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The Evening Blues - 7-21-26



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: J.B. Hutto

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues slide guitarist J.B. Hutto. Enjoy!

J.B. Hutto – Alcohol Blues

"It's 10 PM, do you know if your congressfossil is still breathing?"


News and Opinion

Trump Is NOT A Reluctant War President

America’s latest forever war continues to ravage the middle east as US forces bomb Iran for the tenth consecutive night in a series of exchanges which The New York Times reports have caused a significantly higher number of injuries to US troops than the Pentagon has acknowledged.

President Trump is saying that “Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over” while simultaneously guaranteeing more Iranian retaliations with the ongoing onslaught, which could of course easily end up killing more US troops.

Amid these escalating hostilities, Yemeni forces have announced a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia as the ceasefire the two nations have maintained since 2022 hurtles toward collapse. Trump inherited a ceasefire in the horrific war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia and seems to be flushing it right down the toilet, just like he inherited the Iran deal and torched it so he could start a war. He is a disgusting, evil war pig.


One of the dumbest popular narratives you see today is the idea that Zionists persuaded a reluctant Trump to start a war with Iran after he was re-elected, like they were chasing him around going “Would you like to bomb Iran?” like the guy from Green Eggs and Ham while he yelled “Not in a box! Not with a fox!” until he eventually caved in.

It is now abundantly clear that this war was planned a long time ago. Not in 2026, not in 2025, not in 2024, and not even during the Biden administration. This was planned before Trump was ever elected president. He campaigned on tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, and that’s exactly what he did once he got into office the first time around.

As soon as the JCPOA was torched in 2018 the Trump administration began dramatically ramping up aggressions against Iran, smashing them with starvation sanctions in its “maximum pressure” campaign with the explicit goal of regime change and then escalating to the direct assassination of Iran’s top military official.

There was no reason to do that if your goal was peace. There was no reason to do that if your goal was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Iran deal was working. Iran was fully compliant. The escalations were the goal.


Trump has openly admitted to giving the Adelsons everything they wanted in exchange for the massive campaign donations which put him in the White House. In 2013 Sheldon Adelson made headlines by saying the US should drop a nuclear bomb on the Iranian desert and then say “See? The next one is in the middle of Tehran” in order to scare the Iranians into groveling.

Everything we’ve been seeing throughout Trump’s second term makes it glaringly obvious that the only reason he’d received the oligarchic and institutional support necessary to become an American president was because he had provided enough powerful people with enough reassurance that he would do what no other president had dared to try: start a war with Iran.

All that we have seen throughout 2026 has been the seeds of those early assurances coming to fruition. All those murdered schoolchildren. All the dead and injured US soldiers. The bombed-out civilian infrastructure. The blackened skies. The blockades. The fear. The economic strife. This was all planned years ago, with the full complicity of a psychopathic monster who wanted to become president.

He campaigned on ending the wars, and he was lying the whole time. He wasn’t pressured and persuaded, he was an active and eager participant.


Anti-interventionists on the right often try to spin it as Trump getting suckered by the Israelis, because this allows them to retroactively justify their support for Trump with the belief that they voted for someone who was well-intentioned at the time.

But Trump was never well-intentioned. He had always intended to start a war with Iran in his second term, once he no longer had to worry about getting re-elected. He was always a deceitful war slut, as evil as any we’ve ever seen in the White House.

Evil people are the only ones who are ever allowed past the many gatekeeping mechanisms to the presidency. In order to help run a murderous empire that is fueled by human blood, you’ve got to be a psychopath. They don’t let you in unless they’ve been adequately assured that you are sufficiently psychopathic to do the job.

Trump provided them with those assurances. That’s the only reason he sits where he now sits.

Prof. John Mearsheimer : More War and America’s Collapse

US launches 10th round of strikes as Iran says it is in ‘full-scale war’

The US military said it has launched its 10th consecutive round of strikes on Iran to force the reopening of the strait of Hormuz. Earlier on Monday, Iran’s president said the country is in a “full-scale war” after the US expanded its aerial campaign and Tehran struck Washington’s Gulf allies, even as diplomats said talks to de-escalate were continuing.

