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This evening's music features blues guitarist and singer Son Bonds. Enjoy!

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."

-- George Bernard Shaw

News and Opinion

European Union intensifies campaign of terror against refugees

The European Union summit at the end of last week marked a dangerous turning point in post-World War II European history. The measures targeting refugees adopted in Brussels have exposed the EU for what it is: a reactionary instrument of the ruling classes. The EU is being used by the European governments, their mounting differences notwithstanding, to intensify their policies of militarism, repression and social attacks on the working class. With the Brussels summit, the EU has shifted far to the right, with rabidly nationalist and far-right forces setting the agenda. ...

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who governs in Vienna in a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), took over the EU presidency yesterday. Kurz and the FPÖ are being applauded for their anti-refugee agenda by extreme right and fascist forces across Europe. At the party congress of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) over the weekend, federal party spokesman Jörg Meuthen described Kurz as a fellow combatant on the issue of “Fortress Europe.” The AfD leader said, “Those with whom we want to and must cooperate are Hans-Christian Strache, Sebastian Kurz, Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orbán.” ...

In Vienna, Kurz underscored that the EU’s refugee policy is essentially that of the far right. He stated through a spokesman that he leads “a clearly pro-European federal government” and is striving for a European-wide solution to the refugee issue. He added that his “allies in Germany” in this are “the German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.” Kurz noted in an interview on Austrian television, “It’s important that what was decided be promptly implemented. We will continue to apply pressure to ensure that happens.”

The proposed measures recall the darkest chapters in European history. They include, among other things, the complete sealing off of “Fortress Europe” and mass deportations to war zones in the Middle East and Africa. The official summit statement agreed to by all of the member states on Friday declared: “The European Council affirms that the member states must ensure effective control of the EU’s external borders with financial and material support to the EU. It notes that the repatriation of irregular migrants must be significantly increased.”

To terrorise refugees, the EU border agency Frontex will add at least 10,000 new personnel by 2020 and be expanded into a de facto military police force. The summit agreed to the establishment of concentration camps in North Africa and within the borders of the EU to hold refugees. In the summit statement, these detention centres were euphemistically referred to as “debarkation platforms” and “control centres” for the “resettlement and new settlement” of refugees. The euphemisms recall those employed by the Nazis to describe their genocidal policies toward Jews, gypsies and other “aliens.” ... The establishment of such institutions in the major capitalist countries is a serious warning to workers and young people. As under fascist regimes, the concentration camps will be used against political opponents, and ultimately against the working class as a whole.

Horst Seehofer agrees border control deal with Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel has reached a deal on migration with her rebellious interior minister, Horst Seehofer, defusing a bitter row that had threatened her government. Both sides hammered out “a good compromise … after a difficult struggle”, Merkel said on Monday evening, adding that it involved setting up holding and processing centres for asylum seekers near German borders.

“We have reached an agreement after very intense negotiations,” Seehofer agreed, stressing that he intended to stay on in his cabinet post after earlier threatening to quit. ... The agreement still requires the consent of Merkel’s other coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats, to become government policy. Nonetheless, it suggested that Merkel – in power for over 12 years, and the EU’s longest serving leader – goes on to live another day after surviving the latest bruising challenge to her authority.

Public anger and fear about the newcomers have given rise to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which entered parliament last year and threatens Seehofer’s CSU in Bavarian state polls in October. Seehofer, a long-time Merkel critic, had openly challenged her with a plan to unilaterally shutter German border crossings with Austria to many asylum seekers, effectively daring the chancellor to fire him. The threat – and Seehofer’s subsequent warning he may resign – had raised the spectre of a break in the seven-decade-long partnership between their conservative CDU and CSU parties.

This would have deprived Merkel of her narrow parliamentary majority and forced her to either seek a new coalition partner or call a second election within a year, after scoring poor results in last September’s vote. That scenario scared all parties except the anti-immigration AfD which, polls suggest, could hope for further gains.

Asylum Seekers on U.S.-Mexico Border Are Waiting for Days in the Hot Sun, Told the U.S. Is “Full”

Poland’s New Surveillance Law Targets Personal Data of Environmental Advocates, Threatening U.N. Climate Talks

A new Polish law with sweeping surveillance measures threatens free speech and the success of an important climate conference scheduled to take place in Katowice, Poland, later this year. The conference, COP24, is billed as “Paris 2.0” — a crucial follow-up the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, where the Paris Climate Agreement was negotiated. Around 40,000 people from all over the world are expected flock to the industrial city in December, where participating countries will decide on the rulebook for implementing the historic climate accord.

