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"To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse, 10 times as ignorant, 10 times as unfair and tyrannical, 10 times as complaisant and pusillanimous, and 10 times as devious, hypocritical, disingenuous, deceitful, pharisaical, Pecksniffian, fraudulent, slippery, unscrupulous, perfidious, lewd and dishonest."

-- H. L. Mencken

News and Opinion

Media Rediscover Afghan Women Only When US Leaves

Just as US corporate news media “discovered” Afghan women’s rights only when the US was angling for invasion, their since-forgotten interest returned with a vengeance as US troops exited the country.

After September 11, 2001, the public was subjected to widespread US news coverage of burqa-clad Afghan women in need of US liberation, and celebratory reports after the invasion. Time magazine (11/26/01), for instance, declared that “the greatest pageant of mass liberation since the fight for suffrage” was occurring, as “female faces, shy and bright, emerged from the dark cellars” to stomp on their old veils. In a piece by Nancy Gibbs headlined “Blood and Joy,” the magazine told readers this was “a holiday gift, a reminder of reasons the war was worth fighting beyond those of basic self-defense” (FAIR.org, 4/9/21).

The media interest was highly opportunistic. Between January 2000 and September 11, 2001, there were 15 US newspaper articles and 33 broadcast TV reports about women’s rights in Afghanistan. In the 16 weeks between September 12 and January 1, 2002, those numbers skyrocketed to 93 and 628, before plummeting once again (Media, Culture & Society, 9/1/05).

Now, as the US finally is withdrawing its last troops, many corporate media commentators put women and girls at the center of the analysis, as when Wolf Blitzer (CNN Situation Room, 8/16/21), after referring to “the horror awaiting women and girls in Afghanistan,” reported:

President Biden saying he stands, and I’m quoting him now, squarely, squarely behind this decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, despite the shocking scene of chaos and desperation as the country fell in a matter of only a few hours under Taliban control, and the group’s extremist ideology has tremendous and extremely disturbing implications for everyone in Afghanistan, but especially the women and girls.

This type of framing teed up hawkish guests, who proliferate on TV guest lists, to use women as a political football to oppose withdrawal. Blitzer guest Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R.-Illinois), for instance, argued:

Look at the freedom that is being deprived from the Afghan people as the Taliban move into Afghan, or moving into parts of Afghanistan now, and you know how much freedom they had. Look at the number of women that are out there making careers, that are thought leaders, that are academics, that never would have happened under the Taliban leadership…. The devastation you are seeing today is why that small footprint of 2,500 US troops was so important.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R.-Iowa) gladly gave Jake Tapper (CNN Newsroom, 8/16/21) her take on the situation after CNN aired a report on the situation for women:

As you mentioned, for women and younger girls, this is also very devastating for them. The humiliation that they will endure at the hands of the Taliban all around this is just a horrible, horrible mar on the United States under President Joe Biden.

Such analysis depends on the assumption that the US invasion and occupation “saved” Afghan women. In the Wall Street Journal (8/17/21), an op-ed by former George W. Bush staffer Charity Wallace ran under the headline : “The Nightmare Resumes for Afghan Women: America Rescued Them 20 Years Ago. How Can We Abandon Them to the Taliban Again?”

Two days later, a news article in the Journal (8/19/21) about the fate of women in Afghanistan explained: “Following the 2001 invasion, US and allied forces invested heavily to promote gender equality.”

The Associated Press (8/14/21), in a piece headlined, “Longest War: Were America’s Decades in Afghanistan Worth It?,” noted at the end that “some Afghans—asked that question before the Taliban’s stunning sweep last week—respond that it’s more than time for Americans to let Afghans handle their own affairs.” It continued, “But one 21-year-old woman, Shogufa, says American troops’ two decades on the ground meant all the difference for her.” After describing Shogufa’s experience for five paragraphs, the piece concludes with her “message to Americans”:

“Thank you for everything you have done in Afghanistan,” she said, in good but imperfect English. “The other thing was to request that they stay with us.”

