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News and Opinion

Israeli Intelligence Suddenly Knows Exactly Where Hamas Is

t’s interesting how last week Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to, and yet this week they know every mosque, school and hospital that Hamas is hiding in.

When you live under an empire of lies you’ll be asked to believe a lot of very stupid things. The dumbest thing we’re being asked to believe this week is that Israel’s intelligence services are simultaneously so incompetent that Saturday’s Hamas attack took them completely by surprise, but also so competent that all the buildings they’re destroying with their relentless bombing campaign on Gaza are directed solely at Hamas.

The phrase “Hamas targets” has been all over the news media the last few days in reference to the ongoing attacks on Gaza, which have as of this writing killed over 1,500 Palestinians, a third of them children. 

“Israel conducts large-scale strikes on Hamas targets,” reads a CNN headline.

“Israel conducts ‘large-scale strike’ on Hamas targets,” reads the title of a segment for ABC News.

“Israel says it dropped 6,000 bombs so far against Hamas targets,” reads a report by The Washington Post.

Gosh, Israel must have really great visibility into Gaza to know that each of those 6,000 bombs was aimed “Hamas targets” and not just civilian buildings.

Where was this 20/20 vision when Hamas was preparing for an attack using motorized paragliders, drones and motorboats in an enclosed strip of land the size of Philadelphia? How did Israeli intelligence fail to detect preparations for this attack even after Egyptian intelligence warned them that it was coming? How did they fail so spectacularly that even Hamas was reportedly surprised by the scale of their operation’s success? Is it really reasonable to believe they were blind as moles to Hamas activity last week but have the eye of the eagle this week?

Why would Israel take Biden's talking points about Israel acting within international law seriously, when there's little to suggest that Biden took his own comments seriously?

Israel not listening to U.S. plea to minimize civilian harmhttps://t.co/XZGSfS1tci via @politico

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) October 12, 2023

President Biden made some noises on Wednesday about how important it is that Israel “operate by the rules of war”, which sounded like empty cover-your-ass narrative fluff even before we heard US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan dismiss any notion of “red lines” that Israel must not cross in Gaza.

Not even mainstream empire apologists are buying it. Politico’s Andrew Ward, in an article sponsored by Lockheed Martin in which he writes that “Israel’s ferocious counterattack is easy to understand” given the severity of the Hamas attack, writes that “The Biden administration wants Israel to abide by the laws of war as it responds to Hamas’ barbaric attack, but Jerusalem doesn’t appear to be listening.”

“A flood of reports challenges Israel’s claims that it’s exercising caution,” Ward writes. “Mosques, hospitals and schools have been hit with airstrikes, as have healthcare facilities and ambulances.”

“Gazans, many of whom don’t support Hamas or its tactics, have nowhere to flee as the strip is under siege,” ads Ward. “Shrapnel has flown into seven hospitals and 10 U.N. emergency shelters. The situation has gotten so bad that the Red Cross said hospitals, already low on electricity, water and supplies, risk turning into morgues.”

"Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents... There will be no buildings," an Israeli security official tells Israel's Channel 13. https://t.co/FnOX3q28XG

— Ishaan Tharoor (@ishaantharoor) October 10, 2023

Of course Israel isn’t abiding by the rules of war. They’re not even pretending to. Human Rights Watch has just issued a statement decrying Israel’s “unlawfully indiscriminate” use of white phosphorus in Gaza and in Lebanon, and an Israeli security official told the Israeli press that the IDF’s plan is to turn Gaza into “a city of tents” with “no buildings”. 

This is all publicly available information, yet the western press has the gall to use the phrase “Hamas targets” when describing Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza? I’m sorry, but that’s demented. The only reason to do something like that would be to administer propaganda.

The claim that Israel is targeting Hamas when it destroys buildings in Gaza is further undermined by the fact that Hamas would be taking shelter underground during this bombing campaign. As journalist Sharmine Narwani explained on Twitter, “Hamas cadres live underground in Gaza, which they have learned to do after countless Israeli bombing campaigns. The ONLY people being massacred in Gaza by Israeli terror planes right now are Palestinian civilians and Israeli POWs.”

