Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features folk blues guitarist Doc Watson. Enjoy!

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”

-- Lemony Snicket

News and Opinion

Can the U.S. Adjust Sensibly to a Multipolar World?

In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United States was facing after a century of international dominance was “relative and not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order.”

Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony.

Kennedy observed that military power follows economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.

While U.S. leaders have been losing wars and trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth watching.

For decades, the U.S. dollar was the undisputed king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and other nations are taking steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan.

Illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions against dozens of countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves leaves countries vulnerable to U.S. financial coercion. Many countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to only 58% by 2022.

Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem” that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On April 17, 2023, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that U.S. sanctions against Russia risk undermining the role of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency.

And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio lamented that, within five years, the United States may no longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is now higher than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations with many countries.

Now the growth of the Global South will be boosted by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil.

Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity, and privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized, with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82 billion portfolio.

On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “strategic autonomy” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of the Atlantic when the interview was published.

But European Council President Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side, insisting that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders, and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.”

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which has served as a cover for U.S. domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the region are refusing to march in lockstep with U.S. demands. The entire region rejects the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas, which persuaded many other leaders to stay away or only send junior officials, largely doomed the gathering.

With the spectacular victories and popularity of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States.

To reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, South America’s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to create a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of Mercosur—South America’s major trade bloc. While U.S. influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade increasing from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, and Brazil has raised the possibility of a free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.

One of the false premises of U.S. foreign policy is that regional rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent) ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and a succession of military governments in Egypt.

Now China, with help from Iraq, has achieved what the United States never even tried. Instead of driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity.

Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.

Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have visited each others’ capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies backed al-Qaeda-linked groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011.

At a meeting in Jordan on May 1, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial integrity, and that Turkish and U.S. occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab League summit on May 19, for the first time since 2011.

Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranians from Sudan, and, despite their past support for the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to mediate peace talks, along with the U.N., the Arab League, the African Union, and other countries.

The proposal by President Lula of Brazil for a “peace club” of nations to help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos, and instability.

While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country that has lifted its own people out of poverty, China offers its experience and partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of U.S. and Western power that has kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.

This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for. China is responding astutely to what the world needs most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will surely win China many friends, and make it more difficult for U.S. politicians to sell their view of China as a threat.

Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs has grave misgivings about the U.S. ability to adjust. As he recently warned, “Unless U.S. foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development, and diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.

White House dismisses ‘ludicrous’ Russian claims US planned Kremlin drone strikes

The White House has dismissed as “ludicrous” claims by Russia that Washington orchestrated drone strikes on Moscow, saying the US was not involved in the attack and accusing Russia of lying.

Asked about an accusation by the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, that Washington had ordered Wednesday’s strike, John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesman, said: “One thing I can tell you for certain is that the US did not have any involvement with this incident, contrary to Mr Peskov’s lies, and that’s just what they are: lies.”

He said the US was still gathering evidence on the attack.“We haven’t come to any conclusions one way or another,” Kirby told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “We’re doing the best we can to try to find out what happened.”

Earlier on Thursday, Peskov claimed the US had “dictated” the plan of what Russia said was a drone attack on the Kremlin intended to kill Vladimir Putin. Peskov did not provide any evidence to support the allegations.

Peskov said: “We are well aware that decisions on such actions, on such terrorist attacks, are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington. And Kyiv is doing what it is told to do. It is very important that in Washington they understand that we know this, and understand how dangerous such direct participation in the conflict is.”

Ukrainian attack on Kremlin is a criminal provocation

On Wednesday, two drones exploded over the Kremlin in Moscow, the official residence of the president of the Russian Federation. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the explosions an attempt by the Ukrainian government to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the President,” Moscow said. The Ukrainian attack on the Kremlin and attempted assassination of Putin is a criminally reckless provocation, serving no other purpose than to provoke retaliation by Russia that would then be used to justify a massive escalation of NATO’s involvement in the war.

Critically, the attack on the Kremlin took place just after Zelensky had left Ukraine for NATO territory, arriving in Finland just hours ahead of the bombings, in what was no doubt an effort to shield him from retaliation in kind by Moscow. ...

