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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

-- H.L. Mencken

News and Opinion

Click the link and go read all of this, it is worth your time:

The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun -- Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.

The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks” from “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” (that warning also was not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing violence “to attack higher-capacity targets,” exacerbated by the lifting of COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).

Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network, in an “update,” called “the additional information from the Department of Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this time.” And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day was such a flop that even The Washington Post — one of the outlets most vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in particular — had to explicitly acknowledge the failure.

Americans have seen this scam before. Throughout the first War on Terror, DHS, which was created in 2002, was frequently used to keep fear levels high and thus foster support for draconian government powers of spying, detention, and war. Even prior to the Department's creation, its first Secretary, Tom Ridge, when he was still the White House's Homeland Security Chief in early 2002, created an elaborate color-coded warning system to supply a constant alert to Americans about the evolving threat levels they faced from Islamic extremists. In 2004, Ridge admitted that he had been repeatedly pressured by Bush officials to elevate the warnings and threat levels for political gain and to keep the population in fear. ...

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

Ambushed by the Cops: When Police Deliberately Trap Peaceful Protesters

Several hundred people were marching through downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, last year when a few dozen police officers in riot gear jumped off a city bus and lined up along the march route. It was the fifth consecutive day of protests in the city, where, like in scores of other places across the country, thousands had taken to the streets following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

That night, June 2, protesters peacefully approached the intersection of College and Fourth streets, when suddenly, those at the front of the march turned around and started running back: Officers positioned ahead of them had started firing tear gas and flash-bang devices directly at the advancing crowd. As people ran backward, they were met by the officers who had jumped off the bus, now closing in. Within a few chaotic moments, protesters found themselves caught between a line of cops on one end of the road, a cloud of tear gas on the other, and tall buildings on both sides. As the gas thickened, people began screaming and gasping for air.

“They closed the whole group in between a line of riot officers and a wall of tear gas,” Justin LaFrancois, a local journalist who was livestreaming the protest, told The Intercept. “Nobody ever gave a dispersal order or said where people were supposed to leave from. They blocked all the exits with tear gas, and nobody was going to just run through the tear gas, because if you did, you were getting shot with pepper bullets.” People in the middle of the crowd began panicking and trampling other people. “There was no way out, it was the most helpless I have ever felt my entire life,” said Justin McErlain, a photographer who was also filming the protest. “I try to stay calm in most situations, I never get too excited. But in that moment, I wasn’t sure if we were getting out of there alive or not.”

A third group of officers positioned on the second floor of a parking garage along the protest route started shooting pepper balls at the crowd. “Not only we were getting hit from both sides, we were getting hit from the top as well,” said McErlain. “I felt sick to my stomach out of fear.” A few dozen people tried to escape by crouching to the ground and climbing under the closed gates of the parking garage — something police later described as trespassing. When that group eventually tried to leave, police rushed toward them and again fired pepper balls, said LaFrancois.

“It was terrifying,” he added. “They just trap you in, and you are basically at their disposal.”

In collaboration with the visual investigations team SITU, The Intercept reconstructed the events of that night by mapping footage captured by witnesses and police cameras against a 3D digital model of the urban environment in which the incident unfolded. The reconstruction, which offers multiple perspectives of the same event, shows that police deliberately exposed hundreds of peaceful protesters to tear gas and other “less-than-lethal” weapons within a confined space they had no clear way to escape. The model, combined with officers’ comments caught by their own body cameras, shows that their maneuvers had been intentional and carefully coordinated despite a claim from Charlotte’s then-police chief that his officers had not intended to cause harm.

Israeli opposition leader tells president he can form government

The Israeli opposition leader has told the country’s president that he can form a government, a critical step that places Benjamin Netanyahu in his most precarious political position for more than a decade.

After days of frenetic negotiations, Yair Lapid told President Reuven Rivlin less than an hour before a midnight deadline that he had the support of a majority of opposition parties for what has been called a “government of change” – a mix of bitter ideological rivals united by a shared desire to oust Israel’s longest-serving leader.

