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This evening's music features blues musician Henry "Taj Mahal" Fredericks. Enjoy!

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."

-- Samuel P. Huntington

News and Opinion

The Trouble With ‘Western Values’ Is That Westerners Don’t Value Them

Have you ever noticed how those who shriek the loudest about tyranny in foreign countries are always the same people calling for the censorship and deplatforming of anyone who criticizes the western empire?

It’s a ubiquitous mind virus throughout western society. Anyone — and I do mean anyone — who aggressively and consistently criticizes the foreign policy of the US and its allies in front of a sizeable audience gets branded a Russian agent by empire apologists, and this consensus is accompanied by the steadily growing opinion that Russia’s operatives and useful idiots should be banned from western platforms.

Defenders of the western empire won’t admit to wanting all empire critics silenced, but that’s what you get when you combine (A) the fact that they view everyone who criticizes the empire with sufficient aggression as a Russian agent with (B) their opinion that those given to Russian influence ought to be censored. Whenever I criticize the foreign policy of the western empire I get its apologists telling me I’d never be allowed to criticize my rulers like that if I lived in a nation like Russia or China, when they know full well that if it were up to them I wouldn’t be allowed to criticize the western empire here either. They are the same as the tyrants they claim to despise.

The trouble with “western values” is that westerners don’t value them. They think they value them, but all that reverence for free expression and holding power to account with the light of truth goes right out the window the second they see someone saying something that sharply differs from what their rulers and their propagandists have told them to think. Then they want that person silenced and shut down.

In truth, the most forceful critics of the western empire actually embody these western values infinitely more than empire apologists do. It is the critics of empire who value free speech and holding the powerful to account. It’s the brainwashed bootlickers of the US-centralized empire who are calling for censorship and shouting down anyone who directs fierce oppositional scrutiny toward the most powerful people in the world.

People tell me “Move to Russia!” or “Move to China!” depending on what aspect of the empire’s global power agendas I happen to be criticizing at the moment, and I always want to tell them, no, you move to Russia. You move to China. You’re the one trying to suppress dissent and criticism of the powerful. I’m the one who is living by western values as they were sold to me and demanding normal scrutiny of the most powerful empire that has ever existed. You don’t belong here.

In school we are taught that our society values truth, free speech, equality, accountability for the powerful, and adversarial journalism, then we grow up and we see everyone rending their garments because institutions like CBS News or Amnesty International let slip one small report which doesn’t fully comply with the official line of our rulers. We see Russian media banned and censorship protocols expanded to the enthusiastic cheerleading of mainstream liberals. We see astroturf trolling operations used to mass report and shout down those who scrutinize the establishment line about Ukraine on social media. We see Julian Assange languishing in Belmarsh Prison for the crime of unauthorized journalism.

It’s obvious with a look around that the “western values” we’re all told about are not actually terribly common in the west. Look at the west’s major media platforms and they virtually never platform anyone who is meaningfully critical of the real centers of power in western civilization. Look at western governments and they continually dance to the beat of oligarchy and empire regardless of how people vote in their supposedly free democratic elections. Look at the internet and it’s actually very difficult to find authentic criticisms of imperial power unless you already know where to look.

Some of us bought into those western values we were taught about in school, but it’s not the people you’ve been trained to expect. It’s we marginalized outsiders who are adamantly opposing censorship, propaganda and the empire’s war on the press while continuously working to shine the light of truth on the mechanisms of power from the fringes, while we are being yelled at and accused of treason by mainstream sycophants who have far more in common with the autocrats they claim to oppose than with the western values they purport to uphold.

Bakhmut surrounded. Poking at Russia and hoping for escalation

How many days ago was the last announcement of vast sums of money that Biden was going to light on fire?

US announces new $600m arms package for Ukraine

Joe Biden announced a new $600m arms package to help the Ukrainian military battle Russia, according to a White House memo sent to the state department on Thursday.

The memo does not detail how the money would be used, but several sources told Reuters it was expected the package would contain munitions, including more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) ammunition for howitzers.

$2.2B military aid earmarked for Europe to REPEL Russian INVASION, weapons & equipment: Report

Oh lookie, the Senate wants to light $6.5 Billion on fire!

Senate Panel Advances Bill That Would Radically Change US Taiwan Policy

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill on Wednesday that would radically alter US policy toward Taiwan and significantly escalate tensions with Beijing.

