The Evening Blues - 9-6-24



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Grady Gaines

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues saxophone player and bandleader Grady Gaines. Enjoy!

Grady Gaines and the Texas Upsetters - Hey Hey Hey Hey

"True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion."

-- Charles Bukowski


News and Opinion

Revolution Is Now

People are always asking me what we can do to fight the tyranny and depravity of the empire and create a healthy world.

“But what can we do?” they ask. “You always talk about the problems, but we need solutions! How do we solve the problems you keep pointing to?”

It’s especially common during US election season, because I tend to spend a lot of time pointing to the fraudulent nature of western electoral politics and saying Americans will never be able to vote their way out of their problems.

Which is of course fair. If I’m saying “Not that way, it’s a dead end,” it’s only fair that I should be asked which way actually leads to the exit.

Trouble is I talk about solutions all the time here, and I’m always practicing what I preach and leading by example; some people just can’t seem to hear what I’m saying. It goes in one ear and out the other, because I don’t have any solutions that are as easy and immediate as “Cast your vote for Donald Trump, he’ll fight the Deep State” or “Cast your vote for Kamala Harris, she’ll stop fascism.”

The truth of the matter is that in the here and now there are no easy and immediate solutions to the problems we face in our world. The system is far too deeply entrenched, and people are far too deeply indoctrinated with propaganda to be persuaded to fight against it right now.

And I emphasize the words “right now”. My solutions might not be easy or immediate, but unlike voting for Trump or Harris in November, they will actually work if put into practice in sufficient numbers.

An effective solution that we can all begin applying in the here and now is working to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist by spreading awareness of the depravity and deceit of the empire. The primary obstacle to real change is the fact that far too many people are far too brainwashed by propaganda to rise up against our rulers, so our first task is to begin working to wake people up out of that propaganda-induced coma so they can see how desperately real change is needed.

The tyrants won’t end their tyranny until they are forced to, and they can’t be forced to as long as enough people are propagandized into believing things are fine. That’s why so much energy goes into narrative control measures like mass media propaganda, censorship, government secrecy, the war on journalism, and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation. They wouldn’t pour so much energy into protecting that part of the imperial machine if it wasn’t very vulnerable to attack.

So we attack it. We cultivate a habit of small acts of sedition, trying to do something every day to de-normalize the abuses of the empire in the eyes of the public. Our historically unprecedented ability to share ideas and information around the world in real time makes circulating unauthorized materials much easier than it used to be, and much more democratic. This is something we can all dedicate ourselves to.

The machine is far too big and powerful for us to take down on our own, but if enough minds can become unplugged from the narrative matrix, we can definitely bring it down together. Once enough minds are pointed at this project, more concrete solutions will emerge and begin gaining traction in our collective consciousness.

It’s too early for an uprising right now. Ever seen Les Miserables? The part with the barricade? That’s what it would look like if we tried to take the machine head-on right now. The people wouldn’t come. It would be unwinnable. History is full of such failed revolutions. So in the here and now we dedicate ourselves to the project of making sure there will be many others joining us at the barricade, in whatever form that direct concrete resistance might wind up taking.

The good news is this brings the revolution into the here and now, since right now the revolution looks like something we can all start doing today. Each and every one of us.

None of us can do everything, but we can all do something. Anything you can do to help open the next pair of eyes to the horrors the empire is inflicting upon our world, the injustices our rulers are imposing upon us in our society, and the lies we’re being told to justify it all.

You can do this using any means at your disposal. Talking to people. Distributing literature. Making videos. Making TikTok skits. Making tweets. Making art. Making memes. Writing on the wall. Writing blogs. Printing zines. Writing letters to the editor at your local paper. Anything you can do to help get unauthorized ideas into eyes and ears which may not otherwise have encountered them, using your own unique set of skills and personal conditioning.

The more eyes are opened to what’s going on, the more hands we will have working toward the task of waking up the others. This allows for the possibility of nonlinear growth, which means things could move very quickly from looking impossible to looking inevitable.

All positive changes in human behavior are always preceded by an expansion of consciousness, whether you’re talking about changes of the behavior in an individual or changes in the behavior of our entire species. So let’s get to work expanding it.

It is my sincerest wish that one day before too long what I do here will be seen as nothing special, because there are so many others doing what I do that I no longer stand out in the crowd in any way. And ideally this project here will then fade into total obsolescence, as we create a healthy world together which makes it completely unnecessary.

"Beyond Catastrophic": U.N. Issues Dire Warning on Gaza as Israel Hinders Polio Vaccination Drive

Israeli Rights Group Leader Tells UN It's Clear Netanyahu 'Does Not Want' a Hostage Deal

The head of a leading Israeli human rights organization told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that Israel's far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, obviously "does not want" to reach a hostage-release and cease-fire agreement with Hamas.

