The Evening Blues - 8-11-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features soul blues singer Johnnie Taylor. Enjoy!
Johnnie Taylor – Love Bone
"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people."
-- Terry Pratchett
News and Opinion
Trump demands Iran pay compensation for decades of US soldier deaths
Donald Trump has said he will demand that Iran pay compensation for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and Iran’s own civilians killed in recent decades in the latest sign his negotiations to end the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz have reached an impasse. The US president is trying to end conflicts in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, and his additional demands of Iran are likely to provoke anger in Tehran at the same time as Israel has rejected Trump’s terms for a 15-point roadmap to end the war in Gaza.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was issuing the demand for war reparations in response to Iranian negotiators making similar claims for damages for the five-month war that has killed thousands and devastated Iran’s military and economy. “Now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by Gen Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands of others killed in combat,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“Additionally, compensation should be paid to the families of the hundreds of thousands of innocent protesters that Iran has killed over the last 50 years, not to mention the 52,000 that have been killed in the last five months.”
The demands are likely to be a nonstarter for Iran’s leaders in the careful peace negotiations aimed at reopening the strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil trade flowed before the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in late February. Trump and other senior negotiators have claimed many times that a deal is imminent, although none has materialised.
The remarks followed a series of setbacks for Trump’s efforts to end several Middle East conflicts before the midterm elections in November, in which high oil prices and inflation will probably hurt fellow Republicans at the polls.
Prof. John Mearsheimer : What Comes Next in Iran?
Flip-flopping Netanyahu rejects Gaza plan but cannot placate all his allies
Benjamin Netanyahu’s public rejection of a US-backed deal for Gaza drew scepticism in Israel, amid reports he was personally hammering out details of a pilot military withdrawal days earlier. The Israeli prime minister is struggling to balance incompatible demands on Gaza policy from his key domestic and international allies.
The far-right Israeli politicians who prop up Netanyahu’s coalition government want to intensify Israeli attacks on Gaza and establish settlements inside the territory. Donald Trump, who provides vital diplomatic and military backing for Israel, wants to move toward a permanent settlement and return to Palestinian control in Gaza, brokered by the Board of Peace that he created and chairs.
With an Israeli election looming in just over two months, Netanyahu appears to have opted to publicly placate domestic partners who are already on the campaign trail. On Sunday, he rejected a new 15-point plan for Gaza, which included a Hamas commitment to give up its weapons, meeting a key Israeli demand. He also resisted US pressure to end wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran without Israel’s buy-in.
Defying Trump, who is notoriously thin-skinned and intolerant of dissent, is risky when Israel is internationally isolated and needs US military supplies. For now the administration in Washington appears to have largely shrugged off Netanyahu’s comments as electioneering, perhaps encouraged by military decisions that indicate a far more attentive regard for Trump’s wishes.
Last week, Netanyahu scaled back Israeli airstrikes on Gaza by raising the threshold for authorising attacks. Netanyahu’s combination of fierce domestic rhetoric and some conciliatory steps on the ground in Gaza may have bought him a bit of time but US patience may not last until polling day in late October. Trump is weighing up election concerns of his own, as the US is holding midterms just a week after Israel votes.
Trump Descends Into Paranoia As Global Oil Markets Worsen
‘He Has No Choice. He Lost’: Expert Delivers Brutal Obituary for Trump’s Failed Iran War
University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer on Sunday delivered a harsh reality check to US President Donald Trump over the state of his illegal war with Iran.
In an interview with Australian journalist Tom Switzer, Mearsheimer was asked why Trump seemed willing to accept an arrangement in which Iran is able to demand fees from transport ships in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which has been almost entirely shut down since the US and Israel began bombing Iran in late February.
“It’s very simple... he has no choice,” Mearsheimer replied. “He lost the war. This is a devastating defeat for the United States. Can you tell me what the United States should do to regain leverage over Iran? I actually think you can’t tell me because we have no solution.”
Host: But John, again, why would Trump accept an arrangement in the Strait of Hormuz where Iran receives fees & denies passage to anyone transiting without its permission?
John Mearsheimer: It’s very simple. He has no choice. He lost the war. This is a devastating defeat for the… pic.twitter.com/RQ9G5fKiDA
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 10, 2026
Mearsheimer then explained why Trump’s threats to escalate his assault on Iran ring completely hollow.
