It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, December 16, 2024
2023, 2024 climate change records defy scientific explanation
Global surface air temperature departures from average compared to 1850-1900, showing pronounced warming in 2023 and 2024. Image: Copernicus Climate Change Service
The year is closing out with more global temperature records that, in aggregate, largely defy what many climate scientists expected for 2024.
Why it matters: Among the potential factors driving this year's — as well as 2023's — record warmth is the unsettling possibility that global warming is accelerating and the planet's climate behaving differently than expected.
If so, the climate scenarios that form the basis for countries' decarbonization goals could be faulty, with higher warming levels and greater societal consequences likely to arrive sooner than expected.
Driving the news: New data from NOAA, NASA and the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that the planet just had its second-warmest November on record.
These centers use different methods to track global average surface temperatures. They agree that 2024 is on track to be the planet's hottest year in well over a century of instrument record-keeping — and likely at least 125,000 years when including tree rings and ice core data.
Copernicus, in fact, is out front in saying that 2024 may end up close to 1.6°C (2.88°F) above the pre-industrial average, exceeding the Paris Agreement's most ambitious target for a single year.
The 1850-1900 average is used as a baseline to approximate the period before the addition of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
By the numbers: According to the new Copernicus data, November was the 16th out of the past 17 months during which global average surface temperatures exceeded the 1.5°C target relative to pre-industrial temperatures.
Separately, NOAA found that so far this year, six continents have had their warmest temperatures on record for the year so far, while Asia has ranked second-warmest.
During November, a record 10.6% of the world's surface had a record high monthly average temperature, beating the previous milestone set in 2023, NOAA found.
In addition, the ratio of warm temperature records to cold temperature records set globally during the month was about 50-to-1. That was roughly equal to November 2023 and an increasingly common occurrence in recent years, but largely unheard of prior to about 2010.
The intrigue: At the American Geophysical Union conference in Washington last week, top climate researchers discussed how to account for the steep, as yet incompletely explained warming spike seen during 2023 and 2024.
Between the lines: At the end of a Dec. 10 session on the causes of the 2023 and 2024 warming spike, NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt asked for a show of hands from those attending the year's largest climate science conference.
Only a smattering went up when Schmidt asked them to agree with the statement: "We have understood the anomalies in '23 and '24 with all of the information that has been presented here and that exists elsewhere."
Instead, the overwhelming majority backed the position that a sufficient explanation hasn't been offered and more research is needed.
"There is something to explain and there is still work to do," Schmidt said.
The bottom line: While there's virtually zero uncertainty that 2024 will be the hottest on record, plenty of unnerving debate exists regarding how and why this happened — and what it means for the near future.
Amazon Teamsters in NYC have voted to authorize a strike
Workers are asking Amazon to recognize their union and bargain for better working conditions and pay.
THE VERGE Unionized Amazon warehouse workers could strike during one of the company’s busiest seasons. Bloomberg via Getty Images
Workers at a Staten Island, New York Amazon warehouse voted on Friday to authorize a strike if the company doesn’t agree to set dates for contract negotiations. The workers are asking Amazon to recognize the union and bargain for safer working conditions and better wages, threatening the possibility of a strike during one of Amazon’s busiest times of the year.
Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien says in a press release that Amazon must agree to bargaining dates by December 15th, which passed yesterday. If Amazon hasn’t agreed, it risks facing a strike by the more than 5,500 workers at its Staten Island (JFK8) fulfillment center. Delivery drivers at a Queens (DBK4) last-mile delivery station also voted to authorize a strike.
“This is my third holiday I’m giving to Amazon,” a worker named James said in a video published Friday by labor nonprofit More Perfect Union. “I haven’t been around for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s constant speed-up for the holidays. It’s like twice as dangerous, I would say.”
A newly published US Senate Committee report says that, based on an investigation of Amazon’s records, the company’s warehouse injury rates were “more than 1.8 times that of other companies in each of the past seven years,” according to The New York Times. Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee, said “Amazon’s executives repeatedly chose to put profits ahead of the health and safety of its workers by ignoring recommendations that would substantially reduce injuries.”
In a statement emailed to The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards accused the Teamsters union of “intentionally” misleading claims that it represents thousands of Amazon employees and drivers.
They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative. The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.
Hards didn’t immediately respond when we asked which charges she was referring to. Conversely, in 2022, the National Labor Relations Board alleged that Amazon itself “repeatedly broke the law by threatening, surveilling, and interrogating” Staten Island workers who were attempting to unionize.
