Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features guitarist, harmonica player and singer Doctor Ross, "The Harmonica Boss." Enjoy!

"And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

-- George Carlin

News and Opinion

"The party of the people," strikes again. Look, this time it's Mark Warner (D-Jackass) dancing around the pole for the corporate elites, hoping that they'll stuff some dollar bills in his congressional g-string. Go Democrats!

Democratic Senator Urges Business Elites to Get More Involved in Politics

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called on an audience of business and political elites earlier this week to respond to populist anger by lobbying harder for a deficit-reduction package that would reduce corporate tax rates and cut public retirement programs such as Social Security.

Although a dominant populist sentiment is that the system is already rigged in favor of the rich, Warner suggested that the “business community” needs to get more involved in politics or face unpleasant repercussions.

“If you don’t think the frustration of Americans with our overall system, — not just our political system, but our business system, our tax code — is at the boiling point, then Katy bar the door!,” he said. “The walls that are gonna have to be built, may not be at borders, they may be around neighborhoods the way they are in many Third World countries around the world,” Warner warned. ...

Warner bemoaned that his years of efforts to strike a congressional “Grand Bargain” based on the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan had resulted in failure.

The U.S. Government Has Been Outsourcing The Gitmo Trials

he Defense Department has farmed out to a private company much of the criminal investigation and trials of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to federal records and sources affiliated with the trials who spoke to BuzzFeed News.

What’s more, the government has hired the same firm, SRA International, to serve both the prosecution and defense teams, sparking concerns of a conflict of interest that could undermine the integrity of one of the most significant terrorism cases in modern history.

The central role that SRA, a Virginia-based security logistics contracting firm, plays in staffing the prosecution and defense at GITMO has not been previously reported. BuzzFeed News obtained a contracting document dated November 2015, in which the Pentagon justifies using SRA and explains how much the government relies on the company.

In the document, the government calls the SRA contractors “vital” — so much so that if they left it would “severely disrupt” the already ?strained judicial proceedings.

The Defense Department has paid SRA almost $39 million over the last five years, U.S. government contracting records show, for the cases of just seven accused terrorists — those charged in the 9/11 attacks and two others charged in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen. ...

The SRA contract played a major role in one of the court’s more recent imbroglios; an SRA security officer assigned to the defense team of a Guantanamo inmate told his employer in 2014 that federal agents had asked him to spy on the very team he was supposed to be helping.

Deployed Army captain sues Obama over ISIS fight

Capt. Nathan Smith, a military intelligence officer, is seeking “a declaration that President Obama’s war against ISIS is illegal because Congress has not authorized it,” according to court documents. The suit, first reported by the New York Times, goes on to cite the 1973 War Powers Resolution and says the president “did not get Congress’s approval for his war against ISIS in Iraq or Syria within the sixty days, but he also did not terminate the war. The war is therefore illegal.”

Smith considers ISIS “an army of butchers” and believes that participating in the fight against them “is what I signed up to be part of when I joined the military,” according to court documents.

However, Smith filed the lawsuit “out of conscience because fighting an illegal war forces him to violate his oath to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ the Constitution,” according to the lawsuit. ...

Obama administration officials, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter, have repeatedly said they have all the legal authority they need to conduct the ongoing fight against the Islamic State group.

US, Allies Agree to ‘Do More’ in ISIS War

Meetings among NATO defense ministers in Germany have ended with an agreement among the US and other nations involved in the anti-ISIS coalition to “do more” in the war, according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. ...

Over the last two weeks [...] the US has announced two significant escalations already, of over 200 troops each, in both Iraq and Syria. Britain also reported just yesterday that they intend to send “several hundred” more troops to Iraq to join the 300 already there.

On top of that Secretary Carter announced just yesterday that the US is consider sending even more troops to both Iraq and Syria, above and beyond the ones already announced, saying the US iss “always looking to build momentum” in the war with more troops.

Clapper: ISIS Capable of Paris-Style Attacks in US

Speaking today on CNN, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that ISIS has the capability of launching attacks in America on the level of the November attack in Paris, using local cells which it has deployed in multiple locations around the United States. ...

Clapper insisted that ISIS did not pose an existential threat to the US, and that the cells within the US might not necessarily get direct orders from the parent organization for an attack, but rather would launch the attack on their own.

