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Authored by Michael Bastasch via The Daily Caller,

• Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lambasted “environmental terrorists groups that have not allowed public access, that refuse to allow harvest of timber.”

• Environmentalists use litigation to keep federal agencies from thinning forests, clearing debris or allowing logging.

• Activists want to blame global warming for wildfires, but experts say the relationship between climate and fires is complicated.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spent the last week targeting environmental groups that have for years opposed activities, like logging and thinning, to reduce the risks of catastrophic wildfires on federal lands.

The former Montana congressman blamed “litigation from radical environmentalists who would rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods,” in a USA Today op-ed published Wednesday.

Zinke also called out “extreme environmentalists” in an interview with KCRA that aired Sunday. The day before that, Zinke lambasted “environmental terrorists groups that have not allowed public access, that refuse to allow harvest of timber” in an interview with Breitbart Radio.

Deadly wildfires have consumed over 1 million acres in West Coast states, damaging structures and forcing thousands to flee their homes. The recent death of a firefighter battling the nearly 350,000-acre Mendocino Complex Fire brings the death toll to six for this season.

So what’s the point of attacking environmentalists? Zinke is taking the conversation away from global warming and bringing it back to land management, including the litigation and environmental laws that keep officials from actively managing the forests.

Instead, activists focus on global warming, arguing human-caused warming has expanded wildfire season due to longer hotter, drier conditions in the western states. At the same time, these groups often oppose efforts to clear forests of debris and dead wood that fuel fires when hot, dry weather sets in every year.

“I’ve heard the climate change argument back and forth,” Zinke told the Sacramento-based KCRA. “This has nothing to do with climate change. This has to do with active forest management.”

Wildfire experts tend to see land management and urban growth as prime drivers of wildfires.

Many experts also see global warming as a factor in the rise of fires, but admit the relationship is more complicated than the media lets on.

“The story can’t be a simply that warming is increasing the numbers of wildfires in California because the number of fires is declining. And area burned has not been increasing either,” University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass wrote in a recent blog post.

In fact, the recent National Climate Assessment special report gave “low to medium confidence for a detectable human climate change contribution in the western United States based on existing studies.”

Most wildfires are caused by humans, mostly unintentionally. Sparks from vehicles or equipment, power lines, arson and cigarettes are some of the ways humans cause massive blazes. Lightning is the cause of wildfires humans don’t spark.

In California, for example, humans caused 95 percent of all wildfires, with power lines and utility equipment becoming a growing problem. Research also shows that wildfire season has primarily grown from population growth in fire-prone areas, increasing the chances of a fire-causing spark.

Environmentalists have obviously not taken kindly to Zinke’s remarks, but are particularly incensed by his dismissal of global warming as a driver of catastrophic wildfires.

Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration is missing the main issue by being dismissive of climate change’s effect on the fires.

“Climate change creates drought, high wind conditions, low humidity. Fire creates its own weather,” Randi Spivak, the public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Hill.

“You can thin all you want till the cows come home but fire will overtake that,” Spivak said, adding “what is misleading is people like Zinke and other people who refuse to talk about climate change and how we need to tackle that.”

“Name calling and finger pointing won’t change the truth that climate change is exacerbating wildfires,” echoed the Sierra Club’s Athan Manuel. “The long-term safety of our communities relies on reducing carbon pollution.”

Zinke actually did say fire season had gotten longer and temperatures had warmed, but added that “doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to remove the dead and dying timber and manage our forests so you don’t have these catastrophic burns.”

But Zinke is correct that environmental litigation has kept federal agencies, including the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service, from thinning, clearing debris and conducting prescribed burns to keep forest growth in check.

A 2014 study published in the Journal of Forestry found “[v]egetative management, or logging projects continued to be the dominant type of management activity involved in Forest Service land management litigation, representing nearly three times more cases than any other type of management activity.”

The Forest Service was found more likely to lose cases “where plaintiffs advocated for less resource use,” particularly in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where the agency won less than half its cases.

In fact, the 9th Circuit on Monday overturned a Forest Service plan for part of Idaho’s Payette National Forest. The judge sided with environmental groups and ruled “renders the Project inconsistent with the desired vegetative conditions set forth in the Payette Forest Plan” from 2003.

The service’s plan that got overturned included getting “fire conditions toward historical range of variability to reduce wildland fire risk, improve wildlife habitat” through “mechanical thinning, harvest and prescribed burning.”

