Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features folk blues musician Ry Cooder. Enjoy!

“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

-- George R.R. Martin

News and Opinion

Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech'

In the run-up to the Fourth of July, the Liberty Country Vindicator, a small local newspaper in Texas, posted sections of the declaration of the independence to its Facebook page, in a bid to encourage discussion of US history among its readership. What must have seemed like a benign social media strategy managed to fall foul of Facebook’s algorithmic censors, which labeled sections of the declaration hate speech and removed the posts.

Facebook alerted the Vindicator to let them know that the section of the declaration that includes a reference to “merciless Indian savages” was a violation of their community standards. The declaration’s passage has often been cited as an encapsulation of the dehumanising attitude toward indigenous Americans that the US was founded on. Facebook’s removal of the section arguably put the Vindicator in a position of whitewashing history.

Casey Stinnett, the managing editor of the paper, said in a post on the site on Monday that the removal also put them in a “a quandary about whether to continue with posting the final two parts of the declaration … should Facebook find anything in them offensive, the Vindicator could lose its Facebook page”. Facebook has since apologised and reinstated the post, but it’s not the first time algorithmic censors have tried to censor important historical artefacts because they are considered obscene. ...

These errors in censorship might appear trivial, but as an ever-increasing amount of internet usage takes place within a tiny number of social media sites, it is likely these kinds of challenging works or honest reflections of history will reach fewer people. As Stinnett says, outlets like theirs have become “dependent, perhaps too dependent, on Facebook to communicate with local residents”.

America Celebrates Lateral Move From Monarchy To Corporate Rule

Today America celebrates its liberation from the shackles of the British Crown and the beginning of its transition into corporatist oligarchy, which is a lot like celebrating your lateral promotion from housekeeping to laundry staff. Fireworks will be set off, hot dogs will be consumed, and a strange yellow concoction known as Mountain Dew will be imbibed by patriotic high-fiving Yankees eager to celebrate their hard-fought freedom to funnel their taxes into corporate welfare instead of to the King.

Spark up a bottle rocket for me, America! In trouncing King George’s red-coated goon squad, you made it possible for the donor class to slowly buy up more and more control of your shiny new government, allowing for a system of rule determined not by royal bloodlines, but by wealth bloodlines. Now instead of your national affairs being determined by some gilded schmuck across the pond, they are determined by the billionaire owners of multinational corporations and banks. These oligarchs have shored up their rule to such an extent that congressional candidates who outspend their opponents are almost certain to win, and a 2014 Princeton study found that ordinary Americans have no influence whatsoever over the behavior of their government while the will of the wealthy has a direct influence on US policy and legislation.

The elite class secured its stance as British Rule 2.0 by throwing their money behind politicians who they knew would advance their interests, whether those interests are in ensuring that the arms and munitions they manufacture get used frequently, the expansion of predatory trade policies, keeping tax loopholes open and keeping taxes on the wealthiest of the wealthy very low, deregulating corporations and banks, or enabling underhanded Wall Street practices which hurt the many for the benefit of the few. The existence of legalized bribery and corporate lobbying as illustrated in the video above have enabled the plutocrats to buy up the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government, and with these in their pockets they were eventually able to get the Judicial branch as well since justices are appointed and approved by the other two. Now having secured all three branches in a system of checks and balances theoretically designed to prevent totalitarian rule, the billionaire class has successfully secured totalitarian rule. ...

1776 turned out to be nothing other than a transition from one form of exploitative rule to another, but who knows? Maybe a year in the not-too-distant future will see America celebrating a real Independence Day.

Trump's Ever More Powerful Weapons Against Journalism

Last month, after spending the better part of two years railing against purveyors of “fake news,” the president called the media the “enemy of the American people.” Now the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly compiling a database of journalists, editors, correspondents and bloggers to identify the leading voices in their respective fields.

