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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Willie Nix

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues multi-instrumentalist and singer Willie Nix. Enjoy!

^{Willie Nix - Nervous Wreck}

"The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship."

-- Fidel Castro

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News and Opinion

Doubts emerge in US over future of Assange extradition case

The American prosecutor seeking to put Julian Assange on trial in the US has said he is uncertain if Joe Biden’s incoming White House administration will continue to seek the extradition of the WikiLeaks co-founder. Zachary Terwilliger, who was appointed by Donald Trump, made the comments as it was announced that he was stepping down as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“It will be very interesting to see what happens with this case. There’ll be some decisions to be made. Some of this does come down to resources and where you’re going to focus your energies,” he told NPR.

The departure of Terwilliger as the prosecutor in Virginia, where Assange would be tried on espionage and hacking charges if extradited from the UK, comes as the 49-year-old is hoping to be successful in a bail application on Wednesday at Westminster magistrates court in London. ...

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said that a pardon of Assange by Donald Trump was unlikely, adding that it was “more likely” that the US Department of Justice will file an appeal before the president leaves office on 20 January and attempt to refute the judge’s views on the US prison system. He added: “The major decisions will fall to Biden and the new administration, namely his attorney general and US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where Assange was charged and would be tried, and those officials may not be confirmed for several months.”

Assange denied bail by UK court, forced to stay in high-security prison

Australian Labor Party Urges US to Drop Charges Against Assange

The Australian Labor Party, currently the opposition in the country's parliament, is calling on Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government to urge the United States to drop all charges against Julian Assange following a British judge's denial on Monday of the Trump administration's extradition request targeting the WikiLeaks founder.

"Labor welcomes the decision to give priority to the health and welfare of Julian Assange. Now that a British court has found that it would be unjust to extradite Mr. Assange to the U.S. Labor believes that this has dragged on for long enough," said Mark Dreyfus, Australia's shadow attorney general, in a statement Tuesday.

"While the U.S. has the right to appeal the court's decision, we call on the Morrison government to do what it can to draw a line under this matter and encourage the U.S. government to bring this matter to a close," he continued, noting that American whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who leaked information to Assange, had her sentence commuted in 2017 by then-President Barack Obama.

Dreyfus' statement—which was welcomed by Assange's partner Stella Moris—added that "Labor expects the Australian government to provide appropriate consular support to Mr. Assange, as is his right as an Australian. Given his ill health it is now time for this long drawn out case against Julian Assange to be brought to an end."

Some Australian politicians have gone even further, pushing Morrison to pressure outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump to pardon Assange. Human rights and free press defenders worldwide, from whistleblower Edward Snowden to United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, have also called for a pardon.

Iran Issues 'Red Notice' Demand for Interpol to Arrest Trump, 47 US Officials for Soleimani Assassination

The Iranian government on Tuesday issued a "red notice" request urging the International Criminal Police Organization to arrest U.S. President Donald Trump and 47 other American officials for their role in the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani just over a year ago, a killing that nearly sparked an all-out war between the two nations.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is very seriously following up on pursuing and punishing those who ordered and executed this crime," Gholamhossein Esmaili, a spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary, told reporters Tuesday.

Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, was among the experts who argued the Trump-ordered assassination of Soleimani last January was a violation of international law.

"Major General Soleimani was in charge of Iran military strategy, and actions, in Syria and Iraq," Callamard wrote in a July report. "But absent an actual imminent threat to life, the course of action taken by the U.S. was unlawful."

Tuesday's demand marked the second time the Iranian government has called on Interpol to arrest Trump and other U.S. officials over the Soleimani assassination. In June, as Common Dreams reported, Iran requested an international arrest warrant for Trump and dozens of U.S. officials who Tehran said were guilty of "murder and terrorism." Interpol, which is based in France, rejected the request.

Tehran's latest demand came as tensions between the U.S. and Iran are rising once again thanks to Trump's recent militaristic rhetoric and actions during his final days in power.

"Fortunately, Trump's presidency has ended," Ebrahim Raisi, chief justice of the Iranian judicial system, said at a ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of the Soleimani killing. "But even if his term hadn't ended, it would be unacceptable to say someone shouldn't be accountable to law due to his administrative position."

