Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz pianist, singer and prolific songwriter Fats Waller. Enjoy!

"A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay."

-- Amos Bronson Alcott

News and Opinion

The West Is A Dystopian Wasteland Of Moral Degeneracy

The west is a dystopian wasteland of moral degeneracy.

Usually when you hear a white person talk about moral degeneracy it’s some wingnut denouncing LGBTQ rights or women’s reproductive rights or whatever, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about real things here.

The real moral decay of our society is illustrated in the way all mainstream political candidates can openly support war crimes currently being inflicted on people in the global south without being immediately removed from power. The way monstrous war criminals of past administrations can endorse a liberal candidate without causing self-proclaimed progressives to recoil from that candidate in horror. The way you can have the two viable candidates for the world’s most powerful elected position both pledge to continue an active genocide without instantly sparking a revolution.

The moral degeneracy of this civilization looks like living lives of relative comfort built on the backs of workers in the global south whose labor and resources are extracted from their nations at profoundly exploitative rates, while raining military explosives on impoverished populations who dare to disobey the dictates of our government, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and acting like this is all fine and normal.

Being born into western civilization is like waking up in the middle of a massive lynch mob. Something terrible is happening, and everyone’s going along with it and telling you it’s fine and it’s normal, and even if you’re able to figure out that what they’re doing is wrong in all the chaos and confusion you find yourself powerless to stop them, because the whole thing has so much momentum already and there are far too many people blindly caught up in the frenzy of bloodlust for you to make everyone change course. Just continuing to live among them makes you complicit in their actions in many ways, but you have nowhere else to go besides this lynch mob town you were born into. So you just move to the fringes of the mob and share your objections with the few people who will listen to you.

Our civilization is cruel and savage, but we compartmentalize away from its cruelty and savagery and laugh at our sitcoms and vapid comedians and make believe the worst things happening politically in our society are the mainstream culture war wedge issues that pundits and politicians prefer to keep us talking about. We live out our lives sedated by entertainment and social media and food and pharmaceuticals while genocide, nuclear brinkmanship and ecocide unfold all around us, thinking ourselves good and virtuous if we are kind to our pets and hold the correct opinions about racial justice and vaccines.

If we as a society were actually good, none of this would be happening. Moral clarity would find all this intolerable, and would reject it and eject it by any means necessary. Which is why the powerful pour so much energy into keeping us all sedated and confused. A lot of power and wealth rides on our lack of moral clarity.

There is much wealth to be gained by exploiting labor and extracting resources around the world. There is much power to be secured by murdering, starving and terrorizing any population which refuses to bow to the interests of the western empire. This is why the western empire has the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever devised: because so much wealth and power depends on ensuring the west remains in a state of moral degeneracy, and that westerners do not regard the citizenry of the global south as fully human.

I personally reject religion, not because I’m some fedora-wearing wanker who makes fun of people for believing in God, but because I reject all aspects of the profoundly sick culture I was born into. Because I don’t resonate with religion I often feel myself pulling away from religious-sounding jargon framing the actions of the western empire as “demonic” or calling the US “the great Satan” — but at the same time I completely understand it. When I see the inside of a child’s skull for the hundredth time next to video footage of IDF soldiers mockingly dressed in the clothes of dead or displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead or displaced children while western podium pontiffs pretend to believe the military they’re arming has done nothing wrong, I do struggle to find adjectives strong enough to describe what I am looking at. Maybe “demonic” is as close as you can get, even if you don’t believe in actual biblical demons.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say the west is a wasteland of moral degeneracy. The type of civilization which would allow its government to do things like this necessarily has a collective conscience that has been so warped and twisted by propaganda and self-interest that it’s the same as not having a conscience at all. If you can’t regard the vast majority of the population of this planet as fully human and equal to yourself, then morally speaking you’re no better than the perpetrators of slavery and genocide we’ve been taught to judge negatively in history class.

And that’s the norm here. It’s what we were born into. It’s what we spend all our lives being trained to accept as normal.

