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This evening's music features Gulf Coast blues singer Barbara Lynn. Enjoy!

“At no time have governments been moralists. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. "

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

News and Opinion

Assange can be extradited, says court

Australian government refuses to press UK and US for Julian Assange’s release

The Australian government is staring down calls to intervene to secure Julian Assange’s freedom, after a British court cleared the way for the WikiLeaks co-founder to be extradited to the US to face espionage charges. The government said it was monitoring the Australian citizen’s case closely, but would “continue to respect the UK legal process – including any further appeals under UK law” – and emphasised Australia was “not a party to the case”.

The high court in London ruled on Friday that Assange could be extradited to the US, sparking a vow from Assange’s legal team to appeal. It also prompted warnings from press freedom and rights groups that the prosecution of a publisher under the US Espionage Act sets “a dangerous precedent”.

Assange was remanded in custody and Friday’s ruling paves the way for the British home secretary, Priti Patel, to ultimately decide whether or not Assange should be extradited to the US. It has led to fresh calls for the Australian government to take a stand, with the independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie calling on the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to “end this lunacy” and demand the US and UK release Assange.

Labor said it believed the matter had “dragged on for too long” and the Morrison government should “do what it can encourage the US government to bring this matter to a close”. The Greens also called on the foreign minister, Marise Payne, to “urgently speak to the US and tell them to drop these absurd charges and end Assange’s torture”.

Assange's Brother CALLS OUT Biden for WAR ON Press Freedom

Assange Had Stroke, Says Fiancee Stella Moris, Warning of 'Dangerous Impact' of Imprisonment

Stella Moris, the fiancee of Julian Assange, reiterated demands for his freedom as she revealed Saturday that the WikiLeaks founder suffered a mini-stroke in October.

"Julian Assange suffered a stroke on the first day of the High Court appeal hearing on October 27th," Moris said in a tweet.

She shared a new Daily Mail report in which she put blame for the event on "the constant chess game, battle after battle, the extreme stress" that Assange, who's been imprisoned at a maximum security prison in London since 2019, continues to endure as the U.S. government seeks to extradite and prosecute him under the Espionage Act for publishing classified information that exposed American war crimes.

"It must have been horrendous hearing a High Court appeal in which you can't participate, which is discussing your mental health and your risk of suicide and in which the U.S. is arguing you are making it all up," said Moris, who has two young children with Assange.

"The U.S. plays dirty every step of the way—it's a war of attrition," she told the outlet. "We can see from the fact that he has suffered a mini-stroke this is having a dangerous impact on him.'

According to United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer—who's previously sounded alarm about Assange's treatment—news of the stroke should come as "no surprise."

"As we warned after examining him, unless relieved of the constant pressure of isolation, arbitrariness, persecution, his health would enter a downward spiral endangering his life," Melzer wrote in a Twitter thread Saturday. The "U.K. is literally torturing him to death."

"As Assange clearly was not medically fit to attend his own trial through video link," Melzer added, "how can they even discuss whether he is fit to be exposed to a show trial in the U.S., a country that refuses to prosecute its torturers and war criminals but persecutes whistleblowers and journalists?"

As NPR reported in October:

Assange, who is being held at London's high-security Belmarsh Prison, had been expected to attend by video link, but he was not present as the hearing began. His lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said Assange "doesn't feel able to attend the proceedings."

Assange's partner, Stella Moris, said outside court that she was "very concerned for Julian's health. I saw him on Saturday. He's very thin."

The weekend revelation from Moris followed a Friday British court's ruling that Assange can be extradited to the United States, a decision that drew fierce condemnation from human rights and press freedom organizations.

In a Sunday tweet, Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, said that "the relentless prosecution/persecution of Julian Assange is a stain on U.S. press freedom commitments and records."

