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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Kenny Neal

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player Kenny Neal. Enjoy!

^{Kenny Neal - Blues Falling Down Like Rain}

"It is the custom of the immortal gods to grant temporary prosperity and a fairly long period of impunity to those whom they plan to punish for their crimes, so that they may feel it all the more keenly as a result of the change in their fortunes."

-- Julius Caesar

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News and Opinion

Israel Really Is As Evil As It Looks

Israeli snipers routinely, deliberately shoot children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip.

Israel created an AI system for the IDF to target suspected Hamas fighters when they go home to their families and mockingly called it “Where’s Daddy?”, because they are killing the fighters’ children.

Israel has targeted healthcare facilities and ambulances in Gaza hundreds upon hundreds of times. They’ve been documented entering the hospitals they attack and systematically destroying individual pieces of medical equipment in order to make them unusable.

IDF soldiers constantly post photos and videos to their social media accounts showing themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children.

THERE'S A TELEGRAM GROUP WITH 150,000 ZIONIST EXTREMISTS WHO MOCK DEAD CHILDREN pic.twitter.com/8tg7tjWDgd

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) May 28, 2024

The IDF has admitted to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces.

After destroying buildings full of civilians, the IDF has been known to send in sniper drones to pick off the survivors, including children.

Israel has murdered a historically unprecedented number of journalists in its Gaza onslaught, and has been knowingly attacking humanitarian aid workers.

Israeli soldiers rape and torture Palestinian prisoners to death, including doctors. On the rare occasions that anyone is ever arrested for these abuses, Israelis have riots — not to oppose the abuses, but to oppose the arrests of the perpetrators.

Smotrich: Gaza Will Be ‘Totally Destroyed,’ Population Will Be ‘Concentrated’
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Gaza #Israel #Palestinians #EthnicCleansing #Smotrich https://t.co/FeBnhuyx2U

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) May 6, 2025

And now Israel is openly declaring its agenda to ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza Strip of Palestinians, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying the plan is for Gaza’s population to be “concentrated” at the southern end of the enclave and pressured to leave while the rest of Gaza is “totally destroyed”.

“The population of Gaza will be concentrated from the Morag Corridor southwards. The rest of the Strip will be empty,” Smotrich said, adding, “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

A poll released earlier this year found that only three percent of Jewish Israelis oppose the planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza on moral grounds. That’s right: three percent. Three out of every one hundred people.

I got into a back and forth with a liberal Israel supporter the other day whose entire argument basically boiled down to “Oh so you’re claiming Israel is just doing terrible things to civilians on purpose, just because they’re evil??”

And, I mean, yes. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but yes. Israel is evil. It’s a deeply evil country full of deeply evil people. Again: three percent.

My interlocutor was attempting to dismiss the idea of Israelis being horrible people as a legitimate explanation for their actions in Gaza, meaning Israel’s actions could only be explained as rational responses to unfortunate provocations by the Palestinians (who he of course had no trouble believing were bloodthirsty savages). But the evidence says Israel really is as evil as it looks.

When they’re not putting it on one another, they’re displaying it on barbed wire. The obsession that Israel’s soldiers have with Palestinian women’s lingerie is one of the most depraved phenomenons of the war on #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/UWndjT1mfO

— Samira Mohyeddin (@SMohyeddin) March 7, 2024

As we have discussed previously, this isn’t because there’s anything inherently evil in Judaism or Jewishness which would cause a state led by Jews to behave in this way. Rather, it’s because modern Israel has from its very inception been premised on the idea of a tiered society where one ethnic group dominates the others, making injustice and inequality an inherent part of the system. Israelis are indoctrinated from birth into accepting this unjust apartheid framework as normal, which necessarily entails indoctrinating them into accepting the dehumanization and abuse of the disempowered group.

