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News and Opinion

Pipeline Company Files $15 Billion Claim Against US for Canceled Keystone XL

In a move that progressives described as unsurprising yet outrageous, TC Energy Corporation, the Canadian company behind the now-defunct Keystone XL pipeline, is seeking more than $15 billion in compensation from the United States government, which it has accused of violating free trade obligations by blocking further development of the tar sands oil project.

After President Joe Biden rescinded the Keystone XL permit on the first day of his term, TC Energy announced last month that the pipeline is officially dead, marking a huge victory for the climate movement following a decade of organizing.

"To recover economic damages" stemming from the Biden administration's cancellation of the project, the fossil fuel giant on Friday filed a Notice of Intent with the U.S. State Department to initiate a legacy North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) claim under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). ...

TC Energy reportedly took a $2.2 billion hit last month when it formally pulled the plug on Keystone XL. In addition, the Alberta government, which had invested public money in the project, was liable for $1.3 billion when the pipeline was terminated.

Just days after Biden revoked the Keystone XL permit in January, Kyla Tienhaara, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Queen's University, warned that Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was "scrambling for a way to recoup some of Alberta's losses," and he viewed NAFTA as "offering some hope."

According to Tienhaara:

The former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contained a chapter on investment that allowed foreign investors to sue governments in international arbitration. The owner of Keystone XL—TC Energy (previously TransCanada)—used NAFTA to launch a US$15 billion lawsuit in 2016 after President Barack Obama canceled the project.

At the time, some legal experts thought the company had a reasonable chance of winning. We will never know, because the case was dropped when President Donald Trump indicated he was willing to let the project proceed.

This time may be different if TC Energy chooses to proceed with a claim. NAFTA has been replaced by a new agreement—the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Unlike NAFTA, USMCA does not permit Canadian investors to sue the U.S. government (or American investors to sue the Canadian government).

Because investments in the Keystone XL pipeline predate USMCA, TC Energy's lawsuit is still able to invoke NAFTA's Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause, which allows foreign investors to sue governments for profits that are "lost" due to regulatory interventions.

However, Tienhaara wrote, "TC Energy's claim may now be weaker because the permit issued by the Trump administration explicitly stated that it could be rescinded, essentially at the president's whim."

"Nevertheless," she added, "many investors have proceeded with claims on the basis of much weaker cases. Investors bet on positive outcomes in arbitration, as much as they bet on governments not taking action to halt catastrophic climate change. This is because the anticipated rewards, in both instances, are high." ...

TC Energy's announcement of its lawsuit came amid a deadly heat wave in British Columbia and the U.S. Pacific Northwest and just before an underwater gas pipeline burst in the Gulf of Mexico, setting the ocean on fire.

Julian Assange spends 50th birthday in prison - Protesters demand freedom for WikiLeaks journalist

Glenn Greenwald: Corporate Media IGNORES Julian Assange Due To Professional Resentment, Jealousy

The Horrifying Rise Of Total Mass Media Blackouts On Inconvenient News Stories

Two different media watchdog outlets, Media Lens and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), have published articles on the complete blackout in mainstream news institutions on the revelation by Icelandic newspaper Stundin that a US superseding indictment in the case against Julian Assange was based on false testimony from diagnosed sociopath and convicted child molester Sigurdur Thordarson.

FAIR’s Alan MacLeod writes that “as of Friday, July 2, there has been literally zero coverage of it in corporate media; not one word in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, Fox News or NPR.”

“A search online for either ‘Assange’ or ‘Thordarson’ will elicit zero relevant articles from establishment sources, either US or elsewhere in the Anglosphere, even in tech-focused platforms like the Verge, Wired or Gizmodo,” MacLeod adds.

“We have not found a single report by any ‘serious’ UK broadcaster or newspaper,” says the report by Media Lens. “But in a sane world, Stundin’s revelations about a key Assange witness – that Thordarson lied in exchange for immunity from prosecution – would have been headline news everywhere, with extensive media coverage on BBC News at Six and Ten, ITV News, Channel 4 News, front-page stories in the Times, Telegraph, the Guardian and more.”

