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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Charles Brown

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues piano player Charles Brown. Enjoy!

^{Charles Brown - Drifting Blues}

"If people protesting genocide and ethnic cleansing makes you “feel unsafe”, then perhaps you are the fucking problem."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

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News and Opinion

Trump Sends Netanyahu Weapons While Talking Tough To Zelensky

Israeli media are now reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu is considering “a brief resumption” of the onslaught in Gaza in order to pressure Hamas to make concessions and change the terms of the ceasefire agreement which was signed on the 19th of January.

The Times of Israel reports:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a brief resumption of fighting against Hamas to pressure the terror group into making further concessions, according to an Israeli television report aired Saturday as he held high-level deliberations on the stalled negotiations to advance to the second stage of the hostage-ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

“Hamas has rejected Israel’s proposal to extend the first, 42-day stage of the deal, which formally expires Saturday night, insisting that the deal proceed with phase two, which Israel has largely refused to negotiate for the past month. Thirty-three Israeli hostages were released, eight of them dead, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Five Thai nationals held hostage in the Gaza Strip were freed separately.

“With the ceasefire expected to lapse at midnight, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz will meet Sunday, along with other security officials, to discuss preparations for a potential resumption of fighting in Gaza and a review of all potential war fronts, Channel 12 news reported.”

Headlines should not be that ‘Hamas refuses to extend the first phase of the ceasefire’ - they should be that ‘Israel refuses to begin talks on the second phase of the ceasefire’, which would bring a definitive end to the war. Israel has also repeatedly violated the ceasefire.

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) March 1, 2025

This framing that Hamas has “rejected” Israel’s proposed extension of phase one is just the current propaganda line from the US-Israeli PR machine. In reality the terms of the ceasefire deal say that Israel and Hamas were supposed to move on to phase two of the agreement this weekend, but Israel has been refusing to negotiate the second stage of the agreement this entire time because it would entail a withdrawal of Israeli troops and a commitment to a lasting peace. This idea that the first phase of the ceasefire should be “extended” instead of continuing on to the second phase is a brand new proposition the US and Israel just started pushing a few days ago.

It is therefore Israel who is rejecting the ceasefire as written and trying to write up new terms for the deal; Hamas is just insisting on the terms of the ceasefire it agreed to.

But today we’re being hammered with this message that Hamas is rejecting peace. A tweet by Axios’ Israeli intelligence operative Barak Ravid reads as follows:

“Israeli Prime Minister’s office says Israel agreed to a U.S. proposal for extending the Gaza ceasefire in return for release of hostages but claims Hamas refuses.”

So that’s the official message we’re being fed by the consent-manufacturing machine, as the Trump administration sends even more weapons to Israel. The White House has just used its “emergency powers” to bypass congressional oversight for a $3 billion weapons transfer to the Netanyahu regime, right after posturing as a stern tough guy who cares about making peace in his controversial dustup with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Zelensky show was nice but doing this on the eve of the possible collapse of the Gaza ceasefire deal is absolutely despicable (article by @KyleAnzalone_) pic.twitter.com/THhdVSLvVz

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) March 1, 2025

As readers have no doubt already heard, the entire western political-media class has been in an uproar since Trump and Vice President JD Vance made international headlines by publicly raking Zelensky over the coals for his role in obstructing peace with Russia, even accusing him of “gambling with World War Three.”

Democrats are rending their garments over the public humiliation of Saint Zelensky and crying about the “bullying” behavior of Trump and Vance, while Republicans are applauding the whole ordeal as a sign that Trump is a strong and heroic peacemaker who doesn’t take any guff from Washington’s warmongering proxies. But the most immediate and glaring point about Zelensky’s public castigation is that this same administration doesn’t appear to be taking that same energy to Benjamin Netanyahu as he prepares to resume a genocide.

And of course it doesn’t. Trump has publicly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s wealthiest Israeli, megadonor Miriam Adelson, while JD Vance is the protégé of virulent Zionist billionaire Peter Thiel. What we witnessed on Friday was Trump speaking to Zelensky in public the way Adelson probably speaks to Trump in private. We can certainly never expect to see him speaking that way to Netanyahu.

