The Evening Blues - 1-21-25



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Albert Washington

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Cincinatti, Ohio blues and soul singer Albert Washington. Enjoy!

Albert Washington - Case Of The Blues

"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a sultan. The palace becomes a circus."

-- Turkish Proverb


News and Opinion

Donald Trump Is The Empire Unmasked

During his inaugural address, the new president of the United States was refreshingly open about the fact that Washington is the hub of a continuously expanding empire which is ruled by billionaire plutocrats.

As Joe Lauria highlighted for Consortium News, President Trump’s speech included references to the “manifest destiny” of America, saying that under his presidency the US will consider itself a nation that “expands our territory”. He waxed fondly about the settler-colonialist past which established the country at the expense of the people who were already living there, and vowed to take control of the Panama Canal.

Trump gave this speech to an audience where the wealthiest people on earth sat alongside his own cabinet in the best seats in the house. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were seen together in the crowd among the more official members of the incoming administration. Israeli-American Trump megadonor Miriam Adelson, who according to Trump helped dictate US policy toward Israel during his first term, was seen sitting among Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Clintons at the inauguration. There will reportedly be no fewer than 13 billionaires with official roles in the new Trump administration.

If you were to twist my arm and force me to say something positive about Donald Trump, this is the sort of thing I would point to. He makes the US empire much more transparent and unhidden. He removes its mask and reveals the twisted face beneath it.

The US isn’t suddenly ruled by billionaires now that Trump is president; it was already ruled by billionaires. The US isn’t suddenly an empire bent on global domination now that Trump has been sworn in; that was already the case. But you’re not supposed to just come right out and say that.

Well, Trump comes right out and says it. He says the quiet parts out loud. He’s the only president who’ll openly boast that US troops are in Syria to keep the oil or lament that they failed to take the oil from Venezuela, or just come right out and tell everyone he’s bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs. He puts much less effort into disguising the true nature of the US empire than other presidents.

That’s the only reason various factions of America’s unofficial permanent government have had objections to Trump’s presidency over the years. It’s not because he presents a threat to the establishment or because he’s trying to bring down the deep state, it’s because he is viewed as a poor custodian of the empire. He either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the importance of keeping a polite face on the imperial machine.

If I were forced to say something positive about Trump, that would be it. The thing some US empire managers dislike about him is the only thing I like about him: that he makes the US empire a less effective evil because of how much less hidden he keeps the inner workings of the machine. The hood stays popped open the entire time, showing the whole world how the imperial sausage gets made.


Not that there haven’t been plenty of mask-off moments during the dementia-muddled chaos of the Biden administration as well. A new article in Time titled “Why Biden’s Ukraine Win Was Zelensky’s Loss” is a good example of this; the report cites a former member of Biden’s National Security Council saying that victory for Ukraine was never part of the Biden administration’s plan.

The opening paragraph reads as follows:

“When Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, President Joe Biden set three objectives for the U.S. response. Ukraine’s victory was never among them. The phrase the White House used to describe its mission at the time — supporting Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ — was intentionally vague. It also raised the question: As long as it takes to do what?”

“Ukraine’s victory was never among them.”

Talk about a mask-off moment. It has long been clear that the US pushed Ukraine into an unwinnable war with the goal of bleeding and preoccupying Moscow, and that it actively sabotaged peace negotiations in the early days of the war in order to pursue these goals. Now that the job has been done and the demented meat puppet is out of office, we are finally hearing it from Biden’s own handlers in his administration.

And of course there was Gaza, where the world spent 15 months watching history’s first live-streamed genocide right in front of their faces while western officials made nonstop excuses of less and less believability. If there’s to be any good to come from that incomprehensibly horrific nightmare, it’s that it has shown everyone the true face of the empire.

The more glimpses people get of the true face of the empire, the less effective the imperial propaganda becomes, because propaganda only works if you believe it. The primary obstacle to revolutionary change under the western empire is the fact that its citizenry have been successfully propagandized into accepting the status quo. The more people open their eyes to the fact that we are ruled by psychopaths who are driving us to our doom on multiple fronts, the closer we get to a collective movement toward a healthy world.

