Chris Hedges's Blog, page 100

Does Joe Biden Excite Anybody But Wealthy Donors?

Last week, I attended Joe Biden’s first rally in California since he launched his presidential campaign more than six months ago.

It was revealing.

The Biden for President campaign had been using social media and its email list in the Los Angeles area to urge attendance. Under sunny skies, near abundant free parking, the outdoor rally on the campus of LA’s Trade-Technical College offered a chance to hear the man widely heralded as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

No more than 500 people showed up.

Admittedly, as an active Bernie Sanders supporter, I didn’t have high expectations. But what struck me about the rally went beyond the dismal turnout and the stale rhetoric from a corporate Democrat posing as a champion of working people.

Biden’s slow decline in polls is empirical, but what ails his campaign — as reflected in that California kickoff rally — is almost ineffable. Biden is a back-to-the-future product who often seems clueless about the present. In view of so many deep and widespread concerns, from income inequality to healthcare disparities to the climate emergency, his talking points are simply beside the point.

The Biden base has two main components: the corporate media outlets that routinely protect him from critical scrutiny, and the rich people who routinely infuse his lackluster campaign with cash. When and where he isn’t getting fuel from either component of that base, the campaign sputters.

Contrasts with the large and passionate rallies for Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could hardly be greater. Not coincidentally, those two candidates are glad to rely on large numbers of small donations, while Biden relies on small numbers of large donations.

Biden is so afraid of Democratic activists that — for the second time this year — he declined an invitation to join other candidates in speaking to a convention of the California Democratic Party. The latest convention heard from eight presidential candidates on Nov. 16, two days after Biden’s kickoff rally, no more than an hour’s drive away in Long Beach.

While careful to stay away from engaged grassroots Democrats, Biden made a beeline for wealthy donors immediately after his sparsely attended rally. First, he hurried over to a reception in West Los Angeles (tickets up to $1,000 each). Later that evening, a local TV station noted, Biden’s fundraising schedule took him to “the Pacific Palisades home of Rick Lynch, the owner of the entertainment marketing firm BLT Communications, and music video producer Lanette Phillips,” with tickets “priced at $500 and $2,800, the maximum individual contribution during the primary campaign.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Biden “previously made eight fundraising trips to California since entering the race in late April, visiting at least once a month. He has headlined 21 fundraisers in the state, raising money at the homes of Hollywood executives, Silicon Valley tech leaders and other affluent Democrats.”

Among some who roll their eyes about Biden, a kind of conventional wisdom now says that he is sure to fade from contention. But — in the absence of comparable polling numbers from the numerous other corporate candidates in the race — the Biden campaign is likely to be the best bet for deep-pocketed political investors seeking to prevent the nomination of Sanders or Warren.

Biden’s decision last month to greenlight super PACs on his behalf has underscored just how eager he is to bankroll his AstroTurf campaign against grassroots progressives no matter what. As he said during an interview in January 2018, “you shouldn’t accept any money from a super PAC, because people can’t possibly trust you.” But ultimately, Biden doesn’t need people’s trust. He needs their acquiescence.

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Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Amnesty Says at Least 106 Killed in Iran Protests

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Days of protests in Iran over rising fuel prices and a subsequent government crackdown have killed at least 106 people across the Islamic Republic, Amnesty International said Tuesday, citing “credible reports.”

Iran’s government, which has not made nationwide numbers available for the toll of the unrest that began Friday, did not immediately respond to the report. A request for comment to its mission at the United Nations was not immediately acknowledged.

The Amnesty report comes after a U.N. agency earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.” Amnesty added that it “believes that the real death toll may be much higher, with some reports suggesting as many as 200 have been killed.”

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The U.S. Is Setting the Stage for Another Coup in Iran



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It Doesn't Get More Illegal Than a War With Iran



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Iranian authorities have not offered a definitive account of how many people have been arrested, injured or killed in the protests that spread quickly across at least 100 cities and towns. Authorities shut down internet access to the outside world Saturday, an outage that persisted Monday in the nation of 80 million.

That has left only state media and government officials to tell their story. State television showed video Tuesday of burned Qurans at a mosque in the suburbs of the capital, Tehran, as well as pro-government rallies, part of its efforts to both demonize and minimize the protests.

Absent in the coverage, though, was an acknowledgement of what sparked the demonstrations in the first place. The jump in gasoline prices represents yet another burden on Iranians who have suffered through a painful currency collapse, following President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of the United States from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, and the re-imposition of crippling U.S. economic sanctions.

Relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani has promised that the fuel price increase will be used to fund new subsidies for poor families. But the decision has unleashed widespread anger among Iranians, like Maryam Kazemi, a 29-year-old accountant in the southern Tehran suburb of Khaniabad, who said the new cost of fuel was “putting pressure on ordinary people.”

“It was a bad decision at a bad time. The economic situation has long been difficult for people, and Rouhani unexpectedly implemented the decision on fuel,” she said.

Amnesty said it gathered its figures from interviewing journalists and human rights activists, then cross-checked the information. In its breakdown, it showed the hardest-hit areas as the western Kermanshah province and its oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan. Many online videos released before the internet outage showed unrest there.

“Video footage shows security forces using firearms, water cannons and tear gas to disperse protests and beating demonstrators with batons,” Amnesty said. “Images of bullet casings left on the ground afterwards, as well as the resulting high death toll, indicate that they used live ammunition.”