US, Russia Broker 48-Hour Ceasefire in Syria’s Aleppo

As the ceasefire elsewhere in the country begins to expire, Russia and the United States have brokered a 48-hour ceasefire in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, where two weeks of firing between military and rebel factions have killed nearly 300 civilians, and hit several hospitals.

US officials are continuing to “warn” the Assad government about the ceasefire, though there has been reported shelling since the pact was announced. They insisted that they would hold Assad responsible for any violations.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, by contrast, sees al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front as a major threat to the truce, accusing them of thwarting previous efforts to get a ceasefire in place in that city. In the city, materially all the rebels are either with Nusra Front or are allied with them.

Russia Creates New Military Divisions to Respond to NATO Buildup

Russia’s Defense Ministry has announced its intention to create three new military divisions for its westernmost territory in response to NATO’s announcement last week of another 4,000 ground troops to be deployed along the Russian border.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg insists that NATO’s deployments were a response to Russia’s “use of force against Ukraine in 2014,” which both happened two years ago and has been in a state of ceasefire for well over a year.

NATO has used Ukraine as an excuse for repeated buildups along the Russian border, and while Stoltenberg insists all those troops are purely “defensive,” Russia is clearly feeling the need to respond after half a dozen such major deployments.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry, in Error, Releases Memos on Restricting News Media

Memos sent to journalists from Egypt’s Interior Ministry’s official email account contained suggestions about how to counter a “vicious” news media campaign that were triggered by the arrest of two reporters at the journalists’ union headquarters in downtown Cairo late Sunday. One document proposed a rule to stop all coverage related to Giulio Regeni, the Italian graduate student whose brutalized body was found on a Cairo roadside in February. ... The Regeni killing has plunged relations with Italy into crisis, while the police arrested dozens of people on April 25 during a rare public protest over the transfer of two Egyptian islands to Saudi Arabia. ...

Journalists have called for the dismissal of the interior minister, Maj. Gen. Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar, who insists he has done nothing wrong. But judging by the leaked media guidance, his ministry believes it needs to show a strong hand to stop the protests from growing.

The ministry “cannot backtrack”, one of two memos says. “Backtracking means a mistake was made.” Instead, it says, the police should seek to undermine the credibility of the journalists’ union by deploying retired police generals to the country’s influential, and mostly pro-Sisi, television programs, to “explain the ministry’s point of view.”

The memos proposed assigning more staff members to monitor news websites around the clock.

Turkey's Davutoglu prepares to step down

Turkey's PM Steps Down as President Erdogan Tightens His Grip

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has confirmed he will step down, a move that comes after the premier lost a struggle for control of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Davutoglu confirmed the news at a press conference on Thursday afternoon in the capital of Ankara, saying that he wouldn't continue to lead the party if there was no consensus. The AKP will now hold an extraordinary congress on May 22 to vote on his successor. Davutoglu confirmed that he would not be running for re-election. ...

A close Erdogan ally is likely to be selected for the premiership with possible candidates including the president's own son-in-law.

On the trail of US-exiled cleric Gulen, arch enemy of Erdogan

Speaker of Brazil's lower house Eduardo Cunha suspended

The speaker of Brazil’s lower house, Eduardo Cunha, has been suspended from all congressional duties for allegedly trying to intimidate congressmen and obstruct investigations against him, a supreme court spokeswoman has said. ...

The supreme court justice Teori Zavascki accepted an injunction requested by the country’s general prosecutor. Another case against Cunha will be judged later on Thursday by the full supreme court.

Cunha, a powerful rival of Rousseff who has led an impeachment drive against her, is under investigation for allegedly receiving bribes in a massive corruption scheme at state-run oil producer Petrobras.

Glenn Greenwald: President's Impeachment Process in Brazil is a Trojan Horse for Neo-liberalism

A Probe Into Olympic Corruption Is Making Brazilians Think of Pizza

A probe into spending on the Rio 2016 Olympics kicked off this week and has already been dismissed by some as a whitewash or, as Brazilians say, vai acabar em pizza — it's going to end up as pizza.

The city council inquiry, launched on Tuesday, stems from widespread suspicions that there were dubious deals behind Olympic legacy projects such as the extension of Rio's metro system, and the regeneration of its port.

