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"The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

News and Opinion

Biden's Broken Promise to Avoid War with Russia May Kill Us All

On March 11, 2022, President Biden reassured the American public and the world that the United States and its NATO allies were not at war with Russia. "We will not fight a war with Russia in Ukraine," said Biden. "Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent." 

It is widely acknowledged that U.S. and NATO officers are now fully involved in Ukraine's operational war planning, aided by a broad range of U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis to exploit Russia's military vulnerabilities, while Ukrainian forces are armed with U.S. and NATO weapons and trained up to the standards of other NATO countries.

On October 5, Nikolay Patrushev, the head of Russia's Security Council, recognized that Russia is now fighting NATO in Ukraine. Meanwhile, President Putin has reminded the world that Russia has nuclear weapons and is prepared to use them "when the very existence of the state is put under threat," as Russia's official nuclear weapons doctrine declared in June 2020. 

It seems likely that, under that doctrine, Russia's leaders would interpret losing a war to the United States and NATO on their own borders as meeting the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

President Biden acknowledged on October 6 that Putin is "not joking" and that it would be difficult for Russia to use a "tactical" nuclear weapon "and not end up with Armageddon." Biden assessed the danger of a full-scale nuclear war as higher than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. 

Yet despite voicing the possibility of an existential threat to our survival, Biden was not issuing a public warning to the American people and the world, nor announcing any change in U.S. policy. Bizarrely, the president was instead discussing the prospect of nuclear war with his political party's financial backers during an election fundraiser at the home of media mogul James Murdoch, with surprised corporate media reporters listening in.

In an NPR report about the danger of nuclear war over Ukraine, Matthew Bunn, a nuclear weapons expert at Harvard University, estimated the chance of Russia using a nuclear weapon at 10 to 20 percent.

How have we gone from ruling out direct U.S. and NATO involvement in the war to U.S. involvement in all aspects of the war except for the bleeding and dying, with an estimated 10 to 20 percent chance of nuclear war? Bunn made that estimate shortly before the sabotage of the Kerch Strait Bridge to Crimea. What odds will he project a few months from now if both sides keep matching each other's escalations with further escalation?

The irresolvable dilemma facing Western leaders is that this is a no-win situation. How can they militarily defeat Russia, when it possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads and its military doctrine explicitly states that it will use them before it will accept an existential military defeat?

And yet that is what the intensifying Western role in Ukraine now explicitly aims to achieve. This leaves U.S. and NATO policy, and thus our very existence, hanging by a thin thread: the hope that Putin is bluffing, despite explicit warnings that he is not. CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the director of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, have all warned that we should not take this danger lightly.

The danger of relentless escalation toward Armageddon is what both sides faced throughout the Cold War, which is why, after the wake-up call of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, dangerous brinkmanship gave way to a framework of nuclear arms control agreements and safeguard mechanisms to prevent proxy wars and military alliances spiraling into a world-ending nuclear war. Even with those safeguards in place, there were still many close calls—but without them, we would probably not be here to write about it.

Today, the situation is made more dangerous by the dismantling of those nuclear arms treaties and safeguards. It is also exacerbated, whether either side intends it or not, by the twelve-to-one imbalance between U.S. and Russian military spending, which leaves Russia with more limited conventional military options and a greater reliance on nuclear ones.

But there have always been alternatives to the relentless escalation of this war by both sides that has brought us to this pass. In April, Western officials took a fateful step when they persuaded President Zelenskyy to abandon Turkish- and Israeli-brokered negotiations with Russia that had produced a promising 15-point framework for a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal and a neutral future for Ukraine.

That agreement would have required Western countries to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, but they refused to be party to it and instead promised Ukraine military support for a long war to try to decisively defeat Russia and recover all the territory Ukraine had lost since 2014.

U.S. Defense Secretary Austin declared that the West's goal in the war was now to "weaken" Russia to the point that it would no longer have the military power to invade Ukraine again. But if the United States and its allies ever came close to achieving that goal, Russia would surely see such a total military defeat as putting "the very existence of the state under threat," triggering the use of nuclear weapons under its publicly stated nuclear doctrine.