Another set of Israeli lies collapses: Prosecutor admits no evidence of rape in October 7 attack

Just days after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militants, the Israeli press, amplified by the mainstream international media, was publishing horrific stories of the “mass” and “systematic” rape and sexual abuse of Israeli women. There were even claims that the Palestinians had been given explicit orders to carry out rape. This was alongside lurid and mendacious claims about the slaughter, beheading, and, in one instance, cooking in an oven of babies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu utilised the claims to denounce Hamas’ “savagery” and justify Israel’s war of annihilation against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Now after 14 months of appeals for witnesses and evidence, Israeli prosecutor Moran Gaz has admitted her department has no evidence of any rapes or sexual assaults and is not filing any such cases for prosecution against the Palestinian attackers held in Israeli jails. Until recently, Gaz headed Israel’s Southern Prosecutor’s Office and was a member of the team investigating the militants arrested during the attack. Speaking in an interview at the end of last month with the Israeli online daily Ynet, Gaz said that despite all their investigations, “In the end, we have no complainants.” No one came forward to give evidence. “We contacted women’s rights organizations and asked for cooperation. They told us that they [those allegedly abused] simply did not contact them.” Apparently, no one came forward to give evidence, even confidentially.

Gaz said that in such circumstances, it would be very difficult to obtain justice, particularly for sexual offenses, and asked the public to lower their expectations. She said that “the vast majority of them will not be able to meet the threshold of proof in court, and the criticism will ultimately come to the prosecutor’s office—unjustly.” Coming from someone like Gaz who believes that the Palestinians detained by Israel during the October 7 attack “have no right to live,” this can only mean that Israel does not have one iota of evidence to substantiate the rape or sexual abuse claims.

Once again, Israel’s propaganda about Hamas savagery, rape, mutilations and beheaded babies that it put out to justify the slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians has been revealed as a tissue of lies. But there has been little or no mention of Gaz’s admission in the mainstream media.

Israel wants to demolish the ceasefire deal

Palestinians begin search for Gaza’s missing as they return to ruined homes

After the first night in Gaza for more than a year without the sound of drones or bombing overhead following the successful implementation of a ceasefire, people in the besieged Palestinian territory have begun returning to destroyed homes and searching for missing loved ones.

The truce that took effect on Sunday with the release of the first three hostages held by Hamas in exchange for 90 Palestinians from Israeli jails was greeted with euphoria as a large influx of desperately needed aid supplies entered the strip.

By Monday, however, the celebrations largely gave way to shock and sorrow, as the strip’s 2.3 million population began to assess the scale of the devastation wreaked by Israel in retaliation for the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack.

In Israel, joy at the three hostages’ safe return was tempered by anger and surprise at Hamas’s show of force at the hostage handover after 15 months of gruelling combat. “The nation watched with no little dread when dozens of Hamas gunmen, hailed by a large cheering crowd, commandeered Gaza City’s Saraya Square for a wild, self-aggrandising daylight ceremony before a vast global audience,” a Times of Israel op-ed said.

Whether the first six-week stage of the ceasefire will hold is yet to be seen after isolated reports of violence on Monday, including what medics said was an incident in which Israeli troops shot eight people in the Rafah area. The Israeli military said it was checking the reports.

'NOT OUR WAR': Trump Predicts Gaza Ceasefire Will FAIL

Palestinians decry their imprisonment

In the dead of night on Sunday, after hours of waiting, a white bus carrying dozens of Palestinian prisoners, released in exchange for three Israeli hostages handed over by Hamas to Israel, arrived at Fawakeh square in the West Bank city of Ramallah. ... Disembarking from the coach were mostly women and many minors, the majority of whom were detained after 7 October 2023. Many said they had been arrested just for writing a social media post; others for taking part in protests against the massacre of civilians in Gaza.

