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This evening's music features "The Harmonica Boss," Doctor Ross. Enjoy!

"Maybe the world really did end in 2012. Everything’s been unraveling into an exponentially expansive field of weirdness ever since."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Irresponsible talk coming from the White House:

US mulling military response to ransomware attacks, Biden officials say

US officials on Sunday ratcheted up pressure on companies and foreign adversaries to fight cybercriminals, and said Joe Biden was considering options to counter the growing threat including a military response.

At the end of a week in which the FBI director, Christopher Wray, said cybercrime threat presented “a lot of parallels” to the threat of terrorism before 9/11, the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, was asked if military action was being considered.

The administration was looking at “all of the options” to defend the US against ransomware criminals, she said.

Raimondo did not detail what those options could look like, but told ABC’s This Week the topic will be on the agenda when Biden meets the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, this month. The rising threat of cyberattacks has pushed the Biden administration into a more aggressive stance against Russia, which is thought to harbor some perpetrators.

“We’re not taking anything off the table as we think about possible repercussions, consequences or retaliation,” Raimondo said.

Wow, even not fighting a war in Afghanistan is expensive!

US Pledges $3.3 Billion in Funding for Afghan Forces

The U.S. peace envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, along with a high-level delegation, met Sunday with leaders in Kabul to discuss bilateral cooperation after U.S. and coalition troops leave the country by a Sept. 11 deadline.

The discussions come as Taliban insurgents have intensified battlefield attacks against government forces, capturing nine Afghan districts, including six in the past week, since the foreign military withdrawal began a month ago. Hundreds of combatants on both sides and Afghan civilians have also been killed.

A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Sunday the talks with Khalilzad’s team focused on three sectors, including defense, economy and humanitarian assistance.

Mohammad Amiri said the U.S. envoy told Ghani that Washington will annually provide $3.3 billion to Kabul over the next two years to support Afghan security forces battling the Taliban.

Amiri noted that more U.S. facilities and equipment, including aircraft, to strengthen the Afghan Air Force, will be among the main topics of bilateral talks in coming days.

C.I.A. Scrambles for New Approach in Afghanistan

The rapid U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is creating intense pressure on the C.I.A. to find new ways to gather intelligence and carry out counterterrorism strikes in the country, but the agency has few good options.

The C.I.A., which has been at the heart of the 20-year American presence in Afghanistan, will soon lose bases in the country from where it has run combat missions and drone strikes while closely monitoring the Taliban and other groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The agency’s analysts are warning of the ever-growing risks of a Taliban takeover.

United States officials are in last-minute efforts to secure bases close to Afghanistan for future operations. But the complexity of the continuing conflict has led to thorny diplomatic negotiations as the military pushes to have all forces out by early to mid-July, well before President Biden’s deadline of Sept. 11, according to American officials and regional experts. ...

One focus has been Pakistan. The C.I.A. used a base there for years to launch drone strikes against militants in the country’s western mountains, but was kicked out of the facility in 2011, when U.S. relations with Pakistan unraveled.

Diplomats are also exploring the option of regaining access to bases in former Soviet republics that were used for the Afghanistan war, although they expect that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would fiercely oppose this.

Sheikh Jarrah Residents Face Legal Defeat; Israel Arrests Thousands of Palestinians to Quell Dissent

Oh, my, violence might break out in Israel? Shocking! It's such a peaceful society. pffffftttt!!!

Netanyahu says Israeli coalition poised to unseat him is result of ‘election fraud’

Benjamin Netanyahu has said a newly formed Israeli coalition that is poised to unseat him as prime minister was the result of “the greatest election fraud” in the history of democracy. The sweeping accusation, similar in tone to those made about the US election by his former close ally Donald Trump, came as Israeli security services warned of an escalation in violent discourse in the country. ...

Netanyahu focused his allegations on a broken campaign promise from the man set to replace him as prime minister, nationalist Naftali Bennett. Bennett had pledged not to partner with leftwing, centrist and Arab parties, but on Wednesday announced with opposition leader Yair Lapid that they had formed a governing coalition with factions from across the political spectrum.

