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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Martha Reeves & the Vandellas

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features early Motown girl group Martha Reeves & the Vandellas. Enjoy!

^{Martha Reeves & the Vandellas - Dancing In The Street}

"We must recognise the essential underlaying savagery in the animal called man, and return to older and sounder principles of national life and defense. We must realise that man's nature will remain the same so long as he remains man; that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake."

-- H. P. Lovecraft

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News and Opinion

Can a Truce in Lebanon Hold and Pave the Way for a Wider Peace?

On November 26th, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement for a 60-day truce, during which Israel and Hezbollah are both supposed to withdraw from the area of Lebanon south of the Litani River.

The agreement is based on the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the previous Israeli assault on Lebanon in 2006. The truce will be enforced by 5,000 to 10,000 Lebanese troops and the UN’s 10,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping force, which has operated in that area since 1978 and includes troops from 46 countries.

The truce has broad international support, including from Iran and Hamas. Israel and Hezbollah were apparently glad to take a break from a war that had become counterproductive for them both. Effective resistance prevented Israeli forces from advancing far into Lebanon, and they were inflicting mostly senseless death and destruction on civilians, as in Gaza, but without the genocidal motivation of that campaign.

People all over Lebanon have welcomed the relief from Israeli bombing, the destruction of their towns and neighborhoods, and thousands of casualties. In Beirut, people have started returning to their homes.

In the south, the Israeli military has warned residents on both sides of the border not to return yet. It has declared a new buffer zone (which was not part of the truce agreement) that includes 60 villages north of the border, and has warned that it will attack Lebanese civilians who return to that area. Despite these warnings, thousands of displaced people have been returning to south Lebanon, often to find their homes and villages in ruins.

Many people returning to the south still proudly display the yellow flags of Hezbollah. A flag flying over the ruins of Tyre has the words “Made in the USA” written across it, a reminder that the Lebanese people know very well who made the bombs that have killed and maimed so many thousands of them.

There are already many reports of cease-fire violations. Israel shot and wounded two journalists soon after the truce went into effect, and then, two days after the cease-fire, Israel attacked five towns near the border with tanks, fired artillery across the border and conducted airstrikes on southern Lebanon. On December 2nd, Hezbollah finally retaliated with mortar fire in the disputed Shebaa Farms area, and Israel responded with heavier strikes on two villages, killing eleven people.

An addendum to the truce agreement granted Israel the right to strike at will whenever it believes Hezbollah is violating the truce, giving it what Netanyahu called “complete military freedom of action,” which makes this a precarious and one-sided peace at best.

The prospect for a full withdrawal of both Israeli and Hezbollah forces in 60 days seems slim, since Hezbollah has built large weapons stockpiles in the south that it will not want to abandon, and Netanyahu himself has warned that the truce “can be short.”

Then there is the danger of confrontation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese military, raising the specter of Lebanon’s bloody civil war, which killed an estimated 150,000 people between 1975 and 1990.

So violence could flare up into full-scale war again at any time, making it unlikely that many Israelis will return to homes near the border with Lebanon, Israel’s original publicly stated purpose for the war.

The truce agreement was brokered by the United States and France, and signed by the European Union, Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. France was a colonial power in Lebanon and plays a leading role in UNIFIL, but Israel initially rejected France as a negotiating partner. It seems to have accepted France’s role only when the Macron government agreed not to enforce the ICC arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu if he comes to France.

The U.K. also signed the original truce proposal on November 25th, but doesn’t appear to have signed the final truce agreement. The U.K. seems to have withdrawn from the negotiations under U.S. and Israeli pressure because, unlike France, its new Labour government has publicly stated that it will comply with the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant - although it has not explicitly said it would arrest them.

Netanyahu justified the truce to his own people by saying that it will allow Israeli forces to focus on Gaza and Iran, and only die-hard “security” minister Ben-Gvir voted against the truce in the Israeli cabinet.

