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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Huey "Piano" Smith

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans piano player and songwriter Huey "Piano" Smith. Enjoy!

^{Huey Piano Smith And The Clowns – Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu Pt 1}

"There is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight."

-- Aeschylus

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News and Opinion

The Craziest Thing In The World Is That We Could End Poverty, But We Don’t

It’s the craziest thing in the world that we already have the technological ability to provide a decent standard of living for everyone on earth, but it doesn’t happen because it’s not profitable. We attained the greatest scientific achievement of all time and then did nothing with it. Our society is completely uninterested in it because capitalism is completely uninterested in it.

It’s just so insane how this doesn’t sit front and center in our attention all the time. There are people dying of starvation, exposure and preventable illnesses every single day for no good reason. Humanity became more than capable of ensuring that this never happened to anyone ever again, and just rode right past that stunning moment in history without even glancing up from its smartphone.

Can you imagine if we did that with any other major technological development?

“Oh yeah humans can fly now… but let’s not.”

“Hey humans now have the ability to share ideas and information in real time with anyone in the world, but whatever, let’s keep mailing letters instead.”

And I would argue that the ability to eliminate poverty and needless human suffering is a far more significant development than flight or the internet. But because it doesn’t generate value for shareholders, we cruised right past it going “Let’s make a chatbot that can generate an Alvin and the Chipmunks version of any song!”

This happened because caring for everyone was never the goal of capitalism. The goal of capitalism is to extract labor from the working class and resources from the global south to sell goods and services at a rate that generates profit for the owners of the means of production. That’s it.

Capitalism has no wisdom. It will start wars to generate profit. It will have impoverished populations toiling in mines and sweatshops for pennies in order to generate profit. It will burn up critical drinking water supplies for AI data centers in order to generate profit. It will cut down the last acre of old-growth rainforest in order to generate profit. It will pollute the air, fill the oceans with plastic and kill all the insects if offloading the cost of industry onto the ecosystem helps generate profit.

The entire world is being consumed by an artificially imposed system which holds as its foundational premise that mass-scale human behavior should be driven by the pursuit of profit for its own sake. It’s a mindless, planet-devouring machine of our own making. It is creating unfathomable destruction and suffering for terrestrial organisms of every species.

And it doesn’t have to be this way. There is nothing inscribed upon the fabric of the universe which says that we need to live under a system which causes us to feed our biosphere into the woodchipper so that billionaires can become trillionaires. Nowhere is it written in adamantine that that the many must always toil and suffer for the benefit of the few. Things are the way they are because of systems that were put in place by human beings, and human beings can replace those systems with different ones.

If we are to continue to survive on this planet, we’re going to have to move from systems which drive us to compete against our fellow humans and our fellow terrestrial organisms to systems that are driven by collaboration toward the good of all beings. Such systems would be entirely unprecedented by their nature, because unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. It would be unlike anything that’s ever been done before, but it is now a matter of existential importance that it be done.

We’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to become kinder. Gentler. Emotionally intelligent. Driven by the desire for the greater good instead of by fear and insecurity. We’re going to have to wake up. We’re going to have to become unlike anything we’ve ever been before.

Every species eventually hits an adapt-or-die juncture in its existence. This is ours. We must become a compassionate animal, or we will go the way of the dinosaur.

Alastair Crooke : How Beijing Sees the World's Hotspots

Convincing evidence Israel backed aid convoy looters in Gaza, historian says

A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the turn of the year says he saw “utterly convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict. Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, entered Gaza in December where he was hosted by an international humanitarian organisation in the southern coastal zone of al-Mawasi.

Israel has blocked international media and other independent observers from Gaza but Filiu was able to evade strict Israeli vetting. He eventually left the territory shortly after the second short-lived truce during the war came into effect in January. His eyewitness account, A Historian in Gaza, was published in French in May and in English this month.

In the book, Filiu describes Israeli military attacks on security personnel protecting aid convoys. These permitted looters to seize huge quantities of food and other supplies destined for desperately needy Palestinians, he writes. Famine threatened parts of Gaza at the time, according to international humanitarian agencies. UN agencies at the time told the Guardian that law and order had deteriorated across Gaza since Israel began targeting police officers, who guarded aid convoys. Israel considered police in Gaza, which has been run by Hamas since 2007, an integral part of the militant Islamist organisation.

