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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: T-Bone Walker

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist T-Bone Walker. Enjoy!

^{T-Bone Walker - Don't Throw Your Love On Me So Strong}

"The hope of impunity is the greatest inducement to do wrong."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

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News and Opinion

Blinken Lied To Congress About Israeli War Crimes Because He Knows He’ll Get Away With It

As Israel butchers hundreds of civilians in its latest attacks on Lebanon, leaked documents have surfaced revealing that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken knowingly lied to congress about Israel’s siege warfare against civilians in Gaza.

ProPublica’s Brett Murphy, who has been covering aspects of this story for months, has a new article out titled “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.” In it we learn that both USAID and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration produced two separate reports this past spring concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking much-needed humanitarian aid from Palestinian civilians in Gaza, which under US law should have led to the suspension of US weapons supplies. Blinken dismissed these findings, as did the rest of the headless cohort known as the Biden administration.

Days after receiving these reports, Blinken delivered a statement to congress that he knew to be false, saying, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

This was a lie. Blinken’s own people were telling him Israel was obstructing aid, but he lied to congress about it in order to ensure that Israel would keep receiving the weapons it needs to keep killing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Blinken needs to resign. There need to be calls from Dem senators demanding it. https://t.co/61X6KyIZ14 pic.twitter.com/dhsSlsyNAg

— austerity is theft (@wideofthepost) September 24, 2024

This is what happens when you don’t prosecute your war criminals. Blinken lied to congress that Israel wasn’t assessed to have been blocking aid when both USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau had indeed assessed that the Israeli government is doing precisely that, because he knew he’d never be jailed for lying in facilitation of horrific war crimes.

Blinken has watched George W Bush’s entire cabinet not only walk free but continue to have high-profile careers in government, punditry, think tanks and the military-industrial complex, when they all should have been caged for two decades now. He watched CIA officials like Michael Hayden lie to congress about the agency’s torture program without ever facing any consequences. He watched Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lie to congress about the NSA’s surveillance program without ever facing any consequences. He knew he could lie to congress about some of the worst atrocities his nation has ever participated in because he knew there would never be any consequences for this.

None of the world’s worst people are in prison, but if you ever did anything to try to bring them to justice yourself you’d spend the rest of your life behind bars, or be executed. The law doesn’t exist to protect ordinary people from the worst of our society, it exists to protect the worst of our society from ordinary people.

It’s worth noting here that while powerful men in Washington break the law and lie in facilitation of mass atrocities, the US is executing Black men without evidence of their guilt. The state of Missouri just executed a man named Marcellus Williams despite objections from prosecutors, jurors, and the victim’s own family due to a lack of solid evidence that he actually committed the murder he was convicted of. Days earlier, Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah was executed in North Carolina despite the key witness in his case recanting his testimony against him. 

Both men were Black, and both men were Muslim. As men with white skin lie with impunity to help butcher brown-skinned civilians in the middle east, I personally find this noteworthy.

This has been going on a long time. In 1902, the renowned attorney Clarence Darrow said the following in a speech to inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago:

“Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.”

It’s just as true in 2024 as it was in 1902.

Antony Blinken LIED! State Dept Caught WITHHOLDING Humanitarian Aid From Gaza

"Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price": Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Thousands

Israel vows to intensify onslaught on Lebanon as danger of region-wide war grows

One day after its devastating bombardment of Lebanon that killed over 550 people, Israel struck the capital Beirut as the imperialist-backed onslaught in the Middle East continues to escalate. The third strike on the Lebanese capital since Friday, coming as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) pledged to “accelerate” its attacks, claimed at least six lives and injured 15. At a situation briefing Tuesday morning, IDF head Herzi Halevi emphasised that Monday’s bloody attack was the opening shot in an expanding war, declaring, “We must not give Hezbollah a break. We will continue to operate at full strength. We will accelerate offensive actions today and reinforce all units. The current situation requires continued intensive operations across all fronts.”

Subsequent hours saw “waves” of strikes on southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, as well as the Beirut bombing. An airstrike on the southern suburbs killed Hezbollah rocket commander Ibrahim Muhammad Kabisi. The death toll in Lebanon since Monday has risen to 569, with over 1,800 reported injured. Hezbollah responded by firing over 300 rockets into northern Israel Tuesday and launching drones targeting military sites. ...

