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This evening's music features blues multi-instrumentalist L.C. "Good Rockin" Robinson. Enjoy!

“No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

News and Opinion

Israeli Officials Promote Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories About Israel

Israeli officials have spent recent days circulating antisemitic conspiracy theories, with Benjamin Netanyahu boasting that he manipulated the United States into war with Iran, and Itamar Ben-Gvir sharing an AI video of Palestinians being sent to Nazi-style concentration camps.

In an appearance on Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Netanyahu said in Hebrew that he’d “been against Iran for almost 40 years” and had worked hard influencing the United States to join Israel in a war of aggression to topple Tehran.

“It took a long time to bring the United States in,” the prime minister said. “I was able to do this because I had close to a thousand hours on American television, influence in the United States, and intimate knowledge of all its leaders — both those who support us and those who do not.”

Netanyahu appeals to Israeli voters by boasting that he manipulated Trump:

“it took a long time to get the US to come to its senses” but I finally got it to attack Iran due to my “influence” over its leaders through “1000 hours on American television” pic.twitter.com/hwrswfkbv2

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 31, 2026

As we all know, it is a horrifying evil disgusting monstrous Nazi antisemitic trope to suggest that Washington is manipulated by Israel or that Israelis have anything to do with American wars. The Anti-Defamation League tells us that such assertions “play into tropes about ‘Jewish control’ of government and are unacceptable.” Earlier this year the ADL Center on Extremism warned that the war in Iran is leading to “a rapid convergence of extremists, alleged anti-war activists and anti-Israel groups around a shared set of narratives, including that the strikes were launched for Israel’s benefit at the cost of American lives, that Jewish or Zionist actors exercise illegitimate control or power over U.S. foreign policy.”

So I am sure we can expect antisemitism watchdog groups to take a short break from yelling about Hasan Piker and instead spend some of that energy denouncing Benjamin Netanyahu’s crazed and hateful conspiracy theories about himself and his own personal actions.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has also contributed to the rising tide of antisemitism by posting an AI video promoting the hateful blood libel that Israel treats Palestinians in the same way Nazi Germany treated the Jews.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has shared a disturbing concentration camp video depicting Palestinians being placed into a machine on a conveyor belt, entering overweight and emerging thin, distressed and crying.

The video comes as Ben-Gvir openly… pic.twitter.com/V5VFgU7cyi

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 31, 2026

In the video, which Ben-Gvir subsequently deleted in response to public outcry, a group of obese AI-animated Arabs are seen having their dreams of a happy future crushed as the national security minister loads them onto a conveyor belt feeding them into a concentration camp with barbed wire walls where they are seen weeping and growing emaciated like Holocaust victims.

According to the IHRA definition of antisemitism which western governments are firmly encouraging us all to comply with, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of hateful discrimination against the Jewish people. By publicly boasting of Israeli policies that he himself is responsible for instituting which are clearly intended to evoke the memory of Nazi death camps, Ben-Gvir clearly now stands guilty of an antisemitic hate crime.

Since our society has decided that antisemitism is the single most urgent threat on our planet and must be placed front and center of our attention at all times throughout all of our politics and media, I trust that we will soon see these Israeli antisemitic blood libels treated with the widespread condemnation they so deserve.

IRGC IN IRAN UNDER FIRE /Robert Barnes & Lt Col Daniel Davis

Trump threatens further action as US and Iran exchange fire in new flare-up

The US and Iran have exchanged fire for the first time in a month, with missiles and drones fired at Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the strait of Hormuz, and Iran targeting US military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in response.

The US president, Donald Trump, on Monday threatened further action. The US is to trying to prise open Tehran’s grip on shipping going through the strait, which before the war accounted for a fifth of the world’s seaborne energy supply. Washington claimed that Iranian control over the waterway had been loosened by repeated US attacks on Iranian missile launchers and radars.

US Central Command said it acted late on Sunday, launching the first strikes on Iran since July, after it detected the Iranians were planning to deploy fresh mines in the strait. Last week Trump claimed the US navy had cleared the strait of mines for the first time since the conflict started on 28 February, a claim the Iranians rejected as lies.

In response to the US attack, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it “targeted technical infrastructure, maintenance facilities and enemy fighter jet positions at the US-operated King Hussein and al-Azraq airbases in Jordan” with ballistic missiles, causing “heavy damage”. The UAE defence ministry said it intercepted a drone over its territorial waters.