So far, scattered reports in state-run and semiofficial media have reported only six deaths.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights earlier issued a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” about reports of live ammunition being used against demonstrators. It also urged protesters to demonstrate peacefully.

“We are especially alarmed that the use of live ammunition has allegedly caused a significant number of deaths across the country,” spokesman Rupert Colville said in a statement.

Colville added that it has been “extremely difficult” to verify the overall death toll.

Meanwhile, an article published Tuesday in the hard-line Kayhan newspaper suggested that executions loomed for those who led violent protests. Though the state-owned newspaper has a small circulation, its managing editor Hossein Shariatmadari was personally appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Some reports say that the judiciary considers execution by hanging for the riot leaders a definite punishment,” Kahyan said, without elaborating.

It also repeated an allegation that protest leaders came from abroad. Khamenei on Sunday specifically named those aligned with the family of Iran’s late shah, ousted 40 years ago, and an exile group called the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. The MEK calls for the overthrow of Iran’s government and enjoys the support of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Police and security forces remained on the streets of Tehran on Tuesday, but in lower numbers. Traffic also appeared to be flowing better, after part of the demonstrations saw people abandon their cars on major roadways.

Authorities postponed four soccer matches in different parts of the country scheduled for Thursday and Friday, the Iranian weekend, according to the semiofficial ISNA news agency. With the internet outage and phone services spotty, it remained difficult to know the situation in some regions.

The protests were prompted by a plunging economy. Many Iranians have seen their savings evaporate amid scarce jobs and the collapse of the national currency, the rial, since Trump withdrew Washington from the nuclear deal over a year ago and imposed sanctions. The rial now trades at over 123,000 to $1, compared to 32,000 to $1 at the time the deal took effect.

Cheap gasoline is practically considered a birthright in Iran, home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves despite decades of economic woes since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Gasoline remains among the cheapest in the world, with the new prices jumping 50% to a minimum of 15,000 rials per liter. That’s 12 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. A gallon of regular gas in the U.S. costs $2.59 by comparison.

The U.N. rights office addressed that background of economic anger across Iran in its statement.

“Protests of this nature and on this scale are an indication of deep-rooted and often well-founded grievances that cannot simply be brushed aside,” Colville said.

Those grievances could be heard in Khaniabad and elsewhere around Tehran. Several described taking part in peaceful protests later hijacked by violent masked demonstrators. Others heard gunfire.

“We were out to protest the gasoline price on Saturday,” said Reza Nobari, a 33-year-old car mechanic. “Suddenly a group of six or seven who covered their faces appeared together and started to break the windows of a bank. This wasn’t what we were out for.”

Jafar Abbasi, a 58-year-old who runs a dairy, said he saw another group of people who arrived in a van smash the windows of nearby shops.

“Some looted the place and some other quickly disappeared,” he said.

He added: “This is all the result of Rouhani’s decision to increase the price of fuel.”

She Can’t Vote, but 2020 Democrats Want Her Support

LAS VEGAS — One of the most sought-after presidential endorsements in a key early voting state is from a woman who cannot vote.

As Democrats jockey for support in Nevada, a meeting with Astrid Silva, a 31-year-old immigrant rights activist who has become a public face of the “Dreamers,” has become a can’t-miss early stop.

Silva has had dinner with Kamala Harris, policy roundtables with Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, and vegan tamales with Cory Booker. Just this week, after Pete Buttigieg saw she attended Supreme Court arguments on the program shielding her from deportation, the candidate called to make sure she knew he was supportive of her cause.

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“Presidential wannabees, when they come here —I don’t know a single one that hasn’t met with her,” said Harry Reid, the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, who helped elevate Silva’s profile during his push for immigration reform. Reid said he didn’t know if Silva would like the title of “kingmaker” but said “there’s no question in my mind that candidates are well-served to visit with her.”

Silva’s busy calendar highlights the power of Latino voters in Nevada, the third state in Democrats’ primary calendar. The state has a large immigrant community and Latinos account for roughly 19% of the electorate, according to the Pew Research Center. Many of those voters are Democrats, making Nevada’s contest a critical test of the candidates’ appeal among a group with rising political power in the party.

While immigration has taken a back seat to health care and impeachment in the national primary debate, it remains on the forefront for Nevada Democrats, many of whom want candidates to have a plan to permanently protect Dreamers and offer a path to citizenship, among a host of other changes.

One of about 13,000 young immigrants in the state temporarily shielded from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Silva has become a visible figure in the push for immigration reform since meeting Reid in 2009. President Barack Obama cited her in a 2014 immigration speech, and she spoke at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. In 2016, she declared Hillary Clinton’s immigration plan to be the most feasible and endorsed her, helping Clinton as she won the Nevada caucuses and later carried the purple state.

If she were to endorse, “it gives that candidate the ability to say that they have been vetted by someone who is fighting with the immigrant community for the immigrant community,” said Democratic state Sen. Yvanna Cancela, a close friend of Silva. “I think that is a badge of respect that obviously candidates are actively seeking.”

Silva, who says she’s uncertain if she will endorse, is wary of giving that stamp of approval easily.

Over the last several months, she has spent hours in private meetings in Las Vegas with the candidates, usually bringing with her a team of other activists, immigrants and volunteer attorneys.

Over chips and salsa at family-run Mexican restaurants or, in Cory Booker’s case, vegan tamales and prayer at the altar in a local home, Silva has tried to focus the candidates on personal stories. She and others often described the fears immigrants face and the complexities of navigating of the U.S. immigration system. They’ve talked about victims of sexual assault who are too afraid to report to police because they don’t have legal status. They recount how family members were forced to leave and remain out of the country for up to 10 years before applying to legally rejoin their family.

