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In This Edition |
  Follow @Uncle -Ernie Visit me on Face Book Coral Reefs Are Dying Off Global warming strikes again! By Ernest Stewart
One of the most immediate threats to coral is ocean temperature increases. Coral reefs exist only in narrow bands of water that stay within a moderate temperature range, not too hot or cold. Even moderate temperature increases can cause thermal stress that contributes to coral bleaching and infectious disease. The ocean has warmed 1.3 degrees (F) since the Industrial Revolution, meaning many reefs are stuck in dangerously hot water. The stress on reef creatures has been immense. When coral polyps-small, anemone-like animals that form the living base of reefs-get stressed, they expel the symbiotic algae that grows on them and provides them with nutrients. This is what's called coral bleaching. With no algae to feed coral and give it its color, the abandoned coral turns white. That doesn't necessarily mean it's dead, but with no nutrient supply its ability to grow and fight off diseases is significantly hampered. Warming water also causes stronger and bigger storms, which can destroy entire reef systems as they pass. Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in 2019 and destroyed 30 percent of the islands' coral reefs. In 2005, Hurricane Rita caused extensive damage to coral reefs in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Texas. Research suggests some storms may at times be beneficial for coral reefs by lowering water temperature. The influx of cool water can reduce heat stress on polyps, according to the Reef Resilience Network. But that temporary relief isn't enough to make up for long-term warming. As surface temperatures increase, scientists hope that coral reefs might be able to slowly move themselves into cooler water-or that deep-water reefs already exist undiscovered. Researchers in Tahiti announced in February 2022 that they had found a nearly two-mile-long healthy coral reef in uncharacteristically deep water, leading to speculation that more deep-water reefs might exist in unexplored areas. Still, the rate of human-caused warming far outpaces the speed at which coral reefs can move. Several start-ups and labs around the world are developing small, human-made coral systems, which could eventually be deposited in the ocean and grow into full reefs. But that technology is still a long way away. Until then, cutting emissions by driving less, using energy-efficient appliances and divesting from fossil fuel companies is the best way individuals can look out for the future of coral reefs.
Remember, coral reefs protect coastlines from storms and erosion, provide jobs for local communities, and offer opportunities for recreation. They are also are a source of food and new medicines. Over half a billion people depend on reefs for food, income, and protection.
 01-11-1934 ~ 03-05-2022 Thanks for the film!
 07-10-1944 ~ 03-08-2022 Thanks for the music!
 01-01-1931 ~ 03-10-2022 Thanks for the music!
(c) 2022 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, philosopher, author, stand -up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Facebook. and like us when you do. Follow me on Twitter. |
 Now Is the Time For A Global Movement Demanding Nuclear De-escalation By Norman Solomon President Joe Biden spoke 6,500 words during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, but not one of them acknowledged the dangers of nuclear war that have spiked upward during the last decade and even more steeply in recent days. The militarism that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about has been spiraling toward its ultimate destination in the nuclear era - a global holocaust that would likely extinguish almost all human life on Earth. In the midst of this reality, leaders of the world's two nuclear superpowers continue to fail - and betray - humanity. In the stark light of March 2022, Albert Einstein's outlook 75 years ago about the release of atomic energy has never been more prescient or more urgent: "This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense, there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world." The phrase "narrow nationalisms" aptly describes the nuclear-weapons policies of the United States and Russia. They have been engaged in a dance of death with foreseeable human consequences on a scale that none of us can truly fathom. Einstein expressed a belief that "an informed citizenry will act for life and not death." But the dire nuclear trends have been enabled by citizenry uninformed and inactive. Twenty years ago, the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Despite his promising rhetoric, President Barack Obama plunged ahead to begin a $1.7 trillion program for further developing the U.S. nuclear arsenal under the euphemism of "modernization." President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which had removed an entire category of missiles from Europe since the late 1980s - largely as a result of the international movement against nuclear weapons. By killing the ABM and INF agreements, the U.S. government pushed the world further away from nuclear arms control, let alone disarmament. And by insisting on expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to Russia's borders - and in recent months continuing to insist that Ukrainian membership in NATO should stay on the table - the United States ignored Russia's longstanding and reasonable concerns about NATO expansion. Placement of ABM systems in Poland and Romania, touted as defensive, gave NATO the capacity to retrofit those systems with offensive cruise missiles. Overall, NATO's claims of being a "defensive" alliance have been undercut by three decades of broken promises, as well as intensive war operations in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya. Russia has its own military-industrial complex and nationalistic fervor. The duplicity and provocations by the United States and its NATO allies do not in the slightest justify the invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched a week ago. Russia is now on a murderous killing spree no less abhorrent than what occurred from the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Right now, an overarching truth remains to be faced and acted upon: The nuclear superpowers have dragged humanity to a precipice of omnicide. The invasion of Ukraine is the latest move in that direction. Last week, the extreme recklessness of Russian President Vladimir Putin's not-so-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons was an indication of just how dangerous the Ukraine conflict has gotten - for everyone, everywhere. Passivity will get us nowhere. In the U.S., supporting antiwar protests and demanding real diplomacy while organizing for peace are essential. "However soon the war ends, its effects on the European security order and the world will be and already are profound," San Francisco State University scholar Andrei Tsygankov wrote days ago. "In addition to human suffering and devastation, the European continent is entering a new era of social and political divisions comparable to those of the Cold War. The possibility of further escalation is now closer than ever. Instead of building an inclusive and just international order, Russia and most European nations will now rely mainly on nuclear weapons and military preparations for their security." Any "conventional" war that puts Russia and the United States in even indirect conflict has the very real potential of being a tripwire that could set off an exchange of nuclear missiles. Heightened tensions lead to fatigue, paranoia and greater likelihood of mistaking a false alarm for the real thing. This is especially dangerous because of land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which are uniquely vulnerable to attack and therefore are on hair-trigger, "launch on warning" alert. "First and foremost," former Defense Secretary William Perry wrote in 2016, "the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy. Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn't only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war." As Daniel Ellsberg and I wrote in The Nation last fall, "Contrary to uninformed assumptions, discarding all ICBMs could be accomplished unilaterally by the United States with no downside. Even if Russia chose not to follow suit, dismantling the potentially cataclysmic land-based missiles would make the world safer for everyone on the planet." But we're not hearing anything from Congress or the White House about taking steps to reduce the chances of nuclear war. Instead, we're hearing jacked-up rhetoric about confronting Russia. It's all too clear that responsible leadership will not come from official Washington; it must come from grassroots activism with determined organizing and political pressure. "I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction," Dr. King said as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. "I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow." Realistic hope seems to be in very short supply right now. But at this dire moment, all that we love demands our determination to organize. (c) 2022 Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" and "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."
