The Evening Blues - 7-20-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features delta blues guitarist Johnny Shines. Enjoy!
Johnny Shines - Sweet Home Chicago
“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
-- Joseph Heller
News and Opinion
Trump Killed Those US Troops In Jordan
More US troops have died in Trump’s insane war of aggression against Iran, so of course we’re seeing a bunch of phony bullshit from American warmongers about what a heroic sacrifice these soldiers made in order to justify further escalations.
“Godspeed, heroes. Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve,” tweeted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in response to the news that two US troops were killed with one soldier missing after Iranian retaliatory strikes on a US base in Jordan.
But they weren’t “heroes”, and they did not make any “sacrifice”.
A hero is someone who risks danger taking noble action for the benefit of others. A sacrifice is when you give up your life for a higher cause.
This was neither of those things. Those soldiers were killed in response to US airstrikes on civilian infrastructure in a stupid, evil war of aggression waged by a Zionist president to please his billionaire Israeli megadonor. Those US attacks destroyed a desalination plant, cutting off an essential water supply for thousands of Iranian civilians.
They did not die defending the United States. They did not die protecting the American people. They did not die for freedom, for democracy, or for any of the other bogus reasons you’ll see imperial spinmeisters saying they died for. They died for Israel, for the military-industrial complex, and for US imperial agendas of global domination. And for nothing else.
I said this online and someone tried telling me “They died for their country and Fuck You for pissing on that.”
I told him no, they did not die for their country. The Iranians are dying for their country. The Americans are dying for Israel, for money, and for geostrategic control. Not a single American life in the United States is being protected by the actions of US service members in the middle east. They’re not defending their homeland, they’re attacking people who are defending theirs.
This isn’t worthy of praise, it’s worthy of anger and outrage.
There’s this bizarre, cultish belief among Americans that you have to play along with the idea that every US soldier killed in action died doing something heroic which benefited the American people, even when every reasonably intelligent person knows that’s objectively false. I reject this whole-heartedly. All this does is make it easier for the US military to recruit more soldiers and to manufacture consent for more depraved wars of aggression.
Those soldiers killed in Jordan did not die doing anything noble. They died meaningless, undignified deaths for an immoral and unworthy cause.
Those soldiers weren’t killed by Iran. They were killed by Donald Trump. They were killed by the oligarchs and empire managers whose decisions sent them to die in yet another middle eastern war based on lies, and who will never lose a wink’s sleep over it.
Inspired by Trump, Israel Advances Plan for Crocodile-Ringed Prison for Palestinians
The Israeli government this week stripped Nile crocodiles of their protected status in order to advance a proposal that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said was inspired by the Trump administration’s now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz to build a prison for Palestinians surrounded by a moat full of the ravenous reptiles.
“You read that right,” the liberal US Jewish group J Street said in response to the news. “When cruelty becomes a governing principle instead of an aberration within the Israeli government, something has gone deeply wrong.”
Israeli Environmental Minister Idit Silman signed a directive Wednesday reclassifying Nile crocodiles as “specially managed wild animals,” a novel legal category enabling the government to keep them for security purposes.
Ben-Gvir, who heads the Israel Prison Service (IPS), said he was inspired by the Trump administration’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in Florida. He is seeking to first introduce crocodiles into a moat around Ketziot Prison in southern Israel.
While it is not certain that the plan will come to fruition, Ben-Gvir celebrated Silman’s decree in a social media post showing him petting a crocodile, with the caption: “Cursed terrorist, thinking of trying to escape? Think again.”
Palestinians have occasionally escaped from Israeli lockups, such as in September 2021, when six men used improvised tools, including spoons, to tunnel out of the high-security Gilboa Prison. All six escapees were caught within weeks.
The move by Silman—who gained international notoriety by calling for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—came despite objections from her own ministry’s legal adviser and the Nature and Parks Authority.
IPS, which sent a fact-finding mission to the Hamat Gader crocodile farm in January, argued that its employees could handle the animals, citing the agency’s experience working with the attack dogs that Palestinian prisoners and human rights groups have claimed were used to maul and even sexually abuse detainees.
Silman’s approval is contingent upon IPS meeting animal welfare requirements and appropriate holding conditions.
Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir has openly boasted about the dramatic deterioration in conditions endured by Palestinian prisoners since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s retaliatory obliteration of Gaza, which United Nations and other experts describe as a genocide.
“We go into the prisons, and they wet themselves,” Ben-Gvir said of Palestinian prisoners during a speech on Friday. “I’m not joking. They’re afraid. Fear rules them, and that’s how it should be.”
Israel’s Ben-Gvir:
“We go into the prisons, and they wet themselves. I'm not joking; they wet themselves. They're afraid. Fear rules them, and that's how it should be.”
It almost seems like he gets off on that. It wouldn’t be surprising.
Mental illness is real.
Writer:…
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 17, 2026
Ben-Gvir and other Israeli officials have worn noose lapel pins to celebrate a recently passed bill legalizing the execution by hanging of so-called “terrorists.”
Former Palestinian detainees and Israeli personnel have described beatings, rape and sexual torture by male and female soldiers, routine amputations due to constant shackling, burnings, electrocutions, attacks by dogs, ice-water dousings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, constant loud music, and other abuse.
The Israeli military is investigating the deaths of dozens of detainees at the Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Ben-Gvir has defended Israeli reservists accused of torturing Palestinian prisoners, and called the reservists who allegedly gang-raped a man at Sde Teiman prison “heroes.”
The minister is banned from entering a number of Western countries for his incitement to violence against Palestinians.
Several Israeli environmental groups issued a joint statement opposing the use of crocodiles in prisons.
“Crocodiles are sentient beings, with complex needs for space, water, temperature, and natural behavior,” the groups said. “It is also highly doubtful that the crocodiles intended for this purpose have aggressive temperaments, and in any event, during the winter they slow their metabolism dramatically, become very sluggish, and stop eating.”
“Security should be achieved through real security measures, not through animals,” they added. “We are considering filing a petition with the High Court of Justice over the matter.”
[Typical f-ing liberals, more concerned about the crocodiles than the Palestinian prisoners. - js]
Last year, the Israeli military massacred 262 crocodiles that were being kept on a farm in the occupied West Bank near the illegal Israeli settler colony of Petzael, claiming the reptiles posed a risk to the public.
“They just slaughtered them,” farm owner Danny Bitan told reporters at the time, describing the scene as “some kind of killing valley.”
Ben-Gvir’s plan comes amid ongoing slaughter in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, over 21,500 of them children, since October 2023—and accelerating colonization and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
News of Silman’s approval sparked disbelief around the world and on social media, where Reddit users called the plan “cartoonish idiocy” and “Bond villain-level lunacy.”
“The fact that Israel is trying to surround a prison with [crocodiles] tells you all you need to know about these camps, which are designed to torture, rape, and murder Palestinians, often held as hostages without charges,” Israeli researcher and political commentator Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said Thursday on X.
Iran WIPES OUT US Troops, Yemen SHUTS Red Sea as Trump PANICS | Alexander Mercouris
US says another troop killed as Israel warns Tehran’s attacks coming close
The US military announced another death of a service member as it launched more airstrikes at Iran on Sunday in response to the killing of American troops , and Iran fired missiles toward Jordan that risked widening the conflict into neighboring Israel. The US military said the service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone.
Earlier, the military said its strikes targeted Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to retaliate for Friday’s killing of troops in Jordan. One service member was missing after that attack, and the military’s new statement said “unidentified remains” were found on Sunday and were being examined. Since the war began, 17 US service members have been killed.
The renewed exchanges of fire, now in their second week, have seen the US target bridges, water desalination plants and electrical facilities in Iran. Tehran has hit US-allied countries throughout the Middle East. Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain again activated air defenses for incoming Iranian drones and missiles. Israel warned that missiles launched toward neighboring Jordan could cause fire to spill over into Israeli territory for the first time in weeks.
The US military’s Central Command said it hit “Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities and missile and drone storage sites”. It said the attack was designed to degrade Iran’s ability to control the strait and “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces”, a power base in Iran’s theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal.
Iranian authorities on Sunday said at least 50 people have been killed and 517 wounded in the latest US strikes. Iran has provided no overall information on its materiel losses.
