The Evening Blues - 5-30-19



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Houston Stackhouse

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features delta blues guitarist and singer Houston Stackhouse. Enjoy!

Houston Stackhouse - Cool Drink of Water

“There will be killing till the score is paid.”

-- Homer


News and Opinion

Assange Is Reportedly Gravely Ill, and Hardly Anyone’s Talking About It

Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson has told the press that “Assange’s health situation on Friday was such that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him.” This jarring revelation has been reported by a small handful of outlets, but only as an aside in relation to Sweden refusing Samuelson’s request for a postponement of a scheduled hearing regarding Assange’s detention en absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations.

The fact that the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder is so ill that he can’t converse lucidly is itself far more significant than the postponement refusal, yet headlines mentioning Samuelson’s statement focus on the Swedish case, de-emphasizing the startling news from his lawyer.

As of this writing I’ve been able to find very few news outlets reporting on this at all, the most mainstream being a Reuters article with the very tame headline “Swedish court rejects delay of Assange hearing over ill-health: lawyer.” The Sydney Morning Herald also covered the story without even mentioning illness in its headline, instead going with “Swedish court rejects effort to delay Assange hearing.” The much smaller alternative media outlet World Socialist Website has been the only outlet I’ve found so far reporting on Samuelson’s statement in anything resembling its proper scale, publishing a good article on May 29 titled “Despite Assange’s ill-health, Swedish court rejects delay to hearing.” ...

Another part of this story that has gone completely uncovered in all English-language media as of this writing is the news that Assange has been transferred to the hospital wing of Belmarsh prison. This was reported by the Swedish outlet Upsala Nya Tidning, a newspaper published in the same district court in which Assange is scheduled to call in for his hearing. The report was also based on a statement to the press by Per Samuelson. ...

We have been watching the slow-motion assassination of Julian Assange. They have been choking him to death by tactical psyops, siege tactics, and willful neglect as surely as if they placed a noose tied around his neck, not just in Belmarsh prison but in the embassy as well. The only difference between his execution and someone on death row is the same as the difference between covert and overt warfare, which makes sense because the intelligence, judicial and military agencies carrying out his death sentence operate within the same power structure that carries out war. First came the smears (propaganda), then came the siege (sanctions), and they staged their coup (dragged him out of the embassy) and now they’ve got him in their clutches and they can do what they want behind closed doors. That’s how you kill a nation while still looking like a nice guy, and that’s how they’re killing Assange.

Endless Procedural Abuses Show Julian Assange Case Was Never About Law

It is astonishing how often one still hears well-informed, otherwise reasonable people say about Julian Assange: “But he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy in London.” That short sentence includes at least three factual errors. In fact, to repeat it, as so many people do, you would need to have been hiding under a rock for the past decade – or, amounting to much the same thing, been relying on the corporate media for your information about Assange, including from supposedly liberal outlets such as the Guardian and the BBC.

At the weekend, a Guardian editorial – the paper’s official voice and probably the segment most scrutinised by senior staff – made just such a false claim:

Then there is the rape charge that Mr Assange faced in Sweden and which led him to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in the first place.

The fact that the Guardian, supposedly the British media’s chief defender of liberal values, can make this error-strewn statement after nearly a decade of Assange-related coverage is simply astounding. And that it can make such a statement days after the US finally admitted that it wants to lock up Assange for 175 years on bogus "espionage" charges – a hand anyone who wasn’t being wilfully blind always knew the US was preparing to play – is still more shocking.

Assange faces no charges in Sweden yet, let alone "rape charges." As former UK ambassador Craig Murray recently explained, the Guardian has been misleading readers by falsely claiming that an attempt by a Swedish prosecutor to extradite Assange – even though the move has not received the Swedish judiciary’s approval – is the same as his arrest on rape charges. It isn’t. Also, Assange did not seek sanctuary in the embassay to evade the Swedish investigation. No state in the world gives a non-citizen political asylum to avoid a rape trial. The asylum was granted on political grounds. Ecuador rightly accepted Assange’s concerns that the US would seek his extradition and lock him out of sight for the rest of his life. ...

