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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Robert Pete Williams

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features country blues singer Robert Pete Williams. Enjoy!

^{Robert Pete Williams - Ashamed & Down Hearted Blues}

"We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us.

They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform."

-- Chris Hedges

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News and Opinion

This Is What It Looks Like When You Give Zionists Everything They Want

This is what it looks like when you give Zionists everything they want. This is Zionism put into practice.

The wars.

The massacres.

The bombed-out schools and hospitals.

The millions of displaced individuals.

The invasion of Lebanon

The explosions carpeting Tehran.

The hollowed-out moonscape of Gaza.

The horrific pogroms in the West Bank.

The child amputees.

The smell of rotting corpses.

The assassinated doctors and journalists.

The blackened sky and the poisoned water.

The nonstop deluge of brain-melting propaganda.

The aggressive promotion of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.

The erosion of free speech rights throughout the western world.

The corrupt warmongering politicians.

The legions of online hasbara trolls.

The soaring fuel prices.

Money which could pay for social services buying bombs for Israel instead.

All the death, destruction, instability and suffering that’s being visited upon countless civilians throughout west Asia.

This is Zionism. This is what it looks like when you apply the political ideology of forcibly imposing the existence of a Jewish ethnonationalist apartheid state on historic Palestine. This is it. You’re looking at it.

There is no alternate-reality version of Zionism where all these nightmares are not happening. There is no other kind of Zionism out there waiting in the wings. The liberal Zionist fantasy of a peaceful, egalitarian Israel is just that: a fantasy. It has never existed in real life.

In real life Israel cannot exist without nonstop violence and abuse. It’s like a house that will fall down if it’s not in a constant state of construction. At some point you realize the house should never have been built where it was built, and that steps need to be taken to rectify this error.

Zionism is a failed experiment. How do we know? Look around you.

Time to pull the plug.

Alastair Crooke: Iran's Missiles AVENGE Larijani, Tel Aviv BURNS as Trump Panics

Iran’s national security council confirms death of its chief, Ali Larijani

Iran’s supreme national security council has confirmed the death of its chief, Ali Larijani, after Israel said it had killed him in an airstrike. “The pure souls of the martyrs embraced the purified soul of God’s righteous servant, Martyr Dr Ali Larijani,” the council said on Tuesday evening, adding that his son and his bodyguards had died with him. “After a lifetime of struggle for the advancement of Iran and of the Islamic Revolution, he ultimately attained his long-held aspiration, answered the divine call, and honourably achieved the sweet grace of martyrdom in the trench of service,” it added.

Israel said earlier it had killed Larijani, a linchpin of Iranian politics, in overnight strikes. He is the most senior Iranian figure to die in the war since the supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on its first day. ... Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said a separate strike had killed the Basij paramilitary force commander, Gholamreza Soleimani, along with other senior Basij figures. Soleimani’s death was later confirmed by Iranian state media.

Donald Trump also hailed Larijani’s reported death, without actually naming him but referring to his supposed role in spearheading the recent crushing of mass protests. “Their leaders are gone,” Trump said of Iran’s clerical regime. “It’s an evil group. I mean, they’ve killed much more than 32,000 people. And the man who was responsible for that was also killed yesterday.”

Larijani had been seen days earlier on the crowded streets of Tehran during the annual Quds day rally. He was appointed secretary of the supreme national security council in August after the previous US-Israeli attacks on Iran in June 2025, and on Monday issued a statement to Muslims around the world appealing to them to support Iran in its struggle and challenging Gulf leaders to explain why they were still allowing US bases in their countries to be used to attack Iran. Larijani had also played a key diplomatic role before the war alongside Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in trying to persuade the Gulf states to prevent an attack. He forcibly defended Tehran’s tactics in the war, but was seen as a possible transitional figure at the end of the conflict. Israel is sceptical about the concept of a transition from within the regime.

The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said: “The political assassinations perpetrated by Israel, including those of Iranian statesmen and politicians, constitute illegal acts contrary to the laws of war.”