Workers at the Staten Island warehouse voted to unionize in 2022 and joined Teamsters, one of the largest US labor unions, in June, followed by drivers working out of the Queens facility in September. Amazon hasn’t recognized those unions. As of this writing, the Teamsters hasn’t announced an active strike on its X account, its Facebook page, or its site.
By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.
ECOCIDE
Radioactive spill reported in Northeast Ohio nuclear power plant
|Published: Dec. 16, 2024, Ohio's Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Lake County.Google Earth
PERRY, Ohio -- At least 78 gallons of water containing radioactive chemicals were spilled at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Lake County in 2024, according to a voluntary report from its parent corporation, Texas-based Vistra Corp.
In its report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Vistra says that “manipulation of a lid upon a container holding radiological waste” in an outdoor area spilled “contaminated water from the container” onto the ground of the Lake County facility.
When plant personnel conducted subsequent research into the event, they found that a total of “78.5 gallons of contaminated water had spilled to the ground” since January 2024, according to the report. Vistra described that figure as a “conservative” estimate.
Two chemicals contaminated the water, according to the report. The first was cobalt-60, which can cause cancer if someone is exposed to it over a long period, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The second was the less-toxic manganese-54.
Energy Harbor, a former FirstEnergy subsidiary that became its own company in 2019, owns and operates the plant.
Vistra writes in the report that the spill has not caused the public to receive a dose above the allowable limits of the chemicals.
“There was no impact on the health and safety of the public or plant personnel,” the report said.
At the time, Vistra said it took precautionary actions by removing the storage container from the area and covering a storm drain to prevent further migration into the stormwater system. A third-party company has also instituted a sampling plan to monitor an adjacent stream that was impacted by the spill, the report said.
A cleveland.com reporter has reached out to the Perry Nuclear Power Plan for comment on this story.
The spill happened on Oct. 14, according to the report. It was reported to authorities on Oct. 29, along with another incident in which a generator was determined to be inoperable during a “monthly surveillance run,” according to a second report filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In May, the Perry Nuclear Power Plant closed so inspectors could find and repair a coolant leak.
Perry Nuclear Power Plant was expected to close in 2021 because it was no longer profitable compared to natural gas plants. However, this was avoided when Ohio House Bill 6 was signed into law in July 2019. HB-6 added a fee to residents' utility bills that funded subsidies of $150 million per year to keep Perry and the Davis–Besse nuclear plant operational.
Vistra purchased Energy Harbor for more than $3.4 billion in 2023. Vistra also operates seven natural gas, oil and coal power plants throughout the state.
Zionist apologists commonly present support for Israel as a necessary extension of opposition to radical Islam and the threat of Jihadi terrorism. “Support us fighting them here, so you don’t have to fight them there” is a common plea to the West from Zionist spokespeople within Israel. Yet when it comes to the Syrian Civil War, the conflict which sparked the major refugee crisis responsible for flooding Europe with millions of Muslims, Israel has been firmly on the side of Jihad, even and most particularly Al-Qaeda.
Israeli support for Jihadis in Syria first became known in the West when reports circulated of Israel providing medical care to anti-Assad fighters on its contested border with Syria.
Israel portrayed this as a principled humanitarian response, but in 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that only a third of those treated by Israel were women and children. Electronic Intifada:
The rest have been fighters who Israeli officials admit are not screened and likely belong to al-Nusra.
Once it became undeniable, Israel confessed it was treating fighters, but claimed that they were moderates.
But after al-Nusra captured and ejected UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights last August, there was no longer any doubt that al-Nusra was the dominant force among opposition fighters in the area.
Efraim Halevy, a former head of Mossad, defended the aid on humanitarian grounds, but confirmed there was a “tactical consideration”. In a 2016 interview, Halevy dismissed the idea that Israel would suffer any blowback from supporting Al-Nusra, the Syrian offshoot of Al-Qaeda. While rejecting the idea Israel might also offer medical assistance to Hezbollah fighters on similar humanitarian grounds, he explained that the difference between Hezbollah and Al Nusra Front was that Israel was “not specifically targeted by Al-Qaeda”.
In 2019, an outgoing Israeli army commander Gadi Eisenkot confirmed suspicions that as well as medical aid, Israel had been providing lethal material support for Syrian Jihadists. Eisenkot said that Israel had been years providing light arms weapons to rebel groups along the Syrian/Israeli border. Eisenkot also acknowledged that “we carried out thousands of attacks [in recent years] without taking responsibility and without asking for credit.”
