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This evening's music features Piedmont blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Enjoy!

“Wherever sufficiently numerous series of the remains of any given group, which has endured for a long space of time, are carefully examined, their morphological relations are never in discordance with the requirements of the doctrine of evolution, and often afford convincing evidence of it. At the same time, it has been shown that certain forms persist with very little change, from the oldest to the newest fossiliferous formations; and thus show that progressive development is a contingent, and not a necessary result, of the nature of living matter.”

-- Thomas Henry Huxley

News and Opinion

Joe Biden is a fossil: 328m-year-old vampire squid named after president

A newly discovered fossilized vampire squid has been named after the US president, Joe Biden, a team of paleontologists has announced.

The Syllipsimopodi bideni, which has been described as an “incredibly rare” fossil, was first dug up in Montana and then donated to the Royal Museum in Canada in 1988. But it sat untouched in a drawer for decades until a scientist pulled it out for a closer look.

Speaking to the New York Times, Christopher Whalen, a paleontologist from New York’s American Museum of Natural History, said he first noticed the squid’s preserved arms and saw small suckers in the rock. ...

The Syllipsimopodi bideni drifted across oceans nearly 328m years ago. According to Whalen, it is the oldest known ancestor of vampyropods, a group that includes vampire squids and octopuses.

Ukraine Officially Adopts Nazi Slogan For Military

There Is No Wisdom in Pretending That Ukraine's Neo-Nazis Don't Exist

Russian President Putin has claimed that he ordered the invasion of Ukraine to "denazify" its government, while Western officials, such as former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, have called this pure propaganda, insisting, "There are no Nazis in Ukraine."

In the context of the Russian invasion, the post-2014 Ukrainian government's problematic relations with extreme right-wing groups and neo-Nazi parties has become an incendiary element on both sides of the propaganda war, with Russia exaggerating it as a pretext for war and the West trying to sweep it under the carpet.

The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off the 2014 coup and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in Eastern Ukraine. And far from "denazifying" Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as it attracts fighters from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.

Ukraine's neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Parubiy played leading roles in the U.S-backed coup in February 2014. Assistant Secretary Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt mentioned Tyahnybok as one of the leaders they were working with on their infamous leaked phone call before the coup, even as they tried to exclude him from an official position in the post-coup government.

As formerly peaceful protests in Kyiv gave way to pitched battles with police and violent, armed marches to try to break through police barricades and reach the Parliament building, Svoboda members and the newly-formed Right Sector militia, led by Dmytro Yarosh, battled police, spearheaded marches and raided a police armory for weapons. By mid-February 2014, these men with guns were the de facto leaders of the Maidan movement.

We will never know what kind of political transition peaceful protests alone would have led to in Ukraine or how different the new government would have been if a peaceful political process had been allowed to take its course, without interference by the United States or violent right-wing extremists.

But it was Yarosh who took to the stage in the Maidan and rejected the February 21, 2014 agreement negotiated by the French, German and Polish foreign ministers, under which Yanukovich and opposition political leaders agreed to hold new elections later that year. Instead, Yarosh and Right Sector refused to disarm and led the climactic march on Parliament that overthrew the government.

Since 1991, Ukrainian elections had swung back and forth between leaders like President Viktor Yanukovych, who was from Donetsk and had close ties with Russia, and Western-backed leaders like President Yushchenko, who was elected in 2005 after the "Orange Revolution" that followed a disputed election. Ukraine's endemic corruption tainted every government, and rapid public disillusionment with whichever leader and party won power led to a see-saw between Western- and Russian-aligned factions.

In 2014, Nuland and the State Department got their favorite, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, installed as Prime Minister of the post-coup government. He lasted two years, until he, too, lost his job due to endless corruption scandals. Petro Poroshenko, the post-coup President, lasted a bit longer, until 2019, even after his personal tax evasion schemes were exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers.

When Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister, he rewarded Svoboda's role in the coup with three cabinet positions, including Oleksander Sych as Deputy Prime Minister, and governorships of three of Ukraine's 25 provinces. Svoboda's Andriy Parubiy was appointed Chairman (or speaker) of Parliament, a post he held for the next 5 years. Tyahnybok ran for president in 2014, but only got 1.2% of the votes, and was not re-elected to Parliament.