In his book, Filiu describes an incident that, he says, took place very close to where staying in al-Mawasi, a supposed “humanitarian zone” packed with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their often destroyed homes elsewhere, when, after continuous attacks on its convoys over weeks by local criminals, militias and desperate ordinary people, the UN decided to test a new itinerary that aid officials hoped would prevent looting. Sixty-six trucks carrying flour and hygiene kits headed west from the Israeli checkpoint at Kerem Shalom along the corridor bordering Egypt, and then north on the main coastal road, Filiu says. Hamas was determined to handle security for the convoy and recruited powerful local families along its route to provide armed guards. However, the convoy quickly came under fire. “It was one night and I was … a few hundred metres away. And it was very clear that Israeli quadcopters were supporting the looters in attacking the local security [teams],” Filiu writes.

The Israeli military killed “two local notables as they sat in their car, armed and ready to protect the convoy”, Filiu says, and twenty trucks were robbed, though the UN considered the loss of one-third of the convoy a relative improvement on the looting of nearly all the previous loads, according to Filiu. “The [Israeli] rationale [was] to discredit Hamas and the UN at that time … and to allow [Israel’s] clients, the looters, to either redistribute the aid to expand their own support networks or to make money out of reselling it in order to get some cash and so not depend exclusively on Israeli financial support,” Filiu said.

Nearly 2 Months Into ‘Ceasefire,’ IDF Kills 2 More Palestinian Children as Gaza Death Toll Passes 70,000

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported Saturday that nearly two months after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement, the death toll in Israel's war on Gaza has passed 70,000 as the Israel Defense Forces have continued to claim they are targeting only Hamas fighters—while killing civilians including two children who were gathering firewood for their father on Saturday.

Fadi Abu Assi, 11, and Goma Abu Assi, eight, were close to a school sheltering displaced Palestinians near Beni Suhaila in southern Gaza when the IDF fired a drone in the area, killing both boys.

"They are children...what did they do? They do not have missiles or bombs, they went to gather wood for their father so he can start a fire," the boys' uncle, Mohamed Abu Assi, told Sky News.

Breaking the Silence, an IDF veterans' group whose members speak out against Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, condemned the military for a statement it released on the killing, which the group said amounted to "a pile of words meant only to keep justifying endless killing under insane and ruthless rules of engagement."

The IDF told Sky News that troops had "identified two suspects who crossed the yellow line," the point to which the IDF withdrew as part of the ceasefire deal in October.

The military said the two boys had "conducted suspicious activities on the ground, and approached IDF troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them."

The IDF claimed it identified the eight- and 11-year-old boys and "eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat."

Despite the ceasefire, said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, "the Israeli military is still killing children."

Drop Site News condemned the New York Times' coverage of the boys' killing, with the newspaper writing in a headline that "Gazans say" Fadi and Goma Abu Assi were killed by Israeli forces.

"The boys’ bodies, their ages, and their identities are fully documented—including videos of their lifeless shrouds and their wheelchair-bound father weeping over them—backed by eyewitness accounts and hospital confirmation," said Drop Site.

The Times also reduced "the 350+ Palestinians killed since the October 10 ceasefire to 'persistent violence,'" said the outlet.

The health ministry, whose statistics the World Health Organization and other international agencies have long viewed as credible, said 356 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the first phase of the truce began.

The Times' framing, said Drop Site, "hides the truth that the violence is one-directional, systematic, and directed at civilians who pose no threat to Israelis."

On Sunday, the outlet reported that the IDF was "boasting about breaking the ceasefire" as it announced troops had killed four Palestinian fighters as they emerged from underground tunnels in eastern Rafah.

"It remains unclear whether today’s casualties were fighters or civilians or children," said Drop Site.

Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas' political bureau, told Al Jazeera Sunday that the group is searching for the two remaining bodies of deceased Israeli captives, to be returned to Israel in accordance with the ceasefire deal, and accused Israeli officials of "using these bodies as a pretext to delay movement to the second phase of the ceasefire."