In reality, both the claims that Israeli intelligence was taken by surprise by the Hamas attack and that Israel is solely targeting Hamas with its Gaza strikes are highly suspect and worthy of intense scrutiny. Israel has never been averse to killing Palestinian civilians, and there’s no reason to feel confident Israeli intelligence didn’t let the attack through in order to justify longstanding agendas like the elimination of Gaza as a Palestinian territory. Both claims can be false, but from where I’m sitting it looks highly unlikely that they’re both true.

If you want to support Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza then go ahead, and if you want to uncritically accept the official narrative about Saturday’s attack then you do you. But don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

Worth watching:

How Western Leaders & Media Are Justifying Israel’s “Genocidal Campaign” Against Palestinians

Israel Accused of 'Blatant War Crime' as HRW Confirms White Phosphorus Used in Gaza

Human Rights Watch on Thursday said it has confirmed reports that Israeli military forces unleashed white phosphorus munitions during artillery attacks on targets in Lebanon and Gaza this week, including over a heavily populated civilian area of the besieged Palestinian strip—an apparent war crime.

HRW said it has interviewed witnesses and verified video footage shot in Lebanon and Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday "showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border."

The HRW announcement came as Israeli forces continue to bombard Gaza from air, land, and sea in an assault that has killed more than 1,500 Palestinians, including at least 500 children, in retaliation for Hamas' surprise infiltration of Israel and killing of over 1,300 Israeli soldiers and civilians.

BREAKING: Israel has used white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, putting civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries.

White phosphorus causes excruciating burns and can set homes afire. Its use in populated areas is unlawful.https://t.co/TbCVA5Qynp pic.twitter.com/4UKANHTwI2

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) October 12, 2023

As HRW explained Thursday:

Upon contact, white phosphorus can burn people, thermally and chemically, down to the bone as it is highly soluble in fat and therefore in human flesh. White phosphorus fragments can exacerbate wounds even after treatment and can enter the bloodstream and cause multiple organ failure. Already dressed wounds can reignite when dressings are removed and the wounds are reexposed to oxygen. Even relatively minor burns are often fatal. For survivors, extensive scarring tightens muscle tissue and creates physical disabilities.

WP burns as hot as 1,500°F. Water does not extinguish it.

"Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering," HRW Middle East and North Africa director Lama Fakih said in a statement. "White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians."

The israeli regime is using internationally-prohibited white phosphorus to bomb Gaza’s Sea Port & cause maximum suffering @OnlinePalEng pic.twitter.com/GuLkWbp52T

— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) October 11, 2023

HRW previously accused Israel of war crimes for using WP munitions in densely populated areas—including over a United Nations school—during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. In response to a 2013 petition to Israel's High Court of Justice filed by human rights groups including HRW, the Israel Defense Forces said it would no longer use WP in populated areas, with "very narrow exceptions" that it would not disclose.

Israel Orders 1.1 Million Palestinians to Evacuate Northern Gaza Amid Bombing & Siege

US to send more arms to Israel before expected Gaza invasion

The US pledged to send more arms to Israel on Thursday ahead of an expected ground assault in Gaza against Hamas, as the UN warned food and water supplies were running dangerously low in the blockaded enclave.

As America’s top diplomat flew into Israel following Saturday’s surprise cross-border assault by Hamas, the UK announced it would send two navy ships and would begin surveillance flights in its own show of support.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, pledged his country’s support for Israel “today, tomorrow, every day”.He told the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on a visit to the region that Israel “may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself but, as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there by your side”. ...

Israel said there would be no humanitarian break to its siege of the Gaza Strip until all hostages held by Hamas were released. The energy minister, Israel Katz, wrote on social media that no “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter” until the “abductees” were free.

The UN considers the tightened siege a war crime, and the 16-year-blockade is illegal under international humanitarian law.

Their Own Paper Of Record ADMITS It’s An Open-Air Prison!

No, It Turns Out, Biden Did Not See Photos of Beheaded Babies

The White House confirmed on Wednesday evening that President Joe Biden’s claim that he had seen photos of Israeli children beheaded by Hamas fighters is false.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” Biden said to leaders of US Jewish organizations at the White House on Wednesday evening.

The president was echoing lurid claims by the Israeli government that women and children had been beheaded by Hamas fighters who took over an Israeli settlement across the boundary from Gaza in recent days.

But the administration quickly backtracked on the president’s seeming confirmation of a story Israel has been using to justify its ongoing mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

As Israel pursues its indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza, it is exploiting unverified claims of atrocities to lay the justification for its campaign of mass destruction and starvation of its 2.3 million people – half of them children – who are cut off from food, water and electricity.

