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"The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence."

-- Confucius

News and Opinion

Rumsfeld gave the orders that resulted in the abuse and torture of hundreds of prisoners in US custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. This should be at the top of every obituary.

— Jameel Jaffer (@JameelJaffer) June 30, 2021

The poet of death is on his way. Bon voyage!

Farewell to Donald Rumsfeld, Dreary War Criminal

At 2:40 p.m. on September 11, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued orders to one of his underlings. Among Rumsfeld’s thoughts:

Best info fast.
Good enough
judge whether good enough
hit SH @ same time
not only UBL

And:

Near term target needs –
– go massive – sweep it all up
– Things related & not

That is, less than six hours after the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld was anxious to “hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time.” And he wasn’t especially concerned whether Iraq or any target was responsible for the attacks. He wanted to conduct “massive” attacks on targets “related and not” (emphasis in original). That is, he saw the deaths of thousands of Americans as a wonderful opportunity to do whatever the George W. Bush administration wanted.

At this moment, Rumsfeld was doing what he did best throughout his life: spinning the unspeakable suffering of others into the desired ends of himself and his political allies. ...

And now Rumsfeld is gone.

“He Was a Disaster”: Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich on Donald Rumsfeld’s Legacy as Architect of Iraq War

"The only thing tragic about the death of Donald Rumsfeld is that it didn't occur in an Iraqi prison."

Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. congressman, aide to several Republican presidents, and two-time defense secretary whose torture-laden tenure and ruinous legacy were defined by his lies in service of an unending war that's killed at least hundreds of thousands of people, died Tuesday at age 88.

By the time he was chosen as then-President George W. Bush's secretary of defense, Rumsfeld had already been a Navy veteran, four-term Republican U.S. congressman, and adviser to former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford—for whom he had served as defense secretary.

In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan repeatedly dispatched Rumsfeld as a special envoy to Iraq, whose brutal dictator Saddam Hussein was at the time an important U.S. ally. An infamous handshake between Rumsfeld and Hussein led to the transfer of deadly chemical and biological materials from the U.S. and allies to Iraq. Hussein subsequently weaponized the components and unleashed weapons of mass destruction on both Iranian troops—with the assistance of the Reagan administration—and Iraqi Kurds during the genocidal (pdf) Anfal campaign.

As Bush's defense secretary, Rumsfeld—who served as CEO or chairman of companies including General Instrument and Gilead Sciences—recruited an inner circle of former corporate executives to oversee Pentagon operations, including Air Force Secretary James G. Roche (Northrop Grumman), Navy Secretary Gordon England (General Dynamics), and Army Secretary Thomas E. White (Enron). So great was the influence of the arms industry in the department during Rumsfeld's tenure that one commentator described it as "Department of Defense, Inc."

An ardent imperialist, Rumsfeld was a leading luminary of the neoconservative movement and a prominent leader of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose other members included Bush administration officials such as Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Elliott Abrams, and Paul Wolfowitz.

PNAC hawks—who envisioned and strategized regime change in Iraq and elsewhere even before 9/11—lobbied vigorously for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even though they knew the country had no connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. or weapons of mass destruction. When pressed on this last point, Rumsfeld offered perhaps his most infamous explanation:

As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

In the rushed run-up to invade Iraq, Rumsfeld dutifully disseminated Bush administration lies about Hussein's nonexistent nuclear program, while laughably asserting that the Iraq invasion had "literally nothing to do with oil."

The invasion of Iraq, at first called Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) began in the dark of night with a Navy SEAL raid on two offshore Iraqi oil platforms. The New York Times—which parroted many of the administration's Iraq lies—hailed this as the first "victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire."

Rumsfeld predicted a quick and easy war in Iraq. "Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that," he declared in November 2002 with cocksure miscalculation. Although former President Barack Obama officially ended the Iraq War in December 2011, U.S. troops are still stationed there today—and President Joe Biden bombed the country earlier this week.

When U.S. forces conquered Baghdad, one of the first sites they secured was the Oil Ministry headquarters. Meanwhile, the Iraqi National Museum, which housed priceless ancient artifacts spanning Mesopotamia's 5,000-year history, was being looted. Thousands of statues, manuscripts, and countless other treasures, some of them among the oldest objects created by civilized humans, were stolen while nearby U.S. troops did nothing.

