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"The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations."

-- Noam Chomsky

News and Opinion

The Taliban Surrendered in 2001

At a U.S. Special Forces camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Dec. 5, 2001, the Taliban offered an unconditional surrender. Furthermore, they would disband and disarm: a military force would no longer exist. Then President George W. Bush ignored the offer and continued attacking the Taliban until the end of his term. If only in self-defense the Taliban fought back, eventually regaining the battlefield initiative.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama fought the Taliban for eight years more. Former President Donald Trump did so for the next four.

Twenty years later, after the squandering of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, President Joe Biden withdrew American troops from Afghanistan —and drew angry criticism for the chaotic exit that followed.

How perverse to chastise Biden for a messy ending of the war in Afghanistan and fail to indict George Bush for its illegal beginning. ...

Osama bin Laden was portrayed as an iconic terrorist, to be apprehended for his orchestration of 9/11. But George Bush from his first day in office, Jan. 20, 2001, could have negotiated with the Taliban to assassinate Osama bin Laden or to surrender him into U.S. custody. That was the standing offer the Taliban tendered in late 2000, seeking to retain U.S. favor after bin Laden bombed the U.S.S. Cole. The Bush administration refused the offer, four times prior to 9/11 and once more five days later.

Saddam Hussein was said to be an intolerable terrorist threat, too. “Regime change” was necessary to remove him from power. In February of 2003, Saddam Hussein offered to enter voluntary exile in Turkey, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Here was “regime change” handed on a platter to George Bush, but a peaceful one. The offer was brushed aside.

Jimmy Dore: Biden’s Afghanistan Withdrawal A Distraction Increasing US Imperialism!

After Afghanistan, the Pax Americana is over – as is Nato. About time too

The North Atlantic measurably widened last week. The more Joe Biden tried to shift blame for the Afghan chaos, the bigger the gulf with America’s UK and European allies grew. This US president, who preaches the virtues of multilateralism yet acted on his own, has done more in a few weeks to undermine the western alliance than Donald Trump ever did with all his bluster. All things considered, this may not be such a bad outcome. A reckoning was long overdue. The Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq was a historic mistake. Barack Obama’s Syria cop-out was shaming, for the opposite reason. Now the hugely costly 20-year Afghan intervention is ending in calamity, more refugee chaos, and the threat of renewed terrorism which, once again, will principally affect Europe.

If this is where US leadership leads, who needs it? When America plays global policeman, as self-described “liberal-neocons” say it must, too many people in too many places end up screaming “I can’t breathe!” America is either woefully absent – or its domineering engagement ends in tears. The cycle repeats. Fears grow that US allies are being dragged into another “forever war”, this time with China. ...

The president’s televised speech last Monday was truly shocking to non-Americans. His undeserved contempt for Afghan forces and obliviousness to the sacrifices of Nato allies smacked of arrogance and betrayal. ... Yet it was Biden’s apparent repudiation of the traditional US leadership role that rocked British and European establishments. “Endless military deployments of US forces” in overseas conflicts were not in the national interest, he declared. Afghanistan was solely about defending the “homeland”. For those raised in a world defined by American power and ringed by its permanent bases, this was stunning.

Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s choice to succeed her as Germany’s chancellor, called the withdrawal “the biggest debacle Nato has suffered since its founding”. Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, an Afghan war veteran, decried “Britain’s biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez” – another fiasco, incidentally, to which the US contributed. Hapless Boris Johnson meanwhile snuffles about like a pig stuck in the middle. ... The obvious lesson for European leaders, and even Johnson, is that Washington cannot be relied upon, if it ever could. Afghanistan is the latest proof that the US, like every other nation state, ultimately acts in its own interest – as it perceives this at a particular moment in time – no matter what solemn blood promises have been made.

Three major networks devoted a full five minutes to Afghanistan in 2020

If the U.S. government was caught up short by the dramatic denouement of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, viewers of the three major networks must have been taken entirely by surprise.

Out of a combined 14,000-plus minutes of the national evening news broadcast on CBS, ABC, and NBC last year, a grand total of five minutes were devoted to Afghanistan, according to Andrew Tyndall, editor of the authoritative Tyndall Report, which has monitored and coded the networks’ nightly news each weekday since 1988.

