Chris Hedges's Blog, page 116

Who Exactly Are Biden’s Bundlers?

The Joe Biden campaign is short on cash, so short that it has moved from disavowing an outside super PAC earlier this year to throwing the door open to one last week. That begs the question: If Biden is compromising on this stance for a buck, what other things might he be willing to trade for fundraising help? And with whom?

The answers to these questions are among the most consequential indicators of what Joe Biden would actually do as president. A candidate’s top fundraisers often get to choose who occupies the positions of power in the executive branch—or get those jobs themselves. And how those fundraisers’ people wield (or fail to wield) power often determines a president’s legacy more than even the legislation actually passed during his/her tenure.

Yet, Biden, breaking with years of precedent—including, notably that of the man whose legacy is the foundation of Biden’s case for being president, Barack Obama—has kept information about his key fundraisers, otherwise known as “bundlers” (or, if you like, “future appointees”), secret. In the wake of his decision to welcome an outside super PAC with open arms, it is all the more important that he release that information immediately.

Welcoming a super PAC’s support won’t solve all of Biden’s financial problems; Biden will still need to raise enough money for his campaign apparatus, something he’s been struggling to do as quickly as his campaign pays for staff and charter jets. With his grassroots fundraising efforts largely having foundered and many of his supporters having already “maxed out,” Biden will likely need to rely ever more heavily on his backers to “bundle” for him.

“Bundlers” mine their social and professional networks for donations, often bringing in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for their candidates. It is not difficult to appreciate that handing $500,000 over to a candidate will get you significantly more purchase than an individual contribution of $2,800. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that these fundraisers often get to advise their preferred candidate on who gets key jobs if the candidate wins—or maybe get a job themselves. Yet, candidates are under no legal obligation to disclose the identities of these important supporters unless they are registered lobbyists (and with so many candidates having taken the “no lobbyist money” pledge, this is moot).

Nonetheless, in recent years, numerous presidential candidates have elected to voluntarily disclose their bundlers in the name of transparency. In the 2008 primary race, the Democratic contest’s three leading candidates—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards—all disclosed some bundler information. Clinton began as early as May of 2007. Even several of the candidates in the Republican contest (John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and yes, even Rudy Giuliani) disclosed the identities of their bundlers.

Barack Obama, of the oft-invoked “Obama-Biden administration,” demonstrated a particular commitment to bundler transparency. Unlike his primary competitors, Obama not only disclosed his bundlers’ identities but also provided some idea of how much they were raising by splitting them up into tiers from $50,000 to $100,000, $100,000 to $200,000, $200,000 to $500,000, and $500,000 or more. Furthermore, as a senator, Obama had introduced legislation to make bundler disclosure mandatory. Biden, usually so eager to associate himself with the former president, has failed to follow Obama’s lead in this regard.

Unfortunately, Biden is not the only one refusing to release this information. In fact, among presidential candidates who are relying on “classical bundlers” (i.e., excluding Sanders and Warren), only Senator Kamala Harris has committed to disclosing their identities in a timely manner. Harris is providing the names of those who have bundled over $25,000 for her campaign on a quarterly basis. Mayor Pete Buttigieg initially released a list of 23 bundlers in April, in the early days of his longshot campaign. Since that time, Buttigieg’s fundraising has taken off, and he has raked in millions of dollars via (according to Politico) at least 71 more bundlers. Yet Buttigieg has provided no further clarity about these new backers’ identities.

Other candidates have failed to release any bundler information at all. Remarkably, this near-universal rejection of past precedent and the principle of transparency has garnered little media attention—although a broad coalition of good government groups has raised the alarm since April.

None of this gives Biden a pass. Indeed, the fact that he was twice one half of a presidential ticket that held itself to a higher standard might make it worse. And his anti-transparency stance is definitely more concerning in light of his apparent fundraising desperation.

We know that he is not above making eyebrow-raising promises in the interest of currying favor with donors. Earlier this year, he famously told a room full of high-dollar donors that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”

Apparently, that didn’t generate the sort of enthusiasm he needed, which begs the question: What more might he be promising in exchange for more hustle from his bundlers? The possibilities are almost endless, and many likely won’t even garner any attention, let alone engender political blowback. By quietly promising bundlers a say in who occupies roles in, for example, the Departments of the Treasury and of Health and Human Services, or on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Biden can assure donors that their business models and personal fortunes won’t come under threat.

To be sure, disclosure doesn’t ensure that bundlers are excluded from a presidential administration—scan the ranks of Obama’s executive branch, and you will find the names of some who fundraised for him. That’s why we’re also asking all candidates, including Joe Biden, to make public commitments regarding the types of people they would appoint to their administration. But in the absence of such promises, it is the least that Biden (and others) can do to be at least as transparent as Rudy Giuliani and give the public access to his list of bundlers (the “short list,” if you will).

Jeff Hauser is the director of the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which aims to increase scrutiny on executive branch appointments.

Eleanor Eagan is a research assistant at the Revolving Door Project.

This article was produced in partnership by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Bolton Summoned; First Big Vote Set on Impeachment Probe

WASHINGTON — House investigators are summoning former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in their impeachment inquiry, deepening their reach into the White House as the probe accelerates toward a potential vote to remove the president.

Democratic lawmakers want to hear next week from Bolton, the hawkish former adviser who openly sparred over the administration’s approach to Ukraine, in particular President Donald Trump’s reliance on his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani for a back-channel operation. Bolton once derided Giuliani’s work as a “drug deal” and said he wanted no part of it, according to previous testimony.

The Democrats are also calling John Eisenberg, the lawyer for the NSC who fielded an Army officer’s concerns over Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine president, and Michel Ellis, another security council official, according to a person familiar with the invitation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Related Articles











Trump Dismisses John Bolton, Says They 'Disagreed Strongly'



by

















White House Official Defies Impeachment Subpoena, Deepening Standoff



by

















What Happens in the Senate if Trump Is Impeached?



by Bill Blum

The rush of possible new witnesses comes as the House prepares to take its first official vote Thursday on the process ahead. That includes public hearings in a matter of weeks and the possibility of drafting articles of impeachment against the president.

The White House has urged officials not to testify in the impeachment proceedings, and it’s not guaranteed that those called will appear for depositions, even if they receive subpoenas as previous witnesses have.

Bolton’s former deputy, Charles Kupperman, has filed a lawsuit in federal court asking a judge to resolve the question of whether he can be forced to testify since he was a close and frequent adviser to the president. Any ruling in that case could presumably have an impact on whether Bolton will testify.

Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill say the entire impeachment inquiry is illegitimate and are unpersuaded by the House resolution formally setting out next steps.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the basic format for the impeachment probe denies Trump the “most basic rights of due process.”

Now in its second month, the investigation is focused on Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine when he asked President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democrats and a potential 2020 political rival, Joe Biden, as the White House was withholding military aid Ukraine relies on for its defenses. Democrats contend Trump was proposing a quid-pro-quo arrangement.

On Thursday, the investigators are to hear from Tim Morrison, a former top GOP aide on Capitol Hill, who served at Trump’s National Security Council and was among those likely monitoring the president’s call with Ukraine.

Late Wednesday, it was disclosed that Morrison was resigning his White House position. He has been a central figure in other testimony about Trump’s dealing with Ukraine.

Earlier in the day, the Democratic and Republican House lawmakers heard fresh testimony about the Trump administration’s unusual back channels to Ukraine.

Two State Department Ukraine experts offered new accounts of Trump’s reliance on Giuliani rather than career diplomats to engage with the East European ally, a struggling democracy facing aggression from Russia.

