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This evening's music features "The King of the Delta blues singers" Robert Johnson. Enjoy!

“If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

News and Opinion

Ukraine announces beginning of offensive to retake Kherson

On Monday, the Ukrainian government and military announced the beginning of a counter-offensive against Russian troops, focused on recapturing the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine. ... Based on an anonymous source in the Ukrainian military, CNN reported on Monday that “the operation began at night with massive shelling of Russian positions and the rear.” The source also claimed that the Ukrainian military had taken four villages in the Kherson region.

Russian authorities initially dismissed these claims, arguing that what was taking place was a “virtual offensive,” designed to garner more military support for Ukraine from NATO. However, by Monday night, Russian media reported that the Ukrainian military had suffered heavy losses in its “attempted counter-offensive” in the Kherson and Nikolaev regions. Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that the Ukrainian army lost over 560 soldiers, 26 tanks and two SU-25 fighter jets.

The Russian press also reported that the Ukrainian army had engaged in heavy shelling of Nova Kakhovka, a city in the Kherson region that is located directly on the Dnepro River. The city has been used by the Russian army as a logistical center since almost the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February. The Ukrainian military reportedly used American-made HIMARS rocket systems to fire on the city’s electrical power plant and water station, forcing the shutdown of electrical and water supplies to the city’s almost 46,000 residents.

The current offensive was preceded by weeks in which the Ukrainian army, backed by Washington, carried out a series of strikes on military bases and ammunition depots in Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea that was annexed by Russia in March 2014. On August 20, Daria Dugina, the daughter of the far-right Russian ideologue and war supporter Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bomb that was clearly designed to murder her father as well. These attacks were an attempt to provoke a military response by Russia to provide a justification for NATO’s expansion and escalation of the war. The military strikes on Crimea were also aimed at weakening Russia’s aviation and military logistics in advance of the offensive now underway.

None of the military efforts by Ukraine, which for years has ranked as the poorest country in Europe, would be possible without the arms and funding from NATO and, above all, the US. Amidst record inflation, Washington has spent some $50 billion on weapons for Ukraine since February alone, while ceasing all COVID-19 relief funding and targeting social welfare benefits for millions of Americans. Last Wednesday, Biden pledged another $3 billion for weapons and ammunition for at least another three years.

US, UK Sabotaged Ukraine-Russia PEACE DEAL In April: Aaron Maté Breaks Down Report

Arms makers are licking their chops as defense officials worry about shortfalls in weapons stockpiles

Defense officials are worried that U.S. weapons transfers to Ukraine are reducing the Pentagon’s military readiness, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“It is not at the level we would like to go into combat,” a defense official said, adding that current stockpiles of artillery ammunition are “uncomfortably low.” And, given that it can take years to purchase new weapons from weapons makers, this shortfall could last well into the future.

The news shows just how dramatically American weapons stocks have fallen in recent months in order to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion. It also highlights the massive financial windfall that arms manufacturers will receive in the coming months and years as taxpayers fund a boost in weapons production.

Gorbachev. Kherson fake out, Kharkov counteroffensive? 10k euro electricity bill, why?

6 Million Afghans Facing Famine as US Refuses to Return $7 Billion in Seized Funds

The United Nations aid chief on Monday led calls for a resumption of the humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan that ended after the Taliban reconquered the war-ravaged nation one year ago—pleas that came as six million Afghans face famine and the Biden administration continues to refuse to return billions of dollars in frozen funds.

"The people in Afghanistan continue to face extreme hardship and uncertainty," U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths told the world body's Security Council.

Noting that the U.N.'s Humanitarian Response Plan for Afghanistan is currently facing a more than $3 billion shortfall, Griffiths called on donors to immediately provide $754 million in aid to help Afghans survive the coming winter.

"Close to 19 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity, including six million people at risk of famine," he warned. "More than half of the population—some 24 million people—need humanitarian assistance. And an estimated three million children are acutely malnourished. They include over one million children estimated to be suffering from the most severe, life-threatening form of malnutrition. And without specialized treatment, these children could die."

Griffiths continued:

This malnutrition crisis is fueled by recurrent drought, including the worst in three decades in 2021, and whose effects are still lingering. Eight out of 10 Afghans drink contaminated water, making them susceptible to repeated bouts of acute watery diarrhea. Around 25 million people are now living in poverty and three quarters of people's income is spent on food. There's been a 50% decline in households receiving remittances; unemployment could reach 40%; and inflation is rising due to increased global prices, import constraints, and currency depreciation.

