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"I believe we have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace, we are on the verge of a global economic expansion that is sparked by the fact that the United States at this critical moment decided that we would compete, not retreat."

-- William J. Clinton

News and Opinion

Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp in Ukraine?

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, known for his staunch support for Ukraine,recently revealed his greatest fear for this winter to a TV interviewer in his native Norway: that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a major war between NATO and Russia. “If things go wrong,” he cautioned solemnly, “they can go horribly wrong.”

It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war, and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between U.S. and NATO political leaders on one hand and military officials on the other. Civilian leaders still appear committed to waging a long, open-ended war in Ukraine, while military leaders, such as the U.S. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, have spoken out and urged Ukraine to “ seize the moment” for peace talks.

Retired Admiral Michael Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, spoke out first, maybe testing the waters for Milley, telling ABC News that the United States should “do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.”

Asia Times reported that other NATO military leaders share Milley’s view that neither Russia nor Ukraine can achieve an outright military victory, while French and German military assessments conclude that the stronger negotiating position Ukraine has gained through its recent military successes will be short-lived if it fails to heed Milley’s advice.

So why are U.S. and NATO military leaders speaking out so urgently to reject the perpetuation of their own central role in the war in Ukraine? And why do they see such danger in the offing if their political bosses miss or ignore their cues for the shift to diplomacy?

A Pentagon-commissioned Rand Corporation study published in December, titled Responding to a Russian Attack on NATO During the Ukraine War, provides clues as to what Milley and his military colleagues find so alarming. The study examines U.S. options for responding to four scenarios in which Russia attacks a range of NATO targets, from a U.S. intelligence satellite or a NATO arms depot in Poland to larger-scale missile attacks on NATO air bases and ports, including Ramstein U.S. Air Base and the port of Rotterdam.

These four scenarios are all hypothetical and premised on a Russian escalation beyond the borders of Ukraine. But the authors’ analysis reveals just how fine and precarious the line is between limited and proportionate military responses to Russian escalation and a spiral of escalation that can spin out of control and lead to nuclear war.

The final sentence of the study’s conclusion reads: “The potential for nuclear use adds weight to the U.S. goal of avoiding further escalation, a goal which might seem increasingly critical in the aftermath of a limited Russian conventional attack.” Yet other parts of the study argue against de-escalation or less-than-proportionate responses to Russian escalations, based on the same concerns with U.S. “credibility” that drove devastating but ultimately futile rounds of escalation in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other lost wars.

U.S. political leaders are always afraid that if they do not respond forcefully enough to enemy actions, their enemies (now including China) will conclude that their military moves can decisively impact U.S. policy and force the United States and its allies to retreat. But escalations driven by such fears have consistently led only to even more decisive and humiliating U.S. defeats.

In Ukraine, U.S. concerns about “credibility” are compounded by the need to demonstrate to its allies that NATO’s Article 5—which says that an attack on one NATO member will be considered an attack on all—is a truly watertight commitment to defend them.

So U.S. policy in Ukraine is caught between the reputational need to intimidate its enemies and support its allies on the one hand, and the unthinkable real-world dangers of escalation on the other. If U.S. leaders continue to act as they have in the past, favoring escalation over loss of “credibility,” they will be flirting with nuclear war, and the danger will only increase with each twist of the escalatory spiral.

As the absence of a “military solution” slowly dawns on the armchair warriors in Washington and NATO capitals, they are quietly slipping more conciliatory positions into their public statements. Most notably, they are replacing their previous insistence that Ukraine must be restored to its pre-2014 borders, meaning a return of all the Donbas and Crimea, with a call for Russia to withdraw only to pre-February 24, 2022, positions, which Russia had previously agreed to in negotiations in Turkey in March.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken toldTheWall Street Journal on December 5th that the goal of the war is now “to take back territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th.” The WSJ reported that “Two European diplomats… said [U.S. National Security Adviser Jake] Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelenskyy’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.”

In another article, TheWall Street Journal quoted German officials saying, “they believe it is unrealistic to expect the Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories,” while British officials defined the minimum basis for negotiations as Russia’s willingness to “withdraw to positions it occupied on February 23rd.” One of Rishi Sunak’s first actions as U.K. Prime Minister at the end of October was to have Defence Minister Ben Wallace call Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the first time since the Russian invasion in February. Wallace told Shoigu the U.K. wanted to de-escalate the conflict, a significant shift from the policies of former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

A major stumbling block holding Western diplomats back from the peace table is the maximalist rhetoric and negotiating positions of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government, which has insisted since April that it will not settle for anything short of full sovereignty over every inch of territory that Ukraine possessed before 2014.

