IMPERIALISM IS FINANCE CAPITALI$M

TD on deal hunt after BancWest bid as Canadian lenders pursue U.S. growth


FILE PHOTO: Toronto-Dominion Bank logos are seen outside of a branch in Ottawa

Thu, December 23, 2021
By Pamela Barbaglia and Nichola Saminather

LONDON/TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto-Dominion Bank is leading the charge of cash-rich Canadian banks seeking to make a foray in the United States and find growth away from their home turf where the Big Six banks already control nearly 90% of the market.

Billions of dollars of excess cash amassed during a nearly two-year moratorium on capital redistributions that was only lifted last month, and share prices close to record highs have given Canadian banks an acquisition currency to bet on the exit and downsizings of several European and international banks.

The sale of BNP Paribas' U.S. unit, Bank of the West (BancWest), is the latest example of pent-up demand, with Toronto-Dominion Bank battling it out with rival Canadian lender Bank of Montreal, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Bank of Montreal said on Monday it will buy BNP Paribas' unit, Bank of the West, for $16.3 billion in its biggest deal ever.

TD, Canada's second-largest bank by market value, had looked at every major asset portfolio that came up for sale, including the U.S. businesses sold by Mitsubishi UFJ (MUFG) in September and BBVA in November 2020, the sources said.

It remains on the hunt for acquisitions in the United States after its narrow loss to BMO.

TD and BMO spokespersons did not comment on the bidding process or future growth plans in the United States. MUFG declined comment on the Canadian banks' interest in their assets and BBVA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Banking is a scale, technology and sophistication game," said Brian Madden, portfolio manager at Goodreid Investment Counsel.

He added that Canadian banks already in the United States are well placed to scale up their U.S. operations since they "happen to be directly adjacent to the largest banking market on the planet."

TD executives said earlier this year that the bank "will not be shy" to do a bank deal in the U.S. Southeast or in any area where it currently has operations, primarily on the East Coast.

Having missed out on some big acquisitions, TD is now likely to turn its attention to smaller banks, one of the sources said.

Along with TD and BMO, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Bank of Nova Scotia and National Bank of Canada round out Canada's Big Six banks.

TD is one of the top 10 banks in the United States, and Royal Bank owns City National, the ninth-largest bank in California by deposits.

Royal Bank has also been undergoing U.S. expansion, although Canada's biggest lender is more focused on its wealth management https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rbc-wealth-idUSKBN25U1I6 business in the United States.

And CIBC, which entered the United States in 2017 with its acquisition of PrivateBancorp, has said it is aiming for increased earnings from the country in the coming years.

Royal Bank did not respond to a request for comment. CIBC declined to comment.

BMO'S CHASE

BMO had pursued BancWest after losing out on the U.S. retail business of MUFG, Japan's biggest lender, one of the sources said. MUFG ended up selling its U.S. retail business to U.S. Bancorp for $8 billion.

BMO made a competitive bid for MUFG's assets, and its disappointment at losing out propelled Canada's fourth-largest bank to move fast on the BancWest sale, the source said.

BNP Paribas, advised by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, entered parallel discussions with both TD and BMO, raising pressure on both bidders to finalise their offers as it fretted that regulatory headwinds could hamper the sale, the sources said.

BNP Paribas did not respond to a request for comment.

While TD initially made a low bid and subsequently raised it, BMO was more aggressive with its first proposal and was quick at declaring its offer "best and final" in December after offering a final sweetener, one of the sources said.

The deal will make BMO the 16th biggest bank by assets in the United States, up from 19th now, and lifts its assets to nearly $300 billion.

By merging with U.S. rivals, Canadian banks with an existing U.S. presence are expected to extract better returns from these businesses than smaller players, even when they appear to pay a premium as BMO did for BancWest, said Anthony Visano, portfolio manager at Kingwest & Co.

"Sometimes the strategic value trumps the financial consideration," Goodreid Investment's Madden said.

(Reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London and Nichola Saminather in Toronto; Editing by Megan Davies and Matthew Lewis)

Customers hate tipping before they're served – and asking makes them less likely to return

Nathan B. Warren, Ph.D. Candidate, Marketing, University of Oregon

 Sara Hanson, Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Richmond

Fri, December 24, 2021

Imagine you’re in line at a coffee shop. You order your usual cappuccino and swipe your credit card to pay. Then the cashier swivels a little screen that prompts you for a tip – before the espresso shot is pulled or a drop of milk steamed.

Do you tip more, perhaps hoping that it will lead to a better drink? Or less or none at all, peeved at being asked to reward service that hasn’t happened yet? Do you feel pressured into tipping the suggested amounts, which can equate to more than half the price of the drink?

