Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans guitarist and singer Smiley Lewis. Enjoy!

"Nothing Trump will do inside US borders over the next four years will be the tiniest fraction as murderous, tyrannical and worthy of ferocious opposition as what Biden is doing in Gaza right now."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Kremlin Reiterates Putin’s View on US-Supported Long-Range Strikes in Russia

In response to reports of President Biden authorizing long-range Ukrainian strikes inside Russia with US missiles, the Kremlin pointed to a warning previously made by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In September, Putin was asked about the possibility of NATO supporting long-range strikes on Russian territory and said it would mean the US and European NATO countries were “at war with Russia.” He added that if that’s “the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face.”

The New York Times and several other media outlets reported on Sunday that Biden gave Ukraine the greenlight to use US-provided Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles, in strikes on Russia. ATACMS are fired by US-provided HIMARS rocket systems, which require intelligence from the US to be fired, which means the US will be directly supporting strikes deep inside Russia.

So far, the reports haven’t been officially confirmed by the US or Ukraine, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted in his nightly address on Sunday that the missile strikes could start soon.

U.S. Officials Play Dumb on Escalation with Russia, As Biden Mumbles Incoherently at G20

Trump allies attack Biden for allowing Ukraine to use US missiles inside Russia

Allies of the president-elect, Donald Trump, have lashed out angrily at Joe Biden for his decision to permit Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to launch attacks inside Russia for the first time, in what the Kremlin has termed an “escalation” in the war. Key Trump surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr, hardline congressional Republicans, and other backers have accused Biden of seeking to spark “world war three” before Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.

“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” wrote Donald Trump Jr on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.

Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, who was seen as a potential candidate for secretary of state, wrote: “No one anticipated that Joe Biden would ESCALATE the war in Ukraine during the transition period. This is as if he is launching a whole new war. Everything has changed now – all previous calculations are null and void.” ...

A state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, defended the decision during a press briefing on Monday, saying: “[The] American people elected Joe Biden to a four-year term, not to a term of three years and 10 months, and we will use every day of our term to pursue the foreign policy interests that we believe are in the interests of the American people.”

Moscow Tough Response Biden ATACMS Decision, Trump Team Furious, UK-France Dither; Xi Scolds Biden

Kremlin says Biden is ‘fuelling fire’ of Ukraine conflict with missiles decision

The Kremlin has accused Joe Biden’s outgoing US administration of wanting to escalate the conflict in Ukraine by allowing Kyiv to use long-range missiles for strikes inside Russia, vowing an “appropriate and palpable” response. The decision, first reported on Sunday, to allow Ukraine to conduct strikes with US-made weapons deep into sovereign Russian territory has not been formally announced by the White House, but a German government spokesperson said on Monday that Berlin had been informed.

“It is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters. “This decision is reckless, dangerous, aimed at a qualitative change, a qualitative increase in the level of involvement of the United States.” ...

Biden, currently in Rio de Janeiro for his final G20 Summit, has yet to comment on the decision, which marks a significant shift in US policy. ...

Peskov said Putin had expressed his position clearly in September when the Russian leader warned that the move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be directly “at war” with Moscow. Putin had said Moscow would “take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face” and previously suggested Moscow could supply long-range weapons to other countries with the aim of attacking western targets.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Biden and Wider War

Ukraine fires several US-made longer-range missiles into Russia for the first time

Ukraine fired several American-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia, officials said Tuesday, marking the first time Kyiv used the weapons that way in 1,000 days of war.

The use of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, came as Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, opening the door to a potential nuclear response by Moscow to even a conventional attack by any nation supported by a nuclear power. That could include Ukrainian attacks backed by the U.S.

A Telegram channel affiliated with the Ukrainian military posted a video Tuesday that it says shows U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles being fired from an undisclosed location in Ukraine. The Associated Press could not independently verify the date and location the video was filmed.

