Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer Ray Agee. Enjoy!

"You cannot organize civilization around the core of militarism and at the same time expect reason to control human destinies."

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

News and Opinion

Outrage as Biden Reportedly Considers Lifting Ban on 'Offensive' Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

As President Joe Biden prepares to visit Saudi Arabia this week, peace and human rights campaigners on Monday decried a report that his administration is considering lifting its amorphous ban on the sale of "offensive" U.S. weaponry to the repressive monarchy.

According to Reuters, the U.S. administration has come under pressure from Saudi officials to end its policy of selling only defensive arms to the kingdom, which Biden is scheduled to visit later this week as part of a wider Middle East tour with stops in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine.

"Biden is headed to Israel and Saudi Arabia this week, where he will sing the praises of an apartheid government and a council of oil dictators," tweeted Sunjeev Bery, executive director of Freedom Forward, which seeks to end U.S. support for dictatorships.

"And now, Biden is considering resuming offensive weapon sales to one of the most brutal dictators on the planet: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS," he added, a reference to de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman.

Ukraine w/Military Summary & Gonzalo Lira

Chris Hedges, depressing as usual, but worth a read:

Hedges: NATO — The Most Dangerous Military Alliance on the Planet

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the arms industry that depends on it for billions in profits, has become the most aggressive and dangerous military alliance on the planet. Created in 1949 to thwart Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, it has evolved into a global war machine in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia. NATO expanded its footprint, violating promises to Moscow, once the Cold War ended, to incorporate 14 countries in Eastern and Central Europe into the alliance. It will soon add Finland and Sweden. It bombed Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. It launched wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, resulting in close to a million deaths and some 38 million people driven from their homes. It is building a military footprint in Africa and Asia. It invited Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the so-called “Asia Pacific Four,” to its recent summit in Madrid at the end of June. It has expanded its reach into the Southern Hemisphere, signing a military training partnership agreement with Colombia, in December 2021. It has backed Turkey, with NATO’s second largest military, which has illegally invaded and occupied parts of Syria as well as Iraq. Turkish-backed militias are engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds and other inhabitants of north and east Syria. The Turkish military has been accused of war crimes – including multiple airstrikes against a refugee camp andchemical weapons use – in northern Iraq. In exchange for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s permission for Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, the two Nordic countries have agreed to expand their domestic terror laws making it easier to crack down on Kurdish and other activists, lift their restrictions on selling arms to Turkey and deny support to the Kurdish-led movement for democratic autonomy in Syria.

It is quite a record for a military alliance that with the collapse of the Soviet Union was rendered obsolete and should have been dismantled. NATO and the militarists had no intention of embracing the “peace dividend,” fostering a world based on diplomacy, a respect of spheres of influence and mutual cooperation. It was determined to stay in business. Its business is war. That meant expanding its war machine far beyond the border of Europe and engaging in ceaseless antagonism toward China and Russia. ...

The U.S. military, following its fiascos in the Middle East, has shifted its focus from fighting terrorism and asymmetrical warfare to confronting China and Russia. President Barack Obama’s national-security team in 2016 carried out a war game in which Russia invaded a NATO country in the Baltics and used a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon against NATO forces. Obama officials were split about how to respond. “The National Security Council’s so-called Principals Committee—including Cabinet officers and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—decided that the United States had no choice but to retaliate with nuclear weapons,” Eric Schlosser writes in The Atlantic. “Any other type of response, the committee argued, would show a lack of resolve, damage American credibility, and weaken the NATO alliance. Choosing a suitable nuclear target proved difficult, however. Hitting Russia’s invading force would kill innocent civilians in a NATO country. Striking targets inside Russia might escalate the conflict to an all-out nuclear war. In the end, the NSC Principals Committee recommended a nuclear attack on Belarus—a nation that had played no role whatsoever in the invasion of the NATO ally but had the misfortune of being a Russian ally.”

The Biden administration has formed a Tiger Team of national security officials to run war games on what to do if Russia uses a nuclear weapon, according to The New York Times. The threat of nuclear war is minimized with discussions of “tactical nuclear weapons,” as if less powerful nuclear explosions are somehow more acceptable and won’t lead to the use of bigger bombs.

At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.

