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This evening's music features blues guitarist and prolific sideman Wayne Bennett. Enjoy!

"The first and probably most fundamental aspect of this crisis is that we are now close to the commodification of everything. That is, historical capitalism is in crisis precisely because, in pursuing the endless accumulation of capital, it is beginning to approximate that state of being Adam Smith asserted was 'natural' to man but which has never historically existed. The 'propensity [of humanity] to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' has entered into domains and zones previously untouched, and the pressure to expand commodification is relatively unchecked."

-- Immanuel Wallerstein

News and Opinion

The Entire Human Species Has Been Turned Into A Profit-Generating Machine

The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant machine to generate profit for corporations.

Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders.

That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live.

It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless.

Music is made to be as profitable as possible, which means giving it the broadest possible appeal using formulaic song structure calculated to cause a chemical response in the largest number of human brains.

Movies are designed to draw the largest possible box office revenue at the lowest possible risk to studios and investors, often by just rehashing a movie that’s already proven successful in the past or by slapping together a story about an IP with pre-existing mass appeal.

Food is made to be fast and addictive rather than nourishing.

Healthy human connection has been commodified as social media intertwines with friendships and dating apps insert themselves into the development of romantic relationships.

Human sexuality is being warped and twisted as internet porn normalizes violence and degradation for the maximum number of clicks.

Attention and engagement have been monetized, creating an information ecosystem dominated by conflict and gossip designed to appeal to our baser instincts.

Advertisement is injected into every possible corner of our waking sensory experience, with any available space where the eye might rest or the ear might listen being flooded with psychological manipulation compelling us to consume. They’ll start running commercials in our dreams the instant they have the technology to do so.

You spend eight hours at the office working to generate corporate profits, then you come home and consume products to profit other corporations. You need your beer and snacks to unwind, your streaming services and social media to distract your mind from the stress of it all, your online clothing purchase to try to feel good about yourself, and your prescription drugs to get to sleep at night. People live their entire lives like this.

And that’s those of us who are lucky enough to be living in the global north. In the global south you get wage slavery and exploitation with far more toil, far less relaxation time, and no cheap products made by impoverished workers on other continents with which to comfort yourself.

All of humanity has been roped into this mess. And for what? To make the numbers in some bank accounts increase. To get some green arrows pointing upward on the stock exchange. To enable a few billionaires to buy islands and elections.

All while destroying the biosphere we all depend on for survival.

This, we are told, is the best possible system we could possibly be living under.

I personally do not believe this is true. I personally believe we can have better. Those who benefit from this current arrangement are going to assure us it’s impossible and do everything they can to stop us from changing it, but we do have the means to reclaim the wealth, dignity and happiness that they have stolen from us.

They built this whole machine on our backs. All we need to do is stand up.

Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Steps In – Israel Refuses to Withdraw as Hezbollah CRUSHES the Buffer Zone

Trump declares US-Iran peace deal ‘all signed’ as G7 leaders battle to tie up loose ends

Donald Trump has declared that the strait of Hormuz will be “completely open” from Friday, as western leaders gathering at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains battled to prevent the fragile US deal with Iran from almost immediately unravelling. “The deal’s all signed. And the strait ⁠is already partially opened,” Trump said as he arrived at the summit in France, but Israeli breaches of the ceasefire in Lebanon and Iran’s claims about its right to charge fees in the crucial waterway revealed the agreement’s many loose ends.

Speaking at the start of bilateral talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Monday, Trump rejected a proposed UK-France joint naval mission in the strait, saying “I don’t think we will need much help” keeping it open. “I think a lot of great things are going to happen in the Middle East right now. And very importantly, the oil is plummeting down and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today,” Trump said. “The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. They fully agreed to that with strong policing powers, and they won’t have a nuclear weapon, which is what it was all about.”

