The Evening Blues - 8-13-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Bumble Bee Slim, was an American Piedmont blues singer and guitarist Amos "Bumble Bee Slim" Easton. Enjoy!
Bumble Bee Slim - Rough Rugged Road Blues
"Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality."
-- Eric Hoffer
News and Opinion
Joe Biden Should Be Dying Of Cancer In The Hague
Joe Biden’s cancer is moving into the advanced stages, according to the former president’s son Hunter.
AP reports:
“Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer has spread to other parts of his body and is causing him pain, even as he continues to speak out on public issues, his son Hunter said in an interview.
“In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC broadcast late on Friday, Hunter Biden grew emotional as he discussed his father’s condition, describing it as very sad to watch.
“‘The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further,’ he said. ‘It’s very painful and it’s very debilitating in many respects.’”
I’ve seen a lot of people on social media expressing sadness and grief at the news of Biden’s situation, and I agree it is very sad that this is happening. Joe Biden shouldn’t be sitting at home dying of cancer, he should be sitting in a cell at The Hague dying of cancer.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer has spread to other parts of his body and is causing him pain, even as he continues to speak out on public issues, his son Hunter said in an interview. https://t.co/nsc5TeplC4
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 8, 2026
The world is a mess because men like Joe Biden get to die peacefully in their homes of cancer.
They live long lives free from consequences for their monstrous actions.
They don’t spend their final days rotting in a cage for war crimes.
Nobody makes them pay for what they did.
The worst people on the planet are elevated by the capitalist empire to the highest echelons of power across every field, and they make life worse for everyone, and then they die comfortably of old age, surrounded by loved ones.
That is the real source of our problems. Not immigrants. Not “woke”. Not elections going to the wrong political party. The source of our problems is that we are ruled by murderous psychopaths and do not use the power of our numbers to forcibly cast them from their thrones. That we let tyrants get away with genocide.
Your dad helped that guy collapse entire apartment buildings full of women and children https://t.co/N0CGrVqBQy
— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) August 11, 2026
Joe Biden backed a live-streamed holocaust in full view of the entire world, and now he shuffles off this mortal coil with nary a slap on the wrist. We all watched him do it. We all watched him circulate lies about seeing beheaded babies murdered on October 7 and about the Gaza death toll being fake in order to justify his genocidal atrocities. And there are so many of us. But we didn’t stop him. We didn’t make him pay. We aren’t making an example of him showing everyone else why no one should ever do what he did.
This is happening everywhere. We’re watching powerful people wage wars and genocides, destroy our ecosystem, shove AI down our throats and surround us with tyrannical surveillance technology, and they’re doing it right out in the open, and we’re all basically just going along with it.
As Utah Phillips said, “The earth is not dying, it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.”
It’s not just that the revolution hasn’t materialized, it’s that it hasn’t come anywhere remotely close to materializing. We’re given just enough bread and circuses to mollify us, and then we sit there munching doritos and watching Netflix while the world burns.
Nature isn’t going to let this continue for much longer. We will awaken the natural ferociousness within ourselves, or nature’s ferociousness is going to make this planet a lot less habitable fairly soon.
We will either pass this test or we will fail it. And as long as the Joe Bidens of the world are living long lives free from consequences, we are failing.
Israel manipulates Trump again - Max on Judging Freedom
The USS Trumpster is resting comfortably in the Straits of Delusion:
Trump Claims the US Has ‘Total Control’ Over the Strait of Hormuz and May ‘Keep It’
President Trump claimed on Wednesday that the US has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz and may “keep it” despite Iran continuing to demonstrate its control of the waterway and engaging in negotiations with Oman on its future.
“The USA has total control over the Strait of Hormuz. I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, one day after US forces bombed a ship allegedly attempting to get past the US blockade of Iranian ports.
“They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid, the IRGC is decimated and fleeing, and their ‘Leadership’ is uncertain, at best! They have No Money – Their country is ‘shot.’ All they have is FAKE NEWS and 300% INFLATION, and getting worse! Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer. Praise be to Allah!” he added.
Trump’s post came as Reuters reported that traffic through the strait fell to a one-week low on Tuesday, with just eight ships transiting the waterway that day, below the recent average of 12 ships per day. Before the war, somewhere between 130 and 140 would cross the strait each day.
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump’s Dwindling Options
USS Abraham Lincoln sailors tried to jump overboard amid extended deployment
Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran. Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.
Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”. A woman at the meeting told Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported.
The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. “He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.
Mike Levin, a Democratic member of Congress from California, has sounded the alarm over conditions onboard the warship, which is in its fifth month of combat operations against Iran. He described the lot of the crew on X as “moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste.”
The current crunch has been months in the making. The warship left San Diego on 21 November and was originally intended for the Pacific but was redirected to the Middle East once the US-Israel war with Iran began. Since then, MS Now revealed, the 5,000-plus crew has had only two days on land, in Guam in December and Oman in July. The deployment was scheduled to end in May but has been extended a couple of times amid the ongoing war.
Alastair Crooke: Iran & Russia Give Up on Diplomacy & Go on the Offensive
Israeli militants besiege two Palestinian families in their West Bank homes
Israeli militants have besieged two Palestinian families in their homes since the weekend, aiming to take over their properties in the West Bank village of Qusra through a campaign of terror. A group of settlers and soldiers set up a tent outside the home of Yousef Hassan on Sunday afternoon, trapping him inside with his wife and two young daughters.
The Israeli men gathered just metres away from the spot where 28-year-old Amir Moatasem Odeh was killed by a settler in March. Another attacker stabbed his father. No one has been arrested over the murder and assault. “Every night, the settlers throw stones, use obscene language and shout during the night. We are living in a state of terror,” Hassan said. His mother, brother and sister, and three neighbours have also been blockaded inside, and their power and water have been cut off.
Settlers used the same tactics to steal another Palestinian home in neighbouring Jalud village, driving the al Tubasi family out in July after a months-long siege. They cut off water and electricity to the homes, although a solar panel allows Hassan to keep some devices charged in Qusra. They have also blocked medical care.
When his younger daughter, a two-year-old, fell ill with vomiting and a high fever on Monday, settlers blocked an ambulance from reaching the house. The girls and their mother were eventually evacuated on Tuesday. They are short on food and are drinking water and juice delivered by the ambulance that came to collect his daughter. “The situation is extremely dire,” Hassan said.
On Wednesday morning, the commander of Israeli forces in the region, Gen Avi Bluth, visited the families and promised to lift the siege, an Israeli military spokesperson said. Hassan confirmed the visit. “Today, the area commander came and spoke with us and assured us that he would evacuate the settlers. For the first time, I feel that there is some seriousness on the part of the army in dealing with the settlers,” Hassan said, but added that it had not yet produced tangible results. Israeli militants target Palestinians with near total impunity in the occupied West Bank. Since 2020, Israeli civilians and soldiers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians there, and there has been only one indictment over those deaths.
Seyed M. Marandi: Middle East Escalation: Iran’s Hormuz Counter-Siege and Economic Fallout
Home demolitions by Israeli forces; attacks on healthcare infrastructure, homes, and schools; mass displacement of Palestinians; and the expansion of illegal settlements across the West Bank have brought the occupied Palestinian territory to “the breaking point,” said a top humanitarian official at the United Nations Security Council Tuesday, calling for a “coordinated international effort” to end the violent Israeli occupation.
At a meeting on the situation in the territory, Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, addressed the council as families in the town of Qusra, northern Nablus, were facing days of attacks by Israeli settlers.
That violence exemplified what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called an escalating “ethnic cleansing” operation that Israel’s military allows.
As B’Tselem said Wednesday, settlers had established an illegal outpost in the yards of two Palestinian families’ homes, “forcing the families out and taking over their homes,” and the US-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had done nothing to protect the Palestinian residents.
“Israeli ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in full view of everyone,” Yuli Novak, president of B’Tselem, told Anadolu Agency, adding that the settlers’ seizure of the Palestinian homes was “not an isolated incident.”
Breaking the Silence, an organization run by former IDF members who oppose the occupation, explained how settlers, with the backing of the military, essentially blockade individual homes as a method of driving Palestinians out.
A Palestinian family is besieged by the IDF and settler terrorists in Qusra, in the West Bank. No one is allowed in or out: no food, no ambulances, no journalists. This is a new method for carrying out the same policy: forcing Palestinians off their land. Here’s how it works pic.twitter.com/mYdpg3NlSb
— Breaking the Silence (@BtSIsrael) August 11, 2026
“Violent settlers may do the ‘dirty work’ of daily terror against Palestinian men, women, and children, but neither this terror nor ethnic cleansing would be possible without the army’s support,” said the group. “Village after village, house after house. It keeps happening because it is policy.”
