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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Ann Cole

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer Ann Cole. Enjoy!

^{Ann Cole - Easy Easy Baby}

"True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion."

-- Charles Bukowski

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News and Opinion

Wow, just wow ...

Genocide Fuels Anti-Establishment Politics

Opposition to Israel’s genocidal attack on Palestinians has become a rallying cry for insurgent third party and independent candidates in Britain’s July 4 general election, especially in northern towns with large Muslim populations, like Blackburn in Lancashire.

On Sunday, former British diplomat Craig Murray, running to represent Blackburn in Parliament, spoke to prospective voters with MP George Galloway about how to end Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

Scott Ritter : On My Way to Russia I Met Big Brother

Caitlin Johnstone: Why I Don’t Condemn Hamas For October 7

In 1999, a woman named Cindy Hendy was stabbed in the neck with an ice pick by a woman named Cynthia Vigil inside a trailer home in New Mexico. Vigil then fled the scene to a nearby residence, whose owner promptly called the police.

She was never charged with any crime.

The reason Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any crime despite having stabbed Cindy Hendy in the neck with an ice pick was because Hendy was an accomplice of the serial killer David Parker Ray, also known as the Toy Box Killer. Vigil’s escape from the trailer where Ray and Hendy had been imprisoning and torturing her led to the pair’s subsequent arrest. Ray died in prison three years later, the full extent of his murder spree still unknown. Hendy served 19 years and was released in 2019.

Cynthia Vigil was never charged with any crime because anyone could see that violent force was an entirely understandable and legitimate response to having been kidnapped and subjected to horrific treatment. It never at any time occurred to anyone to say that she should have acted differently, and it most certainly never occurred to anyone to make her single act of desperate violence the major story instead of the fact that there was a serial killer who’d been abducting women and torturing them in his murder dungeon.

And, I mean, imagine how absurd it would have been if they’d done that. Imagine if, after the Toy Box Killer story broke, all the major headlines were about a woman stabbing another woman with an ice pick. Imagine if the ice pick stabbing was all the press ever wanted to talk about, for month after month after month, instead of the fact that people had been imprisoned and subjected to savage abuse by a cruel serial murderer.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if, any time someone was interviewed about this case in the news, they were asked if they condemned Cynthia Vigil for her brutal, evil, sadistic ice pick stabbing of Cindy Hendy.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if the press kept framing the incident as though Hendy was just standing around, innocently minding her own business, and was then victimized by a barbaric and unprovoked attack by Vigil.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if everyone kept the story focused on the ice pick stabbing, and any time anyone tried to point out that the stabbing only occurred because Cynthia Vigil was being imprisoned by a deranged serial killer and his female accomplice they were hysterically denounced as Vigil apologists and supporters of neck-stabbing, and told that nothing — absolutely nothing — could ever excuse or justify the violence that Vigil inflicted upon Hendy on that terrible day.

Imagine how absurd it would’ve been if, rather than coming to Vigil’s rescue and arresting those who’d victimized her, the police had returned Vigil to her captors and helped David Parker Ray resume his murderous lifestyle.

Imagine if, while helping David Parker Ray re-establish his status quo lifestyle of kidnapping, torture and murder, arguments were made by law enforcement and the media that Ray’s murder dungeon has a right to exist, and that Ray and his accomplices have a right to defend their home and their way of life.

Imagine if Ray had greatly escalated his murderousness and sadism in full view of the entire world following Cynthia Vigil’s attempted escape, and people defended this by solemnly invoking the horrible, awful day when Vigil launched an unprovoked ice pick attack on Cindy Hendy’s neck.

Imagine if, in order to help justify their support for Ray’s murderous rampage, the police and the media had sown lies and disinformation about what Vigil did during her escape attempt, claiming she sexually assaulted Hendy and beheaded her baby and put its body in an oven.

