Chris Hedges's Blog, page 135

Portugal’s Lesson for the Global Left

There’s a place in the West where a smattering of anti-austerity, pro-immigration, pro-public-spending left-wing parties are not only in power, but are actually popular. I’m talking about Portugal, the small European country I have witnessed grow into a global political marvel.

On Sunday, progressives around the world cheered as a loose left-wing coalition won enough seats to rule the country for another four years.

The story of Portugal’s resurgent left starts in 2015, when, as a center-right government continued to force austerity measures painfully down the throats of a suffering nation, the Portuguese voted for an alternative—sort of. While the ruling coalition, made up of center-right and right-wing parties, earned the most seats in the Portuguese parliament, it wasn’t able to form a majority government. That’s when António Costa, Lisbon’s former mayor and progressive leader of the Socialist Party (PS), did something unprecedented and highly controversial—he reached left to form what was disparagingly labeled a geringonça, meaning an odd contraption, and established something between a coalition and a parliamentary pact with the Left Bloc (BE) and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP).

The idea behind the pact was that while all three parties would agree on core, anti-austerity policies that would establish a functioning majority in parliament, on all other issues, politicians from the left-wing parties were free to vote against and openly criticize the PS, allowing them to maintain their integrity and vows to voters when the PS diverged from a more leftist approach. No one, perhaps least of all the left-wing politicians themselves, expected the political arrangement to work as well as it did, successfully ruling the country through to Sunday’s general election.

In the years since the left took over, I have personally seen the sweeping shifts take effect across the country during several stints there. Not only did the major cities of Lisbon and Porto go through massive restoration projects that made the uptick in the economy seem palpable, but the effects could be seen in people’s outlooks across the country. The Portuguese, whom I find to be some of the friendliest and most humble people this side of the Atlantic, were visibly downtrodden after the 2008 financial crisis and years of subsequent spending cuts imposed by the dreaded “troika”—the combination of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. On my most recent stint in Portugal this summer, I witnessed a country and a people excited for what seemed like the first time in quite a while for the possibility of a more stable and prosperous future than many thought possible just years before.

Underpinning this sea of change was a vastly different approach to the economy, but more important, the Portuguese people’s well-being. Costa, a politician of Goan descent who gained popularity and power with an anti-austerity message, prioritized pensions, raising the minimum wage and other public spending projects. Unemployment is on the decline and economic growth on the rise, all while sticking to the European Union’s economic constraints regarding spending deficits. All of which is why on Sunday, Portuguese voters seemed to express their willingness to give the “contraption” government another go, handing the Socialist Party a near-majority and re-electing the same amount of Left Bloc members of parliament. The Communist Party was the only party in the pact to have suffered the loss of five seats.

Portugal, 99% of parishes counted:

Confirmed Seats: 226/230

PS-S&D: 106 (+21)
PSD-EPP: 77 (-12)
BE-LEFT: 19
CDU-LEFT|G/EFA: 12 (-5)
CDS/PP-EPP: 5 (-13)
PAN-G/EFA: 4 (+3)
CH-ECR: 1 (+1)
IL-RE: 1 (+1)
LIVRE-G/EFA: 1 (+1)
unclear: 4

+/- vs. current distribution#Legislativas2019

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) October 6, 2019

With results like these, the government likely will be formed using another similar pact, which might include a new left-wing parties which gained a seat. Costa even made a joke about the popularity of the geringonça, telling supporters on Sunday, “The Portuguese liked our arrangement.” Most important, however, Portugal, where many people still remember the repressive dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar who ruled until 1974, is being held up as proof that the European hard-right can be stomped out by a strong left. While the racist Chega became the first far-right populist party to gain a seat in the Portuguese parliament, as the Left Bloc’s Catarina Príncipe points out in a piece for Jacobin, the rise of “Livre (a social-democratic party related to Yanis Varoufakis’ Diem25, and the first party to stand a black woman as its lead candidate) … points to the political tensions of a country with both renewed racist tendencies and new anti-racist movements.” Even so, while keeping in mind Portugal has had very low immigration rates in recent years, the fact that the current leader actually openly campaigned on the need for more immigration in a Europe where xenophobia is on the rise is somewhat remarkable.

What’s the Portuguese left’s secret? According to the country’s socialist leader, it’s a healthy dose of democracy.

“What sets democratic politics apart from populism is that it does not tap into people’s fears … but instead gives them back hope in the future,” Costa told other European leaders.

The progressive prime minister’s tenure, however, has not been completely trouble-free. Increasing spending while adhering to EU economic restrictions has meant alarming cuts in education and health care investment, among other public sectors. The rapid rise of tourism has brought up many questions about how to protect housing for residents, despite a valiant attempt to address the issue with a law that guarantees housing as a right. Costa’s Socialist Party is also still grappling with the fallout of a corruption scandal surrounding a previous leader, former Prime Minister José Sócrates. And, according to the founder of the Left Bloc, Francisco Louçã, Costa has not done enough to truly break with austerity. Louçã wants the Left Bloc to fight for “a fresh rise in the minimum wage and in pensions, to propose concrete measures for a housing program and the national health system, a new wave of public investment in urban transport in order to reduce emissions, and the nationalization of the Post Office,” though he finds it “quite implausible that the PS would agree to negotiate these measures, and still less to apply them.” In other words, Louçã is advocating for more long-term solutions to economic troubles rather than simply short-term relief from austerity measures.

Others warn against seeing Portugal as “Europe’s beacon of social democracy,” as The Guardian labeled it in a recent piece. Federico Santi, a political analyst, calls it instead “left-wing exceptionalism”:

The absence of a far-right party, the fact that the PS were in opposition during the bailout and the willingness of the radical parties to work with the moderates is not the case in most other countries. Rather than a template for other parties to follow, I see Portugal as the exception that proves the rule, what some people see as an irreversible crisis of the moderate left.

Yet, with the harrowing rise of far-right forces across the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Poland and other parts of the EU, not to mention the U.S., and its own neighbor Spain struggling to even form a government, you can’t fault those who see Portugal’s left-wing geringonça as an enviably progressive dream come true—or, at the very least, a leftist vision in progress.

The Real Impeachment Scandal Isn’t About Trump

There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill. Or so they think.

From the time of Donald Trump’s election, American elites have hungered for this moment. At long last, they have the 45th president of the United States cornered. In typically ham-handed fashion, Trump has given his adversaries the very means to destroy him politically. They will not waste the opportunity. Impeachment now—finally, some will say—qualifies as a virtual certainty.

No doubt many surprises lie ahead. Yet the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives have passed the point of no return. The time for prudential judgments—the Republican-controlled Senate will never convict, so why bother?—is gone for good. To back down now would expose the president’s pursuers as spineless cowards. The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC would not soon forgive such craven behavior.

So, as President Woodrow Wilson, speaking in 1919 put it, “The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God.” Of course, the issue back then was a notably weighty one: whether to ratify the Versailles Treaty. That it now concerns a “Mafia-like shakedown” orchestrated by one of Wilson’s successors tells us something about the trajectory of American politics over the course of the last century and it has not been a story of ascent.

The effort to boot the president from office is certain to yield a memorable spectacle. The rancor and contempt that have clogged American politics like a backed-up sewer since the day of Donald Trump’s election will now find release. Watergate will pale by comparison. The uproar triggered by Bill Clinton’s “sexual relations” will be nothing by comparison. A de facto collaboration between Trump, those who despise him, and those who despise his critics all but guarantees that this story will dominate the news, undoubtedly for months to come.

