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This evening's music features blues and jazz guitarist Freddie Robinson. Enjoy!

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."

-- Benjamin Franklin

News and Opinion

Nobody Who Gets Gaza Wrong Is Worth Listening To

I saw a comment from an Israel defender saying “You just lack the intellect to comprehend the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!”

Just in the last few days we learned that Israeli snipers have been deliberately picking off children in Gaza by shooting them in the head, that Israeli troops summarily executed a prisoner in handcuffs after sending him into a hospital to deliver a message to evacuate, and that Egypt has begun constructing refugee camps in the Sinai Desert to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Gazans.

“Complexities”. This isn’t complex.

“It’s complicated” is just some nonsense people say about things they don’t want you looking at too closely, like their dysfunctional relationship or their active genocide.

There are no words. pic.twitter.com/47DQo3FqXC

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) February 17, 2024

Next time the US-centralized empire is preparing to stage a “humanitarian intervention” to rescue the people of some resource-rich nation from their evil tyrannical overlords, remember how they backed an open genocide in Gaza.

Brazilian Pres Lula: Israel War Is Hitlerian

Gaza ceasefire hopes fade as Netanyahu rejects calls to halt Rafah offensive

Hopes of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza are fading amid Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated rejection of calls to hold off on a Rafah ground offensive, and a vote by his cabinet that Israel will formally oppose international efforts at what it called the “unilateral recognition” of a Palestinian state.

Diplomatic efforts led by Egypt, Qatar and the US are also stalling: on Sunday, Qatari officials acknowledged that indirect talks in Cairo between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which restarted last week, had “hit an impasse”. Washington has also signalled it will veto this week’s expected new push for a UN security council resolution on a ceasefire.

The diplomatic impasse was met with dismay by the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, where almost 29,000 people have been killed, 85% of the population displaced from their homes and one in four are starving, according to the UN. ...

Airstrikes on Gaza City, Khan Younis and the strip’s southernmost border town of Rafah – Gaza’s last place of relative safety – killed at least 18 people overnight, according to local officials, including a family of seven, a relative, Sayed al-Afifi, told the Associated Press. ... Israel’s ground offensive continues to target the central town of Khan Younis, where Nasser hospital, previously the territory’s largest functioning healthcare facility, has gone offline after Israeli ground forces launched a raid on the premises on Thursday.

Alastair Crooke: Israel/US Fatal Mistakes

US vows to veto ceasefire resolution as Israel’s Rafah onslaught looms

The US will veto a resolution at the United Nations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Saturday, in the latest expression of all-out support for Israel’s planned assault on Rafah by the Biden administration. Israeli forces are on the verge of launching a full-scale ground offensive against Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, into which nearly 1.5 million Palestinian civilians are now confined. They have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s more than four-month-long campaign of indiscriminate bombing, missile strikes and ground assault, aimed at driving the Palestinian population out of Gaza.

On Saturday, Algeria called for a vote to be held on a resolution for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the UN Security Council this week. In a statement, Thomas-Greenfield declared, “the United States does not support action on this draft resolution. Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted”—in effect declaring that the US would veto it. Greenfield added, “The Council has the obligation to ensure that any action we take in the coming days increases pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal on the table.” In other words, Greenfield called for an endorsement of Israel’s military offensive in order to break the resistance of the Palestinians. ...

Ultimately, US officials indicated that the United States would support the assault on Rafah even if Israel takes no actions to protect civilians. Asked what will happen if Israel does not take into account “what happens to civilians,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby replied, “We will continue to support Israel.”

The increasingly naked US support for Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Rafah takes place against the background of ongoing US military intervention throughout the Middle East. On Sunday, the US military announced that it carried out yet another round of strikes on Yemen.

Israel Raids Nasser Hospital, Arrests Staff in Latest Assault on Gaza Medical System

Israeli Assault Leaves Gaza's Nasser Hospital 'Not Functional'

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced Sunday that the largest hospital in the southern Gaza Strip "is not functional anymore, after a weeklong siege followed by the ongoing raid" by Israeli forces.

