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“A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!”

-- Leon Trotsky

News and Opinion

Varoufakis Says Only Ending Europe's Support for Israeli Apartheid Will Stop Bloodshed

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis—who heads the leftist Democracy in Europe Movement 2025—on Tuesday blamed Europe for complicity in Israel's "crimes against humanity" in Palestine, while asserting that the only way to achieve peace is by ending Israeli apartheid against Palestinians.

"Those who try very hard to extract from people like me... a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas guerrillas will never get it," Varoufakis told red in an interview explaining why he refuses to denounce the surprise weekend infiltration attack by Gaza-based militants that killed at least 900 Israelis.

Varoufakis continued:

And they will never get it for a very simple reason. Those who care about humans without any discrimination; those who care equally about a Jew and an Arab, must ask themselves a very simple question: What exactly is their idea of a cessation of hostilities? That the Palestinians are going to lay down their arms and go back into the largest open-air prison in the world, where they are constantly suffocated by the apartheid state?

"Any human being living under apartheid at some point will either die a terrible silent death or rebel and take some innocent people with them," Varoufakis said.

.@yanisvaroufakis told red. media “those who try very hard to extract a condemnation of the attack by Hamas” from him or his movement @DiEM_25 will “never get it”. Varoufakis said, “the criminals here are not Hamas…the criminals are Europeans” for remaining silent “as long as… pic.twitter.com/6bZjzHLGMa

— red. (@redstreamnet) October 8, 2023

Addressing European complicity in Israeli apartheid, Varoufakis asserted that "the criminals here are not Hamas. Not even the Israeli settlers who are killing Palestinians. The criminals are Europeans. Us."

"We have participated in this crime against humanity over the decades by keeping our mouths shut," he added. "As long as people are dying outside the reach of cameras, as long as it's Palestinians who die and not the occupiers."

Varoufakis urged Europe to "wake up and redeem ourselves" by working for the "destruction of the state of apartheid."

While Palestinians and international figures including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, United Nations officials, and South African anti-apartheid activists have for decades called Israel's policies and practices in Palestine apartheid, major Western human rights organizations—including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli groups Yesh Din and B'Tselem—have only recently begun to do so, as have a growing number of U.S. congressional Democrats.

Apartheid is an abomination. Desmond Tutu, a hero of the anti-Apartheid movement in its place of origin, understood it. Will those who claim to respect Tutu and Mandela follow suit? Or will they continue to defend Apartheid's continued, strengthened variant in Israel-Palestine? pic.twitter.com/pq6D7hobWC

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) October 10, 2023

So have prominent Israelis including former Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, former Deputy Attorney General Yehudit Karp, and former ambassadors to South Africa Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch, as well as journalists, artists, veterans, and others.

Underscoring Varoufakis' remarks, Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) posted on social media that "only one thing can put a stop to the tragic cycle of violence suffered by innocent Palestians and Israelis: the end of the Europe-supported Israeli apartheid."

Varoufakis' commentary came as Israeli forces continued a massive retaliatory assault on Gaza by air, land, and sea, killing at least 830 Palestinians, including at least 140 children, while wounding more than 4,000 others. Israeli air and artillery strikes have hit civilian targets including apartment buildings, medical facilities and workers, schools, mosques, and the Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza's largest.

As was the case in previous Israeli attacks on Gaza, entire families have been killed. Speaking Tuesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari declared that "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday announced a "complete siege" of Gaza, saying Israel would block food and fuel from entering the territory of 2.3 million people—half of them children—and cut off its water and electricity, actions experts say likely amount to war crimes.

Given the hundreds of Israelis killed, the high death tolls in previous IDF assaults on Gaza, and Israel's unofficial "hundred eyes for an eye" policy, many observers fear thousands of Palestinians could be killed in the coming days and weeks.

No electricity, no food, no fuel for 1 million children. Straight from the horse's mouth. That can't be the civilised world's answer, whatever differences we may have on who did what to whom first or last. https://t.co/UM0xsRJJhs

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) October 9, 2023

Far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will exact a "mighty vengeance" for the weekend attacks, while Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that it is "time to be cruel" and parliamentarian Ariel Kallner has called for a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48," a reference to the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-48.