The response of the United States, exemplified by the statements of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, directly implicates the United States in the attack, and as such testifies to a staggering level of recklessness at the highest levels of the American state. Shortly after the attacks, Blinken was asked by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to comment on “the news overnight from the Kremlin accusing Ukraine of having tried to assassinate President Vladimir Putin with a drone strike. … What is the United States’ position on such attacks on leadership during this war by Ukraine?”

Far from separating the United States from responsibility, Blinken explicitly sanctioned the legitimacy of such attacks, declaring, “We leave it to Ukraine to decide how it’s going to defend itself.” Ignatius asked him again: “If Ukraine decided on its own to strike back in Russian territory, the United States would not criticize them?” To this, Blinken again reiterated, “These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself, how it’s going to get its territory back, how it’s going to restore its territorial integrity and its sovereignty.”

Later in the day, during a White House briefing, Jean-Pierre was asked a variant of the same question: “Does the administration see Putin as the commander-in-chief of Russian troops that have waged this war against Ukraine, as a lawful military target?” She refused to condemn the potential assassination of Putin, declaring, “I'm just not going to speculate.” These statements make clear that the aim of the United States in the conflict is regime-change, with Putin placed in the same category as previous leaders Washington has overthrown and murdered: Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, both of whom were killed by US proxy forces, and Slobodan Milošević, who died while in custody.

It has long been recognized that the assassination of a political leader is a casus belli.

Blinken Says Ukraine’s Army in Better Shape Than Discord Leaks Show

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Ukraine’s military is capable of launching a counteroffensive and regaining territory from Russia despite what Pentagon documents leaked on Discord have revealed.

One of the leaked documents allegedly released by Jack Teixeira was an intelligence assessment that said Ukraine would fall “well short” of its goals to retake territory due to difficulty preparing troops and equipment. Blinken didn’t comment on the specific leak but said the condition of Ukraine’s army can change over time.

“Where Ukraine might have been a month ago, two months ago, three months ago, is not where it is now in terms of its ability, for example, to prosecute a counteroffensive and to deal with the ongoing Russian aggression,” Blinken said.

Italian foreign minister calls off Paris visit over ‘insults’ from France

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, scrapped a trip to Paris on Thursday in reaction to “insulting” comments by the French interior minister against the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

In an interview with RMC radio, Gérald Darmanin said Meloni was “unable to solve the migration problems on which she was elected” and accused her of “lying” to voters that she would end the influx of people crossing the Mediterranean in search of refuge in Europe.

Tajani had been preparing to fly to Paris for a meeting with his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, that was partly aimed at restoring good relations between the two countries when news of Darmanin’s comments reached him.

“I will not go to Paris for the expected meeting with Colonna,” he wrote on Twitter. “The insults towards the government and Italy uttered by minister Darmanin are unacceptable. This is not the spirit in which common European challenges should be addressed.”

Paris swiftly sought to reassure Tajani of its willingness to work with Rome “to face the common challenge represented by the rapid growth in migration flows”, but it was not enough to change his mind.

ACLU, Allies Warn Internet Bills 'Would Undermine Free Speech, Privacy, and Security'

As the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee considered a series of bills on Thursday, the ACLU and other digital rights advocates warned against federal legislation that would promote censorship, disincentivize protecting users with strong encryption, and expand law enforcement access to personal data.

A trio of ACLU policy experts sent a letter to the committee about three bills: the Cooper Davis Act, the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act, and the Strengthening Transparency and Obligation to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment (STOP CSAM) Act.

"These bills purport to hold powerful companies accountable for their failure to protect children and other vulnerable communities from dangers on their services when, in reality, increasing censorship and weakening encryption would not only be ineffective at solving these concerns, it would in fact exacerbate them," said one of the experts, ACLU senior policy counsel Cody Venzke.

Named for a Kansas teenager who died after taking a pill laced with fentanyl, the Cooper Davis Act (S. 1080) would require social media companies and other communication service providers to give federal agencies information about illicit activity related to the synthetic opioid on their platforms.

The EARN IT Act (S. 1207)—which targets Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—would remove tech companies' blanket liability protection for civil or criminal law violations related to online child sexual abuse material and establish a national commission to craft voluntary "best practices" for providers.

