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This evening's music features blues guitarist Debbie Davies. Enjoy!

“Tell the innocent visitor from another world that two people were killed at Sarajevo, and that the best that Europe could do about it was to kill eleven million more.”

-- A.A. Milne

News and Opinion

Biden Says He Will Bring a ‘Responsible End to Wars’

Speaking at the Pentagon on Wednesday, President Biden said he will work with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to bring a “responsible end” to US wars. “I will work with Secretary Austin and leaders around the world to bring a responsible end — a responsible end to wars that have dragged on for far too long, while continuing to ensure that terrorist threats cannot endanger the security of the American people.”

Biden’s comments come as he has an opportunity to end the almost 20-year-old war in Afghanistan. The US-Taliban peace deal signed in February 2020 paved the way for a May 1st withdrawal. While the administration hasn’t made an official announcement, all signs indicate that US troops will remain in Afghanistan beyond the deadline.

Biden’s language of bringing a “responsible” end to wars could mean he doesn’t think now is the right time to leave Afghanistan. Last week, a congressionally mandated report was released that warned against the May 1st withdrawal. The study repeated the usual talking points hawks use to justify staying in Afghanistan. It said the withdrawal would cause a civil war, even though fighting is raging now between the Taliban and the US-backed government. The only thing keeping US troops in Afghanistan beyond May 1st would accomplish is more US casualties.

Dems Plan To Make GOP PAY For Opposing Coronavirus Relief

Worth a full read:

Same Old Third Way

For a moment, it looked like the Democratic Party’s Wall Street-boosting think tanks might stop hawking austerity during the historic, deadly COVID-19 pandemic. “Clearly, there’s a need,” Jim Kessler, an executive vice president at Third Way, told the Washington Post last month in response to President Joe Biden’s first coronavirus relief proposal. ...

Unfortunately, everything has now gone back to normal: Third Way is boosting a campaign by billionaire-funded economists and millionaire TV pundits to deny $1,400 COVID survival checks to tens of millions of middle-class Americans. Meanwhile, its well-heeled executives are helping Republicans undermine the push to raise the minimum wage to $15. A few years ago, Third Way admitted that most of its funding comes from finance industry donors. Its corporate donors include PepsiCo, Facebook, and chemical giant Dow, according to company filings.

In late January, Third Way’s Kessler gave a ringing endorsement of a shoddy study by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard University think tank, that has been used to try to build the case for limiting direct payments to middle-class families. Opportunity Insights is funded by billionaire foundations, including one that has been a generous donor to Third Way — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Opportunity Insights study found that middle and upper-class families didn’t immediately spend the entire $600 survival checks authorized by Congress in December. The economists used their findings to argue that survival checks should be cut off for individuals earning more than $50,000 per year and couples earning more than $75,000 per year. By comparison, the first two COVID survival checks of $1,200 and $600 were sent in full to individuals who made less than $75,000 per year and couples who made less than $150,000. The changes they recommended could deny or reduce aid to nearly half of Americans, according to census data.

As the American Prospect’s David Dayen and economist Claudia Sahm pointed out earlier this week, the study has massive flaws that were never disclosed in any of the articles hyping its findings.

David Sirota: Neera Tanden's Mean Tweets DISTRACT From Her Corporate Corruption

Medicare for All the 'Only Way Forward,' Concludes Lancet Panel in Study Detailing Death and Misery Inflicted by Trump

A panel of policy experts and medical professionals convened to examine the healthcare legacy of Donald Trump concluded in a detailed report released Thursday morning that the former president's sweeping regulatory rollbacks and full-scale assault on America's already decimated public health infrastructure severely undermined the nation's fight against Covid-19 and caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths.

Described as the first comprehensive look at the consequences of the former president's four years of corporate-friendly privatization efforts, deep cuts to public health programs, and abandonment of international cooperation in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the new study by the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era argues that while the Republican's tenure was in some ways uniquely destructive, his agenda built upon years of "damaging neoliberal policies" pursued by his predecessors.

"The disturbing truth is that many of President Trump's policies do not represent a radical break with the past but have merely accelerated the decades-long trend of lagging life expectancy that reflects deep and long-standing flaws in U.S. economic, health, and social policy," reads the report, the product of years of research by dozens of leading health experts from the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

The 49-page assessment notes that while Trump and his GOP allies failed in their effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the number of U.S. residents without health insurance coverage soared by 2.3 million during the former president's first three years in office largely due to his assault on Medicaid, a program that has long been in the crosshairs of Republican lawmakers.

