The Evening Blues - 10-5-22
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features blues guitar player Memphis Minnie. Enjoy!
Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie - When the Levee Breaks
"Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empire earlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future."
-- Cornel West
News and Opinion
Biden Lies at the United Nations
It takes a special kind of hubris for a president of the United States to speak at the United Nations, the place where international law is supposed to be upheld and defended. Yet the representative of the worst violator of international law predictably shows up every September when the United Nations General Assembly holds its annual session. The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez got it right when he spoke in 2006:
“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation, and pillage of the peoples of the world.”
Chavez is no longer with us, and Joe Biden is the third man to serve as U.S. president since George W. Bush was compared to the devil. But the words are as true now as they were then. This year Biden’s speech was replete with the usual drivel about the United States being some sort of guarantor of peace. Among other things, he said that permanent members of the Security Council should “...refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective.”
Perhaps Biden thinks that the rest of the world has amnesia. Every time the members of UN General Assembly condemn Israeli apartheid it is the U.S. that predictably steps in with a Security Council veto to protect its ally and partner in crime. Twelve of the 14 U.S. vetoes since 2000 were made on behalf of Israel. Any U.S. proposal calling for change in the Security Council structure is intended to weaken China and Russia’s veto power and to bring in its own puppets such as Germany and Japan.
Of course, Russia bashing was the focus of Biden’s speech with false claims of a nuclear threat, unprovoked attack, and accusations of war crimes. He didn’t mention well documented Ukrainian war crimes such as the shelling of civilians in Donetsk. Worse yet, there was no acknowledgement that Ukraine and Russia were negotiating until the U.S. and the U.K. intervened and scuttled the talks. Biden’s speech was full of projection and every condemnation leveled against Russia or Iran or Venezuela was instead an indictment of U.S. behavior in the world. ...
Biden did make one valid statement. “Because if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for.” It is unfortunate that the U.S. ignores the consequences of its own actions.
Nord Stream Operators: Authorities WON'T ALLOW US To Inspect Damaged Pipelines
It looks like it will take 20 days to clean up the Nordstream crime scene and remove any evidence that can finger the western perpetrators.
Nord Stream operator says unable to inspect damaged sections of gas pipeline
The operator of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is unable to inspect damaged caused to the two-string link because it has not yet received the relevant approvals, it said late Oct. 4. ...
"As of today, Nord Stream AG is unable to inspect the damaged sections of the gas pipeline due to the lack of earlier requested necessary permits," it said in a statement.
Nord Stream AG said that in line with its expectations, the pressure in both lines of Nord Stream had stabilized as of Oct. 3. ...
Sweden, it said, had imposed a ban on shipping, anchoring, diving, the use of underwater vehicles, and geophysical mapping while it conducted a state investigation into the damage. In addition, Denmark had informed Nord Stream AG that the processing time of its request for a survey may take more than 20 working days.
Finally, Nord Stream AG said, the owner of the appropriately equipped survey vessel it had chartered still did not have approval from the Norwegian foreign ministry to depart.
German deindustrialization, transitioning to service based economy
Despite Calls for Diplomacy to End War, US Confirms More Weapons Headed to Ukraine
Proponents of a negotiated diplomatic solution to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine this week decried the Biden administration's latest military assistance package for the embattled country, warning that the longer the fight continues, the greater the chance of a catastrophic nuclear war.
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the U.S. will deliver up to $625 million worth of additional armaments and ammunition to Ukraine following Russia's illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions last week, a move that prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to formally apply for NATO membership.
The new package includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and an unknown number of guided missiles; 16 155mm howitzers and 75,000 precision-guided artillery rounds; 1,000 155mm remote anti-armor mines; 16 105mm howitzers; 30,000 120mm mortar rounds; 200 MaxxPro mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles; 200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition; and other armaments.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the new aid—which comes on top of more than $15 billion in American military assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24—is "carefully calibrated to make the most difference on the battlefield and strengthen Ukraine's hand at the negotiating table when the time is right."
Peace advocates stressed that—with Russian President Vladimir Putin's repeated threats to use nuclear weapons—the right time is right now, and that the United States and NATO allies should stop trying to weaken Russia by prolonging the war.
"The longer the war goes on, the longer it's maintained, the more the prospects for a diplomatic settlement diminish," U.S. political dissident and professor Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman in a Monday interview. "The longer the war continues, the more the window closes."