“For those who still believe the media provides news, please read this,” tweeted Australian journalist John Pilger regarding the Media Lens report. “Having led the persecution of Julian Assange, the ‘free press’ is uniformly silent on sensational news that the case against Assange has collapsed. Shame on my fellow journalists.”

As we discussed the other day, this weird, creepy media blackout has parallels with another total blackout on a different major news story which also involved WikiLeaks. In late 2019 the leak outlet Assange founded was publishing multiple documents from whistleblowers in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) revealing that the organisation’s leadership actively tampered in the investigation into an alleged chlorine gas attack in Douma, Syria in 2018 to support the US government narrative on the allegation, yet the mass media wouldn’t touch it. A Newsweek reporter resigned from his position during this scandalous blackout and published the emails of his editors forbidding him from covering the story on the grounds that no other major outlet had reported on it.

Make no mistake, this is most certainly a new phenomenon. If you don’t believe me, contrast the blackout on these stories with the mass media coverage on WikiLeaks revelations a few short years earlier. The press eagerly lapped up the 2016 publications of Democratic Party emails and actively collaborated with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks in 2010. Even the more recent Vault 7 leaks published in 2017 received plenty of media coverage.

Yet now every WikiLeaks-related story that is inconvenient for the US-centralized empire is carefully kept out of mainstream attention, with a jarring uniformity and consistency we’ve never experienced before. If the media environment of today had existed ten or fifteen years earlier, it’s possible that most people wouldn’t even know who Assange is, much less the important information about the powerful that WikiLeaks has brought to light.

We also caught a strong whiff of this new trend in the near-total blackout on the Hunter Biden October surprise last year, which only went mainstream because it stood to benefit one of America’s two mainstream political factions. After the New York Post first broke the story we saw mainstream media figures publicly explaining to each other why it was fine not to cover it with reasoning that was all over the map, from it’s a waste of time to it’s just too darn complicated to it’s not our job to research these things to the Washington Post’s notorious “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”

Anyone who dared publicize the leaks anywhere near the mainstream liberal echo chamber was bashed into submission by the herd, and without any legitimate reason it was treated like a complete non-story at best and a sinister Russian op at worst. And then, lo and behold, in April of this year Hunter Biden acknowledged that the leaks could very well have come from his laptop after all, and not from some GRU psyop.

And I think that whole ordeal gives us some answers into this disturbing new dynamic of complete blackouts on major news stories. Last year The Spectator‘s Stephen L Miller described how the consensus formed among the mainstream press since Clinton’s 2016 loss that it is their moral duty to be uncritical of Trump’s opponent and suppress any news stories which might benefit them.

“For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over what I will call the ‘but her emails’ dilemma,” Miller writes. “Those who reported dutifully on the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server and spillage of classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids’ table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have been highlighting Trump’s foibles. It’s an error no journalist wants to repeat.”

Once you’ve accepted that journalists have not just a right but a duty to suppress news that is both factual and newsworthy in order to protect a political agenda, you’re out in open water in terms of blatant propaganda manipulation. And we saw the mainstream press shoved into alignment with this doctrine in the wake of the 2016 election.

This shove was never the biggest story of the day, but it was constant, forceful, and extremely dominant in the conversations that mainstream journalists were having with each other both publicly and privately in the wake of the 2016 election. Even before the votes were cast, we saw people like Vox’s Matt Yglesias and Axios editor Scott Rosenberg shaming mass media reporters for focusing on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, and after Trump hysteria kicked in it got a whole lot more aggressive.

In 2017 we saw things like Clinton insider Jennifer Palmieri melodramatically lamenting the media’s fixation on WikiLeaks publications despite the Clinton campaign’s desperate attempts to warn them that it was a Russian operation (a claim that to this day remains entirely without evidence). Liberal pundits like Joy Reid, Eric Boehlert and Peter Daou (prior to his leftward conversion) were constantly browbeating the press on Twitter for covering the leaks at all.