Perhaps the most indignant media piece about Afghan women came from Caitlin Flanagan in the Atlantic (8/19/21), “The Week the Left Stopped Caring About Human Rights.” Flanagan argued:

Leave American troops idle long enough, and before you know it, they’re building schools and protecting women. We found an actual patriarchy in Afghanistan, and with nothing else to do, we started smashing it down. Contra the Nation, it’s hard to believe that Afghan women “won” gains in human rights, considering how quickly those gains are sure now to be revoked. The United States military made it possible for those women to experience a measure of freedom. Without us, that’s over.

Flanagan pointed to Afghan activist Malala Yousafzai, whom she accused “critics of the war” of forgetting, saying Yousafzai “appealed to the president to take ‘a bold step’ to stave off disaster.”

Such coverage gives the impression that Afghan women desperately want the US occupation to continue, and that military occupation has always been the only way for the US to help them. But for two decades, women’s rights groups have been arguing that the US needed to support local women’s efforts and a local peace process. Instead, both Democrat and Republican administrations continued to funnel trillions of dollars into the war effort, propping up misogynist warlords and fueling violence and corruption.

Contra Flanagan’s insinuation, Yousafzai didn’t ask Biden to continue the occupation. In an op-ed for the New York Times (8/17/21) that most clearly laid out her appeal, she asked for humanitarian aid in Afghanistan and for refugees fleeing the country. In fact, her take on the US occupation’s role in women’s rights (BBC, 8/17/21) is much more critical than most voices in the US corporate media: “There had been very little interest in focusing on the humanitarian aid and the humanitarian work.”

As human rights expert Phyllis Bennis told FAIR’s radio program CounterSpin (2/17/21), Malalai Joya, a young member of parliament, told her in the midst of the 2009 troop surge that women in Afghanistan have three enemies: the Taliban, warlords supported by the US and the US occupation. “She said, ‘If you in the West could get the US occupation out, we’d only have two.’”

Things did get better for some women, mostly in the big cities, where new opportunities in education, work and political representation became possible with the Taliban removed from power. But as Shreya Chattopadhyay pointed out in the Nation (8/9/21), the US commitment to women was little more than window dressing on its war, devoting roughly 1,000 times more funding to military expenses than to women’s rights.

Passive consumers of US corporate news media might be surprised to learn that Afghanistan, in its 19th year under US occupation, ranked second-to-last in the world on women’s well-being and empowerment, according to the Women, Peace and Security Index (2019).

As the Index notes, Afghan women still suffer from discriminatory laws at a level roughly on par with Iraq, and an extraordinarily low 12.2% of women reported feeling safe walking alone at night in their community, more than 4 points lower than in any other country. And just one in three girls goes to school.

In 2015, a 27-year-old Afghan woman named Farkhunda Malikzada was killed by an angry mob of men in Kabul after being falsely accused of burning a Quran; US-backed Afghan security forces watched silently (Guardian, 3/28/15). The shocking story spread around the world, but the only US TV network to mention it on air was PBS (7/2/15), which offered a brief report more than three months after the murder, when an Afghan appeals court overturned the death sentences given to some of the men involved.

FAIR turned up no evidence of Caitlin Flanagan ever writing about Malikzada, either—or about the plight of any Afghan woman before last week.

According to a Nexis search, TV news shows aired more segments that mentioned women’s rights in the same sentence as Afghanistan in the last seven days (42) than in the previous seven years (37).

The US did not “rescue” Afghan women with its military invasion in 2001, or its subsequent 20-year occupation. Afghan women need international help, but facile and opportunistic US media coverage pushes toward the same wrong kind of help that it’s been pushing for the last two decades: military “assistance,” rather than diplomacy and aid.

For more than 20 years, US corporate media could have listened seriously to Afghan women and their concerns, bringing attention to their own efforts to improve their situation. Instead, those media outlets are proving once again that Afghan women’s rights are only of interest to them when they can be used to prop up imperialism and the military industrial complex.

