ATF joins investigation into New Year’s Day fire which destroyed Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee

DJK Freeman
WSWS.ORG

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided abortion services, was declared a total loss after fire destroyed the building in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

Firefighters were alerted to heavy smoke coming from the building at 6:40 a.m. on January 1. By the time fire crews arrived at the site, flames were coming through the roof, and most of the building was engulfed. The facility, which offers health care to workers in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the city, had been closed and undergoing renovations since December 7. No injuries from the fire were reported.

Knoxville Planned Parenthood clinic on fire (Source: Twitter/@cole_sull)

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. However, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) immediately joined local authorities in the investigation of the incident due to the politically charged atmosphere around the issues of abortion and women’s health services throughout the nation.

Later this year the Supreme Court of the United States could overturn the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade by upholding a Mississippi law blocking abortions after 15 weeks. Last year saw more anti-abortion regulations passed by state legislatures than at any point since abortion was legalized by the 1973 landmark decision. Should the ruling be overturned, a wave of legislation effectively banning abortion is expected to follow or go into immediate effect in states throughout the country.

In 2020, Tennessee passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. The “fetal heartbeat bill” would have banned abortions after six weeks, before many women even suspect they are pregnant. Though the law was blocked by a judicial ruling less than one hour after it was signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee, far-right members of the legislature and fascistic extremists with ties to the January 6 coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol continued the attack on workers’ access to abortion in Tennessee.

The New Year’s Day fire occurred just under a year after shots were fired by a masked gunman into the front doors of the clinic on January 22, 2021, the 48th anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade. While no one was charged with the attack, suspicions were raised about the involvement of members of the Patriot Church in neighboring Loudon County whose pastor has ties to right-wing extremists in Tennessee and throughout the US.

The pastor of Patriot Church, Ken Peters, is the founder of The Church at Planned Parenthood (TCAPP) which he started in Spokane, Washington, in 2018. TCAPP targets Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country at which to hold their monthly “services.” During these events, participants crowd the sidewalks and entrances to clinics, singing, praying and shouting at patients and passersby. Peters has been known to use his megaphone at these demonstrations to brag about the number of congregants who carry guns to the gatherings and to tantalize his followers with scripture-based calls to violence.

In comments to a local TV news station about the New Year’s Day fire at the Knoxville clinic, Peters remarked: “Christians would never participate in any sort of destruction of property, or looting, or rioting.” This is ironic coming from a pastor who flew on a private jet to Washington D.C. on the eve of January 6 to speak at a rally that resulted in the storming of the Capitol by fascistic groups intent on overthrowing the Constitution.

He was also instrumental in shutting down Knox County Schools for a day and disrupting schools for a week after a federal judge imposed a mask mandate in the district to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In September, Peters encouraged parents to defy the judge’s ruling by having their children refuse to wear masks in school. The district cancelled classes in order to prepare for the onslaught of anti-mandate reaction and the subsequent safety issues posed by unmasked students in classrooms. Throughout the week, the pastor rallied families and sympathizers to converge at school entrances with signs disparaging those who abided by the law and wore masks, further hampering efforts to continue instruction despite scores of teachers, school staff and students being absent due to a back-to-school surge of the pandemic.

Amid the accelerating economic and social crisis spurred on by COVID-19 pandemic, the aim of these far-right extremist attacks on the services provided by Planned Parenthood and the employment of public safety measures during the pandemic, administered by the entire political establishment, is to divide the working class and waylay the growing class struggle into reactionary attacks on the most exploited layers of workers.

The World Socialist WebSite called attention to this tactic of the ruling elites on December2: “The far-right political forces being mobilized to destroy the right to abortion are the same forces that have played a leading role in demanding the ending of all restrictions on the COVID-19 pandemic and which came close to establishing a fascist dictatorship with the coup attempt of January 6.”

The Democrats, culpable for the 826,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and a dramatic erosion of democratic rights and living standards, have enabled the far-reaching attacks on the health and well-being of the working class while cloaking themselves in the mantle of civility and bipartisanship.

The fight to uphold the right to abortion is a class question; it requires a politically independent movement of the working class. The ruling elite and its representatives have made clear their determination to subordinate the health and rights of workers to Wall Street and ever-skyrocketing profits. The working class must respond through a mass movement, coordinated on a global scale, aimed at the overturn of the capitalist system which bears responsibility for these social crimes.

‘It Sends the Wrong Message’: Inside the GOP Civil War Over the Jan. 6 ‘Martyrs’

FIGHT FOR THE HEART OF THE PARTY

Some local GOP chapters are hosting Jan. 6 anniversary events that valorize the Capitol attackers as “patriots” or “political prisoners”—enraging the party’s remaining moderates.

Kelly Weill
Reporter
Published Jan. 03, 2022 

Credit: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Cobb County, Georgia’s Republican party will gather for a candlelight vigil—not to condemn the attack, but to recognize “J6 Patriots held in DC prison.”

The event will feature a speech by the founder of “Women for America First,” the group that secured permits for the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the deadly riot. And the Cobb County event will begin with a livestreamed Donald Trump speech, in which the former president is expected to double down on his lies about winning the 2020 election.

The local Republican party’s event is among more than a dozen Jan. 6 anniversary events that valorize the Capitol attackers as “patriots,” “political prisoners,” or “martyrs.”