If you have a society whose populace are systematically indoctrinated into accepting apartheid and abuse as normal and good, you are inevitably going to wind up with a society full of sociopaths. That’s who’s going to be casting the votes, serving in the military, working in the media, and working in the government. It’s not caused by their ethnicity or their religion — it’s caused by the perverse nature of the apartheid state in which they live.

That Israel is an apartheid state is not seriously disputed by any honest actor. Every mainstream human rights organization — both in the west and in Israel — calls it an apartheid state. The claim that Israel isn't an apartheid state does not deserve to be taken seriously. https://t.co/v44zWF54yN pic.twitter.com/aaDGuS9dWy

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 3, 2025

Many westerners tend to give Israel the benefit of the doubt because they assume from the beginning that this can’t be as simple as it looks and the abuse cannot be as one-sided as it appears to be. They assume this because western news media and politicians are constantly churning out narratives to make Israel look as innocent as possible and Palestinians look as guilty as possible, but in reality this really is exactly what it looks like: Israelis murdering and starving a civilian population in order to steal their land.

It really is that simple. Israel really is that bad. And so is anyone who supports it.

Israel is starving Gaza. It’s a cheap, silent and brutal way to kill

I recently looked up a biography of Rudolf Höss. The Kommandant who led the Auschwitz prison camp in Poland during the second world war was fastidious in his duties. He successfully oversaw the extermination of millions of people from 1940 to 1943, and, according to accounts, seems to have been a father who cared for his five children. His home life was imagined, and captured, by the film-maker Jonathan Glazer in his 2023 movie The Zone of Interest. John Primomo recounts, in his biography, how the Nazi would randomly select groups of prisoners and sentence them to die by starvation. Höss was eventually captured by Nazi hunters and hanged for his crimes, in his case a slow death on a short gallows.

Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, is the primary architect of the starvation policy in Gaza, which is unfolding as I write. The international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest indicating “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu … and Mr Gallant … bear criminal responsibility for … the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.” Gallant’s successor, Israel Katz, has embraced the Gallant policy. He and his boss, Benjamin Netanyahu, broke the ceasefire with Hamas in March. Since then, they have worked fastidiously to starve the people in Gaza – food, medicine and critical supplies for the maintenance of human life have all been prevented by Israeli troops from entering the territory for more than two months. This video shows a young girl, Rahaf, who is starving to death. ...

Starvation is attractive to mass murderers for a few reasons. First, it’s cheap. While Joe Biden and Donald Trump – and the majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress – have committed more than $22bn of public money to Israeli’s genocide, killing people can be expensive. Tanks, bombs, missiles, drones, bullets and incendiary devices all cost money to make and deliver. But starvation doesn’t require any big outlays. Impose a siege, and human biology resolves the rest.

Beyond being inexpensive to implement, starvation makes little noise. For those who seek to silence their victims – as Israel has by murdering at least 155 Palestinian journalists – and obscure their actions, starvation is a useful tool. There are no bomb craters, no burning children or journalists. There are only emaciated corpses. And 18 months into the darkness that has enveloped the Palestinians, they do not warrant many headlines. And that benefit – obfuscation – extends to the patrons too. The leaders of the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany and so on – who have underwritten the extermination of the Palestinians – can feign ignorance, or just ignore, what their partners in Israel are doing.

Women, Children, and Journalists Among Nearly 100 Killed in Gaza Wednesday

"Death follows families in Gaza wherever they go," said the commissioner-general of a United Nations agency that has long provided aid and services to Palestinians in the enclave on Wednesday, as it was reported that nearly 100 people had been killed in numerous Israeli strikes across Gaza over the past day.

News outlets cataloged the latest deaths in attacks on restaurants, markets, and schools, with women, children, and two journalists who had covered Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza among those killed.

At least 33 people were killed in Gaza City when an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired two missiles—one inside a restaurant that had served as a gathering place for residents recently and one at a busy intersection.

Freelance journalist Yahya Sobeih was among those killed—shortly after he had posted on Instagram about the birth of his new baby.