The memorandum of understanding (MOU) – which US officials said would open the strait of Hormuz in exchange for a lifting of a US naval blockade on Iran – is set to be formally signed at a ceremony in Geneva on Friday attended by the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the chief Iranian negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf. White House officials said the full details of the agreement would be published in the next 24 to 48 hours. But the G7 leaders gathering for three days of talks found themselves already trying to shore up the agreement that the US had signed. Technical discussions led by Vance from the US side will begin later this week, including the more thorny issues of the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme, which Trump has declared must never be able to produce a nuclear weapon.

It would also include provisions to lift sanctions and unfreeze billions of dollars in frozen assets, but US officials said that would be tied to “Iran meeting their commitments”. They insisted no Gulf country was cutting a side deal to unfreeze Iran’s assets, but suggested the US was “prepared to release frozen funds, and we are prepared to relieve sanctions”. The administration officials also said that there would not be an immediate drawdown of US forces near Iran upon the signing of the MOU. “The plan is to keep the current force posture during the … negotiations in force,” the official said. “We hope to draw them down. We’re not doing that yet. We want to see the Iranians do what they promise.”

In his first remarks on the agreement, Netanyahu did not denounce the deal but did distance himself from the negotiations, saying that it was “[Trump’s] decision”, adding: “We have our own interests.” He also said Israel would not leave the territory it was occupying in Lebanon despite the ceasefire agreement and it would be ready to strike Iran if it deemed it was moving toward making a nuclear weapon. “With an agreement or without an agreement, Iran will not have nuclear weapons – not today and not tomorrow,” he said.

Col Douglas Macgregor: Trump Seeks 'Get out of Jail ' Card Since US Lost in Iran

Trump hails Iran deal that fixes nothing except a problem his war caused

If we get to a Friday signing ceremony without this uncertain new US-Iran deal being derailed by any of its inherent ambiguities, then nuclear talks can finally restart in the same place – and at almost exactly the same point they were before this conflict started. The world will have irrevocably been changed in other ways. There is no going back for the 120 Iranian children in Minab killed in their primary school in the war’s first hours, nor for their bereaved parents, or any of the thousands in Iran, Lebanon and around the region whose lives were erased or blighted by a feckless war of choice.

Tehran has been bolstered by its proven capacity to close the strait of Hormuz and squeeze the lifeblood of the global economy. Conversely, the power and credibility of the US has been undermined decisively in front of the entire world. Donald Trump has so far achieved none of the stated regime change and nuclear disarmament goals he laid out when the war was launched with Israel on 28 February. The achievement he advertised overnight – “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” – was a matter of claiming credit for fixing a problem his war had caused. Even that is not in the bag yet.

Ultimately, the ships will only start their engines and the oil begin to flow through the strait of Hormuz when the shipping companies and insurance companies judge it to be safe – and that may be some days or weeks off. At the same time, Iran and the Pakistani brokers are adamant that the deal should stop Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, but members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have already made clear they do not intend Israel to be bound by the agreement.

The hope now is that some of that forward momentum can be restored, but the postwar Iranian delegation is likely to be an even tougher nut to crack. The regime has shown its durability and has a proven weapon in its pocket: the Hormuz option. The Iranians will arrive knowing that it was Trump who blinked first to get this interim deal over the line. It seems to include no detailed parameters for future nuclear negotiations, as the Americans had wished, and Israeli reporting confirms arrangement for Tehran to get some of its frozen assets delivered before the Geneva nuclear talks, as Iran had demanded.

If Trump and Netanyahu had set out to demonstrate the futility of war, they could not have staged it better.

Trump SLAMS Bibi As CIA LEAKS BEGIN

Prof. Steve Hanke: Israel ASKED to See the Iran MoU – Trump SHUT THEM DOWN

Netanyahu declares victory over Iran – and rules out withdrawal from Lebanon

Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed a historic victory over Iran and ruled out any immediate withdrawal from Lebanon, saying that Israel’s forces would remain there ... "We established deep security zones around the state of Israel. We did this in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Syria,” the Israeli prime minister said in a televised press conference on Monday. “And I want to make it clear: we will remain in these security zones … to protect our country.”

