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This evening's music features blues singer Billy "The Kid" Emerson. Enjoy!

“Action expresses priorities.”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

News and Opinion

Priorities. It's more important to bomb people than vaccinate them.

The Pentagon Just Got $778 Billion, But USAID Is Running Out of Money for Covid-19 Vaccines?

Sharply contrasting with the $778 billion in new military spending authorized Monday by President Joe Biden, the U.S. Agency for International Development reportedly can't find the funds to pay for the Biden administration's effort to help vaccinate the world's population against Covid-19, according to two agency officials interviewed by Politico.

In an article published Monday by the website, a pair of unnamed sources at USAID—the main goverment agency in charge of distributing coronavirus vaccine doses to COVAX, the global vaccine equity program—are concerned that efforts could stall in the coming spring should the administration fail to find new funding sources. ...

Stephen Semler, co-founder of Security Policy Reform Institute, a grassroots-funded think tank, tweeted Monday that in 2021, Biden "delivered 8% of the funding he campaigned on for physical and human infrastructure, and 105% of the amount he ran on for the Pentagon."

Critics have noted that the $778 National Defense Authorization Act approved by Congress is $25 billion more than Biden requested—and more than enough to vaccinate everyone in the world.

More Than 10,000 Russian Troops Returning to Bases After Drills Near Ukraine

More than 10,000 Russian troops have been returning to their permanent bases after month-long drills near Ukraine, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing the Russian military.

Interfax said the drills were held in several regions near Ukraine, including in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, as well as in the southern Russian regions of Rostov and Kuban.

Russia's deployment of tens of thousands of troops to the north, east and south of Ukraine had fuelled fears in Kyiv and Western capitals that Moscow was planning an attack.

Russia denies any such plans, saying it needs pledges from the West - including a promise from NATO not to expand the alliance eastward towards Russian borders - because its own security is threatened by Ukraine's growing ties with the Western alliance.

Moscow also says that it can deploy its troops on its territory as it sees fit.

Russia to pick from range of responses if US, NATO fail to guarantee its security — Putin

Russia may choose various responses based on advice from military experts if US and NATO decline to provide security guarantees, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Rossiya 1 television on Sunday. ...

The president said Russia will seek to achieve a positive outcome in the talks on security guarantees. Russia made the proposals on the matter in order "to reach a legally binding outcome of diplomatic talks on the documents," he said. "That’s what we will strive for."

Putin said during his news conference on December 23 that Moscow will base its further steps on the need to achieve unconditional security for Russia in the long term, regardless of how talks with the US on security guarantees unfold. He said Russia made it clear it won’t tolerate NATO’s further eastward expansion.

The US has moved its missiles to Russia’s doorstep, he said, and wondered how the US would feel if Russia were to place its missiles in Mexico or Canada.

Did Biden BLOW IT On Iran Deal By Listening To Israel?

Iran atomic chief claims country won’t enrich uranium over 60% if nuclear talks fail

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said Saturday that his country will not exceed 60 percent enrichment of uranium, even if it cannot agree with world powers on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Asked by Russia Sputnik news agency about the possibility enrichment levels would rise further, Mohammad Eslami responded, “No.”

He further asserted that “All our nuclear activities are carried out according to the agreements, statutes and regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

INSIDE Secret Unit That Spies On Americans Warrant Free

Worth a full read:

Hedges: PEN America and the Betrayal of Julian Assange

Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, is one of the very few establishment figures to denounce the judicial lynching of Julian Assange. Melzer’s integrity and courage, for which he has been mercilessly attacked, stand in stark contrast to the widespread complicity of many human rights and press organizations, including PEN America, which has become a de facto subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

Those in power, as Noam Chomsky points out, divide the world into “worthy” and “unworthy” victims. They weep crocodile tears over the plight of Uyghur Muslims persecuted in China while demonizing and slaughtering Muslims in the Middle East. They decry press censorship in hostile states and collude with the press censorship and algorithms emanating from Silicon Valley in the United States. It is an old and insidious game, one practiced not to promote human rights or press freedom but to envelop these courtiers to power in a sanctimonious and cloying self-righteousness. PEN America can’t say the words “Belarus,” “Myanmar” or the Chinese tennis star “Peng Shuai” fast enough, while all but ignoring the most egregious assault on press freedom in our lifetime. PEN America only stopped accepting funding from the Israeli government, which routinely censors and jails Palestinian journalists and writers in Israel and the occupied West Bank, for the literary group’s annual World Voices festival in New York in 2017 when more than 250 writers, poets and publishers, many members of PEN, signed an appeal calling on the CEO of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, to end PEN America’s partnership with the Israeli government. The signatories included Wallace Shawn, Alice Walker, Eileen Myles, Louise Erdrich, Russell Banks, Cornel West, Junot Díaz and Viet Thanh Nguyen. To stand up for Assange comes with a cost, as all moral imperatives do. And this is a cost the careerists and Democratic Party apparatchiks, who leverage corporate money and corporate backing to seize and deform these organizations into appendages of the ruling class, do not intend to pay.

