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This evening's music features soul singer and songwriter Howard Tate. Enjoy!

"I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence."

-- Jacques Yves Cousteau

News and Opinion

The Last of the Mad Pirates?

There is clear evidence of a world increasingly steeped in conflict and violence: The degradation of U.S.-Russian relations, territorial tensions in the South China Sea, the hostile rhetoric between North Korea and the United States, an escalation of the border conflict between China and India, growing tension between Israel and Iran, and the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine; among other hostilities around the globe yielding death and destruction. Yet there is some indication that what we may be witnessing is darkness before a new dawn.

In his historical essay of 1968, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Buckminster Fuller, futurist and inventor of the geodesic dome, describes the conquest and colonization of the planet by Europeans as the age of the great pirates. He marks the end of that era with World War I, followed with a subsequent attempt by lesser pirates taking advantage of a time when the planet’s fate was precarious.

Fuller concluded that the later events of the Twentieth Century and beyond would be determined by the wisdom and strength of those who recognized that Spaceship Earth has limited resources that need to be appreciated and protected. As with others who consider our predicament, he saw only two possibilities: “We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.”

The struggle between the conflict generating profiteers and those who recognize that reducing conflict is the only path to sustaining human life on the planet, is coming to a head. Despite hard evidence that environmental traumas are increasing and will dominate the near future, the modern pirates are in defiant denial, leading their final charge against anything that might get in the way of gargantuan treasure chests. They must lie, cheat, pillage or kill in order to maintain the facade that everything is okay with the planet. One of the most critical tools of the great pirates and their modern heirs is the ability to prey on the ignorant and misinformed.

The pirates of old applied the sword to abscond with valuables; and more often committed genocide to steal land and resources from the indigenous. Modern pirates inherited these tools and became specialists in others. They deceive, entice and encourage scapegoating to obtain treasures or protect their fortunes. Ignorance is fertile ground for their work. Anyone opposing these marauders and their skewed vision of the world become the objects of derision, ridicule and threats of violence. Yes, this tale may sound familiar as we watch world events unfold. In that sense, the Trump presidency is a dramatic test of the planet’s fate; the last desperate, inane, final gasps of piracy confront us all.

George Monbiot: We Can't Be Silent on Climate Change or the Unsustainability of Capitalist System

US orders Russia to close consulate and annexes in diplomatic reprisal

The US has ordered Russia to close diplomatic offices in San Francisco, New York and Washington within the next two days in the latest round of punitive measures between the two countries that began at the end of last year.

Heather Nauert, a state department spokeswoman, said that the US has fully carried out Moscow’s demands to cut its staff at the US mission in Russia from 1,200 to 455 to make it the same size as the Russian mission in the US. The deadline for the staff reduction was 1 September. But Nauert also announced that the US was striking back for what she said was an “unwarranted and detrimental” move by the Kremlin.

“In the spirit of parity invoked by the Russians, we are requiring the Russian Government to close its Consulate General in San Francisco, a chancery annex in Washington, D.C., and a consular annex in New York City. These closures will need to be accomplished by September 2,” she said in a statement. “With this action both countries will remain with three consulates each. While there will continue to be a disparity in the number of diplomatic and consular annexes, we have chosen to allow the Russian Government to maintain some of its annexes in an effort to arrest the downward spiral in our relationship.”

In the statement, Naert said the US hoped that “having moved toward the Russian Federation’s desire for parity, we can avoid further retaliatory actions by both sides and move forward to achieve the stated goal of both of our presidents”.

Dmitry Trenin, the director of the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, predicted that the mutual expulsions “won’t stop there”.

Victory for Assad looks increasingly likely as world loses interest in Syria

In recent months, as supplies of aid, money and weapons to Syria’s opposition have dwindled, it had clung to the hope that ongoing international political support would prevent an outright victory for Bashar al-Assad and his backers. Not any more. An announcement earlier this week by Jordan – one of the opposition’s most robust supporters – that “bilateral ties with Damascus are going in the right direction” has, for many, marked a death knell for the opposition cause.