Iranian media reported strikes around Tabriz, believed to hold underground missile bases, as well as Bushehr, home to the country’s only operational civilian nuclear power plant. The US military said it had struck “military command centres, air defence and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and communications networks”.

Iran launched attacks against Bahrain, which hosts the US navy’s fifth fleet, and Kuwait, in addition to striking tankers in the strait of Hormuz, which carried a fifth of global oil and gas supplies before the war. Bahrain said its air traffic systems were damaged by the strikes, but that traffic was not affected. The Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen also announced a blockade of Saudi ports. “The reality is that today the Islamic Republic of Iran is engaged in a full-scale war,” the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a statement on Monday, warning it might have to endure more strikes.

Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump signalled an escalation in tactics, saying on ​Monday ⁠that Iran ⁠would “pay” ​for killing US soldiers “many times over” after multiple service members ‌were killed ​in action over the ​weekend. The US military on Monday identified two soldiers killed in Jordan while defending against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. An examination of remains is under way to determine whether they belong to a third service member who was reported missing in that attack. And in Iraq, another US service member died after “a controlled detonation” of an Iranian drone.

Col. Larry Wilkerson: Iran Says It Knocked Out Patriot Defenses at U.S. Base in Kuwait

Democrats clutch the pearls and pretend to be the good guys:

‘It needs to end now’: Democrats urge Trump to halt Iran war after US troop deaths

Democrats have seized on the deaths of three US troops killed in Iranian strikes to urge Donald Trump to urgently reverse his resumption of the war with Iran amid widespread anxiety over climbing casualties. Even as US forces launched a 10th consecutive wave of attacks against Iranian targets, concern over the deaths of American service personnel threatened to complicate moves to escalate the conflict, which has reignited after he last week walked away from a memorandum of understanding agreed with Iran in June. Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, accused Trump of having “frighteningly lost control of this war”.

“For those of us who pay attention to the hour-to-hour pace of the Iran War, things are getting very dark very quickly,” he wrote on social media. “The scale of attacks – and threats of escalation – are increasing rapidly.” Iran has vowed to carry out retaliatory strikes against US Gulf allies, which it has branded “collaborators” for providing logistical facilities for strikes on Iranian territory.

In a brief telephone conversation with NewsNation, Trump called the deaths “a very sad thing” and said the service members had died “in service of our country”. But he faced a chorus of calls from Democrats to step back from his belligerent posture even as Republicans remained supportive. “The reckless and costly war of choice in Iran has been a disaster for the American people,” wrote Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. “May God continue to watch over our troops who have needlessly been put into harm’s way.”

Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee and a Democrat from Virginia, said there were “hundreds of seriously wounded” US personnel, and added it was “remarkable” that casualty figures had not been higher. “This is what happens when you start a war of choice. And as a member of the Gang of Eight, I can say unequivocally there was no imminent threat from Iran,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation.

The House and Senate have both passed war powers resolutions – requiring the president to ask for congressional approval after 60 days of hostilities – with the aim of restraining Trump. But the White House has contended that there has yet to be 60 days of continuous fighting because the clock stopped after an initial ceasefire in April, which held, shakily, for several weeks. Republicans, meanwhile, have remained publicly supportive of Trump – despite poll figures showing support for the war and the president’s conduct of it low and sliding. A Washington Post-Ipsos survey showed approval for Trump’s handling of the conflict at 29% – lower than the 33% backing his stewardship of the economy, which has been buffeted by soaring fuel prices caused by the war.

Knock Out Coming: Inside Iran's 'Rope-a-Dope' Strategy Against the U.S., Israel

Pentagon Has Been Hiding Reports on Soldiers Injured During Trump’s Illegal Iran War

After months of downplaying the number of American casualties from President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, The New York Times revealed that the Pentagon once again hid dozens of US military injuries from Iranian strikes on bases in Jordan last week.