Media HATES That Afghan Withdrawal Is Going Better Than Portrayed

Biden, European powers in crisis talks over Afghan evacuation policy

The Biden administration is under increasing pressure, both within ruling circles in the US and from its imperialist allies, particularly Britain, to extend the US military presence at the Kabul airport and provide for a longer and more extensive evacuation from Afghanistan’s capital. A virtual meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 (US, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Japan) set for Tuesday morning will be the first occasion for Biden to address a global forum on the collapse of the US- and NATO-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan, which fell in only 11 days to a Taliban offensive. ...

In televised comments Sunday afternoon, Biden reiterated his decision to end the US role in Afghanistan in order to continue refocusing US foreign policy to the major strategic rivals of American imperialism, China and Russia. “Let me tell you, you’re sitting in Beijing or you’re sitting in Moscow—are you happy we left?” he asked, then laughed sarcastically. “They’d love nothing better for us to continue to be bogged down there, totally occupied with what’s going on.” This remark, a consistent theme of Biden since he first approved final withdrawal of US troops in April, underscores that the US government has not pulled out of Afghanistan in response to the mass popular opposition to “endless wars.”

Rather, American imperialism is pursuing a course of action that poses the danger of a war that could bring an end to human civilization—a global strategic confrontation with its most powerful nuclear-armed rivals. At the very time that the last US forces were being drawn down in Central Asia, the US Navy was stepping up its anti-China provocations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, and US commanders in the Pacific region were predicting war with China within a half dozen years. Despite the shattering impact of the rapid collapse of its puppet regime in Afghanistan, American imperialism remains committed to using its massive military machine, still the most powerful of any country, to offset the vast decline in its economic strength and maintain its position of global dominance.

That belligerence is likely to be on display at the G7 summit, where the US president will listen to the urging of his European allies, particularly the British, to stay a bit longer in Kabul. Asked Sunday what his response would be to such pleas, Biden said dismissively, “I will tell them that we’ll see what we can do.”

UN Warns “Humanitarian Catastrophe” in Afghanistan Amid Political Turmoil, Economic Crisis, Drought

Afghanistan could start to run out of food by September, UN warns

UN agencies have warned of food shortages to Afghanistan as early as September without urgent aid funding, as it emerged first aid supplies, including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits, were stuck due to restrictions at Kabul airport. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday the closure of the airport to commercial flights has held up key deliveries.

The World Food Programme (WFP), which brings in supplies by road, said it was getting food through via four different supply routes for the moment, but could start running out of food by next month. Andrew Patterson, the WFP’s deputy country director in Afghanistan, said they were transporting food through humanitarian crossings, including from Uzbekistan, though which 50% of supplies arrived, as well as via Pakistan and Turkmenistan.

“Winter is coming. We are going into the lean season and many Afghan roads will be covered in snow. We need to get the food into our warehouses where it needs to be distributed,” said Patterson. “We’ve got 20,000 metric tonnes of food in the country now, we’ve got 7,000 metric tonnes on the way.

“We need another 54,000 metric tonnes of food to get the Afghan people through to the end of December. We could start running out of food by September.” Patterson said the WFP needed $200m (£146m) to buy food for up to 20 million people who they predict will need it. Nearly 18.5 million people – half the population – already rely on aid, and the current drought is expected to exacerbate that.

Successive US Presidents claimed ‘victory’ in Afghanistan ... Who's gonna tell them?

Biden under pressure over Afghanistan and Covid as approval ratings slide

Joe Biden faced mounting pressure at home and abroad on Monday as he raced against time to deal with evacuations from Afghanistan, a surging coronavirus pandemic and a vital congressional vote on his domestic agenda.

The US president’s job approval rating fell below 50% for the first time, according to an NBC News poll, with just 25% approving of his handling of Afghanistan, which was overrun by the Taliban this month far quicker than he predicted. Thousands of American troops have poured back into the country to oversee the chaotic airlift of foreigners and selected Afghans from Kabul airport, and Biden is being called upon to extend a 31 August deadline for full US withdrawal.