It’s hard to imagine anything being more ridiculous, is it not? It’s hard to imagine a more obscene reversal of victim and victimizer, and a more absurd response to someone’s desperate efforts to escape from her abusive captors.

It’s about as backwards and insane as anyone could possibly be about anything, and anyone who tried to get you to believe such an absurdity would obviously be a psychologically abusive gaslighter who should never be believed about anything ever again. Clearly they have a demented perspective, every part of which should be rejected in every way possible.

Anyway, yeah. That’s why I’ve never condemned Hamas for October 7.

Confusion Over Biden Ceasefire Proposal, Israeli Media: 4 MORE Hostages Likely Killed By IDF

White House says ‘ball in Hamas’s court’ over Gaza peace proposal

The White House insisted that the “ball was in Hamas’s court” on whether to accept a new Gaza peace proposal, despite mixed signals from Benjamin Netanyahu reflecting turmoil within his governing coalition in Israel.

The US national security spokesperson, John Kirby, insisted on Monday that it was an Israeli proposal – despite the fact it had been unveiled by Joe Biden on Friday, during the Jewish Sabbath, and Netanyahu had appeared to challenge it. The Israeli prime minister said any deal that did not lead to the complete destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capacity would be a “non-starter”.

The Israeli prime minister told the Knesset on Monday: “The claims that we have agreed to a ceasefire without our conditions being met are incorrect.”

“I’ve heard different statements coming out of Israel,” Kirby said, pointing out that the country’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, had acknowledged that it was an Israeli proposal. The three-phase plan outlined by Biden on Friday, he added, “accurately reflects that proposal that we worked with the Israelis on”.

US officials said that the proposal had evolved in discussions between US, Israeli and Qatari negotiators in the past few weeks. However, Netanyahu was given just a few hours’ notice on Friday that Biden would make it public. The officials said that the timing, with Biden speaking when Israeli government offices were closed for the Sabbath and the country’s most conservative, religiously observant politicians had cut themselves off from the internet and other communications, was not deliberate, but was dictated by the fact that the four and a half page plan was delivered to Hamas on Thursday.

Israeli Officials Think Netanyahu Remarks Could Sabotage Ceasefire Deal

Israeli officials are worried that recent comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could sabotage the chances of the Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by President Biden, Axios reported on Monday.

The Israeli officials said there was “constructive ambiguity” in the proposal that could allow Israel and Hamas to enter the first phase of the deal, which involves a six-week truce and initial hostage and prisoner exchange, without Israel committing to a permanent ceasefire.

Under the potential deal, the two sides would negotiate the terms for a permanent ceasefire during the first phase. A senior Israeli official told Axios that Netanyahu was “killing” the ambiguity by ruling out a permanent truce. “Instead of keeping things ambiguous, his statements are pushing Hamas to ask for more clarification, making it harder to get a deal,” a second Israeli official said.

Hamas still strong in areas ‘cleared’ by Israel in northern Gaza, say experts

There may be more Hamas militants in the north of Gaza, supposedly cleared by Israeli forces months ago, than in Rafah, the southern city in the territory described by Israeli officials as the extremist Islamist organisation’s “last stronghold”, analysts believe. More than 1 million people have fled Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, after instructions from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the biggest wave of displacement since the early months of the conflict. The IDF has said repeatedly that four Hamas brigades – the militant Islamist organisation’s biggest remaining force – is based in Rafah.

But though Israeli forces have now invaded Rafah, it was fighting in Jabaliya, the second-most populous town in northern Gaza, that was described last month by IDF officials as “perhaps the fiercest” yet seen in the seventh-month-long conflict.

“We do have to remember there are more Hamas armed people in the north of Gaza in the places that the IDF has already moved out of than … in Rafah … Those are the IDF’s numbers. This is why the IDF had to go back into Jabaliya and … Zeitoun [a nearby town]. Hamas is controlling all those areas,” Eyal Hulata, the head of Israel’s national security council from 2021 to last year, told reporters last month.

