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This evening's music features the fellow later to be known as James Brown's guitarist, Jimmy Nolen. Enjoy!

"Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limits to its economic expansion."

-- Hannah Arendt

News and Opinion

Joe Biden says US to pull its forces out of Afghanistan by 31 August

Joe Biden pledged on Thursday that he would not send “another generation of Americans” to war in Afghanistan and said the US would withdraw its forces from the nation by 31 August. “Our military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on August 31,” Biden said.

The president had previously said the withdrawal would wrap up by 11 September, but the Pentagon announced this week that more than 90% of the operation was already completed. Biden said senior defense officials had told him that moving swiftly was the most effective method to protect US troops, and the president noted that no service members had been lost in the withdrawal process so far. ...

Retired Maj Gen James “Spider” Marks told CNN on Thursday afternoon that he saw no outcome for Afghanistan in the near future other than civil war, with the Taliban surging to take control of vital chunks of the country but leaving enough of a vacuum to create, once again, “a breeding ground” for terrorism by Islamist fundamentalists.

Before the president spoke on Thursday afternoon, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said of the planned withdrawal: “We’re not going to have a ‘mission accomplished’ moment in this regard. It’s a 20-year war that has not been won militarily.”

“I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome,” the president said.

Boris Johnson announces end of UK military mission in Afghanistan

Boris Johnson has announced the end of Britain’s military mission in Afghanistan following a hasty and secretive exit of the last remaining troops 20 years after the post-9/11 invasion that started the “war on terror”. The prime minister confirmed to MPs that the intervention, which claimed the lives of 457 British soldiers, would end even as the insurgent Taliban were rapidly gaining territory in rural areas and UK, US and other forces withdrew.

Speaking in the Commons, Johnson said “all British troops assigned to Nato’s mission in Afghanistan are now returning home”. While he would not disclose the exact timetable of the departure for security reasons, the prime minister added: “I can tell the house that most of our personnel have already left.”

In a separate defence briefing, the head of the armed forces, Sir Nick Carter, acknowledged that recent news from Afghanistan had been “pretty grim” but said the Afghan military had been regrouping to defend urban areas.

He said that while it was fair to say the Taliban now held nearly 50% of the rural districts in Afghanistan and that the Afghan army would also no longer have access to western air power from within the country, he hoped there would eventually be peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government.

Lebanon Faces Dire Crisis After the Elite Plundered the State for Decades, Exacerbating Inequality

Biden Turns His Back on Yemen

In his first major foreign policy address on February 4, President Joe Biden announced that he was "ending all support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales." If only. Five months later, US assistance to the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen continues, even though some observers don't realize it.  In an otherwise perceptive article on President Biden's foreign policy in the May 27, 2021 New York Review of Books, Jessica T. Matthews writes that President Biden "withdrew American support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen that has produced little more than an atrocious level of human suffering."

Only the second half of this sentence is true. Two hundred and thirty-three thousand Yemenis have died over the course of the war which entered its seventh year in March. The country is on the brink of famine with twenty-four million Yemenis relying on humanitarian aid to survive. Over two million children are acutely malnourished with a child dying every 75 seconds. The American Public Health Association governing council has twice passed policy statements condemning the U.S.-supported blockade of Yemen, most recently in 2020& ("A Call to End the Bombing of Yemen and the Blockade on Its Ports"). Small wonder the UN has declared Yemen "the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and eight other Gulf and Arab nations attacked Yemen in March 2015 after the country's Houthi rebels overthrew the pro-Saudi government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. President Barack Obama took the US into the war in order to mollify the Arab states which opposed Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Since then, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have provided the coalition with intelligence, targeting assistance, spare parts for coalition aircraft, arms sales, and (until November 2018) in-flight refueling of coalition warplanes. Yemenis speak of the "Saudi-American war."

The Saudis continue to bomb Yemen despite their June 10 announcement that they were suspending airstrikes. The US continues to service Saudi warplanes through private contractors. Without maintenance, the Royal Saudi Air Force would be grounded. ...

Biden could have issued an executive order on his first day in office ending US support for the Saudi coalition. Biden's failure to do so means that Congress must act. In 2019, in an historic move, Congress passed a War Powers Resolution which would have ended all US assistance to the Saudi coalition. President Trump vetoed the resolution. Congress must pass a new War Powers Resolution, this time by veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate.

While he is a welcome change from the incompetence, venality, and cruelty of the Trump Administration, Biden has continued the Obama and Trump Administrations' support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen. Commentators like Jessica T. Matthews give Biden credit he does not yet deserve. We should hold our applause until Biden actually ends US support for Yemen's destruction.

