Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist TV Slim. Enjoy!

"Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions."

-- Mark Twain

News and Opinion

Biden Is Everything People Feared Trump Would Be

In an article titled “Joe Biden Risks A Major Middle East War If He Makes The Wrong Choices,” The Huffington Post cites anonymous US officials who fear the careless and chaotic behavior of their commander-in-chief is going to embroil the US in a hot war between Israel and Lebanon.

HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed writes the following:

“American officials say the Biden administration is not doing all it can to reduce tensions, despite public commitments from senior officials to avoid a regional blow-up.

“ ‘I’ve been trying to keep an avalanche from falling on Lebanon and so have a lot of people,’ one official told HuffPost, saying many national security personnel fear unchecked U.S. support for Israel will make it overly confident about expanding operations into Lebanon. ‘The problem is no one can rein in Biden, and if Biden has a policy, he’s the commander-in-chief ― we have to carry it out. That’s what it comes down to, very, very, very unfortunately.’ ”

Listening to the way people on the inside have been talking about Biden’s bull-in-a-China-shop behavior regarding middle east policy lately, one can’t help being reminded of the way the liberal press used to talk about the erratic and irresponsible behavior of Donald Trump when he was in office. The mood and tone feels like when Trump was exchanging verbal hostilities with North Korea in the first year of his term, which comedian John Mulaney famously likened to the disorder and discomfort of having a horse loose in the hospital.

We’re all just standing here praying that this lunatic doesn’t ignite yet another horrific war in the middle east while watching him unapologetically sponsor a genocide in Gaza, and we’re still a ways off from emerging safely from the world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship his administration dragged everyone into with Russia in Ukraine. And it’s hard not to notice that this all sure looks an awful lot like what liberals were terrified would happen when Trump got into office.

The lead-up to Trump winning the 2016 election and taking office was rife with some of the most vitriolic and emotionally intense rhetoric in the history of American politics, featuring frequent fears that Trump would start a nuclear war, that minorities would be fleeing in terror from violent persecution, that he’d be another Hitler and launch another holocaust, that he’d facilitate ethnic persecution and racist attacks.

In the end Trump turned out to be a fairly standard evil Republican president. He sanctioned Venezuelans into starvation, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from the US-backed atrocities of Saudi Arabia, assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, imprisoned Julian Assange, and, despite the incredibly virulent mass delusion that he was a secret agent of Moscow, spent his entire term ramping up cold war hostilities against Russia with extreme aggression.

All of which were monstrous. But none of those crimes rise to the level of single-handedly facilitating a genocide in Gaza or taking the world closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis with his peace-killing efforts in Ukraine.

Biden has turned out to be everything we were warned Trump would be: a genocidal monster fueling racist violence and crimes against humanity while imperiling the world with insanely reckless foreign policy decisions.

None of this is to suggest that Trump would have handled Gaza any differently than Biden, or even that he’d have handled Ukraine any differently. It’s likely that the main reason Biden’s administration has been more warlike than Trump’s is by sheer timing and coincidence; the US empire tends to trudge onward in more or less the same direction regardless of who’s in office, with wars occurring not because of who happens to be president in any given instance but because of whatever the empire’s needs happen to be at that time.

The lesson of Joe Biden’s depravity is not that it would be better to have Donald Trump in the White House, it’s that it doesn’t matter which one gets in, because only murderous monsters are allowed to play that role in the management of the US-centralized empire. The globe-spanning power structure which loosely revolves around Washington is held together by nonstop violence and abuse, and nobody who isn’t willing to inflict copious amounts of violence and abuse on human beings around the world will ever make it past the gatekeeping measures that have been placed between that office and the illusion of democracy that the American people have been deceived into believing is real.

The atrocities will continue for as long as that empire exists. Humanity won’t ever have a chance at a healthy and peaceful world until that world is freed from the tyranny of a planet-dominating power structure that is fueled by human blood.

South Africa Lays Out Genocide Case vs. Israel at World Court in The Hague

Israel ON TRIAL: DAMNING TIKTOK VIDEOS Used to Prove Israeli GENOCIDE

Israeli Lawmakers Reaffirm Genocidal Rhetoric on Eve of ICJ Trial

Two Israeli lawmakers from right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party doubled down Wednesday on calls to destroy or depopulate Gaza, prompting an admonition from the country's attorney general on the eve of an emergency hearing in the South African-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

In an interview with Hakol Baramah radio, Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi said he did not regret his November call for Israel to "stop being humane" and "burn Gaza now."