"I witnessed the wars of 2008, 2014, and 2021, but this is something unique in terms of the intensity... entire families have been killed," Nidal Hamdouna, a humanitarian worker with Norwegian-Danish group Church Aid, toldThe Guardian on Tuesday. "The concern is to what extent civilians are protected, but also how to find a safe place, even though there is no safe place to go to."

Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy: Israel Should Lift Siege & Call Off Plan for Ground Invasion of Gaza

Netanyahu Tells Biden ‘We Have to Go’ Into Gaza, Rules Out Negotiations

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Biden in a phone call on Sunday that Israel had to launch a ground invasion into the besieged Gaza Strip and ruled out the idea of negotiations, Axios reported on Monday.

“We have to go in. We can’t negotiate now,” Netanyahu told Biden, according to US and Israeli sources. On the same day, US officials told the media that they expected Israel to launch an invasion within 48 hours.

The report said President Biden did not press Netanyahu or try to convince him not to go through with the ground incursion as the US has shown no interest in calling for de-escalation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deleted a tweet where he said he was “encouraging” Turkish efforts to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Mustafa Barghouti: Israel's Siege & Bombing of Gaza Are War Crimes. Is Ethnic Cleansing Next?

Who is responsible for the violence in Israel and Gaza?

The governments and media of all the imperialist countries have been mobilized for a massive propaganda operation to poison public opinion about the ongoing popular uprising against the Israeli occupation in Gaza and to justify the retaliatory decimation of Palestinians being prepared by Israel’s far-right regime. The tone was set by US President Joe Biden, who declared Saturday following a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his “support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering,” condemning the “appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza.” This was followed by what amounted to a roll call of the entire cast of characters that constitute the American political establishment, who lined up over the weekend to make appearances and issue statements denouncing “terrorists” and the “attack on Israel,” while expressing their “horror” and “outrage” at reports of deaths among Israeli civilians.

Similar scenes played out in all the imperialist capitals, with Israel’s national flag being projected onto public monuments. Any equivocation or wavering from this line was swiftly labeled as “antisemitism” or tantamount to “supporting terrorism.”

There is no denying that, particularly in the opening hours of the breakout from Gaza, there have been significant casualties among Israeli civilians, many of whom doubtless bore no individual responsibility for the oppression of Palestinians. There is an element of tragedy in the fates of many such people, who simply found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fighters from Gaza, hardened by a lifetime of atrocities under Israeli occupation and accepting that they would not return to Gaza alive, exacted their revenge on the first Israelis they found, including those who had staged a dance party on the outskirts of what amounts to a concentration camp. But the question must be posed: Who bears ultimate responsibility for their deaths? Blame for these tragedies must be assigned where it belongs: In the first instance to the criminal Israeli apartheid regime and its US backers, together with the whole reactionary Zionist project of establishing an exclusivist Jewish state by expelling Palestinians and confining them to a constantly shrinking set of open-air prisons and ghettos.

The unanimous denunciations of the “terrorism” and “violence” of the uprising by the imperialist powers are hypocritical in the extreme. No official expressions of “horror” and “outrage” on a remotely similar scale have ever been made on behalf of the far more numerous victims of violence and terror among the Palestinians. While Biden’s speechwriters offered his “prayers” Saturday for “all of the families who have been hurt by this violence,” Biden is a war criminal himself and no stranger to violence. In 2003, he voted in the Senate for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, which resulted in over a million deaths.

Contrary to the upside-down official picture of events, according to which the Palestinians are the aggressors and the state of Israel is the victim, the oppression of the Palestinian masses by imperialism is an entirely one-sided conflict, in which for three-quarters of a century the Israeli government—armed to the teeth by the imperialist powers—has brutally put down all resistance. In the three-week 2008–09 aerial bombardment of Gaza, for example, which killed hundreds of people, Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli casualties by a ratio of 100 to 1.

Palestinians in the West Bank have been reduced to living in hundreds of separate ghettos surrounded by hundreds more Israeli military checkpoints, while Gaza itself has been transformed into one giant open-air prison: the Gaza Strip, only a handful of miles wide and 25 miles long. At the mercy of the Israeli government for every necessity, more than 2 million Palestinians are confined in this open-air prison in some of the most densely populated and desperate conditions on earth. In this context, the uprising in Gaza that broke out over the weekend is more akin to a prison break than an “attack” and only the latest chapter in a long saga.