The owner of Palmyra restaurant on al-Wehda Street, Abu Saleh Abdu, told the BBC that many children and elderly people had been killed in the blasts. He was seen in a video angrily addressing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

"What do [you] want to achieve?" he said. "You haven't bombed any fighters or any weapons. You've only hit civilians."

Israel and its allies including its top international military funder, the U.S., have persistently claimed the IDF is targeting Hamas and has inadvertently killed children, women, aid workers, and healthcare providers—but remarks from Israeli officials have pointed to an overall goal of targeting all Palestinians regardless of whether they are Hamas members or not.

Other attacks over the past day include a strike at al-Karama school in the Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City, which killed at least 13 people; a strike on a home in Jabalia in which three people were killed; a bombing of a home in Khan Younis, which killed eight people including a father and his children; and a strike on a tent shelter in Deir el-Balah, which killed three people including a child.

At Al Jazeera, Hani Mahmoud reported that Palestinians—who are also facing increasing levels of acute malnutrition two months into a total humanitarian aid blockade—have been "scrambling for cover" across Gaza.

"We have confirmed that a farmer was killed in the eastern part of Khan Younis, in Abasan, as he was trying to harvest what he managed to plant in the past couple of months, making up for the lack of food," Mahmoud said. "This is one of the elements that we have been seeing quite visibly. Not only are they suffering on a daily basis because of the enforced starvation and dehydration, they [also] try to plant their own food, but they are deprived, and their abilities to do so are [thwarted] by the ongoing attacks."

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said that 19 months into Israel's bombardment of Gaza, "no place is safe. No one is spared."

"In Gaza, day after day, inaction and indifference are normalizing dehumanization and overlooking crimes livestreamed under our eyes: families bombed, children burned alive, children starved," said Lazzarini. "Enough. Humanity must prevail before losing all moral compass."

The bloodshed on Wednesday followed an attack on a school-turned-shelter in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday. The Palestinian Civil Defense released an updated death toll in that attack Tuesday night, saying at least 30 people had been killed and dozens had been wounded.

Israel is ramping up its attacks as officials have approved a plan to seize Gaza, forcibly displace Palestinians to the southern part of the enclave, and enlist private U.S. security companies to help it take control of aid distribution.

On Wednesday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the plan fuels concerns that Israel's true intention is to make life for Palestinians "increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza."

"There is no reason to believe that doubling down on military strategies, which, for a year and eight months, have not led to a durable resolution, including the release of all hostages, will now succeed," said Türk.

Expanding Israel's attacks on Gaza "will almost certainly cause further mass displacement, more deaths and injuries of innocent civilians, and the destruction of Gaza's little remaining infrastructure," he said.

Independent human rights experts appointed by the U.N. said countries including the U.S. face a "defining choice... to end the violence or bear witness to the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza—an outcome with irreversible consequences for our shared humanity and multilateral order."

"The world is watching. Will member states live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger, and disease, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity?" asked the experts. "International norms were established precisely to prevent such horrors. Yet, as millions protest globally for justice and humanity, their cries are muted. This situation conveys a deadly message: Palestinian lives are dispensable, and international law, if unenforced, is meaningless."

"States must act swiftly to end the unfolding genocide," they said, "dismantle apartheid, and secure a future in which Palestinians and Israelis coexist in freedom and dignity."

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Can Netanyahu Conquer Gaza?

Israeli Military Lists Returning Hostages as Least Important Goal for Gaza

The Israeli military has listed the return of the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza as its least important goal in its plans for an escalated assault on the Strip, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, retrieving the hostages was placed last in a list of six objectives. Those goals include:

1. Defeating Hamas
2. Operational control over the territory
3. Demilitarizing the territory
4. Striking Hamas government targets
5. Concentrating and moving the population
6. Returning the captives

News of the Israeli military’s goals comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that retrieving the hostages was not his priority, something that’s been clear for a long time but hasn’t been explicitly stated by the Israeli leader until last week.