Latifa Misha’sha, 34, was one of the 90 prisoners freed on Sunday on the first day of the ceasefire deal aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza. As soon as she emerged from the bus, she hugged her brother Basil, in tears, without saying anything for minutes. “She was so skinny,” Basil says. “In those 20 months she has lost over 6 or more kilograms of her weight. She had been arrested on November 2023 for posting a picture supporting Gaza on Instagram.” She was charged with incitement, like many arrested after October 2023. ...

Palestinians have long alleged that imprisonment is a key element of Israel’s 57-year occupation: various estimates suggest that up to 40% of Palestinian men have been arrested at least once in their lives. After the 7 October attack, the Israeli government announced a crackdown on social media posts seen as inflammatory, describing it as a “zero tolerance policy” towards activity deemed to express support for Hamas. Hundreds of Palestinians had been arrested since and charged “on suspicion of the offences of incitement, identification and support for terrorism”. ...

Shatha Jarabaa, 24 – who was arrested and also charged with incitement on 14 August last year, she says, over a social media post criticising the “brutality” of Israel’s campaign in Gaza – tells the Guardian she has lost 14kg during her detention. “The treatment in prison was so bad,” she says. “Each prisoner had only one outfit. It was bitterly cold inside the detention centre. The rain would fall on us inside the cells. My arrest was illogical and unjustified. The charge was incitement and support for terrorist organisations due to posting Quranic verses on social media. “It was a way to imprison as many women as possible because of the prisoners inside Gaza and to exchange them for the Israelis hostages. We were hostages as well because we were imprisoned against our will without any credible charges.” ...

Several prisoners released on Sunday reported to the Guardian having been mistreated or tortured during their detention by the Israeli Prison Service personnel. The testimonies build on a Guardian investigation and research from rights group B’Tselem that found violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuse has been normalised across Israel’s jail system in the wake of 7 October.

AMB. Chas Freeman : A Ceasefire or a Pause?

Israeli Settlers Wage 'Vicious Terror Attacks' in West Bank Over Prisoner Releases

A day after the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem said Monday that attacks by settlers in the West Bank—carried out with the "full cooperation" of Israeli soldiers, according to one rights group—were meant to "impose a 'price tag' for the release of Palestinians" as part of the truce.

West Bank residents shared accounts—backed up by footage that was verified by The New York Times—of masked Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied territory burning homes and vehicles on Sunday, with gangs of "dozens of men, some carrying slingshots," rampaging through at least three Palestinian villages.

The cease-fire deal reached last week was widely celebrated after more than 15 months of Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 46,913 Palestinians.

But some on the far-right in Israel, including settlers in the West Bank, object to the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. ...


B'Tselem reported that a 15-year-old boy was killed in the West Bank town of Sabastiya by soldiers who "escorted" gangs of settlers on Sunday.

In Sinjil, the Times reported that dozens of men threw stones and set houses ablaze, injuring several people, including an 86-year-old man.

"People screamed as their homes were burning," a resident, Ayed Jafry, told the newspaper.

Villagers in Turmus Aya reported that Israeli police officers did not try to stop at least 20 masked settlers who entered the town and threw stones, and CCTV footage showed Israeli police cars in the area.

Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli Knesset who has expressed support for South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, called on the international community to "enforce accountability on its own and bring these violent, racist criminals to justice."

"If their flames of hatred will not be vanquished," said Cassif, "it will engulf us all."

Pepe Escobar : Does Trump Want Peace or Triumph?

Has South Korea just witnessed its own January 6 moment?

They arrived intent on causing mayhem. The political figurehead they supported had, they said, been the victim of a grave injustice at the hands of the establishment. The ringleaders had soon broken through security cordons, armed with fire extinguishers, steel pipes and police shields, smashing windows and gaining entry to a government building, leaving destruction worth an estimated £400,000 in their wake.

The scene of the riot was not the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021, and the mobs attempting to overturn the rule of law had swapped animal skins and bald eagle masks for hooded down jackets and face masks. But the similarities between Maga ideologues’ attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, and the far-right protesters who stormed the Seoul western district court building this weekend in support of the impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, are hard to ignore.