Those five minutes, which covered the February 2020 Doha agreement between the United States and the Taliban, marked a 19-year low for Afghanistan coverage on the three networks’ newscasts. They compared to a high of 940 minutes the networks devoted to Afghanistan in 2001, all of it following 9/11 and the subsequent U.S. intervention, as shown below. [See article for graphic. - js]

While the pathetic amount of coverage of the conflict last year can be partially explained by the virtually total dominance of the news agenda by the COVID-19 pandemic, the three networks devoted a total of only 362 minutes to Afghanistan in the preceding five years, or just two hours of coverage per network, or an average of only 24 minutes per network per year.

Glenn Greenwald suggests CNN, liberal media is controlled by CIA

Biden: Afghanistan evacuations would always have been ‘hard and painful’

The evacuation of thousands of Americans and their Afghan allies from Kabul would have been “hard and painful no matter when it started or when we began”, Joe Biden insisted on Sunday, amid fierce criticism of his administration’s handling of the US withdrawal.

The Taliban took Kabul a week ago. Biden also said on Sunday the US had now “made a number of changes” to the evacuation effort, “including extended access around the airport and the safe zone”, a move to push back Taliban fighters and lessen deadly chaos around the airport gates. “We are working diligently to make sure we’ve increased the ability to get [people] out,” Biden said. ...

At the White House, Biden said: “The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful, no matter when it started when we began.” That, he said, “would have been true if we had started a month ago or a month from now. There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss, or [the] heartbreaking images you see on television. It’s just a fact. My heart aches for those people you see.”

Answering questions, he said it was possible that his deadline for the completion of the evacuation, 31 August, would be extended. Biden sought to herald an American success, saying that in “a little over 30 hours this weekend” about “11,000 individuals” were evacuated from Kabul. The US, he said, had “evacuated nearly 28,000 people since 14 August in both US and coalition aircraft including civilian charters, bringing the total number of people who were evacuated since July to approximately 33,000”.

The Taliban’s Resurgence Was Years in Making & Aided by Trump, Who Sidelined Afghan Gov’t in Talks

US Public Clear: War in Afghanistan Wasn't Worth It

As corporate media amplify pro-war voices to cover developing events in Afghanistan, two polls out Sunday showed the U.S. public has little appetite for continuing the 20-year war.

A new CBS News/YouGov survey, conducted August 18-20, found that 63% approve of President Joe Biden's decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan, and just 37% disapprove. Just 47%, however, approve of the way Biden is handling the troop withdrawal.

Separate polling from NBC News, conducted August 14-17, asked if the war in Afghanistan was worth it. Sixty-one percent said it was not, compared to 29% who said it was. The last time the poll asked the question was in June of 2014 when similar percentages were found. At that time, 65% said the war wasn't worth it, compared to 27% who said it was.

Those findings mirror a poll out last week from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Conducted leading up to and after the Taliban entered Kabul on August 15, the survey found 62% of U.S. adults believed the war in Afghanistan wasn't worth fighting.

Evacuations Continue As Taliban Threatens WAR If US Extends Deadline

Pentagon orders commercial airlines to help in Afghanistan evacuations

Activating a plan used only twice before, the Biden administration on Sunday ordered the use of commercial aircraft to help ferry people evacuated from Afghanistan.

Chaotic scenes continue at the airport in Kabul, a week after the city fell to the Taliban. On Saturday, the US advised Americans in the city not to travel to the airport. Officials told US outlets there were concerns that Islamic State militants might mount an attack. ...

The activation of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, for only the third time in history, was ordered by Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary.

A Pentagon spokesman said the aircraft would not fly into Kabul but would be used to transport people already flown out. The administration asked for three planes each from American Airlines, Atlas Air, Delta Air Lines and Omni Air; two from Hawaiian Airlines; and four from United Airlines. ...

The Civil Reserve Air Fleet was created in the 1950s as a way to help the US military transport people and supplies in times of exceptional stress. All major US airlines are part of it. It has only been activated twice before, during the Gulf war in 1990 and the Iraq war in 2003.

Former Marine Officer EXPOSES Afghan War Lies

Potential U.S. flunky located, given platform at WAPO:

Afghan civil war ‘unavoidable’ if Taliban refuse talks, says opposition leader

One of the main figures still leading Afghan opposition to the Taliban’s takeover of the country, Ahmad Massoud, has warned that a new civil war is inevitable without a comprehensive power-sharing agreement.

Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and was assassinated two days before 9/11 in 2001, told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV channel that war was “unavoidable” if the Taliban refused dialogue.

“We confronted the Soviet Union, and we will be able to confront the Taliban,” he said.

