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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Cripple Clarence Lofton

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features boogie woogie piano player Cripple Clarence Lofton. Enjoy!

^{Cripple Clarence Lofton - Strut That Thing}

“People are what are scary…people.”

-- Blackbeard

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News and Opinion

Every Israel-Palestine Debate In A Nutshell

Basically every Israel-Palestine debate goes like this:

“Israel did X.”

“Yeah, because Hamas did Y.”

“Yeah, because Israel did Z.”

“Yeah but only because the Palestinians keep doing A.”

“Okay but that’s wouldn’t have happened of the Israelis hadn’t been doing B.”

“But that only happened because the Arabs did C!”

But if you bring the debate back far enough in time, eventually you get to the part where the western world forcibly dropped a brand new ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization without the permission of — and to the extreme detriment of — the people who were already living there.

Sure you can go further back and say “Oh yeah well the Jews lived there thousands of years ago,” but that’s just silly. There’s no valid reason to believe some Jewish guy in New York City even has any meaningful lineage connecting him to that land more strongly than any random Muslim in Turkey or wherever, and even if there was, it would still be absurd to cite ancient history as the basis for a territorial claim. I’m only a few generations removed from my ancestry in Ireland and Scotland, but it would be ridiculous for me to show up demanding the home of someone who lives there.

So the original grievance is clearly the artificial creation of an ethnonationalist state in the mid-20th century, and the push by Zionists and western imperialists to make it happen. That’s the initial act of abuse that spawned this whole gigantic mess.

And how has it all worked out? History speaks for itself. Generations of nonstop violence and abuse, culminating in the slaughter and chaos throughout the middle east that we see before us today.

This means that creating Israel was a mistake. A mistake that needs to be corrected.

Zionists will collapse into a shrieking pile of vitriol and hyperbole when you say this, claiming you’re calling for the extermination of Jews, but this is false. Certainly righting the wrongs of the past and ending a national order premised on putting the interests of Jews before Palestinians would inconvenience a lot of the Jewish people who’ve been living there, but there’s no basis for the claim that it would entail their deaths. Apartheid South Africa was dismantled without the extermination of millions of white people, and there’s no reason to believe the dismantling of apartheid Israel would entail the extermination of Jews.

The Israel experiment has been tried, and it has failed. It is time to try something else.

IRAN FIRES ON US NAVY SHIP, UAE TANKER IN HORMUZ BREACH | Prof. Mohammad Marandi

Bragging of Wartime Iran Blockade, Trump Admits ‘We’re Like Pirates’

President Donald Trump on Friday night openly bragged about the US military acting “like pirates” in the world’s oceans as he described recent activities of the US Navy incapacitating vessels at sea and then taking their cargo.

“We took over the cargo. We took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said with a smile as the friendly crowd at the Forum Club in Palm Beach, Florida, cheered him on.

“We’re sort of like pirates, but we’re not playing games,” Trump added before calling the Iranian “bullies” who had to be confronted.

Trump on US Navy Seizing Ships:

It’s a very profitable business. We’re like pirates. pic.twitter.com/erWDQmJWnw

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 2, 2026

“The only good thing about Trump—only thing!—is that he sometimes says what we all know to be true,” said journalist Mehdi Hassan, “but don’t expect an American president to say, admit, out loud.”

In a social media post, the Iranian Embassy in New Zealand said: “No need to confess, President, the whole world already knows you. By the way, those who, with performative noise, constantly talk about ‘international law’ and ‘freedom of navigation’… don’t want to condemn piracy now?”

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Trump's Ship Is Sinking

Trump casts doubt on Iran peace deal and says Tehran has not ‘paid a big enough price’

Donald Trump has cast doubt on the prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough by claiming Iran had not yet “paid a big enough price” for its past wrongs. Trump’s remarks came amid growing speculation over the possibility of another round of US strikes against Iran aimed at forcing concessions, including a halt to the country’s nuclear programme. Israeli press reports quoted senior military officials as saying they were preparing for possible US strikes on Iran, and the likelihood that Tehran would hit back against Israel. A senior Israeli officer who briefed reporters on Friday said any peace agreement without a cessation of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme and the surrender of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium would be considered a failure.

