The Evening Blues - 5-24-21



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: James "Son" Thomas

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features delta blues singer James "Son" Thomas. Enjoy!

James Son Thomas - Dust My Broom

"When a man repeats a promise again and again, he means to fail you."

-- Edmund Fuller


News and Opinion

Blinken pledges US will deal with ‘grave humanitarian situation in Gaza’

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has pledged the Biden administration will deal with “the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza” and will seek “equal measures of security” for Israelis and Palestinians as a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict held throughout the weekend. ...

Blinken told ABC News on Sunday that the ceasefire was “critical” to position the US “to make a pivot to building something more positive” and reiterated that the administration supports a two state solution. “That has to start now with dealing with the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza. Then reconstruction, rebuilding what’s been lost. And critically, engaging both sides in trying to start to make real improvements in the lives of people so that Israelis and Palestinians can live with equal measures of security, of peace and dignity,” Blinken said.

“It’s vitally important that Palestinians feel hope and have opportunity, and can live in security just as it is for Israelis, and there should be equal measures,” he added.

Pressed on how the US would support rebuilding efforts in Gaza without funding Hamas, the militant group in power in Gaza, Blinken said the administration would rely on “trusted, independent parties that can help do the reconstruction and the development, not some quasi-government authority”. He argued that Hamas “has brought nothing but ruin to the Palestinian people”.

Blinken credited Joe Biden’s “relentless, determined, but quiet diplomacy” in brokering the ceasefire but declined to comment on calls within the progressive wing of the Democratic party to curb arms sales to Israel.

Amid Gaza Ceasefire, Israel Arrests Hundreds & Continues “Colonial Violence” in Occupied Palestine

Israel Attacks on Gaza Left Strained Health Care System in Tatters

Dr. Khaled Harazeen described the scene at al-Shifa Hospital in the occupied Gaza Strip as “catastrophic.”

“We are already working within extreme limitations and now we face dozens of victims at a time,” he told The Intercept. “We try our best to triage the cases, but there are so many wounded. The end result is a lot of deaths and an unbearable load on the medical staff.” Harazeen added, “We are shattered.”

Leading up to the ceasefire announced on Thursday evening, the medical professionals of Gaza’s main hospital had worked around the clock for more than a week to treat the soaring number of war injuries inflicted by Israeli airstrikes — nearly 2,000 in only 10 days. Medical workers and their facilities have not been exempt from the attacks: Israeli airstrikes have killed doctors and damaged at least 19 health clinics, drawing increasing international outcry and condemnation.

The swelling number of patients, casualties among medical staff, and attacks on infrastructure surrounding medical facilities all compounded a longstanding crisis in the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged by Israel for a decade a half. “The war injuries are the most brutal additional burden on a health care infrastructure that was already on its knees because of the occupation’s systematic ‘de-development’ of Gaza’s health care sector,” said Dr. Osama Tanous, a Palestinian pediatrician with Physicians for Human Rights–Israel. “Gaza’s doctors and staff are absolutely inspiring, hardworking professionals, but they’re working in an intentionally broken system by the occupation, always pushed to its most extreme limits.”

Harazeen said he and his colleagues have only slept “a few hours here and there” during the hostilities because “the need is nonstop.” The few times he had reached his home through the Israeli shelling, he was physically and emotionally exhausted, “barely able to open my eyes or have a good chat with my family.”

He and his colleagues are “haunted by the sound of screaming children and all the shredded bodies.”

Since last Monday, at least 243 Gazans, including 66 children, were killed by Israeli airstrikes, using U.S.-made warplanes and bombs. Twelve Israelis have been killed by rockets fired by Gazan militants.

Israel Destroys Press Building--Press Responds By Firing Reporter

Krystal Ball: Right-Wing “Cancel Culture” Hypocrisy EXPOSED By AP Firing Of Emily Wilder

Blast at Iranian complex housing drone factory injures nine

A complex that houses a factory that makes Iranian drones has suffered a major explosion days after Israel had claimed that Iran was providing drones to Hamas in Gaza.

The blast at the weekend injured at least nine workers at the petrochemical factory in Isfahan. The Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (Hesa), which produces a variety of aircraft and drones for Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, is located in the complex owned by Sepahan Nargostar Chemical Industries.

There was no independent confirmation of the cause of the explosion or the precise factory hit.

Iran has not provided information on the cause of the incident, but Israel has shown no compunction in the past about taking what it regards as reprisals inside Iran.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday showed the remains of what he described as an Iranian drone that was downed on Tuesday after crossing from Iraqi or Syrian airspace.