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 Biden Neglects To Make The Crucial Request To The Citizenry For His Program How many billions of dollars in costs and a weakened economy will Joe Biden tolerate as the price of anti-Putin sanctions that will blow back on the American people? How much suffering will he tolerate being inflicted on the long-suffering Russian people? By Ralph Nader The President's State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress is the media event of the year for the occupant of the Oval Office. Joe Biden spoke for an hour, covered lots of predictable policy ground, and also praised, promised, and reassured "the people." But, as President Biden has done many times in public speeches and addresses, he failed to engage the people as his allies to confront his policy opponents in Congress. All his priorities - social safety net protections, rebuilding community infrastructure or public works, more aggressive action against climate crises, and paying for these programs by repealing the Trump tax escapes for the large corporations and the super-rich, are being blocked by 50 GOP Senators and two Democratic Senators. Biden's reluctance to invite the people to phone, write or email these obstructionists in Congress reflects his personality of not criticizing the GOP opposition when addressing the public. Here is what Mr. Biden could have said to mobilize the citizenry and stay with his amiable style: My four major programs register large majority support among the American people. It is easy to understand why. People want their public services to work. They want the roads, bridges, public transit, their water and sewage plants, their public clinics, and broadband upgraded and maintained in good repair. People need their well-equipped heroic emergency responders to rescue them in times of danger. That's what your taxes are supposed to be for public needs.Why didn't Biden's speechwriters save this solemn, mass-media-covered occasion from being another exercise in rhetorical futility? (c) 2022 Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest book is The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Other recent books include, The Seventeen Traditions: Lessons from an American Childhood, Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism: Build It Together to Win, and "Only The Super -Rich Can Save Us" (a novel). |
 Ukraine Exposes White Supremacist Foreign Policy By Margaret Kimberley White supremacy is at the heart of US war propaganda. The exhortation to "stand with Ukraine" is no exception to this rule. By now everyone knows that Ukraine's flag is blue and yellow. It is impossible to miss as the Empire State Building in New York, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris have all been bathed in those colors. Nearly every city and town across the United States has followed suit and politicians ranging from local legislators to members of congress shout "Stand with Ukraine!" at every opportunity. Yet it must be pointed out that those blue and yellow motifs and pleas for solidarity are all about white supremacy. Ukraine is upheld as a bastion of "civilization" which is supposed to put it off limits for war and suffering. The quiet part is now being spoken out loud. We are told that Ukrainians are more deserving of concern because they are Europeans. Ukraine's deputy chief prosecutor said as much in a BBC interview. "It is very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed..." He wasn't alone in his assessment. An NBC reporter was asked why Poland was willing to admit Ukrainians even as it turned away other refugees. "Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. That, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians, they are white, they're ... um... very similar to the people that live in Poland." CBS followed suit, "This isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan who has seen conflict rage for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European - I have to choose those words carefully - city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it was going to happen." The narrative that only white people deserve peace and security is all the more shameful because the global south suffers from war and privation as a direct result of US/NATO actions. It is NATO that destroyed the nation of Libya, NATO which attempted to do the same in Syria, NATO that occupied Afghanistan, NATO which wages war across African countries with US, French and British troops deployed across the continent. The white world causes suffering and then says that the people of the global south are "uncivilized" with no rights that need to be respected. A Watson Institute of Brown University study showed that more than 37 million people in North Africa, Western and Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa have been displaced by the US and its allies since 2001. The humanitarian disasters begun years ago are ongoing, as refugees use the Mediterranean and even the US border with Mexico as points of escape. After experiencing wars of aggression these nations are then subjected to punishment as the United States steals Afghanistan's assets and keeps Syria under the thumb of Caesar Sanctions. These thefts cause more suffering and even death as nations are robbed of the ability to care for their people. Who is civilized and who is not? Ukraine has been pushed to the forefront of American thought in order to defend the imperialist foreign policy which led to the current conflict with Russia. If the blue eyed nation is suffering it is because of US and NATO arrogance and aggression. Ukraine's current situation is a direct result of the 2014 coup engineered by the US and its EU partners. An elected president was dispatched and a civil war began that has killed some 14,000 people. Ukraine is a US colony with a puppet government now under military attack. Ukrainians are themselves refugees as they flee to neighboring Poland, Romania, Slovakia and other countries. It is the supposedly advanced, democratic, and supposedly civilized who have created their problems. Yet once again bare faced racism is evident. African migrants and students in Ukraine were prohibited from boarding trains and buses that could take them to safety. A group of Jamaican students was forced to walk 20 kilometers when they were forced off of a bus enroute to Poland. Africans and Jamaicans live and study all over the world because the US and Europe underdevelop their nations through a variety of means. Yet Ukrainians and Poles didn't see people in need of help. They determined that the non-blondes were not deserving of assistance. Ironically, it is the white supremacist underpinnings of US/NATO foreign policy which has created all of Ukraine's suffering. The need to dominate, to "contain" Russia and its ally China is not playing out the way they had hoped but the Ukrainians be damned. The MinskII agreement which was unanimously approved in the United Nations Security Council was a roadmap to peace. Ukraine should be a neutral nation but that is the exact opposite of what its lords and masters in Washington want. The good faith negotiations that could resolve the crisis are a non-starter because NATO is a very dishonest broker. The corporate media have joined the state in an extraordinary effort to create war propaganda. They deliberately tug at heartstrings and demand solidarity with Ukraine because the truth is very unpalatable. Instead of standing with Ukraine, Americans should stand with humanity across the world. If they did they would be better able to understand why there are wars in Europe or anywhere else. (c) 2022 Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e -mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.Com. |
 A Phoenix Is Rising By Jim Hightower Our local newspapers are being merged, purged, shrunk, shut down, and looted by Wall Street profiteers - yet there's good news. In the towns those media vultures are torching, a phoenix is rising! Hundreds of determined locals, often led by people of color, are finding new ways to pay for and revive top-quality, local journalism. For example, the Ferndale (CA) Enterprise moved to an old Victorian home, renting upstairs rooms to vacationers to subsidize the paper. Also, while aloof Wall Street owners have no connection to us or our towns, the scrappy new community papers are stressing their grassroots connection by moving into friendlier, more central, street-level spaces - such as public libraries and community centers - so that regular people can see them and have direct access to their reporters and editors. Then there's the editor of the Sahan Journal in Minneapolis, who moves his weekly editorial meeting to the offices of various grassroots groups so their members can help shape the paper's coverage. And in Marfa, Texas, the Big Bend Sentinel is literally serving the public, not only with a good weekly, but also with The Sentinel - a combo coffee shop, cozy bar, cafe, event space, and hangout for locals to meet and greet. In ways big and small, dedicated local journalists are experimenting with funding, structures, staffing, etc., to produce the news that democracy requires. Note to Wall Street vultures: These newspaper ventures aren't interested in "scaling-up" to maximize investor profits. As they know, it was corporate cost-cutting, consolidation, and "scaling" that got us into today's mess of journalistic collapse. Instead, by sharing ideas and resources, these local innovators help each other succeed. And, unlike the Wall Street model, their success is not measured simply by financial return, but also by how they do at keeping citizens informed and engaged. Now that's real journalism (c) 2022 Jim Hightower's latest book, "If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates,"is available in a fully revised and updated paperback edition. Jim writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. |
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These relatives have essentially bought into the official Kremlin position: that President Vladimir V. Putin's army is conducting a limited "special military operation" with the honorable mission of "de-Nazifying" Ukraine. Mr. Putin has referred to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a native Russian speaker with a Jewish background, as a "drug-addled Nazi" in his attempts to justify the invasion.
