The Evening Blues - 3-9-22



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Sammy Myers

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer and harmonica player Sammy Myers. Enjoy!

Sammy Myers - My Love Is Here To Stay

"It’s 2022 and people still believe the US is pouring weapons into a foreign country to protect freedom and democracy. That’s like being 57 and still believing in the Tooth Fairy."

-- Caitlin Johnstone


News and Opinion

Former UN Inspector Scott Ritter on What The Hell Is Happening

US dismisses Polish plan to provide fighter jets to be sent to Ukraine

Poland has said it will hand over its MiG-29 fighter jets to the US, in a move which appeared to take Washington by surprise and was quickly dismissed by the Pentagon. The Polish foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, said his government was “ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein airbase and place them at the disposal of the government of the United States of America”.

But the Pentagon appeared to reject the proposal, saying it was not “tenable”. In a statement, the US Department of Defense said the prospect of the jets departing from the base “to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire Nato alliance”.

“We will continue to consult with Poland and our other Nato allies about this issue and the difficult logistical challenges it presents, but we do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one,” John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said.

Poland is thought to have 28 of the Soviet-era warplanes, and had been in negotiation with the Biden administration on a three-way deal in which Warsaw would gave the planes to Ukraine, on condition that the US would provide the Polish air force with newer US fighters.

CrossTalk | Liberal Order Collapse

How the US ban on Russian oil risks splitting the west’s response

Joe Biden’s decision to ban imports of Russian oil increases the economic pressure on Vladimir Putin – but it is not without risk. On the face of it, the announcement from the White House looks like a bit of a free hit, given the fact that Russia accounts for just 7% of the oil imported by the world’s biggest economy. Three-fifths of Russia’s oil exports go to the EU, only 8% to the US. ...

So when Biden said the west remained united in its determination to keep the pressure on Russia, that is not strictly true. The EU, as the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, made clear 24 hours before the US ban was announced, is worried about its energy security and has decided not to follow suit, for now at least. There is no risk of the lights going out in the US; the same could not be said of every country in Europe. ...

While high energy prices eventually prove self-correcting because they tend to lead to recessions, the damage they can cause is considerable. UK living standards are on course for their biggest one-year fall since modern records began in the mid-1950s, with the war in Ukraine putting at risk the post-pandemic recovery. All of which makes it important that sanctions work quickly. The longer the economic war, the higher the cost.

Russian Invasion Shows Risks of Addiction to Fossil Fuels; Will Biden Fund Shift to Renewables?

Saudi Arabia and UAE leaders ‘decline calls with Biden’ amid fears of oil price spike

The de-facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have declined to arrange calls with US president Joe Biden in recent weeks as the US and it allies have sought to contain a surge in energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing Middle East and US officials, both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan have been unavailable to Biden after US requests were made for discussions.

“There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,“ a US official said of a plan for Saudi Prince Mohammed and Biden to speak. “It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].”

Last week, OPEC+, which includes Russia, declined to increase oil production despite western entreaties. But reports of frigid communications come as the Biden administration seeks to increase oil supply after formally banning Russian oil imports on Tuesday, pushing oil prices to $130 a barrel, the highest level in 14 years.

Stockholm syndrome?

Two Americans released from Venezuelan prison

Australian Government Sanctions People For Sharing Unauthorized Thoughts

In the western world’s mad rush to ramp up censorship and dangerous cold war escalations against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, the Australian government has done what it always does and raised the bar of authoritarianism a click above everyone else in the room.

“The Australian Government is sanctioning 10 people of strategic interest to Russia for their role in encouraging hostility towards Ukraine and promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda to legitimise Russia’s invasion,” reads a new statement from Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne. “This includes driving and disseminating false narratives about the ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, making erroneous allegations of genocide against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and promoting the recognition of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as independent.”

A report by the Australian Associated Press and the Daily Mail says that the men targeted with these new sanctions are “journalists, authors or Putin’s press officers.” This move follows earlier waves of sanctions directed at Russian government, military and financial institutions, as well as economic sanctions on the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

Obviously a government in a purportedly “free” country sanctioning anyone for sharing any ideas anywhere on earth is outrageous, no matter how stupid or fictional they might be. Anyone on earth should be free to say that Ukraine is ruled by reptilian space wizards orchestrating a global conspiracy to steal the earth’s ivermectin if they want to without being sanctioned by the Australian government.

