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This evening's music features blues guitarist Joe Louis Walker. Enjoy!

"If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad."

-- Mary McCarthy

News and Opinion

U.S. Absolves Drone Killers and Persecutes Whistleblowers

After the terrorist attack on the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, that killed more than 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. soldiers, President Joe Biden issued a warning to fighters from the Islamic State. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said on August 26. Three days later, Biden authorized a drone strike that the U.S. claimed took out a dangerous cell of ISIS fighters intent on staging another attack on the Kabul airport. ...

But the Kabul strike, which targeted a white Toyota Corolla, did not kill any members of ISIS. The victims were 10 civilians, seven of them children. The driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, was a respected employee of a U.S. aid organization. Following a New York Times investigation that fully exposed the lie of the U.S. version of events, the Pentagon and the White House admitted that they had killed innocent civilians, calling it “a horrible tragedy of war.”

This week, the Pentagon released a summary of its classified review into the attack, which it originally hailed as a “righteous strike” that had thwarted an imminent terror plot. The results were predictable. The report recommended that no personnel be held responsible for the murder of 10 civilians; there was no “criminal negligence,” as the report put it. The fact that the U.S. military spent eight hours surveilling the “targets,” that a child could be seen in its own footage minutes before the strike — this was written off as a fog-of-war moment. The operators conducting the strike “had a genuine belief that there was an imminent threat to U.S. forces,” asserted the Air Force’s inspector general, Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said. ...

As the Pentagon absolves itself of this crime, the Biden administration is pushing ahead with its persecution of whistleblowers who exposed this system of killing innocents. Daniel Hale, a military veteran who pleaded guilty to disclosing classified documents that exposed lethal weaknesses in the drone program, is serving four years in prison. (Prosecutors said those documents formed the basis for The Drone Papers, a series of investigative articles published by The Intercept.) Among other revelations, Hale’s documents exposed how as many as nine out of 10 victims of U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan were not the intended targets. In Biden’s recent drone strike, 10 of 10 were innocent civilians.

FBI Probe Into Saudi Nationals' Advance Knowledge of 9/11 Proved Futile, New Documents Show

An expansive investigation to tie three Saudi nationals to supporting 9/11 hijackers has resulted in a conclusion only that there is insufficient evidence to make such a connection, new FBI documents show.

Decades of searching has resulted in one clear merge between Saudi nationals and three of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks: There was documented help provided to the hijackers when they arrived in the U.S.

But that information, as well as other layers of info released Wednesday, did not clarify whether senior Saudi leaders helped devise the attacks which devastated the United States and still have ripple effects 20 years later.

An FBI memo stated it "has not identified additional groups or individuals responsible for the attack other than those currently charged," according to the Associated Press.

The documents did show the FBI's broad effort to find a possible direct link between the Saudi government and aid provided to the first two hijackers to arrive in the United States, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

They received help finding a place to live as well as possible financial support from other Saudi nationals. However, investigators did not find sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges. ...

The documents were the latest materials to be released under an executive order from President Joe Biden aimed at making public long-classified investigative reports related to the attacks.

Warnings of 'More Death and Suffering' in Yemen as US Moves to Sell Saudis Missiles

Anti-war activists on Thursday accused the Biden administration of throwing fuel on the flames of the Saudi-led war in Yemen after the U.S. State Department notified Congress it approved a new $650 million missile sale to the repressive Middle Eastern monarchy.

Defense News reports the Pentagon said the Saudi government requested to purchase 280 AIM-120C-7/C-8 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles and 596 LAU-128 missile rail launchers in a deal that would also include spare parts, support, and logistical services. The missiles would be fitted to Saudi warplanes including Eurofighter Typhoons and McDonnell-Douglas F-15s.

"Meanwhile," tweeted the women-led peace group CodePink, "one Yemeni child continues to die every 10 minutes as a result of the humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi-led war on Yemen."

The missiles are made by Raytheon, whose board Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin joined upon retiring as head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in 2016.

A State Department spokesperson called the proposed sale "fully consistent with the administration's pledge to lead with diplomacy to end the conflict in Yemen while also ensuring Saudi Arabia has the means to defend itself from Iranian-backed Houthi air attacks."

Peace advocates scoffed at the claim that selling more weapons to the Saudis would help bring about peace.

If approved by Congress, the sale would be the first to Saudi Arabia since President Joe Biden's February announcement that the U.S. was ending support for "offensive operations"—including weapons transfers—in the atrocity-laden Saudi-led war that has killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, while displacing hundreds of thousands more and exacerbating famine-like conditions through a crippling economic blockade.