Iran agrees to extend nuclear deal on cameras at sites weeks before Iranian elections

US-Iran nuclear pact revival at risk after delays to new inspection deal

The future of talks to bring the US back into the Iran nuclear deal is under threat after the UN nuclear watchdog was unable to reach an expected agreement on how to continue to inspect Iran’s nuclear sites.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency was forced to postpone a planned press conference on Sunday that was due to set out details of a one-month extension of the current light-touch inspection regime amid conflicting signals from Iran over whether it would sign up to it.

The IAEA said its director general, Rafael Grossi, will continue consultations with Tehran on a technical agreement. The wider talks in Vienna on reviving the nuclear deal with the west, which Donald Trump took the US out of in 2018, are likely to collapse or be suspended if there is no agreement first between the IAEA and Iran on inspections.

The talks are to enter what is expected to be their fifth and decisive round this week, with both sides warning that big gaps still remained.

Voice of America Is Accused of Ignoring Government Atrocities in Ethiopia

Jason Patinkin spent the better part of a decade as a freelance reporter, covering conflicts, extremism, and counterinsurgency in East Africa for major news outlets including the Washington Post, Reuters, and the Associated Press. He won commendations for relentless reporting under a repressive regime in South Sudan and broke stories about war crimes that provoked global outrage.

But as Patinkin watched a brutal civil war unfold in Ethiopia this winter and spring, the coverage by his most recent employer, the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Voice of America, shocked and unnerved him. Troops and paramilitaries loyal to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed were accused of killing and expelling civilians and committing gang rape, but VOA’s coverage largely favored the government, in Patinkin’s view, while ignoring its potential war crimes.

For months, Patinkin complained to senior editors about bias in the news outlet’s Ethiopia coverage. In his resignation email last month, he called out “VOA’s pro-Abiy propaganda effort,” its failure to issue corrections for “false and biased reporting,” and its airing of “pro-government propaganda while ignoring atrocities blamed on pro-government forces.” Twelve other current and former VOA service chiefs, reporters, and staffers, as well as outside experts, described violations of basic journalistic standards in VOA’s coverage of Ethiopia stretching back decades. Ethnic factions, especially in VOA’s Amharic language section, have used the news agency to push partisan agendas and settle scores, current and former VOA staff, including two former heads of the agency’s Horn of Africa service, told The Intercept.

“Since I was hired full-time at VOA about a year and a half ago, I’ve seen many incidents and decisions here that caused me great concern as a journalist,” Patinkin wrote in his April 30 resignation email, which was seen by The Intercept. “But VOA’s continued tolerance of a wartime propaganda effort is too much. I cannot in good conscience remain associated with this organization.”

Founded in 1942 with a mandate to serve as a “reliable and authoritative source of news,” Voice of America’s digital, television, and radio platforms provide news in more than 45 languages to an estimated weekly audience of more than 278 million people. With an annual budget of $252 million, the broadcaster says it is committed to “telling audiences the truth.”

Belarus forcefully diverts Ryanair flight to detain opposition blogger

Belarus accused of ‘hijacking’ Ryanair flight diverted to arrest blogger

Belarus has been accused of hijacking a European jetliner and engaging in an act of state terrorism when it forced a Ryanair flight to perform an emergency landing in Minsk after a bomb threat and arrested an opposition blogger critical of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko.

Roman Protasevich, a former editor of the influential Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live, was detained by police after his flight was diverted to Minsk national airport. Minsk confirmed that Lukashenko ordered his military to scramble a Mig-29 fighter to escort the plane.

The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said the plane had been “hijacked” and accused Lukashenko of a “reprehensible act of state terrorism”. He said he would demand new sanctions against Belarus at a European Council meeting scheduled for Monday. ...

Protasevich has been accused by Belarus of terrorism and provoking riots after the Nexta channels became one of the main conduits for organising last year’s anti-Lukashenko protests over elections fraud. Protasevich had been living in exile and Poland had previously rejected an extradition request sent by Minsk.

Protasevich was flying on an intra-EU flight from Athens to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, when the plane was diverted to Minsk. According to online flight data, the plane was over Belarusian airspace when it diverted course but was closer to Vilnius than Minsk.

Double standards? | US, EU condemn Ryanair plane grounding in Belarus

Drug Industry Money Quietly Backs Media Voices Against Sharing Vaccine Patents

Just before going live on Al Jazeera last week, Achal Prabhala, an activist for equitable access to medicine, performed a quick internet search on his sparring partner in a debate on the proposal to share vaccine technology with low-income countries. It didn’t take long before Prabhala found that his opponent, an academic who favors pharmaceutical monopoly rights, leads an institute at Duke University funded by Pfizer and AstraZeneca. He pointed this fact out to the producers on air.

