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“Every major power has some widely publicized justification for its procurement and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction, often including a reptilian reminder of the presumed character and cultural defects of potential enemies (as opposed to us stout fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world.”

-- Carl Sagan

News and Opinion

Russia And China Draw ‘Red Lines’ On Their Borders; US Draws Them On The Other Side Of The Planet

Reacting to China’s announcement that it will be putting forward a proposal for a political settlement to end the war in Ukraine, the US ambassador to the United Nations said that if China begins arming Russia in that conflict this will be a “red line” for the United States.

“We welcome the Chinese announcement that they want peace because that’s what we always want to pursue in situations like this. But we also have to be clear that if there are any thoughts and efforts by the Chinese and others to provide lethal support to the Russians in their brutal attack against Ukraine, that that is unacceptable,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told CNN on Sunday.

“That would be a red line,” she said.

The ambassador’s comments pertained to an unsubstantiated claim made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday that China is “considering providing lethal support to Russia in the war against Ukraine,” according to US intelligence.

The US has been making evidence-free claims in relation to China arming Russia against Ukraine since the war began. In March of last year the New York Times reported that “Russia asked China to give it military equipment and support for the war in Ukraine after President Vladimir V. Putin began a full-scale invasion last month, according to U.S. officials.” Then in April of last year NBC reported that this claim “lacked hard evidence” and was essentially just a lie the US government told the media “as part of an information war against Russia.”

The mass media have eagerly participated in promoting this latest re-emergence of narratives about China supplying weapons to Russia, with the Wall Street Journal running a piece just the other day titled “Chinese Drones Still Support Russia’s War in Ukraine, Trade Data Show.” But as commentator Matthew Petti has observed, buried deep in that article is an acknowledgement that these China-made camera drones aren’t even coming from China; they’re being purchased by Russian middlemen in nations like the United Arab Emirates. Really it’s just a story about how China manufactures a lot of products, disguised as something scandalous.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin knocked back Blinken’s claims at a press conference shortly after they were made, saying the US is in no position to be accusing anyone of pouring arms into the war.

“It is the US, not China, that has been pouring weapons into the battlefield,” he said. “The US is in no position to tell China what to do. We would never stand for finger-pointing, or even coercion and pressurizing from the US on our relations with Russia.”

Indeed, Washington is warning Beijing with a “red line” against doing something that Washington does constantly, and is currently doing to an unprecedented extent in Ukraine. The US sends weapons to proxy forces all over the world, including to Saudi Arabia in facilitation of its mass atrocities in Yemen, to Al Qaeda and its aligned forces in facilitation of the western dirty war on Syria, and to Israel in facilitation of its apartheid regime and its nonstop attacks on its neighbors. Ukraine is Washington’s biggest proxy warfare operation yet, so it’s a bit rich for it to be drawing “red lines” on the other side of the planet regarding an activity the US spent $113 billion on last year.

And that’s the major difference between the US and nations like Russia and China. When Russia and China draw red lines, it’s at their own borders and regards their own national security interests. When the US draws red lines, it’s far from its own borders and unrelated to the security of the nation.

During the lead-up to the invasion of Ukraine, Putin warned over and over again that the west was taking Moscow’s “red lines” on Ukrainian neutrality too lightly, and Washington brazenly dismissed those warnings while continuing to float the possibility of future NATO membership for Ukraine.

“I don’t accept anybody’s red lines,” President Biden told the press in December of 2021 when asked about the warnings.

Weeks later Putin made good on his threat, launching a horrific war that could easily have been prevented with a little diplomacy and sensibility.

“This is that red line that I talked about multiple times,” Putin said. “They have crossed it.”

Similarly, Beijing has been using the phrase “red line” with regard to Taiwan and the US empire’s rapidly escalating provocations on that front. China used it multiple times last year warning against then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, which Beijing regards as an egregious violation of Washington’s One China policy. As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp frequently notes, this marked the beginning a new level of hostilities from Beijing which now sees frequent military crossings of the median line between Taiwan and mainland China that weren’t commonplace before.

