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This evening's music features the master of the single entendre, Bo Carter. Enjoy!

"The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government."

-- Hugo Black

News and Opinion

Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the U.K. What Comes Next?

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno traveled to London on Friday for the ostensible purpose of speaking at the 2018 Global Disabilities Summit (Moreno has been using a wheelchair since being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt). The concealed, actual purpose of the president’s trip is to meet with British officials to finalize an agreement under which Ecuador will withdraw its asylum protection of Julian Assange, in place since 2012, eject him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then hand over the WikiLeaks founder to British authorities. ...

A source close to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry and the president’s office, unauthorized to speak publicly, has confirmed to The Intercept that Moreno is close to finalizing, if he has not already finalized, an agreement to hand over Assange to the U.K. within the next several weeks. The withdrawal of asylum and physical ejection of Assange could come as early as this week. On Friday, RT reported that Ecuador was preparing to enter into such an agreement.

The consequences of such an agreement depend in part on the concessions Ecuador extracts in exchange for withdrawing Assange’s asylum. But as former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told The Intercept in an interview in May, Moreno’s government has returned Ecuador to a highly “subservient” and “submissive” posture toward western governments. It is thus highly unlikely that Moreno — who has shown himself willing to submit to threats and coercion from the U.K., Spain and the U.S. — will obtain a guarantee that the U.K. not extradite Assange to the U.S., where top Trump officials have vowed to prosecute Assange and destroy WikiLeaks. ...

If the U.s. did indict Assange for alleged crimes relating to the publication of documents, or if they have already obtained a sealed indictment, and then uses that indictment to request that the U.K. extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial, that alone would ensure that Assange remains in prison in the U.K. for years to come. Assange would, of course, resist any such extradition on the ground that publishing documents is not a cognizable crime and that the U.S is seeking his extradition for political charges that, by treaty, cannot serve as the basis for extradition. But it would take at least a year, and probably closer to three years, for U.K. courts to decide these extradition questions. And while all of that lingers, Assange would almost certainly be in prison, given that it is inconceivable that a British judge would release Assange on bail given what happened the last time he was released.

All of this means that it is highly likely that Assange — under his best-case scenario — faces at least another year in prison, and will end up having spent a decade in prison despite never having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime. He has essentially been punished — imprisoned — by process.

Be Prepared To Shake The Earth If Julian Assange Is Arrested

We are about to find out if this is the part of the movie where the empire rips off the mask of freedom and democracy and reveals its true tyranny. Assange is a soft target, a controversial figure who has been on the receiving end of wildly successful smear campaigns marketed to every major political faction across the western world. He is the logical place to begin a crackdown on press freedoms and make a public example of what happens to those who shine the light of truth upon Big Brother.

If we allow them to imprison Julian Assange for practicing journalism, that’s it. It’s over. We might as well all stop caring what happens to the world and sit on our hands while the oligarchs drive us to ecological disaster, nuclear annihilation or Orwellian dystopia. If we, the many, don’t have the spine to stand up against the few and say “No, we get to find out facts about you bastards and use it to inform our worldview, you don’t get to criminalize that,” then we certainly don’t have the spine it will take to wrest control of this world away from the hands of sociopathic plutocrats and take our fate into our own hands.

Julian Assange Prosecution Threatens Everyone's Press Freedom

How a One-Word Loophole Will Make It Easier for the U.S. to Sell Weapons to Governments That Kill Civilians

Arms control experts are raising concerns about a possible loophole in the Trump administration’s new arms export policy, arguing that it gives the administration further cover to sell weapons to some of the world’s worst human rights violators. When it was issued in April, the Trump administration’s Conventional Arms Transfer policy was widely panned by critics for prioritizing the profits of weapons companies ahead of transparency and human rights concerns. The White House was blunt about its intentions, promising that the executive branch would “advocate strongly on behalf of United States companies.”

But one change in particular may make it easier for American companies to sell weapons to governments that routinely kill civilians in conflicts by discounting killings that the governments claim are unintentional. The change could have a significant impact on sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — the top two U.S. weapons clients — both of which are engaged in a destructive bombing campaign in Yemen.

The loophole hinges on the insertion of one word in a section that is otherwise identical to the Obama administration’s conventional arms policy, which was issued in 2014. While the previous policy prohibited arms transfers to countries that perpetrate “attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians,” the Trump administration policy bars such transfers to countries that commit “attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians” (emphasis added).

