Chris Hedges's Blog, page 101

North Korea Says It Won’t Give Trump a Summit for Free

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Monday responded to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump that hinted at another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying it has no interest in giving Trump further meetings to brag about unless it gets something substantial in return.

The statement by Foreign Ministry adviser Kim Kye Gwan is the latest call by North Korea for U.S. concessions ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by Kim Jong Un for the Trump administration to offer mutually acceptable terms for a deal to salvage nuclear diplomacy.

Following a U.S. decision over the weekend to call off joint military exercises with South Korea to create space for diplomacy with the North, Trump in a tweet urged Kim Jong Un to “act quickly, get the deal done” and hinted at another summit between them, saying “See you soon!”

But Kim Kye Gwan reiterated his government’s stance that Washington must discard what North Korea sees as “hostile” policies to keep the negotiations alive.

“Three rounds of DPRK-U.S. summit meetings and talks were held since June last year, but no particular improvement has been achieved in the DPRK-U.S. relations … the U.S. only seeks to earn time, pretending it has made progress in settling the issue of the Korean Peninsula,” he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We are no longer interested in such talks that bring nothing to us. As we have got nothing in return, we will no longer gift the U.S. president with something he can boast of, but get compensation for the successes that President Trump is proud of as his administrative achievements.”

Kim Kye Gwan is a veteran diplomat who led the North Korean delegation at much of the now-dormant six-nation nuclear disarmament talks held in Beijing in 2003-2008.

His statement came hours after KCNA reported that Kim Jong Un supervised a parachuting drill by military sharpshooters and vowed to build an “invincible army,” displaying more defiance despite the decision by the U.S. and South Korea to shelve their drills.

It was North Korea’s second publicized military drill in three days. A report Saturday said Kim urged combat pilots to prepare against enemies “armed to the teeth” while attending a flight demonstration.

North Korea has been ramping up missile tests and other military demonstrations in recent months in an apparent pressure tactic over the talks.

Negotiations have faltered since a February summit between Kim and Trump in Vietnam which broke down after the U.S. rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.

Kim later issued his end-of-year deadline and has also said the North would seek a “new path” if the United States persists with sanctions and pressure.

Working-level talks last month in Sweden broke down over what the North Koreans described as the Americans’ “old stance and attitude.”

North Korea last week said the United States has proposed a resumption of negotiations in December. Kim Myong Gil, who was the North’s main negotiator for the Stockholm talks, didn’t clearly say whether the North would accept the supposed U.S. offer and said the country has no interest in talks if they are aimed at buying time without discussing solutions.

He said North Korea isn’t willing to make a deal over “matters of secondary importance,” such as possible U.S. offers to formally declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which was halted by a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, or establish a liaison office between the countries.

At an Asian defense ministers’ conference in Bangkok on Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States has indefinitely postponed a joint military exercise with South Korea in an “act of goodwill” toward North Korea.

Truthdig Nominated for 15 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards

Truthdig contributors received 15 nominations for the 2019 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards sponsored by the Los Angeles Press Club. Journalists from press clubs across the nation selected the finalists.

Truthdig’s Elaine Margolin and Peter Richardson, whose book reviews can be read by clicking on their names, were both nominated for their work as a book critics, while Carrie Rickey and Noor Al-Sibai were nominated for the film and television criticism respectively.

Longtime contributor Allen Barra received four nominations for his book and art criticism, as well as for the pieces “The Trickster King and the Erudite Literalist” and “‘Mulholland Drive’ Is David Lynch’s ‘Ulysses.’”

Truthdig’s Foreign Editor Natasha Hakimi Zapata was nominated for her work as a book critic as well as for the piece “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Still Revolutionary at Age 100,” which appears in both the Multimedia Package and Celebrity Feature categories.

Other Truthdig pieces that received nominations include a Q&A with Peter Richardson about his biography of Carey McWilliams, as well as David Matorin’s firsthand account and analysis of the politically themed 2019 Venice Biennale and Jordan Riefe’s commentary on groundbreaking photography by Kwame Brathwaite.

Related Articles











Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Still Revolutionary at Age 100



by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

















Venice Biennale Artists Foresee a World on the Brink



by David Matorin

















The Trickster King and the Erudite Literalist



by Allen Barra

















‘Black Is Beautiful’: Identity, Pride and the Photography of Kwame Brathwaite



by Jordan Riefe

















Carey McWilliams: The Most Important American Author Many Don't Know


















‘Mulholland Drive’ Is David Lynch's ‘Ulysses’



by Allen Barra

The 12th annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award winners will be announced Dec. 1 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

America’s Not-So-Secret Weapon for Dominating the Middle East

It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as president. It continued with his White House photo op with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he brandished a map with a state-by-state rundown of American jobs supposedly tied to arms sales to the kingdom. And it’s never ended. In these years in office, in fact, the president has been a staunch advocate for his good friends at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics — the main corporate beneficiaries of the U.S.-Saudi arms trade (unlike the thousands of American soldiers the president recently sent into that country’s desert landscapes to defend its oil facilities).

All the American arms sales to the Middle East have had a severe and lasting set of consequences in the region in, as a start, the brutal Saudi/United Arab Emirates war in Yemen, which has killed thousands of civilians via air strikes using U.S. weaponry and pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine. And don’t forget the recent Turkish invasion of Syria in which both the Turkish forces and the Kurdish-led militias they attacked relied heavily on U.S.-supplied weaponry.

Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he cares far more about making deals for that weaponry than who uses any of it against whom. It’s important to note, however, that, historically speaking, he’s been anything but unique in his obsession with promoting such weapons exports (though he is uniquely loud about doing so).

Despite its supposedly strained relationship with the Saudi regime, the Obama administration, for example, still managed to offer the royals of that kingdom a record $136 billion in U.S. weapons between 2009 and 2017. Not all of those offers resulted in final sales, but striking numbers did. Items sold included Boeing F-15 combat aircraft and Apache attack helicopters, General Dynamics M-1 tanks, Raytheon precision-guided bombs, and Lockheed Martin bombs, combat ships, and missile defense systems. Many of those weapons have since been put to use in the war in Yemen.

To its credit, the Obama administration did at least have an internal debate on the wisdom of continuing such a trade. In December 2016, late in his second term, the president finally did suspend the sale of precision-guided bombs to the Royal Saudi Air Force due to a mounting toll of Yemeni civilian deaths in U.S.-supplied Saudi air strikes. This was, however, truly late in the game, given that the Saudi regime first intervened in Yemen in March 2015 and the slaughter of civilians began soon after that.

By then, of course, Washington’s dominance of the Mideast arms trade was taken for granted, despite an occasional large British or French deal like the scandal-plagued Al Yamamah sale of fighter planes and other equipment to the Saudis, the largest arms deal in the history of the United Kingdom. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from 2014 to 2018 the United States accounted for more than 54% of known arms deliveries to the Middle East. Russia lagged far behind with a 9.5% share of the trade, followed by France (8.6%), England (7.2%), and Germany (4.6%). China, often cited as a possible substitute supplier, should the U.S. ever decide to stop arming repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, came in at less than 1%.

The U.S. government’s stated rationales for pouring arms into that ever-more-embattled region include: building partnerships with countries theoretically willing to fight alongside U.S. forces in a crisis; swapping arms for access to military bases in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Persian Gulf states; creating “stability” by building up allied militaries to be stronger than those of potential adversaries like Iran; and generating revenue for U.S. weapons contractors, as well as jobs for American workers. Of course, such sales have indeed benefited those contractors and secured access to bases in the region, but when it comes to promoting stability and security, historically it’s been another story entirely.

The Nixon Doctrine and the Initial Surge in Mideast Arms Sales

Washington’s role as the Middle East’s top arms supplier has its roots in remarks made by Richard Nixon half a century ago on the island of Guam. It was the Vietnam War era and the president was on his way to South Vietnam. Casualties there were mounting rapidly with no clear end to the conflict in sight. During that stopover in Guam, Nixon assured reporters accompanying him that it was high time to end the practice of sending large numbers of U.S troops to overseas battlefields. To “avoid another war like Vietnam anywhere in the world,” he was instead putting a new policy in place, later described by a Pentagon official as “sending arms instead of sending troops.”

The core of what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine was the arming of regional surrogates, countries with sympathetic rulers or governments that could promote U.S. interests without major contingents of the American military being on hand. Of such potential surrogates at that moment, the most important was the Shah of Iran, with whom a CIA-British intelligence coup replaced a civilian government back in 1953 and who proved to have an insatiable appetite for top-of-the-line U.S. weaponry.

The Shah’s idea of a good time was curling up with the latest copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology and perusing glossy photos of combat planes. Egged on by the Nixon administration, his was the first and only country to buy the costly Grumman F-14 combat aircraft at a time when that company desperately needed foreign sales to bolster the program. And the Shah put his U.S.-supplied weapons to use, too, helping, for instance, to put down an anti-government uprising in nearby Oman (a short skip across the Persian Gulf), while repressing his own population at the same time.

In the Nixon years, Saudi Arabia, too, became a major weapons client of Washington, not so much because it feared its regional neighbors then, but because it had seemingly limitless oil funds to subsidize U.S. weapons makers at a time when the Pentagon budget was beginning to be reduced. In addition, Saudi sales helped recoup some of the revenue streaming out of the U.S. to pay for higher energy prices exacted by the newly formed OPEC oil cartel. It was a process then quaintly known as “recycling petrodollars.”

The Carter Years and the Quest for Restraint

The freewheeling arms trade of the Nixon years eventually prompted a backlash. In 1976, for the first (and last) time, a presidential candidate — Jimmy Carter — made reining in the arms trade a central theme of his 1976 campaign for the White House. He called for imposing greater human-rights scrutiny on arms exports, reducing the total volume of arms transfers, and initiating talks with the Soviet Union on curbing sales to regions of tension like the Middle East.

Meanwhile, members of Congress, led by Democratic Senators Gaylord Nelson and Hubert Humphrey, felt that it was long past time for Capitol Hill to have a role in decision-making when it came to weapons sales. Too often Congressional representatives found out about major deals only by reading news reports in the papers long after such matters had been settled. Among the major concerns driving their actions: the Nixon-era surge of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, then still an avowed adversary of Israel; the use of U.S.-supplied weapons by both sides in the Greek-Turkish conflict over the island of Cyprus; and covert sales to extremist right-wing forces in southern Africa, notably the South African-backed Union for the Total Independence of Angola. The answer was the passage of the Arms Export Control Act of 1978, which required that Congress be notified of any major sales in advance and asserted that it had the power to veto any of them viewed as dangerous or unnecessary.

