Chris Hedges's Blog, page 109

In ‘The Kingmaker,’ Sordid Past is Prelude

In the Philippines, there is an island called Calauit, a tropical refuge populated by farmers until 1977, when it was overtaken by 104 beasts imported from Kenya, including giraffes, zebra and gazelle, all part of first lady Imelda Marcos’ private menagerie, which displaced 256 families. Marcos aimed to nurture her personal Garden of Eden as she would her country, and the results are revealing. Neglected for 40 years, the animals of Calauit Island are inbred and ailing. The villagers, like 21% in the rest of the country, live in poverty.

Calauit is the jumping-off point for filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s new documentary, “The Kingmaker,” which opens in theaters Friday. Greenfield is famous for such chronicles of conspicuous consumption as “The Queen of Versailles,” about Jacqueline and timeshare king David Siegel’s effort to build the largest home in the U.S. during the recession, and “Generation Wealth,” about Greenfield’s rich-kid classmates at Santa Monica’s exclusive Crossroads School.

While “The Kingmaker” features interviews with animal handlers and archival footage of the beasts being shipped to and arriving at Calauit, its focus is on a different kind of predator in a different kind of jungle: Imelda Marcos, in her own words, sitting amid priceless works of art, lamenting her fate. The film is about a sordid past, in which she and her husband, President Ferdinand Marcos, are accused of looting an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion from their country, as well as staining their hands with the blood of thousands of activists, including that of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, who was assassinated in 983. Even more chilling, “The Kingmaker” is also about the return of the Marcos family to political power.

“She’s unguarded. She speaks her mind all the time, and that could come from the fact that she’s never had to face accountability. I was really afraid to ask her about the assassination of Benigno Aquino, but I kind of worked up to it,” Greenfield tells Truthdig, noting that Marcos put no limits on the questions she could ask. “When I asked her, she said, without missing a beat, ‘Why would I do that? I have nothing against him except that he talks too much.’ ”

The first half of the movie provides background: the death of her mother during her childhood, volatility in the family fortunes, her disputed victory in the 1953 Miss Manila beauty pageant, and her 11-day whirlwind courtship with then-Sen. Marcos before their marriage a year later. The film’s second half examines Marcos’ real-time efforts to restore her family to power after being driven from the country in the 1986 “People Power Revolution,” which brought Aquino’s widow, Corazon, to the presidency.

“What we know is in the film … [current President Rodrigo] Duterte says he got money from Imee Marcos, but they did not contribute officially,” Greenfield says about a clip that shows Duterte at a news conference acknowledging receiving funds from Sen. Imee Marcos, Imelda’s daughter. Also running in the 2016 election that put Duterte in power was Marcos’ son, vice presidential candidate Ferdinand Jr., known as Bongbong. Candidates for president and vice president are decided separately, and Bongbong lost out to opposition candidate Leni Robredo, whom Duterte has disavowed, charging her with sedition in July in an attempt to have her removed.

Bongbong has contested election results in the Supreme Court, where Duterte replaced Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno with the more Marcos-sympathetic Lucas Bersamin in an attempt to clear the way, though the court remains undecided. Duterte spokesman Harry Roque is quoted as saying the strongman, responsible for a reported 12,000 deaths in his “war on drugs,” has a “real, genuine wish to step down” if a qualified leader could replace him, singling out Bongbong as a successor.

Following her husband’s death in 1989, Imelda Marcos was left to face down racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice charges in the U.S on her own. She was acquitted of all counts in 1990 and returned to the Philippines, her criminal past seemingly forgiven. She was soon running for office, winning a congressional seat and representing her home province of Leyte in 1995, leaving opposition activists of a certain age aghast. They recall that after the first term of the Marcos presidency, he refused to step down, instead instituting nine years of martial law, during which the government imprisoned 70,000 people, tortured 34,000 and killed 3,240, according to Amnesty International.

In “The Kingmaker,” activists recall torture and rape at the hands of police, and how San Juanico Bridge, dubbed the “bridge of love” and built at exorbitant expense as a birthday gift to Imelda early in her marriage, became a favorite place for executions. In the meantime, Marcos has been using her influence to rewrite history. Children are heard saying that martial law made the country safer. “Perception is real, truth is not,” Marcos intones, something Trump might say, if he knew the word “perception.”

“She becomes very dependent and addicted to this constant love by the people, which I think is part of what drives her to want to come back to power,” Greenfield says.

In 2010, Marcos replaced Bongbong, who successfully campaigned for senator. Daughter Imee is currently a senator, grandson Matthew Manotoc is governor of Ilocos Norte (the Marcos seat of power), and even Bongbong’s son, Alexander, or “Sandro,” is getting into the act, eyeballing the vice-gubernatorial post in the same state as recently as March.

Critics accuse the Marcos family of funding its political endeavors with assets pillaged from the Filipino people decades earlier. Under Corazon Aquino, the PCGG (Presidential Commission on Good Government) was established in 1986 with the express purpose of recovering “ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses goods and valuables and returning the money to the people.” To date, roughly $3.4 billion has been recovered, leaving another $4 billion spread among shady deals, art assets and money-laundering schemes, such as the house she put in the name of actor George Hamilton, which he later turned around and sold for his own profit. Since Duterte has gained office, Juan Andrés Bautista, head of PCGG under his predecessor, Noynoy Aquino (Benigno Jr.), has been removed, though the office has survived efforts to have it shuttered altogether.

“I don’t think she started out as a villain. She talks about Moammar Gadhafi, Saddam Hussein, Chairman Mao, as being her friends, being wonderful people. It’s all personal with her. She says, ‘I don’t read books about the leaders I’m going to meet,’ which is maybe a commonality she does have with Trump. She doesn’t do research; she bases it all on personal connections. So, if they’re nice to her, they’re good people,” Greenfield says. “I think with Aquino it’s very personal. She’ll talk about Noynoy and Cory in very personal terms. I don’t think it is as personal on the other side.”

Duterte is part of a global wave of strongmen who have come to power in recent years and exploited economic anxieties, racism and fear. Under Aquino, the country reformed its constitution and adopted more democratic values, but the poverty level continued to grow.

Bongbong represents a new generation of the Marcos family. But it’s easy to see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when he laments how humiliating it would be to return to his country flying in coach. As Bongbong ascends, Benigno Aquino’s admonition to his son, Noynoy, resonates: You can’t really have democracy while people are hungry, and that’s why it’s so important to bring up the standard of living.

Tom Steyer Aide Offered Money for Endorsements

DES MOINES, Iowa—A top aide to Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer in Iowa privately offered campaign contributions to local politicians in exchange for endorsing his White House bid, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the conversations.

The overtures from Pat Murphy, a former state House speaker who is serving as a top adviser on Steyer’s Iowa campaign, aren’t illegal — though payments for endorsements would violate campaign finance laws if not disclosed. There’s no evidence that any Iowans accepted the offer or received contributions from Steyer’s campaign as compensation for their backing.

But the proposals could revive criticism that the billionaire Steyer is trying to buy his way into the White House. Several state lawmakers and political candidates said they were surprised Steyer’s campaign would think he could purchase their support.

Tom Courtney, a former Democratic state senator from southeastern Iowa who’s running for reelection to his old seat, told The Associated Press that the financial offer “left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Murphy said concerns about his outreach were the result of a “miscommunication.”

As Steyer met with voters in Bluffton, South Carolina, on Thursday, the first question posed to him was about the AP report. He said that he learned about the allegations while driving to the event and that no payments had gone to officials in Iowa.

“We haven’t given any money to anyone in Iowa, nor are we planning to,” he said. “There’s no way we would ever do that.”

Courtney declined to name Murphy as the Steyer aide who made the offer, but several other local politicians said they received similar propositions, and all confirmed the proposal came from Murphy himself. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue freely. Iowa state Rep. Karin Derry said Murphy didn’t explicitly offer a specific dollar amount, but made it clear Derry would receive financial support if she backed Steyer.

