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"The most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation."

-- Charles Horton Cooley

News and Opinion

Ukraine hints at timing of 'counteroffensive’

Ukrainian forces might be able to launch a large-scale attack on the Russian military by the end of June, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser, Alexey Arestovich, indicated on Thursday.

“A counteroffensive is possible with the accumulation of a large number of Western weapons, which will be sufficient for several brigades, completely rearmed, trained and coordinated, after which we can attack,” Arestovich told the Ukraine 24 TV channel.

Arestovich has repeatedly promised a counteroffensive against the Russian military, which launched a large-scale operation against Ukraine in late February. In late April, the official said the counteroffensive might happen in early June, tying the operation to the deliveries of Western-made weaponry. On May 1, however, Arestovich dispatched an even more optimistic prognosis, claiming that Russian forces in Ukraine’s east might get “crushed” by Victory Day, celebrated on May 9.

US intelligence helping Ukraine kill Russian generals, report says

US officials have reportedly confirmed they are providing intelligence that has helped Ukrainian forces target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in the Ukraine war.

The claim in the New York Times, quoting unnamed defence officials, appears to confirm suspicions the US is supplying actionable intelligence in real time to help the Ukrainian military select high-value targets.

Appearing to confirm the claims, the Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby, acknowledged the US was providing “Ukraine with information and intelligence that they can use to defend themselves”, although Adrienne Watson, a national security council spokesperson, said intelligence was not provided “with the intent to kill Russian generals”.

The acknowledgment of US intelligence assistance in targeting Russian forces, which comes on top of another $20bn (£16bn) in promised weapons to Ukraine from Washington, is a further escalation in what is increasingly becoming a proxy war between the US, with its western allies, and Russian forces in Ukraine.

Some European officials expressed uneasiness about the claims. “We have to be very careful on what we are briefing, for two reasons: for the security of the operations on the ground … and because we don’t want to go to war with Russia,” one said.

What’s going on in the south of Ukraine? by Jacob Dreizin

Russia opens artillery barrages in south and east Ukraine

Russia has unleashed heavy artillery barrages against multiple Ukrainian positions in the south and east of the country, amid conflicting claims over whether Russian forces were attempting to storm the last Ukrainian positions in the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol. While Ukrainian officials and fighters claimed Russian troops had entered the labyrinthine industrial area in the southern city and that heavy fighting was taking place inside, the Kremlin denied its troops had entered and said humanitarian corridors to evacuate trapped civilians were operating there on Thursday.

Ukrainian fighters inside Azovstal said they were fighting “difficult, bloody battles” inside the plant, according to Denys Prokopenko, commander of the Azov regiment. Ukraine’s military general staff said the assault on the plant had air support, and pictures released by Russian-backed fighters appeared to show smoke and flames enveloping it.

However, asked to comment on the claim that Russian troops had broken into the plant’s territory, the official Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, referred reporters to president Vladimir Putin’s previous order not to storm the plant.

Pope Francis Blames NATO for Ukraine War!

Israeli court paves way for eviction of 1,000 Palestinians from West Bank area

After a two-decade legal battle, Israel’s high court has ruled that about 1,000 Palestinians can be evicted from an area of the West Bank and the land repurposed for Israeli military use, in one of the single biggest expulsion decisions since the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began in 1967.

About 3,000 hectares of Masafer Yatta, a rural area of the south Hebron hills under full Israeli control and home to several small Palestinian villages, was designated as a “firing zone” by the Israeli state in the 1980s. Firing zones are used for military exercises, and the presence of civilians is prohibited.

According to the Geneva conventions pertaining to humanitarian treatment in war, it is illegal to expropriate occupied land for purposes that do not benefit the people living there, or to forcibly transfer the local population. Israel has argued, however, that the Masafer Yatta villagers living in Firing Zone 918, farming and raising animals there, were not permanent residents of the area when the firing zone was declared, and therefore have no rights to the land.

The high court decision published overnight on Wednesday – ahead of Israel’s Independence Day on Thursday, a public holiday – accepted the state’s argument that the community could not prove they were residents before the 1980s, despite expert testimony and literature presented in court that showed the area has been inhabited for decades.

The judges also rejected the claim that the “prohibition of forcible transfer set forth in international law is customary and binding”, calling it instead a “treaty norm” that is not enforceable in a domestic court, according to the Israeli international human rights lawyer Michael Sfard.