As Common Dreams reported Monday, experts are growing increasingly concerned that Trump could launch a military attack on Iran as he continues to lash out in the wake of his loss to President-elect Joe Biden.

"War with Iran could be Trump's final punishment on the American people for rejecting him and a massive act of sabotage against Biden for defeating him," Sina Toossi, senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council, warned last week.

Sirota, worth a full read:

The Infrastructure Of Impunity

It would be a good thing for Donald Trump to be investigated for all the crimes he committed, including his caught-on-tape demand that public officials overturn Georgia’s election — a situation that seems like a straightforward prosecution in a nation of laws. America, though, is not that nation — rhetoric to the contrary, we are not a society that values “law and order.” We are immersed in a culture of impunity — more specifically, impunity for the powerful to do whatever they want without consequences. This culture is so ubiquitous that it can be difficult to even recognize at this point. It’s like that David Foster Wallace story about fish asking “what the hell is water?” — but unlike water, impunity isn’t natural. It is anomalous and artificial, a construct that elites have manufactured and that is particularly pronounced in the political arena.

There, prominent voices have continued to suggest that Trump should be granted immunity in the name of Moving Forward Not Backward™.

Those calls for blanket amnesty have been the background noise of this week’s two huge political events — Republicans’ attempt to overturn the national election and the two decisive Georgia Senate races — which are themselves reminders of what happens when society eliminates most deterrents to sociopathic and criminal behavior. ... It might be comforting to presume that the situation in Washington and in Georgia are isolated aberrations of a Republican electorate that has momentarily gone batshit crazy. But they are not anomalies — they are picture-perfect reflections of a larger infrastructure of impunity constructed by both parties and by media corporations over many decades.

We are nearly two decades into a costly war that America was lied into and that killed hundreds of thousands of people. We are decades into financial deregulation that caused a global recession and ruined millions of lives. Not only were none of the perpetrators of those disasters prosecuted or even investigated, the very idea of punishing them was portrayed as primitive, dangerous and antithetical to justice. ... Even the avatars of all this impunity — George W. Bush and Barack Obama — have been rewarded with sky-high approval ratings, as if nothing happened. ...

According to aides, president-elect Joe Biden — the author of the most punitive criminal justice bill in modern history — says he "just wants to move on” from questions about prosecuting Trump for blatant crimes, all as Republicans are promising to continue their politically charged Trump-era investigations against Biden and the Democrats. Meanwhile, even after the infamous Georgia telephone call, House Democratic Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries insisted that "we're not looking backwards, we're looking forward.”

Federal Judge Blocks Trump Order Targeting Lawyers Supporting ICC Afghan War Crimes Probe

A federal judge in New York on Monday issued an injunction against President Donald Trump's June executive order sanctioning human rights lawyers cooperating with an International Criminal Court investigtion of alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan issued a preliminary injunction (pdf) barring the Trump administration from targeting four law professors with criminal or civil penalties for supporting the work of the ICC in its investigation of alleged extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, and other potential war crimes committed by military and CIA personnel and allied forces during the ongoing 19-year war in Afghanistan—the longest campaign of the so-called War on Terror. 

"The court is mindful of the government's interest in defending its foreign policy prerogatives and maximizing the efficacy of its policy tools," Failla wrote. "Nevertheless, national security concerns must not become a talisman used to ward off inconvenient claims, a 'label' used to 'cover a multitude of sins.'"

The ruling came in a case filed last October by the Open Society Justice Initiative and professors Diane Marie Amann, Margaret deGuzman, Gabor Rona, and Milena Sterio, who argued that Trump's order violates their constitutional rights.

Failla determined that Trump's order unconstitutionally prohibits free speech "so as to induce [ICC officials] to desist from their investigation of U.S. and allied personnel."

James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, welcomed Failla's decision, saying in a statement that the injunction "affirms what we have said from the start: the executive order is misguided and unconstitutional, violating our fundamental rights to free speech."