“It was presented more as, he has provided financial support to other down-ballot candidates who’ve endorsed him, and could do the same for you,” she said.

Courtney described a similar interaction with Steyer’s campaign.

“Tom, I know you’re running for Senate. I’m working for Tom Steyer,” Courtney recalled hearing from the aide. “Now you know how this works. … He said, ‘You help them, and they’ll help you.'”

“I said, ‘It wouldn’t matter if you’re talking monetary, there’s no amount,'” Courtney continued. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

Alberto Lammers, Steyer’s campaign press secretary, said the candidate hasn’t made any individual contributions to local officials in Iowa and won’t be making any this year. In an email, Lammers said Steyer’s endorsements “are earned because of Tom’s campaign message,” and distanced the candidate from Murphy.

“Our campaign policy is clear that we will not engage in this kind of activity, and anyone who does is not speaking for the campaign or does not know our policy,” Lammers said.

In a separate statement, Murphy said that “as a former legislator, I know how tricky the endorsement process can be for folks in Iowa. It was never my intention to make my former colleagues uncomfortable, and I apologize for any miscommunication on my part.”

The overtures do not appear to have made much of a difference for Steyer. Aside from Murphy’s support, Steyer has received the endorsement of just one Iowan since entering the race in July — former state Rep. Roger Thomas.

Thomas did not respond to phone calls, but in a statement provided by the campaign, he said that he endorsed Steyer “because he’s the outsider who can deliver for Iowans on the issues that matter most: getting corporate corruption out of our politics and putting forth a rural agenda that revitalizes communities across Iowa.”

Thomas’ endorsement was issued in October after the close of the most recent campaign finance reporting period, which ended Sept. 30. The disclosure Steyer filed offers no indication that he directly gave Thomas any money.

Experts say a campaign could violate campaign finance laws if they don’t disclose payments for endorsements.

“It’s legal if you disclose a payment for an endorsement on your campaign finance report,” said Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now works for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. But, he added, “It would be unlawful if you don’t disclose it, or you disclose it but try to hide who the recipient is, or try to hide what that purpose was.”

A trio of former Ron Paul aides faced legal trouble in 2016 over similar issues during the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus campaign. Campaign chairman Jesse Benton, campaign manager John Tate and deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari were convicted in 2016 of charges related to arranging and concealing payments for then-Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson, who switched his support from Michele Bachmann to Paul just six days before the Iowa caucuses. Sorenson served 15 months in jail for his role in the scheme.

It’s unclear whether Murphy could face a similar legal complaint, but the issue could revive scrutiny of how Steyer is deploying his financial resources. The billionaire businessman built his fortune in banking and investment management before turning to politics, and though he’s never held public office, he invested tens of millions of dollars in political activism and electoral politics before launching his presidential bid this year. Before his presidential run, Steyer’s most recent focus was a multimillion-dollar, pro-impeachment campaign, and as the U.S. House takes up the issue, he’s argued he’s put it on the national agenda.

Steyer has largely self-funded his presidential campaign, spending $47.6 million of his own money in the first three months since launching his bid, much of that on online fundraising and advertising. Steyer has qualified for the November debate, but he remains at the back of the pack in early-state and national polls.

Steve Bullock, who as Montana’s governor and attorney general spent years pushing for stricter regulation of money in politics, was quick to criticize Steyer, saying an attempt to buy endorsements undermines the democratic process.

“Tom Steyer’s campaign is built on writing the biggest checks, not on building genuine grassroots support – and proves why it’s so important to get Big Money out of our elections,” Bullock, who is also running for president, said in a statement.

It’s not the first time Bullock, who has failed to meet the donor and polling thresholds for most of the Democratic debates, has slammed Steyer. In September, he accused the wealthy philanthropist of bankrolling his way onto the debate stage after spending $12 million on advertising in his first six weeks as a candidate.

___

Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko in Washington, Steve Peoples in Bluffton, S.C., and Michelle Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Governments Beware: People Are Rising Up All Over the World

Lately there seem to be an unusually large number of mass resistance movements unfolding in countries all over the world. Here in the U.S., Puerto Rico’s recent political turmoil upended the entire local government structure. In Latin America, there have been upheavals over the past few weeks in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile. In the Caribbean, Haiti is experiencing its worst political turmoil since the 2004 ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. On the other side of the planet, Arab nations like Iraq and Lebanon have erupted into mass upheavals. Sudan just a few months ago toppled dictator Omar al-Bashir and now wants his party disbanded. And in Hong Kong, months of mass sustained protests have brought the nation to a standstill. What is happening?

There are common themes running throughout this widespread global uprising. The unrest is marked by a deep dissatisfaction with an economic order that benefits elites over others, combined with outrage against authoritarianism and the use of force to quell dissent. Often these are intertwined, as regimes use force to maintain the unequal economic order and demand public subservience and obedience. Then, a new proposed rule or law— seemingly innocuous at first—lights the spark of protest over long-simmering issues. In the internet age, activists organize with greater ease than before and are highly educated about their plight, giving them a greater ability to document and share abuses far and wide.

I spoke with three people to try to understand the common threads of protest in Chile, Lebanon and Hong Kong, and to explore why and how people have been rising up and organizing in the face of inequality and repression. Mia Dragnic is a sociologist from Chile and a doctoral candidate in Latin American studies at the University of Chile. Dragnic considers herself a “feminist militant” and, in the midst of her current tenure as a visiting scholar at University of California at San Diego, she explained to me in an interview that Chilean President Sebastián Piñera “has not attempted to dialogue with social movements nor changed any of the type of structural factors that have given rise to the current crisis.” Chileans rose up after the announcement of a hike in subway fares, but as is often the case, their response to the fare hike was symptomatic of a broader economic resentment. In fact, although Chile has been lauded for being an economic miracle, it experiences the highest level of inequality among OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations.

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According to Dragnic, the protesters “are demanding social rights because the Chilean state has privatized those rights and converted itself into a guarantor of the rights of the private sector.” Those “social rights,” she says, include “education, health and housing.” Dragnic recently authored a statement titled “International Community Against the Militarization of Chile,” which was signed by thousands of academics, activists and others. The statement demands Piñera’s resignation and denounces his militarized response to the protests. So far, Piñera’s response has been to oust eight ministers, but he has resolutely refused to resign from his own position. Dragnic pointed out Piñera has “handed power to a military general to handle the protests.” Many fear that such a move is reminiscent of Chile’s violent past, when the U.S. backed a brutal 1973 coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and helped install the notorious dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Across the world in Lebanon, Prime Minister Saad Hariri was more responsive to dissent than Chile’s Piñera, resigning after just 13 days of sustained mass protests in cities all over the country that included the formation of a human chain. As with the subway fare incident in Chile, outrage among the Lebanese public was initially triggered by the announcement of a tax on the popular texting software WhatsApp, but it reflected a deeper economic discontent.

I recently spoke with Jackson Allers. In our interview, Allers explained to me that Lebanese people are fed up with their government because “the infrastructure has crumbled, [and] the currency, which is artificially pegged to the U.S. dollar, is in absolute disarray right now, and it mirrors what’s happened around the Arab world since 2012.” Allers was referring to the Arab Spring movements in many Middle Eastern nations that comprised a wave of pro-democracy movements demanding democratic reforms. “The final straw was on Oct. 17,” said Allers, “[which] was when the government imposed a tax on WhatsApp phone calls.”

Allers pointed out Lebanon’s crisis was centered on the failures of capitalism, calling the country “a perfect example of a free-market state,” and “crony capitalism gone rampant.” One of the positive hallmarks of this mass movement — unlike previous eras of dissent in Lebanon — is the cross-sectarian nature of protesters. People from nearly every socioeconomic, political and religious sector are joining together. They say Hariri’s resignation is not enough and want to see an overturning of the entire corrupt system.

Elsewhere on the globe, in Hong Kong, which has occupied international headlines for many months now, protesters are also sustaining their activism for the long haul. Although the protests were initially triggered by a controversial extradition plan with China, they are now a response to broader issues of control, authoritarianism and — just as is the case in many other sites of dissent — the economy. Economic inequality in Hong Kong has increased dramatically and is now the greatest it has been in 45 years.

A brutal police response overseen by Chief Executive Carrie Lam has only hardened the resolve of the largely youth-led and seemingly leaderless movement. Joy Ming King is activist born and raised in Hong Kong and an undergraduate student at Wesleyan University. In an interview, he explained to me that activists marked an ongoing ban on face masks in the public realm by donning masks en masse on Halloween while defying authorities. King, who has been participating in the ongoing protests through organizing and direct action both outside and inside Hong Kong through his work in the Lausan Collective, explained that the creative action was an example of “collective enjoyment and rejuvenation, a way to sustain the movement, and that Hong Kongers are organizing largely through the use of digital technology in online forums and without leaders directing most of the actions. The anger that residents feel toward the government is aimed both at the local authorities and at China, which through its special relationship with Hong Kong has attempted to exert greater control over the semi-autonomous city.

The commonalities of why there are so many movements in disparate parts of the world are quite striking. Free-market capitalism has proved time and again to be a failure. The promised riches are distributed far too unequally, and for most they never transpire. The only way to preserve the current social and economic order is by force. And when people have had enough, they meet force with resistance and resilience. These are lessons not just for ordinary people suffering economic injustices, but for the governments that oversee them.

Watching My Students Turn Into Soldiers of Empire

This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.

Patches, pins, medals, and badges are the visible signs of an exclusive military culture, a silent language by which soldiers and officers judge each other’s experiences, accomplishments, and general worth. In July 2001, when I first walked through the gate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at the ripe young age of 17, the “combat patch” on one’s right shoulder — evidence of a deployment with a specific unit — had more resonance than colorful medals like Ranger badges reflecting specific skills. Back then, before the 9/11 attacks ushered in a series of revenge wars “on terror,” the vast majority of officers stationed at West Point didn’t boast a right shoulder patch. Those who did were mostly veterans of modest combat in the first Gulf War of 1990-1991. Nonetheless, even those officers were regarded by the likes of me as gods. After all, they’d seen “the elephant.”

We young cadets arrived then with far different expectations about Army life and our futures, ones that would prove incompatible with the realities of military service in a post-9/11 world. When my mother — as was mandatory for a 17-year-old — put her signature on my future Army career, I imagined a life of fancy uniforms; tough masculine training; and maybe, at worst, some photo opportunities during a safe, “peace-keeping” deployment in a place like Kosovo.

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Sure, the U.S. was then quietly starving hundreds of thousands of children with a crippling sanctions regime against autocrat Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, occasionally lobbing cruise missiles at “terrorist” encampments here or there, and garrisoning much of the globe. Still, the life of a conventional Army officer in the late 1990s did fit pretty closely with my high-school fantasies.

You won’t be surprised to learn, however, that the world of future officers at the Academy irreparably changed when those towers collapsed in my home town of New York. By the following May, it wasn’t uncommon to overhear senior cadets on the phone with girlfriends or fiancées explaining that they were heading for war upon graduation.

As a plebe (freshman), I still had years ahead in my West Point journey during which our world changed even more. Older cadets I’d known would soon be part of the invasion of Afghanistan. Drinking excessively at a New York Irish bar on St. Patrick’s Day in 2003, I watched in wonder as, on TV, U.S. bombs and missiles rained down on Iraq as part of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s promised “shock-and-awe” campaign.

Soon enough, the names of former cadets I knew well were being announced over the mess hall loudspeaker at breakfast. They’d been killed in Afghanistan or, more commonly, in Iraq.

My greatest fear then, I’m embarrassed to admit, was that I’d miss the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It wasn’t long after my May 28, 2005, graduation that I’d serve in Baghdad. Later, I would be sent to Kandahar, Afghanistan. I buried eight young men under my direct command. Five died in combat; three took their own lives. After surviving the worst of it with my body (though not my mind) intact, I was offered a teaching position back at my alma mater. During my few years in the history department at West Point, I taught some 300 or more cadets. It was the best job I ever had.

I think about them often, the ones I’m still in touch with and the majority whom I’ll never hear from or of again. Many graduated last year and are already out there carrying water for empire. The last batch will enter the regular Army next May. Recently, my mother asked me what I thought my former students were now doing or would be doing after graduation. I was taken aback and didn’t quite know how to answer.

Wasting their time and their lives was, I suppose, what I wanted to say. But a more serious analysis, based on a survey of U.S. Army missions in 2019 and bolstered by my communications with peers still in the service, leaves me with an even more disturbing answer. A new generation of West Point educated officers, graduating a decade and a half after me, faces potential tours of duty in… hmm, Afghanistan, Iraq, or other countries involved in the never-ending American war on terror, missions that will not make this country any safer or lead to “victory” of any sort, no matter how defined.

A New Generation of Cadets Serving the Empire Abroad

West Point seniors (“first-class cadets”) choose their military specialties and their first duty-station locations in a manner reminiscent of the National Football League draft. This is unique to Academy grads and differs markedly from the more limited choices and options available to the 80% of officers commissioned through the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) or Officer Candidate School (OCS).

Throughout the 47-month academy experience, West Pointers are ranked based on a combination of academic grades, physical fitness scores, and military-training evaluations. Then, on a booze-fueled, epic night, the cadets choose jobs in their assigned order of merit. Highly ranked seniors get to pick what are considered the most desirable jobs and duty locations (helicopter pilot, Hawaii). Bottom-feeding cadets choose from the remaining scraps (field artillery, Fort Sill, Oklahoma).

In truth, though, it matters remarkably little which stateside or overseas base one first reports to. Within a year or two, most young lieutenants in today’s Army will serve in any number of diverse “contingency” deployments overseas. Some will indeed be in America’s mostly unsanctioned wars abroad, while others will straddle the line between combat and training in, say, “advise-and-assist” missions in Africa.

Now, here’s the rub: given the range of missions that my former students are sure to participate in, I can’t help but feel frustration. After all, it should be clear 18 years after the 9/11 attacks that almost none of those missions have a chance in hell of succeeding. Worse yet, the killing my beloved students might take part in (and the possibility of them being maimed or dying) won’t make America any safer or better. They are, in other words, doomed to repeat my own unfulfilling, damaging journey — in some cases, on the very same ground in Iraq and Afghanistan where I fought.

Consider just a quick survey of some of the possible missions that await them. Some will head for Iraq — my first and formative war — though it’s unclear just what they’ll be expected to do there. ISIS has been attritted to a point where indigenous security forces could assumedly handle the ongoing low-intensity fight, though they will undoubtedly assist in that effort. What they can’t do is reform a corrupt, oppressive Shia-chauvinist sectarian government in Baghdad that guns down its own protesting people, repeating the very mistakes that fueled the rise of the Islamic State in the first place. Oh, and the Iraqi government, and a huge chunk of Iraqis as well, don’t want any more American troops in their country. But when has national sovereignty or popular demand stopped Washington before?

Others are sure to join the thousands of servicemen still in Afghanistan in the 19th year of America’s longest ever war — and that’s even if you don’t count our first Afghan War (1979-1989) in the mix. And keep in mind that most of the cadets-turned-officers I taught were born in 1998 or thereafter and so were all of three years old or younger when the Twin Towers crumbled.

The first of our wars to come from that nightmare has always been unwinnable. All the Afghan metrics — the U.S. military’s own “measures for success” — continue to trend badly, worse than ever in fact. The futility of the entire endeavor borders on the absurd. It makes me sad to think that my former officemate and fellow West Point history instructor, Mark, is once again over there. Along with just about every serving officer I’ve known, he would laugh if asked whether he could foresee — or even define — “victory” in that country. Take my word for it, after 18-plus years, whatever idealism might once have been in the Army has almost completely evaporated. Resignation is what remains among most of the officer corps. As for me, I’ll be left hoping against hope that someone I know or taught isn’t the last to die in that never-ending war from hell.

