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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Charlie Musselwhite

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite. Enjoy!

^{Charles Musselwhite - Keys To The Highway}

"When it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts."

-- Michael Ende

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News and Opinion

Israel Propagandists Are Uniformly Spouting The Exact Same Line About The Bondi Shooting

Looks like some kind of memo went out or something, because pro-Israel outlets and individuals are all loudly amplifying one specific talking point about the Bondi Beach shooting.

Here are some examples:

“Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like”
~ Bret Stephens, New York Times

“The Intifada Comes to Bondi Beach”
~ David Frum, The Atlantic

“The Intifada Comes to Australia”
~ Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal

“Shooting at Bondi Beach is what a globalized intifada looks like”
~ Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post

“The Intifada Comes to Australia”
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Free Press

“Welcome to the global intifada”
~ David Harsanyi, Washington Examiner

“Palestinian propaganda has globalized the intifada”
~ Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner

“Bondi Beach massacre is what globalizing the intifada looks like”
~ Vivian Bercovici, National Post

“Chanting ‘globalise the intifada’ leads to Bondi Beach”
~ Danny Cohen, The Telegraph

“I have a simple question for leftists after the antisemitic shooting in Australia. What do you think ‘globalize the intifada’ means?”
~ US Senator Ted Cruz

“That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize intifada.’ We saw the actual application of the globalization of intifada in Sydney.”
~ New York City Mayor Eric Adams

Did literally all the top genocide-apologists in media & politics get a memo from Israel to use this same "This is what globalize the intifada means" line in response to the Bondi Beach shooting? https://t.co/jrMpf4W85Q

— Ash J (@AshAgony) December 14, 2025

“These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today.”
~ Gideon Sa’ar, Foreign Minister of Israel

“When you refuse to condemn and only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach.”
~ Former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt (addressing New York City Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani)

“What on earth do you think globalise the intifada means? And can’t people see the link between that kind of rhetoric and attacks on Jewish people as Jewish people? Because that’s what really struck at the heart of Jewish people in our country today — an attack on Jewish people organising around Hannukah, coming together as Jewish people.”
~ UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting

“Why is it still allowed? What is the meaning of globalise the intifada? I’ll tell you the meaning… it’s what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday.”
~ Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom

“Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ and chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are not abstract or rhetorical slogans. They are explicit calls for violence, and they carry deadly consequences. What we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome of sustained radicalisation that has been allowed to fester under the guise of protest.”
~ Israeli embassy in the UK

“This is what happens when you ‘globalize the intifada.’”
~ Newsweek editors

“This was not an isolated act of violence — it was the culmination of ‘globalise the intifada’ rhetoric that has been building around the world since October 7.”
~ Yoni Bashan, The Times

“For those who’ve been marching these past few years demanding to ‘globalise the intifada’ this is a barbarous anti-Semitic consequence of their pro-Islamist stupidity.”
~ Former BBC anchor Andrew Neil

“When people call to ‘globalise the intifada’, this is what they are calling for: dead Jews, terrorism and families shattered forever.”
~ Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesperson

“Taking a stand against antisemitism after Bondi Beach should begin with an unequivocal recognition that ‘intifada’ rhetoric is hate speech.”
~ The Bulwark’s Cathy Young

“It would be great if those who have been shouting ‘Global Intifada’ would revisit that phrase right now. It is not a ‘harmless left wing slogan.’ It is a call to blame — and kill — Jews who have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government.”
~ Spiritual guru and former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson

"It is obscene how quickly the right has seized on this horror to advance an Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda. And it is disgusting to see Israel’s politicians almost gleeful at the opportunity to distract from their genocidal onslaught in Gaza" https://t.co/fuA6QfBowr

— Nick Riemer (@NickRiemer1) December 16, 2025

Of course, these outlets and individuals do not actually care about the phrase “globalize the intifada”. If pro-Palestine activists had never chanted that slogan, pro-Israel spinmeisters would be focusing on a different line today. They are not trying to stop chants which they perceive as dangerous, they are trying to stomp out criticism of Israel’s genocidal atrocities.

As The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard wrote regarding the aforementioned Bret Stephens piece, “It’s all done in the name of fighting antisemitism by conflating the worst kinds of violent anti-Jewish bigotry, like what we saw in Bondi Beach, with any criticisms of Israel and its actions. To so much as say Palestinians ought to have basic human rights, in this view, becomes a deadly attack on Jewish safety.”