But the Taliban warned on Monday there would be “consequences” if the US and its allies linger beyond that date. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesperson in Doha, Qatar, told Sky News: “It’s a red line. President Biden announced that on 31 August they would withdraw all their military forces. So if they extend it that means they are extending occupation while there is no need for that.”

Asked if Biden would extend his deadline, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told reporters at the White House that the president is “taking this day by day, and will make his determinations as we go”. He added: “We believe that we have time, between now and the 31st, to get out any American that wants to get out.”

Notably, this statement did not include thousands of at-risk Afghan civilians who worked with US forces, non-government organisations and media, many of whom are desperate to leave and reportedly feel betrayed by the US government.

Doctors Without Borders: U.S. Should Force Pfizer to Share COVID Vaccine Technology with Africa

Biden hails announcement as FDA gives full approval to Pfizer’s Covid vaccine

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine for Covid-19. The vaccine and others have been in use for months under emergency use authorisation.

President Joe Biden hailed the announcement as “another milestone, a key milestone, in our fight against Covid”.

The decision is likely to trigger a wave of formal vaccine requirements from government departments, businesses, schools and other bodies.

On Monday a Pentagon spokesman said: “Now that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved, the Department [of Defense] is prepared to issue updated guidance requiring all service members to be vaccinated.”

In New York, city authorities announced that all public school teachers and other staffers will have to get vaccinated.

More Florida school districts to require masks in battle against governor’s order

Florida’s battle over school mask mandates has reached the governor’s doorstep after education leaders in the state capital, Tallahassee, became the latest to defy Ron DeSantis’s ban.

Rocky Hanna, superintendent of the Leon county school district, announced on Sunday that masks would be required to be worn by students in pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, beginning on Monday. Only medical exemptions will be allowed.

The district’s reversal of its previous stance, which complied with DeSantis’s requirement to allow parents to opt out, comes after Leon county recorded hundreds of new cases of Covid-19 in the first week of the new school year.

“It’s time to make a change,” Hanna said in a video recorded in an empty classroom at Gilchrist elementary school. “We have been in school for just seven days and have recorded over 245 positive cases, which is nearly one-third the total we had for all of last year.”

Hanna’s decision, communicated to parents and staff by Facebook on Sunday, means at least seven Florida school districts are now in open defiance of DeSantis’s executive order banning mask mandates. The governor, a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has portrayed the ban as a protection of individual freedoms.

Hundreds clash in Portland as Proud Boys rally descends into violence

A rightwing protest in Portland on Sunday has culminated in a gunfight, when antifascist demonstrators returned fire at a man who shot at them with a handgun in a downtown street. The firefight took place in the heart of downtown Portland, soon after 6pm. As antifascists followed a man at a distance whom they were trying to eject from the area, he took cover behind a solar-powered trashcan, produced a handgun and opened fire. He fired at least two shots before an antifascist returned fire with their own handgun. At least seven shots were fired.

Portland police bureau confirmed that a man had been arrested over the shooting but did not have any information on any injuries. The incident came after a day of protest descended into running clashes involving hundreds of protesters and counterprotesters.

Earlier that afternoon, in the city’s suburban east, Proud Boys discharged rounds from airsoft guns, while antifascists threw firework munitions, and both sides exchanged clouds of choking Mace and countless blows in a chaotic running street battle that lasted the better part of an hour. ...

In downtown streets, and during the suburban fracas, Portland police were nowhere to be seen, until the exchange of fire near 2nd Street and Taylor brought forth dozens of officers in cruisers, who arrested the suspected gunman and blocked surrounding streets.

Proud Boys leader gets five months for burning BLM banner and weapons crimes

The leader of the Proud Boys extremist group was sentenced to more than five months in jail for burning a Black Lives Matter banner that had been torn down from a historic Black church and for bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the nation’s capital days before the 6 January Capitol attack.

