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"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."

-- Aldous Huxley

News and Opinion

Thoughts On The Trump Team’s Signal Chat About Bombing Yemen

The Atlantic has published the full contents of a Signal chat from earlier this month featuring top Trump administration officials discussing the bombing campaign the president was about to begin in Yemen.

There’s a whole scandal in mainstream US politics right now about the Trump team’s carelessness in letting the conversation become public. The story goes that Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz accidentally included in the chat Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who then swiftly exited instead of staying and doing some actual journalism by observing what these warmongering swamp monsters were up to. Goldberg did this because he is not actually a journalist, he is one of the most virulent war propagandists working in US media today, having famously worked to manufacture consent for the invasion of Iraq by publishing false narratives linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. He is also a former IDF prison guard.

What’s getting a lot less discussion in mainstream political discourse is the depraved nature of the bombing itself, and the Trump team’s exuberance about murdering civilians seen in the brief exchange of messages. Waltz describes to the group how US forces waited until a target entered an apartment building and then flattened it with an airstrike, eliciting digital applause from the rest of the administration.

So the Signal chat reveals that the US waited for the Houthis’ “top missile guy” to walk into a residential building where his girlfriend lived before launching an airstrike that collapsed it, which must have killed civilians. JD Vance said this was “excellent.” pic.twitter.com/SuXbBVbczx

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) March 26, 2025

“The first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building, and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz said.

“Excellent,” Vice President JD Vance responded.

“Great job all,” said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

“Kudos to all — most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really Great. God bless,” said White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

“Great work and effects!” replied intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard.

Waltz and Trump’s middle east envoy Steve Witkoff are seen posting numerous celebratory emojis.

Imagine how fucked up you have to be inside to react this way to the bombing of an apartment building full of civilians. How far gone you have to be as a human being. These are the kinds of freaks who rule our world.

The real scandal here is that the media along with the Democrats are more upset about the fact that Signal was used to make plans to bomb Yemen than they are about the fact that we bombed another country and killed 8 innocent children. pic.twitter.com/kJIEnBvdvx

— Power to the People (@ProudSocialist) March 25, 2025

Another thing that strikes me about the Signal chat is how Trump’s supporters are so much more confident that Yemen needs to be bombed than Trump’s own cabinet was. Any time I criticize Trump’s ongoing war on Yemen I get his cultists in my replies going “Well obviously the Houthis need to be bombed to protect global shipping routes, what choice did Trump have?” But if you scroll through the chat you’ll find mixed opinions about it, admissions that there’s no urgent need to launch any strikes right away, and nonsense about how the bombings can be used “to send a message.”

Trumpers have their tongues so far up Trump’s asshole that they’re more supportive of Trump’s warmongering than Trump’s own appointed officials.

In reality this entire conflict could have been avoided by simply using the leverage the US has over Israel to make it honor its ceasefire agreement with Hamas. The only reason Yemeni forces began attacking ships in the first place was to blockade Israel because of its genocidal atrocities in Gaza; as soon as a ceasefire was in place those attacks stopped, and the Houthis only announced that their blockade would resume again when Israel announced a genocidal starvation siege on the entire Gaza Strip. The Trump administration told Israel to let the US handle the Houthis for them, and that’s exactly what happened.

US Bomber Deployment to Diego Garcia Suggests Heavier Airstrikes on Yemen Could Be Coming
The US is also deploying a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #DiegoGarcia #Houthis #Iran https://t.co/gg8uA3qdci

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) March 26, 2025

But the main thing that stands out for me right now is a section of the conversation where Pete Hegseth talks about what the administration’s “messaging” should be about the airstrikes.

Hegseth wrote the following in the lead-up to the strikes:

“I think messaging is going to be a problem no matter what — nobody knows who the Houthis are — which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”

It’s always fascinated me how much empire managers focus on messaging. Their focus is never on whether or not they should do evil things, it’s on what narrative they’re going to sell to the public about the evil things they’re going to do.

Here we see Hegseth talking about the challenges in the administration’s “messaging” regarding its upcoming bombing campaign on Yemen, and the need to establish a public narrative about how (1) Biden is to blame for it and (2) the Houthis are “Iran funded”.

At no time does anyone ever raise the issue of whether or not it’s ethical to rain military explosives on an already war-ravaged and deeply impoverished nation in order to protect Israel’s right to commit genocide. Hegseth’s interest is solely in what stories will be told to the public to justify those actions.