This is a dilemma that most of us are increasingly facing in a variety of settings where previously you might have encountered a lone tip jar with change and crumpled dollar bills. Now we’re being asked to fork a over US tip for a coffee drink.

In a 2020 research study, we explored how this new pre-service tipping etiquette is affecting consumers – and what it meant for the baristas and other employees hoping for a reward for their efforts.

Long live the tip jar. Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images

The pre-service tip invasion

Point of sale platforms such as Square and Clover are making it easier than ever for businesses large and small to seamlessly integrate tip requests into the service experience.

While most of us are used to filling out the tip line on a receipt at a full-service, sit-down restaurant, we are now seeing tip requests occur in many new environments, such as cafes and bakeries, fast-casual delis and food trucks, and even retail stores, flower shops and liquor stores.

Articles in the popular press about the trend suggest that some prefer the convenience of tipping when placing their order. Others say they feel that they are being guilted into tipping employees who have not yet provided a service – and who have done little more than type in an order and hand over a muffin.
How consumers really feel about it

To find out how people respond to differences in tip timing – before or after service – we conducted a series of experiments with fellow marketing professor Hong Yuan.

We looked at how it affected tip amounts, ratings and likelihood of returning to the business, controlling for variables that might affect tip amounts, most notably the effects of repeat customers or attractive workers.

The first study compared real tip amounts at two locations of a popular smoothie chain on the East Coast. At one location, tips were collected while ordering – before receiving the smoothie. At the other, gratuities were requested only after someone handed the customer her order. After analyzing 7,523 transactions, we found that tips were 75% higher on average at the location that asked for them only after people received their smoothie.

Next, to dive a little deeper into why, we conducted three experiments in which we recruited participants online and asked them to imagine themselves a customer in a scenario. In one, participants imagined ordering a drink and a sandwich at a cafe, while the other two involved getting a haircut at a salon. In all three, participants were randomly prompted to tip either before or after receiving service.

Then we asked them to fill out a scaled survey rating the experience in terms of how likely they’d be to return to the business and how they felt about the tip request. In the third study, we also asked participants to select how much they’d tip and and how they’d rate the service on Yelp.

In each study, we found that participants viewed pre-service tip requests as unfair and manipulative and reduced the likelihood that they would become repeat customers. In the third study, requests for tips before a haircut also led to lower gratuities and online ratings.

We also found that businesses that emphasize the convenience of tipping can offset some, but not all, of the other negative feelings.

Consumers prefer to drink their coffee before handing over a tip. 

Anastasiya Aleksandrenko/Shutterstock.com

Tip benefits

Tipping trends are constantly shifting.

Some innovations include the introduction of recommended tip amounts on receipts and the proliferation of tip jars in the 1990s and most recently digital tip requests. Each has contributed to “tip creep,” which has pushed up the average tip from 10% in the 1940s to over 20% today, and made tipping the norm in more and more types of business.

Our findings, however, suggest that businesses should be careful when adopting new innovations. Customers, employees and owners all benefit if businesses stick to tradition – and request the tip only after the coffee is poured.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Nathan B. Warren, University of Oregon and Sara Hanson, University of Richmond.

Read more:

Why we should get rid of tipping

How the war on tipping harms customers

Are you a stingy tipper? You may have unresolved trust issues

WE ARE ALL CUSTOMERS AS WE ARE ALL WORKERS, THIS IS AN IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT LIKE MIDDLE CLASS ( NO SUCH CREATURE)  ITS ALL ABOUT WHICH SIDE OF THE COUNTER YOU ARE ON.

THE TIP IS A WAGE IT IS NOT AN OPTION, IN ALL PROVINCES IT IS PART OF THE STATE'S DETERMINATION OF EMPLOYMENT IN THE SERVICE SECTOR BEING PAID LESS ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT FELLOW WORKERS WILL RECOGNIZE THE EMPLOYER CHEATS ITS WORKERS LEGALLY AND WE WILL MAKE UP FOR IT.

THE MYTH THAT IT IS FOR 'SERVICE' IS JUST THAT SOMETHING THE BOSSES AND THEIR STATE WANT US TO BELIEVE.

Applebee’s server sparks debate with photo of customer’s low tip: ‘The nerve of some of y’all’

Alex Lasker

Thu, December 23, 2021

A TikToker has sparked debate on the platform after sharing an Applebee’s receipt exposing a customer’s substandard tip.

