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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Byther Smith

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Byther Smith. Enjoy!

^{Byther Smith - Come On In This House}

“The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.”

-- Noam Chomsky

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News and Opinion

They Fearmonger About “Communism” Because They Can’t Oppose Real Problems

As self-styled “democratic socialists” make some advancements in blue states, Republicans have launched a renewed fearmongering campaign about the urgent threat of “communism” — an ideology with no meaningful political existence in the United States.

At a speech on Wednesday, President Trump said that “communism is the greatest threat to our country” and would lead to “the ultimate annihilation of civilization.” This is just the latest in a string of rhetoric from the president as he tries to drum up fear about progressive Democrats to prevent massive losses in the midterms.

Democratic socialist politicians are still a small minority in US politics, and conflating them with communists is absurd. Communism seeks the complete dismantling of capitalism and the imperialist world order it holds in place at gunpoint, while western “democratic socialists” typically just seek a gentler, more photogenic capitalist empire where things like healthcare and public transportation are funded by taxes.

The west in general and the US in particular have spent generations stomping out communism, and, at least within the confines of the western world, they have been remarkably successful at it. In 2026 the United States is so very, very, very, very, VERY far from communism that viewing it as a threat is just a sign of weak-minded cowardice and jumping-at-shadows paranoia. It’s kind of like reading about a brush fire in Nigeria and worrying that it’s going to burn its way across the world to show up on your doorstep.

But I suppose if I were in Trump’s position I might be fearmongering about communism, too. He just lost the war in Iran, everyone hates his support for Israel, people are critical of his astonishing levels of corruption
and his known Epstein associations
, and it’s not like he disagrees with Democrats on enough issues to take a real position of substance. What else does he have in his arsenal besides vapid fearmongering about an imaginary boogie man?

The leader of the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth can’t take a stand against the real problems in our world, because the power structure is the source of those problems. So instead he has to invent fictional monsters to fight.

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : The Consequences of Losing a War

Netanyahu Claims He Doesn’t Want Any More American Aid. Why Are Top Democrats Trying to Keep It Flowing?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday compared US aid to “welfare” and said he wants it to end, remarks that came as top Democrats in the US House of Representatives expressed opposition to an amendment that would cut off $3.3 billion in American military assistance to Israel.

“I want to stop American aid,” Netanyahu said during a televised event in Israel on Tuesday, saying he wants the US aid phaseout to begin this year. “We can finance ourselves.”

In recent weeks, amid growing US public backlash against continued military aid to Israel as its military commits atrocities in Gaza and throughout the Middle East, Netanyahu has signaled a desire to “shift the framework” of the US-Israeli relationship “from aid to partnership,” as the prime minister put it in a June 1 letter to US Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.).

“Israel deeply appreciates the financial component of the military aid the United States has generously provided us over the years,” Netanyahu wrote in the letter. “The time has now arrived for us to move from aid recipient to partner.”

Netanyahu’s stated vision aligns with legislative text included in annual US defense policy legislation, which would deepen integration of the American and Israeli militaries. Earlier this week, the Republican-controlled House Rules Committee refused to allow a floor vote on an amendment by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) that proposed stripping the integration measure from the bill, which is currently moving through Congress.

But the rules panel is allowing a full House vote on a separate Massie-led amendment that would prevent any US State Department or national security appropriations from being “obligated or expended for Israel” in the coming fiscal year. The amendment would specifically cut off the $3.3 billion in assistance Israel is slated to receive via the Foreign Military Financing Program in 2027.

Massie’s proposal has spotlighted a consequential rift in the House Democratic caucus, even as an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters support ending US aid to the Israeli government.

Prominent progressives—including Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—have said they plan to vote yes on the amendment, which could come to a vote next week.

“It should be a no-brainer: Our tax dollars should not fund a genocide,” Omar, the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Tuesday. “We cannot continue to be complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.”

But top Democrats, including the ranking members of key committees, are opposed to the Massie amendment, which is unlikely to get through the Republican-controlled House. Few Republicans are expected to support Massie’s proposal.

“I don’t want Israel to be without what they need,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Jewish Insider earlier this week, following a closed-door House Democratic caucus meeting.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he is “against” the Massie proposal because it would cut off “all aid for Israel.”