Chris Hedges: The American Ruling Class Explained

Netanyahu tells Houthis they will pay ‘heavy price’ as missile hits Israel

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned Yemen’s Houthi rebels will pay a “heavy price” after the group claimed its first ballistic missile strike on Israel and its leader warned of bigger attacks to come. The missile – claimed by the Houthis as an advanced surface-to-surface hypersonic missile – triggered air sirens across the country at about 6.30am, and local media aired footage of people racing to shelters at Ben Gurion international airport south-east of Tel Aviv. According to reports, it hit an open area in the Ben Shemen forest, causing a fire near Kfar Daniel. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

The Israeli military is investigating whether the fire was the result of falling fragments caused by the interceptor missiles launched at the projectile, or if it successfully penetrated Israeli air defences as the Houthis have claimed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that interceptors from Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow air defence systems were deployed but said it had not yet determined whether any had been successful. It said an “initial inquiry indicates the missile most likely fragmented in mid-air [after] several interception attempts”, adding that “the entire incident is under review”.

Netanyahu hinted at a military response in a statement released at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday. “This morning, the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory. They should have known by now that we charge a heavy price for any attempt to harm us,” he said. “Those who need a reminder in this matter are invited to visit the port of Hodeidah,” he added, referring to Yemen’s Red Sea city, which Israeli warplanes bombed in July after the Houthis claimed a drone strike that killed a civilian in Tel Aviv.

The Houthi leader, Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, warned on Sunday of further attacks on Israel. “The operation our forces carried out today with an advanced Yemeni missile is part of the fifth stage of the escalation. What is to come will be greater,” he said in a speech.

Saudi Arabia calls for more pressure on Iran as Houthi threat grows

The claimed acquisition by Yemen’s Houthi rebels of hypersonic missiles capable of penetrating Israeli air defences threatens to further heighten Middle East tensions, as Saudi Arabia calls for more than “pinprick bombings” to constrain the supply of weapons to the group.

Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemen government opposing the Houthis, believes Iran has been arming the group, including with the weapons used in the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Those attacks have led to a halving of the traffic on the Red Sea route, pushing up the costs of maritime transport and damaging the Egyptian economy through disruption to the Suez canal.

But in the Houthi capital, Sana’a, from where the rebel group mastermind their attacks on shipping, the leadership celebrated Sunday’s claimed attack on Israel – which landed in an open area near Ben Gurion international airport – as a homegrown breakthrough and claimed the technology was created by the hard work of Yemeni technicians. It promised more strikes would come. Before the attack the Houthis had issued warnings of some kind of attack on Israel. ...

Iran has repeatedly been accused, including by the UN, of supplying weapons to the Houthis initially for use in fighting the Saudi-backed Yemen government based in Aden. Despite an intensive bombing campaign by the Saudis in 2016, the Houthis have proved impossible to displace, even mounting drone attacks into Saudi Arabia.

Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and diplomat, has expressed the kingdom’s disappointment at the way Iran has been helping the Houthis. Speaking at Chatham House in London on Friday, he called for more international action to block such assistance and said the “pinprick bombings” mounted on Houthi positions by US and UK naval forces in the Red Sea needed to be more effective.

Iran retaliation waiting game continues

Boo! The Guardian catapults the (lacking any evidence) propaganda:

Alarm in UK and US over possible Iran-Russia nuclear deal

Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine. During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb. [Also, it's long-eschewed-by-official-fatwa goal. -js]

British sources indicated that concerns were aired about Iran’s trade for nuclear technology, part of a deepening alliance between Tehran and Moscow.

Alastair Crooke : Israel and Ukraine Soon to Explode?

Netanyahu requested staged criminal probe into him and Gallant to fend off ICC case

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asked his justice minister to stage the launch of a criminal investigation into himself and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in a bid to fend off the International Criminal Court's (ICC) pending arrest warrants over the country's military conduct in Gaza.

In a highly unusual move, Justice Minister Yariv Leven requested that government Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara open and then close a probe as a ruse to show the ICC that Israel’s courts are investigating the allegations, according to a report from Hebrew-language broadcaster Channel 12.

The prime minister is believed to be deeply worried about the arrest warrants, which could block him from travelling to countries under the ICC's jurisdiction.

This would be highly embarrassing for Netanyahu and put him on a par with other leaders who have been dealt warrants such as Russian President Vladmir Putin and former Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir.

