The Evening Blues - 11-10-25
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Texas blues singer and guitarist Barbara Lynn. Enjoy!
Barbara Lynn - You're Gonna Need Me
“Normal is an ilusion. What's normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”
-- Morticia Addams
News and Opinion
The US Empire Keeps Getting Creepier
Secretary of War™ Pete Hegseth said during a speech on Friday that the US is at “a 1939 moment” of “mounting urgency” in which “enemies gather, threats grow,” adding, “We are not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing.”
Everything’s getting darker and creepier in the shadow of the empire.
Nate Bear has a report out on his newsletter titled “The AI Drones Used In Gaza Now Surveilling American Cities” about a new company called Skydio which “in the last few years has gone from relative obscurity to quietly become a multi-billion dollar company and the largest drone manufacturer in the US.” Bear reports that Skydio now has contracts with police departments in almost every large US city to use these Gaza-tested drones for surveillance of American civilians.
Hegseth: "We are not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing. Building for victory should our adversaries FAFO." pic.twitter.com/eoxhgZh7sZ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 7, 2025
Haaretz reports that Israel’s efforts to manipulate American minds back into supporting the Zionist entity include pouring millions into influence operations targeting Christian churchgoers and efforts to change responses to Palestine-related queries on popular AI services like ChatGPT. It’s crazy how you can literally just be minding your own business in your own church on a Sunday morning and then suddenly find yourself getting throat fucked by propaganda paid for by the state of Israel.
The Intercept reports that YouTube, which is owned by Google, quietly deleted more than 700 videos documenting Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in a purge of pro-Palestine human rights groups from the platform. Mass Silicon Valley deletions like this combined with the sudden influx of fake AI-generated video content polluting the information ecosystem could serve to erase and obfuscate the evidence of the Gaza holocaust for future generations.
A new report from Reuters says that last year the US had intelligence showing Israel’s own lawyers warning that the IDF’s mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip could result in war crimes charges. This is yet more evidence that the Biden administration knew it was backing a genocide the entire time, including during election season when left-leaning Americans were being told they needed to vote for then-Vice President Kamala Harris if they wanted to save Gaza.
AI drones used in Gaza are now surveilling American cities
Drone usage by Israel-based, Gaza-field tested Skydio across the US has grown extraordinarily https://t.co/OUhy37L9DI
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) November 2, 2025
In Italy a journalist was fired from the news agency Nova for asking an EU official if she thought Israel should be responsible for the reconstruction of Gaza in the same way she’s said Russia should have to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine. A Nova spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that the journalist was indeed fired for asking the inconvenient question on the basis that “Russia had invaded a sovereign country unprovoked, whereas Israel was responding to an attack.”
Reuters reports that the US is preparing to establish a military base in Damascus. For years the empire waged a complex regime change operation in Syria to oust Assad, first by backing proxy forces to destroy the country and then via sanctions and US military occupation to prevent reconstruction. And it worked. The empire’s dirty war in Syria will be cited by warmongering swamp monsters for years to come as evidence that regime change interventionism can succeed if you just stick at it and do whatever evil things need to be done.
These are just a few of the disturbing stories from the last few days that I hadn’t had a chance to write about yet. This is the kind of world we are being offered by the US empire. There is nothing on the menu for us but more war, more genocide, more surveillance, more censorship, more tyranny, and more abuse.
Things are going to keep getting more and more dystopian for everyone who lives under the thumb of the imperial power structure until enough of us decide that the empire needs to end.
Biden Admin Israel 'War Crime' Coverup Exposed
Much more at the link:
The Israeli government has signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to rehabilitate Israel's standing in American public opinion, both online and offline. Amid a sharp drop in support from the conservative right, Israel has hired firms to conduct not just "hasbara [public diplomacy] campaigns" but also campaigns targeting millions of Christian churchgoers, bot networks to amplify pro-Israel messages online, and efforts to influence both search results and the responses given by popular AI services like ChatGPT.
