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This evening's music features St. Louis blues singer and guitarist Clifford Gibson. Enjoy!

"When you're just singing a beautiful melody with a story that's true to the heart, you don't need a lot of embellishment."

-- Emmylou Harris

News and Opinion

Trump has complained that “the world is laughing at us.” On Tuesday, it did.

On the campaign trail, President Trump often said “the world is laughing at us.” When he hit the United Nations General Assembly to deliver a speech on Tuesday to the assembly of 192 member nations’ leaders, his campaign warning proved prophetic.

Trump opened up his speech boasting that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” That declaration was greeted by a rare wave of audible laughter that rippled through the crowd of world leaders and diplomats.

"In less than two years my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” President Trump told the #UNGA.

The crowd burst into laughter. pic.twitter.com/hexkmFqqM6

— VICE News (@vicenews) September 25, 2018

Trump proceeded, looking a bit subdued, to hand threats and praise to democracies and tyrants alike , while laying out a vision of a world in which “strong, sovereign nations” freely pursue their own national interests. ...

Trump didn’t specifically threaten to destroy anyone this time, but he did issue warnings to Iran, Syria, Venezuela and China. He spent considerable time on Iran’s “corrupt” leaders, whom he blamed for fueling the fighting in Syria’s ongoing civil war, and destabilizing much of the middle east. “Iran’s leaders sew chaos, death and destruction,” he said. “They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations.” Trump pledged that an American campaign of economic pressure on Iran would continue, and that his administration would work to pressure other countries not to buy Iranian oil exports.

Iran Officials Blame US, Allies After Ahvaz Parade Attack

Still reeling from the Saturday shooting attack on a military parade in Ahvaz, top Iranian officials are issuing a series of statements blaming the attack on the US, Israel, and Gulf Arab states, and pushing EU nations to stop hosting members of the separatist group involved after the deadly attack. ...

US Ambassador Nikki Haley issued a statement denying any US involvement in the attack. Curiously, however, she said it was Rouhani’s fault for “oppressing his people for a long time,” and cited public protests in Tehran as connected to the violence.

Yet the US has been very public about funding the Tehran protests in the first place, as part of an attempt to portray Iran’s government as having lost all public support.

The Ahvaz terror attack in Iran may drag the US into a larger war

Iran has been hit by yet another terrorist attack. At least 29 people were killed in the southwestern city of Ahvaz when gunmen opened fire on a crowd watching a military parade on Iran's equivalent of Memorial Day. But unlike previous terror attacks, this one may spark a much larger regional conflagration - involving not just regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, but also the United States. In fact, it may have been designed to trigger just that.

The terrorist attack, which was first claimed by an Arab separatist group with alleged connections to Saudi Arabia, the Ahvaz National Resistance, did not occur in a vacuum. Iran's regional rivals, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have increasingly taken their decades-long behind-the-scenes pressure on the US to bomb Iran into the open. What used to be said in private is now increasingly declared in public. Moreover, these monarchies are no longer limiting themselves to pushing the US to take military action, but are announcing their own readiness to attack Iran.

Only a year ago, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman explained in an interview that Saudi Arabia would take the fight to "inside Iran". "We won't wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia," he said. "Instead, we will work so that the battle is for them in Iran." His statement was widely interpreted as a sign that Riyadh would dramatically escalate tensions with Iran and intensify its support for various armed groups opposing the government in Tehran. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an adviser to the Abu Dhabi government, justified the Ahvaz attack on Twitter, arguing that it wasn't a terrorist attack and that "moving the battle to the Iranian side is a declared option". Attacks of this kind, he ominously warned, "will increase during the next phase".

If the terrorist attack in Ahvaz was part of a larger Saudi and UAE escalation in Iran, their goal is likely to goad Iran to retaliate and then use Tehran's reaction to spark a larger war and force the US to enter since Riyadh and Abu Dhabi likely cannot take on Iran militarily alone (indeed, after spending roughly $6bn a month, they have failed to defeat the Houthi guerillas in Yemen).

If so, the terrorist attack is as much about trapping Iran into war as it is to trap the US into a war of choice. As former secretary of defense Bob Gates said in 2010, the Saudis "want to fight the Iranians to the last American".

