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"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

News and Opinion

The US Empire’s Ultimate Target Is Not Russia But China

The Pentagon has produced its latest National Defense Strategy (NDS), a report made every four years to provide the public and the government with a broad overview of the US war machine’s planning, posturing, developments and areas of focus.

You might assume with all the aggressive brinkmanship between Moscow and the US power alliance this year that Russia would feature as Enemy Number One in the 2022 NDS, but you would be assuming incorrectly. The US “Defense” Department reserves that slot for the same nation that’s occupied it for many years now: China.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

The full NDS is still classified, but the Pentagon released a fact sheet on the document that says it “will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department.”

The fact sheet outlines four priorities for the Pentagon:

Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC

Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, Allies, and partners

Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary, prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific, then the Russia challenge in Europe

Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem

“The Pentagon says that while China is the focus, Russia poses ‘acute threats’ because of its invasion of Ukraine,” DeCamp writes, showing the empire’s view of Moscow as a second-tier enemy.

Ahead of a meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made some comments which clearly illustrate the US-centralized empire’s actual problem with Moscow.

“We, together with you, and with our sympathisers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order,” Lavrov said to the Chinese government on Wednesday.

And that right there ladies and gentlemen is the real reason we’ve been hearing so much hysterical shrieking about Russia these last five or six years. It’s never been about Russian hackers. Nor about a Kremlin pee pee tape. Nor about Trump Tower. Nor about GRU bounties in Afghanistan. Nor about Manafort, Flynn, Bannon, Papadopoulos or any other Russiagate Surname of the Week. It’s not even actually about Ukraine. Those have all been narrative-shaping constructs manipulated by the US intelligence cartel to manufacture support for a final showdown against Russia and China to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world.

The US government has had a policy in place since the fall of the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of any powers which could challenge its imperial agendas for the world. During the (first) Cold War the strategy promoted by empire managers like Henry Kissinger was to court China out of necessity to pull it away from the USSR, which was when we saw business ties between China and the US lead to immense profits for certain individuals in both nations and the influx of wealth which now has China on track to surpass the US as an economic superpower.

Once the USSR ended, so too did the need to remain on friendly terms with China, and subsequent decades saw a sharp pivot into a much more adversarial relationship with Beijing.

In what history may one day view as the US empire’s greatest strategic blunder, empire managers forecasted the acquisition of post-soviet Russia as an imperial lackey state which could be weaponized against the new Enemy Number One in China. Instead, the exact opposite happened.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Bloomberg New Economy Forum last year that she’d “heard for years that Russia would become more willing to move toward the west, more willing to engage in a positive way with Europe, the UK, the US, because of problems on its border, because of the rise of China.” But that’s not what occurred.

“We haven’t seen that,” Clinton said. “Instead what we’ve seen is a concerted effort by Putin maybe to hug China more.”

The empire’s expectation that Moscow would come grovelling to the imperial throne on its own meant that no real effort was expended trying to establish goodwill and win over its friendship. NATO just kept on expanding and the empire got increasingly aggressive and belligerent in its games of global conquest. This error has led to the strategist’s ultimate nightmare of having to fight for global domination against two separate powers at once. Because empire architects incorrectly predicted that Moscow would end up fearing Beijing more than it fears Washington, the tandem between China’s economic power and Russia’s military power that experts have been pointing to for years has only gotten more and more intimate.

And now here we are with Russian and Chinese officials openly discussing their plans to create a multipolar world while Chinese pundits crack jokes about the US empire’s transparent ploys to turn Beijing against Moscow over the Ukraine invasion:

Can you help me fight your friend so that I can concentrate on fighting you later?

— CGTN LIU Xin 刘欣 (@LiuXininBeijing) March 19, 2022

On the empire’s grand chessboard, Russia is the queen piece, but China is the king. Just as with chess it helps to take out your opponent’s strongest piece to more easily pursue checkmate, the US empire would be well advised to try and topple China’s nuclear superpower friend and, as Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria recently put it, “ultimately restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow.”

Basically all we’re looking at in the major international news stories of our time is the rise of a multipolar world crashing headlong into an empire which has espoused the belief that unipolar domination must be retained at all cost, even if it means flirting with the possibility of a very fast and radioactive third world war.

