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The Evening Blues - 11-20-25

Submitted by joe shikspack on Thu, 11/20/2025 - 3:00pm

eb1pt12

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sam Cooke

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features The King of Soul, Sam Cooke. Enjoy!

^{Sam Cooke - You Send Me}

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

-- John Maynard Keynes

News and Opinion

Capitalism Is The Best It’s Ever Been!

No no everything’s fine. It’s perfectly normal for people to have 80 hour work weeks while billionaires transform into trillionaires and tech plutocrats feed all our drinking water to AI servers as the planet dies. This is the only system that could possibly work.

No no it’s great. If you can’t afford a house it’s because you’re lazy and entitled. Stop eating fancy fruits and vegetables and sleep in your cubicle. One time I saw a homeless person with a phone. Sell your phone and use the money buy a house, you idiot.

What do you mean you want taxes to go toward infrastructure and basic social safety nets? That money is for the arms industry, and for Israel. If you want a high-speed rail system, build it yourself.

If you’re sad about being poor, ask your parents to loan you a few million dollars so you can invest it and become wealthy. There’s a veritable smorgasbord of exciting new opportunities on the horizon.

There’s still time to get in on the ground floor of the upcoming sexbot industry, for example, or the militarized police robot industry.

Create a line of children’s toys with functions you can activate through a small monthly fee with flexible tiered payment options.

See if you can design a highly addictive social media platform that feeds people’s information directly to CIA headquarters.

Invent an AI system that automatically freezes people’s digital money if they try to start a union.

Make a new gig economy app that helps poor people sell and deliver their organs to rich people.

Or what about a boat that sinks if you let your Remain Buoyant subscription lapse?

They say there are giant continents of plastic forming in the Pacific Ocean. You could rent out apartments on those.

Cult leaders are generally good at extracting wealth from their followers. You could probably make a chatbot that does that.

Elon Musk is working on those Neuralink implants to connect human brains to computers. You could set up a company that beams advertisements directly into people’s heads.

Speaking of advertisements, how has nobody thought of drones with megaphones blaring commercials at pedestrians yet? That’s a multibillion-dollar industry right there. They should fill the air in every major city on earth.

Capitalism is the best it’s ever been, is my point. There has never been a more exciting time to be an industrious young mind with a dream in your heart and a roll of nickels in your pocket.

So quit your whining, commie.

Israel aims to keep Gaza ‘unlivable’ or provoke retaliation to resume war: Analysis

Gaza residents report blasts as Israeli forces raze homes

Al Jazeera journalists on the ground say blasts have echoed through Gaza since the early hours, even though the ceasefire is supposedly in effect.

Most of the strikes hit zones on the far side of the yellow demarcation line, territory Israel’s military occupies and has largely sealed off from the rest of the enclave.

Residents living near the line told Al Jazeera that the noise has barely stopped. Families say they are hearing repeated blasts and drones overhead, long after the ceasefire came into force.

People in the area also report seeing Israeli tanks and bulldozers levelling homes inside these zones, wiping out what remains of residential streets and making any Palestinian return even harder.

Again, I cannot stress enough how important it is to let Zionists speak. Platform them as much as possible. Let them show the world who they are. Some of the most effective anti-Zionist work is being done by Zionists who share their perspectives candidly and without reserve. https://t.co/wLakRXMHC4

— Tariq Kenney-Shawa (@tksshawa) November 19, 2025

At Least 28 Palestinians—Including 17 Children—Killed by Israeli Strikes on Gaza

Israel Defense Forces strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians including a woman and 17 children in the Gaza Strip Wednesday in the latest of what local officials say are over 400 Israeli violations of a tenuous ceasefire.

The IDF said it carried out strikes targeting neighborhoods in Gaza City and Khan Younis after "terrorists" opened fire on occupation troops—none of whom were harmed—in what the IDF called "a violation of the ceasefire agreement."

Gaza officials said that more than 100 people were also wounded in Wednesday's attacks, including one which medical personnel said targeted a building housing displaced families in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.

