The Evening Blues - 10-22-24

Submitted by joe shikspack on Tue, 10/22/2024 - 3:16pm

eb1pt12

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lester Williams

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist Lester Williams. Enjoy!

^{Lester Williams - Hey Jack}

"I think that there is a problem with rewards and consequences because in the long run, they rarely work in the ways we hope. In fact, they are likely to backfire."

-- Marshall B. Rosenberg

News and Opinion

Scott Ritter: Iran’s Bomb Is Real — And It’s Here

The outbreak of conflict between Iran and Israel appears to have changed Iran’s stance against possessing a nuclear weapon as Israel is poised to strike after Teheran’s retaliation with two major attacks of drones and ballistic and cruise missiles. Iran has issued at least three statements through official channels since April that has opened the door to the possibility of religious edicts against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons being rescinded. The circumstances which Iran has said must exist to justify this reversal appear to have now been met.

No mere threats, these statements issued by Teheran should be viewed as declaratory policy indicating Iran has already made the decision to obtain a nuclear weapon; that the means to do so are already in place and that this decision can be implemented in a matter of days once the final political order is given. ...

In June Iran informed the IAEA that it was installing some 1,400 advanced centrifuges at its Fordow facility. Based upon calculations derived from Iran’s on-hand stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium hexaflouride (the feedstock used in centrifuge-based enrichment), Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium (i.e., above 90 percent) to manufacture 3-5 uranium-based weapons in days. All that is needed is the political will to do so. It appears that Iran has crossed this threshold, meaning that the calculus behind any Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran has been forever changed. ...

A simple gun-type nuclear weapon would not need to be tested — the “Little Boy“ device dropped on Hiroshima by the U.S. on Aug. 6, 1945 was a gun-type device that was deemed so reliable that it could be used operationally without any prior testing. Iran would need between 75 and 120 pounds of highly enriched uranium per gun-type device (the more sophisticated the design, the less material would be needed). Regardless, the payload of the Fatah-1 solid-fueled hypersonic missile, which was used in the Oct. 1 attack on Israel, is some 900 pounds—more than enough capacity to carry a gun-type uranium weapon. Given the fact that the ballistic missile shield covering Israel was unable to intercept the Fatah-1 missile, if Iran were to build, deploy, and employ a nuclear-armed Fatah-1 missile against Israel, there is a near 100 percent certainty that it would hit its target.

Iran would need 3-5 nuclear weapons of this type to completely destroy Israel’s ability to function as a modern industrial nation.

Israel claims Hezbollah bunker under Beirut hospital holds millions of dollars

Israel has accused Hezbollah of keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker under a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, though it said it would not strike the complex. The Sahel hospital in Dahiyeh was evacuated shortly afterwards, and Fadi Alame, its director, told Reuters that the allegations were untrue.

Israel did not provide evidence for its claim that cash was being kept under the hospital. Instead, it published an animated graphic that purported to show a bunker under the hospital and said it had previously been used to hide the former secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel appealed to the Lebanese government to confiscate the money it said the Shia militant organisation had stolen from the Lebanese people.

Shortly after, Israel issued a series of warnings to residents of Dahiyeh that it would begin striking buildings in the area and that they should move at least 500 metres away. Those who remained in the area began to flee. Airstrikes began about an hour later, with strong explosions heard across the Beirut area. One of the strikes hit just in front of the entrance of the Rafik Hariri university hospital, the largest public hospital in Lebanon. At least four people including a child were killed and 24 injured in the strike, and the hospital suffered “major damage” from the blast.

The initial casualty count was expected to rise as first responders continued digging through the rubble for people. A picture of the building struck in front of Rafik Hairi hospital showed a man covered in blood lying lifeless in a bombed-out building. Fears had proliferated that hospitals would be struck in the greater Beirut area after the Israeli allegations, which echoed similar claims in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces said Hamas ran military operations from medical buildings.