On Sunday night, Iran’s foreign ministry said it had received a US response to its peace proposal, and that Tehran would review the response. A ministry spokesperson, quoted on Iranian state media said that the exchange of messages through Pakistan did not as yet mean that nuclear negotiations had resumed. Iran’s military-backed Fars news agency quoted a senior official as saying a return to all-out conflict was “likely”, four weeks after a ceasefire was brokered by Pakistan. Pakistani efforts to resume peace talks in Islamabad, after a first round broke up without agreement, have failed as each side set preconditions that the other refused to fulfil.

Asked on Saturday about the possibility of renewed hostilities, Trump said it was possible, adding: “If they misbehave, if they do something bad, but right now, we’ll see.” While issuing threats of a return to bombing, Trump has also argued to Congress in a letter on Friday that the ceasefire meant hostilities had “terminated”, in an effort to claim the administration is not obliged to seek congressional approval for military operation by a legal deadline of 60 days from the start of the war.

A few hours later, Trump contradicted himself, telling a meeting of supporters at a retirement community in Florida: “You know we’re in a war, because I think you would agree we cannot let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran presented a new 14-point proposal to the US via Pakistan on Friday, with a reported focus on the lifting of the blockades and a new mechanism for managing the strait. Iranian press reports portrayed this as a comprehensive peace plan to be implemented within 30 days, rather than just a ceasefire. It also included the payment of compensation to Tehran for war damage, the lifting of sanctions and cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon, where Israel continues to exchange fire with Hezbollah despite a ceasefire having been declared by Trump.

Alastair Crooke : Are Negotiations with Trump Even Possible?

In honor of Guido Reichstadter,
the man who climbed the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge to make his voice of protest heard.

Your dignity stands taller than the place you stood,
and it will live forever in our memory. pic.twitter.com/WANYzS7kIh

— Explosive Media (@ExplosiveMediaa) May 2, 2026

Spain demands release of Gaza flotilla activists ‘held illegally’ by Israel

Spain’s foreign ministry has demanded the immediate release of a Spanish national it said was being “held illegally” by Israel after the interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla, hours after an Israeli court moved to extend his detention by two days. Saif Abu Keshek, who lives in Barcelona, and Thiago Ávila, from Brazil, appeared in court in Ashkelon on Sunday, days after Israeli forces intercepted at least 22 boats from a flotilla that was attempting to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the devastated Palestinian territory to deliver aid.

The interception took place in international waters off Greece. Israel later said it had removed 175 activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was made up of about 58 vessels carrying crew members from 70 countries. Two members of the flotilla, Abu Keshek and Ávila, were later taken to Israel for questioning.

On Sunday, the rights group representing the pair said the court had ruled to extend their detention and that no formal charges had been filed against them. “The court extended their detention by two days,” Miriam Azem, the international advocacy coordinator at Adalah, told Agence France-Presse. A source from Spain’s foreign ministry told the Guardian on Sunday that the Spanish consul in Tel Aviv had attended Abu Keshek’s court hearing, adding that he was being “held illegally”. His next hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, the source said, adding: “The Spanish government demands his immediate release.”

On Saturday, Adalah said its lawyers had met the two detained activists at Shikma prison in Ashkelon. The right group said Ávila had told the lawyers he had been “subjected to extreme brutality” when the vessels were seized, saying he had been “dragged face-down across the floor and beaten so severely that he passed out twice”. Since arriving in Israel, Ávila said he had been “kept in isolation and blindfolded”, according to Adalah.

Abu Keshek, meanwhile, had been “hand-tied and blindfolded … and forced to lie face down on the floor from the moment of his seizure” until reaching Israel, the group said. “Both activists are continuing their hunger strike in protest of their unlawful detention and ill-treatment,” it added.

Iran ATTACKS US Warship & UAE in DIRE Warning to Trump | Larry Johnson & Col. Lawrence Wilkerson

Trump Rebuked for Bypassing Congress With $8.6 Billion Weapons Sale to Israel and Gulf Allies

As the US voting public continues to express its discontent over the disastrous war of choice against Iran that US President Donald Trump launched just over two months ago, fresh criticism followed after weekend reporting revealed the administration skirted congressional review to approve an $8.6 billion weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates and other allies in the Middle East.

Announced Friday night quietly by the US State Department, as the New York Times reports, the “sales would entail the transfer of rockets to

Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and air-defense equipment to Qatar and Kuwait.”

According to the Times:

Under the terms of the deal with Qatar, the Gulf country would pay more than $4 billion for American-made Patriot missile interceptors — global stockpiles of which have dwindled during the war with Iran.

