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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Joe Carter

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Joe Carter. Enjoy!

^{Joe Carter - It Hurts Me Too}

“The US and Israel erased our agency.They’re deciding our future without us. They talk about women, life and freedoms … yet they attacked my land. They violated the skies and borders of my country. They killed innocent people. And within hours, billions of dollars – money that could have gone towards rebuilding Iran – were obliterated by American bombs."

-- Raha (an Iranian citizen)

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News and Opinion

Iran-U.S. War ‘FAR FROM OVER,’ Trump Still Pushing for Regime Change

Israel, confirming ceasefire, declares “campaign against Iran is not over”

In the aftermath of a 12-day US-Israeli bombing campaign, Israeli officials have pledged to continue their “campaign against Iran.” In a statement Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israeli military, declared, “We have concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over. We are entering a new phase, one that builds upon the achievements of the current operation.”

Reiterating these points, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would abide by the ceasefire with Iran announced Monday by US President Donald Trump, but that it would attack Iran again if it sought to continue enriching uranium. “We have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project. And if anyone in Iran tries to rebuild it, we will act with the same determination, with the same intensity, to foil any attempt,” Netanyahu said.

Praising the outcome of the US-Israeli campaign, Netanyahu declared, “We eliminated many senior officials and attacked Revolutionary Guard bases. We struck a decisive blow to the Ayatollah regime, marking the hardest blow in its history. We eliminated hundreds of regime operatives in a crushing attack. I thank President Trump for his unwavering support.” Netanyahu pledged to turn his attention to Gaza, where the US and Israel are carrying out a genocide of the Palestinian people, declaring, “We must complete the mission against the Iranian axis of evil by... destroying Hamas.”

Iran, for its part, pledged to continue its nuclear enrichment program after the Israeli assault. “We have exerted a huge effort to acquire this technology. Our scientists made massive sacrifices and even lost their lives for this goal,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al-Araby al-Jadeed. “Our people have endured challenges for this, and a war was imposed on our nation over this issue. It is certain that no one in Iran will give up this technology.” ...

Dominant factions within the US political establishment are already calling on the US and Israel to demand further concessions from Iran. An editorial published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday called for this month’s war to be used as a springboard to force Iran to “dismantle what’s left of the nuclear program and end its proxy warfare across the region.”

Alastair Crooke: Iran–Israel Ceasefire? Inside the 12‑Day War & Trump’s Peace Deal

Trump and Hegseth admit doubts about level of damage to Iranian nuclear sites

Donald Trump and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian programme had been set back by only a few months. “The intelligence was very inconclusive,” Trump told journalists at a Nato summit in The Hague, introducing an element of uncertainty for the first time after several days of emphatic declarations that the destruction had been total.

“The intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the intelligence suggests.” The president then appeared to revert to his claim that “it was very severe. There was obliteration”. Later in the day, he claimed that was the conclusion from “collected intelligence”, and that the Iranian programme had been set back “decades”. Trump also likened the US use of massive bunker-buster bombs on the Fordow and Natanz uranium enrichment sites to the impact of the US nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the second world war, using the comparison specifically in reference to their impact in ending a conflict.

Over the course of the day, Trump’s claims became more far-reaching, even rejecting reports from the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that Iran’s 400kg stock of 60% enriched uranium could no longer be accounted for, and appeared to have been moved.

Trump claimed there would be a US-Iran meeting next week to negotiate once more about Tehran’s nuclear programme. “We’re going to talk to them next week with Iran, we may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” he said, before adding: “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not.” Trump was also markedly less confident on Wednesday about the ceasefire he had previous declared was “unlimited” and “going to go forever”, even suggesting that a return to conflict could be imminent. “I dealt with both and they’re both tired, exhausted … and can it start again? I guess someday, it can. It could maybe start soon,” he said.

It isn't over 'til it's over. Bloodied Israel back for more?

This is the useful part of this article, which is filled with the usual Guardian propaganda slant.