As this process unspools, what politicians like to call “the people’s business” will go essentially unattended. So while Congress considers whether or not to remove Trump from office, gun-control legislation will languish, the deterioration of the nation’s infrastructure will proceed apace, needed healthcare reforms will be tabled, the military-industrial complex will waste yet more billions, and the national debt, already at $22 trillion — larger, that is, than the entire economy — will continue to surge. The looming threat posed by climate change, much talked about of late, will proceed all but unchecked. For those of us preoccupied with America’s role in the world, the obsolete assumptions and habits undergirding what’s still called “national security” will continue to evade examination. Our endless wars will remain endless and pointless.

By way of compensation, we might wonder what benefits impeachment is likely to yield. Answering that question requires examining four scenarios that describe the range of possibilities awaiting the nation.

The first and most to be desired (but least likely) is that Trump will tire of being a public piñata and just quit. With the thrill of flying in Air Force One having worn off, being president can’t be as much fun these days. Why put up with further grief? How much more entertaining for Trump to retire to the political sidelines where he can tweet up a storm and indulge his penchant for name-calling. And think of the “deals” an ex-president could make in countries like Israel, North Korea, Poland, and Saudi Arabia on which he’s bestowed favors. Cha-ching! As of yet, however, the president shows no signs of taking the easy (and lucrative) way out.

The second possible outcome sounds almost as good but is no less implausible: a sufficient number of Republican senators rediscover their moral compass and “do the right thing,” joining with Democrats to create the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump and send him packing. In the Washington of that classic twentieth-century film director Frank Capra, with Jimmy Stewart holding forth on the Senate floor and a moist-eyed Jean Arthur cheering him on from the gallery, this might have happened. In the real Washington of “Moscow Mitch” McConnell, think again.

The third somewhat seamier outcome might seem a tad more likely. It postulates that McConnell and various GOP senators facing reelection in 2020 or 2022 will calculate that turning on Trump just might offer the best way of saving their own skins. The president’s loyalty to just about anyone, wives included, has always been highly contingent, the people streaming out of his administration routinely making the point. So why should senatorial loyalty to the president be any different? At the moment, however, indications that Trump loyalists out in the hinterlands will reward such turncoats are just about nonexistent. Unless that base were to flip, don’t expect Republican senators to do anything but flop.

That leaves outcome number four, easily the most probable: while the House will impeach, the Senate will decline to convict. Trump will therefore stay right where he is, with the matter of his fitness for office effectively deferred to the November 2020 elections. Except as a source of sadomasochistic diversion, the entire agonizing experience will, therefore, prove to be a colossal waste of time and blather.

Furthermore, Donald Trump might well emerge from this national ordeal with his reelection chances enhanced. Such a prospect is belatedly insinuating itself into public discourse. For that reason, certain anti-Trump pundits are already showing signs of going wobbly, suggesting, for instance, that censure rather than outright impeachment might suffice as punishment for the president’s various offenses. Yet censuring Trump while allowing him to stay in office would be the equivalent of letting Harvey Weinstein off with a good tongue-lashing so that he can get back to making movies. Censure is for wimps.

Besides, as Trump campaigns for a second term, he would almost surely wear censure like a badge of honor. Keep in mind that Congress’s approval ratings are considerably worse than his. To more than a few members of the public, a black mark awarded by Congress might look like a gold star.

Not Removal but Restoration

So if Trump finds himself backed into a corner, Democrats aren’t necessarily in a more favorable position. And that ain’t the half of it. Let me suggest that, while Trump is being pursued, it’s you, my fellow Americans, who are really being played. The unspoken purpose of impeachment is not removal, but restoration. The overarching aim is not to replace Trump with Mike Pence — the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo. No, the object of the exercise is to return power to those who created the conditions that enabled Trump to win the White House in the first place.

Just recently, for instance, Hillary Clinton declared Trump to be an “illegitimate president.” Implicit in her charge is the conviction — no doubt sincere — that people like Donald Trump are not supposed to be president. People like Hillary Clinton — people possessing credentials like hers and sharing her values — should be the chosen ones. Here we glimpse the true meaning of legitimacy in this context. Whatever the vote in the Electoral College, Trump doesn’t deserve to be president and never did.

For many of the main participants in this melodrama, the actual but unstated purpose of impeachment is to correct this great wrong and thereby restore history to its anointed path.

In a recent column in the Guardian, Professor Samuel Moyn makes the essential point: Removing from office a vulgar, dishonest, and utterly incompetent president comes nowhere close to capturing what’s going on here. To the elites most intent on ousting Trump, far more important than anything he may say or do is what he signifies. He is a walking, talking repudiation of everything they believe and, by extension, of a future they had come to see as foreordained.

Moyn styles these anti-Trump elites as “centrists,” members of the post-Cold War political mainstream that allowed ample room for nominally conservative Bushes and nominally liberal Clintons, while leaving just enough space for Barack Obama’s promise of hope-and-(not-too-much) change.

These centrists share a common worldview. They believe in the universality of freedom as defined and practiced within the United States. They believe in corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale. They believe in American primacy, with the United States presiding over a global order as the sole superpower. They believe in “American global leadership,” which they define as primarily a military enterprise. And perhaps most of all, while collecting degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, Wellesley, the University of Chicago, and Yale, they came to believe in a so-called meritocracy as the preferred mechanism for allocating wealth, power, and privilege. All of these together comprise the sacred scripture of contemporary American political elites. And if Donald Trump’s antagonists have their way, his removal will restore that sacred scripture to its proper place as the basis of policy.

“For all their appeals to enduring moral values,” Moyn writes, “the centrists are deploying a transparent strategy to return to power.” Destruction of the Trump presidency is a necessary precondition for achieving that goal. “Centrists simply want to return to the status quo interrupted by Trump, their reputations laundered by their courageous opposition to his mercurial reign, and their policies restored to credibility.” Precisely.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

For such a scheme to succeed, however, laundering reputations alone will not suffice. Equally important will be to bury any recollection of the catastrophes that paved the way for an über-qualified centrist to lose to an indisputably unqualified and unprincipled political novice in 2016.

Holding promised security assistance hostage unless a foreign leader agrees to do you political favors is obviously and indisputably wrong. Trump’s antics regarding Ukraine may even meet some definition of criminal. Still, how does such misconduct compare to the calamities engineered by the “centrists” who preceded him? Consider, in particular, the George W. Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (along with the spin-off wars that followed). Consider, too, the reckless economic policies that produced the Great Recession of 2007-2008. As measured by the harm inflicted on the American people (and others), the offenses for which Trump is being impeached qualify as mere misdemeanors.

Honest people may differ on whether to attribute the Iraq War to outright lies or monumental hubris. When it comes to tallying up the consequences, however, the intentions of those who sold the war don’t particularly matter. The results include thousands of Americans killed; tens of thousands wounded, many grievously, or left to struggle with the effects of PTSD; hundreds of thousands of non-Americans killed or injured; millions displaced; trillions of dollars expended; radical groups like ISIS empowered (and in its case even formed inside a U.S. prison in Iraq); and the Persian Gulf region plunged into turmoil from which it has yet to recover. How do Trump’s crimes stack up against these?