Within the ranks of the political opposition, and regional allies, the statement was the opening act of something that all had dreaded: normalisation with a bitter foe. And without anything much to show for it. Emphasising his words, Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said: “This is a very important message that everyone should hear.” And indeed, the about-face in Amman was quickly noted in Ankara, Doha, and Riyadh, where – after seven and a-half years of war – states that were committed to toppling the Syrian leader are now resigned to him staying.

Returning from a summit in the Saudi capital last week, opposition leaders say they were told directly by the foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, that Riyadh was disengaging. “The Saudis don’t care about Syria anymore,” said a senior western diplomat. “It’s all Qatar for them. Syria is lost.” ...

Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, has openly delegated finding a solution to Syria to Russia. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to close a CIA-run programme, which had sent weapons from Jordan and Turkey to vetted Syrian rebel groups for much of the past four years. Washington has adopted a secondary role in twin, ailing, peace processes in Geneva and Astana and has focused its energies on fighting Isis, not Assad.

Japan wants $1.6B in new weapons to shoot down North Korea’s missiles

Japan is loading up its missile defense systems days after North Korea lobbed an intermediate-range rocket over one of its islands. The defense ministry proposed record military spending on Thursday that included $1.6 billion for high-tech radar and weapons to shoot missiles out of the sky.

The request follows the launch of a North Korean missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido Tuesday, which prompted Japanese authorities to send an emergency text to civilians under the projectile’s path advising them to seek cover.

The proposed 2.5 percent increase for Japan’s defense budget would bring overall military spending to a record 5.26 trillion yen ($48 billion). If approved, the budget would represent the sixth straight annual increase under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has reversed years of cuts to the military.

Defense spending, and the military in general, remain controversial in Japan, where many still support the country’s pacifist constitution imposed by the United States after WW2. The text specifies that “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential will never be maintained.”

Wow, perhaps next they'll stop lying about how many civilians they kill. Nah, that'll never happen.

DoD: We Lowballed the Number of Troops in Combat Zones for Years

The number of U.S. boots actually on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the number officially reported by the military have been two different things for years, the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday.

The long-standing official number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, or Force Management Level, has been 8,448, but Marine Lt. Gen. Frank McKenzie said for the first time that the actual number in Afghanistan is about 11,000.

The Pentagon consistently has lowballed the troop count by not including those on so-called "temporary assignment" and overlaps in troop rotations. "This way of doing business is over" at the direction of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, said Dana White, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman.

The discrepancies on the troop counts, which began under former President Barack Obama and continued into the Trump administration, often resulted in the official number being thousands of troops short of the actual troop strength.

Iraq now a war-based economy, with over 2 million serving in military

Glenn Greenwald:

The NY Times’s Newest Op-Ed Hire, Bari Weiss, Embodies its Worst Failings – and its Lack of Viewpoint Diversity

Controversy erupted on April 14 over the New York Times’ hiring of neoconservative climate-skeptic and anti-Arab polemicist Bret Stephens as the paper’s newest Op-Ed page columnist, hired away from the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing op-ed page. But just two days after it unveiled him, the paper’s op-ed page, with much less fanfare, announced that it had also hired a carbon copy of Stephens named Bari Weiss, also from the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, to “write and commission the kinds of quick-off-the-news pieces” that will “amplify the section’s already important voice in the national conversation.”

In her short tenure, Weiss (pictured, right) has given the paper exactly what it apparently wanted when it hired her. She has churned out a series of trite, shallow, cheap attacks on already-marginalized left-wing targets that have made her a heroine in the insular neocon and right-wing intelligentsia precincts in which she, Stephens and so many other NYT op-ed writers reside.

Exactly as she was doing a decade ago as a “pro-Israel” activist at Columbia and thereafter at various neocon media perches, her formula is as simple as it is predictable: she channels whatever prevailing right-wing grievance exists about colleges, Arabs or Israel critics (ideally, all of those) into a column that’s supposed to be “provocative” because it maligns minority activists or fringe positions that are rarely given platforms on the New York Times op-ed page. ...