Foreign Service officer Christopher Anderson testified that Bolton cautioned him that Giuliani “was a key voice with the president on Ukraine” and could complicate U.S. goals for the country.

Another Foreign Service officer, Catherine Croft, said that during her time at Trump’s National Security Council, she received “multiple” phone calls from lobbyist Robert Livingston — a former top Republican lawmaker once in line to become House speaker — telling her the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, should be fired.

“It was not clear to me at the time — or now — at whose direction or at whose expense Mr. Livingston was seeking the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch,” she said in prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press.

Livingston characterized Yovanovitch as an “‘Obama holdover’ and associated with George Soros,” she said, referring to the American financier who is often the subject of conservative criticism in the U.S. and Europe.

Most Democrats are expected to support the formal impeachment investigation resolution Thursday, even if they don’t back impeachment itself, saying they are in favor of opening the process with more formal procedures.

Public hearings are expected to begin in mid-November, a matter of weeks. Democrats are eager to hear from some top witnesses who have already provided compelling testimony behind closed doors, including diplomat William Taylor, a top ambassador in Ukraine, and Alexander Vindman, the Army officer who testified Tuesday that he twice reported to superiors, including Eisenberg, his concerns about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

Vindman is willing to testify publicly, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity Wednesday to discuss it.

At Trump’s hotel in Washington, during a fundraiser for House Republicans and lengthy dinner afterward with GOP leaders, the president indicated he was prepared for the fight ahead, said those familiar with the private gatherings Tuesday night.

“He’s a tough guy,” said Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the GOP whip.

Both career diplomats testifying Wednesday had served as top aides to the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who was the first to testify in the impeachment inquiry and whose cache of text messages provided key insight into Trump’s demands on the new Ukraine president.

Croft, who testified for nearly five hours, described being told at an administration meeting that security funds for Ukraine were being put on hold “at the direction of the president,” corroborating other accounts that have been provided to investigators.

In his opening statement, Anderson traced his unease with developments that he felt threatened to set back relations between the U.S. and Ukraine.

He told investigators that senior White House officials blocked an effort by the State Department to release a November 2018 statement condemning Russia’s attack on Ukrainian military vessels.

Both witnesses were instructed by the administration to not testify but appeared in response to subpoenas from the House, according to a statement from their attorney Mark MacDougall.

The lawyer told lawmakers that neither of his clients is the whistleblower whose complaint triggered the impeachment inquiry and that he would object to any questions aimed at identifying that person.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Padmananda Rama, Matthew Daly and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

Twitter Bans Political Ads Ahead of 2020 Election

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter, reacting to growing concern about misinformation spread on social media, is banning all political advertising from its service. Its move sets it apart from Facebook, which continues to defend running paid political ads, even false ones, as a free speech priority.

“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Wednesday in a series of tweets announcing the new policy.

Facebook has taken fire since it disclosed earlier in October that it will not fact-check ads by politicians or their campaigns, which could allow them to lie freely. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress last week that politicians have the right to free speech on Facebook.

Related Articles











Twitter Rakes in Cash From Anti-Immigrant Bigots



by Ilana Novick











Court to President: Blocking Twitter Critics Is Unconstitutional



by

















Why I’m Glad About Trump's Latest Twitter Tirade



by Sonali Kolhatkar

The issue suddenly arose in September when Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, refused to remove a misleading video ad from President Donald Trump’s campaign that targeted former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate.

In response, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another presidential hopeful, ran her own ad on Facebook taking aim at Zuckerberg. The ad falsely claimed that Zuckerberg endorsed President Donald Trump for re-election, acknowledging the deliberate falsehood as necessary to make a point.

Critics have called on Facebook to ban all political ads. These include CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who recently called the company’s policy of allowing lies “absolutely ludicrous” and advised the social media giant to sit out the 2020 election until it can figure out something better.

During Facebook’s earnings conference call — which began less than an hour after Dorsey’s tweet — Zuckerberg stood by the company’s decision to run unchecked political ads. He emphatically stressed what he called Facebook’s deep belief “that political speech is important” and denied any financial motive, noting that political ads make up less than half of a percent of the company’s revenue.

To put that in perspective, he added, Facebook’s recent $5 billion Federal Trade Commission fine was more than 10 times that.

“This is complex stuff. Anyone who says the answer is simple hasn’t thought about the nuances and downstream challenges,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can say that we are not doing what we believe or we haven’t thought hard about these issues.”

Google had no immediate comment on Twitter’s policy change.

Misleading political ads on social media burst into the spotlight during the 2016 presidential election, when Russian agents took out thousands of ads on Facebook in an attempt to sow political division and influence the election.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, another Democratic 2020 contender, retweeted Dorsey’s announcement, adding the comment, “Good. Your turn, Facebook.”

Dorsey said the company is recognizing that advertising on social media offers an unfair level of targeting compared to other mediums. It is not about free expression, he asserted.

“This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle,” he tweeted. “It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”

Twitter currently only allows certified campaigns and organizations to run political ads for candidates and issues. The latter tend to advocate on broader issues such as climate change, abortion rights and immigration.

The company said it will make some exceptions, such as allowing ads that encourage voter turnout. It will describe those in a detailed policy it plans to release on Nov. 15.

It will also still allow politicians to freely tweet their thoughts and opinions, which can then be shared and spread. Trump’s Twitter feed in particular is known for his often bombastic and controversial tweets that are shared widely.

Twitter said in June that political figures and world leaders who tweet abusive or threatening messages might get slapped with a warning label, but the tweets would remain on the site. Twitter has not yet used this warning label.

Federal campaigns are expected to spend the majority of advertising dollars on broadcast and cable channels during the 2020 election, according to advertising research firm Kantar, and about 20% of the total $6 billion in spending on digital ads.

Twitter’s policy will start on Nov. 22.

Russia Isn’t Getting the Recognition It Deserves on Syria

At a time when the credibility of the United States as either an unbiased actor or reliable ally lies in tatters, Russia has emerged as the one major power whose loyalty to its allies is unquestioned, and whose ability to serve as an honest broker between seemingly intractable opponents is unmatched.

If there is to be peace in Syria, it will be largely due to the patient efforts of Moscow employing deft negotiation, backed up as needed by military force, to shape conditions conducive for a political solution to a violent problem. If ever there was a primer for the art of diplomacy, the experience of Russia in Syria from 2011 to the present is it.

Like the rest of the world, Russia was caught off guard by the so-called Arab Spring that swept through the Middle East and North Africa in 2010-2011, forced to watch from the sidelines as the old order in Tunisia and Egypt was swept aside by popular discontent. While publicly supporting the peaceful transition of power in Tunis and Cairo, in private the Russian government watched the events unfolding in Egypt and the Maghreb with trepidation, concerned that the social and political transformations underway were a continuation of the kind of Western-backed “color revolutions” that had occurred previously in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004).

When, in early 2011, the Arab Spring expanded into Libya, threatening the rule of longtime Russian client Moammar Gadhafi, Russia initially supported the creation of a U.N.-backed no-fly zone for humanitarian purposes, only to watch in frustration as the U.S. and NATO used it as a vehicle to launch a concerted air campaign in a successful bid to drive Gadhafi from power.

By the time Syria found itself confronting popular demonstrations against the rule of President Bashar Assad, Russia—still struggling to understand the root cause of the unrest—had become wary of the playbook being employed by the U.S. and NATO in response. While Russia was critical of the violence used by the Assad government in responding to the anti-government demonstrations in the spring of 2011, it blocked efforts by the U.S. and Europe to impose economic sanctions against the Syrian government, viewing them as little more than the initial salvo of a broader effort to achieve regime change in Damascus using the Libyan model.