But the fact that the ideas cited by the Foreign Minister — de-Nazification, genocide of ethnic Russians, and independence for the DPR and LPR — are fairly common opinions that can be argued using facts and evidence makes this move a lot more disturbing.

I personally don’t find it truthful to claim that the invasion of Ukraine has anything to do with “de-Nazification” myself; that just sounds like the sort of thing you say to make a bloody invasion look noble, and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi issues would surely have been a non-issue for Putin if Kyiv was aligned with Moscow rather than Washington. But even NBC News is reporting that “Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem” that cannot simply be ignored, and a recent report by The Grayzone details how intimately neo-Nazi militias are intertwined with the nation’s power structure. So this isn’t some preposterous conspiracy theory; it arises from known facts that people do need to talk about.

The claim of genocide in the Donbas may not be a consensus reality that has been firmly established via official channels, but neither is the claim of genocide in China’s Xinjiang province, yet we saw that assertion waved around as absolute fact by the entire western political/media class in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s just a simple fact that 14,000 people have died in the fighting against Donbas separatists since a US-backed coup toppled Ukraine’s government in 2014, and that most of those deaths have been on the side of the ethnic Russian separatists. Whether or not this technically constitutes genocide has not been established, but it’s a debate that is both valid and worthwhile.


The most egregious citation on Payne’s list is “promoting the recognition of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as independent.” The idea that rebel-held regions in eastern Ukraine should be recognized as independent republics is pure political opinion; the Australian government has no more legitimacy in labeling it “propaganda” than they would on people’s opinions about the morality of abortion. Yet it’s being cited as a justification for targeted sanctions.

This comes after Australian television providers SBS and Foxtel dropped RT in the frenetic push to expand censorship throughout the western world, a move Payne explicitly praised in the aforementioned statement with an acknowledgement that the Australian government is working with online platforms to censor unauthorized content.

“The Australian Government continues to work with digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google to take action to suspend the dissemination of content generated by Russian state media within Australia. SBS and Foxtel have already announced the suspension of Russia Today and NTV broadcasting,” the statement says.

This is getting so, so ugly so very, very fast. Just the other day a young Australian-Russian man was ejected from the audience of the popular television show Q+A simply for expressing his support for Putin’s war, something we’ve never seen happen in any of the controversies about the insane American military invasions that this country has gotten itself involved in over the years.

Whether you agree with these opinions or not, you’d have to be blind not to see the dangers of speech getting stomped out which doesn’t align with the authorized opinions of the government and the globe-spanning empire of which it is a member state. It is not valid to simply label dissenting ideas “propaganda to legitimise Russia’s invasion” and then shut them down; in a free society we’re meant to debate ideas and explain our positions to convince others that they are correct.

An ostensibly free and democratic nation labeling basic political opinions and ideas about points of geopolitical contention “pro-Kremlin propaganda” and implementing punitive sanctions in response has implications that are uncomfortable to think about. As an Australian who frequently disagrees with Canberra about unaligned foreign governments including Moscow, I am frankly feeling a bit nervous that I might myself be designated a person “of strategic interest to Russia” and penalized in some way for “disseminating false narratives”.

Securing more and more control over the ideas and information that people share with each other is an objective of unparalleled importance of the oligarchic empire loosely centralized around the United States. It is an intrinsically valuable goal; anywhere control of speech can be expanded is strategically useful for that expansion in and of itself, independent of the excuses made to justify it. Hopefully we all collectively find a way to unplug each other from the imperial narrative matrix before they can secure total control.

Ukraine Commits War Crime Against Russian Soldiers & Liberals Cheer

Ukraine's Zelensky says he has 'cooled' on joining NATO and is open to discussions about control of Russian-backed separatist regions

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had "cooled down" about Ukraine's bid to join NATO amid Russia's war with the Eastern European country.

"Regarding NATO, I have cooled down regarding this question long ago after we understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine," Zelensky told ABC News in an exclusive interview that aired Monday night.

Zelensky added: "The alliance is afraid of controversial things and confrontation with Russia. I never wanted to be a country which is begging something on its knees. We are not going to be that country, and I don't want to be that president." ...

In addition to his NATO comments, Zelensky said on Tuesday that he was open to discussions about the control of Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, which could be an opening for peace talks with Russia.

What is going on in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine?

Three days after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the details are beginning to emerge. According to people who were privy to details about the meeting, the current situation is that Russia has offered a "final" version of its offer to end the crisis, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needs to accept or decline. ...

