The Evening Blues - 2-24-25
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features soul singer Otis Redding. Enjoy!
Otis Redding – Wonderful World
“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
-- David Sedaris
News and Opinion
Israel And Its Apologists Weaponize Sympathy In Order To Facilitate Genocide
Activist and author Yves Engler has been jailed by Montreal police for criticizing media figure Dahlia Kurtz and her support for Israeli atrocities in Gaza, after Kurtz said Engler’s comments made her feel “afraid for my safety”.
After Engler wrote about the charges against him, he reported that he was subsequently charged for “harassing the police” by drawing public attention to his case.
It’s fascinating how everyone who supports Israel always collapses into playing the victim at the earliest opportunity—even western police forces tasked with persecuting Israel’s critics. Israel models this victim-LARPing behavior, and its entire goon squad follows its example.
You can’t make this up. Initially the Montreal police accused me of harassing an anti-Palestinian media personality because I posted about Israel’s genocide. Now they are charging me for harassing the police for writing about the charges levelled against me.
At 9:30 AM tomorrow… pic.twitter.com/xRajDQfLAX— Yves Engler (@EnglerYves) February 20, 2025
But what’s interesting is that being perceived as the victim has no value in and of itself — what has value is sympathy. It is sympathy that Israel’s supporters are after. Playing the victim is just a means toward that end.
If you’ve ever known anybody with a personality disorder that inclines them toward manipulative behavior, you may have noticed that one of the main things they manipulate in people is their sympathy. They do everything they can to draw as much sympathy toward themselves while working to kill off any sympathy that people might have toward their perceived enemies. They’ll sacrifice almost any piece on their psychosocial chessboard in order to control a bit more of the sympathy among the people in their life.
They do this because sympathy is a fundamental primer for narrative control. If you sympathize with someone, you are much more likely believe the things they say and trust their narratives about what’s going on. If you lack sympathy for someone, then anything they say is going to be viewed with much more skepticism.
This is just how humans are wired as a social animal. We’re evolutionarily conditioned to place more trust in people we perceive as belonging to our own tribe than we place in those outside it — those within our group are the ones with whom we sympathize. That’s why for example you’ll see Trump supporters start voicing opinions they’d never held before as soon as Trump and his MAGA pundits take a certain position on a given issue; they sympathize with the source, so they espouse its position on that issue.
Hello, @EnglerYves. I'm advising you in this one message only that you are harassing me. You're threatening and you're making me afraid for my safety. You must stop this harassment — and communication with me. Stop now. https://t.co/S3nIUjOguk
— dahlia kurtz (@DahliaKurtz) July 5, 2024
A good manipulator understands this, so they do everything they can to make sure everyone is sympathetic toward them and unsympathetic toward anyone whose interests conflict with theirs. That’s why we’re still talking about October 7 even after 16 months of genocidal atrocities and ethnic cleansing plans. Israel and its apologists throughout western governments and media have been working diligently to draw sympathy toward Israel for those killed and abducted on October 7, and to stomp out all sympathy for the orders of magnitude more Palestinians who’ve been killed and abducted by Israel. This has allowed narratives which serve the interests of Israel to dominate the mainstream western consensus on this issue, thereby bringing in concrete material benefits like weapons, bulldozers, the weakening of Israel’s enemies, and the eventual replacement of Palestinians with Israeli Jews on what used to be Palestinian territory.
So you can see how victim-LARPing leads to sympathy, sympathy leads to believed narratives, and believed narratives lead to concrete material benefits. All skillful manipulators understand this dynamic and use it in their own lives; the only thing that differs is the specific narratives they use and the material benefits they’re trying to extract. One manipulator might use sympathy to extract sexual favors from women and deference from men. Another might use it to extract money or resources. Another might use it for status in their social circle. It’s on a different scale and has different objectives, but the dynamic is the same.
Normal people don’t typically understand this, so we’re highly susceptible to these kinds of manipulations because they tend to fly under our radar. Normal people place a lot more value on telling the truth and doing what’s right than highly manipulative people do, because normal people prioritize human connection much more highly than manipulators. Normal people use language to communicate and understand and connect with each other, while manipulators use it to extract material benefits. These are two drastically different ways of relating to one’s social environment, and normal people are often completely unaware that the other way of relating is even a feature for some of the people in their lives. This makes them ideal targets for manipulation.