According to a U.S. official, Ukraine fired about eight of the missiles, and just two were intercepted by the Russians. The official said that the U.S. was still assessing battle damage, but that the missiles struck an ammunition supply location in Karachev, a city of about 18,000 people in Russia’s Bryansk region. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments.

Scott Ritter : Biden Suddenly Relevant as He Begins WWIII

Worth a full read:

Craig Murray: US Tries to Pound Lebanon Into Submission

Israel has intensified its air strikes on Lebanon and in particular on Beirut, ahead of a visit on Tuesday or Wednesday by U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, at which he will press Lebanon to accept a U.S./Israeli ceasefire plan. This plan is touted as being based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 [of 2006], but in fact represents its abnegation.

You may have noted that neoliberal politicians and media pundits, who ignore and denigrate every other U.N. resolution on the Middle East, are suddenly very enthusiastic about UNSCR 1701. This is because it mandates withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to the north of the river Litani. But it also mandates, at operative paragraph No. 3, that the government of Lebanon must have full sovereignty over Southern Lebanon and that only the Lebanese Army and United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) might operate there.

“3. Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon….”

The U.S./Israeli ceasefire proposal directly contradicts this, by giving Israel the right to invade Southern Lebanon with ground forces whenever Israel considers it necessary, and by giving Israel permanent military overflight rights. The U.S./Israeli proposal is therefore incompatible with UNSCR 1701. These are direct intrusions on the sovereignty emphasised by UNSCR 1701. They are of course terms no self-respecting nation could possibly accept.

In order to try to force Lebanon to accept these humiliating terms, Israel has substantially intensified its bombing campaign throughout Lebanon these last two days. Yesterday in Beirut alone there were 19 waves of airstrikes, in addition to airstrikes in Tyre, Baalbek and throughout the South.

A new development in Beirut today was a definite move to bomb in Christian, as well as Muslim, areas. If you take one thing away from this article today, I want you to understand this. The narrative portrayed in Western media, that Lebanese Christians support Israel and are egging on the destruction of the Shia community, is completely false. Only a very small and unrepresentative minority of Christians, related to the thankfully declined fascist movement, think in this way. The large majority of Christians, including the major Christian political parties and politicians, are as horrified as the rest of the world by the genocide in Gaza and still more horrified by Israel’s genocidal attack on Lebanon.

Matt Hoh : Live from Israel

UK upheld some arms export licences to Israel to reassure US

The UK government did not fully suspend export licences to Israel as it would undermine US confidence in the UK and Nato and have a “profound impact” on international peace and security, court documents reveal. On Monday the UK government returned to the high court in legal action by the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq and the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (Glan) over the decision to continue arms exports to Israel.

In September the government suspended 30 existing arms licences because of a “clear risk” they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law (IHL).

But an exemption was made for some licences related to components of F-35 fighter jets, and about 330 others continued unaltered, which concerned items such as training and air defence equipment.

Al-Haq is now seeking to challenge the decision not to suspend all licences in September, the move to “carve out” licences for F-35 components from the suspension, and decisions by the former Tory government not to suspend licences in December 2023 and April and May this year. The government is opposing the legal challenge, with its lawyers telling the court that the licensing of arms exports to Israel “is being kept under close and continuous review”.

According to court documents, the defence secretary’s advice resulting in the September decision concluded it was not possible to suspend licensing of F-35 components without affecting the global F-35 programme to which 20 countries belong, including the US, Israel, Canada and the Netherlands. The advice said a F-35 licensing suspension would “have a profound impact on international peace and security” and “would undermine US confidence in the UK and Nato at a critical juncture in our collective history and set back relations”.

Biden committed to Israel to the bitter end

Gaza ministry says 20 killed in anti-‘gang’ operation after looting of aid convoy

Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry has said that at least 20 people have been killed in an operation targeting “gangs” accused of looting trucks bringing aid into the war-torn territory which is facing the threat of famine. Gunmen attacked and looted about 100 trucks carrying desperately needed supplies over the weekend, the biggest such attack during 13 months of war in the territory and new evidence of the growing power of Gaza’s criminal gangs.