Holy crap! Democracy Now actually has some good coverage today:

As U.S. Funnels Money to Ukraine, Independent Media Faces Pressure to Parrot Official Narrative

Germany criminalizes journalist for exposing Ukrainian war crimes

Zelensky hopes to build a "million man" army to retake lost territory

Ukraine hopes to assemble a “million strong” army to try to retake territory occupied by Russia, the defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said over the weekend. Its forces, he added, had also demonstrated to the US they could make good use of newly acquired longer-range rocket artillery, opening the door to the supply of more.

But however impressive sounding the claims were, it is hard to believe Ukraine is yet capable of an effective counteroffensive, even if the much-vaunted US Himars and the British M270 rocket artillery, with their range of 70km to 80km, have begun to arrive and are being put to good use. A turning of the military tide, if it happens at all, will most likely take time.

Ukraine has to talk up its prospects. The idea of a counteroffensive “is a hugely popular idea inside Ukraine”, said Orysia Lutsevych, a research fellow at the Chatham House thinktank, and Kyiv needs to convince the west that with sustained help, its military has a realistic chance of kicking the Russians out.

US defence firm ends talks to buy NSO Group’s surveillance technology

The American defence contractor L3 Harris has abandoned talks to acquire NSO Group’s surveillance technology after the White House said any potential deal raised “serious counterintelligence and security concerns for the US government”. ...

The news, which is being reported by the Guardian, Washington Post and Haaretz, follows a tumultuous period for the Israeli surveillance company, which was placed on a US blacklist by president Joe Biden’s administration last November after the commerce department’s bureau of industry and security determined that the firm had acted “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US”. ...

Sources said L3 Harris had been caught off guard when a senior White House official expressed strong reservations about any potential deal after news of the talks was first reported. At that time – last month – a senior White House official suggested that any possible deal could be seen as an effort by a foreign government to circumvent US export control measures. The senior White House official also said that a transaction with a blacklisted company involving any American company – particularly a cleared defence contractor – “would spur intensive review to examine whether the transaction poses a counterintelligence threat to the US government and its systems and information”.

Once L3 Harris understood the level of “definitive pushback”, a person familiar with the talks said, “there was a view [in L3 Harris] that there was no way L3 was moving forward with this”.

How Sri Lanka Protests Led to a "Reawakening of the Citizen" & Pushed Out President & Prime Minister

FDA could approve over-the-counter purchase of first birth control pill

The Food and Drug Administration will consider an application for the first birth control pill to be sold without a prescription.

The application from HRA Pharma would seek to make Opill – an every day, prescription-only hormonal contraception first approved in 1973 – available over-the-counter. Such an approval from the FDA would allow people to purchase “the pill” without a prescription for the first time since oral contraceptives became widely available in the 1960s.

The application will also cast oral contraceptives into a fraught political moment in the US. The US supreme court ended federal protection for abortion rights late last month, throwing into question the future of birth control.

The drugmaker said the timing is unrelated. A decision on the application could come as soon as 2023.

Abortion Providers in Mississippi & Alabama Post-Roe Want Biden to Federally Codify Right to Choose

Biden heckled by Parkland father during event to celebrate new gun law

Joe Biden has been heckled by the father of a mass shooting victim during a White House event celebrating the passage of a federal gun safety law. The US president was delivering a speech on the South Lawn on Monday when he was interrupted by Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was among 14 students and three staff members killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

“We have to do more than that!” Oliver shouted, among other remarks, while standing up and wearing dark sunglasses, grey beard and purple jacket. At first Biden told him, “Sit down, you’ll hear what I have to say,” but then the president relented and said, “Let him talk, let him talk, OK?” By then, however, security had already stepped in to take Oliver away.

Earlier on Monday, Oliver had made clear that he objected to the event being billed as a celebration in the aftermath of a mass shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on 24 May. He wrote on Twitter: “The word CELEBRATION has no space in a society that saw 19 kids massacred just a month ago.”

The confrontation underlined simmering frustration with Biden, accused of failing to meet the moment not only on guns but abortion, climate and other issues. A New York Times/Siena College poll published on Monday put his approval rating at 33%, with 64% of Democratic voters saying the party should nominate a different candidate for president in 2024.

Surprise, the mainstream media are for sale:

Uber offered shares to media barons for political help, leak reveals

Uber courted leading media barons across Europe and India with the aim of using their clout to secure more favourable treatment from governments, leaked documents reveal. It asked existing media investors to lobby on its behalf and offered others prized stakes in the company.