Whether you agree with Moscow and Beijing about their “red lines” or not, you must concede that there’s a very big difference between the way they draw them and the way the US makes use of that concept. Russia and China are issuing these warnings about the areas immediately adjacent to their own territory, while the US issues them to anyone it likes about what they are permitted to do with their neighbors, even when the US itself engages in those very activities all the time.

Washington literally thinks of this entire planet as its territory. It believes it is its divinely bestowed right to issue decrees about what may and may not be done anywhere in the world, and that any transgression against these decrees is an act of aggression against it.

We see this evidenced in the way US officials talk about the world. Just in January of last year President Biden said that “everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.” That same month then-Press Secretary Jen Psaki remarked on the mounting tensions around Ukraine that it is in America’s interest to support “our eastern flank countries”, which might come as a surprise to those who were taught in school that America’s eastern flank was not eastern Europe but the eastern coastline of the United States. You’ll see the imperial media refer to things like the vague prospect of China maybe someday building a military base in the African nation of Equatorial Guinea as a menacing encroachment upon America’s “backyard”.

It’s just so crazy how the US government has the temerity to publicly rend its garments in outrage over foreign nations making demands about what happens on their own borders while it continually makes demands about what happens everywhere in the world. It wails and moans about its enemies asserting small “spheres of influence” over former Soviet states or the South China Sea, while it itself asserts a sphere of influence that looks like planet Earth.

Whenever you point out how the US is the worst offender in any area it criticizes other governments for you’ll find yourself accused of “whataboutism”, but what this actually means is that you have highlighted evidence that the US does not play by its own rules and does not actually value the issues it’s trying to moralize about. The US is not trying to stop foreign nations from bullying and dominating their neighbors, it’s trying to bash out more space for itself to bully and dominate the world.

China's Wang Yi in Moscow, meeting Lavrov and Putin

Biden talks with Poland president to focus on troop deployments

Joe Biden is holding talks with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, about the strengthening of Nato’s eastern flank in the face of Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, the White House said. Biden met Duda at lunchtime on Tuesday before a speech in the evening outside Warsaw’s Royal Castle, his second address there in less than a year, underlining the increasingly close relationship between the US and Poland as the Ukraine war grinds on. ...

“Poland has been a critical player,” the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on Tuesday morning after Biden and his team arrived back in Poland from their surprise rail trip to Kyiv. “It has been critical to hosting very large numbers of Ukrainian refugees. It has been a critical logistics hub for military assistance going into Ukraine, and it has been a strong voice as part of a unified western effort to try to ensure that there are no cracks, that the west and that the larger coalition of nations holds together strongly for as long as it takes.”

Last year, Biden gave Poland what it had long requested: a permanent US base on its territory, where US forces now number 10,000. Nato established four new battle groups in south-east Europe, doubling its overall force on the alliance’s eastern flank. Sullivan said that military deployments would be at the top of the agenda in Biden’s talks with Duda, but he did not specify whether that would involve the announcements of further deployments.

“There is the larger question of Nato force posture and the continuing commitment of the US to play a critical role in the defence of the eastern flank allies, including Poland,” Sullivan said. “So the president will have the opportunity to reinforce his fundamental message from last year that he intends to defend every inch of Nato territory and that he will do so not just with rhetoric, but with the kinds of actions where we put in place the necessary capabilities.” ...

Biden’s visit comes at a time of increasing Polish assertiveness stemming from the Ukraine crisis. The country has publicly vowed to increase its defence spending from 3% of GDP to 4% – the highest proportion in Nato – but government insiders say it will exceed that. Senior ministers believe years of raising the alarm about Russia have been vindicated.

U.S. Ambassador Delivers BIGGEST LIE About Russia & Ukraine War!

VP Harris Spreading WILD Accusations Against Putin

The deliberations of the neocon death cult continue ...