Reuters Plays Dumb About Iran/Israel Nukes

OPEC, Russia rebuff Trump's call for immediate boost to oil output

OPEC's leader Saudi Arabia and its biggest oil-producer ally outside the group, Russia, ruled out on Sunday any immediate, additional increase in crude output, effectively rebuffing U.S. President Donald Trump's calls for action to cool the market. "I do not influence prices," Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told reporters in Algiers ahead of a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC energy ministers.

Benchmark Brent oil reached $80 a barrel this month, prompting Trump to reiterate on Thursday his demand that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries lower prices. The price rally mainly stemmed from a decline in oil exports from OPEC member Iran due to fresh U.S. sanctions.

We protect the countries of the Middle East, they would not be safe for very long without us, and yet they continue to push for higher and higher oil prices! We will remember. The OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2018

Falih said Saudi Arabia had spare capacity to increase oil output but no such move was needed at the moment. "My information is that the markets are adequately supplied. I don't know of any refiner in the world who is looking for oil and is not able to get it," Falih said.

Trump Gets 100 Countries to Sign On to His U.N. Drug War Plan, Ignoring Changing Thinking on Human Rights and Legalization

The Trump Administration announced last week that it would kick off the United Nations General Assembly with an event inviting member states to join a revamped U.S. war on drugs. On Monday, Donald Trump got his drug meeting — but not quite everyone signed on. Billed as a “Global Call to Action on the World Drug Problem,” the State Department said that 130 countries had agreed to a nonnegotiable text, but missing from that list were a number of key U.S. allies. ... “I think a lot of delegations, including a lot of delegations that ended up signing, found it entirely offensive that one country would take it upon itself with a few others, pronounce a text as nonnegotiable, and then pressure countries to sign up because they said so,” said John Walsh, director for drug policy and the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America. Advocates like Walsh expressed concern at the substance of the U.S. program, as well. “The U.S. is trying to lead us backwards now to the failed policies that led us here,” he said.

Some U.S.-allied governments echoed those concerns, albeit in softer terms. Speaking to Norwegian TV, the country’s Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said the call had “too little focus on the health side of drug policy,” explaining why Norway had turned it down like all the other Nordic countries. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made similar remarks. Nigeria and Brazil were the largest countries to refrain, and Germany was the biggest in Europe to decline. Others who kept away included Uruguay, which has legal marijuana market, and South Africa, which days ago legalized private use of the drug. (Tens of millions of Americans live in states where marijuana is legal.) ...

In a statement, the Global Commission on Drug Policy said the call to action “signals the continuation of inefficient, costly and harmful policies.” On the same day as Trump’s event, the Global Commission released a report outlining regulation as a responsible means of controlling narcotics. One of the panel’s members is former Colombian President César Gaviria, who led the country through the deadliest years in its modern history during the early 1990s, when civil war and drug-fueled violence saw homicide rates skyrocket. “Attempts to eradicate drug supply and use through prohibition-based repressive measures against people who use drugs have proved expensive and counterproductive for more than 50 years,” said the Commission. “The U.S. government, which tried and abandoned alcohol prohibition, and now faces an unprecedented opioid crisis, should know better than anyone.”

Hundreds of neo-Nazis chant anti-Semitic slogans in Dortmund, Germany

On Friday evening, several hundred Neo-nazis marched through a residential area in the working-class German city of Dortmund. They waved black-white-red imperial flags and roared neo-Nazi slogans. Their main slogan was, “Those who love Germany are anti-Semitic”. They also chanted, “Police, democracy, you’ll never break us” and “National Socialism [Nazism] now!” The police left the Nazis undisturbed and did not intervene. That same day, radical right-wingers once again marched through the city in Chemnitz. According to media reports, followers of the “Pro Chemnitz” alliance attacked the offices of the Left Party, where many members of the Saxony state legislature are based. A journalist was also said to have been attacked during the right-wing march.

On Saturday, in the Bavarian city of Bamberg, a so-called “anchor centre” for refugees was burnt down. It took several hours for the fire to be extinguished and to evacuate hundreds of asylum-seekers. The police said the cause of the fire was unclear, and that there was no evidence of arson or a xenophobic attack. ...