According to an April 5 report in Bloomberg Government, DHS was searching for a contractor to help it monitor more than 290,000 global news sources in over 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, all of which will be translated to English in real time. These outlets would include newspapers and magazines, television and radio, podcasts and social media.

“The DHS request says the selected vendor will set up an online ‘media influence database’ giving users the ability to browse based on location, beat, and type of influence,” Bloomberg’s Cary O’Reilly reveals. The database would include, “[f]or each influencer found, present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for, and an overview of the previous coverage published by the media influencer.”

If the project sounds like a First Amendment violation waiting to happen, that’s because it is. While DHS insists that the database will “protect and enhance the resilience of the nation’s physical and cyberinfrastructure,” perhaps against foreign interference in future elections, the potential for censorship and other abuses of power is virtually limitless. ...

The DHS’ latest venture reveals where disdain for journalists can lead, and the extent to which it can be weaponized.

A quest for truth with investigative journalist, Seymour M. Hersh

Trump administration rescinds right of detained immigrants to in-person court appearances in New York City

Last week, the New York City Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revoked the right of detained immigrants to appear in person in court. The decision, which is completely unprecedented, was made for appearances at the agency’s Lower Manhattan Court and has forced immigrants facing deportation proceedings to have their legal cases heard via video conferences. ICE justified this flagrant attack on democratic rights by citing the presence of the “Occupy ICE NYC” demonstration in front of the Varick Street offices. From June 22 to June 24 the small protest group, comprising only about two dozen individuals, blocked the entrance to the immigration court where ICE deposes detained immigrants. ICE reacted by canceling all trials on Monday June 25. Usually the courthouse sees 30 to 40 cases every day.

The following day ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow said, “Due to attempts by certain groups to disrupt ICE operations through spreading misinformation and advocating violence against ICE employees, ICE decided to suspend transport of detainees for the foreseeable future to the Varick Street facility for immigration hearings.” These comments were made even though protesters remained entirely peaceful throughout their blockade and on Monday night the group agreed to move across the street, facilitating entrance to the courthouse.

The ramifications of this policy for detained immigrants are dire. A statement by the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), a pro bono legal group that represents immigrants, noted that “this unilateral decision by ICE to replace in-person appearances with video and audio teleconferencing would eviscerate the ability of NYIFUP providers to ensure due process for people facing removals … denying in-person appearances will impact due process, access to counsel, and exacerbate separation from families and loved ones.”

The statement went on to say that through in-person appearances “attorneys have increased immigrants’ rate of winning their cases by a factor of ten, showing that approximately one-third of people arrested and brought to court by ICE are actually entitled to remain in this country under the law.” The Vera Institute of Justice corroborates this claim, finding in 2017 that immigrants without lawyers won just 4 percent of their cases, while those who benefited from services by the Family Unity Project won 48 percent of the time.

Because of the new juridical procedures, lawyers cannot show evidence to a client or answer questions because attorney-client conversations will no longer be confidential. The sole recourse left to attorneys defending immigrants is to adjourn the case for another date, which would add weeks to the detention of their clients.

Black Leaders Express "Profound Indignation" Over Schumer and Pelosi's Failure to Defend Maxine Waters From Trump Attacks

More than 200 black leaders denounced Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) this week for failing to come to the defense of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) amid President Donald Trump's attacks on the 14-term congresswoman—attacks which continued Thursday night at the president's rally in Great Falls, Montana.

"We call on the Democratic Party leadership to step up and publicly support Congresswoman Waters, who has been receiving death threats for speaking truthfully and boldly in support of immigrant families and challenging the Trump administration to end their inhumane and immoral policy that has yet to reunite over 2,000 children with their parents and continues to lock up refugees seeking asylum in the United States of America," wrote the mostly female signers of a letter sent to the Democratic leaders.

Signers of the letter (pdf) included faith leaders, social justice advocates, community organizers, and business owners. ...

