A link via Popular Resistance to a report from ScheerPost; others are accessible by clicking on the sources’ names below. (GAZA entry for this date, so far, is HERE.)  — MCM

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FROM JAN. 7  Bill introduced in House calls for U.S. to drop charges against Assange, by Dave DeCamp | ScheerPost / Popular Resistance  A resolution introduced in the House last month calls for the United States to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the U.S. and convicted for journalism that exposed U.S. war crimes. The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives . . . READ MORE . . .

First, links to Reuters and Associated Press reports from this morning (possibly updated  from what appears below, and linked to others) and National Public Radio segments. Then, a link to a New Yorker interview with a Russian ex-patriot journalist who specializes in that country’s intelligence network; it is linked to other recent New Yorker pieces related to Russia and Ukraine. Next, from Global Research, a link to one writer’s summaries of “the road to war” and the war itself so far. Finally, from TK News, the beginning of Matt Taibbi’s reminder that TV news shows tend to present representatives of corporations doing business with the government who are former government officials according to their former government status without mentioning their current paid status; also recommended: the short video illustration. — MCM

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Russia halts gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, by Marek Strzelecki, Tsvetelia Tsolova and Pavel Polityuk | Reuters * Russia demands payment in roubles to shield it from sanctions * EU denounces gas cut-off as ‘blackmail’  * Kyiv reports some Russian gains in villages in east Ukraine * Explosions hit Russian regions on border; Kyiv calls it ‘karma’ * Concern grows that conflict could suck in Moldova | WARSAW/SOFIA/KYIV — Russia halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland today for rejecting its demand for payment in roubles, taking direct aim at European economies in its toughest retaliation so far against international sanctions over the war in Ukraine. The step was denounced by European leaders as “blackmail”, and comes as European countries have joined the United States in ramping up arms shipments to help Ukraine fend off a new Russian assault in the east. READ MORE . . .

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Russia releases US Marine vet as part of prisoner exchange, by Eric Tucker and Matthew Lee | The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Russia and the United States have carried out an unexpected prisoner exchange in a time of high tensions, trading a Marine veteran jailed by Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America. The deal announced by both countries involving Trevor Reed, an American imprisoned for nearly three years, would have been a notable diplomatic maneuver even in times of peace. . . . The U.S., for its part, returned Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who’d been serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut . . . READ MORE . . .

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U.N. secretary general goes to Moscow for talks with President Putin. Reported by Charles Maynes | National Public Radio U.N. Secretary General António Guterres was in Moscow Tuesday for talks with Russian President Putin and his foreign minister. The focus: U.N. efforts to ease the civilian suffering in Ukraine. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, read.

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U.S. officials say more weapons will help Ukraine hand Russia a strategic defeat. Reported by Michele Kelemen | NPR  The White House is rushing more weapons to Ukraine to try to ensure “a strategic defeat” for Russia. Aims shifted partly because of Ukrainian battlefield successes with U.S. provided weapons. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, read.

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Russia’s national energy company cuts off natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria. NPR’s Leila Fadel talks to Henning Gloystein, energy director at the Eurasia group, about what European leaders say is a move that amounts to blackmail. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, read.

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Ukrainians debate the future of Russian identity and culture within their society. Reported by Brian Mann | NPR People in the Ukrainian city of Odesa are considering how their deep Russian heritage can fit into Ukraine’s national identity. Some want Russian monuments and cultural markers removed. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, read.

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The Purges in Putin’s Shrinking Inner Circle, by Isaac Chotiner | The New Yorker I recently spoke by phone with Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist and an expert on the Russian state’s intelligence apparatus. Currently in London, Soldato . . . READ MORE . . .

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THE MILITARY SITUATION IN THE UKRAINE: Parts 1 and 2. By Jacques Baud | Global Research Let’s try to examine the roots of the [Ukrainian] conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about “separatists” or “independentists” from Donbass. This is a misnomer. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were NOT referendums of “independence” (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but . . . READ MORE . . .

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A Brief Note on the ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement,’ Which Is Not Just for Defense Lobbyists, by Matt Taibbi | TK News TV analysts from all sorts of industries are identified by long-ago official titles, not current lobbying gigs. . . . As some readers correctly pointed out, defense is only the most conspicuous example of the phenomenon in which TV news programs identify guests by illustrious past official titles, and not by their current lobbying ties or positions on corporate boards. This happens in most every industry . . . READ MORE . . .

