The Evening Blues - 1-26-23



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Bobby Byrd

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features soul and r&b singer, songwriter and associate of James Brown Bobby Byrd. Enjoy!

Bobby Byrd - I Know You Got Soul

"What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles."

-- J. William Fulbright


News and Opinion

Zelensky: "Moar!"

Ukraine says US and German tank pledges ‘only the beginning’ and calls for fighter jets

Commitments from the United States and Germany to send advanced battle tanks to counter Russian aggression has been hailed as “only the beginning” by a senior official in Ukraine, who said hundreds of tanks were needed, as Kyiv renewed its calls for fighter jets.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, made the comments as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy praised the decision by western allies, urging them to provide large quantities of tanks quickly.

“The key now is speed and volumes. Speed in training our forces, speed in supplying tanks to Ukraine. The numbers in tank support,” he said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.

Joe Biden approved sending 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, after weeks of speculation. The reversal of the US’s position came after Germany confirmed it would make 14 of its Leopard 2A6 tanks available to Ukraine, and give partner countries its permission to re-export other tanks.

Berlin’s decision unlocks offers by Finland, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland and Norway to provide Ukraine with their own German-manufactured Leopards.

Russia Aims to Surround Vuhledar, Missile Strike; West Mulls Giving Kiev Fighter Jets, Missiles

NATO to send over 100 heavy tanks against Russia

In the most dangerous escalation of the war between NATO and Russia to date, the United States will provide 50 M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, as part of a deployment of NATO tanks that could number in the hundreds, according to reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Germany also plans to announce that it will send over a dozen Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, paving the way for multiple NATO countries, including Poland and the Baltic states, to send their own German-made main battle tanks into combat. Ukrainian officials have suggested that over 100 Leopard 2 tanks will be sent by the NATO countries.

These measures make it clear that the war is not merely a proxy war, but an open conflict between NATO and Russia, threatening incalculable consequences for humanity. The Abrams and Leopard 2, which are twice the weight of the Sherman and T34 battle tanks of World War II, are the successor to Nazi Germany’s Tiger heavy tanks that were thrown against the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. Altogether, the Telegraph estimated that the US and its allies are “poised to send nearly 200 battle tanks to Ukraine.”

These announcements follow the deployment, according to the Pentagon, of “about 900 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine,” including the Bradley, Stryker, and Marder infantry fighting vehicles. Poland formally announced that it intends to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Tuesday. Formal announcements by the United States and Germany that they will send their own tanks are expected Wednesday. ...

Amid the announcements, the actual goals of the US military are coming into clearer view. Washington Post reporter Max Boot, who accompanied Austin to Ramstein Air Base, reported that “Austin told me that a ‘realistic goal for this year’ would be for the Ukrainians to cut the ‘land bridge’ between Crimea and Russia that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces occupied last year.” The realization of this military aim would require a blitzkrieg combined-arms style offensive, in which Russian forces would be pulverized and a string of cities in Southern Ukraine captured, according to US war planners quoted by the New York Times.

Hardly Anyone Is Thinking Logically About The Risk Of Nuclear War

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock to ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been set since its founding after the second world war. Chief among their reasons for doing so is the increasingly dangerous war in Ukraine.

A statement authored by the Bulletin’s editor John Mecklin is as biased against Russia as any mainstream western punditry today and makes no mention of the US empire’s role in provoking, prolonging and benefiting from this conflict, yet it still provides a fairly reasonable appraisal of the magnitude of the threat we’re staring down the barrel of at this point in history:

This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.

The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake. Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks.

And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.

Mecklin encourages dialogue between Russia, Ukraine and NATO powers in order to de-escalate tensions in “this time of unprecedented global danger.” He quotes UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who warned last August that the world has entered “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”

We came a hair’s breadth from nuclear annihilation during the chaotic and unpredictable brinkmanship at the height of the last cold war, and in fact had numerous close calls that could have easily wound up going another way. As former Secretary of State Dean Acheson put it, humanity survived the Cuban Missile Crisis by “plain dumb luck”.

There’s no logical basis for the belief that we’ll get lucky again. Believing nuclear war won’t happen because it didn’t happen last time is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias; it’s as rational as believing Russian roulette is safe because the man handing you the pistol didn’t blow his head off when he pulled the trigger.

But that’s the kind of sloppy thinking you’ll run into when you try to discuss this subject in public; I’m always encountering arguments that there’s no risk of nuclear war because we’ve gone all this time without disaster. One of the reasons I engage so much on social media is that I find it’s a good way of keeping tabs on the dominant propaganda narratives in our civilization and understanding what people are thinking and believing about things, and nowhere have I been met with more fuzzbrained comments than the times I’ve written about the need to prevent an entirely preventable nuclear holocaust.

