The Evening Blues - 8-14-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Eddie C. Campbell. Enjoy!
Eddie C. Campbell - All Your Love
"The two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth into the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment."
-- Wendell Berry
News and Opinion
If We Could See Everything, It Would Radicalize Us All Instantly
It’s hard to wrap your mind around the abusiveness of the imperial status quo, partly because it’s all we’ve ever known, and partly because it’s too big to perceive all at once.
The statistics don’t show you the true human impact. The personal anecdotes just show you small snapshots of individuals suffering in their own lives. A working single mother crying in her car in a TikTok video because the endless toil necessary for survival is all-consuming and overwhelming. A news report about child labor in DRC cobalt mines. An Instagram reel about a father in Gaza carrying plastic bags he’s been told contain the remains of his daughter.
Individually, such stories are heartbreaking and enraging. But they are not merely personal anecdotes from separate individuals. These stories are unfolding all around the world, every moment of every day, affecting the lives of billions of human beings in different ways and to varying degrees.
If we could see it all, it would radicalize everyone against the empire instantaneously.
But we cannot see it all. We simply can’t take in all the suffering that is happening in all the ways it is being inflicted upon innocent people all around the world.
The most powerful weapon our rulers have is the fact that homo sapiens are incapable of perceiving everything all at once. If everybody could perceive all the consequences of the decisions being made by powerful people on a deep experiential level, most of humanity would rise up to overthrow the established order, and there’d be hardly anyone willing to defend it.
The only thing keeping the heads of the oligarchs and empire managers attached to their necks is the limitations of human perception.
Which of course is why they work so hard to maintain the present limitations of human perception. All the propaganda, internet censorship, AI shenanigans, algorithm manipulation and government secrecy we see from the capitalist empire is there to keep us from seeing too much, because unadulterated truth tends to have a radicalizing effect on the mind.
That’s why they’re scrambling to roll out police drones, AI mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems while doing everything they can to slow down our access to information and insight: it’s a race to get us fully locked down in a capitalist dystopia policed by militarized robots before humanity’s unprecedented ability to share inconvenient facts and ideas lets us see enough to awaken a revolutionary zeitgeist in our collective consciousness.
So in that sense there really is a kind of worldwide struggle between light and darkness — not in a religious sense, but in the sense that there is a direct ongoing conflict between the agenda to see and to know versus the agenda to keep things hidden. Humanity’s higher impulses are trying to bring things into the light of awareness, while those representing our lower nature are trying to keep things obscured in the darkness of ignorance and confusion.
I don’t know which side will win in the end. I just know it makes sense for every well-intentioned person to spend as much the time and energy as they can muster trying help make the abuses of the empire as visible as possible for everybody.
Chris Hedges - Will Iran or Trump Bring Down the American Empire?
Prof. Mohammad Marandi : Trump’s War Achieved Nothing for the US
Israeli troops force families from homes amid settler terror campaign in West Bank
Israeli troops have forced two Palestinian families to leave their besieged West Bank homes, the day after a top Israeli commander personally promised he would end a violent settler campaign to drive them out. Israeli soldiers also took over eight other homes in Qusra early on Thursday, telling the village’s mayor, Abdul Azim Wadi, that the buildings were needed for a days-long operation to remove the settlers. They later relinquished six. Settlers still roam the village.
The Palestinians’ ordeal began on Sunday when Israeli settlers and soldiers set up a tent blocking the entrance to three homes on the edge of the village. They severed water and electricity supplies and prevented an ambulance from reaching a sick toddler. Amid mounting international pressure over the siege, Maj Gen Avi Bluth, who commands all Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, visited Qusra on Wednesday to meet the trapped Palestinians and committed to “evacuate” the settlers from the village.
Bluth’s troops later removed the tent but left the militants, their bedding and other equipment. Soldiers retreated after a failed attempt to drive out the Israeli settler group with riot control techniques. The siege continued into a fifth day on Thursday, with the impact on the village only expanding after Bluth’s visit. “The army arrived at around 10am and asked us to evacuate the houses because of a military operation in the area that would last for three days. We refused to leave,” said Qusai Ridi, one of the besieged Palestinians. “The army then moved us all into one house.”
He was allowed to return home in the afternoon, where he found Israeli soldiers had damaged a security camera system and stolen some equipment. They are still occupying the home of his neighbour Yousef Hassan, who is staying with Ridi.
