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"All roads lead to Rome, but our antagonists think we should choose different paths."

-- Jean de La Fontaine

News and Opinion

The Ruling Class Promotes Identity Politics And ‘Anti-Wokeism’ For The Exact Same Reasons

It’s an interesting time for culture war red herrings in the shadow of the empire. There are no major electoral races currently underway. Government Covid regulations have been mostly rolled back. The empire is waging an extremely dangerous and continually escalating proxy war with Russia that should be getting a lot of scrutiny. If one didn’t know better one might expect this to be a time when the rank-and-file public would be doing a bit less barking and snarling at one another and a bit more at the people in charge.

But if one is reading this, one probably knows better.

The world is roaring toward multipolarity and the empire is doing everything it can to slam on the brakes, up to and including ramping up for a global confrontation with noncompliant nuclear-armed powers, and meanwhile the public is growing more and more disaffected with stagnant wages and soaring inequality even as concerns grow that we are headed toward environmental collapse.

So of course, at this crucial point in history, they’ve got everyone arguing about “wokeness”.

What “woke” means depends on who you ask. According to the original AAVE definition, it means “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination”. If you ask Ron DeSantis’ lawyers when they were made to define the term in court, it means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Both of which sound entirely reasonable.

If you ask members of the rank-and-file right wing, though, the answers range from the incoherent to the insanely bigoted to the profoundly stupid. You’ll hear gibberish about “Cultural Marxism” (not a real thing), about communist conspiracies to give your child puberty blockers and gender reassignment surgery, about a liberal plot to normalize child molestation and erase women as a gender, and about the agenda to deteriorate society and plunge western culture into chaos and disorder because it makes Satan happy. In my experience the arguments are often intensely emotional — hysterical, even— yet entirely lacking in substance.

You’ll also run into the occasional good faith actor who sincerely believes “wokeism” needs to be aggressively opposed because the obsession with racial and sexual justice is sucking all the oxygen out of the room for more important matters and being used as a weapon to ram through pernicious power-serving agendas. It’s this category that I am mainly addressing here, because I view the previous category as generally beyond redemption.

It is entirely true that identity politics are being used to ram through establishment-serving agendas and subvert real dissent. We saw a very in-your-face example of this in 2016 with the extremely aggressive push to elect America’s first woman president, when anyone who pointed out her horrifyingly awful track record on things like war and militarism was shouted down as a misogynist. The entire Democratic Party is essentially one big psyop designed to kill any attempt to redress income and wealth inequality, poverty, wars, militarism, money in politics, surveillance, government secrecy, police militarization and every other control mechanism designed to hold the status quo in place, while herding any revolutionary zeitgeist back toward establishment loyalism with false promises to make life better for women and marginalized groups.

But it is also true that pouring your energy into “anti-wokeism” serves the establishment in the exact same way as pouring your energy into identity politics.

Anti-wokeism — if you will permit me a somewhat counterintuitive turn of phrase— is identity politics dressed in drag. Fixation on fighting “wokeness” corrals people into mainstream establishment-serving frameworks in exactly the same way identity politics corrals people into mainstream establishment-serving frameworks. It makes sure the rank-and-file public stays busy barking and snarling at one another instead of the people in charge.

Does it not seem odd to you that half of the ruling class has been getting half of the population to fixate on identity politics while the other half has been getting half the population increasingly panicked about “wokeness”? Does it not seem a little too convenient how all the mainstream right-wing politicians are making anti-wokeism a major part of their platforms, how all the mainstream right-wing pundits are doing everything they can to make their audiences more panicked about how “woke” everything is getting, and how you’ve got Elon Musk talking about “the woke mind virus” in exactly the same way more liberal-aligned oligarchs champion social justice issues?

This is because both anti-wokeism and identity politics serve the same establishment agendas, entirely by design. The more people are fixated on the mainstream culture war, the less likely they are to decide they want to do things like defund the Pentagon or take back everything the rich have stolen from them. Time you’re spending yelling at the other side of the cultural divide is time you’re not spending eating your landlord as God and nature intended.

And of course by saying these things are used in the same way I do not mean to imply that “anti-wokeism” is equal in value to the struggle for social justice. It absolutely is the case that there are disadvantaged groups in our society who do need to be uplifted from where they’re at, and anyone who tries to stop that from happening is plainly in the wrong. What I’m pointing at here, rather, is the way lip service to racial and sexual justice is used to get people supporting a mainstream political faction that never does anything other than facilitate oligarchy, exploitation and imperialism, in precisely the same way right-wing hysteria about “wokeness” is used to do precisely the same thing.