In advance of the conference, a growing number of international NGOs and United Nations agencies have raised concerns about a law passed by Poland’s parliament — a bill “on specific solutions related to the organization of sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Republic of Poland.” While the vast majority of the law does little more than establish rules on governing how to host and finance the conference, one statute allows Polish authorities to “collect, obtain, gather, verify, process and use information, including personal data about persons posing a threat to public safety and order, including outside the borders of the Republic of Poland” if there is a “justified assumption” they will be staying in Poland. 

Elsewhere, the law empowers Polish authorities to solicit other countries for information on COP24 attendees coming from abroad, including any police records and intelligence gathered by state surveillance. This information can be collected “without the knowledge or consent” of the people it’s collected from, and stored through March 2019. The legislation would ban spontaneous protests within Katowice city limits, permitting only demonstrations approved by the city in advance.

Bartosz Kwiatkowski, director of Frank Bold Foundation, a Polish civil liberties group, calls Poland’s COP24 measures “completely unconstitutional.” But not unusual. “It’s not really new,” Kwiatkowski says of the COP24 security measures. “Similar regulations were introduced before. From my perspective, there’s no terrorist threat or security threat to justify introducing such severe regulations. It’s a chance to collect data on NGOs.” Although the law itself doesn’t specify exactly what types of information will be collected, Kwiatkowski suspects, based on previous and existing rules, that authorities will collect metadata on COP attendees — logs of who made phone calls, text messages, and emails, for instance.

The new law comes in the context of a conservative political shift throughout Eastern Europe.

Some international groups planning to attend COP24 see the bill not just as a threat to the productivity of the conference, but as part of a broader, anti-democratic trend of governments targeting environmental advocates. ... At the urging of civil society groups, various U.N. agencies have sent letters raising these issues to Poland’s Ministry of Environment, which oversees COP24, and the Bureau of the U.N. Framework Conventions on Climate Change, which presides over COPs generally. Five U.N. special rapporteurs also sent a joint letter expressing their concerns about the law to the Polish government in late April, stating that “implementation of the law may lead to human rights violations that may be considered as acts of reprisals against individuals for their cooperation with the United Nations.”

Papers Insist ‘We Need’ Secret Gang Databases—Just Like We ‘Needed’ Stop & Frisk

When President Donald Trump rails against alleged immigrant gang members as “animals,” as he did last month, he’s reducing complex (and highly political) issues—like the presence of MS-13 in the United States—to a fearsome cartoon of snarling packs of subhuman marauders. Vintage Trump, right? But local media, nowadays lionized as a check on Trump, resort to the same strategy, playing fast and loose with the inflammatory term “gang” and deferring and time and time again to questionable police tactics. ...

Editorializing in favor of a database kept by the NYPD that no one knows they’re on—and therefore cannot challenge their inclusion in—the New York Daily News (6/13/18) shrugged off community concerns as “alarmism,” and called the collection of people on the database (some as young as 13 when added to it) “good police work.” The editorial headline “Ganging Up on Police: The NYPD’s Gang Database Is a Solid Investigative Tool” told readers it was the police who were under attack, and conferred legitimacy on a shadowy database that the News‘ own reporting (6/12/18) suggests can negatively impact people for years.

Local police gang databases can present serious legal implications for those marked as gang members, such as increased bail, harsher sentencing, erosion of presumption of innocence and even increased chances of deportation. Lawyers and activists have suspected local gang database information is shared with federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sometimes even putting people trying to avoid gangs on the deportation block (New Yorker, 1/1/18). In fact, a new report released on the same day that Trump made his “animals” comment says that gang designations have led to increased deportations of young immigrants in New York. The report also points to “media coverage in certain outlets” that have “exacerbated the view of MS-13 as a dangerous, invading army of foreigners,” thus “sowing fear around the country.” Are these concerns alarmist? Or, as the New York Post‘s editorial board headlined, “utterly ridiculous” (6/16/18)?

