The Evening Blues - 6-24-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features "The Empress of the Blues" Bessie Smith. Enjoy!
Bessie Smith - Back Water Blues
"In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion."
-- Thomas Paine
News and Opinion
Blaming Ordinary People For The Ecocidal Consequences Of AI
I just saw an article in The Conversation titled “Your AI habit is wasting precious resources. Here’s how to use it responsibly,” and it pisses me off because you can already see where this is going. Neoliberalism is already doing that thing where they shift all the blame for the environmental consequences of ecocidal capitalism to the individual consumer, like how they told everyone to ride bikes and recycle instead of regulating the corporations who are actually destroying our biosphere.
There are plenty of reasons why we should all avoid using AI, but the push to offload all the responsibility for the ecological consequences of data centers onto individual users instead of just regulating AI companies is typical capitalist power-serving bullshit.
This is especially the case when AI is being aggressively shoved down our throats on every front, and when we all know most of this AI infrastructure being built up all around us is probably just going to wind up going toward mass surveillance and the western war machine. Telling people not to use ChatGPT to make shitty memes isn’t going to save us from the ecological fallout of the AI-driven facial recognition murder drones we’ll have patrolling our skies in the future of this increasingly dark dystopia.
Alastair Crooke: Iran Deal, Who's Dictating the Terms?
Prof. Mohammad Marandi : Iran Stands Firm at Negotiations
Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children in Gaza, UN inquiry finds
Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an independent UN inquiry has found. The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces have been children.
A previous report by the commission in September found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and that Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts. Netanyahu is separately wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes.
The Israeli mission in Geneva said Israel rejected the commission’s “libellous sham”. Israel has fought hard against allegations of genocide, while receiving critical diplomatic support from its allies, including the US and the UK.
A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide.
The UN commission said in its report, released on Tuesday, that Palestinian children were deliberately targeted and killed during the war, including after a ceasefire came into effect in October 2025. It said this was a key element in establishing genocidal intent by Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.
From Gaza to Lebanon: Israel's Genocidal Occupation Forces Met With Indigenous Resistance
Lebanon’s Leverage: ‘Tectonic Shift’ in Global Power With Iran War Win | w/ Rania Khalek
Rubio insists strait of Hormuz will be toll-free as he arrives for Gulf meeting
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said no country, including Iran, would be allowed to charge tolls for shipping in the strait of Hormuz as he sought to reassure US allies in the Gulf that Washington would take a firm line in peace negotiations with Tehran. Rubio is to meet Gulf allies on Tuesday and Wednesday in an attempt to reassure them that the US remains committed to their security and the 60-day ceasefire deal struck with Iran last week will not embolden Tehran.
Arriving in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Rubio said the US would provide for freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz and that no country would be allowed to charge a toll there, which Iran has said it has a right to do. “It’s an international waterway,” Rubio said. “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here.”
That was just one of a number of potential fault lines in the shaky new US ceasefire deal, as concerns have grown that the release of Iran’s frozen assets would be reinvested into its military. And while Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Iran had agreed to allow international inspectors back into the country to monitor its nuclear programme, Iran directly denied that an agreement had been struck.
Rubio also nodded to the potential spoiler role that Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon could play in the agreement, saying that Iranian proxies must also respect the ceasefire but that the issue would be addressed “at the appropriate time in these negotiations”.
The US last week signed a ceasefire agreement with Iran that established a 60-day period of toll-free passage through the strait, after which Iran and Oman would discuss the “future administration and maritime services in the strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf littoral states, in line with applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the strait of Hormuz”. Observers took that to mean that Iran was not directly precluded from charging fees or services for transport through the strait of Hormuz. Rubio, however, indicated that he believed Iran would accept the terms of toll-free passage through the waterway.
Laith Marouf: Developing: Israel Signals Partial Withdrawal From Lebanon Border
Aaron Maté Iran Deal a Pause Not Peace
US Senate passes war powers resolution challenging Trump’s Iran war authority
The US Senate approved a war powers resolution preventing Donald Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran, delivering the president a significant but symbolic rebuke over a conflict that has proven unpopular with the American public. The resolution passed by a 50-48 vote, with four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky – breaking with their party to support its adoption. John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, was the sole Democrat to vote against the resolution.
