Chris Hedges's Blog, page 138

The Refugee Crisis Unlike You’ve Ever Seen It Before

As conflicts spread and climate change worsens, the refugee crisis worldwide is breaking astounding records. There currently are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people around the globe, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Each of these individuals has a tale to tell about overcoming immense obstacles and dangers as he or she sought safety and stability away from homes they were forced to leave. One such story is told in the documentary “Midnight Traveler,” filmed by Afghan director Hassan Fazili and his family on three cellphones over the course of three years. The film documents their displacement from Afghanistan after receiving threats from the Taliban because of a film Fazili made about the terrorist organization, and their journey toward Europe in search of refuge.

Emelie Mahdavian and Su Kim, producers of “Midnight Traveler,” spoke with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer about the award-winning film in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.” Mahdavian, the film’s editor, writer and producer, was in touch with the Fazili family before they began filming “Midnight Traveler.” She says they all had hoped the family’s journey and story would be a much shorter, less difficult tale to tell. Mahdavian also recounts the worries she experienced about the Fazilis throughout the filming and production of this important work of art.

“I never knew what they were going to encounter,” Mahdavian says. “And I never knew what kind of needs they would have, and whether I would be able to help them or not. And I was very concerned to make sure that it was clear to them that I wanted them not to put themselves in risk for the sake of the film. Unfortunately, the migrant route is a risky thing to be on, and there was not a lot that they often could do to protect themselves or keep themselves out of risky situations. So the film ends up documenting those.”

To Kim, who dealt with the technical aspects of converting footage shot on cellphones into a film that could be screened in cinemas, the heart of the documentary is the unique perspective it lends to viewers about the crisis they’ve likely only read about in newspapers.

“The story of the refugee crisis, the migration crisis, is really a story that’s from the gaze of outsiders, and from the point of view of journalism, often,” Kim tells Scheer during his podcast. “And I think it’s really hard to relate as a sort of a person living in a very comfortable [life] to imagine what happens when you take this journey. What was special for me with this material in this film was that I could imagine myself in his and his family’s situation, and then the worst thing that could happen happens, and then how would I react? I think that that gaze on that story hasn’t been a part of the conversation.”

“This is the story of our time, because the refugees, wherever they’re coming from, there’s a tendency to try to sort of treat them as a problem for other people, intrusive to other societies,” Scheer notes. “And we forget all of these people have their own harrowing story, to one degree or another. They’ve been uprooted.”

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Throughout the conversation, the Truthdig editor in chief returns to a powerful quote by Fazili, which Scheer interprets as a commentary on the political machinations—including those by the U.S. during its nearly two decades-long war with Afghanistan—that led him and his family to such perilous circumstances. “My family, like leaves ripped away from a tree in a storm, was taken from our land and thrown in every direction by outside forces,” Fazili says. “As a father, I am tired from the strain of protecting my family from threats we encountered on this route. But as a filmmaker, these wanderings and troubles are appealing to me, so we all became the subject of this film.”

Listen to the full conversation between Mahdavian, Kim and Scheer as they discuss the technical, political and emotional aspects of “Midnight Traveler.” You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player and find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

—Introduction by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of

“Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case, it’s Emelie Mahdavian and Su Kim, the producers of a very important new film called Midnight Traveler, [directed] by Hassan Fazili, a person whose, journalist whose life was—and filmmaker, artist whose life was threatened in Afghanistan, his home country. He took his wife and two daughters—his wife was also a filmmaker; two daughters, one of whom had already been involved in theater a bit. And they went on this horrendous, harrowing journey of a refugee. And they produced this film using basically—you’ll correct me if I’m wrong—phones, handheld cameras, so they were not noticed by people very much. People are familiar with them now. And they made—he made a documentary on the go; he saved it on little discs, and when he got to safe places he could send it on; then he erased the discs, put it back in his phone. Why don’t you take us through that process, how this film got to be made. It was a big hit at Sundance this year, and it opened last night in New York. It will be opening in other theaters; in Los Angeles, where I’m doing this recording, it will be opening October 4th at the NuArt. It’s a must-see film. So just take us through the beginning. How did this film get to be made?

Emelie Mahdavian: So this is Emelie Mahdavian. I’m the producer, the writer, and the editor of the film. And I’ve been on the film from the beginning. I wrote my PhD dissertation on filmmaking during the Tajik Civil War and afterwards, so I’ve written a fair amount about and studied filmmaking during conflict, and migration as a consequence of conflict. And I met the family through connections in Tajikistan. They’re, as you said, they’re from Afghanistan, but they fled initially to Tajikistan, and that’s where the film begins. So I met them through connections there. And I was trying to help them avoid what actually transpires in the film, which is that they end up on the migrant route to Europe. And when it became clear that the family was going to be forced to become migrants, I agreed to collaborate with them and document what was happening to their family. And as you said, it was really only possible for them to shoot on their mobile phones.

So the whole film was shot by the family collaboratively. So it’s not just Hassan, but it’s also his wife Fatima, who’s also a filmmaker. Their older daughter Nargis, who’s eight at the start of the film, actually shoots quite a bit as well. And then the youngest daughter, who was three at the start of the film, doesn’t shoot too much, but a little. And so it’s, you know, it’s a collaboratively told story of the experience of migration across Eastern Europe from Central Asia, you know, towards asylum in Europe.

RS: And this is the story of our time, because the refugees, wherever they’re coming from, there’s a tendency to try to sort of treat them as a problem for other people, intrusive to other societies. And we forget all of these people have their own harrowing story to one degree or another. They’ve been uprooted. The description provided by director Hassan Fazili, he said, “My family, like leaves ripped away from a tree in a storm, was taken from our land and thrown in every direction by outside forces. As a father, I am tired from the strain of protecting my family from threats we encountered on this route. But as a filmmaker, these wanderings and troubles are appealing to me, so we all became the subject of this film.”