As it happened, though, neither President Carter’s initiative nor the new legislation put a significant dent in such arms trafficking. In the end, for instance, Carter decided to exempt the Shah’s Iran from serious human-rights strictures and his hardline national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, undercut those talks with the Soviet Union on reducing arms sales.

Carter also wanted to get the new Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) he established — which eventually morphed into the U.S. Central Command — access to military bases in the Persian Gulf region and was willing to use arms deals to do so. The RDF was to be the centerpiece of the Carter Doctrine, a response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Shah of Iran. As the president made clear in his 1980 State of the Union address: “An attempt by any outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including the use of force.” Selling arms in the region would prove a central pillar of his new doctrine.

Meanwhile, most major sales continued to sail through Congress with barely a discouraging word.

Who Armed Saddam Hussein?

While the volume of those arms sales didn’t spike dramatically under President Ronald Reagan, his determination to weaponize anti-communist “freedom fighters” from Afghanistan to Nicaragua sparked the Iran-Contra scandal. At its heart lay a bizarre and elaborate covert effort led by National Security Council staff member Oliver North and a band of shadowy middlemen to supply U.S. weapons to the hostile regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. The hope was to gain Tehran’s help in freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. North and company then used the proceeds from those sales to arm anti-government Contra rebels in Nicaragua in violation of an explicit Congressional ban on such aid.

Worse yet, the Reagan administration transferred arms and provided training to extremist mujahedeen factions in Afghanistan, acts which would, in the end, help arm groups and individuals that later formed al-Qaeda (and similar groups). That would, of course, prove a colossal example of the kind of blowback that unrestricted arms trading too often generates.

Even as the exposure of North’s operation highlighted U.S. arms transfers to Iran, the Reagan administration and the following one of President George H.W. Bush would directly and indirectly supply nearly half a billion dollars worth of arms and arms-making technology to Iran’s sworn enemy, Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein. Those arms would bolster Saddam’sregime both in its war with Iran in the 1980s and in its 1991 invasion of Kuwait that led to Washington’s first Gulf War. The U.S. was admittedly hardly alone in fueling the buildup of the Iraqi military. All five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the U.S., the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China) provided weapons or weapons technology to that country in the run-up to its intervention in Kuwait.

The embarrassment and public criticism generated by the revelation that the U.S. and other major suppliers had helped arm the Iraqi military created a new opening for restraint. Leaders in the U.S., Great Britain, and other arms-trading nations pledged to do better in the future by increasing information about and scrutiny of their sales to the region. This resulted in two main initiatives: the United Nations arms trade register, where member states were urged to voluntarily report their arms imports and exports, and talks among those five Security Council members (the largest suppliers of weapons to the Middle East) on limiting arms sales to the region.

However, the P-5 talks, as they were called, quickly fell apart when China decided to sell a medium-range missile system to Saudi Arabia and President Bill Clinton’s administration began making new regional weapons deals at a pace of more than $1 billion per month while negotiations were underway. The other suppliers concluded that the Clinton arms surge violated the spirit of the talks, which soon collapsed, leading in the presidency of George W. Bush to a whole new Iraqi debacle.

The most important series of arms deals during the George W. Bush years involved the training and equipping of the Iraqi military in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But $25 billion in U.S. arms and training was not enough to create a force capable of defeating the modestly armed militants of ISIS, when they swept into northern Iraq in 2014 and captured large swaths of territory and major cities, including Mosul. Iraqi security forces, short on food and equipment due to corruption and incompetence, were also short on morale, and in some cases virtually abandoned their posts (and U.S. weaponry) in the face of those ISIS attacks.

The Addiction Continues

Donald Trump has carried on the practice of offering weaponry in quantity to allies in the Middle East, especially the Saudis, though his major rationale for the deals is to generate domestic jobs and revenues for the major weapons contractors. In fact, investing money and effort in almost anything else, from infrastructure to renewable energy technologies, would produce more jobs in the U.S. No matter though, the beat just goes on.

One notable development of the Trump years has been a revived Congressional interest in curbing weapons sales, with a particular focus on ending support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. (Watching Turkish and Kurdish forces face off, each armed in a major way by the U.S., should certainly add to that desire.) Under the leadership of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA), Congress has voted to block bomb sales and other forms of military support for Saudi Arabia, only to have their efforts vetoed by President Trump, that country’s main protector in Washington. Still, congressional action on Saudi sales has been unprecedented in its persistence and scope. It may yet prevail, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020. After all, every one of the major presidential contenders has pledged to end arms sales that support the Saudi war effort in Yemen.

Such deals with Saudi Arabia and other Mideast states may be hugely popular with the companies that profit from the trade, but the vast majority of Americans oppose runaway arms trading on the sensible grounds that it makes the world less safe. The question now is: Will Congress play a greater role in attempting to block such weapons deals with the Saudis and human-rights abusers or will America’s weapons-sales addiction and its monopoly position in the Middle Eastern arms trade simply continue, setting the stage for future disasters of every sort?

Democrats Invite Trump to Testify in Impeachment Inquiry

WASHINGTON — Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited President Donald Trump to testify in front of investigators in the House impeachment inquiry ahead of a week that will see several key witnesses appear publicly.