That’s what you’re seeing when Israel cries victim about October 7 or Israeli hostages held by Hamas. It’s what you see when Israel supporters shriek about an entirely made-up crisis of “antisemitism” in our society. It’s what you see when the propaganda machine for the western empire frames its enemies as the evil perpetrators of “unprovoked” aggressions to which the empire is just an innocent passive witness, or when they try to generate sympathy for the poor oppressed people living under this or that evil dictatorship that happens to be sitting on top of a lot of oil. They’re manipulating public sympathy so they can control the narrative, so that by controlling the narrative they can advance their material agendas.
There’s a legendary video of Norman Finkelstein shouting down a sobbing young Israel apologist on a college campus for trying to play the Holocaust card to silence his criticisms of Israel. One of the reasons this video is so widely shared and resonates with so many people is because Finkelstein happens to be the Jewish son of Holocaust survivors and could therefore speak with great authority, but another reason is because it’s such a skillful shutting down of an attempt to manipulate sympathy for the benefit of the Israeli state. By taking sympathy off the table, he took away the Israel apologist’s primary weapon.
Israel and its supporters understand the power of narrative control better than most. That’s why they have a carefully cultivated discipline dedicated to narrative control with its own special name: hasbara. Hasbara is all about manipulating the narrative about Israel in mainstream public discourse.
The real currency of our world is not money or resources, nor gold, nor even weapons. The real currency of our world is narrative and the ability to control it, because if you can control the narrative, you can control everyone.
The average human life is dominated by mental stories, so if you can control the stories that humans are telling each other about their world, you can control the humans.
If you’ve ever tried to meditate, then you know how pervasively dominated human consciousness is by mental chatter. Our minds are constantly babbling about how things are, how we are, how the people around us are, and what’s going on. If you can exert control over how this powerful deluge of mental narrative is occurring for large numbers of people regarding an issue you’ve got a vested interest in, then you have a much better chance of advancing your interests than someone who does not. You have a lot of real power.
Mountains of abuses exist in our world because manipulators understand this dynamic while normal people do not. The strings of our sympathy are continually jerked around without our awareness, by which we are herded into belief systems which advance the interests of the powerful.
That’s why it’s very important to withhold sympathy wherever it’s being weaponized. If someone is using a weapon to hurt people, your first order of business is to take their weapon away from them. You really can’t cede any ground to Israel apologists when they try to tug at your heartstrings about the victims of October 7 or fake “antisemitism” emergencies in western society, because any sympathy you extend in that direction will be used as a weapon to murder and abuse people in the middle east who’ve never done anything to you.
This is something to keep in mind as Israel and its apologists work to whip up public sympathy using dead Israeli children in order to reignite the genocide in Gaza.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world, and whoever controls sympathy controls the narrative. Never give manipulators that power over people.
Alastair Crooke : Political Implosion in Israel and Political Earthquake in Germany
Israel Delays Prisoner Release, Threatening Gaza Cease-Fire
The fragile Gaza cease-fire between Israel and Hamas was thrown into uncertainty Sunday after the Israeli government announced it would not immediately move forward with what would have been the largest single-day release of Palestinian prisoners since the truce was agreed to in January.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israeli forces "are prepared to resume intense fighting at any moment."
"In Gaza, we have eliminated most of Hamas' organized forces, but let there be no doubt, we will complete the war's objectives entirely—whether through negotiation or by other means," he said.
Netanyahu cited what it called "humiliating ceremonies" that Hamas has orchestrated while releasing some of the 25 Israeli hostages who the group has freed since the cease-fire went into effect, when he announced that 620 Palestinian prisoners would not be released as planned.
Nour Odeh, a reporter for Al Jazeera in Amman, Jordan, said the delay was announced "against the recommendation of Israel's security establishment."
Most of the prisoners were detained in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
Six Israeli hostages were released Saturday as planned; Hamas has paraded some of the captives on a stage while handing them over in ceremonies that the group has said do "not include any insult to them."
The cease-fire deal does not include stipulations about how prisoners should be released, and some international observers noted that Israel has released Palestinian detainees wearing shirts displaying the Star of David and phrases translated into Arabic that threatened revenge for Hamas attacks on Israel.