It ramped up even further when mainstream reporters like The New York Times’ Amy Chozick and CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin stepped forward with degrading mea culpas on how badly they regret allowing the Russian government to use them as unwitting pawns to elect Donald Trump with their reporting on newsworthy facts about completely authentic documents. It was like a cross between the confession/execution scene from Animal Farm and the walk of atonement scene from Game of Thrones.

Bit by bit the belief that the press has a moral obligation to suppress newsworthy stories if there’s a possibility that they could benefit undesirable parties foreign or domestic became the prevailing orthodoxy in mainstream news circles. By mid-2018 we were seeing things like BBC reporter Annita McVeigh admonishing a guest for voicing skepticism about Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s culpability in the Douma incident on the grounds that “we’re in an information war with Russia.” It’s now simply taken as a given that managing narratives is part of the job.

Again, this is a new phenomenon. Mainstream media have always been propaganda firms, but they’ve relied on spin, distortion, half-truths, uneven coverage, and uncritically parroted government assertions; there weren’t these complete information barricades across all outlets. You’d see them giving important stories an inadequate amount of coverage, and some individual outlets would neglect inconvenient stories. But you’d always see someone jump at the chance to be the first to report it, if for no other reason than ratings and profit.

That’s simply not how things work now. A major story can come to light and only be covered by media outlets which mainstream partisans will scoff at and dismiss, like RT or Zero Hedge.

The way the mass media have begun simply ignoring major news stories that are inconvenient for the powerful, across not just some but all major news outlets, is extremely disturbing. It means any time there’s an inconvenient revelation, mainstream news institutions will just pretend it doesn’t exist.

Seriously think about what this means for a moment. This is telling whistleblowers and investigative journalists that no matter how hard they work or how much danger they put themselves in to get critical information out to the public, the public will never find out about it, because all mainstream news outlets will unify around blacking it out.

You want to talk about a threat to the press? Forget jailing journalists and whistleblowers, how about all news outlets of any real influence unifying to simply deny coverage to any major information which comes to light? This is a threat to the thing the press fundamentally is. More than a threat. It’s the end. The end of the possibility of any kind of journalism having any meaningful impact.

The journalist who worked on the Stundin report says he spent months working on this story, and he would surely have expected his revelations to get some coverage in the rest of the western press. The OPCW whistleblowers would surely have expected their revelations to get enough attention to make a difference, otherwise they wouldn’t have leaked those documents at great risk to themselves. What’s being communicated to whistleblowers and journalists in these blackouts is, don’t bother. It won’t make any difference, because no one will ever see what you reveal.

And if that’s true, well. God help us all, I guess.

OPCW chief misleads UN with new lies, excuses on Syria cover-up

Italy to investigate Libyan coastguard’s ‘attempted shipwreck’ of migrant boat

Prosecutors in Sicily have launched an investigation against the Libyan coastguard after footage emerged appearing to show officials firing on a boat of migrant families in the Mediterranean Sea. On 30 June, rescue workers from the German organisation Sea-Watch recorded the Libyan coastguard patrol vessel coming dangerously close to the small wooden boat and apparently firing shots in an attempt to force the 64 people onboard back to Libya.

On Friday, after receiving a complaint from Sea-Watch, which contained footage and photos of the incident, prosecutors in Agrigento decided to investigate the Libyan officials for “attempted shipwreck”, and will look at whether the incident put the lives of the migrants in danger.

It is the first time a European country has launched an investigation against the Libyan coastguard, who have faced numerous accusations of alleged collusion with people smugglers and of mistreating asylum seekers.

The investigation, which was first reported by the Italian newspaper Avvenire, was confirmed by Agrigento’s chief prosector, Luigi Patronaggio, who said that to continue the investigation he needed “authorisation from the Italian ministry of justice, given that the object of the proceeding is a foreign authority”.