CIA director urged Bolsonaro to stop doubting Brazil’s voting system – report

The CIA director William Burns urged Jair Bolsonaro to stop questioning his country’s voting system, it has been claimed, amid growing fears the Brazilian president might refuse to accept defeat in this year’s election.

Polls suggest Bolsonaro, a far-right populist famed for his adulation of Donald Trump, will struggle to secure a second term when about 150 million Brazilians head to the polls in October to choose their next leader.

Bolsonaro’s leftist rival, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is currently in pole position, and will formally announce his candidacy at a convention in São Paulo this weekend.

The possibility of a Lula victory appears to have spooked Bolsonaro, who has ratcheted up his anti-democratic rhetoric in recent weeks, reviving baseless doubts over the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system.

Such claims – part of a long-running Bolsonaro campaign to delegitimize the electoral process for political gain – have alarmed both Bolsonaro’s opponents and members of the international community.

Empire News Roundup: Latin American Sovereignty

Multipolarista’s Ben Norton reports that Former Brazilian president Lula da Silva, who is still favored to beat Bolsonaro in the nation’s election later this year, has announced plans to create a Latin American currency called the “Sur” (South) in order to “be freed of the dollar.” Lula is also making headlines today for his position that presidents Zelensky and Putin are both equally to blame for the war in Ukraine, and that the US and EU also share blame for the conflict.

This comes at the same time the Mexican government begins promoting the idea of a Latin American lithium alliance. Bolivia’s Kawsachun News reports that Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has expressed his intention to form an alliance with major lithium nations Bolivia, Argentina and Chile for the mutual benefit of all nations involved. This could have major implications for the future due to the use of lithium batteries in smartphones, laptops and tablets, as well as electric cars.

Latin America finally moving out of Washington’s Monroe Doctrine sphere of domination and into its own collective sovereignty for its own benefit would be an earth-shaking historical development. That there appears to be some movement toward that end is both exciting and scary, because the US empire isn’t known for peacefully allowing its vassals to simply move out from under its thumb. Either way, though, the fact that nations around the world are coming out against the empire with increasing boldness is hugely significant.

Democrats FLAILING In Response To Roe V Wade Memo Leak, With No Plan To Protect Abortion Rights

Louisiana Republicans advance bill to make abortion a crime of murder

Republicans in Louisiana have advanced a bill to make abortion a crime of murder, as a draft decision that would end abortion rights continues to spark nationwide protests and police in Washington raised “non-scalable” fences around the supreme court.

Supporters admitted the bill, under which a woman terminating a pregnancy or anyone assisting her could be charged, was unconstitutional – as long as Roe v Wade was law. ...

Since the draft ruling that seems set to overturn Roe was published by Politico on Monday night, Democrats have warned of a likely torrent of challenges to established rights. ...

The same day in Texas, the Republican governor raised the possibility of challenging a 1982 ruling which said states must provide free education to all children, including those of undocumented migrants.

Sam Alito Leaned On WITCH TRIAL Advocates Who Endorsed Beating Women In Overturning Roe: Ryan Grim

The 'Raw Judicial Power' of Samuel Alito Is an Attack on Dignity, Autonomy, and Progress

The leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft opinion in the Mississippi abortion ban case has put into authenticated form an announcement that abortion advocates on both sides of the aisle have been predicting for years: stack the Court with Republican-appointed justices and Roe v. Wade will be overturned. The Court’s leaked opinion does just that, holding that both Roe and Casey are now bad law because there is no longer any constitutional right to abortion.

The current draft—which will be revised between now and its formal publication, likely in June—tells us a lot about where the Court stands on abortion, of course, but also other constitutional rights and the role of the courts in our constitutional republic.

First, though the opinion purports only to hold that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, thus permitting states to implement laws restricting, banning, or even criminalizing abortions, the language of the draft opinion lays the groundwork for a future federal ban on abortion altogether. Alito’s opinion approvingly quotes Mississippi’s claims that dilation and evacuation abortions are “barbaric,” "dangerous for the maternal patient," and "demeaning to the medical profession” as "legitimate interests" that "provide a rational basis" for the Mississippi ban. (The draft opinion employs rational basis review rather than the tougher level of review reserved for gender-based distinctions because—though it may surprise any human on the planet to hear it—the Court reminds us that previous cases have established that "regulation of abortion is a not a sex-based classification"). These "interests" are, of course, anti-choice talking points, not rational bases for a ban on abortion. Their embrace by the draft majority opinion makes clear that Alito is being disingenuous when he claims that the decision "is not based on any view about when a State should regard prenatal life as having rights or legally cognizable interests." Instead, the opinion is suffused with the unstated but implied belief that legally cognizable life begins at conception.