If Ukraine's president rejects the proposal, French President Emmanuel Macron's assumption that "the worst is before us" is prone to happen. In that scenario, Putin will order his army to put the pedal to the metal and change the face of Ukraine. ...

Zelensky can fortify Ukraine's independence but will have to pay a heavy price, the sources said. Assumptions are that he will be forced to give up the contested Donbas region, officially recognize the pro-Russian dissidents in Ukraine, pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO, shrink his army and declare neutrality. If he declines the proposal, the outcome may be terrible: thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Ukrainians will die and there is a high probability that his country will completely lose its independence.

Swedish PM Rejects Opposition Calls to Consider Joining NATO

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Tuesday rejected opposition calls to consider joining NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying an application now would destabilize security in Europe.

Sweden has not been in a war since 1814 and has built its foreign policy on non-participation in military alliances, but it has forged ever closer ties to NATO in recent years as tensions with Russia in the Baltic region have risen.

Russia's invasion, which it calls a "special military operation", has renewed calls for Sweden to join NATO, alongside Finland, which has also remained outside the bloc.

'Can't Fool Us': 250+ Groups Reject Biden Rebrand of Trump's Medicare Privatization Ploy

More than 250 advocacy groups representing seniors, people with disabilities, doctors, and other constituencies made clear Tuesday that they're not remotely satisfied with the Biden administration's rebrand of a Trump-era pilot program that allows private industry to gain a foothold in traditional Medicare.

In a new letter addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the coalition warned that the revamped pilot program known as ACO REACH "retains the most dangerous elements" of the Trump administration's Medicare Direct Contracting experiment, which officially debuted in 2020 despite internal concerns about its legality.

"If allowed to continue, REACH would completely transform traditional Medicare by allowing third-party middlemen to manage seniors' care, without seniors' full understanding or consent," the letter states. "Millions of seniors who actively chose traditional Medicare will be automatically enrolled into REACH entities, many of which will likely be run by for-profit businesses, such as commercial insurers, venture capital and private equity investors, and even dialysis centers."

"Although REACH middlemen are required to notify seniors of their enrollment, few seniors are likely to understand the implications," the letter continues. "Because seniors are automatically enrolled into REACH based upon their relationship with their primary care provider, the only way for a beneficiary to opt out is to change primary care providers."

Last week, the Biden administration announced that instead of terminating the Trump administration's Medicare pilot program—as physicians and progressive activists demanded—it is moving ahead with the program under a different name and a slightly different structure. That approach won applause from the healthcare industry, which had lobbied for such reforms and against complete elimination of the program.

The Biden administration's changes are set to take effect in January 2023.

Doctors leading the charge against Direct Contracting (DC) argued that the new tweaks will do little to mitigate the threat the experiment poses to traditional Medicare, which covers roughly 36 million Americans.

In a Tuesday statement, Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) president Dr. Susan Rogers said that "HHS gave Direct Contracting a fresh coat of paint, but we can see right through it."

"Hundreds of community leaders joined forces to say: You can't fool us, we know Medicare privatization when we see it," said Rogers.

While Biden officials shrouded ACO REACH in a veneer of progressivism—emphasizing such goals as "addressing historical healthcare disparities" and achieving "greater transparency"—PNHP notes in a policy brief that the redesigned initiative "includes major giveaways to profit-seeking REACH middlemen that will open the door to increased profiteering in marginalized communities."

"Compared to DC, REACH gives middlemen less financial risk for health costs and quality, and more potential for profit at the expense of traditional Medicare and its beneficiaries," notes PHNP, which coordinated the new letter opposing REACH.

The group also accused the Biden administration of making a "superficial nod to equity that may lead to profiteering in underserved communities," pointing specifically to the REACH program's "no-strings-attached bonus for enrolling vulnerable beneficiaries."

"CMS created a 'Health Equity Benchmark Adjustment' to incentivize REACH middlemen to enroll underserved beneficiaries, determined by residence and Medicaid eligibility," PNHP observed. "CMS will give REACH middlemen an additional $30/month ($360/year) for each beneficiary in the top decile of the Benchmark, regardless of how much care each beneficiary receives."

Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works—one of the signatories to the Tuesday letter—argued in a statement Tuesday that "REACH is simply a new name for the same backdoor scheme to privatize Medicare."

"Unless the Biden administration pulls the plug now, this program will put for-profit insurers and Wall Street between seniors and their doctors," said Lawson. "This letter shows how broad-based the opposition to REACH is. Tweaks aren't good enough—President Biden and Secretary Becerra must end this dangerous experiment immediately."

