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This evening's music features unique blues singer Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Enjoy!

"This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

News and Opinion

Hurricane Helene Victims FREEZING in Tents as Biden Sends $725 Million More to Ukraine

The Kind Of Ceasefire Where One Side Keeps Firing

In less than a week of its supposed “ceasefire” agreement Israel has reportedly attacked targets in Lebanon around a hundred times, leading to a single retaliation from Hezbollah on Monday which resulted in zero casualties. As you might expect, Israel is now playing victim and shrieking bloody murder, vowing a major response against Hezbollah for daring to strike back while Israel violated its ceasefire agreement dozens of times.

Apparently this was the kind of ceasefire where only one side has to actually cease firing. This is such a perfect example of everything Israel is.

Israel responds to Hezbollah rocket attack with airstrikes on south Lebanon

Israel has carried out a series of airstrikes in the Nabatieh district, south Lebanon, in response to Hezbollah rocket fire near a watchtower, in the deadliest attacks since a ceasefire came into effect last week. The Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised there would be a strong response to Hezbollah’s attack, and the Israeli military later said it had “struck Hezbollah terrorists, dozens of launchers, and terrorist infrastructure throughout Lebanon”.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least nine people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the two southern towns of Haris and Talousa. The Israeli bombing constituted the most significant attacks since the ceasefire was established on Wednesday.

The Israeli military had previously carried out several strikes over the past week, but at a lower intensity. Israeli media reported on Sunday that France, which is supposed to supervise the implementation of the deal, had accused Israel of violating the ceasefire agreement 52 times since its establishment.

Hezbollah had launched two rockets near a watchtower in the occupied Shebaa farms earlier on Monday night. They landed in an open area and caused no injuries. In a statement, the group said the attack on the watchtowers was an “initial warning defensive response” against “repeated violations” by Israel of the ceasefire agreement.

The resumption of tit-for-tat strikes in south Lebanon and north Israel has caused concern that fully-fledged fighting between Hezbollah and Israel could resume just five days after a ceasefire was announced.

After Days of Israeli Strikes on Lebanon That Violated Truce, Hezbollah Fires Back

Israel has launched dozens of strikes in Lebanon since a ceasefire was supposed to go into effect last week, and on Monday, Hezbollah fired back for the first time, launching two rockets toward Israeli-occupied territory as a “warning” shot, causing no casualties.

Now, Israeli officials are vowing a major response, signaling Israel will use Hezbollah’s response to repeated Israeli ceasefire violations as a reason to escalate. ...

A source with the UN’s peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, told CNN that Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement “approximately 100” times since it went into effect last Wednesday. The Lebanese government said Israel had violated it over 50 times.

"Acts of Massacre and Ethnic Cleansing": Haggai Matar on Gaza War, ICC Arrest Warrants & More

Trump To Hamas: 'HELL TO PAY' If No Hostage Release

Trump Vows 'There Will Be All Hell to Pay' If Hostages Not Released

In an early signal of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's foreign policy plans for when he returns to office next month, the Republican said Monday "there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East" if Hamas does not release hostages taken from Israel, the occupying military force in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Trump demanded hostages seized during the October 7 attack of last year be released or his promised retribution would follow. Nearly 45,000 Palestinians have already been killed—mostly civilian men, women, and children—since Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Gaza in the wake of the Hamas-led operation.

Of the 251 people taken captive last year, 63 are believed to be still alive in Gaza, according toThe Washington Post's tracker, which was updated last week. So far, 117 others have been freed or rescued and 71 have been confirmed killed.

After dining with Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel's prime minister, at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida Sunday night, the U.S. president-elect made his threat about the hostages on his Truth Social platform Monday afternoon.

"Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East," Trump wrote. "But it's all talk, and no action! Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity."

"Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America," Trump added. "RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!"

AMB. Charles Freeman : Why Netanyahu Will Fail

Syria crisis due to Assad’s refusal to engage with opposition, says Turkish minister

The crisis in Syria is the result of President Bashar al-Assad’s refusal to engage in political dialogue with the opposition, and not external interventions, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said after meeting his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, for emergency talks in Ankara.

Araghchi, by contrast, blamed intervention by Israel for the crisis. But the two sides appeared to agree on the need to convene an urgent summit between Turkey, Iran and Russia, the three main external powers inside Syria. These three powers have been meeting to discuss Syria’s political future as part of the Astana process since January 2017. A total of 22 meetings have been held in that format, but Turkey believes Syrian intransigence has led to a lack of progress.

Araghchi said he wanted the Astana process to be revived as quickly as possible, reflecting the need on all sides to reassess their diplomatic positions due to the Syrian Islamist militia the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Syrian National Army (SNA) – the coalition of Turkey-linked rebels formerly called the Free Syrian Army – seizing swathes of territory from the control of Assad, including Syria’s second city of Aleppo. Turkey supports the SNA, and is refusing to call for any withdrawal from Aleppo.

Iran and Russia, Assad’s key backers, are urging Turkey to persuade the forces it supports to end the offensive before it leads to the breakup of Syria, the fall of Assad, or the country falling into the hands of extremist Islamists.