The apparent conflict of interest is hardly a rare occurrence. Across newspapers, online outlets, and broadcast media, prominent experts and organizations backed by the pharmaceutical industry are weighing in against the global push to temporarily waive enforcement of certain patent and intellectual property rights on vaccines and other pandemic-fighting technologies, a proposal designed to allow the creation of generic coronavirus vaccines and therapeutic medicine to meet global demand. Despite their relevance for many opponents of the waiver, financial ties to the drug lobby are rarely disclosed.

The Biden administration’s announcement earlier this month that it would back the waiver at the World Trade Organization has escalated the fight.

WHO Says Covid Has Killed 6 to 8 Million People—Two to Three Times More Than Officially Reported

Official reports of the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 are likely a "significant undercount," according to the World Health Organization, which estimated Friday that the pandemic's total global death toll is between six and eight million people so far.

As of Friday, the coronavirus had officially claimed the lives of more than 3.4 million individuals worldwide, the WHO said. When unreported Covid-19 deaths as well as deaths due to Covid-19's effects on mobility and hospital capacity are accounted for, however, the United Nations agency argued that the true toll could be two to three times higher.

In its annual World Health Statistics report (pdf), the WHO estimated that in 2020, at least three million deaths could be attributed, both directly and indirectly, to Covid-19. That's 1.2 million more than last year's official count of 1.8 million Covid-19 deaths.

Focusing on excess mortality—which includes correctly certified Covid-19 deaths as well as unreported and incorrectly attributed ones, plus deaths due to the negative impacts of the virus on daily life and healthcare systems—"provides a more accurate picture of the full impact of the pandemic," the health agency wrote.

"Total deaths are at least two to three times higher than officially reported," Samira Asma, WHO assistant director-general in charge of data, told reporters, according to Al Jazeera.

Now, with Covid-19 ravaging Latin America and Asia as new coronavirus variants spread, Asma estimated that "about six to eight million deaths" could be attributed to the pandemic.

Asma added that the WHO is collaborating with countries "to understand the true human toll of the pandemic so we can be better prepared for the next emergency."

CDC studying reports of heart inflammation in young Covid vaccine recipients

Some teenagers and young adults who received Covid-19 vaccines have experienced heart inflammation, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group said, recommending further study of the rare condition.

In a statement dated 17 May, the CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation practices said it had looked into reports that a few young vaccine recipients, predominantly male adolescents and young adults, developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

The condition often goes away without complications and can be caused by a variety of viruses, the CDC group said.

CDC monitoring systems had not found more cases than would be expected in the population, but members of the committee on vaccinations felt that healthcare providers should be made aware of the reports of the “potential adverse event”, the committee said in the statement.

'Attempting to Starve People Back to Work': Anger Grows as GOP Governors Cut Off Jobless Benefits

Millions of jobless workers in Republican-led states across the U.S. are growing increasingly worried that they soon won't be able to afford rent, medicine, and other basic necessities as GOP governors rush to cut off pandemic-related unemployment benefits, a widely condemned attack on struggling people that the Biden administration insists it is powerless to stop.

As of this writing, 22 Republican governors have moved to withdraw from a federal program that boosted regular unemployment checks by $300 per week to help jobless people weather the ongoing economic crisis.

Of those Republican-led states, 19 are also ending their participation in Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)—federal initiatives that provide an extension for people who have exhausted their state-level benefits and offer aid to gig workers and others who are typically ineligible.

To justify stripping a crucial lifeline from the jobless, the Republican leaders of Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, South Dakota, and other states have falsely claimed that the federal unemployment programs are so generous they are dissuading people from rejoining the workforce—a narrative that ignores a slew of other relevant factors, from the low wages on offer to lack of child care to health concerns.

"Many are asking whether expanded unemployment benefits are damaging the labor market by keeping workers from taking jobs. There is no compelling evidence of this," said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. "Nevertheless, many Republican-led states are preparing to cancel pandemic UI benefits. This will not just hurt workers who can't find work or can't work right now, it will hurt the economy in these states, because those benefits are supporting spending. It's terrible economics."

According to The Century Foundation, 3.6 million jobless workers across the 22 Republican-led states are set to lose a combined $21.7 billion in benefits due to the GOP governors' efforts, which will begin to take effect as early as June 12—nearly three months before the unemployment programs are set to expire on September 6. ...

Warning that the Republican cutbacks will worsen the immense suffering and hardship that jobless workers are already experiencing, progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups have pressured the Biden administration to do everything in its power to ensure the benefits continue reaching eligible people regardless of GOP governors' actions.

In a letter to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) argued that the Biden administration has both a moral and legal obligation to keep distributing benefits under the pandemic unemployment programs, which are funded entirely by the federal government.