'Signed. Sealed. Delivered.' Senate Sends USPS Reform Bill to Biden's Desk

Postal reform advocates on Tuesday welcomed the U.S. Senate's passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation that was held up last month by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.

A day after overcoming a filibuster, the Postal Service Reform Act passed the evenly split Senate in a 79-19 vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats to send the bill to President Joe Biden's desk. ...

The $107 billion compromise package, which the House advanced with a 342-92 vote in February, will make future Postal Service retirees enroll in Medicare—ending a costly mandate forcing the USPS to prefund health benefits—and require the creation of a new online mail tracking system.

"This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people," tweeted Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

The bill was even supported by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who has faced multiple scandals.

The Senate vote comes as DeJoy is under fire for a USPS plan to buy gas-powered delivery trucks in spite of President Joe Biden's proposed transition to zero-emission government vehicles.

"DeJoy's environmental review is rickety, founded on suspect calculations, and fails to meet the standards of the law," said Earthjustice senior attorney Adrian Martinez last month. "We're not done fighting this reckless decision."



the horse race



Texas man convicted for role in Capitol attack in landmark trial

A Texas man who joined the assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters was found guilty for his role in the attack on Tuesday, a milestone victory for federal prosecutors in the first such case to go before a jury. The defendant, Guy Reffitt, was found guilty on all five of the felony charges he faced, including bringing a gun on to the Capitol grounds and obstructing an official proceeding. ...

The federal jury in Washington returned the unanimous verdict after just two hours.

Reffitt never entered the Capitol on 6 January 2021 but video showed him egging on the crowd and leading other rioters up a set of stairs outside the building. Reffitt, who wore a bulletproof vest and a helmet, persisted up the staircase even as police officers pelted him with pepper balls and doused him with chemical spray.

In video played for jurors, Reffitt repeatedly urged rioters to drag the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other lawmakers out of the Capitol building.

Former 'Proud Boys' Leader Indicted on Conspiracy Charges Over Capitol Riot

The former leader of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, was arrested in Miami on Tuesday for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Enrique Tarrio was indicted on one count each of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding. He was also indicted on two counts each of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and destruction of government property.

"Although Tarrio is not accused of physically taking part in the breach of the Capitol, the indictment alleges that he led the advance planning and remained in contact with other members of the Proud Boys during their breach of the Capitol," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.



the evening greens


Fears for bees as US set to extend use of toxic pesticides that paralyse insects

The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to allow the use of four of the most devastating chemicals to bees, butterflies and other insects to continue in America for the next 15 years, despite moves by the European Union to ban the use of toxins that have been blamed for widespread insect declines.

The EPA is widely expected to confirm a proposed plan outlined last year that will extend the use of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran on US farmland for the next 15 years, even though the agency has noted “ecological risks of concern, particularly to pollinators and aquatic invertebrates”.

These four insecticides are all types of neonicotinoids, a class of chemicals that is widely used on crops to treat them for pests but has been found to cause devastation among non-target insects, such as bees. The chemicals assault receptors in an insect’s nerve synapse, causing uncontrollable shaking, paralysis and death.

Neonicotinoids are used across 150m acres of American cropland, an area roughly the size of Texas, and have contributed to the land becoming 48 times more toxic than it was a quarter of a century ago. The chemicals are water soluble and quickly leach out of plants into soils and streams, causing such harmful impacts to wildlife that Canada has restricted their use while the EU has banned the outdoor deployment of clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.

But while states such as Connecticut and New Jersey have enacted some curbs on neonicotinoids, the US federal government is set to bend to pressure from farming groups and pesticide makers to perpetuate their use nationally. “We are already seeing crashes in insect numbers and we don’t have another 15 years to waste,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s frustrating to see the EPA go down this path. We really are at a crossroads – we can follow the science and the rest of the world or we can go out on our own and appease the chemical industry.”

Climate Coalition Urges Big Banks to Pull Plug on US Gas Exports

A coalition of 120 progressive advocacy groups on Tuesday urged the six largest U.S. banks to stop financing new and expanded gas export facilities in the Gulf Coast region, emphasizing that supporting the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels is a bad investment that endangers working people, biodiverse habitats, and the planet at large.

"When banks finance fracked gas projects, they're funding the creation of sacrifice zones," John Beard, founder and president of Port Arthur Community Action Network, said in a statement. "The fossil fuel industry in Southeast Texas has swallowed up our local economies, poisoned our air and water, and contributed to the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes that we're still recovering from."