Sponsored by committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the STOP CSAM Act (S. 1199) would, among other provisions, enable survivors of online child sexual exploitation to bring a civil cause of action against tech companies that promoted or facilitated the abuse.

The ACLU warns that the proposals "would undermine free speech, privacy, and security." As the letter explains:

First, they incentivize platforms to monitor and censor their users' speech and interfere with content moderation decisions. Second, they disincentivize platforms from providing end-to-end encrypted communications services, exposing the public to abusive commercial and government surveillance practices and as a result, dissuading people from communicating with each other electronically about everything from healthcare decisions to business transactions. And third, they expand warrantless government access to private data. As longtime champions of privacy, free speech, and an open internet, we strongly urge you to vote against reporting these bills out of committee.

Despite the ACLU's argument that "there are other avenues to protect children, privacy, and safety online that do not lead to increased surveillance, censorship, and policing," the committee on Thursday unanimously advanced the EARN IT Act, spearheaded by Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, the Center for Democracy & Technology led 132 other groups—including the ACLU—in a letter to the panel which says: "We support curbing the scourge of child exploitation online. However, EARN IT will instead make it harder for law enforcement to protect children. It will also result in online censorship that will disproportionately impact marginalized communities."

Fight for the Future, another signatory to that letter, tweeted Thursday that "the dangerous, anti-encryption #EARNITAct passed out of committee this morning. We know this bill—it's back from the dead to restrict the internet and make everyone less safe online."

The bullshit drama grinds on...

Senate Democrats highlight ‘terrible choice’ of Republicans’ debt ceiling plan

Senate Democrats held a hearing on Thursday to lambaste House Republicans’ proposal to raise the US government’s borrowing limit in exchange for spending cuts, as economists testified that a federal default would bring disastrous and decades-long consequences.

The hearing came a week after House Republicans narrowly passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act to raise the debt ceiling until May 2024. The legislation, championed by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, would also roll back federal discretionary spending to 2022 levels and cap annual increases at 1%.

Mocking the bill as the “Default on America Act”, Democrats warned that the legislation would result in devastating cuts to veterans’ benefits, childcare access and infrastructure funding.

“Republicans’ dangerous bill proposes a terrible choice: default on our financial obligations, causing widespread pain and wrecking our economy, or gut basic federal programs essential to our economic strength, causing widespread pain and wrecking our economy,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic chair of the Senate budget committee. “It is a false and unnecessary choice.”

Drip, drip, drip ...

Clarence Thomas: mega-donor paid for great-nephew’s private school

The Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow paid for the great-nephew of Clarence Thomas, whom the conservative supreme court justice raised “as a son”, to attend a private boarding school in Georgia. “Harlan picked up the tab,” a former school administrator said. Thomas did not declare the payments.

The report, by ProPublica, stoked a fresh blaze of controversy surrounding Thomas over ties between the justice, his family members and conservative figures outside the court. It was followed hours later by reporting from the Washington Post that found rightwing legal activist Leonard Leo had arranged for Thomas’s wife, Ginni, to receive tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work between 2011 and 2012. Leo specifically asked that Ginni Thomas’s name not be included on billing paperwork, according to the Post’s reporting.

Leo, who has close ties to the Thomases and has backed conservative causes and judges through a network of nonprofits, told the newspaper he was trying to protect the couple’s privacy by leaving her name off.

ProPublica’s latest story builds on previous reporting that detailed extensive gifts from Crow including luxury travel and resort stays which Thomas rarely declared.

‘Malice or ineptitude’: probe into police killing of eco-activist frustrates family

Attorneys for the family of Manuel Paez Terán found out from a local reporter about the results of a test to determine if there was gunpowder residue on the killed environmental activist’s hands. Civil rights attorney Jeff Filipovits said he was “totally caught off guard” by the reporter’s call, especially since the DeKalb county medical examiner’s office – the agency that released the results to the media – had told him and his team two weeks earlier that those same results weren’t yet available and wouldn’t be for some time.

But the results were actually dated 23 January. What’s more, they appeared to reach the opposite conclusion of the county’s recently released autopsy of Paez Terán, the report which brought Filipovits and his team to meet with the agency last month.