"I stand behind my words," Vaturi said, according toThe Times of Israel. "It is better to burn down buildings rather than have soldiers harmed. There are no innocents there."

Referring to Palestinian civilians trapped in northern Gaza, Vaturi added that he has "no mercy for those who are still there."

"We need to eliminate them," he asserted.

On Tuesday, Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara cautioned government officials against making inflammatory statements like Vaturi's.

Baharav-Miara said officials are "obligated to act according to the principles of international law and the laws of war."

"Statements that call for, among other things, intentional harm to uninvolved citizens, are against the prevailing policy and may constitute criminal offenses, including incitement," she added.

Vaturi's remarks came as more than 90,000 Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or left missing by 96 days of largely indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of Gaza, where around 90% of the territory's 2.3 million residents have been displaced and most of its infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reported that Danny Danon, a former United Nations ambassador now serving in the Knesset, said in a Wednesday radio interview that Israel must "not do half a job" in Gaza.

That, Danon said, means "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from Gaza—a euphemism, critics say, for an ethnic cleansing campaign akin to the Nakba, or "catastrophe," in which more than 750,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled from Palestine during the war to establish the modern state of Israel in 1948.

In November, Danon co-authored a Wall Street Journal opinion piece suggesting the ethnic cleansing of some of Gaza's population to Western countries that would accept the refugees.

Danon and Vaturi's remarks came as the International Court of Justice prepared to convene an emergency hearing Thursday in The Hague in a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and backed by nations including Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Venezuela, Jordan, and Bolivia.

The filing in the World Court specifically mentions "direct and public incitement to genocide by senior Israeli officials and others."

These include individuals from Netanyahu and other senior Cabinet and military officials to Knesset members and municipal leaders.

Meanwhile, leftist Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif is being targeted for removal from the Knesset after becoming the first parliamentarian to express support for the ICJ genocide case against his country.

Palestinian Genocide Scholar & South African Lawyer on ICJ Case

A Chance to Hold Israel–and the United States–to Account for Genocide

On January 11th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is holding its first hearing in South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. The first provisional measure South Africa has asked of the court is to order an immediate end to this carnage, which has already killed more than 23,000 people, most of them women and children. Israel is trying to bomb Gaza into oblivion and scatter the terrorized survivors across the Earth, meeting the Convention’s definition of genocide to the letter.

Since countries engaged in genocide do not publicly declare their real goal, the greatest legal hurdle for any genocide prosecution is to prove the intention of genocide. But in the extraordinary case of Israel, whose cult of biblically ordained entitlement is backed to the hilt by unconditional U.S. complicity, its leaders have been uniquely brazen about their goal of destroying Gaza as a haven of Palestinian life, culture and resistance.

South Africa’s 84-page application to the ICJ includes ten pages (starting on page 59) of statements by Israeli civilian and military officials that document their genocidal intentions in Gaza. They include statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Gallant, five other cabinet ministers, senior military officers, and members of parliament. Reading these statements, it is hard to see how a fair and impartial court could fail to recognize the genocidal intent behind the death and devastation Israeli forces and American weapons are wreaking in Gaza.

The Israeli magazine+972 talked to seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials involved in previous assaults on Gaza. They explained the systematic nature of Israel’s targeting practices and how the range of civilian infrastructure that Israel is targeting has been vastly expanded in the current onslaught. In particular, it has expanded the bombing of civilian infrastructure, or what it euphemistically defines as “power targets,” which have comprised half of its targets from the outset of this war.

Israel’s “power targets” in Gaza include public buildings like hospitals, schools, banks, government offices, and high-rise apartment blocks. The public pretext for destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is that civilians will blame Hamas for its destruction, and that this will undermine its civilian base of support. This kind of brutal logic has been proved wrong in U.S.-backed conflicts all over the world. In Gaza, it is no more than a grotesque fantasy. The Palestinians understand perfectly well who is bombing them—and who is supplying the bombs.

Intelligence officials told +972 that Israel maintains extensive occupancy figures for every building in Gaza, and has precise estimates of how many civilians will be killed in each building it bombs. While Israeli and U.S. officials publicly disparage Palestinian casualty figures, intelligence sources told +972 that the Palestinian death counts are remarkably consistent with Israel’s own estimates of how many civilians it is killing. To make matters worse, Israel has started using artificial intelligence to generate targets with minimal human scrutiny, and is doing so faster than its forces can bomb them.