Settlers are still patrolling outside in the area where 28-year-old Amir Moatasem Odeh was killed by a settler in March. Another attacker stabbed his father. No one has been arrested over the murder and assault. “I am afraid and do not trust that the army will actually evacuate the settlers. But I sincerely hope they do,” Ridi said.
CIA DIDN'T BELIEVE Israeli Warnings Over Trump Catering Cart Escape!
US, Turkish Officials Suspect ‘Plot’ That Led to Trump Plane Switch Was Israeli Ruse
US and Turkish officials are reportedly suspicious that the supposed Iranian assassination plot that led President Donald Trump to make an elaborate escape from Ankara using a catering truck last month may have been a fabrication by Israeli intelligence.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Trump had to be secreted onto a nondescript plane to leave a NATO summit on July 8 after Israel passed an intelligence report to the CIA warning that Iran had planned to launch a missile at Air Force One. But new reporting indicates that neither Turkish nor American officials found the evidence all that compelling.
The alleged threat came at a highly volatile time, as the “memorandum of understanding” between the US and Iran to end nearly five months of war was on the verge of collapse, in part thanks to Israel’s attempts to undermine it.
As Middle East Eye reported on Tuesday, Turkish officials suggested that the intelligence report was “probably a ruse by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government to portray itself as protecting Trump, derail negotiations with Iran, and undermine Trump’s apparently close relationship with [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan].”
The Washington Post confirms our scoop at MEE: According to US intel officials, Israel likely used an intelligence report suggesting that he was under threat in Ankara to influence Trump’s decision-making on Iran and Turkey.
Read our story here:
https://t.co/Pf2cIi3z75 pic.twitter.com/DMH4QjqN61— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) August 13, 2026
Turkey tightened security after US officials informed it of the plot. But after examining the details of the scheme—which purportedly involved using shoulder-fired missiles to attack Trump’s plane within a kilometer of the runway—they said they found the intelligence report highly implausible.
“Of course, we took the report very seriously and tried to assist our American counterparts as much as possible,” one person familiar with the matter said. “Yet it was very clear to us that there was no way this report was true.”
It turns out that it wasn’t just Turkish officials who felt this way. The Washington Post on Wednesday cited a senior US official who said that the CIA analysts who’d received the report from Israel “did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials.”
The story of Trump secretly switching airplanes is actually a great example of how we got into the war with Iran…
“Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence” by our own intelligence agencies. pic.twitter.com/zWKkWxYBat
— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) August 13, 2026
Another official said the report was “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence.” The Secret Service acted on the report anyway out of an abundance of caution.
Nevertheless, the Post indicated that there was a striking amount of doubt among US intelligence officials about the motives of one of the country’s top allies, whom they suggest passed the information along to nudge Washington toward Israel’s own foreign policy objectives:
Some US intelligence officials saw Israel’s sharing of the warning about threats to Trump’s life as designed less to inform than to influence the president’s decision-making and US policy in the region, a current and a former US official said. Israel views Iran as by far its most urgent near-term threat.
But it views Turkey as a medium- to long-term threat and is anxious about warming ties between Washington and Ankara, bolstered by the personal rapport between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current official said.
It “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it,” the former official familiar with the matter said.
Iranian leaders have denied any attempt to assassinate Trump. As they try to push him to admit defeat in the war the US and Israel started in February and accept a series of harsh surrender terms, they are having a laugh at his reaction to what they say was a fabricated plot.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, portrayed it as part of a larger pattern of the US having been misled by faulty Israeli intelligence.
Netanyahu was notably one of the driving forces behind Trump’s mistaken belief that an operation to topple the Iranian government would be quick and painless.
“The US has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures,” Araghchi wrote Thursday on social media. “Case in point: The war on Iran. Now, an even bigger miscalculation on the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Worse than fake news is fake intelligence,” he said. “Be careful.”
Joe Kent, the former director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned in March after accusing Trump of being manipulated into starting the war by false reports that Iran posed an imminent threat, said that “the story of Trump secretly switching airplanes is actually a great example of how we got into the war with Iran... ‘Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence’ by our own intelligence agencies.”
“It’s smart to take all threats seriously,” Kent said. “But if you’re basing a decision about going to war on information from a liaison intel service or an ‘ally,’ it’s important to remember they are most certainly providing that information to influence us as well as inform us.”