Ukrainian voters turned their backs on the extreme-right in the 2014 post-coup elections, reducing Svoboda's 10.4% share of the national vote in 2012 to 4.7%. Svoboda lost support in areas where it held control of local governments but had failed to live up to its promises, and its support was split now that it was no longer the only party running on explicitly anti-Russian slogans and rhetoric.

After the coup, Right Sector helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what their leader Yarosh described to Newsweek as a "war" to "cleanse the country" of pro-Russian protesters. This campaign climaxed on May 2nd with the massacre of 42 anti-coup protesters in a fiery inferno, after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.

After anti-coup protests evolved into declarations of independence in Donetsk and Luhansk, the extreme right in Ukraine shifted gear to full-scale armed combat. The Ukrainian military had little enthusiasm for fighting its own people, so the government formed new National Guard units to do so.

Right Sector formed a battalion, and neo-Nazis also dominated the Azov Battalion, which was founded by Andriy Biletsky, an avowed white supremacist who claimed that Ukraine's national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. It was the Azov battalion that led the post-coup government's assault on the self-declared republics and retook the city of Mariupol from separatist forces.

The Minsk II agreement in 2015 ended the worst fighting and set up a buffer zone around the breakaway republics, but a low-intensity civil war continued. An estimated 14,000 people have been killed since 2014. Congressman Ro Khanna and progressive members of Congress tried for several years to end U.S. military aid to the Azov Battalion. They finally did so in the FY2018 Defense Appropriation Bill, but Azov reportedly continued to receive U.S. arms and training despite the ban.

In 2019, the Soufan Center, which tracks terrorist and extremist groups around the world, warned, "The Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist network… (Its) aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion's overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy."

The Soufan Center described how the Azov Battalion's "aggressive networking" reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others.

Violent foreign extremists with links to Azov have included Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 worshippers at a mosque in Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019, and several members of the U.S. Rise Above Movement who were prosecuted for attacking counter-protestors at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Other Azov veterans have returned to Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and other countries.

Despite Svoboda's declining success in national elections, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups, increasingly linked to the Azov Battalion, have maintained power on the street in Ukraine, and in local politics in the Ukrainian nationalist heartland around Lviv in Western Ukraine.

After President Zelensky's election in 2019, the extreme right threatened him with removal from office, or even death, if he negotiated with separatist leaders from Donbas and followed through on the Minsk Protocol. Zelensky had run for election as a "peace candidate," but under threat from the right, he refused to even talk to Donbas leaders, whom he dismissed as terrorists.

During Trump's presidency, the United States reversed Obama's ban on weapons sales to Ukraine, and Zelensky's aggressive rhetoric raised new fears in Donbas and Russia that he was building up Ukraine's forces for a new offensive to retake Donetsk and Luhansk by force.

The civil war has combined with the government's neoliberal economic policies to create fertile ground for the extreme right. The post-coup government imposed more of the same neoliberal "shock therapy" that was imposed throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Ukraine received a $40 billion IMF bailout and, as part of the deal, privatized 342 state-owned enterprises; reduced public sector employment by 20%, along with salary and pension cuts; privatized healthcare, and disinvested in public education, closing 60% of its universities.

Coupled with Ukraine's endemic corruption, these policies led to the profitable looting of state assets by the corrupt ruling class, and to falling living standards and austerity measures for everybody else. The post-coup government upheld Poland as its model, but the reality was closer to Yeltsin's Russia in the 1990s. After a nearly 25% fall in GDP between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine is still the poorest country in Europe.

As elsewhere, the failures of neoliberalism have fueled the rise of right-wing extremism and racism, and now the war with Russia promises to provide thousands of alienated young men from around the world with military training and combat experience, which they can then take home to terrorize their own countries.

The Soufan Center has compared the Azov Battalion's international networking strategy to that of Al Qaeda and ISIS. U.S. and NATO support for the Azov Battalion poses similar risks as their support for Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria ten years ago. Those chickens quickly came home to roost when they spawned ISIS and turned decisively against their Western backers.

