The Evening Blues - 3-15-23



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Charles Brown

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer and piano player Charles Brown. Enjoy!

Charles Brown - Black Night

"It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies."

-- Bertrand Russell


News and Opinion

Russia downs US drone as NATO plans major escalation in Ukraine

On Tuesday, an American MQ-9 Reaper military drone crashed near the Russian coastline during an encounter with two Russian fighter jets 6,000 miles from US territory. Whether the American aircraft was rammed by a Russian jet, as the Americans claim, or crashed after it was forced to take evasive action, as the Russians assert, it was the first time that the Russian Air Force had downed an American aircraft since the end of the Cold War. ...

In its press briefing, the Pentagon did not provide any meaningful information on the incident. It refused to explain where the drone was, what it was doing near Russian airspace, whether it was armed, or what kind of mission it was performing, beyond “surveillance.” The Pentagon did not deny claims by Russia that the drone had its transponder turned off and that it was headed toward Russian airspace. ...

US surveillance operations over the Black Sea and NATO airspace are a critical component of the operations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which are not only funded and armed by the US military, but directed by it. In February the Washington Post reported that nearly all long-range missile strikes launched by the Ukrainian military relied on targeting provided by the United States. ... The flight was “routine,” as if providing targeting information for combat troops in the largest war in Europe since World War II was “routine.”

Such statements explain nothing. As Rand Corporation political scientist Samuel Charap explained, “I would bet the MQ-9 was operating in an area that was of particular military significance to Moscow.” He continued, “The Russians would have had a clear military reason for what they did—this wasn’t a random act of lashing out. And Russian pilots would have been following instructions from ground control, not freelancing.” ...

According to internal US government documents published as part of the Pentagon Papers, the preeminent reason for US involvement in Vietnam was to avoid a “humiliating defeat.” It is just such a prospect that the United States faces, unless it massively expands its involvement in the war. Just such an expansion is being actively prepared. On Tuesday, just hours after the Pentagon announced the downing of the drone, Politico reported that a group of senators from both US political parties called on the Pentagon to prepare to send F-16 fighters to Ukraine. ...

Whatever mission the US surveillance drone was flying, it was no doubt related to the Washington’s next steps in the conflict, which threaten to make all the blood spilled so far just a down payment.

MQ-9 Reaper drone, military tries to de-escalate. Neocons want to escalate

Fresh off The Guardian's propaganda catapult:

Russian downing of US drone marks escalation of confrontation near war zone

On any given day around Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, Russian and Nato aircraft and naval vessels, manned and unmanned, buzz around in close proximity, a constant recipe for a superpower crisis along the edges of a war. The stakes are raised by the fact that both sides have thousands of nuclear warheads as a weapon of last resort, and the risks are raised considerably by reckless behaviour.

The Russian defence ministry denied any contact between one of their Su-27 fighters and a US MQ-9 Reaper drone which crashed into the Black Sea on Tuesday, insisting the drone went down of its own accord. But the US allegations of dangerous flying and even dumping fuel on the Reaper to disrupt it are detailed – and the Russians have a long record of aggressive behaviour.

A 2021 Rand Corporation study analysing dozens of close-shave incidents concluded it was a matter of policy, which Rand dubbed “coercive signalling”.

“Moscow appears to be using coercive signals to send targeted messages regarding activities that it finds problematic,” the report said. “Sometimes the coercive signal is something like this: the plane will come up to interrogate the target, shadow at a distance, with wings clean (no missiles) but increasingly with wings dirty (with missiles) as our bilateral relations have deteriorated, and it will leave,” Dara Massicot, one of the report’s authors, said on Twitter in the wake of the drone incident. ...

The collision cost the US a machine that cost up to $32m and triggered a race to get to the wreckage in the Black Sea. If the Russians get there first, it will be an intelligence boon, allowing their experts to pore over its innards at leisure.

Jeremy Scahill on Growing Proxy War Between U.S. and Russia & Downing of U.S. Drone in Black Sea

Russia DOWNS US Drone; Biden Proxy War in Ukraine Threatens WORLD WAR III

Here are a few useful tidbits from an otherwise rancid example of propaganda (which can't entirely be separated from the useful information) from The Guardian:

Ron DeSantis says US should not get ‘further entangled’ in Ukraine war

Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, the top two Republicans in polling regarding the 2024 presidential nomination, have said defending Ukraine was not a vital US interest, in remarks that will demoralise Kyiv and encourage Vladimir Putin to believe that time is on his side. ... DeSantis had previously tried to dodge questions on Ukraine, and his new comments are likely to shift sentiment in the Republican party further from support of Ukraine.

Both men answered a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson, the primetime Fox News host, who posted the responses to Twitter.

DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said the US should not “become further entangled” in the Russia-Ukraine war. ... To Carlson, DeSantis said: “While the US has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese communist party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”

DeSantis also accused Joe Biden of providing “a virtual blank cheque” to Ukraine and said: “Without question, peace should be the objective. The US should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders.” ...

“F-16s and long-range missiles should … be off the table,” DeSantis said. “These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States … closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.” The governor also said “a policy of ‘regime change’ in Russia (no doubt popular among the DC foreign policy interventionists) would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making the use of nuclear weapons more likely”.

Russia says it does not recognise Hague court amid reports of arrest warrants

Moscow has said it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court in The Hague, after reports that the court is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals over the war in Ukraine. “We do not recognise this court; we do not recognise its jurisdiction,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday morning.

The New York Times and Reuters news agency reported on Monday that the prosecutor at the international criminal court (ICC) would formally open two war crimes cases and issue arrest warrants for several Russians deemed responsible for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children and the targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

If successful, it would be the first time ICC warrants have been issued in relation to the invasion of Ukraine.

Reports of imminent arrest warrants come just over a year after the prosecutor Karim Khan opened an investigation into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine. Over the past 12 months, he has made three trips to the country and visited sites of alleged war crimes.

