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"If a nation wants to live in peace with its neighbors, it doesn't keep rattling the saber at them."

-- Howard E. Koch

News and Opinion

From The Guardian, fnords and all:

Putin warns of possible military response over ‘aggressive’ Nato

Vladimir Putin has said he will consider a military response if Russia feels threatened by Nato, in a sign that he is not ready to de-escalate tensions over a potential invasion of Ukraine.

In a combative speech on Tuesday, Putin – who has demanded “security guarantees” from Nato – told his top military commanders that the west was to blame for the rising tensions. It came against a backdrop of a Russian buildup of tanks and artillery for what could constitute an invasion force within weeks.

The Russian president has railed against Nato enlargement since the fall of the Soviet Union and accused the west of turning Ukraine against Russia. After a revolution installed a pro-western government in 2014, Moscow annexed Crimea and sparked a conflict in east Ukraine that has left more than 14,000 dead. It has bristled at growing military cooperation between Ukraine and Nato countries.

“What the United States is doing in Ukraine is at our doorstep,” he said of Washington’s support for Kyiv. “And they should understand that we have nowhere further to retreat to. Under [US] protection, they are arming and urging on extremists from a neighbouring country at Russia. Against Crimea, for instance. Do they think we’ll just watch idly?” ...

“If our western counterparts continue a clearly aggressive line, we will undertake proportionate military-technical countermeasures and will respond firmly to unfriendly steps,” Putin said in televised remarks. “I’d like to stress that we are fully entitled to do that.” ...

“What’s happening now, this tension in Europe, is their fault,” Putin said. “At every step Russia has been forced to respond, the situation has got worse and worse and worse … And now we’re in a situation where we must make a decision. We can’t allow the situation I’ve described to develop any further.”

Poll: Americans don’t want war with Russia over Ukraine

According to a survey conducted by YouGov in conjunction with the Charles Koch Institute that was released on Friday, a plurality of Americans (48 percent) said they either strongly or somewhat oppose “going to war with Russia to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity” should Russia invade. Just 27 percent favored such a move while 24 percent said they didn’t know. 

Meanwhile, 73 percent agreed that the United States “should prioritize domestic issues over foreign policy issues,” and just 7 percent agreed that foreign policy should take precedence.

A Pentagon Cover-Up: Azmat Khan on How U.S. Hid Thousands of Civilian Deaths in Middle East Air War

Media Forget Afghan Plight as US Sanctions Drive Mass Famine Risk

As the United States withdrew militarily from Afghanistan in August, US TV news interest in the plight of the country’s citizens spiked, often focusing on “the horror awaiting women and girls” (CNN Situation Room, 8/16/21) to argue against withdrawal (FAIR.org, 8/23/21).

Four months later, as those same citizens have been plunged into a humanitarian crisis due in no small part to US sanctions, where is the outrage?

Experts warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in the wake of the US withdrawal (IRC, 8/20/21). In recent months, the messages have become more urgent. A UN report (10/25/21) warned that “combined shocks of drought, conflict, Covid-19 and an economic crisis in Afghanistan have left more than half the population facing a record level of acute hunger.” One million children are so malnourished they are at risk of dying in the coming months (IRC, 12/3/21).

Decades of conflict, invasion and occupation left Afghanistan with a highly precarious economy. In 2019, well before withdrawal, a record 50% of Afghans reported finding it “very difficult” to get by on their household income (Gallup, 9/23/21). While drought and the Covid-19 pandemic have contributed to the current humanitarian crisis, it is largely driven by the imploding economy. The entire banking system is collapsing, with government employees going unpaid, and citizens unable to access their money or receive funds from relatives abroad.

As many have pointed out, the Taliban shoulder some blame, having banned women from most paid jobs outside of teaching and healthcare, costing the economy up to 5% of its GDP (UNDP, 12/1/21). But a much bigger driver of the crisis has been the US-led sanctions on the Taliban. The US occupation left Afghanistan dependent on aid for 40% of its GDP and 80% of its budget. After withdrawal, the US froze some $9 billion of the country’s central bank reserves, and US and UN sanctions cut off the central bank from the international banking system and drastically limited the aid flowing into the country (UNDP, 12/2/21).

Despite pleas from around the globe, even, most recently, from former US military commanders in Afghanistan and dozens of members of Congress (Washington Post, 12/20/21), the Biden administration has made only slight tweaks to its policies, which are ostensibly meant to punish and provide leverage over the Taliban, but, like other supposedly targeted sanctions, have the effect of putting millions of civilian lives in peril.