Israel, the Emirates and Qatar would receive an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, which fires laser-guided rockets. Kuwait also purchased an advanced aerial defense system for about $2.5 billion.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio expedited the deals under an emergency provision allowing the “immediate sale” of the weapons, the State Department said, bypassing standard congressional review and prompting criticism from Democratic lawmakers. This is the third time the second Trump administration has invoked an emergency authorization during the Iran war to bypass Congress on arms sales.

“No comment,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an eye-rolling response to the news on social media.

After a commenter suggested that “America opened the door to war for [the countries taking part in the sale] so they would open their treasuries and the Israeli-American arms trade would boom after a slump,” ElBaradei seemed to agree.

“The vaults are open, and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it,” he said.

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton University, said: “Trump is bypassing Congress to fast-track arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, apparently without receiving any promise that the UAE would stop arming the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.”

The RSF has been accused of atrocities in the ongoing Sudanese civil war, and the backing it has received from the US, with the UAE as its closely allied proxy, has been the source of outrage and criticism.

Scott Ritter: Iran War Reignites as U.S. Pushes to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Scores Killed in Israeli Strikes on Southern Lebanon Despite Ceasefire ‘Holding’

Scores of people, including a number of women and children, have been killed over the course of the weekend in southern Lebanon, as Israeli strikes continue to escalate across the region, and numbers from the Lebanese Health Ministry show the overall death toll of the war continuing to spiral, despite reports continuing to present the active ceasefire in Lebanon as “holding.”

The Health Ministry’s most recent numbers, released on Sunday, had at least 2,679 people killed and 8,229 wounded so far since the Israeli invasion in early March. Those numbers continue to consistently rise despite a ceasefire nominally being in place for weeks now.

The Health Ministry’s number included 20 killed on Sunday alone in multiple different strikes, and 46 others wounded. The wounded included at least four paramedics, who were wounded in an Israeli strike near a medical center in the Tyre District.

‘This is just disarray’: alarm inside Pentagon after Hegseth staff purges

Since Donald Trump’s first term, they have been viewed comfortingly as the “adults in the room,” a last line of defense against the impulsive whims of a president with access to the nuclear codes. Now – after an unprecedented wave of firings that has been compared by some to Stalin’s purges – the Pentagon top brass no longer seem like such a reliable bulwark.

Since Trump returned to office in January last year, Pete Hegseth, the rumbustious defense secretary who has made it his mission to remake a military ethos he denounced as “woke”, has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders, with no performance-related reason given. About 60% have been Black or female, an approach seemingly driven by the administration’s proclaimed onslaught against “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hires”.

Yet the officers forced out have had impeccable reputations. The most recent victim was Gen Randy George, the army chief of staff, ousted last month reportedly after he refused to obey Hegseth’s instruction to strike four officers – two Black men and two women – from a list of prospective promotions.

In interviews with the Guardian, insiders have portrayed Hegseth – a former Fox News host known for combative public appearances and an aggressive stance towards journalists – as increasingly isolated within the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy and surrounded by a small coterie of close friends and relatives. Some say he expresses fear and paranoia about Trump firing him from a job for which critics say his background as a former national guard infantry major with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is inadequate qualification.

Military analysts say Hegseth’s recent firings dovetail with plans spelled out in Project 2025, the radical blueprint drawn up by the rightwing Heritage Foundation that has closely guided Trump’s second-term policies. “It talked about an officer purge and going after the so-called woke officers at the senior level,” said Paul Eaton, a retired army major-general who commanded US forces after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “They want to create ideologically pure armed forces that will be pliant to the president and his secretary of defense and whose oath will be more to a person than to the constitution.”

China Says SCREW YOU To US Sanctions

Nato meetings with TV and film-makers prompt claims it is seeking ‘propaganda’

Nato is holding closed-door meetings with film and TV screenwriters, directors and producers across Europe and the US, the Guardian can reveal, prompting accusations the alliance is seeking to use the arts to generate “propaganda” for the bloc. The alliance has held three meetings with film and TV professionals in Los Angeles, Brussels and Paris and is due to continue its “series of intimate conversations” next month in London, meeting with screenwriter members of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), which represents professional writers in the UK.

The planned meeting in London has caused consternation among some of those invited, who felt they were being asked to “contribute towards propaganda for Nato”.

The topic of conversation at the meeting, to be held under the Chatham House rule – in which participants are free to use information received, but identities of attenders are not revealed – will be the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond”. Former Nato spokesperson James Appathurai, who is now deputy assistant secretary general for hybrid, cyber and new technology, is understood to be planning to attend, along with other officials from the alliance.