While there were hopes that the truce in Lebanon might set the stage for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel’s actions on the ground tell a different story. Satellite images show Israel carrying out new mass demolitions of hundreds of buildings in northern Gaza to build a new road or boundary between Gaza City and North Gaza. This may be a new border to separate the northernmost 17% of Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip, so that Israel can expel its people and prevent them from returning, hand North Gaza over to Israeli settlers and squeeze the desperate, starving survivors in Gaza into an even smaller area than before.

And for all who had hopes that the cease-fire in Lebanon might lead to a regional de-escalation, those hopes were dashed in Syria, when, on the very day of the truce, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a surprise offensive. HTS was formerly the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front. It rebranded itself and severed its formal link to al-Qaeda in 2016 to avoid becoming a prime target in the U.S. war in Syria, but the U.S. still brands it as a terrorist group.

By December 1st, HTS managed to seize control of Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, forcing the Syrian Arab Army and its Russian allies onto the defensive. With Russian and Syrian jets bombing rebel-held territory, the surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent, destabilizing front reopening in the Middle East.

This may also be a prelude to an escalation of attacks on Syria by Israel, which has already attacked Syria more than 220 times since October 2023, with Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments killing at least 296 people.

The new HTS offensive most likely has covert U.S. support, and may impact Trump’s reported intention to withdraw the 900 U.S. troops still based in Syria. It may also impact his nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard is a long-time critic of U.S. support for al-Qaeda-linked factions in Syria, so the new HTS offensive sets the stage for an explosive confirmation hearing, which may backfire on Syria hawks in Washington if Gabbard is allowed to make her case.

Elsewhere in the region, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and war on its neighbors have led to widespread anti-Israel and anti-U.S. resistance.

Where the United States was once able to buy off Arab rulers with weapons deals and military alliances, the Arab and Muslim world is coalescing around a position that sees Israel’s behavior as unacceptable and Iran as a threatened neighbor rather than an enemy. Unconditional U.S. support for Israel risks permanently downgrading U.S. relations with former allies, from Iraq, Jordan and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Yemen’s Ansar Allah (or Houthi) government has maintained a blockade of the Red Sea, using missiles and drones against Israeli-linked ships heading for the Israeli port of Eilat or the Suez Canal. The Yemenis have defeated a U.S.-led naval task force sent to break the blockade and have reduced shipping through the Suez Canal by at least two-thirds, forcing shipping companies to reroute most ships all the way around Africa. The port of Eilat filed for bankruptcy in July, after only one ship docked there in several months.

Other resistance forces have conducted attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, and U.S. forces have retaliated in a low-grade tit-for-tat war. The Iraqi government has strongly condemned U.S. and Israeli attacks in Iraq as violations of its sovereignty. Attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have flared up again in recent months, while Iraqi resistance forces have also launched drone attacks on Israel.

An emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on November 26th voted unanimously to support Iraq and condemn Israeli threats. U.S.-Iraqi talks in September drew up a plan for hundreds of U.S. troops to leave Iraq in 2025 and for all 2,500 to be gone within two years. The U.S. has outmaneuvered previous withdrawal plans, but the days of these very unwelcome U.S. bases must surely be numbered.

Recent meetings of Arab and Muslim states have forged a growing sense of unity around a rejection of U.S. proposals for normalization of relations with Israel and a new solidarity with Palestine and Iran. At a meeting of Islamic nations in Riyadh on November 11th, Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin-Salman publicly called the Israeli massacre in Gaza a genocide for the first time.

Arab and Muslim countries know that Trump may act unpredictably and that they need a stable common position to avoid becoming pawns to Trump or Netanyahu. They recognize that previous divisions left them vulnerable to exploitation by the United States and Israel, which contributed to the current crisis in Palestine and the risk of a major regional war that now looms over them.