It is good that things are moving toward peace in Ukraine, but this war was never intended to be permanent. It was only ever intended to be a temporary quagmire to bleed and divert Russia as much as possible while advancing strategic objectives elsewhere, which we recently saw manifest in the empire’s successful regime change operation in Syria. Zelensky, like every other US imperial asset, was only ever intended to be used and then discarded. The gears of the imperial war machine roll onward.

Ken Roth on Israel's "Starvation Strategy" in Gaza & "Righting Wrongs" of Abusive Governments

Israel cuts off humanitarian supplies to Gaza as it seeks to change ceasefire deal

Israel has cut off humanitarian supplies to Gaza in an effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a change in the ceasefire agreement to allow for the release of hostages without an Israeli troop withdrawal.

The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday it was imposing a blockade on Gaza because Hamas would not accept a plan which it claimed had been put forward by the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to extend phase one of the ceasefire and continue to release hostages, and postpone phase two, which envisaged an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal, and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease. Israel will not allow a ceasefire without the release of our hostages,” it said in a statement. “If Hamas continues its refusal, there will be further consequences.”

After the announcement, Netanyahu’s spokesperson, Omer Dostri, wrote in a social media post: “No trucks entered Gaza this morning, nor will they at this stage.” ...

The existence and details of a Witkoff plan had not been confirmed by Washington by Sunday morning. A statement from Hamas called the suspension of aid a “war crime” and a violation of the ceasefire agreement. It said Netanyahu’s “decision to suspend humanitarian aid is cheap blackmail, a war crime and a blatant coup against the [ceasefire] agreement”. Hamas said it was committed to the originally agreed ceasefire that had been scheduled to move into a second phase, with negotiations aimed at a permanent end to the war, and it rejected the idea of a temporary extension to the 42-day truce.

Israel BLOWS UP Ceasefire, Begins New Starvation Policy

As Freed Palestinians Describe Torture, Trump OKs $3 Billion Arms Package for Israel

As Palestinians released from Israeli imprisonment recount torture and other abuse suffered at the hands of their former captors, the Trump administration on Friday approved a new $3 billion weapons package for Israel.

The new package, reported by Zeteo's Prem Thakker, includes nearly $2.716 billion worth of bombs and weapons guidance kits, as well as $295 million in bulldozers. The Trump administration said that "an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale," allowing it to bypass Congress, as the Biden administration did on multiple occasions. However, the weapons won't be delivered until 2026 or 2027.

From October 2023 to October 2024, Israel received a record $17.9 billion worth of U.S. arms as it waged a war of annihilation against the Gaza Strip that left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more displaced, starved, or sickened. Israel is facing genocide allegations in an International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Reporting on the new package came after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Monday announced an effort to block four other arms sales totaling $8.56 billion in offensive American weaponry to Israel.

Meanwhile, some of the approximately 1,000 Palestinians released by Israel as part of a prisoner swap described grim stories of abuse by Israeli forces. The former detainees, who were arrested but never charged with any crimes, "have returned visibly malnourished and scarred by the physical and psychological torture they say they faced in Israeli prisons," according to The Washington Post. Some returned to what were once their homes to find them destroyed and their relatives killed or wounded by Israeli forces.

Eyas al-Bursh, a doctor volunteering at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City when he was captured by Israeli troops, was held in Sde Teiman and the Ofer military prison in the illegally occupied West Bank for 11 months.

"The places where we were held were harsh, sleep was impossible, and we remained handcuffed and blindfolded," al-Bursh told the Post.

"We endured psychological and physical torture without a single day of respite—whether through beatings, abuse, punches, or even verbal insults and humiliation," he added.

The Israel Defense Forces told the Post that it "acts in accordance with Israeli and international law in order to protect the rights of the detainees held in the detention and questioning facilities."

However, farmer Ashraf al-Radhi, who was held for 14 months—including at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel's Negev Desert—told the Post that "we witnessed all kinds of humiliation."

According to the newspaper:

Radhi said he "wished for death" during his detention, which included long periods when he was blindfolded, handcuffed, and crammed into a filthy cell with dozens of other prisoners. The 34-year-old said he had no access to a lawyer; no idea why he was there; or what, in his absence, had become of his family.

Rahdi also said that Mohammed al-Akka, a 44-year-old detainee held with him, died last December. Al-Akka is one of dozens of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody, some from suspected torture and, in at least one case, rape with an electric baton. A number of Israeli reservists are being investigated for the alleged gang-rape of a Sde Teiman prisoner.