The new preliminary agreement between Washington and Tehran has prompted dismay and anger in Israel, with widespread criticism of Netanyahu’s leadership. He claimed on Monday that the joint US-Israeli military campaign against Iran had spared his country from what he described as “nuclear annihilation”.

The exact details of the interim deal remain unclear, but appear to explicitly include a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel launched a wide-ranging offensive after attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah at the beginning of the 15-week-long conflict. US officials have sought to reassure Israel, saying on Monday that the ⁠withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon ⁠was ⁠not a ​condition of ⁠a pact between the ⁠US ‌and ‌Iran, and Israel would have ​the right to defend ⁠itself against ​attacks ​by ​Hezbollah.

The apparent terms of the agreement still appear to be a major setback for Israel, which fiercely resisted Iranian efforts to link its interim deal with the US to halting Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Headlines in Israeli media described an “abject failure”. An Israeli drone strike killed one person in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Tebnit, and Hezbollah later said it had attacked an Israeli force trying to advance in the same area. Before Israel’s drone strike, Hezbollah welcomed the US-Iran deal, saying it had resulted in a comprehensive ceasefire including in Lebanon. A Hezbollah official earlier told Reuters the group’s position on the ceasefire was linked to Israel adhering to it, while military sources in Israel quoted by the Jerusalem Post said that, if Hezbollah respected the new ceasefire, Israeli military forces would not attack anywhere in Lebanon.

Matt Hoh : A People Should Know When They’re Conquered

Settler products from occupied Palestine sold to Europe as Israeli, investigation finds

Israeli exporters to Europe regularly hide the origin of produce grown in occupied Palestine to qualify for unlawful tax breaks that bolster the settler economy, a rights group investigation has found. The legal non-profit Global Echo analysed more than 30,000 export documents for thousands of Israeli shipments to the UK and EU over eight years.

One in six shipments it investigated contained agricultural products that had originated in illegal settlements in occupied Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights, at least 42 percent of which had been mislabelled as Israeli-grown. “This isn’t an aberration and its not accidental,” said Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, the executive director of Global Echo. “This is a system that the UK and the EU have perpetuated and agreed to.”

The group is demanding the UK government review controls on Israeli imports, and has promised to take legal action if HMRC does not tackle verification concerns. Europe is Israel’s biggest market, and the EU its single top trading partner, accounting for almost 30% of exports.

A free trade agreement signed in 1995 reduced tariffs for Israeli imports, but products from settlements do not qualify, because Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and Syrian territory is illegal under international law. However, Global Echo’s research indicated that mislabelled settlement goods accounted for “a substantial and recurring component” of agricultural trade from Israel to Europe in recent years, the group said in a 400-page report. In addition to reviewing export documents, the investigation analysed publicly available data and interviewed Palestinians and senior Israeli industry representatives, including whistleblowers.

Concealing the origin of produce from settlements allows importers to claim lower import tariffs. These make fruit and vegetables from occupied land more competitive in European shops, while reducing tax revenues for European governments. The overall effect of mislabelling is that European consumers and governments unknowingly subsidise settlement agriculture.

U.S. and Iran Reach Initial Deal to End War and Reopen The Strait of Hormuz

Indian outrage over US killing of sailors mounts as leaders attend G7 summit

Fury has continued to mount in India over the US’s refusal to apologise for the deaths of Indian sailors killed in strikes in the strait of Hormuz, further straining relations between the two countries as their leaders meet at the G7 summit in France this week. Last week, three Indian seafarers, who were working on board commercial oil tankers, were killed when the US launched missile strikes on the vessel as it sailed through the strait of Hormuz.

The deaths were the first since the US military began in April its blockade of the strait in an attempt to squeeze Iran’s economy and push its government towards a peace deal. However, the seemingly blase response from the US government to the killing of the sailors has been the cause of great consternation in India. Headlines over the weekend simply read: “No apology from Washington.” The initial US government statement initially did not even make any mention of the deaths, instead just confirming that its forces had carried out a strike on a vessel in the strait that was allegedly in violation of sanctions, and which had been “uncooperative”.

