Fox News defense reporter challenges war comments on air


Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin discusses her kidnapping ordeal in Gaza during an interview on the show "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" in New York on Aug. 29, 2006. Griffin, who has reported for Fox News Channel since 1996, has attracted attention for publicly correcting or contradicting several Fox hosts and analysts in the past two weeks about the crisis in Ukraine. 

(AP Photo/Stephen Chernin, File)Less

DAVID BAUDER
Fri, March 4, 2022

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin couldn't hold back when following a retired U.S. Army colonel on the air recently, saying she barely had time to correct all of his “distortions.”

She tried, though. And it wasn’t for the first time or the last time.

Griffin, who has reported for Fox News Channel since 1996, has attracted attention over the past two weeks as she has publicly corrected or contradicted several Fox analysts and hosts on the air about the crisis in Ukraine. When Tucker Carlson suggested this week that some reporters are acting as flacks for the Pentagon, some interpreted that as a criticism of his colleague.

Meanwhile, former Fox host Bill O'Reilly singled Griffin out as a gutsy reporter unafraid to challenge others.

Griffin says her efforts are consistent with what she's always tried to do for 25 years, both on the air and behind the scenes at Fox News.

“I think you want your experts, in today's media environment, to be passionate about what they know and what they feel about the facts,” said Steve Krakauer, author of The Fourth Watch, a media newsletter with a conservative viewpoint. “I want them to be in the story.”

Griffin knows her beat as much as anyone in journalism and her real-time fact-checks are a valuable public service, as long as she doesn’t get caught in the muck of partisan debating, he said on Thursday.

Griffin has pushed back on comments made by Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy, Harris Faulkner and Greg Gutfeld during appearances on their own shows. After Hannity criticized President Joe Biden on Ukraine policy, Griffin noted that every president since the fall of the Soviet Union has made mistakes there. Doocy argued on “Fox & Friends” that sanctions haven’t worked against Russia; Griffin said it was too soon to say that. When Faulkner similarly questioned whether sanctions were a sufficient step, Griffin said that sending troops to the area would have given Putin an excuse to invade. She said it was “not some wag-the-dog situation” when Gutfeld suggested on “The Five” that the Ukraine crisis had been manufactured.

This past Sunday, she took on a retired U.S. Army brigadier general, Don Bolduc, after he said that it “boggles my mind” that the United States hadn’t already gone “all in” on Ukraine. Griffin said Bolduc was a politician, not a student of history.

“To suggest that the U.S. would put indirect fire or special operations or CIA on the ground to give Putin any sort of excuse to broaden this conflict is extremely dangerous talk at a time like this,” Griffin said.

Earlier that day, she was interviewed by Trey Gowdy after an appearance by retired U.S. Army Col. Doug Macgregor, who urged the United States to stay out of Ukraine and not ship it any weapons. He said the Russians should be allowed to annex the portion of Ukraine they are most interested in.

When Griffin followed him, she said she needed to correct some of what Macgregor had said, “and I'm not sure 10 minutes is enough time because there are so many distortions.” She said that Macgregor sounded like an apologist for Putin. "That kind of projection of withdrawal and weakness is what made Putin think he could move into a sovereign country,” she said.

Macgregor, in a subsequent radio appearance, criticized Griffin for offering a “standard neo-con narrative” of drawing comparison to 1930s appeasement of Adolf Hitler. He called it a “tired trope" that had nothing to do with the people and events of today.

Two days after his appearance on Gowdy's show, Macgregor was brought on as lead guest by Tucker Carlson in prime time. Carlson's show is usually the most-watched program on Fox.

“Unlike so many of the so-called reporters you see on television, he is not acting secretly as a flack for (Defense Secretary) Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon,” Carlson said in his introduction. “No, Doug Macgregor is an honest man.”

Was that a shot at Griffin? Carlson did not specify what reporters he was referring to, and Fox News did not offer a clarification. He hasn't been afraid to take on colleagues in the past; Carlson and Shepard Smith had a memorable tiff before Smith left the network in 2019.

Griffin also didn't respond to a message seeking comment.

Griffin, who is based at the Pentagon and had stints in Moscow and Jerusalem for Fox, has a reputation for being knowledgeable and a straight-shooter, said David Lapan, a former Pentagon spokesman who dealt with her professionally in several national security capacities.

Much of her work reporting for her employer is done behind the scenes, Lapan said. He believes her recent on-the-air correctives indicate how important she considers the issues involved.

“I hope there are no reprisals because she's doing the right thing,” Lapan said. “The stakes are too high.”

Fox News Media, in a statement, said that “we are incredibly proud of Jennifer Griffin and her stellar reporting as well as all of our journalists and talent covering this story across our platforms.”

O'Reilly, on his web show, praised Griffin and said that “propagandists” on television news aren't challenged often enough, according to the Wrap.

Fox would not make Griffin available for an interview. She appeared on Fox's “Media Buzz” on Sunday, where she told host Howard Kurtz that she doesn’t believe her role at Fox News has changed.

“I’m here to fact-check facts, because I report on facts,” she said. “My job is to try and figure out the truth as best as I know it. I share that information internally, so out network can be more accurate. That’s what I’ve always done.”