Iran’s parliament approves bill to suspend cooperation with IAEA

Iran’s parliament has unanimously agreed to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear inspectorate, making it harder for an independent expert assessment to be made about the degree of damage inflicted on Iran’s three key nuclear sites by the joint US and Israeli bombing.

It also makes it harder for the location of any highly enriched uranium to be known. The vote is a sign that Iran wants to harden its negotiating position on cooperation with the west in the wake of 12 days of attacks mounted by Israel and the US, but supported by European governments only with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

The decision to suspend cooperation with the IAEA is likely to be passed for final approval to the Guardian Council, a body empowered to vet legislation. ...

The parliament’s move to suspend cooperation with the IAEA was passed with no opposing votes. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament, said the IAEA had “not fulfilled its duties and become a political tool”. Resumption of cooperation would be dependent on a report from the Iranian Atomic Energy Authority and the national security and foreign policy committee. Guarantees would be needed about the safety of Iranian nuclear facilities. ...

The parliament also heard calls for Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, to be sued for providing false reports and for his staff spying on nuclear facilities on behalf of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. Grossi said the international community could not accept Iran ending cooperation over its nuclear facilities. He admitted the IAEA could not know the location of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Israel Never Abides Ceasefires

A majority of Americans disapproves of Trump’s Iran airstrikes

President Donald Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes against Iran is broadly unpopular with Americans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after the strikes. Americans disapprove of the strikes, 56% to 44%, according to the survey, with strong disapproval outpacing the share who strongly approve. Most distrust Trump’s decision-making on the use of force in Iran, with about 6 in 10 worried that the strikes will increase the Iranian threat to the US.

Sharp partisan divides cut through nearly every question asked in the survey: Democrats are broadly opposed to the strikes as most Republicans support them, though younger GOP supporters and Republican-leaning independents are more skeptical than others in their party. Majorities of independents (60%) and Democrats (88%) disapprove of the decision to take military action in Iran. Republicans largely approve (82%). But just 44% of Republicans strongly approve of the airstrikes, far smaller than the group of Democrats who strongly disapprove (60%), perhaps reflecting that some in Trump’s coalition are broadly distrustful of military action abroad.

A 58% majority overall say the strikes will make Iran more of a threat to the US, with just 27% believing it will lessen the threat and the rest expecting it to do neither. Even among those who support the strikes, just 55% expect them to lessen the threat level. And few say the US made enough of an effort at diplomacy before using military force: 32% feel the US did enough, 39% that it did not and 29% are unsure.

The poll was conducted Sunday and Monday, with nearly all of the interviews completed before Iran launched retaliatory strikes Monday against US air bases and all interviews done before Trump’s subsequent announcement of a ceasefire. Just over half of Americans, 55%, expresses little or no trust in Trump to make the right decisions about the US use of force in Iran, with 45% saying they trust him moderately or a great deal. And most – 65% – say that he should be required to get congressional approval for any further military action, with 21% saying he should not.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Why Israel Will Fail

Seven Israeli soldiers killed in Hamas attack in southern Gaza Strip

Seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in a Hamas attack in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said on Wednesday, one of the deadliest incidents for the force in months. Meanwhile, Israeli attacks have killed 74 people in the Palestinian territory over the past 24 hours, according to local health authorities.

The seven Israeli soldiers, in the 605th combat engineering battalion, were killed on Tuesday after militants planted a bomb on their vehicle while they were driving in Khan Younis, causing it to catch fire. Hamas later claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Rescue forces and helicopters were dispatched to the scene and made attempts to extract the soldiers but were unsuccessful,” said Brig Gen Effie Defrin, an Israeli army spokesperson, on Wednesday. He added that the 605th battalion was finding and demolishing tunnels, as well as killing militants, in Khan Younis.

Their deaths brought the total number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 to 879. ...

At least 40 Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza were shot by Israeli forces on Tuesday, local medics and officials said.

