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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Art Neville

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans keyboard player and singer Art Neville. Enjoy!

^{Art Neville – That Old Time Rock 'N' Roll}

"The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet."

-- Eric Ambler

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News and Opinion

Israeli attack on Hamas negotiators in Qatar exposes fraud of “ceasefire” talks

Israel carried out an airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha Tuesday in an effort to kill the Hamas negotiators with whom it is nominally carrying out “ceasefire” talks. While the Hamas negotiators survived, the attack killed six people, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, as well as civilian bystanders. All factions of the Israeli political establishment endorsed the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted about it, saying, “At the beginning of the war, I promised that Israel would reach those who perpetrated that horror. Today that was done.”

The attack on Qatar is the second major act of international perfidy carried out by Israel in recent months. In June, Israel and the United States used negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program as cover to assassinate large portions of Iran’s military and civilian leadership. The attempt to murder Hamas negotiators exposes, once again, the complete fraud of US and Israeli claims that they are seeking a negotiated settlement of the genocide they refer to as a “war.” In reality, the negotiations are a fiction, invoked by the US media to cover up the fact that the “war” being waged by the US and Israel is merely a pretext to conquer the entirety of Gaza and kill or expel the Palestinian population.

On Sunday, Trump said he was giving Hamas a “final warning” to accept the US-Israeli terms of surrender. “I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!” Trump said. The Hamas negotiators were holding a meeting to discuss the terms laid down by Trump. ... The Times of Israel, citing Israeli officials who spoke to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, reported that “US President Donald Trump gave the green light for the Israeli strike in Qatar.”

Scott Ritter: America Might Be Trying To Break Israel!

Israeli airstrikes ‘killed any hope’ for hostages in Gaza, says Qatari prime minister

Qatar’s prime minister has said that Benjamin Netanyahu “killed any hope” for the remaining hostages in Gaza following Israel’s extraordinary strike on Hamas negotiators in Doha on Tuesday. In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani called the deadly strike in the Qatari capital an act of “state terror”. Israel’s attack the previous day killed six members of Hamas who were negotiating a ceasefire deal brokered by the US and other Gulf countries. “He needs to be brought to justice,” al-Thani said of the Israeli prime minister.

Netanyahu has responded defiantly to international criticism for the attack, including a White House statement that the “unilateral bombing” inside Qatar “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” In a video statement, Netanyahu accused Qatar of harbouring terrorists and suggested he reserved the right to continue attacks in the future. “I say to Qatar and all nations who harbour terrorists, you either expel them or you bring them to justice,” he said. “Because if you don’t, we will.”

Al-Thani accused Netanyahu of “wasting” Qatar’s time in hosting negotiations between Israel and Hamas and said his country would reassess “everything” about its role as mediator in the conflict. “I was meeting one of the hostage’s families the morning of the attack,” al-Thani said. “They are counting on this [ceasefire] mediation, they have no other hope for that.”

“I think that what Netanyahu has done yesterday, he just killed any hope for those hostages,” he added.

Other Israeli officials have also responded defiantly to public criticism over the strike, amid doubt over whether the missiles fired by Israeli air force planes had killed any of their primary targets. On Wednesday, the country’s defence minister, Israel Katz, warned its “long arm will act against its enemies anywhere”.

Laith Marouf: Qatar Losing Confidence?! What’s Really Happening Behind the Scenes

Netanyahu Appears To Threaten More Attacks on Qatar

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday appeared to threaten more airstrikes on Qatar despite the widespread international criticism of the Israeli attack on the US-allied nation. ...

Hamas has said that the Israeli airstrikes killed five of its lower-level members and one Qatari security officer, but didn’t kill the senior officials whom Israel attempted to target. Israeli media reported on Wednesday that Israeli officials are now doubting that the strikes killed the intended targets.

Qatar strongly condemned Netanyahu’s comments and pointed to the fact that it hosts a Hamas office to facilitate negotiations between the Palestinian group and Israel. The Hamas office opened in Qatar in 2012 at the request of the US, according to Qatari officials. Israel also facilitated Qatari payments to Hamas in Gaza for years, and ensured they continued when Doha was considering cutting them off.

“Netanyahu is fully aware that the hosting of the Hamas office took place within the framework of Qatar’s mediation efforts requested by the United States and Israel,” the Qatari Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Doha Strike: Will the Gulf States Finally Stand Up to Israel and the U.S.?