Lebanon’s ministry of health condemned what it said was “attacks on two of Lebanon’s largest hospitals” and part of Israel’s “daily targeting of the Lebanese health sector”. Israel has killed at least 115 healthcare workers and emergency responders since fighting started between Hezbollah and Israel a year before.

"The Gaza I Know Is Gone": Israel's Rampage Continues as Survivors Struggle for Food, Water, Safety

In other news, the Israelis keep bombing people and Antony Blinken continues to pretend to be trying to stop them.

Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon hit branches of Hezbollah-linked bank

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, south Lebanon and the Bekaa valley early on Monday morning, hitting buildings belonging to the Hezbollah-run banking institution Al-Qard Al-Hassan.

At least 10 airstrikes were carried out in the southern suburbs of the capital, with an entire building collapsing and a jet of fire streaming into the air in the Chiyah neighbourhood. A building close to Lebanon’s only commercial airport was also struck, video footage showing a smoke plume billowing while a nearby plane sat on the runway.

“They struck empty buildings in residential neighbourhoods, and destroyed those surrounding neighbourhoods. These weren’t military centres or weapons caches,” said Ma’an Khalil, the mayor of Ghobeiry municipality in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The US envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut hours after the strikes, where he met Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, and the country’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, to discuss ways towards a ceasefire.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was also set to depart for a four-day trip to Israel and other countries in the Middle East on Monday, where he will make a renewed push for a ceasefire to both the war in Gaza and Hezbollah-Israel fighting. It will be his 11th trip to the region since the Hamas attack and the beginning of the war in Gaza on 7 October last year.

HEZBOLLAH VS ISRAEL: Violence And War Keep GOING Despite US Pleas for Calm

'Conquer, Kick Out, Resettle': Israel's Far-Right Gathers to Plan Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Hundreds of Israelis including numerous senior state officials gathered Sunday near the Gaza border for a festive two-day rally at which members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and leaders of the settler movement openly spoke of ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the embattled coastal enclave to make way for Jewish recolonization.

"We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip... Every inch from north to south," Daniella Weiss, who co-founded the extremist settler movement Nachala—which organized the rally backed by Netanyahu's Likud party—told attendees on Monday as joyous music played in the background.

"We're thousands of people and ready to move to Gaza at a moment's notice," she continued. "October 7 changed history. As a result of the brutal massacre, the Gazan Arabs have lost their rights to be here forever, they'll not stay here."

"We plan to take what we have acquired in the years of settling Judea and Samaria and to do the same thing here in Gaza," Weiss asserted, referring to the historic Jewish names for the illegally occupied Palestinian West Bank territories being gradually usurped by Israeli seizure and settlement. "Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."

"I want to say to the world: This isn't just for the Jews. We're doing this for the benefit of the entire world," added Weiss, who earlier this year was sanctioned by Canada for inciting violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank. "Ending the evil powers is for everyone. I call on the democracies of the world to stand with us. Adopt the values of the Bible."

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, told attendees: "What we have learned this year is that everything is up to us. We are the owners of this land."

"Yes, we experienced a terrible catastrophe," he added. "But what we need to understand, one year later—so many Israelis have changed their thinking... They understand that when Israel acts like the rightful owners of this land, this is what brings results."

May Golan, Minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel, told rallygoers, "We will hit them where it hurts—their land."

"Anyone who uses their plot of land to plan another Holocaust will receive from us, with God's help, another Nakba," Golan added, referring to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Jewish militants during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Around two-thirds of Gaza's population are descendants of Nakba refugees.

Sima Hasson of the group Mothers' Parade told the audience that "I'm going to say something that not everyone here is prepared to say, but I am, and I know a lot of you are: Conquer, kick out, resettle."

"I'm not just talking about one area of Gaza," she continued. "I'm not just talking about northern Gaza. I mean every single sliver of land. It's the only way we'll save our boys from constantly going to war."

"To everyone in Europe who has an opinion about what's happening here, I say: Don't get involved," Hasson added. "Worry about yourselves. Radical Islam is taking over your whole continent. You want to help? Take in the Gazans who we want to leave Gaza."