That's the same Israel that pushes murdered Palestinians around on the blade of a bulldozer, dumps dozens of unidentified Palestinian bodies out of a truck into Gaza & leaves, & releases brutalized Palestinian prisoners out of its torture chambers wearing pro-Israel shirts. https://t.co/LzAD5owqsR
— Omar Baddar (@OmarBaddar) February 23, 2025
In Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinian families who were gathered to welcome their family members home from Israeli prisons learned that Israel was refusing to move forward with freeing prisoners until the future release of more Israeli hostages "has been assured."
"We wait for them, to hug them, and see them, but Netanyahu is always stalling," Fatiha Abu Abdullah, a mother of a detained Palestinian in Khan Younis, Gaza, toldAl Jazeera. "God willing, they will be released soon."
The cease-fire is set to expire in early March unless Israel and Hamas can agree to an extension. In the second phase of the truce agreement, a permanent cease-fire is set to be established and Israeli forces are set to completely withdraw from Gaza.
"By postponing the release of our Palestinian prisoners according to the phase one cease-fire agreement, the enemy government is acting rampantly and exposing the entire agreement to grave danger," senior Hamas official Basem Naim said in a statement, called on the U.S. "to pressure Netanyahu and his government to implement the agreement as it is and immediately release our prisoners."
As the prisoner release was delayed, Israeli warplanes flew at low altitudes over Beirut, Lebanon as thousands of people gathered for the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the army planes were deployed to send "a clear message: Whoever threatens to destroy Israel and attacks Israel—that will be the end of him."
Ramy Abdul, chairman of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, called the delayed prisoner release along with the deployment of warplanes "childish, theatrical stunts by a shaken entity that sees no future for itself in this region."
Israel’s delays in releasing Palestinian child & female prisoners as per the agreement, along with its warplanes flying over Nasrallah’s mourners in Beirut, are childish, theatrical stunts by a shaken entity that sees no future for itself in this region
Just clowns, nothing more pic.twitter.com/aQpyJoEsUf
— Ramy Abdu| (@RamAbdu) February 23, 2025
The government media office in Gaza this week reported that Israel has violated the cease-fire agreement more than 350 times since it was established in mid-January, killing at least 92 Palestinians and injuring at least 822 more in direct attacks.
Meanwhile, Katz said Sunday that Israeli troops will remain in the West Bank for "the coming year" as tanks moved into the territory for the first time since 2002.
The United Nations has confirmed that about 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from refugee camps in the West Bank, with Israel pushing to further its goal of achieving what Al Jazeera called a "demographic shift" in the territory.
Jewish settlers have carried out violent attacks across the West Bank since the Gaza cease-fire was reached, and as Common Dreams reported last week, Israeli officials have moved to expand a Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank by nearly 1,000 homes.
"If we look at history in 1948 and 1967, immediately after the war Israel tried to change Palestinian demography to seize maximum territory—it's doing the same now," Menachem Klein, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, told Al Jazeera. "There is a war and Israel tries to gain some demographic and geographic achievements to further base Jewish supremacy in the region."
Israel Sends Tanks into West Bank Amid “De Facto Annexation” of Palestinian Lands
Israeli Defense Minister Says 40,000 Forcibly Displaced Palestinians in West Bank Cannot Return Home
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the Israeli military has forcibly displaced 40,000 Palestinians in the northern occupied West Bank and that they couldn’t return home as the IDF will be operating in the area over the next year, raising fears of a new ethnic cleansing campaign.
The Israeli military launched the current operation in the West Bank, dubbed “Iron Wall,” on January 21. It has been focused on the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarm but has spread elsewhere in the occupied territory. In a new escalation, Israeli tanks entered the West Bank on Sunday for the first time since 2002.
Katz said in a statement that he ordered the Israeli military “to prepare for an extended stay in the camps that have been cleared for the coming year, and not to allow residents to return.”
Massive crowds attend funeral of late Hezbollah leader Nasrallah
Tens of thousands of people have attended a funeral in Beirut for Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Iran-backed, Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah for three decades before being killed in an Israeli bombing last September. The ceremony was held in a sports stadium in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which had extra seats installed prior to the ceremony in anticipation of the massive crowds.