“One, he’s out of munitions,” the political scientist said. “Number two, our Gulf allies have told him, in no uncertain terms, that is unacceptable because the Iranians have made it clear that if we escalate, they will escalate, and they will destroy oil facilities, desalination plants, and so forth.”
In the same discussion, Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, similarly argued that Iran appears to be in the driver’s seat, noting that “the period where you can basically pressure Iran into submission... I think is gone.”
Nasr added that Iran now appears to be “very comfortable demanding” concessions from the US in exchange for reopening the strait, and he said that many in the Washington foreign policy establishment had yet to understand this fact.
“In reality, Iran is not overplaying its hand,” he said. “It’s just playing its hand.”
Johns Hopkins scholar Vali Nasr tells host Tom Switzer that Washington’s fixation on Tehran “overplaying its hand” reflects disbelief at how dramatically the balance of power has shifted.
“Iran is not overplaying. It’s just playing its hand,” he said.
Iran sees a narrow window… pic.twitter.com/7sL9ryc5Jw
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 10, 2026
The scholars’ arguments were echoed by Daniel DePetris, fellow at Defense Priorities, who wrote in an analysis published Monday that the US has little choice but to accept Iran charging fees to ships in exchange for passage through the strait.
While acknowledging such a situation is far from ideal, DePetris said that it became inevitable when Trump launched his unprovoked war without authorization from the US Congress more than five months ago.
“Trump’s war handed Iran the perfect excuse to leverage its geography, and the Iranians didn’t hesitate to do so,” wrote DePetris. “Over time, the Strait of Hormuz, in addition to Iran’s more aggressive posture toward its neighbors writ-large, has become something far more valuable: a strategic card Iran can play whenever Trump threatens to accelerate military operations.”
Iran's NEW Terms. US Siege Strategy Will Cripple Allies
Influential Retired IDF General Says Gaza Should Remain ‘Destroyed for Generations’
A retired Israeli general who has had significant influence on Israel’s operations in Gaza has called for the Palestinian territory to remain in a state of devastation “for generations,” Middle East Eye reported on Monday, citing Israeli media.
“Israel has no interest in Gaza being rebuilt, it is better for us that it be destroyed for generations to come,” Ret. Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland told Israel’s 103FM radio station.
“The greater the despair in Gaza and the greater the destruction, and the greater the monument to what they did on October 7, years to come, that is good,” added Eiland, who previously headed Israel’s National Security Council.
Eiland said that Israel should be able to keep the land that it controls in Gaza, which is currently about 70% of the Palestinian territory. “In war…the losing side loses. Germany, which lost the Second World War, was forced to surrender 25 percent of its territory,” he said.
Larry Johnson: Why Israel Can’t Strike Iran Alone?
Future of Israel-Lebanon Talks in Doubt After ‘Annexation’ Map, Grave Demands
US-brokered Israel-Lebanon talks are already adjourned for the month of August, but as the war continues various controversies raise doubts over whether it would be worth coming back to the table in September, and indeed if Israel is taking these matters seriously.
The latest round of controversies started Friday with the Israeli Foreign Ministry publishing a map on social media aiming to downplay child malnutrition in the Gaza Strip. The map, rather conspicuously, made Lebanon substantially smaller than it actually is, and added quite a bit of Lebanon’s south to Israel.
Adding more confusion to the already struggling negotiations, Israel reportedly also raised the prospect of a “civilian prisoner exchange” which would allow Lebanon to recover the civilians Israel has captured so far over the course of the war. In return they wanted the Lebanese government to exhume remains of Lebanese Jews and send them to Israel.
Historically, Lebanon had a rather substantial Jewish community, and both Beirut and Sidon have historic Jewish cemeteries. The expectation that they’d be dug up and their bodies given to the Israeli state was previously never broached, and reportedly “bewildered” the Lebanese negotiating team.
Poll shows one in five Israelis considering emigration
A poll by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on emigration from Israel found that one-third of respondents know someone who has left the country, while 12 per cent said the outcome of the next election could determine whether they stay in Israel or leave.
In the Kan poll, published on Sunday evening, respondents were asked about their views on the issue. One-third said they knew someone who had left Israel over the past two years, while two-thirds said they did not.
Asked whether they had considered leaving Israel over the past two years, the vast majority, 82 per cent, said no. However, 18 per cent, or nearly one in five respondents, said they had considered leaving.