"Stuff happens," Rumsfeld flippantly replied when faced with images of the looting. "The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'"

Thousands of U.S. troops would die during the course of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The latter were practically ignored by Bush officials. When Rumsfeld was asked why the public only hears about the number of American war dead and not about Iraqi casualties, he cooly replied that "we don't do body counts on other people."

But Rumsfeld died without ever facing any accountability or justice for his actions because President Barack Obama’s administration refused to prosecute former Bush administration officials implicated in torture and other war crimes.

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) June 30, 2021

Rumsfeld was also an instrumental figure in the Bush administration's torture program. He signed off on torture techniques used by U.S. troops at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere—places where prisoners were sometimes tortured to death. He also issued a directive allowing torturers to withhold medical care to prisoners under interrogation who had injuries as serious as gunshot wounds. Later, Rumsfeld would require doctors to certify that detainees slated for torture were certified "medically and operationally" fit for abuse.

When the Abu Ghraib torture photo scandal broke, Rumsfeld—after outing the courageous soldier who exposed the abuse—lied about what he knew.

Gen. Antonio Taguba, author of an Army report (pdf) on U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib, said he met with Rumsfeld and other Pentagon brass just before the defense secretary testified to the Senate about abuse at the notorious prison. Taguba, who had seen thousands of photos of detainee abuse, says Rumsfeld asked him if what was happening in the Iraqi prison was abuse or torture.

"I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum and said: 'That’s not abuse. That’s torture.' There was quiet,'" the general recalled.

Yet Rumsfeld testified before the Senate that nobody in the Pentagon had seen the Abu Ghraib torture photos.

However, a Senate Armed Services Committee investigation concluded that "Rumsfeld's authorization of interrogation techniques... was a direct cause of detainee abuse."

The senators additionally asserted that it was "unconscionable and false" for leading Bush officials to blame a "few bad apples" in the military for detainee abuse in order to avoid accountability.

While fighting a war purportedly meant to defeat terrorism in some parts of the world, Rumsfeld supported terror elsewhere. Pursuing allies in the so-called War on Terror, Rumsfeld courted dictators including Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov—who boiled political opponents alive—and the Iranian exile militants Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a State Department-designated terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report concluded that Rumsfeld let bin Laden escape in December 2001. The report also said Rumsfeld's failures ultimately left Americans more vulnerable to terrorism.

It wasn't as if Rumsfeld did not understand the real root causes of anti-U.S. terrorism. In 2004, he commissioned a task force to study the subject. It concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies." The task force report cited "American direct intervention in the Muslim world," U.S. support for dictators in countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan."

Yet Rumsfeld remained an unrepentant cheerleader for war and empire until the end. Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the women-led peace group CodePink who famously confronted the former defense secretary over his war crimes, tweeted that "his legacy of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan lives on."

Daily Beast senior national security correspondent Spencer Ackerman wrote, "The only thing tragic about the death of Donald Rumsfeld is that it didn't occur in an Iraqi prison."

"Do not mourn the defense secretary," said Ackerman. "Mourn his victims. There were nearly too many to tally, but his Pentagon refused to count anyway."

Demonization of Iran Is a “Mistake” That Has Trapped the U.S. in Perpetual Middle East Conflict

US must guarantee it will not leave nuclear deal again, says Iran

A US guarantee that it will never unilaterally leave the Iran nuclear deal again is vital to a successful conclusion of talks in Vienna on the terms of Washington’s return to the agreement, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, has said.

His comments are the clearest official signal yet that disagreements between the US and Iran on how such a guarantee might be constructed remain a serious obstacle. Donald Trump took the US out of the nuclear deal in 2018, only three years afterhis predecessor, Barack Obama, had signed it.

Takht-Ravanchi said that unless some US guarantee of stability was provided, European and other investors would not have the confidence to invest in the Iranian economy.

US diplomats have said such a legally enforceable guarantee cannot be negotiated if only because one US administration cannot bind another or Congress to it. Nor could Washington be left reliant on UN approval to leave the deal if it believed Tehran was flouting its terms because that would in effect make US policy subject to a Russian veto at the UN security council, they said. ...