Russell Brand Claims US Blew Up Nord Stream In ENERGY SCHEME, Putin DISMANTLES Pipeline 'NONSENSE'

Poland Says It May Send MiG-29 Fighter Jets to Ukraine in 4-6 Weeks

On Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw could give Ukraine Soviet-made MiG-29 fighter jets within four to six weeks, a step that would mark a significant escalation in NATO support for Kyiv.

Morawiecki said Poland wanted to transfer the jets as part of a coalition, suggesting it will only happen if other NATO countries went along. Slovakia has previously said it’s open to sending its MiG-29 jets to Ukraine.

Ukrainian pilots are trained to use the MiG-29s, so the jets can be used in battle immediately once they arrive in Ukraine. But it’s not clear how long the process of delivering the aircraft would take.

On War With China, Australia Is Caught Between A Rock And A Pentagon

As part of Australian media’s relentless onslaught of warwithChina propaganda, the government-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation just aired a radio segment on RN Breakfast about the newly revealed details on the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, featuring two guests who are enthusiastic supporters of the deal, and hosted by another enthusiastic supporter of the deal.

One of the guests, Australia’s former treasurer and ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey, made some interesting remarks.

“This locks us in with the United States for decades to come; is there a risk, as the smaller partner in this deal, we’ll just have to do what the US tells us when it comes to future wartime engagements?” host Patricia Karvelas asked Hockey.

“Well we’re already fully integrated with the United States military, and arguably have been for more than one hundred years,” Hockey replied. “We’re the only country in the world that has fought side-by side with them in every major battle for the last one hundred years. And already today a lot of our navy has the Aegis Combat System, which is an American combat system; our current Collins-class submarines use American torpedoes… and in every major way, communications systems and integration, we already have American technology, and we’re integrated with American systems. So there’s nothing new here in that regard.”

This is true; Australia is inseparably intertwined with the US military and is in practice nothing other than a US military and intelligence asset in every meaningful way, to such an extent that the US navy is reportedly planning to use the country as a full-service submarine station for the entire range of undersea activities in the Asia-Pacific region. In an incredibly brazen admission that the Australian government has fully given away the nation’s sovereignty to a foreign power, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of Defence Richard Marles said last year that the Australian Defence Force is moving “beyond interoperability to interchangeability” with the US military so they can “operate seamlessly together, at speed.”

Asked about the hundreds of billions of dollars this submarine program is going to cost Australians, Hockey said that “the cost of failure is far greater than the cost of investment,” citing Australia’s ports and shipping routes which could come under attack without the deterrence factor of the new submarines.

This claim is false. As has been humorously explained on the Australian TV series Utopia, China is the power who is supposedly being “deterred” from attacking Australia’s ports and shipping routes, and since China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner this means that we are effectively pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into protecting our trade with China, from China.

In reality, Australia is not arming itself against China to protect itself from China. Australia is arming itself against China to protect itself from the United States.

This dynamic was illustrated in all its grotesque glory by a 2019 presentation at the Australian think tank Centre for Independent Studies by American political analyst John Mearsheimer. In his usual uncomfortably blunt manner, Mearsheimer told his audience that the US is going to do everything it can to halt China’s rise and prevent it from becoming the dominant power in the region, and that Australia should align with the US in that battle or else it would face the wrath of Washington.


“The question that’s on the table is what should Australia’s foreign policy be in light of the rise of China,” Mearsheimer said. “I’ll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian.”

Mearsheimer said China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert that economic power into military power to dominate Asia “the way the US dominates the western hemisphere”, and explained why he thinks the US and its allies have every ability to prevent that from happening.

“Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?” Mearsheimer said. “Well, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way you’re not the only country in East Asia that’s in this quandary. You trade a lot with China, and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise, you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that security is more important than prosperity, because if you don’t survive, you’re not gonna prosper.”

“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer. “You have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China, you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”

“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued. “And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The CIA is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.

So if you’re confused as to why Australia is preparing to fight an unwinnable war against its primary trading partner, in direct contradiction to its own security and economic interests, that’s why. It’s because Australia is ultimately more afraid of the US than it is of China.

Contrary to Joe Hockey’s claims, Australia is not paying hundreds of billions of dollars to knit itself even further into the US war machine because “the cost of failure is far greater than the cost of investment.” In truth those hundreds of billions of dollars are more like pizzo payments to the Mafia; we’re letting the boss wet his beak so he doesn’t trash our business and break our kneecaps.

Nobody ever talks about this, even though anyone who studies US foreign policy knows it’s true. All the Australian propagandists always make up stories about what China might do to us if we don’t play along with Washington’s brinkmanship against Beijing, but they never talk about what the US would do to us if we don’t. This is because they don’t want us thinking too hard about the fact that we are being coerced by the world’s most powerful government into preparing to fight a war of unfathomable horror under the tacit threat of inflicting even worse horrors upon us if we don’t.

Australia is caught between a rock and a Pentagon, and both are the fault of the United States. The US is responsible for engineering all these hostilities between China and the western power alliance in its desperate attempts to secure unipolar hegemony, and the US is responsible for creating the fear other countries feel knowing what fate might befall them if they disobey its dictates. The US is solely responsible for creating a situation in which we are being forced to choose between (A) throwing our sons and daughters into the gears of an unimaginably terrible war while destroying our economy and risking nuclear armageddon, or (B) facing retribution and retaliation from a government that is far more violent and destructive than China.

This completely intolerable situation is why Australians are being aggressively hammered with war propaganda about China right now; if we were simply allowed to consume truthful information and think normal thoughts, no healthy person would ever consent to any of this.

But that’s where we’re at, and it’s not going to get better until people understand that that’s what’s happening. We’ve got to talk about this thing, and we’ve got to help everyone understand the reality of the situation we now find ourselves in. In the end, humanity will not have a chance at health until it has freed itself from the shackles of the US empire.

'Unions at top level very united': French protesters very active in 'physical' & 'digital' street

France faces another day of strikes ahead of key vote on pension reforms

French unions have called for a show of force with a final day of strikes and protests in the run-up to a crucial vote on Emmanuel Macron’s fiercely contested pensions overhaul in parliament. The call for an eighth day of national mobilisation on Wednesday comes as rubbish piles up in Paris and a number of other French cities after continuing strikes by refuse collectors who oppose the bill that will increase the official retirement age from 62 to 64.