Yuli Novak, the CEO of B'Tselem, said in an address to the U.N. body that the Netanyahu government is "cynically exploiting our collective trauma" in the wake of the October 7 Hamas-led attack to "violently advance its project of cementing Israel's control" over Palestinian land.

"To do that, it is waging war on the entire Palestinian people, committing war crimes almost daily," said Novak. "In Gaza, this has taken the form of expulsion, starvation, killing, and destruction on an unprecedented scale."


Amnesty War Crimes Probe Exposes Israel's 'Wanton Destruction' in Gaza

Amnesty International said Thursday that the Israeli military should be investigated for the "war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment" over its destruction of entire communities along Gaza's border with Israel.

"Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools, and mosques," the London-based rights group said in a new investigation.

Amnesty analyzed satellite imagery, as well as photos and videos posted online by invading Israel Defense Forces troops between October and May, and found that the IDF has cleared wide swathes of land up to 1.2 miles (1.8 km) wide along Gaza's eastern border.

"In some videos, Israeli soldiers are seen posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings are demolished in the background," the report states.


Israeli forces laid waste to much of Khuza'a in Khan Younis governate, under the pretext that Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel from the town on October 7.

Salem Qudeih, a teacher who lived in Khuza'a about a mile from the border, told Amnesty that "around my family home we had a three dunam (0.7 acre) orchard full of fruit trees. They were all destroyed. Only an apple tree and a rose were left."

"I had bees and produced honey. All of it is gone now," he added. "Out of the 222 houses of my relatives in the area, only about a dozen remain. My home—where I lived with my wife, my five daughters, and one son—was completely destroyed."

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement: "The Israeli military's relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes, and rendered their land uninhabitable."

"Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of an entire area," she continued. "These homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area."

"The creation of any 'buffer zone' must not amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilians who lived in these neighborhoods," Guevara-Rosas added. "Israel's measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law, including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment."

Other experts—including United Nations officials and scholars—have previously highlighted what Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, described as "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history."

In the 335 days since October 7, Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 145,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing almost all of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures, according to Palestinian and international officials. Rebuilding after Israel's obliteration of Gaza's civilian infrastructure is expected to cost over $18.5 billion, or nearly Palestine's entire annual gross domestic product.

Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has applied for warrants to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination.

"International humanitarian law, which applies in situations of armed conflict, including during military occupation, is comprised of rules whose central purpose is to limit, to the maximum extent feasible, human suffering in times of armed conflict," Amnesty explained Thursday.

The group noted that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly," is a war crime.

Additionally, the treaty bans collective punishment of civilians, stating that "no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed."

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza and has urged the ICC to open investigations into multiple "indiscriminate" and "disproportionate" IDF massacres, as well as torture and other alleged human rights violations.

“We’re Happy To Know Palestinians Are Suffering” - Say Israeli Podcasters

Gallant Says Israel ‘Mowing the Lawn’ in the West Bank But Will Need to ‘Pull Out the Roots’

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday that the Israeli military was “mowing the lawn” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank but will eventually need to “pull out the roots.”

“Mowing the lawn” is a term the Israeli military used for its bombing campaigns in Gaza pre-October 7. The idea is that the raids would reduce Hamas’s military capability but not eliminate it, and it would eventually grow back, requiring another bombing campaign.

“The process is an attack to prevent terror. We are mowing the lawn, [but] the moment will also come when we will pull out the roots, that must be done,” Gallant said.

Palestine Action Co-Founder on Protesters Arrested in U.K. Under Terrorism Act

Scott Ritter: Free Speech & The DOJ attack on Independent Journalism

US Close To Agreeing on Long-Range Cruise Missiles for Ukraine

The US is close to reaching an agreement on giving Ukraine cruise missiles that could hit targets deep inside Russia, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.

The officials said the US is expected to include Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package that will be announced for Ukraine this fall. But first, there are technical issues to work through to ensure they can be fired by Ukraine’s Soviet-made fighter jets.

An older version of the JASSM can hit targets over 230 miles, and there are newer versions that can fly over 500 miles. Reuters said it was unable to establish which kind the US is considering sending to Ukraine. Providing the older, shorter-range version would put less strain on US military stockpiles.

The comments suggest the administration is preparing to give Ukraine the greenlight to launch long-range strikes inside Russian territory using US-provided missiles, which would mark another significant escalation of the proxy war and risk a major response from Moscow. Russia has said it’s altering its nuclear doctrine in response to Western escalations in Ukraine.

European irrationality in Ukraine - Michael von der Schulenburg, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Macron names Barnier to lead right-wing French government backed by neo fascists

Yesterday, after an unprecedented seven weeks of talks with members of the parliamentary parties since the July 7 elections, President Emmanuel Macron named Michel Barnier prime minister. Barnier will now try to select a ministerial cabinet that can win the support of the majority of the National Assembly. Macron’s selection of Barnier, a member of the discredited, right-wing The Republicans (LR) party, tramples upon the elections and installs the far right at the center of official politics. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP) won a plurality in the July 7 elections, with 182 seats. Macron’s Ensemble coalition won 163 seats, and the far-right National Rally’s (RN) 143, only because the NFP endorsed Ensemble candidates, supposedly to stop a RN victory.