However, Chomsky noted that the United States and Britain "are keeping to the principle that the war must continue to severely weaken Russia—meaning no negotiated settlements, with all the consequences that follow."
Harry J. Kazianis, senior editor at 19FortyFive and president of the Rogue States Project, a bipartisan national security think tank based in Washington, D.C., wrote Monday for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft that "tensions are rising by the second," while "the chances of a nuclear war increase significantly every day that passes."
"Considering the stakes—among them, the possibility that Russia will feel so boxed in that it will turn to its arsenal of 6,400 nuclear warheads and try to end the Ukraine war on its own terms despite the risk of a nuclear holocaust—one would think talks would already be happening as we speak," Kazianis continued.
"Sadly," he added, "due to the Western narrative that Ukraine is 'winning' the war against Moscow, the Biden administration appears to believe it can put enough pressure on Putin with more weapons for Ukraine that he will give up his newly annexed territories and go home with his atomic tail between his legs."
According to recent polling by the Quincy Institute and Data for Progress, 49% of Americans want Biden to do more to seek a diplomatic solution to the war.
OPEC+ makes big oil cut to boost prices, pump costs may rise
Truss’s cabinet in open warfare over key policies and coup accusations
Liz Truss’s cabinet is in open warfare over the 45p tax U-turn and benefit cuts, with the home secretary accusing fellow Tory MPs of a coup against the prime minister. On another chaotic day at the Conservative party conference, ministerial discipline broke down, with cabinet colleagues disagreeing over key policies and bitter infighting over the decision to scrap plans to ditch the top rate of tax.
In some of the most provocative remarks, Suella Braverman said she was “disappointed” by the U-turn – and suggested Tory MPs were trying to overthrow Truss’s government. The home secretary was backed by Simon Clarke, the levelling up secretary, but criticised by Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, who said talk of a coup was “inflammatory”.
Braverman appeared to be taking aim at the former cabinet ministers Michael Gove and Grant Shapps, who dominated the first day of the Birmingham event by criticising the abolition of the 45p tax rate.
On Tuesday, Shapps suggested Truss had about 10 days to turn things around and signalled MPs may try to remove her if polls continued to show Labour on course for a landslide majority.
Worth a look:
The Limits of Change in Britain
There are two lessons to learn from the U.K.’s current economic meltdown — and commentators are obscuring both of them. The first, and more obvious conclusion, is that Britain has a completely dysfunctional political and media system. It has allowed two mediocre, clueless careerists like Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to reach the pinnacle of the power pyramid — and then car-crash the economy because they refused to listen to economic advisers whose sole job was to stop them sabotaging a system carefully calibrated to maintain a transatlantic Ponzi scheme designed to enrich a wealthy elite while trashing the planet. ...
Truss’ elevation to prime minister, immediately in the wake of Johnson’s festival of cronyism and corruption, demonstrates that these filters no longer function. The system is breaking down ideologically just as surely as the infrastructure of supply chains and gas pipelines is breaking down materially. We are in store for a rocky ride at the hands of serial blunderers and conmen over the coming years.
The second lesson is in many ways the flip side of the first. Truss may have triggered the economic crisis through a toxic mix of ego, incompetence and ideological fervour, but we should be extremely wary of focusing exclusively on blaming her. She didn’t do the equivalent of jumping off a cliff on the assumption that she could defy gravity: the crisis was not caused because she violated some fundamental, scientific law of economics. The current crisis is manmade. She is being punished for doing things “the market” — meaning people who control our money — do not like.
Those functionaries of capitalism don’t sit around plotting how they will react to a budget like Kwarteng’s. They responded in unison much as a big shoal of fish suddenly and collectively take a new course. They operate as a hive mind. ... “The market” believes Truss is in danger of wrecking the system that upholds their privilege — by accruing too much debt while also starving the government of income by cutting taxation too much. Because economics is not a science but a kind of elite formation psychosis, the instinctual reaction of “the market” to Kwarteng’s budget was to … wreck Britain’s economy.
The Bank of England stepped in not to change the fundamentals of the economy but to “reassure the market.” You don’t need to reassure a law of nature.
