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“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

-- Ronald Reagan

News and Opinion

Condoleezza Rice Admits She’s A War Criminal During Ukraine Interview

'World Is Racing Toward the Cliff': Belarus to Host Russian Nuclear Weapons

Anti-nuclear groups on Monday decried a referendum in Belarus allowing for the country to host nuclear weapons, as the European Union warned the development puts the entire planet on a "very dangerous path."

Josep Borrell, the E.U.'s high representative for foreign affairs, was among those calling the referendum vote into question, saying it was "orchestrated" by President Alexander Lukashenko "in a context of widespread human rights violations" and the government's "brutal repression against all segments of the Belarusian society."

But regardless of the criticism, the reported results of the referendum—which showed more than 65% of voters supporting changes to the constitution including a renunciation of the country's neutral and non-nuclear status as well as new broad powers and legal immunity for Lukashenko—are expected to allow Russia to launch nuclear missiles from the Eastern European country.

The vote took place as Belarus also prepares to send troops to Ukraine to support the Russian military in its invasion that began last week.

The Single Most Important Question In The World Right Now

There is one question today that is more important than any other question that could possibly be asked, and it’s this:

“Is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?”

Russian state media have confirmed that Vladimir Putin’s orders to move the nation’s nuclear deterrent forces into “special combat duty mode” have been carried out, citing “aggressive statements from NATO related to the Russian military operation in Ukraine.”

“Russia’s ground, air and submarine-based nuclear deterrent forces have begun standby alert duty with reinforced personnel, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has informed President Putin,” Sputnik reports.

This comes days after Putin issued a thinly veiled threat of an immediate nuclear strike should western powers interfere in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying, “Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so, to create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”

so... the implications of an isolated, angry Putin presiding over a grinding, existential conventional war and an economy devastated by sanctions are really terrifying. The chances of his accepting "defeat" are far lower than the chances he escalates dramatically.

— Samuel Charap (@scharap) February 27, 2022

This also comes as the US and EU countries commit to sending fighter jets and stinger missiles to assist Ukraine in fighting an unwinnable war against a longtime target of the US empire, perhaps with the hope of dragging Moscow into a costly military quagmire like it deliberately worked to do in Afghanistan and in Syria.

This also comes as the ruble crashes following crushing sanctions and the banning of Russian banks from the international money transfer system SWIFT by the US and its allies. The economic hardship that follows will hurt ordinary people and may foment unrest, and it is here worth noting that in 2019 then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted that the goal of brutal sanctions on Iran was to push people to rise up and overthrow their government.

We’re also seeing the all-too-familiar phrase “regime change” used in reference to Putin by prominent western narrative managers like Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas, European Council on Foreign Relations Co-Chair Carl Bildt, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institute and Hoover Institution, as well as USA Today.

"This is the most dangerous situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. How can we reduce the risk of catastrophic escalation?"

"Send in fighter jets and Stinger missiles"

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 28, 2022

All of this has made nuclear war in the near term a whole lot more likely than it was just a few days ago… which is a really strange thing to type.

As I’m always saying, the primary risk of nuclear war is not that anyone will choose to start one, it’s that one could be triggered by any combination of miscommunication, miscalculation, misunderstanding or technical malfunction amid the chaos and confusion of escalating cold war tensions. This nearly happened, repeatedly, in the last cold war. The more tense things get, the greater the likelihood of an unthinkable chain of events from which there is no coming back.

Cold war brinkmanship has far too many small, unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that they can ramp up aggressions without triggering a nuclear exchange. Anyone who feels safe with these games of nuclear chicken simply does not understand them.

To get some insight into how easily an unpredictable scenario can lead to nuclear war I recommend watching this hour-long documentary or reading this article about Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet submariner who single-handedly saved the world from obliteration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was one of three senior officers aboard a nuclear-armed sub that was cornered near Cuba by US war ships who did not know the sub had a nuclear weapon on board.

The US navy was dropping explosives onto the sub to get it to surface, and the Soviets didn’t know what they were doing as they had cut off all communications. It took all three senior officers to launch the nuke their ship was armed with, and two of them, thinking this was the beginning of World War 3, saw it as their duty to use it. Only Arkhipov, who had witnessed the horrific effects that radiation can have on the human body during a nuclear-powered submarine meltdown years earlier, refused.