The amended version of the Taiwan Policy Act would give Taiwan $6.5 billion in military aid, give the island the benefits of being a “major non-NATO ally,” expedite arms sales to Taipei, and require sanctions in the event of Chinese aggression.

The bill was easily passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a vote of 17-5.

US Announces Fund to Benefit Afghan Economy—Using Stolen Afghan Bank Reserves

Rights organizations on Thursday responded to a new Biden administration plan to use $3.5 billion in U.S.-held Afghan funds to "help mitigate the economic challenges" facing the people of Afghanistan by saying the proposal was "better than keeping that money locked away in a U.S. vault" but must only be the first step in returning $7 billion in stolen money to Afghanistan.

Following months of outcry from economists, peace groups, and Afghan rights campaigners, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday that it is coordinating with international partners, including the Swiss government, to establish what it called the "Afghan Fund."

The fund will include "$3.5 billion of Afghan central bank reserves to be used for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and other malign actors," the Treasury Department said, and will make "targeted disbursements of that $3.5 billion to help provide greater stability to the Afghan economy."

The Afghan economic justice group Unfreeze Afghanistan said that "the freezing of this money has devastated Afghanistan's economy and contributed to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world,"

"Over the past year, the banks have been so starved for cash that Afghans have been unable to withdraw their own money for paying basic household expenses or running their businesses," said the group. "We believe the Afghan people would ultimately be best assisted if these funds are quickly made available for Central Bank functions."

The money being placed in the Afghan Fund represents half of the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) reserves, stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which were seized by the U.S. earlier this year even as Afghanistan faced a worsening hunger crisis.

The Biden administration said earlier this year that the other $3.5 billion would be retained to potentially be claimed by the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks to settle legal judgments against the Taliban—a proposal that several families objected to, saying the money belonged to the people of Afghanistan.

Last month, a U.S. federal judge concluded that the families should not be permitted to claim the funds.

On Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the U.S. is taking an "important, concrete step forward in ensuring that additional resources can be brought to bear to reduce suffering and improve economic stability for the people of Afghanistan while continuing to hold the Taliban accountable."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) denounced the Biden administration's statement as "pure spin," noting that the $3.5 billion in Afghan funds is not the United States' money to disburse.

"The Afghan Fund is funded by Afghanistan, and the U.S. is only delivering unprecedented suffering," said the CEPR.

Since the U.S. has withheld the $7 billion from the DAB, Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis has steadily grown more dire, with six million people facing famine and an estimated three million children suffering from acute malnourishment.

Lebanese depositors storm banks amid historic economic crisis

Israel pressuring Biden to accept terrorist designation for Palestinian NGOs

Last week an Israeli delegation was in Washington, D.C. trying to pressure the Biden administration into accepting its terror designation for six Palestinian human rights groups. “Israeli officials told me the delegation that went to Washington last week included officials from the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defense financial intelligence unit that was spearheading the designation of the NGOs,” reported Axios’ Barak Ravid.

According to Ravid, Israeli officials met with the State Department, CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence to present them with updated intelligence about the six groups.

“Our Israeli partners have in recent days provided us with additional information,” confirmed State Department spokesman Ned Price at a State Department briefing on Tuesday. “They provided this information not only to the department but also to a range of our interagency partners. We are continuing to review this and that process is ongoing,” he continued. Price refrained from saying more about the new information telling reporters he didn’t want to “prejudge” the information.

In October 2021 Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz publicly declared that Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, The Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees had direct links to militant terror groups. According to Gantz, the civil society organizations “promote the goals of the terror organization , including the armed struggle destruction of Israel.” Israel has never provided any public evidence to back up these claims and when +972, Local Call, and The Intercept obtained a secret dossier used by the country to justify the accusations last year, they found no proof for the accusations.

“Despite claiming to center human rights in U.S. foreign policy, the Biden administration has repeatedly failed to take action and stand up for Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations increasingly under attack by the Israeli government,” Defense for Children International – Palestine senior policy and advocacy adviser Brad Parker told Mondoweiss. “We have no reason to believe this meeting between Israeli and U.S. officials will result in a different outcome. The Biden administration has made it clear that the Israeli apartheid regime has their unwavering support even if it means criminalizing and closing down prominent Palestinian human rights institutions despite international backlash.”