The Great Recession stemmed directly from economic policies implemented during the administration of President Bill Clinton and continued by his successor. Deregulating the banking sector was projected to produce a bonanza in which all would share. Yet, as a direct result of the ensuing chicanery, nearly nine million Americans lost their jobs, while overall unemployment shot up to 10%. Roughly four million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The stock market cratered and millions saw their life savings evaporate. Again, the question must be asked: How do these results compare to Trump’s dubious dealings with Ukraine?

Trump’s critics speak with one voice in demanding accountability. Yet virtually no one has been held accountable for the pain, suffering, and loss inflicted by the architects of the Iraq War and the Great Recession. Why is that? As another presidential election approaches, the question not only goes unanswered, but unasked.

To win reelection, Trump, a corrupt con man (who jumped ship on his own bankrupt casinos, money in hand, leaving others holding the bag) will cheat and lie. Yet, in the politics of the last half-century, these do not qualify as novelties. (Indeed, apart from being the son of a sitting U.S. vice president, what made Hunter Biden worth $50Gs per month to a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch?  I’m curious.) That the president and his associates are engaging in a cover-up is doubtless the case. Yet another cover-up proceeds in broad daylight on a vastly larger scale. “Trump’s shambolic presidency somehow seems less unsavory,” Moyn writes, when considering the fact that his critics refuse “to admit how massively his election signified the failure of their policies, from endless war to economic inequality.” Just so.

What are the real crimes? Who are the real criminals? No matter what happens in the coming months, don’t expect the Trump impeachment proceedings to come within a country mile of addressing such questions.

Betrayal Is American Foreign Policy

This piece originally appeared on antiwar.com.

First, the (mostly) good news: President Trump appears poised, finally, to end the U.S. military mission in Northeast Syria. The move would constitute the first actual follow-through on the promises of candidate Trump to avoid “stupid” and terminate “endless” Mideast wars. That’s no small thing. Furthermore, while the outcome in Syria is likely to be messy, if not tragic, I’ve long argued for an end to America’s ill-advised, all risk no reward, quagmire in Syria. With Assad – thanks to ample backing from Iran and Russia – victorious in the long civil war, the US military tenuously ensconced in Northeast Syria without true congressional authorization, and Washington’s mission more muddled than ever, it’s become increasingly unclear what some 1,000 troops can reasonably hope to accomplish in the war-torn country.

Nevertheless, the way the mission appears to be ending promises great (if ultimately unavoidable) human suffering, especially for Syria’s Kurdish minority. Specifically, Trump has sold out his Kurdish partners, the main ground force that defeated the territorial Islamic State from 2014-19, suffering some 11,000 battle deaths in the process. It’s not just that the US military is leaving, but Washington has veritably green-lighted an impending Turkish Army and Air Force invasion of Northeast Syria. The result will be war–since the courageous Kurds are unlikely to back down–slaughter, potential ethnic cleansing, and perhaps even the resurgence of ISIS during the inevitable tumult.

The Turks are led by an authoritarian strongman, and Trump amigo, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who considers Washington’s allied Kurdish militiamen to be both “terrorists” and an existential threat to his country. Both are wild overstatements. Regardless, in a predictable bit of Trumpian “telephone” diplomacy, the US president apparently sanctioned the invasion during a call with Erdogan – who, if Egypt’s President Sisi constitutes Trump’s “favorite dictator,” must count as Trump’s favorite almost-dictator. Not only did Trump approve the illegal invasion, but he even agreed to pull US troops out of the way and promised no American actions in the area. Erdogan must have been thrilled. The Kurds…not so much.

Personally, I think it just as well that the US military get out of a risky morass in yet another fractured Mideast country. That said, this latest in a long line of American betrayals (often of Kurds), demonstrates the broader tragedy of U.S. imperialism and hyper-interventionism. Time and again, Washington has used and abused its “partners” on the ground in the Mideast locales it regularly invades and occupies. Consider America, then, the ultimate fair-weather friend.

Consider just a few examples of how the US – long before Emperor Trump took office–has blown-up Mideast societies like the proverbial bull in a china shop, then sold out its local “friends.” In 1991, after expelling Saddam Hussein’s Army from Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush encouraged oppressed southern Shia and northern Kurds to rebel. When they did, he promptly abandoned them to their fate. The uprisings were crushed; thousands died. That wasn’t even the first betrayal of the Kurds – the world’s largest stateless community–by Uncle Sam. Lest we forget that Bush’s predecessor, Ronald Reagan, had backed Saddam during his terror war on Iran, and not only looked the other way, but helped pick targets, as the Iraqi dictator poison gassed a Kurdish village in 1988.

In the wake Bush-the-younger’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq–the gold standard of regime change folly–Washington remained idle as all state functions collapsed, looting ran rampant, and the economy went into free-fall. “Stuff happens,” is all Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to say about the looting, adding, though, that democracy is “untidy.” How comforting. The US then dismantled the entire Iraqi Army and kicked tens of thousands of other Sunnis out of their government jobs. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands were unemployed, many of whom lost their pensions. The results: sectarian civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, the empowerment of Iran’s position in the country, and Washington backing a chauvinist Shia regime in Baghdad.

To bring spiraling violence to a manageable level, to enable the US military to declare victory and withdraw, Uncle Sam then funded and armed a Sunni militia to fight more extreme Al Qaeda-linked insurgents. Once the US hit the exits, however, the Shia government predictably quit paying the militiamen, oppressed everyday Sunni citizens, and massacred protesters. The result this time: the rise of Islamic State like a mythical Phoenix from the ashes of the US invasion and destruction of Iraq. Oh, by the way, Bush, then Obama, and finally Trump, denied asylum to thousands of interpreters who had risked their lives working with the US military. Much of the same unfolded in Afghanistan.

What’s likely to transpire, as a result of this latest betrayal, is that the Kurds will reach out to Bashar al-Assad’s Damascus regime (and by extension to Russia and Iran). That’s not such a bad thing. A better solution than keeping the U.S. military in place indefinitely or enabling a Turkish terror invasion, and one which Trump could totally apply, is to strike a deal between Erdogan and Assad. As such the US would recognize that Assad is, for better or worse, the sovereign ruler of Syria, that President Obama never had a right to permanently carve out any sort of fiefdom in part of that country, and to try to assuage Turkey’s “Kurdish problem,” without sanctioning an illegal invasion. Now that means dealing with plenty of nefarious actors, and sure the beltway elite will cry foul, but it’s also inevitable if the US is to avoid a permanent military presence and simultaneously avoid a new Turk-Kurd bloodbath in the area.

Unfortunately, that seems unlikely, precisely because it’s so logical. Instead, I fear we’re in for a new conflagration; this time as macabre voyeurs on the sidelines. As for the Kurds, consider the latest betrayal in Northeast Syria to be at least the third American sellout of these stateless, at-risk people. It’s unlikely to be the last. None of that should be taken to imply the US should remain in Syria indefinitely–although that’s precisely what the neocon/neolib media and intelligence apparatus now clamors for–but is a reminder of the “blowback” associated with US militarism, imperialism, and hasty interventionism.