The lawsuit came a month after Trump imposed sanctions targeting Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, the ICC's chief prosecutor and prosecution jurisdiction division director, respectively, in retaliation for their scrutinty of U.S. wartime conduct.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared at the time that "the United States has never ratified the Rome Statute that created the court, and we will not tolerate its illegitimate attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction."

In April 2019, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II announced it would not grant a request by Bensouda to open an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including deliberate attacks on civilians and child soldier conscription by Taliban militants, torture and sexual violence by members of Afghan National Security Forces, and torture of prisoners held in U.S. military and secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania.

In December 2019, the ICC convened a three-day hearing in The Hague, Netherlands at which prosecutors and Afghan victims of alleged U.S. and Afghan government torture pleaded with court officials to reverse their April decision and conduct a war crimes probe. The ICC unanimously ruled in March 2020 that the investigation could proceed. Pompeo condemned the decision, calling the ICC "an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body."

In July 2020, top Trump officials were further incensed after prominent Canadian jurist William Schabas submitted a request to the ICC to investigate senior U.S. and Israeli officials for alleged war crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

Looking ahead to Trump's January 20 departure from the White House, Goldston asserted that "rather than spending time defending an order in direct conflict with Washington's historic support for international justice, the incoming administration should rescind it on day one." 

According to Reuters, the incoming Biden administration may consider lifting sanctions against the ICC officials, pending an evaluation of the role of sanctions in U.S. foreign policy.

Russians are 'likely' perpetrators of US government hack, official report says

Russia was “likely” to have been behind a string of hacks of US federal agencies identified last month, according the office of the US director of national intelligence which said the hackers breached fewer than 10 federal agencies.

The office and the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency inside the Department of Homeland Security, in a joint statement, said the hackers’ goal appeared to be collecting intelligence, rather than any destructive acts.

The agencies said that the actor, “likely Russian in origin, is responsible for most or all of the recently discovered, ongoing cyber compromises of both government and non-governmental networks”. The investigation is continuing, they said, and could turn up additional government victims.

It was the first formal statement of attribution by the Trump administration.

Are $2,000 Checks A LOCK With Dem Senate?

Briahna Joy Gray: Bernie Poised To Wield HUGE Power In Senate. Will He Use It?

The Kaganate of Nulands to return.

Biden to name Sherman, Nuland to top diplomatic posts

Democratic President-elect Joe Biden plans to name U.S. foreign policy veterans Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland to be the No. 2 and No. 3 officials at the State Department, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Sherman, a key negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Republican President Donald Trump abandoned, is to be tapped for deputy secretary of state, the sources said, confirming a report that first appeared in Politico newspaper.

Nuland, a retired career foreign service officer who served as the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, NATO ambassador and State Department spokeswoman, is to be nominated as undersecretary of state for political affairs, effectively the third-ranking U.S. diplomat, the sources added, also confirming Politico’s report.

AOC Deletes Tweet -- Betrays Her Own Campaign Promises #FraudSquad

New Study Reveals Flawed Predictions of Runaway Costs and Usage Under Medicare for All

With the Covid-19 pandemic raging and recognition of the inadequacy and injustice of America's for-profit healthcare system at a possible zenith, a new study released Tuesday reveals that projections of large and costly usage increases under a single-payer program have been overstated, bolstering the case that Medicare for All would save both lives and money.

In a paper published Tuesday in Health Affairs, Drs. Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhander of Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School and James Kahn of the University of California San Francisco—all associated with Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for Medicare for All—analyze the relationship between universal healthcare and the use of medical services.

What the researchers find is that most estimates of the effect of universal coverage expansion on healthcare utilization are overblown, adding to a growing consensus that Medicare for All is less costly than previously thought due to lower administrative costs and usage rates that increase only slightly or not at all.

The authors anticipate that "debate over public coverage expansion and its costs" is likely to grow as a result of the pandemic's exposure of the problems with employment-based insurance and the return of a Democratic administration to the White House.

In contrast to most models of the relationship between coverage expansions and utilization changes, the authors' findings, based on examining the history of past coverage expansions in the U.S. and 10 other affluent countries, are more modest.