INDIA COLD WAR RUSSIAN ALLY

US says it is still considering India sanctions after it abstained in UN vote on Ukraine

Stuti Mishra
Thu, March 3, 2022

 India has been a long-term partner for the US in South Asia, however, the position of the two countries on the Ukraine crisis remains at odds (Getty Images)

The US has once again hinted at sanctioning India over the purchase of a missile defence system from Russia as the South Asian nation continues to balance its relations between the west and Moscow.

Speaking to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, just after India had abstained from a vote on the UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, senior US diplomat Donald Lu said the Biden administration was still considering sanctions against India.

Nonetheless, Mr Lu said the US government hopes India will begin to distance itself from Moscow.

“What I can say is that India is a really important security partner of ours now and that we value moving forward that partnership,” said Mr Lu, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, adding that the decision on sanctions was still being considered and he did not want to prejudge it.

“I hope that part of what happens with the extreme criticism that Russia has faced, is that India will find it’s now time to further distance itself,” Mr Lu said.

He did not specify whether India’s move to abstain from voting at the UN would have any bearing on the decision of imposing sanctions or a waiver amidst the current turmoil.

“We have spared no effort to try to convince India both to vote in UN sessions but also to show support for Ukraine at this critical moment,” Mr Lu further said. “Those efforts were led by Secretary Blinken.”

The conversation over whether the US will sanction India after it purchased an S-400 Triumph missile defence system from Russia has been going on for many months.

The US’s Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) mandates sanctions against those buying arms from Russia, unless certain exceptions apply or the president chooses to waive them. It has already been used to sanction Turkey for a purchase from Russia.

Before the Ukraine conflict, it had been seen as likely the US would waive sanctions over India’s S-400 purchase, with Delhi arguing the equipment was a necessary deterrent against China.

Mr Lu’s statement is being seen as a tactical approach from the US to get India, a long-term ally, onboard in condemning the Russian attack against Ukraine and to isolate Moscow further.

“It could be highly damaging for the US to impose sanctions on India,” says Harsh V Pant, director of research at the Observer Research Foundation – a think tank – and a professor of international relations at King’s College London.

“Americans are well aware of India’s dependency on Russia, there is no ambiguity in that regard,” Mr Pant says, adding that the latest statements are a diplomatic effort to bring India on board with their cause while underscoring the American unhappiness at what India is doing.

“I think what is happening at the moment in regards to Ukraine is certainly something that the US would want India to be more vocal about. Therefore, it seems more of a diplomatic pressure tactic to say publicly, and make it difficult for India to wriggle its way out of this situation.”

Harsh V Pant, director of research at the Observer Research Foundation

While India has for decades been largely dependent on Russia for defence equipment, the way China’s aggression at its doorstep has intensified in recent years means a strong relationship between India and the US has become increasingly strategic for both sides.

“Some of these issues will come and go, like the issue of Russia or Iran, where the countries have differences,” he says. “The relationship depends on Indo-Pacific and how to manage China. I don’t think any policymaker in the US would consider antagonising India or giving up on India for this conflict.”

“They understand it has compulsions like the US does in several sectors. It’s not an alliance partner.”

Even if India resists the urgings of the west to get on board with criticising Russia over Ukraine and at the same time avoids sanctions over the S-400 deal, it might still find it relations with Russia are strained going forwards.

“What we’ve seen from India in just the last few weeks, is the cancellation of MiG 29 orders, Russian helicopter orders and anti-tank weapon orders,” Mr Lu said. “It is going to be very hard for any country in the globe to buy major weapon systems from Russia because of the sweeping sanctions now placed on Russian banks.”

Biden weighing sanctions on India over Russian military stockpiles

Thu, March 3, 2022


The Biden administration is weighing whether to impose sanctions against India over its stockpile of and reliance on Russian military equipment as part of the wide-ranging consequences the West is seeking to impose on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Donald Lu, the assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, on Thursday told lawmakers in a hearing that the administration is weighing how threatening India's historically close military relationship with Russia is to U.S. security.

"It's a question we're looking at very closely, as the administration is looking at the broader question over whether to apply sanctions under CAATSA or to waive those sanctions," Lu said.

The Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, passed in 2017 in the wake of the Kremlin's interference in U.S. elections, includes the authority to sanction transactions with Russian defense or intelligence sectors.

The law includes waiver authority for the president that was used for Turkey, an ally in NATO, until December 2020 when the Trump administration imposed sanctions under the law for Ankara's purchase of the Russian S400 missile defense system.

In 2016, India was named a "Major Defense Partner" with the U.S., a unique designation that serves to elevate defense trade and technology. Defense contracts between the U.S. and India are said to have amounted to $20 billion since 2008.

India is also a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the U.S., Japan and Australia, a grouping that focuses on countering China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.

President Biden held a video call with Quad leaders on Thursday, according to the White House, "to discuss the war against Ukraine and its implications for the Indo-Pacific."

Lu told lawmakers that the administration is "in the process of trying to understand whether defense technology that we are sharing with India today can be adequately safeguarded given India's historical relationship with Russia and its defense sales."

"It is critical that with any partner, that the United States is able to assure itself that any defense technology we share is sufficiently protected," he said.

Lu said the administration has been engaged in a "pitched battle" with Indian officials over the past couple of months leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior officials in the State Department urged New Delhi to "to take a clearer position, a position opposed to Russia's action."

The secretary said India's abstention at the United Nations and its commitment to provide Ukraine with humanitarian assistance are promising steps in a shift in its public position and that he expects an even greater shift in the aftermath of outrage at the death of an Indian student killed in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, by Russian bombing in recent days.

