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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lowell Fulson

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist Lowell Fulson. Enjoy!

^{Lowell Fulson - Reconsider Baby}

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

-- John Paul Stevens

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News and Opinion

They’re Attacking Online Anonymity

The EU is looking to ban VPNs, arguing that the ban is necessary to police recent online age verification laws. Critics have been warning for years that these age restriction laws are being rolled out around the world to erase online anonymity and enable greater surveillance of the entire population, and they are looking more vindicated than ever today. This isn’t about protecting children from social media addiction and porn, it’s about expanding the western empire’s surveillance network.

This happens as the FCC moves to require ID verification for every phone activation in the United States, claiming the push is about stopping robocalls but effectively ending another form of anonymous communication.

It’s always been about being able to more closely monitor the behavior of the public to make sure nobody’s plotting a revolution.

Alastair Crooke: The Western Way of War Is a Bust

Trump calls Iran’s response to peace plan ‘totally unacceptable’ as ceasefire frays

Donald Trump has rejected an Iranian response to a US peace proposal as “totally unacceptable”, on a day the month-old ceasefire showed signs of fraying as drone strikes were reported around the region and Benjamin Netanyahu warned the war was “not over”. The Iranian counter-proposal was passed to Washington through Pakistani mediators. The semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an informed source, said on Sunday night that Iran’s proposed text for negotiations underlined the necessity of lifting US sanctions, ending the US naval blockade of the strait of Hormuz after the signing of initial understanding, and an immediate end to the war with guarantees against any renewed attack on the country.

The US had presented a peace proposal a week ago, which was reported to consist of a one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding that would reopen the strait of Hormuz while setting a framework for further talks on Iran’s nuclear programme. The US parameters for nuclear talks reportedly included a moratorium on Iranian nuclear enrichment for up to 20 years; the transfer overseas, possibly to the US, of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), which could be used to make nuclear warheads; and the dismantling of Iranian nuclear facilities.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranian counter-proposal suggested a shorter moratorium, the export of part of the HEU stockpile and the dilution of the rest, and refusal to accept the dismantling of facilities. Trump responded shortly afterwards by saying: “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘representatives’. I don’t like it – totally unacceptable.”

Earlier in the day Trump had posted a long statement on his online platform, Truth Social, alleging Iran “has been playing games with the United States, and the rest of the World, for 47 years”, adding that Tehran “will be laughing no longer”. Trump was expected to talk to Netanyahu on Sunday. The Israeli prime minister had earlier warned the war would continue as long as Iran had a stockpile of HEU. “It’s not over, because there’s still nuclear material – enriched uranium – that has to be taken out of Iran. There’s still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” he told the CBS programme 60 Minutes, according an excerpt published before its broadcast.

Asked how the HEU should be removed, Netanyahu said: “You go in and you take it out,” adding that the best way would be to enter Iran to secure the fissile material as part of an agreement. He said Donald Trump had told him he wants “to go in there”. In a separate interview, Trump appeared to take a more relaxed view of the HEU stockpile, which the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, says is buried deep under mountains in central Iran. The US president suggested that for the time being, satellite surveillance was sufficient to guarantee no one had access to it.

How is Decision-Making Happening in Iran?

BIBI DEMANDS More War as Trump REJECTS Iran Proposal

Iran Warns of ‘Heavy Attacks’ on US Assets in the Region If US Targets More Iranian Oil Tankers

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned that it’s ready to launch “heavy attacks” on US assets in the region if more Iranian oil tankers are targeted by the US military.

“Any attack on Iranian tankers and commercial vessels will result in a heavy attack on one of the American centers in the region and enemy ships,” the IRGC said on Saturday after the US military attacked two Iranian tankers.

Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Committee, issued a similar warning on Sunday. “As of today, our restraint is over,” he said. “Any aggression against our vessels will be met with a heavy and decisive Iranian response against American vessels and bases.”

On Friday, May 8, US Central Command said in a statement that a US Navy F/A-18 fighter jet launched from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush “disabled” two Iranian tankers by “firing precision munitions into their smokestacks.” CENTCOM accused the ships of attempting to violate the “ongoing US blockade” of Iranian ports and said the attack stopped “the non-compliant ships from entering Iran.”