The most common response I get is something along the lines of “Well if there is a nuclear war it will be Putin’s fault,” as though whose “fault” it is will matter to us while we’re watching the world end, along with the related “Well Russia shouldn’t have invaded then” and “Well Russia should stop threatening to use nukes then.” People genuinely don’t seem to understand that in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, it will really be the end of everyone. They still kind of imagine everyone still being there and shaking their fists at Russia afterward, and themselves sitting there feeling self-righteous and vindicated for correctly saying what a bad, bad man Vladimir Putin is.

They don’t understand that there will be no pundits discussing the nuclear armageddon on Fox and MSNBC, arguing about whose fault it was and which political party is to blame. They don’t get that there won’t be any war crimes tribunals in the radioactive ashes as the biosphere starves to death in nuclear winter. They don’t understand that once the nukes start flying, nobody’s shoulds or shouldn’ts about it will matter at all, and neither will your political opinions about Putin. All that will matter is that it happened, and that it can’t be taken back.

Another common response when I talk about the looming threat of nuclear war is, “Oh so you just don’t care about Ukrainians and you want them all to die.” The other day some lady responded to a Twitter thread I made about the need to avoid nuclear armageddon by saying that I must love rape and war crimes. People sincerely believe that’s a valid response to a discussion about the need to prevent the single worst thing that could possibly happen from happening. It really doesn’t seem to occur to them that they’re not actually engaging the subject at hand in any real way.

Slightly more perceptive interlocutors will argue that if we back down to tyrants just because they have nuclear weapons then everyone will try to get nukes and those who have them will become more belligerent, which will end up making nuclear war more likely in the long run. This response is a straw man fallacy because it misrepresents the argument as “just back down” rather than a call to engage in diplomacy and dialogue to de-escalate and begin sincerely negotiating toward detente, none of which is happening to any meaningful extent in this conflict. More importantly, it pretends that Russia is just invading its neighbor out of the blue instead of the well-documented reality that it is in fact responding to provocations by the US empire. The US has a moral obligation to de-escalate a conflict it knowingly provoked to advance its own interests, especially when that conflict could kill everyone in the world.

The whole “We can’t just back down to bullies like Putin” line of argumentation is further invalidated by the fact that it’s one thing to draw a line in the sand that must never be crossed — even if in the face of armageddon — but it’s quite another to say that line should be over something as small as who governs Crimea. This planet is populated with eight billion humans and countless other sentient creatures, very few of whom care one way or another who governs Crimea and almost none of whom would be willing to watch their loved ones die over it. Wanting to draw the line there is obnoxious, arrogant, and absurd.

And that’s just the shoddy brainwork of the rank-and-file public; the thinking of those who actually got us into this situation is surely just as dogshit. From what I can tell standing on this side of the thick veils of government secrecy which separate us from the truth, it appears to arise predominantly from a combination of immense hubris and zealous groupthink; hubris to think they can control all possible outcomes in a game of brinkmanship with so many small, unpredictable moving parts, and zealous groupthink in mindlessly adhering to the imperial doctrine that US unipolar planetary hegemony must be secured at all cost. They’re playing games with the life of every creature on this planet, and anyone who thinks that’s smart or wise should be as far from such decisions as possible.

The logical faceplants I’m describing here seem to arise partly from the fact that our civilization is completely inundated with empire propaganda about this conflict, and partly from the fact that people just haven’t thought terribly hard about nuclear war and what it would mean. The latter is probably because the prospect of everyone dying horrifically is such a huge, heavy, uncomfortable subject to sit down and deeply grapple with to the extent that it demands. For most people it’s just this vague, blurry mass in the periphery of their awareness, because they’ve been doing all these weird mental gymnastics to squirm and compartmentalize away from this thing rather than facing it.

But if ever there was a time to start doing some rigorous independent thinking and stop trusting the authorities to sort things out, it would be now. They’re showing us every sign that they’re just going to keep ramping up these games of nuclear chicken until they either fill their bottomless need for more complete global control or get us all killed trying. People need to start waking up to what’s going on and start making things uncomfortable for the people who are driving our world toward total destruction.

It does not need to be this way. Peace talks are possible. Diplomacy, de-escalation and detente are possible. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. We need to start building some public pressure to end this madness, because if the mushroom clouds ever show up, there is not one person alive who in that moment will believe that it was worth it.

“Germany At War Against Russia!” – Says German Foreign Minister

The War Profiteers Overseeing US Pentagon Spending

Earlier this month, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees named eight commissioners who will review President Joe Biden’s National Defense Strategy and provide recommendations for its implementation.

But the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which is tasked with “examin[ing] the assumptions, objectives, defense investments, force posture and structure, operational concepts, and military risks of the NDS,” according to the Armed Services Committees, is largely comprised of individuals with financial ties to the weapons industry and U.S. government contractors, raising questions about whether the commission will take a critical eye to contractors who receive $400 billion of the $858 billion FY2023 defense budget.

