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This evening's music features delta and Chicago blues musician Howlin' Wolf. Enjoy!

“Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.”

-- Terry Pratchett

News and Opinion

US Rejection Of Moscow’s Offer For Peace Talks Is Utterly Inexcusable

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was open to talks with the the US or with Turkey on ending the war in Ukraine, claiming that US officials are lying when they say Russia has been refusing peace talks.

Reuters reports:

Lavrov said officials, including White House national security spokesman John Kirby, had said the United States was open to talks but that Russia had refused.

“This is a lie,” Lavrov said. “We have not received any serious offers to make contact.”

Lavrov’s claim was given more weight when US State Department spokesman Ned Price dismissed the offer for peace talks shortly after it was extended, citing Russia’s recent missile strikes on Kyiv.

“We see this as posturing,” Price said at a Tuesday press briefing. “We do not see this as a constructive, legitimate offer to engage in the dialogue and diplomacy that is absolutely necessary to see an end to this brutal war of aggression against the people and the state, the Government of Ukraine.”

This is inexcusable. At a time when our world is at its most perilous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis according to many experts as well as the president of the United States, the US government has no business making the decision not to sit down with Russian officials and work toward de-escalation and peace. They have no business making that call on behalf of every terrestrial organism on this planet whose life is being risked in these games of nuclear brinkmanship. The fact that this war has escalated with missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital makes peace talks more necessary, not less.

This rejection is made all the more outrageous by new information from The Washington Post that the US government does not believe Ukraine can win this war and refuses to encourage it to negotiate with Moscow.

“Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table,” WaPo reports. “They say they do not know what the end of the war looks like, or how it might end or when, insisting that is up to Kyiv.”

These two points taken together lend even more credibility an argument I’ve been making from the very beginning of this war: that the US does not want peace in Ukraine, but rather seeks to create a costly military quagmire for Moscow just as US officials have confessed to trying to do in Afghanistan and in Syria. Which would explain why US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the US goal in Ukraine is actually to “weaken” Russia, and also why the empire appears to have actively torpedoed a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the conflict.

This proxy war has no exit strategy. And that is entirely by design.

Many have been calling for the US to abandon its policy of actively sustaining this war while avoiding peace talks.

“President Biden’s language, we’re about at the top of the language scale, if you will,” former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen told ABC’s This Week on Sunday regarding the president’s recent remark that this conflict could lead to “Armageddon”.

“I think we need to back off that a little bit and do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing,” Mullen said, adding, “As is typical in any war, it has got to end and usually there are negotiations associated with that. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

“One thing the United States can do is… drop the position, the official position, that the war must go on to weaken Russia severely, meaning no negotiations,” Noam Chomsky argued in a recent appearance on Democracy Now. “Would that open the way to negotiations, diplomacy? Can’t be sure. There’s only one way to find out. That’s to try. If you don’t try, of course it won’t happen.”

“It is time for the United States to supplement its military support for Ukraine with a diplomatic track to manage this crisis before it spirals out of control,” said the Quincy Institute’s George Beebe following the Monday missile strikes on Kyiv, calling it “a major escalation in the war” that was bound to “bring the world closer to a direct military collision between Russia and the United States.”

“The Americans have to come to an agreement with the Russians. And then the war will be over,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at an event on Tuesday, adding that “anyone who thinks that this war will be concluded through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations is not living in this world.”

It’s absolutely insane that the world’s two nuclear superpowers are accelerating toward direct military confrontation and they aren’t even talking to each other, and it’s even crazier that anyone who says they should be gets called a Kremlin agent and a Chamberlain-like appeaser. Responsible Statecraft’s Harry Kazianis discusses this freakish dynamic in a recent article titled “Talking is not appeasement — it’s avoiding a nuclear armageddon“:

I have fought more than thirty combat simulations in wargames under my own direction for a private defense contract over the last several months, looking at various aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and one thing is clear: the chances of a nuclear war increase significantly every day that passes.