Family of Shireen Abu Akleh Responds After Film Names Israeli Soldier Who Shot Her

House panel on campus antisemitism likened to cold-war ‘un-American’ committee

A congressional panel investigating antisemitism on US college campuses on Wednesday was accused of trying to chill constitutionally protected free speech and likened to a cold-war era committee notorious for wrecking the lives of people suspected of communist sympathies.

The comparison was made by David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University law centre, who told the House education and workforce committee that its proceedings resembled those staged by the House un-American Activities Committee (Huac) during and after the second world war. Cole, a former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, accused the present-day committee of “broad-based charges of antisemitism without any factual predicate”.

“These proceedings, with all due respect, have more in common with those of the House un-American Activities Committee,” he told committee members. “They are not an attempt to find out what happened, but an attempt to chill protected speech.”

HUAC, originally formed in 1938 to investigate Nazi subversion, switched focus to communism after the war and grew infamous after its high-profile hearings – including into suspected communism in Hollywood – led to blacklists and people losing their jobs.

Cole’s criticism came in the eighth hearing held by the committee, which has previously looked into antisemitism sparked by anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests at elite universities, including Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Columbia University calls in police to clear pro-Palestinian protesters

Columbia University asked the New York police department to help clear pro-Palestinian activists after dozens of protesters occupied parts of the main campus library on Wednesday. Claire Shipman, the university’s acting president, said in a statement that protesters had refused to leave the building despite being warned that a failure to comply would result in disciplinary action and possibly arrest for trespassing.

“Due to the number of individuals participating in the disruption inside and outside of the building, a large group of people attempting to force their way into Butler Library creating a safety hazard, and what we believe to be the significant presence of individuals not affiliated with the University, Columbia has taken the necessary step of requesting the presence of NYPD to assist in securing the building and the safety of our community,” Shipman said in the statement.

“Sadly, during the course of this disruption, two of our Columbia Public Safety Officers sustained injuries during a crowd surge when individuals attempted to force their way into the building and into Room 301. These actions are outrageous,” she wrote.

In an interview with a local NBC affiliate on Wednesday evening, the New York mayor Eric Adams said the police department was “on its way” to the campus. “We are in engagement with the college. They have asked for our help, and the NYPD is en route,” Adams said, calling the protest “unacceptable”. ...

In a statement posted on X, protesters confirmed that they had refused to show their IDs and that some had sustained injuries in the skirmish with the public safety officers. “We will not be useless intellectuals,” protesters said in a statement. “Palestine is our compass, and we stand strong in the face of violent oppression.”

BRICS furious as Zelensky tries to disrupt May 9

Pakistan PM promises to ‘avenge each drop of blood’ after Indian airstrikes kill 31

Pakistan has warned that it will “avenge” the death of 31 people killed in overnight missile attacks by the Indian air force, raising fears of an escalating conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries. In a late night address to the nation late on Wednesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said: “We make this pledge, that we will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs.”

His comments came after Pakistan’s government accused India of “igniting an inferno” with strikes on nine sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the Pakistani province of Punjab and authorised its military to take “corresponding” retaliatory action against India.

India said the strikes were a direct retaliation for an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir late last month, in which militants killed 25 Hindu tourists and their guide. India had accused Pakistan of direct involvement in the attacks, through Islamist militant organisations it has long been accused of backing.

In an interview with the Guardian in Islamabad, Pakistan’s deputy prime minister, Ishaq Dar – who is also the foreign minister – said the country would go to “any extent” to defend its dignity. “We reserve the right to authorise the armed forces to take any proper actions in response – and those will be measured, proportionate and responsible,” said Dar. ...

Dar was adamant that until now, Pakistan had exercised “patience and maximum restraint” in the face of India’s accusations and attacks. “Yes, there is a huge economic loss attached to any full-fledged war. But when the question [is] of sovereignty, integrity of the country, territorial integrity, dignity of the nation, then there is no price,” he said.

