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This evening's music features New Orleans r&b singer Tommy Ridgely. Enjoy!

"Conspiracy! Intrigue! A rapidly thickening plot! Add some bestiality and a lecherous priest and I'd say you have the beginnings of a beautiful novel."

-- Marquis de Sade

News and Opinion

Former Peru dictator’s spymaster reappears in alleged plot to swing recount

He was known as the Peruvian Rasputin, the spymaster of one of the country’s most corrupt and brutal regimes. Vladimiro Montesinos masterminded a network of political espionage, mining state coffers to control the military top brass, the courts, and the media, until he was brought down by one of his own videotapes, which showed him bribing politicians.

Now Montesinos, the éminence grise of the jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, has re-emerged after nearly two decades in relative obscurity – this time amid an apparent bid to aid Fujimori’s daughter Keiko Fujimori, whose baseless claims of electoral fraud have plunged Peru into its most tumultuous weeks in recent history. ...

Montesinos is serving multiple sentences for human rights crimes, corruption and arms and drugs trafficking in a maximum security naval base prison, yet he was somehow able to use a landline number to make 17 phone calls to Pedro Rejas, a retired military officer and formerly loyal Fujimori cohort who later revealed the recordings. Peru’s defence ministry confirmed the security breach at the navy-run prison and said three guards and one officer had been removed from their positions.

In one conversation, days after the election, Montesinos appears to suggest bribes be paid through an intermediary to three of the four members of an electoral tribunal to favour Fujimori in a recount. “If we had done the job as we had proposed it we would not be in this shitty problem,” Montesinos, 76, complains at one point in the recording. ...

The emergence of the Montesinos audio ended an unsettling week, as one of the four judges on the electoral tribunal quit, leaving it without quorum, after clashing with the other officials over requests to nullify votes. He was replaced on Saturday by another judge, but both face separate probes for alleged corruption. The electoral tribunal has until 28 July, Peru’s independence day, to declare a winner; if not, new elections must be called under the country’s constitution.

The Weird, Creepy Media Blackout On Recent Assange Revelations

As of this writing, it has been three days since the Icelandic newspaper Stundin broke the story that a key witness in the US government’s case against Julian Assange had fabricated allegations against the WikiLeaks founder. And yet, somehow, Assange is still in prison.

Weirder still, not one major western media outlet outside of Iceland has reported on this massive and entirely legitimate news story. A search brings up coverage by Icelandic media, by Russian media, and by smaller western outlets like Democracy Now, World Socialist Website, Consortium News, Zero Hedge and some others, but as of this writing this story has been completely ignored by all major outlets who are ostensibly responsible for informing the public in the western world.

It’s not that those outlets have been ignoring Assange altogether these last few days either. Reuters recently published an interview with Assange’s fiance Stella Moris. Evening Standard has a recent article out on Assange’s plans to marry Moris in Belmarsh, as does Deutsche Welle. It’s just this one story in particular that they’ve been blacking out completely.

And it’s not that the mainstream press are unaware of this story. Mainstream western reporters spend a lot of time on Twitter, and Assange’s name was trending in the United States after the Stundin story broke. Tweets about the article by high-profile accounts like WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have many thousands of shares each. They’ve all seen the article. They all know it’s newsworthy. They’re just choosing not to report on it.

It reminds me of the blanket media blackout that occurred while the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was hemorrhaging leaks revealing a US government-tied coverup in the alleged chlorine gas incident in Douma, Syria. Immensely newsworthy stories were breaking every few days on a major international scandal, yet not a peep was made about it by the mainstream press.

We got some insight into what happens in mainstream newsrooms during such bizarre circumstances when journalist Tareq Haddad leaked the emails from his editors at Newsweek refusing him permission to write about the unfolding OPCW scandal. Haddad’s pitch was rejected by editor Dimi Reider on the basis that other bigger outlets hadn’t written about it.

