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News Articles | March 6, 2022

March 6, 2022March 8, 2022 Robert Heston Afghanistan, America, Biden, big oil, China, Climate Change, Corruption, economy, Environment, EPA, foreign policy, Global Warming, great reset, imperialism, labor, Oil, Politics, propaganda, Putin, Russia, The Environment, Ukraine, unions, United States, War, war crimes, Yemen

As fighting rages across Ukraine, two versions of reality that underlie the conflict stare across a deep divide, neither conceding any truth to the other.

The more widespread and familiar view in the West, particularly in the United States, is that Russia is and has always been an expansionist state, and its current president, Vladimir Putin, is the embodiment of that essential Russian ambition: to build a new Russian empire.

“This was … always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary,” President Joe Biden said on Feb. 24, 2022.

The opposing view argues that Russia’s security concerns are in fact genuine, and that NATO expansion eastward is seen by Russians as directed against their country. Putin has been clear for many years that if continued, the expansion would likely be met with serious resistance by the Russians, even with military action. READ MORE

I follow the evolution of the war in the Ukraine. The New York Times keeps updating the war by the hour. And while I decry the violence of the war, I cannot overlook the hypocrisy of the West, that is, the American-led NATO military alliance encircling Russia.

The West blessed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus

My mind rushes to 1974 when NATO, primarily America and England, authorized Turkey, a NATO “ally,” to invade Cyprus, a Greek island that had the misfortune of having a Moslem Turkish minority and British military bases.

In order to make the Turkish invasion easy, the Americans ordered Greece to remove its army from Cyprus. The Turks invaded Cyprus, blasting their way through Greek villages and towns, converting Orthodox churches into stables and mosques, killing thousands, and forcing half of the Greek Cypriot population to become refugees. READ MORE

As the Russian Defence Ministry warned people in Kyiv that it was about to strike targets in the city, the country’s targeting of government, security and communications facilities is likely to be expanded and to produce a mass exodus of refugees from Kyiv.

The Russian statement said that it would target the Security Service of Ukraine building and a government information facility “in order to suppress information attacks against Russia” using high precision weapons – shortly before it attacked the capital’s main television tower.

“We call,” the statement read, “on Ukrainian citizens attracted by Ukrainian nationalists to carry out provocations against Russia, as well as residents of Kyiv living near relay nodes [communications towers] to leave their homes.” READ MORE

Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine is undoubtedly illegal and immoral. From the point of view of Russian interests, it is also likely to prove a costly mistake. The primary question now, however, is what to do about this, and the answers presented thus far by those outraged by the invasion are dangerously counterproductive.

“Putin must be punished,” the Americans and Europeans insist. But the forms of punishment now being implemented – severe economic sanctions and military aid to Ukraine – are designed to prolong the military struggle and to cripple the Russian economy, apparently on the theory that Russia’s discontented masses and oligarchs will then replace Putin with a leader more to the West’s liking. Pardon me, but this makes little sense. Prolonging the conflict will kill more Ukrainians and Russians, inspire their compatriots and loved ones to seek revenge. It may also bring the world close to nuclear war. Moreover, making a whole people suffer usually unites them against their adversary rather than turning them against their leader. READ MORE

I figured something out after tossing and turning all night. We on the left often make the mistake of still looking upon Russia as a somewhat socialist enterprise. Of course, it isn’t. The Soviet Union ended in 1991. Russia is an unadulterated neoliberal capitalist gangster’s paradise, modeled during the time of its horrific restructuring under Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) on the United States of America.

It should come as no surprise that its autocratic, and possibly unhinged leader, Vladimir Putin, has no more respect for the UN Charter and international law than recent presidents of the United States or prime ministers of England have had. (For example, remember George W. Bush and Tony Blair during the Iraq invasion.) I, on the other hand, do care about international law and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and can unequivocally state that if I had been eligible to vote in the General Assembly on March 2, I would have voted with the 141 ambassadors who supported the resolution condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw its armed forces. READ MORE

The guilty can be devious in concealing their crimes, and their role in them. The greater the crime, the more devious the strategy of deception. The breaking of international law, and the breaching of convention, is a field replete with such figures.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has presented a particularly odious grouping, a good number of them neoconservatives, a chance to hand wash and dry before the idol of international law. Law breakers become defenders of oracular force, arguing for the territorial integrity of States and the sanctity of borders, and the importance of the UN Charter.

Reference can be made to Hitler’s invasions during the Second World War with a revoltingly casual disposition, a comparison that seeks to eclipse the role played by other gangster powers indifferent to the rule and letter of international comity. READ MORE

Last week, I wrote that Russia was “on the offensive and impatient” and would “act very soon.” It did, but in a way that far exceeded my expectations. I thought Russia would make a direct military intervention to secure the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics (LDPR) it had newly recognized, and maybe help them to capture the large portion of their claimed territory still controlled by Ukrainian forces—a more offensive and riskier move that, I warned, would make it easier to create a political narrative detrimental to Russia. Unlikely, I thought, that Russia would engage in a military offensive west of Donbass, let alone aimed at Kiev.