Among the experts recruited is a former campaign manager for Donald Trump and many of the other firms are linked to the Republican party or Evangelical communities, indicating that Israel is focusing massive efforts on communities once considered automatically pro-Israel. Among the campaigns' goals is fighting antisemitism, which has risen alongside the decline in support for Israel. Together, these campaigns signal a new phase in Israel's post-war public diplomacy strategy, and a shift in the way it uses agents - both AI and human influencers - for hasbara abroad. ...
The largest of the new hasbara contracts was signed in August with a firm called Clock Tower X, owned by Brad Parscale, who played a lead role in Trump's digital campaigns in 2016 and 2020. The $6 million, four-month contract - signed between his firm and Havas Media on behalf of the Israeli government - calls for "strategic consulting, planning, and communications services to develop and execute a broad U.S. campaign to combat antisemitism."
According to the filing, Parscale's company will produce "at least 100 core pieces of content per month" - including videos, audio, podcasts, graphics and text - and "5,000 derivative versions" monthly, aiming for 50 million impressions a month. Eighty percent of the content will target young Americans on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Campaign messages will be distributed via Salem Media Network, a conservative Christian media group that owns more than 200 radio stations and websites. Parscale was appointed this year to lead Salem's strategy.
Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi : Why Iran Wants Peace
Hezbollah reaffirms right to resist Israel, warns against US-imposed 'negotiation traps'
Hezbollah released an open letter to the Lebanese government on 6 November, reaffirming its right to armed resistance against occupation and calling on Lebanon to reach a “unified and dignified national stance” to Israel’s daily attacks and ceasefire violations. The resistance slammed and rejected US calls for direct talks between Lebanon and Israel, which it described as “negotiation traps” that would “only grant further gains to the Israeli enemy.”
It also said it released this message out of “commitment to … the protection of sovereignty, and the preservation of security and stability in Lebanon,” and “in order to block attempts to drag the Lebanese state into new rounds of negotiations serving only the goals and interests of the Zionist enemy and the powers of tyranny hostile to truth and justice.”
“While the facts confirm that Lebanon and Hezbollah have implicitly and strictly abided by the content of the ceasefire declaration from the moment it was issued until today, the Zionist enemy has continued its violations of the declaration by land, sea, and air – and still does so now – disregarding all calls to cease its hostile actions,” Hezbollah added.
“Instead, the enemy has exploited such calls to blackmail Lebanon, impose conditions, and evade halting its aggression – persisting in its project to subjugate Lebanon, humiliate its state, people, and army, and drag it into a political agreement that would force Lebanon to recognize the enemy’s interests in our country and the region, as well as to acknowledge the legitimacy of its armed occupation of Palestinian land.”
It also said that the “hasty” Lebanese government decision on disarmament was a “goodwill gesture to the enemy,” but Israel “exploited this governmental misstep to impose the disarmament of the resistance throughout Lebanon as a precondition for halting hostilities – something that was not stipulated in the ceasefire declaration and can neither be accepted nor imposed.”
Israel Massively Escalates Strikes on Lebanon as Hezbollah Threatens Retaliation
Israel’s long-threatened escalation of their attacks on Lebanon seems to have begun in earnest on Thursday, with massive numbers of strikes reported against several towns and villages in the country’s south.
The IDF issued evacuation warnings for at least five sites in southern Lebanon, and is claiming, as they so often do, that everything they are attacking is Hezbollah infrastructure. Early indications are that a substantial number of civilian casualties have occurred. The most recent toll has one confirmed killed and nine wounded, though those tolls are expected to rise.
This comes amid an Israeli security cabinet meeting, at which the Northern Command will reportedly present various options for the direction and scale of a military escalation in Lebanon, in spite of a ceasefire nominally having been in place for the past year.
Israel has violated the ceasefire thousands of times since then, killing hundreds of people, including over 100 confirmed to be civilians. Hezbollah has not fired a single rocket at Israel during that period, though that may be about to change.
US To Establish Military Base in Damascus
The US is planning to establish a military base in Damascus, Syria, Reuters has reported, as the Trump administration continues to strongly back the new Syrian government that’s led by former al-Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The report said that the US will establish a military presence at an airbase on the outskirts of the Syrian capital for the purpose of enabling a security pact that Washington is attempting to broker between Israel and Syria.
