The Evening Blues - 3-28-22



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Oscar "Buddy" Woods

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas lapsteel blues guitarist Oscar "Buddy" Woods. Enjoy!

Buddy Woods & The Wampus Cats - Don't Sell It (Don't give it away)

"The dictionary defines “gaffe” as a social error or faux pas. (...) A “gaffe” is the opposite of a “lie”: It’s when a politician tells the truth."

-- Michael Kinsley


News and Opinion

More Evidence That The US Is Trying To Prolong This War

The Washington Post has a new article out bemoaning the fact that Russian military commanders are declining calls from the Pentagon to discuss their operations in Ukraine (I dunno guys, might have something to do with the fact that the US is sharing extensive military intelligence on exactly those operations directly with the Ukrainian government). Tucked all the way down in the eighteenth paragraph of the article, we find a much more interesting revelation: that Washington’s top diplomat has made no attempt to contact his counterpart in Moscow since the war began on the 24th of February.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict, according to U.S. officials,” The Washington Post reports.

So the US government is continuing its policy of refusing to attempt any high-level diplomatic resolutions to this war despite its public hand-wringing about the horrific violence that’s being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. This revelation fits nicely with a recent report by Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson that sources in the US and UK governments have told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in order “bleed Putin” and achieve regime change in Moscow.


Building on an earlier report from The New York Times that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire,” Ferguson writes that he has reached the conclusion that “the U.S. intends to keep this war going,” and says he has other sources to corroborate this:

“The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Earlier this month when The Intercept’s Ryan Grim was able to get a word in edgewise at a White House press briefing amid the throngs of mass media reporters demanding to know why Biden still hasn’t started World War 3, Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a very revealing answer.

“So, aside from the request for weapons, President Zelensky has also requested that the US be more involved in negotiations toward a peaceful resolution to the war. What is the U.S. doing to push those negotiations forward?” asked Grim.

“Well, one of the steps we’ve taken — a significant one — is to be the largest provider of military and humanitarian and economic assistance in the world, to put them in a greater position of strength as they go into these negotiations,” Psaki answered, completely dodging the question of whether the US was actually doing anything to help negotiate peace.

As we’ve discussed previously, the US government has a well-documented history of working to draw Moscow into costly military quagmires with the goal of preoccupying its military forces and draining its coffers. Former US officials are on record publicly boasting about having done so in both Afghanistan and Syria. This is an agenda geared toward sapping the Russian government, manufacturing international consent for unprecedented acts of economic warfare designed (though perhaps ineptly) to crush the Russian economy, to foment discord and rebellion, and ultimately to effect regime change in Moscow.

The US empire doesn’t care about Ukrainian lives, and it’s insulting that its operatives continually pretend to. The empire will happily feed every man, woman and child in the entire nation into the mouth of this war if it means unseating a disobedient leader from a nuclear-armed seat of power which has become unacceptably cozy with Beijing and intolerably comfortable with intervening against US imperial agendas. And all the Ukrainian-flag-waving propagandized westerners with their #StandWithUkraine Instagram activism and blue and yellow profile pics will cheer for it every step of the way.

I hope this brutal proxy war ends and peace comes to Ukraine very quickly. But from what we’re seeing today there appears to be an immense globe-spanning power structure holding its foot against the door of the only exit from this horror.

Biden's CATASTROPHIC Call For Regime Change In Russia

Biden gets his foot all the way in there and accidentally releases his secret strategic plan.

Biden: ‘butcher’ Putin cannot be allowed to stay in power

Joe Biden condemned Vladimir Putin as a “butcher” who could no longer stay in power in a historic speech in Poland as Russian missiles rained down on Ukraine’s most pro-western city, just 40 miles from the Polish border, and Ukraine’s president called for more military aid.

With explosions erupting across neighbouring Lviv, in a clear act of defiance from the Kremlin, Biden told an audience in Warsaw that the west must steel itself “for a long fight ahead”

In what seemed to be a dramatic shift in US policy to back regime change in Moscow, Biden also appeared to urge those around the Russian president to oust him from the Kremlin. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said in his most belligerent speech since the war began a month ago. ...

In his speech, Biden said Putin was “bent on violence”. Addressing the Russian president directly, he said: “Don’t even think about moving on to one single inch of Nato territory.”