As the Times reported on Monday:

In the week leading up to the Iranian attack on Friday that killed two US soldiers and left one service member missing in Jordan, Iran carried out three other strikes against US forces in the country.

Those attacks injured dozens of US service members and damaged several helicopters, according to several US officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

But the Pentagon did not disclose the earlier strikes, nor the casualties and damage they inflicted.

The Pentagon’s failure to disclose full information about US casualties is not a new development.

In the early days of the war, Defense Department officials said fewer than a dozen American troops had been injured before abruptly acknowledging that more than 140 had been wounded after Reuters obtained the full figures.

After six American soldiers were killed during the war’s opening salvo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth derided the press’s inquiries about the number of casualties, claiming they were only seeking “to make the president look bad.”

The Intercept’s Nick Turse found in April that US Central Command (CENTCOM) had repeatedly sent outdated and incomplete casualty figures to journalists in what one defense official referred to as a “casualty cover-up.”

As of April 1, Turse reported that more than 520 US troops had been injured, including more than 200 sailors being treated for smoke inhalation, without acknowledgment from the government.

Last week—prior to the deaths of two US soldiers in Jordan—CENTCOM said that a total of 414 service members had been injured since the war began, mostly from traumatic brain injuries. In total, 17 US personnel have now been killed, according to official counts.

CENTCOM spokesperson Maj. Emma Thompson said last week that she had no update on how many troops were seriously wounded, but claimed that “almost all” of those injured had returned to duty. She also did not say how many troops had been wounded enough to be evacuated from the region.

The Times report notes that CENTCOM is not required to disclose information about injured US service members publicly. And one military official argued that doing so would provide Iran with free information that would leave the US vulnerable to further attacks.

However, it does speak to the Trump administration’s ever-growing secrecy as it threatens to dramatically expand the unpopular conflict.

As the Times noted, the Pentagon has provided little information about the war in recent months, and the last major press briefing on the war took place in early May.

The administration has blown past its initial promises to end its operation against Iran in a matter of weeks and avoid a “forever war.” The conflict is now into its fifth month with no end in sight.

The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that in an effort to break Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz—where it began to restrict travel in response to the US-Israeli war—Trump is planning a “wider war” that may include a possible ground invasion of Kharg Island and other Iranian territory along the strait.

Experts have estimated that efforts to capture and occupy Iran’s coastline would likely require hundreds of thousands of troops.

Greater Israel: The Plan to Dominate the Middle East w/ Daniel Levy

Yemeni Forces Announce Maritime Blockade on Saudi Arabia

Yemen’s Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, announced on Monday that its forces were imposing a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia, a move that came a week after the Saudis bombed the Sanaa International Airport in Yemen.

Ansar Allah military spokesman Yahya Saree said the blockade was a response to the long-standing Saudi blockade on Yemeni ports and seaports, which was eased under a 2022 ceasefire deal but was never fully lifted.

The Saudi strikes on the Sanaa airport were done to enforce the blockade and prevent a plane from landing that was carrying a Yemeni delegation that visited Iran for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

U.S. Gasoline Prices Climb Back Above $4 Per Gallon

The national average price of gasoline in the United States topped $4 per gallon once again on Monday following the crude oil price rally of the past week amid the renewed hostilities in the Middle East and the fresh de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

As of July 20, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $4.0030, according to AAA data.

Prices are now up from $3.8720 per gallon on Monday last week, following a week of re-escalation in the Middle East with Iranian attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, nine consecutive nights of U.S. strikes against Iran, and Iranian missiles targeting U.S. bases and military assets in America’s regional allies, including Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain.

At this time last year, the average price of gasoline in the United States was $3.1410.

LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : How the Deep State Uses Trump

Trump says Benjamin Netanyahu ‘will not be arrested’ if he visits the US

Donald Trump has said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, “will not be arrested” if he visits the US. His comments came days after Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, said he was exploring whether his administration could arrest Netanyahu if he visits the city during the UN general assembly in September.

In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said Netanyahu, who has been the subject of an international criminal court arrest warrant since November 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza, “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form while in the United States of America”.

Mamdani, who has described Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide, also said he is in “an active conversation” with New York City’s law department about his legal authority to direct the New York police to detain Netanyahu. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do,” he said, adding: “But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

Russia Destroys Odessa Ships Brushes Off Protests; Russia Fuel Situation Stabilises; Syrsky Survives

Donald Trump to impose 50% tariff on most Canadian goods, White House says

Donald Trump is imposing 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods in response to the country retaliating against previous US tariffs, the White House announced Monday, declaring Canada has unfairly discriminated against American cars, alcohol and dairy products.

The tariffs will hit a wide range of products, the White House said, including wine, hockey sticks and cement. They also include goods previously protected from import taxes under the United States-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement.

The new tariffs will exclude energy products, fish, critical minerals and potash. They also exclude products already subject to tariffs aimed at protecting national security, such as steel and aluminum.

The steep tariffs will probably unleash a new wave of economic chaos, with risks of higher inflation and further fraying of relations between two nations that had been closely woven together before Trump’s return to the White House. The White House said the tariffs will go into effect in 30 days, leaving time for possible negotiations between the two countries.

Trump signed three proclamations to launch the tariffs under Section 338 of the 1930 Trade Act. Several Democratic lawmakers last year proposed repealing the section because they said Trump could use it to destabilize the economy.

Tech Oligarchs MELTDOWN After China ERASES AI Edge

‘Front groups and fellow travelers’: state department attacks US left over Cuba

As part of the Trump administration’s continuing attack on left-leaning groups, the US state department has listed several activists and organizations as “front groups and fellow travelers” for Cuba, including Hasan Piker and Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls.

In a 100-page report released on Monday, the state department denounces Cuba as the “capital of 21st-century communism”, accusing the Cuban government of carrying out a “campaign of subversion” that has “infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists [and] backed an unprecedented wave of leftwing terrorism on American soil”.

The state department report alleges that the so-called campaign is “designed to turn America against itself” and singles out several left-leaning activists and organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America, Isra Hirsi – the daughter of Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar – New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, and journalist Amy Goodman, citing their criticism of US policy toward Cuba or participation in Cuba solidarity movements.

Describing the DSA, of which Mamdani is a member, the report says the organization “serves as a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism”. It accuses the DSA of maintaining a “fierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime – not because the group is controlled by Cuban agents, per se, but because that commitment is now simply the de facto policy orthodoxy on the American far left”.

Trump has doubled down on similar messaging in recent days, using the term communism at political rallies and presidential engagements alike.

Trump DOJ Subpoenaed Phone Records of Journalists’ Relatives

Attorneys representing The New York Times have revealed that the Trump administration’s subpoenas of the newspaper’s journalists are far more aggressive than what had been previously reported.

In a letter sent to US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Saturday and unsealed by the court on Monday, attorneys David O’Neil, Douglas Zolkind, and Julie Edelstein said that the US Department of Justice was engaged in an “alarming pattern of conduct” beyond its recently revealed efforts to compel Times reporters to testify before a grand jury for a probe related to unspecified national security leaks.

The attorneys said the administration had gone so far as to subpoena phone companies for subscriber information and toll records for phone numbers used by one reporter’s mother and by two reporters’ spouses, among others.

They also revealed that two administration subpoenas seek records going back as far as January 1 this year, “long before the events that are purportedly the basis for the department’s investigation,” suggesting that “the department is using this investigation... to forage for information about the journalists’ source relationships more broadly.”

The subpoenas of the Times journalists, issued earlier this month, came days after the paper published a story that detailed security concerns about the luxury jet the Qatari government gave to President Donald Trump.