The funeral for Nasrallah and his deputy, Hashem Safieddine, also killed in an Israeli airstrike in early October, was delayed for five months due to security concerns. Most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership was killed by Israel late last year, due to what analysts have described as Israel’s deep intelligence infiltration of a group once famed for its secrecy.
The stadium was packed by mourners carrying pictures of Nasrallah and waving Hezbollah flags, with some hanging off floodlights to get a better vantage point of the stage. Several foreign delegations attended the funeral, including the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, and several Iraqi lawmakers. ...
Mourners wept as Nasrallah and Safieddine’s caskets were paraded around the stadium and threw rings, jackets and scarves for pallbearers to rub on the coffins and return to them as mementoes of the late leaders. As the caskets were unveiled, four Israeli fighter jets flew low over the stadium, prompting cries of “Death to Israel!”.
Israeli fighter jets bombed south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley before and during the funeral ceremony, despite the ceasefire agreement signed months earlier.
How Biden SABOTAGED Peace In Ukraine! w/ Scott Horton
Starmer and Macron agree to show ‘united leadership in support of Ukraine’
Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have agreed to show “united leadership in support of Ukraine” when they separately meet Donald Trump this week. The UK prime minister and the French president spoke on Sunday afternoon to reiterate the importance of Ukraine being at the centre of any negotiations to end the war, Downing Street said.
Their call before an important week for both leaders highlights their desire to present a united European position against Russia’s aggression, after the US president launched extraordinary attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dismissing the president of Ukraine as a “dictator without elections”.
The prime minister appeared determined to have vital discussions with allies before his Washington visit: he also spoke to Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, and Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, on Sunday night.
Starmer and Rutte agreed “there could be no negotiations about Ukraine, without Ukraine”, and noted the importance of European leaders stepping up to ensure the security of the region, Downing Street said.
Trump ‘surrendering to the Russians’ on Ukraine, top Democrat says
A senior Democratic lawmaker accused Donald Trump of “surrendering to the Russians” on Sunday, as Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff said talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine was “the only way to end the carnage”. In an interview on ABC News’ This Week, Democratic senator Jack Reed, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, hit out at Trump’s recent verbal attacks on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and increased alignment with Russia.
“Essentially, this is President Trump surrendering to the Russians,” Reed said. “This is not a statesman or a diplomat. This is just someone who admires Putin, does not believe in the struggle of the Ukrainians and is committed to cozying up to an autocrat.”
But senior administration officials sought to side-step accusations that Trump’s re-positioning of US policies on Ukraine, including a possible deal for Ukraine to repay US military and financial support with rare-earth materials, amounted to a capitulation to the Russian position on the war.
Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the mideast who revealed this week that he had “spent a lot of time with President Putin”, during a recent trip to Moscow, “talking, developing a friendship, a relationship with him”, declined to blame Russia for starting war in Ukraine, calling Ukraine’s ambitions to join Nato “a threat to the Russians”.
“The war didn’t need to happen – it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians,” Witkoff said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining Nato”, he said. “That didn’t need to happen. It basically became a threat to the Russians and so we have to deal with that fact.”
Zelenskyy says he would ‘quit for peace’ as he refuses US demand for Ukraine minerals
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is not willing to cave in to intense US pressure to sign a $500bn minerals deal and that he wants Donald Trump to be “on our side” in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv ahead of the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy said he did not recognise the sum demanded by the White House as apparent “payback” for previous US military assistance.
He said the figure was far higher than the US’s actual military contribution of $100bn, and pointed out that both parties in the US Congress and the then president Joe Biden had approved the support in the wake of Russia’s attack. It came as a “grant” rather than as “debt” that had to be repaid. “I’m not signing something that 10 generations of Ukrainians are going to pay later,” he said.
Zelenskyy said any deal was contingent on the US administration providing security guarantees to stop Russia from violating any future ceasefire – something it has so far refused to do.
Ukraine’s president also revealed the onerous financial terms which Washington is seeking to impose. For every $1 of any future military aid Kyiv has to pay back $2 – an interest rate, Zelenskyy noted, of 100%. The same conditions were not applied to Israel, the UAE, Qatar or Saudi Arabia, he remarked, saying he had asked for an explanation but not received one.
