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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Roosevelt Sykes

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Roosevelt Sykes. Enjoy!

^{Roosevelt Sykes – Out On A Limb}

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

-- Mahatma Gandhi

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News and Opinion

Israel Apologists Hasten To Use Bondi Shooting To Attack Anti-Genocide Activists

Two shooters attacked a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing fifteen people and injuring dozens of others. Police report that the shooters were a father and his son; the father was killed by police, and the son was captured.

The shooters appear to have been Muslim, but, much to the inconvenience of those who would like to use this incident to fan the flames of western Islamophobic hysteria, the man who selflessly risked his life to disarm one of them was also a Muslim father of two named Ahmed al-Ahmed.

As usual we’re seeing a lot of speculation about false flags and psyops regarding this incident, but I prefer to hang back from such commentary until I’ve seen some solid evidence.

I do have some thoughts about the public discourse we are seeing about the shooting right now, though.

Only the @nytimes would print a headline this twisted. Bondi Beach has nothing to do with the Palestinian struggle, and to say it does is journalistic malpractice. pic.twitter.com/HK5bSZDOfp

— Linda Mamoun (@mamoun_linda) December 14, 2025

Point 1: Obviously it is evil to massacre civilians for being Jewish.

Point 2: Obviously Israel’s massacring of civilians must continue to be opposed, and will continue to be opposed.

Today the worst people in the world are trying to pretend Point 1 and Point 2 are contradictory.

It’s so gross watching the tail-wagging excitement of Israel supporters in response to this shooting. They’re so happy they have another rhetorical weapon with which to bludgeon pro-Palestine voices into silence. They can barely contain their glee.

Basically @netanyahu is saying that Australia got what it had coming for not supporting his genocide in Gaza even more than it already does. https://t.co/oxVlJVW4HK

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) December 14, 2025

Benjamin Netanyahu immediately scrambled to hold a press conference proclaiming that the attack was the result of Australia taking some steps toward the recognition of a Palestinian state.

BREAKING — Netanyahu Said the Bondi Shooting was a Result of Australia Opposing Israel. pic.twitter.com/KQYo85ldxY

— Pamphlets (@PamphletsY) December 14, 2025

New York Times warmonger Bret Stephens penned an article titled “Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like,” arguing that the shooters “were taking to heart slogans like ‘resistance is justified,’ and ‘by any means necessary,’ which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over.”

Iraq-raping war propagandist David Frum wrote a similar article for The Atlantic titled “The Intifada Comes to Bondi Beach,” saying the beach “has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators” and denouncing the fact that “Many in the western world have interpreted post-October 7 anti-Israel actions within the framework of free speech.”

The virulently Islamophobic Australian senator Pauline Hanson swiftly slapped together a statement claiming that “the weekly anti-semitic protests across our nation” and “our obnoxious universities” were “warning signs” that such an attack was coming.

Sky News hastened to give a platform
to Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sharren Haskel in an interview where she declared that “this is what it means” to allow protesters to chant “globalize the intifada”, saying that “if you let that continue and run in your streets” you are inviting further terrorist attacks. Haskel has previously called pro-Palestine protesters in Australia “useful idiots” for Hamas
.

not a second is wasted for victims to mourn their loved ones. instantly israel's envoys demand "persecution" of anti genocide protestors worldwide. they blame the bare min recognition australia has offered to palestinians. its so cynical, so transparent. https://t.co/yh5huyhN3g

— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) December 14, 2025

Political dynasty princeling Chris Cuomo
took to Twitter to assert that people who’ve been accusing Israel of genocide helped “fuel the hatred on bondi beach.”

The Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard tweeted a video of pro-Palestine protesters in Birmingham with the caption “It you deny the connection between this and what happened at Bondi Beach you are part of the problem.”

A viral tweet from Australian right wing social media personality Kobie Thatcher features a video of a pro-Palestine protest with the caption “This was Sydney, Australia just 6 months ago. These scenes should have been an urgent warning.”