"We write to share our profound indignation and deep disappointment over your recent failure to protect Congresswoman Waters from unwarranted attacks from the Trump administration and others in the GOP," reads the letter. "That failure was further compounded by your decision to unfairly deride her as being 'uncivil' and 'un-American.' In doing so, we believe this mischaracterizes her call to action for peaceful democratic assembly and the exercise of her constitutional rights to free speech in support of defenseless immigrant children and their families."

Woman who climbed Statue of Liberty pleads not guilty to trespassing

A woman who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty on a busy Fourth of July in what prosecutors called a “dangerous stunt” pleaded not guilty Thursday to misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct. A federal judge released Therese Okoumou without bail after her court appearance.

Court papers also charged Okoumou with resisting arrest by refusing to leave her perch by the bottom of the statue’s robes, about 100ft (30 meters) above ground. Police were forced to scale the statue to pull her down. If convicted, Okoumou, 44, of Staten Island, would face up to six months behind bars on each count. ...

A federal official said the woman told police she was protesting the separation of immigrant children from parents who cross the US-Mexico border illegally. ... The park service was reviewing security videotape to try to determine how the woman made the climb, National Park Service spokesman Jerry Willis said. It also was taking a closer look at the statue to see if there was any damage, though that’s unlikely, he said. The copper-pounded skin is only the thickness of two pennies but “it’s strong,” he said.

Germany’s Plan to Create Refugee Detention Centers ‘Is a Disaster’

The real reason Merkel’s coalition is in crisis is the rise of the far-right AfD

The recent migration row that threatened to sink Germany’s government looked, on the face of it, a gloves-off in-house policy battle between Chancellor Angela Merkel and a rebellious coalition ally, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. But analysts say that, in the background to this high-stakes internecine feud, the real force pushing the ruling conservative bloc close to breaking point was the rising threat of the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD) party.

Observers warn that Germany’s turmoil is a telling sign of how much this disruptive new nationalist force, once dismissed as a fringe movement, has already transformed the German political landscape, forcing some on the center-right to co-opt AfD’s hardline positions on immigration and identity to try to blunt its rising appeal.

Specifically, the battle over border control between Merkel and Seehofer, head of the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU), was a direct result of the latter’s anxiety at the prospect of losing votes to the AfD in state elections in October, according to Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office at the European Council on Foreign Relations. ...

Faced with the prospect of rising support for the AfD — up to 14 percent in recent polls — costing the party its absolute majority in the Bavarian state parliament, the CSU has tacked sharply to the right on immigration, adopting the hardline stance that led to the standoff with Merkel. ...

Janning said the CSU’s co-option of AfD-style politics reflected a standard response by the political mainstream to the arrival of a new political force. After an initial period of denial — writing off the newcomers as a flash-in-the-pan, single-issue party whose support would crater once voters realized they offered no solutions — the next step was to absorb their agenda once they realized they were here to stay. “That means that even though the AfD isn’t in government, its views enter politics through the backdoor, because the parties next to them morph to the right.”

Trump is using U.S. troops as a bargaining chip to raise NATO defense spending

Donald Trump dangled the threat of withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe in a series of “sharply worded” letters sent to the leaders of NATO countries demanding they increase their defense spending, according to a report published Monday in the New York Times.

Sent last month ahead of next week’s NATO summit in Brussels, the missives warn of a growing division within the alliance between the U.S. and the other members over the issue of financial contributions.

“There is growing frustration in the United States that some allies have not stepped up as promised,” Trump said in a particularly pointed letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The United States continues to devote more resources to the defense of Europe when the continent’s economy, including Germany’s, are doing well and security challenges abound. This is no longer sustainable for us.” ...

The U.S. currently has 35,000 active-duty troops stationed in Germany, with Washington reportedly already considering scaling down this footprint.

Trump even told Merkel Germany was to blame for the underspending of other countries: “Continued German underspending on defense undermines the security of the alliance and provides validation for other allies that also do not plan to meet their military spending commitments, because others see you as a role model.”