Aaron Maté : Their Blood, Our Bullets
WW3? Russia & North Korea's Missiles HAMMER Kiev, Iran HITS US Ships | Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
Trump’s media company, which also owns Truth Social, reports $238m loss
Donald Trump’s media company – which owns the Truth Social platform favored by the US president – posted a $238m loss in the second quarter. Trump Media & Technology on Monday reported that losses in the three months through June came as the company branched into new ventures including crypto. The company’s new chief executive, Kevin McGurn, announced at a conference call about the earnings that after a yearlong effort to expand into online betting and crypto, the company would be refocusing on social media.
“We made the disciplined choice to pivot in order to invest more time and resources in our most important initiatives,” McGurn said. “We will say no to things or change course as warranted.”
One key to the company’s new approach will be a a service called Truth API which will sell early access to Truth Social posts by Trump and other top users to Wall Street trading firms – allowing them to profit from the moves in stocks, bonds and interest that often follow major policy announcements from Trump on the platform.
The new Truth API service is charging $60,000 to $100,000 a month, McGurn said, adding that Trump Media has already signed up 10 customers, mostly so-called high frequency trading firms that buy and sell in milliseconds.
YOU WILL PAY For Inevitable AI Bailout
Ilhan Omar questions whether Trump administration has used ICE to ‘surveil’ critics
Donald Trump’s administration is facing questions over whether it is using Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “surveil political opponents” after after an investigative agent was apparently stationed outside Democratic representative Ilhan Omar’s monthly town hall meeting in Richfield, Minnesota. After the incident, Omar demanded the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) clarify whether Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents have been used to monitor “any other activity” involving “local, state, or federal officials” in the state.
In a letter to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), an arm of ICE, the congresswoman said an agent claiming to be conducting an undercover drug operation was parked outside the community center where she was holding an event last Thursday, without prior coordination with local law enforcement. According to Omar, who represents Minnesota’s fifth congressional district, a Richfield police officer noticed the agent sitting in a Ford Explorer and “became suspicious of the way she was monitoring the building”.
“He proceeded to run the plates attached to the vehicle and discovered they were registered to a different vehicle,” said Omar. “He approached the woman in the vehicle to ask about the purpose for her presence there and why the plates on her vehicle did not match the government’s records. Like any reasonable officer, he was concerned that she harbored ill intentions and may be in a stolen vehicle.” The woman initially identified herself as security, but later called her supervisor and said she was an HSI agent conducting an undercover drug operation in the area, Omar said. Richfield police had not been informed of the operation beforehand, according the congresswoman.
Omar said that despite a visible sign indicating that a town hall was taking place at the community center, the agent remained parked there until speaking with her supervisor, after which she left the property. “HSI’s actions yesterday evening put an entire community at risk,” she said. “Instead of monitoring the area for those who might wish harm to me and my constituents, Richfield Police were required to devote time to investigating why an HSI agent was outside of a Congressional event in a vehicle with mismatched plates.”
Omar added: “It also raises serious and uncomfortable questions about the purpose of HSI’s presence outside of my event. At best, your agent was unable to assess that the parking lot of a community center hosting a congressional event wasn’t the best place to conduct a drug operation. At worst, it emphasizes many Americans’ growing concern that the Trump administration uses ICE to surveil political opponents and may interfere with our democracy.”
Trump officials offer cities tens of millions for Memphis-style police surges – with conditions
The Trump administration is offering grants of tens of millions of dollars to cities across the US to create more Memphis-style enforcement surges – on the condition that they abandon progressive ideologies on policing. The US Department of Justice says it will announce up to four finalist cities that will split $300m in grant funding under a federal “Model Cities” policing initiative (MCI) next month, setting the stage for some of the largest federal policing grants ever awarded to individual US cities.
In exchange for the funding, cities are required to comply with federal immigration enforcement requests, enact conservative policies on anti-homelessness rules, and potentially repay millions of dollars in the event of a surge in violent crime or “civil unrest”, according to a grant document. The document cites Washington DC and Memphis, Tennessee – two cities with national guard troops patrolling the streets – as a model to emulate. The administration has so far defied calls to suspend its controversial taskforce in Memphis, following four officer-involved deaths since its launch last September.
