The Evening Blues - 11-7-24

Submitted by joe shikspack on Thu, 11/07/2024 - 2:48pm

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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Syl Johnson

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and soul singer and guitarist Syl Johnson. Enjoy!

^{Syl Johnson - Different Strokes}

"Democrats are sitting on a mountain of hundreds of thousands of human corpses they helped kill by mass military slaughter in the last four years, weeping and lamenting that now bad things are going to start happening."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

The Evil Warmongering Zionist Won (No Not That One, The Other One)

The Democratic Party has lost control of both the White House and the Senate. As of this writing it is still unclear which party will secure control of the House of Representatives. Turns out campaigning on the promise of continuing a genocide while courting endorsements from war criminals like Dick Cheney is not a great way to get progressives to vote for you.

One interesting point is that Donald Trump appears to have taken the battleground state of Michigan, where Kamala Harris was soundly rejected by the large Arab American population of Dearborn despite their voting overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020. Back in August, Harris famously shushed Muslim anti-genocide protesters at a campaign rally in Michigan by admonishing them with the words “I’m speaking”.

Well, who’s speaking now?

Who's speaking now, bitch? https://t.co/XhLmReCgCy

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 6, 2024

To be clear, this is not a good result. A good result was not possible this election. The warmongering Zionist genocide monster lost, which means the other warmongering Zionist genocide monster won.

Donald Trump is still bought and owned by Adelson cash, which means we can expect him to be just as much of a groveling simp for Israel as he was during his first term. The president elect has publicly admitted that when he was president the Zionist plutocrats Sheldon and Miriam Adelson were at the White House “probably almost more than anybody” asking him to do favors for Israel like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and acknowledging Israel’s illegitimate claim to the Golan Heights, which he eagerly did.

Trump closed out his campaign tour alongside his former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, which should be enough to dash the hopes of even the most naive Trump supporters that US foreign policy is headed in a positive direction in January. As CIA director, Pompeo led a plot to assassinate Julian Assange and cheerfully admitted that “we lied, we cheated, we stole” at the agency. This odious swamp creature has remained in Trump’s good graces for the last eight years, and is reportedly expected to have a position in Trump’s cabinet once again.

Speaking at a campaign event in Pittsburgh on Monday, Pompeo boasted that he has been called “the most loyal cabinet member to Donald J Trump” and said that when Trump is re-elected “we will take down the ring of fire; we will support our friends in Israel.” The “ring of fire” is think tank speak for Iran and the militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Palestine who oppose Israel.

So things are probably going to get uglier and uglier. But they were getting uglier and uglier under Biden, and they would have gotten uglier and uglier under Harris as well. That’s just what it looks like when you’ve got a dying empire fighting to retain planetary control like a cornered animal. You don’t get to be the US president unless you are willing and eager to do ugly things.

Democrats exaggerate how destructive Trump is relative to their own bloodthirsty psychopath candidates. While we can expect Trump to inflict tyranny and abuse upon Americans, it will be nothing compared to the tyranny and abuse he’s going to inflict on people in other countries, and it will be nothing compared to the tyranny and abuse his predecessor has been inflicting on people in other countries. All the histrionic shrieking we see from US liberals about Trump only works inside a western supremacist worldview that does not see the victims of US warmongering as fully human, and therefore sees scorched earth genocidal atrocities as less significant than comparatively minor abuses concerning US domestic policy.

Abandon hope that any positive changes will come from this election result.

Abandon hope that Trump will do good things.

Abandon hope that Democrats will learn any lessons from this loss.

Abandon hope that liberals will suddenly remember that genocide is bad and start protesting against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza.

Abandon hope in US election results, period.

US elections do not yield positive results. They are not designed to benefit ordinary human beings.

Nothing changes for those of us who are dedicated to fighting against the abuses of the US empire. It will be the same fight after January 20 as it was on January 19. We fight on.

Max Blumenthal : Neocons and the Security State

Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF

Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes”. He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but not the north, since there are “no more civilians left”.

International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

The Israeli army and government have repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining population of northern Gaza to flee to the relative safety of the south during a month-long renewed offensive and tightened siege. Residents still clinging on in the north have said the new operation has created the worst conditions of the war to date. Israel said the push is necessary to combat regrouped Hamas cells.