At the Security Council meeting, Alakbarov said Israeli forces have killed 76 Palestinians, including 18 children, in the West Bank in 2026 so far, while children make up nearly half of the 3,800 Palestinians who have been displaced by settler attacks, demolitions, and evictions.
“One hundred and twenty-seven Palestinian communities have experienced full or partial displacement since January 2023, including 47 that have been entirely displaced, affecting more than 6,390 Palestinians,” said Alakbarov. “Settler violence has reached unprecedented levels. So far this year the UN has documented more than 1,430 incidents involving Israeli settlers that resulted in casualties, property damage, or both, affecting approximately 260 Palestinian communities. Many incidents occurred in the presence of Israeli forces.”
As Alakbarov spoke Tuesday, the World Health Organization warned that the West Bank has also seen an uptick in violence against healthcare infrastructure, with Israeli carrying out 83 attacks on healthcare transport such as ambulances and 11 attacks on medical centers and facilities, injuring at least 33 people and killing four. July saw a surge in healthcare attacks—a hallmark of Israel’s assault on Gaza that began in 2023—with 37 strikes on infrastructure.
Attacks on health care in the West Bank 1 January - 31 July 2026 https://t.co/rwxooUMegs pic.twitter.com/1X3AmMoQxu
— WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (@WHOEMRO) August 11, 2026
Settler attacks were once mainly concentrated in Area C, which comprises about 60% of the West Bank and is under Israeli control.
But Alakbarov said settlers are increasingly waging violence against Palestinians in Areas A and B, which are under the administration of the Palestinian Authority.
“The future of the region is at stake,” the UN permanent observer for the state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, told the Security Council. “International will cannot bow before the colonial whims of the Israeli government.”
Israeli officials in recent months have advanced and approved about 12,360 housing units in settlements across the West Bank this year, with the Security Cabinet signing off on 13 new settlements in the central part of the territory last month. The move further isolates East Jerusalem, which Palestinians consider the capital of a future Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank.
Last year Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also signed an agreement to develop 3,400 new units in the E1 settlement, which would also cut off access to East Jerusalem. The prime minister said as he approved the deal, “There will be no Palestinian state.”
The approvals of more settlement housing this year and the escalation in IDF-sanctioned violence against Palestinian communities across the West Bank “are interconnected steps, not isolated developments,” Alakbarov said Tuesday.
“The situation in the West Bank must be treated as an emergency requiring urgent action,” he said. “The concern is not only the continued expansion of settlements, but the speed and systematic manner in which new facts are being created on the ground. New outposts are established, often with state support, and can be retroactively authorized or incorporated into the wider settlement system. From these outposts, settler violence and intimidation have driven the displacement of Palestinian communities.”
He added that the spread of settler outposts in agricultural and grazing areas is “deeply troubling.”
“Requiring only a small number of settlers, they enable control over vast areas of land,” said Alakbarov. “Israeli monitoring organizations report that agricultural and pastoral outposts now exercise effective control over close to 20% of the West Bank.”
Israeli forces also arrested 23 Palestinians on Tuesday, including two children, days after a large-scale operation at Qalandia refugee camp resulted in the detentions of more than 60 people.
Hannah Sulieman, deputy executive director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), emphasized that 355 Palestinian children are currently being detained in Israeli military prisons—“the highest number in eight years.”
The arrests and the violence mean that for children and their families in the West Bank, “the fundamental spaces of childhood—the home, the classroom, the street, the community—are becoming increasingly unsafe,” said Sulieman.
“Children in the West Bank have the same rights as children everywhere,” she said. “To live, to learn, to be protected, and to imagine a future beyond violence and fear.”
Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Trump FUMING Over Iran's Defiance as US Plans 'Massive Move'
Israel deliberately starting wildfires in southern Lebanon, firefighters say
Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih. “Most of our missions are now related to fires,” Fakih said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.”
The Israeli military has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and on agricultural land, according to videos and testimony from emergency services, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. “They started doing this right after the ceasefire, and there have been incendiary bombs every day,” Fakih said. “Small drones come out and drop incendiary materials, [white] phosphorus shells are fired at the woodlands, in addition to illumination flares that they drop during the daytime so the vegetation catches fire.”