Pushing back against accusations from the president that the process has been stacked against him, Pelosi said Trump is welcome to appear or answer questions in writing, if he chooses.

“If he has information that is exculpatory, that means ex, taking away, culpable, blame, then we look forward to seeing it,” she said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Trump “could come right before the committee and talk, speak all the truth that he wants if he wants,” she said.

Related Articles











Think Capone When It Comes to Trump’s Impeachment



by Bill Blum

















Conflicting White House Accounts of 1st Trump-Zelenskiy Call



by

















Roger Stone Guilty of Witness Tampering, Lying to Congress



by

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer echoed that suggestion.

“If Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing, doesn’t like what he’s hearing, he shouldn’t tweet. He should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow all those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath,” Schumer told reporters. He said the White House’s insistence on blocking witnesses from cooperating begs the question: “What is he hiding?”

The comments come as the House Intelligence Committee prepares for a second week of public hearings as part of its inquiry, including with the man who is arguably the most important witness. Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, is the only person interviewed to date who had conversations directly with the president because the White House has blocked others from cooperating with what they dismiss as a sham investigation. And testimony suggests he was intimately involved in discussions that are at the heart of the investigation into whether Trump held up U.S. military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure the county’s president to announce an investigation into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 candidate, and his son, Hunter.

Multiple witnesses overheard a phone call in which Trump and Sondland reportedly discussed efforts to push for the investigations. In private testimony to impeachment investigators made public Saturday, Tim Morrison, a former National Security Council aide and longtime Republican defense hawk, said Sondland told him he was discussing Ukraine matters directly with Trump.

Morrison said Sondland and Trump had spoken approximately five times between July 15 and Sept. 11 — the weeks that $391 million in U.S. assistance was withheld from Ukraine before it was released.

And he recounted that Sondland told a top Ukrainian official in a meeting that the vital U.S. military assistance might be freed up if the country’s top prosecutor “would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.” Burisma is the gas company that hired Hunter Biden.

Morrison’s testimony contradicted much of what Sondland told congressional investigators during his own closed-door deposition, which the ambassador later amended.

Trump has said he has no recollection of the overheard call and has suggested he barely knew Sondland, a wealthy donor to his 2016 campaign. But Democrats are hoping he sheds new light on the discussions.

“I’m not going to try to prejudge his testimony,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said on “Fox News Sunday.” But he suggested, “it was not lost on Ambassador Sondland what happened to the president’s close associate Roger Stone for lying to Congress, to Michael Cohen for lying to Congress. My guess is that Ambassador Sondland is going to do his level best to tell the truth, because otherwise he may have a very unpleasant legal future in front of him.”

The committee will also be interviewing a long list of others. On Tuesday, they’ll hear from Morrison along with Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Alexander Vindman, the director for European affairs at the National Security Council, and Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine.

On Wednesday the committee will hear from Sondland in addition to Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, and David Hale, a State Department official. And on Thursday, Fiona Hill, a former top NSC staffer for Europe and Russia, will appear.

Trump, meanwhile, continued to tweet and retweet a steady stream of commentary from supporters as he bashed “The Do Nothing Dems” for “now doing even less.”

Among them was a doctored video exchange between Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, in which Schiff said he did not know the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the inquiry. The clip has been altered to show Schiff wearing a referee’s uniform and loudly blowing a whistle.

In her CBS interview, Pelosi vowed to protect the whistleblower, whom Trump has said should be forced to come forward despite longstanding whistleblower protections.

“I will make sure he does not intimidate the whistleblower,” Pelosi said.

Trump has been under fire for his treatment of one of the witnesses, the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump criticized by tweet as she was testifying last week.

That attack prompted accusations of witness intimidation from Democrats and even some criticism from Republicans, who have been largely united in their defense of Trump.

“I think, along with most people, I find the president’s tweet generally unfortunate,” said Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Still, he insisted that tweets were “certainly not impeachable and it’s certainly not criminal. And it’s certainly not witness intimidation,” even if Yovanovitch said she felt intimidated by the attacks.

Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, said Trump “communicates in ways that sometimes I wouldn’t,” but dismissed the significance of the attacks.

“If your basis for impeachment is going to include a tweet, that shows how weak the evidence for that impeachment is,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

__

Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.

Democrat Wins Reelection in Conservative Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, La. — Deep in the heart of the conservative South, Louisiana’s voters reelected Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards to a second term, shocking Republicans who had hoped to reclaim the seat on the strength of President Donald Trump’s popularity.

With his focus on bipartisan, state-specific issues, the moderate Edwards cobbled together enough cross-party support Saturday to defeat Republican businessman Eddie Rispone, getting about 51% of the vote.

Trump fought to return the seat to the GOP, but his intense interest in the race not only motivated conservative Republicans, but also powered a surge in anti-Trump and black voter turnout that helped boost Edwards over the finish line.

Related Articles











Robert Reich: A Centrist Cannot Win in 2020



by Robert Reich

















Beshear Claims Victory in Kentucky, but Bevin Refuses to Concede



by

















Deval Patrick Had Chris Christie's Nod ... a Year Ago



by Kasia Anderson

Coming after a defeat in the Kentucky governor’s race and sizable losses in Virginia’s legislative races, the Louisiana result seems certain to rattle Republicans heading into the 2020 presidential election. Trump made three trips to Louisiana to rally against Edwards, and fashioned the runoff election between Edwards and Rispone into a test of his own popularity and political prowess.