“We are witnessing the greatest election fraud in the history of the country, in my opinion in the history of any democracy,” Netanyahu said in comments to legislators of his rightwing Likud party. “That’s why people justifiably feel deceived and they are responding: they must not be shut up,” he said in the remarks, which were broadcast live and referred indirectly to Bennett’s campaign promise not to team up with Lapid and others.

On Saturday, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, Nadav Argaman, issued a rare public statement warning of a “severe escalation in violent and inciting discourse” on social media. “This discourse could be understood by certain groups or individuals as enabling illegal violence that could even cost a life,” Argaman said, calling on public officials to “issue a clear call to stop this discourse”.

Dangerous discourse | Will Israel's growing incitement lead to more violence?

Don’t expect Netanyahu’s departure to alter the course of politics in Israel

It would be encouraging to think that the massive upheaval afoot in Israeli politics with the unseating of Benjamin Netanyahu also signals a seismic shift in political culture. Perhaps a turning point in its democratic decline, even a move towards ending its rule over millions of Palestinians. Unfortunately, it signals none of these things. The burning desire to depose Israel’s longest serving leader is certainly the driving force behind the disparate eight-party coalition that hopes to replace him. But another factor also unites them – by default, if not by design: the consensus that in determining the future of the Jewish state, the conflict with the Palestinians can be managed in perpetuity.

Netanyahu, more than any other Israeli leader, has promoted this idea, cementing it so fast within the national consciousness that it may be his most enduring legacy.

It is a sign of how invisible the Palestinians now are in Israeli politics that even the truly historic inclusion of an Arab party in the coalition has not introduced them on to the agenda. Islamist party Ra’am is using its four seats to extract some narrow gains for its own constituency but, like all the other partners, has agreed not to become entangled in the whole Palestinian issue for the purposes of avoiding friction. ...

Yair Lapid [is] the leader of the largest bloc and slated to become prime minister in 2023 if by some miracle the coalition lasts until then. The Mondeo Man of Israeli politics, he represents a huge and significant constituency of centrist, secular citizens. But they want civil marriage, subsidised childcare and for buses to run on Jewish holidays more than they want to confront an occupation with little impact on their day-to-day lives. ...

The presence in the coalition of the fragmented rump of the Zionist left, leaping at the chance to finally regain some kind of political relevance, will also not revive the Palestinian issue. Labour and Meretz have nothing fresh to offer, clinging to the idea of the two-state solution as a kind of magical thinking to perpetuate their dream that Israel can be both Jewish and democratic.

Google Blurs Out Map Of Gaza Strip

Oakland BDS Activists Stymie Israeli Cargo Ship During Global #BlockTheBoat Protests for Palestine

Demanding an end to Israel's apartheid and other crimes against Palestinian people, hundreds of San Francisco Bay Area human rights defenders on Friday prevented an Israeli-owned cargo ship from unloading at the Port of Oakland as part of a weeklong international #BlockTheBoat campaign.

Led by the Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC) as part of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and backed by union workers as well as over 100 organizations around the world, Friday's action drew several hundred community members who began picketing entrances to Oakland's port in the early morning hours.

The activists targeted the Volans, a container ship owned by Haifa-based ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. that has been circling outside the port for nearly two weeks. While the ship was able to dock Friday morning, as of 8:00 am local time it remained fully loaded, with cranes idle, as longshore workers refused to cross the protesters' picket lines.

The Block the Boat campaign—in which activists are mobilizing to prevent Israeli ships from docking at ports in Los Angeles, Houston, Vancouver, Seattle/Tacoma, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, Italy, and South Africa—comes in response to Israel's recent assault on Gaza, which killed at least 248 people including at least 67 children, as well as ongoing Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and illegal occupation and settler colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in Palestine.

Lots of interesting information here, if the subject interests you.

Israel claimed its 1967 land conquests weren't planned. Declassified documents reveal otherwise

For years, most Israeli historiography maintained that the country’s decision makers were taken by surprise by the fruits of the victory that were harvested with lightning speed in June 1967. “The war,” Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said, three days after its conclusion, “developed and rolled into fronts that were not intended and were not preplanned by anyone, including by me.” On the basis of these and other statements, the view took root that the conquest of the territories in the war was the result of a rapid slide down a slippery slope, a new reality that no one wanted.