Hungary is no longer a full democracy, says European parliament

Hungary can no longer be considered a full democracy, the European parliament has said in a powerful symbolic vote against Viktor Orbán’s government. In a resolution backed by 81% of MEPs present to vote, the parliament stated that Hungary had become a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”, citing a breakdown in democracy, fundamental rights and the rule of law.

While the vote has no practical effect, it heightens pressure on EU authorities in Brussels not to disburse billions in EU cash to Hungary that is being withheld over concerns about corruption.

Hungary is battling to persuade the European Commission to release €4.64bn in Covid recovery funds, frozen for more than a year. Budapest is also trying to stave off a separate legal procedure that could lead to deductions from €24.3bn of cohesion funds, money for infrastructure and economic development.

The European Commission is expected to propose cutting 70% of Hungary’s cohesion funds on Sunday, but will also open the door to a compromise, according to two MEPs familiar with discussions. “More or less what we hear is that the commission will propose … these sanctions or financial measures,” said Moritz Körner, a German MEP, who has been briefed by the commission. ...

Responding to the vote, Hungary’s chief spokesman Zoltán Kovács said the European Parliament “would do better do focus on energy prices that have tripled and quadrupled due to the failed sanctions,” reprising his government’s critique of the EU’s restrictive measures against Russia.

Uh, oh! I wonder if Biden has the CIA on speed dial.

Colombia & Venezuela to Reopen Border

The governments of Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro simultaneously announced this month that they will reopen the common land border and resume commercial flights between the two countries on Sept. 26, in a step towards restoring the bilateral relations broken in February 2019.

“I am very pleased to announce that starting September 26, we will jointly open the borders between Venezuela and Colombia. We will also resume flights between Caracas-Bogotá and Valencia-Bogotá. The exchange and cooperation between our peoples are starting off on the right foot,” Maduro tweeted.

“We aim at an economic alliance of respect and cooperation, with the aim of guaranteeing the well-being of the two peoples of (Liberator Simón) Bolívar. May the Venezuela-Colombia union strengthen!,” he wrote in another tweet.

Petro, confirming the same, tweeted that “on September 26, we will open the border between Colombia and Venezuela. As a first step, air travel and freight transport between our countries will resume. We confirm the government’s commitment to restore brotherly relations.”

‘Bolsonaro promotes hatred’: violence stalks run-up to crucial Brazil election

The body was found in the shade of a mango tree: a man’s life cut short in a frenzy of stabbing – and a horrifying symbol of the political violence that has gripped Brazil under its rabble-rousing president, Jair Bolsonaro. “He showed no sign of remorse,” the police chief investigating the murder said of the prime suspect, a Bolsonaro-supporting lumberjack who allegedly committed the crime because he disliked the victim’s leftist views.

The murder of Benedito Cardoso dos Santos, which took place last Wednesday near a remote Amazon town, has sent shock waves through South America’s most populous nation as it braces for its most important presidential election in decades on 2 October.

Bolsonaro, a pro-gun former paratrooper notorious for his radical rhetoric, has not commented on the killing, which police say was the result of a political altercation involving one of his devotees. But Bolsonaro’s political opponents are convinced the toxic climate whipped up by the far-right populist lies behind the murder – and a series of other violent incidents which have taken place ahead of next month’s crunch vote.

Within hours of last week’s murder Bolsonaro – who calls the election a battle between good and evil – demanded leftists be “eradicated from public life”. During the last election – when Bolsonaro himself was stabbed by a mentally ill lone wolf – he called for supporters of Lula’s Workers’ party to be “machine-gunned”. After winning power, Bolsonaro promised a cleanup of “red outlaws”.

Extreme hunger soaring in world’s climate hotspots, says Oxfam

Extreme hunger is closely linked to the climate crisis, with many areas of the world most affected by extreme weather experiencing severe food shortages, research has shown.

The development charity Oxfam examined 10 of the world’s worst climate hotspots, afflicted by drought, floods, severe storms and other extreme weather, and found their rates of extreme hunger had more than doubled in the past six years.

Within the countries studied, 48 million people are currently suffering from acute hunger, up from about 21 million people in 2016. Of these, about 18 million people are on the brink of starvation, according to the Oxfam report published on Thursday.

The 10 countries covered by the report – Somalia, Haiti, Djibouti, Kenya, Niger, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Madagascar, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe – were those with the highest number of UN appeals driven by extreme weather events.

Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International, said: “Climate change is no longer a ticking timebomb, it is exploding before our eyes. It is making extreme weather such as droughts, cyclones and floods – which have increased five-fold over the past 50 years – more frequent and more deadly.”

How Reagan's NEOLIBERALISM destroyed the middle class: Thom Hartmann

US is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality

The United States may regard itself as a “leader of the free world,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list.

In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to 41st worldwide, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology – an expansive model of 17 categories, or “goals,” many of them focused on the environment and equity – the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.

The U.S. is also now considered a “flawed democracy,” according to The Economist’s democracy index.

As a political historian who studies U.S. institutional development, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to “American exceptionalism” keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.

The Office of Sustainable Development’s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth.

So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the Gini coefficient, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measurement, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.

These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.

Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, “The Philadelphia Negro.” Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a “city within a city.” Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia’s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation – not to Black people’s degree of ambition or talent.

More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. similarly decried the persistence of the “other America,” one where “the buoyancy of hope” was transformed into “the fatigue of despair.”

To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, Black Americans fared worse than whites. But as King noted, “Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America.”

The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book “The Other America,” by political scientist Michael Harrington, founder of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington’s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly galvanized him into formulating a “war on poverty.”

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty bound to discrete places. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.

In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, according to my research.

Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to achieve universal health care or unionized workforces. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of local funding for education and public health.

Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident — though perhaps less visibly so — in the inadequate health policies driving a shocking decline in average American life expectancy.

There are other ways to measure a country’s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better.

The U.S. currently ranks 21st on the United Nations Development Program’s index, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person – $64,765 – and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.

Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems.

The Economist’s democracy index now groups the U.S. among “flawed democracies,” with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated “full democracy” in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between “red” and “blue” states.

Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an insurrection intended to disrupt it, their report laments that, according to a January 2022 poll, “only 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

Election denialism carries with it the threat that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index.

Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, one aspect of the United Nations’ sustainable development index.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republican-controlled states have enacted or proposed grossly restrictive abortion laws, to the point of endangering a woman’s health.

I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.

To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of American exceptionalism, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world.

Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but “exceptionalism” receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party’s national platform of 2016 and 2020 (“we believe in American exceptionalism”). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump’s vow to restore “patriotic education” to America’s schools.

In Florida, after lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in critical race theory, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.

With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement – despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

DeSantis sends migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, causing ‘humanitarian situation’

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, created an “urgent humanitarian situation” in Massachusetts, authorities said, by deporting about 50 undocumented migrants to Martha’s Vineyard with no apparent notice.

Two planes carrying mostly Venezuelan and Colombian adults and children landed on the island on Wednesday afternoon, as part of what DeSantis’s office said was “a relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations”.

In a separate development on Thursday, two buses from Texas carrying about 100 predominantly Venezuelan migrants were dropped off outside the home of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, in Washington. Like DeSantis, the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has adopted a confrontational and theatrical approach to the Biden administration over immigration, sending migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and the capital, all cities with Democratic mayors.

In Massachusetts, authorities scrambled to accommodate the migrants sent by DeSantis, most of whom had no idea where they were being taken, spoke little to no English and were left to walk several miles from the airport into a nearby town to seek help. Some told aid workers they had been promised jobs and housing.

“There was no advance notice to anyone in Martha’s Vineyard or Massachusetts that these migrants were arriving, to my knowledge,” said Julian Cyr, a state senator. The Dukes county emergency management association activated emergency shelters and other resources usually reserved for hurricanes, in order to deal with the “unexpected urgent humanitarian situation”.

Judge proposed by Trump named special master in records case

A federal judge has named Raymond Dearie, a senior US district judge with experience handling US national security matters, as an independent arbiter to vet records seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in an ongoing criminal investigation.

Florida-based US district judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday appointed Dearie to serve as a special master in the legal fight between Trump and the Department of Justice over government documents the former president kept at his Florida resort. Dearie was one of two candidates for the post proposed by the former president, and the US justice department had said it would not oppose his appointment.

In her order, Cannon also rejected the justice department’s demand that prosecutors would be allowed to continue their review of the seized records while the dispute is ongoing, and their assertion that the investigation is urgent due to the highly classified and sensitive material in the records.

“The court does not find it appropriate to accept the government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” Cannon said in the ruling.