Israeli military kills at least 41 people as it continues to order evacuation of Gaza City

The Israeli military has killed at least 41 people in Gaza, including 12 aid seekers, over the last 24 hours as it continued to order the population of Gaza City to evacuate before its planned offensive. The evacuation orders were accompanied by intensified Israeli bombing of the city, the Israeli military interspersing orders with announcements of high-rise towers they had bombed.

“For your safety, take the time to protect yourself and your family members,” Avichay Adraee, the Arabic spokesperson of the Israeli military, said while sharing videos of crowds of people fleeing Gaza City. The Israeli military has tried to push the around 1 million residents of Gaza City to what it says is a humanitarian zone in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, for weeks before finally issuing an official evacuation order on Tuesday.

Very few people had left Gaza City before the order, with the UN estimating that only 50,000 people did so over recent weeks. Many residents said they would not leave Gaza City regardless of the official order to evacuate, as they did not trust Israel’s promise that al-Mawasi would be safe. Israel regularly strikes al-Mawasi despite designating it as a safe zone, and hundreds of thousands of people already live there in tent encampments.

The evacuation order has been accompanied by increasing military pressure and degradation of humanitarian conditions in Gaza City. Over the last five days, the Israeli military has been bombing high-rise buildings in the city, which it claims housed Hamas infrastructure. It has released videos of bombs striking the bottom of the buildings, flattening them in seconds. Residents said they received a call to evacuate the buildings about 20 minutes before they were struck. The bombings left many of them without a place to go and brought renewed pressure to leave the city.

Amnesty International condemned the displacement order, saying it compounds the suffering of civilians amid what the human rights organisation has deemed a genocide. “The order issued [on Tuesday] by the Israeli military for the mass displacement of Gaza City residents is cruel, unlawful and further compounds the genocidal conditions of life that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Global Sumud Flotilla Vows to Keep Sailing to Gaza; Israeli Drones Accused of Striking Two Boats

Anti-Islamic biker gang members hired to run security at controversial Gaza aid sites

Senior members of an anti-Islamic biker gang have been hired by US contractors and deployed to Gaza to oversee security at food distribution sites backed by the US and Israeli governments, according to a BBC investigation.

The investigation found that more than 10 members of Infidels MC, a US biker gang that uses the Crusader cross as its symbol and whose members have anti-Islamic tattoos, have been hired by UG Solutions and deployed to food aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. According to the BBC, seven members of the gang are in “senior positions overseeing [GHF] sites”.

They include the gang’s leader, Johnny “Taz” Mulford, who is a “country team leader” for UG Solutions and had recruited others to work for UG solutions in Gaza. He has the numbers 1095 tattooed across his chest – the year that Pope Urban II launched the first Crusade.

Mulford, whose affiliation with GHF was public, accidentally sent an email to the BBC telling other leaders of the group not to comment on inquiries – inadvertently revealing the identities of several other senior Infidels members also working for UG Solutions.

One of the contractors, Josh Miller, posted a photograph of contractors in Gaza holding a banner at an aid site that reads: “Make Gaza Great Again.” He has the numbers 1095 tattooed on his fingers.

Poland ‘closer to military conflict than at any time since WW2’ as Nato allies weigh response to Russian drones

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the country is closer to military conflict “than at any time since the second world war” as Warsaw and Nato allies weighed a response to an incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace. Poland scrambled its own and Nato air defences, shooting down at least three drones, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine spread to Nato territory early on Wednesday in the most significant way since the full-scale invasion more than three years ago.

In the aftermath, Warsaw said Nato allies had made concrete proposals to bolster the country’s air defences. The UK is considering deploying Typhoon jets as part of an enhanced air policing mission to protect the alliance’s eastern flank.

There had been at least 19 violations of Polish airspace overnight, said Tusk, and some of them had entered Poland from Belarusian territory. Four Polish airports, including the two that serve Warsaw, were closed to traffic during the incursion. The prime minister of the Netherlands, Dick Schoof, said F-35 jets from his country took part in the mission to intercept the drones. At least three drones were shot down. ...

Zelenskyy urged Nato countries to launch a strong response to the incursion into Poland. “Moscow is always testing the limits of the possible, and if it does not meet a strong reaction, moves to a new level of escalation,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on social media. “Today was another escalatory step … Not one ‘Shahed’, which could have been called an accident, but at least eight attack drones which targeted Poland.”

