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“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.”

-- A.J.P Taylor

News and Opinion

When They Announce WW3 Let’s Just Say ‘Nah’: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

All of human civilization is being organized around a “great power competition” between the US-centralized empire and the China/Russia/Iran bloc, and that “competition” stands to benefit ordinary humans in no way, shape or form. It will hurt all of us and help none of us.

There’s no valid reason why powerful nations can’t simply work together toward their mutual benefit. But it would mean the US empire giving up its plans of total global domination, so it’s not even being considered.

This conflict is slated to last throughout the 21st century, and it already has a massive body count. The war in Ukraine is a direct result of this “great power competition”, and the economic warfare between the empire and Russia will starve many more. This is a terrible thing.

Our world is being steered toward a dark and dangerous path full of impoverishment, starvation and proxy warfare, and fraught with the possibility of nuclear exchanges. They’re playing games with our lives, and because we’ve bought into the propaganda, we’re letting them.

China warns Biden WH, military action on the table if Pelosi visits Taiwan

White House confirms US may send US-NATO jets to fight Russia

In what may be the most provocative escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia to date, the White House has confirmed that the US is planning to send NATO-made fighter jets to Ukraine. John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, confirmed that the Pentagon is discussing “providing fighter aircraft to the Ukrainians.”

Kirby’s statement marks a rejection of the Biden administration’s previous refusal to send fighter aircraft to Ukraine because, in Biden’s words, such a move would lead to “World War III.”

Friday’s announcement confirms the earlier statement by Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., that “discussions are ongoing” to send US-NATO fighters to Ukraine.

In May, the Pentagon rejected an earlier proposal by Poland to send Soviet-made MiG fighters to Ukraine, calling it “high risk.” At the time, Biden declared that the move could start “World War III,” saying, “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III.”

In announcing the Pentagon plan, Kirby said the Pentagon is looking to solve logistical issues including training, maintenance, and spare parts.

Zelensky’s Hidden Offshore Assets & Corruption Exposed!

Zelensky Rejects Any Ceasefire With Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Russia would capitalize on any ceasefire to give its troops rest and to re-equip its military. He claimed that a break in fighting would prolong the war.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Zelensky said, "Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest. They will not use this pause to change their geopolitics or to renounce their claims on the former Soviet republics."

Zelensky predicted a ceasefire would only last a few short years, then Moscow would resume its offensive. Russia "will rest and in two or three years, it will seize two more regions and say again: Freeze the conflict. And it will keep going further and further. One hundred percent," he said.

How the war has robbed Ukraine’s oligarchs of political influence

Ukraine’s richest people, known in the country as oligarchs, are used to dominating political and economic life. But in the five months since Russia’s full-scale invasion started, they have gone quiet.

Political analysts and experts attribute this loss of influence to the fact that oligarchs and their businesses – like all Ukrainian citizens – need protection in the form of the military and diplomacy, state functions they have no control over.

Mykyta Poturyaev, an MP and former election campaign adviser to several Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians including the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said oligarchs are in the unusual position of not being able to influence the country at the moment. “Unlike in 2014, when [Ukrainian oligarch Ihor] Kolomoisky, for instance, was involved in defending Dnipropetrovsk region, there is someone to do that now – the state, the regional administration,” Poturyaev said.

The war has seemingly enabled Zelenskiy to become the first Ukrainian president to sideline the oligarchs, who have traditionally competed to control the country’s political leadership.

But analysts say that only once the war is over will it be clear if Ukraine’s oligarchic era has ended or if the oligarchs will try to regain their influence.

Female Warmongering General Eyes Natural Resources In Latin America

US lobbyists accused of failing to disclose NSO Group's ties to Israeli government

A group of US-based lobbyists representing the Israeli spyware company NSO have been violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (Fara) by not registering the company as being under the control of the Israeli government, a prominent rights group has said.

In a letter sent to the US Department of Justice, Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) called on the government to investigate the four agents representing NSO, saying that when the agents registered themselves under Fara, they stated that the company was not "supervised, owned, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidised in part" by a foreign government.

