The Evening Blues - 8-6-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Piedmont blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Blind Willie Mctell. Enjoy!
Blind Willie McTell - Statesboro Blues
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero
News and Opinion
Our physical literature is being destroyed in order to train generative AI products
Today in dystopia, our physical literature is being destroyed in order to train generative AI products to take our jobs and pollute our environment.
AI companies are now bulk-buying rare and out-of-print books and then destroying them after scanning their contents. 404 Media reports that in order to satisfy the demand for more and more text on which to train large language models, corporations like Google and Anthropic have been hoovering up books published before LLMs existed to ensure that their models aren’t being polluted by AI-generated samples.
One of the most evil things imaginable to me https://t.co/FZvb8T3Df2
— Will Menaker (@willmenaker) July 27, 2026
This need has combined with some peculiar courtroom copyright rulings to give rise to something called “high volume destructive book scanning,” in which the spines are removed from books in bulk and then fed into scanning machines before being shredded.
They’re destroying things that make the world better in order to create things that make the world worse.
Richard Wolff & Michael Hudson: The Bill Comes Due: Trump & Netanyahu’s War Spirals Out of Control
Understanding reached on coordinates for shipping route through Hormuz, Iran says
Iran and Oman have reached an understanding on the geographic coordinates for a shipping route through the strait of Hormuz, and a joint announcement is being finalised provided certain third parties do not interfere, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Wednesday. Baghaei added that any such agreement between Iran and Oman would not, by itself, guarantee security in the strategic waterway.
The proposed deal between Iran and Oman would give Tehran control over ships entering the gulf through the strait of Hormuz, a senior Iranian source and two regional officials told Reuters on Wednesday, in one of the biggest concessions yet to Iran.
The deal appears to be a stepping stone toward a broader ceasefire agreement with the US that would reopen the strait of Hormuz for marine traffic and lift a US blockade on Iranian ports that has brought upheaval to global energy markets. It comes as Donald Trump has claimed there could be an announcement as soon as Wednesday on a separate US-Iran peace deal.
But the sources pushed back against assertions by Trump that a deal reopening the strait was imminent, saying important details still had to be agreed.
Pepe Escobar : Iran Has No Fear of Trump
Iran Says Deal With Oman Close, But It Doesn’t Mean the Strait of Hormuz Will Open To All Traffic
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Iran and Oman were close to reaching an agreement on a new shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, but that it wouldn’t guarantee that the waterway would be opened to all traffic.
oreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said, that the agreement “cannot in itself be interpreted as meaning the Strait has become safe for passing vessels” since the restrictions on the waterway have been imposed due to US military aggression, and the US blockade of Iranian ports remains in effect.
Unnamed Iranian officials told The New York Times that the agreement would involve “service fees” for the environmental impact of shipping, cargo-ship and tanker security, and staffing, and that the revenue would be divided between Iran and Oman. A US official speaking to the outlet denied that there would be any kind of toll.
The Iran-Oman Deal Is A Disaster For Trump w/ Mostafa Khoshcheshm
Yemen’s Ansar Allah Announces Attacks on Two Saudi Tankers as It Continues Enforcing Blockade
Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, announced Wednesday that its forces struck two more Saudi tankers as its forces continue enforcing a blockade on Saudi Arabia, which was recently imposed following Saudi strikes on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport.
Ansar Allah military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree first announced a missile strike on a tanker, the Wafa, in the Red Sea near the Saudi port of Yanbu. Later in the day, he claimed another missile attack on a second tanker, the Daisy, which he said was hit while transiting the Gulf of Aden.
So far, there’s been no confirmation of the strikes from Saudi Arabia. According to Yemen’s SABA news agency, Saree said that “the targeting comes within the framework of enforcing the maritime blockade against the Saudi enemy, according to the principle of ‘blockade for blockade.'”
AMB. Chas Freeman : Is Trump Afraid of Netanyahu?
Israeli MOLE At UN Children's Agency Exposed
I propose that any agreements that involve the state of Israel place the word ceasefire in quotation marks, to read "ceasefire" ...