US & UK Destroying Assange & Press Freedom

They’re Killing Him: Assange’s Stroke Reveals The Western Version Of The Saudi Bone Saw

Julian Assange suffered a mini-stroke in October during the hearing for the US appeal of a UK court’s ruling on his extradition case. ...

“Julian is struggling and I fear this mini-stroke could be the precursor to a more major attack. It compounds our fears about his ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on,” Assange’s fiance Stella Moris told the Daily Mail. ...

They are killing Julian Assange. Experts agree that they are killing him. Assange’s stroke is just another item on the mountain of evidence we already had for this.

The US-centralized power alliance is murdering a journalist, as surely as the Saudi regime murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The only difference is that Khashoggi was killed quickly by live dismemberment via bone saw while Assange is being killed slowly by lawfare.

The Assange extradition case is just the western version of the bone saw treatment. It’s no less barbaric, cruel, vicious and tyrannical; it’s just more media-friendly and better-suited for the Nice Guy Fascism of the western branches of the globe-spanning empire which rules our world. The US, UK and Australian governments are not hacking Assange to pieces in their coordinated campaign toward his destruction, but they may as well be.

The world recoiled in horror when it learned of Khashoggi’s grizzly end, and it won’t be long before the world begins recoiling in the same way to what has been done to Assange as well. Our society is becoming rapidly more conscious; we’re already ashamed of things we thought were fine just a few years ago. We realize now that men like Harvey Weinstein are predators and the Hollywood starlets people used to criticize for “sleeping their way to the top” were actually victims of assault. We realize now it was wrong to crack jokes about the intern Bill Clinton sexually abused. We realize that the “Leave Britney alone” kid everyone made fun of in 2007 was actually on to something. We realize now that it’s wrong to make people feel bad about their sexual orientation or sexual identity. Many movies made even ten or fifteen years ago are uncomfortable to watch now because of how unconscious they were of power dynamics we all see much more clearly now.

And, whether Assange survives this slow-motion assassination attempt or not, it won’t be long before society fully understands that their government and its allies actively conspired to murder a journalist for telling the truth.

With journalists like Assange out of the way, this is the sort of shit reporting we're often left with. Fnords in The Guardian again:

Russia edges closer to war as new arms arrive on Ukraine’s border

A flatbed rail wagon speeding through south-west Russia last week carried an ill omen for negotiations to avert a larger war with Ukraine.

On board was a Buk-M1, the kind of medium-range surface-to-air missile system that became notorious in 2014 after a missile fired from territory controlled by Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine shot down a Malaysian airliner, [fnord] killing all 298 people aboard.

If Russia goes to war in Ukraine, it still needs to take a number of steps: establishing fuel supply lines, opening field hospitals and deploying air-defence systems such as the Buk that would protect its heavy weaponry and troops near the front.

Even as Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin were sitting down to talks meant to end the crisis, Russia was inching closer to being ready to launch a full-scale ground invasion of its neighbour. ...

Putin may still decide not to launch an invasion, as he leaves troops near the front as leverage for negotiations. But Russian and western analysts are predicting that this military buildup – the second one this year – portends a series of future crises over Ukraine as Putin seeks to reverse its trajectory towards the west.

Trita Parsi: Biden Efforts To APPEASE Israel FAIL, Must Choose Between America's Interests Or Israel

40 Years Later, El Mozote Massacre Victims Vow to 'Keep Demanding Justice'

As Salvadorans this weekend mark 40 years since nearly 1,000 rural villagers were murdered in El Mozote and nearby hamlets by troops from an elite U.S.-trained army unit, the pursuit of justice by survivors and victims' families is being threatened by El Salvador's right-wing president—who critics say is trying to derail the prosecution of the massacres' perpetrators in a bid to protect the armed forces and solidify his power.

Even as somber ceremonies were held to commemorate those slain in the deadliest mass killing in modern Latin American history, President Nayib Bukele was accused of demagoguery and disrespect after he showed up in El Mozote Friday without consulting local residents, accompanied by soldiers from the same army that committed the massacre.