The scale of Israel’s indiscriminate assault, which also targeted vehicles carrying fleeing residents, and rescue and emergency services teams, demonstrates that Israel has the full backing of the United States. The huge shipments of weaponry dispatched by the Biden administration to Israel since the onset of the genocide in Gaza have not only allowed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government to lay waste to the enclave, but bring the entire Middle East to the brink of a region-wide war. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant twice within 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday to make clear Washington’s backing for Israel to “defend itself.”

Nevertheless, the imperialist powers are seeking with sickening hypocrisy to present themselves as a stabilizing force in the region working for “deescalation” and “peace.” US President Joseph Biden asserted at the UN General Assembly that he was “determined to prevent a wider war that engulfs the entire region,” while German Foreign Minister Analena Bearbock commented, “We must not slide into another war, we must rather do everything to bring about deescalation, especially with regard to the situation in Lebanon.”

Coming from the two imperialist powers that have supplied Israel with the most weapons, while clamping down ruthlessly on all forms of domestic opposition to the Gaza genocide, such statements ring hollow. Their aim is to cover up the fact that American imperialism and its European allies backed the genocide, which has officially claimed the lives of more than 41,000 Palestinians, as a means to prepare for a region-wide war with Iran. This war has moved significantly closer to becoming reality following the events of the past week.

Notice how he’s 1) speaking English (because this is a performance for U.S. audiences, not for Lebanon) 2) repeating the nonsensical claim spun up by former PM Naftali Bennett?

They’re manufacturing consent, doing the Nazi tactic of ‘repeat a lie until it becomes truth.’ https://t.co/4ANvmwJ3r1

— Talia Jane (@taliaotg) September 23, 2024

Tel Aviv ATTACKED By Hezbollah As War SPIRALS

Israeli strikes on Lebanon continue as Iran says Hezbollah ‘cannot stand alone’

Thousands of Lebanese people fled the continuing bombing in the country’s south on Tuesday as Israel said it was conducting “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah targets, including on the southern suburbs of Beirut, for the second day in a row and third time this week.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to maintain the offensive against Hezbollah and said the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was leading Lebanon “to the edge of the abyss” while world leaders meeting at the United Nations general assembly in New York called for the de-escalation of the conflict, which has claimed hundreds of lives this week. ...

Israel struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon overnight and during Tuesday, with the death toll from the recent wave of attacks now nearing 560 people. Hezbollah, which is sponsored by Iran, said it had targeted several Israeli military targets including an explosives factory about 35 miles (56km) into Israel and the Megiddo airfield near the town of Afula, which it attacked three separate times.

The fighting has raised fears that the US, Israel’s close ally, and Iran will be drawn into a wider conflict. On Tuesday Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, expressed fears of a regional conflagration but said Hezbollah, which Iran helped to found in 1983, “cannot stand alone” against Israel. “Hebzollah cannot stand alone against a country that is being defended and supported and supplied by western countries, by European countries and the United States,” Pezeshkian told CNN. ...

Israeli officials have said the recent rise in airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon is designed to force the group to agree to a diplomatic solution, cease its own attacks on Israel or unilaterally withdraw its forces from close to the contested border. Many experts and officials question the assumption that air power or other military operations can achieve such strategic aims. Others point out that Hezbollah has repeatedly pledged to stop firing into Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

Lebanon Health Minister: ‘Majority, If Not All’ of 558 Killed by Israel Were Civilians

Lebanese Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad told The New York Times on Tuesday that the “overwhelming majority, if not all,” of the people killed and wounded by Israel’s bombardment in Lebanon on Monday were civilians.

The death toll from Lebanon’s Health Ministry puts the number of killed by the Monday bombing at 558, which includes 50 children and 94 women. Nearly 2,000 were wounded in the attack.

The Times notes that Lebanon’s Health Ministry’s figures have historically been viewed as reliable. The ministry is not run by Hezbollah but is overseen by the Lebanese government and collects its data using an emergency operations center that gathers casualty figures from private and state-run hospitals.

CNN DOUBLES DOWN On Fake Rashida Tlaib SMEAR

CNN's Tapper, Bash Urged to Apologize for 'Reprehensible' Lies About Rashida Tlaib

Calls grew on Monday for CNN and two of its top on-air personalities to apologize for claiming that U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib made an antisemitic remark during a recent interview after the journalist who interviewed the Michigan Democrat confirmed that the reporters were lying.