Prior to February's announcement, the Biden administration imposed a temporary freeze on all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pending a review of deals inked during the tenure of former President Donald Trump.

Critics say the new sale is at least the third violation of Biden's "offensive operations" promise this fall. In May, Pentagon officials acknowledged the U.S. was still servicing Saudi warplanes via contractors, and in September, peace and human advocates denounced the State Department's approval of a $500 million contract to maintain the kingdom's military helicopters.

In late September, the U.S. House passed an amendment by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that, if approved by the Senate and signed by Biden, would end U.S. logistical support and weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia.

GIGANTIC Pentagon Budget & GUTTED Social Spending EXPOSES Where Politicians' TRUE Loyalties Lie

Biden’s big bill on brink of House votes, but fights remain

Democrats in the House appear on the verge of advancing President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion-and-growing domestic policy package alongside a companion $1 trillion infrastructure bill in what would be a dramatic political accomplishment — if they can push it to passage.

The House scrapped votes late Thursday but will be back at it early Friday, and White House officials worked the phones to lock in support for the president’s signature proposal. After months of negotiations, House passage of the big bill would be a crucial step, sending to the Senate Biden’s ambitious effort to expand health care, child care and other social services for countless Americans and deliver the nation’s biggest investment yet to fight climate change.

Alongside the slimmer roads-bridges-and-broadband package, it adds up to Biden’s answer to his campaign promise to rebuild the country from the COVID-19 crisis and confront a changing economy.

But they’re not there yet.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked furiously into the night at the Capitol Thursday and kept the House late to shore up votes. The party has been here before, another politically messy day like many before that are being blamed for the Democrats’ dismal showing in this week’s elections. On and off Capitol Hill, party leaders declared it’s time for Congress to deliver on Biden’s agenda.

“We’re going to pass both bills,” Pelosi insisted at a midday press briefing.

Pathetic: Progressives 100% Cave To Establishment On Spending Bills

Democrats' Paid Family Leave Plan 'Keeps Getting Worse,' Policy Expert Warns

People's Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig on Thursday pointed to a new provision buried in the Democratic Party's newest version of the Build Back Better Act that would ensure the lowest earners in the U.S. are left out of the legislation's paid leave program, saying the proposal "just keeps getting worse" as negotiations continue.

The new version of the bill offers only four weeks of paid leave rather than the 12 weeks initially included, which had the support of seven in 10 Americans, including large majorities of Republican and independent voters.

But a "smaller, more insidious change" weakening the package, said Bruenig, is a new rule requiring workers to have earned at least $2,000 in the last two years, in addition to a stipulation that was in the previous version of the bill which requires workers to have "at least the specified amount of wages and self-employment income during the most recent eight-calendar quarter period that ends at least four months prior to the beginning of the individual’s benefit period."

In other words, Bruenig wrote, the new bill still requires that employees "worked in the period immediately prior" to taking leave, a requirement that already excluded from the benefit "around one in three new mothers, including those who are still in education, disabled, or who have had a recent spell of unemployment."

"When reinserting paid leave back into the bill, the Democrats modified the eligibility rule to ensure that the lowest earners in the workforce cannot claim benefits from the program," said Bruenig. "These people were already not going to get very much under the prior version. But now they aren't going to get anything." ...

Bruenig added that some in the political press appear to have misunderstood the new requirement, as Politico's Eleanor Mueller claimed on Twitter that the new bill simply "makes sure that people with erratic income can access paid leave even if they haven't worked in the period immediately prior."

"The requirement that they have 'worked in the period immediately prior' is contained in paragraph 3, which as you can see clear as day above is still in the bill," countered Bruenig. "Mueller seems to think that paragraph 4 replaced paragraph 3. But this is not the case. Paragraph 4 is a new restriction that is coming in on top of paragraph 3. It does not help people with erratic incomes. It does nothing but make some people who were eligible under the prior version of the bill ineligible under the new version of the bill."

Suggesting lawmakers have intentionally misled reporters regarding the details of the new restrictions, Bruenig wrote, "They are tightening the rope on the neck of the poor but don't want anyone to know it."