Max Blumenthal : Netanyahu Sabotages Ceasefire.

Trump invites freed Israeli hostage to White House

Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has been invited to Washington to meet Donald Trump this week, his brother told Israeli media on Sunday. Sharabi, who was released from Gaza after 16 months in captivity, expects to meet Trump with other freed hostages on Tuesday, after the US president watched him describe the severe hunger and violence he endured on Israeli television.

Excerpts from Sharabi’s moving interview on Israel’s Channel 12 “were shown to Trump, with English subtitles, and he was shocked once again, but also expressed great sympathy for those who survived captivity”, his brother Sharon said, according to a translation from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israeli advocacy groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), have posted subtitled versions of the interview online.

When Sharabi and two other hostages, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, were released on 8 February alongside after nearly 500 days in captivity, their physical condition outraged Israelis, and Trump. Sharabi was at home in Be’eri kibbutz with his British-born wife and their two teenage daughters when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023. ...

Sharabi’s brother said the freed hostage is flying to the US aboard a plane provided by Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and a major Trump donor.

One Palestinian prisoner who was released yesterday evening. He was abducted from Gaza a year ago and was then subjected to torture, especially burning by chemicals. He lost sight in his left eye. pic.twitter.com/iRkzOgJON6

— Mosab Abu Toha (@MosabAbuToha) February 27, 2025

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Egypt Ready for War with Israel.

Treasury Secretary: Ukraine Minerals Deal Not on Table After Zelensky ‘Blew It Up’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the US-Ukraine economic deal was no longer on the table after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chose to “blow it up” during the contentious meeting at the White House on Friday.

President Trump was ready to sign the deal with Zelensky on Friday and said the US would continue providing military aid to Ukraine before the Oval Office meeting turned hostile due to Zelensky pressing Vice President JD Vance about the idea of diplomacy with Russia.

“All President Zelensky had to do was come in and sign this economic agreement, and again show no daylight — no daylight — between Ukrainian people and the American people, and he chose to blow that up,” Bessent told CBS News host Margaret Brennan. ...

After the blow-up in the Oval Office, Zelensky was kicked out of the White House, and reports say President Trump is now considering cutting off all US weapons shipments to Ukraine. For his part, Zelensky says he still wants to sign the deal, although he’s asking for stronger security guarantees.

Democrats jump to defense of Zelensky and Ukraine war

A trio of prominent Democratic senators appeared on Sunday television interview programs to denounce President Trump and Vice President JD Vance for their Friday gang-up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which ended with Zelensky being asked to leave the White House and Trump aides suggesting that the administration might cut off military and economic aid to his country.

All three Democrats—Amy Klobuchar, who was interviewed on ABC, Chris Murphy, who appeared on CNN, and Bernie Sanders, who spoke on NBC—suggested that Trump was doing the work of Russian President Vladimir Putin. They all backed the Democratic Party’s pro-war line, calling for stepped-up military aid to Ukraine and intensive efforts to defeat the Russian forces, which occupy about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, in the east and south.

UK media claims possible Russia collapse

Keir Starmer says Europe ‘at crossroads in history’ and must support Ukraine

Keir Starmer has said Europe is “at a crossroads in history” and must act to support Ukraine to secure a lasting peace as he confirmed the UK and France would lead a “coalition of the willing” to help end the fighting.

After a crucial defence summit in London, Starmer said any plan for a lasting ceasefire would have to be “delivered together” with the US to provide a deterrence to Russia, as he continued attempts to repair frayed ties between Kyiv and Washington. Starmer announced a deal that would allow Ukraine to use £1.6bn of export finance to buy more than 5,000 air defence missiles, to be made by Thales in Belfast and therefore creating jobs, as part of the government’s plan to boost economic growth.

The prime minister had spent 48 hours engaged in intense diplomacy after the disastrous White House meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump on Friday, during which the Ukrainian president was berated live on camera by the US president and his deputy, JD Vance.

The defence summit, which brought together major European powers as well as Canada, was intended to develop a united European response to the shift in the transatlantic consensus towards Ukraine but it took on a new urgency after the diplomatic clash. ...

Starmer told a press conference afterwards that Britain and other European nations were willing to put “boots on the ground and planes in the air” to help provide an effective deterrent to Russia.