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“It sends the wrong message,” Jason Shepherd, the former chair of the Cobb County GOP told The Daily Beast. “It goes to the heart of what the Republican party's having to deal with, and that is: do we believe in the core values of the party, the principles of the party that are in our platform, or are we simply following one person?”


The Jan. 6 commemorative events come amid a national reckoning over the riot, which saw thousands of Trump supporters march on the Capitol, many breaking into the building following a speech in which Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election to have been stolen. In the attack’s immediate aftermath, Republican leaders issued loud condemnations of the riot, even rebuking Trump for his role in stoking the attack, leading to speculation that the former president had finally lost his grasp on the GOP.

But Republicans soon adopted a more forgiving stance on the Capitol attack, said Brian Hughes, cofounder and associate director of American University’s Polarization and Extremism and Research Innovation Lab.

“There has been an evolution,” Hughes told The Daily Beast. “The attack has been metabolized by the far rightwing media, such that the initial disavows that were seen as the necessary response have been able to evolve into this talking point of ‘political prisoners’ being because of their beliefs.”

Some of that messaging has been taken up by elected officials, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene whose newly redistricted constituency includes parts of Cobb County. In November, Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert visited what Greene called the “patriot wing” of the D.C. jail, where some alleged Capitol rioters are being held pre-trial. Greene later described the defendants as “political prisoners of war.”

“One of the things I noticed in the purge has been a lot of the new people who came in after the 2020 election getting rid of the Trump supporters who joined in 2016.”

The sloganeering has also been promoted by fringe groups like “Look Ahead America" (LAA), which has organized past demonstrations at the D.C. jail, and is responsible for most of the planned Jan. 6 anniversary “vigils.”

LAA is the work of Matt Braynard, who worked on Trump’s first presidential campaign for five months before getting fired. Braynard previously made headlines for a September rally in defense of Capitol rioters. The event received little buy-in from Trump’s inner circles, and received paltry turnout. Undeterred, Braynard and LAA are advertising 16 anniversary events on Jan. 6, ranging from a “vigil” outside the D.C. jail, to demonstrations in seven states, the Daily Dot previously reported.

Many of those events take place outside courthouses or in parks. Another Jan. 6 event, organized by a far-right political candidate, calls for a “patriot martyr vigil” outside the Orange County, California FBI office.

The event’s organizer, Nick Taurus, is an outspoken fan of the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and is currently running a longshot campaign to unseat Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in California. Taurus is a longtime participant in physical clashes with the left. This summer, two weeks after announcing his candidacy, he uploaded a video montage of himself ripping up a Black Lives Matter sign and repeatedly punching a man who was on the ground. The montage is set against an audio clip of Barry Goldwater proclaiming that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Other footage from the rally at which Taurus ripped the Black Lives Matter sign shows him punching and kicking people, and chanting “fuck that bitch” about Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by police in 2020.

Shepherd, the former Cobb County GOP chair, linked the events to a rightward shift he observed in his party last year. (Shepherd resigned in October, after the Cobb County GOP moved to censure Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Trump foe. Shepherd objected, arguing that the censure was outside the group’s powers, and that it jeopardized the local party’s standing as a neutral voice within Republican politics.)

Trump’s loss inspired a wave of newly energized supporters to join the Cobb County GOP, to the chagrin of some older members, he said.

“One of the things I noticed in the purge has been a lot of the new people who came in after the 2020 election getting rid of the Trump supporters who joined in 2016,” Shepherd said. “That’s where the sort-of civil war comes.”

The Cobb County GOP has rejected accusations that its anniversary event “glorified” the Capitol attack.


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“The intent of the Cobb GOP January 6th Candlelight Prayer Vigil is to acknowledge Americans who lost their lives and to pray for those who have been denied justice,” the group said in a statement, referring to Capitol rioters awaiting trial.

But the statement hardly condemned the attack, only noting that “to those who have cast quick judgement concerning this event, under no uncertain terms are we condoning any form of violence nor the glorification of what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. This miscarriage of justice should concern ALL AMERICANS. It’s unfortunate that so many have issues with prayer. Everyone should be concerned when our Constitutional rights are being abused.”

Hughes, the American University researcher, said Republican talking points around Jan. 6 have always been contradictory.

Upcoming anniversary events are both “a celebration and a disavowal at the same time,” Hughes said. “These recognitions that come from the far right are going to be contradictory, and they’re going to be incoherent in some cases, but that’s not an impediment to the project. It’s actually central to the project.

“It’s very important that, on one hand, these rallies and commemorations continue to provide this ideological cover, that Jan. 6 was actually about ‘preserving democracy,’ which has to do with the lie that the election was ‘stolen.’ But then at the same time, there is this kind of avowal of violence that goes along with it.”

Some old-guard Georgia Republicans took issue with the Cobb County GOP’s Jan. 6 event, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sam Olens, Georgia’s former Republican Attorney General, tweeted about the event, writing that “I yearn for the return of the Isakson / Coverdell Georgia Republican Party.”

Isakson, a former U.S. senator from Cobb County, was a moderate Republican who died last month: “someone who was able to build bridges, who could work with both Donald Trump and across the aisle with Senate Democrats,” Shepherd recalled.

Isakson’s memorial services will also be held on Jan. 6.

Elizabeth Holmes Tried and Failed to Use MeToo To Save Herself

HAIL MARY

As a survivor and advocate, her “coercive control” defense—which included exploiting her college rape—offended me to the core.


Susan Crumiller
Published Jan. 03, 2022

OPINION
NurPhoto

Theranos! It sounds like a cross between a Greek god and a Marvel villain, representing hubris, deception and manipulation. The company’s avatar was Elizabeth Holmes, one of the most fascinating figures of our times with her turtlenecks, gigantic eyes and weird-ass voice who was found guilty on four of 11 criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy, with the jury hanging on three others.

Holmes’s lies were so outrageous that the spectacle would be almost comical in retrospect, if not for the real people whose lives were affected by the bogus test results she touted. Fake blood tests, on fake equipment, with fake results for people from a business built on fake partnerships and fake projections.

And if not for the fact that she used her identity as a woman in a male-dominated tech world to try and convince people to believe her at every step of the way.

Her mostly failed Hail Mary defense was the wild revelation that her ex and former co-exec, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, had been abusing her while secretly pulling the strings during the years of alleged fraud, grift, and glossy magazine profiles.

Thank god the jury didn’t fall for all of her bullshit.

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It’s easy in hindsight to mock her investors, all of the idiot men who threw money at her, many of them not thinking—shall we say—with their brains. But idiot men throw money at other men all the time, too. Holmes is a master manipulator and her femininity didn’t give her any special advantage, it just gave her different tools.

She brought new tools to her trial, too, as her bombshell “coercive control” defense took direct aim at the #MeToo movement’s biggest weakness: That no one actually believes women all the time, since women are, in fact, people and people lie and dissemble. Emmett Till’s accuser comes to mind.

Nonetheless, the prosecution fought valiantly to extricate the abuse claims from the fraud claims. “Your verdict does not validate her claims of abuse,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Schenk told the jury, adding, “You do not need to decide whether that abuse happened.” Meanwhile, Holmes’s attorneys didn’t even mention the coercive control defense in their closing statements. Perhaps they felt they had achieved what they had set out to simply by muddying the waters.


Elizabeth Holmes Wrote Bad Love Poetry as Theranos Tanked
‘MY WATER AND OCEAN’
Kate Briquelet


Of course, women don’t often lie about domestic and sexual abuse. Discrimination litigators like myself fight the unwinnable “he said/ she said” battle every single day. For every abuser that is outed, you’ll find decades of public accusations. Survivors have been disbelieved, mocked, ridiculed, blamed, and ignored for all of human history. To this day, when survivors come forward, they know to expect an onslaught of backlash. It’s one of the scariest things a person can do, because in reality, many people’s attitudes have not caught up with the lip service given in well-crafted publicist statements.

But “Believing Women” has become a performative thing people do publicly, an homage they pay to equality, like Mother’s Day tributes. The problem with these tributes is that they are often false.

When people pretend to believe all women, what most of them are really saying is, “we have to say that we believe them, even though privately we obviously don’t.”

With her defense, Holmes attempted to capitalize upon this societal ambivalence. By all appearances, she seems to be a lying sociopath whose words should have zero weight. But the lengthy history of acceptance of violence against women makes it feel extremely difficult to accuse a woman of lying about domestic abuse. It feels like giving comfort to the enemy.

The problem with this attitude is it is silencing. When Tara Reade accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, I asked a number of female colleagues—fellow anti-discrimination attorneys—whether they would state publicly with me that they didn’t believe Reade. Nobody would do it, although many had expressed just this sentiment in private.

I don’t blame them for their predicament, or the feeling that MeToo has become some sort of zero-sum game. Feminists and sex-abuse activists feel like it’s us against the world, and there must be no cracks in the façade. Institutions coalesce around abusers as a matter of routine. Survivors often effectively suffer more punishment than their abusers do.

But ultimately, the zero-sum game is dehumanizing to women. It gives cover to private disbelief, and gives skeptics more cover—not less—to think that women are liars, and our accusations should be disregarded. It turns people into hypocrites.

It pretends that Elizabeth Holmes is somehow representative or indicative of all women, as opposed to an incredibly fascinating, history-making outlier. It’s counterproductive. The worst thing we can do for women is to pretend that this verdict is somehow a referendum on women, on “girlbosses”, on anything other than one unsuccessful criminal. Holmes is no more representative of women than Bernie Madoff is of men.

I’ll admit that there’s something satisfying about seeing a woman in the swindle game. There are plenty of jokes to be made about how adding a woman to the ranks of dudebros on the make is a form of progress. And it’s true, in a way: There is so much sexism in tech, and what Holmes did is, while obviously not laudatory, certainly awe-inspiring. That is until you remember the victims—not the investors who couldn’t be bothered to do their homework but the consumers of her dubious product, who suffered real consequences.

But the cynical #MeToo ploy prevented me from rooting for her. As an attorney, I admire her defense strategy. But as a survivor and advocate, her “coercive control” defense—which included exploiting her college rape by making it into grist for her origin story—offends me to the core. It adds to the unfair skepticism that survivors already face.

For the sake of #MeToo, I’m glad she didn’t get away with all of it.

Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers wants to use $700 million in state funds for a border wall

By Alisa Reznick

Published: Monday, January 3, 2022 - 

Alisa Reznick/KJZZ

A section of border wall built by the Trump administration can be seen near the border crossing in Sasabe, Arizona.

