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This evening's music features blues singer
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"When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'."

-- Brian Eno

News and Opinion

NATO to train hundreds of Ukrainian troops in US, Germany

The United States and Germany have announced they will expand their training of Ukrainian troops inside their own borders, further embroiling them in a war with Russia. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will train Ukrainian troops at Fort Sill, Oklahoma on how to operate the Patriot missile system, the most advanced weapon sent to Ukraine to date.

The Pentagon’s announcement is, in the words of the Washington Post, the “latest test of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threshold for Western intervention in the conflict.”

Last month, the Biden administration announced that it would send a Patriot missile battery, capable of downing Russian aircraft flying over Russian territory, to Ukraine. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz officials announced they would send another battery of their own. ...

Pointing to the extent of interoperability that already exists between the NATO military command structure and the Ukrainian military, Ryder added, “There has been training of Ukrainian forces in the United States before, as well as development. Ukrainians have attended our professional military education schools, they have embedded in headquarters of some of our units.”

The Pentagon official also confirmed that the US aims to train approximately 500 troops at a time at a US military facility in Germany on “combined arms warfare” involving both the Bradley infantry fighting vehicles that that are already being sent to Ukraine and the main battle tanks that NATO is expected to provide in the near future.

How will they spin Soledar?

From the Guardian, take with grain of salt (no pun intended):

Head of Russia’s Wagner group says his troops have taken control of Soledar

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has claimed his forces have completed the takeover of the Ukrainian town of Soledar, which if confirmed would mark Moscow’s first major battlefield success since last summer.

“Wagner units have taken the whole territory of Soledar under control,” said Yevgeny Prigozhin in an audio message released on his Telegram channel late on Tuesday. Prigozhin said on Tuesday Ukrainian troops were surrounded in the centre of the town and “there are street battles ongoing. The number of prisoners taken will be announced tomorrow.”

Denis Pushilin, a Russian proxy official in eastern Ukraine, told Russia’s Channel One that Soledar had been taken. “At the current time, according to the information I have, the centre of Soledar is already under the control of Wagner units,” he said.

Prigozhin released a photograph of himself, surrounded by Wagner fighters, in what appeared to be one of Soledar’s salt mines, possibly a deliberate riposte to US officials who have in recent days publicly claimed the controversial businessman is interested in taking over salt and gypsum mines in the area.

Biden classified docs, why Ukraine? Soledar cauldron. G7 double oil price caps.

Ukraine And Russia Agree - Russia Is Fighting NATO

Russia and Ukraine have publicly agreed on a fundamental and important issue. The question is who Russia is fighting in Ukraine. During an interview with a Ukrainian TV station the Oleksii Reznikov, the defense minister of Ukraine, answered that the Ukraine has "already become a de facto member of the NATO alliance."

The interview, given four days ago, is available on Youtube. English language subtitles can be generated by autotranslate. The sentence pictured above comes at about 1:25 minutes in.

Sputnik, which seems to be the only international outlet that has picked up on this, has more (from ~11:05 min):

“At the NATO Summit in Madrid” in June 2022, “it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons,” Reznikov said ...

The official said Kiev was being constantly reminded by its “Western partners” that it, “like a real shield, is defending the entire civilized world, the entire West,” from the Russians, and said that he personally has recently received holiday greeting cards and text messages from Western defense ministers to that effect.

Reznikov expressed “absolute” certainty in Ukraine’s eventual entry into NATO, saying he was “convinced that this is an absolutely realistic possibility... Of course they won’t accept this political decision via consensus before our victory. This is clear. But after the victory, after all this ends and some kind of peace arrives, NATO countries, first and foremost, will be interested in the construction of this security architecture. They have seen their own weak spots, they have seen who is strong and powerful. Today they are teaching us but tomorrow our officers, sergeants and even privates will be teaching them how to fight the Russians. Russia remains one of the threats to NATO, and for Europe as a whole.”

...

As both sides now seem to agree on the real participants of the conflict we can assume that they will later also come to an agreement about its outcome. That however will still take a while.

Left & Right AGREE On Cuts To Military Spending!

Populist revolt against McCarthy fuels war party freakout

Yemen: 87 civilians killed by UK and US weapons in just over a year

At least 87 civilians were killed by airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen using weapons supplied by the UK and US between January 2021 and February 2022, according to a new Oxfam analysis.

The charity accused the UK government of ignoring an identifiable “pattern of harm” caused by the indiscriminate bombing – and argues it amounts to legal grounds for Britain to end elements of its lucrative arms trade with Riyadh.

Martin Butcher, a policy adviser at Oxfam, said that there had been 431 airstrikes in the period monitored, roughly one a day, and that the “intensity of these attacks would not have been possible without a ready supply of arms”.

The sheer number of attacks, the 87 civilians killed and 136 wounded amounted to, Butcher added, “a pattern of violence against civilians” which all parties to the conflict, including arms suppliers, had failed to prevent.

A further 13 airstrikes carried out by British or American-made jets had taken place on hospitals and clinics, the Oxfam research added, with farms and homes routinely hit. Civilians were forced to leave their homes or places of shelter after a total of 293 raids from the air.

Haiti left with no elected government officials as it spirals towards anarchy

The last 10 remaining senators in Haiti’s parliament have officially left office, leaving the country without a single democratically elected government official.

The expiration of the officials’ terms at midnight on Monday formally concluded their time in office – and with it, the last semblance of democratic order in the beleaguered Caribbean nation.

Haiti – which is currently engulfed in gang violence and the worst malnutrition crisis in decades – now officially has no functioning parliament as the senators were the last of 30 to remain in office after successive failed efforts to hold elections. There is now no constitutional representation at any state level, the latest sign that the country has become a failed state.

“The constitution, which until now we have been referring to as the framework for political transition, is essentially just a letter, because none of the institutional architecture that it describes is currently in place,” said Renata Segura, deputy director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Crisis Group, a peacebuilding thinktank.

Haiti is plagued by a series of acute, overlapping crises as gangs violently exploit a power vacuum to expand their control of the capital.

Evo Morales barred from Peru as foreign interests blamed for deadly protests

Peru has barred Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales from entering the country, as it accuses foreign interests of stirring up deadly protests in support of the imprisoned former president Pedro Castillo. Peru has seen weeks of violent unrest following last month’s removal from power of Castillo, who was arrested on 7 December after attempting to dissolve congress in an attempt to avert his impeachment trial.

On Tuesday, 17 more protesters were killed by security forces, bring the number of dead to almost 40.

Morales has been vocal in his support of Castillo, another leftist who came to prominence through campesino organisations, and has denounced his arrest as illegal, both on Twitter and in trips to Peru.

In a statement issued by Peru’s new government, led by President Dina Boluarte, Morales and eight other Bolivians were on Monday accused of carrying out political activities in the country, in violation of immigration laws.

Morales, however, has cast the events in in Peru as the latest in a string of “coups” by rightwing forces across the continent, including Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s recent corruption conviction in Argentina, and his own ouster in 2019, when he resigned after a contested election, mass opposition protests and the army’s suggestion he do so.

Brazil’s attempted coup was thwarted by Lula’s decisive action, minister says

The insurrection that shook Brazil’s capital was a well-organised coup attempt that was thwarted thanks to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s swift and firm reaction, one of the president’s top ministers has told the Guardian. Speaking at the presidential palace on Tuesday, the minister of institutional relations, Alexandre Padilha, said he believed Sunday’s far-right assault on the three branches of Brazil’s government was “an act of terrorism” designed to bring down Lula’s week-old government.

And Padilha said the insurrection in support of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro might have succeeded had it not been for Lula’s decision to order a federal intervention that put his administration in charge of security in the capital, Brasília. Ibaneis Rocha, the pro-Bolsonaro governor of the federal district which contains Brazil’s capital, was suspended from his post on Sunday night amid outrage that local security forces had failed to stop thousands of radical Bolsonaristas ransacking the presidential palace, congress and supreme court.

Late on Tuesday, a supreme court judge ordered the arrest of Brasília’s public security chief, Anderson Torres, who was previously Bolsonaro’s justice minister. Torres was removed from office on Sunday after security forces failed to stop the invasion of the key government buildings. He had previously told local media that he was on holiday in Orlando, Florida, where Bolsonaro is also staying. ...

The minister also praised the unity shown in the wake of the attacks by the leaders of Brazil’s supreme court, lower house and congress, and Brazil’s 27 regional governors, who gathered in the rubble-strewn plaza outside the presidential palace on Monday night in a powerful show of support for Lula’s new administration and Brazilian democracy.

How the Brasília violence has its roots in Bolsonaro’s war on nature

The manufactured mayhem that tore through the centres of power in Brasília on Sunday should be seen, at least in part, as another front in the war on nature. One week earlier, the new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had marked his inauguration by unveiling what is arguably the world’s most ambitious environmental program.

He and his environment minister, Marina Silva, promised zero deforestation in the Amazon, an end to invasions into any of Brazil’s biomes, and greater participation for Indigenous peoples in national decision making. These are changes on a historically epic scale. Since the invasion of the first Europeans 500 years ago, the economy of Brazil, has been built on destruction of the wilderness and subjugation of the original inhabitants. This threatened an old – mostly white – elite, as well as those who depend on illegal extraction activities, such as land grabbing and gold-mining in nature reserves and Indigenous territories.

The unrest was organised long in advance, supported by serious money, and its very public buildup – in the form of road blocks and social network messaging – was conspicuously ignored by sympathisers of the former president Jair Bolsonaro in the security forces.

In his first comments after the attack, the Brazilian president suggested illegal miners, loggers and “evil agribusiness” may be involved in the destruction. That is yet to be proven, but there is no doubt his plans to protect the rainforest and other biomes have stirred up a hornets nest in the Amazon.

For the past two months, motley crews of Bolsonarista protesters have been camped outside military bases across the country. They have become a familiar sight with their green national flags, yellow football shirts and banners falsely claiming the presidential election was fraudulent and urging the army to intervene. Their numbers dwindled and most people, including soldiers, ignore them. Strangely though, they have remained remarkably well provisioned with food supplies and marquees to shelter from rainy season storms. Sore losers are rarely so well funded.

New York Nurses Strike for More Staff & Better Pay as Hospital CEOs Make Millions, Cut Charity Care

Trump call to ‘play tough’ on debt ceiling stokes fears of chaotic Congress

Following the passage of a new House rules package on Monday and with Donald Trump urging House Republicans to “play tough” on raising the federal debt limit, Democrats are warning of a chaotic 118th Congress that could see the government cease to function normally. ...

The rules package also sets up a showdown over the federal debt limit. It removes the so-called Gephardt rule, which allowed the House to circumvent a vote on lifting the debt ceiling, which had remained in place while Democrats controlled the House.

Republicans have made clear that they plan to leverage consideration of further debt increases in order to secure significant government spending cuts – potentially including to social security and Medicare. The move opens the possibility of a government shutdown similar to the one in 2013, or even a federal debt default. Both would have severe consequences for the US and global economy.

On Monday, Trump, whose influence over the party was shaken somewhat by poor midterm election results for his endorsed candidates but who remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, called on House Republicans to leverage power “by simply playing tough in the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations”.

Posting on the social media network he set up, Truth Social, Trump pressed all wings of the Republican party, including those rebels who initially voted against McCarthy, to join the negotiations: “It will be a beautiful and joyous thing for the people of our country to watch."

78 Congress Members Broke INSIDER TRADING LAW, But They WON'T Face Consequences

Katie Porter launches bid for Dianne Feinstein’s US Senate seat

Democratic representative Katie Porter, the progressive former law professor known for her sharp questioning of witnesses and her use of a whiteboard during hearings, said she will seek the California Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein.