Israel strikes southern Lebanon killing one and injuring 11
An Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon killed one person and injured 11, the Lebanese ministry of health said, in one of Israel’s deadliest bombings since the start of the June ceasefire. Israel carried out an airstrike in the town of Tebnine, south Lebanon hitting a cemetery, the Lebanese health ministry said. It said the town of al-Mansouri, also in south Lebanon, was bombed too, forcing families to flee.
The Israeli military issued a displacement order about 30 minutes before the strike, saying it was destroying Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the area in response to the group’s “violation of the ceasefire”. Two Israeli troops were killed and seven wounded in an explosion in south Lebanon on Wednesday, with the origin unknown. In recent weeks, Israeli troops have been wounded by booby-trapped vehicles and mines laid by Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
Wednesday was the first time Israel has issued a displacement order since the start of the June ceasefire. Such orders were a near daily occurrence during the most recent round of Hezbollah-Israel fighting, which started on 2 March and displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon.
Since the June ceasefire, Israel has occupied swathes of Lebanon as part of a so-called security zone. It has continued bombing parts of the area and killing people who have come near.
In Lebanon, Israel has continued mass demolitions in areas it occupies, including a blast last week that used 700 tons of explosives around Beaufort Castle, outside Nabatieh. Israel has said it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, say the indiscriminate nature of the explosives could comprise the war crime of wanton destruction.
Max Blumenthal explains Ceuta hybrid attack, Trump's latest Iran war fail
‘Bay of Pigs Reloaded’: New CIA Task Force to Further Destabilize Cuba Revealed
After months of President Donald Trump threatening a US takeover of Cuba and ramping up a decadeslong economic assault of the island, The New York Times revealed Wednesday that the Central Intelligence Agency created a related task force, “setting in motion plans for a more concerted campaign to pressure the Cuban government to make the economic, political, and leadership changes.”
“In 1960, the CIA established an earlier Cuba task force, whose members oversaw the failed, agency-backed invasion of Cuba the next year known as the Bay of Pigs,” the newspaper noted. “The people briefed on the new task force said its mandate is more limited: to create fissures among the Cuban political elite, in hope of pressuring the Cubans to replace perceived anti-American hard-liners with more practical leaders more amenable to Mr. Trump’s demands.”
Despite the anonymous sources’ claims about the differences from over a half-century ago, Eva Golinger, an American lawyer who wrote multiple books about former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, simply responded, “Bay of Pigs reloaded.”
Because the poor Cuban ppl haven’t suffered enough already. WTF is wrong w our country? We’re led by complete sociopaths.
— Ric Fouad (@ricfouad) August 6, 2026
The Times article—on which the CIA declined to comment—came a day after Politico reported that “the US has increased its intelligence assets in Cuba in recent months as it pushes the country’s communist regime to reform or fall from power, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans for the island.”
The agency also declined to comment on Politico’s piece, which pointed out that “US military operations are often preceded by increased American intelligence activity. CIA efforts to track the whereabouts of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro reportedly played a critical role this January in the successful US operation to capture him.”
Sharing Politico’s coverage on social media, Andrés Pertierra, a Cuba historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that it is “hard to say at this point to what degree this is theater aimed at rattling the cage in Havana or performing strength to Miami, on the one hand, or some kind of prelude to an actual escalation, on the other, given recent months of warnings of escalation that went nowhere.”
Enrique “Ric” Prado, a Cuban exile who served in various posts at the CIA, “is convinced that Washington is preparing a definitive blow against the island regime,” El País reported early Wednesday. He predicted, “Cuba is the next apple to fall from the tree.”
The State Dept. has been on a full-throttle media blitz the last two weeks painting Cuba as an espionage superpower and a threat to U.S. national security.