In the absence of a full, independent investigation of what took place since Hamas fighters launched their offensive across the boundary on Saturday, the Israeli military and political leadership have been feeding world leaders and media with shocking claims that have not been independently verified.

The claims that Hamas fighters had beheaded 40 children in the Israeli settlement of Kfar Aza near the Gaza boundary were splashed all over the front pages of British newspapers, Israeli media and circulated widely on social media.

It was amplified by a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who asserted that women, children, toddlers and elderly people were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.”

However even the Israeli army – normally not slow to accuse Palestinians of any crime – refused to confirm the report. ...

Other atrocity stories with no evidence behind them have included claims that Hamas fighters raped several Israeli women. At least one publication, The Los Angeles Times retracted the assertion.

But despite the lack of evidence, as The Intercept noted, Biden in remarks on Tuesday repeated the claims that women had been “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.”

It should be recalled that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, ending and destroying millions of lives, based on lies about “weapons of mass destruction” – lies that then Senator Joe Biden had himself pushed for years.

In an earlier notorious incident used by the United States government to justify its 1991 war to expel Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait, the American public were fed totally fabricated stories of Iraqi troops tossing hundreds of Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. ...

As the latest atrocity stories have spread, Sarah Leah Whitson, the former Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, warned, “unless you’ve got some hard facts (not more allegations) to support gruesome allegations of decapitated babies and mass rape – which [the] Israeli army says it can’t confirm – please take a pause from asserting it has happened.”

“Recall the allegations of mass rape in Libya and Syria all turned out to be false, though that did not stop media from repeating it,” Whitson, who now heads the human rights advocacy group DAWN, added.

BRICS prepare peace plan as Gaza evacuation looms

Poll: Majority of Israelis Blame Government for Hamas Attack

A new poll found that the vast majority of Israelis say the Hamas attack on southern Israel was caused by a failure in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a smaller majority want Netanyahu to resign once the conflict is over.

In the poll released by the Dialog Center, 86% of the people asked, including 79% of supporters of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said the surprise attack from Gaza was a failure of the country’s leadership.

The poll also found that 56% of respondents want Netanyahu to resign at the end of the conflict, and 52% also want to see the resignation of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Biden White House condemns Trump’s ‘dangerous’ Israel-Hamas remarks

Speaking in Florida on Wednesday, Trump, the Republican frontrunner to take on Biden next year, called Hezbollah – a Lebanese group also backed by Iran and supportive of Hamas – “very smart” and the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, “a jerk”.

Around the world, the question of what the Israeli government knew about the attacks in advance continues to be debated and Trump weighed in on the issue and slammed the Israeli government.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had been “hurt very badly”, Trump said, adding: “He was not prepared. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared. And under Trump, they wouldn’t have had to be prepared. You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart.” Israel’s enemies, he said, were “vicious and they’re smart and boy, are they vicious”.

Those comments prompted a stern reaction from the White House. “Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged,” said Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary. “It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organisation as ‘smart’ or have any objection to the United States warning terrorists not to attack Israel.”

“This is a time for all of us to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel against unadulterated evil.”

France & Germany Officially BAN Pro-Palestinian Protests—As Rabid US Neocons Urge US War w/ Iran

Hamas’ attack on Israel prompts South Korea to consider pausing military agreement with North Korea

South Korea’s defense minister said Tuesday he would push to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement in order to resume frontline surveillance on rival North Korea, as the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas militants raised concerns in South Korea about similar assaults by the North.

The agreement, reached during a brief period of diplomacy between South Korea’s former liberal President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, created buffer zones along land and sea boundaries and no-fly zones above the border to prevent clashes.

Talking with reporters in Seoul, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-shik cited the violence in Israel and Gaza to stress the need to strengthen monitoring on the North. Shin was appointed by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday.

Shin was particularly critical of the inter-Korean agreement’s no-fly zones, which he said prevents South Korea from fully utilizing its air surveillance assets at a time when North Korean nuclear threats are growing. ...

While it would take a complicated legal process for South Korea to fully abandon the agreement, pausing the agreement would only require a decision from a Cabinet meeting, Shin said.