"I have had several conversations with Indian officials in the last 24 hours," Lu said. "What we can see, already, very quickly is that action has begun to turn public opinion in India against a country that they perceived as a partner, undeniably, that partner has killed a young person who was an innocent victim in Ukraine."

Roger Stone raged at ‘disgrace’ Trump over failure to overturn election – report

Martin Pengelly in New York

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, March 4, 2022

ROGER STONE AS PENQUIN 

Close Donald Trump ally Roger Stone raged at the former US president in the aftermath of the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, according to a report from the Washington Post, telling a friend that Trump was a “disgrace” who would go to prison and adding: “He betrayed everybody.”

The Post said it had viewed 20 hours of footage of the political operative that had been shot for a forthcoming documentary. The footage, it said, showed Stone:

Meeting and corresponding with members of a far-right militia since indicted for seditious conspiracy over the Capitol riot on January 6.

Discussing a plan in which Trump would issue a blanket pardon to co-conspirators in the attempt to overturn the election, Senator Ted Cruz and congressman Jim Jordan among them.

Saying Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, should be “punished” in a way that would leave him “braindead”.

Suggesting violence against protesters for racial justice would be possible with the election out of the way.

“Once there’s no more election,” Stone reportedly said, “there’s no reason why we can’t mix it up. These people are going to get what they’ve been asking for.”

The plan for a blanket pardon was reportedly blocked by Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel. “Clearly, Cipollone fucked everybody,” the Post quoted Stone as telling a friend, before messaging another: “See you in prison.”

Trump had already commuted a three-year sentence handed to Stone for obstructing Congress during the Russia investigation.

The footage viewed by the Post was shot by Danish film-makers for a documentary, A Storm Foretold, to be released this year.

Stone, who has resisted cooperation with the House January 6 investigation, told the Post “any claim, assertion or implication that I knew about, was involved in or condoned the illegal acts at the Capitol on January 6” was “categorically false”.

Stone also said the paper employed “a clever blend of ‘guilt by association’, insinuations, half-truths, anonymous claims, falsehoods and out-of-context trick questions” and said the footage could be “deep fakes”.

Now 69, Stone – who was once a “dirty trickster” for Richard Nixon – has been close to Trump since the 1980s. In 2020 he was closely involved with the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, driven by the lie of widespread electoral fraud.

On 5 November, two days after election day and two days before Biden’s victory was called, the film-makers captured Stone talking to Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser Trump pardoned for lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation.

“Our slogan should be ‘count every legal ballot’,” Stone was quoted as saying. “Much better messaging. More positive.” In the White House briefing room that evening, the Post said, Trump said: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win.”

The Post detailed Stone’s activities leading up to 6 January, including staying at the Willard hotel, a “command centre” for Trump associates. Footage, the paper said, showed Stone with members of the Oath Keepers militia now charged with seditious conspiracy.

The film-makers also shot Stone as he attempted to broker presidential pardons for money, and as he attempted to secure access to Trump’s rally near the White House on 6 January, but failed.

As the Capitol riot began, the Post said, Stone was unavailable for a short period of time. He then told the film-makers: “I think it’s really bad for the movement. It hurts, it doesn’t help. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to achieve.”

But he also said: “When you can’t get a fair and honest judicial opinion, when you can’t get a fair, honest and transparent election, when your legislative process is constipated by fear and threat …”

The Post said Stone then “slightly misquot[ed] former president John F Kennedy”: “Those who make peaceful progress impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”

Stone returned to Florida and worked on his pardon plan. The Post said intended recipients included senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and representatives Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz. Spokesmen for Cruz and Jordan denied contacts with Stone.

On 20 January 2021, inauguration day, enraged by a pardon on fraud charges for Steve Bannon, a rival for Trump’s attentions, Stone reportedly said Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was “going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating. And needs to be told, ‘This time we’re just beating you. Next time we’re killing you.’”

Urged to say he was joking, the Post said, Stone said: “No, it isn’t joking. Not joking. It’s not a joke.”

Stone also said Kushner should be “punished in the most brutal possible way” and would be “braindead when I get finished with him”.

Stone then turned to Trump, who he said deserved to be impeached and whose presidency had been the “greatest single mistake in American history”.

“A good, long sentence in prison will give him a chance to think about it, because the southern district is coming for him, and he did nothing,” Stone said, referring to prosecutors in New York investigating Trump’s business.

Stone also mocked Trump’s apparent plan to run again, saying: “Run again! You’ll get your fucking brains beat in.”

He told the film-makers: “Obviously if you use any of that, I’ll murder you.”

The First Step Toward Saving the Planet Is Ignoring the Economists


Andrew Dessler

ROLLING STONE
Fri, March 4, 2022,

US-CALIFORNIA-FIRE - Credit: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is stark. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres describes it as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” If the world can’t solve this problem, there will be a lot of blame to go around, but one group in particular shouldn’t be able to skirt it: economists who have relentlessly downplayed the seriousness of climate change and overstated the costs of solving it.

Most mainstream economists believe government action, such as a carbon tax, is a necessary step to taking on the climate crisis. But what if you’re an economist who doesn’t want the government to do anything? Perhaps you work for a libertarian think tank or a fossil fuel producer. Your job is literally to use the tools of economics to conclude that we don’t need any government intervention to address climate change. Luckily for you, economics offers a handy tool to reach the required conclusion: the cost-benefit analysis.