The release of the new policy was followed by a two-month public comment period that ended last month. On Monday, the State Department issued a fact sheet on the policy’s implementation, which promised it would energize a “whole-of-government effort to expedite transfers that support [the administration’s] essential foreign policy and national security objectives.” Colby Goodman, a researcher on arms sales and director of the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, said arms control groups had objected to the word “intentional,” but no change was reflected in the guidelines released Monday. ...

The loophole is particularly significant in light of the destructive Saudi and Emirati-led bombing campaign in Yemen, where civilian deaths are routinely termed inadvertent or unintentional.

This is what shiny Obama hope and change looks like now. A pack of greedy, bloodthirsty neoliberal morons getting fat on brokering military contracts, selling the creativity and labor of people who don't want to work for war or 1984. Worth a full read.

Former Obama Officials Help Silicon Valley Pitch the Pentagon for Lucrative Defense Contracts

Silicon Valley firms seeking lucrative business opportunities with the Pentagon face a range of obstacles, not least the morally fraught choice of enabling a military led by President Donald Trump with the latest technological solutions. Enter a group of former high-level officials from the Obama administration, who are helping to bridge the divide between tech firms and the Defense Department through a new company called WestExec Advisors. “Think Scowcroft Group, Kissinger, RiceHadleyGates, Albright, but my generation,” explained Michèle Flournoy, referencing the myriad of consulting firms founded by former top national security and foreign policy officials, during an interview on Capitol Hill. Flournoy herself is the former under secretary of defense for policy and one of the co-founders of WestExec Advisors.

The sort of initiatives WestExec is posturing itself to spearhead, however, have grown controversial. In recent months, Google has faced an internal rebellion over its work with the Defense Department to deploy cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology for drone warfare, part of a Pentagon initiative known as Project Maven. The internal uprising led to Google executives announcing last month that the firm would not renew the military contract when it expires next year. And WestExec has found itself at the center of the storm, with the consultancy’s officials deeply involved with the project and wading into the media firestorm that was set off by the Google employees’ objections. ...

WestExec had been working to grow its business when the Google controversy popped off. As a result, WestExec Advisors’ team has appeared in media accounts of the flap, sharply criticizing Google workers for protesting against the contract their firm had signed with Google. At the center of the controversy is former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, who launched Project Maven while in the government and now serves as a principal at WestExec Advisors. In recent weeks, Work has lashed out at the Google rebellion. “I believe the Google employees created an enormous moral hazard for themselves,” Work said, speaking at a summit last month organized by the industry-friendly publication Defense One. Google, Work later noted to the Associated Press, is “very, very good” at helping the military improve its performance. ...

The relationship between WestExec Advisors and Google troubles Lilly Irani, a professor at the University of California San Diego, who was one of the first to sign the academic petition protesting Google’s drone contract. ... “Google’s own workers and now the ACLU have joined the chorus of voices asking for a separation of military and police operations from the data sets of private corporations who store our photos, email, and location data,” Irani added, referencing the Google workers’ rebellion and an American Civil Liberties Union-led coalition discouraging the sale of next-generation facial recognition technology to the government.

'Putin's War on America' Is Nothing Compared With America's War on Democracy

... I can say with full confidence that nothing Trump said Monday [at the Helsinki summit press gaggle] or Tuesday was as ridiculous as something I heard leading Democrat and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., tell CNN the night of Trump’s Helsinki debacle.

“It is the role of the U.S. intelligence community,” Warner said to Anderson Cooper, “to speak truth to power.” Read that again: “It is the role of the U.S. intelligence community to speak truth to power.”

Never mind that the FBI has long surveilled, hounded, harassed, oppressed, slandered, maimed and even murdered U.S. labor, civil rights, peace, social justice and environmental activists and leaders—people fighting concentrated wealth, privilege and power. The FBI’s long record of domestic police-state repression has continued to the present day, up through Occupy, the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock. Never mind the CIA’s longstanding central role in the crushing and subversion of national independence and social justice movements, popular revolutions and democratically elected governments the world over. Or the CIA and FBI’s central role (current Russiagate investigator Robert Mueller’s having been a top player) in the creation of false intelligence pretexts for George W. Bush’s monumentally criminal, mass-murderous invasion of Iraq.

