The Evening Blues - 3-8-23



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Barbeque Bob

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Piedmont blues guitarist Barbeque Bob. Enjoy!

Barbecue Bob (Robert Hicks) -Barbecue Blues

"History shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one."

-- Glenn Greenwald


News and Opinion

ACLU Obtains Docs Detailing FBI, Pentagon Development of Facial Recognition Tech

Thousands of records about U.S. government involvement in the research and development of facial recognition technology—unveiled due to an ACLU lawsuit and first reported on Tuesday by The Washington Post—fueled fresh calls for a federal ban on such tools.

"Americans' ability to navigate our communities without constant tracking and surveillance is being chipped away at an alarming pace," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told the Post. "We cannot stand by as the tentacles of the surveillance state dig deeper into our private lives, treating every one of us like suspects in an unbridled investigation that undermines our rights and freedom."

While some cities and states have taken action, there is currently no federal law restricting the use of facial recognition tools. However, Markey pledged to reintroduce his proposed ban on government use of the technology—which he did, alongside Rep. Pramila Jayapal(D-Wash.) and other Democrats, within hours of the reporting.

"The year is 2023, but we are living through 1984. The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing," declared Markey, reintroducing the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which is backed by various groups including the ACLU.

"Biometric data collection poses serious risks of privacy invasion and discrimination, and Americans know they should not have to forgo personal privacy for safety," the senator said. "As we work to make our country more equitable, we cannot ignore the technologies that stand in the way of progress and perpetuate injustice." ...

The Post reported that documents including internal emails and presentations expose how intimately officials at the FBI—which is part of the Justice Department—and Pentagon "worked with academic researchers to refine artificial intelligence techniques that could help in the identification or tracking of Americans without their awareness or consent."

Many of the records pertain to the Janus program, which was funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) and ultimately folded into a search tool used by multiple federal agencies called Horus. As the newspaper detailed:

Program leaders worked with FBI scientists and some of the nation's leading computer vision experts to design and test software that would quickly and accurately process the "truly unconstrained face imagery" recorded by surveillance cameras in public places, including subway stations and street corners, according to the documents, which the ACLU shared with The Washington Post.

In a 2019 presentation, an IARPA program manager said the goal had been to "dramatically improve" the power and performance of facial recognition systems, with "scaling to support millions of subjects" and the ability to quickly identify faces from partially obstructed angles. One version of the system was trained for "Face ID... at target distances" of more than a half-mile.

To refine the system's capabilities, researchers staged a data-gathering test in 2017, paying dozens of volunteers to simulate real-world scenarios at a Defense Department training facility made to resemble a hospital, a subway station, an outdoor marketplace, and a school, the documents show. The test yielded thousands of surveillance videos and images, some of which were captured by a drone.

"IARPA said in public filings that the Janus program had helped advance 'virtually every aspect of fundamental face recognition research' and led to algorithms that were 'twice as accurate as the most widely used government-off-the-shelf systems,'" the Post noted.

Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told the newspaper that the tool's use in U.S. mass surveillance would be a "nightmare scenario."

"It could give the government the ability to pervasively track as many people as they want for as long as they want," he said. "There's no good outcome for that in a democratic society."

Varoufakis — Try Those Guilty of Persecuting Assange

Ukraine Wants the US to Provide Cluster Bombs to Use With Drones

Ukraine has been seeking cluster bombs from the US to use in its war against Russian forces and is now asking for a type of the controversial munition that they want to adapt so they can be dropped from drones, Reuters reported on Monday. ...

Cluster munitions scatter small bombs over large areas, making them more indiscriminate than other munitions. According to Reuters, the MK-20 releases 240 dart-like submunitions or bomblets after being launched.

The bomblets in cluster munitions often don’t explode on impact, making them a huge danger to civilians who come across them, similar to land mines. The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans the weapons has over 100 signatories, but the US, Russia, and Ukraine are not parties to the treaty.

Since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions. Kyiv was also accused of using the bombs in populated areas of Donestk back in 2014.

