Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Andrew Brown. Enjoy!

"Beware of self-righteousness. The black devil of licentiousness destroys his hundreds, but the white devil of self-righteousness destroys his thousands."

-- Charles Spurgeon

News and Opinion

Excellent, worth a click and a full read:

Hedges: The Lie of American Innocence

The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States. It is unclear how anyone would try Putin for war crimes since Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But justice is not the point. Politicians like Biden, who do not accept responsibility for our well-documented war crimes, bolster their moral credentials by demonizing their adversaries. They know the chance of Putin facing justice is zero. And they know their chance of facing justice is the same.

We know who our most recent war criminals are, among others: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Asst. Atty. Gen. Jay Bybee, former Dep. Asst. Atty. Gen. John Yoo, who set up the legal framework to authorize torture; the helicopter pilots who gunned down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks. We have evidence of the crimes they committed. But, like Putin’s Russia, those who expose these crimes are silenced and persecuted. Julian Assange, even though he is not a US citizen and his WikiLeaks site is not a US-based publication, is charged under the US Espionage Act for making public numerous US war crimes. Assange, currently housed in a high security prison in London, is fighting a losing battle in the British courts to block his extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison. One set of rules for Russia, another set of rules for the United States. Weeping crocodile tears for the Russian media, which is being heavily censored by Putin, while ignoring the plight of the most important publisher of our generation speaks volumes about how much the ruling class cares about press freedom and truth.

If we demand justice for Ukrainians, as we should, we must also demand justice for the one million people killed — 400,000 of whom were noncombatants — by our invasions, occupations and aerial assaults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. We must demand justice for those who were wounded, became sick or died because we destroyed hospitals and infrastructure. We must demand justice for the thousands of soldiers and marines who were killed, and many more who were wounded and are living with lifelong disabilities, in wars launched and sustained on lies. We must demand justice for the 38 million people who have been displaced or become refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, a number that exceeds the total of all those displaced in all wars since 1900, apart from World War II, according to the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Tens of millions of people, who had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, were killed, wounded, lost their homes, and saw their lives and their families destroyed because of our war crimes. Who will cry out for them?

Every effort to hold our war criminals accountable has been rebuffed by Congress, by the courts, by the media and by the two ruling political parties. The Center for Constitutional Rights, blocked from bringing cases in US courts against the architects of these preemptive wars, which are defined by post-Nuremberg laws as “criminal wars of aggression,” filed motions in German courts to hold US leaders to account for gross violations of the Geneva Convention, including the sanctioning of torture in black sites such as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. ...

Historically, those who are prosecuted for war crimes, whether the Nazi hierarchy at Nuremberg or the leaders of Liberia, Chad, Serbia, and Bosnia, are prosecuted because they lost the war and because they are adversaries of the United States. There will be no prosecution of Saudi Arabian rulers for the war crimes committed in Yemen or for the US military and political leadership for the war crimes they carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, or a generation earlier in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The atrocities we commit, such as My Lai, where 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were gunned down by US soldiers, which are made public, are dealt with by finding a scapegoat, usually a low-ranking officer who is given a symbolic sentence. Lt. William Calley served three years under house arrest for the killings at My Lai. Eleven US soldiers, none of whom were officers, were convicted of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But the architects and overlords of our industrial slaughter, including Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Gen. Curtis LeMay, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Lyndon Johnson, Gen. William Westmoreland, George W. Bush, Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are never held to account. They leave power to become venerated elder statesmen.

Fresh off of The Guardian propaganda catapult. I really enjoyed little Neddy Price's precious comments, which must have been hard to spit out with a log in his eye.

Russia threatens to cut ties with US after Biden labels Putin a ‘war criminal’

Russia has warned of a breach of its relations with Washington and summoned the US ambassador in Moscow for an official protest over Joe Biden’s labelling of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, as the US president held talks with European allies on efforts to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ...

The Russian foreign ministry said it had summoned the US ambassador, John Sullivan, for a meeting over “recent unacceptable statements” by Biden about Putin, days after Biden called Putin a “war criminal” amid the bombardment of Ukrainian cities.

The ministry said in a statement “it was emphasised that remarks such as these by the American president, which are unworthy of a state figure of such a high rank, put Russian-American relations on the verge of a breach”. ...

