Call Your Senators to Stop [Mass] Extinction

You may wonder if I’ve lost my mind.  But no, let me reassure you. My mind’s intact or reasonably so, and my sense of humor hasn’t yet evaporated. This message was one of the 500 or so I received August 10^th. I was going to include it under my Sunday Funnies, but I had to save it because it deserves a headline all its own.  And besides, the newsletter doesn’t have a Reverse Chutzpah section yet.

Your senators are probably the very people whose greed and insouciance may have put us on track to trashing all life forms on this little speck of dust in a universe that’s probably full of other such specks of dust, with—hopefully—more rational creatures inhabiting them.

 

How else to explain the headlines culled from the past fortnight:

Rivers have become too warm to effectively cool Electricite de France reactors

Degrading plastics revealed as source of greenhouse gases

Sea water used to cool Finland’s Loviisa nuclear reactors has become too warm

Pacific Ocean Warming and Possible California hurricanes

Wild Science: The startling New Science of permafrost..and more

Help Support Those Impacted by the Wildfires

Arctic’s Strongest Sea Ice Breaks up for the First Time on Record

Hothouse Earth Risks Even if CO2 Emissions Slashed

Trump’s Coal-Friendly EPA Rule Decried as “Sheer, Reckless

Folly” and “All-Out Assault on Our Climate and Communities”

Going to War on Climate Change

“A smokestorm is Imminent”: Spokane’s hazardous Air Now Worse then Beijing and Delhi combined

Greenhouse Gasses Continue Their Massive Rise.

Hurricane Lane is Heading for Hawaii as a Dangerous Category 5 Storm

“A Global Emergency.” (Dahr Jamail writing for Truthout.)

We Are Climbing Out of Humankind’s Safe Zone: New Report Warns

Your Climate Change Survival Plan

Dire Climate Warnings Not Be Dire Enough (look it up in Common Dreams) and

Writing a New Chapter, Not an Obituary for the Planet.

If you’re on the same page I am, you might want to express outrage: how can humanity trash its own 4.58 billion-year-old planet in a mere 350 years? And while you might not grab the Polyannish straw of the last headline, you might want to entertain some shred of hope, install solar panels, maybe stop driving, maybe take up walking, maybe stop heating your home, maybe use sweaters instead. I thrive on telling stories, and here’s one I offer:

Every tree that is here is a seed I planted. Here began the history of Pouso do Rochero, Brazil. My name is Antonio Vicente. I am 83 years old. When I was a child, I used to tell my neighbors that the water was going to run out.  In 1973, when I bought [land] here, this was all cattle pasture. The water springs [had] dried up and never returned. So what did I do? I left the countryside to go to the city. I worked very hard to buy this land. And I started replanting, and then the water springs started coming back.

Today I have 76.7 acres of land here all reforested with   native plants. [Today] there are eight waterfalls here that have all been recovered. 

So this was what I wanted to do. This is my family!

This is our Family, too: the water, the soil, the trees, the animals, even if some of them are human beings who need drastic psychotherapy right about now to help them deal with their delusions.

Oppose militarism.

Oppose Urban Shield in your city.

Turn out against Kavanaugh nomination.

Divest from fossil fuels.

Small Iowa town, hosting one of 15 immigration bond projects nationwide, frees 21 immigrants.

Massachusetts’ Sanctuary in the Streets supports dozens of families and individuals facing deportation.

Scientists discover way to accelerate formation of magnesite which stores carbon as it crystalizes.

California prisoners help develop a remedy to unjust detention conditions.

San Francisco becomes first city on U.S. to open  a Safe Injection Site. 

San Antonio becomes 33^rd U.S. city to vote 9-2 to pass a sick leave ordinance.

As part of a broader effort toward economic and racial justice, Public Bank, N.Y.C. launches campaign to create municipal public bank.

Incarcerated People declare national prison strike to demand humane living conditions and an end to slavery in prisons throughout the U.S.

After years of advocacy, NYC’s Council’s Environmental Committee Chair announces he will push toward reducing pollution from  large buildings by over 60% by 2050.

Top-ranking Michigan official order to do jail time over Flint water crisis.

Landmark Seventh Circuit decision says fourth amendment applies to smart meter data.

Amid backlash, Georgia officials defeat racist plan to eliminate polling places in Randolph County, a black-majority county.

Sierra Club launches ad campaign against Trump administrations effort to bail out dirty coal plants.

Internet activists turn up the heat on Salesforce over border patrol contract.

