Daily Archives: February 10, 2022

2022-02-10: News Headlines

Tom Engelhardt (2022-02-10). Tomgram: John Feffer, Welcome to the Future (It's Not Pretty). warisacrime.org This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Peter Certo (2022-02-10). Why isn't US Media Screaming that the Republican Party Is Now Openly Against Democracy? juancole.com ( Otherwords.org ) — If you're the sort of person who follows the news, you've probably heard a good bit lately about podcaster Joe Rogan, Neil Young's fight with Spotify, and maybe a little about Russia and Ukraine. All that's good grist for the mill. But did you also hear former President Trump admit that …

WSWS (2022-02-10). Trump and his fascist allies double down on defense of January 6 coup. wsws.org Following Senator Mitch McConnell's rebuke of the Republican National Committees' resolution defending Trump's putsch attempt as "legitimate political discourse," leading Republicans came out in defense of their would-be Fuhrer.

Ben Radford (2022-02-10). Twelve years after US-backed military coup, Honduras's left is back in power. greenleft.org.au Leftist Xiomara Castro has been sworn in, the first time since 2006 that Honduras has a legitimately-elected president. Ben Radford reports.

League of Women Voters (2022-02-10). Monday 2/14: League of Women Voters 102nd Birthday: Virtual Action Rally for Voting Rights & Democracy. indybay.org Virtual action rally for voting rights and democracy…

Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J. S. Davies (2022-02-09). Memo to Congress: Diplomacy for Ukraine Is Spelled M-i-n-s-k. dissidentvoice.org Peace protest at the White House — Photo credit: iacenter.org While the Biden administration is sending more troops and weapons to inflame the Ukraine conflict and Congress is pouring more fuel on the fire, the American people are on a totally different track. A December 2021 poll found that a plurality of Americans in both …

WSWS (2022-02-09). White House seeks to fabricate lower COVID-19 hospitalization numbers. wsws.org The Biden administration is moving to slash the official number of COVID-19 hospitalizations by 50 percent or more by changing the standard for who is counted as a COVID-19 patient, implementing a central demand of Donald Trump and other advocates of "herd immunity."

_____ (2022-02-09). USDA Offers $1 Billion To Help Farmers And Ranchers Fight Climate Change. popularresistance.org The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will invest $1 billion in projects that encourage farmers, ranchers and owners of forested land to employ practices that help mitigate the effects of climate change by lowering greenhouse gas emissions or catching and storing carbon, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told Reuters on Monday. The new program is called the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. | President Biden has committed to cutting agricultural emissions in half by 2030 and has asked farmers to lead the way, as U.S. agriculture is responsible for more than 10 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissi…

Basav Sen (2022-02-09). Three Hopeful Stories of Environmental Activism. otherwords.org When you work on climate, the news can often feel like one step forward, two steps back. But lately, ordinary people have been winning big victories to protect their communities — and our planet. | Last November, for example, President Biden Then, just two weeks later, his administration announced…

Isheka N. Harrison (2022-02-09). Fact Check: Biden And Democrats To Hand Out Crack Pipes To Promote Racial Equity, Prevent Infection. moguldom.com The Biden Administration is providing funding to fight against drug addiction and crack pipes are among the supplies included on the approved equipment list. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has included the pipes as one of 20 items in its planned safe smoking kits, which will be distributed through the department's …

_____ (2022-02-09). Biden Makes a Fruitless Attempt to Play the Qatari Card against Russia. journal-neo.org By promoting a Russophobic campaign in Europe, in part by escalating the information war with a fake thesis about Russia's alleged intention to attack Ukraine, Washington is trying to convince Europeans that it can find a vital substitute for Europe's natural gas supply here. In particular, the Joe Biden administration is seeking additional sources of …

Mike Walter (2022-02-09). The Heat: Russia-Ukraine tensions. america.cgtn.com The week started with high-level meetings to discuss the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Here, in Washington DC, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with U.S. President Joe Biden and tried to dispel fears that NATO countries were divided on how to deal with the threat. Last Friday, in …

Dave DeCamp (2022-02-09). Israel's Bennett to Biden: Don't Return to Iran Nuclear Deal. news.antiwar.com Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told President Biden during a call on Sunday not to return to the Iran nuclear deal, The source said that Bennett told Biden that without a deal, there wouldn't necessarily be an escalation in Iran's nuclear program and said "nothing will happen if you don't sign it." | Israel is more concerned about the economic relief Iran would get under the nuclear deal, and Bennett said Tehran's financial benefits would f…

WSWS (2022-02-09). Biden's task force on unionization: A corporatist agenda for austerity and war. wsws.org The task force proposals are all aimed at the strengthening of a labor police force, comprised of upper-middle class executives, to enforce the dictates of the ruling class.

