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News and Opinion

Russians ridicule western media on ‘day of no invasion’

As 16 February – the day when some briefings had forecast Russia would invade Ukraine – came and passed without incident, pundits in Moscow lined up for their chance to dunk on the western media.

“What a sad celebration we have today,” said Olga Skabeeva, the host of the state media talkshow 60 Minutes, while standing on a stage emblazoned with the logos of the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail. “The day of no invasion of Ukraine, or perhaps as they say in Ukraine, the day when Putin once again hasn’t attacked.”

Western leaders led by Joe Biden have gone public with what they claim are Russian plans to launch an invasion of Ukraine, hoping that exposing the Kremlin’s alleged moves in advance could avert a war. But announcements of a date and, in the case of some tabloids, the exact time when Russia could launch the potential attack set up a big target for Russian officials and media to ridicule.

The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who enjoys prodding foreign media, wrote a “request to the mass disinformation outlets of the USA and Britain – Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Sun etc – announce the schedule of our ‘invasions’ for the coming year. I’d like to plan my vacation”. A day earlier, she wrote: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day of the failure of western war propaganda. Humiliated and destroyed without firing a shot.”

‘Who wants Russia ill will continue to undermine any trust in the document’ - George Galloway

Ukrainians TRASH CNN, Western Media: 'Worse Than Russians'

The propagandists are spinning so fast, it'll make you dizzy:

US and UK trying to fend off Russian invasion by making intelligence public

The US and the UK have sought to fend off a feared Russian invasion of Ukraine in part by going public with an unusual amount of intelligence, hoping to rob Vladimir Putin of the element of surprise.

There have been regular briefings in Washington and London – sometimes from national security officials who do not often talk to the press – going into detail about potential Russian military tactics, regime change plots, and “false flag” operations Moscow is allegedly planning to provide a pretext for invasion.

Derek Chollet, the state department counselor, said on Wednesday that the US and its allies wanted to warn of Russia possibly carrying out such operations in Ukraine “in order to hinder their ability to do so”.

“We are trying to be as forthcoming as possible, to say that’s their play and what could be coming,” Chollet said. In doing so, the US and UK are trying to beat Russia at what has largely been Moscow’s game in recent years – or at least to provide better opposition.

Ex-U.S. Ambassador to USSR: Ukraine Crisis Stems Directly from Post-Cold War Push to Expand NATO

Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse

Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.

Then in late January when the calendar debunked the Military Times incendiary headline “Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January”, that same outlet ran a much less viral story with the headline “Russia not yet ready for full-scale attack says Ukraine“.

This past Friday the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring, tweeted the following:

“Putin has big weekend plans in Ukraine: 1) he’s going to cut power and heat, knock out Ukrainian navy and air force, kill general staff and hit them with cyber attack; 2) then install pro-Russian president and 3) resort to full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”

And, of course, none of these things happened. The weekend came and went, Haring issued a sheepish admission that she got it wrong, then immediately turned around and proclaimed that “Putin may strike on Weds”, then later pivoted to “We’ve been so focused on Russian troops and tanks that we missed Moscow’s strategy: strangle Ukraine’s economy and sap the resolve of its people.”

No way. I'm a think tank expert. We make predictions. We get some right, we get some wrong. Things looked mighty bad on Friday. They still do. Putin may strike on Weds or he may sit on the border and just menace us all. VVP hasn't called yet to tell me his plans. Did he call you? https://t.co/VUatu9wdYW

— Melinda Haring (@melindaharing) February 14, 2022

On January 14th we were told by NBC that we could expect a Russian invasion of Ukraine “within a month’s time”. On February 14th the prediction was as unfulfilled as the wishes of a Jordan Peterson fan on Valentine’s day.

Then British outlets The Daily Mirror and The Sun told us that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to come at precisely 1am GMT on Wednesday, citing “American intelligence agencies”. This prediction, whose frightening “DAWN RAID” presentation likely gave sales a bit of a boost, was again debunked by the hands of the clock.

“The 3am time (1am GMT) when US intelligence sources suspected a Russian attack came and went without incident last night as Putin continued to keep The West guessing,” The Sun’s updated online article now reads.

Last week the US president told US allies that Putin may invade on February 16th, a prediction Ukraine’s President Zelensky made fun of in a widely misinterpreted joke. This claim also has been discredited by the clock.