Larry Johnson: "Totally Unacceptable" – Then Iran Does the UNTHINKABLE (Hezbollah Blasts Iron Dome)

The Israeli army launched thermobaric and pressure bombs, supplied by the United States, on Gaza. These bombs, which burn at a temperature of 3,500 degrees Celsius, are capable of killing thousands in seconds, leaving no trace. pic.twitter.com/dKcEJh7LyL

— Hasan alrabay (@HasanEssam29636) May 8, 2026

Israeli Drone Kills Man and 12-Year-Old Daughter in ‘Barbaric’ Double-Tap Strike

An Israeli drone killed a Syrian laborer and his 12-year-old daughter in a double-tap attack in southern Lebanon on Saturday, in what the Lebanon Health Ministry described as part of a continuing pattern “of grave violations of International Humanitarian Law.”

The man was riding with his daughter on a motorcycle in Nabatiyeh when the pair were targeted by three drone strikes, according to the ministry.

The Associated Press reported:

The ministry said that after the initial strike, the man and his daughter managed to move away from the site only to be attacked again by the drone instantly killing the man. The girl then moved about 100 meters (yards) away and was hit again by the drone after she had been already wounded.

The girl was taken to the hospital, but did not survive her injuries, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

“The Ministry of Public Health denounces this barbaric targeting and the deliberate violence against civilians and children in Lebanon,” the ministry said, as AP reported.

The father and daughter were among a total of at least 24 people in Lebanon who were killed by Israeli strikes on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.

One strike on the town of al-Saksakieh killed seven, among them a child. The strike also wounded 15 people including three children.

The bombings continue despite a nominal ceasefire between Lebanon and Hezbollah that went into effect April 17. However, Israel has killed almost 500 people in Lebanon since April 16, raising the death toll since its March 2 invasion to over 2,750.

War correspondent Courtney Schellekens shared the story of the 12-year-old girl and her father in a video on social media on Saturday.

What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s no double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?

Westerners, where is your humanity?

Cameraman: @aliezzedine7 pic.twitter.com/ntXIwz4s6H

— courtneybonneauimages (@cbonneauimages) May 9, 2026

“What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s [not] double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?” she wrote above the video.

At the conclusion of the video itself, she continued the same line of questioning.

“To my Western followers, I really want you to think critically about the definition of terrorism, to whom it gets applied and who does it benefit,” she said. “Because where I’ve been sitting for the last 18 months, this mass murder and mass, you know, look at this,” she gestured to the ruble behind her, “this mass destruction, this ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon, this looks a lot like terrorism to me.”

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : The Economic Consequences of Trump's War

Heinz CEO DIRE WARNING: People Running Out Of Money

Don’t Listen to Hegseth, Trump’s Iran War Will Cost ‘Very Possibly Trillions’

University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers on Friday joined a growing number of economists and other critics casting doubt on what he called “the Pentagon’s lowball $25 billion estimate” for the cost of President Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran.

While testifying before Congress last week alongside US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Pentagon comptroller Jules “Jay” Hurst offered the $25 billion figure. However, experts have responded with raised eyebrows. Stephen Semler, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, estimated that the government spent at least $71.8 billion during the first two months of the war, or around $1.2 billion each day.

Although Trump told Congress last Friday—a key deadline under the War Powers Act—that his assault on Iran had been “terminated,” citing the ceasefire deal reached a month ago after his genocidal threat, the administration has maintained its naval blockade and on Thursday bombed what it claimed were “Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces.”

As the threat of more US bombings of Iran loomed, Wolfers wrote Friday in a New York Times opinion piece that “the Pentagon’s stated number reflects only a narrow accounting of the tab that Operation Epic Fury is running up. It’s the price of the more than 2,000 Tomahawk and Patriot missiles already fired, the warplanes already flown and in some cases lost, and the rest of the gear already chewed through. It does not measure the true cost of the war—including the human toll.”

“Since the start of the war, oil markets have been disrupted, consumer confidence has cratered, the global economy is groaning, and military budgets are growing,” the economist continued. “The toll from this upheaval must be counted in lives disrupted, jobs lost, companies shut down (see: Spirit Airlines), and the income and output sacrificed. The less easily quantified costs—death, disability, and mental health—could become much more dramatic should President Trump send troops into Iran, which still can’t be ruled out.”