Daniel Davis: U.S. Military Options & War Narrative Collapse

Trump says US does not need Nato after being rebuffed over strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump has said the US does not need Nato after being rebuffed by a number of the organisation’s member countries over his appeal for a multinational naval force to reopen the key strait of Hormuz trade route closed by Iran. Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office, the US president described the rejection of his calls as a “very foolish mistake”, adding without evidence: “Everyone agrees with us, but they don’t want to help. And we, you know, we as the United States have to remember that because we think it’s pretty shocking.”

Trump added that he thought Europe would have sent minesweepers to assist with the operation in the strait, adding that it was “not a big deal” but was “unfair” to the US. Once again among Trump’s targets was the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who Trump said he was disappointed with, adding that the relationship with the UK had been good before Starmer took office.

The US president’s remarks came after Starmer said on Monday that while the UK would be “taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war”. British government sources said there was no plan for UK ships to be deployed in the strait. A number of US allies have questioned Trump’s changing logic for, and the necessity of, the US-Israeli war against Iran, now in its third week.

In an earlier post on his Truth Social network, Trump also called out Japan, Australia and South Korea for saying they would not be sending warships. “Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the Nato Countries’ assistance _ WE NEVER DID!” he wrote. “Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea.” ...

In response to reports that he was considering potential ground operations by American or Israeli forces – either in the shape of taking over the Kharg Island oil port complex or in the area of Isfahan where Iran has stored stores much of its of highly enriched uranium – Trump said: “I’m really not afraid of that. I’m really not afraid of anything,” when asked if such a move could risk a Vietnam-style quagmire.

Lawrence Wilkerson: U.S. Strategic Defeat in Iran Will Reshape the World

UK security adviser attended US-Iran talks and judged deal was within reach

Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, attended the final talks between the US and Iran and judged that the offer made by Tehran on its nuclear programme was significant enough to prevent a rush to war, the Guardian can reveal. Powell thought progress had been made in Geneva in late February and that the deal proposed by Iran was “surprising”, according to sources. Two days after the talks ended, and after a date had been agreed for a further round of technical talks in Vienna, the US and Israel launched the attack on Iran.

Powell’s presence at the talks, and his close knowledge of how they were progressing, was confirmed by three sources. One source said he was in the building at Oman’s ambassadorial residence in Cologny, Geneva, acting as an adviser, reflecting widespread concern about the US expertise on the talks represented by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy on several issues.

Kushner and Witkoff had invited Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the Geneva talks, to provide technical expertise, though Kushner would later claim that he and Witkoff had “a pretty deep understanding of the issues that matter in this”. Nuclear experts would later say that Witkoff’s pronouncements on the Iran nuclear programme were riddled with basic errors.

Powell has long experience as a mediator, and one source said Powell brought an expert from the UK Cabinet Office with him. One western diplomat said: “Jonathan thought there was a deal to be done, but Iran were not quite there yet, especially on the issue of UN inspections of its nuclear sites. It was not a complete deal, but it was progress and was unlikely to be the Iranians’ final offer."

The British team expected the next round of negotiations to go ahead on the basis of the progress in Geneva.” Powell’s attendance at the Geneva talks, as well as at a previous set of meetings earlier in the month in the Swiss city, helps in part to explain the UK government’s reluctance to back the US attack on Iran, a reluctance that has put the UK-US relationship under unprecedented strain. The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of an Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon. Instead the UK regarded the attack as unlawful and premature.

Pepe Escobar : The US vs. BRICS: Global Power Clash You Can’t Ignore

Trump counter-terrorism chief quits over Iran war, blaming Israel

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a far-right political figure and supporter of Donald Trump, resigned from his position on Tuesday in protest of the war in Iran. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in a resignation letter posted to X. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran,” Kent wrote. “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and you should strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.

“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.”

Kent ran for Congress in south-west Washington state after his wife’s death in 2022 and 2024, losing both times to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Though the district is relatively conservative – Trump won this district in 2024 – Kent’s campaigns were marred by associations with figures on the far right and white nationalists, such as Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, and Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer.

Kent also embraced anti-government conspiracy theories such as the argument that the FBI and the intelligence community were involved in the January 6 attack at the US Capitol and that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden.

Matthew Hoh: US Just Burned Through Its Cruise Missiles… Now What?