[Much more at the link. - js]
Colombia to restart peace talks with the country’s largest active guerrilla group
Colombia’s government and the nation’s largest remaining guerrilla group have announced that they will restart peace talks next month for the first time since 2018. After meeting in Caracas, representatives of the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army issued a statement saying a start date for the peace talks would be announced after the first week of November. The statement added that Norway, Venezuela and Cuba would be “guarantor states” in the talks, and that the participation of civil society groups would be “essential” for the peace talks to succeed.
The ELN was founded in the 1960s by students, union leaders and Catholic priests inspired by Cuba’s revolution. The group is believed to have about 4,000 fighters in Colombia and is also present deep inside Venezuela where it runs illegal goldmines and drug trafficking routes....
In a press conference after the meeting between both sides, Colombia’s peace comissioner Danilo Rueda said that the ELN had shown changes in its behaviour which had enabled it to gain the government’s trust. Rueda said that the rebel group had recently released hostages and scaled back attacks against the Colombian military.
The ELN did not disclose any details on what it would seek in exchange for laying down its weapons. But the commander, García, hinted that the group was looking for political and economic changes. “The way to look for peace is not just by thinking about weapons but by attacking the root causes of this conflict which are inequality and the lack of democracy,” García said.
15-Yr-Old Girl KILLED While Running To Police For Help, Officers BLAME THE VICTIM
Civil liberties in decline:
Surveillance shift: San Francisco pilots program allowing police to live monitor private security cameras
Last week San Francisco city leaders approved a 15-month pilot allowing police to monitor live footage from surveillance cameras owned by consenting businesses and civilians without a warrant.
The 7-4 decision by the San Francisco board of supervisors was a major loss for a broad coalition of civil liberties groups that had argued the move would give police unprecedented surveillance powers. It also seemingly marked a departure from the progressive stance on surveillance the city’s leadership had previously maintained.
In May 2019, the board had made history by making the city the first to ban the use of facial recognition by any local government agency. At the time, supervisor Aaron Peskin said, the city had an “an outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology”.
But more than three years, a pandemic and many protests against police injustice later, some members of the board now say they need to balance concerns for privacy with the need to allow law enforcement officials to “utilize certain technologies to make San Francisco safer”.
Privacy advocacy groups say the shift is part of a larger phenomenon in cities across the US, where fears of both perceived and real increases in crime have prompted police and elected officials to expand the use of surveillance technology, even if there isn’t always clear evidence those technologies are effective at deterring or solving crimes.
US supreme court hears case that could gut voting rights for minority groups
The supreme court’s conservative majority appeared unsettled on Tuesday on whether it would gut one of the most powerful remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act in a case that has profound implications for the representation of Black Americans and other minority groups.
The case, Merrill v Milligan, centers on how much those who draw electoral districts should be required to consider race. It involves a dispute over the seven congressional districts Alabama drew last year. Only one of those districts has a majority-Black population, even though Black people make up a quarter of Alabama’s population. Earlier this year, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the configuration was illegal under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which guarantees minority groups equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process. It ordered Alabama to draw a second district with a minority population. The supreme court stepped in earlier this year and halted that order while the case proceeded.
The state’s solicitor general, Edmund LaCour, argued on Tuesday that the lower court’s ruling was incorrect because it required Alabama to consider race above traditional, race-neutral criteria. In order to require Alabama draw a second majority-minority district, he said, the plaintiffs should have first had to prove that such a map could exist without taking race into account at all. He argued that computer simulations programmed with race-neutral criteria never produced a map with a second majority-Black district.
Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s most conservative jurists, seized on that point repeatedly in support of Alabama’s argument. “How can it be reasonably configured if you can’t get that map with a computer simulation that takes into account all of the traditional race-neutral factors?” he said. But even Alito acknowledged that some of the arguments Alabama made were “far-reaching”. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative justice, said at one point she would be “struggling in the same way others have about narrowing down exactly what your argument is”.
Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson all seemed deeply skeptical about all of Alabama’s arguments. Embracing the state’s approach would upend how the court has long approached section 2 redistricting cases. Kagan said the case was a “slam dunk” case under the court’s existing precedent before laying out how she believed the lower court had correctly evaluated the facts. “It seems to me you’re coming here … and saying change the way we look at section 2 and its application,” she said.