Record numbers of demonstrators have taken to the streets of France over the past weeks to oppose proposed changes to the pension system, which Macron promised to carry out in his re-election campaign last year. The legislation would not only raise the retirement age but also increase the number of years of contributions needed to claim a full pension.

Opinion polls suggest up to 70% of French people oppose the changes, but a poll by Ifop found 71% are resigned to the bill being passed. The same poll found 56% of those asked considered protesters and strikers were justified in bringing France to a standstill in the run-up to Thursday’s vote.

The upper house, the Sénat, approved the bill on Saturday sending it back to the National Assembly. Union leaders and opposition MPs are furious that a 28-member cross-party parliamentary commission that will thrash out a final compromise on the bill will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday.

Matt Taibbi RESPONDS To Congressional Smear Campaign

US inflation slows to 6% annual rate amid looming banking crisis

Price rises slowed again in February as the annual rate of inflation eased but the report has been overshadowed by a banking crisis ahead of next week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve.

Prices in February were 6% higher than a year ago, down from an annual rate of 6.4% in January and significantly lower than the 9.1% peak of inflation seen in June. Between January and February, prices rose 0.4% as prices increased in sectors including housing and food.

While February saw the continuation of a downward trend in the 12-month inflation rate, the core prices – which excludes volatile food and energy prices – increased by 0.5% in February compared with a 0.4% monthly gain in January.

The housing sector is seeing the stickiest price increases and contributes to over 70% of the overall inflation increase. Housing prices rose 0.8% between January and February and 8.1% over last year. The food industry also saw high price increases, reaching 10.2% inflation over the last year, though monthly increases have been slowly falling and once soaring egg prices have started to fall.

Meanwhile, the energy sector saw decreases that helped drive down the 12-month inflation rate.

Gallego Says Lobbyists 'Bought Sinema's Vote' That Resulted in Bank Collapse

Democratic Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego on Tuesday accused Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—who he hopes to oust from the U.S. Senate next year—of playing a major role in the Silicon Valley Bank collapse by taking campaign contributions from lobbyists that represented the bank and then voting to deregulate it.

Politico reports that Sinema (I-Ariz.) was one of numerous members of Congress to take campaign donations from Franklin Square Group, which once counted Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) among its clients. In 2018, Sinema—then a Democrat serving in the U.S. House of Representatives—received more than $8,000 from the lobbyists before she voted for Sen. Mike Crapo's (R-Idaho) Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

"Before voting to loosen bank safeguards, Sinema received over $100,000 from big banks. And among those who bought Sinema's vote were three Silicon Valley Bank lobbyists that maxed out," Ruben said in a campaign email. "Simply put, she voted to give the banks free rein. And I did not."

Dubbed the Bank Lobbyist Act by critics, the law rolled back the Dodd-Frank Act—which was passed in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial meltdown—and exempted banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets from rigorous stress-testing and capital requirements. Both SVB and Signature Bank, which are both now under federal government control, qualified for the "medium-sized bank" exemption.

Sinema argued at the time that "these important reforms will help protect the financial security of Arizonans young and old as they plan for homeownership, a college education, or a stable retirement."

Regulators Greenlit SVB’s Risky Investments

In the years before Silicon Valley Bank’s sudden failure, federal regulators gave the firm a special exemption from rules designed to prevent deposit-taking banks from engaging in risky investments and financial speculation, according to records reviewed by The Lever.

The move — which was a precursor to regulators later extending a similar exemption to the entire banking industry — coincided with Silicon Valley Bank, or SVB, continuing to invest in the high-risk venture capital industry in the lead-up to its collapse, which is the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

As the federal government now protects SVB’s depositors from losses, the bank’s demise has touched off alarms about broader risk in the financial industry, just a few years after both lawmakers and federal bank overseers began rolling back some of the reforms that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

In this particular example of that deregulation, the Federal Reserve created significant carve-outs to the so-called Volcker Rule, named after former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. That regulation was supposed to prevent federally insured banks from owning or investing in private equity or hedge funds — opaque pools of assets that are considered illiquid, meaning they cannot be easily sold and turned into cash.

In 2017, the Fed granted SVB a five-year reprieve from the Volcker Rule. The decision allowed SVB, a major lender to the tech industry, to remain a traditional deposit-taking bank while also maintaining its risky investments in venture capital — a form of private equity that funds startups in the tech industry, which has recently been battered by mass layoffs and financial losses.

A few years later, the Trump administration effectively granted this same exemption to the whole banking industry, allowing banks to sponsor and invest heavily in venture capital funds. As a result, SVB was able to continue investing in assets that the Fed deemed too risky for a federally-insured bank in 2017.

A Black couple’s home was undervalued by $300,000. Now the US is investigating

The Department of Justice on Monday intervened in a federal lawsuit alleging that an appraiser and a mortgage lender discriminated against a couple who are both Johns Hopkins University professors by significantly lowering the value of their Baltimore home and denying a loan because they are Black.

In response to a pending motion to dismiss the lawsuit by the mortgage lender, loanDepot, justice department civil rights attorneys filed a “statement of interest” in a federal district court in Maryland arguing that the case raised significant questions about appraisal racial bias, noting that President Joe Biden had identified the issue “as a priority for the federal government”. ...

Drs Nathan Connolly, a professor of history, and Shani Mott, an instructor in Africana studies, both at Johns Hopkins University, wanted to apply to refinance their mortgage and take advantage of historically low interest rates. They made renovations to their four-bedroom home in a predominantly white neighborhood in Baltimore.

They claimed in the lawsuit that the appraiser, Shane Lanham, of 20/20 Valuations, “dramatically” undervalued their Baltimore home at $472,000, and that loanDepot denied their loan application based on that valuation. Lanham countersued the couple for defamation in January arguing they falsely accused him of racism and that the accusation had a “devastating impact” on his reputation and business. The appraisal, he argued, “had nothing to do with discrimination” of Connolly and Mott’s race.

