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This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Little Johnny Jones. Enjoy!

"The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting."

-- Richard M. Nixon

News and Opinion

West and Russia on course for war, says ex-Nato deputy commander

A startling claim that the west is on course for war with Russia has been delivered by the former deputy commander of Nato, the former British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff.

In a book published on Wednesday, 2017 War With Russia, Shirreff argues that the events in Crimea have destroyed the post-cold-war settlement and set the stage for conflict, beginning next year.

In a chilling scenario, he predicts that Russia, in order to escape what it believes to be encirclement by Nato, will seize territory in eastern Ukraine, open up a land corridor to Crimea and invade the Baltic states.

Shirreff, who was deputy supreme allied commander Europe from 2011 to 2014 and before that served in Northern Ireland, Iraq and the Balkans, is risking his reputation by making such a bold prediction. But he claims his narrative is closely modelled on his Nato experience of war-gaming future conflicts.

His scenario is specific, naming Latvia as the first of the Baltic countries to be invaded, in May next year. Such specifics open him to potential ridicule.

At the book launch at London’s Royal United Services Institute, he heavily caveated the scenario by saying it was still avoidable provided Nato took the necessary steps to pre-position forces in large enough numbers in the Baltic states. Nato is planning to make a start on just such a move at a Nato summit in Warsaw in July.

The Danger of Demonization

Does any intelligent person look at a New York Times article about Russia or Vladimir Putin these days and expect to read an objective, balanced account? Or will it be laced with a predictable blend of contempt and ridicule? And is it any different at The Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC, CNN or almost any mainstream U.S. news outlet?

And it’s not just Russia. The same trend holds true for Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries and movements that have fallen onto the U.S. government’s “enemies list.” We saw the same pattern with Saddam Hussein and Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion; with Muammar Gaddafi and Libya before the U.S.-orchestrated bombing campaign in 2011; and with President Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine before the U.S.-backed coup in 2014. ...

[The West’s demonization of foreign “enemies” is not only an affront to free speech and meaningful democracy, it is also dangerous because it empowers unscrupulous American and European leaders to undertake violent and ill-considered actions that get lots of people killed and that spread hatred against the West.]

The most obvious recent example was the Iraq War, which was justified by a barrage of false and misleading claims about Iraq which were mostly swallowed whole by a passive and complicit Western press corps. ...

We’ve seen a similar pattern with the U.S. government’s “information warfare” around high-profile incidents. In the “old days’ – at least when I arrived in Washington in the late 1970s – there was much more skepticism among journalists about the official line from the White House or State Department. Indeed, it was a point of pride among journalists not to simply accept whatever the spokesmen or officials were saying, but to check it out.

There was plenty of enough evidence – from the Tonkin Gulf lies to the Watergate cover-up – to justify a critical examination of government claims. But that tradition has been lost, too. Despite the costly deceptions before the Iraq War, the Times, the Post and other mainstream outlets simply accept whatever accusations the U.S. government hurls against “enemies.” Beyond the gullibility, there is even hostility toward those of us who insist on seeing real evidence. ...

In short, there has been a system-wide collapse of the Western news media as a professional entity in dealing with foreign crises. So, as the world plunges deeper into crises inside Syria and on Russia’s border, the West’s citizens are going in almost blind without the eyes and ears of independent journalists on the ground and with major news outlets delivering incessant propaganda from Washington and other capitals.

Instead of facts, the West’s mainstream media trafficks in demonization.

No clear breakthrough at Vienna talks

Iran Seeks Compensation From US for 1953 Coup

Iran’s parliament today voted on a bill requiring the government to request compensation from the United States for damages caused by the CIA’s 1953 imposition of a coup d’etat against Iran’s democratically elected government. ...

The move is unlikely to seriously secure money for Iran, but is rather a retaliatory talking point after the US Supreme Court approved seizing some $2 billion in Iranian central bank assets to pay for the 1983 Beirut bombing, an act which Iran insists they didn’t do. The Iranian parliament also passed a bill calling for a complaint to be filed with the International Court of Justice over the US seizing those assets, arguing it violates international norms on sovereign immunity.

9/11 lawsuits: US Senate passes bill to allow victims to sue Saudi Arabia

Senate Unanimously Passes Bill Allowing 9/11 Families to Sue Saudi Arabia

Despite threats from the Saudi government to collapse the US economy in retaliation, the US Senate today unanimously agreed to pass a bill allowing victims of 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia for its role in the attack.