The fact that so many ordinary people keep making these basic errors has a very obvious explanation. It is because the corporate media keep making these errors. ... British journalists have had many years to get the facts straight. In an era of social media, journalists at the Guardian and the BBC have been bombarded by readers and activists with messages telling them how they are getting basic facts wrong in the Assange case. But the journalists keep doing it anyway. They are trapped in a herd-think entirely divorced from reality. Rather than listen to experts, or common sense, these “journalists” keep regurgitating the talking points of the British security state, which are as good as identical to the talking points of the US security state.

What is so striking in the Assange coverage is the sheer number of legal anomalies in his case – and these have been accumulating relentlessly from the very start. Almost nothing in his case has gone according to the normal rules of legal procedure. And yet that very revealing fact is never noticed or commented on by the corporate media. You need to have a blind spot the size of Langley, Virginia, not to notice it.

Arms Manufacturers Tell Investors That Iran Tension Fuels Business

Defense executives from around the country crowded into Goldman Sachs’ glimmering tower in downtown Manhattan in mid-May, eager to present before a conference of bankers and financial analysts. While much of the world was on edge over simmering tension in the Middle East, as the U.S. and its allies have stoked tensions with Iran, the businessmen at the conference talked of opportunity.

Eric DeMarco, the president of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, addressed the conference, arguing that his company is “very well-aligned” for the shift in the military budget away from asymmetrical fighting toward nation-state warfare. The rising threat of war with Iran, Russia, and China, DeMarco continued, could threaten U.S. naval power, which could require ballistic missile threat upgrades, the type of systems Kratos Defense specializes in.

Large arms manufacturers from across the industry have similarly told investors that escalating conflict with Iran could be good for business. ...

The defense industry is far from an idle observer of the conflict. Major firms spend big sums on lobbying to influence the Pentagon’s budget — money that came primarily from Congress in the first place. The last National Defense Authorization Act includes several provisions on Iran, including a directive that U.S. allies “build an interoperable ballistic missile defense architecture … to defend against the Islamic Republic of Iran missile threat” and that the secretary of defense develop a plan to counter the “destabilizing activities of Iran.”


Leaked OPCW report suggests Syria gas attack was 'staged,' MIT scientist says

Global markets fall as China prepares to hit back at US in trade war

Financial markets around the world have sold off sharply after Beijing signalled a readiness to strike back at Washington in their escalating trade war by restricting exports of rare-earth elements.

Wall Street recorded steep losses on Wednesday as the Dow Jones slumped to the lowest level in almost four months, losing about 200 points to trade at 25,149. The S&P 500 index also fell to a two-month low, sliding by 18 points to 2,784.

Against a backdrop of mounting concern over the long-running trade dispute between the US and China, which stands to choke global growth, Beijing signalled that exports of rare-earth elements to the US could be curtailed. Chinese media reports, including the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist party, raised the prospect of the crackdown, which would stand to hit American companies involved in electronics, car production and defence.

Analysts said China handles roughly 80% of US imports of rare earths and that high-tech manufacturers could see their profits crippled by the measures.

Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at the financial trading platform Oanda, said: “It appears the financial markets are convinced the trade war is not going to yield anything promising any time soon, and new risks are emerging. If China does follow through on its rare export ban, the effect would cripple high-tech manufacturing.”

An eye-opener that puts brexit in context. The wealthy looter class is coming for the UK and it is just about ready to get away with the heist.

Brexit: Endgame - The Hidden Money, with Stephen Fry

Louisiana braces for latest turn of the screw on abortion rights

On Wednesday Louisiana looks set to vote on making abortion illegal beyond the sixth week of pregnancy – following a slew of other states who have passed similar laws. The law is described inaccurately by its supporters as banning abortion after a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, but experts have pointed out that this terminology is wrong on both accounts.

But even without the new law abortion has been prohibitively difficult in the state for decades. Lousiana’s lawbooks hold more than 1,000 medically unnecessary requirements regarding abortion, according to the ACLU. These include laws requiring not just waiting periods, but the reading of counseling scripts, mandatory ultrasounds, and what choice advocates call “Trap” laws, or Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers.

Unlike the recent onslaught of unconstitutional anti-choice legislation in states like Alabama, Ohio and Georgia, most of these laws do not depend on a future landmark supreme court decision to go into effect, and are already curbing women’s access to reproductive healthcare. Thanks to those regulations Louisiana, which had 17 abortion clinics in the early 1990s, has just three today. Additional pending Trap legislation could make it difficult for all but one to remain open.