Trump responded to the Iranian reprisals by telling Fox News: “We’re going to hit them hard. There will be a response.” The US president called Iran “officially a failed nation without an airforce, a navy or a currency”, adding that inflation was at 300% and its leaders were incapable of representing their country.

Col. Larry Wilkerson & Larry Johnson: The CIA’s Secret Moscow Mission Changes Everything

Interesting article, here's a snippet to encourage your clicker...

Hormuz: US & Israel Escalated the Known Risks

Iran has not collapsed, while Hormuz has become a global economic choke point. The central failure was not ignorance of the risks, but the political decision in Washington and Tel Aviv to gamble that coercive military power could overcome them. So, why did they set the stage for the catastrophe that was both unwarranted and unnecessary?

In February 2024 – after 4 months of the Israeli obliteration of Gaza – over 100 senior military and government officials participated in a report by Reichman University’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism which outlined in painful detail how unprepared the Israeli home front was for an all-out war with Hezbollah. This lethal scenario was written long before Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. It is the result of a three-year study. The 130-page report was the work of six think tanks made up of over 100 terrorism experts, former senior security officials, academics, and government officials who examined critical aspects related to the level of preparedness for the I.D.F. and the home front in the event of a multi-front war.

The project was led by Professor Boaz Ganor, a world-renowned counter-terrorism expert. In the months leading up to October 7, he presented his research to relevant military and political authorities in an attempt to rouse intelligence and decision-makers from complacency and misconceptions. The Netanyahu government ignored him and the analysis.

In late 2023 – almost in parallel with the Hamas attack – a high-level U.S. war game was conducted in Washington. The participants included members of U.S. executive branch, Republicans and Democrats in the Congress, leading academics, think-tank experts and Pentagon officials. The game started in 2027 with Israeli intelligence reports that Iran was mating nuclear warheads to its long-range missiles. Consequently, Israel targets Iran’s key nuclear and missile sites with U.S. standoff hypersonic missiles. Intriguingly, initially the U.S. participants presumed that self-restraint would prevail in this high-level war game. Yet, the simulation’s cold logic compelled them into a sequence of steps that quickly went nuclear. The adverse consequences were felt by millions of civilians in both Israel and Iran.

The lessons of the war game were ignored by both the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration.

'Nuclear War Soon': Jeffrey Sachs WARNS Americans Of U.S And Israel's Disaster War

Pravin Sawhney: Nuclear Weapons in the Strait of Hormuz?! The Risk Nobody's Talking About

Washington to impose weekly sanctions in bid to tighten economic noose on Iran

The US Treasury Department plans to introduce new secondary sanctions every week to intensify economic pressure on Iran, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters on 30 August.

“You're going to see a lot more of these every week,” Bessent said ahead of a meeting of Group of 20 (G20) financial leaders in Asheville, North Carolina, on Sunday.

“We're starting with the banks, and we're telling the banks it's not okay to have Iranian money and to aid the regime.”

On Friday, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on the UAE branches of Egypt's Banque Misr over alleged financial ties to Iran. The Treasury cut those branches off from access to the US financial system for obtaining dollars.

Bessent said the next step could involve completely cutting off an institution from the dollar-based financial system.

TOP ARMY OFFICIAL RESIGNS With DIRE WARNING On Hegseth

US army secretary Dan Driscoll resigns over reported friction with Pete Hegseth

Army secretary Dan Driscoll has handed his resignation to Donald Trump, the White House said on Monday, becoming the latest high-profile figure to depart the defense department. The army official, who is second in line to defense secretary Pete Hegseth, had reportedly been eyeing an exit from the Pentagon amid apparent friction with the secretary.

“Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations, restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and more,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War,” she added.

The resignation comes after months of turmoil at the defense department, which has seen numerous incidents, from leak investigations and budget issues to the ousting of several senior officials including the army chief of staff Randy George in April. In June, the army’s commander of its forces in Europe and Africa, Gen Christopher Donahue, unexpectedly stepped down.