While demand for medical services is elastic, meaning that "people use more healthcare when the price they pay is lower and less care when prices rise," the authors contend that prior research documenting the effect of coverage expansions on healthcare use and costs have underestimated the impact of "supply-side constraints."

Although the number of physicians and hospital beds is malleable in the long-run, current limitations on supply can provoke a reduction in the provision of low-value services and yield a more egalitarian prioritization of care, the authors say.

As Dr. Gaffney explained in a statement Tuesday, "Our findings clash with the traditional economic teaching: that giving people free access to care would cause demand and utilization to soar."

"That traditional thinking ignores the 'supply' side of the health care equation: doctors' and nurses' time and hospital beds are limited, and mostly already fully occupied," Gaffney added. "When doctors get busier, they prioritize care according to need, and provide less unnecessary care to those with minimal needs to make way for patients with real needs."

Between 1973 and 2020, various models have projected utilization increases ranging from 2% to at least 21%, but according to the authors, "nearly all predictions of utilization surges stemming from universal coverage expansions are overestimates."

Mourners at Andre Hill's funeral demand justice after police shooting

As light snow fell around the Ohio church on Tuesday morning, Andre Hill’s family, friends and strangers angry about his death – clad in their Sunday best and Black Lives Matter masks – walked in to honor his life. ... State senator Hearcel Craig greeted guests at the door. The Democratic lawmaker is a minister at south-west Columbus’s The Church of God, where Hill’s service was taking place. “This is the second time in three weeks I have been here to honor the life of a black man taken by this city’s officials,” he said.

The first was for the funeral of 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr, who was killed by a Franklin county sheriff’s office deputy on 4 December. Scarcely three weeks later, Officer Adam Coy of Columbus police can be seen in body-cam footage fatally shooting Hill early on 22 December as Hill emerged from a garage holding a cellphone in his left hand with his right hand obscured. He was visiting a family friend at the time.

“Being black in America gives us cause to be cynical, and we must say enough is enough,” Shannon Hardin, the Democratic chair of the Columbus city council, said at the beginning of Hill’s service.

Columbus’s mayor, Andrew Ginther, US representative Joyce Beatty, state representative Erica Crawley were among a number of lawmakers and leaders in attendance.

“Miscarriage of Justice”: No Charges Against White Kenosha Officer Who Shot & Paralyzed Jacob Blake

Jacob Blake: officers will not be charged in shooting that left Black man paralyzed

A Wisconsin prosecutor announced Tuesday that he will not bring criminal charges against the white police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back from close range last August, which left the Black Kenosha father paralyzed from the waist down. Michael Gravely, Kenosha county district attorney, said during a press conference that his office determined that the officer, Rusten Sheskey, would not be charged based on the state’s law relating to self-defense.

The decision prompted immediate anger from attorneys representing Blake’s family, Benjamin Crump, Patrick A Salvi II and B’Ivory LaMarr. They denounced the decision not to charge Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Blake.

“Officer Sheskey’s actions sparked outrage and advocacy throughout the country, but the district attorney’s decision not to charge the officer who shot Jacob in the back multiple times, leaving him paralyzed, further destroys trust in our justice system,” the attorneys said in a statement. They added: “This sends the wrong message to police officers throughout the country. It says it is okay for police to abuse their power and recklessly shoot their weapon, destroying the life of someone who was trying to protect his children.”

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“Unprecedented Moment”: Far-Right Forces Swarm D.C. to Back Overturning Election, Egged On by Trump

Trump makes false claim Pence has power to alter election result

Donald Trump is intensifying pressure on Mike Pence to subvert democracy and overturn the election result when Congress meets on Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s victory.

The president has been hyping the congressional tally of electoral college votes as a dramatic last stand and urged supporters to stage “wild” street demonstrations in Washington. In reality, Biden’s win is a foregone conclusion and the vice-president’s ceremonial role as presiding officer has been likened to an awards host opening envelopes.

Even so, defying norms to the end, Trump falsely insists that Pence can intervene and change the outcome. At a rally in Dalton, Georgia, ahead of Tuesday’s crucial Senate runoff elections, the president said: “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us ... He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much.”

He followed up with a tweet on Tuesday that wrongly claimed: “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.” Experts were quick to point out that the vice-president has no such power and there is no evidence of election fraud. ...