Second, Alito is also deeply disingenuous when he argues the opinion won't impact other fundamental rights. Alito's opinion holds there is no right to abortion because that right is neither explicitly mentioned in the Constitution nor implicitly contained within the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of an individual's right to liberty. Many of our most cherished constitutional rights are only impliedly contained within the expansive, conceptual language of the Constitution. As Justice Marshall reminded the Court over 200 years ago, "we must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding."

So why does it matter to other constitutional rights that Alito doesn't think individual liberty includes the right to decide whether to have an abortion? Because the liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause and the right to privacy it encompasses are also the bases for the Court's protection of gay marriage, the right to contraception, the right to private consensual sex, and the right to interracial marriage.

"Liberty," the Court explained in Lawrence v. Texas, "presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct." Alito says he can't seem to find a liberty interest in abortion because "the most important historical fact" is "how the States regulated abortion when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted." Needless to say, these other core rights would also not fare well under an analysis that prioritizes what legislatures were doing in 1868. Alito has already suggested as much. His dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges reads like an early edition of this draft opinion, arguing that gay marriage "lacks deep roots" and "is contrary to long-established tradition" and thus is not a right that can be protected by the Constitution. 

Finally, the opinion makes clear that the guard rails are gone when it comes to SCOTUS decision making. Throughout the opinion Alito returns repeatedly to the argument that the decision will correct "Roe's abuse of judicial authority" and "return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives." Of course, fundamental rights are fundamental rights because they are not up for debate by "the people's elected representatives." We don't ask for state referenda on whether we should permit racially segregated schools. Courts do their best and most essential work for a democracy when they protect the interests that enable humans to live with dignity and autonomy.

In 2018, Alito wrote the majority opinion Janus v. AFSCME, the decision that held that public employees could not be compelled to pay agency fees to the unions that are required by law to represent them and advocate for their interests. Though public employee unions have passed the small "d" democratic test not once but twice—elected state legislators must first pass a law enabling public unions and then, of course, the public employees themselves must vote for their union—Alito's majority opinion overruled a 41-year-old precedent to hold that agency fees violated the First Amendment rights of public employees. At the time of the opinion, commentators expressed concern that the Court's easy overruling of a case it did not like did not bode well for Roe v. Wade in the hands of a differently constituted Court. And of course, that is precisely what seems to have happened.

Alito tries to ease the shock of the decision to overrule such longstanding and prominent precedent by citing a number of cases—I counted 26 in total—in which the Supreme Court has overruled its own precedent. But I am not aware of a single case on that list in which the Court overruled precedent to take away a previously granted constitutional right.

So what is the end game here? Alito's full vision for the United States has yet to be painted, but thus far it's looking like an America in which "raw judicial power” (words he quotes disparagingly regarding Roe four times in the draft opinion) is used to foist the world views of judicially privileged interests upon the rest of us.

In the meantime, it means that where you live and what private resources you have at your command will be increasingly important to chart the course of your life.

As disconnected as they may seem on their face, overruling decades of precedent to weaken public unions on the one hand and doing the same to revoke a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion on the other are two sides of the same oppressive coin. They both chart dramatic turns away from an understanding of the law and Constitution grounded in commitments to individual dignity and autonomy in core spheres of life—work and family—and establish a core role for the judiciary in steering the ship in that direction.

Bernie FLAMES Dems Giving Corporate Tax Breaks

'The System Is Broken,' Amazon Union Leader Tells Congress. 'That's a Fact'

Wearing a jacket that read "Eat the Rich" across the back, Amazon Labor Union President Christian Smalls on Thursday told a Senate committee that the systems meant to protect workers' rights, particularly at large corporations, are "broken" and called on lawmakers to take action to protect people who want to join unions and who demand fair treatment at work.

Smalls testified before the Senate Budget Committee at a hearing titled "Should Taxpayer Dollars Go to Companies That Violate Labor Laws?" in which his former employer, Amazon.com, was the main focus.

Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) led the hearing, noting that Amazon is one of "hundreds of corporations in America that receive federal contracts, huge subsidies, special tax breaks, and all kinds of corporate welfare despite the fact that these same companies have engaged in widespread illegal behavior—including massive violations of labor laws."