"My home of Port Arthur is already inundated with fossil fuel and petrochemical industry, yet there are several fracked gas export terminals that could still be built here," added Beard, whose organization is a coalition member.

According to the Sierra Club, another coalition member, "More than 20 new and expanded export facilities are currently proposed to liquefy and ship methane gas from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana to foreign markets."

Fossil fuel industry proponents "have attempted to use current fears of gas shortages in Europe to build support for this massive build-out of new export facilities," noted the Sierra Club, "despite the fact that this expansion would do nothing to alleviate these concerns in the short term, and would only serve to lock in decades of dependence on fossil fuels at a time when a shift in the opposite direction is necessary."

Although scientists have warned repeatedly that halting new fossil fuel projects is necessary to have a chance at averting the most catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis, extraction is on the rise in the U.S., which earlier this year became the world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The last decade's drilling and fracking boom turned the Permian Basin into the most productive oil and gas field in the world, and Congress' decision to lift a ban on crude exports in late 2015 precipitated a surge in the construction of pipelines and related infrastructure.

Despite mounting evidence of the deadly toll of fossil fuels, President Joe Biden has yet to use his executive authority to cancel nearly two dozen fracked gas export projects that are set to unleash pollution equivalent to roughly 400 new coal-fired power plants.

"It is imperative that we stop these methane gas export terminals to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and adhere to domestic and international climate goals and commitments, including the Paris agreement and the Global Methane Pledge," the coalition wrote in letters sent to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Bank of America.

"If your institution continues to support these dangerous projects, it faces both substantial financial risk—as renewables outcompete oil and gas—and significant reputational damage—as the public urgently demands responsible and sustainable investment practices," added the coalition, which is composed of groups working in the Gulf Coast region, as well as national environmental and Indigenous rights groups representing millions of members and supporters.

Adele Shraiman, a representative for the Sierra Club's Fossil Free Finance campaign, stressed that "new and expanded fracked gas export terminals would exacerbate the climate crisis and threaten the health and safety of already vulnerable communities in the Gulf Coast."

In addition, said Shraiman, "they also face significant public opposition and legal challenges that put them at risk of becoming stranded assets or never being completed at all."

A new report released Tuesday by Global Energy Monitor details how the nation's proposed LNG export terminals are struggling to secure buyers because they face "competition from lower-priced international producers, pressure from cheap renewables, and tightening climate commitments."

According to the analysis, none of the new LNG export terminals that have been proposed in the U.S. reached final investment decisions or advanced to the construction phase in 2021.

If new or expanded fracked gas export facilities were to be built in the Gulf, it would jeopardize "one of the most ecologically and economically productive regions in the world," wrote the coalition.

Furthermore, the groups argued, the rise of U.S. fossil fuel exports in recent years has resulted in a "growing perception that oil and gas companies, and their funders, are exploiting consumers and driving up heating costs in the United States, in an unrelenting thirst for exporting gas to the highest international bidder."

"Financing the continued expansion of methane gas exports is not worth the risk," added the coalition, "as mounting competition from greener technologies and increasing public opposition forecast a grim future for these projects and the banks that invest in them."

Instead, said Shraiman, "big banks should do the right thing for the climate, for communities, and for their own bottom line by steering clear of these risky, toxic investments."

Beard, meanwhile, said that "we need to see investment in renewable energy jobs and coastal restoration, not more polluting and destructive infrastructure."


Also of Interest

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

US can’t absolve itself of responsibility for Putin’s Ukraine invasion

Nuland: US Working With Ukraine to Keep US ‘Biological Research Facilities’ Out of Russia’s Hands

Discerning Volodymyr Zelensky

Disarming Ukraine - Day 13 - Lies Do Not Win Wars

The War-Torn & Dispossessed Worldwide

The Geopolitics of Hell

The US Chose This Conflict: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Yemen Under Longest Period of Saudi Heavy Bombing Seen Since 2018

