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This evening's music features early American blues singer and guitarist Sam Collins. Aka Jim Foster, Jelly Roll Hunter, Big Boy Woods, Bunny Carter, and Salty Dog Sam. Enjoy!

"The responsibility to nightmare is to wake up."

-- Michael S. Harper

News and Opinion

We Live In A Nightmare

Awakening from the propaganda matrix is like being a conservative: you’re frequently disgusted with society and where it appears to be headed. But unlike a conservative, you’re disgusted by actual problems instead of imaginary nonsense.

Also unlike a conservative, your problem is not with relatively new societal developments like recent immigration waves and LGBTQ acceptance; your problem is with abusive dynamics which have been plaguing civilization for centuries. Capitalism. Imperialism. Militarism. Settler-colonialism. Genocide. Plutocracy. Exploitation. Consumerism.

Many rightists warn urgently that our society is on the verge of plunging into a nightmarish authoritarian dystopia, but if you’re truly unplugged from the indoctrination of the empire you understand that the dystopia is already here, and has been for a long time. The overwhelming majority of the people in our society are already thinking, speaking, working, shopping, spending, voting and behaving pretty much exactly how the ruling class wants them to. If they put microchips in our brains which allowed them to fully control our minds, they’d have us moving around in more or less the same way we’ve been moving for generations. We are seeing increases in authoritarianism as our rulers tighten their grip on power, but those measures are being rolled out to keep the current system in place, not to create a new one. They’re not changing anything about the prison, they’re just installing better locks on the doors.

Until you’ve fully liberated yourself from the indoctrination of the mainstream imperial worldview, you don’t truly understand that this is dystopia. You don’t understand how nightmarish it is to live in a society where everyone is marching to the relentless drumbeat of profit and domination. You think it’s fine and normal for people to go their whole lives with their entire identities wrapped around their careers and the goals that they have accomplished within them. You don’t notice anything amiss with the way human lives are being psychologically shaped by propaganda and advertising to make them identify primarily as workers and consumers, and for them to be imprisoned or made homeless if they can’t or won’t be hammered into those shapes.

When you’re still plugged into the imperial worldview, you don’t think much about the horrors your government is unleashing upon people in other countries. If you think about politics at all, “foreign policy” is just one of many issues of consideration, and is much less worthy of your attention than whatever hot partisan topic is being pushed in mainstream discourse on any given day.

When you take the blinders off, you’re not able to ignore that stuff anymore. You’re acutely aware that unfathomable suffering is always being unleashed by your rulers upon foreigners whose lives matter just as much as yours does, and that atrocities are being inflicted in your name which are just as horrific as they would be if they were happening in your neighborhood.

These things disgust and outrage you. This whole dystopia does.

The way people in your life mindlessly regurgitate war propaganda about this or that empire-targeted nation. The way movies and TV shows manufacture consent for this hellscape. The way almost every product you interact with came into your life through depraved acts of international exploitation. The way none of the artists you’ve admired seem remotely interested in truth or justice, serving up nothing but vapid distraction in pretty shapes. The elections. The advertising. The phoniness. The way everyone’s always running around in circles frenetically trying to avoid experiencing even one single moment of true sincerity.

It looks more and more unwholesome the more lucid you become. You look at a US presidential debate, or MrBeast, or Jake Paul staging a glitzy exhibition match with an ancient Mike Tyson, or the way people are using all kinds of exploitative gig economy apps to sell off more and more of their time, labor and dignity in order to survive, and you just want to howl like a wounded animal. Some primordial eruption at this twisted thing our species has become.

This doesn’t mean you become bitter and jaded — at least not if you remain dedicated to the experience of truth. All it means is you stop looking for joy and satisfaction in the places this perverse civilization tells you to look for it. Instead of chasing after this dystopia’s warped definitions of success and trying to look like what you’ve been told a well-adjusted member of society ought to look like, you begin finding enjoyment in real things. Love. Real human connection. The thunderous beauty of the natural world. The crackling delight of the raw sights, sounds, smells and sensations which come with living a human life on this planet — even in the thickest manifestations of our madness. True romance, if you dare.

And as trying as it can be, it’s the only path toward real happiness. None of the people who are plugged into the matrix are really enjoying themselves, as hard as some of them try to pretend otherwise. How could they be? It’s impossible to be truly happy when deep down you know something’s profoundly wrong. That’s why antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds are being shoveled out like Halloween candy. Everyone’s getting more and more miserable, because you can’t build real lasting happiness on a foundation of propaganda and lies. The products never satisfy, the false definitions of success never deliver fulfillment, the toil never ends, and the cognitive dissonance grows stronger and stronger.

