went to Democrats.

The analysis was released weeks after The Associated Press and OpenSecrets reported Trump's small-dollar donations—those smaller than $200—made up fewer than a third of his contributions this election cycle, down from nearly half of his donations in 2020.

"Billionaire campaign spending on this scale drowns out the voices and concerns of ordinary Americans. It is one of the most obvious and disturbing consequences of the growth of billionaire fortunes, as well as being a prime indicator that the system regulating campaign finance has collapsed," said David Kass, executive director of ATF. "We need to rein in the political power of billionaire families by better taxing them and by effectively limiting their campaign donations. Until we do both, we can only expect the influence of the super-rich over our politics and government to escalate."

Trump has made clear that he would push for policies that enrich corporations and the ultra-wealthy if he wins on November 5, promising to extend the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, which disproportionately benefited the rich. An alleged quid pro quo offer from Trump to oil executives, promising deregulation and expanded drilling if they donated $1 billion to his campaign, is being investigated by the U.S. Senate.

Harris has endorsed President Joe Biden's proposal to tax unrealized stock gains for people whose net worth is at least $100 million, and has proposed a minimum income tax for billionaires and a rollback of Trump's tax cuts.

ATF pointed out that the billionaire families in the report have managed to spend billions of dollars on the election while spending just 0.07% of their wealth.

"The median American household is worth about $200,000, making an equivalent political donation for them just $140," said ATF. "This means that a handful of billionaires have the financial political influence of more than 13.5 million ordinary families."

The group emphasized that the $1.9 billion included in the analysis "is almost certainly an undercount," both because it doesn't account for "typical flurries of last-minute fundraising" and "because there are ways of financially supporting campaigns that are anonymous or at least hard to trace back to the original donor."

"These methods include donations to so-called 'dark money' groups that spend the money on outside efforts or in turn donate it to campaign committees; and contributions to super PACs that contribute to each other in long chains," said ATF.

Trump will be worse on Gaza

“Trump will be worse on Gaza” is such an obnoxiously dishonest argument. It’s completely unfalsifiable and can’t even be tested after the election since abuses keep getting worse in Gaza anyway, and it’s based on nothing but the claim that very vague statements made by Trump prove he’ll facilitate Israeli atrocities more than the current administration already has been. It’s completely empty narrative fluff with no basis on the facts in evidence.

There are all kinds of legitimate cases to be made that Harris would be a little bit better than Trump on some aspects of domestic policy and the environment, but there is no case whatsoever to be made that he’ll be worse on Gaza than the administration that’s already committing genocide there. He could be worse, he could be a bit better, or he could be exactly the same. There’s no way to know, and there won’t be any way to know in a universe where we can’t observe alternate realities to compare what each presidential candidate would have done if they’d won. It’s an entirely unanswerable question that people are just pretending to know the answer to.

Harris and the Democrats have repeatedly attacked Trump for not starting a war with Iran when he was president. She criticized him for making John Bolton sad when he refused to bomb Iran. How is that less insanely pro-Israel than anything Trump has said?

If you want to argue that Harris will be better on reproductive rights or something then go ahead, but when it comes to Gaza don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.



the evening greens


Over 1 in 3 of World's Tree Species Face Extinction

More than one-third of Earth's tree species are at risk of extinction, with logging, forest destruction for agriculture and urban development, and human-caused global heating most responsible for this "frightening" development that threatens life as we know it, according to a report published Monday.

The 2024 Global Tree Assessment—released at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia and published as part of this year's International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) "Red List" of threatened species—warns that more than 16,000 of the 47,000 tree species analyzed in the report are at risk of extinction.

The report blames deforestation and catastrophic global heating, caused by human burning of fossil fuels, as the main drivers of tree extinction. More than 5,000 tree species on the IUCN Red List are felled for construction timber, while 2,000 species are used for fuel, food, and medicines.

According to the report:

Trees now account for over one-quarter of species on the IUCN Red List, and the number of threatened trees is more than double the number of all threatened birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians combined. Tree species are at risk of extinction in 192 countries around the world..

The highest proportion of threatened trees is found on islands. Island trees are at particularly high risk due to deforestation for urban development and agriculture at all scales, as well as invasive species, pests, and diseases. Climate change is increasingly threatening trees, especially in the tropics, through sea-level rise and stronger, more frequent storms.