"Netanyahu Wants Open-Ended War": Palestinian Journalist & Fmr. Israeli Negotiator on Gaza Ceasefire

‘The war has stolen our future’: Gaza children begin second school year without education

Every evening, for two hours, Asma Mustafa sits down with the small children of Nuseirat camp in central Gaza for what now passes as school in the beleaguered strip. She makes do with what is available: sometimes there are pens and paper for basic maths and literacy, but most of the time class time is taken up with storytelling, singing and play.

“I have been doing this since November,” said Mustafa, 38, who taught at a girls’ high school in Gaza City before the war. “Many children are now working or helping their families find basic things like food during the day, but I try to give them a little bit of structure and normality in the evenings.”

Last week was supposed to mark the beginning of the new school year in Palestine, but in Gaza 625,000 school-age children are now entering a second year in which they have been denied the right to education because of the Israel-Hamas war. More than 45,000 six-year-olds were due to start school this year.

In the 11 months since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, and some of the strip’s schools have become shelters. But about 90% of Gaza’s 307 public school buildings and all 12 universities have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli attacks, according to the Education Cluster, a collection of aid groups led by Unicef and Save the Children.

“Education has totally stopped since 7 October and the future is still unclear,” Mustafa said. “There’s no vision for how we start again because we are still under attack. Everything and everyone is targeted – the tents, the shelters, the schools, the streets. It’s a very dangerous situation.” According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose data various investigations and the World Health Organization have found to be broadly accurate, 25,000 school-age children have been killed or injured in the war.

'Nice Jewish Boys' podcast lifts mask on Israel

Israeli military admits ‘high probability’ it mistakenly killed hostages

The Israeli military has said there is a “high probability” that three hostages found dead in a tunnel at the end of last year were mistakenly killed in a strike that also took the life of Hamas’s northern Gaza brigade chief, Ahmed al-Ghandour, in November.

The families of Col Nik Beizer and Sgt Ron Sherman, both 19, and the French-Israeli civilian Elia Toledano, 28, who were abducted by Hamas on 7 October, were informed in the last week by officials from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that a comprehensive inquiry revealed their loved ones had lost their lives as a result of IDF actions.

Their bodies were recovered on 14 December from a tunnel in Jabaliya but the most likely cause of death was only recently determined, the military said.

“The findings of the investigation suggest that the three, with high probability, were killed by a byproduct of an IDF airstrike,” a statement said. “This is a highly probable estimate given all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death.”

The families were initially told the hostages had been killed by Hamas captors and, in January, the IDF rejected Hamas’s assertions that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Columnists quit Jewish Chronicle over Gaza stories based on ‘fabrications’

A number of prominent columnists have resigned in protest from the Jewish Chronicle after allegations it printed articles about the Gaza conflict that were based on “wild fabrications”.

The weekly title, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper, is facing calls for an investigation after it deleted nine articles by Elon Perry because of doubts over their accuracy and concerns he had misrepresented his CV. The sensationalist articles by the former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier allegedly included fabricated claims about Israeli intelligence.

In a brief statement on Friday announcing the deletion of the articles, the paper said it was not satisfied by some of Perry’s claims. ...

On Sunday, four of the paper’s best-known columnists, David Baddiel, Jonathan Freedland, David Aaronovitch and Hadley Freeman, announced they had resigned in protest over the scandal. ...

Perry’s articles purported to describe detailed accounts of Israeli operations and Israeli intelligence on the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Last week Israeli press described his articles as “fabrications” and suggested they had been placed in the European media to support Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s negotiating position over Gaza.

Funeral for slain Turkish American Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi draws hundreds

Hundreds of people waving Turkish and Palestinian flags gathered on Saturday for the funeral of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish American activist killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Cevdet Yılmaz, Turkey’s vice-president; Hakan Fidan, the foreign minister; Numan Kurtulmuş, the parliament speaker; and Özgür Özel, the main opposition leader from the Republican People’s party (CHP) were among mourners at the ceremony in the Turkish Aegean coastal city of Didim.

A guard of honour carried the 26-year-old’s coffin, which was draped with a Turkish flag.

“The blood of Ayşenur Eygi is as sacred as that of every Palestinian martyred, and we will follow it until the end. As the Turkish nation, we are fully committed. As a state, we are fully committed,” Kurtulmuş told reporters. ...