Massoud, who is the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, has set up base in the Panjshir valley, north of Kabul, where the former vice-president Amrullah Saleh has also taken refuge.

His comments followed an op-ed in the Washington Post last week in which he called for the US to supply his forces with weapons. The Taliban said on Sunday that “hundreds” of its fighters were heading to the Panjshir valley “to control it, after local state officials refused to hand it over peacefully”.

Anti-war veterans explain how US lost Afghanistan while leaders lied, profited

Germany’s resurgent SPD has new hope of succeeding Merkel

An old party with an ageing membership, fronted by a politician with all the charisma of a middle-ranking bank clerk, following the humiliating descent from national institution to electoral also-rans already suffered by its comrades across Europe. The obituary of Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) had already been written. Yet as Germany’s election campaign is about to enter its home stretch, it is the centre-left party of Olaf Scholz that is enjoying a surge of energy as its rivals start to lag.

The last five polls published over the course of last week have shown the SPD overtaking the Greens, who looked on course to be contenders for the top spot in the spring. In a survey published by pollster INSA on Sunday, the SPD pulled level with the Christian Democratic Union of the outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel, for the first time since spring 2017, with both parties on 22% of the vote. Under Germany’s proportional voting system, Scholz could become the next chancellor even if his party came second behind the CDU – his great idol Helmut Schmidt managed to do so in 1976.

Going by current polls, it would require the SPD to rule out entering a conservative coalition with the Christian Democrats and Free Democratic party, and to persuade the pro-business, anti-tax FDP to join a power-sharing deal with the SPD and the Green party instead.

If Scholz’s name were on the ballot on 26 September, rather than that of his party, he would already be the undisputed frontrunner: in one survey published last week, 41% of those asked said they would vote for him directly as chancellor if they could, compared with only 16% who opted for Merkel’s designated successor of the centre-right, Armin Laschet, and 12% for the Green party candidate, Annalena Baerbock.

Proud Boys & Far-Right Groups Tied to Jan. 6 Attack Reporters & Others at Anti-Mask, Anti-Vax Rally

Despite Delta Threat, Biden Admin Supports Letting Critical Jobless Aid Expire

With nearly eight million people set to lose federal unemployment benefits in just over two weeks, the Biden administration on Thursday made clear that it supports allowing the pandemic-related jobless aid programs to expire, even as the highly transmissible Delta variant wreaks havoc across the United States.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged that the Delta mutation of the coronavirus may "pose short-term challenges to local economies and labor markets." Nevertheless, they argued it is "appropriate" for the $300-per-week federal unemployment insurance (UI) supplement to expire on September 6, which happens to be Labor Day.

"In addition, President [Joe] Biden believes that the conditions exist in many states such that the other emergency UI programs (the extended-length benefits and the coverage of individuals not otherwise within the scope of UI) can end on the date set in the American Rescue Plan," Walsh and Yellen wrote, adding that some struggling states could use previously approved federal aid to continue providing enhanced jobless benefits beyond September 6.

If nothing is done to extend the emergency UI programs, roughly 7.5 million unemployed workers will completely lose the federal benefits on Labor Day, according to a recent analysis by The Century Foundation (TCF). That would represent "the largest cutoff of unemployment benefits" in U.S. history, TCF's Andrew Stettner warned earlier this month.

"Ending UI benefits while the pandemic still rages is cruel, period," Unemployed Action, a project of the Center for Popular Democracy, tweeted Thursday.

Twenty-six U.S. states—each led by Republican governors except Louisiana—have already cut off the emergency federal UI benefits for their residents, prematurely depriving millions of jobless workers of crucial aid as the economy remains a long way from full recovery. The Biden administration refused to intervene to prevent the states from cutting off the extra $300 per week in UI aid, even though a pandemic relief law enacted last year explicitly requires the federal government to continue distributing the benefits.

While state leaders justified their actions with the widely disputed claim that federal UI benefits were constraining hiring, research published Friday indicates that ending the aid early did not result in a hiring boom—but it did cause a major income decline among affected workers.

According to a new paper (pdf) authored by six academics, "ending pandemic UI increased employment by 4.4 percentage points while reducing UI recipiency by 35 percentage points among workers who were unemployed and receiving UI at the end of April 2021."

"Through the first week of August, average UI benefits for these workers fell by $278 per week and earnings rose by $14 per week, offsetting only 5% of the loss in income," the researchers found. "Spending fell by $145 per week, as the loss of benefits led to a large immediate decline in consumption."