Biden’s Kiev visit threatens direct US war with Russia

On Monday, US President Joe Biden arrived in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, pledging the United States’ commitment to the war with Russia for “as long as it takes.” The visit by the “commander in chief” to the front solidifies the conflict not only as an American war, but as the defining and preeminent focus of the Biden administration. ...

In his visit to Kiev, Biden is attempting to make the US-NATO commitment to the escalation of war irreversible. There is mounting opposition to war within the population, while Biden’s constant invocations of “unity” within NATO speak to deep concerns about how far the United States’ NATO allies are willing to go toward direct war with Russia. In a comment published Monday, Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman wrote, “There comes a point in many wars where the warring sides wonder what they have got themselves into.” Russia reached this stage in September, he stated, but is now going on the offensive. “With the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion falling this week, it is the western alliance backing Ukraine that is having difficult policy debates.” ...

War has a logic of its own, which at a certain point becomes a major factor in the escalation itself. The US and the NATO powers instigated the reactionary Russian invasion of Ukraine one year ago. This has been followed by the expenditure of ever greater sums of money and the deployment of an ever more massive scale of military equipment to the field of battle. Any retreat at this point would entail a devastating defeat for NATO and a collapse of US influence in Europe. The entire credibility of NATO and, in particular, American imperialism is at stake. This makes war until complete victory an existential issue for US imperialism.

Biden’s visit to Kiev also explodes any remaining pretense that the US and NATO are not direct parties in the conflict with Russia. But if this is a NATO war, it will require NATO troops. Biden’s visit has been preceded by a coordinated shift on the part of US government officials, Ukrainian officials and the US media to publicly push for expanding the scope of US involvement and introduce the concept of “boots on the ground.” ... This past weekend, the US media began to moot the prospect of deploying ground troops to Ukraine. On Saturday, the Washington Post called for NATO to deploy “a convincing array of military muscle on the ground.” Chuck Todd, the host of “Meet the Press,” the leading US political talk show, asked, “Will the US and its allies be able to defeat Putin without putting any NATO or US boots on the ground?”

The expansion of US war aims confronts the reality, however, that the official stated policy of Russia is to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory, including Crimea. In response to this reality, US officials are making clear that they fully accept the prospect of nuclear war. As Eliot Cohen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies stated in a recent interview, for US officials to accept that they will be limited by the threat of Russian nuclear retaliation would mean “we’ve been deterring ourselves.”

As Putin Suspends New START Treaty, Is There Still Hope for Nuclear Disarmament?

Western propaganda outlet, The Guardian, has a(n unintentionally) funny article about the failure of the west's efforts to rule the world. They think they just need a "new narrative."

War in Ukraine defining new world order, says thinktank

Almost a year after Russia’s war against Ukraine started, it has united the west, according to a 15-country survey – but exposed a widening gulf with the rest of the world that is defining the contours of a future global order. The study, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank, surveyed opinions in nine EU member states, including France, Germany and Poland, and in Britain and the US, as well as China, Russia, India and Turkey.

It revealed sharp geographical differences in attitudes to the war, democracy and the global balance of power, the authors said, suggesting Russia’s aggression may be a historic turning point marking the emergence of a “post-western” world order. “The paradox of the Ukraine war is that the west is both more united, and less influential in the world, than ever before,” said Mark Leonard, the thinktank’s director and a co-author of the report, based on polling carried out last month.

Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at Oxford University, who also worked on the study, called the findings “extremely sobering”. The survey showed the war had given the transatlantic west unity and purpose, he said. However, it had “utterly failed to persuade major powers of the rest, such as China, India and Turkey”. The lesson was clear: “We urgently need a new narrative that is actually persuasive to countries like India, the world’s largest democracy.”

For First Time in 6 Years, US Allows UN Security Council to Denounce Israeli Settlements

The United Nations Security Council on Monday unanimously approved a formal statement expressing opposition to Israel's ongoing expansion of illegal settlements on Occupied Palestinian Territory, the first time in more than six years the United States has permitted the body to rebuke its close ally.