In a victory rally of his own late Saturday, Edwards thanked supporters who danced, sang and cheered in celebration, while he declared, “How sweet it is!”

He added, “And as for the president, God bless his heart” — a phrase often used by genteel Southerners to politely deprecate someone.

“Tonight the people of Louisiana have chosen to chart their own path,” Edwards said.

As he conceded the race, Rispone called on supporters to give a round of applause for Trump, saying: “That man loves America and he loves Louisiana.”

Democrats who argue that nominating a moderate presidential candidate is the best approach to beat Trump are certain to say Louisiana’s race bolsters their case.

Still, while Rispone’s loss raises questions about the strength of Trump’s coattails, its relevance to his reelection chances are less clear. Louisiana is expected to easily back Trump next year, and Edwards’ views are, in many ways, out of step with his own party.

A West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, Edwards opposes most gun restrictions, signed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans and dismissed the impeachment effort as a distraction.

Meanwhile, Rispone, 70, wasn’t among the top-tier candidates Republican leaders hoped would challenge Edwards. He had ties to the unpopular former Gov. Bobby Jindal, started with little name recognition and offered few details about his agenda.

Edwards, 53, also proved to be a formidable candidate, with a record of achievements.

Working with the majority-Republican Legislature, Edwards stabilized state finances with a package of tax increases, ending the deficit-riddled years of Jindal. New money paid for investments in public colleges and the first statewide teacher raise in a decade.

Edwards expanded Louisiana’s Medicaid program, lowering the state’s uninsured rate below the national average. A bipartisan criminal sentencing law rewrite he championed ended Louisiana’s tenure as the nation’s top jailer.

Rispone, the owner of a Baton Rouge industrial contracting company, hitched his entire candidacy to Trump, introducing himself to voters in ads that focused on support for the president in a state Trump won by 20 percentage points. Rispone said he was like Trump, describing himself as a “conservative outsider” whose business acumen would help solve the state’s problems.

The president’s repeated visits appeared to drive turnout for both candidates.

Tour guide Andrea Hartman, 40, cast her ballot for Edwards in New Orleans.

“I do not agree with what Rispone advocates,” she said. “I also don’t want Trump coming here and telling me who to vote for.”

Rispone poured more than $12 million of his own money into the race. But he had trouble drawing some of the primary vote that went to Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, after harshly attacking Abraham in ads as he sought to reach the runoff. He also avoided many traditional public events attended by Louisiana gubernatorial candidates and sidestepped questions about his plans. He promised tax cuts without saying where he’d shrink spending, and pledged a constitutional convention without detailing what he wanted to rewrite.

“We have nothing to be ashamed of. We had over 700,000 people in Louisiana who really want something better, something different,” Rispone said.

Climate Change Is Threatening Newborn Babies

Today’s world is not a welcoming place for babies, who – across the globe – face multiple climate health risks.

On present trends, any new-born today is likely to live in a world 4°C hotter than it has been all through human history.

On present trends, climate change will affect infant health by reducing the yield and nutritional value of maize, wheat, soybean and rice, to stunt growth and weaken immune systems.

Older children will be at increasing risk from climate-related diseases such as cholera and dengue fever, and adolescents will be at increasing risk from toxic air, driven by fossil fuel combustion and ever-higher temperatures.

And then throughout their lives, today’s newly-borns will be at hazard from increasingly severe floods, prolonged droughts and wildfires.

“This year, the accelerating impacts of climate change have become clearer than ever,” said Hugh Montgomery, who directs the Institute for Human Health and Performance at University College London.

“The highest recorded temperatures in Western Europe and wildfires in Siberia, Queensland and California triggered asthma, respiratory infections and heat stroke. Sea levels are now rising at an ever-concerning rate. Our children recognise this climate emergency and demand action to protect them. We must listen, and respond.”

Professor Montgomery is a co-chair of the Lancet Countdown, which has assessed research from 120 experts in 35 global institutions on health damage from climate change and the lifelong health consequences of rising temperatures.

The Lancet is one of the world’s oldest and most distinguished medical journals and has already published three important studies of the  challenge of climate change in terms of nutrition, diet and the effect of extreme temperatures on human health.

The latest study compares a world in which governments everywhere fulfil a promise made in Paris in 2015 and contain global heating by the century’s end to a rise of “well below” 2°C, or follow the notorious “business as usual” scenario in which developing economies burn ever more fossil fuels and ratchet up global temperatures to potentially catastrophic levels.

The new study looks at the available indicators and warns that climate change driven by global heating is already damaging the health of the world’s children and will shape the wellbeing of an entire generation unless the Paris targets are met.

Targets receding

Right now, average planetary temperatures have already risen by 1°C in the last century and the latest analysis of national plans to reduce fossil fuel use suggest that the Paris targets will not be met.

And climate change has begun to take its toll. In the last 30 years the average global yield potential of maize has shrunk by 4%, of winter wheat by 6%, of soybean by 3% and rice by 4%: this alone makes more infants vulnerable to malnutrition and rising food prices.