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Mission in Iran war has pivoted toward ensuring oil flow, Trump official says
A Trump administration official on Sunday grappled with mounting criticism over the length of the US war with Iran after months of promised diplomatic breakthroughs, short-lived ceasefires, and the deaths of three more American troops bringing the total number of American military members killed in the conflict to 17. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, defended the Trump administration’s strategy after being confronted with his earlier claims that the war which began in February would have ended by now.
Wright argued that the mission has since shifted toward ensuring oil shipments can move through the strait of Hormuz. “We did a pause to try to get an agreement with the Iranian people to allow oil to flow without them attacking it,” Wright said. “They’ve proven unwilling to do that, and we’ve pivoted. Now, what we’re doing is assuring that that oil and gas and other products can flow through the strait of Hormuz with or without Iranian cooperation, and we’ve continued to degrade their offensive military capabilities.”
On the same program, a prominent Democrat continued his party’s sharp criticism of the Trump administration’s handling of the nearly five-month conflict. US senator Mark Warner of Virginia described the conflict as a “war of choice” that was launched without an imminent threat and argued the administration has failed to accomplish its previously stated objectives. He said: “The continuation of this war, at this pace, will be a continuing disaster.”
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Israel threatens ‘full force’ response if Iran fires missiles towards it
Israel has warned it could retaliate against Iran with “full force” if Tehran’s missiles strike within its borders, threatening a return to an all-out regional war as the ceasefire brokered by Donald Trump collapses with a new round of missile strikes across the Middle East.
On Sunday, Iran launched salvoes of ballistic missiles at US-allied Arab states, targeting a power and water desalination plant for the second time in two days in Kuwait, as well as sites in Jordan and Bahrain. Air-raid sirens sounded in Amman as Jordan said it shot down three Iranian missiles targeting the country. Israel said the strikes could spill across its borders, reigniting a direct regional conflict that had been restrained even as tensions between the Trump administration and Iran soared again in recent weeks.
“If Iran fires missiles at Israel, we will attack them with full force,” said the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, on Sunday. The country was prepared for “both defensive and offensive” action, he added. The US is expected to send dozens of additional refuelling planes to Israel as part of a reinforcement of its force posture in the region, a US official told Reuters.
The US and Iran expanded their strikes, with civilian infrastructure hit, as Trump told a US media outlet that he “couldn’t care less” about Iran’s repudiation of his ceasefire agreement to end the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz. But since April, direct attacks between Iran and Israel had grown less frequent, in large part because of Trump’s pressure to maintain a ceasefire needed to reopen the strait and resume the flow of oil through the key waterway.
Now, however, Trump has moved to apply maximum pressure on Iran. “The gates of HELL have now been UNLEASHED like they never could have imagined or seen before,” the US president said in a social media post on Sunday. In a statement on Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, warned that the US would face “unforgettable lessons” if it continued its attacks.
‘War Crime’: US Attack on Water Desalination Plant Cuts Off Supply for Thousands in Southern Iran
About 10,000 people in nearly two dozen villages in southern Iran were without drinking water while the region was under an excessive heat warning on Saturday, after the US struck a water desalination plant in the village of Bonji in one of its latest attacks on Iranian civilian infrastructure.
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting said the drinking water supply was expected to be restored within a week, and emergency supply operations had begun.
Drop Site News reported comments from the deputy governor for political and security affairs in Hormozgan province, who said several missiles had hit power infrastructure and water desalination plants in the region near the Strait of Hormuz, which President Donald Trump has demanded control over as he’s ramped up attacks on Iran in recent days, despite a ceasefire and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end hostilities that was agreed to in June.
Breaking: U.S. Strike Hits Desalination and Power Facilities Near Jask, Cutting Water to Villages
Iranian officials said U.S. forces struck power infrastructure and desalination plants at the port of Bonji village near Jask at 4:44 a.m., cutting off water supplies to several… pic.twitter.com/fp6sXARS6i
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 18, 2026
On Saturday, Iranian officials said the country was suspending its commitments to the MOU after the US violated the agreement repeatedly over the past week.
“The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the framework of the Islamabad MOU,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi. “We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments.”
He added that Tehran is now “busy defending the country.”
A representative for Hormozgan province, Ahmad Moradi, told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that over the past two nights, “about seven to eight people” have been killed in US attacks, all of whom were civilians. One attack targeted a bridge and hit two family cars. The neighborhood of Tappeh Allaho Akbar in Bandar Abbas was also hit, killing a woman and injuring a one-year-old, whose wounds required doctors to amputate.