However, historical documentation stored in the Israel State Archives and the Israel Defense Forces and Defense Establishment Archives in recent years demands that we cast doubt on the credence of that view. The information cited here constitutes just a small part of a wide range of documentation being held in governmental archives relating to the conquest of the territories, and which remain classified. Long-term stubborn persistence was necessary to effect the declassification of some of the documents on which this article is based.

The documents describe detailed preparations that were made in the military in the years before 1967, with the intention of organizing in advance the control of territories that the defense establishment assessed – with high certainty – would be conquered in the next war. A perusal of the information indicates that the takeover and retention of these areas – the West Bank from Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria – were not a by-product of the fighting, but the manifestation of a strategic approach and prior preparations. The IDF’s meticulous preparations to conquer the territories had already begun early in the 1960s.

Leftist teacher holds razor-thin lead in Peru presidential election

The scion of a jailed autocrat and the son of illiterate peasant farmers are fighting vote by vote for the presidency of Peru, in an election which has thrown into sharp relief the Andean country’s deep fault lines of class and geography.

With more than 94% of the official vote counted, hard-left candidate Pedro Castillo holds a razor-thin lead of about 0.2% over his far-right opponent, Keiko Fujimori, an advantage of around 50,000 votes.

Ballots continue to be counted in remote rural areas – which are expected to favour Castillo, 51, a teacher and union activist – and also from expatriate voters, who are are expected to heavily favour Fujmori, 46, the daughter of jailed former 1990s president Alberto Fujimori.

The vote in Covid-battered nation has split the country between the poor, rural Andes and the wealthier and more urban northern coast and capital Lima. It comes amid one of the worst economic slowdowns in the region, which has pushed nearly 10% of Peru’s population into poverty, millions into unemployment and prompted many others to leave major cities and return to their rural villages.

The results show existing polarisations in society pushed to extremes, with Castillo gaining more than 80% of the vote in the poor – but mineral-rich – southern Andean regions such as Ayacucho, Puno and Cusco, while Fujimori held a decisive lead in Lima, where she won in every one of its 43 districts, and the city’s neighbouring port district Callao.

Historic But Inadequate: Joseph Stiglitz on G7 Deal to Back a 15% Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rate

Global G7 deal may let Amazon off hook on tax, say experts

Experts have raised concerns that Amazon may escape paying significantly more tax in some of its biggest markets unless world leaders close a large loophole in a historic global deal. Finance ministers in London from the G7 group of wealthy nations, including representatives of the UK, US and EU, on Saturday agreed the landmark deal aimed at making the biggest companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook pay more tax.

The two “pillars” of the deal would make companies pay a percentage of their profits in markets where they make large sales despite minimal corporate presence, as well as setting an unprecedented global minimum corporation tax. However, a communique from G7 ministers said that they envisaged pillar one would only apply on “profit exceeding a 10% margin for the largest and most profitable multinational enterprises”, a restriction that could rule out Amazon.

Amazon is one of the largest businesses in the world, with a market value of $1.6tn (£1.1tn) and sales of $386bn in 2020. A Luxembourg subsidiary paid zero corporation tax in 2020 on sales income from across Europe of €44bn (£38bn), making Amazon a prominent target for politicians campaigning for changes to the global tax system. However, its profit margin in 2020 was only 6.3%. It runs its online retail business at very low profit margins, partly because it reinvests heavily, and partly to gain market share.

Richard Murphy, visiting professor of accounting at the Sheffield University management school, said the 10% profits threshold was “inappropriate” because of different business models for different companies. He added that current approaches to reporting profits in each country were “easily gamed”.

Biden Faces Backlash Over 'Shameful' Capitulation to GOP Governors as They End Unemployment Lifelines

Biden administration officials publicly signaled Friday that they have no intention of putting up a fight as the Republican governors of 25 states prematurely cut off emergency unemployment programs, yanking key lifelines from millions of jobless workers and depriving local economies of billions of dollars.