Seymour Hersh EXCLUSIVE: SHREDS NYT's Nord Stream Report

Russia Captures East Bakhmut, Zelensky Admits Importance: Intel: Nord Stream Attack 6 Guys & A Boat

Spain Asks U.S. to Begin Cleanup of Nuclear Accident Site

Spain said Monday it has asked the United States to begin procedures to remove soil contaminated with radioactivity after a mid-air collision dumped four U.S. hydrogen bombs near a southern Spanish village nearly 60 years ago.

None of the bombs had exploded, but the plutonium-filled detonators on two went off, spreading several kilograms (pounds) of highly radioactive plutonium 239 across the landscape around Palomares. ...

The bombs fell on Jan. 17, 1966, when a U.S. B-52 bomber and a refueling plane crashed into each other, killing seven of 11 crew members. There were no fatalities on the ground.

The accident happened during the height of the Cold War when it was U.S. policy to keep nuclear-armed warplanes in the air constantly near the Soviet border.

Stagflation, Russian sanctions success

UK will miss out on EU’s ‘massive’ increase in arms spending for Ukraine

Britain’s defence industry is to be blocked from profiting from the EU’s vast increase in spending on arms for Ukraine, under a leaked plan seen by the Guardian.

A “massive order” of ammunition, ranging from small arms to 155mm artillery rounds, is being prepared in Brussels but only EU and Norwegian manufacturers will be able to take advantage. France, Germany and Italy, the home of Europe’s biggest arms manufacturers, are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries to the detriment of the UK, which is the world’s seventh largest arms exporter.

“Essentially, this is a zero-sum game and the proposal will bolster European defence industry at the costs of those outside the union,” a diplomatic source in Brussels said.

The EU is close to agreeing on its landmark move to jointly procure ammunition to help Ukraine in its war with Russia and replenish members’ stockpiles. The plan involves immediately transferring ammunition reserves and “rapidly” sending new joint orders to meet EU and Ukrainian needs as part of “a massive and strong signal to EU industry”. ...

According to the leaked discussion paper that will be in front of ministers, member states are initially being encouraged to offer up their spare stockpiles of ammunition to Kyiv, of which up to 90% of the cost could be reimbursed by Brussels.

Sergei Lavrov DESTROYS Biden’s Argument On Ukraine

92 Flights From Israeli Base Reveal Arms Exports to Azerbaijan

An Azerbaijani cargo plane landed last Thursday at the Ovda Israeli air force base north of Eilat. After two hours on the ground, as usual, the old Ilyushin-76 airlifter took off, flew over central Israel, continued north over Turkey and then to the east – returning to its home field in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. An investigation by Haaretz, based on publicly available aviation data, reveals that over the past seven years, 92 cargo flights flown by Azerbaijani Silk Way Airlines have landed at the Ovda airbase, the only airfield in Israel through which explosives may be flown into and out of the country.

Israel has had a strategic alliance with Azerbaijan for the past two decades, and Israel sells the large Shi’ite-majority country weapons worth billions of dollars – and in return, Azerbaijan, per sources, supplies Israel with oil and access to Iran. According to foreign media reports, Azerbaijan has allowed the Mossad to set up a forward branch to monitor what is happening in Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south, and has even prepared an airfield intended to aid Israel in case it decides to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Reports from two years ago stated that the Mossad agents who stole the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled it to Israel via Azerbaijan. According to official reports from Azerbaijan, over the years Israel has sold it the most advanced weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, kamikaze drones and more. ...

Figures revealed here for the first time show that since 2016, the company’s IL-76 planes have landed at least 92 times at the Ovda airport, an unusual destination for civilian cargo planes. Silk Way is one of the very few airlines that lands at Ovda; over the years only a handful of Eastern European airlines that have carried explosives have landed and taken off from there. Silk Way was even at the center of an investigative report in the Czech media in 2018, which stated that weapons banned for sale to Azerbaijan were flown there in spite of the arms embargo - in a circular deal through Israel. ...

These Silk Way aircraft (and others) have landed at Ovda almost 100 times since the permit was issued. The data expose an increasing pace of flights to Baku especially in the middle of 2016, in late 2020 and at the end of 2021 – which coincide with periods of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan and Armenia have waged war over this disputed region between them many times since the beginning of the 20th century – and all the more so since both countries gained independence after the Soviet Union collapsed. ...

During their first years of independence, both Armenia and Azerbaijan relied on the Soviet arsenal of weapons, but according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute, since 2016 the situation has changed and Israel is now responsible for almost 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s weapons.

