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This evening's music features "The Mother of the Blues" Gertrude "Ma" Rainey. Enjoy!

"Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first."

-- Steve Irwin

News and Opinion

Worth a click and a full read:

The Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump and Political Violence Waged by the U.S.

On January 3, 2020, Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and nine other people were killed by a United States drone strike under the orders of President Donald Trump . Soleimani was in Baghdad, Iraq to meet with Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in order to broker a peace initiative between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two nations which had been antagonists for many years. At the time Joe Biden was a presidential candidate and he issued a “Statement from Vice President Joe Biden on the Killing of Qassem Soleimani .” Biden said, “No American will mourn Qassem Soleimani’s passing. He deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region. He supported terror and sowed chaos.”

Everything Biden said about Soleimani was untrue. There was no evidence of Iran fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. It is the U.S. that killed thousands of people in the region after its 2003 invasion of that country. The lies about Soleimani were spread in order to justify killing him and preventing Iran from improving relations with a U.S. ally. It is important to remember this and other examples of state terrorism practiced by the United States now that we are inundated with hypocritical platitudes in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Before the July 13th assassination attempt which killed one person, injured two others, and resulted in the death of the alleged shooter, we were told that Trump posed an existential threat to democracy and was hell bent on dictatorship and the murders of his opponents. Establishment corporate media like The New Republic even portrayed him as a new Adolf Hitler. After being harangued by Democratic Party assertions that democracy itself was on the ballot, suddenly we were exhorted to pray for Trump and for his entire family. Not only was the devil suddenly turned into an angel but history itself was rewritten in the process. President Biden informed the public that political violence was to be condemned and also claimed that it doesn’t even exist in this country. "But the idea, the idea that there's political violence or violence in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate." Then again, Soleimani was assassinated in Iraq. Perhaps the rejection of violence ends at the U.S. borders. ...

The crocodile tears were proof that depicting Trump as the embodiment of evil is a desperate attempt to obscure the Democratic Party’s failures and, in the process, stave off a defeat that is looking more likely. Biden has been struggling in the polls for months, and his debate performance revealed that the party’s leadership has been lying about his health for four years. Biden’s legislative agenda, such as it was, was undone by the greedy capitalist oligarchy that refused to allow even the tiniest crumbs of help for the masses of people. All that was left was demonizing Trump until fate intervened and took that weapon away from them. ...

Pretend outrage and pretend political differences go hand in hand in the United States. Denial is a running theme in politics, especially in a presidential election year. While Trump is lauded for heroism for raising his fist after being grazed on his ear, Soleimani’s broken body and those of the 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza are consigned to selective amnesia. Political violence is the default position in this country and not an aberration.

You Can’t Vote Against The Crumbling Empire! w/ Matt Kennard

At least 60 people killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza Strip

At least 60 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, health officials have said, including in an attack on a school sheltering displaced people and another on an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone”, as ceasefire talks in the nearly 10-month-old conflict appeared to stall again.

The Red Crescent said on Tuesday that 17 people were killed in a bombing near a petrol station in Mawasi, an area on the Mediterranean shoreline packed with hundreds of thousands of displaced people that Israel had previously declared an evacuation zone. Another 16 were killed in a strike that targeted the UN-run al-Awda school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, medics at a nearby hospital said.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas militants were present at the school. There was no immediate comment on the strike in Mawasi but the army said the air force had struck about 40 targets in Gaza on Tuesday, including sniping and observation posts, military structures and buildings rigged with explosives.

The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, said their fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several locations with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs. Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said it had fired missiles at Sderot in southern Israel, but no damage or casualties were reported.

Over the past two weeks, Israel has hit the besieged Palestinian territory with some of the fiercest bombardments in months, the deadliest of which targeted Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander, in a bombing in Mawasi on Saturday that killed more than 90 people. It is still unclear whether Deif, wanted by Israel for decades, was killed in the strike.

Israel PROMISES to NEVER Accept a PEACE Deal

With Media Enamored by US Presidential Race, Israeli Massacres in Gaza Get Even Deadlier

Israeli forces have massacred nearly 60 people in the Gaza Strip over just the past 24 hours, and the past week has been one of the deadliest since the war began more than nine months ago.

But you'd hardly know it by looking at the front pages of major newspapers in the United States, despite U.S. President Joe Biden fueling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assault with diplomatic support and billions of dollars worth of weaponry.

While outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters have kept Israel's onslaught at or near the top of their pages, coverage of the relentless war on the Palestinian enclave has largely been supplanted in the U.S. by presidential politics, particularly in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday—the same day Israeli forces killed around 100 people in an attack on a southern Gaza town that was previously designated a "safe zone," as Common Dreams reported.

