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“There is nothing more American than raising your voice in protest, and there is nothing more un-American than a government that attempts to hit the mute button when it doesn't like what it hears.”

-- Witold Walczak

News and Opinion

Kentucky Senate passes bill making it a crime to insult the police

On March 11, the Republican-majority Kentucky state Senate voted 22 to 11 to approve a bill that would make insulting a police officer a crime. Senate Bill (SB) 211 makes it so that a person could be charged with disorderly conduct—a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to 90 days in jail and up to a $250 fine—if one “accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person.”

Having passed the State Senate, the bill will now move to the Republican-controlled House for possible amendments and a vote. It is unclear whether Democratic Governor Andy Beshear will veto the bill if it passes, sending it back to the legislature for a possible override vote, or sign it into law.

SB211 would give police the power to arrest protesters on a whim. The bill would also impose stiffer sentences for “rioting” along with prohibiting any form of early release for those arrested under its ordinates. Instead, accused persons would be required to be held in jail for at least 48 hours, a penalty which does not apply even for the most serious crimes such as murder or arson.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican State Senator Denny Carroll, defended the legislation earlier this month, telling the Louisville Courier-Journal: “In these riots, you see people getting up in officers’ faces, yelling in their ears, doing everything they can to provoke a violent response … I’m not saying the officers do that, but there has to be a provision within that statute to allow officers to react to that. Because that does nothing but incite those around that vicinity and it furthers and escalates the riotous behavior.”

The legislation would also criminalize a number of forms of protest, including banning what it calls “unlawful camping.” One provision in the bill is explicitly designed to counter the demand to “defund the police” by requiring local government entities to “maintain and improve their respective financial support to the Commonwealth’s law enforcement agencies.” While criminalizing constitutionally protected free speech, SB211 extends protections to officers who use “defensive force” during “riots” and criminalizes the possession of any implements that could be used as weapons during demonstrations.

Sahouri Acquitted, But US Press Freedom Still Under Attack

When Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was acquitted on misdemeanor charges related to her coverage of a Black Lives Matter protests last summer, she declared (New York Times, 3/10/21) that the jury’s “decision upholds freedom of the press and justice in our democracy.” Amnesty International condemned the charges, and journalists feared that a conviction would be a game-changing attack on the press.

Sahouri’s acquittal still leaves a chilling effect on free speech. Of course, a conviction would have been catastrophic, but merely being charged is an injustice. For months she’s been in legal limbo, and other journalists have spent those months wondering if they’ll be next when they’re caught up in the mix at an anti–police brutality protest. Sahouri, and her newspaper, have had to waste their time and energy on meaningless charges.

And Sahouri, of course, is just one of the more prominent victims in the United States of this rising police repression of journalists covering social justice. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (9/4/20) noted:

Reported press freedom violations endured by journalists during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests alone outpace the annual rates reported by the Press Freedom Tracker. The rate of physical attacks on reporters in the US has spiked dramatically in 2020. The Press Freedom Tracker has documented 185 attacks on the media in 2020, up from 40 in 2019, 42 in 2018 and 50 in 2017, respectively.

Even Voice of America (3/11/21), which is US state media, and the Economist (3/13/21), a center-right publication, have noticed the decline in press freedom.

A journalist who was blinded in one eye by a police projectile during the George Floyd protests has a lawsuit alleging that the Minneapolis police specifically targeted journalists (Star-Tribune, 2/22/21). The ACLU of Minnesota is pushing a class action lawsuit for violence against journalists. The NYPD attacked AP journalists (New York Post, 6/3/20) during a Black Lives Matter protest last year. The NYPD has also sought to make it easier to strip reporters of press credentials in the wake of last year’s BLM demonstrations (New York Post, 7/15/20).

But this isn’t a problem that began last year. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman faced absurd riot charges for her coverage of the uprising at Standing Rock (Guardian, 10/17/16; FAIR.org, 10/17/16), and another journalist was shot by a rubber-jacketed bullet while covering protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline there (Vox, 11/4/16). The Committee to Protect Journalists (11/11/11) documented police violence and arrests of journalists during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

In this context, journalists need to see the rise of troubling anti-protest bills around the country as anti-journalist bills. Take, for example, a bill in Kentucky, which was a hotbed of Black Lives Matter protests after the police killing of Breonna Taylor,  that would make it a crime to insult a police officer during what police deem a riot (WJW, 3/5/21):

Any individual who “accosts, insults, taunts or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words” or makes “gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person” could be imprisoned for up to three months.