While working to weaken the labor movement within its ranks last year, Amazon enjoyed more than $600 million in state and local government tax breaks. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleged earlier this year that the company violated federal labor laws by intimidating and threatening employees who tried to unionize. The board also found last year that Amazon violated labor laws during a unionization drive at a Bessemer, Alabama warehouse.

"No government—not the federal government, not the state government, and not the city government—should be handing out corporate welfare to union busters and labor law violators," said Sanders.

Smalls was there to give a firsthand account of Amazon's abuses two years after being fired from his job at a warehouse in New York City where he had organized his coworkers to protest what they called insufficient Covid-19 mitigation practices.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) leader led workers at the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island to vote overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing last month—but he didn't do so without facing aggressive anti-union tactics from the company, which spent $4.3 million last year on union-busting consultants and lawyers.

Smalls described being arrested for allegedly trespassing on company property in February when he delivered food to warehouse workers as part of the ALU's union drive, and noted that he and other employees have been fired after organizing.

"They break the law, they get away with it. We filed over 40 [unfair labor practice complaints] in 11 months," he said, noting that the NLRB confirmed Amazon broke the law when it fired Staten Island warehouse worker Daequen Smith.

"He's still out of a job," said Smalls. "He's living in a shelter right now, we raised money through GoFundMe. These are just a few examples including myself, who's been out of a job for two years."

Amazon officials know, he said, that their illegal anti-union activities "won't be resolved during the election campaigns."

"The system is broken," Smalls told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at one point during the hearing, emphasizing, "That's a fact" when the right-wing lawmaker pushed back.

Graham called into question Sanders' decision to hold the hearing at all, claiming it was "dangerous" and "radical" to allow former workers and labor experts to "make accusations" about Amazon in order to hold the corporation accountable.

"That's literally the point of congressional hearings," tweeted Oliver Willis of The American Independent.

Smalls responded to Graham's objections in his remarks:

It sounds like you were talking about more of the companies and the businesses in your speech, but you forgot that the people are the ones who make these companies operate, and if we're not protected and if the process for when we hold these companies accountable is not working for us then... That's the reason why we're here today.

I'm here to represent the workers who make these companies go and I think it's in your best interest to realize that it's not a left or right thing... It's a workers thing, it's a workers issue and we're the ones that are suffering in the corporations that you're talking about... And you should listen because we do represent your constituents as well.

Smalls garnered praise from progressives for his rebuke of the high-ranking Republican senator.

"Seeing Christian Smalls say this to Lindsey Graham's face, in the halls of power on Capitol Hill, is incredible," said journalist and activist Morgan Artyukhina. "Literally speaking truth to power!"

Amazon Gets Huge Contract Despite Biden’s Union Pledge

The Biden administration has re-awarded a massive $10 billion federal contract to Amazon, even as the president is facing mounting pressure to fulfill his promise to halt such contracts to companies that refuse to remain neutral in union elections. The contract decision came as Amazon responded to its workers’ first successful union drive by busting the organizing drive that followed.

At issue is Biden’s 2020 promise to “ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns.”

Amid revelations of Amazon’s aggressive efforts to shut down a union drive among its workers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) last month sent a letter to Biden “asking you to fulfill that promise… to make sure that federal dollars do not flow into the hands of unscrupulous employers who engage in union-busting, participate in wage theft, or violate labor law.”

A day later, Nextgov reported that Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) ratified a $10 billion cloud computing contract for Amazon, which hired the brother of Biden’s top aide as a lobbyist days after the 2020 presidential election. The contract for the company’s web services division is codenamed “Wild and Stormy,” and is distinct from another massive Pentagon cloud contract on which Amazon is also currently bidding.

A few days after Amazon received the NSA contract, the Amazon Labor Union lost its second union election bid by a 2-to-1 margin at another Staten Island warehouse, after Amazon mounted a furious campaign to halt the organizing drive.

In effect, while Amazon was doubling down on its union busting, the Biden administration was delivering a massive federal contract to the company, signaling to Amazon executives that he is so far not interested in fulfilling his pledge to use the government’s purchasing power to be “the most pro-union president.”

Meanwhile in Congress, lawmakers are advancing legislation that could give Amazon new tax breaks and give $10 billion to company founder Jeff Bezos’s space company. Most Democratic senators also voted Wednesday to reject a measure from Sanders demanding that tech companies that receive government subsidies remain neutral in union elections.

US stocks see worst day this year as Fed rate hike rattles investors

US stock markets suffered their worst day of the year on Thursday as investors worried about the Federal Reserve’s plans to raise interest rates to tackle soaring inflation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 1,000 points (3.1%). The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell 3.5% and 4.9% respectively. Tech stocks were particularly hard-hit, with Amazon dropping 7.6% and Tesla falling 8.3%.