Escalation of trade war will hurt US most, Mark Carney tells Donald Trump

The governor of the Bank of England has warned Donald Trump that further escalation of US trade disputes around the world would damage the America the most, as the world’s largest economy and China prepare to launch the opening salvos of a trade war on Friday.

Speaking hours before the world’s top two economies prepare to launch tariffs on one another’s imports, Mark Carney said further escalation would have serious and damaging consequences for global GDP. He cautioned that US growth could be hit by as much as 5%, compared with a slowdown for the rest of the world of up to half that amount.

The intervention from the head of a G7 central bank against another member of the club of wealthy nations marks one of the boldest criticisms levelled against the US president so far. ...

He revealed forecasts made by Threadneedle Street showing the American economy would suffer a 2.5% drop in GDP as a result of falling trade volumes alone over three years, should the White House increase US import tariffs by about 10 percentage points on all of its trading partners.

The world economy would take a hit to GDP of just over 1%, while there would be a smaller impact on the EU and the UK.

Oh my. This could get interesting. Fast.

Iran Threatens To Close the Strait of Hormuz

An old doomsday scenario has been revived again by Iranian officials. Iranian president Rouhani stated on Tuesday in Bern, Switzerland that his country could block the Strait of Hormuz for all Arab shipping traffic if Washington fully implements its zero oil export targets for Iran in the coming months.

Rouhani, who is currently on a lobbying mission in Europe in an effort to salvage the JCPOA deal (the Iran nuclear deal) and mitigate U.S. sanctions, seems to be have been pushed by hardliners to increase threats against Iran’s neighbors. Rouhani, considered by European politicians to be a reformist, appears to be showing a hardline streak that is nearer the strategy of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Khamenei has already been pushing for a direct confrontation with the U.S. and the Arab Alliance.

Several hours after Rouhani made his statement, Major-General Qassem Soleimani, one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), told the press that the IRGC is fully prepared to implement any action ordered by Rouhani or Khamenei. Soleimani, well-known for his direct involvement in the Syrian civil war and the set up of Iraqi Shi’a militias, has a reputation for taking strong and direct military action if needed. No direct threats were made, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the main thoroughfare of the Arabian/Persian Gulf region, is of strategic importance to all. At present, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA.gov), more than 17 million bpd of crude oil and products travel through the strait every day. If taking into account that all of Qatar’s LNG exports are also going through it, the importance is clear.

A confrontation between the Arab OPEC members, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Iran is far from impossible. The Shi’a regime is under enormous pressure at present. With the JCPOA agreement on its last legs, the Iranian government needs to save face and is expected to increase pressure on its regional neighbors in a response to Trump’s threats. Since May, when the U.S. pulled out of the JCPOA, all countries that previously bought Iranian oil have been asked to end their dealings with the Khamenei regime. Washington has repeated in recent days that no oil should leave Iran after November 4, as the full package of sanctions will come into effect. Asian customers are already leaving Iran, although China is still officially stating that it will not end its Iranian oil imports and operations. NATO member Turkey has also openly defied the U.S. sanction threats by stating that it will continue to import oil and gas from Iran.

Military assessments have shown that a closure of the Strait of Hormuz is possible. An attack on several vessels at the same time in the Strait would close it for a prolonged period of time. Analysts, however, expect that with the military means available to Arab states and Western navies in the area, a full closure would only last for around a month. If a full-blown war breaks out, removal of the offending vessels would be dealt with reasonably quickly. Still, the threat of such a direct confrontation, and a possible unforeseen fall-out, significantly raises the geopolitical risk in energy markets.

ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) takes a hit in the EU:

Shock EU Court Decision Strikes Blow Against Investment Arbitration

With all the dreary news we’ve seen this week, could you stand some good news? The battle against investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) got a huge boost in March when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in Slovak Republic v. Achmea B.V. (“Achmea”) that ISDS is contrary to EU law. The decision was something of a surprise because the preliminary analysis (“opinion,” in EU-speak) of Advocate General* Melchior Wathelet had suggested that the CJEU rule that ISDS is consistent with EU law.