“It’s very different when you’re the one that’s afraid of the police, when you’re the one that’s afraid of ICE, when you’re the one that goes to bed at night thinking, ‘Will I come home tomorrow?’” Silva said.

Silva sometimes tells them her story, about being brought at age 4 by her parents across the border from Mexico without legal permission. Until she was 26 and Nevada began issuing driver privilege cards to immigrants, she relied on the bus to get around sprawling Las Vegas. She runs a nonprofit that connects immigrants with support and legal help but says she ensures her family or friends can access her bank account to pay her bills in case her legal status changes and she ends up in an immigrant detention facility.

“Our literal everything is in somebody else’s hands,” she said. “I don’t have a say over my life.”

While meeting with candidates, her fellow Latino immigrants often give the 2020 hopefuls small tokens to remember them, like an image of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, or an escapulario, a devotional necklace featuring the Catholic icon Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, that’s seen as a protection from bad things.

“They can’t vote. The one thing they can give is their time and literally their treasures, which is their religious artifacts,” Silva said.

Some of the candidates took pages of notes and had their staff follow up with Silva as they crafted their immigration plans, Silva says.

Booker, Warren and Harris, who had several meetings with Silva, have released Dreamer plans that would use executive action to extend protections for those already covered and allow other immigrants, like Dreamers’ family members, to apply for protection from deportation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders also has proposed extending protection to parents of legal residents, along with placing a moratorium on all deportations and allowing those without legal status to get health coverage under his Medicare for All plan. His campaign has been working to set up a meeting with Silva.

Buttigieg and Silva spoke for about five minutes by phone on Sunday.

Biden, who has not released a detailed immigration plan, has called for Congress to grant citizenship to Dreamers.

All the candidate face time hasn’t shed Silva’s worries about the Democratic field. She’s seen few candidates truly reaching out and organizing families in the immigrant community, she said. She worries that candidates will change their tune in the general election, when the fight shifts to the Rust Belt, where immigration is an issue that could drive some white, working-class voters away.

“Right now, they could be talking really nice, but when they have to go moderate, or when they have to go to the right, our families are first to be sacrificed,” Silva said. “We are the first to be on the cutting board because we don’t vote. We can’t vote.”

Others worry about campaigns thinking one activist — or one issue — alone will unlock the Latino vote.

Like other voters, Latinos care about health care, education and climate change, among other issues, said Leo Murrieta, the director of advocacy organization Make the Road Nevada.

While Silva plays an important role, candidates need to do more than just meet with her “just to check off a box,” Murrieta said.

“One person can’t possibly be asked to represent an entire population,” he said.

Meanwhile, Silva acknowledges the race for the White House has been overshadowed by the day-to-day struggles she and other immigrants are facing, which have intensified under the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week about whether President Donald Trump can terminate the DACA program, and a decision in the case is expected by the end of June. Opponents on the right argue DACA protections reward people who broke the law and encourage more people to immigrate without legal permission.

Moderate Republicans have backed a path to citizenship for Dreamers, but past efforts to pass the change have repeatedly collapsed in Congress.

“If my work permit is taken away,” Silva said, “does it matter, my endorsement? Does it matter that I’m advocating for a candidate when I can’t see my family?”

Ending Endless War From the Right

They sure didn’t look the part. These weren’t a bunch of stereotypical hippie peaceniks. As I surveyed the room in the beautiful DC brownstone which hosted the BringOurTroopsHome.us opening night reception, I saw well-built, well-dressed men and women, many still sporting military-style haircuts (though often with a well-groomed beard). Instead of tie-dye shirts, I spied some flag-lapel pins, a few Trump 2020 ball caps, and even a big old cowboy hat. Yet all these relatively young combat veterans were gathered in the nation’s capital last week with a common cause: ending America’s endless wars! The very wars, of course, that they had fought, the wars they could still smell, the wars that killed their friends.

The entire event was remarkable, and, even a few years ago, would have seemed unthinkable. What I witnessed, and took part in, represents a profound pivot point in America’s post-9/11 forever wars. As those hopeless, countless, conflicts enter their 19th year, the nation’s veterans have finally had enough. I’d noticed the first rumblings of this over the last coupe of years, when texts and phone conversations with old military buddies, and still serving officers, took on increasing frustrated, even exasperated, tones. Then, this past summer, came empirical evidence of what many had suspected, in the form polls which indicated nearly two-thirds of veterans felt the wars they’d once fought were “not worth it.” Coming from a caste of volunteers that tend to be slightly more rural, conservative, and likely to have a family legacy in the military, that’s a significant statement.

It must be said, of course, that BringOurTroopsHome.us is not a partisan organization. After all, the gathering was rather diverse: including veterans of different races, genders, and regions. In fact, the next afternoon, the organization set up meetings with these veterans’ congressmen and senators from 24 states. Still, the attendees clearly leaned in a rightward, libertarian direction. In a sense I, a vaguely liberal sort, initially felt the odd man out. When Dan McKnight, a founding member, called and invited me, I confessed my political differentiation. He immediately assured me that all veterans opposed to these wars were welcome, and I decided in that moment to attend. I’d long surmised that there’s a natural potential alliance budding between progressive and libertarian antiwar activists. Perhaps I’d found an organization in the vanguard of this powerful nexus.