But that maximalist position was itself a remarkable reversal from the position Ukraine took at cease-fire talks in Turkey in March, when it agreed to give up its ambition to join NATO and not to host foreign military bases in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to its pre-invasion positions. At those talks, Ukraine agreed to negotiate the future of Donbas and to postpone a final decision on the future of Crimea for up to 15 years.

The Financial Times broke the story of that 15-point peace plan on March 16, and Zelenskyy explained the “neutrality agreement” to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27, promising to submit it to a national referendum before it could take effect.

But then U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened on April 9 to quash that agreement. He told Zelenskyy that the U.K. and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back Ukraine to fight a long war, but would not sign on to any agreements Ukraine made with Russia.

This helps to explain why Zelenskyy is now so offended by Western suggestions that he should return to the negotiating table. Johnson has since resigned in disgrace, but he left Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine hanging on his promises.

In April, Johnson claimed to be speaking for the “collective West,” but only the United States publicly took a similar position, whileFrance, Germany, andItaly all called for new cease-fire negotiations in May. Now Johnson himself has done an about-face, writing in an Op-Ed for TheWall Street Journal on December 9 only that “Russian forces must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of February 24th.”

Johnson and Biden have made a shambles of Western policy on Ukraine, politically gluing themselves to a policy of unconditional, endless war that NATO military advisers reject for the soundest of reasons: to avoid the world-ending World War III that Biden himself promised to avoid.

U.S. and NATO leaders are finally taking baby steps toward negotiations, but the critical question facing the world in 2023 is whether the warring parties will get to the negotiating table before the spiral of escalation spins catastrophically out of control.

$110 BILLION For Ukraine War Is 100% Corruption

I Support Western Values More Than The West Does: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

To be clear, the US empire is getting everything it wants out of the war in Ukraine. It claims out of one side of its mouth that this was an unprovoked invasion that it never wanted, while admitting this war is giving it everything it ever wanted out the other side. The US did not just luckily stumble into a happy coincidence that just happens to advance all of its longstanding geostrategic agendas against a longtime geopolitical target. It deliberately created this situation, and only a baby-brained idiot would believe otherwise.

Putin isn’t waging this war because he thought it would be a nice idea to grab a bit more land, he’s waging it because he assessed that he’d need to fight off NATO aggressions in Ukraine at some point and it would be easier to do it now than later. People say “Hurr hurr, if the US provoked this war to advance its own interests then Putin’s an idiot for falling for it,” but anyone who’s ever played chess knows strategy is often about forcing your opponent to choose between two bad options, either of which benefit you.

There’s still this notion in some anti-imperialist factions that Putin is a brilliant strategic wizard who is outfoxing the empire in a game of 5D chess, but really he’s just fighting on the back foot against a far wealthier, far more powerful foe, and it’s costing his nation dearly.

Whether Ukraine “wins” this war or not is irrelevant to the fact that the US empire was for relatively little cost able to create a massive sinkhole for Moscow to pour its energy and attention into, freeing up the imperial machine to focus on turning the screws on China.

MASKING Ukrainian Corruption? Zelensky In Hot Water For Media Regulation Bill

Ah, the sweet smell of democracy being spread:

Zelensky Expands Crackdown on Ukrainian Media

President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a new bill into law which strengthens government control over public access to news in Ukraine. Zelensky has already nationalized the country’s media under martial law powers invoked after Russia’s invasion last year, stoking criticism from press freedom groups.

Signed on December 29, the law expands the Ukrainian broadcast regulator’s powers over news agencies ”dramatically,” now including both print and online sources, according to the Kyiv Independent. The measure requires publications to obtain licenses to operate, and any media org without the proper paperwork can be shut down, the outlet reported, adding that the body handing out the permits will be under Zelensky’s control.

According to Ukraine’s Institute of Mass Information, under the law, the media regulator is likely to be controlled by the incumbent authorities because its members are appointed by Zelensky and the Ukrainian parliament, where his party has an absolute majority.

In March, Zelensky issued a presidential decree which nationalized Ukraine’s broadcast media, stressing the need for a ”unified information policy” to combat Russian disinformation and voices critical of the government. Around the same time, he also banned a long list of opposition political parties with alleged links to Russia, and has since taken punitive action against Orthodox churches also said to have ties with Moscow, effectively quashing all dissent under martial law powers.

Thousands Of Ukrainian Deaths CENSORED From European Commission Head’s Speech!