To start, Associated Press and Reuters stories, both linked to others related to the war. Then, five stories heard on NPR’s “Morning Edition” program. Next, some suggestions by Sarah Morris, head of instruction and engagement at the Emory University Libraries, whose focus is media literacy. More news and commentary to follow. — MCM

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Russia pressures Mariupol as it focuses on Ukraine’s east, by Adam Schreck | The Associated Press KYIV — Russian forces pressured a stubborn pocket of resistance in Mariupol amid renewed hopes today for an evacuation of thousands of civilians from the shattered port city that is a key battleground in Moscow’s new onslaught to take control of Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. In addition to pounding the holdout in Mariupol, Russian forces have intensified . . . Click HERE for rest of report including photos.

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No surrender in Mariupol as Russian ultimatum expires; refugees from Ukraine top 5 million,by Natalia Zinets | Reuters * Russia told Ukrainians at Mariupol plant to lay down arms * U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany promise more help * U.S. plans new military aid package in next few days – sources | A Russian ultimatum to Ukrainian troops in Mariupol to surrender or die expired this afternoon with no mass capitulation, but the commander of a unit believed to be holding out in the besieged city said his forces could survive just days or hours. The United Nations said on today the number of refugees . . . Click HERE for rest of report including photos.

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Ukrainian fighters are making their last stand in a steel mill in Mariupol. Reported by Leila Fadel and Tim Mak | National Public Radio A Ukrainian fighter calls on the world to save their lives and extract them and civilians out of the destroyed city of Mariupol. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, to read.

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Ukrainian forces in Mariupol are refusing to surrender to Russian forces. NPR’s Leila Fadel talks to retired Gen. Ben Hodges about how the Russian assault in eastern Ukraine will be different from Russian President Putin’s initial plan to take Kiev at the end of February. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, to read.

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To fight climate change, and now Russia, too, Zurich turns off natural gas. Reported by Dan Charles | NPR European officials are debating whether they can stop buying natural gas imports from Russia. Many say it can’t be done. But the biggest city in Switzerland – Zurich – is already taking ambitious steps to wean itself off gas. It’s shutting down the flow of gas to whole parts of the city. Zurich started down this path a decade ago in order to save money and fight climate change. The plan . . . Click HERE to read more and listen.

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It’s planting season in Ukraine, and that means problems for global food supply. Reported by Ayen Bior | NPR. The day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Lebanon’s economy minister announced the country of 6.8 million people had enough wheat reserves to last just one month. Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of agriculture, which Lebanon depends on. Ukraine alone exported more than $27 billion in agricultural products to the world last year. About 80% of Lebanon’s wheat comes from Ukraine. So when the war started, so did worries of food shortages and price hikes. “You could say . . . Click HERE to listen and read today.

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Decades after the USSR collapsed, Eurasian countries struggle to maintain democracy. NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Abramowitz of Freedom House about the state of democracy in 29 formerly communist nations of Central Europe and Central Asia following Russia’s war on Ukraine. Click HERE to listen and, tomorrow, to read.

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Disinformation, Propaganda, and the War in Ukraine, by Sarah Morris | The Carter Center The war in Ukraine is a terrible situation that is keeping many of us glued to our devices, looking for updates and ways to help Ukraine. Unfortunately, large amounts of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda are swirling around, creating confusion and disruption. How can you spot and prevent the spread of dangerous mis/disinformation and propaganda and support high-quality, factual coverage and reporting on the war? The five tips below can help. [1] Be extra thorough with fact-checking. During periods of turmoil, it is crucial . . . READ MORE . . .

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TO BE CONTINUED

Lionel and I are not friends, have never met, and until he took part in a conference Bruce Henry and I attended in New York City on Sept. 11, 2016, a couple of years before our walk across Massachusetts, I had never hear of him. But occasionally he sends me an email. The one below arrived this afternoon. (It’s online HERE.) He seems to be on to something. — MCM

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Greetings, Mark:

If this present world doesn’t scare you to a level unrealized in recent times, you’re simply not paying attention. So much to assimilate and digest. Provided infra are myriad observations and takes, displayed and posted at various times and occasions with deliberate citation and referencing when necessary. They provide thought graffiti for your edification, perusal and review.