Featured speakers over the two-day event included a lieutenant governor and state majority whip, both from the Mountain West, a retired special operations brigadier general, a few retired lieutenant colonels, as well as young former sergeants and corporals. All were committed, regardless of their personal angles or strategies, to the belief that endless war erodes republican institutions and inappropriately churns up the nation’s servicemen and women. The event was carefully organized and highly professional, in keeping with the military backgrounds and experiences of the group’s leadership. Media had been coordinated, and several dozen congressional visits scheduled.

It was unfortunate, then, that the very day of the event, as these esteemed national servants gathered in Washington to protest the most important issue of the times, most of the press and the country’s legislators were busy – distracted by the impeachment charade on Capitol Hill. Here were decorated veterans, who’d done all the nation asked of them, prepared to oppose the endless wars crippling this ostensible democracy, and all the political and media class cared about was the aimless Ukraine-gate affair, a partisan parody almost certain to amount to nothing. As such, most of us received audiences of staffers rather than the legislators themselves. Our flood of congressional visits was still a powerful statement, but our representatives mostly owed us better.

Personally, I met with two representatives – a Democrat from New York City and a Republican from Kansas – both veterans themselves, and a senator from Kansas. Rep. Steve Watkins (R-Kansas), a fellow West Point graduate, did give me some unexpected and unscheduled face time. He was cordial, personable, and refreshingly informal, even though our politics diverge in almost every way. Nonetheless, the staffers with whom I spoke in each office had few answers to my desperate pleas to front load foreign policy and take tangible action – repeal the 2001/02 AUMFs, wield the War Powers Act to end, or at least legally sanction these conflicts – on the national disgrace of forever war.

Most pointed to, and defended, aspects of their bosses’ records on these issues. And admittedly, some had opposed the Yemen war, and one backed – at least in principle – the president’s (unfulfilled) proposal to end the U.S. military presence in Syria. Still, when asked about inconsistencies in their war votes and positions, and their (thus far) unwillingness to lead on this issue, I was treated to mostly excuses. These ranged from the partisan variety – Republican reps can’t achieve much while the Dems control the House – to the structural and bureaucratic. House and committee leadership, it seems, have too much power and often stifle bold, especially bipartisan, positions. Nonetheless, with young men and women born after September 2001 currently training for a war older than they are, the national debt skyrocketing, and civil liberties at home increasingly eroding, the time for political excuses is long past. And I told them so.

The veteran activists of BringOurTroopsHome.us are just the start of what may well be a deluge of antiwar former soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines finally ready to speak out against endless conflict in the Greater Middle East. They’ll be, I promise you, on the right side of history. Their congressmen – imbued with the constitutional duty to fund, sanction, and oversee war – I’m not so sure of. That they’ve allowed these aimless forever wars to gather an inertia all their own, and have yet to unite to stop the madness, is – in the words of that retired general who gave the organization’s keynote speech – “unforgivable.”

As I warned each of the three staffers assigned to politely hear me out, the issue is urgent; potential tragedy imminent. Take action, be a leader, and stop these wars now, I repeated, or something even more dreadful will be partly on their hands: the inevitable death of a soldier born after the 9/11 attacks in the nation’s longest ever war. Now that’s unforgivable.

 

U.S. Angers Palestinians With Reversal on Israeli Settlements

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday softened the U.S. position on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, reversing four decades of American policy and further undermining the effort to gain Palestinian statehood.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. is repudiating the 1978 State Department legal opinion that held that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are “inconsistent with international law.” Israeli leaders welcomed the decision while Palestinians and other nations warned that it undercut any chance of a broader peace deal.

Pompeo told reporters at the State Department that the Trump administration believes any legal questions about settlements should be resolved by Israeli courts and that declaring them a violation of international law distracts from larger efforts to negotiate a peace deal.

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” Pompeo said. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

The change reflects the administration’s embrace of a hard-line Israeli view at the expense of the Palestinian quest for statehood. Similar actions have included President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the movement of the U.S. Embassy to that city and the closure of the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington.

“The U.S. administration has lost its credibility to play any future role in the peace process,” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The European Union warned of the potential repercussions in a statement following the announcement that did not mention the U.S.

“All settlement activity is illegal under international law and it erodes the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace,” said the statement from the 28-nation bloc. “The EU calls on Israel to end all settlement activity, in line with its obligations as an occupying power.”

Even though the decision is largely symbolic, it could give a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political survival after failing to form a coalition government following recent elections.

It could also spell further trouble for the administration’s peace plan, which is unlikely to gather much international support by endorsing a position contrary to the global consensus.

The Netanyahu government was dealt a blow on settlements just last week when the European Court of Justice ruled products made in Israeli settlements must be labeled as such.

The 1978 legal opinion on settlements is known as the Hansell Memorandum. It had been the basis for more than 40 years of carefully worded U.S. opposition to settlement construction that had varied in its tone and strength, depending on the president’s position.

The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements illegal based in part on the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bars an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population to occupied territory.

In the final days of the Obama administration, the U.S. allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution declaring the settlements a “flagrant violation” of international law.

Pompeo said that the U.S. would not take a position on the legality of specific settlements, that the new policy would not extend beyond the West Bank and that it would not create a precedent for other territorial disputes.

He also said the decision did not mean the administration was prejudging the status of the West Bank in any eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

For Netanyahu, the welcome boost comes at a time when he has been weakened domestically by mounting legal woes and two inconclusive elections this year.