Having preserved his party from collapse with Mélenchon’s support, France’s widely-hated president has now named a right-wing prime minister who would rule with far-right support. LR and Ensemble together control only 233 seats in the Assembly, and Barnier is well short of a 289-seat majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. Yesterday, however, RN officials indicated that they played a central role in selecting Barnier and would, at least initially, support his government.

A Macron-Barnier government would impose violently right-wing policies and, sooner rather than later, provoke mass opposition in the working class. It is committed to policies that face opposition from an overwhelming majority of the French people, above all in the working class—notably escalating the NATO war in Ukraine by sending troops to fight Russia, and continuing attacks on pensions and social spending.

Barnier is a 73-year-old European Union (EU) bureaucrat known mainly as the EU’s representative in Brexit talks with Britain. He is a partisan of strict austerity and corporate tax cuts. He denounces social spending for creating “entitled people,” and opposes renewable energy. He has proposed a further one-year rise in the retirement age, beyond the two-year increase to 64 that Macron imposed in 2023, despite overwhelming popular opposition and mass strikes. ...

Yesterday, RN officials made clear that they played a key role in the selection of Barnier, and that they would keep his government afloat, as long as it carries out policies acceptable to them. RN leader Marine Le Pen told a press conference at the Assembly: “We demanded a certain number of conditions, namely that we have a prime minister that would respect RN voters. … I believe that Mr. Barnier fulfills that criterion. As for other things, on substantive issues, we will wait and see what the statement of general policy of Mr Barnier will bring, and the way in which he carries out the necessary compromises on the upcoming budget.”

Why Does the US Not Want Mexico to Vote for Their Own Judges?

Medical provider to US jails failing to keep its patients alive

When Isaiah Trammell experienced a mental health episode while detained at Ohio’s Montgomery county jail in February last year, he pleaded for a blanket, a mat and a phone call. He was denied them because he was on suicide precautions.

Trammell screamed and banged his head on the jail cell door. He couldn’t calm himself – the 19-year-old had autism spectrum disorder and was stimming due to the overwhelming stress of being confined in jail without access to his family or his medication. He told officers he had autism and ADHD. In turn, they ridiculed him and told him he was behaving “like an ass”, forcibly placing him in a restraint chair twice.

Jails around the US regularly contract private healthcare companies that are oftentimes paid for by taxpayers to meet the needs of people in their care. NaphCare, a $1bn company, has been paid tens of millions of dollars to provide medical and mental health care at the Montgomery county jail. But they did not do that for Isaiah Trammell.

A sheriff’s office information report found that an officer requested mental health officers to speak with Trammell to “deescalate the situation”. Video footage of the 10 hours that Trammell spent at the jail showed an on-duty healthcare worker attempting to speak with him – but gave up and was quoted as saying: “OK, I’m done.” Trammell died three days later after hitting his head against his unpadded jail cell wall. Officials ruled his death a suicide. ...

Trammell’s experience forms part of a larger history of deaths, legal settlements and other substandard care issues involving NaphCare. Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, the company operates in dozens of jails in 32 states. And jails where NaphCare is contracted have seen the highest death tolls compared with any healthcare provider in the country, according to a 2020 Reuters investigation. In 2022, the company was forced to pay nearly $27m to the estate of a woman in Washington state who died after being denied anti-seizure medication while in its care in a wrongful death settlement.

Pavel Durov: Telegram founder says France arrest is ‘misguided’

The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, under investigation in France, has said that French authorities should have approached his company with their complaints rather than detaining him, calling the arrest ‘“misguided”.

Durov, writing on his Telegram channel early on Friday in his first public comments since his detention last month, denied any suggestion the app was an “anarchic paradise”.

The Russian-born multi-billionaire said the investigation into the app was surprising in that French authorities had access to a “hot line” he had helped set up and they could have contacted Telegram’s EU representative at any time.

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” he wrote.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”



the horse race



Hunter Biden pleads guilty in federal tax case after day of back-and-forth

Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to tax charges in federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday, after a day of legal wrangling and in a dramatic move that will avoid a potentially embarrassing trial for Joe Biden’s son.

Biden, 54, pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges on a day of courtroom twists and turns, after prosecutors earlier objected to his surprise intention to enter an “Alford” plea, an unusual legal maneuver where a defendant pleads guilty but does not acknowledge wrongdoing. Following prosecutors’ objections, lawyers said Biden was ready to change course and enter an “open” plea, where a defendant pleads guilty to the charges and leaves his sentencing fate in the hands of the judge.

