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This evening's music features blues singer Little Willie John. Enjoy!

"If one sins against the laws of proportion and gives something too big to something too small to carry it - too big sails to too small a ship, too big meals to too small a body, too big powers to too small a soul - the result is bound to be a complete upset. In an outburst of hubris the overfed body will rush into sickness, while the jack-in-office will rush into the unrighteousness that hubris always breeds."

-- Plato

News and Opinion

Worth a full read:

“That Was Me, People" - The new U.N. report confirms that a repeat of Obama’s climate denialism will doom humanity

If after Monday’s news you didn’t feel a pang of doom, you’re either a zen master, a recluse living in a news vacuum, or a nihilist. The new United Nations report on climate change predicts an actual, bona fide apocalypse unless our civilization discards our fetish for incrementalism, rejects nothing-will-fundamentally-change fatalism and instead finally takes the crisis seriously. The bad news is that we’ve been here before during the last era of Democratic supremacy, and if the Obama era we sleepwalked through now repeats itself, we’re done. It’s that simple. ...

When Obama won the 2008 election, liberals lauded him for declaring: “Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.” Little noticed was the concurrent Obama-Biden pledge to “promote the responsible domestic production of oil and natural gas,” “prioritize the construction of the Alaska natural gas pipeline,” and extract “up to 85bn barrels of technically recoverable oil [that] remains stranded in existing fields”.

And so four years after that campaign, Obama delivered a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma, which perfectly summarized his actual legacy – and which future post-apocalypse historians (if any survive) will likely see as one of the pivotal moments in the cataclysm:

“Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years,” he said in a speech promising to increase pipeline capacity to flood the world with even more fossil fuels.

“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some. So we are drilling all over the place – right now.”

You can try to tout Obama’s support for stuff like the Paris accords and electric vehicles, but his own boasts illustrate a record of climate denialism, as did Obama’s 2018 declaration one month after an IPCC sounded an alarm. Amid the worsening emergency, he told a Texas audience that “suddenly America is like, the biggest oil producer. That was me, people … just say, ‘Thank you,’ please.” ...

Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and Democratic primary voters were not innocent bystanders in all this. Biden was the vice-president and had his name on the original initiatives to flood the world market with US fossil fuels during the climate crisis. Primary voters rewarded him with the presidential nomination as he was lauded by the fossil fuel industry for campaigning against a fracking ban – just as those same voters continue rejecting progressive climate candidates in favor of corporate-friendly incrementalists. ...

Now, Biden is championing a bipartisan infrastructure bill that omits major climate initiatives – and that legislation is moving through a Congress whose most powerful Senate Democrat profits off the coal business, and whose most powerful House Democrat laughed at the “green dream or whatever”. It doesn’t help that the party is run by a gerontocracy that can laugh off the emergency, knowing they won’t be around to suffer through the worst consequences of its climate compromises and capitulations.

Clearly, if nothing fundamentally changes in our politics and for the donor class that is disproportionately driving the climate crisis, then everything in our natural world is going to change for the worse, with ecocidal consequences on a scale that our species has never experienced, and might not survive.

Forgot to take your irony pills today? Here, have some:

Canadian Official Says Trans Mountain Pipeline Revenue Needed to Fight Climate Crisis

Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson attracted fury and ridicule when he said Monday—just hours after the United Nations warned in no uncertain terms that continuing to burn fossil fuels will result in catastrophic consequences—that the country needs to secure more revenue from the Trans Mountain pipeline to achieve its long-term decarbonization goals.

The Canadian government purchased the pipeline from Kinder Morgan in 2018 for $4.5 billion, and a planned expansion of the project would nearly triple the amount of oil moving through the pipeline.

According to Wilkinson, sending 890,000 barrels of crude per day from Alberta to British Columbia—where, earlier this summer, a heatwave killed hundreds of people and a wildfire incinerated the town of Lytton—would be a good thing because it would help finance Canada's clean energy transition.

"Canada needs to ensure that in the context of that transition, it's extracting full value for its resources and using that money to push forward in terms of reducing emissions," Wilkinson told guest host Katie Simpson during an interview on CBC's "Power & Politics."

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has "got to be part of the transition," Wilkinson said, because "part of the transition is being able to raise the revenues that enable you to actually make the investments that are required" to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century.