Israeli forces kill three Palestinians after settlers attack West Bank town

Dozens of Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian West Bank town, sparking a confrontation that ended with Israeli forces killing three Palestinians.

In a separate incident, a 15-year-old boy was killed by the Israeli army in the northern West Bank town of Al-Yamoun, amid a surge of violence and near-daily confrontations between settlers and Palestinians.

Three Palestinians were killed and seven wounded in the violence in Kafr Malik on Wednesday, north-east of Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry said.

An Israeli military statement said dozens of Israelis set fire to property, and military and police forces were dispatched to the scene after receiving a report of ensuing violence that included an exchange of stone-throwing.

Australian Reporter Wins Suit Against ABC Over ‘Anti-Semitic’ Post

A judge in a federal court in Sydney, Australia has ruled against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for wrongly dismissing a radio presenter after she shared an instagram post from Human Rights Watch that accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon in Gaza.

Judge Darryl Rangiah awarded journalist Antoinette Lattouf AU$70,000 and possibly more in damages on Wednesday in a case that undermines an organized campaign in Australia, like in many countries today, that is attacking legitimate critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza as being anti-semitic.

Senior ABC executives had testified at trial that they had been flooded with complaints — even though none of the contested content had been discussed on air — and that pressure had mounted to get rid of the presenter, which they did.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers later revealed that the flood of complaints was the result of a coordinated campaign by pro-Israel lobby groups via WhatsApp. The campaign targeted the ABC’s chair and managing director to have Lattouf sacked. The Australian journalists union MEAA stood behind Lattouf, questioning the national broadcaster’s independence from outside influence. ...

Her attorney, Josh Bornstein said the ABC had refused to settle for A$85,000 and instead spent A$1.1 million of taxpayer money defending the case.

China Russia Discuss Iran Aid, Defence Chiefs Meet; Iran Cuts IAEA Ties; Moscow: NO To Kiev EU Entry

Zelensky Still Pushing for NATO Membership Despite Trump Administration’s Rejection

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still “forcefully” pushing for Ukrainian NATO membership despite the Trump administration rejecting the idea, POLITICO reported on Tuesday.

Zelensky is in The Hague for the NATO summit and is set to hold a meeting with President Trump on Wednesday. The Ukrainian leader met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Tuesday, who repeated the line that Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to NATO membership, echoing an alliance statement from last year’s summit in Washington.

But President Trump and his top officials have ruled out the idea of Ukraine joining NATO as part of any future peace deal with Russia since one of Moscow’s main motives for invading Ukraine was the country’s alignment with the Western military alliance, a fact acknowledged by the previous NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg.

Billionaires’ wealth surged $6.5tn over past decade

The wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires has surged by $6.5tn (£4.8tn) in real terms over the past decade, according to Oxfam, equivalent to 14.6% of global output.

In total the richest 1% of the global population has gained at least $33.9tn in real terms, which the charity said was “enough to end annual global poverty 22 times over”.

The figures come as various governments face growing calls to introduce a wealth tax on the international elite.

In the UK, the number of billionaires has grown sharply, from 15 in 1990 to 165 in 2024, according to separate figures from the Equality Trust, which found their average wealth rose by more than 1,000% over the same period. Billionaires pay “effective tax rates close to 0.3% of their wealth, well below what average workers contribute”, Oxfam said.

Trump DoJ ally denies claim he urged defying court orders on immigration

Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, denied to senators on Wednesday a whistleblower’s claim that he suggested prosecutors ignore orders from judges who ruled against the president’s immigration policy. In a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee to consider his nomination to serve as a federal appeals court judge, Bove, currently the principal associate deputy attorney general at the justice department, also rejected assertions from Democrats that corruption charges against New York City mayor, Eric Adams, were dropped in order to secure his cooperation with the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.

The hearing convened hours after reports emerged that former justice department attorney Erez Reuveni filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging that Bove said prosecutors “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’” in instances when they rule against Trump’s immigration policies. “I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order,” Bove said in response to questions from the committee’s chair, Chuck Grassley.