Israel-Gaza War: The Urgent Need for Rational—Not Emotional—Responses

Pentagon Offers Israel Support for Extracting Hostages from Gaza

The US military has offered Israel assistance in extracting hostages that Hamas has taken into Gaza, Pentagon officials told the media on Tuesday.

According to Task & Purpose, the US offer includes help planning and intelligence support, not US troops on the ground involved in the operation. CNN first reported the offer and said the support would also include surveillance and reconnaissance.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made the offer to his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in a conversation over the weekend. On Monday, Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, which has been under blockade since 2007. Gallant said Israel was fighting “human animals” in Gaza, which is populated by about 1 million children.

IDF's LEVELING Of Gaza Funded By US TAXPAYERS, Only HELPING Hamas' Cause

‘Emphasis is on damage, not accuracy’: ground offensive into Gaza seems imminent

Road 232, an Israeli highway, runs parallel to the blockaded Gaza Strip. It is surrounded by flat agricultural land in every direction, and from it the higher floors of the overcrowded enclave’s high rise buildings are clearly visible, about 3 miles (5km) away. Now, the route appears to have become the new de facto boundary between territory controlled by Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that launched a devastating surprise sea, land and air offensive on 20 neighbouring kibbutzim and Israeli towns last weekend. They slaughtered more than 1,000 people, and abducted dozens more to be used as bargaining chips. More than 900 people in Gaza have been killed in retaliatory Israeli airstrikes.

It is not just a new border: it is a new frontline. Early on Tuesday, four days into the fifth round of war since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that Israel’s perimeter with the strip had finally been secured – but by midmorning, that was no longer the case. The boom and crump of airstrikes and artillery, along with the rattle of automatic gunfire, echoed across the empty fields; a convoy of Israeli tanks roared past, sending soil and dust metres up into the air. Two military helicopters hovered overhead and jumpy soldiers at checkpoints bristled at every distant movement. Huge plumes of black smoke rose above Gaza. ...

On Monday night, Israelis were told by the Home Front to prepare a safe place to shelter and enough food, water and other supplies to last 72 hours – a clear sign that a ground offensive into Gaza is imminent. The move will undoubtedly claim many more Palestinian and Israeli lives. Speaking on Tuesday morning, IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari made the startling admission that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had already been dropped on the tiny strip, adding that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”.

The question now is whether the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will continue with his promise to “flatten” the enclave, home to 2.3 million trapped civilians, or re-occupy it. Israel pulled out occupying ground forces from Gaza in 2005. The strip was taken over by Hamas during the Palestinian civil war with the secular Fatah party two years after that, leading Israel and Egypt to besiege it, and there have now been five wars and several smaller escalations between Israel and Gaza’s fighting factions since.

There are also growing signs that the fighting on the Gaza front will drag in other actors and theatres. Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said on Tuesday that his ministry would be providing 10,000 rifles to civilian security teams in border towns, as well as mixed Jewish-Arab cities and Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where over the last 18 months tensions have reached their highest levels for 20 years. To Israel’s north, the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, has threatened to join the fray if a ground invasion of Gaza is launched. The group has already claimed responsibility for rocket fire into Israel, and deadly clashes have erupted on the border.

“Hamas’ Weapons Are Coming From RUSSIA!” – U.S. Liberals

More than 900 dead in Gaza since Saturday as shelling hits school, hospitals and homes

Frightened residents of Gaza have described bombardments striking residential buildings, hospitals and schools across the enclave amid growing concern over destruction of civilian infrastructure as Israel pledges to enforce a full siege. Palestinian health officials said more than 900 people have been killed, with 4,250 wounded since Saturday.

Nidal Hamdouna, a humanitarian worker with Norwegian-Danish organisation Church Aid, said: “I believe this is the most serious escalation I will face. I was born here in Gaza, I witnessed the previous escalations. “The situation we are facing involves intensive airstrikes and shelling targeting different locations across the Gaza Strip, including my neighbourhood,” he said, speaking from the northern edge of Gaza City. “The issue is that there is no safe place to go to in Gaza right now.”