On Eve of Hearing, Amnesty Again Demands US End Effort to Extradite Assange

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden to drop the U.S. government's extradition request for Julian Assange and end its "farcical prosecution" of the WikiLeaks founder.

“President Obama opened the investigation into Julian Assange. President Trump brought the charges against him. It is now time for President Biden to do the right thing," Nils Muiznieks, Amnesty's Europe director, said in a statement.

The renewed call from Amnesty came on the eve of a preliminary appeal hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London at which the U.S. government will be allowed to partly challenge a lower court's January ruling blocking Assange's extradition.

The New York Times reported last month on how the U.S. is attempting to challenge the assessment that Assange would face "oppressive" conditions in prison if extradited.

The summary of the decision to accept the appeal said that the United States had “provided the United Kingdom with a package of assurances which are responsive to the district judge’s specific findings in this case.”

Specifically, it said, Mr. Assange would not be subjected to measures that curtail a prisoner’s contact with the outside world and can amount to solitary confinement, and would not be imprisoned at the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., unless he later did something “that meets the test” for imposing such harsh steps.

“The United States has also provided an assurance that the United States will consent to Mr. Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence imposed on him,” the summary said.

Assange, who's been imprisoned for over two years at London's maximum-security Belmarsh jail, faces an 18-count indictment stemming from WikiLeaks' publication of classified information that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Seventeen charges are under the Espionage Act and one is under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

“This attempt by the U.S. government to get the court to reverse its decision not to allow Julian Assange's extradition on the basis of new diplomatic assurances is a blatant legal sleight of hand," said Muiznieks. "Given that the U.S. government has reserved the right to keep Julian Assange in a maximum security facility and subject him to Special Administrative Measures [SAMs], these assurances are inherently unreliable."

Muiznieks added that the court should dismiss the "disingenuous appeal," and called on Biden to "take the opportunity to drop these politically motivated charges which have put media freedom and freedom of expression in the dock."

According to Stella Moris, Assange's partner and mother of two of his children, Assange is expected to attend the Wednesday hearing in person.

In a Friday update on his case, Moris framed the appeal as "the latest move by the U.S. government to try to game the British legal system." She continued:

The U.S. government's handling of the case exposes the underlying nature of the prosecution against Julian: aggressive tactics and subverting the rules so that Julian's ability to defend himself is obstructed and undermined while he remains in prison for years and years, unconvicted, and held on spurious charges. The “process” is the punishment...

The big picture is that any assurance short of dropping the case entirely is entirely worthless. Julian is being punished for doing his job. He published true information that the public had the right to know and which revealed serious wrongdoing on the part of states and their agents.

If found guilty, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.

Taliban’s Sweeping Offensive in Afghanistan Was “Inevitable” and Stems from Brutal U.S. War

Taliban fighters capture Afghan city at strategic junction north of Kabul

The Taliban have captured the key Afghan city of Pul-e-Khumri, 140 miles north of the capital Kabul, giving the insurgents control of a strategic road junction linking Kabul to the north and west, according to insurgents and local officials. Two officials in the city told the Guardian it fell to Taliban after heavy fighting on Tuesday, with officials and security forces abandoning their compounds.

“Pul-e-Khumri fell to the Taliban, they are everywhere,” one official said in a phone interview during which the sound of heavy gunfire could be heard. “Taliban fighters broke through the frontlines in several directions during the afternoon. After heavy clashes, officials and security forces abandoned the governorate, intelligence and police headquarters. Heavy clashes are ongoing. We are deciding where to retreat now.”

A Taliban spokesperson on Twitter also claimed the capture of the city, the capital of Baghlan province. Images on social media showed the Taliban’s flag at city gates and insurgent fighters inside the city. If confirmed, Pul-e-Khumri would be the eighth out of 34 provincial capitals captured by the hardline Islamist movement in less than a week. ...

The latest gains in the Taliban’s lightning advance came as a US peace envoy to Afghanistan warned the Taliban that any government that comes to power through force in Afghanistan would not be recognised internationally.

FBI offer to release some Saudi files not enough, 9/11 families say

Families of 9/11 victims say an FBI offer to release some documents from its investigation into the attack has not gone far enough, and are demanding a comprehensive declassification review of all relevant material, particularly on Saudi Arabia’s role.