In a WGGB email seen by the Guardian, it was suggested that the meetings had already led to “three separate projects” in development, which were “inspired, at least in part, by these conversations”. It also said that Nato was “built on the belief that cooperation and compromise, the nurturing of friendships and alliances, is the way forward”, adding that “even if something so simple as that message finds its way into a future story, that will be enough”, according to the organisers of the event. Alan O’Gorman, writer of the film Christy, which won best film at the 2026 Irish Film & Television Awards, called the planned meeting “outrageous” and “clearly propaganda”.

Cuba says Trump’s fresh sanctions on its economy amount to ‘collective punishment’

Cuba’s government has said new sanctions imposed on the island by Donald Trump amounted to “collective punishment”, as an enormous 1 May procession outside the American embassy in Havana vowed to “defend the homeland”.

In an executive order on Friday, the US president said he would impose sanctions on people involved in broad sections of the Cuban economy, as he seeks to put more pressure on Havana after ousting Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this year. The latest sanctions constituted “collective punishment” of the nation’s people, said Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez. “We firmly reject the recent unilateral coercive measures adopted by the #UnitedStates government,” he posted on X in English.

Trump has mused about taking over Cuba, which lies 145km from Florida and has been under a nearly continuous US trade embargo since Fidel Castro led a communist revolution in 1959. On Friday, Trump used a speech in Florida to again suggest the US could launch operations against Cuba. “On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big – maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world, we’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up.’”

The economic situation has worsened for Cuba since Washington imposed a fuel blockade in January, with only one Russian oil tanker making it through since then. Supply shortages and power cuts have become the norm, and tourism – once Cuba’s most lucrative industry – has plummeted.

Trump’s Friday order targets people known to “operate in or have operated in the energy, defence and related materiel, metals and mining, financial services or security sector of the Cuban economy, or any other sector of the Cuban economy”, as well as Cuban officials judged to have engaged in “serious human rights abuses” or corruption.

Trump’s disapproval rating hits record high

Six months out from November’s midterm US elections, Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has reached 62% – the worst of his two terms in office – according to a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. The US president received his worst ratings on the cost of living and other economic issues since launching his deeply unpopular war against Iran in February, which has plunged the global economy into an oil crisis and sent gas prices rocketing to a four-year high.

Trump achieved majority disapproval on his management of every issue measured, including Americans disapproved of his handling of that war by 66% to 32%, while a staggering 76% disapproved and only 23% approved of his handling of the cost of living. Two-thirds of Americans now feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. The poll found Trump’s overall approval now stands at 37%, which isn’t much movement from 39% in February. But his disapproval rose to 62%, a record high across his two terms in office.

Predictably, among the Republican party faithful, Trump’s approval held steady at 85%, buoying his overall rating. But the share of Republicans who strongly approve of Trump has dropped, with 45% saying they strongly approve, down from 53%. And his ratings among Republican-leaning independents reached a new low of 56%. Among independents overall, he lost ground, with his approval rating slipping to 25%.

The weak approval ratings put the Republicans’ wafer-thin House majority in jeopardy, with its Senate majority on the line as well. The poll found that among registered voters, Democrats hold a five-point advantage on the question of which party people favor in House elections, up from a two-point edge in February and October. The Democrats’ advantage rises to nine points among those who are absolutely certain to vote. Democrats also are far more likely than Republicans to say voting this fall is more important than previous midterms, at 73% compared to 52%.

After More Private Social Security Data Exposed by Team Trump, Where Will GOP ‘Draw the Line’?

A newly reported failure of the Trump administration’s ability to handle sensitive private information in the social programs it is tasked with operating triggered a fresh wave of anger over the weekend after it was revealed that healthcare providers’ Social Security numbers were made public as part of a faulty Medicare portal rollout.

The Washington Post discovered the compromised database and alerted the administration last week, before publishing a story about it on Friday, after efforts had been made to protect the sensitive information from further compromise.

According to the Post:

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year created a directory to help seniors look up which doctors and medical providers accept which insurance plans, framing it as an overdue improvement and part of the Trump administration’s initiative to modernize health care technology.

But a publicly accessible database used to populate the directory contains some of the providers’ Social Security numbers, linked to their names and other identifying information. For at least several weeks, CMS made the database available for public use as part of its data transparency efforts.

While the reporting noted that the files were “not immediately visible to users who [visited] the provider directory,” lawmakers and experts said the compromised information would be a treasure trove for fraudsters.