For News and Post readers, the editorial board positions must have sounded awfully familiar: They were almost indistinguishable from the police department’s position, which was published by the News (6/12/18) the day before key hearings by the New York City Council. Not just the editorials but the whole scenario should feel familiar, since we’ve been here before. Nearly five years ago, as the NYPD was being criticized by community and legal groups over its Stop and Frisk program, the News‘ editorial board (8/13/13) sided with the police department, predicting “the ravages of lawlessness and bloodshed” if police efforts were curtailed. That didn’t happen, and the News, three years later, apologized on its pages (“We Were Wrong: Ending Stop and Frisk Did Not End Stopping Crime,” 8/8/16).

You’d think after being so spectacularly wrong on Stop and Frisk, the News would take the lesson to be more skeptical and wary about police practices. Alas, no, the editorial instinct is the same: support the police department to the point of echoing its talking points.

A Year Later, the Fascists of Charlottesville Are Back for More — This Time Outside the White House

The "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year ripped away the last shred of plausible deniability about the white supremacist fascism of the so-called alt-right. A neo-Nazi plowed his Dodge Charger into a crowd of anti-fascist counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring others. A young black man was beaten bloody by racists with metal poles in a parking lot near a police station. White supremacists marched Klan-like, with burning torches and Nazi salutes, around a Confederate statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee while chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” It was a gruesome pastiche of 19th-century American and 20th-century European race hate, newly emboldened under Donald Trump. The president later declared that there were some “very fine people on both sides” — a remark that winked at the side with swastikas and “Sieg Heils.”

The tragic events of that day make it all the more vile that the white nationalist organizer of “Unite the Right,” Jason Kessler, is planning an event to mark the deadly demonstration. The approval for the “anniversary” rally outside the White House was granted by the National Park Service. The application offered plans for an estimated 400 demonstrators in Washington’s Lafayette Park who would be “protesting civil rights abuse in Charlottesville, Va / white civil rights.” Kessler initially applied to hold “Unite the Right 2” in Charlottesville, and is now suing the city because it denied him a permit due to safety concerns. The lawsuit seeks to allow the demonstration to go ahead in Charlottesville, as well as in Washington, D.C., on August 12 — exactly a year after Heyer’s brutal death. The false victimhood of Kessler’s aims were on full display as news of approval for him to both assemble and speak in Washington came in: He told a local CBS affiliate, “We’re not able to peacefully assemble. We’re not able to speak.” ...

The government has upheld the speech rights of white nationalists with ardor. And yet for others, freedom of speech and association is increasingly under threat. Black Lives Matter activists are labeled “Black Identity Extremists” and tracked. The government swept up anti-fascist J20 protesters and threw the book at them. Palestinian rights activists could be labeled anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel under a newly proposed law.

Man with “ICE ICE baby” sign arrested after pulling gun at Families Belong Together rally

A pro-ICE counterprotester yelled “womp womp” before pulling a gun out of the waistband of his cargo pants at an immigrants rights rally in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sunday.

About 100 people had gathered in Huntsville for a “Families Belong Together” rally on Sunday — modest numbers compared to other rallies taking place around the country the same day. As a priest gave a prayer for children separated from their families at the border, videos of the protest show a man — holding a sign that read “ICE ICE baby” — pulling out a firearm after yelling “womp womp.”

He’s now been charged with menacing and reckless endangerment, according to AL.com.

The counterprotester, 34-year-old former schoolteacher Shane Ryan Sealy, according to AL.com, was echoing the words of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Last week on Fox, a commentator brought up the case of a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome separated from her mother at the border. “Womp womp,” Lewandowski responded, although he swears the comment was directed at the other guest, a Democratic strategist, rather than a reaction to the child’s situation.

Mexico’s Leftist President-elect AMLO Promises Sweeping Changes on Corruption, Poverty, Drug War

The best, fairly concise piece that I've seen about AMLO so far, it's worth a click:

Obrador Seeks to Restore Mexican Sovereignty

International media touted the neoliberal reforms of President Enrique Peña Nieto for the past year or two. However, when the “reform” narrative proved hollow, Nieto’s approval rating plunged from almost 50 to barely 10 percent. So the establishment narrative changed: it shifted to a flawed portrayal of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a Mexican Hugo Chávez who endangers Mexico’s future. Perhaps that’s why before his landslide election victory as president on Sunday The Economist called Obrador “Mexico’s answer to Donald Trump” whose “nationalist populism” offers “many reasons to worry about Mexico’s most likely next president.” Similarly, U.S.-based economic hit men and political risk groups, including Ian Bremmer’s Eurasia Group, framed Obrador’s popular front as a “significant market risk.” ...

