---

---

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sidney Bechet

---

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features jazz saxophone and clarinet player Sidney Bechet. Enjoy!

^{Sidney Bechet - Blue Horizon}

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

-- Denis Diderot

---

News and Opinion

Chris Hedges: Monarchs Belong in the Dustbin of History

The fawning adulation of Queen Elizabeth in the United States, which fought a revolution to get rid of the monarchy, and in Great Britain, is in direct proportion to the fear gripping a discredited, incompetent and corrupt global ruling elite. The global oligarchs are not sure the next generation of royal sock puppets – mediocrities that include a pedophile prince and his brother, a cranky and eccentric king who accepted suitcases and bags stuffed with $3.2 million in cash from the former prime minister of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and who has millions stashed in offshore accounts – are up to the job. Let’s hope they are right. ...

Monarchy obscures the crimes of empire and wraps them in nostalgia. It exalts white supremacy and racial hierarchy. It justifies class rule. It buttresses an economic and social system that callously discards and often consigns to death those considered the lesser breeds, most of whom are people of color. The queen’s husband Prince Phillip, who died in 2021, was notorious for making racist and sexist remarks, politely explained away in the British press as “gaffes.” He described Beijing, for example, as “ghastly” during a 1986 visit and told British students: “If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”

The cries of the millions of victims of empire; the thousands killed, tortured, raped and imprisoned during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya; the 13 Irish civilians gunned down in “Bloody Sunday;” the more than 4,100 First Nations children who died or went missing in Canada’s residential schools, government-sponsored institutions established to “assimilate” indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture, and the hundreds of thousands killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are drowned out by cheers for royal processions and the sacral aura an obsequious press weaves around the aristocracy. The coverage of the queen’s death is so mind-numbingly vapid — the BBC sent out a news alert on Saturday when Prince Harry and Prince William, accompanied by their wives, surveyed the floral tributes to their grandmother displayed outside Windsor Castle — that the press might as well turn over the coverage to the mythmakers and publicists employed by the royal family.

The royals are oligarchs. They are guardians of their class. The world’s largest landowners include King Mohammed VI of Morocco with 176 million acres, the Holy Roman Catholic Church with 177 million acres, the heirs of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with 531 million acres and now, King Charles III with 6.6 billion acres of land. British monarchs are worth almost $28 billion. The British public will provide a $33 million subsidy to the Royal Family over the next two years, although the average household in the U.K. saw its income fall for the longest period since records began in 1955 and 227,000 households experience homelessness in Britain.

Royals, to the ruling class, are worth the expense. They are effective tools of subjugation. British postal and rail workers canceled planned strikes over pay and working conditions after the queen’s death. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) postponed its congress. Labour Party members poured out heartfelt tributes. Even Extinction Rebellion, which should know better, indefinitely canceled its planned “Festival of Resistance.” The BBC’s Clive Myrie dismissed Britain’s energy crisis — caused by the war in Ukraine — that has thrown millions of people into severe financial distress as “insignificant” compared with concerns over the queen’s health. The climate emergency, pandemic, the deadly folly of the U.S. and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, soaring inflation, the rise of neo-fascist movements and deepening social inequality will be ignored as the press spews florid encomiums to class rule. There will be 10 days of official mourning.

Zelensky To Headline US Weapons Manufacturers Conference

EU unable to stop economic collapse, pin their hopes on Zelensky

Lots more at the link. Worth a full read.

Scott Ritter: Why Russia Will Still Win, Despite Ukraine’s Gains

Russia has fought three different styles of wars in the six months since it entered Ukraine. The first was a war of maneuver, designed to seize as much territory as possible to shape the battlefield militarily and politically. The operation was conducted with approximately 200,000 Russian and allied forces, who were up against an active-duty Ukrainian military of some 260,000 troops backed by up to 600,000 reservists. The standard 3:1 attacker-defender ratio did not apply — the Russians sought to use speed, surprise, and audacity to minimize Ukraine’s numerical advantage, and in the process hoping for a rapid political collapse in Ukraine that would prevent any major fighting between the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces.