Washington's support for the statement—a non-binding measure requiring consensus from the 15-member council—came after the Biden administration pressured the United Arab Emirates to abandon its plan to call for a vote on a stronger, legally binding resolution that the U.S. almost certainly would have vetoed.

Buttigieg POINTS THE FINGER Over East Palestine Derailment Disaster, Blames CONGRESS & Corporations

Interesting what the threat of a Trump visitation will do ...

Ohio train derailment: EPA takes control of response and clean-up efforts

Federal environmental regulators on Tuesday took control of the clean-up from the derailment of the train carrying huge quantities of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month, and ordered the railroad company Norfolk Southern to foot the bill. Amid growing fear and frustration among residents about safety and transparency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will now take control as the fallout from the 3 February train disaster moves from emergency response to the clean-up phase.

Norfolk Southern will be required to reimburse the federal government to provide cleaning services for impacted residents and businesses. If Norfolk Southern fails to comply with the order to identify and clean up all the contaminated water and soil, the EPA will take over the work, and seek triple damages from the multibillion-dollar company. “Let me be crystal clear: Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess they created and for the trauma they’ve inflicted on this community … in no way, shape or form will they get off the hook,” said EPA administrator Michael Regan at a press conference during his second visit to East Palestine on Tuesday.

“This order represents one of EPA strongest authorities to hold a company accountable for jeopardizing a community’s health and safety. It cannot undo the nightmare that families in this town have been living with but it will begin to deliver much needed justice for the pain that has caused,” Regan added.

The new hardline approach against the rail company marks a shift from the EPA amid mounting frustration and distrust of state and federal authorities among residents who have complained they have been getting mixed messages on safety. It comes as misinformation about the crash spreads online and growing concerns that rightwing conspiracists are trying to take advantage of the disaster for political gain. Former president Trump, who gutted environmental regulations, will visit East Palestine on Wednesday.

Letting 'Secrecy Prevail,' SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to NSA Mass Surveillance

Privacy advocates on Tuesday blasted the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Wikimedia Foundation's case against a federal program for spying on Americans' online communications with people abroad.

The nonprofit foundation, which operates Wikipedia, took aim at the National Security Agency (NSA) program "Upstream" that—under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—searches emails, internet messages, and other web communications leaving and entering the United States.

"In the course of this surveillance, both U.S. residents and individuals located outside the U.S. are impacted," the foundation explained in a statement. "The NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of internet traffic, including private data showing what millions of people around the world are browsing online, from communications with friends and family to reading and editing knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects."

"This government surveillance has had a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia users, with research documenting a drop in traffic to Wikipedia articles on sensitive topics, following public revelations about the NSA's mass surveillance in 2013," the group added.

Last August, Wikimedia—represented by the ACLU, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the law firm Cooley LLP—petitioned the high court to take up the case after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed it based on the "state secrets privilege."

"The Supreme Court's refusal to grant our petition strikes a blow against an individual's right to privacy and freedom of expression—two cornerstones of our society and the building blocks of Wikipedia," said Wikimedia legal director James Buatti. "We will continue to champion everyone's right to free knowledge, and urge Congress to take on the issue of mass surveillance as it evaluates whether to reauthorize Section 702 later this year."

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, in a separate case, the ACLU sued the NSA along with the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence for failing to respond to public records requests for information about Section 702, which will expire if it is not reauthorized.

"Before Congress votes on reauthorizing this law, Americans should know how the government wants to use these sweeping spying powers," Patrick Toomey, deputy project director for the ACLU's National Security Project, said at the time.

Responding to the development in the Wikimedia case on Tuesday, Toomey declared that "the Supreme Court let secrecy prevail today, at immense cost to Americans' privacy."