Connolly and Mott sought out a different lender, but this time they “whitewashed” their house and removed any signs that a Black family with three children lived there. They replaced family photos and children’s drawings with items from white friends. They brought a white colleague, a fellow Johns Hopkins professor, to stand in their place when the appraiser showed up. The home was then valued at $750,000.

San Francisco backs reparations plans, including $5m to eligible Black adults

San Francisco lawmakers heard a range of options on Tuesday to provide reparations to Black people for decades of racist treatment by the city government.

The more than 100 recommendations included payments of $5m to every eligible Black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years and homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family.

The San Francisco board of supervisors hearing the report for the first time Tuesday voiced enthusiastic support for the ideas listed, with some saying money should not stop the city from doing the right thing.

Several supervisors said they were surprised to hear pushback from politically liberal San Franciscans apparently unaware that the legacy of slavery and racist policies continues to keep Black Americans on the bottom rungs of health, education and economic prosperity and overrepresented in prisons and homeless populations. ...

Black residents once made up more than 13% of San Francisco’s population, but more than 50 years later, they account for less than 6% of the city’s residents – and 38% of the city’s homeless population. The reparations attempt to rectify historic injustices by focusing not on slavery but rather the city’s discriminatory treatment of Black residents during the period of “urban renewal” in the 1950s through 1970s, which included the razing of a thriving Black neighborhood and the displacement of nearly 20,000 people in the name of “economic development”.

Manuel Paez Terán’s family release results of independent autopsy after protester fatally shot by Georgia law enforcement

An environmental activist who was fatally shot in a confrontation with Georgia law enforcement in January was sitting cross-legged with their hands in the air at the time, the protester’s family said as they released results of an autopsy they commissioned. ...

The family’s attorneys said the Georgia bureau of investigation, which has been investigating the shooting for nearly two months, has prevented Atlanta police from releasing additional evidence to the family. ...

“Manuel was looking death in the face, hands raised when killed,” civil rights attorney Brian Spears said, citing the conclusions of the autopsy. “We do not stand here today telling you that we know what happened. The second autopsy is a snapshot of what happened, but it is not the whole story. What we want is simple: GBI, meet with the family and release the investigative report.”

In a statement, the bureau said it was preventing “inappropriate release of evidence” to preserve the investigation’s integrity.



the horse race



Pffffffftttt!

North Carolina court appears poised to overrule itself in gerrymandering case

The North Carolina supreme court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a major gerrymandering case that could have significant implications for US voting rights.

In a highly unusual move, the North Carolina court appears poised to overrule itself and get rid of congressional and state legislative districts it approved last year. The GOP-drawn map that was struck down could have produced a 11-3 advantage for Republicans in the congressional delegation. The one that replaced it was far less advantageous to the GOP and wound up producing a 7-7 split in the 2022 midterm elections. The court’s decision would likely allow Republicans to get a more advantageous map back in place.

Demonstrators gathered outside the state supreme court in Raleigh on Tuesday as the justices heard oral arguments in the case, Harper v Hall. Much of the back-and-forth at the hearing focused on whether there were metrics the court could use to measure partisan gerrymandering. Phil Strach, a lawyer for the legislature, argued that because there were no clear metrics, it was not something the court could regulate.

Anita Earls, a Democrat on the court, pushed Strach to explain whether that meant the legislature could essentially do whatever it wants when it comes to drawing districts. If the state legislature were to adopt a rule that explicitly said any congressional plan had to result in an 11-3 advantage for Republicans, she asked, could the state supreme court do anything to stop it? Strach suggested it could not. “Some things, your honor, are beyond the power of this court,” he said.

Lali Madduri, a lawyer representing those challenging the map, accused lawmakers of playing a “cynical game, hoping that this newly constituted court will reverse course and abdicate its fundamental duty of judicial review”. Sam Hirsch, another lawyer for the challengers, said that an effort to impose new legislative districts could be unconstitutional since North Carolina’s constitution prohibits mid-decade redistricting for the state general assembly.

Fox News Says BOTH Parties Are Corrupt!

Election-denying donors pour millions into key Wisconsin supreme court race

More than $3.9m has poured into the Wisconsin supreme court election from individuals and groups involved with promoting election disinformation and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to an analysis of campaign spending by the Guardian.

The contributions, in support of the conservative candidate Daniel Kelly, come amid a race that has broken national campaign spending records. According to a campaign finance tracker by the Brennan Center for Justice, political ad orders for the liberal county judge Janet Protasiewicz and conservative Kelly have reached at least $20m in anticipation of the 4 April general election.

The Wisconsin supreme court is currently made up of three judges who lean liberal and four conservatives. Whoever replaces the conservative retiring justice Patience Roggensack will determine the ideological composition of the court, which has been dominated by the right wing for 15 years. At stake in the Wisconsin supreme court race are redistricting, abortion rights, and voting rights and elections policy. And these decisions go beyond the state: Wisconsin has been a critical swing state in recent presidential elections, so its voting policies affect more than just state residents.

Among the election-denying funders behind Kelly’s run are anti-abortion thinktanks and Super Pacs, conservative billionaires and a constellation of groups funded by the Wisconsin shipping supply tycoon Richard Uihlein.



the evening greens


Biden just betrayed the planet – and his own campaign vows

The Willow project is an act of terrorism against the climate, and the Biden administration has just approved it. This massive oil-drilling project in the wilderness of northern Alaska goes against science and the administration’s many assurances that it cares about climate and agrees that we must make a swift transition away from fossil fuel. Like the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden seems to think that if we do some good things for the climate we can also do some very bad things and somehow it will all even out.

To make that magical thinking more obvious and to try to smooth over broad opposition, the US federal government also just coughed up some protections against drilling in the Arctic Ocean and elsewhere in the National Petroleum Reserve (and only approved three of the five drilling sites for ConocoPhillips’ invasion of this wilderness). Of course, this is like saying, “We’re going to kill your mother but we’re sending guards to protect your grandmother.” It doesn’t make your mom less dead. With climate you’re dealing with physics and math before you’re dealing with morality. All the carbon and methane emissions count, and they need to decrease rapidly in this decade. As Bill McKibben likes to say, you can’t bargain with physics.