Judge slams Energy Transfer Partners for baseless lawsuit against Earth First!

Yemeni man granted Muslim B an waiver, reunites with family after 17 years.

Wales lets people build their own eco-homes in the countryside.

Center for Biological Diversity wins restraining order to save wolf’s life from Washington State officials.

Mudgirls work to spread the word that even  new mothers can build their own home off the grid.

Hundreds of immigrant kids and parents join rapper Logic onstage to shine a light on the struggles of separated families.

Militant N.Y.C, taxi drivers union wins landmark legislation forcing Uber and Lyft to pay drivers a living wage.

Supreme Court declines to suspend proceedings in landmark case pitting a group of youth plaintiffs against the federal government for dragging its feet re: climate change.

L.A. tenants lead largest rent strike in history.

University of North Carolina students topple monument to white supremacy.

As Trump military parade canceled, peace parade goes forward.

Lucas Aerospace plans conversion from military to peaceful production.

National Association of Letter Carriers urges congress to pass legislation reducing pollution  of the atmosphere causing global warming.

AB2772, creating a statewide grant program for school district to pilot ethnic studies, moves our of Senate Appropriations Committee to go on State Senate floor.

Berkeley’s 1951 Café helps refugees by allowing them to practice English while serving customers, and placing them in job after their training.

Court stops North Carolina GOP from stripping candidate of party affiliation just to win judicial race.

Urged by advocacy, senators pass AB 2923 out of committee helping to insure denser housing is built next to transit hubs.

Circuit Court orders EPA to stop delaying and implement the chemical disaster rule.

Chase Iron Eyes, one of the Native leaders of Standing Rock,  has his serious charges dismissed, and will not face six years in prison.

Federal Court rules against Ohio’s gerrymandered districts.

Legislative committee indefinitely postpones hearing on extending the California State Water Project contract.

In  Vermont governor’s Democratic primary results transgender candidates win.

Gaza fisherman  battles poverty (and Israeli restrictions) with plastic bottle boat.

Israel allows Gaza mom to accompany toddler to cancer treatment.

Demonstrations in solidarity with the prison strike take place in Tacoma,  Washington as supporters march through the University of Washington which has contracts with Correctional Industries.

Activists try successful anti pipeline strategy developed in N.Y. State in Oregon.

California net neutrality bill SB 822 clears committee hearing to speed to gull Assembly vote.

Women win the Democratic primaries at twice the rate of men.

Under legal pressure from the Center for Biological Diversity, Siskiyou County suspends its contract with Wildlife “Services”, an entity that managed to kill 28,000 animals in the county over the past decade, and 3 million nationwide every year.

Ninth Circuit rules that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services refusal to protect the grayling is unlawful, failing to consider climate impacts.

The Trump administration agrees to a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity requiring federal agencies to prepare management plants to keep California rivers free-flowing and wild within three years of their designation.

A new set of principles known as the Toronto Declaration aims to put human rights front and center in the development and application of machine learning technologies.

Full U.S. Senate approves fiscal year 2019 public media funding.

After fatal shooting of Antwon Rose, East Pittsburgh ponders eliminating entire police force.

Ride-sharing app teams up with nonprofits to provide discounted election day rides to the polls.

Jackie Hill is the first African American woman in history to be elected in Blount County Tennessee.

More than 20 U.S. cities issue IDs to protect undocumented immigrants.

Floating tidal stream turbine off Orkney produces more green energy in year than Scotland’s entire wave and tidal sector produced in the 12 years before it came on line.

Young Kerala girl give up all her savings to help Kerala flood victims.

Last week in L.A., the national TPS Alliance along with Mayor Garcetti, launched the TPS journay for Justice,, a bus traveling cross country visiting over 50 cities in 12 weeks to save TPS.

Federal judge orders Trump to restore DACA.

Federal court rules that unaccompanied children immigrants should be able to apply for visas without the participation of their absent parent.

Jury wallops North Carolina hog farm again for its negative impact on neighboring residents.

Portuguese administrative court rules in favor of the Algarve Fossil Free platform’s injunction, and suspends license for ENI/GALP consortium to drill for oil off Aljezur.

Boogey Man blog

Today’s blog might appear downright scary, especially to those who believe there’s no cause for concern, but good and courageous people don’t deserve to have scare tactics used against them. My intention here is not so much to scare you, but to affirm your right to know.
 