Under the proposed deal, Lapid will not immediately take high office. Instead, his former rival the far-right politician Naftali Bennett, whose support was vital to the coalition’s success, will become prime minister for the first two years. ...
Crucially, Lapid secured backing from a small party of Arab Islamists who signed roughly two hours before the deadline. In doing so, the United Arab List became the first party from Israel’s sizeable Arab minority to join a government. Its leader, Mansour Abbas, is a pragmatist and has sought greater resources and rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The step by Lapid does not immediately end Netanyahu’s 12-year stretch in power or conclude a political deadlock that has brought four snap elections since 2019. Before that happens, lawmakers will need to vote on the deal, which is expected next week. Then there will be a swearing-in.

Netanyahu pushes back against Lapid-Bennett-Abbas deal

Officials investigating why Iran warship caught fire and sank in Gulf of Oman

Military officials in the Gulf are investigating what caused the Iranian navy’s largest vessel to catch fire and sink in the latest mysterious incident to affect shipping linked to Tehran.

The support ship Kharg went down in the strait of Hormuz just after dawn on Wednesday, after a fire that had started 18 hours earlier reached the waterline. All crew members are reported to have survived.

Iranian media reported that the fire had started in the boiler room of the 44-year-old ship. Images captured by drones and satellites showed the vessel fully ablaze, with survivors wearing lifejackets in rescue ships nearby.

The sinking of the Kharg marked the second time in the past three months that an Iranian vessel has suffered serious damage at sea. In early April, an Iranian freighter, the Saviz, which had supported the Houthi war effort off the coast of Yemen was damaged by mines placed on its hull by Israeli commandos. ...

Ships off the coast of Syria have also been targeted by drones in recent months. In May, an Iranian freighter delivering oil to the Syrian port of Latakia was hit by a small missile that struck its bridge, killing three crewmen. Both countries pointed fingers at Israel, which acknowledges attempts to disrupt alleged Iranian efforts to transfer weapons, but has not admitted any role in the shadow war across the region’s waters.

US troops accidentally raid sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria

The owner of a small sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria has filed a lawsuit after US soldiers accidentally stormed his facility during a Nato military exercise last month. Marin Dimitrov told reporters on Wednesday that he had filed the suit against those responsible for the 11 May incident.

Swift Response 2021 was a US army-led multinational exercise held across Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania and involving more than 7,000 paratroopers from 10 Nato countries.

During the drill, members of the Italy-based 173rd airborne brigade simulated seizing and securing the decommissioned Cheshnegirovo airbase in southern Bulgaria by clearing bunkers and other structures, a US army statement said.

On 11 May, American soldiers entered and cleared a building next to the airfield that they thought was part of the training area but turned out to be occupied by Bulgarian civilians operating a private business, according to the statement. “No weapons were fired at any time during the interaction,” the army statement said.

US Air Force Plans to Buy More Bombs 'Better-Suited for Operations in the Pacific'

Soon after President Joe Biden called for a gargantuan $753 billion military budget for fiscal year 2022, the U.S. Air Force indicated that it plans to buy fewer small-diameter bombs in favor of spending heavily on "state-of-the-art, long-range weapons that are better-suited for operations in the Pacific," Military.com reported Tuesday.

The Air Force's proposal is consistent with other investments outlined in Biden's Pentagon budget request, including billions of dollars for U.S. nuclear weapon modernization and the so-called Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which is purportedly aimed at "countering China's military build-up in Asia."

Regarding the Air Force's budget, Military.com reporter Oriana Pawlyk noted that:

The service has requested $161 million to buy an initial production of 12 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW (pronounced "Arrow"), hypersonic weapons to move it out of the research and development phase. Despite the service shifting more resources toward the ARRW program last year, the missile failed its first flight test a few weeks ago.

The Air Force also wants to increase its procurement of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, or JASSM-ER, stealth cruise missile, an advanced weapon with a range of roughly 600 miles, the budget documents state. Officials have previously stated the JASSM and its cousin, the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, or LRASM, can be used for stand-off precision strikes throughout the vast expanses of the Pacific region.

"To fund those efforts," Pawlyk wrote, "the service will reduce its purchases of Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs, the first iteration of the small-diameter bomb, and Hellfire missiles."

