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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lonnie Johnson

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and early jazz guitarist Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson. Enjoy!

^{Lonnie Johnson - Swingin' The Blues}

"Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances."

-- Steve Allen

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News and Opinion

American Conservatives Are Disgusting Frauds

After spending days enthusiastically applauding Trump’s freakish act of imperialist aggression to oust the president of Venezuela on the grounds that he is a murderous tyrant, Republicans in the United States are falling all over themselves to justify the cold-blooded murder of a mother of three by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

The shooting was caught on video from multiple angles, and from every angle it looks completely unjustifiable by the standards of any normal human being. The officer will probably get off using the usual “feared for his life” defense claiming that he believed the woman was going to run him over with her car. But when you’re repeatedly firing your pistol into the side window of the vehicle, you know you’re not in any danger of being run over. He tracked her head with his gun well after he was out of harm’s way and pulled the trigger anyway, firing at the side of her head from the side of the vehicle.

As one libertarian commentator noted, it was “Less a ‘she did X so I have to shoot her,’ and more of ‘she did X so I get to shoot her.’”

No guys don't you understand??? We have to go in and protect the Iranian, Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban and Russian people from their evil authoritarian government. https://t.co/7bn3W7ZDX2

— Bryce Greene (@TheGreeneBJ) January 7, 2026

And yet this killing is being treated as a partisan issue, with leftists and Democrats denouncing the actions of the shooter and rightists ferociously defending them.

The president himself took the time to weigh in on this one, falsely claiming on Truth Social that the woman “ran over the ICE Officer” and that “it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital.” Anyone watching the videos can see this is a lie.

As Brad Reed notes for Common Dreams, “Eyewitness videos taken at the scene of the incident, however, do not show the officer getting run over at all. In fact, the officer can be seen walking around after discharging his weapon, with no signs of any injury. In fact, the video Trump posted on his Truth Social that he claims shows the officer being run over does not at all show the officer being run over, but rather stepping safely out of the way as the car starts moving forward.”

I understand why people are comparing the ICE shooting to the abuses we see from the IDF but it’s important to be aware that while this kind of thing is very Israeli it’s also very, VERY American.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 7, 2026

American conservatives are such gross frauds.

They pretend to oppose tyranny but start frantically licking boots whenever there’s a police shooting.

They pretend to oppose war and applaud Trump’s warmongering.

They pretend to be Christian and ignore most of the New Testament.

They pretend to support freedom of speech and then support Trump stomping out speech that is critical of Israel.

They pretend to support the rule of law and then applaud when Trump openly kidnaps the president of a sovereign nation to steal its oil.

They pretend to oppose big government and then applaud trillion-dollar military budgets and the expansion of government departments to flood the streets with armed thugs.

It’s not that they’re hypocrites. It’s that they’re liars. They’re groveling, power-worshipping bootlickers, and then they make up a bunch of fake stories about themselves to make them feel like they’re actually decent people.

They are not decent people. They are genocidal warmongers with their tongues firmly inserted into the anuses of the most powerful people on the planet. They are everything they pretend to hate. They are everything that is wrong with this world.

Not that the Demonrats are any better than the Conservotwits ... and is there anything more ineffectual than a "congressional progressive?" or for that matter, an institutional progressive? where are the calls for dem exit?

Progressives Rip ‘Spineless’ Dem Leaders for ‘Empty’ Response to Trump’s Venezuela Attack

As Donald Trump blows by Barack Obama’s record for most countries bombed by a US president, progressive observers are fuming over Democratic leadership’s inaction in response to the abduction of Venezuela’s president and other illegal acts of war.

Congressional Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s brazen bombing and invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro—who faces dubious narco-terrorism charges in the US—ranged from open praise by members of the party’s conservative wing like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), to fierce condemnation by Congressional Progressive Caucus Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other anti-war leftists including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

However, numerous observers have noted that, as Chris Lehmann wrote Tuesday for the Nation, senior Democrats including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, “are doing what they do best on Venezuela: Nothing.”

Trump “staged an illegal coup,” Lehmann argued. “Chuck Schumer’s response? Empty words and meaningless parliamentary maneuvers.”

