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This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Buster Benton. Enjoy!

"It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail."

-- Vladimir Nabokov

News and Opinion

Either Watch The Footage Of Dead Kids In Gaza Or Stop Supporting Israel

If you have not spent the past 14 months watching all the footage of dead and mutilated children coming out of Gaza, then you have no business trying to defend Israel and its actions. If you are avoiding looking at the facts, then you have no business talking about them.

Everyone who has spent these past 14 months bringing their attention to the concrete realities of the nightmare in Gaza has been living in an entirely different world than everyone who has not. A darker world. An uglier world. A world where living monsters prowl the earth.

Their dreams are worse. Their insides feel different. They experience the day to day moments of life in a whole other way.

The opinions of such a person about what is happening in Gaza do not have the same value as the opinions of someone who has avoided looking at these things. Someone who has not been watching the videos, looking at the photos, seeing the blown-out, burnt-up bodies, listening to the screaming children, reading the harrowing stories, is not equal in their ability to form lucid assessments about Gaza to someone who has. Their opinions have no merit, and their words on the subject can be dismissed.

Someone who supports Israel’s butchery in Gaza but has not spent the last 14 months bearing witness to the daily deluge of footage showing what that support entails is someone whose position is held together by psychological compartmentalization. They are only able to maintain their view of Israel and Palestine because they’ve been avoiding looking at the raw evidence of exactly what their position means. They’re like someone who eats meat but avoids learning about the harsh realities behind how it got to their dinner plate, because they know if they learned the truth about factory farming and saw how livestock are treated in our civilization it would reduce their ability to enjoy their favorite meals. Except with human beings instead of animals.

If you are only able to hold your worldview together by refusing to face the facts about it, then your worldview is garbage and your opinions suck. If you’ve been avoiding looking at what’s happening to people in Gaza while justifying all the death and destruction with some gibberish about human shields and October 7, then everything that comes out of your mouth about this issue is a lie, because it is only made possible by your own untruthful relationship with reality.

If you don’t want to face reality, then stop sharing your opinions about it. If you want to hide your head in the sand and dissociate from what’s really being done in your name then at least have the decency to shut up and spend your time in your fantasy land like a normal escapism addict. Stop annoying people by babbling about a subject that you cannot even bring yourself to deeply reckon with.

Aaron Maté : Biden and Permanent War

Israel’s war in Gaza amounts to genocide, Amnesty International report finds

A report from Amnesty International alleges that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the first such determination by a major human rights organisation in the 14-month-old conflict.

The 32-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.

Israel has “committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians” in the territory, the report said.

It marks the first time Amnesty has alleged the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine that concluded “there are reasonable grounds to believe” Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Netanyahu's Diabolical Undeclared War Objectives in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that Israel's war on Gaza will continue until achieving what he terms “total victory.” Instead of critically examining Netanyahu’s vague and open-ended objectives, much of the Western media and many governments frame the onslaught as self-defense, and some even normalize the genocide as a "humane" attempt to “free” Israeli captives.

At the same time, the same pundits decontextualized the Palestinian right to self-defense by ignoring that the October 7 revolt was a direct response to over two decades of Israel’s imposed “starvation diet” blockade on Gaza. Exactly, as the West turns a blind eye, and continues to enable Israel's theft of Palestinian-occupied land in the West Bank to benefit Jewish-only colonies.

Meanwhile, these media outlets downplay or dismiss Israel’s treacherous undeclared war objectives, even to the detriment of Israeli captives and the immense civilian suffering in Gaza.

For over a year, Netanyahu has prioritized an agenda to reoccupy and to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza rather than engage in negotiations for prisoner’s swap. Especially since the release of Israeli captives would undermine one of Netanyahu’s primary pretexts for pursuing his sinister objectives.

This is only possible in the wake of Western leaders embracing Netanyahu’s racist perspective, focusing only on the well-being of Israeli captives, while ignoring the over 10,000 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli jails, and the welfare of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. For instance, Joe Biden has expressed recently his concern over Netanyahu potentially delaying action to secure the release of Israeli captives until January 20, 2025, while expressing no sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians in 2024 and beyond.