"So these relentless layers of crisis persist at a time when communities are already struggling," Griffiths added. "In June, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake affected over 360,000 people living in high-intensity impact areas. And since July, heavy rains have led to massive flash floods across the country, and indeed the region, killing and injuring hundreds of people, and destroying hundreds of homes as well as thousands of acres of crops."

Because the Taliban—which fought for two decades to oust U.S.-led forces and the coalition-backed Afghan government in a war that claimed over 170,000 lives—is not formally recognized by any nation and is under international sanctions, it is difficult to deliver humanitarian assistance to the country.

U.S. policy is exacerbating the crisis. Despite pleas from economists and humanitarians, the Biden administration continues to withhold around $7 billion in Afghan central bank funds stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

On Monday, a U.S. federal judge concluded that relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States should not be allowed to claim billions of dollars of the frozen funds to settle legal judgments against the Taliban, who sheltered al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before unsuccessfully offering to turn him in for trial in a third country as the U.S.-led invasion began. However, another judge can decide whether to accept that conclusion.

U.S. President Joe Biden had sought to set aside $3.5 billion of the $7 billion to settle 9/11 claimants' cases, while signing a February executive order allocating the remainder "to be used for the benefit of the Afghan people."

However, six months later, the administration still has not released the funds, citing the Taliban's apparent sheltering of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri—who was killed by a U.S. drone strike on Kabul on July 31.

Also addressing the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the world body, contended that "no country that is serious about containing terrorism in Afghanistan would advocate to give the Taliban instantaneous, unconditional access to billions in assets that belong to the Afghan people."

Assal Rad, research director at National Iranian American Council Action, tweeted Monday that "the U.S. is still collectively punishing the people of Afghanistan."

"For millions of Afghans facing starvation," she added, "the war never ended."

US navy intervenes after Iran seizes American sea drone

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard seized an American sea drone in the Persian Gulf and tried to tow it away, only releasing the unmanned vessel when a US navy warship and helicopter approached, according to US officials.

The incident on Tuesday marks the first time the navy’s Middle East-based fifth fleet’s new drone taskforce has been targeted by Iran.

While the interception ended without incident, tensions remain high between Washington and Tehran as negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers hang in the balance.

"Total Terror" in Iraq: Muqtada al-Sadr Supporters Fight Rivals in Baghdad Amid Political Deadlock

Greece to launch parliamentary inquiry into spy scandal

Greece is to launch a parliamentary inquiry into a spy scandal embroiling the government as MEPs also step up calls for an investigation into the use of phone taps in the country. An inquiry proposed by the centre-left Pasok party was backed by the entire political opposition late on Monday after revelations that the group’s leader, Nikos Androulakis, had been placed under surveillance while serving as an MEP.

“It is necessary more than ever for these cases to be investigated,” the Pasok MP Haris Kastanidis told the chamber, saying the inquiry should not be limited to Androulakis. Eavesdropping claims made by the communist KKE party as well as the bugging of journalists should also be addressed, he said.

The centre-right government has faced charges of a cover-up by liberal and leftwing MEPs, who are pressing for a fact-finding mission to be sent to Greece. Lawmakers with the ruling New Democracy party abstained from Monday’s vote although they made clear that they, too, supported the inquiry in the name of reforming Greece’s intelligence service, the EYP.

The wiretap disclosures have been described as “probably the tip of the iceberg” by Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch politician heading the European parliament’s PEGA committee looking into the use of malicious spyware across the continent. “The Greek authorities, on the one hand, claim they are innocent so they’ve got nothing to hide, and on the other hand they are very reluctant to shed light on the whole matter,” she said. “And so far all their moves over the last year or so have been to cover things up.”

Wholesale gas prices tumble as Europe prepares to intervene in energy markets

The wholesale price of gas has dropped sharply in a rare respite from recent highs on signs that Europe is preparing to intervene directly in energy markets. The European Commission said it was working “flat out” on an emergency package, and on a longer-term “structural reform of the electricity market” to combat soaring prices while efforts to fill gas storage facilities appear to be ahead of schedule.

The day-ahead UK wholesale gas price tumbled by more than 20% to 447p per therm on Tuesday, while the month-ahead contract dropped by a quarter, to 473p per therm. Prices eased from near record highs but are still 12 times higher than at the start of 2021, before the energy crisis began. ...

The German economy minister Robert Habeck said he expected gas prices to fall soon as Germany, Europe’s largest gas consumer, was making progress on its storage targets and would not have to pay the high asking prices to continue replenishing stocks. Habeck also reportedly told other European energy ministers that Germany is willing to consider a European price cap on gas, a measure it has previously argued against.

The European Commission is working on as yet undefined emergency proposals to ease the cost for households this winter, before a meeting of EU energy ministers on 9 September. A longer-term plan for market intervention appears to be more advanced.

