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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Jimmy Yancey

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Jimmy Yancey. Enjoy!

^{Jimmy Yancey - Yancey Stomp}

"There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

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News and Opinion

The Plutocrats Who Rule Our World Aren’t Even Enjoying Themselves

I saw a tweet by Elon Musk the other day, “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.”

He put a sadface emoji at the end.

I personally do not feel the slightest bit sorry for Elon Musk and his feelings. But the fact that these billionaires aren’t even enjoying themselves as they poison our planet and rob us all says so much about the madness of the civilization we are living in.

I mean, think about it.

It’s not even making them happy. All that exploitation and extraction, all the parasiting and hoarding and manipulating politics and inserting themselves into governments, and it’s not even making them happy.

It would be terrible if these obscenely wealthy oligarchs were robbing everyone else of happiness in order to make themselves exponentially happier than all of us. But they’re not even making themselves happy. They’re fucking miserable. Everyone involved in this abusive dynamic is suffering from it — even the abusers.

And really, how could they not be?

Can you think of anyone less likely to be happy than someone who can’t be content simply retiring with a house and maybe twenty million dollars in the bank, ensuring that all their material needs will be cared for for the rest of their lives? Someone who must instead press on until they have obtained more money than they could reasonably spend in a thousand lifetimes?

Can you think of anything less conducive to happiness than becoming so much wealthier than everyone else that you have to isolate yourself from normal society, eventually surrounded only by people who are in your life because of your wealth? Never knowing how they truly feel about you or what they’d be doing with their lives if not for your vast fortune?

Can you think of a more surefire path to a lifetime of dissatisfaction than spending your years storing away wealth like some kind of fantasy dragon creature hoarding gold in a mountain, while people panicking over paying their bills look upon you with disdain?

Can you imagine a more miserable way to spend your days on this planet than becoming an oligarch and manipulating state power to ensure that your unfathomable wealth will never be redistributed to the needful and the struggling, and that ordinary people will forever remain trapped as powerless gear-turners whose labor exists solely to turn billionaires into trillionaires?

I know I can’t.

The plutocrats who control our society are not sincerely dedicated to the pursuit of happiness; if they were, they wouldn’t be plutocrats, and they wouldn’t be controlling our society. Happiness comes from contentment with one’s present experience, and those who keep compulsively amassing wealth for its own sake can never experience that contentment.

As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his poem “Joe Heller”:

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!

The Elon Musks of our world can never have the experience of having enough. They exist in a permanent state of lack. They’ve got a giant hole inside themselves that can never be filled, no matter how much money they throw into it, no matter how many private jets and private islands and media outlets and bought politicians they try to fill it with.

We are ruled by deeply wounded and dysfunctional emotional infants. The people who control our society are whipped about by primitive forces within themselves that they don’t understand. Their actions are motivated not by the pursuit of the common good, nor even their own good, but by psychological disorder and unconscious compulsion.

And yet we are assured this is the best possible way to run a society.

I kind of doubt that. I really don’t think that’s true.

Larry Johnson: Decision Has Been Made to Attack Iran

Iran’s Comprehensive Peace Proposal to the United States

History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East.

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: “If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready.” He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.

On February 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s responded to the United States’ proposal for a comprehensive peace. In his speech at the Al Jazeera Forum, the foreign minister addressed the root cause of regional instability – “Palestine… is the defining question of justice in West Asia and beyond” and he proposed a path forward.

The Foreign Minister’s statement is correct. The failure to resolve the issue of Palestinian statehood has indeed fueled every major regional conflict since 1948. The Arab-Israeli wars, the rise of anti-Israel militancy, the regional polarization, and the repeated cycles of violence, all derive from the failure to create a State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel. Gaza represents the most devastating chapter in this conflict, where Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine was followed by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and then by Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.

In his speech, Araghchi condemned Israel’s expansionist project “pursued under the banner of security.” He warned of the annexation of the West Bank, which Israeli government officials, as National Security Minister Ben Gvir, continually call for, and for which the Knesset has already passed a motion.