Weiss, standing alone, isn’t worth spending much time on: she’s just another thoroughly mainstream writer who thrives on cheap, easy and superficial “controversy,” who sees herself as a brave intellectual dissident as she is continually celebrated by and gets promoted within the most mainstream media circles, all for spouting conventional and power-flattering critiques of largely powerless figures. But she is worth examining for what it says about the New York Times, its understanding of “diversity,” and the range of opinions it does, and does not, permit.

The New York Times Gives Ex-Blackwater CEO Erik Prince Free Advertising

New York Times Slammed for Running 'Advertorial' by Notorious War Profiteer

The New York Times came under fire on Wednesday for running what critics characterized as "uncontested propaganda" in the form of an op-ed by notorious war profiteer and Blackwater founder Erik Prince.

As in his other prominent op-eds that ran recently in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, Prince—the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—pitched his plan to largely privatize the 16-year war in Afghanistan. Many have denounced this for-profit scheme—which would place the war in the hands of an American "viceroy" and private mercenaries—as tantamount to "colonialism."

On Wednesday, though, commentators began directing their ire at the outlet that "uncritically" provided a platform for Prince's "advertorial." "Why is the New York Times op-ed page publishing Erik Prince's sales pitch for more mercenaries?" asked The New Republic's Sarah Jones. The scheme being proposed "would make Prince, who now owns another private military company, Academi, very rich," Jones added. "The conflicts of interest are glaring, and yet this advertisement was given pride of place in the opinion section."

when outlets like the Times uncritically publish pieces like Prince's, it further blurs the line between opinion and straight propaganda pic.twitter.com/nQFyc70EWK

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) August 30, 2017

Further, as Slate's Ben Mathis-Lilley observed, Prince's Times bio failed entirely to highlight these conflicts of interest. While the bio "notes that [Prince is] the chairman of the Frontier Services Group, it doesn't make clear that the Frontier Services Group's business involves selling 'force protection' to clients in countries including Afghanistan." As many observed following Prince's Wall Street Journal op-ed, it is hardly surprising that a war profiteer sees an opportunity to profit off a war with no end in sight. The real problem, argues GQ's Jay Willis, "is not that Prince is taking advantage of an opportunity to shill for his latest collection of well-compensated mercenaries. It's that the New York Times is giving Prince space on its opinion pages in order to do so."

Tomorrow on the NYT Op-Ed page: "Let Us Re-Discover the Joys and Benefits of Agent Orange," by Dow Chemical pic.twitter.com/COxBo9CUtZ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 30, 2017

The Real ‘Fake News’ Crisis

Everything you need to know about “fake news” happened on July 19, 2017. That was the day the media stopped in its tracks and turned like well-coiffed, bronzer-addicted lemmings to collectively hurtle themselves into the abyss of infotainment. It was a truly telling moment because they actually had to hit the pause button on the morphine drip of TrumpTV to carry the live feed of O.J. Simpson’s piddling parole hearing in a Nevada conference room. Amazingly — or, perhaps, predictably — this utterly inconsequential event was carried by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and ESPN. That’s right, this scandalous ghost of obsessions past received the same treatment as a spectacular terrorist attack or a deadly hurricane or a political assassination. ...

President Trump is actually right about something … CNN and much of the news media is, in fact, “fake news.” The problem is that he’s right for the wrong reason. He wants you to believe fake news is part of a Deep State plot to keep him from Draining the Swamp™ and because the media’s doesn’t want him to Make America Great Again™.  According to Trump, that’s why the “fake news” media — as embodied by CNN — is churning out fallacious stories. ... But the true story of fake news is at once far more banal and yet ultimately just as pernicious as Trump’s fake news boogeyman. Sorry, Donald … the problem is not that the news is a bunch of made-up lies or salacious slanders cut from whole cloth. Nor is it a conduit for some nefarious political agenda. Their primary motive is the most All-American motive of all … it’s the profit motive.