A devotion to truth can get ugly. It can get uncomfortable. It’s sometimes downright agonizing. But it’s the only path toward a healthy world. We can only begin moving toward health by facing the truth, as unpleasant as it might be. Our future as a conscious species lies on the other side of some confrontations that take us way outside our comfort zones. We come to nirvana by way of samsara.

American Historical Assoc. Votes Overwhelmingly for Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza

Social order in Gaza will collapse if Israel ends cooperation with UN aid agency, official says

Social order in Gaza is likely to collapse further if Israel goes ahead with its threat this month to end all cooperation with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, Louise Wateridge, its senior emergency officer, has warned. Wateridge, who has just returned from Gaza, described the territory as increasingly fractured and said the two Knesset bills due to come into force at the end of the month blocking cooperation with the agency would make it impossible for Unrwa to operate or to distribute aid in a war zone.

“If we’re no longer able to communicate to the Israeli authorities, we no longer have a deconfliction process in place, so none of our buildings will be de-conflicted or protected any more, and we simply won’t be able to be there,” she said.

She said the levels of lawlessness already occurring in the Kerem Shalom crossing had so far not spread across Gaza due to the societal ties Palestinians have with each other and their relationship with Unrwa. “If people don’t have flour one day, people understand and trust that the agency will do what they can, because it’s their cousin or brother that works at Unrwa, so they know that the agency is trying to help, and it’s not that agency’s fault.

“If that agency is removed, it takes this buffer away, and what’s to say people don’t fight more? I’m surprised social order hasn’t collapsed more than it has. People have been pushed to the brink.”

Wateridge said the threat to Unrwa’s future was coming at a time when the general consensus in Gaza is that they have been abandoned by the international community. “If you speak to any person, any civilian, they feel in absolute despair,” she said. “There’s a quadcopter, then there’s a drone, it’s like a fish bowl, and you’re just having to dodge being killed. And while you’re dodging being killed, you have to get water and food for your family, and now you have to keep warm.”

Scott Ritter : What’s Next In Ukraine and Israel?

Biden Greenlights 'Racist' and 'Sociopathic' $8B Arms Sale to Israel

The administration of US President Joe Biden announced on Saturday an arms sale to Israel valued at $8 billion, just ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House.

Biden has repeatedly rejected calls to suspend military backing for Israel because of the number of civilians killed during the war in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, primarily women and children.

The sale includes medium-range air-to-air missiles, 155mm projectile artillery shells for long-range targeting, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 500-pound bombs, and more.

Human rights groups, former State Department officials, and Democratic lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to halt arms sales to Israel, citing violations of US laws, including the Leahy Law, as well as international laws and human rights.

The Leahy Law, named after former Sen. Patrick Leahy, requires the US to withhold military assistance from foreign military or law enforcement units if there is credible evidence of human rights violations.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s most significant Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called Biden’s new $8 billion arms deal “racist” and “sociopathic.”

Multiple human rights organizations and international bodies have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for committing war crimes.

The US is, by far, the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.

CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said on Saturday:

“We strongly condemn the Biden administration for its unbelievable and criminal decision to send another $8 billion worth of American weapons to the government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu instead of using American leverage to force an end to the genocide in Gaza.

“Only racists who do not view people of color as equally human, and sociopaths who delight in funding mass slaughter, could send Netanyahu even more bombs while his government openly kidnaps doctors, destroys hospitals, and exterminates the last survivors in northern Gaza.

“If President Biden is actually the person who approved this new $8 billion arms sale, then he is a war criminal who belongs in a cell at The Hague alongside Netanyahu. But if Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk, Jake Sullivan, and other aides are making these unconscionable decisions as shadow presidents, then anyone with a conscience in the administration should speak up now about their abuses of power.”

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69% of Israel's imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023.

On the other hand, incoming President-elect Donald Trump has also pledged unwavering support for Israel and has never committed to supporting an independent Palestinian state.

Israel Launches Major Airstrikes Against North Syria

Syria’s new government may view peace with Israel as a top priority, but Israel seems to be heading in a different direction, as airstrikes continue to escalate against sites across Syria, and Israeli ground forces are taking more and more strategic locations in southern Syria.