Dar also expressed his frustration at the international community, which has so far been reluctant to get involved in the latest dispute between India and Pakistan, beyond urging restraint. Calls by Pakistan for assistance in carrying out an independent investigation into the Kashmir attacks had gone unanswered, he said.

Denmark to summon US envoy over report of Greenland spying directive

Denmark has said that it will summon the US ambassador to Copenhagen to respond to reports that US intelligence agencies have been ordered to increase espionage in Greenland.

The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said on Wednesday that he was concerned about the report in the Wall Street Journal, telling the Ritzau news agency: “It worries me a lot, because we don’t spy between friends.”

Speaking on his way to a meeting in Warsaw, he added: “I can’t know if it’s true because it’s in a newspaper. But it doesn’t seem to be strongly rejected by those who speak out. That worries me.”

High-ranking officials working under Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, issued the instruction to agency heads in a “collection emphasis message”, the Journal reported.

Such messages customarily help to set intelligence priorities and direct resources and attention to high-interest targets. The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency were all included in the message. It told chiefs to study Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes to American efforts to extract resources on the island, according to the Journal, citing two unnamed officials familiar with the matter.

Democrats FAILED To Protect Journalists From TRUMP

Federal Reserve warns of inflation and jobs risks amid Trump’s erratic trade strategy

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold and called out growing dangers in the US economy amid Donald Trump’s erratic rollout of an aggressive trade strategy.

Jerome Powell, the US central bank’s chair, cautioned that the president’s tariffs were likely to raise prices, weaken growth and increase unemployment if maintained.

Fed policymakers cautioned that “the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen” as they opted to maintain the benchmark interest rate for the third time in a row. “Uncertainty about the economic outlook has increased further,” they said in a statement.

With inflation expectations – how consumers think prices will move – rising,Powell, the Fed chair, said the “driving factor” appeared to be Trump’s tariffs.

At a press conference, he said: “If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they are likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment.”

Republicans SLASH Medicaid to Fund Corporate Tax Cuts

'The Fix Is In': GOP Wants Poor People to Pay More for Medicaid to Fund Tax Cuts for Wealthy

Reporting out Wednesday indicates that congressional Republicans are considering a proposal that would force low-income Americans to pay more for Medicaid coverage, a highly regressive plan aimed at helping the GOP offset the massive projected cost of another round of tax breaks for the wealthy.

The proposal, first reported by The American Prospect's David Dayen, is part of a menu of options Republicans are weighing for inclusion in their forthcoming reconciliation package. A House Energy and Commerce Committee markup of the legislation is expected next week.

"Making poor people pay more for healthcare is exactly the kind of effective cut to Medicaid that moderate Republicans have sworn they would not abide," Dayen wrote. "While reducing the federal share of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, which provides federal funding to extend Medicaid to adults under age 65 up to 138% of the poverty level in 40 states and D.C., is not part of the menu, this is a backdoor way of achieving something like that reduction, on the backs of individuals who get Medicaid."

The proposal is described in the emerging reconciliation proposal as "cost-sharing above 100% FPL," or federal poverty level.

Medicaid's website explains that out-of-pocket Medicaid costs currently apply to all "enrollees except those specifically exempted by law, and most are limited to nominal amounts."

Under the GOP proposal, according to Dayen, "Medicaid recipients making at or above the federal poverty level, which is $15,650 for a single individual and $21,150 for a two-person household, would have to pay some money for coverage—either in premiums, co-payments for hospital visits and other treatment, or other fees."

"Currently, Medicaid gives states the option to impose out-of-pocket spending on recipients, though some populations and services, like children under 18 or pregnancy care, are exempted," Dayen added. "Some premiums and enrollment fees are limited to beneficiaries above 150% of the poverty line; this policy would take that number lower."

Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, told the Prospect that "whether you call it a co-pay, a premium, a fee, or a tax, the net result is either a reduction in the disposable incomes of those subject to the cost-sharing or people forgoing healthcare."