It is unclear how many people remain in northern Gaza; last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders. On Wednesday social media footage showed waves of several dozen displaced people carrying children and rucksacks and walking south through flattened areas of Gaza City. Many had not eaten in days, Huda Abu Laila told the Associated Press. “We came barefoot. We have no sandals, no clothes, nothing. We have no money. There is no food or drink,” she said.

Peace Advocates Fear Trump May Hand Israel 'Full Control of Gaza and the West Bank'

While many critics of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris opposed the Democratic presidential nominee due to the Biden-Harris administration's nearly unconditional support for Israel's annihilation of Gaza, peace advocates on Wednesday warned that Republican President-elect Donald Trump could lift the few guardrails the Democrats had placed on Israel and unleash the key ally to seize all of Palestine.

"A Harris victory would not have stopped Israel's genocide in Gaza or drive to war across the Middle East, but Trump's racism, Islamophobia, and bigotry, and his close relationship with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, could well enable Israel to pursue its desire for full control of Gaza and the West Bank," Lindsey German of the London-based Stop the War Coalition said in a statement.

Israel has gradually and systematically seized more and more Palestinian lands since illegally occupying the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1967. The goal of Israel's far right is expansion of Israeli territory to include what proponents call "Greater Israel," which is based on biblical boundaries that stretched from Africa to Turkey to Mesopotamia. Netanyahu has repeatedly displayed maps showing the Middle East without Palestine, all of whose territory is shown as part of Israel.

On Wednesday, far-right Israelis including senior government officials like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich celebrated Trump's win. They are openly plotting ways to steal more land, including by ethnically cleansing Palestinians during the current war on Gaza, through home demolitions and forced expulsions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and by expanding Jewish-only apartheid settlements that are illegal under international law.

David Friedman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during Trump's first term, recently released a book advocating Israel's annexation of all of Palestine, a policy "based first and foremost on biblical prophecies and values," according to the author. Friedman envisions a situation in Palestine akin to the U.S. conquest and rule of Puerto Rico, in which Palestinians don't have voting rights but are granted limited autonomy so long as they act in accordance with Israeli law.

The Trump/Friedman plan for Palestinians is to “Let Israel be Israel.”
Via @AvrahamAtLaw. https://t.co/oWhRrZ4QbJ. pic.twitter.com/GhxqG2TlvN

— Richard Goldwasser (@_Goldwasser_) November 2, 2024

Powerful Trump backers also support annexation. Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson's wish list for the president-elect's second term includes Israeli annexation of the West Bank and U.S. recognition of the move.

During Trump's first term, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ended a 30-year State Department policy under which Israeli settler colonies in the occupied West Bank were viewed as inconsistent with international law. Pompeo later explained that as an evangelical Christian, his position was based on the biblical belief that Israel is God's "promised land" for his "chosen people," the Jews.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reversed the so-called Pompeo Doctrine, declaring Israeli settlements to be "inconsistent with international law"—even as he provided diplomatic cover for the war on Gaza for which Israel is on trial at the International Court of Justice for alleged genocide.

According to Israeli media reports, Trump has pushed Netanyahu to wrap up the Gaza war before he takes office next January. Many observers fear that could mean Israeli forces ramp up already devastating attacks that have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, while wounding more than 102,000 others and displacing, starving, and sickening most of Gaza's population.

United Nations human rights officials said last week that Israeli forces are creating an "apocalyptic" situation in northern Gaza, where the invaders are being accused of carrying out the so-called General's Plan to starve and then ethnically cleanse Palestinians from parts of the coastal enclave in order to make way for Israeli recolonization.

"We face an extremely dangerous situation worldwide, with a growing arms race," warned German. "We in the anti-war movement must redouble our efforts to end the genocide and wars in the Middle East. We also need peace in Ukraine, for the West to stop arming Ukraine, and for an end to the escalation of militarism and conflict aimed at China in the Pacific."

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Netanyahu On the Ropes

If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is

For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip. Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza.

But even based on the little that has been revealed to the public, two things can be said about the siege. First, the scale of the civilian casualties from the army's daily bombings of towns and refugee camps in northern Gaza – children, women, elderly people and men who are innocent of any crime – is enormous. Moreover, medical and other aid facilities have largely collapsed, and other institutions are also collapsing. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of people are now at risk of starvation or are already suffering terrible hunger.

Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose. Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends. ...

Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn't making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn't demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.

If this process doesn't stop immediately, hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli.

Netanyahu Congratulates Trump, Says They Discussed ‘Iranian Threat’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory against Vice President Kamala Harris and said the two discussed the “Iranian threat.” ...

