Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz organist Jimmy Smith. Enjoy!

"I know many people believe that our criminal justice system can be “fixed” by smart people and smart policies. President Obama seems to think this way. He suggested yesterday that police-community relations can be improved meaningfully by a task force he created last year. Yes, a task force. I used to think like that. I don’t anymore. I no longer believe that we can “fix” the police, as though the police are anything other than a mirror reflecting back to us the true nature of our democracy. ... If we’re serious about having peace officers—rather than a domestic military at war with its own people—we’re going to have to get honest with ourselves about who our democracy actually serves and protects."

-- Michelle Alexander

News and Opinion

Legalized Murder and the Politics of Terror

The rhetoric of compassion, even outrage, by the political class over the police murders in Baton Rouge, La., and near St. Paul, Minn., will not be translated into change until the poor are granted full constitutional rights and police are accountable to the law. The corporate state, however, which is expanding the numbers of poor through austerity and deindustrialization, has no intention of instituting anything more than cosmetic reform.

Globalization has created a serious problem of “surplus” or “redundant” labor in deindustrialized countries. The corporate state has responded to the phenomenon of “surplus” labor with state terror and mass incarceration. It has built a physical and legal mechanism that lurks like a plague bacillus within the body politic to be imposed, should wider segments of society resist, on all of us.

The physics of human nature dictates that the longer the state engages in indiscriminate legalized murder, especially when those killings can be documented on video or film and disseminated to the public, the more it stokes the revenge assassinations we witnessed in Dallas. This counterviolence serves the interests of the corporate state. The murder of the five Dallas police officers allows the state to deify its blue-uniformed enforcers, demonize those who protest police killings and justify greater measures of oppression, often in the name of reform.

This downward spiral of violence and counterviolence will not be halted until the ruling ideology of neoliberalism is jettisoned and the corporate state is dismantled. Violence and terror, as corporate capitalism punishes greater and greater segments of the population, are, and will remain, the essential tools for control. ...

Unfortunately, all the calls by the political class for reform in the wake of recent murders by police will make things worse. Reform has long been a subterfuge for expanded police repression.

Police Killings Won't Stop Until U.S. Comes to Grips with its Racist Foundations

It looks like Obama has some domestic competition in the use of death robots. Now police forces are apparently able to become judge, jury and executioner, too.

How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman

Following the tragic deaths of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives.

Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc-style — detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm’s way. ...

Eric Ivers, the president of RoboteX, which sells robots to police departments in Texas (though not in Dallas), said that the use of a police robot to kill someone was unprecedented. “We are not aware of any robot, from any company, having been used for this purpose before,” he wrote in an email to The Intercept.

The Dallas Police Department has refused to confirm which robot was used against the suspect on Friday morning, but several reports have noted that the city’s public records have identified prior purchases from Remotec, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary. Both Dallas police and Northrop declined to comment to The Intercept — or elucidate which types of explosives were deployed or how they were attached.

Dallas police reveal details of bomb-carrying robot it used to kill gunman

Micah Johnson was killed using a Northrop Grumman tactical robot carrying one pound of C4 explosive in its arm following gun battle

The Dallas police department has defended its decision to use a robot to kill the gunman who fatally shot five of its officers, saying the controversial method was used only “as a last resort”.

Amid disquiet about the potential legal implications of the killing, the department also gave the first public details of the model of robot and type of explosive device they used against Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old army reserve veteran.

Johnson was killed late on Thursday by the explosion of a device carried toward him by remote control, after he was cornered by officers at a college parking garage. ... The police said on Saturday they had no choice but to take out Johnson remotely after their efforts to talk him into surrendering ended unsuccessfully.

Elizabeth Joh, a law professor the University of California at Davis, told the Guardian last week that the use of killer robots by police officers “raise all sorts of new legal, ethical, and technical questions”.

Noting that use of deadly force by police officers was typically justified “in terms of an immediate threat to the officer or others”, Joh said: “It’s not clear how we should apply that if the threat is to a robot – and the police may be far away.”

Details of Dallas gunman's larger plans emerge after protests around the US

Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested in cities across the US this weekend, as protests against police shootings intensified and new details emerged about the motivations and plans of a man who killed five officers in Dallas. ...

Military-style vehicles, teargas and smoke grenades returned to American streets for the first time this summer, and Barack Obama appealed for calm and said those who attack law enforcement undermine the cause of social justice.