Locals reported huge explosions in the northern Syrian city of al-Safira, just east of Aleppo. There were at least seven airstrikes reported against different targets in the city, mostly targeting defense industry factories, but also some hitting research centers in the area.

The attacks were carried out overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning. Locals said the explosions were so huge they “turned night into day.” There are still no official figures on the casualties from any of these latest attacks.

Alastair Crooke : Can Trump Save the US From Itself?

US imperialism seeks to restructure political relations in Lebanon after Israeli invasion

Lebanon’s parliament is to convene on January 9 in another bid to elect a president. The vote comes amid intense pressure from the US, France and Saudi Arabia to select a figure, behind the backs of the Lebanese people, that will run the country in their geostrategic interests. Their delegations to Beirut this week are determined to capitalise on Israel’s significant weakening of Hezbollah’s military and political forces, the Israel/Hezbollah ceasefire and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria at the hands of Washington’s Islamist ally, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). They are seeking to establish an explicitly pro-US/Israel government and end Iran’s longstanding influence in the country via Hezbollah and its political allies.

Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” was formed in the 1980s as an “Islamic Resistance” dedicated to “the armed struggle” against Israel, amid Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the 1975-90 civil war that served as a proxy war for the competing regional and imperialist powers. Backed by Syria and Iran, it drew its support within Lebanon from the impoverished Shi’ite masses to whom it provides vital welfare services. Hezbollah advocated corporatism, paternalism and religious obscurantism as a counterweight to the class struggle. With its Shi’ite and Palestinian allies, Hezbollah constitutes the largest bloc in Lebanon’s confessional-based and fragmented political system.

The tiny country, long a pawn in the broader machinations of the imperialist and regional powers, has been without a president for more than two years after Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022. This left the country without a functioning government. Headed by Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s richest man, the government has been unable to impose the “economic reforms” demanded by the International Monetary Fund and international banks in return for a restructuring of the country’s debts—amid bankruptcy, soaring inflation and mass poverty caused by the looting of the country’s wealth by the handful of billionaires that have run Lebanon since the end of the civil war in 1990.

US President Joe Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein is to visit Beirut, alongside representatives from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt. This follows the recent visits of Lebanese Forces legislator Pierre Bou Assi and Lebanese Army Commander General Joseph Aoun (no relation to the previous president), Washington’s preferred candidate, to Saudi Arabia. Lebanese Forces, the former Christian-militia that during the height of the civil war in the 1980s controlled, with support from Israel, much of the predominantly Christian territories of the country, is now a political party backed by Saudi Arabia. Aoun heads Lebanon’s armed forces in southern Lebanon where he is charged with disarming Hezbollah, under the terms of the Washington-imposed ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The Progressive Socialist Party of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt recently endorsed his candidacy.

Hezbollah, now led by Na’im Qassem, is backing its ally Suleiman Frangieh, who had close relations with Syria’s President Assad and Iran. However, Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament whose party is allied with Hezbollah, has indicated that Hezbollah is willing to be more “flexible.” Another possible candidate is said to be Jihad Azour, a senior International Monetary Fund banker. Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron paid a three-day state visit to Riyadh, the first by a French president since 2006, where he sought Saudi help in Lebanon’s reconstruction. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have made it clear they will not help Lebanon rebuild if Hezbollah remains the dominant force in the country, giving whoever becomes president and prime minister significant power over Hezbollah and the ability to limit its political influence.

The US is building a new $1.2 billion fortified embassy on a 43-acre site near Beirut whose declared purpose is to counter the “Axis of Resistance”, meaning Iran. Its scale, out of all proportion to the country’s size, is indicative of US geo-political interests in Lebanon, with its strategic location and newly found sources of gas and oil under the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Following the settlement of a longstanding maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon, a French, Italian and Qatari consortium began drilling in 2023, while Israel has already begun extraction.

Lame duck Biden explores strikes on Iran

Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator

A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group.

Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims. ...

The CIA, however, is not the only clandestine spy organization with which Berg has a long history of collaborating. He also has a rich professional relationship with Mossad, Israel’s premier intelligence agency.

In 2020, for instance, Berg published “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” a book that tells the story of the Israeli operation to clandestinely smuggle Ethiopian Jews into Israel. That the 320-page account lionizes Israel and its spies is perhaps unsurprising, considering how much input Mossad had in its creation. Berg said that he wrote the book “in collaboration” with Mossad commander Dani Limor, whom he relied on extensively, as he, in his own words, knew “next to nothing” about the story and its background before writing it. Limor opened numerous doors and was able to secure “over 100 hours of interviews” with Israeli military and intelligence officials, including with the head of Mossad.