During the September 13 interview with Detroit Metro Times reporter Steve Neavling, Tlaib—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—condemned Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for setting a "dangerous precedent" by prosecuting University of Michigan students who peacefully protested against Israel's war on Gaza, for which the key U.S. ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Charges against the Michigan protesters include trespassing on their own campus and obstructing police.

"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest," Tlaib said during the interview. "We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."

Nessel, who is Jewish, accused Tlaib of antisemitism in a Friday social media post comparing the congresswoman's comments to a cartoon drawn by Detroit News automotive reporter Henry Payne and published in the right-wing National Review implying Tlaib is a member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and paramilitary group.

Enter Jake Tapper, CNN's lead Washington anchor, who critics have long accused of pro-Israel bias. On Monday, Tapper interviewed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, asking the Democrat to respond to Tlaib's purported assertion that Nessel is only prosecuting Palestine protesters "because she's Jewish."

"I'm not going to get in the middle of this argument that they're having," Whitmer said. "I can just say this. We do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses, and we recognize that every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out, and I'm going to use every lever of mine to ensure that both are true."

During a live broadcast on Monday, CNN anchor Dana Bash lamented what she called the "sad reality" that "antisemitism is everywhere and it comes from both ends of the political spectrum."

"But politicians sometimes sidestep calling it out when it comes from a member of their own party," she added, referring to "a Democratic congresswoman's accusation that the state's Jewish attorney general was letting her religion influence her job."

There was no such "accusation."

Now Dana Bash from CNN is lying about what happened. U.S. Rep. @RashidaTlaib did not say Nessel filed the charges because she's Jewish. She said there is an anti-Palestinian attitude among many institutions, and most of them are not run by Jewish people. https://t.co/SiHqDyF3sw

— Steve Neavling (@MCmuckraker) September 23, 2024

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League—which has come under fire for conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews—slammed Whitmer, posting Monday that "saying you want to 'make sure that students are safe on our campuses' is just words if you are not willing to use your bully pulpit to speak out unequivocally on antisemitism and support holding people accountable for violating the law when it affects Jews."

Whitmer then issued a new statement saying: "The suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is antisemitic. We must all use our platforms and voices to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes."

Neavling accused Whitmer of "adding to the lie."

"I'm the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib," he said in response to a social media post by Tapper. "She never said Nessel did this because she's Jewish. Never. You're spreading lies."

On Monday, Detroit Metro Times also published a fact-check by Neavling underscoring that Tlaib never said what Nessel, Tapper, and Bash claim.

The false claims from state Sen. @JeremyAllenMoss, Attorney General @dananessel, @CNN, @J_Insider, and the ADL's @JGreenblattADL were based on an interview I did with U.S. Rep. @RashidaTlaib. I know what was said during the interview, and it was not what was characterized.

— Steve Neavling (@MCmuckraker) September 23, 2024

"Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel's religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims," Neavling wrote. "It should also be noted that the ACLU of Michigan criticized Nessel for charging peaceful protesters at the University of Michigan."

Margaret Zaknoen DeReus, executive director at the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding, said Monday that "at this point, there is virtually zero chance that CNN, Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash don't know that Rashida Tlaib never said what they are claiming."

"Why are they doubling down instead of correcting themselves and apologizing?" she asked.

Isaac Bailey, a McClatchy columnist and professor of communications practices at Davidson College in North Carolina, asserted Tuesday that Bash and Tapper "owe Tlaib an apology."

Later on Monday, Tapper said during an interview with Nessel that he "misspoke yesterday" about Tlaib's comments.

Bash followed Tuesday by acknowledging that Tlaib "did not reference Nessel's Jewish identity," but added that Nessel believes the congresswoman's remarks were antisemitic.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement Tuesday that "CNN made a misstatement of fact that needs to be retracted if the network is to maintain its journalistic credibility."

"Congresswoman Tlaib should also be offered a public apology for falsely claiming she is antisemitic," Walid added.

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted earlier this year, Bash and Tapper have "both infused their Jewish identity into their reporting."

Tlaib has faced repeated unfounded allegations of antisemitism from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, especially for calling Israel's war on Gaza a "genocide"—an assessment with which many experts concur—and for using the phrase, "From the river to the sea."

The congresswoman has explained that, to her and to many Palestinians, the phrase—which is also a core component of the original platform of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party—"is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate."