A former New York City-based federal prosecutor, Trump hired Bove as an attorney to defend him against the four state and federal indictments he faced before winning re-election last year. He then appointed Bove as acting justice department deputy attorney general his first weeks back in the White House, during which time he fired prosecutors who brought charges against January 6 rioters and requested a list of FBI agents who worked on the cases. He also oversaw legal motions to drop charges against Adams, which prompted the resignation of seven veteran prosecutors in New York who refused to cooperate.

During his confirmation hearing for a seat on the appeals court overseeing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the US Virgin Islands, Republican lawmakers signaled no objections to moving his nomination to the Senate floor, while Bove described himself as unfairly maligned. ... Democrats described Bove as exactly what he claims not to be, with the committee’s ranking member, Dick Durbin, saying he “led the effort to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president’s enemies. Having earned his stripes as a loyalist to this president, he’s been rewarded with this lifetime nomination.”

Pam Bondi denies knowing Ice agents wore masks during raids despite video evidence

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, professed ignorance of reports of immigration officials hiding their faces with masks during roundups of undocumented people, despite widespread video evidence and reports that they are instilling pervasive fear and panic.

Challenged at a Wednesday Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing by Gary Peters, a Democratic senator for Michigan, Bondi, who as the country’s top law officer has a prominent role in the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, implied she was unaware of plain-clothed agents concealing their faces while carrying out arrests but suggested it was for self-protection.

“I do know they are being doxxed … they’re being threatened,” she told Peters. “Their families are being threatened.” Bondi’s protestations appeared to strain credibility given the attention the masked raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents have attracted on social media and elsewhere.

Civil rights campaigners and democracy experts have criticised the raids as evocative of entrenched dictatorships and police states, and say it is a warning sign that the US is descending into authoritarianism. Peters said he understood officers’ concerns at being doxxed but said the failure to wear identifying insignia endangered both themselves and detainees.

“The public risk being harmed by individuals pretending to be immigration enforcement, which has already happened,” he told Bondi. “And these officers also risk being injured by individuals who think they’re basically being kidnapped or attacked by some unknown assailant. People think: ‘Here’s a person coming up to me, not identified, covering themselves. They’re kidnapping.’ They’ll probably fight back. That endangers the officer as well, and that’s a serious situation. People need to know that they’re dealing with a federal law enforcement official.”

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How Zohran Beat the NYC Democratic Establishment

Democrat elites engage in internecine war rather than getting their act together.

Union leaders’ exit from DNC exposes ‘mind-boggling’ tensions inside Democratic party

As the Democratic party fights to rebuild from a devastating election defeat, the abrupt exit of the presidents of two of the nation’s largest labor unions from its top leadership board has exposed simmering tensions over the party’s direction. Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders quit the Democratic National Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to “open the gates” and win back the support of working-class voters. Ken Martin, the new DNC chair, and his allies told the Guardian that the party was focused on doing exactly that.

Weingarten, president of the 1.8-million-member American Federation of Teachers, resigned after Martin did not renominate her to serve on the DNC’s important rules committee. In her resignation letter, Weingarten wrote that education, healthcare and public service workers were in “an existential battle” due to Donald Trump’s attacks and that she did not “want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent”. Saunders, the long-time president of the 1.3-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also issued a critical statement. “These are new times. They deserve new strategies,” he said. “We must evolve to meet the urgency of the moment. This is not a time to close ranks or turn inward … It is our responsibility to open the gates [and] welcome others.” ...

Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, said the resignations were an inarguable blow to the DNC. “When something like this becomes public, there’s clearly a spotlight on it,” he said. “Giving the longstanding leadership role that Randi and Lee have played in the Democratic party, and at a time when the party is trying to desperately improve its image with working-class voters and remake itself in a lot of ways, this is really unacceptable.”