Araghchi also highlighted another fundamental dimension of Israeli strategy which is the pursuit of permanent military supremacy across the region. He said that Israel’s expansionist project requires that “neighboring countries be weakened—militarily, technologically, economically, and socially—so that the Israeli regime permanently enjoys the upper hand.” This is indeed the Clean Break doctrine of Prime Minister Netanyahu, dating back 30 years. It has been avidly supported by the US through 100 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel since 2000, diplomatic cover at the UN via repeated vetoes, and the consistent US rejection of accountability measures for Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.

Israel’s impunity has destabilized the region, fueling arms races, proxy wars, and cycles of revenge. It has also corroded what remains of the international legal order. The abuse of international law by the US and Israel with much of Europe remaining silent, has gravely weakened the UN Charter, leaving the UN close to collapse.

In the concluding remarks of his speech, he offered the US a political solution and path forward. “The path to stability is clear: justice for Palestine, accountability for crimes, an end to occupation and apartheid, and a regional order built on sovereignty, equality, and cooperation. If the world wants peace, it must stop rewarding aggression. If the world wants stability, it must stop enabling expansionism.”

This is a valid and constructive response to Rubio’s call for comprehensive diplomacy.

This framework could address all the interlocking dimensions of the region’s conflict. The end of Israel’s expansion and occupation of Palestine, and Israel’s return to the borders of June 4, 1967, would bring an end to outside funding and arming of proxy groups in the region. The creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel would enhance Israel’s security as well as that of its neighbors. A renewed nuclear agreement with Iran, strictly limiting Iran to peaceful nuclear activities and paired with the lifting of US and EU sanctions, would add a crucial pillar of regional stability. Iran already agreed to such a nuclear framework a decade ago, in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. It was the US during Trump’s first term, not Iran, that withdrew from the agreement.

A comprehensive peace reflects the foundation of modern collective security doctrine, including the United Nations Charter itself. Durable peace requires mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and equal security guarantees for all states.

Regional security is the shared responsibility of all states in the region, and each of them faces a historic obligation. This comprehensive peace proposal is not new, it has been advocated for decades by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57 Muslim‑majority countries) and the League of Arab States (22 Arab States). Ever since the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, all of these countries have endorsed, on a yearly basis, the framework of land-for-peace. All major Arab and Islamic states, allies of the US, have played a crucial role in facilitating the latest round of US-Iranian negotiations in Oman. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has clearly reminded the US that it will normalize relations with Israel only on the condition of the establishment of a Palestinian State.

The United States faces a moment of truth. Does it really want peace, or does it want to follow Israel’s extremism? For decades, the US has blindly followed Israeli misguided objectives. Domestic political pressures, powerful lobbying networks, strategic miscalculations, and perhaps a bit of blackmail lurking in the Epstein files (who knows?) have combined to subordinate American diplomacy to Israel’s regional ambitions.

The US subservience to Israel does not serve American interests. It has drawn the United States into repeated regional wars, undermined global trust in American foreign policy, and weakened the international legal order that Washington itself helped to construct after 1945.

A comprehensive peace offers the US a rare opportunity to correct course. By negotiating a comprehensive regional peace grounded in international law, the United States could reclaim genuine diplomacy and help to establish a stable regional security architecture that benefits all parties, including Israel and Palestine.

The Middle East stands at a crossroads between endless war and comprehensive peace. The framework for peace exists. It requires first and foremost Palestinian statehood, security guarantees for Israel and the rest of the region, a peaceful nuclear deal restoring the basic agreement adopted by the UN a decade ago, lifting of economic sanctions, the unbiased enforcement of international law, and a diplomatic architecture that replaces military force with security cooperation. The world should rally behind a comprehensive framework and take this historic opportunity to achieve regional peace.

Aaron Maté : Why Netanyahu Needs Another War

US Maritime Administration Tells US-Flagged Ships To Stay Away From Iran’s Territorial Waters

The US Maritime Administration (MARAD) said in an advisory issued on Monday that US-flagged vessels should stay away from Iran’s territorial waters, a warning that comes as the US has built up forces in the region to prepare for a potential attack on the Islamic Republic.