The term “intifada” means to “shake off” and “rise up”, and as Middle East Eye’s Craig Birckhead-Morton and Yasmin Zainab Bergemann explained last year, intifadas have historically included nonviolent resistance. Saying “globalize the intifada” isn’t calling for people to massacre Jewish civilians around the world, it’s advocating resistance to the power structure which incinerated Gaza and continues to inflict abuse upon Palestinians and any other population which doesn’t bow to the interests of the empire.

And the people scaremongering about this phrase know this. They’re fully aware that they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.

As Em Hilton wrote for the Israeli outlet +972, “It is obscene how quickly the right has seized on this horror to advance an Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda. And it is disgusting to see Israel’s politicians almost gleeful at the opportunity to distract from their genocidal onslaught in Gaza by using our pain and grief as a political weapon.”

What Hamas Leaders Told Jeremy Scahill in Meetings in Qatar

Gaza Newborn Dies of Hypothermia as Israel Continues to Block Lifesaving Aid

Yet another infant has died from hypothermia in Gaza as winter rain and wind continued to lash the embattled Palestinian exclave on Tuesday amid Israel's blockage of tents and other essential goods from the coastal strip.

Gaza's Health Ministry announced the death of 2-week-old Mohammed Khalil Abu al-Khair, who died Monday after his body temperature plummeted due to exposure as cold, heavy rains, and fierce winds continued to batter the strip. Storm conditions have exacerbated the suffering of residents already weakened by more than two years of Israeli bombardment, invasion, and siege.

The ministry said that al-Khair was one of at least 13 Palestinian children who have died in recent days due to Storm Byron and subsequent rains. Confirmed victims include Rahaf Abu Jazar, age 8 months; Hadeel al-Masri, age 9; and Taim al-Khawaja, an infant whose precise age is unclear.

The renewed hypothermia deaths follow those of more than a dozen Palestinians—most of them infants and children—who died from exposure during the first two winters of the Gaza genocide. While the strip does not experience severe winters, experts have noted that hypothermia can be deadly at temperatures over 60°F (15°C) in overexposed conditions such as those in Gaza.

What’s happening in the West Bank?

Extrajudicial Killings From Barack Obama to Donald Trump

In May 2013, as President Barack Obama delivered a major foreign-policy speech in Washington, I managed to slip inside. As he was winding up, I stood and interrupted, condemning his use of lethal drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.

“How can you, a constitutional lawyer, authorize the extrajudicial killing of people—including a 16-year-old American boy in Yemen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki—without charge, without trial, without even an explanation?”

As security dragged me out, Obama responded, “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.” Perhaps my questions touched a chord in his conscience, but the drone attacks did not stop.

Just before that incident, I had returned from Yemen, where a small delegation of us met with Abdulrahman’s grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki—a dignified man with a PhD from an American university, someone who genuinely believed in the values this country claims to represent. He looked at us, grief etched into his face, and asked, “How can a nation that speaks of law and justice kill an American child without apology, without even a justification?”

Under Obama, drone strikes killed thousands of people. Entire communities lived under the constant terror of buzzing drones—never knowing whether a flash in the sky meant death for them, their children, or the neighbors who ran to help.

We heard these horrors firsthand in 2012, when CODEPINK traveled to Pakistan to meet with victims’ families. A tribal leader from Waziristan described attending a peaceful jirga—a gathering of elders—when a US missile obliterated the meeting. Dozens were instantly killed. As survivors rushed to help the wounded, a second missile struck.

Forty-two people died, including elders and local officials. No one in Washington was held accountable. Not one person.

Faced with mounting outrage, Obama eventually scaled back the drone program—not because the killings were illegal, immoral, or strategically disastrous, but because the political cost was rising. The truth is that Obama’s drone war normalized the idea that the United States can kill whoever it wants, wherever it wants, without due process or oversight.

That normalization is the bridge to where we are today.

The Trump administration is now carrying out extrajudicial assassinations at sea, including “double taps.” With the latest December 15 strikes, 95 people have been blown to bits in the bombing of 25 boats. Meanwhile, the administration is refusing to release the memo that supposedly explains the legal basis for these killings or to release the video showing the September bombing that killed two shipwrecked sailors who survived an initial strike.