The idea would be for the US military to monitor a potential deal that would include the demilitarization of areas to the south of Damascus. Officials compared it to the US monitoring of the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, which Israel has constantly violated, and the ceasefire deal in Gaza, which Israel has also been in breach of.
A Syrian Foreign Ministry official later told Syria’s state news agency SANA that the Reuters report was “untrue” but did not specifically deny that the US would establish a military presence in Damascus. “The current stage marks a transformation in the US position towards direct engagement with the Syrian central government in Damascus, and towards supporting the country’s unity while rejecting any calls for partition,” the official said.
Syria carries out preemptive raids against Islamic State
Syria has carried out nationwide preemptive operations targeting Islamic State cells, a spokesperson for the interior ministry said on Saturday, as the country’s president arrived in the US for talks with Donald Trump. Syrian security forces carried out 61 raids, with 71 people arrested and explosives and weapons seized, the spokesperson told state-run Al Ekhbariya TV.
The raids came as the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, arrived in Washington for a planned meeting with Trump, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. He is expected to join an anti-Islamic State US-led coalition. ...
The visit by Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts.
Kiev Faces Worst Defeat; Russia Tells Pokrovsk Troops To Surrender Breaks Through Zaporozhye Kharkov
Ray McGovern : Will Russia Aid Venezuela?
Trump Killing Spree Continues as Murder Count Rises to At Least 70 People
A top global human rights expert said Friday that President Donald Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, "must be arrested and prosecuted" as the death toll in their military campaign in the Caribbean and Pacific, which has gone on for two months without congressional authorization, reached 70 people.
"It is illegal to treat drug suspects as combatants to be shot when there is no armed conflict," said former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. "Repetition doesn't change criminality."
Roth spoke out hours after Hegseth posted footage of the Department of Defense's latest strike in the Caribbean, which brought the number of vessels bombed to 18. The White House has said the boats were all operated by "narco-terrorists," but has provided no evidence publicly that they contained drugs or drug traffickers.
The Trump administration has also informed Congress that the US is engaged in an "armed conflict" with Latin American drug cartels, but Congress has not voted to authorize military action in the Caribbean or Pacific. The White House has claimed it does not need lawmakers' approval to carry out the attacks.
On Thursday, Senate Republicans, who control the chamber, voted down a bipartisan war powers resolution that would have required Trump to seek congressional authorization to continue the boat bombings and to take further military action in Venezuela, where the president has insisted drug cartels are producing fentanyl and trafficking it to the US.
Federal agencies and the United Nations have found Venezuela plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl—a fact that Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed in September when a reporter asked him about it—and is not a major producer of cocaine, though some cocaine is trafficked through the country after being produced in Colombia.
The footage Hegseth released on the social media platform X on Thursday was purported to show “a vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization" that was "trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean." Three people were killed in the strike.
"To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs—we will kill you," said Hegseth, who calls the DOD Trump's preferred Department of War, even though congressional approval is needed to officially change a federal agency's name.
As with previously released footage of some of the boat bombings, part of the boat that was struck was not visible in the surveillance video.
Latin American officials and the families of some victims have insisted that the people killed have not been involved in the trafficking of drugs. Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, is among those who have called the bombings "extrajudicial executions" of people who have never been proven to be a threat to the US.
The latest boat strike came as the Associated Press published an investigation into the identities of at least four people who have been killed in the bombings.
The victims, the AP reported, have included Robert Sánchez, a 42-year-old fisherman who made about $100 a month and hoped to eventually purchase his own fishing boat. Economic pressures in the impoverished Sucre state where Sánchez lived pushed him to help cocaine traffickers navigate the Caribbean.
Another man, Juan Carlos “El Guaramero” Fuentes, was struggling to feed his family after he lost work as a transit bus driver, which he had been for several years before his bus broke down. He turned to smuggling to make ends meet, and was one of many novices hired by high-level cocaine traffickers, who typically stay ashore while the impoverished "drug runners" travel through the Caribbean by boat.
One relative of a person killed in one of the boat bombings told the AP that the US government “should have stopped" their family member's vessel instead of striking it and killing those on board.