With the conspicuous silence or impotence of world bodies, the Israeli captives became a convenient fig leaf under which Netanyahu saw as an opportunity to reoccupy Gaza. It is worth recalling that in 2005, Netanyahu resigned from the Israeli government in protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to “disengage” and remove the Jewish-only colonies from the Gaza strip.

Immediately following October 7, Netanyahu launched a genocidal war, disregarding the Palestinian Resistance’s proposal for prisoner’s exchange. His decision to pursue war instead of negotiations was motivated by several factors:

a) Deflect responsibility for the intelligence failure under his watch.
b) Evade scrutiny of his role in facilitating external funding to Hamas.
c) Execute a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing to reoccupy Gaza.

The strategy to ethnically cleanse Gaza was openly advocated by Israel’s racist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who three months following October 7 called for Palestinians to leave Gaza. The scion of an Ukrainian immigrant repeated the century-old European Zionist myth of blooming the desert⎯a narrative that not only ignores historical and geographical realities but also contradicts his own Old Testament that once described Canaan, the land of the Filastin (Palestine), as the "land of milk and honey," before the ancient Hebrews migrated from their original homes to Palestine.

Further, and on January 1, 2024, Smotrich’s fellow racist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared in a Knesset speech that Israel should never withdraw from any territory it occupies and explained that the establishment of new Jewish-only colonies in Gaza as “an important thing.” The following day, on January 2, Ben Gvir doubled down, stating that displacing “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians from Gaza would help pave the way for the creation of the new Jewish-only colonies.

More recently, on Monday, November 25, Smotrich declared to the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing the Jewish-only colonies in the occupied West Bank, “We can and must conquer the Gaza Strip.” He claimed there is “a unique opportunity” with Donald Trump’s election to halve Gaza’s population—a veiled euphemism for ethnic cleansing. Last Thursday, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir echoed similar calls to "reoccupy the Gaza Strip."

On the ground inside Gaza, the tools of occupation were more explicit in defining the meaning of Netanyahu’s ostensible mantra: “total victory.” Israeli soldiers posed before an orange banner that read, “Only (Jewish-only) settlement (in Gaza) would be considered victory!” Notably, the orange color harkens back to the banners used by the settler movement in 2005 to protest Sharon’s decision to evacuate the Jewish-only colonies from Gaza.

To this end, and starting October 1st, Israel initiated a new phase of targeted genocide by starvation, blocking food aid trucks from entering northern Gaza, particularly the towns of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and camp Jabalia. And where trucks were allowed in, food aid was swapped with sand bags. Starvation has become so widespread in these areas, women and children are forced to scavenge through mounds of trash for food.

On November 29, Ajith Sunghay, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, stated after visiting Gaza that the “U.N. had been unable to deliver any aid to northern Gaza” due to “repeated impediments or outright rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities.”

Regarding the genocide by terror, U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk reported that residents of northern Gaza are subjected to “non-stop” bombing. Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands have been ordered to evacuate, likely to make way for new Jewish-only settlements.

As part of the forced depopulation of Gaza's northern region—the most fertile land in the strip—Israel is constructing a topographic barrier to isolate this area from the rest of Gaza. Beginning in early October, Israel carried out extensive controlled explosions, demolishing multi-story buildings to clear a path for a 5.6-mile road cutting across the strip. This road divides Gaza City from the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahia. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has characterized this widespread forced displacement as part of an official government policy amounting to "crimes against humanity."

On November 30, former Defense Minister and IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon confirmed HRW findings, stating that Netanyahu and "far-right" (racist) elements are waging a war of "occupation, annexation, and ethnic cleansing." He added, "There is no Beit Lahia, there is no Beit Hanoun."

The live-documented ethnic cleansing in Gaza, much like in 1948, alongside the expansion of Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank, underscores the true undeclared objectives in Israel’s ostensible “total victory.” In this contest, Netanyahu’s deliberate undermining of U.S.-led negotiations for prisoner’s swap exemplifies his quintessential diabolical persona: exploiting the predicament of his own Israeli captives to further his cynical undeclared agenda of slaughtering the “Amalek,” and ethnically cleansing Gaza to pave the way for new Jewish-only colonies.