Well, as I was writing that, Russia moved in a way that blew through all my—and just about everyone’s—oh-so-shrewd calculations of how oh-so-shrewd Russia’s strategic thinking would be. Russia mounted a broad, full-scale offensive—destroying military facilities throughout Ukraine, seeking to encircle and capture major cities, and moving on the capital itself. This is nothing less than an attempt to achieve major policy changes in Ukraine by military force. READ MORE

Surprise and horror have defined the reaction to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. That’s likely because although the intervention has followed the contours of a modern land war, it has also marked a break with the past in a number of ways. The world has become used to military interventions by the United States. This is, however, not a U.S. intervention. That in itself is a surprise—one that has befuddled reporters and pundits alike.

Even as we deplore the violence and the loss of life in Ukraine resulting from the Russian intervention (and the neofascist violence in the Donbas), it is valuable to step back and look at how the rest of the world may perceive this conflict, starting with the West’s ethnocentric interest in an attack whose participants and victims they believe they share aspects of identity with—whether related to culture, religion, or skin color. READ MORE

The Russian government has invaded Ukraine using the same pretext of national security that the U.S. used to invade Iraq 19 years ago in 2003.

As a U.S. diplomat who resigned from the U.S. government in 2003 in opposition to Bush's war on Iraq, I hoped at the time that all Americans would not be vilified by the world for the actions of the Bush administration.

As hard as it might be for some now, I plead that we not vilify the Russian people for the actions of their political leaders. I hope that we can be as generous to peace-seeking Russians as the world was to anti-war Americans.

I have visited Russia twice in the past 6 years and I know the Russians I spoke with—and I would guess that most Russians—do not want war and object to Putin's war on Ukraine.

Thousands of Russians have taken to the streets to protest the war and have been jailed. Thousands of Russians have signed letters and petitions to their own government to stop the military action against Ukraine. READ MORE

We were in the middle of writing about GOP idiocy at home when news broke of the fire at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe, which stopped us cold. Such is relativity: Even the most heinous of God-awful news somehow pales before the specter of a nuclear plant on fire amidst a madman's mindless war against a besieged civilian population. News of the latest catastrophe prompted a ragged, emotional Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to declare, "The end for everyone, the end for Europe" - an entirely understandable conclusion, given the brutal insanity of the last few weeks. But according to multiple reports and updates, thanks to better technology and perhaps the last living splinter of reason in otherwise deranged minds, we wish we could be glad to report: Probably not yet, possibly getting there. READ MORE

Accurate perception, precise language and objectivity are the first victims of war and conflict. For good reason. Emotion eclipses reason. The “we/they” prism refracts and distorts our thoughts. The individual is swept up into the mass mood. Frenzy roils just below the surface.

Experiences of war and conflict, though, are not uniform. They vary. Whose blood is being shed, in what quantities? Are we the direct protagonist or just the empathetic supporters of certain combatants? How closely and why do we identify with one side? How much do we hate the other side? Is our collective self vulnerable or confident? What is the pre-existing anxiety level?

Consequently, each situation is peculiar. A country’s subjective response and attendant behavior, therefore, can be highly revealing. READ MORE

While Western media deploys Zelensky’s heritage to refute accusations of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the president now depends on them as front line fighters in the war with Russia, report Alex Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal.

Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.

Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy. READ MORE

Rather than find Putin a ladder to climb down, the NATO leadership will strike heroic poses, wave Ukrainian flags and send more weapons.

I could not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin really would invade Ukraine, because I could see no sensible outcome for him. I still cannot. Initiating a war on this scale has no legal justification, and no moral justification either. Russian troops are in areas which have no wish to be ruled by Russia.

Those of us who opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq must also oppose the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Whether the Ukrainian government is obnoxious or not is as irrelevant now, as the obnoxiousness of Saddam Hussein was irrelevant then. I am as fed up now with being asked if I support Ukrainian Nazis as I was then with being asked if I supported Saddam Hussein.

It is simply illegal to wage a war for regime change, without the endorsement of the U.N. security council. READ MORE

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The speed of Western retaliation over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised eyebrows among Yemenis who have endured a relentless bombing campaign and deadly air, land, and sea blockade for 2,520 consecutive days.

“We’re brutally bombed every day. So why doesn’t the Western world care like it does about Ukraine?!!… Is it because we don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes like Ukrainians?” Ahmed Tamri, a Yemeni father of four, asked with furrowed brows about the outpouring of international support and media coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lack of such a reaction to the war in Yemen.