Who killed Haiti's president? • FRANCE 24 English

Haiti Assassination Raises Red Flags Among Observers Fluent in History of US Intervention

In the wake of Wednesday's assassination of Jovenel Moïse, the unpopular, corrupt, and increasingly authoritarian U.S.-backed Haitian president, observers fluent in the history of foreign interference in the hemisphere's first truly free republic sounded the alarm over the same sort of calls for intervention in the name of "stability" that preceded so many previous American invasions of Haiti.

On Wednesday, the editors of the Miami Herald responded to Moïse's murder by asserting that the "U.S. must get off the sidelines and act."

They wrote:

The U.S., as Haiti's biggest donor, has no choice but to take the lead... to stabilize Haiti. An international coalition could do immense good very quickly by picking five critical things to focus on so that basic life in Haiti can continue: good roads, reliable electricity, clean water, policing that works, and Covid vaccines.

The Miami Herald editors were not alone. Robert Fatton, a professor of government affairs at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, told France 24 that "in previous decades the U.N., U.S., and France have sent troops [to Haiti] due to political insurgency. If things worsen I assume we'd have an intervention."

Echoing this sentiment, the editors of the Washington Post called for "a swift and muscular intervention" in Haiti.

It's quite striking that the arguments being made for a U.S. intervention in Haiti are so alike the ones that were used to justify the 1915-34 occupation.

— Matt Davidson (@md_ptbo) July 8, 2021

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at a Wednesday press conference that the Biden administration is "prepared to respond to requests for assistance" from Haiti's interim leadership, and that the U.S. "expect[s] to be in receipt of formal requests" for armaments.

When asked specifically about "the history of U.S. intervention in Haiti" and any "appetite" to intervene again, Price indirectly answered that "the United States has and will continue to stand by to provide assistance to the Haitian people."

Jake Johnston, a research associate for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, told Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times that "there will be a lot of calls for international intervention and sending troops" in the name of restoring stability to Haiti.

"But it's important that we take a step back and see how international intervention has contributed to this situation," Johnston said. "There's already been billions of dollars spent on so-called nation-building in Haiti, which has only contributed to the erosion of the state and politicization of these institutions. To now say we need to do more of this, well, that won't work."

Amid reports that at least one U.S. citizen was among those arrested in connection with Moïse's assassination and the mounting calls for foreign intervention, the U.S.-based anti-war group Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) said that it "smells a rat."

"What happens now is the question," BAP said in a statement. "Will the Biden administration and other political players use this moment as the pretext for military intervention, as was done in 1915?"

"Whatever happens, the Black Alliance for Peace remains steadfast in our call against foreign intervention and occupation of Haiti," the group said. "And we call on all anti-imperialist and Black internationalist forces to stand with the Haitian people and oppose U.S. and European interventions deployed under the guise of the 'responsibility to protect.'"

"For over a century the U.S. military has helped corporations plunder Haiti, carrying out invasions, supporting coups, and menacing anyone who fights for the freedom and independence of the country," writes artist and activist Rachel Domond. "Even if they use humanitarian language, the goal of any U.S. intervention remains the same."

Haiti—site of the world's only successful nationwide slave revolt—was the first country in the hemisphere to win its independence after the United States. Over the course of 13 years beginning in 1791, Haiti's slaves fought to end not only slavery, becoming the first nation to permanently do so, but also French rule in a colony that, while only the size of Maryland, produced as much wealth as all 13 colonies of the future United States combined. 

Haiti was the first truly free nation in the Americas, and the world's first Black republic. Its revolution also belied the hypocritically egalitarian pretensions of the French and U.S. revolutions, the latter which fought to preserve and expand slavery while declaring that "all men are created equal."

Haiti's revolution—led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Henri Christophe, and others—also led Napoleon Bonaparte to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

However, U.S. Founding Fathers were tremendously alarmed by the Haitian revolution and its implications in the United States, where nearly one in five inhabitants were enslaved Black people. President George Washington, who regarded slaves as "a very troublesome species of property," wrote to French Minister Jean Baptiste de Ternant in September 1791, promising "every aid in [our] power to our good friends and allied the French to quell the alarming insurrection of the negroes."

Thus began the more-than-200-year history of U.S. intervention in Haiti. Instead of exalting Haiti's hard-won freedom, the United States refused to recognize the country until 1862. What it did recognize was the crushing debt imposed by France as a condition for peace that continues to harm Haitians to this day.