First-of-its-kind legislation will keep California’s children safer while online

California lawmakers passed first-of-its-kind legislation on Monday designed to improve the online safety and privacy protections for children. The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, will require firms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to install guardrails for users under the age of 18, including defaulting to higher privacy settings for minors and refraining from collecting location data for those users. ...

Meanwhile some privacy advocates have raised concerns about the sweeping scope of the bill, as it may require all users to authenticate their age and restrict anonymous browsing online.

“The bill will dramatically degrade the internet experience for everyone and will empower a new censorship-focused regulator who has no interest or expertise in balancing complex and competing interests,” wrote Eric Goldman, a law professor and critic of the bill.

California fast-food workers close to winning historic protections

California lawmakers approved a nation-leading measure that would give more than half a million fast-food workers more power and protections, over the objections of restaurant owners who warn it would drive up consumers’ costs.

The bill will create a new 10-member Fast Food Council with equal numbers of workers’ delegates and employers’ representatives, along with two state officials, empowered to set minimum standards for wages, hours and working conditions in California.

A late amendment would cap any minimum wage increase for fast-food workers at chains with more than 100 restaurants at $22 an hour next year, compared with the statewide minimum of $15.50 an hour, with cost of living increases thereafter.

Biden DEFENDS FBI, Vows MORE Police Funding & Gun Control

Biden's Student Loan Scam

The Biden administration announcement of so-called student loan debt relief does little to alleviate the problem it claims to solve. Forgiving $20,000 for Pell grant holders and $10,000 for all who earn less than $125,000 is questionable for a variety of reasons. It is a midterm election bait and switch that pleases gullible democrats, helps only a minority of borrowers, and is nothing like what candidate Biden proposed during the 2020 campaign.

Americans owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. This crisis did not occur by happenstance. Universities did not escape the neoliberal onslaught and are fund raising machines charging astronomical amounts of money for tuition and room and board. Decades of austerity have slashed spending for public institutions. Once so inexpensive that they were practically free, they now offer little respite from crushing debt. There is no way for working people to secure the higher education they’re told they need without ruining themselves financially, and in so doing defeating the purpose of attending college. ...

The rationale for this catastrophe is quite simple. The race to the bottom is an essential part of the corporate drive to keep Americans desperate. The living wage work that is the holy grail for college students is less likely to exist. The international capitalist overlords want the system to be this way, and they have created a system which keeps everyone, including the educated, in a grip of stagnant wages, insecure employment, and a diminishing social safety net.

Senator Joe Biden played a role in creating these terrible conditions. In 2005 he and 17 other democrats joined republicans in voting for the Bankruptcy Act, which made it all but impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. The Delaware senator was beholden to the consumer credit industry, like all of that state’s elected officials. They were the drivers in ensuring that filing for bankruptcy for any reason would become very difficult and they were always among Biden’s biggest campaign contributors. ...

Biden promised well heeled democratic fundraisers that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Forgiving student loans or any of the other forms of debt peonage is the last thing that the U.S. oligarchy wants to see. The increasingly predatory capitalist system demands that Biden does little more than give lip service instead of meeting the people’s needs. That is why the oddly named Inflation Reduction Act will negotiate Medicare drug prices but not until 2026 and then only for ten drugs. Even if Biden cared he wouldn’t be allowed to do anything more for senior citizens, student loan debtors or anyone else.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Who Presided Over End of Cold War and Soviet Empire, Dead at 91

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president whose gradual opening of his country paved the way for both the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the communist empire, died Tuesday at age 91.

Gorbachev died following a "serious and long illness," officials at Moscow Central Clinical Hospital told Russian state media.

In a statement, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said he was "deeply saddened" to learn of Gorbachev's passing, calling the former Soviet leader "a one-of-a kind statesman who changed the course of history." ...

Following the deaths of three Soviet leaders in just over two years, Gorbachev took control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in March 1985 amid a moribund national economy and heightened Cold War tensions with the United States, then led by the ardently imperialist Reagan administration.

In an attempt to address his country's economic woes, Gorbachev implemented the policy of perestroika, or "restructuring," which sought to improve efficiency by decentralizing decision-making. He also ushered in the age of glasnost, or "openness," allowing for erstwhile unimaginable freedoms in what had for generations been a rigidly totalitarian state. Both of Gorbachev's grandfathers were imprisoned in gulags during the Stalinist repression of his youth, and he and his family also survived the 1932-33 engineered famine that killed millions in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union.

Despite then-President Ronald Reagan condemning the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and U.S. nuclear aggression epitomized by the placement of new nuclear missiles in Europe and research into the so-called "Star Wars" space-based missile defense system, Gorbachev chose to pursue a policy of rapprochement with the United States. This led to a series of bilateral summits between the two leaders that bore fruits in the form of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed in December 1987. ...