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has used the attack to demand that Prime Minister Albanese shove through the authoritarian speech suppression plan put forward by Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal earlier this year, arguing that “We have seen public landmarks turned into symbols of antisemitic hate. We have seen campuses occupied and Jewish students made to feel afraid.”

From the earliest moments after this attack Israel apologists have taken it as a given that it was an act of terrorism in response to Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza, but then framing the people peacefully protesting those atrocities as the problem.

They’re openly acknowledging that the genocide is violently radicalizing people, but instead of coming to the obvious conclusion that Israel should therefore not commit genocide, they’re citing it as evidence that people should stop protesting the genocide.

It's wild how people take it as a given that the Bondi shooting was a response to Israel committing genocide, but then instead of saying Israel should not be committing genocide they say people should not have called it a genocide. https://t.co/4rCZpsY0ru

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 14, 2025

They could blame the shooting on the actual shooters. They could blame the people committing genocide for radicalizing the shooters. But instead they’re blaming the violence on the most peaceful people in the equation: the ones holding signs and saying violent massacres should NOT happen.

It’s about the craziest, most evil manipulation you could possibly come up with.

After the Manchester synagogue attack this past October, I made the observation that “Whenever western Jews get hurt these days you always see the Israel supporters having a big parade where they go ‘Okay that’s it, wrap it up, nobody gets to criticize Israel’s behavior anymore because you’re causing terrorism!’ And then everyone ignores them and goes back to protesting the genocide, because that’s ridiculous.”

We’re seeing that same parade again today, and it’s just as ridiculous now as it was then.

Whenever western Jews get hurt the Israel supporters have a big parade where they go "Okay that's it, nobody gets to criticize Israel's behavior anymore, you're causing terrorism!" And then everyone ignores them and goes back to protesting the genocide, because that's ridiculous. https://t.co/m3iNn0Ys0p

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 2, 2025

Massacring civilians is wrong. It’s wrong in Bondi Beach, and it’s wrong in Gaza. Today the worst people in the world are trying to claim that because the former happened, everyone needs to stop protesting the latter. This is pure, cynical manipulation designed to protect a genocidal apartheid state from criticism. It deserves nothing but a scoff and a dismissal.

My heart is heavy for everyone who woke up today to their first day on the planet without their loved one. No doubt every breath taken today will feel like an impossible challenge. Each of these deaths will flatten their family, their friendship groups, their workplaces, their various communities, and their religious community like a nuke, and the trauma will take years to get over. That’s done; that’s baked in. This is as true in Bondi as it is in Gaza. My heart breaks for everyone who found themselves suddenly standing at the foot of this seemingly-unscalable mountain of grief today.

There’s still a lot of information on this incident yet to emerge, but it’s safe to assume it will be used as an excuse to target pro-Palestine activists and further outlaw criticism of Israel in Australia, as has been happening to a greater and greater extent in this country for the last two years. Zionism is the single greatest threat to free expression in the entire western world.

Mohammad Marandi: One Accusation That Could Ignite the Middle East

‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’: Mehdi and Prem Unpack the Australia Terror Attack

‘They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian. With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics.

But there’s no way to issue long-term contracts for reconstruction or humanitarian aid yet: a Board of Peace, chaired by Donald Trump, was endorsed by the United Nations to administer the territory but is not yet in operation. And the mandate of the new Civil-Military Coordination Center is limited. Parallel to these official efforts, the White House has established its own Gaza taskforce led by Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Aryeh Lightstone.

The Guardian has learned that two former Doge officials – once assigned to Elon Musk’s effort to slash government and fire federal workers in bulk – are leading the group’s conversations about humanitarian assistance and the postwar reconstruction of Gaza. They have circulated slide decks with detailed plans for logistics operations, including prices, financial projections and the locations of potential warehouses.