An Arizona state senator wants to appropriate $700 million in state funds to pay for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The proposal came in a bill from Sen. Wendy Rogers of northern Arizona, one of more than two dozen she introduced ahead of the new legislative session this month. 

The Trump administration erected a 30-foot steel bollard wall across just over 450 miles of borderland, some 230 miles of which was in Arizona, according to an estimate provided by Customs and Border Protection in January 2021. 

Roger’s bill is the latest attempt to build a border wall at the state level. In January 2020, a bill sponsored by then-State House Majority Leader Warren Petersen could have cleared permit barriers standing in the way of privately-funded barriers, but it narrowly failed in the House. 

State Bill 1032, the measure introduced by Rogers for this coming legislative session, would put a chunk of the state’s nearly $13 billion 2022 budget toward the construction and maintenance of a "physical border fence." She didn’t respond to questions about where it would take place or how the cost could be justified. 

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would begin construction to fix gaps and other issues in the wall built by the Trump administration. 

IVANKA AND DONALD TRUMP JR. WOULD RATHER NOT DISCUSS THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION’S MANY ALLEGED CRIMES

The duo are trying to dodge a subpoena from the New York Attorney General’s office.


BY BESS LEVIN

JANUARY 3, 2022

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivers remarks before a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Trump International Hotel October 26, 2016 in Washington, DC. The hotel, built inside the historic Old Post Office, has 263 luxry rooms, including the 6,300-square-foot 'Trump Townhouse' at $100,000 a night, with a five-night minimum. The Trump Organization was granted a 60-year lease to the historic building by the federal government before the billionaire New York real estate mogul announced his intent to run for president.

BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES.

As you’ve probably heard by now, prosecutors in various states have taken a keen interest in Donald Trump. In New York, for example, there are a number of investigations into the ex-president’s business and its financial practices, including ones being conducted by the Westchester district attorney, the Manhattan district attorney, and the New York attorney general. In the case of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were charged with a cornucopia of felonies in July, which is obviously no good, very bad news for the family business. (Both the Trump Organization and Weisselberg have pleaded not guilty.) But that’s not the only probe undoubtedly keeping Team Trump up at night. For instance, last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed Donald Trump for his testimony as part of a civil fraud investigation—which he naturally responded to by suing her—and now James has demanded a word with the ex-president’s eldest children. And they’re not happy about it!

The Associated Press reports that James’s office confirmed on Monday that it has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, seeking testimony and documents as part of a multiyear civil probe of matters including “the valuation of properties owned or controlled” by Trump and his company. Before she became a senior White House adviser, Ivanka Trump served as an executive at the Trump Organization. After Trump was elected in 2016, both Don Jr. and Eric Trump took over the day-to-day running of the company. James’s investigation appears to deal with matters predating Trump’s time in the White House, i.e. when both children in question were Trump Organization employees.

In response to the subpoenas, because they are nothing if not chips off the old block, Ivanka and Don Jr. have refused to comply; ABC News reports that the duo will shortly be filing motions to quash the orders. A document filed jointly by James’s office and an attorney for the Trump Organization noted that the Trump kids will now be named as respondents in the A.G.’s ongoing inquiry, according to the outlet. In a statement, James’s office told ABC News, “As her investigation into financial dealing of the Trump Organization continues, Attorney General James is seeking interviews under oath of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. Despite numerous attempts to delay our investigation by the Trump Organization, we are confident that our questions will be answered and the truth will be uncovered because no one is above the law.”

Both James and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are investigating whether the Trump Organization broke the law by inflating the value of its properties to attract lenders, while deflating them to minimize its tax bills. For example, when the Trump Organization was listing its assets for potential lenders in 2012, it said an office building it owns at 40 Wall Street was worth $527 million; a few months later, it told property tax officials the building was worth $16.7 million. In 2019, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told Congress that in his experience, Trump “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.” This past November, The Washington Post reported that the D.A.’s office had convened a second long-term grand jury to hear fresh evidence about the Trump Organization’s “financial practices” and would potentially vote on levying new charges. (It was the first grand jury, which met last spring, that returned the felony indictments against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg.) The new grand jury will meet three days a week over six months, sources told the Post at the time; according to one person familiar with the matter, staffers in the D.A.’s office have been working closely with James’s office.

While it’s not clear what the outcome for Ivanka and Donny-boy will be re: dodging the subpoenas, history is certainly not on their side. In 2020, James’s office subpoenaed Eric Trump, who initially refused to comply, before agreeing to sit for questioning in the fall. In October, a judge ordered their father to be deposed in a case accusing his security guards of assaulting protesters. As for the Trump family’s history of sitting for depositions, that hasn‘t gone so well either. In 2007, after Trump sued biographer Tim O’Brien for penning an unflattering but accurate portrait, O’Brien’s lawyers caught Trump in dozens of his own lies during a deposition, and in 2009, a judge dismissed the case altogether. In December 2020 and February 2021, Ivanka Trump and Don Jr., respectively, were deposed under oath by D.C.’s attorney general, and it certainly seems as though they lied about their involvement in their father’s inauguration.

Neither lawyers for the Trumps nor the Trump Organization responded to the AP’s requests for comment. In suing James, lawyers for the ex-president claimed the A.G. had violated his constitutional rights in a “thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates.”