“I witnessed the wars of 2008, 2014 and 2021, but this is something unique in terms of the intensity … entire families have been killed. The concern is to what extent civilians are protected, but also how to find a safe place, even though there is no safe place to go to.”

The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) has said that more than 200,000 people have been displaced in Gaza, with that number expected to rise. Airstrikes levelled 790 housing units, it said, and severely damaged 5,330.

Over 2,000 KILLED As Biden ENDORSES Israel Attacks On Gaza

Biden’s Israel-Ukraine Plan FORCES Americans To Foot The Bill For FOREVER WARS?!

Israeli Human Rights Group Denounces Netanyahu's 'Criminal Policy of Revenge'

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem on Tuesday condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials in Israel for implementing a "criminal policy of revenge" in the wake of Hamas' deadly attack, making a dire humanitarian situation worse by intensifying the unlawful blockade of Gaza and bombing civilian areas of the occupied enclave.

The group said in a statement that Netanyahu's call for Gazans to "get out now" ahead of Israel's relentless bombing campaign was a "farce," given that the Gaza Strip is "closed off on all sides and the residents have no way out."

"There are no shelters and no way to seek cover from airstrikes," B'Tselem said. "Among the people killed, some of them still trapped under debris, are entire families wiped out in a single bombardment—including at least 140 minors and 105 women. The death toll is rising by the minute."

"The order to prefer damage over precision has also been carried out. Hundreds of homes already lie in ruins, including residential towers reduced to rubble and houses that collapsed on top of the inhabitants," the group continued. "More than 180,000 people have been internally displaced. Roads and public buildings, including schools and medical clinics, have been damaged by airstrikes. Hospitals are functioning only partially—some were damaged by bombing, and all are severely lacking medical equipment and fuel for electric generators."

B'Tselem's latest statement comes a day after it denounced Hamas' massacre of Israeli civilians as a "shocking crime whose horrifying dimensions are slowly becoming clear." On Tuesday, the group said that "even in the face of horror and terror—intentionally harming civilians, their property and civilian infrastructure is always prohibited."

The new statement describes Israeli's massive wave of airstrikes and its total blockade of the Gaza Strip—which is home to 2.3 million people, roughly half of whom are children—as "war crimes openly ordered by top Israeli officials."

More than 800 people, including more than 140 children, have been killed and over 4,200 have been injured in Gaza since Israel began bombing on Saturday, the day Hamas gunmen crossed into Israel and killed hundreds of people. Netanyahu pledged in response to turn the places Hamas "hides and operates" into "cities of ruin."

In addition to its aerial bombardment of Gaza, Israel is preparing for a "monthslong ground campaign in Gaza," TheTimes of Israel reported on Tuesday. A major invasion is expected to push the already devastating death toll even higher.

B'Tselem said Tuesday that "one crime does not justify another, nor does one kind of injustice justify another."

"Acts of revenge are prohibited by basic moral principles and by the provisions of international law that Israel is obliged to uphold," the group added. "Contrary to what Israeli ministers are implying, this policy is not new, but has been implemented towards Gaza for many years. The death, destruction, pain, and horror it has wrought have led to nothing but more horror. It is time to demand a different reality—a new future for all those who live here."

Extremist Politics in Israel and Ukraine - Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

Zelenskiy pledged not to attack nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia, says IAEA chief

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy has promised him that Ukraine will not attack Europe’s biggest nuclear plant as part of its counteroffensive against Russia. In an interview with the Guardian, the nuclear watchdog chief said he was most concerned about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant becoming engulfed in fighting between the two sides, but insisted he had obtained a commitment from the Ukrainian president.

“President Zelenskiy has personally assured me that they will not directly bomb or shell it,” Grossi said, although he added that Zelenskiy had told him “all other options are on the table” in terms of taking it back. ...

Grossi said he was particularly concerned by “a number of fragile points apart from the reactors themselves”, including “the spent fuel area which is not fortified” as well as other storage areas holding fresh nuclear fuel. “The fresh fuel halls, let me remind you, were hit in August 2022,” he added, describing the aftermath of an attack that left holes visible to satellite imagery on the roof of the power station’s key facility.