It follows revelations that emerged as part of the massive judicial probe that has uncovered over-inflated contracts within the oil giant Petrobras. That investigation — known as the Lava Jato or Car Wash — has linked some of the same construction firms to allegedly suspicious payments in deals for Olympic preparations.

Calls for a specific investigation into Olympic infrastructure projects also grew dramatically last month after the collapse of an elevated bike route along the Rio Coast. The newly-inaugurated route, which cost about $12 million, killed at least two people when part of it fell into the sea amid suspicions of shoddy and rushed work.

Now the new five-person council commission is itself being questioned, not least because it is packed with members of the same political party as the mayor of Rio de Janeiro — the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB.

Justin Trudeau on Indigenous Issues in Canada

Justice Department says North Carolina anti-LGBT law violates Civil Rights Act

North Carolina’s law limiting protections to LGBT people violates the US Civil Rights Act and cannot be enforced, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday. ...

“The Department of Justice has determined that, as a result of compliance with and implementation of NC House Bill2, both you and the state of NC are in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant US attorney general, wrote to the Republican governor, Pat McGrory.

The act prohibits employers from discriminating against people based on gender identity. “Access to sex-segregated restrooms and other workplace facilities consistent with gender identity is a term, condition or privilege of employment,” Gupta wrote. “Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from the gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII.”

The letter called HB2 is “facially discriminatory against transgender employees on the basis of sex because it treats transgender employees, whose gender identity does not match their biological sex, as defined by HB2, differently from similarly situated non-transgender employees”.

The letter also cited Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in education.

If a court upholds the US attorney general’s position, the state of North Carolina stands to lose $861m in federal funding for schools.

The Bailouts Were for the Banks: Study Confirms Rescue Loans Didn't Serve Greeks

A new study offers more confirmation that the so-called bailout packages the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delivered to Greece primarily served European banks rather than the Greek people.

The study released Wednesday by the Berlin-based European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) analyzed where funds from the two aid bailout deals—received on the condition of imposing harsh austerity measures—since 2010 went.

"Contrary to widely held beliefs," ESMT states, of the €215.9 billion (roughly $246 billion), less than 5 percent went to the Greek fiscal budget. The other 95 percent of the funds "disbursed to Greece since the start of the financial crisis as loans from the bailout mechanism has been directed toward saving the European banks," Ekathimerini reports.

Reporting by the German business newspaper Handelsblatt adds, "The aid programs were badly designed by Greece's lenders, the European Central Bank, the Europe Union and the International Monetary Fund. Their priority, the report says, was to save not the Greek people, but its banks and private creditors."

"Most of the money was used to actually transfer risks from private creditors to public creditors," ESMT President Jörg Rocholl told DW Wednesday. "This means money was used to repay the private creditors by taking on more debts that were taken by private creditors."

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to Put End to Mandatory Arbitration for Consumer Loans, Credit Cards

It looks like a pervasive abuse is about to bite the dust.

A major way that financial firms have tipped the playing field even further in their direction is the inclusion of mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts. The argument has been that this feature is beneficial to consumers, since arbitration is cheaper that litigation in the event of a dispute. But studies have repeatedly found that to be bollocks. The arbitrators that are chosen to serve are not only screened to be big institution friendly; arbitrators that wind up ruling in favor of customers have this funny way of being moved to the bottom of the selection list, while hanging arbitrators get regular assignments. ...

The New York Times today reports that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will soon bar mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer financial products. Even though the rule is not final and is subject to a comment period, the tone of the Times report is that the provision becoming final is close to a certainty. From the account:

The nation’s consumer watchdog is unveiling a proposed rule on Thursday that would restore customers’ rights to bring class-action lawsuits against financial firms, giving Americans major new protections and delivering a serious blow to Wall Street that could cost the industry billions of dollars.

The proposed rule, which would apply to bank accounts, credit cards and other types of consumer loans, seems almost certain to take effect, since it does not require congressional approval.

In effect, the move by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the biggest that the agency has made since its inception in 2010 — will unravel a set of audacious legal maneuvers by corporate America that has prevented customers from using the court system to challenge potentially deceitful banking practices.

Note that the rule will apply only to new accounts and loans, but consumers can cancel existing ones and sign up again.

I’ve been generally critical of Dodd Frank as delivering much less than it promised, but this is an important exception. Dodd Frank not only established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but also tasked the agency to investigate arbitration.

Cupertino's mayor: Apple 'abuses us' by not paying taxes

The last time the mayor of Cupertino walked into Apple – the largest company in his small Californian town and, it so happens, the most valuable company in the world – he hoped to have a meeting to talk about traffic congestion.

Barry Chang barely made it into the lobby when Apple’s security team surrounded and escorted him off the property.

“They said ‘you cannot come in, you’re not invited’. After that I left and have not gone back,” said an exasperated Chang, who’s been mayor since December 2015 and had approached the computing firm when he was serving on the city council three years ago.

Many in Cupertino, a 60,000-person town in the heart of Silicon Valley, are beginning to organize around their overburdened city. They claim the region is struggling with aging infrastructure and booming companies whose effective tax rate is often quite low. Frustrated by traffic and noise, some in Cupertino are trying to put a stop to more development, which they argue brings more congestion on the roads, parking and train system. But Chang says limiting new development would damage the regional economy and that the real solution should be higher taxes on the wealthy and companies such as Apple. ...

Getting local politicians to battle Apple is hard, Chang said. He recently proposed that Apple – which is building a massive new campus its own employees nicknamed the Death Star, or more favorably, The Spaceship – should give $100m to improve city infrastructure. To move on the proposal, Chang only needed to get a single vote ‘yes’ among the three other eligible council members. He failed to get that vote.

Why must the Trump alternative be self-satisfied, complacent Democrats?

Convinced that the country’s ongoing demographic shifts will bring victory for years to come, the party establishment acts like its candidates need do nothing differently

Hillary Clinton is more or less openly offering herself as the complacency candidate. The least inspiring frontrunner in many years, she is a dynastic heir who stands to receive the Democratic nomination largely because it’s her turn – the logic that made Bob Dole the GOP leader in 1996. Clinton has scolded her rival for wanting to break up Wall Street banks since such a policy, by itself, would not also end racism and sexism. (In point of fact, the black middle class was disproportionately damaged by the detonation of the housing bubble.) ...

Barack Obama offered his own variation on the complacency theme during a meeting in March, in which he announced: “America’s pretty darn great right now.” ...

Obama has said similar things often in these waning months of his presidency. In a recent interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, he went even farther, brushing off criticism of his administration as cranky griping by people who had been left behind by history. He had helped institute “hard changes”, he recollected, that made the economy more “nimble” and “dynamic”. Unfortunately, he continued:

[T]hat then feeds, both on the left and the right, a temptation to say, ‘If we could just go back to an era in which our borders were closed,’ or, ‘If we could just go back to a time when everybody had a defined-benefit plan,’ or ,‘We could just go back to a time when there wasn’t any immigrant that was taking my job, things would be OK.’

Perhaps you noticed something peculiar about that statement, reader: that Obama has here lumped together two complaints that sound absurd and vaguely racist with a third impulse – a longing for defined-benefit pension plans – that is legitimate and quite real. ... Yes, Republicans have attacked defined-benefit plans for years, and such plans have become increasingly rare for younger workers, but instead of fighting back, here’s our liberal president brushing it all off as pie-in-the-sky whining by soreheads.

This is the flip side to the complacency chorus: resentment of people who can’t see that all the skies are blue in our nimble and dynamic world.

Hillary to Bernie Supporters: Don’t Vote for Me!

Hey Bernie supporters: Hillary has a talking point for you.

Confident that she has the Democratic nomination pretty much locked down and turning toward a general election contest against Donald Trump, Secretary Clinton’s surrogates and paid Internet trolls are targeting Sanders devotees via email and seeding comment threads on political websites with a low-key sales pitch.

It goes like this: We’re not asking you to vote for Hillary in November. We are asking you to work for and donate to “down ticket” Democratic candidates for Congress, governor, state rep and so on. Oh, and if you could kindly hold your fire against Hillary — because those attacks help Trump — that would be awesome too, thanks. ...

If Hillary wins the nomination, she’ll need as many votes from former Berners as she can get. So why is she giving up on them already?