Families react to viral footage of executions in West Bank

UN Report Details Israel’s ‘De Facto State Policy’ of Torturing Palestinian Prisoners

Reports of Israeli authorities torturing Palestinian prisoners have been publicized for years, with freed detainees describing frequent beatings, attacks by dogs, and rape and sexual abuse, and the United Nations Committee Against Torture now says Palestinians have been victimized by a "de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture."

Both Palestinian and Israeli rights groups gave reports to the committee on conditions in Israeli detention centers, detailing Israel's regular deprivation of food and water for detainees as well as the "severe beatings," electrocution, waterboarding. and sexual violence Israeli guards and other authorities perpetrate.

A state policy of torturing prisoners constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the committee said.

Peter Vedel Kessing, a member of the committee and a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, told the BBC the panel was "deeply appalled" by the accounts they heard, and expressed concern about the lack of investigations and prosecutions following allegations of torture.

The de facto policy of torture in Israel's has "gravely intensified" since Israel began bombarding Gaza after a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, the report found. Despite a ceasefire that was agreed to in October, those retaliatory attacks against the exclave are continuing and still constitute a genocide, Amnesty International said this week.

Friday's UN report, said progressive Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, provided the latest proof that "Israel's insidious war crimes have not subsided just because Trump succeeded in convincing Western public opinion that the genocide in Gaza has paused."

The UN committee found that at least 75 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since the Gaza war began—an "abnormally high" death toll which "appears to have exclusively affected the Palestinian detainee population."

"To date, no state officials have been held responsible or accountable for such deaths," said the panel.

The report comes nearly two weeks after the Israel-based rights group Physicians for Human Rights released an analysis showing that at least 98 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 2023.

The UN committee noted that Israel's use of "administrative detention," in which roughly 3,474 Palestinians are currently being held without trial, has reached an "unprecedented" level in the last two years, with children among those who have been imprisoned without charges.

Child prisoners, some of whom are under the age of 12—despite 12 being the age of criminal responsibility in Israel—“have severe restrictions on family contact, may be held in solitary confinement, and do not have access to education, in violation of international standards," the report says.

The report was released the same day the UN Human Rights Office accused Israeli soldiers of carrying out a "summary execution" of two Palestinian men who were seen with their hands up—indicating surrender—in the West Bank.

The committee emphasized its "serious concern" that Israel has no "distinct offense criminalizing torture, and that its legislation allows public officials to be exempted from criminal culpability under the so-called 'necessity' defense when unlawful physical pressure is applied during interrogations."

The report was released days after Israel was one of just three countries—along with the US and Argentina—that voted against a UN General Assembly resolution against torture.

Benjamin Netanyahu asks Israel’s president for pardon in corruption case

Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Israel’s president for a pardon for bribery and fraud charges and an end to a five-year corruption trial, arguing that it would be in the “national interest”.

Isaac Herzog’s office acknowledged receipt of the 111-page submission from the prime minister’s lawyer, and said it had been passed on to the pardons department in the ministry of justice. The president’s legal adviser would also formulate an opinion before Herzog made a decision, it added. ...

Presidential pardons in Israel have almost never been granted before conviction, with the one notable exception of a 1986 case involving the Shin Bet security service. A pre-emptive pardon of a politician in a corruption case without an admission of guilt would be precedent-setting and highly controversial. ...

In a short letter included in his legal filing and in a televised statement released on Sunday, Netanyahu argued it was in his personal interest to prove his innocence in court, but that it was in the interest of national unity to cut short the trial, which he claimed was “tearing us apart”. ...

The demand for a pardon without a guilty plea or resignation has the potential to spark a political and constitutional crisis, which the country’s supreme court could ultimately be called on to resolve.

Israel Pounds Southern Lebanon as Trump Issues Ultimatum

Israel continued with its attacks on southern Lebanon on Thursday. A year on from the ceasefire with Lebanon, the strikes show no signs of abating, and indeed come with persistent threats of further escalation by the Israeli military. ...

Israel carries out strikes against Lebanon almost daily, and officials have repeatedly threatened to escalate the conflict, with Israeli DM Israel Katz only yesterday suggesting that Israel might launch a “new” war against Lebanon soon.