US companies are gathering for the spoils. One contender, the Guardian has learned, is Gothams LLC, a politically connected contractor that won a $33m contract to help run the notorious south Florida detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”, where immigrants are housed in tents and trailers. Documents and three people familiar with the plans say that the contractor had an “inside track” to secure what might be the most lucrative contract it’s ever had. But in an interview on Friday, after questions from the Guardian, the company’s founder, Matt Michelsen, said he had reconsidered his company’s participation and was pulling out, citing security concerns.

Meanwhile, sources say contractors have been flying to the region in order to meet with influential US officials and potential business partners before the holidays. “Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this,” one long-time contractor familiar with the process . “People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they’re trying to get, you know, rich off of it.”

Bondi mass•cre is a gift to Netanyahu

Another Palestinian Infant Dies of Hypothermia in Storm-Battered Gaza

A second Palestinian infant and a young girl died of hypothermia in Gaza as heavy rains and flooding—whose effects are exacerbated by Israel's genocidal annihilation and ongoing siege of the coastal strip—raised the death toll from Storm Byron to at least 16.

Taim Al-Khawaja—who was several months old—died in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, while 9-year-old Hadeel al-Masri died in a shelter west of Gaza City, according to local officials. Their deaths follow that of Rahaf Abu Jazar, an 8-month-old who died Thursday of exposure after floodwaters inundated her family’s tent in Khan Younis.

At least five other people were killed when a building in Beit Lahia collapsed amid the storm, and two others were killed when a wall collapsed onto tents housing displaced Palestinians in the Remal neighorhood of Gaza City. According to Gaza's Government Media Office (GMO), at least 13 buildings have collapsed and more than 27,000 tents have been destroyed or left uninhabitable by Byron's winds, rain, and floodwater.

Palestinian babies freeze to death as shelters and life saving humanitarian aid-located just a few miles away-for 1million civilians is blocked by Israel.
Israel deliberately creates horrific conditions of life, revealing its intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a people. pic.twitter.com/ACAUAGSWk3

— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) December 12, 2025

While farmers in neighboring Israel welcomed the torrential rains, which delivered relief from drought conditions, the storm is devastating Palestinians already reeling and weakened from nearly 800 days of war and siege. Israel's US-backed onslaught has left more than 250,000 Gazans dead, maimed, or missing and 2 million more starved, sickened, or displaced. Roughly 1.5 million Palestinians are currently living in tents or other makeshift shelters.

The recent hypothermia deaths evoked horrific memories of the past two winters in Gaza, when more than a dozen Palestinians—most of them infants and children—died from hypothermia caused by exposure. While many Israelis and their supporters abroad point to the relatively mild Mediterranean winters in an effort to deny these deaths, experts note that hypothermia can be deadly at temperatures over 60°F (15°C) in overexposed conditions such as those in Gaza.

Reporting from Gaza, Al Jazeera's Ibrahim al-Khalili said Friday that genocide-ravaged Gazans are now enduring “an added layer of suffering."

“The tents are collapsing. The cold is unbearable. Basically, they don’t have anywhere to go. What is unfolding is devastating,” he said. “It’s not just a storm; it’s a new wave of displacement even after the war has stopped. Many people here told me that a new war has really begun after this flooding, and people are being forced to flee whatever fragile shelters they had.”

Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem on Friday called the recent exposure deaths a "continuation of the war of extermination."

“The successive collapses of homes bombed during the war of extermination on the Gaza Strip, caused by the storm, and the resulting deaths, reflect the unprecedented scale of the humanitarian disaster left by this criminal Zionist war,” he said.

Israel Humiliates Trump With Ceasefire Break

New Israeli barrier will slice through precious West Bank farmland

The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.

The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.

Lawyers for the Atouf village council have lodged an appeal, but long and bitter experience has taught Palestinians here to have low expectations of Israeli courts. “The Israeli military can do anything they like. They don’t care about the law or anything else,” said Ismael Bsharat, a local farmer.