Given the context, and the recent history, it’s amazing that anyone still falls for American promises. Sadly, that some do is a reflection of their utter desperation. Say what you will about Russian President Vladimir Putin or Iran’s Ayatollahs – I’ve no particular love for either – but at least they stand by their man, in this case Bashar al-Assad. That’s more than any recent U.S. proxy in the Greater Middle East–save Israel and Saudi Arabia–can say. My advice to the various peoples of the region: next time, and there will be a next time, don’t even consider trusting Uncle Sam. You’ll thank me later…

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. 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. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

Support for Trump’s Impeachment Is Only Growing

A new Washington Post/Schar School poll released Tuesday showed a majority of Americans approve of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, a dramatic jump in support for the proceedings in the wake of the whistleblower complaint over Trump’s talks with Ukraine’s leader.

The survey found that 58 percent of Americans—including 80 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans—say House Democrats were correct to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, who pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The poll also showed 49 percent of Americans believe the House should call for the president to be removed from office, which would require conviction by the Senate.

“The tide has shifted on impeachment,” tweeted pollster Matt McDermott.

According to the Post, the survey findings “indicate that public opinion has shifted quickly against the president and in favor of impeachment proceedings in recent weeks.”

“Previous Post-Schar School or Post-ABC News polls taken at different points throughout this year found majorities of Americans opposing the start of an impeachment proceeding, with 37 percent to 41 percent saying they favored such a step,” the Post reported. “The recent revelations appear to have prompted many Americans to rethink their position.”

The rapid movement in public opinion toward support for an impeachment inquiry follows a major and abrupt shift inside the Democratic caucus. Within days of news that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden, support for impeachment among House Democrats jumped from a slim majority, with approximately 160 members in favor just two weeks ago, to over 220.

Progressive activists have been credited for keeping the heat on lawmakers to hold Trump accountable for his misconduct, and advocacy groups are continuing to mobilize to ensure House Democrats follow through with their inquiry.

Every MOC should be on the record in support of an impeachment inquiry and a fair and open impeachment trial in the Senate.

For Dem senators, demand that they speak out loudly and firmly about the need for a fair and open impeachment trial in the Senate.https://t.co/xUR4fPqArc pic.twitter.com/uHOVpRbVzh

— Indivisible Guide (@IndivisibleTeam) October 7, 2019

“August had been a challenge for the party’s rank-and-file,” The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim reported last month, “as activists and angry citizens back home browbeat them at town halls, grocery stores, and local events for the party’s unwillingness to impeach President Donald Trump. ‘We spent all summer getting the shit kicked out of us back home,’ said one Democrat who received such treatment.”

Profit, Not Politics: Trump Allies Sought Ukraine Gas Deal

KYIV, Ukraine — As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.

Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

Their plan hit a snag after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lost his reelection bid to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose conversation with Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump.

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But the effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of the gas company, Naftogaz, would soon be taken up with Ukraine’s new president by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry’s past political donors.

It’s unclear if Perry’s attempts to replace board members at Naftogaz were coordinated with the Giuliani allies pushing for a similar outcome, and no one has alleged that there is criminal activity in any of these efforts. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Giuliani had in helping his clients push to get gas sales agreements with the state-owned company.

But the affair shows how those with ties to Trump and his administration were pursuing business deals in Ukraine that went far beyond advancing the president’s personal political interests. It also raises questions about whether Trump allies were mixing business and politics just as Republicans were calling for a probe of Biden and his son Hunter, who served five years on the board of another Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.

On Friday, Trump told a group of Republican lawmakers that it had been Perry who had prompted the phone call in which Trump asked Zelenskiy for a “favor” regarding Biden, according to a person familiar with Trump’s remarks.

The person, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to describe a closed conversation among GOP officials, recounted that Trump said it was Perry who asked him to make the July call to discuss “something about an LNG (liquefied natural gas) plant.” Trump’s remarks were first reported Saturday by the news site Axios.

While it’s unclear whether Trump’s remark Friday referred specifically to the behind-the-scenes maneuvers this spring involving the multibillion-dollar state gas company, The Associated Press has interviewed four people with direct knowledge of the attempts to influence Naftogaz, and their accounts show Perry playing a key role in the effort. Three of the four spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The fourth is an American businessman with close ties to the Ukrainian energy sector.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Energy Department said Perry, a former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, was not advancing anyone’s personal interests. She said his conversations with Ukrainian officials about Naftogaz were part of his efforts to reform the country’s energy sector and create an environment in which Western companies can do business.

Perry was asked about the AP’s reporting on Monday while in Lithuania, where he was meeting with officials from Ukraine and other eastern European countries to discuss energy security and cooperation. He said any suggestion that he tried to force a management change at Naftogaz was a “totally dreamed up story.”

“We get asked for our recommendations about people who are experts in areas, various areas,” Perry said. “Folks who have expertise in particular areas. Obviously having been the governor of the state of Texas, I know a lot of people in the energy industry.”

Perry also confirmed he had urged Trump to call Zelenskiy, but said the subject was the potential growth of Ukraine’s energy sector.

“Absolutely, I asked the president multiple times, ‘Mr. President, we think it is in the United States’ and in Ukraine’s best interest that you and the president of Ukraine have conversations, that you discuss the options that are there,'” Perry said, recounting his conversations with Trump.

The Trump and Giuliani allies driving the attempt to change the senior management at Naftogaz, however, appear to have had inside knowledge of the U.S. government’s plans in Ukraine. For example, they told people that Trump would replace the U.S. ambassador there months before she was actually recalled to Washington, according to three of the individuals interviewed by the AP. One of the individuals said he was so concerned by the whole affair that he reported it to a U.S. Embassy official in Ukraine months ago.

___

THE BUSINESSMEN

Ukraine, a resource-rich nation that sits on the geographic and symbolic border between Russia and the West, has long been plagued by corruption and government dysfunction, making it a magnet for foreign profiteers.

At the center of the Naftogaz plan, according to three individuals familiar with the details, were three such businessmen: two Soviet-born Florida real estate entrepreneurs, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an oil magnate from Boca Raton, Florida, named Harry Sargeant III.

Parnas and Fruman have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to Republicans, including $325,000 to a Trump-allied political action committee in 2018. This helped the relatively unknown entrepreneurs gain access to top levels of the Republican Party — including meetings with Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago.

The two have also faced lawsuits from disgruntled investors over unpaid debts. During the same period they were pursuing the Naftogaz deal, the two were coordinating with Giuliani to set up meetings with Ukrainian government officials and push for an investigation of the Bidens.

Sargeant, his wife and corporate entities tied to the family have donated at least $1.2 million to Republican campaigns and PACs over the last 20 years, including $100,000 in June to the Trump Victory Fund, according to federal and state campaign finance records. He has also served as finance chair of the Florida state GOP, and gave nearly $14,000 to Giuliani’s failed 2008 presidential campaign.

In early March, Fruman, Parnas and Sargeant were touting a plan to replace Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev with another senior executive at the company, Andrew Favorov, according to two individuals who spoke to the AP as well as a memorandum about the meeting that was later submitted to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, formerly known as Kiev.

Going back to the Obama administration, the U.S. Energy Department and the State Department have long supported efforts to import American natural gas into Ukraine to reduce the country’s dependence on Russia.

The three approached Favorov with the idea while the Ukrainian executive was attending an energy industry conference in Texas. Parnas and Fruman told him they had flown in from Florida on a private jet to recruit him to be their partner in a new venture to export up to 100 tanker shipments a year of U.S. liquefied gas into Ukraine, where Naftogaz is the largest distributor, according to two people briefed on the details.

Sargeant told Favorov that he regularly meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and that the gas-sales plan had the president’s full support, according to the two people who said Favorov recounted the discussion to them.