The FBI offer on Monday followed a call by some victims’ families and first responders for Joe Biden to stay away from ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the attack next month, if the president failed to honour a campaign pledge to lift the secrecy surrounding the multi-agency investigations.

The families want information on who financed and supported the attacks, and are currently suing the Saudi Arabian government in a federal court in New York. As part of that case, three former Saudi officials were questioned in June by the plaintiffs’ lawyers about their links with two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who spent several months in southern California before the attack. Their testimony cannot be shared with the families under secrecy rules.

In a letter in the court on Monday, the Biden administration said the FBI had recently closed part of the investigation and was reviewing classified documents and evidence to determine whether more can be disclosed. “The FBI has decided to review its prior privilege assertions to identify additional information appropriate for disclosure,” the letter said. “The FBI will disclose such information on a rolling basis as expeditiously as possible.” ...

Terry Strada, the co-chair of a families and survivors group, 9/11 Community United, said the offer was a sop that did not go nearly far enough in providing transparency. “The FBI came out and said they’re going to start to dribble this out and piecemeal this as much as they possibly can to try to appease us, and it’s just not good enough. It’s a half measure,” said Strada, whose husband Tom died in the attack on the World Trade Centre, when the youngest of their three children was four days old.

Bolsonaro’s ‘banana republic’ military parade condemned by critics

Critics have denounced Jair Bolsonaro’s “banana republic-style” decision to send combat vehicles on to the streets of Brazil’s capital for a rare military parade in what was widely seen as a beleaguered president’s ham-fisted attempt to project strength. Bolsonaro, whose ratings have plunged as a result of his chaotic response to the Covid pandemic, looked on from the marble ramp outside the presidential palace as a motorcade of armoured vehicles trundled past on Tuesday morning.

“Ridiculous. Grotesque. Pitiful. Needless. Banana Republic stuff,” tweeted the Brasília-based journalist Brunno Melo as the procession advanced under a perfect blue sky.

The hastily arranged parade – which experts said had no precedent in the years since the restoration of democracy in 1985 – was reportedly ordered by Bolsonaro last Friday and came on the same day members of congress were scheduled to vote on highly controversial Bolsonaro-backed plans to change Brazil’s voting system. It also followed a succession of incendiary and anti-democratic remarks from Brazil’s leader, an authoritarian-minded former army captain who has said next year’s presidential elections may not happen if the changes are not approved.

“This is an obvious and explicit attempt by Bolsonaro to show that the armed forces are on his side,” said Thaís Oyama, a political journalist who first reported plans for the military mobilisation on Monday.

Delta variant renders herd immunity from Covid ‘mythical’

Reaching herd immunity is “not a possibility” with the current Delta variant, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group has said.

Giving evidence to MPs on Tuesday, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard said the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant reaching the threshold for overall immunity in the population was “mythical”.

“The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population,” he told the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on coronavirus.

“The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission.”

Although the existing vaccines are very effective at preventing serious Covid illness and death, they do not stop a fully vaccinated person from being infected by the virus that causes Covid-19.

Texas governor appeals for out-of-state help to fight latest Covid wave

The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, appealed for out-of-state help to fight the third wave of Covid-19 in his state amid dire warnings while two more of the state’s largest school districts announced mask mandates in defiance of the increasingly hardline Republican.

Abbott’s request came on Monday as a county-owned hospital in Houston raised tents to accommodate their coronavirus patient overflow. Private hospitals in the county already were requiring their staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the Dallas and Austin school districts announced Monday that they would require students and staff to wear face masks. The Houston school district had announced it would implement a mask mandate for its students and staff later this week if its board approves.

The highly contagious Delta variant is causing a majority of new infections.

The Republican governor has directed the Texas department of state health services to use staffing agencies to find additional medical staff from beyond the state’s borders as the Delta wave began to overwhelm its present staffing resources. He also has sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association to request that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures voluntarily. Hospital officials in Houston said last week that area hospitals with beds had insufficient numbers of nurses to serve them. ...

The governor is taking action short of lifting his emergency order banning county and local government entities from requiring the wearing of masks and social distancing to lower the Covid-19 risk.