These are the kinds of people who rule our world. This is how they think.

The powerful understand that narrative control is everything. Power is the ability to control what happens, but ultimate power is the ability to control what people think about what happens. Human consciousness is dominated by mental narratives, so if you can control what narratives the humans believe about their reality, you can control the humans.

The need to control the narrative is why the US empire has invested so heavily in soft power, and why it has the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever constructed. It’s why Palestinian journalists are being killed in Gaza while western journalists aren’t being allowed in. It’s why pro-Palestine activists are being silenced and deported. It’s why the internet is being censored with increasing aggression. It’s why Julian Assange spent years in prison.

The empire invests extensively in narrative control, as do manipulative people in general. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing a malignant narcissist or sociopath, you’ll know they tend to pour immense amounts of energy into manipulating the social narrative about themselves and the people in their circle. Manipulators understand the power of narrative control, while ordinary people do not.

And that’s why the world looks the way it looks: powerful manipulators understand this dynamic, while the rest of humanity typically doesn’t. Normal people tend to assume they’re looking at a more or less accurate picture of what’s happening and how the world works from the information that’s laid out in front of them, not understanding that the information they consume is being constantly distorted, funneled and manipulated by the powerful to the benefit of our rulers.

That’s how consent is manufactured. That’s how wars are justified. That’s how revolution is suppressed. That’s how the political status quo is maintained. That’s how the public is duped year after year into signing on to more of the same while being robbed, cheated, exploited, impoverished, censored, oppressed, brainwashed, and driven to environmental disaster.

The real currency of our world is not gold, nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even war machinery. The real currency of our world is narrative and the ability to control it. We will keep being manipulated into disaster and dystopia until enough of us wake up to this reality.

Well, duh!

BBC’s Jeremy Bowen accuses Israel of blocking journalists from Gaza

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, has accused the Israeli government of blocking journalists from Gaza because of scenes “they don’t want us to see”.

Bowen said that in the last 18 months, he had been granted only half a day with the Israeli army within Gaza. He said that the lack of access was part of an attempt to “obfuscate what’s going on, and to inject this notion of doubt into information that comes out”.

Speaking after he accepted a special fellowship award for the Society of Editors conference, he said that while Palestinian journalists were doing “fantastic work”, he and other international media colleagues wanted to contribute to reporting on the ground in Gaza.

“Why don’t they let us in,” he said. “Because there’s stuff there they don’t want us to see. Beginning after those Hamas attacks on 7 October, they took us into the border communities. I was in Kfar Aza when there was still fighting going on inside it. They had only just started taking out the bodies of the dead Israelis. Why did they let us in there? Because they wanted us to see it.

“Why don’t they let us in to Gaza? Because they don’t want us to see it. I think it’s really as simple as that. Israel took a bit of flak for that to start with, but none now, certainly not with [President] Trump. So I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Netanyahu repeats threat to seize territory in Gaza as anti-Hamas protests continue

Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated Israeli threats to seize territory in Gaza if Hamas refuses to release the remaining Israeli hostages, as, for the second consecutive day, hundreds of Palestinians joined protests against the militant group and demanding the end of the war. The Israeli prime minister’s warning came a week after Israel resumed its military operation in the territory, shattering the relative calm of a January ceasefire with Hamas.

“The more Hamas continues in its refusal to release our hostages, the more powerful the repression we exert will be,” Netanyahu told a hearing in parliament, which was occasionally interrupted by shouting from opposition members. He added: “I say this to my colleagues in the Knesset, and I say it to Hamas as well: this includes the seizure of territories, along with other measures I will not elaborate here.”

Hamas warned on Wednesday that hostages may be killed if Israel attempts to use its military to retrieve them. “Every time the occupation attempts to retrieve its captives by force, it ends up bringing them back in coffins,” the group said in a statement.

Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 that the Israeli military says are dead.

"Kidnapped": 1,000+ Protest After Masked ICE Agents Abduct Tufts Ph.D. Student Rumeysa Ozturk

Ice agents detain Tufts graduate student over pro-Palestinian activism

Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student in Boston detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents in response to her pro-Palestinian activism, was on Wednesday evening being detained at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainee locator page.

The transfer of Ozturk, a PhD student at Tufts University, appeared to violate a federal court order from Tuesday, which directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice to give the court 48 hours’ notice before attempting to take her out of Massachusetts.