“I don’t think there’s support for it,” Smith added, “but we’ll see.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is staunchly pro-Israel and a recipient of AIPAC campaign cash, has not publicly taken a position on the Massie amendment.

The Hill reported that the House Democratic leadership told caucus members during Tuesday’s private meeting to “vote according to their conscience” on the amendment, as some members expressed concerns about the proposal’s broad scope and the process by which it is being brought to a vote.

Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, acknowledged earlier this week that—if passed—the amendment “may cut off both military weapons (~$3.3 billion) and some diplomatic funding (~$50 million).”

“While I would prefer to vote on an amendment that stripped just military funding,” Casar wrote on social media, “I think opposing the billions in military funding is what’s most important here.”

Speaking to MS NOW earlier this week, Casar said that “it’s really important for members to recognize that, while a relatively very small amount of diplomatic funding could be implicated on the amendment... virtually all of the money is military financing that the Israeli military has used to buy fighter planes and attack helicopters.”

“You’re going to see a growing number of Democrats come out against sending more money for weapons for Netanyahu’s military,” Casar predicted. “In the past, it was just a very, very small number. You could count on maybe one or two hands how many members of Congress would vote against sending the Israeli military money for more weapons.”

“Lebanon’s Surrender Agreement”: Hezbollah Expert Amal Saad on Beirut’s “Framework” With Israel

Trump Considers Return To Full-Scale War With Iran, Chooses To Hold Off For Now

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that President Trump has considered resuming all-out war with Iran, holding talks with US War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine about potential strike options, but has decided to hold off for now and stick with engagement under the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding.

The report said the talks focused on whether the US should restart the full-scale war and abandon negotiations, and that while Trump hasn’t made a final decision, he told aides that he believed another round of full-scale strikes would derail negotiations and hurt the chances of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, though Tehran has maintained it won’t give up its civilian nuclear program.

Trump also reportedly said that he was fine with going past the first 60-day deadline for talks under the MoU and that he was happy with launching limited strikes against Iran for allegedly “violating” the MoU, though attacks in themselves are a violation of the agreement, which states each party pledges “not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.”

US Declares Fertilizer EMERGENCY As Iran War Fallout Continues

Israeli Minister Vows Israel Will Control 100% of Gaza

Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen, who is also a member of the Israeli security cabinet, vowed on Wednesday that Israel will control 100% of Gaza as the IDF continues capturing more land in the Palestinian territory in violation of the US-backed ceasefire deal.

“I say this because I sit in the Security Cabinet, and I understand that we cannot allow Hamas to raise its head again – not even by a millimeter. There is no such thing,” Cohen said in an interview with Galei Israel Radio, according to Israel National News.

The Israeli minister said that the IDF is steadily increasing its territorial control of Gaza, which aligns with what Palestinians are reporting on the ground. “We already see that we are progressing. I assume you will speak to me [again] in a few months – our control of the territory will only continue to expand until we reach 100%,” Cohen said.

After the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025, the IDF was left occupying about 53% of Gaza, and the agreement explicitly said Israel couldn’t take more territory if Hamas lived up to its end of the deal, which the group did by releasing the remaining Israeli hostages and finding the remains of deceased Israelis.

Israel's 'kill first' strategy is now aimed at Turkey

Israel Killing West Bank Children at Highest Rate in Decades

Between October 2023 and June 2026, Israel’s military killed Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank at the highest rate since 1967, according to a report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

The report, titled Unshielded Childhood, argues that “the unprecedented scale of killing of Palestinian children and teenagers by Israeli forces is the result of a reckless open-fire policy, expanded to be even more permissive than in the past, that is currently being implemented in the West Bank.”

Between Oct. 7, 2023 and June 28, 2026, Israeli forces killed more than 240 children and teenagers, with 54 killed in 2025 alone.

The report, which tells the story of each child killed by Israeli forces last year, quotes Israel’s top West Bank commander, Avi Bluth, who recently boasted that Israeli forces are “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967” — a reference to the Six-Day War in which Israel seized the West Bank.

Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: Iran Just Shattered America's Strategic Advantage

$1.1 Trillion Big Oil Subsidies Spark Fresh Calls for Windfall Tax on Profits From Trump’s Iran War

With the US and Iranian governments engaged in 60 days of peace talks, the United Nations’ latest projections about the illegal war’s impact on fossil fuel subsidies this week triggered new demands for taxing the windfall profits of climate-wrecking Big Oil.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Monday released “Military Escalation in the Middle East: Cushioning the Global Shock,” a report detailing how governments have navigated the “most severe oil supply shock in history,” caused by Iran limiting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in response to the Trump administration and Israel’s unlawful assault.

As fossil fuel prices have soared worldwide, the report states, “governments have moved quickly to cushion households and firms from higher energy prices through fuel subsidies, tax cuts, price caps, strategic stock releases, emergency procurement, export restrictions, demand-management measures, and fuel switching.”

“While energy subsidies had fallen by roughly half in 2024 as energy markets stabilized, the downward trajectory has sharply reversed,” the document notes. “We estimate that global fossil fuel subsidies are currently on track to reach $1.1 trillion in 2026 and could reach as high as $1.43 trillion in a severe scenario where the average oil price reaches $110/barrel... This represents an estimated $410-$740 billion increase from 2025.”

UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo said in a statement that “the global spillover of the Middle East conflict is profound and potentially long-lasting. Developing countries, many already struggling with debt, have temporarily managed to protect people from the worst of the energy shock.”

“These countries are doing everything they can, but there is a hidden cost,” he stressed. “To deal with today’s crisis, governments are postponing tomorrow’s investments. Money that should be building schools, hospitals, and clean energy systems is being used simply to keep economies afloat. Without international support, these countries won’t escape the shock. They are absorbing it at the expense of future growth.”

“No country should have to sacrifice its future development to manage a crisis it did not create,” De Croo argued. “First, we must unlock multilateral liquidity in ways that are easy to access for low- and middle-income countries. Second, we must accelerate investment in renewable energy. Every clean energy investment reduces exposure to future shocks. The crisis has made one thing clear: Energy security and the energy transition are no longer separate agendas. They are one and the same.”

In addition to reiterating calls for a just transition to clean energy, the advocacy group 350.org has repeatedly advocated for a windfall profits tax targeting oil and gas giants cashing in on the conflict in the Middle East. Executive director Anne Jellema pushed for such policies again on Wednesday, noting the new UNDP numbers.

“The $1.1 trillion that governments are pouring into fossil fuel subsidies this year is not a safety net, it is a ransom payment,” Jellema declared. “Every dollar spent shielding the fossil fuel industry from the consequences of its own price volatility is a dollar not spent on the clean energy systems that can bring costs down for good.”

“We need a phaseout to end public subsidies for fossil fuel companies, and a permanent windfall tax on fossil fuel profits,” she continued. “Not a one-off levy, but a permanent, legislated mechanism that redirects the extraordinary profits of an industry driving this crisis into the just transition every country needs. That means affordable clean energy, retrofitted homes, and funding to protect people from the extreme weather unleashed by fossil pollution.”

In the United States, where President Donald Trump’s war has cost Americans tens of billions of dollars at the pump, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act in March, just weeks into the war.

Backing the bill, Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones said at the time that “historical evidence could not be any clearer: Big Oil will undoubtedly leverage the current crisis in the Middle East to maximize profit margins, pinching American families and enriching their executives and Wall Street speculators.”

“This demands a policy response—namely, a windfall profits tax... which would recover much of these egregious, opportunistic gains and return them to everyday Americans,” Jones added. “Fossil fuel companies must be held accountable for the profiteering they are orchestrating as we speak.”

Pepe Escobar : Is Europe preparing for war with Russia?

China has accused Japan of ‘reckless militarism’. What’s behind the latest tensions?

Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have ebbed and flowed in the decades since the second world war, but hit an undeniable low this week. Denouncing what it proclaimed was Japan’s “reckless pursuit of ‘new militarism’”, this week China imposed new export controls on 40 Japanese companies over dual-use items, or items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

The move came as Tokyo protested against joint exercises by Chinese and Russian bombers near its airspace, and claims that the Chinese coast guard had entered its Exclusive Economic Zone. Japan also announced it was deploying missiles launchers on its easternmost island.