The issued subpoenas did not specifically name the Times’ reporting on the Qatari jet as the reason for the grand jury probe, although they were given to all four journalists—Tyler Pager, Julian Barnes, Eric Schmitt, and Eric Lipton—who reported the story.

It is highly uncommon for government investigators to subpoena journalists when they are probing national security leaks, as such actions are generally seen as having a chilling effect on reporters’ ability to gather information.

Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, described news of the department seeking phone records of reporters’ spouses and a parent as “an extraordinary escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign to intimidate the press.”

“The Justice Department didn’t stop at journalists—it went after their family members, too,” Fallow noted. “That sends an unmistakably chilling message to anyone thinking about reporting on this administration. Every American who values a free and independent press should see this for what it is: an abuse of power designed to silence scrutiny.”

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, was even more scathing in his denunciation of the administration’s actions.

“Even the Mafia says families are off limits,” said Stern. “It’s gross that the administration—in its never-ending effort to harass and intimidate reporters who reveal its incompetence—is going after the communications of journalists’ relatives.”



the horse race



Progressive frontrunner and Maine logger poised to replace Graham Platner in chaotic primary

Troy Jackson – a logger, longtime legislator and former president of the Maine senate – is now poised to become the Democratic nominee in Maine’s US Senate race. His rise comes after the party’s previous nominee, Graham Platner, abruptly ended his campaign earlier this month following allegations of sexual assault from a former partner.

Platner’s withdrawal set off a frantic scramble inside the Maine Democratic party. Several contenders filed paperwork to be considered at a 25 July special convention of 601 delegates tasked with selecting a new nominee. But over the weekend, Jackson’s serious challengers dropped out one after another, clearing a swift and unobstructed path for him. Jackson, who lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary earlier this year, is now the presumptive choice.

Among those who ended their bids was Jordan Wood, a former congressional staffer who ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for Maine’s second district. Two other candidates who also fell short in this year’s gubernatorial primary – former Maine CDC director Nirav Shah and current secretary of state Shenna Bellows – likewise ended their campaigns. Dan Kleban, founder of Maine Beer Company, who briefly ran in the Senate primary against Platner before withdrawing months ago, also announced he would not stay in the race.

Wood, Shah and Kleban have all endorsed Jackson, stressing the stakes of flipping the seat held for nearly three decades by Republican Susan Collins – the only GOP senator running for re-election in a state Kamala Harris carried in 2024.

Jackson has consolidated support from major unions, numerous state Democrats and national progressive groups – he also appears to have locked down broad backing from the newly selected delegates. While their commitments are not legally binding, a majority of the 601 delegates have now pledged to vote for him, according to Jackson’s campaign.

Support for War is CRUSHING Democratic Politicians



the evening greens


Canada issues air quality warnings over US wildfire smoke after Trump tariff threat

After days of acrid smoke from northern wildfires choking major US cities and inspiring Donald Trump to threaten Canada with tariffs, officials now say the reverse is also happening as parts of Canada issue air quality warnings caused by American fires to the south. Officials in the Canadian province of British Columbia warned in an alert on Saturday evening that smoke from US fires, spurred on by thousands of lightning strikes in the north-east, was creating smoky conditions as polluted air drifted north.

“Much of this smoke is originating from fires south of the Canada-US border in Washington and Oregon,” the provincial wildfire service said.

Twenty-two large fires are burning across Washington and Oregon, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, the fire coordination agency for both states. British Columbia has air quality warnings in place for two regions, Kootenay Lake and Cranbrook, located along the south-east border with the US.

Despite the US facing its own wildfire issues, Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have chosen to accuse Canada of improper wildfire management and have threatened to hit Canadian officials with sanctions.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump wrote the US had been “invaded” by dirty air. “[The] ‌cost of this pollution must of necessity be added ⁠to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying,” he said. The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to several climate protections.