In the wake of a solid but weaker-than-expected jobs report—which showed that the U.S. added nearly 560,000 jobs in May—President Joe Biden told reporters that it "makes sense" for the $300-per-week federal unemployment boost to expire nationwide in September, even as he acknowledged that "we're going to hit some bumps along the way" to economic recovery.

White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese echoed the president, saying it is "appropriate" for the enhanced unemployment benefits to end in September.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki, meanwhile, said during a briefing Friday that Republican governors "have every right" to prematurely cut off the federal unemployment programs that were approved under the CARES Act last year to help workers weather the pandemic-induced economic crisis. ...

More than two dozen Republican governors have recently announced that, instead of waiting for the formal expiration date of September 6, they are cutting off the $300-per-week unemployment insurance boost beginning in mid-June. Twenty-one Republican-led states are also terminating emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed and gig workers.

The GOP leaders have justified their potentially devastating actions by claiming that enhanced jobless benefits are holding back hiring—a narrative that experts have rejected as baseless and simplistic, given other potential factors such as lack of child care, low wages, and coronavirus-related health concerns.

White House officials previously pushed back against the right-wing narrative; last month, Biden said there was "nothing measurable" to indicate that unemployment benefits were dissuading people from returning to the workforce. But they declined to push back again on Friday.

"I would leave it to you and your outside analysts to decide whether that is a big factor," Psaki told reporters.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and labor law experts with the National Employment Law Project have recently argued that under the terms of the CARES Act, the Biden administration is legally obligated to continue distributing the emergency unemployment benefits regardless of Republican governors' actions, which could affect more than four million workers.

But Biden administration officials never responded to Sanders' letter detailing that argument, opting instead to anonymously tell media outlets that they are powerless to stop the Republican governors.

"There is nothing we can do," one official told CNN last month.

Biden’s DOJ Vows to Stop Spying on Journalists Months After Placing Gag Order on New York Times

Jameel Jaffer: America’s Secret Spy Court Should Be Forced to Make Rulings Public

Jeff Bezos' Fake News in the Newspaper He Really Owns

Readers opened the Washington Post online recently to find a full page “native” ad—that’s the kind designed to look like news—from Amazon (Jacobin, 5/27/21). Whose owner Jeff Bezos owns the Post and soon MGM (Washington Post, 5/26/21), among much else.

Blended in with the Post‘s banner and “Democracy Dies in Darkness” tagline, readers got text about how Amazon supports a raise in the federal minimum wage and has been paying its workers $15 an hour since 2018. A big picture showed an African-American employee and her child talking about how Amazon‘s generosity is allowing them to move to a bigger home. ...

Just as it was selling Post readers on the notion that it’s lifting folks to a better life, Amazon was being cited by OSHA for a rate of serious workplace injuries nearly double that at other employers (CNBC, 6/1/21). A front-page, “truthy-looking” ad about corporate benevolence is surely designed to deflect from such troubling realities.

It didn’t prevent the paper (6/1/21) from reporting on the OSHA findings, though that story contained another kind of weirdness we’ve come to take for granted: a summary statement that “Amazon declined to make any executives available for interviews on its workplace injury data.”

Glenn Greenwald: Stelter's NEW LOW in fawning interview with Biden Press Sec

Matt Taibbi, worth a click and a full read. Funny and sad at the same time:

Congratulations, Elitists: Liberals and Conservatives Do Have Common Interests Now

The hilarious headline in the Daily Beast yesterday read like a cross of Clickhole and Izvestia circa 1937: “Is Glenn Greenwald the New Master of Right-Wing Media? FROM HIS MOUTH TO FOX’S EARS?”

The story, fed to poor Beast media writer Lloyd Grove by certain unnamed embittered personages at the Intercept, is that their former star writer Greenwald appears on, and helps provide content for — gasp! — right-wing media! It’s nearly the exclusive point of the article. Greenwald goes on TV with… those people! The Beast’s furious journalisming includes a “spot check” of the number of Fox items inspired by Greenwald articles (“dozens”!) and multiple passages comparing Greenwald to Donald Trump, the ultimate insult in #Resistance world. This one made me laugh out loud:

In a self-perpetuating feedback loop that runs from Twitter to Fox News and back again, Greenwald has managed, like Trump before him, to orchestrate his very own news cycles.

