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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: J.B. Lenoir

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist J.B. Lenoir. Enjoy!

^{J.B. Lenoir – The Whale Has Swallowed Me}

"Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented."

-- Mark Twain

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News and Opinion

Chris Hedges Report: Epstein & Ohio’s ‘Silicon Heartland’

Under the radar, the billionaire class is building the infrastructure and models necessary to create a dystopian future in which cities become billionaire fiefdoms – completely privatized, governed by dictatorial CEOs and financed by subservient taxpayers. The buildout of data centers is one essential part of the effort to construct a totalitarian capitalist society, which is already advancing.

In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Hedges interviews investigative journalist Whitney Webb, the author of One Nation Under Blackmail, who unravels the complex relationships between elected leaders, the National Security State, the state of Israel and Big Tech.

Webb discusses the methods being used in the Silicon Heartland, the area around Columbus, Ohio, where Les Wexner, who has ties to organized crime and was Jeffrey Epstein’s most notable benefactor, and other powerful billionaires such as Peter Thiel of Palantir, have made significant headway in creating a privately-run city — New Albany. She describes their use of innocent-sounding front groups, such as Jobs Ohio, private development corporations and political bribery to enrich themselves and create what they are marketing as Smart Cities.

Hedges and Webb expose the connections between the billionaires behind this effort and the State of Israel. Webb argues that Israeli startups have been promoted to Big Tech “so that U.S. technological infrastructure on multiple levels would be so intimately enmeshed with Israeli interests that they could never meaningfully boycott Israel.”

After Months of Denials, Pentagon Says US Killed and Wounded Hundreds of Civilians in 2025 Yemen Airstrikes

An internal review conducted by the US Department of Defense found that US airstrikes in Yemen last year killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.

As reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, the Pentagon review estimated that US strikes killed more than 150 Yemeni civilians while wounding nearly 250 others.

The strikes were carried out as part of an operation authorized by President Donald Trump targeting Houthi rebels, who were suspected of launching attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The body count from US strikes in Yemen could be even larger than the Pentagon’s current estimates, which only cover three attacks that were determined to have “more likely than not” harmed civilians. An additional 15 incidents are still being reviewed by the DOD.

The deadliest operation carried out by US forces was a strike on Ras Issa Port in the city Hodeidah, which the DOD estimates killed 80 people and wounded 171 others.

As noted by NBC News, the DOD initially said the Yemen strikes did not cause any civilian deaths, and the Pentagon “has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress.”

Stanford University historian Robert Crews remarked that the internal DOD report shows that there is “no end in sight for America’s brutal colonial wars” and “still no substantive domestic anti-colonial movement in the US.”

Human rights groups have long been critical of US operations in Yemen, and Human Rights Watch last year described the attack on Ras Issa Port as “an apparent war crime.”

Scott Ritter: Trump Turns the Screws: The High-Stakes Move Against Iran

Union reports 108 attacks on Palestinian journalists in July

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has documented 108 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinian journalists and media workers in the occupied West Bank last month.

The syndicate’s Freedoms Committee said in a statement on Sunday that the violations ranged from detention and beating to interrogation, obstruction of coverage and the seizure or destruction of press equipment, describing a pattern that has made it increasingly difficult for journalists to document Israeli military raids and settler violence on the ground.

Brief detentions and restrictions on reporting were the most common violations, with 58 cases recorded. The committee also documented 11 settler attacks on journalists, including physical assaults, shoving and threats, mostly while crews covered settler attacks and military raids elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, along with 12 cases in which Israeli forces fired stun grenades or tear gas at journalists, causing some to suffocate.

Six journalists were beaten, and four sustained bleeding injuries while covering developments in Gaza, including from shrapnel. Two others were detained and four interrogated about their reporting.

The committee recorded four raids on journalists’ homes or media offices, including the closure of one outlet, three cases of equipment being confiscated or destroyed, two instances of deleted footage, and two expulsions of journalists from the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israel HUMILIATES Trump Ceasefire With CONSTANT BOMBINGS

War of Economic Sieges: Who Can Last the Longest

Pressley Demands Israel Release US Citizen Sama Safi, Abducted by IDF More Than Two Months Ago

US Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Tuesday demanded that the Israeli government release Sama Safi, a 20-year-old US citizen who was taken into custody by Israeli military forces two months ago while staying with family in the occupied West Bank.

In a social media post, Pressley (D-Mass.) revealed she recently met with Safi’s parents, who said their daughter has been subjected to “inhumane conditions” during her two-month detention, while also citing concerns about an unspecified chronic health condition that they said has been gradually worsening.

Pressley cited a statement from an attorney representing Safi that “there is little credible evidence” that warrants Safi’s continued detention. Israel has so far not leveled any criminal charges against Safi.