Israeli officials, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have long claimed that the ongoing offensive in Rafah, despite strong opposition from many allies, will achieve their stated war aims of destroying Hamas’s capability to threaten Israel and freeing hostages held by the group.

The battles in Jabaliya between lightly armed Hamas militants and a powerful IDF force underlined the ability of Hamas to return to parts of Gaza from which it was forced to retreat by earlier Israeli offensives, threatening a “forever war” for months or even years to come, as Israel tries to stamp out a tenacious insurgency, experts say.

Worth a full read:

The Comma That Erases Genocide

Israel’s claim that a single comma exempts it from having to respect the International Court of Justice’s order on May 24 to immediately halt its murderous attack on Rafah should be ridiculed. Instead it is being given space to breathe by complicit media like The Guardian. The paper’s diplomatic editor offers an “analysis” that takes seriously claims by Israel and the two judges at the ICJ — one an Israeli — who dissented from the ruling approved by the other 13. They argue the following:

“The world is wrong to think that the ICJ has required Israel to halt its Rafah assault and any actions elsewhere in Gaza that are genocidal. Instead, a comma in the text qualifies the ruling to mean the court wants Israel to halt its actions in Rafah and elsewhere only if they are genocidal. Because Israel’s actions are not genocidal, the court is not, in fact, asking Israel to halt anything.”

That argument is preposterous on its face. It would be a less forceful statement than the one the court issued back in January, when Israel’s genocide was far less developed than it is now. But there’s another glaring flaw in the argument’s logic that The Guardian somehow overlooks. If the two dissenting judges are really so sure that is what the overwhelming majority meant — that Israel is barred only from carrying out actions if they are already proven to constitute genocide — why on earth did they dissent?

Were this really the case, there could be only one possible interpretation of their decision to dissent: that they favour giving Israel the green light to commit genocide.

This isn’t rocket science.

Forced displacement has pushed over 1 million people away from Rafah.

Thousands of families now shelter in damaged & destroyed facilities in Khan Younis, where @UNRWA keeps providing essential services despite increasing challenges. Conditions are unspeakable.#CeasefireNOW pic.twitter.com/qRVnWmfZSr

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 3, 2024

Trade convoys ‘squeezing out’ Gaza aid, humanitarian organisations say

Aid shipments into southern Gaza are being squeezed out by commercial convoys, humanitarian organisations say, at a time when Israel’s military push into Rafah has choked off supply routes critical to feeding hundreds of thousands of people.

Deliveries of food, medicine and other aid into Gaza fell by two-thirds after Israel began its ground operation on 7 May, UN figures show. But overall the number of trucks entering Gaza rose in May compared with April, according to Israeli officials.

Part of the reason for the stark difference in accounts of what supplies reached the strip is a rise in commercial shipments.

In May, the Israeli military lifted a ban on the sale of food to Gaza from Israel and the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported last week. Traders got the green light to resume buying fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy and other goods.

Inside Gaza, residents say there is more food in markets, but prices are many times higher than prewar levels, and after months of fighting and displacement few people can afford to buy much. A group of aid agencies warned this week that there was a “mirage of improved access”, when efforts to feed Palestinians were on the verge of collapse.

'History Will JUDGE,' State Department Officer Explains Why She QUIT Over GAZA Policy

Maldives Bans All Israeli Travelers Over 'Genocidal Acts' in Gaza

Citing the Gaza genocide, the Maldives said Sunday that it will ban all Israeli passport holders from entering the Indian Ocean archipelago nation, in which income from tourism accounts for nearly 30% of the gross domestic product.

Acting on a recommendation by his Cabinet, Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu will impose the travel ban, the details of which will be determined by a specially appointed subcommittee. Muizzu's office also said the president will appoint a special envoy "to assess Palestinian needs."