Other Cabinet members who spoke at the rally included Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party and Negev and Galilee Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf of Jewish Power. Knesset members in attendance included Ariel Kallner, Avichai Boaron, Osher Shkalim, Tally Gotliv, and Sasson Gueta of Likud; Tzvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party; and Limor Son Harmelech from Jewish Power.

"We need to occupy the complete land of Israel. There are no innocent people in Gaza," Gotliv told Middle East Eye. "Everybody who has refused to leave the north is a collaborator."

While numerous Israeli officials called for the recolonization of a Gaza Strip prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, such calls have accelerated since then. In January, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and other senior Israeli officials attended a similar but smaller conference hosted by Nachala on the Jewish recolonization of Gaza.

Last year, Amir Weitmann, who chairs Likud's Libertarian faction, published a plan examining the economics of forcibly transferring Gazans to Egypt's Sinai Desert. A separate 2023 proposal by then-Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who is also a Likud member, would ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, forcing them into the Sinai.

Monday's rally came as Israel's military continued its relentless 381-day assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and for which Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In recent weeks, Israeli forces have intensified attacks on northern Gaza—seen by numerous observers as the part of the coastal strip most likely to be seized by Israel—including Saturday airstrikes in Beit Lahia in which more than 120 Palestinians were killed, wounded, or are missing.

The intensified assault comes as some Israeli troops claim the Israel Defense Forces has launched the so-called "Generals' Plan," a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. The U.S., which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover, last week warned Israeli leaders against any such "policy of starvation," which critics countered is already being implemented throughout Gaza with deadly results.

Hey @nytimes @BBCWorld @washingtonpost @Reuters @AP @CNN, this is what Israel is doing while ministers openly talk about illegally settling Gaza.

This is a picture of ethnic cleansing.

It should be your top story, but it’s not. And it would be if it was a picture from Ukraine. https://t.co/PhgxwXJMWh

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 21, 2024

More than 20 Israeli settlements were built in Gaza following Israel's conquest of the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War. While Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the besieged enclave is still considered occupied under international law, as Israel maintains a physical and economic stranglehold on the territory.

As in the occupied West Bank, Israel's settlements in Gaza, as well as the occupation itself, were illegal under international law. In July, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion stating that Israel's 57-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must end "as rapidly as possible."

However, in language resembling the Palestinian liberation slogan "from the river to the sea," Likud's founding platform states that "between the sea and the Jordan [River], there will be only Israeli sovereignty." On multiple occasions over the past year or so, Netanyahu has publicly displayed maps showing the Middle East in which there is no Palestine and all Palestinian lands are labeled as "Israel."

Ray McGovern : US Aid to Israel is Illegal

US investigation of IDF unit for alleged abuse against Palestinians could jeopardize aid

An Israeli military unit that has been accused of human rights abuses against Palestinian detainees is reportedly under investigation by the US state department in a move that could lead to it being barred from receiving assistance.

The inquiry into the activities of Force 100 was instigated following a spate of allegations that Palestinians held under its guard at a detention centre have been subject to torture and brutal mistreatment, including sexual assault, Axios reported on Monday.

The investigation – a rare occurrence on the part of the US with regard to Israel – could result in the unit being penalised under a landmark piece of legislation known as the Leahy Law, which prohibits the state and defence departments from rendering assistance to foreign security force units facing credible accusations of human rights abuses.

Nine members of Force 100, a unit inside the Israeli Defence Force, are the subject of criminal investigation over allegations that they sexually assaulted a prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert, which human rights groups have dubbed “the Israeli Guantanamo”. ...

Axios, citing two Israeli officials, said the US embassy in Jerusalem had submitted a list of questions to Israel’s foreign ministry regarding several incidents involving violations allegedly carried out by Force 100 members. The embassy told the Israelis that the questions were part of a review under the auspices of the Leahy Act.

Heh, maybe they should appoint Bibi.

Hamas to conceal successor of Yahya Sinwar, mulls over contenders

Hamas issued a statement this week, saying that they will be keeping the identity of the individual set to replace Yahya Sinwar as leader of the group concealed.