You can try to bargain with the public, but the motivation behind this decision is hard to figure out. The deal was inherited from the Trump administration, and rejecting it would have been a break with convention, but convention dooms us, and we need the break.

Biden was elected in no small part by the participation of young voters who supported his strong climate platform. As a candidate he promised: “And by the way, no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.” Six million letters and 2.3m comments opposed to the project were sent to the White House, many from young people galvanized by social media. The American public, Republican minority aside, is strongly engaged with the reality of climate crisis now and the urgency of doing something about it. ...

We are already failing to stop runaway climate change. Adding this carbon bomb to the total makes it worse – both for the actual damage to the climate and for the signal the US is sending to the world. The Biden administration has made a colossal mistake.

Biden Approves Huge Oil Drilling Contract In Pristine Alaskan Wilderness!

EPA sets ‘groundbreaking’ limits on toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water

The US Environmental Protection Agency has taken the extraordinary step of setting legal drinking water limits for six of the most studied and toxic PFAS compounds, known commonly as “forever chemicals”, that are at the center of an ongoing environmental crisis.

The new limits mark the first time in 26 years that the EPA has set legal limits for a contaminant in drinking water. Municipal utilities will be required to remove the compounds from drinking water, which could set off a wave of lawsuits directed at PFAS polluters, including the US military and chemical producers like 3M, DuPont and Chemours. ...

By some estimates, PFAS are contaminating drinking water for more than 200 million Americans, and the EPA has said it has moved more quickly to regulate the compounds than any in the agency’s history.

Between 2016 and 2022, the agency worked off an advisory health limit of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOS and PFOA, two compounds commonly produced and used for decades. Last year, after science showed virtually no level of exposure to drinking water is safe, the EPA set non-enforceable “advisory health limits” of 0.02 ppt and 0.004 ppt for PFOA and PFOS, respectively.

The new legal limits for PFOS and PFOA is 4 ppt each, levels that science shows are still dangerous to drink. Public health advocates say the discrepancy is likely the result of industry pressure on the EPA and an inability of PFAS tests that regulators use to check water for the chemicals at levels as low as 0.02 ppt.


Also of Interest

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

Scott Ritter: The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up

Putin Says Nord Stream Blasts Carried Out on 'State Level'

Sy Hersh Meets the Press

Ukraine - Media Start To Acknowledge Reality

The Urbanity of Evil: 20 Years After the US Invasion of Iraq

Remembering Who The Nazis Killed First

Just How Likely Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan?

In FBI Case, the First Amendment Takes Another Bizarre Hit

Silicon Valley Bank Fallout Nudges World’s Most Troubled Systemic Lender, Credit Suisse, Closer to Edge

Metallica buy vinyl factory as format outsells CDs for first time in US since 1987

The Nord Stream Bombing: Jeremy Scahill on Why U.S. Remains Most Likely Culprit in Pipeline Sabotage

Roger Waters Concert CANCELLED Over Israel Criticism

Guess Why The PENTAGON Is Blocking Russia From War Crimes Prosecution!

Nikki Haley CONDEMNS DeSantis Over Ukraine; GOP Hawks Neocons ANGRY With Governor


A Little Night Music

Charles Brown w/Shuggie Otis - Trouble Blues

Charles Brown - Angel Baby

Charles Brown & Amos Milburn - I Want To Go Home

Charles Brown - Hard Times

Charles Brown - Rockin' Blues

Charles Brown - Fool's Paradise

Charles Brown - These Blues

Charles Brown - Big Legged Women

Charles Brown - Drifting Blues

Charles Brown & Dr John - A Virus Called The Blues


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joe shikspack's picture

i will be heading out in a little bit to go see the new julian assange movie, so i will be out for the evening.

you all have fun and i'll catch up with you when i get back if i'm still awake enough.

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would we avoid emitting all that carbon? No. We would burn the same amount of oil, but from Venezuela or Canada, and Venezuelan oil is much heavier, as is Canadian, much more polluting to refine.

If we closed our borders to oil imports and made all these claims about armageddon I'd be less skeptical. The dirty part of oil is when it is burnt. Cars, airplanes, cars to carry all of the service people to work that so much of the chattering class rely on. Closing our borders to imports would mean that if nothing else at least forgoing oil in one place might drive up the price and drive down consumption.

That land along the coast of the Arctic Ocean is all Inuit land anyway, except when it came time to divy it up we mostly took it for US public land. Generally there are no Indians until you get down to where there are trees. And if you were to put it to a vote amongst the people of the N slope borough you know how that would go, they like the jobs.

I'm all for reducing greenhouse gasses, and leaving as many wild areas, wild, as possible, but the weeping and wailing is too noisy on this one.

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Edited to add that the youtube title is a little bit deceptive as the video deals with the downing of the drone. The last few minutes are pretty good also.

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snoopydawg's picture

.
Utah's snowpack officially breaks mid-March record; rain causes new flooding

Utah's snowpack is officially the highest it has ever been in the middle of March, in more than 40 years.

The statewide snowpack reached an average of 23.2 inches of snow water equivalent Wednesday morning, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service data. The agency's figure is based on the amount of water in the snow at 114 mountain sites across Utah.

Record books date back to the beginning of the 1980s, with the previous record snowpack for mid-March being 23.1 inches set in 1997. The current figure is also now within 3 inches of Utah's all-time snowpack record of 26 inches, set in April 1983.

My snow has melted in just 3 days if I’m being generous. Most of it went in just 2 and the ground is so saturated there’s standing water at the cemetery where it has nowhere to drain to. Southern Utah has already seen some flooding and lots of places are offering sandbags.

1983 was when there was so much water coming down from the mountains they made decision to divert it down 2 of SLC's main and boy was that quite a sight. Back then the lake was full too so our governor decided to build pumps to pump water in the west desert…the pumps were never turned on.

Here’s a great article on the floods and what led up to the decision. Click to see the pictures.