Israeli support for these groups actually went well beyond the “light arms” Eisenkot acknowledged. In September 2018, Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel had funded “at least 12 rebel groups in southern Syria”, based on reports from “more than two dozen commanders and rank-and-file members of these groups.” The transfers included:
Assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers and transport vehicles. Israeli security agencies delivered the weapons through three gates connecting the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to Syria—the same crossings Israel used to deliver humanitarian aid to residents of southern Syria suffering from years of civil war.
Israel also provided salaries to rebel fighters, paying each one about $75 a month, and supplied additional money the groups used to buy arms on the Syrian black market, according to the rebels and local journalists.
Israel also carried out numerous airstrikes in the region which exclusively benefited groups like Al-Nusra front. In one incident, Israel responded to some rebel group firing rockets into the occupied Golan Heights by launching airstrikes on Syrian army artillery positions.
In a year and a half period from 2017 to 2018, Israel carried out over 200 airstrikes in Syria, mostly directed at Iranian forces assisting the Syrian army. In a 2015 interview, Bashar al-Assad responded to the question of Israel’s agenda in Syria:
They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It’s very clear. Because whenever we make advances in some place, they make an attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear. That’s why some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al-Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force.”
As far back as 2015, senior Israeli military figures had justified Israeli support for Al-Nusra front in Western media. Michael Herzog, a former chief of staff for Israel’s defense minister, told The Wall Street Journal
Nusra is a unique version of al-Qaida. They manage to cooperate with non-Islamist and non-jihadi organizations in one coalition … They are totally focused on the war in Syria and aren’t focused on us. But when Hizballah and Iran and others are pushing south, they are very much focused on us.
The same article quotes Amos Yaldin, a retired Israeli general, who reasoned that:
There is no doubt that Hizballah and Iran are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy…Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90 percent of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy — maybe it isn’t Israel.
Also in 2015, the Pentagon acknowledged that the “moderate rebels” who were being armed and trained by the United States and its allies were passing their equipment to Nusra Front.
Although the US publicly claimed it did not intentionally support Islamists like Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, leaked internal documents have repeatedly shown that US officials were aware that these groups dominated the Syrian opposition and were often the chief beneficiaries of their aid. For example, a declassified 2012 memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) revealed that, from the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, the US believed that “The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”. AQI being a reference to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which later evolved into ISIS.
The DIA also foecasted “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime”.
This is exactly what happened when the region was overrun by ISIS. The DIA even pointed to Mosul, the future capital of the Islamic State and base of its expansion, as a prime potential location for this “Salafist principality”.
Wikileaks revealed that current US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Hillary Clinton in 2012 that “AQ (Al-Qaeda) is on our side.”
When ISIS did emerge, many voices within Israel saw it as a positive. A 2016 paper by an Israeli strategic think-tank that contracts for NATO and the Israeli government argued against destroying the Islamic state, since “The continuing existence of IS serves a strategic purpose”, and could be “a useful tool in undermining” Israel’s enemies of Hezbollah, Iran, Syria and Russia.
Arguing against the perspective that a defeat of ISIS would help stabilise the Middle-East, the paper noted that:
Stability is not a value in and of itself. It is desirable only if it serves our interests. The defeat of IS would encourage Iranian hegemony in the region, buttress Russia’s role, and prolong Assad’s tyranny.
Other senior Israeli figures also saw an opportunity in the growth of ISIS. Naftali Bennett, now a former Prime Minister of Israel, told the annual Herzliya conference — a “closed-door annual gathering of the country’s very top political, security, intelligence, and business elite” — that the emergence of ISIS would offer Israel an opportunity to legitimise its annexation of the Golan Heights. Calling for a quintupling of the Jewish occupation population to 100,000 in a 5 year period, Bennett argued the chaos in Syria now made Israel’s claim more appealing than ever to the international community:
Who do they want us to give the Golan to? To Assad? Today, it’s clear that if we listened to the world we would give up the Golan and ISIS would be swimming in the Sea of Galilee. Enough with the hypocrisy.
By supporting Jihadis in Syria, Israel fulfilled multiple strategic goals: weakening Iranian and Russian influence in the region, dragging its arch-enemy Hezbollah into a costly fight, and solidifying its hold on the occupied Golan Heights from the claims of the Syrian regime.
The Jihadis who love Jews
In late November 2024, the world was shocked with the news that rebel forces in Syria had seized Syria’s second city of Aleppo. This came just days after the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Assad ally Hezbollah, significantly weakened by a year of conflict with Israel since Israel began it’s war on Gaza.
This latest advance was led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which has maintained control of the north-western province of Idlib. HTS grew out of a merger of multiple radical Islamist groups in Syria, most notably the Al-Nusra Front. Its leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is previously a member of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Al-Nusra, as well as other Jihadi groups, and fought in both the Iraqi insurgency and Syrian Civil War, leading to the US State Department declaring him a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” and placing a $10 million bounty on information leading to his capture.
