SO QUIET NO ONE NOTICED
Biden Quietly Casts Trump As The New Face Of Putin In America

S.V. Date
Fri, March 4, 2022

(Photo: Scott Olson via Getty Images)

SUPERIOR, Wisc. – President Joe Biden failed to bring up the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol incited by his predecessor in his State of the Union speech, but less than a day later essentially made Donald Trump, without ever mentioning his name, the American face of Russia’s dictator.

“Vladimir Putin was counting on being able to split up the United States,” Biden said, and proceeded to describe the Trump-inspired mob that attacked the Capitol with the goal of overturning the 2020 election.

“Look, how would you feel if you saw crowds storm and break down the doors of the British Parliament, kill five cops, injure 145 ― or the German Bundestag or the Italian Parliament? I think you’d wonder,” he said. “Well, that’s what the rest of the world saw. It’s not who we are. And now, we’re proving, under pressure, that we are not that country. We’re united.”

The little-noticed remarks at the University of Wisconsin-Superior student union came just 18 hours after Biden did not mention the Jan. 6 attack at all in his hourlong State of the Union address to Congress and the nation.

Polls show that Americans are no longer as concerned about the attempt to forcibly keep Trump in power as they were immediately afterward. Indeed, Americans generally, and more so Republicans and independents, are also less inclined to believe that Trump was responsible for the attack than they were a year ago.

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said that if Biden is hoping to stoke interest in Jan. 6, it is not likely to work.

“The Jan. 6 events are already baked into voters’ minds, and I have a hard time believing that any new revelations will impact attitudes one way or another,” he said. “That’s especially true when Americans are focused on other current event and issues, like Ukraine, inflation, crime and the economy.”

Perhaps appreciating where public sentiment is today, Biden actually drew an explicit link between Jan. 6 and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He said Putin assumed that his long efforts to sow division in the West, including the United States, would let him get away with seizing Russia’s neighbor.

“We were able to make sure we kept Europe united and the free world united,” Biden said. “In my view, he did what he did because he thought he could split NATO, split Europe, and split the United States. We’re going to demonstrate to the whole world no one can split this country.”

Deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked why Biden had not talked about Jan. 6 in his State of the Union, told reporters Wednesday that he has spoken about it many times, including a lengthy speech on the first anniversary of the attack earlier this year.

One White House official said on condition of anonymity that Biden would continue to discuss Jan. 6 as needed. And press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday, responding to a question about the House Jan. 6 committee, repeated Biden’s previous statements that Jan. 6 was a uniquely dangerous event in the nation’s history caused by the sitting president at the time, and needed to be treated as such.

Trump, who now is under investigation in multiple jurisdictions for his post-election actions, was elected with the open help of Putin in 2016. The Russian leader’s intelligence agencies stole documents from the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and made them available. Trump used that material daily during the final month before Election Day, even though he knew it had been stolen for him by Putin’s spies.

Putin also mounted a propaganda campaign using social media to generate false stories about Clinton with the goal of depressing Democratic turnout, according to both Special Counsel Robert Mueller as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Four years later, Russia was again working for Trump, and then after his loss helped amplify his lies that the election had been “stolen” from him ― lies that fomented the anger among Trump’s followers that culminated in the violent attack on Jan. 6.

Since then, Russian state media, “troll farms” and even Putin himself have been spreading Trump’s claims that the supporters who were arrested for their participation that day are “political prisoners” and are being unfairly persecuted.

Trump, despite losing the election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ― his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to the deaths of five people, including one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides.

That attempt to remain in power notwithstanding his loss has sparked both state and federal investigations.

The district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, has impaneled a special grand jury just to focus on Trump’s attempt to coerce state officials to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss of that state to Biden in 2020.

And the House Jan. 6 committee has been subpoenaing more and more former and current Trump aides to determine his precise role in that day’s events, while the Department of Justice has confirmed that it is investigating at least one element of Trump’s scheme to remain in power: the submission of fake Trump “electors” in states that Biden won.

This week, the Jan. 6 committee filed a lengthy brief in federal court in California in a lawsuit filed by a pro-Trump lawyer who wrote a memo arguing that Vice President Mike Pence had the unilateral ability to declare Trump the winner. That lawyer, John Eastman, is now trying to block the release of his emails on the topic. In the 221-page document, the committee told the judge that the lawyer cannot cite attorney-client privilege because of, among other reasons, the “crime-fraud” exception to that rule.

“The select committee ... has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee’s lawyers wrote.

In response, Trump has asked his followers to stage “the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere” if prosecutors come after him, “because our country and our elections are corrupt.”

Despite this, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and is openly speaking about running for the presidency again in 2024.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

DEMONIZING PUTIN
Russia's former top diplomat says the West's previous appeasement of Putin has made him 'delusional'

Jake Epstein
Thu, March 3, 2022

Now former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev speaks with

 journalists in the west driveway of the White House, Washington DC, September 29, 1993.

Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images


Russia's former top diplomat says the West's past appeasement of Putin has made him "delusional."

Andrei Kozyrev called for more sanctions and weapons deliveries to Ukraine during a CNN interview.