These conversations were recounted to AP by Dale W. Perry, an American who is a former business partner of Favorov. He told AP in an interview that Favorov described the meeting to him soon after it happened and that Favorov perceived it to be a shakedown. Perry, who is no relation to the energy secretary, is the managing partner of Energy Resources of Ukraine, which currently has business agreements to import natural gas and electricity to Ukraine.

A second person who spoke on condition of anonymity also confirmed to the AP that Favorov had recounted details of the Houston meeting to him.

According to Dale Perry and the other person, Favorov said Parnas told him Trump planned to remove U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and replace her with someone more open to aiding their business interests.

Dale Perry told the AP he was so concerned about the efforts to change the management at Naftogaz and to get rid of Yovanovitch that he reported what he had heard to Suriya Jayanti, a State Department foreign service officer stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv who focuses on the energy industry.

He also wrote a detailed memo about Favorov’s account, dated April 12, which was shared with another current State Department official. Perry recently provided a copy of the April memo to AP.

Jayanti declined to provide comment. Favorov also declined to comment.

A Florida lawyer representing Sargeant, Christopher Kise, issued a statement Monday confirming that his client was at the Houston dinner with Parnas, Fruman and Favorov, but insisted he was there only to offer “broad industry guidance and his expert view on the challenges presented by operating in foreign markets.”

“Attending a single, informal dinner in Houston does not place Mr. Sargeant at the center of any Naftogaz or Ukrainian business plan,” Kise said. “Mr. Sargeant never discussed any role or participation in any Ukraine venture, nor any specifics regarding the potential business ventures of the other dinner participants.”

The statement did not address whether Yovanovitch’s fate was discussed at the dinner. Kise also said Sargeant has not met at Mar-a-Lago with Trump since he became president.

On March 24, Giuliani and Parnas gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington with Healy E. Baumgardner, a former Trump campaign adviser who once served as deputy communications director for Giuliani’s presidential campaign and as a communications official during the George W. Bush administration.

She is now listed as the CEO of 45 Energy Group, a Houston-based energy company whose website describes it as a “government relations, public affairs and business development practice group.” The company’s name is an apparent nod to Trump, the 45th president.

This was a couple of weeks after the Houston meeting with Favorov, the Naftogaz executive. Giuliani, Parnas and Baumgardner were there to make a business pitch involving gas deals in the former Soviet bloc to a potential investor.

This time, according to Giuliani, the deals that were discussed involved Uzbekistan, not Ukraine.

“I have not pursued a deal in the Ukraine. I don’t know about a deal in the Ukraine. I would not do a deal in the Ukraine now, obviously,” said Giuliani, reached while attending a playoff baseball game between the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins. “There is absolutely no proof that I did it, because I didn’t do it.”

During this meeting, Parnas again repeated that Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, would soon be replaced, according to a person with direct knowledge of the gathering. She was removed two months later.

Giuliani, who serves as Trump’s personal lawyer and has no official role in government, acknowledged Friday that he was among those pushing the president to replace the ambassador, a career diplomat with a history of fighting corruption.

“The ambassador to Ukraine was replaced,” he said. “I did play a role in that.”

But Giuliani refused to discuss the details of his business dealings, or whether he helped his associates in their push to forge gas sales contracts with the Ukrainian company. He did describe Sergeant as a friend and referred to Parnas and Fruman as his clients in a tweet in May.

As part of their impeachment inquiry, House Democrats have subpoenaed Giuliani for documents and communications related to dozens of people, including Favorov, Parnas, Fruman and Baumgardner’s 45 Energy Group.

The House Intelligence Committee also issued sweeping document requests to Parnas and Fruman, due Monday, and scheduled depositions for later in the week.

John Dowd, a former Trump attorney who now represents Parnas and Fruman, said he and his clients have not yet decided whether to comply. Democrats on Monday threatened to issue subpoenas if they don’t show.

Baumgardner issued a written statement, saying: “While I won’t comment on business discussions, I will say this: this political assault on private business by the Democrats in Congress is complete harassment and an invasion of privacy that should scare the hell out of every American business owner.”

Baumgardner later denied that she had any business dealings in Ukraine but refused to say whether the replacement of Ambassador Yovanovitch was discussed.

Dowd said it was actually the Naftogaz executives who approached his clients about making a deal. Dowd says the group then approached Rick Perry to get the Energy Department on board.

“The people from the company solicited my clients because Igor is in the gas business, and they asked them, and they flew to Washington and they solicited,” Dowd said. “They sat down and talked about it. And then it was presented to Secretary Perry to see if they could get it together.

“It wasn’t a shakedown; it was an attempt to do legitimate business that didn’t work out.”

___

THE ENERGY SECRETARY

In May, Rick Perry traveled to Kyiv to serve as the senior U.S. government representative at the inauguration of the county’s new president.

In a private meeting with Zelenskiy, Perry pressed the Ukrainian president to fire members of the Naftogaz advisory board. Attendees left the meeting with the impression that Perry wanted to replace the American representative, Amos Hochstein, a former diplomat and energy representative who served in the Obama administration, with someone “reputable in Republican circles,” according to someone who was in the room.

Perry’s push for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz to change its supervisory board was first reported by Politico.

A second meeting during the trip, at a Kyiv hotel, included Ukrainian officials and energy sector people. There, Perry made clear that the Trump administration wanted to see the entire Naftogaz supervisory board replaced, according to a person who attended both meetings. Perry again referenced the list of advisers that he had given Zelenskiy, and it was widely interpreted that he wanted Michael Bleyzer, a Ukrainian-American businessman from Texas, to join the newly formed board, the person said. Also on the list was Robert Bensh, another Texan who frequently works in Ukraine, the Energy Department confirmed.

Gordon D. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt D. Volker, then the State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine, were also in the room, according to photographs reviewed by AP. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, said he was floored by the American requests because the person had always viewed the U.S. government “as having a higher ethical standard.”

The Naftogaz supervisory board is supposed to be selected by the Ukrainian president’s Cabinet in consultation with international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the United States and the European Union. It must be approved by the Ukrainian Cabinet. Ukrainian officials perceived Perry’s push to swap out the board as circumventing that established process, according to the person in the room.

U.S. Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said Perry had consistently called for the modernization of Ukraine’s business and energy sector in an effort to create an environment that will incentivize Western companies to do business there. She said Perry delivered that same message in the May meeting with Zelenskiy.

“What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” Hynes said Saturday. “That is fiction being pushed by those who are disingenuously seeking to advance a nefarious narrative that does not exist.”

Hynes said the Ukrainian government had requested U.S. recommendations to advise the country on energy matters, and Perry provided those recommendations. She confirmed Bleyzer was on the list.

Bleyzer, whose company is based in Houston, did not respond on Saturday to a voicemail seeking comment. Bensh also did not respond to a phone message.

Perry has close ties to the Texas oil and gas industry. He appointed Bleyzer to a two-year term on a state technologies fund board in 2009. The following year, records show Bleyzer donated $20,000 to Perry’s reelection campaign.

Zelenskiy’s office declined to comment on Saturday.

In an interview Friday with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Perry said that “as God as my witness” he never discussed Biden or his son in meetings with Ukrainian or U.S. officials, including Trump or Giuliani. He did confirm he had had a conversation with Giuliani by phone, but a spokeswoman for the energy secretary declined to say when that call was or whether the two had discussed Naftogaz.