"We believe that the FARA Unit should investigate these four lobbyists and their firms and find that their presentation of false information was intentional and intended to mislead the US government, Congress, and the American public," the letter said.

Three of the lobbyists - David Tamasi, Steve Rabinowitz, and Timothy Dickinson - had filed to register for the NSO Group after it was placed on a blacklist by the US Department of Commerce last year. Another lobbyist, Brian Finch, registered prior to the listing.

"These four lobbyists are not just representing NSO Group, a company with an egregious record of enabling human rights abuses; they are in fact representing a company controlled by a foreign government, and they are misrepresenting this relationship to the US government and the American public," Adam Shapiro, Palestine-Israel advocacy director at Dawn, said in a statement.

'Historic Moment in American Labor': Starbucks Workers Notch 200th Union Win

With a victory in Cleveland on Friday, Starbucks workers officially reached 200 union election wins across more than 30 U.S. states, a remarkable achievement in the face of a full-throttle union-busting campaign by the coffee company's management and its billionaire interim CEO, Howard Schultz.

The speed with which Starbucks workers across the country built on the historic victory in Buffalo in December—when employees voted to form the company's first-ever unionized store in the U.S.—has stunned observers who've seen the nation's labor movement wither in recent decades amid a ruthless corporate assault. ...

As More Perfect Union, a progressive media outlet, noted Friday, "Eight months ago there were 0 unionized Starbucks stores."

In addition to the number of elections won thus far, experts have also taken note of the union's strikingly high win percentage and the dozens of unanimous victories it has scored at locations across the country, an indication of Starbucks workers' overwhelming desire to organize in the face of poor treatment.

"Starbucks Workers United has won an amazing rate—about 5 of 6 elections," wrote labor journalist Steven Greenhouse. "It has won 52 unanimous votes."

Pelosi DENIES Insider Trading As Husband Trades Millions

Janet Yellen Declares NO RECESSION, Fed Hikes DESTROY Housing Shortage

On 13th Anniversary of Last Minimum Wage Hike, Dems Urged to Raise 'Deplorable' $7.25 Floor

Marking the 13-year anniversary of the last federal minimum wage increase in the U.S.—a meager boost from $5.15 to $7.25 in 2009—progressive campaigners on Sunday urged congressional Democrats to make another push to raise the national pay floor as inflation continues to diminish workers' purchasing power.

"Today is a sad anniversary in the United States," said Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group that advocates progressive economic policy. "For 13 years now, Congress has failed to act to raise the $7.25 hourly federal minimum wage. Lawmakers have turned their backs on America's tens of millions of low-wage workers and revealed themselves to be beholden to the short-sighted interests of some of their ultra-rich donors."

According to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the real value of the federal minimum wage is currently at its lowest point in nearly seven decades amid record-high inflation, which spurred a decrease in real average hourly earnings between June 2021 and June 2022 as corporate profits soared.

Krystal Ball: HALF Of Americans Say Civil War IMMINENT

South Carolina Bill Would Criminalize Sharing Abortion Info Online

Critics on Friday took aim at a proposed South Carolina law that would criminalize the online sharing of information about obtaining abortions and, according to some journalists, could even be used to silence stories related to reproductive rights.

S.B. 1373—which one prominent defense attorney called "a breathtaking assault on free speech"—contains language associated with organized crime conspiracy laws by targeting people who engage in "a pattern of prohibited abortion activity."

"This is tremendously concerning for us. It is a target for folks who tell the stories of patients who need to access care, explain how care is [accessed], and the stories of providers and advocates who are helping make sure that happens," Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior vice president and executive editor at the reproductive rights site Rewire News Group, told Prism.

"If we think that conservatives will stop at speech that targets abortion providers, people who write about abortion, people who offer scientific and medical information around abortion, we're mistaken," Pieklo added. "We know that this will bleed into other areas that evangelical and social conservatives deem inappropriate and deviant."