Last week, Kozyrev spoke out against current Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Russia's former foreign minister said the West's past appeasement of President Vladimir Putin has made him "delusional" amid his ongoing war against Ukraine.

"[Putin] is kind of delusional now, partly because of the long story of Western — including French — appeasement policy," Andrei Kozyrev said in an interview with CNN that aired on Thursday.

His comments came in response to a question about Putin's phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier on Thursday, which left Macron thinking "the worst is yet to come" in Ukraine, according to a senior French official.

Kozyrev, who was Russia's first foreign minister under Boris Yeltsin during the early-to-mid 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, said there needs to be "more severe sanctions now and more weapons delivery to Ukraine now."

Kozyrev also called on Russian diplomats to resign from their posts. He said he thinks the message will resonate, but is unsure if it will have any impact.

Last week, Kozyrev spoke out against current Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after the White House announced it would sanction Putin and Lavrov.

"Lavrov, rightfully sanctioned by the US and EU today, was my deputy in the 90s. Used to have my back," former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev wrote on Twitter. "Today, I would watch my back if he was behind me."

With one week now having passed since Putin ordered Russian troops to attack Ukraine, Kozyrev on Thursday said people in Russia will begin asking questions about the war, especially younger children and teenagers.

"Hey father, mother, what is going on?" he said. "What are you actually representing — what are you defending, this kind of barbarity?"

Russia on Tuesday, however, said it planned to force schoolchildren to watch a broadcast about the government's justification for the Ukrainian invasion.

Putin, the oligarch and the Fabergé eggs on show in London


Viktor Vekselberg
Chris Harvey
Thu, March 3, 2022

The Alexander Palace Egg, by Fabergé (1908) - V&A

They’re the royal treasures of the former Russian empire, the magnificent imperial Easter eggs made for the Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II by the St Petersburg jeweller Carl Fabergé. Only 50 were ever delivered, seven have been lost; of the 43 dazzlingly intricate creations still in existence, 15 of the most beautiful make up the climax of the V&A’s sold-out exhibition Fabergé: Romance to Revolution, which is scheduled to run until May 8.

The V&A say that of the 233 objects included in the entire show, 13 have been loaned from Russian institutions, and that to date there have been no requests to return the loans, which they expect to stay on display until the exhibition closes, “at which point we will work closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the lenders to ensure [their] safe return.”

Yet the imperial eggs seem certain to become objects of fraught concern in a new and frightening Cold War that is extending even to the arts. It has already thrown into jeopardy the careers of such stars as Anna Netrebko, probably the most famous operatic soprano in the world, and Valery Gergiev, the great conductor. Russia has been disinvited from Eurovision. Meanwhile the eggs, these extraordinary symbols of Russian wealth and might, continue to draw crowds of visitors daily.

The CEO of Fabergé, Sean Gilbertson, describes them as “some of the most important culturally historic pieces of art ever made… The value that’s on display in those 15 imperial eggs is simply staggering. The Queen owns one called the Mosaic egg. If that was put up for auction today it would probably exceed $100 million.” Before the war in Ukraine, he says, “in our view, you’ve got half a billion dollars of eggs there.”

Among them is the Moscow Kremlin egg, a gift from Tsar Nicholas II to his wife, which consists of ornate towers of gold, silver and onyx around a white enamel cupola. It was crafted between 1904-6 and has been loaned by the Kremlin Armoury Museum. The museum has loaned two other imperial eggs: the Alexander Palace egg and the Romanov Tercentenary egg. Also present is the very first imperial Easter egg, the Hen egg, made in 1884-5 for Nicholas’s father, Alexander III, as a present for the Empress Maria Feodorovna.

The Moscow Kremlin Egg - Moscow Kremlin Museums/PA

It contains a small, golden bird, which fits in a golden yolk, inside a white enamel egg. This has been loaned by a foundation set up by the Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has had his assets frozen in the US since 2018 along with 23 other Russian nationals, in relation to Moscow’s perceived meddling in the 2016 American election and other alleged “malign activity”. His main relationship with Putin appears to be a business one connected to Russian infrastructure projects.

Vekselberg bought the Hen egg in 2004, as part of the collection of Fabergé works once owned by the late American media magnate Malcolm Forbes. He owns nine Fabergé imperial eggs, which are normally on display in the Fabergé Museum in the Shuvalov Palace in St Petersburg. The V&A say they “have received no direct support from Viktor Vekselberg either through funding or the donation of objects”. The museum explains, “Our loan agreement is with the Link of Times Foundation and was made in good faith between two cultural organisations”.

Yet Fabergé’s own publicity on their website refers to it as: “the celebrated Fabergé collection of the Link of Times Foundation owned by Russian entrepreneur Viktor Vekselberg”. The oligarch spent £30 million on renovating the neoclassical palace in which they’re housed and is reported as saying, “Any true collector makes a collection to put it on public display sooner or later and, ideally, create its own museum.” One source suggests that the purchase of the collection has been talked about as a bargaining chip that could be used to keep Vekselberg in favour with the Russian president, rather like a “get out of jail free” card.