Limor and Berg became extremely close friends. In 2020, he posted a picture of himself with his arm around the ex-Mossad commander. The first page of “Red Sea Spies” is simply a glowing recommendation from Efraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, a group Berg describes as “the world’s greatest intelligence service.”

Ukraine running out of soldiers to sacrifice for proxy war

Ukraine launches surprise operation in Russia’s Kursk region

Ukrainian armed forces began a surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region on Sunday, in an apparent attempt to regain the initiative on the battlefield before Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House.

Video showed Ukrainian armoured columns advancing across snowy fields towards the village of Bolshoe Soldatskoe, north-east of the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. Vehicles could also be seen driving through empty rustic settlements.

Ukrainian officials confirmed a substantial operation was taking place. Russian military bloggers reported fierce fighting. Ukraine’s general staff said 42 combat clashes took place on Sunday in the Kursk area, with 12 continuing.

There were unconfirmed reports Ukrainian troops had entered the Russian hamlets of Berdin and Novosotnitskii. Overnight Ukrainian sappers removed mines. Extensive electronic countermeasures were used to knock out some Russian drones.

Austria’s president to meet far-right leader amid coalition speculation

Austria’s president has said he will meet the leader of the country’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), amid speculation that the pro-Kremlin, anti-Islam party will be tasked with trying to form a government after centrist parties failed to find agreement.

The Alpine country of 9 million has been plunged into political crisis after the collapse of coalition talks aimed at keeping the far right out of government. On Sunday it appeared the FPÖ – narrowly the most voted-for party in September’s parliamentary elections – would be most likely to benefit from the turmoil.

It would be a turn of fortune for the party, which had seemed poised to be kept out of power after the mainstream parties, including Austria’s People’s party, refused to back a government led by the FPÖ’s leader, Herbert Kickl, who during the election routinely peppered his speeches with Nazi rhetoric, railed against migrants with slogans such as “Fortress Austria” and “Austria First”, and had been previously ousted as a hardline interior minister.

Austria’s president, Alexander van der Bellen, on Sunday said he had spent several hours speaking to officials and had emerged with the impression that “the voices within the People’s party who exclude working with the Freedom party under its leader Herbert Kickl have become quieter.” This development meant “that a new path may be opening up that did not exist before,” he added, noting that he would meet Kickl on Monday morning.

Kickl, who cites Hungary’s autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán, as a role model, has previously said his party would only join a government if he were chancellor. He has long courted controversy and campaigned on a slogan to become “Volkskanzler” (people’s chancellor), a term once used for Adolf Hitler.

‘Don’t feed the troll’: German chancellor responds to Elon Musk comments

When the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was asked in an interview about the barrage of insults being directed at him and other German leaders by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, his reply was: “Don’t feed the troll.”

Speaking to the German weekly Stern, Scholz described the criticisms as nothing new. “You have to stay cool,” he said in the interview. “As Social Democrats, we have long been used to the fact that there are rich media entrepreneurs who do not appreciate social democratic politics – and do not hide their opinions.”

He said he would make no efforts to engage with Musk, who has endorsed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in next month’s federal elections and will host a live discussion on his social media platform X with its candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel. “I don’t believe in courting Mr Musk’s favour. I’m happy to leave that to others,” he said. “The rule is: don’t feed the troll.”

It was the chancellor’s most direct response to Musk, coming days after he urged voters not to let the “owners of social media channels” decide the outcome of the general election in a New Year’s Eve address that did not mention Musk by name nor his platform X.

Since taking the reins of X, Musk has increasingly used the social media platform’s global reach to push his own political views. After spending a quarter of a billion dollars to help secure Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Musk has used his influence to back far-right and anti-establishment parties across the continent, while attacking some of its most prominent centre-left leaders.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau RESIGNS

Forget talk of defending workers, the US visa feud is about the market’s needs

On the one side stand Silicon Valley moguls and leaders of corporate America; on the other, longstanding Donald Trump loyalists and supporters of the Maga (“Make America great again”) movement. One side claims to be building America’s bright new future by recruiting the best talent from across the globe, the other to be defending US workers from the depredations of global capitalism. One side portrays itself as challenging racism and bigotry, the other is outraged by bigoted views of American culture.