Although government prosecutors had requested that Enrique Tarrio receive a sentence of three months in jail after pleading guilty, a District of Columbia judge on Monday said that punishment was insufficient. “Mr Tarrio has intentionally and proudly crossed the line from peaceful protest and assembly to dangerous and potentially violent criminal conduct,” Judge Harold Cushenberry said at the sentencing hearing, adding that Tarrio had “betrayed” democratic values.

The judge said that Tarrio’s expressions of remorse and his claims that he had not fully realized what he was doing were “not credible” and in some cases contradicted by video evidence. ...

Tarrio pleaded guilty last month to destruction of property and attempted possession of a large-capacity ammunition feeding device. A police spokesman told the Associated Press in December that investigators were probing the events as potential hate crimes, but no hate crime charges were filed.

Police officer who shot Breonna Taylor has pulled out of book deal

One of the police officers involved in the shooting of Breonna Taylor has pulled out of his book deal with a conservative press four months after Simon & Schuster refused to distribute the title.

Jonathan Mattingly is one of the Louisville, Kentucky officers who shot Taylor in the raid in her home in March 2020, and was shot in the leg by Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker. A grand jury brought no charges against Louisville police last September for the killing.

Mattingly signed a book deal in April with small conservative publisher Post Hill Press to release The Fight for Truth: The Inside Story Behind the Breonna Taylor Tragedy. Post Hill is distributed by Simon & Schuster, and after widespread criticism, the publishing giant announced that it would not be distributing Mattingly’s book. Company president Jonathan Karp later said the decision was “responsive to the concerns we heard from you and our authors”. ...

Post Hill Press publisher Anthony Ziccardi told the Wall Street Journal that after the press had informed Mattingly that it couldn’t distribute the book without Simon & Schuster, “he thought it was best to find another publisher who could fully distribute the book. We wish him success.”

California reaches reform deal with Bakersfield police department, condemned over deadly force

California’s justice department has announced a court-enforced reform settlement with the Bakersfield police department, following a years-long state civil rights inquiry initiated after a 2015 Guardian investigation found that police in the state’s Kern county were the deadliest in America.

The settlement, known as a stipulated judgment or “consent decree”, was announced on Monday by the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, more than four years after the department commenced its investigation, and requires the police department to revise and reform its policies, overseen by an independent monitor. ...

The consent decree requires the department to revise its use-of-force guidance to focus its officers on de-escalation and proportionality; strengthen its use-of-force training for officers; strengthen investigations into officers’ use of force; and modify the use and training of police dogs. ...

The five-part Guardian investigation into Bakersfield police department and the Kern county sheriff’s office - the two largest law enforcement agencies in the county - revealed that the two departments had killed people at a higher rate than police in any other county in America during 2015 and unearthed a culture of violence, corruption and impunity within the agencies.

It was revealed that a number of officers had been involved in multiple fatal shootings over the years, that the majority of investigators examining police killings in the county were former department officers, and that the Kern County sheriff’s office had made multiple cash payments - sometimes as low as $200 - to women who had been sexually assaulted by it officers in order to buy their silence.

Corporate Dems Threaten To BLOW UP Bernie Bill

Nancy Pelosi FUMES, Right-Wing Dems Hold Biden Economic Agenda HOSTAGE

RIP

Charlie Watts, Bedrock Drummer for the Rolling Stones, Dies at 80

Charlie Watts, whose strong but unflashy drumming powered the Rolling Stones for over 50 years, died on Tuesday in London. He was 80.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his publicist, Bernard Doherty. No other details were immediately provided.

The Rolling Stones announced earlier this month that Mr. Watts would not be a part of the band’s forthcoming “No Filter” tour of the United States after he had undergone an unspecified emergency medical procedure, which the band’s representatives said had been successful.

Reserved, dignified and dapper, Mr. Watts was never as flamboyant, either onstage or off, as most of his rock-star peers, let alone the Stones’ lead singer, Mick Jagger; he was content to be one of the finest rock drummers of his generation, playing with a jazz-inflected swing that made the band’s titanic success possible. As the Stones guitarist Keith Richards said in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” “Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically.”