New Firepower Heads to Iran /Lt Col Daniel Davis
Lebanese Americans sue US over Israel’s rights abuses in Lebanon war
Dozens of Lebanese Americans have filed a class action civil lawsuit against the US government and several defence contractors, saying their role in Israel’s war in Lebanon is a violation of a US law that bars assistance to foreign governments known to be committing human rights abuses. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the US District Court in Michigan, names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Caterpillar as defendants.
The plaintiffs are the Michigan-based Arab American Civil Rights League group and 16 individuals, all US citizens with property in Lebanon that has been impacted by what they claim is indiscriminate use of force by Israel during the war. Plaintiffs include Nasser Beydoun, a prominent Michigan businessman and politician who alleges in the lawsuit that Israeli forces destroyed his family home in Bint Jbeil, southern Lebanon, “without any military necessity or justification”.
The lawsuit argues that by supplying Israel with funds and weapons used in this manner, the US government is in violation of the Leahy Law, which bars military assistance, training, or equipment to foreign militaries that are credibly linked to gross human rights violations. Defence contractors selling equipment to Israel, the plaintiffs claim, similarly should be halted as the companies are knowingly helping the country commit illegal actions in the conflict
“The law is very clear and has been enforced around the world, but when it comes to Israel, there is zero enforcement,” Nabih Ayad, a lawyer and the head of the Arab American Civil Rights League, said on Wednesday. In the Lebanon conflict, Ayad said, “You have credible information about gross human rights violations that have happened…yet you are doing nothing about it.”
Alastair Crooke: Iran Goes On OFFENSIVE, US DEPLOYS Aircraft Carrier as Israel PANICS
US Lost 25% of Its Reaper Drones During Iran War
The US lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones in its war with Iran, or roughly 25% of its entire fleet, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, one of the many examples of the conflict creating a staggering depletion of US military stockpiles.
MQ-9s are used to conduct surveillance and launch airstrikes and were deployed extensively over the decades for drone strikes in the US War on Terror, which continues today in Somalia, but when used against an enemy with air defenses, the MQ-9 is extremely vulnerable. The US also lost more than 20 MQ-9s during bombing campaigns against Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, in Yemen in 2024 and 2025.
The Post report said that the MQ-9s cost between $30 billion and $50 billion to manufacture, meaning the 45 lost in the Iran war could cost up to $2.25 billion to replace. Throughout the war, MQ-9s have been shot down by Iran, struck by Iranian missiles and drones at US bases in the region, and some have crashed due to communications errors.
The aircraft carrier USS George Washington is preparing to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln as part of a scheduled Middle East deployment, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, news that comes as families of military personnel aboard the Lincoln have reported that sailors have attempted to jump overboard.
The Lincoln has been deployed for more than 250 days and hasn’t made a port call in over 200 days, as part of a deployment initially scheduled to end in May but extended due to the Iran war, straining the crew. For months, the ship has been deployed in the Arabian Sea, where it has been involved in bombing Iran and is currently part of the armada enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports.
According to USNI News, the USS George Washington and its strike group were in the Strait of Malacca on Thursday, transiting after a westbound transit through the Singapore Strait as the warships headed to the Middle East.
Pete Hegseth dismisses reports of deteriorating conditions on USS Abraham Lincoln
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, insisted a wave of reports describing deteriorating conditions and mental health struggles onboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln “completely misrepresented” the situation, pushing back against growing congressional pressure over the ship’s record-breaking, nearly nine-month deployment. “We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth told reporters during a visit to Panama, adding that “some deployments are longer than others” and praising sailors enduring “high seas” and “austere conditions with less port calls”.
His remarks came a day after Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Connecticut and a member of the US Senate armed services committee, sent a letter to Hegseth and the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, demanding a formal accounting of conditions on the carrier. Blumenthal wrote that he had “serious concerns about the increasing length of Carrier Strike Group deployments” and said the Lincoln’s extended deployment raised broader questions about “the Navy’s ability to sustainably generate carrier forces while preserving servicemember well-being”.
CNN later reported that a sailor went overboard from the Lincoln last month and was rescued and medically evaluated, citing an unnamed US official. It was not immediately clear how the sailor ended up in the water, or whether they returned to duty.
Another US aircraft carrier, the Pacific-based USS George Washington, is currently heading toward the Middle East, according to navy statements and open-source marine data. The Wall Street Journal reported that the carrier is set to replace the Lincoln, citing unnamed US officials.
Ukraine's Fortress Belt Under Siege As Odessa Blockade Tightens w/ Stanislav Krapivnik
What could possibly go wrong?