PEN America is typical of the establishment hijacking of an organization that was founded and once run by writers, some of whom, including Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer, I knew. Nossel is a former corporate lawyer, listed as a “contributor” to The Federalist Society, who worked for McKinsey & Company and as Vice President of US Business Development for Bertelsmann. Nossel, who has had herself elevated to the position of the CEO of PEN America, also worked under Hillary Clinton in the State Department, including on the task force assigned to respond to the WikiLeaks revelations. I withdrew from a scheduled speaking event at the 2013 World Voices Festival in New York City and resigned from the organization, which that same year had given me its First Amendment Award, to protest Nossel’s appointment. PEN Canada offered me membership which I accepted.

Nossel and PEN America have stated that the prosecution of Assange raises “grave concerns” about press freedom and lauded the decision by a British court in January 2012 not to extradite Assange. Should Nossel and PEN America have not taken this stance on Assange it would have left them in opposition to most PEN organizations around the world. PEN Centre Germany, for example, made Assange an honorary member. PEN International has called for all charges to be dropped against Assange. But Nossel, at the same time, repeats every slanderous trope and lie used to discredit the WikiLeaks publisher facing extradition to the United States to potentially serve a 175-year sentence under the Espionage Act. She refuses to acknowledge that Assange is being persecuted because he carried out the most basic and important role of any publisher, making public documents that expose the multitudinous crimes and lies of empire. And I have not seen any direct appeals to the Biden administration on Assange’s behalf from PEN America. “Whether Assange is a journalist or WikiLeaks qualifies as a press outlet is immaterial to the counts set out here,” Nossel said. But, as a lawyer who was a member of the State Department task force that responded to the WikiLeaks revelations, she understands it is not immaterial. The core argument behind the U.S. effort to extradite Assange revolves around denying him the status of a publisher or a journalist and denying WikiLeaks the status of a press publication. Nossel parrots the litany of false charges leveled against Assange including that he endangered lives by not redacting documents, hacked into a government computer and meddled in the 2016 elections, all key points in the government’s case against Assange. PEN America under her direction has sent out news briefs with headlines such as: “Security Reports Reveal How Assange Turned an Embassy into a Command Post for Election Meddling.” The end result is that PEN America is helping to uncoil the rope to string up the WikiLeaks publisher, a gross betrayal of the core mission of PEN. ...

The tenuous return to power of the Democratic Party under Joe Biden, and the specter of a Republican rout of the Democrats in the midterm elections next year, along with the very real possibility of the election in 2024 of Donald Trump, or a Trump-like figure, to the presidency, has blinded human rights and press groups to the danger of the egregious assaults on freedom of expression perpetrated by the Biden administration. The steady march towards heavy handed state censorship was accelerated by the Obama administration that charged ten government employees and contractors, eight under the Espionage Act, for disclosing classified information to the press. The Obama administration in 2013 also seized the phone records of 20 Associated Press reporters to uncover who leaked the information about a foiled al-Qaida terrorist plot. This ongoing assault by the Democratic Party has been accompanied by the disappearing on social media platforms of several luminaries on the far right, including Donald Trump and Alex Jones, who were removed from Facebook, Apple, YouTube. Content that is true but damaging to the Democratic Party, including the revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop, have been blocked by digital platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Algorithms have since at least 2017 marginalized left-wing content, including my own. The legal precedent set in this atmosphere by the sentencing of Assange means that anyone who possesses classified material, or anyone who leaks it, will be guilty of a criminal offense. The sentencing of Assange will signal the end of all investigative inquiries into the inner workings of power. The pandering by press and human rights organizations, tasked with being sentinels of freedom, to the Democratic Party, only contributes to the steady tightening of the vise of press censorship. There is no lesser evil in this fight. It is all evil. Left unchecked, it will result in an American species of China’s totalitarian capitalism.

Build Back Better is DOA - and Progressives Think They Won?

Flailing failures fill the halls of Congress.

Jayapal Warns Political Disaster Looms If Democrats Fail to Deliver in the New Year

Rep. Pramila Jayapal warned her fellow Democratic lawmakers and President Joe Biden on Sunday that failure to deliver their promised social spending and climate agenda could have disastrous political consequences, feeding voter disillusionment and leaving millions of people without badly needed economic aid amid a deadly pandemic.