This is the Hail Mary pass of the US hegemon. Its last-ditch effort to secure control before forever losing any chance at it. Many anti-imperialist pundits I read regularly seem quite confident that this effort will fail, while I personally think those forecasts may be a bit premature. The way the chess pieces are moving it definitely does look like there’s a plan in place, and I don’t think they’d be orchestrating that plan if they didn’t believe it had a chance to succeed.

One thing that does seem clear is that the only way the empire has any chance of stopping the rise of China is by maneuvers that will be both highly disruptive and existentially dangerous for the entire world. If you think things are crazy now, just you wait until the imperial crosshairs move to Beijing.

Antiwar NATO Soldier DESTROYS Justification For Ukraine War

Putin and Zelenskiy could meet soon, says Ukraine’s top negotiator

Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy could meet “soon”, a senior aide to Ukraine’s president has claimed, even as the Kremlin downplayed hopes of an early breakthrough in the peace talks. The head of Ukraine’s negotiating team, Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Zelenskiy, said on Wednesday that Moscow was scrutinising proposals submitted by Kyiv in Istanbul which he believed could lead to a presidential peace summit. “We can expect a presidential meeting to be held some time soon,” Podolyak said. “When is too early to tell, but it is a logistical issue.”

Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said it was “positive” that Ukraine had set out its position, but he talked down expectations of a summit. “We cannot state that there was anything too promising or any breakthroughs,” he said, adding that there was “a lot of work to be done”.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s delegation in the talks this week, once again raised hopes, however, by claiming that Zelenskiy’s proposals indicated a readiness by Ukraine to reach a deal “for the first time in years”, adding that “if it fulfils the obligations, the threat of creating a Nato bridgehead on the Ukrainian territory will be removed”.

But later on Wednesday Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader whose forces are fighting in Ukraine, said that Moscow would make no concessions. “Medinsky who made a mistake, made an incorrect wording... And if you think that he (Putin) will quit what he started just the way it is presented to us today, this is not true,” Kadyrov said.

The claims and counter-claims from the two capitals highlight the negotiating games being played by both sides as the war continues to rage in hotspots across Ukraine, with little sign of the bloodshed abating.

Israel says it dropped 5,500 bombs on Arab states in just five years

Israeli warplanes conducted hundreds of missions in the region, dropping thousands of munitions on Arab states over the past five years, new data shows. Israeli Air Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin has laid bare the brutal air campaign that has been waged by Israel, with almost complete impunity, via the data drop.

Since 2017, Israeli planes hit some 1,200 targets, dropping from the sky over 5,500 munitions, during 408 missions, including the brutal 2021 bombing of Gaza which left more than 250 Palestinians dead. It has also decimated civilian infrastructure in the besieged landstrip during the bombing putting Gaza at risk of starvation and disease.

The vast majority of the Israeli strikes have been in Syria, where Israel is trying to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold in the south. While Israel insists that it is targeting military features, and preventing smuggling, civilians a frequently caught up in the airstrikes.

Senators urge US to halt UN probe into alleged war crimes during Gaza bombing

A bipartisan group of 68 US senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling on the Biden administration to lead an effort to end a United Nations commission that is probing alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

The lawmakers, led by Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and Republican Rob Portman, said that the investigation, which was announced following Israel's bombing of Gaza last May, is a part of "continuing bias against Israel" and is taking up a "disproportionate use of resources in an ongoing campaign to disparage, discredit and denounce Israel". It follows a similar effort made by House lawmakers in January.

"An important step in this regard would be to redirect the wasteful use of funds and personnel on excessive devotion to disparaging Israel to allow the UN Human Rights Council to fairly promote human rights around the world," said the letter sent on Monday. ...

Last year, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) agreed to launch an investigation with a broad mandate to probe all alleged violations Israel had committed against Palestinians following its May offensive on Gaza, which killed 260 Palestinians, including 66 children, according to the UN. The investigators, who have been tasked with trying to identify those responsible for violations and ensure they are held accountable, are due to present their first report in June.