Look no further than their bottom line since becoming Trump’s bête noire. The ratings, revenue and executive compensation … are all up. Frankly, CNN and MSNBC were mired in a crisis before the Trump came down the elevator of Trump Tower in June of 2015. And the New York Times and Washington Post were battling their own declining readership and relevance. But that was then. And this is now. ... And in a plot twist befitting the side-show state of American politics, it turns out that fake newsiness is also one of the main reasons he became president in the first place. The media’s addiction to cheap and easy, scandal-driven coverage perfectly fit Trump’s one-man circus act. And they forked over the $5 billion in free media coverage to prove it.

Angela Merkel faces protests in Germany's nationalist heartlands

Angela Merkel has faced fierce protests on the campaign trail for next month’s federal elections in Germany, calling into question her strategy of actively targeting regions of the country where rightwing populists have been gathering support. Germany’s first east German chancellor has been heckled and jeered, and her aides physically assaulted, while campaigning in the part of the country she grew up in.

Merkel is hoping to be re-elected for a fourth term on 24 September, and her centre-right Christian Democrats have a poll lead over Martin Schulz’s centre-left Social Democrats. On Tuesday, she told a press conference she was targeting the heartlands of populist nationalists Alternative für Deutschland, saying she wanted to “make a stand against the yelling”. ...

But the scale and intensity of protests at some of the widely televised events have overwhelmed organisers. In Brandenburg an der Havel, west of Berlin, Merkel’s rally on Tuesday was accompanied by a 40-minute chorus of jeers after the AfD and the far-right National Democratic Party organised a counter rally. ... Last Friday, a 21-year-old campaign aide wearing a T-shirt with the Christian Democratic Union’s logo was taken to hospital after she was assaulted during skirmishes around a rally in Vacha, Thuringia. Local media reported “scary, dangerous situations” as security prevented some protesters from getting too close to the arriving chancellor.

Federal judge blocks Texas ban on sanctuary cities in blow for Trump

A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction that blocks key parts of Texas’s ban on so-called sanctuary cities two days before the law was scheduled to go into effect.

The decision from judge Orlando Garcia on Wednesday is a victory for immigration rights advocates and a potential blow for other Republican-led states that may be keen to follow Texas – as well as for the Trump administration, which has vowed to crack down on sanctuary cities.

Coming against the backdrop of Hurricane Harvey, the judge’s ruling will be a welcome boost for the state’s large population of undocumented immigrants. There were concerns that some of those affected by the storm’s widespread flooding had stayed away from shelters or avoided asking for help because they feared that interactions with law enforcement could be a prelude to deportation.

Rumours spread that evacuees were being asked for immigration documentation at shelters, which the city denied on Tuesday in a tweet, writing: “We will not ask for immigration status or papers at any shelter.” Houston mayor Sylvester Turner said on Monday that he would personally offer assistance to any immigrants detained after seeking emergency aid.

Immigrants in Houston Face Triple Threat: Flooding, Racist Texas Law SB4 & Potentially Losing DACA

Florida’s governor prevails over prosecutor who opposes death penalty

The Florida Supreme Court sided with Governor Rick Scott Thursday in his standoff with State Attorney Aramis Ayala over her decision not to seek the death penalty in any of her capital cases.

In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled that Gov. Scott acted within his legal power when he removed Ayala from death penalty eligible cases. “Far from being unreasoned or arbitrary…the reassignments are predicated upon ‘good and sufficient reason,’ namely Ayala’s blanket refusal to pursue the death penalty in any case despite Florida law,” the decision said.

Ayala announced in a March 16 press conference that she would not pursue the death penalty for Markeith Loyd, an Orlando man accused of murdering his pregnant ex-girlfriend and a police officer. She then went on to say she would not be pursuing the death penalty in any case during her term. Gov. Scott used an executive order to remove Ayala from the Loyd case and assign it to a different state attorney. This year, Scott has removed her from 29 cases where capital punishment was a sentencing option.