The upsetting sequence of events reflects the broader experience of Paez Terán’s family, their attorneys and, by extension, the public in the high-profile case: the city, county and state agencies that are involved have continually delayed, obfuscated about or denied releasing information about the events of 18 January, when, for the first time in US history, police killed an environmental activist while they were protesting. It also led six state legislators to send a letter to the US Department of Justice last week seeking an independent investigation “that gathers and releases the necessary information to ensure public confidence”.

The results of the test – known as a gunshot residue, or GSR, kit – released last week indicated traces of gunpowder, which “supports the possibility” that Paez Terán fired a gun first, as the police claim. The document also states that “it is possible for victims of gunshot wounds, both self-inflicted and non self-inflicted, to have GSR present on their hands.” The former – that Paez Terán fired first – is the police’s version of what happened that January morning, when dozens of law enforcement officers from multiple agencies swept through the public park to remove the activists.

The results reached the opposite conclusion of a DeKalb county autopsy released two weeks ago, which stated that no observable residue was seen on Paez Terán’s hands. There was no press conference or statement from the county medical examiner explaining how the kit could reach different conclusions, just an unannounced release of each document to media.

New York mayor and police criticized for lack of action over Jordan Neely’s death

Pressure was mounting on police, prosecutors and the New York mayor, Eric Adams, on Thursday as protesters, advocates and even Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the lack of action over the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man and Michael Jackson impersonator who was placed in a chokehold by another subway rider.

Adams has heightened police presence in subway stations in an attempt to curtail crime, while endorsing involuntarily hospitalizing people experiencing homelessness with mental illness and using police to remove people suffering from mental illness from subway stations.

But even as Adams touts future investments in mental healthcare, the city has reduced services for those experiencing such challenges.

Advocates argued that the circumstances surrounding Neely’s life and death – his struggles with homelessness, food insecurity and mental health struggles – reflected longstanding failures to provide social services to impoverished New Yorkers.

Proud Boys: four found guilty of seditious conspiracy over Capitol attack

Four members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio, were on Thursday convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and leading the January 6 Capitol attack, in a desperate effort to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.

The verdicts handed down in federal court in Washington marked a major victory for the US justice department in the last of its seditious conspiracy cases related to the January 6 attack. Prosecutors previously secured convictions against members of the Oath Keepers, another far-right group.

Seditious conspiracy is rarely used but became the central charge against the Proud Boys defendants after the FBI identified them as playing crucial roles in helping storm the Capitol in an effort to interrupt and stop the congressional certification of electoral results. ...

Those convicted now await sentencing. The verdicts were partial, and hours after the initial four were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, the jury found another Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who smashed a window to gain entry to the Capitol, not guilty of seditious conspiracy.

Tarrio, who was not in Washington for the Capitol attack, as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. All five were convicted of obstructing an official proceeding.

In ‘Cancer Alley’, US chemical giants mount campaign against grassroots organizers

After residents of America’s “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana put a national spotlight on their fight for a healthy environment, the state’s economic interests and petrochemical giants are backing the creation of a new “sustainability council” to counter grassroots activists, documents show.

In recent years, the activists have successfully fought construction of two multibillion-dollar plastics facilities and what would have been the nation’s largest methanol plant. The growing concerns have caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency, which earlier this year sued a manufacturer of neoprene in the state for not doing enough to reduce its cancer-causing air emissions.

Now, those same groups are receiving millions of dollars from Michael Bloomberg and his Beyond Petrochemicals campaign, and the Louisiana energy and chemical companies along with the states’ business-boosting groups have, in turn, created the Louisiana Industry Sustainability Council – originally called the Industry Defense Council. ...

According to a 21 April presentation by Greater New Orleans Inc, the mission of the council is to “protect and grow safe and responsible community jobs and prosperity in Louisiana”.

The group consists of about 60 representatives, including from Chevron, Dow, Entergy, BASF and ExxonMobil, alongside leaders of parishes in Cancer Alley. Other members include economic development groups, law firms and public relations agencies, according to a list that was posted on the website of Greater New Orleans Inc.