Hamas—which rules Gaza and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—condemned the attacks as “a dangerous escalation” and refuted the IDF’s claim while accusing Israel of attempting to “justify its ongoing crimes and violations.” Hamas also urged the United States to exert “immediate, serious pressure” on Israel to “respect the ceasefire and halt the aggression against our people.”

Settler violence reaches new heights in the West Bank

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in Lebanon

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war in Lebanon, photos of munition remnants in south Lebanon seen by the Guardian suggest. The images, which have been examined by six different arms experts, appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions found in three different locations: south of the Litani River in the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz and Wadi Deir Siryan.

The evidence is the first indication that Israel has used cluster munitions in nearly two decades since it employed them in the 2006 Lebanon war. It would also be the first time that Israel was known to have used the two new types of cluster munitions found – the 155mm M999 Barak Eitan and 227mm Ra’am Eitan guided missiles.

Cluster munitions are container bombs which release many smaller submunitions, small “bomblets”, over a wide area the size of several football fields. The use of cluster munitions is widely banned as up to 40% of submunitions do not explode upon impact, posing a danger to civilians who might later stumble upon them and be killed when they explode. To date, 124 states have joined the convention on cluster munitions, which forbids their use, production and transfer. Israel is not a party to the convention and is not bound by it.

“We believe the use of cluster munitions is always in conflict with a military’s duty to respect international humanitarian law because of their indiscriminate nature at time of use and afterwards,” said Tamar Gabelnick, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition. “Their wide area impact means they cannot distinguish between military and civilian targets and the cluster munition remnants kill and maim civilians for decades after use.”

Israel’s war with Hezbollah which started in October 2023 and killed almost 4,000 people in Lebanon and about 120 people in Israel, left the Lebanese militant group devastated. Much of Lebanon’s south remains in ruins and Israel still carries out near-daily airstrikes in the country, despite a ceasefire signed last year .Lebanon in particular has a painful history with cluster munitions. Israel blanketed Lebanon with 4m cluster bombs in the final days of the 2006 war, with an estimated 1m failing to explode. The presence of unexploded cluster bombs continues to make life in south Lebanon dangerous, with more than 400 people killed by unexploded bomblets since 2006.

Max Blumenthal : The CIA’s Cocaine Business and Regime Change

Scahill talks U.N. Occupation force and Grim on Mexico's Color Protest and India/Pakistan on brink

Top judge resumes contempt inquiry into Trump El Salvador deportations

A federal judge on Wednesday said he was resuming his long-stalled court proceeding to determine whether Trump administration officials willfully violated a court order by deporting hundreds of men to El Salvador in March. US district judge James Boasberg said he would demand sworn testimony from administration officials to determine whether they defied his March court order to turn around aircraft that were removing the men from US territory.

“It seems that a factual inquiry is in order, and the best way to proceed would appear to be bringing in witnesses and having them testify under oath,” Boasberg said during the hour-long status conference. A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court halted the inquiry earlier this year. But a larger panel of appellate judges on Friday said Boasberg “remains free to require the government to identify the decision makers who directed the potentially contemptuous actions and to carefully consider next steps”.

Boasberg’s remarks on Wednesday breathed new life into his standoff with the Trump administration over the limits of US presidential power. By conducting the criminal contempt proceedings, which can result in fines or other forms of censure, Boasberg has drawn the ire of Trump allies, who say the judge has overstepped.

Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: The West Is LOSING Control

Kiev Defeats Force US U Turn Accept Istanbul Plus; Kellogg Quits; Kiev/EU Stunned Say NO; War Crisis

Full grand jury didn’t see final Comey indictment, prosecutors admit

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they had never presented the final version of the indictment filed against James Comey to a full federal grand jury, a concession that adds to mounting challenges in their effort to prosecute the former FBI director.

Prosecutors acknowledged the omission during a Wednesday hearing in which Comey’s lawyers argued the case against him should be dismissed because it was a selective and vindictive prosecution.

Comey was indicted on 26 September on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding in connection with testimony he gave in 2020 in which he said he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding Hillary Clinton.

Court documents from September show that Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally installed as a top prosecutor in the case, had sought an additional false statement charge against Comey, but that grand jurors had rejected it.