Ankara said it will request international arrest warrants for those to blame for what it calls an intentional killing. Kurtulmuş said Turkey would “ensure this case is pursued until the end. We will hold them accountable in all international courts. Yesterday, we completed all autopsies in accordance with international standards,” he said.

SHOCKING second attempt on Trump's life

Pfffffttt!!!

US rejects claims of CIA involvement in alleged plot to kill Maduro after Venezuela arrests six

The US state department rejected allegations of CIA involvement in an alleged assassination plot against Nicolás Maduro after Venezuelan officials announced the arrest of three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech on Saturday.

The claims of a plot against Maduro – the Venezuelan president, whose recent re-election is contested – were made on state television by Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. Cabello said the foreign citizens including a US navy member were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership. In the television programme, Cabello showed images of rifles that he said were confiscated from some of the alleged plotters.

The US state department late on Saturday confirmed the detention of a US military member and said it was aware of “unconfirmed reports of two additional US citizens detained in Venezuela”.

“Any claims of US involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro are categorically false. The United States continues to support a democratic solution to the political crisis in Venezuela.”

The claims come two days after the US treasury imposed sanctions on 16 allies of Maduro, accused by the US government of obstructing voting during the disputed 28 July Venezuelan presidential election and carrying out human rights abuses.

All of the "best" people are coming out for Killer Kamala, even Karl Rove!

Former Ronald Reagan staffers endorse Kamala Harris for president

More than a dozen former Ronald Reagan staff members have joined dozens of other Republican figures endorsing the Democratic nominee and vice-president, Kamala Harris, saying their support was “less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy”.

In a letter obtained by CBS News, former Reagan aides and appointees – including Ken Adelman, a US ambassador to the United Nations and arms control negotiator, as well as a deputy press secretary, B Jay Cooper – said they believed that, if alive today, Reagan would have supported Harris.

“President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket,” the group wrote. ...

The letter comes as more than 230 former Republican administration officials have also backed Harris. Karl Rove, George W Bush campaign strategist and senior adviser, wrote “there’s no putting lipstick on this pig” after Donald Trump’s debate performance. Bush has said he has no plans to endorse any 2024 candidate.

Yes, Democrats Win Elections. And Then They Commit Genocide.

Democrats are going after Jill Stein with surprising ferocity this election cycle, with their favorite line of attack being that the Green Party doesn’t win elections.

At an appearance on the radio show The Breakfast Club with her running mate Butch Ware, Stein was slammed by host Angela Rye over her ongoing feud with celebrity congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“The one thing that AOC has done that you haven’t is win some elections,” Rye said.

This line was later picked up by AOC, who tweeted, “Nobody needs talking points to know Jill Stein hasn’t won so much as a bingo game in the last decade and if you actually give a damn about people, you organize, build power and infrastructure, and win.”

We’ve been seeing this “hurr hurr you don’t win anything” attack line from liberals against the left more and more lately. There’s a meme that’s become popular in shitlib circles this year featuring a left-punching rant by the YouTuber Contrapoints about leftists who attack the Democratic Party, saying, “They don’t want victory. They don’t want power. They want to endlessly ‘critique’ power.”

And it’s so obnoxious. It’s like yes, you win elections under the current system by being a warmongering corporate whore. That’s the problem the real left is trying to address. Duh.

Yes, those who align themselves with the Democratic Party win elections. But then what do they do with that win once they’ve won? They commit fucking genocide. They start wars. They kill the ecosystem. They repay favors to the donor class at the expense of everyone else. Republicans also win elections, and then do these same things.

If the current system means you will lose elections unless you are loyal to a murderous, ecocidal, exploitative and tyrannical power structure, then is the problem really losing elections, or is the problem the current system? And how much of a “win” are you even capable of in such a system if you actually care about making the world a better place?

I've never, ever seen Democrats talk this frequently and with such rage about Jill Stein or any 3rd Party candidacy.

The internal polling showing how well Stein is doing among key constituencies in swing states much be very, very alarming to them: https://t.co/NZ1nWLqIWP

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 14, 2024

It’s like that old joke. A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is.”