"Workers who lack access to child care, have lost employer-sponsored health insurance, and fear for their health and safety as we work to get every American vaccinated are entitled to these benefits," Sanders wrote. "They will be forced into poverty—either with poor jobs with unfair wages or no income at all—if you fail to provide these benefits."

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) sketched out a similar argument in a separate letter to Walsh earlier this month. If the Labor Department fails to guarantee that eligible people continue receiving benefits, the group argued, the agency "will not only cause significant harm to our most vulnerable, it will be in direct violation of their duty to provide PUA benefits under the CARES Act," a coronavirus relief law enacted in March.

But unnamed Biden administration officials have told media outlets in recent days that their hands are tied, claiming that any effort by the Labor Department to compel states to distribute the benefits—or send out the aid itself—would be illegal.

Rick Santorum axed by CNN over racist remarks on Native Americans

CNN has dropped former Republican US senator Rick Santorum as a senior political commentator after racist remarks he made about Native Americans at an event in April.

News of Santorum’s termination was first reported by HuffPost. A CNN spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that the network has parted ways with Santorum. No further comment on the firing was provided, though an anonymous CNN executive told HuffPost that “leadership wasn’t particularly satisfied with that appearance. None of the anchors wanted to book him.”

Speaking at an event for the Young Americans Foundation, a conservative youth group, Santorum said that there was “nothing” in the US before Europeans colonizers arrived.

“Brutal & Gratuitous”: Family of Ronald Greene Demands Justice After Video Shows Deadly Traffic Stop

Ronald Greene punched and dragged by police before his death, video shows

Two years after Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with white police officers in May 2019, the Louisiana police department released footage of the incident. Louisiana state police had refused to publicly release footage from the incident, which they claimed culminated in Greene dying from crashing into a tree and injuring his head.

Footage released by the police on Friday was similar to the video released by the Associated Press this past week, which showed inconsistencies with the police’s claim that Greene had died from a car crash. ...

Two investigations, an internal inquiry from Louisiana police and a federal civil rights investigation, began at the end of last summer – over a year after Greene’s death. Greene’s family has also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the officers involved. Citing these investigations, police refused to release footage until Friday. Col Lamar Davis, the state police superintendent, said the agency decided to release the footage to encourage “healing”. ...

Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother, told CNN that she was disgusted by the videos. “There’s no words for how mad I am.”

Davis, the police chief, said he intends to fire one of the state troopers involved, according to the Advocate. A second trooper died in a car crash last year, shortly after he was informed of his imminent termination. A third officer received a 50-hour suspension.

Video Shows Tennessee Officers Taunted Hogtied Man Before He Died

Justice advocates on Friday condemned officers at a Tennessee county jail for taunting a hogtied man moments before his death after a local news station published video of the incident.

William Jennette—a 48-year-old white father of five—died on May 6, 2020 at the Marshall County Jail in Lewisburg, Tennessee after a group of officers from multiple law enforcement agencies restrained him and kneeled on his back for several minutes while he screamed for help, WTVF reports.

Video obtained by the Nashville station shows Jennette—who was arrested for alleged public intoxication, indecent exposure, and resisting arrest—yelling, "Help, they're going to kill me!"

One officer is heard commanding Jennette to "stay down, you stupid son of a bitch."

The video also shows Jennette repeatedly pleading with officers that he could not breathe.

"You shouldn't be able to breathe, you stupid bastard," an officer identified in a lawsuit as Kendra Burton replies.

At least two officers in the video say that Jennette bit them.

At one point in the video an officer sounds a note of caution, telling his colleagues: "Easy, easy—remember asphyxiation, guys."

To which another officer responds, "That's why I'm not on his lungs."

Jennette's last words were, "I'm good."

"No, you ain't good," an officer replies.

An autopsy (pdf) performed by the Marshall County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Jennette's death a homicide, listing the cause as "acute combined drug intoxication"—he had methamphetamine in his system—with asphyxia as a "contributory cause of death."

Despite that finding, a grand jury decided not to indict any of the officers.

Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund called the video "an absolute nightmare," tweeting: "Grand jury refuses to indict any. That's how it usually happens."

Chris Vanderveen, director of reporting at KUSA in Denver, tweeted that this is the 121st prone police restraint death he has logged.

One of Jennette's daughters, Dominque Jennette, filed a lawsuit (pdf) this February against Marshall County, the city of Lewisburg, and several of the officers involved. The suit alleges the officers' "savage beating" and "suffocation" of Jennette caused his death, and constitute a "deprivation of civil rights" under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Squad Caves & Votes To SUPER FUND Police!