While some rock drummers chased after volume and bombast, Mr. Watts defined his playing with subtlety, swing and a solid groove.

Cuomo LIES In Final Address As HE ABANDONS HIS DOG

Cuomo says in farewell address he was victim of ‘political and media stampede’

Andrew Cuomo defended his record over a decade as governor of New York and portrayed himself as the victim of a “political firecracker on an explosive topic” on Monday, as he prepared for a midnight power transfer that will make Lt Gov Kathy Hochul the state’s first female governor.

Cuomo, a Democrat, was set to end his term at 11.59pm, just under two weeks after he announced he would resign rather than face an impeachment battle over sexual harassment allegations which he denies. ...

In a pre-recorded farewell address, released at noon, Cuomo boasted of making government effective, cited his work battling Covid-19 and struck a defiant tone on the harassment allegations.

He said the report that triggered his resignation – a scathing account of what the state attorney general, Letitia James, said was sexual harassment or inappropriate touching of 11 women – was “designed to be a political firecracker on an explosive topic, and it did work”.

“There was a political and media stampede.” But he said prolonging his fight in office “could only cause governmental paralysis and that is just not an option for you and not an option for the state, especially now”.

Buffalo's Democratic Establishment Still Trying to Defeat Socialist India Walton

India Walton, the democratic socialist candidate for mayor in Buffalo, New York who won the Democratic Party primary in June, took aim at four-term incumbent Mayor Byron Brown on Sunday over his attempts—alongside other members of the city's political establishment—to circumvent the will of the voters ahead of November's election.

Without calling the Democratic mayor out by name, Walton assured voters that if she had lost the primary, "I wouldn't be trying to change election laws and work with Republicans to override the will of Buffalonians."

The community organizer and healthcare worker's comments came amid Brown's write-in campaign, which has attracted the support of Republican real estate developer Carl Paladino and other conservatives. Brown filed a petition last week to change the filing deadline in order to run as an independent.

According to a Salon report published Monday, nearly a third of the signatures the mayor has collected in favor of establishing a "Buffalo Party" candidacy are from the right, including from Republicans from outside of Buffalo. The city's Republican Party is considering an official endorsement of Brown, who is a close ally of outgoing Gov. Andrew Cuomo and who's denounced Walton as a "radical socialist."

On Friday, Walton said Brown's write-in campaign "is just another attempt by an establishment politician to move right to fight the left."

Meanwhile, should Brown's attempt to defeat Walton electorally fail, the city's legislative body is examining how it might wrest power from the progressive if she wins in November. Weeks after the primary, the nine-member, Democratic-led Buffalo Common Council voted to study how the mayoral position could be dissolved in the city and replaced with a city manager who would "carry out the will of the Council members."

The council has 90 days to study the proposal, which was put forward by council member Rasheed Wyatt—reportedly in response to Brown's governance and a policy disagreement between the two politicians over placing speed cameras in minority neighborhoods.

Walton suggested on Twitter last month that the study, which is set to wrap up just two weeks before the election, is actually an attempt to keep her from running the city with an agenda unabashedly focused on improving the lives of working class and poor Buffalo residents.

"If those in power cannot handle actual democracy they should never have had it," tweeted progressive digital media company Act.tv in response to Salon's report.

Walton, who was a teenage working mother before becoming a nurse and community leader, ran on establishing an unarmed public safety force "to address quality of life;" making Buffalo a sanctuary city; strengthening protections for renters; and expanding food access.

She told reporters after her primary win that she "absolutely" would call herself a socialist and that she aimed to "draw down power and resources to the ground level and to the hands of the people," reminding the local NBC affiliate that millions of Americans have benefited from "socialist" policies in the last 17 months.

"I am a Democrat socialist. The first word in that is Democrat," Walton told WGRZ. "My policies are socialist policies. Many things that we enjoyed during the pandemic like our economic stimulus, like SNAP benefits for families with children, like free healthcare."

