The Evening Blues - 11-15-24



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Eddie Bond

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Memphis rockabilly singer and guitarist Eddie Bond. Enjoy!

Eddie Bond And His Stompers - Slip Slip Slippin' In

"Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade."

-- Wallace Stegner


News and Opinion

The Face At The Front Desk Changes, The Corporation Remains The Same

Obama continued and expanded Bush’s most evil policies. Trump continued and expanded Obama’s most evil policies. Biden continued and expanded Trump’s most evil policies. Now Trump is preparing to keep the streak going. The face at the front desk changes, but the corporation stays the same.

Trump’s insanely pro-Israel cabinet of bloodthirsty Iran hawks suggests that Trump is going to expand the evils of the Biden administration in the middle east. This is a great example of the point I often make that the empire uses Democrats and Republicans the way a boxer uses the jab-cross combo to set up knockout blows.

Democrats and Republicans are different from one another, not in the ways they claim to be different, but in the same way the jab and the cross are used differently in boxing. The jab, thrown with the left hand for an orthodox fighter, is used as a range-finding weapon which can stun or blind the opponent to open them up for a crushing power blow from the right hand. That power blow is called a cross, which is often set up by the jab in the classic “one-two” combination you learn on day one in boxing.

The two parties are not the same, but they are used in conjunction with one another toward the same end, and, most importantly, they are both being used by the same boxer to punch you right in the fucking face. You’ll hear people try to argue that Democrats are better because it sometimes hurts less when they’re in office, but that’s exactly the same as saying it’s a good boxing strategy to let your opponent jab you in the face because it hurts less than the cross. You can’t understand boxing if you see your opponent’s fists as two opposing forces and think you can side with one against the other. You can’t understand US politics in that way for the exact same reason.

Any decent boxer will tell you they’d rather fight an opponent with a powerful cross than a masterful jab, because an opponent with a great jab will stifle your offense while allowing their offense to be much more effective — including their cross. The two-armed monster of the US oligarchy will keep using both fists to punch you in the face until you stop staring at its hands and trying to calculate which one you’d rather be smashed by, and start focusing on knocking that motherfucker’s head off.

UN special committee likens Israeli policy in Gaza to genocide

A UN special committee has said that Israeli policies and practices in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”. The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor the Israeli occupation, also said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” in the 13-month-old conflict, and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The international court of justice (ICJ) is investigating a claim put forward by South Africa that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is genocidal, and has ordered Israel to take interim measures to prevent genocide taking place.

The new report is by the special committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories. The committee, set up in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is made up of representatives from three member states: Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Senegal.

There was no immediate response from the Israeli government, which has portrayed the UN in general as obsessed with, and biased against, the country. ...

The UN special committee said that its requests to visit Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Israel had received no response, so its staff were not able to visit the areas it was scrutinising. It said its research raised “serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including starvation as a weapon of war, the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.

Israeli strikes intensify on three fronts as Lebanon talks reach critical stage

Israel has intensified its air offensives on three fronts, launching dozens of new strikes in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria as negotiations for a ceasefire on its northern border reach a critical point.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said about 30 targets had been struck in the southern suburbs of Beirut in 48 hours and described continuing efforts to “dismantle and degrade” the military capabilities of the militant Islamist organisation.

Analysts said the wave of raids could also be aimed at increasing pressure on Hezbollah as indirect talks continued.

Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister, told Reuters an arrangement to end fighting with Hezbollah was drawing closer but insisted that Israel must retain freedom to act inside Lebanon should any deal be violated. “We will be less forgiving than in the past over attempts to create strongholds in territory near Israel. That’s how we will be, and so that is certainly how we will act,” he said.

A senior Lebanese official indicated on Wednesday that Hezbollah was ready to pull its forces away from the Lebanese-Israeli border in any ceasefire but rejected Israel’s demand to be allowed to intervene at will to enforce a deal.

Larry C. Johnson: IRAN & HEZBOLLAH PREPARE FOR ALL-OUT WAR as IDF Faces Major Setbacks!

Elon Musk meets with Iran’s UN ambassador

Elon Musk reportedly met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday, a day before Donald Trump named the SpaceX founder as one of the heads of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

The meeting was a discussion of how to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States, according to two Iranian officials who spoke with the New York Times. One of the Iranian officials said that the Tesla executive requested the meeting and that the ambassador picked the site.