Now though, “Jolani” is providing thoughtful interviews to CNN, where he promises Syria under HTS rule will be a pluralist country, ready to join the civilised world. As well as working on working on their PR with the liberal-democratic West, this new wave of Jihadis have also been keen to improve their relations with Israel.
Notably, the one time ISIS actually attacked Israeli forces — in a brief exchange of fire in the Golan Heights — it promptly issued an apology.
Israel’s state media outlet Kan interviewed some of the Jihadis leading today’s advance, who were surprisingly grateful to the Zionist state. Those interviewed expressed gratitude for Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and weapons transfers within Syria “which have allowed us to return and free the lands and the country”.
“They accuse us of cooperating with you because we were quite happy when you attacked Hezbollah, really happy, and we’re glad that you won,” the source said.
Both said the rebels had no issue with Israel. “We love Israel and we were never its enemies,” the man from the Idlib area said. “[Israel] isn’t hostile to those who are not hostile toward it. We don’t hate you, we love you very much.”
Given that Israel is carrying out a genocide on their Muslim brothers and sisters in Gaza, you might think militant Muslims in Syria wouldn’t be the biggest fan of the Jewish state. Yet Israeli media has ran multiple pieces on the pro-Israel sympathies of the chief threats to Assad’s rule. A commander for the US-backed Free Syrian Army assured Israel’s Channel 12 News that:
We are open to friendship with everyone in the region – including Israel. We don’t have enemies other than the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Iran. What Israel did against Hezbollah in Lebanon helped us a great deal. Now we are taking care of the rest.
With Assad’s forces seemingly being overrun, the future of Syria is uncertain. What seems assured is a strengthening of Israel’s position. Assad was a key ally of Iran, whose rule in Syria allowed them access to the “resistance highway” of Tehran-Beirut, a Shia crescent extending across the Middle East right up to Israel’s door. If it comes to pass, Assad’s fall will follow a year of war on Hezbollah and Hamas that has significantly debilitated each. Who or what will replace Assad, and whether Syria as an entity will even survive the transition or be balkanised or collapse into years of sectarian conflict remains to be seen. But Israeli leaders are confident that what follows will not offer the same resistance to its hegemony that an Iran-aligned Syria did.
When Israeli support for Jihadist groups was first reported, it sounded too crazy to be true, the kind of thing one might hear from an Infowars host sensationalising the complicated dynamics of the region. We now know it was not just real, but far greater extent than suspected. As its long time enemy Bashar al-Assad now seemingly faces his end, and Iran’s axis of resistance loses a crucial link in its chain, the cold logic of Israel’s Jihad-friendly military leadership and their cousins in the Pentagon appears to have borne fruit.
‘As Much And As Quickly As Possible’: Israeli Settlers Eye Land in Syria, Lebanon
With the Israeli army advancing into Syria following Assad's fall, a group promoting settlements in Lebanon is casting its gaze eastward.
Within hours of the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli forces were already pushing into Syrian territory, conquering the Syrian side of Mount Hermon/Jabal A-Shaykh and the buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that has been in place for more than half a century. But the army were not the only ones quick to react; so, too, was the Israeli settler movement.
“We have to conquer and destroy. As much as possible, and as quickly as possible,” wrote one member of Uri Tsafon — a group founded earlier this year to promote Israeli settlement of southern Lebanon — in the organization’s WhatsApp group. “We need to check according to the new laws in Syria whether Israelis are allowed to invest in real estate and start buying land there,” another member wrote. In another settler WhatsApp group, members shared maps of Syria and tried to identify potential areas for settlement.
The Nachala movement — led by Daniella Weiss, who has been spearheading efforts in recent months to resettle Gaza — expressed a similar sentiment in a post on Facebook: “Whoever still thinks it’s possible to leave our fate in the hands of a foreign actor — forsakes Israel’s security!” it said. “Jewish settlement is the only thing that will bring about regional stability and security for the State of Israel, along with a stable economy, national resilience, and deterrence.
“In Gaza, in Lebanon, in the entire Golan Heights including the ‘Syrian Plateau,’ and in the entire Mount Hermon,” it added — attaching a biblical map titled “Abraham’s Borders,” in which Israel’s territory includes the entirety of Lebanon as well as most of Syria and Iraq.
This is not mere talk; these groups mean business. Nachala has already mapped out where it plans to build new Jewish settlements across the Gaza Strip, and claims that more than 700 families have committed to move when the opportunity arises (Daniella Weiss herself has already been into Gaza with a military escort to scout out potential locations). And last week, Uri Tsafon, which has bided its time over the past year, made its first attempt at a land grab in southern Lebanon — where Israeli soldiers are still present following the ceasefire deal.