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The Los Angeles subway will become the first mass transit system in the nation to deploy portable body scanners to screen passengers for explosives and weapons, officials announced on Tuesday. 

The scanners, made by UK screening company ThruVision, are able to screen passengers walking through the station without slowing them down and will be deployed over the next few months according to Alex Wiggins, head of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation’s law enforcement division. 

“We’re looking specifically for weapons that have the ability to cause a mass-casualty event,” Wiggins said. “We’re looking for explosive vests, we’re looking for assault rifles. We’re not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don’t have the ability to inflict mass casualties.”

The machines scan for metallic and non-metallic objects on a person’s body, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet (9 meters) away and have the capability of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour. –AP

“We’re dealing with persistent threats to our transportation systems in our country,” said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. “Our job is to ensure security in the transportation systems so that a terrorist incident does not happen on our watch.”

And before you worry about your kibbles and bits getting scanned into some secret database, rest assured that ThruVision’s technology is “safe and respectful,” which their website describes as “Completely safe, with no anatomical detail revealed and physical ‘pat-downs’ no longer needed.” 

Thruvision is a proven people-screening camera able to detect any type of object hidden under clothing. Based on patented, passive terahertz technology, Thruvision provides safe and respectful real-time imagery of items concealed in travelers’ clothing, allowing law enforcement agents to take decisive, pre-emptive action if suspicious items are seen. –ThruVision

The technology is reportedly passive, meaning it doesn’t shoot beams of radiation through one’s body. 

Los Angeles will post signs at various stations notifying passengers they are subject to body scanner screening. And while Wiggins wants you to know that the screening process is totally voluntary – those who refuse won’t be able to ride on the subway. Around 150,000 passengers ride on Los Angeles’ Metro Red Line daily, while over 112 million riders used the system last year. 

We can picture it now. 

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Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist,

Although I have a theory that on Quantitative Tightening expiry days the stock market is weak, the last two haven’t worked out.

To be fair, I warned you about this past one as it coincided with the day before the FOMC meeting – a period long known to be subject to abnormal stock market strength due to the FOMC drift.

But here we are, with tomorrow (Wednesday August 15th), having just a shade over $23 billion of bonds expiring.

So even though I am not one to hop upon the “world-is-ending-because-of-EM-contagion-bandwagon”, I am taking a flyer on the short side for tomorrow’s trading.

Recently QT expiry days have coincided with month-end and it will be interesting to have a large redemption day occur on a more “regular” trading day. It will be a great test of the theory in a more “pure” environment.

Don’t mistake this punt as a change of heart to the bearish side. It’s purely a one-day-trading position.

Let’s hope it’s not three in a row as that cat looks really mean…

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During a quarter of broken or barely-kept promises, unprofessional outbursts on conference calls, rationality-questioning tweets, and a record loss, it is perhaps no surprise that some of Elon Musk’s biggest backers are committing mutiny.

As Reuters reports, Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price Group – two of the largest investors in Tesla – disclosed in their quarterly filings tonight that they each cut their stakes in the electric automaker by more than 20%.

Additionally, Bloomberg notes that Susquehanna exited almost all of their 1.266 million shares.

It was not clear why T. Rowe Price and Fidelity reduced their Tesla holdings or whether they support a move by the company to go private.

“A lot of these mutual funds, who are the large shareholders, they can’t necessarily buy and hold private company’s stock,” said CFRA analsyt Efraim Levy.

However, bear in mind that this exodus came before Tesla CEO Musk dropped a 140-character bombshell that he may take his company private; something that had left many smaller investors wondering if mutual fund giants will stick with the company if it does go private.

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Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

All over the world, specifically motivated arson attacks, shootings, knifings, and gang violence eruptions are occurring. But mainstream media outlets in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the US are reluctant to report the stories without a pro-immigration bias, quietly glossing over the common thread in the attacks. Extremists with ties to Northern Africa seem to be waging a war, but you won’t hear this from the media or the respective governments.

Before someone starts calling me a racist, please understand that in my following report, I am certainly not trying to paint every person who has migrated with the same brush. I’m talking about extremists, and as I’ve written many times, extremists are usually the ones who get all the press. The other thing that is rarely reported on is the families who relocate to another country and embrace the new way of life, becoming valuable members of society. It seems to me that if there weren’t a large number of these people who quietly integrate, we’d be hearing about it.