“Leak has been out since weekend,” Reider wrote. “It’s certainly no scoop. Yet despite the days that passed, not a single respected media outlet – many of whom boast far greater regional expertise, resources on the ground and in newsroom than Newsweek does – have taken the leak remotely seriously. Which already yesterday made my wonder how we could or why we should.”

Reider was supported by Newsweek‘s digital director Laura Davis, who told Haddad his pitch was being rejected because “the leak found zero to no traction among publications which are highly resourced and experienced on Syria.”

And that’s just pretty darn convenient for the powerful, is it not? Assuming other mainstream news outlets feel the same, this means they’re all generally following the lead of just a handful of top-tier publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. If just those few outlets decide to ignore a major news story that’s inconvenient for the powerful (either by persuasion, infiltration or by their own initiative), then no one else will either. As far as the media-consuming public is concerned, it’s like the major news story never happened at all.

And that’s really, really creepy.

Western mass media outlets are propaganda. They are owned and controlled by wealthy people in coordination with the secretive government agencies tasked with preserving the world order upon which the media-owning plutocrats have built their kingdoms, and their purpose is to manipulate the way the mainstream public thinks, acts and votes into alignment with the agendas of the ruling class.

You see this propaganda in the way things are reported, but you also see it in the way things are not reported. Entire news stories can be completely redacted from mainstream attention if they are sufficiently inconvenient for the mechanisms of empire, or only allowed in via platforms like Tucker Carlson Tonight and thereby tainted and spun as ridiculous right-wing conspiracy theories.

If newsworthiness and significance were what governed mainstream news media reporting, instead of the agendas of profit and power, we’d constantly be hearing about the people dying in Yemen and the brutal income inequality in the United States. And the fact that the most powerful government in the world is persecuting a journalist for telling the truth would be at the forefront of everyone’s awareness, instead of the mountain of smears they have heaped upon Julian Assange.

I sometimes get people telling me that some news stories are meant to “distract” us from other, bigger news stories, like this is something the imperial narrative managers do especially on some occasions but not all the time. In reality, distraction is never not happening, because every single day the plutocratic media pull people’s attention away from the pressing issues of the moment like ecocide, poverty, oppression and mass military slaughter to get them talking about Cardi B’s baby bump and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest doofy publicity stunt.

We are being lied to. Constantly, and in more ways than we realize. By omission, by distortion, by half-truths and by outright deception. Our minds are being actively messed with by powerful people with limitless resources to ensure their continued domination of the planet at any cost. Our very perception of reality is being assaulted on myriad fronts. Until humanity finds a way to wake itself up from its propaganda-induced coma, the abuses of the powerful will continue.

Israel: Knesset member calls for murder of people in mixed marriages

An Israeli Knesset member has called for the killing of couples involved in mixed marriages during a speech in parliament. Yitzhak Pindrus is a member of the United Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox party that believes in a homogenous Jewish state and society.

He called for the murder of "people who contribute to miscegenation", invoking a Biblical story about the murder of a Jewish man and non-Jewish woman while they were making love by lancing a spear through their engaged sexual organs.

He made his comments on Monday while addressing - and looking at - Mansour Abbas, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who is a deputy minister in Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's coalition and the head of the Islamist Raam party.

Six federal agencies used facial recognition software to ID George Floyd protesters

Huawei lawyers claim emails prove US has no grounds to extradite CFO from Canada

US justice department’s battle to extradite Meng Wanzhou from Canada has taken a fresh turn as lawyers for Huawei’s chief financial officer claimed that internal emails and bank documents prove there is no grounds to extradite her to the US. Meng, 48, was arrested on a US warrant at Vancouver airport in late 2018, and has been battling extradition to the US. Her detention infuriated the Chinese government and has helped drag relations between Beijing and Ottawa to their lowest point in years.