Today, Politico reports that the Trump administration has been mobilizing CIA assets to push for regime change in Cuba. https://t.co/JZ0qYRiTKr
— Blake Burdge (@bburdge) August 4, 2026
This week’s reporting followed the July release of a “McCarthyite” US Department of State document that was widely decried as an “attack on Americans’ constitutional rights to free speech and assembly,” as well as an attempt to justify an invasion of Cuba, where the Trump administration has fueled a humanitarian crisis.
“For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States,” the department’s report begins, “that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history.”
Promoting the publication on social media, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island—claimed his department was “exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country.”
During a Sunday interview with Fox News host Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, Rubio repeated claims from the report and called the island nation, about 90 miles south of Florida and home to roughly 10 million people, “an influence and espionage superpower.” His comments drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, the Cuban foreign minister, and other experts.
Medea Benjamin CONFRONTS U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar For Starving Cuban Children: "Go to Cuba and See!”
The US and Ecuadorian joint attacks that occurred in March at a rural dairy farm where officials insisted drug traffickers were operating “could replicate over the rest of 2026” across Latin America, said one expert after the Pentagon announced that its boat bombing campaign would be expanded to “defeat all threats” within countries across the region.
US Southern Command, which has overseen the boat bombings—up to now known as Operation Southern Spear—and the killings of at least 221 people, announced Tuesday that the operation will now be known as Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, with the US military “taking the fight to the enemy.”
The “fight” the military referred to is largely against drug cartels operating in Latin America, with which President Donald Trump has claimed the US is in an “armed conflict.”
But the US Congress has not authorized the attacks the US military has carried out as it’s claimed to be fighting “narco-terrorists,” including at least 66 boat bombings in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean—an operation that has cost $820 million so far.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have introduced war powers resolutions aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing the boat bombings, but the efforts have failed, even as families have filed legal complaints alleging that their loved ones were wrongfully killed in the attacks.
The Drug Enforcement Agency’s own data recently showed that the bombing of boats suspected of carrying drugs has done little-to-nothing to stop illegal substances from entering the US, while international law experts have emphasized that even if the US has been accurately targeting drug traffickers, the killings could constitute war crimes or mass murder.
Now, releasing a promotional video that resembled an action movie trailer, US Southern Command on Tuesday pledged to “synchronize US military operations with allies and partners to counter threats, strengthen regional security, and respond rapidly to crises across the Western Hemisphere.”
“Along with our America’s Counter Cartel Coalition partners, we will locate, close with, and destroy the enemies that threaten our hemisphere,” said Commander Francis Donovan of US Southern Command.
Donovan noted that 18 countries have backed the United States’ stated mission of halting drug trafficking out of Latin America.
As Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, pointed out, leaders in Colombia and Peru have both expressed interest in hosting joint military operations with the US on their own soil.
President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella of Colombia has said he plans to join Trump’s Shield of the Americas alliance, a group right-wing government across the hemisphere that have pledged to join in the fight against drug cartels—but which the civil society group Justice for Colombia warned may ultimately “impose US strategic interests on the region and could target left-wing activists and other opponents.”
“Colombian communities have long opposed purely military solutions to the existence of armed groups,” said the group last month. “Many welcomed peace talks under the [President Gustavo] Petro government, while highlighting that more needed to be done to protect social activists and deal with root causes of conflict. Many now fear that they will be targeted in a renewed emphasis on conflict.”
Newly inaugurated Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori has also signaled a willingness to join the alliance after having campaigned on fighting crime rates in the South American country.
The Trump administration has also pushed Guatemalan and Honduran leaders to approve joint strikes against suspected drug gangs inside their borders.
With Joint Task Force dWestern Hemisphere, said New York Times reporter Maria Abi-Habib, the Pentagon is “standing up a task force that will see Latin American countries accept joint US strikes inside their borders. It moves the boat strikes from international waters to sovereign inland territories across the region.”
US Southern Command spoke approvingly of a raid Guatemala conducted on an alleged drug lab earlier this year, saying in a social media post that the operation showed a “commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists in their country.”
Two people familiar with the push in Guatemala told the Times that the administration was advocating for joint strikes in the country to ultimately pressure Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum has rejected similar requests.