Finland says ‘state actor’ not ruled out in mystery of damaged Baltic gas pipeline

Finland has said it cannot exclude the possibility that a “state actor” was behind damage to a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, amid what its national security intelligence service called “significantly deteriorated” relations with Russia. ...

Helsinki confirmed the damage, without specifying any details, on Tuesday after one of the pipeline’s two operators, Finland’s Gasgrid, said it had shut it down after registering a sudden drop in pressure shortly before 2am on Sunday.

“Involvement of a state actor in this job cannot be ruled out,” the director of the security intelligence service (Supo), Antti Pelttari, said on Thursday. “Who is behind this is a matter for the preliminary investigation. We do not comment in more detail.”

The rupture, which came almost exactly a year after a series of explosions burst three of the four Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to western Europe, has prompted renewed concern over regional energy security and pushed up gas prices.

Finnish investigators said on Wednesday that they had found marks on the seabed at the scene of the damage, which they had reason to suspect was caused by “an external force” that “appears to have been mechanical, not an explosion”.

Senator Bob Menendez charged with acting as foreign agent of Egypt

Federal prosecutors on Thursday filed a superseding indictment against the Democratic senator Bob Menendez, charging him with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, a court filing showed. ... The superseding indictment, filed in Manhattan federal court, accuses Menendez of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people to register with the US government if they are acting as “an agent of a foreign principal”. As a member of Congress, Menendez was prohibited from being an agent of a foreign government, even if he did register as one.

The indictment says the conspiracy occurred from January 2018 to June 2022. It alleges that in May 2019, Menendez, his wife and a business associate, Wael Hana, met an Egyptian intelligence official in Menendez’s Senate office in Washington. During the meeting, they allegedly discussed a US citizen who was seriously injured in a 2015 airstrike by the Egyptian military using a US-made Apache helicopter, the indictment says.

Some members of Congress objected to awarding certain military aid to Egypt over that episode and the perception that the Egyptian government was not willing to fairly compensate the injured American, according to the indictment.

Shortly after the meeting in Washington, the Egyptian official texted Hana that if Menendez helped resolve the matter, “he will sit very comfortably”. Hana, the indictment says, replied: “Orders, consider it done.”

Scalise OUT Of Speaker Race, GAETZ Says 'It's Jim Jordan Time', Jeffries FLOATED

Republican hardliner Steve Scalise drops out of House speaker race

The Republican congressman Steve Scalise is ending his bid to become the US House speaker after failing to secure enough votes to win the gavel.

“I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for speaker-designee,” Scalise said as he emerged from the closed-door meeting at the Capitol, where he first informed fellow Republican colleagues of his decision.

Scalise, a hardline conservative representing Louisiana, said the Republican majority “still has to come together and is not there”.

“There are still some people that have their own agendas,” Scalise said. “And I was very clear, we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs.”

Next steps are uncertain as the House is now essentially closed. ... The standoff over the speakership, which was sparked by the hard-right Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, has left congressional business at a standstill, with many Republican lawmakers furious at the degree of division within their party – and how voters are likely to judge them for their inability to govern.

Elijah McClain: one Colorado officer convicted and one acquitted in 2019 killing

A jury has convicted one Colorado police officer and acquitted another for the 2019 homicide of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old whose death at the hands of law enforcement while on a walk home sparked international outrage and years of protests.

A jury found Randy Roedema, an Aurora police department (APD) officer, guilty of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault on Thursday. A second officer, Jason Rosenblatt, was found not guilty of manslaughter and assault. Both had held him on the ground and ignored his cries saying he couldn’t breathe. A third officer, who was the first to approach McClain, is also facing charges and has an upcoming trial.

Convictions of officers are rare in the US, and the verdicts come after McClain’s family and racial justice advocates have been fighting for four years for the officers to be held accountable and for systematic reforms to prevent future killings. ...

It was not immediately clear why the jury, which had been deliberating since Tuesday, had divergent verdicts for the two officers. The state’s indictment specified that Roedema, who was convicted, had grabbed McClain’s bag and thrown it on the ground without examining its contents, which were cans of iced tea; the officer also told investigators that he had “cranked pretty hard” on McClain’s shoulder while twisting his arm, and heard it pop three times. Rosenblatt acknowledged that he had placed McClain in a neck hold, and prosecutors said he had also remained on top of McClain while he couldn’t breathe.