CHINA, RUSSIA, IRAN CEMENT Bonds In SCREW YOU To Trump

Pentagon plays down report of Hegseth regularly overruling military advice

Pete Hegseth regularly receives formal objections from senior commanders and proceeds anyway, the Pentagon’s top spokesman has said, as he tried to discredit a Washington Post report that four generals and admirals had advised against prolonging the war in Iran. “Of course, we demand candid military advice,” Sean Parnell wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Non-concurs are standard. The Secretary sees them constantly. That’s how you run a real military.”

Parnell was responding to the Post’s account of four four-star commanders who had lodged formal “non-concurs” against a plan to keep more than 50,000 US troops in the Middle East through September, with some deployments potentially running into 2027. In dismissing the story, Parnell did not dispute that the objections had been filed, or that Hegseth fields such dissent on an ongoing basis.

The non-concurs described by the Post were in the 14 August edition of the secretary of defense orders book, a classified document typically produced twice a month that tracks the availability and deployment of US forces worldwide. They reportedly came from Adm Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations; Gen Alexus Grynkewich, head of US European Command; Gen Francis L Donovan, chief of US Southern Command; and Adm Samuel Paparo, chief of US Indo-Pacific Command.

Geopolitical Lies Fuel Financial Bubble w/ Jeffrey Sachs

Anthropic sued over alleged theft of ‘tens of thousands’ of songs

All AI wants for Christmas is a vast back catalogue of songs without paying for it, according to a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the startup behind the Claude chatbot. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell, music publishers who manage the copyright of songs on behalf of songwriters and composers, are seeking damages for alleged misuse of “tens of thousands” of copyrighted works by Anthropic.

The compositions include Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, originally performed by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, and Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger. The plaintiffs claim they are victims of “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history”.

The lawsuit, filed in a California court, targets Anthropic and its chief executive, Dario Amodei, as well as co-founder Benjamin Mann. It alleges the defendants breached copyright law by “torrenting, scraping and downloading” lyrics from copyrighted works to train its family of Claude AI models – as well as reproducing those lyrics in responses to users’ prompts. It claims that Mann and Anthropic downloaded at least 7m copies of books from pirate websites, including the lyrics and sheet music to songs such as Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

The figures are from a recent copyright case against Anthropic brought by US authors which the company settled for $1.5bn. The lawsuit, filed on 28 August, was first reported by trade publication Music Business Worldwide. Other songs allegedly having their copyright infringed included Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk and Katy Perry’s California Gurls.

It also claims that Anthropic acquired copies of songs in other ways including scraping lyrics from legal sites like Musixmatch and LyricFind, and datasets on archive sites such as Common Crawl. In another section of the claim, the publishers allege that Anthropic stripped identifying information from songs while processing the texts, which denied copyright owners “valuable attribution” to their work. “Defendants specifically elected to harvest unauthorized copies of Music Publishers’ works so that they would not have to pay Music Publishers a licensing fee to use their works in AI training and development,” said the plaintiffs.

US trade regulator and 22 states accuse Amazon of taking $20bn with secret surcharges

The US’s main trade regulator and 22 states sued Amazon on Monday, alleging the online retailer “secretly and systematically overcharged” advertisers on Amazon.com. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said these practices led to higher costs for customers on items like groceries and other essential goods that are sold on Amazon. “Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher prices. These higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers,” said Andrew Ferguson, the FTC chair.

The agency accused the company of taking in more than $20bn from “hidden surcharges”, in what it deems an “ad-rigging scheme”. Amazon’s advertising business has grown significantly in recent years, becoming the third-largest online advertising marketplace after Google and Meta. The FTC says Amazon generates more than $68bn in ad revenue on its website. The lawsuit alleges that 1.2 million advertising customers were overcharged since 2019, including more than 500,000 small- and medium-sized businesses.

The government’s case hinges on Amazon’s advertising auction system, called “second-price auctions”, that lets the winning bidder pay only slightly more than the second-highest bid. Regulators allege that with this system, Amazon could secretly raise the second-highest bids with a higher “shill” bid of its own.

“We believe Amazon manipulated its ad auctions to inflate what sellers had to pay, adding billions of dollars in costs that ultimately get passed on to customers with higher prices,” said Jeff Jackson, the attorney general for North Carolina, one of the states involved in the suit.

The suit alleges Amazon tested how much it could increase the amount it charges without advertisers flinching. Internal documents show one manager allegedly describing the company’s pricing strategy as “hoping that advertisers don’t notice and decrease bids or ad spend”.