Fresh Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed dozens of people—including children—but the massacres didn't receive mention on the front pages of the web versions of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, each of which heavily featured coverage of the high-stakes U.S. presidential contest between two candidates who have backed Israel's war on Gaza.

As of Tuesday morning, Gaza was entirely absent from the website landing pages of the Journal and USA Today. The Post's home page buried a story about the potential for an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, while the imes' home page contained a piece about surging settler violence in the West Bank amid Israel's ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

In recent weeks, U.S. corporate media coverage of developments in Gaza has not reflected the extent to which Israel has intensified its aerial and ground attacks, even as recent cease-fire talks have sparked some hope of a pause.

After a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, pictures of the former president's bloodied ear and raised fist were plastered across the front pages of major newspapers in the U.S. and around the world while the far more numerous images of child victims of Israeli bombs—many of them supplied by the United States—faded from view.

Israel does not allow journalists with major U.S.-based media outlets to enter the Gaza Strip unless they are embedded with Israeli forces and agree to let the military vet their coverage.

Al Jazeera, a Qatari-funded outlet that Israel's far-right government has repeatedly targeted, reported Monday that "Israeli forces have attacked five separate schools in Gaza in just eight days, killing dozens of people sheltering in them."

One attack on Sunday, the outlet noted, "struck the United Nations-run Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 80. Most of the victims were women and children, said Palestinian Civil Defense."

Reporting from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud said he witnessed children "crying out in pain and agony" at the facility, which—like all of Gaza's remaining hospitals—is under-resourced and only partially functioning.

"This is the result of incinerating bombs," Mahmoud added.

The death toll from Israel's war on Gaza is nearing 40,000—likely a dramatic undercount, given how many bodies are missing under the rubble that now dominates the landscape of the enclave and could take 15 years to clear.

Those who have survived Israel's onslaught are now living amid sewage, decomposing bodies, and the ruins of their homes, shops, schools, and hospitals, with nowhere safe to flee. Famine and disease are spreading rapidly across the territory as the Israeli government continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid.

US and Israel allowed tax-deductible donations to groups blocking Gaza aid

Under American pressure, Israel has pledged to deliver large quantities of humanitarian aid into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. But at the same time, the US and Israel have allowed tax-deductible donations to far-right groups that have blocked that aid from being delivered.

Three groups that have prevented humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza – including one accused of looting or destroying supplies – have raised more than $200,000 from donors in the US and Israel, the Associated Press and the Israeli investigative site Shomrim have found in an examination of crowdfunding websites and other public records.

Incentivizing these donations by making them tax-deductible runs counter to America’s and Israel’s stated commitments to allow unlimited food, water and medicine into Gaza, say groups working to get more aid into the territory. Donations have continued even after the US imposed sanctions against one of these groups.

By not cracking down on these groups, Israel is showing a “lack of coherence” in its Gaza aid policy, said Tania Hary, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli non-profit that has long called on Israel to improve conditions in the territory.

“If you’re on the one hand saying you’re allowing aid in but then also facilitating the actions of groups that are blocking it, can you really say you’re facilitating aid?” she said.

US Special Forces’ Secret Flights From Cyprus to Israel

The U.S. Air Force has been sending unmarked planes from Britain’s base on Cyprus to Israel since it began bombing Gaza, it can be revealed. The planes are all C-295 and CN-235 aircraft, which are believed to be used by American special forces.

Declassified has found 18 of these aircraft which have gone from the sprawling British air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, to Israel’s coastal city Tel Aviv since Oct. 7. Akrotiri is the key node in the international effort to arm and provide logistical support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. But the U.K. government has always refused to divulge any information about U.S. activities at Akrotiri, which is known to include transporting weapons to Israel. ...

Declassified discovered the unmarked planes that flew from Akrotiri to Israel from November to June have a serial number showing they are operated by the USAF. Most of these journeys had the flight number GONZO62. Six more unmarked C-130 planes have gone from Akrotiri to Tel Aviv since the bombing of Gaza began, which are believed to be USAF, but it was not possible for Declassified to locate their operator. ...

The new information could further implicate British ministers in war crimes in Gaza. In November 2023, a U.S. military official revealed that American special forces were stationed in Israel and “actively helping the Israelis”.

Gallant Tells Hostage Families Israel’s Security Establishment Wants Deal With Hamas

Israeli media reported on Monday that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and told them that a deal with Hamas was possible and that it was supported by the Israeli security establishment.

“When a deal was not possible, I told you,” Gallant said, according to Israel’s Channel 12. “Now it is [possible], so I’m telling you: it’s closer than it has ever been. There is complete unanimity in the defense establishment — the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Mossad — that there is no insurmountable security obstacle to the deal from their point of view.”

Other recent reports have said that Israel’s top generals want a ceasefire deal and see it as the best way to secure the remaining hostages. But Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of his coalition government who have significant sway over him do not want a deal.