In every scenario I tested, the Biden Administration slowly gives Ukraine ever more advanced weapons like ATACMS, F-16s, and other platforms that Russia has consistently warned pose a direct military threat. While each scenario has postulated a different point at which Moscow decides to use a tactical nuclear weapon in order to counter conventional platforms it can’t easily defeat, the chances that Russia uses nukes grow as new and more powerful military capabilities are introduced into the battlefield by the West.

In fact, in 28 of the thirty scenarios I have run since the war began, some sort of nuclear exchange occurs.

The good news is there is a way out of this crisis — however imperfect it may be. In the two scenarios where nuclear war was averted, direct negotiations led to a ceasefire.

I repeat again that it is absolutely pants-on-head gibbering insanity that these direct negotiations are not already presently underway. Let us petition any and all higher powers we have faith in that this changes very soon. Let us also petition the leaders of our individual nations around the world to exert whatever kind of pressure they can muster upon Washington for these talks to commence. This brinkmanship threatens us all, and the managers of the US empire have no business playing these games with our lives.

DC Elites CLAMOR For Nuclear War With Russia

Biden Says He Has ‘No Intention’ of Meeting With Putin About Ukraine

President Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Tuesday night that he has no “intention” of meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin or negotiating with Russia over Ukraine. ...

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that US officials have ruled out the idea of encouraging Ukraine to negotiate with Russia even though they don’t think either side could win the war “outright.” The US’s lack of interest in diplomacy comes after President Biden warned the world was closer to nuclear “armageddon” today than at any point since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

When discussing his armageddon comments with Tapper, Biden said he didn’t think Putin would use a nuclear weapon. “Well, I don’t think he will, but it is irresponsible of him to talk about it,” he said.

Obama Official Flip-Flops On Nuclear War w/ Russia

Oh dear, our strategerists are thinking and planning again:

US will soon need to deter two major nuclear powers for first time, White House says

Within a decade, the US will need to deter two major nuclear weapons powers for the first time, the Biden administration has warned, pointing to the Russian arsenal that is increasingly being brandished by Moscow and an expanding Chinese stockpile. The president’s new national security strategy (NSS) depicts China as the most capable long-term competitor, but Russia as the more immediate, disruptive threat, pointing to its nuclear posturing over Ukraine. It warns that threat could grow as Russian forces continue to suffer defeats on the battlefield.

“Russia’s conventional military will have been weakened, which will likely increase Moscow’s reliance on nuclear weapons in its military planning,” the strategy blueprint says. Its publication was scheduled in the spring but was postponed because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has threatened to use “all means” to defend Russian territory, in which he included Crimea, annexed in 2014, and four Ukrainian regions he now claims. The NSS pledges US support for Ukrainian resistance would not be affected by such threats.

“The United States will not allow Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons,” the document says.

In a foreword, Biden makes a distinction between the types of threats posed by Moscow and Beijing. “Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown,” the president writes. He describes China, on the other hand as “the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective”.

“The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit, even as the United States remains committed to managing the competition between our countries responsibly,” it says.

Russia to Take Bakhmut, Ukraine Energy Reeling After Missile Strikes, Putin Ridicules Oil Price Cap

NATO Has 10-Year Plan to Rebuild Ukraine’s Military

NATO is developing a 10-year plan to rebuild Ukraine’s military and arms industry with a focus on shifting the country from using Soviet equipment to primarily using NATO weapons, Politico reported on Wednesday.

“We will be looking at defense planning requirements to get Ukraine fully interoperable with NATO,” a senior NATO official told Politico on the condition of anonymity. “It’s about shifting away from Soviet equipment … to NATO-compatible Western equipment.” ...

“We’ll be looking at ways to try and rebuild Ukraine’s defense industry,” the NATO official said. The Politico report said that the effort could turn Ukraine into a NATO country “by default,” even if it isn’t technically a member of the military alliance.

Vladimir Putin blames the west for energy market disruptions

Vladimir Putin has blamed the west for disruptions to the energy market and spiralling heating costs, claiming that desperate Europeans had begun to stock up on firewood ahead of the cold winter months.

The Russian president has sought to deflect blame for the oil and gas crisis sparked by his invasion of Ukraine, and tried to pressure European governments to drop sanctions against Moscow.