Dave DeCamp (2022-02-09). White House Holds Meeting on Redesignating Houthis as Terrorists. news.antiwar.com According to a report from Axios, President Biden reversed the Houthi terror designation as one of his first foreign policy moves in office. The designation was made in the final days of the Trump administration despite warnings from the UN and aid groups that it would make the delivery of food to Yemen's starving population…

John Knefel (2022-02-09). Will Biden Declare a "No First Use" Approach to Nuclear Weapons? truthout.org When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, many observers noted that, terrifyingly, he would soon be the sole person in charge of determining whether or not to use the U.S.'s vast nuclear weapons capability. He would have the power to end life on Earth in a matter of minutes. | As Barack Obama and Joe Biden were preparing to hand the nuclear codes over, the outgoing vice president warned against any preemptive use of the terrible weapons: "Given our non-nuclear capabilities and the nature of today's t…

_____ (2022-02-09). Wanting Peace With Russia To Focus Aggressions On China Is Just Being An Imperialist Warmonger. strategic-culture.org By Caitlin JOHNSTONE | Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz criticized the Biden administration's dangerous escalations against Russia on the House floor on Monday, not because he thinks needlessly ramping up cold war brinkmanship with a nuclear-armed nation is an insane thing to do, nor because he believes the US government should cease trying to dominate the world by constantly working to subvert and undermine any nation who disobeys its commands, but because he wants US aggressions to be focused more on China. | "While the Biden administration, the media, and many in congress beat the drums of war for Ukraine, th…

Staff (2022-02-09). Debate: Would U.S. Sanctions Bill on Russia Prevent Military Conflict or Make War More Likely? democracynow.org In an effort to discourage Russia's increasing military presence at the border with Ukraine, the U.S. has threatened to impose sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders an invasion. We host a debate between two foreign policy thinkers on whether sanctions could avert war — or make it more likely. The current sanctions bill proposed by Congress rushes to punish Russia in a way that would be harmful to diplomacy and could have disastrous humanitarian impacts on Russian civilians, warns Marcus Stanley, advocacy director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Meanwhile, George Lope…

_____ (2022-02-09). Workers Power Day — February 26, 2022. popularresistance.org Starbucks workers are leading an electrifying drive to organize the major coffee chain, with one or often several stores announcing they're joining this growing movement each day. Amazon workers from coast to coast are organizing to build power at one of the world's largest and most powerful corporations. Workers in Staten Island recently filed to hold union elections at 2 warehouses. The majority Black Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama are engaged in their second union campaign, after the results of the first were tossed out based on Amazon's egregious union busting campaign — which they continue in earn…

Tanya Wadhwa (2022-02-09). Center-left candidates to face off in second round of presidential elections in Costa Rica. peoplesdispatch.org The Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) of Costa Rica released on Monday February 7 the preliminary results of the general elections that were held in the country on February 6. As per the results, former president José María Figueres of the center-left National Liberation Party (PLN) and former World Bank economist Rodrigo Chaves of the center-left Social Democratic Progress Party will face off in the presidential run-off scheduled for April 3. With 88.20% of the Following the top two candidates were Fa…

WSWS (2022-02-09). Two right-wing figures to contest South Korean presidential election. wsws.org The candidates from the two main parties are both determined to further open the economy despite the surge of COVID-19 cases and have backed the US war drive against China.

_____ (2022-02-09). Black Alliance For Peace Condemns The 'America COMPETES Act'. popularresistance.org On Friday evening, February 4, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act of 2022 (H.R. 4521). The stated intent of the legislation is to strengthen "America's national and economic security and the financial security of families, and advance our leadership in the world." While this claim, found in Nancy Pelosi's press statement on January 20th, seems to be addressing some of the most important political and economic issues currently plaguing the United States, from the supply chain to the shortage of semiconductors, the Black Alliance for Peace sees this piece of legislation as sinophobic…

Dean Baker (2022-02-09). The Big Lie of the Elites. cepr.net We all know about the Trumpers' big lie: somehow millions of votes were stolen from their hero, but the liberals were so smart in their steal that Trump's team can't produce any evidence. That one rightly draws contempt from anyone not in the cult, but what about the big lie that the vast majority of …