David Sirota: Elite Greed On DISPLAY, Dems Pushing For SALT Repeal Could Score $75K In Tax Breaks

Progressives to Biden: If You Want to Be Popular, Take On Corporate Greed

Following Terry McAuliffe's Tuesday night loss in Virginia's gubernatorial election and amid the White House's ongoing failure to enact redistributive legislation due to obstruction from Republicans and right-wing Democrats in Congress, progressives are urging President Joe Biden to fully embrace and use his executive authority to challenge corporate power, which they say might give people a reason to vote for his party in next year's midterms.

"The story of the midterm elections will be whether Biden chooses to spend the next 12 months focusing on speechifying pablum or substantive corporate accountability," Jeff Hauser, the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, wrote Wednesday in a blog post.

Hauser's commentary came in the wake of McAuliffe's defeat to "failed Carlyle private equity mogul-turned-Trump dog whistler Glenn Youngkin," which progressives attributed to the conservative Democratic candidate's utter lack of a pro-working class economic agenda—warning that unless they start campaigning on and delivering material gains for the vast majority, Democrats can expect similar outcomes nationwide one year from now.

"Why is a hysterical, imagined version of 'critical race theory' the main villain discussed in Virginia and elsewhere?" asked Hauser, who pointed out that "Glenn Youngkin's firm, the Carlyle Group, fired thousands of unionized workers for profit." While "a non-compromised nominee would have been able to hammer Youngkin on the ways his greed devastated real people and connected that critique to issues in Virginia," McAuliffe, a Carlyle investor, was unwilling to do so.

Turning to Biden, Hauser wrote that "as their poll numbers slump," the president and his administration "have mostly whimpered that they are the victims of circumstance."

"These immensely powerful men too often make excuses by pretending to be helpless, primarily because they are afraid of making powerful enemies—most especially, corporations and the ultra-wealthy," argued Hauser. "But if they and other Democrats refuse to fight for the people, the people will seek fighters elsewhere."

Hauser proceeded to provide examples of how Biden's executive branch could "enforce laws limiting corporate misbehavior—which would also be overdue good politics."

For instance, asked Hauser, "if the Biden administration is so worried about supply chain disruptions, why isn't it tackling the ultimate cause of the problem—corporate greed?"

"Profiteering companies embraced just-in-time logistics and swallowed any redundancies into bloated monopolies," he added. "Why isn't the Biden administration attacking firms which cared more about their dividends than their actual operations? Why isn't the administration dusting off little-used statutory powers to mitigate and resolve these disruptions? Why is there no 'Supply Chain Profiteering Task Force' identifying the obstacles to normalcy in American transportation?"

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has argued that it's necessary to "put the pandemic behind us" in order to address supply chain issues, but Hauser criticized Buttigieg for refusing to immediately "us[e] federal law to fight for consumers and against profiteers."

Moreover, Hauser asked, "how can we 'put the pandemic behind us' in a world that remains largely unvaccinated thanks to Big Pharma greed?"

As Public Citizen has stressed for months, the Biden administration could, with an investment of just $25 billion dollars—around 3% of what the U.S. spends on its military each year—establish regional manufacturing hubs around the world to produce eight billion coronavirus vaccine doses in less than a year.

However, as of late August, Biden had spent less than 0.01% of the $16 billion in Covid-19 pandemic response funds provided by Congress to expand global vaccine manufacturing, according to PrEP4All.

While Moderna, which is raking in billions of dollars in profits thanks to its monopolization of publicly funded knowledge, has refused to share its vaccine recipe, the federal government owns a patent covering a key spike-protein technology used in the jabs, which gives it the legal authority to distribute the ingredient list and manufacturing instructions.

"Why hasn't the administration fought tooth and nail to actually end the intellectual property restrictions which strangle our global vaccine supply for the sake of blood-stained profits?" asked Hauser.

As progressives welcome the reintroduction of drug price reform into the Build Back Better Act—while lamenting the fact that the new version is a hollowed-out shell of the overwhelmingly popular proposal to allow Medicare to secure a wide array of affordable medications through direct negotiations with pharmaceutical corporations—Hauser stressed that the White House is missing opportunities to tackle Big Pharma's deadly price gouging in ways that circumvent opposition from industry-funded lawmakers, including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

"Forget Manchin, Sinema, and narrow congressional majorities," he wrote. "The executive branch has extraordinary powers to rein in that industry. Why hasn't Biden used them?"

Last Thursday, in an attempt to appease a few conservative Democratic obstructionists, Biden unveiled a heavily gutted Build Back Better framework that proposes cutting the previously agreed-upon 10-year spending level in half, from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, by removing or watering down several popular provisions.