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Overfishing has caused cod to halve in body size since 1990s

Overfishing has led to a collapse in the eastern Baltic cod population, but over the past three decades the size of the fish themselves has also been dramatically and mysteriously shrinking. Now scientists have uncovered genomic evidence that intensive fishing has driven rapid evolutionary changes that have contributed to these fish roughly halving in average body length since the 1990s.

The “shrinking” of cod, from a median mature body length of 40cm in 1996 to 20cm in 2019, has a genetic basis and human activities have left a profound mark on the population’s DNA, the study concluded. “When the largest individuals are consistently removed from the population over many years, smaller, faster-maturing fish gain an evolutionary advantage,” said Prof Thorsten Reusch, head of the marine ecology research division at Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and senior author of the research. “What we are observing is evolution in action, driven by human activity. This is scientifically fascinating, but ecologically deeply concerning.”

The dramatic shrinking of cod has been a source of concern for several decades, but it was not clear to what extent the phenomenon has been driven by environmental factors such as hypoxic conditions caused by algal blooms, pollution and more extreme marine seasonal temperature changes.

“It was very hard to prove that it was an evolution that had happened,” said Dr Kwi Young Han, first author of the study, who completed her PhD at Geomar.

Mirrors in space and underwater curtains: can technology buy us enough time to save the Arctic ice caps?

When the glaciologist John Moore began studying the Arctic in the 1980s there was an abundance of suitable sites for him to carry out his climate research. The region’s relentless warming means many of those no longer exist. With the Arctic heating up four times faster than the global average, they have simply melted away.

Forty years on, Moore’s research network, the University of the Arctic, has identified 61 potential interventions to slow, stop and reverse the effects of the changing climate in the region. These concepts are constantly being updated and some will be assessed at a conference in Cambridge this week, where scientists and engineers will meet to consider if radical, technological solutions can buy time and stem the loss of polar ice caps.

“We want to get them down to maybe 10 [ideas] that it’s possible to proceed with. No one is talking about deployment yet,” Moore says, insisting that research is about “excluding the non-starters, the hopeless ideas”. “But we may have ideas that work if we start them now; if we don’t do something for 30 years, it could be too late.” The best way to do that, he says, “is by evaluating them in a rational manner; otherwise it’s just guesswork or religion”.

From sunlight reflection methods (SRM) by brightening Arctic clouds, stabilising ice sheets with huge underwater curtains to stop warm water melting glaciers, and even building vast mirrors in space, ideas that were once closer to science fiction have become increasingly mainstream.

“None of these ideas are going to fix everything,” says Moore, adding that part of the issue will be to weigh up the potential cost against the perceived benefit.

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Also of Interest

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

‘It’s not peace – it’s a pause’: Iranians sceptical ceasefire will hold

Jonathan Cook: The BBC’s Complicity in Genocide

Israel receives nearly 39,000 compensation claims for damages caused by Iranian missiles

Rob Urie: Why Did the US Attack Iran?

Mark Sleboda - What the Hell Just Happened in the Middle East You May Ask?

English Outsider - "Dirty War" Is What Trump Has Been Left With

The Middle East Is Hastening Ukraine’s Fall & The End of the European Era

NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary Puts Gaza in Focus

After Mamdani Victory, Progressives Call for Primary Challenges to Democratic Establishment

Mexico’s president threatens to sue over SpaceX debris from rocket explosions

Wall Street LOSES IT Over Zohran Victory, Fears DEATH

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A Little Night Music

Joe Carter & His Chicago Broomdusters - Take A Little Walk With Me

Joe Carter & Big John Wrencher - Honey Bee

Joe Carter & Kansas City Red - Moon is rising

The Aces and Joe Carter - Tribute to Little Walter

Joe Carter & Kansas City Red - You're The One

Joe Carter - Joe's New Stormy Monday

Joe Carter ~ Rock Me

Joe Carter & His Chicago Broomdusters - Sloppy Drunk

Joe Carter - Shake Your Moneymaker

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