“That’s not a model I’d be looking for,” said Steven Reed, the mayor of Montgomery, Alabama. Reed said he had seen the grant and passed on applying. “Everybody wants a quick fix, and no one wants to invest in the root cause of the issue,” he said. Despite the significant funding boost on offer, Reed is one of several leaders of large municipalities with Democratic majorities who have signaled they will not even consider applying for the grant.
The justice department has offered policing grants to cities through programs of the office of community oriented policing services (Cops) since 1994, disbursing more than $20bn since then. The Cops office of the justice department offered city governments about $700m this fiscal year to supplement hiring, training and equipment. The MCI, a product of funding from Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, offers another $300m to two to four municipalities with more than 100,000 residents. Grant funding will last three years under the program.
Unlike most previous grants, awards will seemingly be awarded after evaluation by senior political appointees in the justice department, and not through a more politically neutral recommendation process of peer review, said Amy Solomon, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, who previously served as assistant attorney general of the office of justice programs under Joe Biden.
Kurdish film-maker recounts ‘inhumane’ ICE force-feeding
In June 2025, a sluggish and thin Gabar Choli, with sunken temples and bones visible under his skin, braced himself for the immigration detention center guards to charge into his cell once again. Choli was in a solitary confinement medical cell inside the Port Isabel service processing center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in south Texas where immigrants arrested in Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown are detained.
Choli, a 40-year-old Kurdish asylum seeker with a thick beard and long dark hair, had been on hunger strike for over two months, demanding improved conditions for detained immigrants and to be released or deported. That day in June 2025, Choli’s nose was swollen, his throat hurt and he could still taste blood from previous days of treatment for which he never gave his consent, he said. The film-maker and activist for an independent Kurdistan has spoken out for the first time, talking exclusively to the Guardian last week from Canada about the ordeal in the United States that he said “broke him”.
He recounted the vile routine as the detention center guards would rush towards him and wrestle him to the concrete cell floor, shackle his wrists and ankles, and drag him to the detention center infirmary. There, the guards pinned Choli on a bed while medical staff forcibly inserted a feeding tube through his nose and down his throat, and pumped nutritional liquid into his stomach. Choli was being force-fed by ICE. “Two guards would hold my feet; two hold my hands; one hold my head – and they would shove tubes in my nose,” Choli said. “It’s not easy to be wrestled to the ground twice a day by men that are stronger than you. And you just take it. You have 60cm of tube going through you and you just feel every centimeter of it.”
An investigation by the Guardian, based on dozens of pages of court records and interviews with medical and legal experts, found that Choli was quietly and intermittently force-fed by ICE for nearly eight months – from late May 2025 until he was deported in January. Force-feeding is an excruciating and traumatizing process that has been widely condemned by human rights organizations as torture. For Choli and others, refusing food is a last resort to protest against harsh conditions and lack of progress in their immigration cases, but sometimes brings only harsher conditions.
“I understood the necessity of making a stand for what was right,” Choli said, speaking by phone with the Guardian, talking in a very matter-of-fact way about his recent experience. At various times, Choli would sarcastically chuckle, almost incredulous now when remembering the officials’ actions. “I was respectful. I just told them I am protesting for humane treatment, nothing else. But they were determined to break me,” he said. Choli suffered swollen sinuses, a damaged esophagus, stomach problems and psychological torment, according to court records and his own account.
AIPAC on the Ballot in Key Swing States
Establishment Dems PANIC Over Francesca Hong Strength
How clean air clubs are protecting Americans from wildfire smoke
Miquette Thompson’s county of Mendocino has been covered in smoke all week. There are the nearby Feliz and Woodside fires in northern California, which have burned more than 1,000 acres, as well as the wildfires devastating Oregon and Washington that are sending smoke their way, too. “It’s become not unusual,” she said of walking outside and seeing a hazy sky. The wildfire smoke means dangerous air quality for her under-resourced, “wee rural little area”, Thompson said. Wildfire smoke is potentially unsafe for all populations, but particularly for elderly people and those with respiratory conditions. Hospitalizations for asthma go up 10% on smoke days, according to a recent University of California study.
Having locally organized around safety amid airborne illness for years – distributing free personal protective equipment (PPE) to neighbors and Covid tests at farmers markets – Thompson said she watched as the local health department failed to distinguish which types of masks help with smoke issues (N95 masks are better at filtering out tiny particles; cloth or surgical masks are less effective). So with her fellow organizers at Mendo Clean Air Club, she began partnering with local businesses that offered to distribute masks, too.