It is now likely the talks will not recommence until Iran is satisfied that it has the guarantees it requires or compromises on its demand. Ali Bagheri Kani, a hardliner, is tipped to be in charge of the transition in the foreign ministry. Speaking at a UN security council meeting, the French envoy to the UN, Nicolas De Rivière, said Iran had come closer than ever to a nuclear threshold during the three months of talks, and that the negotiations could not be allowed to drag on indefinitely.

Cornel West and Ryan Grim join Julian Assange's father & brother at National Press Club

Is Tucker Carlson Being SPIED ON By NSA?

Bolsonaro fires health official who reportedly asked for vaccine deal bribe

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has fired a health ministry official who reportedly asked for a bribe in a vaccine deal, the latest graft accusation to rock the government amid investigations of its pandemic response.

With over half a million Covid-19 deaths and more new cases daily than any other country, anger is mounting in Brazil over missed opportunities to buy coronavirus vaccines. Accusations of corruption undercutting efforts have poured fuel on the fire, triggering new calls for Bolsonaro’s impeachment.

On Tuesday, Brazil suspended a contract worth 1.6bn reais ($321m) for a vaccine from India’s Bharat Biotech, following allegations of undue pressure within the ministry. Bharat and the government have denied wrongdoing. A former employee at the health ministry recently told the prosecutor’s office that he told the president that he was pressured to sign a contract that would increase the average price of doses by 1,000%.

Bolsonaro, whose popularity has faded as Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll climbed past 500,000, has denied any wrongdoing, saying on Monday he was not aware of any irregularities.

Schumer Amendment Shorts States $5 Billion in Covid-19 Relief Funding

Buried in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Congress passed in March is a little-known amendment, proposed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and backed by 13 of his colleagues in the Democratic caucus, that rerouted billions of dollars meant for economic recovery for small towns. The obscure change altered five words and could strip more than a quarter of the recovery funding from 23 states, including Schumer’s New York.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 included $19.53 billion to distribute to local governments serving small cities and towns of populations of about 50,000 or less, known in government jargon as “non-entitlement units,” or NEUs. In the House’s version of the bill, every NEU in every state would have received the same amount per resident, about $178 per person.

But the Senate version doesn’t allocate aid based on NEU populations. Instead, it instructs the Treasury Department to allocate funding based on states’ “non-metro populations” — a designation that overlaps with NEUs but is not synonymous. First identified by the data consulting firm Civilytics, the change in terminology established a new aid formula that shifted $5 billion, or 25 percent of the total program, creating sharp disparities depending on how states classify their communities. 

According to Civilytics researchers Jared Knowles and Hannah Miller, in states that have large populations living in unincorporated areas — places outside the bounds of local or municipal jurisdiction, governed only at the county, state, and federal levels — local governments will now receive much higher per capita funding than those in states without them. In states like California, Maryland, Georgia, and Virginia, where there are large unincorporated populations, residents in small towns stand to get hundreds of dollars more per person. But in the unincorporated areas themselves, with no local governments to allocate funding, residents are effectively barred from receiving federal aid. ...

Had the federal government kept the House’s funding formula, Pennsylvania would have received almost $689 million more in aid, and New York and Ohio would have also received over $500 million more. Sixteen states in total would have gotten about 70 percent more federal aid for their small-town economic recoveries under the House version. By contrast, Nevada, Maryland, and Virginia are getting more than four times as much thanks to the Senate amendment.

Matt Taibbi: Silicon Valley Makes Ivermectin ‘Right-Wing,’ Medical Community Held HOSTAGE By MSM

Delta variant surge explodes claims that the pandemic is over in the US

For months, the Biden administration, the media and major US corporations have promoted the fiction that the COVID-19 pandemic is all but over. Last month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reversed its guidance on mask-wearing, urging vaccinated people to stop wearing masks and socially distancing in crowded areas. Biden claimed vaccinated Americans had reached the “finish line” in the pandemic, encouraging the public to “take your mask off, you’ve earned the right.”

“America is headed into a summer dramatically different from last year,” the White House wrote earlier this month. “A summer of freedom. A summer of joy. A summer of reunions and celebrations.” But the absurd pretext that the pandemic is over, even as over 300 people continue to die every day in the United States and as the disease continues to surge throughout the globe, was exploded Monday when Los Angeles County—the most populous county in the US—issued a recommendation that residents disregard the CDC order on mask-wearing and social distancing and take health measures recommended by scientists.