There are two answers.

1/ She doesn’t think she can convince Sanders’ supporters that she’s a good-enough second-best.

2/ She doesn’t want to try. ...

In Hillary Clinton we have a right-wing Democrat who campaigned as a right-wing Democrat and who will now tack even farther right this summer and fall. She’s so far right that she won’t even bother to pretend to throw a bone to progressives, much less bring Sanders or his ideas into an Abe Lincoln-style Team of Rivals à la Hillary.

No one should say they’re surprised when President Hill turns out to a rabid rightie.

Kshama Sawant: It’s Not About Bernie: Why We Can’t Let Our Revolution Die in Philadelphia

A growing chorus of voices is declaring the Democratic Primary over, and calling on Sandernistas to dutifully line up behind Hillary. ...

To throw our support behind Hillary’s corporate campaign would be to sabotage our political revolution.

At the same time the Clintons and Democratic establishment are cracking their whips for “party unity,” we’re also hearing Bernie Sanders shifting his political messaging away from winning and from political revolution. “[This] campaign,” Sanders said, “is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform.” This statement is just one of a number of recent comments showing a fundamental change in approach.

With all due respect to Bernie and his campaign, I think to reduce our struggle to a question of party platform and of pushing Hillary to the left would be a fundamental mistake. In reality, the Democratic Party platform is next to meaningless. There are no rules, or even a custom, of elected Democrats respecting the party platform when it comes to real world votes. And Hillary Clinton herself is a thoroughly pro-corporate politician who has the full support and backing of Wall Street and the billionaire class.

To endorse Hillary, even with a more progressive platform, would be the opposite of political revolution and would abandon all the vital energy and momentum we have built over this historic past year.

Judge says Clinton may have to testify in email lawsuit

A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday ordered that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have to testify in a lawsuit related to the private email server she used while secretary of state.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said the parties in the case, the State Department and conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, also struck an agreement about the scope of the testimonies that some of Clinton's former top aides will give in the case.

Those testimonies, known as discovery, will take place over the next eight weeks and may yield information that would require Clinton herself to be deposed, Sullivan said in an order. ...

It is not typical for a judge to grant discovery to a plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act case, but Sullivan said in the order that the question remained whether the State Department provided all relevant documents to Judicial Watch.

Trump to stick with Muslim ban

Donald Trump stood by his call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. Wednesday, saying he doesn’t care if it hurts him in the general election.

“I don’t care if it hurts me,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday. “I’m doing the right thing when I do this. And whether it’s Muslim or whether it’s something else, I mean, I have to do the right thing, and that’s the way I’ve been guided.”

“And I've been guided by common sense, by what's right," he continued. "And you see what's happening. We have to be careful. I mean, we're allowing thousands of people to come into our country, thousands and thousands of people being placed all over the country that frankly nobody knows who they are. They don't have documentation in many cases — in most cases. And we don't know what we're doing.”

Data Journalism in one tweet: add the word “math” to a hot take & still get proven wrong — in just four weeks! pic.twitter.com/OPTYGmtsew

— Blupman (@blippoblappo) May 4, 2016

worst part about Data Journalism is its invulnerability. Nate Silver could say the Hamburglar would win in 2016 & still get taken seriously

— Blupman (@blippoblappo) May 4, 2016

I have to admit, this makes for some pretty amusing reading. Donald Trump gives George Will the willies. One corporate party down, one to go.

Donald Trump: blame game begins among fellow Republicans

As the news sinks in, a palpable sense of shock is settling over much of America of the sort normally reserved for the day after major natural disasters. Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon once known primarily for his mop of orange hair, perma-tan and catchphrase “You’re fired!”, has become the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican party.

The country, including many top figures within the GOP itself, is struggling to come to terms with the unthinkable, the unconscionable, the downright preposterous: in theory, Trump is now one short hop away from the White House. To say that the news has unsettled the party of which he is now the nominal head would be a gross understatement – thunderstruck, flabbergasted or devastated would be closer to the mark. ...

When asked by the Guardian to describe the impact on the Republican party of Trump’s now-inevitable nomination, Rick Wilson, a prominent conservative strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of both George Bushes, replied: “What Republican party? The party I grew up in is done, it’s over. As long as Donald Trump is the definition of our brand, it’s dead.”