In a statement late on Monday, the Gaza interior ministry said that more than 20 people had been killed “in a security operation carried out by security forces in cooperation with tribal committees”. The statement said that thefts had “severely affected society and led to signs of famine in southern Gaza”, and warned that the operation was the start of a broader campaign to tackle the problem. ...

Ninety-eight trucks of the 109-truck convoy were looted and some transporters were injured during the incident, said Louise Wateridge, Unrwa’s senior emergency officer. The incident “highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza”, she told Reuters. “The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over 2 million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive.”

Community leaders in central Gaza said local people had fought back against the looters of the convoy, who were armed with automatic rifles, and managed to retrieve some of the stolen trucks which were then returned to the WFP. ... Gaza is facing deepening anarchy as the last remnants of civil order break down, leaving a vacuum increasingly filled by armed gangs, clans, powerful families and criminals.

Trump promises to attack First Amendment for Israel

Trump likely to use antisemitism claims to launch crackdown on US universities

US universities are bracing for funding cuts and investigations under the incoming administration, as Donald Trump and his advisers have billed them as an “enemy” and made them a prime target of their rightwing, anti-woke crusade.

While attacks over critical race theory and diversity and inclusion initiatives have long been part of conservative campaigns against higher education, experts say that the nationwide campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza over the last year, and a push to crack down on them that has often attracted support from Democrats, will probably provide the incoming administration their opening salvo.

“There are political actors who have been obsessed with the idea of fundamentally transforming American higher education, and they have jumped into the space made open by accusations of antisemitism,” said Isaac Kamola, a political science professor at Trinity College whose research focuses on conservative efforts to undermine higher education.

Trump and his backers have made no secret of their plans, many detailed under Project Esther, a blueprint by the rightwing Heritage Foundation aimed at “dismantling” the US pro-Palestine movement “when a willing Administration occupies the White House”. Universities will probably be the main battleground. While Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of eliminating the education department altogether, some of his advisers have expressed hope he will use its tools, like the anti-discrimination Title VI process, to eradicate the pro-Palestine movement on US campuses under the guise of fighting antisemitism. ...

Trump indicated in his first term how he would define antisemitism to threaten colleges. In 2019, he signed an executive order requiring university administrators to “consider” the IHRA definition of antisemitism or face consequences. It was a vague and legally dubious directive, constitutional experts say, but it in effect encouraged university administrators to adopt the definition and a series of examples attached to it. One of those examples, for instance, posits that claims that the state of Israel is a “racist endeavor” are antisemitic.

Pentagon Fails Seventh Straight Audit as Annual US Military Budget Nears $1 Trillion

The Pentagon announced late last week that it failed its seventh consecutive audit as the sprawling, profiteering-ridden department wasn't able to fully account for its trillions of dollars in assets.

As with its past failures to achieve a clean audit, the U.S. Defense Department attempted to cast the 2024 results in a positive light, with the Pentagon's chief financial officer declaring in a statement that "momentum is on our side."

The Pentagon is the largest U.S. federal agency and is responsible for roughly half of the government's annual discretionary spending, with its yearly budget approaching $1 trillion despite long-standing concerns about the department's inability to account for vast sums of money approved by lawmakers and presidents from both major parties.

The latest financial assessment published Friday by the Defense Department's inspector general office estimates that the Pentagon has $4.1 trillion in assets. It is the only major federal agency that has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.

"Of the 28 reporting entities undergoing stand-alone financial statement audits, nine received an unmodified audit opinion, one received a qualified opinion, 15 received disclaimers, and three opinions remain pending," the Pentagon said Friday.

Since the department's first failed audit in 2018, Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in additional military spending. According to the Costs of War Project, more than half of the department's annual budget "is now spent on military contractors" that are notorious for overbilling the government.

"The Pentagon's latest failed audit is a great signal to the incoming administration for where they can start their attempts at slashing government spending," Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams. "Instead of gutting veterans' benefits or the Department of Education as planned, they should start with the one major government agency that has never passed an audit, the Pentagon."