The idea behind a cost-benefit analysis seems simple enough: Evaluate a policy by comparing the costs of enacting the policy to the policy’s benefits. If costs exceed benefits, then the policy is not a good idea; if benefits exceed costs, then it is.

Cost-benefit analyses certainly make sense for some problems, but the climate crisis is not one of them. Climate change is a global, multi-generational threat featuring impacts that lie entirely outside anything that modern humanity has ever experienced. Solving it, to the extent that it can be solved, involves balancing the welfare of the rich world versus the poor, and today’s population versus that of future generations.

Cost-benefit analyses require economists to make judgements about what a “good” outcome looks like. For example, do we want to maximize wealth, or do we care about how the wealth is distributed? By carefully making these judgments, a motivated economist can reach any conclusion they want. During the Obama administration, the social cost of carbon (the damage from emitting a ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere) was estimated to be $35. The Trump administration altered some of the assumptions that led to his estimate, particularly how much they valued future generations versus ours, and how much they valued people outside the U.S. versus those who live in America. They estimated the social cost of carbon to be as low as $1.

To be clear: economists have no idea how bad five degrees Fahrenheit of global average warming in 2100 will be (that’s about where we’re headed now) or what that will do to our economy. For context, the global average temperature during the last ice age was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than today, and it was a world that would be literally unrecognizable to people living now. This means that five degrees Fahrenheit of warming by 2100 is about half an ice age — an enormous amount of warming that will likely remake the world.

Any estimate of economic damage due to five degrees Fahrenheit of warming requires drawing from our experience with the present climate into a realm where we have no experience. As a result, impact estimates must be based on a large number of assumptions, many of which are arbitrary. Most economic estimates do not include reliable estimates of the costs of impacts to things for which good markets do not exist, such as ocean acidification or melting permafrost. They also do not account for catastrophic changes, tipping points, or many other factors. Faced with this reality, the new IPCC report concurs that we simply don’t know how expensive climate change will be.

Just as one should be skeptical of estimates of the costs of climate impacts, one should also be skeptical of estimates of the cost of switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. For these analyses also, economists can get any answer they want by simply changing the assumptions. Want to get a really high cost of reducing emissions? Just assume that future innovation in energy technology is slow. You can get the opposite conclusion by assuming a rapid rate of innovation.

The fossil fuel industry has taken advantage of how easy it is to manipulate these cost estimates. Academic research has documented that economists hired by oil companies “used models that inflated predicted costs while ignoring policy benefits, and their results were often portrayed to the public as independent rather than industry-sponsored. Their work played a key role in undermining numerous major climate policy initiatives in the U.S. over a span of decades.”

We can get some idea of how unreliable these cost estimates are by examining cost estimates of previously implemented environmental regulations, such as the phase out of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the 1990s. Prior to the phaseout, many suggested it would be an economic apocalypse. After the phase out, “The ease with which businesses have developed CFC substitutes makes it easy to forget how hard the tasks looked at the outset. Industries predicted doomsday scenarios,” Jessica Mathews wrote in The Washington Post in 1995.

The lesson from the phaseout of CFCs is the power of the market to innovate. Once it became clear that CFCs would be banned, the free market rapidly produced cheap, effective substitutes. This is exactly the beauty of the free market and it’s ironic that economists who tout it are ignoring the power of government regulation to spur innovation.

A more recent example was the debate over Obama’s climate bill, which died in the Senate in 2010. Opposition to the bill was intense, full of hyperbolic claims of an economic apocalypse if the bill was enacted. The conservative Heritage Foundation wrote that Obama’s proposed bill “raises energy prices by 55-90 percent. The higher energy prices push unemployment up by 844,000 jobs on average with peaks over 1,900,000. In aggregate, GDP drops by over $7 trillion. The next generation will inherit a federal debt pumped up by $33,000 per person.”

Yet, even without the bill, the U.S. reached the emissions-reduction and clean-energy goals of the legislation. The economy didn’t burn down, energy prices didn’t soar, the GDP didn’t drop, and unemployment didn’t spike. We can now see that the predictions were not just wrong, but excessively so. The economists making these estimates are the true alarmists in the debate.

In the end, we don’t need economics to answer the big question about climate change: Should we take aggressive action to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gasses? The physics makes clear that the increase of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere is driving warming temperatures, more extreme heat waves, more extreme precipitation events, rising sea level, and the acidification of the ocean. The geological record tells us that the amount of warming the world is on track to experience is enormous and will transform our planet in unimaginable ways.

As the latest IPCC report says, “The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Do we really need a cost-benefit analysis to convince ourselves to address this threat?

Federal Court Rules Biden Isn’t Taking the Climate Crisis Seriously

William Vaillancourt - Jan 28
Rolling Stone
© Tom Pennington/Getty Images


A federal judge on Thursday sided with environmental groups by revoking more than 80 million acres of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico that the Biden administration had approved in what had been the largest such sale in U.S. history.

The decision, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, found the administration didn’t adequately consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico. “This is huge,” Brettny Hardy, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental group that was part of the lawsuit, told The New York Times.

“This requires the bureau to go back to the drawing board and actually consider the climate costs before it offers these leases for sale, and that’s really significant,” Hardy added. “Once these leases are issued, there’s development that’s potentially locked in for decades to come that is going to hurt our global climate.”