US supreme court allows Trump to keep building $400m White House ballroom

A divided US supreme court has permitted Donald Trump to continue building his controversial $400m White House ballroom despite legal challenges, raising the likelihood it will be completed. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices permitted the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court order that had halted above-ground construction of the project while a lawsuit by a historic preservation group seeks to block it.

The US president, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people. Monday’s decision from the supreme court comes after the court’s conservative chief justice, John Roberts, issued a temporary order that had enabled work to continue.

However, Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in dissenting from the majority’s decision and wrote that the construction was “likely unlawful”.

The court’s decision may allow Trump to bring to fruition a project that is at the center of his ambition to remake the US capital in his image. Since taking office, he hass ordered the National Mall’s reflecting pool covered in blue liner, proposed a $250m renovation to the Kennedy Center performing arts center that would see his name emblazoned on its side, and is pursuing plans to renovate a golf course and build a massive arch.

The majority ultimately side stepped the question of whether the president’s decision to tear down a chunk of a building that rotates between presidential officeholders was actually legal. “Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project,” they wrote. The dissenting justices – Roberts, together with Democratic-appointed justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – argued that the project is unlawful because Congress has not approved it. In his opinion, Roberts wrote that the construction is a “likely infringement of the legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue”, and says the majority’s ruling “is no victory for the separation of powers”.

Lawmakers, Journalists Rip CBS News Over ‘Insane, Blatantly Racist Headline’ on Abdul El-Sayed

Several Democratic lawmakers on Monday slammed CBS News for publishing a news analysis linking Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The CBS story claimed that El-Sayed “may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack” ahead of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which killed over 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The piece cited two deleted El-Sayed social media posts to make its case: One in which he called on Americans to unite in a common purpose to combat the Covid-19 pandemic just as they came together after the 2001 attacks, and another where he drew attention not just to the victims who died on 9/11, but to all the people who died afterward as a result of the US War on Terror.

El-Sayed defended the latter post in an interview with CBS News.

“My point is just to say that what happened on 9/11 is a disaster,” El-Sayed said. “It was a terrible attack on our country and our responsibility is also to think about how do we build an America where we are protecting our servicemen and women from being asked to fight wars we have no business fighting that ultimately end up doing harm to people. And we’re seeing that right now.”

Critics slammed the CBS analysis, which they said unfairly tarred El-Sayed—a Muslim and son of Egyptian immigrants who has repeatedly faced Islamophobic and racist attacks—as a terrorist sympathizer even as he has consistently denounced the 9/11 attacks.

“What an insane, blatantly racist headline,” wrote Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) in a social media post. “Unreal.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also slammed the CBS story as “racist,” adding that “targeting Abdul like this is intentional and coordinated.”

The Nation’s Jeet Heer argued that the CBS News piece reflected the change in management the network has undergone ever since owner David Ellison put Bari Weiss in charge of it.

“To be clear the Bari Weiss project... is to revive post-9/11 Islamophobia in mainstream politics,” wrote Heer. “These are profoundly illiberal people, who should be combated not just by the left and progressives but anyone committed to civil equality.”

Responding to the network’s post promoting the article on the platform X, Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan asked CBS News if it ever considered that “it’s super offensive and disgusting and Islamophobic to do a tweet about the potential first-ever Muslim Democratic senator which begins by referencing 9/11?”

Adam Johnson, host of the Citations Needed podcast, highlighted the El-Sayed social media posts flagged by CBS and argued that the network is trying “to scandalize perfectly sensible and humane comments.”

Progressive commentator Wajahat Ali said that he’s seen a lot of mainstream media articles attacking El-Sayed, but concluded that “this one takes the cake for being so exquisitely racist.”

According to Zeteo media columnist Justin Baragona, one anonymous CBS News staffer is also raising concerns about the El-Sayed story, which they called “trash” and “horribly Islamophobic.”

LEAKED AUDIO: Republican PANICS OVER MIDTERM DISASTER

Trump EPA is manipulating safety data around a highly toxic flame retardant, advocates allege

The Environmental Protection Agency is manipulating safety data around a highly toxic flame retardant deployed across the US economy, public health advocates allege. The chemical, TBBPA, has been found in dust in US homes and in consumer goods at combined levels that independent research has found may present a danger to the public, and especially small children.