In Lithuania on Monday, Perry said he could not recall whether Bleyzer’s name was on the list provided to Zelenskiy. But Perry confirmed he had known Bleyzer for years and called him “a really brilliant, capable businessman.”

“I would recommend him for a host of different things in Kyiv because he knows the country,” Perry said of Bleyzer. “He’s from there. So, why not? I mean I would be stunned if someone said that would you eliminate Michael Bleyzer from a recommendation of people you ought to talk to about how to do business in the country, whether they’re knowledgeable. It’d be remarkable if I didn’t say, ‘Talk to Michael.'”

___

Biesecker and Lardner reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Alan Fram contributed.

The Wealthiest Americans Haven’t Paid Their Fair Share in Decades

Donald Trump tried to sell America on his 2017 tax bill by calling it a middle class tax cut, and regurgitating Reagan-era talking points about how tax cuts for the wealthy actually benefit everyone. As Heather Long warns in The Washington Post however, while some middle class families got a modest cut in 2018, in 2019, millions of Americans were—or were about to be—“surprised to learn that their refunds will be less than expected or that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service.”

If 2019 wasn’t your first tax-time shock—and if many years of surprise have turned to anger, and you suspect that the wealthiest Americans have spent those same years free from tax-time shock—David Leonhardt’s latest column in The New York Times has a simple, but scarily effective illustration that will confirm your worst fears.

Using this simple interactive graph you can scroll from 1950 until today, and watch the line showing the tax rate the rich pay move lower and lower.

The graph uses data from a new book, “The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay,” by UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. It reveals what many Americans have long suspected (and seen in their bank accounts): Not only do the rich really pay less in taxes, but, “For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group,” Leonhardt writes.

Taxes that apply primarily to the wealthy, like the estate tax and corporate taxes, have declined, while payroll taxes, which impact low- and middle-income earners more—and not to mention fund Social Security and Medicare—have increased.

In addition, Leonhardt continues, “Families earning from $200,000 to $1 million will see their tax bills drop about 9 percent next year according to Congress’s official scorekeeper, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. That’s 1 percentage point more than the tax cut for households earning $75,000.”

Some of Saez and Zucman’s conclusions have been hinted at in previous studies. From 2001-2018, 65% of the savings from tax cuts went to the richest fifth of Americans; 22% of that to the top 1%, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic and Policy. “If you look at the richest 1 percent, they’re getting more than the bottom 60 percent of Americans,” Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the institute and one of the report’s authors, told Vox’s Emily Stewart in 2018.

What makes these latest revelations different from previous studies is their book’s scope, both in timeframe and detail. Per Leonhardt:

[Saez and Zucman] have constructed a historical database that tracks the tax payments of households at different points along the income spectrum going back to 1913, when the federal income tax began. The story they tell is maddening — and yet ultimately energizing.

“Many people have the view that nothing can be done,” Zucman told me. “Our case is, ‘No, that’s wrong. Look at history.’ ” As they write in the book: “Societies can choose whatever level of tax progressivity they want.” When the United States has raised tax rates on the wealthy and made rigorous efforts to collect those taxes, it has succeeded in doing so.

It may feel like too much to hope for, but two presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have based their economic policies off of Saez and Zucman’s research.

Read Leonhardt’s full column here.

Billionaire Supported Trump While Suing for Worker’s Special Visa

This article was initially published on ProPublica.

As two of the most prolific political donors in the Donald Trump era, billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have supported the president’s “America First” agenda. Elizabeth, the president of their shipping supplies company, recently wrote to customers: “Personally, I am an American first. I care about American jobs.”

But when it comes to business, their company has sought special visas for foreign workers — going so far as to sue the government to secure one at the same time federal officials implemented the president’s more stringent immigration policies.

The suit, filed February in federal district court in Illinois, came after the administration rejected the company’s 2018 petition to hire a full-time software engineer from India, court records show. The company sought a type of visa, called an H-1B, that allows foreign workers with special skills to stay in the U.S. for temporary periods.

Uline Inc., a Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, company that competes with Staples, FedEx Office and OfficeMax, regularly seeks temporary work visas reserved for non-U.S. workers, the company said in a statement.

The Uihleins back conservative candidates and groups that have advocated not only for crackdowns on illegal immigration, but also for stemming legal migration to the U.S.

In court testimony last year in an unrelated case in Texas, Richard Uihlein, who is the company’s CEO, was asked if his contributions to a group that supports conservative representatives were meant to aid not just immigration reform but a tougher immigration policy. Uihlein responded: “I would say that’s correct, yep.”

During the 2018 cycle, federal campaign finance records show, Richard Uihlein gave more than $38 million to conservative candidates and groups and his wife, Elizabeth, gave more than $1.5 million. The only individual donor who gave more to support Republicans during the 2018 cycle than Richard Uihlein was Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Richard Uihlein’s recent political donations included $2.5 million to the failed Illinois gubernatorial campaign of Jeanne Ives, who ran an ad featuring an actor wearing a hoodie, his face covered, thanking her opponent for making the state a “sanctuary state for illegal immigrant criminals.” He also gave $100,000 to a super PAC supporting the failed senate campaign of Roy Moore, the Alabama judge who ran for office amid allegations that he’d sexually molested underage girls. Moore, a staunch supporter of aggressive policies to curb immigration, backed legislation that would’ve halved the number of green cards issued in the U.S.

In March, the Uihleins gave $500,000 each to America First Action Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC staffed with former administration officials, federal campaign records show. In addition, the couple attended Trump’s inaugural after each contributed $250,000 to his inaugural fund.

The worker on whose behalf the company sued appears to have been caught up in a Trump administration effort to scrutinize applications for H-1B work visas. In April 2017, Trump signed the “Buy American and Hire American” executive order that instructed immigration officials to propose new rules to “protect the interests of United States workers in the administration of our immigration system.”

That effort has been effective. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied 14% of H-1B petitions filed on behalf of H-1B holders seeking to continue working in the U.S. through the second quarter of this fiscal year, up from 3% of such petitions in fiscal year 2015, according to an analysis of government data by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit public policy group.

Lawyers for Uline, which the Uihleins started in 1980, withdrew their lawsuit months after filing it, telling the court that immigration authorities had approved a subsequent visa petition for the worker.

Uline boasts that it’s one of the biggest distributors of shipping, industrial and packing materials in North America. In its visa application, Uline told the government it employs 5,200 workers nationwide and brings in $3.6 billion in gross annual income.

The worker, Abhishek Nimdia, told ProPublica that he enjoyed working at Uline and questioned whether the Uihleins actually support the Trump administration’s tough immigration policies.

“I don’t think they are against immigration in any way, because if they were, why would they support me?” he said in an interview.

In a statement provided by an outside publicist, Uline said that the company’s visa “decisions are made without the visibility of or approval from Liz and Dick Uihlein to support our growing business.” No one from Uline discussed the visas of its current employees on H-1Bs with administration officials, the statement said.

Richard Uihlein said in a statement provided by his executive assistant that he’s always been in favor of legal immigration. “Highly skilled immigrants with H-1B visas help contribute to the growth of both Uline and the US economy as a whole,” he said.

Matthew Bourke, a spokesman for USCIS, said in a statement that the agency “does not consider political affiliations or political connections when adjudicating benefit requests.”

Nimdia’s experience navigating the H-1B visa process during the Trump administration isn’t unique, said Jonathan Wasden, a former government lawyer who specializes in visa cases.