• Crematorium Mythology. A viral tweet that remains to this day unchecked by “fact checkers” claims to show a Russian-operated “mobile crematorium” in Mariupol, but there’s a problem. The image is taken from an 8-year-old YouTube video. If this story doesn’t blow your mind, you’re brain-dead. Here’s another quote from another source. Read this carefully. And a quote from the article. “Shocking footage – originally shared in 2013 – disturbingly shows a circular chamber fitted into the back of the lorry.” What?! 2013? What about now? As in current. And as they say on QVC, but wait, there’s more. This from an MSDNC piece. So help me, this is the quote. “NBC’s Richard Engel says reports that Russians brought mobile cremation machines into Ukraine are ‘credible,’ but there has been no evidence that they have been used.” Again, what?! If there’s no evidence they’ve been used, then what’s the point? (Unless waste disposal equipment delivers the point.)
• Americans have either forgotten about or know nothing of #AgendaID2020. And we are a society of amnesiacs who didn’t know anything in the first place to remember. Welcome to slavery. Please, refresh your recollection.
• “The question is: Why are the Western powers pressing for the expansion of NATO? Why is NATO being renewed and extended when the ‘Soviet threat’ has disappeared?” This is from a speech from 1996 and the question is even more valid today. Please, have a read.
• All of the lies misinformation misrepresentation obfuscation redirection confusion, all of that doesn’t matter so long as we have a population that is asleep and unconscious and unable to apply critical thinking to the obvious. It’s that simple.
• Disney’s Karey Berk is writing the script for a GOP midterm sweep and 2024 election of colossal proportion. She is representative of the epicenter of a specific and targeted approach to destroy traditional American families by targeting children.
• Fundamental and critical children’s human development and psychological/emotional wherewithal have been dramatically and permanently impaired and disrupted by virtue of obedience face diapers and a complete and total untethering from medical reality. Happy? See for yourself.
• Understand something. The American population is easily duped. Easily persuaded. Easily fooled. And when it comes to war and death point out the bad guy and they’ll believe everything you tell them. No questions asked. It’s always been like that. And always will be. Sadly.
• Pelosi understands on her way out the door with a copy of the home game that the radleft component of the Demons will be its ruination. This is one of the most incredibly important stories that the pusillanimous sockpuppets are too afraid to cover.
• Tell me again why NATO is still necessary in the 21st Century after the demise of the Warsaw Pact.
• The single biggest component—out of four—in determining the price of gas in America is the price of crude oil on international markets. In February 2022, the price of crude made up as much as 61% of the price Americans paid for a gallon of regular gas. [SOURCE]
• Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Patrisse Cullors has spoken against a report that reveals her organization’s purchase of a $5.8 million mansion in southern California, calling the story a “racist and sexist” attack on the movement. Right.
• I’m sure glad that America knew when to pull out of Vietnam. Like Reagan did in Lebanon. The question that none of the media generals address is why in the name of God doesn’t Zelenskyy and NATO formalize their complete and total abnegation of future coordination.
• SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras posted this on Twitter: “The speech of members of the neo-Nazi Order Azov in the Greek Parliament is a provocation. The absolute responsibility lies with the Prime Minister. He talked about a historic day but it is a historical shame. Solidarity with the Ukrainian people is given. But the Nazis can not have a say in Parliament.” I could walk into any sockpuppet news media station and no one would understand what this story was even about.
• The problem rational Americans have is that it’s virtually impossible to lecture countries about invading sovereign nations when we’ve done it repeatedly ourselves with justifications that border on imaginary. How can we lecture any country on invasion? With a straight face.
• Marine Le Pen is presaging what will happen during the midterms in seven months. Political ideology and waves of change happen globally and geopolitically. This is not about the US anymore. In fact, we’ve been marginalized during the great reset. Focus.
• If you need a textbook example of how to conduct misinformation wars regarding civilian casualties look no further than Syria and Douma. What’s critical to focus on is how no one questions anything ever. It’s like our skepticism was nerve gassed.