This, folks, is from the Daily Beast, a publication that has spent much of the last five years huffing horseshit into headlines, from Bountygate to Bernie’s Mittens to classics like SNL: Alec Baldwin's Trump Admits 'I Don't Care About America'. The best example was its “investigation” revealing that three of Tulsi Gabbard’s 75,000 individual donors — the late Princeton professor Stephen Cohen, peace activist Sharon Tennison, and a person called “Goofy Grapes” who may or may not have worked for Russia Today host Lee Camp — were, in their estimation, Putin “apologists.” Speaking of creating your own news cycles, this asinine smear inspired serious stories by ABC News and CNN, and when Gabbard denounced it as “fake news,” Politico jumped in with the now-familiar retort:

“Fake news” is a favorite phrase of President Donald Trump…

For years now, this has been the go-to conversation-ender for prestige media pundits and Twitter trolls alike, directed at any progressive critic of the political mainstream: you’re a Republican! A MAGA-sympathizer! Or (lately), an “insurrectionist”! The Beast in its Greenwald piece used the most common of the Twitter epithets: “Trump-defender.” Treachery and secret devotion to right-wing politics are also the default explanation for the growing list of progressives making their way onto Fox of late, from Greenwald to Kyle Kulinski to Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore to Cornel West.

The truth is, Trump conservatives and ACLU-raised liberals like myself, Greenwald, and millions of others do have real common cause, against an epistemic revolution taking hold in America’s political and media elite. The traditional liberal approach to the search for truth, which stresses skepticism and free-flowing debate, is giving way to a reactionary movement that Plato himself would have loved, one that believes knowledge is too dangerous for the rabble and must be tightly regulated by a priesthood of “experts.” It’s anti-democratic, un-American, and naturally unites the residents of even the most extreme opposite ends of our national political spectrum.

Congressional Progressives are talking big. Prepare for another Democrat failure.

'$2 Trillion Was Already the Compromise': Progressive Revolt Brews Over Biden's Infrastructure Offer to GOP

A potential progressive revolt is brewing over President Joe Biden's compromise offer to Senate Republicans on infrastructure, a proposal that would leave in place the corporate tax rate established under the Trump administration and cut the original $2.2 trillion American Jobs Plan in half.

In a statement issued late Thursday after details of Biden's new $1 trillion proposal began to emerge, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said that "if what we've read is true, I would have a very difficult time voting yes on this bill."

"Two trillion dollars was already the compromise. President Biden can't expect us to vote for an infrastructure deal dictated by the Republican Party," Bowman added. "The crises we face are immense and urgent. We have an economic crisis, a climate crisis, and a racial injustice crisis. We have a historic opportunity to act, and history won't judge us kindly if we let it pass us by."

Bowman was far from alone in voicing deep concerns over the president's compromise offer to Republican negotiators, who have repeatedly shown they are unwilling to accept an infrastructure deal that includes significant spending on renewable energy, the social safety net, and other key progressive priorities.

"The pursuit of Republican votes cannot come at the expense of necessary, urgent, and popular investments," the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus tweeted Thursday. "For a just, equitable package that meets this moment, both physical and social infrastructure are essential. Progressives will not be forced to choose between them."

As the Washington Post reported Thursday, Biden signaled during a closed-door meeting with the GOP's top infrastructure negotiator that "he would be open to significant revisions on the size of his infrastructure package and how it would be paid for in order to win Republican support, outlining a plan for about $1 trillion in new spending financed through tax changes that do not appear to raise the top corporate rate."

Instead of hiking the corporate tax rate to 28% as proposed in his original package, the president floated a new minimum corporate tax of 15% aimed at profitable companies that pay little to no federal taxes.

Pope Francis stops short of apology over deaths in ex-Catholic school in Canada

Pope Francis has said he was pained by the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former Catholic school for indigenous students in Canada and called for respect of the rights and cultures of native peoples, but stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded.