Over the weekend, a member of Tamri’s family was killed and nine relatives injured when their family home was targeted in a Saudi-led Coalition airstrike in the remote al-Saqf area in Hajjah Governorate. Tamri claims that al-Saqf has been subjected to a brutal Saudi bombing campaign for the past seven years – more so, he says, than all of Ukraine has endured since it was invaded by Russia. READ MORE

Ukraine's Special Operations Command announced Thursday on Facebook that Russian soldiers who try to surrender henceforth will be "slaughtered like pigs" while they're begging for mercy.

Ukraine's special operations command wrote on Facebook:

The SSO Brotherhood of Ukraine sends its greetings to the Russian artillery! We congratulate you: after you bombarded our peaceful cities, our relatives, children, loved ones - you, worms, became our number one target. We explain to you, Vanki: you seem to be far away and shoot at targets you can't see. You don't see little children, old people, homes, kindergartens, schools and hospitals - all these are just goals for you. Pressed, flew, got hit - f*cked, right guys? Now look, worms: you don't see your goals and you seem to be relieved. But believe me: it will never be easier for you scum. We already have the information about you. And if it is not for someone else, then it is a matter of minutes. From now on, there will be no more captured Russian artillery. No mercy, no "please don't kill, I surrender" will be getting away. Every calculation, no matter: commander, driver, guide, charger - will be slaughtered like pigs. Tie your pants up, we've already come for you. Call your mom one last time. Say you gonna die soon jackal. We are not death, we are worse!

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change –IPCC- has issued its direst warning of all-time: “Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly.” Additionally, they readily admit to overly conservative predictions: “Many impacts will be more severe than originally predicted.” (Source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report, 2022)

The crowning blow of this heavy-hitting report is a chilling statement: “There is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages.”

Moreover, the IPCC claims that even at current levels dangerous widespread disruptions threaten devastation of swathes of the natural world: “Many areas will become unlivable.”

Interestingly enough, the world is fully aware that climate change is on a collision course with life. At some level people know this. This is true because of media exposure of organized climate marches and protests across the globe for decades now. It’s doubtful that you could find one person that has not heard about global warming and climate change, although almost all chose to ignore the details. Indigenous people live with it on a daily basis. The climate change/global warming story is decades old. READ MORE

The latest UN climate report highlights how communities that have contributed the least to climate change are suffering the most.

"A brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future."

That's the sobering assessment made by scientists on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which earlier this week published its latest report, on the impacts of the climate crisis.

In it, the IPPC argues that roughly 3.5 billion people—45% of the world's population—currently live in areas of "high vulnerability" to climate change, meaning they will be heavily impacted by floods, droughts or extreme weather in the decades to come.

Yet even more striking than the sheer scale of these impacts is their inequality and unfairness. The vast majority of those 3.5 billion people are in "west-, central- and east Africa, south Asia, Central and South America, small island developing states and the Arctic." These regions—which have some of the lowest per capita carbon emissions in the world—are now suffering the effects of a crisis that has been driven and exacerbated by the looting of their lands for wealth and natural resources. READ MORE

"Organizing works," said one advocacy group. "Now, all insurers must stop supporting fossil fuel expansion."

Climate justice advocates celebrated Tuesday in response to insurance giant AIG's announcement that it will no longer invest in or provide insurance coverage for any new Arctic drilling activities nor will it finance or underwrite the construction of any new coal-fired power plants, thermal coal mines, or tar sands projects, effective immediately.

AIG also said that it will immediately stop investing in or underwriting "new operation insurance risks" of coal-fired power plants, thermal coal mines, or tar sands projects owned by corporations that derive 30% or more of their revenue from those industries or generate over 30% of their energy production from coal.

By January 1, 2030 at the latest, AIG said that it will phase out the underwriting of all "existing operation insurance risks" and cease new investments in those clients that still depend on coal or tar sands for 30% or more of their revenue, or coal for over 30% of their electricity generation. READ MORE

On Monday, the United Nations’ climate change assessment body, the IPCC, released a landmark report finding that 150 years of unchecked fossil fuel burning had left the planet with a “brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

A day before, speaking at a virtual meeting of UN climate delegates from her home in embattled Kyiv, Ukraine’s representative, Svitlana Krakovska, related the report’s finding to Russia’s attack on her homeland: “Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels, and our dependence on them.” She added: “We will not surrender in Ukraine…And we hope the world will not surrender in building a climate-resilient future.” READ MORE

An insecticide banned due to its harm to bees will be used on sugar beet in Britain this year after ministers authorized an emergency exemption. The government overruled its own scientific advisers and the decision was called “scandalous” by campaigners.

The neonicotinoid, called thiamethoxam, was banned in 2018 across Europe after a series of studies found it damaged bees. But British Sugar applied for an emergency exemption and on Tuesday the conditions for the exemption were met.