Sure the Democratic Party is where the light is, but it ain’t where the keys are. You can spend your whole life getting the “win” of being where the light is, but it will never get you the keys of peace, justice and a healthy world. Democrats going “hurr hurr, you never win anything” are standing under the streetlight boasting about how easily they can see the ground and making fun of the poor saps out there crawling around in the darkness where the keys could actually be.

Some of the worst people in the world have won elections. It’s not enough to win, you’ve got to do good things with your win. Democrats do not do good things when they win, they do profoundly, shockingly evil things when they win. This is a problem, and the real adults in the room are trying to fix it by changing the system which is responsible for it.

The task of changing a profoundly corrupt and abusive system won’t look like a lot of wins at first. At first it will look like anything else would look when a very small group of people with no power go up against a vastly larger and stronger power structure. The idea is that by fighting you spread awareness of the fact that conditions are unacceptable and that a better world is possible, and the more eyes open to this reality, the more hands there will be to help in the fight.

It’s still early days, and wins are still very few and far between. But at least it’s a fight, instead of the direct perpetration of tyranny and abuse that’s on offer from the Democratic Party.

Eric Adams’ Top Aide RESIGNS; Corruption Inquiry WIDENS

Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?

Big tech has made some big claims about greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. But as the rise of artificial intelligence creates ever bigger energy demands, it’s getting hard for the industry to hide the true costs of the data centers powering the tech revolution. According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the “in-house” or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are likely about 662% – or 7.62 times – higher than officially reported.

Amazon is the largest emitter of the big five tech companies by a mile – the emissions of the second-largest emitter, Apple, were less than half of Amazon’s in 2022. However, Amazon has been kept out of the calculation above because its differing business model makes it difficult to isolate data center-specific emissions figures for the company.

As energy demands for these data centers grow, many are worried that carbon emissions will, too. The International Energy Agency stated that data centers already accounted for 1% to 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2022 – and that was before the AI boom began with ChatGPT’s launch at the end of that year.

AI is far more energy-intensive on data centers than typical cloud-based applications. According to Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search, and data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. Goldman competitor Morgan Stanley’s research has made similar findings, projecting data center emissions globally to accumulate to 2.5bn metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

In the meantime, all five tech companies have claimed carbon neutrality, though Google dropped the label last year as it stepped up its carbon accounting standards. Amazon is the most recent company to do so, claiming in July that it met its goal seven years early, and that it had implemented a gross emissions cut of 3%. “It’s down to creative accounting,” explained a representative from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an advocacy group composed of current Amazon employees who are dissatisfied with their employer’s action on climate. “Amazon – despite all the PR and propaganda that you’re seeing about their solar farms, about their electric vans – is expanding its fossil fuel use, whether it’s in data centers or whether it’s in diesel trucks.”

MARYLAND FARMS ARE IN BIG TROUBLE "This will destroy everything!"

Also of Interest

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

RAF Spy Flights Over Gaza Could Benefit From Torture

Israeli Torture Chambers Aren’t New. They Provoked October 7

Cantwell calls for U.S. investigation into Aysenur Ezgi Eygi’s killing

Biden Admin Decides - For Now - Against Long Range Strikes On Russia

Alleged would-be Trump assassin recruited for Ukraine’s International Legion

Cheneymania Seizes the Democrats

The EU Retreats Further into a World of Self-Delusion

Race is on to produce a super-coral to survive world’s warming seas

How scientists debunked one of conservation’s most influential statistics

‘Entire ecosystem’ of fossils 8.7m years old found under Los Angeles high school

Suspected Trump ASSASSIN Is Ryan Wesley Routh; Secret Service GRILLED

ANOTHER Win For Trump In Court Case

Ray McGovern : Will Putin Be Provoked?

A Little Night Music

Fats Waller & Myra Johnson - The Joint Is Jumpin'

Fats Waller - You're A Viper

Fats Waller - Handful of Keys

Fats Waller - It's a Sin to Tell a Lie

Fats Waller - All That Meat & No Potatoes

Fats Waller - Alligator Crawl

Fats Waller - Truckin’

Fats Waller - Louisiana Fairytale

Fats Waller - Your Feet's Too Big

Fats Waller - Honeysuckle Rose