“Ordinary Europeans are suffering,” the Russian president told an energy forum in Moscow on Wednesday, “the population, like in the middle ages, has begun to stock up on firewood for the winter”.

To Putin’s anger, major world economies are discussing a cap on Russian oil prices. “[With] their cavalier decisions,” he said, “some western politicians are destroying the global market economy and are in fact posing a threat to the wellbeing of billions of people”.

At the same conference, the head of the Russian state-owned gas monopoly supplier Gazprom warned that Europe could freeze this winter.

Democrats issue fresh ultimatum to Saudi Arabia over oil production

Democrats in the US Congress have issued a fresh ultimatum to Saudi Arabia, giving the kingdom weeks to reverse an Opec+ decision to roll back oil production or face a potential one-year freeze on all arms sales.

The threat came as Joe Biden reiterated his pledge to take action over Riyadh’s decision last week to cut oil output by 2m barrels a day, which Democrats have said would help “fuel Vladimir Putin’s war machine” and hurt American consumers at the petrol pump.

Janet Yellen: US Economy Is Doing ‘Very Well.’ Inflation Rises AGAIN In New CBI Report: NYT

DeJoy Faces Outrage Over New Postal Service Price Hikes

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is facing backlash over his newly announced plan to hike postcard and stamp prices as part of his proposed 10-year overhaul of mail operations, a strategy that critics warn will further damage the Postal Service.

Late last week, the USPS notified the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) of its planned price increases, which are set to take effect in January. Under the new pricing proposal, which must be approved by the PRC, the cost of a stamp would rise 4.2% to 63 cents while the cost of a postcard would jump 9% to 48 cents.

The Postal Service cited the need to "offset the rise in inflation" in justifying the price hikes, but Government Executive's Eric Katz pointed out Tuesday that "DeJoy has previously suggested the increases would continue to allow the Postal Service to reach a financial break-even point."

Why a federal agency would need to reach "break-even" is a question that observers have asked for months as DeJoy——a former logistics executive and Trump megadonor—has rushed ahead with pricing changes, job cuts, and postal facility closures in a purported attempt to make the public USPS "profitable."

DeJoy has told consumers and the mailing industry to expect USPS prices to continue rising "at an uncomfortable rate" for the foreseeable future as the postmaster general vows to remain in his position despite sustained calls for his removal. The Postal Service Board of Governors, which has the authority to oust DeJoy, approved the new price increase.

Kevin Yoder, a former GOP congressman and executive director of Keep US Posted—an alliance of consumer and business groups—warned in a statement Tuesday that "if DeJoy's frequent postage hikes are allowed to take place, Americans could soon be paying well over $1 to mail a single letter."

"The January 2023 rate increases will impact every American, as well as industries that depend on the mail to serve the public," said Yoder. "In fact, with July's increase this year, newspapers faced a 9% postage increase, and nonprofits' mail costs increased more than 6%. We can't let the Postal Service sabotage itself by driving industries out of business and driving consumers away from using the mail."

"It's a relief to see Congress step in with H.R. 8781 to ensure that mail service remains accessible to all," Yoder added.

H.R. 8781 is Rep. Gerry Connolly's (D-Va.) recently introduced Ensuring Accurate Postal Rates Act, a bill that would require a reassessment of the authority DeJoy has used to hike prices significantly during his scandal-plagued tenure as postmaster general.

"We must ensure that rate hikes do not return the Postal Service to a service of the privileged," Connolly said during a hearing last month.

DeJoy's latest pricing announcement came a day after a federal judge ruled that the postmaster general's cost-cutting measures—including limits to overtime pay and a ban on late delivery trips—were to blame for alarming mail slowdowns ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

"There were already enough reasons to fire Postmaster General DeJoy, but this court ruling that DeJoy's actions in 2020 affected mail service is yet another reason," Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in response to the decision.

"DeJoy's conflicts of interest and attacks on a basic government function mean he has to go," Bookbinder added.

New Data Tool Details Thousands of Corporations Profiting From US Prison Industry

An advocacy group "dedicated to dismantling the prison industry" on Wednesday unveiled an interactive database of over 4,000 corporations it says are profiting from the U.S. carceral system, the world's most populous.