Donald Trump empowers US private companies to conduct cyber-attacks
Donald Trump signed a memo on Wednesday that aims to give private companies the power to carry out offensive cyber-attacks against foreign criminal entities. The president signed a national security presidential memorandum directing his administration to “leverage the capability and innovation of the private sector to help conduct these cyber operations under the direction, control and authority of the US government”, the White House said.
The policy shift gives the private sector a role that has traditionally been reserved for government agencies, essentially deputizing companies in the fight against crime online. Trump’s memo does not give private firms unlimited ability to conduct hacking operations, but instead would authorize “limited cyber operations at the direction of the US government”.
International concern over cyber-attacks has grown after the release of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence models, which have shown that they can hack into outdated security systems. In the US, hackers targeted critical infrastructure systems in several states earlier this year, resulting in disruptions at water facilities.
The White House, in a fact sheet about the memo, cited ransomware attacks, financial frauds and other crimes run by foreign-based criminal organizations, referred to in the memo as “transnational criminal organizations” (TCOs).
The Trump administration has previously vowed to give private firms a larger role in cybersecurity operations. A national cybersecurity policy released in March stated that the government would create incentives to “unleash the private sector” against foreign adversaries. These plans have faced questions from legal experts on what sort of risks companies could face as they enmesh themselves in international digital conflicts.
Bessent PANICS as US Bond Auctions COLLAPSE — Deficit EXPLODES 260%
Kennedy Center board votes again to renovate building and inscribe Trump’s name on it
The board of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington is said to have voted once again to move forward with Donald Trump’s controversial plan to temporarily shutter the building for substantial renovations, as well as to inscribe the US president’s name on the facade of its building, despite a federal order for his name to be removed from the signage.
The board – mostly handpicked, staunch allies of the president – voted “to close the Kennedy Center’s main building, while keeping a newer addition to the campus, known as the Reach, open for limited programming and to operate as an active memorial to John F Kennedy”, according to the New York Times, which was first to report the results. Shortly after, the board also reportedly voted to add an inscription beneath the signage of the institution’s name that reads: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J Trump.”
In May, the US district judge Christopher Cooper ordered Trump’s name to be removed from the building’s facade after the president had it added last year. Cooper ruled that the addition had been illegal, as only Congress had the authority to change the institution’s name. The center removed Trump’s name in June, but is appealing the decision.
Judge dismisses Trump lawsuit that claimed Harvard failed to protect Jewish students
A US federal judge has dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit that claimed Harvard University failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment in the aftermath of the war in Gaza. In a ruling on Thursday morning, US district judge Richard Stearns in Boston said the administration’s lawsuit – filed in March – failed to plausibly show an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard’s campus.
The administration’s complaint focused largely on a handful of incidents alleged in March 2025, Stearns said, saying these were “too isolated and episodic” to support a claim of ongoing civil rights violations by Harvard. Thursday’s ruling deals a blow to Donald Trump and his officials, and their ongoing push to force the elite university to bow to its will – not only on the response to antisemitism, but to a range of race-in-admissions, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and other issues.
In its original complaint, the Trump administration painted a dystopian picture of Harvard life in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack. Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyers said that Jewish and Israeli students were “harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon” while the response of the university administration had been to “do nothing”. That, the DoJ argued, was a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs on grounds of race or national origin.
In a brief, but pointed, four-page ruling, Stearns said he was not “diminishing any concern arising” from campus events in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks. But he said that the DoJ’s complaint had misconstrued the remit of Title VI.
Third person dies at New Jersey immigration detention center
A Guatemalan immigrant detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a Newark, New Jersey, facility suffered a medical emergency and later died after being hospitalized, according to the Trump administration. José Chajón-Raxón is the third immigrant to die after being held at Delaney Hall, an ICE detention center that reopened in May 2025 amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
A nurse responded when Chajón-Raxón experienced a medical emergency and “witnessed Chajón-Raxón experiencing seizure-like activity”, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Medical personnel were called, and he was transported to a hospital, the DHS said in a statement shared with the Guardian.
ICE agents had arrested Chajón-Raxón before bringing him to Delaney Hall on 18 July, the agency said. Four days later, Chajón-Raxón was “released from ICE custody on July 22”, according to the agency, which did not provide further details about the circumstances of his release. Key questions about what happened next remain unanswered in the DHS account. The department did not say what occurred after Chajón-Raxón arrived at the hospital, whether he left the hospital before his death or exactly when he died.