And then, so what we have here is the artist uprooted. And the one positive story is that modern technology—even though he was separated from film studios and high technology and expensive production—on his own, with his family, on the run, they were able to make an award-winning film that can reach millions of people now, that’s in the theaters. That is a positive story in an otherwise harrowing tale, right?

EM: Yeah, and I mean, the logistics of shooting on mobile phones are actually pretty complicated. So it took a lot of work for us to make it possible for them to, for instance, secure the footage and send it to me in the United States. And Su can talk about what goes into taking footage that was shot on mobile phones and making it into something that can open in a theater, and in New York City last night. It’s actually a pretty complicated and expensive process to take that technology, which is very on the one hand democratizing, but then bring it up to a standard that makes it broadcastable and distributable.

RS: Well let me just say, we’re doing this on my end, the taping, from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. And I think that’s a good caution that you just entered. We have the illusion somehow that media has become free and totally accessible. And as you point out, in order to become a credible product that you will find for a viewing audience, of any kind of length and seriousness, it often requires a great deal of technology and funding, even today.

Su Kim: This is Su Kim. So the actual production was on the cell phones. And you know, clearly it doesn’t cost anything except for actually shooting it on your phone and having the memory cards to store your footage. But in practical terms of actually creating a product that can be broadcast and also be, like, screened in movie theaters, they have to meet certain technical standards. And with the cell phone footage, many times there were a lot of different kind of frame rates. The film was supposedly being shot in 2997 frame rate, but in actuality, the frame rates varied. So it might be 2996, 2998; maybe sometimes 299, you know, whatever it may be. And so we ended up with over 50 different frame rates in the cut film.

So all of those frame rates had to be brought to the conventional frame rate of 2997 in order for us to work on the film. So that is an expensive process. And also there was a lot of technical work to be done on the film; everyone records footage on their phone, it’s–the sound is very, it’s variable. And so in order to create this immersive experience, we really had to create a soundscape for the film. And that was completely built by our composer, Gretchen Jude, and by our sound designer, Daniel Timmons.

RS: So let’s—we’ve done the technology a bit. And it’s, you know, without the kind of guidance—and of course, the director here was a professional, and his wife, and they had done work. So let’s get to the substance here. And as I say, it’s a generic story for our time, people uprooted, whether they’re in Syria, whether they’re in Afghanistan, what have you. The refugee is now the norm. And we tend to dehumanize the people called refugees, because they can also be inconvenient to stability of more established or settled societies.

So can you—what really drew, what attracted you to this story? And why do you think it’s a story that people should go see in the theaters? What is the–you know, in your mind, the significance? Because you both volunteered for this project. You heard about it, you supported it; he gives, the director gives you great credit for making it a reality. So why—what is the big message of Midnight Traveler?

SK: I mean, I wouldn’t use the word volunteered. You know, we embarked on this as a professional endeavor. Emelie and I spent a lot of time—

RS: I meant you believed in it, I meant you believed in the project.

SK: OK. I’m sorry. So what happened is, you know, as—for me there’s this, you know, the story of the refugee crisis, the migration crisis, is really a story that’s from the gaze of outsiders, and from the point of view of journalism, often. And I think it’s really hard to relate as a sort of a person living in a very comfortable—for me, it’s a comfortable life in New York City–to imagine what happens, you know, when you take this journey. What was special for me with this material in this film was that I could imagine myself in his and his family’s situation, and then the worst thing that could happen happens, and then how would I react? And really, that story plays out in front of the cameras, and also—and that’s what’s so powerful about the story.

And often, it’s kind of a story about waiting. Because not every day is like something, like—dramatic things don’t happen every day. It’s like these dramatic moments are, you know, just–they happen. And then most of the time, you know, you’re just living as a family and doing things, and looking after your children and watching them play, and really caring for them, and making sure that everything is OK. So I think that that gaze on that story hasn’t been a part of the conversation.

RS: Well, I think that’s an important sentence, that “really caring for them.” Because when we objectify people, and we do objectify refugees as a sort of category, we forget these are human beings with all the aspirations, concerns, emotions that the rest of us have. And they’re not just huddled masses in a camp. They are individuals of strong commitment, feeling, love, and so forth. And I think that’s the power of your film; you see, you get inside a family as it’s in, it’s being held by a thread in this life that we all share. But that, it’s not a very secure thread, because they are in the most vulnerable situation, being without country, without government, without support, without legitimacy. I mean, that’s sort of this condition that tens of millions of people seem to find themselves in now—maybe more than at any time except, you know, in huge World War II or something.

EM: Yeah, I think—this is Emelie—I think that we all forget that nobody sets out to be a refugee. That, you know, we can, any of us can imagine something terrible happening and having to deal with it. And, you know, when I came on board the project, they were—they had fled Afghanistan because of death threats against Hassan, the father, and the family, by the Taliban. But they were living in Tajikistan for about 14 months; it’s a Persian-speaking country, so they were relatively able to assimilate and have a life there.

And so when I met them in Tajikistan, they weren’t migrants, they weren’t refugees; I mean, they technically had already fled their country, but they had fled to a place that was culturally similar enough that their life was still kind of normal. And when we started this project, none of us knew what was going to happen to them; they didn’t know, we didn’t know; we all hoped it would be a short trip, [Laughs] and not the subject of a film like this.

And so I think part of what we were documenting was the process of coming to the realization that you are now seen by outsiders as among those sort of numbers of many. And you’re caught up in a bureaucratic system that, you know, just sees you as another case in a stack of cases. And that’s a very difficult realization to come to, I think, for any person. And it ends up placing your life in limbo for many, many years. And like I said, they have two daughters; their daughters’ lives were also in limbo for many years, and still are, in a sense. You know, without access to good schooling, without access to schooling in a language they could speak.

So I think that what is also powerful about the project is that it begins with them before they’re among those refugees. And it’s their—it’s, you know, told from their perspective, like Su said. So it’s not an outsider coming and finding people the moment they’re drowning on a beach, it’s a family documenting their life starting from, you know, the day before they actually find themselves in this difficult situation of being migrants.