The Washington Post reported that during a call in October, Trump praised Israeli military actions in Lebanon following Israel’s dramatic escalations. “He didn’t tell him what to do militarily, but he expressed that he was impressed by the pagers,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who was also on the call, told the Post. “He expressed his awe for their military operations and what they have done. He told them, do what you have to do to defend yourself.” ...

Trump has vowed that he will strongly support Israel when if he returns to office and has said Israel has to “finish the problem,” referring to the genocidal campaign in Gaza. According to a report from The Times of Israel, Trump has told Netanyahu that he wants the war to be over by the time he returns to office by January 20, 2025. However, one of the Times’ sources stressed that Trump wasn’t specific in his appeal to Netanyahu and could well back “residual” Israeli military activity in Gaza.

US Warns Iraq Not To Allow Iran To Attack Israel From Iraqi Territory

The Biden administration has warned the Iraq government that if it allows Iran to attack Israel from its soil, the US won’t stop Israel from striking Iraq, Axios reported on Tuesday.

The report said US and Israeli intelligence believe that Iran is preparing to launch a significant attack from Iraq in response to Israel’s October 26 airstrikes on Iran, which killed four Iranian soldiers and one civilian. Iranian officials have been vowing that there will be a response.

US and Israeli officials claim Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been moving drones and ballistic missiles to Shia militias in Iraq in preparation for a joint attack.

Ali Abunimah: why 'Holocaust Harris' deserved to lose

Ukrainian Officials Feeling ‘A Lot of Anxiety’ After Trump Victory

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated President-elect Donald Trump on his “impressive election victory,” but behind the scenes, Ukrainian officials are really feeling “a lot of anxiety,” according to a report from Financial Times.

Trump campaigned on ending the war in Ukraine, although he never laid out a plan to reach that goal. His running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, has been more explicit, saying he favors a deal to end the war that would freeze the current battle lines and guarantee Ukrainian neutrality and independence but still allow some sort of US military assistance for Ukraine.

An unnamed Ukrainian defense official told FT that many people in the Ukrainian military are “afraid” that a Trump victory means US aid will stop and “we’ll lose Donbas at least.” Another Ukrainian official said, “For us, [US] support means life or death. We need to convince Trump to be with us.”

Trump Could Halt BILLIONS in Weapons Shipments to Ukraine, Promises to END War with Russia

German government on brink of collapse after Olaf Scholz sacks finance minister

The German government was left on the brink of collapse after the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, unexpectedly sacked his finance minister, plunging Europe’s largest economy into political disarray. Christian Lindner was thrown out of the three-way coalition during a meeting of high-level government members on Wednesday evening, after months of bitter infighting that has contributed to the administration’s growing unpopularity.

Government insiders had suggested Donald Trump’s electoral victory would focus minds in Berlin and force leaders of the Social Democrats, Greens and the FDP to recognise the need for unity. But the discord and rancour in Berlin appeared to show no signs of subsiding.

Hours after Lindner’s sacking, the FDP withdrew the rest of its ministers from the cabinet, spelling the end of the beleaguered and unpopular three-way coalition.

In a televised address to the nation, Scholz said that he will seek a vote of confidence in January that would pave the way for early elections by March.

German government heading towards collapse

Sheinbaum tells Mexicans stunning Trump win is ‘nothing to worry about’

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has reassured her country that “there’s nothing to worry about” after Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the US presidential election. But Trump’s extreme campaign promises have left Mexico bracing for punishing tariffs, mass migrant deportations – and even the far-fetched but alarming suggestion of US military strikes on organised crime groups in Mexican territory.

Addressing reporters at her daily press conference, the Mexican leader said: “We are a free, independent, sovereign country and there will be good relations with the United States. I am convinced of this.” Later on Wednesday she offered her “sincere congratulations” to Trump, adding in that she was sure the neighboring countries would “work together with dialogue and respect of our sovereignties, to advance the broad bilateral agenda that links us”.

The US-Mexico relationship is one of massive interdependence, and always diplomatically complex, but a Trump presidency will inevitably ramp up the tension.

Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, have promised to take a range of hardline measures that span trade, migration and security. Trump has variously proposed a baseline 10% tariff on all imports and a 25% tariff on those from Mexico if it doesn’t do more to stop “the onslaught of criminals and drugs” coming through the border.

