Texas has the third-highest number of billionaires in America.  The mayor of Colorado City,  accused his constituents – trapped in near sub-zero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity and drinkable water – of being the “lazy” products of a “socialist government”, adding “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!” and predicting “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish”.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electric power, exempted affluent downtowns from outages, leaving thriving parts of Austin, Dallas and Houston brightly lit while pushing less affluent precincts into the dark and cold.

In Texas, for-profit energy companies have no incentive to prepare for extreme weather or maintain spare capacity. Even if they’re able to handle surges in demand, prices go through the roof and poorer households are hit hard. If they can’t pay, they’re cut off.

Rich Texans take spikes in energy prices in their stride. If the electric grid goes down, private generators kick in. In a pinch – as last week – they check into hotels or leave town. On Wednesday night, as millions of his constituents remained without power and heat, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancún, Mexico for a family vacation.

Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change. Many inhabit substandard homes, lacking proper insulation. The very poor occupy trailers or tents, or camp out in their cars. Lower-income communities are located close to refineries and other industrial sites that release added pollutants when they shut or restart. Shutdowns led to the refineries flaring, or burning and releasing gases, to prevent damage to processing units. That flaring darkened the skies in eastern Texas, with smoke visible for miles.

Climate change, Covid-19 and jobs are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. The white working class is taking as much of a beating as most Black and Latino people.

White working class has been seduced by conservative Republicans and Trump cultists, of which Texas has an abundance, into believing that what’s good for Black and Latino people is bad for them. White grievance helps keep Republicans in power, protecting their rich patrons from a majority that might otherwise join to demand what they need – such as heat, electricity, water and reliable sources of power.

Lower-income Texans, white as well as Black and Latino, are taking it on the chin in many other ways. Texas is one of the few states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving the share of Texans without health insurance twice the national average, the largest uninsured population of any state. Texas has double the national average of children in poverty and a higher rate of unemployment than the nation’s average. Although Texans have suffered multiple natural disasters stemming from climate change, Texas Republicans are dead set against a Green New Deal that would help reduce the horrific impacts.

Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, went on Fox News to proclaim, absurdly, that what happened to his state “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States”. Abbott blamed the power failure on the fact that “wind and solar got shut down”. The loss of power from frozen coal-fired and natural gas plants was six times larger than the dent caused by frozen wind turbines. Texans froze because deregulation and a profit-driven free market created an electric grid utterly unprepared for climate change.

In Texas, oil tycoons are the only winners from climate change. Everyone else is losing badly. With huge gaps in the state and local response to the winter crisis, volunteers are stepping up to provide vital services

Texas freeze shows a chilling truth – how the rich use climate change to divide us | Texas | The Guardian

Saturday February 20 was a National Day of Solidarity with Amazon workers in Alabama.

Between February 8 and March 29, about 6,000 Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama are voting by mail on whether to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale Department Store Workers Union (RWDSU). The harsh working conditions at Amazon warehouses, along with Amazon’s refusal to adopt measures that protect workers from COVID 19, have pushed Amazon and Whole Foods workers everywhere to step up organizing efforts.

These mostly Black workers, who have in recent months formed the BAmazon Workers Union, face one of the biggest and most powerful transnational corporations in the world, and its super rich union-busting owner, Jeff Bezos. They are also defying the racist anti-union laws that suppress labor across the South.

Solidarity from every corner of the labor and progressive movements is needed now to show the workers in Bessemer that they are not alone. This is especially needed as Amazon ramps up its union-busting tactics.

The Southern Workers Assembly has issued a call for a National Day of Solidarity with Amazon workers in Alabama on Saturday, February 20. Actions are planned across the country at Amazon facilities (warehouses, distribution centers, Whole Foods, etc.) — pickets, rallies, marches, leafleting, car caravans, bike brigades. Social distancing will be observed.  

For details of the actions planned, please follow this link.

Taken from the WSPUS website

Solidarity with Alabama Amazon Workers | World Socialist Party of the US (wspus.org)

 Between 2015 and 2019 there were 44,225 raids on private homes resulting in  7,578 people deported. 

There were also 190 raids carried out on care homes resulting in 37 care workers removed from the UK.

Mary Atkinson, campaigns officer at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “These figures show just how out of control the hostile environment has become. Carers are being arrested in the middle of their shifts, often as they look after elderly and vulnerable people – it is difficult to see who could possibly benefit from that. Ours is a government relentlessly pursuing an anti-immigration agenda, regardless of the harm it causes – in this case, to some of the very same carers whose hard work and sacrifice has been rightly applauded throughout this pandemic…”

Susan Cueva, trustee at Kanlungan Filipino Consortium, which works with migrants including those working in care homes said: “We know that care homes lack staff. The Home Office should stop raiding care homes. It is counter-productive. The solution is to regularise the immigration status of these workers who are carers. That’s the most practical way to deal with this situation.”