The user @kingj24__ posted footage of a receipt from a franchise location in Staten Island, N.Y., showing a $6.55 tip left for a server named Dana G. The total bill plus the tip is $80, meaning the cost of the meal was $73.45. The tip comes out to around 9% of the bill. That’s significantly less than the standard 20% tip, which would have been $13.49 in this instance. 

It is unclear if the TikToker who shared the receipt is the server in question.

The customer also left a hand-written message on the receipt explaining the low tip. 

“You [were] great,” they wrote. “Holidays are just rough right now.”

They added in an arrow pointing to the tip and a frowning face. 

TikTokers were divided in the comments of the video, which has since racked up over 711,000 views. Some pointed out that the customer, who seemed to be going through some financial struggle, did at least leave a tip, albeit a small one.

"It's only $4.45 less than the typical 15% average tip," one user commented. "But at the same time, you don't know that family's struggle. [At] least they left you a tip."

"The nerve of some of y'all," wrote another. "Gatekeeping taking your family out to dinner for the financially blessed. What type of BS is 'stay home if you're broke.'"

"This makes me really not want to go to Applebee's," commented a third. "It's a low tip, but it's still a tip. Calling out customers like this is wrong."

Still, others believed that the customer shouldn't be dining out if they cannot tip fully, as waiters rely on their tips as a primary source of income.

"You can afford $73 and some change to feed yourself but not enough to tip?" commented one person. "Don’t eat out if you can’t afford the service.

"If I can't afford a 20% tip, then [I'm] not going out for an $80 meal," wrote another.

Some TikTokers turned the conversation around, noting that restaurants should be fairly compensating their employees so they do not have to live off of tips.

“Ban tipping,” one user wrote. “Force the restaurants to pay servers living wages.”

“Don’t blame the tipper, blame the establishment,” wrote another. “These people shouldn’t have to rely on tips to barely make ends meet.”

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. 

However, as trial attorney Laura Lawless explains for The National Law Review, businesses that employ tipped workers are legally allowed to pay them as little as $2.13 per hour, though the number varies by state.

This is because employers can take a “tip credit” of up to $5.12 per hour against the $7.25 federal minimum wage obligation — meaning that as long as an employee’s hourly wage plus their tips equals $7.25 an hour or over, the low wage is considered legal.

According to tax and auditing firm Plante Moran, tip credits are meant to “give some relief to businesses that pay an employer’s share of employment taxes on tip income paid to their employees by someone else.”

But Lawless notes that the long-standing tip credit model “presumes that tipped employees receive a steady flow of tips and spend nearly all of their working hours engaged in tip-generating labor,” which does not “always align with reality.”

Many tipped employees, for instance, might be tasked with time-consuming duties for which they are not tipped, such as bookkeeping and cleaning, while receiving just $2.13 an hour for such labor.

On Oct. 28, the U.S. Department of Labor announced the “Final Rule,” which will require employers to pay the full federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to tipped workers who spend more than 20% of the workweek on tasks not directly engaged in tip-producing work. 

The rule will go into effect on Dec. 28.

The post Applebee’s server sparks debate with photo of customer’s low tip: ‘The nerve of some of y’all’ appeared first on In The Know.

HIP CAPITALI$M

Marijuana Stocks -- What Are You Waiting For?

Benjamin Rains

Fri, December 24, 2021, 5

Marijuana transformed at lightning-fast speeds from a mostly underground black market into a dynamic, booming, $20 billion a year industry full of public companies. And the best part about investing in legal marijuana right now is that we are still in the very early days.

The legal tides have already changed dramatically in a short time and we are on the verge of a truly seismic shift that will only happen once. Heading into 2022, there are multiple marijuana legalization bills being debated and reworked in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. is poised to introduce wide-ranging federal cannabis legalization in the near future, on the back of overwhelming bipartisan support. When this happens, the entire industry will change overnight and current projections that call for global marijuana sales reach to $90 billion by 2026 might look super conservative.¹

Legalization is Gaining Steam

Only a decade ago, recreational pot was totally illegal in the U.S. By the end of 2021, a total of 18 states and Washington, D.C. had legalized adult-use marijuana. Meanwhile, the number of legal medical cannabis states is fast-approaching 40.

On top of that, Canada legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, becoming the first major economy to do so. Since then, Mexico has made a series of legal changes that will soon see it operate a large legal pot market. Across the Atlantic, multiple European countries are prepared to legalize nationally.

The tiny European nations of Malta and Luxembourg legalized weed near the end of 2021. More importantly, Germany is reportedly ready to legalize marijuana under its new coalition government in the early months of 2022. Italy and a few other countries are showing solid potential to join the legal ranks in the near future. And with every new market, new marijuana firms are sure to emerge, as the dollars flow.

Huge Bipartisan Support

Global marijuana sales soared roughly 50% to a whopping $31 billion in 2021, based on some recent data, and the U.S. is by far the largest legal cannabis market. The expansion was driven by continued growth in legacy states such as Colorado and California, alongside a wave of relative newbies ranging from Illinois to Arizona. And more states are set to climb on the legal cannabis train in 2022.

More importantly, multiple bills are under debate in Washington to federally legalize marijuana. Furthermore, Republicans, the party traditionally opposed to weed, are in the midst of a dramatic, paradigm-shifting transformation at both the state and national level.

Multiple GOP lawmakers are pushing for marijuana legalization in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. On top of that, the first major Republican-led federal legalization effort was introduced in November. The bill grabbed a huge amount of national media attention and could gain steam as more Republicans come on board.

The growing number of federal legalization efforts on both sides of the aisle make sense given mounting public support. A total of 68% of U.S. adults are now in favor of legal marijuana, including 50% of Republicans. This is up from just 50% of the entire country as recently as 2013. And just think how hard it is to find any issue nearly 70% of Americans agree on these days.

Nine into Two: 

The Failure of the US Two-Party System

When the so-called “Founding Fathers”-- the elites who constructed the US republic-- unfolded their unique vision of republicanism and political decision-making, they went long on stability and continuity and short on broad participation and social change.

Accordingly, most of them opposed political factions or parties, but very soon after the new government came into existence, major differences arose, leading to factions and swiftly into parties.

Predictably, the break in unanimity came with the formation of two parties, in the US, a Federalist and an anti-Federalist party.

But what is truly remarkable is that subsequent political differences in the US have been contained by only two parties for over two centuries. In most countries that embrace a parliamentary system, political parties emerge with the development of social classes and distinctive social strata. 

Further, as social classes generate internal differences, they too spawn new parties. In addition, religious, regional, and economic differences have generated distinctive political parties.

This is the pattern that exists throughout the advanced capitalist countries, creating multi-party parliaments as a commonplace. But not in the US.

Where there have been emergent third or fourth parties, the two parties have either placed insurmountable obstacles in their way or absorbed their political identity.

Stunted class consciousness, illusions of social mobility, perceived opportunities afforded by an expanding frontier, and entrenched loyalties are among the many factors securing a two-party system. The distractions of wars and conflicts, demanding unity and stability, have also played a role in preserving the two-party system.

In truth, the US ruling class has won a remarkable achievement in maintaining an electoral vessel filled to overflowing with diverse, incompatible interests. When will that vessel fracture?

A Pew Research Center study enlisting over 10,000 respondents in a political typology study, the most robust of those conducted by Pew since 1987 suggests a possible answer. What they found bears directly upon the validity and viability of the-two party system. In the words of the study, “...the gulf that separates Republicans and Democrats sometimes obscures the divisions and diversity of views that exist within both partisan coalitions – and the fact that many Americans do not fit easily into either one.”

Researchers found clusters of political attitudes that define independent voter perspectives that are hard to coexist comfortably in the two existing parties. They identify the following clusters and their respective percentages of the population:



It should be noted that these clusters are constructed from answers to questions that were posed to those participating in the survey. Thus, they are biased by the researchers' preconceived notions of the issues that they believe divide the US. Nonetheless, they do identify potential factions that coexist uneasily in both parties.

So we find that Pew identifies eight significant factions-- four that tend to vote Democratic and four that vote Republican (with stressed sideliners representing disinterested, disgusted, less frequent voters)-- funneling their votes into two electoral vehicles that cannot possibly represent them all adequately!

Moreover, the conventional illusion that each of the two parties represent a consistent, shared ideology obscures the many possibilities of creating useful coalitions or alliances in moving politics out of the stagnation and ineffectiveness of the US system.

Just to mention one of the insights to be drawn from the Pew study: [Members of the] "...Populist Right hold highly restrictive views about immigration policy and are very critical of government. But, in contrast to other parts of the GOP coalition, their criticism extends well beyond government to views of big business and to the economic system as a whole: 82% say that large corporations are having a negative impact on the way things are going in the country, and nearly half support higher taxes on the wealthy and on large corporations." In addition, more than any other group, they believe that they have been left behind. They also share with the left, the view that profits are too high.

While they share many left views that might be the basis for a tentative or calculated alliance with left forces, any such approach has been hysterically denounced by the liberal media, political purists, and smug elitists as consorting with evil, those who Hilary Clinton famously called "the deplorables".

