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"If the Kremlin wanted to kill large numbers of people it should have done so with starvation sanctions and proxy militias like a civilized government.

Fashion has moved on since the early 2000s, you savages."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

US Bombed Somalia Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Just before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale military assault on Ukraine, which has drawn accusations of potential war crimes and received global condemnation, the United States hit Somalia with the latest drone attack in its 15-year war against the impoverished nation.

In a statement released Wednesday, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said its Tuesday airstrike targeted suspected al-Shabab militants "after they attacked partner forces in a remote location near Duduble."

The first known U.S. airstrike in Somalia in 2022 was the fifth since the start of President Joe Biden's tenure in the White House.

"Before him, Donald Trump escalated the U.S. war in Somalia like no one else had, bombing the country more in the first two years of his presidency than Barack Obama had in eight, all the way up to January 19, 2021," journalist and author Spencer Ackerman wrote Thursday on his Forever Wars blog. "George W. Bush plunged the U.S. into conflict in Somalia in the first place in 2006."

Ackerman continued:

I hesitate to call Somalia a forgotten war. I write in Reign of Terror that calling it forgotten implies its receiving public attention in the first place. Shortly before I wrote the book, I learned that the House Armed Services Committee had never issued any study of a war that was more than a decade old. There is neither expectation nor effort to articulate a strategy that can bring this circumstance to a conclusion. There isn't even pressure for the most basic oversight.

With minimal spillage of U.S. blood, treasure and less media attention, a war like the one the U.S. wages in Somalia can persist as long as there is funding for it. In Washington, there is nothing more than a vacant shrug of the shoulders and a numb assumption that whatever it is the U.S. is doing must be the best of bad options. After 15 years, AFRICOM doesn't need to justify the operation beyond signing off with "violent extremist organizations like al-Shabab present long-term threats to the U.S. and regional interests."

Writing as Russia's bombardment of Ukraine killed dozens of civilians and produced thousands of refugees, Ackerman stressed that he was not engaging in "facile whataboutism."

"I don't think there's any whataboutism necessary," argued Ackerman. "You do not, in fact, have to choose between American and Russian imperialisms. The correct choice is to detest and resist both, with emphasis placed on resisting your own state's aggression, since you stand the greatest chance of success against something justified in your name."

CrossTalk | ‘Demilitarize’ and ‘denazify’

Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This

Chris Hedges introduces his latest article for Scheer Post, titled “Chronicle of a War Foretold“, with the following:

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.”

Imperial narrative managers have been falling all over themselves working to dismiss and discredit the abundantly evidenced idea that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was due largely to Moscow’s fear of NATO expansion and the refusal of Washington and Kyiv to solidify a policy that Ukraine would not be added to the alliance.

Take Michael McFaul, the mass media’s go-to pundit on all things Russia:

Putin's horrific invasion of Ukraine has NOTHING to do with NATO expansion! Stop please.

Or read the details: https://t.co/YHXPvoL2Xc via @JoDemocracy

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 24, 2022

Or New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski:

Rep. @Malinowski: "The mask is totally off of Putin. In case anyone had any doubts, this is nothing to do with NATO expansion. It has everything to do with his belief that Ukraine has no right to exist. The very existence of Ukraine is offensive to him." pic.twitter.com/i0VS3ChMHG

— The Hill (@thehill) February 23, 2022

Or Just Security editor Ryan Goodman:

If you think the #RussiaInvasion has much to do with NATO enlargement, this analysis provides many fact-based reasons to think again.

Thanks to great experts on the topic: @PopovaProf and @OxanaShevel#Ukrainehttps://t.co/M0UpxzgKC7

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) February 24, 2022

It makes sense that they would have to do this. After all, if westerners were to get it into their heads that this whole terrible war could have been avoided by simply solidifying a policy of neutrality for Ukraine and issuing a guarantee that it would never be added to NATO, they would begin asking why this did not happen. NATO powers had no interest in adding Ukraine to the alliance anyway, so it doesn’t really make sense to refuse to make such low-cost concessions if the only alternative is mass military slaughter. I mean, unless your goal was to provoke mass military slaughter to advance your own geostrategic objectives.