There was nothing close to the hint of a pushback against Warner’s idiotic statement from Cooper (a former CIA intern) or anyone else in the “mainstream media.” It doesn’t enter cable news’ talking heads’ minds to see the nation’s spying, surveillance and police state for what it is at its core: an instrument of class, racial and imperial oppression. On Tuesday and Wednesday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper could be heard on CNN using the same phrase—“speaking truth to power”—to describe the mission of “the intelligence community.” ...

A final preposterous thing that “mainstream” U.S. news media has been repeating over and over in the last several days is the charge that “Russia tried to undermine our democracy.” In three days of informal but regular monitoring of CNN and MSNBC, I heard that phrase or some variation of it (including “Russia waged war on our democracy”) at least 30 times. To what “American democracy” are they referring? ... We get to vote? Big deal. An “unelected dictatorship of money” (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson) reigns nonetheless in the United States, where, Page and Gilens find, “government policy … reflects the wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office.” ...

Missing from this media hysteria is the question of who will protect U.S. elections and purported “democracy” from the unmentionable malign influence of U.S. oligarchs.

U.S. Pushes Confrontation with Iran: Trump Warns of “Consequences,” Pompeo Likens Leaders to “Mafia”

Trump has repeatedly depicted war with Iran an something a president would do for domestic political gain.

Here are four examples pic.twitter.com/JdR1qM0BM8

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 23, 2018

Trump just tweeted an all-caps threat to Iran’s “demented” president Rouhani

To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018

This was the incendiary all-caps tweet President Donald Trump posted to the Iranian president late Sunday, in response to earlier comments from Hassan Rouhani warning the U.S. would suffer the “mother of all wars” if it continued to threaten Tehran. “Do not play with the lion's tail or else you will regret it," Rouhani said during a televised speech. “Peace with Iran would be the mother of all peace and war with Iran would be the mother of all wars.”

The sudden escalation comes amid ongoing fallout from the White House decision in May to withdraw the U.S. from the Iranian nuclear deal, labeled by Trump as the “worst deal in history.”

pic.twitter.com/EyMUQ2rbmX

— Serial Trader (@Serial_Trader_) July 23, 2018

John Bolton backs Trump's Iran threat: 'They will pay a price'

Donald Trump plans to make Iran pay a price few countries have ever paid before, according to the US national security adviser, John Bolton, who doubled down on a late-night tweet in which the US president threatened Tehran.

Bolton’s statement was designed to show that Trump’s unexpectedly belligerent tweet was not a random act, or empty bluster but part of a considered move by the US administration to step up the economic, political and psychological pressure on Iran. Iran dismissed the US president’s threats as psychological warfare designed to appeal to his electoral base ahead of the mid-term elections.

But Bolton, a well-known hawk on Iran, told reporters in Washington: “I spoke to the president over the last several days, and President Trump told me that if Iran does anything all to the negative, they will pay a price few countries have ever paid.”

Kings Bay Plowshares: Meet Two of the Seven Activists Who Secretly Entered a Nuclear Submarine Base

Steve Bannon wants to elect little Trumps all over Europe

Having helped spearhead the populist insurgency that helped deliver Donald Trump to the White House, Steve Bannon has set his sights on repeating the trick in Europe.

In the year since President Trump ousted him from his perch as White House chief strategist, Bannon has been assiduously cultivating ties with European far-right and populist movements, including France’s National Rally (formerly the National Front), Italy’s Lega, Hungary’s Fidesz, and the British right-wing network centered around Nigel Farage, a prominent campaigner for Brexit. Now he’s unveiled the masterplan behind it all: a foundation to unite and support Europe’s populist right-wing parties, with the goal of winning power in the European Parliament.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Bannon said he planned to establish a foundation in Brussels called The Movement, whose 10-or-so staff will provide polling, messaging, data-targeting and research to European far-right and anti-establishment parties.

The short-term goal, he said, was to challenge the supremacy of liberal establishment parties at the next European Parliament elections, in May. Ultimately, he hopes, his group would act as a sort of right-wing counterbalance to George Soros’s Open Society, which provides billions of dollars in support to liberal causes, as well as a link between the European far right and the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus in the U.S.

Netanyahu: Trump asked me to evacuate White Helmets from Syria

Trump's zero-tolerance policy turns basement into pop-up 'dungeon'

Some lawyers call it the dungeon. Others call it the garage. Guards call it the sub-block. Whatever the name, the windowless basement beneath the federal courthouse in San Diego hosts a very particular kind of justice under Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. Since last week, this former car park has been where defence lawyers in this corner of southern California confer with clients who are charged with entering the US illegally. There are tables and chairs but little privacy – more than two dozen defendants, attorneys, translators and US marshals share the open space.