The tech company’s charm offensive targeted the owners of publications including the UK’s Daily Mail, France’s Les Echos, Italy’s La Repubblica and L’Espresso, Germany’s Die Welt and Bild and the Times of India. The German deal was discussed internally as a way of gaining political “support and influence” in Germany and Brussels, according to the Uber files, a leak of more than 124,000 documents to the Guardian.

In the winter of 2015-16 the company did what it called a “cash plus media for equity” deal with the leading newspaper publisher Axel Springer, the owner of Die Welt and Bild, selling a $5m stake. The arrangement was not made public until 2017. Uber also announced a similar partnership with Bennett, Coleman & Co, the owner of the Times of India group, in early 2015.

Documents show that for Uber, cash was secondary to the media companies’ influence in the corridors of power. Uber was facing bans in both countries at the time of the deals: in Germany it was accused of operating unlawfully in major cities and in India its licence had been suspended following a notorious case in 2014 in which an Uber driver raped a passenger.

Uber also called on the clout of one of its early investors, the Italian industrial and media magnate Carlo De Benedetti, to help gain access to the then prime minister, Matteo Renzi, when legislation affecting the taxi market was being considered in early 2016, the Uber files reveal. De Benedetti was the publisher of the influential daily La Repubblica and the news weekly L’Espresso at the time, titles he has since sold.

Advocates Demand Justice for Boy, 15, Killed During Albuquerque Police Attack

Civil rights advocates on Monday demanded justice after a 15-year-old boy was killed by a fire during a police attack on a home in New Mexico's largest city.

Brett Rosenau—whose father was shot dead by police before he was born—died after Albuquerque Police Department (APD) officers threw tear gas grenades into a home in Southeast Albuquerque during a Wednesday standoff in which the unarmed Black teen was a bystander.

"Any time a police encounter leads to the death of a person in our community, we must demand a full and unbiased accounting of how it happened," Barron Jones, senior policy strategist at the ACLU of New Mexico, said in a statement. "It is especially heartbreaking when our community loses a child in an interaction with local police."

"This latest incident is another tragic example of an extremely deadly year for the Albuquerque Police Department," he continued. "New Mexico regularly ranks first or second nationwide in the rate of people killed by police. This is a systemic statewide problem mostly affecting people of color who are disproportionately victims of police violence."

"The loss of yet another young, and by all accounts, innocent Black boy during a police encounter is a story all too familiar and should trigger scrutiny from the highest level." Jones added. "Rosenau's loved ones deserve answers and our community must be assured that proper accountability will be applied to fatal police encounters like this one."

According to the Albuquerque Journal, officers with APD's Investigative Services Unit were attempting to serve felony warrants to 27-year-old Qiaunt Kelley at a house in the 8100 block of San Joaquin SE on Wednesday evening when Rosenau followed Kelley into the residence.

As the standoff drew on for hours, a SWAT team was called in, and in the early morning hours of Thursday, officers attacked the home with an unknown number of Flameless Tri-Chamber tear gas canisters and rounds of powder-based chemicals in a bid to force Kelley outside.

"They started throwing gas bombs in there," Elizabeth Fields, whose sister owns the house, told the Journal. "The whole house went up in flames... They burned down a family home that we can't get back."

According to the Journal, more than an hour passed between the time police used tear gas and when smoke began billowing from the house. Suffering from burn injuries as flames engulfed the home, Kelley eventually came outside. Rosenau and one of two dogs in the house never made it out alive.

Speaking of the police, Fields said: "They said, 'Well, we were trying to negotiate.' It's 2022! These are Black men that fear the police. You really thought you were going get them to come out the house?"

APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said Sunday that "the preliminary results of an autopsy cited the cause of death as smoke inhalation," while APD Chief Harold Medina said earlier that "we're working to determine" if a tear gas grenade "caused the fire."

Medina acknowledged that tear gas canisters have a history of sparking fires and said that if an investigation proves APD actions caused Rosenau's death, "we will take steps to ensure this never happens again."

Rosenau's killing sparked protests in Albuquerque's International District and on the campus of the University of New Mexico, where Moneka Stevens, a member of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, told the Daily Lobo that "they had a different bar for this child's life."

"They took his body from the home and they left it outside—his burnt body—and the community had to demand and beg to have dignity to cover him up," she added.

"When the family told [officers] repeatedly there was a child in the house, they did not care. You know why? Because he's African. They do not care for our lives...They did not care for that home. They use war weapons in our communities that created a fire that burned a child alive."

