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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Texas Alexander

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander. Enjoy!

^{Texas Alexander - Easy Rider Blues}

"The man who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty. Possibly more."

-- Richard J. Needham

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News and Opinion

The Empire At Its Most Honest

President Donald Trump has shared a shockingly awful AI-generated music video envisioning a future Gaza that has been turned into an ostentatious resort town where everyone parties amid showers of cash while Trump and Netanyahu sip drinks by the pool.

The video is intended to reflect Trump’s plans for a Gaza Strip that has been permanently ethnically cleansed of Palestinians.

If you haven’t watched it yet you definitely should, because words can’t do justice to just how terrible it is.

This video is simultaneously the most American thing that has ever happened and the most Israeli thing that has ever happened. Fake. Gaudy. Sociopathic. Genocidal. Emblematic of all the ugliest values that both dystopian civilizations have come to embody.

They used the most artless art medium in existence to digitally dance on the graves of mountains of dead civilians. The most powerful government on earth celebrated the idea of Trump and Netanyahu presiding over orgiastic parties for the obscenely wealthy on a land that has been purged of its indigenous inhabitants following a year and a half of brutal slaughter. Twerking to shitty AI-generated techno music surrounded by golden Trump statues and hundred dollar bills, because you are so happy that you finally found a Final Solution to the Palestinian Problem.

It doesn’t get any more American than this, and it doesn’t get any more Israeli. This soulless, artless, conscienceless expression of egotistic masturbation lubricated with the blood of dead children is the empire at its most honest. This is the very best this globe-dominating power structure has to offer our world.

This entire civilization is diseased. Not just the United States and Israel but every nation on earth that is subject to the metastases of their cancerous influence. They’re making us all dumber, sicker, nastier, crueler. Less creative. Less artful. Less caring. Less insightful. They are poisoning our minds and turning our hearts into shit.

This video, in and of itself, is a sufficient argument for the entire US empire to be demolished and sold for scrap metal. https://t.co/18B1t2o2r7

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 26, 2025

I’ve always said that the only thing I like about Trump is that he puts an honest face on the empire. In terms of actual policy and actions he’s not much different from any other Republican president, but he has this compulsive inclination to constantly yank off the plastic smileyface mask of the empire and reveal the snarling blood-spattered face beneath. This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

That one video, all by itself, tells you more about what the US empire really is than every movie its PR agents in Hollywood have ever produced. This is the real America. This is the real Israel. This is the real empire.

And this is why we must defeat them.

Israel releases some Palestinian prisoners after Hamas returns bodies of four hostages

Hamas has handed over the bodies of four hostages, and Israel has released some Palestinian prisoners, as the five-week-old ceasefire appeared to get back on track after a breach that had brought fears of a return to war in Gaza.

The bodies of the hostages were transferred to the Red Cross in southern Gaza and driven to the border point at Kerem Shalom at about midnight. Meanwhile, a convoy of buses carrying Palestinian prisoners arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that 43 Palestinians being held in Ofer had been transferred to the Red Cross. The group got off the bus to cheers from hundreds congregated outside, with some of the released men – clad in green jackets and keffiyehs – hoisted aloft by the crowd.

It was unclear on Wednesday how many Palestinians were being released overnight, and whether the exchange would include all 602 prisoners who had been due to be released by Israel on Saturday in exchange for six surviving Israeli hostages.

The six hostages had been transferred by Hamas according to the agreed schedule but, as the Palestinian prisoners sat in buses on Saturday night waiting to be transferred, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu at the last moment decided not to release them and returned them to their cells. ... Since then, Hamas agreed to hand over the four hostages’ bodies away from the cameras, and in return Netanyahu’s government said it would proceed with the prisoner releases. However, the Israeli prison authorities did not specify whether the Palestinians would be freed in one go. One Israeli official was quoted in reports as saying that they would be released in batches.

Family mourns grandfather’s death as Israel brings Gaza tactics to West Bank

Waleed Lahlouh was 73, with a shock of white hair that marked his age, when Israeli soldiers shot him dead on a sunny February morning outside his home in Jenin refugee camp. Relatives said he was killed while trying to collect some winter clothes for his family. He had fled with his children and grandchildren a week earlier when Israeli troops moved into the camp and ordered residents out within an hour. They scrambled to gather documents, valuables and phones, and had little time to pack clothes.