New GOP Platform Vows Support for Israel, Deportation of Pro-Palestinian Protesters

The Republican Party posted its new platform last week that’s expected to be ratified at the Republican National Convention, which will start on Monday as scheduled despite the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Israel is the only foreign country mentioned by name as one that the GOP vows to support. ...

Republicans have made an effort to make themselves the more pro-Israel party ahead of the November elections and have strongly criticized President Biden despite his full-throated support for the genocidal war in Gaza. Trump has accused Biden of abandoning Israel and has signaled that he will provide strong support for the campaign in Gaza.

The GOP platform also targets pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses, listing as one of its promises in all caps: “DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN.”

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on how to make peace with Russia, China, and in the Middle East

Pepe Escobar: Russia & NATO On Brink Of All-Out War

US senator Bob Menendez found guilty on all counts in corruption trial

A slew of senior Democrats demanded the resignation of US senator Bob Menendez on Tuesday after the New Jersey politico’s conviction on all counts following a nine-week federal corruption trial in New York City.

A jury found the 70-year-old former chair of the Senate foreign relations committee guilty of 16 charges, including accepting bribes of cash, gold and a luxury car from three New Jersey businessmen, and acting as an overseas agent for Egypt.

Shortly after the verdicts were read, the Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and Menendez’s fellow New Jersey senator Cory Booker, urged him to stand down.

“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate and our country, and resign,” Schumer said in a statement. ...

The conviction confirms the remarkable downfall of a politician who once was one of the most powerful and influential Democrats in the US. Federal district court judge Sidney Stein set a sentencing hearing for 29 October, at which Menendez faces up to 222 years in prison. ... According to the Associated Press, Menendez and his lawyers promised to appeal as they were leaving the courtroom.

Jury Convicts NJ Senator Bob Menendez of Taking Bribes from Egypt & Qatar

Ohio police fatally shoot man a mile from Republican national convention

Police officers in Milwaukee shot and killed a man about a mile from the Republican national convention on Tuesday, authorities and witnesses of the shooting said.

Security arrangements for the convention have come under the microscope since Saturday, when Donald Trump, the former president and Republican nominee for president in November’s election, was the subject of an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.

The officers involved in Tuesday’s shooting were from Columbus, Ohio, a police union statement said, adding that no officers were injured. Officers said they saw the man brandish a knife while they patrolled the area and fired at him after he turned toward them, according to the New York Times.

Neighbors said the man killed was a regular at a homeless encampment in the neighborhood. The man did not appear to have any connection to the convention, or any plans to go closer.

“Milwaukee has blood on its hands,” said Ryan Clancy, a state representative from Milwaukee. “This is not near the RNC. The police should not be here.”

Samuel Sharpe Shooting: Ohio Cops in Wisconsin for RNC Kill Unhoused Black Veteran

Biden to reportedly push for supreme court term limits and new ethics code

Joe Biden plans to endorse term limits for supreme court justices and a new ethics code, the Washington Post reported, as an emboldened rightwing court continues to upend US legal precedent despite operating under the cloud of multiple ethics scandals.

Biden is also mulling whether to call for a new constitutional amendment that would eliminate sweeping immunity for presidents and other officials, the Post reported, citing two unnamed people familiar with the president’s thinking. ...

In recent weeks, Biden had a phone call with Laurence Tribe, a leading constitutional scholar, to discuss Tribe’s opinion piece in the Guardian proposing concrete steps to reform the supreme court, which included new term limits, an “enforceable ethics code” and an amendment limiting presidential immunity, the Post reported.

Teamster President's Extraordinary RNC Speech

Democrats seek to lock in Biden nomination before convention

Democratic bosses are moving to kill off efforts to force Joe Biden from the party’s presidential ticket by rushing ahead with plans to formalise his candidacy before next month’s convention in Chicago.

The move comes while the rebellion triggered by last month’s debate fiasco – which prompted multiple calls from within the party for Biden to be replaced as the candidate – has stalled following Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The Democratic National Committee is seeking to exploit the impasse by pushing ahead with a plan that would secure the president’s nomination by arranging for convention delegates to vote electronically in a week-long roll call starting in late July, Axios reported.

If a majority of the 4,000 delegates back Biden, it will make his candidacy technically unchallengeable when the convention starts on 19 August.

Trump Assassination Attempt: Incompetence or Complicity?

Sightings of Uncontacted Tribe Spur Calls to End Logging in Peruvian Amazon

A leading rights group on Tuesday called for loggers to be "thrown out" of a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon following recent sightings of people belonging to what is believed to be the world's largest uncontacted Indigenous tribe.

London-based Survival International published video and photos of dozens of Mashco-Piro people taken near the village of Monte Salvado in southeastern Peru near the Brazilian border. The group said that in recent days, more than 50 Mashco-Piro have appeared near the village, which is inhabited by the related Yine people. A group of 17 Mashco-Piro were also recently sighted near the neighboring village of Puerto Nuevo.