In November 2025, less than three weeks after taking office, Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi sparked controversy when she said that an attack on Taiwan could trigger the deployment of her country’s self-defence forces if the conflict posed an existential threat to Japan. Takaichi’s comments were not a deviation from official policy, but in the past Japanese leaders have avoided commenting on potential Japanese military involvement in Taiwan.

Beijing’s response was swift and furious: it accused Takaichi of interfering in domestic Chinese affairs, implemented economic sanctions, cancelled diplomatic meetings and discouraged its citizens from visiting Japan. Flights have been reduced, academic and cultural exchanges cancelled, while a ban on the import of Japanese seafood has been continued.

Despite being colonised and exploited by foreign powers including Britain, France, the United States, Russia, and Germany, China feels keenly its suffering at the hands of the Japanese, a much smaller Asian neighbour that it influenced culturally and linguistically. Beijing believes Tokyo has never sufficiently apologised for Japan’s brutal second-war occupation of China. It is this wound that China evokes when it accuses Japan of remilitarising and threatening regional peace. At the same time, visits by Japanese politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of “Class A war criminals” who were convicted of plotting and waging the war are said to be enshrined, fuel claims the nation is still in denial about a dark chapter in its history.

Russia Conducts Massive Kiev Strike; Plans Ground Operation; Zelensky Demands More EU Money; Drones

Ex-CIA head sues Trump administration to preserve records of inquiries into him

The former CIA director John Brennan sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, demanding a court order that would require officials to preserve records from investigations that he says are targeting him for “phantom criminal conduct”. Brennan said in the lawsuit that the records would be essential for him to mount a defense on vindictive prosecution grounds in the event of a future indictment brought by the administration.

Such a defense, his lawyers said, would be supported by the more than 100 verbal or written statements that Donald Trump has made since 2017 lambasting Brennan and by the Republican president’s directives to his Department of Justice to initiate cases “without regard to factual or legal justification”.

“To fully consider those motions, the reviewing judge would need to scrutinize the motivations of the justice department officials who directed, oversaw or undertook those actions to determine whether they violated Director Brennan’s rights, and specifically whether they were motivated by a desire to vindictively prosecute him as an act of retribution,” Brennan’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington.

Trump BETRAYS Country As Corruption Hits INSANE NEW LEVELS

Trump accused of ‘disgusting’ greed after being paid over $2bn since return to office

Donald Trump has again been accused of “brazen crypto corruption” after financial disclosures revealed his family’s cryptocurrency ventures generated more than $1bn in his first year back in the White House.

A 927-page disclosure, released on Tuesday by the US Office of Government Ethics, showed that the US president had been paid more than $2.2bn last year in total, from real estate, golf resorts, branded merchandise, licensing deals and court settlements.

But a set of extraordinary crypto takings stood out: World Liberty Financial, a joint venture between the Trump family and that of Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, brought in more than $500m from sales of “governance tokens”, while another firm, CIC Digital LLC, generated more than $600m from Trump-branded meme coins, launched days before his second inauguration.

In his second term, the president and his family have invested heavily in digital money and crypto businesses, with Trump announcing at the start of last year that he wanted the US to be the “crypto capital of the world”. Trump also made millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, trainers and other small items, in another unprecedented move for the presidency. In the Trump-branded watches category alone, the president received $4.7m.

The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy given the president racked up tens of millions from fees and licensing deals in a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas. Many of those countries were negotiating with the US over tariffs, military aid and other important matters.

Trump refuses to renew US-Canada-Mexico trade pact he once championed

Donald Trump has refused to renew the North American trade pact he once championed as his signature deal, opting instead to keep it alive on a short leash of annual reviews rather than committing to another 16 years.

Wednesday was the deadline built into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for the three countries to jointly decide its fate, which is set to expire in 2036.

After virtual talks between officials from all three governments, the US trade representative’s office confirmed that Washington had walked away from renewing the deal on its existing terms, pointing to persistent US trade deficits with both neighbors.

The refusal does not kill the pact outright, however. USMCA stays in force while negotiations continue, but it will now face a review every year rather than once every six, as originally designed.

Trump has routinely criticized the USMCA as of late, and last month threatened to abandon it. “We don’t need anything that Canada has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have. And they have to treat us better,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump attorney general plots crackdown on ‘birth tourism’ after supreme court ruling

A day after the US supreme court upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, has said federal prosecutors and law enforcement officers will focus on combating so-called “birth tourism” – the process of tourists, temporary visitors and undocumented immigrants traveling to the US and giving birth.