Schumer did co-sponsor a war powers resolution aimed at blocking Trump from using military force in or against Venezuela. However, like every other resolution ever introduced in a bid to force presidential compliance with the 1973 War Powers Act, it failed to muster enough votes to pass. Trump has now ordered attacks on 10 countries, compared with seven bombed under Obama and at least six under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

“The central complaint from Democratic leaders has been that the Trump White House didn’t properly consult Congress in advance of its crime spree. And even that grievance rings hollow,” Lehmann said. “Thus far, Democrats have shown no inclination to pursue an impeachment resolution against the president—the clear constitutional remedy for such abuses—even as a growing chorus of lawmakers are calling for it, together with leaders of the party’s activist base.”

“Sadly,” he continued, “the party’s inert approach to illegitimate acts of war well predates Trump’s Venezuela rampage; leading Democrats sat on their hands while their own president backed a genocidal war in Gaza—a lockstep posture of complicity so deeply ingrained that the Democratic National Committee refused to let any Palestinian speaker take the stage at the party’s 2024 convention.”

“Democrats likewise enthusiastically hailed Barack Obama’s raid in Pakistan to kidnap and execute Osama bin Laden with little thought that it would serve as a precedent for later imperial errands like Maduro’s ouster,” Lehmann added. ...

While there are more anti-war Democratic voices in Congress than there have been since the Vietnam War era, many senior Democrats in both chambers have a history of approving wars. Every current Democratic lawmaker who was in office in 2001 voted to authorize the so-called War on Terror, while Schumer, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), and several House Democrats still in office assented the following year to the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Europe-Russia, two-century failure w/ Jeffrey Sachs

US seizes Russian-flagged oil tanker in Atlantic after two-week pursuit

The US has seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean in a high-stakes operation that could risk confrontation with the Kremlin after Moscow reportedly dispatched a submarine to safeguard the vessel. US European Command said on Wednesday that it had boarded the Marinera over alleged sanctions violations, bringing to an end a dramatic two-week pursuit that began in the Caribbean and concluded in the Atlantic.

The Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT earlier published two grainy photographs showing a helicopter approaching the Marinera tanker, saying an operation was under way. The seizure – the first known US military seizure of a Russian-flagged vessel in recent history – is the latest demonstration of brazen US military power and reach.

The US Coast Guard said on Wednesday it had separately intercepted another dark-fleet tanker that is under sanctions, the M Sophia, in a pre-dawn operation in the Caribbean. Commenting on the twin operations, the White House signalled it would continue to seize Venezuela-linked oil vessels after Donald Trump last month imposed what he described as a “complete blockade” on ships transporting oil for Caracas.

“The US will enforce all sanctions,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters. Asked whether the seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic risked escalating tensions with Russia, Leavitt did not respond directly, saying the vessel’s crew could be transferred to the US for prosecution “if necessary”. The Russian foreign ministry has demanded the US ensure the humane and dignified treatment of Russian citizens onboard the Marinera and guarantee their swift return to Russia.

The Kremlin’s immediate reaction to the seizure has been notably muted, with Moscow appearing to continue its efforts to improve ties with Washington under Trump in the hope of securing his favour in talks over Ukraine. Russia’s transport ministry said in a statement that US forces had boarded the vessel outside the territorial waters of any state and that contact with it had been lost.The ministry cited the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea, which says “no state has the right to use force against vessels duly registered in the jurisdictions of other states”.

Q: Is the administration really willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military operation?

MARCO RUBIO: The president always retains the option -- every president -- to address it through military means pic.twitter.com/ZKAAajcDkL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2026

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Regime Change Is How Empires Die

The Trump doctrine exposes the US as a mafia state

When a bleary-eyed Trump explained the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro this past Saturday, he invoked the Monroe doctrine: while the US president sounded as if he were reading about it for the first time, historians of course recognized the idea of Washington as a kind of guardian of the western hemisphere. Together with the national security strategy published in December, the move on Venezuela can be understood as advancing a vision for carving up the world into what the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt called “great spaces”, with each in effect supervised by a great power (meaning, in today’s world, Washington, Moscow and Beijing). But more is happening than a return to such de facto imperialism: Trump’s promise to “run the country” for the sake of US oil companies signals the internationalization of one aspect of his regime – what has rightly been called the logic of the mafia state. That logic is even more obvious in his stated desire to grab Greenland.

