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"The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression."

-- Quintilian

News and Opinion

Tom Cotton Admits The US Doesn’t Actually Care About Spreading Democracy

Warmongering senator Tom Cotton made an interesting comment during the confirmation hearings for Tulsi Gabbard the other day which acknowledged the mostly unspoken truth that the US government cares less about whether the nations it partners with are free and democratic than how well they serve US interests.

“In a fallen world, we have to take our friends where we find them,” Cotton said. “No question, stable democracies make the most stable friends, but what matters in the end is less whether a country is democratic or non-democratic, and more whether the country is pro-American or anti-American.”

“I’ll confess that those views may be somewhat unconventional, but look at where conventional thinking has got us,” Cotton added.

Far from being unconventional, the senator from Arkansas is simply stating out loud the standard foreign policy orthodoxy which all Beltway swamp monsters share but tend to keep between themselves. It’s not very often you hear a US empire manager come right out and admit they only care about planetary hegemony and that their whole schtick about spreading freedom and democracy is a sham. They’ll pick a US crony dictator over a sovereign democratically elected leader ten times out of ten.

Just something to keep in mind the next time US warmongers start clamoring for more regime change interventionism in a strategically valuable country in order to liberate its people from tyranny.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : A Lonely Netanyahu in DC

Netanyahu heads for Trump talks in US amid uncertainty over Gaza truce

Benjamin Netanyahu has flown to Washington for Donald Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since his return to office. The pair are due to meet on Tuesday, amid widespread uncertainty about the parameters of the encounter. The Israeli prime minister will arrive at a potentially pivotal moment, with negotiations on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire supposedly due to begin on Monday. Should those talks fail, Israel could resume its offensive in early March.

Netanyahu has made a show of portraying the meeting as “a testimony to the strength of our personal friendship”. On Sunday, as he boarded his plane for Washington, he listed a series of familiar talking points, including “victory over Hamas”, reshaping the Middle East and countering the threat posed by Iran. However, the messaging from the White House is that Netanyahu is seen as a junior partner, and the few details that have emerged from Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to the region last week suggest Trump is pushing for adherence to a Gaza ceasefire plan that will pose political problems for Netanyahu. ...

The New York-based Soufan Center said Trump officials had warned that “renewed fighting in the Middle East would distract the new Trump team from addressing what Trump defines as more pressing priorities”. These include “securing the southern US border from illegal migration and settling the Russia-Ukraine war”, the thinktank said.

Alastair Crooke : Can Trump Save Gaza and Ukraine?

Arriving in US, Netanyahu pledges to “redraw” map of Middle East

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived Sunday in Washington D.C. ahead of an extensive series of meetings with US President Donald Trump this week aimed at planning the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and an expansion of the US-Israeli war of aggression throughout the Middle East. Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader welcomed to the White House by Trump. He will be staying at Washington’s Blair House, the guest lodging of foreign dignitaries, for the 14th time, more than any other leader. There is currently a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity, issued by International Criminal Court (ICC), which the United States does not recognize.

Ahead of his departure for the US, Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday on X pledging to “redraw” the map of the Middle East, in a reference to his government’s plan to create a “greater Israel” encompassing the entirety of the Palestinian territories and significant portions of adjoining states. In his statement, Netanyahu declared, “The decisions we made in the war have already changed the face of the Middle East. Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further.”

The actions that have “redrawn the map” of the Middle East have led to wartime casualties in Gaza that “probably exceeded 70,000,” according to a study published in The Lancet last month and may be as high as 186,000 or more, according to an earlier study. Israel has attacked nearly all of its neighbors, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The genocide launched by Israel in Gaza has, according to a UN report, killed far more women, children and older people than men. The overwhelming death toll among women and children makes clear that Israel’s aim is the massacre of the people of Gaza and the turning of the region into a wasteland in preparation for its ethnic cleansing. ...

Last month, Trump called for Israel to “clean” Gaza of its Arab inhabitants, openly calling for ethnic cleansing. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said. Trump’s statement was a public embrace on the part of the American state of the actual policy of the Netanyahu government, which is the systematic extermination and removal of the Palestinian population from Gaza, as part of the effort to annex all of the Palestinian territories.