The decision to hide the successor’s identity comes following Israel’s killing of Sinwar earlier this month and the killing of Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in July.

Multiple sources quoted in local media have said the group is currently discussing who the new successor will be, reiterating that they will keep the decision under wraps due to growing security risks.

According to a report in Asharq Al-Awsat, the decision is aimed at giving the new chief more freedom to operate and avoid Israeli assassination attempts.

Network of Israeli citizens arrested after spying for Iran

Israeli police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency say they have arrested a network of Israeli citizens spying for Iran who allegedly provided information on military bases and conducted surveillance of individuals.

The investigators claimed the network had been active for about two years. According to reports in the Israeli press, the suspects are accused of photographing and collecting information about Israeli bases and facilities, including the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, known as the Kirya, and the Nevatim and Ramat David airbases. The Nevatim base was targeted by Iran’s two missile attacks this year, and Ramat David has been targeted by Hezbollah.

“This is one of the most serious security cases investigated in recent years,” state prosecutors said. Police said the group had carried out 600 missions over two years.

News of the alleged network, which includes two minors, follows the arrest in September of an Israeli businessman accused of spying for Iran. According to the allegations against him he had travelled twice to Iran to discuss the possibility of assassinating the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, or the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, Ronen Bar.

Scott Ritter: Russia CRUSHES NATO with This Move, Turkey Joining BRICS Means Game Over

Rus Storms Girnik, 60% Taken, Kiehl Institute: West Unable Match Rus Weapons; BRICS Kazan Summit

Billionaire Investors Are 'Supercharging' Housing Crisis

A new report out Monday puts "into numbers the trend that ordinary Americans have known to be true for years," said economic justice advocates behind the analysis: "Their everyday struggles of affording a home are made worse by the sweeping influence that billionaires have over the market."

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) joined Popular Democracy in compiling a 71-page report titledBillionaire Blowback on Housing, aiming to get to the bottom of growing concerns in recent years about how Wall Street, as Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this month, is "buying up housing and making them less affordable."

The two groups found that a small number of wealthy individuals and their investment arms, who control "huge pools of wealth," have spent some of their vast resources on "predatory investment and wealth-parking in luxury housing"—contributing significantly to the crises of unaffordable rents, out-of-reach homeownership, and homelessness.

Billionaires are "supercharging existing problems" in the housing market, according to the report.

The authors take issue with assumptions about what is driving the housing crisis, which is characterized by record-breaking homelessness in 2023 with more than 653,000 people unhoused; half of tenants paying more than 30% of their income on rent, making them cost-burdened; and a significantly widened gap between the income needed to buy a house and the actual cost of a home.

"The real estate industry would like you to believe the problem is entirely one based on supply and demand," and that regulations need to be changed to allow for the construction of more affordable housing, reads the report. But with 16 million vacant homes across the U.S.—28 for every unhoused person—"the reality is that the owners of concentrated wealth... are playing a more pronounced role in residential housing, thereby creating price inflation, distortions, and inefficiencies in the market."

Signifying the U.S. real estate market's "emerging status as global tax haven," the number of vacant units in some communities exceed the number of unhoused people partially because wealthy investors are acquiring property and intentionally leaving it vacant, found IPS and Popular Democracy.

For example, in 2017 there were more than 93,500 vacant units in Los Angeles and an estimated 36,000 unhoused residents, with vacancies treated as "a structural feature of the market thanks to the presence of a small class of wealthy investors who engage in speculative financial behavior."

Billionaires and their investment firms, such as Blackstone—now the world's largest corporate landlord—are also "taking advantage of the tight low-income rental market, lack of publicly funded affordable housing, displacement after the foreclosure crisis, and inaccessible homeownership to get into the business of single-family and multifamily home rentals, and buying up mobile home parks," the report reads.

In one section of North Minneapolis, private equity firms including Pretium Partners "snatched up blocks of single-family rental homes, added fees on top of rent, and then proceeded to neglect the maintenance and upkeep of their properties."