Those narratives are emerging amid a wave of disinformation emanating from the Russian state as the Kremlin moves to clamp down on independent news reporting while shaping the messages most Russians are receiving.
It is an absolute wonder, however thoroughly horrifying, that Putin is attempting to pull off a gaslighting of such magnitude. Russia is not North Korea, isolated nearly entirely by an all-controlling authoritarian state. Russia is a world power, and has a booming international oil and gas business that has made itself globally indispensable even as Putin rains war crimes down on a neighbor. Indeed, it is that very energy sector that has saved it from the worst possible sanctions so far. Attack Russia's oil economy and the rest of Europe - which depends heavily on Russian oil - could go dark, badly rattling the resolve of NATO in the face of crumbling economies and a restive population.
However, Russia's disinformation campaign should not look entirely unfamiliar to us in the United States. Let us not forget that, not so long ago, we were led into a long and bloody war under the false pretenses of "weapons of mass destruction," which reverberated across mainstream media. In certain media sectors, those official lies echo strongly to this day.
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And then, there is the lie-based future Donald Trump and his allies have been striving to construct for the U.S. for the last seven years. Any story not in praise of Trumpism is immediately labeled false, backed by an anti-logic that mangles civic discourse beyond recognition. Even trying to deconstruct a Trumpist's "fake news" charge is a victory for the one leveling it, because it means you have accepted the premise that it could be fake news, thus giving partisans just enough of a peg to hang their hat on.
With a tight enough media bubble, reinforced by the long-espoused idea that other viewpoints stem from evil sources and must be shunned as a moral imperative, a segment of any population can be manipulated and even controlled in ways that leave those outside looking in astonished and stunned. While Trump likely would not have been able to hide a whole war with a neighbor, he has painted a masterwork of disinformation about COVID-19, masks, vaccines and basic safety measures. Tens of millions have bought what he is peddling, to the ongoing detriment of the COVID fight, leaving the country badly fractured and unable to escape the gravity well of the pandemic.
Yet, we in the U.S. independent media know well that state attempts to manipulate public opinion cannot easily quell grassroots movements. Where there is war and repression, there is resistance, and the same is true in Russia in this moment. More than 13,000 antiwar protesters have been arrested in Russia, and still they come.
And resistance to the tyranny of the outside invaders is a touchstone of the Ukrainian ethos. They will not surrender it lightly.
Meanwhile, those of us in the United States, confronting Putin's disinformation machine, must not assume that it can be torn down by sanctions, our own military and state mechanisms of information warfare. Rather, we must take note of the fact that if many thousands of Russians are protesting in the face of massive state repression, grassroots channels of information are being used and new ones created. We must work our hardest to amplify our own channels for truth, particularly those that lift up grassroots resistance movements. As Khury Petersen-Smith writes in Truthout, "Our challenge is to build protest across borders that stands in solidarity with those facing the violence of war, and is independent - and defiant of - the governments where we reside."
(c) 2022 William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co_written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.
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Reykjavik, Iceland - Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning editor of the Russian publication Novaya Gazeta, says that, "only the antiwar movement of Russians, in my opinion, can save life on this planet."
A lot of Russians agree with him. A courageous antiwar movement has developed in Russia as the streets of cities across the country fill with protests against President Vladimir Putin's murderous decision to invade Ukraine. On Sunday, more than 4,300 Russians were detained after protests in more than 50 cities. The arrests came after OVD-Info, the independent media project on human rights and political persecutions in Russia, reported that at least 7,500 Russians were arrested in previous "No to War" demonstrations.
Putin understands the threat he faces from these demonstrations, as does Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. "To all the citizens of the Russian Federation who come out to protest, I want to say, we see you," Zelensky declared in Russian last week. "This means that you heard us. This means that you begin to trust us. Fight for us. Fight against the war." He renewed the direct appeal to Russians on Sunday, announcing, "Citizens of Russia! For you, this is a struggle not only for peace in Ukraine! This is a struggle for your country, for the best that was in it ..."
Zelensky knows that many Russians have been hearing his appeals, and those of the Ukrainian people. But for how long? Putin and his allies are making every effort to silence channels of communications and to narrow the discourse - following a playbook that authoritarians, including those who pose as small "d" democrats, invariably use when their actions stir domestic dissent. "The screws are being fully tightened - essentially we are witnessing military censorship," said OVD-Info's Maria Kuznetsova.
It was only last fall that the remaining outposts of Russian press freedom earned global recognition when Muratov and his colleagues - along with Filipino journalist Maria Ressa - were honored by the Nobel jurors "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." Muratov said at the time that he would accept none of the prize money, declaring that, "Since it is a Peace Prize, I believe it should contribute to that cause." At the same time, he explained why authoritarians, in his country and around the world, are so bent on censorship. It is nothing so simple as vanity. It is rooted in fear of the people.
"What is censorship?" asked Muratov. "It is a manifestation of distrust to your own people. Those who introduce censorship do not trust their people. In different countries of the world, many individuals who, of course, consider themselves independent, simply do not believe their people. They think that they are the ones to determine what the people should read, watch, see and listen to. Such lack of trust to the people is the most dangerous thing."