It is not clear what Turkey’s ultimate objectives in Syria will be, but it is striking how many other regional actors, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, do not want Assad to fall even if they would like Iranian influence to be reduced. Most Gulf states have normalised relations with Syria but received little in return.

Israel bans Islamic call to prayer

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, directed police on Sunday to ban mosques from playing the adhan, or Islamic call to prayer, claiming it "disturbs" Jewish residents. He has instructed authorities to confiscate loudspeakers and fine mosques for playing the call, which lasts about two minutes.

Ben Gvir defended the move as necessary to combat "unreasonable noise" and lawlessness.

In an interview with Channel 12, Ben Gvir said that he was “proud” to move forward with a policy of “stopping unreasonable noise from mosques and other sources that has become a hazard for Israel’s residents”.

“In our debates, it arose that most western countries, and even some Arab countries, limit the noise and have many laws on the matter. It’s only neglected in Israel,” Ben Gvir’s office said in a statement.

In a post on X, he called the adhan a "hazard" to nearby Israelis. Palestinian citizens of Israel, however, view the ban as a provocative attack on their community and religious rights.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Is NATO Destroying the EU?

French government faces no-confidence vote on Wednesday

The French government appears likely to fall this week after leftwing and far-right parties lodged motions of no confidence in response to the prime minister’s decision to push through a belt-tightening budget without a vote. If passed by MPs, the motions, which will be put to a vote in the national assembly on Wednesday, will bring down the government and force Michel Barnier’s resignation after only two and a half months.

The New Popular Front (NFP), a leftwing coalition that includes the Socialists, Greens, hard left France Unbowed and the Communist party, had already warned it would put forward a motion to censure the government if it used the controversial “49.3” constitutional clause to force through the social security legislation.

On Monday, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally (RN) increased the pressure on the government by announcing that her party was also lodging a no-confidence motion. “The French have had enough,” she told reporters in parliament. “Maybe [voters] thought with Michel Barnier things would get better, but it got even worse.”

Together, the NFP and the RN have enough MPs to topple the government – the first time a French government has been dispatched in such a way since 1962. It would leave both the EU’s traditional powerhouses, France and Germany, in political flux just weeks ahead of Donald Trump re-entering the White House.

EU's Georgia regime change operation enters final month

Georgian police fire teargas at pro-EU protesters as political crisis deepens

Georgian police have fired teargas to try to disperse thousands of pro-EU demonstrators rallying in the centre of Tbilisi amid a deepening political crisis in the Black Sea nation. The country’s prime minister hours earlier had vowed “no negotiations” with the opposition, enraged by the ruling Georgian Dream party’s decision to shelve EU accession talks after it claimed victory in an election they decried as fraudulent.

The Caucasus country of about 3.7 million has been rocked by turmoil since the 26 October parliamentary elections, with Georgian Dream facing accusations of betraying the country’s longstanding ambition of joining the EU and instead moving Tbilisi closer to Moscow.

Opposition lawmakers are boycotting the country’s parliament and the pro-EU president is seeking to throw out the election results in the constitutional court.

Prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze refused any potential negotiations with the opposition, as Monday marked five consecutive nights of clashes between protesters and riot police outside the parliament in central Tbilisi. ...

Kobakhidze claimed on Monday that the protests were “funded from abroad” and vowed “there will be no revolution in Georgia”. He also lambasted western countries for failing to condemn “organised violence” by protesters, as they have criticised excessive force by Georgian police.

Chip war ramps up with new US semiconductor restrictions on China

The US has announced new export restrictions targeting China’s ability to make advanced semiconductors, drawing swift condemnation from Beijing.

Washington is expanding efforts to curb exports of state-of-the-art chips to China that can be used in advanced weapons systems and in artificial intelligence.

The announcement on Monday came a few weeks before Donald Trump returns as president, where he is expected to bolster Washington’s hawkish stance on China. On Monday the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, said Joe Biden’s presidency had been especially tough in “strategically addressing China’s military modernisation through export controls”.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: “The United States has taken significant steps to protect our technology from being used by our adversaries in ways that threaten our national security.” Washington would keep working with allies and partners “to proactively and aggressively safeguard our world-leading technologies and knowhow so they aren’t used to undermine our national security”.

Beijing vowed on Monday to defend its interests, with a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson saying the US “abuses export control measures” and has “hindered normal economic and trade exchanges”.

Idaho’s ‘abortion trafficking’ law partly revived by US appeals court

Idaho can enforce a first-of-its-kind “abortion trafficking” law against those who harbor or transport a minor to get an abortion out-of-state without parental consent, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. But the San Francisco-based 9th US circuit court of appeals in its ruling blocked a part of the law that prohibits “recruiting” a minor to get an abortion. ...

Lourdes Matsumoto, a lawyer and advocate who works with victims of sexual violence, and two groups that support abortion rights sued the state to challenge the law soon after it was passed. They argued that the law violated their right to free speech under the first amendment of the US constitution and that the threat of prosecution prevented them from counseling minors seeking abortions.