That today—85 years after the seizure of power by the Nazis and the subsequent fascist terror in Europe, which cost the lives of 6 million Jews—Nazi gangs are again marching through the streets and chanting anti-Semitic slogans under the eyes of the police is the product of the policy of the German government. The grand coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) is responsible for the return of the Nazi hordes.The grand coalition, whose constituent parties all saw their votes plummet in the general election last year, and which is deeply hated, has adopted the slogan of the neo-Nazis: “Foreigners out!” as the guiding line of its refugee policy. The government has set up an inhumane system of concentration camps to detain, bureaucratically bully and deport refugees as quickly as possible.

Interior Minister Seehofer (CSU) stated that immigration was the “mother of all problems”. At the end of August, when extreme right-wing thugs hunted down and attacked foreigners in Chemnitz and also attacked a Jewish restaurant, Seehofer said the demonstrators were “concerned citizens” and added that as a citizen of Chemnitz, he too would have taken to the streets.

Keiser Report: Stock Markets Are Totally High

Ex-UN chief Ban Ki-moon says US healthcare system is 'morally wrong'

The former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has denounced the United States’ healthcare system as politically and morally wrong, and urged American leaders to enact publicly financed healthcare as a “human right”. Ban made the comments in an exclusive interview with the Guardian in New York, as part of his work with The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela to work on issues of global importance, including universal health coverage.

The US has the world’s most expensive health system, accounting for nearly one-fifth of American gross domestic product and costing more than $10,348 per American. The United Kingdom, by comparison, spends a little under 10% of GDP according to the latest available statistics, and healthcare is free at the point of delivery.

“It’s not easy to understand why such a country like the United States, the most resourceful and richest country in the world, does not introduce universal health coverage,” said Ban. “Nobody would understand why almost 30 million people are not covered by insurance.” Failing to provide health coverage, he said, was “unethical” and “politically wrong, morally wrong”. He accused the “powerful” interests of pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and doctors that “inhibit the American government” of having prevented the US from moving towards universal healthcare.

“This is for the people. Leaders are elected because they vowed that they would work for the people,” said Ban. “They are abandoning people because they are poor, then these poor people cannot find a proper medical support.”

Brett Kavanaugh: third woman expected to make accusations of sexual misconduct

A third woman is expected to publicly make accusations of sexual misconduct against supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh this week, her attorney Michael Avenatti said, plunging the judge’s confirmation to America’s highest court into further uncertainty. “She reached out to me. We vetted her claim and she satisfactorily passed that vetting,” Avenatti said of the new accuser in an interview with the Guardian on Monday.

Avenatti said the woman has also asked to testify at a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Thursday, which will hear from California professor Christine Blasey Ford, who has alleged the judge drunkenly sexually assaulted her while in high school. The fresh allegations relate to Kavanaugh’s school days when he attended the elite Georgetown prep school in Maryland, where Ford has already accused him of a violent sexual attack at a party there when he was 17 and she was 15. Those allegations turned his confirmation process upside down earlier this month. ...

Matters relating to the additional individual date back to Georgetown preparatory school, Avenatti said. “I’m going to be representing her and I may be representing some corroborating witnesses, and we plan on releasing additional information,” he told the Guardian. ... Avenatti tweeted on Sunday evening that: “I represent a woman with credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. We will be demanding the opportunity to present testimony to the committee and will likewise be demanding that Judge and others be subpoenaed to testify. The nomination must be withdrawn.”

Within minutes on Sunday night, Avenatti had been contacted by Mike Davis, the chief counsel for nominations for the judiciary committee, asking that any additional information “be submitted so that Senate investigators may promptly begin an inquiry”. Avenatti replied that he was aware of significant evidence of Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, in summary, participating in “the targeting of women” with alcohol or drugs at house parties in the Washington DC-area in the early 1980s “in order to allow a ‘train’ of men to gang rape them”.

Avenatti then posted: “Senate investigators should pose the following questions to Judge Kavanaugh without delay and provide the answers to the American people,” and then listed detailed questions, including: “Did you ever target one or more women for sex or rape at a house party? Did you ever assist Mark Judge or others in doing so?” ... Avenatti acknowledged that the list of detailed, questions about various aspects of the alleged sexual misconduct which he thought the committee should ask Kavanaugh, were noticeably specific. “They are very pointed because they are designed to elicit answers that go directly to the facts,” he said.