The unrest built as authorities in Dallas said Micah Johnson, who opened fire on officers late last Thursday, had been plotting a wider bombing campaign that could have had “devastating effects”. Johnson was said to have been seeking revenge for the police’s treatment of African Americans. ...

On Sunday, the Dallas police chief, David Brown, said investigators had found bomb-making equipment and written evidence indicating that Johnson was plotting attacks “large enough to have devastating effects throughout our city and our north Texas area”. ...

Brown said Johnson had apparently been planning to “target law enforcement, and make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement’s efforts to punish people of colour” since before last week’s fatal shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota, which merely triggered his actions. ... The deaths of Sterling and Castile had had apparently moved Johnson to act before his more ambitious plan could be realised, Brown said.

Rep. Keith Ellison: Arrest the Officer Who Killed Philando Castile, He Has to Be Held Accountable

Tensions High as Combat-Ready Police Confront National Black Lives Matter Protests

After a weekend of protests and arrests across the U.S., demonstrations against police violence continued on Sunday in cities nationwide.

As Common Dreams reported, marches and rallies responding to the recent fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile took place Saturday in Phoenix, New York City, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, San Francisco, Nashville, Baton Rouge, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Rochester, New York. In St. Paul, an overnight face-off on Interstate-94 resulted in more than 100 arrests, while in Baton Rouge, nearly 200 people have been arrested since Friday.

This isn't Baghdad. It's #BatonRouge.

What militarized police looks like. pic.twitter.com/u3SvJpf1Vi

— Khaled Bey (@KhaledBeydoun) July 11, 2016

In an interview with the New Yorker published Sunday, Black Lives Matter network co-founder Alicia Garza predicted such an outcome in the wake of last week's shootings in Dallas and urged the movement to "think bigger":

The deaths of these officers will absolutely create the conditions for increased security, surveillance, and monitoring of protesters. It will absolutely usher in additional post-9/11-like measures that allow the state to profile people based either on their political beliefs or on their political activities, and then, of course, I think we will also probably see a push for an expansion of the police state, rather than the reduction of one.

If we can anticipate that, then that means that it’s no longer acceptable to fight for reforms like body cameras, and certainly I think it means that we have to think bigger. The call that I heard from many, many activists and their supporters over the last few days has been, “We can’t just march and protest.” There has to be something bigger than that.

With more protests and rallies on the horizon, Jamira Burley, Amnesty International USA's campaign manager for gun violence and criminal justice reform, said Sunday from Baton Rouge: "In the wake of this intensely emotional week, it is understandable that people across the country have been moved to take to the streets to peacefully exercise their right to be heard. Police have a duty to facilitate the right to peaceful protest while still protecting their own safety and that of the public."

Black Lives Matter activists speak about the Dallas protest

Philando Castile's killing puts NRA's gun rights mission at a crossroads

As the details of Philando Castile’s shooting by a Minnesota police officer emerged this week, many people asked the same question: where was the National Rifle Association?

Many liberals, conservatives and police reform advocates alike pressed the nation’s most powerful gun rights organization to condemn the shooting of a law-abiding black gun owner. But the circumstances of Castile’s killing, including the suggestion by Minnesota’s governor that it would not have happened were he white, puts the NRA’s allegiance to police in direct conflict with its gun rights mission.

Despite its fierce criticism of government overreach, the NRA is largely a pro-police organization: many of its more than five million members, who are predominantly white and conservative, are current or former law enforcement officials, the group’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre, noted Friday. The group also hosts an annual “police shooting championship” and it has an entire law enforcement firearms division, which specializes in training police instructors. ...

Criticism of the NRA about its lack of comment about Castile only grew sharper after the group released an almost immediate statement Friday morning in support of the law enforcement officers shot to death in Dallas.

Hours after the NRA hailed the bravery of Dallas law enforcement officers, the group finally released an extremely cautious statement referring to “troubling” reports from Minnesota.

It said it would not comment further “while the investigation is ongoing” and did not use Castile’s name.

As Protests Sweep Country, New Video Shows Off-Duty NY Cop Fatally Shooting Black Man Delrawn Small

Ramsey Orta, Man Who Filmed Eric Garner Chokehold, Will Likely Go to Jail for 4 Years

Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the death of Eric Garner in summer 2014, pleaded guilty on Thursday to drug and weapons charges.

