IMPORTANT READS

COMMENTARY-Imagine a nation so reactionary and racist that “Black Lives Matter” is considered a “radical slogan” inside its borders.

AFGHAN WITHDRAWAL--A Taliban judge is promising that Sharia law will be reinstated in Afghanistan after coalition forces have left the country and the brutal Islamic force regains power.

IMMIGRATION POLITICS-Last month, attorneys from the Department of Justice joined with counsel for the private prison corporation, the GEO Group, to present Oral Arguments supporting private immigration detention in California. 

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA-The attempted recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom has many geographic roots. Its original proponent was a sheriff’s deputy from Yolo County.

EASTSIDER-By all accounts, this was a really bad (as in ill-conceived and poorly executed) war, and yet we have been there for 20 years without “winning” anything.

COVID WORLD UPDATE-Underscoring the desperate need to dramatically increase access to coronavirus vaccines on a global scale, Africa just saw its worst pandemic week yet and conditions across the continent are only expected to get worse in the weeks ahead.

MILITARY WATCH-An end to war? It’s certainly necessary, but is it politically possible?

VIEW FROM HERE-Wokerism has not been around long, at least not by that name. It refers to the Left wing anti-white racist ideology that all things white are evil and all things minority are good.

CLIMATE POLITICS-Facing Future TV founder and executive producer Stuart Scott and co-host Dale Walkonen recently broadcast a wide-ranging interview with Noam Chomsky about the state of human existence in the face of universal decadence.

LABOR WATCH-The COVID-19 pandemic has left pain and tragedy in its wake.

LABOR TRAFFICKING-In June of 2018, two Monterey County site inspectors visited a Salinas cannabis farm, where they encountered a small group of farmworkers who they suspected had been trafficked.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS-Donald Trump will go down in history as the president responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans due to the criminal negligence in his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and for pushing the world closer to a precipice with his denialism of our climate crisis;

RACIAL RECKONINGS-On June 30, the New York Times published an article, Target Store Closings Show Limits of Pledge to Black Communities, about Target closing 13 stores and divesting in some Black communities.

TOM DISPATCH-America has an accountability problem. In fact, if the Covid-19 disaster, the January 6th Capitol attack, and the Trump years are any indication, the American lexicon has essentially dispensed with the term “accountability.”

TAKING THE HELM-President Joe Biden announced that he is appointing Chantele Wong to be the ambassador-level position of U.S. Director of the Asian Development Bank, a financial institution that works on the government level with over 60 member countries to provide fiscal services.  

RACIAL RECKONINGS-When in the course of human events it comes time to mark the birth of this grand but deeply imperfect nation, damn but the zealots and squawkers emerge from the musty woodwork to proclaim their unholy certainties.

WORLD WATCH-President Biden may well succeed in forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace by restating in the strongest terms that a two-state solution remains the only viable option and works to create the conditions on the ground to that end.

PLANNING DEBACLE-Housing has been a hot topic in Sacramento over the last few years. 

CLIMATE POLITICS-A fire that raged for hours in the Gulf of Mexico Friday offered the latest illustration of the climate emergency and the urgent need to end fossil fuel extraction and invest instead in burgeoning renewable energy industries.

An underwater gas pipeline controlled by Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, also known as Pemex, burst in the early morning hours, sending flames "resembling molten lava" to the water's surface.

The "eye of fire," as news outlets and observers on social media called the blaze after Pemex publicized the incident Friday night, happened about 150 yards from a drilling platform in the Ku-Maloob-Zaap offshore field. According to Bloomberg, the field produces more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day.

It took emergency workers about five hours to put out the flames.

"Having to put out a fire in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico feels just too difficult to believe," tweeted HuffPost editor Philip Lewis. "And yet..." 

"The frightening footage of the Gulf of Mexico is showing the world that offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous," Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Washington Post. "These horrific accidents will continue to harm the Gulf if we don't end offshore drilling once and for all." 

Pemex has seen production declining recently, according to Bloomberg, with output falling every year for the past decade and a half and putting the company into $114 billion in debt.  

Entrepreneur and fair wage advocate Dan Price catalogued several of the past week's climate-related emergencies, including the fire in the gulf as well as deadly heatwaves in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, which sparked outraged calls for climate action in recent days.  

"The Gulf of Mexico is on fire, it's 112 degrees in Portland, roads and rails are crumbling from the sun, wildfire and hurricane season are here in record time and people are concerned about the cost of going green," said Price. "COMPARED TO WHAT?" 

The pipeline burst days after undercover journalists released footage of lobbyists from fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, in which the lobbyists discussed their fight against climate science and their reliance on centrist lawmakers such as Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Jon Tester (D-Mt.) to ensure the failure of far-reaching climate action legislation. 

The progressive advocacy group RootsAction released a version of the Gulf of Mexico fire footage with images of the centrist lawmakers.  

"This is our future," the group said of the image of the world's largest gulf on fire. "Don't forget who is responsible."

(Julia Conley writes for CommonDreams.org … where this piece was first posted.)

-cw

21ST CENTURY BANKING-When thinking of trading with Bitcoin, many people just resort to reading all of the processes that power this cryptocurrency, getting educated on how trading works, and after all of that is done, they think that they are ready to dive into this world and earn money.

RE-NEGOTIATION-Despite the best efforts of the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu to disrupt the nuclear talks with Iran by attacking Iran’s nuclear computer network, the news out of Geneva is that a new agreement is close to being signed.