This is a different story, however. It’s a story about how numerous attacks that have happened in just the past few weeks are being glossed over by the media and the governments of the countries where they happened.

Canada

Havoc was unleashed in Toronto’s Greektown neighborhood on July 23rd when a gunman opened fire on diners in restaurants and cafes, killing two people and injuring thirteen more. The victims were 18-year-old and 10-year-old girls.

A video from one witness shows a man dressed in black clothes and a black hat walking quickly and firing three shots from the sidewalk into at least one shop or restaurant in Toronto’s Greektown, a lively residential area with crowded Greek restaurants and cafes…

…Witnesses heard many shots and described the suspect walking past restaurants and cafes and patios on both sides of the street and firing into them. (source)

The gunman was identified as Faisal Hussain. Hussain’s parents were Canadian citizens from Pakistan, so he himself was not actually a migrant. He was born in Canada. There are some clues that he was, however, an extremist., but we’ll never know for sure since he was reported to have killed himself during an exchange of gunfire with the police.

ISIS quickly took credit for the attack. (It’s important to note that ISIS often takes credit for attacks in which they are not necessarily involved.) But in this case, the initial evidence leaned toward Hussain actually being a terrorist, despite a statement to the contrary from the public safety minister.

“At this stage, based on the state of the investigation, which is led by the Toronto police service, there is no connection between that individual and national security,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said.

But a law enforcement source told CBS News that Faisal Hussain visited Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) websites and may have expressed support for the terrorist group. They were looking into whether Hussain may have lived at one time in Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan,the source said. There is no indication that Hussain was directed by ISIS to carry out the attack. (source)

There were other ties, too. His brother Fahad overdosed last year while awaiting a trial for dealing crack. The brothers were friends with Maisum Ansari, who was charged with the possession of 53 kilograms of carfentanil, a synthetic drug that is 100 times stronger than fentanyl. This was the largest seizure of carfentanil in Canadian history.

During the investigation into Ansari’s drug operations, police discovered a weapons cache in the basement of his rented-out house. This is possibly an example of the intersection of the drug trade and terrorism. Furthermore, carfentanil, specifically, has been of concern to the US government as a drug that also could be used as a chemical weapon. (source)

The story quickly changed as soon as there was a whiff of ties to Islamic terror. A statement was released, ostensibly by the Hussain family, that talked of serious mental health issues. The media jumped on this immediately as the truth. But as it turns out, that statement was not written by Hussain’s mom and dad.

It emerged, however, that the so-called Hussain “family statement” had not been written by the murderer’s parents at all, but rather by Mohammed Hashim, a professional activist who served as chairman of the “Stronger Together” program of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM, formerly the Council of American Islamic Relations Canada or CAIR CAN). Its American parent organization, as stated in its own documents, is CAIR, designated as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates. (source)

An investigation by the National Post also shed some doubt on the claims of mental health issues.

The National Post has learned that Toronto Police files show little evidence of the typical history of a person with a florid mental illness such as “psychosis,” as his family said.

A senior police source, while cautioning that this doesn’t mean Hussain wasn’t mentally ill, said that often with such people, there are frequent encounters with police — calls from the family for help, suicide attempts or committals to hospital under the Mental Health Act.

With Hussain, the source said, “we have very little of that.”

The third party, who had distributed the family’s statement, didn’t reply to a Post email Tuesday, asking if he had any light to shed on the apparent contradiction between the statement and police files. (source)

This is only the most recent in a series of extremist attacks in Canada, according to the Gatestone Institute:

• The attempted 2013 bombing plot on a Via Rail train

• The 2014 car-ramming attack that killed a Canadian soldier

• The 2014 gun attack on the National War Memorial and Parliament

• The 2016 botched suicide bombing that ended with only the terrorist dying

• The 2016 knife attack on a Canadian Forces recruiting center

• The 2016 knife attack in a Canadian Tire store by a woman claiming to work for ISIS

• The 2017 vehicle-ramming and knife attack

• The 2018 restaurant bombing in Mississauga which left 15 people wounded

Australia

Police in the city of Melbourne made no arrests during a rampage that left residents of the Taylors Lake neighborhood terrified in their homes.

“Dozens” of Sudanese-Australian young people descended on the neighborhood. Police told residents to “stay inside and lock their doors” during the fray. They also stated that there was “no risk to public safety.” The residents, however, had a different story.