My former cadets who ended up in armor (tanks and reconnaissance) or ventured into the Special Forces might now find themselves in Syria — the war President Trump “ended” by withdrawing American troops from that country, until, of course, almost as many of them were more or less instantly sent back in. Some of the armor officers among my students might even have the pleasure of indefinitely guarding that country’s oil fields, which — if the U.S. takes some of that liquid gold for itself — might just violate international law. But hey, what else is new?

Still more — mostly intelligence officers, logisticians, and special operators — can expect to deploy to any one of the dozen or so West African or Horn of Africa countries that the U.S. military now calls home. In the name of “advising and assisting” the local security forces of often autocratic African regimes, American troops still occasionally, if quietly, die in “non-combat” missions in places like Niger or Somalia.

None of these combat operations have been approved, or even meaningfully debated, by Congress. But in the America of 2019 that doesn’t qualify as a problem. There are, however, problems of a more strategic variety. After all, it’s demonstrably clear that, since the founding of the U.S. military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, violence on the continent has only increased, while Islamist terror and insurgent groups have proliferated in an exponential fashion. To be fair, though, such counterproductivity has been the name of the game in the “war on terror” since it began.

Another group of new academy graduates will spend up to a year in Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states of Eastern Europe. There, they’ll ostensibly train the paltry armies of those relatively new NATO countries — added to the alliance in foolish violation of repeated American promises not to expand eastward as the Cold War ended. In reality, though, they’ll be serving as provocative “signals” to a supposedly expansionist Russia. With the Russian threat wildly exaggerated, just as it was in the Cold War era, the very presence of my Baltic-based former cadets will only heighten tensions between the two over-armed nuclear heavyweights. Such military missions are too big not to be provocative, but too small to survive a real (if essentially unimaginable) war.

The intelligence officers among my cadets might, on the other hand, get the “honor” of helping the Saudi Air Force through intelligence-sharing to doom some Yemeni targets — often civilian — to oblivion thanks to U.S. manufactured munitions. In other words, these young officers could be made complicit in what’s already the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

Other recent cadets of mine might even have the ignominious distinction of being part of military convoys driving along interstate highways to America’s southern border to emplace what President Trump has termed “beautiful” barbed wire there, while helping detain refugees of wars and disorder that Washington often helped to fuel.

Yet other graduates may already have found themselves in the barren deserts of Saudi Arabia, since Trump has dispatched 3,000 U.S. troops to that country in recent months. There, those young officers can expect to go full mercenary, since the president defended his deployment of those troops (plus two jet fighter squadrons and two batteries of Patriot missiles) by noting that the Saudis would “pay” for “our help.” Setting aside for the moment the fact that basing American troops near the Islamic holy cities of the Arabian Peninsula didn’t exactly end well the last time around — you undoubtedly remember a guy named bin Laden who protested that deployment so violently — the latest troop buildup in Saudi Arabia portends a disastrous future war with Iran.

None of these potential tasks awaiting my former students is even remotely linked to the oath (to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”) that newly commissioned officers swear on day one. They are instead all unconstitutional, ill-advised distractions that benefit mainly an entrenched national security state and the arms-makers that go with them. The tragedy is that a few of my beloved cadets with whom I once played touch football, who babysat my children, who shed tears of anxiety and fear during private lunches in my office might well sustain injuries that will last a lifetime or die in one of this country’s endless hegemonic wars.

A Nightmare Come True

This May, the last of the freshman cadets I once taught will graduate from the Academy. Commissioned that same afternoon as second lieutenants in the Army, they will head off to “serve” their country (and its imperial ambitions) across the wide expanse of the continental United States and a broader world peppered with American military bases. Given my own tortured path of dissent while in that military (and my relief on leaving it), knowing where they’re heading leaves me with a feeling of melancholy. In a sense, it represents the severing of my last tenuous connection with the institutions to which I dedicated my adult life.

Though I was already skeptical and antiwar, I still imagined that teaching those cadets an alternative, more progressive version of our history would represent a last service to an Army I once unconditionally loved. My romantic hope was that I’d help develop future officers imbued with critical thinking and with the integrity to oppose unjust wars. It was a fantasy that helped me get up each morning, don a uniform, and do my job with competence and enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, as my last semester as an assistant professor of history wound down, I felt a growing sense of dread. Partly it was the realization that I’d soon return to the decidedly unstimulating “real Army,” but it was more than that, too. I loved academia and “my” students, yet I also knew that I couldn’t save them. I knew that they were indeed doomed to take the same path I did.

My last day in front of a class, I skipped the planned lesson and leveled with the young men and women seated before me. We discussed my own once bright, now troubled career and my struggles with my emotional health. We talked about the complexities, horror, and macabre humor of combat and they asked me blunt questions about what they could expect in their future as graduates. Then, in my last few minutes as a teacher, I broke down. I hadn’t planned this, nor could I control it.

My greatest fear, I said, was that their budding young lives might closely track my own journey of disillusionment, emotional trauma, divorce, and moral injury. The thought that they would soon serve in the same pointless, horrifying wars, I told them, made me “want to puke in a trash bin.” The clock struck 1600 (4:00 pm), class time was up, yet not a single one of those stunned cadets — unsure undoubtedly of what to make of a superior officer’s streaming tears — moved for the door. I assured them that it was okay to leave, hugged each of them as they finally exited, and soon found myself disconcertingly alone. So I erased my chalkboards and also left.

Three years have passed. About 130 students of mine graduated in May. My last group will pin on the gold bars of brand new army officers in late May 2020. I’m still in touch with several former cadets and, long after I did so, students of mine are now driving down the dusty lanes of Iraq or tramping the narrow footpaths of Afghanistan.

My nightmare has come true.

Robert Reich: Big Tech and Democracy Can’t Coexist

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says he’ll run political ads even if they are false. Jack Dorsey of Twitter says he’ll stop running political ads altogether.

Dorsey has the correct approach but the debate skirts the bigger question: Who is responsible for protecting democracy from big, dangerous lies?

Donald Trump lies like most people breathe. As he’s been cornered, his lies have grown more vicious and dangerous. He conjures up conspiracies, spews hate and says established facts are lies and lies are truths.

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This would be hard enough for a democracy to handle without Facebook sending Trump’s unfiltered lies to the 45 percent of Americans who look to it for news. Twitter sends them to 68 million users every day.

A major characteristic of the internet goes by the fancy term “disintermediation”. Put simply, it means sellers are linked directly to customers with no need for middlemen.

Amazon eliminates the need for retailers. Online investing eliminates the need for stock brokers. Travel agents and real estate brokers are obsolete. At a keystroke, consumers get all the information they need.

But democracy can’t be disintermediated. We’re not just buyers and sellers. We’re citizens who need to know what’s happening around us in order to exercise our right to self-government, and responsibility for it.

If a president and his enablers are peddling vicious and dangerous lies, we need reliable intermediaries that help us see them.

Intermediating between the powerful and the people was once mainly the job of publishers and journalists – hence the term “media”.

This role was understood to be so critical to democracy that the constitution enshrined it in the first amendment, guaranteeing freedom of the press.

With that freedom came public responsibility, to be a bulwark against powerful lies. The media haven’t always lived up to it. We had yellow journalism in the 19th century and today endure shock radio, the National Enquirer and Fox News.

But most publishers and journalists have recognized that duty. Think of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate and, just weeks ago, the exposure of Trump’s withholding $400 million in security aid to Ukraine until it investigated his major political rival, Joe Biden.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey insist they aren’t publishers or journalists. They say Facebook and Twitter are just “platforms” that convey everything and anything – facts, lies, conspiracies, vendettas – with none of the public responsibilities that come with being part of the press.