In 1891 U.S. President Benjamin Harrison attempted to acquire a naval base at Môle Saint-Nicolas, prompting Frederick Douglass, the U.S. minister and consul-general at the time, to declare that "there is perhaps no one point upon which the people of Haiti are more sensitive, superstitious, or united, than upon any question touching the cession of any part of their territory to any foreign power."

Haiti maintained its sovereignty for 116 years until President Woodrow Wilson—who claimed to champion national self-determination—ordered a U.S. invasion in the name of "stability" following the assassination of Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. The murder sparked widespread violence and U.S. Marines, wrote Time, "landed at Port-au-Prince and began forcibly soothing everybody."

The U.S. would occupy Haiti until 1934, killing thousands of Haitians who resisted the invaders. Occupation forces and administrators implemented forced labor in service of building the kinds of infrastructure advocated by the Miami Herald editors, Jim Crow segregation, and looting of the country's finances for the benefit of New York banks. Rape of Haitian women and children by U.S. troops ran rampant, and unpunished.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, successive administrations in Washington, D.C. supported Haitian dictators including the brutal kleptocrat François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, not only turning a blind eye to his regime's gross human rights violations but also training its security forces. Meanwhile, U.S. economic interests profited handsomely from their investments in a "stable" Haiti. "Papa Doc" was succeeded upon his death in 1971 by his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who was also backed by the U.S. even as his death squads murdered as many as 60,000 Haitians.

Haiti finally held democratic elections in 1990. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest, was elected with two-thirds of the vote. However, less than a year later he was overthrown in a military coup whose plotters included CIA operatives.

In 1994 Joe Biden, then the junior senator from Delaware, opined that "if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn't matter a whole lot to our interests." President Bill Clinton did not agree, and that year his administration secured United Nations Security Council authorization to stage a U.S.-led nvasion to "restore democracy" to Haiti. Clinton sent 25,000 troops on a "nation-building" mission, and Aristide was returned to the presidency—until the George W. Bush administration actively worked to topple his government in events culminating in a 2004 coup, in which the same CIA-trained forces played a key role.

"The nation-building exercises that the United States and its international partners have embarked upon in Haiti and around the world have done little to create functioning states, instead creating a system where questionable actors with little national support—like Mr. Moïse—are propped up, the easiest way to achieve short-term stability," writes the Times' Abi-Habib.

Haiti security forces arrest six alleged gunmen after president’s assassination

Six people, including one US citizen, have been arrested and seven reportedly killed as Haitian security forces pursued the gunmen responsible for the killing of the Caribbean country’s president, Jovenel Moïse. ... Haiti’s police chief, Léon Charles, told local radio seven suspects had been shot dead and six arrested following Moïse’s killing. The masterminds were still being sought. In later comments he said a total of 28 attackers had been identified, 26 Colombians and two Haitians. They had come to the country to kill the president. Eight were still on the run, he said.

Helen La Lime, a veteran US diplomat who is the UN’s special envoy for Haiti, told journalists she had been informed that “a larger group of possible perpetrators” had been surrounded by police after taking refuge in two buildings in Port-au-Prince. Speaking after an emergency UN security council meeting in New York, La Lime said Haiti’s prime minister had told her the presidential compound had been invaded by a Spanish- and English-speaking “commando unit”, whose heavily armed members killed the president after posing as “a DEA force”. ...

Haitian authorities described several of the suspects as “foreigners”, with the Washington Post naming one of the six detained men as James Solages, a US citizen of Haitian descent. ... Theories about who was behind the killing ran wild in Haiti and in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which shares the same island. ... And in the febrile atmosphere, competing – and so far unverified – theories have continued to emerge, one suggesting that a hit squad of Colombians and Venezuelans contracted to powerful figures in Haiti involved in drug trafficking and other criminality had ordered the killing, or that the killing involved individuals linked to Moïse’s own security staff.

US refuses to drop Assange hunt even after key witness admits to lies

'It Didn't Have to Be This Way': WHO Chief Laments 4 Million Covid-19 Deaths

The official global death toll from Covid-19 hit 4 million Wednesday—a "tragic milestone," said the World Health Organization chief as he blasted "vaccine nationalism" as a "morally indefensible" position.

That number of fatalities is likely an underestimate, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-Genereal Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his remarks at a press briefing. Also troubling, he said, are "fast moving variants" of the coronavirus and premature dropping by some authorities of public health measures meant to contain the spread of the pandemic.