Israeli officials claim that each of the high-rise apartment buildings it bombs contains some kind of Hamas presence, but an intelligence official explained, “Hamas is everywhere in Gaza; there is no building that does not have something of Hamas in it, so if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so.” As Yuval Abraham of +972 summarized, “The sources understood, some explicitly and some implicitly, that damage to civilians is the real purpose of these attacks.”

Two days after South Africa submitted its Genocide Convention application to the ICJ, Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich declared on New Year’s Eve that Israel should substantially empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and bring in Israeli settlers. “If we act in a strategically correct way and encourage emigration,” Smotrich said, “if there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million, the whole discourse on 'the day after' will be completely different.”

When reporters confronted U.S. State Department spokesman Matt Miller about Smotrich’s statement, and similar ones by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Miller replied that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have reassured the United States that those statements don’t reflect Israeli government policy.

But Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s statements followed a meeting of Likud Party leaders on Christmas Day where Netanyahu himself said that his plan was to continue the massacre until the people of Gaza have no choice but to leave or to die. “Regarding voluntary emigration, I have no problem with that,” he told former Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon. “Our problem is not allowing the exit, but a lack of countries that are ready to take Palestinians in. And we are working on it. This is the direction we are going in.”

We should have learned from America’s lost wars that mass murder and ethnic cleansing rarely lead to political victory or success. More often they only feed deep resentment and desires for justice or revenge that make peace more elusive and conflict endemic.

Although most of the martyrs in Gaza are women and children, Israel and the United States politically justify the massacre as a campaign to destroy Hamas by killing its senior leaders. Andrew Cockburn described in his book Kill Chain: the Rise of the High-Tech Assassins how, in 200 cases studied by U.S. military intelligence, the U.S. campaign to assassinate Iraqi resistance leaders in 2007 led in every single case to increased attacks on U.S. occupation forces. Every resistance leader they killed was replaced within 48 hours, invariably by new, more aggressive leaders determined to prove themselves by killing even more U.S. troops.

But that is just another unlearned lesson, as Israel and the United States kill Islamic Resistance leaders in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, risking a regional war and leaving themselves more isolated than ever.

If the ICJ issues a provisional order for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanity must seize the moment to insist that Israel and the United States must finally end this genocide and accept that the rule of international law applies to all nations, including themselves.

Norm Finkelstein PREDICTS Israel Genocide Decision

The video footage is at the link if you want to see it.

West Bank videos show Israeli troops killing teenager and driving over man’s body

Two videos from the West Bank showing Israeli troops shooting a 17-year-old boy and security forces repeatedly running over the body of a man they had shot have added to concerns about the Israeli military’s rules of engagement.

The shooting of 17-year-old Osaid Rimawi in the early hours of last Friday is shown in footage from a security camera in a local shop that was obtained by the Associated Press news agency. The video also shows two earlier rounds of gunfire that injured two unarmed men. Rimawi was killed when he tried to rush to their aid.

The only weapons visible in the footage are guns held by Israeli soldiers. Soldiers gathered round the dead and injured bodies; one prodded Rimawi with his foot, then drove away. They did not make any arrests. The Israeli military said troops in Beit Rima had opened fire on suspects who had thrown explosives and firebombs, AP reported. Local residents said the killings were unprovoked, and no one had thrown explosives.

The Israeli military has repeatedly been accused of using deadly violence without provocation. ...

The second West Bank video comes from a security camera in the city of Tulkarm, where Israel’s border police said on Monday they had killed three gunmen in a raid to arrest a militant. The footage shows Israeli security forces shooting at young men, at least one of them armed, as they rush out of a house, Reuters reported. An Israeli military vehicle approaches two men who had been hit in the street and drives over one, stopping on the man’s legs. Footage apparently recorded later shows a vehicle backing over the body and then manoeuvring over it twice more. It is not clear if the man is dead or alive the first time he is run over.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Does Israel Have a Defense at UN Court?

UN security council approves resolution demanding end to Red Sea attacks

The UN security council has just voted to approve a resolution drafted by the US and Japan to demand an end to attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels.

The council voted down proposed amendments from Russia that would have weakened the resolution.