Human Rights Investigators Probe Deadly Colombian Government Crackdown on Protests

Brazil's Bolsonaro implicated in alleged graft scheme

Corruption allegations increase pressure on Bolsonaro

The Brazilian president has come under further pressure after being personally implicated in an alleged corruption racket involving the supposed misappropriation of his workforce’s wages. Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who admires Donald Trump, took office in January 2019 vowing to “forever free the fatherland from the yoke of corruption”.

On Monday, however, a leading Brazilian news website published a series of reports that threatened to fatally undermine Bolsonaro’s already tenuous claim to be a clean-living conservative. UOL claimed its reports, called “the secret life of Jair”, suggested he had presided over an embezzlement scheme known as the rachadinha during his almost 30 years as a lawmaker in the lower house of congress, between 1991 and 2018.

One UOL story featured audio recordings, obtained from an unnamed source, in which Andrea Siqueira Valle, the sister of Bolsonaro’s second wife, allegedly discussed how her brother was sacked from his job in Bolsonaro’s congressional chambers. “André caused loads of problems because André never gave back the right amount of money that had to be given back, you see? He was supposed to give back 6,000 reals, but André would only hand over 2,000 or 3,000. This went on for ages until Jair said: ‘Enough – get rid of him because he never gives me back the right amount of money.’” In Brazil, the illegal and reportedly widespread practice by which politicians demand a slice of their staff’s wages is known as the rachadinha, a slang term which roughly translates as the “salary split” or “cashback”.

In a second recording obtained by UOL, the woman identified as Bolsonaro’s former sister-in-law says: “It’s not nothing I know. There’s a lot that I could do … to screw Jair’s life. That’s what they’re afraid of.”

The revelations – which Bolsonaro’s lawyer rejected as being based on “untruthful and nonexistent facts” – sparked renewed calls for the impeachment of a president who is already facing mounting public anger over his anti-scientific response to the Covid pandemic, which has killed nearly 525,000 Brazilians.

Jordan Chariton EXPOSES Loopholes Which Led To Pandemic Eviction Crisis

‘I can’t live on $709 a month’: Americans on social security push for its expansion

Nancy Reynolds, age 74, of Cape Canaveral, Florida, works as a cashier at Walmart while struggling to make ends meet on her work income and social security benefits of just $709 a month. “I can’t live on $709 a month, so I have to work. I have no choice, even though my body says you can’t do much more,” said Reynolds.

She explained her benefits are lower due to years where an abusive husband didn’t allow her to work, and she had also taken time off to care for her father before he died. Reynolds relies on Medicare insurance, though she still has to pay co-pays for doctor visits, and receives only $19 a month in food stamp assistance.

Reynolds is one of millions of Americans who are either senior, disabled or survivors of a deceased worker, and rely on social security benefits for the majority of their income, but the average benefit of just over $1,500 a month doesn’t provide enough income to cover basic necessities. “The government is failing all of us seniors. We have to choose whether we eat or we go to the doctor, do we eat or do we buy medicine? The struggle is out there even though I’m working,” added Reynolds. “I’m wondering how long am I going to have my home, how long am I going to be able to pay for it? Should I buy a tent now and store it, because if I lose my job, I’ll be homeless because no one wants to hire a 74-year-old.”

Senior citizens and disabled Americans who rely on benefits for the majority of their income are pushing for expansion of social security. Calls for reforms include increasing benefits in line with the cost of living, as employers are providing fewer retirement pensions to workers and the US population at retirement age of 65 is expected to grow from 56 million to 78 million in 2035.

“The nation is really facing a retirement income crisis, where too many people aren’t going to be able to retire and maintain savings to live on,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy organization for expanding the program. “It’s a very strong system, but its benefits are extremely low by virtually any way you measure them.” Altman argued an expansion of the program is long overdue, noting that payouts haven’t increased since 1972.