The theory of the mafia state was first elaborated by the Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar in 2016. Such a state is less about corruption where envelopes change hands under the table. Instead, public procurement is rigged; large companies are brought under the control of regime-friendly oligarchs, who in turn acquire media to provide favorable coverage to the ruler. The beneficiaries are what Magyar calls the “extended political family” (which can include the ruler’s natural family). As with the mafia, unconditional loyalty is the price for being part of the system.

As so often with Trump 2.0, practices that other regimes try to veil have been unashamedly in the open: the “pausing” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signaled that the US is not only open for business but also bribing (be it with a jet or a fake prize from Fifa); not only do pardons appear to be for sale; and not only can companies curry favor by financing a grotesque ballroom – but also the president’s political family, which includes billionaires like Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick, seems poised to profit handsomely, including from foreign deals, and now foreign military adventures; according to the investigative reporter Judd Legum, the Trump oligarch Paul Singer (owner of the oil company Citgo), is to set to do very well with a Trump-controlled government in Caracas.

This does not mean that the US’s “special military operation” in Venezuela is entirely a matter of “it’s the oil, stupid”; there is an argument that it helps push back against Iran, China and Russia (even if the precedent that killing 40 people and kidnapping sets also legitimizes interventions by other powers, as those lamenting the weakening of international law have rightly pointed out). There is also the old-style neoconservative justification for removing a tyrant from power, something that the former self of Marco Rubio, before bending the knee, would have favored – though leaving a decapitated regime in place has made talk of democracy and human rights protection a tad implausible. But the point is not regime change, as long as a regime is fine with Trumpian exploitation. The alternative is extortion: if the US oil companies get “total access”, the rulers of what is also a mafia state of sorts can stay in place; if not, it’s a bigger boss talking to a minor boss along the lines of: “Nice country you have there; pity if we had to do a full-scale invasion.”

Maduro's Ex-Chief Tells Me TERRIFYING TRUTHS About Venezuela - w/. Temir Porras

‘Dirty’ and ‘infested with drugs’: the New York jail holding Maduro and Mangione

After US military forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas during a controversial pre-dawn raid, they were ultimately spirited to one of this country’s most infamous jails: the Metropolitan detention center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York. The deposed Venezuelan president and Flores will almost certainly reside in the MDC until their federal trial on drugs and weapons charge – inducting them into a notorious group that counts Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, Sam Bankman-Fried and Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo” as either current or former members.

The facility, located in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, holds prisoners with pending cases in the United States district court for the eastern district of New York as well as those serving brief sentences. ... Defense lawyers representing both famous and lower-profile detainees alike have repeatedly complained that conditions at the MDC are unsafe and inhumane. Federal judges have even refused to send defendants there who they determine don’t pose a danger to others. ...

Manhattan federal court judge Colleen McMahon even said in 2021 that both Manhattan’s Metropolitan correctional center and the MDC were “run by morons”, according to the New York Post. At the facilities, officials neglected to “do anything meaningful” to address conditions. Wardens at these jails, McMahon said, “cycle repeatedly, never staying for longer than a few months or even a year”.

Maduro and Flores appeared in Manhattan federal court on Monday following their transfer to the MDC and both pleaded not guilty. Maduro carried himself with a defiance similar to that of his foe, Trump, and called himself a “prisoner of war”.

Glenn Greenwald: Power Unchecked Destroys Freedom

US reportedly warns Maduro ally Diosdado Cabello he could be next

The Trump administration has reportedly put Venezuela’s hardline interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, on notice that he could be next to fall if he does not support the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been in power since Nicolás Maduro was seized on Saturday.

Reuters reported that US officials were “especially concerned” that Cabello, long seen by many as the regime’s real No 2, could sabotage Washington’s plan to keep key figures from Maduro’s inner circle in place in the name of stability while pursuing a transition and unrestricted access to Venezuela’s oil.