Local media heard police had said the youths had gathered “for war” as they told people to stay inside their homes, with one resident telling reporters: “They told me to stay inside, lock the doors and yeah, it’s scary, I’ve got a nine-year-old and an 11-year-old and they’re scared.”

Another Taylors Hill local described youths threatening his family, asking “what are you looking at, you white trash” before warning him not to be shocked if they decided to “raid” his home, and he added that the group seemed completely unafraid of police in the area.

A recurring theme in locals’ testimony was the desire to feel safe in their own homes amidst rising African violence in Melbourne. “I thought this isn’t right. I should be able to come out here and feel safe,” said one resident, who told 9NEWS she was branded a “racist” by female troublemakers on her property she tried to confront during the chaos.

“They were everywhere, I don’t know if I’m over exaggerating but it looked like hundreds,” resident Maree Delaney said, recalling she was “scared they were going to start smashing cars, breaking doors down, everything.” (source)

Some Melbourne residents say they’ve added security doors and roller shutters. Others have begun stockpiling weapons, no easy feat in a country with strict gun control.

The frightening incident was glossed over in a report by ABC:

Achol Marial, the secretary of youth affairs for the South Sudanese Community Association in Victoria, said the incident was disappointing but was not gang-related.

“It was just immature young people having a misunderstanding and it led to a fight,” she said. “It’s been spread around, which has caused others that were not involved in the fight to come and witness it.

“We are disappointed … about what happened. We will do the best that we can to get those particular young girls on board and just advise them a little bit on how to behave.

“We will speak to their parents to keep an eye on them. I think parents need to be more aware of what their children may be up to.” (source)

You know. Just kids being kids. Boys fighting over girls.

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton told ABC Radio Melbourne the dispute revolved around “a couple of girlfriends”.

“[They were] having a bit of a clash there. I think it was over a couple of girlfriends or somethinglike that,” he said. “It’s just the case of two groups coming together to want to fight about it.”

Local resident Jeb said police told them to go inside and stay there. “[There was] a whole bunch of African youths running around,” he said. “I’d say they were being a bit abusive in terms of … they were sledging the coppers and the police were clearly outnumbered. That was pretty clear.

“There were a lot of females and they were being most vocal just swearing, and carrying on.  (source)

No arrests were made, but Commander Hansen said there “could” be some later for “anything from an affray, through to criminal damage through to riotous behavior would be the sort of type of offenses we’d be considering.”

Back in January, Australia’s Prime Minister caused outrage when he warned of “gang violence” by African migrants. He was immediately accused of “willfully stoking anxieties about migration, assimilation and sentencing for political purposes.”

Victoria crime statistics show that Sudanese immigrants are overrepresented in criminal arrests. About 1.5 percent of offenders in Victoria are Sudanese, though Sudanese and South Sudanese immigrants make up about half a percent of the state’s population, according to a parliamentary inquiry last year. (source)

Sweden

And again, we’re back to Sweden. I’ve written before about the no-go zones, the strained welfare system, and the increased violence against women. Police officers who talk about the migrant extremist issues are disciplined for “inciting racial hatred.”

This week, the inundated country has seen a rash of firebombs in what looks like a coordinated attack in different cities. On Monday night, more than 80 cars were set on fire in the cities of Gothenburg and in Trollhättan. A translated article states that this is a huge increase.

“We’ve had periods of many fires but …”

“It’s closer to some 60 cars that have burned or vandalized in several places, and we have found several rocks and bangs,” said police inspector Claes Dahlström in place at Frölunda square at 23 pm.

Later it was reported that the figure has risen to 80 vehicles that have been burned or damaged in other ways.

“We have had periods of many fires but on one and the same evening and in such a short space of time, in so many different places, I do not know if we have had before,” said Ulla Brehm, President of the Police in the West West…

“Young people have thrown stones against the police who came to ensure the scheme. They have been masked with hoodies and with cap over the face so that one can not easily identify someone, he says.

Eyewitnesses describe how dark-colored people turned fire on the cars. Pictures from Frölunda show how many people turn on fire by car after car in the parking lot. (source)

Here’s a photo from SVT, a Swedish news source.

Some Swedish politicians expressed outrage.

“I get pissed off for real,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven hit out in an interview with Swedish radio ahead of the September 9th election, adding he wanted to ask the perpetrators “what the hell are you doing?”

