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"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."

-- Edward Bernays

News and Opinion

Caitlin Johnstone: Consent That’s Manufactured By Propaganda Is Not Informed Consent

A new Twitter post by Secretary of State Tony Blinken reads as follows:

“We will never hesitate to use force when American lives and vital interests are at stake, but we will do so only when the objectives are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, and with the American people’s informed consent – together with diplomacy.”

Like pretty much everything ever said by Blinken, and indeed by every US secretary of state, this is an absolute lie.

Firstly, US military force is never used to protect “American lives” in modern times, unless you count the lives of US troops and mercenaries in foreign lands they have no business occupying in the first place. The US military is never used to defend American lives against an invading enemy force; that simply does not happen in our current world order. It is only ever used to protect the agenda of unipolar planetary domination, which would be the “vital interests” which Blinken obliquely refers to above.

Secondly, Blinken’s claim that the Biden administration will never use military force without “the American people’s informed consent” has already been blatantly invalidated by Biden’s airstrikes on Syria last month. The American people never gave their consent to those airstrikes, informed or uninformed. A nation the US invaded (Syria) was bombed because troops are being attacked in a second nation the US invaded (Iraq) on the completely unproven claim that a third country against whom the US is currently waging economic warfare (Iran) supported those attacks. At no time were the people asked for their consent to this, and at no time was any attempt made to ensure that they were informed of the situation before it happened.

Thirdly, US military force is never, ever conducted with the American people’s informed consent. Literally never. Consent is always manufactured for US wars by lies and mass media propaganda, one hundred percent of the time, without exception. The bigger the military operation, the more egregious the deceit used to manufacture consent for it. Even in relatively “peaceful” times when the US is merely raining dozens of bombs and missiles per day on foreign soil, Americans are subject to a nonstop deluge of distorted and outright false narratives about their military and the nations it targets for destruction.

Consent that has been artificially manufactured by propaganda is not informed consent, any more than sex with someone who’s been dosed with rohypnol is consensual sex. US imperialism does not rely on informed consent, it relies on disinformed consent; consent for it is manufactured by disinformation. Informed consent plays no role whatsoever in the use of US military force, nor indeed in any other major aspect of the behavior of the US or its allies.

Every aspect of the US-centralized power alliance is propped up by a relentless deluge of mass-scale psyops. Imperialism, capitalism, electoral politics; consent for all its key pillars is constantly being manufactured by the plutocratic news media, by television, by movies. All of the most influential generators of modern mainstream thought and culture are heavily influenced by a plutocratic class which has a vested interest in keeping power out of the hands of the people.

$100bn US plan to build new nuclear missile sparks concern

The US is building a new $100bn nuclear missile based on a set of flawed and outdated assumptions, a new report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) will say. The report, due to be published next week, will argue the planned ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD) is being driven by intense industry lobbying and politicians from states that will benefit most from it economically, rather than a clear assessment of the purpose of the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

“It is becoming increasingly clear that there has not been a serious consideration of what role these cold war-era weapons are supposed to play in a post-cold war security environment,” the FAS report, titled Siloed Thinking, will say.

According to the FAS, a non-partisan thinktank, the US Air Force price tag for the new GBSD was deliberately framed in such a way as to appear slightly less than the cost of extending the life of the missile it would be replacing, the Minuteman III.

An independent assessment by the Rand corporation at about the same time, suggested the cost of a totally new weapon could cost two to three times more. An effort by Congress to mandate an independent study on the comparative costs was blocked in 2019 with the help of the industry lobby. The current estimate is that the basic acquisition costs of the GBSD will be $100bn, while the total cost of building, operating and maintaining it over its projected lifespan to 2075 is projected as $264bn.

Bernie & Bezos Gaslight Public Over Stimulus Bill w/Justin Jackson

US House passes $1.9tn Covid relief plan in major legislative victory for Biden

A deeply divided Congress passed a landmark $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill on Wednesday, delivering the first major legislative victory of Joe Biden’s presidency and a sweeping promise to raise millions of Americans out of poverty.

In a near-party line vote of 220 to 211, the US House of Representatives gave final approval to one of the largest emergency rescue packages in American history. The vote sends to Biden’s desk legislation that he said was critical for steering the US towards the end of the Covid-19 pandemic that has already killed more than half a million Americans.

“Help is here,” the president tweeted, moments after the vote concluded in a burst of Democratic applause. Biden will sign the bill on Friday, in time to prevent millions of Americans from losing the enhanced unemployment benefits that were set to expire without federal action. ...