The measure, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, would require the president to seek Congress’s authorization to use military force against Iran. It comes after Trump dispatched JD Vance to Switzerland to negotiate a settlement that would resolve the conflict the US began alongside Israel in February.
The resolution does not require the president’s signature, and Trump and his Republican allies have questioned the constitutionality of the 1973 War Powers Act under which it was passed. Nonetheless, its success underscores the discontent among Republicans over a conflict that has grown deeply unpopular with voters ahead of the November midterm elections, in which Republicans will be defending their control of Congress.
Congress Hawks Threaten To BLOW UP Iranian Peace Deal
Iran Challenges the US Doctrine of Low-Intensity Warfare
The 60-day extension of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran may lead to lasting peace or it may be over within a week, doomed by the dysfunctional alliance between the US and Israel. If it holds, it could mark the beginning of a transition away from the doctrine of “low-intensity conflict” that has shaped US foreign policy for decades.
Talks between the US, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar began in Switzerland on June 21. But Iran was firm that it holds the United States responsible for Israel’s violations of the US-Iran memorandum and cannot move forward with other parts of the agreement until the US fulfills its part in Article 1, which requires an actual Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal from Lebanon.
If the memorandum agreed between Iran and the United States fails, the world will be left with vastly reduced oil and gas supplies and a regional war between Iran, Israel, and the United States from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf.
This entire crisis is one more devastating result of the world community’s failure to tame Israel’s war crimes and genocide or end its illegal occupation of Palestine and attacks and invasions in neighboring countries—all of which the United States continues to enable and support through its military and diplomatic alliance and arming of the Israeli military.
President Donald Trump seems to understand the rapidly deteriorating position of the US and Israel, and to recognize that his own political future now depends on extricating the US from the war on Iran that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooked up. Voices of peace from around the world support the tentative ceasefire extension and oppose efforts to sabotage it by politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.
But to understand the roots of this crisis in US foreign policy, we have to look back. Since the 1980s, aggressive US foreign policy has dragged the Middle East and much of the world into a state that US military planners call “low-intensity conflict” or “LIC.”
Under this doctrine, the United States, and now its protégé Israel, claim the freedom of action to use military force in flagrant and widespread violation of international law, while deterring the rest of the world from mustering the political will to enforce the law or hold them accountable.
The US doctrine of low-intensity conflict was a deliberate policy choice by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, after the US defeat in Vietnam. After President George Bush II and Vice President Dick Cheney’s catastrophic full-scale US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Presidents Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden reverted to low-intensity warfare, but globally expanded its scope.
This US choice to expand low-intensity warfare followed the example and the techniques of the British Empire in its final phase in the 1950s. From the Suez crisis to guerrilla war against communist revolutionaries in Malaya and Mau Mau torture camps in Kenya, the deliberate and deadly violence of Britain’s imperial policies was hidden from its own people and the world behind a tapestry of lies.
In 1989, Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh edited a book titled Low-Intensity Warfare: How the USA Fights Wars Without Declaring Them.
They wrote that the official description of low-intensity warfare was deliberately broad and ambiguous, embracing drug interdiction in Bolivia; the occupation of Beirut; the invasion of Grenada; the airstrikes on Libya in 1986; as well as covert “special operations,” “special activities,” and “unconventional warfare.”
They concluded that low-intensity conflict was in fact “a strategic reorientation of the US military establishment, and renewed commitment to employ force in a global crusade against Third World revolutionary movements and governments.”
Today’s nominal but false ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf fit squarely within that doctrine. They allow the US and Israel to continue illegal uses of force while appearing to respond to international demands for negotiations and diplomacy.
But the US involvement in low-intensity conflict today is not limited to the Middle East. It also encompasses the proxy war on Russia centered in Ukraine; the savage, deadly siege of Cuba; US and Western piracy on the high seas; the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife; and economic and financial coercive measures or “sanctions” that impact about 40 countries.