And now we’re being told that nobody seriously believed Russia was going to invade on the 16th, and that February 20th is the real invasion date.

“The prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 16 was always overhyped,” Politico tells us. “The time frame to really keep an eye on is what happens shortly after Feb. 20.”

Radio evangelist Harold Camping famously predicted that the Apocalypse would occur on September 6, 1994, then again on September 29 of the same year, and then again on October 2. In 2005 he revised his claim and said the real Rapture was coming on May 21, 2011, and then when that failed to pan out he said it was happening on October 21 of that year. Whenever he got a prediction wrong he’d just do some more magic Bible math and move the date into the future.

Camping was one of many exploitative Christian cult leaders who’ve falsely predicted the Second Coming over the years amassing thousands of followers with an early form of tabloid clickbait. The difference between the Harold Campings of history and the Ukraine invasion prognosticators of today is that Harold Camping died disgraced and disdained instead of being elevated to lucrative positions in the most influential news media outlets on the planet.

Today’s Harold Campings will invent all kinds of justifications for their shameless participation in a transparent government psyop designed to advanced the unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the US hegemon once their war forecasts fail to bear fruit. The most common justification will be to claim that the Biden administration’s hawkish posturing and strategic information warfare is what deterred the forcible annexation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation. ...

We’re already seeing this “we stopped the Russian invasion” narrative circulated by unscrupulous pundits like Tom Friedman of the New York Times, whose spectacularly awful career differs from a stopped clock only in that it is wrong two additional times per day.

“If Vladimir Putin opts to back away from invading Ukraine, even temporarily, it’s because Joe Biden — that guy whose right-wing critics suggest is so deep in dementia he wouldn’t know Kyiv from Kansas or AARP from NATO — has matched every Putin chess move with an effective counter of his own,” writes Friedman.

Putin could just as easily have launched a virulent propaganda campaign claiming the US is about to invade Mexico any minute now and threatening severe repercussions if it does, and then taking credit when the invasion fails to occur for his bold stance against the Biden regime. It would have been the easiest thing in the world; just copy the western script replacing each instance of “Ukraine” with “Mexico” and each instance of “Crimea” with “Texas”.

We’re also seeing a new narrative in the oven with claims of a Russian cyberattack against Ukraine, which as an invisible attack whose evidence is classified would serve the imperial face-saving effort, with the added bonus of justifying further economic warfare on Moscow.

“This is such a transparent scam,” journalist Aaron Maté recently tweeted of the hacking claims. “The warmongers crafting new US sanctions on Russia have repeatedly said that Russian cyberattacks could trigger them. With no invasion happening, this is Plan B.”

The Ukraine invasion that never arrives is showing us once again that when it comes to Russia you really can just completely ignore all the so-called “experts” in the mainstream media. Just dismiss 100 percent of everything they say, because any random schmoe’s best guess would be better than theirs.

Looking to the mainstream media for truth is like looking to a prostitute for love. That’s not what they’re there for. That’s not their job.

NBC CAUGHT Spreading Literal Nazi, Deep State Propaganda

The Pundits Who Lied America Into A War

The Pundits Who Lied America Into A War from Andrew Perez on Vimeo.

China Denounces US as 'Bandits' for Seizing $7 Billion as Afghans Starve

Following the Biden administration's unilateral decision last week to seize $7 billion worth of assets from Afghanistan amid a mounting humanitarian crisis that threatens to kill more civilians than two decades of war, foreign leaders and critics worldwide continue to express disgust, with China on Tuesday condemning the U.S. for dispossessing Afghans of their own money.

"Without the consent of the Afghan people, the U.S. willfully disposes of assets that belong to the Afghan people, even keeping them as its own. This is no different from the conduct of bandits," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Tuesday during a press conference in Beijing.

China's response came after U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to confiscate more than $7 billion that the Afghan Central Bank has on deposit in the Federal Reserve. Biden froze those funds last August when the Taliban regained control of Kabul as U.S. military and NATO forces withdrew, and now he plans to divide them between the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and humanitarian aid for Afghanistan.

According to Wang, "This latest example has once again laid bare that the rules-based order the U.S. claims to champion is not the kind of rules and order to defend the weak and uphold justice, but to maintain its own hegemony."

He added that the U.S. "should unfreeze [Afghan] assets, lift unilateral sanctions on Afghanistan as soon as possible, and assume its due responsibility to ease the humanitarian crisis in the country."