Police use water cannon in Georgia to disperse protests at ‘authoritarian’ law

Police in the former Soviet state of Georgia have used water cannon and teargas in an attempt to disperse thousands of people who rallied on Tuesday night after parliament gave its initial backing to a draft law on “foreign agents” which critics say represents an authoritarian shift.

Some protesters threw petrol bombs and stones at police in the centre of the capital Tbilisi, as demonstrators warned that the draft law could hurt the south Caucasus country’s hopes of EU membership.

The law, backed by the ruling Dream party, would require any organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as “foreign agents”, or face substantial fines.

Critics have said it is reminiscent of a 2012 law in Russia that has since been used to crack down on dissent.

Georgia’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, has said she intends to veto the law if it crosses her desk but the parliament could override her veto. She expressed solidarity with the protesters on Tuesday.

Biden administration urged to block extremist Israeli minister’s visit

The Biden administration is under growing pressure to block a visit by Israel’s extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, over his call to “wipe out” a Palestinian town that was the target of an attack by Jewish settlers.

Smotrich’s plan to speak at an investment conference in Washington DC next week has drawn unusually strong criticism, including accusations that he is promoting “Jewish supremacy”, from individuals and groups that are more usually ardent defenders of Israel.

More than 100 Jewish American leaders signed a statement opposing the visit by leader of the Religious Zionism party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government. It said they “reject the notion that someone must be accorded respect simply by dint of serving in the Israeli government”.

“We call on all pro-Israel Americans to understand that welcoming Smotrich here will harm, rather than help, support for Israel,” they said.

“Smotrich has long expressed views that are abhorrent to the vast majority of American Jews, from anti-Arab racism, to virulent homophobia, to a full-throated embrace of Jewish supremacy. To this list, we can now add his endorsement of violence against innocents based on their ethnic heritage.”

Five women denied abortion care in Texas sue state over bans

Five women denied abortions in Texas, along with two doctors, have sued the state after they were refused abortion care despite suffering severe complications with their pregnancies. None of the plaintiffs’ fetuses had a chance of survival. The state’s abortion bans are supposed to allow for the procedure in cases where there is a fatal diagnosis for the fetus, as well as when the pregnancy poses substantial harms to the pregnant person’s health.

“People are scared and outraged at the thought of being pregnant in this state,” Amanda Zurawski, one of the plaintiffs in the case said on Tuesday in a press conference about the lawsuit in front of the Texas capitol in Austin.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is bringing the lawsuit, the case is the first since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year in which pregnant women are challenging the abortion bans that are wreaking havoc on reproductive health in much of the country. “We want the state of Texas to acknowledge the women behind me should have received timely abortion care,” said Molly Duane, the lead litigator in the case, outside the Texas capitol. She said the lawsuit aimed to establish that what happened to the plaintiffs was a violation of their basic human rights according to the Texas constitution.

The women named in the case encountered a range of different outcomes and treatment detailed in a 92-page complaint filed on Monday.

Biden reportedly considers detaining migrant families in major reversal

The Biden administration is considering detaining migrant families who cross into the US illegally as it prepares to end Covid-19 restrictions at the US-Mexico border, according to officials familiar with the plans. That would be a major reversal after officials in late 2021 stopped holding families in detention facilities.

Department of Homeland Security officials are working through how to manage an expected increase of migrants at the border once the pandemic restrictions that have been in place since 2020 are lifted in May. Detention is one of several ideas under discussion and nothing has been finalized, the officials said.

If families were detained, they would be held for short periods of time, perhaps just a few days, and their cases expedited through immigration court, one official said. The officials were unauthorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on “rumors” that the policy was under consideration. “I’m not saying that it is, I’m not saying that it’s not,” she said. She refused to say whether President Joe Biden believed that the detention of families was humane.

Judge ROASTS Starbucks’ CEO For EGREGIOUS Union Busting

Starbucks CEO to testify before Senate over opposition to stores unionizing

The Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, has agreed to testify before a Senate committee investigating the company’s intense opposition to national efforts to unionize its stores.

Senator Bernie Sanders had threatened to subpoena Schultz if he refused to appear before the US Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee. Sanders said Schultz had “refused to answer any of the serious questions we have asked” for over a year.