A law this vague has a chilling effect on journalism. Is a reporter who overzealously reminds a police officer that they are entitled to stand near a police line, or protests being shoved too much, breaking the law? That we are even asking these questions, and fear that they won’t be answered until a journalist goes to court on these charges, is intimidating in itself.

Journalists don’t need to embrace the cause of a protest in order to cover it accurately and in full. But they do need to take a side in the fight over the right to protest, because the right to protest the police, the government or a corporation, and the right to cover the protest and the issues around that protest, are inherently related, as journalists are learning.

This is where journalists—and their professional associations and unions—are going to need to throw objectivity and neutrality out the window to protect press freedom. No, journalists should not, in good faith, be expected to employ the standard “he said, she said” tropes to cover anti-protest bills, excessive charges against demonstrators and the use of tear gas, acoustic weapons and rubber bullets against protesters. Police tactics are seemingly indiscriminate. Journalists should see these methods not as methods against a particular political movement, but against the public at large, which includes the press.

Sahouri’s acquittal can be met with a sigh of relief, certainly by her, her colleagues and family. But it’s a rallying cry: Press freedom is under severe attack in the US, along with protest freedom, and anyone who cares about the First Amendment needs to fight back.

Art - transcendent, transformative, revolutionary

Biden swings by Pennsylvania in Covid relief tour and promises ‘more help’

Joe Biden stopped by a unionized, Black-owned flooring company in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday to highlight how the provisions of his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package will help lift small businesses hurt by the pandemic, part of a cross-country campaign to promote the first major legislative achievement of his presidency.

During his visit to Smith Flooring Inc, located in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester, Biden said the sweeping new law was a “big deal” and promised the owners: “More help is on the way – for real.”

“We’re gonna be paying our employees,” James Smith, who co-owns the business with his wife, Kristin Smith, said of their plan for the relief checks. “We’ve been paying them. Since the first run of PPP, we decided we wanted to take that money and not lay anyone off. We put everybody in a group and said, ‘Look, we’re gonna do this for you as a team, we’re gonna get through this together.’”

Biden’s visit to Smith Flooring, in a state he clawed back from Donald Trump in 2020, was his first stop on the White House’s “Help is Here” tour and comes a day after Biden announced that his administration was on track to mark two key milestones in the coming days: delivering 100m Covid vaccinations since his inauguration – far outpacing his initial promise to administer those doses in his first 100 days – and distributing 100m stimulus checks to Americans.

The tour includes Biden, Kamala Harris and their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff. Later this week, Biden and the vice-president will visit Georgia, another swing state that he narrowly won in 2020.

Briahna Joy Gray: Poll Shows MEGA Popularity Of 15 Dollar Minimum Wage

Medicare for All Would Have Prevented Hundreds of Thousands of Covid Deaths

A new report released Tuesday morning by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen makes the case that the United States' fragmented for-profit healthcare system hampered the nation's coronavirus response "at every turn," resulting in millions of Covid-19 infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths that likely would have been prevented under a Medicare for All system.

Titled Unprepared for Covid-19: How the Pandemic Makes the Case for Medicare for All, the white paper builds off a recent analysis showing that around 40% of U.S. Covid-19 infections and 33% of virus deaths are associated with uninsurance, which was high before the pandemic and soared last year as mass layoffs threw millions off their employer-provided coverage. The growing uninsured rate has hit frontline workers particularly hard.

"The reality is that our for-profit healthcare system put the U.S. at a dangerous disadvantage and hindered rapid response," Public Citizen's new report reads. "It has also meant millions of Americans have contracted Covid-19 unnecessarily and hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been prevented."

"Under Medicare for All, everyone would have consistent coverage regardless of their employment status or employer," the report continues. "And because Americans would have their choice of providers, instead of facing the narrow networks their employers choose for them, they would face fewer challenges getting care, especially during a pandemic where some hospitals and providers are overwhelmed by demand."