Right now, Ukrainians are united in their resistance to Russia's invasion, but we should not be surprised when the U.S. alliance with neo-Nazi proxy forces in Ukraine, including the infusion of billions of dollars in sophisticated weapons, results in similarly violent and destructive blowback.

Demonizing Russia while justifying US-led wars: Western media's approach to 'journalism'

U.S. willing to fight to the last Ukrainian and the last Pole, too.

Clash between Poland and US over MiG-29s reveals tensions in escalating war

The buck-passing between Poland and the US over the possible use of elderly MiG-29s to hit Russian forces inside Ukraine is one of the west’s few diplomatic failures of the past month. It also raises questions about how far European countries are prepared to escalate militarily before they believe they will touch a dangerous Russian tripwire. ...

In essence, Poland said it would cooperate in strengthening the Ukrainian air force so long as this would be seen in Moscow as a US, Nato or EU scheme but not a Polish one. In its original, US-conceived iteration, the proposal was a trilateral deal whereby Poland would hand over the MiGs to Ukrainian pilots to fly into their homeland, and the US would then provide some substitute planes. Boris Johnson, an enthusiast, described the plan as “rent a MiG”.

That proposal, arguably, was not qualitatively different to Nato members providing Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles. In return, Poland would eventually fill the hole in its air force with 28 F-16s being provided by the US.

But under private pressure from the US, Poland felt the plan unduly exposed its citizens to Putin’s ire. So instead, in a game of diplomatic pass the parcel, Poland tweaked the proposals so the planes would be sent free of charge to the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, rather than being flown out of Poland into Ukraine. The move would literally take Poland out of the line of Russia’s fire since the plan could be labelled as that of the US, Nato or the EU.

WH, Russia Warn Of BIOLOGICAL WAR In Ukraine

Glenn Greenwald, totally worth a click and a full read:

Victoria Nuland: Ukraine Has "Biological Research Facilities," Worried Russia May Seize Them

Self-anointed "fact-checkers” in the U.S. corporate press have spent two weeks mocking as disinformation and a false conspiracy theory the claim that Ukraine has biological weapons labs, either alone or with U.S. support. They never presented any evidence for their ruling — how could they possibly know? and how could they prove the negative? — but nonetheless they invoked their characteristically authoritative, above-it-all tone of self-assurance and self-arrogated right to decree the truth, definitively labelling such claims false.

Claims that Ukraine currently maintains dangerous biological weapons labs came from Russia as well as China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry this month claimed: "The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone.” The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted that “Russia obtained documents proving that Ukrainian biological laboratories located near Russian borders worked on development of components of biological weapons.” Such assertions deserve the same level of skepticism as U.S. denials: namely, none of it should be believed to be true or false absent evidence. Yet U.S. fact-checkers dutifully and reflexively sided with the U.S. Government to declare such claims "disinformation” and to mock them as QAnon conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately for this propaganda racket masquerading as neutral and high-minded fact-checking, the neocon official long in charge of U.S. policy in Ukraine testified on Monday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and strongly suggested that such claims are, at least in part, true. Yesterday afternoon, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), hoping to debunk growing claims that there are chemical weapons labs in Ukraine, smugly asked Nuland: “Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?” Rubio undoubtedly expected a flat denial by Nuland, thus providing further "proof” that such speculation is dastardly Fake News emanating from the Kremlin, the CCP and QAnon. Instead, Nuland did something completely uncharacteristic for her, for neocons, and for senior U.S. foreign policy officials: for some reason, she told a version of the truth. Her answer visibly stunned Rubio, who — as soon as he realized the damage she was doing to the U.S. messaging campaign by telling the truth — interrupted her and demanded that she instead affirm that if a biological attack were to occur, everyone should be “100% sure” that it was Russia who did it. Grateful for the life raft, Nuland told Rubio he was right.