The steep fall came one day after the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, announced the sharpest rise in interest rates in over 20 years. With inflation now running at an annual rate of 8.5%, a 40-year high in the US, Powell said the Fed needed to do “everything we can to restore stable prices”.

The half-percentage-point increase in rates had been widely signaled, and Powell’s comments that the Fed was not considering raising interest rates by 0.75 percentage points at a future meeting were initially welcomed by Wall Street, with stock markets recording their biggest one-day gain since 2020. But those gains evaporated on Thursday as traders worried about the impact of the Fed’s moves on demand, and on the wider economy.

“The Fed is between a rock and a hard place, and because of instant information, investors are experiencing both fear and greed at the exact same moment,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. “Investors realized that by the Fed continuing to take a very measured approach, it could actually allow inflation to remain out of control.”

Nina Turner Told She’s ‘Not The Right Kind Of Democrat,’ Says She’s Now ‘UNLEASHED’

Manchin, Kelly Join GOP in Passing Motion to Bar Biden From Declaring Climate Emergency

Two right-wing Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, crossed the aisle Wednesday to help Republicans approve a motion aimed at barring President Joe Biden from declaring a climate emergency, a step that green groups have been pressuring him to take since his first day in office.

The nonbinding motion, sponsored by Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.) and approved by a vote of 49-47, states that Biden "cannot use climate change as the basis to declare a national emergency." House and Senate lawmakers will consider the motion as part of their efforts to finalize legislation packed with subsidies to profitable microchip corporations.

It's unclear whether lawmakers will ultimately include the climate emergency language in the final bill, but environmentalists voiced outrage at the motion's passage as Manchin and Republicans continue to obstruct desperately needed congressional action to slash greenhouse gas emissions and bolster renewable energy production.

A separate motion instructing lawmakers to reject provisions that "prohibit development of an all-of-the-above energy portfolio"—which would include oil and gas production—also sailed through Wednesday by voice vote.

"Our political leadership is out to kill most of us," Basav Sen, director of the Climate Justice Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, said in response to the vote. "Every branch of [the federal government] (executive, Congress, courts) is rotten to the core."

"Manchin shouldn't be voting on climate/energy issues, based on his glaring and obvious conflict of interest," Sen added, alluding to the West Virginia Democrat's stake in his family's coal empire. "If we had a civilized system of government, he would be investigated for corruption, not heading the Senate energy committee."

UK Survey Finds 'Terrifying' 60% Plunge in Flying Insect Population

A survey published this week analyzing bug splat on U.K. motorists' license plates found that the nation's flying insect population has declined by nearly 60% over the past 17 years, indicating a "terrifying" loss of biodiversity among the planet's most numerous class of species.

"There is a growing amount of evidence of widespread insect population decline. These declines could have catastrophic impacts on the Earth's natural environment and our ability to survive on the planet," warns a summary of the Bugs Matter Citizen Science Survey, which was conducted by Buglife and the Kent Wildlife Trust (KWT).

"However, there has not been enough data to draw robust conclusions about trends in insect populations in the U.K., because standardized surveys are not used for all insect groups or at a national scale," the publication continues. "Our study demonstrates the use of an innovative method for widespread monitoring of insect 'splat rate' to investigate changes in insect populations in the U.K. over a 17-year timeframe."

To collect survey data, U.K. drivers cleaned their front license plates before setting out on essential journeys. After trips, they counted the number of insects on the plate using a "splatometer grill" before submitting photos and count information via the Bugs Matter app.

The data showed the overall number of insects recorded had declined by 58.5% nationwide. England suffered the greatest loss, with 65% fewer insects recorded in 2021 than in 2004, while Wales had 55% fewer, and Scotland saw a decline of 27.9%.

"This vital study suggests that the number of flying insects is declining by an average of 34% per decade—this is terrifying," Buglife CEO Matt Shardlow told The Guardian. "We cannot put off action any longer, for the health and well-being of future generations this demands a political and societal response. It is essential that we halt biodiversity decline now."

According to a 2020 British parliamentary report that noted a 38% to 75% loss in bug biomass throughout Europe: "Insects play a pivotal role in natural processes that support other living organisms, and human health and well-being. Roles include pollination, pest and weed regulation, decomposition, nutrient cycling, and provision of food for wildlife and humans."

KWT conservation director Paul Hadaway told the BBC Thursday that "declines are happening at an alarming rate and without concerted action to address them we face a stark future."

The U.K. survey's findings complement those of other studies conducted around the world.

Last month, researchers at University College London's Center for Biodiversity and Environment Research published one of the largest-ever assessments of global insect population loss, with the paper revealing that "farmland in climate-stressed areas where most nearby natural habitat has been removed has lost 63% of its insects, on average."

In 2020, 73 international scientists published a roadmap to battle that's been called the global "bugpocalypse." The researchers stressed the need to aggressively curb planet-heating greenhouse emissions, reduce use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, limit pollution of all types, and fund increased conservation efforts.

US is recycling just 5% of its plastic waste, studies show

When most people toss a plastic bottle or cup into the recycling bin, they assume that means the plastic is recycled – but a new report lays bare how rarely that actually happens. According to the Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics, the organization behind the report released on Wednesday, the recycling rate for post-consumer plastic was just 5% to 6% in 2021.

The Department of Energy also released a research paper this week, which analyzed data from 2019, and came to the same number: only 5% of plastics are being recycled. The researchers on that report wrote that landfilled plastic waste in the United States has been on the rise for many reasons, including “low recycling rates, population growth, consumer preference for single-use plastics, and low disposal fees in certain parts of the country”, according to a press release.

The problem has also been exacerbated by shifts in the global recycling market, including China’s 2017 ban on most US plastic exports. Countries such as China used to accept ships full of plastic waste from the US, says Jan Dell, founder of the Last Beach Cleanup, but without that option, more plastic is ending up thrown away, since few US facilities have the capacity to recycle it. “The rate of plastic recycling in the US has never been about 4% to 5% ever,” she says. “We don’t have factories to do it. It’s also very water intensive, so we’re not going to build more plastic recycling facilities in the US.”

Firefighters slow advance of New Mexico blaze as Biden declares disaster

Firefighters in New Mexico have slowed the advance of the largest wildfire currently burning in the US, as Joe Biden declared the situation a disaster, bringing new resources to remote stretches of New Mexico that have been devastated by fire since early April.

Nearly 1,300 firefighters and other personnel are currently battling the fire, which has fanned out across 258 sq miles (669 sq km) of high alpine forest and grasslands at the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains.

Fire bosses are seizing upon an interlude of relatively calm and cool weather to prevent the fire from pushing any closer to the small New Mexico city of Las Vegas, and other villages scattered along the fire’s shifting fronts. Airplanes and helicopters dropped slurries of red fire retardant from the sky, as ground crews cleared timber and brush to starve the fire along crucial fronts. ...

Wildfires have become a year-round threat in the drought-stricken west – moving faster and burning hotter than ever due to climate change, scientists and fire experts have said. Rising temperatures have escalated drought conditions, desiccating vegetation that sprang up during last summer’s strong monsoon season in the south-west. While the region typically has its driest days in late spring and early summer, the climate crisis has intensified the cycle, setting the stage for bigger blazes and a longer fire season. ...

Strong winds with gusts up to 45mph are expected to return on Saturday afternoon along with above-normal temperatures and “abysmally low” humidity that make for extreme fire danger, said Todd Shoemake, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Albuquerque. “Sunday and Monday are probably looking to be even worse.”

Also of Interest

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

US Officials Claim US Intelligence Helped Ukraine Sink Russian Flagship Moskva

Ukraine's Forces Are Told To Hold The Line Where Russian Artillery Is Pulverizing Them

Biden Vacillates as Venezuela’s Maduro Gains Ground

‘Dodged a bullet’: how whistleblowers averted a second US nuclear disaster

‘Towns just turned to dust’: how factory hog farms help hollow out rural communities

America is exterminating its wolves. When will this stop?

$50.5 Billion and Counting: Climate Groups Launch 'Cost of Inaction' Ticker

Media Hypocrites Recommend Women Take Horse Drugs For Abortion

A Little Night Music

Marcia Ball - Red Hot

Marcia Ball - Mobile

Marcia Ball - Louisiana 1927

Pinetop Perkins & Marcia Ball - Pinetop's New Boogie Woogie

Marcia Ball - Give it up (Give In)

Marcia Ball - I'm Coming Down With The Blues

Joe Ely and Marcia Ball - I Keep My Fingernails Long

Marcia Ball - Soulful Dress

Honey Piazza & Marcia Ball - Four Hand Boogie

Marcia Ball - Red Beans Cooking