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"It is essential to persuade the soldier that those he is being urged to massacre are bandits who do not deserve to live; before killing other good, decent fellows like himself, his gun would fall from his hands."

-- Andre Gide

News and Opinion

So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza Now

One of the most horrifying facts about this dystopia we live in is that large-scale military operations are routinely used as testing grounds for new war machinery, using human bodies as guinea pigs for experimentation in what amount to giant blood-soaked field laboratories — all to benefit the strategic objectives of empire managers and the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.

Haaretz has a new article out titled “Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots”, which reports that “In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War.”

(Yeah because my gosh, can you imagine how terrible it would be if Israeli soldiers and dogs got harmed while carrying out a genocide?)

The article’s author Sagi Cohen reports that drone-mounted robot dogs and remotely controlled bulldozers are two of the new apocalyptic horrors currently being battle-tested in Gaza, saying “defense establishment officials confirm that there has been a leap in the use and sophistication of robots on the battlefield.” Which is a pretty disconcerting sentence to read.

In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War https://t.co/jGV1yl7pOd

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) March 3, 2024

This news comes out at the same time as a new Public Citizen report warning of the likely imminent arrival of autonomous weapons systems which will kill people with minimal instruction from human pilots, saying “The most serious worry involving autonomous weapons is that they inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing, including in violation of international human rights law.”

The more normalized robots become within the world’s militaries the closer we come to this point, and steps are already being taken in that direction. As Common Dreams’ Thor Benson notes in an article about the Public Citizen report, “Israel has purchased and at times deployed self-piloting, lethal drones.”

Back in January I wrote that “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex,” saying “Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.”

What sparked this comment at the time was reports and first-hand witness accounts we’d seen coming out about the prolific use of IDF “sniper drones” in Gaza since October, with Israeli forces frequently shooting Palestinians with quad drones armed with rifles. Copious records are most assuredly being compiled on the effectiveness of these newer weapons and tactics in ending human lives, which will then be used to help market those weapons to other states and to improve their efficiency in killing.

When I say this is most assuredly happening, I am not being hyperbolic for effect. Author and journalist Antony Loewenstein gave a lengthy interview on The Chris Hedges Report back in December about Israel’s long and extensively documented history of using Gaza as a testing ground for new weapons, spyware, surveillance and security systems, AI, drones, and tactics, which has profited scores of corporations and enabled Israel to become a player of outsized success in the global weapons industry.

“Israel’s drones, surveillance technology including spyware, facial recognition software, and biometric gathering infrastructure, along with smart fences, experimental bombs, and AI-controlled machine guns are all tried out on the captive population in Gaza, often with lethal results,” says Hedges in introduction. “These weapons and technologies are then certified as ‘battle-tested’ and sold around the world.”

This doesn’t only happen in Gaza. This past September The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The War in Ukraine Is Also a Giant Arms Fair,” subtitled “Arms makers are getting orders for weapons being put to the test on the battlefield.” In January of last year CNN published a report titled “How Ukraine became a testbed for Western weapons and battlefield innovation,” with one source saying that Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations.”

And of course we are also seeing this same phenomenon in Africa. In 2021 Mintpress News published a report by Scott Timcke titled “West Africa is the Latest Testing Ground for US Military Artificial Intelligence” about this very same trend. In 2020 Libya saw what is believed to have been the first time a human being has ever been killed by a fully automated drone attack — that is, killed without the machine having been told to do so by a human.

The other day we discussed how the empire’s great weakness is that it depends on normal human beings to carry out its orders and turn the gears of the machine. If you look at the facts and think about them for a moment, it’s not hard to see how the empire managers are hoping to overcome this weakness in the future.

'Kamala Harris DEMANDS Gaza Cease-fire NOW, Fetterman Says Crisis Is HAMAS’ FAULT

Lip service, no action:

Kamala Harris issues sharp rebuke of Israel over ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Gaza

US vice-president Kamala Harris has bluntly called out Israel for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza as the Biden administration faces increasing pressure to rein in its close ally while it wages war with Hamas militants.

Harris, speaking on Sunday in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where state troopers beat US civil rights marchers nearly six decades ago, called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept a deal to release hostages in return for a 6-week cessation of hostilities.

But she directed the bulk of her comments at Israel in what appeared to be the sharpest rebuke yet by a senior leader in the US government over the conditions in the coastal enclave. “People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said at an event to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Alabama. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses,” Harris said.