As you may recall from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, ISDS is private arbitration of investment disputes between governments and foreign investors. Completely untethered from precedent and with no appeal, arbiters decide if a government has “expropriated” an investment, complied with its duties under a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) or “trade agreement” such as NAFTA, while these establishing mechanisms place no requirements on the investor. The imbalance of requirements under ISDS as well as its actual procedures present numerous opportunities for corporate abuse and, as Professor Susan Sell laid out in her guest post here in 2015, there is no shortage of examples of such abuse.

In Achmea, the Dutch insurer Achmea B.V. took the Slovak government to arbitration under the Dutch-Slovak bilateral investment treaty after the government decided to reverse liberalization of its health care system, ultimately deciding to create a single national health insurance program. The arbitrators ruled in favor of Achmea and awarded € 22.1 million to the company Three other cases were filed against the Slovak Republic’s action, including a second case from Achmea B.V. (Achmea II), but their respective tribunals all ruled they did not have jurisdiction. In Achmea, the government sought annulment of the award first from the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt, which ruled against it, and then from the German Federal Court of Justice, which referred the case to the CJEU for a ruling on the relevant EU law (this is standard procedure in EU law).

A number of EU Member States, as well as the European Commission, filed briefs in this case. According to Reuters, “The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the European Commission submitted observations in support of Slovakia’s arguments.Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland contended that such clauses were valid.”

The CJEU ruled, contrary to the Advocate General’s opinion, that ISDS tribunals are not part of the EU legal system, not national courts, and yet might be called on to apply EU law. Moreover, since no appeal is possible, there is nothing to ensure that EU law is applied properly by these tribunals. Given that EU law supersedes all national law, ISDS threatens to undermine the autonomy of EU law. Therefore, the Court ruled that ISDS is not compatible with EU law.

Israel Is Arming Ukraine’s Blatantly Neo-Nazi Militia the Azov Battalion

If the novichok was planted by Russia, where’s the evidence?

I seem to be the only person alive with no clue as to who has poisoned four people in Wiltshire. I am told that only Russians have access to the poison, known as novichok – though the British research station of Porton Down, located ominously nearby, clearly knows a lot about it. Otherwise, I repeat, I have no clue. I suppose I can see why the Kremlin might want to kill an ex-spy such as Sergei Skripal and his daughter, so as to deter others from defecting. But why wait so long after he has fled, and why during the build-up to so highly politicised an event as a World Cup in Russia?

Four months on from the crime, the Skripals have been incommunicado in a “secure location”. Barely a word has been heard from them. Theresa May has persistently blamed Russia. She has called the incident “brazen and despicable”, and MI5 condemned “flagrant breaches of international rules”. But I cannot see the diplomatic or other purchase in prejudging the case, when no one can offer a clue. ...

Since I have not a smidgen of an answer to any of these questions, I feel no need to capitulate to the politics of terror and fear. ...

That clearly does not apply to government ministers, for whom ignorance is not a sufficient condition for silence. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, said it was time “the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on”. His security minister, Ben Wallace, had earlier reached the same conclusion, given that the Russians “had developed novichok, they had explored assassination programmes in the past, they had motive, form and stated policy”. Like Javid, he asserted “to a very high assurance” that Russia was to blame, and spoke of “the anger I feel at the Russian state. They chose to use a very, very toxic, highly dangerous weapon,” and should “come and tell us what happened”. Since Moscow vigorously denies any involvement, it is hard to see how the Russians would now “explain”.

Surely, three months after the poison attack on the Skripals, ministers could have produced some evidence for all these accusations? Clearly it is possible that freelancers, wildcats or private contract killers could have operated at many removes from the Kremlin. But who knows? The most obvious motive for these attacks would surely be from someone out to embarrass the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – someone from his enemies, rather than from his friends or employees. But once again we have no clue. As it is, all we can see are the devious tools of the new international politics. We see the rush to judgment at the bidding of the news agenda. We see murders and terrorist incidents hijacked for political gain or military advantage. Ministers plunge into Cobra bunkers. Social media and false news are weaponised.