Firefighters and residents of other areas in south Lebanon describe similar blazes being started by Israeli munitions and drones in dry scrub and woodlands. On Friday, Israeli munitions created large wildfires in two heavily forested areas, in Kfarchouba, close to the border, and between Jezzine and the western Bekaa valley. The civil defence station chief in the area, Samir Hardan, said a fire was started near Kfarchouba on Friday afternoon after a drone dropped a munition in woodlands. After battling blazes overnight and extinguishing them on Saturday, a second drone started another fire on Sunday, Hardan said.
Firefighters are required to coordinate their movements with the Lebanese army, which relays their request to a “deconfliction” group that includes the Israeli military. They were given permission to fight the fires at only two spots, and not other areas where fires were raging. According to environmental groups, the fires are part of a pattern of Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s environment that threaten the country’s woodlands and the biodiversity they support.
Russia Plans Ukraine Land Blockade Strikes Road Rail Links; Russian A50 AWACS Defeat Ukraine Drones
Ecuador Fishermen HUNTED By Possible US MERCENARIES
Mysterious Attacks on Ecuadorian Fishers Raise Fears of Expanded US Boat Bombings
An investigation published Wednesday by The New York Times has raised fresh questions about who attacked three Ecuadorian fishing vessels in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year—but for fishers and their families in the South American nation, the mystery is hardly new.
According to the Times, Ecuadorian fishers aboard the Fiorella, Negra Francisca Duarte II, and Don Maca were separately attacked by what witnesses called unidentified “gringos” using drones. Survivors said they “came under attack by English-speaking assailants wearing matching uniforms with American flag patches, but without any clear insignia to link them to an official government force.”
International rights groups have called for an investigation after the Fiorella and its crew of eight disappeared in January amid Operation Southern Spear, President Donald Trump’s largely ineffective campaign of extrajudicial strikes on boats that the US administration claims, without evidence, were smuggling drugs.
By the Pentagon’s own admission, more than 220 people have been killed in at least 66 such strikes since last September. The US military says no civilians were killed in the strikes, a claim that anonymous government officials called “a fucking joke” and “a total whitewash.”
Government officials in countries including Colombia and Venezuela, as well as victims’ relatives, have contradicted the US claim. The families of two Trinidadian men killed in one strike earlier this year filed wrongful death lawsuits against the United States. Relatives of a Colombian slain in another US strike also filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Some of the Ecuadorian fishers featured in the new Times piece say they were seized and interrogated by the attackers before being handed over to the Salvadoran navy, which conducts long-range maritime patrols and counternarcotics operations in the Eastern Pacific and occasionally intercepts vessels.
The new Times report says that a maritime patrol aircraft based at a military facility in El Salvador repeatedly flew toward and tracked the Ecuadorian fishing boats in the days before they were attacked or disappeared. An analysis of flight data found that the aircraft’s course appeared to follow the vessels over several days.
Yet the aircraft was not listed among Pentagon operational aircraft. According to the Times, it was registered to a private company whose address was a UPS store mailbox in Virginia, deepening the mystery over who was operating it—and for whom.
“It would be one thing if the US didn’t have an overt maritime strike campaign, but they do, and they’re posting snuff films of boats going up in flames regularly,” Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in the laws of war, told the Times.
“And that’s what makes this even more squirrelly,” added Finucane, now a senior adviser in the US Program at the International Crisis Group. “Who are these people that are operating, and under what authority? And they are using a UPS store as their company address? Come on.”
The Pentagon has denied involvement, claiming that US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) did not know about the attacks or have a role in them. But the new findings raise the possibility that the attacks could have involved a private military contractor or another force operating in coordination with Washington’s expanding anti-drug campaign.
In addition to the boat bombing campaign—which the Pentagon has replaced with the newly created Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—SOUTHCOM has launched Operation Total Extermination, a joint counternarcotics operation with Ecuadorian forces involving the deployment of US ground troops into the Andean nation.
In one operation in the campaign, Ecuadorian soldiers raided and destroyed a dairy farm in San Martín, Sucumbíos, on March 3. Ecuador claimed the site was a traffickers’ camp, but investigations by The New York Times and, later, Human Rights Watch found substantial evidence that it was a working cattle and dairy farm with no credible evidence of a criminal connection. HRW said four workers at the farm were detained and tortured by Ecuadorian forces, and that the broader operation was carried out with US assistance.