On May 23rd, the very day that Congress passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, including $24 billion in new military spending, the contradictions and dangers of the new U.S.-NATO war policy in Ukraine finally spurred a critical response from The New York Times editorial board. A Times editorial, titled "The Ukraine War is Getting Complicated, and America Is Not Ready," asked serious, probing questions about the new U.S. policy:

Is the United States, for example, trying to help bring an end to this conflict, through a settlement that would allow for a sovereign Ukraine and some kind of relationship between the United States and Russia? Or is the United States now trying to weaken Russia permanently? Has the administration's goal shifted to destabilizing Putin or having him removed? Does the United States intend to hold Putin accountable as a war criminal? Or is the goal to try to avoid a wider war…? Without clarity on these questions, the White House…jeopardizes long-term peace and security on the European continent.

The Times editors went on to voice what many have thought but few have dared to say in such a politicized media environment, that the goal of recovering all the territory Ukraine has lost since 2014 is not realistic, and that a war to do so will "inflict untold destruction on Ukraine." They called on Biden to talk honestly with Zelenskyy about "how much more destruction Ukraine can sustain" and the "limit to how far the United States and NATO will confront Russia."

A week later, Biden replied to the Times in an op-ed titled "What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine." He quoted Zelenskyy saying that the war "will only definitively end through diplomacy," and wrote that the United States was sending weapons and ammunition so that Ukraine "can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table."

Biden wrote, "We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia.…the United States will not try to bring about [Putin's] ouster in Moscow." But he went on to pledge virtually unlimited U.S. support for Ukraine, and he did not answer the more difficult questions the Times asked about the U.S. endgame in Ukraine, the limits to U.S. involvement in the war or how much more devastation Ukraine could sustain.

As the war escalates and the danger of nuclear war increases, these questions remain unanswered. Calls for a speedy end to the war echoed around the UN General Assembly in New York in September, where 66 countries, representing most of the world's population, urgently called on all sides to restart peace talks.

The greatest danger we face is that their calls will be ignored, and that the U.S. military-industrial complex's overpaid minions will keep finding ways to incrementally turn up the pressure on Russia, calling its bluff and ignoring its "red lines" as they have since 1991, until they cross the most critical "red line" of all.

If the world's calls for peace are heard before it is too late and we survive this crisis, the United States and Russia must renew their commitments to arms control and nuclear disarmament, and negotiate how they and other nuclear armed states will destroy their weapons of mass destruction and accede to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, so that we can finally lift this unthinkable and unacceptable danger hanging over our heads.

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas Davies: Negotiations "Still the Only Way Forward" to End Ukraine War

Putin ‘totally miscalculated’ Russia’s ability to occupy Ukraine, Biden says

Joe Biden has said he believes Vladimir Putin is a “rational actor” who badly misjudged his prospects of occupying Ukraine.

The US president told CNN in remarks released ahead of a rare TV interview on Tuesday that he believed his Russian counterpart had underestimated the ferocity of Ukrainian defiance in the face of invasion.

“I think … he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv, and that where he was going to be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated,” Biden said.

“I think he is a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly.”

The president spoke as his administration looks for what he has described as an “off-ramp” for Putin to de-escalate his invasion of Ukraine before he resorts to weapons of mass destruction.

“We Need To Back Off Ukraine” Military Leaders Tell Biden

No signs Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapon, says GCHQ boss

The head of GCHQ has said the UK spy agency has not seen any indicators that Russia is preparing to use a tactical nuclear weapon in or around Ukraine despite recent bellicose statements from Vladimir Putin.

Jeremy Fleming, speaking on Tuesday morning, said it was one of GCHQ’s tasks to monitor whether the Kremlin was taking any of the preliminary steps needed before a tactical weapon was being made ready.

“The way in which the Russian military machine and President Putin are conducting this war, they are staying within the doctrine that we understand for their use, including for nuclear weapons,” Fleming said.

NATO To Hold NUCLEAR DETERRENCE Exercise, Elon Musk Accused Of COLLUDING WITH PUTIN

This is a pretty interesting article, there's a pretty good survey of the ferment across european countries after some talk about France's reaction to the worsening economy and energy shortages.