Feinstein, a fellow Democrat, is the oldest member of the chamber, and has not yet said if she will retire.

“Especially in times like these, California needs a warrior in Washington,” Porter said in a video posted on Twitter. “That’s exactly why I’m announcing my candidacy for the United States Senate in 2024.”

Porter was first elected to Congress in 2018 and won a tight race for re-election to her newly redrawn southern California district in November. She said in the video that she had “challenged the status quo” in Washington, taking on “big banks,” Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry. She wants to ban members of Congress from stock trading.

California needs a warrior in the Senate—to stand up to special interests, fight the dangerous imbalance in our economy, and hold so-called leaders like Mitch McConnell accountable for rigging our democracy.

Today, I'm proud to announce my candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2024. pic.twitter.com/X1CSE8T12B

— Katie Porter (@katieporteroc) January 10, 2023

Libs FURIOUS At Katie Porter For Running For 89-Yr-Old Diane Feinstein's Senate Seat

HUGE Geofence Case Shows Government Abuse

Madagascar’s unique wildlife faces imminent wave of extinction, say scientists

From the ring-tailed lemur to the aye-aye, a nocturnal primate, more than 20m years of unique evolutionary history could be wiped from the planet if nothing is done to stop Madagascar’s threatened mammals going extinct, according to a new study. ... “Our results suggest that an extinction wave with deep evolutionary impact is imminent on Madagascar unless immediate conservation actions are taken,” researchers wrote in a paper published in Nature Communications. Madagascar is one of the planet’s biodiversity hotspots with 90% of its species found nowhere else on the planet, yet more than half of its mammal species are threatened with extinction. ...

“It’s about putting things in perspective – we’re losing unique species traits that will probably never evolve again,” said lead researcher Dr Luis Valente from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, and the University of Groningen. “Every species is valuable in its own right; it’s like destroying a piece of art, so what is happening is very shocking.” His team collaborated with researchers from the US and the conservation organisation Association Vahatra in Madagascar. ...

Biologists and palaeontologists created a dataset that showed all the mammal species currently present on the island, those that were alive when humans arrived, and those known only from fossil records. Of the 249 species identified, 30 are extinct. More than 120 of the 219 mammal species alive today on the island are threatened with extinction. ... The loss of mammals would have significant impacts on other species of plant and insect that depend on them. Valente said: “It’s a cascading effect – losing these mammals would likely cause a collapse of the ecosystem more broadly. In total, it is likely to be more than 23m years at stake.”

The main threats are human-induced habitat destruction, climate change and hunting. During the past decade, the number of mammal species threatened with extinction on Madagascar has more than doubled, from 56 in 2010 to 128 in 2021. Conservation programmes are needed to create livelihoods for local people, to stop forests being converted into farmland, and to limit the exploitation of resources such as hardwood trees and animals used for bushmeat, the paper’s authors said.

‘Last nail in the coffin’: Utah’s Great Salt Lake on verge of collapse

Emergency measures are required to avert a catastrophe in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, which has been drying up due to excessive water use, a new report warns. Within years, the lake’s ecosystems could collapse and millions will be exposed to toxic dust contained within the drying lakebed, unless drastic steps are taken to cut water use.

A team of 32 scientists and conservationists caution that the lake could decline beyond recognition in just five years. Their warning is especially urgent amid a historic western megadrought fueled by global heating. To save the lake, the report suggests 30-50% reductions in water use may be required, to allow 2.5m acre-feet of water to flow from streams and rivers directly into the lake over the next two years.

“We really need to increase the speed of our response, and also increase our ambition for how much water we restore to the lake,” said Ben Abbott, an ecologist at Brigham Young University and one of the report’s lead authors. Despite growing political momentum, Abbott said that existing policies and action plans will not be enough to save the lake from collapse. Already, the lake has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area, as trillions of litres of water are diverted away from it to supply farms and homes. As a result, the lake is becoming saltier and uninhabitable to native flies and brine shrimp. Eventually, the lake will be unable to sustain the more than 10 million migratory birds and wildlife that frequent it.

Declining lake levels could also make magnesium, lithium and other critical minerals extraction infeasible within the next two years. Dust from the exposed lakebed could further damage crops, degrade soil and cause snow to melt more quickly – triggering widespread economic losses for Utah’s agriculture and tourism industries. Toxic sediment, laced with arsenic, from the lakebed can exacerbate respiratory conditions and heart and lung disease, and could increase residents’ risk for cancer.

“The last nail in the coffin is where we’re at,” said Kevin Perry, a University of Utah atmospheric scientist researching the Great Salt Lake dust. In parts of Utah that already suffer dangerous air quality in the summer and winter due to wildfire smoke and vehicle emissions, dust from the lake threatens to bring year-round pollution, Perry said.

‘It’s horrifying’: storm deaths of unhoused people highlight California crises

California’s devastating winter storms have killed at least two unhoused people, deaths that call attention to the grave risks extreme weather poses to more than 116,000 people living outdoors in the state.

Both deaths occurred in Sacramento, which endured winds of 60mph (96.5km/h) over the weekend and saw thousands of people lose power. Rebekah Rohde, 40, died after a falling tree crashed into her tent along the American River on Saturday. Steven Sorensen, 61, died on Sunday when a tree fell on his tent next to a light rail station.

Across California at least 17 people have died since the storms began last week, bringing torrential rain and wind that has flooded rivers, knocked down trees and power lines, and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. Joe Biden has declared an emergency in the state, where officials have opened shelters “to support the most vulnerable Californians”.

Unhoused people from San Francisco to San Diego have been weathering the brutal storm outdoors or taking to temporary shelters as state and local officials face pressure to protect people from the dangerous conditions. Last week, San Jose ordered unhoused people living near creeks to evacuate due to flooding risks. In the city of Ontario, east of Los Angeles, officials have offered hotel vouchers to unhoused people living near river washes – three people living outside died in floodwaters there during a November storm. ...

The dangers to unhoused people during the latest bout of extreme weather are particularly acute, warned Bob Erlenbusch, the executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, a non-profit advocacy group. “It’s horrifying. You’ve got 7,000 people or more trying to survive the rain and high winds. The little survival gear they have – it gets blown away pretty easily,” he said. “People get wet, their belongings get wet. These are really difficult conditions.”

Also of Interest

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

Militarized Japan and the Biden-Kishida Summit Signal Moment in the New Cold War

Zelensky government expands media censorship

Washington’s Version of Venezuela

Former Israeli Intel Chief Says Israel Convinced US to Kill Soleimani

War with China over Taiwan won’t end well for anyone

The January 8 “Insurrection” in Brazil Could Be the Perfect Gift for Lula

The Vote for House Speaker Obscured Democratic Treachery

Washington Has Trouble Refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve After 220 Million Barrel Draw

House GOP Says Pentagon Budget Is Safe—But Social Security and Medicare Aren't

Walmart cashier, 82, finally able to retire after wellwishers’ fundraising effort

The US and the Holocaust review – unmissable Ken Burns doc reveals how Hitler was inspired by America

We’ve Been Dominated By Narrative Control Since The Dawn Of Civilization

Aaron Swartz : Legacy Of An Internet Freedom Fighter

Ro Khanna, Marco Rubio Team Up To REBUILD American Industry

Briahna Joy Gray: IRS Wages WAR On The POOR?

Ilhan Omar, Eric Swalwell KICKED OFF Intel & Foreign Affairs Cmte, GOP Rejoice

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Witherspoon & the Quintones - My Girl Ivy

Jimmy Witherspoon - No Rollin' Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon - Cold, Cold Feeling

Jimmy Witherspoon - Evening

Jimmy Witherspoon - It's a Low-down Dirty Shame

Jimmy Witherspoon - In Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon - Who's Been Jivin' You

Jimmy Witherspoon - When The Lights Go Out

Jimmy Witherspoon - Good Rockin' Tonight