The agency is considering restrictions for the flame retardant, and advocates say the fight is the latest example of the Trump administration teaming up with the industry to downplay the risks of a highly toxic and profitable chemical. While European agencies and international cancer organizations have found that TBBPA is, or is probably, a carcinogen, the EPA in its new draft risk assessment used what public health groups say is a highly unusual approach to conclude that it is not carcinogenic at levels it suggests the US public and children are exposed to.

The agency also relies heavily on industry science that underestimates the chemicals’ toxicity and levels that people are exposed to throughout the day, environmental groups allege. The chemical is so widely used that the public can be exposed through a range of routes, but the EPA does not take into account many of those. If approved, the risk assessment will be used to set regulations for the flame retardant. The agency in its assessment said there was no “unreasonable risk” to consumers or children despite the chemical’s widespread use, and suggested no restrictions on TBBPA’s application to consumer goods was needed.

“The political people at the EPA changed the science to get the outcome they want,” said Maria Doa, a former EPA scientist now with the Environmental Defense Fund non-profit. “This isn’t the first time. They’ve been doing that pretty consistently under Trump.”

TBBPA, a brominated flame retardant, is applied to circuit boards and cases for electronics, like computers, phones, microwaves, toasters, televisions and other small appliances. It is also used in products like toothbrushes, children’s clothing, carpeting, leather goods, automobiles, airplanes, furniture and a broad range of other textiles and plastics. The chemical is linked to hormone disruption, brain damage, immune system toxicity and developmental harms in children, including to the reproductive and nervous systems. The International Agency for Research on Cancer labels it a probable carcinogen.

‘Breakthrough’ as Turkmenistan starts fixing ‘mindboggling’ methane mega-leaks

Turkmenistan has started plugging the mega-leaks of methane that spew from its ageing oil and gas facilities, the latest UN data shows, in a move hailed as a breakthrough. Methane, also called natural or fossil gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. It traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and causes 25% of global heating today. Stopping leaks can be quick and cheap and, because methane breaks down in the atmosphere far quicker than CO2, this has a rapid impact, with some experts calling it the climate “emergency brake”.

The Guardian revealed in 2023 that Turkmenistan was the worst country for methane mega-leaks. Sources in Turkmenistan said this scrutiny was the “critical step” in leading the secretive and authoritarian government to engage with foreign partners. A “super-emitter” leak, the escape of tonnes of methane per hour from a single valve or pipeline, heats the planet more than the emissions from a million SUVs or an entire coal-fired power station.

Turkmenistan had now stopped eight leaks by repairing corroded pipes, faulty wells and failing flares. The work was an “incredible first step”, said the UN, but much remained to be done. The UN Methane Alert and Response System (Mars) sent 192 alerts of methane plumes to Turkmenistan in the last year. The country had three of the six worst leaks detected in the world by Mars in last six months, and nine of the top 50.

Turkmenistan responded to about 20% of the alerts with on-the-ground information about the leaks and potential plans to fix them. In contrast, the US was sent the second highest number of alerts – 138 – but responded to none and had fixed no leaks in the last year. Other nations that failed to respond to any alerts were Iran, Russia and China.

As Ocean Temperatures Rise, Coral Reefs Face Closing Window for Recovery From Climate Damage

The destruction of coral reef cover, cataloged in the largest global assessment of the reefs ever completed, was distressing to scientists, with the world’s reefs declining by nearly 10% between 2020-24, compared with 1980-2009.

The authors of the report released Monday by Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), however, emphasized that coral bleaching events driven by ocean heating was not the most worrisome finding of the analysis—but rather, the fact oceans have become so warm that stressed reefs have less and less time to recover.

Historically, coral bleaching events—in which changes in conditions such as ocean temperatures and pollution cause coral to expel its symbiotic algae and become completely white and more vulnerable to mortality—have taken place about once in a decade, giving the reefs years to recover.

Now, the reefs are “lucky to get five or six years,” as water temperatures are remaining high and making it more difficult to regain hard coral cover, explained Manuel González Rivero of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the lead author of the report, titled “Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2025.”