The Prison Industry Corporate Database, published by New York-based Worth Rises, includes publicly traded and privately held corporations spanning 12 sectors: architecture and construction, operations and management, personnel, programs and labor, equipment, data and information systems, telecom, financial services, food and commissary, healthcare, transportation, and community corrections.

"Despite earning tens of billions of dollars each year, the public knows little about the prison industry and those that profit from it," Worth Rises executive director Bianca Tylek said in a statement. "This is not about any one corporation—and it's not about private prisons or prison labor—but the thousands of corporations that profit off the caging of millions of people in our prisons and jails across the U.S."

"We are releasing the Prison Industry Corporate Database to help people understand the vastness of the prison industry and the financial incentives it has to expand incarceration rather than protect public safety, so that together we can build the solutions needed to dismantle it," Tylek added.

Companies in the database are assigned a "harm score" based on their responsibility for and responsiveness to their human rights violations. Corporations with a harm score over 10 are recommended for immediate divestment

Twenty companies on the list have a harm score of 15, including Bushmaster Firearms, Cerberus, CoreCivic, GEO Group, Remington Outdoor, Sodexo, and Sturm, Ruger & Co.

Companies scoring a 13 or higher include 3M, Amazon, Aramark, Avis, General Dynamics, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, McDonald's, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Starbucks, Sysco, T-Mobile, Universal Health Services, Vanguard Group, and Wendy's.

Worth Rises says the financial technology company Envestnet has used the database "to create an investment screen that financial advisors can apply to client accounts to ensure they are not invested in the most harmful corporations in the prison industry."

Indiana supreme court blocks state from enforcing abortion ban

The Indiana supreme court issued an order Wednesday that prevents the state from enforcing a Republican-backed abortion ban while it considers whether it violates the state constitution.

The supreme court took over the case after a county judge blocked the ban last month, spurring the attorney general to appeal the decision. The court denied a request from the state attorney general’s office to set aside the preliminary injunction, setting a hearing on the lawsuit filed by abortion clinic operators for 12 January. ...

The five-member supreme court, all of whom were appointed by Republican governors, did not explain their decision.

Ron DeSantis investigated over migrant transfer from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard

The US treasury department is investigating whether the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, improperly used funds to transport migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on chartered flights.

The Treasury Office of Inspector General (TIG) is inquiring into whether DeSantis used the interest earned on funds from the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds (SLFRF) program that his state received as part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

The intended use of SLFRF was to support state and local response to and recovery from the Covid public health emergency.

DeSantis defended his decision, arguing that the migrants had intentions to come to Florida, despite having no evidence for such a claim. The Republican governor is facing legal challenges for his stunt, including a class-action lawsuit from the migrants he transported who believe they were purposefully misled into boarding the flights.

Briahna Joy Gray: Houston Police INTIMIDATE Budget Proceeding In MASSIVE Authoritarian Red Flag

Fired Texas police officer charged over shooting of teen in fast-food parking lot

A now-former San Antonio police officer was charged on Tuesday with two counts of aggravated assault by a peace officer for shooting and gravely wounding a teen eating a hamburger in his car in a McDonald’s parking lot. The teen had begun driving away when the officer opened fire.

James Brennand, 25, was charged in the 2 October shooting of Erik Cantu, 17, according to a police statement. He turned himself in to police on Tuesday night and remained in custody, said the police chief, William McManus.

Erik is still unconscious and on life support, his family said on Tuesday.

“There is no improvement in his condition,” the family said in a statement delivered by their lawyer, Brian Powers. “The last two days have been difficult, and we expect more difficulty ahead, but we remain hopeful.”

Brennand, a rookie officer, reported the vehicle Erik was sitting in had evaded him the night before during an attempted traffic stop. Brennand said he suspected the vehicle was stolen. ... A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether the vehicle was actually stolen.

Biden Lies About Roe v Wade For Midterm Votes

Losing Ground, Cortez Masto Defeat in Nevada Could Cost Democrats Senate Majority

With less than a month before the midterm elections, recent polling and reporting have heightened fears about the GOP seizing control of the evenly split U.S. Senate—and particularly, whether Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada can hold on to her seat.