The vote passed with 11 votes in favour, zero objections and four abstentions, including Russia, China and Algeria.

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Not a war crime, but GENOCIDE

Houthis call west’s bluff with renewed Red Sea drone assault

A week ago, the US, the UK and 10 other mostly western nations told Yemen’s Houthi rebels that they would “bear the consequences” if they launched further attacks on merchant shipping in the southern Red Sea. For a brief period – six days – the Houthis paused, before at 9.15pm on Tuesday launching their most sophisticated attack yet.

Eighteen drones, described by the British as of Iranian design, and three missiles appear to have targeted a fleet of warships in and around the 18-mile-wide Bab el-Mandab strait, where the Red Sea comes closest to Houthi-controlled Yemen. Though they were all shot down, the brazen nature of the attack was not lost on western politicians. ...

What began as an opportunistic Houthi campaign targeting merchant shipping travelling south of the Suez Canal in mid October – in support of Hamas in Gaza – appears to have become something different: a determined attempt to attack and provoke a retaliation from Washington as the US electoral cycle is heating up, bringing the UK and other allies alongside.

Prior to Tuesday night, 61 drones had been fired in 25 attacks. But in the early evening, a group of 18, probably the relatively inexpensive delta-wing Shahed 136, appear to have been aimed at the warships directly. Seven were shot down by HMS Richmond, which Shapps told reporters “potentially was targeted”. Attacking in a swarm is a tactic taken from Ukraine, where several Shahed drones are deployed in an effort to overwhelm local air defences – and even when they are all stopped, it imposes costs on the defenders.

A Shahed 136 costs $20,000 (£16,000) to make, while missiles for HMS Richmond’s Sea Viper defence system cost £1m to £2m a time, although the costs of losing a warship – or human lives – is far greater.

Blinken restates commitment to Palestinian state on West Bank visit

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, restated Washington’s commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state during a brief trip to the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, a visit dismissed by many residents as “theatre”.

Blinken told Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), that the US position was that a Palestinian state must stand alongside Israel, “with both living in peace and security”, a spokesperson said.

As Blinken arrived under tight security at Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah, a group of protesters held up signs that read: “Stop the genocide”, “Free Palestine” and “Blinken out”. Some scuffled with Palestinian security forces in riot gear.

Analysts and others in Ramallah said Palestinian expectations of the visit were “lower than low”.

“The only purpose is to give the Israelis time to finish off Gaza,” Atef al-Hamoud, a local government functionary, said. Jamal Zakout, an analyst, said: “This war has damaged the image of the US in all Arab countries, not just Palestine. No one can ignore their unfair diplomacy. For three months all the US has done is protect Israel.”

ADL Report Decried for Equating Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism

The Anti-Defamation League came under fire Wednesday after publishing a report that significantly expanded the group's definition of antisemitic incidents to include demonstrations against Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal war on Gaza.

"For the first time, the ADL is counting pro-Palestinian rallies that do not feature overt hostility toward Jews in its count of antisemitic incidents," Jewish Daily Forward antisemitism reporter Arno Rosenfeld noted on social media in response to the organization's new report, which lists what it claims are 3,283 anti-Jewish occurrences in the United States in the three months after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead and over 200 others taken hostage.

That three-month figure tops every full-year total except 2022 and represents a 360% increase over the same period a year ago. In an embargoed statement viewed by Rosenfeld, ADL national director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said that the tally highlights a threat to Jews that's "unprecedented in modern history."

Antisemitic—and Islamophobic—incidents have undoubtedly surged in the wake of the October 7 attacks and Israel's bloody collective punishment in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, in which more than 90,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing. However, critics accuse the ADL and many other pro-Israel groups and individuals of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

In a statement to the Forward, the ADL acknowledged that its report includes pro-Palestine protests at which "anti-Zionist chants and slogans" were observed. Rosenfeld said that these events appeared to account for 1,317—or over 40%—of the total incidents in the report.

Max Blumenthal: Is Netanyahu In Charge of His Own Government?

Take note, the cost of a congressworm soul is currently about $100k.

Congress backers of Gaza war received most from pro-Israel donors

Congress members who were more supportive of Israel at the start of the Gaza war received over $100,000 more on average from pro-Israel donors during their last election than those who most supported Palestine, a Guardian analysis of campaign data shows.