This plan succeeded in some areas (in the south, for instance, around Kherson), and did fix Ukrainian troops in place and caused the diversion of reinforcements away from critical zones of operation. But it failed strategically — the Ukrainians did not collapse but rather solidified — ensuring a long, hard fight ahead. The second phase of the Russian operation had the Russians regroup to focus on the liberation of Donbass. Here, Russia adapted its operational methodology, using its superiority in firepower to conduct a slow, deliberate advance against Ukrainian forces dug into extensive defensive networks and, in doing so, achieving unheard of casualty ratios that had ten or more Ukrainians being killed or wounded for every Russian casualty.

While Russia was slowly advancing against dug in Ukrainian forces, the U.S. and NATO provided Ukraine with billions of dollars of military equipment, including the equivalent of several armored divisions (tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery, and support vehicles), along with extensive operational training on this equipment at military installations outside Ukraine.

In short, while Russia was busy destroying the Ukrainian military on the battlefield, Ukraine was busy reconstituting that army, replacing destroyed units with fresh forces that were extremely well equipped, well trained, and well led. The second phase of the conflict saw Russia destroy the old Ukrainian army. In its stead, Russia faced mobilized territorial and national units, supported by reconstituted NATO-trained forces. But the bulk of the NATO trained forces were held in reserve. These are the forces that have been committed to the current fighting. Russia finds itself in a full-fledged proxy war with NATO, facing a NATO-style military force that is being logistically sustained by NATO, trained by NATO, provided with NATO intelligence, and working in harmony with NATO military planners.

What this means is that the current Ukrainian counteroffensive should not be viewed as an extension of the phase two battle, but rather the initiation of a new third phase which is not a Ukrainian-Russian conflict, but a NATO-Russian conflict. ... There will be a fourth phase, and a fifth phase … as many phases as necessary before Ukraine either exhausts its will to fight and die, NATO exhausts its ability to continue supplying the Ukrainian military, or Russia exhausts its willingness to fight an inconclusive conflict in Ukraine. Back in May I called the decision by the U.S. to provide billions of dollars of military assistance to Ukraine “a game changer.” What we are witnessing in Ukraine today is how this money has changed the game. The result is more dead Ukrainian and Russian forces, more dead civilians, and more destroyed equipment. ...

In the end, I still believe the end game remains the same — Russia will win. But the cost for extending this war has become much higher for all parties involved.

Biden Now HIDING U.S. Arms Sales

Yanis Varoufakis on Europe's Energy Crisis, War in Ukraine & Crackdown After Queen's Death

Israel warns over Iran uranium capability with nuclear talks at halt

Tensions around a breakdown in talks between Iran and the US over Tehran’s nuclear programme escalated on Monday when Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, claimed that Iran would be able to produce enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear warheads within a few weeks.

Gantz also revealed a map detailing 10 facilities in Syria allegedly being used to arm Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah. He said the facilities represented a threat to Israel’s security.

Iran for its part claimed it had manufactured a stealth drone that could hit major Israeli cities. ...

It is thought the US would prefer to keep a lid on the Iran issue before the midterm elections in November, but one of the most informed thinktanks on the nuclear deal, the International Crisis Group, said in a new report that the situation could spiral out of control.

It said there was little space left for Iran to escalate without it being able to make weapons-grade fissile material in days. The US has been steadily increasing sanctions against Iran while Tehran has, according to the IAEA, increased its nuclear stockpile and use of advanced centrifuges.

Fifty million people now trapped in modern slavery in a ‘surge of exploitation’

Fifty million people around the world are trapped in modern slavery, either forced to work against their will or forced into a marriage, according to new global estimates, marking a significant rise over the past five years.

The number of people trapped in forced labour, including sex trafficking, rose to 28 million, with a further 22 million trapped in forced marriage, says a report published on Monday by the International Labour Organization, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the anti-trafficking human rights group Walk Free.