Last week, Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff met with Netanyahu to discuss, in the words of the Times of Israel, “Trump’s ... idea of sending Gaza’s population to Jordan and Egypt.” The newspaper reported that Witkoff and Israeli officials “discussed possible outlines for the transfer of Gaza’s population, in line with the US president’s repeated suggestion that millions of Gazans should relocate to Egypt and Jordan.”

The Life Expectancy of Palestinians

Using estimates from the United Nations’ “World Population Prospects 2024,” Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights analysed the decline in Palestinian life expectancy caused by the Israeli bombardment in Gaza and found that Palestinian life expectancy at birth fell by 11.5 years between 2022 and 2023, from a respectable 76.7 years in 2022 to just 65.2 years in 2023.

It was the first three months of the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing — from October to December 2023 — that brought about this terrible decline in total life expectancy.

We are not aware of such a rapid decline in life expectancy at any other period of modern human history. A Palestinian life is now more than 17 years shorter than an Israeli one.

This gap is greater than that which existed between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa, which was 15 years in 1980.

Eleven and a half years lost per Palestinian. That is almost 60 million years lost for the remaining 5.2 million Palestinians who have remained in Palestine and survived the genocide.

Australian authorities: 'paid actors' spreading antisemitism from abroad

Member of US Holocaust Memorial Council Says the People of Gaza Are ‘Collectively Guilty’ and Don’t Deserve Mercy

A Trump-appointed member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council has called for the collective punishment of all Palestinians in Gaza, saying they’re “collectively guilty” and not deserving of any mercy.

Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Martin Oliner praised President Trump’s suggestion to “clean out” the Palestinians in Gaza and send them to Egypt and Jordan, which would amount to ethnic cleansing. ...

It’s estimated roughly half of Gaza’s population is made up of children, but Oliner said that all Palestinians in the enclave are responsible for Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel. “LET’S NOT mince words here. The people of Gaza are collectively guilty for invading Israel,” he said. Oliner said the people of Gaza are “fundamentally evil, and they must pay a price for their actions.”

Tucker Carlson CALLS OUT Ben Shapiro For Gaza War

Trump threat to deport pro-Palestinian students mirrors rightwing Heritage blueprint

Critics warn that a new executive order from Donald Trump’s administration purporting to “combat antisemitism”, and a corresponding fact sheet suggesting deporting international students who protest Israel, could chill political speech on campuses.

The fact sheet released before Trump signed the order on Wednesday quoted the president as saying: “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Although the executive order itself does not call directly for deportations, the idea of cracking down on student protesters involved with pro-Palestine efforts became a Trump 2024 campaign promise and a prominent talking point on the right in the US. Republicans have broadly sought to portray protests against Israel’s offensive in Gaza as expressions of support for Hamas, and have called to punish universities that don’t quash them.

The approach dovetails closely with Project Esther, a rightwing blueprint to target the pro-Palestinian movement, along with other calls from the right. Days after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack that sparked Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza, Marco Rubio – then a US senator, now the secretary of state – urged former secretary of state Antony Blinken to revoke the visas of students who protested Israel.

Critics argued that the reference to deportations in the fact sheet could violate the US constitution if implemented. “Immigration enforcement that is predicated on protected speech is unconstitutional,” said Ben Wizner, director of the speech, privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “We think the order potentially will invite overreaching illegal law enforcement and immigration actions, but we’ll just have to see.”

Tucker SCHOOLS Piers Morgan On NATO Aggression!

Is Elon Musk Staging a Coup? Unelected Billionaire Seizes Control at Treasury Dept. & Other Agencies

'It's a Coup': Musk's DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security

Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.

Newly approved Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk surrogates access to the system late on Friday, five people familiar with the situation told The New York Times. Bessent's decision came the same day as news that David Lebryk, a career Treasury official who was acting secretary before Bessent's confirmation, would step down after arguing with DOGE members over access to the system run by the Bureau of Fiscal Service that pays out over $6 trillion a year.

"Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote on social media on Saturday. "Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it." ...