Muizzu will also launch a fundraising campaign "to assist our brothers and sisters in Palestine with the help of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and to conduct a nationwide rally under the slogan 'Falastheenaa Eku Dhivehin,' which translates to 'Maldivians in Solidarity with Palestine,' to show support."

Like Palestine, the Maldives is a majority Sunni Muslim nation. There have been numerous well-attended pro-Palestine rallies in the Maldivian capital Male since October.

Last month, the Maldives reaffirmed its intention to join the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, with Muizzu's office accusing the Israeli government and military of violating the Genocide Convention and causing "mass displacement, acute starvation, and blockage of humanitarian aid." ...

Responding to last month's massacre of dozens of Palestinian refugees in a Rafah tent encampment and the wider Israeli assault on Gaza's southernmost city, the Maldivian government said that "such deliberate aggression and genocidal acts targeted against civilians are in gross violation of international humanitarian law."

This isn't the first time the Maldives has banned Israeli travelers. The country's government ended the previous ban in the early 1990s with an eye toward normalizing relations with Tel Aviv. However, normalization efforts were abandoned following the 2012 coup that ousted then-President Mohamed Nasheed.

Maldivian government data show 528 Israelis visited the country—known for its pristine white sand beaches and stunning turqouise lagoons—during the first four months of 2024, a decrease from 4,644 during the same period last year. Nearly 11,000 Israelis visited the Maldives last year.

Israel and many of its international supporters shrugged off the impending ban, with the Israeli government's account on the social media platform X saying, "We're good," and one prominent Tel Aviv attorney scoffing, "Maldives, Schmaldives."

The Israeli Foreign Minister advised Sunday that citizens already in the Maldives should "consider leaving, because if they find themselves in distress for any reason, it will be difficult for us to assist."

According to the Israeli government, 10 other nations—Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen—ban entry of Israeli passport holders.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Why the West Hates Russia

Operation Kharkov Attrition; Report Rus Stop West Black Sea Drones; Germany Crisis; Italy Out of Gas

Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum poised to secure supermajority after historic win

Claudia Sheinbaum seems poised to cement her historic victory as Mexico’s first female president with a supermajority in congress that would let her party pass legislation and budgets unopposed – and perhaps even change the constitution without need for compromise.

Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won the presidency with 59.5% of the vote, according to a rapid sample count by Mexico’s electoral authority. During the campaign, Sheinbaum portrayed herself as a continuity candidate, vowing to keep the policies of her populist predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known popularly as Amlo, who founded the Morena party in 2014 and forged a bond with voters disenchanted with democracy.

López Obrador was constitutionally unable to run again, but chose Sheinbaum as his successor – and she appears to have won 5m votes more than he did six years ago. ...

Morena and its allies are poised to win a two-thirds supermajority in one and perhaps both houses of congress, which would allow it to amend the constitution at will. Amlo has already laid out a desired packet of reforms that is wide-ranging and occasionally eccentric, including pension reform but also outlawing animal abuse, as well as banning fracking and the sale of vapes.

But the most controversial would be a reform to elect supreme court justices by popular vote. The court has often stood against Amlo, and such a reform could place it under Morena’s control. On Monday, Amlo said he did “not want to impose anything” on Sheinbaum, before later adding: “I do think we have to address the issue of judicial reform … There has to be a judiciary that represents the Mexican people, that is incorruptible, because if not, we will not move forward.”

The City of Atlanta has millions to build a Cop City to oppress the populace more efficiently, but the cupboards are bare when it comes to maintaining critical infrastructure that citizens rely on for survival needs.

Collapse of Atlanta water system continues for third day

The collapse of the water infrastructure in Atlanta, Georgia, that began on Friday and left a large section of the city without any water expanded on Sunday with two more ruptures being investigated by water department officials. ... Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens declared a state of emergency in the city at a press conference on Saturday night after the massive disruption of water service resulted in a boil water advisory from the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management. Dickens said the city was “working around the clock to bring us safe drinking water in the city of Atlanta.”

The water main collapse that shut down water service in all of downtown Atlanta began after corroded 48-inch and 36-inch pipes burst sometime on Friday at an intersection of three primary water lines in the city. ... The water main failure impacted Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Fulton County and Atlanta government facilities and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the State Farm Arena. High-rise apartment buildings were also left with no water pressure. Businesses were forced to close their doors or reduce their services on what would have been a busy Saturday in the city. Major events, including concerts and sporting events, were canceled, and hotel guests were forced to use bottled water in their rooms or check out early. ...

Emory University Hospital Midtown told news media on Saturday that it was forced to move patients and divert ambulances due to the crisis. A Journal Constitution report said, “The situation grew so serious by Saturday afternoon, that the hospital—which has about 500 patients hospitalized—doesn’t even have enough water pressure to flush toilets and is forced to rely on bottled water for all water needs.” ...

Kelly Hughes posted, “This is what happens when you fail to maintain the infrastructure and keep adding new users to an existing system. Increasing water pressure to try and keep up with new buildings was a sure fire way to start causing problems ... we’ve been complaining for YEARS about this issue only to be ignored by the city Gov’t.” ... Katie Robertson added, “What is the plan for these 80-year-old pipes? They only last 53 years! Why are they not replaced and maintained? You are wasting water and money on these breaks. Roll up your sleeves and get to work on a solution for the long run not a band-aid.”

The failure of the water system in Atlanta is the latest in a growing series of events across the US that expose the decrepit condition of the infrastructure and refusal of the ruling political establishment and corporate elite to do anything about it. It follows the collapse of the water system in Jackson, Mississippi, after storm-related flooding, and the crisis in Flint, Michigan, in which thousands of adults and children were poisoned by lead in the water. Essential services such as water and electricity are failing at an increasing rate due to the lack of resources made available to upgrade the systems which are in some cases a century old or older.

DoJ accuses far-right Epoch Times of being money-laundering operation

The far-right Epoch Times media company was at the center of a fraudulent money-laundering and cryptocurrency scam involving tens of millions of dollars, the justice department said on Monday as it announced the indictment of its chief financial officer Bill Guan.

The 61-year-old executive “conspired with others to participate in a sprawling, transnational scheme to launder at least approximately $67m of illegally obtained funds”, according to a statement from the US attorney’s office of the southern district of New York.

Proceeds went to the company, it said, and for the personal enrichment of individuals including Guan, who faces up to 70 years in prison on one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud.

The attorney’s office said the charges did not relate to the newsgathering activities of the Manhattan-based Epoch Times, a media company popular with the conservative right wing for its often conspiratorial coverage of global politics and affairs, and outspoken criticism of the Chinese communist party.

Guan is accused of masterminding a scheme in which he managed the media company’s “Make Money Online” team overseas, the justice department said. “Under Guan’s management, members of the team and others used cryptocurrency to knowingly purchase tens of millions of dollars in crime proceeds, including proceeds of fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits, that had been loaded onto tens of thousands of prepaid debit cards,” the statement said. The proceeds were then allegedly “laundered” through a certain cryptocurrency platform and turned into digital currency at 70 to 80 cents on the dollar, prosecutors said.

FBI RAIDS Corporate Landlords For Rent Price Fixing

200-to-1: Gap Between CEOs and Workers Grew Even Wider in 2023

The median compensation of chief executives at major U.S.-listed firms increased by 12.6% to $16.3 million in 2023, far outpacing the growth in worker wages and widening the CEO-to-worker pay gap to nearly 200-to-1, according to new reporting by the Associated Press on Monday.

The increase in CEO compensation came as private sector workers' pay increased just 4.1% last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Among hundreds of surveyed firms for the AP analysis, the median gap between CEO pay and median employee pay was 196—up from 185 in 2022.

Experts said the analysis showed that the economic hardship that Americans face and the dissatisfaction they feel with the economy is due to unnecessary wage stagnation, with profits diverted upwards, and not just inflation.