But let’s be clear: the actions of the Trump administration are not an aberration—they are the logical sequel to Obama’s drone killings. If Obama could kill a 16-year-old American boy without accountability, why wouldn’t Trump believe he has the same power to snuff out the lives of civilians with no due process?

One of the victims of Trump’s maritime strikes was Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian fisherman killed on September 15 when a US missile tore apart his vessel. His family has filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The family says he was working—fishing, not fighting—when the US government ended his life.

And even in cases where drugs are on board, let’s say the obvious: Smuggling narcotics does not turn the open sea into a battlefield, and it does not strip civilians of their right to due process simply because the Trump administration says so. The US cannot declare people “enemy fighters” to disguise what are, in reality, unlawful killings.

Civil liberties groups are suing the government to secure the release of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion and other documents related to these strikes on civilian boats in international waters. The public deserves to see this information. The American people also deserve to see the full video of the September “double tap” that killed two survivors desperately clinging to their overturned boat, as a bipartisan group of lawmakers is demanding. We deserve transparency, accountability, and answers—the same things we demanded under Obama and never received.

For more than twenty years, human rights advocates have warned that unchecked drone warfare would shred the boundaries between war and peace, between combatants and civilians, between military force and basic law enforcement.

Trump’s maritime killings are the predictable collapse of a system the Obama administration cemented into place: killing people far from any battlefield, without legal authority, without congressional approval, and without the slightest regard for human rights.

Once an administration insists that due process in the use of lethal force is optional, every future president inherits a blank check for murder.

Laith Marouf: Israel Points the Finger: Iran, Hezbollah & Hamas Accused

Jews and Muslims embrace at vigils for those killed in Bondi beach terror attack

About 24 hours after terror was unleashed on Sydney’s Bondi beach, Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins stood in the city’s Hyde Park and delivered a message of unity. “So many in our Jewish community have received messages of love from leaders in different faith communities, from Palestinian friends and friends around this country, and in so doing, we are now learning we are all just flesh and blood, and we are all also the light,” he said.

The vigil, on Monday evening, was to commemorate the 15 killed and dozens injured and traumatised in Sunday’s antisemitic terror attack on Bondi beach. After Kamins’s speech, Bilal Rauf, special adviser at the Australian National Imams Council, offered “deep heartbreak and condolences”, noting the pain reminded him of his own community after the 2019 Christchurch massacre. Afterwards, the pair embraced in a hug as the crowd broke into applause.

Dr Munther Emad, a Palestinian Australian living in Sydney, spoke at the memorial event. “I felt that it’s a duty of me … saying that I just want to let you know that you’re not alone in your sense of despair and grief. I share it with you and my family,” he said. “We wouldn’t be beating darkness with more darkness. The only way to actually really defeat darkness is by have a sense of unity.”

Kupyansk ebb and flow. Huliaipole falling fast

Yale Historian Warns Trump Is Putting US on Path to World War III

Yale historian Greg Grandin believes that President Donald Trump's foreign policy is putting the US on a dangerous course that could lead to a new world war.

Writing in The New York Times on Monday, Grandin argued that the Trump administration seems determined to throw out the US-led international order that has been in place since World War II.

In its place, Grandin said, is "a vision of the world carved up into garrisoned spheres of competing influence," in which the US has undisputed control over the Western Hemisphere.

As evidence, he pointed to the Trump White House's recently published National Security Strategy that called for reviving the so-called Monroe Doctrine that in the past was used to justify US imperial aggression throughout Latin America, and that the Trump administration is using to justify its own military adventures in the region.

Among other things, Grandin said that the Trump administration has been carrying out military strikes against purported drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, and has also been "meddling in the internal politics of Brazil, Argentina, and Honduras, issuing scattershot threats against Colombia and Mexico, menacing Cuba and Nicaragua, increasing its influence over the Panama Canal, and seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela."

Most ominously, Grandin said, is how the US Department of Defense has been "carrying out a military buildup in the Caribbean that is all but unprecedented in its scale and concentration of firepower, seemingly aimed at effecting regime change in Venezuela."

A large problem with dividing the globe into spheres controlled by major powers, Grandin continued, is that these powers inevitably come into violent conflict with one another.

