Chris Hedges's Blog, page 121

Now the Generals Speak Up?

Now they’ve decided to speak out! For years, I’ve published searing critiques of America’s senior generals and admirals for their failure to speak out publicly against U.S. foreign policy and warmongering. Specifically, I’ve argued that it’s their duty to loudly dissent, and if necessary resign, in opposition to the nation’s ongoing, ill-advised, illegal and unwinnable forever wars.

Now, in a rather dark bit of irony, the — mostly retired — generals have turned my advice on its head. In unprecedented numbers, a litany of prominent military leaders have recently spoken out. Unfortunately, they’ve chosen to do so in the name of continuing perpetual war — specifically in Syria. The target of their criticism, of course, is Donald Trump, whose clumsy withdrawal (and partial redeployment) of a modest number of soldiers from northeast Syria has led the military establishment to declare rhetorical war on the president.

In doing so, the generals haven’t just violated their purported core principles of nonpartisanship, but they have shown their true colors as unabashed militarists in a rare wave of public defiance.  That they’re doing so to prolong an unsanctioned war with a muddled and dubious mission is dangerous, scary, and hypocritical — a serious threat to the republic.

What’s crazy is that Trump isn’t even consistently antiwar. He’s only reshuffled the troops to Iraq and infused even more into Saudi Arabia. He’s even suggested that he may keep some in Syria to protect (or seize) oil fields.

Nevertheless, even the hint of deescalation in a single theater of a region-wide endless war has sparked an unparalleled, even hysterical, outcry from former senior military officers intent on maintaining the hyper-interventionist status quo. And why not?  The failed “war on terror” has defined their careers; it’s all they know. It doesn’t hurt the generals’ pocketbooks either to maintain the forever wars — a huge percentage have gone to work on the corporate boards of various defense contractors right after retirement, earning cool six- and seven-digit salaries in the process. (Notice that’s never mentioned on the mainstream cable networks when these generals receive endless airtime, as if working for an arms-dealing corporation with a pecuniary interest in perennial war isn’t itself a highly political act.)

These self-righteous and obsessively self-described “apolitical” generals have demonstrated that’s only the case until a president even modestly, if inconsistently, removes troops from just one unsanctioned (by Congress) — and thus unconstitutional — war.  Let’s review the boundless hypocrisy of just a few of the most prominent voices crowing against the Syria withdrawal.  There’s Army General Joseph Votel, a recent commander of all troops in the greater Middle East. He took to the pages of The Atlantic to assert that “abandoning” the Syrian Kurds will “severely damage American credibility and reliability.”

He claims to be genuinely worried about a potential ethnic cleansing or genocide of those Kurds.  Funny — while he commanded the very pilots and intelligence analysts who abetted and enabled the Saudi terror war on Yemen, he apparently felt no moral compunction to speak out. That U.S.-backed war has actually, not potentially, caused the world’s worst humanitarian disaster and killed more than 100,000 civilians from another ethnic minority, the Yemeni Houthis, including the starvation deaths of at least 85,000 children. Spare us the moralizing, Joe!

Then there’s that media darling, “Saint” Jim Mattis, Trump’s former defense secretary and venerated Marine Corps general. “Mad Dog” has been, until now, the paragon of the insincere “apolitical military professional.” Trump’s detractors have even criticized Mattis for not openly attacking his former boss in a newly released memoir. Now Mattis is blazing away with both barrels. Maybe he just couldn’t swallow Trump’s recent exaggerated assertion that the “warrior monk” is the “world’s most overrated general.” Lost in Trump’s absurd hyperbole, and Mattis’ admittedly clever responsive quip — “I earned my spurs on the battlefield … Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor” — is the fact that the former general is overrated.

That’s demonstrable both strategically — he’s yet to win a war or advise a commander-in-chief that a mission was ill-advised and impossible — and morally. Though normally viewed as a man, first and foremost, of integrity, his record demonstrates the opposite. Remember, Mattis chose to resign as Trump’s defense secretary not because of his military’s support for a slow-boiling Yemeni genocide, which he defended before Congress, but because the president merely hinted at a modest troop withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan. Apparently that was too much for Mattis. More telling is that Mattis didn’t resign or speak out over the Pentagon’s conduct of undeclared and unsanctioned wars– in Yemen, Syria, Libya and West Africa under his watch. This, despite having proudly taken an oath to defend the Constitution, which quite clearly mandates just such congressional approval before “his” troops are sent to kill and die.

How about good old David Petraeus, the former Iraq and Afghan War commander, disgraced CIA director and “hero” of the Bush II and Obama years. This character, wildly lacking in any sense of self-awareness, has also decided to decry Trump’s Syria policy and alleged Ukraine-gate violations in recent weeks. Riddle me this: just who is Petraeus, a convicted criminal who shared classified information with his mistress whilst serving as CIA chief, to utter a word about whistleblowers, scandal or the president’s shady activity? That a man like “King David” gets a millisecond of air time is proof of media failure of the highest degree.

Also lost in the canonization of these retired general officers is the inconvenient fact that they are way out of step with the opinions of rank-and-file soldiers and veterans. After all, in a remarkable turnaround among a demographic that’s long tilted in a conservative direction, a series of polls this summer indicated that nearly two-thirds of post-9/11 vets say they believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the military engagement in Syria “were not worth it.”

So, does all of this senior military dissent add up to an actual coup? That’s probably an exaggeration, but one worth considering. Not every putsch requires tanks in the streets or political assassination. Current and former national security officials can undermine civilian leadership or topple a government without overt or violent upheaval. Today’s chorus of angry, anti-Trump, pro-forever-war generals clearly don’t rise to the level of outright treason, but their unanimity and reflexive hawkishness do demonstrate that the National Security State is imbued with immense power and a political agenda.

On the other hand, those veterans who publicly dissent against these wars and clamor for adherence to constitutional war-making procedures they are, unlike the adulated generals, viciously pilloried. To question generals and oppose endless war is a risky endeavor. Just ask Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a serving Army major and Iraq war veteran making a longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton, who regularly (and accurately) criticized Trump’s conspiratorial thinking, recently advanced her own absurd theory that Gabbard is a “Russian asset.” Pot, meet kettle.

Of course, this preposterous charge is no laughing matter. Clinton has legitimately accused Gabbard, without a shred of evidence, of treason — a crime punishable by death, given that the Hawaii congresswoman still serves in the military. Gabbard ought to sue Clinton for libel. That Gabbard has been repeatedly defamed by the likes of Clinton and The New York Times proves that despite the veneer of vacuous hyper-adulation of veterans, one’s uniform and combat record won’t save him or her from a smear campaign. There are serious limits to even combat veterans’ antiwar dissent.