Speaking to pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican during his weekly blessing, Francis urged Canadian political and Catholic religious leaders to “cooperate with determination” to shed light on the finding and to seek reconciliation and healing. ... Two days ago, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said the Catholic church must take responsibility for its role in running many of the schools.

The residential schools operated between 1831 and 1996 and were run by a number of Christian denominations on behalf of the government. Most were run by the Catholic church. The Canadian government has admitted physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages.

The discovery last month of the remains of the children at the Kamloops Indian Residential school in British Columbia, which closed in 1978, has reopened old wounds and is fuelling outrage in Canada about the lack of information and accountability.

Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia has said her nation wants a public apology from the Catholic church. The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which ran nearly half of Canada’s residential schools, has yet to release any records about the Kamloops school, she said.

CRINGE: Biden Insults Black Business Owners

Virginia supreme court to hear cases challenging removal of Confederate statue

The supreme court of Virginia will this week hear arguments in legal challenges to Governor Ralph Northam’s plan to take down a 131-year-old statue of Confederate Gen Robert E Lee, a move met with widespread praise from activists who had long seen it as a symbol of white supremacy. A year after Northam’s announcement, the enormous bronze equestrian statue still towers over a traffic circle on Monument Avenue in downtown Richmond, kept in place by two lawsuits.

Among the central issues to be decided by the court whether the Commonwealth of Virginia is bound by a decision made by state officials more than 130 years ago, or can it undo that decision because the public’s attitude toward Confederate symbols has changed? ...

Separate lawsuits were filed by residents who own property near the statue and a descendant of signatories to a 1890 deed that transferred the statue, pedestal and land they sit on to the state.

In the latter lawsuit, William Gregory argues that the state agreed to “faithfully guard” and “affectionately protect” the statue. In the other suit, five property owners, including lead plaintiff Helen Marie Taylor, say an 1889 joint resolution of the Virginia general assembly accepting the statue and agreeing to maintain it is binding. They say Northam’s order to remove the statue exceeded the governor’s authority.

Georgia Board of Education Votes to Censor American History

“Slavery is not just something that just happened with the people who were white to people who were Black,” said Lisa Kinnemore, a member of Georgia’s state board of education, as it deliberated a resolution on Thursday restricting classroom discussion of racism. “Black people were actually slaves to Black people. It goes all the way to back even to ancient times, slavery in Egypt and Rome and all around the world.” This sentiment — an explicit rejection of the horrors of American slavery and its roots in white supremacy — underpinned the 11 to 2 vote by the board to adopt a resolution to provide a framework for policy revisions on the teaching of race and sex in Georgia’s classrooms. ...

Parents — mostly white — have been storming school board meetings across the state over the last few weeks, heeding a call by conservative demagogues to fight against “critical race theory” being taught in schools. Gov. Brian Kemp wrote a letter to the state board of education last month, calling critical race theory a “divisive, anti-American agenda” which “has no place in Georgia classrooms.” Kemp echoes a wave of protests across the country over the last two months, from rich Virginia suburbanites launching a campaign to oust the state school board to a disrupted meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, with parents protesting mask mandates — unmasked, of course — along with critical race theory.

In practice, these white parents haven’t been railing against the arcane legal theory but against the idea that students should be taught that racism is a real, current problem created by longstanding structural inequality. Local school board meetings have devolved into vitriolic shouting matches, with boards looking for ways to control public comment afterward. The board drafted the resolution without public input and then blocked comments from the YouTube livestream. Impassioned pleas, it seems, are fit only for those on one side of this argument. ...

The board’s vote drew swift condemnation. “The prohibitions outlined in the resolution would undermine Holocaust education in Georgia,” said Allison Padilla-Goodman, vice president of the southern division at the Anti-Defamation League. “Indeed, it could prohibit teaching that the Nuremburg laws were taken from Jim Crow America. The resolution is fundamentally contradictory. It claims to respect First Amendment rights and strongly encourages educators, who teach about controversial public policy or social affairs issues, to explore them from diverse and contending perspectives. Yet, the resolution clearly would prohibit a teacher or student from talking about systemic racism or inequity in America. And the resolution is so vaguely written that it undoubtedly will come under constitutional challenge and may suffer the same fate as President Trump’s divisive concepts executive order.”