The Indian government first condemned the strikes with “strong protest” and summoned a senior US diplomat to convey that the strikes must stop. But as pressure over the attack continued to build in Delhi, India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, spoke directly to the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sending a signal that India would not simply let the matter slide. “Such lethal actions against commercial shipping are not justified,” said Jaishankar’s statement.

However, Rubio appeared unrepentant as he doubled down on the US’s justification while refusing to offer any kind of condolence. “Violations of the US blockade and the illicit transport of Iranian oil will not be tolerated,” said the state department readout. The terse exchange is likely to put more pressure on the relationship between Delhi and Washington, which were once seen as robust and thriving but have become increasingly more complex and strained in recent months due to economic and political tensions.

Back home, the political pressure has been mounting for Modi to publicly raise his objections. The families of the three sailors who died came out publicly demanding answers for how the men had become collateral damage in the conflict and calling for their remains to be brought back. On Sunday, India’s leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, accused the prime minister of being “silent” over the killing of innocent Indian citizens who were simply doing their jobs, and of kowtowing to the US government. “Foreign powers kill our citizens. Our government quietly obeys orders like an obedient servant and our citizens are left to rot,” said Gandhi.

Putin's Shift From Diplomacy To Military Victory

Oil and gas unlikely to return to prewar prices for months even if Hormuz reopens

After more than 100 days of the greatest recorded disruption to the world’s energy supplies, the global oil and gas markets have breathed a sigh of relief. Hours after Donald Trump confirmed that a US-Iran peace deal would lead to the reopening of the strait of Hormuz for tankers carrying millions of barrels of oil and gas, the price of Brent crude tumbled to lows of $82 a barrel. Wholesale gas prices fell about 6%.

The international oil benchmark remains well above the $69 a barrel average recorded last year but the slump from $126 a barrel at the peak of the crisis could mean that the global economy avoids the worst-case consequences predicted in the early days of the US war on Iran. The 11th-hour deal has emerged weeks before the oil market was forecast to enter a “red zone” in which soaring summer demand during the travel season was expected to collide with fast-depleting crude stockpiles.

But even as the market exhales after weeks of unprecedented disruption, uncertainty remains: a return to pre-crisis normality is months away and relies on the cooperation of the Iranian regime with the White House. “Trump has to sell this at home as a victory,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, the chief commodities analyst at SEB. When the deal is finalised, US consumers can expect “lower gasoline price and maybe US Republicans survive the midterm elections”, he said. For Iran, a gradual reopening “is tactically preferable”, too, according to Schieldrop, in preventing global governments from restocking their crude stores too quickly and allowing Tehran to maintain its political leverage through its negotiations with the US.

Despite the sharp fall in global oil and gas markets in response, prices may now remain between $80 and $90 a barrel over the rest of the year as buyers race to refill the heavily depleted emergency crude stockpiles. Oil exports from the Gulf could take until next year to reach pre-crisis levels, according to analysts at Rystad Energy, because of the challenge of restarting ageing oilfields in Iraq and Kuwait that were shut within weeks of the strait closure as regional storage facilities were filled to the brim.

“Full pre-conflict traffic volume is realistically a 2027 story, and only if the agreement holds without incident and production recovers at pace,” said David Jorbenaze, the global oil market leader at Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS). The lag between Trump’s victory clarion call and a full market recovery means that at least some economic pain will continue.

In ‘Grotesque Billionaire Bonanza,’ 41 Energy Tycoons Saw Fortunes Grow by $23.5 Billion Since Trump Launched Iran War

While much of the world is holding out hope that the US-Israeli war against Iran may finally be reaching an end amid news of a ceasefire agreement, the billionaire owners of some of the world’s largest energy companies may not be so thrilled.

A handful of just 41 energy industry barons in Group of Seven (G7) countries collectively increased their wealth by $23.5 billion since the war was launched in late February, according to a report released by Oxfam International on Monday, as the leaders of the world’s largest industrialized economies meet in France this week.