California’s three-year drought continues with no relief in sight
California has witnessed its three driest years on record and the drought shows no signs of abating, officials said Monday. The dry spell set the stage for catastrophic wildfires and has strained water resources and caused conflicts over usage. “We are actively planning for another dry year,” said Jeanine Jones, drought manager for the state’s department of water resources, who was discussing California’s status at the conclusion of its water year, which ended 30 September.
This water year saw record rainfall in October and the driest January-to-March period in at least a century. Even these deluges, which at times produced flooding and debris flows, weren’t enough to combat the state’s dry spell. Drought-stricken landscapes do better with soft wetting rains than they do with surges, and it will take more than a few winter storms to ameliorate California’s water shortages.
Fueled by the climate crisis, which will both worsen dry conditions and spur stronger storms, this weather whiplash is likely to become more common as the planet warms, scientists say.
Spiking temperatures exacerbate and intensify drought conditions, baking moisture out of landscapes at the same time that plants, animals and people require more moisture to adapt to hot conditions. Meanwhile, the weather phenomenon La Niña, a pattern characterized by surface ocean temperatures that can cause heat increases and rainfall shortages, is also expected to occur for a third straight year, increasing the potential for less precipitation.
Another dry year would mean little to no water deliveries from state supplies to southern California cities beyond what’s needed for drinking and bathing. Farmers who rely on state and federal supplies would also see minimal water during another dry year, putting even greater strain on groundwater supplies often used as a backup to keep crops alive.
WALL STREET, EPA Are Behind Jackson's Water Crisis: Matthew Cunningham-Cook
Wall Street Is Behind Jackson’s Water Crisis
In August, clean water stopped flowing from residents’ taps in Jackson, Mississippi. The crisis lasted more than six weeks, leaving 150,000 people without a consistent source of safe water. The catastrophe can be traced back to a decision by a credit ratings agency four years ago that massively inflated the city’s borrowing costs for infrastructure improvements, most notably for its water and sewer system
n 2018, ratings analysts at Moody’s Investor Service — a credit rating agency with a legacy of misconduct — downgraded Jackson’s bond rating to a junk status, citing in part the “low wealth and income indicators of residents.” The decision happened even though Jackson has never defaulted on its debt.
Moody’s move jacked up the price of borrowing for Jackson, costing the cash-strapped city between $2 and $4 million per year in additional debt service costs — a massive financial roadblock to officials’ plans to fix the municipality’s aging water system. And since the state of Mississippi and the federal government refused to use their powers to address the city’s infrastructure problems, that meant Jackson was essentially powerless to stop the impending catastrophe.
The situation underscores how Wall Street works to prevent governments from fixing their public works and contributing to an infrastructure crisis nationwide. Such actions by ratings agencies are particularly harmful in majority Black and Brown areas like Jackson, which have tight budgets and often receive minimal federal support. ...
“The practices of the ratings agencies are often extremely racist,” Brittany Alston, research director at the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), told The Lever. “We did an analysis that showed that all the cities at the bottom of the ratings scale have been majority-minority. As I’ve been monitoring the reporting, I’ve noted how the local government is characterized, I’ve heard the term ‘mismanagement’ multiple times.”
Alston continued: “I think that term has been used to really vilify local governments who are working with what they have, and are struggling because they’re stuck in a system that has denied them federal support for decades.” The federal government’s share of contributions to water infrastructure fell from 31 percent in 1977 to just 4 percent in 2017.
Florida's Deadliest Hurricane in Years May Worsen Inequality, Housing Amid DeSantis's Culture War
Wax worm saliva rapidly breaks down plastic bags, scientists discover
Enzymes that rapidly break down plastic bags have been discovered in the saliva of wax worms, which are moth larvae that infest beehives.
The enzymes are the first reported to break down polyethylene within hours at room temperature and could lead to cost-effective ways of recycling the plastic.
The discovery came after one scientist, an amateur beekeeper, cleaned out an infested hive and found the larvae started eating holes in a plastic refuse bag. The researchers said the study showed insect saliva may be “a depository of degrading enzymes which could revolutionise [the cleanup of polluting waste]”.
Polyethylene makes up 30% of all plastic production and is used in bags and other packaging that make up a significant part of worldwide plastic pollution. The only recycling at scale today uses mechanical processes and creates lower-value products.
Chemical breakdown could create valuable chemicals or, with some further processing, new plastic, thereby avoiding the need for new virgin plastic made from oil. The enzymes can be easily synthesised and overcome a bottleneck in plastic degradation, the researchers said, which is the initial breaking of the polymer chains. That usually requires a lot of heating, but the enzymes work at normal temperatures, in water and at neutral pH.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Ukraine - What Explains The Recent Russian Retreats?