At least 116 telecommunication towers were out of service in southern Iran Saturday, Al Jazeera reported.
The Iranian Embassy in India posted a video of the destruction of a bridge and also condemned the US attack on a maritime surveillance tower at the Chabahar Port, which US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth boasted about on social media on Thursday.
The deliberate targeting of civilian and economic infrastructure, including the Chabahar Port, constitutes a clear war crime and a flagrant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.
By targeting civilian and economic infrastructure, the United States… pic.twitter.com/QdB1Y3Aqe8
— Iran in India (@Iran_in_India) July 18, 2026
“For a state that once cast itself as the global champion of order, liberalism, and the war on terrorism, proudly displaying images of destroyed bridges and civilian infrastructure has become its only remaining ‘victory,’” said Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Saturday. “Yet with the collapse of every bridge, every tower, and every civilian facility, it is not merely steel and concrete that is being reduced to rubble. It is America’s moral standing—along with the entire architecture of international law and the civilizational claims of the West—that is crumbling before the world’s eyes.”
According to Drop Site, US attacks have targeted nine bridges, two airports, a railroad junction, and a road tunnel since Wednesday. At least 41 Iranians have been killed and 408 have been wounded in US attacks so far this month, with Iranian authorities reporting that at least three women and one child are among those killed.
In a letter to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent UN representative, wrote on Saturday that US attacks had “targeted and caused extensive damage to
ports, transportation networks, communications facilities, logistics hubs, radar installations, coastal defense systems and other infrastructure indispensable to the civilian population, and to the functioning of the national economy.”
“The continued commission of these unlawful armed attacks poses a grave threat to international peace and security, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and the security of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” wrote Iravani.
Iran has retaliated against the US this week by striking American allies, including Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. Kuwait’s government Saturday said a power plant and water treatment plant had been attacked for the second time in two days, as well as an oil facility.
Two US soldiers were killed and a third was missing after an Iranian attack on a US military base in Jordan—the first American service members to be killed from hostile fire since an initial ceasefire was brokered in April.
Roxane Farmanfarmian, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Cambridge, told Al Jazeera that Iranian forces are “using Kuwait, in particular, as an example of what they can do in retaliation.”
“The US is clearly hitting the south in Iran and hitting airports, desalination plants, and bridges, and so the same kinds of things are being hit now in Kuwait to show what kind of effect Iran really can have on those countries that are hosting American bases,” she said.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, echoed Iranian officials’ condemnation of the US attack on the southern water desalination plant on Saturday, saying it was “not a legitimate military target.”
“It is a war crime to target it,” he said.
Israel threatens to seize ancient water reservoirs near Bethlehem
Israel is threatening to seize ancient water reservoirs near Bethlehem, in what would be a significant escalation in an intensifying campaign for control of West Bank land and the Middle East’s historical narrative. Since Israel’s extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, made an explicit threat in May to “erase” the agreements that confirmed Palestinian ownership of Solomon’s Pools more than 30 years ago, Israeli settlers and troops have stepped up their presence around the spectacular site.
The pools date back as far as the second century BCE, though the main construction was carried out by the Romans a century later as part of a vast engineering project of two reservoirs, aqueducts and tunnels to supply water to Jerusalem 8 miles (13km) away. A third monumental basin was added under Ottoman rule, when a fort was also built to safeguard the water supply. During the Mandate period from 1923 to 1948, the British authorities modernised the system with metal pipes and pumps.
The pale stone Mandate-era pumping station now stands abandoned in the wooded hills of the area and the pools, more than 10 metres deep in places, no longer funnel water to Jerusalem, but have become the main source of recreation in the area. On a recent afternoon, children from the neighbouring villages of Artas and al-Khader took running jumps off the stone walls of the middle pool into the deep green water, while a handful of men fished amid the reeds off the ramparts on the other side.
“It’s the only place now in all Bethlehem that you can find somewhere to sit and to enjoy the water, the shade, the green space – and now they are trying to steal it,” said Mahmoud Jaber, a local activist and horticulturist from Artas, who uses water from the local springs to grow vegetables. Although a district of the Efrat settlement looms above the pools, they only came under immediate threat in May when Smotrich and another hardline Israeli politician, Zvi Sukkot, had police drive Palestinians away from the area so they could be filmed swimming in the middle pool.