President Manchin is feeling frisky:

Manchin says he'll vote against Democratic elections bill, defends stance on filibuster

Joe Manchin opposes For the People Act in blow to Democrats’ voting rights push

In a huge blow to Democrats’ hopes of passing sweeping voting rights protections, the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said on Sunday he would not support his party’s flagship bill – because of Republican opposition to it. The West Virginia senator is considered a key vote to pass the For the People Act, which would ensure automatic and same-day registration, place limits on gerrymandering and restore voting rights for felons.

Many Democrats see the bill as essential to counter efforts by Republicans in state government to restrict access to the ballot and to make it more easy to overturn election results. ...

In a column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin said: “I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act.” Manchin’s opposition to the bill also known as HR1 could prove crucial in the evenly split Senate. His argument against the legislation focused on Republican opposition to the bill and did not specify any issues with its contents. ...

Manchin also reiterated his support for the filibuster, which gives 41 of 100 senators the ability to block action by the majority.

Manchin’s op-ed might as well be titled, “Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim Crow.” https://t.co/pS1xEvkwEz

— Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) June 6, 2021

"The Republican Party has launched an unprecedented war on American democracy, in which, shamefully, they are now being aided and abetted by at least two Democratic senators."

From my opening monologue on @MSNBC tonight:pic.twitter.com/w0g9JeXTFk

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) June 7, 2021

Joe Manchin Pattern REVEALED, Flip-Flops AGAIN On Filibuster

Katie Hill ordered to pay $220,000 in costs after failed intimate photos suit

The former California congresswoman Katie Hill has been ordered to pay about $220,000 in attorneys’ fees to the Daily Mail and two conservative journalists she sued after the publication of intimate photos without her consent.

The Democrat, who briefly represented a district north of Los Angeles, accused them in a revenge-porn lawsuit of violating the law by publishing or distributing the compromising photos. The lawsuit was thrown out earlier this year on first amendment grounds, the Los Angeles Times reported. Hill resigned in 2019 after the publication of the photos and amid a House ethics investigation into allegations of an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of her congressional staffers, which she denied.

On Wednesday, judge Yolanda Orozco of Los Angeles county superior court awarded about $105,000 to the parent company of the Mail. Hill had called for a boycott of the tabloid on Twitter and sought donations for her legal costs.

“A judge just ordered me to PAY the Daily Mail more than $100k for the privilege of them publishing nude photos of me obtained from an abuser,” she tweeted. “The justice system is broken for victims.” A spokeswoman told the newspaper Hill plans to appeal against the rulings that dismissed her lawsuit.

Krystal and Saagar: Is Neoliberalism ALREADY The Winner Of Disastrous NYC Mayoral Race?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorses Maya Wiley for New York mayor

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Maya Wiley for mayor of New York, a dramatic intervention that could heighten the chances of the city electing a woman for the first time and only its second Black leader.

“If we don’t come together as a movement we will get a New York City built by and for billionaires, and we need a city by and for working people,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday. “So we will vote for Maya No1.”

Wiley is a lawyer and community organiser who was a counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and has taught urban policy and social justice at the New School in Manhattan.

“She will be a progressive in Gracie Mansion,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the mayoral residence. “We can’t let New York become a playground for the wealthy where working people cannot afford to live.” ...

Polls have tightened, with Yang, Wiley, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams and former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia the top four in a crowded field.

The Perils of an 'America First' Climate Policy

This Earth Day, April 22, President Biden presided over a flashy White House Climate Summit aimed at restoring U.S. leadership in the fight for the planet. He pledged to pay $5.7 billion per year for global adaptation and mitigation and to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50%- 52% below 2005 levels within the next decade. However, Biden’s pledges fall far short of the $800 billion down payment and 195% in cuts that climate justice groups calculate to be the United States’ fair share. And the United States still has no laws in place to enforce even the dangerously modest goals it has set for itself.