In the past six years, Nieto’s administration has sold Mexico’s public assets to foreign bidders and opened financial markets to speculation, while loyally accommodating Washington’s policies. At the same time, corruption, crime, narco-violence and rising murder rates have soared. While neoliberal elites portray the past decade as that of rising competitiveness, market realities prove otherwise. Mexico’s real GDP growth has fallen significantly behind its BRIC potential during the years of Felipe Calderon (2006-12) and Nieto (2012-18).

But change may be at the door. Obrador will be inaugurated in December. His coalition “Juntos Haremos Historia” (Together We’ll Make History) rests on popular will, not on the needs of the oligarchic economic and political elite, or what Obrador calls the “power mafia.” He is pushing for the rejuvenation of the agricultural sector. In particular, he would like to develop the agricultural economy of southern Mexico, which has been hurt by cheap (and tacitly subsidized) U.S. food imports. In contrast to Nieto’s “energy reform” – which ended state-owned Pemex’s monopoly in the oil industry and brought foreign investors to Mexican energy markets – Obrador wants a popular referendum on the energy sector, knowing well that many Mexicans oppose or are highly skeptical of the sale of national assets to foreign speculators. ...

In contrast to ‘law and order’ candidates that in the past have colluded with the drug kingpins, he wants to restore genuine law and order and thus peace and stability, in order to focus on economic development. He might even seek to negotiate an amnesty for the key narco criminals. Obrador’s platform reflects popular will. That’s why it has been marginalized by the oligarchic elites for decades – even with electoral fraud.

As Mexicans chose a new president until 2024, they also elected 128 members of the Senate for six years and 500 members of the Chamber of Deputies for three years. If Mexico opts for a new direction, the consequences could be historical, domestically, regionally, and even internationally. Not only the White House, but Mexicans may well review the role of NAFTA. Moreover, the drug trade that is maintained mainly by U.S. demand will be under new scrutiny as well. It is time: the cartel violence has taken the lives of more than 200,000 Mexicans.

Mexico’s AMLO Gets Massive Mandate to Stand Up to the US

Democrats can’t decide how hard they want to fight Trump’s Supreme Court nominee

If Democrats want to block President Donald Trump from appointing another Supreme Court justice before the November elections, they must convince at least two Republicans and every Democrat to oppose Trump’s nominee. It’s a very narrow, but not impossible, pathway to prevent the Republican Party from resetting the ideological balance of the court. ... But so far, the Democratic response to Anthony Kennedy's retirement has been more scattered than united, revealing divisions among Democratic lawmakers and between the party’s liberal base and its leadership.

The base of the party wants a fight. Progressive groups and liberal activists have already called for party leaders to throw anything and everything behind stopping the nomination from going forward. ... But this Senate also already confirmed one conservative justice to the Supreme Court — and Murkowski, Collins, McCain, and three Democrats all voted in favor of Neil Gorsuch last year. Perhaps given that history, some of the party’s leaders seemed less inclined to fight and attempted to lower expectations.

“The grim reality is that we have some power but not the power to stop this,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-highest ranking Democrat, told The New York Times this week. “I’m sure many of them believe we have the power to stop this,” he said of the party’s base. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who is running for reelection in a state Trump won by 36 points in 2016, was noncommittal. ...

With or without clear Democratic opposition, however, Trump said he’ll announce his pick on July 9th.

Hostage Situation in California Ends Peacefully as Lawmakers Pay Ransom to Big Soda Companies

A hostage situation ended quietly in the California Capitol last Thursday, when lawmakers in Sacramento paid a hefty ransom to big soda companies. The lawmakers advanced legislation under duress that would ban localities from establishing taxes on soda or sugary drinks for the next 12 years.

The soda companies were pleased enough with this ransom note that they pulled an initiative off this fall’s ballot that would have required a two-thirds supermajority across California for all local tax increases.