ICE Detention Center Shuttered Following Repeated Allegations of Medical Misconduct

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday the agency will be shutting down the controversial immigration prison in Georgia where dozens of detained immigrant women were subjected to nonconsensual gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies. The memo, sent by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, instructs U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to terminate the contract with the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, according to the Washington Post, along with another detention center in Massachusetts. Both facilities are under federal investigation for detention practices. ...

The detention center, run by the private prison company LaSalle Corrections, was the focus of widespread criticism last fall when Dawn Wooten, a nurse and subsequently whistleblower at the facility, came forward with allegations of pervasive medical neglect and misconduct. “For over a decade, LaSalle and ICE have ignored, threatened, and even attacked immigrants at Irwin in an attempt to silence them,” said Priyanka Bhatt, a staff attorney at Project South. “Today matters because the people suffering abuse at Irwin have been seen.”

In her whistleblower allegations, Wooten detailed how the facility’s staff ignored serious medical complaints and failed to take proper precautions against Covid-19 both for the staff and the people detained at the prison. Wooten also alleged detained women were subjected to hysterectomies and other, sometimes unnecessary, gynecological procedures performed without proper informed consent, allegations that spurred widespread international criticism, including congressional investigations. ...

Mayorkas’s memo closing Irwin also instructed ICE not to renew its contract with the Bristol County immigration detention center in Massachusetts. In December, the Massachusetts attorney general said the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the facility, violated the civil rights of detained immigrants last year, when officials fired pepper spray and pepper projectiles and illegally unleashed dogs on detainees who were demanding Covid-19 protections.



the horse race



Stunner: Biden Retracts EVERY Campaign Promise



the evening greens


Lawyer Steven Donziger Under House Arrest for Suing Chevron

Indigenous, Climate Leaders Launch National Effort to Demand Biden 'Stop Trump Pipelines'

Indigenous and climate activists this week launched a national "Stop Trump Pipelines" campaign to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden and other key decision-makers to depart from the polluter-friendly positions of former President Donald Trump by blocking a pair of controversial fossil fuel pipelines.

The effort—led by Bold Alliance, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and partners from frontline communities—is kicking off with a six-figure television and digital campaign targeting Canada-based Enbridge Energy's Line 3 and Line 5 pipelines.

Moving forward, organizers said Friday, the campaign plans to "launch new efforts on the airwaves, online, and in communities across the country to keep the pressure up on policymakers and stop risky pipelines advanced by the Trump administration."

The day he took office in January, Biden revoked a permit that Trump granted for the Keystone XL pipeline in March 2019, citing the climate crisis and declaring that the project did not serve the U.S. national interest.

"Keystone XL was the first pipeline that President Biden rejected," says the new campaign website, "but it should not be the last."

Campaign organizers say that "decision-makers in Washington, D.C. and across the country now have a choice—stand with the Trump pipelines that prop up big oil and gas profits and cronyism or the approach Biden established when he canceled KXL."

Real Water, a premium bottled water, recalled amid death and liver illnesses

Federal authorities have ordered a complete recall of the Las Vegas-based bottled water brand Real Water and ordered the company to surrender records in investigations of at least one death and multiple cases of liver illness among people who reported drinking it.

The product is sold as premium alkalized drinking water in distinctive boxy blue bottles touting “E2 Electron Energized Technology.” Labels say it is “infused with negative ions” and offers healthy detoxifying properties.

Brent Jones, the company’s president, and attorneys for the company and the bottler, AffinityLifestyles.com, did not immediately respond Friday to email messages about a US district court order issued Wednesday. The order stopped the production and distribution of the product marketed primarily in Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California.

Jones and the company did not contest the order, called a consent decree, or admit wrongdoing pending further hearings. ... The consent decree requires the company to recall and destroy all its product produced before Wednesday; to turn over to the FDA records about processing, bottling and distribution; and to submit to unannounced inspections of company facilities in Las Vegas; Henderson, Nevada; and Mesa, Arizona.


Also of Interest

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

Boycotts and sanctions helped rid South Africa of apartheid – is Israel next in line?

Gaza Health Officials Fear Covid-19 Surge as Tens of Thousands Emerge From Crowded Bomb Shelters

Israeli security forces storm al-Aqsa after Gaza ceasefire

Jewish Americans are at a turning point with Israel

Canadian Journalists Fear Retaliation for Criticizing Coverage of Israeli Attacks on Gaza

The US Isn’t An Israel Puppet, Israel Isn’t A US Puppet: It’s One Empire

Why Israel Blows Up Media Offices & Targets Journalists

Corporate Media's Double Standard: They Attack Whomever They Want, But You Cannot Criticize Them

Tribune Shareholders Approve $633 Million Sale to Vulture Fund Alden Global

Congress Plans Climate Resiliency — but Mostly for the Military

Beavers, the Landscape, Carbon, Methane, and Climate Change

After Record Deportations, Biden Grants 100K Haitians Chance for Temporary Protected Status

Jimmy Dore: Feckless Bernie Too Late To Force The Vote

Jimmy Dore: Chris Cuomo's COLOSSAL Ethics Violation Condoned By CNN

Jimmy Dore: DEADLY Mass Protests Enter Third Week In Colombia

immy Dore: Alabama More Progressive Than Biden

immy Dore: YouTube Censoring Israel Coverage By Independent News

Grayzone: Chile shifts left to rewrite Pinochet-era constitution, as Goldman Sachs eyes its copper reserves

JD Scholten: How Dems LOST Rural America, Can They Get It Back?