Since late 2021, 290 Starbucks stores around the US have won union elections, but dozens of workers and the Starbucks Workers United union have filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over alleged retaliatory firings, discipline, unilateral changes, store closures, refusing to bargain with the union and intimidation against workers’ efforts to form unions.

Nine decisions by NLRB administrative law judges so far have found Starbucks violated the National Labor Relations Act, and 22 Starbucks workers have received judgments ordering their reinstatement. No Starbucks appeals have yet overturned any rulings.

US has ‘long way to go’ to reduce inflation, Fed chair tells Congress

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell told Congress on Tuesday that the central bank will likely continue to increase interest rates in coming months as bringing down inflation “has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy”.

“The ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated,” Powell said, delivering the Fed’s semiannual monetary policy report to the Senate’s banking committee. “My colleagues and I are acutely aware that high inflation is causing significant hardship, and we’re strongly committed to returning inflation to our 2% goal.”

“The full effects of our tightening so far are yet to be felt. Even so, we have more work to do,” he said. “Restoring price stability will likely require that we maintain a restrictive stance on monetary policy for some time.”

Interest rates currently stand at 4.5% to 4.75% after the Fed increased rates by a quarter-point – what had been its smallest increase since it started raising rates up from zero last March – in February. The Fed’s next meeting, where the board will announce any new interest rate increases, will take place 21-22 March..

DeSantis Lets Electric Companies Hide Their Dirty Work

As more than $9 million in utility and utility-connected cash flooded the coffers of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign and the state Republican party he controls, his appointees to a little-known body allowed utility companies to stop disclosing information about how they are shutting off the power for thousands of struggling Florida residents.

In November 2021, Florida’s Public Service Commission (PUC) issued a memorandum allowing  electric utilities to stop disclosing their shutoff data. The memorandum, which reversed the commission’s September 2020 decision to collect the data to track the pandemic’s effects on utility customers, came after DeSantis stacked the board with his appointees. The move came less than a month after commission members approved the largest electric rate hike in Florida’s history, resulting in a 20 percent increase in costs to residential ratepayers.

Now it’s impossible to know how many customers have been disconnected from their electric utilities for being unable to pay their increasing power bills. NextEra — the parent company of Florida’s largest utility, Florida Power & Light — disconnected 738,000 Floridians in 2021 and 1.1 million Americans nationwide since 2020, according to a report from Bailout Watch last month. If that disconnection rate continued, noted the report, NextEra would have shut off 1.2 million customers in 2022. But we do not know the total, because the DeSantis-appointed Florida PUC allowed them to hide the data.

Besides NextEra, another utility company operating in Florida, the Southern regional monopoly powerhouse Duke Energy, cut off power to over 600,000 customers since 2020. Nationwide, utilities shut off power 5.7 million times since 2020. ...

When he announced his campaign for the governorship in January 2018, DeSantis pledged to “drain the swamp in Tallahassee, which needs to be drained, just like Washington.” But shortly after he was elected, DeSantis aggressively began raising money from businesses with interests before his office.

US safety board investigates rail firm Norfolk Southern after Ohio derailment

Federal investigators announced on Tuesday a special investigation into rail operator Norfolk Southern following a fiery derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border in February and several other accidents, including the death of a train conductor just hours earlier on Tuesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it will take a broad look at the railroad’s safety culture, saying it has sent teams to look into five significant accidents involving Norfolk Southern since December 2021. The agency also said it was urging the company to take immediate action to review and assess its safety practices.



the horse race



Tucker's Jan 6 Tapes EXPOSE Liberal Media Coverup



the evening greens


Increasingly Large and Intense Wildfires Hinder Western Forests’ Ability to Regenerate

As global warming threatens the long-term survival of many forests in the Western United States, a new study suggests that reducing the intensity and size of wildfires would help conifers regenerate after the destructive blazes that have become more frequent in recent decades.

The team of more than 50 scientists analyzed data from more than 10,000 field plots after 334 wildfires to assess how forests regrow after fires. They also compared the effects of the fires to what’s expected from a warming climate.

The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, show that, for the next few decades, fire intensity is the bigger factor influencing how forests regenerate after a blaze. And they suggest that there is a short-term window of opportunity to help coniferous forests regenerate with pro-active management of wildfires and forests.