• Recremental dross is seen every night on local TV news.
• Sockpuppet media execs still insist upon grinding out the same animatronic mannequins and vapid empty shells. Instead of righting the course of certain collapse they keep recasting the same idiots, ensuring their ultimate demise and irrelevance. Keep it up. Obsolescence awaits.
• Pay close attention, citizens. You’re going to see firsthand how profoundly useless the corporate statist moribund otiose SG sockpuppet media are today. Watch how they mince about and traverse the minefield of obviousness and actually doing their job. Pay very close attention.
• Sockpuppet media must have a list of clichés that must be enunciated every hour because all you have to do is listen to 10 minutes of any subway terror coverage and you will hear the same nonsensical circular drivel repeated in rote mindless fashion.
• NBC News reported that the US intelligence community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the US mainstream media for the American audience to consume.
• The WHO has contracted German-based Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to develop a global vaccine passport system with plans to link every person on the planet to a QR code digital ID. #MarkOfTheBeast
• Not only is Biden’s approval dropping but his cognition and mental wherewithal. You are watching the systematic collapse of the first neurological Manchurian candidate. We have no president. He is cognitively AWOL. But, nothing to see here. Move along.
• Justice Clarence Thomas must not budge an inch, remain steadfast and those of you who claim to love justice and the American way better wake up and see what’s happening now. SCOTUS must never be intimidated by the mob.
• Watch any American cable news program and see the greatest propaganda distortion imaginable. And how it is accomplished is by creating a noninformation series of white noise nothing. Graphics and puker blowdried morons reading saccharine prompter tripe. And it’s all by design.
• Here’s the problem with these vaccine mandate rallies. Nothing will come of them. The GOP is nonexistent. It’s for all practical purposes DOA. Covid is a religion. The vaccine its sacrament. The mask its vestments. Fauci its Pope and the CDC its Vatican.
• Everything we can possibly say about China COVID crackdowns is an understatement. And while putatively brave news correspondents warn American citizens about the dangers of medical tyranny that will certainly befall us, our torpid US population sits back, belches and couldn’t care less.
• Governments since the beginning of time have been trying to contrive new ways to lock its citizens up and imprison them. The struggle and challenge have been to dupe contingents of citizens to believe that it is for their own good. Voilà!
• If the DOJ doesn’t immediately recognize the fraudulent organization of BLM as a criminal racketeering enterprise that there is no justice, there is no equality and there was no reason for anyone to follow anyone else ever again. Capeesh?
• I have no problem with Biden bringing illegals to the border. It’s crossing the border that I have a big problem with.
• Dr. Oz is a tool of Oprah. Now, any questions?
• It seems the new overused word for those who have just found themselves aware of child predation and human trafficking is grooming.
• “The warmongers are taking an enormous risk, even for them. Putin is not the maniac they portray him to be but rather a cautious statesman pursuing Russia’s legitimate security interests.” This ideation is inconsistent with the accepted narrative.
• In an attempt to crack down on online criminals, federal investigators are utilizing the so-called keyword warrants to order Google to provide personal information on anyone who searches a specific keyword in their browser — completely breaching privacy.
• A biological male inmate in prison for life for strangling a cellmate to death in 2004 and previously identified as a transgender woman is now demanding to be treated like a baby by prison staff and wants to be given diapers and baby food. (We shit you not.)
• “Our special military operation is meant to put an end to the unabashed expansion [of NATO] and the unabashed drive towards full domination by the US and its Western subjects on the world stage.” Who said that?
• During the Vietnam war we only had three networks, a daily newspaper and maybe a bulletin here and there. Yet we knew more about what was happening then we do today with the library at Alexandria in our pocket. Amazing if you think about it.
• It’s really something isn’t it? Hungary and France have elections and nothing seems to go wrong. No obvious criminality, no weird inexplicable disasters, no plywood hastily nailed to obscure vision. Amazing.