Orta, 24, collected paperwork from Manhattan Criminal Court Wednesday, and will be going to prison upstate per a plea deal. He faces a four-year sentence under his agreement. ...

"I'm supposed to be copping out," Orta told the New York Daily News. "I'm pretty much tired of fighting." Orta has said that he has been a target of the New York Police Department ever since videotaping Garner's chokehold death.

"And from then on, I've been targeted by NYPD," Orta told Democracy Now! in a January interview. "I got five pending cases right now — two in Supreme Court, three in criminal. Since then, I've just been harassed. I've been almost killed in Rikers Island."

Another government lie about war

The Obama administration argued that since President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 through 2015, the number of non-combatants killed (largely by predator drones) in our permanent, global war against international terrorism outside conventional war zones in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan was at least 64, or as high as 116, depending on cogency of evidence used in the counting. The administration further argued that these unintended deaths were collateral damage in 473 CIA and military counterterrorism strikes that killed between 2,372 and 2,581 combatants.

The administration’s arguments were not made under oath. They were made without disclosing a crumb of objective evidence to support the number of non-combatants and combatants allegedly killed. They pivoted on statistics compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Its Director, James Clapper, achieved notoriety in 2013 for falsely denying to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the National Security Agency was indiscriminately collecting telephonic metadata on the entire United States population, and then declining an opportunity to correct on the record. Moreover, the 64-116 range of civilians allegedly killed by drones during Obama’s tenure is but a fraction of the corresponding numbers compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, New American Foundation, and Long War Journal, respectively. Further, in 2011, near the peak of the drone war in Pakistan, Obama’s then lead counterterrorism adviser and now CIA Director, John Brennan, dubiously asserted that for approximately one year “there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop.”

War legalizes what is customarily first degree murder. Once a nation enters that moral abyss, any scruples about lies disappear.

[For an excellent recounting of presidential war lies, click the link for the article. -js]

Osama bin Laden's son threatens "revenge" on the US for his father's death

The son of slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has threatened revenge against the United States for assassinating his father, according to an audio message posted online.

Hamza bin Laden promised to continue the global militant group's fight against the US and its allies in the 21-minute speech entitled "We Are All Osama," according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

"We will continue striking you and targeting you in your country and abroad in response to your oppression of the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and the rest of the Muslim lands that did not survive your oppression," Hamza said.

"As for the revenge by the Islamic nation for Sheikh Osama, may Allah have mercy on him, it is not revenge for Osama the person but it is revenge for those who defended Islam." ...

Introduced by the organization's new chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in an audio message last year, Hamza provides a younger voice for the group whose aging leaders have struggled to inspire militants around the world galvanized by Islamic State.

Pentagon will send hundreds more troops to Iraq following seizure of key airfield

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Monday that the Pentagon will deploy an additional 560 U.S. troops to Iraq, a widening of the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State that will place American military advisers at a key airfield seized by Iraqi security forces Saturday.

The decision will elevate the number of U.S. troops the Pentagon counts in Iraq to 4,647. Unofficially, that figure is probably closer to 6,000 when considering a variety of American troops who deploy on temporary assignments that the Pentagon does not include in its official tally.

Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that the additional troops will “predominantly” be assigned to Qayyarah Air Base, installing everything from additional security measures to communications gear. The base was described as an important springboard to take back the city of Mosul, which is the de facto capital of the Islamic State in Iraq and about 40 miles north of the airfield.

Mosul Offensive Will Create More Refugees, Displacement, and Humanitarian Disaster

Britain Forbids Military Chiefs From Discussing Chilcot Inquiry

The Chilcot Inquiry, a British government report on the illegality of the 2003 US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq, is a huge issue in Britain, a country which has more than its share of huge issues lately. But while the British military is very much effected by the report, there is a deafening silence from their leadership.

It’s not by accident, as the Daily Telegraph reports that the Cameron government placed a blanket gag order over all military chiefs in the wake of the report’s release, not just forbidding them from making public statements, but also from sharing their views on the matter with soldiers.

Send Our War Criminals to the Hague Court

This week’s Chilcot report on Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was as polite and guarded as a proper English tea party. No direct accusations, no talk of war crimes by then Prime Minister Tony Blair or his guiding light, President George W. Bush. But still pretty damning. ...

