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"In the nuclear age, superpowers make war like porcupines make love - carefully."

-- Robert F. Kennedy

News and Opinion

Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled M-I-N-S-K

While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track.

A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both political parties prefer to resolve differences over Ukraine through diplomacy. Another December poll found that a plurality of Americans (48 percent) would oppose going to war with Russia should it invade Ukraine, with only 27 percent favoring U.S. military involvement.

The conservative Koch Institute, which commissioned that poll, concluded that “the United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine and continuing to take actions that increase the risk of a confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia is therefore not necessary for our security. After more than two decades of endless war abroad, it is not surprising there is wariness among the American people for yet another war that wouldn’t make us safer or more prosperous.”

The most anti-war popular voice on the right is Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has been lashing out against the hawks in both parties, as have other anti-interventionist libertarians.

On the left, the anti-war sentiment was in full force on February 5, when over 75 protests took place from Maine to Alaska. The protesters, including union activists, environmentalists, healthcare workers and students, denounced pouring even more money into the military when we have so many burning needs at home.

You would think Congress would be echoing the public sentiment that a war with Russia is not in our national interest. Instead, taking our nation to war and supporting the gargantuan military budget seem to be the only issues that both parties agree on.

Most Republicans in Congress are criticizing Biden for not being tough enough (or for focusing on Russia instead of China) and most Democrats are afraid to oppose a Democratic president or be smeared as Putin apologists (remember, Democrats spent four years under Trump demonizing Russia).

Both parties have bills calling for draconian sanctions on Russia and expedited “lethal aid” to Ukraine. The Republicans are advocating for $450 million in new military shipments; the Democrats are one-upping them with a price tag of $500 million.

Progressive Caucus leaders Pramila Jayapal and Barbara Lee have called for negotiations and de-escalation. But others in the Caucus–such as Reps. David Cicilline and Andy Levin–are co-sponsors of the dreadful anti-Russia bill, and Speaker Pelosi is fast-tracking the bill to expedite weapons shipments to Ukraine.

But sending more weapons and imposing heavy-handed sanctions can only ratchet up the resurgent U.S. Cold War on Russia, with all its attendant costs to American society: lavish military spending displacing desperately needed social spending; geopolitical divisions undermining international cooperation for a better future; and, not least, increased risks of a nuclear war that could end life on Earth as we know it.

For those looking for real solutions, we have good news.

Negotiations regarding Ukraine are not limited to President Biden and Secretary Blinken’s failed efforts to browbeat the Russians. There is another already existing diplomatic track for peace in Ukraine, a well-established process called the Minsk Protocol, led by France and Germany and supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The civil war in Eastern Ukraine broke out in early 2014, after the people of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine as the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in February 2014. The post-coup government formed new “National Guard” units to assault the breakaway region, but the separatists fought back and held their territory, with some covert support from Russia. Diplomatic efforts were launched to resolve the conflict.

The original Minsk Protocol was signed by the “Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine” (Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE) in September 2014. It reduced the violence, but failed to end the war. France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine also held a meeting in Normandy in June 2014 and this group became known as the “Normandy Contact Group” or the “Normandy Format.”

All these parties continued to meet and negotiate, together with the leaders of the self-declared Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics in Eastern Ukraine, and they eventually signed the Minsk II agreement on February 12, 2015. The terms were similar to the original Minsk Protocol, but more detailed and with more buy-in from the DPR and LPR.

The Minsk II agreement was unanimously approved by the U.N. Security Council in Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015. The United States voted in favor of the resolution, and 57 Americans are currently serving as ceasefire monitors with the OSCE in Ukraine.

The key elements of the 2015 Minsk II Agreement were:

• an immediate bilateral ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and DPR and LPR forces; 
• the withdrawal of heavy weapons from a 30-kilometer-wide buffer zone along the line of control between government and separatist forces;
• elections in the secessionist Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, to be monitored by the OSCE; and
• constitutional reforms to grant greater autonomy to the separatist-held areas within a reunified but less centralized Ukraine.

The ceasefire and buffer zone have held well enough for seven years to prevent a return to full-scale civil war, but organizing elections in Donbas that both sides will recognize has proved more difficult.