You, and everyone you know, exist because Arkhipov made that decision. Had his personal history and conditioning been a little bit different, or had another officer been on board that particular ship on that particular day, nothing around you right now would be there. We got lucky. So lucky it’s uncomfortable to even think about it. But it’s important to.

This again is just one of the many nuclear close calls we’ve experienced since our species began its insane practice of stockpiling armageddon weapons around the world. We survived the last cold war by sheer, dumb luck. We were never in control. Not once. And there’s no reason to believe we’ll get lucky again.

A 2014 study by Earth’s Future found that just a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would throw 5 Tg of black carbon into the stratosphere, blocking out the sun for decades and potentially starving everything to death. India and Pakistan have 160 and 165 nukes each, respectively. The US and Russia have 5,550 and 6,257.

one thing that's worryingly different now as opposed to during the cold war (as I understand it) is that thousands of people are just confidently yelling that Russia will never use nukes and therefore we should make aggressive moves against them

— i bless the rains down in castamere (@Chinchillazllla) February 28, 2022

So I repeat again the world’s most important question: is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?

Well? Is it?

It’s not really a question you can just compartmentalize away from if you have integrity. It demands to be answered.

Is it worth it to continue along this trajectory? Is it? Is it really? Perhaps there might be some things that would be worth risking the life of every creature on earth to obtain, but is refusing to concede to Moscow’s demands in Ukraine one of them?

Whatever your values are, whatever your analysis is, whatever beliefs you’ve been holding to justify your support for the west’s side of this conflict, will you still proudly stand by them if you look outside and see a mushroom cloud growing in the distance?

Well? Will you?

Here’s a hint: if your answer to this question is premised on the assumption that nuclear war can’t or will never happen, then you don’t have a position that’s grounded in reality, because you’re not accounting for real possibilities. You’re justifying your position with fantasy.

For those on this platform giddy about the plummet of the ruble, a word of caution: the severity of this will create forces beyond everyone's control. It could get very scary and not have the outcome you suspect.

— Paul Sonne (@PaulSonne) February 27, 2022

I understand the argument that if we let tyrants do whatever they want just because they have nukes they’ll just do whatever they want. I understand the argument that if we don’t stop Putin now he’s going to take over all of Europe because he’s literally Hitler and blah blah blah. I understand why people ask “Well if we don’t stand up to him now, then when? Where is your line??” I really do.

But the US has been making risk-to-benefit calculations based on the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons every single day since Stalin got the bomb. There are things Russia has been permitted to do that weaker nations would have been forcefully stopped from doing, like annexing Crimea and intervening in Syria, exactly because they have nukes. If those weren’t the line, why specifically does Ukraine have to be? Surely there’s a line somewhere, but it would have to exist at a point where it would be worth risking the life of every living creature for.

So is it? Is keeping the possibility of NATO membership open and retaining control of the Donbas really so important that we should roll the dice on the existence of the entire human species on it? Is maintaining a hostile client state on Russia’s border truly worth gambling the life of every terrestrial organism for? Are the desperate unipolarist grand chessboard maneuverings of a few powerful people in Washington, Langley and Arlington really worth risking the life of everyone you know and love?

If the answer is no, then building some opposition to what we’re seeing here becomes a very urgent matter. Very urgent indeed.

Journalist Andrew Cockburn & Historian Timothy Snyder on Ukraine, Russia, NATO Expansion & Sanctions

Say, isn't this the court that the U.S. threatened and implemented sanctions against if it was to investigate either the U.S. or Israel?

ICC prosecutor to investigate possible war crimes in Ukraine

The prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague has announced that he will launch an investigation into possible war crimes or crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Karim Khan said that although Ukraine was not a member of the ICC, it had awarded jurisdiction to the court. He said that there was grounds to open an investigation based on a previous preliminary investigation on Crimea and the Donbas published last year, and on current events in Ukraine.

“I have already tasked my team to explore all evidence preservation opportunities,” Khan, a British lawyer, said. He said that he could go to ICC judges to approve the inquiry, but it would be faster if an ICC member state referred the case to his office, “which would allow us to actively and immediately proceed with the office’s independent and objective investigations”.

Earlier in the day, Lithuania had called on the ICC to open an investigation into possible war crimes committed by Russia and Belarus in Ukraine.

Ukraine has also taken Russia to the international court of justice (ICJ) for having launched an invasion on the pretext of false claims of genocide perpetrated against the country’s Russian speakers. David Bosco, an expert on international justice at Indiana University, said the ICJ submission “is kind of a symbolic move by Ukraine”. “That’s not going to yield very much because it’s not actually clear that ICJ is going to have jurisdiction,” Bosco said. “And then even if they do, it’s something that would take a long, long time.”

What the Media Is HIDING About Ukraine/Russia

Ukraine-Russia negotiations have reached ‘certain decisions’

Moscow and Kiev have found certain things that could be agreed on during the ceasefire talks hosted by Belarus and will return for consultations before the next round, both delegations told reporters after the talks ended on Monday.

The main purpose of the talks was to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine, said Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The two sides have identified a number of priority topics, on which “certain solutions have been outlined,” he added.

The two delegations found points on which common positions could be reached, confirmed Vladimir Medinsky, aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. ...

While the talks were ongoing, Zelensky sent a formal request for Ukraine’s EU membership to Brussels. Meanwhile, Russia has put its nuclear deterrent forces on highest alert amid NATO moves to send weapons to Kiev.

So This Is What It Looks Like When the Corporate Media Opposes a War

Having worked inside mainstream U.S. media during the beginning of the "War on Terror" and run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the differences in today's war coverage are dizzying to me.

While covering Russia’s horrific aggression in Ukraine, there is a real focus—as there always should be—on civilian victims of war. Today, the focus on that essential aspect of the Russian invasion is prominent and continuous—from civilian deaths to the trauma felt by civilians as missiles strike nearby.

Unfortunately, there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the U.S. military launching the invasions. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses—made possible by U.S. mainstream media complicity that I witnessed firsthand—civilian deaths were largely ignored and undercounted through the years.

Shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, leaked directives from CNN's management to its correspondents and anchors showed that the network was intent on playing down and rationalizing the killing and maiming of Afghan civilians by the U.S. military. One memo instructed CNN anchors that if they ever referenced Afghan civilian victims, they needed to quickly announce to their audience: "These U.S. military actions are in response to a terrorist attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S." Such language was mandatory, said the memo: "Even though it may start sounding rote, it is important that we make this point each time."

A few weeks after 9/11, what CNN viewer had forgotten it?

Noting the cursory U.S. television coverage of Afghan civilian casualties, a New York Times reporter wrote: “In the United States, television images of Afghan bombing victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors or American officials explaining that such sights are only one side of the story. In the rest of the world, however, images of wounded Afghan children curled in hospital beds or women rocking in despair over a baby's corpse, beamed via satellite by the Qatar-based network, Al Jazeera, or CNN International, are more frequent and lingering.”

The near-blackout on coverage of the civilian toll continued for decades. In April of last year, NBC anchor Lester Holt did a summing-up report on Afghanistan as “America’s longest war” by offering one and only one casualty figure: "2300 American deaths." There was no mention of the more than 70,000 Afghan civilian deaths since 2001, and no mention of a U.N. study that found in the first half of 2019, due mostly to aerial bombing, the U.S. and its allies killed more civilians than the Taliban and its allies.

As the war on terror expanded to other countries, U.S. mainstream media remained largely uninterested in civilian victims of U.S. warfare and drone strikes.

Invasions and military force by one country against another are clearly illegal under international law, unless conducted in true self-defense (or authorized by the U.N. Security Council). In coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, U.S. mainstream media have correctly, repeatedly, and without equivocation, invoked international law and declared it illegal. As they did when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

By contrast, when the U.S. illegally invaded or attacked country after country in recent decades, international law has almost never been invoked by mainstream U.S. media. That was surely the case in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion—unlike in Britain, where major media prominently discussed the reality that invading Iraq would be a crime against international law unless authorized by a U.N. Security Council resolution. On a BBC television special six weeks before the invasion, for example, Tony Blair was cross-examined on that point by antiwar citizens.

In 1989, when the U.S. invaded Panama in perhaps the bloodiest drug bust in history, mainstream U.S. media made a determined effort to ignore international law and its violation—as well as the slaughter of civilians.

Mainstream media in our country today are outraged by imperialism. On Friday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’ Donnell indignantly and repeatedly denounced "Russian imperialism."