The key would be to reduce the overall intensity of wildfires and to minimize the size of the most intense fire patches, said co-author Phil Higuera, an ecosystem and conservation science researcher at the University of Montana. The way to do that is by using intentionally set fires, as well as selective logging, to clear smaller trees out of forests.

Higuera said the biggest advance of the study was the broad-scale assessment of the relative influence of changes in climate and the effects of wildfires, and how they will impact post-fire tree regeneration, in combination with assumptions of how fires will burn in the future. The study covered most of the forested area in Western states, and Higuera said he was somewhat surprised that the modeled effects of fire severity hampered regeneration more than droughts and other effects of climate change, at least for the next 30 years. “But the longer you wait, the bigger the warming effect gets,” he said. “Importantly, the projections only go through 2050, and that seems a lot closer than it used to.”

Activists Make Final Appeal to Biden to Block Arctic Oil Project

Environmental and Indigenous activists rallied outside the White House on Friday calling on President Joe Biden to reject a major Arctic oil project that has been in development for years. The Biden administration is expected to make a final decision on the proposal as soon as next week, and environmental groups have been framing it as a major climate test for the president.

On a rainy, chilly afternoon, about 50 people huddled under a colorful canopy of umbrellas holding banners and appealing to Biden to stand by his campaign promise to help phase out fossil fuels.

The Willow Project, proposed by ConocoPhillips, would be the largest single oil development to proceed under the Biden administration if it is approved.

The project would pump more than 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years from a rapidly-warming Arctic region, and environmental groups say it is wholly inconsistent with the administration’s climate goals.


Also of Interest

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

No, Australia Does Not Actually Need To Prepare For War With China

Top US military officials visit Middle East to ratchet up conflicts with Iran and Russia

The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart

Nord Stream Attack - White House Counters Hersh's Reputation With Weak 'Intelligence'

Congressional Progressive Caucus Urges ‘Yes’ Vote on Syria War Powers Resolution

Jewish New Yorkers Rally to Demand 'End to All US Military Funding to Israel'

The Basis Of All Law

‘This is how I’m going to die’: police swarm activists protesting ‘Cop City’ in ‘week of action’

Patrick Lawrence: What Dan Ellsberg Means

The creeping threat of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt

Biden Press Sec DODGES On ILLEGAL Spying


A Little Night Music

Barbecue Bob - Mississippi Heavy Water Blues

Barbecue Bob - She's Coming Back Some Cold Rainy Day

Barbecue Bob - Going Up The Country

Barbecue Bob - Freeze to Me Mama

Barbecue Bob Hicks - Motherless Chile Blues

Barbeque Bob - It's Just Too Bad

Barbeque Bob - Yo Yo Blues

Barbecue Bob - We Sure Got Hard Times

Barbecue Bob - Poor Boy A Long Ways From Home

Barbecue Bob - Diddle-Da-Diddle


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I check out now and then the blog of one Larry Johnson, ex-CIA/State official. Some suspicious happenings which hopefully mean nothing.

IS NATO BLUFFING OR IS IT BEEFING UP FORCES TO BACK A UKRAINIAN OFFENSIVE?

The crux of the concern.

Air Mobility Command has directed its refueling and cargo planes to obscure the majority of identifying information painted on the aircraft, citing national security concerns — an unusual move that is alarming to government watchdogs. . . .

“Because of operational security concerns, we cannot provide specifics, though our aircraft will maintain markings as required by law,” Stewart said in the provided statement.

The change in the paint schemes, first reported by Aviation Week, comes a little more than a month after Air Mobility commander Gen. Mike Minihan sent a memo to his service members telling them to prepare for a war with China and warning them that it could be coming as soon as 2025.

But despite AMC’s stated justification of national security concerns, the new move to obscure some identifying info on planes is both alarming and puzzling to government watchdogs and transparency advocates

.

You betcha it is alarming.

I would not be normally worried. But given the leadership of US/NATO I have no doubt they would try to intercede in the war using a lot of air power. Western leaders are both ignorant and delusional.

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12 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

in years past i have not concerned myself too much that the people running the show are stupid enough to get into a shooting war with a major nuclear power. i have to say that my concern is mounting due to the all-too-apparent stupidity of the biden regime.