“Society will come back hard on this,” said the Social Democrat leader, who also raised questions about the scope and timing of the attacks, which police suspect were coordinated via social media.

“It looks very coordinated, almost like a military operation,” Löfven said, adding that the police probe would show if the car fires were down to vandalism, organized crime or something else.

Justice and Interior Minister Morgan Johansson called the attacks “despicable”…

…Ulf Kristersson, leader of the centre-right opposition party the Moderates, wrote on Facebook that “dreadful scenes are being played out in Gothenburg”. “These are no ‘protests’, this is sabotage. Sweden has tolerated this far too long. It has to end,” he added. (source)

USA Today described the arson attacks as “gang violence.”

Police did not say what might have motivated the “organized and prepared” attacks, only confirming that gangs of youths were involved without specifying numbers.

Witnesses told police the alleged offenders were dressed in dark clothing and hoodies.

“It seems very organized, almost like a military operation,” Lofven said in an interview on Swedish radio but did not say who might have been behind the attacks. (source)

Really, migrant extremists are waging all-out war in parts of the country. But as far as local reporting goes, my source in Sweden said, “Nothing to see here.”

Here’s an example:

The police killing of a 69-year-old man who wielded a machete in a suburb of Stockholm, prompted accusations of police brutality in 2013 and saw rioting by hundreds of youths in the capital. (source)

What do you think?

Meanwhile, in America, we have our own extremists, whose threats to shoot political adversaries have been largely ignored by our mainstream media. It’s pretty blatant that we’re watching a massive cover-up happening all over the western world.

There’s one very important lesson in all this: If you want to know what’s really going on in the event of something politically incorrect, you can’t depend on the mainstream media or the government to tell you. And when things like this are happening? You really need to know in order to keep your family safe.

How far will political correctness stretch before these things can no longer be covered up?

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Deutsche Bank has released a one-page summary on the ongoing “Trade War” situation.

As DB’s Jim Reid notes, “a lot has happened in recent months on this front and a lot more is still pending. While we acknowledge that the topic is well written about, the fluidity of ‘Trade war’ related headlines makes it difficult to follow the status of where we stand with regards to different tariffs measures, retaliations and the numbers behind them. With this in mind, we have put together this one page infographic note highlighting (i) the status of different tariff measures announced so far (ii) the retaliatory push back (iii) room for further escalations (iv) potential macroeconomic impacts and (v) the most recent rhetoric.”

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Submitted by Priceonomics

The average plastic bag you pick up at the grocery store, or carry your takeout in, has a lifespan of about 12 minutes. When discarded, they clog sewage and storm drains, entangle and kill an estimated 100,000 marine mammals every year, and degenerate into toxic microplastics that fester in our oceans and landfills for up to 1,000 years. 

Shoppers collectively use around 500 billion single-use plastic bags every year. That’s 150 bags per person, per year, for every single person on Earth — or enough to circle the globe 4,200 times.

Notably, we’re starting to see communities around the U.S., and the world, mobilize to reduce waste by banning, taxing, or otherwise limiting the use of these plastic bags. How common are these “plastic bag bans” and is there any data about how effective they are?

We analyzed data from Priceonomics customer Reuse This Bag, a company sells reusable bags, to take a big-picture look at where legislation has been passed, and what its  effects have been. Which cities in the US are leading the way for plastic bag bans? Internationally, which countries have made the most significant push?

Summary of key takeaways:

• In the U.S., only 2 states (CA and HI) have banned plastic bags on a statewide level
• 4 U.S. states (DE, ME, RI, NY) have mandatory recycling or reuse programs in place
• 10 U.S. states (AZ, FL, IA, ID, IN, MI, MN, MO, MS, WI) have places preemptive bans on banning plastic bags.
• ~200 U.S. municipalities have banned or taxed plastic bags; outcomes have been largely positive, including:
  • San Jose, CA: Reduction of plastic bags in storm drains (89%), rivers (60%), and residential areas (59%); average # of bags per person reduced from 3 to 0.3.
  • San Francisco, CA: Savings of up to $600k per year in plastic processing fees.
  • Seattle, WA: Reduction of plastic bags in both residential (48%) and commercial (76%) waste.

• Globally, plastic bags are banned in 32 countries, 18 of which are in Africa

Plastic bag legislation in the US

Many lists of plastic bag bans exist online — but most are convoluted and hard to understand. In assembling our data, we drew public information from the National Conference of State Legislators and a number of state-level, and country-level reports. 