Looking back at the 1983 flood that sent a river through downtown

Flooding isn’t unusual in Utah. In fact, Southern Utah felt the effects of it again this past August.

However, for Salt Lake and much of Utah, the most memorable flood not only shut down some streets for days, it turned them into rivers.

Some streets, such as State Street, were just that — aqueducts to control the problems caused by the rising water. Makeshift vehicle and pedestrian bridges were constructed to allow people to commute to work or wherever they needed to go with as minimal impact as possible.

So how did the state flood this badly? Unlike floods caused by immediate heavy downpours, the 1983 flood was the result of abnormally high precipitation totals for several months and culminated into weeks of issues.

The 1981 and 1982 precipitation totals were off the charts, according to the Utah Department of History. For example, the September 1982 rain total was about 10 times higher than the average, recording a record total of 4.35 inches of rain that month.

The damp conditions lingered into the fall and winter, creating mudslides and flooded creeks in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. In March and April 1983, more precipitation records were broken, creating hazards to the Salt Lake valley with the moisture levels exceeding capacity.

Mudslides and related issues began to cause problems throughout the area. Houses were flooded, missing or split in two, in some cases. The problems weren’t just throughout Salt Lake valley, but all over Utah.

A Deseret News front page article from May 29, 1983 wasn’t like the traditional above-the-fold story. It was bullet points with mini reports of where flooding was the worst. The more than a dozen bullet points ranged from throughout Salt Lake to places like Bountiful, Centerville, Levan and Pleasant Grove.

Bountiful is halfway between SLC and Ogden and it saw the flooding and mudslides that caused a lot of damage first. Just next to it is Farmington where cops just killed a man who wouldn’t give his ID to them. Of course they escalated it themselves and when they reached into the car to pull him out they saw a gun holster on his hip and so all 11 of them fired at him and now he’s dead. He wasn’t threatening anyone, but you know…if you don’t mind cops they have license to kill you.

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snoopydawg's picture

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Russia wants to recover the fragments of a U.S. surveillance drone that American forces brought down in the Black Sea after an encounter with a Russian fighter jet, a Russian security official said Wednesday.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the drone was flying in international airspace and over international waters when a Russian fighter jet struck the propeller of the MQ-Reaper drone.

At the Pentagon, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the intercept by the Russian jet was part of a "pattern of aggressive, risky and unsafe actions by Russian pilots in international airspace." He said Russia must operate its aircraft in a safe manner.

"Make no mistake, the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows," Austin said in opening remarks before a virtual meeting of a U.S.-led effort to coordinate Western military support for Ukraine.

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, claimed in televised remarks that Tuesday's incident was "another confirmation" of direct U.S. involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. He said Russia planned to search for the drone's debris.

I think that’s an interesting slip to start the story with, but speaking of aggressive actions I think that there is no chance in hell that we would allow Russian aircraft to fly so close to our borders and especially if Russia was running a proxy war in America. Plus Lloyd can’t have it both ways. If we are spying for Ukraine so they can kill Russians he can’t then deny that we are just mutual observers to the war. Goes back to my point of not letting Russia close enough to our borders to give information to their troops that they are using in a proxy war.

Lol…

Separately, the U.K. defense ministry said British and German air force fighter jets were scrambled Tuesday to intercept a Russian aircraft flying close to Estonian airspace. The U.K. and Germany are conducting joint air policing missions in Estonia as part of NATO's bolstering of its eastern flank.

The defense ministry said the Typhoon jets responded after a Russian air-to-air refueling aircraft failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control. The Russian plane did not enter the airspace of Estonia, a NATO member.

It’s okay if we do whatever the hell we want, but we are the ONLY ONES WHO CAN! It’s like Blinken warning China not to send weapons to Russia whilst he is arming Taiwan to the gills and sending American troops into the country to train them to fight against China. Boy the people in charge of this warring shit show must walk very funny to accommodate their ……. Including Vicky Nuland, Sam Powers and Susan Rice. I don’t even want to imagine Hillary’s.

From the comments

- Russia has over 700 miles of coastline on the Black Sea. The US is more than 4000 miles from the Black Sea. Imagine if Russia, China, or Iran were flying one of their drones with its transponder turned off within miles of our coast.

- If it is international waters, it would not matter.

……

- United States navy vessels should be sent immediately to the area where the drone went down in international waters to recover it. If the Russians show up and try anything again while in international waters, I would hope our navy would open fire and sink any threats.

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snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

.

Boy is he pissed that Hillary didn’t win in 2016 because that meant he couldn’t deliver weapons to the Ukraine Nazis as planned when he and his BFF McCain told them that as soon as Obama was out of office they would be sending them over.

Show me how close to American shores the drone was…

B4D6C0F6-4C42-47BD-9C95-2E6304EC4D48.jpeg
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karl pearson's picture

@snoopydawg
According to Sean Hannity, only Iran is still on the "original" evil list of 2002, while North Korea and Iraq have been replaced by Russia and China. This is starting to look like a game of musical chairs. lol

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snoopydawg's picture

@karl pearson

old talking points like we saw during Bush's war of terror. Adam Schiff started it with his "we have to fight Russia over there so we don’t have to fight them here." And now we have another axis of evil…but the saddest thing is that people will fall for it again even if they have heard it before and it was all based on lies. And it’s being done on a new generation. Heavy sigh..

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https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-03-15/china-russia-iran-...

Russian warship is seen during a joint naval military drill between Iran, Russia, and China in the Gulf of Oman, Iran, in this picture obtained on March 15, 2023. Iranian Army/WANA

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soryang's picture

...starts off with a lot of pentagon insider gobblygook about anti China organizational/mobility schemes. Near the end however Lyle Goldstein gives some comments on the Taiwan situation and China's potential approach.

How U.S. Plans for a Faraway Pacific War While China Plots to Disrupt It
BY TOM O'CONNOR AND NAVEED JAMALI ON 3/9/23 AT 5:00 AM EST

"And what is the soft rib? Logistics," Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at the Washington, D.C.-based Defense Priorities think tank and a professor at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, told Newsweek.