“After decades of studying coral reefs, what concerns me most isn’t the current loss of hard coral cover; it’s that we’re steadily eroding the conditions they need to recover,” said González Rivero. “Climate change is driving more frequent and severe marine heatwaves, but local pressures such as poor water quality, overfishing, and coastal development are making reefs even less able to withstand them.”

The study compiled 21.1 million observations from 36,886 reef sites across 124 countries and territories, drawing on more than 40 years of data from across the globe.

But scientists cautioned that because the research did not include the most recent and intense global bleaching event, which lasted from 2023-25, it may not provide a full picture of the danger coral reefs are in—as well as the coastal communities they help protect and the thousands of marine species they serve as a habitat for.

We act like nothing’s happening but when they’re gone we will regret it. They are the oceans’ nurseries.https://t.co/vuhkVDEfL3

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) August 31, 2026

Carlos Duarte, a marine scientist at the Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform, told The New York Times that this year’s El Niño warming trend is likely to cause another global bleaching event next year, which reefs will likely struggle to recover from as ocean temperatures have been recorded as getting hotter and hotter in recent years.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the Earth will lose 70-90% of its coral reef cover if the planet gets 1.5°C hotter than its preindustrial level.

“For many reefs affected by the unprecedented marine heatwaves in 2024, this year’s El Niño likely means they’ll have had little more than a year to begin recovering before being hit again,” said González Rivero. “This is creating a staircase of decline that becomes harder to reverse with every bleaching event.”

The report emphasizes that reefs have maintained their ability to regain hard coral cover “when disturbances are reduced and sufficient recovery time is available,” such as after the third major global coral bleaching event since 1998, which took place from 2016-17 and saw a 6.6% decline in coral.

After the event, scientists observed a “relative increase of approximately 6% between 2017 and 2019,” said the GCRMN.

“That recovery matters because the benefits coral reefs provide extend far beyond the reef itself. Coral reefs cover less than 0.2% of the ocean floor,” said the organization. “Yet, they support at least 25% of all marine species and underpin food security, livelihoods, coastal protection, tourism, and cultural heritage of close to one billion people worldwide.”

Scientists including Terry Hughes, a former director of coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia, who was not involved in the analysis, emphasized that reducing planet-heating emissions is the top solution to the crisis of coral reef recovery, as the pollution from fossil fuel extraction is linked to increasingly hot oceans.

Allowing coral reefs to recover from bleaching events “really depends on how much more greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere and the amount of warming that causes,” Hughes told the Times, while local solutions including reducing water pollution are also crucial for maintaining reef health.

David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, expressed hope that the report will “shake us out of our persistent inertia.”

The long-term monitoring by GCRMN, said Obura, “tracks not just the pulse of coral reefs, but of our planet too. It shows which regions are under the greatest pressure, that actions to date have not been sufficient, and warns where reefs will be under increasing threat in years to come.”

“We must act now to halt this decline and invest in solutions that reduce pressures and build resilience, while sustaining the monitoring that turns good intentions into effective policy,” he said. “The 40 years of data in this report provide a strident warning that delayed action risks locking in irreversible losses—not just to reefs, but also to the economies and people that depend on them.”

Also of Interest

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

So Tired Of All The Lying

War On Iran: – IRGC Defeats U.S. Strait Clearing Scheme

Iran War: Iran Retaliates Disproportionately to US Attack on Larak Island as WaPo Detailed Pentagon Leak Shows Navy Incapacity, Top Level Opposition

New US strikes on Iran may restart war Trump wants to freeze

In a town in the heart of the US, Israeli settler violence in West Bank hits close to home

Cisco probably violated Middle Eastern and Muslim employees’ civil rights, US agency finds

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) Names Epstein Co-Conspirators

A Little Night Music

L.C. Good Rockin' Robinson - I've Got To Go

L.C. "Good Rockin'" Robinson - Train Time Blues

L.C. "Good Rockin'" Robinson - Bringin' My Baby Back Home

L.C. Good Rockin' Robinson - L.C. 's Shuffle

L.C. 'Good Rockin' Robinson ~ Summerville Blues

L . C. Good Rockin ' Robinson - Southern Bound

L. C. "Good Rockin" Robinson - Things So Bad In California

L.C. Good Rockin' Robinson - My Baby Crossed The Bay

L C -Good Rockin- Robinson - Mojo In My Hand