“There is simply no justification or provocation for Russia’s choice of war,” Biden told the audience in the Polish presidential palace.

Either Joementia is a flagrant liar or he is not a sophisticated word user, in that he believes that words don't mean things. He says things and then denies that he said them.

Biden denies calling for regime change in Russia

US President Joe Biden has said that he was not calling for regime change in Russia when he said on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”

“Mr President, do you want Putin removed? Mr President, were you calling for regime change?” a reporter asked Biden as he left a church service in Washington on Sunday.

“No,” the president replied.


Macron warns against inflammatory words after Biden’s Putin remark

The US has been forced to clarify that it is not seeking regime change in Russia after president Joe Biden’s suggestion that Vladimir Putin is a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power” prompted concern and condemnation at home and abroad.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, warned against the use of inflammatory language in an already volatile situation, while the Kremlin said the “personal insults” further undermined relations between the US and Russia.

Biden’s ad-libbed remarks on Putin’s leadership, made during a speech in Poland on Saturday, were taken by many as a call for the Russian president to be overthrown.


Glenn Greenwald. Excellent and worth a click and a full read:

Biden's Reckless Words Underscore the Dangers of the U.S.'s Use of Ukraine As a Proxy War

That there are few if any risks graver or more reckless than a direct U.S./Russia military confrontation should be too obvious to require explanation. Yet that seems to have been completely forgotten in the zeal, arousal, purpose and excitement which war always triggers. It takes little to no effort to recognize the current emergence of the dynamic about which Adam Smith so fervently warned 244 years ago in Wealth of Nations:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory, from a longer continuance of the war.

The grave dangers of the world's two largest nuclear-armed powers acting on opposite sides of a hot war extend far beyond any intention by the U.S. to deliberately engage Russia directly. Such a war, even with the U.S. waging it “only” through its proxies, severely escalates tensions, distrust, hostilities, and a climate of paranoia. That is particularly true given that — ever since Democrats decided to blame Putin for Hillary's 2016 loss — at least half of Americans have been feeding on a non-stop, toxic diet of anti-Russian hatred under the guise of “Russiagate.” As recently as 2018, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russia hacked into voting machines and altered the 2016 vote count to help Trump win. This cultivation of extreme anti-Russian animus in Washington has been made even more dangerous by the virtual prohibition on dialogue with Russian officials, which during Russiagate was deemed inherently suspect if not criminal.

And all of those preexisting dangers are, in turn, severely exacerbated by an American president who so often is too age-addled to speak clearly or predictably. That condition is inherently dangerous, made all the more so by the fact that it leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by the Democratic Party's national security advisers who will never forget 2016 and seem more intent than ever on finally attaining vengeance against Putin, no matter the risks. Speaking to U.S. troops in Poland on Friday, a visibly exhausted and rambling President Biden — after extensive travel, time-zone hopping, protracted meetings and speeches — appeared to tell U.S. troops that they were on their way to see first-hand the resistance of Ukrainians, meaning they were headed into Ukraine:

It seems clear that this was not some planned decision to have the U.S. president casually announce his intention to send U.S. troops to fight Russians in Ukraine. This was, instead, an old man, more tired, unpredictable and incoherent than usual due to intense overseas travel, accidentally mumbling out various phrases that could be and almost certainly were highly alarming to Moscow and other countries.

But accidental or unintentional escalation — from misperception or miscommunication — is always at least as serious a danger for war as the deliberate intention to directly engage militarily. In January of this year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that its so-called "doomsday clock” was set to 100 seconds before midnight, the metaphorical time they used to signify an extinction-level event for humanity. They warned that the prospect of a cataclysmic nuclear exchange among the U.S., Russia and/or China was dangerously possible, and specifically warned: “Ukraine remains a potential flashpoint, and Russian troop deployments to the Ukrainian border heighten day-to-day tensions.”

In 2018, when the clock was “only” at two minutes before midnight, they emphasized tensions between Russia and the U.S. as one of the primary causes: “The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.” They urged recognition of this specific danger: “Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperceptions.”