A few days later, Grossi crossed the frontlines to pay one of three personal visits since the start of the war to the nuclear plant, where he said he saw the damage caused by the attack where “a few metres down, you have the racks containing the fresh fuel”. Though the damage was likely to have come after a Ukrainian attack, Grossi said he would not say who was responsible. “I don’t have a forensic capacity [to determine who was responsible],” he said. “The Russians would certainly say that [the Ukrainians did it].”

Californians will be able to delete all personal online data with first-in-US law

In a victory for privacy advocates and consumers, the California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that would enable residents to request that their personal information be deleted from the coffers of all the data brokers in the state.

The bill, SB 362, otherwise known as the Delete Act, was introduced in April 2023 by the state senator Josh Becker in an attempt to give Californians more control over their privacy. Californians already have a right to request their data be deleted under current state privacy laws, but it requires filing a request with each individual company.

The new bill reinforces that all data brokers must register with the California privacy protection agency, and it requires the CPPA to establish an easy and free way for Californians to request that all data brokers in the state delete their data through a single page, regardless of how they acquired that information. If data brokers don’t comply with these rules, the bill stipulates they be fined or otherwise penalized.

California becomes first state to ban use of ‘excited delirium’ as cause of death

California has become the first state to ban the use of “excited delirium” as a cause of death, prohibiting the pseudoscientific diagnosis that authorities have frequently cited to justify killings at the hands of law enforcement.

Excited delirium – a term rejected by major medical groups, including the American Medical Association – suggests that people can develop “superhuman strength” due to drug use. Medical examiners and coroners have argued that the condition caused victims of brutal police force to struggle and collapse from cardiac arrest, essentially excusing the role of officers who were holding them down, choking or suffocating them.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Sunday prohibiting the term from being recognized as valid diagnosis or cause of death. The bill comes as a national emergency physicians’ group is also considering disavowing the term.

Steve Scalise DEFEATS Jim Jordan In GOP Speaker's Race

​​'DESPICABLE': Obama Bros UNLEASH On RFK Jr, Cornel West's Challenges To Biden

More charges for George Santos: stealing donors’ identities and credit cards

Federal prosecutors added major allegations to the indictment charging the House Republican George Santos with fraud and lying about his campaign finance disclosures, presenting evidence that he stole donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards without their knowledge.

The new charges, revealed in a superseding indictment returned on Tuesday by a grand jury in New York, increases the legal peril for the embattled congressman, given that his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, last week pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States.

The original indictment filed in May accused Santos of engaging in multiple instances of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements. Santos, who won his congressional seat through a campaign built partly on falsehoods, pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The updated, 23-count indictment detailed two more fraudulent schemes: the credit card scheme, and a conspiracy to submit to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) false reports that inflated his campaign’s fundraising so it could deceive the Republican party into extending financial support.

Human emissions made deadly South American heat 100 times more likely

The deadly heat in central South America over the past two months was made 100 times more likely by human emissions that disrupted the climate, scientists have shown.

Temperatures have exceeded 40C in late winter and early spring in the southern hemisphere, affecting millions and leading to heat-related deaths. This year’s El Niño has been partly to blame, but a rapid study by researchers at World Weather Attribution revealed the human-made climate crisis was by far the main cause of the unseasonable warmth.

The study examined the 10 consecutive hottest days in August and September over a region encompassing Paraguay, central Brazil and parts of Bolivia and Argentina, where heatwave warnings were issued.

Using a statistical analysis of historical trends, on-the-ground data and computer models, it found temperatures in this period were elevated by between 1.4C and 4.3C as a result of human heating of the climate.

In the past, such temperatures would have been almost impossible, but they are predicted to occur every 30 years. If global heating rises to 2C above pre-industrial levels, similar heatwaves will be expected every five or six years. The world has now heated by about 1.2C.

Indigenous Amazonians urge Brazil to declare emergency over severe drought

Indigenous people in the Amazon are calling on the Brazilian government to declare a climate emergency as their villages have no drinking water, food or medicine due to a severe drought that is drying up rivers vital for travel in the rainforest.