A national forecast of the proportion of the crop expected to suffer from virus yellows, a disease spread by aphids, predicted a level of 69 percent, far above the 19 percent threshold that had been set.

The exemption was also granted in 2021 but was not implemented as the forecast for virus yellows turned out to be low. In 2020, according to the government, the virus cut the national yield of sugar beet by a quarter. READ MORE

With its siege on neighboring Ukraine, Russia has embroiled two of the world’s five leading wheat exporters in a chaotic war, representing about a quarter of the global trade in staple grain. Not surprisingly, global wheat prices surged during the first few days of the invasion. They’ve come down a bit since, but remain at their highest level since the early 2010s. That’s not a comforting milestone. Back then, extreme weather in wheat powerhouses Australia, the United States, and Russia, along with a few other factors, caused wheat prices to spike. The result: bread riots in the Middle East that helped bring about the Arab Spring and the still-simmering civil war in Syria.

Geopolitical shocks like Russia’s attack on Ukraine fall upon a global food system already wobbling from climate change, according to the latest report released on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ assemblage of 270 researchers from 67 countries. READ MORE

The IPCC keeps hiding how much the temperature could already have risen and could rise over the next few years, the associated dangers, and the policies that could most effectively improve the situation.

1. Hiding the potential rise that has already unfolded
One of the first issues that springs to mind is the IPCC's use of 1850-1900 as a baseline, which isn't pre-industrial as the Paris Agreement called for. Above image, adapted from a NASA image, shows a January 2022 temperature rise of 1.31°C versus 1885-1915. As the box underneath indicates, a further 0.1°C could be added for ocean air temperatures and another 0.1° for higher polar anomalies. When calculating the temperature rise from pre-industrial, a further 0.79°C could be added for the period from 3480 BC to 1900, resulting in a total temperature rise from pre-industrial to January 2022 of 2.3°C.

2. Hiding the potential rise to come

While a huge temperature rise has already unfolded, the rise is accelerating, as discussed at earlier posts such as this one and as illustrated by the image below, an example from an earlier post.

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It took me a day of watching and rewatching Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address, but I was finally able to put my finger on what was troubling me: Reagan! Biden spent his hour before us on Tuesday doing his best Ronald Reagan imitation. It took a while to spot it because Biden lacks the performative chops Reagan brought wherever he went, and because I hadn’t seen the real item in the flesh for 30 years. Once I saw it, though, it became impossible to miss.

Biden was at turns a national lightning rod for outrage, a peddler of comforting fictions, our big-talking tough guy, and that avuncular grandparent you want cheering for your kid from the stands at a Little League game. Reagan went from Hollywood to the Oval Office on that shtick. It works. READ MORE

"The Biden administration's executive order from February 11th is deeply misguided, but it's not too late to change course."

A coalition of more than 80 humanitarian groups implored U.S. President Joe Biden this week to revoke his executive order that would permanently seize $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets and split the money between the families of 9/11 victims and an ill-defined trust fund ostensibly formed to benefit the people of Afghanistan.

In a letter to Biden and other top administration officials, the groups argued the best way the White House can help Afghans as they face a worsening humanitarian disaster—including mass starvation—is by withdrawing the February executive order and conducting a review of the current sanctions regime, which one analyst warns could be deadlier than two decades of U.S.-led war on the country.

"We write to ask that you prevent a catastrophe from unfolding in Afghanistan by urgently rescinding the recent executive order which splits the frozen reserves that are the property of the people of Afghanistan, designating half pending court action involving the families of the September 11th attacks and depositing the other half into a newly created humanitarian fund, rather than finding a safeguarded mechanism to return the Afghan people's reserves through the infrastructure of Afghanistan's Central Bank," reads the letter, which was coordinated by Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, the Partnership of Advancement of New Americans, and Just Foreign Policy. READ MORE

"President Biden has significant power to effect immediate, meaningful change for people across America, and we urge him to use it aggressively," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

Following President Joe Biden's first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, a chorus of progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups—frustrated that Biden's legislative agenda has ground to a halt thanks to opposition from the GOP and a handful of corporate Democrats—urged the White House to use its executive authority to the fullest possible extent to improve the lives of working people and secure a livable planet.

"In the midst of a global pandemic, economic recession, and the immense task of rebuilding from the Trump years, the progress the president and our Democratic majority have made in the past year is nothing short of extraordinary," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement.

Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), pointed out that "wages are up, unemployment is at the lowest rate since 1969, and the United States is the only major advanced economy with its GDP back at pre-pandemic levels." READ MORE

Tech workers for the New York Times have voted overwhelmingly to form a union, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined on Thursday night.

The union won 404 to 88, with 80 percent of voters in favor. Representing about 600 software engineers, data analysts, and other tech workers, the New York Times Tech Guild is the largest tech union that has been recognized by the NLRB in the U.S.