Objections to a state’s result will halt the count and trigger up to two hours of debate in both the House and Senate, followed by votes on whether to sustain or dismiss the objection. Trump’s allies do not have sufficient numbers in either chamber to invalidate Biden’s victories but, by raising multiple objections in multiple states, threaten to drag out a process already slowed by coronavirus restrictions.

Georgia Turning Blue? In Victory for Grassroots Organizers, Warnock Wins Senate Runoff; Ossoff Leads

'We will never concede': Trump addresses supporters gathered in Washington

Reintroduced 'For the People Act' Praised for Its Potential to Bring Sweeping Democracy Reforms

Progressive groups this week are welcoming the reintroduction in the U.S. House of the For the People Act and heaping praise on the proposed legislative package's potential for sweeping democracy reforms in the face of relentless Republican Party hostility towards election protections and voting rights.

"It has become clear that we must shore up the defenses of our democracy by expanding access to the franchise, empowering the voices of everyday Americans in our elections, and upholding strong ethical standards in government. H.R. 1 contains reforms that address all three pillars," Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn said in a statement Monday. ...

HR1, which Congress just reintroduced, includes:

-Automatic voter registration

-A ban on gerrymandering

-Public financing of elections

-Support for DC statehood

-Plans to restore the Voting Rights Act

-A requirement that presidents disclose tax returns

About damn time.

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) January 4, 2021

As detailed in a fact sheet from Sarbanes's office, H.R. 1 would boost "clean and fair elections" through measures such as automatic voter registration, banning "voter roll purges like those seen in Ohio, Georgia, and elsewhere," and simplifying voting by mail; ending "the dominance of big money in our politics" by exposing so-called dark money in politics and enforcing of campaign finance laws; and making sure "public servants work for the public interest" by taking actions including limiting the revolving door between Capitol Hill and corporate America and overhauling the Office of Government Ethics.

Krystal Ball: The Four Horsemen Of Election Denialism

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Trump administration pollution rule strikes final blow against environment

The Environmental Protection Agency has completed one of its last major rollbacks under the Trump administration, changing how it considers evidence of harm from pollutants in a way that opponents say could cripple future public-health regulation. The EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, formally announced the completion of what he calls the “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” rule in a Zoom appearance before Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank on Tuesday. The EPA completed the final rule last week.

The new rule would require the release of raw data from public-health studies whose findings the EPA uses in determining the danger of an air pollutant, toxic chemical or other threat. Big public-health studies that studied the anonymized results of countless people have been instrumental in setting limits on toxic substances, including in some of the nation’s most important clean-air protections.

Some industry and conservative groups have long pushed for what they called the transparency rule. Opponents say the aim was to handicap future regulation and public health interventions. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday night, Wheeler said the change was in the interest of transparency. ...

But critics say the new rule could force disclosure of the identities and details of individuals in public-health studies, jeopardizing medical confidentiality and future studies. Academics, scientists, universities, public health and medical officials, environmental groups and others have spoken out at public hearings and written to oppose the change.

Trump auctions Arctic refuge to oil drillers in last strike against US wilderness

In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers.

The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum.

Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers. ...

Oil from drilling west of the refuge, at Prudhoe Bay, has fueled the economic development the state has depended on to fill its coffers and write annual revenue checks to residents. That extraction also led to the most damaging oil spill in history, when the Exxon Valdez tanker spewed millions of barrels off Alaska’s southern coast in 1989.

Prudhoe Bay “was the largest oil field ever discovered in North America. Since then we have had more than 1,500 sq miles of oil and gas development in the Alaskan Arctic … but [ANWR] has been off limits,” said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. “For us, it symbolizes just what’s at stake here. If you can’t draw a line at the tundra and keep this one area of the Arctic off limits, then the question is, where can you draw the line and what protected part or wildlife refuge in the United States will remain off limits?”

Climate Campaigners to Biden: Your Solicitor General 'Should Not Be a Lawyer Who Fought for Big Oil'

Environmental and government accountability advocates on Tuesday expressed concern over a report that President-elect Joe Biden is considering a corporate attorney who defended oil giant Royal Dutch Shell in climate liability lawsuits for the post of solicitor general. 