"Over the past four years," the report notes, "the Trump administration gradually advanced its market-based agenda, including efforts to divert funds from the Veterans Health Administration (VA) to purchase private care for veterans and, most prominently, by pushing forward the creeping privatization of Medicare that started with the Reagan administration."

The Trump administration's sprawling attack on America's public health programs helped set the stage for the White House's disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic, which hit the nation after many of the former president's healthcare rollbacks had taken their toll, leaving millions of additional Americans vulnerable to the virus and its widespread economic consequences. As of this writing, the virus has killed more than 471,000 people in the U.S.

"Instead of galvanizing the U.S. populace to fight the pandemic," the report states, "President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation. His refusal to develop a national strategy worsened shortages of personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests."

Stressing that the Trump administration impacted public health through a variety of means, the Lancet panel's study estimates that the former president's gutting of environmental regulations was responsible for 22,000 excess deaths in 2019 alone.

Trump's massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations, moreover, contributed to decades of soaring income and wealth inequality, a trend that has further stratified U.S. society and left large segments of the population unable to afford the basic necessities of life—including adequate healthcare, food, and housing. The commission also pointed to the president's racism, xenophobia, and attacks on women's reproductive rights as immensely damaging to U.S. public health.

Beginning to undo some of the devastation inflicted by Trump and those who laid the groundwork for his ascendancy will require much more than a return to a status quo under which tens of millions were uninsured, hungry, and poor, the experts behind the study argue.

"Trump's disastrous actions compounded longstanding failures in health policy in the USA," said panel member Dr. Kevin Grumbach, Hellman Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "We know what it will take to create a healthy society. We just need the political will to do it."

Among the panel's list of policy recommendations is Medicare for All, a system that would "cover all residents under a single, federally financed plan providing comprehensive coverage" at a lower cost than the current fragmented, for-profit system. President Joe Biden opposes Medicare for All and has instead proposed more incremental reforms like a public option, an approach the commission warns would leave many with "onerous co-pays... and deductibles, and millions of people would remain uninsured."

Ralph Nader on Corporate Crime, Holding Boeing Accountable for 737 MAX Deaths & Biden’s First Weeks

US buys 200m Covid-19 vaccine doses as Biden says Trump 'did not do his job'

The US has finalized an order for 200m more vaccine doses – 100m doses each from Pfizer and Moderna – to be delivered by the end of July, Joe Biden confirmed on Monday.

Speaking at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, the president touted his team’s early efforts to expand access to coronavirus vaccines, and criticized Donald Trump’s strategy for distributing vaccines, saying the last administration did not order enough doses or mobilize enough people to administer shots.

“While scientists did their job in discovering vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I’ll be very blunt about it – did not do his job in getting ready for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” Biden said.

With demand for the vaccine far outstripping supply, Americans are struggling to get appointments for their inoculations, leaving Biden with an acute problem less than a month after taking over from Trump.

Top Republicans call for Cuomo's ouster following nursing home revelation

New York Republicans assailed Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration on Thursday night in response to new revelations about his stonewalling the release of information about nursing home deaths, with several calling for him to resign or be impeached.

The New York Post reported that top gubernatorial staffer Melissa DeRosa told Democratic state legislators in a meeting on Wednesday that the administration “froze” when asked to release data about the number of nursing home residents who had died of Covid-19. A March directive from Cuomo calling on nursing homes to admit patients who tested positive for the coronavirus has been blamed for contributing to high death rates.

DeRosa said the administration resisted the release of data because of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to turn the tragedy “into a giant political football,” according to the Post. “Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation," DeRosa said, according to the Post.

Nearly every top Republican in the state pounced on the Post's report, subjecting Cuomo to a barrage of criticism arguably unparalleled at any point during his decade in office. "For over six months, day after day, in briefing after briefing, Governor Cuomo stood before New Yorkers and lied about his directive that contributed to the deaths of thousands of seniors,” said Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, Cuomo’s 2018 challenger. “In the coming days he will cynically try to convince us that it was for our own good — that it was someone else's fault. This is another lie. What is true, is Andrew Cuomo has proved himself unworthy of our trust, and unfit for public office."

