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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Connie Mack Booker

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Houston r&b singer and piano player Connie Mack Booker. Enjoy!

^{Connie Mack Booker - Love Me Pretty Baby}

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war. And until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war.”

-- Haile Selassie I

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News and Opinion

ALL Mainstream Western Institutions View Palestinian Lives As Worthless

The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorizing a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth ten million Palestinian lives.

“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.

“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.

“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s ten million, okay?”

“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”

The interaction has been going viral on social media as people react to the blatant display of the extremist ideology held by the settlers who are working to gradually squeeze Palestinians off their land in the West Bank. And while it is true that Shimon’s comments are extremely evil and racist, that’s not what I personally found interesting about the interview. What I found interesting was Williamson’s response.

I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. After all, the premise that Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives has colored every aspect of western news media reporting on Israel and Palestine for generations.

That’s why the western press expressed disproportionately more shock and horror at October 7 than the far more egregious Israeli abuses which led up to it and the far more egregious Israeli abuses which followed. It’s why you saw howling outrage at the Bondi shooting in Sydney last year when the same number of Palestinians getting killed on any given day in Gaza never even makes a blip in the news.

On the 26th of March 2025, 15 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during a ceasefire in Gaza. On the 14th of December that same year, 15 people were killed at Bondi Beach in Sydney in a mass shooting by ISIS members directed at Jewish Australians.

Two instances of mass murder. Same exact number of victims. But you only heard about one of them.

Why did you only hear about one of them? Because only one of them made the news.

The mainstream press spent weeks urgently reporting on the Bondi shooting, frenetically working to falsely associate an ISIS terrorist attack with pro-Palestine demonstrations by uniformly repeating the line “This is what globalize the intifada looks like” in news outlets throughout the western world. Report after report after report was published about how Jews are being attacked, how Jews are feeling unsafe, and what new laws and free speech restrictions must be rolled out in order to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment to protect the Jews.

Nothing remotely similar happened on the 26th of March, 2025. As far as the western press were concerned, 15 Palestinians getting killed in Gaza was just another Wednesday.

This is because all mainstream western media outlets hold the same racist opinions about Palestinians as those that were voiced by Yehuda Shimon. So do all mainstream western political parties. So do all other mainstream western institutions. So do all supporters of the state of Israel. They all believe Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, as evidenced by the policies they support and the news stories they pay attention to.

The BBC has a well-documented history of extensive pro-Israel bias, with its own reporters complaining that they’ve been performing PR for the Israeli government and its own editor losing a libel lawsuit against a journalist who exposed his pro-Israel slant. They spent years running cover for an active genocide with “Hamas-run health ministry says” headlines and passive-language verbal gymnastics to protect Israeli information interests, so you know that when Lucy Williamson objects “That sounds racist!” to an Israeli settler claiming Jewish lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives, she’s not actually upset at his belief system. She just knows you’re not supposed to say such things out loud.

Israeli Settler Brags: '1 Jewish Life Worth 10 Million Palestinians'

Seyed M. Marandi: Yemeni Blockade Cripples Saudi Oil Exports, Trapping Trump in a Regional Quagmire

Did somebody order a dozen Tacos to go?

Fresh US-Iran talks are ‘last chance’ for Tehran to avoid war escalating, Trump says

New talks between Washington and Tehran are the “last chance” for Iran to forge a deal and avoid an escalation of US strikes on the country, Donald Trump said on Monday. Trump said he expected negotiations to begin in the next day or two to reopen the strait of Hormuz and create a pathway for Iran to address the US’s concerns about its nuclear programme.

“The first phase is the opening of the straits. The second phase will be the denuclearisation,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “And that will take a little while.” Trump reiterated that he was running out of patience with Iran. “This is the last chance for them to sign a good document.”