‘We’re Wiping Them Out’: Netanyahu Shows Off Kill List ‘Punch Card’ to a Fawning Mike Huckabee

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday posted a video of himself showing off what he said was a list of kill targets to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

In the video, Netanyahu informs Huckabee that he recently “erased” two names off the punch card, while noting that there are “many more to go.”

Huckabee then expresses relief to Netanyahu that his name is not on the punch card, to which Netanyahu replies that the former Republican Arkansas governor was on a “list of the good, good guys.”

Netanyahu then says that he’s “proud to stand shoulder to shoulder” with the US military in “getting rid of these lunatics” that the two countries started bombing more than two weeks ago in Iran.

“We’re wiping them out,” the Israeli prime minister boasts.

“I love it,” Huckabee responds. “Thank you, mister prime minister.”

Crossing names off the list is good - doing it shoulder to shoulder with our American friends is even better.

Good to see Ambassador @GovMikeHuckabee. Always a pleasure.

pic.twitter.com/FZrZN03IZI

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 17, 2026

Journalist Noga Tarnopolsky expressed disgust at the two men being so jovial about matters of life and death.

“PM Netanyahu and US Ambassador Huckabee amuse themselves with a kill list,” she wrote. “Yes, really.”

Drop Site News reporter Julian Andreone expressed a similar sentiment.

“I’m extremely creeped out,” Andreone wrote. “Just going to go ahead and say it.”

Pentagon Bombs Thousands of Targets in Iran Using Palantir AI

Robot dogs are standing guard for tech companies, patrolling the massive data centers across the country that power AI operations. https://t.co/KhAf1RHYer

— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) March 17, 2026

Would AI lie to you? Perhaps it's programmed to.

A photo of Iran’s bombed schoolgirl graveyard went around the world. Was it real, or AI?

The graves, freshly dug, lie in neat rows of 20 across. More than 60 have already been carved out of the earth, with a few clusters of people standing gathered around them. Dozens more are marked out on the ground in front: small chalk rectangles, with diggers poised to complete their task. The cemetery of Minab, photographed as it prepares to bury more than 100 of the town’s young girls, is one of the defining images of the US-Israeli war on Iran, bluntly capturing the devastating civilian toll.

But is it real?

Ask Gemini, the AI service powered by Google, and the answer you receive is no – in fact, Gemini claims the photograph is from two years earlier and more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) away. Rather than graves for small girls killed by a missile, the image “depicts a mass burial site in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey” after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck in 2023. “This specific aerial perspective became one of the most widely shared images of the disaster,” Gemini says, “illustrating the sheer scale of the loss.”

Seeing the same burial image on social media, others turned to X’s AI assistant Grok to check its veracity. Like Gemini, Grok will breezily assure you the photo is not from Iran at all – although it lands on a different date, disaster and location. The image is “from Rorotan Cemetery in Jakarta, Indonesia – a July 2021 stock photo of Covid mass burials. Not Minab,” it says.

In both cases, the AI answers sound sure: they don’t equivocate, and even provide “sources” for the original image, should you choose to check them. Follow the thread to examine those, however, and you’ll begin to hit dead ends: either the image doesn’t appear at all, or the link provided is to a news report that doesn’t exist. For all their impression of clarity and precision, the AIs are simply wrong.

The cemetery image, it turns out, is authentic. Researchers have cross referenced the photo of the site with satellite images that confirm its location, and it can be cross-referenced again with dozens more images taken of the same site from slightly different angles, and again with video footage – none of which experts say show signs of tampering or digital manipulation. The “factchecks” by Gemini and Grok are just one example of a tidal wave of AI-generated slop – hallucinated facts, nonsense analysis and faked images – that are engulfing coverage of the Iran war. Experts say it is wasting investigative time and risks atrocities being denied – as well as heralding alarming weaknesses as people increasingly rely on AI summaries for news and information.

Laith Marouf: Hezbollah vs Israel: Air & Ground War Intensifies

Long Iran War Would Hurt Consumers, But That’s the ‘Last of Our Concerns’: Trump Economic Adviser

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett caused a stir on Tuesday when he indicated that the prospect of US consumers getting hurt by a protracted conflict with Iran was not of particular concern to the administration.