Russia’s defence ministry released a statement saying Moscow had “no intentions to engage any targets on the territory of Poland”, without confirming or denying that its drones had entered Polish airspace. “We are ready to hold consultations on this subject with the Polish defence ministry,” it added. Russia’s chargé d’affaires in Poland, Andrei Ordash, called the accusations against Moscow groundless, saying “no evidence has been presented proving these drones are of Russian origin”.

Russia Denies That It Launched Drones Into Poland

In response to Poland’s claims about the drones that entered its airspace, the Russian Embassy in Poland told Newsweek: “The Polish side once again failed to present evidence of the Russian origin of the objects that entered Polish airspace (and there is no reason to expect that it will), and completely groundlessly accused Russia of provocative actions.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that it carried out attacks in Ukraine overnight, but that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction” and that the drones that “allegedly crossed the Polish border, do not exceed 700 kilometers.” [It is more than 700km from any point that Russia could have launched the drones to Poland. - js]

Pointing to the Defense Ministry statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, “These specific facts completely debunk the story again spread by Poland to further escalate the Ukrainian crisis.”

Trump Admin Considering a Strike on Venezuela, Military Sources Say

US President Donald Trump's administration is considering launching military strikes on Venezuela, according to new reporting from independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

Military sources on Tuesday told Klippenstein that the Trump administration is mulling an attack against Venezuela unless it cracks down on drug cartels that it claims are shipping fentanyl into the United States.

Contrary to the administration's claims, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies, Venezuela plays virtually no role in fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking.

Klippenstein's sources said the attack was likely to involve "shooting down Venezuelan military aircraft or by bombing Venezuelan military airfield," and that the US Air Force has been rehearsing for such a mission in recent weeks. ...

A leaked Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by Klippenstein gives clues as to why the administration is taking an aggressive military posture toward Venezuela.

Specifically, writes Klippenstein, the memo gives insight into the administration's view that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is actually in charge of the Tren de Aragua cartel and is giving it orders to poison American citizens by getting them addicted to drugs.

However, Klippenstein cautions that this view of Maduro as the commander of an international drug cartel is not backed up by US intelligence agencies.

"A declassified assessment prepared by the National Intelligence Council concluded in April that the Maduro regime 'probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TdA and is not directing TdA operations in the United States,'" he noted.

Klippenstein closed his report by likening the situation to the buildup to the 2003 Iraq War, but with fentanyl taking the place of "weapons of mass destruction" as the purported casus belli.

"Similar to the 'debate' about Saddam's WMD, Democrats in Congress are busy discussing whether the strike on a small drug boat was legal and complaining that they weren't briefed on the operation," he wrote. "The fundamental question—is there any evidence that the Venezuela government is directing fentanyl into the U.S.?—is hardly ever asked. And most importantly, would bombing Venezuela do anything to reduce the flow of drugs into the U.S.?"

New French PM Sébastien Lecornu promises ‘profound break’ with past politics

The new French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has promised a “profound break” with past politics as he took over from the unpopular centrist François Bayrou, who was ousted this week over a proposed budget squeeze. Lecornu, 39, who said “humility” was the key approach, now faces the difficult task of gaining enough support from France’s divided parliament to pass a budget if he is to avoid being swiftly ousted in the same way as Bayrou, and before him, the rightwing Michel Barnier, who only lasted three months. ...

Lecornu, who as defence minister for the past three years was known for his work on increasing French military spending, said: “We are going to have to change, be more creative and serious in our way of working with the opposition.” He said there must be deep changes to working methods, but also to the substance of politics. Lecornu said he would address France “in the coming days” to explain his approach, which he promised would be different from the past. He is expected to take several weeks to form a new government. The new prime minister began meeting party leaders as tens of thousands of protesters held a national day of demonstrations on Wednesday, barricading roads and gathering in town centres as 80,000 police were deployed across France.

Lecornu is seen as representing continuity rather than change. He had a background on the right in Nicolas Sarkozy’s party before joining Macron’s centrists eight years ago. He is seen as one of Macron’s most loyal allies, having been in government since Macron was first elected in 2017. Lecornu is so close to Macron that he has been called “Macron’s spiritual son”. Opposition parties, which had wanted a radical change of direction from a new prime minister, warned on Wednesday that they remained highly critical and a wrong step could lead to Lecornu being toppled in a no-confidence vote.