Several logging companies are operating within just a few miles of where the Mascho-Piro were spotted. One company operating inside Mashco-Piro territory, Canalaes Tahuamanu, has laid more than 120 miles of road there to facilitate timber extraction. The company is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as a sustainable and ethical operator, even though it is known to be felling trees inside Mashco-Piro territory. Survival International is calling on the FSC to withdraw its certification.

"This is a humanitarian disaster in the making—it's absolutely vital that the loggers are thrown out, and the Mashco-Piro's territory is properly protected at last," Survival International director Caroline Pearce said in a statement Tuesday. "The FSC must cancel its certification of Canales Tahuamanu immediately—failure to do so will make a mockery of the entire certification system."

Alfredo Vargas Pio, president of the local Indigenous group Native Federation of the Río Madre and its Tributaries, called the new photographs "irrefutable evidence that many Mashco-Piro live in this area, which the government has not only failed to protect, but sold off to logging companies."

"The logging workers could bring in new diseases which would wipe out the Mashco-Piro, and there's also a risk of violence on either side," he added, "so it's very important that the territorial rights of the Mashco-Piro are recognized and protected in law."

In 2014, Peruvian authorities evacuated residents from Monte Salvado by boat after around 200 Mashco-Piro armed with bows and arrows raided the village, killing livestock and pets and taking food and tools. In 2022, Mashco-Piro members killed 21-year-old Peruvian logger Gean del Aguila and wounded another man with arrows as they fished on the Tahuamanu River.

In the 1890s most Mashco-Piro were either enslaved or exterminated by private mercenaries hired by self-described Peruvian "Rubber King" Carlos Fitzcarrald—immortalized in the 1982 Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo. Surviving Mashco-Piro fled deeper into the Amazon and avoided contact with most outsiders. They fiercely defended their territory from intruders. However, in recent decades, loggers have penetrated and exploited Mascho-Piro lands.

There are believed to be more than 750 Mascho-Piro living in Peru. They sometimes cross the border into Brazil.

"They flee from loggers on the Peruvian side. At this time of the year they appear on the beaches to take tracajá eggs," Rosa Padilha of the Indigenous Missionary Council in the Brazilian state of Acre told The Guardian, referring to a species of Amazon turtle.

"That's when we find their footprints on the sand. They leave behind a lot of turtle shells," Padilha added. "They are a people with no peace, restless, because they are always on the run."

Around 15 other uncontacted Indigenous tribes with as many as 15,000 members are believed to remain in the Peruvian Amazon. It is illegal to make contact with such peoples for fear they would contract common human illnesses that could be fatal to unexposed populations without immunity.

Millions of US low-income households face power shutoffs amid deadly heat

Millions of low-income households are at risk of having their power disconnected this summer, exacerbating the risk of deadly heat as the climate crisis drives up temperatures.

A new report by the Centre for Energy Poverty and Climate (EPC) and the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada) found that almost half of Americans live in states without rules restricting disconnections for unpaid or overdue energy bills during potentially deadly heatwaves, forcing some low-income families to choose between cooling their homes and paying rent.

It comes as large swaths of the midwest and eastern US remain under heat advisories amid sweltering temperatures and humidity caused by a slow-moving area of high pressure, which brought misery across the west and south-west last week.

Summer shut-off protections are mandated by only 19 states and Washington DC, leaving about 203 million people in the US across 31 states susceptible to being disconnected if they are unable to afford their energy bills.

This includes 45 million of the most financially vulnerable people in the country – those with household incomes less than 200% of the federal poverty level – who are most likely to struggle to keep up with rising energy bills. The average energy bill is expected to rise by almost 9% across the US from June through September, with households paying an average of $719 – up from $661 during the same period last year.

Also of Interest

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

US-Led Military Exercises in Pacific Wreak Havoc

Venezuela’s Maduro on John Bolton’s plot to kill him

Get Out If You Can. If Not, Prepare

RFK Jr apologises after leaked phone call in which Trump seems to offer deal

US Prosecutors Secure Guilty Plea in First-of-Its-Kind Espionage Act Case Involving Drone Photography

Storm Ciarán’s low pressure made tea taste worse, say scientists

Senior Dem: "We've All RESIGNED OURSELVES To a 2nd Trump Presidency"

Isolated EU wants to punish Orban and Hungary

A Little Night Music

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Yonder Come The Blues

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Daddy, Goodbye Blues

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Prove It On Me Blues

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey - See See Rider Blues

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey - Leaving This Morning

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Ma Rainey's Mystery Record

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Trust No Man

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Booze and Blues

Gertrude "Ma" Rainey - Countin The Blues

Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom