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"Deterrence failed completely as a guide in setting rational limits on the size and composition of military forces, spurring an insatiable arms race with a reckless proliferation of the most destructive power ever unleashed, tailored for delivery by a vast array of vehicles to a stupefying array of targets."

-- George Lee Butler

News and Opinion

US escalates arms transfers to Ukraine

Despite ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine that has killed thousands and led millions to flee, the United States is continuing and escalating its arms transfers to Kiev. On Wednesday, the White House announced it would provide an additional $500 million in “budget aid” to Ukraine—money that Bloomberg reported could be used for military purposes—amid ongoing discussions on intensifying arms shipments to the country.

This funding comes in addition to the $1 billion in military aid announced by Biden earlier this month. According to the Washington Post, since January 2021 alone, the US has provided Ukraine with $2 billion of assistance, including Stinger and Javelin missiles. In a phone call between Biden and Zelensky on Wednesday, “The leaders discussed how the United States is working around the clock to fulfill the main security assistance requests by Ukraine, the critical effects those weapons have had on the conflict, and continued efforts by the United States with allies and partners to identify additional capabilities to help the Ukrainian military defend its country,” the White House said.

Responding to the announcement, members of Congress pressed for further arms shipments. “Dithering needs to end. We need to flip the script and make Putin afraid of escalating against the West,” said Republican Representative Mike Rogers at a hearing of the House Committee on Armed Services Wednesday. That means, he said, “Giving the Ukrainians the resources to drive out every last Russian on Ukrainian soil.” General Tod Wolters, the U.S. European Command Chief, told a hearing of the House Committee on Armed Services, “We can’t rest for one second. We’ve got a lot of work to do out in front of us to make sure that the Ukrainian armed forces are getting the right gear at the right time.”

Speaking for the United States European Command, Wolters demanded, “should deterrence fail—we remain ready to respond with lethal and resilient force in all domains.” ...

The United States, for its part, is committed to prolonging the conflict as long as possible. As Edward Luce wrote earlier this week in the Financial Times, “domestic US pressure is tilting towards escalation. In marked contrast to US post-Vietnam history, America’s liberal consensus is today at least as gung-ho as on the conservative right.”

An inauspicious start to Biden’s democracies v. autocracies campaign

If Secretary of State Antony Blinken wanted to highlight the hypocrisy that so many non-Western nations perceive in President Biden’s efforts to depict the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a global “battle between democracy and autocracy,” he couldn’t have chosen better than to attend the Middle East foreign ministers’ meeting in Israel today.

All five of his interlocutors from Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco represent governments that are either monarchical, outright tyrannical, or have invaded and occupy their neighbors’ territory by the force of arms.

Blinken’s enthusiastic endorsement of this burgeoning axis of Mideast states regardless of their human rights records marks a return to the familiar Cold War politics where generous U.S. support for all kinds of repressive states, especially in the Global South, was justified by the overriding necessity of containing and defeating the Soviet Union.

Blinken of course is trying to get these same governments to back sweeping U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia in order to demonstrate their opposition to Moscow’s aggression — even as a growing number of Putin-enabled oligarchs seek safe haven in Israel and the UAE, in particular. ...

Whether Blinken succeeds in persuading his interlocutors to take stronger measures to isolate Russia or reconcile them to Washington’s revival of the nuclear deal remains to be seen. But the warm embrace of his Israeli and Arab counterparts in Monday’s meeting would seem to undermine — at least in the Middle East — Biden’s sweeping message Saturday that Washington is a defender of an international rules-based liberal order that is leading the “perennial struggle for democracy and freedom.” ...

If Blinken wants to focus on Russia’s aggression and defiance of the international “rules-based order,” this meeting is not a good look.

Speaking of not a good look:

Jewish Group Endorses Nazis In Ukraine

Fresh off The Guardian's propaganda pipeline:

Putin signs order demanding gas payments in roubles from Friday

Vladimir Putin has indicated that Russia could rip up contracts to supply gas to Europe unless “unfriendly” states drop their refusal to pay in roubles from Friday. “To buy Russian gas, they need to open rouble accounts in Russian banks,” Putin said in a televised appearance on Thursday. “It is from those accounts that gas will be paid for, starting 1 April. If such payments aren’t made, we will consider this a failure by the client to comply with its obligations.”