Oil Traders Are Cashing In on Volatile Markets
Nobody Cares About The Labour Files
Mexico: reporters and activists hacked with NSO spyware despite assurances
Hypothermia deaths of unhoused people rise sharply in Los Angeles, records reveal
The Onion defends right to parody in very real supreme court brief supporting local satirist
Biden Promises Puerto Rico $60M for Hurricane Fiona. Will U.S. Repeat Mistakes of Hurricane Maria?
Left WAR For Deep State Control Under Biden
Ben & Jerry’s Founder Showing Up At Assange Rally!
80 Percent Of Twitter Accounts Are Bots!
A Little Night Music
Memphis Minnie - Shout the Boogie
Memphis Minnie - Bumble Bee
Memphis Minnie - I Hate To See The Sun Go Down
Memphis Minnie - I'm Selling My Pork Chops (but I'm Giving My Gravy Away)
Memphis Minnie - In My Girlish Days
Memphis Minnie - Joe Louis Strut
Memphis Minnie - Dirty Mother For You
Memphis Minnie - Pig Meat On The Line
Memphis Minnie & Little Walter - Lake Michigan
Memphis Minnie - Kissing In The Dark
Comments
Indeed
It’s also unfortunate that America’s warmongers don’t think the UN rules apply to them and that they think they should be in charge of who rules other countries. Here is one of the biggest and most blood thirsty sociopathic person who has ever walked the earth. John Bolton.
John Bolton wants US to ‘change regime’ in Russia
Weird how Pelosi said that Trump was the most dangerous president evah and yet Biden hasn’t canceled most of the things Trump did that democrats said they disagreed with isn’t it? As the article points out, Biden still hasn’t reinstated the Iran deal and he probably won’t because he’s demanding all the things that Trump did and has imposed even more sanctions on them. Cuba is still a no go for Americans and Biden hasn’t reinstated what Obama did. Venezuela’s oil is still not allowed on the market because…reasons. Glad to see the adults have returned to America’s government aren’t you?
Here are 2 new authors worth reading on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I think I’ve linked to Big Serge before. And William Schryver. Both have interesting comments to say about the recent events in Ukraine and where Russia goes now that the 4 areas have voted to return to Russia. Both have been mentioned in comments on MoA and Naked Capitalism.
Is there any reason Biden’s labor agency hasn’t cracked down on Amazon’s abhorrent labor laws?
Amazon just suspended 50 workers who didn’t return to work after a fire at one of their distribution centers. Another government agency that has been captured by those it’s supposed to regulate. Anyone know what happened to the DEA agents during Bush 2 that were caught using drugs and snorting cocaine off people’s nether regions? Did they get fired or just put on paid leave till the smoke cleared?
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
heh, bolton is still an idiot. if there is a coup in russia that takes out putin, it seems quite likely that it will install military hard-liners who will be far more aggressive than putin. a coup is a roll of the dice, and since it would be so obvious that the u.s. was behind it, there will certainly be a backlash. only a neocon moron could believe that we would be greeted as liberators.
heh, i'm thinking that biden's dol doesn't want to go to war with bezos.
I especially got a kick out of this
How many years has Russia tried to join the west and NATO only to be kicked to the curb and told that they aren’t welcome in NATO? And I’m sure that Bolton knows what NATO's objectives are regarding Russia and Germany. This blatant lying will be eaten up by the shitlibs who might even welcome Bolton into their hearts. Blehh! I’m betting that people in Russia got a belly laugh out of him saying that.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
On that note
Paul Craig Roberts nails it.
The Entire World Is Threatened by the Total Ignorance of American Governing Elites
Rarely do I agree with Roberts on everything he says and especially his thinking that Russia has been too slow to accomplish their goals in Ukraine, but here he admits that Putin has been trying to stay in bounds of international law. Biden’s string pullers could have addressed Putin’s concerns about Russia’s safety and derailed this idiotic war, but they didn’t. And remember that sanctions against Russia went into effect 2 days before Russia crossed the border. Do people even know that? No because the mainstream media has been lying to us about Russia Russia Russia for 5 years and has made Putin sound like a madman. And instead of letting Ukraine and Russia work out the problem Biden and the European poodles derailed the agreement and instead made sure that tens of thousands of people would die in Ukraine and even more in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Gawd help us with these idiots in charge.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
yep...
back during the honeymoon period when the west thought that putin was the cat's pyjamas, putin asked pointedly to join nato and was rejected.