RS: And it’s interesting, the role of journalist, observer, and then participant. As Hassan Fazili points out, he suddenly becomes a character in a film that he’s making, whereas previously he was making films about other people. And his family, this is—they are the cast, and so it’s not manipulating professionals or strangers. And that’s a duality here that doesn’t often occur. It does—it happened to, you know, a lot of political refugees, say from Germany in World War II, who were themselves artists and so forth; there’s quite a bit of literature about that. But we haven’t addressed the current refugee crisis in that way; you’re uprooting a whole range of people who were used to a different life.

And I just want to mention the current political atmosphere–at least, you know, with President Trump and others–there’s a, you know, a concerted effort to dehumanize the refugee. Or to say, oh, they’re just coming over for economic reasons, as if that’s unimportant anyway, which it isn’t. But you know, there’s a sort of thing of they’re the inconvenience, why are they there, let’s get a bigger wall against them. And it’s not just, obviously, here; it’s in Germany, it’s everywhere in the world now. And they are treated as an other–an other that you shouldn’t, or needn’t care that much about. I think that’s the power of your film appearing at this time.

EM: I hope so.

RS: Yeah, so you don’t think I’ve mischaracterized it? I don’t want to graft my own meaning on it. But it seems to me that’s the—

EM: No, I think we see it as–because it’s a personal story, because it’s the story of a family and it’s longitudinal, it follows them, you know—well, not follows them; they tell their story themselves over the course of over two years of their lives. You have an opportunity to be with a family, be in this experience. And I think that can help to get past the very polarizing rhetoric that we have right now and allow audiences to ponder what it would be like to be in the shoes of this one family, who obviously represent, you know, just a drop among an ocean of migrants right now. But I think that they’re a very compelling family. I think that they have—their daughters are absolutely charming; his wife is feisty and smart. And so they’re a family that, you know, we can all imagine ourselves hanging out with, and we can recognize elements of ourselves in them and put ourselves in their shoes.

RS: And the film is Midnight Traveler. It opened in New York–well, when this broadcasts, probably a week before. But—what is today’s date? I’m sorry, last night it opened—the 18th, right, September 18th. And then it will be opening in theaters; it’s going to open in L.A., by the time we have this up, it’ll probably be already up in L.A. at the NuArt theater. But it’ll be opening in theaters around the country, I gather.

EM: Yes.

RS: Yeah. And so let me just raise this question about, again, responsibility. And I don’t want to, you know, neither of you are from Afghanistan, but you’re sophisticated, knowledgeable people. But I want to get to this word, responsibility, because most of the refugees in the world are not refugees from bad weather conditions, or a bad economy in their own country. That does happen, we know, particularly with climate change that’s causing a lot of upheaval in terms of droughts and so forth. But actually, most of the refugees in the world now are there because the more settled countries, the more powerful countries, made decisions to intervene in their history. And certainly Afghanistan is an example of that. He had, your director Hassan Fazili had a death threat from the Taliban. But the Taliban composed elements that were once on the side of the United States, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and we went through a whole war there.

And then they became later our enemy, the so-called freedom fighters, when Ronald Reagan was president. So this word—you know, the refugees did not create the conditions of their becoming refugees. And I think in Afghanistan, which is really the—yes, you picked the movie up once he’s left, but that he’s a refugee from Afghanistan, is a country that you know, the old Soviet Union and the United States had a lot to do with destabilizing, and causing people to become refugees. And in the movie you talk about a sense of loss. There was an Afghanistan that, you know, we think some of these countries—oh, they’re so miserable, people want to get out—no, there was a life in Afghanistan that people found supportive until the upheaval came.

EM: Yeah, and people don’t necessarily realize that in Kabul, women were wearing miniskirts in 1992, you know, and then the Taliban took over. So it’s certainly not that distant of a memory for people who are from there, you know, to imagine a very different condition of living. I think that one of the interesting things in our film is that Hassan found out about the death threat from the Taliban because a very, very old friend of his warned him. And that old friend, oddly enough, had begun working with the Taliban. And so that’s how he saw the name on the list.

So one of the things that we hope people see there is that, oddly enough, it was his willingness to maintain a friendship in spite of ideological differences. Obviously, he didn’t approve of this friend working with the Taliban, but it was an old friend, and he, you know, he would tell him honestly, you’re wrong, don’t do this. But he kept just enough connection with him that when the day came that he was on a Taliban hit list, he got notified. So there’s something, I think, interesting about a character who, you know, is on the one hand doing this kind of work of trying to push for an open society and women’s rights, but then on the other hand is able to maintain a friendship with somebody who has clearly adopted very different ideological positions. And in the end that—that, how do you say, openness on his part is what saves his life.

RS: Well, but again, you know, the Taliban was not just suddenly appeared. And that is not the focus of your movie, how did this all happen. But again, throughout the world when we see people becoming refugees, it’s often because some other people decided to bomb their country or invade their country or destabilize it for some, one reason or another. And—or finance, as in the case of the Taliban; some of that money came from, or the [Mujahideen] movement, came from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. In fact, some of the military hardware came from the United States, it was drawn into the Cold War. So when he talks about leaves—and I read this to you before, and you said well, it’s more metaphoric, but I think it’s important—he said, “My family, like leaves ripped away from a tree in a storm, was taken from our land and thrown in every direction by outside forces.”

Well, that can be said about refugees from Mexico right now. I mean, you had a drug war, you had a destabilizing; we were involved with the Mexican government, we decided that the society needed to, in some sense, be turned upside down. And so when a Mexican family, or a Persian family from Iran, after all the upheaval and the overthrow of Mossadegh and everything–I’m not going to go through that whole history. But if you look at country after country, people become refugees in part because of actions taken by the very societies that then want to refuse them entrance as refugees. So there’s a real disconnect there about how people get to be refugees, and the responsibility of these other societies that have actually inflicted damage on those countries, taking them in as refugees.