The Times investigation published Wednesday followed months of reporting by Ecuadorian and international media and human rights groups, including HRW, on the three fishing vessels and their crews.
In April, Primicias reported growing fear among fishermen in Manabí, Ecuador’s major fishing province, where crews said they had been intercepted and attacked at sea. Fishers from the Don Maca and Negra Francisca Duarte II separately described being surrounded by drones and subsequently detained by what they believed were US personnel.
Don Maca‘s crew told El Universo that drones bombed their boat without warning on March 26. Fishers aboard said they escaped in small boats, approached a foreign vessel for help, and were instead handcuffed and hooded before eventually being transferred to Salvadoran authorities.
El Universo also separately reported a strikingly similar account from the crew of the Negra Francisca Duarte II. Captain Hernán Flores said a drone struck the boat on March 17, setting it ablaze and forcing all 16 fishermen into the water. When they approached a nearby blue vessel seeking assistance, Flores said, armed foreign personnel pointed weapons at them, bound them, and covered their heads.
In the case of the Fiorella, Primicias and El Universo reported that two fishers who had separated from the boat in a smaller vessel saw a drone circling above shortly before they spotted smoke on the horizon. Fiorella and those aboard it have never been found.
America PANICS as Canada DUMPS US Energy Markets for China
US inflation cooled slightly to 3.4% in July but prices still elevated
US consumer prices cooled slightly in July as the annualized inflation rate dipped down to 3.4%, though prices still remain higher than levels seen before the war with Iran. Though inflation decreased 0.7 percentage points in June during a brief ceasefire between the US and Iran that brought energy prices down, consumer prices have remained elevated. Price increases hit a three-year high in May, with annual inflation reaching 4.2%.
Core inflation – a key measure that excludes volatile energy and food prices – increased slightly to 2.5% compared with last year, and increased at a modest 0.2% since last month. The overall index for food and services, including shelter, transportation and medical care, rose 3% each compared with last year, though grocery prices fell slightly. The price of lettuce fell 16% over the last year as it continues to be linked to the cyclosporiasis outbreak.
The energy index declined slightly from the previous month, with gasoline falling nearly 3% over the last month, but still sitting about 15% higher than the year before. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, dipped in June when the US and Iran reached a peace agreement. Prices then rose again when that deal collapsed in July.
Energy prices are still far lower than their peak in late April, but remain above prewar levels. Gas at the pump is an average $4 a gallon in the US, according to the AAA, more than $0.85 up from a year ago.
Wednesday’s release also follows a disappointing jobs report that showed American employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July. Labor market gains for May and June were also revised sharply down by a combined 103,000, painting a weaker-than-expected picture of the state of US employment. Wage gains for hourly employees were erased by inflation, according to the latest data, decreasing by 0.2% after adjusting for inflation.
Trump’s justice department arrests expert on far right as part of SPLC crackdown
The justice department on Wednesday arrested a leading expert on far-right extremism, charging her with financial crimes as part of the government’s ongoing case against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Federal prosecutors charged Heidi Beirich, who formerly served as the group’s chief financial officer, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.
The justice department charged the SPLC in April over a now-ended program in which it paid informants to infiltrate white supremacist groups. The government said the civil rights organization committed financial crimes by laundering money through bank accounts set up on behalf of fictitious entities to protect the identities of their informants. The government says the SPLC deceived donors into thinking they were combatting extremism, when they were actually supporting it. The organization has strongly denied that accusation and says the charges are politically motivated. Experts have raised questions about the charges.
The indictment alleges Beirich was in a romantic relationship with one of the informants and that $140,000 of donor money made its way into a joint bank account they had.
Without ruling on the merits of the case, a federal judge in Alabama allowed the case to proceed last week, rejecting an argument from the SPLC that the case should be dismissed because it was a vindictive prosecution.
Trump sued over $100,000-a-month early-access offer to Truth Social posts
Donald Trump has been sued after a subscription service charging up to $100,000 a month for early access to his posts on his Truth Social platform sparked allegations of corruption. The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the southern district of New York, was brought by the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation against Trump, two of his aides and the executive office of the president.
The service gives paying subscribers faster access than the general public to posts from 10 of the platform’s highest-profile accounts, including Trump’s own account, as well as those of the vice-president, JD Vance; press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; and other senior officials. Subscribers pay $100,000 a month, or $60,000 a month for a three-year commitment.