“He went to get some things we need, but he was shot before he even got into the house,” said his daughter Samia Lahlouh, 45. “The grandchildren ask us: ‘Grandpa was old, and didn’t do anything bad, why did they want to kill him?” She didn’t have an answer. The Lahlouhs are among 40,000 people forced out of their homes in refugee camps across the occupied West Bank this year, the largest displacement since Israel seized the territory in 1967.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that “evacuated” Palestinians would not be able to go back home this year, and sent three tanks to Jenin.

Palestinians who have lost homes and loved ones over the past month have described Jenin as a “little Gaza” because of the scale of destruction, death and displacement. The same comparison is made inside Israel, with some cabinet members demanding the use of military tactics from Gaza, as domestic critics warn against the “Gazafication” of the West Bank.

Israel plans second genocide in Gaza, steps up ethnic cleansing in West Bank

Israel’s deputy parliament speaker Nissim Vaturi has called for a renewed genocide in Gaza, separating children from their mothers and then slaughtering all adult he described as “subhumans”. On Kol BaRama, the Likud MK (Member of Knesset) declared that no one, civilians included, was “innocent in Gaza… They are outcasts and no one in the world wants them.” Israel needs to “separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate,” he declared. Released Palestinian prisoners should be sent to the West Bank city of Jenin “so they can be eliminated later… Erase Jenin.”

These are not just the ravings of one vile fascist. They are the policy already being actioned by Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud coalition, which has announced its intention to expel the Palestinians from Gaza with the backing of the Trump administration in the US and has mounted a five-week-long Operation Iron Wall against refugee camps in Jenin and elsewhere in the West Bank, that has already driven 40,000 into internal exile. The operation follows the Gaza playbook point for point. Hundreds of buildings and infrastructure have been systematically levelled in Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas and the surrounding areas in the largest Israeli offensive against the West Bank since the assault on Jenin in 2002.

Just two days after Israel agreed the ceasefire deal in Gaza, the security cabinet added the West Bank into its war goals and called to “[strengthen] defence and security in Judea and Samaria [the biblical names of the West Bank], with an emphasis on maintaining the security of movement and settlements”. This followed repeated calls from the fascist members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, their supporters in the media and settler leaders to “transfer the war to the West Bank.” On Sunday, Defence Minister Israel Katz declared the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) offensive across the West Bank was expanding and the military would remain in the refugee camps “for the coming year”.

The IDF has deployed tanks in the West Bank, the first time in more than 20 years. It has utilised the same tactics employed in Gaza, including air power and advanced weaponry, ground raids using special forces and detonations and armoured bulldozers to “clear” Palestinian cities of what it calls terrorist infrastructure. It has killed at least 70 people, including 10 children, a pregnant woman and an elderly man, since the start of the year. In Jenin alone, 38 have been killed. ...

Israel’s offensive in the West Bank is part of broader plans to expand Zionist settlements and eventually annex the West Bank—first expelling the Palestinians from Area C, assigned by the 1993 Oslo Accords to Israel’s full military control and making up 60 percent of the Palestinian territory. The Badil Center for Refugee Rights, based in Bethlehem, said that Israel’s aim was to “dismantle the refugee camps” in the West Bank and “normalize Israeli presence” by “establishing a new status quo in the West Bank through invasions and raids that include extensive destruction and wilful killing” — with the purpose of “accelerat[ing] full Israeli colonial domination.”

Report from a Devastated Lebanon: Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Nasrallah’s Funeral & Fragile Ceasefire

Why Russia Justifies Its War Against Ukraine: With Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin

The whole Guardian article is chock-full of propaganda, this part has some useful information:

Trump says no significant security guarantees in Ukraine minerals deal

Donald Trump has announced that Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal, but the US will not provide significant security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the agreement. The conclusion of a deal, which Trump has claimed would allow the US to recoup hundreds of billions of dollars it spent on military aid to Kyiv, followed days of intense negotiations in which Zelenskyy said he wanted the US to guarantee Ukraine’s security against the ongoing Russian invasion. ...

Trump, when asked about the specific guarantees he would provide to Ukraine as part of the deal, said: “Well I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re going to have Europe do that.”

He brushed aside Ukraine’s aspiration to join Nato, repeating a Russian talking point that the issue triggered the war. “Nato you can forget about,” Trump said. “I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started.”