As for the generals, maybe someday (but don’t hold your breath) this generation of sycophantic military leaders will at last produce a new Smedley Butler. He was a Marine Corps major general who served for decades, twice won the Medal of Honor and then became an outspoken antiwar activist– willing to dissent against today’s wars. Unlike the interwar era, when Butler was a genuine celebrity speaker, expect that if such a general does step forward, today’s mainstream media will ignore or silence him. All the while, the troopers the current crew of hypocritical, failed generals once commanded, “their boys,” will continue to die in perpetuity.

————

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army major and regular contributor to Truthdig.  His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The L.A. Times, The Nation, Tom Dispatch, The Huffington Post, and The Hill. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, “Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.” He co-hosts the progressive veterans’ podcast “Fortress on a Hill.”  Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

 

The Case for Trump’s Impeachment Is Only Growing

What follows is a conversation between professor Bill Black and Greg Wilpert of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

GREG WILPERT: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Baltimore.

A group of Republican members of Congress staged a protest at a closed-door hearing of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, which was about to hear testimony related to the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump. Only members of the House Intelligence, Judiciary, and Foreign Affairs Committees are allowed to be present at that hearing. The protests though, managed to scuttle the hearing, where Laura Cooper, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, was supposed to testify. So far, the House impeachment investigation has issued subpoenas to the White House, the Defense Department, the Budget Office, and other agencies.

Many of those subpoenaed have refused to comply, however, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and Vice President Mike Pence, among many others. On Tuesday, William B. Taylor Jr., who was the top American diplomat in Ukraine, testified that Trump, indeed, withheld $391 million in foreign aid to Ukraine and refused a White House meeting until President Zelensky announced investigation into prominent Democrats. He basically dismantled Trump’s claim that there was no quid pro quo.

Joining me now to discuss the Democrats’ impeachment investigation into Donald Trump is Bill Black. Bill is a white collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is also the author of the book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Thanks for joining us again, Bill.

BILL BLACK: Thank you.

GREG WILPERT: So let’s start, not with Trump, but with Joe Biden. It would seem that all of this impeachment controversy does, to some extent, hinge on what Joe Biden did or didn’t do for his son, Hunter, with regard to the Ukraine. Republicans and Trump suggest that Hunter Biden was involved in some sort of corruption by being on the board of a Ukrainian company. What’s your take on this?

BILL BLACK: Well, first, I don’t agree that it hinges on it. Legally, it most assuredly doesn’t hinge on it. Even if Joe Biden had done corrupt things in the Ukraine, Trump can’t tie the provision of foreign aid voted by the United States Congress to whether the Ukrainian government will investigate his political opponent. Beyond that, the Democrats keep using the wrong phrase, that Trump wants them, or Giuliani wants them to dig up dirt on Biden and Hunter Biden. That would not be terrible, right? If there were actually dirt there and it was covered up, you certainly want Ukrainian investigators, on their own, to investigate it. What Trump wants is not dirt to be uncovered that actually exists. He wants it created. He wants a smear campaign. And it’s all premised on this fundamental lie that this former Ukrainian prosecutor, who was a non-prosecutor, was actually vigorously going after Hunter Biden, and that Joe Biden used his power as vice president and leader of the efforts on getting that prosecutor fired, to quash this investigation.

So that’s one of the two claims. The second claim is even crazier. And the second claim is that there is a, quote unquote, “server,” when of course there are actually roughly 90 to 200 servers, and that, supposedly, this server at the DNC was funneled secretly out of the United States to keep the FBI from finding it, and for some reason, sent to the Ukraine. And it’s just, it’s Pizza Gate style craziness. Beyond that, why was Hunter Biden getting $50,000 a month? Hunter Biden is someone who has huge problems with alcohol, with drugs, with women. He’s a really messed up individual with no skills relevant to the task. He was getting $50,000 a month. So when we say there’s nothing wrong, of course there’s something wrong with this. This is the powerful and the kids of the powerful who are paid off. And there’s only one reason they’re paid off, and that is that corrupt people hope to influence the powerful elected official.

And by the way, we just had guilty pleas to all of this by Deutsche Bank, for example, where they did this in spades for the Chinese princelings and such, as a way of getting business. So that’s a bad thing. And it’s obviously not in any way unique to the Bidens. The entire Trump family and in-laws are quintessential examples of this at a much higher level. But that isn’t a crime. There is no credible evidence of a crime in any of this. There’s also the point that… judgment. And as vice president of the United States, Joe Biden took this lead in the Ukraine and continued it knowing that his son was in this situation that was easily spun as a conflict of interest. And so, in jargon, he created an apparent conflict of interest. You’re not supposed to do that. That’s terrible judgment. And you’re just handing people ammunition to use against you. So in the electability issue, in the “who’s the reasonable, moderate, responsible type,” Joe Biden demonstrated incredibly poor judgment and dramatically harmed his electability prospects; and did it completely gratuitously.

Joe Biden had no expertise in the Ukraine. There was absolutely no reason for him to take the lead, particularly with his son having that role. Anyone with judgment would have said, “Hey, leave it to the professionals,” right? And it’s a criticism of Trump validly as well, as he brings in people who have no expertise in the Ukraine, who simply in his case gave his campaign cheer election stuff over a million bucks and bought himself–this is Sondland–an ambassadorship. Well, yes, all administrations do some of that, but it’s not good. And we should work strongly against it. So when Biden’s folks say, “We did nothing wrong.” Well, yeah, you did things that were wrong. You didn’t do things that were remotely criminal or impeachable. And so you’re here in the way of abuses, and Trump is off the charts in the way of abuses. But again, you gave him a freebie. And our lesson when we were regulators cracking down on the most powerfully connected political types was never give freebies, right? So we lived this life of super probity because we knew they would use anything against us. Biden just should have done the same thing.

GREG WILPERT: Let’s turn to Trump actually, to the impeachment investigation. Now, the evidence actually seems pretty solid right now that there, indeed, was a quid pro quo for US aid to the Ukraine in exchange for an investigation. What is your take on this situation? Is the impeachment a done deal at this point?