That Biden's "gaffe” about U.S. troops headed into Ukraine could generate exactly this sort of "misperception” seems self-evident. So do the grave dangers from Biden's sudden yet emphatic declaration on Saturday that Putin "cannot remain in power” — the classic language of declared U.S. policy of regime change:

That clear declaration of regime change as the U.S. goal for Putin was quickly walked back by Biden's aides, who absurdly claimed he only meant that Putin cannot remain in power in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, not that he can no longer govern Russia. But this episode marked at least the third time in the past couple weeks that White House officials had to walk back Biden's comments, following his clear decree that U.S. troops would soon be back in Ukraine and his prior warning that the U.S. would use chemical weapons against Russia if they used them first. ...

Whether deliberate or unintentional, these escalatory statements — particularly when combined with the U.S.’s escalatory actions — are dangerous beyond what can be described. ... Whatever else is true, the U.S. and Russia are now in waters uncharted since the Cuban missile crisis. Even the savage US/USSR proxy wars of the 1980s in Latin America and Afghanistan did not entail these sorts of rapidly escalating threats. A Russian president who, validly or not, feels threatened by NATO expansion in the region and driven by questions of his legacy, on the other side of a U.S. president with a long record of hawkishness and war fever which is now hobbled by the carelessness and infirmities of old age, is a remarkably volatile combination. As former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis put it on Saturday: “A U.S. President who, during an atrocious war, does not mean what he says on matters of War and Peace, and must be corrected by his hyperventilating staff, is a clear and present danger to all.”


Democracy Now and Ro Khanna perform an emergency cleanup on aisle 3:

"Reckless & Damaging": Could Biden's Suggestion of Regime Change in Moscow Endanger Peace Talks?

Reporting from Moscow: Sanctions May Achieve the Opposite of Biden's Stated Long-Term Goals

So far, Western sanctions have succeeded in delivering a serious blow to the Russian economy. The Russian ruble has lost almost 30% of its value against the dollar since February 24, a development which has caused prices on imported goods to skyrocket. Further exacerbating Russia’s inflation problem is a wave of panic buying in major cities across the country, with shoppers seeking to stock up on essentials ranging from basic food products to medicines. At the same time, Russian lawmakers have estimated that nearly 96,000 workers have been put on leave following the mass exodus of Western corporations.

Despite these economic costs, however, there is so far little sign that Western sanctions are changing Putin’s political calculus on Ukraine. If anything, there are some reasons to believe that growing sanctions pressure could encourage the Russian president to harden his stance.

Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Council of Foreign and Defense Policy, a research group that advises the Russian government, explained to this page that the high costs inflicted on the Russian economy by Western sanctions have put significant pressure on Moscow to compensate for them with military successes. Consequently, the Kremlin could very well respond to increased sanctions pressure by doubling down on its military operation in Ukraine instead of seeking a diplomatic way out.

“If the West continues to impose new sanctions, then Russia will have no other option but to also raise the stakes because there is no room for retreat,” Lukyanov said. “There is no option in the current situation that would allow us to smoothly take a step back without suffering catastrophic political consequences.”

A similar argument was made by Dmitry Suslov, a professor of international relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics, one of Russia’s most elite universities. Suslov told us that there was currently a divide within the Russian political establishment between supporters of a diplomatic settlement with Ukraine and hawkish elements who want to continue fighting until the Russian military succeeds in bringing about “regime change” in Kyiv. “Western sanctions right now are the central question,” he explained. “If the West makes it clear that sanctions will at least be partially removed once the military operation comes to an end, then the compromise faction will be strengthened. However, if Moscow gets the sense that the West is waging ‘total economic war’ against Russia, then Putin will have little incentive to not go all the way.”

Peace Makes NBC Host “UNCOMFORTABLE”

Progressives Demand End to US Involvement on 7th Anniversary of Saudi-Led War on Yemen

On Friday, the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi-led war on Yemen, four members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus implored President Joe Biden to immediately end U.S. military support for the deadly assault—and vowed to pass a War Powers Resolution to make it happen if the White House refuses.

"Seven years ago today, the United States began unauthorized military participation in Saudi Arabia's devastating war in Yemen. In the time since, Saudi Arabia's airstrikes and air-and-sea blockade have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and threatened millions more with famine, triggering the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in a statement.

"On this grim anniversary—spanning seven years and three presidential administrations—we are calling for an immediate end to American involvement in the Saudi-led coalition's brutal military campaign," said the lawmakers. Time is of the essence, they stressed, because "with each passing day, the crisis in Yemen intensifies."