But Rubio's clean-up act came too late. When asked whether Ukraine possesses “chemical or biological weapons,” Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead — with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.” Any hope to depict such "facilities” as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added: “we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

Nuland's bizarre admission that “Ukraine has biological research facilities” that are dangerous enough to warrant concern that they could fall into Russian hands ironically constituted more decisive evidence of the existence of such programs in Ukraine than what was offered in 2002 and 2003 to corroborate U.S. allegations about Saddam's chemical and biological programs in Iraq. An actual against-interest confession from a top U.S. official under oath is clearly more significant than Colin Powell's holding up some test tube with an unknown substance inside while he pointed to grainy satellite images that nobody could decipher. ...

Any attempt to claim that Ukraine's biological facilities are just benign and standard medical labs is negated by Nuland's explicitly grave concern that “Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of” those facilities and that the U.S. Government therefore is, right this minute, “working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces.” Russia has its own advanced medical labs. After all, it was one of the first countries to develop a COVID vaccine, one which Lancet, on February 1, 2021, pronounced was “ safe and effective” (even though U.S. officials pressured multiple countries, including Brazil, not to accept any Russian vaccine, while U.S. allies such as Australia refused for a full year to recognize the Russian COVID vaccine for purposes of its vaccine mandate). The only reason to be “quite concerned” about these "biological research facilities” falling into Russian hands is if they contain sophisticated materials that Russian scientists have not yet developed on their own and which could be used for nefarious purposes — i.e., either advanced biological weapons or dual-use “research” that has the potential to be weaponized.

Lavrov on US biological labs found in Ukraine

When caught with your hands in the cookie jar, spin, spin, spin!

Britain and US fear Russia could be setting stage to use chemical weapons

Britain and the US fear Russia could be setting the stage to use a chemical weapon in Ukraine after Kremlin officials alleged without firm evidence that the US had been supporting a bioweapons programme in the country. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that Russia had been making “false claims about alleged US biological weapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine”, and added that the allegations had been echoed in Beijing.

“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” she tweeted. Her comments came after western officials said at a briefing “we’ve got good reason to be concerned about possible use of non-conventional weapons” by Russia, reflecting the experience of chemical weapon use during the Syrian civil war.

The concern arose partly because Russia’s foreign ministry had been engaged in “setting the scene” by making “false flag claims” about a biological weapons programme operating inside Ukraine. Earlier on Wednesday, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Russia had documents showing evidence that the US had supported a bioweapons programme in Ukraine, involving plague, cholera and anthrax. Washington and Kyiv both denied the claims, which Psaki described as “preposterous”.

Russian Debt DEFAULT Looms As They Decry 'Economic Warfare'

US tries to blame Russia for their mistakes — Putin

Ukraine war piles pressure on global food system already in crisis

Households are facing the prospect of even higher food prices owing to the war in Ukraine, threatening hikes of the kind seen in 2008 after the global financial crisis, as wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia come under threat, compounding price increases resulting from the climate crisis. Prices of wheat, maize and soya beans have surpassed 2008 levels in recent days, with maize hovering slightly below prices of 2013 and soya beans reaching similar heights as in 2012.

Arif Husain, the chief economist at the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said: “The devastating consequences of the Russian onslaught on Ukraine are also felt in places far away. Grain and oil prices are fast approaching or even surpassing levels not seen since the 2008 food and fuel crisis.” Food prices were surging around the world before the invasion, in part because of the effects of the climate crisis and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a UN agency, has said Ukrainian farmers could miss the crucial May planting season for their crops. Supplies from Russia could also come under threat if the Kremlin curtails wheat exports in response to western sanctions. Ukraine is the fifth largest wheat exporter, accounting for about 10% of the global market, according to the FAO. It is also one of the biggest exporters of maize, accounting for about 15% of global exports.

Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter, with about 17% share of the global export market, and is the second biggest supplier of sunflower seed.

Inflation Hits 40 YEAR HIGH

Congress screws workers to escalate war on Russia

Conservative candidate squeaks to victory in South Korean election

Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative former prosecutor, declared victory in South Korea’s presidential election on Thursday after his liberal rival conceded defeat following a bitter battle in the politically divided nation. Yoon, from the main opposition People Power Party, edged out the ruling Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung with 48.6% of the vote to 47.8%, with more than 98% of the ballots counted as of 4.20am on Thursday (7.20pm GMT on Wednesday). ...