Krystal and Saagar: Amazon Execs ADMIT Workers Treated As Collateral Damage On Bezos's Last Day

Overworked, underpaid: workers rail against hotel chains’ cost-cutting

The hotel industry is rebounding from the pandemic, but workers now fear planned labor cuts could cost tens of thousands of jobs and increased workloads for those who remain. Several of the largest US hotel chains have outlined different ways of working, which labor groups say amount to a slide in standards that could have a profound impact on workers’ lives.

Nuris Veras Merlos, a housekeeper at a Hilton in downtown Seattle, was recently recalled to her job, but is only scheduled one or two days a week because her hotel eliminated daily room cleaning. She is concerned her job may disappear. “Before the pandemic it was relatively simple touch-up cleaning. All of the surfaces, tiles, mirrors, glass, bathroom – it wasn’t such a big deal to clean them. Now when we work, the guests build up towels, wet floors, dirty linens, and it’s very difficult to scrub the tiles and all the surfaces. Sometimes they’re so dirty they’re black. And we have to use stronger chemicals to get them clean again and scrub with much more intensity,” said Veras Merlos.

It takes Veras Merlos and her co-workers nearly twice as long now to clean rooms after long stays, with much of the time spent picking up days’ worth of garbage and hauling a lot of dirty linens, trash, and cleaning equipment. She has to take ibuprofen to get through the more intense physical exertion.

Several of the largest hotel corporations in the US have proposed to permanently cut housekeeping and staffing throughout their portfolios as part of hotel industry recovery. ... A recent report from Unite Here, a labor union representing hotel workers, found plans to end daily housekeeping would eliminate over 180,000 positions around the US – 39% of all hotel housekeeping jobs.

The cuts would result in $4.8bn in lost wages for workers in an industry who are predominantly women of color. According to Unite Here, about 65% of their 300,000 union members in the US and Canada remain unemployed.

Firms That Backed Gov. Charlie Baker’s Pro-Charter Initiative Scored Millions in Contracts With Massachusetts Pension Fund

In the 2016 election, executives at high-fee, high-risk investment firms poured cash into a Massachusetts pro-charter school initiative championed by Gov. Charlie Baker. In the years since, those investment firms have reaped a total of $320 million in new lucrative investment management contracts with the state pension fund. The Massachusetts Pension Reserve Investment Management Board, which oversees more than $74 billion in assets covering 300,000 beneficiaries, frequently touts its investment performance that helps to provide $1 billion in benefits annually. Baker sits on the MassPRIM Board via a designee and appoints two additional members.

A comparison of the pension fund’s return to a straight and simple 70/30 portfolio — wherein 70 percent is allocated toward the S&P 500 and 30 percent goes to a blue-chip bond index fund — reveals underperformance, with the pension returning 10.4 percent annualized for the five years ending December 31, 2020, and the index fund returning 11.58 percent, costing the commonwealth of Massachusetts, its taxpayers, and active and retired public employees more than $5 billion over that period.

Those trailing returns come as the pension fund has made hundreds of millions of dollars in new commitments to high-risk, high-fee, low-transparency “alternative investments” like private equity, private real estate, and hedge funds — including to those managers whose executives donated to Baker and his pro-charter school campaign. Financial reports show that some of those managers may have subpar performance, dragging down MassPRIM returns and forcing taxpayers to contribute more into the funds. Viewed as a whole, the new investments raise the question of whether money managers with political connections were able to reap benefits regardless of their investment performance.

Progressive Nabs July 4 Endorsement of Largest Ohio Newspaper

Nina Turner, running for U.S. Congress in Ohio's 11th district, won the endorsement of the state's largest newspaper Sunday—the latest show of momentum for the progressive champion who has been targeted for defeat by the Democratic Party's more corporate-friendly establishment wing.

Citing the "pioneering civil rights legacy of the late U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes of Cleveland," who served constituents in the district that spans portions of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County for 15 terms from 1968 to 1999, the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed Turner on July 4th by saying she would be the best candidate to replicate Stokes' ability "to speak out for the rights, needs and interests of urban, largely poor constituents of color, too often neglected in the business of the U.S. Congress."