The Trump administration has reportedly issued a deadline for Lebanon, presenting the country with an ultimatum to disarm Hezbollah fully by the end of 2025 or face an “unavoidable” new war. ...

The implication of a new Israeli war is a common talking point against Lebanon, though how big of a threat it is seen as is unclear, as Israel never really stopped attacking from the last war, so the distinction between an active war with Israel and an active ceasefire with Israel seems to be functionally very similar.

Coke? It's the real thing

Larry C. Johnson & Paul Craig Roberts: Netanyahu Bends? Trump Drops Bombshell, Putin Pushes Forward!

Venezuela denounces ‘colonialist threat’ as Trump orders airspace closed

The Venezuelan government has responded defiantly to the heightened pressure by the US government, including Donald Trump’s recent statements on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela is to be closed in its entirety.

In a statement, the Venezuelan government said Trump’s comments are a “colonialist threat” against their sovereignty and violate international law. The government also said it demanded respect for its airspace and would not accept foreign orders or threats.

Trump on Saturday, in a Truth Social post said: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

Due to Trump’s announcement, all migrant deportation flights were “unilaterally suspended”, the Venezuelan government added. Deportation flights to Venezuela have been a significant point of contention for the Trump administration, as it continues to engage in its mass deportation program.

WAR IMMINENT?! Trump Declares Venezuelan Airspace CLOSED!

Trump confirms he recently spoke with Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro

Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had spoken with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, but he did not provide details on what the two leaders discussed. “I don’t want to comment on it. The answer is yes,” the US president said when asked if he had spoken with Maduro. He was speaking to reporters onboard Air Force One.

The New York Times first reported Trump had spoken with Maduro earlier this month and discussed a possible meeting between them in the United States.

“I wouldn’t say it went well or badly. It was a phone call,” Trump said regarding the conversation. The revelation of the phone call comes as Trump continues to use bellicose rhetoric regarding Venezuela, while also entertaining the possibility of diplomacy.

On Saturday, Trump said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety” but gave no further details, stirring anxiety and confusion in Caracas as his administration ramps up pressure on Maduro’s government. When asked whether his airspace comments meant strikes against Venezuela were imminent, Trump said: “Don’t read anything into it.“

Reuters has reported the options under US consideration include an attempt to overthrow Maduro, and that the US military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela’s coast.

Ray McGovern : Can Rubio Be Trusted?

Hegseth INVESTIGATED For WAR CRIMES After Alleged "K*ll Them All" Order

Pete Hegseth denies he gave orders to ‘kill everybody’ on alleged ‘narco-boat’

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has declared recent reporting that he may have illegally ordered all people to be killed in a military strike in the Caribbean as “fake news” on Friday evening, adding that the series of strikes of people on boats had been “lawful under both US and international law”.

Hegseth lambasted reports about his role in the strike as “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland”.

The remarks came after a Washington Post report this week alleged that Hegseth ordered defense officials to “kill everybody” traveling on a boat that was being surveilled by analysts on 2 September, the first strike of many carried out in recent months by the Trump administration. The White House said – without proof – that the people in the boats in the Caribbean, killed in Pentagon operations, were drug smugglers.

Following the Washington Post’s reporting, two senators – Republican Roger Wicker and Democrat Jack Reed – released a statement saying the Senate armed services committee would be investigating the boat strikes. “The Committee is aware of recent news reports – and the Department of Defense’s initial response – regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” the senators wrote in a joint statement. “The Committee has directed inquires to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to the circumstances.”

During the 2 September operation, led by the elite counter-terrorist group Seal Team 6, a first missile strike left two survivors clinging on to the wreck, the Post reported. Adm Frank M “Mitch” Bradley, head of Special Operations Command, reportedly ordered a second strike to kill the two survivors to comply with Hegseth’s orders.

Venezuela, US Kiev Hold Tense Florida Talks; Kiev NO To Moscow terms; Witkoff Kushner Go Empty Handed To Moscow

Hondurans vote amid Trump threat to cut aid if his preferred candidate loses

Hondurans have begun voting in an election held amid threats by Donald Trump to cut aid to the country if his preferred candidate loses.

Honduras could be the next country in Latin America, after Argentina and Bolivia, to swing right after years of leftwing rule.