After claiming that Hamas was using Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for "military activity" and some hostages' bodies may be there, the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday began raiding the facility, where around 10,000 people had sought shelter. Sources there said the IDF bombed "a ward full of patients" and multiple people who were dependent on oxygen have died due to power outages.

Tedros highlighted on Sunday that the WHO team "was not permitted to enter" the facility in recent days "to assess the conditions of the patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital compound to deliver fuel alongside partners."

"There are still about 200 patients in the hospital. At least 20 need to be urgently referred to other hospitals to receive healthcare; medical referral is every patient's right," he added. "The cost of delays will be paid by patients' lives. Access to the patients and hospital should be facilitated."

Later Sunday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said that "150 patients who cannot move are piled inside the rooms and corridors of the old building at Nasser Medical Complex without medical care after the arrest of 70 of the complex's management and medical staff."

"The occupation refuses to evacuate patients for treatment in other hospitals, which endangers their lives, including seven intensive care patients, five dialysis patients, [and] three newborns in the nursery, in addition to cases of burns, amputations, quadriplegia, childbirth, and others," the ministry added.

The IDF said on Telegram that in its operations around the facility, Israeli troops apprehended "hundreds of terrorists and other terror suspects who were hiding in the hospital, some of whom had posed as medical staff," including alleged participants in the October 7 Hamas-led attack that led to the war.

Noting IDF claims that soldiers aimed to recover the remains of hostages believed to be in the facility, The Washington Post reported that "Israeli forces have not yet found the bodies of any hostages but said on Sunday that they discovered medicine at the hospital bearing the names of Israelis who were abducted by Hamas."

Israeli forces taking a hostage to cover up what they have done in Gaza's Nasser Hospital. https://t.co/j1PzCuXenl

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) February 18, 2024

The Israeli assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians, injured over 68,800 others, devastated civilian infrastructure—including hospitals—and left most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents displaced, hungry, and at risk of disease. Global experts and critics have accused Israel of genocide, including in a South Africa-led case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In response to IDF orders to leave northern Gaza, most residents are now crammed into the southern part of the strip. According to Al-Jazeera:

Al-Amal Hospital, the only other major medical facility still operational in Khan Younis, continues to be a target of Israeli attacks. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) on Sunday said Israeli forces targeted the third floor of the hospital with artillery fire.

The Israeli military has expanded its siege on Khan Younis and its medical facilities as it pushed further south into Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Throughout the week, people around the world including humanitarian and United Nations leaders have pressured Israel to refrain from a full-scale attack on Rafah. The ICJ on Friday echoed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres' warning that it "would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences."

Palestinian factions to meet in Moscow as west rejects Hamas role in ruling Gaza after war

Western powers have rejected suggestions that Hamas as an entity can be allowed a role in governing Gaza at the end of the war, saying only that they recognise that Palestinian militancy will still exist.

Speculation that a weakened Hamas might be willing to form a partnership with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, and govern Gaza and the West Bank jointly, have been revived by a Russian invitation for Palestinian factions to meet in Moscow on 26 February.

The news of the meeting was confirmed by the Palestinian Authority prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, at the Munich security conference.

“We are ready to engage. If Hamas is not, then that’s a different story. We need Palestinian unity,” he said, adding that to be part of that unity, Hamas needed to meet certain prerequisites. ...

Hamas, if it attends the Moscow talks, would like the discussion to focus on reviving a committee of Palestinian factions as a step in rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the formation of a technocratic government, until conditions allow for holding elections. It would also like to see the current Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, step down.

ICJ Hearings to Examine 57 Years of Israeli Occupation of Palestine

More than 50 countries are set to participate in next week's hearings at the International Court of Justice focusing on Israel's illegal 57-year occupation of Palestine, a forum that follows the Hague tribunal's finding last month that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in occupied Gaza.

The ICJ—also known as the World Court—will hold a week of hearings on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of Palestine, which dates to the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, Syrian Golan Heights, and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 Six-Day War.