Ben Gvir Says Netanyahu Is ‘Open’ To Expelling Palestinians From Gaza

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, has said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expressing “openness” to the idea of expelling Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. ...

“Ideas like settling in Gaza are welcome; the only times we defeated our enemies were when we took territory from them,” Ben Gvir said in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio on Sunday. “But that doesn’t satisfy me. I also want to encourage emigration [of Palestinians from Gaza].”

“I am working hard to promote the encouragement of migration from Gaza with the prime minister, and I am beginning to discover some openness on the matter,” Ben Gvir added.

Netanyahu has previously claimed the idea of expelling Palestinians and building settlements is not part of his plan for Gaza, but according to Israeli media, he said in December 2023 that he was looking for other countries to “absorb” the Palestinian population of Gaza.

Israel violates Lebanon ceasefire 100+ times

Moscow claims ‘external forces’ seeking to escalate violence in Syria

Moscow has condemned “external forces” seeking to escalate violence in Syria, despite reports from Ukrainian military intelligence that Russia is to send mercenaries to support flagging troops allied to Damascus.

The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova blamed outside actors for instigating a recent sweeping insurgent offensive, after Islamist militants spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took control of the city of Aleppo at the weekend in a shock advance.

Zakharova emphasised Moscow’s support for a counter-attack by Damascus, despite reports that Russia has begun removing ships from its naval base in Tartus. Militia forces spearheaded by HTS are engaged in fierce confrontations with Syrian army forces 50 miles away outside the provincial capital of Hama.

The ministry of defence in Damascus said major reinforcements had been dispatched to Hama city to bolster troops on the frontlines, while insurgents claimed increasing control of towns in the Hama countryside north-west of the city as a second front pushed sound towards Hama.

Fighting also continued in eastern Syria, where forces loyal to Damascus supported by Iranian and Iran-backed militias are fighting Arab-majority rebel militias from the city of Deir Ezzour. The Pentagon said it destroyed rocket launchers, a tank and mortars that presented a “clear and imminent threat” to US and supporting forces near the Euphrates river, the second such pre-emptive strike in the area in under a week.

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Russia’s Next Moves

Antony Blinken takes his ghoul suit out of the closet and extends his fangs:

Blinken Says Ukraine Must Send Younger People Into War

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Ukraine needs to send younger people to fight Russian forces as the US is pressuring Ukraine to start conscripting teenagers for combat.

Ukraine’s current minimum conscription age is 25, and the US wants it lowered to 18. Ukrainians ages 18 to 25 can join the military to fight but cannot be forced into combat under the latest mobilization law.

“These are very hard decisions, and I fully both understand that and respect that,” Blinken told Reuters in an interview with Reuters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “But for example, getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary. Right now, 18 to 25-year-olds are not in the fight.”

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Our Dangerous Geopolitical Landscape

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, facing impeachment after martial law shock

South Korean opposition parties have formally submitted a motion to impeach the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, over his short-lived declaration of martial law.

Early on Thursday, lawmakers presented to parliament an impeachment motion alleging that Yoon “gravely and extensively violated the constitution and the law” and accuses him of imposing martial law “with the unconstitutional and illegal intent to evade imminent investigations... into alleged illegal acts involving himself and his family”.

Representatives for six opposition parties, including the main Democratic party said a vote could come as soon as Friday, but Yoon’s ruling People Power Party said they would oppose the measure. The Democratic party needs at least eight ruling party lawmakers to back the bill in order for it to pass.

Collapse of MACRON'S France

France in political crisis after no-confidence vote topples government

France has been plunged into political crisis after a no-confidence vote brought down the government, ending the beleaguered minority coalition of the rightwing prime minister Michel Barnier after only three months. The no-confidence motion brought by an alliance of left-wing parties was supported by MPs from Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, far-right, National Rally. A total of 331 lawmakers — a clear majority — voted on Wednesday night to bring down the government.

Barnier will resign as prime minister on Thursday morning, having warned before the vote that France would be “plunged into the unknown”. Macron will then address the nation in a televised address on Thursday evening, his office said after the vote.