In the past, the US has treated drug trafficking as a crime to be dealt with by law enforcement agencies, with the US Coast Guard sometimes helping to intercept boats in the Caribbean if they were suspected of carrying drugs and arresting those on board, affording them a day in court.
"You save more lives when you stop a vessel and arrest those aboard, alive, if they're actually trafficking drugs," said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America on Thursday. "Instead of drowned bodies, you get useful intel about their criminal structures, their support networks, their finances, and future vessels."
The AP's reporting confirmed, said Isacson, that the Trump administration's boat strikes "are the equivalent of straight-up massacring 16-year-old drug dealers on US street corners."
"It satisfies some people's anger and bloodlust," said Isacson, "but hitting the poorest and most replaceable link in the chain does nothing to affect drug supplies."
Alastair Crooke : MAGA Split vs the Deep State
Trump weighs giving Americans $2,000 from tariff revenues in bid for support
Donald Trump on Sunday mused about giving most Americans $2,000 funded by tariff revenues collected by the president’s administration – an evident bid to rally public support on the issue. “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday. The post also made it a point to call people against tariffs “FOOLS!”
For such a plan to take effect, congressional approval would likely be required. Earlier this year, Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill proposing $600 in tariff rebates for nearly all Americans and their dependent children. “Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of [Joe] Biden [White House] policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said at the time. He said the legislation would “allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country”.
However, US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in August that the administration’s main focus remains reducing the national debt, which stands at $38.12tn, using funds from tariff collections. He said the money would be used first to start paying down the federal debt – not to give rebate checks to Americans. According to the treasury department’s September report, $195bn in customs duties were collected during the first three quarters of the year.
Though, it appears that the cost of giving out $2,000 checks could easily surpass the amount actually collected from the tariffs. According to calculations, these payments would cost close to if not more than double the amount that has reportedly been generated so far. “If the cutoff is $100,000, 150M adults would qualify, for a cost near $300 billion,” wrote Erica York, vice-president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, on social media. “If kids qualify, that grows.”
“The math gets worse accounting for the full budgetary impact of tariffs”, York added. “Adjusting for that, tariffs have raised $90 billion of net revenues compared to Trump’s proposed $300 billion rebate.” John Arnold, co-chair of Arnold Ventures, estimated that the dividend payments could cost as much as $513bn.
Trump Says Affordability Is A 'Con Job,' Proposes 50 YEAR MORTGAGE
Heh, so where does the Trumpster think that "the people" are going to purchase "their own, much better, healthcare" if not from these same "money sucking Insurance Companies?"
Senate Republicans embrace Trump’s call – from his Florida golf course – to replace Obamacare
US senators are working through the weekend for the first time since the government shutdown began more than a month ago, but hopes for a bipartisan agreement on how to end the standoff, and keep healthcare affordable for millions of Americans, appeared to recede as Republican senators floated a proposal toxic to Democrats: scrapping the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare.
The impact on Americans from the longest shutdown of the federal government in history deepened on Saturday, as federal workers went unpaid, airlines were forced to cancel flights and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits have been delayed for 42 million Americans.
As Saturday’s session got under way, Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana welcomed a proposal made on social media early Saturday by Donald Trump, from his golf course in West Palm Beach, for subsidies to be replaced by health savings accounts.
In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested that instead of meeting the demand from Democrats to extend subsidies for health insurance plans purchased through the ACA marketplace, to pay for sharply increased premiums, Republicans should return to the project of replacing the Obama-era law, which failed during his first administration.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE,” Trump wrote.
US flight cancellations rise as Sean Duffy warns travel could reduce to a ‘trickle’
Flight cancellations and delays are set to grow as airline passengers across the United States spent the weekend grappling with those issues at major airports nationwide after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated a 4% reduction in air traffic in response to the ongoing federal government shutdown.
If the shutdown continues, the FAA has instructed airlines to cut 6% of flights on Tuesday – and to do the same to 10% by 14 November. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has warned that flight reductions could reach 20% if the shutdown persists, and on Sunday he predicted a “substantial” number of people in the US would be unable to celebrate the upcoming holidays with their families if the shutdown wasn’t resolved.