Krystal and Saagar: Fox Host CALLED OUT LIVE For Lying To Viewers About Tax Enforcement On Rich

Rising: Squad BOWS To Pelosi On BILLIONS More For Capitol Police

Rising: Dems IDIOTIC Decision To Go ALL IN ON January 6 For Midterms


A Little Night Music

James "Son" Thomas - Beefsteak Blues

James Son Thomas- Crawlin Kingsnake

James Son Thomas - Catfish Blues

James 'Son' Thomas - After The War

James "Son" Thomas - It Hurts Me Too

James "Son" Thomas - Highway 61 Blues

James "Son" Thomas - Early One Morning Blues

James 'Son' Thomas - Cairo Blues

James "Son" Thomas - Rollin' & Tumblin'


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Comments

Good evening Joe.

Maybe this is too outlandish to consider but all this renewed interest about UFO sightings has gotten my antenae quivering.

As far as I know these sightings have been continuous and made by trained pilots and observers for a long time. Now it has been promoted to Big News, involing the words, "national security."

To be clear, I have no---Zero---opinion on this matter. How could I? Astronomy I for a semester helped me meet the science requirements to graduate. Fascinating stuff. But that was long, long ago.

What I am thinking is that just as Benjamin Netanyahu provoked a War on Gaza and Palestinians as a Diversion because his throne was slipping away from him, Are we now going to substitute actual news with a new, titillating topic? After all, Trump and cronies are losing the public's attention, certainly on cable news as they see their viewers slipping away. UFO as the next Russiagate?

Well.... I am interested. But it will not make me forget what the real news is in the USA and what my personal answer is. My belief, like many here is that we are living in the Crumbling Empire and my solution is Light a Candle when you can or point out one if you see it.

Is maybe a renewed Iranian deal a candle? IDK. I hope so. Please share your opinions if you have them.

Israel and Gaza defy even the word "hope" as far as I am concerned. Sorrow and Rage for now.

Here is my candle for today. For people who do not get why Andrew Yang has exploded in NYC an endorsement today provides an answer. Endorsements no longer matter much in NYC but John Liu now a NY senator, previously a NYC Council member, and The First and Only Asian ever to win CityWide in NYC, former NYC Controller endorsed Andrew Yang today and every local outlet was there and they are covering it. Even the NY Daily News who are all-in on the Anybody but Yang narrative.

The Why? is this endorsement different is the answer.

Here paraphrased is what Liu said: Andrew Yang is our Shirley Chisholm. His is the first Asian voice that is getting heard. He is OUR AOC. And later in the speech, Yang is our Audacity of Hope. Powerful and undeniable.

The Daily News published this cartoon today:

This tweet is the outrage from Mrs. Yang. Please click on each image to get the full effect.

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7 users have voted.

NYCVG

@NYCVG

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6 users have voted.

NYCVG

@NYCVG @NYCVG Against the Media Propaganda

The propaganda says that "Adams is the Leading Voice on Policing" and Eric Adams proclaiming himself the "REAL New Yorker."

In reality---Adams owns a home in NJ. His partner lives in that house in NJ. His kids went to school in New Jersey.

Gloves are coming off.

Yang begins every News Presser with his stances on policing. And his determination to back and support the police. The Media is entirely off base on who Yang is or they just do not care about anything except getting their hard RW DINO guy into office to rule us along with Cuomo.

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6 users have voted.

NYCVG

joe shikspack's picture

@NYCVG

heh, i have noticed that there has been an uptick in ufo news. i see the headlines and generally ignore them. it may just be a hangover from my youth when such news was national enquirer fare causing my prejudice, but then again, i can't see why any intelligent life form would want to visit us unless it was to point and laugh.

the iranian deal is kind of a head-scratcher. i think that the biden administration probably find it a rational thing to do. but, on the other hand, they have this irrational, racist theocracy breathing down their necks that appears to be willing to do damned near anything to scupper such an agreement.

then there's the fact that if biden does sign on the dotted line, it's likely that israel will use it as an excuse to start a full-scale war against iran, possibly escalating into a nuclear conflagration.

what's happening in occupied palestine now is just a temporary lull until the bloodthirsty likudniks figure that the world will put up with them mowing the grass again. they will never stop until they have slaughtered the last palestinian in the land of their magic book.

heh, people should avoid comparing yang to obama. there are similarities, but nobody needs another wall street lackey like obama.