“It is recommended that US-flagged commercial vessels transiting these waters remain as far as possible from Iran’s territorial sea without compromising navigational safety,” MARAD said. “When transiting eastbound in the Strait of Hormuz, it is recommended that vessels transit close to Oman’s territorial sea.”

MARAD said that US-flagged commercial vessels navigating in the area should “coordinate voyage planning with U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS) and consider their recommendations and guidance whenever possible.”

Col. Larry Wilkerson: The U.S. Just Hit a Point of No Return

COL. Douglas Macgregor : A U.S. - Iran War Could Spiral Out of Control

US Forces Board Tanker in Indian Ocean as Trump Targets Venezuelan Oil

President Donald Trump’s blockade of Venezuelan oil—condemned as “piracy” by critics around the world—continued on Monday, with the US Department of Defense announcing that overnight, “military forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding on the Aquila II without incident” in the Indian Ocean.

“When the Department of War says quarantine, we mean it. Nothing will stop DOW from defending our homeland—even in oceans halfway around the world,” the Pentagon declared on social media, using Trump’s preferred department name. “The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean. It ran, and we followed.”

“The Department of War tracked and hunted this vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean,” the department continued. “No other nation on planet Earth has the capability to enforce its will through any domain. By land, air, or sea, our armed forces will find you and deliver justice.”

“You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us,” the Pentagon added. “The Department of War will deny illicit actors and their proxies the ability to defy American power in the global maritime domain.”

The department also shared a video and photos from the operation, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged during a visit to the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, a stop on his national Arsenal of Freedom tour.

pic.twitter.com/sh8J61RC8Y

— Department of War (@DeptofWar) February 9, 2026

According to the Associated Press:

Following the US raid to apprehend then-President Nicolás Maduro in early January, several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight.

Hegseth vowed to eventually capture all those ships, telling a group of shipyard workers in Maine on Monday that “the only guidance I gave to my military commanders is none of those are getting away.”

“I don’t care if we got to go around the globe to get them; we’re going to get them,” he added.

Citing an unnamed dense [heh, I like it, but it should probably be "defense" -js] official, the AP also reported that “the Aquila II has not been formally seized and placed under US control,” unlike seven other Venezuela-linked tankers previously taken by the Trump administration. Instead, the news agency explained, the Panamanian-flagged ship “is being held while its ultimate fate is decided by the US.”

Reuters noted that Aquila II “was carrying about 700,000 barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude bound for China,” based on schedules from the Venezuelan state oil and gas company, PDVSA.

China Dumps MORE US Bonds, Dollar COLLAPSES as EU Caves | Richard Wolff & Sean Foo

Air Canada cancels all flights to Cuba as US oil blockade cuts off fuel access

Air Canada has cancelled all flights to Cuba after the island’s authorities said they were running out of aviation fuel, as a consequence of the US oil blockade on the Caribbean country.

The airline, one of a dozen who serve the island, said it would begin repatriating 3,000 customers. Cuba’s beaches are a major holiday draw for Canadian tourists in winter, and one of the government’s most important sources of hard currency.

Other airlines from as far away as Russia, China, Turkey, France and Spain have also been affected. The crisis has erupted at speed because of Washington’s policy of forcing Cuba’s government to the negotiation table, with prominent figures in Donald Trump’s administration calling for regime change.

The US has threatened any country that sends oil to Cuba with increased tariffs, claiming the island’s government is a threat to US national security. On Monday, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, lashed out at what she described as a “very unjust” US policy.

“You can’t strangle a nation in this way,” she said. Mexico dispatched 800 tons of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered island nation on Sunday, and Sheinbaum said Mexico was taking “all necessary diplomatic actions” to be able to send oil to the island – although she did not offer details on how that might happen.

Worth a watch:

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : What to Do With a Lawless President

Maine shaken by ICE raids as backlash threatens Republican Senate control

Maine, the US’s whitest state, has been shaken by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, a crackdown that could threaten Republican control of the Senate in November’s crucial midterm elections. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents launched “Operation Catch of the Day” in the state on 21 January, targeting “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens who have terrorized communities”, according to the administration.