Her comments reflected intense frustration within the US government about the war, which has hurt president Joe Biden’s standing with left-leaning voters as he seeks re-election this year.

Flour Massacre PROOF Debunks Israel Lies

US Vetoes UN Resolution Condemning Israel for Flour Massacre

The US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for a massacre of civilians surrounding an aid convoy in Gaza, a motion supported by all other member states. The Israel Defense Forces has acknowledged its soldiers fired on the crowd.

On Thursday, hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured by Israeli soldiers as they gathered around an aid convoy near Gaza City. As some people took aid off the trucks, the IDF claimed the same Palestinians approached Israeli soldiers nearby, saying its troops felt “endangered” and opened fire. The killing has been dubbed the “flour massacre.”

More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the shooting and ensuing panic, while at least 750 others were injured. Tel Aviv has attempted to blame the Palestinians for the deaths, saying the violence was caused by the mob. Washington has claimed it needs more information to assess the incident. ...

Asked about the incident on Thursday, Washington’s deputy UN envoy Robert Wood told reporters that the White House would not condemn Israel’s actions given contradictory reports about how the massacre unfolded. “We don’t have all the facts on the ground – that’s the problem,” he said.

US Complicity in Gaza Case Gets June Appeal Date

As over 100,000 Michiganders signaled to President Joe Biden that they oppose U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, a federal court this week granted a motion to expedite the appeal of a recently dismissed lawsuit against senior U.S. officials including the president.

Just over a month into Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza for the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) sued Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on behalf of the groups Al-Haq and Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) as well as Palestinians in Gaza and the United States.

CCR sought an emergency injunction to stop the Biden administration from aiding the Israeli assault and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held a hearing last month.

While Judge Jeffrey White ruled that the suit falls “outside the court’s limited jurisdiction” and must be dismissed, he also found that Israel’s military campaign “plausibly” amounts to genocide, echoing a recent conclusion at the International Court of Justice, where a case is ongoing.

“Since the filing of this lawsuit in November, the death toll in Gaza has nearly tripled, and all the while, the United States has continued to accelerate Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people of Gaza with its unconditional material, financial, and diplomatic assistance and cover,” Sadaf Doost, an attorney and Bertha Justice fellow at CCR, noted in a statement Wednesday.

In response to the dismissal, CCR and co-counsel at Van Der Hout LLP asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to expedite their appeal. Doost stressed that “our expedited appeal to the 9th Circuit — seeking judicial review to make clear that no individual, not even the president of the United States, is above the law and all must comply with obligations to stop genocide — comes as the carnage and devastation in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels and requires urgent attention.”

According to the legal group, the appellate court agreed to set an early June date for oral arguments in San Francisco.

Hamas delegation joins mediators at Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo

A Hamas delegation was in Cairo on Sunday for talks on efforts to broker a ceasefire in the war in Gaza after indications that Israel had provisionally accepted a six-week phased hostage and truce deal before the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Qatari and US mediators also arrived in the Egyptian capital on Sunday, according to the state-linked Al Qahera News.

Talks involving Israeli negotiators took place in the Qatari city of Doha on Saturday and Hamas is expected to respond on Sunday or Monday as time runs out before the unofficial deadline of 10 or 11 March, when Ramadan starts. The month of fasting is often accompanied by an uptick in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even in quieter years.

A Hamas official said that if Israel were to meet its demands – which include a complete military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and stepped-up humanitarian aid – this would “pave the way for an agreement within the next 24-48 hours”. Another unnamed Palestinian official told Reuters, however, that a ceasefire deal was still not imminent, saying: “We’re not there yet.”

A US official said on Saturday that Israel had “more or less accepted” a deal presented by mediators. However, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has so far refused to pull troops out of Gaza before Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed. Israel had yet to confirm it had accepted the truce plan or whether it would attend the Cairo talks.

Alastair Crooke: Warning Signs - "Untenable Positions"

Ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties make gains in Israeli local elections

Local elections in Israel, delayed by the war in Gaza, have returned gains for Ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties after low turnout in most areas.

The municipal votes were expected to serve as an indication of public opinion after the 7 October Hamas attack and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip. Just under 50% of the seven million eligible voters turned up to polling stations, and rightwing and religious parties allied with the Likud, the party of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were more successful in mobilising their bases.