So what is to be done about the culture war we’re being pushed into fighting with greater and greater force?

Well this is just my opinion, but the answer can perhaps be found in the famous line from the movie WarGames: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

That’s been my approach, anyway. I’ve found that getting too wrapped up in pushing or pulling any part of that debate does nothing but feed into it by increasing opposition (which is why this is likely the only article I’ll ever write on the subject), so I’m better off just focusing on attacking the actual power structure that our rulers are trying to divert us from attacking. If they’re pouring all this energy into sucking us into a culture war, the most inconvenient thing we can do to them is to keep our eyes on the prize and keep doing everything we can to hurt the agendas of the empire.

Irish Politician Calls Out Western Imperialism To EU MPs Faces

Ukraine Furious as EU Plans to Refine Sanctions on Russian Fertilizer Exports

The European Union has agreed to redefine sanctions on some Russian exports to make it easier for poorer nations to import Russia’s fertilizer products. While a group of Western states say the amended policy will help to ease a growing food crisis in Africa, Kiev was outraged at the EU for taking any steps that could even slightly ease the economic war on Moscow.

The tight blockade on Russian agricultural exports has opened a rift between EU members, with several Western European countries arguing that the sanctions are fueling hunger in the third world while pushing to alter the existing policy. However, Poland led a bloc of nations in Eastern Europe which insisted the penalties must continue, calling to keep up maximum pressure on Russia’s economy.

The two sides reached a compromise by modifying the language of the sanctions to clarify that third countries are permitted to import Russian fertilizer, according to Politico, which noted the agreement will take effect on Friday if it faces no opposition from other EU members. The decision made Ukrainian officials irate, with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba later condemning the move on Twitter.

Kiev guessing game, as Putin and Shoigu land in Belarus

US Believes Ukraine Can Retake Crimea, But May Provoke Nuclear Escalation

The White House believes Ukraine’s military could retake the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. However, officials say the offensive may cross Moscow’s "red lines" and prompt a nuclear strike.

The Biden administration has radically changed its view of Kiev’s military since Russia invaded nearly ten months ago. The Ukrainians "continue to shock the world with how well they’re performing on the battlefield," an unnamed official said.

The White House now assesses that the Ukrainian armed forces are capable of retaking Crimea, with NBC News reporting that statements to that effect were made to lawmakers during a Congressional hearing last month. The administration official was attempting to explain to Congress why Kiev still needs American support.

A Ukrainian Embassy reception was sponsored by Northrop, Lockheed and Raytheon, reports @mideastXmidwest. (Not The Onion) https://t.co/U89y7gER8v pic.twitter.com/fNzika6utb

— Eli Clifton (@EliClifton) December 16, 2022

US Weapons Makers Set to Profit as Japan Readies $320 Billion Military Buildup

In a significant departure from its postwar national security strategy—nominally limited to self-defense along with hosting U.S. troops—Japan on Friday announced its plan to embark on a five-year, $320 billion military buildup to secure offensive strike capacity amid growing regional tensions.

Japan "faces the severest and most complicated national security environment" since the end of World War II, according to the new blueprint unveiled by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's conservative government, which named China as its "biggest strategic challenge," followed by North Korea.

Acknowledging that the pursuit of cruise missiles represents "a major change to Japan's postwar security policy," Kishida told reporters that obtaining them is "indispensable" to preempting foreign aggression.

As Al Jazeera reported, Japan worries that Russia's invasion of Ukraine "has set a precedent that will encourage China to attack Taiwan, threatening nearby Japanese islands, disrupting supplies of advanced semiconductors, and putting a potential stranglehold on sea lanes that supply Middle East oil."

In response to those concerns, Japan plans to buy long-range weapons capable of striking China, including hundreds of Lockheed Martin's Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles—a boon for one of the biggest players in the powerful U.S. arms industry, which is already poised to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in public money following Congress' passage of an $858 billion military budget for next fiscal year.

As NPR reported, "Japan also plans to develop its own weapons, including advanced fighter jets, hypersonic missiles, and armed drones."

According to Al Jazeera, Japan is also preparing to "stockpile spare parts and other munitions, reinforce logistics, develop cyber-warfare capabilities, and cooperate more closely with the United States and other like-minded nations" in a purported attempt to "deter threats to the established international order."