As Trump prepares to address conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, Musk, the world’s richest man, has been assisting in discussions with foreign officials, establishing himself as the country’s most influential civilian come January. ...

“He’s now engaging the Iranians,” said Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, about Musk. “And the Iranians have not engaged Americans in direct negotiations since before Trump left the nuclear deal, so this could be a very big deal.”

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Will Russia Protect Iran?

Elizabeth Warren denounces Biden administration over Gaza humanitarian situation

Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive voice in the US Senate, has denounced the Biden administration’s failure to punish Israel over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and endorsed a joint resolution of disapproval in Congress. The amount of aid reaching the territory has dropped to the lowest level in 11 months, official Israeli figures show. The White House last month gave Israel an ultimatum of 30 days to improve conditions or risk losing military support. As the deadline expired on Tuesday, international aid groups said Israel had fallen far short.

But the US state department announced it would not take any punitive action, insisting that Israel was making limited progress and was not blocking aid and therefore not violating US law. Warren condemned the Biden administration’s decision to continue supplying arms to its ally.

“On October 13, the Biden administration told Prime Minister Netanyahu that his government had 30 days to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza or face the consequences under US law, which would include cutting off military assistance,” the Massachusetts senator said in a statement shared with the Guardian.

“Thirty days later, the Biden administration acknowledged that Israel’s actions had not significantly expanded food, water and basic necessities for desperate Palestinian civilians. Despite Netanyahu’s failure to meet the United States’ demands, the Biden administration has taken no action to restrict the flow of offensive weapons.” For the first time on the issue, Warren threw her weight behind a joint resolution of disapproval, a legislative tool that enables Congress to overturn actions taken by the executive branch. Such a resolution must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

She added: “The failure by the Biden administration to follow US law and to suspend arms shipments is a grave mistake that undermines American credibility worldwide. If this administration will not act, Congress must step up to enforce US law and hold the Netanyahu government accountable through a joint resolution of disapproval.”

Israeli Military Planning To Stay in Gaza Through 2025

The Israeli military is planning to stay in Gaza through 2025 and is stepping up demolitions and the construction of more permanent military structures, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

There is a significant portion of Gaza’s territory that’s under the control of the Israeli military, where the IDF has been destroying every building in sight and establishing military outposts, including the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land that separates northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip.

According to Haaretz, the Netzarim corridor is currently five to six kilometers wide and about nine kilometers long, and the Israeli military is working to expand it even more. ... The Israeli military has conducted a similar campaign of destruction along the Philadelphi Corridor, which is on the Gaza-Egypt border, and in a “buffer zone” along the entire Israel-Gaza border that cuts one kilometer into Gaza’s territory. In those areas as well, virtually all the buildings have been destroyed, and military outposts are going up. Haaretz previously reported that the Netzarim Corridor, the Philadelphi Corridor, and the buffer zone account for 26% of Gaza’s territory.

Israeli drones shooting children in Gaza deliberately 'day after day', UK surgeon tells MPs

A retired NHS surgeon who recently returned from working at a hospital in Gaza said he treated children "day after day after day" who had been deliberately targeted by Israeli drones following bomb attacks. In harrowing testimony to British MPs on Tuesday, Nizam Mamode said of all the conflicts he had worked in, including the genocide in Rwanda, he and other experienced colleagues in Gaza had "never seen anything on this scale ever".

He said at least once or twice daily, there were "mass casualty incidents," meaning that 10 to 20 people were killed and up to 40 seriously injured. He estimated that at least 60 percent of the people treated at these times were women and children.

"Drones would come down and pick off civilians, children," Mamode told members of the International Development Committee in a hearing focused on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. "This is not an occasional thing. This was day after day after day operating on children who would say, 'I was lying on the ground after a bomb dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me'."

Mamode worked at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza for a month between August and September for the British charity Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP). He said he spent the entire month in the hospital partly because it was not safe to travel around, but also because Israel bombed MAP’s guest house in southern Gaza in January, an act that Mamode believes was deliberate.

"All of those guest houses are in the Israeli army’s computers and are designated safe houses, so my assumption is that it was a deliberate attack and the aim behind it is to discourage aid workers from coming," Mamode said.

Israeli paper Haaretz plagiarizes Wyatt Reed

ACLU Slams Senate Push to Crack Down on Campus Criticism of Israel

The ACLU on Thursday sent a letter to U.S. senators arguing that bipartisan legislation which backers claim would combat antisemitism on university campuses would actually be an affront to free speech protections and censor legitimate criticism of the Israeli government as it carries out atrocities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and Lebanon.