Ecuador seeks arrest of former president in kidnapping inquiry

An Ecuadorean judge on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for former President Rafael Correa for alleged involvement in a kidnapping case stemming from the 2012 seizure of one of his political opponents. Correa, who is in Belgium, in recent days has denied culpability and called the accusations politically motivated. He also has said he is considering requesting political asylum in Belgium, which is the native country of his wife. ...

The judge in question, Daneiella Camacho, said she will ask for Correa's extradition and also make a request to Interpol to issue a red alert that could cause Correa to be detained if and when he crosses a border. The Correa case is only the latest involving the detention or possible jailing of former Latin American leaders. Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is in jail on corruption charges. Meanwhile, former Peruvian President Ollanta Humala was sentenced last summer to 18 months of house arrest while being investigated for possible corruption; he was ordered released in May and the investigation continues.

Correa, who served as president from 2007 to 2017, is being investigated in the case of Fernando Balda, who allegedly was seized off a street in Bogota, Colombia, by a group of men hired by Ecuadorean intelligence agents. Officials say there is evidence that Correa masterminded the kidnapping. A taxi driver witnessed the kidnapping and Colombian police rescued Balda a few hours after he was seized.

In the early years of Correa’s administration, Balda was an official at a government development bank where he said he witnessed alleged cases of government corruption involving Correa. After he went public with his criticisms, he was charged with slander and subverting national security and sentenced to two years in prison, prompting him to seek asylum in Colombia in 2010. After being freed from his captors by Colombian police, Balda was extradited to Ecuador, where he served his two-year sentence. His claims of having been kidnapped received no judicial attention until this year, months after Correa had left office.

Ecuador: Rafael Correa Supporters March To Protest Detention

Thousands of Rafael Correa supporters marched through one of Quito's main arteries on Thursday in defense of Ecuador's former president, accused of orchestrating a failed kidnapping attempt in 2012 – a charge he vehemently denies. ... On July 3, Ecuador's National Court of Justice ruled that Correa should be taken into preventive detention. The court is accusing the former president – a popular, progressive politician who governed for a decade until he was replaced by Moreno last year – of 'illicit association' and being involved in the failed kidnapping of opposition lawmaker Fernando Balda in Bogota, 2012.

Balda claims that five people tried to kidnap him in the Colombian capital, but police stopped the attempt. Evidence supporting the allegations has yet to be made public.

The arrest warrant came shortly after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Ecuador on June 27. "There is a whole roadmap, there is a whole plot," Correa told AFP from Brussels, where he now lives with his family, insisting that Moreno "is behind this."

In Quito, marchers carried a giant banner bearing the faces of Kristina Fernandez, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales: nearly all former progressive presidents in Latin America who are now being prosecuted by their respective right-wing governments.

Native Americans seek to rename Yellowstone peak honoring massacre perpetrator

Mount Doane is a 10,500ft peak in Yellowstone national park, named for Lt Gustavus C Doane, a US army cavalry captain and explorer. In January 1870, he led a massacre that killed around 175 Blackfeet people, and he continued to brag about the incident throughout his life.

Hayden Valley, a broad valley that holds Yellowstone Lake, was christened for Dr Ferdinand V Hayden, a geologist and surveyor. He also advocated for the extermination of tribal people who refused to comply with federal dictates.

A group of Native Americans say such names can no longer stand. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association, an organization of tribal chairmen of 16 Sioux tribes from Nebraska and the Dakotas, is pursuing an application to change Mount Doane to First Peoples Mountain and Hayden Valley to Buffalo Nations Valley. ...