Kim Iversen: So-Called CONSPIRACY ‘New World Order’ Now Touted By China, Russia, Biden, Klaus Schwab

Critics Rebuke Biden for Nuclear Posture Review Update

Nonproliferation advocates on Wednesday expressed disappointment after the Biden administration released a summary of its latest Nuclear Posture Review, which fails to depart from decades of dangerous U.S. first use policy.

"This Nuclear Posture Review is a failure. It nudges the needle back to the Obama administration but does almost nothing to reduce the continuing risks of nuclear war," Stephen Young, the senior Washington representative for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a statement.

While President Joe Biden—a longtime advocate of adopting a no first use (NFU) policy—promised reform while on the 2020 campaign trail and in office, he has largely continued his predecessors' policies, including initial use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear foes.

"If media reports are true, President Biden has missed a historic opportunity to reduce the role of... nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement last week. "Retaining a warfighting role for U.S. nuclear weapons is a triumph for the trillion-dollar defense industry, but it is a tragedy for everyone counting on the president to keep his campaign promise to make deterrence the sole purpose of nuclear weapons."

Young of UCS asserted that "the U.S. faces two choices: spending $1 trillion rebuilding our entire nuclear arsenal and continuing Cold War-era policies that make nuclear war easier to start, or deciding it is time to change, and beginning to move posture and policy back from the brink."

"This NPR chooses the first path," he added. "If maintained, it will mean decades more of nuclear brinkmanship and clear nuclear risk. The chances of catastrophic failure are higher than ever."

Germany close to gas rationing as it activates emergency fuel plan

Germany and Austria moved a step closer to gas rationing on Wednesday, after activating an emergency plan designed to help it cope with any disruption in supplies from Russia.

Amid fears of a looming showdown with Vladimir Putin over gas flows, Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, convened a crisis team and warned consumers and businesses to reduce consumption, telling them “every kilowatt hour counts”. As Europe’s largest economy, Germany is one of the EU members most reliant on supplies from Kremlin-controlled reserves, making it particularly vulnerable if the taps are turned off. ...

Habeck said he had activated the “early warning phase” of an existing gas emergency plan, meaning that a crisis team from the economics ministry, regulatory officials and the private sector will monitor imports and storage. “We must increase precautionary measures to be prepared for an escalation on the part of Russia,” said Habeck. “With the declaration of the early warning level, a crisis team has convened.” ...

Austria, which is even more reliant on Russian gas than its larger neighbour, said it was implementing tighter monitoring of gas markets.

Left-Wing YouTubers Co-opted By Security State

California reparations decision sparks debate over who should qualify

California’s reparations taskforce has recommended compensating the descendants of enslaved and free Black people who were in the US in the 19th century, bringing the state one step closer to becoming the first in the US to pay African Americans for the harms of slavery.

The taskforce, established under state law to study reparations, voted on Tuesday in favor of a compensation and restitution plan that is based on lineage. The group for months has been tackling thorny questions about who should be eligible, and had considered recommending reparations based on race, which would mean a broader group of recipients.

Supporters of the narrower eligibility have said that reparations should be available to direct descendants of slaves along with descendants of Black residents who were free and migrated to the country in the 19th century, given the challenges in documenting genealogy and the risk at the time of becoming enslaved. They have argued that Black immigrants who migrated to the US in the 20th and 21st centuries did not experience the same harms as people who were kidnapped and enslaved; they also said that eligibility based on lineage would be more likely to survive a legal challenge.

The decision, which passed by a vote of 5-4 on Tuesday night, has sparked widespread debate about who should be compensated for the continuing impacts of slavery, and how the state should factor in systemic racism that remains pervasive in society. The taskforce, which has been collecting testimony about the many forms of discrimination tied to the legacy of slavery, is due to issue its first formal report on its findings by 1 June.

SHOCK Government Report Reveals Medicare RAPIDLY Being PRIVATIZED: Ryan Grim

Police killings are proceeding at almost exactly the same pace as previous years. No progress has been made in reducing deadly police violence nationwide. Another ~870 people will be killed by police by year’s end unless there are massive systemic changes. https://t.co/G3YiCYZoEi pic.twitter.com/bvhQvZJKWV

— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) March 26, 2022

‘No progress’ since George Floyd: US police killing three people a day

Police officers in America continue to kill people at an alarming rate, according to a data analysis that has raised concerns about the Biden administration’s push to expand police investments amid growing concerns about crime.

