Welcome to The Now

 

 Via BreakThrough News:

 In the wake of the Israeli government's pager attack on Lebanon, another assault:  Adding to the fact that the pager attack was 15 years in the making (sounds premeditated), it's hard to argue that these actions are not meant to provoke Lebanon to act in a way that Israel can claim the role of victim and ask the US for direct military assistance (read: boots on the ground).  But if you were to look at what President Joe Biden and VP (and current Democratic Party presidential nominee) Kamala Harris are saying , you would think that Hassan Nasrallah was Saddam Hussein and not the leader of a political party: On Saturday, both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris released statements strongly backing the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, which was carried out using US-provided 2,000-pound bombs. President Biden said in a statement that Nasrallah’s death was “a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of A...

As mainstream American politics remains strained as best and completely divided at worst, the average viewer looks to non-traditional outlets for guidance, information and relief. Many believe that shows like Saturday Night Live can provide these three things, and with good reason. Historically, humorists and comedians were some of the best truth-tellers in society. Saturday Night Live has a long history of distilling political figures into their most base form; pretty much every American views Gerald Ford as clumsy and accident prone because of how he was portrayed on SNL. Over the years, other comedy outlets (In Living Color, Mad TV, Chappelle's Show, the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Patriot Act, etc.) followed suit with varying success (though admittedly more biting than SNL). Well, one thing that they all lacked was longevity and a constant. For SNL, Lorne Michaels is latter and as such has contributed to the former. The others, while definitely more edgy at times, only las...

 Apparently you have to break some rules to keep order in the city:

Not sure, but eggs are getting expensive again : Supermarket prices are no longer skyrocketing – except, of course, if you’re buying eggs. Egg prices spiked by 28.1% in August from 12 months ago, easily the biggest increase out of any food item tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The sticker shock in the egg aisle comes even as overall grocery prices are barely budging (up less than 1% in August from last year) and inflation cools across the US economy. The main culprit for rising egg prices is a familiar one: bird flu. Birds are getting sick, and that means fewer eggs and higher prices at the grocery store. “Bird flu is the number one reason for higher prices, absolutely,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst and editor of SuperMarketGuru.com. [SNIP] Still, the current BLS average of $3.20 per dozen eggs remains high. Before Covid-19, eggs never hit $3 per dozen, according to BLS data going back to 1980. Now Americans are paying nearly twice as much for eggs as before ...

 As mentioned in the comments, it's curious that politicians and the media are quick to come to the defense of Muslims in China but turn a blind eye to Muslims in Gaza/West Bank...

 

The failure of political imagination afflicts the casual voter and the erstwhile radical icon too, who pop up in election years to declare their surrender to the forces they otherwise claim to oppose.  -- Margaret Kimberley, on fallen activist Angela Davis' support for Kamala Harris. 

 The US House of Representatives, has passed (among other things) a bill to use $1.6 billion to fund five years of anti-China messaging (i.e., propaganda). Like the video states, expect  some updated "incubator baby" stories.

 

 

 

In other words : the Biden Administration (through Antony Blinken) is ignoring findings that support the belief/fact that Gaza is an open-air prison: The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do ...

 Link here . Apparently talking about how the West has exploited an entire continent is "Russian propaganda."

 Curious that everyone Israel threatens or attacks is labeled "ruthless" or " violent by US media:

 After getting Republicans Dick Cheney and (his daughter) Liz Cheney's endorsement, Kamala Harris can't get Democrat Joe Manchin to follow suit.  Of course in a "normal" political world, the Democratic nominee for POTUS would welcome the endorsement of a conservative Democrat before a conservative Republican, especially one who was hated by Democrats in the early 2000's. However, there's nothing normal about this political season (other than the donors calling the shots in the background, that is). 

 

 

 

  Full article here .

Yikes : On the first day of his American National Government class, Prof. Kevin Dopf asks how many of his students are United States citizens. Every hand shoots up. “So, how did all you people become citizens?” he asks. “Did you pass a test?” “No,” one young woman says tentatively. “We were born here.” It’s a good thing. Based on his years of making his students at the University of South Carolina Beaufort take the test given to immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship, most would be rejected. “Thirty, 35% of the students will pass it,” says Dopf, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former West Point instructor. “The rest of them are clueless. I mean, they’re just clueless.” Most states require some sort of high school civics instruction. But with a recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center showing that about a third of American adults can’t name the three branches of the federal government, many think we should be aiming higher. Over the past few years, a small but growing numb...