According to Military.com, Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia, the Air Force deputy assistant secretary overseeing the budget at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller, told reporters Friday that "the service has reached 'healthy inventory levels' of those munitions and now will focus on the more advanced weapons."

As Pawlyk explained:

The Air Force will ask Congress for about 1,900 JDAM munitions, according to the documents, compared to 16,800 last year. The service wants to buy only 1,176 AGM-114 Hellfire missiles this year, down from 4,517 last year. And it plans to reduce its buy of GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb I, or SDB I, to 998 from 2,462 last year.

To bolster its inventory of conventional munitions that allow aircraft to stay outside the range of enemy air defenses, the service's funding request for JASSM-ER, which incorporates low-observable technology, has increased by $211 million "to grow production line capacity." The Air Force wants to buy 525 missiles this year, up from 400 last year, the budget states.

Dave DeCamp of Antiwar.com wrote Friday that Biden's $753 billion military budget proposal "emphasizes research for new weapons technology, which the U.S. sees as vital for competition with China and Russia."

In a statement on the budget, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin identified China as the Pentagon's main focus. "The budget provides us the mix of capabilities we need most and stays true to our focus on the pacing challenge from the People's Republic of China," he said.

Ai Weiwei accuses curators of rejecting artwork over Julian Assange content

Ai Weiwei has accused the organisers of a large UK art exhibition of rejecting his artwork for the show because the piece addressed the imprisonment of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Chinese dissident artist and activist said the piece for The Great Big Art Exhibition featured an image of the treadmill which Assange used while seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.

In an opinion article for the art website Artnet, Weiwei said the piece, called Postcard for Political Prisoners, incorporated a photograph of the running machine given to him by Assange, who is detained in Belmarsh high-security prison in south-east London.

Glenn Greenwald on Fauci and Internet Censorship

Biden announces ‘month of action’ to get 70% of Americans vaccinated

Joe Biden has announced a national “month of action” to try to get at least 70% of Americans vaccinated against coronavirus before the Fourth of July holiday.

Touting the progress already made, and dangling the promise of a “summer of freedom” from Covid-19 to those reluctant to get a shot, the US president urged citizens, especially those under 40, to play a role in the “wartime effort” to defeat the virus.

In a 15-minute address from the White House, he laid out a five-point plan to achieve his 4 July target, and tasked Vice-President Kamala Harris and other senior administration figures with a nationwide tour in the coming weeks to spread vaccination information.

Incentives for getting a shot, he said, include tax credits for employers and paid time off to get vaccines, free childcare for parents and caregivers to do so, and free beer and complimentary rides to and from vaccination appointments.

“It’s going to take everyone, the federal government to state governments, local, tribal and territorial governments, and private sector, and most importantly the American people, to get to the 70% mark,” he said.

US meatpacking plants get back on stream after crippling cyber-attack

Meat-processing factories in the US run by the world’s largest company in that field are coming back on stream on Wednesday after a ransomware attack – as experts warned all corporate and local government leaders to be on the alert.

A cyber-attack on the meat processor JBS had forced it to halt all US operations while it scrambled to restore functionality. The attack, like other recent hacks, is believed to have originated in Russia.

JBS, which supplies more than a fifth of all beef in America, said all of its US beef plants were pushed offline on Sunday. The ransomware attack on the Brazilian-headquartered company’s networks also disrupted other operations across the US, as well as the company’s businesses in other countries, including Australia, but less severely.

'GOP Isn't Going to Meet Us Halfway': Top Progressive Presses Biden to Cut Off Infrastructure Talks With Republicans

As President Joe Biden prepared to continue talks with the Senate GOP's lead infrastructure negotiator on Wednesday, progressive Democrats in Congress implored the White House to stop wasting precious time wrangling with a party that has repeatedly shown it is uninterested in pursuing an adequate legislative package.

"It's time to go big, bold, and fast on an infrastructure plan that repairs bridges and roads—but also guarantees paid leave and child care," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said late Tuesday. "The GOP isn't going to meet us halfway. It's time to go alone—and get this done."