Since November 1, well into the worsening crisis, FAIR identified only 37 TV news segments from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC that mentioned “humanitarian” in the same sentence as Afghanistan. That’s 37 segments in seven weeks.

For perspective, as the US withdrew in August, journalists from those shows mentioned “women’s rights” in the same sentence as Afghanistan more often—42 times—in just seven days. Today, as those women and girls face starvation, the deeply concerned TV reporters are virtually nowhere to be seen.

Even when reports did mention the crisis, they rarely highlighted the US role. Of the 37 mentions, FAIR was able to find only four that named sanctions as a factor.

MSNBC twice (11/23/21, 12/16/21) brought on spokespeople from the International Rescue Committee to discuss the crisis, and CBS did so once (12/12/21); all three of these guests named the role sanctions play in Afghanistan’s economic collapse.

ABC World News Tonight‘s Ian Pannell (12/15/21), in a report from Afghanistan, made the only other mention of sanctions, in a vague and brief reference that named no names: “A mix of sanctions and drought has brought the country to the brink of catastrophe.” After showing an emaciated two-year-old and telling the child’s mother, “You must feel very hopeless, very helpless,” Pannell wrapped up his report by noting:

$280 million in emergency aid has been OKed by the United States and others, but it’s likely not enough. It won’t reach hungry mouths until the end of the year. And the situation right now in Afghanistan seems as bad as I can remember it in 20 years of reporting here.

With no mention of what was causing the crisis, or what kind of help was actually needed, Pannell’s report had the effect of painting the US as a benevolent actor that just wasn’t doing quite enough to address a largely inevitable situation. The segment and its top-of-the-show preview were the only two mentions FAIR’s study found of Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis on ABC during the study period.

More often, the crisis was covered with a brief soundbite that emphasized women’s rights over the broader humanitarian crisis, as on CNN Newsroom (11/28/21):

A group of female Afghan students graduated from a private university in Kandahar on Saturday. They were forced to wear veils, due to a rule imposed by the Taliban. Before the Taliban takeover, an estimated 100,000 girls were attending universities. The graduates fear finding jobs might be difficult, because of both the Taliban rule and the country’s worsening humanitarian crisis.

Finding jobs is also difficult when a powerful enemy has frozen the funds of your nation’s central bank—but that’s not the kind of problem US corporate media is likely to dwell on.

Iran suggests Saudis hindered effort to save ambassador from Covid

Iran has implied that its regional foe, Saudi Arabia, may have blocked efforts to save the life of its ambassador to Yemen, who contracted coronavirus there but was unable to be repatriated immediately for urgent medical treatment.

The ambassador, Hasan Irlu, “was evacuated in poor condition due to delayed cooperation from certain countries”, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Saeed Khatibzadeh, told state media.

The spokesperson appeared to be referring to Saudi Arabia. Riyadh controls the airspace around the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the ambassador was flown out on an Iraqi military aircraft after negotiations by the Oman government with Saudi Arabia. ...

If the Saudi objections to his evacuation were genuinely material to his death, the episode is unlikely to ease relations between the two countries that had been on a upward path.

Leftist Becomes Youngest President of Chile Ever

Chilean president-elect Gabriel Boric urges citizens to back constitution rewrite

Chile’s future as a greener, fairer country, depends on the success of efforts to rewrite the country’s dictatorship-era constitution, president-elect Gabriel Boric said on Tuesday. After a meeting with the delegates elected last year to rewrite the 1980 constitution which enshrined the ideological legacy of General Augusto Pinochet, Boric called for Chileans to unite behind the project.

“We all need to put our best efforts into [the constitutional process], independent of our political differences,” Boric said in Santiago. A stunning 78% of Chileans voted last year in favor of drafting a new document and another vote this year saw the election of a broadly leftwing assembly for the task.

“If things go well for the convention, they will go well for Chile,” Boric said, confirming that he would respect the convention’s decision-making. The convention’s president, Elisa Loncón, an academic belonging to Chile’s Mapuche indigenous group, said that the convention would “open its doors to institutional collaborations”, but expected the body’s autonomy to remain intact.

As Pressure Mounts, Biden Considers Extending Pause of Student Loan Payments

The Biden administration is reportedly considering another extension of the federal student loan payment pause that is set to end on February 1, a shift that comes as the White House is facing growing pressure from progressive lawmakers and grassroots advocates.

Politico's Michael Stratford reported Tuesday that the Education Department "says it may postpone" its plan to restart monthly student loan payments early in the new year.

Such a move would be a significant reversal for the administration, which called its August decision to delay the resumption of payments until February 1 "a final extension of the pause on student loan repayment, interest, and collections."