The potential conflicts of interest start at the very top of the eight-person commission. The chair of the commission, former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), sits on the board of Iridium Communications, a satellite communications firm that was awarded a seven-year $738.5 million contract with the Department of Defense in 2019.

“Iridium and its Board members follow Iridium’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and all rules and regulations applicable to dealings with the U.S. government,” Iridium spokesman Jordan Hassin told Responsible Statecraft.

A January 11 press release announcing the commission’s roster cited Harman’s current board memberships at the Department of Homeland Security and NASA but made no mention of her Iridium board membership, which paid her $180,000 in total compensation in 2021. Harman held 50,352 shares in Iridium, now worth approximately $3 million, in March 2022, according to the company’s disclosures.

“The members of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy each hold long records of ethical public service and national security leadership,” a Senate Armed Services Committee spokesperson told Responsible Statecraft. “The commissioners have committed to adhering to all government ethics policies to prevent any potential conflicts of interest. Congress will provide responsible oversight throughout the Commission’s work.”

That oversight will be complicated, judging by the financial ties to government and defense contractors held by six of the eight commission members.

“Lets face it, the National Defense Strategy and the Commission on the National Defense Strategy are flipsides of the same coin,” Mark Thompson, national security analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told Responsible Statecraft. “Both are heavily infected by Pentagon spending and Pentagon contractors.”

“These folks have a vested interest in spending more,” said Thompson. “In Washington’s national security community, the way you get credibility is to work at think tanks funded by defense contractors or serving on boards of defense contractors.”

Indeed, Thompson’s characterization of who has “credibility” appears to be reflected in appointments to the Commission.

Commission member John “Jack” Keane serves on the board of IronNet, a firm that describes itself as providing “Collective Defense powered with network detection and response (NDR), we empower national security agencies to gain better visibility into the threat landscape across the private sector with anonymized data, while benefiting from the insight and vigilance of a private/public community of peers.” The firm’s 2022 second quarter report made clear that IronNet is dependent on government contracts.

“Our business depends, in part, on sales to government organizations, and significant changes in the contracting or fiscal policies of such government organizations could have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations,” the report said.

Keane received $210,751 in total compensation from IronNet in their fiscal year ending January 31, 2022.

Ties to contractors extend beyond the commission members who serve on corporate boards.

Another commission member, Thomas Mahnken, serves as president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a job that paid him $394,924 in 2019, the last year in which financial disclosures are available. Major weapons firms, and some of the government’s biggest contractors, are listed as funders of the Center, including Aerojet Rocketdyne, BAE Systems, General Atomics, General Dynamics, L3 Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing.

Similarly, commission member Roger Zakheim serves as Washington Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, a job that earned him $495,500 in 2020, the last year for which financial disclosures are available. Major defense contractors play an outsized role in funding the Foundation, including: Boeing, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Anduril, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Raytheon, Leonardo DRS, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Thales.

Finally, employees of two major tech companies with government contracts were appointed to the commission: Alissa Starzak, Vice President and Global Head of Policy at Cloudflare and Mariah Sixkiller, General Manager of Strategic Defense at Microsoft.

Last year, Cloudflare told investors, “Our business depends, in part, on sales to the United States and foreign government organizations which are subject to a number of challenges and risks.”

When reached for comment, a Cloudflare spokesperson told Responsible Statecraft, “Alissa Starzak is one of the country’s leading experts at the intersection of national security and cyber security.”

“Cloudflare is proud of the contributions that she is making to the Commission. All Cloudflare internal policies and all government ethics policies have been satisfied to prevent any potential conflict of interest,” said the spokesperson.

Microsoft, for its part, is the recipient of billions of dollars in cloud computing contracts from the Department of Defense. The company declined to comment on Sixkiller’s appointment.

The appointment to the commission of individuals with deep ties to the contracting and weapons sectors is also consistent with campaign contributions to the chairs of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

SASC chairman Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.H.) counts General Dynamics employees as the top source of campaign contributions over his entire political career, and HASC chairman Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.) saw Lockeed Martin employees as his top source of campaign funds in the past election cycle.

As the defense budget creeps toward $1 trillion, voices who will bring a critical eye to the NDS, and the enormous costs associated with the strategy, are unlikely to be found within the newly appointed commission.

“The nation’s security is an important responsibility, but the subordinate question is whether we’re doing it in the best way possible,” said Thompson. “It seems that the NDS commission is going to give us more of the same.”

The Great Reset: TERRIFYING Future Of Social Control!

Greek government faces confidence vote over spying row

The leader of Greece’s main opposition party has tabled a motion of no confidence against the government, accusing the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, of orchestrating mass wiretaps of political friends and foes.

“For the past six months, Greek society has been witness to disclosures of an inconceivable number of phone taps, the deepest deviation from rule of law that the country has seen in its modern history,” said Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the leftist Syriza party, as he submitted the motion. “We have a historic duty to act.”

Accusing Mitsotakis of replicating an “Orwellian dystopia”, Tsipras said the prime minister had not only orchestrated the mass wiretapping of public figures across the board but had sought to hide his “moral bankruptcy” by obstructing a judicial inquiry.

“[He] will be forced to come to parliament – even if he constantly wants to run away – to give explanations, to be accountable, to answer,” said Tsipras, who was prime minister between 2015 and 2019.

The motion, which immediately triggered a three-day parliamentary debate, was a first step, he told MPs, “for the defence of democracy, transparency and justice”. A vote is expected to take place Friday. Although the ruling New Democracy party’s 156 majority in the 300-seat chamber of deputies means the motion is unlikely to pass, the overwhelming support it has received from the opposition is expected to cause maximum unease for the government.

Biden Proposes Renters Bill of Rights as Landlords Make Record Profits; Housing Advocates Want More

Top Russiagate-Pushing Dems Kicked Off Intelligence Committee!

McCarthy vows to block Schiff and Swalwell from House intel panel

Speaker Kevin McCarthy reiterated Tuesday that he will block Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California from serving on the House committee that oversees national intelligence, saying the decision was not based on political payback but because “integrity matters, and they have failed in that place”. ...

The minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, in a letter sent to McCarthy over the weekend, asked that Schiff and Swalwell be reappointed to the House permanent select committee on intelligence, a prestigious panel with access to sensitive, classified information. There is no “precedent or justification” for rejecting them, Jeffries said.

Unlike most committees, appointments to the intelligence panel are the prerogative of the speaker, with input from the minority leader. ...

McCarthy was critical of Schiff’s actions as chairman of the panel during the first impeachment investigation of Donald Trump, asserting he used his position to “lie to the American public again and again”. He also asserted Swalwell couldn’t get a security clearance in the private sector, so “we’re not going to provide him with the secrets to America”.

McCarthy tried to have Swalwell removed from the intelligence panel in March 2021 based on his contact with a suspected Chinese spy. His resolution against Swalwell, which was voted down in the Democratic-led House, cited information that the suspected spy, Christine Fang, came into contact with Swalwell’s campaign as he was first running for Congress in 2012 and participated in fundraising for his 2014 campaign. Federal investigators alerted Swalwell to their concerns and briefed Congress about Fang in 2015, at which point Swalwell says he cut off contact with her.

Heh, it's Ukraine on the Potomac time again ...

Pelosi Sells MILLIONS In Google Stock Before Gov Lawsuit



the horse race



Biden LOSING Dem Primary in New Hampshire

Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban to be lifted, Meta announces

In a highly anticipated decision, Meta has said it will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram following a two-year ban from the platforms over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection.

Meta will allow Trump to return “in coming weeks” but “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses”, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blogpost explaining the decision. ...

“In the event that Mr Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation.”

Briahna Joy Gray: Candace Owens & Sean Hannity Said WHAT About The Rich?!



the evening greens


Biden Restores Vital Protections for Alaska's Tongass National Forest Gutted by Trump

Indigenous and green groups on Wednesday applauded the Biden administration for reinstating protections for millions of acres of wilderness in Alaska's Tongass National Forest that were lifted during a Trump-era regulatory rollback spree.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Wednesday that it has finalized protections for the Tongass National Forest by restoring "longstanding roadless protections to 9.37 million acres of roadless areas that support the ecological, economic, and cultural values of Southeastern Alaska."

The Roadless Rule was established in 2001 to protect wilderness areas in U.S. national forests from roads and logging. The administration of former President Donald Trump rescinded the rule in 2020 amid a flurry of regulatory rollbacks, prompting a lawsuit from a coalition of Indigenous, conservation, and business organizations. The Biden administration subsequently committed to reviving the Roadless Rule in 2021.

"As our nation's largest national forest and the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, the Tongass National Forest is key to conserving biodiversity and addressing the climate crisis," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement Wednesday. "Restoring roadless protections listens to the voices of tribal nations and the people of Southeast Alaska while recognizing the importance of fishing and tourism to the region's economy."

According to the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife:

The Tongass contains rare expanses of pristine old-growth forest and as many as 17,000 miles of creeks, rivers, and lakes. These waters abound with all five species of Pacific salmon, which anchor the economy of Southeast Alaska. Approximately 1 million visitors come from all over the U.S. and internationally each year to see its glaciers, old-growth forests, and abundant wildlife.