Lawyer Michael Avenatti Raises New Sexual Misconduct Allegation Against Kavanaugh

Brett Kavanaugh calls sexual assault allegations a “coordinated effort,” says he won’t withdraw

Brett Kavanaugh calls the sexual assault allegations weighing on his Supreme Court confirmation a “coordinated effort to destroy my good name” and “smears, pure and simple” in a new letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh wrote in the Monday letter. “The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last-minute character assassination will not succeed.” ...

“There is now a frenzy to come up with something—anything—that will block this process and a vote on my confirmation from occurring,” Kavanaugh wrote in the letter. “These are smears, pure and simple. And they debase our public discourse.”

Kavanaugh and Ford are set to separately testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, and the Washington Post reported that female staff attorneys will be questioning the judge and his accuser, though other logistical details may still be in question. (Sen. Dianne Feinstein called for that hearing to be postponed following the New Yorker report, but it’s not clear if that effort will be successful.) Both Kavanaugh and Ford have faced death threats since the accusations came to light.

France just refused to let a ship carrying 58 rescued migrants dock in Marseille

The French government said Tuesday it would not allow a ship carrying 58 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to dock in Marseille. “For the moment, it’s no,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told broadcaster BFM TV. This followed a request from charities operating the Aquarius 2 to land at the southern port, and allow the migrants to disembark.

Le Maire said that under international law, ships saving people at sea must dock at the nearest port — which, as the vessel was currently off the coast of Libya, headed north, wasn’t Marseille. “On matters of migration, the issue must be handled firmly and clearly, and European rules respected,” he said.

The ship — operated by charities SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders — has repeatedly been at the center of disputes over where it can dock in recent months, since Italy’s anti-immigration government took power in June and closed the country’s ports to rescue vessels.

Having rescued the migrants in two separate rescues over the past week and with Italy and Malta refusing to let the ship dock, SOS Mediterranee said Monday its "only option" was to set course for Marseille, where the charity is based and where it spent 19 days docked last month. ... The Aquarius 2 is the the last remaining private migrant rescue vessel plying the central Mediterranean, a busy trafficking route from Libya into Europe. But it faces an uncertain future after Panama revoked the ship’s registration Monday, following complaints from Italy that its captain had failed to follow orders.

This is an article worth reading. The Trump administration's barbarity in the way that it treats immigrant children is certainly nothing new.

An Untold Number of Indigenous Children Disappeared at U.S. Boarding Schools. Tribal Nations Are Raising the Stakes in Search of Answers.

When Yufna Soldier Wolf was a kid, she was made well aware of why her family members only spoke English, and why they dressed the way they did. Her grandfather and other elders used to recount their experiences at boarding schools, where the government sent hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children, from nearly every Indigenous nation within U.S. borders, to unlearn their languages and cultures. “A lot of them were physically abused, verbally abused, sexually abused,” she said. At the center of the stories were the children who never came home from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where her grandfather was a student. ... The school, which opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and closed its doors 100 years ago this month, was the United States’ most notorious Indian boarding school and the starting point for more than a century of child removal policies that continue to tear apart Indigenous families today. ...

A coalition of Indigenous organizations — including the National Congress of American Indians, which represents 250 Indigenous nations, the International Indian Treaty Council, the Native American Rights Fund, and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition — has turned to the United Nations to demand that the U.S. government “provide a full accounting of the children taken into government custody under the U.S. Indian Boarding School Policy whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.” After unsuccessful attempts to obtain such information directly through Freedom of Information Act requests to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, the coalition members hope that pressure from the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will make the difference. An appeal could require the U.S. to report on the statuses of missing Native boarding school children every six months. ...

Those pushing for the U.N. filing and the return of children’s remains acknowledge that it’s only a beginning — a full accounting of Carlisle’s legacy would mean reforming child welfare systems that continue to separate Native children from the land and their communities. Although Carlisle and the boarding schools like it have closed, child removal is an enduring reality for many Native families and their nations. “It’s always worked for colonizers worldwide, you take the children and you break the family tie,” said Madonna Thunder Hawk, a boarding school survivor who now works for the Lakota People’s Law Project advocating Indian child welfare reform in South Dakota. “If we’re fighting for the land, we’re also fighting for our future,” Thunder Hawk said of her community in Cheyenne River. “Who is going to be on the land? We’ve got to keep our children.”