Now Let’s Do the US Oligarchs

Octopuses were around before dinosaurs, fossil find suggests

Huge invasive spiders native to Asia expected to spread along US east coast

Russia urges US to clarify its activity in biolaboratories in Ukraine


A Little Night Music

Sammy Myers (with Elmore James) - Angel Child

Sammy Myers - Sleeping In the Ground

Papa lightfoot & Sammy Myers - When the saints go march in

Sammy Myers (with Elmore James) - Little Girl

Sam Myers - You Don't Have To Go

Sammy Myers - Sad Sad Lonesome Day

Sam Myers - Remembering Elmore

Sam Myers - I Got A Thing For The Voodoo Woman

Sam Myers - Sam's Boogie

Sam Myers - Let You Slowly Bring Me Down

Sam Myers - Things you do


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snoopydawg's picture

U.S. Nailed to the Wall on Illicit Biological Weapons Labs in Ukraine

A couple of days ago, when I presented a summary of the dramatic information and warnings conveyed in the latest televised briefing by the spokesman for the Russian military, Igor Konoshenkov, I received back from some readers the comment that this was all just Russian propaganda, similar to the kind of propaganda we hear regularly coming from the Pentagon and State Department. The allegations of biological weapons banned under international convention being produced in experimental laboratories in Kharkiv and other Ukrainian towns under programs paid for and supervised by Americans had to be fake news, these skeptics and cynics maintained. The same had to be true of Konoshenkov’s asserting that the Ukrainians were working on dirty nuclear bombs at their Zaporozhye nuclear power stations, which had just been captured by Russian forces.

Howvever, yesterday the story about biological weapons labs received convincing confirmation from the U.S. State Department, when Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said publicly before microphones that the USA fears that its biological labs in Ukraine will “fall into the wrong hands.” That is a very convoluted admission that the Russians’ allegations are perfectly true. The U.S. is battening down the hatches against the coming storm of international indignation, at the same time trying to divert attention away from itself by suggesting that the Russians might do something dastardly with what they find.

American evasion and attempted dissimulation were stymied however when, also yesterday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded an explanation from the United States of what exactly Americans have been doing not only in their Ukrainian labs, which were situated in cities across the Ukraine from Kharkiv to Lviv, but also in a further 130 such labs spread out across the world. Intense Chinese concern is understandable since one such laboratory was in Wuhan, the point of origin of Covid19.

Still on the subject of biological weapons being prepared in Ukraine under United States funding and guidance, Russian experts were on television this morning explaining how leaks from these labs have been monitored over the past few years. In one such case, 450 Ukrainian civilians were said to have died from biological agents that contaminated their residential block. This number, you will note, is higher than the total number of civilian deaths in the ongoing “barbaric” Russian in Ukraine as reported in The Financial times (characterization as “barbaric” by Andrew Bacevich, Chairman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a self-described American think tank for peace). The Russians are now examining whether outbreaks of swine flu and avian flu that caused havoc with their livestock in farming areas close to the Ukrainian border may not have been artificially induced by saboteurs coming from Ukraine. Work on viruses transmissible from animals to humans was also reportedly being done in the Ukrainian facilities

He also says that Ukraine has already restarted its nuclear weapons program with the help from the US and might have been making a dirty bomb. Russia has evidence of ‘baby bombs' Oh my we sure have been flaunting international law in many countries and on many things that are forbidden to do.

I bet Nuland is not only kicking herself for admitting that yes indeed there are bio weapons labs in Ukraine, but getting a dressing down for doing it. Good. Biden should fire her. Yeah I know.

All of the foregoing points to what may be expected when the Russians finish their demilitarization and denazification campaign in Ukraine in the next several weeks. They may well convene an international tribunal to try the Ukrainians who were responsible for the illicit programs involving weapons of mass destruction. We may expect the Chinese to join them in running the tribunal, as well as other closely interested countries. It is also reasonable to expect that this tribunal will identify and seek to extradite their American handlers. This may be difficult, because Moscow has already said today that the Americans on the ground in Ukraine overseeing the biological weapons laboratories all carried diplomatic passports. However, the Russians, like the Americans, can be very resourceful in cases like this.

Hey Israel do you have anything to say about this evidence on top of our supporting neo Nazis there? Probably not because they too have been arming them with their rifles made in Israel. Oh what a tangled web that has been woven.

He has some other good essays on his site if anyone is looking for news other than the propaganda being shouted from the stenographers on the mainstream media.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

hey, whaddya know? saddam's weapons of mass destruction turned up in ukraine! funnily enough, it turns out that the u.s. provided the precursors for them again.

not to worry, jen psaki says that russia's claims about bioweapons are preposterous and just a false flag to justify their own near-future use of bioweapons in ukraine.

it's a wonder that the cameras can capture psaki since she spins so fast.

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snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

Psakiopath how she could say that after Vicky admitted it yesterday? Oh I forgot that the stenographers are cowardly lions who are too afraid to their shadows. Maybe they should take a trip on the yellow brick road to oz and get some courage. But I’m sure that there will be plenty of people who will believe her.