In court on Thursday afternoon, Abbe Lowell, Biden’s attorney, told Judge Mark Scarsi: “Mr Biden will agree that the elements of each offense have been satisfied.”

Biden quickly responded “guilty” as the judge read out each of the nine counts. The charges carry up to 17 years in prison, but federal sentencing guidelines are likely to call for a much shorter sentence.

DOJ PUSHING Narrative RUSSIA Is TAMPERING With US Election; IT ISN’T: Ken Klippenstein



the evening greens


Oil firms vow to fight judicial review of North Sea oil and gas projects

Two of Europe’s biggest oil companies have vowed to fight two legal cases brought by environmental campaigners against their plans to develop new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

Shell and Equinor have said that they will defend their plans to develop new North Sea projects despite Labour’s decision to withdraw government support for the plans, which were approved by the Conservatives over the last two years.

Greenpeace called for a judicial review of the government’s go-ahead for the Jackdaw gasfield, operated by Shell, which received approval in 2022. It also, alongside the campaign group Uplift, called for a judicial review of Equinor’s plan to develop a giant oilfield at Rosebank, which was approved last year.

The green groups’ campaign against new North Sea oil and gas projects received a boost earlier this week after Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, withdrew government support for the companies’ plans. Miliband has also ruled out further licensing rounds for new projects in the North Sea.

The government’s decision came months after a supreme court ruling, known as the Finch ruling, appeared to lend support to judicial reviews by finding in a separate case that the full emissions impact of burning fossil fuels should be taken into account before approving new oil and gas projects.

University funding from fossil fuels slowing switch to green energy

Fossil fuel companies’ funding of universities’ climate-focused efforts is delaying the green transition, according to the most extensive peer-reviewed study to date of the industry’s influence on academia. For the study, published in the journal WIREs Climate Change on Thursday, six researchers pored over thousands of academic articles on industries’ funding of research from the past two decades. Just a handful of them focused on oil and gas companies, showing a “worrying lack of attention” to the issue, the analysis says.

But even that small body of research shows a pattern of industry influence: “The academic integrity of higher education is at risk,” they write.

During the past two decades, non-profits, campus organizers and a small group of scholars have sounded the alarm about oil companies’ influence in academia, drawing parallels to tobacco, pharmaceuticals and food producers who have also funded scholarship.

In the new study, researchers found that out of roughly 14,000 peer-reviewed articles about conflicts of interest, bias and research funding across all industries from 2003 to 2023, only seven mentioned fossil fuels. When the authors broadened their search to look at book chapters, they found only seven more.

But even by combing through the small body of existing scholarship, the authors identified hundreds of instances in the US, UK, Canada and Australia where oil and gas interests had poured funding into climate and energy research while sitting on advisory or governing boards, endowing academic posts, sponsoring scholarships, advising curricula or otherwise influencing universities. “We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry,” the authors write.

Loss of bats to lethal fungus linked to 1,300 child deaths in US

In 2006, a deadly fungus started killing bat colonies across the United States. Now, an environmental economist has linked their loss to the deaths of more than 1,300 children. The study, published in Science on Thursday, found that farmers dramatically increased pesticide use after the bat die-offs, which was in turn linked to an average infant mortality increase of nearly 8%. Unusually, the research suggests a causative link between human and bat wellbeing. ...

The crisis for bat colonies began in 2006, when a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans hitchhiked from Europe to the US. P destructans grows on hibernating bats in winter, sprouting as white fuzz on their noses. It can extinguish a bat colony in as little as five years.

When Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, learned about the disease, called white-nose syndrome, he realised it provided a perfect natural experiment to demonstrate the value of a bat. Bats eat 40% or more of their bodyweight in insects every night, including many crop pests. What would their disappearance mean?

In infected areas, he found, farmers compensated for the loss of bats by significantly increasing their use of insecticides – by 31.1% on average. Next, Frank looked at infant mortality – a metric commonly used to judge the impact of environmental toxins. Infected counties had an infant death rate 7.9% higher, on average, than counties with healthy bats, despite pesticide use being within regulatory limits. That equates to 1,334 extra infant deaths.

Frank tested other factors that might plausibly explain the rise in deaths: unemployment, the opioid epidemic, the weather, differences among mothers, or the introduction of genetically modified crops, but none explained the increase in pesticide use or the rise in infant deaths. He spent a year “kicking the tyres on the study”, and the results held. It provided “compelling evidence”, he said, “that farmers did respond to the decline in insect-eating bats, and that response had an adverse health impact on human infants”.


Also of Interest

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

Why Israel is attacking the West Bank

Girl killed by Israeli sniper in West Bank was looking out the window, father says

Will UK Ministers Now Be Held Liable for War Crimes?