As David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, detailed Friday, the war seemingly hasn’t achieved any of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shifting objectives:

The US and Israel said they wanted to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program and change its regime. The regime is now composed of more hard-liners than before, and Iran’s nuclear capability has not budged since last summer. Now the two sides are negotiating the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the conflict, and the terms of Iran’s nuclear program, which they were negotiating before the conflict. Moreover, the compromise being contemplated involves Iran pausing uranium enrichment in exchange for the US lifting sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds. That sounds suspiciously like the deal President Obama struck in 2015 that Trump ripped up when he took office, complete with the “bags of cash” sent to Iran that Trump flipped out over back then.

All this war has done is killed thousands of people, opened a new front for Israel in Lebanon, damaged most US military sites and most energy production facilities in the region, led to oil spills that are visible from space, created a shipping bottleneck that will take at least a year to fix, raised domestic gas prices to a record for this time of year, cost American consumers $34.3 billion and counting, ended the life of one US airline with more likely to come, and led us down an imminent path to physical shortages of critical commodities like oil, including in the United States.

I have never in my life seen a war that achieved literally none of its objectives while directly causing this many devastating costs, and I lived through Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency has privately warned the Trump administration that “Iran can survive the US naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship,” and its “analysis might even be underestimating Iran’s economic resilience if Tehran is able to smuggle oil via overland routes.”

The reporting heightened concerns about how long the war may drag on. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that a prolonged conflict could cause a global recession.

In this week’s Aftermath, David Dayen argues that the idea of “ending” the war is a kind of fallacy—the end isn’t really an end in material terms, and it will do nothing to slow down an ongoing crisis triggered by the decision to start bombing. https://t.co/uEKZpFaX4r pic.twitter.com/Fez7xFd9Lv

— The American Prospect (@TheProspect) May 8, 2026

Already, the war has “pushed the Federal Reserve Bank into a corner,” and “Wall Street is worried, despite the market touching new highs,” Wolfers wrote Friday. “My estimate—based on the movement of oil prices, along with the S&P 500—is that stocks are about 5% lower than they otherwise would be, suggesting that the war has wiped about $3 trillion off the value of these companies.”

The economist also cited recent research showing that elevated “geopolitical risk leads to lower investment and employment.”

Shortly after launching the war in February, the White House signaled it would need $200 billion for the operation. However, it is now seeking a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year—which Hegseth tried to frame as a fiscally responsible plan that puts “the American taxpayer first” in a widely ridiculed video this week. Wolfers highlighted that the budget request is “a roughly 40% boost over this year. That’s a massive $600 billion increase, or roughly $4,000 per household.”

Like Dayen, Wolfers also pointed to the Iraq War, which economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz estimated cost the US around $3 trillion, after factoring in expenses such as “lifetime medical care and disability benefits for veterans, and the higher recruitment and retention costs that follow a bloody war—all compounded by a rising interest bill.”

“The best any economist can do right now is get the order of magnitude right, and my math suggests the Iran war will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and very possibly trillions,” Wolfers concluded. “War is hell. And hell comes with a hefty price tag.”

Iran HITS Qatari Tanker, Downs US F-35 as Trump LOSES IT | Patrick Henningsen

When Trump Compares Iran to Vietnam or Iraq

As Donald Trump’s War shambles on with no end in sight, the U.S. president asks us to put his “little excursion” “in perspective.” Compared to Vietnam and Iraq, Trump says, the Iran conflict has lasted “not very long at all.” Does anyone find comfort in comparing the Iran disaster with two of America’s previous catastrophic wars?

Once, U.S. forces had been in Vietnam for only two months. Then Washington’s involvement became unlimited and the war did not end until millions were dead, over 10 years later. The Iraq war was just a few days shy of two months old when Bush proclaimed: “Mission Accomplished!” Years of chaos, mass death and wasted trillions of dollars followed.

But neither the Vietnam war nor the Iraq war revealed its calamitous stupidity as swiftly as Trump’s war. Two months in, the American people and our standard of living, along with the entire world economy, have taken body blows. Gasoline costs half again as much. Diesel has risen even more. Aviation gas has doubled. Food prices will soon follow because of shortages of key fertilizer ingredients — on top of Trump’s tariffs and the shortage of farm workers because of deportations.