Ecuador’s partnership with Trump has brought allegations of torture, arbitrary detention, and unexplained drone strikes on at least three Ecuadorian fishing boats. In June, the prosecutor investigating the boat attacks was killed in an apparent assassination.
“Ecuador has been the proving ground” for Trump’s so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” said Drop Site News reporter Camila Lourdes Galarza, adding that the “media silence” regarding the US military’s expansion in the region “has severely compromised all analysis.”
‘What they’re doing qualifies as torture’: new details of ICE force-feeding revealed
One hunger striker in an immigration detention center was force-fed for almost six months. One detained immigrant with mental health problems was about to be force-fed, until his attorney intervened and stopped the process. And another hunger striker was almost force-fed, but gave in and broke her hunger strike as coercive procedures loomed.
These are among 10 separate cases the Guardian found, since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has attempted to subject detained hunger strikers to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding. Of those, ICE subjected at least three – but probably five – who were protesting against the conditions of their confinement, to the procedures. Human rights organizations have widely condemned force-feeding as torture.
Now, as ICE detains more immigrants nationwide, immigrant rights organizations and medical experts worry more people will be subjected to involuntary medical procedures. Among the 10 cases, the Guardian can exclusively reveal, are an Afghan man who was force-fed for months in Texas, a Ukrainian man with mental health problems in detention whose looming force-feeding in Florida was stopped by his attorney, and a Saudi Arabian woman who ended up in hospital while on hunger strike in Louisiana and eventually broke her strike in Texas before she was subjected to the procedure.
The process to engage in force-feeding is quick and secretive. After a detainee has spent a certain amount of time on a hunger strike, which varies, ICE will request emergency court orders from federal judges allowing them to quickly force-feed them. In six of the cases reviewed by the Guardian, detained immigrants did not have any legal representation during the court proceedings. Most records are sealed, giving the public only a glimpse at the process. ICE detention center guards will then restrain the hunger striker, while medical staff insert a tube through the nose and down the throat and pump nutritional liquid into their bodies, according to court documents and the Guardian’s reporting – a painful, traumatizing and potentially harmful procedure.
[See article at link for details of known cases. -js]
Trump immigration crackdown ensnares families of US troops
The Trump administration has detained dozens of parents and spouses of active-duty US troops as it rolls back immigration protections for military families in the pursuit of its mass deportation agenda. More than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty service members have been detained since Donald Trump returned to office, and at least six have been deported, an Associated Press investigation found. It is the first accounting of such detentions, which the government does not track. At least eight immediate family members of US service members remain in federal immigration custody.
Parents and spouses of people in the military have generally been shielded from deportation under bipartisan consensus for decades. But the AP found they are now routinely being detained for months as they try to adjust their legal status through the policies available to service members’ close relatives and even as parts of the military continue to recruit by advertising immigration benefits for enlistees’ families.
Experts warn that the reversal could undermine military preparedness even as the US is at war in Iran. It has left military members without emotional support and caretakers for their children, delayed deployments and forced some to take leave. A handful of detentions of service members’ spouses have prompted public backlash and led to intervention by the homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to secure their release.
The Department of Homeland Security has said it does not compile data on these cases. The AP obtained information by analyzing thousands of federal court records compiled by Habeas Dockets, a project run by the non-profit Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative, by reviewing existing media coverage and by verifying information with family members and attorneys. The actual number is probably much higher than the 51 cases AP found.
Trump administration targets children amid push to ‘deport at all costs’
The Trump administration is deliberately targeting children who came to the US unaccompanied by a parent or guardian as it pushes to quickly return them to the countries they fled – amid “drastic policy changes” in immigration courts, according to allegations in a federal lawsuit shared with the Guardian. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are trying to prevent imminent deportation to the places from where they escaped danger or harm.
The complaint, filed before the US district court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania on behalf of Jewish Family and Community Services of Pittsburgh (JFCS) and six of its immigrant clients, alleges children are being repatriated “as a means to increase deportation numbers of children as ‘priorities’ for US immigration enforcement” despite many of them qualifying to remain in the country legally.