The H-1B visa – which allows US companies to hire foreign workers with “highly specialised knowledge” – might seem an unlikely spark for a mini civil war among Trump supporters. Yet the bitter feud that has gripped the Trumpsphere over the past week has exposed many of the fissures of US conservatism. There is little to admire on either side and much to deplore. Both sides are right in certain respects, but usually for desperately wrong reasons.

The fallout began when Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with the ear of the incoming president, described as “deeply disturbing” the appointment by Trump of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-born US venture capitalist, as policy adviser on AI. She was alarmed by “the number of career leftists … appointed to serve in Trump’s admin” whose views “are in direct opposition to Trump’s America first agenda”. Then Vivek Ramaswamy published a long post blaming “American culture” for the need to import foreign engineers. A former presidential rival turned Trump supporter, and Trump’s pick to run, with Elon Musk, the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, Ramaswamy claimed that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long”. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the maths olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian,” he added, “will not produce the best engineers.”

Musk waded in both to defend the H-1B scheme, of which he has long been a fervent advocate, and to demand that the “hateful, unrepentant racists” be “removed from the Republican party”. Trump himself, who in 2016 described the programme as being “very, very bad for workers” and one that “I frankly use and… shouldn’t be allowed to”, and who four years ago temporarily suspended the scheme, last week backed his new Silicon Valley friends against their Maga critics. Policy walks to where money talks.

It’s a bit rich, though, for the likes of Musk and Ramaswamy to cry racism about those objecting to their favoured visa scheme when they themselves have been so fervidly disseminating racist tropes about immigrants. Musk helped promote the notorious claim that Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, were “eating pets”. He and Ramaswamy have been advocates of the “great replacement theory”, the belief that the elites are “importing” millions of illegal immigrants to replace white people. Ramaswamy called it “a basic statement of the Democratic party’s platform”, while Musk claimed it was part of the Democrats’ attempt to create “single party rule”.

Biden signs bill to boost social security payments for millions of public workers

Joe Biden has signed into law a measure that boosts social security payments for current and former public employees – such as teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public-service workers – in what the White House has described as the first expansion of such benefits in 20 years. “The bill I’m signing today is about a simple proposition: Americans who have worked hard all their lives … should be able to retire with economic security and dignity,” Biden said. “That’s the entire purpose of the social security system crafted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt nearly 90 years ago.”

The Senate voted last month to approve the Social Security Fairness Act, which advocates say rights a decades-old disparity, though it will also put strain on social security trust funds, which face a looming insolvency crisis.

The bill rescinds two provisions – the windfall elimination provision and the government pension offset – that limit social security benefits for recipients if they get retirement payments from other sources, including public retirement programs from a state or local government.

The Congressional Research Service estimated that in December 2023, there were 745,679 people, about 1% of all social security beneficiaries, who had their benefits reduced by the government pension offset. About 2.1 million people, or about 3% of all beneficiaries, were affected by the windfall elimination provision. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in September that eliminating the windfall elimination provision would boost monthly payments to the affected beneficiaries by an average of $360 by December 2025. Ending the government pension offset would increase monthly benefits in December 2025 by an average of $700 for 380,000 recipients getting benefits based on living spouses, according to the CBO. The increase would be an average of $1,190 for 390,000 or surviving spouses getting a widow or widower benefit.

Crack-Up Capitalism: How Billionaire Elon Musk's Extremism Is Shaping Trump Admin & Global Politics

‘Ironic’: climate-driven sea level rise will overwhelm major oil ports

Rising sea levels driven by the climate crisis will overwhelm many of the world’s biggest oil ports, analysis indicates. Scientists said the threat was ironic as fossil fuel burning causes global heating. They said reducing emissions by moving to renewable energy would halt global heating and deliver more reliable energy.

Thirteen of the ports with the highest supertanker traffic will be seriously damaged by just 1 metre of sea level rise, the analysis found. The researchers said two low-lying ports in Saudi Arabia – Ras Tanura and Yanbu – were particularly vulnerable. Both are operated by Aramco, the Saudi state oil firm, and 98% of the country’s oil exports leave via these ports.

The oil ports of Houston and Galveston in the US, the world’s biggest oil producer, are also on the list, as are ports in the United Arab Emirates, China, Singapore and the Netherlands.