Similar eviction notices had been delivered on the same day all along an almost 14-mile (22km) strip of Palestinian farmland running north to south through Atouf, tracing out the route of the planned road and fence. And this week it became clear that this abrupt gash across Palestinian land was the first section of a new line of division that would redraw the map of the West Bank.

This week, Israel’s defence ministry made clear that this would mark only the first section of a new 5.5bn-shekel (£1.3bn) barrier that will eventually run 300 miles, from the Golan Heights on the Syrian border to the north all the way down to the Red Sea near Eilat. Labelled “Crimson Thread” by the Israeli military, the barrier will split countless Palestinian communities along its route.

UN’s Francesca Albanese: Why Gaza ceasefire could collapse

Three Americans killed in Syria by suspected Islamic State gunman, Pentagon says

Two US army soldiers and one American civilian interpreter have been killed and several other people wounded in an ambush on Saturday by the Islamic State group in central Syria, the Pentagon said. The attack on US troops in Palmyra is the first to inflict casualties since the fall of the former Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, a year ago.

“We mourn the loss of three great patriots in Syria,” Donald Trump told reporters as he left the White House to attend the army-navy football game in Baltimore. “We also have three wounded. They seem to be doing pretty well.” “This was an Isis attack on us and Syria,” Trump added. “We will retaliate.”

“The attack occurred as the soldiers were conducting a key leader engagement,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement. “Their mission was in support of on-going counter-ISIS / counter-terrorism operations in the region.”

The attacker “was killed by partner forces”, Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, wrote on the social media platform X.

3 US Personnel KILLED In Syria ISIS Attack

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump's Empire of Hubris

Pilot narrowly avoids ‘midair collision’ with US air force plane near Venezuela

A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Curaçao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a US air force refueling tanker on Friday, and the pilot blamed the military plane for crossing his path.

“We almost had a midair collision up here,” the JetBlue pilot said, according to a recording of his conversation with air traffic control. “They passed directly in our flight path ... They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous.”

The incident involved JetBlue flight 1112 from Curaçao, which is just off the coast of Venezuela, en route to New York City’s JFK airport. It comes as the US military has launched deadly airstrikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean and is also seeking to increase pressure on Venezuela’s government.

“We just had traffic pass directly in front of us within 5 miles of us – maybe 2 or 3 miles – but it was an air-to air-refueler from the United States air force and he was at our altitude,” the pilot said. “We had to stop our climb.” The pilot said the US air force plane then headed into Venezuelan airspace.

Alastair Crooke : Trump's Different Imperial Model

US seizure of Venezuela oil tanker an act of ‘maritime terrorism’, says Cuba

Cuban officials have denounced the US seizure of the Skipper oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday, calling it an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism”, as well as a “serious violation of international law” that hurts the Caribbean island nation and its people.

The tanker, which was reported now to be heading for Galveston, Texas, was believed to loaded with nearly 2m barrels of Venezuela’s heavy crude, according to internal data from the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, as reported by the New York Times. ...

“This action is part of the US escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” the Cuban foreign ministry statement said.

Larry C. Johnson: Russia Launches Largest Missile & Drone Attack Yet

Ukraine willing to drop ambitions to join Nato, Zelenskyy says

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered to drop Ukraine’s aspirations to join the Nato military alliance, as he held five hours of talks with US envoys in Berlin on Sunday to end the war with Russia. Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said “a lot of progress was made” as he and the US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met Zelenskyy in the latest push to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the second world war – though full details were not divulged.

Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said Zelenskyy would comment further when the talks conclude on Monday. He added that officials are now considering the draft documents. Before the talks, Zelenskyy had offered to drop Ukraine’s goal to join Nato in exchange for western security guarantees.

The move marks a big shift for Ukraine, which has fought to join Nato as a safeguard against Russian attacks and has such an aspiration included in its constitution. It also meets one of Russia’s war aims, although Kyiv has so far held firm against ceding territory to Moscow.