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

Her father was active in German politics and decades after Hitler’s demise he had many ties to the Nazis there and tried to overthrow the government. Her ancestors on the other side were just as bad and evil. They were involved in the slave trade.
.

Ukraine Hawk Who Heads European Commission Has a Nazi Pedigree She Does Not Want You to Know About

According to Ursula, “European values” represent only the highest attributes of humankind: freedom, justice, solidarity, and rule of law.

Of course, anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can tell you that these are nothing but euphemisms. Not long ago, “European values” meant something very different. Those values drew the borders of the world in oceans of blood, both of Europeans and those they conquered. A look at the history of Ursula’s aristocratic European family can show us the true face of these “European values” and how the ruling class profited from imposing them on the world.

“If we succeed in bringing people of above-average capabilities to governance an autocracy or the rule of the few will be able to create a better order than the rule of the people.” - Ernst Albrecht

Ernst Albrecht was her father. If interested you can read the rest. But it’s no wonder that Ursula is supporting the Ukrainian Nazis. EU values aren’t what they are cracked up to be.

On Jimmy’s video of Lavrov’s pointing out our hypocrisy, Milley was in Syria last week talking to the troops and explaining why they were still there. He said that ISIS is still a threat to US national security and so the troops are there to keep their threat down. In other words he just validated Putin’s reasons for why Russia went into Ukraine. But the threat of Nazism is actually real for Russia because we are currently supporting them. And Ukraine is on Russia’s border and not thousands of miles from its shores like Syria and ISIS are from us. I keep waiting for Putin to point this out.

Also too…damn groundhog!
Edited

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11 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

yep, people from the same bad families keep turning up like bad pennies in government. the elite class has a deep bench of people to insert into positions of power.

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6 users have voted.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

Haven't tried to dig out the specific episode, but distinctly remember George Webb some years back covering the Azeri connection - specifically mentioning that Silk Way airline - as part of a US clandestine operation to run East Bloc/Soviet sourced weapons from E. Europe (Bulgaria, specifically) to Isis in Syria and Iraq.

Israelis known to have provided support for Isis also - treating wounded fighters in Israeli hospitals, for instance. The sort of thing Michael Flynn would have known or found out about and threatened to shut down had he become Trump's national security advisor. No wonder taking him out was a Deep State priority.

Don't have to be a huge fan of Iran's mullahs to question why US policy toward Iran seems to be all about catering to Israel and the Saudis' big hate for Iran and the Shia... Azeris are Shia, too - but I guess they have longstanding issues with Iran...

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2 users have voted.
ggersh's picture

The media duopoly that controls all the press in OZ is
doing a full court press on how China is bad bad bad

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/08/australian-media-are-outright-te...

“Today’s Sydney Morning Herald and Age front-page stories on Australia’s supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life,” former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating opined in response to the publications.

“Apart from the outrageous illustrations of jet aircraft being shown leaving a profiled red-coloured map of China, the extent of the bias and news abuse is, I believe, unparalleled in modern Australian journalism,” he added.

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10 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

snoopydawg's picture

@ggersh

Pelosi went to Chinatown and hugged some people there just to show us that they aren’t a threat to us and the shitlibs were pleased how she stuck it to Trump. And it was wonderful that she went to Taiwan because no one tells her what she can and cannot do! But just today I read how China is spying on from their balloons and how they weren’t upfront with the world about the coronavirus. And they steal our technology and do lots of other bad things which tells me that they will be standing behind Biden if he decides to go to war with them.

There’s a graphic of people like them that says: I support the current thing! I don’t understand why their necks aren’t in devices that prevent the whiplash that they gotta have.

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

ever since the mid-70's u.s. coup in australia they have certainly been a reliable lapdog for washington.

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8 users have voted.

on the Nordstream sabotage but it is well worth watching for Hersh's comments with regards to the present situation in the MSM and the government.

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10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

heh, i enjoy listening to hersh ramble on and not answer his interviewers' questions. he always imparts valuable information despite the interviewer.

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

.

For starters, people outside the West view the rules-based order and Western insistence that states not violate international law as rank hypocrisy, and they were particularly resentful of Western attempts to claim the moral high ground on this issue. In their view, not only do Western powers make most of the rules, but they are also perfectly willing to violate these rules whenever it suits them.