During an interview on CNBC, Hassett dismissed concerns about the Iran war, which is now in its third week, dragging on indefinitely.

“The US economy is fundamentally sound,” Hassett claimed. “And if [the war] were to be extended, it wouldn’t really disrupt the US economy much at all. It would hurt consumers, and we’d have to think about, you know, if that continued, what we would have to do about that, but that’s, like, really the last of our concerns right now... because we’re very confident that this thing is going ahead of schedule.”

Trump economic advisor says consumer pain is the last of their concerns. Tell that to Americans paying almost twice as much for gas as they were a month ago. https://t.co/sEZUNjx8Xp

— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) March 17, 2026

In fact, US consumers are already hurting financially from the effects of the Iran war, which has caused the price of both oil and gasoline to skyrocket. Petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan reported on Tuesday that the average price of gas in the US has reached $3.80 per gallon, while the average price for diesel fuel has reached $5.03 per gallon.

The war’s impact on oil and gas prices has been exacerbated by Iran closing down the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, and so far there is no indication that it will be reopening anytime soon.

Norway to investigate links between Jeffrey Epstein and foreign office

The Norwegian parliament has voted unanimously to appoint an independent investigative commission to look into connections between its foreign office and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Speaking before the vote on Tuesday, the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, paid tribute to Epstein’s victims and said that the files released by the US Department of Justice had clearly shown “it is possible to buy and abuse influence if you are rich enough”.

Støre said that connections between Norwegians in “trusted and central positions” had been “proven” in the Epstein files, adding: “Reasonable questions have been raised about whether the links are in violation of the law and many aspects of society’s ethical regulations. It is crucial that these circumstances and the questions they raise are clarified, and that the facts are brought to the table.”

The release of the Epstein files in January sent shockwaves through Norway after multiple figures from the highest echelons of society – including the crown princess and a former prime minister – were named in them. The foreign office was also drawn into the spreading scandal after the financial crimes squad, Økokrim, said it was is investigating Mona Juul, Norway’s former ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, on suspicion of gross corruption while working at the ministry of foreign affairs. Her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, also a former diplomat and former president of the International Peace Institute, is being investigated by Økokrim on suspicion of complicity in gross corruption. The couple were part of a small group of diplomats who facilitated the 1993-1995 Oslo accords. The Epstein files appear to show that Juul and Rød-Larsen’s two children were bequeathed $10m by Epstein and that Rød-Larsen was appointed executor of Epstein’s will in 2017, which was later revoked.

Økokrim is also investigating Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Labour prime minister and the former chair of the Nobel committee and former secretary general of the Council of Europe, charged with gross corruption. Børge Brende, a former foreign minister, also appears in the documents. After they were published he left his position as president of the World Economic Forum. Meanwhile, Crown Princess Mette-Marit is under pressure to explain her years-long relationship with the US financier.

In his speech to Stortinget, Støre said that he agreed that the files raised “serious questions” that must be answered in order to restore public trust. When the independent commission delivers its report, he said, the government will “thoroughly review it”.

Summer Lee Introduces Impeachment Articles Accusing Bondi of ‘Breaking the Law’ to Protect Trump, Target Opponents

Democratic Rep. Summer Lee introduced articles of impeachment against US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday and accused the nation’s top prosecutor of “breaking the law to protect pedophiles” and prosecute President Donald Trump’s “political opponents.”

“We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected. And that cannot continue to be our reality,” Lee (D-Pa.) said in a video posted to her social media on Tuesday announcing the articles.

Two of the five articles pertain to Bondi’s conduct surrounding the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) release of files related to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the DOJ has been accused of covering up to protect Trump.

One article accuses Bondi of obstruction of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena in July 2025, which required the DOJ to release the full, unredacted files to the House Oversight Committee in August as part of a congressional inquiry.

I just introduced articles of impeachment against Pam Bondi.

It's time we hold powerful people accountable when they break the law, no matter their title, their political party, or how rich they are.

Thank you to the constitutional experts at @FSFP for drafting these with us. pic.twitter.com/bb45OCH7gL

— Rep. Summer Lee (@RepSummerLee) March 17, 2026

“The Department of Justice refused to adhere to the subpoena and withheld substantial evidence; evidence logs indicate that amongst the withheld evidence are FBI interviews with a survivor who accused Trump of sexual abuse,” the article reads.