"The International Court of Justice is set for the first time to broadly consider the legal consequences of Israel's nearly six-decades-long occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinian people," Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin said in a statement. "Governments that are presenting their arguments to the court should seize these landmark hearings to highlight the grave abuses Israeli authorities are committing against Palestinians, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution."

The West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights remain under Israeli military occupation six decades after their conquest. The United Nations—to which the ICJ belongs—and many international NGOs contend that, despite removing its troops and settlers from Gaza two decades ago, Israel continues to occupy Gaza by controlling the besieged enclave's airspace, territorial waters, and the entry and exit of people and goods.

Since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza while forcibly displacing around 90% of the population. Numerous Israeli leaders have called for the renewed physical occupation, Jewish resettlement, and ethnic cleansing of the strip.

During the current assault on Gaza, occupation forces have also killed at least 388 Palestinians, including 99 children, in the West Bank, according to U.N. human rights officials.

Israeli settlers have for decades been steadily colonizing the occupied territories under the protection of the IDF, while ethnically cleansing Palestinians whose lands and homes they steal.

Next week's hearings come on the heels of the ICJ's provisional ruling last month in a case led by South Africa—which will be the first nation after Palestine to present at next week's hearing—that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza. The tribunal ordered Israel to "take all measures within its power" to adhere to its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention.

Earlier this week, South Africa urgently appealed to the ICJ to act amid the looming threat of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah. More than 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees ordered to flee to the south of Gaza by invading Israeli forces, are crammed into what is now one of the world's most densely populated places.

On Friday, the ICJ declined to take any additional action against Israel, while reiterating that the "perilous situation" in Rafah "demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures indicated by the court" in last month's ruling.

Egypt Builds Walled Enclosure on Border as Israeli Offensive Looms

Egyptian authorities, fearful that an Israeli military push further into southern Gaza will set off a flood of refugees, are building an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert near the border, according to Egyptian officials and security analysts.

For weeks, Egypt has sought to bolster security along the frontier to keep Palestinians out, deploying soldiers and armored vehicles and reinforcing fences. The massive new compound is part of contingency plans if large numbers of Gazans do manage to get in.

More than 100,000 people could be accommodated in the camp, Egyptian officials said. It is surrounded by concrete walls and far from any Egyptian settlements. Large numbers of tents, as yet unassembled, have been delivered to the site, these people said. ...

Egypt has long sought to avoid a flood of refugees from spilling over its borders, even threatening to abandon its decades-old peace treaty with Israel if that occurs as a result of its offensive against Hamas. The fact that Egypt is now urgently proceeding with contingency plans signals that Egyptian officials see a rising danger of such a scenario.

Israeli Cabinet Unanimously Rejects ‘International Diktats’ on Palestinian State

Israel’s cabinet on Sunday unanimously approved a declaration rejecting “international diktats” on a future Palestinian state amid reports the US is preparing to unveil an outline for a potential peace deal that includes establishing a timeline for a two-state solution. ...

US officials have previously portrayed opposition to a future Palestinian state as unique among Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a handful of extremist settler Israeli ministers. But the declaration was approved by all ministers, including Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot of the National Unity party, who are members of the emergency war cabinet and considered centrists in Israeli politics.

In response to the cabinet’s decision, a US State Department spokesperson said the US still supported the idea of a future Palestinian state. “The best way to achieve an enduring end to the crisis in Gaza that provides lasting peace and security, for Israelis and Palestinians alike, is our strong commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state,” the spokesperson said.

World’s largest oil companies have made $281bn profit since invasion of Ukraine

The world’s five largest listed oil companies have made profits of more than a quarter of a trillion dollars since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to dramatic increases in energy prices and household bills. The “super-majors” – BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies – have made $281bn (£223bn) since the war began in February 2022, according to Global Witness. ...

Shell, which has made $58.9bn (£47bn) in profits since the second quarter of 2022, is also in the process of cutting up to 330 roles from its low-carbon solutions unit in a renewed focus on high-profit oil projects this year. BP, which last year also moved to scale back its climate goals, has made $35bn (£28bn) in profits since the start of the conflict. The European and US majors – Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies – have made combined profits of more than $187bn (£148bn).