President Biden staked his presidency on taking on the climate crisis, but after a year on the job many activists aren’t happy with his approach. “There is no there is no way that the United States can meet its climate obligations and goals with this kind of business-as-usual fossil-fuel development,” says Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, told Rolling Stone back in September. “Twenty-five percent of the U.S. climate footprint comes from carbon emissions, from oil, gas, and coal extracted from federal lands and federal waters. It’s a huge chunk of the U.S. climate footprint and it’s the piece of the U.S. climate footprint that the president of the United States has the most responsibility and control over.”

A federal judge ruling that the administration isn’t taking the climate impact into account in its bid to sell off the Gulf of Mexico is an embarrassment for a president who aimed to build the government around doing just that.

As a candidate, Biden pledged to stop drilling on public lands, and shortly after taking office signed an executive order putting a hold on issuing new leases. (His record on drilling thus far is mixed.) The order putting a hold on new leases, however, was blocked by a federal judge in Louisiana after more than a dozen Republican attorneys general sued. The lease sales, the judge ruled, must continue. They were going to until Thursday, with administration officials believing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland otherwise could be held in contempt, according to the Times.

But environmental groups had argued that the Interior Department didn’t do its due diligence because it relied on a global warming analysis conducted under the environmentally hostile Trump administration. Judge Rudolph Contreras agreed, writing that the department “acted arbitrarily and capriciously in excluding foreign consumption from their greenhouse gas emissions.” This was required under the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Contreras wrote. If revoking lease sales caused any disruptions in the oil and gas industry, he added, this would “not outweigh the seriousness of the NEPA error in this case and the need for the agency to get it right.”

Now, the Interior Department will have to conduct a new analysis before it decides whether to hold a new auction.

Scott Lauermann, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement that the ruling is “disappointing,” saying that “offshore energy development plays a critical role in strengthening our nation’s economy and energy security.”

It’s a little difficult to take the Biden’s administration’s dedication to combating the climate crisis seriously when it’s finding itself on the the same side of a court ruling as the American Petroleum Institute.

Honduras prosecutor: Ex-president's offices swept of papers


Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, center in chains, is shown to the press at the Police Headquarters in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. Police arrested Hernandez at his home, following a request by the United States government for his extradition on drug trafficking and weapons charges. 

(AP Photo/Elmer Martinez) 

MARLON GONZÁLEZ
Thu, March 3, 2022

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — An anti-corruption team from Honduras' Attorney General's Office visited presidential offices a week after President Juan Orlando Hernández stepped down and found paper shredders and none of the financial documents they were looking for, the chief of the investigators said Thursday.

Hernández has been in custody since mid-February waiting on a judge to rule whether he will be extradited to the United States to face drug trafficking charges. Now it appears members of his administration are targets of obstruction of justice probes at home for allegedly destroying evidence of wrongdoing.

“A week after the swearing in of new President Xiomara Castro (on Jan. 27) we went to (the presidential offices) and they showed us that all documentation — when I say all, it’s everything — disappeared or was destroyed,” Javier Santos, head of the special unit against corruption networks, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

A year earlier, Santos’ office had taken to court an investigation dubbed “Hermes” concerning the alleged diversion of about $4.9 million from presidential offices through a front company. The money was allegedly spread among a number of people, including journalists. There were 11 people implicated, including one of Hernández’s sisters.

“To complement that investigation and other lines of investigation in other ongoing cases, we asked the president’s office for all supporting documentation,” Santos said. “They rejected us. They told us all information from the president’s office was covered by secrecy because it involved state security.”

So Santos waited for the change of government, hoping for an opportunity under Castro. But Hernández’s office appeared determined to leave nothing to chance, he said.

“Those people, according to the law, had a legal responsibility to preserve that documentation and turn it over to those taking charge,” Santos said.

He acknowledged the investigation would be more difficult without it, but not impossible because a financial trail still exists.

The anti-corruption unit had multiple investigations underway into Hernández’s administration, among them sizeable monthly bonuses to officials supposedly for gasoline and security.

“It's millions that we’re talking about in all of these investigations,” Santos said — in cases ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $12 million in diverted public funds.

Hernández administration officials argued that documents were protected under a law covering security and national defense, known as the “Secrets Law.” But the new congress repealed the law, allowing investigators, government auditors and the public to access documents previously classified as secret.

Santos expressed support for Castro’s pledge to bring a United Nations supported anti-corruption mission to Honduras.

In Hernández's extradition case, a hearing to present the presiding judge with evidence supporting the U.S. charges is scheduled for March 16. U.S. federal prosecutors have alleged that Hernández’s political rise was funded in part by drug trafficking proceeds and that his administration in exchange allowed some drug traffickers to operate without interference or gave them information to help avoid law enforcement.

Hernández has denied any wrongdoing.

ADORABLE CUTENESS
New Orleans zoo's near-threatened maned wolves have 4 pups


In this Feb. 19, 2022, photo provided by the Audubon Nature Institute is a mother maned wolf, Brisa, with her new puppies at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. Near-threatened maned wolves brought to New Orleans to breed have done just that, and are rearing four puppies, the Audubon Zoo announced Thursday, March 3, 2022. Three are black and one is silver, but they’ll mature to their parents’ coloration — red coats shading to black on muzzles and long, slender legs. (Audubon Nature Institute via AP)


Thu, March 3, 2022, 12:52 PM·2 min read


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Near-threatened maned wolves brought to New Orleans to breed have done just that, and are rearing four puppies, the Audubon Zoo announced Thursday.