Charlie Kirk Shooting HIDDEN TRUTH: Israel & the COLLAPSE of US Empire

Leaked Ice document shows worker detained in Hyundai raid had valid visa

At least one of the Korean workers swept up in a huge immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia last week was living and working legally in the US, according to an internal federal government document obtained by the Guardian. Officials then “mandated” that he agree to be removed from the US despite not having violated his visa.

The document shows that immigration officials are aware that someone with a valid visa was among the people arrested during the raid at the Hyundai factory and taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention for removal proceedings, where the people arrested remained on Tuesday before expected deportation flights back to South Korea. ...

The document says that immigration agents from Atlanta “determined that [redacted] entered into the United States in [redacted], with a valid B1/B2 visa and [redacted] was employed at HL-GA Battery Company LLC as a contractor from the South Korean company SFA. From statements made and queries in law enforcement databases, [redacted] has not violated his visa; however, the Atlanta Field Office Director has mandated [redacted] be presented as a Voluntary Departure. [Redacted] has accepted voluntary departure despite not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements.” ...

The document contradicts claims by the agency that all 475 people arrested during the raid were working illegally or violating their visas. Attorneys scrambling in recent days to provide representation to the men detained had already claimed that immigrants with a valid working status were swept up alongside the people allegedly working unlawfully, and placed in removal proceedings. That view was backed up by an agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive government matters.

It is not yet clear whether other people with valid visas were detained in the raid, nor how many were actually alleged to be working illegally at the factory.

Scott Bessent DESPERATE To Spin TERRIBLE Jobs Numbers

House Passes NDAA to Push Military Spending Approved This Year Beyond $1 Trillion

Nearly all Republicans and 17 Democrats in the US House of Representatives voted Wednesday evening for a military bill that would push the figure for defense spending approved this year beyond $1 trillion.

The final vote for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2026 was 231-196, with just four Republicans opposing the bill, which will still need to be reconciled with the Senate's version.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen, highlighted after the vote that the House's NDAA authorizes about $883 billion for defense spending—including over $848 billion for the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit—on top of the $150 billion in the GOP budget reconciliation package that President Donald Trump signed in July.

"Throwing a trillion dollars at the Pentagon—an agency replete with waste and fraud—at the same time the Republican Congress and the Trump regime are slashing spending on healthcare, education, housing, food assistance, and foreign aid is a disgraceful and unconscionable misuse of taxpayer money," Weissman said, referring to other provisions in the earlier package.

Trump's Personal Army? Exec. Order to Create "Quick Reaction Force" Raises Alarm

‘Your friends love you,’ UK’s ambassador to US Mandelson told Epstein after 2008 charges, emails show

The British ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, told Jeffrey Epstein to “fight for early release” and wrote: “Your friends stay with you and love you,” when the disgraced financier was facing charges of procuring a child for prostitution, according to leaked emails. The emails, first published by the Sun after circulating in Washington DC, will put further pressure on Lord Mandelson after he admitted on Tuesday that more “very embarrassing” details of his friendship with Epstein were likely to emerge but insisted he had never seen any “wrongdoing”.

In an email from June 2008, which was not disputed by his spokesperson, Mandelson wrote to Epstein: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. “I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can.” It continued: “Everything can be turned into an opportunity and that you will come through it and be stronger for it.”

The emails, also reported by Bloomberg, show Mandelson helped Epstein with strategy. It showed Epstein pushing Mandelson to ask “your guy” to have a discussion with a “mr big” for him. Another email from Mandelson to Epstein in February 2008 said: “Reminder. You are fighting back so you need strategy, strategy, strategy. Remember the Art of War.”

The Telegraph reported that when Mandelson was business secretary in 2010, and after the financier’s release from jail, he allowed Epstein to help broker a deal for JP Morgan to buy part of a commodities firm from the UK government-owned RBS bank. No 10 stood firmly behind Mandelson on Wednesday, saying he had been fully security-checked before taking up the role and was the right person for the job.

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Carbon emissions from oil giants directly linked to dozens of deadly heatwaves for first time

Carbon emissions from the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies have been directly linked to dozens of deadly heatwaves for the first time, according to a new analysis. The research has been hailed as a “leap forward” in the legal battle to hold big oil accountable for the damages being caused by the climate crisis.