“We’re not against certain names,” said William Snell, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, who supports the Yellowstone renaming. “But we’re not for names where individuals have been involved with genocide, where elders and children have been killed and there have been some traumatic events in our history that don’t meet standards of honor.” ...

At Yellowstone, the name change request has so far met with resistance. Local county representatives voted against it in early May, and in a motion the county commissioner, Tim French, said a name change was like “trying to change history”. The commissioners’ opposition could prove fatal. “The board on geographic names places a good deal of emphasis on local opinion,” said Lou Yost, its executive secretary.

Half the country thinks Donald Trump is a racist.

A new Quinnipiac University poll has a striking result: 49% of people said they believe President Donald Trump to be a racist while 47% believe he is not. ...

This question, like all questions tied to Trump, is effectively a measure of whether you love or hate the President. So, 86% of Republicans say Trump isn't a racist and 86% of Democrats say he is. Independents, who view Trump slightly more negatively than positively overall, have similar view on whether he is a racist: 50% say he is, 44% say he is not.

The "racist" numbers are not a direct facsimile of Trump's overall approval numbers, of course. More people feel unfavorably about Trump's job performance (55%) than say he is a racist (49%). But it's close. ...

Trump's response to the consistent finding that half the country believes him to be a racist -- Quinnipiac found 49% saying that of Trump back in February -- is to not only insist that he isn't a racist but, in typical Trumpian overstatement, that he is the least racist person in the world.

As Scott Pruitt Resigns, Former EPA Officials Warn His Radical, Anti-Science Agenda Harmed Nation

Scott Pruitt is out but his impact on the environment will be felt for years

While not as eye-catching as, for example, his demand that his official vehicle use sirens so he could reach a French restaurant on time, Pruitt’s actions at the EPA have left behind a demoralized agency where staff fret that their ability to protect public health has been diminished.

A staunch ally of oil and gas companies, Pruitt stacked EPA advisory boards with industry representatives and sought to set aside whole troves of research that link pollution to various illnesses. He oversaw the delay or destruction of dozens of clean air and water rules, sparking legal battles with states and environmental groups. The EPA’s record in court under Pruitt was patchy but his deregulatory zeal was enough to impress Trump, who said Pruitt was doing a “fantastic job” even as scandals that sparked more than a dozen different investigations swirled around him.

Pruitt became a trusted advisor to Trump, helping convince the president the US should withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. He also continued his pre-EPA work of dismantling the Obama-era clean power plan, but from within the agency. Vehicle emissions standards were shelved. Under Pruitt, the EPA has wiped climate change-related content from its website for an “update” that has lasted for more than a year. ...

Pruitt proposed looser safety rules for chemical plants and halted a planned ban on chlorpyrifos, an insecticide linked to developmental problems in children, after being directly lobbied by Dow Chemical, which sells the product under the trade name Lorsban. Enforcement of environmental crimes that foul the air and water also fell under Pruitt, with industries afforded an unusual level of deference. In his final days as EPA chief, Pruitt was seeking to sign away the EPA’s right to veto certain projects that cause major harm to the environment. ...

At a time when the US needs to accelerate its emissions cuts to stave off the worst floods, wildfires, repeated monster hurricanes and other calamities associated with climate change, the national response has been eviscerated, the international community left floundering and aghast. The way the EPA evaluates science has been altered, leaving behind a process that is far more friendly to industry. Experienced staff either left in droves – around 700 departed in Pruitt’s first year – or found themselves sidelined, forced to watch as coal executives marched into their Washington headquarters to witness Pruitt and Trump declare and end to the “war on coal.”

Many of rule rollbacks instigated by Pruitt still need to be completed, which is why green groups are horrified that Pruitt’s replacement – at least in the interim – is his deputy Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist. Wheeler is known as a technocrat who is well-versed in DC politics. He’s unlikely to have quite the same appetite for financial and scandal as his predecessor, meaning that Pruitt’s agenda will continue, just without any of the high-profile ethical abuses.

New EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler, Former Coal Lobbyist, Aims to Continue to Dismantle EPA from Inside

Meet the Mother Who Confronted Scott Pruitt & Urged Him to Resign—Three Days Later, He Did

Syrian seeds could save US wheat from climate menace

Inside a Kansas greenhouse, a buzzing horde of flies set about laying waste to 20,000 seedlings. But as researchers watched, there was one species of growth that remained untouched – an ancient Syrian grass known as Aegilops tauschii. Now those Syrian seeds, once stored in a vault outside of Aleppo, could end up saving US wheat from the menaces of climate change.

From 2000 to 2015, average temperatures in the US midwest rose from 1 to 2 degrees fahrenheit above the 20th-century average. Periods of time between rainfalls are lengthening, according to a 2016 assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency. In other words, conditions in some areas of the midwest are starting to resemble conditions in the Middle East. Rising temperatures are already leading to drops in midwestern crop yields, and threaten further reductions of as much as 4% per year. In the heart of US cereal and grain country, new pests and diseases are following the hot and dry conditions northward – and frequently overwhelming the ability of agricultural chemicals to battle them off. In response, scientists are seeking sources of natural resistance – and finding them in Syria, in the heart of the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of domesticated agriculture.

One of the world’s most important seed banks used to be located about 25 miles west of Aleppo in the town of Tal Hadya, and was run by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (Icarda). That UN-affiliated centre specialises in preserving and researching seeds in hot, dry areas – conditions now being faced by many of the Earth’s food-growing regions. It’s also the place of origin of today’s domesticated wheat, and the seeds that were stored there benefit from genes embedded with survival strategies evolved over thousands of years. Now diseases and pests such as the Hessian fly, long familiar to Middle and Near Eastern farmers, are moving north from the southern US and Mexico and surging across Kansas and surrounding states – Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and Nebraska and in some instances up to Illinois and the Dakotas.

Even as forces supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, were bombing Aleppo in spring 2016, researchers at Kansas State University (KSU) were receiving increasingly urgent reports from US wheat farmers of devastating attacks by the Hessian fly, leading to an average 10% yield loss per year, according to the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Applied Wheat Genomics at KSU. That’s a significant bite out of the earnings of farms already operating on shaky margins. Ming-Shun Chen, a professor of molecular entomology at KSU, says the flies’ larvae used to be killed off by the cold of winter. But that cold is coming later in the season, and the larvae survive to turn into flies.

Suspected rhino poachers killed by lions at South African reserve

At least two rhino poachers were eaten by lions on a South African game farm, according to the reserve’s owner.

A ranger taking guests on a safari drive at the Sibuya game reserve in the Eastern Cape on Tuesday afternoon discovered human remains near a pride of lions. ...

An axe and three pairs of shoes and gloves were found later when police and an anti-poaching unit arrived. The lions had been heard making a commotion in the early hours of Monday.

Also of Interest

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

Corporate Media’s About-Face on Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis

British Government Peddles Warmed Over Novichok Muck

Israel Lays Down Red Lines for Postwar Relations With Syria

Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world.

Why Is Nancy Pelosi So Afraid of Socialism?

Giving Mountains Back Their Indigenous Names

How Dangerous is New EPA Chief Andrew Wheeler? Very. Here’s Why.

'All humanity has left the area': paying for Tesla's Gigafactory

American elections are a battle of billionaires. We are merely spectators

A Little Night Music

Ry Cooder - My Girl Josephine

Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder - Statesboro Blues

Ry Cooder - I Can't Win

Ry Cooder - Little Sister

Ry Cooder - Crazy 'Bout An Automobile

Los Lobos w/ Ry Cooder - Cumbia Raza

Ry Cooder - Goin' To Brownsville

Ry Cooder & Nick Lowe - Fool Who Knows

Ry Cooder & Nick Lowe - How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live

Ry Cooder - Get Rhythm

Ry Cooder - No Banker Left Behind