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“Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.”

-- W.H. Auden

News and Opinion

Manipulators Understand That Narrative Control Is Everything

Former Israeli intelligence officer Ella Kenan was seen at a recent pro-Israel conference saying she runs an online influence operation that works with “communities of over sixty thousand people around the world that make our content viral” to manipulate public discourse and “serve the narrative” of Israel.

I’ve been assured that this never happens and that it’s antisemitic to say it does, but okay sure. Let’s move on.

Fmr Israeli intelligence force captain Ella Kenan tells Jewish conference she runs an influence operation out of Tel Aviv that works with "over 60,000 people around the world that make our content viral."

She says she made up the "Hamas is ISIS" meme after Oct 7, and they pushed… pic.twitter.com/iC4XJtId00

— Chris Menahan (@infolibnews) April 21, 2026

“We also create content for non-Jewish influencers that collaborate with us,” Kenan says in a clip I first saw circulated by Information Liberation’s Chris Menahan. She then boasted of coining the slogan “Hamas is ISIS” and circulating it with such success that Joe Biden eventually parroted it in a speech.

“I offered ‘Hamas is ISIS,’ and I offered why, and I gave a short 101 on how we can garner attention and traction around that narrative, and that worked,” Kenan explained. “So in three to four days it became the most viewed narrative online. It became viral for almost three months around the world, in some places even more, and it even got to Biden’s speech. I also, you know, I can’t show you but I have so many videos, posts of Palestinians or Hamas officials like Abu Obeida responding to that narrative, influencing them.”

Do you notice how often she repeats the word “narrative”? This is because all manipulators understand that narrative control is everything.

HAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT my God lmao pic.twitter.com/SiBv9jIFEq

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 19, 2026

It reminds me of a 2024 McCain Institute conversation between then-Senator Mitt Romney and then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken where they discussed the need to ban TikTok in order to control the narrative.

After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

Incredible mask-off moment: Romney and Blinken say that the ban of TikTok was directly because "the emotion, the impact of images has a very challenging effect on the narrative", the narrative being "Israel's PR".pic.twitter.com/WkIGTAXG2X

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 6, 2024

There’s that word: narrative, narrative, narrative. That’s how empire managers talk to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.

This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality.

They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.

They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens.

They understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

That’s what’s going on with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, plutocrat-funded think tanks, mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood, and online influence operations like the one run by Ella Kenan. A few clever manipulators understand that you can control a society by controlling its dominant narratives.

You may notice the more manipulative people in your own life behaving the same way. They pour an unusual amount of energy into influencing the agreed-upon stories their social circle tells about them, about the people they favor, about the people they dislike, and about what’s been happening. They’ve learned that the key to controlling a group of humans is controlling their collective story about their surroundings.

Manipulators understand that you can get people to trade away real material goods for empty narrative fluff. A womanizer can manipulate a lady into trading real material sex for empty narratives about loving her and wanting a future with her. A cult leader can manipulate their followers into trading all their wealth and possessions for narratives about rewards in the afterlife. An Israel propagandist can manipulate people into supporting real military resources being sent to the middle east in exchange for empty narratives about defending western civilization or fighting terrorism or fulfilling a biblical prophecy. Through manipulation, they can ensure that they get the material goods, while their marks get the empty narrative fluff.

Col. Macgregor: U.S. MAY ATTACK IRAN THIS WEEKEND

‘Impossible’ to reopen strait of Hormuz amid ‘flagrant’ ceasefire breaches, Iran says

Iranian forces have seized two ships in the strait of Hormuz as the US and Iran doubled down on imposing separate blockades of the shipping waterway. The standoff over the strait – through which about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied fossil gas passed through during peacetime – has raised doubts about whether stalled peace negotiations will resume.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament and lead negotiator, said late on Wednesday that reopening the strait of Hormuz would be “impossible” while the US and Israel committed “flagrant” breaches of the ceasefire, including the US naval blockade, “the hostage-taking of the world’s economy” and “Zionist warmongering”. He added in a post on X that the US and Israel “did not achieve their goals through military aggression, nor will they through bullying”.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said earlier that their naval forces had stopped two ships attempting to cross the strait and brought them to shore. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency ​reported that the IRGC ​had accus​ed the two ships – the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca and Liberia-flagged Epaminondas – of “attempting to exit the strait of Hormuz covertly”.​ The Epaminondas is Greek-​operated, and Greece’s foreign minister confirmed there had been an attack against a Greek-owned cargo ship.