In February, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee announced that they were investigating the DOJ’s handling of an accusation made against Trump to the FBI in 2019. A woman accused the president of having sexually assaulted her at the age of 13 in the 1980s.

Another impeachment article accuses Bondi of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), signed into law in November, which required the DOJ to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” pertaining to the Epstein case without redacting information to protect powerful figures from embarrassment.

The DOJ missed the December 19 deadline to release the files and has since released only about 3 million pages of documents as part of its “final” trove, while millions more remain unavailable.

The pages that have been released, the article says, “were heavily redacted” to scrub the names of Trump and other powerful figures, but sensitive information about many of Epstein’s victims—including identifying details and nude photographs—was released, even though the law said redacting this information was permitted.

Meanwhile, it says the DOJ “continues to withhold documents,” including FBI interviews with the Trump accuser.

Three of four memos detailing the interviews with the accuser were posted to the DOJ website in March. They include the victim’s graphic claims that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex.

Trump has denied the allegations, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the alleged victim “disturbed.”

Approximately 37 pages of FBI records related to the accusation, including the fourth memo and pages of agent notes, remain unreleased to the public, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

“Pam Bondi is complicit in the most egregious cover-up in American history, hiding documents that reveal a young woman reported being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump when she was just a minor,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), a cosponsor of Lee’s impeachment articles. “Bondi’s actions are not only disgusting and wrong. They are also illegal.”

Another article accuses Bondi of having “abused” the DOJ and FBI’s powers in a partisan fashion—to target Trump’s enemies and shield his friends from accountability. It also cites Bondi’s attempts to criminalize protesters who express anti-Trump viewpoints by designating them as “domestic terrorism threats” and creating secretive lists of organizations and individuals to be targeted.

Bondi is also accused of misleading courts on several occasions—including in the cases against former FBI Director James Comey and the Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García and says she presented “demonstrably false allegations in court to support baseless prosecutions against protesters.”

She is also accused of perjury before Congress during her confirmation hearing, where she pledged not to politicize her office or target journalists. It also accused her of lying during last month’s contentious hearing in which she claimed that there was “no evidence” in the Epstein files “that Donald Trump has committed a crime.”

BREAKING: Rep. Ted Lieu: I believe you just lied under oath.

Pam Bondi: Don’t you ever accuse me of a crime. pic.twitter.com/HhFozbAdu5

— Leading Report (@LeadingReport) February 11, 2026

No US attorney general has ever been impeached by the US House, which requires a simple majority. Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled House during his first term of office, though neither resulted in a conviction in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority.

Democrats urge windfall tax as big oil set to make billions from Iran war

With big oil companies poised to reap billions of dollars in profits from the war in Iran, Democratic lawmakers and progressive groups are calling for a windfall tax on major fossil fuel companies.

The US-Israeli strikes on Iran have triggered the largest ever disruption to fuel supply, according to the International Energy Agency, sending crude costs surging over $100 per barrel in recent days. Those high prices have hit US pocketbooks, with average domestic gas prices topping $3.70 a gallon, and Americans spending more than an additional $2bn to fill their tanks in the past fortnight according to one estimate.

As ordinary people struggle, corporations are seeing windfall gains. Since the war began last month, share prices for US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron have climbed by more than 5% and 7% respectively, while their market values have soared. With oil prices continuing to rise, the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse and California congressman Ro Khanna have proposed taxing big oil’s windfall profits from the Iran war-fueled crisis.

“Trump’s war of choice in Iran is not just a moral mistake but an economic blunder that is skyrocketing gas prices for working Americans,” said Khanna in a statement.

Hours before the bill’s release, dozens of consumer and environmental advocacy organizations sent a formal letter to Congress backing such a proposal. “Revenue from a windfall profits tax should be returned directly to struggling American households to help offset rising costs,” says the letter, which was signed by the Make Polluters Pay campaign, the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and more than 70 other state and national groups. The time to impose the tax is now, supporters say. If oil prices remain at their current level, gas prices will continue to rise while US fossil fuel firms could collect an additional $60bn this year, analyses from consultancy firm Rystad Energy and investment bank Jeffries show.