“When it came to the governor’s response, I was absolutely stunned, because I’m constitutionally authorized to make the decision that I made,” Ayala told VICE News during an interview at her home in May. The only two female justices on Florida’s high court, Justice Barbara Pariente and Justice Peggy Quince, dissented, agreeing with Ayala’s assertion.

Seattle police shot Charleena Lyles seven times, autopsy finds

Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother killed by Seattle police in her apartment in front of her children, was shot seven times, including twice in the back, according to an autopsy released on Wednesday. The medical examiner’s report on Lyles, 30, who was killed after she called 911 to report a burglary, classified the death as a homicide and noted that the bullets cut through her uterus and hit her fetus, estimated to be 14 to 15 weeks old.

Lyles’ death sparked national outrage and reignited debates about law enforcement’s disproportionate killing of African Americans and officers’ treatment of people with mental illness. The two police officers have claimed that Lyles was holding a knife when they killed her on 18 June, but her family has questioned law enforcement’s narrative and justification for using deadly force, noting that she was 100lb, 5ft 3in and not a threatening person. ...

The 14-page King County medical examiner’s office report, released by a family attorney and published by the Seattle Times, raises fresh questions about why the officers, Jason Anderson and Steven McNew, used lethal force and fired a round of bullets at the woman at close range. The officers had arrived at Lyles’ apartment door less than an hour after Lyles dialed 911 to report a burglary, when she discovered her Xbox was missing. After roughly two minutes and 30 seconds, police fired at her from about five feet away as her one-year-old and four-year-old children crawled nearby, police records revealed. Her 11-year-old son was in another room during the shooting.

It’s unclear how the encounter escalated, with police audio recordings capturing a conversation that was initially polite and cordial. In department interviews, the officers claimed that at some point she had a knife on her and that they feared for their safety.

Leaked Chats Show Charlottesville Marchers Were Planning for Violence

Well before a white nationalist “Unite the Right” demonstration turned deadly in Charlottesville this month, attendees were planning for violence, according to leaked online chats. In private chat channels, they shared advice on weaponry and tactics, including repeatedly broaching the idea of driving vehicles through opposition crowds. After the vehicular attack which killed counterprotestor Heather Heyer, users of the channel celebrated the event.

The discussions took place on a private channel created using Discord, a service primarily intended for gamers. Hundreds of screenshots of the exchanges were released this week by Unicorn Riot, a left-wing activist group, which said they were shared by an anonymous source. The records also included audio recordings of planning meetings.

While much of the discussion centered on flags, chants, and other forms of speech, the leaked exchanges also included advice on weapon construction. “You want something designed for longitudinal stress,” wrote one poster. “[Three] whacks and that thing is breaking.” Other topics included body armor and shield design.

Users also shared memes alluding to using vehicles against opponents.

Attendees of #UniteTheRight in #Charlottesville discuss legality of plowing into protesters with a vehicle, less than one month before rally pic.twitter.com/bVOAisOOZG

— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) August 17, 2017

There’s no indication that James Alex Fields, the driver of the car that killed Heyer and injured more than a dozen others, was part of the Discord discussion, but his act was celebrated and defended by users, including some who edited images of the carnage into memes that were intended to be humorous.

Interior drops probe into secretary, senators

The Interior Department inspector general’s office has dropped an investigation into whether the Trump administration pressured Alaska GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan over their health care votes. ... Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reportedly suggested Alaska could pay a price if they crossed President Donald Trump on the GOP’s plan to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall wrote that her office “does not believe it could meaningfully investigate the matter further” because Murkowski and Sullivan declined to provide statements or be interviewed.

Robert Mueller and NY attorney general working on Manafort investigation – report

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with the New York attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, on its investigation into Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, Politico reported on Wednesday.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, Politico reported that Mueller’s team, investigating possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, and Schneiderman’s aides have shared evidence and talked frequently about a potential case in recent weeks.