Other countries could be skeptical of trusting its word, given that the U.S. left the Kyoto Protocol and left (then rejoined) the Paris Agreement. Plus, ​“America First” still rules the day, with the Biden administration positioning climate action as an opportunity for U.S. companies to dominate export markets and hoard green intellectual property. As Biden told a joint session of Congress in April, ​“We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21^st century.” ...

But who wins when an existential threat is cast as a new Cold War? The planet doesn’t much care whether emissions rise over Detroit or Shenzhen, or who gets rich mitigating climate change. Decarbonizing as fast as possible requires priorities beyond hawkish nationalism and corporate profit.

In keeping with decades of Democratic Party climate politics, Biden has yet to acknowledge the massive climate debt the U.S. owes the world. Nor has he done much to directly curb Big Oil, which continues to put itself at the center of the global climate policymaking debate. Real U.S. climate leadership would mean doing something this country has never been great at: transforming itself for the better, without some foreign threat (real or imagined). Like his predecessors, Biden has yet to leverage the most powerful tools he has to stem carbon and capital: our outsize sway over the trade rules and international institutions that, unlike climate pledges, have real teeth. ...

For most establishment Democratic politicians, climate change is simply an issue to have a good line on: We Are Still In. We Believe Science. We Will Rejoin the Paris Agreement. The climate, as a singular issue, is thought to float in the clouds above supposedly meatier and more pressing issues like jobs and trade and the economy, something to be rolled out when it’s a political winner and stowed away when it’s not. That fails to account for the urgency of the crisis.

Elephants on tour in China guzzle crops and wreak havoc

‘Sea snot’: Turkish minister announces plan to tackle slimy scourge

Turkey’s environment minister has pledged to defeat a plague of “sea snot” threatening the Sea of Marmara, with a disaster management plan he said would secure its future. A thick slimy layer of the organic matter, known as marine mucilage, has spread through the sea south of Istanbul, posing a threat to marine life and the fishing industry.

Harbours, shorelines and swathes of seawater have been blanketed by the viscous, greyish substance, some of which has also sunk below the waves, suffocating life on the seabed.

Environment minister, Murat Kurum, said Turkey planned to designate the entire Sea of Marmara a protected area, reduce pollution and improve treatment of waste water from coastal cities and ships which has helped the sea snot to spread. ...

Scientists say the climate crisis and pollution have contributed to the proliferation of the organic matter, which contains a wide variety of microorganisms and can flourish when nutrient-rich sewage flows into seawater.

Also of Interest

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

NATO Summit: West To Move China to Back Burner, Russia and Belarus to the Front

Media Converges On The Narrative That UFOs May Be Russian/Chinese Threat

Former British Minister: ‘Israelis Think They Control the Foreign Office. And They do!’

Was Israeli Looting in '48 Part of a Broader Policy to Expel Arabs?

With AMC Stock Exploding Like GameStop Did, the Founder of r/WallStreetBets Speaks Out

Dennis Kucinich: From Sleeping in a Car as a Kid to 16 Years in Congress

I joined the oil rush to an American boomtown. Guess who got rich?

How California’s redwood forest is recovering after last year’s wildfires

Peru presidential election: Castillo closes in on Fujimori in knife-edge runoff

Jimmy Dore - CHILLING: Liberals Cheer Censoring Trump

Krystal and Saagar REVEAL Why They Switched Sides!

Krystal Ball: Groundbreaking Study PROVES Culture Wars KILL Class Politics

LIVE Report back from Syria after 10 years of Western dirty war, with Aaron Maté & Mohammad Marandi

Zaid Jilani: Push To OUST Netanyahu Won’t INCITE Change

A Little Night Music

Doctor Ross - Chicago Breakdown

Dr. Isaiah Ross - Feel So Good

Dr Ross - Industrial boogie

Doctor Ross - Cannonball

Doctor Ross - I'd Rather Be An Old Womans Baby Than A Young Girl's Slave

Dr Ross - Call The Doctor

Doctor Ross - Numbers Blues

Doctor Ross - The Sunnyland

Dr Ross - Doctor Ross Boogie