Today’s low-intensity warfare also includes deploying US special operations forces in up to 140 countries. Since 2001, US special operations forces claim to have suffered 40% of all US military casualties, including many of the 8,492 American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Concentrating such a large share of US war casualties in such a small force—about 70,000 men and women at any one time—helps to give most American families the illusion of living in peace, even as the United States projects military force across the world and kills thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of people abroad.
The doctrine of low-intensity warfare depends on a fundamental assumption: that the countries targeted by the United States and its allies will remain too weak, too isolated, or too divided to effectively resist. But that assumption is increasingly being tested.
Iran has made great strides in developing effective military defenses and demonstrating to shocked US and Israeli officials that it can now defend itself. But the deadly results of false ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon stand as concrete evidence that Israel and the United States still favor low-intensity warfare over real peace.
Even as Trump presents himself as a peacemaker, he remains committed to funding an enormous war machine that can ratchet the intensity of military and covert operations up and down in different parts of the world as it adjusts to new forms of resistance and responds to fluctuating international diplomatic pressures.
But the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza opened the eyes of a new generation of people all over the world to the reality of US imperialism. The official lies that undergird low-intensity warfare are wearing dangerously thin. People are no longer swallowing the false narratives of US and Western politicians and establishment media.
US political, military, and business leaders face a crisis of credibility and legitimacy that only grows as they take off the gloves and ratchet up the intensity of these campaigns, from escalating the war on Russia and the brutal blockade of Cuba to murdering innocent fishermen and ferry passengers in the Caribbean and Pacific and threatening traditional allies like Canada and Denmark.
In the US-Israeli war on Iran and the negotiations to end it, we are witnessing a serious effort by an attacked country to stand up to the bullies, redress the imbalance of power, and uphold international law.
Whatever one thinks of the Iranian government, Iran’s pursuit of a durable peace based on sovereignty, security, and international law deserves the support of governments and people around the world, including Americans.
This moment could become a critical turning point in reining in US aggression and Israeli regional expansion. It could even give humanity a chance to end this cycle of endless war and begin working together to address the existential crises threatening the world in the 21st century.
As the people of the United States commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding, and the violence of the US empire comes home to attack us and our neighbors in our own homes and streets, we should find common cause with, and learn from, our neighbors around the world who have been resisting US imperial violence for generations.
It is ultimately up to us to take our future in our own hands and begin the essential transition from empire to democracy.
That is why CODEPINK is calling for a Summer of Peace and Love, a time to reject fear, militarism and empire, and to organize our communities around the simple but radical demand that our country stop making war on the world and start investing in life.
Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Trump Is FUMING! Iran’s MASSIVE Move Just Changed The World Order
CNN: Downed US Pilot Reported Seeing Iranian Drones Swarm in ‘Jellyfish’ Formation
CNN reported on Tuesday that the pilot of a US F-15 fighter jet that was shot down over Iran during the US-Israeli bombing campaign in April reported seeing a swarm of Iranian drones in a formation that resembled a jellyfish before he ejected from the aircraft.
Sources told the outlet that the pilot reported what he believed he saw to US intelligence officials, setting off a debate within US intelligence agencies about Iran’s potential drone capabilities. The report noted that the pilot was concussed during the incident, and US intelligence officials disagreed on whether he could recount what he saw clearly.
If Iran is able to control multiple drones in a formation like what the pilot described, it would mean its drone capabilities are far more advanced than what the US assessed. During the full-scale war, the Pentagon admitted to Congress that Iran’s drones were more difficult to deal with than expected and that US forces were struggling to intercept them.
Rubicon crossed, permanent conflict on Russia. Zelensky targets Belarus next
Volodymyr Zelenskyy to skip postwar conference amid tensions with Poland
Volodymyr Zelenskyy will skip a high-level conference on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine amid a deepening rift with Poland over his naming of a military unit after one that killed tens of thousands of Poles during the second world war. Ukraine’s president had been expected to co-host the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which begins in the Polish coastal city of Gdańsk on Thursday, but the Ukrainian delegation will instead be led by the prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.