The 40-year-old populist president, who is often seen wearing a leather jacket and backward baseball cap, has called himself "the world's coolest dictator." He's widely known outside his country for making Bitcoin legal tender; however, inside El Salvador he has stoked fears of a return to authoritarianism with a series of policies and actions that have alarmed human rights defenders at home and abroad.

Earlier this year, Bukele's allies in the Legislative Assembly summarily fired the attorney general and all the judges in the Supreme Court of Justice's constitutional chamber. Their replacements then lifted a ban on consecutive presidential terms. These and other moves—including his support for the military's refusal to grant the former presiding judge in the El Mozote case access to key records—have been internationally condemned.

That judge, Jorge Guzmán Urquilla, was on the verge of trying 15 former El Salvador Armed Forces (FAES) officers who stand accused of crimes including murder, torture, aggravated rape, terrorism, and forced disappearance in connection with the El Mozote massacres.

However, in what critics called a bid to obstruct justice, the Legislative Assembly in August passed a law forcing judges over the age of 60 to retire. Guzmán is 61.

"The people who have been on the side of the victims will continue to be relentless in the pursuit of justice," Oscar A. Chacón, the Salvadoran-American co-founder and executive director of the migrant advocacy group Alianza Americas, told Common Dreams.

"But I have to say very honestly that given how closely the Bukele administration has become entangled with the Salvadoran military, I do not believe we will see any advancement toward justice," he added.

Chile: candidates battle for moderate votes as presidential race nears end

Chile’s presidential race is hurtling towards its conclusion with the two remaining candidates battling to secure moderate votes in a deeply divided political landscape. Far-right candidate José Antonio Kast secured a two-point victory in November’s first round, but polls show that Gabriel Boric – the leftwing former student leader he will face in the 19 December runoff – now holds a narrow lead.

Since the first round, Kast has undertaken a whistlestop tour of the US – where he met conservative politicians including Marco Rubio – while back in Chile he has concentrated on attracting other right-leaning candidates’ vote share.

Boric, meanwhile, has taken his campaign into the communities where his message failed to resonate. “Boric’s vote is urban, progressive, and largely concentrated in Santiago,” said María Cristina Escudero, a political scientist at the University of Chile. “But both candidates have had to physically take their message to the rural and marginalised areas they weren’t able to reach via social media.” ...

And while both Kast and Boric scrap for the votes, the political class has also realigned itself after the bombshell first round. Centrist candidate Yasna Provoste and former Socialist party lawmaker Marco Enríquez-Ominami – who took 19% of the first-round vote between them – have backed Boric. ...

The first round of the election was characterised by historically low participation – even for Chile, where more than half of the electorate typically abstain. Only 47% of registered voters turned out in November. “If people turn out to vote, that favours Boric,” said Escudero. “But that’s a big ‘if’ – and it makes the whole election very uncertain.”

Starbucks Workers WIN HISTORIC Union Victory

'Inexcusable': Amazon Under Fire After Warehouse Collapse Kills at Least Six

Amazon was accused Saturday of putting corporate profits above worker safety following the tornado-caused partial collapse of a St. Louis-area warehouse that left at least six people dead.

"Time and time again Amazon puts its bottom line above the lives of its employees," said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), in a statement. "Requiring workers to work through such a major tornado warning event as this was inexcusable."

Appelbaum's remarks came after an outbreak of over 20 devastating tornadoes late Friday tore through multiple states and killed dozens of people. In addition to Illinois, affected states included Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.

Among the buildings struck was an Amazon facility in Edwardsville, Illinois—a community about 30 minutes from St. Louis. Local officials said Saturday that at least six people died from the collapse.

Local KMOV reported:

The walls on both sides of the building collapsed inward, causing the roof to fall. The 11-inch-thick, 40-feet-tall walls could not sustain the tornado that hit the building Friday night.