Let’s start with the United States. 

In America, only two states have conclusively banned single-use plastic bags: Hawaii and California.

Though Hawaii’s ban came first, it wasn’t technically a state-wide ban: all five Hawaiian islands (Big Island, Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Pala) individually banned plastic bags at various points — the last of which took effect in 2015. The bans, which aim to fully phase in by 2020, range in definition and severity, but generally still allow for the use of 100% recyclable plastic bags.

California passed a unilateral, state-wide ban in September of 2014, and it went into effect in November of 2016. The law bans single-use plastic bags at all large retailers, and imposed a 10-cent charge for paper bags. Before the law was passed, more than 100 California counties already had various bans in place.

In 2009. Washington, DC imposed a 5-cent tax on all single-use plastic bags after independent studies found them to be the single largest source of pollution in local waterways — and a number of states (New York, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware) have put partial taxes or bans into place, but haven’t yet made the full leap.

Meanwhile, 10 states — Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Wisconsin — have preemptively banned plastic bag bans. In these states, the plastic industry’s heavy lobbying paid off.

Do bans actually work?

Since the two statewide bans are relatively new, data on outcomes are still largely unfounded,  but we can turn to a few studies run by the more than 200 individual cities and municipalities that have enacted ordinances around the country.

Over 200 counties and municipalities have enacted ordinances either imposing a fee on plastic bags or banning them outright, including all counties in Hawaii.

In San Jose, California, for instance, a ban was put into place in 2012 — and since then, there has been an 89% reduction in plastic bags in storm drains, a 60% reduction in creeks and rivers, and a 59% drop in residential plastic waste.

In nearby San Francisco (ban enacted in 2007), the city has saved a reported $600,000 per year in plastic processing fees alone.

And in Seattle, where bags were banned 5 years ago, residents have seen in 48% drop in residential plastic bag waste, and a 76% decline in commercial plastic bag waste. In 2010, there were 262 tons’ worth of plastic bags in landfills; by 2014, that dropped to 136 tons.

Where are plastic bags banned around the world?

America is far from the most progressive country when it comes to plastic bag bans internationally.

At least 32 countries around the world have plastic bag bans in place — and nearly half are in Africa, where plastic bags frequently clog drains, leading to increased mosquito swarms (and, as a result, bouts of malaria).

The bans in these countries range widely in severity, but Kenya’s, put into place last year, surely take the cake: anyone “making, selling, of importing” plastic bags could face fines of up to $19,000, and 4 years in jail.

In China, plastic bag waste was so bad that it led to the coining of the term “white pollution.” A full ban was adopted in 2008 — and since then, plastic bag waste has dropped by 60% to 80%, an effective reduction of some 40 billion bags. The country does, however, still face enforcement issues.

And in India, where an estimated 20 cows per die die from plastic ingestion, a ban has been in effect since 2002.

Some 18 countries also have taxes in place, which have proved to be a viable alternative to a full ban.

In Ireland, a 22c plastic bag tax has reduced usage by as much as 90%. Portugal has seen a drop in excess of 85%. And since imposing a tax in 2003, Denmark has seen the lowest plastic usage in Europe. Averaging just 4 bags per person, per year.

***

Globally, as many as 160,000 plastic bags are used every second — and currently, only 1 to 3% of them are recycled. This simply isn’t sustainable behavior and plastic bag bans are one solution to the problem. While only two states in America and a few dozens countries have banned bags, the results so far have included a substantially decline in plastic bag usage and waste.

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A bombshell grand jury report from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concludes that over 300 members of the Catholic clergy molested over 1,000 child victims amid a “systematic” coverup by church leaders spanning over seven decades – in the second major Catholic pedophile scandal this week following a raid conducted in Chile at the Catholic Episcopal Conference. 

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a Tuesday press conference in Harrisburg that while 1,000 victims were identified in the grand jury report, members of the grand jury believe there are more – and that the real number might be “in the thousands” since some records were lost, while victims in other cases were afraid to come forward.  

We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church’s own records. We believe that the real number — of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward — is in the thousands.

“The coverup was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the coverup. These documents, from the dioceses’ own ‘Secret Archives,’ formed the backbone of this investigation,” Shapiro said. 

The report specifically faulted Cardinal Donald Wuerl – former longtime Pittsburgh bishop who now leads the Washington archdiocese, for his part in concealing the sexual abuse. On Tuesday, Wuerl refuted the claims, saying in a statement that he “acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse.” 