Germany’s president and chancellor bang the drum for Ukraine war and invoke unity of the nation

The continuation of the Ukraine war and the invocation of the unity of the nation were the focus of the traditional Christmas and New Year speeches of the German president and chancellor. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, both Social Democrats, advocated continuing the Ukraine war until Russia’s complete defeat, even if this entailed enormous social and economic costs and the risk of nuclear war. Both invoked the “cohesion” and “togetherness” of society in seeking to pass on the disastrous consequences of the war to the mass of the population.

Steinmeier, who delivered the Christmas address, sanctimoniously declared, “This year, our most ardent wish is probably that peace will reign again.” Only to immediately add, “But this peace is not yet tangible.” It had to be “a just peace” that did not reward land grabbing, he said. Until then, “it is an imperative of humanity that we ... stand by those who are attacked,” he said.

In plain language, this means that Germany and NATO will continue to escalate the war with billions in arms deliveries and military support until Russia capitulates. According to experts, this could take two to three years and claim hundreds of thousands more victims. The risk of the war spreading to the whole of Europe and involving the use of nuclear weapons is being deliberately accepted.

Scholz was even more explicit in his New Year’s address. Several times, he repeated the phrase “the turn of the times,” which he had employed in the spring to justify increasing the arms budget by €100 billion and vowed, “We will continue to support Ukraine.” He claimed that thanks to the “cohesion and strength” of our “dear fellow citizens,” Germany “has not bowed to Russia,” and praised the unity of the European Union and NATO. ...

NATO is no more concerned with freedom and democracy in Ukraine than it was in its previous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, where it devastated entire countries, killing millions and driving countless more to flee. NATO deliberately provoked the Ukraine war by systematically advancing eastward, supporting the 2014 coup in Kiev, and arming the Ukrainian military since then, and is now using this to bring Russia to its knees. Ukraine itself is also a valuable prey. Not only is it rich in coal and gas reserves, but it has critical raw materials—lithium, cobalt, titanium, beryllium and rare earths—worth an estimated €6.7 trillion, according to the Brussels-based Carnegie Endowment think tank.

Ukraine Wants EU to Scrap Medicine Exemption for Russia Sanctions

Ukraine is threatening to punish European pharmaceutical companies that are still operating in Russia and wants EU sanctions on Russia to apply to medicine, POLITICO reported in December.

The EU has imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Russia but has exempted medicines due to humanitarian concerns. The report said that the exemption hasn’t “sat well” with Ukraine as Kyiv wants Russia under a total embargo.

The Ukrainian government has taken some steps toward punishing the European pharmaceutical companies over their business in Russia by granting itself the power to ban medicines from the Ukrainian market. The idea is to prohibit the sale of any goods produced by pharmaceutical companies that haven’t left Russia.

Death Toll in Ukraine HIMARS Strike on Russian Soldiers in Donetsk Rises to 89

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that 89 Russian soldiers were killed in the Ukrainian HIMARS strike on a facility housing Russian troops in Donetsk that took place on January 1, raising the death toll from 63.

“The first medical aid was provided; wounded individuals were evacuated to medical institutions. Regrettably, the death toll of our comrades increased to 89 when removing structural steel debris,” the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Ukraine fired six missiles from the US-provided HIMARS rocket systems, and Russia said four struck a school that was being used to house troops in the city of Makeyevka. A Russian military official blamed the massive death toll on Russian soldiers using their phones.

Media Pressured Twitter To FABRICATE Russian Interference

Matt Taibbi Reveals State Dep Agency COLLUDED With Media To CENSOR On Twitter

Antitrust target Ticketmaster spends big on lobbying amid woeful 2022

Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation had a calamitous 2022 – managing to anger everyone from Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny to Joe Biden and Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As calls grow for action to rein in the concert monopoly in the US and abroad, the company seems to have hit on a new strategy: spending big in Washington.

Live Nation’s spending on lobbying jumped from about $250,000 in 2018 to nearly $1.3m in 2021, federal records show, and it may top that peak in 2022 and beyond. It has focused its lobbying campaign on the department of justice, as well as legislation aimed at greater transparency around ticket sales.

The spending is a response to the “serious challenges” Live Nation faces, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of campaign finance analyst Open Secrets. “The spending has a lot to do with them playing defense because they have been accused for several years of behavior that has been anticompetitive, they have been accused of being a monopoly company and they have the DoJ investigation, so they are fighting on a number of fronts,” Krumholz said.

The political spending comes amid mounting frustration among concertgoers and sports fans over alleged price gouging, soaring fees and Live Nation’s practice of withholding tickets that are then sold on the secondary market at inflated cost, among other issues.