The group's letter comes two weeks after Axios reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "recently promised Jewish leaders that he would try later this year to pass" the House-approved Antisemitism Awareness Act, or S. 4127.

"Instead of addressing antisemitism on campus, this misguided legislation would punish protected political speech," said ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff, who signed the letter with Christopher Anders, director of democracy and technology.

"At a time when civil rights enforcement on campus could not be more critical, this bill risks politicizing these vital protections by censoring legitimate political speech that criticizes the Israeli government," Leventoff warned. "The right to criticize government actions is the most fundamental protection provided by the First Amendment—and this includes the actions of foreign governments. The Senate must continue to block this bill and protect free speech."

The letter highlights that "federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities. S. 4127 is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism."

As Israeli forces—armed by the Biden administration and U.S. Congress—have bombed and starved Palestinians in Gaza over the past 13 months, students colleges and universities across the United States have held protests urging their education institutions and government to divest from the assault, which is the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.

Some campus administrations—under pressure from Zionists in Congress—have called in law enforcement to violently crack down on protesters and enacted new policies intended to limit anti-genocide demonstrations by students and faculty.

"The ACLU does not take a position on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but it does staunchly defend the right of those in the United States to speak out on domestic and international political matters," the organization emphasized. "The ability to criticize governments and their policies is a critical component of our democracy."

As the letter explains:

This bill directs the Department of Education to take the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of "antisemitism" into consideration when determining whether alleged harassment was motivated by antisemitic intent and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance, including in higher education. The federal government itself has interpreted Title VI to prohibit harassment or discrimination against Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs as well as others when that discrimination is based on the group's actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics. These existing protections are critically important, particularly in the current environment.

The IHRA working definition, however, is overbroad. It equates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination. Enshrining this definition into regulation would chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the Department of Education’s legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination. Criticism of Israel and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment.

"The IHRA definition of antisemitism is also unconstitutional," the letter continues, citing a case about Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order directing the state's higher education institutions to craft policies based on the controversial language.

The letter points out that even "the lead author of the original IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, has himself opposed the application of this definition to campus speech, noting that codifying this definition would lead campus administrators to 'fear lawsuits when outside groups complain about anti-Israel expression, and the university doesn't punish, stop, or denounce it.'"

The ACLU specifically warned that "S. 4127 could result in colleges and universities suppressing a wide variety of speech critical of Israel or in support of Palestinian rights in an effort to avoid investigations by the department and the potential loss of funding, even where such speech is protected and does not qualify as harassment."

"Even where administrators do not take formal action, students and their organizations, faculty, and university staff may be deterred from speaking and organizing on these issues," the group added. The bill would also "likely inspire an increasing number of complaints focused on constitutionally protected criticism of Israel," taking time away from "meritorious" filings.

The Senate majority leader has faced intense pressure to bring the bill to a vote as this session of Congress winds down. Axios noted that Florence Avenue Initiative, a nonprofit that doesn't have to disclose its donors, "has spent about $5 million on an ad campaign blasting Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker, for his inaction."

NSO – not government clients – operates its spyware, legal documents reveal

Legal documents released in ongoing US litigation between NSO Group and WhatsApp have revealed for the first time that the Israeli cyberweapons maker – and not its government customers – is the party that “installs and extracts” information from mobile phones targeted by the company’s hacking software.

The new details were contained in sworn depositions from NSO Group employees, portions of which were published for the first time on Thursday. It comes five years after WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Facebook, first announced it was filing suit against NSO. The company, which was blacklisted by the Biden administration in 2021, makes what is widely considered the world’s most sophisticated hacking software, which – according to researchers – has been used in the past in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, India, Mexico, Morocco and Rwanda. ...

NSO has lobbied members of Congress in an attempt to be removed from the Biden administration’s so-called blacklist, and Trump’s return to the White House could signify a change in White House policy on the use of spyware.

WhatsApp filed suit in California in 2019 after it revealed that it had discovered that 1,400 of its users – including journalists and human rights activists – had been targeted by the spyware over a two-week period. At the heart of the legal fight was an allegation by WhatsApp that NSO had long denied: that it was the Israeli company itself, and not its government clients around the world, who were operating the spyware. NSO has always said that its product is meant to be used to prevent serious crime and terrorism, and that clients are obligated not to abuse the spyware. It has also insisted that it does not know who its clients are targeting.