Unable to secure a parliamentary majority, Netanyahu is now anxiously waiting to see if his chief rival, Benny Gantz, can put together a coalition. If Gantz fails, the country could be forced into a third election, with Netanyahu facing the distraction of a trial.

Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying the policy shift “rights a historical wrong” concerning settlements.

“This policy reflects an historical truth – that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea and Samaria,” it said, using the Israeli terms for the West Bank.

Gantz, meanwhile, applauded Pompeo’s “important statement, once again demonstrating its firm stance with Israel and its commitment to the security and future of the entire Middle East.”

Pompeo dismissed suggestions that the decision would further isolate the U.S. or Israel in the international community, though Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi wrote on Twitter that the settlements hurt peace prospects. “We warn of the seriousness of the change in the U.S. position towards the settlements and its repercussions on all efforts to achieve peace,” he said.

Shortly after Pompeo’s announcement, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem issued an advisory warning for Americans planning to travel in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, saying, “Individuals and groups opposed to (Pompeo’s) announcement may target U.S. government facilities, U.S. private interests, and U.S. citizens.” It called on them “to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness in light of the current environment.”

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and quickly began settling the newly conquered territory.

Today, some 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the two areas, which are both claimed by the Palestinians for their state.

After the war, it immediately annexed east Jerusalem, home to the holy city’s most important religious sites, in a move that is not internationally recognized.

But Israel has never annexed the West Bank, even as it has dotted the territory with scores of settlements and tiny settlement outposts.

While claiming the fate of the settlements is a subject for negotiations, it has steadily expanded them. Some major settlements have over 30,000 residents, resembling small cities and serving as suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The Palestinians and most of the world say the settlements undermine hopes for a two-state solution by gobbling up land sought by the Palestinians.

Israel’s settlement activities have also drawn attention to its treatment of Palestinians.

While Jewish settlers can freely enter Israel and vote in Israeli elections, West Bank Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law, require permits to enter Israel and do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections.

___

Associated Press writers Josef Federman and Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Bernie Sanders’ Stance on Bolivia Matters

Toward the end of Saturday night’s Democratic forum hosted by the Spanish language network Univision, moderator Jorge Ramos posed what can charitably be called a leading question to 2020 hopeful Bernie Sanders. Ramos, who cemented his place in the public consciousness when then-candidate Donald Trump had him tossed from a news conference in 2015, noted that Sanders had called the overthrow of Bolivian President Evo Morales a “coup,” but that others maintain that Morales was attempting to become a dictator. So what does Sanders think?

In a Democratic field that seems to grow more crowded by the month if not the week, the Vermont senator’s answer was nothing short of revelatory. “I don’t agree with that assertion,” he said. “I think Morales did a very good job in alleviating poverty and giving the indigenous people of Bolivia a voice that they never had before. Now we can argue about his going for a fourth term, whether that was a wise thing to do. … But at the end of the day, it was the military who intervened in that process and asked him to leave. When the military intervenes, Jorge, in my view, that’s called a ‘coup.'”

Since Morales’ forced resignation, the response of leading Democrats and presidential hopefuls has been one of almost total silence, even among the party’s putative progressives. As video emerged of right-wing protesters burning the flag of the indigenous Wiphala and pro-coup police officers gleefully cutting it off their uniforms, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., declined to comment publicly despite the gruesome precedent in the region. (She has since issued a tepid tweet calling on Bolivian security forces to “protect demonstrators, not commit violence against them.”) The same can be said of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, who has made opposition to U.S. regime change the centerpiece of her campaign, although her anti-imperialism has always been questionable at best. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., an outspoken critic of the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, could only muster the following on social media:

The drama isn’t just in Washington today. Unrest is growing in Latin America, and the Trump Administration needs to pay attention.

In Bolivia, the U.S. needs to support a civilian-led transition of power at a perilous moment. We can’t botch this like we did Venezuela.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 13, 2019

Given that the U.S. has repeatedly backed coup attempts in Venezuela, most recently throwing its support behind President of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó, the last line of that tweet seems confusing at best and ominous at worst. What, after all, is the United States’ to botch? By contrast, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn instantly condemned Morales’ removal from office as an assault on “democracy, social justice and independence.” Both Trump and Prime Minister Boris Jonson have officially recognized Bolivia’s interim government.

In the week since, the crisis in Bolivia has grown increasingly deadly. The Bolivian military has slaughtered dozens of demonstrators, and over the past two days, hand-picked president, Jeanine Áñez, has issued a pair of disturbing edicts. The first is that the Bolivian military will not be prosecuted for crimes committed in the suppression of protests, providing it with what members of the socialist MAS party are calling a “license to kill”; the second is the creation of a “special government apparatus” to detain MAS lawmakers, who constitute a two-thirds majority in the Bolivian legislature. Meanwhile, Argentinian journalists have been chased from the country under the threat of violence.

Ánez, whose deceptively named Democratic Social Movement Party won just 4.2% of the vote in the October elections, has called a New Year’s celebration of the Aymara people “satanic” and has referred to Morales as a “pobre indio” (a poor Indian). Upon assuming office, she declared that “La Biblia vuelve al palacio” (“the Bible has returned to the presidential palace”), bearing an oversized scripture to re-enforce the point. The New York Times notes that she has made her speeches “shadowed by an aide carrying a cross.”