"Trees are essential to support life on Earth through their vital role in ecosystems, and millions of people depend upon them for their lives and livelihoods," IUCN director-general Grethel Aguilar said in a statement. "As the IUCN Red List celebrates 60 years of impact, this assessment highlights its importance as a barometer of life, but also, crucially, as a unique tool guiding action to reverse the decline of nature."

Climate, environmental, and biodiversity defenders pointed to the new report with alarm.

"The significance of the Global Tree Assessment cannot be overstated, given the importance of trees to ecosystems and people," said Eimear Nic Lughadha, senior research leader in conservation assessment and analysis at the U.K. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. "We hope this frightening statistic of 1 in 3 trees facing extinction will incentivize urgent action and be used to inform conservation plans."

Climate crisis caused half of European heat deaths in 2022

Climate breakdown caused more than half of the 68,000 heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022, a study has found. Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found 38,000 fewer people would have died from heat if humans had not clogged the atmosphere with pollutants that act like a greenhouse and bake the planet. The death toll is about 10 times greater than the number of people murdered in Europe that year.

“Many see climate change as a future concern,” said the lead author, Thessa Beck. “Yet our findings underscore that it is already a pressing issue.” The warm weather killed more women than men, more southern Europeans than northern Europeans, and more older people than younger people. Scientists already knew carbon pollution had made the heatwaves hotter but did not know how much it had driven up the death toll.

They found 56% of the heat-related deaths could have been avoided if the world had not been warmed by burning fossil fuels and the destruction of nature. The share varied between 44% and 54% in the six years prior.

Even small increases in temperatures can have devastating impacts on public health, said Emily Theokritoff, a researcher at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study. “This result makes sense – heat-related death increases rapidly as temperatures push past the limits people are acclimatised to.”

Europe is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet but doctors warn its hospitals are not prepared to deal with the consequences. The rise in temperatures forces more people to endure searing summer heat that pushes their bodies into overdrive even as it cuts exposure to chilling winter cold that leaves them too weak to fight off illness. Scientists project the lives lost to hotter summers in Europe will outstrip those saved by cooler winters if the planet heats more than 2C above preindustrial levels.

Biden administration awards $3bn to US ports for climate-friendly upgrades

Joe Biden’s administration is awarding nearly $3bn to boost climate-friendly equipment and infrastructure at ports across the country, including Baltimore, where a deadly bridge collapse killed six construction workers in March and disrupted east coast US shipping routes for months.

The president timed the announcement of the grants ahead of a visit to the city’s main port on Tuesday. Officials say they will improve and electrify port infrastructure at 55 sites nationwide while supporting an estimated 40,000 union jobs, reducing pollution and combating the climate crisis.

Biden’s visit, a week before the 5 November presidential election, is intended to highlight efforts by him and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to promote clean energy while protecting and creating good-paying union jobs as she runs against Donald Trump.

The port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the east coast, is a major hub for the import and export of motor vehicles and farm equipment. More than 20,000 workers support daily port operations, including unionized longshoremen and truckers.

The new grants include $147m for the Maryland port administration. The funds will support more than 2,000 jobs by enabling the purchase and installation of cargo-handling equipment and trucks to transition the port into a zero-greenhouse-gas-emission facility. The Maryland port is among 55 ports across 27 states and territories that will receive nearly $3bn through the Clean Ports Program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).


Also of Interest

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

Yeah, Yeah, UNRWA Is Hamas. Everyone Israel Hates Is Hamas.