Immigration officials wary of litigation will usually relent once sued over H-1B denials like Nimdia’s — but only deep-pocketed employers can afford to take on the fight, Wasden said. The administration’s enforcement approach is a “ploy to eliminate people and make it as miserable as possible for H-1Bs to stay in the country,” he said.

Nimdia was originally employed by a Uline contractor. Uline sought to hire him as a full-time employee last summer, telling USCIS he’d be working to “design, develop, and implement automated testing and tooling solutions” as a “Quality Assurance Automation Engineer” at a prevailing annual wage of about $71,400, according to a copy of his visa application. The company also sought to sponsor Nimdia’s wife.

USCIS challenged Uline’s assertion that Nimdia’s job was a “specialty occupation,” asking the company for more information because its prior description of his duties was written “in relatively generalized and abstract terms” that didn’t adequately detail his job duties.

Uline responded with more information, but immigration officials again denied the visa, reaffirming their earlier position. That’s when Uline sued.

Nimdia, emphasizing that he wasn’t speaking on behalf of his employer, said the job with Uline was the latest stage in an almost nine-year stint working in the U.S. on temporary visas.

“They hired me as a contractor, liked me very much and they wanted to sponsor me,” he said. “There was a little hurdle. That’s the short story.”

Secretary of Defense, Incorporated

 

The man is so beautifully bland. In fact, I’d wager that only a tiny segment of Americans could name the current Secretary of Defense—and far fewer could pick him out of a lineup. Perhaps that’s the point. President Trump, a celebrity ham, has tired of sharing the stage with big-name advisers such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser John Bolton. So they’re both gone. In their place, Trump has installed faceless bureaucrats to run the most powerful national security state in human history. And the rest of us hardly notice.

Trump’s appointment of Mark Esper as head of the largest and most active Cabinet department, and the new Defense Secretary’s near unanimous approval by the U.S. Senate, is no less of a scandal than Trump’s apparent efforts to seek foreign interference in the 2020 elections. Only it isn’t.

Still, the nomination of Esper, a recent lobbyist for the defense contracting corporation Raytheon, ranks as one of the most egregious illustrations of the “revolving door” between lobbyists and the Defense Department. It’s crony capitalism in fatigues, and while nothing new, a clear indication that things have only worsened under our reality-show-mogul-president.

Of course, seen through the rose-colored glasses of American empire, Esper is highly qualified to head the Defense Department. He’s a West Point graduate, former Army infantry officer, recipient of a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard and a doctorate in public policy from George Washington University, and has past experience working in the Pentagon.

If one digs further, however, Esper is wildly problematic—loaded with conflicts of interest, a veteran of the (should be) discredited neoconservative Bush-era DOD, and little more than a corporate “company man.” He didn’t just work for Raytheon, he lobbied on the defense contractor’s behalf only recently. Under rather sharp questioning by Sen. Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation hearings, Esper refused to recuse himself from participating in government business involving Raytheon. In typically lifeless language, Esper replied that “On the advice of my ethics folks at the Pentagon, the career professionals: No, their recommendation is not to.” How’s that for accepting responsibility? No matter, he was swiftly and quietly confirmed by a vote of 90-8 in the Senate.

Expect another banner year for Raytheon. It’s already the third-largest U.S. defense contractor, and produces, among other tools of destruction, Paveway precision-guided missiles—the very weapons that Congress recently sought to stop shipping to Saudi Arabia due to (rather tardy) concerns about the heads of Yemeni civilians upon which they’re dropped.

I predict more deals and more taxpayer billions for Raytheon with Esper at the Defense helm. Not that the company has done poorly during the Trump years. In 2018, Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy candidly quipped that “It’s the best time that we’ve ever seen for the defense industry.” Not for indebted taxpayers, bombed-out Middle Easterners or U.S. soldiers still dying in endless wars, it’s not. But sure, it truly is the best of times for what prominent American leaders—once upon a time—labeled the “merchants of death.”

Conflicts of interest, sliding seamlessly between defense contracting boards and the Pentagon, and securing post-government largesse on corporate boards, that’s an old story indeed. Looking back to 2001, most Defense Secretaries have troublesome private sector connections. Donald Rumsfeld entered the Pentagon after a 24-year business career; Robert Gates was on the board of directors of Fidelity Investments and the Parker Drilling Company; Chuck Hagel served on the boards of Chevron and Deutsche Bank; Ash Carter—an exception—was mostly an academic and a bureaucratic wonk, but still consulted for Goldman Sachs. All made millions.

That covers the Bush and Obama years. What we’ve seen in the Trump administration, is, however, something far more brazen. His three Secretaries of Defense (one of whom, Patrick Shanahan, was only acting head) have been unapologetically ensconced in the world of defense contracting and corporate lobbying.

“Saint” Jim Mattis had, while still a general, encouraged the military to buy the blood test products of Theranos, then dropped the service and joined its corporate board. But Theranos’ products did not work, the deal described by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an “elaborate, years-long fraud.” Mattis also served, both before and after his Pentagon stint, on the board of General Dynamics, the nation’s fifth largest defense contractor. Nonetheless, Mattis easily slid through his confirmation and was praised by all types of mainstream media as the administration’s “adult in the room.”

After Mattis resigned, he being unable to countenance even Trump’s hints at modest withdrawal from the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, Patrick Shanahan stepped in as interim defense chief. Unlike his predecessor, Shanahan didn’t emerge from the military, but rather from yet another defense contractor, Boeing, for which he’s worked some 30 years. Trump thought that was dandy and nominated him to officially replace Mattis, but Shanahan decided to withdraw due to alleged personal scandals. Enter Mark Esper, Raytheon lobbyist extraordinaire.

Esper’s in good company in Washington’s military-industrial swamp. Recent reports by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO)—a vital organization that hardly any American has heard of—identified “645 instances in the past 10 years in which a retired senior official, member of Congress or senior legislative staff member became employed as a registered lobbyist, board member or business executive at a major government contractor.” POGO also noted that “those walking through the revolving door included 25 generals, nine admirals, 43 lieutenant generals and 23 vice admirals.”

All of which begs some questions and provides some disturbing answers. Perhaps we ought to ditch the myth that the Defense Secretary simply heads the Pentagon, and admit that Esper is really the emperor of a far grander military-industrial complex that includes a veritable army of K-Street lobbyists and venal arms dealers. Maybe it’s time to concede that unelected national security czars, and not a stalemated bought-and-sold Congress, run national defense and set the gigantic Pentagon budget. Perhaps we should confess to ourselves that the nation’s vaunted soldiers are little more than political pawns in a game that’s far bigger, far more Kafkaesque, than those troopers could begin to fathom. And, finally, let’s admit one last thing: Few of us care.

————

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army Major and regular contributor to Truthdig. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The LA 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 Domino Effect of Trump’s Syria Withdrawal

U.S. President Donald Trump told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, October 6, that the United States troops inside Syria would not defend the Syrian Democratic Forces, which have built an enclave inside Syria along a section of the Turkish border. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are made up largely of Kurdish factions, who set up this armed force to defend the mainly Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. When the U.S. began its attack on the Islamic State (ISIS), the SDF became the ground forces beneath the U.S. bombers. Now, the U.S. has decided to betray the sacrifice of the SDF.