Scott Warren Provided Food & Water to Migrants in Arizona; He Now Faces Up to 20 Years in Prison

'Criminalizing Compassion': Trial Begins for Humanitarian Facing 20 Years in Prison for Giving Water to Migrants in Arizona Desert

Human rights advocates accused the U.S. Justice Department of "criminalizing compassion" as a federal trial began in Arizona Wednesday for activist Scott Warren, who faces up to 20 years in prison for providing humanitarian aid to migrants in the desert.

Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor from Ajo, Arizona, is a volunteer for the humanitarian organization No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, an official ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson. He was arrested by Border Patrol agents in 2017 and faces three felony counts for providing food, water, clean clothes, and beds to two migrants.

Warren's parents, Pam and Mark, launched a MoveOn.org petition earlier this month calling on federal authorities to drop all charges, which has garnered nearly 130,000 signatures. Amnesty International issued that same demand on May 15, in an open letter to Michael Bailey, the U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona.

The charges against Warren "are an unjust criminalization of direct humanitarian assistance" and "appear to constitute a politically motivated violation of his protected rights as a Human Rights Defender," Amnesty International's Americas regional director Erika Guevara-Rosas wrote to Bailey. "Providing humanitarian aid is never a crime," Guevara-Rosas added in a statement last week. "If Dr. Warren were convicted and imprisoned on these absurd charges, he would be a prisoner of conscience, detained for his volunteer activities motivated by humanitarian principles and his religious beliefs."



the horse race






the evening greens


Fossil Fuel Subsidies Mean Using Public Money 'To Destroy the World': UN Chief

As Pope Francis called on global financial leaders to help keep dirty energy in the ground, the United Nations chief said Tuesday that fossil fuel subsidies amount to "using taxpayers' money... to destroy the world."

"Climate disruption is upon us, and it is progressing faster than our efforts to address it," said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in Vienna at the climate-focused R20 Austrian World Summit. ... "What is needed for effective mitigation and improved resilience," he said, "is quite simply a rapid and deep change in how we do business, how we generate power, how we build cities, and how we feed the world."

Another key change, said Guterres, is to stop using taxpayer funds to prop up the coal, oil, and gas industries. "We need to tax pollution, not people, and to end subsidies for fossil fuels," said Guterres. He also debunked the wrongful assumption by some that fossil fuel subsidies improve people's lives. "There is nothing more wrong than that," he said. "What we are doing is using taxpayers' money—which means our money—to boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals. In one word—to destroy the world."

"As taxpayers," continued Guterres, "I believe we would like to see our money back rather than to see our money used to destroy the world."

Climate crisis may be a factor in tufted puffins die-off, study says

The death of thousands of tufted puffins in the Bering Sea may have been partly caused by the climate breakdown, according to a study. Between 3,150 and 8,500 seabirds died over a four-month period from October 2016, with hundreds of severely emaciated carcasses washed up on the beaches of the Pribilofs Islands in the southern Bering Sea, 300 miles (480km) west of the Alaskan mainland.

Researchers believe the birds died of starvation partly caused by a loss of energy-rich prey species, which was triggered by increased sea and atmospheric temperatures, as well as reductions in winter sea ice recorded since 2014.

Tufted puffins breeding in the Bering Sea feed on fish and other marine invertebrates, which in turn feed on plankton. The loss of nutritious prey species caused by the climate crisis is also affecting populations of the Atlantic puffin around Britain and Iceland.

Researchers in the journal Plos One documented the Bering Sea “wreck”, or mass die-off, with the help of a citizen science programme in which tribal and community members on St Paul Island recovered more than 350 carcasses of adult birds in the process of moulting, a vulnerable moment in the bird’s lifecycle when they require plentiful food.


Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Prosecuting Julian Assange for Espionage Is a Coup Attempt Against the First Amendment

U.S. Government Seeks NGO Help For Removing Iran From Syria

Robert Mueller’s First Public Statement About the Russia Probe

Bernie Sanders Asked Bill Kristol to Apologize for Pushing the Iraq War. Guess What Happened Next.

How Bernie Sanders Accidentally Built a Groundbreaking Organizing Movement


A Little Night Music

Houston Stackhouse - Mean Old World

Houston Stackhouse - Kansas City Blues

Houston Stackhouse - Big Road Blues

Houston Stackhouse - Return Mail

Houston Stackhouse, Robert Nighthawk & Peck Curtis - Right round the corner

Houston Stackhouse - Sweet Black Angel Blues

Houston Stackhouse - Take a little walk with me

Houston Stackhouse - Talkin' 'Bout You

Houston Stackhouse - My Babe



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joe shikspack's picture

i am still hanging with relatives. see you soon!

have a great evening, all!