Just one day earlier, Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "the challenge that we face in this really unusual moment in American history is whether we have the courage to stand with the American people and take on very powerful special interests."

"If we fail—in my view, if the American people do not believe that government can work for them and is dominated by powerful special interests, the very fabric of American democracy is in danger," he added.

According to journalist David Dayen, even though "Biden didn't get everything he claimed to want" in the budget reconciliation package, there is still a lot that he can accomplish through executive action. "His hands aren't tied here," said Dayen, who shared The American Prospect's "Executive Action Tracker," which monitors 77 significant policies Biden can implement without relying on legislation from Congress.

Another RussiaGate Source Arrested For Lying!

Russian source for Steele’s Trump dossier arrested by US authorities

A Russian analyst who was the main source for Christopher Steele’s dossier on Donald Trump and Moscow has been arrested by US authorities, the justice department said on Thursday. Igor Danchenko now faces charges as part of the investigation by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to examine the origins of the FBI’s investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Danchenko collected much of the intelligence behind Steele’s dossier during three trips to Russia in summer and autumn 2016. He was the chief source behind its most incendiary allegation: that Trump was compromised during a trip to Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. ...

The five-page indictment released on Thursday accuses Danchenko of lying repeatedly to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 – a criminal offense. These include over his dealings with an unnamed US PR executive with close links to the Democrats. The executive’s information found its way into some of the dossier’s memos, a fact Danchenko allegedly concealed.

The FBI further accuses Danchenko of making up a conversation with Sergei Millian, a Russian American property broker with links to Trump, who appears in the dossier as “source D”. He appears to have been credited by Danchenko with the claim that Trump watched sex workers perform “golden showers” by urinating on each other at the hotel.

Giuliani investigators home in on 2019 plan to advance Ukraine interests in US

The high-profile federal criminal investigation of Rudy Giuliani in recent days has zeroed in on evidence that in the spring of 2019 three Ukrainian government prosecutors agreed to award contracts, valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, to Giuliani and two other American attorneys as a way to gain political and personal influence with the Trump administration.

Federal investigators believe Giuliani and two attorneys who worked closely with him, Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova, probably violated federal transparency laws that require Americans working for foreign governments or interests to register as foreign agents with the US justice department and fully disclose details of each such action they undertook on behalf of the foreign interests.

Federal prosecutors in the southern district in New York have compiled a list of more than two dozen specific acts by Giuliani, Toesning and DiGenova as to how to advance the personal and political interests of a group of Ukrainian prosecutors and political factions in Ukraine with which they were aligned, the Guardian has learned. Prosecutors consider each one of those acts to be crucial evidence of a potential violation of law, according to sources close to the investigation.

In a previously undisclosed episode, the Guardian has learned that federal investigators have uncovered extensive, detailed plans devised by one Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, and approved by Giuliani, by which they would announce and promote an investigation of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in Ukraine, to help boost Trump’s chances of re-election. Investigators as early as last year obtained emails received and sent by Lutsenko describing various elements of the scheme, according to sources close to the investigation.

Citing Failure to Prosecute Trump and Cronies, Legal Group Calls On AG Garland to Resign

Frustrated by the U.S. attorney general's failure to investigate or take legal action against former President Donald Trump and his associates for various potential crimes, Free Speech for People argued Thursday that because Merrick Garland "is unwilling to step up, it is time for him to step down."

Free Speech for People's call for Garland to resign came in a lengthy statement outlining his inaction as well as Trump's troubling behavior while running for and serving as president. It followed the U.S. legal advocacy group urging Garland to "establish an independent task force to centralize and coordinate criminal investigations of Trump and his associates."

The organization called for a task force in January, just days after news broke that incoming President Joe Biden would nominate Garland to lead the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Since the Senate confirmed his nomination in March, the statement says, Garland hasn't taken "any meaningful action" to hold accountable Trump or "his co-conspirators for attempting to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021 and a flurry" of earlier criminal acts.

While Trump was president, the House of Representatives impeached him twice: in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and this past January for "high crimes and misdemeanors" after he incited a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Ben Crump on the Start of Trials for Kyle Rittenhouse & the Killers of Ahmed Arbery

Ahmaud Arbery: judge seats nearly all-white jury in Georgia murder trial

A Georgia judge has acknowledged there appeared to be “intentional discrimination” after a nearly all-white jury was selected for the trial of three white men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, but has seated the jury nonetheless. A jury comprising 11 white members and one Black member was seated on Wednesday after defense attorneys struck almost all Black jurors from the pool. Opening arguments in the high-profile case are set to begin on Friday.

Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was killed while out jogging in the coastal town of Satilla Shores, Georgia. None of the men involved were charged until eyewitness footage was made public months later, shortly before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, prompting widespread protests.

Jury selection for the case has lasted for 11 days, and lawyers were initially given a pool of 48 potential jurors, 12 of whom were Black. But defense lawyers for the accused murderers, Gregory McMichael, 67, his 35-year-old son Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, struck all but one of them from the final jury.

Prosecutors had urged Judge Timothy Walmsley, who is overseeing the trial in south Georgia, to reverse the strikes of eight Black potential jurors, whom they said had been intentionally targeted over race. A landmark 1986 US supreme court decision in Batson v Kentucky ruled it unconstitutional for potential jurors to be struck solely based on race or ethnicity. But Walmsley, while acknowledging the apparent “intentional discrimination”, cited limitations spelled out in the supreme court precedent and pointed to defense lawyers’ justifications, which did not mention race or ethnicity.

All eyes on vulnerable House Democrats after election losses

For many House Democrats, 2021 is looking a lot like 2009, a year when a Republican elected governor in Virginia foreshadowed a dreadful blowout in the next year’s midterm elections. ...

“Is this ’09 all over again? This is exactly what happened in ’09 and it did portend a catastrophe in 2010,” said Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly. He represents a safely Democratic northern Virginia district outside Washington, but recalled Republicans winning his state’s governor’s race a year after President Barack Obama captured the White House and a year before a tea party-led GOP wave took control of the House.

House Democrats in swing districts are likely the party’s first line of defense against such an outcome, and they are the most vulnerable incumbents. Mostly moderates, they helped deliver party control of the chamber in 2018 and keep it by a threadbare margin last year. Now, though, they are starting to closely resemble the same former Republican members many defeated four years ago.

Their president, Joe Biden, is not popular, and their control of Congress has been seen by voters as divisive and not productive. Keeping their seats also may mean defying historical trends dictating that the party that wins the White House loses ground in Congress during the next election — traditional political headwinds that are now almost certainly intensified for Democrats by Tuesday’s election results. ...

“This is not a moment for blaming,” said moderate Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla. “This is a moment for action. And it is a moment to try and get something done for the American people.” The Democrats now have a year to pass legislation they see as most likely to resonate with voters.

DoJ sues Texas over new voting law, saying restrictions violate civil rights

The Biden administration filed a federal lawsuit challenging Texas’s new voting law on Thursday, saying some of the state’s new restrictions violate key civil rights laws.

The suit takes aim at two specific provisions in the Texas law that deal with providing assistance to voters at the polls and mail-in voting, respectively.

The first measure restricts the kind of assistance people can provide at the polls to voters, blocking them from explaining how voting works or breaking down complex language on the ballot.

That violates a provision of the Voting Rights Act that guarantees that anyone who requires assistance because of “blindness, disability, or inability to read or write” can receive assistance, the Department of Justice said.

“Prohibiting assistors from answering voters’ questions, responding to requests to clarify ballot translations, and confirming that voters with visual impairments have marked a ballot as intended will curtail fundamental voting rights without advancing any legitimate state interest,” DoJ lawyers wrote in their complaint.

The complaint targets a second provision that requires voters to provide identification information on mail-in ballot applications as well as the ballot return envelopes. The new Texas law says that election workers have to reject the ballots if there are discrepancies in the identification provided. The justice department said that violates a provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that says someone can’t be blocked from voting because of an error on a paper or record that is unrelated to their qualifications under state law to vote.

US oil giants top list of lobby offenders holding back climate action

ExxonMobil and Chevron are the world’s most obstructive organisations when it comes to governments setting climate policies, according to research into the “prolific and highly sophisticated” lobbying ploys used by the fossil fuel industry.

The biggest US oil companies, as well as American Petroleum Institute, a lobby group, were found to be the worst offenders in a global report by lobbying experts at the thinktank InfluenceMap. It concluded that companies were manipulating governments to take “incredibly dangerous paths” in their approach to climate action. Oil giants have mounted “intense resistance” to Joe Biden’s green agenda, according to the report, as the US president’s administration attempted to shift the country away from fossil fuels.

The report was published on Thursday before talks at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. It also came a week after ExxonMobil’s chief executive, Darren Woods, was accused of lying to the US Congress when he denied that the company had covered up its own research about oil’s contribution to the climate crisis.