Map showing the approximate locations of Israel’s military expansion into Lebanon and Syria, with darker blue indicating the most recent advances, created using data from satellite imagery, geolocation, and Israeli military statements. (Ahmad Baydoun)
On Dec. 5, the group’s founder, Amos Azaria, who is a computer science professor at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank, crossed the border into Lebanon along with six families in an attempt to establish an outpost. They reached the area of Maroun A-Ras, around two kilometers into Lebanese territory, and planted cedar trees in memory of an Israeli soldier who fell in battle in Lebanon two months ago. Several hours passed before the Israeli army evicted them and forced them back into Israel. (In response to The Hottest Place in Hell’s request for comment on this incident, the Israeli police said that according to the army, no Israeli civilians had crossed into Lebanon.)
Even back in June, at Uri Tsafon’s “First Lebanon Conference,” held on Zoom, members were already talking about settling Syria. Dr. Hagi Ben Artzi, Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law and a member of the group, told attendees that Israel’s borders should be those promised to the Jewish people in biblical times: “We don’t want even one meter beyond the Euphrates River. We are humble. [But] what we were promised, we must conquer.”
And with the fall of the Assad regime and the advance of Israeli troops into Syrian territory, they were eager to seize the opportunity. “We called on the government to capture as much as possible of what was Syrian territory,” Azaria told the Israeli magazine The Hottest Place in Hell. “The rebels are exactly [the same as] Hamas. Maybe now they’re making nice noises, but ultimately they are Sunnis who will find the common enemy, which is us. We need to do as much as possible now, while it’s possible.”
On Dec. 11, a small group of Israeli settlers claimed to have crossed into an area of Syrian territory now under Israeli military control, where they filmed themselves praying. When asked about the incident, the Israeli army said that it “there is no known crossing of the border by the people in question,” and that the video is “being examined by the relevant authorities.”
‘The most important thing is to be on the other side of the fence’
Uri Tsafon takes its name from a biblical verse calling to “Awaken, O north.” Its website describes Lebanon as “a state that does not really exist or function,” and claims that the true expanse of Israel’s northern Galilee stretches as far north as Lebanon’s Litani River — which Israeli forces had reached just as the recent ceasefire agreement came into effect, having forcibly displaced tens of thousands of residents of southern Lebanese villages in the process.
“We [started off with] quieter activities,” Azaria told The Hottest Place in Hell. “We called on the government and the army to go to war in the north … [and] we drove to Mount Meron under the air force base and did reconnaissance toward Lebanon.”
But last week’s attempt to establish an outpost in southern Lebanon marked the group’s entry into a new phase of activity that aims to force the government’s hand. “The goal was and still is to establish a settlement in Lebanon,” Azaria said. “We are not waiting for the state to tell us, ‘Come’ — we are working to make it happen.”
According to Azaria, the movement already boasts thousands of members “who are very eager and interested” in its activities. Last week’s action was not advertised in advance, because “[the army] would have blocked us and not allowed us to enter.” And they certainly didn’t face much resistance: “The gate was open and we just drove in,” he said.
Israeli settlers from the group Uri Tsafon establishing an outpost in southern Lebanon, December 5, 2024. (Uri Tsafon/taken from The Hottest Place in Hell’s website)
Azaria isn’t worried that they didn’t succeed; in fact, he sees their eviction as the first step in a longer-term plan of action that has characterized the settler movement since its inception more than half a century ago.
“The first time we’re evicted, we go,” he explained. “The second time, we stay longer. The [third] time, we stay the night. That’s how we’ll continue until there is a settlement. At first, [the army] demolishes it, and then they reach an agreement that there will be one settlement, and that’s it. In the meantime, we start working on the next settlement. It may not be realistic that the state will build a settlement [of its own accord], but that doesn’t mean the state has to demolish a community that we built.
“In the first stage, we’ll settle where we can,” he continued. “There’s no interest in a specific location; the most important thing is to be on the other side of the fence. We have to fight the taboo of the border that was established by France and England 100 years ago. We will live on the Lebanese border, God willing, and if we are there, the border will move north and the army will guard it.
“Just as the army is fighting in both Gaza and the north, it’s the same with settlements: we have to settle everywhere,” Azaria went on. “In Gaza, there is Nachala and several other bodies [promoting settlement]. In the north, we are the only movement that really deals with this right now. Nachala does it more with permits. We operate in a more ‘spearhead’ manner.”
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