“Now that our union is officially certified, we are ready to begin the work of building a better workplace alongside [New York Times Guild] and [Wirecutter Union],” the Times Tech Guild wrote on Twitter. “We look forward to realizing the full potential of our [Times Tech Guild] mission.” READ MORE

Workers at a Manhattan REI location overwhelmingly voted to form a union on Wednesday, overcoming a fierce union-busting campaign waged by the company after workers filed for a union election in January.

The results of the in-person vote to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) on Wednesday were 88 to 14 in favor of the union, or an 86 percent “yes” vote. The store, located in SoHo, is the first of the company’s 170 locations to unionize.

“As members of the RWDSU, we know we will be able to harness our collective strength to advocate for a more equitable, safe, and enriching work environment,” Claire Chang, a member of the workers’ organizing committee, said in a statement. READ MORE

Starbucks Workers United has filed 20 complaints with federal labor officials over the last week, alleging that the company has engaged in multiple illegal union-busting activities, Bloomberg reports.

The union claims that the company threatened to shut down all of its stores in Buffalo, New York, where the union drive began. Starbucks Workers United also says that the company has been illegally coercing employees during “effectively mandatory” anti-union meetings — which Starbucks has been holding in unionizing stores across the country — and that it has barred pro-union employees from attending the meetings. The complaints were filed with the Buffalo regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). READ MORE

A new Oxfam analysis finds that "99% of humanity" is worse off due to Covid-19 while the world's 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes during the pandemic.

If a single word can encapsulate why—two years into the global Covid-19 pandemic—the virus continues to spread widely and kill thousands of people each day despite the availability of lifesaving vaccines, the humanitarian group Oxfam International on Thursday suggested that word is "greed."

n a new report titled "Pandemic of Greed," Oxfam offers a grave assessment of the current state of the public health emergency in an effort to bury the notion that the coronavirus is on its way out and normality is on the horizon—a rosy and potentially dangerous sentiment voiced in recent days by the leaders of rich nations and the executives of powerful pharmaceutical companies.

"While effective vaccines provide hope, their rollout has tipped, from a natural desire to protect citizens, into nationalism, greed, and self-interest," reads Oxfam's report, compiled on behalf of the People's Vaccine Alliance. "Large numbers of people in low-income countries face the virus unprotected and millions of people would still be alive today if they had had access to a vaccine. Big pharmaceutical corporations have been given free rein to prioritize profits ahead of vaccine equality." READ MORE

"This is a turn toward sharing not only doses, but knowledge, which is the difference between charity and justice," said one public health advocate.

Public health advocates welcomed the Biden administration's announcement Thursday that the U.S. will share certain medical technologies used to produce Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines with the World Health Organization as part of an effort to combat the global pandemic that continues to kill thousands of people each week.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Thursday that it will offer unspecified technologies being developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the WHO's Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) for licensing through the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), which experts say will empower generic manufacturers to boost the global supply of lifesaving diagnostics, drugs, and jabs. READ MORE

"Basically, the Supreme Court has allowed the CIA to decide what can be said in court about the torture of prisoners in CIA black sites."

Human rights advocates on Thursday sharply condemned the Supreme Court's decision that the U.S. government can block the testimony of two former Central Intelligence Agency contractors for a Polish criminal investigation into the torture of a Guantánamo Bay detainee.

"Basically, the Supreme Court has allowed the CIA to decide what can be said in court about the torture of prisoners in CIA black sites," tweeted Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "It's really a disgraceful abdication of responsibility."

Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan and has been in U.S. custody since 2002. His attorneys are trying to hold Polish officials accountable for the torture he endured at a CIA facility in Stare Kiejkuty, Poland before being transferred in 2006 to Guantánamo Bay, where he remains. READ MORE

I write a lot about whistleblowers. They’re usually national security whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg, Ed Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, Daniel Hale and Darin Jones. But I’ve become friendly with another one, Joe Carson, a nuclear safety engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy who has a unique case that is largely being ignored by the media, whistleblower support organizations and even other whistleblowers.

Carson is not your typical whistleblower, who makes a revelation of wrongdoing and then deals with the fallout. Instead, he blew the whistle on waste, fraud, abuse and illegality at the Department of Energy, (DOE) and then did it again and again and again. And to make matters more difficult for him, he had to deal with the fallout not just from DOE, but from the governmental organizations set up to protect whistleblowers. Consequently, he has spent decades in court. READ MORE

“There are always those who will want to profit from war or the threat of war, as unscrupulous as it may seem,” said one critic. “And for the American oil and gas industry there is no exception.”

The U.S. fossil fuel industry is poised to benefit from an expected expansion of gas exports to Europe after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday suspended approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in response to Russian military aggression toward Ukraine.

Completed in September but awaiting certification by Germany and the European Union, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which bypasses Ukraine by running under the Baltic Sea, could double the flow of gas from Russia to Germany.