The annual conference, which in previous years took place in Rome, Berlin and London, seeks to bring together partners and businesses that could help with rebuilding Ukraine after the war. Zelenskyy’s decision not to attend follows weeks of tensions with Poland over his decision last month to name a military unit after “the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” the UPA.
The partisan formation is seen in Ukraine as a symbol of heroic resistance against the Soviet forces in the fight for Ukrainian independence. In Poland, however, the UPA is notorious for killing up to 100,000 Poles in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 45, in an attempt to ensure the territory did not become part of postwar Poland.
Zelenskyy’s decision sparked anger in Poland and accusations of historical insensitivity, dampening hopes of a breakthrough after last year’s agreement on exhumations, in which Ukraine agreed to first steps that could ultimately allow Polish families to bury their massacred relatives.
Poland has been one of Ukraine’s closest allies since the full-scale invasion in 2022, becoming home to more than a million Ukrainians who fled in the first months of the war. It also remains a strategic logistics hub for deliveries to Ukraine.
Prof. Glenn Diesen : Is Europe Preparing for War?
Former Pinochet agents convicted over 1976 Washington DC carbomb murder
Fifty years after Gen Augusto Pinochet’s secret police detonated a car bomb in the heart of Washington DC, killing Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean minister and ambassador to the US, and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a Santiago court has convicted three former agents of Moffitt’s murder. Judge Paola Plaza, a special minister for human rights in Chile, sentenced Pedro Espinoza, José Zara, and Raúl Iturriaga to 15 years in prison for their roles in the killing of Moffitt, 25.
All three men were agents of the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (Dina), Pinochet’s feared secret police which hunted down opponents at home and abroad. Espinoza and Iturriaga – who is serving more than 500 years’ prison time for a litany of human rights atrocities – were being held at an exclusive facility outside Santiago, but Zara had been released in August last year having completed a 15-year jail term. He has now been arrested once more.
According to the court ruling, the agents, led by notorious Dina chief Manuel Contreras, concocted a plan to carry out extrajudicial murders on foreign soil and carried out surveillance on Letelier, whose murder was initially investigated separately. Several high-ranking Chilean military officials were sentenced in connection to the case during the 1990s, as well as US citizen Michael Townley, a Dina collaborator who confessed to his role in the murders in 1978, but in 2012 a Santiago appeals court ruled that Moffitt’s case must be reopened as the perpetrators were Chilean nationals.
It’s not easy being green: Trump’s botched reflecting pool becomes 2,028ft metaphor
Narcissus was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Donald Trump is finding that his effort to overhaul the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington has turned into a perverse tourist attraction and 2,028ft national metaphor. On Monday afternoon a massive algae bloom had turned the pool a green reminiscent of a plane passenger clutching a sick bag. It also stank, but that did not deter a steady flow of curious tourists snapping photos and TV crews doing eyewitness interviews about the folly of Donald Trump’s $14.7m renovation.
“He has a contrary of the Midas touch, which is everything he touches becomes crap,” said José Lebron, 32, a local tour guide standing poolside. “I’m worried because now the point of visiting the pool is seeing the whole spectacle of the mistake. It’s not enjoying what the pool actually is meant for, which is a reflective space.” The pool was designed more than a century ago to connect the Washington Monument with the Lincoln Memorial, Lebron added. “Now we’re not talking about that; now we’re analysing what a bad job it is, how it’s peeling, how the animals are dying, that it’s not a healthy ecosystem, that the algae are blooming. I don’t like that changing conversation. It feels like personification of this whole thing.”
Facing humiliation, the president has claimed saboteurs caused a 300ft-long gash in the pool, illegally polluted it with chemicals and marked a giant 86 47 (slang for getting rid of Trump) into nearby grass. At least five people are said to have been arrested, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who publicly denied the charges. Trump has threatened the culprits with 10 years in jail.
The reflecting pool is hardly the most urgent issue facing the US as the Trump administration negotiates an end to the war in Iran, grapples with high inflation and braces for midterm elections. Yet its symbolic power, as a stagnant pond beneath the gaze of Abraham Lincoln’s marble statue, is irresistible for the president’s critics. Even an image of a dead duck in the pool went viral on social media over the weekend.