Last week, a group of Republican senators unveiled the outlines of an infrastructure proposal that called for just $257 billion in new spending over eight years—a far cry from the $1.7 trillion in above-baseline spending Biden offered as a compromise proposal. Republicans flatly rejected that offer as excessive, even though the president lopped roughly $500 billion off his initial American Jobs Plan.

Progressive lawmakers, and even some centrists, have grown increasingly frustrated in recent weeks as Biden's talks with the GOP have predictably moved toward less spending as Republican negotiators attempt to strip out key climate proposals and other measures they consider extraneous, including elder care.

"Time is tick, tick, ticking past. Every day spent on hopeless bipartisanship is a day not spent on climate," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Tuesday. "We can survive bumpy roads; a ruined planet is for eons."

And yet, as Politico reported Tuesday, "the White House continues to see upside to infrastructure negotiations with Republicans, even as the talks run on longer than President Joe Biden initially planned."

"The president still has faith in his ability to win over reluctant Senate Republicans and advisers see benefits—reputationally and politically—in working across the aisle," according to Politico.

But leading progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have warned of the potentially disastrous consequences of dragging out negotiations with Republicans, both for the climate and for Democrats' chances of holding on to their slim congressional majorities.

California launches first-in-nation taskforce to study reparations for Black Americans

A first-in-the-country taskforce to study and recommend reparations for African Americans held its inaugural meeting in California on Tuesday, launching a two-year process to address the harms of slavery and systemic racism.

The meeting of the first state reparations committee in the US coincided with a visit by Joe Biden to Oklahoma, during which the president marked the centenary of the Tulsa race massacre and commemorated the hundreds of Black Americans who were killed by a white mob in a flourishing district known as the “Black Wall Street”. It also comes just over a year after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota.

A federal slavery reparations bill passed out of the House judiciary committee in April, but it faces an uphill battle to becoming law. The bill was first introduced in Congress in 1989 and refers to the failed government effort to provide 40 acres (16 hectares) of land to newly freed slaves as the civil war wound down.

California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, who as a state assemblywoman authored the state legislation creating the taskforce, noted the solemnity of the occasion as well as the opportunity to right a historic wrong that continues today, in the form of large racial disparities in wealth, health and education. African Americans make up just 6% of California’s population yet were 30% of an estimated 250,000 people experiencing homelessness who sought help in 2020. “Your task is to determine the depth of the harm, and the ways in which we are to repair that harm,” said Weber, whose sharecropper parents were forced to leave the south.

The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who signed the bill into law last year, issued a formal apology to Native American tribal leaders in 2019. He also announced the creation of a council to examine the state’s role in campaigns to exterminate and exploit indigenous people in the state.

Canada calls on pope to apologize after Indigenous children’s remains found

Canada’s government has called on Pope Francis to issue a formal apology for the role the Catholic church played in Canada’s residential school system, days after the remains of 215 children were located at what was once the country’s largest such school. ...

The Kamloops Indian Residential school was Canada’s largest such facility and was operated by the Roman Catholic church between 1890 and 1969 before the federal government took it over as a day school until 1978, when it was closed. Nearly three-quarters of the 130 schools were run by Catholic missionary congregations.

A papal apology was one of the 94 recommendations made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up as part of a government apology and settlement over the schools, and the prime minister asked the pope to consider such a gesture during a visit to the Vatican in 2017.

National Enquirer publisher fined over payment for Trump story

A federal election watchdog fined the publisher of the National Enquirer $187,500 for scuppering the story of a former Playboy model who claimed she’d had an affair with Donald Trump.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined A360 Media, formerly known as American Media, for paying Karen McDougal $150,000 in August 2016, saying the payment was made to keep her story from becoming public before the presidential election.

The FEC said the publisher’s “payment to Karen McDougal to purchase a limited life story right combined with its decision not to publish the story, in consultation with an agent of Donald J Trump and for the purpose of influencing the election, constituted a prohibited corporate in-kind contribution”.

Campaign finance laws prohibit corporations from cooperating with a campaign to affect an election. ...