BILL BLACK: Well, nothing’s a done deal because we’ve just seen how, in the last three weeks, the smart money proved completely wrong that there wouldn’t be an impeachment. So it’s immensely subject to developments. So first, in terms of the law, you don’t need a quick pro quo. And you shouldn’t gratuitously take on an extra burden of proof. Just trying to get the head of the Ukraine to investigate your political opponent is already a classic abuse of power that would constitute, within the way the framers of the Constitution thought it, an obvious example of a high crime and misdemeanor. Further, the obstruction that you talked about in the introduction would also do so. And has, in fact … That precise charge has been used by both major political parties in modern times as a legitimate basis for impeachment.

That said, if you do seek a quid pro quo, then that is a clear crime. And the failure of Barr and the supposed investigation, non-investigation, they had of this, to charge anything on the absurd grounds that what Trump was seeking was not, and I quote, “a thing of value.” Why? Because it couldn’t be quantified. It couldn’t be counted. That’s preposterous. Just, it would destroy the entire intent. It would be incredibly easy to evade the law in those circumstances and accomplish everything Congress was trying to prevent. So that’s actually a third ground of impeachment, or a grounds why Barr should be impeached as well in all of these things. So, yes. Now, the late night talk show hosts have it right. I mean, the headlines should read: “Top US Diplomat in the Ukraine Confirms What Trump and Mulvaney Already Confessed.” Yes, there was a quid pro quo.

GREG WILPERT: So just to touch quickly on that last topic, I mean, not last one, the one you mentioned about obstruction of justice, we saw the Republicans trying to prevent it, but what … prevent the hearing that is, but what obstruction are you concretely referring to?

BILL BLACK: The refusal to provide witnesses and documents. Similar refusals in the past by both parties have been charged as the official grounds … So both parties are on record as saying, “This constitutes an appropriate basis to, not simply impeach, but to convict and remove from office an official.” This, by the way, what’s going on, is not a hearing in the usual sense. This is a staff deposition in which people like me and people that are actually investigators, not politicians, who aren’t playing for any cameras, there aren’t any cameras in the room, or at least not regular cameras, just to video tape, are asking professional, in-depth questions. And the analogue, and this again is, both parties use this analogy, this is not partisan in any way, is that the House serves like the grand jury. A grand jury typically meets in secrecy. The witnesses are permitted to talk, right? They’re not barred. But the officials conducting the grand jury-like inquiry are not supposed to be leaking the evidence that comes from it. Again, Bill Taylor’s perfectly allowed under grand jury rules to make an opening statement and to give that opening statement to the public.

For security reasons, to keep it secret, they are holding this in what’s called a SCIF. And a SCIF is an acronym that means basically a secure room where you take really stringent steps to make sure that no one can be engaged in electronic eavesdropping. And the Republicans didn’t just stage this stunt where … Remember, Republicans are in the room, right? All Republican members of the appropriate committees are fully able to attend all of this. They brought all these clowns who aren’t legitimately there. They tried it previously with just one. This time they brought like 20 of these folks. They brought their cell phones into the room. Now, you never, ever bring those kinds of electronics into a SCIF. It’s completely irresponsible. The sergeant-in-arms asked them not to do it and to give him their phones. They refused to do so. Eventually, Meadows, a senior Republican, was able to do this.

But this comes directly after Taylor’s bombshell testimony and directly after President Trump implored his people to get tough and attack the Democrats. In other words, to obstruct the testimony, the evidence finding of the grand jury-like function. That too should be a basis for impeachment. Tactically, it’s a question of how many things you’re adding in. I’m not trying to advise them on the tactics. But legally, this is yet another act of obstruction to cover up prior acts of obstruction.

GREG WILPERT: Okay. Well, I think this analysis is really interesting. I think it’s important. I hope many people get to see it, but we’re going to leave it there for now. I’m sure we’ll come back to you on it as the situation develops. I was speaking to Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Thanks again, Bill, for having joined us today.

BILL BLACK: Thank you.

GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.

The Trump Administration Admits Violating Its Own Ethics Pledge

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

A governmentwide review has acknowledged for the first time that at least several Trump political appointees violated the administration’s ethics pledge, which was put in place to try to “drain the swamp” by imposing lobbying restrictions and penalties.

The details are tucked away in the Office of Government Ethics’ latest annual report, which attracted little notice when it was released this summer.

While President Donald Trump’s ethics pledge was weaker than previous rules, the government ethics office still found violations in 2018 at three federal agencies: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Labor Relations Board.

No federal agency reported a violation of the Trump ethics pledge in 2017.

At the National Labor Relations Board, Republican board member William Emanuel was found to have improperly voted on a case involving franchisee or contractor violations of labor laws. Emanuel’s former employer, the law firm Littler Mendelson, represents a company that was a party to the original ruling, ProPublica reported. Before he joined the board in September 2017, Emanuel was a shareholder at Littler, which represents corporations in labor disputes.

In December 2017, the labor board overturned the original union-friendly ruling, undoing years of precedent and making it tougher for employees to pursue federal complaints against parent or related companies if they indirectly control employee work conditions. Because of Emanuel’s conflict of interest with Littler, the ruling on the case was ultimately overturned a second time and the labor board’s inspector general called Emanuel’s vote a “serious and flagrant problem and/or deficiency.”

The National Labor Relations Board declined to comment on Emanuel’s ethics violation. Emanuel did not respond to requests for comment.

The report cites an ethics violation by an unnamed presidential appointee at the EPA. Agency officials familiar with the matter said the case involves Bill Wehrum, a former lobbyist and attorney who resigned in June as the agency’s assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation. Wehrum is the subject of several internal EPA investigations and faced questions from the House Energy and Commerce Committee over his communications with his former law firm Hunton & Williams, now known as Hunton Andrews Kurth. The firm represented several EPA-regulated power plant operators.

Wehrum, the chief architect of the Trump administration’s rollback of the Clean Air Act, the EPA and Hunton Andrews Kurth did not respond to requests for comment.

At the Interior Department, government attorneys disclosed in the annual report that “Ethics Pledge violations may have occurred in 2018.” The Interior Department’s inspector general is looking at potential violations of the ethics pledge by six current and former Trump staffers. (The agency also acknowledged problems with its ethics office after an earlier ProPublica story.)

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Interior Department in February, alleging that six current and former department staffers violated the ethics pledge, calling it “a disturbing pattern of misconduct” and including one former staffer who went directly from working on energy policy to working for an offshore oil drilling firm. Penalties for violating the pledge include fines and a five-year ban on lobbying.