DOGE gained access to the Treasury payment system on the same day that an official at the Office of Personnel Management said that Musk allies had locked career civil servants out of a computer system containing the personal information of federal employees. The news also capped a week in which the Trump administration attempted to freeze all federal grants and loans, a move that has been temporarily blocked by two judges.

Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter demanding answers from Bessent on Friday when reports first emerged that Musk's team had tried to gain access to the system.

"To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy," Wyden wrote. "I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems." ...

Responding to the article on social media on Sunday, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens wrote: "The Treasury system makes the payments (cuts checks). It doesn't decide who to pay or how much. A little like an employer using a payroll processor. Musk has infiltrated the system to stop payments. It's a coup."

USAID Shutdown: Trump Says 'RADICAL LUNATICS' Run Agency. Musk Brands Them 'Criminal'

Senior USAid officials put on leave after denying access to Musk’s Doge team

USAid has put two senior security officials on administrative leave after a tense standoff with members of Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) seeking access to sensitive data from the agency, five current and former USAid officials have told the Guardian.

USAid director of security John Voorhees and a deputy have been put on administrative leave after they blocked efforts by Doge members to physically access restricted areas, the people said. The demands led to a tense standoff during which a senior deputy to Musk threatened to call the US marshals in to grant access to the building.

The confrontation and Voorhees’ suspension was first reported by CNN and confirmed by the USAid officials. The Doge officials gained control over the access control system, which would allow them to lock out employees and read emails. They also sought personnel files and turnstile data, two people said. ...

Musk has said that USAid should be shut down as the Trump administration is said to be mulling various strategies to downsize the agency or potentially fold it into the state department. CBS News reported that JD Vance has been put in charge of figuring out next steps for USAid reform. “USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote on X, the social network that he owns. “Time for it to die.” In another post, he referred to the agency in the past tense, saying it “was a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America”.

Trump tariffs spark retaliation from Mexico, China and Canada

Donald Trump’s imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China have sparked retaliation from all three countries. Mexico and Canada have vowed levies of their own while China and Canada are seeking legal challenges. Canada’s department of finance has published a list of US products imported into Canada that it will target with a 25% retaliatory tariff starting on Tuesday.

The list shows products that will be hit in the first round of retaliatory tariffs by Canada starting on Tuesday, and mounts to $30bn Canadian dollars’ worth of goods (about US$20bn). The impacted products include tobacco, produce, household appliances, firearms and military gear. Canada is also preparing for a second, broader round of retaliatory tariffs in 21 days that will target an additional C$125bn (US$86bn) worth of US imports. The second list would include passenger vehicles, trucks, steel and aluminum products, certain fruits and vegetables, beef, pork, dairy products and more.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said her government will provide more details on the retaliatory tariffs she ordered on US goods on Monday. Sheinbaum, in a statement on Sunday, she will announce details on her government’s “plan B” as she insisted that Mexico “doesn’t want confrontation”.

“Problems are not addressed by imposing tariffs, but with talks and dialogue,” she said. “Sovereignty is not negotiable: coordination yes, subordination no.” ...

Trudeau’s office said in a statement that Canada and Mexico agreed “to enhance the strong bilateral relations” between their countries. Canadian officials have had extensive dialogue with their Mexican counterparts, but a senior Canadian official said he would not go as far as to say the tariff responses were coordinated.

Wall Street Journal editorial calls Trump tariffs ‘dumbest trade war in history’

US business leaders are offering a mixed reaction to the steep trade tariffs that Donald Trump’s administration has imposed on Canada, Mexico and China, as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called it “the dumbest trade war in history”.

Donald Trump hit Canada and Mexico with a 25% tariff on imports, and China with 10%, on Saturday in a move that launched a new era of trade wars between the US and three of its largest trading partners. The tariffs against Canada tax oil and energy products at 10%. Trump said on his own Truth Social social media platform that he had used emergency powers to issue the tariffs, due to come into effect on Tuesday, “because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl”.