About 25 terrified court workers barricaded themselves on the rooftop for an hour as rioters reached the seventh floor, hunting specifically for the judge who had issued the warrant to detain their leader as part of an investigation into allegations that his 3 December declaration of martial law amounted to insurrection. Of the 90 people arrested, more than half were in their 20s and 30s, including three YouTubers who livestreamed the chaos. The violence left 51 police officers injured, seven seriously, while broadcast journalists from KBS and MBC were attacked and had their equipment damaged. Both have announced they are taking legal action.

In the weeks since Yoon, an arch conservative, took the disastrous decision to impose martial law in one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies, the battle for South Korea’s political future has been played out mostly in the national assembly chamber, courtrooms and Yoon’s official residence. There have been periods of real tension, when the country appeared to be treading a narrowing line between the democratic process and anarchy – not least the confrontations between soldiers and politicians on the night martial law was declared, and when armed security personnel blocked police and prosecutors during their first, unsuccessful attempt to arrest Yoon.

Adding fuel to the unrest, the controversial far-right pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon told supporters that the people’s right to resist “supersedes the constitution” and offered to pay protesters to attend anti-impeachment rallies. Yoon sent a letter praising the protesters as patriots, vowing to “fight to the end” and encouraging them to “be stronger”.

UK/EU VETO on Trump-Putin talks

Trump launches second term with barrage of executive orders

Donald Trump launched his second term as US president on Monday with a barrage of executive orders, the first round signed on stage at the Capitol One Arena in downtown Washington, where the inaugural parade was moved to avoid freezing temperatures outside.

Among the measures signed on stage to cheers from a raucous crowd was the order for the US to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, a step the president took during his first term in power, before Joe Biden recommitted the US to that attempt to tackle the worsening climate crisis. ...

On stage in Washington, Trump then signed a recision of 78 Biden-era executive orders, memoranda and other measures.

In addressing the federal government he signed a regulatory freeze “until we have full control of the government”, a freeze on all federal hiring except in the military and some other categories and a requirement that federal workers return to full-time in-person work immediately. He also directed every department of government “to address the cost of living crisis”.

More orders included a directive to the federal government ordering the restoration of protections of free speech and “preventing government censorship” and another directive ending the “weaponization of the government against the adversaries of the previous administration”.

Trump issues 1,500 ‘unconditional’ pardons over January 6 Capitol attack

Donald Trump on Monday issued “full, complete and unconditional” presidential pardons for about 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 attack on Congress, including some convicted of violent acts, making good on his promise to act in such cases on day one of his second term.

In addition to the pardons, he issued commutations for more than a dozen cases, shortening sentences for those that he said needed “further research”. Among those whose sentences were commuted was Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia.

“This is a big one. We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” Trump said while signing the pardons in the Oval Office on Monday night after he referred to those convicted as “hostages”.

Trump also directed the justice department to dismiss all pending indictments against people related to January 6.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation,” Trump’s action says.

Trump Threatens Again to Retake Panama Canal While Distorting Deadly History of Waterway

Biden’s last-minute pardons

Former president Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons – of family members, members of the January 6 Capitol attack investigative committee, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney – are drawing heat from both sides of the political divide.

The Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt said Biden’s actions showed that “the guy who claimed he would ‘protect norms’ continues to bulldoze them and the Constitution until the bitter end.”

“Biden truly is one of the worst Presidents in American history and will only be remembered as the guy between Trump’s two terms,” Schmitt wrote on X.

Biden said he was issuing blanket pardons to his brother James Biden, James’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; his younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens; Valerie’s husband, John T Owens; and his younger brother, Francis W Biden. “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement on the pardons.

Biden commutes life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, 80

Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of the Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of the 1975 murder of two FBI agents in South Dakota, moments before handing over power to Donald Trump on Monday. Peltier, who has spent half a century in federal prison, is said to be in poor health and would have not come up for parole until 2026 after being denied release in July last year.