The DPR and LPR postponed elections several times between 2015 and 2018. They held primary elections in 2016 and, finally, a general election in November 2018. But neither Ukraine, the United States nor the European Union recognized the results, claiming the election was not conducted in compliance with the Minsk Protocol.

For its part, Ukraine has not made the agreed-upon constitutional changes to grant greater autonomy to the separatist regions. And the separatists have not allowed the central government to retake control of the international border between Donbas and Russia, as specified in the agreement.

The Normandy Contact Group (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) for the Minsk Protocol has met periodically since 2014, and is meeting regularly throughout the current crisis, with its next meeting scheduled for February 10 in Berlin. The OSCE’s 680 unarmed civilian monitors and 621 support staff in Ukraine have also continued their work throughout this crisis. Their latest report, issued February 1, documented a 65% decrease in ceasefire violations compared to two months ago.

But increased U.S. military and diplomatic support since 2019 has encouraged President Zelensky to pull back from Ukraine’s commitments under the Minsk Protocol, and to reassert unconditional Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas. This has raised credible fears of a new escalation of the civil war, and U.S. support for Zelensky’s more aggressive posture has undermined the existing Minsk-Normandy diplomatic process.

Zelensky’s recent statement that “panic” in Western capitals is economically destabilizing Ukraine suggests that he may now be more aware of the pitfalls in the more confrontational path his government adopted, with U.S. encouragement.

The current crisis should be a wake-up call to all involved that the Minsk-Normandy process remains the only viable framework for a peaceful resolution in Ukraine. It deserves full international support, including from U.S. Members of Congress, especially in light of broken promises on NATO expansion, the U.S. role in the 2014 coup, and now the panic over fears of a Russian invasion that Ukrainian officials say are overblown.

On a separate, albeit related, diplomatic track, the United States and Russia must urgently address the breakdown in their bilateral relations. Instead of bravado and one upmanship, they must restore and build on previous disarmament agreements that they have cavalierly abandoned, placing the whole world in existential danger.

Restoring U.S. support for the Minsk Protocol and the Normandy Format would also help to decouple Ukraine’s already thorny and complex internal problems from the larger geopolitical problem of NATO expansion, which must primarily be resolved by the United States, Russia and NATO.

The United States and Russia must not use the people of Ukraine as pawns in a revived Cold War or as chips in their negotiations over NATO expansion. Ukrainians of all ethnicities deserve genuine support to resolve their differences and find a way to live together in one country—or to separate peacefully, as other people have been allowed to do in Ireland, Bangladesh, Slovakia and throughout the former U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia.

In 2008, then-U.S. Ambassador to Moscow (now CIA Director) William Burns warned his government that dangling the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine could lead to civil war and present Russia with a crisis on its border in which it could be forced to intervene.

In a cable published by WikiLeaks, Burns wrote, “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.”

Since Burns’s warning in 2008, successive U.S. administrations have plunged headlong into the crisis he predicted. Members of Congress, especially members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, can play a leading role in restoring sanity to U.S. policy on Ukraine by championing a moratorium on Ukraine’s membership in NATO and a reinvigoration of the Minsk Protocol, which the Trump and Biden administrations have arrogantly tried to upstage and upend with weapons shipments, ultimatums and panic.

OSCE monitoring reports on Ukraine are all headed with the critical message: “Facts Matter.” Members of Congress should embrace that simple principle and educate themselves about the Minsk-Normandy diplomacy. This process has maintained relative peace in Ukraine since 2015, and remains the U.N.-endorsed, internationally agreed-upon framework for a lasting resolution.

If the U.S. government wants to play a constructive role in Ukraine, it should genuinely support this already existing framework for a solution to the crisis, and end the heavy-handed U.S. intervention that has only undermined and delayed its implementation. And our elected officials should start listening to their own constituents, who have absolutely no interest in going to war with Russia.

Debate: Would U.S. Sanctions Bill on Russia Prevent Military Conflict or Make War More Likely?

Macron claims Putin gave him personal assurances on Ukraine

Emmanuel Macron completed a whirlwind diplomatic mission to Moscow and Kyiv on Tuesday, claiming that he had received personal assurances from Vladimir Putin that Russia would not worsen the crisis over Ukraine. Speaking after talks with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv, Macron said Putin had made clear during discussions on Monday that he would not be the one to escalate tensions. The standoff could take months to resolve, Macron added.