Although there were no major political upsets, as all large cities except the coastal city of Haifa re-elected incumbent mayors, security was a higher priority than usual for voters, who cast ballots in first-round votes for mayors and councillors on Tuesday. ...

Most results had been tallied by Saturday night, after the end of Shabbat, and the 150,000 or so people displaced from their homes by the conflict will vote in November. Last week’s polls, originally scheduled for 31 October last year, were twice delayed by the outbreak of the war. The low turnout was blamed on people’s preoccupation with the war.

US aircraft carry out airdrops of aid to Gaza with 38,000 meals

The US air force began airdrops of aid over Gaza on Saturday afternoon, in a joint operation with Jordanian planes in a last-resort attempt to get food into the besieged coastal strip as mass starvation looms. US officials said that US and Jordanian C-130 planes taking off from Jordan dropped 66 pallets of food, containing a total of 38,000 meals at mid-afternoon local time, in the first of a series of airdrops that Joe Biden announced on Friday.

“The [defence department] humanitarian airdrops contribute to ongoing US government efforts to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to the people in Gaza,” US Central Command said in a statement. “We are conducting planning for potential follow-on airborne aid delivery missions.” ...

Jordan has already airdropped aid into Gaza, as have France, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Saturday’s drop marks the first US involvement.

The decision to use air drops has been fiercely criticised by aid agencies and human rights groups as being an ineffective way of delivering humanitarian assistance. The critics have pointed out that Biden has opted not to use Washington’s leverage as Israel’s principal arms supplier.

'The Child Deaths We Feared Are Here,' Says UNICEF

The United Nations Children's Fund said Sunday that at least 10 children have reportedly died of starvation and dehydration at a hospital in northern Gaza as Israeli forces continue to obstruct and attack aid convoys, fueling desperation across the territory.

Adele Khodr, UNICEF's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said malnutrition is ravaging the Gaza Strip and warned that child deaths "are likely to rapidly increase" unless Israel ends its military assault and allows humanitarian aid to flow unimpeded.

"The child deaths we feared are here," said Khodr. "At least ten children have reportedly died because of dehydration and malnutrition in Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip in recent days. There are likely more children fighting for their lives somewhere in one of Gaza's few remaining hospitals, and likely even more children in the north unable to obtain care at all."

"These tragic and horrific deaths are man-made, predictable, and entirely preventable," Khodr added.

Nearly half of the more than 30,000 people killed by U.S.-backed Israeli forces in Gaza since October have been children, and humanitarian officials have said disease and famine could soon become bigger killers than Israel's bombs and bullets. United Nations experts and human rights groups have accused the Israeli government of using starvation as a weapon of war, intentionally depriving Gazans of food and other necessities.

A group of U.N. officials warned last month that an "explosion in preventable child deaths" was looming.

"The sense of helplessness and despair among parents and doctors in realizing that lifesaving aid, just a few kilometers away, is being kept out of reach, must be as unbearable, but worse still are the anguished cries of those babies slowly perishing under the world's gaze," Khodr said Sunday. "The lives of thousands more babies and children depend on urgent action being taken now."

Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said that "these deaths are unlawful, the result of acts by Israel authorities which engineered famine."

"They knew the likely outcome of their actions but persisted. Over weeks and months," Callamard added. "And all states that cut UNRWA funding, sold weapons, and supported Israel bear responsibility too."

While virtually all of Gaza's population is in need of food, conditions are particularly dire in the northern part of the territory. Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, told members of the U.N. Security Council last week that "if nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza."

With aid deliveries plummeting due to Israel's obstruction, families have been forced to eat grass, leaves, animal feed, and scraps left behind by rats. On Saturday, the U.S. airdropped 38,000 meals into Gaza—a move that critics said would do little to slow the rapid spread of hunger across the Palestinian territory.

Melanie Ward, CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians, described conditions in Gaza as "the fastest decline in a population's nutrition status ever recorded."

"That means children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen," Ward said in an appearance on CNN. "We could save them all. But we're not being able to."

George Galloway victory triggers UK elite meltdown

Fear and panic grips UK establishment

Nicaragua Hits Germany With ICJ Case for Aiding Israel in Gaza Genocide

Nicaragua on Friday launched a case against Germany at the International Court of Justice, accusing the nation responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust of helping Israel commit genocide in the Gaza Strip over the past five months.