Citing past statements and actions by the British Empire, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany, Grandin argued that "as the world marched into a second global war, many of its belligerents did so citing the Monroe Doctrine."

This dynamic is particularly dangerous in the case of Trump, who, according to Grandin, sees Latin America "as a theater of global rivalry, a place to extract resources, secure commodity chains, establish bulwarks of national security, fight the drug war, limit Chinese influence, and end migration."

The result of this policy shift, Grandin concluded, "will most likely be more confrontation, more brinkmanship, more war."

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Ukraine and European War Fantasies

US Blows Up Three More Boats in the Eastern Pacific

US Southern Command announced on Monday night that its forces bombed three more alleged drug-running boats in the Eastern Pacific Ocean as the Trump administration continues the extra-judicial executions at sea amid increasing scrutiny of the bombing campaign.

SOUTHCOM claimed, without providing any evidence, that the boats were engaged in “narco-trafficking.” It said that the three strikes killed a total of eight “narco-terrorists,” a term the Trump administration uses to justify the executions for an alleged crime that doesn’t receive the death penalty in the US.

According to numbers released by the Trump administration, the attack brings the total number of people killed in the bombing campaign to 95. So far, 25 strikes have been launched, and 26 boats have been destroyed, including 11 in the Caribbean near Venezuela, where the strikes started, and 15 in the Eastern Pacific.

The US War Department has never provided any evidence to back up its claims about what the boats were allegedly carrying and has acknowledged that it doesn’t know the identities of all of the people it has been killing. While much of the scrutiny is focused on the September 2 attack that involved multiple strikes to kill survivors, the entire bombing campaign is clearly illegal under US and international law.

Max Blumenthal : Why War With Venezuela Is Unjust

Trump orders blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela

Donald Trump has ordered “a total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro. The move comes amid an escalating campaign by the Trump administration against Maduro that has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed dozens of people. ...

In a post on social media on Tuesday night announcing the blockade, Trump alleged Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to escalate the military buildup. “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before … today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

It is unclear how the Trump administration will impose the blockade against the sanctioned vessels, and whether he will turn to the Coast Guard to interdict vessels like he did last week. The administration has moved thousands of troops and nearly a dozen warships – including an aircraft carrier – to the region recently.

Maduro, speaking at an event on Tuesday evening before Trump’s post, said: “Imperialism and the fascist right want to colonize Venezuela to take over its wealth of oil, gas, gold, among other minerals. We have sworn absolutely to defend our homeland and in Venezuela peace will triumph.” Venezuela’s government said it rejected Trump’s order of a blockade as a “grotesque threat”, Reuters reported.

Texas congressman Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, called the blockade “unquestionably an act of war. A war that the Congress never authorized and the American people do not want,” Castro said on social media.

Trump DEMANDS Venezuela Oil & Land, Threatens HISTORIC ARMADA

Wiles suggests real goal of Trump's boat strikes is to topple Venezuela's Maduro

Wiles [...] said of Trump’s Venezuela strategy:

He wants to keep on blowing boats up until [president Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.

The author notes that “Wiles’s statement appears to contradict the administration’s official stance that blowing up boats is about drug interdiction, not regime change”.

“So not a war on the cartels. It’s regime change,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy wrote on X in response to the article. “Either way, totally illegal and nonsensical.”

Trump signs order to further restrict entry of foreign nationals to US

Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Tuesday that further restricts and limits the entry of foreign nationals to the United States, the White House said. The US has imposed full restrictions and entry limitations on nationals from five countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan, and Syria – in addition to the initial list of 12 countries. Full restrictions have also been imposed on individuals holding Palestinian Authority-issued travel documents, the White House said.

The move represents an intensification of Trump’s crackdown in the immediate aftermath of the shooting of two national guard members in Washington DC on 26 November. The suspected shooter is an Afghan national who served in a unit under the CIA in Afghanistan and was admitted to the US after its withdrawal from the country in 2021. He was granted asylum this year after being vetted.

The Trump administration has highlighted the case to justify further tightening controls on immigration. Trump himself has since engaged in incendiary racist rhetoric against some immigrant groups. The inclusion of Syria among the five added countries comes days after three Americans – two soldiers and a civilian interpreter – were killed in the country in an attack the US blamed on the Islamic State. ...