“This analysis shows that, regardless of what happens on the frontlines, the fossil fuel majors are the main winners of the war in Ukraine,” said Global Witness’s senior fossil fuels investigator, Patrick Galey.

Israel Threatens to 'FINISH THE JOB' by Ramadan as Biden BLEEDS Support in MICHIGAN

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tells fellow Democrats: reject Biden in primary

The progressive US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has called on her fellow Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s presidential primary election – at the expense of the party’s incumbent, Joe Biden – in late February.

Appearing in a video posted to X on Saturday by Listen to Michigan, a political campaign to encourage the state’s voters to vote “uncommitted” in the 27 February primary, Tlaib justified her stark display of displeasure with Biden by alluding to Israel’s military strikes on Gaza, which local authorities say have killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians since last October. ...

Speaking in front of the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, which has one of the US’s largest populations of Arab Americans, Tlaib said: “It is important … to not only march against the genocide, not only make sure that we’re calling our members of Congress and local elected [officials], and passing city resolutions all throughout our country. It is also important to create a voting bloc, something that is a bullhorn to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Tlaib added: “We don’t want a country that supports war and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza … This is the way you can raise our voices. Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government.

“If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted” rather than in support of Biden, the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for November’s presidential election.

MSNBC FREAKS After Rashida Says DON'T Vote Biden

Chaos in Kiev follows chaotic retreat from Avdeyevka

Russia claims full control of Avdiivka after Ukrainian retreat

Russia has said it has taken full control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, its biggest gain since capturing Bakhmut last May, after a retreat by Ukrainian troops. Russian troops launched multiple attacks further west from Avdiivka in a bid for further battlefield gains, a Ukrainian army spokesperson said on Sunday.

“The enemy is trying to actively develop its offensive,” said Dmytro Lykhoviy, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian army commander leading Kyiv’s troops in the area. Ukraine’s general staff reported 14 failed Russian attacks on the village of Lastochkyne, around 2km (one mile) to the west of Avdiivka’s northern edge. “But our considerable forces are entrenched there,” Lykhoviy said.

Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from the city in the industrial Donbas region to avoid encirclement, the army chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Saturday, adding that he had acted to “preserve the lives and health of servicemen”, stabilise the situation and move troops to more favourable defence lines.

Some Ukrainian troops were still holed up in a vast Soviet-era coke plant, one of Europe’s biggest, Russia said, describing the retreat as rushed and chaotic. Ukraine’s military said there had been casualties in the retreat but that the situation had stabilised.

The capture of Avdiivka gives Russia full control of the area surrounding Donetsk, a large Ukrainian city that was seized by Russian proxy forces in 2014, and comes as the second anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears.

Watch Cop UNLOAD Gun After Attack by... ACORN?!? Viral Clip Shows INSANE Police Recklessness

GOP House Intel Chair Urged to Resign Over Russian Space Nuke Scare

Advocacy groups who support changes to a U.S. government spying program that targets foreigners but sweeps up Americans' data on Friday joined calls for Congressman Mike Turner to step down from his leadership role in the House of Representatives after the Ohio Republican made moves suspected as an attempt to kill bipartisan surveillance reform efforts.

In a letter to Turner first reported by Politico, Demand Progress, Due Process Institute, FreedomWorks, and Restore the Fourth called for his resignation as chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), writing that "it appears you exploited your privileged access to intelligence to scare your colleagues in an effort to undermine reform of warrantless surveillance laws—and in so doing have undermined your credibility, your committee, and national security."

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who was sent a copy of the letter, delayed action on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) after Turner announced Wednesday that the HPSCI had provided all members of Congress with "information concerning a serious national security threat," which multiple news outlets—citing unnamed intelligence sources—reported was that Russia has made concerning progress on a space-based nuclear weapon designed to target U.S. satellites.