APD has been slow to comply with court-ordered reforms after a U.S. Justice Department investigation completed in 2014 found that it engaged in "a pattern or practice of use of excessive force" after 20 people were killed by officers in a four-year period.

In contrast, APD officers have encouraged right-wing militias, including some whom officers described as "heavily armed friendlies" who harassed racial justice protesters in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

VAST Majority Of Dems REJECT Biden 2024

Biden's APOCALYPTIC Disapproval With Young Voters

Dem Bloodbath IMMINENT In House

Firefighters attempt to save giant sequoias as Yosemite wildfire grows

A grove containing some of the world’s oldest giant sequoia trees is under threat from a rapidly growing wildfire at California’s Yosemite national park.

From Friday to Monday, the blaze expanded from 250 acres to roughly 2,340 acres, with the terrain of timber and brush fueling the flames, officials said. Visitors on the Washburn trail of the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias first reported the blaze on 7 July, and 545 firefighters and other personnel were currently working to contain it as of Monday.

The firefighters’ efforts included laying down a sprinkler system within the grove to keep the trunks of more than 500 mature giant sequoias moist. Officials also hope the steady spray of sprinkler water keeps the flames away from the grove, which they had also previously protected with so-called prescribed burns aimed at clearing out materials that could help fuel fires.

None of the grove’s named trees – including the 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant – had suffered significant damage as of Sunday. But the area where firefighters are working is difficult and prone to keep fires burning, especially because of a high number of trees that died in a three-year period beginning in 2013, officials said. ...

The blaze comes after six major wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada range have killed thousands of giant sequoias. In fact, wildfires in that area burned 85% of all giant sequoia groves between 2015 and 2021 – up from one quarter in the preceding 100 years, National Park Service officials have said.

Humans need to value nature as well as profits to survive, UN report finds

Taking into account all the benefits nature provides to humans and redefining what it means to have a “good quality of life” is key to living sustainably on Earth, a four-year assessment by 82 leading scientists has found.

A market-based focus on short-term profits and economic growth means the wider benefits of nature have been ignored, which has led to bad decisions that have reduced people’s wellbeing and contributed to climate and nature crises, according to a UN report. To achieve sustainable development, qualitative approaches need to be incorporated into decision making.

This means properly valuing the spiritual, cultural and emotional values that nature brings to humans, according to the report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ipbes). The assessment includes more than 13,000 references, including scientific papers, and indigenous and local sources of information. It was done in collaboration with experts in social science, economics and humanities.

The report builds on the Dasgupta review, which found the planet is being put at “extreme risk” by the failure of economics to take account of the true value of nature. Incorporating diverse worldviews and knowledge systems will be key to leading to a more sustainable future, the report says. ...

Ipbes, which is the equivalent of the IPCC for biodiversity, was set up to provide governments across the world with scientific advice on how to protect nature. Last week, it released another report that found wild species support half the world’s population but their future use is threatened by overexploitation.

Also of Interest

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

At G20 Summit, Washington and Moscow Trade Blame for Diplomatic Freeze

NYT Ground Report Debunks NYT Claim Of Strikes Against 'Ukraine’s Civilians'

Iran: US Air Defense Plans Are a Regional Threat

Abu Akleh's Death Investigation Proves America Will Always Defend Israel

Hidden Video Shows US Navy Jet Fuel Spewing in Hawaii

What the liberal justices’ scorching dissent reveals about the US supreme court

‘An inequality story’: Utah abortion ban will drive women further into poverty

Michigan Groups Submit Signatures to Put Abortion Rights on the Ballot

Turning a San Francisco Recall Into Rout for Police Reform

‘This is a war of propaganda’: John Pilger on Ukraine and Assange

ANALYSIS: What Matters From Hunter Biden iCloud Leak

Krystal Ball: Sri Lanka COLLAPSE Is DIRE WARNING For World

Robby Soave: New FOREVER WAR? Biden Says US Will Send Weapons to Ukraine For ‘As Long As It Takes’

A Little Night Music

Ray Agee - Somebody Messed Up

Ray Agee - Tin Pan Alley

Ray Agee - Till death do us part

Ray Agee - No More Blue Shadows Falling

Ray Agee - Wobble-Loo

Ray Agee - Mr. Clean

Ray Agee - Swingin' Partner

Ray Agee - The Monkey On My Back

Ray Agee - Open Up Your Heart / The Gamble

Ray Agee - I'm Coming Home