Under US law, Saudi Arabia would normally be protected from such lawsuits by sovereign immunity. This law strips immunity from lawsuits against states related to the 9/11 terrorist attack. This exposes the Saudi government.

House Removes Language on Drafting Women From Spending Bill

With growing complaints from a faction within the Republican leadership, the House Rules Committee has stripped language from the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requiring women to register for the military draft. ...

The elimination of the language from the NDAA doesn’t end the effort, however, as the Draft Our Daughters Act of 2016 is still being pushed in both the House and Senate, with the Senate seen as more likely to support it.

Libyan factions agree on unified oil structure

Rival factions have agreed in principle to have one oil organization for strife-torn Libya, the foreign minister in the new U.N-backed, national unity government said Tuesday. ...

“These institutions can only be managed centrally. That’s why it was agreed that both institutions from east and west be united, so that there is only one oil company, one investment company and one central bank,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Siyala told reporters in Vienna.

“The first steps to achieve this are being taken now, there is an agreement on the basic points and principles and now we’re waiting for the implementation,” Siyala added.

Libya, an OPEC member, will resume oil shipments from the port of Marsa al-Hariga after a deal reached at talks in Vienna between rival oil officials representing the east and west of the country, Libyan oil sources said Monday. Exports from Marsa al-Hariga have been blocked for two weeks due to a standoff between the rival national oil corporations in the east and west of the vast OPEC member state.

Venezuelan president braced for protests as political crisis deepens

Venezuela’s political crisis has deepened after the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, predicted that the opposition-controlled parliament would soon “disappear” while his political rivals prepared for a day of protests in the capital to demand a recall vote.

Both sides have intensified the rhetoric as they vie for control of a country wracked by food shortages, looting, power cuts, spiralling violence, a shrinking economy and the world’s highest rate of inflation.

Maduro, who says the country’s problems are the result of a plot by rightwingers and foreign interests to destabilise the country and end his rule, decreed a state of emergency on Friday.

But parliament refused to pass it, with opposition leaders instead pushing for a referendum to recall Maduro for mismanagement. They have collected enough signatures to trigger a broader recall petition under the constitution, but the president dismissed the referendum as “optional”. ...

But opposition leaders warned against ignoring popular discontent. “What will happen if they block the democratic route?” asked Henrique Capriles, who is championing the push for a referendum. “We don’t want a social explosion in Venezuela nor a military solution.”

Caprilles subtly calls for a military coup:

Venezuela crisis: Lawmakers reject state of emergency, protests to be held

Banks likely to sue to deny consumers their right to sue

Banks keep saying over and over that arbitration proceedings, as opposed to class-action lawsuits, are the best way for consumers to handle disputes.

Yet faced with the prospect of no longer being able to deny consumers the right to sue them, the banking industry is expected to take the deliciously ironic step of suing the federal government.

At issue is a proposed rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would prohibit financial-services firms from placing clauses in contracts stipulating that customers can only arbitrate disagreements. The clauses prevent customers from suing on an individual basis or from joining class-action lawsuits.

“Signing up for a credit card or opening a bank account can often mean signing away your right to take the company to court if things go wrong,” Richard Cordray, director of the federal agency, said after the proposed rule was announced this month. He called mandatory arbitration a "contract gotcha" that "denies groups of consumers the right to seek justice and relief for wrongdoing.”

Arbitration still could be required for individual grievances under the rule, but that's not a very big deal because few consumers file individual suits over small amounts. The big deal here is that financial firms no longer would be able to block consumers from coming together in class-action lawsuits.

CEO-worker pay gap stays wide despite wage hikes

Chief executive officers of S&P 500 companies on average made 335 times more money than U.S. rank-and-file workers last year, down from a multiple of 373 in 2014, according to a union study released on Tuesday.

The figures are issued annually by the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of labor unions. Pay disparities, which have persisted despite a steady U.S. economy that has reduced the joblessness rate to around 5 percent and raised wages somewhat, have fueled political debate even as large institutional investors support most executive compensation plans.

The average production and non-supervisory worker made around $36,900 last year, up from roughly $36,000 in 2014, according to the AFL-CIO, based on U.S. government reports.