Polls show three candidates neck-and-neck in the race to succeed President Xiomara Castro, whose husband, Manuel Zelaya, also led the country before being toppled in a 2009 coup.

Trump’s favourite is 67-year-old Nasry “Tito” Asfura of the rightwing National party. His main challengers are 60-year-old lawyer Rixi Moncada from the ruling Libre party and 72-year-old TV host Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal party.

Trump has conditioned continued US support for one of Latin America’s poorest countries on Asfura winning. “If he [Asfura] doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad,” he wrote on Friday on his Truth Social platform, echoing threats he made in support of the Argentine president Javier Milei’s party in that country’s recent midterms.

Larry Johnson : Why Does the US Kill?

Gutting of key US watchdog could pave way for grave immigration abuses

The federal watchdog system at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that oversees complaints about civil rights violations, including in immigration detention, has been gutted so thoroughly that it could be laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to “abuse people with impunity”, experts warn. Former federal oversight officials have sounded the alarm at the rapid dismantling of guardrails against human rights failures – at the same time as the government pushes aggressive immigration enforcement operations.

A group of fired watchdogs has filed a whistleblower complaint to Congress through the Government Accountability Project (GAP), and a coalition of human rights organizations sued the administration, demanding the employees be reinstated. There is deepening concern that a system of oversight that was already weak is now hanging by a thread, even as criticism surges over treatment of detainees in the ballooning immigration jail network.

“They want to be able to abuse people with impunity,” said Anthony Enriquez, vice-president of US advocacy and litigation at the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights advocacy group based in Washington, which is representing the group suing the government. He added: “They want to be able to operate a system that doesn’t have any rules and that can be used to maximize brutality against people, in order to accomplish a mass deportation agenda.”

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Power surge: law changes could soon bring balcony solar to millions across US

Acquiring solar panels at home can be an expensive hassle for people in the US. But small, simple, plug-in solar panels for use on balconies are soon to become available for millions of Americans, with advocates hoping the technology will quickly go mainstream.

Earlier this year, Utah became the first state in the country to pass legislation allowing people to purchase and install small, portable solar panels that plug into a standard wall socket.

When attached outside to the balcony or patio of a dwelling, such panels can provide enough power for residents to run free of charge, home appliances such as fridges, dishwashers, washing machines and wi-fi without spending money on electricity from the grid.

Balcony solar panels are now widespread in countries such as Germany – where more than 1m homes have them – but have until now been stymied in the US by state regulations. This is set to change, with lawmakers in New York and Pennsylvania filing bills to join Utah in adopting permission for the panels, with Vermont, Maryland and New Hampshire set to follow suit soon.

“Plug-in solar is a powerful tool to deliver enhanced energy independence and affordability to millions of New Yorkers who are currently shut out of the solar economy,” said Liz Krueger, a New York state senator who has sponsored a bill to allow balcony solar. Krueger said that her tweak to state law will be “a gamechanger for renters, low-income New Yorkers, and many others who can’t install rooftop solar”.

EPA urged to ban spraying of antibiotics on US food crops amid resistance fears

A new legal petition filed by a dozen public health and farm worker groups demands the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stop allowing farms to spray antibiotics on food crops in the US because they are probably causing superbugs to flourish and sickening farm workers. The agricultural industry sprays about 8m pounds of antibiotic and antifungal pesticides on US food crops annually, many of which are banned in other countries.

The overuse of antibiotics, which are essential to treating human disease, as pesticides on fruits and vegetables threatens public health because it can lead to superbug bacteria that are antibiotic-resistant. Similarly, overuse of antifungal pesticides can lead to fungal infections that are less treatable with medical currently available drugs, the groups say.

“Each year Americans are at greater risk from dangerous bacteria and diseases because human medicines are sprayed on crops,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This kind of recklessness and preventable suffering is what happens when the industry has a stranglehold on the EPA’s pesticide-approval process.”

Antibiotic-resistant infections sicken about 2.8 million people and cause about 35,000 deaths, annually, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates. The CDC has linked “medically important antibiotics” that the EPA has approved for pesticide use on crops to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, increased risk of staph infections and increased risk of MRSA.