Moscow’s refusal to help facilitate that Western-sponsored regime change, however, did not translate into unequivocal support for the continued rule of Assad. Russia supported the appointment of former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to head up a process for bringing a peaceful resolution to the Syrian crisis, and endorsed Annan’s six-point peace plan, put forward in March 2012, which included the possibility of a peaceful transition of power away from Assad.

At the same time Russia was promoting a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian crisis, the U.S. was spearheading a covert program to provide weapons and equipment to anti-Assad forces, funneling shipments from Libya through Turkey and into rebel-controlled areas of Syria. This CIA-run effort, which eventually morphed into a formal operation known as Timber Sycamore, helped fuel an increase in the level of violence inside Syria that made it impossible for the Assad government to fully implement the Annan plan. The inevitable collapse of the Annan initiative was used by the U.S. and its European allies to call for U.N. sanctions against Syria, which were again rejected by Russia.

While Russia continued to call for a political solution to the Syrian crisis that allowed for the potential of Assad being replaced, it insisted that this decision would be made by a process that included the Syrian government, as opposed to the U.S. demand that Assad must first step down.

The Military Solution

The failed Annan initiative was replaced by a renewed U.N.-sponsored process, known as Geneva II, headed by Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat with extensive U.N. experience. The Geneva process stalled as Brahimi sought to bridge the gap between the U.S.-backed Syrian opposition—which insisted upon Assad’s resignation as a precondition to any talks about the future of Syria—and Russia, which continued to insist that the Assad government have a voice in determining Syria’s future.

Complicating these talks was the escalation of violence inside Syria, where anti-Assad forces, building upon the massive amount of military aid received from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, aggressively pushed for a military victory that would moot the Geneva II process.

By June 2013 the situation had devolved to the point that the U.S., citing allegations that the Syrian government was using a nerve agent against rebel forces, was considering the establishment of no-fly zones in northern Syria and along the Jordanian border. While sold as a humanitarian move designed to create safe zones for Syrian civilians fleeing the fighting, the real purpose of these zones was to carve out large sections of Syrian territory where the opposition could organize and prepare for war under the umbrella of U.S. air power without fear of Syrian government retaliation.

The concept of Syria’s chemical weapons being used by the U.S. to justify military action against the Syrian government was not hypothetical. In 2012, President Barack Obama had declared that any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be considered a “red line,” forcing the U.S. to act. When, in August 2013, a major chemical weapons incident occurred in Ghouta (conclusive attribution for the attack does not exist; the U.S. and NATO contend that the Syrian government was behind the attacks, which the Russians and the Syrian government claim were carried out by anti-Assad opposition for the purpose of compelling U.S. intervention), it looked like the U.S. would step in.

Committing to a larger war in Syria was not a politically popular move in the U.S., given the recent experience in Iraq, and when Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September 2013, the Russians suggested a solution—the disarmament of Syrian chemical weapons under the supervision of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). When Secretary of State John Kerry opened the door to that possibility, Russia and Syria jumped on the opportunity, paving the way for one of the great disarmament achievements of modern times, an action that won the OPCW the Nobel Peace Prize for 2013.

The disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons was a huge success, for which Russia received little recognition, despite the major role it played in conceiving and overseeing its implementation. Russia had hoped that the disarmament process could lead to the establishment of international confidence in the Assad government that would translate into a diplomatic breakthrough in Geneva. This was not to be; a major peace conference planned for 2014 collapsed, and efforts to revive the failed talks were sidelined by the escalation of violence in Syria, as the armed opposition, sensing victory, pressed its attacks on the Syrian government.

The situation in Syria was further complicated when, in 2013, the organization formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq renamed itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and started carving out a so-called caliphate from the ungovernable expanses of eastern Syria and western Iraq. Having established its capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, Islamic State launched a dramatic offensive in early 2014, capturing large swaths of territory in both Syria and Iraq, including the Iraqi city of Mosul. By 2015, the Syrian government, under pressure from anti-Assad rebels and the forces of Islamic State, was on the brink of collapse.

The consequences of the loss of Syria to forces dominated by radical Islamic ideology do not seem to have been fully considered by those in the West, such as the U.S. and its European allies, which were funneling military aid to the rebel forces. For Russia, however, which had its own experiences with Muslim separatist movements in the Caucasus region, such a result was deemed an existential threat, with thousands of Russian citizens fighting on the side of Islamic State and the anti-Assad opposition who would logically seek to return to Russia to continue the struggle once victory had been achieved in Syria. In September 2015, Putin urged the Russian Parliament to approve the intervention of the Russian military on the side of the Syrian government. The Parliament passed the resolution, thus beginning one of the most successful military interventions in modern times.

The impact of the Russian intervention was as dramatic as it was decisive. Almost immediately, the Russian air force helped turn the tide on the field of battle, allowing the Syrian army to launch attacks against both the anti-Assad opposition and Islamic State after years of losing ground. The Russian intervention helped pave the way for the commitment by Hezbollah and Iran of tens of thousands of ground troops who helped tipped the scale in favor of the Syrian government. The presence of Russian forces nipped in the bud all talk of Western military intervention and created the conditions for the Syrian government to eventually recapture much of the territory it had lost to Islamic State and the anti-Assad rebels.

Unheralded Peacemaker

The connection between military action and diplomacy is a delicate one. For some nations, like the United States, diplomacy is but a front for facilitating military action—the efforts to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq stand as a prime example. For Russia, however, the decision to intervene militarily in Syria was not seen as an end unto itself, but rather as the means by which Russia could shape the political landscape in such a manner as to make a political solution realistic. From the Russian perspective, the Geneva II process was an empty shell, having been hijacked by Saudi Arabia and its anti-Assad proxies.

In January 2017, Russia took the diplomatic offensive, initiating its own peace process through a series of summits held in the Kazakh capital of Astana. This process, which brought together Turkey, the Syrian government and Iran, together with Russia, quickly supplanted the Geneva II talks as the most viable vehicle for achieving a peaceful resolution to the Syrian conflict. By directly linking diplomatic talks with the fighting on the ground, the Astana process had a relevance that Geneva II lacked. For its part, Russia was able to woo Turkey away from insisting that Assad must leave, to a stance that recognized the territorial integrity of the Syrian nation, and a recognition that Assad was the legitimate leader of Syria, at least for the time being. The Astana process was lengthy and experienced its share of ups and downs. But today it serves as the foundation of a peace process that, unlike any of its predecessors, has a real chance of success.

Bridging the gap between the finesse of diplomacy and the brutal violence of military action is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable. For its part, the United Nations has undertaken so-called peacekeeping operations with mixed effect. In recognition of the importance and difficulty of this kind of work, the Nobel Committee awarded the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize to the U.N. Peacekeepers. When the diplomatic solutions reached in Astana needed to be implemented in Syria, Russia turned to the most unlikely source for turning objectives into reality: the Russian military police. A relatively new entity in the Russian military establishment, formed only in 2012, the military police were tasked with a wide range of missions, including convoy protection, area security, restoring law and order and resettlement operations.

In late 2016, as the Syrian army was positioned to recapture the city of Aleppo from rebel forces, Russia deployed a battalion of military police to Syria. The mission of these troops was not to engage in frontline fighting, but rather to restore law and order and win the trust and confidence of a civilian population wary of the potential for retaliation at the hands of the victorious Syrian army.