The Interior Department has yet to make any announcement or ruling on the complaint. But in a statement, the agency said it “immediately consulted with department ethics officials after receiving the Center’s complaint in February. Ethics reviewed each matter and provided materials to the chief of staff, who has taken appropriate actions. All of these materials have been provided to the Inspector General.”

Influence peddling in federal politics is not new; in the Obama administration, appointees in both the Interior Department and the EPA were found to have violated his version of the ethics pledge by talking with former business clients.

The difference, ethics experts who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations say, is both the lack of enforcement and the dearth of information coming from certain federal agencies and the White House about its missteps.

“The White House Counsel’s office has taken the lead in making excuses for ethics violations,” said Kathleen Clark, a professor specializing in legal ethics at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “There’s examples of the White House refusing to impose any sanction for officials found to have committed violations. They’re setting quite the example.”

In the first two years of the Trump administration, 3,887 political appointees — from Cabinet secretaries and acting chiefs to special and confidential assistants — signed the Trump ethics pledge. Of those thousands of political appointees, 116 were registered lobbyists in the two years immediately before starting government service, or roughly 3%.

Employees who signed Trump’s ethics pledge are not allowed to work on “any particular matters” they previously lobbied on. By contrast, the Obama administration banned lobbyists from working at agencies they previously lobbied.

Trump’s ethics pledge also bars those exiting the government from lobbying for five years — except we’ve found dozens of cases of staffers who’ve gone on to do exactly that.

The EPA and the Interior Department, along with other federal agencies, are no strangers to ethics issues over the past 2 1/2 years.

Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general, resigned in July 2018 after a tumultuous tenure that saw more than a dozen different federal investigations into ethical and legal allegations, including his lease of a bedroom in a condo linked to a Canadian energy company’s Washington lobbying firm. (Pruitt’s attorney, Cleta Mitchell, told The Washington Post, that ethics rules had been unfairly “weaponized in order to destroy political opponents” like Pruitt and that he was “enemy No. 1” when he left the EPA. Pruitt is now working with coal baron Joseph W. Craft III and as an energy consultant and paid speaker while “in full compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the law,” Mitchell said.) Current EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, had at least three meetings with former clients as Pruitt’s deputy, according to calendars obtained by the trade publication E&E News.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, now a lobbyist with Turnberry Solutions, is being investigated by the Justice Department’s public integrity section over allegations he lied to his agency’s inspector general’s office. That’s on top of two separate probes by the Interior Department’s inspector general about his ties to real estate deals in Montana and a proposed casino project in Connecticut. Zinke also exchanged emails about his family foundation’s Montana property in the summer of 2017, in violation of his own recusal memo he signed with ethics attorneys, according to documents obtained by The Post. (Zinke described the ethics allegations against him to Bloomberg News as “false” and “B.S.,” and calling D.C. “so angry and hateful.”)

As part of a House inquiry into possible ethics violations, current Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist, was found to have met with officials from Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, a division of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, one of his former clients. The nonprofit legal center has also filed a complaint against Bernhardt, alleging he violated the ethics pledge by meeting with another former client, California’s Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural water district. The Interior Department has said Bernhardt is in “complete compliance with his ethics agreement and all applicable laws, rules and regulations.”

These reported cases of ethics pledge violations don’t represent the many ethics issues found across the Trump administration.

In April, the State and Energy departments released three long-delayed ethics waivers it has granted to Trump appointees, allowing them to talk to former employers and business clients. An additional 10 waivers specific to the Trump ethics pledge were disclosed by agencies in their annual ethics reports.

In 2017 and 2018, federal agencies referred 125 ethics cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution. Of those cases, 91 were declined and 12 were accepted, with the rest pending.

Bolivia’s Morales Says He Won Presidential Vote Outright Amid Protests

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia’s Evo Morales declared himself the outright winner of the country’s presidential election Thursday, which would give him a fourth straight term after a vote that has sparked days of protests by his opponents and supporters over accusations of fraud.

With more than 98 percent of the votes counted from Sunday’s election, Bolivia’s first indigenous president had 46.8% support against 36.7% for former president Carlos Mesa, just barely giving Morales the 10 percentage point lead over his nearest rival needed to avoid a second-round runoff. Seven other candidates were in the race.

“We have won in the first round. There are 1.58% (of the votes) left to count but we won with the rural vote,” Morales, the region’s longest-ruling leader, told a press conference.

But Morales later said that if the count of the final ballots showed that he did not get enough votes, he would be prepared to head to a second round. As of midday Thursday, electoral authorities had still not announced a final result.

Opposition leaders were meeting Thursday to study the situation. Mesa announced that he would form an alliance to “defend the vote” in the streets and alleged the leftist president had perpetrated “a monumental fraud” to get re-elected. Morales, in turn, urged his supporters to defend his win and denied electoral fraud, demanding his detractors show proof.

“We are at the start of a crisis that could affect the social, political and economic stability of the country,” said political analyst Jorge Dulón.

The Andean nation has been on a knife-edge since the bitterly disputed vote. If it had gone to a runoff between Morales and Mesa, analysts said a united opposition might have stood a chance of defeating the incumbent president.

International vote monitors have expressed concern at an earlier unexplained daylong gap in reporting results before a sudden spurt in Morales’ vote percentage. The Organization of American States has asked that the vote go to a second round because of the concerns.

The OAS observer mission released a statement expressing its “concern and surprise over the drastic change and difficult to justify tendency in the preliminary results.”

Opposition backers continued to stage rowdy protests, while Morales’ backers staged a march in the capital to show their support for the president.

Protesters have burned Supreme Electoral Tribunal offices in three cities and staged demonstrations since Monday. The opposition bastion of Santa Cruz has seen two days of a partial strike “in defense of the vote and democracy.” On Thursday, Morales supporters announced marches in coca-growing region of Chapare, a bastion of support for the president.

Morales has repeatedly said he won outright and that his opponents are conspiring to oust him.

“I want to denounce to the people and the world that a coup d’etat is underway,” Morales said at a news conference Wednesday. “The right wing has prepared it with international support.”

Morales did not specify where the alleged international support for the coup was coming from, but he regularly rails against U.S. imperialism in Latin America.

Suspicions of electoral fraud rose when officials abruptly stopped releasing results from the quick count of votes hours after the polls closed Sunday with Morales topping the eight other candidates, but also falling several percentage points short of the percentage needed to avoid the first runoff in his nearly 14 years in power.

Twenty-four hours later, the body suddenly released an updated figure, with 95% of votes counted, showing Morales just 0.7 percentage point short of the 10-percentage point advantage needed to avoid a runoff.