The research found that the emissions from any one of the 14 biggest companies were by themselves enough to cause more than 50 heatwaves that would otherwise have been virtually impossible. The study shows, in effect, that those emissions caused the heatwaves. The carbon pollution from ExxonMobil’s fossil fuels, for example, made 51 heatwaves at least 10,000 times more likely than in an unheated world, the researchers found, as did the emissions from Saudi Aramco.

Global heating is making heatwaves more frequent and more intense across the globe, contributing to at least 500,000 heat-related deaths a year. The searing heatwave that struck the Pacific north-west of the US in 2021 was made almost 3C hotter, for example.

The new research found that the total emissions from the 180 “carbon major” companies included in the analysis were responsible for about half the increase in intensity, with emissions due to forest destruction making up most of the rest. It also found that the 213 heatwaves studied became 200 times more likely on average from 2010 to 2019 owing to the climate crisis.

“Being able to trace back the contribution of these single [carbon major] emitters and quantify their contribution could be very useful for establishing potential liability,” said Prof Sonia Seneviratne, at ETH Zurich university in Switzerland, a senior author of the report. Dr Davide Faranda, a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and not part of the study team, said: “This study adds a crucial new step: it connects the dots between specific climate disasters and the companies whose emissions made them possible. This bridge could become a cornerstone for legal and policy action to hold polluters accountable.”

Jump in US greenhouse gas pollution pushed global emissions higher

A jump in greenhouse gas pollution in the US helped push global emissions higher in the first half of this year. This could be an omen of what’s to come, with Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda set to significantly slow down the emissions cuts required to avoid disastrous climate impacts, a new forecast has found. The “most abrupt shift in energy and climate policy in recent memory” that has occurred since Trump re-entered the White House will have profound consequences for the global climate crisis by slowing the pace of US emissions cuts by as much as half the rate achieved over the past two decades, the Rhodium Group forecast states.

The US is still expected to reduce its planet-heat emissions by between 26% and 35% by 2035 compared with 2005 levels, according to the report. But this is well down from a 38% to 56% reduction by 2035, which Rhodium forecast just last year during Joe Biden’s presidency. None of these scenarios will be sufficient to allow the US, the world’s largest historic emitter of carbon pollution, to play its full part in helping the world avert a worsening climate breakdown coming from 2C (3.6F) or more in global heating.

The US and other governments agreed a decade ago in Paris to avoid this threshold but are badly off-track in required emissions reductions, ahead of a key UN climate meeting in Brazil in November to thrash out new targets. Even under the best-case scenario, whereby fossil fuels become much more expensive and cheap renewable energy is swiftly deployed, the US will cut its emissions by just 43% by 2040, Rhodium found – well below Biden’s own pledged target, since jettisoned by Trump.

In the worst case, in which clean energy is severely constrained by economic and political factors, US emissions could even tick up slightly at the end of 2030s, the report states. “That is very different to where we were before; it’s more than halving the pace of decarbonization we’ve had over the last two decades,” said Ben King, a director at Rhodium. “The US was already off-track in meeting its contribution to emissions cuts and this is now a fairly big step in the wrong direction. The emissions trajectory is now a lot worse because of this policy whiplash.”

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Also of Interest

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

Israel's attack on Qatar eviscerates promise of US security umbrella for Gulf

EU halts payments to Israel, moves toward sanctions over Gaza genocide

Banksy mural of a judge beating a protester is scrubbed from London court

India Disavows ‘Tianjin spirit,’ Turns to EU

Poland to Invoke NATO Article 4 Over Russian Drones in Its Airspace

Super Predators, Born Criminals, and the Black Misleadership Class

South Africa to reopen Steve Biko inquest 48 years after death in police custody

Unusual compounds in rocks on Mars may be sign of ancient microbial life

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A Little Night Music

Art Neville - Let's Rock

Art Neville - You Won't Do Right

Art Neville - Skeet Scat

Art Neville - My Dear Dearest Darling

Art Neville - My Babe

Art Neville - Too Late

Art Neville – Oohh-Whee-Baby

Art Neville - What's Going On

Art Neville - Bo Diddley, Pt. 1

Art Neville - Bo Diddley, Pt. 2

Art Neville - Cha Dooky-Doo

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