Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer, songwriter and one-man band Jesse Fuller. Enjoy!

"There’s nothing wrong in Ukraine that direct US military intervention couldn’t make much, much worse."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Worth a click and a full read:

The US Bubble of Pretend

It is perfectly obvious by now, to anyone who cares to look, that mainstream media in America and the other Western powers are not reporting the Ukraine crisis accurately. Let me try that another way: The government-supervised New York Times and the rest of the corporate-owned media on both sides of the Atlantic lie routinely to their readers and viewers as to why Russia intervened in Ukraine, the progress of its military operation, the conduct of Ukrainian forces, and America’s role in purposely provoking and prolonging this crisis.

So far as I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission — most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact. ...

This majority — and it is almost certainly a majority — has no thoughts or views except those first verified through the machinery of manufactured images and “facts.” Television screens, the pages of purportedly authoritative newspapers, the air waves of government-funded radio stations — NPR, the BBC — serve to certify realities that do not have to be real, truths that do not have to be true. ...

Ten days into the Russian intervention, the propaganda coming out of Kiev was already so preposterous The New York Times felt compelled to publish a piece headlined, “In Ukraine’s Information War, a Blend of Fact and Fiction.” This was a baldly rendered apologia for the many “stories of questionable veracity,” as The Times put it, then in circulation. I do love The Times for its delicate phrasing when describing indelicate matters. ... After railing against disinformation for years, The Times wants us to know, disinformation is O.K. in Ukraine because the Ukrainians are our side and they are simply “boosting morale.”

We cannot say we weren’t warned. The Ghost of Kiev and Snake Island turn out now to be mere prelude, opening acts in the most extensive propaganda operation of the many I can recall. ... And then, as evidence mounts that these incidents were staged as propaganda to frame the Russians and draw NATO forces directly into the war, a silence worthy of a Catholic chapel descends. We read no more of the maternity ward that turned out to be an improvised Azov base, or the theater, where citizens were herded, photographed in raggedy blankets, and sent away. Ditto the art school: Nothing more on this since the initial reports began to collapse. No body counts, no mention of the fact that Russian jets did not fly over Mariupol on the days in question. ...

After the Pentagon Papers came out in 1971, Hannah Arendt published an essay in The New York Review of Books called “Lying in Politics.” In it she wrote of America’s slide into a sort of collective psychosis she termed “defactualization.” Facts are fragile, Arendt wrote, in that they tell no story in themselves. They can be assembled to mean whatever one wants them to mean. This leaves them vulnerable to the manipulations of storytellers. “The deliberate falsehood deals with contingent facts,” Arendt explained in this remarkable piece of work, “that is, with matters which carry no inherent truth within themselves, no necessity to be as they are; factual truths are never compellingly true.”

A dead body in a Ukrainian street, in other words, can be assigned a meaning that, once it is established, evidence to the contrary cannot be used to erase.

US Media Pushes “War Crime” Propaganda In Ukraine

Interview with Scott Ritter about what happened in Bucha (RT)

Conflict in Ukraine to continue for years 'at least', US military chief says

Army Gen Mark Milley also agreed that Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, and its ongoing demands that the US and Nato reduce troops and arms in European countries along Russia’s borders, signal a lengthy conflict in the region that extends beyond Ukraine.

"I do think this is a very protracted conflict and I think it’s at least measured in years. I don’t know about decades, but at least years for sure,” said Milley.

I think that Nato, the United States, Ukraine and all of the allies and partners that are supporting Ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time.”"

Austin added that the broad Russian demands were not acceptable to Nato, and the US is looking at ways to provide additional aid and training to countries, including non-Nato allies such as Georgia and Finland, the Associated Press reports.

Sergei Lavrov – war graves 'a provocation'

Russia foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said today that mass graves discovered in Bucha were a “provocation” meant to stall peacekeeping talks between Russia and Ukraine, reported AFP.

In a video message broadcast on Russian television, Lavrov said:

"A question arises: What purpose does this blatantly untruthful provocation serve? We are led to believe it is to find a pretext to torpedo the ongoing negotiations."

Proof: Zelensky REJECTED Peace With Russia

Poland Says US Should Deploy Nuclear Weapons to its Territory

Poland’s deputy prime minister has called on the United States to station nuclear weapons in his country, arguing they would act as a deterrent against Russia while urging the NATO alliance to significantly boost its presence across Eastern Europe.