US urged to fast-track vaccine approval for children under 12 as cases rise

As Covid cases among children continue to rise in the US due to spread of the Delta variant, experts are urging the federal government to fast-track vaccine approval for those under the age of 12. New data analysis from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indicated that children accounted for 15% of new cases reported last week, with a total of almost 94,000 cases. There was a 4% increase in child cases over the past two weeks, the AAP found.

While children still make up a small fraction of hospitalized Covid patients, up to 1.9% in states reporting such data, there is anecdotal evidence in areas that have seen a significant Covid surge in recent weeks that more children are being admitted for care. ...

Last week, president of the American Academy of Paediatrics Lee Savio Beers, wrote to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government agency responsible for vaccine approval, urging them to fast-track vaccinations for those under 12. “Last week saw the largest week-over-week percentage increase in pediatric Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic,” the letter states. “Simply stated, the Delta variant has created a new and pressing risk to children and adolescents across this country, as it has also done for unvaccinated adults.”

The letter acknowledges that the agency has worked with US manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer to expand the number of children in clinical vaccine trials, but urges the agency to approve the vaccine with clinical trial results it has already obtained: “In our view, the rise of the Delta variant changes the risk-benefit analysis for authorizing vaccines in children.”

“The End of Neoliberalism”: Rep. Ro Khanna Hails “Historic” $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan

Briahna Joy Gray: Biden FAILING Miserably On Progressive Issues, Manchin ALREADY BALKS At $3.5T Bill

Since 1978, CEO Pay Has Risen 1,322%. Typical Worker Pay? Just 18%

A new analysis released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO pay in the United States rose by a staggering 1,322% between 1978 and 2020—a sharp contrast to the pay increase of the typical worker, which was just 18% during that same period.

In 2020, a year of pandemic and widespread economic dislocation, the top executives at the largest public firms in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker, with CEO pay measured by salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, and exercised stock options. According to Bloomberg, Tesla's billionaire CEO Elon Musk was the highest-paid corporate executive in the U.S. in 2020.

Highlighting the extent to which inequality has soared in recent decades, EPI observes in its report that the CEO-to-worker-pay ratio was 61-to-1 in 1989.

CEOs saw their compensation increase by 18.9% between 2019 and 2020 while the pay of typical workers—those who were able to hold on to their jobs amid mass layoffs stemming from the pandemic—rose just 3.9% over that time, EPI shows.

"Even that wage growth is overstated," notes EPI, which has been tracking and documenting executive pay trends for years. "Perversely, high job loss among low-wage workers skewed the average wage higher."

Authored by EPI distinguished fellow Lawrence Mishel and research assistant Jori Kandra, the new report argues that "exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with." In 2020, EPI finds, a CEO at one of the top 350 public companies in the U.S. was paid $24.2 million on average.

"CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills," Mishel and Kandra write. "This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%. The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more)."

Other recent research has similarly called attention to the growing disconnect between CEO compensation and measures such as company performance, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Imagine that, a church that lies flagrantly. More detail at the link if you want it.

Canada: pressure on Catholic church to compensate victims of residential schools abuses

The Catholic church in Canada has come under growing pressure to compensate victims of the country’s residential school system after the scale of its assets were revealed in a string of media investigations. As part of a 2007 agreement, the church agreed to pay C$29m in compensation to survivors, but distributed only a fraction of that figure, citing poor fundraising efforts.

Now, reports by CBC News and Globe and Mail have revealed that the church not only controls more than C$4bn in assets, but also pulls in hundreds of millions in charitable donations and that it constructed gilded cathedrals while claiming it lacks the funds to make good on its promises to pay compensation.

The Catholic church’s resistance to compensating residential school survivors is no secret, but the discovery of more than 1,300 unmarked graves has prompted fresh calls for reparations. ...

In 2006, the landmark Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement was approved by all parties – including survivors, the federal government and religious institutions. A recent report by the Independent Assessment Process found that nearly C$3bn had been paid out by the federal government as part of settlement, including direct compensation to survivors and funding for healing programs.

The Anglican, United and Presbyterian churches have all fully paid the agreed upon amount.

“A Petty Tyrant with Too Much Power”: Former Cuomo Rival Zephyr Teachout Responds to Resignation

Andrew Cuomo resigns in wake of damning report on sexual harassment

The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, has resigned following an investigation by the state attorney general that found he sexually harassed multiple women, most of whom worked for him, and also retaliated after some made complaints.