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AIPAC $20 MILLION Bet FLOPS In Major Elections

US Senate heeds Trump’s call to debate restrictive Save America Act voting bill

The Senate voted on Tuesday to debate a sweeping restrictive voting bill that would require proof of US citizenship for new voters, among other measures. The Senate voted 51-48 to begin debate on the Save America Act, a rebranded version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility act, or the Save Act, which has been circulating through Congress in some iteration for more than two years.

The US House passed the bill earlier this year, but it faces steep odds in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to move forward because of the filibuster rule. Republican senators including the majority leader, John Thune, face heavy lobbying to lift the filibuster to advance the act, but Thune has said he does not have the votes.

Debate in the Senate is likely to last many days, an effort by Republicans to demand attention on what they claim is an issue of insecure elections and to “put Democrats on the record”, Thune said.

Democrats are uniformly opposed to the legislation and expected to block its passage through the Senate. They say the legislation would disenfranchise millions of American voters who don’t have birth certificates or other documents readily available – both Republicans and Democrats who would be newly registering to vote.

Federal law already requires that voters in national elections be US citizens. But the legislation would lay out strict new requirements for voters to prove their status. The bill would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register and to present approved identification when they go to the polls, among other new rules that Donald Trump and his most loyal supporters are pushing as part of an effort to assert more federal control over elections.

Dem Party Attack Ad On Graham Platner BUSTED Using Party Hacks

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Oil flows again through controversial California pipeline after Trump order

Oil has begun to flow from a controversial California pipeline system for the first time in an more than decade following a Trump administration order, despite state officials decrying the move. Sable Offshore Corporation, the Houston-based owner of the coastal pipelines, announced on Monday that offshore oil was now flowing through its Santa Ynez unit and Santa Ynez pipeline system, which runs through several California counties.

The pipeline had been closed since 2015, after a burst pipe caused a massive oil spill, one of California’s worst to date. Hundreds of animals, including birds and marine wildlife, died after being coated in crude oil. Sable, which took over ownership of the pipeline from ExxonMobile in 2024, has been attempting to restart its offshore oil production for over a year but has failed to secure necessary permits from California regulators.

On Friday, however, Donald Trump ordered the pipeline to reopen regardless of regulator approval, citing energy needs amid the war on Iran. Trump, along with the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, invoked emergency powers granted in the Defense Production Act (DPA), a cold-war era policy. “The Trump administration remains committed to putting all Americans and their energy security first,” said Wright in a statement. ...

Jim Flores, Sable’s chair and chief executive, said in a statement: “We look forward to working closely with the Department of Energy in fully complying with the DPA and working with the Trump administration to take all necessary steps to deliver the energy necessary for the security and defense of the country.”

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has threatened to sue the Trump administration and Sable over the pipeline’s reopening. “Donald Trump started a war, admitted it would spike gas prices nationwide, and told Americans it was a small price to pay,” said Newsom in a statement. “Now he’s using this crisis of his own making to attempt what he’s wanted to do for years: open California’s coast for his oil industry friends so they can poison our beaches.”

Revealed: the world’s worst mega-leaks of methane driving global heating

The world’s worst mega-leaks of the potent greenhouse gas methane in 2025 have been revealed by an analysis of satellite data. The super-polluting plumes from oil and gas facilities have a colossal heating impact on the climate but often result from poor maintenance and can be simple to fix. The assessment found dozens of mega-leaks, each having the same global heating impact as a coal-fired power station. The researchers said it was “maddening” that such easy action to fight the climate crisis was not being taken, and said people should be angry. Stopping the leaks can even be free, given that captured gas can be sold – methane is the “natural gas” that fires power stations.

The mega-leaks occur across the world, but the top 25 list, produced by the Stop Methane Project at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is dominated by facilities in Turkmenistan. The scale of methane leaks in the secretive and authoritarian state has previously been described as “mind-boggling”. Super-polluting plumes were also seen in the US, the largest detected in 2025 occurring in Texas and leaking 5.5 tonnes of methane per hour, equivalent to running about a million fuel-guzzling SUVs. Venezuela (five) and Iran (three) also had multiple mega-leaks from state-owned facilities.