Abandon Biden Becomes Abandon Harris, Focuses on Battleground States

FBI raids three top aides to New York mayor Eric Adams and police commissioner

Common food dye found to make skin and muscle temporarily transparent

Stonehenge tale gets ‘weirder’ as Orkney is ruled out as altar stone origin

The vanishing mangroves of El Salvador: ‘All our efforts may only slow the destruction’

Kamala CAVES To Billionaires On Capital Gains Tax

Israel’s Sadistic Frenzy of Hate and Revenge – with Israeli activist Sarit Michaeli


A Little Night Music

Grady Gaines and the Texas Upsetters - Let Your Thing Hang Down

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Something On Your Mind

The Upsetters w/ Jimi Hendrix - K.P.

Grady Gaines & The Texas Upsetters - Looking For One Real Good Friend

Grady Gaines & The Texas Upsetters - Mr. Blues In The Sky

Grady Gaines & The Texas Upsetters - Jumbo

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Hard Times Blues

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Baby Work Out

The Upsetters w/ Jimi Hendrix - Cabbage Greens

Grady Gaines & the Texas Upsetters - Midnight Shuffle


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11 users have voted.

Comments

QMS's picture

.
revolution will enact the changes
we need in governance

thanks js for all that stuff
enjoy your weekend away from the news

Q

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6 users have voted.

truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

@QMS

direction.

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5 users have voted.
QMS's picture

@humphrey
.
that ranted 'off with their heads'
seems the ruling class may have eat
the fruits of their (fill-in the blank here).

or this

up
4 users have voted.

truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

yeah, the right kind of revolution could get the job done. i've always been a little dubious about both the possibility of a revolution and the idea of it being executed by a decent bunch of people. i guess my faith in humanity is at a low ebb lately.

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6 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

.

an almost criminal violation of human intelligence."

IMG_6489.jpeg

My mind was on other things when I first came across this poster. And it landed abruptly as an assault and an insult all at once.

Just glance at it for now: This is how some Democratic voters, and I suspect many, want to imagine a candidate who supports and advances, among various other late-imperial crimes, a genocide of world-historical significance.

Vanessa Beeley calls it “cartoon theatrics,” and it’s as good as I’ve seen. In two words the British journalist captures from a useful distance the infantilism of the Harris-for-president campaign and the Hollywoodization of American politics.

Patrick Lawrence

And there it is…

IMG_6488.jpeg

Now they are waiting for W to endorse her.

I’m not sure if his face is getting longer, but his nose sure is.

IMG_6487.jpeg

Hopefully he has a date with The Hague in his future. He and Baghdad Bob certainly deserve to.

Have a weekend all. Thanks for the news and blues!

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11 users have voted.

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

some idiot graphic designer has managed to insult an entire generation.

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5 users have voted.

@snoopydawg

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

.

When I first saw the “Kamala” poster it was via a social media message Katrina vanden Heuvel sent out, with cheerful approval, on “X.”

Vanden Heuvel, as many readers will know, is the editorial director of The Nation. It is important to take note. In “Vote Joy 2024” we find the denouement of the long, pitiful story of what has become of the American “left” and why this term now requires quotation marks.

The replies are brutal.

I wonder if Smirkula has seen this photo and if he’s waiting for Israel to investigate the incident?

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9 users have voted.

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

majority of talking heads in the MSM.

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8 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

the shouting was over the top. Especially from 2 feet away.
Ahh well she got her message across. Good for her.

up
7 users have voted.

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

glad to see that the zionist liars are getting pushback.

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

You and Dana do not get to hide behind antisemitism here, Jake. You each played a seminal role in marketing Israel's genocide to Americans after Oct 7, pushing every atrocity hoax you could. When the Gaza Holocaust Museum is constructed, there will be a special exhibition about cynical Zionist propagandists like you and Dana Fash.

Your name is still on the byline of a CNN report claiming Al-Shifa Hospital sat atop a massive terror command and control center. Your fake report, sourced to one anonymous "US official," appeared hours before Israeli occupation forces stormed Al-Shifa, kidnapping doctors and hauling them to torture centers. No command and control center has been found, but you have not apologized or retracted. You personally manufactured consent for the destruction of Gaza's hospitals and its entire public health system. https://cnn.com/2023/11/13/politics/al-shifa-hospital-us-intelligence/in...

You also gave an uncritical platform to lies from United Hatzalah, the extremist group of grifters that fabricated atrocities about babies baked in ovens and mutilated children on Oct 7 which have been discredited even in Israeli media. You have never acknowledged that the testimony furnished to you by Hatzalah's Linor Attias, has been solidly discredited by evidence on the ground. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/12/06/scandal-israeli-october-7-fabrications/

You also led a special report on the Oct 7 "mass rape" hoax spun out by the Israeli government, which was desperate to justify destroying northern Gaza and massacring hundreds of entire families in their homes. We exposed your sources as complete frauds, as did
@Mondoweiss
, and you have never responded, let alone acknowledged that many were tied to the Israeli govt. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/cnn-report-claiming-sexual-violence-on-oc...