The Education Department told Stratford that an announcement on the payment pause would come "later this week." White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that "the president has not made a decision yet."

Manchin Under Fire for Blowing Potential $60 Billion Hole in US Economy During Pandemic

Beyond its near-immediate—and potentially devastating—impact on millions of families with children, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin's obstruction of his party's Build Back Better package could have far-reaching consequences for the overall U.S. economy as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage at home and abroad.

According to a Business Insider calculation derived from Goldman Sachs' new adjusted growth projections, the death of Democrats' $1.75 trillion reconciliation measure could deprive the U.S. economy of $60 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) over the next three quarters, hampering the nation's fragile recovery.

"Economists are already forecasting what a BBB-free economy will look like, and early projections are gloomy," the outlet noted. "Goldman Sachs economists led by Jan Hatzius now expect U.S. GDP to grow 2% in the first quarter, 3% in the second quarter, and 2.75% in the third quarter, according to estimates published Monday. Those projections are down from 3%, 3.5%, and 3%, respectively."

The financial services firm Moody's Analytics, for its part, projected earlier this year that passage of both the reconciliation bill and the bipartisan infrastructure package—which President Joe Biden signed into law last month—would boost real GDP growth to 4.8% next year.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's, warned in a series of tweets Monday that "if BBB doesn’t become law, real GDP growth in 2022 will be lower by 0.5% and reaching full-employment next year will prove elusive." ...

On Sunday, Manchin dealt what many saw as the death blow, telling Fox News that he would vote no on the Build Back Better Act should it reach the floor in its current form—likely spelling the end of programs like the expanded child tax credit, which reduced poverty and bolstered consumer spending by putting money directly in families' pockets.

Behind the scenes, Manchin reportedly told colleagues that "he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit (CTC) payments on drugs instead of providing for their children," ignoring research showing that families have largely spent the money on groceries and other necessities.

In a statement released to the public on Sunday, the West Virginia Democrat offered several other objections to the bill that economists and other analysts slammed as nonsensical.

"He says he's worried about inflation and the national debt, but Build Back Better will be paid for with tax increases on big corporations and the wealthy—so it won't have any bearing on inflation or the debt," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in a blog post following Manchin's statement.

Reich continued:

He says he's worried about the impact of the latest Covid surge on the economy, but if Covid slows the economy there's even more justification for federal spending that strengthens social safety nets.

He says he can't face his constituents in West Virginia without renouncing 'Build Back Better.' But on a per-person basis, West Virginians would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation in all of America. One out of four West Virginians over 65 have no natural teeth, for example—the highest rate in the nation. Biden's original bill provided dental benefits under Medicare.

In a statement on Tuesday, Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens argued that "if Sen. Manchin is concerned about inflation, then he should join us in fighting back against the corporate profiteering that is driving it—rather than trying to derail legislation that will not impact inflation one bit."

Kopmala has some impotent blather for us:

Harris refuses ‘personal’ fight with Manchin over Build Back Better: ‘The stakes are too high’

Kamala Harris has refused to be drawn into a war of words with Joe Manchin over the West Virginia senator’s attempt to sink the Build Back Better spending plan, saying: “The stakes are too high for this to be in any way about any specific individual.” The vice-president, whose vote in the 50-50 Senate would have passed Build Back Better had Manchin (and the other 49 Democrats and independents) stayed onboard, was speaking to CBS News. ...

“I don’t have any personal feelings about this,” Harris insisted. “This is about let’s get the job done. Let’s get it done.

“I refuse to get caught up in the what might be personal politics. The people who are waking up at three o’clock in the morning worried about how they’re going to get by, they could care less about the politics of DC.” ...

Harris said: “Let’s talk with families who say I can’t afford to do the basic things that I need to do as a responsible adult, like care for my children, care for my older parents, or afford to get life saving medication like insulin.”

Asked how the Democrats could do that without Manchin – as many in the party have said they will try to do, if they are not able to turn him round – Harris said: “You don’t give up? That’s how we do it.”

Coal Miners Union Rebukes Manchin for Effort to Kill Build Back Better

The push for passage of the Build Back Better Act got a potential boost late Monday as the United Mine Workers of America, the coal miners' union that Sen. Joe Manchin counts as a key ally, called on the right-wing Democratic senator to reconsider his opposition to his party's signature economic agenda.

UMWA president Cecil Roberts outlined several provisions in the $1.75 trillion investment in anti-poverty programs and climate action which would directly benefit the union's 80,000 members, and made clear that coal miners are counting on the West Virginia lawmakers to "revisit his opposition."