 

  It gets more interesting : The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse a presidential candidate on Wednesday after releasing internal polling that showed a majority of its members supported former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s the first time in nearly three decades that the union has not endorsed a presidential candidate . “ Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business ,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries – and to honor our members’ right to strike – but were unable to secure those pledges.” Ahead of the decision, the Teamsters shared internal data showing that a majority of members supported Trump over Harris. According to an electronic member poll that was initiated ...

If the fact that Matt Damon promoted cryptocurrency years ago in a SuperBowl commercial wasn't an indicator of it's true nature, t hen this Substack article from Golden Monarch should add more substance to the argument.

 

 

Voting is both a right and a choice. If you don't decide to participate, that's OK; don't be shamed into supporting someone you don't agree with. If you choose to vote, why not give it meaning by voting for someone as opposed to against someone else? 

First: yes, people still use pagers. Second: pagers can apparently be used as bombs : A company based in Hungary was responsible for manufacturing the pagers that exploded in an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah, another firm said Wednesday. The attack marked a new escalation in the conflict between the two foes that has often threatened to escalate into all-out war. Pagers used by the militant group Hezbollah exploded nearly simultaneously a day earlier in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people, including two children, and wounding around 2,800. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel. An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the attack, in which small amounts of explosive hidden in the pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly. The sophisticated apparently remote attack renewed fears that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza could...

 

 George Galloway and Scott Ritter talk about the scenarios that could lead to the end of things as we know it:

 So much so, the Democrats of 2024 has essentially become the Republicans of 2001 in order to frame him as the Boogey Man.

 

 

Between whistleblowers showing up dead and members being lost in space , I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner : Boeing bosses are staring down the barrel. The twists and turns of the past week paint a picture of managers badly wrong-footed by the depth of fury among workers who tossed out a 25% pay increase deal and launched strike action. "They probably didn't think that we had enough people for the strike," Kushal Varma, a Boeing mechanic, told Reuters. "But this is a movement of people who are willing to put their livelihoods on the line to get what's fair." With little time to regroup, and pressure mounting, management enters a fresh week of talks to contain the crisis at the $97 billion U.S. aerospace champion.  A week ago, Boeing executives believed they'd done enough to secure the pay deal with around 33,000 workers in Washington state, the heart of the company's global manufacturing operations, according to two people directly i...

  Selling weapons to a country hellbent on starting WWIII didn't invoke anger. Neither was betraying unions. Not fighting for (let alone just implementing) universal healthcare during a pandemic was met with yawns. Fracking is fine. Selling weapons to another country to use for a genocide? "Well, the victims  may be People of Color, but..." So what upsets the Guardians of American Race Relations, Breakfast Club Branch? Jill Stein rightfully calling Angela Rye's attacks "the talking points" of imperialism and white supremacy .  To be fair, the real source of their ire is the inroads the Green Party is making with Muslim Americans, in particular those who support Palestinians. The Democratic Party was so confident that Harris could win on a combination of Obama/Clinton cliff notes and "fear of Trump" that they ignored Palestinian voice at the 2024 Democratic Convention (a convention, mind you, that basically skipped the whole "our nominee should...

 

 Well, it depends:

 

 

 The China Report (via BreakThrough News) discusses this question:

Quite heartbreaking : A few years ago, Dr. Steven Rogers, a physician in the emergency department at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, started a new initiative. He wanted to screen every child age 10 and up who passed through the department for suicide risk. That’s around 15,000 kids a year.  “There’s lots of stigma around this question,” Rogers said. “I’d rather be able to identify kids who are low risk and need help versus when they’re an imminent risk or have already made an attempt.”   In Connecticut, 11 children have died by suicide so far this year, nine of those in the past few months. To put that in perspective, just six children 17 and younger died by suicide in all of 2023.  “I hope this isn’t a canary in the coal mine,” said Gov. Ned Lamont in late August at a roundtable event on youth suicide.  There were no clusters of deaths, according to the Office of the Child Advocate, and deaths were distributed across the state, as well as among races and...