The new legislation frees localities to continue to set their own tax policy democratically — just not on soda products until 2030. Gov. Jerry Brown, after signing the soda tax ban, wrote in a statement that the proposed ballot initiative — the bomb threat — was “far-reaching” and “an abomination.” He added that mayors across that state had called him to voice their alarm, putting pressure on him to prevent detonation.

The spectacle reflects the extreme power of money in California’s direct democracy process, where special interests use the ballot to obtain broad exemptions from the law that they couldn’t secure otherwise. For a few million dollars, you can get virtually anything on the state ballot, and those with means often use this cash to threaten the state government for ulterior motives. Initiatives bring electoral politics into play, too. Democrats worry not just that the measure will pass, but also that it will motivate more Republicans to vote in the midterms, wreaking all sorts of havoc on Democratic electoral prospects up and down the ballot. Better to just give the men what they want.

'Vindictive and Cruel': After Work Requirements Struck Down, GOP Governor Cancels Dental and Vision Medicaid Coverage for 460,000 in Kentucky

In what was described as a "Trumpian tantrum" that comes just days after a federal judge struck down his attempt to impose work requirements on his state's 1.4 million Medicaid recipients, Kentucky's Republican Gov. Matt Bevin on Monday completely canceled dental and vision coverage for 460,000 Kentuckians.

"This action is vindictive and cruel," declared the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented 15 Kentucky residents in their lawsuit against the state's proposed work requirements, which a federal judge ruled were unlawfully approved by the Trump administration.

Bevin has also warned that he may attempt to go even further, threatening to cancel Kentucky's Medicaid expansion if he is barred from imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients. If Bevin succeeds in rolling back Kentucky's Medicaid expansion—which was implemented under Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear—500,000 people could lose health insurance entirely.

Trump defends tariffs despite signs of trouble in global markets

Goldman Sachs warned the second half of 2018 would be tough for investors as they grapple with rising tariffs and interest rates, while the latest survey of American factories by IHS Markit found that tariffs were driving up costs for US manufacturers and exacerbating a slowdown for eurozone members. In another stark warning, JP Morgan warned that a full-blown trade war would punch a hole in global economic growth because of reduced trade volume, supply chain disruptions and lost confidence. John Normand, the bank’s head of cross-asset fundamental strategy, said he believed that the worst-case scenario could reduce global growth by a “material” amount of at least 1.4% over the next two years.

Some effects are already being felt. The largest US nail manufacturer, Mid-Continent Nail, has laid off 60 workers and said it might be out of business by the end of the summer.

Warnings of a slowdown come as administration officials, including the president, continue to offer defiance as its single public policy position. On Sunday, Trump brushed off the mounting pressure from businesses and world leaders to scale back tariffs and taxes before November. “The European Union is possibly as bad as China, just smaller,” Trump said on Sunday, pointing to the “car situation”.

Trump’s comments came in response to an 11-page European Union letter sent to the commerce department on Friday threatening that the global community would impose tariffs on up to $290bn of US products if Trump moves forward with tariffs on foreign autos, according to the Financial Times. “Protective measures would undermine US growth, negatively impact job creation, and not improve the trade balance,” EU leaders wrote, adding that auto tariffs would “damage further the reputation of the United States”.

This is an excellent article by William Engdahl, worth reading in full. Here's a teaser:

Enforcing Dollar Hegemony: Only Thing New About Trump’s Economic Wars Are Tweets

The only new part of the ongoing Trump Administration economic warfare, a calculated assault on friend and foe alike from Russia to China to Iran to Venezuela and the EU, via so-called tariff war, is a President who uses Tweets as a weapon to throw opponents off balance. Since at least the beginning of the 1970’s Washington has deployed similar tactics of economic blackmail and destabilization to force what has become a global domination not of US manufactured goods, but rather of the dollar as a world reserve currency. For almost five decades, since August 15, 1971, Washington and Wall Street have used their dominant position to force inflated paper dollars on the world, cause financial bubbles and subsequently debt buildup to impossible levels, then collapse.

The most essential point to understand about the so-called Trump “trade wars” is that they are not at all about trade or correcting trade or currency imbalances with America’s export partners. That world was largely left behind in 1971 by Nixon and the advisers. The US economy since 1971 has been turned into a financial revenue source, in effect turning the United States from a nation primarily producing industrial goods to one in which the sole aim of all investment is to make money from money. ...