Dearie, who is 78 and based in Brooklyn, is tasked with deciding whether any of the documents seized by the FBI during the August search are privileged – either due to attorney-client confidentiality or through a legal principle called executive privilege – and should be off limits to federal investigators.

NGO retracts ‘waste colonialism’ report blaming Asian countries for plastic pollution

An environmental watchdog has retracted an influential report that blamed five Asian countries for the majority of plastic pollution in the ocean. The report, Stemming the Tide, from the US-based environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, also included incineration and waste-to-energy as “solutions” to the plastics crisis. Published in 2015, it was decried as “waste colonialism” by hundreds of environmental, health and social justice groups across Asia.

The watchdog has now publicly apologised for unfairly “creating a narrative” about who is responsible for producing plastic waste and removed the report from its website. Its apology was welcomed on Wednesday as “long overdue” by Gaia, an alliance of 800 waste-reduction groups in 90 countries, and by Break Free From Plastic, a global movement of more than 2,000 organisations.

The report had caused years of harm, the groups said, by ignoring the role of countries in the global north for overproduction of plastic and for exporting plastic waste to developing countries in the guise of trade. “This unprecedented report retraction is an opportunity to interrupt decades of waste colonialism,” said Froilan Grate, Gaia’s Asia-Pacific coordinator. ...

The report not only “wrongly blamed” five countries – the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand – for the bulk of plastic pollution, but “misled, for years, governments and the public into thinking that burning plastic waste was a solution to the problem”, Grate said.

Republicans plan legal assault on climate disclosure rules for public companies

Republican officials and corporate lobby groups are teeing up a multi-pronged legal assault on the Biden administration’s effort to help investors hold public corporations accountable for their carbon emissions and other climate change risks. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed new climate disclosure rules in March that would require public companies to report the climate-related impact and risks to their businesses.

The regulator has since received more than 14,500 comments. Submissions from 24 Republican state attorneys general and some of the country’s most powerful industry associations suggest that these groups are preparing a series of legal challenges after the regulation is finalized, which could happen as soon as next month.

“I would expect a litigation challenge to be brought immediately once the final rule is released,” Jill E Fisch, a business law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian. “They probably have their complaints already drafted, and they’re ready to file.”

Some opponents claim that requiring companies to publish climate-related information infringes on their right to free speech. Others (often the same ones) say that the rule exceeds the SEC’s legal authority. Both critiques feature prominently in comments from the Republican attorneys general and the US Chamber of Commerce, which spent more than $35m lobbying the federal government in the first half of 2022, according to OpenSecrets. The Republican letter warns that if the new disclosure requirements are finalized, “capitalism will fall by the wayside”.

Also of Interest

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

Ukraine Is the New Israel

Ukraine SitRep - Hit On Dam Endangers Ukrainian Troops - Russians Defeat More Counterattacks

Speculation Over What Russia Does Next

Zelensky quietly deletes photo of his bodyguard’s pro-Hitler patch

Europe, More Than Putin, Must Shoulder the Blame for the Energy Crisis

IEA: Russian Crude Ban Will Take 2.4 Million Bpd Off The Market

Gasoline Demand Destruction Accelerates Despite Plunge in Prices: Consumption Drops to August 1997 Level

Armenia Warns Clashes With Azerbaijan Could Escalate Into War

The Profit Motive Is Crippling Humanity: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Pakistan floods ‘made up to 50% worse by global heating’

US civil rights groups file complaint against ‘death by incarceration’ to UN

Scientists hail autoimmune disease therapy breakthrough

Briahna Joy Gray: Did Biden SABOTAGE Student Debt Forgiveness To Please Corporate LOAN SHARKS

Sabby Sabs: AOC Is More Interested In Being A CELEBRITY Than Helping The Working Class

A Little Night Music

Taj Mahal - Stagger Lee

Taj Mahal - She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride

Taj Mahal - Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes

Taj Mahal - Fishing Blues

Taj Mahal - Shady Grove

Taj Mahal - Leaving Trunk

Taj Mahal - Ain't That a Lot of Love

Taj Mahal and Gregg Allman - Statesboro Blues

Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder - Hooray Hooray

Taj Mahal - Going up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue

Taj Mahal - Cakewalk Into Town

TajMo': The Taj Mahal & Keb' Mo' Band Live at Jazz San Javier 2017