So they work hard to present the narrative that the invasion has nothing to do with NATO at all, and occurred solely because Putin is an evil madman who hates freedom and wants to destroy democracy. Most western analysis goes no deeper than this:

Why would Putin want to invade Ukraine?
Because he wants democracy to fail, and not just in Ukraine https://t.co/ome1TZMvn0

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) February 11, 2022

But these herculean propaganda efforts have one pretty significant plot hole: if the attack on Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, then how come so many western experts have spent years warning that NATO expansion will lead to an attack on Ukraine?

Check out this 2015 video clip by John Mearsheimer, for example:

Best advice to solve the Russia-Ukraine Conflict was given by John J. Mearsheimer in 2015 which nobody listened.

"The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."#RussiaUkraineCrisis pic.twitter.com/kcRnuhncfu

— Buddhi (@buddhimedia) February 24, 2022

Or this one by the late great Stephen F Cohen back in 2010:

The late historian Stephen Cohen in 2010: “There has been a tremendous expansion of America's sphere of influence since the mid-1990s…with all the while, every American administration saying to Russia…‘You cannot have a sphere of influence because that’s the old thinking.’” pic.twitter.com/99vw2SlW0N

— Human Rights Watch Watcher (@queeralamode) February 22, 2022

Or this excerpt from a summary by The Nation of points made by Cohen in a 2017 dialogue with John Batchelor titled “Have 20 Years of NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?“:

NATO promises that Georgia might one day become a member state was an underlying cause of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, in effect a US-Russian proxy war. The result was the near ruination of Georgia. NATO remains active in Georgia today.

Similar NATO overtures to Ukraine also underlay the crisis in that country in 2014, which resulted in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war in Donbass, and in effect another US-Russian proxy war. Meanwhile, US-backed Kiev remains in profound economic and political crisis, and Ukraine fraught with the possibility of a direct American-Russian military conflict.

Or this from Stephen M Walt in 2015:

Today, those who want to arm Ukraine are demanding that Russia cease all of its activities in Ukraine, withdraw from Crimea, and let Ukraine join the EU and/or NATO if it wants and if it meets the membership requirements. In other words, they expect Moscow to abandon its own interests in Ukraine, full stop. It would be wonderful if Western diplomacy could pull off this miracle, but how likely is it? Given Russia’s history, its proximity to Ukraine, and its long-term security concerns, it is hard to imagine Putin capitulating to our demands without a long and costly struggle that will do enormous additional damage to Ukraine.
…

The solution to this crisis is for the United States and its allies to abandon the dangerous and unnecessary goal of endless NATO expansion and do whatever it takes to convince Russia that we want Ukraine to be a neutral buffer state in perpetuity. We should then work with Russia, the EU, and the IMF to develop an economic program that puts that unfortunate country back on its feet.

Or this from George Kennan right after the US Senate approved NATO expansion all the way back in 1998:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves… Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

Or how about now-CIA Director William Burns’s 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Or what the last US ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock recently wrote about the Ukraine conflict, calling it “an avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense”:

In 1997, when the question of adding more members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement: “I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.”

So many people who’ve worked hard to gain an understanding of the Russian government have been warning for years that NATO expansionism would lead to a disastrous conflict, strongly emphasising Ukraine as a powderkeg where that conflict could ignite. Yet we’re being asked to believe that what we’re seeing in Ukraine has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO expansion and is due rather to Vladimir Putin simply being a mean jerk who wants to ruin everything.

The aforementioned Michael McFaul even goes so far as to pretend this thing we were warned about for decades was never anything anyone ever mentioned until the end of last year:

Why were not thinking/debating/writing/tweeting about NATO expansion in 2009? 2010? 2011? 2012? 2013? 2014? 2015? 2016? 2017? 2018? 2019? 2020? Why are you now? Something change in Brussels? No. Putin massed his army on Ukraine's border and invented this "NATO expansion" crisis.

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 9, 2022

Imperial spinmeisters have even gone so far as to deceitfully claim Putin makes no mention of NATO in a speech about intervening in Ukraine and citing that as evidence that he’s just a land-grabbing Hitler-like monster, hoping no one would fact check them:

And after everything, this Putin speech has nothing to do with NATO and everything to do with challenging Ukraine’s legitimacy as a state.