"We depend on the courts to hold the government to account, especially when it wields powerful new technologies to peer into our lives like never before. But the Supreme Court has again allowed the executive branch to hide abuses behind unjustifiable claims of secrecy," he continued. "It is now up to Congress to insist on landmark reforms that will safeguard Americans in the face of the NSA's mass spying programs."

US supreme court lets Arkansas law penalising Israel boycotts stand

The US supreme court has let stand an Arkansas law penalising boycotts of Israel that has provided the model for a proliferation of similar legislation to protect oil companies, gun makers and other contentious industries from political protest movements. The supreme court declined to hear an appeal from the editor of the Arkansas Times, Alan Leveritt, after a federal court upheld a law requiring him to sign a commitment not to boycott Israel in order to receive advertising contracts from the state.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the supreme court to overturn the Arkansas law on the grounds it is in conflict with the court’s own ruling 40 years ago that popular boycotts have a long tradition in American history and are protected speech under the first amendment.

The law is one of more than 30 passed by states in recent years, backed by both Republicans and Democrats, that require individuals or companies to pledge not to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories in order to do business with the state.

The laws, pushed by groups such as American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and the American Jewish Committee with the backing of the Israeli government, are primarily aimed at the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But they have also provided the template for legislation to curb boycotts of companies over the climate crisis, gun control, factory farming and others issues.

Leveritt said he had no intention of boycotting Israel, with which his newspaper does no business, but he refused to sign the commitment because it “requires the Arkansas Times to take a political position in return for advertising”. The editor said he was disappointed that the supreme court declined to take the case but it will not change his position.“We’re not going to sign any political pledges in return for advertising. The supreme court can ignore our our first amendment rights but we’ll continue to exercise them vigorously,” he said.

Google LIABLE For ISIS Terrorism?! MAJOR SCOTUS Case Tests Limits Of FREE SPEECH On The Internet

How two supreme court battles could reshape the rules of the internet

A pair of cases going before the US supreme court this week could drastically upend the rules of the internet, putting a powerful, decades-old statute in the crosshairs.

At stake is a question that has been foundational to the rise of big tech: should companies be legally responsible for the content their users post? Thus far they have evaded liability, but some US lawmakers and others want to change that. And new lawsuits are bringing the statute before the supreme court for the first time.

Both cases were brought by family members of terrorist attack victims who say social media firms are responsible for stoking violence with their algorithms. The first case, Gonzalez v Google, had its first hearing on 21 February and will ask the highest US court to determine whether YouTube, the Google-owned video website, should be held responsible for recommending Islamic State terrorism videos. The second, which will be heard later this week, targets Twitter and Facebook in addition to Google with similar allegations.

Together they could represent the most pivotal challenge yet to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a statute that protects tech companies such as YouTube from being held liable for content that is shared and recommended by its platforms. The stakes are high: a ruling in favor of holding YouTube liable could expose all platforms, big and small, to potential litigation over users’ content.

While lawmakers across the aisle have pushed for reforms to the 27-year-old statute, contending companies should be held accountable for hosting harmful content, some civil liberties organizations as well as tech companies have warned changes to section 230 could irreparably debilitate free-speech protections on the internet.

Who Killed Malcolm X? Family Files $100 Million Lawsuit Against FBI, NYPD & Others to Find the Truth

Democrat Barbara Lee announces bid to replace Dianne Feinstein in US Senate

United States congresswoman Barbara Lee on Tuesday formally launched her campaign for the Senate seat held by the retiring Dianne Feinstein, joining two fellow House Democrats in the race in the nation’s most populous state.

In a video posted on Twitter, Lee ran through a list of the personal and professional battles she has taken on in her life, including fighting to be her school’s first Black cheerleader, championing protections for survivors of domestic violence and being the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization for the use of military force after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Today I am proud to announce my candidacy for US Senate. I’ve never backed down from doing what’s right. And I never will,” Lee said in the video. “Californians deserve a strong, progressive leader who has delivered real change.”