Yoon, who was hoping to benefit from public anger over rising house prices in Seoul, income inequality and youth unemployment, said during the campaign that he would address mounting economic problems with a dose of fiscal conservatism, including a cut in the minimum wage and the removal of limits on working hours.

As an avowed “anti-feminist” he has pledged to abolish the ministry for gender equality, claiming South Korean women do not suffer systemic discrimination - despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. He vowed to address the housing crisis with tax relief, pledged support for small businesses and self-employed people, and encouraged the private sector to create jobs and builds millions of new homes.

Amazon referred to US attorney general over ‘potentially criminal conduct’

Members of the Democratic-controlled House judiciary committee have referred Amazon to the Department of Justice, alleging “potentially criminal conduct” by the company and some of its senior executives. In a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, lawmakers claim that Amazon had engaged in a “pattern and practice of misleading conduct that suggests” it was acting to influence the committee’s investigation into online market competition.

“Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the congressional letter dated 9 March says. “We have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” it added. ...

A Reuters investigation last year cited documents that showed that Amazon had conducted a systematic campaign of copying products and rigging search results in India to boost sales of its own brands, or private-label brands – practices that Amazon denies.

The congressional committee later claimed that news coverage “directly contradicts the testimony of Amazon’s executives including former chief executive Jeffrey Bezos”. The company denied the allegations, responding that it “did not mislead the committee” and had “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question”.

But lawmakers claim the company had declined opportunities to demonstrate with evidence that it had made accurate and complete representations to the committee.

Congress Rushes BILLIONS More In Aid To Ukraine

Priorities - lots of money for military imperialism, diddly squat for americans in need. Another form of Demockery Tax.

'Holy Hell': Dem Leadership Pulls Covid Relief From Spending Bill

Progressive U.S. lawmakers and advocacy groups on Wednesday expressed frustration with Democratic leadership for removing $15.6 billion in Covid-19 relief from an omnibus spending bill before an anticipated vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) confirmed the move in a "Dear Colleague" letter after some Democrats were outraged that the package would claw back funding states got from last year's American Rescue Plan to offset the new Covid-19 spending.

"Democrats delivered on the American Rescue Plan, which included lifesaving, tangible investments in our children, families, and communities," said Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) in a statement. "Why is it that we can create new money for defense spending, but when it comes to investing in our communities, the only way Congress can make a deal is by taking that same lifesaving American Rescue Plan money away from our communities?"

"We cannot turn our backs on the progress this money is intended to fund," she continued. "In Missouri, this funding was already appropriated to help fund childcare, healthcare, housing, and our schools. To turn around and now say we're taking hundreds of millions of dollars back, in the name of bipartisanship, is just unbelievable. I vehemently oppose efforts to snatch back the lifesaving resources we need to fully and equitably recover from this pandemic."

The offset provision—which was revealed in the 2,741-page, $1.5 trillion package early Wednesday—would have impacted over half of U.S. states, CNN reported.

"New York and California got their dollars," Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) told CNN, noting that her state could lose about $600 million. "It's not fair that 30 states not get their dollars."

Some critics highlighted that while cutting out Covid-19 funding, the package still contains $782 billion for the Pentagon, a $42 billion increase over the previous fiscal year.

The National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies said in a statement that "the budget deal announced today repeats a longtime pattern by putting more resources into the military and war than into K-12 education, affordable housing, public health, scientific and medical research, early childhood education and care, and homelessness combined."

"This continued special treatment for the Pentagon recklessly squanders precious resources that could be used to strengthen our families and communities," NPP asserted. "Even as war rages in Ukraine, a higher military budget can only risk a larger war; it can't promote real solutions and alleviation of suffering through diplomacy and humanitarian aid."

"The country faces compounding crises at home," NPP continued. "Families are fearful for their economic security. The pandemic has not yet ended. Schools and hospitals face ongoing staffing shortages. The opioid epidemic is raging. And our dependence on oil continues to fuel the climate crisis, while subjecting families to wild price swings and supporting corrupt authoritarian states. Increasing military spending does nothing to address these problems."

William D. Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, declared in a statement that the package's level of Pentagon spending "is far in excess of what is needed to provide a robust defense for America."