If the U.S. had in place a single-payer system that provided everyone in the country with comprehensive healthcare for free at the point of service—as proposed by supporters of Medicare for All—"the U.S. would finally be able to ensure sufficient funding for public health, including future pandemics," and "the nation could finally begin addressing massive health disparities in a comprehensive way," the paper argues.

"As the pandemic has shown, everyone depends on the healthcare system throughout their lives," the paper adds. "Whether we face a public health emergency like a global pandemic or simply need to meet routine medical needs, Medicare for All would ensure necessary treatments are available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay."

Eagan Kemp, Public Citizen's healthcare policy advocate and the author of the new report, said in a statement that the "pandemic has shown how wide the gaps in our healthcare system remain and how easy it is for families to fall through them."

"We need to be prepared for the next pandemic, and we can't be under the current for-profit system. The time has come for a healthcare system that guarantees healthcare for everyone in the U.S.," Kemp said. "The time has come for Medicare for All."

Review of Trump Era CDC Guidance Confirms Political Manipulation of Agency's Covid Response

A top-to-bottom review of Trump-era coronavirus guidance has identified public health recommendations issued under the banner of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that were "not primarily authored" by agency staff or backed by the best existing scientific evidence.

Ordered by current CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, the review (pdf) was seen as confirmation of widespread fears that the Trump administration—members of which repeatedly downplayed the severity of the pandemic—manipulated guidance coming out of the nation's leading public health agency to make it fit with the White House's views and political objectives. In September, Politico reported that Trump political aides reviewed and, in some cases, altered CDC recommendations.

"I am deeply concerned by CDC's findings that the Trump administration undermined the public health response to the coronavirus pandemic by issuing CDC guidance that was at odds with the best available science and in some cases was not even written by CDC scientists," Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said in a statement Monday.

"These findings provide further evidence of the sweeping pattern of political interference in the nation's pandemic response that the select subcommittee's investigations have uncovered," Clyburn added. "The Trump administration put politics over people's lives. I am committed to investigating this conduct fully and taking all steps necessary to ensure that it never happens again."

US Dep. of Health publicly confirmed that it pressured Brazil against Sputnik V.
We believe countries should work together to save lives. Efforts to undermine the vaccines are unethical and are costing lives.
https://t.co/Ga5i4zvbCt P.48 pic.twitter.com/A6wyKOkc8t

— Sputnik V (@sputnikvaccine) March 15, 2021

Brazilian politician's cunning plan to fight Covid: spray hand gel from planes

A Brazilian politician has suggested using helicopters and planes to spray his town with hand sanitizer in a desperate and futile bid to obliterate the coronavirus from above.

The mystifying proposal was floated in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on Monday, as Brazil wrestles with the deadliest phase of its 13-month outbreak and the country’s Covid death toll rose to nearly 280,000. ...

Social media was left in stitches, with many wondering what would happen if Canela’s smokers decided to light up. “This guy’s ready to be health minister,” tweeted one jokester in reference to President Jair Bolsonaro’s decision to axe his widely derided health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, on whose 10-month watch more than 260,000 Brazilians died of Covid-19.

Krystal and Saagar: Biden SUPPORTS Filibuster Reform, McConnell Threatens 'SCORCHED EARTH'

Biden Eyes First Major Tax Hike Since 1993 in Next Economic Plan

President Joe Biden is planning the first major federal tax hike since 1993 to help pay for the long-term economic program designed as a follow-up to his pandemic-relief bill, according to people familiar with the matter.

Unlike the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus act, the next initiative, which is expected to be even bigger, won’t rely just on government debt as a funding source. While it’s been increasingly clear that tax hikes will be a component -- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said at least part of the next bill will have to be paid for, and pointed to higher rates -- key advisers are now making preparations for a package of measures that could include an increase in both the corporate tax rate and the individual rate for high earners.

With each tax break and credit having its own lobbying constituency to back it, tinkering with rates is fraught with political risk. That helps explain why the tax hikes in Bill Clinton’s signature 1993 overhaul stand out from the modest modifications done since.