On November 29th, Saudi and Western officials told Reuters that Saudi Arabia has given up on a new military alliance with the U.S., which would include normalizing relations with Israel, and is opting for a more limited U.S. weapons deal.

The Saudis had hoped for a treaty that included a U.S. commitment to defend them, like U.S. treaties with Japan and South Korea. That would require confirmation by the U.S. Senate, which would demand Saudi recognition of Israel in return. But the Saudis can no longer consider recognizing Israel without a viable plan for Palestinian statehood, which Israel rejects.

On the other hand, Saudi relations with Iran are steadily improving since they restored relations 18 months ago with diplomatic help from China and Iraq. At a meeting with new Iranian prime minister Pezeshkian in Qatar on October 3rd, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan declared, "We seek to close the page of differences between the two countries forever and work towards the resolution of our issues and expansion of our relations like two friendly and brotherly states.”

Prince Faisal highlighted the "very sensitive and critical" situation in the region due to Israel's "aggressions" against Gaza and Lebanon and its attempts to expand the conflict. He said Saudi Arabia trusted Iran's “wisdom and discernment” in managing the situation to restore calm and peace.

If Saudi Arabia and its neighbors can make peace with Iran, what will the consequences be for Israel’s illegal, genocidal occupation of Palestine, which has been enabled and encouraged by decades of unconditional U.S. military and diplomatic support?

On December 2, Trump wrote on Truth Social that if the hostages were not released by the time of his inauguration, there would be “ ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East.” “Those responsible,” he warned, “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”

Trump and many of his acolytes exemplify the Western arrogance and lust for imperial power that lies at the root of this crisis. More threats and more destruction are not the answer. Trump has had good relations with the dictatorial rulers of the Gulf states, with whom he shares much in common. If he is willing to listen, he will realize, like they do, that there is no solution to this crisis without freedom, self-determination, and sovereignty in their own land for the people of Palestine. That is the path to peace, if he will take it.

Phil Giraldi : Will Netanyahu Be Held Accountable?

Craig Murray: Lebanon’s Teetering Ceasefire

Only Israel has opened fire since the start of the “ceasefire”, and Israel has done so repeatedly. Nobody has fired back. Since the ceasefire was agreed, Israel has attacked alleged Hezbollah rocket sites with bombs or missiles, killing at least four people and probably more. Israel has opened fire on journalists. It has critically wounded two mourners at a funeral. There are numerous reports of Lebanese civilians returning to their homes in the South coming under fire from Israeli troops.

Israel has also used the “ceasefire” to advance its forces including tanks into towns and villages from which they had been repulsed and which Israel could not take by fighting. It has entrenched positions in Southern Lebanon, issued orders to Lebanese civilians not to return to over 60 villages in South Lebanon — none of which it had managed to permanently occupy in the fighting — and is reinforcing, re-arming and re-equipping.

Israel in fact is treating the “ceasefire” as unconditional surrender. All of this was entirely predictable, not only from Israel’s past and normal behaviour, but also on the face of the “ceasefire” document itself, which is a wildly unbalanced document. ...

Lebanon can do nothing to monitor or prevent the reinforcement of Israeli positions in Southern Lebanon (spoiler — Israel has no intention of ever withdrawing) because the ceasefire stipulates not only that the Israeli army has 60 days leisure to leave Southern Lebanon, but that in those 60 days the Lebanese armed forces cannot enter the areas Israel is occupying: including not taking control of their own Southern border and thus they cannot check what troops and weapons Israel is moving across unopposed. ...

The United States is a party to the conflict. The bombs falling on Lebanese heads are American bombs, dropping from American planes. The United States is put in charge of the “peace” by this agreement. The U.S., as the current imperial hegemon is having its coat carried by the former colonial power France, in exchange for which honour France granted immunity to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. People in Lebanon are desperate for peace. It is at United States insistence that Lebanon has no air defences – historically the USA insisted on removal of those given by Syria, and the USA has ensured they were never replaced. The USA is holding Lebanon down for Israel to violate. The United States wants to see Lebanon divided, weak and at the mercy of Israel, and wants to see a reduction of the Shia population.