Biden promised over a year ago to end U.S. support for "offensive operations" in Yemen, but his administration has continued to offer hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons maintenance and billions in arms sales to Saudi and Emirati regimes accused of war crimes. Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Right Council in October voted not to renew the mandate of the independent monitoring group investigating potential violations of international law in the conflict.

"Saudi airstrikes have escalated in recent months," the lawmakers said Friday, "killing and injuring four times as many civilians as the previous year."

At the same time that civilian casualties are surging, humanitarian aid is drying up. "The Saudi blockade has reportedly prevented all fuel from arriving at Yemen's major port since January, causing massive shortages," said the lawmakers. "And with 30% of Yemen's wheat imports coming from Ukraine and food prices soaring, acute hunger is expected to increase five-fold."

As Jayapal, Sanders, Khanna, and DeFazio noted, "Congress has repeatedly voted to end the United States' unconstitutional participation in this conflict."

"This past fall, for the third time in as many years, a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives passed a measure in the National Defense Authorization Act to terminate ongoing military involvement," the lawmakers said. "Still, the flow of U.S. logistics, spare parts, and maintenance essential to Saudi Arabia's devastating bombings and aerial siege continues to this day."

"We know that concern is not limited to Congress," said the lawmakers, who pointed out that when Biden was a presidential candidate in 2019, he urged Congress to override then-President Donald Trump's veto and pass a War Powers Resolution to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen.

Earlier this month, as the White House sought to contain a spike in oil prices amid Russia's war on Ukraine, the de facto rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates declined to accept Biden's phone calls and reportedly demanded even deeper U.S. involvement in Yemen.

After that, the lawmakers said Friday, "there is no better time for the president to fulfill his promise: 'end U.S. support for the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen,' and 'make clear that America will never again check its principles at the door just to buy oil or sell weapons.'"

"While the United States may not be able to unilaterally end all fighting in Yemen, we can stop participating in Saudi Arabia's brutal campaign, and exert leverage to compel them to lift their blockade," said the lawmakers.

"Now, on this solemn anniversary, we urge the Biden administration to act," the lawmakers continued. "If not, we remain committed to invoking Congress' constitutional authorities to pass a new Yemen War Powers Resolution to end unauthorized involvement in this conflict."

"American complicity in this humanitarian disaster has persisted for too long," they added, "and we will not allow it to continue."

Mayor orders New York’s homeless camps dismantled ‘within two weeks’

New York mayor Eric Adams has ordered that every homeless encampment in the city should be taken down within two weeks, arguing that the situation is not only dangerous to those living there but to the city itself.

“We’re going to rid the encampments off our street and we’re going to place people in healthy living conditions with wraparound services,” Adams said Friday, though he provided few details on exactly how that extra provision would be provided for them.

“I’m looking to do it within a two-week period,” he added in an interview with the New York Times.

The Times said the number of people living in parks and on the streets was estimated at at around 1,100, though that figure was likely a serious undercount.

Krystal Ball: AOC BETRAYS Amazon Workers to COSPLAY Class Politics

Biden to announce tax on billionaires in 2023 budget plan – report

Joe Biden is set to announce a tax aimed at US billionaires as part of his 2023 budget plans on Monday in a move that will likely delight many progressives in his party but could meet opposition from conservative Democrats who have already stymied his domestic agenda.

The Washington Post, citing five sources and an internal administration document, said the “billionaire minimum income tax” plan would establish a 20% minimum tax rate on all American households worth more than $100m.

That would mean the majority of new revenue would come from billionaires, who are a frequent target of public and political ire for tax avoidance schemes. The paper said it would be “a tax on the richest 700 Americans for the first time”.

The Post said that the White House Office of Management and Budget and the council of economic advisers estimated some 400 billionaire US families paid an average federal tax rate of just about 8% of their income between 2010 and 2018 – much lower than millions of Americans who are far less wealthy.



the horse race



SCOTUS Justice Wife 'Stop The Steal' GRIFT Revealed

Republican won’t say whether Capitol attack panel will question Ginni Thomas

Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members on January 6 committee, on Sunday vowed to “get to the bottom” of events surrounding the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol but refused to reveal whether the panel intends to question Ginni Thomas – wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – over reports of her urging the White House to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat.