By all accounts, the Russian military police performed admirably, and soon the Russian ministry of defense dispatched more battalions of these new peacekeepers, who quickly established a reputation of being fair arbiters of the many cease-fire agreements brokered through the Astana process. The Russian military police were ubiquitous, whether policing the no-man’s land separating warring parties, escorting convoys of rebel fighters and their families to safe zones or providing security for OPCW inspectors.

The final phases of the Syrian conflict are playing out in northern Syria today. The last vestiges of the anti-Assad opposition, having been taken over by al-Qaida, are dug in in their final bastion in Idlib Province, their ultimate defeat at the hands of the combined Russian-Syrian armed forces all but assured. The American intervention in northeastern Syria, begun in 2015 as a means of confronting and defeating Islamic State but continued and expanded in 2017 as a vehicle for destabilizing the Assad government, has imploded in the face of a geopolitical reality in transition, facilitated in large part by the combined forces of Russian diplomacy in Astana and Russian-led military action on the ground in Syria.

By successfully wooing Turkey away from the U.S., Russia has dictated the reality on the ground in Syria, greenlighting a Turkish incursion that put the American forces deployed there in an impossible situation, prompting their evacuation. While the U.S. continues to maintain a military presence in Syria, occupying a border crossing point at Tanf and a series of military positions along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in order to secure nearby Syrian oil fields, the ability of the U.S. to logistically sustain this force is doubtful, making its eventual withdrawal from Syria inevitable.

Moreover, by compelling an American withdrawal from northeastern Syria, Russia broke the back of the U.S.-supported Kurdish autonomous entity known as Rojava, and in doing so prevented a larger war between Turkey, the Kurds and the U.S.

In greenlighting the Turkish incursion into northern Syria, the Russians invoked the 1998 Adana Treaty, which guarantees the sovereign inviolability of Syria’s borders. The processes involved in stabilizing the Turkish-Syrian border, defeating the anti-Assad forces in Idlib, evicting the Americans from Syrian soil, and integrating the Kurds into a future Syrian government are lengthy, complex and not necessarily assured of a positive outcome. One thing is certain, however: The prospects for peace in Syria are greater today than at any time since 2011. And the fact that Russia has deployed even more battalions of its military police to Syria to oversee implementation of the current cease-fire bodes well for the prospects of success.

Despite literally salvaging victory from the jaws of defeat, the scope of the Russian accomplishment in Syria is muted in the United States, thanks to rampant Russophobia that has insinuated itself into every aspect of the domestic political discourse. Under normal circumstances, the Russian accomplishment in Syria would have been deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, if not for the Russian diplomats and leaders who oversaw the effort to forge peace from the furnace of war, then at least for the Russian military police whose actions in Syria embody the very definition of humanitarian peacekeeping.

Over time, international historians will come to appreciate what Russia accomplished in Syria, potentially ending a sectarian conflict that could easily have served as the foundation for a decades-long conflagration with regional and global consequences.

Whether American historians will ever be capable of doing the same is unknown. But this much is true: In the years to come, children will be born of parents whose lives were not terminated or otherwise destroyed by a larger Syrian conflict that almost assuredly would have transpired if not for the honest broker services provided by Russia. Intentionally or not, Russian diplomacy prevented the United States from embarking on a foreign policy disaster of its own making. While it is highly doubtful that Americans will ever muster the moral fortitude to say so publicly, those who know the truth should find the time to whisper, “Thanks, Putin,” between the barrage of anti-Russian propaganda that floods the American mainstream media today.

Like it or not, in Syria, the Russians saved us from ourselves.

Who Appointed Mark Zuckerberg Head of the Thought Police?

What follows is a conversation between California gubernatorial candidate Adriel Hampton 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.

Alexandria O.: You announced recently that the official policy of Facebook now allows politicians to pay to spread disinformation. Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact checking on political advertisements?

Mark Zuckerberg: Well, Congresswoman, I think lying is bad and I think if you were to run an ad that had a lie, that would be bad.

Alexandria O.: So you won’t take down lies or you will take down lies? I mean, it’s just a pretty simple yes or no.

Mark Zuckerberg: In democracy, I believe that people should be able to see for themselves what politicians that they may or may not vote for are saying [crosstalk 00:00:30]

Alexandria O.: So you won’t take them down.

Marc Steiner: I don’t want to be on her bad side. That was of course, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushing Mark Zuckerberger over the false advertising that Facebook allows with no fact checking by right-wing candidates.

So let’s start there and hello and welcome to The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you with us. What did he say? I think he’s the new king of doublespeak. Facebook cut a news deal with the Breitbart. Breitbart, remember them? The news liars from the right and now employees there are revolting at Facebook because Zucc, as he’s called by, some allows politicians to post ads that are clearly lies and from folks are taking full advantage of that. So when AOC asked if she could run an ad full of lies it inspired someone to post this ad on Facebook.

Speaker 4: When Teddy Roosevelt became president, our land, forests and wildlife had been exploited for more than 100. But the consequences of these lost resources had not yet dawned in the public conscience. President Teddy Roosevelt fired the imagination of the American people, shook our nation from its lethargy and began to rescue the public domain.

Speaker 5: Clean air and clean water, a wise is use of our land, with the protection of wildlife and natural beauty. These are part of the birthright of every American. To guarantee that birthright, we must act and act decisively. It is literally now or never.

Speaker 6: It breaks my heart to see that the conservative movement in America has really abandoned a century of tradition, of support for conservation and environment.

Senator Graham: I’m Senator Graham from South Carolina. I’m here to announce with my colleagues that we care about conservation. We care about the environment. From a Republican point of view, I think we need to look at the science. Admit that climate change is real. Simply put, we believe in the Green New Deal.

Alexandria O.: This should not be a partisan issue.

Senator Graham: I’m not a scientist. I have the grades to prove it, but I have really taken this issue to heart.

Marc Steiner: So who knew? I mean this is a whole different Graham than anyone’s ever seen before. I kind of liked this Graham, might changing my whole idea of what to do. I don’t know. Let’s welcome the man who did this ad that was taken down by Facebook. He’s now running for governor of California. Adriel Hampton, welcome to The Real News. Good to have you with us.

Adriel Hampton: Hey, thank you Marc. It’s good to be here.

Marc Steiner: So why’d you tell those lies?

Adriel Hampton: Well, during the hearing where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioned Mark Zuckerberg, she laid out the scenario for an ad just like that one. And the interesting thing is what happens when you really do it, right? So we have a political action committee called The Really Online Lefty League. And Wednesday night after seeing that testimony, I got a flash of insight and I thought we need to make that ad and see what happens if we put it up on Facebook.

So I contacted a friend who works with me, Mike Ramsey, who is the founder of something called the Institute for Progressive Memetics and he’s a very talented designer and obviously video editor. And we discussed the idea. I had thought about doing an image first. He said, it’s got to be a video. He cut that video for The Really Online Lefty League. And the next day, Thursday, we put it up and I thought after this hearing and Ocasio-Cortez said, “Could I run an ad saying that my, the GOP candidates in the primaries support the Green New Deal?” And I thought Zucc would have sent a missive around to make sure that that ad didn’t get approved, but it did get approved. Facebook has a review process and then they, if they get complaints or media contact them, then they react.

And that ad ran for about a day, very little spend. The goal was never to intentionally deceive. It was to test the policies that are allowing a president whose campaign manager has run millions of Facebook ads, he claims to have, and he also is planning to spend $1 billion on Trump’s re-elect. That’s on Facebook, that’s enough money, even a 10th of that is enough to sway an election in my opinion, depending on what other candidates are doing. But it’s that exemption for falsehood is very big. Now then Facebook took down our ads saying that it is a political action committee, not a politician.