The US accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom to sell equipment to Iran in violation of US sanctions. It says Meng, 48, committed fraud by misleading HSBC about the company’s business dealings in Iran. But Meng’s legal team argue that documents from HSBC show that Huawei was open about its links to Skycom. In a statement, Huawei Canada said: “These documents consisting of emails and other HSBC records show there is no evidence of fraud on HSBC.

“They show that Huawei’s control over Skycom was not kept from senior HSBC executives, that the continuing nature of Skycom’s business with Huawei in Iran was not kept from HSBC executives and that internal HSBC risk assessments were made based on knowledge of the true facts”. ...

Huawei lawyers will now try to persuade the Canadian court to permit the internal documents to be introduced as evidence. Government lawyers in Canada are likely to contest Huawei’s interpretation of the documents and have argued that they are irrelevant to the extradition process and should be reserved for a fraud trial in the US.

Delta variant: LA recommends indoor masks regardless of vaccination status

Health officials in Los Angeles county now strongly recommend that people wear masks indoors in public places, regardless of their vaccination status, to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.

Monday’s recommendation by the LA county health department comes as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that Delta variants are now responsible for about one in every five new infections across the US.

LA county health officials noted that “fully vaccinated people appear to be well protected from infections with Delta variants”. But the department suggests that people wear masks when inside grocery or retail stores, as well as theaters and family entertainment centers and workplaces when people’s vaccination statuses are not known.

“Until we better understand how and to who the Delta variant is spreading, everyone should focus on maximum protection with minimum interruption to routine as all businesses operate without other restrictions, like physical distancing and capacity limits,” the department said in a news release.

Facebook’s value tops $1tn after judge dismisses US lawsuits

In a significant blow to US regulators’ attempt to rein in big tech, a federal judge has dismissed lawsuits brought against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and a broad coalition of state attorneys general.

Markets cheered the ruling, sending Facebook shares surging by more than 4%, which pushed the social network’s market value to more than $1tn (£722bn) for the first time.

The US government and 48 states and districts sued Facebook in December, accusing the tech company of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors and seeking remedies that could include a forced spin-off of the social network’s Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services.

But on Monday, the US district judge James Boasberg ruled that the lawsuits were “legally insufficient” and didn’t provide enough evidence to prove that Facebook was a monopoly. The ruling dismisses the complaint but not the case, meaning the FTC could refile another complaint. ...

Facebook shares soared in the aftermath of the decision, propelling it into the club of companies now valued at over $1tn. Since 2018, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google’s holding company, Alphabet have all crossed that threshold.

Lots of big talk going on. Let's see where this goes.

Ilhan Omar Says Progressives Ready to Withhold Votes From Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said Tuesday that Democratic lawmakers in the House's nearly 100-member Progressive Caucus are prepared to withhold their votes from the White House-backed bipartisan infrastructure deal in order to guarantee the concurrent passage of a separate bill that invests in climate action, child care, and other priorities.

Speaking to Politico, Omar—the whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)—said a recent internal poll of the members showed that 60% of respondents would be willing to withhold their votes to secure a reconciliation bill. The Minnesota Democrat noted that 80% of the caucus responded to the survey, meaning that more than 40 CPC members are prepared to stand in the way of a bipartisan infrastructure measure if it is not accompanied by a more ambitious bill.

Depending on how many House Republicans ultimately support the bipartisan deal, that level of progressive opposition could be enough to sink the bill.

"We have a commitment that regardless of what happens with bipartisan legislation, they will give us reconciliation legislation that goes as far as we've wanted it," Omar said.

Under the two-track infrastructure approach embraced by the Democratic leadership and endorsed by President Joe Biden, Congress will soon move the $579 billion bipartisan infrastructure plan through regular order, meaning the bill will need 60 votes to pass the Senate. The details of the measure have yet to be finalized amid growing questions over its proposed pay-fors, which could include the privatization of public assets and cuts to unemployment insurance.