Arindrajit Dube, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the paper's authors, noted on Twitter that for every eight people who lost UI benefits in states that slashed the aid early, just one found a job by August.

Additionally, the new paper warns that allowing the federal unemployment aid to expire nationally could result in "$8 billion in reduced spending during September and October," potentially hampering the economic recovery.

"The spending losses are likely to continue further as additional workers take time to enter the workforce," the researchers note.

Pointing to the new paper, Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project argued Friday that Congress must act "to avoid needless economic devastation that dramatically cuts income and consumer spending while having virtually no impact on employment."

In their letter on Thursday, Walsh and Yellen wrote that Biden "believes that the pandemic has exposed serious problems in our UI system that require immediate reform."

"Accordingly, he is calling on Congress to take up the issue of long-term UI reform as part of the reconciliation process, when Congress returns from recess," the pair added.

Thus far, however, there is little indication that Democratic members of Congress plan to include any kind of federal unemployment insurance extension or fix in their sprawling $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key swing vote, said earlier this month that he would oppose any extension of the emergency federal UI benefits.

In his blog post on Friday, Bruenig noted that "at the start of the pandemic, 152.5 million people were employed. That number is currently 146.8 million people."

"If employment continues to increase at around 900,000 per month, the gap between current employment and pre-pandemic employment will be closed in six months," Bruenig wrote. "Cutting off benefits now is clearly premature and almost certainly counterproductive to the macroeconomic recovery."

Full FDA approval of Pfizer Covid shot will enable vaccine requirements

Full federal approval of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine will empower businesses and universities to require vaccinations and tip hesitant Americans toward getting the jab, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, said on Sunday. “We already know that there are many businesses and universities that have moved toward vaccine requirements,” Murthy told CNN’s State of the Union. “And I think it’s a very reasonable thing to do to create a safe environment.”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is trying to finish its licensing process for the lifesaving drug as soon as Monday, the New York Times has reported.

Until now, the Pfizer shot has been administered under an emergency use authorization, though experts continue to emphasize that it is safe and effective. “We’ve given it to hundreds of millions of people,” Murthy said. “We’ve seen that it’s doing its job. And that’s why we’re continuing to recommend that people get vaccinated starting today and … as soon as they can.”

Texas Republican blames Black Americans for Covid surge

Dan Patrick, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas, has refused to apologise for blaming rising Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths on unvaccinated African Americans, comments one Black Houston official called “racist and flat out wrong”. Doubling down on his remarks to Fox News, Patrick blamed “Democrat social media trolls” and said “Democrats continue to play politics with people’s lives”.

Sylvester Turner, the Democratic mayor of Houston, who is African American, said Patrick’s comments were “offensive and should not be ignored”. ...

Speaking to Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday night, Patrick said: “The biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated.

“The last time I checked over 90% of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties, so it’s up to the Democrats – just as it’s up to the Republicans – to try to get as many people vaccinated.”

Don Everly dies aged 84

Don Everly, one half of the rock’n’roll duo the Everly Brothers, has died at his home in Nashville at the age of 84. A spokesperson for the family confirmed Everly’s death to the Los Angeles Times, but did not disclose a cause. ...

Considered one of pop music’s greatest vocal partnerships, Phil and Don Everly had worldwide hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Bye Bye Love and All I Have to Do Is Dream. Their unique vocal harmonies, coupled with ingenious guitar arrangements and timeless material, had a revolutionary impact on the Beatles, the Hollies, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. ...

Although the pair had an onstage breakup in 1973 that resulted in a decade-long estrangement, Phil later said that their relationship had survived the tumultuous period. Two years younger than Don, Phil died of pulmonary disease in 2014 at the age of 74.

Polls Show Biden IN BIG Trouble But NOT Because Of Afghanistan

Texas Democrats’ effort to block voting restrictions sputters

A last-ditch effort to stall Texas Republicans from passing sweeping voting legislation effectively ended on Thursday evening after enough Democrats returned to the state capitol in Austin to allow lawmakers to proceed on legislation.

It’s a coda that came a little more than a month after Democrats in the state house of representatives dramatically left the state capitol, denying Republicans a quorum to conduct legislative business. As Republicans threatened those who fled with arrest, the effort electrified Democrats, in Texas and around the country, at a moment when Republicans have been able to ram through new voting restrictions in state capitols across the country.