I don’t think they are asking.

b humorously takes on the German article on who blew up the nordstream pipelines. Next someone will write about how a group set out for a 3 hour sail and disappeared… Smile

Lindsay Graham wants Biden to send troops into Mexico. Why?

“To the president of Mexico, you have let your country slide into the hands of narco-terrorists. Your capability or your will doesn’t exist to the point to stop what is, I think, the poisoning of America. You’re leaving us with no other choice,” Graham said. “To the president of Mexico, fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction being unleashed on America from your country... You’re allowing safe havens for these groups to operate without impunity because what you’re doing is not working.”

Where O where was Lindsay when big pharma was selling tons of OxyContin and getting millions of Americans killing hundreds of thousands and getting millions addicted to it? Where was his concern then? Or maybe the better question to ask is how much money was big pharma contributing to his campaign? And let’s not forget how Lindsay and his side kick John were happily arming the Nazis to kill their fellow citizens in the Donbas and watched as those Nazis killed their fellow citizens during the Maidan massacre. My contempt for people like Lindsay knows no bounds.

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

what, the chinese are complaining because the only manufacturing sector that the u.s. has not fully exported to china for cheap labor wants to sell some weapons to people? /s

send lindsay to the front lines.

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7 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

Lindsey Graham parroting Marge Greene sort of reduces his stature from midget to critter. Not to mention that the two of them are blaming the wrong evil perpetrator:

“China remains the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations environment, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States,” the DEA report says.

also

Fentanyl is smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border in low concentration, high-volume loads, kilogram seizures often contain less than a 10 percent concentration ...

Beyond that, pr CATO ( https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-... ) Most Fentanyl is smuggled by US citizens for consumption by US citizens.

I suspect those two half-wits just want to find an enemy we can beat in a ground war.

be well and have a good one

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7 users have voted.

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 --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

heh, if the cartels get involved and let's say, combine to defeat u.s. troops, they might be terribly disappointed with the quagmire for the u.s. that emerges. it's all too easy for these washington morons to get a war started and they have a terrible record of not knowing when to cut their losses (and they always lose) and get out.

have a great evening!

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snoopydawg's picture

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Weird how so many leave out the fact that America also has this law and that it’s not enforced equally on many countries. Shitlibs are outraged that Russia is pushing this on Georgia and don’t know that their own country does it too. I wonder how much money we are spending on this protest and what it could do for vulnerable Americans?

Also weird how signs written in English appear in countries that don’t normally speak it.

The Twit is abuzz with this protest against Russia without saying how Russia is responsible for the congress to be pushing it.

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7 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg Georgia and Armenia.
Armenia and Turkey relations were tense, but Georgia and Russia were extremely tense.
Great, beautiful, honest, hopeful people who couldn't kick the past, who were propagandized to their personal harm.
With all my heart, I hope my friends I made there will thrive.
I guess my hope to visit Azerbaijan is dashed. I would have loved it, would have made more friends.
Maybe in the next life.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

March 10 (today in Japan) or more specifically the night of March 10-11 marks the 78th anniversary of the single deadliest attack in human history - the Great Tokyo Air Raid of 1945.

In a single night, around 100,000 people - mostly civilians - were killed and over a million made homeless by US bombing that intentionally targeted civilian areas - conducted at night an in a pattern and under specific wind conditions using incendiaries to cause massive conflagration.

The death toll was almost as much as that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings combined - and details were kept secret by the US for a number of years after the war.

The smaller city that I live in was also frequently attacked - it did have numerous military and industrial targets, but was also targeted in similar fashion as in Tokyo - incendiaries dropped at night on crowded residential areas under high wind conditions to spread fires through areas of densely packed wooden structures.

An elderly student of mine who was a year old at the time survived only because her mother (who was pregnant with her younger sister) was able, with her baby on her back, to flee through burning streets, managing to reach a small river which was enough of a refuge for them to survive although it was so hot that her daughter's (my student's) hair caught on fire - but was put out by another woman that had fled to the same place.

Unfortunately, many of those who survived the war did not speak of it to younger generations and little is taught in school - most young Japanese are oblivious to such history.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/firebombing-of-tokyo#33

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