EM: Yeah.

RS: I mean, I think that’s sort of lost in the whole debate. And your film is a reminder of it. That, you know, if not for all this intervention, someone like Hassan Fazili could have been happy to be a film director in Afghanistan. He didn’t ask to become a refugee. This is not someone seeking better economic opportunity in the West or something, right.

EM: That’s right. And I think it’s worth saying that the journey itself takes a very large toll on people who undertake it. It’s–I think that the trauma of the migrant journey is often as great or greater than the trauma of the thing that caused a person to leave. It’s a huge financial toll on people who undertake it. So no one–no one would do it lightly. No one would spend that much time and put their family in that kind of risk for, you know, without a good reason. And in this case, you know, they had a pretty middle-class life in Kabul before they fled, and they don’t have a middle-class life right now.

You know, they’re still, many years later, living in a kind of limbo, waiting to find out what their long-term life is going to look like. So it’s–the journey is extremely hard. And you know, one thing that we could look at is the way in which the migration, the asylum system and the refugee system function, you know, differently. This is a family that did the thing that is logical, which is they fled to the closest country next door, where they spoke the language.

And they put in about 50 applications to receive protection from Tajikistan, you know, without having to put their daughters at risk, put their daughters in the hands of smugglers who could be very unscrupulous. And they were—they were turned down. It just so happens that the way that the system is designed doesn’t allow for an Afghan person who flees to the closest country next door where they feel safe, which in this case was Tajikistan, to receive any kind of long-term protection. So they were not just forced onto the route by the Taliban, they were also forced onto the route by a system that isn’t functioning very well to protect people who try to use a different route. A simpler route that ought to be also, you know, a safer route for someone like their two little girls, who were often in quite a lot of danger when they went on the Balkan route, you know, across Eastern Europe.

RS: Yeah. And why don’t you sketch that out to where we are now with this family? Because it, you know, it’s an exhilarating film and journey in terms of survival, but it hasn’t come to the Hollywood happy ending yet.

EM: No.

SK: I do want to add one last thing about that last question, is that I don’t think–what I really want is that the film can have the conversations about these political issues. I feel like the film really stands on its own as a piece of work that tells the story, and it’s sort of not our jobs as filmmakers to impart that meaning; it’s just really to be able to provide a way to have that discourse in society.

RS: Right. But what your film does say, unquestionably, is that these people have needs, are complex, are full human beings, and that we should care about what happens to them. They’re not an objectified category of the other.

SK: Exactly. And I think that that is what we planned on doing. And that’s what I’m very happy that we were able to achieve. And in a way, like, it’s—I think it’s, we really want everyone else to have that discussion. Because we’ve given them a platform to view the film and have that kind of discourse.

RS: Right. And it’s part of the complexity which I think is critical, because if you don’t have a view of other people as complex as yourself, or your own view, and as a human in all of its variations. You just mentioned, here is a family, a man, a devoted—an Afghan man devoted to his two daughters, right, in a society that some of us think of—oh, they don’t value women, or they don’t care, or women are expendable, or so forth. And you’ve actually presented a very different view. Is that not sort of the sleeper here?

EM: [Laughs] I think that his wife and his daughters, as characters in the film, are certainly some of the most compelling characters. You know, not least of all because they’re on camera quite a lot. But also, because like you say, some people have that view that Afghan women are quite demure, and that daughters are not, you know, free to do things like dance and go to school. Which, you know, in many cases is true.

In fact, Fatima, his wife, was not allowed to go to school, and she was illiterate until she was, you know, in her late teen years. And then she ended up completing school herself after they were married, even while she was a young mother. So it’s true that there is quite a lot of oppression of women, there’s serious problems with women’s rights and laws around women’s rights, even things like freedom to choose who you marry, or you know, to go against your father’s wishes.

There’s certainly issues in the legal system in Afghanistan, and also cultural issues. But that doesn’t mean that, like in many cultures, you don’t have people who think differently. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t have parents who love their children, whether they’re daughters or whether they’re sons. And so here we have, you know, young girls who like to dance around their bedroom, and a wife who, you know, is feisty and fights back at her husband. And I don’t think that’s as uncommon in Afghanistan as we think it is. But it’s just part of the private space of any family that normally we don’t see in a film made by outsiders.

RS: And we should point out this film, Midnight Traveler, was not shot on a Hollywood set, or under great controls. This is a family trying to survive, and yet they’re filming their journey, because they think it has larger significance, or—well, tell us why they filmed it.

EM: I think that’s right, I think that they thought it had larger significance. I think that also they had nothing to do. You know, when you take people who are used to working, and then you drop them in a camp and you tell them they can’t work, and they need to just live here for a year in a small, cramped room with a bunch of other families right on top of them, they can go stir crazy. And so having a project that they could involve their daughters in, and something that they felt was meaningful—it gave them some meaning in their life at a time when, you know, all of the circumstances were colluding to take meaning away from them.

RS: So without spoiling the, you know, people going to the film and finding out the end of the storyline on their own after they witness what is essentially a work of art, basically, in the best sense, why don’t you just sketch out what happens as they then move on to their second country, and how–and take us to the end of the story. We have just some time to do that.

EM: Well, like I said, they traveled the Balkan smuggling route. So for people who are familiar with the various routes that people take from Central Asia to Europe, you know, it’s common to get to Turkey, and then some people take boats to Greece or to Italy. The Balkan route is a land route that goes through Bulgaria and Serbia, and then some people go through Croatia or Romania, or there’s a few different ways that people travel. And the danger in the Balkan route is that there’s quite a lot of borders to cross, with quite a lot of unfriendly policing of those borders. And it’s a notoriously dangerous route. Of course, we’ve all seen images of people drowning in overcrowded boats crossing the Mediterranean, so the boats are also a very dangerous route.