The new estimates found that 10 million more people had fallen victim to forms of modern slavery in 2021 compared with 2016, with women and children the most badly affected.

Most cases of forced labour – 86% – were found in the private sector in industries including manufacturing, construction, agriculture and domestic work. Millions of people, mainly women and girls, are also estimated to be trapped in commercial sexual exploitation. The other 14% of cases are state-sanctioned forced labour.

The report found that the main form of coercion used by employers was the deliberate withholding of wages and the threat of dismissal, and that the refugee crisis has fuelled a surge of exploitation in supply chains and commercial businesses and industries.

Markets Crash After Inflation Report Shows Surge

Biden Touts 'Exceptionally Strong' Economy As Americans Face SKYROCKETING Food, Rent, Energy Prices

Alabama is jailing pregnant marijuana users to ‘protect’ fetuses

At a traffic stop, the police officer found a small amount of weed. Ashley Banks, a 23-year-old woman living in Alabama, admitted to the cops that she had smoked marijuana two days earlier. It was the same day that she learned she was pregnant. She was six weeks along. It was this disclosure – that she was pregnant – that led Etowah county officials to keep her in jail, without a trial, for the next three months.

Alabama has an exceptionally high incarceration rate, locking up about 938 people per 100,000 residents. But even in a state with a disproportionate prison population, an arrest for small-scale drug possession would not usually lead to such an extended pre-trial jail stay. But Banks fell victim to a peculiar Alabama law that advocates say Etowah county enforces with special zeal: pregnant women who are arrested for drug offenses are not allowed to post bail and go free, the way other people are. They have to stay in state custody: either in jail, or in a residential drug rehab program. The logic is that the women are a danger to their fetuses: they need to be imprisoned by the state, and kept from their freedom, in order to protect their pregnancies.

In Banks’s case, jail officials tried to send her to rehab, but after an assessment, the facility turned her away: Banks, they said, was merely a casual marijuana user, not an addict, and did not need in-patient drug treatment. Too healthy for rehab, but not trusted enough by the state to be set free, she was kept in limbo in jail. Meanwhile, Banks’s pregnancy wasn’t going well. She has a family history of miscarriages, and was experiencing bleeding in jail. At one point, jail officials assigned her to sleep in a bed that was already occupied by another prisoner; Banks slept on the floor.

She’s not the only one. Another woman, Hali Burns, was taken to the Etowah county jail just six days after giving birth to her son, with police saying that she had tested positive for a drug used by pregnant women with opioid addictions to help manage cravings and withdrawal. When she was thrown in jail, Burns was still physically recovering from giving birth. But the jail had no facilities for her to pump or tend to her wounds. Her partner tried to bring pads and underwear to her, so that she wouldn’t have to bleed into her clothes, but Etowah county authorities wouldn’t let her have them. The risk for infection was great – the indignity was even greater.

Stories like Banks’s and Burns’s – the needless and disproportionate incarceration, the loss of freedom and recourse inflicted on them on the basis of their pregnancies, the cruelty justified by authorities as “protection” for a fetus – are becoming more common. Alabama criminalizes more women for pregnancy than any other state. Just last year, Kim Blalock, a mother of six from Florence, Alabama, was charged with a felony for filling a longstanding prescription from her doctor while pregnant. Prosecutors charged that the medication, which Blalock was taking as prescribed, could have hurt her fetus, and that she should have known not to refill it. (Blalock later gave birth to a healthy baby boy.)

‘A wakeup call’: more Republicans are softening staunch anti-abortion stance

A growing number of Republicans are changing their positions on abortions since the fall of Roe v Wade as midterm elections approach in the US, signaling a softened shift from their previously staunch anti-abortion stances. Since the supreme court overturned the federal right to abortion in June, many Republicans are adopting more compromised positions in attempts to win votes in key states through a slew of changes in messaging on websites, advertisements and public statements.