The following are among proposals currently planned or under consideration, according to the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private:

• Raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%
• Paring back tax preferences for so-called pass-through businesses, such as limited-liability companies or partnerships
• Raising the income tax rate on individuals earning more than $400,000
• Expanding the estate tax’s reach
• A higher capital-gains tax rate for individuals earning at least $1 million annually. (Biden on the campaign trail proposed applying income-tax rates, which would be higher)

'Total Scandal': Memos Expose Failure of Obama-Era FTC to Stop Google's Monopoly Power

A damning new Politico series based on 312 pages of internal memos reveals that federal antitrust regulators appointed by former President Barack Obama "misread the evidence in front of them and left much of the digital future in Google's hands," even though investigators concluded that the tech giant's effort to dominate mobile internet searches was well-documented and illegal.

The reporting sheds light on the 19-month probe by the Federal Trade Commission that, in early 2013, amounted to what some described as a slap on the wrist. The series comes as Google faces three antitrust lawsuits from the Department of Justice and coalitions of state attorneys general—one of which was expanded Tuesday—and lawmakers' calls to break up Big Tech.

As technology reporter Leah Nylen details:

Hundreds of pages of unreleased internal FTC memos, obtained by Politico, show for the first time that the agency's commissioners dismissed substantial evidence to support the monopoly claim, including taking the rare step of rejecting a recommendation by staff investigators to sue.

The contracts at the center of the fight made Google the default search engine on almost all U.S. smartphones and locked in that exclusivity for years, giving the company a major advantage just as Americans were starting to flock to smartphones. In its antitrust suit against Google last October, DOJ revealed that the company pays as much as $12 billion a year to Apple alone to keep its search engine as the default on iPhones, iPads, and the Safari browser.

Antitrust experts and critics of Google's practices responded by blasting decision-makers at the FTC and reiterating demands for an end to such exclusionary contracts.

Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout called the exposé a "devastating takedown" of the FTC and its economists under Obama.

"These documents are really extraordinary," tweeted Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project, who writes a monopoly-focused newsletter. "Obama's FTC knew Google was engaged in monopolization, the lawyers said sue, and... nothing. All of this was in 2012. Total scandal." ...

"The documents also add to doubts about whether Washington is any more capable today of reining in the tech industry's titans, despite efforts by a new generation of antitrust enforcers to turn up the heat on Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon—all of which now rank among the United States' wealthiest companies," Nylen adds. "That will be a crucial test awaiting President Joe Biden's regulators, including the outspoken Silicon Valley critic he plans to nominate to an open slot on the FTC's five-person board."

Though opponents of corporate consolidation have applauded Biden's reported decision to nominate Columbia Law School professor Lina Khan to the FTC, Nylen notes that "many of the people who were involved in the FTC's Obama-era probe of Google are still players in the antitrust fights involving the tech giants—sometimes for the opposite side." The series identifies former FTC commissioners and other staffers now associated with not only Google but also Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Amazon and Facebook weren't publicly critical of Google during the FTC's probe, but they both privately complained to the comission, charging that "Google was taking overt actions to dominate markets that made products more cumbersome for users," according to Politico—which notes that at the time, their D.C. lobbying efforts were no match for those of Google.

"We wouldn't be in the situation we are today with any of these big companies if [the FTC] had done something then," said Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, who represented eight companies that complained and told Politico he remains "bitter to this day" about the commission's decision not to sue Google. "If they had stopped that in its tracks, the world would be a different place."

Krystal Ball: Shock Report REVEALS Amazon's Worker Crushing Tactics

Foxconn says it might revive Wisconsin plant to make electric cars

The head of the Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn has said it could start making electric vehicles at a previously abandoned Wisconsin project Donald Trump had claimed would be the “eighth wonder of the world”.

Speaking in Taipei, Foxconn’s chairman, Young Liu, said the company would finalise plans by July in order to start production by the end of 2023, if they decided electric vehicles (EV) were the way to go in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin factory campus was announced in 2017 with the original plan to make LCD screens, but was mired in controversy after hundreds of residents were forced to move and millions in US tax breaks were secured, only for Foxconn to later re-evaluate its ability to competitively produce screens at the site.

The 13,000 jobs and $10bn in local investment promised by 2023 appeared to be no longer coming. “Recently we found maybe there’s a good product to have made in the US, and that is EV,” Young said on Tuesday. “EV is big, it’s not easy to ship. Also we studied the area in Wisconsin. It’s close to the area they use to make cars. So the infrastructure is there.”