The Tongass supports an incredible array of biodiversity and is home to the Alexander Archipelago wolf, brown bears, bald eagles, northern goshawks, and Pacific marten, among others. The Tongass is also one of the world's largest carbon reservoirs, storing the equivalent of about 8% of the carbon stored in all the U.S. forests combined. In addition, a broad coalition of tribal leaders, outdoor recreation businesses, and conservationists in Southeast Alaska have fought to preserve the region's remaining cedar, hemlock, and Sitka spruce trees.

"The restoration of National Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass National Forest is a great first step in honoring the voices of the many tribal governments and tribal citizens who spoke out in favor of Roadless Rule protections for the Tongass," said Naawéiyaa Tagaban, the environmental justice strategy lead at Native Movement. "We are grateful to the Biden administration for taking this first step toward long-term protections for the Tongass. We hope that going forward true long-term protections will be established that do not rely on a rule which can be changed at the whim of a presidential administration."

'Spectacular Failure of Climate Leadership': Biden Outpaces Trump on Oil and Gas Permits

Although President Joe Biden vowed on the campaign trail to phase out federal leasing for fossil fuel extraction, his administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity's analysis of federal data released Wednesday, the Biden White House greenlit 6,430 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in 2021 and 2022—a 4.2% increase over former President Donald Trump's administration, which rubber-stamped 6,172 drilling permits in its first two years.

“Two years of runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership by President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland," said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires phasing out fossil fuel extraction, but instead we're still racing in the opposite direction."

Of the drilling authorized so far by the Biden administration, nearly 4,000 permits have been approved for public lands in New Mexico, followed by 1,223 in Wyoming and several hundred each in Utah, Colorado, California, Montana, and North Dakota.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, these "Biden-approved drilling permits will result in more than 800 million tons of estimated equivalent greenhouse gas pollution, or the annual climate pollution from about 217 coal-fired power plants." ...

As a presidential candidate, Biden pledged to ban new oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters and to require federal permitting decisions to weigh the social costs of additional planet-heating pollution. Although Biden issued an executive order suspending new fossil fuel leasing during his first week in office, his administration's actions since then have run roughshod over earlier promises, worsening the deadly climate crisis that the White House claims to be serious about mitigating.

Inuit warn of ‘rock concert-like’ noise from ships affecting Arctic wildlife

For centuries, narwhals and ringed seals have provided food for Inuit communities on the ice floes of Mittimatalik, or Pond Inlet, on northern Canada’s Baffin Island. But now, the Inuit – who have hunted, trapped and fished in the region since long before the Hudson Bay Company opened its first Arctic trading camp here in 1921 – say they no longer find the narwhals where they should be. They say shipping noise is to blame.

Researchers have likened the passing of a single ice-breaker, increasingly present in the Arctic, to an underwater rock concert. Ship noise can be caused by everything from propellers to hull form to onboard machinery. It can disrupt activities that marine mammals need to survive, by shrinking their communication space, causing stress and displacing them from important habitats.

Underwater noise from increasing ship traffic has doubled in intensity in the Arctic over the past six years, and is expected to at least double again over the next decade, as the ice melts and new shipping routes open due to the climate crisis.

“The Inuit community on Mittimatalik has observed an increase in shipping and shipping noise, and harvesters are not seeing narwhals in their usual spots,” said Lisa Koperqualuk, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC). “They have to go further away to hunt them, which carries risks, costs more in fuel and affects the transfer of cultural knowledge.”

This week, the ICC, a body representing 180,000 Inuit in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Chukotka in Russia, has urged the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) to adopt mandatory measures to reduce underwater shipping noise, which they fear is affecting marine mammals.


Also of Interest

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

Ukraine Claims Orderly Retreat From City It Lost Days Ago

Australia Has Not Written to US on Assange For 6 Months

US Funds ‘Independent Journalism’ in Cuba to Spread Propaganda, Ex-Spy Admits

If You Won’t Sacrifice Workers to Fight Inflation, You’re Off the Op-Ed Page

A Story About How Health Care Privatization Happens

Pepper spray for the school run? The weaponised SUV set to terrify America’s streets

Bolivia’s dream of a lithium future plays out on high-altitude salt flats

Mass Protests Against Coup In Peru!

Why U.S. Sending Tanks To Ukraine Is A Joke


A Little Night Music

James Brown & Bobby Byrd - You've Got to Change Your Mind

Bobby Byrd - I Need Help (I Can't Do It Alone)

Bobby Byrd - If You Don't Work You Can't Eat

Bobby Byrd - Never get enough

James Brown & Bobby Byrd - Soul Power & Get Involved

Bobby Byrd - Try It Again

Bobby Byrd - I'm Coming I'm Coming

Bobby Byrd - If You Got A Love You Better (Hold On To It)

Bobby Byrd & The JB All Stars - I Need Help


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15 users have voted.