After Ozturk’s transfer to Louisiana emerged from the online locator, the federal judge ordered DHS and Ice to respond to an emergency request in court on Wednesday to produce Ozturk by 9am ET on Thursday.

Videos released online purportedly showed plainclothes DHS officials wearing masks that partially covered their faces while detaining Ozturk in the street and taking her to one of several unmarked cars, while an unseen onlooker can be heard calling out challenges and framing the apprehension as like a kidnapping.

Tuesday’s operation by DHS officials is the latest in a series of arrests of students who are not accused of any crime but have been involved in on-campus, pro-Palestinian activism, in a sharp escalation of anti-immigration crackdowns and attacks on some political speech in higher education by the Trump administration.

HUMILIATION: FULL Signal Chats EXPOSE Trump Admin Lies

Republican senators break ranks to call for investigation of Signal leak scandal

In rare signs of unrest, top Republican senators are calling for an investigation into the Signal leak scandal and demanding answers from the Trump administration, as they raise concerns it will become a “significant political problem” if not addressed properly. “This is what happens when you don’t really have your act together,” the Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski told the Hill.

The Trump administration has been facing criticism from Democrats – and now Republicans – after Monday’s embarrassing revelation that a team of senior national security officials accidentally added a journalist to a private group chat on Signal, an encrypted messaging app. The group, which included JD Vance, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and others, discussed sensitive plans to engage in military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.

On Wednesday, morning the Atlantic posted another tranche of messages that contained details of the attack on Yemen, including descriptions of targets, launch times and even the details of weather during the assault.

Senior national security officials testified before the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday, where the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA director, John Ratcliffe, were grilled by lawmakers over the scandal. The national security officials said “no classified material” had been shared in the chat. Republicans are now calling for investigations, as well. According to reporting from the Hill, top Republican senators are calling for various committees to investigate the leak, including the Senate armed services committee and the Senate intelligence committee.

What Everyone Is MISSING About The Signal Leak! w/ George Galloway

Latest Signal leak revelations expose US officials’ lies about what was shared

The disclosure by the Atlantic of further devastating messages from the Signal chat group used by the Trump administration’s most senior security officials has nailed the lie that nothing that threatened the safety of US servicemen and women was shared on the group.

After the vague and evasive assertions by Trump officials at Monday’s Senate intelligence committee hearing, from the White House, and from the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, that no war plans or classified material was shared, readers can make up their own minds.

Despite Hegseth’s angry denial, the exchanges in the leaked group chat did contain details of war planning, shared recklessly by him in advance of the attack on 15 March, on a messaging system and perhaps devices which he and others in the chat could not have been certain were secure. Most damning is the fact that Hegseth sent details in advance of the F-18s and other aircraft that would take part in the attack, including the timing of their arrival at targets, and other assets that would be deployed.

As Ryan Goodman, a law professor who formerly worked at the Pentagon, put it after the latest release: “The Atlantic has now published the Signal texts with attack plans in response to administration denials. I worked at the Pentagon. If information like this is not classified, nothing is. If Hegseth is claiming he declassified this information, he should be shown the door for having done so.” ...

“If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests – or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media – the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic,” wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor who was accidentally added to the chat.

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Is Hegseth Competent?

Along With National Security Breach, Leaked Signal Chat Contains 'Confession' of Alleged War Crime

Along with raising alarm about a massive national security breach—and questions about the competence of top officials in the Trump administration who "inadvertently" added a journalist to a Signal group chat about plans to bomb targets in Yemen—the incident that Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg publicized this week included an apparent "confession" of at least one alleged war crime.

As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, Goldberg released the entirety of the group chat that was held via the commercial messaging app Signal, following denials by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt that any classified information was transmitted in the discussion.

In addition to making clear the detailed plans for attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen using F-18s and drones, the conversation included a brief message from National Security Adviser Michael Waltz in which he appeared to casually describe a strike on a civilian target in Sanaa.

Waltz first praised Hegseth, Central Command leader Gen. Michael Kurilla, and the intelligence community for an "amazing job," saying a "building collapsed" after U.S. intelligence identified a Houthi leader who was targeted for a strike.

He then clarified his message for Vice President JD Vance: "Their first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building and it's now collapsed," wrote Waltz.

The vice president replied, "Excellent."