The Associated Press, meanwhile, reported that a grand jury used by Mueller has heard secret testimony from Rinat Akhmetsin, a Russian American lobbyist who attended a June 2016 meeting with Trump’s eldest son at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The cooperation between Mueller and Schneiderman “could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes”, Politico reported.

CNN reported on Tuesday that Mueller had issued subpoenas to an attorney who formerly represented Manafort and to a Manafort spokesman.

Kremlin says got Trump adviser email about tower project but ignored it

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman confirmed on Wednesday he had received an email in January last year from an adviser to Donald Trump about a Moscow real estate project, but said he had neither replied nor discussed it with Putin.

The Washington Post reported this week that Michael Cohen, one of Trump's closest business advisers, had emailed Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, seeking his help in advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow. Trump was running to become president at the time.

Peskov, answering questions about the matter on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, said he had seen the email among many others he said he received every day, but had not responded to it because the request was not the kind of thing he dealt with in his job as Kremlin spokesman.

He said the Kremlin had not received any other similar requests on the subject and that he had not raised the subject of Cohen's original email with Putin. "We cannot discuss the hundreds and thousands of various requests from different countries we get with President Putin," said Peskov.

Houston’s polluted Superfund sites threaten to contaminate floodwaters

As rain poured and floodwaters inched toward his house in south Houston, Wes Highfield set out on a risky mission in his Jeep Cherokee. He drove in several directions to reach a nearby creek to collect water samples, but each time he was turned back when water washed against his floorboard.

“Yesterday as these large retention ponds filled up, eight feet deep in places, kids were swimming in them, and that’s not good,” said Highfield, a scientist at Texas A&M University’s Galveston campus. The Brio Refining toxic Superfund site, where ethylbenzene, chlorinated hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds were once pooled in pits before the Environmental Protection Agency removed them, sits “just up the road, and it drains into our watershed,” he said.

Harris County, home to Houston, has at least a dozen federal Superfund sites, more than any county in Texas. On top of that, the state lists several other highly toxic sites managed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Up to 30 percent of the county is under water. Like other scientists in the area, Highfield is deeply worried about toxins leaking into the water during an unprecedented rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Harvey that caused dams to spill over for the first time in history. On Tuesday, ExxonMobil reported that two of its refineries east of Houston had been damaged in the flood and released pollutants. “I made a couple of phone calls to colleagues who said bottle up [samples], label them and we’ll run them all,” Highfield said. ...

With its massive petroleum and chemical industry, Houston, part of the “Chemical Coast,” presents a huge challenge in a major flooding event, said Mathy Stanislaus, who oversaw the federal Superfund program throughout the Obama administration.

Harvey Flooding: Explosions reported at chemical plant near Houston

Houston flooding: two explosions at Texas chemical plant

Fires and two explosions occurred early on Thursday at a chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, that lost power due to flooding caused by tropical storm Harvey. Arkema, the industrial chemical manufacturer that runs the plant, later said eight more tanks could yet burn and explode.

“We believe that the safest thing to do is to allow the other eight containers to degrade and burn,” said Rich Rennard, an Arkema executive, at a press conference. “These things can burn very quickly and very violently and it would not be unusual for them to explode.”

Arkema said it was notified at approximately 2am by the Harris County emergency operations center of two explosions and black smoke. A sheriff’s deputy was taken to hospital after inhaling smoke, and nine others drove themselves to hospital. Harris County ordered the evacuation of residents within a 1.5-mile (2.4km) radius.

The plant makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products. An Arkema statement said: “Organic peroxides are extremely flammable and, as agreed with public officials, the best course of action is to let the fire burn itself out. ...

The blasts sent up a 30-40ft flame and a plume that the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Brock Long, told reporters in Washington was hazardous. The Texas commission on environmental quality urged people in the area to stay indoors with their windows closed and air conditioners running, and to restrict physical activity.