Amid U.S. sanctions and worsening winter conditions, suffering in Afghanistan has reached catastrophic levels. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), 97% of Afghans are projected to fall into poverty by the second half of 2022. Moreover, nearly 23 million Afghans—over half of the country's population of roughly 40 million—are facing acute food insecurity, with one million children at risk of the most severe form of malnutrition.

If the Biden administration refuses to change course, more Afghans could starve to death in the coming months than were killed during two decades of U.S.-led war, prompting critics to describe the White House's decision to snatch the war-torn and poverty-stricken country's assets as "tantamount to mass murder" and reflective of a brutal willingness to facilitate "mass civilian death."

In a Tuesday interview with France24, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged Biden to reverse his decision to allocate $3.5 billion to families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, stressing that all $7 billion belongs to Afghanistan and that it is "wrong" for the U.S. to expropriate another country's money for its own purposes.

"The people of Afghanistan share the pain of the American people, share the pain of the families and loved ones of those who died, who lost their lives in the tragedy of September 11," Karzai said earlier this week.

"We commiserate with them [but] Afghan people are as much victims as those families who lost their lives. Withholding money or seizing money from the people of Afghanistan in their name is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against Afghan people," he added, asking U.S. courts to return the funds.

Phyllis Rodriguez, the mother of a victim of the 9/11 attacks, denounced Biden's "outrageous" move to take billions of dollars from Kabul to compensate Americans while millions of Afghans are on the brink of starvation due to economic sanctions the U.S. imposed at the conclusion of its 20-year war.

"The suffering of the Afghan people at the hands of the United States and its allies is reprehensible," she said. "This is adding insult to injury."

In an opinion piece published earlier this week, Bloomberg columnist Ruth Pollard wrote that in the wake of Biden's executive order, "many in Afghanistan and its diaspora pointed out the obvious: This appears to be a backwards attempt to punish Afghanistan for its role in the 2001 attacks on the U.S."

"If so," wrote Pollard, "the aim was off-target. Of the origins of the 9/11 hijackers, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Lebanon and Egypt. Not one was Afghan. The Taliban, who ruled most of the country, had provided refuge to Osama bin Laden; but, given the median age of Afghans today is 18, those attacks took place before many were even born."

As for the $3.5 billion that the White House has proposed using for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, peace activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, urged global aid groups to reject those funds and called on "other countries and institutions not to cooperate in the implementation of [Biden's] unjust order."

Experts have noted that the sovereign wealth captured by Biden undergirds Afghanistan's currency and is not meant for aid.

Maduro ally informed US about bribing Venezuelan officials, court filing claims

A businessman who was a close ally of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, was secretly signed up by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a cooperating source in 2018 and provided agents with information about bribes he paid to Venezuelan officials, according to a US court filing unsealed on Wednesday. Alex Saab agreed to be an “active law enforcement source” for the DEA and forfeited nearly $10m of his fortune as part of his cooperation agreement with the US, which included several meetings with US law enforcement officials in his native Colombia and Europe.

However, he was deactivated as a source after failing to meet a 30 May 2019 deadline to surrender himself. Two months later, he was sanctioned by the Trump administration and indicted in Miami federal court on charges of siphoning millions from state contracts to build affordable housing for Venezuela’s socialist government.

A lawyer for Saab, David Rivkin, said in a statement that Saab only met with US law enforcement officials to explain that his companies had done nothing wrong, adding that Venezuela was fully aware of his engagement with those officials. But the news could be an embarrassment to Maduro’s government, which has championed Saab as a special envoy who helped Venezuela’s government conduct business deals under the radar of US sanctions meant to force the ruling Socialist party from power.

Saab was indicted in 2019 and arrested in 2020 while he was refueling his plane in the west African island nation of Cape Verde, which last year approved his extradition to the United States – a move Maduro’s government described as a kidnapping.

US prosecutors say Saab, a Colombia-born businessman, siphoned about $350m out of Venezuela via the United States as part of a scheme that involved bribing Venezuelan government officials for fake import documents to secure dollar payments at a favorable exchange rate.

Saab has pleaded not guilty to the charge against him.

Media DOXXES Private Small Donors To Freedom Convoy

‘Carnival of chaos’: Ottawa police face growing flak for failure to end protests

Police in Ottawa have warned they will begin breaking up blockades that have gridlocked traffic, angered residents and plunged Canada’s capital into a crisis that has rippled throughout the country. ... On Wednesday, officers began handing out leaflets warning protesters to leave the area immediately or face the possible loss of their vehicle licenses. ...