Eight of the ten hottest years ever recorded have happened in the last decade, and this heating has been driven by fossil fuel use: every second the world burns 171,000 kg of coal, 186,000 litres of oil and 11,600,000 litres of gas.

Nine of the 10 most suitable years for the transmission of dengue fever – carried by the mosquito – have happened since the turn of the century. Last year was the second most suitable year on record for the spread of the bacteria that cause diarrhoeal disease and wound infection.

In 2016, deaths from outdoor air pollution were set at around 2.9 million; of these, 440,000 were from coal alone. The share of global energy from coal actually rose by 1.7% between 2016 and 2018.

Better future possible

And the journal also records a rise in extreme weather events: out of 196 countries, 152 experienced an increase in citizens exposed to wildfires since the first four years of the century; and a record 220 million more citizens over the age of 65 were exposed to heatwaves in 2018, compared with 2000. This is an increase of 63m just on 2017.

In 2018, compared with 2000, heat extremes cost the world’s economies a potential 45 billion hours of additional work: in the hottest month, outdoor agricultural workers and construction teams lost as much as 20% of potential daylight working hours.

But, the Lancet Countdown experts say, if the world did fulfil its Paris Agreement promise, then any child born today would grow up on a planet that had reached net zero carbon emissions by their 31st birthday: there would be a healthier future for coming generations.

“The climate crisis is one of the greatest threats to the health of humanity today, but the world has yet to see a response from governments that matches the unprecedented scale of the challenge facing the next generation,” said Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet.

“With the full force of the Paris Agreement due to be implemented, we can’t afford this level of disengagement. The clinical, global health and research community needs to come together now and challenge our leaders.”

Iran’s Top Leader Warns ‘Thugs’ as Protests Reach 100 Cities

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday cautiously backed the government’s decision to raise gasoline prices by 50% after days of widespread protests, calling those who attacked public property during demonstrations “thugs” and signaling that a potential crackdown loomed.

The government shut down internet access across the nation of 80 million people to staunch demonstrations that took place in a reported 100 cities and towns. That made it increasingly difficult to gauge whether unrest continued. Images published by state and semiofficial media showed the scale of the damage in images of burned gas stations and banks, torched vehicles and roadways littered with debris.

Since the price hike, demonstrators have abandoned cars along major highways and joined mass protests in the capital, Tehran, and elsewhere. Some protests turned violent, with demonstrators setting fires as gunfire rang out.

Related Articles











Donald Trump’s Iran Humiliation



by Scott Ritter

















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



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

















Only a Coalition of the Foolish Wants a War With Iran



by

It remains to be seen how many people were arrested, injured or killed. Videos from the protests have shown people gravely wounded.

Iranian authorities on Sunday raised the official death toll in the violence to at least three. Attackers targeting a police station in the western city of Kermanshah on Saturday killed an officer, the state-run IRNA news agency reported Sunday. A lawmaker said another person was killed in a suburb of Tehran. Earlier, one man was reported killed Friday in Sirjan, a city some 800 kilometers (500 miles) southeast of Tehran.

In an address aired Sunday by state television, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said “some lost their lives and some places were destroyed,” without elaborating. He called the protesters “thugs” who had been pushed into violence by counterrevolutionaries and foreign enemies of Iran.

Khamenei 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 President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

“Setting a bank on fire is not an act done by the people. This is what thugs do,” Khamenei said.

The supreme leader carefully backed the decision of Iran’s relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani and others to raise gasoline prices. While Khamenei dictates the country’s nuclear policy amid tensions with the U.S. over its unraveling 2015 accord with world powers, he made a point to say he wasn’t an “expert” on the gasoline subsidies.

Khamenei ordered security forces “to implement their tasks” and for Iran’s citizens to keep clear of violent demonstrators. Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said the “key perpetrators of the past two days’ riot have been identified and proper action is ongoing.”

That seemed to indicate a crackdown could be looming. Economic protests in late 2017 into 2018, as well as those surrounding its disputed 2009 presidential election, were met with a heavy reaction by the police and the Basij, the all-volunteer force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

The semiofficial Fars news agency, close to the Guard, put the total number of protesters at over 87,000, saying demonstrators ransacked some 100 banks and stores in the country. Authorities arrested some 1,000 people, Fars reported, citing unnamed security officials for the information.

The protests have put renewed pressure on Iran’s government as it struggles to overcome the U.S. sanctions that have strangled the economy since Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear deal over a year ago.

While representing a political risk for Rouhani ahead of February parliamentary elections, the demonstrations also show widespread anger among the Iranian people, who have seen their savings evaporate amid scarce jobs and the collapse of the national currency, the rial.

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 in the country remains among the cheapest in the world, with the new prices jumping 50% to a minimum of 15,000 rials per liter. That’s 13 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. A gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. costs $2.60 by comparison.

Iranian internet access saw disruptions and outages Friday night into Saturday, according to the group NetBlocks, which monitors worldwide internet access. By Saturday night, connectivity had fallen to just 7% of ordinary levels.

“The ongoing disruption is the most severe recorded in Iran since President Rouhani came to power, and the most severe disconnection tracked by NetBlocks in any country in terms of its technical complexity and breadth,” the group said. The internet firm Oracle called it “the largest internet shutdown ever observed in Iran.”

The semiofficial ISNA news agency reported Sunday that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council ordered a “restriction of access” to the internet nationwide, without elaborating.