As critics said the operation had caused “pain and suffering”, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican facing a re-election battle this year in a state that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, claimed she spoke with Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who told her the operation had ended at her request. But residents doubt Collins has defanged ICE and say the agency is still making its presence known and causing chaos in the bucolic state nicknamed Vacationland. ...

Todd Chretien, an organizer and local high school Spanish teacher in Portland, dismissed claims from Collins about the ICE operation ending, and emphasized the negative economic effects the operation is still having in Maine. “ICE’s impact on the local Maine economy has been devastating. Thousands of workers have been sheltering in place, and hundreds of people have been detained,” said Chretien. “Many of our support staff are either citizens or legal residents with work permits, but the racial profiling was so intense that much of our custodial and support staff was unable to work for a couple weeks.” ...

The Democratic frontrunners in the US Senate primary to challenge Collins in November for her Senate seat, Graham Platner and Governor Janet Mills, have criticized ICE’s tactics in Maine and the harm inflicted by the operation on residents. Polls have shown a close primary race between Platner and Mills. Collins maintaining her seat is crucial for Republicans to hold a majority in the Senate.

“I care about material outcomes and reality. I don’t really care about people’s words, and a pinky promise from Kristi Noem is not enough for me to think that we are maybe going to see ICE ramp down operations,” said Platner during an interview with a Portland ABC News affiliate on why he was still holding a protest against Collins over ICE. Furthermore, in her statement, she still supports ICE operations, just not this expanded one. An agency that over the past week has abducted people that work for the sheriff’s department, fathers bringing their newborn child home from the hospital, an agency that has murdered American citizens in the street of Minneapolis. That is not an agency that has any welcome in Maine to conduct any operations.”

Irish man with valid US work permit held in ICE detention for five months

An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record. Seamus Culleton was a “model immigrant” who had become the victim of a capricious and inept system, said his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye. Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton is married to a US citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area. While buying supplies at a hardware store on 9 September 2025 he was arrested in a random immigration sweep, according to Okoye, of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts.

Culleton entered the US in 2009 on a visa waiver programme and overstayed the 90 day-limit but, after marrying a US citizen and applying for lawful permanent residence, he obtained a statutory exemption that allowed him to work, Okoye told the Guardian. “He had a work-approved authorisation that is tied to a green card application,” she said. Culleton’s detention prevented him from attending the final interview in October, she said. “It’s inexplicable that this man has been in detention. It does not make sense. There’s no reason why the government shouldn’t just release him and allow him to attend the interview that will confirm his legal status.”

After being held in ICE facilities near Boston and in Buffalo, New York, he was flown to a facility in El Paso, Texas, where he is sharing a cell with more than 70 men. Culleton said the detention centre was cold, damp and squalid, and there were fights over insufficient food – “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”, he told the Irish Times, which first reported the story on Monday.

Culleton said that when he was arrested he was carrying a Massachusetts driving licence and a valid work permit issued as part of an application for a green card that he initiated in April 2025. When asked at the Buffalo facility to sign a form agreeing to deportation, Culleton said he refused and instead ticked a box expressing a wish to contest his arrest, which he intended to do on the grounds that he was married to a US citizen, Tiffany Smyth, and had a valid work permit. At a November hearing a judge approved his release on a $4,000 bond, which Smyth paid, but authorities continued to detain Culleton, initially without explanation.

When his attorney appealed to a federal court, two ICE agents said that in Buffalo Culleton had signed documents agreeing to be deported. Culleton said he did not agree and that the signatures were not his. “My whole life is here. I worked so hard to build my business. My wife is here.” The judge noted irregularities in ICE’s court documents but sided with the agency. Under US law Culleton cannot appeal but he wants handwriting experts to examine the signatures and believes a video of his interview with ICE in Buffalo would prove he refused to sign deportation documents.

Federal judge blocks California from enforcing ICE mask ban

A federal judge on Monday blocked a California law from going into effect that would ban federal immigration agents from covering their faces, but they will still be required to wear clear identification showing their agency and badge number. ...

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit in November challenging the laws, arguing that they would threaten the safety of officers who are facing harassment, doxing, and violence and that they violated the constitution because the state is directly regulating the federal government.