By 2000, Wall Street banks and investment funds essentially dominated the entirety of the US economy. Manufacturing jobs had been pushed offshore, “outsourced,” not by Chinese or German or other “greedy thieves” as charged, but by pressure from those same Wall Street banks that since the 1980’s had driven corporations to focus only on the value of their stock shares and not on the soundness of their products. Leveraged Buyouts, Shareholder Value became bywords. Corporate heads perished if Wall Street banks did not approve their financial profit returns. What that has left today is a United States that is primarily a services economy, a debt-bloated consumer economy and no longer a great industrial leader. The so-called upper 1% of US oligarchs are demanding similar tribute from the rest of the world to sustain the unsustainable. The Trump trade and economic war is a desperation ploy to try to repeat half a century later what worked in the 1970’s.

Enbridge #Line3 was approved by the #Minnesota PUC to pump tar sands oil 340 miles across Minnesota, through treaty land, wild rice beds, the Mississippi River, indigenous communities, and historical sites. pic.twitter.com/KNRMgvlIqw

— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) June 30, 2018

Line 3 Oil Pipeline Approved By Minnesota Regulators

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has given an official stamp of approval to Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement oil pipeline despite massive public opposition. The PUC today granted Enbridge the “certificate of need” which is required before beginning pipeline construction in the state of Minnesota (construction is already near complete in Wisconsin). The certificate of need, however, does not indicate the final route the pipeline will be permitted to take.

Winona LaDuke was among many others that spoke directly after the decision:

Line 3 has for years been opposed by Indigenous peoples along its proposed route, who say they do not consent to the pipeline’s route through their ancestral lands.

“You have just declared war on the Ojibwe people,” one woman told PUC commissioners during the hearing on Thursday afternoon. Many environmentalist groups have also opposed Line 3, insisting that investing in more tar sands oil infrastructure is the wrong direction to take in a world already facing serious threats from climate change and oil spills.

Enbridge has a long, troubled history of public safety incidents involving its pipeline infrastructure.

'Watershed Moment for Climate Liability' as Rhode Island Files Historic Lawsuit Against 21 Big Oil Companies

In what advocates are calling a "watershed moment" for climate litigation, Rhode Island's Democratic Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin announced on Monday that the state has filed a lawsuit against 21 major oil companies—including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—"for knowingly contributing to climate change, and causing catastrophic consequences to Rhode Island, our economy, our communities, our residents, our ecosystems."

"This lawsuit marks the first in the country filed on behalf of a state and its citizens against Big Oil," Kilmartin declared. "For a very long time there has been this perception that they, Big Oil, were too big to take on, but here we are—the smallest state, the Ocean State—taking on the biggest, most powerful corporate polluters in the world, because it's the right thing to do. They need to be held accountable."

The suit is supported by Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Reps. Jim Langevin and David Cicilline, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse—all Democrats. Whitehouse, a congressional leader on climate action, commended Kilmartin for "holding some of the world's most powerful corporations responsible for the damage they're inflicting on our coastal economy, infrastructure, and way of life."

The filing comes on the heels of a similar pair of landmark lawsuits brought by two cities in California, which U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup dismissed last week. Following Kilmartin's announcement, Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, said the Rhode Island suit "takes climate liability to another level, and puts Judge Alsup's recent decision in the rearview mirror."

"When state attorneys general start filing suit it's a game changer, as it was with tobacco and currently is in opioid litigation. In the same way, Rhode Island's lawsuit is a watershed moment for climate liability," Wiles added. "Kilmartin recognized that if polluters don't pay, then taxpayers will, and that is completely unacceptable."

Seattle just became the first major city to ban plastic straws

Seattle just became the first major U.S. city to officially ban plastic straws and utensils.

The new requirement, which went into effect on July 1, effectively bans local businesses from using plastic utensils and straws, under penalty of a $250 fine. Seattle had banned the use non-recyclable, non-compostable plastics in the foodservice industry since 2008. But over the years, officials issued a number of exemptions — including one for plastic straws and utensils. The city, however, let that exception expire on Sunday.

Now, the only exception now is for customers who need a flexible plastic straw for medical reasons, according to the Seattle Times.