"The Omicron variant is surging as Covid-19 has once again disrupted people’s ability to work, care for children and elders, access medical care, and make ends meet. We simply cannot abandon our vision," Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post as Democrats' Build Back Better agenda hangs in the balance.

Just over a week before Jayapal's opinion piece was published, the U.S. Senate adjourned for the year having passed neither voting rights legislation nor the popular Build Back Better Act, key Democratic agenda items that have been imperiled by corporate-backed Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other right-wing lawmakers.

Jayapal called Manchin's opposition to the Build Back Better package "a stunning rebuke of his own party's president," noting that the West Virginia Democrat had "committed to the president—who relayed that commitment to House members—that he would support the legislative framework unveiled on October 28." ...

While Jayapal vowed to continue working to salvage the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act via the legislative process, she called on Biden to "use executive action to immediately improve people's lives." In the coming days, Jayapal wrote, the CPC will "release a plan for these actions, including lowering costs, protecting the health of every family, and showing the world that the United States is serious about our leadership on climate action."

"If we use every tool at our disposal to redouble our efforts to deliver for our communities, with the most urgent needs of the American people as our guide, success is possible," she wrote.

The specific elements of the CPC's plan remain to be seen, but progressive lawmakers have vocally pushed Biden since the start of his presidency to use executive action to cancel student debt, slash prescription drug prices, and advance other Democratic priorities. The American Prospect's David Dayen argued last week that Biden has significant leeway to accomplish progressive goals without needing a vote in the closely divided Congress.

"Biden could cancel student debt for 42 million borrowers. He could give millions more workers access to overtime pay," Dayen wrote, outlining just a handful of steps the president has yet to take. "He could deschedule marijuana from the list of controlled substances, effectively legalizing a burgeoning industry. His IRS could end the carried interest loophole that makes private equity so attractive and prohibit private equity management fees."

But Jayapal acknowledged Sunday that executive action won't be enough to accomplish every objective set out in the Build Back Better agenda. Extending the boosted child tax credit (CTC), for instance, will likely require legislation.

"We can't be naive about the difficulty of once again negotiating with someone who has not kept his commitments," Jayapal wrote, referring to Manchin, who reportedly wants to zero out the CTC expansion. "But legislation remains the best path for delivering enduring relief."

"Nor can we underestimate the urgency to act, especially as Covid is surging and so many constituencies—seniors, people of color, working and young people—are disillusioned," she added. "Democrats must prove that their voices and their votes matter, and that we can produce tangible economic assistance... This moment for the Biden administration and Congress can either lead to our greatest failure or our greatest success."

Media CAUGHT Holding Secret Propaganda Meetings With Biden

LAPD releases video in police killing of 14-old-girl in clothing store

The Los Angeles police department has released body-camera footage and surveillance video of an incident in which an officer shot and killed a 14-year-old girl inside a department store while firing at another person.

The footage from the Thursday morning incident shows that as soon as police encountered a man suspected of assault inside the store, an officer fired three bullets at him from a distance. One of the officer’s bullets struck the girl when it bounced off the floor and into the dressing room where she was with her mother, police said on Monday. ...

The officer who fired the shots was put on paid leave, and has not been identified. The man shot by police upon arrival was Daniel Elena Lopez, 24, who also died on the scene, officials said. ... [R]oughly a dozen officers entered the store. One officer with an assault rifle initially ordered the other officers to “slow down” and “get distance” and “back up” before they approached Elena Lopez. That officer said he would take lead.

But the officer’s body camera footage showed that as soon as he made it to the store aisle where Elena Lopez was standing and saw the man for the first time, he fired three bullets in rapid succession at him. The footage did not capture the officer making any commands, and did not show Elena Lopez advancing toward the officer. Elena Lopez was at the other end of the store aisle from the officer and appeared to be turning away from him.

Trump could face charges for trying to obstruct certification of election, legal experts say

Expectation is growing that Donald Trump might face charges for trying to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election this year as a House panel collects more evidence into the 6 January attack on the Capitol, former prosecutors and other experts say.

Speculation about possible charges against the former US president has been heightened by a recent rhetorical bombshell from Republican representative and 6 January panel vice-chair Liz Cheney suggesting the House panel is looking at whether Trump broke a law that bars obstruction of “official proceedings”.

Former prosecutors say if the panel finds new evidence about Trump’s role interfering with Congress’ job to certify Biden’s election, that could help buttress a potential case by the Department of Justice.

In varying ways, Cheney’s comments have been echoed by two other members of the House select committee, Republican Adam Kinzinger and Democrat Jamie Raskin, spurring talk of how an obstruction statute could apply to Trump, which would entail the panel making a criminal referral of evidence for the justice department to investigate, say DoJ veterans.