Lee, a former chair of the congressional Black caucus, filed federal paperwork last week to enter the campaign shortly after the 89-year-old Feinstein announced she would step down after her term ends next year. Feinstein, the oldest member of Congress, has held the seat since 1992.

Democratic US congresswoman Katie Porter, who is known for her use of a whiteboard during congressional hearings, and Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor in then President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, announced their Senate campaigns last month.

Biden urged not to approve oil terminals that could create ‘carbon bombs’

Joe Biden’s administration has been urged not to sink its own climate goals by approving an unprecedented ramp-up of oil export infrastructure off the Texas coast that could result in planet-heating emissions equivalent to three years of the US’s entire emissions output.

The federal government has already quietly approved the Sea Port oil terminal project, a proposed offshore oil platform located 35 miles off the Texas coast, south of Houston, and will decide whether to allow three other nearby oil terminal proposals. Combined, the four terminals would expand US oil exports by nearly 7m barrels every day, handling the capacity of half of all current national oil exports.

Should all of these projects be allowed to proceed and then operate at full capacity for their expected 30-year lifespan, it will result in an incredible 24bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases once the transported oil is burned, an analysis conducted for the Guardian by Global Energy Monitor has found.

These huge “carbon bomb” projects, critics say, fatally undermine Biden’s image as a president who has acted decisively to stem the climate crisis. No new major fossil fuel infrastructure can be built if the world is to avoid dangerous global heating, the International Energy Agency has warned.

Stronger El Niño events may speed up irreversible melting of Antarctic ice, research finds

Stronger El Niño events due to global heating may accelerate irreversible melting of the Antarctic ice sheet and ice shelves and the rise in sea levels, according to research from Australia’s premier government science agency.

Previous studies have found that rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are expected to increase the magnitude of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (Enso), the planet’s most significant year-to-year climate fluctuation and a major driver of extreme droughts and floods. Extreme warm El Niño events and cool La Niña events are expected to become more frequent as the planet heats.

Relatively little has been known about the impact of Enso changes in Antarctica. A new study published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change led by CSIRO researchers found stronger El Niño events were likely to have divergent impacts in the ocean surrounding the southern continent.

The examination of 31 climate models found stronger El Niños may accelerate the heating of deeper ocean waters while slowing the pace of warming on the surface as westerly winds along the continental shelf become less intense.

The chief research scientist at CSIRO and the study’s lead author, Dr Wenju Cai, said the former would lead to the ice sheet and ice shelves melting faster. The study did not look at how much more rapidly melting may occur.

Also of Interest

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

German Lawmaker Calls for Nord Stream Probe

Putin’s February 21 Speech: Hot Takes – Putin Speaks for a Strong, Self-Sufficient Russia

Jimmy Dore RAGES Against War Machine At DC Peace Rally

The Buildup To War In Ukraine - Monday, February 21, 2022

Daughter of Malcolm X to sue CIA, FBI and NYC police for $100m

Pro-choice advocates file paperwork for Ohio ballot initiative on abortion

In Wisconsin’s supreme court race, a super-rich beer family calls the shots

Bernie ROASTS Corporate Media to Their FACE

Italy drought: Famed Venice canals run dry, gondola beached by low tides

Kucinich Turns On Biden For Blowing Up Nord Stream Pipeline

White House Officials Won’t Deny Blowing Up Nord Stream Pipeline!

Briahna Joy Gray: BONKERS Child Labor ROLL BACK Proves There's No One Corps Won't Exploit

A Little Night Music

Mead Lux Lewis - Honky Tonk Train Blues

Mead Lux Lewis - Low Down Dog

Edmond Hall, Meade Lux Lewis, Charlie Christian & Israel Crosby - Edmond Hall Blues

Meade Lux Lewis - Solitude

Meade Lux Lewis - Bear Cat Crawl

Meade Lux Lewis - Glendale Glide

Meade Lux Lewis - Roll - Em

Meade Lux Lewis & Louis Bellson - Bush Street Boogie

Meade Lux Lewis - The Blues (Complete, Parts 1-5)