— Isabelle Khurshudyan (@ikhurshudyan) February 21, 2022

When he most certainly did:

I've seen numerous pundit-hawks point to Putin's speech today as the definitive evidence that all of this is about imperial ambitions and has nothing to do with NATO...even though Putin again specifically mentions NATO expansion in the speech. Dishonesty or laziness? pic.twitter.com/57Nwlpu2qu

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) February 22, 2022

And continues to:

Kremlin issues 2 demands to Ukraine:
1)Per Minsk2 agreement, disarm
2)Remain neutral; no joining #NATO
No demands for #VolodymyrZelensky to step down. No demand for #ukraine to join Russian Federation. #Putin says incursion can end now if terms are met. #BREAKING #news #Russia

— Manila Chan (@ManilaChan) February 24, 2022

So I dunno, if experts have been warning for many years that NATO expansion would provoke an attack, and the guy launching the attack is explicitly citing NATO expansion as a driving motive for his actions, it seems like maybe it’s sorta kinda got something to do with NATO expansion.

Which would be great news, because it would mean that the US and its allies actually have a lot more power to end this war than they’ve been letting on, and no good reason not to do so immediately.

Putin Puts Russian Nuclear Forces on High Alert as Resistance to Ukraine Invasion Grows

The Guardian isn't trying to hide that it is promoting western propaganda narratives:

Putin signals escalation as he puts Russia’s nuclear force on high alert

Vladimir Putin has ordered his military to put Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces on high alert, in the latest signal from the Russian leader that he is prepared to resort to the most extreme level of brinkmanship is his effort to achieve victory in Ukraine.

The US accused Putin of “totally unacceptable” escalation and made clear that it would keep up its support of Ukraine and punitive measures on Russia. With the EU also announcing unprecedented new measures against Moscow, it was clear that Putin’s assault on Ukraine had failed to yield the quick victories he had anticipated but had instead rallied a concerted western response that was potentially devastating for Russia’s economy.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, announced that a delegation from Kyiv would meet Russian officials without preconditions on his country’s border with Belarus, but it was far from clear Putin was ready to entertain talks that did not involve compliance with his demands that Ukraine accept partition and disarm. “I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting, but let them try, so that later not a single citizen of Ukraine has any doubt that I, as president, tried to stop the war,” Zelenskiy said. ...

Putin’s nuclear order came at a meeting between the president, the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff of the armed forces of Russia, Valery Gerasimov. “Senior officials of the leading Nato countries also allow aggressive statements against our country, therefore I order the minister of defence and the chief of the general staff [of the Russian armed forces] to transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty,” Putin said in televised comments.

“Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading Nato members made aggressive statements regarding our country.”

BATTLE UPDATE: Putin's Forces STALL, Meet FIERCE Resistance |Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Scott Ritter, worth a full read:

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Perspective

The major takeaway from this unfolding situation should be that Russia’s president does not bluff, and that the West would do well to listen closely to what he has to say. As Russian troops poured across the Ukrainian border, Western diplomats and pundits proclaimed shock and dismay. But Russia had been clear about what it wanted, and what the consequences of failing to get that would be. This war was predictable, if only the West had listened. The fighting rages in Ukraine. How this war will end is uncertain. The old military adage that no plan survives initial contact with the enemy applies in full. What is known is that the US and Europe are imposing a second tranche of hard-hitting sanctions designed to punish Russia.

It is important to point out that anyone who believed this second round of sanctions would compel a change in Russian behavior will be disappointed. Russia’s course of action has incorporated the full range of sanctions planned by the West — not a difficult task, since there had been wide speculation about their scope since sanctions were first threatened in spring 2021. The problem isn’t the sanctions, but what follows. These sanctions exhaust the options the US, Nato and the EU have for responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They have no follow-on plan. Russia, on the other hand, has such a plan. It has been very clear about what the future holds. Again, however, the West has not been listening.

Russia will not take this second tranche of sanctions laying down. Putin has made clear that Russia will respond in kind, using symmetrical (i.e., countersanctions) and asymmetrical (i.e., cyberattacks) actions designed to disrupt the economies of targeted nations and entities. Russia has made no secret that this is its intended course of action, but as with its “military-technical” solution for Ukraine, the West shrugged off the Russian threat. Russia, however, does not bluff.

