IMPORTANT READS

The United Nations COP 26 climate summit this November was already set to be one of the most important diplomatic gatherings in history, a meeting where world leaders will, without exaggeration, decide the future of life on earth.

POLITICAL ECONOMICS - Democrats in Congress have a plan for their summer vacation: talk about President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, and then talk about it again and again and again.

This week we again observe the anniversaries of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WW II – the only time nuclear weapons were used against human targets.

CLIMATE POLITICS-The world is on fire like never before:

ENVIRONMENT - At least 162 oil refineries and other petroleum-holding facilities in California have likely stored or used materials containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of synthetic chemicals that persist indefinitely in the environment and are linked to severe illnesses, according to state water regulators.

The recall attempt against Gov. Gavin Newsom is being widely—and wrongly—dismissed as a peculiar and illegitimate consequence of California’s strange direct democracy.

CLIMATE WATCH - Wildlife defenders on Wednesday denounced the Biden administration after the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a rule allowing fossil fuel companies operating in northern Alaska to harass polar bears and walruses while searching or drilling for oil and gas.

PLANNING WATCH-CityWatch contributor Robert Hunziker has written frightening columns alerting readers that the climate crisis has arrived, and the worst case climate predictions are the most accurate.

PEACE VOICE-Modern-day democracy has numerous weaknesses, as we’ve been made well aware: policy differences that cannot be resolved, corruption, manipulation of voting and elections, and the refusal of one side to allow the other to pass legislation. 

CUBA LIBRE - In the weeks following the protests in Cuba on July 11 questions about how US President Joe Biden would react have dominated headlines.

HEALTH CARE - Activists in more than 50 cities across the United States marched and rallied on July 24 to demand a Medicare for All or single-payer health care system.

BY THE PEOPLE - Perhaps the best possible thing we could acknowledge being is a “divided nation.” Failing to do so justifies — or at least avoids noticing — all manner of violent cruelty and repression in the name of so-called democracy, from the jailing of whistleblowers who reveal U.S. war crimes and global criminality, to the lynching of men and women of color . . .  to the waging of endless war.

COMMENTARY - Remember when the right-wing was all about supporting cops and maybe even a little police brutality?

Without racism running deep in their DNA, Trump's supporters would not have listened to a raving maniac president encouraging violence in order to remain in power. 

COMMENTARY - As a ROTC cadet and an Air Force officer, I was a tiny part of America’s vast Department of Defense (DoD) for 24 years until I retired and returned to civilian life as a history professor. 

CLIMATE WATCH - Apocalypse is complete destruction of the world as described in some detail in the biblical book of Revelation.

LABOR VIEW - Amazon founder and Richest Man in the World Jeff Bezos got shot into space on his very own rocket on July 20, two weeks after retiring and handing off the company to a successor, Andy Jassy, who previously ran Amazon web services. 

CLIMATE CHANGE - Wildfires, heatwaves, hurricanes and droughts: the deadly impacts of climate change are becoming more intense and devastating.

NEVER ENDING WARS - We should have abolished war after World War II. That war was so lethal and so destructive, even before the dropping of the atomic bombs, that had people understood that there is a real alternative to deadly violent conflict, humanity might have taken another path.

THE CITY - Rowing events on Monday have been rescheduled to accommodate Typhoon Nepartak, which formed Friday night to the southeast of Japan, is expected to make landfall in mainland Japan by Tuesday with Tokyo in the forecast cone.  

Rep. Ilhan Omar—the first Somali-American elected to Congress and an outspoken critic of U.S. militarism—on Friday sent a letter to President Joe Biden questioning his rationale behind its first drone strike in Somalia earlier this week,