Should she win in November, Walton would be the first self-identified socialist mayor of a major American city in 60 years. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont from 1981 until 1989, describing himself and governing as a democratic socialist.

Voting Rights Groups Launch Civil Disobedience Campaign at the White House Urging End to Filibuster

'Extreme Weather' Ads Target Democrats Defending Fossil Fuel Subsidies

More than two dozen advocacy groups launched "extreme weather ads" in five state newspapers on Monday to pressure right-wing Senate Democrats to stop giving taxpayer money to the oil, gas, and coal companies most responsible for the climate emergency.

Full page ads—featuring artwork from Hannah Rothstein's 50 States of Change Collection, which depicts some of the detrimental effects U.S. residents can expect if lawmakers refuse to swiftly enact robust climate mitigation measures—have been placed in The Arizona Republic, The Dover Post, The Billings Gazette, The Union Leader, and The Charleston Gazette-Mail, to mark the beginning of a week of action against fossil fuel subsidies.

Those five publications were chosen because they are the home-state newspapers of Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Chris Coons (Del.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.).

The coalition is targeting the six senators because of their close ties with Big Oil, which were exposed in late June when Greenpeace U.K. and the British Channel 4 News teamed up to release secretly recorded videos, wherein ExxonMobil lobbyists admitted that the company deliberately sowed doubt about climate science to protect fossil fuel profits and worked with several GOP lawmakers as well as conservative Democrats to undermine climate legislation.

According to the investigation, Coons, Manchin, Sinema, and Tester, along with Republican Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), John Cornyn (Texas), Steve Daines (Mont.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.), have taken tens of thousands of dollars from Exxon.

The 25 groups behind the ad campaign—including Greenpeace USA, Our Revolution, Public Citizen, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Food & Water Watch, and the Sunrise Movement—noted that the federal government gives more than $15 billion in public funding to fossil fuel corporations every year.

Moreover, the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill includes up to $25 billion in potential new subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The key author of the energy-related measures in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is Manchin, who has made more than $4.5 million from his family's coal business since joining the Senate in 2010.

The ad campaign comes just weeks after the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, which, in the words of Greenpeace USA climate campaign manager Anusha Narayanan, "showed the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels will kill us all."

"Everyone saw the video where a Big Oil lobbyist named these six Democratic senators as key to their plan to delay climate action," Narayanan said Monday in a statement. "Members of Congress like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have the fossil fuel industry on speed dial, while they keep the rest of us on hold. That's a disaster for the future of the planet and its people."

"It's time for Congress to stop taking over $15 billion from hardworking Americans and giving it to billionaire fossil fuel CEOs," she continued. "Despite what these companies say, subsidies don't actually lead to jobs and most subsidies go to profits."

Narayanan added that an amended infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, which Democratic Party leaders hope to pass through the reconciliation process, present a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" for Sens. Kelly, Sinema, Coons, Tester, Hassan, and Manchin "to invest in a just transition to renewable energy, racial and economic justice, and working-class communities."

The new ads also come as the U.S. West is suffering from an increasingly severe drought and 93 active wildfires, while the Northeast is battered by Tropical Storm Henri, and parts of the South, including North Carolina and Tennessee, are grappling with deadly flooding after being pummeled by record-breaking rainfall.

That lawmakers continue to collaborate with oil, gas, and coal companies despite dire warnings from scientists and glaring real-time evidence that fossil fuel emissions are exacerbating extreme weather events prompted Rothstein to ask: "What is wrong with our politicians?"

"Why do they continue to support Big Oil and coal when it's clear these industries are causing natural disasters that harm everyday Americans?" Rothstein asked Monday in a statement. "California's increasingly rampant wildfires, Texas' unprecedented February 2021 snowstorm, and the current water shortages in Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico are only a few examples of the unshakably clear evidence that we need urgent climate action ASAP."

Solar power in Australia outstrips coal-fired electricity for first time

The national electricity market reached a new milestone on Sunday, with solar power outstripping energy generation from coal for the first time since the market was set up two decades ago.