Manchin must "work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families, and their communities," Roberts said.

The statement came a day after Manchin announced he's a "no" on the legislation, imperiling the monthly Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments millions of families—including 70% of Manchin's constituents—have come to rely on this year, as well as universal pre-kindergarten, $550 billion in climate investments, and other provisions to help working people over the next decade.

The UMWA specifically objected to Manchin's refusal—reportedly due to the inclusion of the CTC—to back a spending plan that includes protections for coal miners' right to organize in the workplace and investments in their health and financial stability.

"The bill includes language that would, for the first time, financially penalize outlaw employers that deny workers their rights to form a union on the job," said Roberts. "This language is critical to any long-term ability to restore the right to organize in America in the face of ramped-up union-busting by employers. But now there is no path forward for millions of workers to exercise their rights at work."

Roberts noted that by tanking the legislation's chance of passing in the evenly split U.S. Senate, Manchin is threatening provisions that are also part of the UMWA's "Principles for Energy Transition," the union's proposal for a "just transition" toward renewable energy.

“The bill includes language that will provide tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to build facilities in the coalfields that would employ thousands of coal miners who have lost their jobs," said Roberts, referring to President Joe Biden's plan to grow domestic supply chains in solar and wind power "in communities on the frontlines of the energy transition."

"We support that and are ready to help supply those plants with a trained, professional workforce," said Roberts. "But now the potential for those jobs is significantly threatened."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Roberts' statement demonstrates how Manchin's own constituents "desperately need" him to support the package. ...

Manchin is also poised to deliver a blow to coal miners who develop black lung disease, as the bill includes an extension of the requirement that coal companies contribute to the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which provides benefits for victims of the illness.

Without the legislation, the fee required of companies "will be cut in half, further shifting the burden of paying these benefits away from the coal companies and on to taxpayers," said Roberts.

"If we don't get an extension through the Build Back Better Act, then it is going to be a struggle for those of us with black lung to see what happens to the fund," Gary Hairston, president of the National Black Lung Association and a former West Virginia coal miner who suffers from the disease, told Kim Kelly, a labor reporter for Teen Vogue.

Expressing disbelief that Manchin would jeopardize a fund that sent $40 million to West Virginia coal mining veterans in 2020—out of $162 million nationwide—The New Republic asked on Sunday, "Does Joe Manchin know that Build Back Better would extend vital aid to sick coal miners?"

Manchin has had a close relationship with the UMWA for years. He was named an honorary member of the union last year and has worked with Roberts to secure pensions for coal mining retirees.

The senator's ties to the industry make Roberts' statement "a big step" toward potentially pushing Manchin to reconsider his position, Kelly tweeted.

"Manchin has lost the coal miners with this latest betrayal," she said.

Kim Potter trial: jury deliberates verdict in case of Daunte Wright’s death

A jury resumed deliberations on Tuesday in the trial of a suburban Minneapolis police officer who says she meant to use her Taser instead of her gun when she shot and killed a Black motorist, Daunte Wright, in April this year. The jury met for about five hours on Monday following closing arguments in which prosecutors accused Kim Potter of a “blunder of epic proportions” in Wright’s death in a traffic stop – but said a mistake was no defense.

Towards the end of the day on Tuesday, the jury asked the judge what to do if they couldn’t agree on verdicts. The judge told them they must keep deliberating. ...

The mostly white jury got the case after about a week and a half of testimony about an arrest that went awry, setting off angry protests in Brooklyn Center as Minneapolis was on edge over a Minneapolis police officer’s trial in the death of George Floyd. Potter resigned two days after Wright’s death.

Republican congressman refuses to cooperate with Capitol attack panel

Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and the first sitting member of Congress to be requested to provide documents and sit for an interview with the committee investigating the Capitol riot, said on Tuesday he would not comply with the panel. The news came shortly after Donald Trump provocatively announced that he will hold a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on 6 January, the first anniversary of the deadly attack on Congress.

Perry’s refusal to appear sets up a potentially fraught battle if the panel decides to subpoena him and he – like other Trump allies – decides to ignore that too. ... Perry claimed the 6 January committee was “illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives”.

Successive court rulings have said that the committee was properly formed and does have the investigative powers it is using.

Honest Government Ad | Hung Parliament

Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction

Gaya Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss thinktank, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time. Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, from western US and Siberian wildfires to German floods and a report that suggests the Amazon rainforest may no longer be able to perform as a carbon sink, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held.