Iran has been in discussions with Oman about the creation of a temporary route through the strait that would allow commercial shipping to resume, but is not yet reviving talks with the US, Tehran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said earlier on Monday. Esmail Baghaei denied claims by Trump that talks between the two sides covering all the major disputes between them could restart as early as Monday. “We are not currently negotiating with the United States,” he said.

Trump claimed he had held off from launching the biggest strike on any country “since world war two” over the weekend after Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, rang him to urge diplomacy. Trump said the cancellation was conditional on Iran reaching a deal quickly.

It is thought to be the 12th time in the war between the US and Iran that Trump has called off threatened strikes.

'VIRTUALLY ALL' US Missiles USED In Iran War

Trump meets his obstinate match in Iran’s hardball regime

The Donald Trump doctrine has always contained a tenuous relationship with the truth. It was his mentor, the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn, who taught the young real estate mogul always to claim victory and never to admit defeat. Unfortunately for Trump, in Iran the US president has found a counterpart just as stubborn as himself.

As Trump claims new negotiations are to begin with Tehran this week, Iran has shown it can also reignite the conflict by lobbing ballistic missiles at US bases in the region and maintaining a stranglehold on the strait of Hormuz, effectively taking initiative in the stalled peace process. And time is of the essence for Trump as the clock ticks toward a global energy crisis and a painful midterm elections for him and his Republican party.

But as soon as his latest attempt to hammer out a peace deal was announced, it was denied by Iran and the US president was left fuming once again. “Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” he posted to his social media site, Truth Social, saying that Iran had begged for a meeting and talks had already begun. “Nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a Deal, or Total Surrender, is accomplished.”

Trump has suggested dozens of times since the beginning of the war that a deal with Iran is imminent, and his latest claim that new negotiations could produce a peace deal within days has shown the administration’s desperation to reopen the strait and find a road map out of the crisis. After promising to hit Iran “very hard”, Trump made a U-turn on Sunday and claimed that talks would continue and that the “perimeters of a deal” for the opening of Hormuz and the “denuclearization of Iran” had been agreed.

Unfortunately, the Iranians don’t agree. In a statement on Monday, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson denied any peace negotiations were taking place. “We are not currently negotiating with the United States,” said Esmaeil Baqaei. “Our negotiations are with Oman to secure passage through the strait of Hormuz.” That may result in an agreement. But that will not result in the return of the strait of Hormuz to its prewar status, Baqaei added, in effect keeping the waterway a political football for the foreseeable future. “We must ensure that the strait of Hormuz cannot be misused by parties that have committed aggression against Iran,” said Baqaei.

Col. Larry Wilkerson: Breaking: Yemen Strikes Saudi Airport – “Sensitive Target” Hit

Trump Lashes Out at Iranian Leadership After Tehran Says Talks With the US Aren’t Taking Place

President Trump on Monday attacked Iranian leadership in a post on Truth Social after Tehran denied his claim that talks with the US were taking place.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said that the only negotiations underway were between Iran and Oman, but that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz wouldn’t change unless the US lifts the blockade of Iranian ports. In his post, Trump vowed the blockade would continue.

“Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous! They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg,’ talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with ‘Oman,'” Trump wrote.

“They then go on to give their usual blather in saying, the Strait of Hormuz will be operated powerfully by them, when it is already completely controlled by the United States Navy and our “Blockade” or, as some say, “The United States Wall of Steel!” Nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a Deal, or Total Surrender, is accomplished,” he added.

The president told reporters later in the day that Iran was facing its last chance for a deal “before decapitation.”

After Trump's Latest TACO, The Resistance Increases The Pressure

Israel ‘Destroying Crucial Evidence of Genocide’ in Gaza

A new report published Monday details how Israeli soldiers and civilian contractors are systematically removing potential proof of genocide from the Gaza Strip, an apparent violation of an order issued by the World Court for Israel to preserve evidence of genocidal acts committed in the Palestinian exclave.