As a lifelong opponent of imperialism, I'm also indignant that a powerful country like Russia is using force to try to impose its will and its own chosen leadership on the Ukrainian people.

But I've never heard O’Donnell or anyone at MSNBC denounce U.S. imperialism. Indeed, the existence of something called "U.S. imperialism" is so adamantly denied by mainstream U.S. media that the phrase doesn't appear in print without scare quotes.

This stubborn unwillingness to recognize U.S. imperialism persists despite the fact that no country (including Russia) has come close to ours in the last 70 years in imposing its will in changing the leadership of foreign governments—often from good to bad (for example, Iran in 1953; Guatemala in 1954; Congo in 1960; Chile, in 1973; Honduras in 2009).  Not to mention other U.S.-led regime changes (for example, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011).

This denial persists despite the fact that our country maintains more than 750 military bases in nearly 80 foreign countries (Russia has about 20 foreign bases in a half-dozen countries); that our military budget dwarfs that of every other country (more than 12 times larger than Russia's); that the U.S. provides nearly 80 percent of the world's weapons exports—including weapons sales and military training to 40 of the 50 most oppressive, anti-democratic governments on earth.

Speaking of U.S. imperialism, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been all over the news in recent days commenting on Ukraine and accurately denouncing Putin as anti-democratic. But her commentary reeks of hypocrisy on many grounds; one is her key role, largely ignored by mainstream U.S. media, in enabling the violent military coup regime that replaced elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. (You can read about it here and here.)

Glenn Greenwald Responds to Krystal & Saagar Comparing Ukraine to Iraq on "Breaking Points"

"We are not going to have a military war with Russia with U.S. troops" - we are going to have a war with Russia using other people as cannon fodder and their homes as the battlefield.

Psaki Says Biden Has No Intention of 'No-Fly Zone' for Ukraine

Emphasizing U.S. President Joe Biden's desire to avoid a war with Russia, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki repeatedly made clear Monday that the administration does not plan to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's long-awaited invasion of Ukraine last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Biden and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to take such action.

Psaki told reporters during a Monday press briefing that "the president has been very clear that he is not intending to send U.S. troops to fight a war with Russia, and I think what's important to note here is that is essentially what this would be a step toward, because a no-fly zone would require implementation."

Implementation "would require deploying U.S. military to enforce" the no-fly zone (NFZ), she said. That could lead to a direct conflict and "potentially a war with Russia, which is something we are not planning to be a part of."

Psaki made similar remarks in an interview with MSNBC on Monday, highlighting that an NFZ "would essentially mean the U.S. military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes."

"That is definitely escalatory. That would potentially put us into a place where we're in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the president wants to do," she said. "Those are all the reasons why that's not a good idea."

"We are not going to have a military war with Russia with U.S. troops," and Biden believes it is "vitally important" to be direct with the American public about that, the press secretary added.

Ukraine's crimes are not punished

Critics Denounce Racist Double Standard of Western Media's Ukraine Coverage

The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association on Sunday was among those criticizing coverage from major international news outlets which suggested the Ukrainian people are more worthy of sympathy than victims of other military conflicts in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere outside of Europe.

Standing "in full solidarity with all civilians under military assault in any part of the world," AMEJA listed a number of comments made by correspondents for CBS News, Al Jazeera English, The Telegraph, and French news network BFM TV in which Ukrainians under attack were referred to as "civilized" and "prosperous," with some remarking that the civilians look like an unidentified "us."

"They seem so like us," wrote David Hannan of The Telegraph. "That is what makes it so shocking. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations."

Comparing Kyiv to cities in Afghanistan and Iraq, Charlie D'Agata of CBS News commented that Ukraine's capital "is a relatively civilized, relatively European" city, "one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that [an invasion is] going to happen."

"AMEJA condemns and categorically rejects orientalist and racist implications that any population or country is 'uncivilized' or bears economic factors that make it worthy of conflict," the organization said. "This type of commentary reflects the pervasive mentality in Western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Latin America."

"It dehumanizes and renders their experience with war as somehow normal and expected," AMEJA added.

Big Tech BANS Russian State Media In Foolish Move

BP and Shell lead rush to exit Russia

First BP, now Shell. The rush to disinvest from Russia is impressively quick since it’s possible to imagine an alternative script in which the oil companies’ boards tried to buy time by issuing woolly “all options are open” statements. A definitive statement to sell its 20% stake in Rosneft (in BP’s case) and ditch all partnerships with Gazprom (Shell’s position) leaves no ambiguity. There can be no going back.