Russia has also made clear that its security guarantees go beyond preventing Ukraine from joining Nato and include the return of Nato’s military infrastructure to pre-1997 levels. In short, all Nato forces deployed into Eastern Europe must be returned to their home bases, and the two missile defense sites in Poland and Romania dismantled. This is the demand that will drive future Russian relations with the West. Rather than acceding to Russia’s demands, Nato has been doubling down on the reinforcement of its eastern flank, dispatching additional forces to Poland, Romania and the Baltics.

Russiagaters, NeoCons Push WORLD WAR 3 With Russia

An excellent piece by Glenn Greenwald, worth a full read. Lots more info at the link.

War Propaganda About Ukraine Becoming More Militaristic, Authoritarian, and Reckless

In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

Less than a week into this war, that can no longer be said. One of the media's most beloved members of Congress, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), on Friday explicitly and emphatically urged that the U.S. military be deployed to Ukraine to establish a “no-fly zone” — i.e., American soldiers would order Russia not to enter Ukrainian airspace and would directly attack any Russian jets or other military units which disobeyed. That would, by definition and design, immediately ensure that the two countries with by far the planet's largest nuclear stockpiles would be fighting one another, all over Ukraine.

Kinzinger's fantasy that Russia would instantly obey U.S. orders due to rational calculations is directly at odds with all the prevailing narratives about Putin having now become an irrational madman who has taken leave of his senses — not just metaphorically but medically — and is prepared to risk everything for conquest and legacy. This was not the first time such a deranged proposal has been raised; days before Kinzinger unveiled his plan, a reporter asked Pentagon spokesman John Kirby why Biden has thus far refused this confrontational posture. The Brookings Institution's Ben Wittes on Sunday demanded: “Regime change: Russia.” The President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, celebrated that “now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.”

Having the U.S. risk global nuclear annihilation over Ukraine is an indescribably insane view, as one realizes upon a few seconds of sober reflection. We had a reminder of that Sunday morning when “Putin ordered his nuclear forces on high alert, reminding the world he has the power to use weapons of mass destruction, after complaining about the West’s response to his invasion of Ukraine” — but it is completely unsurprising that it is already being suggested. ...

It is genuinely hard to overstate how overwhelming the unity and consensus in U.S. political and media circles is. It is as close to a unanimous and dissent-free discourse as anything in memory, certainly since the days following 9/11. Marco Rubio sounds exactly like Bernie Sanders, and Lindsay Graham has no even minimal divergence from Nancy Pelosi. Every word broadcast on CNN or printed in The New York Times about the conflict perfectly aligns with the CIA and Pentagon's messaging. And U.S. public opinion has consequently undergone a radical and rapid change; while recent polling had shown large majorities of Americans opposed to any major U.S. role in Ukraine, a new Gallup poll released on Friday found that “52% of Americans see the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests” with almost no partisan division (56% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats), while “85% of Americans now view [Russia] unfavorably while 15% have a positive opinion of it.” ...

Besides 9/11 and the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Americans have been subjected to numerous spates of war propaganda, including in 2011 when then-President Obama finally agreed to order the U.S. to participate in a France/UK-led NATO regime change operation in Libya, as well as throughout the Obama and early Trump years when the CIA was fighting a clandestine and ultimately failed regime change war in Syria, on the same side as Al-Qaeda, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. In both instances, government/media disinformation and emotional manipulation were pervasive, as it is in every war. But those episodes were not even in the same universe of intensity and ubiquity as what is happening now and what happened after 9/11 — and that matters a great deal for understanding why so many are vulnerable to the machinations of war propaganda without even realizing they are affected by it.

War in Ukraine: Ruble plummets as west tightens Russia sanctions

Moscow braces for market meltdown Monday as new sanctions hit

Moscow is bracing for economic panic when markets open on Monday morning, with the value of the rouble expected to plummet after the US and European Union announced unprecedented sanctions over the weekend.

Those measures targeted the Russian central bank, which has intervened to prop up the value of the rouble following Vladimir Putin’s order to invade Ukraine. They also marked the first time Russian banks have been excluded from the Swift international payments system.