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clean clothes, and beds to two migrants.

Killing millions is a patriotic duty.

Offering help is a felony.

How upside-down has our system of justice tumbled.

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@QMS

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

mimi's picture

@UntimelyRippd
he got killed already, so no need to ask the question ... (I am a little bitter and that's my way of being sarcastic, no offense meant to anybody)

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enhydra lutris's picture

slow it down a bit.

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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 --

travelerxxx's picture

@enhydra lutris

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mimi's picture

detroitmechworks's picture

Because that would be illegal.

The can targeted airstrike you, put you under seige, raid your house in the middle of the night with soldiers, shoot you for the slightest provocation based off the feelings of the guy holding the gun... but they cannot assassinate you.

Horrific, deplorable violence is ok, as long as nobody admits it's happening.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpMLpOn0MWg]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks Nothing more to say, my friend.

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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

dystopian's picture

Great blues man... he had some neat moves, especially for the time, wow.

What is so striking in the Assange coverage is the sheer number of legal anomalies in his case – and these have been accumulating relentlessly from the very start. Almost nothing in his case has gone according to the normal rules of legal procedure. And yet that very revealing fact is never noticed or commented on by the corporate media. You need to have a blind spot the size of Langley, Virginia, not to notice it.

I think using the term "media" for what the MSM has become needs to be reconsidered.

Syriastan: The engineering report being left out of the OPCW report, coupled with the canister photos are damning. That canister fell out of the sky onto that bed, which remains intact. No wonder they left the engineering report out. OPCW has been hijacked by the neolib/MIIC warmongers.

What kind of country charges people with crimes for feeding the hungry homeless, or giving water to the thirsty? America's capitalistic democracy where compassion is criminalized.

Puffins:
A lot of seabirds are in trouble. Besides plastics, and long-liner fisheries, introduced cats and rats on many islands... Often warmer sea surface temps drive things too deep for birds. Or warm water areas simply move the prey species somewhere else, which you can't do with your nest. The Puffins are really amazing birds, not the least of which is that incredible bill, the sheaths of which are molted after breeding season. Some Tufteds (as in the article - black with big orange bill and gold head tufts) nest south to the Farallon Isls. off San Francisco. In winter to spring mostly they can be seen further south, Monterey Bay gets some. I have seen a few around the Channel Isls. off Sta. Barbara, where they actually nested into the 1940's when the herring fishery collapsed due to you'll never guess it overfishing. Maine is the place for Atlantic Puffin in the states. Whatabird!

Thanks for the cool tunes...

edit - removed errant space

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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

Selection_004_10.png

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Pricknick's picture

give Justin Amash another state he can go to.
He's been an absolute disaster to michiganders.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

mimi's picture

@Pricknick
being no Michigandian, I was unable to understand, what he wanted to say. Would you explain a little bit in what way he was a disaster? I couldn't understand why the crowd thought he was courageous, but then I guess it would be difficult for an American to understand, who of the folks of the German Green party are the the good eggs, who are scrambled eggs and who has nothing egg-like in them as well ... (so please bear with me)

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mimi's picture

resorting to my favorite 'rescue from hell' emergency prayer...

Israel to hold fresh election as Netanyahu fails to form coalition

Mr Netanyahu was unable to reach a deal for a fresh right-wing coalition following last month's election.

At the heart of the impasse was a military conscription bill governing exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students.

It is the first time in Israel's history that a prime minister-designate has failed to form a coalition.

Parliament voted 74-45 in favour of dissolving itself after Mr Netanyahu missed a midnight local time (21:00 GMT) deadline on Wednesday.

and

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Mr Netanyahu said: "We'll run a sharp, clear election campaign which will bring us victory. We'll win, we'll win and the public will win." ....

No party has ever won a majority in Israel's 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, and the country has always had coalition governments....

Mr Netanyahu faces another challenge in the coming months in the form of possible fraud and bribery charges, and has been accused of attempting to secure for himself immunity from prosecution.
If he is indicted, the Supreme Court will determine whether he must resign.

That's life sentence ...or may that's a death sentence ... who knows?

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