Judge Christina Snyder said she issued the initial ruling because the mask ban as it was enacted did not also apply to state law enforcement authorities, discriminating against the federal government. It left open the possibility to future legislation banning federal agents from wearing masks if it applied to all law enforcement agencies, with Snyder writing “the court finds that federal officers can perform their federal functions without wearing masks”.

Epstein Prison Tapes WIPED By FBI

Republican calls on Trump ally Howard Lutnick to quit cabinet over Epstein files

US House member Thomas Massie has called for the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick – a fellow Republican – to resign over his ties to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Massie, who co-authored a law mandating the release of the so-called Epstein files, appeared Sunday on CNN’s Inside Politics and said Lutnick, a staunch Donald Trump ally, “has a lot to answer for”.

“Really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign,” Massie said. Alluding to how the Epstein scandal has roiled UK politics, including by costing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor his title as a prince and Peter Mandelson his US ambassadorship, Massie added of Lutnick: “If this were Great Britain, he’d already be gone.”

Asked for comment, a statement from Lutnick’s commerce department said in part: “This is nothing more than a failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration’s accomplishments.”

Massie’s call for Lutnick’s resignation came a little more than a week after the US justice department released about 3m of its investigative files on Epstein in connection with the transparency law that the Kentucky congressman helped pass. The disclosure revealed that the commerce secretary discussed visiting Epstein’s island in 2012 – four years after the disgraced financier was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.

The Epstein and Lutnick-related emails show correspondence about travel arrangements and political fundraising, among other things. Lutnick and Epstein were neighbors on a particularly tony stretch of Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhood.

Alleged Epstein Co-Conspirator REVEALED After Massie Fight

Ghislaine Maxwell’s refusal to answer questions before Congress draws criticism: ‘Who is she protecting?’

Ghislaine Maxwell refused to answer questions during a closed-door congressional deposition on Monday, prompting criticism from a House representative backing efforts to release Jeffrey Epstein investigative files. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the committee on oversight and government reform, said in a statement that Maxwell invoked the fifth amendment and refused to testify during her scheduled deposition. Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, also said that she invoked her fifth amendment right.

“After months of defying our subpoena, Ghislaine Maxwell finally appeared before the oversight committee and said nothing,” said Garcia, a California Democrat. “She answered no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls. “Who is she protecting? And we need to know why she’s been given special treatment at a low security prison by the Trump administration. We are going to end this White House cover-up.”

“On my advice, Ghislaine Maxwell will respectfully invoke her fifth amendment right to silence and decline to answer questions today even though she would very much like to answer your questions,” Markus, her attorney, told the committee, according to a statement he posted on X. “She must remain silent because Ms Maxwell has a habeas petition currently pending that demonstrates that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial.

“If this committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path,” he added. “Ms Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump. Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters. For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”

Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) with Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, noted before Monday’s session that Maxwell’s expected silence conflicted with her apparent willingness to provide information this summer. Maxwell in July sat down with Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s deputy attorney general, for a two-day interview. “This position appears inconsistent with Ms Maxwell’s prior conduct, as she did not invoke the fifth amendment when she previously met with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche to discuss substantially similar subject matter,” Khanna said.

Jamie Raskin accuses DoJ of cover-up after viewing unredacted Epstein files

A top House Democrat on Monday accused the justice department of making “mysterious redactions” to documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that obscured the names of abusers, while also allowing the identities of the disgraced financier’s victims to become public. Jamie Raskin, House judiciary ranking member, criticized the department after reviewing the unredacted Epstein files at a government facility in Washington DC on the first day they were made available to lawmakers. ...

Raskin told reporters that he wanted to view the complete files to better understand how the justice department handled the redaction process. “I went over there, and I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions, in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims, and so that was troubling to us,” Raskin told reporters.

He accused the justice department of being “in a cover-up mode” and breaking the law. “They violated that precept by releasing the names of a lot of victims, which is either spectacular incompetence and sloppiness on their part, or, as a lot of the survivors believe, a deliberate threat to other survivors who are thinking about coming forward, that they need to be careful because they can be exposed and have their personal information dragged through the mud as well,” Raskin said.