Prosecuting Parents — and Separating Families — Was Meant to Deter Migration, Signed Memo Confirms

On April 23, the heads of the three major immigration agencies wrote to their boss, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, to present her with three options for how to step up immigration enforcement at the border. They recommended “Option 3” — prosecuting every adult who crossed the border illegally, including those who came with their children — because it would “have the greatest impact on current flows.”

In other words, top immigration officials believed that prosecuting parents, even if it meant separating families, would deter migration. Following their recommendation, Nielsen signed off on “Option 3,” authorizing one of the darkest dramas in the Trump administration’s attempt to remake the U.S. immigration system, resulting in thousands of families ripped apart, hundreds of parents deported alone, and children scattered in shelters across the country.

Despite the fact that the memo makes clear that “Option 3″ would involve family separation, Nielsen for months maintained publicly that “this administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border” and avoided saying that the goal of the newly aggressive prosecutions was deterrence.

The memo and other communications on family separation were released in redacted form through a Freedom of Information Act request brought by the watchdog groups Open the Government and Project on Government Oversight and were shared with The Intercept; the groups also obtained an unredacted copy of the memo, which, at the request of their sources, is not being published. It appears to be the same document reported on, but not published, by the Washington Post in April, before Nielsen added her signature. (The signature itself is redacted, but a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it is Nielsen’s.)

In a statement, POGO and Open the Government noted that “the memo does not discuss any plan for reuniting separated families, or the harmful effects of separation on children, nor does it reflect any input from the government agencies who would be responsible for caring for the separated children.” They added that there is more to be learned about the decision-making behind the administration’s actions this spring and summer: “The records point to new important documents, such as a legal analysis of the family separation policy, which remains shielded from the public and from Congress.” The groups also plan to challenge the redactions on the released documents.

Trump's 'Devastating' New Proposal Offers Green Cards 'To the Highest Bidder,' Rejecting Families Who Have Received Public Benefits

Angering immigrant rights and economic equality advocates alike, the Trump administration has made official its proposal to deny permanent residency, or green cards, to immigrants who have used public assistance programs including nutritional or housing aid. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced late Saturday that under the new "Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds" rule, immigrants who have used benefits including the Medicare Part D prescription program; the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps; or Section 8 housing vouchers could be considered ineligible for green cards.

The proposal could force more than 380,000 people to choose between vital assistance programs or the security offered by permanent residency. ... The proposal has been expected since this past spring. As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, rumors of the restriction have already had a detrimental effect on immigrant communities, as families across the country have begun to drop out of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), reporting fears that their participation will affect their right to stay in the country.

Some immigrants will be given the option of posting $10,000 in cash bonds to prove that they will not need public assistance—a proposal akin to auctioning off green cards to wealthy immigrants, according to the National Immigration Law Center (NILC).

Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Socialists of America candidate, covers for CIA Democrats

During a news conference on Saturday, Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to rule out endorsing former military and CIA agents who are running for Congress alongside Ocasio-Cortez in the Democratic Party. ... When a WSWS reporter asked her if she would back candidates from the military and intelligence agencies, she attempted to deflect the question.

“I think it all depends on the individual candidate,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “I don’t think that a person’s life experience in one way or another necessarily precludes them from running for office. I think what is important… is a candidate’s given story. And, for me I’m very outspoken about being an anti-war candidate... I don’t think that a person should be discounted because they were a bartender or on the front lines.” When this reporter pressed the question asking about Democratic Congressional candidate Max Rose, who is running in the same city as Ocasio-Cortez on a platform that emphasizes his experience as a soldier in Afghanistan, she continued to evade, claiming, “I don’t know a ton about his background, but I do know… What we try to do is focus on issues. What I see my responsibility as is building a consensus on single payer healthcare, on a peace economy... that’s really what we focus most on. I can’t provide opinions on all 200 candidates running.”

The response was a calculated evasion aimed at maintaining a left cover while avoiding stating her opposition to any of the Democratic Party candidates. In fact, Ocasio-Cortez has stated on multiple occasions that she supports a vote for all Democratic Party candidates in the 2018 elections. ... Despite her claims to be an “anti-war candidate,” during her run in the Democratic primary she made virtually no reference to foreign policy. She has also remained silent on the Democrats’ provocative anti-Russia campaign, only nodding along with Bernie Sanders at a rally after her victory as he denounced supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election. ...