"Unthinkable under past administrations, the rapid arming of Japan... will double defense outlays to about 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) over the next five years, and increase the defense ministry's share to about one-tenth of all public spending," the news outlet noted. "It will also make Japan the world's third-biggest military spender after the U.S. and China, based on current budgets."

Russia to Double Intercontinental Missile Tests in 2023

Russia is to double the number of test launches of its intercontinental ballistic missiles to eight in 2023 from four in 2022, the commander of strategic rocket forces was quoted as saying on Friday.

Sergei Karakayev told the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that the eight test flights would be scheduled from two launch sites - one near Murmansk in the north, the other near Volgograd in the south.

In remarks reported by Tass news agency, Karakayev said four launches had taken place this year and "confirmed the high reliability of the missile systems". ... Karakayev cited in particular the nuclear-capable Sarmat missile which underwent its first launch in April from Plesetsk in northern Russia, hitting a target on the Kamchatka peninsula 6,000 km (3,700 miles) away.

Tensions simmer on Korean peninsula as North fires two ballistic missiles

North Korea fired two ballistic missiles, Seoul’s military said, days after Pyongyang announced a successful test of a solid-fuel motor for a new weapons system.

Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen sharply this year as Pyongyang has carried out an unprecedented blitz of weapons tests, including the launch of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever last month.

South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff (JCS) said it detected two ballistic missiles on Sunday that had been fired from the Tongchang-ri area in North Pyongan province. ...

The launch at Tongchang-ri – home to a major rocket launch site – came days after North Korea tested a “high-thrust solid-fuel motor”, with state media describing it as an important test “for the development of another new-type strategic weapon system”.

The development could allow it to possess a more mobile, harder-to-detect arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the US mainland.

Violent protests in Peru evoke memories of darkest days of civil war

Huamanga, a picturesque Andean city of cobbled streets and whitewashed plazas, was eerily silent. Shop doors were bolted, and the tiny taxis known as ticos were absent in the aftermath of the worst violence it has seen in decades. A day earlier, soldiers had opened fire on stone-throwing protesters, who tried to storm the local airport’s runway, killing at least eight and injuring more than 70 in running battles, as helicopters rained teargas canisters and bullets over the city.

For many, it was a flashback to a past they had hoped to have left well behind. Huamanga is the capital city of Ayacucho, the Andean region that was brutalised by the state’s conflict with the Mao-inspired Shining Path rebels, suffering half of all the nearly 70,000 deaths between 1980 and 2000. ...

The deaths sparked outrage and inflamed demonstrations in Lima and regional cities. Two ministers resigned in protest, one of them – the education minister, Patricia Correa – wrote on Twitter that “state violence cannot be disproportionate and cause death”. Peru’s human rights ombudsman’s office said a criminal complaint had been filed to determine the responsibility, without giving further details. ...

By Friday afternoon, the smoke of burning buildings and teargas hung over Huamanga once more, as demonstrators torched judicial buildings – for many, symbols of an incurably corrupt state – and returned to storm the airport runway. This time they were repelled by riot police; the soldiers had been called back to their barracks. Around the same time, Peru’s congress – the target of collective anger across the country – voted to reject a bill to bring forward the elections to 2023, one of the protesters’ principal demands.

On Saturday morning, Dina Boluarte, flanked by ministers and police and army chiefs, brushed off calls for her resignation and invoked congress to “vote for the sake of the country” to bring forward elections, a move supported by 83% of Peruvians, according to a poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies.

‘Heartless’ mass layoffs hit US workers ahead of holidays

While many American workers are preparing for the holiday season, some are grappling with the mental and financial anguish of being suddenly laid off. ... Job cuts in the US have risen this year, with a 6% increase for the first 11 months of 2022 in comparison to last year. In 2021, 320,173 of them had been announced, though job cuts are lower in the past two years than in the previous few decades.

Driving the increase in job cuts is the tech sector, as numerous high profile tech companies, including Facebook’s Meta, Twitter and Amazon, announced mass layoffs in recent weeks. Catalent, a pharmaceutical manufacturing contractor, recently informed employees the company is going to cut about 600 jobs in Indiana, Texas, and Maryland over the next several weeks, as demand for Covid vaccines has dropped significantly. ...

Some experts see the layoffs as unnecessary. “These companies are all making money. They are doing it because other companies are doing it,” said Stanford Graduate School of Business Prof Jeffrey Pfeffer on the recent trend of tech companies shedding employees.