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed in 2018 not to prosecute American Media in exchange for its cooperation in a campaign finance investigation. That investigation led to a three-year prison term for Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, who had urged the publisher to obtain the rights to McDougal’s story and promised to reimburse them for the payment.

Sources: Dem lobbying firm under federal investigation for Burisma work

The Justice Department is investigating the work of a consulting firm linked to the president’s son for potential illegal lobbying, four people familiar with the probe told POLITICO.

The firm, Blue Star Strategies, took on as a client the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while Hunter Biden served on its board. Republican operatives’ efforts to investigate Burisma and the alleged corruption that surrounded the firm were at the heart of the first Trump impeachment.

The probe comes as the Justice Department ramps up its scrutiny of foreign governments’ efforts to influence U.S. politics through covert lobbying operations. Much of that enforcement work has focused on Republicans linked to former President Donald Trump, including an active probe of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The existence of the investigation into Blue Star, meanwhile, shows that DOJ’s torqued-up enforcement efforts may also create legal jeopardy for firms and operatives aligned with the Democratic Party.

The Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office is involved in the probe, and is coordinating with lawyers in the National Security Division at DOJ’s Washington headquarters, the sources said. The Delaware office is also investigating Hunter Biden for potential tax violations. ...

One focus of the investigation is whether the firm failed to comply with disclosure requirements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires Americans to disclose lobbying and public affairs work for foreign officials and political parties. There is no indication that Hunter Biden is a target of the investigation into Blue Star. Karen Tramontano, one of Blue Star's co-founders, testified that Hunter Biden did not direct any of the firm’s work for Burisma.

Climate crisis is suffocating the world’s lakes, study finds

The climate crisis is causing a widespread fall in oxygen levels in lakes across the world, suffocating wildlife and threatening drinking water supplies. Falling levels of oxygen in oceans had already been identified, but new research shows that the decline in lakes has been between three and nine times faster in the past 40 years. Scientists found oxygen levels had fallen by 19% in deep waters and 5% at the surface.

Rising temperatures driven by global heating is the main cause, because warmer water cannot hold as much oxygen. Furthermore, rising summer heat leaves the top layer of lakes hotter and less dense than the waters below, meaning mixing is reduced and oxygen supply to the depths falls.

Oxygen levels have increased at the surface of some lakes. But this is most likely due to higher temperatures driving algal blooms, which can also produce dangerous toxins. Cutting emissions to tackle the climate crisis is vital, the scientists said, as well as cutting the use of farm fertiliser and urban sewage pollution that also damages lakes.

“All complex life depends on oxygen and so, when oxygen levels drop, you really decrease the habitat for many different species.” said Prof Kevin Rose, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in the US, who was part of the research team. “This study proves that the problem is even more severe in fresh waters [than in oceans], threatening our drinking water supplies and the delicate balance that enables complex freshwater ecosystems to thrive,” said Curt Breneman, RPI’s dean of science. ...

The study, published in the journal Nature, analysed 45,000 dissolved oxygen and temperature profiles collected from nearly 400 lakes worldwide. Most records started in about 1980, though one went back to 1941.

Despite 'Green Recovery' Vows, G7 Nations Spent Billions More on Fossil Fuels Than Renewables Over Past Year

Even as officials prepare for the G7 summit where seven of the world's richest nations will reportedly discuss climate action and a "green recovery" from the Covid-19 pandemic, a new report reveals that those same countries poured tens of billions of dollars more into fossil fuels in the last year than they spent supporting renewable energy.

According to the relief agency Tearfund, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the G7 nations invested $189 billion in fossil fuel production and deregulation between January 2020 and March 2021, while committing just $147 billion to developing renewable energy.

The groups' report, titled "Cleaning Up Their Act?," notes that in most cases, the money invested by the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and Canada was spent without "green strings," which would have conditioned the spending on fossil fuel companies' commitment to climate action.

The countries "missed major opportunities to make their response to Covid-19 greener," the report reads. "More than eight in every ten dollars committed to fossil fuels came with no 'green strings' attached."

"Investments with no 'green strings' attached are highly problematic, as they end up benefiting fossil-fuel intensive activities without requirements for any climate targets or reductions in pollution," said Angela Picciariello, senior research officer at ODI.