The toppling of the government leaves the president, Emmanuel Macron, facing the worst political crisis of his two terms as president. There is uncertainty over how a 2025 budget can be decided as France faces a growing public deficit, and over whom Macron could appoint as prime minister.

Macron, whose second term as president runs until spring 2027, is not obliged to stand down himself. He has ruled out resigning, calling such a scenario “political fiction”. But part of the left and far right called for his exit. ...

Le Pen wrote on social media that, by following the “catastrophic continuity of Emmanuel Macron”, Barnier, who led a coalition dominated by the right and centre, “could only fail”. She said she was “protecting and defending” her party’s 11 million voters, who she said were deeply concerned about the cost of living. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a National Rally MP, said: “[Having] no budget is better than the actual budget, which says a lot about how bad it is.”

The significance of Trump’s war to maintain dollar supremacy

The threat by incoming US president Donald Trump to impose a 100 percent tariff on the BRICS group of countries if there are attempts to set up an alternative to the US dollar as the global currency is a significant expression of the crisis of US imperialism, which is setting it on the road to a third world war. The threat, which was made by Trump in a post to his social media site on Saturday, has been under consideration for some time among his entourage, which regards any move away from the dollar and the undermining of dollar supremacy as an existential threat to the hegemony of the US. ...

This is not overblown rhetoric, but the expression by Trump of real economic relations and contradictions which are daily at work beneath the appearance of a “booming” US economy. The so-called boom, which does not refer to the ever worsening social conditions of the working population, but, instead, to the vast accumulation of profit by the financial oligarchs, has been made possible in major part by the escalation of debt to stratospheric heights.

The US national debt is now rapidly approaching $36 trillion at a rate which has been characterised by all of Washington’s official institutions, including the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board, as “unsustainable,” and where one dollar in seven of the annual federal budget is needed just to pay the interest bill. Such metrics if applied to any other state would lead to its designation as bankrupt. But the US enjoys a unique position within world capitalism because the dollar is the global currency and therefore its debt is financed by the inflow of capital into dollar assets from the rest of the world. ... But if dollar supremacy is in any way significantly questioned or if confidence is undermined, even well before there is any prospect of an alternate currency, then the inflated debt structure is threatened with a crash.

These economic facts are kept well away from the sight of the American public and the eyes of the world. But they are well known in ruling economic, political and media circles. ... Trump’s threats and his underscoring of the crucial importance of dollar supremacy—which must be defended at all costs—arise out of this deepening crisis of the US imperial state.

Don’t Buy Into Phony Anti-Establishment Schtick

I saw a rant from Mehdi Hasan the other day complaining that the way Elon Musk constantly says the media are corrupt and dishonest “has a massive effect not just on trust and polarization in society, but on election outcomes and political messaging.” 

Hasan said that Musk, Trump and their ilk “have cynically created an unpenetrable [sic] bubble around their followers, primed them against a reality-based universe, [and] pre-emptively undermined any negative stories about themselves.”

Hasan is of course correct that the people who listen to Trump and Musk have largely been herded into fact-resistant echo chambers of cult-like loyalty, but it’s worth pointing out that Musk’s claims about the media are absolutely correct as well. The media are corrupt and untrustworthy, and do indeed promote lies and propaganda all the time. Just because Elon Musk says it doesn’t mean it’s false.

One great challenge of our time is that while it’s becoming common knowledge that western media is propaganda and western politics is a corrupt sham, fake solutions to these problems are being marketed to the mainstream by the same powers responsible for them. Donald Trump himself will tell you that the media are lying and the political establishment is run by swamp monsters, and then say that the solution is to support Republicans and trust right wing media. Elon Musk will go on Joe Rogan and say the same thing. In 2028 AOC will probably run for president campaigning on the Democratic Party version of the same faux-populist message, just as Bernie Sanders did.

This dynamic poses a major obstacle to those who yearn for real revolutionary change. It’s becoming increasingly necessary to not just stand against the status quo but against the fraudulent political factions which pretend to oppose it. It’s no longer enough to reject establishment politics and media, we also need to reject the fake anti-establishment politics and media which seek to herd a discontented populace away from meaningful revolutionary movements.