The National Weather Service confirmed that it was a category EF-3 tornado that went through Edwardsville Friday night. Winds picked up to as much as 150 mph.

The number of workers inside the building at the time of collapse is not yet determined. Edwardsville Fire Chief James Whiteford said at a press conference late Saturday that one person was injured and 45 people were rescued.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

By Saturday evening, first responders had shifted from an emergency response to a recovery effort. While they would continue to go through the rubble during daylight hours over the next three days, Whiteford said he doesn't know whether any other victims will be found inside.

Shortly before the facility was hit the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center warned of an increasing "damaging wind and tornado threat" for the area.

As some observers pointed out on social media, Amazon has previously failed to close warehouses in the face of extreme weather events:

"How many workers must die for Amazon to have a policy for extreme weather events?" sociologist Nantina Vgontzas tweeted Saturday. "It's currently up to local management and this is clearly disastrous. Condolences to the families and survivors of this horrific, avoidable tragedy."

In his statement, Appelbaum called the event "another outrageous example of the company putting profits over the health and safety of their workers, and we cannot stand for this."

"Amazon cannot continue to be let off the hook for putting hardworking people's lives at risk," he said, vowing that his union would "not back down until Amazon is held accountable for these and so many more dangerous labor practices."

Adding to the fresh scrutiny of the online giant's labor practices, as Bloomberg reported Saturday, are its policies regarding employees' mobile phone access. From the reporting:

Amazon had for years prohibited workers from carrying their phones on warehouse floors, requiring them to leave them in vehicles or employee lockers before passing through security checks that include metal detectors. The company backed off during the pandemic, but has been gradually reintroducing it at facilities around the country.

"After these deaths, there is no way in hell I am relying on Amazon to keep me safe," one unnamed worker from another Amazon facility in Illinois told Bloomberg. "If they institute the no cell phone policy, I am resigning."

INFLATION Hits 40 YEAR High Destroying Wage Gains

Wealthy Spent Over $300K in Failed Bid to Stop Manhattan Hotel From Housing Homeless

After dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into a hostile anti-homeless campaign, wealthy residents in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York City have officially lost their legal battle to prevent the opening of a local hotel that has been converted into a rapid re-housing program.

"Nestled in between a 24-hour parking structure and an apartment building on a predominantly residential street" near Central Park, the Park Savoy Hotel "blends in with the other hotels in the neighborhood," The Guardian reported Friday. The key difference is that its occupants are unhoused workers—not the business travelers or tourists preferred by many rich people living on so-called Billionaires Row, a nearby cluster of recently built luxury high-rises.

The shelter, which "quietly opened its doors in early November," the newspaper noted, "is designed to house up to 80 men and is known as an 'employment shelter' meant for those who are seeking employment or who are actively employed, especially in midtown Manhattan."

For over three years, its opening was delayed by wealthy opponents, who spent more than $300,000 in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop it—"the longest and the most-well-funded litigation" against any shelter in New York City history, according to Steve Banks, commissioner for the city's Department of Homeless Services.

In 2017, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a new initiative to address homelessness in New York City, where nearly 123,000 different individuals used the municipal shelter system in fiscal year 2020. His initiative included plans to open roughly 90 new shelters to accommodate the United States' largest population of unhoused people.

"They'll be in every kind of neighborhood," de Blasio said at the time.

According to The Guardian:

The Park Savoy shelter was slated to open in spring 2018, but the city entered a lengthy legal battle with residents and business owners in the area who vehemently opposed the shelter and formed a group, called the West 58th Street Coalition, to block it.

An online petition created in 2018 against the hotel, calling it a threat with "an enormous impact on our densely populated, narrow, high pedestrian-traffic street," garnered nearly 3,500 signatures. Members of the coalition argued that the city did not receive community input when starting plans to open the shelter and called the building "a dangerous fire trap."

[...]