So there wasn’t a great option either way, you know; neither choice was good. So they are making their way along that route, but it’s not by any means an easy journey. It’s not an uninterrupted journey. You know, they end up in positions where they’re arrested, where their lives are threatened, or they’re attacked, you know. So there’s quite a lot of harrowing things that no one would want to happen to their family that do happen to this family. And like I said, it follows them over several years, as they’re attempting to get somewhere and have asylum and have a final, you know, settling of their life somewhere that they can live long term. And they still don’t have that; they still don’t have any answer about where they’re going to be living long term.

RS: So where are they now? When this film opened in New York, did you get word to them, and where did the word go?

EM: They’re in Germany now. And they’re, they have a pending case. So they’re waiting.

RS: But they’re not allowed to leave the particular state in Germany that they’re in, or travel; at least I saw that somewhere.

EM: They, when they first arrived, they had very limited travel; it’s been sort of slowly opening up as their case moves through the system. They were able to come to the Berlinale. So after the Sundance premiere, the film went to Berlin for the Berlinale, and the whole family was able to come to the Berlinale and participate in Q&As and see the film. And now they’re working on, you know, getting the ability to do more travel within Europe. There’s not any likelihood, I don’t think, that they would be in a position to come to the United States anytime soon, so—

RS: Why is that?

EM: Well, this is true of any asylum seeker anywhere–generally, while your case is pending, you have to stay in the country where you’re applying for asylum. Germany is part of the Schengen zone of Europe, so there’s maybe a little more freedom within Europe. But you know, even in America, if you are applying for asylum, it’ll be very difficult for you to get permission to, say, leave and go to Japan. And so they don’t have passports; you know, they don’t have legal status in Germany. It would be very difficult for them on their Afghan passports right now, you know, as asylum seekers, to be given a visa to enter the U.S.

RS: But again, and I don’t want to over-politicize this, but the fact is we are still—U.S. government, military—we’re still in Afghanistan because we want, ostensibly, to expand freedom; it’s also to prevent attacks coming from Afghanistan. But here you have a director, Hassan Fazili, who has standing as an artist, right. And he makes a really important, complex movie about the result of all of the things that have happened in Afghanistan, and deepens our understanding. And you mean you can’t even get him invited to a screening? He’s a non-person because his passport is from Afghanistan?

EM: Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get a visa [Laughs] to come to the United States on an Afghan passport. It’s not easy. And then if you add to that the person is known to be looking for asylum in another country, it makes it very difficult to get permission from the United States government. Because of course, their view is that the person is not likely to return. Or, you know, they’re not likely to leave the country. But I think in any case, it’s, yes, it’s complicated.

RS: But don’t we have exemption, don’t we have a consideration for political refugees and human rights?

SK: I think–this is not a question that I think Emelie and I can really answer properly. So I think we’d like to move on.

RS: OK. So let me just say, as a little editorializing, it is one of the contradictions in our immigration policy. Because, you know, we have periodically admitted people we say are political refugees, and we make it easier. And that seems to have been tightened substantially. And so I—

EM: Yeah. But it’s, you know, it’s not—it’s also an issue of being able to leave the country that they’re in, like I said, so they would be forfeiting their case in Germany. So it wouldn’t be you know, it wouldn’t be something that they or their immigration attorneys would want them to do.

RS: OK. So let me ask you one last, but big question; take your time to answer it, because you’re both producers. So if you were producing this podcast, this radio program, what do you think we should cover about this film before we sign off here? The film is Midnight Traveler. I’m asking that question in the spirit of trying to get people to go watch it. Because any work of art, you know, you can discuss it, but actually the proof is in the pudding. And you know, people should go see this, because it raises a whole range of really important questions about human existence. Not just political, obviously not just political questions, but who are we, and what are our needs, and how do we relate to our family and our times. So you know, what do you think is—I mean, make the case for why this film you produced is so important.

EM: Well, so I like I said, I’m also the editor. So I spent, you know, quite a long time sitting with this footage and sitting with what the story was going to be. And I really think that the strength of the film is in its ability to allow us to just be with this family, through moments of joy and humor, as well as through moments that are quite harrowing. To be in a story that at its heart is really kind of a family drama more than it is a story about, you know, the refugee crisis, as people like to call it. And surrounding this family, there are broader issues. But so many films, and so much media, invites us to look at them first as refugees.

And then second, maybe if we think about it, to ponder what it’s like to be in their shoes, or what their life is like, or why they are where they are. And you know, this is a film that sets the refugee question, in a sense, just on the periphery. You know, we understand what kind of story it is, but really at its heart, this is the story of a family. And it’s by that shift in perspective, like Su said at the beginning, that I think the film has real strength.

RS: Yeah, and the two points really are not inconsistent. I mean, they are part of a category called refugees. But the film is a reminder that we’re talking basically about human existence, the struggle for meaning in life, survival, family, right. And that these are universal themes. And being a refugee happens to heighten them in certain ways and put them at risk in certain ways. But what you’re really saying is that this is a compelling story about a family caught up in history, but it’s about this family, and how they go about the business of taking care of each other and surviving under a terrible situation.

EM: That’s correct.

RS: Good. I’m glad we got that. Anything else we should add before we wrap this up?

SK: I just want to make a couple of corrections. So the film is actually–it was directed by Hassan Fazili, but it’s a film by Hassan Fazili and Emelie Mahdavian. It’s a very minor—but it’s a, you know, how the film is presented. Also, Emily’s credit is producer, writer, and editor.

RS: OK. And so I didn’t mean to take away that credit. So why don’t we just end, then, by telling me more—I am intrigued by how this film got to be made. And I think it’s a great story in itself. So can you just give me a little bit more about your role in that, Emelie?