"Vaccine nationalism, where a handful of nations have taken the lion's share, is morally indefensible," said Tedros, as well as "an ineffective public health strategy against a respiratory virus that is mutating quickly and becoming increasingly effective at moving from human-to-human."

"Variants are currently winning the race against vaccines because of inequitable vaccine production and distribution, which also threatens the global economic recovery," Tedros said.

"It didn't have to be this way," he added, "and it doesn't have to be this way going forward."

Biden CHUCKS Worker Risks For Big Business, 56% Call For Action During Delta Variant SURGE

Covid-19 infections rising in California as Delta variant gains ground

Covid-19 infections in California are on the rise, as public health officials in the US west warn that the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus is fast gaining ground. For the week-long period ending Tuesday, California saw an average of approximately 1,143 new Covid-19 cases a day, up 30% from mid-June. The increase started shortly after California’s reopening on 15 June, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Covid-19 hospitalizations have also increased by 34% since the middle of June. As of Tuesday, there were 1,228 Covid patients in California hospitals, compared with 915 reported on 12 June. That is still far less than hospitalizations at the pandemic’s peak, when hospital admissions totalled almost 22,000.

The increases reported in California come amid global concern over the threat posed by the Delta or B.1.617.2 variant. In the US, Covid-19 cases are rising in nearly half of states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The variant is already the dominant strain of Covid-19 in the country, accounting for more than 50% of all new US cases and up to 80% of cases in some regions.

Big Pharma Firms Spent More Enriching Investors Than on R&D: Report

The leading 14 Big Pharma firms paid out more to enrich their investors than they spent on research and development from 2016 to 2020, a report published Thursday by the U.S. House Oversight Committee revealed, renewing calls from healthcare reform advocates for urgent action to reduce the high cost of prescription drugs in the United States.

The report (pdf)—the sixth in a series on prescription drug prices—notes that the 14 companies spent nearly 10% more on stock buybacks and dividends than they did on developing and testing new medications.

Meanwhile, according to the report, the 14 firms "spent over $3.2 billion in aggregate executive compensation for their highest paid executives in the past five years," an increase of 14% during the four-year period analyzed by congressional researchers.

As Texas Pushes “Worst Voter Suppression Bill in the Country,” Activists Call on Biden to Do More

Justin Trudeau’s love of fossil fuel will only make Canada’s extreme weather worse

After recording the country’s highest ever temperatures of 49.6C, the town of Lytton in British Columbia, Canada, burst into flames. Residents had minutes to flee a “wall of fire” with nothing but the clothing on their backs. Like people in many other places in the world struggling with heatwaves, fires, droughts and strange extreme storms, BC residents now know what it feels like to live in a changing climate on an increasingly inhospitable planet. ...

The most recent data, despite the Trudeau government’s claims of climate leadership, shows that Canada has made no progress in reducing emissions. Canada’s emissions are higher today than they were in 1990 and Canada is performing worse on climate change than any other G7 country. So why are we doing so poorly on addressing this emergency, in a relatively wealthy country with a stable democracy in which the majority of the population not only believes in climate change but supports strong action to move to a low carbon economy? The answer lies in part with the level of influence, lobbying and power of the fossil fuel companies in the committees, councils and commissions that are shaping our response to the climate emergency. The fox is watching the henhouse.

Canada’s big banks and pension funds are among the largest fossil fuel financiers and investors in the world. Their enabling of the fossil fuel industry hinders real action on climate. The distortion of the debate is so remarkable – not only in Canada but internationally – that we are somehow still trying to convince ourselves that it is OK to finance and build more fossil fuel infrastructure, oil sands pipelines, offshore drilling and LNG plants while talking about committing to “net-zero” emissions.

I have no doubt that at COP26, Canada will be lauded for its new, stronger targets and for its national carbon price. These policies are ones that, more than a decade ago, were thought to be enough. Similarly, a decade ago natural gas was considered a “bridge fuel” and along with biomass was thought to be better for the climate than coal. Today the science is clear that both exacerbate climate change, yet Canada continues to subsidize clearcutting our forests for wood pellets and fracking for liquified natural gas. In the face of the nightmare we are now living in, these policies are at best Band-Aids on a gaping wound and at worst they are throwing gas on the fire.

‘Heat dome’ probably killed 1bn marine animals on Canada coast, experts say

More than 1 billion marine animals along Canada’s Pacific coast are likely to have died from last week’s record heatwave, experts warn, highlighting the vulnerability of ecosystems unaccustomed to extreme temperatures. ...