The crossover point lasted for only a few minutes, as low demand and sunny skies on Sunday meant the contribution from coal dropped to a record low of 9,315MW just after noon, while solar provided the dominant share with 9,427MW.

Dylan McConnell, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s climate and energy college, said that for a brief moment renewable energy represented 57% of national electricity generation.

“This is what I unofficially call ‘record season’,” McConnell said. “It’s actually still pretty early in the season [to get these numbers] but in spring or the shoulder seasons you have the combination of low demand, because there’s no heating or cooling, and then nice weather on the weekend.

“Those factors combine, and you get these giant shares of renewable energy that generally push out coal." While McConnell said it was only “fleeting” and that “Australia was a long way from peak renewable energy”, energy prices also went negative on Sunday from 8.30am through to 5pm.

California’s Caldor fire burns 100,000 acres as it rips through small towns

The raging Caldor fire in northern California has burned more than 100,000 acres and destroyed more than 500 structures after surging over the weekend. Fueled by warm winds and drought-stricken vegetation, the fire, burning south-west of Lake Tahoe, surged through more than 30,000 acres in two days and by Monday morning had consumed about 106,500 acres.

Crews battling the blaze achieved 5% containment, helped by moderate humidity and lower overnight temperatures that helped calm the fire on Sunday night, but officials said the firefight through steep rugged terrain has been difficult.

“These are very, very dry drought-ridden areas that we are dealing with,” said Diana Swart, a spokesperson for the Amador El Dorado unit of Cal Fire. She said the forest understory was filled with dense layers of dead and dry leaves, branches, and stumps. “Everything is primed to start – we just haven’t had enough water,” she said.

More than 13,500 firefighters were working to contain a dozen large fires in California. Gavin Newsom, the state governor, requested that Joe Biden issue a major disaster declaration for eight counties, said Mark Ghilarducci, the director of the California office of emergency services.

If approved, the declaration would provide a wide range of assistance, including housing, food aid, unemployment and governmental emergency costs. Nearly 43,000 Californians were under under evacuation orders and more than 500 households were in shelters, Ghilarducci said.

Also of Interest

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

John Kiriakou: The World is Rid of Rizzo

Israel’s Bennett to Present Biden With Plan to Confront Iran

OMG Afghanistan Is Invading Afghanistan: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

To Instigate Against Taliban CNN Claims Contradiction Where None Is Evident

America Decides To Ensure Afghanistan Will Be A Chinese And Russian Ally

Will Senate Democrats Stoop to Confirming Rahm Emanuel as Ambassador?

Dem Obstructionists Are Bankrolled By Pharma And Oil

Right-Wing Dems Begin to Cave as Progressives Hold Their Ground on Reconciliation Vote

Revealed: how California police chased a nonexistent ‘antifa bus’

Trump’s border wall reportedly in severe disrepair in Arizona

Why is the US right suddenly interested in Native American adoption law?

Primary Challenger Hits Henry Cuellar for Trying to Tank Biden Agenda

Amazon: Regrowing Forests Have Offset Less Than 10% of Carbon Emissions from Deforestation

David Gilbert, Ex-Weather Underground Member, Granted Clemency by Cuomo. Will Parole Board Free Him?

Why we should blame Bush, Obama and their generals for Afghanistan's catastrophe

Kim Iversen: MANDATES And Big Tech Surveillance Inching U.S. Closer To Dystopian CHINA

Ryan Grim: Pelosi Army Launching A Mutiny, PROVES Dems SCREWED Themselves Squashing Progressives

A Little Night Music

'Whistling' Alex Moore - Wake Up Old Lady

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Ice Pick Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - They May Not Be My Toes

Whistlin' Alex Moore - It Wouldn't Be So Hard

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Blue Bloomer Blues

Whistlin' Alex Moore - If I lose You Woman

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Miss no good weed

Whistlin' Alex Moore - Heart Wrecked Blues

Alex Moore - Neglected Woman