Those who took more money most often called for US military support and backed Israel’s response, even as Gaza’s civilian death toll mounted, the findings show. The analysis, which looks at positions taken during the war’s first six weeks, does not prove any particular member changed their position because they received pro-Israel campaign donations. However, some campaign finance experts who viewed the data argue that donor spending helped fuel Congress’s overwhelming support for Israel.

The analysis compared campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups and individuals to almost every member of the current Congress with each lawmaker’s statements on the war through mid-November.

About 82% of Congress members were more supportive of Israel, and just 9% more supportive of Palestine during this period. The remainder had “mixed” views. Legislators categorized as supportive of Israel received about $125,000 on average during their last election, while those supportive of Palestine on average took about $18,000.

The volume and breadth of the donors’ spending is considerable: over $58m went to current Congress members, and all but 33 received donations.

The findings have “profound implications for what American policy toward … Israel looks like”, said John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political scientist and co-author of the 2006 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. “If there was no lobby pushing Congress in a particular direction in a really forceful way, the position of the US Congress on the war in Gaza would be fundamentally different.”

Ukraine air defense collapse. Zelensky's counter counter offensive Crimea plan

Sounds like it's time for women of childbearing age to vote with their feet.

Do pregnant women have a right to urgent medical care? No, according to a US court

Do doctors have an obligation under federal law to keep their patients alive, even if their patients happen to be pregnant women? Do doctors have an obligation to prevent maiming – or irreversible organ damage, or other kinds of serious bodily harm – and if so, does that obligation extend even to women? Do women have a right to access medically necessary care even if they are pregnant? No, according to the US fifth circuit court.

That’s the conclusion reached by a three-judge panel recently in Texas v Becerra, a case in which Texas sued the Biden administration over guidance that directed all hospitals receiving federal funds to perform “necessary stabilizing treatment” on patients – including abortions on pregnant patients undergoing medical emergencies.

The federal guidance, the Biden administration argued, trumped state laws under the supremacy clause. But Texas said that the guidance conflicted with its own total abortion ban, which provides only a vague and effectively inaccessible medical exemption in cases where the life (not merely the health) of the pregnant woman is in danger. The appellate court sided with Texas, freeing the state to force women to the brink of death – if not past it – before they are allowed to access medically necessary abortion treatment. It effectively greenlights the state to enforce injury and illness on women whom it deems insufficiently endangered. ...

The ruling means that Texas, and other anti-abortion states, have been endowed with a morbid power over the lives and health of pregnant women. They can force them to endure ruptures of the uterus, organ prolapse, massive blood loss and sepsis. They can force them to lose their fertility. And even in cases where – through luck and grace – none of this comes to pass, they can force these women to wait, in fear and humiliation, for what fate has in store for them.

Pregnant women in these states can thereby be robbed of their health, of their self-determination, of their dignity and their peace of mind and of quite a lot of money in medical costs – all without recourse or due process to contest the fate that the law has chosen for them. And Republican states can do all this in a sadistic theater of misogynist domination, as a public demonstration of how dearly they supposedly value the lives of fetuses and how cheap they find the lives of women.

WILD Affair Allegations ROCK Trump Georgia Prosecution

Judge blocks Trump plan to deliver own closing argument in New York fraud trial

Donald Trump’s plans to deliver closing arguments on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial were dashed on Wednesday by the judge overseeing the case. Trump had planned to give his own speech in addition to his legal team’s summations, according to two people familiar with the highly unusual plan. But judge Arthur Engoron rescinded permission for the speech.

In an email exchange, the judge requested Trump agree to certain conditions – requiring he focused only on the facts of the case, and refrained from introducing new evidence, or commenting on “irrelevant matters” – to formally address the court. Engoron also stressed that Trump would not be allowed to deliver “a campaign speech”, or “impugn myself, my staff, plaintiff, plaintiff’s staff, or the New York state court system”.

The former president’s legal team would not agree to these terms.

“I won’t debate this yet again,” Engoron wrote on Wednesday, after Trump’s lawyers pushed back. “Take it or leave it. Now or never. You have until noon, seven minutes from now. I WILL NOT GRANT ANY FURTHER EXTENSIONS.”

When Trump’s lawyers failed to respond in time, Engoron followed up with another email. “Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline,” he wrote, “I assume that Mr Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow.”