Trump insists, however, that all will soon be well. Gas prices will “drop like a rock” after the war ends, says the president. Can there be anyone left in America who believes Donald Trump’s promises on prices? This is the man who vowed in 2024 that if he were elected, “prices will come down and they’ll come down fast, with everything.” “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down.”

Larry Wilkerson Responds: Is US Checkmated in Iran??

Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s state oil company reported a 26% jump in profits in its first quarter as its east-west pipeline allowed it to ship millions of barrels of oil out of the Gulf despite conflict in the Middle East. Profits at Saudi Aramco hit $33.6bn (£26.9bn) in the first three months of the year, while revenue rose nearly 7% compared with a year earlier to $115.5bn.

The boost in profits came even as Aramco grappled with attacks on its infrastructure and a halt to exports through its Gulf ports.

Amin Nasser, the company’s president and chief executive, said: “Our east-west pipeline, which reached its maximum capacity of 7m barrels of oil per day, has proven itself to be a critical supply artery, helping to mitigate the impact of a global energy shock and providing relief to customers affected by shipping constraints in the strait of Hormuz.”

Nasser, who previously warned that the continued blockade of the strait of Hormuz would be a “catastrophe” for global oil markets, said it would take months for the market to return to normal even if the strait reopened immediately.

“If trade flows resume immediately or today through the strait of Hormuz, it will take a few months for the oil market to rebalance,” he wrote in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. “But if trade and shipping remain curtailed by more than a few weeks from today, we anticipate the supply disruption to persist and the market to normalise only in 2027.”

Richard Wolff: Iran War UNRAVELS U.S. Empire, Petrodollar is FINISHED

Tehran, Taiwan, trade … what are the hazards facing Trump on Xi summit tightrope?

If all goes to plan over the next few days – and that is a big if – Donald Trump will arrive in Beijing on Wednesday for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. The trip will mark the first time a US president has visited China in nearly a decade. The last visit was also made by Trump, during his first term, in 2017. Back then, Beijing pulled out all the stops. On the three-day trip Trump and his wife, Melania, were treated to a private tour of the Forbidden City, the sprawling palace that housed Chinese emperors for centuries, and sat for a traditional Peking opera performance. The Chinese described it as a “state visit-plus”.

But in the intervening nine years there has been a trade war, a global pandemic, an intensification of concern in Washington about Chinese military activity, and another trade war. Now, as the president of the world’s biggest superpower prepares to visit his country’s biggest competitor on the global stage, the mood has shifted. Trump’s trip has been delayed by his attack on Iran, a stunning demonstration of the limits of US power, and cut to just two days.

“The idea of an American president going to a summit with our foremost competitor at a time where he has just experienced the most catastrophic strategic debacle in recent memory is going to be a striking moment,” Suzanne Maloney, vice-president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, told reporters on Thursday. “From a US perspective, this absolutely changes the sense of our ascendance at this point in time and what it means for the relationship.”

Whatever bonhomie Xi and Trump are able to muster during the 48-hour summit that brings together the men who together control more than 40% of the world’s economic activity, the frictions, heightened by the war in the Middle East, will not be far from the surface. Zhao Minghao, a professor of international studies at Fudan University, said there was a “very prominent mutual distrust” between the two countries. “Both sides still have profound disagreements on a number of issues, economic and trade issues, military-to-military relations, and Taiwan-related issues.” The biggest items on the agenda in the world’s most important bilateral relationship will be trade, Tehran and Taiwan.

‘Each of These Is a Murder’: Trump Admin Conducts 3rd Deadly Boat Strike in 5 Days

The Trump administration continued its illegal bombing of small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific on Friday, killing two and leaving one survivor in its third such strike in five days.

US Southern Command announced the attack on social media, claiming that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”

“Under [President Donald] Trump’s illegal orders, the US military conducted its third boat strike in five days against supposed drug smugglers, killing at least two. Each of these is a murder. Drug suspects should be arrested and prosecuted, not summarily executed,” former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth wrote on social media Saturday in response to the news.

Friday’s strike marks the 57th by the Trump administration and raises the death toll from the boat-strike campaign, which experts say is illegal even if every boat targeted is ferrying drugs, to 192.