The justice department has released a total of about 3.5m files related to Epstein, and Raskin said there were around 3m more awaiting release. The Maryland congressman said he was only able to review about 30 to 40 of the unredacted files that had been released at one of four computers set up at the justice department facility, which lawmakers must enter without bringing any electronic devices, or staff members who have been researching the issue alongside them. “I saw the names of lots of people, who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons,” Raskin said. He noted Les Wexner, the Victoria’s Secret founder whose association with Epstein is public, is among those whose names were deleted.

Another redacted document Raskin said he saw in full was an email Epstein had sent to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, which contained an account from his lawyers of a conversation with attorneys representing Trump that occurred around 2009. Trump was quoted in it as saying that while Epstein was never a member of his Mar-a-Lago club, he had been a guest and was never asked to leave, which would contradict statements from the president that he had at one point barred him from his Florida property. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is scheduled to testify before the House judiciary committee on Wednesday, and Raskin said he would raise the redactions with her.

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Trump justice department moves to dismiss Steve Bannon criminal case

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice moved to dismiss a criminal case against his former aide Steve Bannon, connected to his refusal to testify before Congress relating to the investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

The controversial hard-right strategist, an ally of Trump, was convicted in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to appear for a deposition before the House committee that investigated the 2021 attack on the Capitol and declining to produce documents requested by the committee.

Federal prosecutors previously said that Bannon believed he was “above the law” by refusing to comply with the subpoena.

Bannon served four months in federal prison in 2024, after a failed attempt to force the US supreme court to reverse his sentence. He was released shortly before the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump defeated Kamala Harris.

The justice department wrote in its unopposed motion on Monday to dismiss the case: “The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”

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US chemical giant to stop producing herbicide called ‘toxic cocktail’ by critics

The chemical giant Corteva will stop producing Enlist Duo, a herbicide considered to be among the most dangerous still used in the US by environmentalists because it contains a mix of Agent Orange and glyphosate, which have both been linked to cancer and widespread ecological damage.

The US military deployed Agent Orange, a chemical weapon, to destroy vegetation during the Vietnam war, causing serious health problems among soldiers and Vietnamese residents. Glyphosate, meanwhile, is a highly controversial and toxic herbicide ingredient that has prompted similar litigation. Both are banned or severely restricted in many industrialized countries.

Despite the risks of combining the substances, the US Environmental Protection Agency has twice approved it for use on food crops. The compound is annually spread on around 4.5m acres of fields in which corn, soybeans and genetically engineered cotton are grown.

The move will bring to an end a decade of litigation and public pressure campaigns to ban Enlist Duo, and advocates are “celebrating it as a win”, said Kristina Sinclair, a staff attorney with the Center for Food Safety (CFS) non-profit, which is a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. “After over a decade of legal battles, rather than try to rebut our arguments in court, the manufacturer pulled Enlist Duo from the market,” Sinclair said. “Our food system never should have been doused in this toxic cocktail, and now never will be again.”

Corteva reported selling more than $1bn in Enlist products in 2022. The Agent Orange chemical 2,4-D will still be used in Enlist One, and a lawsuit that asks a judge to invalidate its approval will continue. In a statement, a Corteva spokesperson said is stopped producing Enlist Duo because it now only represented 1% of sales.

EU urged not to roll back green agenda in effort to revive faltering economy

EU leaders have been warned against a rollback of the green agenda before a summit focused on reviving the bloc’s waning economy. Campaigners from the Climate Action Network, a pan-European group of NGOs, said European industry was “under real pressure” from “high energy prices, ageing assets, global overcapacity and delayed investments”, but these issues could not be solved by watering down climate and environmental policies.

“Deregulation is not an industrial strategy,” the group wrote in an open letter, which argued that the problems facing energy-intensive industries, including steel, cement and chemicals, were driven by prices of fossil fuel-derived energy and global market dynamics, rather than environmental regulation.

The EU economy has been under pressure over the last year amid Donald Trump’s US tariff trade war. Last week the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, said the eurozone economy “remains resilient in a challenging environment” but the outlook was “uncertain” as it left interest rates on hold. ...