“I’ve been calling on the Trump administration to secure Sama’s immediate release, continued access to medical care, and end all unjust and arbitrary detentions,” wrote Pressley. “And I’ll keep fighting for Sama’s release and demanding accountability from the Israeli government and the Trump administration.”

The Guardian reported in June that Safi, a psychology student at the West Bank’s Birzeit University, was arrested along with three other women around the same time. An Israeli military spokesperson told The Guardian that they were all arrested “after promoting hostile terrorist activity and additional terrorist-related activities.”

Safi’s case on Monday was cited by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in his call for US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to resign from his position.

Van Hollen accused Huckabee of remaining silent about Safi and other Americans unlawfully detained or otherwise mistreated by Israel, and said the former Republican Arkansas governor had become “a complete apologist for the most extreme Israeli government in history.”

Robert Barnes: Israel's Become a Political Pariah, Republicans Take Note

Human rights groups sue Trump administration over ‘crippling’ ICC sanctions

Four prominent US human rights organizations have accused the Trump administration of using its “crippling” sanctions regime against the international criminal court (ICC) to undermine global efforts to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court on Tuesday, the groups – the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Institute – argued that the administration’s targeting of the ICC, as well as of groups and individuals affiliated with it or assisting its work, amounts to a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice”, the groups said.

The suit challenges Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which authorized sanctions on ICC officials, judges and others working to support its investigation of Israeli crimes in Palestine – one of 18 investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity the Netherlands-based tribunal is overseeing.

Soldiers Try To JUMP OVERBOARD As USS Lincoln MORALE COLLAPSES

Putin Orders Retaliatory Seizures By Russian Navy Of EU Ships; Orekhov Crisis Kiev Brigade Trapped

Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining supreme court

The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows. The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005.

The findings come as the supreme court prepares to take up a case in which the oil companies Suncor Energy and Exxon asked the justices to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against fossil fuel producers for the climate-warming effects of their products.

The supreme court said this month it will hear oral arguments in the case on 5 October, the opening day of its new term. The Trump administration, which is siding with the oil companies, has asked for 10 minutes of argument time. Court Accountability and other groups have called for a Senate committee to investigate Alito, the sole supreme court justice with holdings in energy companies, and said he should recuse himself. He and the court rejected those calls.

Supreme court ethics rules focus specifically on investments in companies named in court cases. In May, a supreme court spokesperson told NBC News that Alito was not required to recuse himself from the Suncor lawsuit as his holdings do not include the companies directly named in the case, Suncor and ExxonMobil. But Lisa Graves, co-founder of Court Accountability who authored the new analysis, said Alito’s oil-tied wealth provides grounds to question whether Alito can impartially weigh in on cases affecting the entire fossil fuel sector.

[Much more detail at the link. -js]

ICE to spend up to $20m on gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

ICE plans to spend up to $20m (£15m) to purchase thousands of gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The devices, called Glove (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), are manufactured by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky.

According to the manufacturer, “the discomfort associated with the stimulation is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks or scars”. The company has advertised the device as a “humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform”. The gloves have previously been used in settings such as jails in the US.

Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the plan, saying ICE officers already face criticism for their use of force with little oversight or accountability while enforcing Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Associated Press that she questioned the use of the devices for civil immigration enforcement. “ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do,” she said. “Introducing gloves that can so easily be used to deliver terrible pain in encounters is a recipe for harm to the public.”

ACLU asks judge to block new Trump order restricting birthright citizenship

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other advocacy groups have asked a federal judge to block Donald Trump from enforcing new executive ⁠orders he signed last week in his latest attempt to restrict eligibility ​for birthright citizenship in the US. In a Tuesday court filing, the groups called the US president’s new orders an improper attempt to evade the US supreme court’s 30 June rejection of his first, more sweeping bid to deny automatic citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents.

The supreme court said that Trump’s original executive order, issued the day he began ⁠his second White House term last year, violated the US constitution’s 14th amendment. “Despite the supreme court’s clear direction, the president continues ​to claim for himself the power to identify ‌categories of children whose citizenship he intends ‌to deny,” the filing said. “The court should underscore that the government may not strip away class members’ citizenship through any ‌executive orders or other similarly flawed assertions of executive power over birthright citizenship.”

Trump has long sought to dismantle birthright citizenship and has made the effort a central pillar of his second-term immigration crackdown, though he has thus far been unsuccessful. He also lashed out at the supreme court on Thursday over what he called “a very unfortunate decision … concerning birthright”. He told reporters: “It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair.”