Major Russian banks such as Sberbank and VTB Bank have assured their customers that they will be able to access their rouble deposits and make exchanges into foreign currencies like dollars and euros. But the economic turbulence will mark a key moment when the gravity of the crisis in Ukraine hits home for many ordinary Russians. ...

Videos circulated on social media of long lines at some Russian ATMs on Sunday morning, although the rush for currency is expected to begin in earnest on Monday as markets open.

Some details of the sanctions remain unclear, and it is possible that western governments will make exceptions for oil and gas payments.

Here’s Why the Russian Sanctions Are a Dud: Big Foreign Banks from the U.S., France, Austria and Italy Are Operating in a “Routine Manner” in Russia

While Ukrainian children sleep with their pets in the subways, living in terror of the bombs raining down on them from their Russian invaders, wealthy Russian oligarchs are being comforted by “relationship managers” at banks owned by the very nations that say they are going to hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine.

Noticeably missing from President Biden’s press conference yesterday on expanded sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine was any mention of how the U.S. and its allies were going to deal with the big foreign global banks that conduct banking business for thousands of Russian corporations and millions of Russian individuals. Biden only mentioned sanctions on Russian banks.

That sent a loud message to the MOEX Index at the Moscow Stock Exchange, which as of 2:49 p.m. today in Moscow (6:49 a.m. in New York) had rallied into positive territory from a loss of as much as 45 percent yesterday, when the precise nature of the expanded sanctions were as yet unknown.

Big Oil Is Trying to Profit from the War in Ukraine

Putin’s tanks had barely crossed the border into Ukraine before the American Petroleum Institute (API) was out on Twitter attempting to exploit the crisis. Without even a word of solidarity for the people of Ukraine, API launched into a set of four demands for the White House, all of which would benefit the industry while providing no help to Europe or Ukraine.

We saw API and their allies in the GOP use the same playbook during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when they issued a long list of demands for the Trump administration, who was all too happy to turn the pandemic relief package into a multi-billion dollar handout to Big Oil.

This time, we can’t let them get away with it. That starts with loudly and publicly debunking their arguments, and then pivoting to our own, real solutions to the energy issues surrounding the conflict and the ongoing climate emergency.

First, API called on the White House to release permits for more drilling on federal lands. This is absurd. Nearly 13 million acres of public lands are already leased for oil and gas development and the industry has stockpiled thousands of unused leases they bought at rock bottom prices. The reason the industry wants more land isn’t to rush oil and gas to Ukraine, but so they can claim more reserves and inflate their perceived value. It’s a land grab pure and simple.

Second, since polluting on land isn’t enough when you can also pollute on water, API called on the White House to issue a new five-year offshore leasing plan. The Biden administration already made the mistake of holding the largest offshore lease sale in U.S. history, but a judge threw it out because it lacked any meaningful climate analysis. Either way, it’s never enough for Big Oil: they want a guarantee that they’ll keep being able to expand in the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. How a five-year plan could possibly have any relevance to an immediate conflict is a mystery, but of course that isn’t really the point.

Third, API demanded that the administration accelerate energy infrastructure permitting. This, of course, is the industry’s answer to everything: when in doubt, build more pipelines. The energy infrastructure API is talking about isn’t the solar panels and wind turbines that could help free us from our dependence on fossil fuels, but the pipelines, refineries, and export facilities that will only deepen our addiction. API likes to pretend that more infrastructure will allow the U.S. to somehow flood the global market with enough oil and gas that Putin won’t sell any of his, but that’s not how markets work. As long as the world is still reliant on fossil fuels, money will be flowing into the Putin regime.

Finally, API threw in the catch-all “reduce legal and regulatory uncertainty,” a fancy way of saying, “make sure the rules don’t apply to us.” Big Oil doesn’t like the idea of following the law, let alone being held accountable in court for the damage they’ve done to the climate. They’re equally dismissive of regulations, also known as environmental and public protections, like the clean air and clean water acts. At this point, the industry can be pretty confident that their donations to Senators Manchin, Sinema, and the GOP have killed the most ambitious parts of Biden’s Build Back Better Act, but one can never be too sure.