Trump has a history of using Truth Social to disclose market-sensitive news, including posts on tariffs and the war on Iran, which have triggered swings in stock and oil prices. Trump Media’s interim chief executive, Kevin McGurn, has even promoted the service as a way to give businesses fast access to the platform’s “most market-moving” posts. He has described it as a “high-margin” product meant to provide a “meaningful, ongoing source of revenue”.
The plaintiffs argue that the president, who remains Trump Media’s largest shareholder, with a stake worth roughly $1bn, stands to personally profit from selling privileged access to information generated in his official capacity. The suit also raises concerns about the historical record. Truth API subscribers get access to an archive of posts stretching back to 2022, including ones later deleted or altered.
Judge awards $252,480 to musician who canceled Kennedy Center performance
A superior court judge in Washington DC has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay more than $250,000 to a musician who canceled a performance at the arts center after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the venue. Judge Tanya Jones Bosier ordered the Kennedy Center on Monday to pay $252,479.70 in legal fees and costs to attorneys for musician Chuck Redd within 45 days.
The Kennedy Center had sued Redd after he canceled a Christmas Eve concert at the venue. In June, the judge dismissed the Kennedy Center’s lawsuit and ruled in Redd’s favor under the district’s anti-Slapp statute, which is designed to protect people from lawsuits seeking to silence protected speech. Redd then requested that the court make the Kennedy Center reimburse him for the legal costs he incurred defending himself.
A Kennedy Center spokesperson said the organization intended to appeal.
Trump officials again urge US supreme court intervention on mail ballots
Donald Trump’s administration again asked the US supreme court on Wednesday to intervene to fully implement the president’s executive order restricting the use of mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of US Congress. The US Department of Justice filed a request asking the justices to put on hold a decision made on Tuesday by US district judge Indira Talwani in Boston that blocks the US Postal Service from nationwide enforcement of the directive’s tighter rules for voting by mail.
Trump signed his executive order in March after years of calling for restrictions on voting by mail and pushing the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Talwani’s decision on Tuesday, in a case brought by several voting rights groups and represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, effectively expands on an earlier order she issued in June preventing the enforcement of Trump’s order in 23 mostly Democratic-governed states and Washington, DC, which had also challenged the action as unconstitutional.
The administration has already asked the supreme court to pause the June decision. In its brief filing on Wednesday, the justice department urged the supreme court to lift that decision and make clear that the ruling applies to the judge’s action on Tuesday as well. The administration contends that the lawsuits are premature as federal agencies have not yet taken any concrete actions that affect the plaintiffs, and so any harm they allege is speculative.
Left BACK AT WAR WITH ITSELF as Midterms Approach
Greenland forces Trump-linked US oil firm to delay drilling
Greenland authorities have forced a US oil company connected to Donald Trump to postpone drilling wells in the Arctic territory, defying claims by the US president’s envoy that Americans could be extracting crude by next year. Amid Trump’s imperialist threats, tensions have been rising on Greenland’s eastern coast after the oil company brought drilling equipment ashore in July without permission, drawing a “strong warning” from the government.
Just week before Greenland Energy intended to sink its first wells into the tundra, the government said on Thursday: “The necessary regulatory process cannot be completed, and the necessary approvals cannot therefore be obtained before the planned start of drilling.” It said that during talks Greenlandic officials had expressed concern that the timetable was too tight to assess the environmental and social impact.
The authorities will have to decide whether to sanction drilling in a protected wetland that is home to rare birds and the muskoxen on which local hunters depend. At the earliest, drilling could now commence in the winter of 2027, the government and the company said. That is a long way off the prediction made as recently as May by Jeff Landry, the hard-right Louisiana governor whom Trump named as his envoy to Greenland. He said after a visit that oil supposedly lying under Greenland could ease the energy crisis caused by the US attack on Iran. Landry, whose stated goal is to “make Greenland a part of the US”, said: “We could have those barrels on production within 10 months or so.”
Since a rich friend put the idea of acquiring Greenland in Trump’s head during his first term, the president has threatened to do so by buying it from Denmark, seizing it with military force or cutting a deal.