Charlie Sykes, a popular conservative radio host in Milwaukee, said: “Donald Trump represents the antithesis of everything I have fought for in the last 30 years. He is a neo-fascist buffoon.”

Influential conservative pundits are calling on party members to work to keep Trump from securing the most powerful job on earth. George Will in the Washington Post exhorted conservatives to help Trump lose in all 50 states, while Mark Salter, a strategist for the 2008 Republican nominee John McCain, went as far as to say on Twitter that he would vote for Hillary Clinton, tweeting: “I’m with her.”

How is it that the criminal negligence of a group of politicians and their hired lackeys, who were imposed upon a city, sweeping aside the democratically-elected leadership, imposes a (presumably equal) responsibility on "everybody" to clean things up in the wake of their crimes?

Obama goes to Flint, spreads blame

The Flint water crisis was a “tragedy that never should have happened” in the US, Barack Obama said Wednesday during his first visit to the city since evidence of lead contamination emerged last fall, while residents jeered Michigan’s governor in his first public remarks before the community.

“Flint’s recovery is everybody’s responsibility,” the president told a crowd of 1,000 gathered inside a high school gymnasium. “And I will make sure that responsibility is met.”

The president focused his remarks on what he called a “corrosive” mentality in politics that “contributed to this crisis”.

“Now, I do not believe that anybody consciously wanted to hurt the people,” he said. “And this is not the place to sort out every screwup … but I do think there’s a larger issue.

“It’s a mindset that believes the less government is the highest good no matter what,” he continued. “It’s an … ideology that undervalues the common good, says we’re all on our own.”

[Did you see that? Mr. President deftly avoided the elephant in the room. Why does he not mention the much larger issue that the people of Flint were disenfranchised? Why is it that Obama is saying and doing nothing about their disenfranchisement? This is not simply a partisan issue about ideology that is amenable to solution in the election booth. - js]

Alberta blaze shows no signs of letting up

Here's Why the Alberta Wildfire Just Might Have a Lot to Do With Climate Change

The disaster unfolding in Alberta isn't just a "one-off," as one scientist puts it. Canada has seen its annual fire season get longer and bigger for the past several decades as its climate warms, raising the odds of a massive blaze like the one now tearing through Fort McMurray. ...

The rapidly spreading fire was whipped up further by unseasonably warm temperatures and winds of nearly 40 kph (25 mph). Tuesday's high of 32 degrees Celsius (90 Fahrenheit) is far warmer than the area's normal high of 16 C (60 F), Canada's weather service reported.

That's an unusual spike — but overall, the number of hot days in Alberta has gone up sharply since 1950, according to provincial government statistics. And as a result, the blazes in the boreal forests of Canada's northwest are getting worse, said Mike Flannigan, a wildfire researcher at the University of Alberta.

"There's a lot of year-to-year variability in area burned, but we have doubled since the 1970s," Flannigan said. "And the last three years have been very active fire years. We typically burn more than 2 million hectares (7,700 square miles) a year now, which is half the size of our province of Nova Scotia."

Northwestern Canada has warmed more than the country as a whole. That's meant the plants and fallen limbs that lie on the forest floors are drier. The wetlands around them are drying up as well, turning from a potential firebreak to a new source of fuel. And warmer weather means more lightning, which can touch off a blaze: Recent studies indicate a 1-degree increase in temperature can lead to 12 percent more lighting, Flannigan said.

When in drought: the California farmers who don’t water their crops

There’s something different about Will Bucklin’s grape vines. At first it’s hard to notice, but a drive through northern California’s Sonoma Valley, past waves of green, manicured vineyards, makes it clear. The black ribbon of PVC irrigation pipe that typically threads the vines is curiously absent here – because Will doesn’t water his crops.

Bucklin’s Old Hill Ranch, purchased by his stepfather Otto Teller in 1980, claims to be the oldest-rooted vineyard in the area. Teller fell in love with the vineyard because it was one of the few that still “dry-farmed”. Dry farming is a method that bypasses artificial irrigation, relying instead on seasonal rainfall and working the soil in such a way that it holds onto water for the drier months.