“Representatives held in-depth discussions regarding the 20-point plan for peace, economic agendas, and more. A lot of progress was made,” Witkoff wrote in a post on X.

Incredible!

Trump says building DC triumphal arch is domestic policy chief’s ‘primary thing’

Amid concerns that he has failed to address a worsening affordability crisis, with health insurance premiums about to spike dramatically for over 20 million Americans, Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that his domestic policy chief’s main priority is building a triumphal arch for Washington DC.

Speaking at a White House holiday party, the president praised Vince Haley, his former speechwriter and a longtime aide to Newt Gingrich who now leads the White House Domestic Policy Council.

.@POTUS recognizes longtime staffer and Domestic Policy Council Director @vincehaley:

"I put Vince in charge of the triumphal arch. We're building an arc like the Arc de Triomphe, and we're building it by the Arlington bridge... opposite the Lincoln Memorial." pic.twitter.com/zZvDgBHW0a

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 14, 2025

“Vince is unbelievable on policy,” Trump said. “And we have a policy thing that’s going to be unbelievable happening.” The nature of that policy initiative might indeed be hard to believe for Americans struggling to make ends meet. ...

Americans struggling with increased costs due to tariffs imposed by Trump on imported goods – or those whose health insurance premiums are set to double or triple in the coming weeks – might disagree with the president’s claim that the construction of an Arc de Triomphe knockoff should be the main focus of his chief domestic policy adviser.

Top Democrats call for investigation into share-buying spree by Trump allies

Two more senior Democrats have called for an investigation into a share-buying spree by two fossil fuel billionaires with close ties to the Trump administration, after a Guardian investigation raised questions about potential wrongdoing. Robert Pender and Michael Sabel, the founders and co-chairs of Venture Global, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) company headquartered in Virginia, bought more than a million shares worth almost $12m each in March. The trades took place just days after a meeting with senior White House officials, who then issued a key regulatory permit that helped expand the company’s business in Europe.

Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate finance committee and a member of the energy and natural resources committee, said the transactions should be investigated, drawing parallels with previous Trump administration controversies. “Corrupt pay-to-play schemes are at the heart of everything the Trump administration does,” Wyden said. “There is no doubt in my mind that these new LNG transactions should be investigated so the American people know the full extent of Trump’s corruption and abuse of office.”

Wyden said investigators uncovered in 2020 that Trump’s energy secretary had inappropriately pressured a Ukrainian state-owned natural gas company to benefit campaign donors, and added that neither Trump nor his energy team faced accountability for those abuses.

Senator Chris Van Hollen echoed those concerns about potential conflicts of interest. “The Trump administration’s blatant use of cronyism and pay-to-play politics knows no limit. It’s clear that they’re padding the pockets of billionaires at the expense of working Americans,” said Van Hollen, senator for Maryland, member of the Senate banking committee and ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission and justice department. “These investments absolutely merit further investigation.”

Obamacare expiration will have ‘death spiral’ effect on US healthcare

With subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance set to expire, Americans who rely on them will probably switch to plans with lower monthly premiums and high deductibles or decide not to purchase any coverage, which will have a serious and damaging impact on the entire sector, according to healthcare policy experts. The average amount ACA plan enrollees pay annually for premiums is estimated to more than double, from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 in 2026, according to a KFF analysis.

That will then have economic downstream effects, including for rural hospitals and people who have employer-sponsored health insurance, according to the experts. With “a significant portion of people dropping their marketplace coverage and being uninsured, it doesn’t just impact them, it impacts everyone”, said Emma Wager, a senior policy analyst for KFF’s program on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). ...

On Thursday, legislation to preserve the credits failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle needed to pass in the Senate. A Republican plan, which would have expanded health savings accounts and provided payments of up to $1,500 to people to purchase the most basic health insurance plans, also failed. ...