The seizures mark the first time Iran has taken control of ships since the beginning of the war, which started on 28 February, and come after the US fired on and seized an Iranian cargo vessel and boarded a Iranian oil tanker in the Indian Ocean.

In the latest in a series of about-turns, Donald Trump threatened violence on Tuesday hours before announcing he was unilaterally extending a ceasefire. The US president has been unable to contain the global economic and diplomatic crisis that erupted from the war, which has not resulted in the anti-US regime being overthrown or ended Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, it led to Tehran’s forced closure of the strait of Hormuz, which has caused a spiralling global economic crisis.

WH FREAKS After Intel Reveals Iran's Military Capacity To Fight Back

Strait of Hormuz is hosting gunboat diplomacy as US and Iran vie for most effective blockade

Donald Trump’s indefinite shelving of the plan to bomb Iran’s bridges and power stations on Tuesday night is being widely described as leaving the conflict in limbo, but that is anything but the truth. Both sides are vying to prove they can enforce their blockade of the strait of Hormuz more effectively than the other. It has become a form of gunboat diplomacy brought to life in the most significant geopolitical waterway in the world.

Iran, by firing at and seizing commercial ships trying to navigate the strait, is trying to send a message that it can maintain its chokehold on the world economy. The US, through its blockade of Iranian ports, is trying something more immediate. Through sanctions and naval action, it is attempting to make the Iranian economy collapse as Tehran runs out of space to store the oil it is producing and cannot export due to the blockade. It is a trial of strength in which both sides believe they have time on their side.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said that in a matter of days “Kharg Island storage will be full and the fragile Iranian oil wells will be shut in. Constraining Iran’s maritime trade directly targets the regime’s primary revenue lifelines.” The mix of blockade, sanctions enforcement and implicit threat of renewed strikes run in parallel with talks. Iran insists it understands and can foil this US strategy, in part by refusing to restart talks until the US blockade is lifted.

The cargo tracking firm Vortexa has reported that at least 34 tankers linked to Iran have circumvented the US blockade since it began, with 19 exiting the Gulf and 15 entering from the Arabian Sea. Secondly, Iran does not need to look far for signs that its own blockade of the strait is working. The price of oil, manipulated downwards by Trump’s social media messaging, remains the key metric for Iran, and is above $100 a barrel.

But there are other signs, too – the cancellation of 20,000 Lufthansa flights due to the cost of jet fuel, hotel booking vacancies this summer, the level of oil reserves at the UAE’s Fujairah port, the price of copper and condoms, the cost to European treasuries of mitigating energy inflation and even the number of Senate “pick-ups” that the Democrats are now targeting in November. In this global war the mood among Tennessee voters about Trump’s handling of the economy matters as much in Tehran as in the White House.

Iranian Drone Warfare That Awaits US /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Matt Hoh

US Official Says Trump’s Iran Ceasefire Extension Is Not Open-Ended

A US official has told Axios that President Trump’s extension of the ceasefire with Iran will not be open-ended and suggested it could last just “three to five days,” though that exact timetable was later denied by the White House.

The Trump administration is attempting to frame the lack of talks in Pakistan as related to divisions between the Iranian leadership, but Iranian officials have been clear that they won’t engage in further negotiations as long as the US is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports.

US officials speaking to Axios reporter Barak Ravid continued to push the narrative that Iran’s government is not cohesive. “Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together,” one US source told Ravid.