So then Mike Gravel, the former candidate for president, put it up on his page. They took it down again this time saying it had been debunked on our page, so it couldn’t be run subsequently on someone else’s page. And then Facebook fact checkers also indicated to me that they might rule that Mike is a former politician, even though he’s actively doing interviews and he’s promoting his book and he’s clearly a politician, but he’s not in elected office or actively seeking elected office.

So Monday morning I went and I filed to run for governor of California because I figured if you can launch a run for governor by attacking Trump, Mark Zuckerberg and the biggest recipient of PG&E, large S in California politics, that’s a pretty good way to kick it off.

Marc Steiner: And you did. So of course in California, it doesn’t cost anything to run for office, right?

Adriel Hampton: It doesn’t. Not when you declare. You have to pay a fee that’s not in consequential, much closer to the actual election in 2022. So yeah. Yeah. Just about anyone could go and file for office right now in California. You basically, you can’t be a felon and you have to sign your name on it. It’s a one page form.

But I think in this case, the interesting thing is we have the technical acuity to keep doing these kinds of ads. And we now have myself, Mike Gravel and one other federal candidate who are all… all of us will run these fake ads if we have to, to beat up at the system until we get politicians and right wingers treated the same as everyone else. And I swear, Marc, if they don’t change, it wouldn’t take me very much money to defeat them. And I can explain why.

Marc Steiner: So I mean, so you’re running for California, basically, so you can undermine Facebook and tell a lot of lies about the other side.

Adriel Hampton: I’m running for California governor because this issue… Ocasio-Cortez is doing a great job, it looks like, at the federal level, but she’s not in House leadership. And you need someone like a governor or a chair of a powerful committee in California or in Congress to hold real hearings on this. We can hold hearings for months figuring out how in a democracy you police this kind of false speech, disinformation, the audience targeting that Facebook allows that is really more powerful than anything ever invented. And that’s the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal, right? And I’m very familiar with psychometric targeting. I have not run millions of Facebook ads, but I have run tens of thousands.

Marc Steiner: So, speaking of Zuckerberg, I’m going to come back to this Cambridge Analytica thing and what happened with AOC, but this is Zuckerberg talking at Georgetown, I believe in Washington DC just a little bit ago.

Mark Zuckerberg: In times of social tension, our impulse is often to pull back on free expression, because we want the progress that comes from free expression, but we don’t want the tension. Pulling back on free expression wasn’t the answer. And in fact, it often ends up hurting the minority views that we seek to protect. We can either continue to stand for free expression, understanding its messiness, but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide that the cost is simply too great, yet still a strict first amendment standard might require us to allow things like terrorist propaganda or bullying people that almost everyone agrees that we should stop, and I certainly do. So once we’re taking this content down, the question is, where do you draw the line?

Marc Steiner: Where do you draw the line? And he, I mean, he made it very clear when he was being questioned by Ocasio-Cortez. He sounded like a 12 year old. I don’t lie, I don’t like lies. So what do you make of Mr. Zuckerberg in this?

Adriel Hampton: Well, I heard the word free a lot of times from a man who runs a $531 billion advertising platform. So I find it to be incredibly disingenuous and in fact dishonest. And Mark Zuckerberg himself is dealing in gross misinformation. And before we came on air, and I think in some of the slides here, I saw references to Popular Information which is a newsletter that regularly talks about how Facebook is not enforcing its policies against Trump. And Facebook, I believe, explicitly clarified its policies to make sure that it was clear that it was okay for Trump to lie. They also use Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller as a fact-checking organization. I believe they created a foundation to be a fact checker.

Now I’ve just refused my first Fox on air interview and will continue to do so, because these are the companies, Fox, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Breitbart, that are really a part of the problem of gross right-wing propaganda. It’s also interesting, you don’t see The Real News being asked to provide a fact checking crew. You don’t see Occupy Democrats being asked to be a news source inside. They have I think a publication called The Washington Times, that’s not highly regarded for truthfulness, but neither was Daily Caller. And then Daily Wire has 14 Facebook pages coordinating to boost its content on a daily basis, making it more popular on Facebook than CNN and New York Times on many days.

Marc Steiner: So tell me. There’s this is tweet that AOC put out about Cambridge Analytica and I just looked, for our viewers to take a look at this a minute. I mean, here’s what we know that Zuckerberg doesn’t know when Facebook discovered, he discovered that Cambridge Analytica scandal, that’s hard to believe. And so Zucc privately met with Trump and the far right. He’s now allowing pages for disinformation ads. He didn’t tell the whole truth about his fact-checkers. So that’s what you were alluding to. And, so what do you think’s afoot here when you have that and you had the News Wire and Ben Shapiro having 14, 16, 7 or the number of Facebook pages spewing out lies. He cut a deal with Breitbart, the right wing news media. I mean, is it all about money?

Adriel Hampton: Yeah, I want a smile, but I have to grimace through all of that. I think it’s about money and I think it’s about power, right? You consider, I gave a scenario of some both independent and very left organizations that could correlate to some of the organizations that are in power now with Facebook. And I guess the issue that we’re hammering on is that right now it appears that Facebook is either has a pure profit motive or it has the motive of kissing up to the administration, right? If you know that Trump is going to be really pissed off if you start censoring his content or if you start messing with the Daily Wire, then Facebook, they might do this stuff just to stay in Trump’s good graces.

And we’ve also seen that Mark Zuckerberg does not want Elizabeth Warren to be president because she’s openly called for the breakup of Facebook. So we have the CEO of a company manipulating an election here. And I’m challenging their standing to be the arbiter of truth on their platform. Who gave Mark Zuckerberg the right to decide what the first amendment means.

Marc Steiner: I mean, that’s the danger-

Adriel Hampton: He’s not a judge. He’s not a politician. He’s not democratically elected.

Marc Steiner: No. And that’s the danger in part of this, is when the public commons is privately owned, it changes the nature of our democracy and could. I mean AOC put this other tweet up and when she.. the end of this tweet I think is she’s really pushing hard here. When she writes to the end, they are making active and aggressive decisions that imperil our elections. And I think that’s very real. And I think that’s the point that we’re just beginning to uncover. I mean, I’m not sure where this goes.

I mean, let me conclude with this, this last tweet here up from Carole Cadwalladr, who is in The Observer. And I thought what she said here was really something. It’s not a crime. It’s the coverup always, always, always. This weekend was he brought this fire out. And that’s why I think there’s trouble ahead for Zucc. This isn’t the end of the Cambridge Analytical scandal. It’s the beginning. I mean, so talk a bit about where you think this going to unfold and what this means for you and what you’re about to do.

Adriel Hampton: Yeah. I think that we need democratic regulation of these companies. They should not be allowed to regulate themselves. If it’s a free speech issue from the first amendment, that’s the government, not Facebook, that gets to decide how that’s interpreted, right? We do, those of us on the progressive side of the spectrum, it’s challenging that we have more conservative Supreme Court than I would like to see these things. But Congress can act and also Sacramento can act and that’s the importance of me running for governor. We will continue to challenge these policies.

Have I given you… there’s a Mitch McConnell’s scenario. Do you want to hear it?

Marc Steiner: Yep, please.