The grand jury scrutinized abuse allegations in dioceses that minister to more than half the state’s 3.2 million Catholics. Its report echoed the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials’ concealment of it.

The panel concluded that a succession of Catholic bishops and other diocesan leaders tried to shield the church from bad publicity and financial liability by covering up abuse, failing to report accused clergy to police and discouraging victims from going to law enforcement. –CTV News

The almost 1,400 page report’s introduction notes that due to the age of most of the cases, that criminal cases will be unlikely as a result of the massive investigation. “As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted,” it reads. Indeed, the vast majority of priests named in the document are either dead or likely to avoid arrest due to expired statutes of limitation on their alleged crimes. 

The Pennsylvania coverup is the second recent Catholic pedophilia report of the day – after authorities in Chile raided the headquarters of the Catholic Church’s Episcopal Conference as part of a wide-ranging probe into clerical sex abuse in the South American country. 

The Tuesday raids took place in the most important building of the Chilean church in the capital of Santiago, say prosecutors. Authorities recently summoned the archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, to appear and testify about the alleged cover-up of sexual abuse which had been going on for decades. 

In July, Chilean prosecutors said they were investigating 158 members of the country’s Catholic church – both clergymen and lay people, for perpetrating or concealing the sexual abuse of children as well as adults. 

The cases relate to incidents dating back as far as 1960 and involving 266 victims, including 178 children and adolescents, according to public prosecutor Luis Torres.

The prosecutor’s statement offered the first general view of the extent and scope of the abuse scandal faced by Chile’s Catholic Church – and how many people are implicated.

Last month, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of five Chilean bishops amid accusations of abuse and related cover-ups.

“The vast majority of reported incidents relate to sexual crimes committed by priests or people linked to educational establishments,” Torres told reporters.

The entire strata of the Catholic Church – from bishops to monks – were involved in the crimes, as well as “lay people exercising some function in the ecclesiastical sphere,” he noted.

There are 36 ongoing investigations, while 23 previous ones resulted in convictions and one other in an acquittal. –Straits Times

“There’s no doubt that what the public prosecutor is doing is very positive and is starting to open the door to situations that previously were treated as an open secret,” Juan Carlos Claret, a member of an opposition group to tainted bishop Juan Barros in his area, told AFP.

As we reported earlier, in May, Pope Francis summoned the entire bishops conference to Rome after he said he made “grave errors in judgement” in the case of Baros, who stands accused by victims of pedophile Rev. Fernando Karadima of witnessing and ignoring their abuse. 

But the scandal grew beyond the Barros case after Francis received the report written by two Vatican sex crimes experts sent to Chile to get a handle on the scope of the problem. 

Their report hasn’t been made public, but Francis cited its core findings in the footnotes of the document that he handed over to the bishops at the start of their summit this week.

And those findings are damning. –Daily Mail

While some of the pedophile priests and brothers were expelled from their congregations following the discovery of “immoral conduct,” many had their cases “minimized of the absolute gravity of their criminal acts, attributing them to mere weakness or moral lapses,” wrote Francis. 

The crisis in Chile is just one case in a new wave of abuse-related revelations that have raised pressure on Pope Francis to deal more forcefully with abuse. In France, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is facing a trial on criminal charges for not reporting sexual abuse. In Australia, one archbishop was recently convicted in a criminal court for concealing sexual abuse, and a top Francis lieutenant, Cardinal George Pell, will soon stand trial on charges related to sexual offenses. –WaPo

Brett Doyle, co-director or BishopAccountability.org, which tracks sexual abuse claims, said that the Pennsylvania grand jury report may lead the way for the state to change the statute of limitations. 

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Authored by Bradndon Stout via Geopoliticals Alert,

Read any article about the “Russian hacking” or “U.S. election interference” and you will likely see some reference to the United States’ own long history of election interference. Yet most of these articles defend the U.S. by claiming that such interference campaigns dropped off significantly since the end of the Cold War.

This assumption, however, is fundamentally wrong.

In the past 15 years alone, there are many cases of the U.S. interfering in the Democratic process of foreign nations. Below are some of the worst examples of this election interference.

