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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Fleetwood Mac

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features British blues-rock group Fleetwood Mac. Enjoy!

^{Fleetwood Mac – Just The Blues}

"Never underestimate the incompetence of government."

-- James Cook

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News and Opinion

If Israel Wants To Be An “Independent Nation”, Let It Be An Independent Nation

In a continuation of the Democratic Party’s weird new tactic of trying to assign Benjamin Netanyahu all the blame for the PR crisis caused by Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the Israeli prime minister on Thursday and called for new elections in Israel.

“As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” said Schumer, adding, “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.”

Netanyahu’s Likud party responded with an indignant statement saying that Schumer is “expected to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it.”

“Israel is not a banana republic, but an independent and proud democracy that elected Prime Minister Netanyahu,” the statement said.

Fmr Prime Minister Naftali Bennett:

Regardless of our political opinion, we strongly oppose external political intervention in Israel's internal affairs.

We are an independent nation, not a banana republic.

With the threat of terrorism on its way to the West, it would be best…

— Naftali Bennett (@naftalibennett) March 14, 2024

“Regardless of our political opinion, we strongly oppose external political intervention in Israel’s internal affairs. We are an independent nation, not a banana republic,” echoed former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

“With the threat of terrorism on its way to the West, it would be best if the international community would assist Israel in its just war, thereby also protecting their countries,” Bennett added, an assertion that is ridiculous in multiple ways. There’s no basis for the claim that the threat of terrorism is growing in the west, there is no basis for the claim that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a “just war”, and there is no basis for the suggestion that helping Israel kill Palestinians in Gaza makes the western world safer in any way.

The Israeli right wing’s repeated use of the term “banana republic” is both pointed and revealing. The term was coined in 1904 by O Henry to describe the Central American states which US imperialists ruled with an iron fist in order to exploit their people’s labor at robbery prices for the immensely profitable export of tropical fruit. The insinuation being that it’s fine when the US dictates the governmental affairs of the brown-skinned people south of its own border, but it’s unacceptable for the US to do this to Israel.

We saw this point driven home in even starker terms with a Council on Foreign Relations piece titled “Schumer’s Attack on an Ally at War” by virulent neocon Elliott Abrams. Abrams calls Schumer’s mild finger-wagging “an unconscionable interference in the internal politics of another democracy”, claiming the American senator is trying to treat Israel like a “colony” of the United States by controlling its internal affairs. Which is hilarious, given that just a few years ago Abrams was openly working to stage a coup in Venezuela under the Trump administration.

More to the point though, we should probably pay attention to this absurd claim that Israel is an “independent” nation.

Calling Israel an independent nation is like calling a fetus in the womb an independent person. It’s like looking at a man in a hospital bed whose body is full of tubes and medical devices who needs to be manually repositioned every two hours to prevent him from getting pressure sores, and calling him independent.

Israel is as dependent as a nation can possibly be. It literally cannot exist without the direct military backing of the most powerful empire of all time, namely the United States and its globe-spanning network of allies and assets.

Last November a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick told a columnist with the Jewish News Syndicate, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

That is not how one talks about an “independent nation”.

Israel knows it’s fully dependent on the US empire, which is why it pours so much energy into lobbying in the US and its imperial member states like the UK. Israel cannot exist without nonstop violence, and it cannot sustain that nonstop violence without the backing of the US imperial war machine.

The reason Israel cannot exist without nonstop violence is because it is an artificial nation that was simply dropped on top of a pre-existing civilization whose inhabitants and neighbors had a deeply-rooted way of living which was massively disrupted by the sudden imposition of a newly created ethnostate ruled by people who’d never lived there before. Its emergence was so forced and unnatural that Zionists literally revived a dead middle eastern language called Hebrew and made it their national language so they could LARP as indigenous people speaking in their native tongue.

Because this alien synthetic ethnostate was abruptly forced upon an ancient pre-existing civilization with no regard for the humanity of the people living there, ever since this occurred the region’s indigenous populations have been rejecting it like a body rejecting an ill-matched organ. The only way for the state of Israel to remain the state of Israel is therefore to exist in a continuous state of war, like a house that can only remain standing if it’s got a giant team of construction workers toiling in perpetuity to stop it from falling over.