Protests Rage Across Europe, As Sanctions-Fuelled Inflation Surges and Economic Crisis Deepens

Last Friday (October 7), the 82-year old French writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature, for what the panel described as an “uncompromising” 50-year body of work exploring “a life marked by great disparities regarding gender, language and class”. A feminist and politically committed writer, Ernaux is the first French woman to win the award. ... Ernaux’s name headed a list of 69 signatories to an open letter in the Journal du Dimanche calling for public support of an upcoming demonstration against Macron’s government, on October 16. Organisers of the demonstration accuse Macron of failing to tackle soaring prices of energy and other essentials while exploiting the ensuing crisis to obliterate what remains of the welfare state and social rights:

For many French people, fear of the end of the month is increasing. The bills are getting heavier. Receipts are skyrocketing. But salaries, pensions and welfare benefits are not rising, while the profits of some of the largest French firms are reaching new heights.

This is the shock strategy: Emmanuel Macron seizes on inflation to widen the wealth gap and boost capital income, to the detriment of the rest. To let the prices of essential products and energy soar, and with them the profits of multinationals. To prevent any additional tax on those profits. While taking advantage of inflation so that real wages collapse. By refusing to compensate local authorities, the inevitable demolition of the public services they provide is guaranteed…

Neoliberals have been banging on for 40 years that there is no alternative. Do not let the heirs of Mr. Thatcher destroy hope, and liquidate our social rights. Another world is possible. Based on the satisfaction of human needs, within the limits of ecosystems. Freezing the prices of basic products and rents, increasing wages and social benefits across the board, setting the retirement age at 60, taxing superprofits, pouring massive investments into ecological bifurcation, transport and public services… Everything is only a matter of political will, and depends on our determination.

When it comes to mobilizing large numbers of people for political protests, the French can be pretty determined. Yet there was one word that was conspicuously missing from the open letter: sanctions. Which goes to show, once again, that well-meaning, left-leaning intellectuals are incapable or unwilling to confront the elephant in the room, Europe’s self-harming sanctions against Russia, even as they threaten to plunge the European economy into a deep depression.

Protests and strikes, French anger towards Macron grows

Recommended. Worth a full read, here's the intro to get you started:

OPEC’s Body Blow to Biden

The Biden administration is swiftly establishing a narrative that the recent OPEC decision to cut oil production by 2 million tonnes is a geopolitical “aligning” by Saudi Arabia and Russia. It taps into the Russophobia in the Beltway and deflects attention from the humiliating defeat of President Joe Biden’s personal diplomacy with Saudi Arabia. But it is not without basis, either.

Foreign policy was reputed to be Biden’s forte but is turning out to be his nemesis. An ignominious end is not unlikely; as with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, West Asia may become the burial ground of his carefully cultivated reputation.

The magnitude of what is unfolding is simply staggering. Biden realizes belatedly that territorial conquests in Ukraine is not the real story but embedded in it is the economic war and within that is the energy war that has been incubating through the past eight-month period following the Western sanctions on Russia. The paradox is, even if Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wins the war, Biden would still have lost the war unless he wins the energy war and goes on to win the economic war as well.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visualized such an outcome as far back as in 2016 when on the sidelines of the G20 Hangzhou summit, the tantalizing idea of OPEC+ crystallized between him and then Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. I wrote at that time that an “understanding between Russia and OPEC holds the potential to completely transform the geopolitical alignments in the Middle East… This shift cannot but impact petrodollar recycling, which has been historically a robust pillar of the western financial system. In strategic terms, too, Washington’s attempt to ‘isolate’ Russia is rendered ineffective.” That was six years ago.

The debris that surrounds Biden today is a large messy pile. He didn’t realize that the lackadaisical way the Russian offensive in Ukraine rolled on was because Putin was concentrating on the economic war and the energy war, the outcome of which will determine the future of U.S.’ global hegemony, which has been riveted on the dollar being the reserve currency.

Biden signals rethink over Saudi ties amid anger at cuts in oil output

The Biden administration has said it is ready to consider tough new measures against Saudi Arabia after its decision last week to side with Vladimir Putin and cut oil production.

Observers said the move signalled a dramatic abandonment of the US president’s recent attempts to seek a rapprochement with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and casts doubt over the future of the US-Saudi security relationship.

“The president believes that we should review the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia and take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be and that it is serving our national security interests,” John Kirby, the national security council spokesperson, said, adding that the re-evaluation was “in light of the recent decision by Opec, and Saudi Arabia’s leadership”.

Among other options, Kirby suggested Biden would speak to senior Democrats on Capitol Hill who have been calling for the US to curtail its cooperation with the kingdom in light of what was seen as Prince Mohammed’s decision to side with Russian interests over the US. The move to cut oil production comes just weeks before a critical midterm election that could hinge on how much American consumers are paying at the pump.