If we were to burrow even deeper than the Pew topology and examine class differences-- and even more tellingly, various class ideologies-- it would become apparent that the two-party framework would fail abysmally in giving voice to the broad spectrum of political opinion characteristic of a modern, advanced capitalist state. In that regard, the two-party framework is a hindrance to democracy and neither a vehicle for nor exemplar of democratic decision-making.

Apart from its failure to capture ideological diversity, the two-party system encourages conformity on issues that are easily susceptible to patriotic or nationalistic zeolatry-- foreign policy, the military, loyalty, etc. Politicians in a two-party system dare not allow the other party to challenge them on these matters.

Consequently, we have two-party conformity on the “evils” of such diverse nations as Russia, PRC, Iran, DPRK, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, and others, who share only one common feature-- they are made a target by our two-party dominated government. 

Nor do politicians of each party dare to question the glory or budgets of the military, the FBI, the CIA, etc. for fear that they will be called out by zealots in the other party-- again, a demonstration of the surfeit of democratic debate in a two-party parliamentary system.

Pepsi or Coke, Yankees or Blue Jays, ketchup or mustard are frivolous, but harmless choices. Democrat or Republican-- in the crises before us-- too often becomes frivolous as well, but increasingly harmful.

Unfortunately, too many people have invested heavily in their respective parties, succumbing again to empty, cynical promises like Obama’s risible “hope and change” slogan in our day. No amount of disappointment can seemingly separate the act of faith that cements voters to the two-parties. The prior investment in the Democratic and Republican parties generates what economists call the “sunk cost fallacy”, the idea that too much has been expended on the respective parties to jettison them now.

But it is a fallacy and until we learn to break away from the irrationality of the two-party charade, the Democratic Party will be an obstacle to the kind of changes that we desperately need to make.

Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com

ZZ's blog (zzs-blg.blogspot.com)

THE REBEL JESUS THE CHIEFTANS/JACKSON BROWNE

 

What I'm Getting the American Oligarchs This Year for Christmas

For America's CEOs, my gift is a beautifully boxed, brand-new set of corporate ethics.

Wall Street and Broad Street signs are seen as The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and a Christmas tree are illuminated in New York City, United States on December 1, 2021.

 (Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

JIM HIGHTOWER

December 24, 2021 by Creators.com

Ho-ho-ho, wait till you hear about the gifts I gave to some of America's power elites for Christmas.

To each of our Congress critters, I sent my fondest wish that from now on they receive the exact same income, health care, and pensions that we average citizens get. If they receive only the American average, it might make them a bit more humble—and less cavalier about ignoring the needs of regular folks.

To the stockings of GOP leaders who've so eagerly debased themselves to serve the madness of former President Donald Trump, I added individual spritzer bottles of fragrances like "Essence of Integrity" and "Eau de Self-Respect" to help cover up their stench. And in the stockings of Democratic congressional leaders, I put "Spice of Viagra" and "Bouquet du Grassroots" to stiffen their spines and remind them of who they represent.

"We're a people who believe in the notion that we're all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good."

For America's CEOs, my gift is a beautifully boxed, brand-new set of corporate ethics. It's called the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Going to pollute someone's neighborhood? Then you have to live there, too. Going to slash wages and benefits? Then slash yours as well. Going to move your manufacturing to sweatshops in China? Then put your office right inside the worst sweatshop. Executive life wouldn't be as luxurious, but CEOs would glow with a new purity of spirit.

To the Wall Street hedge-fund hucksters who've conglomerated, plundered and degraded hundreds of America's newspapers, I've sent copies of "Journalism For Dummies" and offered jobs for each of them in their stripped-down, Dickensian newsrooms. Good luck.

And what better gift to the Trump family—Donald, Ivanka and Jared, Eric, Donnie Jr. and the whole nest of them—than to wish that they live with one another constantly and permanently. No, really, each of you deserve it.

Yes, I have finally mastered the art of finding perfect gifts for people on my list—gifts that rise above crass commercialism and are genuinely appreciated by the people who receive them. I wholeheartedly recommend such gift-giving to you.

This holiday season got me thinking about America's spirit of giving, and I don't mean this overdone business of Christmas, Hanukkah and other holiday gifts. I mean our true spirit of giving—giving of ourselves.

Yes, we are a country of rugged individualists, yet there's also a deep, community-minded streak in each of us. We're a people who believe in the notion that we're all in this together, that we can make our individual lives better by contributing to the common good.

The establishment media pay little attention to grassroots generosity, focusing instead on the occasional showy donation by what it calls "philanthropists"—big tycoons who give a little piece of their billions to some university or museum in exchange for getting a building named after them. But in my mind, the real philanthropists are the millions of you ordinary folks who have precious little money to give, but consistently give of themselves, and do it without demanding that their name be engraved on a granite wall.