Israel Kills the Journalists. Western Media Kills the Truth of Genocide in Gaza

Nine days of horror as Israeli offensive on exhausted northern Gaza intensifies

Israeli Journalists Join the Live-Streamed Genocide

The West Only Has Pretend Heroes Like Spider-Man And SpongeBob

Resistance factions target US occupation base in Syria

How Media Continue To Discredit Themselves

Seven Days Till The US Federal Election

Lost Maya city with temple pyramids and plazas discovered in Mexico

Oct 7 Survivor: Bibi Gov COLLAPSE If Kamala Wins


A Little Night Music

The Coasters - Poison Ivy

The Coasters - Down in Mexico

The Coasters - Little Egypt

The Coasters - Idol With The Golden Head

The Coasters - Yakety Yak

The Coasters - Smokey Joe's Cafe

The Coasters - Young Blood

The Coasters - Framed

The Coasters - Along Came Jones

The Coasters - Down Home Girl

The Coasters - The Shadow Knows


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Comments

Pricknick's picture

My heart bleeds that the washington compost has lost 10% of their subscribers. Not!! It must really suck to lose so many nutjobs who read that tripe anyways. I'm sure poor bezos is looking for the hole in his pocket that let his pocket change escape due to their departure.
Big thanks for the Coasters tonight!

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10 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

joe shikspack's picture

@Pricknick

heh, imagine that, a quarter of a million people scouring the newsstand looking for a newspaper awful enough to endorse killer kamala.

glad you dig the tunes.

have a great evening!

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6 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

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7 users have voted.

A leftist is someone with morally correct politics. A liberal is someone who wants to feel morally correct w/o ever putting themselves at odds with power or costing themselves opportunities or experiencing the uncomfortable emotions that truth causes.

@snoopydawg She has set some record for making a fool of herself.

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7 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg

held there since, and by whom.

be well and have a good one

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6 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

snoopydawg's picture

@enhydra lutris

Hint: it has something to do with Trump’s MSG shindig. I posted tweets about it Monday.

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3 users have voted.

A leftist is someone with morally correct politics. A liberal is someone who wants to feel morally correct w/o ever putting themselves at odds with power or costing themselves opportunities or experiencing the uncomfortable emotions that truth causes.

Pricknick's picture

@snoopydawg
I think many here understand the context. We're screwed snoop regardless of who wins.
Peace

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4 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@snoopydawg irony I mentioned, chica. They Rs are or this and that and BAD, but we Ds do it, nothing to see.

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3 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg

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3 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

QMS's picture

@enhydra lutris
.
Madison square garden there

if speeches were leeches
we'd all bleed out Wink

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5 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@snoopydawg

MLK gave his "I have a dream speech", or the association back to the 1920's Klan rally fails big time; the poster just associated KH with MLK.

be well and have a good one

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4 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

TheOtherMaven's picture

@enhydra lutris

using the same dishonest "guilt by association" tactic that was weaponized against Trump. (Pick the most offensive thing that has ever happened on the same site, and screech about it.)

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2 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

heh. good one.

who knew that khive stood for klan hive.

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4 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

Biden’s Twit had to clarify what he said even though he read it off the teleprompter…how do you screw that up?

Then Kamala had to walk back what Biden said. Someone pointed out that he said it will she was giving her klan-hive speech on the eclipse….Biden payback for getting knocked out of the race?

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6 users have voted.

A leftist is someone with morally correct politics. A liberal is someone who wants to feel morally correct w/o ever putting themselves at odds with power or costing themselves opportunities or experiencing the uncomfortable emotions that truth causes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

you really have to hand it to trump, he has a flair for showmanship. i think he wins this round.

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6 users have voted.
orlbucfan's picture

@snoopydawg Sure wish that poisonous ogre with its horrible makeup would bleed out, and take its fascist horde of yahoos and crap monied with it! Add in all the rest across the world, and just mebbe we will be left in peace! Rec'd!!

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2 users have voted.

Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

enhydra lutris's picture

for the Coasters, definitely a bright spot in the day today. Prolly because such a bright spot back in the day.

be well and have a good one

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

glad you're enjoying the coasters. i was a big fan of them when i was a kid (still am). they really had some great songs and a playful delivery.

have a great evening!

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4 users have voted.

Thanks for the Coasters!
The news, or the basic reality, that we are funding, through our taxes, babies being shot in the head, and people being killed by bulldozers crushing them, pretty much sucks.
Thanks, dear friend, for all you do.

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

yeah, the thing that bothers me even more than my taxes paying for this is the utter improbability of making meaningful change. i may as well pick up some lottery tickets, they suddenly feel like a more likely possibility.

oh well, there's always the music.

have a great evening!