Circuit judge M Margaret McKeown wrote for the majority that harboring and transporting were not speech, partly reversing a lower court order that had blocked the entire law. However, she wrote that recruiting could include “a large swath” of speech protected by the first amendment, “from encouragement, counseling, and emotional support; to education about available medical services and reproductive healthcare; to public advocacy promoting abortion care and abortion access”.

McKeown said that while speech can be restricted if it is part of a crime, it is not a crime for a resident of Idaho to get an abortion in a state where it is legal. “Idaho’s asserted police powers do not properly extend to abortions legally performed outside of Idaho,” she wrote.

Handful of countries responsible for climate crisis, top court told

A handful of countries should be held legally responsible for the ongoing impacts of climate change, representatives of vulnerable states have told judges at the international court of justice (ICJ).

During a hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which began on Monday, Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, said responsibility for the climate crisis lay squarely with “a handful of readily identifiable states” that had produced the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions but stood to lose the least from the impacts. The court heard how Pacific island states such as Vanuatu were bearing the brunt of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent and severe disasters. “We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create,” Regenvanu said.

The hearing is the culmination of years of campaigning by a group of Pacific island law students and diplomacy spearheaded by Vanuatu. In March last year the UN general assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling on the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on what obligations states have to tackle climate change and what the legal consequences could be if they fail to do so.

Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries, including wealthy developed states with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency, such as the UK and Russia, and states that have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions but stand to bear the brunt of their impact, including Bangladesh and Sudan as well as Pacific island countries. The US and China, the world’s biggest emitters, will make statements too, even though neither fully recognises the court’s authority.

Regenvanu told the court that states continued to emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases in spite of “increasingly dire warnings” from scientists, noting that emissions had increased by more than 50% since 1990.

Trump allies begin attack on EPA and rules protecting US drinking water

Donald Trump’s allies have fired the opening salvoes of his coming administration’s attack on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal agency that enforces and regulates laws on air, soil, and water quality among other crucial environmental and health issues.

In a letter from Republican House leadership to the EPA administrator Michael Regan, Republicans trained their sites on the agency’s scientific integrity policies that are designed to insulate scientists and research from political interference.

Meanwhile, the incoming chair of the Senate environmental committee in a hearing last week promised to target portions of new PFAS regulations put in place over the last year, a top priority for Trump’s chemical and water utility industry allies. The Republican House committee on oversight and accountability chair, James Comer, charged in his letter that scientific integrity policies would be used by EPA scientists to “hamstring the incoming Trump administration’s ability to implement their own executive agendas”.

The Republicans promptly moving to shred the integrity policies – which critics say were weak to begin with – demonstrates how party officials are “bending over backwards” to assist Trump in attacking career servants, said Jeff Ruch, a former EPA official now with the Public Employees Environmental Responsibility non-profit. “They want to clear out all potential obstacles,” Ruch said.

The integrity policies were put in place during Barack Obama’s administration in response to George W Bush political appointees requiring EPA researchers to scrub terms like “climate change” from agency science and reports, and making other politically directed alterations. The policies include the EPA’s and other administration agencies’ standards for objectivity and accuracy in scientific information, but Ruch said they were too vague under Obama. Among other problems, they didn’t stipulate how investigations would be carried out, or punishments for managers and political appointees who violated the rules.

Scientists baffled as orcas seem to revive an 80s trend: dead salmon hats

Scientists in Washington state have observed at least one orca balancing salmon on its head, a trend known as the “dead salmon hat”. They spotted the stylish killer whale this autumn in Puget Sound. ...

The strange phenomenon was first documented in 1987, when a female orca was observed to be wearing a salmon hat for nearly the duration of that year. Within a few weeks, two other orcas, creatures known for being highly intelligent and social, began to adopt her unique fashion. Yet the trend seemed to disappear just as suddenly as it had appeared – as the salmon hats already seemed to be out of fashion by 1988.

But as all fashion is cyclical, the accessories have seemingly made a comeback as of November. A 32-year-old male orca known as J27 Blackberry was photographed flaunting the same salmon hat trend at Point No Point, Washington, just off Whidbey Island in Puget Sound.

Researchers are still baffled by the abrupt resurgence.

Also of Interest

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

Erdogan Backstabs His Way Into Center of Middle East Conflict

About the Syrian War & Those Rebels

This Dystopia Depends On Hiding Inconvenient Truths

Patrick Lawrence: Shall We Celebrate, the World Being as It Is?

‘The whole foundation is rocking’: inside the explosive film about the investigation of Benjamin Netanyahu

Why Did Joe Biden Pardon His Son?

Belgium found guilty of crimes against humanity in colonial Congo

Biden in Angola: U.S. Competes with China for Influence in Africa Amid Fight for Key Resources

DYSTOPIAN Israeli Baby Crying Quadcopters In Gaza

Israel/U.S./Turkey Funded Terrorists Attack Syria To Topple Assad!

A Little Night Music

Screamin' Jay Hawkins – I Put A Spell On You

Screamin' Jay Hawkins – Same Damn Thing

Screamin' Jay Hawkins – Ignant And Shit

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Hong Kong

Screamin' Jay Hawkins – I Don't Know

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Feast Of The Mau Mau

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Little Demon (alt. Take)

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - There's Something Wrong With You

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Voodoo