Zelenskiy, however, said he was sceptical about his Russian counterpart’s apparent commitment to peace. “I do not really trust words. I believe that every politician can be transparent by taking concrete steps,” Zelenskiy said at a joint press conference with Macron. “Openness was great” so long as it was “not a game”, Zelenskiy added.

On Tuesday, six Russian warships and a submarine passed through the Dardanelles strait, heading towards the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. The Russian vessels are landing ships used for amphibious assault and are expected to arrive in the Black Sea in the next few days. Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said the arrival of the ships, adding to Russia’s already substantial firepower, showed that “the visit of president Macron was important, but it has not produced a miracle.”

Macron flew from Ukraine to Berlin for a meeting with German and Polish leaders. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said: “Our appraisal of the situation is united, as is our position on this. Any further attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine is unacceptable and will draw wide-reaching consequences for Russia – politically, economically and geo-strategically.”

After a meeting in Washington with Joe Biden on Monday, Scholz refused to say definitively whether the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany would be shut down in the event of an invasion. However, the US Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said that the chancellor had given that assurance privately at a dinner on Monday night.

Kremlin denies any de-escalation deal with France

Wanting Peace With Russia To Focus Aggressions On China Is Just Being An Imperialist Warmonger

Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz criticized the Biden administration’s dangerous escalations against Russia on the House floor on Monday, not because he thinks needlessly ramping up cold war brinkmanship with a nuclear-armed nation is an insane thing to do, nor because he believes the US government should cease trying to dominate the world by constantly working to subvert and undermine any nation who disobeys its commands, but because he wants US aggressions to be focused more on China.

“While the Biden administration, the media, and many in congress beat the drums of war for Ukraine, there is a far more significant threat to our nation accelerating rapidly close to home,” Gaetz said. “Argentina, a critical nation and economy in the Americas, has just lashed itself to the Chinese Communist Party, by signing on to the One Belt One Road Initiative. The cost to China was $23.7 billion — a mere fraction of a rounding error when compared to the trillions of dollars our country has spent trying to build democracies out of sand and blood in the Middle East.”

“China buying influence and infrastructure in Argentina to collaborate on space and nuclear energy is a direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine and far more significant to American security than our latest NATO flirtation in the plains of Eastern Europe,” Gaetz continued. “China is a rising power. Russia is a declining power. Let us sharpen our focus so that we do not join them in that eventual fate.”

For those who don’t know, the “Monroe Doctrine” refers to a decree put forward by President James Monroe in 1823 asserting that Latin America is off limits to European colonialist and imperialist agendas, effectively claiming the entire Western Hemisphere as US property. It essentially told Europe, “Everything south of the Mexican border is our Africa. It’s ours to dominate in the same way you guys dominate the Global South in the Eastern Hemisphere. Those are your brown people over there, these are our brown people over here.”

That this insanely imperialist and white supremacist doctrine is still being cited by high-profile politicians to this day says so much about what the US government is and how it operates on the world stage. This is especially true given that Biden himself just articulated the same idea in so many words last month when he declared that “Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.”

So on one hand Gaetz is opposing warmongering against Russia and condemning the trillions spent on US wars in the Middle East, which by itself would normally be a good thing. But the fact that he only opposes doing that because he wants to focus imperialist aggressions on another part of the world to preserve US unipolar planetary domination completely nullifies any good which could come from his opposition to aggressions somewhere else.

This is a very common phenomenon on the right end of the US political spectrum; you’ll hear a politician or pundit saying what appear to be sane things against the agendas of DC warmongers, but if you pay attention to their overall commentary it’s clear that they’re not opposing the use of mass-scale imperialist aggression to preserve planetary domination, they’re just quibbling about the specifics of how it should be done.

Tucker Carlson has been making this argument for years, claiming that the US should make peace with Russia and scale back interventionism in the Middle East not because peace is good but because it needs to focus its aggressions on countering China. He inserts this argument into many of his criticisms of US foreign policy on a regular basis; he did it just the other day, criticizing the Biden administration’s insane actions in Ukraine and then adding “Screaming about Russia, even as we ignore China, is now a bipartisan effort.”