Since her primary victory, Ocasio-Cortez has worked to establish her credentials as a conventional Democrat with a mildly “left” twist. She moved to distance herself from any association with socialism, disavowed a tweet criticizing Israeli’s massacre of Palestinians, voiced her support for “border security,” and hailed McCain. In July, Ocasio-Cortez also stumped for one of the Democratic Congressional candidates drawn directly from the military and intelligence agencies. She traveled to Kansas alongside Senator Bernie Sanders to show support for James Thompson, an Army veteran, who pledges to “Fight for America” and calls on his supporters to “Join the Thompson Army.”

Ian Welsh is spot on:

Of Course Ted Cruz Should Be Publicly Ostracized

So, Ted Cruz and his family were surrounded in a New York restaurant and left.

Much hand wringing ensues about civility. It’s bullshit. ...

Forcing people who make life worse for everyone else to at least suffer public approbation is a baby step in the right direction. Of course, it’s not enough, and people are morons. Barack Obama made life worse for most Americans in many many ways and he wouldn’t be shamed. (But then, he did make New York Bankers lives better….) ... People like Cruz and Obama are responsible for a ton of deaths. Generally incremental deaths, deaths due to policies which impoverish and immiserate people, but deaths nonetheless. They are responsible for even more suffering. Being unable to eat a meal at a restaurant is pretty minor in comparison. It’s not enough.

But don’t think public shaming like this does nothing. People forget that Obama was anti-gay marriage at first. He changed his mind because gay activists got in his face and the face of his family. They crashed public fundraisers, they made a fuss, they made his life and the life of people he cared about unpleasant. They backed it up with a donor strike. And they won. ...

If you want politicians and rich people to do what you want, apply pressure. Make them hurt. They don’t respond to appeals to their better nature because, even if they have one, it doesn’t apply to ordinary people because they don’t identify with ordinary people and they understand that, in most cases, their personal interests are directly opposed to the interests of normal people.

Monsanto's global weedkiller harms honeybees, research finds

The world’s most used weedkiller damages the beneficial bacteria in the guts of honeybees and makes them more prone to deadly infections, new research has found. Previous studies have shown that pesticides such as neonicotinoids cause harm to bees, whose pollination is vital to about three-quarters of all food crops. Glyphosate, manufactured by Monsanto, targets an enzyme only found in plants and bacteria.

However, the new study shows that glyphosate damages the microbiota that honeybees need to grow and to fight off pathogens. The findings show glyphosate, the most used agricultural chemical ever, may be contributing to the global decline in bees, along with the loss of habitat.

“We demonstrated that the abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concentrations documented in the environment,” said Erick Motta and colleagues from University of Texas at Austin in their new paper. They found that young worker bees exposed to glyphosate exposure died more often when later exposed to a common bacterium. Other research, from China and published in July, showed that honeybee larvae grew more slowly and died more often when exposed to glyphosate. An earlier study, in 2015, showed the exposure of adult bees to the herbicide at levels found in fields “impairs the cognitive capacities needed for a successful return to the hive”. ...

The new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that some of the key beneficial bacteria in bees’ guts have the enzyme that is targeted by glyphosate. It also found that the ability of newly emerged worker bees to develop a normal gut biome was hampered by glyphosate exposure.

Yellowstone grizzlies safe from hunting as judge returns them to protected list

In a ruling hailed as historic for wildlife conservation in America, a US judge on Monday ordered that the world-famous grizzly bears living in and around Yellowstone national park be returned to the endangered species list. The move means that a controversial sport hunt of grizzlies in Wyoming and Idaho – outside the boundaries of the park – will be canceled indefinitely, extending protections against hunting that have lasted 44 years.

Tim Preso of the environmental law firm EarthJustice, who served as lead attorney in a case challenging the removal of protection for bears, was ecstatic when reached at his office in Bozeman, Montana, after word arrived of the decision. He called the ruling “momentous”, given the high profile of grizzlies and growing threats to their survival in the 21st century, including climate change, which has affected a key grizzly bear food, the seeds inside whitebark pinecones.