The governor made a public announcement on Tuesday morning that he was stepping aside and said his resignation will be effective in 14 days.

He began defiantly by criticizing Attorney General Letitia James’s report and warning New Yorkers about the dangers of “a bias or a lack of fairness in the justice system”, then said he thought his behavior was acceptable but acknowledged that the 11 women James said he harassed were probably “truly offended” and said “for that I deeply, deeply apologize”. ...

The governor had presented himself as a champion of the revived #MeToo movement sparked by accusations against the now-convicted film mogul Harvey Weinstein in 2017. But on Tuesday Cuomo said that in his mind he had “never crossed the line with anyone”, then added: “I did not realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn”. ...

On Tuesday, it was unclear whether the impeachment would proceed. A conviction would bar Cuomo from running for public office again in New York.

Senate Democrats poised for voting rights push to counter Republican restrictions

Top Democrats in the Senate are poised to make another attempt to push through voting rights legislation before the chamber leaves Washington for a summer recess, in a sign of their determination to counter a wave of Republican-led ballot restrictions across the nation.

The Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is expected to reintroduce Democrats’ marquee election reform bill known as the For the People Act, with additional votes on one measure to end partisan gerrymandering and another measure to tighten campaign spending, sources said.

None of the measures, for which Schumer hopes to schedule votes immediately after the Senate takes up the $3.5tn budget blueprint for infrastructure, is expected to garner any Republican support and will thus likely follow the demise of the For the People Act in June. ...

The only conceivable path for Democrats to ensure passage of the voting rights bills would require reforming the Senate’s filibuster rule, an option not currently available to party leaders after holdouts last week reiterated their opposition. Senator Kyrsten Sinema on Friday told ABC that she continued to support the 60-vote requirement for the filibuster, days after senator Joe Manchin said anew that he would not acquiesce to carving out a voting rights exemption from the rule.

Protesters against Line 3 tar sands pipeline continue to face arrests and rubber bullets

More than 600 people have now been arrested or received citations over protests amid growing opposition to the Line 3 oil sands pipeline currently under construction through Minnesota. Native American tribes including the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe and indigenous-led environmental organisations such as Honor the Earth are leading opposition efforts in court and on the ground, mobilizing ‘water protectors’ to try to halt the project.

Protests against Line 3 are becoming a national and international cause as demonstrators seek to highlight the environmental impact of the pipeline, especially amid an escalating climate crisis that is caused by fossil fuel emissions. ....

On 30 July, water protectors at Line 3 were subjected to pepper spray and rubber bullets during a series of arrests, and protesters who’ve been jailed have reported mistreatment from officers such as lack of proper food, solitary confinement and denial of medications. Maracle noted the police presence at camps has increased in recent weeks, including more frequent police raids, sweeps, surveillance and helicopter flybys. ...

Battles continue in court to halt the pipeline construction. Groups opposed to the project appealed to the Minnesota supreme court to overturn a lower court’s ruling in favor of the approvals granted for the construction to begin. The court is expected to decide whether to hear the case by mid-September. The lack of success through courts and regulatory authorities have inspired opponents to get involved in direct actions and protests to try to halt construction of the project. ...

There have been at least nine reported releases of drilling fluid along the pipeline’s route during construction, prompting 32 Minnesota legislators to request details from the state’s Pollution Control Agency. They also want work on the pipeline halted pending an investigation and until the drought conditions in Minnesota subside. Enbridge currently has a water appropriation permit to pump nearly 5 billion gallons of groundwater for the pipeline construction.

Heat, drought and fire: climate dangers combine for a catastrophic ‘perfect storm’

Northern California’s Dixie fire this weekend swelled to become the single largest fire incident the state has ever recorded, a mammoth that has leveled mountain towns, produced flames that shot 200ft in the air, and scorched through close to 490,000 acres. ... Researchers are concerned that the Dixie fire’s record won’t hold for long. The parched landscapes and increased temperatures that set the stage for bigger blazes this year are not anomalies – they are trends. And the conditions are going to get worse.