“You’re going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle,” Duffy said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays. They want to see their family … Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn’t open back up.”
The FAA’s requirement for airlines to cut 4% of daily flights at 40 “high-traffic” US airports began on Friday and represented an attempt to ease the mounting pressure on air traffic controllers. Like other federal employees, those controllers have not been paid for weeks amid the government shutdown, which has become the longest in history and reached its 40th day.
“We are seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely,” the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, said earlier this week. He also said that between 20% to 40% of controllers had not been showing up for work over the last several days.
Democrats CAVE, Vote To END SHUTDOWN With NO Healthcare Concessions
Chuck Schumer Is DONE After This!
US agriculture department tells states to ‘undo’ Snap benefits for families in need
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is directing states to “immediately undo” any steps that have been taken to send out full food aid benefits to low-income Americans, following a supreme court order on Friday that temporarily halted a lower court order requiring those payments.
The USDA’s directive, issued in a memo on Saturday, followed a supreme court order granting the Trump administration’s emergency request to pause an order for the USDA to provide full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits during the ongoing federal government shutdown, which is now in its 40th day.
That lower court ruling, issued on Thursday, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund the Snap program for November by Friday, rather than issuing only partial benefits. The ruling led to some of the roughly 42 million Americans enrolled in Snap – commonly known as food stamps – to begin receiving their full benefits on Friday from the states, which issue the payments of federal dollars. But on Friday night, the program was thrown into chaos again when the supreme court agreed to temporarily pause the order to allow an appeals court to review the Trump administration’s appeal.
In response to the supreme court’s decision, the USDA, which delivers the money to the states, issued its directive that any payments that had been made under the prior orders are considered “unauthorized”.
“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary of agriculture, wrote to state Snap directors. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.” The memo warned: “Failure to comply with this memorandum may results in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administration costs and holding States liable for any overissuances that result from the noncompliance.”
Border patrol chief reprimanded for lying claims shots were fired at immigration officers in Chicago
A border patrol chief claimed on Saturday that his agents came under fire in Chicago while conducting immigration enforcement operations, just two days after a federal judge said that he had lied to her about having been struck by a rock during a previous confrontation with protesters in the city. Gregory Bovino, the border patrol chief and frequent Fox News guest who has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, said on social media that his agents had been “shot at”, and subjected to “vehicular assaults, physical assaults, impeding, violent mobs, vehicular blockades”, for a number of hours.
In a written statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that border patrol agents were “conducting immigration enforcement operations near 26th Street and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, when an unknown male driving a black Jeep fired shots at agents and fled the scene”. The agency said that the “Chicago Police Department was called for assistance and cleared the scene. The shooter and vehicle remain at large, and this is a dynamic situation.”
Chicago police said they responded but found no signs of anyone having been struck by gunfire where the alleged shooting took place. “There are no reports of anyone struck by gunfire,” the Chicago police said in a statement. According to the police, one officer was in good condition after being struck by a vehicle during the operation, and the driver was ticketed. No video evidence has yet surfaced of the alleged shooting, but social media clips and news photographs did show heavily armed agents in camouflage, including Bovino, confronting protesters, deploying tear gas and detaining people in the city’s Little Village neighborhood.
On Thursday, a US district judge in Chicago, Sara Ellis, said that Bovino had lied about an incident in late October in which he had been caught on video throwing a gas canister at protesters in the same neighborhood without warning, in violation of her earlier temporary restraining order limiting the use of force. “Mr Bovino and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had been hit by a rock in the head before throwing the tear gas, but video evidence disproves this. And he ultimately admitted he was not hit until after he threw the tear gas,” Ellis said on Thursday, according to ABC News. ...
Bovino has previously faced scrutiny for making false and misleading statements. He defended a major immigration sweep in January by claiming agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records, but documents showed that 77 out of 78 people taken into custody during the operation had no prior record with the agency, a CalMatters investigation revealed. And in June, while defending the arrest of a US citizen in a high-profile case, Bovino falsely claimed on social media that the man had been charged with assaulting an officer.