Germany has provided financial, military, and political support to Israel and halted contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in response to unverified Israeli allegations that a dozen employees were involved in the Hamas-led attack that sparked the war on October 7.

Nicaragua's application to the ICJ argues that Germany "has not only failed to fulfill its obligation to prevent the genocide committed and being committed against the Palestinian people... but has contributed to the commission of genocide in violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."

Germany has also "failed to comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, derived both from the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Protocols of 1977 and from the intransgressible principles of international humanitarian law, by not respecting its obligations to ensure respect for these fundamental norms in all circumstances," the document states.

The application further accuses Germany of failing to "comply with other peremptory norms of general international law" by rendering aid or assistance "in maintaining the illegal situation of the continued military occupation of Palestine including its ongoing, unlawful attack in Gaza," as well as "not preventing the illegal regime of apartheid and the negation of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people."

Nicaragua is seeking emergency action from the ICJ, which has already taken a genocide case against Israel led by South Africa. The U.N. court issued provisional measures for that case in January—though rights groups said this week that Israeli forces are ignoring them—and last month reiterated Israel's obligations under the Genocide Convention.

"When emergency measures are requested, the ICJ usually sets a date for a hearing within weeks of a case being filed," noted Deutsche Welle. The German public broadcaster also reported that there was no comment from Berlin.

While the case against Germany was widely welcomed by Palestinian rights advocates around the world, many also pointed out that—as Michael Paarlberg an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, put it—Nicaragua is "maybe not the best plaintiff for making charges of human rights violations."

In its latest annual report on Nicaragua, Human Rights Watch states that "the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, deepened its systematic repression against critics, journalists, and human rights defenders. Dozens of people arbitrarily detained remain behind bars."

As the U.N. Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua released its own report Wednesday, its chair, Jan Simon, said that Ortega, Murillo, and other top officials "should be held accountable by the international community, as should Nicaragua as a state that goes after its own people, targeting university students, Indigenous people, people of African descent, campesinos, and members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations."

Nicaragua's filing at the World Court, as it's also called, comes as Israeli forces have killed over 30,200 Palestinians in Gaza and injured 71,000 more. Most of the Hamas-governed enclave's 2.3 million residents are displaced. They face devastated civilian infrastructure and limited supplies of food, water, and medicine, as Israel restricts humanitarian aid. Children are starving to death.

The Central American country's move follows lawyers in Germany who represent Palestinian families suing top German officials, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for "aiding and abetting" Israel's genocide in the federal court last week.

University of Illinois College of Law professor Francis Boyle told Jordanian-Palestinian writer Sam Husseini that Nicaragua's application "could lead to World Court lawsuits... for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, an emergency hearing by the World Court, another round of oral arguments, and new provisional measures of protection for the benefit of the Palestinians."

New provisional measures would go to the U.N. Security Council—where the U.S. has veto power—for enforcement, he said, and, "if that does not succeed, to the United Nations General Assembly for enforcement under the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950),"

"It is telling that Nicaragua is doing this because they won a resounding World Court lawsuit against the United States from 1984 to 1986 for illegally mining their harbors," Boyle added. He also explained why the United States isn't expected to face an ICJ case, despite giving Israel nearly $4 billion in annual military aid.

"Although the United States richly deserves it too, it would be difficult for Nicaragua to successfully sue the United States for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians because of its disingenuous reservation to Article 9 of the Genocide Convention denying such jurisdiction to the World Court," he said.

However, there is a U.S. genocide complicity case in the federal court system. The Center for Constitutional Rights has sued U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on behalf of groups and Palestinians in Gaza and the United States. After a district-level dismissal, an appeal hearing is expected in June.

U.S. Media ADMITS Russia’s Economy Booming Despite Western Sanctions!

Germany accuses Russia of waging an ‘information war’ after alleged military leak

Germany’s defence minister has accused Russia of conducting an “information war” aimed at creating divisions within the country, in his first comments after the publication of an audio recording of a meeting of senior German military officials.

Russian media on Friday published a 38-minute recording of a call in which German officers were heard discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea, prompting officials in Moscow to demand an explanation.

On Saturday, Germany called it an apparent act of eavesdropping and said it was investigating.