Judge Dana Christensen, who sits on a district court in Montana, had “had done a huge amount of homework, as was evident by the questions he asked when we presented our case, and, because of that, we were hopeful”, Preso said. “This is a case that he will be known for and it’s an important part of the legacy of American conservation. He did what a judge does – apply the law without being prejudiced by politics.”

There are four other grizzly populations in the northern Rocky Mountains in the US, only one of which is significant in size. Saving grizzly bears from near-extinction in the Yellowstone area is considered one of the greatest wildlife success stories. Numbers of bears have rebounded to more than 700 from a low of about 135 three decades ago. As such, the three states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho have aggressively pushed to have bears removed from federal protections. ...

True biological recovery, as spelled out in the Endangered Species Act, the judge said, means reconnecting the population of greater Yellowstone bears with others in the Lower 48. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the judge labeled the rationale behind the government’s case for delisting the bears arbitrary and capricious.

Naomi Klein: A Year After Hurricane Maria, There Is Nothing Natural About Puerto Rico’s Disaster

Where should you move to save yourself from climate change?

Climate change is fueling heatwaves, hurricanes and floods, gradually making certain places in the US challenging, if not outright miserable, to live in. Scientists, and some members of the public, are starting to question where in the US will remain comfortable to call home. The answer, broadly speaking, is north and maybe west. Florida has seen a population boom in recent decades but the southern portion of the state is on course to be submerged by rising seas. The Gulf coast will get supercharged hurricanes, while the south-west and south-east US will be baked by increasingly hostile heat.

“Areas towards the north and away from the ocean and that central corridor where you get tornadoes probably look best,” said Vivek Shandas, an expert on climate change’s impact on cities at Portland State University. Shandas recommends looking to live in a “band roughly above the 42nd parallel” – a line of latitude that divides New York and Pennsylvania and forms the southern borders of Oregon and Idaho.

Places close to a reliable source of water without being flood-prone as the seas rise are attractive, such as areas near the Great Lakes and the Pacific north-west. “Seattle doesn’t break 90F that often so it’ll be nothing like Phoenix in terms of tolerability of heat,” said Shandas. “Places like Portland, Oregon, and Boise, Idaho, will be relatively safeguarded, apart from a bit of wildfire smoke.” There will be bastions elsewhere. “Cincinnati, for example, is surprisingly good,” said Shandas. “It’s close to the Great Lakes, away from hurricanes, away from the eastern seaboard. It will get more heatwaves, but then again we all will.”

The scope of these climate considerations is vast, touching on everything from transport links to the availability of flood insurance. Jesse Keenan, a climate adaptation expert at Harvard University, said that he likes Buffalo, New York, and Duluth, Minnesota, as climate refuges as they tick many of the appropriate boxes. “Their sources of energy production are stable, they have cooler climates and they have access to plenty of fresh water,” Keenan said. “They also have less vulnerability to forest fires, as compared to somewhere like the Pacific north-west. They also have a legacy of excess infrastructural capacity that allows them to diversify their economy in the future. Land prices are cheap and they have a relatively well-educated and skilled labor force.”

Also of Interest

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

Papa Bernie Got a (Not So) Brand New Foreign Policy Bag

IPCC Manipulating Climate Report Summary to Favor Wealthy Nations

Prosecution Presented Fairly Strong Murder Case Against Former CPD Officer Jason Van Dyke

How One Senator Cornered Brett Kavanaugh About His Mentor’s Sexually Explicit Emails

Teachers’ Strikes May Reinvigorate US Labor Movement

Visionary Report Demands 'New Social Contract' to Curb Threats Tech Giants Pose to Democracy

Amazon Is Getting Cities and States to Rob Their Own citizens

A Little Night Music

Clifford Gibson - She's Got the Jordan River in Her Hips

Clifford Gibson - Tired of Being Mistreated Pt. 1

Clifford Gibson - Bad Luck Dice

Clifford Gibson - Keep Your Windows Pinned

Clifford Gibson - Don't Put That Thing On Me

Clifford Gibson - Hard-Headed Blues

Clifford Gibson - Old Time Rider

Clifford Gibson - Society Blues

Clifford Gibson - Blues Without A Dime

Clifford "Grandpappy" Gibson - It's Best To Know Who You're Talking To