Cheney’s remarks raising the specter of criminal charges against Trump came twice earlier this month at hearings of the committee. Experts believe the charges could be well founded given Trump’s actions on 6 January, including incendiary remarks to a rally before the Capitol attack and failure to act for hours to stop the riot, say former justice department officials.

Edward O Wilson, naturalist known as a ‘modern-day Darwin’, dies aged 92

Edward O Wilson, a US naturalist known to some as the “modern-day Darwin”, died on Sunday at the age of 92 in Massachusetts, his foundation said in a statement. Alongside the British naturalist David Attenborough, Wilson was considered one of the world’s leading authorities on natural history and conservation.

“EO Wilson was called ‘Darwin’s natural heir’ and was known affectionately as ‘the ant man’ for his pioneering work as an entomologist,” the foundation wrote. It did not cite a cause of death but said a tribute was planned for 2022.

In addition to groundbreaking work in evolution and entomology, in his later years Wilson spearheaded a campaign to unite scientific and religious communities in an odd-couple pairing he felt presented the best chance to preserve Earth. Wilson presented his views in more than 30 books, two of which – On Human Nature in 1979 and The Ants in 1991 – won Pulitzer prizes. His writing style was far more elegant than might have been expected from a scientist. ...

In a 2011 commencement address at the University of North Carolina, Wilson argued that humanity needed to make changes in how it managed the planet. “We have stone age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology,” he said. Wilson once said destroying a rainforest for economic gain was like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

He won the National Medal of Science, the highest US science honor, and dozens of other awards. In 1995, Time magazine listed him among the 25 most influential Americans.

Cost of world’s 10 most expensive natural disasters rises to $170bn, aid group finds

The 10 most expensive weather disasters this year caused more than $170bn in damage, $20bn more than in 2020, a British aid group has found. Christian Aid said the upward trend reflects the effects of manmade climate change and added that the 10 disasters in question also killed at least 1,075 people and displaced 1.3 million.

Each year, the aid group calculates the cost of weather incidents like flooding, fires and heatwaves according to insurance claims. In 2020, it found the world’s 10 costliest weather disasters caused $150bn in damage, making this year’s total an increase of 13%.

The most expensive disaster in 2021 was Hurricane Ida, which lashed the eastern United States and caused around $65bn in damage. After crashing into Louisiana at the end of August, it made its way northward and caused extensive flooding in New York City and the surrounding area.

Spectacular and deadly flooding in Germany and Belgium in July was next on the list at $43bn in losses. A cold snap and winter storm in Texas that took out the vast state’s power grid cost $23bn, followed by flooding in China’s Henan province in July that cost an estimated $17.6bn.

Record snowfall and heavy rains lash west coast from Oregon to southern California

A heavy Christmas weekend storm blanketed the mountains of northern California and Nevada in snow, causing whiteout conditions and closing highways in the Sierra Nevada.

Forecasters have warned that travel in the Sierra Nevada, the mountainous region along the California-Nevada border, could be difficult for several days. Three people were injured in a 20-car pileup on US route 395, officials near Reno said, amid limited visibility on Sunday. Farther west, a 70-mile (112km) stretch of Interstate 80 from Colfax, California, through the Lake Tahoe region to the Nevada state line was shut due to the snow, low visibility and downed trees and power lines.

The winter weather brought 16ft of snow to the Sierra this month, breaking a 50-year record in the state. “We smashed the previous record,” Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist for UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, told KTVU on Monday. “This is, officially, the snowiest December on record.”

NEW DECEMBER RECORD: 193.7"

With a 24 hour official #snow total of 38.9" at the lab, we have smashed the previous record of 179" of snow in December set in 1970!

Snow rates are still heavy and we could even break the 200" mark today!#CAwx #CAwater pic.twitter.com/x9g6fRuzHQ

— UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab (@UCB_CSSL) December 27, 2021

The region could see 200in of snow by Tuesday morning, Schwartz told the news station.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

What! No Russian Invasion of Ukraine?

If You Haven’t Researched Arguments Disputing A Western Narrative, You Don’t Understand The Issue

Brexit: ‘the biggest disaster any government has ever negotiated’

US truckers driven down by long hours and low pay

A Little Night Music

Billy "The Kid" Emerson - Red Hot

Billy "The Kid" Emerson - Little Fine Healthy Thing

Billy the Kid Emerson - You never miss the Water

Billy (The Kid) Emerson - Move Baby Move\

Billy "The Kid" Emerson - Something for Nothing

Billy "The Kid" Emerson - If Lovin' s Believing

Billy Emerson - Uh Hum, My Baby

Billy ´The Kid´ Emerson - I'll Get You

Billy "The Kid" Emerson - Feel so Good

Billy 'The Kid' Emerson - I Never Get Enough