"Most of the focus here is on inflation, which people are really feeling, but they’re feeling the pain of inflation more because they’re not seeing their wages go up enough," Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), told the AP.

The AP has conducted this analysis annually for the last 14 years, working with business intelligence firm Equilar, which included in the analysis the 341 S&P 500 firms that submitted a proxy statement between January and April 2024. Their work comes on top of a raft of recent academic and nonprofit research on income inequality, including the CEO-to-worker pay ratio.

It's possible that Equilar in fact underestimated the pay gap. Some researchers have found a higher ratio, including the Economic Policy Institute, which found it to be 344-to-1 in the most recent year studied—compared to just 21-to-1 in 1965—using a standardized methodology to determine median worker pay, rather than letting a firm declare its median salary. EPI found that CEO pay soared an astonishing 1,209.2% from 1978 to 2022 while worker pay increased just 15.3% over the same period.

In her work for IPS, Anderson has shown that the S&P 500 CEOs make more in one day than the average American makes in a year.

The rise in CEO compensation in 2023 came primarily because of an increase in stock awards, Equilar found. The S&P 500 rose more than 24% in 2023, after going down in 2022, leading to higher executive compensation.

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Trump calls on supreme court to annul his guilty verdict in hush-money case

Donald Trump has called on the US supreme court to step in and annul his guilty verdict in a hush-money trial that left him with the unwanted distinction of being the first former US president to be a convicted felon.

The 2024 presumptive Republican nominee made his plea in a typically florid post on his Truth Social site, highlighting that a sentencing hearing scheduled for 11 July falls just four days before the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee, when his nomination is expected to become official.

“The ‘Sentencing’ for not having done anything wrong will be, conveniently for the Fascists, 4 days before the Republican National Convention,” Trump wrote. “A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?” ...

The verdict, which Trump has pledged to appeal, raised the atmosphere in this year’s presidential campaign to fever pitch more than five months before polling day, with Republicans circling the wagons while Democrats sought ways to exploit it. ...

By appealing to the supreme court to intervene in a case he insists is nakedly political, Trump is reprising the legal strategy deployed in his defense against special counsel Jack Smith’s charges relating to the 6 January, 2021 mob attack on the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in his favor.

ADL files federal complaint against pro-Palestinian Jewish group

The pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has filed a complaint in the US with the Federal Election Commission, accusing the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace Action's political action committee (JVP-PAC) of violating campaign finance laws. The complaint accuses JVP-PAC of "financial discrepancies" and is calling on the Federal Election Commission to levy sanctions against the organisation. “Simply put, JVP PAC’s numbers do not add up, and despite repeated warnings from the FEC, the PAC has failed to correct the record,” Steven Sheinberg, ADL's chief legal officer, said in a statement. ...

The complaint from the ADL also comes as pro-Israel groups launched plans to spend more than $100m in the current election cycle in an attempt to unseat a number of progressive lawmakers who have also been supportive of Palestinian rights and critical of Israel.

In March, Jewish Voice for Peace joined a coalition of 20 different progressive organisations in order to protect pro-Palestinian lawmakers and take on the powerful Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).

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In threat to climate safety, Michigan to woo tech data centers with new laws

Michigan Democrats are poised to pass legislation aimed at attracting big-tech data centers, but opponents say the bills would destroy nation-leading climate laws the same legislators approved in November because the centers consume massive amounts of electricity. The November climate bills included an “offramp” that would keep gas or coal plants running if renewable sources could not handle the energy grid’s load, and the stipulation would almost certainly be triggered, opponents say.

That would put an end to Michigan’s climate legislation that requires 100% renewable energy by 2040, and dramatically increase electric rates for residential customers, critics say. Meanwhile, the centers would potentially consume millions of gallons of water daily, an unprecedented draw from the Great Lakes, which hold 95% of the nation’s freshwater.