Roedema faces up to four years in prison and will be sentenced in January.

The killing of McClain, an animal lover who had taught himself to play violin, became a symbol of how US police forces criminalize and dehumanize young Black people who pose no threat, rush to use violent and lethal force, and immediately blame victims for their own deaths.

Kushner says Chuck Schumer told family friends ‘Jared’s going to jail’

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, upset Jared Kushner’s mother by telling her friends her son would go to jail over his ties to Russia, Kushner said on Wednesday.

“My poor mom, I told her to stop, you know, reading whatever. I said, ‘I promise you, we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s good,’” Kushner told the Lex Fridman Podcast. “But you know, she’d call me [to] say … ‘Our friends on the Upper East Side were talking with Chuck Schumer, who says Jared’s going to jail.’”

Schumer, the senior senator from New York, was Democratic minority leader in the US Senate during the presidency of Donald Trump, Kushner’s father-in-law and White House boss. Since 2021, Schumer has been majority leader. ...

Trump’s first two years in power were dogged by investigations and speculation over his links to Russia and interference by Moscow in the 2016 US election. Kushner’s interactions with high-placed Russians were placed under the national spotlight.

Texas voting map discriminates against Black and Latino residents, judge rules

A federal judge has struck down a new electoral map in Galveston county, Texas, in an excoriating ruling that berates the Republican commissioners for committing a “stark and jarring” violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Judge Jeffrey Brown of the southern district of Texas found that the redistricting map adopted by Galveston’s Republican commissioners in 2021 amounted to an “egregious” discrimination against the county’s Black and Latino residents. It diluted minority votes and effectively erased the only majority-minority district.

“This is not a typical redistricting case,” the judge wrote in his 157-page ruling. “What happened here was stark and jarring … The enacted plan denies Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect a candidate of their choice.”

Though the battle over the electoral map in Galveston related to a local fight involving the county’s 350,000 residents, it took on national prominence and was being very closely watched across the country. It was the first trial under section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting laws, since the US supreme court affirmed the provision in a critical ruling Allen v Milligan in June.

Human rights experts warn against European crackdown on climate protesters

Human rights experts and campaigners have warned against an intensifying crackdown on climate protests across Europe, as Guardian research found countries across the continent using repressive measures to silence activists. In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK, authorities have responded to climate protests with mass arrests, the passing of draconian new laws, the imposing of severe sentences for non-violent protests and the labelling of activists as hooligans, saboteurs or eco-terrorists.

The crackdowns have come in spite of calls by senior human rights advocates and environmental campaigners to allow civic space for the right to non-violent protest, after a summer of record-breaking heat in southern Europe that is attributed to the effects of climate breakdown.

The UK has led the way in the crackdown, experts say, with judges recently refusing an appeal against multi-year sentences for climate activists who blocked a motorway bridge in east London. The three-year jail terms for Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland earlier this year are thought to be the longest handed out by a British judge for non-violent protest. The ruling came as protesters in the UK try to navigate a new legal environment that includes significant limits on the right to protest, including two wide-ranging new laws passed in the past two years giving police the discretion to ban protests regarded as “disruptive” and criminalising a host of protest tactics.

Michel Forst, the UN rapporteur on environmental defenders since June last year, described the situation in the UK as “terrifying”. He added that other countries were “looking at the UK examples with a view to passing similar laws in their own countries, which will have a devastating effect for Europe”.

“Since my appointment I have been travelling to many countries in Europe and there is a clear trend,” Forst told the Guardian. “We can see an increasing number of cases by which these climate activists are brought to court more and more often and more and more severe laws being passed to facilitate these attacks on defenders.” He added: “I’m sure that there is European cooperation among the police forces against these kinds of activities. My concern is that when [governments] are calling these people eco-terrorists, or are using new forms of vilifications and defamation … it has a huge impact on how the population may perceive them and the cause for which these people are fighting. It is a huge concern for me.”

Deforestation in Bolivia has jumped by 32% in a year. What is going on?

Bolivia’s deforestation has long flown under the radar. That changed when Bolivia reportedly blocked a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 at the Amazon summit in August. But a closer look at the forces driving it leads to an unsettling conclusion: everything points to more, not less, deforestation to come. In 2022, Global Forest Watch placed Bolivia third in the world for primary forest loss, behind Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the third year in a row.