“This is our land,” Smotrich declared, and Sukkot echoed his call for Israel to take over the site. Since then, incursions from settlers have become more frequent and on 10 July Israeli soldiers carried out an unprecedented raid, firing teargas while children swam in the pools. Under the second Oslo Accord of 1995, Solomon’s Pools was made part of the wider Bethlehem area classified as Area A, under Palestinian civil and police control.
‘He’s a war criminal’: Mamdani exploring whether he can arrest Netanyahu if he visits New York
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he was reviewing whether his administration could arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if as expected the Israeli prime minister visits the city for the UN general assembly in September. Mamdani’s comments on Saturday’s episode of the New York Times’s the Interview podcast echoed ones he had made to the publication as he successfully ran for mayor last fall.
“I believe that prime minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, referring to the Dutch city that is home to the international criminal court, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the international criminal court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these past many years.”
Mamdani said it was unclear to him whether he has the legal authority to order the New York police department (NYPD), which he oversees, to detain a foreign leader like Netanyahu. But he said he was in “an active conversation” with the city’s law department about the matter. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do,” Mamdani added. “But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”
“We’re not talking about a personal assessment of Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani told the Times’ podcast. “We’re talking about the international criminal court and the fact that they have a warrant out for this prime minister’s arrest, and I think it’s important to talk about the weight that that has as a charge and that also, as the mayor of New York City, I’ll be following the laws of New York City.”
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‘Fox Is Guarding the Hen House’: ICE Agents Told FBI Will No Longer Investigate Confrontations
New guidance distributed to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country in recent days said that the FBI will no longer investigate confrontations that officers have with protesters or people who are subjected to immigration enforcement—leaving the agency to investigate its own violent encounters with the public following at least two recent killings by ICE agents.
The guidance pertained to claims of assault against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers, but FBI investigations have gathered evidence that implicated agents themselves after they claimed to have been attacked.
According to the message sent to ICE officers, Homeland Security Investigations, which operates under ICE, would begin examining incidents in which an agent claimed they were assaulted.
Underwriting impunity: Federal agents were told in recent days that the F.B.I. would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — cases that sometimes yield evidence that could be used to prosecute agents implicated in violent encounters. https://t.co/TrExtns8om
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 19, 2026
HSI does not have jurisdiction to investigate allegations of civil rights allegations, so in cases in which a confrontation escalates to a use of force by an officer, the unit would be unlikely to investigate whether the agent violated the victim’s rights, The New York Times reported.
“The fox is guarding the hen house,” said American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the reported change.
Despite the guidance that was circulated to agents, the US Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, released a joint statement with DHS denying that the change would take place.
“The relationship between DHS and DOJ in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the statement said. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to a New York Times investigation, the Trump administration filed charges against more than 550 people who it said assaulted federal immigration officers. More than 400 of the cases had been resolved, and in nearly half of them, charges of assault had been thrown out or withdrawn, or the defendants had been acquitted.
As it’s filed such charges, the Trump administration has frequently repeated its assertion that federal agents are regularly facing violent attacks from the public—including in cases in which agents have killed US citizens and immigrants, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and earlier this month, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
The reported change was also made public less than a week after an ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.
Journalist Sam Stein said the guidance that was given to federal agents could grant “pure impunity for ICE to do horrible things.”
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ICE officers to use body cameras during vehicle stops, Trump ‘border czar’ says
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will require its officers to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera, said Tom Homan, the Trump administration “border czar”, on Sunday. The action comes as the agency is under renewed scrutiny after ICE officers fatally shot two men earlier this month. “They exonerate more law enforcement than they convict, and I want officers to wear body cameras because I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action,” Homan said on the Fox & Friends Weekend program.
Homan’s comments come after federal immigration agents fatally shot two men six days apart during traffic stops in Texas and Maine earlier this month. There is no body-camera footage from ICE agents involved in those incidents. In a separate interview on CBS’s Face the Nation show, Homan said money for the cameras was held up during the partial government shutdown earlier this year. “The cameras have been purchased right now,” Homan said. “They’re training the trainer in deploying the cameras nationwide.”