Law enforcement in the US have killed 249 people this year as of 24 March, averaging about three deaths a day and mirroring the deadly force trends of recent years, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. The data, experts say, suggests in the nearly two years since George Floyd’s murder, the US has made little progress in preventing deaths at the hands of law enforcement, and that the 2020 promises of systemic reforms have fallen short.

Police have killed roughly 1,100 people each year since 2013. In 2021, officers killed 1,136 people – one of the deadliest years on record, Mapping Police Violence reported. The organization tracks deaths recorded by police, governments and the media, including cases where people were fatally shot, beaten, restrained, and Tasered. The Washington Post has reported similar trends, and found that 2021 broke the record for fatal shootings by officers since the newspaper started its database tracking in 2015.

“The shocking regularity of killings suggests that nothing substantive has really changed to disrupt the nationwide dynamic of police violence,” said Samuel Sinyangwe, a data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence and Police Scorecard, which evaluates departments. “It demonstrates that we’re not doing enough, and if anything, it appears to be getting slightly worse year over year.”

Advocates argue that the persistent rate of killings was a critical reason the US should not be expanding its police forces.

Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official log

Donald Trump used an official White House phone to place at least one call during the Capitol attack on January 6 last year that should have been reflected in the internal presidential call log from that day but was not, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The former president called the phone of a Republican senator, Mike Lee, with a number recorded as 202-395-0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones, the sources said.

The number corresponds to an official White House phone and the call was placed by Donald Trump himself, which means the call should have been recorded in the internal presidential call log that was turned over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

Trump’s call to Lee was reported at the time, as well as its omission from the call log, by the Washington Post and CBS. But the origin of the call as coming from an official White House phone, which has not been previously reported, raises the prospect of tampering or deletion by Trump White House officials.

It also appears to mark perhaps the most serious violation of the Presidential Record Act – the statute that mandates preservation of White House records pertaining to a president’s official duties – by the Trump White House concerning January 6 records to date.

WAPO Finally ADMITS Hunter Biden Laptop REAL. CNN: The President’s Son Could Be INDICTED

Scientists to Biden: World Needs 'Rapid Transition From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy'

"In this moment of climate emergency," five scientists began a new open letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, "we write with utmost urgency to advise you and your administration to halt recent moves towards increasing fossil fuel production and instead take bold action to rapidly reduce fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure."

Biologist Sandra Steingraber—who is leading the effort with Peter Kalmus, Robert Howarth, Michael Mann, and Mark Jacobson in conjunction with Food & Water Watch—shared a link to the letter on Twitter Wednesday and urged fellow scientists to add their signatures.

"We say the White House call for more drilling and fracking is a climate calamity," Steingraber said. "Sign with us!"

The letter—which its initiators plan to present to the president next month after collecting "a critical mass" of signatures—follows a similar message from October and comes as Biden works to ramp up U.S. gas shipments to Europe in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.

Kalmus, who also shared the document Wednesday, tweeted that "the president's fossil fuel expansion takes us deeper into climate catastrophe."

The scientists' effort aligns with recent remarks from climate campaigners and other experts, who have argued since the war began last month that European nations' attempts to reduce their reliance on Russian fossil fuels—a key source of revenue for Putin's government—show the importance of a swift global shift to clean energy.

"Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said 'we are on war footing' in calling for increased oil and gas production," the scientists' letter states, referencing the U.S. official's speech at a Houston conference earlier this month. "This is backwards thinking. Instead of fossil fuels, we must apply that level of urgency to building a renewable energy economy."

"Rather than working to increase oil and gas production," the letter adds, "we urge you to use your executive authority to redirect these massive investments, mobilize the country, and rally the global community around a program of energy security through a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy."

Recalling that when Biden ran for president, he pledged to listen to science, the five experts wrote that "as scientists who look at data every day, we implore you to keep this promise and listen to what the scientific community is saying about fossil fuels and the climate crisis."