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5 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

.
....from my feelings of empathy for the things that trouble Americans. For example, I cannot muster any feelings one way of the other that some newspapers refused to pick a candidate to get behind. Why would anyone want the media to use their giant soapbox to manipulate the outcome? It's like Citizens United. Why should power players be allowed to use their enormous media presence to shift the people's votes? This type of corrupting influence should be against the law in a Democracy. As for the citizens who cancelling their WAPO subscriptions because of WAPO's neutrality — well, those folk should probably avoid WAPO politics, anyway. Exposure to WAPO has likely confused them about Democracy and their own role in protecting it from domestic meddlers.

I also can't see much reason to hate on Kamala Harris more than any other US Presidential candidate, Both sides are controlled by the deep state Neocons. And they win either way. Nor do I feel a pressing desire to see a woman elected President. I shall morn for the first woman who gets enough votes to turn herself into a lying machine for our wealthy and unconscionable Overlords. I am not enthusiastic about establishing a new low for female political climbers.

While cannot feel any of the hope and desire that Americans have for either of the two US Presidential choices — I do empathize slightly with the dread they have toward the opposing candidate. Personally, I feel less dread about a Kamala Presidency, because we stooped so low to elect a President suffering with senile dementia, who was unable to think much beyond the teleprompter script. We've already scraped the bottom of moral depravity as the political class became active elder abusers. Kamala will not rescue us from that, but she cannot sink us any lower than we are.

I feel a bit more dread about Trump simply because he is so very dumb. He's still too dumb to figure out who the Neocons are. And he recently demonstrated to the world that he is too dumb to know that the US tariffs on Chinese imports severely harms the US middle and lower classes. Trump actually assumed that China would pay for the tariff costs he imposed on them. LOL. He believed this bit of stupidity during all four years that Biden's handlers kept the sanctions and trade war going. He never discovered that the total costs of Chinese tariffs and sanctions were paid by higher US consumer prices. Until a month ago, Trump never knew that his dumb trade war caused the spikes in US inflation, and threatened the economic security of more than half of the American public. Thus, feeling intense dread over another Trump term as President seems irrelevant now. Half the American electorate is now clamoring for more Trump, and maybe more chaos is just what the US needs. I remain somewhat indifferent.

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5 users have voted.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"

@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic for giving this race of idiots such a good analysis.
Once, actual intelligent people with true vision ran for president. Oh, well, that was the early 60's.
Neither of these candidates will buck the Deep State or donor class. They are the same, but look and sound different.
I am not afraid of either of them.
I am afraid of the Deep State and the donor class. I can't vote them out.

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Did anyone change their vote after one endorsed a candidate? Margaret Kimberly addresses the nonsense of that and other things.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/trump-rally-washington-post-and-michel...

Michelle wants men to think of their wives when they vote because of abortion rights while not seeing that it was her own damn husband who failed to codify them when he had the power to do so…oops, Michelle.

People worship people who work to screw them after promising that they will do all kinds of miraculous things for them, but keep failing to do so…Pelosi is worshipped as the lady of the house even though she hasn’t kept a promise in over 30 years and it was democrats who sold the country out to China.

we stooped so low to elect a President suffering with senile dementia, who was unable to think much beyond the teleprompter script.

Biden’s dementia was plain to see when he was campaigning from his basement and even the media was talking about it before Obama cleared the field and gave him the win for democrats. Then they hid it for 4 years up until the day before he was forced out of the race….

Thus, feeling intense dread over another Trump term as President seems irrelevant now

Except that the republicans will hold both houses and democrats won’t even have to pretend that they want to fight against them. Either way whoever wins the oligarchs will still be in charge.

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6 users have voted.

A leftist is someone with morally correct politics. A liberal is someone who wants to feel morally correct w/o ever putting themselves at odds with power or costing themselves opportunities or experiencing the uncomfortable emotions that truth causes.

joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

heh, i bet that i don't agree about much of anything with jeff bozo, but like a blind hog, he has found an acorn. i totally agree with him that newspapers should not be using their influence to endorse candidates for public office. now, i suspect that he came up with this as a convenient excuse to avoid endangering his huge government contracts should he pick the wrong horse, but right is right.

as for me, i really can't choose which of the pageant aspirants i loathe more or feel will do more evil. they're both horribly evil as far as i'm concerned and they both seem intent on continuing the evil of their demented predecessors.

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6 users have voted.