Less than five months after Muratov spoke those words, a new law approved unanimously by the Russian parliament bars reporting by news organizations on Ukraine that does not echo press statements from the Ministry of Defense and other government agencies. The invasion of Ukraine cannot be referred to as an "invasion" or a "war," and journalists who violate the new rules face up to 15 years in jail. Journalists who were covering antiwar protests for Novaya Gazeta have been detained by Russian authorities, and the publication has been forced to curtail its coverage of the Ukraine invasion. Independent broadcasters have gone silent, and dozens of websites are being blocked.
"We are looking on helplessly as Russia's independent media are being silenced to death," said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk for Reporters Without Border (Reporters sans frontieres: RSF). The global press freedom group has relaunched one of its most vital projects, Operation #CollateralFreedom, which uses mirror site technology to enable news websites to circumvent censorship in Russia, Ukraine and other countries.
RSF makes the point that assaults to press freedom are not unique to Russia. Crackdowns on independent media, especially in times of strife and warfare, happen in countries around the world, from Yemen to Myanmar to China and the United States - which has drawn sharp criticism for seeking to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing leaked details about U.S. military actions during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, in what the Amnesty International has referred to as "nothing short of a full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression."
The International Federation of Journalists, a group with which I have been associated over the years, has for some time been campaigning for an International Convention dedicated to the protection of journalists and media professionals. It is sorely needed, as the IFJ's website features daily reports of legal threats, censorship and violence directed at working journalists in dozens of countries.
The IFJ and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) have set up a "Safety Fund for Journalists in Ukraine." The IFJ has also condemned "new attempts from the Kremlin to limit the access to free information in Russian territory." And EFJ General Secretary Ricardo Gutierrez has argued, "Europe must assist Russian journalists who are facing brutal repression."
The United States should do the same.
Amid all the talk about how best to stop the invasion and save the people of Ukraine, it is vital to remember that getting honest information to the Russian people strengthens the antiwar movement that Dmitry Muratov rightly argues "can save life on this planet."
(c) 2022 John Nichols writes about politics for The Capitol Times. His book on protests and politics, Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street, is published by Nation Books. Follow John Nichols on Twitter @NicholsUprising.
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We once noted an interesting observation by Columnist Bret Barquest that a series of mind-shattering events occurred within weeks of one-another during the summer of 1947, just after the end of World War II.
Barquest listed:
-- The discovery of an estimated 500 manuscripts, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, in 11 caves on the shore of the Dead Sea, just east of Jerusalem. The scrolls were said to contain fragments of every book in the Old Testament. But there was more. Other books, including prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Daniel, and psalms believed written by David and Joshua, all of it excluded from the Bible, and many other documents, also providing new insight as to the real identity of Jesus, were discovered. All of this was seized by the Vatican and it has remained under wraps ever since.
-- The Jews in Europe and Russia began an exodus to Palestine after proclaiming an Old Testament story that they were a chosen people and had been given this land by God. They literally moved in among the Palestinian people, established a country, and became officially recognized by the United Nations as the new state of Israel by 1948. This was strangely a Bible prophecy that was carried out by the Jewish people. The existence of Israel, on Palestinian soil, has been a political nightmare for the world ever since.
-- The final conflict was over, the United States had emerged as the greatest world power after winning wars in Europe and Asia and exploding two atomic bombs over Japan only two years earlier. That summer the U.S. created the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all designed to be watch dogs over not only America, but the rest of the world. The names of all of these agencies have become well known to everyone since that time.
-- And for what it is worth, the term "flying saucer" was created that summer after pilot Kenneth Arnold observed what he described as a strange disk-like object flying over Mt. Rainier, Washington. At that time, people all over the United States began reporting similar sightings. To add to the strangeness, the so-called crash of one of these strange flying machines allegedly occurred near Roswell, New Mexico that summer. After a military intelligence officer told the newspapers that a flying disk had crashed there, the government quickly clarified the story, saying it was only a weather balloon. Conspiracy theories have abounded about Roswell ever since.
Indeed, 1947 was a really magical year all around. I remember that it was the year we had a snowstorm so terrible our town was cut off from the outside for weeks, and there was a forest fire not far from us that send a strange cloud of smoke overhead that gave everything an odd yellow hue for a day or two.
But we owe writer Barquest a debt of gratitude for linking all of the important, world-shattering events together as he did. Each of them has had a profound effect on the way everyone in the world has behaved and thought since those amazing days in the summer of 1947.
It was time for the old and antiquated religious systems to be torn down and replaced by new spiritual pathways so that humans could begin to evolve and turn away from the destructive behavior of warfare and collective greed. The miraculous discovery of ancient documents that should have opened the eyes of the world to the Christian cult, the appearance of evidence that aliens were among us, and the move by the U.S. government to create the political machinery for the final world conflict, should have shaken us to our roots. But that did not happen.
It seems that the Vatican squelched the effects of this amazing series of spiritually orchestrated events because the Pope and his henchmen recognized that the great lie that sustained them was about to collapse. They quickly seized these important documents, sealed them under lock and key, and the information in them was carefully hidden until a few "trusted" priests began sneaking the information into published documents. The problem with this is that it happened so slowly, and without fanfare, so only a few of us bothered to read these books. I found my reading in an occult book store in Ann Arbor, Michigan and it jolted me out of Christianity like a thunderbolt.
I have been continuing my research, writing articles and trying to get the truth out there ever since. My biggest problem has been determining the differences between truth and contemporary fiction.
(c) 2022 James L. Donahue is a retired newspaper reporter, editor and columnist with more than 40 years of experience in professional writing. He is the published author of five books, all dealing with Michigan history, and several magazine articles.
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Send aid to Ukrainian friends and aid organizations.
Send aid to organizations helping refugees leaving Ukraine.
Send aid especially that will reach those being refused help for racist reasons.
Share the remarkable media coverage of war victims in Ukraine.
Take the opportunity to point out the war victims in Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and to question whether the lives of all war victims matter.
Take the opportunity to point out that the U.S. government arms most of the world's worst dictators and oppressive governments and would have a lot more funds for humanitarian aid if it didn't.
Take the opportunity to point out that the proper response to a horrific crime by the Russian government is not the crime of economic sanctions that harm ordinary people, but the prosecution of those responsible in a court of law. Sadly the U.S. government has spent decades tearing down the International Criminal Court, which has thus far only prosecuted Africans, and if it were to start prosecuting non-Africans and be credible and supported globally, it would have to prosecute quite a few people in the United States and Western Europe.
I don't think a proper balance of power will save us, but the globalization and universalization of power.
Russia is violating numerous treaties that the U.S. government is one of the few holdouts on. This is a chance to consider fully supporting the rule of law.
We should condemn the Russian use of cluster bombs, for example, without pretending that the U.S. doesn't use them.
The risk of nuclear apocalypse is very high. There's nothing more important than avoiding destroying all life on earth. We can't picture a planet devoid of life and happily think "Well, at least we stood up to Putin" or "Well, at least we stood up to NATO" or "Well, we had principles." Quite apart from where this war goes or where it came from, the U.S. and Russia should be talking right now about taking nuclear weapons out of the calculations, disarming, and dismantling them, as well as protecting nuclear power plants. The news while we've been in this room is that a nuclear power plant has been shot at and is on fire, and firefighters are being shot at. How's that for an image of human priorities: keeping the war going, shooting at people trying to put out a fire in a nuclear reactor that sits next to 5 more?
Forty years ago, nuclear apocalypse was a top concern. The risk of it is now higher, but the concern is gone. So, this is a teaching moment, and we may not have many of them left.
This can also be a teaching moment for the abolition of war, not just of some of its weapons. It's important for us to understand that almost every war kills, injures, traumatizes, and makes homeless mostly people on one side, mostly civilians, and disproportionately the poor, the elderly, and the young, just usually not in Europe.
It's important for us to understand that keeping militaries around kills vastly more people than the wars do - and that this will be true until the wars become nuclear. This is because 3% of just U.S. military spending could end starvation on Earth.
Militaries divert resources from environmental and human needs, including disease pandemics, as well as preventing global cooperation on pressing emergencies, severely damaging the environment, eroding civil liberties, weakening the rule of law, justifying government secrecy, corroding culture, and fueling bigotry. Historically, the U.S. has seen an upsurge in racist violence following major wars. Other countries have too.
Militaries also make those they are supposed to protect less safe rather than more. Where the U.S. builds bases it gets more wars, where it blows people up it gets more enemies. Most wars have U.S. weapons on both sides because it's a business.
The fossil fuel business, which will kill us more slowly is also in play here. Germany has canceled a Russian pipeline and will be destroying the Earth with more U.S. fossil fuels. Oil prices are up. So are weapons company stocks. Poland is buying billions of dollars worth of U.S. tanks. Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe and other members of NATO are all going to be buying a lot more U.S. weapons or having the U.S. buy them as gifts. Slovakia has new U.S. bases. Also up are media ratings. And down is any attention to student debt or education or housing or wages or the environment or retirement or voting rights.
We should remember that no crime excuses any other, that blaming anyone doesn't absolve anyone else, and recognize that the solutions now being offered of more weapons and a bigger NATO are also what got us here. Nobody's forced to commit mass murder. The President of Russia and Russian military elites may simply love war and have wanted an excuse for one. But they would not have had that excuse had the perfectly reasonable demands they'd been making been met.
When Germany reunited, the U.S. promised Russia no NATO expansion. Many Russians hoped to be part of Europe and NATO. But promised were broken, and NATO expanded. Top U.S. diplomats like George Kennan, people like the current director of the CIA, and thousands of smart observers warned that this would lead to war. So did Russia.
NATO is a commitment of each member to join in any war that any other member gets in. It's the very madness that created World War I. No country has a right to join it. To join it, any country has to agree to its war pact, and all other members have to agree to include that country and join in all of its wars.
When NATO destroys Afghanistan or Libya, the number of members doesn't make the crime more legal. Trump supposedly opposing NATO doesn't make NATO a good thing. What Trump did was get NATO members to buy more weapons. With enemies like that, NATO doesn't need friends.
Ukraine became independent of Russia when the Soviet Union ended, and kept Crimea which Russia had given it. Ukraine was divided ethnically and linguistically. But turning that divide violent took decades of effort by NATO on one side and Russia on the other. Both tried to influence elections. And in 2014, the U.S. helped facilitate a coup. The president fled for his life, and a U.S.-backed president came in. Ukraine banned the Russian language in various fora. Nazi elements killed Russian-speakers.
No, Ukraine is not a Nazi country, but there are Nazis in Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.
That was the context of the vote in Crimea to rejoin Russia. That was the context of the separatist efforts in the East, where both sides have fueled violence and hatred for 8 years.
Agreements negotiated called the Minsk 2 agreements provided self-governance for two regions, but Ukraine did not comply.
The Rand corporation, an arm of the U.S. military wrote a report pushing to arm Ukraine to drag Russia into a conflict that would damage Russia and create protests in Russia. A fact that should not stop our support for protests in Russia, but make us careful about what they lead to.
President Obama refused to arm Ukraine, predicting it would lead to where we are now. Trump and Biden armed Ukraine - and all of Eastern Europe. And Ukraine built up a military on one side of Donbass, with Russia doing the same on the other, and both claiming to be acting defensively.
Russia's demands have been to get the missiles and weapons and troops and NATO away from its border, exactly what the U.S. demanded when the USSR put missiles in Cuba. The U.S. refused to meet any such demands.
Russia had choices other than war. Russia was making a case to the global public, evacuating people threatened by Ukraine, and mocking predictions of an invasion. Russia could have embraced the rule of law and aid. While Russia's military costs 8% of what the U.S. spends, that's still enough that either Russia or the U.S. could have:
Kicked off a global reverse arms race, joined human rights and disarmament treaties, and joined the International Criminal Court.
If either the U.S. or Russia had tried for years, not to win Ukraine to its camp, but to train Ukrainians in noncooperation, Ukraine would be impossible to occupy.
We have to stop saying "I'm against all war except this one", every time there's a new war. We have to support alternatives to war.
We have to start spotting propaganda. We have to stop obsessing over the few foreign dictators that the U.S. doesn't fund and arm.
We can join in solidarity with courageous peace activists in Russia and Ukraine.
We can support groups like Nonviolent Peace Force that have greater success unarmed than do armed UN troops called "peacekeepers."
We can tell the U.S. government that there is no such thing as lethal aid and that we insist on actual aid, and serious diplomacy, and an end to NATO expansion.
We can demand that with the U.S. media now like peace demonstrations it cover some in the U.S. and include some antiwar voices.
We can turn out at events on Sunday to demand Russia out of Ukraine and NATO out of existence!
(c) 2022 David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
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 New Climate Report Shows Urgent Need To Adapt And Change By David Suzuki The longer we put off seriously addressing climate disruption's causes, the more we'll have to adapt to unavoidable consequences. Those who have been bleating that getting off fossil fuels will be too expensive are in for a surprise: adaptation can be far costlier than mitigation, and without the latter, we'll have to accelerate the former - and we still can't avoid doing what we should have started 35 years ago: quitting coal, oil and gas. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, shows we're at a point when the choice isn't between one or the other. We must do everything to reduce the worst effects of climate disruption and adapt to the damage we've already locked in with our profligate burning of fossil fuels and destruction of carbon sinks like forests, wetlands and peatlands. This is the second of three working group reports, which - along with three special reports and a synthesis report - make up the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report. The first section, released in August 2021, assessed the physical science and provided overwhelming evidence that "climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying." The third, expected in March, will be on climate change mitigation. As the IPCC shows - and as anyone can see - we're already living with impacts, and they'll worsen if we fail to change: more heat domes, wildfires, intense weather events, flooding, drought and extreme heat. As for "vulnerability," we know the climate crisis is disproportionately affecting those who have contributed to it the least. Through excess consumption and unsustainable lifestyles, wealthy people and nations continue to speed the trajectory to climate chaos. They also have more resources to insulate themselves from the impacts, although no one will be immune to the mounting consequences. The report contains slivers of hope, though. One is that some key methods of adapting to climate disruption will also help prevent it from accelerating beyond our control. That's because a major contributor to climate change, outside of burning fossil fuels, is destruction of natural systems that sequester carbon and help keep the carbon cycle balanced so human and other life can flourish. Protecting and restoring terrestrial, freshwater, ocean and coastal ecosystems can help draw out and keep carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and protect against now-unavoidable impacts. For example, although adapting to sea level rise sometimes means employing strategies like "managed retreat" or building infrastructure such as seawalls, it can also include restoring coastal ecosystems to absorb the impacts of events like storm surges and flooding. Adaptation also means ensuring strategies don't disproportionately affect the most vulnerable people and communities. The IPCC report notes this includes economic diversification, technologies and strategies that strengthen resilience, reduce inequalities and improve climate-related human well-being. It's not just about addressing an existential crisis. Adapting to and preventing the worst impacts of climate disruption will create a better society for everyone everywhere, with less inequality and waste, and with recognition of and respect for the importance of nature, of which we're a part. A world with billionaires, let alone those who can rocket into space - or worse, start planet-threatening wars - while so many people lack life's basic necessities, is a world out of whack. When we evaluate human "progress" according to how much we spend and consume, with little or no thought to actual well-being, something isn't right. When we view economic and population growth as necessary and good, even though our planet and all it has to offer are finite, it's impossible to imagine a sustainable future. The climate scientists and experts who compile the IPCC assessments examine the current and most relevant science regarding all aspects of the crisis. Assessments must then be agreed upon by the 195 member countries and jurisdictions (only a few countries have not formally signed the IPCC's 2015 Paris Agreement). Final reports tend to be conservative and watered down in order to garner agreement. Since the first assessment in 1990, evidence and certainty have become incontrovertible. This report, and the Sixth Assessment as a whole, show that we have no time to lose, that we must employ the many available and emerging solutions before it's too late. Doing so will usher in a better world for all. (c) 2021 Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. |
 The Wildness In Our Politics Is Bursting Out In Poisonous Blooms Across The Country Some of it is amusing. The incident at Joint Base Andrews is not. By Charles P. Pierce This does not fill me with confidence in my fellow citizens. From the Washington Post: Early Monday, officials said the facility's main gate had reopened after a "full sweep" of the base was completed. Officials said they confirmed that one of the intruders who was "on the loose had departed" the base. The other intruder, a 17-year-old male, was arrested Sunday night and remains in custody, base officials said. He was carrying a firearm at the time of his arrest, according to base officials. No shots were fired, and there were no reports of injuries. The intruders drove a stolen vehicle through a security checkpoint at the main gate about 9 p.m. and failed to heed guards' orders, base officials said late Sunday in a statement.Forgive me for being a bit snowflake-y here, but these facts are quite unnerving. Two young men bum-rush a security checkpoint at the president's airport. One of them is armed and...wait for it...one of them gets away. This reminds me of nothing more that an episode in 1993, when Mir Aimal Kasi shot up the main entrance to CIA headquarters in Langley, killing two Agency employees. Eventually, he was caught, tried, and executed, but it took four years and a multimillion reward to do it, and the guy was arrested in Pakistan with the help of Pakistani police. I have no doubt that, sooner or later, the second guy who breached security at Andrews will be caught, and probably not in Pakistan, either. He'll get busted in a diner, or in the chemistry lab at his high school. But the fact remains that these two guys thought it was a good idea to run the gates of Joint Base Andrews, armed, not long after the vice president was there, and they pretty much got away with 60 percent of it. Col. Tyler Schaff, the commander of Joint Base Andrews, commended responders who raised the installation's barriers and captured the suspect. Safeguarding the base and its personnel is a top priority, Schaff said.Dude, despite the barriers and the quick responders, one of these guys got away, on foot. And it was shortly after a good chunk of the executive branch had landed at the base. Harris and several Cabinet members had traveled to Selma, Ala., to commemorate the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in which police attacked peaceful protesters in 1965. They left Alabama on Air Force Two about 6:45 p.m. Sunday and landed in Maryland about 9 p.m. A White House official confirmed by about 9:40 p.m. that all four Cabinet secretaries - Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan - left the base safely.Nothing is as it was. The wildness in our politics, something that many of us saw building during the Obama years, is bursting out in poisonous blossoms all over the country. Some of it is truly comic-the People's Convoy, which was going to paralyze Washington but seems to be satisfied complicating the lives of people in Hagerstown, Maryland, has turned into a delightful burlesque. (Dig this cat, who apparently has come to Hagerstown because Pope Urban II told him to come.) But the incident at JBA is not amusing. It is almost more frightening because it apparently was the work of a couple of amateurs in a stolen vehicle. And one of them was still at large Monday morning, when everybody in Washington was going back to work. (c) 2022 Charles P. Pierce has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently 'Idiot America.' He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.
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 EVs are Freedom Cars: When You Fill Up Your Car With Gasoline, You're Helping Putin Destroy Ukraine By Juan Cole Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - Alex Mills writes that Russia produces 11 million barrels a day of petroleum and in 2021 exported 7.5 million barrels a day. That is about 11.5 percent of all the petroleum produced daily in the world. It is in part the income from those oil sales that helps Vladimir Putin pursue his brutal war of conquest in Ukraine. For the reasons given below, a US boycott of Russian petroleum will have no real effect. There is only one way to hurt Putin's bottom line and to avoid harming the earth at the same time. It is to accelerate the electrification of American transportation. We should call electric vehicles what they are: Freedom cars. Driving one is a declaration of independence from Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other dictatorial petro-states. Plus, electricity is cheap. When we leased an electric car, we just plugged it in at home and saw no real difference in our electricity bill. We have solar panels, so when we charged during the day, the fuel was free, from sunlight. Another advantage is that without an internal combustion engine, automobile repairs are less frequent and much less expensive. The Biden administration should carve out the $550 billion in green energy spending that was in the now moribund Build Back Better and get as much buy-in as possible from Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, and pass as much of it as it can, immediately. Not only would that step help rescue our planet from the bane of global heating but it would contribute to defunding Vladimir Putin's aggressive petro-state. WTKR News 3: "High gas prices have some switching to electric cars" Despite Americans' dislike of Putin, we are contributing to his bottom line. : Eliana Block and Evan Koslof at WUSA-9 in DC explain that the US imports about seven percent of its petroleum needs, including crude oil, from Russia. There have been calls in Congress to boycott these Russian imports. It should be noted that such a boycott would have no effect. The US would import from some other supplier, and another country will take the petroleum from Russia that the U.S. used to. Despite slightly different prices on various world exchanges, the global petroleum market is really just one market. Boycotts of countries are just a game of whack-a-mole as long as global demand stays constant. That is, when you buy gasoline, you are supporting the global price of oil, which benefits Vladimir Putin even though you might not be buying directly from him. The world produces 95 million barrels a day. Because of the economic recovery from the pandemic in many countries, and pent-up demand, the world wants more than that right now. Increased demand and level supply equals higher prices. The price of West Texas crude on March 3 was $107.67 per barrel. At the close of March 4, the London Brent exchange pegged oil at $118 per barrel. This price level was common in 2013, but in mid-2014 the oil industry entered a seven-year period of lower prices because of increased production and level demand or even depressed demand with an economic slowdown in China and elsewhere in 2015-2016. In 2020, as the pandemic hit, demand and prices cratered. But they have now come roaring back. US conservatives tied to the oil industry are clamoring for the Biden administration to let them drill in wildlife preserves and in your back yard. The Biden administration, however, is not significantly interfering with US oil drilling. More oil drilling and more fracking and more gasoline cars will just accelerate the climate emergency, since burning petroleum products puts billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide, a dangerous heat-trapping gas, into the atmosphere annually. Wrecking our environment is not going to help us survive Putin. Buying an electric car, though, and pressuring Congress to pass legislation to green our electricity grid, improve mass transportation, and discourage gasoline vehicles, would actually over time devastate oil prices and leave Putin with fewer resources to launch attacks on his neighbors. Using significantly less gasoline would cause oil prices to fall and deprive Putin of his bonanza. We'd produce less earth-wrecking carbon dioxide. And we'd save lots of money on gasoline. We can save ourselves in three different ways all at once with electric vehicles and electric commuter trains. (c) 2022 Juan R.I. Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively on modern Islamic movements in Egypt, the Persian Gulf and South Asia and has given numerous media interviews on the war on terrorism and the Iraq War. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years and continues to travel widely there. He speaks Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. |
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We're sanctioning Russian oligarchs up the wazoo, hoping it's a way to get Putin to stop his deadly attack on Ukraine.
But for this tactic to work, two conditions must be met: first, the US and our allies must be able to locate and tie up Russian oligarchic wealth. Second, Russian oligarchs must have enough power to stop Putin.
Let's take them one at a time:
Can we locate and tie up the wealth of Russian oligarchs?
Anecdotally, sanctions on the oligarchs appear to be working. Last Sunday, the billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska (on the US sanctions list) and banker Mikhail Fridman (on the EU's) both publicly urged an end to Putin's war.
Billionaire businessman Roman Abramovich has put his English soccer club up for sale and vowed to donate the proceeds to "all victims of the war in Ukraine." Banker and entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov told his 634,000 Instagram followers last week that "innocent people are dying in Ukraine now, every day, this is unthinkable and unacceptable."
But are these sanctions really biting? This is where a comparison of Russian oligarchs with American oligarchs comes in.
While Russian oligarchs (Russia's richest 0.01%) have hidden an estimated $200bn offshore (over half of their financial wealth), American oligarchs - America's 765 billionaires - have hidden $1.2tn (about 4% of their wealth), mostly to avoid paying taxes on it.
While American oligarchs park their income and wealth in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Russian oligarchs have hidden their most valuable assets in the United States and the European Union. The reason they do so is telling: western democracies follow the rule of law.
Under the rule of law, before a government can seize property it must follow lengthy and elaborate legal processes. As a result, American and European governments are finding their hands tied in actually taking control of the assets of Russian oligarchs.
American law makes it difficult even to discover what Russian oligarchs own in the US because they've hidden their assets behind complex trusts and shell corporations.
American laws governing taxes, corporations, transportation and banking are wonderfully convenient for the world's oligarchs.One out of every six aircraft in the United States, for example, is registered through trusts, Delaware corporations and even post office box addresses, making it almost impossible to discover their true owners.
This isn't an argument against sanctioning Russian oligarchs. It's just that we need to be clear-eyed about how difficult it is to do so.
Do Russian oligarchs have enough power to stop Putin?
American oligarchs have enormous political clout. In the 2012 presidential election (the most recent for which we have detailed data on individual contributions), the richest 0.01% of Americans - the richest 1% of the richest 1% - accounted for 40% of all campaign contributions.
What have American oligarchs got out of these campaign contributions? The lowest tax rates on the highest incomes in over a generation - and the lowest among all wealthy nations. They've also gotten an IRS so starved of resources it's barely able to enforce the law.
Russian oligarchs who have pledged loyalty to Putin arguably have less political power in Russia than do American oligarchs in the US.
In Putin's Russia, power is exercised by a narrow circle of officials and generals appointed by Putin, whom he has drawn largely from the former KGB. According to several Russian specialists I've spoken with over the last few days, this circle has become very small in recent months, now numbering perhaps a half dozen.
We should use whatever means are at our disposal to make Vladimir Putin end the brutal war he started. But it is proving difficult to use sanctions on specific oligarchs to get Putin to stop.
Perhaps we should be more ambitious. My Berkeley colleague Gabriel Zucman recommends that the US and the European Union freeze all offshore holdings of Russian nationals in excess of $10m. This would affect about 10,000 to 20,000 Russians who have benefited the most from Putin's rule.
Meanwhile, blanket sanctions against the Russian economy are having an effect. Over the past week they have caused the rouble to collapse and decimated Russian markets.
But the burden has fallen mostly on ordinary Russians, many of whom have already suffered from Putin's brutal regime.
As we've seen in North Korea and Iran, dictatorships don't depend on popular approval. In fact, widespread hardship can lead to even more repression and violence. We should remind ourselves that Putin is not synonymous with the Russian people.
(c) 2022 Robert B. Reich is the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His web site is www.robertreich.org.
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They're at it again: holding up US aid for Ukraine - as you read these words - while demanding more pollution and greater profits for Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas.
If it happened in any other developed country in the world, many of these senators would be in prison, or at least barred from office and paying huge fines.
Sabotage Ukraine aid because your donors paid you to? Sabotage your own country's energy and environmental policies because your donors promise you millions of dollars?
In every other advanced democracy in the world, that's called bribery and corruption and is criminal behavior.
Not only are such corrupt politicians held accountable by the legal systems of most other democracies; if word of their paid shilling became public they'd never get re-elected to their existing positions and probably couldn't even win an election as dog-catcher.
But here in America, thanks to five radicals on the Supreme Court, it's perfectly legal for legislators to take piles of cash from Big Oil and the billionaires it's made and then openly - proudly - trash America and abandon other democracies like Ukraine.
The Biden administration requested an emergency $10 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine attached to the federal budget. House Majority Whip Stenny Hoyer (D-MD), who's in charge of shepherding legislation in the House into law, pushed as hard as he could and got what he thought was a firm commitment for a congressional vote next Tuesday, March 8th.
Full contemporary funding of the federal government has already been dragged out over the past year with stunts by Republicans like Rick Scott, whose contribution to slowing the legislative process in the Senate was to block legislation to fund the Post Office. But that was a few weeks ago; Hoyer and Schumer still thought they could get funding through the Senate and onto the President's desk by next week.
Until, of course, Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby yesterday announced that he wants, as CNBC's Ylan Q. Mui reported, "a better sense of how much unspent money remains." That, of course, will drag things out another week or two, perfect for Putin to wipe the floor with the blood of the children of Ukraine.
Shelby was joined in blocking the new legislation as part of the 2022 budget by both oil-state senators from Louisiana, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, using a BS excuse that they wanted an accounting for disaster relief funds allocated from previous years in the 2020 budget.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the head of the Appropriations Committee overseeing it all, said, "They haven't said a word to me about it, so I don't know what to say." It's all just performance art for the benefit of the GOP's paymasters in the fossil fuel industry.
And then there was Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn holding up the federal budget for two full weeks while Putin built his forces on the Ukraine border because of "crack pipes." She says she's worried about America's opoid addiction epidemic. As the Tennessee Lookout noted:
"As a congresswoman in 2014, she co-sponsored the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act. That's a nice name for a bill that was written by a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, and one that significantly hinders the government's ability to halt suspicious shipments of narcotics."
Because of GOP obstruction, in the midst of the Russian rape of Ukraine, the United States is still running on Donald Trump's last budget, signed into law by Trump in December of 2020.
Let that sink in: Republicans are forcing the Biden administration to fiscally hold its breath on a two-year-old budget that reflects Trump's priorities instead of Biden's. And has not one word in it for Ukraine.
And they appear committed to holding up the 2022/23 budget legislation until after this fall's elections, so, if they win back either the House or Senate, they can make sure that President Biden never, throughout his entire first four years, will have been able to run the country according to his own budget and priorities.
But that's just the start.
Back on February 17th, as the world watched Russian forces mass along the Ukrainian border, 27 Republican senators put the Biden administration on notice that their top priority wasn't passing a budget but, instead, exploiting the Ukraine crisis to increase the profits of the oil, coal and gas industries.
Those senators, who've received, according to OpenSecrets.org and Judd Legum's Popular.info newsletter, "a combined total of $4,270,530 from oil and gas industry PACS" and "nearly $6 million from executives and other employees of oil and gas companies," aren't doing what's best for America: they're nakedly shilling for the industries that line their pockets, fly them around in private jets, and wine and dine them.
In most European countries (except Orban's Hungary) they'd be called, at the very least, "corrupt." The lead author of their letter, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, "has received $294,600 from oil and gas industry PACs and $290,084 from oil and gas industry employees since 2017."
March 1st, the day before the State of the Union address, 23 Republican senators openly declared their loyalty to the fossil fuel industry, demanding that the Biden administration move away from promoting green energy or regulating fossil fuel pollution and let the oil barons have their way with us and our atmosphere.
In response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley lied in a tweet that the Biden administration had reduced America's energy independence (the opposite is true), while coal/gas/oil shilling Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines issued a statement demanding that, because of Ukraine, "Biden must restart the Keystone XL pipeline now."
Which is rather bizarre when you think of it, because that pipeline is not carrying American fossil fuels; it's a line from Canada to the refineries on the Gulf Coast so its products can be sold for export. But, hey, when you're sucking in millions of dollars in ways the Supreme Court legalized with Citizens United, the truth and the fate of future generations are sooo easy to ignore.
Fortunately, not all the politicians of the developed world are on the take, and other nations' politicians are willing to do something about both Ukraine and the way fossil fuels are ravaging our planet.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen - a politician who is not taking money from Big Oil or American oligarchs - pointed out that the one thing the western world could do to most cripple Russia's President Putin is to turn even more rapidly to renewables.
If Europe stops buying his oil and thus cuts fossil fuel consumption so much that prices drop, it will badly hurt Putin's ability to fund his military.
Forty percent of the Russian economy comes from exporting fossil fuels, after all: if the world goes with renewables, Putin will find himself trying to sell into a market with no buyers.
"A strong European Union cannot be so reliant on an energy supplier that threatens to start a war on our continent," von der Leyen told a group of European legislators this week. "We are doubling down on renewables. This will increase Europe's strategic independence on energy."
Both the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are saying the same thing, but Republicans, beholden to fossil fuel billionaires and the massive oil corporations the Supreme Court has allowed to buy them, are trying to use this moment to pump even more of that industry's very profitable poisons into our atmosphere.
The EU this week committed to "a 40 percent reduction in fossil fuel use" in the next 8 years and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as I noted in my Daily Rant yesterday, declared this week that Germany can now last a year or more with no Russian fossil fuels and is working to make that permanent.
That is how a rational nation responds to a petrostate like Russia committing massive war crimes.
But here in the US, the fossil fuel industry continues to inject millions into the political veins of virtually every Republican in the US Congress and state legislatures across the country.
In the process, they're blocking aid to Ukraine, damaging the security of our nation, destroying our atmosphere, and consigning America's and the world's children to an increasingly unimaginable hellscape of war, wildfires, drought, flooding and famine.
Vladimir Putin must be smiling ear-to-ear.
(c) 2022 Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.
~~~ Jeff Darcy ~~~ 
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Parting Shots -
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