In a White House statement, Biden said he was commuting Peltier’s life sentence so that he can serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement. “He is now 80 years old, suffers from severe health ailments, and has spent the majority of his life (nearly half a century) in prison. This commutation will enable Mr Peltier to spend his remaining days in home confinement but will not pardon him for his underlying crimes,” the statement read.

The commutation order noted that commutation for the Native American activist, who was convicted of killing two federal agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and escaping from federal prison, was widely supported.

“Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former US attorney whose office oversaw Mr Peltier’s prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison,” it read.



the horse race



Trump REVOKES Security Clearance For 51 Intel Officials Who Were WRONG About Hunter's Laptop

The Shocking Crimes Biden’s Family Committed & Why They Needed Pardons!



the evening greens


High fertiliser use halves numbers of pollinators, world’s longest study finds

Using high levels of common fertilisers on grassland halves pollinator numbers and drastically reduces the number of flowers, research from the world’s longest-running ecological experiment has found. Increasing the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus doused on agricultural grassland reduced flower numbers fivefold and halved the number of pollinating insects, according to the paper by the University of Sussex and Rothamsted Research.

Bees were most affected – there were over nine times more of them in chemical-free plots compared with those with the highest levels of fertiliser, according to the paper, published in the journal npj Biodiversity. The lead researcher, Sussex University’s Dr Nicholas Balfour, said: “As you increase fertilisers, pollinator numbers decrease – that’s the direct link that​ to our knowledge has never been shown before.

“It’s having a drastic effect on flowers and insects. The knock-on effect goes right up the food chain,” he said.

This is primarily because fertilisers create conditions that allow fast-growing grasses to dominate, crowding out other grasses and flowers. It is generally assumed that having a greater diversity of flowers leads to a greater diversity of pollinators, which often have specialist requirements in terms of the blooms they like to visit.

The research was done in Rothamsted, Hertfordshire, on strips of grassland called Park Grass, which have been studied since 1856. The average use of fertiliser on grassland in the UK is about 100kg for every hectare. The highest amount in the experiment was 144kg a hectare, to which the greatest pollinator declines (of 50% or more) were linked. Even land spread with the average amount, however, had 42% fewer pollinators and five-fold fewer flowers than land with none. The results were most pronounced on plots treated with nitrogen, the most widely used type of fertiliser.

‘It’s an absolute travesty’: fears for border wildlife as Trump takes office

During Donald Trump’s first presidential term, he began an ambitious and costly border militarization program, including the construction of over 450 miles of wall that severed wildlife corridors and fragmented ecosystems in some of the country’s most remote and biodiverse regions. With his second inauguration on Monday, environmentalists are bracing for any new phase of construction that could exacerbate the ecological toll of the border wall.

“It’s an absolute travesty and a disaster for border wildlife,” said Margaret Wilder, a human-environment geographer and political ecologist at the University of Arizona, regarding the environmental impact of the existing border wall and the prospect of renewed construction. She said the wall harmed efforts “after many decades of binational cooperation between the US and Mexico to protect this fragile and biodiverse region. I don’t think Americans realize what is at stake.”

What’s at stake is the historically unparalleled separation of wildlife populations along the more than 635 miles of pedestrian border wall – largely impassable to anything bigger than a jackrabbit – that has been built along the southern border. “This [the border wall] is a massive uncontrolled experiment in the evolutionary history of wildlife species in the borderlands,” said Laiken Jordahl, south-west conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “The places that are still unwalled are some of the most remote, rugged, and important habitats for wildlife that we have left.”

New Mexico and Arizona have approximately 391 miles of the pedestrian border wall, 263 miles of which were constructed during the first Trump administration.

A recent Wildlands Network and Sky Islands Alliance study showed the impact of the pedestrian border wall (30ft-high steel pillars 4in apart) on wildlife movement and habitat connectivity in the exceptionally biodiverse Sky Island region of Sonora Mexico and the south-western US. Motion-activated cameras placed along 100 miles of Arizona border showed an 86% decrease in wildlife crossings and a 100% reduction in crossing for large animals such as bears, pronghorns and jaguars.