Critics pounced on the new reporting, calling it “yet another mess-up by the Team Trump” and only the latest evidence that the administration cannot and should not be trusted to protect the nation’s most successful anti-poverty programs or the sensitive personal data of the American people who entrust the government with that information.

“Over and over again, the Trump administration is exposing private Social Security data,” said Social Security Works, an advocacy group that serves as a public watchdog for the nation’s social programs.

The compromised database, said the group, “is a goldmine for identity thieves, scammers, and foreign governments. And it is undermining the very foundation of our Social Security system.”

“This is a failure by this administration,” said Sen.

Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in response to the reporting. “Exposing Social Security numbers, whether patients or providers, is unacceptable.”

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House committee that oversees the Medicare program, put the onus on his Republican colleagues in Congress.

“The more we learn about how the Trump Administration handles the people’s most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes,” Neal told the Post in a statement. “Do House Republicans need to see their own data exposed before they do right by their constituents and act?”

In March, as Common Dreams reported at the time, a whistleblower filed

a complaint with the Social Security Administration accusing a former staffer with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run for a time by right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, of trying to share information from SSA databases with his private employer.

Since the outset of Trump’s second term, DOGE’s meddling with Social Security and Trump’s undermining of the program have been the source of deep anger and concerns among the program’s defenders.

In a social media post on Saturday citing the whistleblower allegations from March, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said, “For more than a year, ‘DOGE’ has been combing through the American people’s records. They want to use your data to overturn elections and profit in the private sector. Enough! This administration must be held accountable for this massive data breach!

On Friday, responding to the Post’s new reporting about the compromised database of physicians’ private information, Larsen condemned Republicans for their ongoing and pervasive failures in the face of Trump’s malfeasance and incompetence.

DOGE, said Larsen, “has been in your data for more than a year. We just learned that physicians’ Social Security numbers were publicly exposed in an online portal launched by ‘DOGE’ officials.”

“If this isn’t enough for Republicans to act,” he asked, “where will they draw the line?”

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Democrats Committed to LOSING With OLD as F*ck Party (w/ Sam Moyn)

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Could Santa Marta climate talks mark ground zero in push to ditch fossil fuels?

Looking out to sea from the grey sandy beaches of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, it is never hard to spot evidence of the country’s thriving fossil fuel export trade. Oil tankers ride at anchor on the horizon and sometimes, locals say, lumps of coal wash up on the shore, blown off the collier ships that carry cargos from the nearby mines. It was here, on Wednesday evening, that the Colombian government took a bold step to shift its economy – and that of the rest of the world – away from dependence on coal, gas and oil and into a new era of clean energy. With the first ever conference on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, the host joined nearly 60 countries determined to loosen of the grip of petrostates on the world’s future.

“This is the beginning of a new global climate democracy,” Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister and chair of the talks, said in closing remarks that celebrated a “new method” of bringing together high-ambition governments, parliamentarians and civil society groups to accelerate the decarbonisation of their economies. At this moment in history, the conference may also mark a new global divide between “electro-democracies” and petro-dictatorships. The initiative has come at a pivotal moment in the climate fight. Oil and gas prices have soared since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, the second such crisis within five years, after the price rises that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Households around the world are spiralling into debt, farmers cannot afford fertiliser and governments are remembering that a dependency on volatile fossil fuels is holding them hostage to geopolitical forces they cannot control.

Repeated oil shocks blighted the 1970s, and the current crisis is not only greater than those but more impactful than all previous crises combined, according to Fatih Birol, the world’s leading energy economist and chief of the International Energy Agency, the gold standard in energy research. “This is bigger than all the biggest crises combined, and therefore huge,” he said in an exclusive Guardian interview. “I still cannot understand that the world was so blindsided, that the global economy can be held hostage to a 50km strait.” What is different today from previous oil shocks is the ready availability of a viable alternative: cheap, reliable and plentiful renewable energy from the wind and sun, with modern battery technology to smooth over any intermittency; while electric vehicles and heat pumps can shunt transport and heating off fossil fuels and on to far more efficient electricity.

For those reasons, Birol predicted the current shock would mark a permanent change for the global energy industry, leading consumer countries to lose trust in fossil fuels. “Their perception of risk and reliability will change,” he said. “Governments will review their energy strategies. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future. And this will cut into the main markets for oil.” These changes would be lasting, he added. “The vase is broken, the damage is done – it will be very difficult to put the pieces back together. This will have permanent consequences for the global energy market for years to come.”