Documents that the Center for Biological Diversity obtained via Freedom of Information Act request show a 2017 CDC study raised concerns about the risks in expanding the use of antibiotics on citrus crops. “The use of antibiotics as pesticides has the potential to select for antimicrobial resistant bacteria present in the environment,” the agency wrote. Meanwhile, consuming antibiotic residues on food can also disrupt the human gut microbiome and increase the risk of chronic diseases. The substances also pollute drinking water supplies, and are thought to harm pollinators. Often low-income and Latino farm workers are most at risk.

Virginia Democrat flips seat in state legislature by taking on datacenters

John McAuliff, a 33-year-old small business owner and former civil servant, was one of the more unlikely Democrats to win election to Virginia’s legislature this month, after a campaign in which he could, at times, come off a bit like a Republican. ...

The northern Virginia district of subdivisions, farmland and quaint little towns that he sought to represent had not elected a Democrat to the house of delegates in decades, so McAuliff would go door to door on an electric scooter, informing those who answered his knocks that he was running “to preserve their way of life”. He repudiated the term “woke” and decried the “chaos” coming out of Washington DC, an hour-plus drive away.

What he talked most about was a specific grievance in line with the focus on affordability many Democrats are taking these days, but with a unique twist: the deleterious effects of datacenters and their impact on electricity bills. “Most of the year I spent knocking on the doors of folks we didn’t think were Democrats – either independents or Republicans, and once in a while, a Democrat. And so they would start to shut the door in my face,” McAuliff said. “But then they wanted to talk about datacenters. They wanted to have that conversation, which gave me the opportunity to make that contrast, and you don’t get that many opportunities to do that.” ...

Built to the size of warehouses and whirring with the noise of the servers and equipment within, they loom over tract homes in parts of Loudoun. Developers want to bring them to Fauquier, the county that makes up the other, more Republican half of his district, and McAuliff said voters there were worried that they would be built on the bucolic farmland the county is known for. But no matter where he was, McAuliff said he heard complaints about what the datacenters were doing to electricity bills. ... Earlier this month, Virginia’s utility regulator approved an electricity rate increase, though not by the amount Dominion Energy, a major supplier in the commonwealth, requested.

“The infrastructure costs, those huge transmission lines, the power substations – all of the infrastructure that powers these massive, massive users – are being put on the backs of the ratepayer,” McAuliff said at the co-working space in Middleburg, Virginia, where his campaign keeps its office. “They’re essentially an artificial tax on everyday Virginians to benefit Amazon, Google, some of the companies with the biggest market caps in human history. Which is not to say they don’t provide benefits to those communities, but we need to do a much, much better job of extracting those benefits, because the companies can afford them.”

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Also of Interest

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

Elliott Abrams returns, promoting a Caracas cakewalk

Trump Pardons Drug Smuggler, Threatens Venezuela

After 9 Months of Israel’s Abuse, US Teen Mohammed Ibrahim Freed From Detention

Imperial Washington: Ozymandias on the Potomac

What Defeat Looks Like

Ukraine Rejects Trump’s Peace Plan – U.S. Reacts To Its Defiance

The Neocon-Realist War Over Ukraine

Mexico’s ‘Gen Z Rebellion’ Exposed as Right-Wing Plot

Thousands rally in Madrid to demand snap election over corruption allegations

Trade Is Not The Primary Driver of Currency Rates

‘Sellout of the Century’: Canada PM Carney Ripped Over Tar Sands Pipeline Deal

‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival

Why Did Maryland’s First Black Governor Veto a Reparations Bill?

Afghan National Guard Assassin Was CHILD MERCENARY for CIA

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A Little Night Music

Huey Piano Smith And The Clowns – High Blood Pressure

Huey Piano Smith & His Clowns – Psycho

Junior Gordon With Huey Piano Smith's Orchestra – Blow Wind Blow

Huey Piano Smith & His Clowns – The Little Moron

Huey Piano Smith And The Clowns – Don't You Just Know It

Huey Piano Smith & His Clowns – Able Mabel

Huey "Piano" Smith - Sea Cruise ORIGINAL

Huey "Piano" Smith - Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas & The Sinus Blues

Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns - Havin' A Good Time

Huey "Piano" Smith - Everbody's Whalin

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