“What do you call a US citizen who smuggles drugs, SOUTHCOM? A ‘narco-terrorist’?” social media user Andrew Marinelli said in response to the Southern Command announcement. “If a US citizen [allegedly] drove drugs into Canada and they blew him away with a drone strike, would you accept it?”

The administration has also not provided evidence for its claims that the boats belong to drug traffickers, and relatives of the victims say at least some of those killed were simply on the water to fish.

Friday’s strike was notable in that it left behind a survivor and that US Southern Command said it had activated the US Coast Guard to conduct a search and rescue operation.

On May 8, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking… pic.twitter.com/YFLQNZufRx

— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) May 9, 2026

The announcement may reflect a response to backlash after news broke last year that, in the administration’s first such strike, commanders had ordered a vessel bombed twice when it became clear there were survivors, in keeping with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth’s directive to “kill everybody.”

Despite scrutiny, the campaign has continued and even escalated in the past few weeks. There have been three such bombings since the beginning of May, according to The Intercept: One on May 4 in the Caribbean that killed two, one on May 5 in the Pacific that killed three, and the Pacific strike on May 8 that killed two. The reported survivor remains missing.

While the Trump administration claims the strikes have dramatically reduced the flow of illegal drugs into the US, evidence reveals this is not the case, according to an Intercept analysis published May 4.

For example, Trump claimed that drugs entering the US by sea had decreased by 97%, but the administration’s own data contradicts this claim, retired Rear Adm. William Baumgartner told The Intercept.

Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at human rights group Washington Office on Latin America, said, “Really absurdly, there’s been no impact on flows of drugs toward the United States,” noting that Customs and Border Protection seized 6,000 pounds more cocaine at all US borders in the seven months following the strikes than in the seven months before.

As Sanho Tree, who directs the Institute for Policy Studies’ Drug Policy Project, put it, “It wouldn’t be the first time this administration just made up something out of whole cloth.”

‘Corrupt and Unprecedented’: Immigration Board Fast-Tracked Khalil Deportation Decision

An immigration court decision that could hasten the deportation of Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil was marked by irregularities, including unusual speed and the recusals of several judges, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which is housed in the Department of Justice (DOJ) but is legally enjoined to make independent decisions, ruled on April 9 that Khalil could be deported from the US. However, documents obtained by the Times show that the case was fast-tracked in a manner that experts say is unusual.

“This is the due process the administration is offering me, corrupt and unprecedented,” Khalil posted on social media Friday in response to the Times’ reporting.

Khalil, a student leader of Columbia University protests against the Gaza genocide, was an early target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech when he was abducted by Department of Homeland Security agents while returning to his New York home in March 2025. Despite being a permanent resident married to a US citizen, Khalil was detained in Louisiana for over three months, where he missed the birth of his son.

Despite the BIA’s ruling, Khalil cannot be deported while his separate habeas corpus case proceeds through federal courts. However, the Times’ reporting raises questions about how fairly he is being treated by the Trump administration and how quickly he could face removal if the federal case falls through.

“This story proves that the Trump administration’s treatment of my case has always been corrupt and retaliatory. They put me through a sham immigration process while guaranteeing the outcome in advance,” Khalil wrote.

This is the due process the administration is offering me, corrupt and unprecedented:

"Internal board documents obtained by The New York Times show that the case was considered high priority even before the board officially received it.

“Please process as quickly as possible,”…

— Mahmoud Khalil | (@mahmoudkhalel) May 8, 2026

According to the Times:

The case was considered high priority even before the board officially received it. A note from an internal case-tracking file from June said that, even though Mr. Khalil had been released several days earlier, the case was to be handled as if he were still in detention, which would speed it along.

“Please process as quickly as possible,” said another note, from October. Another document shows that the court’s chair—its highest ranking member—oversaw the case from early on.

The decision was made nine days after all the paperwork was submitted, a timeline that Biden BIA appointee Homero López called “unprecedented,” as the board often takes years to decide similar cases.

“It’s an insane turnaround, particularly for such a high-profile case on a novel legal issue,” López, who was fired under President Donald Trump, told the Times.

At the same time, people familiar with the situation told the Times that at least three judges had recused themselves from the case, one before it was decided and the others once it became clear it would be published, meaning it would be considered precedent setting.