Comments

All that hardware won't be there tomorrow. It will trickle in. Best thing would probably be for Putin to pull back to Russia. War would end immediately. F16s make sense, better tank killers than anything else.

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0 users have voted.

@ban nock Might be cheaper for various governments to buy black market parts.

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8 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@ban nock

Russia by NATO and the US, as well as allow the Ukies to finish the genocide of all the the ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and Crimea that they started in 2014

be well and have a good one.

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11 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@ban nock

why not just give the ukro-nazis nukes and get it over with?

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10 users have voted.

Now she is duping the supposed NATO allies into sending their tanks.

Meanwhile the US (MIC) will gladly sell tank replacements.

Edited as a side note:

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11 users have voted.

@humphrey

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8 users have voted.

@humphrey She must be running the entire State/Pentagon war desk.

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12 users have voted.

State Department is running the show led by Blinken.

@MrWebster

Biden just keeps reading the teleprompter like a good little robot.

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10 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@humphrey

tanks are a smoking pile of metal. It’s already happened in Iraq and Syria. Or when they are showcased in Russia.

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

By the time that the Abrams enter the conflict gigantic profits will have been made by the MIC.

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11 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

who knew that all of the abrams tanks the u.s. currently has on hand are showroom models that can't be wrapped up to go?

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8 users have voted.

unbelievable statements are repeated without fact checking.

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10 users have voted.

@humphrey Russia stopped the German Army in 1945. Not the USA.

In case anybody has forgotten, President Putin was not allowed to join the D Day Celebration in Normandy in 2020 or 2021, I am uncertain about exactly when that was. Now excluded from Auchwitz.

The West is trying to erase Russia from any international recognition. This dopey effort will fail completely as the Global South Rises and Europe melts down. German industry, Dutch Agriculture, UK's everything and France's unrest fill the world's newspapers. So much has been destroyed by the War in Ukraine which needs to be re-named as the War Against Western Europe.

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12 users have voted.

NYCVG

snoopydawg's picture

@NYCVG

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

now where is russia going to find a civilized world to join? certainly not in the west.

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9 users have voted.

I remember today this posting I made four months before the 2020 election.

I'm telling ya, Biden will start a major war
Given the article on Biden's so-called national security team, I think it is a certainty that Biden will start a major war somewhere. There is of course the profits and blind neocon ideologies, but there is also that Biden will have inherited a country crumbling with massive homelessness, daily riots, massive hunger, and a collapsed economy. War will be a great diversion.

The only question for me is with whom and where will he start the war. I figure by the 2022 it will happen. It will take time to amass troops for any invasion or to bring forward aerial naval power into one area. If the choice is direct conflict with Russia, well then sell the house and move like down to the tip of South America.

What is interesting is that many posters here on C99 had the same intuitions and forward vision on where things may go back in 2020.

Another prediction I made was that Western countries may experience major health problems due to the vaccines having nothing to do with the virus. And now we are seeing this happen. It was just based on my experience of people around me getting the mRNA vaccine and getting various levels of sickness. I mentioned that a lot of people I know got sick from the mRNA vaccines in another forum. Man, was I attacked what I now realize where industry trolls.

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joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

good call!

i don't think that anybody here at c99 has been surprised by what's happened since dementia joe took office. as you noted, his appointment choices telegraphed his intentions.

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8 users have voted.
dystopian's picture

Hey all, Hi Joe, Hope it's all good out there!

If they have been watching the U.S. from another galaxy for a couple hundred years, they would think we hate forests. Especially extensive pristine ones. OK, lots of the world has been denuded, its not just us, but it is as if we hate that shit. They can't stand an thought of an untamed wilderness area. For some reason they don't put together the removing of the planets lungs, with adding all the gas. Amazing.

At least Biden is being a real green eco-warrior of the President. Wink

gotta get back to work... thanks for the soundscapes Joe!

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8 users have voted.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

if they have been watching this planet from space, they must think something like "flies in a jar" and view with horror our attempts to escape the planet and potentially spread human parasites elsewhere.

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6 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

It’s not like we haven’t done that before. And Russia has said that every action possible has already been gamed out and that’s the only warning you are going to get. And yet Biden keeps crossing the red lines that he set for what he will do for Ukraine. How much longer until he decides to send in US troops? That’s WWW3 according to him.

Russia Warns Ukraine Against Using Depleted Uranium Shells

Speaking at a plenary meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Cooperation, Gavrilov cautioned “western sponsors of Kiev’s war machine” against encouraging “nuclear provocations and blackmail.”

“We know that Leopard 2 tanks, as well as Bradley and Marder armored fighting vehicles, can use depleted uranium shells, which can contaminate terrain, just like it happened in Yugoslavia and Iraq,” he said. “If Kiev were to be supplied with such munitions for the use in western heavy military hardware, we would regard it as the use of ‘dirty nuclear bombs’ against Russia, with all the consequences that entails.”