“Layoffs often do not cut costs, as there are many instances of laid-off employees being hired back as contractors, with companies paying the contracting firm. Layoffs often do not increase stock prices, in part because layoffs can signal that a company is having difficulty. Layoffs do not increase productivity. Layoffs do not solve what is often the underlying problem, which is often an ineffective strategy, a loss of market share or too little revenue. Layoffs are basically a bad decision,” Pfeffer added.

Other corporations have announced mass layoffs right before the holidays, claiming economic downturns have driven the cuts, even as they record profits and the economy showing no signs of a downturn. Yet, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have driven concerns that a downturn could happen soon.

Dem Congressman DEFENDS FBI, Twitter Cooperation

Congress Just Passed $858 Billion Military Budget, But GOP Is Blocking $12 Billion to Fight Child Poverty

Congressional Republicans happily teamed up with Democrats this month to authorize $858 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year, but the GOP is refusing to even consider proposals to revive the Child Tax Credit expansion that lifted millions of kids out of poverty last year—even though bringing the program back would cost a fraction of the Pentagon outlay.

A spokesperson for Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told HuffPost earlier this week that Republicans have thus far been unwilling to negotiate over the Child Tax Credit (CTC) boost, which they unanimously opposed when it was enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan last year.

"Republicans have refused to engage at all on the Child Tax Credit," said Ashley Schapitl. "In fact they made clear they would not negotiate on any deal that includes the child tax credit."

Leading Republicans readily confirmed their refusal to consider the CTC boost as part of an end-of-year tax package. With the 60-vote Senate filibuster intact, Democrats need the support of at least 10 Republicans to revive the expanded CTC in some form.

"As of right now there's no support for that on the Republican side," Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told HuffPost.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), one of the 176 House Republicans who voted in favor of the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act last week, declared that "the country frankly doesn't have the time or the money for the partisan, expensive provisions such as [the] Child Tax Credit."

Railroad Workers' Organizer Sets The Record Straight On Recent Agreement

Starbucks Workers Launch Biggest Strike Yet in Rebellion Against 'Anti-Union Bullying'

In their largest labor action to date, Starbucks workers across the United States launched a three-day strike on Friday with the goal of forcing the coffee giant to bargain in good faith with hundreds of newly organized shops and put an immediate end to its unlawful union-busting efforts.

Starbucks Workers United said in a statement that roughly 1,000 baristas from approximately 100 unionized shops nationwide will walk off the job starting Friday, and a majority of the workers taking part in the action will remain on strike through Sunday.

The walkouts come as Starbucks continues to close stores engaged in union activity and fire labor organizers, drawing a flurry of legal complaints from the funding-starved National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Earlier this month, the NLRB said Starbucks is violating labor law by refusing to negotiate with its hometown Seattle Roastery, where employees voted to unionize in April.

The NLRB is also pushing for a nationwide cease-and-desist order against Starbucks over its union-busting conduct.

None of the more than 260 Starbucks locations that have voted to unionize since December 2021 have been able to reach a contract deal with management, which Starbucks Workers United said is carrying out a "ruthless campaign of anti-union bullying."

US Utility Giants Reap Huge Profits as Households Struggle

With colder winter weather looming, an analysis released this week shows that the nine largest energy utility companies in the U.S. raked in nearly $14 billion in combined profits during the first three quarters of this year — and dished out roughly $11 billion to their wealthy shareholders — as tens of millions of U.S. households struggled to pay their utility bills due to soaring costs.

The watchdog group Accountable.US found that NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Southern Company, Dominion Energy, Constellation Energy, Eversource Energy, Entergy Corporation, DTE Energy and CMS Energy Corporation brought in $13.8 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year.

The firms, the nine largest in the U.S. by market capitalization, returned over $11.2 billion to shareholders during that period in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

The utility giants’ massive profits have come at a cost to U.S. households, roughly 20 million of which are behind on their utility payments as providers continue to raise rates across the U.S., pushing home energy costs to unaffordable levels and prompting warnings of a “tsunami of shutoffs.”

The Center for Biological Diversity recently estimated that utilities have shut off households’ power 440,000 times across 15 states that have made their rates publicly available, a large increase from last year.

“Well-heeled utility company CEOs are holding consumers’ feet to the fire with exorbitant energy prices,” Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US’ Economic Security and Corporate Power program, said in a statement. “Not because they have to, judging by their own high profits and generous giveaways to wealthy investors — but because they can with colder weather on the horizon.”

“To prey on families who use a necessary service with unreasonable and unjustified rate hikes is corporate greed at its worst,” Zelnick added.