Asked if he was worried about domestic US perception of the company if the plans fell through again – given Foxconn had also failed to deliver on a promised project in Philadelphia, as well as others overseas – Young said it made “business sense” to follow through.

Progressives to Biden: No Ambassadorship for 'Ladder-Climbing Hack' Rahm Emanuel

A coalition of more than two dozen progressive advocacy organizations issued a joint statement Tuesday warning President Joe Biden against giving Rahm Emanuel an administration post of any kind, a call that comes as the notorious former mayor of Chicago is reportedly being considered for ambassador to Japan or China.

"Emanuel's disgraceful behavior as mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or ignored," the groups said, pointing to his coverup of the 2014 police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. "At a time when the Democratic Party leadership has joined with most Americans in asserting that Black lives matter, it would be a travesty to elevate to an ambassadorship someone who has epitomized the attitude that Black lives do not matter."

The coalition—which includes Justice Democrats, People's Action, the Working Families Party, and RootsAction.org—also noted Emanuel's anti-union record as well as his history of supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq "long after most Democrats in Congress and most of the public had turned against it."

"Our country needs ambassadors who seek reconciliation and peace rather than conflict and war," reads the coalition's statement, which was signed by CodePink, Veterans for Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and other progressive foreign policy groups.

"He has routinely served elite corporate interests and rarely the interests of the broad public or the causes of racial justice, economic equity, or the peaceful resolution of conflicts at home or abroad," the statement continues. "And whether in federal or municipal office, he has been known for his abrasive, arrogant style of wielding power."

Since November, Emanuel's name has cropped up on several occasions as Biden has moved to fill positions in his administration, leading some to suspect that Emanuel himself generated rumors that he was being considered for such roles as U.S. trade representative and transportation secretary—both of which the president filled with alternative picks.

"What is so hard to understand about this? Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted in November. "This is not about the 'visibility' of a post. It is shameful and concerning that he is even being considered."

Citing unnamed sources, The Hill reported late last month that Emanuel "is the front-runner to be Biden's nominee as ambassador to Japan."

"He's also being considered for the post in China, but sources said Japan is the more likely landing spot for former President Obama's chief of staff," the outlet noted. "Former State Department official Nicholas Burns is the likely front-runner to end up in Beijing."

Jackson Mayor Demands Help After Month of Water Crisis Amid Pandemic, Racism, Broken Infrastructure

Catholic order pledges $100m in reparations to descendants of enslaved people

An order of Catholic priests has pledged $100m in reparations to descendants of Black people it enslaved and sold, in the largest initiative of its kind by the church. Leaders of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States have promised to raise the sum, which will be paid to a foundation set up with a group of descendants, and to “begin a very serious process of truth and reconciliation”.

“Our shameful history of Jesuit slaveholding in the United States has been taken off the dusty shelf and it can never be put back,” said the Rev Timothy P Kesicki, president of the Jesuit Conference.

“Racism will endure in America if we continue to turn our heads away from the truth of the past and how it affects us all today. The lasting effects of slavery call each of us to do the work of truth and reconciliation. Without this joining of hearts and hands in true unity, the cycle of hatred and inequality in America will never end.”

Jesuits used enslaved labour and sold enslaved people for more than a century, to support clergy, churches and schools, including what is now known as Georgetown University in Washington DC. ...

About 5,000 living descendants of people enslaved by the Jesuits have reportedly been identified by a non-profit, the Georgetown Memory Project.

FBI facing allegation that its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh was ‘fake’

The FBI is facing new scrutiny for its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justice, after a lawmaker suggested that the investigation may have been “fake”. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator and former prosecutor who serves on the judiciary committee, is calling on the newly-confirmed attorney general, Merrick Garland, to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how thoroughly the FBI investigated Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

The supreme court justice was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford and faced several other allegations of misconduct following Ford’s harrowing testimony of an alleged assault when she and Kavanaugh were in high school. Kavanaugh denied the claims.

The FBI was called to investigate the allegations during the Senate confirmation process but was later accused by some Democratic senators of conducting an incomplete background check. For example, two key witnesses – Ford and Kavanaugh – were never interviewed as part of the inquiry. Among the concerns listed in Whitehouse’s letter to Garland are allegations that some witnesses who wanted to share their accounts with the FBI could not find anyone at the bureau who would accept their testimony and that it had not assigned any individual to accept or gather evidence.