The oil shocks resulting from the war have caused fuel prices to spike dramatically, rippling inflation throughout the global economy and straining the pocketbooks of ordinary people around the world. One April report by the United Nations Development Program projected that, as a result of the conflict, an additional 32 million people would be pushed into poverty by the end of the year.

But between March 1 and May 18, owners of the largest oil and energy companies in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US, and the UK were adding $300 million on average per day to their collective wealth, Oxfam found through an analysis of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire List.

“Conflict devastates countries and costs countless lives, yet for some it is extraordinarily profitable,” said Oxfam International’s executive director Amitabh Behar. “This is a brutal system that redistributes wealth upwards—from workers to shareholders, from the poorest to the richest, from those with the least power to those who already have far too much of it. While families are skipping meals and governments slash life-saving aid, we are witnessing a grotesque billionaire bonanza.”

While their accumulation of wealth cannot solely be attributed to the war, Oxfam noted that the Big Six oil companies—Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and TotalEnergies—are projected to grow their profits this year by 80% above the pre-war forecast, while the average large G7 company in the sample is projected to see just 8% growth.

Global billionaires saw their wealth increase on average by about 0.42% between March and mid-May. During the same period, G7 billionaires in the energy industry grew their riches by 9%, while those in oil and gas specifically became nearly 11% richer.

Oxfam notes that the Iran War has only widened the chasm between the rich and poor that was already gaping, in no small part thanks to nations in the G7.

While billionaire wealth has surged by nearly $10 trillion since 2020, G7 nations, mostly the US under President Donald Trump, have reduced aid to the poorest nations by $48 billion—equivalent to what billionaires in G7 countries accumulated for themselves in just nine days.

Only 16% of Americans support arming Israel without restrictions.

So what is Congress doing? Burying a provision in the defense bill that would give Israel more military integration than any NATO ally.

We must strip Section 224 from the Pentagon budget.

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 15, 2026

US supreme court rejects challenge to New York law allowing lawsuits against gun industry

The US supreme court turned away on Monday a gun industry challenge to a New York law that permits lawsuits against gun ⁠makers, wholesalers and dealers for endangering ⁠people’s safety through sales ​of firearms and ammunition. The justices declined to hear an appeal by an industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, of a lower court ruling upholding the law, which New York calls a public nuisance statute.

Gun manufacturers ⁠including Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer and Sturm joined the appeal, which argued that New York’s law unconstitutionally conflicted with federal law. The supreme court in 2025 spared Smith & Wesson from a lawsuit by Mexico’s government accusing the company of ⁠aiding illegal gun trafficking to drug cartels.

Signed in 2021 by Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic former governor, the New York law requires the gun industry to use reasonable safeguards to protect against gun trafficking, theft and the use of “straw purchasers” who buy firearms for someone else. It also allows civil lawsuits by New York state and local officials as well as members of the public.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the law was preempted by a 2005 federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, ‌that shields the gun industry from civil liability when its products are used in crimes. Under the US constitution’s supremacy clause, federal laws take precedence over conflicting state laws. The Manhattan-based second US circuit court of appeals upheld New York’s law last year.

ICE agent shoots at vehicle after being struck by car, officials in New Jersey say

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in New Jersey was reportedly struck by a vehicle and shot at the car as it fled the scene on Monday morning, according to local authorities.

The police department of Stafford Township said in a statement that it had been provided with information that ICE “was attempting to apprehend a suspect when the suspect fled from the scene in a vehicle, striking [an ICE agent]”.

“The agent discharged his firearm at the vehicle, reportedly striking it. The suspect fled the scene in the vehicle and has not been located at this time.

“The agent reportedly sustained unknown injuries, and it is unknown if the suspect was injured at this time.”

Stafford police added that “there is no reason to believe there is any concern for the public’s safety.”

Gavin Newsom says Trump directed DoJ to investigate him and his wife

Gavin Newsom said on Monday that Donald Trump directed the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate him and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom. The California governor said in a video statement that federal agents had knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees in recent days as part of an effort to find a crime, demanding records and “abusing the grand jury process”.

“Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets, he’s coming after me because I am considering running for president. Because he hates that I have consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit,” Newsom said.

A source familiar with the matter told the Guardian the administration has been conducting several investigations of the California governor for roughly a year, including one regarding his wife and her taxes, and one related to his former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who recently pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court, and potentially current staff members. The source said the investigations originated in California, not in Washington, and is being run by the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of California, which includes Sacramento, the state capitol.

On Monday evening, Newsom’s office demanded that the Trump administration release the records on the investigation, posting a copy of the Freedom of Information Act request on his social media account. “The American people deserve to know who ordered this abuse of power and how far it goes,” Newsom said. In his statement on Monday, Newsom pointed to the president’s many political rivals whom his administration has investigated, including James Comey, Letitia James and Tim Walz, among others. “One by one, anyone who has challenged Donald Trump has ended up on his hitlist. And today, I proudly join that list,” Newsom said.

Alaska rules Dan Sullivan cannot run against Dan Sullivan in key Senate race

There will still be one Dan Sullivan on the ballot, but election officials in Alaska determined a second man by the same name cannot run against him in the high-stakes Senate race.

A man named Dan Sullivan, or Daniel J Sullivan Jr, filed to run as a Republican against incumbent Alaska senator Dan S Sullivan, also a Republican. Republicans filed complaints against the other Dan Sullivan, saying the candidate had coordinated with a Democratic campaign to confuse voters.

Alaska’s US Senate election is seen as competitive and is a key target for Democrats hoping to win back control of the upper chamber. Mary Peltola, a former Democratic congresswoman, is expected to face incumbent Sullivan in November. The state has a non-partisan primary, set for 18 August. The top four vote-getters advance to the general election, which uses ranked-choice voting.

Dan J Sullivan, a former teacher, previously told the New York Times that election officials were seeking to “protect an incumbent senator from facing competition at the ballot box” and said he had not coordinated with Peltola. Peltola’s campaign has denied coordinating with Sullivan.

Dan J Sullivan can challenge the determination in court to try to appear on the ballot, Alaska elections director Republican Carol Beecher noted, though primary ballots are set to print on 28 June.

Trump wants to put a $75m coal terminal in this liberal California city. Residents aren’t having it

West Oakland, a California neighborhood known for its rich history of Black activism from the Pullman Porters’ union to the Black Panthers, might not seem like the site of the country’s next great coal project. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is pushing for – with the injection of $75m to build a sprawling coal export terminal in the nearby port of Oakland.

Last week, Donald Trump announced he was using wartime powers to hand $700m to coal projects around the US, including the one in Oakland. The news has breathed renewed energy into a decade-long battle against the coal terminal, which Trump hopes will break ground as soon as this summer.

Anti-coal activists were already planning a gathering about the project in Berkeley this month. But Trump’s 4 June announcement “accelerated everything”, said Veronica Eady, executive director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, a grassroots organization focused on environmental justice in West Oakland, which has a high pollution burden from the nearby port, highways and other industry. “Now there is even more urgency, particularly since President Trump said he wants it to start this summer.”

“By injecting millions of taxpayer dollars into a coal terminal that Oaklanders have fought for a decade to stop, this administration is sentencing West Oakland, one of the most pollution-burdened communities in California, to generational harm,” the California state assembly member Mia Bonta said in a statement. “The families who have fought the hardest to keep this terminal out of their neighborhood will bear the highest cost.” On Monday, Bonta introduced a bill into California’s state legislature that would require a full environmental impact report before local agencies approve facilities that will handle, store or export coal.

Plans over the coal terminal took shape more than 10 years ago, after the closure of a military base located in the port. The Oakland army base closed in 1999, and the site was eventually bought by a local developer named Phil Tagami, who signed a contract with the city allowing him to build a shipping terminal there. Tagami did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Although Tagami originally said he had no interest in shipping coal out of the terminal, he pivoted in 2015 when the state of Utah approached him with a deal to ship the state’s coal to oversea markets. The following year, the city of Oakland banned coal handling and storage citywide. Although Tagami sued, the terminal’s development stalled for more than a decade as challenges played out in local courts.

