The Rundown: Top headlines today: Feb. 4, 2022

After a recent talk, I realized nobody ever wrote a Eulogy for Mass Media. I thought I would do the honors. This article looks at the death of mass media and the implications for security and governance.

When NATO and the US fully pull out of Afghanistan the flow of money into the local economies will surely dry up along with most of the service jobs. However, they do have one strong industry there – it’s a cash crop – growing poppies. This is unfortunate because that opium gets transported all over the world and ends up destroying other cultures and their populations. The US in effect is allowing this to happen even with the so-called “eradication program” and it is occurring right now in broad daylight in some regions of the country, even as we tell other nations that we don’t want them pounding indigenous leaf of Central and South America into white powder and shipping it here to the US, due to our war on drugs.

As recession deepens in the euro zone and US growth remains tepid, western central bankers have in effect announced their intention to print money as long as it takes for growth to return. The critics of this Keynesian solution are seeing red. Republicans fret that jump-starting job creation, as US Fed chairman Ben Bernanke proposes to do, could improve the re-election prospects for Barack Obama. Head of German Bundesbank considers it a devilish policy that would burn Germany along with the euro zone in the fire of inflation…

Is it possible to find unbiased news about the war in Syria? This article looks at the difficulties involved in getting to the truth.

Color and class are often interchangeable until they come into conflict and then color always trumps class. Therein lies the true significance of color and its geo-political importance. A current illustration of these conflicting assumptions can be seen in this year’s Presidential campaign. Why would anyone vote for Mitt Romney who is from Appalachia?