These tariffs could violate the free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada, known as the USMCA, but that deal is up for renegotiation in 2026 and Trump wants changes – despite having negotiated it himself during his last presidency. Mexico exports almost $500bn of goods a year to the US, which is significantly more than the US sends in the other direction. The economic uncertainty created by Trump’s threats has already had a chilling effect on foreign investment in Mexico, with companies preferring to wait and see what the new rules of the game will be.

‘Red’ US states pass progressive laws while ‘blue’ states vote for conservative measures

While Donald Trump comfortably cruised to victory over Kamala Harris, , voters in a handful of red states cast their ballots for policies favored by centrists and progressives – such as minimum wage protections. Meanwhile voters in some deep-blue states favored measures that are conventionally associated with conservatism, such as tough-on-crime initiatives. ...

Missouri is among the most striking examples. Trump won this midwestern state’s 10 electoral votes after receiving 1,739,020 ballots, compared with Harris’s 1,190,806 – a landslide 58.5%. But Missouri also also green lit a union-backed ballot initiative to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by January 2026. This initiative also provides paid sick leave to workers of large employers. And voters overturned the state’s near-total abortion ban, establishing a constitutional right to abortion until fetal viability. ...

Voters in Arizona, which at press time is poised to hand its 11 electoral votes to Trump, OK’d a ballot measure to create a fundamental right to abortion. The measure prohibits the state from restricting or banning it before 24 weeks. ...

In several heavily Democratic states, voters indicated that they weren’t all-in for progressivism. In California, residents voted in favor of Proposition 36. This ballot initiative enacts harsher punishments for retail theft, drug offenses and property crimes. The proposition revamps portions of a watershed 2014 law that downgraded several non-violent felony charges to misdemeanor charges. ...

As of press time, Massachusetts voters have struck down a proposal to increase tipped employees’ wages. The measure would have incrementally increased tipped workers’ wages until reaching the state minimum wage in 2029, while still allowing tipping, NBC News said.

Trump's Landslide Win EXPLAINED

US special counsel to wind down criminal cases against Donald Trump

Special counsel prosecutors will shut down their criminal cases against Donald Trump before he takes office, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, after his stunning victory against Kamala Harris meant they would not proceed to trial. The move reflects the reality that the cases will not be completed before inauguration day. Once the former president returns to the White House, the special counsel’s office would be prohibited from pursuing further criminal actions under justice department policy.

The justice department has long known that if Trump won, the criminal cases – over Trump’s retention of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election – would be finished because Trump’s attorney general would likely drop the charges. But it is also understood to be a preemptive measure to ensure that Trump will not be able to order the dismissal of the special counsel, Jack Smith, as he had vowed to do if he takes office and Smith remained in his role.

The justice department is still examining how to wind down the cases, which are in different stages and are complicated. In particular, the department does not want the classified documents case, which was dismissed and currently under appeal, to go unchallenged. Failure to pursue an appeal over the dismissal of the classified documents case on grounds that the special counsel himself was illegally appointed could set a problematic precedent and hamper the department’s ability to use special counsels in the future.

Fatima Bhutto: Kamala Harris's Support for Israel's Genocide in Gaza Is a Betrayal

In Tiny State of Maine, a Big Election Day Win Against Dark Money in Politics

As billionaire-backed Republicans dominated U.S. elections on Tuesday, voters in Maine—among the top 10 states in terms of smallest populations—overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to limit political spending, an initiative that could reach the country's top court.

Maine Question 1 targets super political action committees (PACs), dark money groups that, for the most part, are barred from directly contributing or coordinating with a candidate but can raise and spend unlimited amounts of funds.

Question 1 asked Mainers, "Do you want to set a $5,000 limit for giving to political action committees that spend money independently to support or defeat candidates for office?"

WMTW reported earlier this year that "the $5,000 contributions cap would only apply to state races, not United States House or Senate races."

As of Wednesday afternoon, the measure had passed 531,573 to 186,707, or 74% to 26%, with 89% of the estimated vote reported, according toThe New York Times.

"We're grateful to the Maine people for once again leading the way to help fix our broken political system," said Cara McCormick, chair of Maine Citizens to End Super PACs, which collected signatures to get the citizen-initiated measure on the ballot.

"The Maine people deserve a system that is not only free from corruption, but also free from the appearance of corruption," McCormick added. "Our greatest hope is to restore people's faith in our democracy and increase participation across the board."