Coalition of the k*lling

Defiant but tactful Zelenskyy seeks to move on from White House fiasco

A defiant but tactful Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to apologise to Donald Trump after Friday’s spat in the White House, and declared that the row in the Oval Office “did not bring anything positive” to peace for Ukraine. Speaking to journalists only in Ukrainian at the end of a two-day visit to the UK, the Ukrainian president said that when such delicate negotiations are held in public “foes can take advantage of them” though he said he hoped the row would eventually pass.

Though the Ukrainian leader said there had been no communications at his level with the White House since the meeting, a deal for the US to jointly exploit minerals in his country was ready to be signed. Zelenskyy would not say whether he believed he had been ambushed when he was berated by the US president and the vice-president, JD Vance, and insisted he would talk to Trump again if “invited to solve the real issues”. ...

He also said he believed that an Anglo-French-led peace effort, discussed by European leaders in London on Sunday, would bear fruit “in the coming weeks” and indicated there were supportive declarations from other countries – such as Turkey, the Balts and the Nordics – to get involved. ...

Ukraine “will never” recognise any Russian annexation of territory it occupies, even if it is to try to secure a peace deal, Zelenskyy added, and he repeated that he would only accept a ceasefire if it was followed by robust security guarantees that had the confidence of his country’s people.

Ukraine DESPERATELY Regretting Not Signing 2022 Peace Deal! w/ The Duran

After the Trump-Zelenskyy spat, Starmer may not have many cards left to play on Ukraine

As Keir Starmer surveys the wreckage of the US-Ukrainian relationship caused by the Oval Office bar-room fight, the UK prime minister is clearly intent on trying to repair the diplomatic damage, but it may be that the mood of mutual antagonism not just in the US, but in Europe, is too great. It is not as if Starmer, to use Trump’s blunt phraseology, has many cards left to play. He had already played them, and his hand was not strong enough to prevent the US-Ukraine breakdown.

Courtesy of King Charles, he offered an unprecedented second state visit to President Trump. He had rushed through a cut in the overseas aid budget so as to be in a position to present Trump with an increase in UK defence spending, and during his meeting on Thursday he had fawned over Trump’s ability to “change the conversation over Ukraine”.

Yet despite the decent atmospherics, Starmer, in common with Emmanuel Macron earlier in the week, could not extract the one concession he wanted: a clear US commitment to provide security guarantees – principally air cover and intelligence – for a European force being prepared to oversee a ceasefire inside Ukraine. Trump continued to insist he trusted Vladimir Putin to abide by the ceasefire and focused on the concessions Ukraine was going to have to make. There seemed to be no reserves of goodwill between the US and Europe on which Starmer could draw. ...

In one set of judgments, it marks the end of the post-1945 world order. The US may no longer be a trusted ally, but a competitor, even a strategic threat. It leaves Europe feeling even more alone than at the end of the Munich Security Conference when Vance portrayed Europe’s leaders as a threat alongside Russia and China. Indeed, after the trio of Oval Office meetings with Macron, Starmer and Zelenskyy, it is an illusion to think that Trump can be motivated by any sense of shared history or common values.

The US is determined to end the freeze in its bilateral relations with Russia. Europe is now alone in its conflict with Russia, and the US may not even play the role of a neutral bystander. Somehow, this disparate continent has to decide if it has the strength and cohesion to do what is required to force Moscow’s retreat.

"Ponzi Scheme" Elon ATTACKS Social Security On Rogan

'Bloodbath': Social Security Administration Begins Mass Firings

The Social Security Administration, now under the control of an official installed by U.S. President Donald Trump, began the process of gutting whole segments of the agency and firing a huge portion of its already diminished workforce, sparking alarm among advocates who say the move will almost certainly result in benefit delays and disruptions.

The American Prospect, which first reported earlier this week that Acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek was weighing staff cuts of up to 50%, obtained an email sent late Thursday indicating that the department has launched an "agency-wide organizational restructuring that will include significant workforce reductions."

"The email gives employees until March 14 to decide among a number of options," the Prospect reported. "They can seek voluntary reassignments, or 'separate from federal service through retirement or resignation.' All employees at least 50 years of age with at least 20 years of service are being offered an 'early out' voluntary early retirement; that's lower than the typical benchmarks for federal employees. Early retirees are typically eligible for an annuity."

"In addition, between now and March 14 employees can take voluntary separation incentive payments of up to $25,000, depending on job classification. Employees are also encouraged in the email to resign and take the payout of their annual leave," the outlet added.