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i didn't watch the presser, i have only the account that the propaganda rag the guardian catapulted, so i don't know if anybody challenged her. if they had, the guardian probably wouldn't report it. sadly, the only journalist that i can think of that might have challenged her, matt lee, covers the state department beat.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

looky, they've figured out how to make a new iron curtain out of 1's and 0's!

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

thanks for the tune. if i remember correctly it comes from the obscured by clouds album, kind of an overlooked classic.

have a great evening!

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shaharazade's picture

@joe shikspack Seems to have been fermenting for decades maybe even longer. Yet nothing changes the same players keep playing and reappearing with their nasty global agenda.If they die they are replaced by their progeny or new additions to the parade of evil assholes.
We seem trapped in a loop of history engineered by the same people with power that never go away. Nothing is revealed. Here we go again and again. Politics offer no exit. Repeat and rinse.

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10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@shaharazade

you're spot on. heh, i was just reading a greenwald article which put it this way:

Nuland not only worked for both the Obama and Biden State Departments to run Ukraine policy (and, in many ways, Ukraine itself), but she also was Vice President Dick Cheney's deputy national security adviser and then President Bush's Ambassador to NATO. She comes from one of America's most prestigious neocon royal families; her husband, Robert Kagan, was a co-founder of the notorious neocon war-mongering group Project for the New American Century, which advocated regime change in Iraq long before 9/11. It was Kagan, along with liberal icon Bill Kristol, who (next to current editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg), was most responsible for the lie that Saddam was working hand-in-hand with Al Qaeda, a lie that played a key role in convincing Americans to believe that Saddam was personally involved in the planning of 9/11.

That a neocon like Nuland is admired and empowered regardless of the outcome of elections illustrates how unified and in lockstep the establishment wings of both parties are when it comes to questions of war, militarism and foreign policy. Indeed, Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, was signaling that neocons would likely support Hillary Clinton for president — doing so in 2014, long before anyone imagined Trump as her opponent — based on the recognition that the Democratic Party was now more hospitable to neocon ideology than the GOP, where Ron Paul and then Trump's neo-isolationism was growing.

You can vote against neocons all you want, but they never go away. The fact that a member of one of the most powerful neocon families in the U.S. has been running Ukraine policy for the U.S. for years — having gone from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton and Obama and now to Biden — underscores how little dissent there is in Washington on such questions.

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12 users have voted.

@joe shikspack
even Bernie Sanders is in the anti-Russia warmongering club.

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joe shikspack's picture

@Marie

all too true. bernie has some good ideas from time to time, but he is certainly a cog in the machine and unlikely to support the sort of change that is really needed.

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8 users have voted.
mimi's picture

thank God, so the EU has not to fuck her. Never trust a woman who ... etc.

Thanks for the EB, excellent compilation of all things wrong in these times.

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joe shikspack's picture

@mimi

well, nuland is certainly making the propagandists earn their pay. Smile

have a great evening!

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6 users have voted.

link

A Tennessee Republican lawmaker seeks to ban most abortions in the state and allow private residents to sue abortion providers under a new bill that mirrors a restrictive ban passed in Texas last year.

Rep. Rebecca Alexander, R-Jonesborough, has signed an amendment that would ban abortions except to prevent the death or "substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function" of the pregnant woman.

The amendment appears to mirror a similar Texas law passed last year. It blocks state enforcement of the ban and instead allows everyday residents to sue abortion providers or a person who "aids or abets" abortions, such as by paying for or reimbursing the costs of a procedure.

Residents who successfully sue under the proposed law could receive $10,000 or more for "each abortion that the defendant performed," according to Alexander's amendment. Women who receive abortion services are not liable for civil suit under the proposed law, but the bill states patient consent would not be an acceptable defense.

can'tleave.jpg

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

the american taliban are really getting organized. i can't wait until missouri misery passes a law confining all women of child-bearing age to their homes.

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11 users have voted.

Thanks for all the news.

Especially happy about Caity's article describing what is happening in Australia. If it were up to me, she would be reporting regularly about her homeland. Australia will have some big decisions to make as things take shape post Russia Ukraine War and I want to hear about all of it.

In other news, Ukraine has announced, just as Russia did, that wheat will not be exported until further notice. Obviously, planting anything in Ukraine this Spring is in serious doubt.

Europe must be and should be worried. If Europe is even capable of worrying about feeding its people.

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10 users have voted.