Kirby said that conversations with Congress on Saudi policy would start when it returns from recess after the November elections.

We couldn't cut off military funding to this brutal thugocracy when they merely had a genocidal war going against a neighboring country and hacked an american journalist to pieces, regularly execute women for witchcraft and countless other disgusting authoritarian acts - but now they have committed the cardinal sin of failing to support the U.S. thugocracy's war against Russia. Now we're going to see some action!

Dems Unveil 'Simple Yet Urgent' Bill Blocking US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

A pair of congressional Democrats on Tuesday officially introduced their promised proposal to immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia for a year.

The legislation, spearheaded by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), follows the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, or OPEC+, agreeing to slash oil production to boost prices.

U.S. President Joe Biden and other critics of the move have framed it as Saudi Arabia siding with Russia several months into Russian President Vladimir Putin's deadly and dangerous invasion of Ukraine—a position echoed Tuesday by the bill's sponsors.

"Saudi Arabia's disastrous decision to slash oil production by two million barrels a day makes it clear that Riyadh is seeking to harm the U.S. and reaffirms the need to reassess the U.S.-Saudi relationship," declared Khanna.

The legislative proposal comes over seven years into the Saudi-led war on Yemen, which had created what is widely considered the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Earlier this month, negotiators failed to extend a truce that began in April.

"There is no reason for the U.S. to kowtow to a regime that has massacred countless civilians in Yemen, hacked to death a Washington-based journalist, and is now extorting Americans at the pump," Khanna said, referencing the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which the U.S. intelligence community concluded was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS.

'The Worst Is Yet to Come': IMF Warns Severe Global Recession Is on the Horizon

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday became the latest prominent global institution to warn that the world economy is barreling toward a potentially devastating recession as central banks aggressively raise interest rates, Russia's war in Ukraine rages, and pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions persist.

In its new World Economic Outlook report, the IMF lowered its global growth forecast for next year in the face of myriad "steep challenges" and warned that "the worst is yet to come" for many countries as a strong U.S. dollar worsens debt burdens and costs-of-living crises in developing nations.

"Risks to the outlook remain unusually large and to the downside," the report states. "Monetary policy could miscalculate the right stance to reduce inflation... More energy and food price shocks might cause inflation to persist for longer. Global tightening in financing conditions could trigger widespread emerging market debt distress."

The IMF expects inflation, which is afflicting countries across the globe, to remain elevated through next year even as the U.S. Federal Reserve and other powerful central banks attempt to tamp down demand, risking mass job loss and a worldwide economic crisis.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF's director of research, cautioned in a blog post Tuesday that central banks could hurl the global economy into an "unnecessarily severe recession" if they go too far with interest rate increases, echoing a concern voiced in recent weeks by the World Bank, the United Nations, and progressive economists.

"Financial markets may also struggle with overly rapid tightening," Gourinchas added.

In an interview with The New York Times, Gourinchas said the IMF expects "about a third of the global economy to be in a technical recession"—defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction—in 2023.

In a separate report published Tuesday as finance ministers traveled to Washington, D.C. for the IMF and World Bank's annual meeting, the IMF observed that "financial stability risks have increased," adding to simmering fears of a global financial collapse and anxiety over continued economic turmoil in the United Kingdom.

"Many advanced economies and emerging markets may face housing-market-related risks as mortgage rates rise and lending standards tighten, squeezing potential borrowers out of the market," the IMF's new Global Financial Stability Report notes. "If further adverse shocks were to realize, tighter financial conditions may trigger market illiquidity, disorderly sell-offs, or distress."

Eric LeCompte, executive director of the Jubilee USA Network, said in response to the IMF's warnings that "it seems likely that we are heading into a recession."

"The U.S. and other large economies will see contractions and this impacts the entire global economy," said LeCompte. "The war and rising interest rates are putting developing countries in an even more difficult situation. Rising food and energy prices hurt everyone, in particular the poor."

"Some of the proposed solutions of austerity and higher interest rates will cause pain," LeCompte added. "As the dollar gets stronger, developing country debts become dangerously unsustainable."

Worth a peek:

Nomi Prins’ New Book: “No One Wanted to Call the Fed’s QE a Ponzi Scheme. But It Was.”