Trump’s lawless deportation machine: ICE actions ruled illegal 16,000 times

Federal judges have ruled 16,000 times in the past year that actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in detaining immigrants are illegal, according to a report published by Politico on Sunday. Two-thirds of the rulings concern the same issue: the refusal of ICE to allow detained immigrants to seek release on bond. In a two-page memo issued July 8, 2025, ICE overturned a longstanding policy that immigrants arrested inside the United States for civil immigration violations were eligible to seek release on bond.

According to Politico:

Every prior president applied mandatory detention without bond only to people apprehended soon after crossing the border or who were deemed to be dangerous, not for those who had built law-abiding lives—married U.S. citizens, had children, held jobs, paid taxes—since they arrived. ICE’s new memo erased that distinction.

Some 469 federal judges have found the new policy to be illegal, issuing more than 10,000 orders to release detained immigrants on bond, after the courts were flooded with suits filed on behalf of those imprisoned under savage conditions in detention camps run by ICE or private prison contractors like The GEO Group and CoreCivic. About 50 federal judges, nearly all appointed by Trump, have upheld the new policy. The Trump administration has fought every single one of these cases, appealing them to circuit courts, which have split on the issue, virtually ensuring that the legality of the detention policy will ultimately be decided by the right wing-dominated Supreme Court, likely in the coming term.

The purpose of the ICE memo, issued by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, was “to erase the due process rights of millions of immigrants who have resided in the U.S. for years, even those without criminal records and people who have attended all of their ICE check-ins or immigration court proceedings,” Politico reported. The news website’s report continued:

The thousands of similar cases that have landed in federal court over the past year included: the mother of four U.S. citizen children, including a nursing 6-month-old; a father and owner of a roofing company who has lived in Minnesota since 2019 with no criminal record; a 22-year-old, pregnant Mexican woman who had lived in the U.S. since she was 6; and scores more like them.

Because ICE detainees must file habeas corpus petitions seeking release on bond in the federal court district where they are held, ICE has sought to block such suits by moving detainees without notice to other prisons in other states or even across the country, disrupting communication with attorneys and families. Even when detainees overcame these obstacles and succeeded in winning court orders for their release, ICE has frequently delayed execution of the orders or outright defied them, deliberately prolonging detentions in an effort to coerce immigrants into “self-deporting.”

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What the Left Should DEMAND On Palestine in 2028 (w/ Trita Parsi)

Analysis Shows Insurance Industry Funding Third Way as It Plots ‘War’ on Medicare for All Backers

The investigative outlet Sludge published an analysis on Monday showing that the health insurance industry is among the corporate donors to Third Way, a think tank that is reportedly preparing to pour $15 million into an effort to combat the rise of candidates who support Medicare for All and other progressive policies.

Third Way, which has long been hostile to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and Medicare for All in particular, does not publicly disclose its donors. But Sludge’s David Moore uncovered some of the group’s benefactors by examining corporate tax filings, which revealed that the private insurance industry group Better Solutions for Healthcare (BSFH) donated $50,000 to Third Way’s advocacy arm in 2024.

Among BSFH’s members are the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the health insurance industry trade group AHIP. Moore noted that BSFH is “run out of the offices of leading Republican digital and strategy firm Targeted Victory in Arlington” and was founded by GOP operative Alexander Schriver.

Sludge’s review of corporate tax filings showed other healthcare industry donors to Third Way, including CVS Health and Johnson & Johnson.

“Another corporate lobbying heavyweight, the Business Roundtable (BRT), gave $50,000 to Third Way in 2024, up from the $25,000 it gave in 2023 and down from the $75,000 it gave in 2022,” Moore reported. “Each year in 2019, 2020, and 2021, BRT gave $50,000 to Third Way. The CEO group’s health insurance members include the heads of UnitedHealth, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), CVS Health—all members of AHIP (formerly America’s Health Insurance Plans), save for UnitedHealth—as well as healthcare company Centene and many Big Pharma firms like Johnson & Johnson.”

NEW: Who's funding the dark money Third Way, dug up in most recent tax filings:

- Republican-run insurance industry front group
- Health insurance giant
- Big Pharma
- More insurance lobbyists

...as it fights the Democratic left and Medicare for All:https://t.co/w787PVhxsH

— David Moore (@ppolitics) August 11, 2026

Moore’s reporting came days Third Way president Jonathan Cowan told The New York Times that his organization is “preparing for the next war that is coming.”

Cowan said that “it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potentially presidential swing states”—a comment published two days after progressive epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal supporter of Medicare for All, won the Democratic primary for a critical US Senate seat in Michigan.

The Times story characterized Third Way as “a leading centrist Democratic group,” without mentioning the organization’s corporate ties.

“Post El-Sayed’s win, Third Way has done media hits in NYT, CNN, WaPo, Vox, and not one of these outlets has mentioned who funds Third Way historically or bothered to ask who their current donors are,” journalist Adam Johnson wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, praising Sludge’s review of tax records.