Matt Hoh : Voices of Resistance

UN Says Food Availability Has Hit 'All-Time Low' in Gaza as Forced Famine Takes Hold

A top official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that food availability across Gaza has reached "an all-time low" under Israel's suffocating blockade, which has heavily restricted the entrance of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and plunged the enclave into famine.

"Food supply has sharply deteriorated," FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt. "The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow. Food, medicine, and fuel are self-evident priorities, but we must also prioritize the ability to grow food locally where it is needed most to ensure survival."

Bechdol's grim assessment came weeks after the Biden administration pressured Israel to improve conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been utterly devastated by more than a year of bombing.

Aid organizations say that far from improving, Gaza's humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the Biden administration threatened to cut off the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel. Last month, the U.S. effectively dropped its pressure campaign by concluding that Israel was not violating international law by blocking American humanitarian assistance.

Most of Gaza's population is currently experiencing "high levels of food insecurity," according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) figures, and the "risk of Famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip."

In addition to obstructing aid deliveries, Israeli forces have decimated Gaza's agricultural infrastructure and cropland, repeatedly attacked aid workers, and facilitated the looting of humanitarian supplies, fueling desperation among Gaza's starving population. Last week, as The Associated Press reported, "two children and a woman were crushed to death... as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory."

Amina Mohammed, the U.N.'s deputy secretary-general, said at the Cairo conference on Monday that "conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are appalling and apocalyptic," with malnutrition running "rampant" and famine "imminent."

"In the past four months alone, nearly 19,000 children were hospitalized due to acute malnutrition—nearly double the cases in the first half of the year," Mohammed said. "In the face of the gigantic needs, humanitarian aid is—outrageously—being blocked. This flies in the face of the clear requirements under international humanitarian law to respect and to protect civilians and to ensure their essential needs are met."

"It's past time for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages," she added. "The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away."

Ex-Israeli Defense Chief: Israel Guilty of Ethnic Cleansing

Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli defense minister and army chief, has caused an uproar in Israel by publicly accusing the Israeli government of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in Gaza.

Twenty-four hours after he first made the remark he was invited by a television interviewer on Monday to apologize. He refused. “What I said accurately reflects what’s happening on the ground,” he said, adding that he intentionally used the term “ethnic cleansing.”

Ya’alon defined it as “evacuating civilians from their homes and demolishing those homes, as is happening in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya,” in northern Gaza. In his initial remarks, Ya’alon said Israel’s aim in Gaza was to “conquer, to annex, to purify an ethnic identity.” He added: “They are cleansing the area from the Arabs.”

Ya’alon is not blaming the IDF, but the government, whose extremist ministers like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotritch “have repeatedly declared their intentions to build Jewish settlements in Gaza,” according to the Haaretz daily.

“These politicians … speak openly and proudly of depleting Gaza’s population by half and building settlements on the ruins of the Strip’s destroyed cities and villages,” the newspaper said. Ya’alon said these ministers should have been issued arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Erdogan's gamble in Syria

US-Backed Kurdish Forces Attack East Syrian Villages

The Syrian Civil War and its various fronts continue to re-escalate today with the Kurdish SDF attacking, and temporarily claiming they had captured seven villages in the eastern Deir Ezzor Province. The villages are along the path between the provincial capital and the Abu Kamal border crossing with Iraq.

The villages didn’t ultimately remain in the SDF’s hands, with the Syrian Army reporting that they had repelled them after intense fighting. The decision of the SDF to attack in the first place does not appear to have been entirely their own, however.