Gavrilov also warned that Moscow will retaliate if the West were to supply Kiev with long-range weaponry to carry out strikes against Russian cities.

“If Washington and NATO countries provide Kiev with weapons for striking against the cities deep inside the Russian territory and for attempting to seize our constitutionally affirmed territories, it would force Moscow to undertake harsh retaliatory actions. Do not say that we did not warn you,” he remarked.

TNT showed On the Beach the other day. Hopefully people in Biden’s administration watched it and are now thinking about what they have been doing. It’s said that Reagan watched this video and it upset him so much that he started working with Russia on nuclear weapons control. I’ll see if I can find it.

Yeah I don’t think Schiff is gonna get his job back. Remember he kept telling us that he had proof that Trump colluded with Russia and other lies. McCarthy hits most of them here.

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10 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

it's going to be ugly when russia decides to retaliate against the west, but you can't say that we weren't warned. i wonder if antarctica needs a deejay. Smile

mccarthy has shifty and swallwell dead to rights. shifty ought to shut up while he's still eligible to serve on a committee. frankly, an ethics investigation of shifty is in order.

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9 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

I think this is the right one.

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5 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg announced his run for the US Senate. I guess DiFi is retiring. or being primaried. IDK.

I got a fund raising email from Shiff and I promptly unsubscribed. Somebody must be selling long dead Democratic lists again.

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6 users have voted.

NYCVG

snoopydawg's picture

@NYCVG

She has every intention of running again even though she is 89 and senile. Her staff goes between covering it up and spilling the beans. Most people know that she isn’t all there and they knew it before they let her run the hearing on Barrett's confirmation. She was cover for democrats not trying to keep Barrett off the court and many of them told the media how much trouble she was having before it started.

I agree with Joe that Schiff should be investigated and for at least lying under oath and to congress. What a rotten little weasel he is!

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snoopydawg's picture

Here’s a taste to get your started.

The Worst Article You’ll Ever Read

The following are quotes from the 4000-word New York Times opinion piece titled Nancy Pelosi, Liberated and Loving It by Maureen Dowd. I’ll include the introduction because it really sets the tone. Prepare yourself…

went to lunch with Nancy Pelosi at the Four Seasons to find out how she was faring, now that she has gone from being one of the most powerful women in the world — second in line to the presidency — and one of the most formidable speakers in American history to a mere House backbencher.

I was expecting King Lear, howling at the storm, but I found Gene Kelly, singing in the rain. Pelosi was not crying in her soup. She was basking as she scarfed down French fries, a truffle-butter roll and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts — all before the main course. She was literally in the pink, ablaze in a hot-pink pantsuit and matching Jimmy Choo stilettos, shooting the breeze about Broadway, music and sports. Showing off her four-inch heels, the 82-year-old said, “I highly recommend suede because it’s like a bedroom slipper.”

Fans dropped by our booth to thank Pelosi, and women in the restaurant gave me thumbs-ups, simply because I was sitting with her.

“I wonder, Maureen, girl to girl, I keep thinking I should feel a little more, I don’t know,” she hesitated, looking for the right word. Over the course of our conversation, she said the word was “regretful,” and she thought about it in church, and during morning and night prayers, but she just wasn’t feeling it. “It’s just the time, and that’s it. Upward and onward. I’m thrilled with the transition. I think it was beautiful.”

I think her Iraq has WMDs was more truthful. Bad

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8 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

oh, i dunno, i bet that she is happy. she doesn't have to hide her decline and hold it together anymore and she still gets to grift off of insider information. what's not to like for her?

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6 users have voted.

doing a bit better.

Western SAM systems are, for the most part DIRECTIONAL, i.e., unlike the Russian S300 and later, they have a limited angle on which to act. The Russian systems go out vertically and then in flight, they take direction (360 degrees coverage).
This means that a Patriot battery, in a location like Dnipro, will have to have launchers pointing south, others west, others even east. Coverage is therefore less dense, and even easier to saturate.
In this way the Yemenis, choosing poorly covered routes, attack Saudi Arabia, which uses Patriot systems (and that is why they want to buy S400s).
In the same way, the loss of a launcher system in the battery is a major damage, as there will be gaps in coverage.

Whereas the other side came up with this.

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5 users have voted.
Pricknick's picture

Blessed are the scrappers.
M1 at 55 tons scrap metal current prices: Roughly 2.2 million.
Cost to produce M1: 9 million.
Somebody is on the losing end.
Us.

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8 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

joe shikspack's picture

@Pricknick

i wonder how much the scrap value of an f-16 is?