Trump officials kill proposed rules for Pfas-contaminated sewage fertilizer

The Trump administration has killed proposed regulations for sewage sludge contaminated with Pfas and spread on farmland as fertilizer, a practice that has sickened farmers, destroyed their livelihoods, killed livestock, polluted water supplies, and poisoned meat and food products sold to the public.

The proposed regulations would largely have ended the use of sludge, also called biosolids, in the nation’s food system. But the Environmental Protection Agency tossed out its scientific research from less than two years ago that formed the basis of the proposed regulations. It justified the decision by declaring that sludge was not a wide threat to the public because it is mostly used on farms, and only a small percentage of cropland.

However, in comments published to the federal register, the EPA also advised the US public to “research” sludge companies to protect itself from the highly toxic chemicals contaminating home fertilizer widely sold for use in home gardens.

The decision is “a bit bonkers”, said Laura Dumais, an attorney with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit. “It’s shocking for the EPA to take a scientific assessment and simply throw it out,” Dumais said. “Basically, they’re saying: farmers’ lives don’t matter.”

Sludge is a mix of human and industrial waste that is a byproduct of treating waste sent through the nation’s sewer system. Its disposal is expensive, and the EPA in the early 1990s began allowing it to be spread on cropland because it is also rich in plant nutrients. But public health advocates have condemned the practice because the nation spends billions of dollars annually to treat water, only to take the toxic byproduct, insert it into the food supply, and re-pollute water. Regulators in Maine and Michigan have found Pfas in every sample they have tested, as did a 2001 federal review of the nation’s sewage sludge.

Slowdown in Arctic ice melt ends after largest winter decline on record

A previously recorded slowdown in Arctic sea ice decline has ended, according to a new study, with the largest year-to-year wintertime reduction ever recorded. In a study published last summer, researchers found that melting sea ice in the Arctic had slowed down over the past 20 years, with no statistically significant decline in its extent recorded between 2005 and 2024.

Given the increase in global temperatures during this period, the finding was surprising. However, the researchers said natural variations in ocean currents that limit ice melting probably balanced the rise in global temperatures. They said this was only a temporary reprieve and melting was highly likely to start again at about double the long-term rate at some point in the next five to 10 years. Just two years later, the new study has found the slowdown in sea ice decline is now over.

Using the most recent satellite observations of sea ice coverage, the researchers found that the 2005 to 2024 slowdown was “temporary rather than sustained”. Dr Duo Chan, lead author of the paper from the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science, said that what “looked like a pause in the early 2020s now appears to have just been a temporary slowdown within a longer-term decline”.

Sea ice area in September, when it reaches its annual minimum, has halved since 1979, when satellite measurements began. The researchers found that between 2024 and 2025 Arctic sea ice declined by 5.8%. This is the largest year-to-year wintertime drop ever recorded. Because the winter sea ice acts as an insulator between the relatively warm Arctic ocean and the much colder atmosphere, a reduction in ice will mean more ocean heat and moisture will enter the atmosphere.


Also of Interest

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

Iran War: Brief US Pause Followed by Renewed Strikes as Iran Intensifies Attacks on Bases and Kuwait Desalination; Continued Speculation About US Operation

War On Iran: – Hit On U.S. In Saudi Arabia And Jordan – Yemen Declares SA Blockade

America Doesn’t Have Enough Missiles To Fight Iran

Nicaragua’s president says country will not hold any more elections

‘Most people don’t know we’ve set up a doomsday system’: physicist Laura Grego on satellites, nuclear weapons and the battle for our skies

FDA says review of Taylor Farms lettuce shows cyclospora finding was false positive

AI-altered images on birdwatching forums putting research at risk


A Little Night Music

J.B. Hutto – Tell Me Mama

J B Hutto – That`s The Truth

J.B. Hutto – Turner's Rock

J B Hutto – Leave Your Love In Greater Hands

J B Hutto – Summertime

J.B. Hutto & The New Hawks - Somebody Loan Me A Dime

J.B. Hutto & The Hawks - Mistake In Life

J.B. Hutto & The Hawks - Pet Cream Man

J.B. Hutto And The New Hawks – I Feel So Good


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Comments

the nose. not that it takes much effort

The rest of the tweet:

The assessment says the centrifuges could be used to enrich Iran's existing stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium to weapons-grade for potential use in nuclear warheads.