The Accountable.US analysis shows that the same large utility companies raking in huge profits and paying their executives massive pay packages are driving price increases nationwide.

Southern Company’s Georgia subsidiary, for instance, “had a near-12% rate hike approved in June 2022—and in August 2022, its Tennessee subsidiary was granted a rate hike that would result in typical monthly home heating bills rising by about 25%,” the analysis notes.

NBC News reported in October that “nationwide, investor-owned utilities have requested rate increases amounting to nearly $12 billion from the beginning of the year through the end of August.”

Zelnick argued that utility giants’ price hikes are part of a broader trend of corporate price-gouging, a practice that companies frequently excuse by pointing to higher overall inflation throughout the economy.

“Like so many other industries during the pandemic, utility companies have chased higher and higher profits and enriched investors rather than keep prices stable for working families,” said Zelnick. “While the economy is seeing signs of slowing inflation, it is clear corporate greed continues to be a primary driver of high costs on everything from groceries to heating bills — a problem that won’t be solved by the Fed’s one-track-minded policy of excessive interest rate hikes that threaten millions of jobs.”

Judge Orders Philly DA to Disclose All Evidence in Mumia Abu-Jamal Case. Could It Lead to New Trial?

Schiff: ‘Sufficient evidence’ to criminally charge Trump over efforts to overturn election

California congressman Adam Schiff said Sunday that he believes there is “sufficient evidence” to criminally charge Donald Trump in relation to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Schiff’s dramatic statement on CNN’s State of the Union came one day before the House January 6 select committee to which he belongs is poised to release an outline of its extensive investigative report on the US Capitol attack, which has been linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers.

The committee is expected to use its last meeting on Monday to refer Trump, as well as others, to the US justice department in relation to the former president’s attempts to reverse his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.

During this final meeting, the panel is expected to outline an executive summary of its findings, propose legislative recommendations, vote to adopt the report – and then vote on possible criminal and civil referrals. Schiff is one of nine members, seven of whom are Democrats like him, serving on the January 6 committee.

The potential referrals involving Trump are expected to involve obstruction of an official congressional proceeding as well as conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Sinema Files For 2024 As Independent

Joe Manchin says he doesn’t intend to leave Democratic party for now

The centrist Democratic senator Joe Manchin does not intend to change his party affiliation – at least for now, he said Sunday.

Manchin’s remarks on CBS’s Face the Nation came after fellow centrist senator Kyrsten Sinema sent shock waves through Congress by announcing that she was leaving the Democratic party and listing herself as an independent.

“I’ll let you know later what I decide to do, but right now, I have no intentions of changing anything,” Manchin told host Margaret Brennan, who had asked the West Virginian if there was any political advantage to becoming an independent like Sinema.

Cop15 negotiators close to agreeing nature deal as talks draw to end

A potentially transformational agreement for nature is close to being reached at Cop15 in Montreal, which could bring better protection for Earth’s vital ecosystems such as the Amazon and Congo basin rainforests, big reforms to agriculture, and better protection of indigenous territories and rights – but there are concerns that key issues are being overlooked.

After four years of negotiations and 12 years since the last biodiversity targets were agreed in Japan, the Chinese president of Cop15 put forward its recommendations for a final agreement after two weeks of intense negotiations at the UN biodiversity summit in Canada. ...

Heads of delegations responded to the text in a meeting on Sunday, with a plenary set to be held in the evening and negotiations expected to continue overnight. China’s environment minister, Huang Runqiu, the Cop15 president, said he wanted the final text to be adopted on Monday. ...

Some developing countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil and Malaysia, expressed their disappointment that a new separate fund for biodiversity had not been proposed as part of the final text, and said they could not yet agree to the formulation proposed by China. ...

The package, which includes this decade’s targets to halt the destruction of the planet’s life-sustaining ecosystems, includes plans to protect 30% of Earth for nature, reform $500bn (£410bn) of environmentally damaging subsidies, and halt pollution that damages ecosystems by the end of the decade. Countries from the global north would contribute $30bn a year for conservation by the end of the decade if the agreement is adopted.