But the police’s failure to prevent the protests in the beginning, and then to rid the city of the trucks over a three-week period, has baffled and angered residents of Ottawa and onlookers across Canada. Ottawa’s police chief, Peter Sloly, resigned on Tuesday as the force admitted they have little to show for the C$14m (US$11m)spent since the protests began. ...

The perceived apathy or impotence of the police when dealing with the convoy activists has also underscored what activists and academics say is a double standard in how officers respond towards Indigenous or Black-led protests. On Tuesday, video of Royal Canadian Mounted police embracing protesters at a dismantled blockade in southern Alberta laid bare the stark contrast. Only months before, the RCMP faced criticism for beating anti-logging protesters, ripping off their masks and using pepper spray on them. And in September, Toronto police violently disbanded protests supporting people living in a homeless encampment.

Trudeau Freezes Protesters’ Bank Accounts In Authoritarian Crackdown On Truckers

Sanders Slams Congress for Serving Billionaires and Failing Americans

Less than 24 hours before his Senate Budget Committee hearing about Wall Street greed and oligarchy in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday delivered a sweeping and impassioned speech—reminiscent of his two presidential runs—railing against Congress for serving corporate interests and failing actually address the needs of the American people.
Speaking on the Senate floor for nearly half an hour, the Vermont Independent highlighted that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic "has had a devastating and horrific impact," from "severely" disrupting the education of younger generations to killing over 900,000 people in the United States alone, including essential employees forced to work in dangerous conditions.

"While the vast majority of people in our country are hurting emotionally, they're hurting economically, these are not difficult times for everybody," he explained. "If you are a billionaire in this country or a CEO of a large corporation… these times have not been bad; they have, in fact, have been very, very good."

"When so many people have died, and become ill, and lost their jobs, and missed school, and suffered," Sanders said, "745 billionaires in America became more than $2 trillion richer. And that is, to my mind, the clearest example of the level of corporate greed that we are experiencing."

As people nationwide word about "soaring" gas prices, fossil fuel giants "are making huge profits," Sanders said, noting a similar trend in the food industry.

"Corporate profits are at an all-time high and CEOs, heads of large corporations, have seen huge increases in their compensation packages," the senator said, pointing out that chief executives now make about 350 times more than the average U.S. worker.

"When we speak about oligarchy, we should all understand that we're not just talking about massive levels of income and wealth inequality," Sanders emphasized. "We should all understand that never before in American history have so few owned so much."

"And this issue—the issue of the incredible concentration of ownership in our country—is almost never talked about here in Congress or in the corporate media," he continued, "and that has a lot to do with the corrupt political system that we operate under, where many members of Congress receive huge campaign contributions from these very same people."

The Senate Budget Committee chair then took aim at three Wall Street firms that will also be targeted at his Thursday morning hearing: BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. They collectively manage over $21 trillion in assets, or more than the gross domestic product of the United States, the world's largest economy.

These three firms, Sanders explained, "are major shareholders in more than 96% of S&P 500 companies." They "are the largest shareholders in some of the biggest banks in America" and "are among the top owners of the four major airlines."

BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street also "own an average of 20% of the major drug companies," the senator said, while also noting that a handful of firms "are now the major owners of rental housing" and " control half of the newspapers" in the country.

"When we talk about the growth of oligarchy in America—I talk about it, not a whole lot of other people here do—but when we talk about oligarchy in America, it is not just that the very rich are getting much richer," said Sanders. "The reality is that tens of millions of working-class people, lower-income people, in the wealthiest country on Earth, are suffering today under incredible economic hardship, desperately trying day to day to survive."

While "half of the people in our country are living paycheck to paycheck and tens of millions of our people are an accident, a divorce, an illness, or a layoff away from economic devastation," Sanders noted, "over 80 million Americas are uninsured or under-insured and tens of thousands die each and every year because they don't get to a doctor when they should."

"Many public schools throughout our country lack the resources to adequately educate our young people, or pay their teachers the wages those teachers deserve; at the same time we are the most heavily incarcerated nation on Earth," he added. "Meanwhile, 45 million Americans who did go to college… are now drowning in $1.8 trillion in student debt."