The moves come amid a ferocious backlash to the decision that has revived Democratic hopes in the midterm elections, as a solidly red state like Kansas voted in a referendum to keep some abortion rights.

With midterm elections approaching, abortion has also served as a prime motivator for female voters across the country, especially among Democrats, and driving striking special-election successes for the party seeking to hold both houses of Congress.

According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, 56% of voters say that the issue of abortion will be “very important” to them at the polls this fall, marking a significant increase from 43% in March. Additionally, an increasing number of states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are seeing growing gender gaps among new registrants since the supreme court’s Dobbs decision, according to the Democratic data services firm TargetSmart.

---

---

Experts Warn Supreme Court Supporting 'Dangerous' GOP Legal Theory Could Destroy US Democracy

Progressive campaigners in North Carolina warned Monday that a once-fringe conservative legal theory set to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming months poses a serious threat to representative democracy.

The nation's highest court is expected to hear Moore v. Harper, a case involving North Carolina's racially rigged congressional map, sometime in December or early next year—meaning the outcome won't affect the 2022 midterm elections.

After North Carolina's GOP-controlled Legislature prejudicially redrew the state's congressional map to lock in 10 of its 14 districts for Republicans, the state Supreme Court struck down the map, which it described as an "egre­gious and inten­tional partisan gerry­mander... designed to enhance Repub­lican perform­ance."

Republican state lawmakers appealed, citing independent state legislature theory (ISLT), which the pro-democracy group Common Cause calls a "dangerous legal argument" increasingly popular in right-wing circles positing that federal elections can only be regulated by a state's lawmakers, not its judiciary—or even its constitution.

The elections clause and presidential electors clause of the U.S. Constitution explicitly empower state legislatures with regulating federal elections and appointing electors, respectively.

However, according to the Brennan Center for Justice:

The dispute hinges on how to under­stand the word "legis­lature." The long-running under­stand­ing is that it refers to each state's general lawmak­ing processes, includ­ing all the normal proced­ures and limit­a­tions. So if a state consti­tu­tion subjects legis­la­tion to being blocked by a governor's veto or citizen refer­en­dum, elec­tion laws can be blocked via the same means. And state courts must ensure that laws for federal elec­tions, like all laws, comply with their state consti­tu­tions.

Proponents of the inde­pend­ent state legis­lature theory reject this traditional read­ing, insist­ing that these clauses give state legis­latures exclus­ive and near-abso­lute power to regu­late federal elec­tions. The result? When it comes to federal elec­tions, legis­lat­ors would be free to viol­ate the state consti­tu­tion and state courts could­n't stop them.

Purveyors of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—including Ginni Thomas, a right-wing activist and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas—invoked ISLT during their efforts to pressure state lawmakers to help overturn President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

Experts including Michael Luttig, a former federal judge and distinguished conservative jurist, have warned than ISLT is a central pillar of the "Repub­lican blue­print to steal the 2024 elec­tion."

Speaking of the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court hearing of Moore v. Harper during a Monday webinar co-hosted by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Kathay Feng, national redistricting director at Common Cause, said that "the date has yet to be set, but what we do know is the question at issue: Whether state legislatures should be given absolute and supreme power to create voting laws and redistricting maps for congressional elections."

Feng blasted what she called the GOP's "down and dirty" map rigging as "illegal and unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders with devastating consequences for voters, particularly Black voters, and their ability to elect candidates of their choice."

"The danger is not just that partisan political leaders will be able to draw lines without any kind of checks, but also that we the people will no longer have a representative government," she asserted. "Our government will be of, by, and for the politicians, not regular people."

Common Cause North Carolina executive director Bob Phillips called his state "number one in gerrymandered maps and number one in redistricting lawsuits."

"I don't know if there's any other state in America that holds this distinction, but every single election from 2012 up to 2020 was run and held… by maps that were eventually ruled unconstitutional," he said during the webinar. "So we do have this sordid past."