A strong critic of Moscow who’s repeatedly called for direct military action amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Deputy PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested that American bombs could be deployed to Poland during an interview with German newspaper Die Welt on Sunday. “Basically, it makes sense to expand nuclear sharing to [NATO’s] eastern flank,” he said. “If the Americans asked us to store US nuclear weapons in Poland, we would be open to that. It would significantly increase deterrence towards Moscow.”

Kaczynski – who also leads the ruling Law and Justice Party and is considered a major decision-maker in Warsaw – went on to call for a “large operational NATO command in Poland,” hoping for a larger NATO presence that could be used to plan and conduct joint military operations.

“That would send a clear signal to Moscow: the NATO leadership is now also present in the east,” he continued, also calling on Washington to increase its troop levels “from the present 100,000 soldiers up to 150,000 in the future due to Russia’s increasing aggression.” Of those, he said 75,000 should be stationed directly on Russia’s border, while 50,000 others should be deployed elsewhere in Poland and Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which are NATO members.

Germany and UK seize Gazprom assets. Biden blocks Russian bond payments

Why Biden’s release of US oil reserves won’t end pain at the pump

When Joe Biden announced that the United States would release more than 180 million barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserve over the next six months, the US president hailed it as an historic move that would lower fuel prices in the US.

The price at the pump has surged amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has led the US and other nations to bar oil and gas imports from Moscow and driven concerns over global energy supplies with inventories low and new production capacity limited.

Beginning early this week, Europe, Japan, and others are expected to join the US in releasing more from their reserves, adding about 30 to 50 million barrels to the world market over the same six-month period.

But while the Ukraine conflict pushes Biden and other world leaders to dip into their stockpiles, experts say the actual effect for consumers will be limited – and higher prices and more disruptions lay ahead. That is because with global supply-and-demand dictating prices, the barrels of Russian oil coming off the market will far exceed what is being put back in by the US and other nations.

New Analysis Details 'Master Class in War Profiteering' by US Oil Giants

An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia's war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: "First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors' hands."

"Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares," the report continues. "Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors', have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group."

"Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive," the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, "seven companies' boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021," the report states. "Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion."

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—"often extravagantly"—and notes that "nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%."

"Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses," the document points out.

"So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends," the report adds. "Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise."

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that "Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra 'socialize losses, privatize gains.'"

"Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don't care how it affects regular Americans," Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: "Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill."

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

"The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration's acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry," he said. "But the industry's actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers."

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: "This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street."

"Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction," he warned. "Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil's cash grab."

Fuel protests prompt Lima curfew as Ukraine crisis touches South America

Peru’s embattled president Pedro Castillo has banned residents of the capital, Lima, from leaving their homes in an attempt to quell nationwide protests over soaring fuel and fertiliser prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In a televised address just before midnight on Monday, Castillo announced a curfew from 2am until 11.59pm on Tuesday, claiming the measure would “protect the fundamental rights of all people”.

Castillo said the curfew was a response to “violent acts certain groups have created by blocking free transit” on roads in and out of the capital, where about a third of Peru’s 33 million citizens live. ...

The unrest erupted last week as farmers and lorry drivers blocked roads into Lima, triggering a jump in food prices. Inflation in Peru hit a 26-year high on Friday with consumer prices rising 1.48% last month. Over the weekend, the government responded by trying to lower fuel prices by waiving taxes.

Peru – which imports 1.2m tonnes of fertilisers a year – issued an emergency declaration for its agricultural sector due to rising fertiliser prices triggered by western sanctions on Russia, a major exporter of soil nutrients.

Deutsche Bank PREDICTS RECESSION As Corporate America THRIVES

World may be on brink of new inflationary era, says central bank chief

The world economy may be on the brink of a new inflationary era with persistently higher growth in consumer prices due to the retreat of globalisation, a leading central bank chief has said. Agustín Carstens, head of the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements – which is known as the central bank of central banks – said there was a strong risk that prices would rise uncontrollably without a sharp rise in interest rates above existing plans.

In a speech setting out risks for persistently higher rates of inflation, Carstens said higher borrowing costs could be required for several years to curb the risk of spiralling prices wreaking long-term damage on the economies of the industrialised world. However, his comments are disputed as other experts warn that high inflation will probably choke consumer spending and economic growth – reducing the urgency for significantly higher interest rates.

Carstens said a trend for manufacturers to cut back extensive global supply chains in response to the pre-pandemic trade war between the US and China and, more recently, sanctions on Russia, meant production costs would be higher for a longer period than central banks and independent economists currently estimate.