The threat of a gas shutoff was reduced, however, as details emerged about the new deal, which appeared to allow European buyers to continue to pay for gas in euros and dollars. The decree Putin signed on Thursday authorises the state-controlled Gazprombank to open foreign currency and rouble accounts for gas purchases. European buyers would pay in foreign currency and then authorise Gazprombank to make the conversion into roubles, which would then be used to formally purchase the gas. ...

One gas analyst said the use of Gazprombank as an intermediary may allow western economies to drop their opposition. He said market prices for gas, which rose slightly on Thursday, did not indicate fears of an imminent major supply disruption. ...

Putin spoke to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, about the new deal on Thursday. Both sought to calm fears of a gas shutoff, with Scholz telling journalists that he believed Germany would continue to pay for gas in euros. Draghi gave a similar interpretation of the deal. “What I understood, but I may be wrong, is that the conversion of the payment ... is an internal matter of the Russian Federation,” he said.

There are fears Putin could extend the rouble payment plan to include exports of oil, grain, fertilisers, coal, metals and other key commodities.

Moscow accuses Kyiv of air strike in Russia in new snag for talks

More propaganda here:

EU leaders urged to be tough on China if it backs Russia in Ukraine

EU leaders are being urged to tell China it will face sanctions if it offers military aid to Russia for the war in Ukraine, amid concerns about a deepening authoritarian alliance that threatens the rules-based international order. Senior EU and Chinese leaders are expected to hold discussions on Friday at a video summit that is likely to be dominated by the war.

EU diplomats said the the bloc’s representatives needed to pass on a message that Beijing would pay a price for any intervention in support of Russia’s war.

“Our expectation is that the summit is not business as usual,” one senior EU diplomat said. “The message should be clear: any military or financial support of China to Russia, also to circumvent sanctions, will have serious consequences for EU-China relations.”

A second diplomat said the summit would be a defining moment that would shape the relationship between Brussels and Beijing for years to come. “It’s pretty clear that if they help Russia in the way that they provide weapons, or help circumvent sanctions, this will open up all kinds of possibilities, not least in a very firm transatlantic alliance,” the diplomat said.

Gas Sales: The REAL Reason For Ukraine War

Even more propaganda here:

Biden announces ‘largest release of oil reserves’ in effort to curb gasoline prices

Joe Biden has announced plans to release up to 1m barrels of oil a day from the strategic reserve, in an attempt to contain high gasoline prices and curb inflation exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

The president spoke from the White House to announce the move, which he said would represent the largest-ever draw ever on the country’s emergency supplies. “Look, I know gas prices are painful. I get it. My plan is going to help ease that pain today and safeguard against tomorrow,” Biden said.

“I’m open to ideas and to strengthen the plan, but I will not be put off and put it on hold. I will do everything at my disposal to protect you from [Russian president Vladimir'] Putin’s price hike. It’s not time for politics. Americans can’t afford that right now.”

The administration is reportedly considering extending the release for as long as six months, with a potential limit of 180m barrels drawn from the current national reserve of 568m barrels.

Big Oil Is Creating 'Pain at the Pump' to Boost Profits: Report

As President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered the release of one million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months in a bid to reduce surging gas prices, Public Citizen released a report that details how Big Oil is intentionally creating "pain at the pump" to boost profits.

While the fossil fuel industry has tried publicly to pin the blame for soaring gas prices on the Biden administration's ostensibly strict environmental regulations, oil executives have admitted behind closed doors that they are suppressing production to maximize shareholder returns.

"Oil and gas companies lost a ton of money between 2010 and 2020, mainly by borrowing way too much to fund an expansion of drilling using expensive oil and gas fracking technology," Alan Zibel, fossil fuels research director at Public Citizen and author of the report, said in a statement. "The result was unsustainable overproduction and massive losses when oil prices plunged, as they did two years ago at the start of the pandemic. Now the industry is keeping production down and making consumers pay."

After a brief coronavirus-driven decline in 2020, demand returned, but shareholders pressured oil producers to restrict supply to push prices higher. Last year, as average gas prices in the U.S. steadily increased—hitting around $3.40 per gallon in December 2021, up from $2.10 a year before—25 of the world's biggest fossil fuel corporations raked in a record $205 billion in profits.

Oil and gas companies have hiked prices even further during the first three months of 2022—especially in the three weeks since Biden announced a U.S. ban on imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, leading to growing accusations of war profiteering. The average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. is now hovering around $4.23.