Senior Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said Clarence Thomas must recuse himself from relevant cases and warned the integrity of the supreme court is at stake.

Kinzinger refused to confirm or deny the existence of text messages Ginni Thomas is reported to have exchanged with then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, although he did not contest the Washington Post and CBS’s joint revelation last week that they obtained copies of such messages from materials submitted to the congressional committee by Meadows.

“The question for the committee in this or any exchange is ‘was there a conspiracy, or how close did we get to overturning the election?’” he told CBS’s Face the Nation show on Sunday.

Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the events surrounding 6 January 2021, said of witnesses being summoned to give evidence to the committee: “We’ll call in whoever we need to call in."

Polls: Biden Hits NEW LOW, Public DEMANDS Inflation Action



the evening greens


Locals Warn Biden's EU Export Plan Would Make Gulf Coast 'Sacrifice Zone' for Fracked Gas

Frontline community activists on Friday joined climate and environmental campaigners in denouncing the Biden administration's plan to ramp up U.S. gas shipments to the European Union in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Elida Castillo, program director at Chispa Texas, said in a statement that "our thoughts are with those in Ukraine and Europe who are facing humanitarian and energy crises, but we cannot disregard the crises our communities are facing every day."

U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday announced a joint task force whose goal is "to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian fossil fuels and strengthen European energy security."

Under the task force plan, the U.S. aims to export 50 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe annually through at least 2030. The move comes amid sanctions-driven cutbacks in fossil fuel shipments from Russia, which before the Ukrainian invasion supplied roughly 40% of Europe's gas and 27% of its oil imports.

"The Biden administration cannot promise to reduce greenhouse gases while increasing the fracking and production of LNG," said Castillo. "Fracking methane gas poisons our scarce drinking water, the land, and air, especially in communities that already have trouble accessing clean, potable water and live in sacrifice zones."

"Plus, the industry has left thousands of orphaned wells throughout the state that leak tons of methane into the atmosphere, and the people once again bear the costs," she added. "President Biden has a commitment to protect the environment, act on environmental justice, and be energy independent. This should mean finding alternatives to fossil fuels and stopping the greenwashing efforts such as carbon capture storage and hydrogen."

Addressing Biden, Roishetta Ozane, founder of Vessel Project and an organizer at Healthy Gulf, said that "if you are true in your word in wanting to defend environmental justice communities, then you must prioritize actions that will actually protect us. That includes stopping the fracked gas LNG build-out along the Gulf Coast."

Ozane noted that "more than 20 export facilities have been proposed along the Gulf Coast, specifically in Texas and Louisiana. Here in Southwest Louisiana, we are already infiltrated with industry, both with petrochemical facilities and LNG."

"We've had enough," she added. "We will no longer sit idly by and become a sacrifice zone to Big Oil and Big Gas. We are tired."

Port Arthur Community Action Network founder and CEO John Beard said that "increasing gas exports to the E.U. will exacerbate environmental racism and environmental injustices in the Gulf."

"Routinely, communities of color across the Gulf bear the brunt of air and water pollution, get displaced due to industry operations, and receive inadequate hurricane relief while fossil fuel corporations are getting billion-dollar tax breaks to pollute our neighborhoods," he continued. "This has been true for decades, but the Biden administration and the E.U. are preparing to give the fossil fuel industry a green light to transform the Gulf Coast into a 'sacrifice zone' for fracked gas."

"President Biden cannot call himself a climate president while ignoring the needs and reality of impacted communities," Beard added.

Emma Guevara, Sierra Club's Rio Grande Valley organizer for the Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign, said that area residents "and the Indigenous communities of South Texas have been resisting the fracked gas build-out for over half a decade, and through community pressure and international organizing with allies in Europe, we have successfully stopped one of the proposed export terminals, Annova LNG, from ever getting built here."

"The Biden administration and the E.U.'s task force plans to export more gas from the Gulf is not only dangerous, it is deaf to the clear vocal opposition from Rio Grande Valley residents who want to protect their health and environment," she added. "Even in hearing this news, we are unwavering in our message: The Rio Grande Valley is not a sacrifice zone to fossil fuels and we will continue to defend the Gulf from polluting and extractive industry."

The frontline activists urged Biden to visit their communities to see firsthand the impacts of his administration's policies and actions on their lives.