“Per ICE policy, when an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for monitoring or reviewing deaths that may occur. This is common sense,” the DHS statement said. The case comes after a policy shift announced earlier this year under which the agency stopped reporting deaths occurring within 30 days after a person is released from custody. That change reversed a policy put in place by the Biden administration in 2021.
US representative Rob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who has regularly visited Delaney Hall, has sharply criticized the change. Menendez told the Associated Press that it creates a “loophole” allowing the agency to release someone from custody and then “claim it has no responsibility to investigate their death or inform Congress and the public”. Chajón-Raxón’s death did not become publicly known until Menendez disclosed it last week in the aftermath of another death connected to the facility.
US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters
Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year. Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.
Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.
The DHS investigative reports were disclosed by the government and submitted to the court by an attorney for one of the defendants. The records show that in January, DHS launched an inquiry called “Operation Puppet Master” to identify a “network of conspirators” organizing against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation came as community organizing against ICE was swelling in the region in response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
A DHS report from February said the agency was looking into people who were “providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators”. The records suggest agents launched elaborate spying efforts targeting activists, protesters and mainstream progressive organizations opposing the Trump administration’s immigration policies. “I was shocked at the scope and the apparent lack of investigative discipline involved, but not totally surprised,” said Kevin Riach, an attorney for one of the indicted protesters, who filed the tranche of records in federal court.
The records indicate that the investigations followed the directive of Trump’s executive order last year that designated “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization” responsible for “riots” against ICE. The documents show that the government alleged major groups were connected to the criminal conspiracy, including the national labor unions AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union; the local unions Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees; and several large left-leaning groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). The records have added fuel to the concerns of civil rights groups, who have argued that the federal government was criminalizing lawful protest activity under the guise of targeting leftwing “terrorism”.
My response to the billionaires and failed trillionaire Elon Musk and their super PAC that announced today that they're dumping $42 million into this race. pic.twitter.com/dWptsctjK8
— Troy Jackson (@TroyJackson207) August 12, 2026
Count Binface: My Clacton Victory Speech!
Fossils show huge carbon emissions harm forests, not ‘green the planet’
Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet. An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56m years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate. The current galloping pace of carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is unmatched in historic and prehistoric records but the PETM, when huge amounts of carbon were released over a 130,000-year period and the world heated up by as much as 8C (14F), is the closest comparison.
The authors of the new paper found this prehistoric change caused a retreat in the forests that blanketed the Paleocene-Eocene world, causing them to die off as the Earth browned rather than greened, a finding they state has “chilling implications” for today’s world. “What we see is that as the carbon dioxide ramped up, the forests became very dense but then subsequently collapsed, opening up dramatically,” said Regan Dunn, a researcher at La Brea Tar Pits and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, who led the study.
“Around 60% of the biomass of the standing vegetation was gone; it was a huge loss. This should be a concern because the rate of carbon release has never been higher than now.” Dun added: “Forests are some of our best friends and allies but we are already seeing them die back, be cut down and consumed by wildfires. It’s happening quickly; every summer the change seems faster and faster.” Plants like trees require carbon to build their structures and, along with water and sunlight, provide food. Once the world started to burn coal, oil and gas in huge volumes from the industrial revolution onwards, the amount of emitted carbon dioxide surged at an unprecedented rate, with atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rising by more than 50% in little over a century.
This increase in carbon did initially help boost some plant life, a change that has been seized upon by those who question the facts of climate science. Prominent figures in Donald Trump’s administration have argued that burning fossil fuels is good for the environment. “CO2 was never a pollutant,” Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, told Fox Business earlier this year as the federal government moved to erase its own power to address the climate crisis. “When we breathe, we emit CO2. Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more CO2.”
On the same TV network last year, Chris Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, said that there were “pluses” to global heating as well as negatives. “A warmer planet with more CO2 is better for growing plants,” Wright claimed. Experts have previously rejected such claims as false, with the new research paper, published in Science, showing that the Earth’s past experience demonstrates that trees require much more than CO2 to thrive. Extra carbon dioxide traps more heat, causing trees to struggle amid extreme temperatures and a lack of key nutrients. Hotter conditions can also trigger outbreaks of pests and disease, weakening trees further, and dry out vegetation that then explodes into huge wildfires, such as those that have engulfed much of Canada and western Europe this summer. The switch from greening forests to browning forests occurred around 2000, the new paper states, when the impacts of drought and heat stress overtook the benefits of extra CO2.