The Trump administration so far has had a muted response to the protests amid the impeachment hearings investigating the president. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus tweeted her condemnation of the internet shutdown.

“Let them speak!” she wrote.

In Dubai, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates told The Associated Press that America was “not advocating regime change. We are going to let the Iranian people decide for themselves their future.”

“They are frustrated. They want freedom,” Ambassador John Rakolta said at the Dubai Airshow. “These developments that you see right now are their own people telling them, ‘We need change and to sit down with the American government.’”

___

Associated Press Writer Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Bernie Sanders Denounces Obama’s Deportations

Asked at a presidential candidate forum in California Saturday night if the Obama administration made a mistake by deporting an estimated 3 million people during its 8-year tenure, 2020 hopeful Bernie Sanders offered a direct and one word response: “Yes.”

The forum, hosted by the Spanish-language channel Univision in the city of Long Beach amid the state Democratic Party’s endorsing convention, had a large focus on immigration issues with many Latino voters in attendance.

The question was asked by moderator Jorge Ramos and Sanders’ succinct answer received rousing approval from many in the audience.

Watch:

.@jorgeramosnews “Can you say that Obama made a mistake deporting 3 million people?”

BernieSanders: “Yes” #RealAmericaForum pic.twitter.com/Bvmaeyi4fg

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) November 17, 2019

After applause died down, Sanders pivoted by saying the American people are ready for an immigration policy that no longer has at its center the demonization of those coming to the United States seeking a better life.

“What I’m going to tell you is in fact what the American people want, and they want to stop this ugly demonization of the immigrant community and the racism that is coming from the White House,” said Sanders. “They want—it’s not my idea, it’s what the American people want—is, finally, comprehensive immigration reform and a path toward citizenship for 11 million undocumented.”

And, Sanders continued, “Here’s a promise I will make—I don’t make a lot of promises—but on day one, Jorge, I will undo the damage Trump did and, among other things, reestablish the legal status of the 1.1 million young people and their parents eligible for the DACA program.”

Immigration reform, said Sanders, is at the “very top” of his agenda and he vowed, if elected, to introduce a comprehensive package to address the situation not only in his first year in office, but within his first hundred days.

Recent reporting on demographic dynamics in the 2020 primary race shows that Sanders continues to lead the pack with Latino voters nationwide. Based on donor data, Politico reported earlier this month, he is also receiving widespread support among the crucial voting bloc.

Prior to the questions about immigration, Ramos explored other key issues with Sanders and asked him to respond to remarks reportedly made by Obama last week to a room full of “wealthy liberal” Democratic donors in which appeared to be cautioning the party establishment against going “too far left” or “tearing down the system” with proposals like Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, student debt forgiveness, and others.

“When I talk about raising the minimum wage to a living wage, we’re not talking about tearing down the system—we’re fighting for justice,” Sanders said.

“When I talk about healthcare being a human right,” he added, “and ending the embarrassment of America being the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child—that’s not tearing down the system. That’s doing what we should have done 30 year ago through Medicare for All.”

He also added the climate crisis to the list of urgent needs that must be addressed with urgency. “We have a threat to the entire planet,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to stand up to the greed of the fossil fuel industry and transform our energy system as quickly as we can.”

Asked specifically by Ramos if he agreed with Obama’s “too far left” warning, Sanders answered: “I don’t think so. I honestly don’t.”

“I think the issues that we are talking about, in fact, are supported by the vast majority of the American people. You ask people, should we go out and make colleges and universities tuition free? Should we cancel all student debt in this country by imposing a tax on Wall Street?”

As the crowd cheered each question, Sanders said: “I think the answer you’re getting here is the answer the answer you’re getting all over the country.”

He then added, “And here’s the bottom line. I think it is the American people are catching on. There is something profoundly wrong when so few people have so much and so many people are struggling. And they want real change.”

Watch the interview:

Trump Goes to Walter Reed Medical Center for Tests

BETHESDA, Md.—President Donald Trump spent more than two hours at Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday for what the White House said were medical tests as part of his annual physical.

The appointment wasn’t on Trump’s weekend public schedule, and his last physical was in February. Press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the 73-year-old president was “anticipating a very busy 2020” and wanted to take advantage of “a free weekend” in Washington to begin portions of his routine checkup. She was not more specific about the testing.

Trump’s 2018 and 2019 physicals were announced in advance and appeared on his public schedule.

The February checkup showed he had put on some pounds and was now officially considered obese. His Body Mass Index was 30.4. His weight was 243 pounds and he was 6 feet, 3 inches tall.

Trump spent more than four hours at Walter Reed on Feb. 8 for his most recent checkup, supervised by Dr. Sean P. Conley, his physician, and involving a panel of 11 specialists.

“I am happy to announce the President of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his Presidency, and beyond,” Conley wrote afterward.

Test results came out six days later, showing that he weighed 243 pounds, compared with 236 pounds in September 2016 before he became president.

An index rating of 30 is the level at which doctors consider someone obese under the commonly used formula. About 40 percent of Americans are obese. That raises their risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke and some forms of cancer.

Trump doesn’t drink alcohol or smoke. His primary form of exercise is golf.

The physical came as House investigators on Capitol Hill interviewed a White House budget official as part of the impeachment inquiry.