Despite promising unity and bipartisanship, he was unable to persuade a single Republican to vote for the measure, which they said was filled with liberal policies and ignored signs of economic recovery. ...

All but one Democrat, congressman Jared Golden of Maine, supported the bill.

Cleared of Corruption Charges, Will Lula Challenge Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2022 Presidential Race?

Lula excoriates Bolsonaro’s ‘moronic’ Covid response in comeback speech

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has excoriated Jair Bolsonaro’s “moronic” and bungling response to the coronavirus pandemic, in a stirring and potentially historic address widely seen as the start of a bid to wrestle the presidency back from his far-right nemesis.

The veteran leftist, who led Latin America’s top economy through some of the brightest years in its modern history, was catapulted back on to the frontline of Brazilian politics on Monday by the surprise decision to quash the corruption convictions that scuppered his bid to reclaim the presidency in 2018. On Tuesday a supreme court judge branded the anti-corruption operation that forced Lula from that year’s election “the greatest judicial scandal” in Brazilian history.

Addressing the nation on Wednesday, the 75-year-old stopped short of formally announcing he would challenge Bolsonaro – a rightwing populist who critics accuse of catastrophically mishandling the Covid outbreak – in the 2022 election. But Lula, who was president from 2003 to 2011, left no doubt his political fightback had begun. ... “This country is in a state of utter tumult and confusion because there’s no government. I’ll repeat that: this-country-has-no-government,” Lula insisted, blaming Bolsonaro’s ineptitude and denialism for the scale of a Covid crisis which has killed nearly 270,000 Brazilians.

“For the love of God. This virus​ killed nearly 2,000 people yesterday,” Lula told journalists and supporters at the metalworkers union headquarters in São Bernardo do Campo, the industrial hub where he cut his political teeth in the 1970s.

U.S. & Other Wealthy Nations Block Effort to Waive Vaccine Patent Rights in Blow to Global South

Russia's Sputnik V Covid vaccine gaining acceptance in Europe

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine appears to be gaining acceptance in the European Union, as the head of Germany’s regulatory authority publicly praised the Covid-19 jab and Italy could become the first European country to produce the vaccine from the summer.

Thomas Mertens, the head of Germany’s standing commission on vaccination, described Sputnik V in an interview on Wednesday as “a good vaccine that will presumably also be approved in the EU at some point”.

“Russian scientists are very experienced in vaccines,” Mertens told Rheinische Post. “Sputnik V is a very clever construct.” ...

[L]ate-stage trial results published in the Lancet in February this year deemed the vaccine to be safe and offers about 92% protection against Covid-19.

Deadly pig disease could have led to Covid spillover to humans, analysis suggests

An outbreak of a deadly pig disease may have set the stage for Covid-19 to take hold in humans, a new analysis has suggested. African swine fever (ASF), which first swept through China in 2018, disrupted pork supplies increasing the potential for human-virus contact as people sought out alternative meats.

Pork is the main meat source in the Chinese diet, and the country produces half of the world’s pigs, which generate roughly 55m tonnes of pork annually, forming an industry worth more than $128bn (£98bn). The ASF outbreak had spread across most of China by the fourth quarter of 2019. The disease is untreatable and incurable. Once it takes hold, the only solution is to kill infected animals.

The dramatic drop in pork supply, after restrictions on movement of pigs and culling led to price rises, escalated demand for alternative sources of meat to be transported nationwide. These sources included wild animals, thus greatly increasing opportunities for human-coronavirus contact, a team of researchers from China and the UK have suggested in a yet to be peer-reviewed analysis.

Activists and Rights Groups Sue Clearview AI, Warning 'We Won't Be Safe' Until Facial Recognition Firm Is Gone

A group of civil liberties advocates and immigrant rights organizations on Tuesday sued Clearview AI in a Northern California court, alleging that the controversial facial recognition company illegally "scraped," or obtained, photos for its database and that its "mass surveillance technology disproportionately harms immigrants and communites of color."

Mijente, NorCal Resist, and five activists filed the suit (pdf) in Alameda County Superior Court in an attempt to stop the New York-based company from collecting data in California and to compel it to delete personal images and data already scraped from social media sites and stored in its database of over three billion photos.

The lawsuit claims the company's artificial intelligence software is being used by federal and state law enforcement agencies to identify people, in contravention of state and local statutes. In 2019, California became the third state after Oregon and New Hampshire to prohibit law enforcement use of facial recognition and other biometric tracking technology in officer body cameras.

In recent years, several California municipalities including San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley have also passed laws banning or limiting police and other city agencies from using facial recognition technology. San Francisco's ban is being tested in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Northern California, and local activists, who allege they were illegally surveilled at last year's Black Lives Matter protests.

"Privacy is enshrined in the California constitution, ensuring all Californians can lead their lives without the fear of surveillance and monitoring," Sejal Zota, a lead attorney in the new suit, said in a statement. "Clearview AI upends this dynamic, making it impossible to walk down the street without fear your likeness can be captured, stored indefinitely by the company, and used against you any time in the future. There can be no meaningful privacy in a society with Clearview AI."

In an interview with CNN Business, Zota called Clearview AI's technology "a terrifying leap toward a mass surveillance state where people's movements are tracked the moment they leave their homes."

Krystal Ball: Will Biden ABANDON Workers To Corporate Greed Or Actually FIGHT?

Senate confirms Marcia Fudge and Michael Regan to Biden cabinet posts

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Marcia Fudge to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Michael Regan to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, picking up the pace for confirmations in Joe Biden’s cabinet.

Fudge, a veteran lawmaker and congresswoman from Ohio, will lead the housing agency just as Congress has passed new benefits for renters and homeowners who have suffered economic losses amid the coronavirus pandemic. She is also the first Black woman to run the agency in decades.

Regan, who has served as North Carolina’s top environmental regulator since 2017, will help lead Biden’s efforts to address climate change and advocate for environmental justice, two of the administration’s top priorities. He is the first Black man to run the EPA. ...

The Senate also confirmed federal judge Merrick Garland as attorney general Wednesday. All three nominees won bipartisan support for their nominations.

Journalist Andrea Sahouri, Arrested at Black Lives Matter Protest in Iowa, Found Not Guilty of 'Bogus Charges'

Supporters of press freedom celebrated Wednesday after a six-member jury in Iowa acquitted Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri in a three-day trial resulting from her arrest while covering a Black Lives Matter protest last year.

Sahouri was arrested in the Iowa capital on May 31, 2020 while she was reporting on the uprising sparked by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. The Polk County prosecutor then charged the journalist with two simple misdemeanors—failure to disperse and interference with official acts—that could have resulted in a fine, a 30-day jail sentence, or both.

"The acquittal of journalist Andrea Sahouri in Iowa today is a welcome relief, but Polk County prosecutors never should have filed charges against her in the first place," declared Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. "Reporting is not a crime, and journalists should not be punished for doing their jobs and covering matters of public interest."

Amnesty International USA's Denise Bell said the human rights group is "incredibly relieved and heartened" to learn that Sahouri was found not guilty of the "bogus charges" and also put her case into a broader context.

"Clearly, the jury saw these charges for what they are—completely ridiculous," she said. "This case should never have gone to trial. In much the same way Sahouri's unfounded arrest is a part of a larger pattern of police abuses, the decision of Polk County prosecutors to bring her to trial on these charges fits a larger pattern of practices undermining human rights within the United States justice system."

"Reporting at a protest as a working member of the media is not a crime, and treating it as one constitutes a human rights violation," Bell continued. "This fits into a larger trend of police forces across the United States committing widespread and egregious human rights violations in response to largely peaceful assemblies protesting systemic racism and police violence, including the killing of Black people."

The Amnesty researcher emphasized that "journalists must be able to report on scenes of protest without fear of retribution. The right of the media to do their work is essential to the right of freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly."

FBI must target white supremacists' infiltration of police agencies, congressman says

The FBI must develop a strategy to respond to white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement agencies and address its past failures to take the issue seriously, a prominent Democratic congressman has argued in a letter to the FBI director, Christopher Wray.

Multiple internal FBI reports over the past 15 years have labeled white supremacist infiltration of police departments as a serious threat. But last year, FBI officials refused to testify in a hearing about the topic, repeatedly telling congressional staffers that “it did not believe that this threat was supported by evidence” and “that there would not be any utility in the bureau offering testimony”, the Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter to Wray on Tuesday.

The presence of current and former police officers in the violent insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January was “irrefutable proof of this threat”, the congressman argued.

“Given the FBI’s refusal just last year to admit that extremist police officers posed a serious threat to our nation’s security, I am now concerned that the bureau lacks an adequate strategy to respond to this clear and present danger to public safety,” Raskin, the chair of a subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, wrote.

Raskin requested a briefing on the issue for members of Congress by 26 March.

Despite Immigration Pledges, Biden Admin Detains Thousands of Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Police De-Militarization Bill Reintroduced to Bar 'Gifts of Grenade Launchers and High-Caliber Rifles'

A broad range of progressive advocates welcomed Tuesday's reintroduction of a House bill that would limit a Defense Department program under which thousands of domestic law enforcement agencies have received billions of dollars worth of military equipment.

More than 70 House Democrats and one Republican reintroduced the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement  Act of 2021 (pdf)—sponsored by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.)—which would place restrictions and transparency requirements on the 1033 program, the Pentagon's excess equipment transfer initiative.

"Our neighborhoods need to be protected, but Americans and our founding fathers opposed blurring the line between police and the military," Johnson said in a statement. "What has been made perfectly clear, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, is that Black and brown communities are policed one way—with a warrior mentality—and white and more affluent communities are policed another way."

"Before another town is transformed into a war zone with gifts of grenade launchers and high-caliber rifles, we must rein in this program and revisit our view of the safety of American cities and towns," Johnson added. ...

More than 11,500 U.S. law enforcement agencies have participated in the 1033 program since its widespread implementation in the 1990s during then-President Bill Clinton's escalation of the so-called war on drugs. Over $7.4 billion worth of military equipment—including armored vehicles, heavy machine guns, aircraft, and surveillance gear—has been transferred under the program. 

Activists have long decried the program's acceleration of police militarization. Images of heavily armed officers and mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) heavy armored combat vehicles deployed against protesters following the 2014 police killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri brought widespread attention to the issue. Around the same time, numerous school districts around the nation made headlines when their police officers acquired MRAPs under the Pentagon program. 

Largely in response to public backlash after Ferguson, then-President Barack Obama in 2015 limited the equipment available to law enforcement agencies under the 1033 program, banning the transfer of tanks, grenade lauchers, heavy machine guns, and other battlefield weaponry. However, former President Donald Trump signed a 2017 executive order lifting many of his predecessor's restrictions.

President Joe Biden is expected to issue an executive order reinstating the Obama-era proscriptions. Recent developments including Johnson's bill and last week's House passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act could affect the content and scope of the president's order.

LA's top prosecutor adopted major reforms. Law enforcement is fighting to block every policy

George Gascón was elected Los Angeles district attorney after promising to end “tough on crime” prosecutions, free people from overcrowded prisons and hold police accountable for misconduct. But three months into his tenure, law enforcement leaders across California have launched an aggressive campaign to thwart his signature reforms. Gascón is facing court challenges and a rightwing backlash, and some are now pushing to recall him from office.

The stakes are enormous. Gascón’s success or failure could determine whether young people in LA are sentenced to life behind bars, whether elderly people get a chance to come home after decades in prison, and whether the DA’s office pursues criminal cases against police for misconduct and unjust killings.

And what happens in LA could affect the future of mass incarceration and reform policies across the US. The LA district attorney’s office is the largest in the country, with jurisdiction over a county larger than most US states, and Gascón’s term has become a crucial test for a growing movement of progressive prosecutors.

“The norm is changing, and the police can’t accept that,” said Helen Jones, an organizer with the group Dignity and Power whose 22-year-old son died in LA sheriff’s custody in 2009. “They don’t want to have to worry about being held accountable, that one of them might go to jail for murdering somebody’s child. They know that change is coming. So they fight back.”

Cuomo faces most serious allegation yet as aide says governor groped her

An aide to Andrew Cuomo says the New York governor groped her in the governor’s residence, marking the most serious allegation among those made by a series of women against the embattled Democrat, according to a report published in a newspaper Wednesday.

The Times Union of Albany reported that the woman, who was not identified, was alone with Cuomo when he closed the door, reached under her shirt and fondled her. The newspaper’s reporting is based on an unidentified source with direct knowledge of the woman’s accusation. The governor had summoned her to the Executive Mansion in Albany, saying he needed help with his cellphone, the newspaper reported.

The three-term governor faces harassment allegations from five other women, including former aide Charlotte Bennett. The 25-year-old’s attorney, Debra Katz, said in a statement released Wednesday evening that the latest allegations are “eerily similar” to Bennett’s own story.

Bennett has said she was summoned to the Capitol on a weekend and left alone with Cuomo, who asked her for help with his cellphone. She has said Cuomo asked about her sex life and propositioned her.