Fewer than one in six ‘hostile environment’ raids led to deportations | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

 Mercenary chief, Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and brother of former education secretary Betty DeVos, violated a United Nations arms embargo on Libya, UN investigators have found.

Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries and weapons to military commander Khalifa Haftar. The $80m operation included plans to form a hit squad to track and kill Libyan commanders opposed to Haftar – including some who were also European Union citizens, The New York Times said.

Trump ally Erik Prince violated Libya arms embargo: UN report | Conflict News | Al Jazeera

A report by Rani Singh on BBC Radio 5 Live was delivered on The Dotun Adebayo Show – 16/2/21 stating that Rihanna and Greta Thunberg voiced support for the protesting farmers in India.

Dishi Ravi, who works for Fridays For Future with Greta Thunberg, retweeted a Tweet from her colleague which caused her to be imprisoned for sedition, conspiracy and a call to wage economic, social, cultural and regional war against India.

The Indian government is at loggerheads with Twitter because activism has been  spread through Tweets. It is using Koo, which uses five Indian languages, to try and combat this.

India is a market which interests many countries. The U. S. government has stated: ‘It’s good to have private investment in India.’

The reporter continued by saying: Myanmar borders Bangladesh and India and Myanmar is India’s biggest arms buyer. For India a stronger Myanmar military means more arms sales.

Rani Singh also said: China has encircled India with its sphere of influence by making big investments in the countries in infrastructure that surround India, particularly Bangladesh and Pakistan.

As we have seen in the past governments continue to look for new markets, raw materials and spheres of influence which will benefit the Capitalist class.

Only in a worldwide Socialist system will we see production and distribution which is of benefit to everyone in the world.

There will be no class system and there will be no military.  

 Millions of council tax payers are in line for increases of up to 5% in their annual bills from April, with those on low and middle incomes hit hardest by a sixth year of increases in England above the rate of inflation. Hundreds of councils must decide soon whether to raise the tax by the maximum allowed by government of 4.99%, or to make big cuts in services.

Manchester city council has told residents that without a 5% increase in bills it must make savings of £8.5m in addition to the £50m it is seeking to cut from current spending.

David Phillips, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said council tax was a regressive tax that favoured wealthier people. “Council tax bills represent a larger share of income for low-to-middle income households than high-income households,” he said.

“This means increases in council tax will typically take up a larger share of their income too …” 

Figures show that a band D council payer in the lowest 20% of income earners last year paid £1,000 after extra government subsidies out of a disposable income of £16,776. A council tax payer in the top 20% of earners paid £1,823 out of a disposable income of £91,472.

 Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, said: “It is the ‘not quite poor’ who suffer the most. Those who have enough income that means they don’t qualify for benefits. They get hammered by council tax increases as a proportion of their income.”

Middle-income households to be hit by ‘£2bn council tax bombshell’ | Council tax | The Guardian

  8 million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes.

The Church of England owns about 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of land. Assets include land suitable for the delivery of 28,500 new homes across England. However, fewer than a quarter of the 3,820 new homes that the church commissioners have secured planning permission for since 2015 were affordable.

A proposal to convert a former C of E school in Arkengarthdale in the Yorkshire Dales into affordable housing was blocked last year when the diocese of Leeds and the local parish said they were legally obliged to accept the highest offer for the property.

Church of England land should be used to help tackle housing crisis, says report | Housing | The Guardian

Belgium’s statistical agency, Statbel, released the first official study on the diversity of the Belgian population. The picture that emerged is one of an increasingly diverse and heterogeneous society. The study revealed that while Belgian citizens of Belgian ancestry make up just more than two-thirds of the country’s population (67.9 percent), the rest is comprised of Belgian citizens of foreign ancestry (19.7 percent) and foreign nationals (12.4 percent).

 The Belgian far right used the results of Statbel’s study to spread misinformation, distort reality, demonise immigrants and stir up racism,  expressing consternation, fear and outrage.

Tom Van Grieken, the head of the anti-immigrant Flemish nationalist political party, Vlaams Belang, tweeted a the comment “Omvolking. It is going fast”.

The Dutch word “omvolking” has its origins in the German word “umvolkung”, which was originally used by the Nazis to describe the perceived dilution of the superior Germanic race through assimilation with other, inferior races.

 Vlaams Belang doubled down on their claims that the Belgian population is currently subject to a so-called “ethnic conversion”. Vlaams Belang MEP Tom Vandendriessche described “omvolking” as a strategy utilised by so-called “cultural Marxists” in a supposed “cultural war”. “This is a deliberate policy,” he claimed, “if we continue with mass migration, we will become a minority in our own country.”