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that Israeli forces and contractors “are conducting a wide and organized operation to process and clear the rubble from neighborhoods and facilities they have destroyed in the Gaza Strip and relocate it from areas under their military control to outside the strip.”

“This is occurring without any official record of the quantities removed or independent oversight, and before international and local investigative committees have had the chance to survey, examine, and document the sites,” the group noted. “This risks destroying crucial evidence of genocide and the remains of victims still unaccounted for under the rubble.”

Israel Attempts to Conceal Evidence of Genocide
Human rights organizations have warned that the Israeli occupation, with the participation of Israeli civilian companies, is carrying out a large-scale and systematic operation to remove and transport the rubble of neighborhoods and… pic.twitter.com/DKdJQT7LtD

— Mustafa Barghouti @Mustafa_Barghouti (@MustafaBarghou1) August 3, 2026

“The systematic removal of rubble at this pace conceals the evidence of appalling crimes Israel committed in Gaza, especially those related to genocide, such as summary executions and killing unarmed civilians,” Euro-Med said. “These sites need careful examination and thorough criminal investigation before any intervention that might change or erase their features.”

“The debris scattered throughout the Gaza Strip includes possible locations of unlawful killings and bombings that targeted entire families, as well as sites believed to contain mass graves or bodies buried within destroyed homes, hospitals, shelters, and civilian facilities,” the group continued. “These sites hold evidence critical for identifying the weapon, attack sequence, victim and attacker positions, firing ranges, cause and manner of death, as well as fragments, projectiles, spent cartridges, biological traces, and personal belongings.”

Euro-Med cited an April report published jointly by the World Bank, United Nations, and European Union, whose authors estimated that around 68 million tons of rubble are spread across Gaza’s 141 square miles after nearly 34 months of ongoing, ceasefire-flouting bombing and other attacks that have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and around 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.

Thousands of Palestinians remain missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of the nearly 200,000 buildings, or over 80% of all structures, that were destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks. Palestinian victims of Israeli aerial massacres are still being unearthed, with the remains of 112 Gazans—including 40 women, 38 children, and seven people with disabilities—largely exhumed by hand over 136 hours in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City last week.

At least 10 million tons of rubble “have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip,” Euro-Med said.

“Approximately 400 heavy pieces of excavation, demolition, crushing, and transport machinery, operated by Israeli civilian companies under military protection, are active across eastern and southern Gaza,” the group added. “They demolish remaining structures, crush rubble from destroyed neighborhoods, and load the debris onto trucks for transportation away from the original sites.”

Euro-Med continued:

The debris in the Gaza Strip comprises more than just rubble; it includes private and public property, essential building materials like steel, stone, and concrete that can be recycled and reused, as well as other valuable assets necessary for Palestinians to reconstruct their homes, roads, and infrastructure. It may also contain property documents, official records, and personal belongings that are part of individuals’ and families’ rights and memories.

Removing rubble from the Gaza Strip and commercially exploiting it without the owners’ consent or compensation may, depending on the circumstances and intent of the seizure, constitute unlawful confiscation or pillage. Such acts are prohibited under international humanitarian law, especially Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the relevant provisions of the Rome Statute.

“These actions are part of a broader pattern that has involved bulldozing sites believed to contain mass graves, storming and damaging hospitals and medical facilities after they were suspected of being sites of grave crimes, ongoing demolition of buildings in military-controlled zones, and targeting Palestinian journalists,” the group added.

The International Court of Justice’s provisional orders of January and May 2024—which came as the ICJ began weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations—directed Israel to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations” of violations of the Genocide Convention.