Cabello, for his part, has posted videos on social media showing him commanding dozens of heavily armed men patrolling the streets of Caracas. He controls the police, counterintelligence agencies and the militias known as colectivos.

Cabello has a long history of rivalry with Rodríguez and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the Venezuelan congress. Although many considered him the regime’s second most powerful figure after Maduro, analysts emphasise that there was no clear hierarchy. Power was divided among factions – one dominated by Cabello, another by the Rodríguez siblings, among others – that coexisted and competed. Cabello was among the officers who took part in Hugo Chávez’s failed coup attempt in 1992 and is therefore regarded as a “core” Chavista.

Treason in the camp

Democrats decry Venezuela attack as Republicans defend Trump after Senate briefing

Top officials from the Trump administration arrived on Capitol Hill to defend one of the most audacious military operations in recent US history: the forcible capture of a sitting head of state from his own capital. Secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, attorney general Pam Bondi, CIA director John Ratcliffe and Gen Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, briefed the Senate and the House on Operation Absolute Resolve, the lightning raid that plucked the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, from his Caracas residence and deposited him in a New York jail cell.

The session marks the first all-member congressional briefing where lawmakers heard the details of the 3 January attack, which involved US special forces from Delta Force swooping into Venezuela before dawn to seize Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Rubio told reporters that he described a threefold process to lawmakers on Venezuela that revolved around oil: first, stabilization of the country; next, finding access for companies to the Venezuelan market; and the final phase, “one of transition”.

“We are going to take between 30 and 50m barrels of oil,” Rubio said. “We’re going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting.” Oil aside, the operation has split Washington along predictable lines. Republicans have rallied behind Trump’s characterization of the raid as a straightforward law enforcement action to arrest an indicted drug trafficker. Democrats warn of an illegal act of war that could plunge Venezuela into chaos and set a dangerous precedent for unilateral presidential action.

Senator Chris Murphy was incredulous coming out of the confidential briefing, telling reporters the Trump administration is “going to take the oil by force, by force”.

“This is an insane plan,” Murphy said. “They are talking about stealing Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for a period of time, undefined as leverage to micromanage the country.” He added that he “heard no detailed plan” on Venezuela’s stability.

Marco Rubio says he will meet Danish officials to discuss Greenland next week

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says he plans to meet Danish officials next week to discuss Greenland as a crisis escalates within Nato over Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Arctic territory.

An urgent meeting had been requested by the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark, which has said that any invasion or seizure of the territory by its Nato ally would mark the end of the western military alliance and “post-second world war security”.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Rubio did not directly answer a question about whether the Trump administration was willing to risk the alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option to gain control of Greenland.

“I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week,” he said. “We’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that.” Every US president retains the option of addressing national security threats through military means, he said.

France said on Tuesday that it was working with allies on how to react if the US were to invade Greenland. “We want to take action, but we want to do so together with our European partners,” the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, told France Inter radio.

The good stuff is at the end, starts around the 15 minute mark...

Did Putin trick Trump with false location for drone strikes?

US suspends funds for needy families in five Democratic-led states

Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday that it is withholding funding for programs that support needy families with children in five Democratic-led states over concerns about fraud. The US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the program, will require the states to provide extra documentation to access the funds.

The administration has not laid out details about the fraud allegations. HHS said in a statement that it “identified concerns that these benefits intended for American citizens and lawful residents may have been improperly provided to individuals who are not eligible under federal law”.

Five states – California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York – are targeted, and the HHS said they had been notified. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, said earlier in the day the state was prepared to take the administration to court, as Democratic-led states have done scores of times now. “We’ll fight this with every fiber of our being, because our kids should not be political pawns in a fight that Donald Trump seems to have with blue state governors,” she said.

Trump says he plans crackdown on defense firms over executive pay and stock buybacks

Donald Trump has claimed he plans to crack down on executive compensation and shareholder payouts at military defense contractors, as his administration looks to dramatically ramp up spending on the armed forces. In a series of posts on social media, the US president said he wants to increase the military budget to $1.5tn – and complained that defense giants had been failing to swiftly deliver “vital” equipment to the US and its allies across the world.