Washington state farm workers worry about boom in legal foreign workers

Agriculture rules in Quincy, Washington. Sprawling apple, cherry and peach orchards surround this rural city of about 8,000. Packing sheds dot the middle of downtown. Railroad tracks run close to the Columbia River, so produce can make its way to market by both train and waterway.

Farm workers such as Alberto, who is only using his first name for privacy reasons, are the backbone of the industry. Once a migrant farm worker traveling around California and Washington state for jobs, he now lives permanently in Quincy with his family. There, he’s found steady year-round work planting, tending and harvesting crops at various farms. With that more stable work, he and other domestic farm workers have built a tight community in Grant county.

But Alberto worries that work in this fertile area will soon dry up for workers like him. US-based farms and growers are increasingly looking to hire H-2A workers, foreign agricultural laborers allowed to temporarily work in the country under federal law enacted in the late 1980s. The program, administered by the Department of Labor, has been steadily growing and was buoyed by the Trump administration’s pandemic designation of farm workers as essential workers. Advocates say that some growers are turning to H-2A labor first, squeezing domestic workers out. Now the president-elect has signaled that mass deportations are on the table for his second term. That could decimate the ranks of the undocumented workers who form the majority of the farming workforce and sustain US agriculture. It could also boost the H-2A program and further displace workers like Alberto.

Until April, Alberto worked for a large farm that grows daffodils, tulips and other flowers. In previous years, he used to work long hours and up to seven days each week. This year, he and other workers started getting fewer hours and sometimes had multiple days off each week.

Alberto explained through a translator that his bosses began complaining that local workers were taking too much time off to handle family commitments – something that H-2A workers, often men who leave their families for US fields and wages, might do less frequently. Then, one day, Alberto drove past the farm and saw workers he didn’t recognize doing the work he and others would typically do. Later, after a long shift, the company announced to all the farm workers that this would be their last day of the season. But instead of closing up shop, the grower continued business as usual – this time with H-2A workers.

Joe Rogan EXPOSES Bari Weiss's Baseless Smears Against Tulsi

The Guardian is certainly catapulting the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) these days ...

Fears mount over Trump’s second term amid flurry of shock selections

Fears that Donald Trump’s second presidency will be more extreme than his first have intensified amid a flurry of senior nominations that opponents have criticised as going from bad to worse. Dismay over some of the president-elect’s early picks escalated to outrage after the far-right Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was unveiled as his selection to be attorney general – a position Trump has previously said he views as the most important in his administration.

The choice provoked disbelief, even among Republicans, and has fueled concerns that Trump is intent on carrying out mass firings at the Department of Justice in retribution for criminal investigations it instigated against him. Trump reportedly chose Gaetz, 42, after the congressman – who himself was subject to a two-year justice department investigation into suspected sex-trafficking that ended without charges – told Trump: “Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.” ...

On Thursday, Trump named his own attorney, Todd Blanche, to serve as the deputy attorney general under Gaetz – the second most senior position in the justice department. Blanche was a former federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York US attorney’s office. Another member of Trump’s legal team, Emil Bove, will serve as the principal associate deputy attorney general and as acting deputy attorney general until Blanche is confirmed, Trump said.

Gaetz’s nomination followed two other shock appointments: Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Fox News’s Pete Hegseth as defence secretary. Gabbard, 43 – a former Democratic member of Congress turned Republican – would oversee America’s vast intelligence complex despite past accusations of being a Russian asset or spouting Kremlin talking points. Her nomination followed repeated vows by Trump to purge intelligence chiefs who he considers to be part of a “deep state”.

Army veteran Hegseth, 44, has railed against “woke” leadership in the military. He was nominated following reports Trump was considering issuing an early executive order that would establish a “warrior board” empowered to recommend the removal of generals and admirals deemed to lack “requisite leadership qualities”

Trump shake-up; Deep State, Ukraine and Five Eyes

Kevin McCarthy predicts Senate won’t confirm Matt Gaetz as attorney general

The former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is predicting that Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general will be rejected by the Republican Senate next year. “Gaetz won’t get confirmed, everybody knows that,” McCarthy said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday. Gaetz orchestrated the successful effort to oust McCarthy from his leadership role last year.

The comments come amid growing calls by both Democrats and Republicans for the House ethics committee to release its report into Gaetz, from their investigation looking into allegations he engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches. The House investigation in effect ended on Wednesday, after Gaetz announced that he would be resigning from Congress following the announcement that Trump would be nominating him to be US attorney general. ...