In a recent survey, KFF found that if the subsidies expire, a third of the 24 million US adults who buy coverage through the ACA marketplace said they were likely going to select a lower-premium plan – with higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs – while a quarter of enrollees said they would be “very likely” to go uninsured. When you increase premiums dramatically, “the healthy people drop out and therefore the pool is sicker”, said Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. It becomes a “death spiral”, Anderson said. “The sicker people are the only ones that stay in the program until it becomes no longer sustainable and the insurance company stops even offering the plan,” Anderson said.

US immigration crackdown forces teens to caretake after parents are detained

Vilma Cruz, a mother of two, had just arrived at her newly leased Louisiana home when federal agents surrounded her vehicle in the driveway. She had just enough time to call her oldest son before they smashed the passenger window and detained her. The 38-year-old Honduran house painter was swept up in an immigration crackdown that has largely targeted Kenner, a New Orleans suburb with a large Hispanic population, where some parents at risk of deportation had rushed to arrange emergency custody plans for their children in case they were arrested.

Federal agents have made more than 250 arrests across south-east Louisiana in December, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the latest in a series of enforcement operations that have also unfolded in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. In some homes, the arrests have taken away parents who were caretakers and breadwinners, leaving some teenagers to grow up fast and fill in at home for absent mothers and fathers.

Cruz’s detention forced her son, Jonathan Escalante, an 18-year-old US citizen who finished high school this year, to care for his nine-year-old sister, who has a physical disability. Escalante is now trying to access his mother’s bank account, locate his sister’s medical records and doctors, and figure out how to pay bills in his mother’s name. “Honestly I’m not ready, having to take care of all of these responsibilities,” Escalante told the Associated Press. “But I’m willing to take them on if I have to. And I’m just praying that I get my mom back.”

The crackdown dubbed “Operation Catahoula Crunch” has a goal of 5,000 arrests. DHS has said it is targeting violent offenders but has released few details on who it is arresting. Records reviewed by AP found that the majority of those detained in the first two days of the effort had no criminal histories. And most in US immigration detention nationwide are immigrants with no criminal record, according to government data.

Billy Nungesser, Louisiana’s Republican lieutenant governor, recently became the first state official to break with his party over the operations. He criticized them for undermining the regional economy by triggering labor shortages because even immigrants with valid work permits have stayed home out of fear.

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Worth a click and a peek:

‘Soil is more important than oil’: inside the perennial grain revolution

On the concrete floor of a greenhouse in rural Kansas stands a neat grid of 100 plastic plant pots, each holding a straggly crown of strappy, grass-like leaves. These plants are perennials – they keep growing, year after year. That single characteristic separates them from soya beans, wheat, maize, rice and every other major grain crop, all of which are annuals: plants that live and die within a single growing season. “These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations],” says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. ... The plants are intermediate wheatgrass. Since 2010, DeHaan has been transforming this small-seeded, wild species into a high-yielding, domesticated grain crop called Kernza. He believes it will eventually be a viable – and far more sustainable – alternative to annual wheat, the world’s most widely grown crop and the source of one in five of all calories consumed by humanity.

Annual plants thrive in bare ground. Growing them requires fields to be prepared, usually by ploughing or intensive herbicide treatment, and new seeds planted each year. For this reason, Tim Crews, chief scientist at the Land Institute, describes existing agricultural systems as “the greatest disturbance on the planet”. “There’s nothing like it,” he says. The damage inflicted by today’s food system is clear: one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions; ocean dead zones covering thousands of square miles; and 25bn-40bn tonnes of fertile topsoil lost each year.

Replacing annual plants with perennial varieties would massively reduce agriculture’s environmental impact. Soil erosion would drop; perennials would instead build soil health, limiting runoff of nutrients and toxic farm chemicals, cutting fertiliser and pesticide use, and storing climate-heating carbon within farm soils. There is just one problem. Reliable, high-yielding perennial grain crops barely exist. The inspiration for the Land Institute’s push to develop perennial grains came from its founder, Wes Jackson, 89. For Jackson, the health of soils that generate 95% of human calories should be a primary concern for all civilisations. “Soil is more important than oil,” he says in a recent documentary. “Soil is as much of a non-renewable resource as oil. Start there, and ask: ‘What does that require of us?’”