At the same time as the bipartisan bill advances, Democrats plan to use the arcane budget reconciliation process—which is exempt from the Senate's 60-vote filibuster rule—to pass legislation dealing with agenda items that were excluded from the bipartisan plan, from major green energy investments to Medicare expansion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed last week that the lower chamber will not vote on the bipartisan legislation until the Senate also passes a reconciliation bill, which Republicans are likely to unify against.

Now House progressives are urging Pelosi to hold to that position as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) demands the decoupling of the bipartisan bill and the infrastructure package. ...

In an appearance on MSNBC over the weekend, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—chair of the CPC—said she has repeatedly conveyed to Pelosi that the bipartisan bill will not garner enough progressive support to pass the House unless there is also a "full reconciliation package."

"That's just the way it is," said Jayapal. "We're not going to be passing a bipartisan infrastructure package unless we are, at the same time, passing a reconciliation package that includes all of our priorities. And that has been our consistent message for some time."

Back in April, the CPC released a document (pdf) outlining its top priorities for the reconciliation bill, a list that includes slashing sky-high prescription drug prices, lowering the Medicare eligibility age, investing in affordable housing, establishing a permanent paid family and medical leave program, and providing a path to citizenship for essential workers, Dreamers, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients.

It remains unclear whether those policy goals will make their way into the reconciliation measure, the details of which have yet to be worked out by the Democratic leadership. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, is advocating for a $6 trillion reconciliation bill that includes Medicare expansion and other progressive proposals.

Over the weekend, Sanders joined his progressive allies in the House in vowing to oppose any bipartisan infrastructure deal that is not paired with a sweeping reconciliation package.

"Let me be clear: There will not be a bipartisan infrastructure deal without a reconciliation bill that substantially improves the lives of working families and combats the existential threat of climate change," Sanders tweeted Sunday. "No reconciliation bill, no deal. We need transformative change NOW."

US needs 30m new trees to combat shade disparity, study finds

With vast swathes of the American west baking under a record-setting heatwave, a new study has revealed how unevenly trees are spread throughout cities in the United States and how much it disadvantages communities of color and the poor. In order to address the balance, America needs to plant more than 30 million trees in major urban environments across the country, according to a major new report.

The first-ever nationwide tally of trees, known as the Tree Equity Score, combines several metrics, including socioeconomics, population density and existing tree cover. Their goal is to show which locations have enough trees for optimal health and economic benefits.

The study examined 3,810 municipalities, including 150,000 neighborhoods and 486 cities with at least 50,000 residents across the country. It found that in order to establish tree equity, cities need to plant about 31.4 million trees – about a 10% increase from the tree cover of today.

Trees are especially lacking in neighborhoods where minorities live, and more prominent in white, affluent neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with a majority of people of color have 33% less tree canopy on average than majority white communities. And neighborhoods with 90% or more of their residents living in poverty have 65% less tree canopy than communities with only 10% or less of the population in poverty.

Numerous studies show a clear relationship between the urban forest and physical health: shade trees promote physical activity and mitigate the effects of heat on health – especially during heat waves. Trees cool the area immediately around them through shade and transpiration, or the evaporation of moisture from leaves – usually leaving the surrounding 100ft about 3F cooler than other places. Trees also remove fine particulates from the air, letting residents breathe easier. American Forests research in Dallas showed heat-related deaths could drop by 22% with a combination of trees and reflective surfaces.

LEAKED Video: "IMMINENT" Plan To Overturn Roe V. Wade?

California bans state travel to Florida and four other states over LGBTQ+ laws

California added five states, including Florida, to its list of places where state-funded travel is banned because of laws that discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, on Monday added Florida, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia to the list that now has 17 states where state employee travel is forbidden except under limited circumstances.

“Make no mistake: we’re in the midst of an unprecedented wave of bigotry and discrimination in this country, and the state of California is not going to support it,” Bonta said.