 Florida surgeon general: You know what I want to see more of in the new year? 

COVID-ridden people infecting everyone around them for the f--k of it.

Fox News: Do you even like your kids that much anyway?

 

BY BESS LEVIN

JANUARY 3, 2022

Why The CIA Might Have 3 Nuclear Weapons From A Dead Russian Submarine

By Benjamin Brimelow

An aerial starboard bow view of a Soviet Golf II class ballistic missile submarine underway. 

Date Shot: 1 Oct 1985

Did the CIA Grab Some Lost Russian Nuclear Weapons? On August 9, 1974, most Americans watched President Richard Nixon resign in disgrace, but on the other side of the world, 178 of their countrymen were pulling off one of the most audacious intelligence operations in history.

On that day, the CIA completed the recovery of the Soviet Golf II-class diesel-electric ballistic-missile submarine K-129, which had sunk in the Pacific six years earlier while on a routine patrol.

The Soviets had given up on finding the boat after an intense search. The US, however, had an advantage.

K-129 lost and found

K-129 was launched in May 1959. After upgrades in the mid-1960s, it had a new suite of electronic systems and carried one of the Soviet Union’s newest weapons: three R-21 nuclear-tipped submarine-launched ballistic missiles — the first missiles that Soviet subs could launch while submerged.

On February 24, 1968, K-129 and its 98-man crew sailed out of their base in Kamchatka. The sub had been ordered to operate under radio silence for its first two weeks at sea.

By March 8, however, K-129 still hadn’t reported in. After it failed to report for a second day, the Soviets panicked and launched a major search operation.

Thirty-six vessels scoured over a million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. They were joined by 53 aircraft that flew more than 286 flights for over two months.

The Soviets even resorted to searching with submarines using their sonars at full power, and calling out to K-129 over open channels. But after months of operating in bad weather, with waves as high as 45 feet, they called off their search.


The US Navy had been watching closely. The Soviet search, done with no apparent concern about detection by US submarines and aircraft, made it clear that something extremely important had been lost — likely a ballistic-missile sub.

The US Navy had a massive advantage over its Soviet counterpart. The Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, a network of underwater listening devices built to detect Soviet submarines, had picked up the sound of an exploding submarine in the search area.

The Navy was able to narrow its search area to 5 miles and sent USS Halibut, a cruise-missile submarine repurposed for intelligence operations, to find K-129. After more than a month of searching, Halibut found the Soviet sub.

K-129 was 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii, sitting 16,500 feet below the surface.

It had suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure, but the most important parts of the submarine, including its missile silos, remained largely intact. At least one and possibly two of the R-21 missiles appeared to still be in their silos.

Realizing the value of a largely intact Soviet submarine with nuclear missiles aboard, the CIA immediately took the lead in a recovery effort, codenamed Project Azorian.

Early ideas included using rockets or underwater balloons to raise the wreck, but it quickly became obvious that the only way to recover K-129 was with a claw attached to a ship.

A perfect cover story

At that time, nothing had ever been recovered from a depth of 16,500 feet before, let alone an object weighing some 2,000 tons. The deep-sea mining industry was still in its infancy, but one American company, Global Marine, had a reputation as the best builder of ocean mining vessels.

The CIA secured Global Marine’s services in constructing and operating a vessel large enough for the mission. Lockheed was hired to make the claw, which was called the capture vehicle.

The CIA still needed a cover story. Fortunately, it found a perfect one in Howard Hughes.

A Texas oil scion and business magnate, Hughes had a reputation as an eccentric recluse, which made the cover story — a financially risky effort to find manganese nodules using unproven deep-sea mining methods — seem legitimate.

Hughes had taken on US government projects before, and he agreed to help the CIA recover the sub.

The Hughes Tool Company would be the public face for the Hughes Glomar Explorer, the massive 620-foot ship specially designed for one purpose: to raise K-129 from the sea floor and bring it into its hold through a “moon pool” in the ship’s hull.

The recovery

The Glomar Explorer arrived over the wreck on July 4, 1974, six years after the sub had been located. It spent the next month lowering the capture vehicle.

The Glomar Explorer was twice surveilled by Soviet ships. The first time, a missile-range instrumentation ship watched the Explorer and flew a helicopter around it for a few days before leaving.

The second ship, an ocean-going tug used for intelligence-gathering, stayed on the scene for weeks. The tug positioned itself so it could recover the Explorer’s trash and repeatedly harassed the US ship, once sailing within 50 feet of it.

But the Soviets had no reason to believe anything suspicious was happening, and the Explorer’s crew continued working. After about a month of lowering the claw, the Americans grabbed the sub and began to raise it.

A few days into the recovery, disaster struck. Several hooks on the claw suddenly broke, and two-thirds of the submarine, including the portion with the missile silos and the code room, fell back into the abyss.

The fallen piece couldn’t be recovered, but the US crew continued to raise what was left. In a stroke of luck, the Soviet tug sailed away when the remains of the K-129 were just 1,000 feet below the Explorer.

With the wreckage aboard, the Explorer’s crew began picking it apart as the ship headed back to the US.

The CIA was preparing for a second recovery effort, called Project Matador, but on March 18, 1975, reporter Jack Anderson broke the story of Project Azorian.