Jackson hit upon an answer during a visit to a native prairie reserve in Kansas in the late 1970s. Prairies are highly productive and biodiverse perennial grassland ecosystems. They don’t erode soils; they build them. Indeed, the rich soils that make much of the US midwest and Great Plains such prime agricultural lands were formed, over thousands of years, by prairie plants working with underground microbes. Why is it that we cannot have perennial grains that grow like prairie plants, Jackson wondered. “That was the epiphany that set me off,” he said in a recent interview.

Though still under development, Kernza is already a viable crop, grown at modest scale in 15 US states. Kernza seeds and flour are used in a range of products, from beers to breakfast cereals. The key challenge is yields. In Kansas, the best Kernza yields are about one-quarter those of annual wheat. But DeHaan says this is changing rapidly. “My best current extrapolation is that some Kernza plants could have wheat-like yields within about 15 years.”

‘A shift no country can ignore’: where global emissions stand, 10 years after the Paris climate agreement

Ten years on from the historic Paris climate summit, which ended with the world’s first and only global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is easy to dwell on its failures. But the successes go less remarked. Renewable energy smashed records last year, growing by 15% and accounting for more than 90% of all new power generation capacity. Investment in clean energy topped $2tn, outstripping that into fossil fuels by two to one.

Electric vehicles now account for about a fifth of new cars sold around the world. Low-carbon power makes up more than half of the generation capacity of China and India, with China’s emissions now flattening, and most developed countries on a downward trend.

For Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who was one of the main architects of the Paris accord and is now chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, this is a remarkable achievement. “The Paris agreement has set in motion a shift towards clean energy that no country can now ignore,” she said. Would this have happened without the Paris agreement? Unlikely, according to Bill Hare, chief executive of the Climate Analytics thinktank. He said: “The 1.5C limit [for rising global temperatures] and the net zero goal have reshaped policy, finance, litigation and sectoral rules, helping to rewire how states, markets and institutions work.”

Ed Miliband, the UK energy secretary, said look where temperatures were headed before Paris, if you want to judge the summit’s impact. The planet was on track for more than 4C of heating, a catastrophic increase. After Paris, that came down to 3C. Then, after Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, which reaffirmed the 1.5C pledge, carbon-cutting commitments brought the projected temperature rise to about 2.8C. Today, the forecast stands at about 2.5C, if all existing promises are fulfilled. ...

Yet the shaky response to the Paris agreement from some key countries in its immediate aftermath has added significantly to the climate crisis we now face, and the failure of rich governments in more recent years to uphold their side of the bargain with the poorer world threatens to implode the global consensus. The question now is: can countries learn from the mistakes of the past decade, in order to keep the Paris agreement alive in the next?

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Also of Interest

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

Jeffrey Sachs: Trump’s Thuggish Empire

Jonathan Cook: Israel’s Biggest Con

‘Release Gaza Footage,’ British Victim Demands

'Deafening silence': US journalist wounded by Israel says his government has done nothing

Russia Counters EU Shenanigans To Steal Its Frozen Assets

US-Ukraine military alliance. Europe dismantles Trump plan

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A Little Night Music

Roosevelt Sykes - Feel Like Blowing My Horn

Roosevelt Sykes - Fine And Brown

Roosevelt Sykes – Come On Back Home

Roosevelt Sykes – Wild Side

Roosevelt Sykes - I'm A Nut

Roosevelt Sykes – Running The Boogie

Roosevelt Sykes – Hupe Dupe Do

Roosevelt Sykes - Too Hot To Handle

Roosevelt Sykes – Drivin' Wheel / Sweet Home Chicago

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