Lawmakers in 2016 banned non-essential travel to states with laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The 12 other states on the list are: Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Worth a full read:

‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US

As the United States has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, according to a new nationwide analysis from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, the researchers found, even though explicit racial discrimination in housing has been outlawed for half a century. The levels of residential segregation appeared highest not in the American south, but in parts of the north-east and midwest: the most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit. ...

Home values are twice as high in highly segregated white neighborhoods as in segregated neighborhoods of color. Poverty rates are three times greater in highly segregated neighborhoods of color. Life expectancy is starkly different. Every outcome that matters in life is shaped by environment. That’s what we mean by structural racism. It’s not about racial prejudice. It’s about the system and environment in which we live. ...

In the first few decades of the 20th century, in northern and western cities, real estate agents began developing an ideology of segregation as African Americans, as part of the great migration, moved out of the south. They had this notion that keeping racially homogeneous neighborhoods was important for the maintenance of property values. You had the widespread adoption of racially restrictive covenants. In the 1930s, the federal government got involved with the housing market for the first time, during the New Deal, and essentially extended and deepened the previous 20 to 30 years of local segregation. In the third phase, racially restrictive covenants were made illegal in 1948, and explicit housing discrimination as of 1970, when the Fair Housing Act goes into effect. But municipalities maintained segregation through superficially race-neutral mechanisms: through blocking development, environmental regulations, zoning authorities and discretionary review.

How the “Abolition Amendment” Would End Constitutional Loophole That Allows Forced Labor in Prisons

Ice transfers 30 detainees to unknown location amid hunger strike

A group of 30 immigrant detainees in Newark, New Jersey, were quietly transferred to an unknown location in the early hours of Tuesday. Among them were some men who were on a hunger strike for over a day who had worries about being sent to another location and were demanding to be released.

Essex county chief of staff Philip Alagia confirmed 30 detainees under the jurisdiction of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) were transferred out of the facility, and that the Ice population in the facility is now down to 76 men.

Abolish Ice NY-NJ, a coalition of organizations seeking to shut down prisons and immigration detention centers, believes 39 detainees were on a hunger strike before the transfer, and that among their concerns were their video tablets being taken away – preventing them from communicating with attorneys and families about their potential move. ...

“This is an act of powerful, organized resistance, and it is not an easy choice,” said the coalition in a text message to the Guardian. “The people have shown time and time again that they are willing to put their bodies on the line for freedom. These transfers put them at risk for being force-fed, and in some cases, deported.” According to Ice’s detention guidelines, a hunger strike is only recognized by the agency after nine consecutive meal denials.

Abolish Ice NY-NJ said Ice has the authority to release people in its custody at any time, and condemned the Biden administration for its role in the transfers.

Advocates Denounce 'Horrifying' SCOTUS Ruling Upholding Indefinite Immigrant Detention

In a decision called "horrifying" by human rights advocates, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the government may indefinitely detain previously deported immigrants who claim they will be tortured or persecuted if returned to their countries of origin.

The court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Johnson v. Guzman Chavez that a group of previously removed immigrants who were apprehended again after reentering the United States could not be released on bond while the government evaluates their claims of "reasonable fear" of torture or persecution. The decision reverses a U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the immigrants' favor.

Writing for the court's right-wing majority, Justice Samuel Alito noted that "Congress has created an expedited process" for the removal of "aliens" caught reentering the U.S. following a deportation.

"Those aliens are not entitled to a bond hearing while they pursue withholding of removal," Alito declared.

Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas rounded out the majority.

Justice Stephen Breyer penned a dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

"Why would Congress want to deny a bond hearing to individuals who reasonably fear persecution or torture, and who, as a result, face proceedings that may last for many months or years?" wrote Breyer. "I can find no satisfactory answer to this question." ...

Sarah Paoletti, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School's Practice Professor of Law, and director of the Transnational Legal Clinic, wrote:

Just a day after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights held a hearing on egregious rights violations committed against individuals held in immigrant detention, and questioned the legitimacy of a system of detention that criminalizes individuals seeking refuge in the United States, the 6-3 conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, in Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, has dismissed U.S. obligations under international human rights law and ruled that persons seeking refuge in the United States after a prior order of removal must be held in detention without the right to a bond hearing while they pursue legal avenues for immigration relief.