All of API, the fossil fuel industry, and the GOP’s talking points during this crisis are based on the idea that they can fool the public into thinking that more U.S. fossil fuel production will help Ukraine and harm Putin. In fact, it’s the opposite. Current exports of U.S. LNG to Europe are an important temporary measure since Europe is still hooked on gas, but it will never be a long-term solution. That’s because as long as there’s a European and global demand for fossil fuels, there will be a market for Putin’s poison.

What’s needed right now is an all-out mobilization to break our global addiction to fossil fuels. Instead of building more fossil fuel infrastructure, the U.S. should be collaborating with Europe and the rest of the world to supercharge the adoption of clean energy technologies. After all, that’s what the European Union itself is calling for: early statements from the E.U. suggest that in part due to the crisis in Ukraine they’re looking to embark on a major energy security plan based on efficiency and renewables.

What if oil and gas prices go up in the meantime? Instead of letting Big Oil continue to gouge consumers at the pump, the Biden administration should take up an idea that’s been gaining steam in the United Kingdom: implement a windfall profits tax on the oil industry and use the profits to offset the costs for consumers while investing in long-term solutions. The U.S. already has programs like the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that could distribute the money in a progressive fashion that helped those most in need.

Big Oil made record profits last quarter not through any innovation of their own, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic and now the crisis in Ukraine. Many would argue that none of Big Oil’s profits are legitimate considering the damage they’re doing to the climate, but profits made off these global crises are especially ill-deserved.

And what better way for Democrats and the Biden administration to respond to Big Oil’s attempts to profit from this crisis than by making them help offset costs and pay for the transition away from fossil fuels? That would be a meaningful contribution from an industry that has long been a driver of conflict rather than an agent of peace.

It's not "war with Russia," it's Russia's war. Apparently nobody else had any part in it.

US inflation is at a 40-year high. Russia’s war will only make it worse

“I will not pretend this will be painless,” Joe Biden warned Americans before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And as the war disrupts already hard-hit international trade, US consumers are likely to soon see just how painful the consequences of the conflict will be in the US. Inflation is already at a 40-year high in the US and, depending on the length and depth of Russia’s war, any further disruption could cause prices to rise at the pump and perhaps on store shelves.

The invasion could also have potential long-term implications for Biden’s green energy transition since a significant amount of key metals are mined and produced there, including nickel, palladium and aluminum. While US-Russian trade is relatively small, the country is home to a broad range of natural resources, from crude oil to wheat. Prices for those natural resources soared following Russia’s incursion, although most are off the highs they hit when the invasion began.

On Thursday, Nymex futures prices for the most active crude oil and gasoline contracts – an indication of the future cost of buying oil – spiked to their highest levels since July 2014, with the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate briefly touching $100 a barrel and reformulated gasoline prices rising as high as $3.07 a gallon. Wheat prices continued their climb on Friday as fighting continued. Chicago Board of Trade wheat prices were trending higher before Russia’s invasion, but spiked higher still on Thursday and Friday, rising at one point to their highest level since April 2008. ...

Roland Harris, portfolio manager for the commodity index strategy at VanEck, says the energy transition story is going to play out over a number of years, meanwhile, supply issues will take a while to work out. He thinks inflation will be much longer-lasting, whether it’s trade disputes or countries trying to secure their own national resources. That’s going to hit US consumers long-term at a time where prices are already high. “We’re seeing the end of globalization. Trade friction, countries trying to secure resources, all those things are inflationary,” he said.

Washington's "rules based" disorder w/UN expert Alfred de Zayas

The Government Just Admitted An Inconvenient Truth

Every now and then, federal officials admit some truths that are inconvenient to the corporations that own the government — and this latest admission is pretty explicit: Scrapping corporate health care and creating a government-sponsored medical system would boost the economy, help workers, and increase longevity. Those are just some of the findings from the Republican-led Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in a new report that implicitly tells lawmakers just how the existing corporate-run health care system is immiserating millions of Americans — and how a Medicare for All-style system could quickly fix the catastrophe.