Partial restrictions were imposed on a further 15 countries, identified as Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Unemployment SPIKES To Highest Since Pandemic

US lost 105,000 jobs in October and added 64,000 in November, according to delayed data

The US labor market grew by more than expected last month, recovering some of the damage inflicted by the federal government shutdown, according to official data. An estimated 105,000 jobs were lost in October, and 64,000 were added in November, a highly-anticipated report showed on Tuesday.

Jobs growth was higher in November than anticipated by many economists, with a consensus forecast of some 40,000 jobs added. But the headline unemployment rate continued to climb – and hit 4.6%, a four-year high, last month – amid apprehension around the strength of the US economy.

Previous estimates for overall jobs growth in August and September were also downgraded, from a drop of 4,000 to 26,000, and from growth of 119,000 to 108,000, respectively.

The latest jobs numbers, typically released monthly, were delayed due to the government shutdown. Federal government jobs declined by 162,000 in October, and 6,000 in November.

Trump’s chief of staff says he believes ‘there’s nothing he can’t do’ as president

Donald Trump believes “there’s nothing he can’t do, nothing, zero” as US president, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said in a rare interview that shines an unvarnished spotlight on his second administration. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Wiles described Trump – who is teetotal – as having “an alcoholic’s personality”, an insight she ascribed to her relationship with her late father, the broadcaster and NFL star Pat Summerall, who had alcoholism.

“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” Wiles said in a series of 11 interviews she gave to the author Chris Whipple.

In a series of strikingly unguarded comments even before Trump returned to the presidency, Wiles said Trump will pursue retribution against his political opponents when he sees an “opportunity” and said she forged a “loose agreement” with him to finish score-settling with adversaries by the first 90 days of his administration.

But the president did not stick to it. Indictments have been served more than six months into his presidency on the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who won a civil action against Trump for business fraud, and the former FBI director, James Comey, whom Trump fired during his first presidency. “In some cases, it may look like retribution,” Wiles said. “And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”

In a social media post on Tuesday morning, Wiles said that “significant context was disregarded” in the Vanity Fair piece. “The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,” she said.

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Republicans FLAIL On Healthcare As PRICES SURGE

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Democratic senators investigate data centers’ effects on electricity prices

Three Democratic US senators announced on Tuesday that they are investigating whether big tech companies are passing the soaring utility costs of “energy-guzzling” data centers on to ordinary Americans. The trio sent letters to the heads of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta as well as the data center operators CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix asking for greater transparency, cost-sharing and accountability.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote that they were alarmed by reports that these data centers caused residential electricity bills to “skyrocket”. Regions with significant data center activity have already endured price increases by as much as 267% over the past five years, the three lawmakers wrote. According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, the average cost of a US family’s electricity bill had risen 7% year-over-year as of September.

“Through these utility price increases, American families bankroll the electricity costs of trillion-dollar tech companies,” they stated, demanding that data centers and tech companies “pay their fair share of their electricity rates” and “a greater share of the costs upfront for future energy usage”. Lawmakers asked companies for more information about their current and projected number of data centers, and their energy usage, as well as what actions have been taken to prevent electricity costs from being passed on to consumer energy bills.

They also inquired about the tax deductions or other financial incentives these companies received from state and local governments, as well as payments they made to lobbyists and consultants to advocate for the construction of data centers. They requested a response no later than 12 January. ...

While the senators’ letters focus mostly on the financial burden of data centers, the massive structures’ enormous energy usage also comes with a significant climate cost. A Cornell study published last month in Nature Sustainability found that data centers could annually consume as much water as 6 million-10 million Americans and emit as much carbon dioxide as 5m-10m cars.

Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in

Water levels across all five Great Lakes have begun to drop in recent months as part of a long-term fall. Since 2019, the Great Lakes have seen water-level decreases of two to four feet. While experts say this is a natural decrease given the record highs the lakes have experienced since 2020, it’s happening at a time when a huge new consumer of water has appeared on the horizon: data centers.

The source of the largest single deposit of freshwater on the planet, the Great Lakes, in particular Lake Erie, are already struggling with the fallout of drought and warmer water temperatures that, at this time of year, fuel major lake-effect snowstorms, and greater than normal levels of evaporation due to the absence of ice cover. With major cities such as Chicago, Toronto, Detroit and Pittsburgh all within a few hundred miles of each other, small, under-resourced communities around the Great Lakes have become hugely attractive for data-center companies.