Three are black and one is silver, but they’ll mature to their parents’ coloration — red coats shading to black on muzzles and long, slender legs.

Maned wolves are from South America. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources estimates there are about 17,000 mature maned wolves in the wild, with about 90% of them in Brazil. The biggest threat is what the organization describes as “intense deforestation” of their habitat in Brazil.


Although their coloration is similar to red foxes and they are called wolves, genetic studies show they are not in either group. Red wolves are the largest South American canids, about 3 feet (90 centimeters) tall at the shoulder and weighing about 50 pounds (23 kilograms).

The Audubon Zoo is among nine institutions with pairs recommended for breeding this year under the maned wolf species survival plan, said Andrew Haertzen, who is the zoo's assistant curator for African animals but also oversees some other canids.

The Audubon Zoo’s adults arrived in August 2021 — mother Brisa from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute and father Sheldon from Sunset Zoo in Manhattan, Kansas.

The pups were born Jan. 31, but the zoo delayed the birth announcement until Thursday because many canids die in their first month.

“There were no obvious health concerns for the pups, but we wanted to remain cautiously optimistic as this pair are first-time parents. The pups are doing extremely well,” Haertzen said in a statement emailed by a zoo spokesperson.

Keepers have not yet gotten close enough to tell how many males and females there are.

“Maned wolves are especially prone to stress in the early days of rearing pups and sometimes move them around frequently, which leads to injury and higher pup mortality as well,” Haertzen said.

Extra barricades have been set up in front of their habitat to keep people farther away from the family and avoid stressing the adults, the news release said.

#STOPWOLFHUNTING

AOC shares meme mocking infamous photo of Boebert and Greene at SOTU with pizza comparison

Gino Spocchia
Fri, March 4, 2022

A meme comparing AOC and Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene 

(roguednc / Instagram )

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shared a meme comparing herself to Republican congresswomen Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene through the medium of pizza.

Created by Democrat blogger “RogueDNC” on Wednesday, the meme shows Ms Ocasio-Cortez representing “New York pizza” and Ms Boebert and Ms Greene as “Papa John’s” - using an infamous photo of the Republicans as they heckled President Joe Biden at his State of the Union address this week.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez shared the meme on her Instagram story on Thursday, writing: “Y’all are too much.”

“Am I the only New Yorker that feels a deep sense of guilt every time they order a papa Johns pie?” wrote one Instagram user of the meme. Another argued: “Dude, Papa John’s is good”.

It came after both Republican congresswomen were condemned for shouting at Biden during his State of the Union on Tuesday.

While Ms Ocasio-Cortez – or “New York pizza” – was calm during Mr Biden’s address, the two Republicans – or “Papa John’s” – frequently interrupted the Democrat during his speech in the House chamber.

Both were afterwards condemned for their behaviour, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki remarking that it “says a lot more about them” than it does about the substance of Mr Biden’s speech.



Ms Boebert, who heckled Mr Biden as he discussed the brain cancer death of his own son, Beau Biden, received the most boos of the night, as well as cries of “shame”.

She accused him of responsibility for the deaths of 13 US troops who were killed during the American evacuation from Afghanistan last August, and said following Tuesday that she would “do it again”.

Mr Biden had been discussing US Army veterans who suffer from toxic chemical exposure, having addressed a range of issues such high inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during his first State of the Union.

Following the apparent success of his pizza meme, RogueDNC produced several other memes comparing Ms Ocasio-Cortez with Ms Boebert and Ms Greene, including through the medium of Mexican food and those “who catch Covid” and “everyone else”.

While it appeared to poke fun at the different pizza styles and supposed difference in quality, Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has been forced to deny that he used the “N” word during a work call in 2018, which prompted his resignation.

Ex-Fox News Producer Broke Law With Work for Russian Oligarch, U.S. Says

March 4, 2022


A former Fox News producer was charged on Thursday with violating U.S. sanctions by working for a Russian oligarch who has been accused of being a leading financial supporter of separatists in Crimea and eastern Ukraine and has close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin.

The producer, John Hanick, was arrested in London last month and charged in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in what federal prosecutors said was the first such indictment stemming from sanctions imposed as a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Konstantin Malofeev — the oligarch who employed Mr. Hanick, according to the indictment — was labeled “one of the main sources of financing for Russians promoting separatism in Crimea” by the Treasury Department when the sanctions were put in place in December 2014. Mr. Hanick worked for Mr. Malofeev from 2013 to 2017.

The case against Mr. Hanick, a 71-year-old U.S. citizen, was announced as the United States and much of the rest of the world continue to punish Russia financially amid broader efforts to halt its war on Ukraine. On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced a new task force to “hold accountable corrupt Russian oligarchs” who had supported the invasion.

Although the charges against Mr. Hanick arise from eight-year-old sanctions, they are of a piece with other steps the United States and its allies have taken more recently and indicate that the federal authorities will use every available lever to exert pressure on Mr. Putin and his circle.

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, emphasized the point in a statement.

The charges, he said, showed a “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes.”

Mr. Hanick, who was with Fox News at its inception and spent 15 years at the network before leaving in 2011, is charged in the indictment with one count of violating sanctions and another of lying to F.B.I. agents who interviewed him last year.