And there is little time. Lawyers have just three hours to introduce themselves, to discover why and how their clients – migrants and asylum seekers – crossed the border and to explain the intricacies of plea deals, misdemeanours and bonds, all before the clients are herded into court for a mass hearing. “You’re explaining all of this to them at a time that they’re visibly dirty, exhausted and terrified and expecting them to understand the long-term, forever consequences of whatever they decide,” said Leila Morgan, of Federal Defenders of San Diego.

Janice Deaton, another defence attorney, said the improvised pre-trial meeting venue underlined the system’s wider injustice. “We’re calling it the dungeon. To accommodate Jeff Sessions’ and Donald Trump’s order, they’ve created this space. These people wouldn’t have been arrested a month ago. It’s pretty despicable.”

San Diego’s subterranean pre-trial interview space is a consequence of Sessions, the attorney general, issuing an order in April to prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Many people who previously would have been swiftly deported or processed through civil courts are now swamping federal courts. To control the flux, the southern district of California last week started fast-tracking detainees in group hearings, a system called Operation Streamline, which Texas and Arizona adopted long before Trump. Liberal California had resisted adopting the so-called “assembly-line justice” until now. ...

Detainees are shackled and often distraught and disorientated. Just hours or days earlier they may have been trekking through desert scrub, for many the final leg of a long, treacherous journey, until they were caught by border patrol agents. Detainees are held in crowded “hieleras” – cold detention rooms – unable to bathe, brush teeth or change clothes, according to a report this week by attorneys who visited border patrol stations and family detention centres. Few sleep well, if at all, on concrete, with cell lights permanently on. Food is semi-thawed. Those sent to San Diego end up in the courthouse basement for a high-speed pre-trial briefing. Many clients struggle to grasp what is happening, said lawyers.

Wow, ICE is ... really desperate for recruits. #abolishICE pic.twitter.com/wOxn4pQX0E

— The Break with Michelle Wolf (@thebreaknetflix) July 20, 2018

Calls to Abolish ICE Get Cold Shoulder on Newspaper Opinion Pages

“Abolish ICE,” once a rallying cry for a small number of leftists and activists, has become a national slogan of dissent against the Trump administration and policies that target Latino communities. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across the US to call for an end to family separation, detention and deportation.

Despite this, corporate media decided to push the status quo—or at least a version of it without Trump as commander-in-chief. Of the 90 opinion pieces on the subject of ICE that were published in papers across the US from June 28 to July 18, 85 were explicitly against abolishing ICE, while only five were supportive.

Five of the ten top newspapers by circulation, including the Washington Post (7/5/18), USA Today (7/3/18), Newsday (7/10/18), New York Post  (7/4/18) and New York Daily News (7/6/18), published editorials that rushed to defend ICE and condemn a progressive stance. No Democrats have called for open borders, which would allow citizens and noncitizens alike to cross into or out of the US with few restrictions; at their most radical, they have called for rebuilding the US immigration system to be more humane. Even so, editorial boards urged Democrats to stick to a moderate work-within-the-system approach. ICE, which was created in 2003 in response to the September 11 attacks, was repeatedly hailed as a necessary agency that is unfortunately being manipulated by Trump for his own agenda. ...

Though the number of Democrats who wish to see dramatic changes to immigration policy is small, the response from editorial boards and columnists was resounding. Even op-eds that weren’t from self-identified conservatives argued that progressive stances would result in Democratic losses in the upcoming midterm elections. USA Today (7/3/18) contended that problems with the US immigration system stem from Trump, not ICE or any systemic problems. The urgency of the push to keep Democrats on a mend-it-don’t-end-it agenda is puzzling, considering again that those who support abolishing ICE are in the minority.

White man who shot black father in front of his kids over parking spot won’t face charges

Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law has spared a white man from criminal charges after he shot and killed a black father in front of his young children over a parking spot.