In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Microsoft is building what it calls the “world’s most-powerful AI data center” that is set to open early next year and expected to use up to 8.4bn gallons of municipal water from the city of Racine every year. Racine gets its water from Lake Michigan. Similar stories are playing out in Hobart, Indiana, where AWS is planning to build a data center two miles from Lake Michigan’s shoreline, and in Port Washington, Wisconsin. In Benton Harbor, Michigan, locals are concerned that a proposed $3bn data center would contribute to environmental pollution and traffic.

“The Great Lakes region, especially in states such as Illinois and Ohio, [is] among the most data-center dense states in the region. In addition to the high volumes of water used on site for cooling, our recent research found that even more water may be consumed to generate electricity to power data centers’ energy needs,” says Kirsten James, senior program director for water at Ceres, a nonprofit headquartered in Boston. “These impacts can conflict with communities’ water-resource planning efforts.” ...

Some communities are fighting back. Last month, residents of Fife Lake, Michigan, were overjoyed after hearing a plan for a data center in their town of 471 residents would be scrapped due to local opposition. Similar stories of successful opposition have played out in Indiana and elsewhere. But the data centers are fighting back. Private firms representing data center companies have often successfully sued community authorities, accusing them of illegally excluding certain types of developments, making small towns powerless in the battle to keep out giant water-guzzling corporations.

Arctic endured year of record heat as climate scientists warn of ‘winter being redefined’

The Arctic endured a year of record heat and shrunken sea ice as the world’s northern latitudes continue a rapid shift to becoming rainier and less ice-bound due to the climate crisis, scientists have reported. From October 2024 to September 2025, temperatures across the entire Arctic region were the hottest in 125 years of modern record keeping, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said, with the last 10 years being the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic.

The Arctic is heating up as much as four times as quickly as the global average, due to the burning of fossil fuels, and this extra heat is warping the world’s refrigerator – a region that acts as a key climate regulator for the rest of the planet.

The maximum extent of sea ice in 2025 was the lowest in the 47-year satellite record, Noaa reported on in its annual Arctic report card. This is the latest landmark in a longer trend, with the region’s oldest, thickest ice declining by more than 95% since the 1980s as the Arctic becomes hotter and rainier. This year was a record for precipitation in the Arctic. Much of this is not settling as snow – the June snow cover extent over the Arctic today is half of what it was six decades ago.

“This year was the warmest on record and had the most precipitation on record – to see both of those things happen in one year is remarkable,” said Matthew Langdon Druckenmiller, an Arctic scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado and an editor of the Arctic report card. “This year has really underscored what is to come.”

Scientists have been struck by how exceptional warmth in other seasons, particularly summer, is now becoming evident in winter too, affecting the annual growth of sea ice across the Arctic in its coldest months. In the past month or so, sea ice extent has been the lowest on record, potentially heralding another reduced maximum for sea ice next year.

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Also of Interest

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

A Story of a 1930s Uprising Against British Colonialism Is Key To Understanding Gaza Today

UK Drops ‘Terror’ Case vs Journalist on Gaza

Polish PM Says US Has Pledged To Take Military Action Against Russia If It Violates Future Ukraine Ceasefire

Flim Flam Theater Of Peace Talks On Ukraine

Surging Home Building Costs Caused by Trump Tariffs Could Result in 450,000 Fewer Homes by 2030

Tucker Carlson : War, Peace, Trump, and the Constitution

How Did Epstein Make His Fortune? "He Stole It," Finds NYT Investigation

Erika Kirk CAUGHT BLATANTLY LYING About Egyptian Planes!

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A Little Night Music

Charlie Musselwhite – Crazy For My Baby

Charlie Musselwhite - Help Yo'self

Charles Musselwhite Blues Band – Everybody Needs Somebody

Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band – My Baby

Charles Musselwhite Blues Band – Little By Little

Charlie Musselwhite – Cut You Loose

Charlie Musselwhite, Harvey Mandel, Barry Goldberg – Lost Love

Charley Musselwhite's South Side Band – No More Lonely Nights

Charlie Musselwhite - Times Gettin' Tougher Than Tough

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