Some time back, I hastily scanned a headline which seemed to indicate Noam Chomsky wanted to address the same theme, but I cannot find the article. What I have found is a talk by Chomsky opining that the two greatest dangers facing humankind (and presumably other animals and plants of a non-human-kind) are global warming and nuclear war.

I want to offer the opinion here that the greatest danger facing livingkind is global warming acting in concert with the nuclear apparatus of both the war-and energy-making kind. 

Here’s how the scenario works: 

1. The economic rationale for establishing a nuclear plant (there are some nearly 95 still chugging away in the U.S. and irradiating the air, ground water, and soils wherever the wind takes their ventings) is to supply the nation with enough weapons-grade plutonium to keep the nuclear war program in full swing.

2. Water: Fuel rods, whether they are located within the reactor itself or in “spent” fuel pools require cooling water at all times. As the planet heats up with the burning of fossil fuel (and the U.S. armed forces are one of the worst global polluters) water no longer has the capacity to keep those nuclear plants cooled. For example, during the last month, some reactors in France and Finland had to be temporarily shut down because the water had become too warm to cool them. Or consider the potential of some accident as nuclear waste is transported over land or water, as a plan proposes for the Great Lakes; or Edison’s storage plans for San Onofre’s nuclear waste which place it barely above the level of seas which promise to rise.

San Onofre at high tide

3. Fires: As fires continue occurring and spreading with greater frequency, they run the extreme danger of reaching irradiated ground, such as, for example, the land surrounding the nuclear weapons lab at Los Alamos, which they did in 2011.

4. Which leads me to conclude that the nuclear war we dread so much may not be in the form of an active fire exchange so much as a slow war presently being waged passively against all forms of life on Earth.

Popular Resistance carries an article titled the Suicide of Capitalism which makes the point that “capitalism thinks that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, that whatever it’s doing will result in no harmful outcomes, and that anyone who tells it not to do such a thing is a hoaxer of the worst order. Inadvertently killing oneself with a loaded handgun is bad enough. What capitalism is doing of course is far worse. Not only will it kill itself as a system, but it will likely take our species along with many others right along with it.” Another article says we have time for life on Earth till 2026.

William Blum writing in the anti-empire report yesterday sums one of these threats up neatly:

“The argument I like to use when speaking to those who don’t accept the idea that extreme weather phenomena are largely man-made is this….We can proceed in one of two ways:

1. We can do our best to limit the greenhouse effect by curtailing greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) into the atmosphere, and if it turns out that these emissions were not in fact a significant cause of the widespread extreme weather phenomena [we are seeing], then we’ve wasted a lot of time, effort and money (although other benefits to the ecosystem would still accrue) or 
2. We can do nothing at all to curtail the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and if it turns out that these emissions were in fact the leading cause of all the extreme weather phenomena, then we’ve lost the earth and life as we know it. So, are you a gambler?

 

 

Protest war in all forms, and nuclear war actively by joining Code Pink or any other organization working for peace.

Become an active anti-nuclear activist by monitoring the Nuclear Information and Resources website, and following its suggestions. 

Become an active member of 350.org. 

Tell our leaders: take the no fossil fuel money pledge.

Sign up to join the climate mobilization September 8th in San Francisco.

Join your neighbors on August 26 opposing the Kavanaugh SCOTUS nomination.

Read this.

  

Energy & climate leadership

Ireland passes a bill divesting its #370 million worth  of investments in fossil fuel companies within the next five years. (Your town can too!)

India’s Karnataka province produces more renewable energy than the Netherlands.

With Tesla’s help, the island of Samoa is going 100% renewable.

Antonio Vicente replants thousands of acres of Brazil heartland creating forests where nothing grew and restoring active water flows. (worth watching.)

Thanks to advocacy, Levi’s makes an ambitious commitment to tackle pollution in its supply chain.

Renovagen, a UK company, markets solar panels which can be rolled out from a trailer.

Clean up of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch begins.

After a ten-year-long campaign, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the EPA must ban chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide linked to brain damage in children.

Monsanto is ruled “guilty on all counts’ and ordered to pay $289 million in Roundup Cancer lawsuit.

With their merger pending, Bayer shares plunge after court orders Monsanto to pay $289 million to cancer victim

French flower cultivator demonstrates method of providing water to growing plants in the midst of drought conditions.

NFWF awards $2.2 million to 59 projects nationwide to restore wildlife habitat and urban waters,

In just five years, China plants 83.5 millions acres of new forest, saving animals from extinction.

Chinese scientists have invented solar panels that can generate power at night.