Meanwhile, immigration judges have allegedly received instructions to not give children a meaningful amount of time for their immigration applications to be processed by other federal agencies, amid accelerated immigration court hearings, the plaintiffs detail in the lawsuit. “This case is about the most vulnerable in our immigration system: abused, abandoned, neglected, and trafficked children,” the lawsuit reads. “One would assume it would be a priority of our immigration system to protect, at least, these children. However, protecting vulnerable and trafficked children conflicts with an agenda of ‘deport at all costs’.”
Unaccompanied immigrant children often come to the US as victims of human trafficking or domestic violence, a reality Congress addressed by providing them with legal pathways to lawful permanent residency. One of those pathways, the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) classification, safeguards young people who have been mistreated by one or both parents. Another pathway, T non-immigrant status, supports trafficking survivors at any age. Such protections – and for SIJ, its affiliated green card – can take years to win, especially in the face of long backlogs and annual quotas that are outside the applicants’ control. Historically, immigration judges have used tools to give children reprieves from deportation while pursuing SIJ or T status with USCIS.
But that practice has been eroding for months now under the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, and starting in June, JFCS noticed a pattern where clients – some of whom had already been awarded SIJ and were awaiting their green card – were being ordered removed instead of receiving more time for their cases. By July, the organization said, the same was happening to children who had survived trafficking.
On Tuesday, El-Sayed’s vision cleared its first hurdle: he won the primary over moderate congresswoman Haley Stevens, who was backed by the party’s establishment, and tens of millions of dollars in outside spending. His rise, and victory, could serve as a revision to how the political establishment views swing-state politics – not requiring candidates to run from the center, but articulating how you will materially improve people’s lives as the working and middle classes struggle with affordability and rising healthcare costs.
The race solidified a growing anti-establishment sentiment on the party’s left, where activists and supporters have sought a proactive vision that doesn’t rely on the pre-Trump status quo, apparent in a string of wins for insurgent candidates. There’s a sense that systems were already broken before Trump’s rise, and a return to those norms won’t serve everyday Americans. They’re looking for politicians who can call out their own party’s orthodoxies, and challenge the big money that haunts US politics. Michigan voters found it in El-Sayed, who centered his campaign around universal healthcare, and wasn’t shy about calling the war in Gaza a genocide.
In Washington, El-Sayed’s effort to win the US Senate race in Michigan is critical for Democrats’ ambitious hopes of retaking control of the upper chamber, and will be closely watched by all factions of the left as a bellwether for the party’s future. Michigan voted for Trump, then Biden, and then Trump, in presidential elections. It is firmly a swing state. If El-Sayed, an unabashed progressive who frequently notes he has a “funny name”, can win a statewide general election, it could remake the contours of the 2028 presidential contest. If he fails, the establishment and pundit class will call him, and his ideas, too extreme – a cautionary tale for play-it-safe politics.
Chris Rabb, a progressive who won a contested primary for a US congressional seat in Pennsylvania, recently noted the high bar people from his branch of the party face as they seek to challenge moderates. “Nobody asks ‘centrist’ Dems to explain their losses,” Rabb wrote on X. “They lose purple districts every cycle & Beltway pundits call it ‘a tough map’. Progressives lose one major race & Dem operatives call us electoral pariahs. It’s a specious double standard.”
Meanwhile, the attack lines from the right have already been drawn. Rogers posted an AI-generated video of El-Sayed, depicting him as Odysseus among other prominent Democrats inside a Trojan horse, and saying “don’t let communism into Michigan”. A Republican has not won a US Senate seat in Michigan since 1994. The Republican National Committee called El-Sayed “Michigan’s Mamdani” and said the race “pits common sense against crazy”. El-Sayed himself remains confident. In November, he is counting on turning out people who normally turn off from politics because they’re cynical, or believe the system cannot change in a way that would make their lives better.