The US not only supported the SDF attack, but according to al-Mayadeen the US military actually “instructed” the SDF’s Deir Ezzor Military Council to attack those specific villages, meant to take advantage of the recent territory losses and fighting further west between Syrian forces and the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

US involvement in the attacks didn’t end there. The US provided artillery support, firing artillery out of the Conoco outpost, which is near oil fields. The US shelled the village of Khasham, hitting it with at least 12 shells. US officials confirmed carrying out strikes in eastern Syria, hitting a tank and other targets.

Max Blumenthal : Who Is Sebastian Gorka?

South Korean Parliament Votes 190-0 to Reverse Martial Law Edict

Members of South Korea's parliament voted unanimously and across party lines on Tuesday to rescind a declaration of martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeol just hours earlier.

Following the 190-0 vote, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik declared that the president's declaration was no longer valid and vowed that the elected representatives of parliament would "protect democracy with the people."

"Through the passage of the motion through the National Assembly, the president must immediately lift the martial law," Woo said in a statement. "The declaration of the martial law is now invalid—the people [of South Korea] now can be relieved."

The effort by Yoon to impose martial law, reports Reuters, "which he cast as aimed at his political foes, was vocally opposed by the speaker of parliament and even the leader of Yoon's own [conservative] party, Han Dong-hoon, who has clashed with the president over his handling of recent scandals."

Mass Protests Force South Korean President to Revoke Shocking Martial Law Declaration After 6 Hours

South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol faces calls to resign after martial law shock

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is facing calls to quit immediately or face impeachment after a short-lived attempt to bring in martial law triggered protests and political condemnation.

The liberal opposition Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the 300-seat parliament, said on Wednesday that its lawmakers had decided to call on Yoon to stand down straightaway or they would take steps to impeach him.

“President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration was a clear violation of the constitution. It didn’t abide by any requirements to declare it,” the Democratic party said in a statement. “His martial law declaration was originally invalid and a grave violation of the constitution. It was a grave act of rebellion and provides perfect grounds for his impeachment.”

Yoon’s shock bid to impose South Korea’s first martial law in over four decades plunged the country into the deepest turmoil in its modern democratic history and caught its close allies around the world off guard.

The United States, which stations nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea to protect it from the nuclear-armed North, initially voiced deep concern at the declaration, then relief that martial law was over.

DEEP STATE MEDIA: News Outlet OVER 50% Funded By US Gov

French government teeters on brink of collapse as no-confidence vote looms

France is staring into the unknown as the minority government of the prime minister, Michel Barnier, faces near-certain defeat in a no-confidence vote that could dramatically intensify the political crisis in one of the EU’s key member states.

If the vote on Wednesday is carried, Barnier’s administration, which took office only in September, would be the first in France to be ousted with a motion of no confidence since 1962. Its fall, at the hands of the far-right and leftwing parties, would be a significant blow to Europe weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House.

The vote risked making “everything more difficult and more serious”, a sombre Barnier told MPs on Tuesday, adding that France’s situation was already “difficult in budgetary and financial terms” and “very difficult in economic and social terms”. ...

A parliamentary debate is due to start at 4pm local time, followed by a vote roughly three hours later. Two separate no-confidence motions have been tabled, by the far-left and far-right opposition, with the former widely predicted to pass.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, who is on a visit to Saudi Arabia, is expected to return to France for what the media have described as a “moment of truth” that risked “plunging France into the great political and financial unknown”.

Arizona says it will not enforce abortion ban until related lawsuit plays out

Weeks after Arizona voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, has agreed that the state will not enforce its 15-week abortion ban while a new lawsuit over the law plays out.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Maricopa county superior court on behalf of Arizona abortion providers, argues that Arizona’s 15-week ban is now unconstitutional and should be overturned.

In legal documents signed by Mayes and that will be filed alongside the lawsuit after the court formally accepts the case, Arizona agreed with providers not to prosecute people under the ban until 30 days after the litigation has wrapped up – a move that permits abortion providers in the state to resume performing abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy.