Just like that we now get this!

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/21/trump-iran-pickaxe-mountain-bomb

President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. military will bomb Iran's Pickaxe Mountain, a deep underground site that the U.S. and Israel suspect could be used for nuclear activity.

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10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

oh boy! now trump is going to shoot off some very expensive ordnance that is utterly incapable of "oblitherating" pickaxe mountain (sounds like a name straight out of a hollywood script) and will inconvenience iranians (unless it's a decoy) for a day or two by covering its entrance with trash. way to go, trumpster!

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7 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@humphrey @humphrey

the enemy that we intend to bomb a specific geographic area of limited extent. Brilliant, they'll never see it coming.

be well and have a good one

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6 users have voted.

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 --

@enhydra lutris Surprise attack is for the little people.

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

i think it's part of trump's bullying campaign - "we're gonna bomb your (insert target name) and you can't do a damned thing about it."

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6 users have voted.

...about the high risk of nuclear war was quite passionate. I happen to agree with him. Whenever, the US faces the prospect of interminable warfare, the ultimate threat basically rears its head.

Korea, Taiwan Strait, Vietnam... Trump and Hegseth don't know what their doing. I think it's a problem that Kaine is the chairman, an air force guy. Short of nuclear war we're getting a Curtis LeMay approach. The latter has profound limitations, psychological, political, and in terms of effectiveness. An air war only approach to warfare, is notoriously inadequate. Much of German and Japanese production capacity was largely still intact, even after extensive saturation bombing campaigns against cities. The one who kills the most people approach to summarize the US/UK air warfare strategy during WWII, simply isn't enough. I think most military officers probably learned this at some point in their training. The problem is that the air force and some parts of the navy, and the MIC, are biased against this perspective. MacGregor emphasizes a combined arms approach, and he's right.

This guy from drop site with Ryan is really a pretty good analyst. He said when all this fails, on the US side, "what then?" My guess would be saturation bombing if possible, if not tactical nuclear attack. If we just walked away, which looks like it might not be a bad choice, what then? Then our putative ally would eventually resort to it. That's the catch 22.

The whole concentration of US assets in Israel necessary for an air campaign against Iran defies the new strategy of modern warfare that the US promoted in the Western Pacific in recent years, disperse assets, concentrate firepower. As Ryan's guest points out (and UFS here) Israel isn't a big enough place to disperse assets. I wondered if iron bombs were now not obsolete because of the aircraft losses we might sustain in the process. Do they have enough JDAMs for saturation bombing? Keep in mind, I don't approve of any of this, for many reasons, practical, ethical, and legal. I'm just looking at the constraints on their decision making which they seem to have been blind to from the outset.

I thought the article about Laura Grego was excellent. Thanks JS!

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己所不欲,勿施于人。

joe shikspack's picture

@soryang

i think wilkerson's correct. i think that there's a far better than even chance that nukes will be used on iran, the only question is which psychopath-run state will drop them. iran's willful refusal to bend to the demands of the usraeli elites will ultimately break down whatever resistance exists in the psychopaths that run these things. the only hope is that the militaries will refuse the orders. i consider the u.s. military more likely to refuse the order than the israeli military.

i too thought that the grego article was thoughtful and well done.

have a good one!

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7 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

Luke Harding in Dnipro
Tue 21 Jul 2026 17.34 EDT

Zelenskyy fires Ukraine’s army chief and offers Fedorov ‘prominent position’

After nationwide protests Oleksandr Syrskyi is to be replaced in reshuffle and popular defence minister returns to government

the above just popped up in the Guardian, It is easily possible given the zclowns standing these days,

be well and have a good one

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6 users have voted.