The mechanics of the exit are yet to be determined, and BP’s route to disentanglement is probably simpler. The company has had a wild ride in Russia over the years (one minute it was fighting local oligarchs, the next it was in partnership with them), but since 2013 it has been reduced to the role of dividend-collecting passive investor in Rosneft.

So it can either seek a buyer or accept whatever token sum of devalued roubles that the Russian company cares to offer. The latter looks more likely.

Shell, by contrast, is an active participant in the Sakhalin-2 project that produces about 4% of the world’s LNG and is crucial to Russia’s efforts to develop Asian markets. The joint-venture structure, where Gazprom is the 50% owner, will be harder to dissolve, but, at this point, the intention to exit is what matters.

As significant is Shell’s scrapping of a five-year “strategic cooperation agreement” with Gazprom that was signed only last year. ... The same goes for the now-ditched involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

BP, Shell lead Western exodus from Russia as sanctions hit and rouble plummets

Poll Shows Majority of US Voters Blame Corporate Profiteering for Inflation

New polling results published Monday show that a majority of U.S. voters see corporate profiteering as a key driver of inflation and support a federal crackdown on companies that are "unfairly" pushing costs onto consumers.

Conducted by Data for Progress and released by the Groundwork Collaborative, the survey found that 63% of U.S. voters—including 51% of Republicans, 76% of Democrats, and 62% of Independents—believe that "large corporations are taking advantage of the pandemic to raise prices unfairly on consumers and increase profits."

Just 29% of voters believe the narrative—advanced by lavishly compensated company executives—that "large corporations have no choice but to raise prices in response to rising costs," the poll found.

With the U.S. inflation rate currently at a level not seen in decades, debates have raged in Congress, the media, and inside the Biden administration over what's behind the persistent price increases.

While experts argue that a number of factors are to blame—including supply chain failures rooted in decades of neoliberal policymaking and exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic—the Data for Progress survey found that 52% of voters believe corporate price gouging contributes "a great deal" to inflation.

The poll also showed that 80% of U.S. voters want the federal government to "crack down on large corporations that raise prices unfairly," a position that aligns with the demands of progressive lawmakers.

"Big corporations aren't shy in telling their investors how they're taking advantage of the pandemic to jack up prices and pad their own profits—and the public is noticing," Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Monday. "Policymakers should listen to voters by cracking down on corporations raising prices unfairly, addressing corporate consolidation and monopoly power, and increasing taxes on corporations."

The Data for Progress poll was conducted between February 18 and 22 and included 1,549 likely voters. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

The new survey data was released after several high-profile corporations—including Starbucks and Amazon—announced plans to hike prices on goods and services even after reporting rising profits.

Israel under pressure to conclude flawed case against aid worker

Pressure is mounting on Israel to conclude the trial of a Gazan aid worker accused of funnelling relief money to Hamas in a six-year-old case widely derided by the international community as “not worthy of a democratic state”.

Mohammed El Halabi, the head of the US-based charity World Vision’s Gaza office, was detained in 2016 after being accused by Israel’s Shin Bet security service of transferring $7.2m (£5.4m) a year to the Palestinian militant group in control of the Gaza Strip.

World Vision said the amount was more than its entire operating budget for the enclave, and an independent donor government audit carried out in the wake of Halabi’s arrest found no evidence of wrongdoing or diversion of funds.

More than 160 court sessions later, Halabi, 45, remains in administrative detention, despite serious flaws in the Israeli case. The Beersheba district court heard closing arguments last October; it is unclear what is now delaying the verdict.

Giuliani’s legal problems deepen as ‘false electors’ scheme investigated

Legal pressures are mounting for Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer Rudy Giuliani as the US justice department and the House panel investigating the January 6 assault on Congress are both investigating a “false electors” scheme which Giuliani reportedly helped lead to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election.

Former prosecutors say the justice department inquiry announced last month could pose a serious legal threat to Giuliani, given his role in helping orchestrate an electoral ploy in seven states that Biden won, involving replacing slates of legitimate Democratic electors with bogus Trump slates.