The gunman, Michael Drejka, 47, shot and killed Markeis McGlockton, 28, after McGlockton parked in a disabled spot in the parking lot of a Circle K convenience store and gas station in Clearwater, Florida, on July 19. ... McGlockton and his girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, 25, who are black, pulled into a disabled spot in the Circle K parking lot with a car full of their young children. ... Their use of the disabled spot without a permit caught Drejka’s attention. Drejka, who's white, is known for picking fights over improper use of disabled spots and other parking-related faux pas, according to local media. ...

Surveillance video from outside the store shows Drejka talking to Jacobs in the vehicle and attracting the attention of other Circle A patrons. McGlockton runs out of the store, places himself between his girlfriend and Drejka, and shoves him to the ground. Drejka then takes his gun out and shoots McGlockton, who runs back into the store clutching his chest.

Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County explained that his department would not pursue charges against Drejka because he believes his actions were protected under the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law. According to Gualtieri, Drejka feared “he was going to be further attacked by McGlockton,” he said as he played the surveillance footage. ... Under Stand Your Ground, someone who feels they’re at risk of bodily harm or death can legally use lethal force, rather than retreat from the perceived threat.

One FBI text message in Russia probe that should alarm every American

Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the reported FBI lovebirds, are the poster children for the next “Don’t Text and Investigate” public service ads airing soon at an FBI office near you. ... It is no longer in dispute that they held animus for Donald Trump, who was a subject of their Russia probe, or that they openly discussed using the powers of their office to “stop” Trump from becoming president. The only question is whether any official acts they took in the Russia collusion probe were driven by those sentiments. The Justice Department’s inspector general is endeavoring to answer that question.

For any American who wants an answer sooner, there are just five words, among the thousands of suggestive texts Page and Strzok exchanged, that you should read. That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017. “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted. The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign.

Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign. This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say — but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses. The admission is deeply consequential. It means Rosenstein unleashed the most awesome powers of a special counsel to investigate an allegation that the key FBI officials, driving the investigation for 10 months beforehand, did not think was “there.” ...

But Team Strzok kept pushing it through the system, causing a major escalation of a probe for which, by his own words, he knew had “no big there there.” The answer as to why a pro such as Strzok would take such action has become clearer, at least to congressional investigators. That clarity comes from the context of the other emails and text messages that surrounded the May 19, 2017, declaration. It turns out that what Strzok and Lisa Page were really doing that day was debating whether they should stay with the FBI and try to rise through the ranks to the level of an assistant director (AD) or join Mueller’s special counsel team. “Who gives a f*ck, one more AD like [redacted] or whoever?” Strzok wrote, weighing the merits of promotion, before apparently suggesting what would be a more attractive role: “An investigation leading to impeachment?”

So the FBI agents who helped drive the Russia collusion narrative — as well as Rosenstein’s decision to appoint Mueller — apparently knew all along that the evidence was going to lead to “nothing” and, yet, they proceeded because they thought there was still a possibility of impeachment. Impeachment is a political outcome. The only logical conclusion, then, that congressional investigators can make is that political bias led these agents to press an investigation forward to achieve the political outcome of impeachment, even though their professional training told them it had “no big there there.”

Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left. This president and his Republican Party are counting on you to do exactly that. America’s great middle wants sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.

— James Comey (@Comey) July 22, 2018

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Colluding w/ Republicans To Cheat Progressive?

Terrified by Progressive Enthusiasm Sweeping the Nation, Corporate Democrats Have Begun Planning a 'Counterrevolution'

Corporate Democrats are extremely worried about the wave of progressive enthusiasm that is sweeping the country in red and blue states alike, and—according to a report by NBC News on Sunday—they are beginning to organize a "counterrevolution" to beat it back.

Ignoring survey after survey showing that progressive priorities like Medicare for All, a living wage, and tuition-free public college are overwhelmingly popular among the American public, Democratic politicians and operatives with the notorious think-tank Third Way used an invite-only event in Columbus, Ohio on Friday to tout an alternative agenda that centers on "opportunity" and access rather than equality—a platform that explicitly avoids alienating the ultra-wealthy.

"You're not going to make me hate somebody just because they're rich. I want to be rich!" Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said during last week's closed-door event, which was titled "Opportunity 2020."

"Once again," added Third Way president Jon Cowan, "the time has come to mend, but not end, capitalism for a new era."

As NBC's Alex Seitz-Wald notes, the "anxiety" centrist Democrats have felt about the rousing campaigns of democratic socialists and bold progressives like New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed "has largely been kept to a whisper among the party's moderates and big donors." But now, with organized events and more frequent interviews with the press, corporate Democrats and strategists are beginning to openly state their plans to undercut surging progressive momentum, "with some of the major fundraisers pressing operatives on what can be done to stop" Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) if he decides to launch another bid for the presidency, Seitz-Wald reports.