Till it be morrow, good citizen.

If you don’t read a newspaper, you are uninformed. If you read a newspaper, you are misinformed. — Mark Twain (attributed)*

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.  — A.J. Liebling

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A Best-Seller: When I turned on the news this morning, Steve Inskeep of “Morning Edition” was intoning the words “has been at the top of best-seller lists since it came out in November.” It tuned out, though, that he was talking with New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones about her book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. A fascinating interview, HERE.

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Another Best-Seller: It turns out I was wrong to write yesterday, HERE, that Robert F. Kennedy’s book is the subject of a mainstream media blackout except for the author’s talk with Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. Wrong, although as far as I know the New York Times has yet to report or comment on it, it is on the Times’s own best-seller list.  Publisher Tom Lyons says that it should be No. 1 on the list but is No. 7 because of the way book sales are calculated for that list.

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Angela Is Out, Olaf Is In: Another item on today’s “Morning Edition” is this four-minute one, HERE, on the transition in Germany. Inskeep interviews NPR’s correspondent there, Rob Schmitz, on Parliament’s vote making the Social Democratic Party’s Olaf Schultz chancellor, succeeding the Christian Democrats’ Angela Merkel, ending her 16-year chancellorship. (Merkel, who did not run for re-election, got a minute-long standing ovation.)

It was noted in the interview that Schultz will govern in a three-party coalition government — the other two parties being the Greens and the Free Democrats, described as “environmentalist” and “libertarian,” respectively. That could never happen in the United States; here, the media frames our political tendencies as “red” and “blue,” for Republican (or Republican-leaning) and Democratic (or Democratic-leaning), which is kind of a fiction because registered voters who are unaffiliated with either major party represent, in fact, huge percentages of registered voters — not to mention the sizable percentages of citizens who don’t bother to register to vote, possibly because they’re demoralized by the system dominated by the two major parties and the mainstream media.

— Mark Channing Miller

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* Often ascribed to Mark Twain, the saying is also attached to others, as THIS account attests.

If you wish to discern either the presence or absence of integrity, you need ask only one question. What is missing? Has anything been left out?* — M. Scott Peck

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Bruce** and I had breakfast together yesterday. It was a reminder that this blog had its start a few weeks before our walk across Massachusetts in April and May 2018 with “9/11 TRUTH” signs on our chests and backpacks, to encouragingly positive response by motorists, fellow pedestrians and others. There have been about 400 postings since then. The meal was at The Soda Chef, a retro luncheonette on Pittsfield’s North Street, the same place we ate at just before taking the first of three buses that got us to Hyannis, where a friend picked us up; she got us to our talk at the Provincetown library, then fed and put us up for the night, got us breakfasted and saw us off walking toward Truro.

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Last night “The Insider” was playing at our house. It’s the 1999 docudrama starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino about whistleblowing executive Jeffrey Wigard (Crowe) and TV producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino). The latter maneuvers within CBS to get Wigard’s documentation of Big Tobacco’s addiction-fostering ways on “60 Minutes.” A good movie, which is probably borrowable through inter-library loan.

It’s based on a 1996 article in Vanity Fair magazine article by Marie Brenner titled “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Click HERE for it.

A paragraph from the DVD case: “As they soon find out, Corporate America will use all legal means at their disposal to save a billion-dollar-a-year habit. And as the corporate giants soon find out, Bergman and Wigard are honorable men, driven to smoke out the evidence.”

Substitute Big Pharma of the 2020’s for Big Tobacco of the 1990’s and add the growing clout of the Internet for a current drama playing out worldwide — but as yet without the analogous victory for reality and truth.

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Speaking of movies, HERE’s a chance to be a co-producer of one being put out by the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. The film-in-the-making is titled “9/11: From Crime Scene to Courtroom.” It is self-described as “An Unprecedented Documentary Taking Hard evidence of 9/11 Crimes to Court.” The crime scene is the World Trade Center of Sept. 11, 2001. The courtrooms would be in New York City and Washington, D.C., where the Lawyers’ Committee has been trying to get impressive evidence of shocking federal crimes on dockets, in the face of yawning lack of interest by news media outlets. This blog has tried to do justice to the LC’s efforts in probably a dozen entries. (Among the things lacking in the 2020s so far in the effort to expose the murderous criminality and fraud is a piece like Marie Brenner’s in Vanity Fair mentioned above, and a publication like that one willing to publish it.)

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What with the Northern Hemisphere continuing to get colder and darker, some humans can probably use something cheerier, like Eleanor Bearsdsley’s story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” the other day Josephine Baker making it into the Pantheon in Paris. (Although the same humans may want to consider THESE RESERVATIONS by Washington Post guest columnist Rokhaya Diallo, headlined “No congratulations to France on Baker honor” in the Springfield Republican.) Or pick their way through a Le Monde story about Baker in the original French, like this one

Quand Joséphine Baker la résistante évoquait « sa vie de caserne » dans la presse, en 1944

Or if you don’t want to read at all, try looking at these paintings, also from France. (Thanks to a 9/11 truther Facebook friend.)

— Mark Channing Miller

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* From Meditations from the Road, a 1993 compilation of 366 quotes from The Road Less Traveled and The Different Drummer.

** Bruce Riblet Henry, for whom the walk was a perfect way to help get the word out.