Zelenskyy insisted he wanted good, “friendly” relations with America – a “strategic partner” - and shrugged off Trump’s bruising description of him as a “dictator” for not holding elections during wartime. “Why should I be offended? A dictator would be offended by being called a dictator,” he said, pointing out he won the last 2019 election with 73% of the vote. He added that he was ready to quit as president if it meant “peace for Ukraine” or membership of Nato, something the US and some other Nato member states oppose.
Trump, Europe’s Collapse & Why Liberals Keep Losing, w/ Yanis Varoufakis
Conservatives win German election but far-right AfD doubles support
The conservative opposition has won the most votes in Germany’s general election, preliminary results indicated, but a dramatic surge by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is likely to complicate the formation of a government to help spearhead a European response to growing global threats. The CDU/CSU candidate, Friedrich Merz, was preparing on Sunday night to try to form a ruling coalition after clinching roughly 29% of the vote from a high turnout. ...
The AfD, buoyed up by anger about immigration, violent crime and high energy costs, got about 20% of the vote – finishing second and nearly doubling its result at the last election in 2021. ... Trump hailed the election’s outcome. “Much like the USA, the people of Germany got tired of the no-common-sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “This is a great day for Germany.”
But Merz struck a blunt tone, saying Trump had made it “clear that [his] government is fairly indifferent to Europe’s fate” and that Germany would have to wait to see “whether we will still be able to speak about Nato in its current form” when the alliance meets for its next summit in June. ...
The incumbent chancellor, Olaf Scholz, turned in the worst performance for his Social Democrats since the second world war, with about 16%, the early results showed. ... Voters also punished Scholz’s junior partners, the Greens, who slipped a point to 13.5%, and the pro-business Free Democrats, who looked unlikely to clear the 5% hurdle to representation in parliament.
The far-left Linke drew more than 8% after a remarkable late-campaign comeback, while a new populist left-conservative party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, fizzled out after strong showings in European and state elections last year to tally just below 5%. ... Exit polls showed the AfD did well among younger voters, winning in the 25-34 age bracket with 22%, ahead of CDU/CSU at 18%, and the Greens and Die Linke at 16% each. Merz’s conservatives ceded legions of support to the AfD compared to four years ago, while the SPD saw heavy losses to the far right among the working class.
German elections, government coalition of losers
Germany’s Merz Says He Will Work To Achieve Independence From the US
Friedrich Merz, the German politician who is expected to be the next chancellor following Sunday’s elections, vowed that he would work to make Europe independent of the US and suggested NATO may need to be replaced.
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said after it was clear his CDU/CSU party had won the election.
“I never thought I would have to say something like this on a television program. But after Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” Merz added, according to POLITICO.
Discussing NATO, Merz said, “I am very curious to see how we are heading toward the NATO summit at the end of June. Whether we will still be talking about NATO in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”
Judge rejects DoJ call to immediately dismiss Eric Adams corruption case
A New York judge on Friday said he would not immediately dismiss Eric Adams’s corruption case, but ordered the Democratic New York City mayor’s trial delayed indefinitely after the justice department asked for the charges to be dismissed. In a written ruling, the US district judge Dale Ho in Manhattan said he would appoint an outside lawyer, Paul Clement of the law firm Clement & Murphy PLLC, to present arguments against the federal prosecutors’ bid to dismiss, in order to help the judge make his decision.
Justice department officials in Washington asked Ho to dismiss the charges against Adams on 14 February. A hearing was held in New York earlier this week.
That came about after several prosecutors resigned rather than follow orders from the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, an appointee of Donald Trump and the Republican president’s former personal criminal defense lawyer, to seek dismissal of the case brought last year by prosecutors during the Biden administration.
Is Trump ABANDONING His Promise Not To Cut Medicaid?
Donald Trump’s administration could rack up a “monumental” bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer. Officials have cited “poor performance” when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases it’s not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice.