Trump administration pulls support for annual Arctic environmental report
The Trump administration has pulled its support for an annual report on the environmental changes across the Arctic, a region that is already heating up four times faster than the global average due to the climate crisis. On Tuesday, Kim Doster, the communications director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), said the federal agency was withdrawing its support for the Arctic Report Card, which has provided environmental updates on the region to scientists and the public since 2006.
Without explaining why the government stopped its support, Doster told the New York Times: “Coordination of the 2026 Arctic Report Card will not be facilitated through NOAA … All data historically contributed by NOAA to the product will continue to be collected and will remain publicly available.” Doster told the outlet that other Noaa programs would continue to support research in the region that contributes to “national security, weather prediction, safety of navigation and the economic vitality of coastal communities”.
Over the last 20 years, the peer-reviewed report has tracked crucial changes across the Arctic’s atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and tundra. The climate crisis has made the Arctic the world’s fastest-warming region. In recent years, the region has experienced severe sea ice decline, carbon sink reversals and ecosystem upheavals.
In the 2025 Arctic Report Card, scientists found that surface temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900. It also found that in March 2025, Arctic winter sea ice reached the lowest annual maximum extent in the 47-year satellite record. Meanwhile, on land, the report noted that ongoing glacier loss contributes to steadily rising global sea levels, threatening Arctic communities’ water supplies, driving destructive floods, and increasing landslide and tsunami hazards.
It also found that in more than 200 Arctic Alaska watersheds – large land areas where rain and melted snow drain northward into the Arctic Ocean – iron and other elements released by thawing permafrost have turned rivers and streams orange in the last 10 years. The “rusting rivers” have in turn increased acidity while elevated levels of toxic metals have degraded water quality, in turn affecting aquatic habits, rural drinking water supplies and subsistence fishing.
A huge AI datacenter is planned near Mar-a-Lago. The Everglades could pay the price
About 16 miles (26km) west of the Mar-a-Lago estate on President Donald J Trump Highway, near the northern edge of the Florida Everglades, developers have proposed a hyperscale datacenter on a 202-acre (82-hectare) parcel of land surrounded by water. Local environmentalists warn that the proposed 600MW datacenter in western Palm Beach county could damage the wetlands, which the federal government and the state of Florida have spent a combined $6bn to restore after decades of drainage and development.
One concern is that the datacenter could exacerbate an existing issue of toxic bacterial blooms in a water system which has already been stressed by drought, fertilizer runoff and warm water temperatures. In recent summers, the bright blooms of blue-green algae have covered nearly half of Lake Okeechobee, which feeds into the Everglades. The cyanobacteria blooms produce a toxin known as microcystin, which can make people and animals sick and contaminate drinking water. On 30 July the Florida department of health in Palm Beach county issued a health alert about cyanobacteria presence in the lake.
Reinaldo Diaz grew up in Palm Beach county and founded Lake Worth Waterkeeper, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the watershed. He said waste heat from the proposed datacenter, called Project Tango, could increase the water temperatures in the surrounding watershed, putting the Florida Everglades further at risk of toxic bacterial blooms. “Our watershed is really complex,” Diaz said. “Ours is more like a spiderweb. That’s why the impacts would be far reaching.”
North-east of the proposed Project Tango site, the habitat changes quickly. Beneath a canopy of bald cypress and native palm trees, the Loxahatchee River winds through one of the few surviving remnants of the northern Everglades. During the Guardian’s recent visit the buzz of dog-day cicadas overwhelmed the distant hum of traffic. Though the Everglades once stretched much farther north, water still circulates through this interconnected landscape through canals, sugarcane fields and grassy waters to surrounding lakes and marshes.