Briahna Joy Gray: Force The Vote VINDICATED? Matt Gaetz Is Doing What The Squad Should Have Done

McCarthy faces long battle for House speaker after he falls short on third vote

In a historic delay, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, was on Tuesday facing a protracted battle to secure the speaker’s gavel after failing to win the first three votes on the opening day of the new Congress. A fourth vote – and perhaps more, into the night – was avoided when the House adjourned, by voice vote, until noon on Wednesday.

Before that, the first two ballots to decide the next speaker saw 19 Republicans oppose McCarthy, leaving him 15 votes short of the 218 needed to win. In the third vote McCarthy lost one more supporter, intensifying concerns that he would fail to unite his caucus.

In another demoralizing sign for the new Republican majority, the Democrat Hakeem Jeffries received more votes than McCarthy on the first three ballots.

McCarthy is the first nominee for speaker in 100 years to fail to win the first vote for the gavel. A Republican political consultant from California said that it was, for McCarthy, “the most humiliating day of his political career”, a line that was picked up in newspapers across McCarthy’s home state.

McCarthy had acknowledged he was unlikely to win the speakership on the first ballot, setting the stage for a potentially lengthy delay before new members of the House could be sworn in. McCarthy suggested he was comfortable breaking the record for the longest speakership election in history, which stands at two months and 133 ballots. That vote standoff came in 1856, shortly before the US civil war.

California police more than twice as likely to use force against Black people

California police were more than twice as likely to use force against Black residents than white residents during traffic and pedestrian stops in 2021, according to a new report on racial profiling. The annual report from a state board also found that law enforcement searched Black people at 2.2 times the rate of white people, and that Black youths ages 15 to 17 were searched at nearly six times the rate of white teenagers. Latino residents were stopped and subjected to force at 1.4 times the rate of white people, and Latino youths were searched at nearly four times the rate of white youths.

The disproportionate searches of Black and Latino people have persisted despite the fact that from 2019 to 2021, officers were least likely to find contraband on members of those groups compared with white people, the report said.

California’s racial and identity profiling advisory board gathered data on stops by officers from 58 law enforcement agencies in 2021, and the findings are based on the officers’ perceptions of the race, ethnicity, gender and disability status of people they stop. The data suggests that racial profiling remains a systemic problem in the state, particularly with ongoing “pretextual stops”, when officers use minor violations as a pretext to investigate someone or launch a search that would otherwise not be justified.

The 58 agencies – which include the 23 largest departments in the state – collectively made more than 3.1m vehicle and pedestrian stops in 2021. In more than 42% of those stops, the individual was perceived to be Hispanic or Latino, according to the report. More than 30% were perceived to be white and 15% were believed to be Black. Hispanic residents make up roughly 39% of the state’s overall population, white residents 35% and Black residents 6%.

The report also found that Black teenagers were detained on the curb or in a patrol car at the highest rate compared with all other groups, with Black youths ages 10 to 17 handcuffed in 34% to 37% of stops. The proportion of stops in which no action was taken – suggesting that the individual was not engaged in a crime and may have been profiled – was highest among Black residents, the data also showed.

David Dayen: Biden Will Need to Use Executive Action for Democrats to Get Things Done in 2023

Report Shows Promise of Greener Jobs for Former Fossil Fuel Workers

A new analysis out Tuesday shows how a just transition towards a green economy in California—one in which workers in the state's fossil fuel industry would be able to find new employment and receive assistance if they're displaced from their jobs—will be "both affordable and achievable," contrary to claims from oil and gas giants and anti-climate lawmakers.

The study published by the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) notes that a majority of workers in the oil and gas sectors will have numerous new job opportunities as California pushes to become carbon neutral by 2045 with a vow to construct a 100% clean electricity grid and massively reduce oil consumption and production.

"The state will need to modernize its electrical grid and build storage capacity to meet increased demand for electricity," reads the report. "Carbon management techniques, plugging orphan wells, and the development of new energy sources such as geothermal will all come into play, providing economic opportunities to workers and businesses alike."

GEPI analyzed the most recent public labor data, showing that the oil and gas industries in California employed approximately 59,200 people as of 2021 across jobs in production, sales, transportation, legal, and executive departments, among others.

The group examined potential job opportunities for fossil fuel workers "in all growing occupations, not solely in clean energy or green jobs," and found that about two-thirds of employees are likely to find promising opportunities outside of fossil fuel-related work.

"Our findings show that a sizable majority (56%) of current oil and gas workers are highly likely to find jobs in California in another industry in their current occupation, given demand in the broader California economy for workers with their existing skills," the report says.

Roughly a quarter of oil and gas workers are employed in jobs that are projected to decline over the next decade, while 18% work in production and extraction, sectors which will contract as the state begins to move away from fossil fuel extraction.