Rubbish. They can’t be the major carriers of the news on which most Americans rely while taking no responsibility for its content.

Advertising isn’t the issue. It doesn’t matter whether Trump pays Facebook or Twitter to post dishonest ads about Joe Biden and his son, or Trump and his enablers post the same lies on Facebook and Twitter. Or even if Russia and Iran repeat the lies in their own subversive posts.

The problem is we have a president who will say anything to preserve his power, and two giant entities that spread his lies uncritically, like global-sized bullhorns.

We can’t do anything about Trump until election day or until he’s convicted of an impeachable offense. But we can and should take action against the power of these two super-enablers. If they’re unwilling to protect the public against powerful lies, they shouldn’t have as much power to spread them.

The reason 45 percent of Americans rely on Facebook for news and Trump’s tweets reach 68 million is because these platforms are near monopolies, dominating the information marketplace. No TV network, cable giant or newspaper even comes close. Fox News’ viewership rarely exceeds 3 million. The New York Times has 4.7 million subscribers.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t just participants in the information marketplace. They’re quickly becoming the information marketplace.

Antitrust law was designed to check the power of giant commercial entities. Its purpose wasn’t just to hold down consumer prices but also to protect democracy. Antitrust should be used against Facebook and Twitter. They should be broken up.

So instead of two mammoth megaphones trumpeting Trump’s lies, or those of any similarly truth-challenged successor, the public will have more diverse sources of information, some of which will expose the lies.

Of course, a diverse information marketplace is no guarantee against tyranny. But we now have a president who lies through his teeth and two giant uncritical conveyors of those lies. It is a system that invites it.

Why a Russian Politician Just Called Trump ‘Hitler’

This piece originally appeared on Informed Comment. 

Lolita C. Baldor at the Associated Press reports that Trump has been prevailed upon by the US officer corps and national security officials to authorize some 600 troops to guard the Syrian oil fields in Deir al-Zor province, in addition to the 200 already in the Tanf pocket. Kurdish troops still hold much of this Arab territory, having taken it from ISIL with US air support, and the mission is advertised as allowing the Kurds to continue to pump oil from this region while denying it to ISIL and the Syrian government. Kurds, however, may or may not be willing to work closely with the US after Trump betrayed them.

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The Russian deputy minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Vershinin, insisted in response that the oil fields in Syria belong to the Syrian government. He added that while Russia and cooperated militarily with the United States in Syria in other respects, Moscow refused to cooperate with Washington in its occupation of the oil fields. Since Russia flies war planes in support of the Syrian Arab Army, failure to share such information with the US would potentially put American troops in danger.

Russian member of parliament Alexander Vershin went further and denounced Trump as Hitler for his invasion of Syria over oil, recalling that the Nazi leader launched invasions for the same goal. Russians may still smart from Hitler’s opening of a second front, in which he attacked the Soviet Union in hopes of ultimately marching on Azerbaijan and capturing Baku’s oil. As it was, the Western blockade of Hitler’s Germany, which has almost no oil of its own, was making it impossible even to fuel his tanks.

There is also the question of what would happen if the Russia-backed Syrian Arab Army came into Deir al-Zor to grab an oil field when the US wasn’t looking (600 troops can’t be everywhere all the time). Would the US fight Syria to recover Syria’s oil fields? As Baldor’s interviewees note, that would not be exactly self-defense and would likely be illegal in international law. And what if a Russian air strike in support of Damascus hit American personnel, killing or wounding them? That would be a major crisis between the two powers.

Trump abandoned the Kurds to a Turkish invasion in October, announcing that he was withdrawing some 1,000 US special operations personnel from Syria and leaving the Kurds to the tender mercies of Turkey, Russia and the Syrian government. Despite Trump’s bluster about bringing the troops home, it appears that all they have simply been sent south from near the Turkish border to Deir al-Zor. Whereas their rational had originally been to defend the US from the ISIl terrorist organization, which is possibly legitimate in international law, their new mandate is simply to occupy the Syrian oil fields and deny them to the Syrian government, which is likely a war crime.

Right-Wing Nationalism Threatens Our Future

What follows is a conversation between journalist John Feffer and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

MARC STEINER Welcome to the Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, great to have you all with us. And we’ve watched the rise of the right wing all over the globe, racists, xenophobes, nationalists, democratically seasoned control of governments and are becoming rising powers all over the place in places like Brazil, India, Italy, Poland, to name just a few. They’ve found a way into the hearts and minds of working and middle class people across the world terrified of the future. Now, the largest economy in the world, our own, the United States has fallen as well to the rise of the right with right wing nationalist movement seizing, as I like to say, the executive branch. So we have Donald Trump who can now play godfather to the rest. 

How did it happen? Once the left had led the way around internationalism and the fight against exploitation, but now, the rhetorical rise comes from the ideologues who worry about Europeans, white folks, non-Muslims being replaced by the other, capitalist economics and neoliberal politics gave rise to the contradictions that allow the rise of the right. What does that really mean? So what is happening and what should be the response? 

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We talk now with John Feffer, who’s director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. And he’s written about the rise of the right in TomDispatch, The Law and The Nation and many other places, and also, he’s the author of a dystopian novel, Splinterlands that warns us of what we might face in a much more creative way. And welcome, John. Good to have you with us. 

JOHN FEFFER Thank you for having me on the show. 

MARC STEINER So where do we even begin? I mean we watched this phenomena happen across the globe, the pinnacle being Donald Trump’s election here. Take a step backwards a bit and talk a bit about what you wrote about in one of your pieces … They’re coming together in my head, I can’t remember which piece, but it was a lot of the other pieces you wrote, where you talk about the end of the Cold War and talk about what the end of communism and the failure of labor unions falling and the rest kind of leading to this world we’re in now. So talk a bit about your perspective historically on why we are where we are. 

JOHN FEFFER Sure. Well, first of all, I’d say that during the Cold War period, there was kind of a liberal conservative consensus about a lot of things, about roughly speaking the nature of the economy, roughly speaking the nature of democratic politics. I’m talking about liberals and conservatives in the United States, in Europe, Western Europe, and in some other places around the world. But with the end of the Cold War, that consensus breaks down and it breaks down across the board. 

From the point of view of this question of the rise of the right, I would begin by pointing out that there was an anti-fascist consensus basically by liberals and conservatives, a belief frankly that was quite good that fascism should not be part of political discourse, should not be part of the electoral political scene, should not be part of normal discourse in the academy, etcetera. But that breaks down after the collapse of the Soviet Union and you begin to see the rise of fascist politicians, primarily in Western Europe getting a toehold for the first time really in France with Jean-Marie Le Pen, who’s the father of current leader of the far right, Marine Le Pen, the rise of Jorg Haider in Austria, also in Russia, the rise of Zhirinovsky, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, again in Russia where the anti-fascist consensus it seemed included everybody and yet even in Russia, you saw someone like Zhirinovsky emerge basically with fascist tendencies. Now that still remained, more or less, I would say on the margins of political debate. 

What thrust that into the mainstream and front and center are basically two phenomenon. The first is the failures of economic globalization. I mean essentially, you have the economic globalization succeeding in increasing trade around the world, bringing China into the world economy, eventually, bringing the former Soviet bloc nations into a world economy. That’s all for the good, but you begin to see the breakdown of economic globalization in two ways. One, greater polarization in wealth, the haves and the have-nots around the world. But you also see basically, the failure of the global economy to prosper. You have, of course, the cycles of capitalism reaching in the late 2000s a massive financial crisis comparable to the Great Depression, if not larger, that throws everything onto the table suddenly. Everything is now open for discussion. And all of the people who have been kind of grumbling about economic globalization because they haven’t done very well as a result of economic globalization are joined by huge numbers of middle-class people as well who are dispossessed as a result of the financial crisis. 