The timing of Turner's statement and the leaks led lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to urge an investigation into him or call for his resignation as the HPSCI leader. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the committee's ranking member, has also come under fire for his role in what Wired called "a sabotage campaign," reporting Friday that Capitol Hill senior aides accuse the pair of trying "to instill paranoia in members that would inevitably raise doubts as to whether popular private reforms were simply too great a risk."

CIA 'COOKED INTEL' To Boost Russiagate

Trump BANNED FROM REAL ESTATE In NY, Ordered to Pay $355M Over CIVIL FRAUD Charges

New York governor seeks to quell business owners’ fears after Trump ruling

The New York governor has told business owners in her state that there is “nothing to worry about” after Donald Trump was fined $355m and temporarily banned from engaging in commerce in the state when he lost his civil fraud trial Friday.

In an interview on the New York radio show the Cats Roundtable with the supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis, Kathy Hochul sought to quell fears in some quarters that the penalties handed to Trump for engaging in fraudulent business practices could chill the state’s commercial climate.

Asked if businesspeople should be worried that if prosecutors could “do that to the former president, they can do that to anybody”, Hochul said: “Law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior.”

She added that the fraud case against Trump resulted from “really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance”.

Hochul’s comments were directed at some New York business leaders who said they were concerned that the attorney general Letitia James’s case against Trump could deter businesses and investment from coming to the state. Hochul noted James’s case demonstrated how Trump and some allies obtained favorable bank loans and insurance rates with inflated real estate values. ... Hochul said most business owners would not merit state intervention.

Biden Runs on Reproductive Rights as Movement Fractures Over Gaza

"Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There's nothing more important. Nothing more sacred. That's been the work of my first term."

That's how U.S. President Joe Biden began the video launch of his reelection campaign last year—and now, with the primary season underway, the Democrat continues to emphasize the importance of freedom and the related issue of reproductive healthcare.

The Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, and his MAGA movement have made clear that they are foes of abortion rights and other reproductive justice priorities, but Biden has work to do to win over some frustrated voters, including those outraged about the maternal health crisis created by the U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

It’s really hard to believe that “genocide is a reproductive justice issue” is a controversial statement among people who allegedly care about (white women’s) access to reproductive healthcare.

Excellent reporting from @AlannaVagianos: https://t.co/SgtDtxlaur https://t.co/PCYu3Vw9sx

— Hayley McMahon, MSPH, CPH (@McMisoprostol) February 16, 2024

Biden is backed by national groups such as EMILY's List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Reproductive Freedom for All, but the devastation of Gaza has caused a "growing rift in the reproductive rights movement," HuffPost's Alanna Vagianos reported Friday.

Vagianos pointed to the January rally marking what would have been the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade—the landmark abortion rights ruling overturned in June 2022 by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court to which Trump appointed three justices:

The president was interrupted over a dozen times as security struggled to wrangle protesters who were screaming "Genocide Joe!" and demanding a cease-fire. Hundreds of Biden supporters tried to drown out the protesters by clapping and chanting, "Four more years!"

"Israel kills two mothers every hour in Gaza! Cease-fire now! End the genocide!" one protester yelled at Biden, who was standing on stage in front of a massive "Restore Roe" banner and flanked by supporters holding "Defend choice" signs.

A video of the event shows Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, clad in her trademark hot-pink pantsuit, standing up and chanting "Four more years!" as security dragged the shouting protester out.

"HuffPost spoke with over a dozen people who work for reproductive justice causes―including current Planned Parenthood employees, legal experts, nurse midwives, abortion fund workers, and clinic staffers from across the country―who say that Biden's unwavering support for Israel has fractured the movement," Vagianos added. "The rift has left those who support Palestinians to feel ostracized by the larger reproductive rights groups and questioning whether they can vote for Biden in November."

February on course to break unprecedented number of heat records

February is on course to break a record number of heat records, meteorologists say, as human-made global heating and the natural El Niño climate pattern drive up temperatures on land and oceans around the world.

A little over halfway into the shortest month of the year, the heating spike has become so pronounced that climate charts are entering new territory, particularly for sea-surface temperatures that have persisted and accelerated to the point where expert observers are struggling to explain how the change is happening.