That set off an uproar among the opposition and expressions of concern by international monitors. Since then, results have slowly been updated.

Along with the OAS, the European Union and the U.N. expressed concern about the electoral process and called for calm. The United States and Brazil, among others, also expressed concerns.

Michael G. Kozak, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, warned Wednesday that Bolivian authorities will be held accountable if the process isn’t fair.

“I think you will see pretty strong response from the whole hemisphere, not just the U.S.,” Kozak said during a House hearing.

In Caracas, Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, voiced support for his ally Morales.

“It is a coup d’etat foretold, sung and, one can say, defeated,” he said.

The crisis was aggravated by the resignation of the vice president electoral council, Antonio Costas, who said he disagreed with the decision to interrupt transmission of the vote count.

Morales, 59, a native Aymara from Bolivia’s highlands, became the country’s first indigenous president in 2006 and easily won the two following elections amid more than a decade of a commodities-fed economic boom in South America’s poorest country. He paved roads, sent Bolivia’s first satellite to space and curbed inflation.

But he has faced growing dissatisfaction, especially over his refusal to accept the results of a 2016 referendum to keep limits on presidential terms. The country’s top court, considered by critics as friendly to the president, ruled that limits would violate Morales’ political rights as a citizen.

Trump: The Job of Our Military Is Not to Police the World

In a statement on U.S. military operations in Syria, the president says, “We’re getting out. Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand.” Watch his full remarks below.

Watch Ocasio-Cortez’s Epic Takedown of Mark Zuckerberg (Video)

At Wednesday’s congressional hearings about Libra, Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the opportunity to question founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about more than a couple of things he likely wasn’t expecting. Probably one of the most memorable questions came when AOC, as the congressmember is known, asked the Facebook CEO about the content of the discussions at his “ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures.” Another great moment came when she asked Zuckerberg if he’d take down false political advertisements and he responded with, “Lying is bad,” but refused to say what he’d do.

Needless to say, the freshman congressmember’s grilling of arguably one of the most powerful people in the world went viral.

Watch other moments when AOC shined during hearings and reminded us all why she’s a powerful, progressive star.

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

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, people are rising up against right-wing, US-backed governments and their neoliberal austerity policies.

Currently in Chile, the government of billionaire Sebastian Piñera has deployed the army to crush nationwide demonstrations against inequality sparked by a subway fare hike.

In Ecuador, indigenous peoples, workers and students recently brought the country to a standstill during 11 days of protests against the gutting of fuel subsidies by President Lenin Moreno as part of an IMF austerity package.

One might expect these popular rebellions to receive unreservedly sympathetic coverage from international media that claim to be on the side of democracy and the common people. On the contrary, corporate journalists frequently describe these uprisings as dangerous alterations of “law and order,” laden with “violence,” “chaos” and “unrest.”

This portrait contrasts remarkably with coverage of anti-government protests in Venezuela, where generally the only violence highlighted is that allegedly perpetrated by the state. In the eyes of Western elite opinion, Venezuela’s middle-class opposition have long been leaders of a legitimate popular protest against an authoritarian, anti-American regime. Poor people rebelling against repressive US client states are considered an unacceptable deviation from this script.

‘Crackdown’ in Venezuela

Corporate journalists have never been able to contain their enthusiasm for the right-wing Venezuelan opposition’s repeated coup attempts, which are regularly cast as a “pro-democracy” movement (FAIR.org, 5/10/19).

In 2017, Venezuela’s opposition led four months of violent, insurrectionary protests demanding early presidential elections, resulting in over 125 dead,  including protesters, government supporters and bystanders. It was the opposition’s fifth major effort to oust the government by force since 2002.

Despite the demonstrations featuring attacks on journalists, lynchings and assassinations of government supporters, they were depicted as a “uprising” against “authoritarianism” (New York  Times, 6/22/17), a “rebellion” in the face of “the government’s crackdown” (Bloomberg, 5/18/17) and a David-like movement of “young firebrands” facing down a sinister regime (Guardian, 5/25/17). Reporters frequently attributed the mounting death toll to state security forces (France 24, 7/21/17; Newsweek, 6/20/17; Washington Post, 6/3/17), while generally ignoring opposition political violence reported to be responsible for over 30 deaths.

The pattern was repeated in January, when deadly clashes broke out across the country  in the days before and after opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president” with the US’s encouragement. Corporate outlets described the events as a “violent crackdown” (Independent, 1/24/19), with security forces “spreading terror…to target critics” (Reuters, 2/3/19) and “soldiers and paramilitary gunmen…hunting opposition activists” (Miami Herald, 1/27/19). International journalists based their accounts largely on pro-opposition sources, suppressing inconvenient details that complicated their Manichean narrative, such as the fact that some 38% of protests were violent and at least 28% featured armed confrontations with authorities.

Unlike in Chile and Ecuador, corporate outlets have consistently vilified Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—who won 6.2 million votes, or 31% of the electorate last year—as an “authoritarian” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19, 8/5/19) or a “dictator” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19), justifying the latest coup effort.

Chile ‘Riots’ 

In recent days, Chileans have taken to the streets in mass demonstrations against the Piñera administration, following a further increase in Santiago’s exorbitant subway fare.

Beginning as high school student–led protests, the movement has escalated into a full-scale rebellion against the savagely unequal neoliberal order, prompting the government to militarize the streets and impose a curfew for the first time since the Western-backed Pinochet dictatorship (1973–90).

Despite the largest protests since the return of democracy, the international corporate media have largely referred to them in pejorative terms such as “riots” (CNN, 10/19/19; CNBC, 10/21/19), “violent unrest” (New York Times, 10/19/19) and “chaos” (NPR, 10/19/19; Vice, 10/21/19), providing a moral casus belli for war against the people.

Revealingly, no major outlets have described the government’s brutal repression as a “crackdown,” nor called into question the legitimacy of Piñera, who was elected in 2017 with the backing of 26% of registered voters.

It’s true that international journalists are beginning to reference allegations of human rights violations reported by Chile’s National Human Rights Institute, including, as of October 23, 173 people shot and 18 dead, among them at least five presumably at the hands of authorities.

However, the victims of state violence in Chile have not received anywhere near the amount of attention international outlets have dedicated to protester deaths in Venezuela, where the dead have been movingly profiled (New York Times, 6/10/17; BBC, 5/14/17)—provided they were not lynched by the opposition.