"We have had some success in the state courts in getting relief for the people of North Carolina, which we feel is vitally important," Phillips added. "And if that was taken away by the… U.S. Supreme Court making the wrong decision, we can just imagine what it would mean in North Carolina and across the country, with legislatures being able to rig the congressional lines freely and suppress the vote whether it's purging voters, making barriers to voter access, and just an assortment of things."

"The state courts must not be taken out of the equation," he insisted.

Tyler Daye, the policy and civic engagement manager at Common Cause North Carolina, said during the virtual meeting that "my first experience voting was in gerrymandered congressional districts."

"I used to live in the old 12th District, which stretched from Charlotte to Greensboro," he explained. "That district packed Black voters to dilute our voting power. It looked more like a river than a congressional district."

Daye was referring to the practice of "packing" voters of color into the same district in order to prevent them from having greater political power in surrounding ones. The related practice of "cracking" is the splitting of communities of color to dilute their power in a given district.

"[My] district has been called the most gerrymandered district in the country," Daye added. "Learning about how my voting power was being diluted made me want to get involved in the fight to end gerrymandering."

"Thankfully, the North Carolina state Supreme Court acted as a check on the state Legislature in a landmark ruling for our state," he said. "Ultimately, the North Carolina Supreme Court appointed special masters to draw the congressional map we currently have. These maps are not perfect, but they are a significant improvement over the extreme gerrymanders in the original congressional map."

"If the Legislature were to be successful in Moore v. Harper, it could threaten the state court's ability to provide this crucial check on the legislative branch," Daye warned.

Allison Riggs, legal counsel in the case and co-executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, told attendees that "we are optimistic about the case we're bringing to court."

"In 2019, five of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts said that litigants and folks fighting for fair maps were not condemned to scream into a void and could go to state courts to seek relief under state constitutions," Riggs noted, referring to a case in which she argued against a previous North Carolina congressional map that had been struck down by a district court due to partisan gerrymandering.

"If the rogue theory being pushed here—the independent state legislative theory—were applicable the way it's being argued," she continued, "then the five justices who wrote that opinion would have no reason to have said it… It would be passing, illogical, and strange for them to have said go to state courts and state constitutions if the U.S. Constitution prohibited that."

"Likewise, there have been a number of cases over the past 200 years that strongly stand for the position that state courts and state processes matter in reviewing redistricting plans and reviewing election laws," Riggs added. "So what the North Carolina legislative leaders are proposing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court now is radical and is a dramatic departure from what we've seen for hundreds of years."

DOJ SEIZES Phones Of Trump Aides Amid WAVE Of Subpoenas

---

---

Steven Donziger: Minn. Police Paid $8.6M By BIG OIL To Brutalize Line 3 Pipeline Protestors

Fossil Fuel Giants Have Targeted 150+ Activists With 'Judicial Harassment': Report

In a first-of-its-kind analysis, the nonprofit legal organization EarthRights International on Monday published research showing how the fossil fuel industry has targeted more than 150 climate campaigners and community leaders in recent years with lawsuits aimed at silencing protests, as well as other forms of "judicial harassment."

The group identified 152 cases in which fossil fuel companies used judicial intimidation tactics to stop critics from organizing against oil, gas, and coal extraction, including 93 strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) and 49 "abusive subpoenas" directed at individuals and groups.

"The fossil fuel industry has responded to growing public concern about climate change by retaliating against those who challenge its practices," said Kirk Herbertson, senior policy adviser for EarthRights and the author of the report. "We cannot let the oil, gas, and mining industries weaponize the legal system to silence their critics."

According to EarthRights, the report—titled The Fossil Fuel Industry's Use of SLAPPs and Judicial Harassment in the United States—is the first to quantify the lengths fossil fuel companies go to within the judicial system to silence their critics, such as four anti-fracking activists in Colorado and a reporter who filmed their protests in 2018, numerous groups and people who demonstrated against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and a grassroots group that spoke out about public health concerns regarding a coal ash landfill in Alabama.