But if Israeli right-wingers wants to pretend none of this is happening, that’s fine. Let Israel be an “independent nation” if that’s what they want. Stop sending it arms, stop being its ally, stop bombing Yemen, Iraq and Syria in facilitation of its current military onslaught, stop providing it with intelligence, training and logistics support, stop operating in tandem with its military and intelligence services in the region, stop allowing its lobbyists and influence campaigns to operate in the United States, and stop providing its atrocities with diplomatic cover and mass media narrative spin. See how long Israel can stand independently if that occurs.

Of course, it won’t happen. The managers of the US empire know their agendas of global hegemony benefit greatly from having a fully dependent and intimate ally in a region as geostrategically crucial as the middle east (which is why they allow the Israel lobby to continue to exist), and Israel knows it isn’t actually independent in any meaningful sense of the word. But the fact that the US and Israel are so inextricable shows what a joke it is to pretend that this is a normal nation independently going about its own affairs like any other.

INTEL Roundtable with Johnson & McGovern: Biden/Putin; Schumer/Netanyahu

Revealed: How the global oil industry is fueling Israel’s war on Gaza

Israeli jets and tanks bombarding Palestinians are being fueled by some of the world’s most profitable fossil fuel companies – and US tax-payers, according to research. Israel relies on crude oil and refined products from overseas to run its large fleet of fighter jets, tanks and other military vehicles.

The research, which was commissioned by the non-profit Oil Change International and shared exclusively with the Guardian, examines this fuel supply chain, which since the current conflict in Gaza began appears to have relied heavily on fossil fuels from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Brazil, Gabon and the US. The analysis by Data Desk, a UK-based tech consultancy firm investigating the fossil fuel industry, suggests the major oil companies facilitating the fuel supplies include BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies.

The analysis suggests that Israel has received three US tankers of JP8 jet fuel in the form of military aid since October 2023. One left the US before the current assault on Gaza began, departing from the Bill Greehey refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, on 22 September. Vessels delivering oil and fuel recently appear to have been turning off their automatic identification system (AIS) signal before reaching Israel, possibly for security reasons.

The other two departed after the conflict was under way: one appears to have departed on 6 December 2023, when more than 16,000 Palestinians had already been killed. The third left Texas on 9 February 2024 – two weeks after the international court of justice’s interim ruling that Israel could plausibly be committing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in occupied Gaza. A satellite image appears to show the tanker at Israel’s Ashkelon terminal on 6 March, when the Palestinian death toll had risen to 30,000.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has continued since the ICJ ordered the Israeli government to prevent any genocidal act. The ICJ ruling has legal implications for countries and corporations, which must ensure they are not complicit in genocidal acts. Human rights experts said that countries and corporations supplying oil to Israeli armed forces may be complicit in war crimes and genocide. “The countries and companies that have continued to supply oil to the Israeli military since the decision of the international court of justice are contributing to horrible human rights violations and may be complicit in genocide,” said David Boyd, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment.

Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: US War Crimes in Gaza

Israel kills more than 60 Gazans in latest breadline massacre

Israeli troops carried out yet another massacre of Gazans waiting to receive food aid Thursday, killing 60 people and injuring 160, the Euro-Med Monitor reported. The shooting took place in the Kuwait roundabout on the outskirts of Gaza City. People seeking aid were targeted with gunfire from tanks, helicopters and drones. Footage circulating on social media showed dozens of bodies lying close together, covered in blood.

The massacre appeared to be the largest since February 29, when Israeli forces killed 112 people and injured 700 more when they opened fire on people attempting to receive aid in the same location.

Commenting on the latest killing, the Euro-Med Monitor wrote, “Amid conditions of famine created by Israel’s government, the Israeli army continues to deliberately commit massacres in the besieged enclave. The Israeli targeting of civilians while they attempt to obtain humanitarian aid has persisted for the fifth consecutive day now, with the total number of casualties from the ‘Flour Massacres’ reaching over 500 deaths.”