Once the grand jury rejected the charge, Halligan could have had the full grand jury vote again on a copy of the indictment that only included the two charges they voted to indict on, or presented the judge with a three-count indictment crossing out the count on which the grand jury had chosen not to indict on. But, pressed on Wednesday by Michael Nachmanoff, the US district judge overseeing the case, Halligan confirmed that only the foreperson and another grand juror had seen the revised indictment that had only the two charges the grand jury had voted to indict on, CNN and Lawfare reported on Wednesday.

Dem Member DEFENDS Epstein Texts: 'Lots Of People Do Crimes'

House Republicans’ attempt to censure Democrat over texts with Epstein fails

A Republican attempt to censure Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic delegate, over her real-time texts with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein collapsed on the House floor on Tuesday night, prompting a confrontation on the chamber floor and accusations that party leaders had struck a deal to protect members on both sides facing ethics controversies.

The measure, which would have formally reprimanded Plaskett and removed her from the House intelligence committee over her text message exchanges with Epstein during a hearing, failed by a vote of 209 to 214. Republicans Don Bacon of Nebraska, Lance Gooden of Texas and Dave Joyce of Ohio voted with all Democrats against the resolution, while three other Republicans voted present.

Over the course of the last few months, Democrats had made it their mission to release all Epstein-related documents and pushed for transparency around the financier’s connections to powerful figures.

But when newly released materials exposed Plaskett, a Democrat from the US Virgin Islands, for exchanging real-time messages with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing, all Democrats voted against her censure. Then, immediately after the vote, Democrats withdrew a planned censure resolution against Cory Mills, a Florida Republican representative facing allegations of stolen valor, financial misconduct and domestic abuse. Mills has denied the accusations.

The sequence prompted Lauren Boebert, a representative of Colorado, to shout at fellow Republicans on the House floor, wagging her finger and at one point directly confronting Mills. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican representative from Florida, attempted to raise a parliamentary inquiry asking Mike Johnson, the House speaker, to “explain why leadership on both sides, both Democrat and Republican, are cutting back-end deals to cover up public corruption in the House of Representatives”.

PLOT To Coverup Epstein Files After Vote

Trump signs bill to compel release of more Epstein documents

Donald Trump has signed a bill to compel the justice department to release more files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased child sexual abuser.

“Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged by the Trump Justice Department in 2019 (Not the Democrats!), was a lifelong Democrat, donated Thousands of Dollars to Democrat Politicians, and was deeply associated with many well-known Democrat figures, such as Bill Clinton (who traveled on his plane 26 times), Larry Summers (who just resigned from many Boards, including Harvard), Sleazebag Political Activist Reid Hoffman, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (who asked Epstein to donate to his Campaign AFTER Epstein was charged), Democrat Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, and many more. Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday night. ...

After Trump indicated his approval of the bill, Republican holdouts swiftly moved it through the House and then the Senate. Mike Johnson had stalled the bill for months, and after the House passed it, the House speaker said he hoped the Senate would amend it, which it did not.

The justice department said earlier this year that it had released all the documents it could about Epstein without hindering investigations or revealing information about his victims. “Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing,” a justice department memo from July said. “Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing.”

It’s not clear what the department will release in response to the bill – the bill details a host of potential items that must be released, but provides exceptions for some materials. ... The department will have 30 days to turn over the documents.

Democratic Florida lawmaker indicted for allegedly stealing $5m in Fema funds

Democratic representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly funneling more than $5m worth of federal disaster funds from her company into her 2021 congressional campaign.

The indictment states that Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, stole $5m in Fema overpayments that their family healthcare company received, moving the money through multiple accounts to hide its origins. The indictment alleges that the majority of the money was used for Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional campaign, as well as for the personal benefit of the defendants.

the evening greens

Trump’s anti-climate agenda could result in 1.3m more deaths globally, analysis finds

New advances in environmental science are providing a detailed understanding of the human cost of the Trump administration’s approach to climate. Increasing temperatures are already killing enormous numbers of people. A ProPublica and Guardian analysis that draws on sophisticated modeling by independent researchers found that Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda of expanding fossil fuels and decimating efforts to reduce emissions will add substantially to that toll, with the vast majority of deaths occurring outside the US.