"When I look out into the American income distribution for places where I'd like to cut things back," Bruenig added, "families with incomes between 100% and 138% of the poverty line is not where my eye tends to go."

In response to Dayen's reporting, Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell said in a statement that "Republicans want to hike Medicaid premiums and copays to pay for massive tax cuts for the rich."

"The fix is in," said Mitchell. "They care more about tax breaks for their billionaire donors than keeping costs low for families in their own districts.

Trump BLOCKED From Shipping Migrants To Libyan Warlord

US reportedly planning to deport migrants to Libya despite ‘clear’ violation of court order

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to deport a group of immigrants to Libya, despite a judge’s efforts on Wednesday to block any such flights and the state department’s previous condemnation of the “life-threatening” prison conditions in the country.

Reuters cited three unnamed US officials as saying the deportations could happen this week. Two of the officials said the immigrants, whose nationalities are not known, could be flown to the north African country as soon as Wednesday, but they added the plans could still change. The New York Times also cited a US official confirming the deportation plans.

The reported moves come as a federal judge ruled in favor of immigrant rights advocates, who asked him to block any deportation of immigrants to Libya. District court judge Brian Murphy agreed with advocates that a previous injunction he had issued already barred such flights.

“If there is any doubt – the Court sees none – the allegedly imminent removals,” Murphy clarified, “would clearly violate this Court’s Order.”

It was not clear what Libya would be getting in return for taking any deportees. In a rare show of unity, Libya’s rival governments have responded to news reports by saying that they would refuse to accept any deportees from the United States.

Court orders detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk returned to Vermont

A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a judge’s order to bring a Turkish Tufts University student from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated. A judicial panel of the New York-based US second circuit court of appeals ruled in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk after lawyers representing her and the US justice department presented arguments at a hearing on Tuesday.

Öztürk has been detained in Louisiana for six weeks following an op-ed she cowrote last year that criticized the school’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

The court ordered Öztürk to be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody in Vermont no later than 14 May. A district court judge in Vermont had earlier ordered that the 30-year-old doctoral student be brought to the state for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. Öztürk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

The justice department, which appealed that ruling, said that an immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over her case.

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Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%

The world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for two-thirds of global heating since 1990, driving droughts and heatwaves in the poorest parts of the world, according to a study. While researchers have previously shown that higher income groups emit disproportionately large amounts of greenhouse gases, the latest survey is the first to try to pin down how that inequality translates into responsibility for climate breakdown. ...

The new research attempts to specifically quantify how much that inequality in emissions feeds into climate breakdown. To produce their analysis, the researchers fed wealth-based greenhouse gas emissions inequality assessments into climate modelling frameworks, allowing them to systematically attribute the changes in global temperatures and the frequency of extreme weather events that have taken place between 1990 and 2019.

By subtracting the emissions of the wealthiest 10%, 1% and 0.1%, they modelled the changes to the climate and frequency of extreme weather events that would have taken place without them. By comparing those with the changes that have occurred, they believed they would be able to calculate their responsibility for the crisis the world finds itself in today.

In 2020, the global mean temperature was 0.61C higher than 1990. The researchers found that about 65% of that increase could be attributed to emissions from the global richest 10%, a group they defined as including all those earning more than €42,980 (£36,472) a year. That includes all those on the UK median salary for full-time employees, which is £37,430. Wealthier groups bore more disproportionate responsibility still, with the richest 1% – those with annual incomes of €147,200 – responsible for 20% of global heating, and the richest 0.1% – the 800,000 or so people in the world raking in more than €537,770 – responsible for 8%.

“We found that the wealthiest 10% contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1% and 0.1% contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the write in their paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Smoke from climate-fueled fires in US contributed to 15,000 deaths in 15 years, study finds

Wildfires driven by the climate crisis contribute to as many as thousands of annual deaths and billions of dollars in economic costs from wildfire smoke in the United States, according to a new study. The paper, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment, found that from 2006 to 2020, the climate crisis contributed to about 15,000 deaths from exposure to small particulate matter from wildfires and cost about $160bn. The annual range of deaths was 130 to 5,100, the study showed, with the highest in states such as Oregon and California.