Ned Price, the state department spokesperson, derided the Kremlin’s complaints about Biden’s language in the context of a brutal war. “It’s awfully rich to hear a country speak about ‘inappropriate comments’ when that same country is engaged in mass slaughter, including strikes and attacks that have resulted in civilian lives [lost], strikes and attacks, barrages that have levelled civilian cities, an invasion of 100,000 plus forces against a largely civilian population,” Price said.

The Pentagon on Monday echoed the president’s accusations.

Kim Iversen: US Media IGNORES Zelenskyy's Anti-Democratic CRACKDOWN On Dissent

The Brutal War on Yemen

Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe, with 17.4 million people now in need of food assistance and a growing portion of the population coping with emergency levels of hunger, three UN agencies warned on March 14. “The humanitarian situation in the country is poised to get even worse between June and December 2022, with the number of people who likely will be unable to meet their minimum food needs in Yemen possibly reaching a record 19 million people in that period.” ...

At the same time, an additional 1.6 million people in the country are expected to fall into emergency levels of hunger, taking the total to 7.3 million people by the end of the year, the agencies added. The IPC report also shows a persistent high level of acute malnutrition among children under the age of 5. Across Yemen, 2.2 million children are acutely malnourished, including nearly more than half a million children facing severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. In addition, around 1.3 million pregnant or nursing mothers are acutely malnourished. ...

Conflict remains the primary underlying driver of hunger in Yemen. The economic crisis – a by-product of conflict – and the depreciation of the currency have pushed food prices in 2021 to their highest levels since 2015, warn the United Nations agencies. ...

The ongoing war on Yemen was launched seven years ago by a Saudi Arabia/United Arab Emirates coalition, heavily armed by the United States and Europe with arms deals amounting to an estimated 100 billion U.S. dollars.

"The destruction of armies rather than the capture of cities"

Russia says it used hypersonic missiles in Ukraine again

Russia’s defence ministry says it attacked Ukraine with cruise missiles from ships in the Black and Caspian Seas, and with hypersonic missiles from Crimean airspace.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday that the Kinzhal (Dagger) hypersonic missile hit a Ukrainian fuel depot in Kostiantynivka near the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv.

He added: “Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from the waters of the Black Sea against the Nizhyn plant that repairs Ukrainian armoured vehicles damaged in fighting.”

The attacks marked the second day in a row that Russia used the Kinzhal, a weapon capable of striking targets 2,000km (1,250 miles) away at 10 times the speed of sound.

Konashenkov added that another attack by air-launched missiles hit a facility in Ovruch in the northern Zhytomyr region where foreign fighters and Ukrainian special forces were based.

Peace Activists Occupy Roof of Raytheon Building to Protest War Profiteering

Peace activists climbed atop and occupied the roof of a Raytheon facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Monday to protest the massive military contractor's war profiteering in Ukraine, Yemen, Palestine, and elsewhere across the globe.

Carried out by a small group of activists with Resist and Abolish the Military-Industrial Complex (RAM INC), the demonstration came a day after the 19th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and as Russian forces continued their deadly assault on Ukraine.

"With every war and every conflict, Raytheon's profits multiply," one of the activists involved in Monday's demonstration said in a statement. "Raytheon profits multiply as bombs fall on schools, wedding tents, hospitals, homes, and communities. Living, breathing, human beings are being killed. Lives are being destroyed, all for profit."

Once they reached the roof of the building, the activists draped banners over the railing that read "End All Wars, End All Empires" and "Raytheon Profits From Death in Yemen, Palestine, and Ukraine."

New FBI documents link Saudi spy in California to 9/11 attacks

Soon after the 9/11 attacks two decades ago, the FBI quietly launched an investigation into a seemingly obscure Saudi Arabian government bureaucrat in Southern California. The man claimed to be nothing more than a Saudi aviation official who innocently happened to befriend two Islamic jihadists in the months before they carried out the 9/11 attacks. That story now appears to be false. The alleged aviation official was really a Saudi spy who reported directly to a Saudi prince who happened to be the kingdom’s influential ambassador in Washington and a close friend of President George W. Bush and other top U.S. government officials. ...