According to the paper's editorial:

Who best among the 13 Democrats on the Aug. 3 special primary ballot seeking the Democratic nod for this overwhelmingly Democratic district to carry on that legacy?

There is one person in this crowded field who has shown she isn't afraid to stand up to power and to partisan shibboleths, who has the guts to say what she thinks and do what's right for her constituents and country, who is passionate about public service and knows the issues, the personalities, the challenges better than anyone else in this race.

That person is Nina Turner.

The endorsement for the former state senator and national co-chair of Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign comes ahead of next month's special election to replace former Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, now serving as secretary for Housing and Urban Development in the Biden administration, and as establishment members of the party—including Hillary Clinton and Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina—have moved against her candidacy.

While the paper advised Turner that she should come closer "to the center," where the Plain Dealer claimed many Ohio voters in the district are, and urged her to be more "practical, not ideological," the endorsement ultimately said that the 11th District "doesn't need someone who will shrink into a corner of the Capitol once in office."

"Turner is the heavyweight in this primary race," the editorial continued, "compared with its other big fundraiser, Shontel Brown, 46, of Warrensville Heights. Brown is a pleasant but undistinguished member of Cuyahoga County Council who has little to show for her time in office..."

Exxon Exposed: Greenpeace Tricks Top Lobbyists into Naming Senators They Use to Block Climate Action

Um, is it just me or does it seem kind of silly and futile to try to put out an underwater fire by squirting water on it?

Pipeline Causes Fire in Gulf of Mexico

A fire that raged for hours in the Gulf of Mexico Friday offered the latest illustration of the climate emergency and the urgent need to end fossil fuel extraction and invest instead in burgeoning renewable energy industries.

An underwater gas pipeline controlled by Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, also known as Pemex, burst in the early morning hours, sending flames "resembling molten lava" to the water's surface.

The "eye of fire," as news outlets and observers on social media called the blaze after Pemex publicized the incident Friday night, happened about 150 yards from a drilling platform in the Ku-Maloob-Zaap offshore field. According to Bloomberg, the field produces more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day.

It took emergency workers about five hours to put out the flames.

"Having to put out a fire in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico feels just too difficult to believe," tweeted HuffPost editor Philip Lewis. "And yet..."

Having to put out a fire in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico feels just too difficult to believe and yet pic.twitter.com/8OFNNiKyrj

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) July 2, 2021

"The frightening footage of the Gulf of Mexico is showing the world that offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous," Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Washington Post. "These horrific accidents will continue to harm the Gulf if we don't end offshore drilling once and for all." ...

The pipeline burst days after undercover journalists released footage of lobbyists from fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, in which the lobbyists discussed their fight against climate science and their reliance on centrist lawmakers such as Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Jon Tester (D-Mt.) to ensure the failure of far-reaching climate action legislation.

The progressive advocacy group RootsAction released a version of the Gulf of Mexico fire footage with images of the centrist lawmakers.

We looped the Exxon lobbyist talking about the company's relationship with Joe Manchin and Joe Biden over the video of the Gulf of Mexico engulfed in flames.

This is our future. Don't forget who is responsible. pic.twitter.com/wwHcZ5PrRg

— RootsAction (@Roots_Action) July 3, 2021

"This is our future," the group said of the image of the world's largest gulf on fire. "Don't forget who is responsible."

Portrait of @JoeBiden: pic.twitter.com/9f999hd7Di

— Eli Valley (@elivalley) July 5, 2021

The Gulf of Mexico is on fire, it's 112 degrees in Portland, roads and rails are crumbling from the sun, wildfire and hurricane season are here in record time and people are concerned about the cost of going green.

COMPARED TO WHAT?

— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) July 3, 2021

Krystal and Saagar: Exxon Lobbyist CAUGHT Saying Quiet Part Out Loud On Corruption

As Protesters Face Felonies, Minneapolis City Council Joins Opposition to Line 3

While Indigenous-led actions against Line 3 continued in Minnesota on Friday even as some peaceful protesters now face felony charges, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution opposing Enbridge's tar sands oil pipeline.