Meanwhile, CEOs of S&P 500 companies made $12.4 million on average last year, down from $13.5 million in 2014. An AFL-CIO spokeswoman said the lower average CEO compensation figure reflected how for many, the present value of future pension benefits declined.

Thomas Frank: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

"Inequality is a euphemism, a kind of shorthand, for all of the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious, year on year, for the last three decades. And also for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious in that same time.

This word inequality. It's visible in the ever rising costs of healthcare and college, in the coronation of Wall Street, and the slow blighting of wherever it is that you happen to live. And you catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that had to declare bankruptcy because a child got sick, or you read about the lobbying industry that drives Washington DC, or the new political requirement, the new constitutional requirement that every presidential candidate has to be a billionaire's favorite, or a billionaire themselves.

Inequality is about the way in which speculators, and even criminals, get a helping hand from Uncle Sam, while the Vietnam Vet down the street from you loses his house. Inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance in the ceiling height of an entrance foyer, or the hop content of a beer, while other people will never believe in anything again."

I see members of Congress shake down Americans every single day

There is a historic scandal going on in Washington DC and the American people are its victims. Members of Congress undertaking oppressive telemarketing fundraising when they should be on the clock solving our nation’s most pressing problems. This is depriving the country of leadership through their elected representatives, and it’s cheating taxpayers.

It’s the unfortunate byproduct of a broken system that can easily be fixed if we simply remove members from the direct solicitation of cash. That’s why I’ve introduced legislation called the Stop Act, a four-page bill that would ban members from personally asking for money.

The public assumes US Representatives spend their days in DC in committee meetings, on the House floor debating issues, attending briefings or discussing critical issues with other elected officials and experts. Sadly, the reality is that they are, in some cases, spending 15, 20, 30 hours a week in call suites on the phone dialing for dollars, shaking down the American people.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently greeted an incoming crop of freshmen with a prescribed schedule that highlighted fundraising “Call Time” of four hours a day as the chief priority for any new member of Congress. The actual time they suggested working in Congress each day was 2 hours!

Rekia Boyd's Killer Resigns as Activists Call for End to "Reign of Terror" by Chicago Police

Chicago police officer who fatally shot Rekia Boyd quits force before hearing

A Chicago police officer whom the department was trying to fire after he fatally shot an unarmed 22-year-old woman in 2012 has decided to resign from the force rather than fight to retain his job.

The city’s police board said on Tuesday that Dante Servin, who was off duty when he killed Rekia Boyd, had quit. It came two days before Servin was to appear for a hearing at which the board was to decide if he should be fired, as former police superintendent Garry McCarthy recommended last year.

Boyd was with friends when Servin opened fire after he said he saw a person in the group moving toward him with a gun. Police found only a cellphone. Servin was charged with involuntary manslaughter, though a judge later dismissed the charges.

Servin’s resignation now saves him from the risk of a possible firing from the department and the loss of his pension. It also means the Chicago police board must withdraw all charges brought against him with no prejudice.

New Study Lays Bare 'Crushing Levels of Poverty' Indigenous Children in Canada Live In

Indigenous children are more than twice as likely than non-Indigenous children to live in poverty in Canada.

Those are the troubling, and well-documented, findings of a new study released on Tuesday that compares numbers from 2011 to those of 2006. Little has changed, according to the figures, which show that First Nations children living on reserve continue to be worse off than any other group, and their conditions have only gotten more dire.

The study titled Shameful Neglect: Indigenous Child Poverty in Canada, by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives comes amid renewed attention on suicides plaguing Indigenous communities, following a declared state of emergency in the remote northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat, which over 11 attempts in one day.

It's difficult to see high suicide rates, particularly among youth, on Indigenous reserves separately from the "crushing poverty" found on them, according to a co-author of the study, who hopes the numbers will empower First Nations governments and those who advocate on behalf of Indigenous children to make their case to the federal government.

Does Democratic Party Discord Portend Disaster at Convention?

Deep divisions and disarray within the Democratic Party, fully surfaced in the wake of the Nevada convention brouhaha, suggest that July's national convention in Philadelphia could serve as ground zero for a battle over the party's very soul.

Beyond their calls for Bernie Sanders to exit the race before every state has had a chance to vote, establishment Dems this week expressed "fear," as CNN put it, "that if Sanders does not rein in his supporters, the same ugly scene that occurred in Las Vegas last weekend could replicate itself in the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia."