Alaska to resume ‘barbaric’ shooting of bears and wolves from helicopters

Alaska is set to resume the aerial gunning of bears and wolves as a population control measure aimed at boosting caribou and moose herd numbers, even as the state’s own evaluation of the practice cast doubt on its effectiveness.

The renewed program would allow hunters to eliminate up to 80% of the animals on 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares) of state land. Environmental groups opposed to what they label a “barbaric” practice of shooting wildlife from helicopters is more about sport than scientific practice in part because hunters want caribou populations to increase because they are trophy animals.

“Alaska’s practice of indiscriminately strafing predators is both inhumane and inane,” said Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska-Fairbanks ecologist now with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), which opposes the practice. “There is no scientific evidence that this carnage will boost populations of moose and caribou, and there is a growing body of evidence that it disrupts a healthy predator/prey balance in the wild.”

The report comes after the Biden administration effectively upheld Trump era rules that allowed for other inhumane hunting practices on federal lands in Alaska, like killing cubs in dens.

Alaska’s “intensive management” allows Alaskan game agents to kill any brown bear, black bear or wolf on some state lands. Nearly 100 bears, including 20 cubs, were killed by helicopter in 2023. The latest program would allow aerial hunters to kill 80% of wolves (until the population is reduced to 35), 80% of black bears (until the population is reduced to 700) and 60% brown bears (until the population is reduced to 375).


Also of Interest

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

Trump Issues Order to End Censorship

Jakarta Unaware of Reported Plan To Relocate Gaza Palestinians to Indonesia

Has Israel Lost?

Biden worked 'tirelessly around the clock' — to prevent a ceasefire

'No Innocents in Gaza': Reflecting on Israel's First Fascist War

What was in the Hamas 'gift bags' given to freed Israeli women?

ICC braces for swift Trump sanctions over Israeli arrest warrants

Trump Is No Traitor to His Class

The Imperial Presidency Marches On

Trump And Ukraine Should Concede

Australian oysters’ blood could hold key to fighting drug-resistant superbugs, researchers find

Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow FURIOUS The Tech Bros Are Cozying Up To Trump

Karen Kwiatkowski : Trump and Israel


A Little Night Music

Albert Washington - I'm The Man

Albert Washington - Somewhere Down The Line

Albert Washington - Hold Me Baby

Albert Washington - Loosen These Pains And Let Me Go

Albert Washington - Turn on the Bright Lights

Albert Washington - Doggin' Me Around

Albert Washington - These Arms Of Mine

Albert Washington - A Woman Is a Funny Thing

Albert Washington - Betty Jane

Albert Washington - Bring It On Up


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Comments

QMS's picture

The unmasking of the evil face of empire
is an ugly sight to behold. It is about time
for the subjects to recognize what their
owners are up to. And the price of subjugation.

Thanks for the EB's.

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5 users have voted.

question everything

joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

well, if the normies don't catch on now that captain obvious is presidunce of the united snakes, i reckon they never will. the reaction to luigi suggests that some of the normies may be getting it about the price of subjugation.

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2 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

.

Now that Biden has pardoned his family he alone should be prosecuted for money laundering, sex trafficking and tax fraud. And since his family can’t shield themselves under the 5th they should all be called in as witnesses against him. Let Joe Biden hold the bag on conviction since his family was working for him.

With all the evidence that republicans have found on him let’s try that theory that no one is above the law.

But will republicans try to pull the truth out of Fauci? There are tons of people who know his crimes too and they can testify against him.

I’d love to see the scams turned against Biden and Fauci. Bitter? You bet’cha I am. Lots of people were hurt by them.

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6 users have voted.

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

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7 users have voted.

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

it will be interesting to see how the hunt for bidencrime plays out. typically, after an election, the new administration "looks forward" and the crimes of the previous administration are swept under the rug - usually so that the most egregious of them, the war crimes, can be continued and expanded upon.

it's possible that the trump administration might be different since a big part of his schtick has to do with grievance over the oppression levied against him by his predecessor and the associated deep state.

i guess we'll see.

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5 users have voted.