The report said corporate lobbying tactics in part explained why regulators in some countries such as Australia have struggled to build support for more ambitious climate policy in the lead-up to Cop26 and were increasingly viewed as “a road block in global negotiations”.

Toyota was the worst-ranked carmaker and the third overall in the report, which drew from more than 50,000 of pieces of evidence, covering hundreds of the world’s most significant firms and trade groups, to analyse corporate climate lobbying activities. The report put Toyota among some of the worst polluting companies in the world because of its opposition to phase out deadlines for fossil fuel and hybrid vehicles.

Worth a scan:

The dark secrets behind big oil’s climate pledges

JPMorgan Chase won glowing headlines last year when the global investment bank unveiled a commitment to counter the climate crisis. The press amplified JPMorgan’s message – sometimes in JPMorgan’s own words. Fortune published a commentary article trumpeting the bank’s plans to “tackle climate change”. Six paragraphs into the piece, the writers noted they worked for the investment firm. (They were actually its top executives.)

The bank waited months to detail its plans. In May, it finally outlined its goals: JPMorgan would not pressure oil companies to lower their emissions. Instead, the firm would encourage them to become more efficient. They would focus on their “carbon intensity”. That metric has become a favorite of banks, oil companies and other big businesses. They’ve balked at requirements to cut overall climate pollution. But “carbon intensity” pledges have given companies a framework to keep investing in dirty fuels, while also expanding into pollution-capturing technology and cleaner energy. ...

Such “greenwashing”, experts say, allows companies to downplay the scale of the climate crisis – and continue contributing to the problem. “It’s the next five or 10 years that will determine our collective futures,” said Andrew Logan, oil and gas director at Ceres, the non-profit that advocates for corporate sustainability. “It’s probably safe to say that there is no company – certainly in the financial sector, or heavy-emitting sectors – that has a fully defensible plan when it comes to meeting the scale and scope of the urgency of the climate challenge.”

100+ Peace, Green Groups Back Barbara Lee's Resolution to Cut Pentagon's Climate Impact

More than 100 peace and environmental groups are supporting a resolution issued Wednesday by U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee demanding that the U.S. military account for its carbon impact, and establish targets for reducing its emissions in line with the Paris climate agreement. ...

The resolution states that the U.S. military has a duty to "monitor, track, and report greenhouse gas emissions from all its operations, including combat operations, deployments, drone attacks, weapons production and testing, and base construction and functions."

The document also says the U.S. Defense Department must "set clear annual greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for both domestic and foreign activities that are consistent with the 1.5-degree target specified by the 2015 Paris agreement." ...

While Lee's resolution—which is supported by 19 mostly progressive congressional Democrats—is a nonbinding "sense of the House" document—it is in support of the legal mandate in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requiring Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to submit a "report on the total level of greenhouse gas emissions for each of the last 10 fiscal years" to congressional armed services committees and the U.S. Comptroller General's office.

Also of Interest

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

Russiagate's Steele Dossier - Paid For By Clinton - Had Clinton Operative As Key Source

Julian Assange's fiancée Stella Moris on dangers of US extradition case

CIA Torture Victim Publicly Reveals Abuse Details For 1st Time, Officers BLAST Use Of Torment

Kristof’s Moralistic Journalism Was Often Full of Holes

4 Years Later, NYT Says Steele Dossier ‘Turned Out to Be Democratic-Funded Opposition Research’

Witnesses: Threat, lunge for gun from 1st Rittenhouse victim

Super Serious News Reporting: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Wall Street’s Latest Scheme Is Monetizing Nature Itself

Indonesia Walks Back Deforestation Commitment Days After Signing Global Pledge

Study Warns 'Luxury' Pollution by the Global Mega-Rich Is Imperiling the Planet

A Little Night Music

Joe Louis Walker - 747

Joe Louis Walker feat. Bonnie Raitt - Low Down Dirty Blues

Joe Louis Walker - You're just about to lose your clown

Joe Louis Walker - Blues Of The Month Club

Joe Louis Walker - One Time Around

Joe Louis Walker & Keb’ Mo’ - Old Time Used to Be

Joe Louis Walker - City of Angels

Joe Louis Walker - 2120 South Michigan Avenue

Joe Louis Walker - Blues in D Natural

Joe Louis Walker - Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

Joe Louis Walker - Joe's Jump

Joe Louis Walker - Silvertone Blues