None of this absolves Morales of his apparent illiberalism or real missteps in office. As his critics in Western media eagerly observe, he narrowly lost a 2016 referendum to determine his eligibility for a fourth term, receiving approval instead from his country’s Supreme Court. Along similar lines, the U.S.-backed Organization of American States has reported irregularities in 2019’s presidential elections, although those remain in dispute. As “Empire’s Workshop” author and Latin American historian Greg Grandin recently wrote, “there has never been a coup in Latin America where the president being overthrown wasn’t considered ‘problematic.’ (Yes, not even [Salvador] Allende.)” Indeed, The Economist blamed the Chilean president directly for Augusto Pinochet’s seizure of power in 1973.

It seems telling, then, that the military asked Morales to resign after he agreed—likely under duress—to a second election. And while the current Secretary General of OAS Luis Almagro will not, former Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has said that Bolivia’s democratic interregnum meets the political definition of “un golpe” (a coup).

So why can’t Democrats do the same? Whether the Trump administration is directly responsible for Morales’ overthrow or the U.S. is merely the passive beneficiary of a new market-friendly and increasingly Christofascist regime is, ultimately, beside the point. (A passing familiarity with Bolivian history or Operation Condor more broadly point to the former, to say nothing of the attempts in Venezuela earlier this year, although I am loath to speculate.) Any presidential candidate who claims to represent workers and marginalized communities, who even nominally opposes U.S. imperialism, should be able to identify a coup as such. If they can’t, why should we trust them to implement a just and holistic foreign policy?

It’s a basic test that the party has, to date, failed miserably—one that not only illuminates the threat Sanders poses to America’s two-party duopoly but renders absurd the notion that he shares the politics of Warren or any other 2020 contender.

Trump Sycophant Jon Voight to Receive National Medal of Arts

Jon Voight thinks Donald Trump is “the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln,” which is probably reason enough for the praise-hungry president to give the star of movies like “Midnight Cowboy,” “Coming Home” and “Deliverance” the National Medal of Arts. Once an annual tradition, Trump hasn’t found anyone he deems sufficiently worthy (or sufficiently worshipful), since his 2017 inauguration, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

That Trump liked Voight isn’t a surprise. This is a president so desperate for recognition, his cabinet meetings begin with compliments just for him, as The Washington Post reports, and have since the very beginning of the Trump presidency. He also rewards those who praise him, and already gave Voight a spot on the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees.

If the media coverage of conservatives in Hollywood is any indication, it’s a lonely existence.

In 2017, The Guardian reported the Friends of Abe, once a solace for Hollywood Republicans, dissolved over Trump’s candidacy.

Gerald Molen, an Academy-award winning producer of films like “Schindler’s” List told The Los Angeles Times in 2017 that while he had no trouble expressing his views in the 1990s, now, “The acrimony — it’s there. It’s front and center.” Andrew Klavan, a screenwriter and novelist, echoed the sentiment, telling The Los Angeles Times, “I feel absolutely [his views have] harmed me professionally.”

Voight was once a prominent liberal; in the 1960s, as the Daily Beast points out, he campaigned for Democrat George McGovern during his presidential run and protested against the Vietnam War. Since the George W. Bush administration, however, Voight’s political views have gone sharply rightward.

Per the Daily Beast in 2016:

He’s lashed out against the American public for criticizing then-President George W. Bush, narrated a video for Sarah Palin that aired on John McCain’s presidential campaign site, branded President Obama a “false prophet,” and makes the occasional appearance on Fox News.

Voight endorsed Trump in 2016, giving an exclusive statement to Breitbart News. He’s continued to support Trump even though, as the Daily Beast also points out, the president has insulted Voight’s daughter, actress Angelina Jolie.

Other National Medal of Arts and National Medal of Humanities recipients this year include bluegrass musician Alison Krauss, mystery writer James Patterson and all five military bands. While their political reviews remain undisclosed, neither Krauss nor Patterson appear to have publicly praised Trump as Voight has.

The awards will be presented Nov. 21.

Chief Justice Orders Delay in House Fight for Trump Financial Records

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts is ordering an indefinite delay in the House of Representatives’ demand for President Donald Trump’s financial records to give the Supreme Court time to figure out how to handle the high-stakes dispute.

Roberts’ order Monday contains no hint about what the court ultimately will do.

The court’s hold could last a matter of days or weeks, if the court is willing to let an appeals court ruling in favor of the House remain in place without granting full review of the case. But the delay could extend for months if the justices decide they need to hear arguments and issue a written opinion.

Earlier Monday, the House said it would agree to a brief halt for the orderly filing of legal briefs, while opposing any lengthy delay. Those written arguments will give the justices a basis to decide whether they will jump into the tussle between Congress and the president.

Last week, Trump made an emergency appeal to ask the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a subpoena issued by a House committee to Trump’s accountants. The House has until Thursday to respond, Roberts said.

The high court has a separate pending request from Trump to block a subpoena from a New York prosecutor for Trump’s tax returns.

The justices next meet in private on Friday and could discuss what to do with the House subpoena. Without some intervention by the high court, a ruling by the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., in favor of the House was set to take effect Wednesday.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform would have been able to try to enforce the subpoena to the Mazars USA accounting firm.

Bloomberg Apologizes for ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Police Practice

WASHINGTON — Michael Bloomberg on Sunday apologized for his longstanding support of the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police strategy ahead of a potential Democratic presidential run, a practice that he embraced as New York’s mayor and continued to defend despite its disproportionate impact on people of color.