"Today, six Supreme Court justices determined that the clear text of the Immigration and Nationality Act—provisions introduced into the law in 1996—gives individuals fleeing persecution no opportunity to challenge their detention," added Paoletti, "and in doing so have sanctioned the United States' use of punitive, prolonged, and arbitrary detention as a means of immigration enforcement and deterrence."

Briahna Joy Gray: Clyburn PROVES Dem Establishment Anti-Bernie Agenda, Endorses Nina Turner Opponent

Dem Primary CHAOS: NYC Election Board DROPS THE BALL, Investigating Discrepancies

Minnesota Sheriff Barricades Pipeline Resistance Camp’s Driveway

A Minnesota sheriff’s office blocked access Monday morning to one of the protest encampments set up to resist the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline. In a notice delivered at 6 a.m. to pipeline opponents, who own the property, the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office stated that it would no longer be allowing vehicular traffic on the small strip of county-owned land between the driveway and the road. Sheriff’s deputies arrived with trucks carrying building materials, a witness said.

“I was handed a notice that states the sheriff will be installing a physical barricade across the driveway to our private property,” said Tara Houska, an Anishinaabe co-founder of the anti-pipeline Giniw Collective, which organized the camp. “He’s saying that we have no right of access to our private property by vehicle.”

The pipeline opponents, also known as water protectors, plan to take legal action. “This is quite simply nothing less than an overt political blockade,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for the pipeline opponents and director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation. “This is an outrageous and unlawful effort to blockade people who are engaged in protected First Amendment activity and to punish them for their opposition to the Enbridge pipeline, where Enbridge is serving as the paymaster for Hubbard County sheriff.”

Verheyden-Hilliard was referring to an Enbridge-funded escrow account set up by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to reimburse public safety agencies for activity related to Line 3. So far Enbridge has reimbursed Hubbard County $2,660 for riot helmet face shields and chest protectors as well as equipment related to removing pipeline opponents locked to construction infrastructure.

Water protectors have been using the trail unencumbered by restrictions for around three years, since the camp opened. The barricade was raised only after Line 3 construction ramped up and protest actions increased.

Five Asian countries account for 80% of new coal power investment

Five Asian countries are jeopardising global climate ambitions by investing in 80% of the world’s planned new coal plants, according to a report. Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam plan to build more than 600 coal power units, even though renewable energy is cheaper than most new coal plants.

The investments in one of the most environmentally damaging sources of energy could generate a total of 300 gigawatts of energy – enough to power the UK more than three times over – despite calls from climate experts at the UN for all new coal plants to be cancelled. ...

China is the world’s leading coal investor, with plans to increase its existing 1,100-gigawatt fleet of coal-fired power plants by another 187 gigawatts, according to the report. Carbon Tracker claims that solar and windfarms could already generate cheaper electricity than more than 85% of the country’s existing coal plants, and that by 2024 renewable energy will be able to outcompete all coal-fired power.

In India, the world’s second largest coal power generator, and Indonesia, renewable energy will also be able to outcompete coal by 2024, while in Japan and Vietnam coal will be uneconomic compared with renewables by 2022.

California couple fined $18,000 for illegally uprooting 36 Joshua trees

A couple has been fined $18,000 after uprooting 36 Joshua trees to make space for a home and then burying them in a hole. Authorities hope the fine discourages others from mowing down the crooked-limbed plant, which is an imperiled species being considered for protection under California’s endangered species act.

“Most California citizens who reside in Joshua tree habitat revere these iconic desert species, more so now than ever because of its degraded population status,” Nathaniel Arnold, the deputy chief of the California department of fish and wildlife’s law enforcement division, said in a press release. “We hope it serves as a deterrent to others who may think it is acceptable to unlawfully remove Joshua trees to make way for development.”