My own Daddy, rest his soul, was a fine example of this. With half a dozen other guys in Denison, Texas, he started the Little League baseball program, volunteering to build the park, sponsor and coach the teams, run the squawking PA system, etc., etc. Even after I graduated from Little League, Daddy stayed working at it, because his involvement was not merely for his kids ... but for all. He felt the same way about being taxed to build a public library in town. I don't recall him ever going in that building, much less checking out a book, but he wanted it to be there for the community and he was happy to pay his part. Not that he was a do-good liberal, for God's sake—indeed, he called himself a conservative.

My Daddy didn't even know he had a political philosophy, but he did, and it's the best I've ever heard. He would often say to me, "Everybody does better when everybody does better." If only our leaders in Washington and on Wall Street would begin practicing this true American philosophy.

© 2021 Creators Syndicate


Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Don't Let the Deeper Meaning of Christmas Be Lost in Materialism

The teachings of Jesus are more important than ever now as Covid-19 threatens us all. It respects no boundaries. We can only defeat it together.


A traveler sits next to a Christmas tree looking out the window while waiting for ground transportation for the Christmas and holiday travel season, although some people cancelling or rethinking their holiday travel plans because of the COVID-19 Omicron variant at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, CA on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2021. (Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)


JESSE JACKSON

December 24, 2021 by Chicago Sun-Times


On Saturday, millions of people across the world will celebrate Christmas. Even with COVID-19 still plaguing the world, families will gather; bells will ring; music will be in the air. Each year, I use this column to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas has become a holiday, a time to exchange presents and cards, to see friends and family. Yet Christmas is literally the mass for Christ, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, a time for prayer, for reflection, for service. The story of Jesus speaks to us still this day.

"In an age of global pandemics, good will to all is not merely a holiday slogan, it is a survival imperative."

He was born under occupation. Joseph and Mary were ordered to go far from home to register with authorities. The innkeeper told Joseph there was no room at the inn. Jesus was born on a cold night, in a stable, lying in a manger. He was an “at-risk” baby. His earthly father was a carpenter, a worker, not a prince or a banker.

He was born at a time of great misery and turmoil. Prophets predicted that a new Messiah was coming who would rout the occupiers and free the people. Many expected a mighty warrior like the superheroes of today’s movies. Fearing the prophecy, King Herod, whose authority stemmed from the Romans, ordered the “massacre of the innocents,” the slaughter of all boys two and under in Bethlehem and the nearby region.

Jesus confounded both Herod’s fears and the people’s fantasies. He was a prince of peace, not of war. He gathered disciples, not soldiers. His ministry was guided by Isaiah 62:1: “the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” We will be judged, he taught us, not for our wealth or our finery or our armaments, but by how we treat “the least of these,” how we treat the stranger on the Jericho Road. He called on us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, comfort the refugee.

He became a great liberator, by his teachings and his example, not by his sword. He converted rather than conquered. He threw the money lenders from the temple. He did not accumulate worldly wealth. His brief ministry led to his crucifixion. And yet he succeeded beyond all imagination to transform the world.

Today his teachings are more important than ever. The pandemic threatens us all. It respects no boundaries. We can only defeat it together, by organizing across the world to ensure that all are vaccinated, that care is available for those who get sick, that safety precautions from masks to ventilation are universally available.
No one is safe until we all are

Yet too often, our instinct is to turn away from one another, not toward one another. For example, the Omicron variant that is now spreading across the world was discovered first by a scientist, Dr. Sikhulile Moyo, working in Botswana in Africa. He and his colleagues found the new strain in international visitors from the Netherlands. They immediately alerted public health authorities across the world, shared their research and findings, and helped mobilize immediate action to counter the new variant.

Sadly, the reaction of the world was to lock the scientist and the countries of his region out. He was not brought to the U.S. to help further the work. The administration joined some European nations in imposing travel bans on Botswana and neighboring countries, with devastating effect on their economies. Cooperation was punished, not rewarded. Worse, while Europeans and Americans are lining up for booster shots after being vaccinated, only a miniscule percentage of Africans have access to vaccination.

Even though none of us will be safe until all are safe, nationalism, drug company profits and patents and inadequate global assistance have combined to abandon millions in poorer nations without the treatments and public health capacities that they need. We put ourselves at risk even as we leave them at risk.