“Prosecution and impeachment discussions must begin right away,” state GOP Chair Nick Langworthy said.

Brazil: missionaries 'turning tribes against coronavirus vaccine'

Medical teams working to immunise Brazil’s remote indigenous villages against the coronavirus have encountered fierce resistance in some communities where evangelical missionaries are stoking fears of the vaccine, say tribal leaders and advocates.

On the São Francisco reservation in the state of Amazonas, Jamamadi villagers sent health workers packing with bows and arrows when they visited by helicopter this month, said Claudemir da Silva, an Apurinã leader representing indigenous communities on the Purus river, a tributary of the Xingú.

“It’s not happening in all villages, just in those that have missionaries or evangelical chapels where pastors are convincing the people not to receive the vaccine, that they will turn into an alligator and other crazy ideas,” he said by phone.

That has added to fears that Covid-19 could roar through Brazil’s more than 800,000 indigenous people, whose communal living and often precarious healthcare make them a priority in the national immunisation program.

Biden Seeks Julian Assange Extradition

US government appeals UK ruling against Julian Assange's extradition

The US government has appealed a UK judge’s ruling against the extradition of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, according to a justice department official.

The appeal made clear that Joe Biden intends to have Assange stand trial on espionage- and hacking-related charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents.

The justice department had until Friday to file an appeal against the ruling on 4 January that Assange suffered mental health problems that would raise the risk of suicide were he extradited to the US for trial.

“Yes, we filed an appeal and we are continuing to pursue extradition,” a justice department spokesperson, Marc Raimondi, told AFP.

Chicago's Black and Hispanic police use force less than white officers – study

Chicago’s Black and Hispanic officers carry out fewer stops and arrests and use force less often compared to their white colleagues under the same working conditions, new research suggests.

In the populous, diverse midwestern city, such marked differences in officer behavior represent a promising sign that transforming the demographic composition of police departments could improve how US law enforcement interacts with minority communities.

“There’s clear evidence that deploying officers of different demographic profiles to the same environment will lead to different treatments of civilians,” Dean Knox, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said in a briefing about his and his co-author’s new article in the journal Science. ...

By contrasting actions taken by Chicago police working the same patrol assignments, shifts, days of the week and months between 2012 and 2015, Mummolo’s team was able to perform a relatively apples-to-apples comparison between officer groups from different demographic profiles.

Their analysis found that Black officers made about 15 fewer stops – including fewer discretionary stops, such as for “suspicious behavior” – than white officers in the same working conditions per 100 shifts, a dramatic drop in enforcement activity.

Hispanic officers also executed fewer stops, while Black, Hispanic and female officers all made fewer arrests and used force less often than their white counterparts.

Another day, another outrage:

Charges dropped against Buffalo police who shoved 75-year-old protester to the ground

Criminal charges have been dropped against two police officers seen on video last spring shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground in Buffalo, New York, prosecutors said Thursday.

A grand jury declined to indict the Buffalo officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski on felony assault charges, ending the matter, said John Flynn, the Erie County district attorney. ...

The case concerned the longtime activist Martin Gugino, who was shoved by officers clearing an area of the city from demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd last June. New cameras covering the protests captured the incident on video, which subsequently went viral and sparked widespread outrage.

Gugino, pushed backward, started bleeding after hitting his head on the pavement. He spent about a month in the hospital with a fractured skull and brain injury.

Wisconsin judge sides with fascists and denies motion for rearrest and bail increase for killer Rittenhouse

On Thursday, a Wisconsin circuit court judge denied a request by Kenosha prosecutors for a warrant to rearrest and increase the bail of the fascist killer Kyle Rittenhouse by $200,000. The motion was filed after it was revealed that the teenage shooter had violated his release agreement by concealing his whereabouts from the court. Judge Bruce E. Schroeder abruptly shut down the virtual hearing after he sided with Rittenhouse and his attorney Mark Richards and repeatedly interrupted Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Thomas Binger’s attempt to explain that the accused murderer was “thumbing his nose” at the terms of his bond. ...