ICE launched a body-camera pilot program in 2024 and deployed cameras to officers in five cities: Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington DC. The Trump administration moved last year to slow-walk the program, urging Congress to cut funding by 75%, Reuters reported in January. In February, after the killing of two US citizens during an immigration crackdown in Minnesota, Kristi Noem, then the DHS chief, said the body-camera program would be rolled out to ICE agents nationwide “as funding is available”.
Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino booed before US president attempts to crash Spain celebrations
Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino were booed as they took to the field for the presentation ceremony before the US president attempted to gatecrash Spain’s victory party.
Trump arrived at the stadium on Marine One, with the president’s helicopter first flying over the stadium about 45 minutes before kick-off. He sat in a glassed-in section of luxury seats for the match, along with Infantino. Other dignitaries and former players sat nearby, including Spain’s king, Felipe VI, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, and Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum.
Trump was briefly shown on the video screens at the stadium after the US national anthem was played. There were scattered boos from some in the crowd but nothing like the hostile reception he has received at other sporting events during his presidency. However, when the US president and Infantino came on to the field for the presentation after Spain clinched victory, boos rang out around the stadium. The White House pool report said that ambient crowd noise, which had been sitting at approximately 78 decibels before their introduction, rose to 84 decibels when Trump entered the field.
Then, after Trump presented Spain with the World Cup trophy, he attempted to stand with the team at the side of the podium as they celebrated before Infantino quietly ushered him away. It was a repeat of last summer’s Club World Cup at the same stadium after Trump presented the trophy to champions Chelsea and tried to crash the celebrations to the bemusement of the players.
‘One-Way Ticket to Extinction’: Trump Admin Again Guts Endangered Species Act
“Yet again, the Trump administration has sold out our endangered wildlife to the highest bidder,” said one biodiversity advocate after the US Department of Interior, in a Friday news dump, issued two new policy changes that would weaken the Endangered Species Act and make it easier for corporate polluters to prioritize their own bottom lines over habitat protection.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) rescinded a policy that has been known as the “blanket rule” since 1975, which has given threatened species the same protections from illegal killing, trapping, harassment, and other forms of “take” under the ESA, as species that are officially designated as endangered.
The rollback would apply to species that have been newly declared as threatened, including the Florida manatee, the Pygmy rabbit, the Aztec Gilia, and Clover’s Cactus—which could now go for years without protections despite their habitat loss and declining populations.
“Today’s decision represents a profound failure by Interior Secretary [Doug] Burgum and his department, and it amounts to an utter abdication of the federal government’s responsibility to protect America’s wildlife,” said Sara Amundson, president of the Humane World Action Fund. “The department’s role is to faithfully implement—and certainly not to dismantle—the Endangered Species Act.”
The other policy change will require the FWS to consider the economic impact on various industries of designating areas as “critical” habitats in order to protect threatened and endangered species. The agency has previously had discretion over whether to consider economics when making habitat protection decisions.
Under President Donald Trump’s new rule, said the Center for Biological Diversity, the FWS will be forced “to accept at face value claims by corporations and landowners of economic impacts from designating critical habitat, which could greatly limit the amount and quality of habitat protected for imperiled wildlife.”
“The way this is written, a landowner could falsely claim they planned to build the next Disneyland on their property, so designating critical habitat would supposedly cost them tens of millions of dollars,” said Noah Greenwald, CBD’s endangered species co-director. “This rule is clearly intended to prevent the protection of the wild places that endangered animals and plants need to survive. It’s a despicable move that cheapens the value of our most imperiled wildlife so corporations can make more money. Anyone can make outrageous claims about how much their property is worth, but that shouldn’t be taken as gospel.”
Advocacy groups said both policy changes amounted to giveaways to the logging, mining, drilling, and cattle ranching industries. The latter industry has long lobbied against land being designated as a critical habitat for the ‘I’iwi bird in Hawaii, Clay Samford, an attorney with the environmental legal group Earthjustice, told The Washington Post.
“It’s part of this administration’s push to reduce protections for public lands and wildlife that are enjoyed by all Americans, in favor of narrow business interests,” Samford told the newspaper.