1. Nazis and Hand-Picked Leaders in Ukraine, 2014

While the mainstream media blames Russia for the civil war in Ukraine, the truth is that the West started the conflict. The crisis began in 2013 when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected an EU offer of closer economic cooperation and instead chose to pursue closer economic ties with Russia

The U.S. then decided it was time for a new government in Kiev. In an entirely illegal process, pro-western politicians seized power from the democratically elected Yanukovych. It was later revealed in a leaked phone call that the U.S. handpicked leaders of this new illegal government. The U.S. even supported Ukrainian neo-nazis and other far-right fascist organizations that supported the Western coup. When Ukrainian rebels in the east took up arms against the new Western-backed government, the country plunged into a civil war that continues to this day.

2. Election Interference in Venezuela, 2018

Washington’s main attacks against Venezuela have generally occurred through sanctions and economic warfare, but the U.S. has also meddled in Caracas’s elections.

In an attempt to discredit the most recent presidential election, the U.S. declared the election illegitimate before a single vote had been cast. U.S. puppet states in the region followed suit by also declaring the election illegitimate. Despite this, international observers from over 40 countries confirmed the validity of Venezuela’s election.  In the wake of the election, both China and Russia issued statements calling for the elections results to be respected.

Even more recently, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro escaped a botched assassination attempt. The Venezuelan government blames the armed opposition, Columbia, and the U.S. for the failed drone attack.

3. Election Interference in Palestine, 2006

Palestinians have also had their elections interfered with by the U.S.

In 2006, on the eve of parliamentary elections in Palestine, the U.S. flooded the moderate Fatah party with foreign aid money meant to steal the election away from Hamas backed politicians. The Bush regime ended up giving the Fatah party 2 million dollars, which was roughly double Hamas’s total budget for the election according to a Hamas spokesperson.

Additionally, Israel carried out heavy election interference by banning pro-Hamas activists from campaigning in East Jerusalem and arresting major Palestinian political leaders. Despite the U.S. and Israel’s best efforts, Hamas crushed the moderate Fatah party and ended up winning 74 seats to Fatah’s 45.

4. Sham Elections in Iraq, 2005 

The U.S. invasion of Iraq killed at least a half a million innocent Iraqis and completely destroyed most of the country’s infrastructure.

After the U.S. invasion, it quickly became clear that America had no concern for rebuilding the country. One way this can be seen is the rushed, undemocratic elections the U.S. facilitated to write a new constitution. More than 100 attacks took place on polling stations during the election leaving at least 44 people dead.

Iraq’s Sunni population largely boycotted the election in protest of the U.S. occupation and to avoid the violence largely directed at them. In addition to holding what basically amounted to a sham election, the U.S. has also been accused of rigging the results. Scott Ritter, a high ranking U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, alleges that the U.S. changed the results after the election.

5. Election Interference in Afghanistan, 2009

The U.S. also tried to rig the 2009 Afghanistan election according to former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates.

Gates says the U.S. “tried to oust Hamid Karzai by manipulating Afghan elections.” Karzai’s government has long accused the U.S. of interfering in the election. In Gate’s memoir, he says that senior U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke worked to illegally delay the vote and then to illegally secure a runoff vote.

“There was no exaggeration on our side when talking about this, and now a very senior U.S. official is accepting this fact and talking about it,” Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, told The Guardian. Karzai’s government alleges that the interference went much further than what Gate alleges in his memoir.

According to Karzai’s spokesperson, the U.S. presented ultimatums to either stack Karzai’s cabinet with U.S. puppets or be unseated in a runoff election.

Ongoing Meddling Abroad and Corruption at Home

This list is far from complete, but due to the nature of these election interference campaigns, it is impossible to identify Washington’s meddling in every country.

Every point on this list besides Venezuela only became public thanks to whistleblowers or leaked communications. Still, these whistleblowers and direct communication represent much better evidence than the easily altered IP addresses that supposedly tie the Russian government to the hacking of the DNC.

But even if Russia did it, does it matter? The Wikileaks emails show corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government, whether it was presidential candidate Hillary Clinton telling bankers behind closed doors that her public positions on Wallstreet were an elaborate lie, Clinton receiving debate questions in advance, to the full control of party funds by the Clinton campaign during the primary.

The utter hypocrisy of the U.S. getting upset about election interference and the complete lack of substantial evidence tying Russia to the hacking does not matter to the U.S. The Russia hacking narrative isn’t about logic or facts; it is a way to distract from the corruption of the U.S.’s own government — corruption that has evidence and facts to substantiate it.

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