Countries at COP15 reach historic agreement to halt loss of biodiversity

BlackRock’s Stealth Anti-Climate Agenda

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company, has become a top target of the right’s crusade against so-called “woke capitalism” because of its rhetoric around climate change and sustainable investing. But when it comes to climate action, the giant asset manager isn’t presently all that far apart from its GOP detractors. Both BlackRock and congressional Republicans are fighting — albeit through different strategies — to defang a forthcoming regulation that would force companies to disclose their carbon emissions and the risks that climate change pose to their business models.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has warned that climate risk constitutes an investment risk. But after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed mandatory disclosure of those risks this spring, the $10 trillion asset manager is lobbying to weaken the final rule, according to a Lever review of BlackRock’s rulemaking comments, federal lobbying disclosures, and meeting memoranda from the SEC. So far this year, the investment firm reported spending nearly $2 million lobbying on finance issues that include climate risk and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure.

The Wall Street Journal has described BlackRock as “walking a political tightrope” between activists on both sides of the sustainable investing debate. But the investment firm’s apparent attempt to undercut the type of measures it’s championed publicly for years instead suggests that it may have hit upon a more effective strategy for navigating the climate transition than the GOP’s outright denial. By aggressively growing the market for ESG funds — which typically net them higher management fees — while pushing watered down regulations and maintaining its status as one of world’s largest fossil-fuel investors, BlackRock can ensure that the climate crisis is a win-win-win.

SEC rulemaking, through which the agency interprets and adapts U.S. securities law according to the changes in the market, seldom garners broad public interest. However, the proposed climate disclosure rule has drawn a record-setting 14,000 comments, ranging widely in tone and content, from lobbying groups, institutional investors, elected officials, academics, and climate advocates.

Pushback on the rule stems from a predictable array of business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as Republicans in federal and state offices attacking the growing use of ESG criteria in investing. BlackRock, which has made ESG funds and disclosures mainstream, has become a central target of those attacks. On Thursday, Texas lawmakers grilled BlackRock executives about whether ESG policies are jeopardizing pension returns. A dark money group tied to conservative activist Leonard Leo has run TV ads accusing the firm of “harassing oil and gas companies, making them divest from fossil fuels.”

But in reality, BlackRock is largely aligned with its GOP critics on one of the biggest points of contention in the proposed SEC rule: the disclosure of so-called “Scope 3” carbon emissions that occur across a company’s value chain, including the impact of consumers burning fossil fuels that a company sells or helps finance.

Experts say that robust reporting of Scope 3 emissions is critical to giving the rule teeth; by contrast, a company’s direct emissions (Scope 1) and those associated with its purchase and use of energy (Scope 2) usually account for just a fraction of its overall footprint. While the GOP attacks the SEC’s statutory authority to require Scope 3 disclosures, BlackRock is pushing changes that critics say could render those requirements almost meaningless.

LA’s celebrity mountain lion P-22 euthanized

The reign of Los Angeles’s most famous mountain lion – hailed as an “ambassador for wildlife” in the city – has come to an end, after health and behavioral concerns led to P-22’s euthanization.

The cougar, who became another LA celebrity after making his home in the city a decade ago, “went to sleep” on Saturday morning, according to state wildlife officials. ...

The decision to euthanize P-22 came after he was apparently hit by a car. Subsequent investigations revealed a skull fracture and chronic illnesses, including a skin infection and diseases of the kidneys and liver. “His prognosis was deemed poor,” Bonham said.

The big cat, who lived in Griffith Park and normally hunted deer and coyotes, had also killed a Chihuahua mix who was being walked in the Hollywood Hills in November; this month, he was the suspect in another Chihuahua killing, this time in the Silver Lake neighborhood.

He was captured in a backyard in nearby Los Feliz on 12 December and underwent a CT scan, according to officials, who determined that he would either face euthanasia or confinement in a sanctuary – a difficult prospect for a wild lion. He lived to be roughly 12 years old, older than most wild males of his species.

Also of Interest

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

Ukraine SitRep - More Missiles, Attack Plans, Artillery Hits Morale

Michael Hudson Discusses the Future of Europe and Global Restructuring

The Empire Is Built On Our Closed Eyes: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

ICC Criticized for Neglecting Probe of Israeli War Crimes

Mainstream Media Discover Twitter Censorship

A Little Night Music

Roy Milton - You Got Me Reeling & Rocking

Roy Milton - R.M. Blues

Roy Milton - Night and day (I miss you so)

Roy Milton and his Solid Senders - Junior Jives

Roy Milton and his Solid Senders - Everything I Do Is Wrong

Roy Milton - Milton's Boogie

Roy Milton And His Band - Fools Are Getting Scarcer

Roy Milton - Rockin' Pnuemonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

Roy Milton - What Can I Do?