The bullshit grinder runs 24/7. Apparently the Dems and their intelligence allies just can't let go of what they think was a successful narrative.

Russia targeted Trump allies to hurt Biden in 2020 election, US officials say

Russia tried to influence the 2020 US presidential election by proliferating “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” largely against Joe Biden and through allies of Donald Trump, US intelligence officials said on Tuesday. The assessment was contained in a 15-page report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It underscored allegations that Trump’s allies played into Moscow’s hands by amplifying claims against Biden by Ukrainian figures with links to Russia.

In a statement, the Democratic House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, said: “Through proxies, Russia ran a successful intelligence operation that penetrated [Trump’s] inner circle. “Individuals close to the former president were targeted by agents of Russian intelligence including Andriy Derkach and Konstantin Kilimnik, who laundered misinformation into our political system with the intent of denigrating now President Biden, damaging his candidacy.”

Kilimnik has widely reported ties to Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 who was jailed under the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller but pardoned by Trump shortly before the end of his term. Derkach worked closely with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who has acted as Trump’s personal attorney, in attempts to uncover political dirt on Biden and his family which were at the heart of Trump’s first impeachment. ...

The intelligence report issued on Monday said Russian hackers did not make persistent efforts to break into election infrastructure, unlike past elections.

Caitlin Johnstone: US Intelligence Cartel: All The Governments We Hate Interfered In Our Election

A new report from the US National Intelligence Council assesses that most of the governments the US-centralized empire has targeted for destruction are guilty of seeking to interfere in the nation’s 2020 election.

Ahem.

Yeah, so, that’s the news. According to the US intelligence cartel, the nations which sought to interfere in the outcome of the US election include Russia, Iran, China, Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela. Interestingly, exactly zero nations aligned geopolitically with the United States are listed as having interfered in its electoral process.

“We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US,” the report informs us. “A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives-including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.”

“We assess that Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects-though without directly promoting his rivals-undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US,” the report adds. “We assess that Supreme Leader Khamenei authorized the campaign and Iran’s military and intelligence services implemented it using overt and covert messaging and cyber operations.”

Shoutout to Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela for making it into the Russiagate 2021 Edition pic.twitter.com/dFsEBLG4w1

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 16, 2021

The report finds that China “considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election,” and that it “probably continued to collect intelligence on election-related targets and topics” and “a probably also continued longstanding efforts to gather information on US voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials.”

“We assess that Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah supported efforts to undermine former President Trump in the 2020 US election,” the report says. “Nasrallah probably saw this as a low-cost means to mitigate the risk of a regional conflict while Lebanon faces political, financial, and public health crises.”

“We assess Cuba sought to undermine former President Trump’s electoral prospects by pushing anti-Republican and pro-Democrat narratives to the Latin American community,” the report adds. “Cuban intelligence probably conducted some low-level activities in support of this effort.”

“The Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro had an adversarial relationship with the Trump administration and we assess that Maduro had the intent, though probably not the capability, to try to influence public opinion in the US against the former President,” the National Intelligence Council claims.

So what the US intelligence cartel is asking us to believe this time around is that America’s democracy has suffered yet another invisible attack, the evidence for which is of course top secret, and that the culprits involved are most of the governments the US intelligence cartel doesn’t like. Also, we’re being asked to believe that US-aligned nations like Saudi Arabia and Israel have had no similar interventions in the US electoral process at all.

And of course we’re already getting reports that this narrative will be used to justify sanctions against many of the accused nations, including Iran (which would necessarily kill the nuclear deal Biden campaigned on re-entering).

“The Biden admin is expected to announce sanctions related to election interference as soon as next week, three admin officials tell me,” CNN’s Kylie Atwood reports on Twitter. “They didn’t disclose details related to the expected sanctions but said that they’ll target multiple countries including Russia, China and Iran.”

So this completely unevidenced narrative is being used to justify support for increased aggressions which have already been long sought by the US intelligence cartel, which has an extensive and unbroken record of lying to us about exactly this sort of thing. The response to this is of course disbelief absent the mountain of evidence required in a post-Iraq invasion world, which (spoiler alert) will never surface. We will never be given any solid evidence for these US spy claims, yet US foreign policy and mainstream news coverage of it will march on as though we have.