The story of the spy and the ambassador-prince emerged in recent days as the centerpiece of a startling series of revelations in a newly declassified FBI report . ...

A 510-page secret FBI report, written in 2017 and declassified last week without any fanfare by the FBI or Justice Department, concludes that the California-based Saudi spy, Omar al Bayoumi, not only helped several 9/11 hijackers to find housing in San Diego, but that there was a “50/50 chance” he “had advanced knowledge” of their deadly plans. ... Before the 9/11 attacks, the FBI report says, Bayoumi was on the payroll of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, the kingdom’s influential U.S. ambassador who was so close to the Bush administration and visited the White House so often that he was nicknamed “Bandar Bush.”

The FBI concluded that Bayoumi regularly passed intelligence findings to Bandar. But the report does not say whether Bayoumi told Bandar that he had met with two members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network who had flown to California in early 2000 to begin preparations for attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Harvard Law School Recognizes Israel as Apartheid Regime

The Massachusetts-based Harvard Law School has recognized Israel as an apartheid regime, joining an array of organizations labeling Israel as such for its practices in occupied Palestine, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

In a recent report to the United Nations, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School joined the international community by recognizing the apartheid character of the Israeli regime.

The 22-page joint report, titled ‘Apartheid in the Occupied West Bank: A Legal Analysis of Israel’s Actions’, which was developed in collaboration with the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, found that the Israel regime’s practices in the occupied West Bank amounted to criminal activities in breach of the prohibition of apartheid.

The report focuses on the legal regime enforced by Israel against Palestinians specifically in the occupied West Bank, and “finds that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid and amount to the crime of apartheid under international law.”

As Biden Continues Privatization Ploy, Sanders Vows to Reintroduce Medicare for All

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday said he intends to reintroduce Medicare for All legislation in the U.S. Senate in the coming days as the Biden administration moves ahead with a Medicare privatization scheme and millions of Americans remain at imminent risk of losing their insurance once pandemic protections expire.

"In the midst of the current set of horrors—war, oligarchy, pandemics, inflation, climate change, etc.—we must continue the fight to establish healthcare as a human right, not a privilege," Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, wrote in a Twitter post. "I will soon be reintroducing our Medicare for All legislation."

Sanders' announcement came weeks after Biden's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that instead of terminating a Medicare privatization experiment hatched under the Trump administration, it would rebrand the pilot program and make minor changes that critics—including physicians and Medicare for All advocates—say would leave the scheme's most dangerous components intact.

Meanwhile, millions of people across the U.S. are set to lose Medicaid benefits once the federally declared coronavirus public health emergency (PHE) expires. In January, the Biden administration extended the PHE through April 16, but it's unclear whether there will be another extension.

Writing for The Daily Poster earlier this month, healthcare policy writer Libby Watson warned that "the potential scale of this mass disenrollment could be huge: The Urban Institute estimated in September that up to 15 million people could lose their Medicaid coverage when the PHE ends."

Ketanji Brown Jackson Vows to Uphold Equal Justice Under Law at Historic SCOTUS Confirmation Hearing

Hundreds of Chevron workers at California refinery go on strike

Hundreds of Chevron workers in California went on strike Monday after the company and the United Steelworkers union failed to reach a contract agreement.

More than 500 workers at a refinery producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and lubricating oils in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Richmond began striking at 12.01am, the union said in an email. Workers recently voted down a contract offer from Chevron, and the company refused to return to the bargaining table.

Refinery operations will continue as normal, Chevron said. But if the strike were to halt operations at the refinery, that could negatively affect fuel prices in California, which already has the highest gas prices in the US at $5.86 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.

“It would be coming at a very unfortunate time because we already have a shortage of refinery capacity in California right now, and so losing even one or two percent of the state’s refinery capacity would probably result in a noticeable increase in gasoline prices,” Severin Borenstein, a UC Berkeley professor, told KTVU. ...

Chevron, which is based in San Ramon, California, has said it does not expect the strike to cause any supply chain issues and told KTVU it would bring in trained workers to replace those on strike.

UN ocean treaty summit collapses as states accused of dragging out talks

UN member states have failed to agree on a treaty to protect the high seas from exploitation, with scientists, environmentalists and conservation organisations blaming states that were “dragging their feet” for the “glacial pace” of talks. The longer the negotiations took, the more wildlife would be lost from the ocean, they warned, urging ministers and heads of state to work together with the president of the UN high seas conference to speed up a further round of negotiations to close a “governance vacuum” on the high seas.

Most of the ocean lies outside the exclusive economic zones controlled by individual states. Of this 64% of the high seas that lie beyond territorial limits, only 1.2% is now protected.

One scientist described the treaty as the most significant ocean protection agreement in four decades. Known as the BBNJ (biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction) ocean treaty, its aim is to create a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas to prevent loss of wildlife, oversee industrial fishing, and share out the “genetic resources” of the sea.

Dr Essam Mohammed, Eritrea’s representative in the negotiations and interim director general of WorldFish, a non-profit research institute, said: “At the moment, there is a governance vacuum in the high seas, and for the ocean and developing countries, the status quo simply isn’t an option.” Swiftly advancing marine technology would lead to “an unprecedented race for marine resources in unregulated waters”, Mohammed said. “The delay in striking a deal means high risk for the health of the ocean. ...

Prof Alex Rogers, a marine ecologist and science director of the non-profit company REV Ocean, said: “There are states here that are dragging their feet and deliberately prolonging the treaty [talks]. But we know the ocean is being degraded and is losing biodiversity. Climate is also having an impact on the ocean. The longer these negotiations are strung out, the more biodiversity we lose.”

The negotiations, the fourth round since 2018, ended late on Friday without agreement and without a schedule set for further discussions.

World water day: Groundwater sources are overexploited

‘It’s not supposed to be white’: one of the Great Barrier Reef’s healthiest reefs succumbs to bleaching

Through a snorkel mask, the corals struggling for survival in the heat are easy to spot. Some have turned white while others are pouring out a fluorescent pigment into their flesh – it’s spectacular, but it’s also a sign of a coral in deep distress. This is John Brewer Reef about 70km off Townsville in Queensland – the centre of a widespread coral bleaching event. For hundreds of kilometres in either direction, reefs are going through the same battle.

As we float over one of about 3,000 individual reefs that make up the vast Great Barrier Reef on Sunday afternoon, two scientists are touching down in Brisbane for a 10-day United Nations monitoring mission. Just to the south, there’s another mission. Scientists are in the air, surveying the bleaching from above in a series of government-chartered flights that, by the middle of this week, will have traversed the entire length of the 2,300-km reef.

As the Guardian enters the water, the first thing Dr Adam Smith does is glance at his dive watch. It tells him the water is 29C. That is warm. Staghorn corals clinging to the reef edge come into view and almost all are partly or entirely white. Thousands of colourful reef fish, some graceful sharks, and lots of still-healthy corals share the space with the strugglers. Soft corals nestled in the gaps on the top of the reef are white. Other corals shaped like giant dinner plates are coping better – but about half are giving off a spectacular but worrying fluorescent show of pinks and blues.

“The coral is basically starving,” says Smith, the managing director of consultancy firm Reef Ecologic. “We’ve definitely just seen corals that are stressed and white. This is one of the healthiest reefs off Townsville and one of the best reefs on the whole Great Barrier Reef. So for these corals to be stressed and damaged … well, it’s likely it’s the same at other reefs down here.”

Also of Interest

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

Ukraine Updates and Scott Ritter on Russia Military Strategy and Progress

Bits Of Interest From The War In Ukraine

Defending Ukrainian “Democracy”: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

US Plots to Upset Russia-Turkey Relations as Ankara Plays Key Role in Ukraine Peace Talks

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Imperial Infantilism

Is Chuck Todd a Chemical Agent?

Krystal Ball: Have the BREAD RIOTS Already Begun?

'How will we survive?': Bangladesh launches food subsidies as Ukraine war sees prices soar

A Little Night Music

Andrew Brown - Something Can Go Wrong

Andrew Brown - You Better Stop

Andrew Brown - Let's Get Together

Andrew Brown - You Ought To Be Ashamed

Andrew Brown - You Started Something

Andrew Brown - You Made Me Suffer

Andrew Brown - Blues Do Something To Me

Andrew Brown - Losing Hand

Andrew Brown - For Liz