The Journal said the moves “reminds us of the old Bernard Lewis joke that it’s risky to be America’s enemy but it can be fatal to be its friend”, adding that with the exception of China “Mr Trump’s justification for this economic assault on the neighbors makes no sense.” It added: “Drugs may be an excuse since Mr Trump has made clear he likes tariffs for their own sake, pointing to Trump’s comments on Thursday that the US doesn’t need oil or lumber from its neighbors.“Mr Trump sometimes sounds as if the US shouldn’t import anything at all, that America can be a perfectly closed economy making everything at home,” the editorial continued. “This is called autarky, and it isn’t the world we live in, or one that we should want to live in, as Mr Trump may soon find out.”

Trump reacted strongly to the outlet’s editorial position, posting on Truth Social that “a ‘Tariff Lobby’, headed by the Globalist, and always wrong, Wall Street Journal, is working hard to justify Countries like Canada, Mexico, China, and too many others to name, continue the decades long RIPOFF OF AMERICA, both with regard to TRADE, CRIME, AND POISONOUS DRUGS that are allowed to so freely flow into AMERICA.

“THOSE DAYS ARE OVER!”, Trump continues in the screed. “The USA has major deficits with Canada, Mexico, and China (and almost all countries!), owes 36 Trillion Dollars, and we’re not going to be the “Stupid Country” any longer.”

Homeland security chief declines to say whether women, children to be held at Guantánamo

The head of the US Department of Homeland Security on Sunday declined to say whether migrant women, children or families would be included in Trump administration expansion plans for the infamous Guantánamo Bay detention center, saying instead the federal government would utilize all available facilities under the law.

Donald Trump last week said he was expanding a detention facility at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold 30,000 people. His White House border czar, Tom Homan, has said he hopes to start moving migrants there within 30 days.

In separate Sunday interviews, Noem and Homan both reiterated that the administration was targeting “the worst of the worst” with its sweeps to detain people who are in the United States illegally, noting that a recent enforcement action in New York City focused on individuals with criminal arrest warrants.

“The worst of the worst need to go to Guantánamo Bay,” Homan told Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures program. “We’ve had a migrant processing center there for decades … We’re going to expand it a lot.”

Noem said that the plan was not to hold people at Guantánamo indefinitely and that the administration would follow US law.

Portland police chief apologizes to mass shooting victims falsely said to be armed

The chief of police in Portland, Oregon, acknowledged this week that the force had misled the public about a deadly attack on traffic-safety volunteers before a Black Lives Matter protest in 2022, by wrongly telling the media that the gunman had been confronted by “armed protesters”. In fact, as a visual investigation by the research group Forensic Architecture first published by the Guardian last year showed, the traffic-safety volunteers at the 19 February 2022 protest were unarmed, and trying to de-escalate the rightwing gunman when he opened fire.

The mass shooting, which claimed the lives of two people and left three others injured, was stopped by a volunteer armed guard for the protest who rushed to the scene, shot the gunman in the hip and disarmed him.

In a recorded video statement posted online Wednesday, Bob Day, the Portland police bureau chief, issued a public apology for the misinformation about the attack provided to the media by the police. “I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the incredible pain and trauma this tragedy has caused,” Day said. “In addition, I want to recognize the role the Portland police bureau played in exacerbating that pain.”

“Following the shooting, PPB issued a news release calling the perpetrator of this violent act a homeowner, when in fact he was not,” Day said. “Additionally, the victims were mischaracterized as armed protesters when, in fact, they were unarmed traffic-safety volunteers”. ...

The shooting victims were part of a community of antifascist volunteers that formed spontaneously in 2020 to keep the racial justice protesters who filled Portland’s streets day after day safe by redirecting traffic away from marchers, a role known as “corking”, providing them with emergency medical aid and using principles of de-escalation to talk down aggrieved bystanders.

‘Perfect rat storm’: urban rodent numbers soar as the climate heats, study finds

Rat numbers are soaring in cities as global temperatures warm, research shows. Washington DC, San Francisco, Toronto, New York City and Amsterdam had the greatest increase in these rodents, according to the study, which looked at data from 16 cities globally. Eleven of the cities showed “significant increasing trends in rat numbers”, said the paper published in the journal Science Advances, and these trends were likely to continue.

Over the past decade, rats increased by 390% in Washington DC, 300% in San Francisco, 186% in Toronto and 162% in New York according to researchers, who analysed public sightings and infestation reports.