El-Sayed: "Mike, I'm gonna say it right now, I know you're gonna say no because you're a coward: Five debates, alright? If you're willing to stand with me and have a conversation, you and I both know that you will wither in front of your own crimes. But I'm gonna make sure… pic.twitter.com/afRW4bm9XA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2026
rest of text:
Michiganders know about them. By the time we're done, you are not gonna have safe quarter from people holding you accountable to what you've done for them here in Michigan. We will send you back to Florida where you belong."
After Michigan upset, Aipac looks to back Republican candidate against Abdul El-Sayed
After spending more than $30m on a candidate who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary on Wednesday, the leading pro-Israel lobbying group in the US has now indicated it will pivot to the Republican in that race come November.
The move highlights how the one-issue behemoth does not see itself as ideologically bound to one party or the other.
"Our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda," the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) said in a statement. "Our community is proud to support pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans who stand for our values."
The race between pro-Israel Congresswoman Haley Stevens and former Detroit public health official Abdul El-Sayed quickly became the most expensive Democratic primary race of all time.
Stevens was backed by a further $30m from outside groups who bankrolled round-the-clock attack ads on Sayed.
DSA WINS BIG Election Night: But Does the Left's "Tea Party" Have Teeth? (w/ Oliver Larkin)
Republican Strategy: Abdul El Sayed Is TERRORIST
Republican who withdrew last month beats Trump-backed rival in Michigan
Thomas Smith withdrew from the Republican primary contest for Michigan’s eighth district last month. On Tuesday, he won the nomination. Unofficial results show Smith with more than 50% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, defeating the man he endorsed, anti-abortion activist Al Lemmo, and the man Donald Trump endorsed, former federal law enforcement officer Amir Hassan.
In a statement on Wednesday, Smith said he was “humbled and honored that Republicans have chosen me to take the fight to Kristen McDonald Rivet”, the Democratic incumbent in the battleground House district. “I look forward to working with Speaker [Mike] Johnson and the entire Republican team to expand our House majority and advance President Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda to lower costs for working families and make America affordable again,” he added.
In June, Trump endorsed Hassan, an African American navy veteran who worked for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Transportation. The president also appeared with Hassan at a campaign event in Michigan. Hassan said during his campaign that he had recently converted to Christianity from Islam. Nonetheless, social media commentary suggests Republican voters did not view Hassan’s conversion as authentic and were apprehensive about nominating a Muslim candidate.
Smith, who did little campaigning, posted on social media in July to endorse Lemmo, describing Hassan as a crypto-Republican. In Michigan, a US House candidate must withdraw their candidacy before 24 April for election officials to have enough time to remove their name from ballots. The Federal Election Commission has no electronic campaign finance filings from Smith. It does have a handwritten letter dated 12 July declaring $1,850 in fundraising.
The Flint native and retired General Motors engineer made a brief appearance at a Republican unity event hosted in Macomb county by Mike Rogers, the party’s newly minted Senate candidate. Smith said he intended to “unseat communist comrade Rivet”. Rivet has signaled her relative moderation as one of 10 House Democrats to join Promise to America, a congressional initiative led by US representatives Tom Suozzi of New York and Adam Gray of California explicitly embracing capitalism and rejecting socialism.
El Niño could push 50m people into acute hunger before end of next year
About 50 million people are likely to be pushed into acute hunger before the end of next year by the rapidly developing El Niño weather system, according to forecasting. This is in addition to the hundreds of millions of people already facing dangerous levels of hunger, owing to years of drought in parts of Africa and pressure on food prices from the war in Iran.
Even if the forecast El Niño is less strong than some models predict, it will tip many countries over the edge, adding more than a fifth to the 225 million people in 45 countries currently in acute food insecurity, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday. Central and South America, the Caribbean and southern Africa are likely to be worst affected, according to the analysis. In south and south-east Asia there is likely to be less rainfall than usual, which would cause serious problems for agriculture and farmers.