Progressive watchdogs and lawmakers have long cited the Pentagon's failure to pass a clean audit as evidence of the department's pervasive waste and fraud. The Pentagon buried a 2015 report identifying $125 billion in administrative waste out of concern that the findings would be used as a justification "to slash the defense budget," as The Washington Post reported at the time.

8 Reasons Why Marco Rubio Would Be a Disastrous Secretary of State

Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.

The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”

But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.

1. His Obsession With Regime Change in Cuba Will Sink any Chance of Better Relations With the Island

Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.

It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police, and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.

When former President Barack Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition... Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”

In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.

These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his secretary of state wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.

2. Applying His Anti-Cuba Template to the Rest of Latin America Will Make Enemies of More of Our Neighbors

Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.

In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.

In March 2023, Rubio urged President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.

Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence, and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.

Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”

While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.

3. He Believes the U.S. and Israel Can Do No Wrong, and That God Has Given Palestine to Israel

Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”

When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a cease-fire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”

There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.

In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.

“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.

No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.

4. His Deep-Seated Enmity Toward Iran Will Fuel Israel’s War on Its Neighbors, and May Lead to a U.S. War With Iran

Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”

He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not reenter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”

Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full-blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.

While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.

5. He Is Beholden to Big Money, From the Weapons Industry to the Israel Lobby

Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last five years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.

Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his congressional career.

Rubio is clearly beholden to the U.S. arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.

6. He’s so Antagonistic Toward China That China Has Sanctioned Him—Twice!

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left's version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China."

It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers question. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to accuse China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against the Uyghurs.

On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence—a dangerous deviation from the U.S. government's long-standing One China approach.

The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice—once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.

Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn't work, then I think we're going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”

7. Rubio Knows Sanctions Are a Trap, But He Doesn’t Know How to Escape

Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the United Nations and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”

The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.

In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.

So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for secretary of state remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.

8. He Wants to Crack Down on U.S. Free Speech

Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”

Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.

The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.

And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden, and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.

Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.

Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.

Conclusion

On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran, or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.

Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.

His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries, or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the U.N. Charter requires.

Trump advisers contemplating cuts to Medicaid and other welfare programs

Donald Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other government welfare programmes to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multitrillion-dollar 2017 tax cut.

The cuts could mean new work requirements and spending caps, according to the Washington Post, citing sources involved in the talks, including aides in Trump’s transition team.

Extending the tax cuts – most of which are due to expire next year – could add $4tn to the national debt, which already stands at $36tn. But Republicans fear triggering a political backlash by slashing programmes that serve an estimated 70 million Americans to pay for a tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy.

The 2017 tax cuts were criticised for being skewed in favour of the rich, with households in the top 1% income bracket receiving a reduction of $60,000 in 2025, compared with less than $500 for those in the bottom 60%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Trump campaigned on extending the 2017 reduction while also vowing to abolish taxes on tips for restaurant workers. Republicans support the extension but worry that the loss of revenue could add to government borrowing – prompting them to search for savings in others areas. In addition to safety net programme cuts, some Republicans are considering re-purposing clean energy funds passed by Democrats.

Trump CONFIRMS Military Will Carry Out MASS DEPORTATION Of Illegal Immigrants

Trump confirms he will utilize US military to conduct mass deportations

Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration would declare a national emergency and use the US military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

In an early morning social media post, Trump responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who wrote on 8 November that the next administration “will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program”.

Since his decisive victory, Trump has said he intends to make good on his campaign promise to execute mass deportations, beginning on the first day of his presidency. But many aspects of what he has described as the “largest deportation program in American history” remain unclear.

Trump has previously suggested he would rely on wartime powers, military troops and sympathetic state and local leaders. Such a sprawling campaign – and the use of military personnel to carry it out – is almost certain to draw legal challenges and pushback from Democratic leaders, some of whom have already said they would refuse to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda.