But Iran’s Supreme National Security Council released a statement making it clear that the strait was re-closed due to the US maintaining the blockade on Iran, which it considers to be a ceasefire violation, a view that’s been affirmed by Araghchi. “Blockading Iranian ports is an act of war and thus a violation of the ceasefire,” the Iranian Foreign Minister wrote on X on Tuesday.

How Hawkish Democrats Paved the Way for War with Iran

Schumer will keep pushing war powers votes until Bibi tells him to stop because one might pass.

Schumer Vows to Keep Forcing Iran War Powers Votes as Senators Sink Another Resolution

For the fifth time since President Donald Trump launched the Iran War in February, US senators on Wednesday voted down a resolution that would have blocked Trump from continuing his joint assault with Israel on the Mideast nation.

Upper chamber lawmakers voted 51-46 against SJ Res. 114, Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-Wis.) war powers resolution. Kentucky Republican Rand Paul joined Democrats in voting for the resolution, while John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to oppose it. Three senators—Chuck Grassley (R-Neb.), Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.)—did not vote.

Wednesday’s vote marked the fifth time that an Iran war powers resolution has failed to pass the Senate this year. On March 4, Fetterman helped upper chamber Republicans sink one such measure introduced by Paul and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). Two weeks later, senators came within three votes of passing a similar resolution introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a rejection repeated days later in a follow-up vote. Last week, Fetterman again crossed the aisle to help defeat a fourth resolution introduced by disabled combat veteran Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).

In remarks delivered on the Senate floor before Wednesday’s vote, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said: “Every day, we hear new promises from the Trump administration that victory has been achieved, that peace is at hand, that costs are starting to come down. And every day, we see the opposite. Trump can talk all he wants, but nothing will change until he realizes that this war needs to end.”

“And if Donald Trump won’t dig us out of this hole, Congress must step into the breach and exercise its constitutional authority over matters of war and peace,” Schumer added. “Democrats will continue to force votes on our resolutions every week until Senate Republicans see reason.”

On Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a fresh Iran war powers resolution, reportedly in coordination with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) previously introduced the first of three failed Iran war powers resolutions in the lower chamber.

Aaron Maté Why Israel is Losing to Iran

Israeli strike kills journalist after ongoing attacks blocked rescuers, Lebanon says

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed a journalist on Wednesday after rescuers were blocked from accessing the building where she was buried under rubble because of further Israeli fire, according to several witnesses.

Amal Khalil was covering developments near the town of al-Tayri with the photographer Zeinab Faraj when an Israeli strike hit the vehicle in front of them. They ran into a nearby house, which was then also targeted by an Israeli strike, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Rescuers were able to retrieve Faraj, who had a head wound, according to Elsy Moufarrej, who runs the Union of Journalists in Lebanon.

When they returned to help Khalil, a sound grenade blocked their access to the damaged building, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, a senior Lebanese military official and press advocates. The health ministry said Israel’s military “prevented the completion of the humanitarian mission by firing a sound grenade and live ammunition at the ambulance”. She was later found dead by civil defence, who pulled her corpse from under the rubble.

In total Israeli strikes killed five people on Wednesday, including Khalil, despite the ongoing ceasefire. Lebanon’s prime minister Nawaf Salam said the targeting of journalists and the obstruction of relief efforts constituted “war crimes”.

“Lebanon will spare no effort in pursuing these crimes before the relevant international bodies,” he said in a post on social media.

Trump will be enjoying his demise, because he is profiting from it

pic.twitter.com/qWiKMAc3cF

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) April 22, 2026

Pentagon asks for $54bn in pivot towards AI-powered war

The Pentagon is aiming to increase funding more than a hundredfold for an autonomous drone warfare program, according to budget documents released this week, signalling a major pivot towards AI-powered war. In its 2027 budget, the Pentagon has asked for over $54bn to fund the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, a 24,000% increase on last year.

An overview of the budget describes this money as going towards “autonomous and remotely operated systems across air, land, and above and below the sea,” including the “Drone Dominance” program.