Physicians for Social Responsibility announces Arjun Makhijani, life-time anti-nuclear activist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, received their 2018 Visionary Leader Award.

Discovery of resistant corals off the coast of Sulawesi may teach scientists how to save reefs around the world.

New Zealand Proposes planting 1 billion trees to fight climate change.

Dominica launches one of the strongest plastic bans in the world.

“Aerial Art Action” demands end to planned fossil fuel extraction in Portugal.

Portugese coast from the air

65 California communities opposed offshore drilling plan.

Chicago’s NEIS spends a year planning a Congressional briefing on the “Age of Decommissioning” nuclear reactors and dealing with  radioactive wastes.

Federal Court orders full environmental review of Trump’s “Illegal Rubber Stamp” of the Keystone XL

A federal appeals court’s ruling finds U.S. Forest Service neglected its long-standing concerns regarding soils erosion and orders work on the million-dollar Mountain Valley Pipeline to stop.

Citizen groups sue Atlantic Coast pipeline, taking aim at the federal certificate that undergirds all other permits for the complex interstate gas project.

Court rules that Chevron must pay for environmental mayhem in Ecuador.

Freedom of the Press

In coordinated editorials, hundreds of newspapers denounce Trump’s attack on media.

Although unreported, the Time’s No. 2 lawyer tells a group of judges that a prosecution of Julian Assange could have dire consequences for The Times itself.

Thanks to advocacy, the Sinclair-Tribune merger is derailed, kicked to an administrative hearing process that signals its death knell.

Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto is freed from detention.

Immigration

Senate Dems demand immediate action to reunite immigrant families torn apart by Trump.

A group of refugees from Central America facing beatings and abuse in detainment launch a legal battle against ICE, the GEO group’s private prison, and the City of Adelanto, and its “concentration camp” prisons.

Federal court orders broad changes in how the U.S. detains and treats migrant children.

Appeals board ruling hands Kansas dad who faced deportation a ray of hope as reported by Daily Kos. 

Elizabeth Hotzman addresses a letter to Kirstjien Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security urging her to resign.

Lancaster County, PA., says no to GEO Group, a for-profit prison company.

Cosecha’s anti-ICE protests target Northeastern contract with ICE. 

 

A recent Supreme Court decision causes some deportation orders to be tossed and cases to be thrown out in a procedural issue over how to properly provide notices to immigrants to appear in court for deportation hearings. 

District Judge John Bates rules the DACA program should be fully restarted.

Labor

New Zealand company makes a 4-day week permanent after trial success.

Domestic workers in Seattle win most comprehensive Bill of Rights in the U.S.

In Indianapolis, entire construction crew walks off the job after racist boss fires Latino co-workers for confronting him.

Thanks to unions, Disneyland’s non-union workers are getting a big raise.

Voters reject Missouri right-to-work  law.

Resistance

For four hours, the Kings Bay Plowshares appeared before U.S. Magistrate Stan Baker arguing that all charges against them be dropped based on the Fifth Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Indiana church replaces “detained” immigrant Holy Family with new display—your own reflection.

In the face of massive community opposition, the BLM suspends plans to capture and remove the wild horse herd from Gardnerville, Nev.

Thousands of small businesses join day of action for net neutrality.

International Politics

Extradition of Catalan leader fails, calling for resolution in which King Carlos offers to negotiate.

Warm welcome greets Ahed and Nariman Tamini as they are released from Israeli prison. (Ahed slapped Israeli soldier in the face following the shooting of her brother in the face.)

After 432 days behind bars, Taner Kilic, honorary chair of Amnesty Turkey, has been released.

Domestic Politics

Kochs admit single payer health saves trillions. Health costs would go down, and wages would increase.

U.S. District court Judge Beryl A, Howell rules against bundling super pac donations to political candidates, invalidating  Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulations that allowed contributions to so-called dark money organizations to avoid disclosure.

Kansas City doctors team up to pay off $1.4 million in medical debt for local patients.

Medical marijuana initiative is filed in Mississippi.

Voters in Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin cast their ballots, nominating impressive women candidates, Christine Hallquist, Jahana Hayes, Ilhan Omar, and incumbent Tammy Baldwin and Amy Klobuchar. Senator Tina Smith, former lieutenant governor of Minnesota, secured the Democratic nomination ahead of a special November election allowing her to serve the remainder of her term and union organizer and ironworker Randy Bryce wins Wisconsin’s first district primary hoping to replace Speaker Paul Ryan. And in  Wisconsin progressive candidates Mandela Barnes, Marisabel Cabrera, Jeff Smith, and Sarah Godlewski win big.