Gaetz was also investigated by the justice department in a sex-trafficking case, though the department ultimately declined to bring charges last year. Gaetz has insisted throughout both investigations that he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Trump announces RFK Jr as his pick to lead US health department

Donald Trump announced on Thursday he will nominate the former independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr as the US secretary of health and human services (HHS) in his administration. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, will be a contentious pick to lead the US health department, and the role will need to be confirmed by the Senate.

“Donald Trump’s selection of a notorious anti-vaxxer to lead HHS could not be more dangerous – this is cause for deep concern for every American,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington state, adding the move could “set America back in terms of public health, reproductive rights, research, and more”.

Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, claimed Americans had “for too long” been “crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health”. ...

Trump has previously said he will let Kennedy “go wild on food” and “go wild on medicines” if re-elected, as well as wanting him to take care of women’s health. There has also been speculation he may be given influence over children’s health, too, which would particularly alarm proponents of vaccines. Kennedy has repeatedly claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism, a theory scientists have debunked. ...

Since Trump’s election victory, Kennedy has sought to allay concerns that he would seek to halt vaccinations. “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody,” he told NPR in an interview. Despite this, some staff members at the Food and Drug Administration were considering a quick exit should Kennedy be selected for a prominent health role, according to NBC News. Shares of the vaccine makers Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax tumbled after news of Trump’s decision was first reported, Bloomberg reported.



the horse race



Wall Street CELEBRATES Trump 2024 Win

Andrew Yang GOES OFF On Democrats After Landslide Loss



the evening greens


Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts

Future UN climate summits should be held only in countries that can show clear support for climate action and have stricter rules on fossil fuel lobbying, according to a group of influential climate policy experts.

The group includes former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and the prominent climate scientist Johan Rockström.

They have written to the UN demanding the current complex process of annual “conferences of the parties” under the UN framework convention on climate change – the Paris agreement’s parent treaty – be streamlined, and meetings held more frequently, with more of a voice given to developing countries.

“It is now clear that the Cop is no longer fit for purpose. We need a shift from negotiation to implementation,” they wrote. ...

Figueres said: “At the last Cop, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations. We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the Cop process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.”

Shell’s successful appeal will not end climate lawsuits against firms, say experts

A court ruling in favour of Shell does not spell the end of climate litigation against companies, legal experts have said. The oil and gas company celebrated on Tuesday when it won an appeal against a landmark climate judgment by a Dutch court.

In 2021 a lower court ruled that Shell must cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030 compared with 2019 levels. It was the first such ruling against a company in the world, and led to a growing trend of lawsuits against corporations. However, the Dutch court of appeal ruled that, while Shell did have a “special responsibility” to cut its emissions as a major oil company, this would not be achieved by imposing a specific legal goal.

Milieudefensie, the NGO that brought the claim, was disappointed with the ruling because it rejected its key demand. However, the lawyer Roger Cox said he could see a number of important points to build on in the NGO’s legal battle against large polluters. “The court makes it abundantly clear that not only countries, but also companies, have a responsibility to reduce their emissions in line with the Paris climate agreement,” said Cox.

Thom Wetzer, an associate professor of law and finance at the University of Oxford, believes this leaves the door “wide open” for future litigation against corporations in the Netherlands and beyond.

Trump promise to repeal Biden climate policies could cost US billions, report finds

The United States’s blossoming emergence as a clean energy superpower could be stopped in its tracks by Donald Trump, further empowering Chinese leadership and forfeiting tens of billions of dollars of investment to other countries, according to a new report.

Trump’s promise to repeal major climate policies passed during Joe Biden’s presidency threatens to push $80bn of investment to other countries and cost the US up to $50bn in lost exports, the analysis found, surrendering ground to China and other emerging powers in the race to build electric cars, batteries, solar and wind energy for the world.

“The US will still install a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines, but getting rid of those policies would harm the US’s bid for leadership in this new world,” said Bentley Allan, an environmental and political policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, who co-authored the new study.

“The energy transition is inevitable and the future prosperity of countries hinges on being part of the clean energy supply chain,” he said. “If we exit the competition, it will be very difficult to re-enter.

“This was our chance to enter the race for clean technologies while everyone else, not just China but South Korea and Nigeria and countries in Europe, do the same.”