Addressing a black church in Brooklyn, Bloomberg said he was “sorry” and acknowledged it often led to the detention of blacks and Latinos.

“I can’t change history,” Bloomberg told the congregation. “However today, I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong.”

Bloomberg’s reversal is notable for someone who is often reluctant to admit wrongdoing. It’s also a recognition that if he’s to compete for the Democratic presidential nomination, he’ll have to win support from black voters. And his record on stop-and-frisk is a glaring vulnerability that could hobble his potential candidacy if he doesn’t express contrition.

The apology, however, was received skeptically by many prominent activists who noted that it was made as he is taking steps to enter the race.

“It is convenient that Bloomberg suddenly apologizes but has done nothing to undo the immense damage he has caused on countless lives,” said activist DeRay Mckesson. “His apology is not accepted.”

Stop-and-frisk gave police wide authority to detain people they suspected of committing a crime, and Bloomberg aggressively pursued the tactic when he first took over as mayor in 2002. Under the program, New York City police officers made it a routine practice to stop and search multitudes of mostly black and Hispanic men to see if they were carrying weapons.

Police claimed that people were only targeted if officers had a reasonable suspicion that they were breaking the law. But while the searches did lead to weapons being confiscated, the overwhelming majority of people who were detained and frisked were let go because they hadn’t done anything wrong.

Many men found the encounters humiliating and degrading, and statistics showed that minorities were far more likely to be subjected to such a search.

“Under Bloomberg, NYPD increased stop and frisk from 100,000 stops to nearly 700,000 stops per year. 90% of those impacted were people of color — overwhelmingly black and brown men,” black activist and data scientist Samuel Sinyangwe tweeted on Sunday. “Bloomberg personally has the money to begin paying reparations for this harm. ‘Sorry’ isn’t enough.”

Bloomberg is not the first Democrat aiming to unseat President Donald Trump next year who has sought to atone for past positions on matters that deeply impacted people of color.

Before he entered the race, former Vice President Joe Biden apologized for his role in the passage of a crime bill that imposed stiffer sentences on those convicted of crack cocaine possession — a law that has disproportionately affected the black community. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, too, said he was “not happy” that he voted for the “terrible” 1994 legislation. And Pete Buttigieg apologized for his handling of race as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a city with a history of segregation where decades of simmering tension erupted this summer when a white police officer shot and killed a black man.

Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor who just entered the Democratic race and was campaigning Sunday in Nevada, was asked for his reaction to Bloomberg’s apology. He replied, “Good.”

Sen. Cory Booker, who was at the same Nevada rally, had a similarly positive but brief reaction to Bloomberg’s reversal on stop and frisk, saying, “I’m happy he did.” Julian Castro, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary and presidential candidate, said: “It’s interesting timing that the mayor would apologize for that now. That was a wrong policy. I guess it’s better late than never. People will have to judge whether they believe his apology.”

Rev. Al Sharpton applauded Bloomberg for reversing his stance, though he added that he would have to “wait and see whether it was politically motivated.”

“As one who helped lead countless demonstrations, marches and rallies to amplify the racial impact that was had on the Black and Brown community from stop-and-frisk policing, I am glad to see Mr. Bloomberg now admit that the policy was wrong,” Sharpton said. “It will take more than one speech for people to forgive and forget a policy that so negatively impacted entire communities.”

On Sunday, Bloomberg sought to contextualize his embrace of stop-and-frisk. Though crime had fallen sharply when he took office, he said there were still 650 murders in the city in 2001. Most were young black and Hispanic men. Meanwhile, relations between police and communities of color were at a nadir.

“I was not going to accept that — and I didn’t,” Bloomberg said. “I was determined to improve police-community relations while at the same time reducing crime even further.”

But the practice had unforeseen consequences, he acknowledged.

“The fact is, far too many innocent people were being stopped while we tried to do that. The overwhelming majority of them were black and Latino,” he said. “That may have included, I’m sorry to say, some of you here today. Perhaps yourself or your children, or your grandchildren, or your neighbors, or your relatives.”

Yet as recent as this year, he defended his handling of it.

“The murder rate in New York City went from 650 a year to 300 a year when I left,” he said in January. He said most police departments do the same thing, “they just don’t report it or use the terminology.”

Ultimately, a federal judge found in 2013 that stop-and-frisk intentionally and systematically violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of people by wrongly targeting black and Hispanic men. Bloomberg blasted the ruling at the time, calling it a “dangerous decision made by a judge who I think does not understand how policing works and what is compliant with the U.S. Constitution.”

Bloomberg’s successor, Mayor Bill de Blasio made ending the practice a centerpiece of his first run for office. In a campaign-defining ad, his son Dante, who is biracial, made the case that de Blasio “would end the stop-and-frisk era that unfairly targets people of color.”

Bloomberg told the congregation Sunday that stop-and-frisk eroded trust in the police department and left a blight on his legacy.

“The erosion of trust bothered me — deeply. And it still bothers me,” he said. “And I want to earn it back.”

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Associated Press writers Errin Haines in Philadelphia, Deepti Hajela in New York and Michelle Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Campus Under Siege as Hong Kong Police Battle Protesters

HONG KONG — As night fell on Hong Kong, police tightened their siege of a university campus where hundreds of protesters were trapped in the latest dramatic episode in months of protests against growing Chinese control over the semi-autonomous city.

The Asian financial center’s workweek began Monday with multiple protests that disrupted traffic, while schools remained closed because of safety concerns stemming from the demonstrations, which began in June but have become increasingly violent in recent weeks.