There is no legitimate reason to trust any of these unproven claims, and it’s also worth noting that even if those claims were true it would not matter. The US interferes in world elections more than any other nation on earth, so foreign nations are fully entitled to interfere in US elections as much as they like. You have no legitimate grievances about pushback on your behavior when you are the clear aggressor.

Furthermore, any claims of foreign nations pushing “influence narratives” are dwarfed by orders of magnitude by the influence narratives being pushed by the media-owning plutocratic class inside the United States. Claiming that any foreign nation has anywhere near that degree of influence over the narratives which Americans consume and believe is cartoonish. The only real electoral interference in the United States was by the plutocratic class.

This continually recycled story is so unbelievably tedious. “Oh noes, we’ve been attacked in an invisible way by an enemy we were already preparing to slam with economic sanctions and new cold war escalations! Believe us or you’re a conspiracy theorist!” Sure, Jan. Cool story.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Those who control the dominant narratives will keep adjusting them as they see fit to advance whatever pre-existing agendas they have chambered up ready to fire. Truth simply does not feature.

Krystal and Saagar: New Move To Push Dianne Feinstein OUT Of Senate

Lisa Murkowski censured by Alaska Republicans for voting to convict Trump

The Alaska Republican party has censured Senator Lisa Murkowski for voting to convict Donald Trump at his impeachment trial and now doesn’t want her to identify as a GOP candidate in next year’s election, a member of the party’s state central committee said on Tuesday.

“The party does not want Lisa Murkowski to be a Republican candidate,” said Tuckerman Babcock, the immediate past chair of the state party.

The vote to censure Murkowski was 53-17 at a Saturday meeting in Anchorage, he said. The decision has not been publicly announced by the party.

“It went further than censure, which was strong,” Babcock said. “But it also directed the party officials to recruit an opponent in the election and to the extent legally permissible, prevent Lisa Murkowski from running as a Republican in any election,” he said.

Krystal and Saagar: Media SMEARS Yang For DARING To Appear On Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro

Cuomo made suggestive remarks about size of his hands, accuser says

As New York governor Andrew Cuomo tried to focus on work on Monday, one of his sexual harassment accusers met for more than four hours with investigators working for the state attorney general.

Charlotte Bennett revealed new details about Cuomo’s behavior and what she said was a “sexually hostile work environment”, according to her lawyer, including a claim the governor frequently made suggestive remarks about the size of his hands.

“One piece of new information that came to light today was the governor’s preoccupation with his hand size and what the large size of his hands indicated to Charlotte and other members of his staff,” her lawyer, Debra Katz, said in a statement.

Bennett also provided 120 pages of records to corroborate her accusations, Katz said.

Good vibrations: bladeless turbines could bring wind power to your home

The giant windfarms that line hills and coastlines are not the only way to harness the power of the wind, say green energy pioneers who plan to reinvent wind power by forgoing the need for turbine towers, blades – and even wind. “We are not against traditional windfarms,” says David Yáñez, the inventor of Vortex Bladeless. His six-person startup, based just outside Madrid, has pioneered a turbine design that can harness energy from winds without the sweeping white blades considered synonymous with wind power.

The design recently won the approval of Norway’s state energy company, Equinor, which named Vortex on a list of the 10 most exciting startups in the energy sector. Equinor will also offer the startup development support through its tech accelerator programme. The bladeless turbines stand at 3 metres high, a curve-topped cylinder fixed vertically with an elastic rod. To the untrained eye it appears to waggle back and forth, not unlike a car dashboard toy. In reality, it is designed to oscillate within the wind range and generate electricity from the vibration.

“Our technology has different characteristics which can help to fill the gaps where traditional windfarms might not be appropriate,” says Yáñez. These gaps could include urban and residential areas where the impact of a windfarm would be too great, and the space to build one would be too small. It plugs into the same trend for installing small-scale, on-site energy generation, which has helped homes and companies across the country save on their energy bills. This could be wind power’s answer to the home solar panel, says Yáñez.