"Come here to Lake Charles," implored Ozane. "Come back to Southwest Louisiana and tell us if you want to save us or continue to make us a sacrifice."

An interesting read:

Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins: ‘It’s the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis’

Temperatures dropped far below freezing this week in Snowmass, Colorado. But Amory Lovins, who lives high up in the mountains at 7,200ft above sea level, did not even turn on the heating. That’s because he has no heating to turn on. His home, a great adobe and glass mountainside eyrie that he designed in the 1980s, collects solar energy and is so well insulated that he grows and harvests bananas and many other tropical fruits there without burning gas, oil or wood.

Nicknamed the “Einstein of energy efficiency”, Lovins, an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has been one of the world’s leading advocates and innovators of energy conservation for 50 years. He wrote his first paper on climate change while at Oxford in 1968, and in 1976 he offered Jimmy Carter’s government a blueprint for how to triple energy efficiency and get off oil and coal within 40 years. In the years since there is barely a major industry or government that he and his Rocky Mountain Institute have not advised.

But for much of that time efficiency was seen as a bit of an ugly sister, rather dull compared with a massive transition to renewables and other new technologies. Now, he hopes, its time may have come. Lovins is arguing for the mass insulation of buildings alongside a vast acceleration of renewables. “We should crank [them] up with wartime urgency. There should be far more emphasis on efficiency,” he says. ...

The prize for governments wanting to be truly energy efficient is huge. Lovins and RMI have calculated that at least two-thirds – and probably as much as three-quarters – of all fossil fuel-generated energy could be profitably saved in most industrialised countries, and even more in developing countries because they tend to be less efficient to begin with and can more easily build things right than fix them later.


Also of Interest

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

I'm an Iraqi and I Remember Madeleine Albright for Who She Truly Was

Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War

The BBC’s Ukrainian War-Messager

Zelensky Sends Mixed Messages About Ukraine’s Willingness To Compromise

How One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, And The Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion

Matt Taibbi: The Media Campaign to Protect Joe Biden Passes the Point of Absurdity

Yes It’s A Proxy War: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Michael Hudson Talks with the Saker About the Russian Counter-Sanction of Paying for Its Gas With Roubles

North Korea may be preparing for nuclear test soon – report

Devastation in Postwar Afghanistan

BLOODTHIRSTY Media CELEBRATES Biden's Regime Change Call

Russian State Media Accidentally Told Us Putin’s Vision For The War. We Should Listen: Ryan Grim

DAMNING Emails Uncover Hunter Biden's Role In Funding UKRAINIAN BIOLABS


A Little Night Music

Buddy Woods - Lone Wolf Blues

Oscar "Buddy" Woods - Low Life Blues

Oscar "Buddy" Woods - Evil Hearted Woman Blues

Oscar "Buddy" Woods w/ the Wampus Cats - Token Blues

Buddy Woods & Jimmie Davis - Bear Cat Mama from Horner's Corner

Oscar Woods - Sometimes I Get To Thinkin'

Buddy Woods & Jimmie Davis - She's a Hum Dum Dinger (From Dingersville)

Eddie (Schaffer) & Oscar (Woods) - Flying Crow Blues

Oscar “Buddy” Woods - Muscat Hill Blues


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Comments

So anybody paying attention knows that Russia is going to demand EU pay in roubles for energy exports. I did not know, but looks like the date for the switch will happen on March 31st. The G7 said they will not pay in roubles. Contracts must be honored according to G7. Sorta funny that some as those countries seized Russian assets now clutching whatever they clutch.

The G7 is playing chicken with a country that just invaded another country and understood the blowback they would get, and did it anyway. My guess is Putin will stop all energy exports.

Now I really don't understand the use of currencies as I am an American. But I do understand what shutting off energy means.

The article posted about US doing stuff to export LNG to Europe and in turn ruining our environment is a fool's errand. From what I can gather, those LNG exports will be like 100 billion short.

A Euro company took over the one I am working at. If I have a job by the end of the year, I will be pleasantly surprised.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@MrWebster

...to India and China and various recipients along its pipelines. Russia's oil fulfillment contract with China is one of the largest in the world. Besides Rubles, I am certain, Russia will continue to accept gold, which is how India pays. China uses a gold-backed Yuan for certain international trades, and has established several settlement banks for the Gold-Yuan trading currency in different parts of the world. Russia is able to hold its reserves in either gold or Yuan and use those reserves for imported goods from China. These transactions are essentially "asset" swaps and do not pass through Western trading banks.