In the past, the Ukrainian-born Vekselberg, who is based in Switzerland and has a fortune estimated to be around £12 billion, has donated freely to arts institutions, including the Tate, where he remains an Honorary Tate Foundation Member. This, Tate informed us, is in recognition of a donation made seven years ago.

Vekselberg considered returning the eggs to Russia as an act of “repatriation”. Yet as Toby Faber, the author of the book Fabergé’s Eggs, points out, for most of the 20th century, their exquisite craftsmanship was disregarded at home. “If you think back to the Soviet era, Carl Fabergé was absolutely a symbol of a discredited time, and they were not proud of his work. Pretty much all of his standard jewellery was melted down in the early Seventies, just for the precious stones it contained... the eggs themselves endured a series of raids by Stalin who wanted to sell them off to fund his five-year plan. The Kremlin was left at the end of that process with 10, and all the rest were scattered overseas.”

It was not until the late 1980s that accurate details about the provenance of the eggs emerged, he explains. "Perestroika and the opening of the Kremlin archives was the first time when people were getting real clarity about which egg was made for whom, and in what year; it had all been guesswork up to then, and a bit of hearsay.”

The Bolshoi Ballet performed at The Royal Opera House - Nigel Norrington

There is also the issue of another egg loaned to the exhibition, not an imperial one, but an item nevertheless of huge value. This is the Rothschild egg, bought by Alexander Ivanov, a Russian art dealer, in 2007 for £8.9 million, for his Fabergé Museum in Germany but latterly seemingly given to Putin, who would donate it in 2014 with much fanfare to the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg – which has now loaned it to the V&A.

Will the closeness of this egg’s connection to the man currently being accused of war crimes entail future problems?

We approached the V&A’s director Tristram Hunt for comment but were told he was not available. The chief executive of the Hermitage Foundation UK, Janice Sacher, was also unable to comment, and even declined to name any works on loan to the UK for fear that they might be targeted. The DCMS provided an almost identical statement to the V&A. There is clearly anxiety.

Meanwhile, the sense of the UK being drawn into a new culture war in the wake of the Russian invasion continues to expand. A planned season of the Bolshoi Ballet has been cancelled by the Royal Opera House, the Science Museum has called off an upcoming exhibition about the Trans-Siberian Railway (and even its director has handed back a Russian medal). The Royal Academy of Arts has severed ties with one of its trustees, the billionaire Russian banker Petr Aven, handing back a donation that he made to a Francis Bacon exhibition.

Semyon Bychkov conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at Carnegie Hall - Getty

One gallerist specialising in Russian artists told me she had been contacted by several collectors asking to be removed immediately from her mailing list. Meanwhile, a reader’s letter in the Telegraph complained about Classic FM continuing to play Russian music.

Navigating this new, bomb-scarred cultural landscape will be difficult for performers and institutions alike. Russian virtuoso musicians regularly play in Britain, principal dancers are integral parts of companies like the Royal Ballet, with Natalia Osipova and Vadim Muntagirov both performing in a current production of Swan Lake. “This will be a traumatic time for our Ukrainian and Russian staff and artists, particularly those with family and friends affected,” a spokesperson for the Royal Opera House told me. “Support has been offered to everyone who works with us, and our respect and solidarity is with Ukraine as it resists the invasion of its territory.”

The Barbican, which has not made any changes to its planned programme, says it is looking at it on a “case by case basis”. A spokesperson explained: “The Russian conductor Semyon Bychkov who conducts the Czech Philharmonic in March has made a public statement denouncing the invasion and the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s programme entitled Shostakovich in the Shadow of Stalin feels like an appropriate programme given the context behind Symphony No 5.” It seems that the words of Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the Hermitage Museum, that “culture is always above politics” have been overtaken by events.

Additional reporting by Alex Diggins

BRONZE AGE SWORDS

Ukraine is fighting the Russians 

with weapons from Troy, 

Alabama


Jemma Stephenson, Montgomery Advertiser
Wed, March 2, 2022

Javelin weapons made in Troy are seemingly being used by Ukrainian troops to fend off the Russian invasion.

Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent, posted photos Tuesday on Twitter that showed the weapons embossed with "Javelin Joint Venture Lockheed Martin Troy, AL."

In a 2017 article, Military + Aerospace Electronics reported that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin were building missiles for Ukraine, among other governments.

Lockheed Martin has a "manufacturing, final assembly, test and storage operation" facility based in Troy, per its website.

"Foreign military sales are government to government transactions, and we work closely with the U.S. government on any military sale to international allies," Lockheed Martin said in a statement Tuesday. "Discussions about sales to foreign governments are best addressed by the U.S. government."

PRO LIFE GOVERNOR
Gov. Kay Ivey tweeted that "we want the last thing Putin ever reads to be 'Made in Alabama.'"

Some social media users have shared their pride at Alabama-made weapons being used in Ukraine. One Twitter user with the handle @HunterPalmerPCB called it a "care package" from "sweet home Alabama."

Raytheon did not immediately return request for comment.

Jemma Stephenson is the children and education reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at jstephenson@gannett.com or 334-261-1569.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Ukraine is fighting Russian troops with weapons from Troy, Alabama

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