June, 28 2013, 03:26pm EDT
TD Bank Divestment From Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline a Hoax Conducted by Tar Sands Blockade Activists
This morning, a fake press release was sent from an email address at yourtdbank.com, to a parody website designed to look like TD Bank's press page announcing the bank's divestment from Keystone XL and tar sands. The fake release cited President Obama's recent climate speech and a host of economic problems for the tar sands industry as reasons for TD Bank's decision to sell its $1.6 billion stake in Keystone XL and live up to their motto to be "As Green As Our Logo."
HOUSTON
This morning, a fake press release was sent from an email address at yourtdbank.com, to a parody website designed to look like TD Bank's press page announcing the bank's divestment from Keystone XL and tar sands. The fake release cited President Obama's recent climate speech and a host of economic problems for the tar sands industry as reasons for TD Bank's decision to sell its $1.6 billion stake in Keystone XL and live up to their motto to be "As Green As Our Logo."
The media stunt was claimed by the Texas-based nonviolent direct action organization, Tar Sands Blockade, who over the last year has successfully caused major delays to the construction of the southern segment of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The fake story was published by media sources such as International Business Times, before later realizing it was a hoax.
Today's hoax was part of a sustained campaign to encourage financial institutions bankrolling Alberta's tar sands industry to divest from toxic projects like Keystone XL and highlight TD Bank's blatant hypocrisy on environmental issues.
Yesterday, TD Bank touted their eco-consciousness by announcing a partnership with the Nature Conservancy to preserve 107 acres of Florida forests. The tar sands mega-project, which analysts say will only be economically viable if Keystone XL and other pipelines are built, would destroy or degrade 34 million acres of the world's largest, most pristine forest and the largest terrestrial carbon sink.
"Today's media stunt was intended to hold TD Bank accountable for bankrolling the most ecologically devastating project on planet Earth. If TD Bank wants to be 'as green as its logo,' then it must immediately divest from tar sands exploitation and Keystone XL, which will have devastating climate impacts," said Ron Seifert, a Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson.
"TD Bank's green-washing of its preservation of 107 acres in Florida while simultaneously investing in the destruction of a forest the size of the entire state of Florida is downright absurd and must be brought to light."
Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and organizers using nonviolent direct action to physically stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
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Zelenskyy: If Trump Has Plan to End the Ukraine War 'He Should Tell Us Today'
"We want to understand whether in November we will have the powerful support of the U.S., or we'll be all alone," Zelenskyy said.
Jul 03, 2024
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview published Wednesday that presumptive Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump should reveal his secret plan to quickly end the war in Ukraine.
The request came following Trump's claim during last week's U.S. presidential debate that he would "have the war settled" by the time he took office on January 20, if elected in November. The former president has claimed repeatedly that he would meet with Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin and end the war "within 24 hours" or within "one day."
Trump hasn't revealed details of his proclaimed plan, leading Zelenskyy to express concern that it would be a deal favorable to Russia.
"If Trump knows how to finish this war, he should tell us today," Zelenskyy told Bloomberg Television in the Wednesday interview. "If there are risks to Ukrainian independence, if we lose statehood—we want to be ready for this, we want to know."
"We want to understand whether in November we will have the powerful support of the U.S., or we'll be all alone," Zelenskyy added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tells @BloombergTV Donald Trump should come forward with his plan to quickly end the war with Russia, warning that any proposal must avoid violating the nation’s sovereignty https://t.co/GeByOh6x5L pic.twitter.com/VQKchCFtyO
— Bloomberg (@business) July 3, 2024
Though Trump has not disclosed his plan to quickly end the war, reports indicate that it involves ceding Ukranian territory to Russia. He's said privately that he would pressure Ukraine to give up land, The Washington Postreported in April. Last week, Trump was said to broadly approve of a plan written by two of his key advisers to reach a cease-fire agreement based on prevailing battle lines, according toReuters.
Ukrainian officials have rejected that idea: Putin violated international law in invading Ukraine, so Russia can't be ceded the territory it's illegally gained, they argue.