Survivors of the massacre described how they were attempting to gather food for their starving families when Israeli forces abruptly opened fire. One survivor, Ibrahim Al-Najjar, said, according to the Euro-Med Monitor, that “he tried to get a bag of flour for his children at the Kuwait roundabout, but that he and others were subjected to live ammunition and artillery shells despite gathering in an area previously designated as safe by Israel’s army.”

In a statement, Gaza’s Health Ministry called the attack “a new, premeditated massacre.”

Thursday’s act of mass murder took place just one day after Israeli troops killed six Palestinians waiting for aid in the same location.

Funding cuts to UN aid agency threaten new crisis in Lebanon

Dr Qassem Salah’s 6,500 patients include many with life-threatening conditions. His small clinic in Beirut’s Mar Elias refugee camp treats cancer patients, those in need of open-heart surgery and at least two people with acute schizophrenia. It is operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), which supports up to 250,000 Palestinians in Lebanon. They are ineligible for state healthcare but priced out of the private market, says Salah: “There is no alternative for Palestinians.” Without Unrwa, he says, his most critically ill patients “surely will die”.

Palestinians in Lebanon rely on Unrwa for basic services such as healthcare and education. The decision by more than a dozen donors – which together contributed about two-thirds of Unrwa’s funding last year – to freeze payments has left the organisation’s operations facing collapse. After Israel alleged that Unrwa staff members took part in the 7 October attacks, which killed more than 1,200 people, donors threatened to cut $450m (£350m) funding from the $880m budget, just as the need for its services in Gaza was at its peak. Cuts also threaten its activities in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

The Lebanese government is warning that the suspension of Unrwa’s services could create a humanitarian catastrophe that threatens the country’s stability. Unrwa runs 150 sites across Lebanon on a budget of about $180m a year, according to Unrwa’s director there, Dorothée Klaus. ...

Palestinians are barred from attending Lebanon’s schools, accessing state healthcare or owning property in the country. Most Palestinians in employment have low-paying jobs in the informal sector, but since the economic crisis hit in 2019, these jobs have become harder to find. A recent Unrwa recruitment drive for 30 sanitation workers received 38,000 applicants, including many with higher degrees. Unrwa is one of the few employers offering white-collar positions to Palestinians. “It is the dream of every Palestinian to find a job there,” says Tarek Moneim, chief executive of Initiate, a programme that supports empowerment and entrepreneurship among young Palestinians in Lebanon.

For young Palestinians in particular, Moneim says it is “super-difficult” to earn an income. Children growing up in the camps “start to lose hope and ambition”, he says, seeing few opportunities for themselves beyond emigrating to Europe or joining a militant group at home. “Without Unrwa, I see a lot of violence inside the camps and a humanitarian crisis,” he says. “If it ever collapses, it will be a black day.”

Geez, Chuckie, don't you know that Aipac has six ways from Sunday at getting back at you? Are you tired of your phoney baloney job?

Schumer faces backlash after calling for new Israeli elections to oust Netanyahu

Chuck Schumer, the US Senate leader and a top ally of Joe Biden, on Thursday broke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his handling of the invasion of Gaza and called for Israel to hold new elections, in comments that upset its ruling party and allies on Capitol Hill. The shift by Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States, came as he continued to press lawmakers to pass a military assistance package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, the countries Biden has named as America’s top national security priorities.

In remarks from the Senate floor, Schumer said he had a longstanding relationship with Netanyahu but believed he “has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel”. Noting the prime minister’s inclusion of far-right officials in his government, Schumer said Netanyahu “has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah”.

Israel’s ruling Likud party responded to Schumer by defending the prime minister’s public support and saying Israel is “not a banana republic”.

“Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza,” it said in a statement. “Senator Schumer is expected to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it. This is always true, and even more so in wartime.”

Ooopsie! Another Dem says he wants Aipac to pick him off:

Biden’s ‘bear-hugging’ of Netanyahu a strategic mistake, key Democrat says

Joe Biden has committed a “strategic mistake” by “bear-hugging” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he prosecutes war with Hamas, a leading congressional progressive Democrat and Biden campaign surrogate said. “The bear-hugging of Netanyahu has been a strategic mistake,” Ro Khanna said, accusing the Israeli leader of conducting “a callous war” in Gaza, in defiance of the United States.