Jacob Malcom was acting deputy assistant secretary for policy and environmental management, and director of the office of policy analysis at the US Department of the Interior – until this week, when he resigned in protest against the mass firings of probationary employees. “This is being done under the guise of ‘poor performance’ or ‘skills not aligned with needs’ but neither are true,” he told the Guardian. “First, no evidence was provided that would suggest that poor performance; in fact, I know some of the individuals that were down my chain of supervision and know they were among the best performers.
“Second, [there has been] no evidence or analysis of a lack of alignment with needs. Some of the people terminated in my chain actually work on performance and efficiency, so they literally work on the public argument of the Doge.” ...
Suzanne Summerlin, a labor attorney, said an “astounding” level of “fraud, waste and abuse” had been occurring as the Trump administration sought to overhaul a string of departments and agencies. “These firings they’re conducting without following the law will result in hundreds of thousands of former federal employees being owed back pay, plus interest, plus benefits, plus attorneys fees,” said Summerlin. “When the bill comes it will be monumental.”
Trump administration shuts down national database documenting police misconduct
Donald Trump’s second presidential administration shut down a national database that tracked misconduct by federal police, a resource that policing reform advocates hailed as essential to prevent officers with misconduct records from being able to move undetected between agencies.
The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), which stored police records documenting misconduct, is now unavailable, the Washington Post first reported. The US justice department also confirmed the database’s elimination in a statement issued online. “User agencies can no longer query or add data to the NLEAD,” the statement read. “The US Department of Justice is decommissioning the NLEAD in accordance with federal standards.” ...
The police misconduct database, the first of its kind, was not publicly available. Law enforcement agencies could use the NLEAD to check if an officer applying for a law enforcement position had committed misconduct, such as excessive force. ...
In an emailed statement to the Washington Post, the White House confirmed the database’s deletion. “President Trump believes in an appropriate balance of accountability without compromising law enforcement’s ability to do its job of fighting crime and keeping communities safe,” read the statement. “But the Biden executive order creating this database was full of woke, anti-police concepts that make communities less safe like a call for ‘equitable’ policing and addressing ‘systemic racism in our criminal justice system.’ President Trump rescinded the order creating this database on Day 1 because he is committed to giving our brave men and women of law enforcement the tools they need to stop crime."
Backyard chickens: Floridians start raising hens to combat rising egg prices
Katie Whalen’s backyard in the Florida city of Port St Lucie is testament to her journey towards a life of self-sufficiency. She grows mangoes, avocados, starfruit, jackfruit and coconuts. She is cultivating a tropical tree spinach known as chaya. What she really wants, however, is a chicken coop and hens to provide eggs that are becoming increasingly unaffordable in stores. As bird flu worsens across the US and commercial suppliers struggle to keep up with demand, the keeping of fowl and production of eggs in home environments, has surged in popularity, and Whalen is keen to join the revolution.
Nationwide, an estimated 84 million chickens are kept privately, broadly similar to the numbers of cats and dogs kept as pets. “[It’s] the news reports of bird flu, the scarcity of eggs, the high cost, really,” she said. “I’ve been wanting for a while to get chickens because I’m into gardening and the whole permaculture stuff that I’m learning about. And obviously chickens are very beneficial in that system.”
What is stalling Whalen, and allowing others to press ahead, is Florida’s patchwork of often contradictory laws and ordinances over exactly who can, or cannot, keep fowl in their backyard. Clermont, a city 20 miles (32km) west of Orlando, responded to the egg crisis last week by passing a new law that allows residents to keep up to five hens in properly constructed coops. Roosters are forbidden, and homeowners must apply to the city for a permit.
For residents like Whalen in Port St Lucie on Florida’s Atlantic coast, raising fowl is a hard no. Officials insist they don’t have enough code enforcement officers to make inspections or otherwise regulate the cottage industry. “Raising chickens has been determined to be incompatible with the city’s design and a population that now surpasses 250,000,” it said in a statement. Yet in unincorporated St Lucie county, a formal Backyard Chicken Program, approved in 2021 at the height of the Covid pandemic, is thriving. Dozens of residents signed up and numerous families are enjoying an unlimited supply of eggs, strictly for their “own personal use” per the ordinance.
Treasure Coast Newspapers conducted its own survey of municipalities and counties mostly along Florida’s east coast and inland, and found a wide disparity in regulations. In general, residents of cities are generally more likely to be prohibited from keeping chickens, while rural areas have looser rules.