EM: Yeah, sure. I mean, the thing that people keep saying to us, once they hear about how the film was made, is that there’s always a film about how the film was made in a film like this. Because obviously, the logistics were pretty complicated. And then the logistics of the creative work were very complicated. So you know, like I said, I was on from the beginning. So I, in the beginning, was working with them on pretty basic things like arranging contacts to get the footage safe, to get it shipped to me in the United States. So in each country, I would find somebody who could meet them, and copy the footage from them, and get it to me. And then, on the U.S. side, I was working simultaneously on, you know, the fundraising and the grant writing, and all of that, and then also on the editing. So I was poring through what was quite a lot of footage, several hundred hours, and trying to begin assembling it into a story that could, you know, that could work for audiences, you know, at a global scale, so audiences from many cultures. And that meant, you know, collaborating from a distance in many cases. And it meant that often, I was simultaneously here in the U.S. working on editing and working on fundraising or producing work. And then also, you know, talking to them while they were on this journey, and coordinating with them, and trying to make creative decisions together from a distance.

I did spend a month with them in Serbia working together in person, but when they were on the move, it was very difficult to ever meet up with them. So it was a very mobile-phone intensive production, not just in the sense that it was shot on mobile phones, but also in the sense that we were constantly in contact through various apps on the mobile phone. And as many people know, refugees use those phones also as mapping systems, as you know, means of sort of lifelines to the outside world. So the phone itself ended up being a massive part of the production, even behind the scenes.

RS: And how long was that, your involvement with it? How long a time?

EM: Well, we started the film in April of 2016. So until now; I’m still working. [Laughs]

RS: OK, well, I just do want to stress one thing. All during that time–you make it sound a little more mechanical than it is–you really had to be worried whether these people are going to survive. I mean, they were in—

EM: Absolutely.

RS: And you were documenting their risk.

EM: Yeah, and I mean, I was really very worried from where I was sitting in the United States. Because it felt like there was not much I could probably do, you know; I never knew what they were going to encounter. And I never knew what kind of needs they would have, and whether I would be able to help them or not. And I was very concerned to make sure that it was clear to them that I wanted them not to put themselves in risk for the sake of the film. Unfortunately, the migrant route is a risky thing to be on, and there was not a lot that they often could do to protect themselves or keep themselves out of risky situations. So the film ends up documenting those. And it was, it was very difficult to be at a distance. Sometimes there was something I could do to try to help. Sometimes they would ask me questions that I wasn’t comfortable answering, because I didn’t know what the safer choice was, and I didn’t want to be responsible for a bad decision. And that certainly weighed on me.

RS: And I just want to indulge myself by trying to patch over this tension between the personal and the political. This migrant route, in their case, is not one that they did as a matter of choice. It was forced upon them by a death threat that was very serious. And so the key takeaway for me about the whole refugee crisis is that this is not a choice issue for most people called refugees. This is necessity, survival. And your movie is really—Midnight Traveler, opening around the country—it’s really about, you know, as I say, I keep getting back to that quote: “My family, like leaves ripped away from a tree in a storm, was taken from our land and thrown in every direction.” It does compel a sympathy for people called refugees. They didn’t make the decision to tear themselves off the tree; events, politics, world reality, tore them off that tree. And your movie is really about the human beings that then try to survive under incredibly risky, dangerous circumstance. So is that a fair summary?

EM: Yeah. I mean, there’s—this might be kind of a technical point, but I think it’s a useful one for the conversation. Which is that a person is not actually a refugee until they’re given refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, which vets people. So there are people, there are migrants who are people who are seeking asylum or refugee status, who are moving for various reasons from country to country. There are refugees, which are people who have been vetted and who are seeking a new place to live. And there are asylum seekers, which are people who are already on the soil of a new country, asking for protection from being forced to return to something that they say is an unsafe situation. So in the course of our film, our family begins as would-be refugees in Tajikistan, and they’re denied access to the refugee system, which forces them to become migrants. And currently, they’re asylum-seekers. So they have been attempting to use all sorts of means of accessing safety. And in the course of that, they’re actually accessing different legal and bureaucratic systems. And there’s technically different words for each of those.

RS: OK, got it. But they are full human beings, and we should be concerned about them. That’s it for this edition of “Scheer Intelligence.” We’ve been broadcasting this from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where Victor Figueroa is the engineer here. Our producer for “Scheer Intelligence” is Joshua Scheer, and we’ll see you next week with another edition.

Ukraine Reviews Cases on Owner of Firm That Hired Biden Son

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine — Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said on Friday that his office is reviewing several cases related to the owner of a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son sat on the board, as part of a review of all the criminal cases closed by his predecessors.

U.S. President Donald Trump had pressed for such a review in a phone call with Ukraine’s new leader, a “favor” that now has led the U.S. Congress to begin an impeachment inquiry. Ruslan Ryaboshapka’s statement shows that Kyiv is under an increasing pressure to react to Trump’s overtures, analysts say.

Ryaboshapka told reporters in Kyiv that prosecutors are “auditing” all the cases that were closed or dismissed by former prosecutors, including several related to Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of the gas company Burisma that hired Hunter Biden in 2014, at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv.

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Though the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.

“We are now reviewing all the cases that were closed or split into several parts or were investigated before, in order to be able to rule to reverse those cases where illegal procedural steps were taken,” Ryaboshapka said.

Asked if the prosecutors had evidence of any wrongdoing on Hunter Biden’s part, Ryaboshapka said: “I have no such information.”

On a trip in the city of Zhytomyr, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, when asked by The Associated Press about Trump’s comment that the U.S. has an “absolute right” to ask foreign leaders to investigate corruption cases, Zelenskiy said that Ukraine is “open” and that all the cases under investigation are “transparent.”

Ryaboshapka and Zelenskiy’s remarks came a day after House investigators released a cache of text messages provided by Kurt Volker, the former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine who stepped down amid the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Volker in the messages encouraged Zelenskiy’s aide to conduct an investigation linked to Biden’s family in return for a high-profile visit to Washington with President Donald Trump.