Zelenskyy described the deal as “preliminary”, adding that it was “just a start, a framework, it can be a big success”. The Ukrainian leader said that if he visited the White House on Friday, he would be “very direct” in asking whether the US would continue supporting Ukraine or not. “If we don’t get security guarantees, we won’t have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing,” he said.

Zelenskyy’s comments came after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, reinforced Moscow’s rejection of the idea of European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine, contradicting Trump’s claims earlier this week that Vladimir Putin supported the presence of western forces on the ground. “Trump said that a decision on the deployment of peacekeeping forces would only be possible with the consent of both sides, apparently referring to us and Ukraine. Nobody has asked us about this,” Lavrov said.

Was Trump Ever Really Putin's Puppet? Key Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on Russiagate Hoax

Is Russia an Authoritarian Regime?: Glenn Asks Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin in Moscow

Romanian liberal fascist eurocrats decide on lawfare:

Romanian presidential hopeful Călin Georgescu faces criminal investigation

Romanian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Călin Georgescu, the far-right, Moscow-friendly populist who surged from almost nowhere to win the first round of the country’s cancelled presidential election last year.

The announcement of the investigation covering a number of separate accusations took place after Georgescu, 62, was stopped by police in Bucharest traffic on Wednesday as he was about to submit his candidacy for a rerun of the election, which is scheduled for May. Prosecutors said after questioning him for several hours that they were formally investigating him on suspicion of communicating false information, promoting war criminals and fascist organisations and forming an antisemitic organisation.

Prosecutors said earlier that they had raided 47 addresses of Georgescu’s associates as part of an investigation into alleged offences including “establishing an organisation with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character” and “false statements” regarding campaign financing.

Georgescu has praised Romania’s 1930s fascist leaders and lauded Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, as “a man who loves his country”. Polls show he has a clear lead in the 4 May rerun, although it is not certain that he will be allowed to stand.

The promotion of fascist leaders and Nazi, racist or xenophobic symbols are banned under Romanian law and carry a prison sentence, although cases have rarely been brought to court. The decision by Romania’s constitutional court to annul the first-round vote caused outrage at home and abroad. Thousands took to the streets of Bucharest on Saturday to support Georgescu and others gathered at the prosecutor’s office on Wednesday.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Does Trump Understand Russia?

'How Trump OVERTHREW NeoCon Foreign Policy Establishment From GOP'

Trump signs executive order expanding power of Elon Musk’s Doge agency

Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order meant to expand the power of Elon Musk’s governmental cost-cutting program, the so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.

The new order calls for a “transformation” in federal spending on contracts, grants and loans by requiring agencies to create a centralized system to record and justify payments, which may be made public for transparency – an initiative that would be monitored by Musk’s team.

“This order commences a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public,” it states.

The order instructs each agency’s Doge team lead to provide monthly reports on contracting activities, including payment and travel justifications. Law enforcement, the military, immigration agencies and national security-related activities are excluded from the new requirements.

The order is part of a much broader effort by the White House to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce, which the Trump administration has cast as an impediment to realizing his sprawling agenda. On Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management sent a seven-page memo directing agency leaders to develop plans to implement “large-scale reductions” by 13 March, according to the Associated Press.

House Passes Budget Resolution That Will Increase Military Spending by $100 Billion

House Republicans on Tuesday passed a budget blueprint that would raise military spending by $100 billion, a plan backed by President Trump despite his suggestions that Pentagon spending could be cut.

The budget plan also extends $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, would add $3 trillion to the deficit, and raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. It passed along party lines in a vote of 217-215, with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) being the only Republican to vote against it.

Explaining his opposition, Massie cited the increases in the deficit. “If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better,” he wrote on X a day before the vote.

Ryan Grim EXPOSES Tesla 400 Million Contract COVERUP

Trump’s first full cabinet meeting celebrates government-shrinking effort led by Musk

Donald Trump used his first full cabinet meeting of his second term to emphasize his administration’s focus on drastically reducing the size of the federal government, with tech billionaire Elon Musk warning without evidence that “America will go bankrupt” without significant spending cuts. The meeting, which featured very minimal input from cabinet secretaries, instead highlighted the government-shrinking effort being led by Musk, who is not a member of the cabinet and described himself as “humble tech support” for the administration.