Once more the practical imperative of Jesus’ teachings is clear. Jesus demonstrated the astonishing power of faith, hope and charity, the importance of love. He called upon us to care for the stranger on the Jericho Road. In an age of global pandemics, good will to all is not merely a holiday slogan, it is a survival imperative.

In this secular age, we should not let the deeper meaning of Christmas be lost in the wrappings. Jesus called us to turn to one another, not on one another. He demonstrated the power of summoning our better angels, rather than rousing our fears or furthering our divisions.

This Christmas, this surely is a message not merely to remember but to practice. Merry Christmas, everybody.

© 2021 Chicago Sun-Times

Jesse Jackson is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH.

 

“Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual and moral.”— Peter Kropotkin REPRINTED FROM PM PRESS

Forget Manchin. Sanders says entire Democratic party must show ‘guts’ against corporate interests

The focus of the party, says the Vermont senator, must be “to restore faith with the American people that they actually stand for something.”

By

 Andrea Germanos

 -

December 24, 2021

SOURCECommon Dreams

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) talks to reporters while leaving the U.S. Capitol on August 9, 2021. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Stressing a need to pass the “enormously important” Build Back Better bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders said this week that failure to do so would indicate to Americans that Democrats “don’t have the guts to take on the powerful special interests.”

The Vermont Independent’s remarks on MSNBC‘s “Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday night came after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced on Fox News that he was a “no” on his party’s social spending and climate reconciliation package, delivering a potential death blow to the legislation his opposition had already weakened.

The announcement prompted ire from progressive groups as well as renewed demands from some Democrats that the Senate be brought back into session so that Manchin would have to go on record for voting against a bill that would provide much-needed benefits to his own constituents and beyond.

In an apparent reference to Manchin and another right-wing Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Sanders criticized “two senators” who’ve acted with regards to BBB negotiations that “it’s my way or the highway.”

Such a stance, said Sanders, is “an arrogance that I think is unacceptable.”

He also rebuked “people like Mr. Manchin,” who are “turning their backs on the working families of this country, allowing the big money interest once again to prevail and basically saying, ‘If I don’t get everything I want, I’m not going forward.’ That is not acceptable to me.”

What has to happen now, he said, is for leadership to bring the BBB bill to the Senate floor for a vote. Then, Manchin “will have to tell the people of West Virginia and this country why he is supporting all of the powerful special interests in this country—the drug companies, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry, the very wealthy who do not want to pay anything more in federal taxes.”

Another step is for Democrats to have better messaging around the bill, said Sanders. He gave as one example the monthly checks from the expanded Child Tax Credit families are poised to see cut off-—”despite the fact we’ve reduced childhood poverty through that by almost 40%.”

The focus right now, Sanders said, must not be solely on Manchin but instead fall more broadly.

“It is about the Democratic Party trying to restore faith with the American people that they actually stand for something,” said Sanders.

“Do we have the guts to take on the drug companies who are spending over $300 million in lobbying right now? Is that the Democratic Party?” he asked.

“Do they have the guts to take on the private insurance company who do not want us to expand Medicare and dental, hearing, and eyeglasses?” he added. “Do we have the courage to do what the scientists are telling us has to be done and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel?”

 

Talon Anvil, Task Force 9 and the terrible cost of the air offensive in Syria

Subsidizing militarism in search of monsters overseas seems more and more like the American way. With the new focus on near peer competitors like Russia and China, the dangers are only growing.

By

 Derek Royden

 -

December 24, 2021

SOURCENationofChange

On December 12th, the New York Times published a story about the U.S. drone war in Syria that should have raised more eyebrows but barely registered with most of the American press. The piece by Dave Phillips, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti concerned a small unit controlled by Delta Force and 5thSpecial Forces members called Talon Anvil, which sounds more like a metal band created by way of a thesaurus than an operation that engaged in thousands of drone strikes across Syria from 2014 to 2019 at the height of the battle against the so-called Islamic State.

Why the story was important is that it revealed that many of Talon Anvil’s 1,000s of strikes killed civilians, so many that some of those operating the drones 24 hours a day in three 8 hour shifts refused orders to deploy them in heavily populated areas or against targets that didn’t appear armed. Despite this, each year the group operated, the numbers of civilian casualties in Syria went up. 

As reported by the Times, even officials with the CIA complained to the Special Operations Command about the strikes. Nonetheless, the bloody drone war was a bipartisan affair that occured over two U.S. presidential administrations.

As Larry Lewis, who was among those who wrote a Defense Department report on civilian casualties in 2018, told the reporters, in terms of the sheer numbers of civilians wounded and killed, “It was much higher than I would have expected from a U.S. unit. The fact that it increased dramatically and steadily over a period of years shocked me.”