Christopher Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia, has calculated that more than a billion marine animals may have been killed by the unusual heat. A walk along a Vancouver-area beach highlighted the magnitude of devastation brought on by the heatwave, he said. ...

The mass death of shellfish would temporarily affect water quality because mussels and clams help filter the sea, Harley said, keeping it clear enough that sunlight reaches the eelgrass beds while also creating habitats for other species. “A square meter of mussel bed could be home to several dozen or even one hundred species,” he said. The tightly bunched way mussels live also informed Harley’s calculation of the scope of the loss.

'This Is What Bipartisanship Looks Like': Vicious Fire Tornado Caught on Film in California

Responding to dramatic footage that went viral Thursday of a so-called "fire tornado" unleashed recently in North California, a longtime aid of Sen. Bernie Sanders said the event—viewed through a political prism—could be seen symbolically as the destructive result of corporate-friendly policies in Washington, D.C. masquerading as bipartisanship while the world burns amid an intensifying climate emergency.

"This is what bipartisanship looks like," tweeted Warren Gunnels, currently the staff director for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, which is chaired by Sanders.

This is what bipartisanship looks like. https://t.co/eKrMKXGpcX

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) July 8, 2021

According to the Los Angeles Times:

The U.S. Forest Service captured video of a fire whirl—a "spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire"—on June 29 at the Tennant fire in Klamath National Forest, near the Oregon border.

Fire whirls carry aloft smoke, debris, and flames, the Forest Service said.

In the astonishing video, thick black smoke quickly gathers and spins near flames, almost completely obscuring a rescue truck in the distance.

The tweet from Gunnels—who has served as congressional staff for Sanders and advised on policy for his presidential campaigns in both 2016 and 2020—comes as a protracted battle in the U.S. Senate around an infrastructure package has largely centered on the willingness of lawmakers to recognize the existential threat of the climate crisis and how much funding will be included for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

With scientists and experts pointing to extreme weather events like "firenados" and the recent record-shattering heatwave in the Pacific Northwest last week—or fossil fuel disasters like the one last week which led to the fiery "gates of hell" to open on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico—frustration is growing in progressive circles that President Joe Biden's obsession with a bipartisan solution on infrastructure with bad-faith Republicans is a dead end politically and for the planet.

Writing for Gizmodo last week, climate journalist Brian Kahn explained that "bipartisanship" in the context of the planetary emergency is simply "climate denial" at the worst possible time. Kahn wrote:

The backslapping bipartisan we've seen does not offer up transformational change. Biden's opening bid of $2 trillion for infrastructure already lacked the money to meet the moment. The bipartisan version is a shell of that already inadequate policy push. Biden's plan included $174 billion for electric vehicles. The bipartisan plan offers $15 billion. The American Jobs Plan had $85 billion earmarked for public transit. The Joe Manchin-Bill Cassidy special offers $48.5 billion. The only areas where the two bills are roughly on par are related to highways and airports, both of which lock in decades of more carbon pollution.

The idea that the ideal policy position to address climate change sits squarely between left and right is like saying the best place between the edge of a cliff and thin air 10 feet out is 5 feet beyond the brink. Choose the middle ground, and you will still fall to your death.

While a group of Republican and Democratic senators has gained much attention in recent weeks by trying to negotiate a deal that will appease a corporate-friendly subset from both parties, Sanders and other progressive members of the Senate are pushing for a large reconciliation package with a much bolder vision to tackle the climate crisis head-on.

"Let me be clear," Sanders tweeted last week. "There will not be a bipartisan infrastructure deal without a reconciliation bill that substantially improves the lives of working families and combats the existential threat of climate change. No reconciliation bill, no deal. We need transformative change NOW."

In his assessment, Kahn—dismissive of the jovial politics of bipartisanship in which getting along or finding common ground is the goal—concluded: "Climate policy isn't about imagining a spectrum from left to right and finding the sweet spot in the middle. It's a zero-sum battle with physics that doesn't give a damn about who’s laughing with whom."

North Dakota sues over Biden’s halt in oil and gas leases on public lands

North Dakota has sued the Biden administration over its suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal land and water, saying the move will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Joe Biden shut down oil and gas lease sales from the nation’s public lands and waters in his first days in office, citing the need to combat climate change, which he has called the “existential crisis of our time”. ...

The North Dakota lawsuit filed on Wednesday in federal court in Bismarck claims the suspension is unlawful. It seeks to force the US Bureau of Land Management to reschedule two lease sales that were canceled in the state and block the agency from revoking others in the future. The lawsuit said the two canceled sales this year have cost the state more than $82m.