There are probably people reading this right now who’ve fallen into this very trap, who started reading my stuff because they see me opposing wars and criticizing the media and assume I support the same things they support, even as they throw their support behind a fraudulent political movement that’s ultimately designed to keep the wars going and make the mass media propaganda more effective. Last time Trump was president I’d always get his fuzzbrained empire simps trying to convince me their guy was ending the wars and fighting against the deep state, twisting themselves into all kinds of cognitive pretzels when I’d present them with hard evidence to the contrary.

It’s a challenge to push back against this new iteration of mass deception, but recognizing where it’s happening for yourself is fairly simple: just look at what they wind up telling you to support. If at the end of the day they wind up telling you to support Republicans or Democrats, or to support the “good kind” of Republicans or Democrats, or to support any other mainstream western political party, then they’re engaged in the exact sort of manipulation I’m describing here. They’re trying to corral you away from a real revolutionary political movement and back into the mainstream flock. Into one of the mainstream political parties which are explicitly designed to undermine all the revolutionary changes you seek.

As capitalism continues to decay and inequalities and injustices become more and more pronounced, public discontent with the status quo is naturally going to rise. Because they can’t end the political and economic systems the empire is built upon without collapsing it, the empire managers have instead devised ways to funnel that discontentment back into support for status quo politics. They don’t just control the opposition, they control the opposition to the controlled opposition.

The empire managers are always a few moves ahead of the masses. There is simply too much power riding on the continuation of the western empire for those in control to allow an authentic revolutionary movement to emerge which could rock the boat. So they give them fake, decoy revolutions to play with while the empire rolls on.

Trump Offers Key Pentagon Job to Billionaire Whose Firm Trained Khashoggi's Murderers

President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly offered the number-two Pentagon job to a secretive billionaire investor with close ties to the military-industrial complex, potentially introducing additional conflicts of interest to an incoming administration that is set to be rife with corporate executives and lobbyists.

Stephen Feinberg is co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity behemoth Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a firm that provided paramilitary training to members of the elite team that murdered Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Trump drew global outrage for publicly defending the Saudi regime in the wake of the assassination, even after U.S. intelligence agencies established that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorized Khashoggi's murder.

The New York Times reported in 2021 that four Saudis who took part in the 2018 Khashoggi assassination "received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department." Tier 1 Group, an Arkansas-based company financed by Cerberus, provided the training.

"The instruction occurred as the secret unit responsible for Mr. Khashoggi's killing was beginning an extensive campaign of kidnapping, detention, and torture of Saudi citizens ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, to crush dissent inside the kingdom," the Times noted.

It's not yet clear whether Feinberg intends to accept Trump's offer to serve as deputy defense secretary, but news of the choice prompted speculation that Feinberg could be elevated to the top Pentagon spot as Fox News host Pete Hegseth—the president-elect's nominee for the role—faces skepticism from senators amid new details of the sexual assault allegations against him. (Update: The Times reported Wednesday morning that Trump's support for Hegseth is "wobbling" and he is "openly discussing other people for the job, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.")

Citing an unnamed person familiar with his thinking, Politico reported that Feinberg is expected to accept the job offer for deputy defense secretary. Feinberg would also have to be confirmed by the Senate.

The Washington Post, which first reported Trump's offer on Tuesday, noted that the private equity billionaire is a major donor to the president-elect and has "investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts." The Post observed that Cerberus "has invested in hypersonic missiles" and "previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp."

Americans Rail Against Healthcare Industry After CEO's Murder

Chris Hedges: The Killing of Brian Thompson

We do not yet know the motive for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But it would not surprise me if the killer stalked Thompson because UnitedHealthcare had denied medical coverage, or forced a family or an individual into bankruptcy, after the company failed to cover a serious illness. Insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment, often by deciding the treatment is not “medically necessary.”

Among 10 high-income nations, the United States spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes. Americans die four years earlier than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

There are more than 200 million Americans who rely on private health insurance, but once they become seriously ill, they are often tossed aside, left with crippling medical bills and unable to receive adequate treatment. Exorbitant medical bills account for about 40 percent of bankruptcies. Many of those driven into bankruptcy because of medical bills had medical insurance.