In two emblematic cases, Manuel Rebolledo, 23, died on October 21 after being run over by a navy vehicle near Concepción, while Ecuadorian national Romario Veloz, 26, was shot dead the day before at a protest in La Serena. Neither men have been mentioned by name in Western press reports.

It would appear that the only worthy victims, in the eyes of US corporate journalists, are those that have propaganda value from the standpoint of Western foreign policy interests. Reporters spontaneously empathize with neoliberal technocrats like Piñera, even as they occasionally chide them for “excesses.”

“Mr. Piñera said that he is mindful of the broader grievances that fueled the unrest… But he seemed to have difficulty coming to grips with the real source of the population’s frustrations,” the New York Times (10/21/19) sympathetically observed, before going on to note that the president has declared “war” against his own people.

The paper of record suggested that Chileans might find the imposition of martial law “jarring,” given that “the military had killed and tortured thousands of people just decades ago in the name of restoring order.” But despite the article being headlined “What You Need to Know About the Unrest in Chile,” the Times did not find it relevant to mention anywhere that state security forces were currently maiming and killing demonstrators in the streets, and allegedly torturing detainees.

The dominant narrative fed to the public is that Piñera’s government has been “inept” in responding to the protests (Economist, 10/20/19; Reuters, 10/21/19; New York Times, 10/21/19), but never criminal or cruel.

No Western newspapers have published scathing op-eds calling Piñera a “dictator” and demanding their government take action to “restore democracy,” as they have done regularly in the case of Venezuela (FAIR.org, 4/11/19). Rather, they counsel the billionaire president to address “inequality,” barring any reference to what is increasingly coming to resemble state terror (New York Times, 10/22/19; Guardian, 10/23/19; Bloomberg, 10/23/19).

Corporate journalists continue  to whitewash Piñera, describing him as “center-right” (Guardian, 10/21/19; CNBC, 10/19/19; Reuters, 10/21/19) and concealing his personal ties to murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet and those of his top cabinet members.

Ecuador ‘Violence’ 

Corporate journalists have shown only marginally more sympathy to Ecuador’s recent indigenous-led uprising against IMF-imposed austerity measures, frequently described in headlines as “violent protests” (CNN, 10/8/19; Guardian, 10/8/19; USA Today, 10/9/19; Financial Times, 10/8/19).

President Moreno has yet to be labeled by the international media as “authoritarian,” despite ordering soldiers to repress demonstrators in the streets, imposing a curfew, suspending basic civil liberties and arresting rival politicians.

Since betraying his campaign promise to continue his predecessor Rafael Correa’s left-wing policies. and embracing the oligarchy he ran against, Moreno has become the darling of Western elite opinion (FAIR.org, 2/4/18).

Like in Chile, corporate outlets have whitewashed Moreno’s vicious crackdown, which left seven dead, around a thousand arrested and a similar figure wounded. However, corporate outlets have been even more nefarious in obfuscating the origins of the crisis in Ecuador.

As Joe Emersberger has recently exposed for FAIR (10/23/19), Western journalists’ favorite lie is that Moreno “inherited a debt crisis that ballooned as his predecessor and one-time mentor, former President Rafael Correa, took out loans for a major dam, highways, schools, clinics and other projects” (New York Times, 10/8/19). In fact, the country’s debt-to-GDP level remains low, though it has increased slightly under Moreno, due not to public works but to his pro-elite policies.

Corporate outlets have for the most part admitted that Moreno has presented no evidence to back his ludicrous claims of Correa and Maduro supporters orchestrating the protests; nonetheless, they have, with few exceptions (DW, 10/14/19; Reuters, 10/12/19), shamefully ignored Moreno’s draconian persecution of Correaist politicians (including elected representatives), which he justifies on the basis of the very same conspiracy theory. This coverage contrasts sharply with the red carpet treatment regularly provided to Venezuela’s US-friendly opposition politicians, regardless of how many coups they perpetrate (Reuters, 4/30/19; LA Times, 4/30/19; Guardian, 2/6/19).

Western Media Gendarmerie 

It is not coincidental that Western journalists stand aghast at the violence of the excluded and exploited in Chile and Ecuador, while rationalizing that spearheaded by Washington-backed opposition elites in Venezuela.

This bias has nothing to do with any actual amount of looting or arson. Rather, it is the eruption of the racialized poor into polite bourgeois society’s technocratic body politic that is viscerally violent to local neocolonial elites and their Western professional-class backers.

Ecuador’s protests are the latest in a long line of anti-neoliberal uprisings, which brought down three presidents between 1997 and 2005.

The rebellion exploding in Chile is the largest in over a generation, evidencing the terminal legitimacy crisis of the “low-intensity democracy” crafted by Pinochet to maintain the neoliberal model imposed at gunpoint. The Chilean uprising has genuinely terrified elites, leading  the right-wing president to wage war on his own people. At stake is not just the stability of a key Western ally, but more crucially, neoliberalism’s ideological narrative that has upheld Chile as a “success story.”

Corporate journalists will most likely continue to muffle themselves vis-a-vis repressive US client states, in the same way that they systematically conceal the impact of Washington’s sanctions on Venezuela (FAIR.org, 6/26/19), which are estimated to have already killed 40,000 Venezuelans since 2017.

If the first casualty of war is truth, its self-anointed purveyors in the international media have much blood on their hands indeed.

The Republican Party Is as Guilty as Trump

Every time it seems as though the firewall of apologists protecting Donald Trump might crumble, Republican politicians let us down over and over. In an interview Sunday, one of Trump’s top Republican allies, Sen. Lindsey Graham, was asked in an interview whether he was open-minded about supporting impeachment if damning evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing was to emerge. Graham said, “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”

But just two days later, the high-ranking senator stood by Trump as the president used the most vile language in reference to his impeachment, saying on Twitter, “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching.” In response, Graham said to reporters, “This is a lynching, in every sense.” He did not say, “This is a symbolic lynching,” or “In some sense, this is a lynching.” (Even those terms would have been unacceptable given the history of quintessentially American racist terror the word references). But Graham said, “in every sense,” this was a lynching of President Trump, implying that even in literal terms, Trump was, in his view, being strung up on a tree by a racist mob and murdered by hanging. Just as other high-ranking Republicans have done in the past, Graham went even further than Trump himself to defend him and his conduct. Are not all of Trump’s supporters as guilty of the president’s wrongdoing as he is?