Wall Street veteran Nomi Prins’ new book is being released today with a title that should give every member of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees pause: Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever. The book does what neither of these Committees has done for the American people. It explains how the financial crash of 2008 unleashed an unbridled and unaccountable Fed as Wall Street’s permanent sugar daddy, distorting market functioning with its perpetual money spigot to the point that markets no longer function as a pricing mechanism or efficient allocator of capital but more along the lines of a Ponzi scheme for the rich. Prins writes:

“Once central banks unleashed monetary policy to accommodate mega-banks, subsidize Wall Street financiers, and bolster global markets, the very idea of free and open markets and laissez-faire investing died. The threat of raising rates or ceasing to buy bonds could catalyze panic, instability, and chaos—so the threat was never issued. No one wanted to call the Fed’s QE a Ponzi scheme. But it was.”

The disparity between the Fed’s money spigot to shore up Wall Street versus the real economy is succinctly captured by Prins as follows:

“The amount of money created to buy securities under its ‘no-limit’ policy over the course of just a few months was staggering. On June 18, 2020, the Fed reported that the size of its book had expanded to $7.1 trillion…It was also nearly double the level it had been one year earlier. It was 60% greater than it had been at the height of the post-financial-crisis period. All that newly manufactured money turbo-boosted the stock market. This trading frenzy among institutional investors and a growing group of retail investors led Wall Street banks to smash earnings records in the third quarter of 2020. This was in stark contrast to abysmal unemployment figures still weighing on Main Street. It was incongruent with the fact that during 2020 the number of US corporate bankruptcies hit their highest level since 2009, with 630 filings…”

The timing of the release of Prins’ book could not be more appropriate as signs mount of how entrenched corruption has distorted the world in which we live to the point that it increasingly feels like a bad sci-fi movie. The man who first hooked up the feeding tube from the Fed to the grifters on Wall Street, former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, just yesterday received a Nobel Prize in economics. The former President of the United States, Donald Trump, who hammered the current Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, with demands to keep the punch bowl flowing, is under criminal investigation for stealing Top Secret government documents. The New York Fed has set up a second trading floor in Chicago near the S&P 500 futures market with not one member of the U.S. Congress curious as to why the New York Fed should have even one trading floor. And a year-long investigation of Fed officials for potentially engaging in insider trading continues..

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is "Heist" by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

Health Insurers Get Government Cash, Then Jack Up Prices

Back in 2010, Democrats sold the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to Americans as a way to both preserve a privately financed health insurance system and provide more affordable and expanded coverage. Twelve years later, as health insurance companies report record profits, the opposite has happened: The nation’s major health insurance companies are receiving most of their money from the government, they just jacked up prices by double digits, and nearly half of the country is now underinsured or uninsured.

A new analysis from former health insurance executive Wendell Potter shows that six of the seven largest health insurers — Centene, CVS, Elevance, UnitedHealth, Humana, and Molina — now receive the majority of their health plan revenues from the federal government, while the seventh, Cigna, gets 42 percent of its revenue from the government. These revenues are fueled in large part by the growth of Medicare Advantage plans, the expensive privatized Medicare plans operated by private health insurers that often wrongfully deny care.

These figures do not even include the subsidies that insurers receive to help people buy individual insurance plans offered on state exchanges under the ACA. Under President Joe Biden, Democrats have twice expanded this ACA subsidy program, now until 2025. If Democrats move to authorize these subsidies yet again, the total ACA health insurance subsidy scheme would cost the public more than $800 million over the decade. Meanwhile, these plans deny nearly 20 percent of all in-network health claims.

All that government money, however, is not buying more affordable prices. According to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health insurers raised their prices by 24 percent in a single year. Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced an 8.5 percent spike in revenues paid to Medicare Advantage insurers after implementing the highest-ever increase to Medicare premiums, a decision Biden has partially walked back for next year.

The government largesse is inflating insurance industry profits, but it isn’t buying universal — or even very good — coverage: A new study from the Commonwealth Fund finds that 43 percent of Americans “are inadequately insured” — meaning they’ve had coverage gaps, they are insured but still cannot afford medical services, or they have no insurance at all.

Rail Workers REJECT Biden Deal As Strike LOOMS

Baltimore prosecutors drop all charges against Adnan Syed of Serial podcast

Prosecutors in Baltimore have dismissed all charges against Adnan Syed, who was released from prison last month after the overturning of his murder conviction in the case that was at the center of the famed podcast Serial.