The amount is over half the entire defence budget of the UK. In an opinion piece published yesterday, former CIA director David Petraeus said it was “the largest single commitment to autonomous warfare in history”. However, Petraeus and others warned that the US military, and AI companies, are largely unprepared for the risks and responsibilities of autonomous war.

“I think every AI company should be pretty worried about the future of AI weapons,” said Jeffrey Ladish, director of Palisade Research and a former security researcher at Anthropic. Ladish said that autonomous systems could change the dynamics of military confrontation by making events such as coups easier to achieve and more common.

“Evaluators keep finding exploitable failures in even the most advanced systems,” said Peter Wallich, a former UK AI Security Institute official who advises MIT’s AI Risk Initiative. “Every frontier AI system the UK AI Security Institute tested in December had exploitable safeguard failures … in a defence context, those failures could endanger warfighters and civilians.”

Pentagon says navy secretary is leaving, marking another top leader’s departure

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that the navy’s top civilian official, John Phelan, the secretary of the navy, is leaving his job. In a statement posted to social media, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, said Phelan was “departing the administration, effective immediately”. Hung Cao, the navy undersecretary, will become acting secretary of the navy, Parnell said.

Reuters, citing an anonymous source, reported Phelan had been fired by the Pentagon. According to the New York Times, Phelan’s ouster came after months of conflict between Phelan and defense secretary Pete Hegseth. Phelan also reportedly clashed with Hegseth’s deputy, Stephen Feinberg, whom the Times and CNN reported disapproved of Phelan’s handling of shipbuilding initiatives.

Phelan’s departure also comes just weeks Pete Hegseth fired the army’s top officer, Gen Randy George. Hegseth also has fired several top generals, admirals and other defense leaders since taking office last year. As with many of those other firings, Pentagon officials did not offer a reason for Phelan’s departure.

US saw record high of 5,668 books banned in libraries in 2025

The American Library Association (ALA) has reported a record high in the number of books banned in US libraries. In 2025, 5,668 books were banned – representing 66% of the total number challenged – with an additional 920 censored through access restriction, such as relocation on the library shelves.

The most-banned book in 2025 was Sold, a 2006 novel by Patricia McCormick about sex trafficking in India. Other frequently challenged titles include The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Empire of Storms by Sarah J Maas.

According to the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), challenges were recorded against 4,235 unique titles in 2025. That figure is the second highest since the organisation began tracking censorship data more than 30 years ago, topped only by 4,240 titles in 2023. The ALA also found that 40% of the materials challenged this year involved representations of LGBTQ+ people or people of colour.

The organisation usually publishes an annual list of the 10 most-banned books, but this year included 11 after four titles tied for eighth place. The list is compiled based on ALA analysis of 713 attempts to censor library materials and services in 2025. Of those attempts, 487 targeted books.

The report also found that challenges are becoming more coordinated and politically driven: 92% came from pressure groups, decision-makers or government officials, compared with 72% in 2024. By contrast, 2.7% were attributed to parents and 1.4% to individual library users.

Virginia court puts pause on voter-passed congressional maps boosting Democrats

One day after voters in Virginia approved new congressional maps intended to make it easier for Democrats to flip four Republican House seats in the midterms, a court ruled the referendum invalid.

The proposal sought to change the state constitution to set aside the nonpartisan redistricting process voters authorized six years ago until 2030, and passed by about three percentage points, 51.5% to 48.5%, according to the Virginia department of elections.

But on Wednesday, Judge Jack Hurley Jr of the Tazewell county circuit court blocked the state from taking any action to implement the new districts, following a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee. The committee had argued to the court that the timing and phrasing of the measure were illegal.

Jay Jones, the Virginia attorney general, said his office planned to appeal the ruling. “As I said last night, Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the People’s vote. We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court,” Jones said.

US supreme court sides with Michigan in its fight to shut down ageing pipeline

The supreme court on Wednesday sided with Michigan in ruling that the state’s lawsuit seeking to shut down a section of an ageing pipeline beneath a Great Lakes channel will stay in state court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous court that the Enbridge energy company waited too long to try to move the case to federal court. The case is part of a messy legal dispute about a pipeline that has moved crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953.

Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, sued in state court in June 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Enbridge to operate a 4.5-mile (6.4km) section of pipeline under the straits of Mackinac, which link Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Nessel, a Democrat, won a restraining order shutting down the pipeline from Ingham county judge James Jamo in June 2020, although Enbridge was allowed to continue operations after meeting safety requirements. Enbridge moved the lawsuit into federal court in 2021, arguing it affects US and Canadian trade. But a three-judge panel from the sixth US circuit court of appeals sent the case back to Jamo in June 2024, finding that the company missed a 30-day deadline to change jurisdictions.

The pipeline at issue is called Line 5. Concerns over the section beneath the straits rupturing and causing a catastrophic spill have been growing since 2017, when Enbridge engineers revealed they had known about gaps in the section’s protective coating since 2014. A boat anchor damaged the section in 2018, intensifying fears of a spill. The Michigan department of natural resources under Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s governor, revoked the straits easement for Line 5 in 2020. Enbridge filed a separate federal lawsuit challenging the revocation.

Enbridge won a ruling from a federal judge blocking the move, but Whitmer, a Democrat, has appealed to the sixth US circuit court of appeals. In March, the supreme court rejected Whitmer’s appeal claiming that she couldn’t be sued in federal court. It was unclear how the federal ruling blocking Whitmer’s revocation attempt would affect Nessel’s case in state court. The company said in a statement that the judge in the Whitmer case had already decided federal regulators, not the state, are responsible for Line 5 safety and they had found no issues that would warrant shutting it down.

The Looming Food Crisis: Why the Strait of Hormuz Is Disrupting Global Agriculture

World food systems ‘pushed to the brink’ by extreme heat, UN warns

Extreme heat is threatening the world’s food systems, with farmers unable to work outside, livestock experiencing stress and crop yields falling, putting the livelihoods of more than a billion people in peril, the UN has warned. Experts said food supply in some areas was being “pushed to the brink” by increasingly common and severe heatwaves, on land and at sea, in a major report written jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Farmers could find it impossible to work safely for as many as 250 days of the year – more than two-thirds of the time – in already hot regions including much of India and south Asia, tropical sub-Saharan Africa and swathes of Central and South America.

Livestock are already experiencing an increase in mortality rates, as heat stress begins for common species at about 25C. Extreme heat reduces yields from dairy cows and cuts the fat and protein content of milk. Pigs and chickens are unable to sweat and, as temperatures rise, face digestive tract breakdowns, organ failure and cardiovascular shock.

Yields begin to decline at temperatures above 30C for most agricultural crops, with damage including weakened cell walls and the production of toxins. The yields of maize in some areas have declined by about 10%. Wheat has fallen by nearly as much, and is projected to decline further as temperatures rise to more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

Ocean heatwaves are also killing fish, as heat reduces the level of dissolved oxygen in the water, leading to mass decline in populations.

Nearly half of US children are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution

Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, as experts warned Donald Trump’s expansive rollback of protections will make the situation worse. The 27th annual air quality report from the American Lung Association (ALA) released on Wednesday evaluates pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone – also known as smog – as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024.

It found that 33.5 million children in the US – 46% of those under 18 – live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. The report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the US, live in communities that failed all three measures.

Speaking to the Guardian, Will Barrett, assistant vice-president of the ALA’s Nationwide Clean Air Policy, said: “Children’s lungs are still developing. For their body size, they’re breathing more air. And also, kids play outdoors, they’re more active, they’re breathing in more outdoor air … So, air pollution exposure in children can contribute to long-term developmental harm to their lungs, new cases of asthma, increased risks of respiratory illness and other health considerations later in life.”

The report further found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air. As a result, they are more likely to live with one or more chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to pollution, including asthma, diabetes, and heart disease. Although people of color make up 42.1% of the US population, they represent 54.2% of those living in counties with at least one failing grade, the report noted. It also found that a person of color is 2.42 times more likely than a white person to live in a community that fails all three pollution measures.