The Arctic is on fire, and you can see it from space

Wildfires are ravaging parts of the Arctic Circle, and they’re big enough to see from space.

The wildfires started in early June, and more than 50 have now cropped up in parts of Sweden inside the Arctic Circle, according to the European Space Agency, which has kept tabs on the situation with satellites from space. Sweden doesn’t often have to deal with fires, but so far the blazes have swallowed up $70 million worth of land, according to Swedish news agency TT. The country has asked for help from Norway and Italy, which sent along helicopters and planes to help contain the flames, according to the New York Times. ...

The wildfires follow the longest sustained drought on record in Sweden and heat waves that have engulfed most of Europe. And to scientists, they look a lot like what you’d expect human-caused climate change to look like. ...

In addition to the usual dangers of massive fires, the flames have started to encroach on a military station in Älvdalens, where ammo’s tested. The flames have cut off access to the base: Emergency workers can’t get within 800 meters and moving any closer would put them at risk should the ammo at the base blow up. Even dousing the flames over the base via helicopter is risky, because the ammo could blow and down a chopper, according to the local government in Älvdalens. If the base does blow up, the fires could spread even more.

Rising temperatures linked to increased suicide rates

Rising temperatures are linked to increasing rates of suicide, according to a large new study. The researchers warn that the impact of climate change on suicides may be as significant as economic recessions, which are known to increase rates of self-harm.

The links between mental health and global warming have not been widely researched but the new work analysed temperature and suicides across the US and Mexico in recent decades. It found that the rate of suicide rose by 0.7% in the US and by 2.1% in Mexico when the average monthly temperature rose by 1C.

The analysis was done at county level and took into account seasonal variation, levels of poverty and even the news of celebrity suicides that can lead to more deaths. The scientists found that hotter periods resulted in more suicides irrespective of wealth and the usual climate of the area.

“Determining whether or not the rate of suicide responds to climatic conditions is important, as suicide alone causes more deaths globally than all forms of violence combined and is among the top 10–15 causes of death globally,” said Prof Marshall Burke, at Stanford University in the US, and his colleagues, who published their research in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Even modest changes in suicide rates due to climate change could [lead to] large changes in the associated global health burden, particularly in wealthier countries where current suicide rates are relatively high,” the researchers said.

Earth's resources consumed in ever greater destructive volumes

Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days. As a result, the Earth Overshoot Day – which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate – has moved forward two days to 1 August, the earliest date ever recorded.

To maintain our current appetite for resources, we would need the equivalent of 1.7 Earths, according to Global Footprint Network, an international research organisation that makes an annual assessment of how far humankind is falling into ecological debt.

The overshoot began in the 1970s, when rising populations and increasing average demands pushed consumption beyond a sustainable level. Since then, the day at which humanity has busted its annual planetary budget has moved forward. Thirty years ago, the overshoot was on 15 October. Twenty years ago, 30 September. Ten years ago, 15 August. There was a brief slowdown, but the pace has picked back up in the past two years. On current trends, next year could mark the first time, the planet’s budget is busted in July.

While ever greater food production, mineral extraction, forest clearance and fossil-fuel burning bring short-term (and unequally distributed) lifestyle gains, the long-term consequences are increasingly apparent in terms of soil erosion, water shortages and climate disruption.

Also of Interest

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

Lisa Page Spills the Beans

Veterans Association Aims to Remember the USS Liberty

Kentucky Republicans are determined to kill Medicaid

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Went to War With Partisanship in Kansas

'White people are so fragile, bless 'em' … meet Rhiannon Giddens, banjo warrior

Barefaced cheek: Rubens nudes fall foul of Facebook censors

A Little Night Music

Bo Carter - Your Biscuits Are Big Enough For Me

Bo Carter - Let's Get Drunk Again

Bo Carter - Please Warm My Weiner

Papa Charlie McCoy & Bo Carter - Mississippi I'm Longing For You

Bo Carter - Cigarette Blues

Bo Carter - Bo Carter's Advice

Bo Carter - My Baby

Bo Carter - Ram Rod Daddy

Bo Carter - All Around Man

Bo Carter - Pussy Cat Blues