Need a laugh?
Zelensky travels to America to discuss how to defeat the Russian devils. Biden takes Zelensky on a break to a ranch in Texas. They go horse riding. They come across a cow with its head caught in the fence. Biden very spritely gets down off his horse, walks towards the cow, unzips his trousers and starts having sex with the cow. 'But Joe, can you do that in America'? a shocked Zelensky asks the President. 'Sure you can can little guy.' 'All American patriots do this in America' said the President adjusting his riding chaps. 'Hey little guy why dont you try it and become a real American?' Zelensky stammered 'You sure Joe? I can do this in America? The President replied: 'Hell yeah'. Come on get yourself down from that horse and give it a go.' 'Well OK Joe if you say so' the hero of Keeve replied. So the President of Ukraine dismounted and swaggered over to the cow. And put his head in the fence.
Posted by: Paul McGrory | Oct 5 2022 21:45 utc | 90
From MoA
I’m usually against these types of jokes, but this cracked me up. Hopefully you know about Zelensky and his leather fetish routine.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
The idea that Russia would join NATO applied
only if Yeltsin was followed by a reliable puppet. (preferably another falling down drunk like Yeltsin) Instead Russia found a strong willed nationalist who wouldn't allow us to strip mine the country.
(note: somehow this was entered in the wrong place. I blame my Parkinson's like I always do when I screw up)
On to Biden since 1973
Enjoyed the article about the Onion
showing up in defense of satire at the Supreme Court.
What is it that law enforcement finds so sensitive about
being made fun of? What, Can't take a joke? HA
Thanks for the Memphis Minnie song book.
evening qms...
law enforcement understands that it is outnumbered and that if public tolerance of their bad actions runs out, they are sitting ducks.
And the winner is ... the wax worm's saliva
I love those discoveries.
Imagine they would find similar worms to break down all those empire's big heads hubris.
Thank you very much for the EB.
I hope all is well chez the shikspacks and for all of the EBers.
Survive as best as you can.
https://www.euronews.com/live
It will take a shitload of worms to break down
the millions of metric tons of plastic we toss out. But I like the idea of cultivating
some kind of painful larvae to pop into the ears of the ruling class.
Clear their minds.
heh...
the worms won't find much plasticity in the brains of the ruling class.
evening mimi...
who knew that worm spit would turn out to be useful?
have a great evening!
With regards to Nord Stream 2 there is this.
Is this true or are the Russians simply playing mind games?
https://www.barrons.com/articles/russia-says-ready-to-supply-gas-via-und...
evening humphrey...
putin's offer to make nordstream work in part is a genius move, since whoever caused the damage to the pipelines is likely to be the most active in blocking any moves to restore service to germany.
as bush used to say, "smoke 'em out." or something like that.
NATO is more in danger of going to war with itself
than it is of going to war with Russia.
Danny Haiphong of The Left Lens interviews Scott Ritter. Takeaway quote: He sees a major wake up call for Europe this winter. Escalating sanctions will make an even colder and bleaker reckoning for political elites come spring.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_c6FOWdskU]
"The EU is like an abused spouse. They keep returning for more."
evening cb...
thanks for the interview, i've listened to a bit of it and so far it's quite good.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the evening blues.
Never heard that cut with Little Walter before; great stuff. It seemed obvious to me from the first day that it was discovered that there were a ton of businesses letting the cops use their spy cams that the city/county of SF would eventually make it legal to make it harder for people to challenge it. Took long enough for them to get around to it. Just gonna have to make camera blinding niner's caps and wear them everywhere.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
yep, you can really hear elements of little walter's later style in that recording. i have to look it up, but there might be recordings of jimmy rogers playing with minnie, i think. i know he was a sideman for her for a while.
heh, maybe you could start a side business making camera blinding ir hats.
Another illuminating video if you have the time to view.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pONjlORXdFQ]
Excellent vido, humphrey!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
pretty good analysis...
i guess we'll see if he's right over the next few weeks.
Good question!
Unfortunately this is how the MSM coverage is produced.