“Until we better understand how and to who[m] the Delta variant is spreading, everyone should focus on maximum protection,” the county health department said. The move by Los Angeles County came after the World Health Organization (WHO) repeated its calls that vaccinated people should continue to wear masks in public, openly clashing with the Biden administration. “Vaccines alone will not stop the community transmission, and we need to ensure that people follow public health measures,” WHO Assistant Director-General Mariângela Simão said at a press briefing Friday.

Last year, the Trump administration justified its promotion of “herd immunity” policies, including the premature reopening of businesses and schools, by falsely claiming that the pandemic was over. Trump’s priorities were to get workers back into the factories and students back into the schools in order to pump up the stock market. Biden has continued to enact the same set of priorities, for the same reasons. He has demanded the resumption of 100 percent in-person instruction and denied OSHA pandemic protections to nearly all workplaces, while falsely claiming that children are not vulnerable to COVID-19 and that schools are not major centers of the disease.

Over the past week, it has become clear that the world is in the grips of a third wave of COVID-19, caused by a new Delta variant of the disease first discovered in India. ... Scientists and public health experts are sounding the alarm, demanding that governments reverse their efforts to dismantle remaining safety protocols to stop the spread of the disease. “It is the most hypertransmissible, contagious version of the virus we’ve seen to date, for sure—it’s a superspreader strain if there ever was one,” Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at the Scripps Research Institution, told Scientific American. “We’ve been warned three times by the UK,” Topol added, referring to previous surges in early 2020 and last winter. “This time is the third warning.”

Maine Sets Example With 'Country's Strongest' Facial Recognition Ban

Civil liberties advocates on Wednesday cheered as Maine enacted what that state's ACLU chapter called "the country's strongest statewide facial recognition law."

The new law—which sailed unanimously through both chambers of the state Legislature and was passed without any action from Democratic Gov. Janet Mills—bans the use of facial recognition technology by most state agencies and for the purpose of surveillance.

The legislation contains exceptions for the investigation of serious crime; the identification of deceased, missing, or endangered persons; and other limited purposes.

When the law goes into effect this October, it will prohibit the use of facial surveillance in schools. It will also ban direct access to facial recognition technology by law enforcement officials, who will have to request such access via the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles in the narrow purview permitted by the legislation.

Krystal Ball: Billionaire DIRECTLY FUNDS Military Deployment in DYSTOPIAN move

Latest First Nations discovery reveals 182 unmarked graves at Canada school

A First Nations community in western Canada has discovered the remains of nearly 200 people on the grounds of a former residential school, adding to the growing tally of unmarked graves across the country.

The Lower Kootenay Band said on Wednesday that ground-penetrating radar had revealed 182 human remains at St Eugene’s Mission residential school, near the city of Cranbrook, British Columbia. Some of the remains were buried in shallow graves only three and four feet deep.

“It is believed that the remains of these 182 souls are from the member Bands of the Ktunaxa Nation, neighbouring First Nations communities and the community of ?Aq’am,” the Lower Kootenay band said in a statement. ...

The discovery at St Eugene’s adds to the growing list of unmarked graves. Last week, the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced the discovery of 751 possible unmarked graves. Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc announced they had found 215 unmarked graves, most of which are believed to be children. ...

The school opened in 1890 and became an industrial school in 1912. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it was the site of recurring outbreaks of influenza, mumps, measles, chicken pox and tuberculosis. In 1969, the federal government took over the operation from the Catholic church and shut it down.

congratulations to the new mayor of New York City! pic.twitter.com/jsx3EkFXHD

— Rob (@robrousseau) June 30, 2021

Ross Barkan: What The F*** Is Going On In NYC Mayoral Race?

New York mayor’s race in chaos after elections board publishes incorrect tally

New York City’s mayoral election has been thrown into chaos after the board of elections mistakenly included 135,000 “test ballots” in its vote tally. The board of elections had published updated vote totals for the Democratic primary earlier on Tuesday, which showed Kathryn Garcia, New York’s former sanitation commissioner, narrowing the gap on Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, to less than two points.