“For two years, physicians’ hands have been tied when a patient needs to end a pregnancy after 15 weeks, including when they face serious pregnancy complications. But today we can once again provide care to people who want to end their pregnancy,” Dr Eric Reuss, one of the abortion providers who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. “We hope the courts will quickly recognize the harms of Arizona’s ban and strike it down once and for all.”

The lawsuit marks the latest effort by advocates to make good on the pro-abortion rights ballot measures passed by seven states in the November elections. While these measures amended states’ constitutions to protect or expand abortion rights, they did not actually rewrite pre-existing state laws.

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Fulton County DA Fani Willis' No GOOD, Very BAD Day

Democrat legislators say, "Quick Biden, we need a distraction!"

Top House Democrat calls on Biden to pardon ‘working-class Americans’

The top Democrat in the US House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, has called on Joe Biden to pardon some “working-class Americans” after the president faced criticism for pardoning his son Hunter.

“During his final weeks in office, President Biden should exercise the high level of compassion he has consistently demonstrated throughout his life, including toward his son, and pardon on a case-by-case basis the working-class Americans in the federal prison system whose lives have been ruined by unjustly aggressive prosecutions for nonviolent offenses,” Jeffries said in a statement.

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‘It’s nonstop’: how noise pollution threatens the return of Norway’s whales

From the moment that the biologist Dr Heike Vester presses play, the sound of the static of the fjord fills the room. First comes the constant, steady rumbling of a boat engine. Then, every eight seconds, like a foreboding bass drum, comes the explosion of seismic airguns – extremely loud blasts used in oil and gas exploration that can travel vast distances underwater. And finally, dancing above it all – and at times drowned out by it – are the soaring vocalisations of whales. ...

These underwater recordings, playing from Vester’s laptop at her home near Bodø, in the Norwegian Arctic Circle, are among hundreds she has made over decades in Vestfjorden. ... The fjord, which is passed by the Gulf Stream coming up from Scotland, is visited by orcas, minke, humpback, sperm and long-finned pilot whales. Blue whales have recently made a return.

But noise pollution now threatens all that, she says. It comes from cruise liners and tourist boats (many of which do not turn off their engines even when whale-watching), cargo ships, oil and gas exploration, and the military – along with issues posed by commercial fishing nets and pollution – and is growing in frequency and volume, she says.

Unlike the majority of humans, who see with their eyes, in the darkness of the ocean whales and dolphins see with sound. It is like going into a dark room and scanning the room with a torch, she says, only for somebody to suddenly turn on a big light. “You get blinded. And that’s how it is for the whales with noise – they get blinded. “It’s not just a masking of the communication,” Vester says. “It’s also blinding their sensory organ of seeing underwater.”

There are a number of studies that have looked at the impact of loud noises on marine life, in particular on whales. A study in 2022 found narwhals disturbed by seismic airguns changed their behaviour in a way that could affect their ability to forage. It has also been proposed that human-made underwater sounds could be a contributory factor in mass whale strandings, such as the one seen in Scotland in July, when 77 pilot whales died on a beach.

The most expensive US property for sale is a mere $295m – and likely to flood

A sprawling Florida mansion set beside a powdery white sand beach overlooking the azure Gulf of Mexico is currently the most expensive property listed for sale in the United States, yours for a mere $295m. It is also in one of the most vulnerable places in the country to climate-driven disasters, and faces an almost inevitable flooding event in the coming years. ...

“It’s almost a certainty this property will experience a flood,” said Jeremy Porter, climate risk researcher at First Street Foundation, a non-profit flood analysis group. According to First Street modeling, the $295m Gordon Pointe property has a 68% risk of flooding in the next 15 years and an almost guaranteed 95% chance of a flood over the next three decades. Its flood exposure is “severe” and its risk from winds is “extreme” according to climate threat ratings that now appear on Zillow property listings.

“It is a beautiful area, people here want access to the water and the beaches but it’s extremely exposed to flooding,” Porter said. “These are basically properties built on water.” ...