California bans paraquat, highly toxic herbicide outlawed in more than 70 countries
California is banning paraquat, a highly toxic, controversial herbicide used across millions of acres of American cropland. Public health advocates characterize it as a deadly substance that is virtually proven to cause Parkinson’s disease. It is already outlawed in more than 70 countries, including China, the UK and the EU. Yet in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reapproved it for use in 2021 and 2024.
California is the US’s largest user of the pesticide, and largest agricultural producer, so advocates have hailed the decision as a major public health win. It is the second US state to prohibit paraquat, following Vermont, and its decision comes after the state legislature passed a 2024 law requiring the pesticide division to re-evaluate the substance’s health risks.
“Paraquat is the most acutely lethal pesticide ever made,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has for years helped lead a coalition of public health and farm worker groups that have pressured state and federal governments to prohibit the substance. “I don’t think anyone thought this was going to happen this quickly, but it’s very welcome news.”
Paraquat has been used for decades as a powerful herbicide that can rapidly kill weeds. About 14m pounds annually are sprayed on US wine grapes, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, pears, citrus, soya beans, cotton and other crops, most commonly in California’s Central valley and the Mississippi River valley. The substance’s use tripled in the US between 2008 and 2018, and has since continued to shoot up.
Exposure to paraquat via skin or inhalation is linked to death, cancer, heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure and scarring of the lungs. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning and the pesticide’s severe toxicity is highlighted on an Environmental Protection Act website titled Paraquat Dichloride: One Sip Can Kill.
Piranha drama: boy, 8, hooks fearsome exotic fish in Pennsylvania lake
An eight-year-old boy fishing for bass in Pennsylvania was stunned to catch something more associated with the Amazon – and countless horror movies – than the rolling landscape of the eastern US.
Seamus Coffey, who was fishing with his father Michael in a lake near Philadelphia, hauled in a large red-bellied piranha, complete with the razor-toothed jaws that the fearsome breed is so famous for.
Michael Coffey recalled to ABC that he told his son “Slow down dude, you might lose it” as he pulled in the hefty catch that he could not recognise. But Sean quickly identified the species.
“He said, ‘It’s a piranha!’” Michael said and when asked how he knew, Seamus replied: “Because I watch YouTube!”
The Pennsylvania fish and boat commission later confirmed the identification.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Chris Hedges: Gaza’s Board of Pieces
Israeli Violence Pushing West Bank to Breaking Point
Paper Tiger: The Failure of America’s Trillion-Dollar War Machine
Ansar Allah Launches More Attacks on Oil Sites in Saudi Arabia, Saudi-Backed Forces in Yemen
Trump has amassed staggering wealth in ‘most openly corrupt’ presidency
A Little Night Music
Eddie C. Campbell - Sister Taught Me Guitar
Eddie C. Campbell - Same Thing
Eddie C. Campbell - Do What You Wanna Do
Eddie C. Campbell - Skin Tight
Eddie C. Campbell - Makin' Popcorn
Eddie C. Campbell - Shake for Me
Eddie C. Campbell - Mellow Down Easy
Eddie C. Campbell - Everything Gonna Be Allright
Eddie C. Campbell - King of the Jungle
Eddie C. Campbell - Devil's Walk
Comments
Not surprised.
Our government has been infested with piranha for years. That they find one in an american lake is poetic justice.
Tanks as always joe.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
evening pricknick...
heh, i am certain that there are other government piranha swimming about. there are also an invasive species called snakeheads that are prevalent in the waters of maryland including those surrounding d.c. they breathe air with gills, which allows them to migrate short distances over land which means it's possible that there are some already in government.
every now and then the fish store down the road from me runs a special on them, but they are so hideous i haven't thought to cook and eat one.
Hey joe
You might be doing the world a favour if you do eat one ; ).
evening janis...
yep, that's what i hear, and i am generally in favor of people eating them and utilizing the gift of protein. i just haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet.
have a great weekend!
You'd probably need more than
a good wine pairing!
Enjoy the weekend.
hiya Janis. Good to see you, One question -
the fish or the politicians?
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 --
Hi el
I think you know the answer ; ).
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. It makes sense that they
would sent the Washington instead of the Truman. The country has celebrated both Washington and Lincoln's birthdays, but not Trumans.
Have a great weekend
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...
heh, sending the avoid foreign entanglements guy's ship sure sounds like a salute to irony.
have a great weekend!