These countries have been preparing for this since 2003, and have built out the financial infrastructure for doing so. Many trades already pass through CIPS, China's alternative international trading system. Not to hide trades from the US, but because the administrative costs of the exchange is less, and the store of value is gold, which has a lot of upside potential. The increasing value of gold is a direct consequence of the economic weaponization of the US dollar, which accelerated with Trump's trade wars. The rapidly expanding theft by the US government, of both privately and nationally-owned Dollar reserves, and privately-owned dollar-denominated assets, has been taking place with sociopathic zeal. This has profiled the Dollar as a high-risk currency that pays far too little interest to investors.

The media boils over with sanction news, which they don't really seem to understand. However, I don't think anything is happening here that hasn't been anticipated and rehearsed for decades.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

Now I really don't understand the use of currencies as I am an American. But I do understand what shutting off energy means.

The article posted about US doing stuff to export LNG to Europe and in turn ruining our environment is a fool's errand. From what I can gather, those LNG exports will be like 100 billion short.

it appears that the west wants to play chicken with the russians, thinking that the west will be better able to sustain the loss of russian resources than russia will be able to deal with the loss of western markets, finance and goods.

the west is run by fools. they will deliberately (further) immiserate their domestic populations in order to win a pissing contest that may well end in a nuclear exchange.

the abyss is staring at us.

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@MrWebster

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster

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

other commentators do:

Because he isn't a smooth conman like Bill Clinton or Obama, Biden often blurts out the truth about US policy. When it comes to Syria, he admitted that the US side spent "hundreds of millions" to arm "Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis."

For other reading, suggest Geo-Politics Is Metamorphosing at Every Moment

Whilst Europe and the U.S. never have been more closely aligned, the ‘West’ paradoxically has also never been more alone.

Very occasionally, a single anecdote can almost completely summate a moment in history. And this one did: In 2005, Zbig Brzezinski, the architect of Afghanistan as quagmire to the Soviet Union, and the author of The Grand Chessboard (which embedded the Mackinder dictum of ‘he who controls the Asian heartland controls the world’ into U.S. foreign policy), sat down in Washington with Alexander Dugin, Russian political philosopher and advocate for a ‘heartland’ cultural and geo-political renaissance.

...

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joe shikspack's picture

@Marie

a cursory review of biden's career shows that he has never been good at thinking before he flaps his gums and has been a gaffe machine for many decades. it is hardly surprising that his administration seems to have to send out scrubbers with mops and buckets on a regular basis to clean up the many messes that he creates.

excellent article from strategic culture, thanks!

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@joe shikspack
to know when to keep his mouth shut. And too needy for public attention not to spill secrets that he's privy to because he's important.

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thought this was interesting

Dumbphones are continuing to enjoy a revival. Google searches for them jumped by 89% between 2018 and 2021, according to a report by software firm SEMrush.

And while sales figures are hard to come by, one report said that global purchases of dumbphones were due to hit one billion units last year, up from 400 million in 2019. This compares to worldwide sales of 1.4 billion smart phones last year, following a 12.5% decline in 2020.

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joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

heh, no matter how you slice it, the spy in your pocket is selling well. too bad.

i'd love to go back to an america where non-portable phones were ubiquitous in homes, offices and places of public accommodation.

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@gjohnsit
I'm sure there are some people that have ditched their smart phone because they've been exhausted by being obsessively plugged in 24/7. That's most of the claims in that article.

Simpler -- it's financial. The dumbphone is much cheaper.

(I still miss black rotary dial phones.)

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lotlizard's picture

@Marie  
and in Hawai‘i before satellites there was no direct connection to North American TV networks, so it was normal for stations to fill up their schedule with lots of old-timey b&w movie-theatre material from before WW2, featuring phones that looked like this:

https://www.oldphoneworks.com/number-51al-reproduction.html

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even more interesting

After crashing as much as 40% in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ruble has managed to claw back much of its losses against the dollar, though it’s still trading nearly 30% below pre-invasion levels. The ruble briefly strengthened to a three-week peak of 95 rubles to the U.S. dollar on news of Putin's order, before settling weaker at 98 rubles to the dollar.

ruble.PNG

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lotlizard's picture

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joe shikspack's picture

@lotlizard

clearly, biden hit a lot of notes that neoconservatives the world over yearned to hear, which is reflected in their state media.