Authorities started investigating the destruction of these Joshua trees – which are actually not trees, but a succulent named Yucca brevifolia – on 11 February, after a nearby resident spotted his neighbors using a tractor to fell dozens of the plants. The neighbor called the department of fish and wildlife tip line to report it, according to officials and the Los Angeles Times. The neighbor reportedly warned the couple against removing the plants. Because the western Joshua tree is being considered for protection under the state’s endangered species statute, it is “illegal to disturb, move, replant, remove” them, officials said.

Douglas Poston, a prosecutor in San Bernardino county, reportedly said that the couple thought that Joshua trees under a certain diameter could be taken out. The couple owns the lot and wanted to build a home there. “But that’s not accurate, obviously,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Poston as saying. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foot tall or 20ft tall, it’s under that protection.”

Historic heatwave, extreme drought and wildfires plague North American west

The summer of 2021 is already shaping up to be one for the record books, with much of the American west gripped by historic heatwaves, extreme drought, and the threat of large wildfires that have already begun to burn across the region. The crisis has also extended into Canada, with temperatures in British Columbia soaring to 118F (46.6C) on Monday, shattering records for the area where few are set up for such intense heat. Experts and officials fear that the catastrophic conditions, fueled by the climate crisis, will only get worse through the coming months. ... “This is the beginning of a permanent emergency,” said Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, during an interview on MSNBC. “We have to tackle the source of this problem, which is climate change.”

The heatwave, caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure, extends from California up through areas in Canada’s Arctic territories and was worsened by the human-caused climate crisis. Zeke Hausfather, a scientist at the climate-data non-profit Berkeley Earth, said the Pacific north-west had warmed by about 3F (1.7C) in the past half-century. Noting that this would still have been an extreme heatwave without the additional warming, he said: “This is worse than the same event would have been 50 years ago.”

For the third straight week, Extreme (D3)/Exceptional (D4) Drought in the West has set a #DroughtMonitor record.

49.7% of the West is in D3/D4 compared to 48.9% last week

The high prior to the 2020/2021 drought was July 23, 2002, at 45.3%.
https://t.co/HtSRATnpTz @NOAA pic.twitter.com/E5BNYO7bfk

— NIDIS Drought.gov (@DroughtGov) June 24, 2021

Large fires are already burning, exhausting resources across the region much earlier than in previous years. Forty-eight large fires have burned more than 661,400 acres across 12 states, as “wildland fire personnel continue to deal with extreme temperatures and very dry fuels across the western states”, the National Interagency Fire Center reports. In Arizona alone, 17 fires are still uncontained.

Also of Interest

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

Judge tosses frivolous lawsuit by heiress Sulome Anderson seeking to destroy The Grayzone

Craig Murray: FBI Fabrication Against Assange Falls Apart

Do US Attacks Portend More Regional Violence in Iraq, Syria?

Biden's Iran Policy Is Already At A Dead End

Turkey, Azerbaijan Launch Live-Fire Military Exercise Named After Ataturk

Prepare For The Forest Fire/Smoke Season

California developers want to build a city in the wildlands. It could all go up in flames

Miami Building Collapse Shows Tragic Costs of Neoliberal Deregulation

Flying cars will be a reality by 2030, says Hyundai’s Europe chief

Gravitational waves from star-eating black holes detected on Earth

Sea Level Expert in Miami: “We Are Building Here Like There’s No Tomorrow — Maybe That’s Correct”

A Little Night Music

Tommy Ridgley - Double Eye Whammy

Tommy Ridgley - Lets try and talk it over

Tommy Ridgley - What'cha Gonna Do

Tommy Ridgley - Jam Up

Tommy Ridgley - I want some money baby

Tommy Ridgley (& Grp.) - The Goose

Tommy Ridgley - I'm Not The Same Person

Tommy Ridgley - Looped

Tommy Ridgley - Early Dawn Boogie