Federal judge blocks Trump administration restrictions on wind and solar projects

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Tuesday struck down several Trump administration actions slowing down development of clean energy, including a requirement that all solar and wind energy projects on federal lands and waters be personally approved by the interior secretary, Doug Burgum.

Denise J Casper, chief judge of the US district court for Massachusetts, ruled that a coalition of plaintiffs representing wind and solar developers were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the administration’s actions violate federal statute and would cause irreparable harm if the court did not intervene.

She issued a preliminary injunction to stop the administration from implementing the policies, which clean energy advocates said would hamstring projects that need to get under way quickly to qualify for expiring federal tax credits.

The interior department in July said that all solar and wind energy projects on federal lands and waters must be personally approved by Burgum, a layer of enhanced oversight that officials said was needed to end what they said was preferential treatment for these technologies under the Biden administration. Burgum’s order authorized him to conduct “elevated review” of renewable projects, from proposed leases to rights of way, construction and operational plans, grants and biological opinions.

A coalition of regional wind and solar developers sued Burgum and other federal officials in December, saying his actions had the “goal and effect of destroying solar and wind energy” proposals in the United States. They accused Burgum of favoring fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas and said he had intentionally changed longstanding agency processes and legal determinations to delay and prevent the permitting and construction of wind and solar facilities. The lawsuit challenged six final agency actions that it says place wind and solar technologies into “second-class status”.

Wildfires burning across Georgia and Florida destroy homes and force evacuations

Wildfires burning across Georgia and Florida destroy homes and force evacuations

Wildfires burning across the south-eastern US intensified on Wednesday across parts of south-east Georgia, where 50 homes were destroyed, and across north-east Florida, forcing evacuations and school closures in some communities. The Georgia forestry commission issued its first mandatory burn ban in the state’s history, effective across 91 counties in the lower half of the state, due to worsening drought conditions and rising wildfire activity.

Smoke from the fires drifted to Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, as well as Jacksonville, Florida, while air quality in parts of south Georgia declined to the unhealthy category. Smoky conditions were expected to linger in the Atlanta area throughout the day, according to the Atlanta-Fulton county emergency management agency, as the worst blazes burned more than 200 miles from the city.

Some of the biggest blazes are reported to be along Georgia’s coast and around Jacksonville, Florida. They have been exacerbated by a long drought, low humidity and strong winds in the area. Georgia’s two biggest wildfires together have burned more than 31 sq miles, and at least four other smaller fires have been reported.

Drought in the contiguous US has reached record levels for this time of year. More than 61% of the lower 48 states are in moderate to exceptional drought – including 97% of the south-east and two-thirds of the west – according to the US Drought Monitor. It’s the highest level of drought for this time of year since the drought monitor began in 2000.

Florida, the area where the worst fires are burning, is in exceptional or extreme drought, according to the monitor. Firefighters are battling 131 wildfires that had burned 34 sq miles, mostly in the state’s northern half. “Florida has got one of the worst fire seasons in maybe the last 30 or 40 years or it’s turning out to be that way,” Florida commissioner of agriculture, Wilton Simpson said. “We’ve been in drought for 18 months now all across the state.”

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: Trump the God

Iran War: TACO Tuesday Strikes Again, Trump Extends Ceasefire

Risk of ‘Significant and Severe’ Food Crisis If Strait of Hormuz Remains Shut

UK in Retrial Seeks to Jail Palestine Action for ‘Terrorism’

Trump Uses Immigration Enforcement to Make America Whiter Again

A Little Night Music

Larry Williams – Bad Boy (Alternate Version)

Larry Williams – Short Fat Fannie

Larry Williams – Just Because

Larry Williams – Bony Moronie

Larry Williams – Iko Iko

Larry Williams – Lawdy Miss Clawdy

Larry Williams – She Said Yeah

Larry Williams – Slow Down

Larry Williams With Art Neville – Rockin' Pneumonia