Adriel Hampton: So Mitchell McConnell right now is blocking action on any bills, right? He’s kind of saying I’m the Grim Reaper of the Senate. Well, Mitch McConnell, how about we run a parody, a parody ad and we’ll run it and it won’t say that we want to elect or defeat you and it won’t be an electioneering ad, but it will talk about how you secretly want to be president and you were secretly planning to stab Trump in the back in the impeachment hearings. And we will run that ad in Kentucky and we’ll run it to, and these are real categories inside Facebook’s ad targeting, and we’ll run it too likely to engage with political content, (conservative) and people with a high school education.

Marc Steiner: I’ll tell you what, we’ll continue our conversations down the road for the next year. If you have you put something up, we’ll try to do it and we’ll put it out there on our sites as well and continue this conversation. And I’m glad-

Adriel Hampton: Thanks.

Marc Steiner: … it’s good to see a man who’s not afraid to fight and have a sense of humor and keep pushing this so.

Adriel Hampton: Thank you Marc. Appreciate it.

Marc Steiner: Adriel Hampton, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s been great.

Adriel Hampton: Absolutely.

Marc Steiner: Keep on telling them. And thank you all for watching The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you with us. Let us know what you think. Take care.

America Can’t Wait Any Longer for Reparations

Amid revived calls for reparations to benefit the descendants of United States slavery, reports have emerged recently that experts have found the wrecked slave ship Clotilda in waters near Mobile, Alabama. The Clotilda is the last known slave ship to reach the United States. Descendants of the Clotilda’s owner and the descendants of the human cargo aboard that ship continue to reside in areas of Alabama near the located shipwreck. Some local residents say that the family members descended from the owner of the Clotilda have always know the location of the ship’s wreckage and they report several attempts by that family to destroy the evidence of their importing of African slaves—which was a crime in 1860, the year that the Clotilda offloaded African slaves and was scuttled near Mobile.

Today, the descendants of the ship’s owner enjoy land ownership, wealth and societal privilege vastly superior to the meager holdings of the descendants of the slaves who were unloaded from the Clotilda. The Associated Press report states, “the slave ship Clotilda may offer one of the more clear-cut cases for slavery reparations, with identifiable perpetrators and victims.” However, if reparations for the wealth, power and privilege gained by the U.S. from the African slave trade are to only be meted out to those cases with “identifiable perpetrators and victims,” then the attempt to gain reasonable recompense for a debt long owed to the African American community is a bust before it gets underway.

Merely compensating those who can draw a direct link to the slave trade, as clearly as is the case of the descendants of the Clotilda affair, fails to address the national issue of a debt owed to 4 million imported slaves and their centuries of unpaid labor that contributed to subsequent amassing of power and wealth by whites in the U.S. Any legitimate effort toward recompense and reconciliation would have the U.S. admit that American “exceptionalism” is the direct result of the horrors inflicted upon African slaves and their progeny. The privileges, riches and opportunities enjoyed by whites today are the result of the African slave trade, Jim Crow laws and continuing unprosecuted terrorism.

Blacks and whites often view reparations as an impossibility, failing to understand the national debt owed to slavery. Many white U.S. citizens are unwilling to accept that the main cause of today’s racial disparity in the U.S. is directly linked to an issue that should have been resolved more than 150 years ago at the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. There remains a great need for all citizens to understand the dehumanizing impact that slavery continues to have on U.S. citizens at every level of society. We must accept that U.S. world power has been obtained and maintained by the profitable exploitation of African Americans.

The idea of prosecuting a case for reparations on the basis of “identifiable perpetrators and victims” is less than a sincere effort to resolve the debt owed to slavery and the descendants of those who survived that cruel institution. It is difficult to understand how any rational human could draw a conclusion that denies the slave’s uncompensated contribution to the building of this nation. When confronted with the facts and figures created by the U.S. slave trade, open-minded humans find it difficult to sincerely deny that the disparity in the quality of life between black and white citizens in the U.S. today is the result of continuing systemic racism, the byproduct of slavery.

Today, there are dozens of U.S. corporations, universities and institutions whose very existence is owed to the slave trade. Still, U.S. political leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell continue to claim that emancipation was over 150 years ago, too long in the past to matter. After all, slave descendants have civil rights bills that have been the law for more than 50 years, and the U.S. has elected a black president. Other detractors in denial declare that the U.S. could never determine who among blacks currently residing here should be made whole or how such a recompense would be dispersed, thus denying the possibility of compensating African Americans for slavery and the repercussions of Jim Crow and continuous discrimination. This state of denial is a sham excuse put forth by the white privileged touting their unwillingness to address an ugly aspect of the nation’s history. These are men and women without empathy and not yet willing to make an effort to repay a valid debt; or else their delay is an example of effectively arguing off the actual point and feigning to question the unquestionable, rather than acknowledging this enormous atrocity and actively join in charting a path toward an equitable resolution of the debt owed to descendants of slaves for torturous and terroristic suffering inflicted by white U.S. citizens.

Some Americans don’t seem to differentiate between reparations with reconciliation. I would like to suggest that they make the poets’ choice, which says, “If asked to choose between two options, choose both.” Africans forced into the diaspora by slavery deserve both reparations and reconciliation. To reduce reparations down to a check is both an insult and a diversionary tactic arguing issues that are off the point. Recompense is justified, and it can be delivered in a rapid and feasible fashion without resorting to individual payouts, avoiding the specter of ensuing tedium and bureaucracy.

Currently, few white Americans take the concept of reparations seriously, and, when pressed, black American lapdogs are hired to muddy rational arguments with provocative bourgeois nonsense. Meanwhile, blacks seeking damage repayment for life, land and labor stolen from them by the use of brutal force are depicted as demanding something undeserved. The interned Japanese Americans have been paid reparations for their damages. Surely the destruction that began with the African slave trade and continues in African American communities today is worthy of equal consideration. Ideally, a renewed discussion of reparations would quickly lead to a seriously financed plan for reconciliation that could be reasonably delivered expediently. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

A manageable body of knowledgeable, diverse and empathetic U.S. citizens could be assembled, elected, appointed and charged with devising a plan to a acknowledge, compensate and clear a road toward a time when the history of the slave trade in the U.S. will no longer influence the quality of life of any citizen.

Instructions to a reparations and reconciliation committee might include but not be limited to the following:

A balanced national slavery education for all U.S citizens, truthfully depicting the contribution of Africans to the creation of U.S. wealth and power. Such an education should not be confined to classrooms, but could instead be a broader program to educate U.S. citizens. Media campaigns could be developed and disseminated until an authentic understanding of the U.S. slave trade is understood and accepted by most of the nation’s residents.
A path to racial justice past, present and future. Recompense and reconciliation for the atrocities heaped upon slaves and their descendants in the name of the law.
Undiluted enforcement of existing civil/human rights laws.
Monuments at Jamestown, Virginia, Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, and New Orleans marking these places as the “Ellis Islands” of the U.S. slave.
Endowments without restrictions for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that are equal to the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning.
An African American Bank established and launched with reserves equal to any of the top ten banks in the U.S.

I write this certain that people of goodwill are capable of mapping a path to truth, reparation and reconciliation that would be empathetic to everyone including the rarely mentioned Native Americans.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Robert Earl Price is an African American screenwriter, playwright and poet. He is a recipient of the American Film Institute’s William Wyler award for screenwriting, an NEA fellowship for poetry, a Cultural Olympics commission for theater and a Maryland Individual Artist Award. His play “Blue Monk” was produced in Johannesburg, South Africa. His 11 full-length plays include an adaptation of Claude Brown’s “Man Child in the Promised Land” and a ritual play, “Black Cat Bones for Seven Sons.” He has four volumes of poetry: Bloodlines, Blood Elegy, Blues Blood and Wise Blood.