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp summarized this dynamic well in response to a recent Reason article making the same “Make peace with Russia to focus on taking down China” argument, tweeting “Unfortunately, a lot of the opposition to war with Russia is rooted in this idea that the US needs the resources to eventually fight China. We need more people to view war for Taiwan as dangerous and foolish as war for Ukraine.”

Do you see how this works? Do you see how wanting to refocus US firepower on a specific target is not actually better than keeping that firepower diffuse? The difference between “Let’s have peace” and “Let’s have peace with Russia and stop making wars in the Middle East so that we can focus on bringing down China” is the difference between “Stop massacring civilians” and “Stop massacring these civilians because you’ll need your ammunition to massacre those other civilians over there.”

And it’s especially stupid because it’s the exact same agenda. One imperial faction believes it’s best to preserve US hegemony by focusing on bringing down the nations which support and collaborate with China, while the other imperial faction wants to go after China itself more directly. They both support using the US war machine to keep the planet enslaved to Washington and the government agency insiders and oligarchs who run it, they just manufacture this debate about the specifics of how that ought to happen.

This is what Noam Chomsky was talking about when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

That strictly limited spectrum of debate is known as the Overton window, and imperial narrative managers work very hard to keep shoving that window further and further in the favor of the oligarchic empire they serve. In order to prevent us from arguing about whether there should be a globe-spanning capitalist unipolar empire in the first place, they keep us arguing about how that empire’s interests should best be advanced.

The longer the drivers of empire can keep us debating the details of how we should serve them, the longer they can keep us from turning toward them and asking why we should even have them around at all.

CNN Hires ANOTHER Iraq War, Never Trump NeoCon Propagandist

Aid Groups Warn Biden Not to Revive Trump's Terror Designation for Houthis in Yemen

Twenty international aid groups on Tuesday urged U.S. President Joe Biden to refrain from restoring the Trump administration's terrorist designation for the Houthis—warning that reinstating the label would have devastating impacts on civilians already struggling to survive amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

Biden was praised last year by peace and anti-hunger advocates for rejecting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's eleventh-hour designation of Ansar Allah—as the Houthi movement is officially called—as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization" (FTO) and a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" (SDGT).

However, the White House is now "considering reversing that reversal and redesignating the Houthis as a terrorist group at the request of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates," The Intercept reported Tuesday. "The Houthi rebels who have controlled Yemen's capital since 2014 recently launched a rare attack on the UAE for its participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen."

Oxfam, Refugees International, and 18 other humanitarian organizations operating in Yemen wrote in a public letter to Biden that "we remain united in our strong opposition to a decision that would have catastrophic consequences for Yemeni civilians."

EU to withhold funds from Poland over unpaid fine

The European Commission plans to withhold EU funds from Poland over an unpaid fine related to a coalmine dispute. In an unprecedented move, the commission will cut Poland’s EU funds by €15m (£12.6) to recover money Warsaw has refused to pay the European court of justice.

Poland’s government was ordered by the ECJ to pay €500,000 a day for every day it defied an order to suspend lignite mining at the Turów coal mine. The Czech Republic brought the case, alleging that the open-pit mine near the Polish-Czech-German border broke EU environmental law, depleting groundwater supplies and causing dangerous levels of air and water pollution.

The two countries settled the dispute last week, but EU officials say they had no choice but to deduct the unpaid fine from funds due to Poland. ...

The deduction covers unpaid fines from 20 September to 19 October 2021. The total fine amounts to around €70m and further cuts are expected to follow unless the sum is paid. ... Poland faces losing a further €100m over an unpaid fine of €1m per day for its refusal to abandon a disciplinary forum for judges.

Kim Iversen: FREE SPEECH Now Labeled As Domestic Terrorism By DHS. Working With BIG TECH To Surveil?

Canadian truckers block main bridge to US as Trudeau demands end to protest

Traffic has ground to a halt at the busiest border crossing in North America, as Canadian truckers and others angry with vaccine mandates spread their protest beyond Ottawa.

Trucks started blocking the Ambassador Bridge linking the cities of Detroit and Windsor late on Monday, closing down traffic in both directions. On Tuesday, entry to Canada remained blocked while US-bound traffic slowed to a crawl. Each day, 8,000 trucks normally cross the bridge, which handles about 27% of trade between Canada and the US. Protesters also targeted another major border crossing in Coutts, Alberta.