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4 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

I'm figuring at least 20 hours by road from Poland to east Ukraine. I figure road since the rail system is just about dead. So they're going to roll a huge convoy over their road system for 20 hours without any meaningful air cover. OK, fine, sure they will. Now, question of the week, do they send the fuel on ahead, or after? Maybe they send it with, for a bigger conflagration when the strikes come?

This is all some sort of "well, we do this, then we do than and then poof, a miracle happens" type of thought process.

The Congressional committee craziness is because it is a spoils system, like the bureaucracy was before they invented civil service to fix it, except that the top is still political appointees. Committee folk don't even have to take a basic competency exam of any kind to get their jobs. Why are people always surprised at the results?

be well and have a good one

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9 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

heh, maybe the ukro-nazis will send one of their steam trains to pick up the leopards at the polish border.

i wonder how far over the border the tanks will get before the russians destroy them.

heh, the way that they're fighting over the committee appointments, there must be extra good money in being on the intel committee.

have a great evening!

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6 users have voted.

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snoopydawg's picture

I doubt Russia thought that they would ever have to fight Nazis again and yet here they are watching history repeat itself. The world should be outraged that German tanks are once again rolling into Ukraine to support the same Nazi band it put down decades ago. Instead it’s staying silent and ignoring what is happening and lots of people in America are okay with it. They should be hanging their heads in shame.

Meant to reply to Humphrey.

By Karlof from MoA

Vladimir Putin: Dear friends, good afternoon!

We are meeting on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Heroes of the Resistance, and our country's position is well known. Of all the Jews destroyed by the Nazis, most were citizens of the Soviet Union, and this is our common pain.

You know our position today. It lies in the fact that we are categorically opposed to consigning to oblivion crimes of this kind, which do not have a statute of limitations. And we are doing this, implementing such a policy so that nothing like this will ever happen again in the history of mankind.

I know the position of the Jewish community of Russia, I know the position of the State of Israel on the role and significance of the Red Army in the victory over Nazism, over fascism, and we highly appreciate it, but I want to repeat once again that this is of particular importance for our people.

You also know that the investigative authorities of the Russian Federation and the Prosecutor's Office are still working hard to identify crimes of this kind, and against all citizens of the former Soviet Union, regardless of their nationality. Of course, this work will and is a significant contribution to solving the crimes of Nazism against the Jews themselves.

It is also known that Jewish organizations around the world support such work on our part. We are doing everything possible to ensure that this is supported at the international level. Unfortunately, under various pretexts, many countries avoid working in solidarity in this crucial area. But we will continue to do this regardless of the current political situation.

I know that you have an event tomorrow, a whole set of events related to this date, and, of course, I will ask you to convey my best wishes to everyone who will take part in the implementation of the program that you have planned for tomorrow.

The reply by Lazar was brief and cordial. However, I suggest looking at this photo to see that social distancing is still practiced which creates an odd atmosphere for such a meeting.

We'll see if Putin makes a public speech tomorrow that connects the Nazis in Ukraine and their masters with the Nazis of the Holocaust. IMO, one is needed, not for Russia but for the world.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jan 26 2023 16:45 utc | 71

I agree that one is needed. But will the world hear him?

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

if putin makes such a speech and makes plain the very real connections between the generations of nazis, the western spin machine will go into hyperdrive should his speech pierce the veil and start to influence western minds.

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8 users have voted.

https://www.rt.com/news/570537-croatia-ukraine-war-russia-president/

Nobody told me we’re at war – NATO state's president
The US and Germany might be at war with Russia, but that is news to Croatia, said Zoran Milanovic

Commenting on the German foreign minister’s declaration that Europe is “fighting a war against Russia,” Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Thursday that this was news to him, and wished Berlin better luck than in WWII.

Croatia “should in no way help” Ukraine militarily, Milanovic said while visiting the port city of Split. “Do you want us to enter the war?”

Framing the Ukraine conflict as one between Washington and Moscow, he reminded reporters that he was criticized for merely echoing the words of Kiev’s defense minister, about the current conflict being a “proxy war” between NATO and Russia.

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-vp-harris-plan-spree-fundraisers-...

President Biden and Vice President Harris will attend high-level fundraisers in New York City and Philadelphia next week, kicking off a spree of fundraising efforts ahead of their expected 2024 announcement.

Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) will host the NYC fundraiser, and Harris will join Biden for the Philadelphia event, a source familiar with the plans told Fox News Digital. The source says Biden and Harris will hold larger and more frequent fundraisers in March and April.

Biden has yet to formally announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race, but he and top White House officials have repeatedly stated he intends to run. He is unlikely to announce his campaign until after the State of the Union address on Feb. 7, according to sources familiar with his thinking.

White House staff have said the discovery of classified materials inside Biden's home has not and will not affect the president's timing on the announcement.

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