Mendo Clean Air Club is one of over 40 clean air clubs around the world. Launched by Emily Dupree, a Chicago resident, the first club lent out air purifiers to touring musicians during Covid. Now, Clean Air Clubs and Mask Blocs – a mutual aid practice for sharing masks – are offering free masks and air purifiers from their “lending libraries” to help their local communities stay safe from wildfire smoke and monitor air quality. Mask Bloc Los Angeles, for example, handed out more than 300,000 masks in two weeks during the catastrophic January 2025 LA fires.
“Covid and climate change are two major pillars of collective denial in the last decade,” said Dupree. “So though our lending library was created in response to one kind of public failure – namely a failure of public health, which is still ongoing – it can serve as a solution in response to this second failure, of governments to adequately address the growing threat of climate change, of worsening wildfires and worsening air quality.”
Can Florida’s ‘coastal corridor’ project safeguard wildlife and boost economy?
From disappearing manatees to bleached coral reefs, gender-changing turtles and oyster beds destroyed by hurricanes, no other state’s marine life faces the magnitude of climate-related challenges that Florida’s does. Now, wildlife authorities are attempting to bring some cohesion to tackling the diverse slate of issues by borrowing from a playbook that has already proved successful on land.
The Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC), and its charitable arm, the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida (FWFF), have announced the creation of an ambitious “coastal corridor”, an interconnected chain of ocean-based projects and enhancements designed to preserve and nourish vulnerable marine creatures. It replicates to a significant degree the state’s wildlife corridor, an 18m-acre (7m-hectare) project established in 2021 to provide a safe, contiguous habitat spanning much of Florida where rare or threatened land-based species including birds, reptiles, panthers and bears can flourish.
Featuring projects including habitat restoration, fisheries enhancement and improved public access and coastal resilience along Florida’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts, the project aims to create a connected network of artificial reefs, oyster beds, seagrass and mangroves on which marine life can thrive.
The coastal corridor is designed to not only protect Florida’s precious marine legacy, but also the economic riches of its waters. Recreational fishing alone brings in $14bn a year, and provides 120,000 jobs, the foundation said. Another $3.1bn and 39,000 jobs come from creating and maintaining artificial reefs. Additionally, more than 2 million out-of-state anglers visit Florida each year, renting charter boats and plowing plenty of dollars into hotels and restaurants.
July was hottest month ever recorded in US as heatwaves scorched country
July was the hottest month ever recorded in the US, with repeated, scorching heatwaves across much of the country helping shatter all previous monthly temperature records stretching back over the full 132 years of reliable measurements.
Last month’s average temperature was 3.3F (1.8C) higher than the 20th century average for the contiguous United States, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
This means the month was the hottest July, and hottest of all months, in records that go back to 1895. It surpasses previous high marks set in July 1936, in the teeth of Dust Bowl conditions, and July 2012.
In July, the US blistered under three separate heat dome events, where soaring temperatures were held in place over a region by slow-moving high pressure weather systems. Extreme heat hit much of the US west, the Rockies, upper midwest, the Gulf of Mexico coast and south-east, according to Noaa. Wyoming recorded its hottest ever July amid temperatures a huge 5.1F above average.
Parts of the US spent the month blanketed under a haze of wildfire smoke, with large blazes engulfing forests in Canada and the US’s Pacific north-west. Scientists have made clear that the elevated heat, along with vast fires, was being significantly amplified by the human-caused climate crisis, accelerated by the burning of fossil fuels.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
War On Iran: – ‘New’ Iran Demands Repeat MoU Conditions
Defund The Police and Abolish Prisons?
Scale of Trump’s Raid on National Parks Funds for White House ‘Vanity Projects’ Revealed
Judge temporarily blocks Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax on second homes
Trump signs order attempting to override CDC vaccine schedule and break up MMR shots
Not your imagination: from backpacks to food, consumer goods are getting worse
A Little Night Music
Johnnie Taylor – Who's Making Love
Johnnie Taylor - Part Time Love
Johnnie Taylor – Steal Away
Johnnie Taylor - Jody's Got Your Girl And Gone
Johnnie Taylor - We're Getting Careless With Our Love
Johnnie Taylor - Running Out Of Lies
Johnnie Taylor - Try Me Tonight
Johnnie Taylor - Hello Sundown
Johnnie Taylor – Cheaper To Keep Her