With other countries also taking steps to restrict imports of Russian oil and gas, U.S. fossil fuel executives have expressed excitement at the prospect of using ongoing geopolitical crises as an excuse to force consumers to accept higher costs for the foreseeable future, and they are projected to reap up to $126 billion in extra profits this year. After rewarding themselves and other investors with billions of dollars worth of stock buybacks and dividend bumps last year, industry bosses have made clear they intend to do more of the same in 2022.

Putin's Popularity Rises in Russia, Drops Among Americans, Polls Say

Approval numbers regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin's activities since the start of the Russia-Ukraine War have seen a steep increase in recent months, according to a new poll from independent pollster Levada.

The poll showed that approval of Putin's actions increased from 69 percent in January to 83 percent in March. ...

When it comes to U.S. President Joe Biden's handling of international affairs, Americans are much more divided. Of the respondents, 48 percent said that they have confidence in Biden's handling of international affairs, while 52 percent said that they have no confidence or not too much confidence.

"Disappeared": Chris Hedges Responds to YouTube Deleting His 6-Year Archive of RT America Shows

“He Signed A Historic Middle-Class Tax Cut”

Unite the Country, a super PAC that supports President Joe Biden, has been running TV ads in Arizona praising Biden for delivering a big tax break to working-class Americans. “Joe Biden knows the pain families feel when tomorrow seems so uncertain,” says the ad. “It’s why he signed a historic middle-class tax cut.”

There’s only one problem: That so-called “historic middle-class tax cut” expired last December, after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) refused to support Biden’s Build Back Better legislation.

The expanded child tax credit provided most American parents — nearly 90 percent — with payments of $250 or $300 per month per kid. The White House has specifically characterized the child tax credit as “a historic tax cut for middle-class families.” The program’s expiration left millions more Americans in poverty. Child poverty quickly spiked.

The Unite the Country ad offers a depressing preview of what Democrats’ message will look like in the midterm elections this year. Because Democratic lawmakers failed to pass the health care, climate, and anti-poverty spending legislation they debated for much of last year, they don’t have many legislative accomplishments to sell to voters.

As a result, Unite the Country is now stuck touting an expired program, hoping voters will reward Democrats for a tax credit that is no longer helping their families. An advisor to the super PAC did not respond to a request for comment.

Abby Martin: Tech Monopolies Are AN ARM Of US Government, INTENT On Controlling The Narrative

Senate Urged to Pass Broader Reforms After House Approves Insulin Price Cap

After the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill to cap insulin prices, a leading patient advocacy group renewed its call for broader action to limit the costs of prescription drugs.

"The House of Representatives today voted to once again pass legislation to cap copays for insulin," said David Mitchell, a cancer patient and founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, in a statement.

"Last fall, Democrats in the House passed a historic drug pricing reform package that included copay caps for millions of people who take insulin, Medicare negotiations to lower the price of insulin and other expensive drugs, and limits on annual drug price increases to the rate of inflation," he noted. "That package of reforms would deliver relief to all Americans."

While the Democratic Party has a clear majority in the House, the Senate's even split and rules mean that most bills can be blocked by the GOP—unless Democrats use the budget reconciliation process. Mitchell argued that "now it is up to Democrats in the Senate to follow the House's lead and pass comprehensive reforms through reconciliation."

"There are millions of patients who rely on expensive drugs who urgently need the reforms in the drug pricing package, including, most importantly, Medicare negotiation," he continued. "There is a path forward in the Senate to pass the legislation through reconciliation. In order to deliver on their promises to all patients—including those who depend on insulin—the Senate must act urgently to approve the broad provisions already passed by the House."

Mitchell added that "Americans overwhelmingly support these reforms—they must be the Senate's number one priority on drug pricing policy upon returning from the upcoming recess."

I hope that Satan saves a warm spot by the fire for Mitt Romney.

Romney suggests cutting retirement benefits for younger Americans

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has addressed the vexing question of how the US copes with its ageing population, suggesting that retirement benefits may have to be cut for younger Americans.

In comments to the Senate budget committee on Wednesday, the Republican senator from Utah said that the spiraling costs of retirement programs had to be tackled to bring national debt under control. Romney raised the politically controversial idea of cutting benefits, but only for younger generations before they reach retirement age.

“For younger people coming along, we got to be able to find a way to balance these programs or we’re gonna find ourselves in a heap of trouble,” he said. He added that he was not in favour of raising taxes as a way of balancing the books, but was open to adjusting “long-term benefits not for current retirees”.