Wildfires Outside L.A. Threaten Homes, Spare Reagan Library

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — A wind-whipped outbreak of wildfires outside Los Angeles on Wednesday threatened thousands of homes and horse ranches, forced the smoky evacuation of elderly patients in wheelchairs and narrowly bypassed the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, protected in part by a buffer zone chewed by goats.

With California tinder dry and fires burning in both the north and south, the state was at the mercy of gusty winds, on high alert for any new flames that could run wild, and weary from intentional blackouts aimed at preventing power lines from sparking more destruction.

The blaze near the Reagan library in Simi Valley was driven by strong Santa Ana winds that are the bane of Southern California in the fall and have historically fanned the most destructive fires in the region.

Related Articles











California Governor Declares State of Emergency as 200,000 Flee Fires



by

















California Wildfires: New Evacuations Ordered, 2.3 Million Face Days-Long Blackout



by

The cause was not yet determined, but Southern California Edison filed a report with state regulators to say it began near its power lines. Electrical equipment has sparked some of California’s worst wildfires in recent years and prompted utilities to resort to precautionary power outages. SoCal Edison had not cut power in the area at the time this fire started.

The library, which holds the presidential archives and whose grounds include the graves of Reagan and his wife, Nancy, was well-equipped when flames surrounded it. It relies on a combination of high-tech defenses such as fireproof vaults and a low-tech measure taken every year, when hundreds of goats are brought in to feed on the brush and create a firebreak.

An army of firefighters helped protect the hilltop museum, and helicopters hit the flames, leaving some neighbors resentful as they frantically hosed down fires in the surrounding subdivisions and open ranchland.

Armed with just a garden hose and wearing a mask, Beth Rivera watered down the perimeter of her large home to prevent embers from igniting dry grass and trees. Friends helped evacuate 11 horses from the property. Soaring flames were only 30 yards (27 meters) away and blowing toward her house, with no firetrucks in sight.

Animals could be heard shrieking in a barn burning next door on Tierra Rejada Road, where large ranches with riding stables and horse rings line the road. Two horses bolted into the street from the flaming barn, trailing a cloud of smoke.

“Oh gosh, this isn’t fun,” Rivera said. “There isn’t a fire unit (here) at the moment because they’re busy working on the fire close to the library. This is why I’m very worried. Because I can’t … save my home.”

Within minutes, a fire crew arrived to help Rivera and her boyfriend protect their home.

The brush fire broke out before dawn between the cities of Simi Valley and Moorpark north of Los Angeles and exploded to more than 1,300 acres (526 hectares), Ventura County officials said. About 7,000 homes, or around 26,000 people, were ordered evacuated, authorities said.

Wind gusts up to 68 mph (109 kph) were reported in the area, forecasters said. Other spots in Southern California were buffeted by even stronger winds. The gusts knocked over a truck on a freeway in Fontana.

Another wildfire forced the evacuation of two mobile home parks and a health care facility in Jurupa Valley, 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, where elderly people were taken out in wheelchairs and gurneys as smoke swirled overhead. The blaze was at least 200 acres (80 hectares) in size.

Meanwhile, nearly 1 million people who rely on Pacific Gas & Electric were without power across Northern California amid the third blackout in a week imposed by the state’s largest utility.

In wine country north of San Francisco, fire officials reported progress in their battle against a 120-square-mile (310-square-kilometer) blaze in Sonoma County, saying it was 30% contained.

The fire destroyed at least 206 structures, including 94 homes, and threatened 90,000 more, most of them homes, authorities said. More than 150,000 people were under evacuation orders.

Winds topped out at 70 mph (112 kph) north of San Francisco Bay and began to ease early Wednesday, but forecasters said the fire danger would remain high because of continuing breezes and dry air.

In Southern California, fire crews continued trying to snuff out a wildfire in the celebrity-studded hills of Los Angeles that destroyed a dozen homes on Monday. About 9,000 people, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and LeBron James, were ordered to evacuate.

No deaths have been reported from the recent fires, but toppled trees claimed three lives.

In the battle taking place in the dry hills around Simi Valley, 800 firefighters worked on the ground as helicopters precisely dropped water on the leading edge of the flames and a jet streamed red fire retardant to slow the fire’s growth.

Firefighters successfully protected the library, leaving it looking like an island in a soot-black sea. Flames came within about 30 yards (27 meters) of the property, but there was no damage, library spokeswoman Melissa Giller said.

Residents were warned of evacuations when their cellphones blared with emergency messages and police officers went door to door.

“Everything started rolling so fast,” said Elena Mishkanian, describing the time from the text to when she heard sirens.

Her family was able to gather only some basics. Her daughter, Megan, 17, took some photos and mementos of trips she had taken. Her son, Troy, 13, netted six pet fish from a tank and put them in pots.

“Fish have feelings!” he said when Megan teased him about it. “Even if they don’t make it, at least I know I tried.”

As they left the house, police tied yellow caution tape around their front door to show they had left.

___

Melley reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers John Antczak and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, and Stefanie Dazio in Thousand Oaks contributed.

Chile Scraps Asia-Pacific and Climate Summits Amid Protests

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said Wednesday that he is canceling two major international summits so he can respond to protracted nationwide protests over economic inequality that have left more than a dozen people dead, hundreds injured and businesses and infrastructure damaged.

The decision to call off the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and U.N. global climate gatherings, planned for November and December, respectively, dealt a major blow to Chile’s image as a regional oasis of stability and economic development.

Piñera said he was forced to cancel both events due to the chaos unleashed by 13 days of protests. Demonstrators are demanding greater economic equality and better public services in a country long seen as an economic success story. Shops have been vandalized and buildings set on fire, shutting down numerous subway stations.

Related Articles











Corporate Media Side With Chile's and Ecuador's Oppressors



by

















Chilean Military Returns to Streets as Public Unrest Mounts



by

















The Revolution Isn’t Being Televised



by

“This has been a very difficult decision that causes us great pain,” Piñera said in a televised address. “A president always has to put the needs of his countrymen first.”

Trade and climate negotiators scrambled to find new locations for their summits, aimed at resolving tariff-related conflicts between China and the U.S. and finalizing countries’ climate rules in advance of a bigger summit next year during which governments will be asked to commit to new emissions limits.

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping had hoped to sign a modest trade agreement at the APEC summit, formerly scheduled to take place in Santiago on Nov. 16-17. Under the tentative deal, the U.S. had agreed to suspend plans to raise tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports, and Beijing had agreed to step up purchases of U.S. farm products.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said U.S. officials were “awaiting potential information regarding another location,” but it was unclear if any had been proposed. Gidley added that Trump wanted to sign the deal with China “within the same time frame,” hinting that a separate event could occur outside a summit.

The so-called Phase One trade agreement did little to address the underlying U.S. grievances against China, including its alleged practice of forcing foreign firms to hand over trade secrets; stealing technology, and unfairly subsidizing Chinese firms. China’s leaders have been reluctant to make the kind of policy reforms that would satisfy Washington, worrying such concessions would mean scaling back their aspirations to become a world leader in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars.

Still, the apparent cancellation of the summit “removes a hard deadline for action toward a comprehensive agreement in the trade war,” said Jeff Moon, a former U.S. diplomat and trade official specializing in China who is now president of the China Moon Strategies consultancy. “That hard deadline and the relatively short period of time available allowed Trump and Xi to give themselves permission to do only easy things and delay indefinitely resolving tough issues.”

Now, Moon said, “there is no excuse for not pressing forward with the full U.S. agenda of concerns.”