MARC STEINER So one thing I think as you were talking about this is that the other factors that you’ve written about as well that kind of fall into this scenario about what happened in the past, I mean maybe we’ll talk about how there was this kind of consensus between liberal conservatives and the Cold War. I always like to think of it also as there was a period of time in history between the ’40s and the ’70s, ’80s when it was mostly white men talking to each other in the halls of power. So they might disagree over liberal conservative economics and politics, but then let’s go and have a glass of whiskey and a cigar, and we all be good friends, right? 

JOHN FEFFER Yeah. 

MARC STEINER And you had this common enemy. Then the Soviet Union falls. People who didn’t like that rule go to the right. And then, you also have this surge of the post-colonial world and our repressive tactics from this country on to other places. You have forced migrations and more. And so this all gets … And so there’s this racism that’s there to begin with that came out of colonialism and it’s still in Europe and still in the United States very deeply. So these factors all kind of dovetailed to create what we’re seeing now, and I think as you were saying, it seems to me also, the contradictions of capitalism itself that can make a global economy, but can’t take care of the people in the process. 

JOHN FEFFER Well, what you’re describing is a backlash against liberalism. 

MARC STEINER Yeah. 

JOHN FEFFER I mean a backlash against, of course, the economic aspects of liberalism, but also, the kind of cultural aspects of liberalism, a backlash against some of the gains that are made within liberal democracies by minorities, by women. There’s a feeling somehow, primarily by white men, that they are being dispossessed. And when we talk about the dispossession of people by economic globalization and by the financial crisis, but there’s also a perception by white men that they’re being dispossessed by the forces of history if you will. And if you add onto that an enormous uptick in immigration as a result, not only, not exclusively, but largely by wars in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, a huge outpouring of people from these parts of the world into Europe, and this becomes a major issue that the far right seizes on. In other words, it’s not just the dispossession of white men, it’s the dispossession of everyone who’s considered to be indigenous, indigenous to France, indigenous to UK. They are under threat from these outsiders. 

And comparable phenomenon in the United States, of course, the far right seizes on immigration coming from Central America and Mexico, also a perception that white Americans are going to be dispossessed by these people. So as you say, these trends are coming together in the 1990s and in the 2000s to create the conditions, if you will, for the rise of the far right. 

MARC STEINER So you’ve got this quote in your piece that I really like to share with our listeners because I think that it’s an important one. It’s by Matthew Feldman from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. And you quote him as saying, “The demographic replacement is a similar master frame that can unite both clear extremists and conservatives who might be worried about demographic change. Once you add these two together, you have potential majorities in many countries. They found a winning formula. There’s nothing I’ve seen that comes remotely close to countering that formula.” Now that to me, and this one particular article that you wrote was the most frightening line in the entire article. I mean because that’s real. This movement has gained power and I don’t see people having an effective response to it. 

JOHN FEFFER Yeah. No, you’re absolutely right. And Feldman points out that this is not something new, this kind of consensus, if you will, between the far right and mainstream conservatives. We saw the same thing in the 1920s and the 1930s both in Europe and the United States. In the United States, you saw this kind of far right racism from people like Calvin Coolidge as well as Father Coughlin coming together to create what would’ve been if it hadn’t been for FDR and a variety of other factors probably a very successful far right in this country. The far right, of course, does emerge in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in Japan, and based on the similar kind of consensus. 

What Feldman is talking about is what’s known as the Great Replacement Theory and the Great Replacement Theory comes out of France in 2010, the notion that these immigrants coming from North Africa, coming from Syria, Afghanistan, they aren’t just coming into France. They have the intention of replacing the French and replacing French culture with their foreign customs, their foreign languages, their foreign religions, and that it’s necessary for the authentic French, if you will, to band together and push them out. Not only stop immigration, but actually remigration, in other words, push current migrant populations out of the country. 

MARC STEINER And in some places, they’re doing that. You look, Israel at this moment is doing that with African refugees from, especially Sudan who come into Somalia, who have come into Israel and sending them back out again. 

JOHN FEFFER That’s right. 

MARC STEINER I mean this is nothing new. And you’re pointing also in your article that this was Hitler’s first idea before he decided to kill all the Jews was to send them off to Madagascar. 

JOHN FEFFER That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. 

MARC STEINER So let’s talk a bit about where this might be going and what the response is. I mean I think that it’s very real. You see this rise. I remember I guess it was 20 years ago, whatever, there was election in France and my wife and I just landed in Paris with this cab driver, and he was talking to us about how everywhere the communists won, the right wing is now winning- 

JOHN FEFFER That’s right. 

MARC STEINER … in France. And that’s similar to other countries as well. It’s not just in France. So the question is with this rise of the right that’s extremely powerful, you have Donald Trump in power in this country, so let’s talk about where you think this could take the world and what do you think the response should be? 

JOHN FEFFER Sure. 

MARC STEINER That’s the most important thing to me. 

JOHN FEFFER Well, before I tell you what I think, let me tell you what I think is the mistaken analysis of this. 

MARC STEINER Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. 

JOHN FEFFER And the mistaken analysis is that this is just the ordinary ebb and flow of politics. So the far right wins this election cycle and the left will win the next one, and maybe the center will come back. I think that’s a fundamental misreading of the current situation because the far right that’s winning, the people that you mentioned at the top of the show, people like Trump, Modi, Orban, Erdogan in Turkey, they’re interested not in serving for a term or maybe two terms. They want to serve forever. They want to be leader for life. You might remember when Donald Trump said that he kind of liked Xi Jinping’s new title, leader for life. Maybe we should look into that in the United States. He wasn’t really joking. I mean- 

MARC STEINER I know he wasn’t joking, right? 

JOHN FEFFER Like many other leaders, they want to be there forever. In order to do that, they have to dismantle what are known as kind of the guard rails of democracy. They have to suppress free press. They have to go after civil society, freedom of speech, all in order to rig the system so that either they or their daughter, Ivanka, can be leader for life. So that’s my fear. That’s the kind of worst case scenario. 

What to do about it? Well, the first thing, of course, is to challenge them across the board and across the board not only within countries, but across countries. 

MARC STEINER Let me just stop for a second ‘ cause hat’s one thing you posit in this as you describe this thing is really important because most of people look in the press and people look at the activists, look at what’s happening with the rise of the right as nothing, but pure nationalists, right? You’re making a very simple argument. Your argument is they may be natioinalists in the extent of talking about what’s happening internally in their countries, but this is an internationalist movement. The left used to be the internationalist movement. Now the right is an internationalist movement, and that’s at the heart of this, which just makes it even more dangerous at the moment. 

JOHN FEFFER And on the face of it, it doesn’t make sense. I mean if you want to make America great, how can you make America great and Hungary great and Russia great and Turkey great all at the same time? You would think that they will kind of bump up against each other. But in fact, they have common interests and the common interests are in basically dismantling liberal institutions as well as suppressing the left. But for the most part, the left is relatively weak whereas liberal institutions remain even in the United States or throughout Western Europe or even in Brazil, liberal institutions remain kind of the status quo. I mean people believe in democracy. They believe in free elections. They believe in free media and freedom of speech. 

So the first thing they want to do in kind of by joining hands across borders is to create a kind of illiberal international in which they push the needle significantly away from the status quo and essentially establish a kind of new status quo in which there is no freedom of speech, in which there are no free free organs of the media. They have other common interests related to immigration, their opposition to social movements like LGBT, women’s movement. 

So for us who are opposed to this kind of nationalist international, this illiberal international, I think it’s necessary not only to organize at a national level against Trump, try to get him out of office next term, Bolsonaro, get him out of office next term, but as much as possible, to sever these connections that they are making across borders and to create a new kind of transnational internationalism in support of the things that we hold in common interest, whether it’s primarily climate change, dealing with climate change, dealing with economic inequality, dealing with militarism. These are the issues that a transnational internationalist movement has to put out there in a positive way. And not just say, “We don’t like Trump. We don’t like Bolsonaro. We don’t like Orban.” That isn’t sufficient. I mean the average voter may or may not agree with that, but what they’re really looking for is something new, something positive, and that’s what we have to provide. 