"For all declining occupations in oil and gas industries, there are available jobs in similar occupations in California that would allow workers to transition without the need for retraining," GEPI reported.

About 16,100 people who will be at risk of displacement into lower-paying jobs over the next two decades will be able to benefit from income subsidies and relocation assistance, which GEPI estimated would cost the state $68.9 million or less annually—far less than a 2021 estimate by the Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, which said aid for displaced oil and gas workers would cost up to $830 million per year. Importantly, PERI's estimate included pension guarantees and income-level guarantees while GEPI's factored in only financial aid for people who face pay cuts.

John Kerry: rich countries must respond to developing world anger over climate

People in developing countries are feeling increasingly angry and “victimised” by the climate crisis, the US climate envoy John Kerry has warned, and rich countries must respond urgently. “I’ve been chronicling the increased frustration and anger of island states and vulnerable countries and small African nations and others around the world that feel victimised by the fact that they are a minuscule component of emissions,” he said. “And yet [they are] paying a very high price. Seventeen of the 20 most affected countries in the world, by the climate crisis, are in Africa, and yet 48 sub-Saharan countries total 0.55% of all emissions.”

The Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt in November was nearly derailed by a bitter row between rich and poor nations over “loss and damage”, the term for the most severe impacts of climate disaster, and the means of rescuing and rebuilding poor nations afflicted by them. The US, the EU, the UK and other rich nations eventually agreed to a new fund for loss and damage, without saying how much money would be in the fund or where the finance would come from. ...

Kerry was speaking to the Guardian in London in December. The White House faces severe problems in raising climate finance through Congress, with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives likely to prove unwilling to disburse funds. The likely difficulties were presaged in a finance bill passed just before Christmas, which contained less than $1bn in climate funds.

Alp ski resorts forced to adapt amid lack of snow

‘Extreme event’: warm January weather breaks records across Europe

Weather records have been falling across Europe at a disconcerting rate in the last few days, say meteorologists. The warmest January day ever was recorded in at least eight European countries including Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, according to data collated by Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who tracks extreme temperatures.

In Korbielów, Poland, the mercury hit 19C (66F) – a temperature the Silesian village is more used to in May, and 18C above the 1C annual average for January. In Javorník in the Czech Republic it was 19.6C, compared with an average of 3C for this time of year. Temperatures in Vysokaje, Belarus, would normally hover around zero at this time of year. On Sunday they reached 16.4C, beating the country’s previous record January high by 4.5C.

Elsewhere on the continent, local records were broken at thousands of individual measuring stations, with nearly 950 toppled in Germany alone from 31 December to 2 January, Herrera said. Northern Spain and the south of France basked in beach weather, with 24.9C in Bilbao, its hottest ever January day, and records broken at stations in Cantabria, Asturias and the Basque region. Only Norway, Britain, Ireland, Italy and the south-east Mediterranean posted no records.

Also of Interest

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

BlackRock Plots to Buy Ukraine

War-Crazed Former CIA Head Wants U.S. Troops In Ukraine

Ukraine: When Will It Reach the End of Its Propaganda Line?

White Lives Matter More in Ukraine

British-run spy tech powers Ukraine proxy war, putting civilians at risk

A History of Dissent

The campaign against Argentina's Cristina Kirchner: rule of law or lawfare?

America’s New Cold War in Africa

Russia Under Pressure To Accelerate Energy Exports To The East

Turkey, Syria coming together. Bolton fumes, wants Turkey out of NATO

As China Rises, Europe Falls

Japan Crosses the Rubicon

A Primer on Mexico’s Unconventional Economic Success Story (Which You’re Unlikely to Hear Much About in the MSM)

False Match That Led to Arrest Highlights Danger of Facial Recognition

Bruce’s Beach heirs to sell land back to Los Angeles county for $20m

New Data EXPOSES Major Stock Corruption From Dems/Reps

French government says controversial pension reform 'not set in stone'

Justin Amash APPLAUDS Revolt Against McCarthy, Says Ruling Oligarchy CRUSHES Dissent

McCarthy denied in 3 votes. Twitter's Russiagate role. Ukraine Intel, deeper strikes in Russia.

A Little Night Music

Tuba Skinny - Weary Blues

Tuba Skinny -Gotta Give Me Some

Tuba Skinny - Jubilee Stomp

Tuba Skinny - Jones Law Blues

Tuba Skinny - Maple Leaf Rag

Tuba Skinny- Once in a While

Tuba Skinny- The Creeper

Tuba Skinny- Pearl River Stomp

Tuba Skinny - Some of these Days

Tuba Skinny - Full Set - Jazz & Heritage Center 2022