This year’s El Niño – a weather system that develops every few years in the Pacific Ocean and brings changes to rainfall patterns around the world – is shaping up to be the strongest in at least 70 years. Some are calling it a “super El Niño”, though this term is not officially recognised. What is certain is that its impacts and strength are being strongly affected by the climate crisis. Earlier this year, experts said a strong El Niño could work in tandem with global heating to deliver the hottest year on record either this year or, more likely, in 2027.
Private sector forecasters have already warned of the impact of the gathering El Niño on global food prices, but the report published by the WFP is the first to look closely at global hunger. The WFP said it was hoping to reduce the effects of the extreme weather through early warning systems and “anticipatory” relief efforts, for which at least $80m (£60m) is budgeted. The consequences will still be far-reaching, as farmers may take more than one season to exhaust their food supplies. In southern Africa, for instance, the main growing season stretches from October this year to March 2027, but it will be about nine months later, during the lean season following the harvest, that the worst impacts will bite.
The herbicide haunting a New York farm town
Nearly a decade ago, Gordon Chaplin began experiencing symptoms he couldn’t explain. His once-pristine handwriting became unreadable, his face took on a permanent look of worry, and he acted out his dreams while he slept. After years of inconclusive test results from various doctors, he received a diagnosis: he had Parkinson’s disease, an incurable degenerative brain disease that affects motor functions and causes cognitive impairment. He had no family history or genetic predisposition to the disease. Chaplin and his wife, Sarah Teale, believe the cause lay hidden under the idyllic hills of their 200-acre cattle and corn farm. For decades, a tenant farmer sprayed the land with paraquat, a herbicide that’s used to kill broadleaf weeds and grasses – and that research has linked to Parkinson’s.
The couple lives in Hebron, a rural farming town of about 1,800 residents in Washington county. After Chaplin’s diagnosis, Teale discovered that 14 people near their home had the disease, too. She calls the seven-mile stretch of highway between east and west Hebron “Parkinson’s Valley”. In nearby towns, she found dozens more. And she believes there’s a common culprit. Paraquat is banned in dozens of countries and is coming under heavier scrutiny in the US. This year, 14 states introduced bills to restrict or ban its use. Vermont was the only state to pass a ban. New York lawmakers sought to be the second, but the bill died on the floor amid a prolonged budget standoff that crowded out other legislation.
Paraquat was first registered for use in the 1960s. Since then, its popularity has ballooned. Between 2014 and 2018, paraquat use across the country doubled to at least 11m pounds a year, according to the latest available data from the US Geological Survey. It’s most commonly sprayed on crops including corn, soybeans, cotton and grapes. In some years in the early 2000s, New York’s paraquat use ranked in the top 10 nationally. According to 2018 USGS data, the latest available, growers in New York sprayed a total of nearly 149,000lb of paraquat, ranking 31st in the country.
The scientific debate over paraquat’s safety has been building for decades. Studies dating back to the late 1990s have linked paraquat exposure to Parkinson’s disease. A 2002 study found that mice injected with paraquat lost dopamine neurons, a hallmark of Parkinson’s. A 2011 study found that farmers who sprayed paraquat were 2.5 times as likely to develop Parkinson’s as those who did not. A 2024 study found that people living or working near areas sprayed with paraquat had double the risk of developing Parkinson’s.
Ray Dorsey, a neurologist at the Atria Research and Global Health Institute, said it’s a common misconception that people with Parkinson’s developed it primarily because of ageing or genetics. About 85% of Americans with Parkinson’s carry no known genetic risk factor for the disease, he said. “The principal causes of Parkinson’s disease are not inside of us, not in our DNA, but outside of us, in our environment,” said Dorsey, who published a book on the disease last year that identified Hebron as a hotspot. “The continued use of paraquat is likely sowing the future seeds of Parkinson’s disease.” The herbicide has been banned in over 70 countries, including China, Brazil and the entire European Union. But not the United States.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Chris Hedges: Don Corleone Trump
Israeli army launches large-scale assault in East Jerusalem refugee camp
Are US and Israel benefitting from 'migration blackmail' in Spain?