Calling into question Trump administration’s claims that continuing reliance on fossil fuels is necessary for energy dominance, only 1% of offshore drilling leases sells at auction.

Fox News correspondent resigns amid reports that network staff are sick of acting as a Trump propaganda channel.

Bob McCulloch, the Missouri prosecutor who refused to indict Michael Brown’s killer, loses race to Wesley Bell in epic upset.

 

Sharice David, a Kansas Democrat could become the first Native American woman ever in congress.

With the help of activists the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act guaranteeing federal funding for school equality regardless of zip code, is approved by both houses.

Watchdog groups call for access to all records of SCOTUS toxic nominee Kavanaugh.

Chicago may become the largest U.S. city to try universal basic income.

Under a new Government-funded scheme, male, pale and stale university professors to be given reverse female minority mentors to help them confront their own biases.

And best rose of all, following 187 organizations calling for a mass protest, AP reports that Trump’s $92 million military  extravaganza is postponed—to next year.

Mobile Chernobyl: Part II of Tin Can Alley

This week the House of Representatives rammed through the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, (with 139 Democrats' aproval)  which, besides green lighting a new, submarine-launched nuclear warhead, approves $717 billion for such hardware as 13 new Navy warships, and the purchase of 77 F-35s, and not coincidentally, the government will have to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year. But not to worry: you are expected to pay for it: you and all future generations.

Said the Intercept: “Its seems strange…that Democrats…say Trump is an authoritarian, lawless traitor, but…keep voting to increase his war powers, military budget, and detention and spying authorities.”

Meanwhile, chugging away,  nuclear plants continue to supply the needed plutonium to obliterate the life on Earth and so doing keep piling up more nuclear waste, some 100,000 metric tons of it and counting. 

But the climate has a nasty way of non-cooperation: in particular, with high temperatures this week in much of France, some of its nuclear reactors cannot be cooled. Rivers have become too warm, and EDF has had to cut energy output.

 

And now before a complaisant congress is a proposal to truck all that waste throughout the United States to two temporary dump sites in Texas and New Mexico. Moving it would have to continue for the next 40 years, there’s that much nuclear waste piled up. To quote the Nuclear Information and Resource Service: “Thousands of casks of this waste would move on our roads, rails and waterways! It could take 40-50 years to move the waste once but then it would all presumably move again to a different permanent site, [one] as yet to be found…So this could be the start of a virtually endless campaign of moving insanely radioactive nuclear waste back and forth across the country.”

 

So please, dear reader, especially if you prefer not to read the fine print below, before doing anything else,  please send your comment (already written out for you ) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission right now. The deadline is July 30^th.  

(https://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=26386)

NIRS lists 9 reasons to oppose the dump

1. The plan cannot go through unless you and every other taxpayer in the United States, including those not yet born agree to assume ownership for this waste, and pay to transport it. U.S. federal laws forbid such an arrangement.

2. Tetra Tech, the contractor Holtec chose to make the Environmental Impact Report, has a track record of falsifying radiation monitoring data, hiring unqualified workers to conduct scanning and clean ups; and suppressing reports for 20 years namey the Navy’s Hunters Point site which has been converted to San Francisco housing!

3. Proposed storage site in  Texas is home to agriculture, dairy farms. And New Mexico, already victim of the 94 million-gallon “spill”  by Kerr McGee into the Rio Puerco, is a minority state, and has experienced environmental racism for decades.

4. Canisters as reported in last week’s Tin Can Alley are less than an inch thick, cannot be monitored for leaks, and do not in any way conform to safety requirements in the case of fire, road accidents, or extended submersion in water. Contact with water leading to erosion will ultimately cause leaks, resulting in a nuclear explosion.

Break down of rail (red) and highway transportation

5. Some of these canisters contain high burn up fuel.

6. As of now the nuclear regulatory commission has been unable to report as to the distantly located emergency response teams, upon which these sites will rely.

7. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission  tends to ignore such factors as high temperatures, salty dry climates, potential flash floods, lightning, blocked vents, and other factors contributing to un predictable conditions.

8. So-called “interim” storage could well become permanent.

9. Consolidating this waste raises the specter of reprocessing to extract the plutonium required  to manufacture nuclear weapons leading to weapons proliferation.

But there is a tenth reason: One site, Yucca Mountain, on Western Shoshone land, is located in the basement of a mountain slowly swimming westward. It consists of 10% water, and its drip has been shown to corrode metal within 20 minutes.