Americans aren't just suffering, he explained. Polls show they are also "giving up on democracy." As Sanders put it: "They work long hours for low wages. They worry about their kids. They can't afford healthcare. They see their jobs going to other countries."

Faced with such conditions, Sanders said, voters are frustrated with elected officials and wondering: "Do they live in the real world? Do they understand what is going on in our lives or are they too busy going out raising campaign contributions from the rich and the powerful?"

"The time is long, long, long overdue for the Congress to start addressing the needs of the American people," Sanders declared. "And I know it is a radical idea to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should do what the American people want, and not what the wealthy campaign contributors want."

Sanders then detailed some actions the vast majority of Americans want Congress to take, from lowering the costs of prescription drugs and expanding Medicare to reforming the tax code.

"When overwhelming numbers of the American people know it is beyond absurd that some billionaires and large, profitable corporations don't pay a nickel in federal income tax," he said, "maybe, just maybe, we might want to change our tax system so that the rich and the powerful start paying their fair share of taxes."

Touching on issues that were negotiated for the stalled Built Back Better Act, Sanders said that "we have dysfunctional childcare" and "our home healthcare system is a disaster," plus "we remain the only major country on Earth not to have paid family and medical leave."

Citing recent scientific warnings and extreme weather—and calling out his colleagues for taking campaign money from Big Oil—Sanders also said that "maybe, just maybe, we stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet."

"We have a lot of work to do," he warned lawmakers. "I'm not sure that we will do it. I am not sure that members of Congress have the willingness or the courage to stand up to the powerful special interests who control the economic and political life of this country."

"But this I will say: If we do not do that, in terms of the economy, in terms of climate, in terms of healthcare, in terms of education," he added, "future generations will look back at this Congress and say, 'Where were you?'"

Texts show Ahmaud Arbery murderers repeatedly using racial slurs, FBI analyst tells court

Two of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery repeatedly used racial slurs in text messages and social media posts, including some violent comments by Arbery’s shooter about Black people, an FBI witness testified Wednesday in their federal hate crimes trial. Amy Vaughan, an FBI intelligence analyst, led the jury through more than two dozen conversations that Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan had with others, identified only by their initials, in the months and years before the 25-year-old Black man’s killing.

The FBI wasn’t able to access the phone of Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael’s father, because it was encrypted, Vaughan said.

In text and Facebook conversations with friends, Travis McMichael frequently used the N-word to describe Black people. In a Facebook conversation with a friend, he also shared a video of a young Black boy dancing on a TV show with a white supremacist song that included the N-word playing over it. He also said that Black people “ruin everything” and said more than once he was glad he wasn’t a Black person, using a racial slur. In many other social media posts, Travis McMichael, 36, talked of violence against Black people and implied he had inclinations towards remorseless racist violence himself. He said he did not like working with Black people.

He had claimed he shot Arbery in self-defense. Jurors on Wednesday saw Facebook posts that McMichael made lauding vigilantism. Defense attorneys have insisted the deadly pursuit of Arbery was motivated by an earnest, though erroneous, suspicion that Arbery had committed crimes.

The hate crimes trial is being heard by a jury of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person.

Biden orders release of Trump White House visitor logs to January 6 panel

Joe Biden has delivered another blow to Donald Trump’s efforts to keep secret his actions around the time of the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection by refusing to exert executive privilege over the former president’s White House visitor logs, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The president has directed the National Archives to turn over the records within 15 days to the House committee investigating the attack by Trump supporters as a “in the light of the urgency” of the panel’s work, the New York Times says.

Trump had insisted that details of who visited him in the White House were protected by executive privilege, a claim identical to the one Biden rejected last year over hundreds of pages of documents, including call logs, daily presidential diaries, handwritten notes and memos from aides. Trump took that case to appeal but lost in the supreme court last month.

The investigation by the House select committee has become increasingly focused on Trump’s Oval Office in recent weeks as it also attempts to unravel his efforts to overturn his defeat by Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Knowledge of who visited the White House and when is seen as crucial to the panel’s inquiry, following recent revelations that a “war room” of Trump insiders, including his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, was set up to plot ways to try to prevent Biden from taking office.