Trump Pollster WARNS Of Dem Midterm Blowout
Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’
The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: “climate.” The US government is withdrawing grants and other support for research that even references the climate crisis, academics have said, amid Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg upon environmental regulations and clean-energy development.
Trump, who has said that the climate crisis is a “giant hoax”, has already stripped mentions of climate change and global heating from government websites and ordered a halt to programs that reference diversity, equity and inclusion. A widespread funding freeze for federally backed scientific work also has been imposed, throwing the US scientific community into chaos.
Researchers said work mentioning climate is being particularly targeted. One environmental scientist working in the western US who did not want to be named said their previously awarded grant from the Department of Transportation for climate-adaption research had been withdrawn, until they retitled it to remove the word “climate”. “I still have the grant because I changed the title,” the scientist said. “I was told that I needed to do so before the title of the grant was published on the US DoT [Department of Transportation] website in order to keep it. The explanation was that the priorities of the current administration don’t include climate change and other topics considered ‘woke’.”
The researcher said they were “shocked because the grant was already awarded and I would have risked losing it. I’m very concerned about science being politically influenced. If researchers can’t use certain words, it’s likely that some science will be biased.”
Hurricane-proof skyscrapers vulnerable to less powerful windstorms, study finds
Skyscrapers built to withstand major hurricanes fare much more poorly in less powerful windstorms known as derechos, researchers have found, raising questions for cities worldwide over the resilience of tall buildings as the climate emergency worsens. A team from Florida International University’s (FIU) civil and environmental engineering department studied the unexpectedly severe damage caused to buildings in Houston, a city with 50 skyscrapers of 492ft (150 metres) or more, during the 16 May 2024 derecho.
They found that the storm’s long line of fast-moving thunderstorms spawned “downburst” winds peaking at 90mph that bounced off the buildings and inflicted considerable damage, especially to the facades of structures designed to withstand stronger, category 4 hurricane-force wind speeds of up to 156mph. The same buildings, by contrast, were virtually unscathed during category 1 Hurricane Beryl in July, when sustained wind speeds were similar to those of the earlier derecho, but without their more erratic, up and down nature, or explosive bursts at or near ground level.
The results were published on Friday by the peer-reviewed science website Frontiers in Built Environment. The FIU study focused on five of Houston’s tallest and most iconic buildings but, the researchers say, it could have profound implications for cities elsewhere as the climate crisis and soaring ocean temperatures fuel stronger and more frequent severe weather events, including hurricanes, fires and floods.
They stress that the wind speeds in a derecho, which can vary from far below major hurricane strength to match or exceed it, is not as consequential as how that wind is dispersed. A “unique characteristic” of a downburst, they say, is how the wind blows outwards in all directions when it reaches the ground. “When strong winds move through a city, they can bounce due to interference between tall buildings. This increases pressure on walls and windows, making damage more severe than if the buildings were isolated,” said Omar Metwally, an FIU doctoral student and the report’s co-author. “On top of this, downbursts create intense, localized forces which can exceed typical design values for hurricanes, especially on the lower floors of tall buildings.”
Metwally called it a “one-two punch effect” that the FIU team predicts will become an even worse problem for states around the Gulf of Mexico, where a 0.34F rise per decade over the last half-century is twice the rate of oceans globally.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Is the UK Spying on Hamas for Israel?
Pro-Israel Bias in UK Newsrooms Revealed
Zelenski Has Yet To Eat The Shit Sandwich
Patrick Lawrence: What Odds, as Trump Takes on the Deep State?
Trump halts medical research funding in apparent violation of judge’s order
MSNBC reportedly cancels Joy Reid show in reshuffle at liberal network
Waves are getting bigger. Is the world ready?
‘You dream about such things’: Brit who discovered missing pharaoh’s tomb may have unearthed another
Trump DISRUPTING the DC Status Quo Should be Celebrated
A Little Night Music
Otis Redding – Pain In My Heart / These Arms Of Mine
Otis Redding – Don't Mess With Cupid
Otis Redding – A Fool For You
Otis Redding – Shake / Respect / I've Been Loving You Too Long
Otis Redding – Ole Man Trouble
Otis Redding – Nobody's Fault But Mine
Otis Redding – Love Man
Otis Redding – Mr. Pitiful
Otis Redding – Satisfaction
Comments
Cain't get no satisfaction
.