But by doing so, these critics delegitimize Sanders' campaign and supporters, as well as his potential role at the convention, and within the party itself. And they risk painting Hillary Clinton as a "sore winner." ...

"[T]o merely condemn without context is to perpetuate a different type of violence," wrote lecturer and commentator Peter Bloom on Wednesday. "It is to be willfully blind to the institutional ways Democratic elites are alienating outside voices demanding genuine as opposed to surface level change to the Party and nation."

Indeed, Bloom argued:

There is a risk that in calling out the most extreme aspects of Sanders supporters, the extremism of Clinton’s brand of Centrism will be dangerously covered up. What does it say if the localized violence in a Nevada caucus room trumps the global violence of a candidate who has advocated disastrous military interventions from Iraq to Libya? Should there be more worry for a protest at a rally than for the millions of lives ruined by an economic crisis by a financial sector that Clinton did little to resist and that continues to support her?

An excellent article describing the construction of the latest anti-Sanders propaganda.

The Faux Fracas in Nevada: How a Reporter Manufactured a Riot

Jon Ralston, the dean of political reporting in Nevada, has spread nothing less than a pack of lies about what went down at the state’s Democratic convention on Saturday. And the fact averse oligarchic national media has run completely riot with the provable falsehoods. No chairs were thrown at the convention Saturday. No death threats were made against the chair of the convention Roberta Lange. And Bernie Sanders delegates were not simply mad because their louder shouting was ignored.

Ralston has been the culprit behind each of these falsehoods; and the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and a dizzying array of other outlets have swallowed them whole then regurgitated them for their much more massive audiences. ...

Ralston reported live from the convention for most of the day, but decided to leave before tensions boiled over. Nevertheless, it was taken as a simple fact that he had observed Sanders supporters throwing chairs when “Roberta’s Rules” were enforced with finality at the end of the proceedings. Ralston tweeted:

Convention ended w/security shutting it down, Bernie folks rushed stage, yelling obscenities, throwing chairs. Unity Now! On to Philly 2/2

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) May 15, 2016

As it turned out, Ralston finally admitted last night that he hadn’t seen this himself but was relying especially on local reporter Andrew Davey. Davey first said he had still frames showing the chair throwing which he would publish. He has not produced the stills in question, but did retweet a still image of a chair held high that was initially posted on Reddit. I spoke with the person who posted it to Reddit and confirmed that it was grabbed from the video now widely seen which shows that other Sanders supporters quickly took away the chair in question. I asked Davey by Twitter if he still had photos to publish, then criticized him for retweeting the Reddit image instead. He blocked me.

In spite of the fact that the whole thing was filmed live from multiple angles, “the revolution will be periscoped” as Ralston snarked on Twitter, no one has any images or video of even a single chair, let alone chairs plural, being thrown.

Ralston was also the source of the claim that Roberta Lange received death threats, again plural. ... Ralston misreported the single instance that could be interpreted as a threat, however. The lede for his post on the matter simply stated: “One caller suggested she would be hung or burned.”  The problem? When Ralston got around to posting the actual message later in the day, the caller turned out not to have said she would be hung, but rather that she should be.

Oregon Goes for Sanders: "If It's So Over, Why Does Bernie Keep Winning?"

Bernie Sanders was able to claim his twentieth victory on Tuesday night by winning the Oregon primary while the margin of an "apparent victory" by Hillary Clinton in Kentucky remained so close (just a fraction of 1 percent) that many outlets are still deeming it 'too close to call.'

"We won a great victory in the state of Washington a few months ago," Sanders told celebrating supporters at a California rally Tuesday night. "We just won Oregon and we're going to win California... I am getting to like the West Coast."

As of early Wednesday morning, with 77 percent of the vote counted in Oregon, Sanders was the projected winner as he captured 55 percent of the vote compared to Clinton's 46 percent. Notably, with a state that has encouraged ballot access by instituting automatic voter registration, Oregon is the first closed primary contest (one in which independents and late registrants are excluded from voting) that Sanders has been able to win against Clinton. ...

Up to this point, Sanders noted, his campaign has captured 45 percent of the party's pledged delegates. He emphasized repeatedly the importance of the energy and enthusiasm that his campaign has brought to this year's election season, especially among young people.