Hartung continued:

As noted in a new issue brief from the Quincy Institute, it is far higher than spending levels reached during the Korean or Vietnam Wars or at the height of the Cold War. And much of this money is wasted on dysfunctional weapons systems, outright waste, and an overly ambitious "cover-the-globe" military strategy that fails to set priorities about the greatest security risks facing the United States and its allies.

Given how much excess spending is already in the budget, there is no need to increase Pentagon outlays in response to developments in Ukraine. The current budget can accommodate security assistance to Ukraine and the movement of some personnel to NATO's eastern flank without further increases.

"Spending at the levels about to be enacted for fiscal year 2022 ignores the need to invest in addressing other challenges to our lives and livelihoods, including pandemics, climate change, and racial and economic injustice," he added. "We need to rebalance our security spending to reflect new realities, not replicate the priorities of the Cold War."

Pelosi, in her letter, blamed the GOP for the Covid-19 cuts, writing that "Republicans resisted this deeply needed funding, demanding that every cent requested by the administration be offset, including through state and local funds scheduled to be released this spring."

"It is heartbreaking to remove the Covid funding, and we must continue to fight for urgently needed Covid assistance, but unfortunately that will not be included in this bill," the speaker said, noting the urgent need to pass the spending package, which must be approved by both chambers of Congress by Friday to avoid a government shutdown.

Following her letter, Pelosi signaled during her weekly news conference that the pandemic relief proposal—which includes $5 billion to help the U.S. Agency for International Development boost vaccinations abroad and over $10 billion for other health efforts—could hit the House floor as a standalone bill as early as Wednesday.

"We have a bill that's going to be on the floor, hopefully today, just depends. We have a bill that I mentioned, that will be on the floor today," she said, according to The Hill. "And it will be—really contain what the administration says that we need. It's a separate funding package to continue the battle against coronavirus largely focusing on the new therapies that are there."

However, given GOP demands about offsetting, it is unclear whether a pandemic relief package will make it through the evenly split Senate—or even make it to a final vote, due to the filibuster.

Green credentials of world’s largest investor questioned over oil industry emails

Emails have revealed the high-wire act performed by major banks and the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, as they privately soothe oil industry concerns about their public support for greener investment. In his annual letter to chief executives, BlackRock boss Larry Fink said that pursuing climate action policies was not about being “woke” but was about pursuing profits on behalf of clients.

The comments were widely seen as a signal that the asset manager, whose clients have entrusted $10tn to its care, would wield its investment clout to support greener ventures. But emails – obtained via a freedom of information request by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the thinktank InfluenceMap – show that a regulator in oil-rich Texas left a meeting with BlackRock believing the company had undergone a change of heart.

After the meeting with BlackRock staff, on 7 January 2022, the chair of the Texas oil regulator, Wayne Christian, wrote to the company expressing his relief. He said he had been concerned by the asset manager’s promotion of investments governed by environmental and social guidelines (ESG), which typically involve selling out of oil and gas stocks. He said that it was “nice to hear that BlackRock didn’t mean – or no longer believes – many of the disagreeable things the company and … Mr Fink have said about the oil and gas industry”.

In an attached letter, Christian said BlackRock’s staff had referred to “media misrepresentations” about its environmental stance and had also declared themselves “supportive” of the oil and gas industry. Replying to Christian, a BlackRock employee did not question his interpretation of the discussion but pointed to comments made by Fink, saying that “traditional” energy companies were “part of the solution” alongside environmental investment policies. ...

Anusha Narayanan, climate campaign manager at Greenpeace USA, said it appeared BlackRock was “trying to have their cake and eat it”.

Oil Pipeline Canada Bought Will Cost Over $25 Billion and Never Turn Profit

Climate activists on Wednesday reiterated calls to cancel Canada's expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline after a new analysis found that a recent pledge to not put any public money into the project "is a promise that the government can't keep."

"The only solution is to cancel it," tweeted Wilderness Committee campaigner Peter McCartney in response to new research by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

Not long after an updated cost estimate for the Trans Mountain expansion (TMX) was unveiled last month, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said that rather than relying on more public money, the government would "secure the funding necessary to complete the project with third-party financing, either in the public debt markets or with financial institutions."