Although Judge Schroeder permitted Rittenhouse’s victims to speak, it became clear in the course of the hearing that he had absolutely no intention of ruling in favor of the ADA’s motion against the right-wing shooter. In the noteworthy conclusion to his ruling, Judge Schroeder acknowledged that Rittenhouse was in violation of the court order regarding his whereabouts and demanded that the residence of the accused shooter be disclosed. However, Judge Schroeder ruled that this information was only to be provided to himself and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s office. It was to be kept concealed from ADA Binger, “unless you offer good reason” to have it, the judge said.

In justifying this extraordinary decision, Schroeder expressed his hostility to the protesters against police violence that Rittenhouse has been charged with firing upon, wounding and killing. Claiming he wanted to keep everyone “safe,” Schroeder went on a diatribe, saying, “You remember what went on six months ago here? I’ve got two broken windows right here in this courtroom. The doors are all still covered with plywood. A good share of the community is still boarded up after millions of dollars of property damage in this ghastly event.”

Given that a survivor of Rittenhouse’s shooting spree of death and permanent injury was in the hearing, these were very revealing statements as to the political sympathies of Judge Schroeder.

Adam Schiff’s Tough-On-Crime Background Complicates His Push to Be California AG

As California Gov. Gavin Newsom considers who to appoint as attorney general, criminal and racial justice groups are pushing back against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s pitch for the job, citing his record of being “not only supportive of, but deeply invested in, creating our current system of incarceration.”

Schiff is lobbying Newsom to be appointed as the state’s next attorney general, with help from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as first reported by Axios. The House Intelligence Committee chair rose to national stardom for his role leading former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial.

Early this month, as rumors swirled that Schiff was being considered for the role, 36 criminal and social justice groups wrote an open letter to Newsom expressing their “strong opposition” to Schiff’s appointment. The letter cited Schiff’s record authoring and supporting legislation that would have grown the system of mass incarceration and increased the criminalization of poverty, both as a California state senator from 1996 to 2001 and as a U.S. representative since 2001. Signatories include the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and Long Beach chapters, the Anti Police-Terror Project, the California Public Defenders Association, the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area chapter, and Sunrise Movement Los Angeles.

“We are standing at a crossroads of either advancing progressive justice reform or really entrenching systemic and institutional racism, classism, and oppression,” Melinah Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, a professor and former chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and one of the signatories, told The Intercept. “And we believe that Adam Schiff represents the latter.”

Nathan J. Robinson, Fired for a Tweet

Impeachment Trial: Democrats Warn That Trump Would Use Political Violence Again If Not Convicted

Impeachment trial: Democrats rest case with warning that Trump remains a threat

House impeachment managers rested their case against Donald Trump on Thursday, concluding that the deadly Capitol assault he stands accused of inciting was the culmination of a presidency beset by lies and violent rhetoric, and warning gravely that he would remain a threat to American democracy if not convicted and barred from holding future office.

With an impassioned appeal to the senators, who are serving as both jurors and witnesses to the alleged “high crime” at the heart of Trump’s second impeachment, the nine managers chosen to prosecute the House’s case declared Trump “overwhelmingly guilty” of inciting the 6 January riot.

“If you think this is not impeachable, what is? What would be?” congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, asked the senators seated silently before him. “If you don’t find this a high crime and misdemeanor today, you have set a new, terrible standard for presidential misconduct in the United States of America.”

Over the course of two days, they offered a methodical account of Trump’s months-long campaign to convince his supporters the election had been stolen. When all other attempts to overturn his electoral defeat failed, Trump summoned his loyal supporters to Washington for a rally on 6 January, his last stand. Hours before Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s victory that day, Trump exhorted the crowd to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal”.

“When President Trump stood up at that podium on 6 January, he knew that many in that crowd were inflamed, were armed, were ready for violence,” said the congressman Joe Neguse, one of the managers. “It was an explosive situation and he knew it.”

Where Are the Witnesses? Ralph Nader Says Democrats’ Impeachment Case Is “Prescription for Defeat”

Analysis Reveals Trump Operation Paid $3.5 Million to Organizers of Rally That Led to Deadly Capitol Attack

A new political spending analysis released Wednesday shows that former President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign and its joint fundraising committees paid more than $3.5 million to the individuals and firms involved in organizing the January 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that presaged the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Investigators at OpenSecrets, a project of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics that examines how money influences U.S. elections and public policy, analyzed recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings and found "newly identified payments... [that] show people involved in organizing the protests on January 6 received even larger sums from Trump's 2020 campaign than previously known."