Goldstein, who retired from the U.S. Naval War College in 2021 and has spent decades researching Chinese military doctrine, explained that "China has interior lines, that is, at every point of combat, they can bring more firepower quicker, whereas we have exterior lines, we have to get the stuff there, it's much more difficult."

"They know very well their biggest advantage here is interior-exterior lines and logistics, and they have a very good idea of what our logistics look like whenever we upgrade a base in the Pacific, certainly, but elsewhere too," Goldstein said. "They follow that carefully."

He recommended the U.S. also tread carefully in its planning. On this point, Goldstein stresses the need for caution and restraint in navigating the tense waters of the Pacific. He sees the People's Liberation Army as well-positioned to take Taiwan in the event of a conflict, but also sees China as hard-pressed to move forward toward other strategically located positions such as the Philippines, Japan and Hawaii.

https://www.newsweek.com/how-us-plans-faraway-pacific-war-while-china-pl...

The Army Secretary seems carried away with her vision of attacks on the US. I was looking for an article Lyle co-authored at The Bulletin, but it was behind a pay wall. I think he was quoted in it as saying there was no military solution, I think Chas Freeman and former Vice Chairman JCS William Owens, are fond of making this observation. They are old timers, who know what they are talking about.

Writing estimates or theories about what could happen is quite the pastime- here's another from Michael T. Clare of Tom Dispatch:

Just How Likely Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan?
Imagine a world in which we were leading with diplomacy towards Beijing, not planning for what would be a devastating war.
MICHAEL T. KLARE
Mar 14, 2023
TomDispatch

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-likely-is-chinese-invasion-of-t...

Here's a neo-con perspective-

China has three roads to Taiwan: The US must block them all
BY DAN BLUMENTHAL AND FRED KAGAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 03/13/23 10:15 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3896916-china-has-three-ro...

This Kagan also signed the PNAC document.

I liked this somewhat related opinion from a South Korean scholar in Hankyoreh-

Seoul’s plan for forced labor compensation isn’t a solution — it’s a disaster
Posted on : Mar.13, 2023
Nam Ki-jeong, professor at Seoul National University’s Institute for Japanese Studies

"The South Korean government’s status has fallen and its negotiating power has weakened as a result of the South Korea-US alliance being incorporated as a subordinate alliance under the broader frame of the US-Japan alliance"

As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan were roped into one bloc with Japan and formed a power-balancing system in East Asia. Due to Japan’s defeat, however, the system became reorganized around the US in the wake of the Korean War.

With this, the “Far East 1905 system” is not a relic of the past but an entity in which the US-Japan and South Korea-US alliances operate as one system. Here, the fact that Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula is seen as something that was “unavoidable.”

After the administration revealed its “solution” to the Supreme Court’s ruling, there has been talk in Japan of reorganizing command and control structures in the event of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula. Some argue that since there is no room for Tokyo to intervene under the current ROK-US Combined Forces Command system, Japan should have a place at the table during any planning stages, considering the level of risk Japan would face in case of an emergency on the peninsula.

It's difficult to hear people say to not get caught up on the past but look at the future and brush off all that has happened. It’s dangerous, and we must be cautious.

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/1083390.html

It's interesting how the US and Japan are attempting to replicate the imperial setup in East Asia at the beginning of the 20th century which ultimately led to the Great Pacific War/ WWII. The US is even in the process of trying to recover for all practical purposes, it's base structure in the Philippines. Taiwan is indispensable to this alignment. "It's dangerous, and we must be cautious."

Thanks Joe for keeping me interested.

(edited to credit author)

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語必忠信 行必正直

@soryang

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/03/16/asia-pacific/north-korea-mi...

North Korea fired off a powerful long-range missile on Thursday, Japan’s Defense Ministry said, in a show of force just hours before Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol were due to meet in Tokyo for their first-ever formal summit.

The ministry said the “intercontinental ballistic missile-class” weapon had flown for about 70 minutes, traveling about 1,000 kilometers and hitting a maximum altitude of around 6,000 km, before falling into waters outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) some 250 kilometers west of Hokkaido’s Oshima-Oshima Island.

The missile was believed to have been fired on a “lofted” trajectory, meaning it had been shot nearly straight up so as to avoid overflying neighboring countries.

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soryang's picture

@humphrey The "long awaited summit." 60 percent of the South Korean people oppose it.

"the wartime labor issue" code for the Japanese war crime of slave labor against hundreds of thousands of Koreans. They denied it was a war crime right up until today.

So far Japan conceded nothing, and the South Korean pro-Japanese president is referred to as a traitor in his own country, to add to his list of other authoritarian and unethical acts.

Pyongyang has not responded to repeated offers of talks by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden as Washington and its allies in Tokyo and Seoul double down on building up their capabilities to deter and respond to a North Korean attack.

This is laughable. Offers? What offers? Haven't heard an "offer" since the Bolton ultimatum in Hanoi.

(Source- JTBC News 8.6.2019) Class A war criminal awarded by South Korean government. In 1970, Kisi (Abe's grandfather) was awarded the top national award in diplomacy by South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, the Distinguished Order of Diplomatic Service. Park was a former graduate of Japanese military schools and a former military officer and agent of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchukuo.

Another Japan Times article repeats the Japanese-US litany that former president Moon ruined relations with Japan. It was the South Korean judiciary that made the decision concerning Japanese corporations having to pay the survivors of their slave labor practices. This is of no account in the Japanese-US view, as the Japanese interfered in the disposition of the final judgement of the case inside South Korea against private parties, and continues to do so by its current actions. On what constitutional basis did former president Park Geun-hye (the dictator's daughter) and President Yoon interfere with the Korean judiciary?

Rahm Emanuel doesn't know what he's talking about. "...U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel issuing a statement praising Prime Minister’s Fumio Kishida’s “bold leadership” as he looks “to the future for a new partnership” with Seoul." It's not a partnership, South Korea is clearly in a subordinate protectorate status as it was in 1905.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/03/07/national/politics-diplomacy...