The Niall guy says he is not sure if those intel officials lied or were sincerely just wrong. The problem is that all those intel officials knew everything around Russiagate since before 2016 were utter lies. They were repeating the lies of the entire hoax that there was interference and that there was some kind of book of bad things Putin was following which apparently everybody knew about. The logic is:

--We know it is a lie that John stole the car.
--John may have stolen the car.

Have some questions which need some in depth reading on fertilizers and bees. It may be the case that where ever fertilizers are use, there is also heavy use of insecticides. While those insecticides are not directly aimed at bees, the bees as they fly about gathering pollen, they are ingesting the pesticides.

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joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

yep, the niall guy is the designated liberal apologist on the show. the only reason that i watch that show at all is to see what the mainstream talking points are on any given day. i find that show annoying, but less so generally than a lot of others.

i don't know about how farms are in the uk (which is where that study is from) but here in the u.s. it's quite likely that pesticide use and commercial fertilizer use go hand in hand on larger farms.

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6 users have voted.

@joe shikspack The inability to understand at least the argument of the other side reminds me of a case long time ago written up by long time civil libertarian Nat Hentoff. During senior year at a NY law school there was a complete mock trail. The school took as the case to be argued by the senior students of a father trying to gain complete complete custody of his children because his ex-wife came out as a lesbian and was shacking up with another women. Activists protesting saying the case was unreal and would never happen, and an attack on lesbians. The school relented.

Hentoff wrote that some lawyers wrote to him that yes in fact they knew about identical pending cases. I believe this mock trial was in the 70s. Probably would not happen now, but how about the lawyers at the time fighting such lawsuits. They going to throw tantrums?

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

pretty funny. the guy whose industrial sector is crashing because it can no longer access cheap russian gas is now talking about economies of scale for weapons production.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

i think that's been going on in the west bank all along, it's just getting more attention now because the shooting has mostly stopped in gaza.

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4 users have voted.

That is disgusting to read. They want to kill all but 35 wolves? From helicopters? That is barbaric, and unethical in every way.

The cons always love to talk a free market and supply and demand. Let the predator species manage their own population without government interference. Why can't humans just leave the wild kingdom alone to it's own devices in some places.

Sometimes I think the natives of the Sentinel Islands are of the right mind repelling outsiders, the Native Americans should have done that here.

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joe shikspack's picture

@BORG_US_BORG

yep, it's also stupid and counterproductive. predators serve a purpose in an ecological web that humans with guns don't do a very good job of replicating. they are going to wind up with a larger, sicker herd that overgrazes the available forage and experiences regular population crashes.

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snoopydawg's picture

Yes the violence in the West Bank has been going on for some time, but maybe the ceasefire in Gaza is so Israel can turn its attention to the West Bank. That’s the reason why Miriam gave Trump $100 million. She wants permission to ethnic cleanse it. There isn’t a Hamas strength resistance there and the IDF has been getting its buttocks kicked in Gaza. Guess we’ll see.

And of course the world will ignore how Israel is taking more hostages while releasing others. Damn this country!

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6 users have voted.

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

https://www.rt.com/news/611417-israel-jenin-counterterrorist-operation/

Israel just announced that it’s going into the West Bank. Surprised? Nope because they attacked Syria days after the Lebanon ceasefire.

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Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

as far as i can see, cynicism is the rational response.

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snoopydawg's picture

Wassa matter? Don’t want to piss off someone who has Trump’s ear?

Here’s the salute

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Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i'm sure it was a delicate moment when israel decided to arm the azov battalion neo-nazis who had "awkward" insignias and tattoos.

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@joe shikspack

I forgot about that. And how it didn’t get upset with us for arming the same Nazi group that wiped out their ancestors. That one stunned me.

I got the tweets from DK. Caitlin just wrote about it too. I’m surprised that they wrote about it since they don’t have much of a problem with the genocide. But it’s probably because they hate Musk.

Here’s the article Karen wrote that the judge mentioned.

This Is just mind boggling.