Some big cities, such as London and Paris, were not included because they did not provide the necessary data – but researchers said the findings would apply to many similar cities around the world. “There’d be no reason to expect it to be different in other places,” said lead researcher Jonathan Richardson, from the University of Richmond in Virginia.

In Toronto, one of the worst-affected locations, a “perfect rat storm” has taken hold, with residents of Canada’s biggest city staring down a surging population. “When you walk the streets of Toronto, under your feet, deep in the sewage system, is a place teeming with rats,” said Alice Sinia, lead entomologist for Orkin, the country’s largest pest control company. “Increasingly we’re flushing them out into open spaces – either through construction or floods – and they have to go somewhere.” Toronto city’s helpline fielded 1,600 rat-related calls in 2023, up from 940 in 2019 and Orkin has also experienced a surge in calls. ...

Rising temperatures correlated with rising rat numbers, researchers wrote in the paper. As small mammals, rats struggle during winter, but in higher temperatures they can breed for more of the year and forage for longer. ... The fact that rat numbers increased fastest in cities that were warming fastest was “the gloomiest outcome of the study”, said Richardson. ... Rats cause billions of dollars in damage by infiltrating buildings each year, and can transmit at least 60 diseases to humans, as well as affecting the ecology of other species living in cities. In regions where they are an invasive species, they do huge damage to biodiversity.

Leaders in the Pacific raise alarm over ‘direct impact’ of Trump’s climate retreat and aid freeze

Leaders and environmental advocates in the Pacific have expressed alarm over Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and freeze foreign aid, warning the moves will accelerate the existential threats they face as nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

The Paris agreement is the world’s main effort to address the impacts of the climate crisis. Trump has called it “unfair” and a “rip off”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Samoa’s prime minister Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa described Trump’s move to pull out of the Paris agreement as “very disappointing,” saying it would undermine global climate action and put the survival of Pacific countries at greater risk. “We look to the US as a global leader, but they seem to not recognise this global issue, not only for Samoa but for the Pacific,” Fiame said. “It’s not surprising … nevertheless, it is very disappointing,” the prime minister said.

A freeze on US foreign aid has deepened concerns that the Pacific region will suffer further as crucial assistance for climate adaptation, disaster management, extreme weather resilience is cut, or under threat. In addition, Fiame told the Guardian Pacific countries would be “seriously impacted” by the withdrawal from the World Health Organisation and other multilateral bodies. “These are the forums that small countries rely on; they are critical to our voices being heard and our causes being addressed,” she said.

Also of Interest

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

They Don’t Just Tell Us What To Think, They Train Us HOW To Think

Jonathan Cook: 30 Years of Middle East Lies

Fate of Gaza Ceasefire Depends on Trump-Netanyahu Meeting

Israel’s female spotters are free – now their families want to know why warnings were ignored

South Lebanon Homes Burn, Fisherman Captured as Israel Ceasefire Violations Continue

Nine countries launch legal action against Israel over Gaza war

Did a Trump Executive Order Just Cripple the Global US Regime Change Network?

US Wants Ukraine To Hold Elections Following Ceasefire

Rubio: "It’s not normal for the world to have a unipolar power."

Fury in Mexico over Trump’s ‘slanderous’ claim of cartel links

DeepSeek has ripped away AI’s veil of mystique. That’s the real reason the tech bros fear it

What DeepSeek Says About Nuland’s Role in Ukraine War

Australia tried to influence other countries and Unesco to keep Great Barrier Reef off in-danger list

Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil sees shadow, predicting longer winter

Trump IMPOSES Tariffs On Canada, Mexico, China, Says US Getting 'RIPPED OFF'

EU wants to PUNISH Russia and wants Russian gas

Larry Johnson : Does Trump Know What He Is Doing?

A Little Night Music

Lester Young - D. B. Blues

Lester Young - Jump, Lester, Jump

Lester Young & Ella Fitzgerald - Blues for Greasy

Lester Young - Lester Leaps In

Lester Young - Blue Lester

Lester Young - Lester's Blues

Lester Young - Upright Organ Blues

Lester Young - Jumpin' With Symphony Sid

Lester Young - Jammin' The Blues