HuffPost reports David Frederick, a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, can boast some solid progressive victories in the U.S. Supreme Court. He represented Tyson Foods workers in a successful wage theft case, took on tobacco titan Altria over false claims of "safer" cigarettes, and argued against a BP gas facility in Delaware, to name but a handful of the at least 50 cases Frederick has argued before the nation's highest court.

However, Frederick also defended Shell against lawsuits seeking to hold the company—which has known about the dangers of anthropogenic climate change since at least the 1980s—legally liable for the damage it has caused. Frederick argued that such suits have no legitimate legal grounds and should be dismissed. He further asserted that Shell could only be sued for climate issues in the Netherlands, where the company is based. 

Frederick's position in the lawsuits stands in stark conflict with several members of the incoming Biden administration including Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken, climate envoy John Kerry, climate czar Gina McCarthy, and health and human services secretary pick Xavier Becerra—all of whom have signed legal briefs in support of a lawsuit brought by Oakland and San Francisco against five fossil fuel companies. 

Some progressive advocates argue Frederick's defense of Shell should disqualify him from consideration for solicitor general, noting that Biden campaigned on promises of holding those responsible for the climate crisis accountable—he even threatened to prosecute and imprison Big Oil executives complicit in such crimes. 

Speaking at a December 2019 town hall-style campaign event in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Biden declared that he would hold fossil fuel corporation leaders "liable for what they have done," adding that "when they don't want to deliver, put them in jail; I'm not joking about this."

"Naming a lawyer who has represented Shell, one the worst and most deceptive climate polluters, as the government's top legal advocate would be a slap in the face to communities seeking  justice for Big Oil's climate lies and destruction," said Center for Climate Integrity executive director Richard Wiles in a statement on Tuesday.

"President-elect Biden pledged to support the growing number of states and localities fighting in court to hold Big Oil companies accountable for their role in causing and lying about the climate crisis," Wiles continued. "The president-elect needs to honor this commitment. There is no shortage of qualified solicitor general candidates without such deep and troubling ties to the fossil fuel industry."

He added: "We urge the President-elect to name a solicitor general who will fight for people, not polluters."

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Also of Interest

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

Caitlin Johnstone: Americans Only Care About America. Their Rulers Only Care About World Domination.

U.S. Foreign Policy Blob Knows The Real Threat From China - Has Ideas Of How To Defeat It

UK judge justifies CIA spying on Assange citing debunked CNN report based on… CIA spying

Why Partisanship Will Increase in the Post-Trump Era

Pennsylvania GOP State Senators Slammed for Refusing to Seat Certified Election Winner

Pull Back the Curtain on Trump’s Call to Georgia Election Officials and Out Pops the Kochtopus

The far right is focused on “Stop the Steal” nonsense, but violence driven by white supremacy won’t disappear even if Trump does.

'Devastating Effects' of CA Prop 22 Begin as Albertsons Stores Move to Replace Unionized Drivers With Gig Workers

Five Days Without Cops: Could Brooklyn Policing Experiment be a ‘Model for the Future’?

Study of 2020 Debates Finds New Topics but Familiar Framing

'Completely Lacking in Soldierly Qualities': Why the Army Booted Jerry Garcia 60 Years Ago

Jimmy Dore: UK Denies Assange Extradition to US!

CENK & TYT Smear Assange And Repeat CIA Propaganda

Krystal and Saagar: Trump Vs Pence Poised For Election SHOWDOWN In Certification Battle

Krystal and Saagar: Trump, Mitch Hand Dems SHOCKING Upset In GA Senate Races

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A Little Night Music

Willie Nix - Try Me One More Time

Willie Nix - Lonesome Bedroom Blues

Willie Nix - Midnight Showers Of Rain

Willie Nix - Just Can't Stay

Willie Nix - No More Love

Willie Nix - Seems Like A Million Years

Willie Nix - Truckin' Little Woman

Willie Nix - Riding In The Moonlight

Willie Nix - Just One Mistake

Willie Nix - Baker Shop Boogie

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