The council's 13-0 vote in support of the resolution (pdf) comes as Indigenous and climate justice groups opposed to Line 3—the Canadian company's project to replace an old oil pipeline with a bigger one—challenge it on the ground and in court.

The resolution, which notes that Minneapolis declared a climate emergency in December 2019, clearly states the city's opposition to Line 3 and "calls on every elected leader with the authority to stop its construction to do so immediately."

The council further "requests that the mayor and police chief continue to keep Minneapolis police from participating in the Northern Lights Task Force," a law enforcement coalition formed in response to protests over the pipeline.

In a statement Friday, members of the Minneapolis City Council highlighted Line 3's anticipated impact on Indigenous communities, drinking water, and the global climate.

"We are experiencing a climate crisis in real time," said Jeremy Schroeder, a council member and co-author of the resolution. "We know emissions from Line 3 will exacerbate the climate crisis, including in Minneapolis."

Glimmer of Hope in Honduras: Ex-Dam CEO & West Point Grad Convicted in Murder of Berta Cáceres

Berta Cáceres assassination: ex-head of dam company found guilty

A US-trained former Honduran army intelligence officer who was the president of an internationally-financed hydroelectric company has been found guilty over the assassination of the indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres. Caceres, winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was shot dead two days before her 45th birthday by hired hitmen on 2 March 2016 after years of threats linked to her opposition of the 22-megawatt Agua Zarca dam.

On Monday, Roberto David Castillo – the former head of the dam company Desarrollos Energeticos, or Desa – was found guilty of being co-collaborator in ordering the murder.

The high court in Tegucigalpa ruled that Cáceres was murdered for leading the campaign to stop construction of the dam, which led to delays and financial losses for the dam company.

The environmentally destructive energy project on the Gualcarque river, considered sacred by the Lenca people, was sanctioned even though it had not complied with national and international environmental and community requirements.

After a trial that lasted 49 days, the high court in Tegucigalpa ruled that Castillo used paid informants as well as his military contacts and skills to monitor Cáceres over years, information which was fed back to the company executives. He coordinated, planned and obtained the money to pay for the assassination of the internationally acclaimed leader, which was carried out by seven men convicted in December 2018.

‘Killing spree’: Wisconsin’s wolf population plunges after protections removed, study finds

As many as one-third of Wisconsin’s gray wolves probably died at the hands of humans in the months after the federal government announced it was ending legal protections, according to a study released on Monday. Poaching and a February hunt that far exceeded kill quotas were largely responsible for the drop-off, University of Wisconsin scientists said.

Adrian Treves, an environmental studies professor, said his team’s findings should raise doubts about having another hunting season this fall and serve notice to wildlife managers in other states with wolves.

Removing federal protections “opens the door for antagonists to kill large numbers in short periods, legally and illegally”, Treves and two colleagues said in a paper published by the journal JPeer. “The history of political scapegoating of wolves may repeat itself.”

The US Fish and Wildlife Service dropped gray wolves in the lower 48 states from its list of endangered and threatened species in January, shortly before former Donald Trump left office. Agency biologists have long argued that the predator has recovered from persecution that nearly wiped it out by the mid-20th century. But environmental and animal-rights groups contend the move was premature because wolves have not returned to most of their historical range. They are pushing the Biden administration to reverse it.

Wisconsin was the first state to resume hunting. Its department of natural resources (DNR) planned to wait until November but was forced to schedule a season in February after a pro-hunting organization won a court order. Officials cut it short after hunters killed 218 wolves, blowing past the target of 119.

‘A scourge of the Earth’: grasshopper swarms overwhelm US west

They’re arriving in swarms so dense it can appear the earth is moving. They’re covering roads and fields, pelting ATV riders, and steadily devouring grains and grass to the bedevilment of farmers and ranchers. A massive population of grasshoppers is proliferating in the sweltering American west, where a deep drought has made for ideal conditions for grasshopper eggs to hatch and survive into adulthood.