Is it possible to grow healthy grapes without watering them? Actually, if conditions are right, he says, it’s possible to grow even better ones. Less water means smaller, more intensely flavoured grapes with a higher skin-to-fruit ratio. Other crops – tomatoes, potatoes, squash, corn, apples, even marijuana – can be dry-farmed too, with similarly intensified results. ...

It’s been more than two years since California governor Jerry Brown declared the drought a state of emergency. ... Since then, Californians in urban areas have been required to greatly reduce their water use. The mandate to cut back by 25% has largely been met, and at times exceeded, by a population that prides itself on eco-consciousness. Strict restraints on personal water consumption, and drought shaming of those who continue to waste, have attracted headlines.

Yet for agriculture, which accounts for 80% of the state’s water use, there is no parallel mandate. It’s a reality that has raised eyebrows. That’s not to say the industry isn’t under scrutiny. In 2014, for the first time in its history, the state passed “groundwater” laws that will monitor how farmers use rapidly diminishing subterranean reserves. But there is currently no statewide move to promote alternative methods of irrigation such a dry farming. As Jeanine Jones of the California department of water says: “that’s a choice that growers make. It’s on their side of the issue.”

Disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable

In California’s coastal forests, tree health is anything but good. Since 1995, a pathogen that causes a phenomenon dubbed ‘sudden oak death’ (a far catchier name than that of the pathogen itself, Phytophthora ramorum) has taken out millions of oak and tanoak trees, particularly along the coast extending northward from Monterey County. That includes areas of Marin County, Sonoma County and Big Sur.

The pathogen is a water mold that affects different trees differently, and not all are susceptible. It will tear through a forest and kill some trees while leaving others standing.

But in some trees, the pathogen causes tree trunks to crack open a ‘canker’ and literally bleed out sap. The disease is actually related to the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1800s.

“Millions of acres of land have been affected in coastal California,” says Richard Cobb, a postdoc at the University of California, Davis, who studies the disease. “It spreads via wind and rain, and it’s made some really big jumps to different parts of the state and into Oregon. It probably spread into California via the nursery trade. And it has been moved around the country a lot, also within the nursery trade.”

Unfortunately, new research on this invasive disease, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday by Cobb and a group of colleagues, finds that while there may once have been a chance to stop the spread of sudden oak death — around the year 2002 — that opportunity has since passed.

PA Township Legalizes Civil Disobedience

Grant Township, Indiana County, PA: Tonight, Grant Township Supervisors passed a first-in-the- nation law that legalizes nonviolent direct action to stop frack wastewater injection wells within the Township. Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) has sued the Township to overturn a local democratically-enacted law that prohibits injection wells.

Grant Township, PA just voted to legalize direct action to stop fracking injection wells in their town.

— Tim DeChristopher (@dechristopher) May 4, 2016

If a court does not uphold the people’s right to stop corporate activities threatening the well-being of the community, the ordinance codifies that, “any natural person may then enforce the rights and prohibitions of the charter through direct action.” Further, the ordinance states that any nonviolent direct action to enforce their Charter is protected, “prohibit[ing] any private or public actor from bringing criminal charges or filing any civil or other criminal action against those participating in nonviolent direct action.”

Grant Township Supervisor Stacy Long explained, "We're tired of being told by corporations and our so-called environmental regulatory agencies that we can't stop this injection well! This isn't a game. We're being threatened by a corporation with a history of permit violations, and that corporation wants to dump toxic frack wastewater into our Township."

Long continued, "I live here, and I was also elected to protect the health and safety of this Township. I will do whatever it takes to provide our residents with the tools and protections they need to nonviolently resist aggressions like those being proposed by PGE."

In 2013, residents in Grant Township learned that PGE was applying for permits that would legalize the injection well. Despite hearings, public comments, and permit appeals demonstrating the residents' opposition to the project, the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a permit to PGE.

Finding themselves with no other options, residents requested the help of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Grant Township Supervisors, with broad community support, passed a CELDF-drafted Community Bill of Rights ordinance in June 2014. The ordinance established rights to clean air and water, the right to local community self-government, and the rights of nature. The proposed injection well is prohibited as a violation of those rights.

PGE promptly sued the Township, claiming that it had a "right" to inject within the Township.

Also of Interest

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