Most of the people expected to die from soaring temperatures in the coming decades live in poor, hot countries in Africa and south Asia, according to recent research. Many of these countries emitted relatively little of the pollution that causes climate crisis – and are least prepared to cope with the increasing heat.

ProPublica and the Guardian’s analysis shows that extra greenhouse gases released in the next decade as a result of the president’s policies are expected to lead to as many as 1.3 million more temperature-related deaths worldwide as the earth heats in the 80 years after 2035. The actual number of people who die from heat will be much higher, but a warming planet will also result in fewer deaths from cold. ...

Our calculations use modeled estimates of the additional emissions that will be released as a result of Trump’s policies as well as a peer-reviewed metric for what is known as the mortality cost of carbon. That metric, which builds on Nobel prize-winning science that has informed federal policy for more than a decade, predicts the number of temperature-related deaths from additional emissions. The estimate reflects deaths from heat-related causes, such as heatstroke and the exacerbation of existing illnesses, minus lives saved by reduced exposure to cold. It does not include the massive number of deaths expected from the broader effects of the climate crisis, such as droughts, floods, wars, vector-borne diseases, hurricanes, wildfires and reduced crop yields.

The numbers, while large, are just a fraction of the estimated 83 million temperature-related deaths that could result from all human-caused emissions over the same period if climate-heating pollution is not curtailed. But they speak to the human cost of prioritizing US corporate interests over the lives of people around the globe.

"End the Accountability Gap": Polluter Countries Have Legal Obligation to Address Climate

China doesn’t want to lead alone on climate policies

China is committed to the energy transition needed to avert climate breakdown – but does not want to take the lead alone in the absence of the US, one of the country’s senior advisers has told the Guardian.

Wang Yi said China would provide more money to vulnerable countries, but the EU’s climate commissioner has warned Beijing is not doing enough to cut emissions.

“I don’t think China would like to play a leadership role alone,” said Wang, the vice-chair of China’s expert panel on climate change. “The most important thing is how to maintain momentum. Now we have two possible directions: one, we go forward with clearer, more ambitious targets. The other may be going back.

“So that’s why China would like to do our best to steer in this kind of direction towards low-carbon or green transition, but in cooperation with other countries. We don’t want to take the lead alone. We need comprehensive leadership.”

In an exclusive interview, Wang said theChinese president, Xi Jinping, was committed to the energy transition for the long haul despite resistance from some industrial sectors. He explained that China’s priority in Belém was to help the Brazilian presidency achieve a successful climate conference, and to show the benefits of multilateral decision-making. On Tuesday, the first draft of a possible agreement was published at the Cop30 summit, reviving the hotly contested plan to transition away from fossil fuels.

Trump officials announce $1bn loan to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant

The Trump administration has announced a $1bn federal loan to restart the nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island that is under contract to provide power to Microsoft’s datacenters.The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said on Tuesday that the loan to Constellation Energy, the plant’s operator, would “ensure America has the energy it needs to grow its domestic manufacturing base and win the AI race”.

Constellation signed a 20-year purchase agreement in 2024 with Microsoft, which needs power for its artificial intelligence operations, to restart the 835MW reactor that shut in 2019. The other unit at the plant, renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center, shut in 1979 after the most serious nuclear meltdown and radiation leak in US history.

US power demand is rising for the first time in two decades, driven by technologies including artificial intelligence. Nuclear energy, which is virtually carbon-free, has become an option for technology companies such as Google and Meta. But critics have pointed out that the US has failed to find permanent storage for radioactive waste.

In a statement, the US Department of Energy said once Constellation’s reactor was restarted, it would be able to power the equivalent of approximately 800,000 homes. It also said the project would help lower electricity costs, strengthen grid reliability and create more than 600 jobs. Wright added: “Constellation’s restart of a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania will provide affordable, reliable and secure energy to Americans across the mid-Atlantic region. It will also help ensure America has the energy it needs to grow its domestic manufacturing base and win the AI race.” Constellation said the loan would help it lower the cost of financing and leverage private investment to restore power to the grid.