Also of Interest

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

Gitmo Continues to Haunt

As Israel destroys infrastructure, will Lebanon be cut off from outside world?

Russia asks Israel to avoid air strikes near Syrian base

DOGE Will Wind Up Costing the Government More Money

Trump’s team drawing up list of Pentagon officers to fire, sources say

As 4B takes the world by storm, South Korea is grappling with a backlash against feminism

Federal court upholds Indiana ban on transgender healthcare treatment for children

‘The most expensive photos ever taken’: the space shots that changed humanity’s view of itself

Hiker discovers first trace of entire prehistoric ecosystem in Italian Alps

A New Crusade? Trump Taps Christian Nationalists Pete Hegseth & Mike Huckabee to Top Posts

INTEL Roundtable w/ McGovern & Johnson : Weekly Wrap Up


A Little Night Music

Eddie Bond And His Stompers - Rockin' Daddy

Eddie Bond - Tore Up

Eddie Bond - Gonna Rock My Baby Tonight

Eddie Bond - Running Drunk

Eddie Bond - Boppin' Bonnie

Eddie Bond - Baby, Baby, Baby (What Am I Gonna Do)

Eddie Bond - No. 9 Train

Eddie Bond - Here comes the train

Eddie Bond - One Way Ticket


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snoopydawg's picture

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "recently promised Jewish leaders that he would try later this year to pass" the House-approved Antisemitism Awareness Act

The brutal crackdowns on college campuses and accusations of anti semitism by Biden/Harris and other dems was another reason why Palestinian supporters didn’t vote for her. Chuck waiting to pass this after the election is just as sh*tty of Biden giving Israel 30 days to allow more aid into Gaza.

As for Biden saying that he sees no evidence of Israel trying to genocide Palestinians that’s total crap too. Bibi,
Galant and others in the Israel government came right out and said they were cutting off all aid and that there were no humans in Palestine. WTF else does the ICJ need to see?

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10 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

chuckie the schoom knows that those leaders have six ways from sunday to get back at him," if he doesn't push their issues with enough alacrity.

i guess that law will last until somebody with standing runs it through the court system.

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

.

Greenwald could have waited a bit longer and gotten more fodder for the people calling Tulsi a Russian asset, or someone who cozies up to dictators.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/11/15/john-kiriakou-gabbard-could-help-c...

Gabbard’s nomination has drawn far more ire, especially from Democrats. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a former C.I.A. officer, said she was “appalled” by Gabbard’s nomination and added, “Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) called Gabbard’s nomination “incredibly reckless,” and added that “Putting someone with known sympathies for foreign adversaries (in the position) is not putting America’s interests first — it’s putting our security at risk.”

And Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) said, “Tulsi Gabbard’s deep ties to some of our nation’s most dangerous adversaries, including Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Vladimir Putin of Russia, make her an untrustworthy guardian of our nation’s most closely held secrets.”

All of this is, in my own humble opinion, absurd. Democrats don’t like Gabbard because she never bought into the party’s anti-Russia hysteria, because she was never supportive of putting the U.S. and NATO on the brink of war with Russia in Ukraine, and because she doubted the Democratic Party’s assertion that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people, an allegation refuted by United Nations whistleblowers.

I think Tulsi should bring a life sized puppet of Joe McCarthy to her confirmation hearing and let people talk to the puppet. Hell if she crowdsourced it I would pitch in. Maybe some congress critter who favors her will ask:

Good gravy don’t you people have any decency?

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11 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

tulsi's confirmation hearings should be interesting to listen to. if past performances are any guide, she has the ability to stand up and defend herself and make them look like chumps.

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9 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/11/thomas-woods/tulsi-and-the-establish...

Rep. Spanberger is a “former CIA case officer,” which means we should favor the opposite of whatever she says.

She claims to be concerned about “conspiracy theories,” when it was contractors with her beloved CIA who spun the absurd theory that Russia had come up with the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop (honestly, if you’re going to pretend a foreign power invented a story, make it not as weird and random as “the president’s son had a laptop with stuff on it”).

She is deeply worried about someone who “cozies up to dictators” — the CIA would never do that! It just installs them.

Here’s what our friend Dave Smith had to say about the present situation:

A lot of crazy things have happened in this country over the last few years, so you may have forgotten this one minor story from eight years ago:

The US intelligence agencies framed the sitting US President for treason. They all knew that Donald Trump wasn’t involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, but they lied.