Somehow the full message thread is even more stunning https://t.co/aA4eHHKvcD pic.twitter.com/CEwchenNCw

— Farnoush Amiri (@FarnoushAmiri) March 26, 2025

The messages Goldberg disclosed to the public were sent over several days after he received a connection request from "Michael Waltz" via the Signal app. The conversation took place around the Trump administration's March 15 bombing of Yemen, which was carried out after the Houthis renewed a blockade on Israeli ships.

At least 31 civilians were killed in the bombing campaign, and the Houthi media office reported at the time that the U.S. had struck a "residential neighborhood" in Sanaa.

On Wednesday, journalist and author Kim Zetter said Waltz's message suggested top administration officials knew U.S. forces had "targeted [a] residential building," despite President Donald Trump's claims to the contrary.

In Signal chat The Atlantic published this morning Waltz says: "The first target – their top missile guy - we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed." Appears to acknowledge they targeted residential building. Trump said they…

— Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) March 26, 2025

Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said the messages contain "prima facie evidence of at least one war crime applauded by the people who conspired to commit it."

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the organization, recalled the warning of Foundation for Middle East Peace president Lara Friedman in September 2024 regarding the Biden administration's support for Israel's "rules of war" in Gaza—where "every human being" has been defined "as a legitimate military target—a terrorist, a terrorist supporter or sympathizer, or a 'human shield'... allowing the annihilation of huge numbers of civilians and destruction of entire cities."

"The costs of these new rules of war will be paid with the blood of civilians worldwide for generations to come, and the U.S. responsibility for enabling, defending, and normalizing these new rules—and their horrific, dehumanizing consequences—will not be forgotten," said Friedman at the time.

Duss said Wednesday that "rules of engagement that permit destroying an entire civilian apartment building to kill one alleged terrorist is part of [former President] Joe Biden's legacy."

"It's still a war crime though," he added, "and Waltz's text is a confession."

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Readying For War With Iran

Donald Trump announces new 25% tariffs on cars from overseas

Donald Trump announced plans to impose sweeping 25% tariffs on cars from overseas on Wednesday, days before the US president is expected to announce wide-ranging levies on other goods from around the world.

“What we’re going to be doing is a 25% tariff for all cars that are not made in the United States,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We start off with a 2.5% base, which is what we’re at, and go to 25%.”

The tariffs will go into effect next week, on 2 April, the president claimed, and the US will start collecting them the following day. “This is very exciting,” he said, suggesting the move would spur economic growth.

In February, Trump floated the idea of a 25% tariff on imported vehicles but had offered no other details. On Monday, the president hinted that the auto industry levies could come in “the very near future”.

On 2 April – a day Trump has dubbed “liberation day” – the president is expected to unveil a wide range of so-called reciprocal tariffs – levies on imported goods that the Trump administration argues are unfairly taxed by the US’s trading partners.

Arizona officers who beat deaf Black man with cerebral palsy are suspended

The Phoenix police department has disciplined three officers who violently used a stun gun on and punched a deaf Black man with cerebral palsy last year. The department’s interim police chief, Michael Sullivan, announced that he had issued 24-hour unpaid suspensions to the officers who were involved in the arrest of Tyron McAlpin last August, which was filmed on video. Two of the officers will also be required to attend de-escalation training, Sullivan said.

Sullivan did not name the three police officers, but in the video of McAlpin’s arrest the two officers who were seen assaulting him were identified in media reports as Benjamin Harris and Kyle Sue. The third officer has been identified in media reports as Jorge Acosta.

In a statement on Tuesday reported by 12News, Sullivan said: “We understand the concerns raised by this incident, and we take them seriously. The decision to suspend the officers reflects our commitment to accountability and maintaining public trust.”

Last October, McAlpin’s attorneys released video footage of his violent arrest which occurred on 19 August outside a Circle K convenience store in Phoenix. ...

In response to the release of McAlpin’s footage last year, Andre Miller, vice-president of the Arizona chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said: “This brutal assault was due to the false claims of a white citizen, reminiscent of many falsehoods like Emmett Till that have claimed the lives of black citizens in America … Tyron was not a suspect in an actual crime, he had not done anything wrong, and he also has communication challenges.”

US court upholds block on deportation of some Venezuelans in blow to Trump

A US appeals court has upheld a lower court’s temporary block on the Trump administration’s deportation of some Venezuelan immigrants under a little-used 18th-century law.

The decision on Wednesday by the US circuit court of appeals for the DC circuit marks a defeat for Donald Trump, who argued that a judge’s two-week ban on deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act encroached on the executive’s authority to make national security decisions.