Trump Writes Democrats’ Ads For Them
NY Governor PROVES She Hates Democracy!
Sam Rasoul, the Virginia Democrat who is currently the longest-serving Muslim state lawmaker in the US and who faced accusations of antisemitism over language condemning Israel’s assault on Gaza as genocide, scored a resounding victory in Tuesday’s election that he believes shows voters are craving honesty from politicians.
Rasoul, an American Palestinian state legislator since 2014, strengthened his majority as he was re-elected to an area of Virginia where the city of Roanoke leans Democrat and the surrounding areas are deeply conservative. In an election seen as a referendum on Trump’s policies, which have disproportionately affected Virginia, Rasoul increased his vote share from four years ago by more than 5% as Democrats trounced Republicans from the legislature to the governor’s mansion.
“A 70% victory in the Bible belt of Virginia for a Palestinian Muslim is really a validation, beyond just Democrats winning, that you can be bold on the Gaza genocide and still be victorious,” Rasoul told the Guardian.
His win came despite months of attack ads and rebukes from other party leaders in the state. He was accused of hate speech and antisemitism by his opponent, a Jewish Republican party member who ran as an independent, pro-Israel groups and senior members of his own party after he called the killing of at least 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 “the most evil cleansing in human history” and blamed Zionism, which he labelled “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and conquer everything and everyone in its way”.
“But I don’t believe that issues win campaigns,” Rasoul said. “It’s good organizing and deep, trusted relationships that win elections because people are really only looking for two things. Are you being honest with me? And will you work hard for me?” Rasoul is part of the most progressive faction of the Democratic party, and like his friend and the newly elected mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has put affordability at the centre of his politics.
Trump Ballroom Makes Americans LOSE IT
Climate disasters displaced 250 million people in past 10 years
Climate-related disasters forcibly displaced 250 million people globally over the past decade, the equivalent of 70,000 people every day, according to a report by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). Floods, storms, drought and extreme heat are among the weather conditions driving conflict and displacement, alongside slow-onset disasters such as desertification, rising sea levels and ecosystem destruction, which are threatening food and water security.
In mid-2025, 117 million people were displaced by war, violence and persecution – a dire human rights crisis that the climate emergency is rapidly intensifying. The UNHCR said the climate crisis was a “risk multiplier” that exposed and compounded existing inequalities and injustices, including the impact of conflict, violence and forced displacement within and across borders.
The number of countries reporting both conflict and disaster-related displacement has tripled since 2009, according to No Escape II: The Way Forward, the UNHCR’s second big report on the impacts of climate refugees released Monday. Yet fragile and conflict-affected countries hosting refugees receive only a quarter of the climate finance they need. ...
In 2024, a third of all emergencies declared by UNHCR involved floods, drought, wildfires and other extreme weather events affecting people displaced by war. Three-quarters of refugees and other displaced people now live in countries facing high or extreme exposure to climate-related hazards, with repeated displacement becoming increasingly common. ...
Almost half the world’s displaced people are facing conflict and climate impacts in politically fragile states, including Sudan, Syria, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Myanmar and Yemen. These countries contribute negligibly to global greenhouse gas emissions yet have limited access to climate finance and solutions needed to adapt. Without radical action to curtail climate catastrophe and help poor countries adapt, the situation is likely to get much worse, the report warns.
U.N. Climate Summit Kicks Off in Brazil Amid “Turbo-charged” Extreme Global Weather
California’s drying Salton Sea harms the lungs of people living nearby
Chemical-laden dust from southern California’s drying Salton Sea is likely harming the lungs of people around the shrinking body of water, and the effects are especially pronounced in children, new peer-reviewed research from the University of California, Irvine, shows. A separate peer-reviewed study from the University of California, Riverside, also found the Salton Sea’s contaminated dust seemed to alter lung microbiome, which could trigger pulmonary issues that have been reported around the lake.
The two new papers are part of a series of studies that are revealing the environmental and public health risks of dust from the drying Salton Sea, which sits about 160 miles (255km) south-east of metropolitan Los Angeles. The dust has been found to travel more than 100 miles (160km), though the prevailing winds blow to the south-east.