“They complement each other well, because solar panels produce electricity during the day while wind speeds tend to be higher at night,” he says. “But the main benefit of the technology is in reducing its environmental impact, its visual impact, and the cost of operating and maintaining the turbine.”

The turbine is no danger to bird migration patterns, or wildlife, particularly if used in urban settings. For the people living or working nearby, the turbine would create noise at a frequency virtually undetectable to humans.

With First Native Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Hope Grows U.S. Will Confront Toxic Uranium Legacy

Europe's Recent Droughts 'Unprecedented' in Millennia, Study Finds

A recent series of summer droughts in Europe, which brought devastating ecological, agricultural, and economic impacts, were more severe than any over the past 2,100 years, new research out Monday finds.

"Our results show that what we have experienced over the past five summers is extraordinary for central Europe, in terms of how dry it has been consecutively," dendrochronology specialist and lead author Professor Ulf Büntgen of Cambridge's Department of Geography said in a statement.

Büntgen and the team of international researchers linked the recent droughts to the climate crisis, including its impacts on the jet stream.

The chemical fingerprints in European oak trees show that in 2015, #drought conditions in Europe suddenly intensified, beyond anything in the past two thousand years: https://t.co/G99zie55oU@CamUniGeography @CambridgeZero #ClimateChange

— Cambridge University (@Cambridge_Uni) March 15, 2021

The findings were published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Natural but deadly: huge gaps in US rules for wood-stove smoke exposed

Glenn Helkenn lives in a spruce forest, in a tiny log cabin he built himself on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska’s third largest city. Give him an hour and a handsaw and Helkenn says he can harvest enough firewood to heat his 96 sq ft home for a couple of days, even when the temperature drops to -40F. For him, it’s about more than free fuel. “It is what I enjoy doing,” Helkenn said. “You know, it’s the fresh air. It’s the time out in the woods. It’s the snowshoeing. It’s the exercise.”

The trouble is about 12,000 much larger Fairbanks-area homes heat with wood too. The city is partially ringed by hills, so smoke can get trapped in low-lying neighborhoods for days or weeks.

Fairbanks has some of the dirtiest air in the country, in large part due to smoke from wood stoves. Wood smoke is a serious health threat. It emits high levels of fine-particle pollution that can be inhaled deep into the lungs, exacerbating respiratory problems like asthma and increasing the risk of premature death from heart attacks and strokes.

In 2015, the US government required that newer models of wood stoves perform better and began spending millions of dollars to subsidize the transition away from older models. Now, an investigation by state environment officials is revealing a critical flaw in that plan: the latest stoves might not be any less polluting than the previous ones.

A review of 250 wood-burning stove certifications found unexplained data omissions and atypical lab practices. When the officials retested about a dozen of the heaters in their own labs, they were not able to reproduce the certification results. ... “We pulled the test reports that are supposed to be publicly posted and we compared – did this certification report meet all the rules? And we couldn’t find any that actually met all the rules,” said Cindy Heil, an air official with Alaska’s department of environmental conservation. “That’s a problem.”

Also of Interest

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

Glenn Greenwald: How Do Big Media Outlets So Often "Independently Confirm" Each Other's Falsehoods?

MI-5 Whistleblower Annie Machon Wins 2021 Sam Adams Award; Prof. Stephen Cohen to be Honored

Trump administration insider reveals how the US military sabotaged a peace agreement to prolong war in Afghanistan

Warning Biden's Syria Strikes Set 'Dangerous' Precedent, Groups Push Congress to Respond

Biden Continues US Indifference to Palestinian Suffering

'Life and Death' Crisis as Utilities Cut Power to Over 765,000 Across 10 States During Pandemic

Critics Say 'Scorched Earth' Threat Over Filibuster Shows McConnell 'Getting Scared'

Green Groups File 'First-of-Its-Kind' FTC Complaint Against Chevron for Climate Lies

Dead Sea scroll fragments and 'world's oldest basket' found in desert cave

Scientists unlock secret of why hummingbirds hum

Saagar Enjeti: Dems See Russia As Top US ENEMY, That's A BIG Problem

Rising: Journalist IN MEXICO - Fact And Fiction Of Biden's Border Crisis

Rising: Biden SHOCKS, Says Cuomo 'May Be Prosecuted'

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