 Well, Lee Camp explains what it is, and why it's important:

 

From CNN : Twenty-three years after the deadliest attack on US soil in its history, the mantra “Never Forget” endures in the American consciousness as a solemn reminder of that day. For the thousands of families who believe key facts have been withheld around the attack that stole their loved ones, it’s a phrase not so much uttered but lived. Now, as survivors and the victims’ families commemorate another anniversary, they await a federal judge’s pivotal decision in their yearslong legal battle with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over their claim of KSA’s role in backing an extremist support network that assisted the hijackers in the US leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The Kingdom denies the allegations. For Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, a coalition of victims’ families and survivors pursuing transparency, Never Forget is a constant reminder to push for the truth about the tragedy that led to the death o...

 

 

 

See if you can spot the difference: Bonus - Due Dissidence has a similar take on a related case:

  Johnstone is correct about the size of "the machine" being too big to be challenged by any one person and that too many people, while frustrated, are still invested in the system to really want to fight back. I'd add what Chris Hedges once said: it will also require a significant amount of the military/police element to join a revolution (i.e., they need to recognize that they have more in common with the working class than the elites they have been hired to protect from the working class). 

 When reporters are "terrorists" but people who shoot up schools are merely "lone wolves," something's very wrong:

 

Yesterday's "winner" of the first (and possible only) US Presidential Debate between former President (Republican) Donald Trump and current Vice President (Democrat) Kamala Harris isn't an indicator of who will win the White House. The rank-and-file voters and supporters of both parties will not be swayed by any gaffes, misspoken words, baseless claims or outright lies or their chosen candidate, and those put forth by their "enemy" will only serve to reaffirm their ire. As someone who has seen (and was very well immersed) in this type of political spectacle over 20 years ago (back when GW Bush and Dick Cheney -the later who endorsed Harris recently- were the "Trumps" of their day) this debate was nothing new. Neither candidate specified their stance on the issues, spending more time attacking the other than promoting the self. Anyone looking for details left disappointed. Nevertheless, if you wanted a few chuckles, the debate was fairly entertainin...

 "Centrists will opt for fascism to keep the left out."

From one of cinema's greatest villain to one of animation's most beloved father figures , Jones has a talent that moved many. He was  93.

 George Galloway talks about the revelation of this ABC News (Australia) story :

 

 

 Kshama Sawant and Due Dissidence talk about this, a General Strike and more:

  There has been a long history of Black Americans (especially on the left) supporting the rights of oppressed people worldwide. Labeling them as "pro-Putin" is merely a distraction for their work. 

 Al Jazeera has a video on the question:

 Sadly, no:

Self-described conservative Liz Cheney endorses Kamala Harris for president . 

 

 According to Mint Press News, the founder of Blackwater has his eyes on Venezuela . 

 

 George Galloway talks to novelist Shereen Malherbe about what going on in the other open-air prison:

  Via NBC News : A 60-year-old Arizona Wells Fargo employee scanned into her office on a Friday on what appeared to be an ordinary workday. Then, four days later, she was found dead in her cubicle. Denise Prudhomme, 60, was found dead on Aug. 20 in her office in Tempe, police said. She had last scanned in the building at 7 a.m. on Aug. 16, a Friday, and there was no further scan in or out of the office, authorities said. Tempe police responded to the Wells Fargo office in the 1100 block of West Washington Street after on-site security called about an employee they believed to be dead. She was pronounced dead at 4:55 p.m., police said. The cause of death is pending determination by the Maricopa County medical examiner. Police said the preliminary investigation showed no obvious signs of foul play. The investigation continues. It's not clear how Prudhomme had gone unnoticed for so long. NBC affiliate KPNX of Phoenix reported that she worked in a cubicle on the third floor, away from ...

 Caitlin Johnstone gives a answer:

 Probably not. Here's why:

 

 Allow Prof. Wolff to explain:

First the story of the bodies (vi Al Jazeera): Israel’s military has announced that its troops have recovered the bodies of six captives, including a dual US national, from a tunnel in southern Gaza, as it continued its 11-month long, deadly assault on the Palestinian enclave. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched war on Gaza on October 7 following an attack led by Palestinian group Hamas that left more than 1,100 people dead. The Palestinian fighters took about 250 captives in the wake of the attack. The coastal enclave has since been turned into rubble amid non-stop bombardment as Israel has been accused of stalling a ceasefire deal to free the captives. The military said on Sunday that their remains were recovered “from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” and returned to Israel where they were formally identified. It claimed that the captives were killed not long before their bodies were recovered. The captives were identified as Almog Sarusi, Al...