Just before the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade last month, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the nation's largest anti-choice group, published model legislation that, in addition to banning abortion, criminalizes "aiding or abetting" the medical procedure.

According to S.B. 1373—parts of which are nearly identical to NRLC model law—"aiding or abetting" includes:

Providing information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking information on behalf of a pregnant woman, by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an abortion;

Hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service purposefully directed to a pregnant woman who is a resident of this state that provides information on how to obtain an abortion;

Offering or providing abortion doula services, knowing that the services will be used, or are reasonably likely to be used for an abortion;

Providing a referral to an abortion provider, knowing that the referral will result, or is reasonably likely to result, in an abortion; and

Providing a referral to an abortion provider and receiving monetary remuneration, or other compensation, from an abortion provider for the referral.

S.B. 1373 also contains novel "whistleblower" protections, imposing prison terms of up to 10 years for people who "take any action to impede" those who report violations of the law to the state attorney general.

The National Law Review said the bill "also provides an extremely broad definition of what constitutes 'actions impeding a whistleblower.'"

Michele Goodwin, director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine Law School, called S.B. 1373 "unconstitutional," but warned such bills would nevertheless likely proliferate.

"These are not going to be one-offs," Goodwin told The Washington Post. "These are going to be laws that spread like wildfire through states that have shown hostility to abortion."

Digital rights campaigners highlighted the role—and responsibility—of Big Tech in light of bills like S.B. 1373, with New Jersey congressional candidate and attorney Stephanie Schmid asserting that "it's time for tech companies to get off the sidelines."

The Center for Democracy & Technology says that "crucially, companies should carefully scrutinize and seek to limit the scope of surveillance demands issued in prosecutions to enforce anti-abortion laws."

"They should adopt clear and consistent standards for refusing overbroad requests, commit to giving their users timely notice of requests, and report publicly the numbers of surveillance demands they receive to increase public accountability," the advocacy group added.

In a bid to counter legislation like S.B. 1373, congressional Democrats last month introduced a bill, the My Body, My Data Act, that would establish privacy protections for reproductive health data.

Earlier this month, a coalition of reproductive rights groups filed a lawsuit in state court challenging the legislation, which Center for Reproductive Rights president and CEO Nancy Northup said is causing "mayhem at an unimaginable scale."

As of last month, abortion is banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape or incest, or when the pregnant person's life is in danger.

Texas lawmakers test how far their threats against abortions can reach

Republican lawmakers have sent legal threats to Texas organizations that offer to fund out-of-state travel for abortions, potentially setting up a showdown between abortion law and long-held constitutional rights such as freedom of association and freedom of travel.

The Texas Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction of Republicans in the state legislature, sent a letter on 7 July to a law firm that offered to cover employees’ expenses if they travelled for abortion. It threatened Sidley LLP with felony charges, claiming Texas can criminalize anyone who “furnishes the means” for an abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurs. The letter cites a 1925 law which was not formally repealed after the supreme court codified the right to abortion in Roe v Wade in 1973; last week, the Texas supreme court confirmed the 1925 law can be applied.

The lawmakers also outlined proposed legislation that would allow individuals to sue anyone who financially assists with a Texan’s abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurs. The law proposes that such assistance be considered criminal even if a Texan travelled out of state for a medication abortion and took part of the drug in Texas.

Texas already allows individuals to bring civil cases on abortion, potentially costing defendants tens of thousands of dollars; the proposed new legislation would build on it, making defendants liable for actions that happen out-of-state, even where abortion is still legal.

The letter is just the latest move by rightwing lawmakers, lawyers and activists to crack down on abortion provision in Texas. Last week, the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued the Biden administration for mandating that states provide abortions in medical emergencies. In March, a state legislator, Briscoe Cain, sent a cease and desist letter to Citibank, who had announced a policy to pay for employees’ out of state abortion expenses.

Pope in Canada to apologise for abuse of Indigenous children in church schools

Pope Francis landed in Canada on Sunday to kick off a five-day trip that will centre around his apology on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for the abuse that Indigenous children endured at mostly church-run residential schools.