“The incident is much more than just the interception and publication of a conversation … It is part of an information war that Putin is waging,” defence minister Boris Pistorius said on Sunday. “It is a hybrid disinformation attack. It is about division. It is about undermining our unity.” ...

On Saturday, Scholz called the potential leak “very serious” and said it was “now being clarified very carefully, very intensively and very quickly”. Germany’s ARD broadcaster described the leak as a “catastrophe” for the German secret services. According to Der Spiegel magazine, the video conference was held on the WebEx platform, and not on a secret internal army network.

Marco Rubio: ‘There’s NO WAY’ Russia Conquers Ukraine; Speaker Johnson OPEN to More Funding

US lawmakers present bill to fund government and avert shutdown

US congressional negotiators on Sunday revealed a bill to fund key parts of the government through the rest of the fiscal year that began in October, as lawmakers faced yet another threat of a partial shutdown if they fail to act by Friday.

The legislation sets a discretionary spending level of $1.66tn for fiscal 2024, a spokesperson for Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said. It fills in the details of an agreement that Schumer and Republican House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson set in early January.

Lawmakers last week passed the fourth stopgap measure since 1 October to keep the government funded, and set themselves two quick deadlines to act, with funding for a part of the government including the Department of Transportation and the Food and Drug Administration running out on 8 March and most other federal agencies partially shutting down on 22 March.

The 1,050-page bill lays out in detail funding for six of the dozen segments of the government that Congress is charged with allocating money for, with the next six due by later in the month. ...

While the top leaders of Congress have agreed on the deal, it still faces some challenges, notably opposition by hardline Republicans in the House, who have repeatedly called for sharp spending cuts and typically do not vote for spending bills.

Oregon undoes groundbreaking drug decriminalization law

Oregon lawmakers have moved to reintroduce criminal penalties for the possession of hard drugs, in effect ending the state’s groundbreaking three-year decriminalization experiment.

In 2020, nearly 60% of voters moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs with the passage of Measure 110, but the new law had grown increasingly controversial as the state grappled with the fentanyl crisis and growing public drug use.

Lawmakers had recently reached a bipartisan deal to undo a key aspect of the law and make minor possession a misdemeanor, while also allocating millions of dollars toward specialty court programs as well as mental health and addiction treatment.

The Oregon house approved the $211m bill earlier this week, followed by the state senate, which voted to approve the measure on Friday. The bill now heads to the desk of Governor Tina Kotek, who said in January that she is open to signing a bill that would roll back decriminalization, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

The measure makes the possession of small amounts of drugs such as heroin or methamphetamine a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail. It enables police to confiscate the drugs and crack down on their use on sidewalks and in parks. Drug treatment is to be offered as an alternative to criminal penalties. The measure passed despite concerns that it would create more suffering and disproportionately harm people of color. Research by the state has found that the changes would disproportionately affect Black and Latino people.

Donald Trump RESTORED To Ballot, Supreme Court Votes 9-0 AGAINST Colorado

US supreme court to issue ruling as Trump Colorado ballot case looms

The US supreme court plans to issue at least one ruling on Monday, the day before Colorado holds a presidential primary election in which a lower court kicked Republican frontrunner Donald Trump off the ballot for taking part in an insurrection during the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack.

The supreme court, in an unusual Sunday update to its schedule, did not specify what ruling it would issue. But the justices on 8 February heard arguments in Trump’s appeal of the Colorado ruling and are due to issue their own decision.

Colorado is one of 15 states and a US territory holding primary elections on “Super Tuesday”. Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the 5 November election.

The Republican party of Colorado has asked the supreme court, whose 6-3 conservative majority include three justices appointed by Trump, to rule before Tuesday in the ballot eligibility case.

During arguments, supreme court justices signaled sympathy toward Trump’s appeal of a 19 December ruling by Colorado’s top court to disqualify him from the state’s ballot under the US constitution’s 14th amendment.

Joe Biden’s disapproval rating reaches new high, according to new poll

Strong voter disapproval of Joe Biden’s job performance has reached 47% – the highest negative polling number at any point in his presidency, according to a survey published on Saturday.

The Siena College-conducted poll, commissioned by the New York Times, showed that Biden currently lags behind likely Republican candidate Donald Trump 43% to 48% in registered voters nationally.

The survey found that just one in four voters (24%) think the country is moving in the right direction – a key question in the run-up to a national election – and more than twice as many voters said that Biden’s policies had personally hurt them than those who said they had helped.