(edit typos)

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語必忠信 行必正直

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consequences. (Are you listening Lindsey?

Intel Slava Z

An attack on a Russian plane in neutral space will be a declaration of war, - the Russian ambassador in Washington responded to the threats of senators

“ Intentionally attacking a Russian aircraft in neutral airspace is not just a crime under international law, but also an open declaration of war against the largest nuclear power ,” Anatoly Antonov warned. - An armed clash between Russia and the United States would be radically different from the proxy war that the Americans are waging remotely against us in Ukraine. Is the Capitol ready to expose American citizens and the international community to the risk of all-out nuclear war? Answer, dear senator! "

This is how the ambassador responded to the threats of a number of American parliamentarians, in particular Senator Lindsey Graham, to shoot down Russian aircraft in international airspace if they come close to US military equipment.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@humphrey

Wouldn't it be ironic if that very expensive drone really had been brought down by a grocery-store item? Biggrin

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

usefewersyllables's picture

in an unpleasant sort of way. They released the "footage" from onboard the drone, showing the Su-27 that did the ramming, and the damage to the prop afterwards that resulted in the drone coming down.

That is, of course, if the footage is real and not some sort of deepfake. For all I know it is from some videogame somewhere, which apparently is all our military leaders seem to think this very real war of ours amounts to.

Even so, I expect more of this- a lot more of it- in the coming weeks. Since we are using our assets to provide the intel to Ukraine for their military adventurings, this idea of "freedom of the skies for me but not for thee" is going to necessarily take a very dark turn. Can't wait to see what comes our way now.

https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/watch-de...

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

snoopydawg's picture

@usefewersyllables

It’s too funny, US spending 2x $400k missiles to shoot down a $50 balloon, and Russians spend $50 of fuel to dump and down a $32 million drone. But is it live or is it memorex? My first thought on seeing this was probably CGI or some other made up BS.

RT also shows a couple of videos of the event and slows down the footage and after the second plane went by the yellow markings on the propeller are no longer there. A few people in the comments said that it’s not fuel, but what happens when pilots hit the air brakes. Can someone look at it and see what you think?

I thought it looked like something I would do when water skiing and passing the dock. I’d serve like that and send a large spray water all over everyone on it and soaking them.

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usefewersyllables's picture

@snoopydawg

definitely not an airbrake symptom- that is in fact a fuel dump. I'm surprised that they aren't doing it on afterburner, which would set the fuel on fire and be very amusing.

As it is, I suspect that they were simply trying to cause the thing's turboprop engine to flame out by drowning it in fuel, and didn't really quite intend to actually hit it. The SU-27 is going to need some repairs after slicing open its intakes on that prop. They'll probably send us the bill.

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snoopydawg's picture

@usefewersyllables

I know nothing about how planes work. I didn’t see where the plane actually hit the prop. And did you notice the yellow markings not being there on the 2nd plane?

Also I didn’t serve whilst water skiing, I swerved to drench people.

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usefewersyllables's picture

@snoopydawg

breaks up into pixelation and test pattern while the drone loses sync with its uplink right after the hit. Who knows how long that went on- that'd be an easy edit. But when the video comes back, all of the prop tips are missing, and a couple of blades are really deformed. I'd like to see a picture of the SU-27, because its belly has to have a bunch of slices across it, sort of like this:

A Hasselbecked SU-27, so to speak, but maybe without the brown sauce...

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soryang's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg ...evaluations. I'm having trouble being convinced by the video. I see the problem with the prop markings. It looks as if at least two props have been impacted, because one is bent, and another has a radical pitch change.

I thought I would see some sign of engine/airframe cavitation in the "post impact" imagery when the drone camera "comes back on," but I don't. Is it because the "after impact" video is so short? Given the angle of bank on the Russian jet, and the attitude of the jet, how could it impact prop blades, and not strike one of the rear stabilizers of the drone? What are the odds of that? There doesn't seem to have been an impact on a control surface. No one has suggested it anyway on the drone.

Another question I have is why does the video suddenly end? Appears to be edited that way. I'm sure an exact computer simulation of the video just prior to the "strike" could answer questions. I think a trained photo analyst could do it because the dimensions of the respective aircraft are known. The problem with simulations is that they are often manipulated to reach the conclusion desired.

I'm not convinced, but I haven't made up my mind. Caveat, this is not the imagery I'm accustomed to. I used to watch old gun camera films of dog fights with Migs. When the plane blew up, you knew why, without a doubt. I've seen a few tactical aircraft impacts in real time, hard landings to total loss.

In controversial international aircraft mishap, accident, bombing investigations the results are sometimes not trustworthy. If the US has more video they should release it. Why only a few seconds after the "impact?" Because it's not declassified? This is all just speculation that I wasn't going to post, but when I heard another analyst who took the video at face value evaluate the prop damage in a somewhat similar manner, I decided to post. The other analyst blamed the collision on inadequate training by the Russian pilot and did not question or doubt the video or its official US interpretation in any manner.

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語必忠信 行必正直

@soryang

whatever supports their half assed narrative
like the Nordstream explanation
it doesn't have to add up to reality
the clowns think they are in control

I thought it interesting Col. McGregor ventured
Biden will be out within 90 days ..

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snoopydawg's picture

@soryang

in tonight’s blues. Hope people will comment on it and maybe we can find some answers.

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

Janet P is running maybe 8 ads for every 1 Dan Kelly ad. Furor Uihlein is going to have to open his wallet wider. My understanding, and the ad ratio reflects this, is that national money is flowing buckets for Janet P. It might even be 10:1 or 12:1 ad ratio.

In the last days there's been a series of devastating ads against Kelly. 20 [edit:not sure where I got 20, ad says] 6 some odd instances where he ruled in cases in which he had a financial interest and at least one where he recused, received campaign contributions then un-recused himself and ruled in the contributor's favor. The ads just plain call him corrupt - no euphemisms, just "corrupt."

We got our ballots in the mail this AM.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

joe shikspack's picture

@GreatLakeSailor

thanks for posting that, i haven't been seeing a lot about the race in the media here despite its importance.

have a good one!

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