Lawyers for Mr. Hanick could not be reached for comment. A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr. Malofeev, a banker and devoted follower of the Russian Orthodox faith, is one of Russia’s most influential magnates and among the most prominent conservatives within the country’s Kremlin-allied elite. (The indictment renders his surname as Malofeyev).


He is a bulwark of Mr. Putin’s support on the Russian right, has ties to far-right politicians in the United States and Europe and has been accused of financing separatists in eastern Ukraine in addition to his activities in Crimea. He has denied the accusations.

He has also been a main figure in a push meant to increase Russia’s influence in Africa while diminishing that of Western nations.

Mr. Hanick’s work for Mr. Malofeev involved developing media outlets in Russia, Greece, Bulgaria and elsewhere, according to the indictment. He moved to Russia in July 2013 after negotiating an employment agreement “directly with Malofeev” that provided for a salary, a $5,000 monthly housing stipend and health insurance, the indictment says.

At the start, Mr. Hanick worked mostly on a project to build a Russian cable television news network, which went on the air in April 2015, the government said. Mr. Malofeev was by then subject to the U.S. sanctions as well as similar European measures.

Mr. Hanick played a leadership role at the network, described variously in emails as board chairman, general producer and general adviser, the indictment says.

Former Fox News Director Jack Hanick Indicted for Helping Russia

Jose Pagliery
Thu, March 3, 2022

Screenshot/Right Wing Watch

As the United States increasingly goes after some of the Kremlin’s business tentacles, the latest person arrested for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia is a former Fox News director who left to launch a Russian propaganda network.

The Department of Justice on Thursday revealed that Jack Hanick was quietly arrested in London on Feb. 3 for dodging U.S. sanctions by helping a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Konstantin Malofeyev, start his right-wing Tsargrad TV.

The DOJ simultaneously unsealed a grand jury indictment against him, accusing Hanick of knowingly engaging in business dealings with Malofeyev, who had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in financing Russia-backed soldiers in eastern Ukraine who have violently tried to break off from the democratic country since 2014.

Sean Hannity’s Ukraine War ‘Plans’ Are Even Dumber Than You Think

The indictment also accuses Hanick of lying to FBI agents about his travels to Greece and Bulgaria to expand the TV network in 2015 and 2016, when he was interviewed by American investigators last year in New York City.

Federal agents assert that many of the damning details about Hanick’s Kremlin adventures were laid out in an unpublished memoir he kept in his email account, which was searched by the feds with a court-approved search warrant.

Malofeyev was sanctioned in December 2014 by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for financing separatists in the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

Russia-aligned fighters there operated with the not-so-secret help of that country's military and used that government’s weapons when they shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers.

Malofeyev (also spelled in the West as Malofeev) started an Orthodox Christian network called Tsargrad TV. In 2020, he launched a similarly named right-wing political group in Russia with an imperialist bent that would—much like the National Rifle Association does in the United States—pressure politicians to toe the conservative line.

I’m a Former Russian TV Anchor. Fox News Mimics State TV.

According to The Warsaw Institute, a Polish-based geopolitical think tank, “Tsargrad” would test political candidates’ adherence to “traditional family, religious, and cultural values of the Russian people.”

The Financial Times in 2015 analyzed how Malofeyev launched his “conservative yet modern spin on global news” in an attempt to mimic the rise of Fox News. Then, in 2018, the online news site Salon called out Hanick for joining the Russian operation, noting that he had previously served as a director for Fox News host Sean Hannity. However, on Thursday, Fox News told The Daily Beast that assertion was wrong and never corrected.

Hanick got his start at Fox News when it first launched in 1996. Fifteen years later, in 2011, he left. Three years later, he joined forces with Malofeyev’s Russian propaganda operation. The Justice Department now wants to extradite him from the United Kingdom to New York City.

Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, issued a statement noting that sanctions “prohibit United States citizens from working for or doing business with Malofeyev but as alleged, Hanick violated those sanctions by working directly for Malofeyev on multiple television projects over the course of several years.”

Williams noted the indictment underscores his office’s “commitment to the enforcement of laws intended to hamstring those who would use their wealth to undermine fundamental democratic processes. This Office will continue to be a leader in the Justice Department’s work to hold accountable actors who would support flagrant and unjustified acts of war.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated Hanick was a producer on Sean Hannity’s show. While he worked at Fox News for 15 years, a Fox spokesperson said he never worked on Hannity’s program.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

School Superintendent Responds After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Scolds Students For Wearing Masks
POLITICS OVER SCIENCE

Virginia Chamlee
Wed, March 2, 2022

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

A school superintendent is responding after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was filmed berating students for wearing face masks during a visit to the University of South Florida on Wednesday.

Before a speech, DeSantis was filmed telling a group of high school students standing behind him, "You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything and we've gotta stop with this COVID theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous."

While some of the students could be seen removing their masks in response to the comments, others kept them on.

In a statement sent to PEOPLE, Hillsborough Schools Superintendent Addison Davis said the district was "proud of the manner in which our students represented themselves," noting that it is their choice "to protect their health in a way they feel most appropriate."

RELATED: Ron DeSantis Claims 'Fabricated Media Narrative' of Tension with Trump, Says He's Focused on Re-Election

According to the district seven children were in attendance at the press conference, which was held to announce funding for cybersecurity education. All of the students attend Tampa's Middleton High School.