The drought and heatwave has killed masses of fish in the rivers that Indigenous people live off and the water in the muddy streams and tributaries of the Amazon river has become undrinkable, the umbrella organization Apiam that represents 63 tribes in the Amazon said on Tuesday.

“We ask the government to declare a climate emergency to urgently address the vulnerability Indigenous peoples are exposed to,” Apiam urged in a statement released at a news conference.

The Rio Negro, Solimoes, Madeira, Jurua and Purus rivers are drying up at a record pace, and forest fires are destroying the rainforest in new areas in the lower Amazon reaches, Apiam said in a statement.

Environment minister Marina Silva said last month the government was preparing a taskforce to provide emergency assistance to the Amazon region hit by the drought. It has sent tens of thousands of food parcels to communities isolated by the lack of river transport. The region is under pressure from the El Niño weather phenomenon, with the volume of rainfall in the northern Amazon below the historical average.

Climate crisis will make Europe’s beer cost more and taste worse, say scientists

Climate breakdown is already changing the taste and quality of beer, scientists have warned. The quantity and quality of hops, a key ingredient in most beers, is being affected by global heating, according to a study. As a result, beer may become more expensive and manufacturers will have to adapt their brewing methods.

Researchers forecast that hop yields in European growing regions will fall by 4-18% by 2050 if farmers do not adapt to hotter and drier weather, while the content of alpha acids in the hops, which gives beers their distinctive taste and smell, will fall by 20-31%.

“Beer drinkers will definitely see the climate change, either in the price tag or the quality,” said Miroslav Trnka, a scientist at the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. “That seems to be inevitable from our data.”

Beer, the third-most popular drink in the world after water and tea, is made by fermenting malted grains like barley with yeast. It is usually flavoured with aromatic hops grown mostly in the middle latitudes that are sensitive to changes in light, heat and water. In recent years, demand for high-quality hops has been pushed up by a boom in craft beers with stronger flavours. But emissions of planet-heating gases are putting the plant at risk, the study found.

The researchers compared the average annual yield of aroma hops during the periods 1971-1994 and 1995-2018 and found “a significant production decrease” of 0.13-0.27 tons per hectare. Celje, in Slovenia, had the greatest fall in average annual hop yield, at 19.4%. In Germany, the second-biggest hop producer in the world, average hop yields have fallen 19.1% in Spalt, 13.7% in Hallertau, and 9.5% in Tettnang, the study found. ... The study found the alpha acid content of hops, which give beer its distinct aroma, had fallen in all regions.

Also of Interest

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

Israelis Made to Suffer the Cruel Price for Oppression of Palestinians in Gaza

Israel Confesses War Crime

This Is Exactly What It Looks Like

Turkey's Erdogan Says U.S. Sending Aircraft Carrier Closer to Israel to Commit Massacre in Gaza

ICC Prosecutor Says Mandate Applies to Current Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Elijah Magnier on Gaza War Risks for Israel

Author Arundhati Roy may face prosecution in India over 2010 speech

McDonald’s and Chuck E Cheese tied to alleged foreign worker exploitation

Nearly Half of Flowering Plant Species Face Threat of Extinction

Lindsey Graham DEMANDS WAR With Iran

French left-wing party stands ground after claims of antisemitism

Egypt moves to prevent exodus of Palestinians from besieged Gaza

Russia Has The Solution To Gaza Crisis! – Norman Finkelstein

Pro-Israel demonstrators call for genocide in New York City

IDF: Beheaded Babies Among Israeli Dead, Soldiers Report. Claim NOT Independently Confirmed

A Little Night Music

Little Smokey Smother - Live At Chicago Blues Festival Pt 2

Little Smokey Smothers - 43rd Street Blues

Little Smokey Smothers & Elvin Bishop - Roll Your Moneymaker

Little Smokey Smothers - Tribute To Earl Hooker

Little Smokey Smothers & Elvin Bishop - Middle Aged Man

Little Smokey Smothers - Soft Winds

Little Smokey Smothers - Why Are You So Mean To Me

Little Smokey Smothers - All Your Love

Little Smokey Smothers & Elvin Bishop - Little Red Rooster