The firms are paying “exorbitant” salaries to their top executives and vast dividends to shareholders while equipment is “NOT BEING MADE FAST ENOUGH”, Trump said. He said he would “not permit” dividends and stock buybacks by defense companies, or allow them to pay executives more than $5m, until they started to accelerate deliveries and build new and modern production plants. ...

On Truth Social, Trump wrote: “All United State Defense Contractors, and the Defense Industry as a whole, BEWARE: While we make the best Military Equipment in the World (No other Country is even close!), Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated! “Executive Pay Packages in the Defense Industry are exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these Companies are delivering vital Equipment to our Military, and our Allies,” he added. “Salaries, Stock Options, and every other form of Compensation are far too high for these Executives.”

In fiscal year 2024, the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics received more than $23.7m each in total compensation, the RTX CEO received more than $18m, and the Northrop Grumman CEO received more than $24.3m. General Dynamics declined to comment. Lockheed Martin, RTX and Northrop Grumman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Aaron Maté : When Law Dies, Freedom Follows - MURDER in Minneapolis

US immigration agents linked to spike in shootings under Trump administration crackdown

Federal immigration agents have been involved in a sharp rise in shootings in recent months, coinciding with the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement efforts. Under Trump’s crackdown, immigration officers have been connected to 14 shootings, according to data compiled by the Trace, a non-profit newsroom focused on gun violence in the US.

The newsroom relied on Gun Violence Archive data and media reports to document incidents in which federal agents either shot someone or held individuals at gunpoint during immigration enforcement operations carried out under Donald Trump’s crackdown. As of 7 January, it identified 28 incidents overall, including the 14 shootings.

The figures probably underestimate the true number of incidents, since shootings involving immigration agents are not consistently made public, the Trace cautioned.

Beyond shootings with firearms, 13 cases in which immigration agents used less-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets or pepper balls were also documented. Ten of those incidents took place during protests. Among those injured were two pastors who were shot with pepper balls while leading prayers at demonstrations in California and Illinois.

ICE Agent Fatally Shoots Minneapolis Mother, Renee Good

Woman in Minnesota fatally shot by ICE agent during raid

Federal agents shot and killed a woman during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis on Wednesday. Ilhan Omar, the Democratic Minnesota congresswoman, said the victim was “a legal observer” of action by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which had sent a surge of agents into the city in recent days tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

A witness to the incident, Emily Heller, told local media that the victim was shot in the face multiple times. Heller said she saw a car blocking traffic that appeared to be part of a protest against the ICE operation, and heard an agent telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here”.

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in – like his midriff was on her bumper – and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller told MPR News, a Minneapolis public radio station. The woman has been identified as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.

A video posted online by the Minnesota Reformer and another video obtained by the Guardian appeared to capture the moment of the shooting as a dark red SUV drove away from agents moving toward it, although the front of the vehicle is obscured. The fatal shooting by a federal officer on Wednesday took place less than a mile from where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, prompting mass protests.

In a post on X, the homeland security department (DHS) said the person was a “domestic terrorist” who “weaponized her vehicle” and attempted “to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”. The videos appeared to contradict that statement.

Minnesota Democrats voice outrage after fatal ICE shooting: ‘Leave our state immediately’

Democratic leaders across Minnesota are calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to leave Minneapolis and are urging residents to “remain calm” after a federal immigration officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in the city during an immigration enforcement operation on Wednesday.

“We’ve dreaded this moment since the early stages of this ICE presence in Minneapolis,” Jacob Frey, Minneapolis’s Democratic mayor, said at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon after the shooting. “They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing in causing chaos and distrust.”

At the news conference, Frey also rejected the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) account of the incident, in which they said that while ICE officers were conducting targeted operations, “rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them”, which the DHS said prompted an ICE officer to fire “defensive shots”.

“Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit,” Frey said at the news conference. “This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”

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Outrage as Trump withdraws US from key UN climate treaty

Donald Trump has sparked outrage by announcing the US will exit the foundational international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing the US’s utter isolation from the global effort to confront dangerously escalating temperatures. In a presidential memorandum issued on Wednesday, Trump stated that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is, along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, “contrary to the interests of the United States” and will be ditched.

The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock of international co-operation to deal with the climate crisis and has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992.

Trump has, however, routinely ridiculed climate science as a “scam” and a “hoax” and has actively hobbled clean energy projects and other climate policies as president, attempting to force the US and other countries to stay wedded to the fossil fuels that are driving disastrous heatwaves, storms, droughts and conflicts that imperils billions of people around the world. ...

Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump’s decision to exit the UNFCCC is an “unforced error” and “self-defeating” as it will further hamper the US’s ability to compete with China, which is increasingly dominant in the world’s burgeoning clean energy technology industries. “While the Trump administration is abdicating the United States of America’s global leadership, the rest of the world is continuing to shift to cleaner power sources and take climate action,” Bapna said. “The Trump administration is ceding the trillions of dollars in investment that the clean energy transition brings to nations willing to follow the science and embrace the cleanest, cheapest sources of energy.”

Underscoring the administration’s hostility to any measure to deal with a climate that is now hotter than at any point in human civilization, the White House memo also states that the US will pull out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s top climate science body, as well as an assortment of other international environmental organizations, including the International Renewable Energy Association, the International Solar Alliance and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Revealed: how aviation emissions could be halved without cutting journeys

Climate-heating emissions from aviation could be slashed in half – without reducing passenger journeys – by getting rid of premium seats, ensuring flights are near full and using the most efficient aircraft, according to analysis.

These efficiency measures could be far more effective in tackling the fast-growing carbon footprint of flying than pledges to use “sustainable” fuels or controversial carbon offsets, the researchers said. They believe their study, which analysed more than 27m commercial flights out of approximately 35m in 2023, is the first to assess the variation in operational efficiency of flights across the globe.

The amount of carbon dioxide per kilometre flown has been falling as aircraft become gradually more fuel efficient. However, the growth in the number of flights has far outstripped this, meaning the emissions helping to fuel the climate crisis are rising. Aviation’s carbon dioxide emissions could double or even triple by 2050, according to experts.

“We are currently stuck with a global situation where there is no hope that aviation will reduce its emissions,” said Prof Stefan Gössling, at Linnaeus University in Sweden and who led the research. In contrast, he said all-economy-seat planes, 95% flight occupancy and using today’s most efficient aircraft could cut fuel use and therefore emissions by 50-75%. “That is huge,” he said, adding that it would also mean far less sustainable fuel would be needed to make flying near emissions free in the future.

“I always thought air transport was already very efficient, and that is also what airlines like to tell people,” Gössling said. “But, in reality, it’s very inefficient because of the three factors: using old aircraft, transporting people [in premium seats] with lots of space, and often having aircraft that are not really fully loaded.” In 2023, the average “load factor” – seat occupancy – was almost 80%.

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Also of Interest

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

Hedges Report: America the Rogue State

‘Outright Piracy’: Russia Decries US Seizure of Oil Tanker as Violation of International Law

US attack on Venezuela will decide direction of South America’s vast mineral wealth

How Britain Helped Trump Destabilize Venezuela

Mafia Increases Activities

Understanding America’s Plan and Venezuela’s Possible Submission

Venezuela Declares State of Emergency, Calls for International Solidarity in Official Communiqué

Trump lawyer ordered to defend using US attorney title despite ruling it’s unlawful

Trump says he will ban big investors from buying single-family homes

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A Little Night Music

Lonnie Johnson - Falling Rain Blues

Lonnie Johnson - Swing Out Rhythm

Lonnie Johnson - Tomorrow Night

Eddie Lang & Lonnie Johnson - Guitar Blues

Otis Spann & Lonnie Johnson - Trouble in Mind

Lonnie Johnson - C.C. Rider

Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson - Dope Head Blues

Lonnie Johnson - Sleepy Water Blues

Lonnie Johnson - Playing with the strings

Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson ~ Handful Of Riffs

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