Speaking to One Decision, a podcast co-hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former British intelligence chief, Khanna, from California, also called Netanyahu “insufferably arrogant”, for acting as if he is “somehow an equal” to Biden. ...

“What I disagree with and sort of the media narrative on this [is that] Netanyahu and Biden, somehow they’re equals,” Khanna said.

“They’re not. We’re the greatest superpower in the world. We’re giving Netanyahu weapons. He needs to be deferential with respect to the American president, whoever that is. And I find it insufferably arrogant for him to act as if he’s somehow an equal to the American president. And that’s just going to rub people the wrong way.

“So if he defies the American secretary of defense, the American president, then we should stop the arms shipments now. We can stop the offensive arms shipments … I voted for defensive funding and we need to continue to protect Israel against an invasion from Hezbollah or Iran. But we certainly shouldn’t be giving Netanyahu the offensive weapons to go kill more people in Gaza when he’s acting in defiance to the president of the United States.

“You can act as an equal if you’re not begging for weapons at the same time.”

Washington and Georgia protest votes raise pressure on Biden over Gaza war

The protest vote against President Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza continued in Washington and Georgia this week, where thousands of voters chose no one, sending a message to the president that their votes depend on a ceasefire.

Washington, a reliably blue state, saw support from local elected officials and major unions in its multi-faith push for “uncommitted” delegates. They spent about $20,000 and began organizing on 24 February. More than 56,000 voters selected uncommitted delegates on the ballots counted so far, though more than 200,000 ballots remain uncounted there as of Thursday morning.

Georgia’s ballot didn’t have an uncommitted option, so organizers there put together a “leave it blank” campaign, calling on voters to cast a ballot, but not fill it out, to send a message to Biden on Gaza. Nearly 6,500 voters there left it blank. And nearly 9,000 voters chose Marianne Williamson, which some protest voters have selected because she supports a ceasefire. Combined, the votes exceed Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020, which was about 12,000 votes. ...

The uncommitted movement started in Michigan’s presidential primary, where more than 100,000 Democratic voters chose the protest vote in a state with a large proportion of Muslim and Arab Americans. Next, Super Tuesday saw several states push for uncommitted, with Minnesota seeing the highest percentage of such voters, at 19%. Then came Hawaii, where 29% of voters in a low-turnout primary voted for uncommitted. All three states got enough votes to earn delegates to the Democratic national convention in August.

Like the states that came before them, Washington and Georgia organized quickly and with little money to reach out to voters and spread the message that their vote could be used for “uncommitted delegates” in Washington or left blank in Georgia.

Ukr Bad Day: Putin Calls Macron Bluff, No West Troops Ukr; Belgorod Disaster; Rus Chasov Yar Canal

Jimmy Tells American General “The U.S. Is The World’s Biggest Terrorist!”

A year in prison is not enough:

Mississippi police officer pleads guilty to forcing prisoner to drink his own urine

A Mississippi police officer pleaded guilty on Thursday to a federal misdemeanor charge after authorities accused him of forcing a prisoner to drink his own urine.

In court filings, first reported by the Daily Beast, prosecutors for the US district court for the southern district of Mississippi alleged that the patrol officer, Michael Christian Green, ordered a prisoner to lick up his own urine after the man had urinated in the corner of his holding cell.

The incident took place at the Pearl police department in Pearl, Mississippi, a town outside Jackson, the state’s capital, and was captured on security cameras. ...

According to court documents, Green and other officers were dispatched to a family disturbance call where they arrested a man, whom court documents refer to as “BE”, on 23 December.

After being placed in a holding cell, BE tried to communicate with Green about needing to urinate. After waiting, BE went to the back of the cell and urinated in a corner.

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Judge denies Trump’s request to throw out classified documents case

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of retaining classified documents has rejected an effort by his lawyers to throw out the case, indicating that their argument that the law is too vague is a question for a jury at trial. The two-page ruling from the US district judge Aileen Cannon came on Thursday evening after a daylong hearing in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida. Throughout the hearing, Cannon expressed reservations about the former president’s complaints against the case.