They specifically pointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last month, which features "a series of dire warnings about the unfolding climate catastrophe," including that "the scientific evidence is overwhelming that we must act now—we simply do not have time to waste."

"Already millions of Americans and even more across the world are being impacted by extreme weather, drought, flooding, sea level rise, and wildfires," the letter notes. "The IPCC report highlights millions being impacted by climate change-induced food insecurity and water scarcity."

The letter warns that "these problems will only accelerate as we continue our reliance on fossil fuels. And, this is on top of the significant health and environmental justice impacts that power plants, export facilities, and other fossil fuel infrastructure have on neighboring communities."

"The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world desperately need energy independence," the document declares, "but allowing more drilling and fracking, approving more pipelines, and expanding export facilities not only fail to address short-term energy needs, they lock us into decades of reliance on fossil fuels and ensure runaway climate chaos for the long run."

US transition to electric vehicles would save over 100,000 lives by 2050 – study

A speedy nationwide transition to electric vehicles powered by renewable energy would save more than 100,000 American lives and $1.2tn in public health costs over the next three decades, according to a new report. Analysis by the American Lung Association highlights the public health damage caused by the world’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels, and provides a glimpse into a greener, healthier future – should political leaders decide to act.

According to the report, swapping gas vehicles for zero-emission new cars and trucks in the US would lead to 110,000 fewer deaths, 2.8m fewer asthma attacks and avoid 13.4m sick days by 2050.

The shift would lead to a 92% fall in greenhouse gases by 2050, generating $1.7tn in climate benefits by protecting ecosystems, agriculture, infrastructure from rising sea levels and catastrophic weather events including drought and floods.

Overall, communities of color and low-income neighborhoods would reap the biggest benefits from zero-emission technologies as they currently suffer disproportionately from air pollution and climate disasters, the study says.

The calculations are based on transitioning to 100% electric cars sales by 2035 and 100% electric trucks by 2040, as well as ditching dirty fossil fuels for 100% renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear by 2035.

Many of New Zealand’s glaciers could disappear in a decade, scientists warn

New Zealand’s glaciers are becoming “smaller and more skeletal” due to the effects of climate change and scientists predict many could disappear within a decade. An annual end-of-summer survey that records the snowline of more than 50 South Island glaciers has revealed continued loss of snow and ice.

Every year, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), the Victoria University of Wellington and the conservation department gather thousands of aerial photographs of the glaciers to measure the altitude of the snowline and see how much of the previous winter’s snow has remained covering each glacier.

That snowline, also known as the equilibrium line altitude (ELA), allows scientists to evaluate the glacier’s health. If the glacier size has decreased, then the line will be higher, because less winter snow remains. “We were expecting the snowlines to be high because of the warm weather we’ve had and sadly, our instincts were confirmed,” said Dr Andrew Lorrey, a principal scientist at Niwa.

New Zealand’s glaciers had lost mass most years over the past decade, said Dr Lauren Vargo from Victoria University. “But what was more striking to me is how much smaller and more skeletal so many of the glaciers are becoming.”

Also of Interest

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

"The Adults in the Room" are Always the Most Colossal Screwups

Depicting Putin as ‘Madman’ Eliminates Need for Diplomacy

Russia Welcomes Ukraine’s Written Proposals But Says No Breakthroughs Made

Ukraine Updates and More Discussion of the Russia “Gas for Roubles” Countersanction

“Dollar Hegemony Ended Last Wednesday”: Michael Hudson Interviewed by Margaret Flowers on Clearing the Fog

Conflicts in Priti Patel’s Power Over Assange

NYC Mayor BULLDOZES Homeless Encampments As Rent Skyrockets To RECORD HIGHS

A Little Night Music

Tommy Tucker - Hi-Heel Sneakers

Tommy Tucker - I'm Shorty

Tommy Tucker - Sitting Home Alone

Tommy Tucker - Alimony

Tommy Tucker - Long Tall Shorty

Tommy Tucker - It Hurts Me Too

Tommy Tucker - Drunk

Tommy Tucker - Wine Bottles

Tommy Tucker - Mo' Shorty

Tommy Tucker - Chewin' Gum

Tommy Tucker - Thats how much

Tommy Tucker - Lightning Bug