Well, that President is back AND the boss of the Intelligence agencies is now, not only someone completely outside of that conspiracy, but someone who was slandered with that same accusation, by the same nasty woman whose campaign came up with the whole Trump frame job to begin with.

Interesting times.

Don’t forget the Russian bounties story. Gotta hope that Trump actually does have the dossier on all the people involved in cooking up the Russia Russia Russia farce. The one that the FBI invade Mara-Largo to find.

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4 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i'm enjoying the freakout.

it seems to me that, so far, tulsi gabbard is trump's best appointment. if trump is the people's fuck you to the powers-that-be, gabbard's appointment seems to be pissing off all of the correct people.

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4 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

but don’t any of the people freaking out have mirrors? Or if when they look into one they can’t see their reflection?

It’s fun to imagine that Trump is going to get payback for everything they put him through and he’s going to correct the system…but I think that is only a pipe dream. I do want to see him nail the Russia gaters to the wall tho! Or at least name them all and show the evidence of what they did. I’d love to see Obama taken down a peg or two.

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And Blinken who got the 51 people to say that Hunter Biden’s laptop was full of Russian propaganda. Trump had to know that the FBI had his laptop since 2019, but they just sat on it. But he hinted that he would pardon Hunter if Biden didn’t. I can’t imagine what his base would do if he did.

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4 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

snoopydawg's picture

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Lots of people signed in, but the site is DOA. No one got anything to say?

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2 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

Pluto's Republic's picture

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....from Chinese nationals living abroad and in China....
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Leopard ate western democracy and I wasn’t surprised
byu/academic_partypooper inSino

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Click on "View 38 Comments" to see what they are saying.

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6 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?"
joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

for some reason when i click on the "view on reddit" i only get the image that you posted, rather than the thread. oh well.

yeah, it's pretty awful, but if killer kamala had been elected, they could have posted things that are at least as awful and maybe moreso.

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

@joe shikspack
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Here's the link to the comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/1gqg882/leopard_ate_western_democ...

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3 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?"
enhydra lutris's picture

#9 train. Not saying that the NewDems could've ever emulated them, but New Zealands Maori delegation just set a pretty high bar. Faced with a bill to change the treaty of Waitanga, pursuant to which they let the furriners run things,their MP objected vociferously:

Maori MPs perform war chant in parliament (VIDEO)
Lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke has been removed from New Zealand’s legislature for preforming a Haka

...

Maori MPs perform war chant in parliament (VIDEO)
Lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke has been removed from New Zealand’s legislature for preforming a Haka

There's a video from X on Sputnik - https://www.rt.com/news/607653-new-zealand-haka-parliament/

https://twitter.com/i/status/1857066860732121495

worth a watch but crank the volume down.

Have a great weekend, 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

heh, the maoris have something and a people to fight for, the democrats don't fight - they represent the oligarchs.

have a great weekend!

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

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..... on the Chinese Internet, explaining how the United States thinks:
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4 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?"
joe shikspack's picture

@Pluto's Republic

wolff gives a great short description of the background reasons for strained relations between the empire and china.

he should probably explain at greater length how the workers of china have been used to drive down costs (wages) in the u.s. by the oligarchs (who have been ripping off chinese workers by greatly underpaying them for the value they produce) and why there is a large constituency in the u.s. that doesn't particularly care for china.

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

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…this.

Weird how the government can always find money for their war projects, but it can’t even find money in the couch cushions to help destitute people. It’s absolutely mind boggling that Americans accept the trillions spent on wars while the quality of life goes down every year for them. I’ve been speaking out on this since my 30's and I’m always been met with blank looks and indifference.

I hope y’all enjoy your miserly 2% COLA raise while you’re paying more for everything. I know I will…pffft! Inflation got how high last year?

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4 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

I’ve been speaking out on this since my 30's and I’m always been met with blank looks and indifference.

i figured that out in my teens and people called me a communist. i told them that they wouldn't recognize a communist if one jumped up and bit them on the ass.

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

figured that out in my teens and people called me a communist.

I saw those accusations all through the Biden years or that Democrats were Marxists or some other dumb assed financial system. As Pelosi said, we’re capitalists or in other words we belong to an oligarch system.

And I’m tired of explaining that liberals aren’t anywhere close to being the left. Liberals are centrists and those who are truly leftist are humanists. Kamala wasn’t the most leftist veep in history…and neither was Biden.

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3 users have voted.

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.