A senior attorney for the group, Elizabeth Forsyth, said in a statement that “the Trump administration is turning the law on its head by letting extractive industries dictate where critical habitat can be destroyed.”
“This prioritization of industry interests over science is fundamentally at odds with the clear purpose of the Endangered Species Act,” said Forsyth. “We won’t let this dangerous giveaway go unchallenged.”
There is currently a backlog of more than 500 species awaiting consideration for listing as threatened or endangered, and the rule changes, along with the Trump administration’s 18% reduction in the FWS workforce, are expected to leave imperiled species waiting even longer for protections.
“In the midst of an extinction crisis, with hundreds of species like the Florida manatee and the wolverine desperately needing stronger protections for their habitats, the Trump administration is gutting protections to benefit industry interests,” said Ryan Shannon, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “Where we see our nation’s irreplaceable wildlife, they see dollar signs. But our federal lands and waters, and the species they support, belong to all Americans, not to the logging, drilling, and mining industries that oppose all limits on maximizing their private profits.”
In a statement, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asserted that the ESA has long been “weaponized to stop almost any new project in America, driving up costs for families, weakening our competitiveness, and undermining our national security,” continued Secretary Burgum.
He added that the endangered species list has “fallen short,” with 97% of listed species remaining designated as endangered, and called for “species recovery and delisting.”
But Defenders of Wildlife noted that the ESA “has succeeded in preventing extinction for 99% of listed species.”
“Public support for protecting our native wildlife remains overwhelmingly high, with 84% of voters supporting the ESA, according to nationwide polling conducted by Defenders of Wildlife,” said the group.
The rules announced on Friday came days after the Interior Department proposed a new rule under which management of threatened grizzly bears would be transferred from the federal government to the states, where Republican leaders have pushed to end protections for the species.
The administration also exempted oil and gas companies from having to protect endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, and earlier this month changed the regulatory interpretation of the word “harm” in the ESA.
“These rules are a one-way ticket to extinction for our most imperiled animals and plants, from monarch butterflies to giraffes to alligator snapping turtles,” said Greenwald. “Trump is bending over backward for corporate polluters by ripping away the blanket that protects so many struggling wildlife species as well as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the natural places where we seek peace of mind. This is the last thing we need in the middle of an extinction crisis, and we’ll fight it with everything we’ve got.”
Cyclospora: iceberg lettuce recalled in 27 states and more products may follow
Taylor Farms recalled potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce in 27 states on Friday, including lettuce distributed as recently as Thursday, as cases of cyclosporiasis continue rising in the US. The US is likely to see at least another two weeks of possible cases, since infections may have happened in recent days. And the expanding outbreak investigation could point to other products in coming days.
Taylor Farms named 27 states where the iceberg lettuce was distributed and included lot codes of produce – but it did not specify the brand names of the products or where they were served and sold. This will probably complicate the recall, with stores, restaurants and consumers attempting to understand which brands and products may be contaminated. The mega-producer is removing the lettuce that came from its Guanajuato facility in central Mexico, “because it has the potential to be contaminated with Cyclospora”, according to the recall notice. Large retailers including Costco, Target and Walmart carry Taylor Farms products, and the producer also owns organic farms such as Earthbound Farm.
In this outbreak, at least 34 states have reported cases. New York and Colorado are reporting higher-than-usual cyclosporiasis cases, but they were not included on the recall list. While Taylor is only recalling shredded iceberg lettuce at this point, it’s possible other products that were grown or processed in the same facility may carry cyclospora, a parasite that embeds in produce. There are also potential risks from producers in the same area if they shared water that was contaminated.
Taco Bell was the first restaurant to announce it would stop serving produce in several states in light of the outbreak. On Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned against eating shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico served at Taco Bell locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. But the notice may expand in coming days. “FDA’s investigation is ongoing,” the agency’s notice said. “Because the investigation remains ongoing, additional implicated brands, restaurants, retailers, or distribution channels may be identified as the investigation continues.”
The FDA notice identified more than 1,600 cases linked to the same product – but many other cases have emerged since late June. Michigan, for example, has confirmed more than 5,000 cases of cyclosporiasis. Last summer, the US saw a total of 249 confirmed cases across all states.