Last November, Tlaib's House colleagues voted 234-188, with 22 Democrats joining almost all Republicans present, in approving a resolution to censure the congresswoman over her defense of Palestine and criticism of Israel's annihilation of Gaza, which has now left more than 147,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.

On Tuesday, 21 House Democrats led by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) published a statement contending that "casting doubt on Attorney General Nessel's impartiality or implying these cases are being handled unfairly due to her religious background is antisemitic, deeply disturbing, and unacceptable."

France’s Ex-PM RIPS Ukraine & Gaza Wars!

Zelenskyy appeals to global south to help ‘force Russia into peace’

In a forceful speech to the UN security council, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on a broad alliance of nations to “force Russia into peace”, saying that Vladimir Putin has violated the foundations of the United Nations and that the war “can’t be conquered by talks” alone. Addressing the council, of which Russia is a permanent member, Zelenskyy accused Moscow of committing “international crimes” by targeting Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure, and claimed he had proof that Putin is plotting to target three Ukrainian nuclear power plants to further degrade the country’s energy grid.

After thanking Ukraine’s allies for their support, the Ukrainian leader appealed to countries further afield, calling on Brazil, India and countries across Africa and Latin America, to increase pressure on Russia to halt the war, saying “all [countries] are equally important for peace without exceptions”. Many of those countries have economic or close diplomatic ties with Russia, and have given greater credence to Putin’s claims that Russia was provoked into the war by the west. ...

Zelenskyy later this week will travel to the White House to meet with Joe Biden and discuss his “victory plan” – a roadmap for Ukraine to end the war with greater western support. In his speech, he said that further pressure was needed to conclude a peace with Russia after it had been “doing things that cannot possibly be justified under the UN charter”.

“That’s why this war can’t be conquered by talks,” Zelenskyy said. “Action is needed … Putin has broken so many international laws and rules that he won’t stop. Russia can only be forced into peace, and that is exactly what’s needed, forcing Russia into peace as the soul [sole? -js] aggressor in this war, the soul [sole? -js] violator of the UN charter.”

In an interview that aired on ABC on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed greater support from the west to win the war, but conceded that the time for negotiations was nearing.

ZELENSKY seeks BIDEN endorsement, stave off RIVAL factions

Canada’s Tories target Trudeau as they seek seismic shift in political landscape

Canada’s Conservative party will make its first bid to unseat prime minister Justin Trudeau this week, the latest attempt in its decade-long aim of restoring the Tories to power.

Buoyed by favourable polls, a cost of living crisis and an increasingly unpopular prime minister, the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, will introduce a motion of non-confidence in the minority government: a long-shot bid to force the government to call an election.

The move, which lawmakers will debate on Wednesday, is doomed to fail, with smaller parties agreeing to temporarily support the incumbent Liberal party.

But the attack underscores the fragile state of Canada’s governing party and the raw political calculation leaders are making as they jockey for position before the next federal election, which must occur before the fall of 2025. ...

In his ninth year as prime minister, Trudeau is deeply unpopular and facing calls within his party to step down to avoid a deeply embarrassing electoral loss that could push the party to a distant third-place finish.

Hillary Clinton Accuses Her Own Students of being FOREIGN AGENTS

US sues Visa for monopoly on debit-card use affecting ‘price of nearly everything’

The US Department of Justice has sued Visa, accusing one of the world’s largest payment networks of antitrust violations that affect “the price of nearly everything”. The financial giant has suppressed competition by threatening merchants with high fees and paying off potential rivals, according to the complaint, filed in US district court for the southern district of New York.

The lawsuit alleges that Visa makes it difficult for merchants to use alternatives, like lower-cost or smaller payment processors, instead of its own payment processing technology, without incurring what prosecutors described as “disloyalty penalties”.

Some $3.3tn in transactions were processed on Visa’s sprawling financial network in the latest quarter. The firm processes more than 60% of debit transactions in the US, bringing it $7bn each year in fees collected when transactions are routed over its network, the justice department said. The company protects that dominance through agreements with card issuers, merchants and competitors, prosecutors allege.

The attempt to tackle such fees, sometimes known as swipe fees or interchange fees, is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to combat rising consumer prices, which have been a key issue on the presidential election campaign trail.

“We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, in a statement. “Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service. As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything.”