The latest science published by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) shows 1 metre of sea level rise is now inevitable within a century or so and could come as early as 2070 if ice sheets collapse and emissions are not curbed. An even more catastrophic rise of 3 metres is probably inevitable in the next millennium or two and could arrive as soon as the early 2100s. ...

Pam Pearson, the ICCI director, said: “It’s ironic these oil tanker ports are below 1 metre of sea level rise and need to have their eyes on these potentially higher rates of sea level rise, which themselves come from continued fossil fuel use.”

Vermont Sued for New Law Requiring Big Oil to Pay for Climate Damage

The US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute - representing the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world - are suing the State of Vermont over its new law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the state's damage caused by climate change.

The lawsuit, filed last Monday in the US District Court for the District of Vermont, asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered over $1 billion in damages from catastrophic summer flooding and other extreme weather.

Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office said as of Friday, Jan. 3, they had not been served with the lawsuit.

The lawsuit argues that the U.S. Constitution precludes the act and that the federal Clean Air Act preempts state law. It also claims that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating “against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont.”

The Chamber and the American Petroleum Institute argue that the federal government is already addressing climate change. Because greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources, they claim it has been impossible to measure “accurately and fairly” the impact of emissions from a particular entity in a specific location over decades.

“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. “Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”

The complaint is an essential legal test as more states consider holding fossil fuels liable for expensive global warming-intensified events like floods, fires, and more. Maryland and Massachusetts are among the states expected to pursue similar legislation, modeled after the federal law known as Superfund, in 2025.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed a similar climate bill into law - the Climate Change Superfund Act- on Dec. 26, pointing to the need to fund climate adaptation projects.

Will Biden IGNORE Corporate Prosecution Of Environmental Activist

Antibiotic emergency ‘could claim 40 million lives in next 25 years’

Dame Sally Davies has a straightforward message about the coming year. We face a growing antibiotic emergency that could have devastating impacts on men, women and children across the globe, she says. Davies, a former chief medical officer for England, has become a leading advocate for global action to fight the scourge of superbugs.

She told the Observer that there is a real danger that routine procedures – from surgery to childbirth – could carry widespread life-threatening risks because of the spread of bacteria that possess antimicrobial resistance (AMR). “About a million people die every year because of the spread of microbial resistance, and that figure will rise over the next 25 years,” she said. “It is really scary.”

Estimates suggest that by 2050, death rates from AMRs will have doubled, with figures indicating almost 40 million people will lose their lives to superbugs over the next 25 years, with elderly people especially at risk.

“Recent data shows AMR is going down in the under-fives, which is good news. For the over-70s, mortality rates have gone up 80% since 1990; that is very concerning.” As the population ages, more people are living with chronic disease and that makes them more vulnerable to AMR, researchers have argued.

In the face of these threats, doctors have tried to limit prescriptions of antibiotics as much as possible while patients have been pressed to complete courses of treatments. However, medical misuse of antibiotics is not the only route by which resistance spreads. The landscape itself plays a critical role, a problem that stems from the fact that about 70% of all antibiotics are given to livestock, creating a pool of animals in which resistance can evolve.

Also of Interest

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

2025 Is Off To A Wild Start

There Is No Need To Wait For Revolution Or Paradise

Eight Israeli Lawmakers Demand Acceleration of the Extermination in Gaza by Destroying Remaining Food, Plus Water and Energy Infrastructure

Vijay Prashad: Tears of Our Children

Acclaimed Australian Journalist Accused of ‘Anti-Semitism’ Awaits Zionist Federation’s Next Move

Manufacturing rebels: How the UK and US empowered HTS

The Earthquake Environmental Justice Advocates Aren’t Talking About

Biden & Make-Believe Democracy

Indictment Debunks China Hacking Claim

Washington Post cartoonist resigns over paper’s refusal to publish cartoon critical of Jeff Bezos

‘It didn’t use to be like this’: woeful US healthcare system exposed by CEO killing

California tribes celebrate historic dam removal: ‘More successful than we ever imagined’

A Little Night Music

Crying Sam Collins - Yellow Dog Blues

Crying Sam Collins - Loving Lady Blues

Crying Sam Collins - My Road Is Rough And Rocky

Crying Sam Collins - Riverside Blues

Sam Collins - It Won't Be Long

Crying Sam Collins - Devil In The Lion's Den

Crying Sam Collins - Midnight Special Blues

Crying Sam Collins - Jail House Blues

Crying Sam Collins - Lonesome Road Blues