"We are excited our students from Middleton High School were highlighted as part of the statewide focus around cyber security education," Davis said in the statement. "Our Cyber Security pathway at MHS has had tremendous success through student's earning industry certifications, participating in internships and leading the way in computer systems and information technology."

The statement continued: "As always, our students should be valued and celebrated. It is a student and parents' choice to protect their health in a way they feel most appropriate. We are proud of the manner in which our students represented themselves and our school district."

While DeSantis is widely rumored to be preparing a 2024 presidential run, he is shot down that speculation, saying in previous interviews that he is "not considering anything beyond doing my job."

The Republican governor, who narrowly won his 2018 election, is not without controversy.

Still, he's worked to raise his national profile over the past few years, sometimes by fueling culture-war conflicts similar to former President Donald Trump.

DeSantis has touted his decision not to impose widespread restrictions during the pandemic (though it's worth noting he did order a statewide lockdown in April 2020) but he has faced much scrutiny for his handling of the virus. He opposed mandating public health measures in the state and attempted to block local leaders' authority to issue mask mandates in municipalities throughout the state.

RELATED: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Downplays 2024 Aspirations: 'Not Considering Anything'

Last July, DeSantis issued an order barring local school districts from requiring students to wear masks, despite federal recommendations that all students in kindergarten through 12th grade wear face coverings when they return to the classroom in the fall.

A fundraising group affiliated with DeSantis also released a line of merchandise that takes aim at masks and White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci, such as a $12 "Don't Fauci My Florida" koozie.

#WATERISLIFE

Climatologists: Drought to worsen in Oregon, Idaho this year

GILLIAN FLACCUS
Thu, March 3, 2022

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Climate scientists in the U.S. Pacific Northwest warned Thursday that much of Oregon and parts of Idaho can expect even tougher drought conditions this summer than in the previous two years, which already featured dwindling reservoirs, explosive wildfires and deep cuts to agricultural irrigation.

At a news conference hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, water and climate experts from Oregon, Washington and Idaho said parts of the region should prepare now for severe drought, wildfires and record-low stream flows that will hurt salmon and other fragile species.

Drought covers 74% of the Pacific Northwest and nearly 20% is in extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. An unusual ridge of high pressure off the U.S. West Coast scuttled storms in January and February that the region normally counts on to replenish water levels and build up a snowpack that feeds streams and rivers in later months, the experts said.

“This year we’re doing quite a bit worse than we were last year at this time, so one of the points is to make everyone aware that we’re going into some tough times in Oregon this summer,” said Larry O'Neill, Oregon's state climatologist. “Right now, we’re very worried about this region, about the adversity of impacts we’re going to experience this year.”

The predictions are in line with dire warnings about climate change-induced drought and extreme heat across the American West.

A 22-year megadrought deepened so much last year that the broader region is now in the driest spell in at least 1,200 years — a worst-case climate change scenario playing out in real time, a study found last month. The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

In the Pacific Northwest, the worst impacts from the drought this summer will be felt in Oregon, which missed out on critical winter storms would normally moisten central and southern Oregon and southern Idaho. Scientists are debating the cause of the shift in the weather pattern and some believe a warming northern Pacific Ocean could be part of the cause, said O'Neill.

“Climate change may be changing this storm track, but there is yet no consensus on how it is affecting the Pacific Northwest,” he said.

The National Interagency Fire Center recently designated all of central Oregon as “above normal” for fire danger starting in May — one of the earliest starts of fire season in the state ever. Most of central and eastern Oregon is in exceptional or extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and parts of eastern Washington and western and southern Idaho are in severe drought.

Seven counties in central Oregon are experiencing the driest two-year period since the start of record-keeping 127 years ago. Overall, Oregon is experiencing its third-driest two-year period since 1895, the experts said.

Most reservoirs in Oregon are 10% to 30% lower than where they were at this time last year and some are at historic lows, signaling serious problems for irrigators who rely on them to water their crops.

Southern Idaho is also experiencing severe drought and a major reservoir in the Boise Basin has below average water supply, said David Hoekema of the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

“It takes more than just an average year to recover and it doesn’t appear that we’re going to have an average year,” he said. “At this point, we expect southern Idaho to continue in drought … and we could also see drought intensify.”

Some of Oregon's driest areas are already running into trouble.

After a water crisis last summer that left dozens of homes with no water, more domestic wells in southern Oregon's Klamath Basin are running dry. State water monitors have measured a troubling drop in the underground aquifer that wasn't replenished by winter precipitation, said Ivan Gall, field services division administrator for the Oregon Water Resources Department.

His agency has received complaints of 16 domestic wells that have run dry since Jan. 1 and is scrambling to figure out how many more wells might go dry this summer in a cascading crisis, he said. Farming season in the agricultural powerhouse began Tuesday.

Last summer, farmers and ranchers in the basin didn't receive any water from a massive federally owned irrigation project because of drought conditions and irrigators instead pumped much more water than usual from the underground aquifer to stay afloat, Gall said.

The tension over water gained national attention when, for a brief period, anti-government activists camped out at the irrigation canal and threatened to open the water valves in violation of federal law.

“We’re going to start this year’s pumping season 10 feet lower than we did last season, which is a problem,” said Gall, who is already fielding calls from worried water users. “I think it's going to be another rough water year in the Klamath Basin.”

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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus