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-- Alfred Adler

News and Opinion

The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back

Well the omnicidal war sluts won the debate over sending tanks to Ukraine, so now it’s time to start arguing for sending F-16s.

In an article titled “Ukraine sets sights on fighter jets after securing tank supplies,” Reuters reports the following:

“Ukraine will now push for Western fourth generation fighter jets such as the U.S. F-16 after securing supplies of main battle tanks, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister said on Wednesday.

Ukraine won a huge boost for its troops as Germany announced plans to provide heavy tanks for Kyiv on Wednesday, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue. The United States is poised to make a similar announcement.

Just in time for the good news, Lockheed Martin has announced that the arms manufacturing giant happens to be all set to ramp up production of F-16s should they be needed for shipment to Ukraine.

“Lockheed Martin has said that it’s ready to meet demands for F-16 fighter jets if the US and its allies choose to ship them to Ukraine,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports. “So far, the US and its allies have been hesitant to send fighter jets to Ukraine due to concerns that they could be used to target Russian territory. But the Western powers seem less and less concerned about escalation as the US and Germany have now pledged to send their main battle tanks.”

The New York Times has a new article out titled “How Biden Reluctantly Agreed to Send Tanks to Ukraine,” subtitled “The decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.” It’s authors David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper write:

President Biden’s announcement Wednesday that he would send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine came after weeks of tense back-channel negotiations with the chancellor of Germany and other European leaders, who insisted that the only way to unlock a flow of heavy European arms was for the United States to send tanks of its own.

His decision, however reluctant, now paves the way for German-made Leopard 2 tanks to be delivered to Ukraine in two or three months, provided by several European nations. While it is unclear whether it will make a decisive difference in the spring offensive that President Volodymyr Zelensky is now planning to take back territory seized by Russia, it is the latest in a series of gradual escalations that has inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.

When even the myopic empire simps at The New York Times are acknowledging that western powers are escalating aggressions in a very dangerous direction, you should probably sit up and pay attention.

In a recent article for Responsible Statecraft titled “Mission Creep? How the US role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” Branko Marcetic outlines the ways the US empire has “serially blown past their own self-imposed lines over arms transfers,” over and over again relenting to war hawks and requests from Ukrainian officials to supply weapons which it had previously refrained from supplying for fear that they would be too escalatory and lead to hot warfare between nuclear superpowers. Marcetic notes the way previously unthinkable aggressions like NATO spy agencies conducting sabotage operations on Russian infrastructure are now accepted, with more escalations being called for as soon as the previous one was made.

Toward the end of his article, Marcetic drives home a very important point which needs more attention: that the western alliance has established a policy of continually escalating every time Russia doesn’t react forcefully to a previous western escalation, which necessarily means Russia is being actively incentivized to react forcefully to those escalations.

“By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines,” Marcetic writes. “This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasingly view the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine, while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries.”

“Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; US officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it’s serious about lines,” Marcetic added on Twitter.

A good recent example of this dynamic is the recent New York Times report that the Biden administration is considering backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea, which many experts agree is one of the most likely ways this conflict could lead to nuclear warfare. The article reports that the Biden administration has assessed that Russia is unlikely to reciprocate an escalatory aggression, but the basis for that assessment apparently comes from nothing other than the fact that Russia hasn’t done so yet.

“Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin,” the Times quotes a RAND Corporation think tanker as saying in explanation for the Biden administration’s belief that it can get away with backing a Crimea offensive. But as Dave DeCamp explained at the time, that’s not even true; Russia did significantly escalate its aggressions in response to strikes on Crimea, beginning to target critical Ukrainian infrastructure in ways it previously had not.

So Russia has in fact been escalating its aggressions in response to attacks on Crimea; it just hasn’t been escalating them against NATO powers. As long as Russia is only escalating in ways that hurt Ukrainians, the US-centralized power structure does not regard them as real escalations. The take-home message to Moscow being that they’re going to get squeezed harder and harder until they attack NATO itself.

And of course that won’t de-escalate things either; it will be seized on and spun as evidence that Putin is a reckless madman who is attacking the free world completely unprovoked and must be stopped at all cost, even if it means risking nuclear armageddon. Russia would of course be aware of this obvious reality, so the only way it takes the bait is if the pain of not reacting gets to a point where it is perceived as outweighing the pain of reacting. But judging by its actions the empire seems determined to push them to that point.

It really is spooky how much de-escalation and detente have been disappeared from public discourse about Russia. People genuinely don’t seem to know it’s an option. They really do think the only option is continually escalating nuclear brinkmanship, and that anything else is obsequious appeasement. They think that because that’s the message they are being fed by the imperial propaganda machine, and they’re being fed that message because that is the empire’s actual position.

I’ve been warning about the increasing risk of nuclear armageddon for as long as I’ve been publicly engaged in political commentary, and people have been calling me a hysterical idiot and a Putin puppet the entire time even as we’ve moved closer and closer to the exact point I’ve been screaming about at the top of my lungs all these years. Now there’s not a whole lot closer it can get without being directly upon us. I deeply, deeply hope we turn this thing around before it’s too late.

NATO tanks in Ukraine: Prelude to a US-Russia shooting war

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced that the United States would send 31 Abrams heavy tanks to Ukraine, after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany would send 14 Leopard 2 tanks as part of the shipment of over 100 main battle tanks from NATO countries. The decision to send main battle tanks into the conflict is intended to set in motion a chain of events that will justify an ever greater involvement of NATO troops and aircraft, up to and including a shooting war with Russia.

The significance of Biden’s announcement lies less in the battlefield impact of the tanks than in the consequences of deploying them. The turbine-driven Abrams tanks will require a massive logistical network inside Ukraine, involving large numbers of specialist American contractors. Attacks on these supply networks and American personnel servicing the tanks will then be used to press for implementation of a “no-fly zone” and the deployment of US and NATO troops to Ukraine.

Immediately following Biden’s announcement, retired four-star General Barry McCaffrey, appearing on MSNBC, made an offhand comment that revealed the essential content of the announcement. Countering the argument made earlier by military officials that the Abrams was too complex to send to Ukraine, McCaffrey declared, “Of course the Ukrainians, with civilian contractor support, can maintain these Abrams.” Who are these “civilian contractors” if they are not “Ukrainians?” McCaffrey was never asked.

America’s vast fleet of M1 Abrams tanks is serviced by civilian contractors at Army bases throughout the world, and these civilian contractors are generally Americans with specialized knowledge and skills, including direct employees of General Dynamics and other major arms manufacturers. The Abrams, the Army’s most complex vehicle, requires about eight man-hours of maintenance for every hour it serves in operation.

In explaining why the US military was reluctant to send the Abrams tank last year, the Washington Post noted, “A senior US defense official… said that… It is hard for the United States to maintain the Abrams tanks and their sophisticated turbine engine... For the Ukrainians, the official said, it would be impossible.” Of course, it would be impossible, unless, as McCaffrey indicates, a large number of American civilian contractors already trained on the Abrams were sent alongside the tanks. ... These supply lines and American personnel will likely become targets of Russian attacks on the weapons systems flowing into Ukraine. The demand, first raised early in the war, to “close the skies” and initiate a no-fly zone will quickly be raised by the entire US media, in order to “save the lives” of Americans deployed in Ukraine.

Like clockwork, Wednesday’s announcement was accompanied by demands in the press for sending F-16 and other fourth-generation NATO fighter aircraft.

Did you order the Code Red? You're damn right I did!

Ukraine Expects to Get All the Western Weapons It Wants

Shortly after President Biden announced Ukraine would be getting the Western-made tanks it sought, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was demanding fighter jets and longer-range missiles.

Ukrainian officials have been lobbying for months to receive F-15 or F-16 fighter jets from the US and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACAMS), munitions with a range of up to 190 miles. ...

Yury Sak, an advisor to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told Reuters that he’s confident Ukraine will get everything it wants. “They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us HIMARS systems, then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks. Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get,” he said.

“Many More Body Bags” Needed To Bring Down Putin – Says Psychopath Fmr U.S. Official

White House Refuses to Say If Ukraine Will Get Toxic Depleted Uranium Ammo

The White House refused to say if it will provide Ukraine with Bradley Fighting Vehicles equipped with radioactive depleted uranium rounds, ammunition that is linked to cancer and birth defects.

Depleted uranium is typically created as a byproduct of producing enriched uranium and is extremely dense, making it an effective material to pierce the armor of tanks. Bradleys can be equipped with depleted uranium ammunition, which is why they are known as “tank killers.”

When asked on Wednesday if the Bradleys the US is sending to Ukraine will be equipped with depleted uranium, a senior Biden administration official said, “I’m not going to get into the technical specifics.” The official also declined to answer if the M1 Abrams tanks the US is providing Kyiv will be equipped with a depleted uranium cage.

Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of Russia’s delegation in Vienna on arms control, has warned Moscow would view the use of depleted uranium weapons in Ukraine as the use of a “dirty bomb.”

Ukrainian security service ‘needs cleanout’ after arrest of accused spy

The Ukrainian security service (SBU) reported on Thursday that they arrested a lieutenant colonel in their ranks on suspicion of “high treason” and published a photograph of bundles of cash found in his home. The unnamed man is said to have used his mobile phone to photograph documents detailing the location of military checkpoints in Zaporizhzhia, a frontline region in the south-east of the country, and sending the information via an email account registered on a Russian domain. ...

“Evidence of permanent connections with representatives of law enforcement and state bodies of the Russian Federation was also established,” the statement said. “In particular, close relatives of the traitor are among them.”

Maj Gen Viktor Yahun, who was deputy head of the SBU until, 2015, said there needed to a thorough cleanout of the service, which he said had long had an overly close relationship with its Russian counterpart, the FSB.

Following Russia’s invasion on 24 February last year, more than 60 members of the SBU and the prosecutor general’s office had remained in occupied territory and collaborated with the Russian forces, highlighting the scale of the infiltration of Ukrainian law enforcement by the Kremlin.

The Danish government has caught the fever. It says, screw the workers and screw that religion crap, we need money to kill people, dammit!"

Danes ‘furious’ over plan to abolish public holiday to fund defence budget

The Danish government’s plan to abolish a public holiday to help fund the defence budget amid the war in Ukraine is putting Denmark’s cherished welfare model at risk, the country’s biggest trade union confederation has warned. “It’s a big threat to the Danish model,” said Lizette Risgaard, the head of the FH confederation, which has 1.3 million members in a country of 5.9 million inhabitants. “Politicians should stay out of labour market issues. If they go through with this they will be imposing their will and violate our agreements,” she told AFP on Wednesday.

The left-right government coalition, in power since December and led by the Social Democratic prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, plans to scrap the religious holiday known as Great Prayer Day, observed since the 17th century. Initially introduced as a day of prayer, fasting and penitence, it falls on the fourth Friday after Easter and is a common date for confirmations.

But the government wants to get rid of the public holiday and use the money to raise the defence budget to Nato’s target of 2% of GDP by 2030, instead of 2033 as previously planned. The government says the accelerated calendar is necessary due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The move is expected to provide an extra 3bn kroner (£355m) to state coffers.

The cancelled holiday would entail an additional 7.4 hours of labour per worker, according to the government. “I don’t think it’s a problem to have to work an extra day,” Frederiksen said. ...

A recent poll by the market researchers Epinion indicated an overwhelming number of Danes opposed the move, which was not mentioned during last autumn’s election campaign. Only 17% supported the plan, while 75% were against it.

Japan remilitarizes as US pushes conflict with China

Israeli forces kill nine Palestinians during West Bank raid

Israeli forces have killed nine Palestinians during a raid in the north of the occupied West Bank in the deadliest single day in the territory in years, prompting Palestinian leaders to cut security ties with Israel and leaving international mediators scrambling to prevent the violence from escalating.

A 61-year-old woman and a male civilian were among the dead, the Palestinian health ministry said, and about 20 more people were seriously injured in the violence on Thursday morning. Two of the casualties were claimed by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another four by Hamas, and one by the armed wing of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank and works alongside Israel to contain militant activity, announced on Thursday night it was suspending security cooperation with the Israeli government – a step it has taken on a temporary basis in the past.

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers arrived at daybreak at several entrances of the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold in the north of the Palestinian territory, said Sakir Khader, a Palestinian-Dutch film-maker at the scene. Armed Palestinians shot at an Israeli armoured vehicle disguised as a commercial van, at which point the IDF returned fire and a fierce four-hour gun battle ensued, causing widespread damage, he said.

“I was stuck in the middle of the firefight for hours,” Khader said. “It was crazy. There were snipers and drones and they used a bulldozer to block off a street. It destroyed lots of cars and a public meeting spot. “At the hospital there are mothers looking for their sons … Everything is still very tense. I have been coming to Palestine all my life and I have never seen something like this.”

“The situation in Jenin camp is very critical,” the Palestinian health minister, Mai al-Kaila, said in a statement. Israeli forces had prevented ambulances from reaching the injured, she added. The raid’s death toll is the highest in a single operation ever recorded by the United Nations since the international body’s records began in 2005.

US economy grows strongly but interest rate rises starting to slow momentum

The US economy maintained a strong pace of growth in the fourth quarter as consumers boosted spending on goods, but momentum appears to have slowed considerably towards the end of the year, with higher interest rates eroding demand.

Gross domestic product – the broadest measure of economic health – increased at a 2.9% annualized rate last quarter, the commerce department said in its advance fourth-quarter GDP growth estimate on Thursday. The economy grew at a 3.2% pace in the third quarter. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP rising at a 2.6% rate.

That could be the last quarter of solid growth before the lagged effects of the Federal Reserve’s fastest monetary policy tightening cycle since the 1980s kick in. Most economists expect a recession by the second half of the year, though mild compared with previous downturns.

Retail sales have weakened sharply over the last two months and manufacturing looks to have joined the housing market in recession. While the labor market remains strong, business sentiment continues to sour, which could eventually hurt hiring.

Robust second-half growth erased the 1.1% contraction in the first six months of the year. For all for 2022, the economy expanded 2.1%, down from the 5.9% logged in 2021. The Fed last year raised its policy rate by 425 basis points from near zero to a 4.25%-4.50% range, the highest since late 2007.

Memphis BLM Activist: Tyre Nichols's Killing Is Part of Police Brutality Crisis for Black Residents

Tyre Nichols: five ex-police officers face murder charges over motorist’s death

Five former police officers are in custody facing murder charges in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black motorist in Memphis, Tennessee, who died three days after a 7 January traffic stop spiraled into a fatal physical attack, local jail records indicated.

Shelby county sheriff’s office online records showed that Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith were in custody. All five were charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.

“While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols and they are all responsible,” Steve Mulroy, the Shelby county district attorney, said during a press conference on Thursday. Nichols, 29, endured a three-minute attack, Mulroy said. An attorney representing his family reportedly said an independent autopsy indicated that he “suffered extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating”.

“He was a human piñata for those police officers,” the family attorney, Antonio Romanucci, told reporters. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

The five former officers accused of involvement in the deadly encounter, who are all Black, were fired last week. Memphis police officials said the officers flouted “multiple department policies, including excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid”.

Georgia's GOP Gov. Signs Order to Prep National Guard for Police Brutality Protests

Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency through at least February 9 that will enable him to deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops "as necessary."

The order follows protests in Atlanta after 26-year-old forest defender Manuel "Tortuguita" Teran was shot dead last week during a multi-agency raid on an encampment to oppose construction of Cop City, a nearby law enforcement training center. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which is investigating the case, has said Teran was killed after he shot and wounded a state trooper.

While the order begins by stating that "protests turned violent in downtown Atlanta" last Saturday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported that Kemp's aides signaled that the move was not about the Cop City demonstrations but rather in anticipation of any potential response to video footage from Memphis, Tennessee showing the arrest of Black motorist Tyre Nichols.

As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, five fired Memphis cops were charged with second-degree murder and other crimes related to Nichols' death. Footage of the 29-year-old's arrest is expected to be released sometime after 6:00 pm local time on Friday.

Shifty wants to move up ...

Adam Schiff, lead prosecutor of Trump’s first impeachment, declares Senate run

Adam Schiff, the California congressman who became a household name as the lead prosecutor in Donald Trump’s first impeachment, said he will seek the California Senate seat currently held by Dianne Feinstein.

“I wish I could say the threat of Maga extremists is over,” said Schiff, 62, in a video announcing his campaign. “We’re in the fight of our lives – a fight I’m ready to lead as California’s next US senator”.

Schiff is joining fellow southern California Democrat Katie Porter in declaring his candidacy for the Senate seat before Feinstein has even announced her retirement. At 89, Feinstein is the oldest member of the Senate, and has told reporters this week that she will make a decision about 2024 in the “next couple of months” amid circling questions about her cognitive health.

Schiff, who is close with Feinstein, said he had spoken to her a day earlier to inform her of his intention to run. “I want to make sure that everything I did was respectful of her and that I did so with her knowledge and her blessing,” Schiff told the Associated Press.

Many will be clambering for her seat. Bay Area representative Barbara Lee has reportedly told colleagues and donors that she plans to run, and political analysts expect Silicon Valley representative Ro Khanna could also mount a competitive campaign.