The planned invasion of Iraq was not about nuclear weapons or democracy, as Bush claimed. Two powerful factions in Washington were beating the war drums: ardently pro-Israel neoconservatives who yearned to see an enemy of Israel destroyed, and a cabal of conservative oil men and imperialists around Vice President Dick Cheney who sought to grab Iraq’s huge oil reserves at a time they believed oil was running out. They engineered the Iraq War, as blatant and illegal an aggression as Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.

Britain’s smarmy Tony Blair tagged along with the war boosters in hopes that the UK could pick up the crumbs from the invasion and reassert its former economic and political power in the Arab world. ...

There was no ‘flawed intelligence.’ There were intelligence agencies bullied into reporting a fake narrative to suit their political masters. And a lot of fake reports concocted by our Mideast allies like Israel and Kuwait. ...

Bush and Blair have the deaths of nearly 4,500 US soldiers on their heads, the devastation of Iraq, our $1 trillion war, the ever-expanding mess in the Mideast, and the violence what we wrongly blame on ‘terrorism’ and so-called ‘radical Islam.’ ... Bush and Blair should be facing trial for war crimes at the Hague Court.

Syria Extends Ceasefire, Fighting Continues in Many Areas

Syria’s military announced over the weekend a 72 hour extension of the nationwide ceasefire which they declared for Eid al-Fitr. The ceasefire never really took hold in the first place, and so far the signs are that the continuation isn’t accomplishing much either.

Though there were a few parts of the country that saw relative calm during the Eid, the overall level of violence was said to be largely unchanged. Today, the fighting largely centered on Aleppo, where al-Qaeda-led rebels are fighting with the military over areas around a key supply road.

Japan could change pacifist constitution after Shinzo Abe victory

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has called for a debate on rewriting the country’s pacifist constitution after his Liberal Democratic party [LDP] and its allies secured a supermajority in upper house elections on Sunday.

The LDP, its junior coalition partner Kōmeitō, and several like-minded smaller parties and independent MPs now control two-thirds of the 242 seats in the upper house. The ruling coalition already has a similar majority in the more powerful lower house.

Conservative MPs have enough seats to push ahead with constitutional changes, including scrapping the war-renouncing article 9 – a prospect that has caused alarm in China and among many Japanese who value their country’s postwar pacifism. Any amendments passed in parliament would then require approval by a simple majority in a nationwide referendum. ...

Rewriting the constitution, imposed by the US occupation authorities after the second world war, has been the ideological driving force behind Abe and other conservatives who believe it unfairly restricts Japan’s ability to respond to new threats such as international terrorism, an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Will France's young economy minister – with a volunteer army – launch presidential bid?

On a Wednesday night at a student hall of residence in southern Paris, residents were surprised to find a group of people in matching grey T-shirts knocking on bedroom doors to ask them earnestly what was wrong with France.

“Can you name something that works in France today?” asked one of the door-knockers. A 19-year-old studying human resources scratched her head and said she couldn’t think of anything. “OK, what doesn’t work in France?” came the next question. That was easier to answer. “Unemployment and having no hope of ever finding job that matches my qualifications,” said the student, who said she came from a poor suburb of Toulouse plagued with discrimination. Her answer was diligently noted down.

It was a typical evening’s work for the volunteer members of France’s newest political movement, En Marche! — or Forward! — set up by the iconoclastic young economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, as a launchpad for a possible presidential bid next year.

Macron’s 16,000 volunteers – known as marcheurs – have been tasked with going door-to-door in more than 50 towns and cities in France, gathering 100,000 suggestions from the public by the end of this month that will be pulled together into a political programme this autumn.

Whether or not the outspoken Macron will then run for president next year is a question obsessing Paris’s political class. He will hold his first political rally for En Marche! in Paris on Tuesday, but he has not yet said whether he will launch a presidential bid.

UK Conservative race cut short: Theresa May set to be next PM

New Twists in UK Political Leadership Races

Energy minister Andrea Leadsom is the latest politician to quit the race to succeed David Cameron as Britain's prime minister, abruptly withdrawing her name on Monday morning and leaving her rival Theresa May as the only candidate.

The two women had been due to compete on a ballot of around 150,000 Conservative party members, with the result to be declared by September 9, but the shock announcement opens the way for May to take over the party much sooner and compete for the head of government. ...

In a speech earlier on Monday [May] set out her vision for the economy, calling for "a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few."