California city to pay woman nearly $1m after police dog tore out her scalp

A northern California city has agreed to pay nearly $1m to settle a lawsuit alleging police used excessive force when a K-9 dog tore out a woman’s scalp during her arrest. Talmika Bates will receive $967,000 from the city of Brentwood, located about 60 miles (100km) east of San Francisco in Contra Costa county, her attorneys announced on Friday.

Bates, who was wanted on suspicion of shoplifting items from a makeup store, was hiding in bushes when the German shepherd bit her head during the arrest in February 2020.

The woman required more than 200 stitches in her head, tissue rearrangement and laceration repair. She has been diagnosed with mild diffuse traumatic brain injury, mild post-traumatic brain syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to her attorneys. ...

The settlement comes six months after a federal judge stripped the officer handling the police dog of some of his qualified immunity protection, because the extended amount of time he allowed his dog to bite Bates could be considered by a jury as excessive force, her attorneys said.

Noura Erakat on what the US Election was really about

Why working class Bronx voters turned on the Dems

World’s 1.5C climate target ‘deader than a doornail’

The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, with 2024 almost certain to be the first individual year above this threshold, climate scientists have gloomily concluded – even as world leaders gather for climate talks on how to remain within this boundary.

Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.

Although a single year above 1.5C does not itself spell climate doom or break the 2015 Paris agreement, in which countries agreed to strive to keep the long-term temperature rise below this point, scientists have warned this aspiration has in effect been snuffed out despite the exhortations of leaders currently gathered at a United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan.

“The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5C is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5C line an accelerating way and that will continue until global emissions stop climbing.” ...

Despite countries agreeing to shift away from fossil fuels, this year is set to hit a new record for planet-heating emissions, and even if current national pledges are met the world is on track for 2.7C (4.8F) warming, risking disastrous heatwaves, floods, famines and unrest. “We are clearly failing to bend the curve,” said Sofia Gonzales-Zuñiga, an analyst at Climate Analytics, which helped produce the Climate Action Tracker (Cat) temperature estimate.

New York issues first drought warning in 22 years as dry conditions persist

New York City on Monday issued its first drought warning in 22 years and paused major repairs to its main water aqueduct out of concern for the lack of rainfall. Dry conditions across the north-east have been blamed for hundreds of brush fires. They had already prompted New York and state officials to implement water-conservation protocols when Mayor Eric Adams upgraded the drought warning and temporarily halted the $2 bn Delaware aqueduct project, which was intended to repair leaks in the 80-year-old tunnel.

Last week, a park on the northern tip of Manhattan caught fire, sending smoke billowing across the city – less than a week after a brush fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The city may elevate the warning to an emergency if dry conditions persist, Adams said. A drought emergency involves requiring residents and city agencies to cut down on water usage. Upgrading from a watch to a warning requires a range of conservation protocols, Adams said.

Amazon, Google & Microsoft Embrace Nuclear Power to Fuel Massive AI & Cryptocurrency Energy Demands

Also of Interest

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

Another Psychopath For US Secretary Of State

‘Israel is trying to terrorise people’: Lebanon’s civil defence reels after deadly strike

Uncommitted achieved its goal in making Gaza a mainstream issue

As Biden Uses Long-Range Strikes into Russia to Create Problems for Trump, What Else Might Happen With Ukraine When Trump Takes Over?

Now What?

U.S. Foreign Aid Is Embarrassing Itself

Cruise line offers ‘escape’ from Trump presidency with multi-year packages

Trump, maximum pressure on Iran

A Little Night Music

Smiley Lewis – I Hear You Knocking

Smiley Lewis – Slide Me Down

Smiley Lewis – 1st RECORDING OF Blue Monday

Smiley Lewis – Bee's Boogie

Smiley Lewis - Lillie Mae

Smiley Lewis – Down The Road

Smiley Lewis – It's So Peaceful

Smiley Lewis - Goin' to Jump & Shout

Smiley Lewis - Caldonia's Party

Smiley Lewis - Rootin' and Tootin'