Former board judge Andrea Sáenz, also fired by Trump, told the Times that judges often recuse themselves because they have somehow been involved with the case before it is appealed.

“How many people touched this case when the immigration judge was handling it the first time?” Sáenz asked.

Former DOJ official David McConnell, who has experience with the immigration appeals process, said that both the quick processing and the recusals were “very unusual.” However, he added this did not mean the board necessarily did anything wrong.

However, the BIA’s decision was heavily criticized by Khalil’s legal team in April, as it upholds Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination that Khalil could be deported because his activism posed a threat to US foreign policy, which a federal judge in New Jersey said was “likely” unconstitutional and could not be the basis for his detention or deportation. It also justified removal on the grounds that Khalil omitted certain details on green card paperwork, but the government only added those charges after Rubio’s foreign policy gambit was challenged.

“In all my decades as an immigration lawyer, I have never seen such a baseless and politically motivated decision. The BIA’s decision has absolutely no support in the record, violates a federal court order, and we’ll be fighting it until the end,” Khalil’s lead lawyer Marc Van Der Hout said in a statement when the decision was first issued. “Federal courts have already agreed that Mahmoud was targeted for his speech, and there is likely much more evidence of the government’s unlawful retaliation that has yet to come to light. This is a clear continuation of the administration’s retaliation against Mahmoud for exercising his First Amendment rights.”

Responding to the new reporting on Friday, Van Der Hout told the Times that the case’s handling suggests it “has been controlled from Day 1 by higher-ups in the administration.”

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72% of Americans Agree: There Is Too Much Money in US Politics

A significant majority of Americans agree that there is too much money in the US political system and that the super rich have more influence over election outcomes than ordinary citizens, a poll published by Politico on Saturday found.

The poll comes after outside spending in the 2024 election broke records, with richest-man-alive Elon Musk pouring over $250 million into President Donald Trump’s campaign.

“In 2024, the maximum individual donation per candidate was $3,300. Elon Musk donated $277 million to elect Trump because of the loopholes Citizens United created for billionaires to buy elections,” Campaign for New York Health executive director Melanie D’Arrigo wrote on social media Sunday in response to the results.

“Elon has increased his wealth by $235 billion during Trump’s second term, and was allowed to gut the federal agencies overseeing and investigating him,” she continued. “Big money in politics is a direct threat to democracy and the working class.”

According to the poll, 72% of Americans agree that there is too much money in politics, while only 5% disagree. There is broad partisan consensus on this issue, with 80% of 2024 Kamala Harris voters and 77% of 2024 Trump voters also agreeing.

At the same time, 61% think that billionaires have too much influence on US politics. There was a larger partisan gap on this issue, with 75% of Harris voters and 55% of Trump voters agreeing

A total of 67% of respondents think that there is too much special interest money specifically in elections, and 53% see it as a form of corruption that should be restricted. There is also bipartisan support for the idea that special interest money is corruption, with 61% of Harris voters and 56% of Trump voters backing this position.

There is slightly more concern about money in politics from Democratic voters, with 49% of 2024 Harris voters stating it could outright buy elections compared with 33% of Trump voters.

In response to the results, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) argued that the Democratic Party should do more to take advantage of this concern.

“Dems shy away from the issue, despite voting 100% to get rid of dark money when given the chance. (Republicans 100% defend dark money.),” he wrote on social media.

The Democratic National Committee passed a resolution condemning dark money election spending last month, but some lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have called for it to go further by banning dark money contributions to Democratic primaries all together.

Election spending skyrocketed in the US following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. Dark money spending increased dramatically, reaching $1.9 billion in 2024.

“This type of astronomical spending corrodes people’s faith in our system of government, and I think people are really looking for changes to take some of this outrageous amount of spending and rein it in,” Michael Beckel, the Money in Politics reform director at Issue One, told Politico.

AOC REJECTS Marjorie Taylor Greene's Anti-Zionism - w/ Garland Nixon

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Norway doubles down on oil and gas production

In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.” This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East.

The decision will help keep gas and oil production at about the 2025 level – which has been stable for almost 20 years – and stay broadly the same for the rest of this decade. Norway has 97 offshore oilfields, three of which came on stream last year, and its Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects “100 and beyond” within the next two years, still producing at least the present level of 2m barrels of oil daily.