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@joe shikspack Iran is tricky. The optimistic part of me wants us to sign it and just stop victimizing Iran. We are the ones who invaded them in 1953 and we are the ones who broke the current theory. Then, there is Israel screwing everything up for freedom democracy and justice.

On being like Obama of course we agree. Yang is not. His lack of a smooth answer for everything has proved that. To the delight of the NYC media.

What IS hitting the same chords are that A) Yang is an agent of change. (Obama was fake on that), but the appeal seems to be working for Yang. And B) also that voting for Yang is going to be an act of solidarity with a non-white victimized people.

Plus, what Liu was trying to say, "Yang is clearly OUR GUY to Asian population." That population has now heard from a Centrist (D) Grace Meng who is a Yang co-chair and Liu who is part of the Leftish movement. As is Ron Kim, a Socialist and Progressive State Senator. Yang has united the disparate branches of the community and I think they will turn out bigtime.

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6 users have voted.

NYCVG

joe shikspack's picture

@NYCVG

hopefully, there can only be one obama. it looks to me like yang is far better than his establishment competition and that it would be better all around if he was to trounce adams in the primary.

i have to say though, that i have had for a while a nagging feeling about yang that once elected, he may not turn out to be what one might hope for. his recent pandering on the israel issue only intensified that feeling. i hope i'm wrong.

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8 users have voted.

@joe shikspack Pleasing rhetoric is easy and cheap; a pleasing track record of accomplishments is tough.

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@joe shikspack

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4 users have voted.

NYCVG

Despite what is available online with regards to the Israeli incitement the public is bamboozled.

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/555137-majority-say-hamas-responsible-...

A majority of Americans believe that Hamas is responsible for the recent violence in Israel, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill on Monday.

Sixty percent of respondents blame Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated as a terror organization, for the bloodshed, while 40 percent blame Israel.

The findings come hours after President Biden announced on Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the region this week to meet separately with Israeli and Palestinian officials. The move is a part of the administration's diplomatic efforts after a cease-fire brought an end to 11 days of violence between the two sides last week.

And is still using its old tricks.

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12 users have voted.

@humphrey It is so sad. And maddening.

is it even possible to stop the blanket of lies that are smothering us?

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9 users have voted.

NYCVG

joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

my guess is the propaganda's effectiveness has to do with it's delivery vector - teevee. the idiot box is incredibly effective.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

glad to see that the hypocrites are getting some pushback. Smile

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9 users have voted.

@humphrey Lukashenko's Revenge

Short and sweet comment from Mar man:

I thought to myself when all this unfolded: "If the entire western media goes into hysterics over this obscure activist, then he absolutely is an asset of a western intelligence agency."

Sure enough, all the hysterics, hand-wringing and pearl-clutching by so many media outlets and governments all over the western world can only mean Lukashenko got the right man.

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Nice break from the other news you have reported on tonight. Fascinating to see the huge beaver dam!
Have seen some fairly large ones paddling around in the Snake River in the Oxbow in Grand Tetons. Have actually participated with WildEarth Guardians in building beaver dams on some of the streams that used to support beaver populations up in the Jemez wilderness. It was quite interesting to see how this was being done and then to walk up to some of the ones that had been built previously and there was evidence the beaver had actually started using some of them

It was hard work but very rewarding. The previous year we had planted various types of trees along the stream bed to encourage the beaver to repopulate the stream. Of course one of the other issues we were dealing with was keeping the cows that were being grazed from getting into the stream and ruining the work.

Thanks for all your hard work day after day and keeping me and others better informed of what is happening with news we cannot find on msm. Have a good evening.

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15 users have voted.

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

@jakkalbessie

glad you liked the beaver article. last year at a park not too far from me, it looked like some beaver were moving in. i found some trees that they had taken down and found their footprints in the mud on the shore of the river that runs through the park. i haven't gotten up there to check on them this year yet, but i will have to put it on my to do list.

have a great evening!

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dystopian's picture

Hey Joe,

Hope things your way are better than the news... The people that have allowed and made this to happen to Donzinger (or Assange and Snowden) won't get their karma soon enough for me...

Son House was great, loved his Catfish Blues...

Thanks for the tunes!

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12 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

heh, things here so far are much better than the news. i guess otherwise things here would be in the news. Smile

karma seems to be taking its time for donziger's persecutors. i hope when it gets around to them the results are gratifying.

have a great evening!