“There’s other things that [the Department if Homeland Security] can do, and the federal government can do in the visa process, and the application process, to try to minimize or limit the opportunity of folks coming here not to visit, and not to do what they’re saying they’re doing on the tourist visa, but just to have a baby that can then be a US citizen,” Blanche told reporters. “What we have to do as Department of Justice is make sure our agents, our [Homeland Security Investigations] agents that we work with, and the FBI are focused on stopping that.”

Shortly after the court’s last ruling of its current term, the assistant attorney general for the national fraud division also, in an office-wide memo, directed justice department staff to bring fraud charges in alleged cases of birth tourism. “The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system,” Colin McDonald wrote.

During the oral arguments in the Trump v Barbara case in April, the government’s lawyer D John Sauer conceded that “no one knows for sure” how significant a problem so-called birth tourism actually is. The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration thinktank, said that there are between 20,000 to 26,000 births by women on tourist visas annually. This is less than 1% of all babies born in the US each year. Nonetheless, the practice has been the bedrock of the Trump administration’s argument against birthright citizenship. Many Republicans and allies of the president have repeated concerns with limited evidence that shows birth tourism to be a sizable problem.

Trump’s executive order sought to redefine the meaning of the 14th amendment based on the claim that children born to non-citizen parents who are either unlawfully in the country or who possess temporary legal status, such as tourists or foreign students, are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US and therefore ineligible for birthright citizenship. However, a majority of the supreme court proved unconvinced in the 6-3 decision, with the chief justice, John Roberts, writing that the administration provided “scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view”.

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New Orleans residents on warning to abandon sinking city: ‘Nobody wants to leave home’

When a study in May concluded that New Orleans has hit a “point of no return” due to the climate crisis that will require people to eventually retreat from their storied yet ultimately doomed city, the local reaction was swift and fiery. The onward march of rising seas around a sinking city was unsettling, but the study is “more focused on generating publicity and clickbait headlines” than coming up with solutions, said Helena Moreno, New Orleans’ mayor. There is flooding in Miami, and wildfires and earthquakes near San Fransisco, Moreno pointed out, “yet no serious movement exists to declare those cities lost causes”.

Others were less diplomatic. “It’s really the most ridiculous study I have ever seen,” said Gordon Dove, the head of Louisiana’s coastal restoration agency, who took aim at Torbjörn Törnqvist, the lead researcher. “I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about,” Dove fumed.

Some locals took to posting defiant video clips of themselves near New Orleans’ levees (including ones carrying captions such as “STOP TELLING US TO MOVE”), or lamented a “modern day redlining of an entire city” and asked what will happen “when investors, insurers and young families read this” and act accordingly. Others decried the climate denial by state and federal governments that has led to such a situation.

But of the torrent of New Orleanians who got in touch with Törnqvist about the study, typically after reading about it in the Guardian, most have grasped the precarity of the city’s future, according to the Tulane University academic, who is a leading expert on the fraying marshlands of the Mississippi Delta. “I’ve found it encouraging – we’ve had more constructive reactions than negative ones,” Törnqvist said. “Of course it’s upsetting to hear this, but cities like New Orleans have an expiration date. We’ve already crossed a tipping point of survivability for our coastal wetlands, the rate of sea level rise is way too high.

“We will be surrounded by open water and New Orleans will be like a fortress in the Gulf of Mexico. It will be like Venice, a few islands in a lagoon.” A decision by Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s Republican governor, to cancel a $3bn project to naturally revive the vanishing coastline with sediment carried by the Mississippi is a further “death penalty” for New Orleans, Törnqvist argues. The process of encirclement, Törnqvist and his fellow researchers stress, will still be a gradual one taking several generations. Protected for now by billions of dollars’ worth of levees, pumps and flood gates, New Orleans doesn’t face the immediate pressure of evacuation. But a galloping sea level rise beside low-lying land that is rapidly eroding as well as subsiding will only end one way, the study warns: the Louisiana coastline moving as much as 62 miles (100km) inland, swallowing the New Orleans region in the coming century or so.