Human activity and drought ‘degrading more than a third of Amazon rainforest’

Human activity and drought may have degraded more than a third of the Amazon rainforest, double the previous estimate, according to a study that heightens concerns that the globally important ecosystem is slipping towards a point of no return. Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages, have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5m sq km of the forest, an area 10 times the size of the UK. This area is now drier, more flammable and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of “megafires” in the future.

Between 5.5% and 38% of what is left of the world’s biggest tropical forest is also less able to regulate the climate, generate rainfall, store carbon, provide a habitat to other species, offer a livelihood to local people, and sustain itself as a viable ecosystem, the paper observes. This degradation is on top of the 17% of the original forest that has been completely cleared over the past half century with Brazil having pushed back its agricultural and mining frontiers to satisfy the demands of an increasingly wealthy, more populous and high-consuming world. ...

The findings, published in Science on Thursday, are based on a review of existing studies, recent satellite data, and a new assessment of drought impacts by an international team of 35 scientists and researchers, from institutions including Brazil’s University of Campinas (Unicamp), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and the UK’s Lancaster University.

Water deprivation accounts for most of the increase in Amazon degradation compared with the previous estimate of 17%. Drought is an area of increasing concern because it raises the forest’s vulnerability to fire and diminishes by up to 34% its ability to regenerate itself through evapotranspiration – the generation of rainclouds by trillions of plants. This has knock-on effects across a wider region, including in food producing areas that depend on the Amazon’s “flying rivers” to water crops. Most worryingly it raises the spectre of a destructive feedback loop in which drought makes the forest less able to pump water which leads to more drought.

To prevent these risks from spiralling out of control, the authors urge policymakers to reduce the drivers of degradation and treat it as much of a priority as the better-known problem of deforestation. The two vary greatly in terms of visibility. Deforestation is the total clearance of forest and conversion of the land to other uses, which can be easily identified by satellites. Degradation, on the other hand, is the partial loss of vegetation due to human behaviour, which is often hidden because it takes place under the canopy of bigger trees.

Food, feed and fuel: global seaweed industry could reduce land needed for farming by 110m hectares, study finds

An area of ocean almost the size of Australia could support commercial seaweed farming around the world, providing food for humans, feed supplements for cattle, and alternative fuels, according to new research. Seaweed farming is a nascent industry globally but the research says if it could grow to constitute 10% of human diets by 2050 it could reduce the amount of land needed for food by 110m hectares (272m acres) – an area twice the size of France.

But the authors of the research said there are a range of potential negative impacts on marine life that will need to be balanced with the benefits of a global seaweed farming industry. The study looked at 34 seaweed species and where they could feasibly grow and then narrowed this down to places with calm enough waters and close enough to populations where farms could be established.

About 650m hectares (1,606m acres) was identified as plausible for seaweed farming, with the largest areas in Indonesia and Australia which both have large ocean regions under their economic control. “Cultivating seaweeds for food, feed and fuel within even a fraction of the 650m hectares of suitable ocean could have profound benefits to land use, emissions reduction, water and fertiliser use,” the authors wrote.

Scott Spillias, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who led the study published in Nature Sustainability, said: “People around the world are looking at the ocean as this big ‘untapped’ resource and asking if we should be using more of it.”

One of the biggest benefits, the study said, would be the cultivation and use of red Asparagopsis as a cattle feed supplement that has been shown to result in drastically lower methane emissions from cows. One supplement based on the seaweed reportedly went on commercial sale to farmers in Australia last year.

Also of Interest

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

US Can Turn Back Doomsday Clock

IAEA Chief Falsely Claims Iran Could Fuel ‘Several Nuclear Weapons’

Spain Debunks Russiagate like New York Times Letter Bomb Story

Biden’s Documents Dilemma

EPA Allowing Vast Oil Refinery Waste to Pollute US Waterways

A Little Night Music

Eddie Kirkland - Must Have Done Somebody Wrong

Eddie Kirkland - Down On My Knees

Eddie Kirkland - Pick Up The Pieces & Working Man

Eddie Kirkland - I Got My Eyes On You

Eddie Kirkland - I've Got To Leave Your Town

Eddie Kirkland - I Need You, Baby

Eddie Kirkland - Train Done Gone

Eddie Kirkland - Write My Baby A Letter

Eddie Kirkland with the Falcons - So Pretty Baby

Eddie Kirkland - Man of Stone