Trump has pledged that Social Security "will not be touched," but the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works argued that the assault on SSA "has only one goal: The total annihilation of Social Security by firing half of the workforce and closing the field offices."

"Wall Street billionaires want to destroy Social Security so they can give themselves trillions in tax handouts," the group wrote on social media.

The Prospect reported that while the email sent to SSA staff on Thursday "does state that some employees may be reassigned from so-called 'non-mission critical' positions to direct service positions at field offices and processing centers, it would be difficult to achieve large-scale reductions in force without impacting staff at the more than 1,200 field offices across the country."

"Already, one large hearing office in White Plains, New York has been shuttered, and there are unclear plans for other lease terminations on the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) website," the Prospect observed. ...

ProPublica reported over the weekend that DOGE staffers' "first wave of actions" at SSA, including the elimination of dozens of jobs and shuttering of local offices, "was largely lost in the rush of headlines."

"Those first steps might seem restrained compared with the mass firings that DOGE has pursued at other federal agencies," the investigative outlet noted. "But Social Security recipients rely on in-person service in all 50 states, and the shuttering of offices, reported on DOGE's website to include locations everywhere from rural West Virginia to Las Vegas, could be hugely consequential. The closures potentially reduce access to Social Security for some of the most vulnerable people in this country—including not just retirees but also individuals with severe physical and intellectual disabilities, as well as children whose parents have died and who've been left in poverty."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday that "firing half of all Social Security workers will guarantee that seniors will stop seeing their earned benefits arrive on time and in full."

"Trump's promises to protect Social Security are a sham, just like the rest of his actions since taking office," Wyden added. "A plan like this will result in field office closures that will hit seniors in rural communities the hardest. The goal of this effort is to hollow out an agency that currently delivers retirement benefits with a 99.7% accuracy rate, and hand over the keys to private equity and grifters who want to pillage Social Security for all it's worth."

US Postal Service faces murky future as Trump mulls dismantling institution

After the postmaster general, Louis Dejoy, a former Trump fundraiser and logistics executive appointed during the president’s first term, announced last month that he was stepping down, defenders of the US Postal Service (USPS) concerned that the 249-year-old institution could soon experience the slice and slash of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” scimitar have expressed alarm.

Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to dissolve USPS’s bipartisan board of governors and place the agency under the control of the commerce department secretary, Howard Lutnick, the Washington Post recently reported.

“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money, and we’re thinking about doing that, and it will be a form of a merger,” Trump said. “It’ll remain the postal service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better than it has been over the years.”

Trump has made no secret of his desire to reform the federal agency, once calling it Amazon’s “delivery boy”. But it employs 637,000 people and 91% of Americans view it favorably, according to a Pew Research survey taken when USPS was perhaps the most visible federal agency during the Covid pandemic and came close to running out of cash entirely.

In 2020, Trump acknowledged that he was starving the service of money in order to make it harder to process mail-in ballots, which he worried could cost him the election. In December 2024, Trump was reported to have expressed a “keen interest” in privatizing the service. But until the administration lays out its plan for the institution, resistance to any proposals remains speculative.

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Elon Musk’s quest for power has a new target: Wisconsin’s supreme court

He is slashing US government agencies, building electric vehicles and space rockets and running one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. But Elon Musk has still found time – and money – to meddle in a relatively obscure election in a state of 6 million people. The close ally of Donald Trump is spending millions of dollars in an effort to tip the scales in favor of a Republican candidate running for a seat on the highest court in Wisconsin. Critics regard it as a statement of intent by Musk to expand his political power in America by playing an insidious role in key races across the country.

“It’s one of the most significant threats to our democracy in the current moment,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “You’ve got money and power in one person who’s been given access to the upper echelon of the federal government. He’s fused the power of the Oval Office with his almost unlimited amount of money to support Republicans, both at the state level and national level.” ...

The [April 1] vote will decide whether liberals maintain a 4-3 majority with major cases dealing with abortion, union rights, election law and congressional redistricting already under consideration by the court or expected to be argued before it soon.

Such campaigns are now non-partisan in name only. Republicans are lining up behind Brad Schimel while Democrats are backing Susan Crawford. It could be the most significant US election since November, an early litmus test after Trump won every swing state, including Wisconsin.