The revenue of six largest insurers — Anthem, Centene, Cigna, AVS/Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth — have more than quadrupled from 2010 to $1.1 trillion. Combined revenues of the 3 biggest — United, CVS/Aetna and Cigna — have quintupled.

These corporations, in moral terms, are legally permitted to hold sick children hostage while their parents bankrupt themselves to save their sons or daughters. That many die, at the very least premature deaths, because of these policies is indisputable.

Nothing absolves the killer of Thompson, but nothing absolves those who run for-profit health care corporations that embrace a business model that destroys and terminates lives in the name of profit.

Elon Musk Targeting Social Security Is HUGE Mistake!

Trillions for war ...

US trails developed democracies in healthcare costs for older adults

Older Americans spend more on healthcare than peers in 10 other developed democracies, a new Commonwealth Fund report found.

The new report highlights how Medicare, the public health insurance program for people older than 65 and people who are disabled, has significant cost-sharing requirements – including co-pays, deductibles and no ceiling on out-of-pocket costs.

“Even though nearly all older adults in the US are covered by Medicare, this study highlights areas where the program has room to improve,” Munira Z Gunja, senior researcher for international health policy and practice innovations at the Commonwealth Fund, said in a statement. “In some countries, almost no older adults are skipping or delaying care because of the cost.” ...

Traditional Medicare lacks many benefits older Americans and disabled people need, such as vision, dental and hearing care, and long-term or home care. While Medicare Advantage offers some of these benefits, it has been criticized as unfairly denying care and being unnecessarily costly, and has been the target of federal fraud investigations.

Conservatives have proposed further privatization of Medicare by instituting “default enrollment” in Medicare Advantage. The president-elect, Donald Trump, promised “no cuts” to the program in the official Republican platform, though there are few specifics beyond that promise.

Georgia’s payback machine: Fani Willis resists subpoenas by state lawmakers over Trump prosecution

Even before Project 2025 made it a Republican goal to use federal power to bring progressive prosecutors to heel, the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, found herself in the crosshairs of conservative state legislators angered by her prosecution of Donald Trump.

That conflict found its way into yet another courtroom on Tuesday. Willis’s office defended itself against a subpoena by a state senate committee, which had demanded her appearance to explain how she might have spent money on Nathan Wade, her former special prosecutor and paramour, in the prosecution of now president-elect Trump and others charged in the election interference case. She rejected two subpoenas issued by the Senate special committee on investigations demanding her testimony and a barrel full of documents about the relationship, her office’s finances and the case.

The future of the Trump election interference case in Georgia remains unclear. The state appeals court canceled a hearing scheduled for this week, in which Trump and other defendants had sought to remove Willis as prosecutor on the case. The appeal cited Willis’s relationship with Wade, arguing that the financial entanglement between the two created a conflict of interest that should force a recusal. The appeals court could – and often does – rule without hearing oral arguments. It could scuttle the case entirely, order Willis to be removed as prosecutor, sever Trump from the trial or allow the case to move forward as is.

Anger over that prosecution has come from multiple flanks within the Republican party. Even as the former Georgia governor Roy Barnes argued on behalf of Willis before the Fulton superior court judge Shukura Ingram on Tuesday that the state senate subpoenas were unconstitutional, another judge issued an order declaring her office in violation of the state’s Open Records Act in another case. Conservative legal activists from Judicial Watch sued Fulton county after Willis’s office refused to turn over records of her communications with the special counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 committee. The Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney ordered her office to turn the records over within five days.

Republicans want to know how Willis might have coordinated Trump’s prosecution with the Department of Justice and, ultimately, the Biden White House. But they are also contemplating how the results of the committee investigation may lead legislators to rewrite laws to take authority away from district attorneys, to cut Willis’s budget or to otherwise limit her authority to prosecute wayward Republicans.

Democratic Party Must Be REBUILT For Workers, NOT BILLIONAIRES: Rep. Ro Khanna Interview

Fury as US argues against climate obligations at top UN court

Climate justice campaigners have condemned the US after the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter argued against countries being legally obliged to combat the climate crisis. The US intervention came on Wednesday as part of the historic climate hearing at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where island nations and other climate-vulnerable countries are calling for wealthy polluting nations most responsible for climate breakdown to be held legally responsible.