Von der Leyen’s commission has proposed 10 “omnibus” proposals to loosen regulation across economic sectors, from the automotive industry to digital, defence, chemicals and farming. However, the green campaigners argue that the deregulation agenda risks weakening the EU’s carbon price and other policies supporting the energy transition. “Without a strong and predictable carbon price, the business case for clean steel, green chemicals, circular materials and electrified industrial production collapses – and with it, the effectiveness of future industrial policy tools,” their letter says.

Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out?

During Cop30 negotiations in Brazil last year, delegates heard a familiar argument: rising emissions are unavoidable for countries pursuing growth. Since the first Cop in the 1990s, developing nations have had looser reduction targets to reflect the economic gap between them and richer countries, which emitted millions of tonnes of CO2 as they pulled ahead. The concession comes from the idea that an inevitable cost of prosperity is environmental harm.

That pattern seems to be holding. In 2024, global GDP per capita reached a new high as did annual carbon emissions. But as climate targets slip and warnings mount that tipping points may already have been crossed, faith in growth for growth’s sake is starting to fracture. This week, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for economies to “move beyond GDP” as a measure of progress, warning that the world’s “existing accounting systems” were driving the planet towards disaster.

His remarks echo an increasingly influential school of economics, known broadly as “post-growth”, that asks what was once unthinkable: will solving the climate crisis mean learning to live without constant expansion? Post-growth economists often reject GDP in favour of new frameworks that account for environmental damage – such as the “doughnut economics” adopted recently by Amsterdam, or New Zealand’s attempt at a “wellbeing budget”.

The field has its disagreements, particularly over the extent to which countries should actively pursue de-growth measures to scale down their economies. But proponents agree that with the planet pushed to the limit, a radical rethink is needed. ... The roots of post-growth can be traced back to one book, which caused a storm upon its publication in the 1970s. Some argue that Limits to Growth underestimated humanity’s ability to adapt in the face of environmental breakdown. This technological optimism underpins the idea of “green growth” – that the world economy can keep expanding while avoiding catastrophe. Advocates point to the uptake of renewables, which has taken place to such an extent in some nations that growth has seemingly been decoupled from emissions.

But experts heavily contest the evidence of decoupling. “It’s inconclusive because it focuses on the wrong thing: annual flows of emissions rather than their accumulation,” said Peter Victor, an emeritus professor at York University in Toronto. “It is the accumulated stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that causes climate change, not the annual flows. We are very far from decoupling the stock of atmospheric carbon dioxide from economic growth.” ... More broadly, since Limits to Growth was published, our understanding of how economic activity is damaging the planet has widened beyond just carbon emissions. Post-growth economics has emerged alongside the study of so-called “planetary boundaries” – hard environmental limits that, once crossed, could have disastrous consequences.

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Also of Interest

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

Iran War Watch: US Moves Towards Attack Footing Despite Questionable Odds of Success

Why the Jury Were Right to Acquit Palestine Action

Israeli prisons 'begin preparations to apply death penalty' for Palestinians

America Psychopathy Continues To Stun (Cuba Edition)

Marco Rubio Is Deliberately Blocking Trump From Cuba Talks

Russia’s Lavrov Says US No Longer Wants To Pursue Its Own Ukraine Peace Proposal

‘Trump Administration Asserts Ambition To Dominate Energy Sector’

Files cast light on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to cryptocurrency

Two senior Norwegian diplomats being investigated over Epstein links

‘We Rely on Hispanic Labor’: ICE Raids Trigger Economic Alarm Bells in Trump States

Prof. Mohammad Marandi : Iran’s Readiness for Escalation

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A Little Night Music

Jimmy Yancey - The Fives

Jimmy Yancey - I Love To Hear My Baby Call My Name

Jimmy Yancey - Two O'Clock Blues

Jimmy Yancey - Rolling The Stone

Jimmy Yancey - Death Letter Blues

Jimmy Yancey - Yancey's Getaway

'Mama' Estelle and Jimmy Yancey - Santa Fe Blues

Jimmy Yancey - Bear Trap Blues

Jimmy Yancey - Yancey's Bugle Call (Take 1)

Jimmy Yancey - Shave 'Em Dry

Jimmy Yancey - Pallet On The Floor

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