An interesting article, worth a scan:

Now Comes the Uncomfortable Question: Who Gets to Rebuild After Harvey?

Hurricane Harvey is likely to focus attention on questions the federal government and the American public have in large part worked hard to avoid, because they don’t cut cleanly along ideological or partisan lines. And because they’re not much fun to think about. What does home ownership look like in an age of climate change? When is it OK to rebuild, and when is it time to retreat?

The 30 Texas counties declared disaster areas by Gov. Greg Abbott are home to nearly 450,000 policies underwritten by the National Flood Insurance Program, a FEMA subsidiary. The NFIP was $24.6 billion in debt before Harvey made landfall, and can borrow just $5.8 billion more from the Treasury before the program’s current round of congressional reauthorization expires. Waters are still rising, and it will be several days or even weeks before damage totals are assessed, but early insurance industry estimates say the figure could match costs incurred from Hurricane Katrina, the most expensive disaster in U.S. history. Homeowners hit by the storm will now enter into a months- and potentially years-long claims fulfillment process, attempting to rebuild what they lost.

As lawmakers return to Washington early next month to determine the future of the beleaguered agency, there are bigger questions on the table than how to make the NFIP financially solvent. Both sides of the aisle agree that the program is unsustainable as is; FEMA is predicting that the NFIP’s rolls could increase by 130 percent by century’s end. Now — at what might be the worst possible moment to do so — Congress is essentially tasked with deciding who gets to live on the country’s most vulnerable coastlines.

'Miracle' weed killer that was supposed to save farms is killing them instead

Farmers are locked in an arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers. The dicamba system, approved for use for the first time this spring, was supposed to break the cycle and guarantee weed control in soybeans and cotton. The herbicide - used in combination with a genetically modified dicamba-resistant soybean - promises better control of unwanted plants such as pigweed, which has become resistant to common weed killers.

The problem, farmers and weed scientists say, is that dicamba has drifted from the fields where it was sprayed, damaging millions of acres of unprotected soybeans and other crops in what some are calling a man-made disaster. Critics contend that the herbicide was approved by federal officials without enough data, particularly on the critical question of whether it could drift off target.

Government officials and manufacturers Monsanto and BASF deny the charge, saying the system had worked as Congress designed it. The backlash against dicamba has spurred lawsuits, state and federal investigations, and one argument that ended in a farmer's shooting death and related murder charges.

After the Environmental Protection Agency approved the updated formulation of the herbicide for use this spring and summer, farmers across the country planted more than 20 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans, according to Monsanto. But as dicamba use has increased, so too have reports that it “volatilises,” or re-vaporises and travels to other fields. That harms nearby trees ... as well as nonresistant soybeans, fruits and vegetables, and plants used as habitats by bees and other pollinators.

According to one 2004 assessment, dicamba is 75 to 400 times more dangerous to off-target plants than the common weed killer glyphosate, even at very low doses. It is particularly toxic to soybeans - the very crop it was designed to protect - that haven't been modified for resistance.

Also of Interest

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

How I Got Fired From a D.C. Think Tank for Fighting Against the Power of Google

Why Donald Trump Pardoned Joe Arpaio

Harvey Victims Face Toxic Pollution as Hurricane Recovery Begins

President Trump is giving police forces weapons of war. This is dangerous

Jared Kushner’s Mideast Peace Push Is Going Nowhere. That’s Why Israelis Love It.

A Little Night Music

Howard Tate - Have You Ever Had The Blues

Howard Tate - Get it while you can

Howard Tate - Ain't nobody home

Howard Tate - Half A Man

Howard Tate - It's Too Late

Howard Tate - I Learned It All the Hard Way

Howard Tate - How Blue Can You Get

Howard Tate - Stop

Howard Tate - Look At Granny Run Run

Howard Tate - Glad I Knew Better

Howard Tate - She's A Burglar

Howard Tate - You're Lookin' Good

Howard Tate - Girl From The North Country

Howard Tate - Night Owl