The Prosecutor General’s Office in a statement issued after Ryaboshapka’s briefing said that among the cases they are reviewing, there are 15 where Burisma’s owner Zlochevsky is mentioned. None of the Zlochevsky-related cases has been revived yet, they said.

They did not specify how many, if any, were related to Hunter Biden’s work at Burisma.

Ryaboshapka was mentioned in the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, who assured Trump that Ryaboshapka was “his man” and that he would resume investigations into Burisma.

The prosecutor general insisted on Friday that he did not feel any pressure over the Burisma case.

“Not a single foreign or Ukrainian official or politician has called me or tried to influence my decisions regarding specific criminal cases,” he said.

A whistleblower last month revealed that Trump in a phone call asked Zelenskiy to resume the probe into Joe Biden and his son. The July 25 call has since triggered an impeachment inquiry against Trump.

Analysts in Kyiv saw Ryaboshapka and Zelenskiy’s remarks as a sign that the Ukrainian government is trying to stay in Trump’s good graces, but not necessarily to dig up the dirt on his Democratic rival.

“Ryaboshapka’s statements mean that the (criminal) cases are allegedly being investigated and Kyiv is open for cooperation with U.S. counterparts but we shouldn’t expect any tangible results of the probe until after the election in the U.S.,” said Volodymyr Fesenko of the Penta Center think tank in Kyiv.

“Zelenskiy doesn’t want to be involved in the U.S. political battles but he’s already in the game and has to be flexible.”

___

Vasilyeva reported from Moscow.

Diahann Carroll, Oscar-Nominated, Pioneering Actress, Dies

NEW YORK — Diahann Carroll, the Oscar-nominated actress and singer who won critical acclaim as the first black woman to star in a non-servant role in a TV series as “Julia,” has died. She was 84.

Carroll’s daughter, Susan Kay, told The Associated Press her mother died Friday in Los Angeles of cancer.

During her long career, Carroll earned a Tony Award for the musical “No Strings” and an Academy Award nomination for best actress for “Claudine.”

But she was perhaps best known for her pioneering work on “Julia.” Carroll played Julia Baker, a nurse whose husband had been killed in Vietnam, in the groundbreaking situation comedy that aired from 1968 to 1971.

“Diahann Carroll walked this earth for 84 years and broke ground with every footstep. An icon. One of the all-time greats,” director Ava DuVernay wrote on Twitter. “She blazed trails through dense forests and elegantly left diamonds along the path for the rest of us to follow. Extraordinary life. Thank you, Ms. Carroll.”

Although she was not the first black woman to star in her own TV show (Ethel Waters played a maid in the 1950s series “Beulah”), she was the first to star as someone other than a servant.

NBC executives were wary about putting “Julia” on the network during the racial unrest of the 1960s, but it was an immediate hit.

It had its critics, though, including some who said Carroll’s character, who is the mother of a young son, was not a realistic portrayal of a black American woman in the 1960s.

“They said it was a fantasy,” Carroll recalled in 1998. “All of this was untrue. Much about the character of Julia I took from my own life, my family.”

Not shy when it came to confronting racial barriers, Carroll won her Tony portraying a high-fashion American model in Paris who has a love affair with a white American author in the 1959 Richard Rodgers musical “No Strings.” Critic Walter Kerr described her as “a girl with a sweet smile, brilliant dark eyes and a profile regal enough to belong on a coin.”

She appeared often in plays previously considered exclusive territory for white actresses: “Same Time, Next Year,” ”Agnes of God” and “Sunset Boulevard” (as faded star Norma Desmond, the role played by Gloria Swanson in the 1950 film.)

“I like to think that I opened doors for other women, although that wasn’t my original intention,” she said in 2002.

Her film career was sporadic. She began with a secondary role in “Carmen Jones” in 1954 and five years later appeared in “Porgy and Bess,” although her singing voice was dubbed because it wasn’t considered strong enough for the Gershwin opera. Her other films included “Goodbye Again,” ”Hurry Sundown,” ”Paris Blues,” and “The Split.”

The 1974 film “Claudine” provided her most memorable role. She played a hard-bitten single mother of six who finds romance in Harlem with a garbage man played by James Earl Jones.

In the 1980s, she joined in the long-running prime-time soap opera “Dynasty” as Dominique Deveraux, the glamorous half-sister of Blake Carrington; her physical battles with Alexis Carrington, played by Joan Collins, were among fan highlights. More recently, she had a number of guest shots and small roles in TV series, including playing the mother of Isaiah Washington’s character, Dr. Preston Burke, on “Grey’s Anatomy” and a stretch on the TV show “White Collar” as the widow June.

She also returned to her roots in nightclubs. In 2006, she made her first club appearance in New York in four decades, singing at Feinstein’s at the Regency. Reviewing a return engagement in 2007, a New York Times critic wrote that she sang “Both Sides Now” with “the reflective tone of a woman who has survived many severe storms and remembers every lightning flash and thunderclap.”

Carol Diann Johnson was born in New York City and attended the High School for the Performing Arts. Her father was a subway conductor and her mother a homemaker.

She began her career as a model, but a prize from “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” TV show led to nightclub engagements.

In her 1998 memoir “Diahann,” Carroll traced her turbulent romantic life, which included liaisons with Harry Belafonte, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier and David Frost. She even became engaged to Frost, but the engagement was canceled.

An early marriage to nightclub owner Monte Kay resulted in Carroll’s only child, Suzanne, as well as a divorce. She also divorced her second husband, retail executive Freddie Glusman, later marrying magazine editor Robert DeLeon, who died.

Her most celebrated marriage was in 1987, to singer Vic Damone, and the two appeared together in nightclubs. But they separated in 1991 and divorced several years later.

After she was treated for breast cancer in 1998, she spoke out for more money for research and for free screening for women who couldn’t afford mammograms.

“We all look forward to the day that mastectomies, chemotherapy and radiation are considered barbaric,” Carroll told a gathering in 2000.