Please send your comment (see above) to The Nuclear Regulatory Commission at https://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=26386

Read a book I wish I had authored myself: John D’Agata: About a Mountain.

Judiciary

U.S. Court of appeals rules in favor the Oglala Sioux, protecting the Black Hills from uranium mining.   

Federal Judge Peter Missette allows emoluments lawsuit, challenging Trump’s refusal to divest assets, to proceed.

By releasing a man awaiting a retrial without bond, Judge Wm. Hooks of Cook country may have set a precedent.

Court orders NYPD to record all citizen encounters.

  

North Dakota attorney general sues Dakota Access pipeline, charging it never acquired legal ownership of the land.

Necessity defense allowed in Resist Spectra/Enbridge AIM pipeline case.

A new Cuban constitution revises the legal definition of marriage.

Four years after he murdered Eric Garner, NYPD officer is finally facing charges.

Judge Dana Sabraw orders temporary halt to deportation of reunited migrant families.

Polk County District Judge Karen Romano issues temporary injunction barring the state from implementing some of the provisions of Iowa’s new voter ID law, restoring the absentee early voting period and blocking certain ID requirements.

A three-member panel of the 7^th Court of Appeals in Indiana determines that the requirement forcing any woman considering an abortion to undergo an ultrasound 18 hours before the procedure imposes an unconstitutional undue burden on women.

Federal Judge, Jesse Furman allows legal challenge to Trump’s citizen question on the census to go forward.

U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty frees pizza man jailed by ICE.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denies Trump administration’s attempt to dismiss suit by 21 kids suing the U.S. government over climate change.

Resistance

RAICES rejects $250,000 Salesforce Corporation donation over company’s border agency ties.

In Iowa, the “No Respect” added to the U.S. Army billboard urges people to oppose the active war zone at Drone Command Center next to Des Moines International Airport.

White House stenographer quits because “Trump is lying to the American people.”

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak issues call for National prison strike August 21 to protest prison slave labor.

Lod stages unique Jewish-Arab LGBTQ Pride event.

Children march through San Francisco Streets and other cities, demanding adults protect them from a future of climate chaos.

Volos, Greece, resorts to barter to by-pass use of Euro.

In Sweden, Elin Ersson, a college student, stopped a deportation to Afghanistan by holding up an international flight.

Ahed Tamimi and her mother, Nariman, are released from Israeli prison where Tamimi was held for slapping an Israeli soldier.

“I am a child”: 100 kids and their advocates fill Senate office building demanding family unification.

Labor

Famed Seattle fish market sold to longtime employees rather than highest bidder.

Forbes reports that Vermont’s Putney Food coop produces more revenue per square foot than fancy chains like Whole Foods.

Starbucks announces it will open it’s first “signing store” where employees must be proficient in sign language. (Yes, but what minimum wage will it pay them ?)

NFL rethinks its anthem policy after Miami Dolphins try to punish protesting players.

New Zealand offers paid leave to domestic violence survivors.

Environment

UNESCO designates 24 new biosphere reserves.

Estimating that its mean ban will save 16.7 billion gallons of water, WeWork, a London company,  goes meat free.

31 new solar power plants bring 1 gigawatt of renewable power to Portugal.

Thanks to 100% wind and solar, Republican Georgetown TX mayor Dale Ross announces his town has some of the lowest energy costs in Central Texas.

After a long list of violations, Oregon shuts down Lost Valley mega-dairy factory farm for good.

With tailpipe emissions the largest source of pollutants, California school districts order all-electric buses.

After first approving  a plan charging ratepayers billions of dollars for the emergency closing of San Onofre nuclear plant, California Public Utilities Commission trims $750 million from customer bills.

In a grid modernization plan, Dominion of Virginia hopes to target  3 GW of wind and solar.

Andrew Wheeler, acting administrator of the EPA announces that he won’t follow Pruit’s order giving super polluting trucks a temporary pass.

Philanthropy

Aware that it’s not a lack of food keeping  people hungry, Atlanta’s Goodr  partners with restaurants  to  deliver their unused food—already up to 900,000 pounds— to the hungry while allowing restaurants to reduce their trash bills and increase their tax write-offs.

Politics

Joint Sanders-Occasion-Cortez Kansas rally is so mobbed, it has to relocate to much larger quarters.

Democrats demand records for Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before starting the confirmation process. (Duh.)