Research by Herrington, a rising star in efforts to place data analysis at the center of efforts to curb climate breakdown, affirmed the bleaker scenarios put forward in a landmark 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth, that presented various outcomes for what could happen when the growth of industrial civilization collided with finite resources. Now, with the climate crisis increasing the frequency of extreme weather events, and many single events shown to have been made worse by global heating, the Club of Rome, publisher of original MIT paper, has returned to the study.

“From a research perspective, I felt a data check of a decades-old model against empirical observations would be an interesting exercise,” said Herrington, a sustainability analyst at the accounting giant KPMG that recently described greenhouse gas emissions as a “shared, existential challenge.” ... Herrington, 39, says she undertook the update (available on the KPMG website and credited to its publisher, the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology) independently “out of pure curiosity about data accuracy”. Her findings were bleak: current data aligns well with the 1970s analysis that showed economic growth could end at the end of the current decade and collapse come about 10 years later (in worst case scenarios). ...

Earlier this year, in a paper titled Beyond Growth, the analyst wrote plainly: “Amidst global slowdown and risks of depressed future growth potential from climate change, social unrest, and geopolitical instability, to name a few, responsible leaders face the possibility that growth will be limited in the future. And only a fool keeps chasing an impossibility.”

Walmart illegally dumps 1m toxic items in landfills yearly, lawsuit claims

Walmart illegally dumps more than 1 million batteries, aerosol cans of insect killer and other products, toxic cleaning supplies, electronic waste, latex paints and other hazardous waste into California landfills each year, state prosecutors have alleged.

In a lawsuit announced on Monday, the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, accused the retail giant of failing to properly dispose of discarded or returned goods.

“When a big box store disposes of unwanted goods, just like the rest of us, they need to do so properly. Unfortunately, Walmart, the largest company in the world by revenue, has failed to do that on a grand scale here in California,” Bonta said.

The attorney general’s office settled a similar lawsuit in 2010 in which Walmart, which operates more than 300 stores in California, paid $25m and agreed to stop the dumping into local landfills that are not equipped to contain the hazardous products.

It paid $1.25m to Missouri in 2012 to settle a similar lawsuit. And in 2013, the company pleaded guilty to six federal misdemeanors of negligently discharging a pollutant into drains in 16 California counties, part of an $81m deal that also included charges in Missouri.

EU in row over inclusion of gas and nuclear in sustainability guidance

The European Commission is facing a backlash from Greta Thunberg and fellow climate activists over plans to include gas and nuclear energy in a “green” investment guidebook.

Both energy sources are expected to feature in the next part of the EU’s “taxonomy for sustainable activities”, which is expected at the end of the year, following a period of intense political bargaining between the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen; the French president, Emmanuel Macron; and Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

The EU taxonomy is a green classification system that is intended to guide investors to projects that are in line with Europe’s goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and better protection of nature.

An EU official said gas and nuclear were likely to have “amber” status, meaning they would not be in the “green” category with wind and solar power, but would feature in the taxonomy. A senior EU diplomat said they expected to see nuclear in the text because “Von der Leyen seems to have promised it to Macron and the other nuclear states”. ...

However, the growing expectation of a Franco-German bargain that brings gas and nuclear into the taxonomy has triggered an excoriating response from Thunberg and nine fellow climate activists. In an article on the Euractiv website, the young activists accused EU leaders of making empty promises at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, which ended with a fragile hope of keeping alive a target to limit global heating to no more than 1.5C. “There is no space for cowardly decisions, like allowing for this fake climate action,” they wrote, citing the taxonomy.

Also of Interest

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

300 Doctors Implore Australia to Bring Assange Home

Iran And The Houthi Split? No, A Reporter Fell For 'Exclusive' Spin.

Maturity Is Realizing That Propaganda Isn’t Something That Only Happens To Other People

The Fed Gets Its Ducks in a Row for the Next Wall Street Bailout; Quietly Adds Goldman Sachs Bank, Citibank to Its New $500 Billion Standing Repo Facility

‘Miscarriage of justice’: outcry after Colorado trucker given 110 years for fatal accident

By ditching landmark climate legislation, America makes the world unsafe

Despite Climate Imperative, 94% of Analyzed Coal Companies Have No Phaseout Plan

Lavrov Interview at RT

A Little Night Music

Leadbelly - Cotton Fields

Leadbelly - House of the Rising Sun

Leadbelly - Where Did you Sleep Last Night

Lead Belly - There's a Man Going Around Taking Names

Leadbelly - The Gallows Pole

Leadbelly - Ham and Eggs

Lead Belly - Let it Shine on Me

Lead Belly - Diggin' My Potatoes

Leadbelly - John Hardy

Leadbelly - Midnight Special