Over a year ago, the newly elected House Speaker could not get a meeting with Biden for months – and when he did, Biden’s staff was reluctant to allow alone time with Speaker Johnson. Not because mild-mannered House Zionist and spendthrift was dangerous to the president, but because staffers had no idea what Biden would say to him. As it turns out, Johnson recalls that Biden didn’t know, or couldn’t remember, what was in bills and orders he was signing. Johnson said, “I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing ….We are in serious trouble—who is running the country?”

Yet, Johnson did nothing. He didn’t meet with colleagues and cabinet members regarding invocation of the 25th Amendment. He didn’t talk to government leaders or the press about his experience and what it meant for national security. He didn’t do anything but continue to spend like a drunken sailor, relying on Democrat votes as needed to push through spending extensions and additions.

You think if democrats found out that Trump was like Biden that they would have just sat on the information?

We are not a serious country.

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Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

@joe shikspack Stepping back a moment...
People Democrats like can do it and get funded.
People Democrats don't like can't do any arm gestures without being trashed.
I see.
I get it!

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

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

heh, i am afraid that this is our future for a while. we are in for a tidal wave of trivial complaints by people who haven't a clue and are resistant to the idea of getting one.

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but there are multiple reports of this development.

That said I don't find it surprising.

https://maritime-executive.com/article/syria-s-new-government-cancels-ru...

On Monday, the new government of Syria canceled Russia's 49-year operating lease at the port of Tartus, bringing a multi-decade Russian naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean to a close. A military cargo ship that had been loitering just off the coast has now berthed at the Russian naval pier, where military vehicles are staged for a likely evacuation.

"According to the Director of Tartous Customs, the agreement signed with the Russian company to invest in Tartous Port has been canceled and all its revenues are now for the benefit of the Syrian state," reported local news agency Levant24.

In early December, U.S.-designated terror group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, driving Assad's Russian military backers to retreat to their longtime bases at Tartus and Hmeimem.

Under Assad, Russia had secured a 49-year renewal of its longtime lease on the port of Tartus, home of the only Russian naval base in the Mediterranean. When HTS forced Assad to flee the country in December, that long-term port agreement was thrown into doubt, since the Russian Air Force had bombarded HTS and its allies throughout the civil war.

As an apparent precaution, the Russian Navy's Mediterranean Flotilla left Tartus en masse and took up station off the coast. The military cargo vessels Sparta and Sparta II joined the task force in early January, and held station in a racetrack pattern for weeks, prompting speculation about a possible evacuation.

Amidst rumors of failed negotiations over a continuing Russian presence in Syria, Russian ground forces accumulated a stockpile of valuable equipment on the quayside at Tartus. Ukraine's military intelligence agency, HUR, claimed earlier this month that Syria's new rulers were not allowing Russian ships to enter Tartus to remove the giant accumulation of gear - which may include several top-end S-400 air defense systems.

On Tuesday, after news broke of the cancelation of Russia's long-term port lease, Sparta II entered the inner harbor and berthed next to the equipment stockpile. Satellite imaging will soon confirm whether the vessel begins loading out the staged vehicles for shipment. The next destination, whether in Russia or in another part of the Mediterranean, remains to be seen.

"There is no comparable alternative base for the [Russian Navy] in the region," UK military intelligence said in a statement Tuesday. "Its ability to logistically support both its military and its private military contractors in Africa, as well as limiting the reputational damage incurred through the fall of the Assad regime, will almost certainly be priorities for the Russian government."

However this part I consider reliable.

Edited to add further confirmation.

The rest of the tweet:

All infrastructure is transferred to Syria, and the Russians must leave the country.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to reach any agreement. The conditions of the Syrian side were obviously impudent - they demanded supplies of fuel and provisions practically for free, which our country obviously was not going to agree to.

That is why our ships could not enter Tartus. Whether they will be given permission now is an interesting question. For now, looking at the satellite photos, our tankers and cargo ships are also several kilometers away from Syrian territorial waters. Let's see what will happen by the end of the day.

Archangel of Spetsnaz

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snoopydawg's picture

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Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.