The government—which controversially bought the embattled pipeline from Kinder Morgan in 2018—"does not intend to be the long-term owner" and plans to "launch a divestment process" after completing the long-delayed expansion, added Freeland, who is also the finance minister.

"Freeland's assertion that Canada will invest no more public money in TMX is grossly misleading to the public. Any new money poured into the pipeline will be backed by the Canadian taxpayer," said Tom Sanzillo, IEEFA's director of financial analysis, in a statement. "Private money cannot be raised without a government guarantee."

As the institute's report explains:

IEEFA's analysis finds that the government, which owns the project, would not be able to generate an adequate profit for investors because the tolls it would charge for the completed project's use cannot be raised high enough to support new debt on the pipeline plus operational costs. To do so would raise the cost of exporting oil through TMX to a price that would not be competitive in international oil markets. To compete, the government would have to maintain toll rates so low that it would be operating TMX at a loss for its investors.

To attract private money to complete the TMX project, IEEFA concludes, the Canadian government will have to protect investors by guaranteeing the debt. The investors will be protected. The taxpayers will not.

Between the $4.7 billion purchase price and the reported $12.6 billion construction costs, Canadian taxpayers have already funded $17.3 billion on the project. These funds will never be recovered, and guaranteeing another $8.8 billion to complete the project will simply be throwing good money after bad, for a total taxpayer loss of $26.1 billion.

"Kinder Morgan quit the project because it was a bad bet for investors," said Sanzillo. "On its own, this project is not profitable. No amount of fiscal gimmickry can hide the fact that Canadian taxpayers must stand behind another estimated $8.8 billion. Investors won't finance it without a guarantee."

Omar Mawji, IEEFA's energy finance analyst for Canada, emphasized that "we have carefully reviewed the Trans Mountain project's balance sheet."

"The project is unbankable," he said. "To make a go of it, TMX would need to hike shipping tolls by 100%, raising the price of Canadian oil way beyond the level it needs to compete in the global market. Without substantial governmental support, the pipeline is unsustainable."

The IEEFA analysis comes after Canada's financial watchdog warned last week that the government is "very unlikely" to recoup its investment.

As Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux put it to Canada's National Observer: "Now that we're talking about over $20 billion in construction costs, it is clearly non-profitable."

While warning about the financial impacts of killing TMX now, he said that "it will probably mean losses for Canadian taxpayers whenever the government decides to sell the pipeline to a private-sector entity."

Noting the Observer's report, Torrance Coste of Wilderness Committee tweeted last week that "trampling Indigenous rights and making the climate crisis worse wouldn't be worth it if we got hundreds of billions of dollars in return."

"The fact we might get nothing," he added, "just underscores what a tacky, shameful mistake this is."

Not going with the flow: salmon ‘sue’ US city over harm to population

An Indigenous nation is turning to a novel legal tactic in the hopes that it can save a beleaguered salmon population: it is suing on the salmon’s behalf, alleging that dams preventing it from migrating are a violation of the fish’s “inherent rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve”. The lawsuit is part of the growing “rights of nature” movement, a legal theory that seeks to give natural entities, like rivers or plants or animals, similar legal rights to humans.

The salmon, called TsuladxW in the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe’s Lushootseed language, are named plaintiffs in the case. The dammed rivers in Washington state no longer provide enough salmon for the tribe to conduct all of their ceremonies, let alone feed their members, and scientists have determined that nearby dams are hurting the salmon population.

The tribe is arguing that the dams are violating TsuladxW’s fourth amendment right to be free from illegal seizures and their due process rights.

Jack Fiander, a tribal member and lawyer representing the tribe in the court case, said the tribe is forcing the owner of the three dams – the city of Seattle – and the courts to recognize rights that the tribe has always believed fish have.

“People need to know that these are our laws and if you come into our territory and do things that affect us you should be familiar with our laws and show us respect,” Fiander said. “These tribal beliefs shouldn’t be ridiculed. They’re based on ancestral knowledge that shouldn’t be discounted.”

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