Scaled to population, Bolivia’s deforestation is four times that of Brazil. Even as Brazil’s deforestation falls, Bolivia’s is rising. Its loss rate of primary forest jumped by 32% from 2021 to 2022, according to Global Forest Watch. Most of this is happening in Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s most economically dynamic region, where most of its soya and beef, as well as its sugar cane, corn and sorghum, is produced. Santa Cruz is also home to the Chiquitanía, a dry forest ecosystem that is part of the Amazon watershed. Almost a quarter of it has been deforested since 1985. ...

Soya farming is the most significant driver of deforestation in Bolivia. In 2022, soya and its derivates were Bolivia’s third largest export, generating revenues of more than $2bn. A study by Trase, which analyses supply chains, found that Bolivian soya production was linked to exceptionally high amounts of deforestation compared with neighbouring soya producers Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Anapo, the industry organisation for Bolivia’s soya farmers, denies that the sector is responsible for deforestation, saying that the surface area dedicated to soya farming has barely increased in recent years. But Stasiek Czaplicki, an environmental economist who contributed to the Trase report, says this a sleight of hand. New lands are continually being deforested and sown with soya for a few years, with diminishing yields, until they are given over to another activity, such as low-intensity ranching. So, the overall surface area might not be rising – but the sector is still driving deforestation.

In Bolivia, it is cheaper to buy forest land and turn it into farmland than to invest in existing farmland to improve its productivity and longevity. Moreover, that land will appreciate in value – which hints at the thriving business behind agriculture in Santa Cruz.

Antarctica has lost 7.5tn tonnes of ice since 1997, scientists find

More than 40% of Antarctica’s ice shelves have shrunk since 1997 with almost half showing “no sign of recovery”, a study has found, linking the change to the climate breakdown. Scientists at the University of Leeds have calculated that 67tn tonnes of ice was lost in the west while 59tn tonnes was added to the east between 1997 and 2021, resulting in a net loss of 7.5tn tonnes.

Warm water on the western side of Antarctica has been melting ice, whereas in the east, ice shelves have either stayed the same or grown as the water is colder there.

The ice shelves sit at the end of glaciers and slow their rate of flow into the sea. When they shrink, glaciers release larger amounts of freshwater into the sea which can disrupt the currents of the Southern Ocean.

Dr Benjamin Davison, an expert in Earth observation and the study’s lead, said: “There is a mixed picture of ice-shelf deterioration, and this is to do with the ocean temperature and ocean currents around Antarctica. “The western half is exposed to warm water, which can rapidly erode the ice shelves from below, whereas much of east Antarctica is currently protected from nearby warm water by a band of cold water at the coast.”

Also of Interest

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

People Have A Serious Case Of 9/11 Brain Right Now, And It’s Scary

Israel-Palestine war: Three lies Biden has told since the start of fighting

How a DC Think Tank Helped Cause the Gaza ‘Deluge’

Avoiding Mass Ethnic Cleansing Or Genocide In Gaza

Patrick Lawrence: ‘Innocent Israelis’

Blinken: ‘As long as America Exists,’ It Will Support Israel

US Papers Rally Behind Israeli ‘National Unity’

Parisians Defy France's New Ban on Pro-Palestinian Rights Protests

CIA publicly acknowledges 1953 coup it backed in Iran was undemocratic as it revisits ‘Argo’ rescue

Clowns Of Brussels

‘Our world hangs by a thread’: Indigenous activist asks US agri giant to stop destroying Amazon rainforest

Rudolph Isley, founding member of the Isley Brothers, dies at 84

Former EU Envoy: Israel’s Forced Transfer of Palestinians in Gaza Would Be a War Crime

(Video) DEVASTATING Compilation Of Media Lies About Ukraine

A Little Night Music

Paul Butterfield & Mike Bloomfield - Walking by Myself

Michael Bloomfield - Blues on the West Side

Michael Bloomfield – If You See My Baby

Michael Bloomfield – Bad Man

Michael Bloomfield – I'm a Country Boy

Michael Bloomfield – Let The People Dance

Michael Bloomfield & Taj Mahal - If I Ever Get Lucky

Michael Bloomfield - Little Wing

Michael Bloomfield – Far Too Many Nights

Michael Bloomfield & Al Kooper – Green Onions

Mike Bloomfield – Live At The Old Waldorf