Peter Certo (2022-02-09). In OtherWords: February 9, 2022. otherwords.org Just as I was looking ahead to the weekend last week, I got a fresh spike of anxiety. | The Republican National Committee, I read, now officially calls the January 6 coup attempt "legitimate political discourse" and is censoring its members who are helping to investigate it. That felt disturbing — and newsworthy. | But come Monday, that story had all but fallen away in the wider media. This week in OtherWords, I put the RNC's disturbing January 6 statement in the context of other recent headlines — like Donald Trump's draft order to seize voting machines in 2020 — and call on the media to priori…

Peter Certo (2022-02-09). Media, Take Note: The GOP Is Now Openly Aligned Against Democracy. otherwords.org If you're the sort of person who follows the news, you've probably heard a good bit lately about podcaster Joe Rogan, Neil Young's fight with Spotify, and maybe a little about Russia and Ukraine. | All that's good grist for the mill. But did you also hear former President Trump admit that he'd intended to have Mike Pence Or, here's a bad one: Did you hear that the Tr…

Sarah Anderson (2022-02-09). President Trump Axed an IRS Report on the Richest 400 Americans. Let's Bring It Back. inequality.org

Chris Walker (2022-02-09). Early Draft of RNC Censure Described Capitol Attack as "Nonviolent" and "Legal" truthout.org A previous draft of the resolution that formally censured Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), which was composed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), vastly downplayed the attack on the U.S. Capitol building last year, describing the breach of the Capitol by a mob of Trump loyalists as "non-violent." | Although the final version of the censure document removed that descriptor, the document's depiction of the Capitol attack still sparked criticism. | Last week,…

_____ (2022-02-09). Is the American Legacy Media a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'? strategic-culture.org Not since the Vietnam War — when liberals behaved like peaceniks and not the Neocon country cousins they've become — has the media seriously scrutinized the US government's arguments for military exploits abroad. | From the oilfields of Iraq, to the mountains of Afghanistan, to Trump's classic head fake in Syria when a few missiles demolished a deserted airfield, triggering NBC host Brian Williams to get all choked up over "the beauty of our weapons," the MSM has dutifully played water boy to Uncle Sam's overseas misadventures. Somewhere, somehow along the way Americans inherited a Fourth Estate that…

Staff (2022-02-09). "Don't Look Up": David Sirota on His Oscar Nod for Writing Blockbuster Climate Crisis & Media Satire. democracynow.org We speak to longtime progressive journalist and 2020 Bernie Sanders adviser David Sirota, who was just nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay of the hit Netflix movie "Don't Look Up" along with the film's director, Adam McKay. The satire of the fight to have climate change acknowledged, let alone acted upon by global leaders, follows the plight of astronomy professor Dr. Randall Mindy (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his graduate student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) as they fail to warn the planet of an impending comet that threatens to wipe out human existence.

teleSUR- jaa, JL (2022-02-09). Aceptan denuncia de expdte. de Honduras por golpe de Estado. telesurtv.net El canciller resaltó los esfuerzos del Gobierno de Castro por instaurar el Estado de Derecho y devolver el goce pleno de los derechos por la ciudadanía…

John Ostman, Noah Roberts (2022-02-09). Mayor's war on the poor punctuates San Francisco's right-wing shift. liberationnews.org Dominated by the Democratic Party, San Fransisco's politics are lauded as some of the most progressive in the nation, yet, over the years, the city's poor and oppressed experienced innumerable attacks, each seemingly more vicious than the last.

Anonymous669 (2022-02-09). Civilian Casualties Reported Following Turkish Drone Strikes On Northeastern Syria (Videos). southfront.org Bayrakdar TB2 UCAV, source: ssb.gov.tr | On February 9, Turkish combat drones targeted two vehicles to the west of the town of Amuda in the northern countryside of Syria's al-Hasakah. | The first vehicle, which was reportedly carrying fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was targeted as it was moving on Amuda-al-Darbasiyah road, while the second vehicle, which was carried civilians, was hit near the town of Bherah. | According to the Hawar News Agency, the strike on the second vehicle…

Peoples Dispatch (2022-02-09). International condemnation following decision to dissolve Tunisia's Supreme Judicial Council. peoplesdispatch.org The dissolution of the Supreme Judicial Council is the latest in a series of undemocratic moves by president Kais Saied who wrested virtually all power in the country last year in July…

WSWS (2022-02-09). Republican National Committee resolution declaring January 6 "legitimate political discourse" deepens crisis in both parties. wsws.org While the Democrats plead for bipartisan "unity," a number of statements by leading Republicans give a sense of the shifting balance of power to far-right forces within the party.