Blackstone now owns 300,000 residential units across the U.S. and nearly doubled its portfolio in 2021. With $1 trillion in assets, it owns 63,000 single-family homes, 149,000 apartment units, and 70 mobile home parks.

Corporate ownership of rental housing stock "has not translated into housing stability, particularly for working-class households and communities of color," reads the report. "Rather, corporate landlords have concentrated their predatory investment practices—flipping, rent gouging, habitability violations, and evictions—in lower-income communities of color."

The billionaire class and its private equity firms, said Chuck Collins, co-author of the report and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, has "severely disrupted" the housing market.

"This is not your grandparent's gentrification—but a hyper-gentrification fueled by concentrated wealth driving up land and housing costs, expanding short-term rentals, and treating housing like a commodity to speculate on or a place to park wealth," said Collins. "The billionaires are displacing the millionaires, and the millionaires are disrupting the housing market for everyone else."

The report calls on policymakers to expand social housing—housing developed by the government or a not-for-profit entity to ensure individuals, households, and families are guaranteed housing as a human right, which cannot be sold for profit.

Social housing could be paid for by levying mansion taxes, regulating predatory practices in the real estate market, and taxing billionaires.

Jayland Walker’s family receives $4.8m from city of Akron over killing by police

The family of Jayland Walker, a Black man killed when eight police officers fired 94 bullets at him after he shot at least one round out his car window, will receive a $4.8m settlement from the city of Akron, the mayor’s office said on Monday.

A grand jury declined to indict the officers last year, but Walker’s family accused the officers in a federal lawsuit of using excessive force and participating in a “culture of violence and racism” within Akron’s police department.

The eight officers who fired at Walker were put on leave and then reinstated to desk duty before returning to active duty, a police official said in February.

What began as a traffic stop on 27 June 2022 ended when Walker was shot 46 times in a hail of gunfire that upended the city with protests and heightened tensions with police. The investigation said police tried to stop Walker and then gave chase after seeing him driving with a broken taillight and a broken light on his rear license plate. Police said Walker refused to stop and then fired a shot from his car before fleeing on foot.

Voters REPELLED By Dem 'Democracy' Talk IN PA

Reporter SHOCKS CNN Panel With Truth About Election!

the evening greens

Humanity is on the verge of ‘shattering Earth’s natural limits’

Humanity is “on the precipice” of shattering Earth’s limits, and will suffer huge costs if we fail to act on biodiversity loss, experts warn. This week, world leaders meet in Cali, Colombia, for the Cop16 UN biodiversity conference to discuss action on the global crisis. As they prepare for negotiations, scientists and experts around the world have warned that the stakes are high, and there is “no time to waste”.

“We are already locked in for significant damage, and we’re heading in a direction that will see more,” says Tom Oliver, professor of applied ecology at the University of Reading. “I really worry that negative changes could be very rapid.”

Since 1970, some studies estimate wildlife populations have declined on average by 73%, with huge numbers lost in the decades and centuries before. Passenger pigeons, the Carolina parakeets and Floreana giant tortoises are among the many species humans have obliterated. “It’s shameful that our single species is driving the extinction of thousands of others,” says Oliver.

The biodiversity crisis is not just about other species – humans also rely on the natural world for food, clean water and air to breathe. Oliver says: “I think we will, certainly, in the next 15 to 20 years, see continued food crises, and the real risk of multiple breadbasket failures … that’s in addition to a lot of the other risks that might impact us through fresh-water pollution, ocean acidification, wildfire and algal blooms, and so on.”

Oliver, who is working with the UK government to identify “chronic risks” to the world, was involved in a 2024 report that showed nature degradation could cause a 12% loss to UK GDP. Disease outbreaks, loss of insects to pollinate crops, collapse of fisheries and flooding were among the risks identified. He says we are in an era of mass extinction with “huge uncertainty in where the safe limits are”. Scientists say human activity has pushed the world into the danger zone in seven out of eight indicators of planetary safety.

‘I’m not voting for either’: fracking’s return stirs fury in Pennsylvania town whose water turned toxic

Fracking has burst back on to the national stage in the US presidential election contest for the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania. But for one town in this state that saw its water become mud-brown, undrinkable and even flammable 15 years ago, the specter of fracking never went away. Residents in Dimock, a rural town of around 1,200 people in north-east Pennsylvania, have been locked in a lengthy battle to remediate their water supply that was ruined in 2009 after the drilling of dozens of wells to access a hotspot called the “Saudi Arabia of gas” found deep underneath their homes.

The company behind the drilling, Texas-based Coterra, was barred from the area for years for its role in poisoning the private water wells Dimock relies upon and, in a landmark later move in 2020, was charged with multiple crimes. But it has now been ushered back into the area following a deal struck by the state’s Democratic leadership.

The re-starting of drilling around Dimock late last year comes as Donald Trump and Kamala Harris clamor to cast themselves to Pennsylvania voters as supporters of fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, whereby water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to extract embedded oil and gas. “If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one,” Trump said of Harris, who previously supported a ban, during the duo’s televised debate last month. The former US president has run a barrage of ads in the state accusing Harris of wanting to shut down the fracking industry. But during the same debate, Harris insisted “I will not ban fracking”, with the vice-president boasting of new fracking leases granted during Joe Biden’s administration.

This bipartisan embrace of fracking has stirred fury among residents of Dimock whose well water is still riddled by toxins linked to an array of health problems and, most spectacularly, contains so much flammable methane that people have passed out in the shower, wells exploded, and water running from the tap could be set on fire by match, according to official reports and accounts from locals.

“Sure as hell, I’m not voting for either of those two assholes,” said Ray Kemble, a bearded military veteran and former trucker. ... Shortly after a gas well was drilled a few hundred feet from Kemble’s home, he said his drinking water turned from dark brown to green and finally jet b;ack, with the liquid smelling like he had taken “every household chemical you can think of, dump it into a blender, take two asses of a skunk and put that in there, put it on puree, dump it out, and take a whiff”. “The water is still not fixed,” said Kemble, who blames the loss of most of his teeth to the presence of uranium, along with other contaminants such as copper and arsenic, in his water.

“When a politicians’ lips are moving they are lying,” he said. “It’s a fricking nightmare. We are back to square one from before the moratorium came into effect – there’s massive drilling like crazy. I don’t care who you are, rich, poor, or whatever, without water and clean air and clean soil, we’re all freaking dead.”

BHP ‘doggedly trying to avoid’ responsibility for Brazil dam disaster, English high court hears

The Anglo-Australian mining company BHP has been accused of “cynically and doggedly trying to avoid” responsibility for Brazil’s worst environmental disaster at the opening of the largest group lawsuit in English legal history. The claim for up to £36bn in compensation was opened by lawyers acting for more than 620,000 individuals at the high court in London. It comes nine years after the breach of a dam holding toxic waste from an iron ore mine killed 19 people near the town of Mariana in south-eastern Brazil.

In his opening submission, Alain Choo Choy KC, for the claimants, suggested that the “profound shortcomings” of the reparations process in Brazil had led the case to be opened in England. He accused BHP of devoting “very substantial resources to placing obstacles in the way of the claimants’ English claims”.

A “chasm” had emerged between the level of compensation that BHP regarded as “acceptable” for the disaster and the amount the victims were “morally and legally” entitled to, the court heard. “This is not BHP facing up to its responsibilities but cynically and doggedly trying to avoid them,” the claimants’ lawyer claimed in court filings. “Although that is BHP’s choice, it cannot properly now claim to be a company ‘doing the right thing’ by the victims of the disaster.” ...

About 50m cubic metres of toxic waste was released when the Fundão dam was breached on 5 November 2015. The avalanche reached the small community of Bento Rodrigues within minutes, killing 19 people including a seven-year-old child and destroying bridges, roads, houses, factories and other commercial premises as well as farmland, wildlife and historic churches containing priceless artefacts.

The dam was managed by a Brazilian company, Samarco, in which BHP and Brazilian miner Vale were joint shareholders.