CIA Director William Colby had personally persuaded other journalists, including Seymour Hersh of The New York Times, to hold their stories until after K-129 had been fully recovered. Anderson refused Colby’s requests and broadcasted his story on national radio.

A partial success and a lasting legacy

With the CIA’s cover blown, the White House canceled the second recovery effort. Project Matador was shut down, and the Soviet Navy began closely monitoring the ocean around the wreck.

But the operation was still fruitful. The CIA has never fully disclosed what it recovered, but the haul is believed to include at least two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and a collection of documents, as well as the sub’s bell.

The recovered section also provided insight into Soviet submarine design, such as where important pieces were manufactured, how often they were replaced, and the thickness of the sub’s hull.

Six bodies and a number of body parts were also recovered. In September 1974, as they sailed home, the crew of the Explorer conducted a burial at sea for the fallen submariners.

CIA director Robert Gates gave Russian President Boris Yeltsin a recording of the burial in 1992. The Russians were also given the sub’s bell.

An enduring legacy of Project Azorian was the “Glomar Response,” a bit of legalese devised by the CIA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Rolling Stone reporter Harriet Ann Phillippi in 1976.

The agency was legally required to reply, so it said it could neither “confirm nor deny” the existence of records relating to the program. A court later upheld it as a legitimate response.

Benjamin Brimelow is a reporter at Business Insider.

RT AND FOX AGREE
Ukraine Joining NATO Could Spark War With Russia. There Is Another Way

By Daniel Davis

A U.S. Marine with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, fires a shoulder-fired Javelin missile during exercise Bougainville II at Pohakuloa Training Area, Hawaii, April 18, 2021. Bougainville II is the second phase of pre-deployment training conducted by the battalion designed to increase combat readiness through complex and realistic live-fire training. 

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Jacob Wilson)

In an effort to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wrote on Monday it was time to call “Putin’s bluff,” by setting “out an action plan to realize our promise” to offer NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia.

Instead of deterring the Russian leader, such action would more likely spur Putin to act.

While no one in the West should surrender decision-making to Moscow, there are a number of practical measures Washington could take to deescalate the situation – and simultaneously increase U.S. national security.

Going back well into the Cold War, the most popular – if not reflexive – Washington response to anything related to Moscow is to “show strength” and lead with either the threat or imposition of sanctions, or to posture militarily with exercises near the Russian border and talk of expanding NATO to Russia’s border. While these ideas play well with establishment thinking and major media, they have been disastrously unsuccessful in accomplishing U.S. strategic objectives.

Regardless of who sits in the White House, the president’s top foreign policy objectives must always be to protect the American homeland and preserve our ability to prosper. Sometimes the best means of attaining those objectives is the threat or use of force.

Congress declared war in 1941 when the United States was deliberately attacked by Japan. America fought that war to complete victory. Strength and resolve preserved our security and prevented a nuclear war with Russia in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy stared down a Soviet dictator. But there is a far longer, more ignominious string of policy failures that partly or fully resulted from relying on the use or threat of force.
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Consider America’s disastrous and unnecessary war of choice in Vietnam that neither improved our security nor prevented any mythical dominoes from falling (at a cost of 58,000+ troops dead). Likewise, the 20-year Afghan war in which a parade of presidents and generals lied to the American people, that “just a little more force” would win the day (predictably, it never did, and at a cost of over 22,000 total U.S. casualties and a mind-numbing $2 trillion, we outright lost the war).

And perhaps most egregiously, we chose to fight a wholly unnecessary war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 (which remains an open sore for periodic U.S. combat losses – and whose government is now more closely aligned to Tehran than Washington).

I could also cite the utter failures of our military-first policies to stop North Korea from getting nuclear weapons, our virtually exclusive reliance on “maximum pressure” against Iran (which does more to push Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons than dissuade them), and what may prove to be the most damaging of all: the decades’ long relentless drive to push NATO up to Russia’s border, somehow believing that would keep us safe, when the only fruit it has produced is to increase the risk of war with Moscow.

In light of so much policy failure over the past several decades in which coercion and threat or use of military force have played the primary role, we should recognize that we are dangerously beyond the time when new methods must be applied. This deteriorating situation in Ukraine is the perfect place to change course to something that has a chance of producing a positive outcome for America.

No one in the West desires to see Ukraine lose its freedom or be invaded by Russia. The question is, what strategies give Kyiv the best chance of avoiding that fate? If we continue only threatening severe sanctions against Moscow, promise to send more weapons to Ukraine, and deploy more NATO combat power along Russia’s border, the most likely outcome is to precipitate the result we claim to want to prevent: the loss of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the possibility of war between the U.S. and Russia. There are, however, superior options available to Washington and NATO.

First, the Western alliance should pay more attention to its own standards and cool the jets on talk of offering membership to Ukraine. NATO has properly strict standards for any aspirant country. No nation should be invited to join the alliance, NATO documents specify, “which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes.” Ukraine has dramatic internal ethnic disputes between the eastern and western parts of their country and have major territorial disputes with Russia.

Second, the United States needs to focus more on American national security than a non-treaty country with significant disputes with its nuclear-armed neighbor. There is no value for the U.S. in risking war with Russia or in materially worsening relations with them, over a long-simmering border dispute between two nations.