Israel has been accused of violating those ICJ orders and another issued by the Hague-based tribunal in March 2024 ordering Israel to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose people were being deliberately starved by the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, according to arrest warrants issued in November 2024 by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, last year published an investigation detailing how a loosely supervised Israel Defense Forces unit has been operating in Gaza outside normal chains of command and oversight. IDF soldiers and civilians, including settler colonists from the illegally occupied West Bank, used Palestinian civilians as human shields while they demolished homes and other buildings in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers and settlers use bulldozers and other heavy equipment made by Caterpillar, Hyundai, and other manufacturers to demolish buildings and remove rubble, desecrate graves, and “level” or “flatten” Gaza, as numerous Israeli and US officials, including President Donald Trump, have advocated. Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer variants are part of the billions of dollars in annual armed aid the US provides for Israel despite the ally’s increasing international isolation over not only what a UN commission of inquiry last year called a genocide in Gaza but also occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“States where the implicated companies or machinery manufacturers are based should mandate a halt to any actions that could lead to property demolition, evidence removal, or rubble seizure,” Euro-Med said. “They must also preserve all relevant contracts, correspondence, and operational data, and carry out independent investigations into the accountability of their directors and staff.”

“Any efforts to remove rubble or rebuild in the Gaza Strip must be led by Palestinians, involving local residents, property owners, and families of the missing,” the group added. “These initiatives should ensure the protection of evidence, recovery of remains, clearance of unexploded ordnance, sorting of hazardous materials, local reuse of rubble, preservation of property maps and urban fabric, and prevent reconstruction from being used to cement control or alter [Gaza’s] geographic or demographic makeup."

Fields Burning Visible FROM SPACE — The War They're Hiding From You | Caleb Maupin

Oil prices plunge and Europe’s markets rally after Trump calls off Iran strikes

Crude oil prices fell sharply while stocks and government bonds rallied on Monday after Donald Trump cancelled planned strikes on Iran and claimed peace talks were about to resume.

Brent crude was trading 5% lower at $83.47 a barrel by lunchtime, after falling as much as 7.3% to $81.55 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate dropped more than 5% to $79.47 a barrel.

Both global oil benchmarks jumped more than 20% in July after fighting between the US and Iran resumed, and as attacks on several tankers in the strait of Hormuz revived fears for the safety of vessels transiting the important shipping passage.

Kathleen Brooks, the research director of the broker XTB, said the drop in oil prices should help support markets. “This will ease inflation fears and could also act as a dampener on bond yields, which rose sharply last week, especially at the long end, where 30-year US Treasury yields jumped to their highest level for 19 years,” she added.

In bond markets, US Treasuries increased, pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year bond down five basis points to 4.68%, a retreat from the highest level since January.

Aaron Maté : Is There a Rift Between the US and Israel?

Russia Traps Kiev Troops NE Kharkov; Desperate Zelensky Ceasefire Call Zaluzhny Says NATO Powerless

Disgusting ...

‘This quarter was otherworldly’: Palantir earnings surge past expectations

In a sea of companies reporting mixed financial results this quarter, Palantir stands out. Although Palantir was not immune to the AI jitters that caused industry-wide drops in share prices earlier this year, the AI and analytics company reported that its overall revenue grew 93% year over year to $1.94bn. That’s well over the $1.8bn Wall Street expected Palantir to bring in for the second quarter.

The glowing financials sparked a 10% surge in share prices in the immediate aftermath. Despite growing opposition to Palantir’s work with various governments including the crucial role the company plays in the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, Palantir’s revenue from US government contracts grew 90% year over year to $809m. [Oh, looky, they're a bunch of corporate welfare queens. -js]

US states sue Trump administration over new tariffs on 60 trading partners

A coalition of 25 US states sued the Trump administration on Monday over new tariffs pegged at 10% to 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, calling them a pretext for replacing import taxes struck down by the supreme court in February. The states are asking the US Court of International Trade to halt the tariffs, declare them unlawful and order refunds of duties that have already been paid.

According to the states involved in the action, tariffs on 59 countries and the European Union imposed last month account for 99.4% of US imports. The Trump administration officials have charged that the countries have not done enough to crack down on imports produced by forced labor. “After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs,” New York attorney general Letitia James said in a statement. “No matter how the administration tries to justify it, the law and our Constitution are clear that the president does not have the power to impose sweeping tariffs on whatever countries he wants,” James added.