“We’re seeing a lot more of these wildfire smoke events,” said Nicholas Nassikas, a study author and a physician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. So he and a multidisciplinary team of researchers wanted to know: “What does it really mean in a changing environment for things like mortality, which is kind of the worst possible health outcome?”

Lisa Thompson, a professor at Emory University who studies air pollution and climate change and was not involved in the paper, said it was one of the first studies she had seen to isolate the effect of the climate crisis on mortality. Looking at the impacts across time and space also made it unique, she said.

The paper’s researchers focused on deaths linked to exposure to fine particulate matter, or PM2.5 – the main concern from wildfire smoke. ... Evidence is emerging that PM2.5 from wildfire smoke is more toxic than other pollution sources. When wildfires encroach into cities, burning cars and other toxics-containing materials, it adds to the danger.

Numerous studies have tied the human-caused climate crisis – caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas – to a growth in fires in North America. Global warming is increasing drought, especially in the west, and other extreme weather. Drier conditions suck moisture from plants, which act as fuel for fires. When drier vegetation and seasons are mixed with hotter temperatures, that increases the frequency, extent and severity of wildfires and the smoke they spew.

Trump reportedly eyes $26m in funding cuts for US national parks

The Trump administration is reportedly eyeing dozens of grants across the National Park Service for termination, according to reporting from the New York Times, one of several moves destabilizing the US’s investment in public lands. According to the newspaper, staff members at Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” have created a spreadsheet of federal grants earmarked for cuts, with total funding cuts amounting to some $26m.

The proposed eliminations follow a familiar pattern for the Trump administration, with reasons given for program cuts including “climate change/sustainability”, “DEI” and “LGBQ”. Programs listed for potential elimination include “Scientists in Parks”, which places undergraduate and graduate students as well as early-career scientists across the country in natural resource management-focused positions. ...

More cuts appear to be on the horizon. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the full cost of proposed cuts could bring a 75% reduction to NPS services in order to meet the goal of more than $1bn in reductions. Critics have said that cuts to the NPS, Department of the Interior and US Forestry Service not only risk the preservation of America’s national parks, but could put land management and fire reduction in jeopardy as well.

They also have the potential to hit rural, and often conservative, parts of the country economically the hardest. National parks in particular can be an economic engine, generating more than $55.6bn in economic input, according to the National Park Service.

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Also of Interest

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

Jonathan Cook: Shilling for Israel’s Genocide

At ICJ, Only US & Hungary Back Israel Starving Gaza

World Central Kitchen Halts Aid Operations in Gaza Due To Israeli Blockade

US, Israel Reportedly Discuss US-Led Administration in Gaza

Yemen’s Houthis Launch Drone Attack on Israel After Reaching Ceasefire With US

What’s Behind Trump’s Decision to Cease Bombing Yemen?

ndia’s Pakistan strikes show how warfare has been normalised again

Turns Out You Can’t Make A Deal With Trump (University and Law Firm Edition)

The Wealthy Don't Leave When States Tax the Rich, But It Sure Does Raise Revenue

"Fascism Isn't Coming, It's Here": Mehdi Hasan on Trump, Gaza & Leaving MSNBC to Start Zeteo

Glenn Greenwald vs. Christopher Rufo: The Limits of Constitutional Freedoms

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A Little Night Music

Kenny Neal & Micah Willis - Devil's In The Delta

Kenny Neal - Let Life Flow

Kenny Neal - Blues Keep Chasing Me

Kenny Neal - Bayou Blood

Kenny Neal - Caught Your Back Door Man

Kenny Neal - The Truth Hurts

Kenny Neal Blues Band - The Things I Used To Do

Kenny Neal - Right Train, Wrong Track

Kenny Neal with Mitch Woods & The Rocket 88's - Strange Things

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