Nancy Pelosi’s Husband DUMPS $500K Of VISA STOCK Before MASSIVE DOJ Lawsuit

Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ push to overturn conviction

Missouri executed a man on death row on Tuesday, despite objections from prosecutors who sought to have his conviction overturned and have supported his claims of innocence. Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, 55, was killed by lethal injection, ending a legal battle that has sparked widespread outrage as the office that originally tried the case suggested he was wrongfully convicted.

In an extraordinary move condemned by civil rights advocates and lawmakers across the US, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, pushed forward with the execution against the wishes of the St Louis county prosecuting attorney’s office.

Williams was convicted of the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. He was accused of breaking into Gayle’s home, stabbing her to death and stealing several of her belongings. But no forensic evidence linked Williams to the murder weapon or crime scene, and as local prosecutors have renounced his conviction, the victim’s family and several trial jurors also said they opposed his execution. ...

Williams, who served as the imam in his prison and dedicated his time to poetry, twice had his execution halted at the last minute. He was days away from execution in January 2015 when the Missouri state supreme court granted his attorneys more time for DNA testing. In August 2017, Eric Greitens, the Republican governor at the time, granted a reprieve hours before the scheduled execution, citing DNA testing on the knife, which showed no trace of Williams’s DNA. Greitens set up a panel to review the case but when Mike Parson, the current Republican governor, took over, he disbanded that board and pushed for the execution to proceed. ...

The governor also rejected Williams’s clemency request on Monday, which noted that the victim’s family and three jurors supported calls to revoke his death sentence. The US supreme court denied a final request to halt the execution on Tuesday, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

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Green Pres. & VP Candidates Jill Stein, Butch Ware on Gaza & Fighting "Two Zombie Political Parties"

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'Unfortunately,' Say Critics, Biden's Climate Claim at United Nations 'Not True'

President Joe Biden claimed in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that the U.S. was on track to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, in line with its Paris agreement commitment, leading progressive critics to say "not true."

Biden's claim came as part of his farewell UNGA address as president, in which he laid out his accomplishments over the past four years.

The Biden administration has helped pushed the U.S. closer to reaching the goal of reducing emissions 50-52% from 2005 levels by 2030, but progressive critics say it hasn't pushed nearly hard enough, pointing to increased oil and gas production.

There is no known data to support Biden's claim. Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan energy consultancy frequently cited by the White House, recently found that the U.S. was on track to lower emissions by 32-43% below 2005 levels by 2030—"not enough for the U.S. to achieve its 2030 climate commitment... or deep decarbonization by mid-century."

Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, which has warned that Rhodium's projections may if anything slightly overstate forthcoming emissions reductions, said that "unfortunately" Biden's claim was "not true."

"Biden presided over a historic oil and gas production expansion and our research shows that his administration's energy policies fall short of U.S. climate goals," she said in a statement released after the U.N. speech.

Swing states in US election are biggest winners in Democrats’ landmark climate bill

The seven swing states that will decide the upcoming US election have received nearly half of the torrent of clean energy manufacturing dollars unleashed by a landmark 2022 climate bill, a new analysis shows, amid stuttering Democratic efforts to translate new factory jobs into political support.

Since the passage of clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a bill called the “most significant climate law in the history of mankind” by Joe Biden, nearly $150bn has been announced for a flurry of new American facilities producing electric cars, batteries and components for renewable energy.

Of this, $63bn, or nearly half, will flow to just seven states – Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin – that form the battleground fought over by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for November’s presidential election, bringing more than 50,000 new manufacturing jobs, according to an analysis carried out for the Guardian by Atlas Public Policy.

“The steady drumbeat of announcements over the past two years has been remarkable, and time and time again they are going to swing states,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas. “The election will decide the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and the election will be decided by the states that have benefitted the most from the manufacturing incentives in the law.”

Rich countries could raise $5tn of climate finance a year

Rich countries could raise five times the money that poor countries are demanding in climate finance, through windfall taxes on fossil fuels, ending harmful subsidies and a wealth tax on billionaires, research has shown. Developing nations are asking for at least $1tn (£750bn) a year of public funds to help them cut greenhouse gases and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.

Rich countries are mooting potential sums much lower than this, in conventional climate finance such as low-interest loans from the World Bank and similar institutions. But they are also discussing potential new forms of finance, such as a levy on shipping and on frequent flyers. Brazil, which currently has the presidency of the G20, is pushing for a wealth tax of about 2% on billionaires.