Last December, as Putin cited NATO provocation while preparing to invade Ukraine, Gorbachev accused the United States of growing "arrogant and self-confident" following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"How can one count on equal relations with the United States and the West in such a position?" he asked.

"Americans have a severe disease—worse than AIDS," Gorbachev said earlier. "It's called the winner's complex."

US to see renewable energy boom in wake of historic climate bill

Renewable energy is set for an unprecedented boom in the US in the wake of its first ever climate bill, with the capacity of solar and wind projects expected to double by the end of the decade and providing the bulk of total American electricity supply, new analysis has shown. ...

The tax credits contained in the bill’s $370bn of climate spending should help double the capacity of installed wind and solar by 2030, according to an updated analysis by the research firm Energy Innovation. This extra resource could enable clean electricity to provide anything from 72% to 85% of total US supply by this time, flowing from 795 to 1,053 gigawatts of cumulative solar and wind capacity. ...

About $180bn in extra capital investment in renewables could be spent by 2030, according to Energy Innovation. A separate research group, Rystad Energy, has forecast even more will be funneled into the sector – about $270bn – leading to hundreds of thousands of new jobs. “The Inflation Reduction Act is a game changer for the US wind and solar industry,” said Marcelo Ortega, renewables analyst at Rystad.

Previously, wind and solar developers had to rely upon short-term tax breaks and partner with banks or other large institutions. The new bill provides the certainty of a 10-year tax credit program and allows the credits to be transferrable to the developers themselves. There is also billions of dollars for the domestic manufacturing of clean energy components, as well as rebates for people to buy electric cars.

Jackson WITHOUT RUNNING WATER Indefinitely And PETTY POLITICS Are At Fault: Jordan Chariton

Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno: Climate Crisis Impact Worse in Black Cities Facing Disinvestment

Pakistan not to blame for climate crisis-fuelled flooding, says PM Shehbaz Sharif

Pakistan is not to blame for a climate crisis-fuelled disaster that has flooded much of the country, the prime minister has said, as he made a desperate plea for international help in what he said was the “toughest moment” in the nation’s history. “We are suffering from it but it is not our fault at all,” Shehbaz Sharif told journalists on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference where his climate change minister referred to the flooding as a “climate catastrophe”.

“We are dealing with a situation I have not seen in my life,” Sharif said. “More than one million houses are damaged or destroyed. Seventy-two districts of Pakistan are in calamity and all four corners of Pakistan are underwater and more than 3,500km [2,175 miles] of roads have been washed away. Around one million animals have died. ...

Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, said towns had become “oceans and rivers” but, due to climate heating, she expected the country to go straight into a drought in upcoming weeks. “We are on the front of unfolding climate catastrophe.”

Rehman said Pakistan was responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. “Our footprint is so small … There are countries that have got to become rich on the back of fossil fuels and let’s be honest about this,” she said. “Now the time has to come to make a change and we all have a role to play but they have a greater role in this climate catastrophe.” At the same press conference, Ahsan Iqbal, the planning and development minister, said: “People are enjoying their lives in the west but someone here is paying the price.”

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that Pakistan was facing a “monsoon on steroids” as the government issued more flood warnings for the next 24 hours.

Also of Interest

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

The ‘Noble Lie’ of a Democratic West

Russia ships air defence missiles out of Syria, satellites show

Russia Says It Shot Down Ukrainian Drone Near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Station

Joe Biden’s Demand of ‘Unconditional Surrender’ to Russia Will Fail

Ukraine - A 'Counteroffensive' That Was Destined To Fail

Factchecking the Factchecker on Chomsky, Russia and Media Access

Bolsonaro under fire over claims family paid for 51 properties in cash

Americans’ support for labor unions at highest in nearly 60 years

‘Do not drink the water’: Jackson water facility fails after flooding in Mississippi

GOP Repeatedly Opposed Infrastructure Upgrades. Now This Mississippi City Has No Safe Water

‘Better off dead’: Makeshift shelters offer little comfort to Pakistan flood victims

Russia's Gazprom halts pipeline gas flow in new jitters for Europe

A Little Night Music

Robert Johnson - Preachin' Blues (Up jumped the devil)

Robert Johnson - I Believe I'll Dust My Broom

Robert Johnson - Hell Hound On My Trail

Robert Johnson - 32 - 20 Blues

Robert Johnson - Drunken Hearted Man

Robert Johnson - If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day

Robert Johnson - They're Red Hot

Robert Johnson - Love In Vain

Playing For Change - Walking Blues