Despite promises to "build back better" after the pandemic by U.S. President Joe Biden—who adopted the slogan for his 2020 campaign—and other leaders, the U.S. and Canadian governments rolled back fossil fuel regulations in the last year, including waiving requirements for impact assessments for infrastructure projects, suspending penalties for pollution-causing corporations, and extending deadlines for emissions reporting.

"The emissions of already-developed reserves of oil, gas and coal alone could bring the world beyond the +1.5°C warming limit set by the Paris Agreement," the report states. "Yet the recovery policies of some G7 nations threw major lifelines to the oil and gas industry, risking an increase in the production and lock-in of these energy systems for decades."

G7 nations particularly invested in transportation systems that run on fossil fuels, spending $115 billion on bailouts for companies including Air France, British Airways, and Honda. More than 80% of the funds were given to the companies without securing commitments to reduce emissions, according to the report.

"So much for the green recovery," tweeted Nick Taylor, a lecturer at the Political Economy Research Center in London.

Authorities on alert as elephants’ 500km trek nears Chinese city

For months, their trek through China’s south-western Yunnan province had gone almost unnoticed. But last week, when images of a herd of 15 Asian elephants walking through a residential area appeared on social media, it immediately captured the imagination of the nation, generating intense media interest and sparking questions as to what prompted the epic journey.

The movement was so unusual that authorities dispatched a taskforce of 360 people with 76 cars and nine drones to track it. State TV has spent days following their every footstep. And as of Wednesday, the hashtag #WhyElephantsTrekkingNorth had been viewed more than 16m times on Weibo.

About 500km (300 miles) into their walk, the herd were seen on Tuesday evening 3km away from the major city of Kunming, turning attention onto efforts to keep them away from populated areas. ...

The appearance of the animals has not always been warmly received by residents in Yunnan. Along the way, they have caused much destruction, eating whole fields of corn and smashing up barns. A car dealer in Eshan county reported last week that six visiting elephants had drunk two tonnes of water in his shop. State broadcaster CCTV has estimated the damage to be at least 6.8m yuan ($1.07m).

Chinese experts said there had been other reports of elephants wandering into villages and harming crops in recent years, with the plants they usually eat gradually replaced by non-edible varieties.

“Large-scale human engineering developments have exacerbated the ‘islanding’ of elephant habitats,” Zhang Li, a professor on mammal conservation at Beijing Normal University told the Global Times . “The traditional buffer zones between humans and elephants are gradually disappearing, and the chances of elephants’ encountering humans naturally increase greatly.”

Also of Interest

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

Biden Joins Long Line of Presidents to 'Woefully' Undercount Civilians Killed in US Wars

House Lawmakers Call on Pentagon to Give Israel More Military Aid

Russia: Pentagon To Use War Games To Smuggle Weapons to Ukrainian Army, Extremist Formations for War in Donbass

Turkey’s Erdogan Warns Biden Ahead of Upcoming Talks

After Biden Says We Must 'Act Swiftly' on Voting Rights, Progressives Respond: 'Abolish the Filibuster'

A Truly Free Society Would Have No Official Narratives

Little-Known Illnesses Turning Up in Covid Long-Haulers

Meet the Construction Attorney Who Shook Up New York’s Mayoral Race

Stressed-out Amazon workers can now access ‘mindfulness’ training. Gee, thanks

Democracy Now: “The Second”: Carol Anderson on the Racist Roots of the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms

Lynn Parramore on The Coup -- and the Corporations -- That Destroyed the Black Middle Class

A Little Night Music

Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers - Original Jelly Roll Blues

Jelly Roll Morton - Doctor Jazz

Jelly Roll Morton - New Orleans Blues

Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers - Steamboat Stomp

Jelly Roll Morton - Michigan Water Blues

Jelly Roll Morton - King Porter Stomp

Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers - Jungle Blues

Jelly Roll Morton & His Orchestra - Boogaboo

Jelly Roll Morton - The Finger Breaker

Jelly Roll Morton - Dead Man Blues

Jelly Roll Morton & His Red Hot Peppers - Pontchartrain Blues