In addition to New York, the states joining the action are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, along with the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

The new tariffs went into effect in July after “Liberation Day” tariffs were ruled unconstitutional in February and a new set of temporary tariffs expired. The latest proposal for tariffs uses Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a federal law meant to target countries that use forced labor. The new tariffs affect major trading partners including the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Taiwan and China.

Trump accuses Jeanine Pirro of ‘folding’ by dropping reflecting pool charges

Donald Trump accused US attorney Jeanine Pirro of having “folded like an umbrella” amid reports that he was considering removing her from her post. Trump criticized Pirro on Monday after she dropped vandalism charges against a former Olympian accused of damaging the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Trump nominated Pirro to serve as interim US attorney for the District of Columbia last year, and the Senate later confirmed her in August.

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office, Trump said: “Frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious. Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department, and I guess she choked,” appearing to refer to DC superior court judge Todd Edelman who is overseeing the vandalism case. He added: “I was disappointed with Jeanine Pirro, really disappointed with Jeanine Pirro. She folded like an umbrella.”

Last Friday, the justice department dismissed the criminal case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, one of seven people charged in connection with what Trump claimed were attempts to vandalize the $15m renovation of the reflecting pool. Hearn had faced a felony property destruction charge that carried a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $1,000 fine. He pleaded not guilty last month.

According to the justice department last week, the damage to the pool liner came as “the result of flawed installation by the contractor”. Pirro said her office received documents from the interior department only “after the return of the indictment” that showed the pool was already damaged before Hearn touched the water on 19 June.

‘Stark example of brutality’: Trump’s ICE used court orders in plan to force-feed at least 10 hunger strikers in detention

Homeland security officials under the Trump administration have quietly attempted to subject at least 10 hunger strikers in US immigrant detention to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding, a Guardian investigation has found. In 2025 and 2026, officials had definitely performed the procedures on at least three detained immigrants and probably subjected two more to the forced treatment – widely considered torture by human rights groups. The other five people gave in and broke their hunger strike at the last minute as force-feeding procedures loomed.

The investigation, based on hundreds of pages of court records and interviews with multiple sources, reveals a clearer picture of the federal government’s response to hunger strikes within secretive ICE facilities.

In the cases reviewed by the Guardian, the involuntary procedures included force-feeding, where medical staff coercively insert a tube through a hunger striker’s nose and down their throat then pump in nutritional shakes – an agonizing and traumatizing procedure that experts say can cause significant harm to the nose, esophagus and body organs. Other procedures included intravenous forced hydration, involuntary blood draws and the collection of urine samples.

In all cases, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, requested necessary permission from courts for detention center guards to physically restrain hunger strikers.

The full scope of forced medical procedures on ICE detainees is unclear but this report, part two of the series, shows that evidence has since emerged of more court orders and more people being force-fed or brought to the brink of that and other procedures. Part of the obscurity is due to the quick legal procedures and secretive nature of the process.

ICE detainee reveals video of drinking water apparently contaminated with worm-like creatures

Attorneys for a man detained in a California immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures. The footage came from a video call with Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, north-east of LA.

Margaret Hellerstein, one of Parias’s attorneys, shared the footage with the Guardian on Thursday and said it was filmed this week. The clip is brief and grainy, but shows him holding up a plastic bottle filled with water, which appeared to have small pests of some kind swimming inside. Parias, in a statement shared by Hellerstein, described them as “worms” or some kind of “larvae”, though it’s unclear what exactly was in the bottle. He said the water was given to residents to drink.

The footage has surfaced weeks after a federal judge ordered ICE to ensure that people detained in Adelanto had “24-hour access to clean, potable drinking water”. The ruling was a response to a class-action lawsuit challenging “dangerous conditions” at Adelanto, with detained plaintiffs alleging they were denied sufficient food, clean drinking water and proper medical care.