Syed can still be retried depending on what the Baltimore state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, decides, according to CBS, because there is no time limit to prosecute murder cases.

But Tuesday’s decision ensures he will not be returned to custody any time soon, if ever again, and investigators have said they are following up on promising leads that potentially implicate other suspects. The state had only eight more days to indicate whether it intended to retry Syed soon or dismiss the case, at least for the time being.

A circuit court judge reversed Syed’s conviction on 19 September after ruling authorities hid exculpatory evidence from his defense.

Syed, 41, spent more than 20 years in prison after the murder of his high-school girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999. A jury convicted him of Lee’s killing in February 2000, but he has maintained his innocence throughout. The withheld evidence appeared to support theories that someone other than Syed had killed Lee.

17-Yr-Old Brutally Shot By Cops In His Car Is Unconscious, On Life Support: Family Lawyer

US supreme court declines to take up fetal personhood case

The US supreme court on Tuesday refused to rule on whether fetuses are people and therefore have constitutional rights, dealing a blow to two women and a Catholic church that filed a lawsuit against the state of Rhode Island.

In May, the Rhode Island supreme court ruled that the word “person” does not apply to the unborn. But that ruling cited Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to abortion and which the US supreme court overturned in June.

The Rhode Island ruling read, in part: “The unborn plaintiffs fail to assert a legally cognizable and protected interest as persons pursuant to these repealed statutes, which are contrary to the United States constitution as construed by the United States supreme court.”

Sources in Russian analyst’s Trump dossier fabricated, prosecutors argue

A Russian analyst who played a major role in the creation of a flawed dossier about Donald Trump fabricated one of his own sources and concealed the identity of another when interviewed by the FBI, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The allegations were aired during opening statements in the trial of Igor Danchenko, who is indicted on five counts of making false statements to the FBI. The FBI interviewed Danchenko on multiple occasions in 2017 as it tried to corroborate allegations in what became known as the “Steele dossier”. ...

Specifically, prosecutors say, Danchenko lied when he said he obtained some information in an anonymous phone call from a man he believed to be Sergei Millian, a former head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce. The prosecutor Michael Keilty told jurors in US district court in Alexandria that Danchenko had never spoken with Millian and that phone records showed he had never received an anonymous phone call at the time Danchenko claimed it occurred.

Prosecutors also say Danchenko lied when he said he never “talked” with a man named Charles Dolan about the allegations contained in the dossier. Prosecutors say there is evidence that Danchenko “spoke with Mr Dolan over email” about very specific items that showed up in the dossier.

The FBI needed to know that Dolan was an important source for Danchenko, Keilty said, because Dolan is a Democratic operative who has worked on the presidential campaign of every Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter, and thus would have had motivation to fabricate or embellish allegations against Trump.

Pressing Safety Concerns, Opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline Gear Up for the Next Round of Battle

As the U.S. Senate begins a month with two extended recesses, Maury Johnson of Greenville, West Virginia, has a proposal for how Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), someone he considers an old family friend, could best spend the break. ... “I can take him not far from his house in Farmington,” said Johnson, a retired educator and administrator who lives 800 feet from the pipeline. “I can take him to this pipeline route and show him some of the horrible things that are going on.” For example, Johnson would like Manchin to take a close look at aging pipes that have been left above ground, exposed to the elements for years, and places where land slippage threatens pipe sections that have already been laid underground. ...

Although the Mountain Valley Pipeline Project is 94 percent complete, according to its developer, it still needs final approval from multiple federal agencies. Johnson and many other landowners along the pipeline’s route are campaigning to block those approvals: Already they view the project as a scar across two states that cuts through forests and farmland and fouls mountain streams and wells with construction sediment. They also worry about a potential for a rupture in the high-pressure pipeline, which measures three and a half feet in diameter.

If an explosion were to occur, said Johnson, 62, “I’ll be dust. I’ll be ashes.” Over the past 20 years, an average of two fatalities per year from major gas transmission pipeline explosions or other “serious incidents” have occurred in the United States, according to the federal Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). Echoing Johnson’s concerns, safety experts cite two factors that could make the Mountain Valley Pipeline prone to rupturing: aging sections of pipe that have been stored for years above ground, and the region’s steep, unstable terrain.