The findings come in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial that will determine whether or not Trump will be convicted for inciting the violent insurrection carried out by a mob of his supporters.

Anna Massoglia, one of the campaign finance researchers who unearthed more than $3.5 million in direct payments from the then-president's political operation to the January 6 organizers, wrote that there are "unanswered questions about the full extent of [Trump's] ties" to the incendiary demonstration that preceded the pro-Trump mob's invasion of the halls of Congress.

"Recent FEC filings show at least three individuals listed on permit records for the Washington, D.C. demonstration were on the Trump campaign's payroll through November 30, 2020," Massoglia noted. "The Trump campaign paid Event Strategies Inc., a firm named in a permit for the rally that also employed two individuals involved in the demonstration, as recently as December 15, just three weeks before the attacks on the U.S. Capitol."

And yet, "because the campaign used an opaque payment scheme that concealed details of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending by routing payments through shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden," Massoglia wrote, "the American public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign's payments to organizers involved in the protests." ...

Despite their attempts "to distance themselves from the rally," the Associated Press reported last month that members of the Trump campaign "played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol... undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president's grassroots supporters."

In a statement shared with AP, Trump's failed reelection campaign claimed that it "did not organize, operate, or finance the event," and that if any former employees or independent contractors participated, "they did not do so at the direction of the Trump campaign."

The AP's review of records, however, found evidence to the contrary. Megan Powers, whose LinkedIn profile said she was still the Trump campaign's director of operations into January 2021, "was listed as one of the two operations managers for the January 6 event." And "at least three of the Trump campaign aides named on the permit rushed to obscure their connections to the demonstration."

WashPo Blames Capitol Protest On Economic Despair

GOP Senators Accused of Violating Oaths by Meeting With Trump Lawyers During Trial

Provoking criticism that ranged from "jury tampering" and "another violation of their oath" to "such bullshit," multiple Republican senators met with Donald Trump's attorneys late Thursday—the third day of the former president impeachment trial over his incitement of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

"We were discussing their legal strategy and sharing our thoughts," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), according to CNN correspondent Manu Raju, who reported that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) also participated in the meeting.

When asked by Raju whether it was appropriate to meet with the senators, who are jurors, Trump lawyer David Schoen said: "I think that's the practice of impeachment. There's nothing about this thing that has any semblance of due process whatsoever."

Krystal Ball: Is Biden's Son-In-Law Trying To CASH IN On The Coronavirus Crisis?

'A clear danger': oil spill in California city revives calls to cut ties with Chevron

Emergency crews in Richmond, California, are rushing to clean up an estimated 600 gallons of oil that spilled from a Chevron refinery into the San Francisco Bay. Details on the spill are still scant, but the emergency has reinvigorated calls from residents and environmentalists for the city to change its relationship with the refinery.

The spill at the Chevron Wharf, which poured unabated for nearly two hours on Tuesday, cast a brownish sheen across the waters of the north-eastern part of the bay where harbor seals haul out, migratory birds skim the water, and residents live and recreate. ...

Sprawling across close to 3,000 acres on the peninsula hillsides overlooking the Pacific, Chevron’s Richmond refinery churns out 245,000 barrels of crude oil a day. The refinery is older than the city itself, which is located 12 miles from San Francisco and counts roughly 110,000 residents. Tuesday’s spill is just the latest incident in a long history of environmental and public health hazards associated with the oil company in Richmond.

The refinery is one of California’s largest polluters, casting toxins into the sky and sea even during normal operations. State records show the refinery released nearly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 that it did a decade prior.

In 2012, an explosion released black clouds of toxic smoke into the air that sent more than 15,000 people to the hospital. In the last five years, the refinery has been hit with 147 formal enforcement actions, according to documents from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Late last year, Chevron agreed to a settlement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for 29 violations issued between 2016 and 2018. Recent increases in flaring – when excess gases are burned off – have also caused community concern.

California's rainfall is at historic lows. That spells trouble for wildfires and farms

There’s a race on in California, and each day matters: the precipitation during winter that fuels the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and fills groundwater supplies has been slow to start, and faltering at best.