Hours later, however, the board of elections said it had become aware of a “discrepancy” in its report. The elections board said its calculations had included “both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records”. The error is likely to sow unfortunate confusion around the system of ranked choice voting, which was used for the first time in a New York City mayoral election this year.

“Board staff has removed all test ballot images from the system and will upload election night results, cross-referencing against election night reporting software for verification,” the elections board said on Twitter at 10.34pm on Tuesday night. “The cast vote record will be re-generated and the RCV rounds will be re-tabulated.” ...

Even if Tuesday’s total had not included 135,000 test ballots, it still would have created confusion: the tally would not have included the 124,000 absentee ballots which are yet to be counted. Those votes are set to be added to the total and published next week.

Clyburn TRIES TO STOP Nina Turner The Same Way He Stopped Bernie

Clyburn Intervention Seen as Latest Salvo in Dem Establishment's Bid to Stop Nina Turner

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, threw his support behind Shontel Brown on Tuesday in the race to fill the vacant seat in Ohio's 11th Congressional District, the latest salvo in the party establishment's effort to forestall the momentum of progressive firebrand Nina Turner.

Brown, the leader of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, is Turner's top opponent in the August 3 special election, which observers have come to view as a proxy battle over key policy issues such as Medicare for All and over the broader ideological direction of the national party.

A top congressional recipient of pharmaceutical industry cash, Clyburn has long been a vocal opponent of Medicare for All despite polls showing the proposal is popular among his South Carolina constituents.

During an interview on Tuesday, Clyburn "took a swipe at what he called the 'sloganeering' of the party's left flank, which has risen to power with calls for 'Medicare for All,' and to 'abolish ICE' and 'defund the police,'" the New York Times reported.

While Brown told the Cleveland Plain Dealer earlier this month that she "certainly would be in favor of Medicare for All" if it reached the House floor for a vote, the Ohio Democrat went on to criticize the proposal in the same interview, characterizing the policy as an attempt to "eliminate employers from providing care for their employees."

"I know when I'm out in the community there are some people who are satisfied with the healthcare they're being provided," said Brown. "I certainly don't want to be the person to end that.”

By contrast, Turner—a former Ohio state senator who served as a national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential bid—has campaigned as an unabashed supporter of Medicare for All. In a 30-second ad released earlier this month, Turner said she is fighting for Medicare for All on behalf of her late mother, who died at the age of 42 with "no insurance" and "no money in the bank."

"The poor, the working poor, and the barely middle class should live a good life," Turner said. "Wealth should not dictate whether or not you have access to healthcare."

As the Daily Poster's David Sirota and Julia Rock wrote Wednesday, corporate lobbyists held a fundraiser for Brown the day after Turner's ad dropped.

"Among those headlining the fundraiser was Jerome Murray—a registered lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association, which has been backing a nationwide campaign to reduce support for Medicare for All," Sirota and Rock noted. "The fundraiser was also headlined by a CVS Health lobbyist, as well as seven Democratic lawmakers who have raked in more than $5 million from donors in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors—including two whose top donating sector is the pharmaceutical industry."

"Now, U.S. Rep. James Clyburn—one of the Democratic Party's most outspoken opponents of Medicare for All—is intervening to try to halt Turner’s rise in the polls," the pair added.

Clyburn's endorsement of Brown came two weeks after erstwhile Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced her support for the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair.

"First Clinton and now Clyburn," tweeted The Daily Poster's Walker Bragman. "Corporate Democrats really don't want to see Nina Turner elected to Congress. Pretty good selling point for Nina Turner, honestly." ...

While polling for the contest is scarce, Turner appears to be the frontrunner in the race as she continues to outraise Brown and other contenders by a long shot.

Ryan Grim: Nina Turner Opponent BEGS For SUPER PAC Rescue And GETS IT

ExxonMobil lobbyists filmed saying oil giant’s support for carbon tax a PR ploy

Lobbyists for ExxonMobil have described the oil giant’s backing for a carbon tax as a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures to combat the climate crisis. Two senior lobbyists based in Washington told an undercover reporter for Unearthed, the investigative journalism branch of Greenpeace, that they worked to undermine Joe Biden’s plans to limit greenhouse emissions and other environmental measures in his infrastructure bill.