Oil company Energy Transfer Partners filed the lawsuits against Greenpeace, Earth First Movement, and several individuals who supported the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in its campaign to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, and openly admitted the cases were meant to intimidate the protesters and others who would speak out against fossil fuel projects. The company sought $900 million in damages and invoked the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

As the report says, Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren told a North Dakota news anchor: "Could we get some monetary damages out of this thing, and probably will we? Yeah, sure. Is that my primary objective? Absolutely not. It's to send a message—you can't do this, this is unlawful, and it's not going to be tolerated in the United States."

For years, said Greenpeace USA on Monday, Big Oil has tried to "shut us up, shut us down, and strip away our First Amendment right to free speech" using SLAPPs.

In addition to dozens of SLAPP cases, the report details "abusive subpoenas," a legal tactic used frequently by oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron, among others. Although many of the subpoenas sought by fossil fuel giants were dismissed by courts, they can still have "a chilling effect" and discourage campaigners from communicating about their work.

"In 2012, Chevron tried to obtain the private communications of dozens of activists, lawyers, and scientists in retaliation for criticism of its environmental pollution in the Amazon region," the EarthRights International reports says.

The group released its analysis two days before Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) was set to lead a congressional hearing on "the legal assault on environmental activists and the First Amendment." A Greenpeace representative is scheduled to testify.

EarthRights included in its analysis a number of recommendations for legislatures, media organizations, courts, and other stakeholders to stop powerful corporations from weaponizing the judicial system against people and groups who exercise their First Amendment rights. The group recommendations included that:

The U.S. Congress and state lawmakers adopt strong anti-SLAPP laws, building on the progress made in 32 states, where laws of varying scope and quality have been passed;

Lawyers who take on their powerful clients' SLAPP cases be sanctioned by courts and disciplined by bar associations, which ostensibly prohibit "lawyers from bringing frivolous lawsuits where there is no basis in law or fact"; and

The federal government take steps to ensure that law enforcement and security agencies are not perpetuating "myths that treat environmental activists and social justice leaders as terrorists," making them more vulnerable to violence and retaliation than campaigners focused on other issues.

"In the coming decades, debates over the future of energy will continue as climate change affects more communities across the United States," said EarthRights. "People must be able to add their voice, without fear of retaliation, to the public debates that will determine the future direction of our country and our planet."

‘Wildfire of disinformation’: how Chevron exploits a news desert

The dire state of local journalism in the US has been well documented in recent years, as the closure of hundreds of local newspapers has created American “news deserts” where people struggle for information on local politics and happenings. It has also created openings for companies and political groups to swoop in, serving up a mixture of local news and propaganda, with the latest being Chevron, in Texas’ news starved – and oil-rich – Permian Basin.

The launch of Chevron’s “Permian Proud” site, in August, was first reported by Gizmodo. The banner at the top of Permian Proud does state that the site is “sponsored by Chevron”. But at first glance, the sponsorship seems like a benevolent grant. On Wednesday Permian Proud’s front page included stories about an upcoming air show and a storytelling workshop – typical local newspaper fare.

But interspersed with news of livestock sales and processions is a series of stories lauding Chevron’s achievements in the Permian Basin, a sprawling area covering parts of west Texas and east New Mexico, where the company operates numerous oil fields. ...

Gizmodo reported that content on the site has been written by Mike Aldax, who works for a San Francisco-based PR firm. Since 2014, according to Gizmodo, Aldax “has also written for a Chevron-funded newspaper in California called the Richmond Standard”. Chevron’s Texas offering has echoes of other dubious “local news” sites that have emerged in recent years.

Locality Labs and Metric Media, both operated by the same ex-journalist, have opened hundreds of “news” sites, which purport to represent local communities, since 2019. The sites, which include the Great Lakes Wire and the Illinois Valley Times, masquerade as local news outlets, but in reality are funded by Republican and conservative groups.