Worth a full read:

Inside the Oil Industry’s Fight to Roll Back Tribal Sovereignty After Supreme Court Decision

In a landmark decision last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that the eastern half of the state of Oklahoma is reservation land, legally “Indian Country.” Although Oklahoma officials spent a century ignoring treaties signed by leaders of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the justices asserted that the treaties remain the law of the land — meaning, most likely, that the reservations of four other tribal nations that share a distinct legal and political history in Oklahoma also stand. McGirt v. Oklahoma, a major victory for Indigenous nations, is now having legal consequences well beyond the state. ...

The decision upended the state’s authority over a swath of land that produces 40 percent of Oklahoma’s total monthly oil and gas production and is home to the global oil pricing hub of Cushing, a town known as the “pipeline crossroads of the world.” ... Eleven days after the court handed down the McGirt decision, Stitt announced the creation of the Commission on Cooperative Sovereignty, designed to make recommendations to the state and Congress on how to handle the court’s decision. Despite the commission name’s reference to tribal self-governance, the roster included no tribal leaders. The oil and gas industry, though, is heavily represented. ...

In October, with industry figures and their allies in place, the commission unveiled “One Oklahoma”: its blueprint for a post-McGirt future. “Oklahoma’s founding fathers knew that only by fully integrating all Oklahomans — Native American and non-Native American alike — into their new state and its government would the word ‘sovereignty’ have meaning,” the One Oklahoma plan stated. “At stake is whether we will continue to be One Oklahoma, or whether we will take steps backward, toward two parallel societies.”

The document asserted that rules and regulations should be applied consistently to all Oklahomans, “regardless of race, gender, or affiliation.” In his speech introducing the plan, Nichols, the commission chair and fracking CEO, suggested that Oklahoma risks reverting to racial segregation if tribes define distinct regulations for their lands. Yet tribal nations do not represent racial groups; they represent governmental and political entities.

Tribal leaders quickly pointed out that One Oklahoma ignores much of Oklahoma’s true history. “Statehood happened on top of us, without our consent, because we were not considered citizens of the United States at that time,” said Casey Camp Horinek, the environmental ambassador of Oklahoma’s Ponca Nation, which has also been impacted by the industry’s post-McGirt maneuvering. In the view of the Stitt administration, however, things should stay the way they were when the reservations were being ignored.

A Big Oil exec told me I had a "misconception" about a special tax break polluters get that other businesses don't.

So, after explaining the deduction to him, I offered to write it out of the tax code if that what he wants. Just let me know! pic.twitter.com/ML25PMnrg5

— Rep. Katie Porter (@RepKatiePorter) March 9, 2021

Is this the end of forests as we've known them?

Camille Stevens-Rumann never used to worry about seeing dead trees. As a wildland firefighter in the American west, she encountered untold numbers killed in blazes she helped to extinguish. She knew fires are integral to forests in this part of the world; they prune out smaller trees, giving room to the rest and even help the seeds of some species to germinate. “We have largely operated under the assumption that forests are going to come back after fires,” Stevens-Rumann said.

But starting in about 2013, she noticed something unsettling. In certain places, the trees were not returning. For an analysis she performed of sites across the Rocky Mountains, she found that almost one-third of places that had burned since 2000 had no trees regrowing whatsoever. Instead of tree seedlings, there were shrubs and flowers. This shift – echoed across a warming world – is a distinct phenomenon from trees dying because of direct human intervention such as logging. These trees are dying without humans laying a hand on them, at least physically, and they are not resprouting. Forests cover 30% of the planet’s land surface, and yet, as humans heat the atmosphere, some locations where they would have grown now appear too dry or hot to support them.

In western North America, huge swaths of forested areas may become unsuitable for trees owing to climate change, say researchers. In the Rocky Mountains, estimates hold that by 2050, about 15% of the forests would not grow back if felled by fire because the climate would no longer suit them. In Alberta, Canada, about half of existing forests could vanish by 2100. In the south-western US, which is experiencing a “megadrought”, as much as 30% of forests are at risk of converting to shrubland or another kind of ecosystem.

“Now’s a good time to go visit national parks with big trees,” said Nate McDowell, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the lead author of a paper forecasting that in southwestern US forests more than half of conifers, the dominant type of trees, could be killed by 2050. “It’s like Glacier national park – now’s a good time to see a glacier before they’re gone.”

The change isn’t unique to the US and Canada. In the Amazon, some experts warn that a forest mortality tipping point is looming. The boreal forests of Siberia are under attack from higher temperatures. Temperate European forests thought to be less vulnerable to climate change are showing worrying symptoms. Forest mortality researchers say while this does not mark the end of the forests, it may well be the end of many forests as we’ve known them. Iconic species such as giant sequoias and Joshua trees are succumbing in remarkable numbers. The landscapes of beloved wild places and national parks are, in turn, being transformed. And the changes being observed today – in which slow-growing trees that have survived for hundreds of years are dying in a drought or wildfire – cannot be undone in our lifetimes.