The campaign highlighted that "some of America's leading constitutional law experts—Laurence Tribe, Lawrence Lessig, Neal Katyal, Al Alschuler, and others—have argued that Question 1 is the most immediate pathway to ending super PACs, the biggest source of dark money in elections."

Welcoming the measure's passage, Lessig declared Wednesday that "this is a great gift from Maine to democracy in America."

"We expect this initiative will be challenged," he explained. "But when the Supreme Court affirms what Maine voters have done, it could end super PACs everywhere."

As Maine Morning Star detailed Wednesday:

Since Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, the Supreme Court has allowed contributions to be regulated when there is a risk of "quid pro quo" corruption, essentially a favor for a favor. In the case of elections, if there is a risk someone could be making a donation to a candidate in exchange for a favor, only then can Congress regulate that contribution. In 2010, the Supreme Court extended this reasoning to corporations and unions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Campaign Act

Three months later, in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld that contributions to groups making independent expenditures can't corrupt or create the appearance of corruption. That decision essentially created the "super PAC," which can receive unlimited contributions but can’t contribute directly to candidates. Other lower federal and state courts followed suit, and the ruling was never reviewed by the Supreme Court.

The editorial boards of both the Bangor Daily News and Portland Press Herald backed the ballot measure, with the latter writing last month that "ours would be the first state in the nation since the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 to move to limit contributions to PACs that can make independent expenditures."

"We believe that political spending has spiraled out of control, in many cases, and that the absence of any limit on PACs is inappropriate and leaves America's system of campaigning and voting vulnerable to the whims of bad actors," the board argued. "If Maine can play a leading role in bringing some order and fairness to political spending nationally, we should seize the chance."

Bernie Sanders BLASTS Harris Campaign, CORPORATE Democratic Party

Ohio Refuses to Count Jill Stein’s Votes!

the evening greens

‘A wrecking ball’: experts warn Trump’s win sets back global climate action

Donald Trump’s new term as US president poses a grave threat to the planet if it blows up the international effort to curb dangerous global heating, stunned climate experts have warned in the wake of his decisive election victory. Trump’s return to the White House is widely expected to result in the US, yet again, exiting the Paris climate agreement and may even remove American involvement in the underpinning United Nations framework to deal with the climate crisis.

While campaigning for president, Trump has called climate change “a big hoax”, scorned wind energy and electric cars and vowed to gut environmental rules and the “green new scam” of the Inflation Reduction Act, a major bill passed by Democrats to support clean energy projects.

Trump’s agenda, analysts have found, risks adding several billion tonnes of extra heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, further imperiling goals to stave off disastrous global heating that governments are already failing to meet. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the US is now a “failed democracy” and that “we now pose a major threat to the planet.”

The election result will send shockwaves through annual UN climate talks that start in Azerbaijan on Monday. “The election of a climate denier to the US presidency is extremely dangerous for the world,” said Bill Hare, a senior scientist at Climate Analytics, who warned a Trump administration would likely “damage efforts” to keep the world from heating by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a Paris target that now appears even further out of reach. ...

When he was last president, Trump took several months to decide to remove the US from the Paris deal, raising fears the agreement would collapse. Countries did manage to avoid such a fate prior to Biden re-entering the pact and there is some optimism that the transition to cleaner energy isn’t something that Trump, despite his demands that the US “drill, baby drill” for oil and gas, can reverse.

Californians forced to flee as ferocious wildfires destroy homes and buildings

Fast-moving fires erupted across California on Wednesday as the state was lashed by powerful winds that complicated firefighting efforts, necessitated power shutoffs and raised the danger for more ignitions.

Just hours after igniting in Ventura county, the Mountain fire rapidly swept through more than 10,000 acres as flames jumped into rural and residential communities tucked close to the burning hillsides, leaving devastation in its wake.

“It has hopscotched over several ridgelines and is now burning structure to structure in neighborhoods,” climate scientist Daniel Swain said in an online broadcast, calling the event a “suburban fire storm” that could rank among the most destructive in California this year. “And the fire is still spreading.”

Fueled by gusts of up to 80mph, the fire spewed flames and embers up to 2.5 miles out, making it difficult and dangerous to fight. Every firefighting resource in the area has been thrown at the fire, according to Ventura county fire chief Dustin Gardner, who added that is is “still moving at a dangerous rate of spread”. By Wednesday evening, the fire remained at 0% containment.