Cain't buy no politicians
too damn expensive ..
only got just a little to give
thanks for spending yours
on us yeeyah joe
question everything
evening qms...
yep, satisfaction can be expensive i guess. the blues is always available, though.
have a great evening!
On DOGE
.
I read a heavy right wing site daily and the members are giddy about the number of government employees who are being fired. I wondered how many members of the site that have been fired are as appalled as I am of people cheering the blood bath. I said thousands of families are being upended and are in dire economic distress through no fault of their own.
Boy did I get dawg piled. Bigly!
The 2 most comments were people in the private sector get fired all the time when companies downsize and they never get an 8 month severance pay. They believe that government workers are lazy and never do their jobs or do anything good for the country.
Only one person understood what I was asking. Yes the government is probably bloated and can use to be downsized, but I think the cuts should be done in our bloated military industrial complex where defense companies get over paid to make crappy products that don’t work as promised. (Like flying turkey the F-35) Or the government can stop subsidizing big businesses and giving them tax cuts and especially when their profits keep going up and up. No one ever talks about that, or that many parts of the government are going to be privatized, but boy are they happy that people like them are getting canned.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
evening snoopy...
well, if you think maga is pissed off now, wait until all of those former government workers start competing with them for jobs and wages go down. bet they'll be real happy, then.
It is just business as usual!
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5161459-former-fda-drug-division-c...
evening humphrey...
all of the people who are in a position to close the golden revolving door utility are at some level invested in its continuance, so i guess we're going to keep seeing reports like this.
Nothing to see here. (or maybe there is) You can be the judge
Umm, perhaps it is about optics
.
choose the battles you can win
and ignore the rest of the wars
you are unable to control?
question everything
heh...
well, you'd have to go back a ways to find an administration that wasn't reflexively pro-israel. i would guess that the last administration that had any notion that they might hold israel somewhat to account was the bush sr. admin.
We don’t have any power!
Aargh…I have so many things to say to Bernie I don’t know where to start.
Okay. How about here.
Bernie, where were you when Clinton started the dem party cozing up to big corporations, pharma and banks? When he cut welfare as we knew it? When he wanted to give social security to Wall Street?
When Obama cut $5 billion from food stamps and he too wanted to deal with republicans on social security?
When Biden immediately stopped the Covid financial support because Joe Manchin and other blue dawg democrats wanted it cut off? When Biden hid behind the parliamentarian to not increase the minimum wage? For saying that he would veto MFA if congress passed it? If I remember correctly after he said that you told us to vote for him anyway. Wasn’t that what you were running on?
So you want people to send you more money so you can travel around the country yelling at people to stop Trump? Isn’t that your fcking job? Why aren’t you asking your billionaire dem friends for the money instead of the people who are having a hard time affording to buy a dozen eggs?
Hey….here’s an idea. Write another book and instead of buying another house you can use that money. Better yet. Sell one of your houses and fund yourself.
Sheesh. This. Guy.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Heh, heh
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
wow...
it's just sad what bernie has become. he used to ask for 27 dollars to fund a revolution and now he wants 27 dollars to fund nationwide travel to appear at rallies. seems like no matter what he just wants your 27 dollars with no value to be returned.
Nailed it
Ha…guess what site is giving him kudos? Just unbelievable.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Hi joe,
I’m wondering, since Trump and Musk are getting all the attention, that it’s maybe not a bad thing for Bernie's voice to travel. I remember how important it was to hear Bernie at his rallies when Trump first ran in 2016. I think Sanders still speaks to the younger generation which is the future of america. If all he does is speak about the potential tragedy of what Trump and Musk are doing, then that would not be enough, and probably even contribute to the divisiveness of the country. On the other hand, I wonder whether being oppositional also has an advantage, being that the younger generation could benefit from continuing to hear his take on valid issues.
Living in an alternate reality
Aren’t American companies planning on returning to Russia if the Ukraine war ends? And isn’t Russia’s economy #4 and passing the European economy? And isn’t Russia winning the war?
Europe needs an enforceable Smith-Mundt act. STAT.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.