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 --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

sounds like elensky is deeply worried about his standing. i guess we'll see how things shake out, elensky will have to find fedorov a plum position, but out of the limelight.

have a great evening!

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4 users have voted.

come across this and it doesn't look like good news.

These are the present numbers.

WTI is at 85.613 up 1.47%

Brent is at 92.565 up 1.68%

gasoline is at 3.4253 up .58%

It looks like Bessent and his minions will have a hard time controlling the impact.

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7 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

i don't speculate or follow the market, but i do purchase gasoline and the cost of it in my area has risen .40 cents in less than a week.

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6 users have voted.

legal authority to arrest Bibi.

But his tweet is worth viewing as doesn't pull any punches.

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7 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

well, i guess he at least issued a sternly-worded condemnation of bibi.

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4 users have voted.

@joe shikspack The Mamdani video is the only mechanism/weapon/tool he has. He did what he could, very eloquently.
Meanwhile, a family, consisting of Dad, Mom, and 4 children, in a house in Lebanon, were killed by the IDF because they were a threat, or something...
Oh, thy did other acts of genocide and atrocities, but that seemed to stand out to me.
Thanks for the ebs, my friend!

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

i guess i'm just feeling grumpy about how ineffectual standard-issue "progressives" are. i hope that he'll be using his platform to condemn netanyahu when he's here and perhaps commission a multi-denominational ritual purification of the city after netanyahu departs.

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4 users have voted.

@joe shikspack and watch what is going on with only lip service/party line griping as "opposition".
Going up against AIPAC is all but impossible. Massie would agree with me.

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Pluto's Republic's picture

.
Winning is losing. Nothing will be gained.

The story that is breaking right now, is a story that I have been following for a very long time. It is the story that is going to change the lives and the self-concept of all USians. I predict it will lead to a massive migration of young people out of the United States in the near future.

This is the story covered by Breaking Points in EB tonight. Watch it.

It's the story of how the US lost the AI Race in a such a way that there will be no recovery for stock market investors, at least not for a long time. It's a story about the defeat of Capitalism — just in time — before it does anymore harm to humanity world-wide. The victory goes to socialist principles and economic models, which deliver economic security and a better future for humanity and for the planet. People will naturally gravitate to socialist models, which supports a higher standard of living. They eliminate poverty. (Growing up in poverty causes life-long brain damage.) We will still have millionaires, and maybe a few billionaires, but the Elite Plutocrat Families that have controlled global economies for centuries, that hoarded the wealth of the world, and operated a high-level system of greed and corruption in governments, with savage disregard for the lives of the people — the surviving Plutocrats will gradually slink away forever.

This is a very hard story to get one's mind around. The outcome was triggered by the idea of AI, but not by the technology of AI, which has yet to be fully released. It's going to take a long time for people to realize that humanity has come out a winner, instead of being used up and discarded by blind progress and aggressive greed. It will take time to get used to the idea that the goal of all governments is to serve the needs of all their people, and to help their people live fulfilling and productive lives. China created a working model for that — and that has changed the world.

That's how it is. You won't need to worry so much about Data Centers moving forward. The US is out of the race. It can develop its AI at a slower pace. The AI produced in the US is very good, but it will be too expensive to attract many customers, globally. The well being of the People will gradually become the first priority on this planet. The people will come to know how they should be treated. What just happened will change everything.

In my opinion, of course.

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5 users have voted.
QMS's picture

@Pluto's Republic
.

about China coming out with a new break-thru in tech
that erases the frontier gap and it is open source.
(At 40% of the cost). Could be a bubble popper.
Called Kimi K3, it was previously considered impossible to achieve.
I do not understand the tech but here is an article on it.

https://www.axios.com/2026/07/17/china-ai-kimi-k3-open-source-anthropic-...

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8 users have voted.

Zionism is a social disease