[Heh, looks like the Conservatives in Britain are pretty good at appropriating the rhetoric of the 99%, too. -js]

"In the coming weeks I will set out (how) to take our economy through this period of uncertainty, to get the economy growing strongly across all parts, to deal with Britain's long-standing productivity problem, to create more well-paid jobs, to negotiate the best terms for Britain's departure from the EU and to forge a new role for ourselves in the world," May said. ...

"As prime minister, I will make sure that we leave the European Union," she said. ...

Minutes before Leadsom's announcement, another party made waves when opposition Labour lawmaker Angela Eagle said she would challenge Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the party.

Corbyn was elected last year with overwhelming support from grassroots Labour activists. He has ignored a vote of no confidence from the party's lawmakers, saying he has a responsibility to carry out that mandate.

Bernie Sanders set to endorse Clinton after Democratic platform negotiations

Senator declares successful end to his presidential campaign after pulling party to the left on issues of minimum wage, climate change and marijuana

Bernie Sanders has cleared the way for an endorsement of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, and declared a successful end to his campaign to pull their party to the left during weekend negotiations over the Democratic policy platform.

“We have made enormous strides,” said Sanders in a statement issued after a meeting in Orlando that swung the party in his direction on the minimum wage, climate change and marijuana though failed to make headway on fracking and trade.

“Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process – many for the first time – we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic party,” he said.

Typically, the public pays little attention to this non-binding agenda for the national convention, but Sanders pushed hard to ensure changes as the price of encouragement to his millions of supporters to back Clinton, despite their often bitter fight for the nomination.

The Sanders campaign confirmed on Monday morning that he would appear together with Clinton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday for a joint rally that is likely to see him put aside recent ambiguity over his degree of support for her in November’s battle against Donald Trump.

The pair plans to “discuss their commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top”, said Sanders in a one-line statement that marks the effective end of their 15-month tussle.

Clinton has to go further left, or she's not going to make it to White House - Ed Schultz

'We Have Just Written Half of the GOP Platform': Progressives Dismayed by Dem Party Platform

As the contentious Democratic Party platform drafting committee negotiations come to an end, many Bernie Sanders surrogates have watched in disbelief as core progressive principles have been waylaid—largely by Hillary Clinton supporters.

The trend continued on the second-to-last day of platform negotiations in Orlando, Florida, when Clinton surrogates on Friday rejected an amendment supporting the creation of a postal banking system, modeled on the one in North Dakota, as well as measures that would end corporate welfare and lay penalties on companies for offshoring jobs, lift the $250,000 income cap on the social security tax, and expand cost of living increases for senior citizens' social security benefits.

Congratulations everyone! We have just written half of the GOP Platform tonight, Democrats! #DemPlatform

— Nomiki Konst (@NomikiKonst) July 9, 2016

All the grandmothers who voted 4 Hillary were betrayed. Her #DemPlatform committee members voted down cost of living social security raises.

— Christyne Harris (@NoniATX) July 9, 2016

#DemPlatform amendment to expand social security by getting rid of cap on income above $250K goes to roll call, FAILS 74-100

— arit john (@aritbenie) July 9, 2016

The #DNCPlatform voted against people guaranteed healthcare. This will sentence so many to pain & suffering & worse. Disgrace.

— RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) July 10, 2016

Clinton supporters reject Israel settlements proposal

Hillary Clinton supporters rejected an effort Saturday to add a call for "an end to occupations and illegal settlements" in Palestinian territories into the Democratic platform.

Clinton's backers argued that the current language in the party's platform, calling for negotiations for a two-state solution in Israel to give Palestinians a homeland, are enough and that going further would inflame tensions and undercut U.S. diplomats' ability to lead future negotiations.

But Bernie Sanders' supporters -- as well as dozens of young people in the crowd in an Orlando hotel ballroom for the Democratic National Committee's platform drafting committee's two-day meeting -- said the language they'd proposed simply repeated a position Clinton herself has taken in the past. ...

The amendment was voted down, 73-95. Its rejection led to the loudest boos of the day, with one man being escorted out after he stood up and declared that Democrats had "sold out to (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)."

Newt Gingrich Pals Around With Terrorists Saddam Hussein Once Armed

Newt Gingrich, who is being vetted to be Donald Trump’s running mate and appeared with the candidate in Cincinnati on Wednesday, left the campaign trail this weekend for an unusual reason. The former Speaker of the House had to fly to Paris to appear at a gala celebration for the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Mujahedin, an Iranian exile group that wants Washington’s backing for regime change in Iran.