Critics say Trump’s opening of public lands to off-road vehicles is ‘reckless and nonsensical’

The Trump administration is executing a controversial plan to allow dirt bikes, ATVs, trucks, snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles to drive through tens of millions of acres of public lands and national parks, which environmental groups warn threatens endangered species and the environment.

The plan’s opponents say the impacts will be wide-ranging and that the vehicles will likely destroy sensitive habitats, harm waterways, drive large predators like grizzly bears into contact with humans, and otherwise damage pristine public lands and parks.

The Nixon administration more than 50 years ago issued an executive order that limited off-road vehicles’ access with the aim of protecting wildlife and preventing disputes on federal land. The Carter administration issued a second order providing similar environmental protections. Since then, the popularity of off-road sports has exploded, and the vehicles are far more powerful than they once were, which advocates say makes the restrictions even more necessary today.

Donald Trump rescinded the Nixon-Carter executive orders and directed agency leaders to draft new rules to open lands to off-road vehicles. Opponents warn that desert tortoises, western snowy plovers, lynxes, grizzly bears and sage-grouse are especially at risk from increased off-road vehicle activity. Trump’s move is “reckless and nonsensical”, said Vera Smith, director of national forests and public lands for Defenders of Wildlife. “This rescission is yet another loss for wildlife and natural places,” Smith added.

The move is part of a broader Trump effort to open public lands to industry and other uses that threaten endangered wildlife and sensitive ecosystems. The administration has attempted to gut the Endangered Species Act, opened public lands to grazing, expanded logging access on public lands, opened protected waters to fishing, boosted oil exploration in protected waters and attacked other rules that limit the exploitation of natural resources.

King tides along California coast prompt advisories following two deaths

Massive waves, coastal flooding and dangerous rip currents are roiling the California coastline this week as authorities advise people to take precautions while visiting beaches following two deaths last week.

Turbulent waters swept a five-year-old girl, who was walking with her mother and brother, out to sea from the shore of Treasure Island Beach in Orange county in southern California on Tuesday. Bystanders were able to rescue the mother and son, but the girl was not found and her body was recovered on Thursday. In the city of Santa Cruz, the tide took two women to sea, leaving one dead and another in critical condition.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco sea water poured into the Embarcadero on Saturday night. The city saw its highest summer water level on record, according to the San Francisco Bay Area office of the National Weather Service.

The treacherous conditions were expected to last into this week with the continuing king tides, a non-scientific term describing the highest tides of the year. Forecasts indicated southern California beaches would see dangerous rip currents and breaking waves and high tides, through at least late Wednesday.

Also of Interest

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

Iran War: Iran and US Announce Signing of Memorandum of Understanding for Friday, Amid Doubts About Status of Terms, Israel Sabotage; Iran Claims Blockade and Hostilities on All Fronts to End Monday Night

War On Iran: The MoU – A Small Pause In A Decades Long Conflict

Tallying the global cost of the US-Israel war against Iran

UK Appeals Court Restores Terrorist Ban on Palestine Action

Helen Mirren WALKS BACK Pro-Israel Comments After VIRAL Backlash

A Little Night Music

Mighty Sam McClain w/ Wayne Bennett - Everyday I Have The Blues

Bobby 'Blue' Bland w/ Wayne Bennett - Driftin' Blues

Bobby 'Blue' Bland w/ Wayne Bennett - Stomy Monday Blues

Mighty Sam McClain w/ Wayne Bennett - Fannie Mae/The Blues Is Alright

Wayne Bennett & Rosco Gordon -- Hello Baby

Wayne Bennett - Rockin'

Bobby 'Blue' Bland w/ Wayne Bennett - That's The Way Love Is

Jimmy McCracklin with Ry Cooder and Wayne Bennett - After Hours

Jimmy McCracklin with Ry Cooder and Wayne Bennett - The Walk