Canada’s capital city remained blockaded by hundreds of vehicles from the “freedom convoy” while protest organizers called for a meeting with all federal political leaders – except the prime minister, Justin Trudeau – to find a “peaceful resolution” to the crisis.

Trudeau repeated his calls for an end to the protest, saying: “Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives. It has to stop.” ...

Tom Marazzo, an acting spokesperson for the convoy, said on Monday that the protesters wanted to go home but would not leave until the “job is done”.

Workers at Largest GM Plant in Mexico Win Historic Vote for New Independent Union After 2019 Reforms

'They Are Firing the Entire Committee!' Memphis Workers Say Starbucks Targeting Union Organizers

Workers at a Memphis Starbucks who were fired Tuesday after launching a unionization effort vowed to carry on their fight, with one employee invoking the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.—who was assassinated in the Tennessee city while campaigning for workers' rights.

"I was fired by Starbucks today for 'policies' that I've never heard of before and that I've never been written up about before," Nikki Taylor, a shift supervisor at the Poplar and Highland store, said in a statement.

"This is a clear attempt by Starbucks to retaliate against those of us who are leading the union effort at our store and scare other partners," she added. "Starbucks will not get away with this—the entire country will be outraged."

Taylor tweeted: "This is an outrage! They are firing the entire committee!"

Beto Sanchez, another shift supervisor at the store, said that "Starbucks has been fighting desperately to silence us because we did not back down or let them shake us."

A Starbucks representative told The New York Times that the workers were fired for violations including allowing at least one reporter inside the store to conduct an after-hours interview in which some of the employees were unmasked. ...

Starbucks Workers United said it would file charges against the company at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

'Class Warfare' in Action: Amazon Dodged $5.2 Billion in Taxes in 2021

An analysis released Monday shows that Amazon utilized several perfectly legal mechanisms to avoid paying $5.2 billion in federal corporate income taxes in 2021, a year in which the online retail behemoth saw its profits and sales skyrocket.

Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), estimated that given Amazon's record-breaking $35 billion in U.S. pretax income for fiscal year 2021, the Seattle-based corporate giant paid an "effective federal income tax rate of 6%"—far lower than the statutory corporate tax rate of 21%.

Had Amazon paid the latter rate on its 2021 U.S. income, Gardner noted, the company's federal tax bill would have amounted to more than $7.3 billion.

"Instead, the company reports a current federal income tax expense of $2.1 billion," Gardner wrote Tuesday. "Amazon's 2021 federal income tax payment is comparatively significant for a profitable company that paid less than $0 in the first year of the Trump-GOP tax law. But the company's continuous tax avoidance adds up over time. Over the past four years, Amazon reported a total federal tax rate of just 5.1% on over $78 billion of U.S. income." ...

Gardner explained that Amazon used several "familiar" legal maneuvers to slash its federal tax bill in 2021, including tax credits and deductions such as the foreign-derived intangible income (FDII) deduction—which was made available by the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law.

"These are tax breaks that Congress has endorsed and even expanded," Gardner emphasized. "This means that Amazon's 6% tax rate is a result that lawmakers have enabled and could prevent if they summon the political will to do so. This outcome will be very unlikely for Amazon and other very low-tax corporations to replicate in the future if Congress enacts the minimum corporate tax provision included in the Build Back Better Act passed by the House of Representatives in November."

While raking in massive profits, handing CEO Andy Jassy a huge compensation package, and doubling its cap on base salaries for corporate employees to $350,000, Amazon is working aggressively to crush a unionization effort by warehouse employees in Bessemer, Alabama.

Bessemer workers are currently voting for the second time on whether to unionize after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Amazon unlawfully interfered in the previous election last year.

According to Glassdoor, the average Amazon warehouse worker in the U.S. makes $16 an hour—roughly $31,000 a year for a full-time worker.

Bezos, meanwhile, saw his wealth grow by $1.4 billion in 2021.

Mass Student Walkouts Over Police Killing of Amir Locke

Demanding accountability from local leaders, hundreds of high school students in Minneapolis and St. Paul walked out of their classes on Tuesday at noon in protest of the fatal police shooting of Amir Locke during a no-knock raid.