Parias said in his statement that the contaminated water came from jugs that staff had given residents for drinking. He said he poured the water with the worms into a bottle to preserve it as evidence. He showed the bottle to a relative on a video call, which was shared with his attorneys. “This is what they give us: contaminated water, water with larvae, water with little black worms, which is slowly killing each one of us who are detained here,” Parias said in his statement, which his lawyer translated from Spanish. “We need proper drinking water, better treatment.”

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AIPAC Set For Historic WIPEOUT In MI Senate Race

Will Missouri be the next primary win for a democratic socialist challenger?

In Tuesday’s Democratic congressional primary, voters in Missouri’s deep-blue first congressional district will decide whether to give pro-Israel incumbent Wesley Bell a second term, or replace him with Cori Bush, a former progressive congresswoman who accuses Israel of perpetrating genocide in Gaza. Along with a heated primary in Michigan, the contest has become a proxy battle over the Democratic party’s role in supporting Israel’s military before the November midterm elections, which will determine which party holds the majority in both chambers of Congress.

After losing to Bell two years ago, Bush, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is vying for her seat back, and a Super Pac linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has so far spent more than $3m to try to keep her out.

In recent weeks, Democratic voters in New York City and Denver ousted incumbents in favor of candidates who promised they would take a hard line against support for Israel. In Congress, large shares of Democrats have voted for unsuccessful efforts to block arms sales to the country’s security forces, and progressives hope that a win by Bush will underscore their movement’s momentum.

“I think her victory this cycle would be monumental,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which has long supported Bush and backed several of the other insurgents who ousted Democrats in recent primaries, though it is not channeling funds into the campaign this year. “We haven’t had a lot of cycles to try this out, but this would be the first time that we would be able to take a seat back from Aipac after they bought one and deliver it back to working-class people.”

Bell and Bush can both trace their political journeys to the unrest in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown. Bush was an activist in the protests that followed, while Bell unseated the longtime St Louis county prosecutor after promising voters he would reopen the case of the police officer who killed Brown, but ultimately decided not to charge him. “The people in St Louis, they want someone that cares,” said Maria Miller, a Democratic candidate for state legislature who met Bush during the protests in Ferguson. “And once you betray them from that trust, it becomes like a war, because they’re very combative, and I just don’t feel that Wesley Bell’s earned that trust.”

Author of Democrats’ 2024 election autopsy report says chapter was left out

The author of an infamous internal Democrat party report on the 2024 presidential election loss has claimed that an entire section that included a discussion of generational wealth established by high-ranking elected officials was cut from the draft version leaked and later released earlier this summer. Paul Rivera, the author of the autopsy, told the New York Times that a section titled “What Happened in 2024” was missing from the published version but had been included in the version he personally handed to embattled party chairman, Ken Martin, in January.

The Democratic National Committee has previously claimed the autopsy had been released “in its entirety”.

Rivera said that elements of the report that were excised included questions about Joe Biden’s decision to run for re-election and the policy influence of Democrat party operatives who had become “generationally wealthy off politics”. While the chapter did not name those who had become enriched he wrote that Democrats seeking change “keep banging their heads up against a system proven to be inflexible and self-enriching.

“Whether that was a conscious decision on their part to bury the section for the purposes of hiding a paragraph, I don’t know,” Rivera told the Times. “That’s a them question. What I can tell you is they had it, and they made a decision not to release it.”

The missing chapter, provided by Rivera and published in full by the Times, states that Democratic wins before the election led the party “to believe they were stronger than they actually were. President Biden, seeing those results, made the consequential decision to seek re-election even when Americans were already sending a very strong signal: they were unhappy with the status quo.”