“This is a trip of penance. Let’s say that is its spirit,” the pope told reporters after his flight took off from Rome.

He touched down in Edmonton in the western province of Alberta, where he will visit a former residential school and meet with Indigenous people on Monday. He is also visiting Quebec City and Iqaluit, the capital of the territory of Nunavut. He will depart on Friday. ...

In response to pressure stemming from those discoveries, the pope apologised for the Catholic church’s role in the schools earlier this year during a visit by Indigenous delegates to the Vatican. Now he is coming to apologise on Canadian soil. But survivors and Indigenous leaders have told Reuters they want more.

Many have called for financial compensation, the return of Indigenous artefacts, the release of school records, support for extraditing an accused abuser, and the rescinding of a 15th-century doctrine justifying colonial dispossession of Indigenous people in the form of a papal bull, or edict.

Tulsi Gabbard: Steve Bannon Indictment Shows Political Hypocrisy As Clapper, Brennan Go Unpunished

California Oak fire remains uncontained as Al Gore warns ‘civilization at stake’

The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, declared a state of emergency for an area close to Yosemite national park, mobilizing thousands to tackle a wildfire that exploded on Friday, quickly grew to more than 14,000 acres and on Sunday remained entirely uncontained.

Discussing the ferocity and fast-growing nature of the blaze, the former vice-president Al Gore, long a campaigner for action on the climate crisis, warned: “The survival of our civilization is at stake.”

The US climate envoy, John Kerry, told the BBC the White House was still considering announcing a climate emergency, adding that Joe Biden was prepared to use “every tool available to him” to tackle climate change, including executive orders.

The fire in Mariposa county, California, named the Oak fire, represented a dangerous new front in the fight against wildfires in the western US. The region has already seen blazes accelerated by a long drought, a terrible forewarning of the intensifying effects of the climate crisis.

As the Oak fire grew on Saturday, more than 6,000 people were placed under evacuation orders in the remote region and power was shut off to more than 2,000 homes and businesses. More than 2,600 structures were threatened.

California's wildfires spreads uncontained toward Yosemite

Greenland Loses 6 Billion Tons of Ice in 3 Days, Harbinger of Unprecedented Coastal Flooding

CNN and The Independent reported this week on a massive ice melt in Greenland, with on the order of 6 billion tons of ice lost in three days. The melting was because of a heat wave at the top of the world, caused by our burning coal, gasoline, and methane gas and spewing billions of tons of the dangerous heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

These sorts of events are directly responsible for sea level rise and coastal flooding around the world and in the United States (which has a lot of coast if you think about it). Often it is the poorest and most disadvantaged who will suffer most severely from disruptions like storm surges, coastal erosion, salt water invasion of lagoons, and urban flooding. ...

If all Greenland’s ice melts, it would raise the seas by more than 24 feet (7.5 meters).

We can still halt an apocalyptic scenario like that, which would wipe out coastal cities around the world, if we stop spewing out carbon by 2050. The existing CO2 in the atmosphere will all go into the oceans. That will make them acidic and wipe out a lot of marine life, but temperatures would immediately stop rising and would gradually go back to a nineteenth-century normal.

The World Burns and the Richest Profit

The last time prices rose this fast was 41 years ago. The last time the UK got through prime ministers this fast was the mid-1970s. The last time there was open war between major European powers was in 1945. The last time the Northern Hemisphere was this hot was probably 125,000 years ago.

Yet the FTSE 100 is worth more than ever, corporate profits are higher than ever, there are more British billionaires than ever. And oil companies are richer than ever.

If we took climate change seriously, the petroleum industry would be bankrupt. These firms borrow billions against the future value of reserves they are yet to drill, but atmospheric physics demands we can’t burn that carbon if we wish civilization to survive.

If our modern societies are to continue to exist in recognizable form, oil companies’ assets are worthless. And if we aren’t, they are still worthless.