A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to uphold the original decision by the judge James Boasberg, with US circuit judge Justin Walker – who was appointed by Trump during his first term – dissenting.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on 15 March to swiftly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, attempting to speed up removals with a law best known for its use to imprison Japanese, Italian and German immigrants during the second world war.

An ensuing legal battle over the move has highlighted Trump’s attempts to strong-arm the federal judiciary, a co-equal branch of government that serves as a check on executive power. Boasberg temporarily blocked the Alien Enemies Act deportations later on 15 March following a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rep. Jim Jordan BLASTS Judge Boasberg for HALTING DEPORTATIONS, "All Options" on Table

Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as Trump faces judicial pressure

Republican House speaker Mike Johnson suggested potentially defunding, restructuring or eliminating US federal courts as a means of pushing back against judicial decisions that have challenged Donald Trump’s policies. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Johnson, a former constitutional attorney, raised the prospect of congressional intervention in the court system. “We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court,” Johnson said.

While Johnson later clarified that his remarks were meant to illustrate Congress’s broad constitutional powers rather than a direct threat, it traces the mounting pressure from Trump’s allies to challenge judicial independence.

Republican lawmakers have grown more visibly frustrated with federal judges blocking Trump administration actions, particularly regarding immigration policies. One particular point of their ire is US district judge James Boasberg, who recently issued a nationwide injunction preventing the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants. Trump has since called to impeach Boasberg over his decision, and several House Republicans have taken up the call to introduce articles of impeachment against him and other judges who have issued similar nationwide injunctions. ...

One alternative approach Republicans are watching is a bill in the House being voted on next week by the California Republican representative Darrell Issa, which aims to limit district court judges’s ability to issue nationwide injunctions.

Erasing History: How Fascism Works (w/ Jason Stanley)

Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada

A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”. Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Stanley told the Daily Nous, a philosophy profession website, that he made the decision “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.

He said in an interview that Columbia University’s recent actions moved him to accept the offer. Last Friday, Columbia gave in to the Trump administration by agreeing to a series of demands in order to restore $400m in federal funding. These changes include crackdowns on protests, increased security power and “internal reviews” of some academic programs, like the Middle Eastern studies department.

“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted – that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said. Stanley added: “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight.”

“Columbia was just such a warning,” he said. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”

Unhoused Seattle man runs for mayor from a tent: ‘It’s a humanitarian crisis’

Joe Molloy says he never planned to enter politics. But after moving to Seattle and losing his job during the pandemic, a year ago he found himself evicted and living in a tent encampment. After losing his home, he learned the hard-scrabble skills of what was required to live on the streets from other homeless people, the location of free food banks, and which organisations offered showers and toilets.

At the encampment, he’d speak to other residents and hear stories very similar to his. He became convinced there had to be a better, long-term solution than the dozens of tents pitched alongside his own. It was from this tent that Molloy launched his unlikely bid for Seattle’s highest office, seeking to unseat the incumbent mayor by tackling the crisis “head-on” and pushing a progressive agenda including everything from a living wage and access to healthcare.

Working out of a shared office space in the city-sanctioned encampment, known at Tent City 3, Molloy is running his campaign via social media and “word of mouth”. He still sleeps in a cot, braving the elements in the famously rainy city where temperatures often fell below 20F this winter. ...

Despite never having held public office, Molloy says these struggles make him the best qualified candidate to lead in a city where some 16,000 people are unhoused and the housing crisis is arguably the largest issue. Molloy, 36, does not think much of current mayor, Bruce Harrell, 66, who took office in January 2022, and especially the way he has approached things. According to a recent survey known as a point-in-time count, Seattle has America’s fourth largest homeless population after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, with the number of unhoused people up 23% from 2022.

And so Molloy decided to challenge Harrell and place his first-hand experiences front and center. “Sweeps [of homeless people] have been increasing since he’s been in office. Deaths of unsheltered people have increased,” Molloy tells the Guardian in a bookstore located in the university district. Molloy, who speaks with both precision and passion, is dressed for the weather, with a beanie, a thick sweater and a Parka jacket. “It’s a humanitarian crisis at this point. The situation is heartbreaking, but it’s also embarrassing.”