Trump, who was president from 2017 until 2021, has for many years made fond, if inconsistent, remarks about Putin, even calling him a "genius" not long after the Russian president's launch of a full-scale incursion into Ukraine in 2022. Trump's history with Zelenskyy, on the other hand, is a complicated one: A phone call between the two world leaders was at the center of Trump's first impeachment proceedings in 2019 and early 2020.
Foreign policy experts have expressed concern that if Trump returns to power, he will abandon Ukraine. Many Republicans don't support continued military aid to the country, and party representatives delayed and obstructed the latest package, though it did ultimately pass, along with military aid for Israel and Taiwan, in late April.
Trump's remarks during last week's debate did little to reassure critics who say he's weak in his support for Ukraine. He criticized President Joe Biden for spending profligately on the war, which he said Ukraine was "not winning," and implied that Democrats were in the thrall of Zelenskyy.
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Right-wing Chief Justice John Roberts accused his liberal colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court of "fearmongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals" in their alarmed dissents against the conservative supermajority's ruling in Trump v. United States, which held that current and former presidents are entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for so-called "official acts."
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Bader was hardly alone in her interpretation of the ruling, which Trump and the far-right architects of his possible second White House term celebrated as a critical victory in their effort to seize the levers of the federal government.
"If I'm reading the court correctly," Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf wrote on social media after the decision was released Monday, a president "can openly accept bribes for pardons, because those fall within his 'exclusive' authority."
During oral arguments over the case in April, an attorney for Trump conceded in response to questioning from Sotomayor that assassination of a political rival "could well be an official act"—thus making it unprosecutable under Trump v. United States.
Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, warned that if Trump wins another term, he's "going to preface every blatantly illegal thing he does by saying, 'Official act, this is an official act.'"
Justice Sotomayor: "If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military...to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?"
Trump’s Lawyer: "That could well be an official act."
– Trump v. US, oral arguments pic.twitter.com/6hOzZ3WFPN
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 1, 2024
Analysts, lawmakers, and civil liberties groups alike expressed horror at the prospect of a former president who has openly threatened to target his political opponents taking office with king-like powers bestowed by the Supreme Court's conservative majority—half of which Trump appointed.
"Former President Trump's handpicked justices have cast aside our nation's bedrock principle of the rule of law, afforded future presidents carte blanche to abuse the powers of their office for political and personal gain, and laid the foundation for Donald Trump to have absolute authority in a potential second term," Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Monday.
"If brazenly attempting to overturn a democratic election by claiming the powers of the presidency can be a so-called 'official' act of the president, then where does it end? If a former president who has fomented an insurrection at our Capitol and who now promises to serve as a dictator on day one back in office can avoid accountability in a court of law, then as Justice Sotomayor stated, I too 'fear for our democracy.'"
ACLU national legal director David Cole warned that the Supreme Court supermajority's opinion "sits like a loaded weapon for Trump to abuse in the pursuit of criminal ends if he is reelected."
In a column headlined "The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially," The Nation's Elie Mystal wrote that he "cannot even imagine what [Trump will] try if he is actually given power again, knowing full well that he will never be held accountable for literal crimes."
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Hurricane Beryl—the earliest Category 4 and Category 5 storm to ever form in the Atlantic Basin—killed at least seven people as it tore through the southeastern Caribbean nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada on Monday, leaving behind devastation that the leaders of both countries compared to "Armageddon."
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"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves toldDemocracy Now! on Wednesday morning. "We are in the era of the Anthropocene, and the developed countries—the major emitters—are not taking this matter seriously."
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters."
Beryl made landfall on Carriacou Island in Grenada at around 11:00 am EDT on Monday as a Category 4 storm before strengthening to a Category 5 later in the day. With winds blowing as high as 150 miles per hour, it was the strongest hurricane to hit the Grenadines since at least 1851.
The storm flattened Carriacou in half an hour, Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said in a press briefing late Monday.