The “sheer volume of electricity required by these things is almost unfathomable”, said Christy McGillivray, legislative director for the Sierra Club of Michigan, which is lobbying against the bills. “These are very clearly a nightmare, because they use so much energy and water that without mandatory protections for ratepayers and guardrails that require renewable energy buildout, we are not going to be able to cut emissions like we want to,” McGillivray said.

The data-center bills would provide tax incentives to tech companies lobbying for them, including Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Democratic leadership recently pushed the bills through the house and senate, both controlled by Democrats, without environmental or consumer protections called for by progressive lawmakers. But environmental groups mobilized in May and peeled off enough support to stall the bills in reconciliation in the house.

Progressive lawmakers are now in a last-ditch stand to add environmental protections to the bills. Big tech’s lobbyists are pushing legislators to quickly move the legislation, said Rosemary Bayer, a senator demanding the addition of environmental and consumer protections.

Hot summer may bring 8% rise in utility costs for many people across the US

Many people in the US can expect to see an 8% rise in their utility costs this summer, according to a new report. Soaring electricity bills put low-income households at risk from extreme heat, the report noted.

Last year was the Earth’s hottest one on record. In the US alone, about 11,000 people are estimated to have died of heat exposure. “With temperatures continuing to rise, more and more families need help with cooling,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association and the report’s lead author. “I’m worried that we’re looking at another hot summer, and we’re not prepared for it.”

The analysis, conducted by National Energy Assistance Directors Association and the Center for Energy Poverty, found that the average cost to cool a home this summer would reach $719, up from $661 last year, and $476 a decade ago. The mid-Atlantic and west coast are expected to see the highest rise in electricity costs compared to last year, at 12%.

Low-income households pay roughly 8.6% of their income toward utilities, according to the Department of Energy. A household paying 6% of their income toward energy costs is considered to be a high energy burden household. According to the report, which looked at the period from June through September, nearly 20% of very low-income households have no air conditioning at all.

California firefighters contain 75% of state’s largest wildfire so far this year

California’s largest wildfire so far this year was significantly surrounded on Monday after blackening a swath of hilly grasslands between San Francisco bay and the Central valley.

The Corral fire was 75% contained after scorching more than 22 sq miles (57 sq km) over the weekend, the California department of forestry and fire protection, or Cal Fire, said. One home was destroyed and two firefighters were injured.

The wind-driven fire erupted on Saturday afternoon on land managed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country’s key centers for nuclear weapons science and technology. The cause was under investigation.

Thousands of people in the area, including parts of the San Joaquin county city of Tracy, were ordered to leave for evacuation centers on Saturday. Evacuation orders were lifted when improved weather allowed firefighters to make progress against the flames.

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Also of Interest

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

Patrick Lawrence: Deaf and Blind: The Maladies of American Diplomats

Israel’s Stalking Operation Against the ICC Is Mirrored in Its Canary Mission Attack on US Universities

Group Documents Israel's Starvation of 2 Palestinian Children in Past Week

Gaza’s Dark Dawn – 28 Palestinians Killed, Jabaliya Declared Uninhabitable

After General Assembly Vote, UN Experts Demand All Nations Recognize Palestinian State

Israel's Backhanded Apology for Rafah Massacre Was No Apology at All

India Is Cooked

‘There is nowhere to fish any more’: life in the shadow of Nigeria’s biggest industrial complex

Hawaii’s Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, erupts

"The Trauma Is Unimaginable": Save the Children CEO Calls for Ceasefire in Gaza

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A Little Night Music

Ann Cole - I´ve Got Nothing Working Now

Ann Cole - Each Day

Ann Cole - Have Fun

Ann Cole - I´ve Got A Little Boy

Ann Cole - I'm waiting for you

Ann Cole - Don't Stop the Wedding

Ann Cole - Plain As The Nose On Your Face

Ann Cole - Are You Satisfied?

Ann Cole - Got My Mojo Working

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