NYCVG

joe shikspack's picture

@NYCVG

i had a feeling that you would appreciate caity's article today. you might also look into juice media for occasional (though quite snarky) reporting of australian current events.

europe is worried, but mostly about the wrong things. i have a feeling that the people of europe are going to be pretty peeved at their governments within a couple of months if things keep going the way that they are.

it will be interesting to see how the american public responds to the inevitable hardships that are coming, too.

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12 users have voted.

What will Brandon do?

https://sputniknews.com/20220309/us-ban-on-russian-energy-excludes-key-i...

President Biden signed an executive order banning the import of Russian energy supplies on Tuesday, claiming the move would deal a “powerful blow” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia accounts for just a sliver of American oil consumption, but together with its Central Asian allies provides the US with nearly half of a key energy resource.

US imports of Russian uranium won’t be affected by President Biden’s ban on Russian energy, a source familiar with the situation has told Reuters. The text of the executive order signed by President Biden Tuesday does not include uranium in its list of banned Russian energy products.

Nuclear power plants account for about 8.9 percent of US energy needs, including 20 percent of the country’s electricity, but America has no active uranium production or processing facilities, leaving it entirely dependent on imports.

46 percent of the uranium used by the US’s 56 operational nuclear power plants is imported from Russia and its Kazakh and Uzbek allies, with 22 percent coming from Canada, 11 percent from Australia, and five percent from Namibia. The US purchased about 10.2 million kg of uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in 2020, according to data extrapolated from US Energy Information Administration

Looks like there is a possibility of more Patriotic suffering in the future.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

our potential demockery tax is going up, up, up!

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

I followed the link and it’s right there in b & w. It’d be a shame if that went viral. Spin that, Jen.

The link doesn’t show unless you click on it. Here.

https://t.co/FpiqHsraFu

I posted her link 2 days ago in the dose.

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9 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

A tremendous back story to the current situations which the western media are
trying like hell to stifle. Thanks for posting it!

[video:https://youtu.be/BZOTszoKbE4]

somehow the western media won't stop talking about their new meme

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11 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

scott ritter has been doing yeoman's work making sense of what is going on for a while now. i keep an eye out for his articles when they pop up at consortium news and other places.

have a great evening!

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8 users have voted.

@QMS He lays out the known facts - current and historical -- and does some analysis of where those facts will lead. He doesn't soft peddle anything or anyone. His projections in the past tended toward the worst case scenario, and therefore, could be criticized or only viewed as partially correct. However, they could also be seen as warnings when there is still time to change course. If I lived in an EU/NATO country I would be very alarmed at their government actions over Ukraine.

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10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

freedom isn't free, but the morons in congress are willing to help you liberate your spirit from your earthly flesh by a rapid process of vaporization. it'll be quick, just like ripping off a band-aid.

jackasses.

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13 users have voted.

@humphrey Good enough to oust Biden/Harris and Democratic congresscritters, but the other team is no solution. Not dissimilar to the "leaders" in Ukraine since independence. Regardless of campaign promises they keep ousting corrupt presidents and PMs and their replacements are no less corrupt.

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ggersh's picture

https://babylonbee.com/news/joining-the-fight-hillary-vows-to-stop-impor...

Hillary Vows To Stop Importing Dossiers From Russia

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13 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

heh, excellent! grade a snark.

thanks, have a great evening!

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7 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

An inside view from Ukraine by a Russian soldier.

“It was not us who raised the fiend of hell, nurtured it, allowed it to seize power and hostages in the person of an entire nation. It was not us, who armed them and sent them to kill Donbass, taught them to hate Russians. Criminal indifference and complicity is also a punishable act. Not by us, by life itself.”

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14 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@lotlizard
anything from their governments. They can only vote every two, four, or six years for the candidate from the other party that is running against the incumbent that hasn't delivered what they wanted.

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13 users have voted.
shaharazade's picture

@Marie other then the ones our duopoly presents us with. 'Propaganda all is phony'.

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joe shikspack's picture

@lotlizard

yep, good thoughts. sadly the others who have responded seem to be correct, americans can demand until they are blue in the face, but our government does not respond to us.

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6 users have voted.

@humphrey Worse than I thought.

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3 users have voted.

NYCVG

@humphrey
This guy wouldn't pass the audition for a comedy store amateur night. No actors or comedians read their script on stage. Totally lacks comedic timing. Admittedly difficult when the script stinks.

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5 users have voted.

things turned out.

Click on the text to see it in full.

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6 users have voted.

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7 users have voted.