US oil lobby launches eight-figure ad blitz amid record fossil fuel extraction

The American oil lobby has launched an eight-figure media campaign this week promoting the idea that fossil fuels are “vital” to global energy security, alarming climate experts.

“US natural gas and oil play a key role in supplying the world with cleaner, more reliable energy,” the new initiative’s website says.

The campaign comes amid record fossil fuel extraction in the US, and as the industry is attempting to capitalize on the war in Gaza to escalate production even further, climate advocates say.

Launched Tuesday by the nation’s top fossil fuel interest group, the Lights on Energy campaign will work to “dismantle policy threats” to the sector, the American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO, Mike Sommers, told CNN in an interview this week.

The ad blitz – which uses images of farm vehicles, footballers under floodlights and concert goers holding phones lit up – comes after US oil production reached a record high in 2023, which was also the hottest year ever recorded.

Carbon pollution down nearly 2% in US – but not enough to meet Biden’s goal

Climate-altering pollution from greenhouse gases declined by nearly 2% in the United States in 2023, though not fast enough to meet Joe Biden’s targets, a new report finds.

The decline, while “a step in the right direction’’, is far below the rate needed to meet the president’s pledge to cut US emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, said a report on Wednesday from the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm.

“Absent other changes″, the US is on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, said Ben King, associate director at Rhodium and lead author of the study.

The report said US carbon emissions declined by 1.9% last year. Emissions are down 17.2% from 2005.

To reach Biden’s goal, emissions would have to decline at a rate more than triple the 2023 figure and be sustained at that level every year until 2030, he said.

Gaza War Fuels Climate Crisis: “Massive” Carbon Emissions from Israeli Bombing

Mass seal deaths in southern Atlantic confirmed as bird flu

A UK virology team has confirmed the first bird flu infections in elephant and fur seals in the sub-Antarctic region, as the highly contagious H5N1 virus continues to spread around the world.

Researchers previously reported the mass deaths of seals and that a number of elephant seals on South Georgia island – a UK overseas territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean – had been exhibiting symptoms of avian flu. But while seabird cases were confirmed, the seal infections were classed as suspected, pending lab results.

The first known cases of H5N1 were detected in the Antarctic region in October among brown skua on Bird Island, off South Georgia. Two months later, hundreds of elephant seals were found dead. There have also been increased deaths of fur seals, kelp gulls and brown skua at several other sites.

Marco Falchieri, a scientist in the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s (APHA) influenza and avian virology team, which collected the South Georgia samples that tested positive for bird flu. He said he saw about 20 dead elephant seals. “Emotionally it is almost heartbreaking to see so many dead seals.” Other seals were showing respiratory signs of bird flu, he said, citing “coughs, sneezing, ocular discharge, nasal discharge, slow head shaking and tremors”.

Falchieri said the death toll on South Georgia was probably about 100, mainly elephant seals, who appear to be more affected than fur seals. “My worst fear is an adaptive mutation to mammals, which we are not seeing in these new samples, but we need to keep monitoring,” he said. An adaptive mutation, he added, “could mean it becomes a mammalian-adapted virus, and consequently increases risk for humans too”.

Also of Interest

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

Watch in full: First day of ICJ hearings in South Africa's genocide case against Israel in Gaza

What Israel Faces at The Hague

Conditions For Israeli Loss

Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report

Ukraine SitRep: High Losses, Mobilization Problems, Too Few Air Defenses

Trump’s Arguments for Immunity Not as Hopeless as Some Claim

Biden administration meddles in the Taiwanese election

Germany’s ‘Krisenmodus’ Has No End in Sight

Line 5 Poses Catastrophic Risks—It’s Past Time President Biden Shut It Down

Joe Rogan TORCHES Bill Gates Over Climate Hypocrisy, Vaccine Mandates

Bibi FREAKS As Genocide Case Opens Against Israel

Scott Ritter: Ukraine/Israel Views from MOSCOW

A Little Night Music

T V Slim - Flatfoot Sam

T V Slim - You Can't Buy A Woman

TV Slim - My baby is gone

TV Slim - Don't Reach Across My Plate

TV Slim And The Soul Bros. - Can't be satisfied

TV Slim - Don't Knock The Blues

Oscar T V Wills - Your Kisses Changed Me

Oscar T-V Slim Wills And His Heartbreakers - My Ship Is Sinking

TV Slim and his Heartbreakers - Flat Foot Sam Met Jim Dandy