“What starts as temporary can become entrenched, as behaviour adapts if what starts that way goes far enough and lasts long enough. It’s hard to establish where that threshold lies, and we may find out only after it has been crossed,” he said.

Georgia passes bill restricting discussion of race in schools

The Georgia general assembly has passed a bill targeting the discussion of race in schools that also paves the way for transgender students to be banned from playing sport on girls’ teams, after a late-night legislative session on Monday. HB1084 bans the teaching of nine so-called “divisive concepts”, including that the US is “fundamentally racist” and that “one race is inherently superior to another race”.

The “divisive concepts” are almost identical those identified in an executive order signed by then president Donald Trump in 2020, which sought to ban them from federal worker training. The bill also establishes a process for local school boards to vet parents’ complaints over teaching of the concepts.

The bill is the latest in a line of state moves seeking to curb the discussion of race in schools and ban critical race theory, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society which has become a lightning-rod issue for Republicans. ...

During a late-night session on Monday, Georgia Republicans added a last-minute measure to the legislation that allows the state’s high school athletics governing body to ban transgender girls from competing against other girls in public school sports. An earlier iteration of the bill, which passed the state senate but was blocked in the house, sought an outright ban on transgender boys and girls playing on teams that did not match their genders assigned at birth.

Sounds like a good time for young women to vote with their feet.

Oklahoma lawmakers pass bill to make performing an abortion illegal

Oklahoma lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill to make performing an abortion a felony punishable by 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. That is likely to land the bill on the desk of the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, who has promised to sign all anti-abortion legislation.

Oklahoma’s bill is just one in a raft of Republican bills to severely restrict or ban abortion, all timed before a widely anticipated supreme court case that disrupts nearly 50 years of established protections for abortion rights. If Oklahoma’s bill passes into law, it will take effect this summer.

“When [patients] hear this is happening, and probably will happen soon, they are in shock,” said Dr Iman Alsaden, medical director of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

“The implications of all of this is there’s going to be a few states that are relied on to provide abortion care to people, and those people who do not live in those states will have to wait enormously long wait times,” said Alsaden. “You’re just looking at really making people jump through extraordinary hoops.”

More than 781,000 women of reproductive age live in Oklahoma. However, the bill is also expected to have an outsized impact on the nearly 7 million women of reproductive age who live in Texas. Thousands of pregnant Texans have relied on legal abortion in Oklahoma since Texas outlawed abortion after six weeks gestation in September 2021.

Ivanka Trump testifies before panel investigating Capitol attack

Ivanka Trump testified before the January 6 committee on Tuesday, the special congressional panel investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021 in which extremist supporters of Donald Trump attempted in vain to overturn his defeat in the presidential election. The Mississippi congressman Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said on Tuesday afternoon that she had been answering investigators’ questions on a video teleconference since the morning and was not “chatty” but had been helpful. “She came in on her own” and did not have to be subpoenaed, Thompson said.

Ivanka Trump, who was with her father in the White House that day, is one of more than 800 witnesses the committee has interviewed as it works to compile a record of the attack, the worst on the Capitol in more than two centuries.

She is the first of Trump’s children known to speak to the committee and one of the closest people to her father. Whether she gave the committee new information or not, her decision to cooperate was significant for the panel, which has been trying to secure an interview with her since late January.

The nine-member panel is particularly focused on what the former president was doing as his supporters broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory for several hours as lawmakers and staff fled for their lives. ... Her testimony came after that of her husband and fellow former presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who spoke to the panel for more than six hours last week.

Scientists sound alarm at US regulator’s new ‘forever chemicals’ definition

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) department responsible for protecting the public from toxic substances is working under a new definition of PFAS “forever chemicals” that excludes some of their widely used compounds. The new “working definition”, established by the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, is not only at odds with much of the scientific world, but is narrower than that used by other EPA departments.

Among other uses, the narrower definition excludes chemicals in pharmaceuticals and pesticides that are generally defined as PFAS. The EPA also cited the narrower definition in December when it declined to take action on some PFAS contamination found in North Carolina.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 12,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They are in thousands of products across dozens of industries, and have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” due to their longevity in the environment.

The discussion within the EPA comes as the agency faces increased pressure to largely restrict the entire chemical class, and critics say the change benefits chemical manufacturers, the Department of Defense and industry.