While the $11 billion pipeline—owned by Nord Stream 2 AG, a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian majority state-owned energy company, with Western partners including the United Kingdom’s Shell, France’s Engie, and Germany’s Uniper—has been criticized on ecological and geopolitical grounds, Scholz had been reluctant to connect the permitting process to deescalation efforts in Ukraine, calling it a “private sector project.” READ MORE

I am starting to think I need to file a First Amendment lawsuit over that insane bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security on Feb. 7.

In case you’ve forgotten, that report – a public declaration of the federal government’s official view of terrorism – called the top terrorist threat to the United States:

false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.

Their words, not mine.

Trying to “undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” is now a terrorist act?

Then I’m a terrorist.

Especially since the bulletin specifically mentions COVID-19: there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.

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The official US embassy website recently REMOVED all evidence of bio-labs in Ukraine. These bio-labs are funded and jointly operated by the US Department of Defense (DOD).

The laboratory documents were public knowledge up until February 25, 2022. These documents include important construction, financing and permit details for bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine. But now the US government is scrubbing these documents from the internet and becoming less transparent with this critical information.

This comes at a time when the world population is waking up to the reality of gain-of-function bioweapons research, lab leaks and predatory vaccine and diagnostics development. These bio-labs generate pathogens of pandemic potential that exploit human immune systems and are the foundation for which medical fraud, malpractice, vaccine-induced death and genocide originates. READ MORE

Bill Gates is not only owning the most farmland in America… He has also taken control of the global production and warehousing of seeds…

Since the onset of the Neolithic Revolution some 10.000 years ago, farmers and communities have worked to improve yield, taste, nutritional and other qualities of seeds. They have expanded and passed on knowledge about health impacts and healing properties of plants as well as about the peculiar growing habits of plants and interaction with other plants and animals, soil and water. The free exchange of seed among farmers has been the basis to maintaining biodiversity and food security.

A great seed and biodiversity piracy is underway, not just by corporations — which through mergers are becoming fewer and larger— but also by super rich billionaires whose wealth and power open doors to their every whim. Leading the way is Microsoft mogul, Bill Gates.

When the Green Revolution was brought into India and Mexico, farmers’ seeds were “rounded-up” from their fields and locked in international institutions, to be used to breed green revolution varieties engineered to respond to chemical inputs. READ MORE

The messenger RNA (mRNA) from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is able to enter human liver cells and is converted into DNA, according to Swedish researchers at Lund University.

The researchers found that when the mRNA vaccine enters the human liver cells, it triggers the cell’s DNA, which is inside the nucleus, to increase the production of the LINE-1 gene expression to make mRNA.

The mRNA then leaves the nucleus and enters the cell’s cytoplasm, where it translates into LINE-1 protein. A segment of the protein called the open reading frame-1, or ORF-1, then goes back into the nucleus, where it attaches to the vaccine’s mRNA and reverse transcribes into spike DNA.

Reverse transcription is when DNA is made from RNA, whereas the normal transcription process involves a portion of the DNA serving as a template to make an mRNA molecule inside the nucleus. READ MORE

All “Smart” and wireless sources (devices and infrastructure) expose us to radiation which can cause undesirable symptoms as well as serious illnesses and injuries. Manufacturers are required to provide warnings about radiation emissions from all “Smart” and wireless products; however, these warnings aren’t necessarily easy to locate or understand. In regard to the brain, research has determined that wireless exposure can disrupt the blood-brain barrier, cause it to leak, and also kill brain cells (see 1, 2). Got pets? Exposure can affect them too. READ MORE

In early 2021 at the height of media generated covid fear the World Economic Forum released a series of panel discussions and white papers outlining a “pandemic” of a completely different nature; what they referred to as an impending “cyber-attack with covid like characteristics.” The program agenda at the WEF was titled “Cyber Polygon” and headed with unsettling zeal by globalist Klaus Schwab.

The WEF and Schwab are best known for two things:

1) Their involvement in a war game called Event 201 which simulated the global spread of a coronavirus pandemic. This simulation was held two months BEFORE the real thing happened in early 2020 and a majority of the measures played out in the game were in fact implemented almost immediately following the outbreak.

2) Klaus Schwab’s excited announcement that the pandemic was the perfect “opportunity” to institute what he calls the “Great Reset” of the global economy along with the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is the complete centralization of world trade and governance into a global socialist empire where you will “own nothing, have no privacy, and like it.” READ MORE

It wasn’t but a week ago that our future looked brighter than it had in the last two years. The mandates were lifting and science was finally switching teams to join the side of rationality.

Then… FULL STOP.

But now, within just a few short days, all of those armchair virology experts who told you that your healthy, un-vaccinated body is a deadly threat to those who double mask and have already taken 3-4 doses of the experimental jab have just become overnight experts in foreign policy and the mind of Vladimir Putin. Too bad they won’t be becoming experts in history as well.