With a quorum now intact, Texas Republicans are expected to quickly approve legislation that would outlaw practices that local election officials adopted to make it easier to vote in 2020, including drive-thru and 24-hour voting. The measure would also give more authority to partisan poll watchers, prohibit officials from sending unsolicited absentee ballot request forms, and provide new rules, and potential criminal penalties, for those who assist others in casting ballots – a move that could make it more difficult for people who are disabled and others to get help voting.

Texas Democrats always acknowledged that Republicans would be able to pass the legislation. But by denying a quorum, they hoped to buy time for Democrats in Congress to pass new federal voting legislation to blunt the measure in Texas. They spent much of the last six weeks in Washington, lobbying Democrats to do just that.

Democrats in Congress have pledged they will move ahead shortly with two pieces of significant voting rights legislation, including one that would require Texas, among other states, to have its voting laws approved by the federal government before going into effect.

‘A complete shock’: the rightwing contrarian leading the California recall race

Larry Elder is a confounding frontrunner in the Republican race to replace Gavin Newsom as California governor. The outspoken libertarian radio talkshow host entered the recall campaign just days before the filing deadline. He has zoomed to the top of a long list of candidates running against the state’s Democratic governor – perhaps both despite and because of his divisive, contrarian politics.

Elder opposes the minimum wage and gun control. He’s said he doesn’t believe that a gender wage gap exists, and has called the climate crisis a “crock”. He has suggested that fatherless families drive up crime rates in Black communities. In three decades on air, Elder has made a name disseminating controversy.

His most extreme views are not only out of line with those of the majority of voters – but also with the views of many of the state’s Republicans. And yet it’s not impossible the self-proclaimed “sage from South Central” will become the next governor of one of America’s bluest states. ...

In response to his inveighing against affirmative action, denials of systemic racism and claims that Black leaders exaggerate discrimination, a group of LA residents in the 1990s organized a two-and-a-half-year boycott of the radio show’s sponsors. Flyers circulating at the time called him a “White Man’s Poster Boy”. Some advertisers did drop Elder, but he ultimately prevailed. His show was syndicated, and he started building a huge national radio audience, making frequent appearances on Fox News and cultivating his brand of contrarian libertarianism. ...

An electoral face-off between Elder and Newsom would be highly improbable, were it not for California’s idiosyncratic recall laws. There are few requirements to get on the recall ballot, other than a $4,200 filing fee. But if more than half of California voters say they want to remove Newsom from office, the remaining candidate with a plurality of votes becomes governor. That means Elder doesn’t need to win over the majority of voters – just enough to beat out Newsom’s other opponents.

Ryan Grim: BIZARRE New Alliance In House Threatens Corporate Power

Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon hits highest annual level in a decade

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, a new report has shown, despite increasing global concern over the accelerating devastation since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019.

Between August 2020 and July 2021, the rainforest lost 10,476 square kilometers – an area nearly seven times bigger than greater London and 13 times the size of New York City, according to data released by Imazon, a Brazilian research institute that has been tracking the Amazon deforestation since 2008. The figure is 57% higher than in the previous year and is the worst since 2012.

“Deforestation is still out of control,” Carlos Souza, a researcher at Imazon said. “Brazil is going against the global climate agenda that is seeking to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Souza called for the urgent resumption of government actions to stop the destruction, including the enforcement of illegal agriculture-led deforestation in the region, which has been impaired by budget cuts for the environment ministry and environmental protection agencies.

Denser cities could be a climate boon – but nimbyism stands in the way

Drawing more people into cities could help significantly shrink the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Low-density developments produced nearly four times the greenhouse gas emissions of high-density alternatives, with research finding that doubling urban density can reduce carbon pollution from household travel by nearly half and residential energy use by more than a third. But compared with most European cities, urban areas in the US are typically sprawling and heavily dependent on cars – at just 283 people per square mile, the average American city is more than 100 times less densely populated than metropolises such as Paris or Barcelona.

As the tentacles of suburbs reach outwards from an urban core, public transit and even sidewalks often don’t follow and so more people rely upon their cars, with larger, and more polluting, SUVs becoming increasingly popular. Research has found that people living in neighborhoods that are walkable, unsurprisingly, drive a quarter less than those in more spread out areas.

The default of car ownership in an age of escalating climate crisis has also led to the rise of Yimbyism in some progressive cities, around a vision of apartments packed close to public transit hubs and amenities. Meanwhile, the temporary shutdown of some streets to cars during the Covid pandemic has heightened calls for more space to be handed over to pedestrians, cyclists and rollerbladers, rather than vehicles, on a more permanent basis.