The youth-led group MN Teen Activists organized the walkout, which included students at St. Paul Central High School and Capitol Hill Magnet School in St. Paul and Southwest, Roosevelt, and Washburn high schools in Minneapolis, as well as other schools in the surrounding suburbs.

The students marched from their schools to the governor's mansion for a rally where they demanded the demilitarization of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and the resignations of police chief Amelia Huffman, Mayor Jacob Frey, and Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill.

It was Cahill who reportedly signed the "no-knock warrant" Minneapolis police were executing when an officer killed the 22-year-old Black man who was reportedly asleep on the couch when the police entered without warning in the middle of the night.

One local reporter said the protest appeared to be the largest school walkout she'd ever witnessed.

"I’m seeing adults and young children, beyond the walls of this high school, participating," tweeted WCCO reporter Marielle Mohs at St. Paul Central High School.

The walkouts followed protests over the weekend over Locke's killing which occurred when Minneapolis police carried out a search warrant in a homicide case on behalf of the St. Paul Police Department.

Cousin arrested in murder case that led police to Amir Locke apartment

Authorities arrested Amir Locke’s 17-year-old cousin in connection with the homicide investigation that led police to the Minneapolis apartment where a Swat team officer fatally shot Locke while conducting a search warrant, police said on Tuesday.

The teen was arrested on Monday in Winona, St Paul police said on Twitter. He was booked into the juvenile detention center on suspicion of second-degree murder in the 10 January killing of Otis Elder and was expected to be charged. ...

Court documents seeking to charge Locke’s cousin as an adult say police used surveillance videos to connect him to Elder’s shooting after a witness told police that a silver Mercedes-Benz had fled the scene.

The documents said video showed the Mercedes parked near Elder’s vehicle, with two males getting out and approaching – one entering the passenger side and the other standing outside the driver’s door. “This male stepped back and a loud gunshot was heard,” the documents say.

Surveillance video allowed police to track the Mercedes, which was stolen, to the Bolero Flats apartment building where Locke was shot. The 17-year-old was identified by witnesses as living with his mother in Apartment 1402, and also having a key to 701, where his brother lives and where Locke was shot by police.

NEW Emails: Hunter Biden Sought MASSIVE $120M Kazakh-Chinese-Ukrainian Oil Deal

You Might Not Like It, but Hunter Biden’s Shenanigans Are Real News

The troubled presidential scion is in the news again and raising questions about his father, President Joe Biden. This unwanted attention has also renewed questions about the media’s relative lack of interest in the younger Biden’s highly questionable business interests during the 2020 presidential election.

Last week, Politico reported: “The New York Times is still digging into Hunter Biden’s business relationships.” The Gray Lady sued the State Department to get emails about Hunter Biden that were sent or received by the US Embassy in Romania. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, these new emails reveal. ...

Meanwhile, conservative media is turning up the heat. Fox Nation is currently streaming a four-part series called Who Is Hunter Biden, and author Peter Schweizer just published a new book called Red-Handed, which alleges that the Biden family “received some $31 million from Chinese individuals who are linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.” According to Schweizer, one of those individuals was investor Che Fung, who is referred to in emails by Hunter Biden as the ‘Superchairman.’” Schweizer also alleges that “Hunter Biden was paying his father’s bills with the foreign money…”

If true, these revelations dramatically advance the story from garden-variety corruption (Hunter Biden trading on his daddy’s name) to something much more nefarious.

Rightwing lobby group Alec driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry

The influential rightwing lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) is driving a surge in new state laws to block boycotts of the oil industry. The group’s strategy, which aims to protect large oil firms and other conservative-friendly industries, is modelled on legislation to punish divestment from Israel.

Since the beginning of the year, state legislatures in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Indiana have introduced a version of a law drafted by Alec, called the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, to shield big oil from share selloffs and other measures intended to protest the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis. A dozen other states have publicly supported the intent of the legislation.

Texas has already begun compiling a list of companies to target for refusing to do business with the oil industry after the state passed a version of the law last year. Top of the list is the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock.

The push to blacklist firms that boycott the oil industry follows a meeting in December between politicians and Alec, a corporate-funded organisation that writes legislation for Republican-controlled states to adopt and drive conservative causes.