The pitched battle for control of the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University has been the center of the most recent developments. For days, protesters have fortified the campus to keep out the police. Now cornered by police determined to arrest them, they desperately tried to get out but faced a cordon of officers armed with tear gas and water cannons.

Officers repelled one escape attempt Monday morning with tear gas, driving hundreds of protesters back onto the campus. Later, huge crowds of supporters advanced on foot toward the police from outside the cordon to try to disrupt the police operation.

Some protesters descended by ropes from a footbridge to a road below, where they were met by motorbike riders helping them flee as police fired tear gas at them. It was unclear whether they got away safely.

Senior government officials said they were trying to de-escalate the situation and urged the protesters to peacefully leave the campus and cooperate with police — advice that seemed certain to lead to arrests and therefore strengthened the protesters’ resolve to resist.

Local council elections scheduled for Sunday are now at risk of being delayed because of the unrest, said Patrick Nip, Hong Kong’s secretary for constitutional affairs.

“The situation in the past weekend has obviously reduced the chance of holding the election as scheduled. And I am very anxious about this,” Nip said, adding that the government “won’t take this step unless absolutely necessary.”

Riot officers broke in one entrance before dawn as fires raged inside and outside the school, but they didn’t appear to get very far. Fiery explosions could be seen as protesters responded with gasoline bombs. Police, who have warned that everyone in the area could be charged with rioting, reportedly made a handful of arrests.

The give-and-take has played out repeatedly during the city’s months of anti-government unrest. The protesters want to avoid arrest. The police want to pick up as many as they can.

“These rioters, they are also criminals. They have to face the consequences of their acts,” said Cheuk Hau-yip, the commander of Kowloon West district, where Polytechnic is located.

“Other than coming out to surrender, I don’t see, at the moment, there’s any viable option for them,” he said.

Cheuk said police have the ability and resolve to end the standoff peacefully so protesters should not “try their luck.”

While both sides dug in at the campus, protest supporters rallied in nearby districts across Kowloon as they attempted to get close to the police cordon to disrupt the law enforcement operation and help those trapped inside. But they were met at multiple locations by riot police firing tear gas, turning the busy streets teeming with apartment blocks into a battle zone.

Protesters won on a legal front on Monday when the high court struck down a mask ban imposed by the government last month. The court said it did not consider anti-mask laws unconstitutional in general, but in this case, the law infringed on fundamental rights further than was reasonably necessary.

Many protesters wear masks to shield their identities from surveillance cameras that could be used to arrest and prosecute them. The ban has been widely ignored, and police have charged protesters with wearing masks.

The protests started peacefully in early June, sparked by proposed legislation that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to the mainland. But by the time the bill was withdrawn, the protests had hardened and broadened into a resistance movement against the territory’s government and Beijing.

Activists see the extradition bill as an example of Hong Kong’s eroding autonomy under Beijing’s rule since the 1997 handover from colonial power Britain.

The head of a nationalistic Chinese newspaper said Hong Kong police should use snipers to fire live ammunition at violent protesters.

“If the rioters are killed, the police should not have to bear legal responsibility,” Global Times editor Hu Xijin wrote on his Weibo social media account.

Anti-government protesters barricaded themselves inside Polytechnic last week. Police surrounded the area Sunday night and began moving in after issuing an ultimatum for people to leave the area. The crowd wore raincoats and carried umbrellas to shield themselves from police water cannons.

At daybreak, protesters remained in control of most of the campus. In one outdoor area, some demonstrators made gasoline bombs while others dozed while wearing gas masks. Two walked about with bows and quivers of arrows, while many stared at their smartphones.

“We are exhausted because we were up since 5 a.m. yesterday,” said a protester who gave only his first name, Matthew. “We are desperate because our supplies are running low.”

A lull settled on the area as the president of the university said in a video message that police have agreed to suspend their use of force.

Jin-Guang Teng said police would allow protesters to leave and he would accompany them to the police station to ensure their cases would be processed fairly.

“I hope that you will accept the proposed temporary suspension of force and leave the campus in a peaceful manner,” he said.

It seemed unlikely the protesters would accept the offer given that they would all likely be arrested.

A few hundred streamed out of the campus about 8:15 a.m. in an apparent bid to escape, but they were driven back by police tear gas. Some wearing gas masks calmly picked up smoking tear gas canisters and dropped them into heavy-duty bags, but the protesters decided to retreat with a phalanx of officers lined up across the road in the distance.

Other protesters blocked a major road not far from the Polytechnic campus to distract police and help those inside the campus escape.

They tossed paving stones onto stretches of Nathan Road as police chased them with tear gas.

An injured woman arrested at a Nathan Road intersection for participating in an unlawful assembly escaped after protesters stopped her ambulance and hurled rocks and bricks inside.

One police officer fired three warning shots, a statement on the police Facebook page said.

Police issued a “wanted” notice for the 20-year-old woman and said anyone who aided her could be charged with assisting an offender, which can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

The road closure added to transport woes during the morning commute, with several train stations still closed because of damage by protesters last week and a section of one line closed completely near Polytechnic.

The Education Bureau announced that classes from kindergarten to high school would be suspended for the sixth straight day Tuesday because of safety concerns. Most classes are expected to resume Wednesday, except for kindergarten and classes for the disabled, which are suspended until Sunday, the bureau said.

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Associated Press journalist Dake Kang contributed to this report.