MARC STEINER I mean it’s kind of a mixed bag. We don’t have time to get into it now, but a lot of the European right leaders are not homophobic. Some of the leaders are gay and lesbian women. 

JOHN FEFFER That’s right. 

MARC STEINER So it’s a really different mix than we have here in that regard, but I think that when you … There was a time when, and this is not law in the Soviet Union because they were part of the problem, which is why they collapsed and the left fell apart as well, but they were at one point the only bulwark against the spread of capitalism across the globe. Now it’s everywhere and people are genuinely terrified too about the future. And I think you mentioned that in one of your pieces that people are really terrified about where it’s going. Not so much on I have no money now, but my future is at stake and I think that the problem with the left is they’re not organizing. They’re not part of labor. They’re not part of doing things that actually can galvanize a movement. Say there’s a different way into kind of bask in our heterogeneity, let’s say, in this country as opposed to playing into the other side. 

JOHN FEFFER Well, I would agree with you. Though I would say the left has plenty of ideas and has done some organizing. For the most part, the left lacks kind of institutional power. And the reason I think it’s important that you point to the labor unions is because that used to be institutional power that the left has. And if you look at the decline of labor unions not just here in the United States, but if you look at the OECD, the most economically advanced countries in the world, basically over the last 25, 30 years, the percentage of organized labor as part of the workforce has dropped in half from about roughly 32% or roughly 16%. 

So in other words, the very core of institutional power for the left has declined substantially, which means the left either has to do one of two things, either has to participate with labor to build that back up, if that is possible, might be difficult in an age of automation, but let’s just say that is one alternative. The other alternative is to find some other institutional power base. What could that be? Well, it could be young people. I mean if we look at the Fridays For Future strikes for climate change, it could be environmentalists more generally, civil society activists. There are a variety of different places one could look for institutional power. 

But I would say for the short term at least, I mean I think your question was looking to the longterm, in the short term, the left really has to kind of promote a united front strategy, has to join hands with liberals and moderates and even renegade Republicans in this country, renegade conservatives in Europe who recognize that there is a threat, a clear and present danger. And with that united front, once again re-establish what that consensus was that we had during the Cold War period, a consensus that fascism and the far right has no place in our society. 

MARC STEINER And we have to conclude this now, but I mean I think that’s right and I think that the danger here is A, that what happened in the past was people who had a different vision of what the world could be got sucked into the neoliberal world and dissipated any power that they had and became identified with that as opposed to being identified with people who are actually struggling to make a better world. And that in itself I think is a real issue and problem we’ll have to deal with. And that united front idea, I mean some people would disagree with this. I’m sure we’ll get a lot of letters saying that you’re wrong, but Donald Trump being in power is a real danger not just to our country, but to the globe- 

JOHN FEFFER Absolutely. 

MARC STEINER … because he is in a literal sense Mario Puzo’s godfather to the rest of the right wing, which you’re right about as well. 

JOHN FEFFER Right. I think most people understand that Donald Trump, Modi or Bolsonaro, they represent such a threat that they’re willing to do almost anything electorally speaking or getting out into the street and joining hands with some uncommon bedfellows, they will do whatever is necessary to get him out of office. So, okay, I know if we talked about it specifically, like would I support Biden for instance? I would be uncomfortable, but still, generally speaking, this is the necessary short term strategy. 

We’re talking longterm, that’s a different matter. 

MARC STEINER Right. 

JOHN FEFFER Longterm is a matter of building institutional power. It’s about finding partners where our common interests overlap to a much larger degree and finding those common interests across borders, which is something, as you pointed out, the left has stepped back from. I mean, again, we used to be kind of the beacon of internationalism and we’ve become more parochial over the last decade or so. We have to kind of burnish that legacy of internationalism, revive it and operationalize it in a real sense. 

And I’m not speaking just ’cause I like the sound of internationalism. This is very pragmatic. We face international problems that need international solutions. The only way we’re going to solve them are internationally. So it’s incumbent upon the left to step up and say, “We actually are the only ones who have an internationalist program that can address these problems. Everybody else, yeah, you can vote for them, but we’re not going to go anywhere. We’re not going to advance. We’re going to step backwards and frankly, step off the precipice if we continue those policies.” 

MARC STEINER That’s frighteningly true. John Feffer, good to have you in the studio. Thanks for coming in today. It was great talking to you. 

JOHN FEFFER Thank you very much for having me on the show. 

MARC STEINER And we’ve been talking to John Feffer who runs Foreign Policy in Focus at Institute for Policy Studies and is also a writer of great fiction and Splinterland and Frostland. John, good to have you here. 

And I’m Marc Steiner, here for the Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Let us know what you think as we look at the radical right in this country and the world, what do you think about that? Let us know. Take care. 

DHARNA NOOR Hey, all. My name is Dharna Noor and I’m a climate crisis reporter here at the Real News Network. This is a crucial moment for humanity and for the planet. So if you like what we do, please, please support us by subscribing at the link below. Thank you.

Bernie Sanders Calls to Break Up ICE

With the goal of creating a “welcoming and safe nation for all,” Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to fundamentally overhaul America’s inhumane immigration system by reversing President Donald Trump’s xenophobic executive orders, placing a moratorium on deportations, ending ICE raids, and confronting root causes—including “decades of disastrous foreign policy decisions”—that have destabilized and impoverished Latin American nations.

If elected president in 2020, Sanders vowed to use his executive authority to “overturn all of President Trump’s actions to demonize and harm immigrants” on his first day in the White House.

But Sanders’ proposal, detailed on his website, makes clear that decades of U.S. foreign and trade policies that long predate Trump must be addressed in concert with Latin American nations in order to tackle “the root causes of migration.”

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Sanders also pointed to the climate crisis as a key factor in driving migration and said the U.S. must do its part in combating the emergency and welcoming those displaced by it.

“No parent would take their child and travel thousands of miles on foot except under dire, dangerous circumstances,” Sanders’ plan states. “Decades of disastrous foreign policy decisions in Latin America and bad trade deals have caused destabilization and poverty in South and Central America. We must end global inequality and the international race to the bottom so that no human being needs to migrate for survival.”

Sanders said, if elected, he will “immediately call a summit of leaders from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and other countries.”

The proposal states that Sanders as president will also “acknowledge the history of U.S. intervention in the South and Central American region, as well as overseas, often in support of authoritarian regimes that brutally repressed their own people, and engage with human rights defenders throughout the hemisphere to promote freedom and dignity for all.”

The Vermont senator’s plan—which he described as “the most progressive immigration proposal put forth in presidential history”—also calls for:

Breaking up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP);
Decriminalizing immigration and demilitarizing the border;
Pushing Congress to establish a “swift, fair” pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people currently living in the U.S.;
Immidiately extending “legal status to the 1.8 million young people currently eligible for the DACA program”;
Closing for-profit detention centers;
Ending the separation of families; and
Bolstering immigrant worker protections by ending workplace raids and enacting a “Domestic Workers Bill of Rights” that would include at least a $15 minimum wage and collective bargaining protections.

“My father came to America as a refugee without a nickel in his pocket, to escape widespread anti-Semitism and find a better life,” Sanders said in a statement. “As the proud son of an immigrant, I know that my father’s story is the story of so many Americans today.”

“We will end the ICE raids that are terrorizing our communities,” Sanders added, “and on my first day as president, I will use my executive power to protect our immigrant communities and reverse every single horrific action implemented by Trump.”

Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund, praised Sanders for articulating “a vision in which everyone, regardless of where they were born or how much they make, can pursue their full human potential.”

“Sanders’ plan would roll back some of the greatest threats coming from the Trump administration,” said Hincapié, “and it addresses laws predating Trump that have criminalized and locked up immigrants for decades, while also protecting the rights of immigrants in our schools, workplaces, and healthcare system, and in our communities.”