At that meeting in San Diego, members of Alec’s energy taskforce voted to promote the model legislation requiring banks and financial companies to sign a pledge to not boycott petroleum companies in order to obtain state contracts. The wording closely resembles that of laws drafted by Alec and adopted in more than 30 states to block support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

Climate Expert Debunks Big Oil's Lies About Carbon Capture, Nature-Based Solutions

A world-renowned climatologist made clear to Congress on Tuesday that some of fossil fuel companies' key proposals to reduce planet-heating emissions are talking points rather than "meaningful" solutions to the climate emergency the industry created.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, was among the experts who testified at the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's hearing about Big Oil climate pledges, which board members from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell refused to attend.

Democrats on the panel asked Mann to address carbon capture and storage (CCS) as well as nature-based solutions such as planting trees—both of which critics warn polluters only promote so they can keep extracting and burning fossil fuels.

"The climate crisis is not a theoretical problem for the future, it's an imminent problem and crisis right now," Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said near the end of the hearing. "It is real and it is here. In order to confront it, we need real solutions that are proven to work and to keep our planet safe."

The congresswoman noted that fossil fuel giants often point to CCS "as a way to offset their greenhouse gas emissions while allowing them to continue producing their toxic product at the same level," despite a lack of evidence that such technology actually works.

"Dr. Mann, have there been advancements in CCS technology that make you believe it will perform as advertised by fossil fuel companies?" Pressley asked.

"No, I don't see any evidence at this point," Mann said. "There hasn't been a proof of concept that shows that you can use CCS and produce energy without producing carbon pollution, and as long as there's no proof of concept for that, then obviously it's not a meaningful climate solution and it displaces meaningful climate solutions like clean energy, renewable energy."

Pressley said she "wholeheartedly" agrees that CCS is unproven and highlighted that its risks are "catastrophically dangerous," referencing February 2020, when a pressurized pipe containing carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide ruptured and left residents of Mississippi's Yazoo County "convulsing, foaming at the mouth, and even unconscious."

Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) pointed out that some companies—such as Shell—push for nature-based solutions, and asked for Mann's perspective.

"This is a common sort of pledge that you hear from fossil fuel producers," Mann said. "It's a bit of a shell game because the idea is that we can offset these fossil fuels that are carbon that's been buried beneath the surface of the planet for millions of years, that we can somehow offset that by planting trees whose lifetime may be decades or at most centuries. And if you actually look at the residence time of that carbon, it's not equivalent. You can't make up for the carbon pollution we're extracting from the Earth by just simply expanding forests."

"And in fact, in recent years, we've seen that it can work in just the opposite direction, because we're seeing worse drought and worse wildfires, and so we're seeing much of that carbon that is stored in forests increasingly burning and putting that carbon back into the atmosphere," the expert explained. "So it is not a viable strategy for really reducing carbon emissions, but it does give fossil fuel interests a convenient talking point."

While reiterating "there is no evidence that these sorts of projects can be viable at the scale that is necessary to reduce net carbon into the atmosphere," Mann also emphasized that "what does work is moving away from fossil fuels, toward renewable energy."

Lawmakers also relied on Mann to debunk other industry greenwashing. Noting that fossil fuel companies are still "touting natural gas as the clean solution to climate change," Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) asked him to explain why gas is also "not a viable alternative for the future."

"Natural gas is a fossil fuel," Mann responded. "When you burn it, it generates carbon pollution—maybe somewhat less than when you burn coal, but at the same time, the process of extracting natural gas from the ground …hydraulic fracturing or fracking, releases what we call fugitive methane."

"Natural gas is mostly methane," he added. "It releases that into the atmosphere, and methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide on the relevant timescales of one or two decades, and so there is no reason to believe that natural gas is any more climate-friendly than other fossil fuels—and investing in natural gas is crowding out investment in true clean, renewable energy that can help us decarbonize our economy and address the climate crisis."

While other Democratic committee members engaged Mann and two of the other witnesses—Tracey Lewis of Public Citizen and Mark van Baal of Follow This—on various relevant issues, Republicans at the hearing expressed outrage about efforts to "demonize" the fossil fuel industry, tried to direct attention to the emissions of other countries, and relied on comments from the final witness, Katie Tubb of the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

The committee's chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), planned the hearing with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a subcommittee leader. Maloney, who has scheduled another hearing for March, noted that Tuesday's event came after four Big Oil CEOs appeared before them in October.

Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement Tuesday that "we're grateful to Chairs Maloney and Khanna for their continued work to advance the committee's investigation and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable."

"It's now a matter of congressional record that the fossil fuel industry's 'business-as-usual' plans are exacerbating the climate crisis, not reducing emissions," Wiles said. "Today's hearing made it clear that Big Oil’s misleading pledges are simply more deception from an industry that has lied about climate change for decades."

"We now know why the Big Oil board members were not eager to participate in this hearing—even the industry's staunchest defenders could not contest the fundamental fact that these companies are fueling climate change and are not serious partners in solutions," he added.

Mann, meanwhile, warned lawmakers about the dangers of inaction.

"People ask, 'What's dangerous climate change?'" he noted. "Dangerous climate change is here. If you're Puerto Rico, if you're California, if you're Australia, if you're my home state of Pennsylvania that saw that record flooding with Hurricane Ida, we are already seeing devastating consequences of climate change, and it will simply get worse and worse."

Pointing out that scientists have already recorded ocean warming that is raising alarm, Mann said that "the real danger is that we start to cross certain tipping points where the damage that we do is irreversible on human timescales, on historical timescales."

"The cost of inaction," he told the panel, "is so far greater than the cost of taking action."

'Obscene': BP Profits Hit 8-Year High Amid Climate Emergency

Fueled by rising oil and gas prices that have left millions struggling to afford energy bills, British fossil fuel giant BP reported its highest yearly profits in nearly a decade on Tuesday while rejecting calls for a tax on its financial windfall.

The company raked in $12.8 billion in profits in 2021—more than its annual income for the past eight years. The announcement comes a week after BP's rival Shell reported $19.3 billion in profits last year.

BP CEO Bernard Looney said Tuesday the company is "delivering distributions to shareholders with $4.15 billion of buybacks announced," and the company intends to deliver $1.5 billion more in share buybacks.

"We see these wealthy firms extracting billions in profit from one of our most basic needs," said Ryan Morrison, a just transition campaigner for Friends of the Earth Scotland. "BP and other fossil fuel bosses are getting even richer as the price of energy pushes millions more homes into fuel poverty and forces people to choose between heating and eating."

Also of Interest

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

Despite US Warnings, Ukraine Says Diplomatic Solution More Likely Than Russian Invasion

Europe Should Leave NATO Behind And Integrate With Russia

State Department Approves $100 Million Deal for Taiwan Missile Upgrades

Propagandist for Syria terror proxies compromised Amnesty International, leaked docs show

Gideon Levy: Tell Me What’s Untrue in Amnesty’s Report on Israel

Evidence police in Belfast colluded with loyalists in the Troubles, report finds

Jamie Dimon Lands in the Cross Hairs of Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown

US Military Faces Crisis in Hawaii After Leak Poisons Water

Erin Brockovich: This lawyer should be world-famous for his battle with Chevron – but he’s in jail

Chimpanzees observed treating wounds of others, using crushed insects

Rumble Offers Rogan 100 Million Dollars With No Censorship

Dave Portnoy CATCHES Rogan Cancellers Using N Word In 2014

Briahna Joy Gray: Biden ABANDONS Free Community College Promise After $900K Ivy League Payout

A Little Night Music

TV Slim and his Heartbreakers - Flatfoot Sam

T.V. Slim - Don't Reach Across My Plate

TV Slim - Don't Knock The Blues

TV Slim and his Heartbreakers - Flat Foot Sam Met Jim Dandy

Oscar T V Wills and his Heartbreakers - Your Kisses Changed Me

Oscar T-V Slim Wills And His Heartbreakers - My Ship Is Sinking

T.V. Slim & his Heartbreakers - Darling Remember

T.V. Slim - My Baby is Gone

T.V. Slim & his Bluesmen - Gravy Around Your Steak

T.V. Slim & his Bluesmen - Dream Girl/Your Kisses Send Me

Oscar Wills - Nervous Boogie

T.V. Slim & his Heartbreakers - To Prove My Love

T.V. Slim & his Bluesmen - You Won't Treat Me Right