Climate disasters are wreaking havoc across the planet, with dwindling hope of the current climate pledges curtailing global temperatures as the US and other fossil fuel nations continue to expand production. Yet according to the US, the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) and 2015 Paris agreement and other existing non-binding treaties should be preserved and are the best way forward.

The current UN climate change regime “embodies the clearest, most specific, and the most current expression of states’ consent to be bound by international law in respect of climate change”, Margaret Taylor, legal adviser at the state department, told the ICJ judges on Wednesday. “Any other legal obligations relating to climate change mitigation identified by the court should be interpreted consistently with the obligations states have under this treaty regime,” added Taylor.

Climate justice activists responded with fury. ...

After years of campaigning by vulnerable nations and the global climate justice movement, the UN asked 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. More than 100 countries and organisations are testifying over the course of two weeks, and many hope the hearings will elevate science to the forefront, ensuring international law reflects the realities of climate breakdown and the urgent need for transformative action.

ICJ advisory opinions are non-binding but carry significant legal and political weight, and this will likely be referred to as an authoritative document in future climate litigation and during international climate negotiations. Those most vulnerable to climate change – predominantly Pacific nations led by Vanuatu – are pushing for fair financial support and compensation for irreversible loss and damage from the states most responsible as they face an existential threat from rising tides, floods, drought and other climate disasters.

‘Straight in harm’s way’: can Trump open up Alaska’s 19m-acre refuge for drilling?

The Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR) is one of the earth’s last intact ecosystems. Vast and little-known, this 19m-acre expanse along Alaska’s north slope is home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears, as well as musk oxen, wolves and wolverines. Millions of birds from around the world migrate to or through the region each year, and it serves as the calving grounds for the porcupine caribou.

Donald Trump has called the refuge the US’s “biggest oil farm”. The first Trump administration opened 1.5m acres of the refuge’s coastal plain to the oil and gas industry, and under Trump’s watch, the US government held its first-ever oil and gas lease sale there.

In a few weeks, when Trump takes office again, the refuge – one of the last truly wild places in the world – is awaiting an uncertain future. The president-elect has promised to revive his crusade to “drill baby drill” on the refuge as soon as he returns to the White House in January, falsely claiming it holds more oil than Saudi Arabia. Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second term, calls for an immediate expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska, including in the ANWR, noting that the state “is a special case and deserves immediate action”.

From his end, Joe Biden is moving to limit drilling in the region as much as his administration can. Experts are debating how much oil and gas there is to gain if Trump were to open up the region for drilling again. But Alaska’s Republican governor and Native Alaskan leaders in the region say they are eager to find out – seeing the potential for a major new source of revenue in the geographically remote region.

Other Native leaders and activists have banded with environmental groups that oppose drilling on the refuge – and are gearing up for an arduous battle. “I see it as a David and Goliath fight,” said Tonya Garnett, a spokesperson for the Gwich’in steering committee, representing Gwich’in Nation villages in the US and Canada. “But we are resilient, and we are strong, and we’re going to keep fighting.”

Also of Interest

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

The Problem with Joe and Hunter

Ukraine’s ‘White Wolves’ Unit Fighting Alongside Extremists in Syria

South Korea - Majority Wins As President's Putsch Fails

Health Insurance CEO Assassinated

UN human rights expert raises concerns about US charges against climate protesters

Small North Carolina town sues energy ‘Goliath’ in historic climate action

Satanic Temple to offer religious program for elementary school students in Ohio

Scientists close to solving mystery of how universe's giant galaxies formed

Fauci Could Get PREEMPTIVE Pardon From Joe Biden! Report

Rahmbo GASLIGHTS On Failures That Led To Trump

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A Little Night Music

Buster Benton - My Lady

Buster Benton - Spider in My Stew

Buster Benton - Blues & Trouble

Buster Benton - Sweet 94

Buster Benton & Carey Bell - Born With the Blues

Buster Benton - Lonesome for a Dime

Buster Benton - That's Your Thing

Buster Benton - Hole In My Head

Buster Benton ~ Leave Me Alone

Buster Benton ~ Love Like I Wanna