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"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 war–with–China 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.

In 2019 John Mearsheimer laid out an argument that perfectly explains why Australia is preparing to go to war with China, its primary trading partner, against its own security and economic interests: Australia is more afraid of the US than it is of China.pic.twitter.com/qPYbuS418Z

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 14, 2023

“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.

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.

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