The Washington Post reports: “Hurricane Irma is an ‘extremely dangerous’ Category 5, barreling toward the northern Lesser Antilles and Southern Florida. It’s already the strongest hurricane ever recorded outside the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s likely to make landfall somewhere in Florida over the weekend. “The storm is life-threatening for the United…

“I do suppose those four or five thousand Confederate soldiers who died in Chicago deserve a memorial. Certainly they deserve it a lot more than the slaveholding southern generals and politicians they were dumb enough to fight for. For ordinary white people, white supremacy is always stupid like that. The Confederate army was a draftee…

“We should do all we can to prevent such a mistake. … Flood waters reaching the nuclear reactors could make operation increasingly dangerous and the rains are expected to continue. There is plenty of reserve capacity on our electric grid, so we don’t have to run the reactors in order to keep the lights on.…

“Climate change will bring more frequent and fierce rainstorms to cities like Houston. But unchecked development remains a priority in the famously un-zoned city, creating short-term economic gains for some while increasing flood risks for everyone.”

“The Federal Trade Commission rashly rubber stamped the $14 billion Amazon-Whole Foods merger — to the detriment of farmers and consumers across the U.S. The scale and complexity of the deal warranted a thorough investigation into how the merger would affect upstream suppliers, like the thousands of local farmers and innovative food companies that supply…

“These new sanctions will further destabilize Venezuela by undermining efforts to alleviate widespread shortages of food and medicine, and by strengthening the hand of hardliners who oppose a negotiated solution to the country’s political crisis. Coupled with Trump’s outrageous threat of military action in Venezuela, these sanctions leave little doubt regarding the administration’s real objective…

“This does nothing for the Afghan people. I think the only solution was something that has been explored over early this year. The Russians tried to get together the regional actors in the region because it must be a regional solution. Every regional power has a horse in this race, which makes this complicated and…

“Trump’s speech offered to accelerate the continued killing and suffering in Afghanistan, while barely giving mention to a negotiated resolution to the conflict and only offering the scarcest platitudes deemed necessary by the speechwriters and political consultants toward peace and diplomacy.”

“Far from being an intractable foe, North Korea has repeatedly asked the United States to sign a peace treaty that would bring the unresolved Korean War to a long overdue end. It has also proposed that the United States cease its annual war games with South Korea. North Korea has cautioned the United States not…

“After the ‘Unite the Right’ rally organized by white supremacists rocked Charlottesville, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe complained that the demonstrators ‘had better equipment’ than the state’s police forces. However, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) detail sophisticated, military-grade weapons Virginia police received from the Department of Defense (DOD) under its controversial 1033…