I won’t comment much on the fact that the fervor being whipped up around Ukraine is ominously duplicitous and phony, because when you look at how people have reacted, or NOT-reacted, to the ongoing genocide in Yemen, the devastation of Libya and Syria, and the catastrophic occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, you see that public zeal only flows where mainstream media goes. (Disclaimer: My firm position is that the Ukraine invasion is terrible, cruel, evil, insane, heart-breaking, depressing, and worse, but that’s because I’m experienced at being anti-war and at recoiling at the actions of the state… whichever state.) READ MORE

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Let me tell you about the state of our nation: things are getting worse, not better.

Easily distracted by wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis and conveniently diverted by news cycles that change every few days, Americans remain oblivious to the many governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, and bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power. READ MORE

Sources in Ukraine have claimed that a member of the delegation Kiev sent to engage in talks with Moscow earlier this week was killed on Saturday.

The first claim about the death of Denis Kireev came from Aleksandr Dubinsky, a controversial MP and journalist. In a post on social media, he claimed Kireev had been killed by agents of the SBU, the Ukrainian security service, during an attempt to arrest him.

The assertion was later confirmed by two media outlets, Ukraina.ua and Obozrevatel, which both cited their own anonymous sources. The former published a partially blurred photo of what it claimed to be the body of the man. The image showed someone lying on the sidewalk face-up with what appeared to be blood on his face and pooling under the head. No comments by Ukrainian officials were available as of 4 pm local time on Saturday.

An even more dramatic description of what had allegedly happened was published by Anatoly Sharij, a Ukrainian politician and journalist. He claimed Kireev “was executed by a shot in the head” near a courthouse in Kiev. READ MORE

A motley crew of militant Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Western activists wanted to change their democratically elected government. Eight years on, the results look disappointing.

The events that transpired in Ukraine in 2013-14, dubbed the Euromaidan, still resonate in people’s memory. While each side in the conflict views them differently, it’s clear to all that the Ukraine once familiar to everyone has changed beyond recognition since then.

People’s revolution or coup d’état?

The impetus for the dramatic events was the decision of the then-president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, to suspend the conclusion of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union and his subsequent failure to sign it during the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius. According to Ukraine’s prime minister at the time, Nikolai Azarov, Ukraine’s transition to European industry standards was to cost the country €150-160 billion. The question arises as to what the Ukrainian authorities were thinking during the long preparation of the agreement, but the decision had the effect of an exploding bomb. READ MORE

The global financial system is on the brink of being thrown into chaos.

The United States and Europe moved to target Russian central bank reserves and sever the country’s banking system from the SWIFT global financial network.

It is the financial equivalent of the nuclear option – something the Biden administration had explicitly declined to invoke last week before abruptly announcing the move on Saturday.

Moscow considers it to be an act of war. An increasingly bellicose Russian President Vladimir Putin could retaliate against the U.S. and its allies in a number of ways, including cutting off energy supplies, launching cyber-attacks on financial institutions, and further partnering with China to create alternative payments platforms that challenge U.S. dollar hegemony. READ MORE

The war is not going well for Kyiv, and it would be unreasonable to expect that to change. As a vastly superior military force overwhelms the US client state, reality is in the process of crashing down hard in the face of western liberals who bought into the war propaganda that the brave, sexy comedian was leading an upset victory to kick Putin’s ass out of Ukraine.

Zelensky is now raging at NATO powers for refusing to intervene militarily against Russia, apparently having previously been given the impression that the US-centralized empire might risk its very existence defending its dear friends the Ukrainians from an invasion.

“Unfortunately, today there is a complete impression that it is time to give a funeral repast for something else: security guarantees and promises, determination of alliances, values that seem to be dead for someone,” Zelensky said Friday. READ MORE or LISTEN

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Say what you will about Russia’s Cleanup-in-Aisle-Four operation in Ukraine. It sure changed the subject from the murderous Covid-19 madness — cooked up by political therapists who have all the answers for our salvation — to the hard realities of power politics. And at just the right time, too, as ever more hard data leaks through the bastions of captured corporate media to morally indict the criminal public health establishment and their elected enablers throughout Western Civ.

In other words, the whole Covid story was falling apart. Though the CDC and the FDA were hiding and fudging all their numbers as best they could, the insurance actuaries and the humble morticians had no such inhibitions about reporting an upsurge in strange deaths. Whistles were blowing over the botched Pfizer approval trials. The world was beginning to grok how dishonest, deadly, and sinister the whole Covid caper really was — from the engineered and patented origins of the disease, to the lethal mechanisms of the “vaccines”— when it became necessary to divert the world’s attention. Plus, the oaf Justin Trudeau badly tipped his hand on the West’s tilt into tyranny… and now American truckers were revving up their convoys… someone, please, do something! Get Russia back in the center ring!