Crawford has received $3m from the state Democratic party, including $1m that the party received from the liberal philanthropist George Soros and $500,000 from the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker. Musk’s America political action committee is spending $1m to back Schimel, a former state attorney general who attended Trump’s inauguration last month. Another group Musk has funded, Building America’s Future, is spending $1.6m on TV ads attacking Crawford, a Dane county circuit judge. It reportedly had to withdraw one social media ad after it featured a photo of a different woman named Susan Crawford.

How Endless War Delivered Trump—Not Once, But Twice

Donald Trump’s power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.

Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the “Global War on Terror” began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade’s allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that “our responsibility” was to “rid the world of evil.”

Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the “national security” state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.

Donald Trump, however, did notice.

Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as “trigger happy.” He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren’t tired of U.S. warfare — in fact, they kept glorifying it — but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.

Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent about “the fallen,” the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.

Status-Quo Militarism

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.

Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” he affirmed at the National Defense University. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer hailed that instance of presidential oratory in a piece touting Obama’s “anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.” But such concerns were fleeting at the White House, while sparking little interest from mainstream journalists. Perpetual war had become wallpaper in the media echo chamber.

President Bush’s messianic calls to rid the world of “evil-doers” had fallen out of fashion, but militarism remained firmly embedded in the political economy. Corporate contracts with the Pentagon and kindred agencies only escalated. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, being a rigid hawk became a negative with the electorate as pro-Trump forces jumped into the opening she provided.

Six weeks before the election, Forbes published an article under the headline “Hillary Clinton Never Met a War She Didn’t Want Other Americans to Fight.” Written by Doug Bandow, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, the piece exemplified how partisan rhetoric about war and peace had abruptly changed. Clinton “almost certainly would lead America into more foolish wars,” Bandow contended, adding: “No one knows what Trump would do in a given situation, which means there is a chance he would do the right thing. In contrast, Clinton’s beliefs, behavior, and promises all suggest that she most likely would do the wrong thing, embracing a militaristic status quo which most Americans recognize has failed disastrously.”

Clinton was following a timeworn formula for Democrats trying to inoculate themselves against charges of being soft on foreign enemies, whether communists or terrorists. Yet Trump, deft at labeling his foes both wimps and warmongers, ran rings around the Democratic nominee. In that close election, Clinton’s resolutely pro-war stance may have cost her the presidency.

“Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump,” a study by scholars Douglas Kriner and Francis Shen concluded. “Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.” Professors Kriner and Shen suggested that Democrats might want to “reexamine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war.”

But such advice went unheeded. Leading Democrats and Republicans remained on autopilot for the warfare state as the Pentagon budget kept rising.

[Much more at the link. -js]

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Surge in marine heatwaves costs lives and billions in storm damage

The world’s oceans experienced three-and-a-half times as many marine heatwave days last year and in 2023 compared with any other year on record, a study has found. The sustained spike in ocean temperatures cost lives and caused billions of dollars in storm damage, increased whale and dolphin stranding risks, harmed commercial fishing and sparked a global coral bleaching, according to the paper published on Friday in Nature Climate Change.

Like heatwaves on land, a marine heatwave is defined as a period of higher than normal temperature over a longer than usual time. The most recent of these were brought about by human-induced climate change and amplified by El Niño conditions, the report’s authors said, with nearly 10% of the ocean hitting record high temperatures in 2023-24. “The more regularly our marine ecosystems are being hit by marine heatwaves, the harder it is for them to recover from each event,” said lead author Kathryn Smith from the UK’s Marine Biological Association.

Higher ocean temperatures “supercharge” evaporation, the study said, fuelling storms such as Cyclone Gabrielle which hit New Zealand in February 2023, killing 11 people and costing an estimated NZ$14.5bn (about £6.5bn). One of the most surprising findings in the study, said Smith, was “how much [marine heatwaves] accentuated storms on land and the number of people that were hit by that – hurt, lost possessions, [suffered a] monetary impact or lost their lives”. More worryingly, she said: “There is going to be a huge amount more [about the impacts of marine heatwaves] that we don’t know about [yet] because of the time it takes to publish in scientific literature.”

The effect on species was often devastating. Whales and dolphins venture closer to shore when the water is warm because they follow their prey, so this increased their chances of stranding, said Smith. For Mediterranean fan mussels, which have been dying in their millions since 2016, marine heatwaves may be the final nail in the coffin because the warming waters bring increased risk of diseases, the study said. Although human intervention saved some marine life from the recent heatwaves, the study found damage reduction was mostly lacking, possibly due to limited resources, disconnects between organisations and poor communication.