The meeting came just as federal agencies have been ordered to submit plans by mid-March for what an official memo described as “large-scale reductions in force” – signaling an escalation in the president’s efforts to reshape the federal workforce. Trump praised Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin’s plans to cut up to 65% of employees at the agency, though Musk declined to specify how many federal jobs they were seeking to eliminate overall, saying only that he wanted to “keep people who are doing good work in essential roles”.

Musk, who runs the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team, said their goal was to achieve “$1tn in deficit reduction by financial year 2026” – already halving the $2tn in cuts he had promised during the campaign. He claimed this would require “saving $4bn per day, every day” until the end of September. “We simply cannot sustain a country with $2tn deficits,” Musk said. “The interest on the national debt now exceeds the defense department spending... If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt.” ...

While Trump has renewed his pledge to balance the budget and pay down the national debt, his previous administration added $8.4tn in new borrowing over 10 years, despite his 2016 campaign promise to eliminate the entire national debt during eight years in office.

BIG story from @JessicaLBurbank: An apparent Luigi copycat is on the loose in Oregon, shots fired into home of insurance CEO https://t.co/STLe5BFwl7

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) February 26, 2025

US national security director condemns UK request for Apple data ‘backdoor’

The new US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, weighed in on the encryption feud between Apple and the UK on Wednesday. In a letter to British lawmakers on Wednesday, she wrote that the UK government’s order for Apple to create a “backdoor” to iCloud users’ accounts is a “clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties”.

“Any information sharing between a government – any government – and private companies must be done in a manner that respects and protects the U.S. law and the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens,” Gabbard wrote.

Gabbard’s letter comes after the US senator Ron Wyden and the representative Andy Biggs sent her a letter on 13 February with their concerns about what such a demand would mean for US residents’ online safety and privacy. Gabbard echoed their worries, saying that the order would “open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors” and could violate a bilateral agreement between the US and the UK.

News of the UK government’s order first surfaced earlier this month when the Washington Post reported that the Home Office had issued a “technical capability notice” under the Investigatory Powers Act, which requires companies to help British law enforcement uncover evidence in investigations. The government demanded Apple build a backdoor into its cloud service that would allow access to people’s iCloud accounts, even when their information was encrypted. In response, Apple removed its encryption feature altogether.

The Billionaires’ Government: Branko Marcetic on Trump’s “Complete Betrayal” of His Base

'Chainsaw Anyone?' As Musk Attacks Public Workers, Analysis Details $38 Billion in Taxpayer Gifts to World's Richest Man

A group of Washington Post journalists on Wednesday published what appears to be the most comprehensive readout to date of the government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits that the companies of Elon Musk, who has helped carry out the Trump administration's punishing cuts to government personnel, have secured over the past two decades.

The world's richest man is also "one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers' coffers," per the Post, which reported that Musk's various companies received at least $38 billion from the U.S. government since 2006—prompting a number of observers to argue that cutting off this spigot ought to be the focus of government saving efforts.

Tim Wu, who worked on competition policy at the National Economic Council under former President Joe Biden, shared the Post's reporting and wrote: "Can anyone think of another way to save over $38 billion that doesn't involve vandalizing agencies." ...

Chainsaw anyone? They’re on sale at Home Depot.

Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding https://t.co/7uA2QGyzgx

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) February 26, 2025

The Post's analysis notes that the government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits helped "seed the growth" that eventually turned Musk into the world's richest man. The $38 billion is likely an undercount because the analysis does not include classified defense and intelligence work for the government, and an additional 52 ongoing contracts with various agencies are slated to potentially pay Musk's ventures an additional $11.8 billion over the next few years.

The electric vehicle company Tesla in particular, according to the Post, benefited from the government's largesse in its path to profitability.

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I Raised $50 Million for Democrats. I Voted For Trump

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Total collapse of vital Atlantic currents unlikely this century, study finds

Vital Atlantic Ocean currents are unlikely to completely collapse this century, according to a study, but scientists say a severe weakening remains probable and would still have disastrous impacts on billions of people. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a system of currents that plays a crucial role in the global climate. The climate crisis is weakening the complex system, but determining if and when it will collapse is difficult.

Studies based on ocean measurements indicate that the Amoc is becoming unstable and approaching a tipping point, beyond which a collapse will be unstoppable. They have suggested this would happen this century, but there are only 20 years of direct measurements and data inferred from earlier times bring large uncertainties.