Trump had asked the judge to dismiss the indictment on several fronts, including one dubious argument that the Espionage Act was “unconstitutionally vague” because it gave insufficient notice of the penalties for a former president retaining classified documents.

The other argument at issue at the hearing was Trump’s contention that the Presidential Records Act meant that, as president, he could convert classified documents into personal records, meaning he was authorized to keep them at his Mar-a-Lago club. But Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, appeared skeptical of both claims. She did not immediately rule from the bench but issued her decision denying the vagueness argument within hours of the conclusion of the hearing.

The claim based on the Presidential Records Act is widely expected to be denied as well. Classified documents are considered property of the US government and Cannon remarked she found it “difficult to see” how Trump’s argument he turned them into personal documents “gets you to the dismissal of the indictment”.

Fani Willis Ordered to STEP ASIDE By Georgia Judge, Or FIRE Nathan Wade

Analysis Shows 'Unprecedented Surge' of Dark Money Ahead of 2024 Elections

Dark money groups are spending at record levels in their efforts to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. elections, an analysis published Wednesday by OpenSecrets revealed.

According to the watchdog, the "unprecedented surge" in spending by dark money groups—which, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling don't have to disclose their donors—topped $162 million in 2023, "surpassing the level of dark contributions seen at the same point in any prior election cycle."

"So far this election cycle, contributions from dark money groups and shell companies are outpacing all prior elections and may even surpass the roughly $660 million in contributions from unknown sources that flooded 2020 elections—a cycle that attracted over $1 billion in total dark money," the group said.

According to OpenSecrets' analysis, super PACs and other dark money groups supporting Democrats have spent $85 million during this election cycle, while contributions backing Republicans have totaled $74 million so far. If the trend holds, this will be the fourth consecutive election cycle in which Democrats enjoyed a dark money advantage.

Americans for Prosperity Action, a right-wing hybrid PAC led by billionaire Charles Koch, has reported around $25 million in contributions so far this election cycle—far more than any other dark money group. Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democrats, has spent over $16.7 million, while the conservative Congressional Leadership Fund is in third place with more than $15.8 million in donations.

In an effort to tackle dark money's corrupting influence, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) last month introduced legislation aimed at closing a loophole that lets wealthy individuals make tax-free asset donations to dark money groups.

Dark money is back in the headlines amid scrutiny over the right-wing billionaires behind the upcoming No Labels third-party "unity" ticket and $100 million blitz unleashed by the American Israel Political Action Committee against Democrats who criticize Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

Democrats set up unit to attack third-party candidates

The Democratic Party is launching a full-scale campaign against third-party competition in the 2024 presidential election, mobilizing both the resources of the Democratic National Committee and of outside political action committees funded by longtime Democratic multimillionaire donors. The effort is its first-ever publicly announced campaign against third parties, although the Democrats have a long and sordid record of behind-the-scenes efforts to block the emergence of any left-wing, let alone socialist, challenge to the capitalist two-party system. Democrats have frequently challenged the efforts of socialist candidates to obtain ballot status, particularly in closely contested elections. ...

NBC reported: “The Democratic National Committee is building its first team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates, people involved told NBC News, as the party and its allies prepare for a potential all-out war on candidates they view as spoilers.” The NBC article added, “More legal challenges are almost guaranteed, with attorneys actively monitoring third-party ballot access attempts across the country to look for any slip-up that could be exploited.” That is, the Democrats are preparing to challenge every signature and use every anti-democratic legal maneuver to challengers from being on the ballot.

“The DNC has hired veteran Democratic operative Lis Smith, best known for her work guiding the 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, to help oversee an aggressive communications component of its strategy, which also includes opposition research and legal challenges. Underscoring how important Democrats view the effort, it is being overseen by Mary Beth Cahill and Ramsey Reid, two veteran DNC insiders … Matt Corridoni, Smith’s former deputy on the Buttigieg campaign and most recently a top aide to Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., is also joining the team as a spokesperson.”