How were Talon Anvil able to get around rules of engagement that might have protected the many civilians said to have been wounded and killed in the strikes? By claiming “self-defense”. As of 2018, 80% of strikes in the chaotic Syrian conflict were characterized this way. 

As two unnamed former task force members explained, the claim that almost every strike was carried out to protect U.S. or allied forces, even when they were far from the location where the bombs were dropped, allowed approvals at lightning speed.

The Delta Force and other special forces soldiers ordering the strikes were also accused by Air Force intelligence analysts tasked with reviewing the footage they produced of turning the drones’ cameras away from their targets before dropping their payloads so that there would be no evidence in the case of a ‘failed’ strike that resulted in civilian casualties. 

This story might not have been told at all if not for an earlier one, also in the Times, about three piloted strikes in a Syrian town called Baghuz on March 18th, 2019, where some of the last IS holdouts were said to be sheltering. 

After a drone above the town relayed images of a crowd of people, mostly women and children, next to a river bank, a U.S. F-15 dropped a 500 pound bomb on the group. As those that survived the first bomb searched for cover or wandered in shock, a second and then a third bomb, each weighing 2,000 pounds were dropped, obliterating them. Although we will never know the exact number, at least 70 civilians died as a result. 

As also reported by other outlets, confused air operations personnel at a large base in Qatar looked on in disbelief at what was happening in Baghuz, with one officer asking in the secure chat, “Who dropped that?” 

Even though an airforce lawyer flagged the incident as a possible war crime, the U.S. military tried to bury and then deny that it had happened at all. They even went so far as to have coalition forces “bulldoze” the blast site in a clear attempt to bury evidence of the crime.

The strike was ordered by the group that we now know also controlled Talon Anvil and ground operations in Syria called Task Force 9, a unit so secretive that those at the airbase in Qatar who first drew attention to the strike in Baghuz were unaware of its existence. Both groups are not officially recognized as ever existing by the American government.

The bizarre metric of success for Talon Anvil and Task Force 9 generally seemed to have been sheer numbers of bombs dropped rather than actual militants removed from the incredibly fraught battlefield. Not only the U.S. and its allies, especially Turkey, routinely massacred innocent people, but the Syrian government and its Russian ally showed callous disregard for the lives of civilians as well, especially in flattening East Aleppo, where they killed well over 400 people in the densely populated urban area. 

The man at the top of Task Force 9 and other secretive special forces, General Stephen Townsend, faced no repercussions for the alleged war crimes but was instead promoted. He now heads the country’s Africa Command, where special forces and drones are deployed but where there are even fewer influential voices who might put a spotlight on the kinds of crimes that may be occuring in countries like Somalia and Niger, where hostilities haven’t been officially declared.

Norman Soloman recently wrote about how crimes like the one that occured in Baghuz and many other towns and cities in Syria go unpunished but those who reveal these kinds of atrocities on the part of the United States and its allies like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Norman Hale, a former analyst with the U.S. Air Force, recently sentenced to 45 months in prison for revealing the impacts of U.S. drone warfare, are victimized by the state for their whistle-blowing. 

It’s important to give mainstream outlets like the Times credit for using the resources at their disposal to make stories like that of Talon Anvil public, even when they are hidden behind paywalls and have to be searched out, but as several commentators including Soloman have noted, there is a tendency to portray the U.S. military and political leadership as meaning well and what amount to war crimes as simple mistakes. Such a position wouldn’t be taken in regards to a competitor like China or Russia.

It should also be noted that in almost every case from the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib to Talon Anvil’s bombing of civilians, every atrocity is placed squarely on the shoulders of the military’s lower ranks when they are made public. This ignores the very rigid hierarchies in place where superiors either order or imply that more and more drone strikes, for example, need to take place in order to create the illusion of some kind of success.

Another fault with the NYT’s story is it fails to credit Hale for his whistle-blowing and doesn’t appear to be using its influence to call attention to his imprisonment for revealing the truth of what was going on with the country’s drone war as early as 2015, revelations that were important to the Times’ stories. 

Rather than passing the Build Back Better Act, which would have, among other things, provided pre-kindergarten child care to working people whose lives would be significantly improved by it, one deeply compromised Democratic senator stopped its passage. Arguments about out of control budgets didn’t stop the same body from awarding the Pentagon $25 billion more than the president asked for for their budget which was $768 billion after approval in the country’s Senate. 

Subsidizing militarism in search of monsters overseas seems more and more like the American way. With the new focus on near peer competitors like Russia and China, the dangers are only growing.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=PERMANENT+ARMS+ECONOMY