You even launched into a 7 minute long tirade explicitly justifying Israel's slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, by asking every single Palestinian, "What did you expect?" By your logic, they should expect genocide if they dare attack the demonic entity that has held them under occupation and siege for decades.

Months and months later, Israel is still ripping little kids to shreds in their homes and spreading infectious diseases throughout tent cities in Gaza. It has constructed a network of torture centers across the land, where its soldiers rape Palestinian prisoners on camera. Israelis have rioted across the country for the right of their soldiers to rape Palestinians. They are making heroes out of the rapist soldiers on national TV. And you and your fellow ethno-supremacists at CNN have said nothing. Not one word about the documented rape by Israeli soldiers of defenseless Palestinian prisoners.

And now you want us to believe that Americans who are outraged by your wanton journalistic malpractice, repugnantly genocidal commentary, and refusal to even acknowledge your own lies, are actually the racists, and you are the victim? No one who has been paying attention to the livestreamed genocide you and Dana propagandized for in Gaza is falling for it. You must be held accountable.

What Judge Navi Pilay said when he convicted three media personalities for inciting the Rwanda genocide, could easily be said about you and Dana Bash: “You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the…medium of communication with the widest public reach to disseminate hatred and violence… Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.”

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8 users have voted.

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

will offer a statement with regards to the murder of this American activist by Israel?

The MSM offers its usual slanted coverage.

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9 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

Didn’t Biden promise that if an American bleeds then there will be hell to pay?
He did nothing when the American soldier tried to deliver food was killed by Israel and so far I haven’t heard a word about Aysenur Ezgi.

But Blinken said that the American that was killed by Hamas was a hero. He joined the Israeli military to kill Palestinians and he was DJ at the rave just outside the Gaza concentration camp. Some hero.

I just saw a photo of a Palestinian child who starved to death. Reminds me of Jewish concentration camp survivors who look just like him. Maybe if photos of thousands of starving children made their way into American news more people would start seeing that there is no difference between Nazism and Zionism.
Gawd’s chosen vs the master race.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

i got this from the stein campaign:

Jill Stein for President

She was 26 years old. She recently graduated
from the University of Washington in Seattle.

She was like millions of our daughters and
nieces and sisters – her whole life ahead of her. But now Aysenur Eygi
is dead – murdered by Israel today in the West Bank.

A photo provided by the family of Aysenur
Eygi, showing her in a black graduation cap and gown with a
Palestinian keffiyeh draped over her shoulders, smiling warmly for the
cameras.

I am sickened. I am
heartbroken. I am disgusted and outraged. And you should be,
too.

Today the Israeli
Occupation Forces brutally murdered Aysenur – an American citizen and
a peace activist protesting settlements in the West
Bank.

Israeli forces
shot her in the head. Deliberately. Just as they did Shireen Abu Akleh
two years ago.

Mainstream media is already working
overtime to whitewash this crime.

They’ve described Aysenur as a “Turkish-American” or
“American-Turkish” in
an obvious attempt to downplay
her identity as a full American citizen
(not that her citizenship should matter ...
but to our policymakers and the public, it does).

They’ve called it “a shooting” stating that
“an activist was killed” without describing how she died – or by whose
hand.

This is important.
Do not look away. This is what witnesses had to say:

An animated GIF of a video clip of an activist
who accompanied Aysenur Eygi to the hospital, sobbing and saying “For
what? They’re standing up for people. Standing up for peace. They
killed her. They shot her in the head.”

Just after graduation this year, Aysenur
joined a group of activists with the International Solidarity
Movement, going directly to the heart of danger to hold the line as a
peace activist against illegal Israeli “settlements” in the West
Bank.

That’s where she
was today when, unprovoked, IDF soldiers murdered her in cold blood
with a killshot directly to the head.

Biden administration officials like Anthony
Blinken can wring their hands and cluck their tongues and “condemn”
the horrific violence playing out every single day against
Palestinians and peace activists in every part of Palestine (NOT just
Gaza).

But those
protestations ring hollow when the same people shaking their heads
with regret and dismay are rubber-stamping the latest
billion-dollar-arms shipment to the murderers pointing the
gun.

Aysenur Eygi was a
brilliant young woman who dedicated her life to the service of others.
As a fresh graduate she could have been chasing the career of her
dreams. But she chose to hold the line for
Palestine.

In February
of this year, following the death of three American soldiers in Jordan
at the suspected hands of Iranian-backed proxy rebels, Joe Biden
forcefully declared:
“If
you harm an American, we will
respond."

Well Joe. They murdered an
American today. Will you finally stop arming the
murderers?

The truth is Biden won’t seek
justice for Aysenur because he knows that ultimately, he is
responsible.
By arming this
fascist, murderous, apartheid regime and giving them unrestricted
political cover, he may as well have loaded the
gun.

Aysenur will not rest until we end our
support for this violent regime.

As your president, I will terminate all arms
transfers and military aid to Israel on DAY ONE of my administration.
I will impose an arms embargo until the Israeli government joins the
peace process as a legitimate partner and an honest broker. And I will
support international arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his cabinet of
thugs.

Biden called Israel’s planned assault on
Rafah a “red line.”
Israel
ignored the United States, ignored the international community, and
invaded Rafah with a devastating military assault.
And
nothing
happened.

Now they’ve
murdered an American citizen – and still nothing is
happening.

It ends with
us.

In
solidarity,

Jill

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enhydra lutris's picture

@joe shikspack

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

i was listening to an interview with stein and her running mate butch ware and ware was responding to the fact that the biden administration refused to provide the campaign with secret service support. he said that he was actually much happier to have private security.

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enhydra lutris's picture

Have a great weekend.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

you have a great weekend, too! i think that i have overloaded on bad news this week, so the weekend is more than welcome.

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dystopian's picture

Hi all, Hey Joe,

Thanks for the tunes, and a great piece of Hendrix history. Incredible what he did from 66 to 67. Found Marshall amps. Wink

As for... Why Does the US Not Want Mexico to Vote for Their Own Judges?

It is because the insane Ahos running the US think they should run the world. No detail of ANY other countries business is too small for them not to mis-manage.

And this link you included, I did not read but... as for Kamala CAVES To Billionaires On Capital Gains I guess takes a knee or bands over wouldn't have sounded as good? I am shocked I tell you, shocked!

Now voting for Kamala is voting with Dick and Liz Cheney. Which says what about what has happened to the Democrats?

Russiagate again already!? Hillary's horse that won't die again? Just shoot me! Now the DOJ at it again? Do they have any credibility?

So state sponsored propaganda is NOT alright. But the U.S. style privately owned state sponsored propaganda, is all good. Yeah makes sense.

A HUNDRED MIL SO FAR from AIPAC on this election cycle is OK, but facebook memes are not OK if not of the 'right' sort?

Sending weapons to a country denying humanitarian aid is not a DOJ problem either aparently. Incredible what they choose to busy themselves with.

Rigging the primaries 3 federal cycles in a row the DOJ sees nothing wrong, but RT is a threat to democracy? The White House telling who what to censor is not an issue for democracy or DOJ?

This bat fungus is a real problem. Wiping lots of them out in many places. Here we have a nearbish-by a cave (less than 20 miles as bat flies), with 10 Million Mexican (now called Brazillian) Free-tailed Bats. TX A & M found their number one prey item here was the number one corn pest, a moth, which lays eggs (making corn worms) on corn. They farm thousands of acres of corn in the area and the farmers get it about the bats doing tens of millions of dollars of 'biological services' as it is called, for free, and better of course.

Thanks for the sounds, sorry 'bout the news! Have a great weekend!

happy trails all!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

As for... Why Does the US Not Want Mexico to Vote for Their Own Judges?

too much democracy!

Now voting for Kamala is voting with Dick and Liz Cheney.

heh, i can see the meme now, "when you vote for kamala, you get in bed with dick cheney!"

Russiagate again already!?

in the approximate words of genocide joe, "if russia didn't exist, we would have to invent it."

farmers get it about the bats doing tens of millions of dollars of 'biological services'

glad to hear that the farmers are waking up. now if we could just get them to recognize the need to support pollinators ...

have a great weekend!

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snoopydawg's picture

@dystopian

So state sponsored propaganda is NOT alright. But the U.S. style privately owned state sponsored propaganda, is all good.

As for selective election interference:

Beginning last October, New York Times reported earlier this year, Israel covertly targeted American members of Congress with an influence campaign intended to generate support for its handling of the war in Gaza. Israel, through its Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, oversaw and funded the $2 million operation. At its height, it deployed hundreds of social media AI-powered bot accounts designed to seem like American constituents of U.S. lawmakers. The Congress members were then targeted with posts calling on them to keep military aid flowing to Israel. The operation also generated three fake news websites containing pro-Israel articles written in English that were circulated by the bot accounts.

Friendly election interference

Move along folks, nothing to see here. Just like when it was discovered that Israel had listening devices outside the Trump WH that were spying on him…. I’m surprised it even got reported.

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

soryang's picture

Why Japan’s PM is visiting Korea for a summit only weeks before stepping down

Kishida’s South Korea visit appears to have the aim of playing up what he views as the main achievements of his term, namely the improvement of relations with Seoul and the strengthening of trilateral military cooperation with South Korea and the US. Indeed, he is also coordinating a visit to the US during a UN General Assembly session toward the end of this month.

“The target audience for Kishida’s visit to Korea this time around is Japanese voters,” assessed an expert who formerly served as a high-ranking diplomat for Korea. “As a politician, he’s trying to showcase his legacy achievements of improving Korea-Japan relations and progressing trilateral cooperation with the US.”