There has been a mass exodus by Republicans from office and even the party the past two years, strongly suggesting that Trump’s politics are too much for party members to tolerate. Among the earliest was the ambitious Republican star and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who criticized Trump and then chose to retire, saying, “We’re making really good progress on a lot of signature issues” — as if Trump’s destructiveness were a small price to pay for Ryan’s chief economic concerns such as lowering taxes for the wealthy. Other high-profile lawmakers followed, including Sen. Bob Corker, who had been openly critical of Trump but then retired without speaking out. Sen. Jeff Flake also spoke up loudly against Trump but also chose to retire.  House Republican Justin Amash became the first GOP congressman to say that Trump had met the standard for impeachment. He did so in May, before Democrats launched their formal impeachment inquiry — and then made a bold stand by actually leaving the party. Sen. Mitt Romney is the highest-ranking Republican senator who remains in the party and who has spoken out strongly against Trump. According to Axios, Romney explained in an interview that “conservatives are trying to maintain the perception of a united front to voters so as not to risk internal shakeups that could lose them the Senate or Oval Office.”

And there you have it. Fear of losing political gains has kept that Republican firewall around Trump strong regardless of what party members think of the president in private. The real reason Trump continues to be tolerated by his fellow Republicans is because he is delivering on the kind of economic reforms they are counting on. They see the rising tide of anti-capitalist populism in the country as Americans are fed up with the rich getting richer. They see the very real prospects of a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidential election in 2020. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows that backing Trump unequivocally has given conservatives the chance to install two out of nine Supreme Court justices and win long-term right-wing influence in the nation’s highest court. He understands that lowering corporate tax rates is worth the price of keeping Trump in the White House. While Trump is destroying the Republican Party, the Republican Party is destroying America.

Does it really matter if there is a secret resistance to Trump from within his party or even his cabinet? In September 2018, a person claiming to work for Trump wrote an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times saying that she or he was “part of the resistance” and had “vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” Now, more than a year later, that same person is apparently publishing a tell-all book called “A Warning,” as a follow-up to the op-ed. But why continue to remain unnamed? Although anonymous resistance is better than no resistance, if Trump’s horrendous damage to the country over the past year is what has survived the internal thwarting of his agenda by so-called resisters, then their efforts have been in vain.

Several people have asserted that if an impeachment trial were held in the Senate in secret, a large percentage of Republicans would vote to remove the president. Flake estimated that 35 would do so, while an unnamed Republican politician told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that there was a 20% chance of the GOP voting to end Trump’s presidency. But Republicans ought to have the courage to voice their opposition in public. Trump thrives on an impression of compliance and loyalty. He may suspect that Republicans are secretly turning against him, but if that resistance to him remains secret, it matters little. All he cares about is the perception of obedience and the view that he is winning no matter what e does.

One group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, has been working hard to expose Trump and encourage the GOP to take him on. They have operated openly without hiding who they are and are now calling on Romney to “pry the Republican Party from President Trump’s hands.” While their efforts are admirable, it remains to be seen if Republicans who are disgusted with Trump will take its advice.

With the testimony of the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor confirming that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo to exact political dirt from Ukraine in exchange for military aid, one might imagine that Sen. Graham would stay true to his claim that he might consider impeachment if such a thing could be proved. But Graham, like McConnell and others, appears to have made the cold calculation that a guilty Republican in the White House is better than any Democrat.

Trump got into office because Republicans allowed it, and he remains in office because Republicans continue to allow it. Until they openly declare war on his presidency, his ongoing assault on our democracy is just as much their fault as his. He remains in office at their whim. They are his enablers, the facilitators of his evil. The stink of Trump’s racist and misogynist hate, abject dishonesty and flagrant impunity over laws and the U.S. Constitution ought to follow every Trump supporter inside or outside government for the rest of their lives. The only way to save their soul from the complicity that history books will surely capture is to disavow him, and to do so now when it matters.

Zuckerberg Defends Facebook’s Currency Plans to Skeptical Lawmakers

WASHINGTON — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endured hours of prickly questioning from lawmakers Wednesday as he defended the company’s new globally ambitious project to create a digital currency while also dealing with widening scrutiny from U.S. regulators.

Representatives also grilled Zuckerberg on Facebook’s track record on civil rights, hate speech, privacy and misinformation — not surprising given the litany of scandals Facebook has been dealing with over the past two years.

The House Financial Services Committee’s immediate focus was Facebook’s plans for the currency, to be called Libra. Zuckerberg took pains to reassure lawmakers that his company won’t move forward with Libra without explicit approval from all U.S. financial regulators.

Still, many members of the panel appeared unconvinced.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who chairs the panel, said the Libra project and the digital wallet that would be used with it, Calibra, “raise many concerns relating to privacy, trading risks, discrimination … national security, monetary policy and the stability of the global financial system.”

Furthermore, Waters told Zuckerberg, “You have opened up a discussion about whether Facebook should be broken up.”

The social media giant has sparked public and official anger at every turn, from its alleged anticompetitive behavior to its shift into messaging services that allow encrypted conversations, to its refusal to take down phony political ads or doctored videos.

The breakup specter — the worst-case scenario for Facebook and other tech behemoths — has been raised by prominent politicians, notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democratic presidential candidate.

The Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee and attorneys general in several states are all conducting investigations of Facebook and other tech giants amid accusations that they abuse their market power to crush competition.

Zuckerberg was on the defensive at the hearing, his first testimony to Congress since April 2018, parrying criticism but also acknowledging lapses. He conceded at one point that the Libra project is “risky,” acknowledging several high-profile companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal had signed on as partners in the currency’s governing association but have recently bailed.

Under continued criticism of Facebook’s handling of hate speech and potential incitements to violence on its site, he said, “We’re not perfect. We make a lot of mistakes.”

Trust was a central theme of the hearing. Given Facebook’s history “why should congress regulators and the public trust you to create what amounts to the world’s largest bank, what really amounts to shadow sovereign government?” asked Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.

Responded Zuckerberg: “Well congresswoman, we are not creating a bank. We are helping an organization create a payment system.”

Zuckerberg held up China as a strong reason for encouraging innovation as embodied in the Libra project.

“While we debate these issues, the rest of the world isn’t waiting,” he said. “China is moving quickly to launch similar ideas in the coming months.”

Facebook also has cited competition from China as a compelling reason against breaking up the company.

Zuckerberg’s China argument found a ready echo from some Republicans on the committee, such as Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who stepped up to defend the Libra project and urge lawmakers not to put “innovation on trial.”

But Democrats, in a rare tilt, allied themselves with President Donald Trump and his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who have publicly criticized the Libra plan. Mnuchin and other regulators, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, have warned that the digital currency could be used for illicit activity such as money laundering or drug trafficking.