Youth Climate Activists Seek Court Ruling That US Fossil Fuel-Based System Is Unconstitutional

While still preparing for a potential U.S. Supreme Court battle, lawyers representing youth climate activists are shifting to a new strategy for the landmark Juliana v. United States case against the federal government with a motion to amend the complaint to seek a ruling that the nation's fossil fuel-based energy system is unconstitutional.

The suit, launched in 2015, argues that the federal government's actions directly contributed to the climate crisis. After the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that the court doesn't have the authority to force the government to prepare a climate recovery plan, attorneys for the 21 plaintiffs—now aged 13-24—filed the amendment motion (pdf) Tuesday in a federal court in Eugene, Oregon.

The new strategy draws inspiration from Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the high court's 1954 ruling that racial segregation of schools violates the Constitution.

Our Children's Trust, the law firm representing the plaintiffs in Juliana, explained that "if the motion to amend the complaint is granted, attorneys for the youth plaintiffs would not submit a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court to correct the legal errors identified in the opinion by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."

"Instead, the plaintiffs would proceed with trial and wait for a final judgment from the district court before seeking the highest court's review of any adverse rulings," said the Eugene-based firm's statement (pdf).

Julia Olson, chief legal counsel of Our Children's Trust, emphasized that this type of amendment "is one of the most common motions filed in a case, so it is not unusual to make this request."

Olson also highlighted the historic potential of the case, whichever legal path it takes.

"A declaratory judgment in favor of the youth in ​Juliana​ would provide protection for the constitutional rights of our children from the shifting winds of the political majority," she said. "A ​Juliana​ win would declare that the national fossil fuel energy system is unconstitutional and hold current and future lawmakers accountable for protecting the rights of youth."

The motion says that "plaintiffs seek declaratory relief that 'the United States' national energy system that creates the harmful conditions described herein has violated and continues to violate the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and plaintiffs' constitutional rights to substantive due process and equal protection of the law.'"

"This relief is squarely within the constitutional and statutory power of Article III courts to grant, would wholly and partially redress plaintiffs' ongoing injuries caused by defendants' ongoing policies and practices, and therefore cures the standing deficiencies identified by the 9th Circuit," the motion continues.

The filing cites the Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling Monday in ​Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski—for which the injuries were solely in the past, unlike Juliana—to support the argument that courts could provide the relief sought. The motion further notes that the high court's majority and Chief Justice John Roberts, in his dissent, "agreed that prospective relief (for ongoing as opposed to past injuries) that is declaratory in nature suffices for Article III redressability."

Also of Interest

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

One year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A disaster caused by capitalism

UN Rebuke of US Sanctions on Venezuela Met With Stunning Silence

Ecuador’s pseudo-left candidate Yaku Pérez echoes call for military takeover, nullifying election, prosecuting top candidate

US and Israel to Hold Meeting on Iran

Glenn Greenwald: Criticizing Public Figures, Including Influential Journalists, is Not Harassment or Abuse

On the 10th anniversary of Libyan war, the New York Times covers up crimes of imperialism

George Floyd killing: more jurors picked in Derek Chauvin trial before new pause

House Passage of Historic Union Rights Bill Intensifies Pressure on Dem Senators to 'Stop Hiding Behind' Filibuster

Exposing Corporate Climate Denial

Jimmy Dore: Hilarious Hit Piece on Jimmy Dore by Democrat Rag

Krystal and Saagar: EVERY GOP MEMBER Votes Against COVID Stimulus Bill

Michael Tubbs: Groundbreaking UBI Experiment Has STUNNINGLY Good Results

Krystal and Saagar: WV Voter Says GOP OPPOSITION To Checks Is 'Hogwash Bullsh**"

Rising: Senate GOP's First Act Under Biden Is ELIMINATING Millionaire Estate Tax

A Little Night Music

Guitar Shorty - They Call Me Guitar Shorty

Guitar Shorty - We The People

Guitar Shorty - I Wonder Who's Sleeping In My Bed

Guitar Shorty - Ways Of A Man

Guitar Shorty - The Porkchop Song

Guitar Shorty - I Don't Know Why

Guitar Shorty - It All Went Down The Drain

Guitar Shorty - Right Tool For The Job

Guitar Shorty - Hey Joe