Ocean surface temperatures hit a record high for June

Temperatures on the ocean surface have hit a record high, raising fears of another burst of extreme heat this summer. On 21 June, temperatures outside the polar regions exceeded the extraordinary highs observed at the same time in 2023 and 2024, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said on Wednesday.

It warned the new peak would probably bring “consequences for weather patterns, global climate and marine ecosystems”, not least because it would coincide with the earliest phases of an El Niño event they forecast to be the strongest in decades.

When the previous ocean record for June was set in 2023, scientists described the trends as “worrying”, “terrifying” and “bonkers” because they were so far outside their expectations. That presaged an El Niño and a period of devastating global heatwaves, floods and storms.

That 2023 record has now been surpassed and much of the world is once again seeing an alarming rise in temperatures. Last month, the UK and many other countries in Europe sweltered amid new heat records while Antarctica experienced unprecedentedly balmy winter conditions.

Although the focus is usually on land temperatures, oceans give a fuller picture of how much the climate is being pushed out of balance by human-caused warming.

‘Everyone dies of cancer’: the Puerto Rican island poisoned by the US navy

When the ferry docks in Vieques, a small island about 6 miles (10km) off Puerto Rico, the first person many tourists see is José Belardo, known as “Gato”, a retired police chief who now drives a taxi. Driving to Esperanza, a town on Vieques’s southern coast, he points to Sun Bay, a popular beach, and to large cleanup tents behind a barbed-wire fence. Gato notes the wildlife preserve, riddled with unexploded munitions, and the health centre, recently built but without doctors. He mentions a woman walking by, whose husband recently died of cancer.

A 2003 study by the Puerto Rican department of health reported that the cancer rate in Vieques was 27% higher than the rest of the archipelago between 1990 and 1994, 35% higher between 1995 and 1999, and 18% higher from 2000 to 2004 – with the increase for males being even higher at 40%. Experts suggest that the main cause of the surge may be contamination of the soil and water with carcinogenic metals in part of the island that was occupied by the US military until 2003. From the 1940s until 2001, the US navy practised bombing and shelling techniques in Vieques, expanding its control to more than 70% of the island.

Ever since then, thousands of bombs and smaller explosive devices remain scattered across the island’s east side and in the surrounding waters, leaving about a third of the island off-limits to its own residents. The navy is overseeing the cleanup under the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund programme, which is projected to continue until at least 2032, according to the US Department of War.

Despite the navy’s withdrawal and ongoing cleanup, residents face persistent health crises and inadequate medical provision, amid fears that statistics on the island’s cancer rate do not reflect the true extent of the contamination. Meanwhile, after the Trump administration attacked Venezuela in January to depose and kidnap the president, Nicolás Maduro, and stepped up its blockade and threats towards Cuba, some Viequenses fear that the military reactivation of their home is imminent. Last November, the Roosevelt Roads military base in Ceiba, on the main island, was reopened 21 years after it was shut down.

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Also of Interest

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

Iran War: Iran Disses Witkoff and Kushner in Doha but Does Not Get $6 Billion in Frozen Assets; Strait of Hormuz Traffic Sub-Par but Continues on Oman Side as Talks Over Future Management Continue

War On Iran: – Trump Requested Briefing For War Renewal

‘Board of Peace’ to launch ‘Hamas-free’ camps as Israel tightens grip on Gaza

Vance Says US Will Use Iran MoU To Replenish Global Oil Supply Then ‘See Where the Hand Is’

IDF Postpones Token Pullouts From Lebanon ‘Pilot Zones’

Ukrainian drone maker picks Northwest Ohio for first US manufacturing center

Why Europe’s Provocation Of Russia Is Likely To Fail

‘I wish he had done more to free enslaved people’: Thomas Jefferson’s descendant on his family’s complex legacy

Albania warned EU accession at risk over Jared Kushner-backed resort plans

Management Theory (MBAs) Are Two Thirds About Non-Competition

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A Little Night Music

Byther Smith - Addressing the Nation with the Blues

Byther Smith - Cut You Loose

Byther Smith - Killing Floor

Byther Smith - The Man Wants Me Dead

Byther Smith - Play the Blues on the Moon

Byther Smith - I'm In A Hole

Byther Smith - I Don't Know Where You Go

Byther Smith - Money Tree

Byther Smith - Champion Girl

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