The false-electors scheme is under growing scrutiny by federal and state investigators as one of the avenues Trump, Giuliani and other allies deployed in their aggressive drive to subvert the election result based on debunked charges of widespread voter fraud.

Giuliani, who was subpoenaed by the House panel in January and is in negotiations about providing some testimony and documents, is one of more than a dozen Trump loyalists the committee has subpoenaed who reportedly were central figures in the stealth electors’ plan to nullify Biden’s election.

The fake electors stratagem was a part of Trump’s discredited and fruitless effort to persuade vice-president Mike Pence to toss out Biden’s electors and substitute bogus Republican electors when Congress met on January 6 to tally up the electoral votes.

US supreme court signals it may restrict EPA’s ability to fight climate crisis

Several conservative justices on the US supreme court signaled on Monday that they may be willing to restrict the federal government’s ability to address the climate crisis. In a case that could have profound implications for those affected by the crisis, the supreme court considered an argument brought by West Virginia, a major coal mining state, that the US Environmental Protection Agency be limited in how it regulates planet-heating gases from the energy sector.

The Biden administration wants the court to throw out the case as baseless because it doesn’t relate to any existing regulation. But John Roberts, the chief justice, said West Virginia and other states could still claim some “harm” from rules not yet enacted.

Brett Kavanaugh, another conservative, noted that the court had previously expressed “skepticism” about the government’s ability to regulate a “significant portion of the American economy”.

Amy Coney Barrett, like Kavanaugh nominated by Donald Trump, indicated, however, that the EPA had the expertise to regulate in this area.

The case has deeply worried environmental groups, stoking fear it could hobble any effort to set strict limits on carbon pollution from coal-fired plants.

Deforestation emissions far higher than previously thought, study finds

Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation this century are far higher than previously thought, doubling in just two decades and continuing to accelerate, according to a study.

The world’s forests form an enormous carbon store, holding an estimated 861 gigatons of carbon – equivalent to nearly a century’s worth of annual fossil fuel emissions at the current rate. When trees are cut down, they release the carbon they store into the atmosphere. Since 2000, the world has lost about 10% of its tree cover, becoming a major driver of global heating.

Yet, despite being the second largest human source of greenhouse gases after fossil fuels, the carbon accounting behind emissions from land still contains significant uncertainties, often relying on limited data that poses difficulties for researchers tracking progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris agreement.

A study published on Monday in Nature Sustainability shows that carbon loss from tropical deforestation in the last two decades has doubled and continues to rise, driven largely by the expansion of agricultural frontiers. The findings contrast with previous assessments, such as the Global Carbon Budget 2021, which had suggested a slight decline in carbon loss from deforestation.

Using high-resolution satellite data, researchers found that the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and Brazil recorded the largest acceleration in forest loss from 2001 to 2020, with the South American country responsible for the largest total emissions from clearing in the Amazon and other forest ecosystems. The analysis found that about a fifth of land clearing in the tropics took place in mountainous regions, which are home to relatively high carbon stocks, especially in Asia.

Also of Interest

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

Scott Ritter: Putin’s Nuclear Threat

Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored

Disarming Ukraine - Day 5 | Money War On Russia - Day 1

Atlantic Council Praised Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion

Hedges: The Greatest Evil Is War

Kosovo asks U.S. for permanent military base, speedier NATO membership

Foreign Agents Designation Causes Media Cold War

Joe Manchin's Contempt for Poor People Continues

IPCC issues ‘bleakest warning yet’ on impacts of climate breakdown

Native Americans are at the heart of Yellowstone. After 150 years, they are finally being heard

Hillary THIRSTS For War With Russia, McCarthyism At Home

Pro-War Media Caught Pushing Fake Ukraine Stories

Kim Iversen: Ukraine-Russia Is REALLY About The Demise Of US Hegemony, Petrodollar

A Little Night Music

Kokomo Arnold - The Twelves

Kokomo Arnold - Busy Bootin

Kokomo Arnold - Sissy Man Blues

Kokomo Arnold & Peetie Wheatstraw - Shake That Thing

Kokomo Arnold - Old Original Kokomo Blues

Kokomo Arnold - How Long, How Long Blues

Kokomo Arnold - Salty Dog

Kokomo Arnold - Policy Wheel Blues

Kokomo Arnold - Chain Gang Blues

Kokomo Arnold - Back To The Woods