Northern California remains stuck in one of the worst two-year rainfall deficits seen since the 1849 Gold Rush, increasing the risk of water restrictions and potentially setting up dangerous wildfire conditions next summer. The current precipitation is only 30% to 70% of what the state would expect to have seen during a normal year – with no more big rainfall events on the horizon for February.

Precipitation in the form of rain – and snowfall at higher elevations – is critical because it refills reservoirs, packs away snow for spring runoff to feed drier parts of the state, and helps stem the risk of wildfires. It also allows California’s agriculture to continue producing important crops.

This year, the state saw a very delayed start to its annual rainy season, which is typically heaviest from January to March. Wildfires sparked as late as January. It’s a sign that the window of time where rainfall and snow can add to the state’s water reserves is shrinking, says John Abatzoglou, a climatology researcher at the University of California, Merced – and that window may be even narrower in the future.

A study published this week showed that the onset of rains each fall has shifted back by a month over the past 60 years. That corresponds as well to drier fall weather, and an increase in the chance for fires to have devastating impacts, Abatzoglou says. Most of the state’s water comes from an astonishingly low number of precipitation events – just three to five winter storms do the work of building up the snowpack and filling reservoirs. That makes California uniquely vulnerable. “In years where you miss out on one or two of those, you’re probably going to struggle to get close to normal,” says Abatzoglou.

Study Warns Emissions Cuts Must Be 80% More Ambitious to Meet Even the Dangerously Inadequate 2°C Target

A new study warns that countries' pledges to reduce planet-heating emissions as part of the global effort to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement must be dramatically scaled up to align with even the deal's less ambitious target of keeping temperature rise below 2°C—though preferably 1.5°C—by the end of the century.

A pair of researchers at the University of Washington found that the country-based rate of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cuts should increase by 80% beyond current nationally determined contributions (NDCs)—the term for each nation's pledge under the Paris agreement—to meet the 2°C target.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, adds to the mountain of evidence that since the Paris agreement—which also has a bolder 1.5°C target—was adopted in late 2015, countries around the world have not done enough to limit human-caused global heating.

"On current trends, the probability of staying below 2°C of warming is only 5%, but if all countries meet their nationally determined contributions and continue to reduce emissions at the same rate after 2030, it rises to 26%," the study says. "If the USA alone does not meet its nationally determined contribution, it declines to 18%."

"To have an even chance of staying below 2°C," the study continues, "the average rate of decline in emissions would need to increase from the 1% per year needed to meet the nationally determined contributions, to 1.8% per year."

Also of Interest

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

Are We Watching the Trial of Trump or the Invisible Hand of the Koch Machine?

Maine Hospital Vaccinates Out-of-State Union-Busters as Vulnerable Residents Forced to Wait

Freedom Rider: Forced Labor in the U.S.

Fight to vote: the escalating attack on US voting rights

'It Is Not a Budget Item,' Democrat Kyrsten Sinema Falsely Says as She Joins Joe Manchin in Opposing $15 Wage

Afghanistan - Bounties - Silly Talk

The Guardian Reveals Its True Face by Sacking Progressive Columnist Nathan Robinson for Criticizing US Military Aid To Israel

'If white people were still here, this wouldn’t happen': the majority-Black town flooded with sewage

Dramatic discovery links Stonehenge to its original site – in Wales

Chick Corea, Grammy-winning jazz musician, dies at 79

Saagar Enjeti: TENS OF THOUSANDS Leave GOP After January 6

Rising: The View AMBUSHES Van Jones For Working With Trump On Criminal Justice

Ken Klippenstein EXPOSES Hypocrisy Of HALF BILLION National Guard Deployment To DC

Krystal and Saagar: Media BOOSTS QAnon To Save Failing Ratings

Krystal and Saagar: Majority Of Americans For FIRST TIME Say US System Of Government Not Sound

A Little Night Music

Debbie Davies - Howlin' At The Moon

Debbie Davies - Done Sold Everything

Debbie Davies - Blue And Lonesome

Debbie Davies - If You Love Me Like You Say

Debbie Davies - Tryin' To Keep It Real

Debbie Davies - All I Found

Joe Louis Walker & Debbie Davies - 747

Debbie Davies - 24 Hour Fool

Albert Collins, Johnny Gayden and Debbie Davies - Black Cat Bone

Albert Collins & Debbie Davies - I Ain't Drunk (I'm Just Drinkin')