“The drying of the Salton Sea is not only an environmental crisis but also a public health crisis,” UC Irvine study co-author Jill Johnston said in a statement. “Our study provides concrete evidence that children in surrounding communities are facing measurable harm to their lungs as a result of increased dust exposure.”
The new research around the Salton Sea is revealing a unique public health risk stemming from poorly regulated pesticide use on surrounding cropland, the climate crisis and poor water-resource management, advocates say.
The over 340-sq-mile lake is receding as its primary source, the Colorado River, dries amid an ongoing drought and over-reliance for drinking or agricultural water. Large patches of the dried Salton Sea bed are now exposed, and those are contaminated from pesticide chemicals and nutrients in fertilizers. The bed also teems with naturally occurring, dangerous heavy metals, such as arsenic.
Data Center BACKLASH Remakes American Politics
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
For Gaza’s fishermen, the sea is their last lifeline after Israel’s war
California Law Illegally Muzzles Students & Teachers
This Ukraine War Report Is One Of A Kind
Trump Quietly Dishes Out More Tax Breaks to Rich Investors While Slashing Food Aid for Millions
Trump shares false claim Obama earned $40m in ‘royalties’ from Obamacare
Trump’s dollar delusion: how trade war risks ending the US’s ‘exorbitant privilege’
Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly ‘much happier’ after prison transfer by Trump officials
A Little Night Music
Barbara Lynn - Oh! Baby We Got A Good Thing Goin'
Barbara Lynn - This Is the Thanks I Get
Barbara Lynn - I'll Suffer
Barbara Lynn - Wild Night Tonight
Barbara Lynn - I'm a Good Woman
Barbara Lynn - Money
Barbara Lynn - Nice & Easy
Barbara Lynn - Call My Bluff Baby
Barbara Lynn - You'll Lose A Good Thing
Comments
Re: The Fifty Year Mortgage
an easier sell than "You'll own nothing and like it." Not much difference.
Housing, education, and healthcare can't be left to the private sector if everyone is to be housed, educated, and received required health care.
evening marie...
heh, replaces "you'll own nothing and like it" with "you'll never live long enough to own a house."
great for banksters, though.
"If you Lose Me"
was a big dance party song when the Baptist community her banned dancing because Jebus. Dance floors were in houses setting up a room for some b'day party, letting the teens defy the "rules".
Great memories, joe, and a great ebs!
Conventional wisdom is come watch me, I am committing no crime. The damn law says if I have done nothing to give rise to suspicion I am commiting a crime, give me my privacy, mfer...leave me the f* alone. Except this does not comport with Zionism.
Man, what a world!
Thanks so much for all your work, joe! You da' best!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
it's funny the things that jebus frowns upon and doesn't. dancing is right out, but making war is perfectly okiedokie. what a religion!
well, now that they have the technology to watch all of us all of the time, i guess suspicion is no longer a viable concept.
have a good one!
Not a microcosm of the
US political landscape, but the election in one small office paralleled the 2025 NYC mayoral election and went one better.
The Ithaca Common Council and Tompkins County Legislature held their general elections this past Tuesday election results. All of the seats won by Democrats. Most candidate ran unopposed. The contested races were Common Council 1st and 5th Wards and Tomkins County Legislative District 14. The Democratic candidates in those three races won in an earlier primary election.
CC 1st Ward - Democrat 88.70% and Republican 9.5%
TC LD 14 - Democrat 57.5% and Independent 42.0%
CC 5th Ward - Democrat 64.1% and Independent 35.4% This is the fun one. The Independent, Gepe Zurenda lost the primary to Hannah Shvets. And like Cuomo, he mounted a sore loser general election campaign. Hannah had many small donors and Zurenda had a few large donors, but in total donations and spending Zurenda only had a $1,300 advantage. Zurenda is a 72 year old licensed clinical social worker. Shvets is a 20 year old community organizer and activist and a member of the Ithaca Club of the Communist Party. For more Ithica
Tonight we're gonna party like AI actually matters
"It hasn't been okay to be smart in the United States for centuries" -- Frank Zappa