And so, the floundering establishment activated the still-potent workings of mass formation to fire up what looked like Act One of World War Three. Forgive me for saying what I will about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US authorities wanted it. They set it up nakedly by replaying the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse, and they refused to negotiate in good faith as to their using Ukraine as a forward base for NATO on Russia’s border. The Russians couldn’t have been plainer about their intentions. They’ve been telling the US to keep Ukraine neutral for over a decade, to not outfit the place for military shenanigans. What part of that did America not understand? Every part, apparently — and on-purpose.

It raises the question, of course, as to whether we actually have an interest in that faraway land. I think the answer is: not hardly, except as a utensil of control and antagonism against Russia. As to the people of Ukraine, let’s be honest: we put them in harm’s way, and then we cried crocodile tears over them — most mawkishly in the increasingly bizarre ritual we call the State of the Union Message. All those yellow and blue lapel pins and fashion accessories. What bathetic pretense.

Who in the US government, from our founding in 1789 to 1991 — while Ukraine was part of Russia in one way or another — gave a passing thought to Ukraine? Answer: nobody. And then, after the crack-up of the USSR, Ukraine was “in play,” culminating in the 2014 CIA-sponsored “color revolution” that ousted then-president Viktor Yanukovych, who was inclined to join Russia’s Eurasian Customs Union of trade relations rather than the US wished-for NATO or EU. And ever since then it has been one American intrigue after another — including a brisk trade in grift and bribery by the Biden family, the Clinton syndicate, the next-gen of Kerrys, and other entitled elites from over here selling their influence.

And now the economic sanctions on Russia, which are sure to blow back on the countries issuing them. Europe has to pretend that it doesn’t need Russian oil and gas, that it doesn’t need cheap uranium to run their nuke power plants, that they don’t need the Baikonur Cosmodrome to launch their satellites, and so on. More likely, these moves will accelerate the collapse of Western Civ’s banking system, stock and bond markets, and erode the US dollar’s role as the global reserve currency — a longstanding “exorbitant privilege” for getting stuff from all over the world in exchange for promises to pay some Tuesday in the distant future.

The reader may ask: why does this blog appear to take Russia’s side in the current conflict against the US and our supposed allies? Answer: Why would you trust a government (ours) and its captive news media after years of their blatant lying and tyrannical over-reach? These parties appear to be at war against their own people, that is, against us — certainly more than Russia is. Especially in the historic moment when all our mendacious “narratives” are being exposed as false? Russian Collusion? Indictments underway and more to follow. Covid-19? A mega-crime of mass homicide spawned by a matrix of pharmaceutical racketeers, corrupt government officials, and accomplice news organizations. Stolen elections? Don’t, for Gawd’s sake, even try looking at the slime trail of evidence. I won’t bother listing the many transgressions of Wokery against our culture and history. And all of a sudden, it appears a lot of American citizens have had enough of being fucked around. I’m with them.

Now consider this: What if it turns out that Russia can complete its Cleanup-in-Aisle-Four operation relatively quickly, with a minimized loss of life and damage to the everyday infrastructure of Ukraine, and arrange things there afterward so that Ukraine is not a menace to anyone, either Russia or the West? I sincerely believe this is their intention — just as I sincerely believe that their leadership is actually sane, and ours appears not to be. Perhaps Russia will even offer Ukraine (or its re-arranged regions) assistance in recovering from the foolishness it played along with to its own sorrow? What if Russia actually has no intention of starting World War Three? Will we keep trying to start it anyway?

Whoever is behind “Joe Biden” has done all they can to derail American Life, and the feckless leadership of Euroland has also seemed avid to trash its future. There is a welling movement, in America, at least, to resist all that, to sweep these degenerates out of power, and make a concerted course correction in the direction of sanity, rectitude, liberty, and generosity of spirit toward each other. An awful lot of trouble has already been set in motion by the idiots running things. There is a difficult slog ahead. Is your head screwed on? Where will you stand?

James Howard Kunstler | kunstler.com/writings/clusterfuck-nation/

The Redacted Side of The Ukraine Crisis

Lee Camp gives his perspective on the current crisis in Ukraine. ~ Full episodes of Redacted Tonight will no longer be available on YouTube. They will be on the free video streaming platform “Portable TV.” All segments of Redacted Tonight will STILL be on YouTube but for the full episodes download the free app at https://www.portable.tv/download. Full episodes will still be available at RT.com. ~ Watch Lee's newest Stand-Up Comedy Special for free here – https://LeeCampAmerican.com

Chris Hedges On Ukraine, Russia & NATO | Interview | 28 Minutes Interviewed by: Katie Halper

The Redacted Side of The Ukraine Crisis

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Chris Hedges On Ukraine, Russia & NATO | Interview | 28 Minutes
Interviewed by: Katie Halper