Trump regarded the pool as an easy way to embarrass the Barack Obama administration, deflect attention from the Iran war and embrace his identity as a builder, according to George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital. “Once he got involved and insisted on a specific fix that didn’t actually address the problem of algae blooms, and doled out a very questionable no-bid contract to an inexperienced contractor, it started to get this stink of corruption,” said Musgrove. “And now, in order to cover up all of his very embarrassing choices about this issue, he’s having people arrested just for touching a piece of the blue paint that has peeled off, and therefore creating yet another crisis which is a clear demonstration of the weaponisation of law enforcement in order to cover up his stupidity and his mistakes.”
Appeals court allows Trump to fast-track deportation process nationwide
A federal appeals court cleared the way on Tuesday for the Trump administration to expand a fast-track deportation process that would allow for the expedited removal of immigrants who are living far from the border. A panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit ruled 2-1 to overturn a decision by a judge who in August 2025 blocked the US Department of Homeland Security’s move to expand who qualifies for expedited removal. That expedited removal process has for nearly three decades been used to quickly return migrants apprehended at the border.
But in January 2025, the administration expanded its scope to cover non-citizens apprehended anywhere in the US who could not show that they had been in the country for two years. After the immigrant rights advocacy group Make the Road New York sued, US district judge Jia Cobb blocked the enforcement of those new policies, saying they violate the constitutional due process rights of migrants who could be apprehended anywhere in the US.
But the DC circuit disagreed in a ruling authored by circuit judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, who said that the Trump administration was allowed to expand “expedited removal to the maximum extent allowed by Congress”. He said migrants are given notice that DHS is placing them in expedited removal and receive a chance to object, including by showing that they have been continually present in the US for two years.
Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison
A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.
After a three-week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.
Benjamin Song, who fired the gun at the police officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Song was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, as well as firearm and explosives charges. He was also convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorists. He faced anywhere from 20 years to life in prison. Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto and Meagan Morris were sentenced to 50 years in prison. Maricela Rueda, another demonstrator, was sentenced to 70 years in prison. All six were convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorist, and explosive charges. Rueda was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record. Evetts, Hill, Morris and Rueda were acquitted on attempted murder and firearms charges.
The sentences handed down on Tuesday were unusually long, said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who served as the US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan during the Obama administration. “Most often, judges will sentence defendants for separate counts concurrently. Here, it appears that the judge stacked the sentences for each count consecutively. I would have expected lengthy sentences here, more in the ballpark at 15 to 25 years, but nothing like 50 to 100 years,” she wrote in an email.
In a statement, Song said he had fired at the police officer, Lt Thomas Gross, because Gross had his weapon drawn and Song believed he was about to shoot a protester. “I never want to see good people, standing for what they believe in, gunned down in the street,” he said. “Now 21 people have been arrested, have been persecuted, have been punished. For knowing me or being my friend? This is wrong. This is mass punishment. Collective punishment. This is guilt by association. This is injustice.” Evetts, a mechanical engineer, said in court on Tuesday the intent of the fireworks was solely to get the attention of people held inside the detention center. He intends to appeal his conviction and sentence, said Patrick McLain, one of his lawyers.
'F*** AIPAC' Pro Israel Dems Destroyed In Major Reckoning
When the US and Israel launched the war on Iran, south-east Asian nations were amongst the first and hardest hit, as the closure of the strait of Hormuz cut off supplies of energy and fertiliser.
Governments across the region, heavily reliant on the waterway, raced to find ways to reduce their fuel use: in the Philippines, many government workers were put on a four-day week. In Vietnam, employers were urged to allow staff to work from home. In Thailand, offices were urged to set air-conditioning units to 27C.
South-east Asian governments last week expressed hope that the Iran peace deal would bring freedom of navigation through the strait and economic stability. However, that optimism looks fragile as on Saturday Iran indicated it would close the strait after Israeli strikes in Lebanon, and planned to introduce a system of maritime fees.