Drought, extreme heat, and destructive infernos are each devastating in their own right, but together they cause calamity. The combination augments their effects and causes each individual condition to intensify. Scientists say they are seeing the trifecta more frequently in the west and that climate breakdown is the key culprit. “This is what climate scientists have been warning about for years now,” says Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Drought and fire have always been part of the climate in the western US, but increasing heat, which scientists say is directly attributable to human-caused climate change, has had a devastating impact. “These things amplify each other,” Williams says, adding that the effects exponentially increase. The climate conditions don’t act alone, and fire and and water policies play a part in increasing risks and determining the outcome as well. Most fires are still started by people. The expansion of communities in forested and fire-prone areas adds new dimensions that complicate containment efforts when blazes get big. But what’s happening in the environment has made fires much harder to fight.

Supreme Court Hearing Likely as 'Reckless' Bayer Loses Third Appeal Over Glyphosate Use

Chemical giant Bayer lost its third consecutive appeal in a case over its use of glyphosate in the popular weed killer Roundup late Monday, in the latest victory for tens of thousands of people who have filed claims saying their use of the carcinogenic herbicide caused them to develop cancers.

A California appeals court ruled that Bayer, which purchased U.S. agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, is responsible for the non-Hodgkins lymphoma that Alva and Alberta Pilliod developed after using Roundup for years, and will have to pay the couple $86 million in accordance with a trial judge's ruling in 2019.

The ruling brings the company a step closer to seeking a favorable verdict from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Pilliods provided "substantial evidence from which the jury could infer that Monsanto acted with willful disregard for the safety of others," the 1st Appellate District in the Court of Appeal for California ruled. "Monsanto's conduct evidenced reckless disregard of the health and safety of the multitude of unsuspecting consumers it kept in the dark. This was not an isolated incident; Monsanto's conduct involved repeated actions over a period of many years motivated by the desire for sales and profit."

Mike Miller, a lawyer for the couple, called the court's decision “well reasoned and correct."

"Monsanto deserves to be punished for decades of hiding the truth about Roundup," Miller told Bloomberg.

Carey Gillam, research director for U.S. Right to Know, applauded the strong language used by the appeals court, which accused Bayer of presenting evidence in its favor "rather than fairly stating all the relevant evidence."

The company claimed the verdict "could not be reconciled with sound science," and noted that the U.S. government has not classified glyphosate as carcinogenic.

Although the World Health Organization said in 2015 that glyphosate is a "probable" carcinogen, the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. has claimed that including a warning of cancer-causing risk on Roundup's label would amount to a "false claim." In 2017, the National Institutes of Health released a study acknowledging that high levels of exposure to Roundup was associated with some cancers.

Bayer is expected to ask the Supreme Court this month to take up a Roundup-related case it lost in 2019.

A fourth trial over Roundup began in San Bernardino, California last week. The company is facing tens of thousands of claims and has set aside more than $16 billion to settle the cases. It also announced as part of a settlement deal with plaintiffs last year that it will stop using glyphosate in its weedkillers that are marketed to homeowners by 2023.

Bayer plans to continue using glyphosate in herbicides for farmers, who use the chemicals heavily.

The case the company plans to take to the Supreme Court was brought by Edwin Hardeman, who was awarded $25 million. An appeals court upheld the verdict in May.

Also of Interest

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

On Eve of Assange Hearing, A Look Back at the US Chief Medical Witness

UN climate report raises pressure on Biden to seize a rare moment

Congress Dithers as the World Burns

Humanity’s Completely Broken Feedback Systems

Patrick Lawrence: A Different World Order

The NSA's Inspector General Opens Investigation Into Allegations of Illegal Spying on Tucker Carlson

Cuomo’s Legacy: Normalizing Corruption And Lawlessness

More than a Decade after the Volcker Rule Purported to Outlaw It, JPMorgan Chase Still Owns a Hedge Fund

Texas draws criticism with plan to lure tourists to sites where Indigenous people were banished

Business Consultants Offer to Buy Ghostwritten Op-Eds Pressuring Arizona Senators

You Can Never Do Everything, But You Can Always Do Something

Jimmy Dore: Bernie Defends Biden's Tax Cuts For The Rich

A Little Night Music

Little Willie John - Dont Play With Love

Little Willie John - All Around The World

Little Willie John - Crying Over You

Little Willie John - Until Again My Love

Little Willie John - My Nerves

Little Willie John - Dinner Date

Little Willie John - I'm Shakin'

Little Willie John - Young Girl

Little Willie John - Country Girl