In his remarks, Gingrich heaped praise on the MEK’s efforts, and congratulated them on the presence of another dignitary, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and a former head of that nation’s intelligence service.

What Gingrich failed to mention in his enthusiastic endorsement of the MEK, however, is that the Iranian dissidents previously spent three decades trying to achieve their aim through terrorist attacks, and some of their first victims were Americans. He also avoided talking about the fact that the group’s terrorist cell was once based in Iraq, where it was armed and protected by Saddam Hussein.

The timing of Gingrich’s appearance at the MEK gala was awkward for Trump, since the candidate had spent part of the previous week arguing that the late Iraqi dictator, while being “a really bad guy,” deserved some credit because “he killed terrorists.”

Changing Cloud Patterns Could Lead to More Global Warming

Cloud patterns have been shifting over the past 30 years in ways that a new study says are possibly due to global warming––and may even lead to more warming in the future.

Climate scientists believe cloud changes are one of the biggest sources of uncertainty in climate models and understanding how cloud patterns respond to rising greenhouse gas levels is critical to determining how much and how quickly global temperatures will rise.

This new study, published Monday in the journal Nature, provides for the first time a reliable record of past cloud changes spanning nearly three decades and a comparison of those changes with climate models. This brings researchers much closer to solving the mysterious cloud-climate relationship.

Most climate models have projected that global warming would cause the tops of certain clouds to move higher in the atmosphere and also trigger a decrease of cloudiness in the subtropics, expanding the dry zone there. The models also predict that these patterns will trigger more warming, creating what's called a positive feedback loop.

The new findings offer "more evidence that clouds are going to be ... [an] exacerbating factor" on climate change and not a mitigating one, lead author Joel Norris told InsideClimate News.

Leaked TTIP energy proposal could 'sabotage' EU climate policy

EU proposal on a free trade deal with the US could curb energy saving measures and a planned switch to clean energy, say MEPs

The latest draft version of the TTIP agreement could sabotage European efforts to save energy and switch to clean power, according to MEPs. ...

A leak obtained by the Guardian shows that the EU will propose a rollback of mandatory energy savings measures, and major obstacles to any future pricing schemes designed to encourage the uptake of renewable energies.

Environmental protections against fossil fuel extraction, logging and mining in the developing world would also come under pressure from articles in the proposed energy chapter.

Paul de Clerck, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth Europe, said the leaked document: “is in complete contradiction with Europe’s commitments to tackle climate change. It will flood the EU market with inefficient appliances, and consumers and the climate will foot the bill. The proposal will also discourage measures to promote renewable electricity production from wind and solar.”

Food shortages and sea level rise US voters' top climate change concerns

Diminishing food and water security and ruinous sea level rise are the leading climate change concerns of a section of the American electorate that is aghast at the lack of discussion of global warming during the presidential debate.

A Guardian US survey of its readers found that pressure on food and water supplies is considered the most important consequence of climate change. Sea level rise, which is set to inundate coastal areas currently occupied by millions of Americans, is second on the list of the most urgent issues. ...

Readers were asked to rank what they think are the most pressing issues thrown up by climate change. Phasing out fossil fuel, expansion of renewable energy and the unfolding disaster affecting coral and other marine life were all popular picks for the most important category. Deforestation and climate refugees also ranked highly.

Also of Interest

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

After Dallas, The Future of Black Lives Matter

Dallas doesn't represent 'civil war', but a society that needs fundamental change

Following Horrific Violence, Something More is Required of Us

Farc guerrillas wary of future without guns

What the FBI didn't say about Hillary Clinton’s email

Seven ways FBI contradicted Clinton’s email claims

What if Trump’s goal is really a Clinton victory?

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Smith - Watermelon Man

Jimmy Smith - Root Down

Jimmy Smith - Moanin'

Jimmy Smith w/Etta James - I Just Wanna Make Love To You

Jimmy Smith,Stanley Turrentine,Kenny Burrell & Grady Tate - The Jumpin' Blues

Jimmy Smith & Oliver Nelson - Walk On The Wild Side

Jimmy Smith - Papa's Got Brand New Bag

Jimmy Smith Quartet - ZDF Jazz Club Leonberg, Germany 1988