If that sounds like hyperbole, consider the analysis in its own words. The CBO reports that under a single-payer health care system:

• “Households’ health insurance premiums would be eliminated, and their out-of-pocket health care costs would decline… Administrative expenses in the health care sector would decline, freeing up productive resources for other sectors and ultimately increasing economy-wide productivity… Longevity and labor productivity would increase as people’s health outcomes improved.”
• “Workers would choose to work fewer hours, on average, despite higher wages because the reduction in health insurance premiums and (out-of-pocket) expenses would generate a positive wealth effect that allowed households to spend their time on activities other than paid work and maintain the same standard of living.”
• “That wealth effect would boost households’ disposable income, which they could then split between increased saving and nonhealth consumption. Although hours worked per capita would decline, the effect on GDP would be offset under most policy specifications by an increase in economy-wide productivity, an increase in the size of the labor force, an increase in the average worker’s labor productivity, and a rise in the capital stock.”
• “States could respond to the (ensuing) budget surplus by growing their rainy-day funds (at least temporarily), reducing state tax rates, increasing spending on government purchases or public services, or a combination of all three.”

The report’s findings tacitly admit that the existing employer-based, corporate-run health care system locks the non-rich into toiling more and more hours just to be able to afford ever-higher costs for insurance coverage and medical care.

Biden polling plummets

Two days ahead of his first State of the Union address, with war raging in Ukraine and inflation rising at home, Joe Biden’s approval rating hit a new low in a major US poll.

The survey from the Washington Post and ABC News put Biden’s approval rating at 37%. The fivethirtyeight.com poll average pegs his approval rating at 40.8% overall.

Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had historically weak approval ratings throughout his presidency but ended it, according to fivethirtyeight, at 38.6%.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told ABC’s This Week Biden would acknowledge challenges but also project optimism when he speaks to Congress and the nation at the Capitol on Tuesday night.

Bill McKibben on Dire IPCC Climate Report & How Oil and Gas Are Fueling Putin's Ukraine Invasion

African countries spending billions to cope with climate crisis

African countries are being forced to spend billions of dollars a year coping with the effects of the climate crisis, which is diverting potential investment from schools and hospitals and threatens to drive countries into ever deeper poverty.

Dealing with extreme weather is costing close to 6% of GDP in Ethiopia alone, equating to a spend of more than $1 repairing climate damage for every $20 of national income, according to research by the thinktank Power Shift Africa.

The warning comes just before the major new scientific report from the global authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This report, the second part of the IPCC’s comprehensive summary of global climate science, will set out the consequences of climate breakdown across the world, looking at the floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms that are affecting food systems, water supplies and infrastructure. As global temperatures have risen in recent decades, and as the impact of extreme weather has become more apparent around the world, efforts to make infrastructure and communities more resilient have largely stalled.

Africa will be one of the worst-hit regions, despite having done least to cause the climate crisis. According to the Power Shift Africa study, titled Adapt or Die: An analysis of African climate adaptation strategies, African countries will spend an average of 4% of GDP on adapting to climate breakdown.

These countries include some of the world’s poorest people, whose responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions is many times less than those of people in developed countries, or in large emerging economies such as China. Sierra Leone will have to spend $90m a year on adapting to the climate crisis, though its citizens are responsible for about 0.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year each, while US citizens generate about 80 times more.

Humpback whales removed from Australia’s threatened species list but feeding grounds still at risk

Humpback whales have been removed from the threatened species list after a significant increase in numbers in the 60 years since they were first protected, but green groups warn populations could decline again as oceans warm. Global heating is predicted to have a significant impact on krill populations in Antarctica, a major feeding ground for humpback whales.

The Australian environment minister, Sussan Ley, said removing the humpback whale from the threatened species list was “a recognition of the success of the outstanding conservation efforts that are in place”. International protections against whaling and domestic protections to preserve the species remain in place, Ley said.

The number of humpback whales in Australian waters has grown from just 1,500 at the height of the commercial whaling industry to an estimated 40,000, Ley said.

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A Little Night Music

Noble “Thin Man” Watts - Hard Times (The Slop)

Noble Watts - F.L.A.

Nobel "Thin Man" Watts - Blast Off

Noble “Thin Man” Watts - Flap Jack

Noble Watts - Thingamajig

June Bateman & Noble Watts - I Don't Wanta

Noble Watts - Noble's theme

Nobel Watts & June Bateman - Georgia Mule

Noble Watts - Mojo Woman

June Bateman With Noble Watts And His Band - Possum Belly Overalls