“Journalists are, in principle, supposed to do what David did here: investigate ulterior motives, follow the money, dig deeper,” Johnson wrote. “Alas what mainstream outlets have done for Third Way this past week is credulously take them at their word they are merely ‘concerned about electability.’”

Earlier this year, Third Way published a memo attacking Medicare for All and its purportedly “astronomical cost.” (The memo does not mention research showing that a Medicare for All system would cost less than the status quo, while providing comprehensive universal health coverage and saving tens of thousands of lives per year.)

A recent study by Yale University researchers found that a Medicare for All system would reduce US national health expenditures by more than $1 trillion a year and “save over 114,000 lives annually.”

Dr. Ed Weisbart, the national board secretary of Physicians for a National Health Program, told Sludge that “anybody who chooses to attack [Medicare for All] is putting themselves out of step with what I think most people in our country see as the solution.”

“People want this, even when they understand that of course it’s going to mean a change in their taxes—but they also understand that for 95% of people or so, the change in taxes is smaller than the amount that they would save by not having premiums, not having co-pays, not having deductibles,” said Weisbart. “People are getting that. And if you try to market a political view that’s opposite, people see right through that.”

AIPAC, Schumer CRUSHED In Key Minnesota Race

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AI’s potential climate benefits outweighed by role in boosting fossil fuels

AI-driven productivity gains enable more planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels than they avoid from renewables, a study has found. Researchers modelled the technical potential for AI to boost clean power generation along with projections for how it can help produce coal, oil and gas. Across 64 scenarios, they found net yearly carbon pollution rose by 0.47-1.8 gigatonnes, or about 1-5% of the energy sector’s annual emissions.

The study is the first to quantify the climate impact of AI across the full power sector. Previous research has explored its indirect climate benefits – such as reducing renewable downtime and optimising electricity grids – while ignoring the extra pollution from increasing productivity in drilling oil wells and extracting gas. “What most studies have done so far … is compare the datacentre energy use with the emissions savings AI has,” said Lynn Kaack, an assistant professor of computer science and public policy at the Hertie School who provided feedback on a draft of the research. “They completely omit this picture of AI causing increases in emissions.”

The researchers found net emissions only fell in scenarios where AI did not increase productivity in the fossil fuel sector. If clean and dirty energy facilities were to adopt AI at similar rates, they found, the productivity gains for renewables would have to outpace those for fossil fuels by at least four times for emissions to break even.

The International Energy Agency estimates that AI could boost technically recoverable oil and gas reserves by 5% and cut the cost of deepwater offshore projects by 10%. Oil and gas executives have been enthusiastic about the extra fuel that AI has allowed them to find, and celebrated its emerging impact as “the next fracking boom”.

Honest Government Ad | Ai Data Centres

Famed tourist destinations evacuated as wildfire threatens California’s Big Sur

Evacuations have been ordered for areas along California’s famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains. The Timber fire in Monterey county started on Sunday and grew to 2,000 acres by Tuesday morning, according to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency. Nearly 500 fire personnel had been assigned to the fire in the Los Padres national forest.

The evacuations have affected famed tourist destinations such as the Nepenthe restaurant, the Henry Miller Memorial Library and the Alila Ventana resort, as well as state parks during the region’s busiest season. Part of the Pacific Coast Highway was closed for non-residents, and officials urged visitors to avoid the area entirely.

Firefighters worked to build containment lines along the Highway 1 corridor, Cal Fire said on Monday, and have boxed in 5% of the blaze. Ground crews are working to access difficult terrain, the agency said, but the fire is moving slowly, burning primarily along the ground through grass, brush and oak woodland and has not moved into the tree tops.

Officials said they are focused on protecting area homes and keeping the fire from moving across the Pacific Coast Highway. The cause of the fire, which started on Saturday evening and now threatens 259 buildings, is still under investigation.

Firefighters are fighting blazes across the US west. Canada put its military on standby on Monday to help battle deadly wildfires in British Columbia.

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Also of Interest

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

Ukraine Increases Security By Ending Count Of Missiles

Iran Says the US Has an ‘Addiction’ to Economic Sanctions

Mamdani Backs Proposal to End Amazon’s ‘Exploitative’ Delivery Model in New York City

Local US Cops Adding AI Drones to Tech Surveillance

A Groundbreaking US Political Defeat for Israel

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A Little Night Music

J.B. Lenoir – I've Been Down So Long

J.B. Lenoir – Slow Down

J.B. Lenoir – Eisenhower Blues

J.B. Lenoir - Down in Mississippi

J.B Lenoir - Feelin' Good

J.B Lenoir - Mama What About Your Daughter

J.B Lenoir - I Don't Know

J.B Lenoir - The Mojo Boogie

J.B. Lenoir – I Feel So Good

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