Romney’s remarks, first reported by Business Insider, open a can of worms often avoided by members of Congress given its intense political sensitivities. The programs in question include two of the most popular benefits in the country – social security and Medicare, which make up more than 40% of government spending.

Applebee’s Uses High Gas Prices To Lower Wages

PITCHFORKS ARE COMING: Inflation Projected To WORSEN, BlackRock Blasts 'Entitled' Generation

US unions condemn ‘unacceptable’ Oregon pension fund link with NSO

When labour organisers passed a resolution this month calling for Oregon’s $100bn state pension fund to divest from a fund that owns NSO Group, it pointed to ways in which the Israeli company’s intrusive spyware is alleged to have been used in the past to target union members.

“It may seem like a cliche, but an injury to one is an injury to all, and we strongly stand behind that,” said Ira Erbs, a part-time professor at Portland Community College and member of the Oregon chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.

Erbs is part of a growing movement of union members in Oregon who are seeking greater transparency from Oregon’s Democratic state treasurer, Tobias Read, about how public employee retirement funds are invested.

Activists such as Erbs have already pressed Read on the retirement fund’s investments in fossil fuels, and in companies that operate private prisons. Now, they are focused on the Oregon fund’s longstanding indirect investment in NSO, the maker of one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance technologies.

Amazon Labor Union SHOCK UPSET Election Win

Amazon workers in New York close to forming historic union after key vote

Amazon workers in New York are close to voting to form a union – a major win for labor activists who have failed in previous efforts to organize at the tech giant that is now the second largest private employer in the US.

Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island will find out on Friday whether or not they want to form a union, Amazon’s first in the US where it now employs over one million people.

The vote count began on Thursday afternoon. It is unclear when the results will be revealed, but the union is currently ahead after the first day of counting by 364 votes, 1,518 votes in favor to 1,154 against. Counting is set to resume on Friday.

The count for a separate worker organizing effort began simultaneously on Thursday in Alabama, where the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWSU) faces a tough challenge in a rerun election to unionize Amazon workers in the city of Bessemer.

The union said that the election had a turnout rate of about 39%, with only 2,375 of the nearly 6,100 eligible workers voting through mail-in ballots. Amazon provides the list of eligible workers to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees the process. Later in the afternoon, the Alabama count concluded with 993 votes against unionizing, versus 875 in favor – but, crucially, with hundreds of ballots that had been challenged and therefore not yet counted for either side still remaining to be addressed.

The US supreme court’s assault on voting rights hits a new low

Even for experts who closely follow the US supreme court, there was something stunning about an emergency decision from the justices on Wednesday.

In an unexpected move, the court decided to throw out new districts for the state legislature in Wisconsin that had been picked by the state supreme court. But what was even more surprising was that the court’s conservative majority seemed to go out of its way to attack the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important civil rights laws designed to prevent discrimination in US elections. “Extra headspinning,” was how Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, described it. “Bizarre,” observed Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the non-partisan Cook Political Report, tweeted that the supreme court had entered “uncharted territory”.

The court’s decision in the Wisconsin case was the latest in a series of rulings that have left little pretense of how aggressively it is trying to weaken section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the most powerful provision of the law, which outlaws racially discriminatory voting practices. The court is not hiding its skepticism of the use of race in redistricting, even when it’s used to protect minority voters, and is making it harder for litigants to justify considering race when district lines are redrawn.

“The supermajority of the conservative justices on the supreme court has become pretty emboldened. They’ve got a narrow vision of the scope of the Voting Rights Act. And they are not being shy about enforcing that as quickly as they can,” Hasen said in an interview. “The court is increasingly aggressive, and as a body is increasingly willingly to go out on a limb to fully implement the justices’ legal and political preferences without it being tempered by concern about perceptions and legitimacy.”

Hillary gets a slap on the wrist.

Hillary Clinton and Democrats settle Steele dossier electoral case for $113,000

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation into whether they violated campaign finance law by misreporting spending on research that eventually became the infamous Steele dossier.

That is according to documents sent on Tuesday to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which had filed an administrative complaint in 2018 accusing the Democrats of misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to obscure the spending.

The Clinton campaign hired Perkins Coie, which then hired Fusion GPS, a research and intelligence firm, to conduct opposition research on Republican candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. But on FEC forms, the Clinton campaign classified the spending as legal services.

“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint had read.