How LNG interests are seeking to disrupt global talks on decarbonising shipping

About a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) passed through the strait of Hormuz, a strip of sea less than 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, before it was in effect closed by the US-Israeli attack on Iran, which sent the price of oil soaring and left an estimated 20,000 seafarers on 2,000 vessels stranded. Their plight has shone a spotlight on the complex and dirty relationship between shipping and the fossil fuel industry. The sector is one of the most polluting, with most ship engines fuelled by what has been called the dregs of the oil refining process, heavy and carbon-intensive diesel too filthy for any other purpose. Shipping produces about 3% of global greenhouse gases, a portion set to rise as trade globalises further.

But the relationship with oil goes even deeper: not only are vessels dependent on “bunker fuel”, but shipping companies also rely heavily on fossil fuels as cargo. “About 40% of the global fleet is used to transport fossil fuels,” said Marie Fricaudet, of the shipping and oceans group at the Energy Institute, University College London. “[That’s] a trade that must be phased out to prevent the most severe impacts of climate change.” At the International Maritime Organization (IMO) headquarters on the banks of the Thames in London, two weeks of talks among scores of governments focused on the means of decarbonising shipping are at their midpoint. Insiders have told the Guardian that many countries have been assailed by fierce pro-oil lobbying.

Liberia, Panama and Greece are among countries that appear to have shifted their position, switching from support for strict controls on greenhouse gas emissions to attempting to scrap new regulation. If the world is to make the shift needed away from fossil fuels to a green economy, cleaning up shipping will be vital. But when so many shipping companies, and so many countries with big fleets, have a vested commercial interest in keeping the world hooked on oil, any attempts to green the fleet can quickly run aground.

LNG, trade in which has been severely disrupted by the closure of Hormuz, is one of the most costly fuels to move. It must be stored in specially cooled containers and transported in some of the most expensive vessels around. Companies and countries have invested heavily in these, partly in response to the last oil crisis sparked in 2022 by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when European countries and others began to look for other sources of gas. Before that, LNG was benefiting from the move away from coal. But repeated oil crises have prompted many countries to consider renewables as a better bet for long-term energy security. Though in the near term “there are plenty of economies with a high dependency on gas”, one person involved in the IMO talks said, these factors mean LNG “is looking particularly dodgy in the midterm, the mid-2030s”.

Tristan Smith, a professor of energy and transport at UCL, points to the influence of LNG interests. “The future demand for moving LNG between continents, and those invested in owning and financing ships and import/export terminals that enable this, appears to be significantly linked to pressure exerted on the IMO’s negotiations,” he said. Several countries with strong national LNG interests disrupted the talks last year, chief among them the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they were joined in opposing key aspects of the carbon regulations by Liberia and the Marshall Islands, which through their national flag registries – systems by which shipowners can pay a fee to be registered in a certain country – are “strongly correlated with LNG exposure”, Smith said.

Lightning may have sparked fire destroying top US marine science lab, officials say

Officials are investigating whether a huge fire that destroyed a top marine science laboratory at the University of South Florida may have been caused by a lightning strike.

Despite a massive response from local fire crews the Marine Science Laboratory building was completely destroyed after the blaze began on Saturday.

Moez Limayem, the USF president, said that lightning storms in the area were being looked at as a possible cause of the enormous and devastating blaze at the advanced scientific institute.

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Also of Interest

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

‘I Refuse to Be Complicit’: Man Scales 168-Foot Bridge in DC Demanding End to Iran War

Trump Says US Will ‘Guide’ Ships Out of the Strait of Hormuz Starting Monday Morning

Trump’s Iran blockade snatches defeat from the jaws of victory

Iran War: Trump Whinges About Iran Proposal, China Rejects New US Secondary Sanctions, Ansar Allah Threatens Saudis

Israel Attacks Gaza Flotilla Near Greek Waters

Palestine Action Defendants Address Jury Directly

The Trump Surveillance State

Patrick Lawrence: Trump’s Trap, Trump’s Sanity

Trump And His Family Are Enriching Themselves

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A Little Night Music

Cripple Clarence Lofton - The Fives

Cripple Clarence Lofton -- Monkey Man Blues

Cripple Clarence Lofton - I Don't Know

Cripple Clarence Lofton - In The Mornin'

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Clarence's Blues

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Traveling Blues

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Blue Boogie

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Brown Skin Girls

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Streamline Train

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