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Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor

Romanian naval forces carried out a controlled explosion to help redirect vital cooling water from the drought-hit Danube to the country’s last working nuclear ⁠reactor, while neighbouring Hungary ​said it may be able to eke out two more days of power from its only atomic plant.

Hungary and Romania have been forced to shut down nuclear reactors cooled by the Danube for the first time, as record-low water levels deepen fears of an energy crisis across the region. Romania has declared a nationwide state of emergency throughout August stemming from a decline in electricity production after record low Danube river levels led to the shutdown at the Cernavodǎ nuclear plant.

The Danube operation used 180kg of explosives, the Adevărul newspaper reported, to move a large rock restricting the flow of water in a blast that sent a tower of water ⁠into the air. The extraordinary measure underlined the scale of the crisis in Europe, where heat and drought have lowered river levels and raised concerns about water supplies, river transport and power generation.

In Serbia, record-low Danube levels have pushed the country’s key hydroelectric plant to operate with only 20% of its capacity, prompting the prime minister, Djuro Macut, to preside over an emergency meeting on Monday focusing on energy problems.

Water levels are not expected to rise on the Danube in the coming days or even weeks as no significant rainfall is forecast. The river passes through 10 countries. In some stretches it has fallen to levels never previously recorded. The river’s retreat has revealed rocks, shipwrecks, a second world war bomb and the remains of a woolly mammoth.

Wildfires rage across Washington as drought and heat fuel painful summer: ‘It’s not normal’

Firefighters in Washington state are battling wildfires that have forced 60,000 people to flee and destroyed hundreds of buildings as drought and extreme heat fuel an “extraordinary” fire season in the Pacific north-west. Fifteen major blazes are raging across the state, David Upthegrove, the head of Washington’s department of natural resources, told reporters over the weekend.

“It’s not a normal season,” he said. “A confluence of weather conditions, a confluence of fires throughout the west, are stretching our resources and challenging the individuals in this response.”

Spokane, a city of 230,000 in north-eastern Washington near the Idaho border, has been particularly hard hit, with three fires burning in the area. While no deaths have been reported, officials confirmed that at least 600 structures had been damaged or destroyed and that none of the fires are contained.

Even before the fires exploded around Spokane, state officials had warned that the year had already been one of the busiest wildfire years on record.“Our firefighters are already stretched thin across the state, and with more heat and wind expected this weekend and for the rest of the summer, any new spark on our tinder-dry landscapes can lead to another devastating wildfire,” Upthegrove said on Saturday.

Bob Ferguson, Washington’s governor, declared a state of emergency on Saturday due to drought, unusually high temperatures and high winds “exacerbating our record-setting wildfires”, and banned most burning in the state through September.

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Also of Interest

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

Inured to the Rising Gaza Death Toll

Iran War: Trump Keeps Up Threat Display, False Claims of Negotiations as He TACOs; Israel Still Pressing for Escalation as US Withdrawals Continue

War On Iran: – Another TACO – Iran’s Need To Escalate

Abandoned by the US: Palestinian Americans trapped in a surge of Israeli settler violence

Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Walks Back Key Part of Gaza Deal After Netanyahu Meeting

Ahead of Seventh Round of Lebanon Talks, Israel Demands Hezbollah Cede Strategic Ridge

Facts On the Ground In Ukraine

‘A reminder of why we have unions’: Matewan writer and director on the film’s lessons for the labor movement

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A Little Night Music

Connie McBooker - Shout Baby Boogie

Connie Mac Booker - Oklahoma Baby

Connie Mack Booker - All Alone

Babe Johnson w/ Conney's Combo - Shout It Out

BB King w/Connie Mack Booker(p) - Bye! Bye! Baby

Bobby Bland w/Connie Mack Booker(p) - Woke Up Screaming

Babe Johnson w/ Conney's Combo - Ugly Mae

Bobby Bland w/Connie Mack Booker(p) - I Smell Trouble

Bobby Bland w/Connie Mack Booker(p) - Don't Want No Woman

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