But it remains to be seen what gains Yoon hopes to score from Kishida’s visit. Considering the rather sour domestic opinion about Korea’s relationship with Japan of late, it stands to reason that the timing of Kishida’s visit to Korea is far from optimal for the Yoon administration. Experts say that Yoon’s warm welcome for Kishida’s farewell tour stop in Korea goes to show just how little regard the president has for domestic public opinion.

“Right now, the Yoon administration thinks that the Korea-US-Japan security cooperation they’re working on is all that matters, and that everything else, including contentious history, is trivial,” said Cho Sung-ryul, a professor of military studies at Kyungnam University who previously served as Korea’s consul general to Osaka.

'고별 방한' 기시다 만난 윤 대통령‥과거사 언급 없었다 MBC News 9.6 Farewell visit Kishida meets President Yoon... No statement about the past. The caption is misleading because after Yoon made some very vague and circuitous reference to the forced labor issue, Kishida made a kind of abstract apology without specifically referencing the issue of forced labor conscription which is one of the thorny issues in the relationship between Korean and Japan. This is the summary in the notes associated with the MBC video.

President Yoon Seok-yeol met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is visiting Korea ahead of his retirement at the end of this month, and had a summit today.
Instead of specific comments such as an apology for the 'past' issue that had drawn attention,
the main discussion was on the importance of Korea-US-Japan cooperation and cooperation to continue the trend of improving Korea-Japan relations.

I think the sit down working part of the summit lasted 1 hour forty minutes. It appeared that facilitating ease of entry between both countries was an important agenda item. The summit appeared to be geared toward domestic consumption in both countries. Both leaders have high disapproval ratings in their respective countries. Allegedly, Kishida's roundabout apology was not reported in Japan. Someone in the Yoon delegation made the comment to the press, that "this problem is concluded." So does that include "slave labor compensation, comfort women compensation, and Japan dropping its territorial claims on Dokdo?"

Kishida had announced he was stepping down Sep 27. He appears headed toward playing the role of respected elder statesman in the LDP. The Yoon administration is in trouble in South Korea, and I'm sure for him and his wife, this is a welcome diversion from those troubles. The long list of First Lady allegations of misconduct now include interference in party candidate selection for elections, ministerial appointments, the Cpl Choi investigation, and arranging unlawful bids for office renovations for the presidential office move. These, if substantiated go to an impeachment level dereliction by Yoon, aka abuse of office.

Wresting the circumlocutious apology out of Kishida appears to be Yoon negotiating team's dubious accomplishment. I'm sure it will be highly regarded in the US, and by the new right in South Korea. Whether it will quell domestic dissatisfaction with the relationship between Japan and South Korea is another thing. It is clear from several programs I saw in the last couple of days, that Japan is still regarded as not trustworthy and a potential threat to South Korea by the opposition. They question what benefit did South Korea gain from the Indo-Pacific commitments squeezed out of them with little resistance by Yoon, along with one sided concessions on the historical issues.

Kishida's apology went something like this:

"I wanted to say that it's heart rending when i think about the time in a difficult environment many people suffered hardships and sad experiences."

This is my interpretation of the Korean translation in the MBC broadcast.

I heard an interesting discussion of John Mearsheimer's latest book by Kim Jong-tae and Yoo Shi-min, two leading media figures in the opposition. They and their host gave the book 3.67 stars out of five. The theoretical part I of the book was regarded as unnecessarily long and hard slog. Part II, with historical examples of good application of realism in national decision making they found to be more interesting and better written. I discovered that Mearsheimer and Kim Tae-hyo, the main national security person on Yoon's staff, knew Mearsheimer apparently from his days getting a post graduate degree at the Univ of Chicago and had apparently introduced John to President Lee Myung-bak. I wonder if that was before or after the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong island in the West Sea in 2010. Kim Jong-tae had given John's book 4 out of five stars and noted that what is realism for a great power is not realism for a smaller state like South Korea. In other words the Sunshine policy is better, get along with your neighbors etc. I still think Mearsheimer's emphasis on gunboat diplomacy doesn't carry the weight with Chinese foreign policy that he thinks it does.

Thanks for the news and blues Joe.

edited for spelling errors

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語必忠信 行必正直

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

thanks for the update. it's interesting that so many other countries seem to have the same problem that we have here of ruling elites having their own (unpopular) agenda that despite having allegedly democratic institutions don't seem to be able to be changed.

have a great weekend!

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snoopydawg's picture

.

but for some reason she thinks she is…

"Did y’all just fall out of a coconut tree?"

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

@snoopydawg Adults do not act like that. Adults in professions don't either.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

lotlizard's picture

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/israeli-po...

This is what the entire political and cultural establishment in Western countries is covering for.

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