Diaz’s environmental concerns, like many, are linked to the amount of electricity a 600MW datacenter could consume, enough to generate enormous amounts of heat. Based on US Energy Information estimates of residential electricity use, at peak capacity a 600MW datacenter could use as much power as half a million US homes. The high energy use of datacenters can also mean costly upgrades to the power grid, which can drive up electricity costs for households.Earthjustice attorney Christina Reichert is representing neighbors with the Western Palm Beach Community Alliance in opposition to Project Tango. The group has challenged the developers’ efforts to convert a previously approved 2016 plan for warehouses and a server farm on the light industrial site into a hyperscale datacenter. Reichert said a hyperscale datacenter could have offsite water, air and sound impacts not covered by light industrial use zoning.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Social Power Is Built Before It Is Seen
Jonathan Cook: The ‘Morbid Symptoms’ of a Dying West
The Fundamental Political Question Of Production & Distribution
Fox News screaming desperately into wind as Trump loses grip
Pentagon Admits To Committing Major Civilian Massacres in Yemen Last Year
Expert Explains the Real Danger Behind Trump’s Midterm ‘National Emergency’ Threat
New Database Documents Over 100 Cases of Cops Abusing Flock Surveillance Cameras
Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter did not endanger others, defense attorneys say
Unexpected hearing scheduled for Luigi Mangione sparks plea deal speculation
Astronomers discover a new kind of cosmic object – a black hole ‘star’
A Little Night Music
Bumble Bee Slim - Sloppy Drunk Blues
Bumble Bee Slim - Fattenin' Frogs For Snakes
Bumble Bee Slim (Amos Easton) - No Woman No Nickel
Bumble Bee Slim - You’ve Got To Do As I Bid You
Bumble Bee Slim - Queen Bee Blues
Bumble Bee Slim - When The Music Sounds Good
Bumble Bee Slim - Uncertain Blues
Bumble Bee Slim - Ida Red
Bumble Bee Slim – Meet Me In The Bottom (1936)
Bumble Bee Slim – Meet Me In The Bottom (1962)
Comments
Good blues, bad news
.
nothing new. Glad to see Greenland standing up to trumpet's Texas
oil drilling buddies, at least for now. They have rights to their soil.
Maybe seize all that junk delivered without permits?
Thanks for the EB's joe.
Zionism is a social disease
evening qms...
yep, the trumpsters are doing their best to act like the mafia and bully greenland into giving up. perhaps they ought to borrow some nukes from somebody and trump and his buddies might learn some manners.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. It had to happen:
Astronomers discover a new kind of cosmic object – a black hole ‘star’https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/12/astronomy-discovery-new-...
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
pretty cool formation in space. good to know that artists were thinking it up first.
"Tell it to the Chaplain"
Thanks for the Navy Times report. I know they're going to put things in the most favorable light possible. In any case they let out that the relief carrier is USS Theodore Roosevelt. They were reported as in port as of the 10th on USNI fleet tracker in San Diego.
Thanks for keeping us updated JS with the latest.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
Gonna be awhile before the relief ship
.
arrives on station. And another while before the blighted carrier
returns to port. Perhaps hogsbreath could greet them with his
slimy facade upon arrival? Help carry the body bags. Prolly no.
What a way to run a 'war'.
Zionism is a social disease
evening soryang...
i don't know if there's any truth to it, but press news (iranian news) reported a violent knife fight injuring 7 on board. i didn't bother posting it because there's just no confirmation, but i suppose that it could have happened. i guess we'll find out down the road.
have a great evening!
Seven killed.
I posted that yesterday with he caveat It had not been confirmed. The families of the dead will go on Facebook if it turns out to be true.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
thanks for refreshing my memory on the details. i hope that we will get more definitive information soon.
Yeah...some brawl
allegedly began after the Centcom advisor get a pep talk, got boos, then brawl.
Thing is, we promote propaganda, Iran seems to promote truth, just as a basis of absorbing information.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Southern rock
Here you have Gov't Mule doing covers. They are somewhat faithful to the originals but they have that Warren Haynes thing on them.
And y'all need to listen to more Jefferson Airplane.
"The US empire’s downfall comes at a time of late stage capitalism when more than 99 percent of the public are effectively disenfranchised while factions of reactionary billionaires vie for control." -- Conor Gallagher
Now they're saying it's USS Washington...
...that will relieve the USS Lincoln. So the earlier reports that it would be the USS Roosevelt?
That's according to the WSJ. The article is behind a paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-sending-fresh-aircraf...
Given the Washington's last position according to USNI fleet tracker Aug 10. That would be sooner.
In an exclusive interview with MS NOW, the wife of a USS Lincoln sailor who jumped overboard says her husband told leadership he was struggling but it was brushed off. This comes amid reports of disturbing conditions on the aircraft vessel. A Navy spokesperson told MS NOW they have not observed an increase in suicidal ideations on the ship. MS NOW Pentagon Reporter Priya Sridhar shares more details. Former Rep. Max Rose and former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Julie Roland, who has lived on the Lincoln, joins Katy Tur to weigh in.
己所不欲，勿施于人。