“I can only describe grasshoppers in expletives,” said Richard Nicholson, a cattle rancher in Fort Klamath, a small community in southern Oregon, who once recalled seeing grasshopper bands eat 1,000 acres a day and cover the ground like snow. The insects cause innumerable headaches for farmers and ranchers, competing with cattle for tough-to-find wild forage and costing tens of thousands of dollars in lost crops and associated costs. “They are a scourge of the Earth … They just destroy the land, destroy the crops. They are just a bad, bad predator.”

Prolific though they are, the grasshoppers are not interlopers. Native to the western lands, they have been there for millions of years, their populations typically in check. They hatch as tiny versions of adults, so small about 50 can fit on a coin the size of a quarter. In average years, most die off before becoming the winged grownups that now buzz the rural skies. They and their eggs are susceptible to pathogens, brutal winters and starvation while young. But grasshopper populations began ballooning in spring 2020, thanks to warmer and drier winters that favored survival, along with a lucky few rains that spur grass that feeds young grasshopper populations.

Oregon and Montana have been the hardest hit by the insatiable eaters, particularly in the arid eastern flank of both states. Thirteen other states are also facing grasshopper damage, according to hazard maps assembled by the animal and plant health inspection service at the US Department of Agriculture. The program helps contain grasshoppers on rangeland and also targets a close cousin, the Mormon cricket. The 17 states under the purview of this pest patrol have a combined agricultural value of $8.7bn, according to the most recent estimates. Last year the program spent more than $5m on suppression efforts and is presently steeped in more.

Krystal and Saagar: Are HUNDREDS More Florida Buildings Vulnerable To Collapse After Surfside?

Also of Interest

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

Key Assange Witness Recants—With Zero Corporate Media Coverage

At 245, America Is Old Enough to Be Honest About Its Founding

Iraq was Donald Rumsfeld’s war. It will forever be his legacy

Rumsfeld Remembered as ‘Complex,’ ‘Energetic’—Not as Killer of Multitudes

As Big Oil Execs Roam Free, Climate Activist Gets 8 Years in Prison

An Ugly War Among Leftist YouTubers Shows Two Common, Toxic Pathologies Plaguing U.S. Politics

TYT, Jimmy Dore, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

The low-desire life: why people in China are rejecting high-pressure jobs in favour of ‘lying flat’

Orange County Prosecutors Operate “Vast, Secretive” Genetic Surveillance Program

‘He died in agony’: how mistaken identity led to a man’s execution

Democrats Prepare to Privatize Medicare, Using Medicare Advantage as Their Opening Wedge (and New York Unions?)

Nightmare scenario: alarm as advertisers seek to plug into our dreams

Hindu Vigilantes Work With Police to Enforce “Love Jihad” Law in North India

A Nation Conceived in Liberty Confronts Its Queasiness With the “MILF Mobile”

Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)

Tropical Storm Elsa makes landfall in Cuba after 180,000 evacuated

Krystal Ball: Is American Freedom Only For The Rich?

Saagar Enjeti: WH TERRIFIED, No Way Kamala Could Beat Trump

Ryan Grim: The TRUTH Behind The Julian Assange Prosecution

Julian Assange UPDATE: Brother Says Wikileaks Founder ENDURING 'Slow Motion Murder'

TYT-Jimmy Dore War Shows Toxic Pathologies in Liberal Discourse - System Update with Glenn Greenwald

A Little Night Music

William Bell - Everyday will be like a holiday

William Bell - I Will Take Care Of You

William Bell - Formula of Love

William Bell - My Kind of Girl

William Bell - Everybody Loves a Winner

William Bell - Any Other Way

William Bell - A Tribute To A King

William Bell - Do Right Woman, Do Right Man

William Bell & Mavis Staples - Love's Sweet Sensation

William Bell - This Is Where I Live

William Bell - Eloise Hang On In There

Gary Clark Jr., William Bell - Born Under a Bad Sign