Turkey has previously threatened to attack the SDF and other Kurdish groups inside Syria east of the River Euphrates. In 2014 and 2015, Turkey signaled that it would invade Syria. In August 2016, the Turkish military crossed the border with U.S. air cover. Erdogan said—at that time—that Turkey was going to attack both ISIS and the Kurdish militia group, People’s Protection Units (YPG). This operation, which was largely around the Syrian town of Jarabulus along the Syria-Turkey border, was known as Operation Euphrates Shield. The 2016 intervention opened the door to two further interventions in northern Idlib (2017) and in Afrin (2018), the last operation with an Orwellian name—Operation Olive Branch. These were targeted attacks and not an all-out war on the SDF and other Syrian forces.

Now, Erdogan’s government is preparing to enter Syria for a major military operation against the SDF. The U.S. forces have already left the observation posts at Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ain—both key places where the U.S. monitored Turkish troops and shielded the SDF from Turkish attacks. That shield has now been removed. U.S. forces remain in the region, but there is every indication that they will remove themselves from the main hubs of the SDF.

The SDF is now vulnerable to the full might of the Turkish army. The political leaders of the SDF say that they would defend their enclave—known as Rojava—“at all costs.” Over the past year, Ilham Ehmed, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, has warned that Turkey is determined to enter this “safe zone” (or what the U.S. calls a “security mechanism”). Ehmed said—before this recent announcement—that Turkey will invade Rojava, harshly attack the SDF, and re-settle the three million Syrian refugees who are now in Turkey. These refugees are not from the area east of the River Euphrates. Not only will the Turkish government wreck Rojava, but it will ethnically cleanse the area by bringing in large numbers of non-Kurdish Syrians. It is important to recall that the population of Syrian Kurds is around two million. Ehmed has expressed her worry about this attempt to render the Syrian Kurds of Rojava extinct.

What will a Turkish invasion mean for the area?

It will destroy the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Rojava. For all its great limitations, the government of Rojava has experimented with various forms of democracy, including economic and cultural democracy.
It will destroy the social integrity of the cultural world east of the River Euphrates. The transport of three million Syrians—largely from the western part of Syria—will change the character of this region, which is the homeland of the Syrian Kurds. In the long run, this population transfer could annihilate Syrian Kurdish society. Besides, if Turkey does this, it would have violated Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949).
It might force the Syrian armed forces to march on the region, to defend its borders. In the Iranian parliament, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Turkey should respect Syria’s borders, and that Turkey must allow the Syrian armed forces to establish their presence at the border. If the Syrian army moves on the border, it will open up the possibility of a clash between Syria and Turkey, which might lead to tensions between the armed forces of Iran, Russia, and the United States.
Since 2017, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey have been part of the Astana Group, whose purpose was to find a way to dial-down the bloody war in Syria. Turkish intervention into Syria will raise the possibility of the revival of war inside Syria. Turkey’s proxy groups that were part of the attack on the Syrian government will be emboldened to try once more to overthrow the government in Damascus.
If Iranian and U.S. forces clash in Syria, will this give the U.S. another reason to open up a fuller war against Iran, including the bombardment of Iran itself?
It will strengthen a greatly weakened Erdogan government.

It is worthwhile to be alarmed by these developments. The United Nations has taken the correct assessment of the situation. The UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria—Panos Moumtzis—said, “We don’t know what is going to happen. … We are preparing for the worst.” So should the rest of us.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than twenty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, 2007), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013), The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016) and Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017). He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Newsclick, AlterNet and BirGün.

Ahmet Tonak is an economist who works at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Climate Activists Block Roads, March in Global Protests

BERLIN — Activists with the Extinction Rebellion movement blocked major roads across major European cities Monday, kicking off a wide-ranging series of worldwide protests demanding much more urgent action against climate change.

In Berlin, around 1,000 people blocked the Grosser Stern, a traffic circle in the middle of the German capital’s Tiergarten park dominated by the landmark Victory Column. That protest began before dawn.

At Monday lunchtime, another 300 people blocked Berlin’s central Potsdamer Platz, placing couches, tables, chairs and flowerpots on the road.

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Police started carrying those protesters away one-by-one in the evening after official entreaties for them to leave were ignored. The protesters didn’t resist, but also didn’t help and had to be picked up and removed individually; no arrests were reported.

Members of Extinction Rebellion, a loose-knit movement also known as XR that started last year in Britain, over the weekend set up a tent camp outside Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office to prepare for the protests, reflecting dissatisfaction with a climate policy package drawn up last month by her government.

Demonstrators playing steel drums marched through central London as they kicked off two weeks of activities designed to disrupt the city.

London police said some 135 climate activists had been arrested. Extinction Rebellion said protesters were arrested as they blocked Victoria Embankment, outside the Ministry of Defense.

Among those arrested was 81-year-old Sarah Lasenby, a retired social worker from Oxford.

“It is imperative the government should take serious actions and put pressure on other states and global powers to radically reduce the use of fossil fuels,” she said.

In Amsterdam, hundreds of demonstrators blocked a major road outside the Rijksmuseum, one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions, and set up tents. The protest went ahead despite a city ban on activists gathering on the road. The protesters ignored police calls for them to move to a nearby square.

In Spain, a few dozen activists briefly chained themselves to each other and to an elevated road over a major artery in the Madrid, snarling traffic during the morning rush hour. The National Police said 33 activists were taken to their premises and three were arrested for resisting orders by anti-riot officers.

A few hundred other protesters camped out in 40 tents at the gates of Spain’s Ministry of Ecological Transition.

Around 1,000 protesters blocked the area around Chatelet in central Paris and vowed to stay at least the night in the makeshift camp they had pitched. Some were seated, some chained to a barrel.

“You might come from a variety of different groups, but we all stand against a system that’s destroying the planet and mankind and we’re looking to change that because we can’t just have little changes, we want a real big change,” said Pierrick Jalby, a 28-year-old nurse from eastern France. “We don’t want reforms in fact, we want a revolution.”

Outside of Europe, Extinction Rebellion said protests were planned Monday in Turkey, Canada, South Africa, Mexico and elsewhere.

In New York City, protesters doused the famous charging bull statue near Wall Street with fake blood. One protester waving a green flag climbed on top of the bull. Afterward, participants were seen mopping the fake blood off the ground.

“The blood of the world is here,” said Justin Becker, an organizer. He said the fossil fuel industry is directly connected to the financial interests of Wall Street.

“A lot of blood has been spilled by the decisions of the powerful and the status quo and the toxic system that we live in,” Becker said.

Those at the Berlin protests included activist Carola Rackete, best known as the German captain of a humanitarian rescue ship who was arrested for docking in an Italian port without authorization this year to disembark migrants rescued at sea.

“We must stay here and rebel until the government proclaims an ecological emergency and acts accordingly,” Rackete said.

Founded in Britain last year, Extinction Rebellion, also known as XR, now has chapters in some 50 countries. The group said the protests Monday were taking place in 60 cities worldwide.

Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, criticized its tactics.

“We all share an interest in climate protection, and the Paris climate targets are our standard in this,” he told ZDF television. “If you demonstrate against or for that, that is OK. But if you announce dangerous interventions in road traffic or things like this, of course that is just not on.”

He dismissed the idea of declaring a “climate emergency,” saying that the German constitution doesn’t provide for such a thing and it doesn’t translate into “concrete action.”

___

Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, Danica Kirka in London, David Rising in Berlin, Jim Mustian in New York, Alex Turnbull and Oleg Cetinic in Paris, and Aritz Parra in Madrid, contributed to this report.