If the Mountain Valley Pipeline were ever to explode, they warn, the impact could be catastrophic. When a Pacific Gas and Electric gas pipeline ruptured in San Bruno, California, on Sept. 9, 2010, the explosion killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes. That pipeline, measuring two and a half feet in diameter, was transporting gas that was pressurized to less than 400 pounds per square inch, according to the PHMSA. The Mountain Valley Pipeline is three and a half feet in diameter and is designed for much higher pressures, with a maximum operating pressure of 1,480 pounds per square inch, allowing it to ship higher volumes of gas.

“This isn’t just another natural gas pipeline,” said Bill Caram, the executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust, based in Bellingham, Washington. “This is a very large, very high-pressure pipeline. It is a completely different animal that we really need to take seriously.” ...

As Manchin looks to override the usual federal and judicial approval process for the pipeline, safety experts worry that legitimate concerns will be ignored. “Clearly they’re trying to use politics to overcome the science and the routing, and that may not be the best thing to do,” said Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and independent consultant, citing the pipe corrosion and landslide concerns.

Interesting article, it looks like a lot of people are being oppressed like Stephen Donziger by extractive energy corporations. Here's a snippet to get you started:

How Fossil Fuel Corporations Are Trying to Sue Their Critics Into Silence

In 2018, Krystal Two Bulls received notice that she was being sued for criminal conspiracy. Two Bulls, who is Oglala Lakota and North Cheyenne, has been organizing for environmental justice for much of her life. She was raised on the North Cheyenne Indian Reservation of Lame Deer, Montana, part of a community that had resisted coal developments for nearly 40 years. In 2016, she helped defeat Arch Coal’s plans to build a massive strip mining operation on the reservation’s border. The project would’ve been one of the largest coal mines in the United States.

Later that same year, Two Bulls received an urgent call for assistance from land and water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, who were working to oppose the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, which transports crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

When Two Bulls arrived, the conflict between protestors and local police was escalating. Her auntie, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, had recently been arrested after standing in the path of a bulldozer set to dig up human remains at an ancestral burial site. Two Bulls spent three-and-a-half months supporting and sustaining the camp — handling basic logistics like providing protestors with food, warm clothing, and other necessities — all in the face of violence by state police. She then helped to launch the No DAPL Solidarity Campaign, a global movement to back the Indigenous opposition to the pipeline. 

It wasn’t until a year after camp was shut down that Two Bulls, who came to North Dakota on her own dime and left in debt, found out she was being sued for millions of dollars by the pipeline developer, Energy Transfer Partners. The charges were brought under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Practices (RICO) Act, a law originally designed to prosecute the mafia. The company claimed that through her “calls to action,” including a statement on Greenpeace’s website asking “all people from around the world to take action” and “come stand with us” against the Dakota Access pipeline, Two Bulls and others had conspired to interfere with Energy Transfer’s business operations and engaged in organized crime. The individuals and groups’ opposition, the company claimed, was defamatory and cost key investments in its pipeline.

In 2017, The Intercept reported on documents leaked from former personnel at an international security firm, TigerSwan, revealing that Energy Transfer had paid the firm to use military-style surveillance and infiltration tactics to gather information that could be deployed in a RICO lawsuit against the anti-pipeline activists. Two Bulls is just one of many victims of the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs — strategic lawsuits against public participation — to silence and intimidate its critics. A report released last month by legal advocacy nonprofit EarthRights International identified 152 instances of legal and judicial harassment by fossil fuel corporations to suppress dissent in the United States over the past 10 years, including 93 SLAPP lawsuits.

Also of Interest

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

Ukraine - War Propaganda And News Items

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Experts: U.S. LNG Growth Could Slow Next Year

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America Stands with World’s Dictatorships in Commitment to Death Penalty

600 Million Metric Tons of Plastic May Fill Oceans by 2036 If We Don’t Act Now

Briahna Joy Gray: Is Tulsi Gabbard A War-Profiteering HYPOCRITE?

A Little Night Music

Jive Five - People From Another World

The Jive Five - What Time Is It

The Jive Five - Goin' Wild

The Jive Five - I'm A Happy Man

The Jive Five - Begging You Please

The Jive Five - Ha! Ha!

The Jive Five - Please, Baby, Please (Come On Back To Me)

The Jive Five - Now That I Found You

The Jive Five - Main Street