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6 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

Jimmy on

Biden Retracts EVERY Campaign Promise

, near the end discussed all thouse who asked for, and hence received nothing in exchange for their voe or support for Biden. He constrasted this behavior with the MIC and such who bot billions.

The example he should've pointed to was Pat Robertson and the religious right. They showed that the GOP cannot win without them and thereby wrested many concessions. That's all it atkes, stay home or vote other one lousy time and you own the party for decades, so why won't the left learn this simple fact.

be well and have a good one.

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11 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

so why won't the left learn this simple fact

might i refer you to p.t. barnum's famous declaration on the timing of the births of suckers? it seems apt.

have a great evening!

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10 users have voted.
TheOtherMaven's picture

@joe shikspack

because it describes his modus operandi both concisely and precisely. Smile

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

https://www.manitobacooperator.ca/daily/mexican-judge-rejects-industry-b...

Mexico City | Reuters — A Mexican federal judge ruled against a request by the National Farm Council to freeze a government plan to ban genetically modified (GMO) corn and the widely used herbicide glyphosate by 2024, the national science council said on Monday.

Judge Martin Adolfo Santos Perez’s ruling allows the executive order issued by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador late last year that outlines the planned ban to proceed.

If the ban is implemented, it would dramatically upend the current grains trade between the U.S. and Mexico, including some 16 million tonnes of U.S. exports of yellow corn to its southern neighbor, which is nearly all GMO.

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11 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

good news for mexico.

too bad the u.s. is too corrupt to stop gmo's and monsanto from selling likely carcinogens.

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8 users have voted.

Chevron needs to die!
And all the cops anywhere and everywhere that torture and kill people are those humans that make me want to believe there is a Hell.
To clear my mind, purify my soul, it is time to make that grueling 4 1/2 hour drive to Natchez, Mississippi in a couple of weeks. So, I know the Natchez Trace pretty well, enjoy looking at the invasive, killing kudzu, and the battlefields at Vicksburg, but I never drove up to see Graceland. Might have to spend a day on that pilgrimage.
TLOML can do the research to see what is open, and if nothing is open but a cool bar with a blues band, we will simply suffer through that ordeal a couple of nights.
Be well, joe!

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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

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

i wrote off bernie and the squad as a lost cause a while ago, so they don't disappoint me anymore, though they do occasionally piss me off like all politicians.

sounds like an interesting trip, with lots of places that feature in songs i listen to along the way.

have a great trip!

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7 users have voted.

USG current and/or former officials weighing in.

Hasn't been seen since the McCarthy era of the Cold War. That "they" (MIC etal.) are stooping to throwing this crap at the wall suggests that Cold War 2.0 isn't going as well for them as they'd hoped.

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joe shikspack's picture

@Marie

heh, when i heard that they had trotted out obama to opine on ufos, i knew something bad was afoot. Smile

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@Marie what occurred to me also.

The Next Distraction.

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NYCVG

Ever think viewers are just not that in to you anymore Jimmy? Nothing lasts forever, why would a comedian doing "journalism" in his garage grow viewers at all? I don't know.

What is a journalist? What is an influencer? What is a reporter? What is a dilettante?

"I have code running on two planets." was a HackerNews quote that flattened me in a thread the other day. The guy could not be bothered to recognize the negative affects platform code has on broad swaths of society today. Or to recognize the ridiculous salaries orks are paid to write facebook adz, or twitter videos, or twitch streams, insta-crap, blah blah blah. Send that guy to mars forever, we got growth problems right here in river city, right now. Shrink every thing, learn how to shrink. That's my advice. ker-plunk!

Rethinking Search: Making Experts out of Dilettantes

When experiencing an information need, users want to engage with an expert, but often turn to an information retrieval system, such as a search engine, instead. Classical information retrieval systems do not answer information needs directly, but instead provide references to (hopefully authoritative) answers. Successful question answering systems offer a limited corpus created on-demand by human experts, which is neither timely nor scalable. Large pre-trained language models, by contrast, are capable of directly generating prose that may be responsive to an information need, but at present they are dilettantes rather than experts - they do not have a true understanding of the world, they are prone to hallucinating, and crucially they are incapable of justifying their utterances by referring to supporting documents in the corpus they were trained over. This paper examines how ideas from classical information retrieval and large pre-trained language models can be synthesized and evolved into systems that truly deliver on the promise of expert advice.

...
Welcome the new robot reporter overlords! Feel secure Silicon Valley orks have your safety and security in mind as they hack away everything containing any shred of humanity, and replace it with yet another shitty rental platform. My ego can't fit in the same room with these people's self-serving pursuit of weatlh and power. PU good luck.

Peace and Love

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

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4 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!