Now, United Nations experts are warning of a “compound shock effect” arising from the economic fallout from the conflict combined with looming “Godzilla strength” El Niño conditions in Asia and the Pacific, which could put millions of tonnes of the world’s food at risk.
Agriculture has been the backbone of south-east Asia’s economy, and contributes almost one tenth (9%) of global agricultural exports.
Scientists alarmed after two wildfires hit Greenland within a week
Scientists have expressed concern after two wildfires broke out within a week of each other on the Arctic island of Greenland earlier this month. Fires were burning close to Sisimiut, Greenland’s second largest town and a popular tourism centre, on 14 and 15 June, satellite imagery has shown, while a second blaze hit Kujalleq, on the island’s southern tip, on 17 June.
While most of Greenland, a largely autonomous territory, is covered in vast ice sheets and thick glaciers, a significant part is ice-free and covered in tundra. Wildfires in these areas are rare, but becoming more common.
For two fires to break out this early in the summer, however, is particularly unusual. “Vegetation fires at high northern latitudes are more usual in July and August,” said Dr Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Sonja Diaz, a scientist at the Environmental Change Research Unit of the University of Helsinki, who conducted field research in Greenland after a major wildfire in 2019, said the timing was not unheard of but that it felt “quite wild” to see the island burning so early in the year. “Wet [conditions] and snow do not favour fire ignition and spread,” she said. “The conditions need to be warm and dry enough.”
The anthropologist Pelle Tejsner, an associate professor at the University of Greenland, said the dryness of the soil meant “more fires could be expected”. A study of fires in ice-free regions of western Greenland did not detect any blazes from 1995 to 2007. It then recorded 21 separate events between 2008 and 2020, with major fires in 2017 and 2019.
Climate breakdown has heated the Arctic four times faster than the rest of the planet. Parrington said it was “challenging” to determine why the latest fires had occurred earlier than usual but that Copernicus data showed “anomalously high” air temperatures that could make vegetation more flammable. Fires that burn peaty soil in Arctic tundra can spew large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, hastening the heating of the planet that helps fires spread.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Chris Hedges: Israel’s Game Is Up
Patrick Lawrence: In Praise of Defeat
Without its missiles, Iran would be ‘just like Gaza,’ president says
War On Iran: – Israel, And Trump Himself, Are Hindering Conflict Solution
Iran says it has no obligation to buy US produce
A Little Night Music
Bessie Smith - I'm Wild About That Thing
Bessie Smith - Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out
Bessie Smith - Empty Bed Blues
Bessie Smith - After You´ve Gone
Bessie Smith - A Good Man is Hard to Find
Bessie Smith - Careless Love Blues
Bessie Smith - You Gotta Give Me Some
Bessie Smith - Me And My Gin
Bessie Smith - Muddy Water (A Mississippi Moan)
Bessie Smith - Gimme a Pigfoot & a Bottle Of Beer
Comments
Good evening joe
.
the failures of the trumpet admin to resolve basic issues
from pools to Iran is indicative of the inability to grasp
elusive solutions. A mixture of egotistical hubris and failed
logic portends negative effects for the empire's ambitions.
Ahh, it is good to be able to talk back to the news.
Thanks for the Bessie music!
Zionism is a social disease
evening qms...
heh, if there's anybody that might be able to single-handedly take down the empire without hardly even trying, it's trump. i'll try to keep a good thought.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. So now we have a
2 jackass horse race (Elenski v BeloRussia) versus (Trump v Iran), step right up and place your bets.Who's gonna fly off the handle first. Wonder if there is a polymarket for that.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
when i run the speculator, it says that elensky is likely to pop off first, thinking that military retaliation against him will not happen. i think his attack clock is at about 5 days out. on the other hand, israel could do something beyond stupid at any moment, so it's not exclusively trump v iran.
have a good one!
“I won’t be inclusive of child killers”
Two-part interview with Norman Finkelstein — the son of Holocaust survivors — in Current Affairs:
Part one:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/i-wont-be-inclusive-of-child-killers
Part two:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/im-committed-to-no-states-norman-fin...