House progressives, putting common good above billionaires, introduce “People’s Budget.”

California dental and medical associations announce that they will pursue a statewide sofa tax initiative on the 2020 ballot.

So far this year, North Carolina has not been guilty of voter caging.

Recalling Trump’s infamous remarks during his presidential campaign, Massachusetts’ “Nasty Women” Act, will officially stop a Roe v. Wade reversal from automatically banning abortion in the state.

Chutzpah

Immigrant parents charged up to $8 a minute to call their kids.

Tin Can Alley

A recent Irish Examiner study reports that villages in the Ukraine 125 miles away from Chernobyl are still suffering from fallout after 30 years. In Japan, seven years after the nuclear triple-meltdown, the government is forcing those it was obliged to relocate, back into Fukushima areas that will remain contaminated for at least that many years. Radiation is not good for you.

  

Meanwhile in the dis-United States, despite a raft of nuclear plant closures, the nuclear industry is doing everything within its power to insure that a similar catastrophe will occur here. Southern California Edison corporation offers one of many shining examples.

Nuclear fuel pool

Billed as “Energy for What’s Ahead.” we can only hope that what’s ahead may not be as grim as its nuclear waste policies seem to indicate, particularly with its plans for the nuclear plant closure at San Onofre. First some background. As fuel rods become “spent” causing them actually to heat up, they are transferred routinely to “spent” fuel pools to cool off. These buildings are not “hardened.” A recent Greenpeace stunt successfully crashed a drone dressed as superman into a nuclear plant in France. Nor are they protected by back up generators in the case of a power failure such as happened at Fukushima, where both internal and external power sources failed.

Now, especially in  the context of reopened governmental discussions regarding the storage of nuclear waste, and with the boondoggle of Yucca Mountain re-opened, Edison has contracted with Holtec Corporation to supply canisters for dry storage. It sounds, on the surface like it might be a good idea,, except that at San Onofre, such canisters are exposed and subject to the corrosion of salt air, and are located some 100 feet above sea level, in an area vulnerable to tsunami surges. Unlike the storage casks employed in Europe where cask walls are about one 11 to 19 inches thick,  Holtec’s canisters are 5/8 of an inch thick. And they are vulnerable to cracking.

Cracking, you say, cracking can be fixed. True if the cracking can be located, but these canisters cannot be inspected, and when 5% air enters them, the fuel will explode; if rain water seeps into them, their contents will go critical—i.e. initiate a nuclear explosion, the kind that generates fallout. The kind that kills. Each can is supposed to hold a Chernobyl disaster in the words of Donna Gilmore, from the group of activists spearheading efforts to hold Southern California Edison responsible, a company with a track record about as integral as Swiss cheese.

Meantime, don’t forget: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s salaries are paid by the industry. And with Holtec’s environmentally unjust proposal for tons of radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel to be “temporarily” stored in southwest New Mexico, high risk, high-level radioactive waste barge shipments could begin on Lake Michigan and many other surface and coastal waters  across the country and high-level radioactive waste truck and train shipments could begin in most states, many major cities, and the vast majority of U.S. congressional districts 

Why address what is assuredly the existential challenge of our time on Earth? 

Because it is never too late to pay attention, massive attention because that’s what it takes to save ourselves from another Chernobyl.  It is never too late to re-awaken a movement, the anti-nuclear movement, which in the ‘80s was capable of turning out hundreds of thousands. It’s important to remember that the economic rationale

for such an exorbitant form of energy was to develop weapons-grade plutonium. Any energy it might supply for home use is merely a by-product of a war-making, planet-devastating military project. 

The time is now. Especially now, with the surge—finally—of such popular movements as #IdleNoMore, #BlackLivesMatter, 350.org, #EndICE and #SaveRoevsWade, why is the idea—not the rhetoric—but the idea of Peace in Our Time, even as it comes to us in words from Helsinki, why is Peace and the always elusive Peace Economy such a bad idea?

For what you can do to help, please go to SanOnofreSafety.org and share this information and fact sheet.

Check out Beyond Nuclear’s fact sheet.

Sign The Nation open letter at Roots Action: https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=13433&tag=JFP20180711&track=JFP20180711

Join action August 6 at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Livermore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-LTRwZb35A

Anti-Nuclear

Greenpeace crashes  Superman-shaped  drone into France’s Bugey nuclear plant.

Ex-PM Koizumi invites Ozawa, a former political rival, to call for ending nuclear power in Japan.