Research by the pressure group Oil Change International, published on Tuesday, shows that rich countries could generate $5tn a year from a combination of wealth and corporate taxes, and a crackdown on fossil fuels. A wealth tax on billionaires could generate $483bn globally, while a financial transaction tax could raise $327bn. Taxes on sales of big technology, arms and luxury fashion would be another $112bn, and redistributing 20% of public military spending would be worth $454bn if implemented around the world.

Stopping subsidies to fossil fuels would free up $270bn of public money in the rich world, and about $846bn globally. Taxes on fossil fuel extraction would be worth $160bn in the rich world, and $618bn globally.

Laurie van der Burg, the public finance lead at Oil Change International, said: “Last year, countries agreed to phase out fossil fuels. Now it’s time for rich countries to pay up to turn that promise into action. There is no shortage of public money available for rich countries to pay their fair share for climate action, at home and abroad. They can unlock trillions in grants and grant-equivalent climate finance by ending fossil fuel handouts, making polluters pay, and changing unfair financial rules.”

Low-lying Pacific islands pin hopes on UN meeting as sea rise threatens survival

The Pacific country of Kiribati might be surrounded by water, but on land its population is running dry. The ocean around them is steadily encroaching, contaminating underground wells and leeching salt into the soil. “Our waters have been infected,” climate activist and law student Christine Tekanene says. “Those who are affected, they now can’t survive with the water that changed after sea level rise.”

The freshwater crisis is just one of the many threats driven by rising seas in Kiribati. Its people live on a series of atolls, peaking barely a couple of metres above a sprawling tract of the Pacific Ocean. As global temperatures rise and ice sheets melt, Kiribati – and other low-lying nations like it – are experiencing extreme and regular flooding, frequent coastal erosion and persistent food and water insecurity.

This week the United Nations general assembly will hold a high-level meeting to address the existential threats posed by sea level rise as the issue climbs the international agenda; last year the UN security council debated it for the first time. Wednesday’s meeting aims to build political consensus on action to address the widespread social, economic and legal consequences of rising seas. ...

Sea level rise presents a range of contentious issues, not least of which is whether low-lying nations and their governments should begin preparations to relocate their populations. While some countries, like Tuvalu, have accepted this possibility and are lobbying for international recognition of their sovereignty even if their islands disappear, others seem more cautious. A decade ago, Kiribati bought land in Fiji as a potential refuge for its citizens, but the government has since reconsidered that strategy.

Some experts argue, however, that world leaders must urgently face the reality of disappearing homelands for millions living on small islands and coastal areas. Dr Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist at Climate Central, warns that while the worst impacts of sea level rise can be delayed, they cannot be undone. “The long term sea level rise that we’ve already locked in is almost certain to drown a great number of Pacific atolls,” he says. “In the end, there are speeds and amounts of sea level rise that will make it impossible to stay on many islands.”

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Also of Interest

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

Going From “The Civilian Buildings Are Hamas” To “The Civilian Buildings Are Hezbollah”

Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.

Craig Murray: Netanyahu Plays Chicken

Fog of (Dis)Information in Escalating Israel-Lebanon Conflict

Consequences of the Israeli Pager Explosions Attack

Assange to Testify at Council of Europe

China and Mexico Seek to Deepen Cooperation As Bilateral Trade Surges to Record Levels

CrowdStrike apologizes for global IT outage in congressional testimony

New York congressman allegedly gave his lover a job – and his fiancee’s daughter, too

'Israel UNLEASHES Hell In Lebanon' - Journalist Séamus Malekafzali + Prem Thakker On Hezbollah

Wokeness Kills Class Politics and Empowers Empire (w/ Christian Parenti) | The Chris Hedges Report

LtCOL Karen Kwiatkowski : Does NATO Smell Defeat?

Who Is Sending More U.S. Troops To The Middle East?

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A Little Night Music

T Bone Walker – Long Skirt Baby Blues

T-Bone Walker - Strollin' With Bones

T Bone Walker – Baby Ain't I Good To You

T Bone Walker – Why My Baby (Keep On Bothering Me)

T-Bone Walker - The Hustle Is On

T Bone Walker - Hey Baby

T Bone Walker - T Bone Shuffle

T Bone Walker - Too Lazy (Alternate Take)

T Bone Walker – Shake It Baby

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