One of the lobbyists also admitted that Exxon “aggressively” fought against climate science and funded shadow groups to deny global heating. Keith McCoy, a senior director in Exxon’s Washington government affairs team, was recorded on video in May saying that the company backs a carbon tax “as an easy talking point” and an “advocacy tool” because “there is not an appetite for a carbon tax” and that Republican legislators who oppose taxes in principle will never let it happen.

“Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans, and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that – but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well, what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,” he said. Later, McCoy reiterates the point: “Carbon tax is not going to happen.” ...

In a meeting over Zoom, McCoy admitted that Exxon funded “shadow groups” that worked to misrepresent and deny climate science in order to sow doubt and stall regulation. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes,” he said. “Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments, we were looking out for shareholders.”

For people who still think climate change isn’t an infrastructure issue: https://t.co/ePmtYohTS3

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) June 30, 2021

How did a small town in Canada become one of the hottest places on Earth?

On Sunday, the small mountain town of Lytton, British Columbia, became one of the hottest places in the world. Then, on Monday, Lytton got even hotter – 47.9C (118F) – hotter than it’s ever been in Las Vegas, 1,300 miles to the south. And by Tuesday, 49.6C (121F). Lytton is at 50 deg N latitude – about the same as London. This part of the world should never get this hot. Seattle’s new all-time record of 108F, also set Monday, is hotter than it’s ever been in Miami. In Portland, the new record of 116F would beat the warmest day ever recorded in Houston by nearly 10 degrees. ...

It’s the mountains of the Pacific coast that have had an essential and unique role in making this particular heat wave possible. Climate change is not just warming the surface of the planet, it’s warming Earth’s entire troposphere – the lowest layer of the atmosphere where all our weather occurs. That’s particularly true in mountainous areas, where temperatures are rising even faster than elsewhere. When snow and ice recedes or even disappears from mountains, the bare soil beneath can warm unimpeded. A 2015 study found that mountainous areas above 2,000 meters (6,500ft) are warming about 75% faster than places at lower elevations.

Warmer mountains along with the mega-drought now plaguing western North America – the most widespread severe drought on record – contributed to a high pressure “heat dome” that has been self-reinforcing this week to create truly extreme conditions along the Pacific coast. Dry, descending air rushing down the mountain slopes offshore towards the ocean created a literal pressure cooker, sending temperatures soaring to never-before-seen values.

Downstream of Lytton, flood warnings are now in effect for the river valleys as sudden snow and ice melt has created a torrent of rushing water. For the time being, Canada’s glaciers are melting so fast they’re flooding out homes under clear skies. ...

“It’s warmer in parts of western Canada than in Dubai,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada in an interview with CTV. “I mean, it’s just not something that seems Canadian.” The most shocking part is that all this is happening with just two degrees Fahrenheit of global warming in the 150 years since we started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. On our current path, we’re heading for another three to five degrees of warming in half that time.

David Dayen: Miami Condo Collapse Signals DISASTROUS Weather Crises To Come

Also of Interest

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

Neoliberalism Has Depended on Huge Levels of Government Support for Its Entire Existence

You Ordered Healthcare, You Got Airstrikes: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

US ‘Intervention Has Directly Led to the Conditions Migrants Are Fleeing’

My relatives went to a Catholic school for Native children. It was a place of horrors

Biden's Position on Line 3 Abandons His Climate Commitments

How Pesticide Companies Corrupted the EPA and Poisoned America

How cities and states could finally hold fossil fuel companies accountable

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

High-Rise Building Collapses: In the Past 50 Years, 174 People Have Died and Hundreds Injured. The Typical Collapse Is During Construction – Not 40 Years Later

A Little Night Music

Joe Hinton - Better To Give Than Receive

Joe Hinton - Now I'm Satisfied

Joe Hinton - You're My Girl

Joe Hinton - If You Love Me

Joe Hinton - Got You On My Mind

Joe Hinton - Funny (How Time Slips Away)

Little Joe Hinton - Tired Of Walking

Little Joe Hinton - I Won't Be Your Fool

Little Joe Hinton - My Love Is Real

Little Joe Hinton - Let's Start a Romance

Little Joe Hinton - The Whip Twist