 Vlaams Belangallude to conspiracy theories, including the “great replacement” and its more extreme variations “white genocide” and “Eurabia” which are becoming increasingly popular, a belief that multiculturalism is a smokescreen for a global plot to dilute, weaken, replace or wipe out the white race. They  combine elements of classic anti-Semitism and anti-leftism with more recent elements of Islamophobia. According to the far right and neo-Nazis, a global cabal of either “cultural Marxists (Jews and leftists)” or “globalists (rich Jewish capitalists)” are conspiring to destroy white civilisation by “importing” millions of brown and Black people, especially Muslims, to the West, reflecting anxiety and a sense of inferiority at the heart of contemporary white supremacy.

That these “theories” enjoy currency and are given credence reflects the credulity of those who believe in them, as well as their ignorance of science, genetics and demographics among other things. The growing preponderance of these theories is also testimony to the far right’s skilful manipulation of social media to spread misinformation.

There is no “great replacement”, let alone a “white genocide” in progress anywhere in the world, including Belgium. The very idea is preposterous. So-called “white people”, ie people with pale skin, are in absolutely no danger of dying out – neither through immigration, nor interracial mixing.

Despite decades of large-scale movement, native Belgians still make up the overwhelming majority of the population, and whites are the overwhelming majority everywhere in Europe. The immigrants and people with immigrant backgrounds living in Belgium are not the dark-skinned non-Europeans that the far right claim are “invading Europe”. They are actually white Europeans from neighbouring countries who have taken advantage of the European Union’s freedom of movement.

 The most radical changes that have swept Belgian society, like elsewhere in the world, have little to do with immigration. Scientific and technological progress, as well as autochthonous social and cultural developments, are responsible for the lion’s share of change.

This will come as a shock to those who have been told for decades by the right that immigrants are nothing but spongers but not only do immigrants provide essential manpower in the medical and care sectors, among others, they also play a pivotal role in keeping Belgium’s healthcare and pensions system afloat. Without the taxes and social security payments coming from immigrants, Belgium’s welfare system may well have collapsed by now. In light of falling birthrates, demographers have long been warning that Belgium’s population would decline, with dire consequences for the ageing population. Luckily, immigration has made up the difference.  Judging by the large numbers of children with a mixed or foreign background currently making their way up through the school system, Belgium will become even more reliant on immigrants and their taxes in the near future.

Beyond the economic imperative, diversity is a beautiful thing in and of itself. Contrary to what anti-migration activists and politicians claim, a multicultural society is no more prone to conflict than a monocultural one. But it offers the additional advantages of dynamism and cultural richness. That the next generation is even more diverse than ours fills us not with fear but wonder and hope for the future. 

Humanity provides us with such a delicious range of cultural choice to feast on that it is a pity to stick to the same set menu. Rather than trying to stamp out multiculturalism, bigots should give themselves the chance to savour its delicious diversity.

The fictional menace of multiculturalism | Islamophobia News | Al Jazeera

 Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. 

An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, 

And the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. 

More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic,  they will be less likely to find jobs and fulfil their potential, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.

People who have lost their main source of income are struggling to feed their immediate households and are unable to send much-needed remittances to their families in rural areas.

Industrialised countries have spent up to 20% of their GDP on stimulus packages. But for the poorest countries, that figure is less than 2%.

Pandemics, world recessions and the climate crisis do not respect national borders. The answer must be global. Strong and sustained cooperation is essential. The longer the delay, the deeper the damage will become.

A “business as usual” approach will not deliver. 

The number of people in need is frightening – we need a global response | Debt relief | The Guardian

 While Texas slowly recovers from its power outages and Texans become accustomed to freezing temperatures, clean water shortages, empty supermarket shelves and sky-high utility bills, some are celebrating the disaster. 

 Dallas billionaire and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, is cashing in on the crisis. Demand for what little natural gas the state can access has soared amid the crisis as millions have gone without power this week, and consequently, wholesale gas prices have gone up nearly 300-fold. 

The chief financial officer of the natural gas company owned by Jones, Comstock Resources Inc., had this to say on a call with investors about the crisis:

 “Obviously, this week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these incredible prices…. Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a material amount of production.”

The company could be selling their product at anywhere from six to 74 times what they were selling for on average last quarter.

Such news warmed the cold callous hearts of investors   as the company’s stock shot up about 12 percent. Jones, who had $1.1 billion invested in the company in 2019, will likely profit handsomely off of this energy crisis that experts now say was largely caused by failures of the natural gas industry in the state at large.

Billionaire Dallas Cowboys Owner and Oil Man Cashes in on Texas Blackout Crisis (truthout.org)