"Having seen it myself, there is really nothing that could prepare you to see this level of destruction," Mitchell told reporters. "It is almost Armageddon-like. Almost total damage or destruction of all buildings, whether they be public buildings, homes, or private facilities. Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture, complete and total destruction of the natural environment. There is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou."
The hurricane also pummeled the Grenadian island of Martinique. On the two islands, which are home to around 6,000 people, the storm damaged or destroyed 98% of structures, including Carriacou's marinas, airport, and main hospital, The New York Times reported. It also wiped out electricity and communications on the two islands, damaged crops, downed trees and power lines, and flattened Carriacou's mangroves.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the hardest-hit islands were Canouan, Mayreau, and Union Island, where 90% of homes were flattened or seriously damaged, according toThe Guardian. The outlet said social media footage of the damage showed "apocalyptic scenes."
Speaking on Democracy Now!, Gonsalves compared conditions in the south of the country to "Armageddon."
"Union Island is flattened," he said, adding that everyone on Union and Mayreau were homeless.
One woman who survived the storm described the experience to Vincentian journalist Demion McTair, saying, "Just imagine stoves flying in the air, house flying, lifting up, tearing apart, and just going in the wind. Just like that… Just imagine."
Despite the devastation, the death toll has remained low for now, with three reported dead in Grenada, one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and three in Venezuela, according to The New York Times.
However, the task of rebuilding from the storm will be "Herculean," Gonsalves told Democracy Now!, adding that he estimated the damage was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We are in a sense going up a down escalator," he said. "Every time we make some progress, we get hit by these natural disasters and we have to start afresh."
Yet, given the role that the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis plays in supercharging storms and hurricanes, these disasters expose the deep guilt of powerful corporations who have profited from the continued consumption of coal, oil, and gas.
"Seriously, at what point do we get crimes against humanity trials for the fossil fuel execs and economists, like Nobel winner William Nordhaus, who minimized climate impacts for decades?" climate advocate Julia Steinberger wrote on social media in response to the storm's devastation.
Greenpeace International agreed.
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters," the group wrote on social media.
Both Gonsalves and Mitchell criticized wealthier nations for leaving Caribbean countries to bear the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause.
In Monday's press briefing, Mitchell said he expected recovery to cost tens of billions of dollars and called for climate justice:
We are no longer prepared to accept that it's OK for us to constantly suffer significant, clearly demonstrated loss and damage arising from climatic events and be expected to rebuild year after year while the countries that are responsible for creating this situation—and exacerbating this situation—sit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.
Grenada's economy, Grenada's environment, both physically built and natural, has taken an enormous hit from this hurricane.
It has put the people of Carriacou and Petit Martinique light years behind, and they are required to pull themselves by the boot strap, on their own.
This is not right, it is not fair, and it not just.
Mitchell promised to establish a task force to address the issue involving other small island developing states and the international community.
Gonsalves, speaking from his residence late on Monday, said that developed countries who have contributed the most to the crisis were "getting a lot of talking, but you are not seeing a lot of action—as in making money available to small-island developing states and other vulnerable countries."
He also referred to the United Nations climate negotiations, or COPs, as "largely a talkshop."
He expressed hope that seeing such a strong hurricane form so early in the season "will alert them to our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses and encourage them to honor the commitments they have made on a range of issues, from the Paris accord to the current time."
However, he also expressed concern that the climate crisis was not a larger point of discussion in the upcoming U.K. elections, or in other elections worldwide this year.
"The same thing is happening in other parts of the election in Western Europe and the United States as countries move to the right," Gonsalves said. "It's a terrible time for small-island developing states and vulnerable countries."
Meanwhile, Beryl's potential path of destruction is not over, as it approaches Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 140 miles per hour, the National Weather Service (NWS) wrote at 2:00 pm EDT Wednesday.
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica."
"On the forecast track, the center of Beryl will pass near or over Jamaica during the next several hours. After that, the center is expected to pass near or over the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday and move over the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico Thursday night or early Friday," NWS said.
While the agency predicted the storm would weaken somewhat over the next two days, it "is forecast to be at or near major hurricane intensity while it passes near Jamaica during the next several hours and the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday."
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