The Stop Methane Project also analysed super-polluting plumes from landfill sites, where rotting organic waste can release huge volumes of methane when not well managed. The worst sites ranged across the world, from Turkey to Algeria and Malaysia to the US.

Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today, and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. They have warned that this acceleration seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points. However, cutting methane emissions has a rapid impact, because the gas is naturally removed from the atmosphere far quicker than carbon dioxide. Some experts call cutting methane the climate “emergency brake”.

The UCLA Stop Methane analysis is based on data from Carbon Mapper and found 4,400 significant plumes in 2025, each emitting more than about 100kg/hour, equivalent to running 20,000 SUVs. In the US, nine of the 10 worst leaks were in Texas.

Pakistan’s people-led solar boom is easing impact of Middle East energy crisis

After prices of liquefied natural gas surged to record highs after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, millions of people in Pakistan were repeatedly left without electricity. An intense heatwave and gas shortages amid record-breaking prices resulted in power cuts across the country. But people soon started to realise there was an alternative. The falling costs of solar panels and generous government incentives to feed excess power back to the grid made rooftop solar an attractive option.

“People who could afford to do it at that time realised that it was much cheaper and cost-effective and better for them in the long run to do a one-time investment in rooftop solar as opposed to keep paying high electricity bills from a grid that is also unreliable,” said Nabiya Imran, an associate at Renewables First, a Pakistani thinktank.

Since then, there has been a stunning surge in rooftop solar deployment in Pakistan. Aerial photos of the city of Lahore capture the scale of the bottom-up rollout. Nationwide, the share of electricity generated by solar jumped fivefold between December 2021 and December 2025, according to data from Ember, another thinktank. Renewables First estimates the figure reached about one-fifth of the country’s grid-supplied electricity in 2024.

As the war in Iran chokes off a key global oil and gas trade route through the strait of Hormuz, energy analysts say Pakistan’s solar expansion has so far insulated the power sector from the worst of the energy market disruptions.“While we’re certainly seeing some impacts, the expansion of distributed solar in the country has provided a cushioning effect against the impacts [of the energy crisis] which could have been much worse had solar not been present in the country,” Imran said.

Booming solar generation has reduced the need for gas to generate electricity, especially during the day. Before the war in Iran broke out, Pakistan was diverting cargoes from a long-term supply agreement with Qatar because of falling gas demand. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) still contributes about a fifth of Pakistan’s power mix but it is mostly used to meet evening demand peaks.

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Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: The World According to Gaza

Jeffrey Sachs: Ending the Trump-Netanyahu War

UN Rights Office Warns Israeli Attacks on Lebanon May Amount to War Crimes

UN investigates strike on Iranian girls' school

Iran War: No Uptake to Trump Plea for Help With Opening Strait of Hormuz; Israel Claims Assassination of Iran Security Chief; Iran Clarifies That Friendly Countries Can Transit, Strikes UAE Terminal at Fajarah, Trump Delays Xi Summit

War On Iran – Czech cruiser ‘Krteček’ – Larijani’s Martyrdom – Kent’s Resignation

Trump’s threats to ‘take’ Cuba signal rising US pressure as island grapples with power crisis

Cuba, Venezuela and Regime Change

AI-Powered Robot Dogs Guarding Reviled Data Centers Is Where We Have Arrived

Aipac: toxicity of pro-Israel Super Pac’s money to be tested in US primaries

Trump administration to slash fee to renounce US citizenship from $2,350 to $450

US postal service will run out of money by February 2027, says agency chief

'TAKE IT': Trump's UNHINGED Cuba Plot As GRID COLLAPSES

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A Little Night Music

Robert Pete Williams - On My Way From Texas

Robert Pete Williams - Graveyard Blues

Robert Pete Williams - Grown So Ugly

Robert Pete Williams - Pardon Denied Again

Robert Pete Williams - A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

Robert Pete Williams - Better Have Your Way

Robert Pete Williams - Matchbox Blues

Robert Pete Williams - I'm Blue as a Man Can Be

Robert Pete Williams - Farm Blues

Robert Pete Williams - Louise

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