Climate advocates said they were disappointed but expected to relocate their talks. The Santiago climate conference was meant to work out some of the remaining unresolved rules for countries on climate efforts, smoothing the way for the bigger effort in the 2020 summit: encouraging countries to up their commitments to cutting climate-changing emissions.

“The absence of rules does not stop countries from acting either alone or together” to cut emissions, said Nigel Purvis, a climate and environment negotiator in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. “It really shouldn’t slow down climate action.”

But other climate experts said it was important to get those rules worked out in advance.

“To load everything into one conference — I think they’ll work pretty hard not to do that,” said Henry Jacoby, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said she believed there would be “every effort made that some type of … meeting does happen.”

“These … are the venues where the global community comes together to decide how to tackle this problem together,” she said. “The climate challenge requires every country to act, but it requires us to act collectively.”

U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa issued a statement saying that “alternative hosting options” were being explored. And a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to comment publicly, said that all U.N. venues are being considered as options. Those would include cities such as New York, Geneva, Bonn, Vienna and Nairobi.

___

Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer and Paul Wiseman in Washington, and Frank Jordans in Berlin, contributed to this story.

Missouri Agency Tracked Menstrual Periods of Planned Parenthood Clients

ST. LOUIS—Missouri’s health department director on Tuesday said he tracked the menstrual cycles of Planned Parenthood patients as part of an effort to identify what the agency says were “failed abortions” at a St. Louis clinic.

Department of Health and Senior Services Director Randall Williams made the revelation during the second day of an administrative hearing to determine whether Missouri’s only abortion clinic will lose its license to perform the procedure.

Williams said an investigator made a spreadsheet at his request that included the dates of patients’ last periods, The Kansas City Star reported. He said the goal was to find women who needed multiple procedures to complete an abortion.

Related Articles











The Dark Truth Behind Anti-Abortion Laws



by

















The Egregious Disparity Behind Anti-Abortion Laws



by











Would Overturning Abortion Rights Turn Back Clock to 1973?



by

The head of the St. Louis clinic called the move “deeply disturbing.”

“Missouri’s top health official, Randall Williams, scrutinized menstrual cycles of women in this state in order to end abortion access,” Yamelsie Rodriguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said in a statement.

Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Democrat from Springfield, called for an investigation to see if patient privacy was compromised or if laws were broken. She also was critical of Williams’ actions.

“State law requires the health department director to be ‘of recognized character and integrity,'” Quade said in a statement. “This unsettling behavior calls into question whether Dr. Williams meets that high standard.”

The state had moved to revoke the clinic’s license in June, citing concerns about a series of “failed abortions,” and a lack of cooperation from some of the doctors involved.

While Williams said concerns about the clinic are “grave,” he said the issues are “imminently fixable.” He believes there are solutions that both the state and Planned Parenthood would agree to that would allow for licensure.

Planned Parenthood says there are no deals on the table.

Wrangling over the license began when an investigator involved in a March inspection of the clinic found that a woman had undergone an abortion that took five attempts to complete. William Koebel, director of the section of the health department responsible for abortion clinic licensing, said Monday that the clinic failed to provide a “complication report” for that incident.

That failure led the health department to launch an investigation of other instances where women were required to undergo multiple procedures before an abortion was completed, Koebel said.

As part of that investigation, the state obtained medical records of women who had abortions at the clinic. They found four women who required multiple procedures, including one where the physician apparently missed that a woman was pregnant with twins. The woman underwent two procedures five weeks apart.

Planned Parenthood officials contend the state “cherry-picked” a handful of difficult cases out of thousands of otherwise successful abortions. They have accused the state of using the licensing process as a tool to eliminate abortions in Missouri, saying the state is among several conservative-led states seeking to end abortion through tough new laws and tighter restrictions.

The Administrative Hearing Commission isn’t expected to rule on the licensing issue until February at the earliest. In the meantime, the clinic remains open.

Missouri would become the first state since 1974, the year after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, without a functioning abortion clinic if the license is revoked.

Missouri is among several states to pass new restrictions on abortions in the hope that the increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court will eventually overturn Roe v. Wade. Parson, a Republican, signed legislation in May banning abortions at or beyond eight weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies but not for rape or incest. The law is on hold while a legal challenge plays out in court.

While the Missouri case unfolded, Planned Parenthood quietly built a new abortion clinic in Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, in part to meet demand from Missouri residents. The clinic in Fairview Heights opened Wednesday.

Missouri women have been increasingly getting abortions at the Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois, another St. Louis suburb. Deputy Director Alison Dreith said 58% of the abortions performed at the Hope Clinic through August of this year involved Missouri women, compared with 37% involving Illinois women.

Another abortion clinic sits in Overland Park, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb. The clinic is 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the state line. Information from the state of Kansas shows about 3,300 of the 7,000 abortions performed there last year involved Missouri residents.

Mark Zuckerberg Faces Employee Backlash Over Political Ads

Last year, it seemed that Facebook might emerge relatively unscathed from accusations ranging from privacy violations to allowing Russian interference in the 2016 elections. The social media company did walk away with a $5 billion fine by the Federal Trade Commission for user privacy violations, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg sailed through a 2018 Senate hearing, partly because, as Casey Newton wrote in The Verge, “Senators don’t understand how Facebook works.”

But the tide may be turning for Zuckerberg and his company. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign posted an ad to Facebook this week that was riddled with deliberate falsehoods (such as the assertion that Zuckerberg had endorsed Donald Trump) in an effort to challenge the company’s hands-off approach to campaign ads on the site.

The company has faced renewed scrutiny for its role in politics after Politico reported that Zuckerberg has been hosting private dinners with right-wing pundits, for which New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed him. Now, The New York Times reports, Zuckerberg is facing dissent from his own employees.

Related Articles











Facebook's Authoritarian Money Grab



by Jacob Bacharach

















Facebook Touts Bans While Taking Hate Groups’ Cash



by Ilana Novick

















Facebook Is No Friend to Democracy



by

In a letter to the CEO obtained by The Times, they call Facebook’s lack of fact-checking in its political advertisements “a threat to what FB stands for.” The letter adds that the company’s policy “doesn’t protect voices, but instead allows politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy. … We strongly object to this policy as it stands.”

According to Times reporter Mike Isaac, “Many employees have been discussing Mr. Zuckerberg’s decision to let politicians post anything they want [on] Facebook ads because those ads can go viral and spread misinformation widely.” Isaac calls the controversy over the ad policy “a rare moment of internal strife for the company.”

The letter, which The Times reports was signed by 250 employees, has been on view on Facebook Workspace, an internal communications platform. While that’s just a fraction of the company’s 35,000-member workforce, the letter is a notable “sign of the resistance that the company is now facing internally over how it treats political ads,” Isaac reports.

In response to questions about the letter, Facebook spokeswoman Bertie Thomson wrote in a statement to The Times: “Facebook’s culture is built on openness, so we appreciate our employees voicing their thoughts on this important topic. … We remain committed to not censoring political speech, and will continue exploring additional steps we can take to bring increased transparency to political ads.”

Previously, the most prominent employee backlash came from content moderators, who, as an investigation by The Verge revealed, monitor user-generated posts, which include hate speech, violence and graphic pornography, often for low pay and with little management support.

In the letter regarding political ads, employees emphasize that they are committed to providing solutions to address the problem: “We want to work with our leadership to develop better solutions that both protect our business and the people who use our products.” Their proposals include redesigning visual aspects of the political ads, restricting options for ad targeting and setting spending limits for individual campaigns.

Read the full letter here.