Cop16 nature summit agrees deal at 11th hour but critics say it is not enough

The task of halting nature loss by 2030 is slipping out of reach, ministers have warned, as countries from around the world came to a hard-won compromise on nature finance after marathon negotiations in Rome.

Delegates at the UN biodiversity conference – known as Cop16 – broke into applause after finally reaching a deal in the Eternal City following a night of tense and painstaking discussions. Cop16 president Susana Muhamad wept as she brought down the gavel on the agreement outlining a roadmap for nature finance. The agreement broke a deadlock at UN talks seen as a test for international cooperation in the face of geopolitical tensions.

Despite some wins, difficult questions were kicked down the road, including the creation of a new fund to distribute money, and significant issues including nature-destroying subsidies and cutting pollution have not progressed. Scientists have long warned that action is urgent. A million of the world’s species are threatened with extinction, while unsustainable farming and consumption destroy forests, deplete soils and spread plastic pollution to even the most remote areas of the planet.

Key decisions were adopted in the final minutes of the last day of rebooted negotiations at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome. Muhamad called it a “historic day”, and added: “We achieved the adoption of the first global plan to finance the conservation of life on Earth.” A number of leaders called the agreement a victory for cooperation. “Our efforts show that multilateralism can present hope at a time of geopolitical uncertainty,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change. ...

Washington, which has not signed up to the UN’s convention on biological diversity, did not send representatives to the meeting.

Multiple wildfires in North and South Carolina force evacuations

Fire officials on Sunday were battling to contain the blazes ravaging North and South Carolina, which have forced evacuations in some areas. The emergency unfolded amid warnings throughout the south-east over dry and windy conditions that exacerbate wildfires.

In North Carolina, the National Forest Service said fire crews were working to contain multiple wildfires burning on more than 400 acres in four forests across the state on Sunday. The largest, about 300 acres (162 hectares), was at Uwharrie national forest, about 50 miles (80km) east of Charlotte. In Polk county, North Carolina, officials set up an emergency shelter as a brush fire encompassing 400 to 500 acres swept an area between the communities of Tryon and Saluda, about 40 miles south of Asheville.

A social media post from Saluda’s fire department said a downed powerline on US highway 176 caused a brush fire that “rapidly spread up the mountain, threatening multiple structures”. Tryon’s and Saluda’s fire departments both led efforts to fight the blaze, with personnel from the North Carolina forest service as well as Polk, Henderson, Rutherford, Buncombe and Spartanburg counties providing assistance, the post said. The fire had zero containment as of Saturday night.

In South Carolina, a brush fire was reported just west of Myrtle Beach in Carolina Forest. Horry county rescue fire reported ongoing evacuations due to the fire on early Sunday morning.

Ageing nuclear plant in Florida at risk from climate crisis

A decision by regulators to extend the life of two of the oldest reactors in the US decades beyond their original permits has elevated the risk of a nuclear disaster in heavily populated south Florida, environmental groups are warning.

The Miami Waterkeeper says the Turkey Point facility in south Miami-Dade county, which was built in 1967 and generates power for a metropolitan area covering about 3 million people, is especially vulnerable to flooding and excessive heat from the climate emergency, in part because of its low-lying position and coastal exposure to a major hurricane.

One of the major risks, the group told a packed public meeting in Miami this week, is contamination of drinking water in the Biscayne Aquifer on which the plant and its two nuclear units sit. Consultants said last month that the plant’s owners, Florida Power & Light (FPL), will not meet a crucial deadline to clean up a toxic hyper-salinated water plume produced in the reactors’ network of cooling canals that has been creeping closer to freshwater wells.

More generally, the activists fear the potential consequences of an unprecedented decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to extend Turkey Point’s operating license to 2053, a reversal of its earlier refusal.

They point out that the Florida plant’s two nuclear power reactors are already among the oldest of 94 currently operating in the US, and beyond the age of both the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 in the country’s worst nuclear accident and radiation leak; and Ukraine’s Chornobyl plant, site of the 1986 catastrophe. Turkey Point is also the same age as the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which is similarly located on a coastline exposed to severe weather events, and where a 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster.

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