Mangroves, marshes and protective sand dunes have been swept aside here so multimillion-dollar developments can sit as close as possible to the sea, which is 6in higher than it was in the 1990s and is accelerating upwards due to the burning of fossil fuels. ... “There has been building right out on to the beach, we are very low-lying, we don’t have good dune fortifications now and no one really thought about storm surge here until Ian happened,” said Michael Savarese, a geology and climate expert at Florida Gulf Coast University, about Naples’ exposure. “The entire region is highly vulnerable to nuisance flooding and storm surge and if we keep having storms like the last two years there’s no time to catch our breath.”

Protection deal for Amazon rainforest in peril as big business turns up heat

One of the cornerstones of Amazon rainforest protection – the Soy Moratorium – is under unprecedented pressure from Brazilian agribusiness organisations, politicians, and global trading companies, the Guardian has learned. Soy is one of the most widely grown crops in Brazil, and posed a huge deforestation threat to the Amazon rainforest until stakeholders voluntarily agreed to impose a moratorium and no longer source it from the region in 2006.

The voluntary agreement brought together farmers, environmentalists and international food companies such as Cargill and McDonald’s, and decided that any detection of soy planted on areas deforested after 2008 would result in the farm being blocked from supply chains, regardless of whether the land clearance was legal in Brazil. In the 18 years since, the moratorium has been hailed as a conservation success story that improved the reputation of global brands, enabled soy production to expand significantly without Amazon destruction and prevented an estimated 17,000 square kilometres of deforestation.

But next week the main soybean body – the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (ABIOVE) – will ballot its members about a reform that conservation groups say would gut its effectiveness and embarrass the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of next year’s COP30 climate conference in Belém. The association is proposing a change in the way the moratorium is monitored. Instead of assessing an entire farm, it breaks down the analysis to the level of individual fields, which would allow growers to pick and choose which areas of their land are in compliance. ...

But conservation groups warn this reform would create a huge loophole and they have threatened to withdraw from the moratorium if it goes ahead. “The question this raises is why the leadership of ABIOVE is pressing ahead with this vote, when it appears to undermine the commitments of its member companies,” said David Cleary, global director for agriculture in the Nature Conservancy. ‘The proposed changes to shift to a sub-farm level monitoring system make it possible for farmers to sell to moratorium companies from one part of the farm and non-moratorium companies from another. The monitoring of the moratorium has worked well since 2008. If it isn’t broken, it doesn’t need fixing.”

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Also of Interest

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

Ray McGovern: Neocons Try Again in Syria

Russia Accuses Ukraine of Supporting Al-Qaeda-Linked Fighters in Syria

Hamas Responds to Trump’s Threat, Says It Should Be Directed at Netanyahu

Israel's military attache in Belgium referred to ICC for alleged war crimes

Mirror Action - China To Block 'Dual Use' Exports To U.S. War Mongers

Streets on fire: Is Georgia opposition forming up a coup?

South Korea’s 6-Hour Martial Law

Watchdogs Say World's Richest Man Elon Musk Has 'Declared War on Social Security'

Poverty in Lahaina has doubled after 2023 wildfire: ‘We’re cutting down on what we eat’

Millions of Mexican Americans were deported in the 1930s. Are we about to repeat this ‘ethnic cleansing’?

Biden’s Pardon Way Worse Than You Thought!!

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A Little Night Music

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - Nowhere to Run

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - My Baby Loves Me

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - Come And Get These Memories

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas ~ Heat Wave

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas ~ Honey Chile

Martha and the Vandellas - I Should Be Proud

Martha Reeves & the Vandellas - Jimmy Mack

Martha Reeves & the Vandellas - Quicksand

Martha Reeves & the Vandellas - I'm ready for love

Martha & The Vandellas - A Love Like Yours

Martha Reeves & the Vandellas - Easily Persuaded

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