But in reality, fossil fuel giants are doing better than ever. Last week, Shell said it expected to revise upwards the value of oil and gas assets it had previously written down, causing its share prices to leap for joy.

Saudi Arabia, which has struggled for investment ever since it allegedly hung a bunch of businessmen by their feet and beat them until they coughed up their bank details, has been welcomed in from the cold.

In May, oil exporter Saudi Aramco overtook Apple as the most valuable company in the world – the most valuable in human history. This week, just months after pretending to take the climate emergency seriously at COP26, Joe Biden has gone to fist bump Saudi’s narco-in-chief and beg him to pump more death into capitalism’s veins.

Meanwhile, as temperatures across England rise above levels with which human homeostasis can cope, the climate crisis collides with the health crisis.

Crushed by a dozen years of Tory austerity and the government’s incompetent response to COVID, NHS waiting lists are already at an all-time high. Accident and Emergency units are “on the fringe of collapse”, with ambulances queueing up outside hospitals, unable to hand over their patients. This means that over the next few days – when experts predict we will see up to ten thousand excess deaths as a result of the heatwave – vast numbers of people will likely spend time cooking in ambulances.

And with world food supplies already shaken by the war in Ukraine, the heatwave also means worsening global hunger.

Italian farmers are expected to lose a third of summer crops like rice and corn, while Sardinia’s fields have been scoffed by a plague of locusts. In China, soaring temperatures are drying out soil, devastating agriculture of all kinds. East Africa is experiencing one of its driest rainy seasons in 40 years, which, combined with the fact that 40% of Africa’s wheat usually comes from Russia or Ukraine, leaves tens of millions facing hunger.

Food and agriculture billionaires, on the other hand, raised their collective wealth by 45% over the past two years, while global food giant Cargill posted a 63% increase in its profits for last year, the best haul in its nearly 160-year history.

As the world moves out of pandemic mode (if not actually out of the pandemic), we’re entering a new phase of global capitalism.

For big businesses and billionaires, the ‘omnicrisis’ presents a perfect opportunity for disaster capitalism: use the overwhelming sense that everything is on fire to plunder: wrack up prices while keeping wages down, extract, extract, extract, extract.

But this isn’t the inevitable future. The faint echo of promises to ‘build back better’ may have disappeared, and, with politics in crisis, people are increasingly realizing that they are going to have to fight for that future.

In Britain, more and more unions are voting to strike against the plunder. As concern about the climate crisis grows, so will action against those driving it. Distrust of our broken politics has deepened, creating a deep volatility.

A vast political fight over what comes next has arrived, just as the Labour Party has abandoned the field and, in the coming months, we can expect something else to rush into that space.

Also of Interest

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

In Ukraine, a proxy war on the planet

Servant of the Corrupt: Pedro Gonzalez details the connections among Zelensky, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and Washington, D.C.

A short ethnic history of Ukraine... courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of the Census

We’ve Been Lied To Our Whole Lives About Everything That Matters

Critical elements of leading Alzheimer’s study possibly fraudulent

How the plastic industry turned the pandemic to its advantage

‘The beaches belong to the people’: inside Puerto Rico’s anti-gentrification protests

As Russia Prepares for Donbass Offensive Russia Records Steady Price Falls, Rebounding Economy

“Immense Frustration”: Monkeypox Spreads Amid Slow U.S. Response; WHO Declares Emergency

33% Americans Say May Be Soon Necessary To TAKE UP ARMS Vs CORRUPT Govt: Robby, Batya, & Liz Wolfe

China warns White House, Pelosi stirring up trouble. EU passport for Russian military jet.

A Little Night Music

Clifford Gibson - Ice and Snow Blues

Clifford Gibson - Brooklyn Blues

Clifford Gibson - Old Time Rider

Clifford Gibson - Sneaky Groundhog

Clifford Gibson - Let Me Be Your Handy Man

Clifford Gibson - Drayman Blues

Clifford Gibson - Hard-Headed Blues

Clifford Gibson - Keep your windows pinned

Clifford Gibson - Society Blues