The Lonely Whale Foundation, a group that pushes for the reduction of plastic waste in the world’s oceans, helped convinced the city to go strawless, through a campaign, “Strawless in Seattle,” that convinced 150 restaurants to ditch plastic.

Heat Waves and Climate Change: Mass Media Fails to Make the Connection

Huge, fast-moving wildfire forces California evacuations

A vast wildfire in rural northern California has exploded in size and forced evacuations in hot, dry weather that is sweeping through several western states where blazes are threatening thousands of homes.

The fast-moving fire that started over the weekend north-west of Sacramento grew dramatically to about 70 sq miles (180 sq km) by Monday, largely burning out of control in rugged terrain, marked by a few cattle and horse ranches, and sending smoke and ash as far south as San Francisco.

The fire that started Saturday about 100 miles (160 km) north-east of San Francisco spread as strong winds pushed smoke south, dusting cars and homes with a thin layer of gray ash. About 300 people were told to flee their homes, and more than 100 buildings were threatened. No injuries were reported. ...

The hot, windy conditions fueling the fire and others across the west were expected to persist through the end of July in Utah and parts of California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, US fire officials said. The south-west, which has been struggling with drought, should get enough rain in early July to reduce the risk of major blazes in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, the National Interagency Fire Center said Sunday.

Woman Confronts Pruitt at DC Restaurant, Demands He Resign for What He's "Doing to the Environment and Our Country"

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt on Monday became the latest member of the Trump administration to be called out while dining at a D.C. restaurant when Kristin Mink walked up, introduced her two-year-old child, and demanded Pruitt resign because, as she put it, "We deserve to have somebody at the EPA who actually does protect our environment, somebody who believes in climate change and takes it seriously, for the benefit of all of us, including our children."

"Hi, I just wanted to urge you to resign because of what you're doing to the environment and our country. This is my son. He loves animals. He loves clean air. He loves clean water. Meanwhile, you're slashing strong fuel standards for cars and trucks, for the benefits of big corporations," Mink said.

Noting Pruitt's contentious condo rental from an energy lobbyist's wife and the more than a dozen other federal probes he's prompted, she concluded, "I would urge you to resign before your scandals push you out."

Watch:

Mink posted the video—with a message saying Pruitt did not respond and left the restaurant—to her personal Facebook account along with a link to the Sierra Club's petition imploring President Donald Trump and Congress #BootPruitt because, as the group says, the EPA chief's "dirty dealings put us in danger." While Pruitt's mountain of scandals involving a used hotel mattress, pricey moisturizer, and Chick-fil-A have elicited outrage, so has the polluter-friendly deregulatory agenda he is pushing through at the behest of the chemical and fossil fuel industries.

In her post, Mink wrote of Pruitt: "This man is directly and significantly harming my child's—and every child's—health and future with decisions to roll back environmental regulations for the benefit of big corporations, while he uses taxpayer money to fund a lavish lifestyle. He's corrupt, he's a liar, he's a climate change denier, and as a public servant, he should not be able to go out in public without hearing from the citizens he's hurting."

Also of Interest

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

EU Calls Trump’s Bluff on Auto Tariffs as Trump Tries Dead on Arrival WTO Exit Plan

Sheriffs see dollar signs and political wins by cooperating with ICE

Betsy DeVos just asked you to drop your union membership

Is Ocasio-Cortez The Start Of A Movement?

On Magical Thinking VS Sober Analysis of the Ocasio-Cortez Victory in NY

As Industry Pushes Billion-Dollar Fracked Petrochemical Projects, State Regulators Struggle To Keep Up

‘Nothing to worry about. The water is fine’: how Flint poisoned its people

Outrage after American woman hunts and kills rare giraffe in South Africa

A Little Night Music

Son Bonds - 80 Highway Blues

Hammie Nixon & Son Bonds - Trouble Trouble Blues

Son Bonds - A Hard Pill To Swallow

Brownsville "Son" Bonds - Weary And Worried Blues

The Delta Boys (Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds) - You Shouldn't Say That

The Delta Boys (Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds) - Black Gal Swing

The Delta Boys (Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds) - You Shouldn't Say That

The Delta Boys (Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds) - Don't You Want To Know

The Delta Boys (Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds) - When The Saints Go Marching In