Blinding Morality In International Relations
Understand China’s Plan To Become A Full Socialist State
"Real Talk" from Kamala Harris on the Voting Rights Act Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
New Mexico sues justice department for ‘stonewalling’ Epstein investigation
A Little Night Music
Blind Willie McTell / Curley Weaver - You Was Born To Die
Blind Willie McTell - Atlanta Strut
Blind Willie McTell - Three Women Blues
Blind Willie McTell - Georgia Rag
Blind Willie McTell - Broke Down Engine Blues
Blind Willie Mctell - Travelin' Blues
Blind Willie McTell - Searching The Desert For The Blues
Blind Willie McTell - I Got To Cross the River Jordan
Blind Willie McTell - Dying Crapshooters Blues
Comments
Hope Iran and Oman can agree to terms
.
which are mutually beneficial for global oil flow which may
forestall a major crisis. The fact that the real estate clowns
are now verboten from negotiations is a good sign. Vance has
tabled his own team. Can't be much worse AFAIK.
Thanks for the EB's joe.
Zionism is a social disease
FWIW I wonder if Trump will agree to this?
evening qms...
from what i've been reading, iran and oman are well on their way to an agreement. the details that i've heard so far sound like they will be less than palatable for trump and perhaps also to other gulf states who cooperated with the u.s. during the series of conflicts and are left on the hook for reparations under the agreement.
my guess is that the war will be back in earnest soon.
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. New York is but a single
instance, the US has and has long had a paraquat problem. The stuff has been banned by over 70 countries, Syngenta is pulling it from sale is Australia because new regs there make its continued sale there umprofitable. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/25/herbicide-parkinsons...
Currently it is primarily used by the developing countries such as Malawi, India, Camaroon and the US.
I'm not sure that there is evidence to support the following at all
The people elected El Sayed, not the Democratic party, the Democratic party fought him tooth and nail and will continue to do do. I've got a headline here from The South China Morning Post:
This seems to represent the opinion of a whole lot of the world. Note, a Progressive is a shock to the Democrats. Right off the top that makes it clear that there is a difference if not a conflict between progressives and Democrats. This-> {Progressives} does not intersect this {Democrats}. Now, AOC might be a "progresive"™, but she is still first and foremost a Democrat and not remotely progressive. The Democratic party's extreme left wing is represented by none other than Kamala Harris whose "Real Talk" made your "also of interest" segment.
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 --
Just the fact that Michiganders rejected the AIPAC
.
candidate tends to shine a spotlight on a foreign influence
effecting local elections. This is important. I think Massie was
was the opening salvo. People are beginning to understand what
is at stake here. May be a small step, but a step in the right direction.
Buying votes does not have the same power on the confused masses
because of an arising of awareness.
Zionism is a social disease
evening el...
if i'm remembering correctly, in the late 70's and early 80's uncle sam was spraying that paraquat crap willy-nilly all over the western hemisphere anywhere it thought there might be a drug crop. fsm only knows how many people are suffering ill effects from that.
i agree that change for the democrats is unlikely. on the other hand, comedy is a possibility.
I have the same memory regarding paraquat. n/t
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 --
I have no doubt that the investigative journalists in the MSM
will look into this. /S
evening humphrey...
that information about the gop crossover voters in michigan may turn out to be interesting. perhaps el-sayed's struggle in the general election might not be as steep as some chattering class gum flappers are making it out to be.
Oh my! You may have to watch it twice to catch all the details.
heh...
very catchy! i hope somebody shows it to trump.
If that doesn’t
give him pause, perhaps you can buy me a taco, one fine day…
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
posted without comment
"The US empire’s downfall comes at a time of late stage capitalism when more than 99 percent of the public are effectively disenfranchised while factions of reactionary billionaires vie for control." -- Conor Gallagher
That works
so much better if you have actually dropped professional pyrotechnics down a mortar on the 4th. Not a lot of folks know what looks like, with the twisted top where the fuse goes in….
Having said that, that image landed for me. Gotta post about that, next summer- Gawd willing and the creek don’t rise…
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
evening cass...
heh, that jamaica has a blunt force.