Sanders said he had a clear message for the Democratic Party leadership: "Open the doors. Let the people in." The only other "sad and tragic" option, he said, was to maintain the status quo and end up as "a party with limited participation and limited energy."

With an eye toward the general election, Sanders warned the Democratic Party that it stands a real chance of losing working class voters to the GOP and their presumptive nominee, billionaire real estate mogul and reality television star Donald Trump.

The Guardian repeats the undocumented claims of Sanders supporters throwing chairs and making physical threats at the Nevada convention. Lies and misinformation are apparently good enough for The Guardian.

Droves rally for Sanders in California as campaign under fire for Nevada unrest

Hours after Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement condemning “any and all forms of violence,” he rallied thousands of cheering supporters in southern California – without mentioning the unrest at the Nevada Democratic convention, during which his supporters threw chairs and threatened the party chairwoman.

“Within the last few days there have been a number of criticisms made against my campaign organization,” the leftwing presidential candidate said in a statement earlier in the day. “Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a penchant for violence. That is nonsense.”

As thousands of supporters at Cal State Dominguez Hills interrupted him with cheers, Sanders celebrated his win in the Oregon primary. ...

Sanders may have ignored the Nevada controversy on Tuesday night, but it was top of the news away from his campus rally in the gritty Los Angeles County city of Carson.

[Perhaps the "Sanders supporters are violent" meme is all over the media is because it is the official talking point of the Democratic Party and the 1% Media establisments. - js]

Cenk Uygur debunks media wurlitzer claims about thrown chairs, physical threats and violence by Sanders supporters at Nevada convention.

Democrats Claim Bernie Sanders Supporters Are Violent

Three of Hillary’s Mega Donors Are in Panama Papers; Another Tied to $6.8 Billion Tax Avoidance Scheme

Last month the Washington Post compared the state of U.S. political campaigns to that of the Gilded Age, noting that 41 percent of the money raised by SuperPacs by the end of February came from just “50 mega-donors and their relatives.”

New evidence suggests that that tax avoidance may be at the center of what some of these mega-donors are expecting in return for that largess to Presidential and Congressional candidates.

Take the case of Priorities USA, the SuperPac supporting Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It has already raised $67 million and just four hedge fund billionaires have ponied up 40 percent of that amount. ...

Three of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors [see link for details - js] to the Priorities USA SuperPac have turned up in the Panama Papers database or earlier leaked documents pertaining to offshore companies now housed in the ICIJ database. ...

Hillary Clinton was asked about the revelations in the Panama Papers. According to the Guardian newspaper, Clinton responded:

“Some of this behavior is clearly against the law and anyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable. But it is also scandalous how much is actually legal. That is why last year I proposed a plan to shut down the so-called private tax-system for the mega wealthy. We are going after all these scams and making sure everybody pays their fair share in America. I am going to hold them accountable.”

Anyone who thinks Hillary Clinton is going to hold her mega-donors accountable should probably put their campaign contributions under their pillow for the tooth fairy.

How Donald Trump Risks Trade War, Crosses Lines on Racism, Wreaks Havoc on U.S. Conservatism

Will Latino loathing of Trump drive a voter movement to swing the election?

Donald Trump’s rise is spurring a backlash from Latino communities across America that has the potential to prove a formidable barrier to the billionaire’s success in the November presidential election.

From Florida to Nevada, Arizona to Iowa, and countless other states beyond, there is evidence that the sleeping giant of the Latino vote is stirring. Trump’s favorability ratings with Hispanic voters are running at historic lows, while he faces an increasingly well-organized nationwide campaign to oppose him. ...

A poll of Hispanic Americans carried out by Latino Decisions and America’s Voice in April found some 87% of Latinos felt unfavorably towards him. Significantly, almost half said they felt more enthusiastic about voting in the presidential election than they did four years ago, and 41% of those said it was because they wanted to “stop Trump”.

In Florida, groups report that new Hispanic voter registrations are running at 1,000 a week. (Some 2.6 million Hispanics are eligible to vote in Florida for this year’s general election, and about 800,000 of them have not yet registered.) That unprecedented number corresponds – not coincidentally, Latino organizers believe – with polls that show almost nine in 10 Latino Floridians view Trump unfavorably. ...

To what extent Hispanic Americans will be motivated to vote by Trump’s anti-immigrant remarks is one of the great unknowns of 2016. The Latino population continues to grow at a faster pace than any other demographic, from 19.5 million eligible Latino voters in 2008 to 23.3 million in 2012, with 27.3 million projected by November. That would amount to some 12% of the nation’s electorate in 2016.