‘Civil War, Now!’ Bolivia Crisis Escalates; 8 Dead, Dozens Hurt

SACABA, Bolivia—Bolivia’s political crisis turned deadly again when security forces opened fire on supporters of Evo Morales. Officials said Saturday that at least eight people died and dozens were injured in an incident that threatens the interim government’s efforts to restore stability following the resignation of the former president in an election dispute.

Most of the dead and injured Friday in Sacaba, near the city of Cochabamba, had been shot, Guadalberto Lara, director of the town’s Mexico Hospital, told The Associated Press. He called it the worst violence he’s seen in his 30-year career.

Related Articles











The Bolivian Coup Comes Down to One Precious Mineral



by





















by

















Chile and Bolivia Reports Expose Western Media's Rank Hypocrisy



by

The national Ombudsman’s Office said the death toll had risen to eight.

Angry demonstrators and relatives of the victims gathered at the site of the shootings, chanting: “Civil war, now!”

Morales, who was granted asylum in Mexico after his Nov. 10 resignation, said on Twitter that a “massacre” had occurred and he described the interim government led by Jeanine Áñez as a dictatorship.

“Now they are killing our brothers in Sacaba, Cochabamba,” he said in another tweet.

At least 13 other people had died during weeks of earlier protests against Morales before his departure, according to the Ombudsman’s Office. Several came in clashes between the president’s backers and those accusing him of fraudulently trying to win reelection.

The U.N. human rights chief, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet issued a statement Saturday calling the deaths “an extremely dangerous development.”

“I am really concerned that the situation in Bolivia could spin out of control if the authorities do not handle it sensitively and in accordance with international norms,” she said in a statement.

“The country is split and people on both sides of the political divide are extremely angry. In a situation like this, repressive actions by the authorities will simply stoke that anger even further and are likely to jeopardize any possible avenue for dialogue,” she added.

Protesters said police fired when demonstrators, including many coca leaf growers who backed Bolivia’s first indigenous president, tried to cross a military checkpoint. Emeterio Colque Sánchez, a 23-year-old university student, said he saw the dead bodies of several protesters and about two dozen people rushed to hospitals, many covered in blood.

Presidency Minister Jerjes Justiniano told reporters in La Paz that five people had been killed and an estimated 22 were injured.

He accused protesters of using “military weapons.”

Lara, the hospital director, said that 75 people were injured.

Earlier in the day, Áñez said Morales would face possible legal charges for election fraud if he returns home from Mexico City.

Áñez also has said Morales would not be allowed to participate in new presidential elections, which are supposed to be held within three months.

The ousted leader, meanwhile, contended this week he is still president since the country’s legislature has not yet approved his resignation.

Morales stepped down following nationwide protests over suspected vote-rigging in an Oct. 20 election in which he claimed to have won a fourth term in office. An Organization of American States audit of the vote found widespread irregularities. Morales has denied there was fraud.

Families of the victims held a candlelight vigil late Friday in Sacaba. A tearful woman put her hand on a wooden casket surrounded by flowers and asked: “Is this what you call democracy? Killing us like nothing?” Another woman cried and prayed in Quechua over the coffin of Omar Calle, which was draped both in the Bolivian national flag and the multicolor “Wiphala” flag that represents indigenous peoples.

Bolivia’s Ombudsman’s Office called on the interim government to investigate if the security forces had acted within the constitution and international protocols on human rights.

“We express our alarm and concern over the result of an attempt to stop a demonstration by coca leaf growers from entering the city of Cochabamba,” it said, adding that it had counted 13 earlier deaths since the protests began.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned what it called “the disproportionate use of police and military force” in the clash.

“Firearms must be excluded from the operations used to control the social protests,” the commission said on Twitter with along with a video that showed the five people lying dead on a blanket on the floor. Soldiers and police in riot gear had been patrolling the area with armored vehicles in the previous days.

“We’re not going to let them make us flee, nor humiliate us. Let me say to Mrs. Añez that she must denounce this. If not the whole country is going to close in on her,” said Enrique Mamani, 21, a local resident. “They have carried out a state coup, paid off the military, paid off the police. There’s political persecution against our leaders.”

Backers of the interim government deny any coup, saying police and the military withdrew backing from Morales only to avoid shedding civilian blood during the massive protests against him.

Supporters of Morales, who had been Bolivia’s president for almost 14 years and was the last survivor from the “pink tide” of South American leftist leaders, have been staging disruptive protests since his ouster, setting up blockades that forced closure of schools and caused shortages of gasoline in the capital.

“There’s no gas,” said Efraín Mendoza, a taxi driver from El Alto, who was forced to buy gasoline on the black market at twice the regular price.

“Products are scarce. There’s no meat, no chicken, people are making long lines. It’s all because of the blockades,” he said. “There’s division in Bolivia. It’s exasperating.”

Áñez, who had been the highest-ranking opposition official in the Senate, proclaimed herself president when Morales resigned, saying every person in the line of succession ahead of her —all of them Morales backers — had resigned.

The Constitutional Court issued a statement backing her claim that she didn’t need to be confirmed by Congress, a body controlled by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party.

Much of the opposition to Morales sprang from his refusal to accept a referendum that would have forbidden him from seeking a new term.

__

Associated Press Writers Carlos Valdez and Paola Flores in La Paz contributed to this report.