Fight Back (2022-02-09). United protest in New Orleans against US, NATO war on Russia. fightbacknews.org New Orleans, LA — Anti-war protesters gathered on February 5 in New Orleans at Lafayette Square Park to demand an end to NATO aggression against Russia. Activists carried signs and chanted slogans calling for peace and the disbandment of NATO. | The protest was organized by a coalition including the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. | Speakers decried the latest U.S. attempt to escalate the situation in Ukraine, which they said threatens us with a nuclear conflict with Russia. The protest also highlight…

WSWS (2022-02-09). US Supreme Court restores Alabama's anti-democratic electoral redistricting plan. wsws.org The decision of the Supreme Court's right-wing majority to reinstate the Alabama district map is a purely partisan move to support the electoral interests of the Republican Party.

Staff (2022-02-09). Headlines for February 9, 2022. democracynow.org Heads of State Hold More Talks as U.S. Threatens Sweeping Sanctions Amid Russia-Ukraine Tensions, NY Drops Indoor Mask Mandate; Pfizer Projects Over $50 Billion in Revenue from COVID Treatments, Canadian Truckers Shut Down Bridge Linking to U.S. as "Freedom Convoy" Grows, Israeli Soldiers Shoot Dead 3 Palestinians in West Bank City of Nablus, Millions in Horn of Africa Face Severe Hunger After Years of Drought, U.S. Approves $100 Million Military Sale to Taiwan, Outrage Mounts over School Hijab Ban in Indian State of Karnataka, Ex-Pope Benedict Asks for Forgiveness for Church's Sexual Abuse But…

Fight Back (2022-02-09). Florida State University SDS statement on Nazis on campus. fightbacknews.org Fight Back News Service is circulating the following February 3 statement from Florida State University Student for a Democratic Society (SDS). | This week an FSU undergraduate student has been exposed through copious emails and message logs as being a member of the Neo-Nazi group Patriot Front. The student is Calvin Stow-Ortiz from Tampa, where his father unsurprisingly works for the Tampa Police Department. In leaked messages Stow-Ortiz references spreading the groups propaganda posters and stickers in the Tampa area and made plans with another Patriot Front member to vandalize FAMU's campus with white supremac…

John W. Whitehead, Nisha Whitehead (2022-02-09). Dystopia Disguised as Democracy: All the Ways in Which Freedom Is an Illusion. dissidentvoice.org The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the …

_____ (2022-02-09). Anatomy Of A Cancellation. popularresistance.org I'll just assume everyone knows who the Democratic Socialists of America are. If not, you can look them up easily enough, but they probably represent the biggest organized political group to the left of the Democratic Party today (or on the left of the Democratic Party, depending). As any sensible democratic socialist organization would do, they are actively supporting the Portland city workers in their contract negotiations with the city, and their plan for an imminent strike. | Then we need to introduce another prominent character in the sordid tale, me. Those of you reading this on my blog probably don't need…

Staff (2022-02-09). Workers at Largest GM Plant in Mexico Win Historic Vote for New Independent Union After 2019 Reforms. democracynow.org In Mexico, thousands of workers at the country's largest General Motors plant have won a historic vote to form an independent union, breaking from a tradition of corrupt unions tied to elites who cut deals with corporations to keep wages and benefits low. We go to Guanajuato, Mexico, to speak with historian Javier Bravo about the victory and the passage of critical labor reforms in 2019, which ensure workers can create new unions independent of the will of their employers, says Bravo.

Berry Craig (2022-02-09). Kentucky Republicans again aim to ban teaching truth about racism. peoplesworld.org Here they go again—white Republicans trying to whitewash history. Kentucky State Sens. Max Wise and Robby Mills have introduced SB 138, the "Teaching American Principles Act." Like HB 14 and HB 18, it's a censorship bill aimed at restricting the teaching of systemic racism in public schools. SB 138 requires a teacher who "chooses to discuss current events …

WSWS (2022-02-09). Virginia public universities drop vaccine mandates. wsws.org Amidst threats from state Republicans, the school system dropped vaccine requirements despite the current caseload being at a pandemic high.

Minnie Bruce Pratt (2022-02-09). Stop the U.S. war machine! workers.org During the week of Jan. 30 to Feb. 6., an ad hoc coalition of U.S. anti-imperialist organizations in the United States held over 70 protests against U.S. and NATO aggressive actions directed at Russia. These ranged from holding signs and banners in well-trafficked areas or on highway overpasses to days . . . |

teleSUR, hvh, JCM (2022-02-09). China insta a EE.UU. detener sanciones contra Corea del Norte. telesurtv.net El funcionario reclamó a Washington a dar la debida importancia a las medidas de desnuclearización tomadas por Pyongyang.

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