Third, the policy that has the best chance of preserving Ukrainian sovereignty and increasing NATO security would be for Kyiv to declare military neutrality. Putin’s overriding fear is the NATO military alliance advancing to his border. Removing that possibility greatly reduces any motivation Putin may have to invade and would enhance NATO security by keeping a buffer between Russia and the alliance.

Many in Brussels and Washington chafe at such a consideration, suggesting such a policy would be giving in to Russia. Many will instead continue advocating for threats of sanctions, for building up further military power near Russia and giving increasingly lethal weapons to Kyiv to fight Moscow. The disaster of the past several decades of failed military-first policies should conclusively disabuse Western policymakers from believing that, this time, threats and military power will work.

Observing that Putin has already used military power to achieve limited aims against bordering states in 2008 and 2014 should also demonstrate to NATO leaders that more threats will likely push Putin to order additional Russian action into Ukraine, not deter him from it.

It is time we acknowledge the multiple, decades-long instances of failure through the application of military-first policies, and instead, change course to something that acknowledges on-the-ground reality and has a chance at successfully attaining a positive outcome for U.S. national security. Stubbornly clinging to failed policies of the past because forceful, coercive tactics have become the norm, could cause us to discover the cost to our country is more than we can afford.

Daniel L. Davis, now a 1945 Contributing Editor, is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis1.

Climate change emergency cannot be solved by disintegrating democracies

BY DAVID SHEARMAN, 

OPINION CONTRIBUTOR 

— 01/03/22 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS

 ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

President Biden’s climate agenda was launched with hopes, prayers and the expectation of leadership to all world democracies, like a glorious ship set on a maiden voyage: the SS Biden. There is now deep concern that in stormy seas it has been driven onto rocks, still intact but in need of a high tide to free it.

The SS (Steam Ship) Biden by definition is fuelled by coal or oil. One is reminded of the disregard for the safety of passengers on the Titanic highlighted by several of the company’s questionable decisions, including to sail when a fire due to spontaneous combustion in coal was burning in a bunker, likely contributing to the ship’s untimely end.

Despite the world’s climate heating crisis, the Biden ship is still powered by fossil fuels and the U.S. liquefied natural gas export capacity will be the world’s largest by end of 2022 closely followed by Australia and Qatar.

Yes, this gas is burned by other countries and the three wealthy exporting countries do not have to account for these emissions domestically. The degree of responsibility for these Scope 3 emissions is a vexed issue. In some countries their import and use will impair development of clean energy and its necessary decentralization. Indeed, Solar household systems are the healthy and affordable answer in Africa, Bangladesh and some other Asian countries.

The U.S. could certainly provide leadership to the world by accepting responsibility for half the emissions from exported gas and coal and pressure other wealthy exporters to follow.

I have detailed the imminent dangers of gas to the control of climate change previously, including dangers accepted by the U.S. in its pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

Nevertheless, the burning of oil and gas extracted from the U.S. over the next decade is predicted to consume 10 percent of the entire world’s remaining carbon budget, which cannot be exceeded if global warming is to be kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Australia may well add another 10 percent.

How can this be accepted by the U.S. government and public when modelling by the UN shows that even if all countries deliver their COP26 climate summit pledges, warming by the end of the century is likely to be about 2.5 degrees Celsius? Currently, with 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming there are terrible impacts from extreme weather including the recent ferocious Colorado wildfires. These are just a taste of future devastations leading to national economies being totally consumed by constant reparations of infrastructure.

Clearly, President Biden placed great reliance on reducing domestic emissions by a range of measures in a Build Back Better initiative, which was grounded on the rocks of a democratic congressman who appears to accept climate change and yet opposes constraints on fossil fuel production. The president now has to resort to executive orders and to a range of other measures, which do not require legislation.

This brings us to the crux of the problem. Our western democracies can no longer deliver consensus and action on issues that threaten the continued existence of humanity, not least the most powerful democracy in the world.

A recent article in the Economist on threats to American democracy places the blame on extreme partisanship with each major party focussing on voting reform, which means different things to each side. This fails to understand that the threat to democracy resides in its inherent inadequacy to deal with today’s urgent and overwhelming world issues.

In the U.S., there are 109 members of the House of Representatives and 30 senators who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change. These members have received more than $61 million in lifetime contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, many elected officials did not accept the science of vaccination and the need to recommend simple preventative measures, such as mask-wearing.

Many amazed observers in the international community liken these climate and COVID positions to a reversion to pre-enlightenment times by elected representatives and their followers. The definitions of facts and the truth have been usurped and the scientific consensus on climate change has become a hoax to many in the United States. Is this the same country with the scientific brains to put a man on the moon and deliver countless scientific advances for humanity?

The U.S. is not alone in democratic disintegration. Climate denial and anti-vaccination sentiment exist in many countries but have not become as debilitating as they appear to have done in the United States.

Over the past four decades, the failures of liberal democracies to address environmental issues and particularly climate change have become increasingly apparent. In 2007, these failures were detailed and today we find they remain unaddressed. Indeed, one failure has become the salient problem, the need to separate governance from corporate capitalism.

The common denominator in current democratic failure is government unwillingness to accept that many of the problems we now confront are so complex and urgent as to be beyond the comprehension and abilities of elected officials. The issue of climate emergency is compounded by two additional interrelated issues: Elected officials place their political survival before collective needs and many defer to an overwhelmingly powerful fossil fuel industry for personal gain.