The Clinton campaign and DNC had argued that the payments had been described accurately, but agreed, according to the documents, to settle without conceding to avoid further legal costs. The Clinton campaign agreed to a civil penalty of $8,000 and the DNC $105,000, according to a pair of conciliatory agreements that were attached to the letter sent to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation.

Sinema Under Fire for 'Directly Enabling' New GOP Voter Purge Law in Arizona

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema faced fresh backlash from civil rights groups on Wednesday after the Republican governor of her home state of Arizona signed into law a bill that could purge hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls.

Advocacy organizations argued the state-level GOP measure was able to advance because Sinema and fellow right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) joined with Republicans earlier this year to tank a proposed change to the Senate filibuster, an archaic rule standing in the way of federal voting rights legislation that would prohibit voter purges and other suppression tactics.

"History will judge Governor [Doug] Ducey and his enablers, who through their actions—or in Senator Kyrsten Sinema's case, inaction—allowed for today's attack on our freedom to vote," Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, said in a statement Wednesday.

Harvey warned that the new Arizona law, known as H.B. 2492, "threatens to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters and silence the voices of older, minority, and low-income voters in particular."

"Ducey's animosity toward our fundamental rights comes as no surprise," added Harvey, "but this attack on voting rights was completely avoidable."

Protect Indigenous people’s rights or Paris climate goals will fail, says report

Paris climate agreement goals will fail unless the rights of Indigenous people who protect rainforests are honoured, according to a new report. Forest lands stewarded by Indigenous people and communities in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru sequester about twice as much carbon as other lands, according to the analysis.

To meet national climate goals – known as NDCs – without protecting this land would require draconian and abrupt lifestyle changes in forested countries. Peru would have to take all vehicles off the roads to compensate for losing just half of the carbon sinks protected by Indigenous and community-held forests, says the study by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and Climate Focus. Brazil and Colombia would have to retire 80% of their vehicles to compensate for the increase in net emissions.

Juan-Carlos Altamirano, a senior economist at the WRI, who co-authored the paper, said: “It would be impossible for these countries to attain the NDC objectives if Indigenous rights are not protected and these lands are deforested or put to other uses. But in other parts of the world, it would likely be the same case.” If the rights of Indigenous people and forest communities were not protected, the “most likely hypothesis” would be a failure to achieve the Paris climate goal of keeping global temperature rises below 1.5C, he said.

Indigenous people are by far the best rainforest custodians, with deforestation rates on their lands up to 50% lower than elsewhere, according to a UN study last year. While an estimated 10% of the south-east Amazon appears to have already become a net carbon source owing to forest degradation, the WRI says that at least 92% of forested lands held by Indigenous peoples and communities in Amazonian countries are still carbon sinks. On average, these lands sequester more than 30 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a hectare, more than twice as much as other lands.

Also of Interest

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

Biden Means What He Says

Putin Is a War Criminal – and So Was Madeleine Albright

"Regime Change" Doesn't Work, You Morons

Ukraine: Transfer of Power Balance from West to East

Putin-Scholz Phone Call on “Gas for Roubles” Mechanism Conforms to Our Assessment; Disputes Over Russia Force Reduction Around Kiev; West Pressure on China, India Continues

Argentina Again Remembers Its US-Backed Coup

NYT Painted Matt Gaetz as a Child Sex Trafficker. One Year Later, He Has Not Been Charged.

Conservationists to Biden: 'Clean Energy Transition Cannot Be Built on Dirty Mining'

Last stop, underwater: the Spanish railway line being devoured by the sea

How flower festivals are moving amid changing climate

Krystal GOES AT IT With AOC Over Abandoning Amazon Workers Union Effort

Jimmy Dore: Chris Hedges DELETED From YouTube!

Jimmy Dore: LA Cops Overrun With Criminal “Police Gangs”

Rising: Real Estate Tycoon: Millennials Just DON'T WANT To Own Homes

Duran: Inflation skyrockets in EU, as Putin squeezes Olaf Scholz & Germany faces severe recession

A Little Night Music

Savoy Brown - Tell Mama

Savoy Brown - I'm Tired

Savoy Brown - Can't get next to you

Savoy Brown - Made up my mind

Savoy Brown - It Hurts Me Too

Savoy Brown - Poor Girl

Savoy Brown - Wang Dang Doodle

Savoy Brown - Why Did You Hoodoo Me

Savoy Brown - Louisiana Blues

Savoy Brown - Doin' Fine

Savoy Brown - Mr. Brown's Boogie