Climate models have indicated that a collapse is not likely before 2100, but they might have been unrealistically stable compared with the actual ocean system. The latest study is important because it uses climate models to reveal the reason that the Amoc is more stable: winds in the Southern Ocean continuing to draw water up to the surface and drive the whole system. The study does not rule out an Amoc collapse after 2100, and other modelling research suggests collapses will occur after that time.

“We found that the Amoc is very likely to weaken under global warming, but it’s unlikely to collapse this century,” said Dr Jonathan Baker at the UK’s Met Office, who led the latest study. He said it was reassuring that an abrupt Amoc crash was improbable, and that the knowledge could help governments plan better for future climate impacts. Amoc weakening would still bring major climate challenges across the globe however, with more floods and droughts and faster sea level rise, he added.

“Of course, unlikely doesn’t mean impossible,” he said. “There’s still a chance that Amoc could collapse [this century], so we still need to cut greenhouse gas emissions urgently. And even a collapse in the next century would cause devastating impacts for climate and society.”

Utah poised to become the first state to ban fluoride from water systems

Utah is poised to become the first state to ban fluoride from its water systems with a bill now before its Republican governor, Spencer Cox.

The bill outlaws the adding of fluoride to water “in or intended for public water systems”, and adds that it repeals any previous laws “including sections about providing fluoridated water upon resident request and under emergency circumstances”.

Cox has not publicly indicated support or opposition to the bill. If he signs it, fluoride would be banned across Utah starting 7 May, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Although the bill would remove fluoride from public taps, it would also allow pharmacists to prescribe fluoride supplements to individuals.

Trump may rue firing experts when environmental rollbacks land in court

Amid spending freezes and policy rollbacks from Donald Trump, environmental advocacy groups are gearing up for a long series of legal showdowns with the administration.

The experience of suing Trump during his first term has left the movement better prepared, but the court battles will still be daunting, with the administration appearing to test the nation’s legal boundaries in an effort to consolidate power under the executive branch.

Trump’s firing of experts might backfire by reducing his ability to defend weakening rules, advocates say, though there are also fears, stirred by Trump and Vice-President JD Vance, that the administration will not obey court rulings.

“The authoritarian statements that the president has made and his vice-president have made, the suggestion that the executive is in some way above the law and that they might ignore the decisions of federal courts, are deeply disturbing and highly antidemocratic,” said Jason Rylander, legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

On Wednesday last week, local and national green groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Louisiana-based Healthy Gulf and the Northern Alaska Environmental Center sued federal officials for pulling Biden-era protections for federal waters from oil and gas development. And on Thursday, the Center for Biological Diversity sent a notice of intent to sue over an administration move to expedite infrastructure permits in ways that threaten wetlands. Other litigation could take more time to develop, since some of Trump’s orders have not yet been enacted.

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Also of Interest

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

Max Blumenthal: Why Did the Feds Question Me?

Bibas family threatens to sue Israeli govt as official propaganda on hostage killings unravels

Just 33% of Democrats have a favorable view of Israel, Gallup poll finds

Starmer’s Plan for UK Growth Is the Ukraine War

Ukraine - Minerals Deal Agreement, Lavrov Rejects Peacekeepers, War Destined To Become Trump's Vietnam

Trump’s Budget Will Cause A Recession

#AltGov: the secret network of federal workers resisting Doge from the inside

NYT: Trump Unstoppable, Opposition Futile

‘The forests are going up in flames – so is the rule of law’: Argentina’s climate of fear

There were never any climate havens: floods in the midwest, hurricanes in Appalachia

Viral photo makes ‘Puppy Mountain’ in China an instant sensation

Greenwald & Hedges Debate Over Doge-Ukraine-Trump & Elon!

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Why Is Trump Arming Ukraine?

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A Little Night Music

Alger "Texas" Alexander - The Risin' Sun

Texas Alexander & Mississippi Sheiks - Seen Better Days

Alger "Texas" Alexander - Levee Camp Moan Blues

Texas Alexander - Range in My Kitchen Blues

Alger "Texas" Alexander - Bell Cow Blues

Texas Alexander - Crossroads

Texas Alexander - Lonesome Blues

Texas Alexander - Broken Yo Yo

Texas Alexander - Blue Devil Blues

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