Determined to stop the shelter, the West 58th Street Coalition filed lawsuit in 2018 that argued the building was too "unsafe" for occupants and that "crime and loitering" caused by the shelter would lead to "irreparable injuries." The coalition also spent at least $287,000 toward lobbyists advocating against the shelter, according to nonprofit news site The City. They spent another $100,000 on billboards in Iowa meant to prod de Blasio during his brief run for president in 2020.

Despite the West 58th Street Coalition's costly and dehumanizing effort to kill the Park Savoy shelter, a state appellate court in May gave the city final approval to open it.

How dismantling Roe v Wade could imperil other ‘core, basic human rights’

Although supreme court opinions are notoriously difficult to predict, a majority of justices on the conservative-leaning court appeared inclined to severely curtail or overturn Roe v Wade, which protects abortion rights in states hostile to the procedure. Legal scholars warned that the impacts of such a move would likely be widespread, because abortion rights are rooted in the same implied constitutional right to privacy that is the foundation for other intimate personal decisions Americans now take for granted.

Gay rights, contraceptives, certain fertility treatments and even interracial marriage, “are imperiled because they’re all rooted in that right to privacy,” Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University law school and an expert in constitutional, family and reproductive rights law, told the Guardian. “All of this has been implied because they’re understood to be core, basic human rights,” said Murray. “You don’t need the state to recognize them because they are vested in you by virtue of being a human.” ...

In arguments, justices pointed to several ways they may reinterpret the Roe v Wade decision. Some, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, were skeptical there is a right to privacy and were swayed by the lack of an explicit reference to the right in the constitution, a concept known as “textualism”.

The theory underlying that right to privacy is called “substantive due process”, or the doctrine that the constitution protects both the procedures of due process, such as how criminal law is applied, and “substantive” guarantees of life, liberty and property. ... Until the supreme court issues a decision, it is unclear exactly how rights protected by substantive due process might be affected. However, scholars consider same-sex and reproductive rights to be the most vulnerable because there is an active political campaign to circumscribe them. By contrast, there is little contemporary criticism of interracial marriage.

Supreme court rules Texas abortion providers can sue over ban but won’t stop law

The supreme court ruled on Friday that Texas abortion providers can sue over the state’s ban on most abortions, but the justices are allowing the law, the strictest such regulation in America to date, to remain in effect. The decision is a mixed result for reproductive health advocates at a time when social conservatives seem on the march in America and the supreme court is leaning towards restricting or outlawing abortion nationally in the future with its conservative supermajority, engineered by Donald Trump. ...

Friday’s supreme court opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, gives a complicated legal response that abortion providers in Texas and beyond are likely to receive as a partial but by no means overwhelming victory. In his opinion, Gorsuch makes clear that the court in this case was not addressing the issue of abortion rights per se, or whether the Texas ban was consistent with existing federal law. ...

The overall result of Friday’s opinion is that abortion providers in Texas will be allowed to press ahead with their legal challenge to the near-total ban on abortion. But their legal path forward has been narrowed and from now on they will be forced to direct their efforts at a small number of state employees. ... The court ruled by a lesser margin that the providers will be able to continue challenging SB 8 by focusing on four licensing officials who would be involved in taking action against abortion clinics under the terms of the new ban. But state court clerks and the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, who had been named as defendants, could not be sued.

Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three remaining liberal-leaning justices on the nine-judge supreme court bench, expressed strong views in dissent. She said that by casting their opinion so narrowly, the conservative majority was “shrinking” from its duty to defend the supremacy of the US constitution over the whims of individual states.

The legal battle to try and stop SB 8 and reopen access to abortion to millions of Texan women will now return to a lower federal court in the state capital, Austin. While it does so, however, the prohibition against almost all abortions in the state will continue to stand.