To become relevant today, elected governments have to be prepared to accept advice and guidance from independent commissions of scientists and other relevant experts selected by their peers — and not by political appointment. The details of this guidance need to be available to all parties and to the public. A starting model for the U.S. and many other countries might be a strengthened U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with appointees selected by peers and not politically appointed.

Currently, the SS Biden continues sailing to its doom. When the iceberg ripped a hole in the “unsinkable” Titanic the orchestra continued playing “Nearer my God to Thee” while the ship sank. The passengers from the upper social crust, the rich bankers and industrialists who resided on the upper decks were soon seated in lifeboats, while the working poor on the lower decks went to their watery grave.

Today, the upper crust, the moneyed titans, seem secure in their gated communities and there is speculation that they have already constructed their own space lifeboats, ahead of the world’s Titanic moment, to journey to a liveable planet in an abundant universe awaiting exploitation.

David Shearman (AM, Ph.D., FRACP, FRCPE) is a professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide, South Australia and co-founder of Doctors for the Environment Australia. He is co-author of “The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy” (2007) commissioned by the Pell Centre for International Relations and Public Policy.

Fox News Attacks Native Americans After Vice President Harris Calls on Americans to Reckon with Its Shameful Past

Sean Duffy and Rachel Campos-Duffy talk derogatory about Native Americans in Fox News Primetime.
(Photo/YouTube)

BY LEVI RICKERT 

 OCTOBER 17, 2021
Opinion. 

On Monday, tribes across Indian Country commemorated Indigenous Peoples’ Day from Alcatraz Island to New York City and throughout hundreds of tribal communities in between. The commemorations and celebrations featured singing, dancing and speeches laced with truths recognizing the struggles Indigenous people face today.

The next day, Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black, Asian and woman vice president of the United States, addressed the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

Vice President said to the NCAI delegates:

“Since 1934, every October, the United States has recognized the voyage of the European explorers who first landed on the shores of the Americas. But that is not the whole story. That has never been the whole story.

Those explorers ushered in a wave of devastation for Tribal nations -- perpetrating violence, stealing land, and spreading disease.

We must not shy away from this shameful past, and we must shed light on it and do everything we can to address the impact of the past on Native communities today.”

All this coming—speaking of genocidal practices—from the vice president was too much for Fox News.

On Fox News Primetime, hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy and Jesse Watters devoted a segment of their program to call out the vice president for saying America should reckon with its shameful past. Campos-Duffy was joined by her husband, former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy (R), Fox News contributor, to defend the lost voyager. Soon their defense of Columbus turned into an attack Native Americans.

“Christopher Columbus, by the way, is the first victim of cancel culture,” Campos-Duffy said and then opined that Native Americans “were just as brutal” as Columbus and other European colonizers.

The former congressman suggested liberals judge Native Americans by their past, too.

“They burned villages, raped women, seized children, took the people they defeated, took their land, scalped people,” the ex-Republican congressman said. “It was a horrible time all across the globe. But they want to apply the ‘woke’ standard that they have today on Christopher Columbus, but nobody else in the world!”

While in Congress, Duffy represented Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district that includes eight federally recognized tribes. With his worldview about Native Americans, one can be glad Duffy is no longer able to vote on legislation impacting tribal nations as he certainly is no friend to Native Americans.

His wife wasn’t done with Native Americans on Wednesday evening.

“And the lie isn’t just about our past,” Campos-Duffy said. “The real lie is with conditions for Native Americans right now. The conditions from Native Americans have everything to do with government dependency, cycles of poverty and alcoholism, and family breakdowns, and these are things that the Democrats don’t want to talk about.”

She continued to say Democrats are telling Native Americans that “all the things you’re experiencing has to do with white people and racism in the past.”

“It has to do with government policies as well,” she continued.

“Yeah, they’re just going to try to send more slush funds to the reservations, and make them out to be victims, and then have them keep voting for Democrats,” Watters added.

Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee), founder and executive director of IllumiNative, an initiative created and led by Natives to challenge the narrative surrounding Native people, called that rhetoric dangerous.

It is “incredibly harmful and dangerous and very clearly rooted in racism and white supremacy,” Echo Hawk writes in a statement. “Instead of allowing people to perpetuate revisionist history that erases the true history of this country - we need to start calling it what it was: genocide. For so long, Americans have chosen to omit and forget us from history and the present day. They render us down to grossly inaccurate stereotypes to perpetuate the discrimination and oppression of Native Americans that began with their ‘founding fathers.’ But we know these are lies non-Natives tell themselves to feel better, even proud about the horrifying truth of this country -- and of their ancestors.”

It is hard to imagine these three talking heads would get a free pass if they were to do a segment on any other racial group. Imagine what would happen if they sat there and invoked the stereotypes of Blacks or Hispanics. For some reason Native Americans became their fodder and Indian Country should be outraged.

Fox News’ assessment that Native Americans are alcoholics who are dependent on the government is completely absurd. An honest look across American society would yield the abundance of non-Native alcoholics and greedy corporations that seem to be dependent on government grants and “handouts.”

Fox News Primetime exchange reinforced why I never watch Fox News, which has done more harm to America through its constant barrage of lies, hate and far-fetched propaganda.

Vice President Harris should be commended for acknowledging America’s shameful past.