Grain trader Cargill faces legal challenge in US over Brazilian soya supply chain

The world’s largest grain trader, Cargill, is facing a first-ever legal challenge in the United States over its failure to remove deforestation and human rights abuses from its soya supply chain in Brazil.

ClientEarth, an environmental law organisation, filed the formal complaint on Thursday, accusing Cargill of inadequate monitoring and a laggard response to the decline of the Amazon rainforest and other globally important biomes, such as the Cerrado savannah and the Atlantic Forest.

The case, which was submitted under the guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, argues that Cargill’s “shoddy due diligence raises the risk that the meat sold in supermarkets across the world is raised on so-called ‘dirty’ soy”. ClientEarth says this breaches the international code on responsible business conduct.

The lawyers behind the complaint have stressed the urgency of the issue because Amazon degradation is approaching a tipping point, after which scientists say the rainforest will turn into dry grassland, emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide. The Amazon’s sister biome, the Cerrado, has already lost half of its tree cover.

The lawyers say they hope the legal challenge will raise standards at Cargill – which is the biggest privately owned company in the US, with revenues last year of $165bn (£131bn) – and set an example across the industry.

151 Groups Blast Biden Admin for Backing 'Destructive' Mountain Valley Pipeline

A coalition of climate groups this week called out the Biden administration's support for the partially completed Mountain Valley Pipeline, highlighting how its ongoing construction and potential operation threaten "the well-being of people, endangered species, streams, rivers, farms, national forests, and the planet."

The letter, led by Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) and 7 Directions of Service and backed by 149 other organizations, is in response to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm writing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month to reiterate the administration's position on the contested 303-mile fracked gas pipeline across Virginia and West Virginia.

"We are incredibly disappointed with your recent actions to promote the destructive and unneeded Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)," the climate coalition wrote to Granholm, noting that her letter to FERC coincided with President Joe Biden signing an executive order to implement "environmental justice policy across the federal government."

After condemning the administration's endorsement of the pipeline and recent approvals of the Willow oil and Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects as "hypocritical betrayals," given Biden's campaign trail pledges, the coalition laid out how the MVP impacts "livelihoods, drinking water sources, property values, and important cultural resources," pointing to Indigenous cultural sites as well as communities of "low-income, elderly, and medically underserved populations" dependent on private wells.

MVP construction has involved over 500 violations of permit conditions, laws, and regulations, the letter emphasizes, and almost 75% of the route "slices through 'moderate-high' or 'high' landslide risk terrain."

The pipeline developer's website states that "MVP's total project work is nearly 94% complete, which includes 55.8% of the right-of-way fully restored." While proponents of the project often cite the former figure, letter signatories are drawing attention to the latter—and that completion would require complex construction involving "incredibly complex and fragile" water crossings.

"The MVP, its greedy political backers, and some journalists continue to claim that the project is nearly complete despite the company's own repeated reports that it is just over half complete with some of the hardest construction yet to come, including hundreds of stream crossings," POWHR managing director Russell Chisholm told Common Dreams.

"This disinformation is not only an insult to frontline communities monitoring and enduring the unfinished pipeline's construction, but it furthers the risk of another planet-killing fossil fuel pipeline built during a climate crisis... on a planet that we all live on," Chisholm added. "Shame on all people in power who tout this falsehood."

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Zelenski's Regime Is Finished

Multiple US Officials Confronted About US Assange Hypocrisy On World Press Freedom Day

Albanese ‘Frustrated’ With US Over Assange

Youth Delegation to Cuba Detained on Return to US

On The Hypocrisy Of The New EU Sanction Regime

What is Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, “The Validity of the Public Debt of the United States?”

Is There Motive Behind the Fed Making Such a Mess of the US Bank Wobbles?

A Little Night Music

Doc Watson – Walk On Boy

Doc & Merle Watson - Mississippi Heavy Water Blues

Doc & Merle Watson -Talking To Casey

Doc & Merle Watson - I’m Going Fishing

Doc Watson – Spikedriver Blues

Doc Watson and Tony Rice, Sean Watkins - Salt Creek

Doc Watson and Peter Rowan - Dark Hollow

Scruggs meets Watson - John Hardy, Cripple Creek

Doc Watson - Ready for the Times to get Better

Doc Watson - I'll Fly Away - Final Performance