In response to Texas abortion law, California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he is working on a bill to allow private citizens to sue anyone who makes or sells assault weapons

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday he is working on a bill that would help private citizens sue manufacturers, distributors, and sellers of assault weapons or ghost gun kits. Newsom said he was responding to a Supreme Court decision made Friday that allowed a controversial abortion law in Texas to stand. The law bans all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and invites ordinary citizens, rather than state officials, to enforce it by suing abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion. ...

"SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?! If that's the precedent then we'll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets," Newsom wrote. "If TX can ban abortion and endanger lives, CA can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives." Newsom said his staff is working with state legislators on a bill that would allow private citizens to take legal action against "anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon of ghost gun kit or parts in the State of California."

Citizens who sue and win would be rewarded at least $10,000 per violation plus the cost of their legal fees, as is also the case in the Texas abortion law.

Jonathan Pie: The World's End (COP26 short film with George Monbiot, Caroline Lucas & Ed Miliband)

Sunrise Movement Blasts 'Criminal' Effort by Corporate Dems to Slash Carbon Capture Threshold

As Senate Democrats continue to negotiate pared-back climate provisions in the Build Back Better reconciliation package in a bid to win the support of right-wing Democratic senators, activists from the youth-led Sunrise Movement on Friday warned against easing the bill's proposed carbon capture threshold.

"It's criminal that the Senate wants to scrap the carbon capture threshold so dirty power plant operators can get even more tax credits and incentives," Sunrise Movement campaign director Deirdre Shelly said in a statement.

"Power plants that disproportionately harm Black, brown, and working-class neighborhoods already get billions in tax credits, with little to show for it," she continued. "This is essentially a government handout of up to tens of billions of dollars to the fossil fuel industry."

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—whose personal and family wealth derive largely from coal—is Senate Democrats' 50th and potentially decisive vote on the pending Build Back Better bill, a $1.75 trillion version of which was approved by the House last month. Manchin has been the leading force pushing his Democratic colleagues to weaken climate action in the reconciliation bill.

In addition to seeking a lower carbon capture threshold, Manchin is also opposed a plan to fine fossil fuel polluters for excess emissions of methane—a greenhouse gas that is up to 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

According to E&E News:

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said yesterday that Democrats had "made some good adjustments" to the policy in response to his concerns about overlap between the [proposed methane] fee and the Biden administration's newly proposed methane regulations.

"Meanwhile, our communities are drowning from historic floods, kids are in constant peril of climate disasters, and our families are slowly dying from the toxic pollution coming from these very same corporations," said Shelly.

She added that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "can't let fossil fuel corporations hijack Build Back Better, and must do everything in his power to protect or strengthen the 75% capture rate for carbon, and stand up to Joe Manchin and corporate Democrats who are trying to make fossil fuel corporations richer at the expense of communities on the frontline of the climate crisis."

As Planet Careens Toward Disastrous 'Crash,' Earth's Black Box Records Leaders' Climate Inaction

Just as investigators examine an airplane's black box after a crash to determine what went wrong in flight, researchers and artists in Australia are preparing for future inhabitants of Earth to go searching for clues about humanity's potential demise—and are constructing an archive of humans' failure to stop the climate emergency, which scientists say could drastically alter life on the planet.

Data researchers at the University of Tasmania are working with the marketing company Clemenger BBDO and the artists' collective Glue Society to construct a 33-foot long vault made of three-inch thick steel, which they've dubbed "Earth's Black Box."

The vault is expected to be completed in 2022 and will lie in a remote plain in Tasmania, where it will keep a record of the planet's rising temperature and extreme weather changes and of policymakers' missteps and inaction, as they lead the global population further down the path of the climate emergency.

"If the worst is to happen and as a civilization, we do crash as a result of climate change," Jim Curtis, executive creative director at Clemenger BBDO, told Reuters, "this indestructible box will be there and will record every detail of that, every inaction and action we take towards that, so whoever is left or whoever finds it afterwards learns from our mistakes and it doesn't happen again."