At a national level, Joe Biden has called for a “historic investment” in affordable housing, with his administration urging cities to change zoning laws to boost density and limit single-family housing developments, as well as rip up highways that have cleaved apart communities, typically communities of color, and added to air pollution. ...

As drought, unprecedented heatwaves and raging wildfires grip the country, calls to build up cities and cut down carbon emissions have gained urgency. And pushes to build higher, amp up transportation and reform land use laws have gained new momentum.

Caldor fire continues to rage after winds fan northern California blaze

A wildfire burning for a week in northern California continued to grow out of control on Sunday, as one of about a dozen big blazes in the drought-stricken state that have destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate.

There was zero containment of the Caldor fire, which had charred nearly 154 sq miles of trees and brush in the northern Sierra Nevada since 14 August. The cause is under investigation.

Multiple large wildfires in California this summer have incinerated at least 700 homes, many in and around the Sierra Nevada communities of Greenville and Grizzly Flats. About 13,000 residences remain under threat.

The fires have burned roughly 2,300 sq miles and have sent smoke as far as the east coast. They have burned in grass, brush and forest that is exceptionally dry from two years of drought likely exacerbated by climate change. Nine national forests in California have been closed because of the fire threat.

To the north-west of the Caldor fire, the massive Dixie fire was 37% contained on Sunday. In five weeks, the blaze about 175 miles north-east of San Francisco has become the second-largest in state history, blackening an area twice the size of Los Angeles.

Henri makes landfall in Rhode Island, packing high winds and heavy rain

Tropical Storm Henri made landfall in Rhode Island on Sunday, packing high winds and heavy rains that were projected to leave devastation from New Jersey and New York up to Massachusetts. ...

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Henri came ashore in the town of Westerly around 12.30pm. It packed maximum sustained winds of 60mph and produced 19ft waves in some places, before weakening to sustained winds of 50mph as it moved inland.

Rhode Island briefly shut down major bridges. All roads to the beach community of Misquamicut were closed because of wind-driven flooding. The small cluster of hotels and cottages was heavily damaged in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy.

National Grid reported 74,000 customers without power in Rhode Island and EverSource reported nearly 20,000 customers out in Connecticut.

The storm was downgraded from a hurricane before making landfall but still packed gusts of up to 75mph. Officials warned of widespread flooding in inland areas as the storm was expected to sweep west from the coast before turning back north-east.

Also of Interest

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

‘America first’ again? Biden echoing Trump on Afghanistan and vaccines

Bush-Era War Criminals Are Louder Than Ever Because They’ve Lost The Argument

America’s Merchants of Death Then — and Now

In Latest Yes Men Prank, 'Paul Wolfowitz' Says Afghanistan War 'Failure From Day One'

The System Is Rigged For Endless War: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Congressman Seeking to Relaunch Afghan War Made Millions in Defense Contracting

Afghanistan - The New 'Northern Alliance' Resistance Has Already Fallen Apart

WikiLeaks & the Crimes of the West in Afghanistan

NYT: Afghanistan a US ‘Neocolonialist’ War

Israeli snipers attack Gaza children

‘From dark art to dark science’: the evolution of digital gerrymandering

Drought rules spark accusations of racism in California outpost

Tennessee floods death toll rises to 22 as Biden offers help

A midwestern town moved uphill to survive climate crisis. Can others do the same?

First murder hornet nest of 2021 found in Washington state

Attack of the giant rodents or class war? Argentina’s rich riled by new neighbors

Saagar Enjeti Has Covid

Lindsey Graham THREATENS Biden IMPEACHMENT Over Afghanistan Amid MAGA Cringe

Krystal Ball: How The HELL Did Biden Actually Do Something RIGHT?

Musical legend Josephine Baker first black woman to enter France's Pantheon

A Little Night Music

Lloyd Glenn - The Shakedown

Lowell Fulson & Lloyd Glenn - Reconsider Baby

Lloyd Glenn - Chick-A-Boo

Lloyd Glenn + Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Slow Train No 1

Lloyd Glenn - Old Time Shuffle Blues

Jesse Thomas w/ The Lloyd Glenn Combo - I Can't Stay Here (An' Be Treated This Way)

Lloyd Glenn - Twistville

Lloyd Glenn - Blue Ivories

Lloyd Glenn - Young Date

Lloyd Glenn - Boogie Woogie On St. Louis Blues