Burnham risks Labour backlash if he reverses ban on new oil and gas drilling
Andy Burnham risks his first confrontation with Labour MPs if he announces new oil and gas drilling licences when he becomes prime minister, insiders have warned. Speculation is rife that Burnham will unveil fresh plans for drilling in the North Sea after he is installed in Downing Street. Although earlier reports suggested details of his proposals could come as soon as Monday, a decision is now expected to be taken at a later date.
Burnham’s team has not confirmed the details of its North Sea plans and whether they would involve new exploration licences or so-called “tiebacks” – where offshore oil and gasfields are connected to already approved production facilities via pipelines. In Labour’s 2024 manifesto, it pledged to honour existing exploration licences but not issue new ones. The Guardian understands that the tieback arrangements would allow new drilling to take place without technically breaching the manifesto commitment, although any new activity is likely to anger some backbenchers and climate campaigners.
One source said the prospect of new drilling was the subject of “extensive” discussions among MPs on Saturday, many of whom are worried that it could affect the climate, while having little impact on energy bills and security. The debate largely centres around two sites, Rosebank and Jackdaw, off the north-eastern coast of Scotland.
Licences for the proposed sites were approved under the Conservatives, but were overturned last year by a Scottish court, which ruled that the government would have to consider the environmental impact before agreeing to let new drilling go ahead. Burnham, confirmed as Labour leader on Friday, has indicated that cutting the cost of living will be a priority for his government.
However, Mike Reader, an MP who is part of Labour’s environment campaign group, which backed Burnham for the leadership, said any new licences would have “zero impact” on household bills as they would generate a tiny proportion of the energy needed to power the UK.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
US Deploying Additional Warplanes to Middle East as It Prepares To Escalate Iran War
Satellite images show damage inside Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant
Economist: Let’s Start A War To Get Europeans Used To It
Rob Urie: No Path Forward, No Way Back, Imperial Decline Edition
Xi Lays Out His Principles for AI Development
Molten salt and human sweat: the weird batteries that could store renewable energy
A Little Night Music
Johnny Shines With The Boogie Brothers & Sister Sarah Brown – Dust My Broom
Johnny Shines – Kind Hearted Woman
Johnny Shines – Cool Driver
The Johnny Shines Blues Band – Layin' Down My Shoes And Clothes
Johnny Shines – Terraplane Blues
The Johnny Shines Blues Band – Hey, Hey
Johnny Shines – Evening Sun
Johnny Shines - Peace In Hell
Johnny Shines - Ramblin'
Comments
The Western powers keep looking the other way as things like
this occur.
evening humphrey...
the western powers always have trouble seeing things that don't lead to their own enrichment.
Hey, joe!
I gotta say, the groups wanting to protect the future prison crocs are the perfect exemplar of "libtards".
Where is the damn fine line?
In this country, no Palestinians involved, has it vanished that we bring species to extinction for capitalism? Humans are involved in that, too, although not in prison. Oh, wait! Flock...they just may be and not know it ?
Our country sucks, joe. We are supposed to love it. What's to love anymore? It's a movie. Script by the CIA, as it has been for decades.
Thanks for keeping us informed and musically pleased.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
yeah, the cross-pollination of "ideas" between u.s. fascists and israeli fascists has gotten us to a very sad place and the opposition to those fascists in both places is severely lacking.
i hope that our country can pull itself out of the muck.
have a good one!
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. Scott is good on the
tension or conflict between the "more drones" and "more brigades" wings, but he didn't bring up the fat that they can't just arm up some brigades without more bodies and the people are in the streets over military recruitment. The military summary channel was looking at the rumors that Syrskyi just might be getting fired any minute now and that the zdude had to hold some loyalty checks with his other generals.
Meanwhile, I asw headlines elsewhere, multiple sites that I haven't investigated, to the effect that the Rus Doomsday Plane is now down in Iran. Dunno what to make of that, should it be true, at all.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
alex christoforou has been talking about the likelihood of syrski getting dumped for a few days now. according to alex, apparently the defense minister/drone guy (fedorov?) was getting too popular for elensky's comfort and he was interfering with money going to the sort of military stuff that elensky and his cronies profit from, so he had to dump him. syrski may just have to go as a sacrificial lamb.
i found this article on an indian teevee network site about the doomsday plane:
have a great evening!