“These protections are long overdue,” Hincapié said, “and it’s encouraging to see a policy proposal that sends such a strong message that immigrants are central to the future of our country.”

Billionaires Have Declared All-Out War on Sanders and Warren

For many decades, any politician daring to fight for economic justice was liable to be denounced for engaging in “class warfare.” It was always a grimly laughable accusation, coming from wealthy elites as well as their functionaries in corporate media and elective office. In the real world, class warfare — or whatever you want to call it — has always been an economic and political reality.

In recent decades, class war in the USA has become increasingly lopsided. The steady decline in union membership, the worsening of income inequality and the hollowing out of the public sector have been some results of ongoing assaults on social decency and countless human lives. Corporate power has run amuck.

Now, the billionaire class is worried. For the first time in memory, there’s a real chance that the next president could threaten the very existence of billionaires — or at least significantly reduce their unconscionable rate of wealth accumulation — in a country and on a planet with so much human misery due to extreme economic disparities.

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In early fall, when Bernie Sanders said “I don’t think that billionaires should exist,” many billionaires heard an existential threat. It was hardly a one-off comment; the Bernie 2020 campaign followed up with national distribution of a bumper sticker saying “Billionaires should not exist.”

When Elizabeth Warren stands on a debate stage and argues for a targeted marginal tax on the astronomically rich, such advocacy is anathema to those who believe that the only legitimate class war is the kind waged from the top down. In early autumn, CNBC reported that “Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle — or even back President Donald Trump — if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the party’s nomination.”

As for Bernie Sanders — less than four years after he carried every county in West Virginia against Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary — the state’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin flatly declared last week that if Sanders wins the nomination, he would not vote for his party’s nominee against Trump in November 2020.

Some billionaires support Trump and some don’t. But few billionaires have a good word to say about Sanders or Warren. And the pattern of billionaires backing their Democratic rivals is illuminating.

“Dozens of American billionaires have pulled out their checkbooks to support candidates engaged in a wide-open battle for the Democratic presidential nomination,” Forbes reported this summer. The dollar total of those donations given directly to a campaign (which federal law limits to $2,800 each) is less significant than the sentiment they reflect. And people with huge wealth are able to dump hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars at once into a Super PAC, which grassroots-parched AstroTurf candidate Joe Biden greenlighted last month.

The donations from billionaires to the current Democratic candidates could be viewed as a kind of Oligarchy Confidence Index, based on data from the Federal Election Commission. As reported by Forbes, Pete Buttigieg leads all the candidates with 23 billionaire donors, followed by 18 for Cory Booker, and 17 for Kamala Harris. Among the other candidates who have qualified for the debate coming up later this month, Biden has 13 billionaire donors and Amy Klobuchar has 8, followed by 3 for Elizabeth Warren, 1 for Tulsi Gabbard, and 1 for Andrew Yang. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has zero billionaire donors.

(The tenth person who has qualified for the next debate, self-funding billionaire candidate Tom Steyer, is in a class by himself.)

Meanwhile, relying on contributions from small donors, Sanders and Warren “eagerly bait, troll and bash billionaires at every opportunity,” in the words of a recent Los Angeles Times news story. “They send out missives to donors boasting how much damage their plans would inflict on the wallets of specific wealthy families and corporations.”

The newspaper added: “Sanders boasts that his wealth tax would cost Amazon owner Jeff Bezos $8.9 billion per year. He even championed a bill with the acronym BEZOS: The Stop Bad Employers By Zeroing Out Subsidies Act would have forced Amazon and other large firms to pay the full cost of food stamps and other benefits received by their lowest-wage employees.”

For extremely rich people who confuse net worth with human worth, the prospect of losing out on billions is an outrageous possibility. And so, a few months ago, Facebook mega-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg expressed his antipathy toward Warren while meeting with employees. As a transcript of leaked audio makes clear, Warren’s vision of using anti-trust laws to break up Big Tech virtual monopolies was more than Facebook’s head could stand to contemplate.

“But look,” Zuckerberg said, “at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

The fight happening now for the Democratic presidential nomination largely amounts to class warfare. And the forces that have triumphed in the past are outraged that they currently have to deal with so much progressive opposition. As Carl von Clausewitz observed, “A conqueror is always a lover of peace.”

Trump’s Worst Impeachable Offense Hurts the Whole World

You can run from the climate crisis, but you can’t hide. On the front lines of this global environmental calamity, entire communities are being consumed by fire, submerged by typhoons and hurricanes, or baked under the sun amid historic droughts. President Donald Trump, the climate change denier in chief, has formally begun the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Originally signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, the accord established a cooperative, global path to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees F) above preindustrial levels. The United States is now the only nation on the planet that has pulled out of the agreement. A new statement signed by over 11,000 scientists from over 150 countries warns of “untold suffering” unless global society undergoes a “major transformation.” Trump’s denial of the climate crisis is unconscionable and should be added to the articles of impeachment against him.

One Trump official with a role in both the climate crisis and in the impeachment proceedings is Wells Griffith, currently a special assistant to the president and senior director for international energy and environment for the National Security Council, serving under departing Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Griffith is a longtime Republican operative who served as deputy chief of staff to Reince Priebus when Priebus was chair of the Republican National Committee.

Wells Griffith’s appointment to the Department of Energy makes sense; his family has run a gas station in Mobile, Alabama, for over 50 years. Griffith moved from pumping gas to pushing coal, successfully negotiating the sale of 700,000 metric tons of coal from Pennsylvania to Ukraine in 2017.

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He then showed up as the top representative of the Trump administration at the U.N.’s “COP 24” climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. The U.S. held just one public event during the two-week summit, which Griffith chaired, promoting fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Amid mocking laughter and a walkout by protesters, he stated, “We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability.”

Afterward, we approached Griffith in a large central hall of the convention center (which was designed to look like the coal mine that it was built on top of) to ask questions for the “Democracy Now!” news hour. To our shock, rather than answering, he bolted, first walking quickly, then running away. Cameras rolling, we ran after him, asking questions as we weaved in and out of the crowd of climate negotiators, scientists and activists.

“Do you agree with President Trump calling climate change a hoax? Can you talk about why the U.S. is here, since President Trump is saying he’s pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord? Can you talk about why you’re pushing coal?” He dodged our questions, but did accuse us of harassing him. “A reporter asking you a question, sir, is not harassment,” we replied.

Just this Tuesday, Wells Griffith continued his refusal to answer questions when he failed to appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s closed-door session of the Trump impeachment inquiry.

While public testimony is expected to begin next week, an unrelated court case is wrapping up in a New York state courtroom. New York is suing ExxonMobil, alleging the fossil fuel giant defrauded its investors for years by understating the risk that climate change posed to shareholder value. Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil and Trump’s first secretary of state, testified at length under oath. He repeatedly claimed he could not recall details when grilled by the New York state attorneys.

Outside the courtroom, 30 children participating in the Fridays for Future weekly climate strike engaged in a die-in. Thirteen-year-old Maria Riker told us, “We held the die-in for 42 minutes, one minute for each of the 42 years that Exxon was aware of the dangers of climate change but lied about it.”

Tillerson’s successor, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, announced Monday, via tweet, “Today we begin the formal process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.” Trump declared that the U.S. would withdraw in June 2017, but legal procedures in place when the agreement was signed have prevented the formal exit until now.

In response, 350.org founder and author Bill McKibben said on “Democracy Now!,” “The fossil fuel industry had its most profitable years in the last three decades. On the other hand, we’re now missing half the sea ice in the summer Arctic. The Great Barrier Reef is half-dead. The oceans are 30% more acidic. California is on fire more weeks than not. We’re in deep, deep trouble.”

The climate crisis imperils the planet. To deny it is impeachable, the highest of high crimes and misdemeanors.