EU slammed over failure to protect marine life from ‘destructive’ fishing

The waters of the EU are in a “dismal” state, with only a third of fish populations studied in the north-east Atlantic considered to be in good condition, according to more than 200 scientists and conservationists.

The analysis, issued on Monday, follows a scathing report from the European court of auditors two years ago, which warned that the EU had failed to halt marine biodiversity loss in Europe’s waters and to restore fishing to sustainable levels.

The EU has left 99% of continental waters unprotected from “high-impact activities” including bottom trawling and industrial-scale extraction, the scientists say, with only 1% set up as “true” marine protected areas (MPAs), By 2017, only 10.8% of the surface of Europe’s seas had been designated as MPAs.

In a declaration – published before a meeting in Brussels next week at which countries will agree common positions on December’s Cop15 global biodiversity conference – they urged member states to “raise the bar” of ocean conservation away from the “disastrous status quo”.

Air quality plummets as smoke from roaring wildfires chokes US west

California firefighters are battling large blazes across the state as the west’s fire season heats up, covering swaths of Oregon, Washington, California and Canada in heavy smoke that has also traveled across the US. ... In northern California, a large wildfire continues to threaten thousands of mountain homes in the foothills east of Sacramento and has forced the evacuation of 11,000 people. The Mosquito fire has scorched nearly 65 sq miles (168 sq km) and is 10% contained, according to the California department of forestry and fire (Cal Fire), the state’s firefighting agency.

The fire has sent smoke over a large portion of the northern Sierra region. California health officials urged people in affected areas to stay indoors where possible. Lake Tahoe, more than 50 miles away from the fire, is facing some of the worst effects, with smoke producing unhealthy to hazardous air quality in the region. For the second year in row, organizers of the Tour de Tahoe canceled the annual 72-mile bicycle ride scheduled for Sunday around Lake Tahoe because of heavy smoke.

Smoke from the Mosquito fire and a wildfire burning in Oregon has moved across the country, the meteorologist Scott McGuire, with the National Weather Service’s Reno office, told SFGate.

“It’s not as thick as it is here, but it has traveled across the entire United States,” he said. “I can see it clear as day on the satellite loop that it’s moving all the way across to northern parts of Canada, too ... There’s so many small fires out there contributing to this. It’s quite remarkable in a bad way.”

---

Also of Interest

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

Diana Johnstone: The Specter of Germany Is Rising

Russia Retaliates For Ukrainian Strikes On Russian Controlled Electricity Networks

Russia Advances in Bakhmut, Defends in North Donetsk; EU Leaders Split on Gas Crisis

13-year-old on Ukrainian gov't kill list speaks out

Biden's $69B Ukraine Spending To Outdo Russia's ENTIRE MILITARY BUDGET, Afghanistan War Cost: Report

Final Opinion Polls Before the Italian Elections Show Parties Are Out of Step With Voters on Russia Sanctions

Conflict between Armenia & Azerbaijan. Russia considers power up from SMO to ATO.

China “To Those Who Have Everything”

Megadrought in the American south-west: a climate disaster unseen in 1,200 years

Line 3 activists face felony charges for attempted assisted suicide

Ukraine Wins Back Territory From Russia!

Jamaica, Antigua & Barbuda May Cut Ties to British Monarch; Renew Call for Reparations for Slavery

Biden FREAKS As Rail Strike LOOMS With Friday Deadline

Teacher Who QUIT Over BOOK BANNING At Risk Of Losing Teaching License

---

A Little Night Music

Sidney Bechet - Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives To Me

Sidney Bechet - Egyptian Fantasy

Sidney Bechet - Les oignons

Sidney Bechet - Lazy River

Sidney Bechet - St Louis Blues

Sidney Bechet - Tommy's Blues

Sidney Bechet - Joshua Fit De Battle of Jericho

Sidney Bechet - Old Stack O'Lee Blues

Sidney Bechet - Sweet Georgia Brown

---