“The planet is warming at an accelerating rate. We are seeing rapid temperature increases in the ocean, the climate’s largest reservoir of heat,” said Dr Joel Hirschi, the associate head of marine systems modelling at the UK National Oceanography Centre. “The amplitude by which previous sea surface temperatures records were beaten in 2023 and now 2024 exceed expectations, though understanding why this is, is the subject of ongoing research.”

Humanity is on a trajectory to experience the hottest February in recorded history, after a record January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June and May, according to the Berkeley Earth scientist Zeke Hausfather. He said the rise in recent weeks was on course for 2C of warming above pre-industrial levels, though this should be the brief, peak impact of El Niño if it follows the path of previous years and starts to cool down in the months ahead.

That would normally be good news if a temperature-lowering La Niña follows, but Hausfather said the behaviour of the climate had become more erratic and harder to forecast. “[Last year] defied expectations so much that it’s hard to have as much confidence in the approaches we have used to make these predictions in the past,” he said. “I’d say February 2024 is an odds-on favourite to beat the prior record set in 2016, but it’s by no means a foregone conclusion at this point as weather models suggest that global temperatures will fall back down in the coming week. So while I think these extreme temperatures provide some evidence of an acceleration in the rate of warming in recent years – as climate models expect there to be if CO₂ emissions do not fall but aerosols do – it’s not necessarily worse than we thought.”

Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds

Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis. While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend.

A major reason for this anomaly, the new study finds, is the vast reforestation of much of the eastern US following the initial loss of large numbers of trees in the wake of European settlement in America. Such large expanses have been reforested in the past century – with enough trees sprouting back to cover an area larger than England – that it has helped stall the affect of global heating.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” said Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research. “The ‘warming hole’ has been a real mystery and while this doesn’t explain all of it, this research shows there is a really important link to the trees coming back.”

There was a surge in deforestation from the start of the US’s early colonial history, as woodland was razed for agriculture and housing, but this began to reverse from around the 1920s as more people began to move into cities, leaving marginal land to become populated again with trees. The US government, meanwhile, embarked upon an aggressive tree-planting program, with these factors leading to about 15m hectares of reforested area in the past century in the eastern US.

The recovery of the US’s eastern forests has blunted global heating mainly through the trees’ transpiration, in which water is drawn up through the roots to the leaves and then released into the air as vapor, slightly cooling the surrounding area. ... In all, the replenished forests today cool the eastern US by 1C to 2C (1.8F to 3.6F) each year. The cooling effect is strongest on the hottest days in summer, when trees lower temperatures by 2C to 5C (3.6F to 9F), the researchers found.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Final Appeal

Crocodile Tears Over Navalny While Ignoring Assange

The Tory Appointee Holding Assange’s Life in Her Hands

Coverage of Julian Assange Hearing

Imperiled Gazans Do Have Somewhere to Go

Israeli Military Says Hamas Will Not Be Defeated in Gaza Offensive

US 'to send weapons to Israel' while pushing for ceasefire

200+ Unions Launch Network to Push for Gaza Cease-Fire

Listening To What He Says

Throwing Good Money After Bad in Ukraine?

European Governments Look for Ways to Send Ukrainian Refugees Home

Scott Ritter: Mike Turner’s Folly

Baltimore’s Media Nightmare and the Billionairification of News

Hillary heckled as war criminal

US media melts down over Tucker-Putin interview

Larry Johnson: Will Israel Invade Lebanon?

A Little Night Music

Freddie Robinson - The Creeper

John Mayall & Freddie Robinson - Country Road

Freddy Robinson - Good Feeling

Freddy Robinson - The Buzzard

Freddy Robinson - I Found My Soul Last Night

Freddy Robinson w/ John Mayall Band - Papa Ain't Salty

Freddy Robinson - River's Invitation

Freddy Robinson - Medicine Man

Abu Talib (f/k/a Freddy Robinson) - Lizzy Mae

Freddy Robinson - The Hawk

Freddy Robinson - I Wonder