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ggersh's picture

should be called are living in a bubble so tightly wrapped that they can't see that their ass isn't a hole in the ground. first and clinton psychophant goes after Caitlin

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/03/27/hillary-clintons-state-departmen...

and then Joementia tries in vain to walks back his commentgaffe when he was addressing the troops stormtroppers

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-live-biden-calls-tax-hikes-cor...

Stay safe everyone and thanks for the Blues Joe!

it appears as the shtf has begun in earnest

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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

the shit is working its way through the pipes and we're in the early part of it where prices rise and shortages appear. later it will probably hit the fan in a more substantial way.

one good sign is that there have been some signs of mitigation efforts, for example california talking about relief checks, but we'll see if they materialize and do any good.

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Will not lower the boom on the wealthy.
It is another of Biden's promises that will not see the light of day.
That's what we get when a brain dead state leader is allowed to
open his mouth in public. Ridicule? Slip of the tongue? Doesn't
matter. This current puppet will do great harm to the US citizenry.
Put an idiot on a soap box, and we get louder idiocracy.
Nothing is true about what he is being told to read.
But he probably can not be cognizant of that fact.

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joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

yeah, biden (or his bosses) probably see that there is going to be some significant pushback on inequality as social conditions decline in concert with biden's idiotic sanctions plan to starve poor americans. symbolic tax plans which "moderate" democrats will deep-six are part of the public relations campaign.

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joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

really, they're a decent sort of nazis! they only attack ethnic russians, russian speakers, roma and homosexuals!

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@humphrey
can make loads of new WWII movies featuring the "good" Nazis. The ones that didn't kill that many Jews within Germany.

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@Marie

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ignore this and even send them more weapons.

Oh! But there is much worse activities.

I tried to keep this somewhat decent but there are plenty of gruesome videos of these type of actions online.

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snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

I tried to keep this somewhat decent but there are plenty of gruesome videos of these type of actions online.

It’s torture porn and it’s being posted everywhere and I think we should have the option not to see it. No offense, but it’s too heartbreaking to see what people do to others. I keep telling Sam how lucky she is to be a dawg cuz humans are sick and twisted. She agrees.

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

are trying diminish in order to get their message across that Russia bad and Zelensky is a hero of all things good.

@snoopydawg

If someone wishes to see the gory details the videos which are available but I will not be the conduit. My point for posting the censored version is to point out the hypocrisy of what is so-called war crimes being embellished by the MSM.

BTW no offence taken as I will continue to just be me.

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CB's picture

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joe shikspack's picture

@CB

thanks for the video, have a great evening!

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20/20 as he still can read his cue cards for a supposedly spontaneous press conference.

You can see him checking his notes.

Edited to add a better video saying the same thing.:

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actually important as emphasized by the MSM.

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the big stick?

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@humphrey
March 28, 2022 - Reactions from North Macedonia, Serbia to the EU common gas purchase platform

The government of North Macedonia released a statement on the conclusion of the European Council supporting the inclusion of the Western Balkans in the platform for the common purchase of gas. President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić also reacted to the proposal on Friday.

European Council conclusions, adopted on 25 March, state that, with the view of the war in Ukraine, refilling of gas storage across the Union should start as soon as possible, taking fully into account national preparedness measures.

“The Member States will work together on the voluntary common purchase of gas, LNG (liquified natural gas), and hydrogen, making optimal use of the collective political and market weight of the European Union and its Member States to dampen prices in negotiations. The common purchases platform will also be open for Western Balkan countries and the three associated Eastern Partners”, the Conclusions read.

...

Serbia and North Macedonia are NOT EU members. Nor are Bosnia Herzegovina and Kosovo, but they aren't covered by this agreement.

Former Yugoslavian Balkan countries that are EU and NATO members:
Croatia (of course)
Slovenia

NATO members but not EU members:
Montenegro
North Macedonia

Are North Macedonia and Serbia wealthy enough to double the cost of their gas?

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

"...Surely there is some scene of hope and happiness you can show me!?"

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!