North Dakota’s attorney general, Wayne Stenehjem, said in a statement that he sued “to protect North Dakota’s economy, the jobs of our hardworking citizens, and North Dakota’s rights to control its own natural resources”. ...

In May Wyoming passed a new state law that created a $1.2m fund to be used by the state governor to sue other states that opt for renewable energy over Wyoming’s coal.

California Employees Hesitant About Returning To Office Currently On Fire https://t.co/ejpGMADKhN pic.twitter.com/Ke5L0QzNwe

— The Onion (@TheOnion) July 8, 2021

Record-breaking US Pacific north-west heatwave killed almost 200 people

The death toll from the record-breaking heatwave that struck the US Pacific north-west last week has risen to nearly 200, with health authorities reporting 116 deaths in Oregon and 78 in Washington state.

The data in Washington state are particularly striking given historical context. There were seven heat-related deaths in Washington between mid-June and the end of August in 2020. Between 2015 and 2020, the state saw just 39 deaths in the late spring and summer months.

“This huge jump in mortality due to heat is tragic and something many people thought they’d never see in the Pacific north-west with its mostly moderate climate,” Dr Scott Lindquist, Washington’s acting state health officer, said in a statement. “But climates are changing, and we see the evidence of that with dramatic weather events, major flooding, historic forest fires, and more.”

In Oregon, most of the deaths were in Portland’s Multnomah county; many of those who died lacked air conditioning or fans, and succumbed to the heat alone. The youngest victim was age 37, and the oldest was age 97, according to the Associated Press.

On Tuesday, the Oregon governor, Kate Brown, directed agencies to review how the state can improve its handling of heat emergencies. Brown also enacted emergency regulations to protect workers from heat, following the 26 June death of a farm worker in rural Oregon.

Californians asked to cut water use by 15% as drought ravages the state

California’s governor has asked people and businesses to voluntarily cut their water use by 15% as the western US weathers a devastating drought.

Gavin Newsom’s request is not an order, but it demonstrates the growing challenges of a drought that will only worsen throughout the summer and fall and is tied to recent heatwaves. Reservoirs across the state, which are depended on for agriculture, drinking water and fish habitat, have dwindled to dangerously low levels and some counties have already enacted mandatory water restrictions.

California’s Democratic governor is asking for voluntary water conservation, which would include actions such as taking shorter showers, running dishwashers only when they are full and reducing the frequency of watering lawns.

“Given how low the reservoirs are going to be at the start of next year, the governor wanted to issue the voluntary call in the event that next year is also dry,” said Karla Nemeth, the director of the California department of water resources. “The voluntary conservation is as much about planning for a dry next year as anything.”

Newsom also added nine counties to an emergency drought proclamation that now covers 50 of the state’s 58 counties. Large cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, are not included under the emergency proclamation. But Newsom is still asking those who live in heavily populated areas to reduce their water consumption because they rely on rivers and reservoirs in drought-stricken areas for much of their supply.

Also of Interest

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

The Assange Case Isn’t About National Security, It’s About Narrative Control

US Wars Come Home to Roost

Russia Says the West Will 'Regret' Any Meddling in Its Election

Hedges: Kucinich Memoir Is a Moving Account of a Battle Against Corporate Power

Conservative justices make it clear: they won’t stop anti-democratic voting laws

Freedom Rider: How the Billionaires Rule

New York Regulations Allow Cops Stripped of Training Credentials to Be Rehired

Climate crisis ‘may put 8bn at risk of malaria and dengue’

Why declining birth rates are good news for life on Earth

‘Save our water’: meet the rain harvesters taking on the US west’s water woes

Human body size shaped by climate, evolutionary study shows

Eswatini, Formerly Swaziland, Sees Brutal Government Crackdown on Mass Protests over Inequality

15 WestExec Consultants LINKED To Biden White House

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Nolen - Strollin' with Nolen

Jimmy Nolen - It Hurts Me Too

Jimmy Nolen - The Way You Do

Jimmy Nolen - Let's Try Again

Monte Easter w/Jimmy Nolen - Blues In The Evening

Jimmy Nolen - Wipe Your Tears

Jimmy Nolen - The Lost Train

Jimmy Nolen - How Fine Can You Be

Jimmy Nolen - You've Been Goofing

Jimmy Nolen - Jimmy's Jive

Jimmy Nolen - Don't Leave Me No More

Jimmy Nolen - Swingin' Peter Gunn