Biodiversity loss in all species and every ecosystem linked to humans

Humans are driving biodiversity loss among all species across the planet, according to a synthesis of more than 2,000 studies. The exhaustive global analysis leaves no doubt about the devastating impact humans are having on Earth, according to researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) and the University of Zurich. The study – which accounted for nearly 100,000 sites across all continents – found that human activities had resulted in “unprecedented effects on biodiversity”, according to the paper, published in Nature.

Florian Altermatt, professor of aquatic ecology at the University of Zurich and head of Eawag, said: “It is one of the largest syntheses of the human impacts on biodiversity ever conducted worldwide.” The team looked at terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats, as well as including all groups of organisms, including microbes, fungi, plants, invertebrates, fish, birds and mammals.

Human pressures distinctly shifted community composition (essentially, which species live where) and decreased local diversity, researchers found. On average, the number of species at human-impacted sites was almost 20% lower than at sites unaffected by humans. Particularly severe losses were recorded among reptiles, amphibians and mammals, according to the paper. Their populations are often smaller than invertebrates, which increases the chances of extinction.

The analysis covered five drivers of decline: habitat change, direct exploitation of resources (such as hunting or fishing), climate change, invasive species and pollution. François Keck, lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in Altermatt’s research group, said: “Our findings show that all five factors have a strong impact on biodiversity worldwide, in all groups of organisms and in all ecosystems.”

Pollution and habitat changes, often driven by agriculture, have a particularly negative impact on biodiversity. Intensive agriculture – especially arable farming – involves large amounts of pesticides and fertilisers, which result in a decline of biodiversity, but also shifts the composition of species. The full extent of climate change and how it affects species is not entirely understood.

Microplastics and pesticides aiding death of sea stars in Washington stat

Microplastics and a widely used pesticide are helping kill off sea star populations in Washington state’s Puget Sound, new research shows.
Finding that the two pollutants cause mortality in sea stars is “not good”, said Allie Tissot, a doctoral candidate at Portland State University and co-author. “Their populations are really low and there are only so many on the coast right now,” Tissot said. “There are so many microplastics, contaminants and chemicals that might be in their environment, so we don’t know what the full combination of effects may be.” ...

The pesticide, Imidacloprid, has been known to devastate bee populations and kill songbirds. The substance is about to be banned in the UK, but the US Environmental Protection Agency has resisted calls for a prohibition. The study also focused on microfibers, a type of microplastic that typically comes from clothing and textiles, and is about one-fifth the size of a human hair. Microfibers are a toxic material that can also carry dangerous chemicals. Laundry machines are thought to be the main source of microfibers because the pieces shed from clothing during wash cycles.

Among other issues, the pesticide caused gut malformations and prevented the stars’ stomachs from growing, which ultimately killed them. Imidacloprid, which targets mosquitos, works by preventing the insects’ stomachs from growing, so it is not entirely surprising that it has the same impact on other organisms. The microfibers also seemed to accelerate growth, a response likely stemming from the stars being unable to get enough nutrients. The contaminants may not be causing wasting sea star syndrome, Tissot said, but it could be preventing the population from recovering.

Also of Interest

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

How American imperialism plots wars of aggression

The High Price of War With Iran: $10 Gas and the Collapse of the US Economy

Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill 38 More Palestinians Over 24 Hours

‘A warning for students of color’: Ice agents are targeting certain protesters, say experts

Trump names pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa

NATO Sec.-Gen. Flip-Flops On Normalization With Russia

CODEPINK Responds to US Senate McCarthy-Style Attack

Trump Doesn’t Have A Master Plan

Bolsonaro must stand trial over alleged coup attempt, Brazil’s top court rules

Teen member of Musk’s Doge staff provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

How to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border

‘Defend yourself’: the Memphis gun club educating Black women and children on firearm safety

The Verdict Against Greenpeace Is an Attack on Us All

Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it

Elon Musk's Family History in South Africa Reveals Ties to Apartheid & Neo-Nazi Movements

UK Starmer coalition of the willing crumbles

Erdogan arrests rival. Has Erdogan gone too far?

A Little Night Music

Houston Stackhouse - Talkin' 'Bout You

Houston Stackhouse - Return Mail

Houston Stackhouse - Sweet Home Chicago

Houston Stackhouse - Big Road Blues

Houston Stackhouse - Maggie Campbell Blues

Houston Stackhouse - Big Fat Mama Blues

Houston Stackhouse - My Babe

Houston Stackhouse - Bricks In My Pillow

Houston Stackhouse - Cool Drink Of Water