The creators began keeping records last month at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26)—where fossil fuel lobbyists were better represented than any country, policymakers watered down language regarding the end of coal extraction, and several wealthy countries failed to increase their emission targets for the coming decade.

The summit led climate action advocates to warn that humans are failing to act decisively enough to limit the heating of the planet to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels—condemning the global population to risks including more deadly heat waves, famine, and sea level rise.

The watchdog group Climate Action Tracker said in November that the planet is on track to heat up by at least 2.4°C.

"The purpose of this device is to provide an unbiased account of the events that lead to the demise of the planet, hold accountability for future generations, and inspire action," the creators wrote on their project's website.

The researchers and artists behind Earth's Black Box collected discussions and official statements made at COP26, and will continue gathering similar data that will be stored on an automated, solar-powered hard drive within the box. The hard drive can collect data for about 50 years.

The box will also collect daily data showing temperatures of oceans and land, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, ocean acidification, and biodiversity.

Earth's Black Box is being constructed to withstand cyclones, earthquakes, and other disasters, and the makers say that if a catastrophic planetary event resulting from the climate crisis draws near, they will engrave instructions for opening the vault on its exterior.

"I'm on the plane; I don't want it to crash," Curtis told the New York Times Friday. "I really hope that it's not too late."

The Earth's Black Box website warns that actions—and inaction—taking place all over the world "are now being recorded" and will be collected in the structure.

"How the story ends is completely up to us," the creators say.

“This Isn’t a Natural Disaster”: Climate Scientist Michael Mann on Deadly Tornadoes in 8 States

Biden calls on EPA to investigate role of climate crisis in deadly tornadoes

Joe Biden has asked the US environmental protection agency (EPA) to investigate what role the climate crisis might have played in the deadly tornadoes that killed scores in Kentucky and several other states this weekend.

Experts have said that tornadoes with such intensity are rare later in the year during colder seasonal weather, and that Friday night’s storms, which included one tornado tearing a path of more than 225 miles across Kentucky, appeared to be an anomaly.

In remarks on Saturday addressing the devastation, Biden said he wanted to know to what degree climate change might have been a contributory factor.

“The specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point. I’m going to be asking the EPA and others to take a look at that,” the president said in an afternoon briefing in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware.

“But the fact is that we know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. And obviously it has some impact here.”

Also of Interest

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

As Fascism Casts Off Its Disguises

The Assange Case Is The US Defending Its Right To Lie: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Julian Assange Loses Appeal: British High Court Accepts U.S. Request to Extradite Him for Trial

John Pilger: A Judicial Kidnapping

Assange Verdict: Vengeance Is Ours, Saith the Agency

Wall Street – How Corrupt Is It? It’s Time for the Justice Department to Finally Answer that Question

Investing in Lego more lucrative than gold, study suggests

How ‘Big Oil’ Works the System and Keeps Winning

Biden Pushing for War with China & Russia?

Krystal Ball DISMANTLES MSNBC LIES about Assange

MSNBC’s Non-Stop Lying About Julian Assange

Ryan Grim: Big Tech Fighting Back INSIDE Biden Admin, Wall Street STIFLING Push To Check Monopolies

Kim Iversen: Biden's Democracy Summit Turned Out To Be A GIANT Lesson In Hypocrisy

Ken Klippenstein: Kellogg’s RUTHLESS Attempts To Squash Strike Fall Short, Redditors SPAM Job Portal

A Little Night Music

Barbara Lynn - I'm A Good Woman

Barbara Lynn - Only You Know How To Love Me

Barbara Lynn - What' d I say

Barbara Lynn - Until Then I'll Suffer

Barbara Lynn - Second Fiddle Girl

Barbara Lynn - Nice & Easy

Barbara Lynn - Thanks I Get

Barbara Lynn - I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

Barbara Lynn - You Left The Water Running

Barbara Lynn - You'll Lose A Good Thing

2018 NEA National Heritage Fellow Barbara Lynn