Cortez Masto's is one of few key Senate races—along with those in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that election watchers largely consider a toss-up. In Nevada, the first-term incumbent senator faces Republican Adam Laxalt, who succeeded her as state attorney general.

Some polls have suggested that Laxalt could be Republicans' "golden ticket" to reclaim the Senate, showing him with slim leads over the chamber's "most vulnerable" Democrat. While the results of a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll out Wednesday showed Cortez Masto with a 46%-44% lead, that's within the margin of error for the survey, which was conducted last week.

Global wildlife report: Animal populations have sunk 69% since 1970

Almost 70% of animal populations wiped out since 1970, report reveals

Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale.

From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, declining on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial Living Planet Report. Two years ago, the figure stood at 68%, four years ago, it was at 60%.

Many scientists believe we are living through the sixth mass extinction – the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs – and that it is being driven by humans. The report’s 89 authors are urging world leaders to reach an ambitious agreement at the Cop15 biodiversity summit in Canada this December and to slash carbon emissions to limit global heating to below 1.5C this decade to halt the rampant destruction of nature. ...

Latin America and the Caribbean region – including the Amazon – has seen the steepest decline in average wildlife population size, with a 94% drop in 48 years. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF-UK, said: “This report tells us that the worst declines are in the Latin America region, home to the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon. Deforestation rates there are accelerating, stripping this unique ecosystem not just of trees but of the wildlife that depends on them and of the Amazon’s ability to act as one of our greatest allies in the fight against climate change.”

Africa had the second largest fall at 66%, followed by Asia and the Pacific with 55% and North America at 20%. Europe and Central Asia experienced an 18% fall. The total loss is akin to the human population of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania and China disappearing, according to the report. “Despite the science, the catastrophic projections, the impassioned speeches and promises, the burning forests, submerged countries, record temperatures and displaced millions, world leaders continue to sit back and watch our world burn in front of our eyes,” said Steele.

US law protecting endangered species hampered by poor resources, study says

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has long been hampered by inadequate resources, leaving the US’s foremost law for protecting plants and animals filled with delays and failures in species recovery, researchers said on Wednesday. The findings, published in the scientific journal Plos One on the eve of the law’s 50th anniversary, helped shed light on why, despite hundreds of species listed, only 54 in the country have fully recovered.

“It’s unfortunate that while we have this very noble law, we haven’t really given it the resources it needs to succeed,” said Erich K Eberhard, an author on the study.

The new report, which examined data from the Federal Register, found that since 1985, one of the main sources of funding for ESA has decreased by almost 50% when measured on a per species basis. Although the law has been shown to be effective when it comes to keeping species from going extinct (it has saved over 99% of listed species from extinction, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service), it has not been as successful when it comes to species recovery.

The authors explained that typically by the time a species has received protection, it has already reached “dangerously low population sizes”, which makes recovery extremely difficult.

Also of Interest

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

Pipelines v. USA

Misguided Foreign Policies Against Russia And Others Damage The U.S. And Its 'Allies'

US Supreme Court May Legalize Election Theft

US voters struggle with hunger ahead of midterms

‘We have no dry land left’: impact of Pakistan floods to be felt for years

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022 – the winning images

Russia IDENTIFIES Ukrainians Connected TO Bridge Bombing

AOC Confronted For Pro-War Votes, BETRAYAL Of Promises: ‘You Are The ESTABLISHMENT’

Regime change plot in UK. Dark times ahead

A Little Night Music

Howlin' Wolf - Dust My Broom

Howlin' Wolf - I Asked For Water

Howlin' Wolf - Killing Floor

Howlin' Wolf - Poor Boy

Howlin' Wolf - Don't Laugh At Me

Howlin Wolf - Spoonful

Howlin' Wolf - I Walked From Dallas

Howlin' Wolf - Down In The Bottom

Howlin' Wolf - Forty-Four

Howlin Wolf - Shake for Me, I'll Be Back Someday, Love Me Darlin