Federal Court Rejects Coal Mine Expansion Unlawfully Authorized by Trump

Environmental defenders on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to take advantage of a federal court ruling which declared that the U.S. Interior Department under former President Donald Trump had wrongly allowed the expansion of a coal mine in Montana—one that would have resulted in the largest coal mine in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of tons of fossil fuel emissions over a decade.

With the question of the expansion of Signal Peak Energy's Bull Mountain Coal Mine now headed back to the Interior Department, said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians, which joined other groups in suing over the expansion, "this is now a huge opportunity for the Biden administration to get it right on coal and climate."

The department's Office of Surface Mining (OSM) decided in 2017 that Signal Peak Energy could expand the coal mine, allowing for the extraction of 175 million more tons of coal and the release of 240 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 11 years—more emissions than those of any other single source in the country.

The OSM's approval was quickly challenged by a federal court that same year, which found administration officials had put a "thumb on the scale" by only considering potential benefits of the mine expansion instead of considering negative impacts. The following year, the OSM completed an environmental assessment which claimed the new emissions resulting from the expansion would be insignificant compared to global greenhouse gas emissions, which stand at 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year.

The Interior Department offered "no convincing rationale" for that finding, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday in a 2-1 decision.

If a project resulting in the largest underground coal mine in the U.S. "can be found to have no significant impact," wrote Circuit Judge Morgan Christen in the majority opinion, "virtually every domestic source of [greenhouse gases] may be deemed to have no significant impact."

Following the court ruling, the case will be remanded to the District Court, which could order further analysis of the mine's environmental impacts and may shut down the expansion until the assessment is completed.

The world is on fire. Why is Canada considering massive new oil drilling?

Coal and other fossil fuels are “choking humanity”. Those were the words of António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, in response to the sobering recent International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which warned that the world has a small window remaining to act before irreversible and catastrophic impacts are locked in. People around the world are already paying the price with their lives and livelihoods. In 2021, the 10 biggest extreme weather events cost $170bn in damages.

Last year, the International Energy Agency and the IPCC both confirmed that in order to stay below 1.5C of warming, the expansion of oil, gas and coal projects must stop and a planned winding down of both production and emissions begin. Yet according to the UN Environment Programme’s Production Gap report, the world is on track to produce double the amount of fossil fuels that can be burned on the planet.

Canada and Norway are two of the world’s biggest fossil-fuel producers. While the two countries have demonstrated leadership in terms of putting a price on carbon pollution and getting rid of coal plants, they share a major blind spot when it comes to oil. Despite the IEA’s finding that no further reserves of oil can be developed if we are to meet global emissions targets, both countries have plans for expansion.

Case in point: a Norwegian company, Equinor, is now proposing a giant oil drilling project called Bay du Nord off the coast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The project is estimated to produce up to 73m barrels a year, which is equivalent to adding more than 7m gas-powered cars to the road. This calls into question the Canadian federal cabinet’s commitment to climate action and risks local ecosystems and the fisheries and other industries that depend upon them. Bay du Nord would involve building the deepest production wells drilled in Canada; according to estimates by Equinor, a wellhead blowout at this location would take 18 to 36 days to cap.

The new Canadian cabinet was supposed to make a decision on whether or not to accept this project by 6 March, but has now delayed that decision by another 40 days – time, we hope, that they will use to plan a just energy transition instead of another oil project. This is the first test of their climate leadership and threatens their claims of being environmental champions.

Also of Interest

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

US Interventionism Always Makes Things Worse: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

If The Pentagon Can Not Confirm The Bucha Tales, Who Can?

Congress Expected to Increase Biden’s $813 Billion Military Budget Request

US Weapons Makers See Longer-Term Benefits of War in Ukraine

Biden’s Sanctions Will Backfire

Joe Biden’s Careless Babbling Could Get Us All Killed

New Data Shows Fed Chair Powell Misled Congress on the Condition of the Megabanks and their Need for Emergency Loans

Drought may have forced Vikings to leave Greenland, says study

Back from Kabul, Women’s Delegation Urges U.S. to Unfreeze Afghan Funds Amid Humanitarian Crisis

A Little Night Music

Jesse Fuller - John Henry

Jesse Fuller - Beat It On Down The Line

Jesse Fuller - Memphis Boogie

Jesse Fuller - Take This Hammer

Jesse Fuller - The Monkey And the Engineer

Jesse Fuller - Hesitation Blues

Jesse Fuller - Lining Up the Track & Railroad Blues

Jesse Fuller - Take It Slow And Easy

Jesse Fuller - Move On Down The Line