New Evidence About the Dangers of Monsanto’s Roundup

Until recently, the fight over Roundup has mostly focused on its active ingredient, glyphosate. But mounting evidence, including one study published in February, shows it’s not only glyphosate that’s dangerous, but also chemicals listed as “inert ingredients” in some formulations of Roundup and other glyphosate-based weed killers. Though they have been in herbicides — and our environment — for decades, these chemicals have evaded scientific scrutiny and regulation in large part because the companies that make and use them have concealed their identity as trade secrets. ...

Research on these chemicals seems to have played a role in the stark disagreement over glyphosate’s safety that has played out on the international stage over the last year. In March 2015, using research on both glyphosate alone and the complete formulations of Roundup and other herbicides, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen. The IARC report noted an association between non-Hodgkin lymphoma and glyphosate, significant evidence that the chemical caused cancer in lab animals, and strong evidence that it damaged human DNA. ...

Some European governments have already begun taking action against one of these co-formulants, a chemical known as polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, which is used in Monsanto’s Roundup Classic and Roundup Original formulations, among other weed killers, to aid in penetrating the waxy surface of plants.

Germany removed all herbicides containing POEA from the market in 2014, after a forestry worker who had been exposed to it developed toxic inflammation of the lungs. In early April, the French national health and safety agency known as ANSES took the first step toward banning products that combine glyphosate and POEA. ...

Independent scientists have been reporting since at least 1991 that pesticides containing glyphosate along with other ingredients were more dangerous than glyphosate on its own. More recently, two papers — one published in 2002, the other in 2004 — showed that Roundup and other glyphosate-containing weed formulations were more likely to cause cell-cycle dysregulation, a hallmark of cancer, than glyphosate alone. In 2005, researchers showed that Roundup was more harmful to rats’ livers than its “active ingredient” by itself. And a 2009 study showed that four formulations of Roundup were more toxic to human umbilical, embryonic, and placental cells than glyphosate by itself.

But because manufacturers of weed killers are required to disclose only the chemical structures of their “active” ingredients — and can hide the identity of the rest as confidential business information — for many years no one knew exactly what other chemicals were in these products, let alone how they affected health.

Last stand for Europe's remaining ancient forest as loggers prepare to move in

Europe’s last primeval forest is facing what campaigners call its last stand as loggers prepare to start clear-cutting trees, following the dismissal of dozens of scientists and conservation experts opposed to the plan.

Poland’s new far right government says logging is needed because more than 10% of spruce trees in the Unesco world heritage site of Białowieża are suffering from a bark beetle outbreak. But nearly half the logging will be of other species, according to its only published inventory.

Oak trees as high as 150 feet that have grown for 450 years could be reduced to stumps under the planned threefold increase in tree fells. Białowieża hosts Europe’s largest bison population and wolves and lynx still roam freely across its sun-mottled interior. Its foliage stretches for nearly 1,000 square miles across the border between Poland and Belarus. ...

But a recently-passed logging law to allow work to begin on the old-growth forest has divided families, and led to death threats against campaigners and allegations of an “environmental coup” by state interests linked to the timber trade. The logging in Białowieża is expected to raise about 700m złotys (£124m), and pave the way for extensive and more lucrative tree clearances.

Sources say that internal government discussions have already begun on extending the new timber regime to the national park, which covers 17% of the forest and has been untouched by humans since the ice age.

Fort McMurray wildfire update on CBC News Morning, May 18th

Alberta wildfire destroys oil sands work camp as thousands of staff evacuated

The wildfire raging through northern Alberta has swelled in size and surged north of Fort McMurray, consuming an evacuated oil sands camp on Tuesday and threatening several other facilities in the region.

“It continues to burn out of control,” said Rachel Notley, the Alberta premier, one day after the shifting fire forced the evacuation of 8,000 non-essential staff from more than a dozen camps and sites in the oil sands region. ...

Winds pushed the fire into an area dotted with oil sands work camps, completely destroying a 665-bed camp belonging to Horizon North Logistics just hours after the area was ordered evacuated. The company said every staff member was safe and accounted for. ...

As the fire raged out of control in the region, production of oil sands crude dropped by roughly a million barrels of oil per day. In recent days oil sands workers had begun returning to the camps north of Fort McMurray in the hope of ramping up production. Monday’s evacuation and the volatile nature of the fire have raised concerns that the region may suffer a prolonged production outage.

Massachusetts Court Sides with Teenagers in 'Historic' Climate Victory

Siding with four teenage plaintiffs and the environmental groups that backed them, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday ruled that the state has failed to fulfill its legal obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The unanimous decision from the state's highest court reverses a lower court ruling and requires the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issue regulations "that address multiple sources of categories of sources of greenhouse gas emissions, impose a limit on emissions that may be released, limit the aggregate emissions released from each group of regulated sources or categories of sources, set emission limits for each year, and set limits that decline on an annual basis."

By failing to do so, the court said, the DEP was falling short of complying with the 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act, which says that by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels. It includes timelines for reductions in 2020, 2030, and 2040.

Massachusetts is not on track to meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction goal of 25 percent below 1990 levels—a fact the plaintiffs say is "directly related to DEP's failure to issue the required regulations."

Too bad that in the US the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone

Zero emission milestone reached as Iberian country is powered by just wind, solar and hydro-generated electricity for 107 hours

Portugal kept its lights on with renewable energy alone for four consecutive days last week in a clean energy milestone revealed by data analysis of national energy network figures.

Electricity consumption in the Iberian country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run that lasted from 6.45am on Saturday 7 May until 5.45pm the following Wednesday, the analysis says.

News of the zero emissions landmark comes just days after Germany announced that clean energy had powered almost all its electricity needs on Sunday 15 May, with power prices turning negative at several times in the day – effectively paying consumers to use it.

Oliver Joy, a spokesman for the Wind Europe trade association said: “We are seeing trends like this spread across Europe - last year with Denmark and now in Portugal. The Iberian peninsula is a great resource for renewables and wind energy, not just for the region but for the whole of Europe.”

James Watson, the CEO of SolarPower Europe said: “This is a significant achievement for a European country, but what seems extraordinary today will be commonplace in Europe in just a few years. The energy transition process is gathering momentum and records such as this will continue to be set and broken across Europe.”

People Power Just Trumped Corporate Power: Oregon County Rejects Nestle Water-Grab

Voters in one Oregon county on Tuesday approved a ban on commercial bottled water production, stopping a years-long effort by Swiss transnational Nestle to sell over 100 million gallons of water a year from the Columbia River Gorge.

"This is really a resounding victory for everyone who cares about protecting not only our water supply, but water supplies around the world," said Aurora del Val with Local Water Alliance, which filed the ballot measure petition.

Though opponents of the proposed plant in Cascade Locks in Hood River County were vastly outspent, Measure 14-55 easily passed—rougly 69 percent to 31 percent. 

According to Julia DeGraw, an organizer for national watchdog organization Food and Water Watch, which helped lead the opposition, voters were very aware of the risks of putting corporate control over the precious resource, despite the purported 50 jobs the plant would provide the job-scarce town. "When you talk to them about something as crucial as their water, which is necessary for an agricultural economy, right after they have a drought, there is not enough misinformation the opposition can throw at voters to make them buy it," she said.

Also of Interest

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

About That Post-Bernie Movement

U.S. Build-Up in Europe Serves No Purpose

“The scope of our failure”: The real story of our decades-long foreign policy disaster that set the Middle East on fire

Crooked Hillary and the Rape of Honduras - The roots of the immigration crisis

Hillary Clinton Wasn’t Always This One-Sided on Israel

This land is our land: is it the end of the line for the great American west?

Heavy Metal: Water Contaminated by Lead Is Poisoning Kids Across New Jersey

The Verizon Strike Is Now In Its Second Month, and the Stakes Are Higher Than Ever

Fleeing Gangs, Central American Refugees Fight Deportation From the U.S.

The real problem with negative interest rates? They are a stealth tax

The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir: 'I'm nowhere near done with our legacy'

A Little Night Music

Little Johnny Jones - I May Be Wrong

Little Johnny Jones - Chicago Blues

Little Johnny Jones - Dirty By The Dozen

Little Johnny Jones - Shelby County Blues

Little Johnny Jones - Hoy Hoy

Little Johnny Jones - She Wants To Sell My Monkey

Little Johnny Jones - Up The Line (Doin' the Best I Can)