Zuckerberg touted his optimistic vision of Libra and what it could mean for people around the world who don’t have access to bank accounts.

A bulk of the hearing also focused on Facebook’s record on diversity and civil rights. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio and vice chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, lambasted Zuckerberg over his company’s track record on both.

Demanding yes or no answers, Beatty asked Zuckerberg, for instance, how many of Facebook’s stable of big law firms are minority- or woman-owned or how many women or minority partners work on the company’s cases.

She told Zuckerberg Facebook works with civil rights groups only because of “the number of lawsuits you’ve had.”

A subdued-looking Zuckerberg didn’t get in much in the way of answers and Beatty ended her questioning by saying “this is appalling and disgusting” and told Zuckerberg that “you have ruined the lives of many people, discriminated against them.”

___

AP Technology Reporter Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco and AP Banking Reporter Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this report.

What’s Really Behind the Media’s Deepfake Panic

If our mainstream media is to be believed, purposefully deceptive AI-generated imagery, or deepfakes, poses an imminent threat to American democracy. “The future will be riddled with them,” according to Bloomberg, and lawmakers as diverse as Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.,  Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom have expressed their alarm. A recent New York Times opinion piece contends, “It will soon be as easy to produce convincing fake video as it is to lie.” The Guardian warns, “The incentive to use deepfakes to injure political opponents is great,” while Fast Company cautions, “Malicious use cases are an increasing concern amid today’s polarized political climate riven by disinformation and fake news.”

All of these pieces share a basic thesis: Deepfakes have mostly commercial and entertainment-related applications now, but they can easily be weaponized for political gain in the future. Yet like so many allegations of “misinformation,” deepfakes are ill-defined and unproved to bear any political weight. What’s worse, they function as a convenient device for the powerful to flatter themselves and subvert those who challenge them.

Some already have questioned the legitimacy of this scare, which by most accounts entered the popular consciousness in 2017. Last year, The Verge noted that deepfakes haven’t succeeded in swaying public opinion because they’re easy to detect and more likely to confuse viewers than convince them what they’re seeing is real. In June, New York Magazine was more dismissive, noting that “the best examples of widespread deepfaked videos are videos in which Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama were deepfaked to warn people not to fall for deepfaked videos.”

Certainly, deepfakes that have gone viral in recent months—celebrity face-swap videos, an animated Mona Lisa, Nicolas Cage appearing in unexpected places—have proved inconsequential. Even a video of House Speaker  Nancy Pelosi, comically slowed down to make her appear drunk and tweeted by President Donald Trump, received more coverage for what it might portend than for any measurable impact it had on the electorate.

Still, for every critical examination of deepfakes, there are scores of credulous ones, even in the same outlets offering platforms to the skeptics. Meanwhile, the political purpose this narrative serves has gone virtually unexamined.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss the deepfake panic without acknowledging its loose parallels with Russiagate and the related “fake news” phenomenon. As with those scandals, which endowed purveyors of   like the Internet Research Agency with the power to steal elections, deepfakes provide the political establishment with a convenient deus ex machina in the event of an unwelcome election result. One can easily imagine Democrats inveighing against them should Trump prevail in 2020.

Indeed, elites have consistently wielded “misinformation” warnings in defense of the status quo. Since the 2016 election, claims have abounded that Russia used social media to “sow discord” among an unsuspecting U.S. public, with a particular focus on issues of racial justice. An NBC News report from May even suggested the Kremlin sought to “manipulate and radicalize African Americans” to “destabilize” the United States—a manifest attempt to undermine racial-justice movements while demonizing a country the U.S. deems an adversary.

“Framing black activism as ‘divisive’ treats the alt-right and white nationalists as if they are on equal footing with those struggling for racial justice,” argued Anoa Changa in The Nation in 2017. “At this time in our history, the struggles and work of black people cannot be reduced to alleged Russian ‘interference’ or ‘propaganda.’”

Similarly, fears of image manipulation have been leveraged to absolve powerful figures of their wrongdoing. On Oct. 3, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University hypothesized that figures such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was discovered to have donned blackface in the 1990s and 2000s, could be subjected to visual manipulation. After these images of Trudeau first surfaced, the article notes that “photoshopped racist blackface and brownface images and memes,” or “cheap fakes,” circulated online, and that the release of the photos “will likely further incentivize … digital dumpstering—combing through bits of digital information, records, data and media, to shame or embarrass candidates or spread confusion for partisan gain.”

While the piece didn’t address deepfakes explicitly, its subtext was clear: Image manipulation could easily be used as a bludgeon against a political candidate. This focus on hypothetical “bad actors” who might seek to smear Trudeau and other politicians, rather than on Trudeau’s very real culpability, only serves to portray a U.S.-allied  world leader with a penchant for racist caricatures as a victim.

Nieman Reports’ findings beg the question: If these “bad actors” exist, who are they? There’s no clear answer, but a few clues, unsurprisingly, point to countries the U.S. routinely vilifies. In a 2018 letter to then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, members of Congress stated, “We are deeply concerned that deepfake technology could soon be deployed by malicious foreign actors.” Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who co-wrote the letter and has been one of Russiagate’s lead proponents, has already implied, without evidence, that Russia will be to blame.

Additional reports have proved no less speculative. The U.S. Intelligence Community’s 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment claimed that “adversaries and strategic competitors probably will” use deepfakes to influence the 2020 election, naming Russia, China and Iran as suspects. A “disinformation” report from New York University also specifically mentioned Russia, China and Iran as “candidates to deploy disinformation in 2020”—again, with no proof.

In this context, U.S. intelligence agencies are depicted as trustworthy investigators, ready to safeguard American democracy against shadowy external forces. CNN Business published a multimedia series titled, “When seeing is no longer believing: Inside the Pentagon’s race against deepfake videos,” highlighting the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) deepfake “research” program. In it, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., calls deepfakes “the next wave of attacks against America and Western democracies.” The Washington Post, PBS, The Hill, TechCrunch and a coterie of other media organizations have all uncritically reported on DARPA’s efforts to “defend” the country.

Given their parallels, the deepfake ferment likely will go the way of Russiagate, languishing amid insufficient evidence. But this scare won’t be the last of its kind. If history is any indication, U.S. policymakers and intelligence officials will continue to sound the alarm about misinformation when it suits them, long after deepfakes have receded from the political discourse. Whether they’ll offer anything more convincing than celebrity face-swaps, though, remains to be seen.