In opposition to the objectionable dump site on Western Shoshone land at Yucca Mountain, Beyond Nuclear leads a standing room only briefing in the U.S. Congress on the need for hardened on-site nuclear waste  storage.

Peace activists gain entry to Buchel, a German air base, that holds U.S. nuclear bombs.

More than 80 activists from Livermore and surrounding towns challenge Air District’s preliminary OK of Livermore Lab’s permit to detonate bomb tests with high explosive contaminants at an outdoor firing table.”

Resistance

Vermont nurses strike for better patient care.

In Khan al Ahmar, Sara abu Dahouk s was release and school opened as scheduled as mandated by Israel’s High Court.

Thousands protest Israeli apartheid bill in TelAviv.

In L.A. bank employees and activists celebrate the passage of an amended bank resolution requiring any bank doing business with the City must disclose its sales goals and reveal any predatory business practices.

Activists are arrested after shutting down ICE facilities in the cities of San Francisco and Miami.

Members of Department of Homeland Security quit over morally repugnant family separation policies.

Hand in Hand, a national network of employers of nannies, house cleaners and personal attendants, brings an additional constituency to Trumps ”zero tolerance” policy.

#TimetoboycottAmazon as Bezos workers mark #PrimeDay with strikes against low pay and brutal working conditions.

Episcopal Church votes to set up a human rights divestment screen to shed investments in companies involved in human rights violations in Israel.

GOP withdraws nomination of racist Judge Ryan W. Bounds.

Environment

Marking “Zero Hour,” young activists kick off three days of marches and demonstrations around the globe to safeguard our planet for both its current and future generations.

Greenpeace slathers Barclay’s London headquarters with faux tar sand spill.

Ecuador’s highest court upholds $9.5 billion ruling against Chevron Corporation.

Four largest tech companies announce 100% renewable energy commitments.

Exxon Mobil leaves conservative advocacy group ALEC.

New York City Council votes on bill to limit the damages of environmental racism.

Juan and Julia Jimenez and their children have restored the ecosystem in their coffee farm in Cajamarca, Peru, and made it more resilient to the impacts of climate change.  

Judiciary

In Khan al Ahmar, Sara abu Dahouk s was release and school opened as scheduled as mandated by Israel’s High Court.

The International Criminal Court judges order outreach to victims of war crimes in Palestine. 

Women’s Rights

India rules marriage of child brides is illegal and that sex with child brides is always illegal.

Turkish wedding photographer stops a child bride marriage he was hired to shoot.

Gov. John Carney of Delaware signs bill requiring all health plans to start providing birth control with zero co-pays.

Indian working class women are finally allowed to sit down and take breaks during the work day.

Discrimination

Philadelphia Judge Petrese Tucker uphold adoption by same-sex couples as non-discriminatory.

Milwaukee enters a settlement agreement to end stop and frisk that resulted in decade-long harassment and racial/ethnic profiling of black and Latino people citywide.

Media

FCC Chair Pai sinks the proposed merger of  Sinclair and Tribune Media because of activist pressure.

Rep. Mike Coffman of CO becomes first House Republican to back reinstating FCC protections.

EU hits Google with $5 billion antitrust fine, demanding it be broken up for monopolistic practices.

Immigrants

District Judge Dana Sabraw temporarily halts deportation  of separated families.

Kansas congregations pledge to shield immigrants facing deportation, “even if it means arrest.”

Otros Dreams en Accion, a grass-roots Mexican group, works with deported and returning migrants from the U.S.

Primaries & politics

Over 62 House Democrats launch a Medicare for all Caucus to thunderous applause.

Progressive candidate Kevin de Leon receives endorsement from California Democrats.

Non-citizens legally register to vote in San Francisco school elections (because it directly affects their children).

Measure to Balkanize California into three states is removed from the November ballot by the state Supreme Court.

California Jovanka Beckles’ run for AD 15 is endorsed by Dan Kalb and Judy Appel.

California Young Executive Board endorses and  overwhelmingly passes Igor Tregub’s #HousingNow-Yes, on Prop 10 (Costa Hawkins).

Philanthropy

World cup star Kylian Mbappé donates all his earnings to help children with disabilities.

Chutzpah (for laughs)

Candelas Glows, a group dealing with problems at Rocky Flats, announced that local developers partnering with government are trying to sell the public on a plutonium –contaminated site re-imaged as a wildlife refuge.

Pentagon reaches back ten years to take money back from veterans.

So you’ve ruined a town and poisoned their children, why not bill them for your legal costs?