The Barents Sea, in the high north, is the new gas and oil frontier – with the prospect of mining for seabed minerals between northern Norway and Greenland, a more distant prospect after initial surveys by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – an agency of Aasland’s department – showed potential. “Norwegian offshore production plays an important role in ensuring energy security in Europe,” Aasland tells the Guardian. “The world, and Europe, will have a need for oil and gas for decades to come and it is crucial that Norway continues to develop its continental shelf to remain a reliable and long-term supplier … and (with) a high level of exploration activity.”

The sector generates vast wealth for Norway, but the decision this week to reopen the Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and Tommeliten Gamma gasfields in the North Sea, which were closed in 1998, has received heavy criticism in some quarters. It goes against the advice of the country’s environment agency, and the Socialist Left party accused the government of “greenwashing”.

A deadly bacterium is creeping up the US east coast. How worried should we be?

Bailey Magers and Sunil Kumar cut strange figures on Pensacola Beach. Bags of disinfectant solution surrounded them on the white sand; their gloved hands juggled test tubes while layers of rubber and plastic shielded their skin from the elements. ... Magers and Kumar study a bacterium called Vibrio, part of a lineage of ancient marine species that likely emerged sometime around the Paleozoic era. Researchers think there are more than 70 Vibrio species in the environment today, hundreds of millions of years later. The organisms float in warm, brackish water, attaching themselves to plankton and algae and accumulating in prolific water-filtering species such as clams and oysters.

A small number of Vibrio species can sicken and even kill. In worst-case scenarios, a person who has been exposed to the most dangerous of them – by swimming in brackish water with an open wound or ingesting a piece of raw shellfish that is contaminated with the toxin – may find themselves with only hours before the flesh on one or more extremities starts to bruise, swell and decay. Without the quick aid of powerful antibiotics, septic shock can set in and lead to death. Anyone can get infected, though it is much more likely in people who have liver disease or are immunocompromised, elderly people or people who are diabetic.

The climate crisis is making the world’s oceans, which have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, more hospitable to Vibrio. Research shows temperature and salinity are the largest predictors of how widespread Vibrio bacteria are. As water temperatures rise, so does the concentration of Vibrio in seawater – boosting the risk of infection for beachgoers and shellfish consumers. The bacteria start getting active in water temperatures above 60F and multiply rapidly as coastal waters warm throughout the summer.

In recent years, scientists have documented Vibrio expanding into places that were once too cold to support the bacteria, pushing as far north along the US east coast as Maine and appearing with more prevalence in temperate seas around the world.

Vibriosis infections in general are the leading cause of shellfish-related illness in the US They have increased “more than any other illness caused by a pathogen in the US food supply” since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, started keeping tabs on such illnesses in 1996, according to a 2019 analysis by the International Association for Food Protection. The report attributed the precipitous rise to a “perfect storm” of factors that include the climate crisis, food handling practices, expanding globalization, a patchwork of regulatory oversight and improved diagnosis.

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Also of Interest

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

The Law Of Elite Consequences Continues To Demolish America

Iran War: Momentary Quiet as Iran Withholds Answer on US Proposal; Iran Asserts Control Over Persian Gulf Cables; Debate Over US Destruction of Iran Tankers, Iran Destroyer Attacks

War On Iran: – Short takes …

'One big glow': Did Trump just threaten to hit Iran with nukes?

The Chilling UK Case Against Palestine Action Lawyer

Lawmakers demand answers after 32,000-gallon jet fuel leak at Joint Base Andrews

Oil-based products are everywhere, from fertiliser to fashion. What are the alternatives?

After Standing Rock, could a canceled mine project offer a roadmap for opponents of a new oil pipeline in South Dakota?

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A Little Night Music

Lowell Fulson - Talkin' Woman

Lowell Fulson – Rollin' Blues

Lowell Fulson – Ask At Any Door In Town

Lowell Fulsom – Going To Chicago

Lowell Fulson – Tramp

Lowell Fulson – I Want To Know

Lowell Fulson – Blues Around Midnight

Lowell Fulsom – Let's Go Get Stoned

Lowell Fulson – Don't Drive Me Baby

Lowell Fulson – Rock This Morning

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