Krystal Ball: Proof Obama DOOMED Dem Party With Working Class

Yale, Stanford and MIT’s fossil fuel investments are illegal, students say

Students at five leading universities have filed legal complaints accusing their colleges of breaking a little-known law by investing in the fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate emergency. The students from Yale, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Vanderbilt wrote to the attorneys general of their respective states on Wednesday asking authorities to investigate breaches of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which requires universities to invest in a manner consistent with their “charitable purposes”.

The novel legal strategy, developed with lawyers from the Climate Defense Project, argues that the law imposes a legal duty to put the public interest first and that their universities, among the wealthiest and most prestigious colleges in the country, are failing to do so by investing in fossil fuel companies that cause damage to the environment and health.

In addition, the complaints say that investments in coal, oil and gas are not financially responsible, as required by the law, because the industries have an uncertain future. The five universities together have total endowment funds of about $150bn, although only a small part is invested in fossil fuel companies. ...

Four of the universities are in states with Democratic attorneys general and their students expect at least a sympathetic hearing. Vanderbilt is in Tennessee, where Slatery is a Republican. But campaigners note that he declined to join 27 other states in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama’s policies to mitigate the climate crisis.

'Monstrous' Methane Plume Seen From Space Highlights Invisible Fracking Dangers

Environmental justice advocates on Wednesday pointed to a methane plume so large it was seen last month from space via satellite as the latest evidence that emissions of the potent fossil fuel must be reined in.

As Bloomberg reported Monday, the geoanalytics firm Kayrros SAS detected the plume of the invisible greenhouse gas, which spanned 56 miles and covered several parishes across Louisiana, on January 21.

The methane plume is the largest concentration of the gas seen via satellite in the U.S. since last October.

The firm said a plume of such size suggested an emissions rate of 105 tons of methane per hour. A release that lasted more than an hour at that rate would have had the same short-term environmental impact as yearly emissions from nearly 2,000 cars, Bloomberg reported.

Methane has 80 times the potency of carbon emissions in terms of heating the planet over a 20-year period, and has accounted for nearly 30% of global heating since pre-industrial times. As Common Dreams reported last week, atmospheric concentrations of methane surpassed 1,900 parts per billion in 2021.

The International Energy Agency said last year that flaring and venting of methane from oil and gas projects should be drastically reduced or eliminated in order to achieve a net-zero emissions energy system by 2050.

"We need comprehensive federal standards to cut methane from pipelines," said Erin Murphy, energy attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources is investigating the cause of the plume, and Kayrros' analysis showed that it likely originated from a leak in a gas pipeline owned by fossil fuel companies Kinder Morgan, Energy Transfer, or Boardwalk Pipelines—but all three have denied responsibility.

Trump’s interior secretary misused position and lied to ethics official, watchdog says

Government investigators say the former US interior secretary Ryan Zinke misused his position to advance a development project in his Montana home town and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement. The interior department’s inspector general said in a report made public on Wednesday that Zinke continued working with a foundation on the commercial project in the community of Whitefish, Montana, even after he committed upon taking office to breaking ties with the foundation.

The report also says Zinke gave incorrect and incomplete information to an interior department ethics official who confronted him over his involvement and that Zinke directed his staff to assist him with the project in a misuse of his position. The Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation was established by Zinke and others in 2007. Zinke and his wife were in negotiations with private developers for the use of foundation land for a commercial development project.

Zinke is a candidate in the June Republican primary for an open Montana congressional seat, a position he held before joining Trump’s cabinet. He stepped down from his role as interior secretary in the Trump administration in December 2018 following a series of scandals in which he was accused of using his position for personal gain.

Also of Interest

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

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Israel Sends Diplomats to Sidelines of Iran Nuclear Deal Talks in Vienna

Ukraine Invasion Scheduled for Wednesday Canceled

Happy 'Russian Invasion' Day

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Follow the Money Behind Senator Pat Toomey and His Boycott of the Vote on Fed Nominees

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Biden his time: how the US president is failing on the climate crisis

Starbucks PROPAGANDIZES Anti-Union Rhetoric As Workers Fight For Wages, Rights: Barista

A Little Night Music

Toussaint McCall - Summertime

Toussaint McCall - I'll Do It for You

Toussaint McCall - Shimmy

Toussaint McCall - I'll Laugh Till I Cry

Toussaint McCall - Let's Do It Over

Toussaint McCall - Baby, You Got It

Toussaint McCall - The Title Escapes Me

Toussaint McCall - I'm Gonna Make Me A Woman

Toussaint McCall - The Toussaint Shuffle