The NBC and Washington Post articles cited a series of comments by prominent Democratic Party operatives blaming the party’s losses in the 2000 and 2016 presidential campaigns on the role of the Green Party and independent Ralph Nader. In both elections, the Democrats won a plurality in the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College, but they chose to blame not the archaic and anti-democratic structure involving electoral votes, but the supposed “spoiler” role of Nader and Jill Stein, who “diverted” votes from Democrats Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

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Hottest city in US saw record 645 deaths related to high temperatures in 2023

Public health officials in Arizona’s most populous county on Wednesday reported they confirmed a staggering 645 heat-associated deaths last year – more than 50% higher than 2022 and another consecutive annual record in arid metro Phoenix.

The numbers in the preliminary report by the Maricopa county department of public health alarmed officials in America’s hottest big metro, raising concerns about how to better protect vulnerable groups such as homeless people and older adults from the blistering summer heat.

The report said two-thirds of the county’s heat-related deaths in 2023 were people 50 years or older, and 71% were on days the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning.

“Deaths from heat are a major public health issue within our community, and it’s going to take support from every level to improve the situation,” said Dr Rebecca Sunenshine, the county public health department’s medical director. “With a coordinated county-wide strategy, nearly every one of these deaths can be prevented.”

The heat-associated deaths confirmed in 2023 represented a huge jump from 2022, when there were 425 such deaths. There were 339 heat-associated deaths confirmed in 2021. No other major metropolitan area in the US has reported such high heat-associated death figures or spends so much time tracking and studying them.

Effects of geoengineering must be urgently investigated, experts say

Scientists must work urgently on predicting the effects of climate geoengineering, the chief of the US atmospheric science agency has said, as the technology is likely to be needed, at least in part. Richard Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said the government-backed body was estimating the effects of some of the likely techniques for geoengineering, including those involving the oceans.

“My own belief is that we need to get a better understanding of what the impacts are,” he said. “I suspect some aspects of geoengineering are going to be an important component of the solution to reducing global warming, and all of the impacts of global climate change, like ocean acidification.”

Potential geoengineering techniques include seeding the oceans with iron to absorb more carbon dioxide, or spraying water from the oceans into low-level clouds to reflect some of the sun’s radiation.

Spinrad said understanding the potential impact of geoengineering on the oceans was vital. “If we were to undertake an effort in some things like iron fertilisation [of the oceans], what are the consequence to the ecosystem of doing that? [Also important is] building good predictive models … and supporting decision-makers,” he said. NOAA is focusing on the potential for the oceans to sequester CO2, a process known as marine carbon dioxide removal.

The agency’s researchers are also working closely with universities and government scientists in the UK on the potential for the shutdown of the systems driving the Gulf Stream ocean currents. Evidence has recently been presented that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) may be rapidly weakening, over decades rather than centuries, under the impact of heating oceans and melting ice, and its shutdown could be catastrophic for Europe and other regions.

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Also of Interest

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

Killing Palestinians by Blocking Aid. Killing Palestinians by Airdropping Aid.

Ralph Nader: Open Letter to President Biden 3.12.24

US Had Secret Talks with Iran About Houthi Red Sea Shipping Attacks in January

The TikTok Forced Sale

Kremlin Says Putin Didn't Threaten to Use Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Took Him Out of Context

"Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism": Palestinian Prof on Her Suspension from Hebrew University

"Towers of Ivory and Steel": Jewish Scholar Says Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom

Matthew Hoh: Only Negotiations with Teeth End War

Col. Douglas Macgregor: Europe Crumbling, Middle East Exploding

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A Little Night Music

Fleetwood Mac – If You Be My Baby

Fleetwood Mac – Doctor Brown

Fleetwood Mac - Oh, Well

Fleetwood Mac – The World Keep On Turning

Fleetwood Mac – Got To Move

Fleetwood Mac – No Place To Go

Fleetwood Mac – Dust My Broom

Eddie Boyd & Peter Green – Ten To One

Otis Spann w/Fleetwood Mac - It Was A Big Thing

Fleetwood Mac - Black Magic Woman

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