Of the two-thirds of the country that feels the nation is headed in the wrong direction, the poll found that 63% said they would vote for Trump.

Conducted at the end of February, these results come as the Biden re-election campaign attempts to change the narrative on voter concerns about the Democrat candidate’s age and mental acuity and his handling of foreign policy and the economy. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition, the polling showed.

The survey is only the latest to reveal the depths of voter dissatisfaction with the president. Last week, a Bloomberg News poll found Biden trailing Trump in several critical states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Texas wildfire: strong winds continue to thwart firefighters’ efforts to contain blaze

Ferocious winds continue to thwart firefighters across a broad swathe of Texas on Sunday where the second largest wildfire in US history is only 15% contained after six days.

As of Sunday morning the Smokehouse Creek Fire has so far scorched almost 1.1m acres – 1,700 sq miles – across the Texas Panhandle in the north of the state, as well as tens of thousands of acres in Oklahoma.

It stretches over an area larger than Rhode Island, making it the largest and most destructive wildfire in Texas history. The fire has the potential to move at 1-3 mph and burn as quickly as 900-1500 acres in an hour, due to a combination of highs winds, dry conditions and unseasonably high temperatures.

Several other smaller fires also continue to burn across the Texas panhandle, including the Windy Deuce fire which has razed 144,000 acres, and the Grape Vine Creek fire stretching 35,000 acres, which are both 60% contained.

Critical fire weather conditions are expected to continue through Sunday as south-westerly winds gust to 50mph and humidity drops below 15%, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) in Amarillo.

Ski resorts’ era of plentiful snow may be over due to climate crisis

If you have been enjoying lushly covered mountains by skiing or snowboarding this winter then such an experience could soon become a receding memory, with a new study finding that an era of reliably bountiful snow has already passed due to the climate crisis.

The US ski industry has lost more than $5bn over the past two decades due to human-caused global heating, the new research has calculated, due to the increasingly sparse nature of snowfall on mountain ranges. Previous studies have shown that in many locations precipitation is now coming in the form of rain, rather than snow, due to warming temperatures.

This situation, the new study states, has shortened the average ski season in the US by five to seven days over the past half century, costing the industry an average of $252m a year from lost revenue and the rising cost of making snow via machines.

“We are probably past the era of peak ski seasons,” said Daniel Scott, a scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who undertook the research with colleagues at the University of Innsbruck. “Climate change is an evolving business reality for the ski industry and the tourism sector.”

Unusually warm winters for parts of the US, as well as ski resorts in Europe, have illustrated the mounting problems facing the pastime. Mountains across France, Austria and Bosnia have been left almost entirely bare of snow, forcing ski lifts to judder to a halt and resorts to shutter. In the US, sites across the western half of the country have reported less than half the normal snowpack, causing resorts to scramble into greater snow production or scale back their offering to skiers.

Also of Interest

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

The Empire’s Weakness Is That It Still Needs Normal People To Turn Its Gears

On Palestine And The Worthlessness Of The Western Liberal

Prediction: Israel Will Bomb Gazans At Drop Sites For U.S. Aid

Defunding UNRWA Makes US Complicit in Genocide

US Officials Expect Israel to Launch Ground Invasion of Lebanon

Jerusalem ‘land grab’: Armenian community fear eviction after contentious deal

Architects of the Disastrous Iraq War Want a Do-Over in Gaza

Galloway Back in Parliament, Declaring Duopoly Defeated

MSM Target Galloway at Victory Party

Out with the animal cruelty. In with … mushrooms? These farmers are leaving factory farming behind

A visual guide to the Texas wildfire

Biden TERRIFIED Of Campus Protestors

NYT In CHAOS After Oct 7 Report DEBUNKED

The Intercept RIPS OFF Grayzone Oct 7 investigations

A Little Night Music

Jesse Fuller - Take This Hammer

Jesse Fuller - The Monkey And the Engineer

Jesse Fuller – Guitar Blues

Jesse Fuller – Stackolee

Jesse Fuller – Running Wild

Jesse Fuller - Lining Up The Track

Jesse Fuller - Jesse's New Midnight Special

Jesse Fuller – Leavin' Memphis, Frisco Bound

Jesse Fuller - San Francisco Bay Blues