Besides her daughter, she is survived by grandchildren August and Sydney.

___

Bob Thomas, a long-time and now deceased staffer of the Associated Press, was the principal writer of this obituary.

The Jig Is Up for Trump

The Ukraine scandal is about Russia’s, Vladimir Putin’s and Donald Trump’s efforts to smear Joe Biden and eliminate him as a presidential candidate in 2020. Such foreign interference in the American election may help Trump and would damage the American political process, just as it did in 2016.

That’s when, according to the report by special counsel Robert Mueller III, Russians stole emails from the Democratic National Committee and the  chairman of Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign,  John Podesta.  They then fed the emails to Julian Assange, who put them out on Wikileaks, the report said. The action, amounting to an international dirty trick,  was a severe blow to Hilary Clinton’s campaign, one of several that cost her the presidential election.

First, let’s review the case against Trump, Putin and Russia. Putin and Russia, having blasted Hilary Clinton in 2016 and helped get Trump elected, would like to—in my opinion—get him elected next year.  The 2016 interference was documented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

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Yesterday, Putin said he had seen no evidence that Trump tried to pressure the Ukraine president into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

“… I don’t see anything compromising at all. President Trump asked his colleague to investigate possible corrupt deals by former administration employees,” Putin told a conference in Moscow. “Any head of state would be obliged to do this.”

It would suit Putin if the United States were to give no aid to the Ukraine so he can continue his conquest of that nation. Trump’s threat to withhold aid, vitally needed for Ukraine’s defense, unless Ukraine investigated the Bidens played into that scheme.

Biden himself rendered aid to Trump’s effort by allowing his son, Hunter, to hook up with a Ukrainian energy company and serve as a board member. Trump is portraying this connection as the stuff of scandal. But despite Trump and his supporters’ attacks on Biden and Biden’s son, the former vice president remains strong in the polls. The accuracy of such polling this early is uncertain, but it does reveal trends, especially when the surveys are in agreement. And these trends should worry Trump.

RealClearPolitics’ average of national polling late in September shows Biden leading Trump 50.5% to 42.8%. The president also trails Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, but not by as much as when he is pitted in the polls against Biden.

The anti-feminist Trump probably feels he could make short work of Warren and Harris, either on the campaign trail or on a debate platform. He’s said that Sanders missed his chance to best him in the last election. But Biden, if he survives the Trump assault, is a different matter. As it stands today, Biden is the prime threat to Trump’s re-election.

The Biden team believes the former vice president’s strength is in the Midwestern industrial states that gave Trump the presidency. Biden is also running strong in South Carolina, where he has been a favorite of African American voters. Also, Biden was born in Pennsylvania, which Trump won in 2016.

Such numbers help explain why Trump was so persistent in asking the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for help in gathering dirt on the Bidens. He was asking the chief of a foreign government to assist him so that he can remain in office.

But standing in Trump’s way is a troublesome document—the Constitution, which the president has tried to ignore in his treatment of refugees and other immigrants and of the voting rights of people of color. The writers of the Constitution gave Congress the power to oust a president through articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives and after a trial in the Senate.

In a Sept. 29 New York Times article, Peter Baker reviewed how the framers of the Constitution were concerned about foreign interference in the affairs of the new country. “The fear of foreign powers … animated the discussion over impeachment,” Baker wrote. “While the framers of the Constitution might never have imagined an impeachment battle waged 280 characters at a time, they did essentially foresee a showdown over foreign influence on an American president.”

As Bill Blum wrote on Truthdig, “This is an abuse of power in black and white, aimed at using a foreign government to bring down a political rival. Arguably, it may also establish the elements of two federal felonies: extortion and bribery.”

Whether Trump committed those felonies will be determined by the House and Senate. But the transcriptions of his telephone conversation with Zelenskiy leaves no doubt that Trump was trying to force the Ukrainians to help him bring down his rival.

Trump’s increasingly wild assaults on Biden and other foes could keep him in office. That would permit him to continue to use the power of the presidency to add profits to his hotels, golf clubs and other holdings, as well as to benefit the businesses of his children.

“It is, quite simply, beyond the pale to use the awesome power of the U.S. presidency for this kind of personal end,” writes David Kris in the blog Lawfare. Kris is a assistant attorney general for national security.

Impeachment has been a long time coming. The Mueller report, derided when issued, actually cleared the way for the House to proceed. It nailed an essential ingredient for impeachment: cooperation with a foreign government against the interests of the United States. Slow and plodding as its boss, Mueller’s office laid it all out for those with the patience and interest to read the report. With that groundwork and now the Ukrainian disclosures, Trump’s hold on the presidency may be tenuous.

But what if he survives impeachment, wins the Republican nomination and runs for a second term? And what if Biden, battered and weakened by Trump, loses his party’s nomination to Warren—now Biden’s leading challenger to Biden—and she beats Trump? That would be a fitting punishment for Trump—a dirty trick gone bad.

Facebook Can Be Forced to Remove Content Worldwide, EU Court Rules

BRUSSELS—The European Union’s highest court ruled Thursday that individual member countries can force Facebook to remove what they regard as unlawful material from the social network all over the world _ a decision experts say could hinder free speech online and put a heavy burden on tech companies.

The European Court of Justice ruling, which cannot be appealed, is seen as a defeat for Facebook and other online platforms and widens the divide over how heavily Europe and the U.S. seek to regulate technology giants.

It would increase the onus on them to monitor what appears online.

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“It really unleashes a whole new gamut of risk and worries for Facebook in the EU,” said Wedbush Securities managing director Daniel Ives.

Ruling in the case of an Austrian politician who objected to what she regarded as a libelous news story, the European court said Internet companies can be forced to take action worldwide to remove objectionable material when ordered to do so by a court in an EU country.

Facebook already removes or otherwise restricts photos and other posts in any given country if the material violates that nation’s laws, such as anti-government comments in countries where that is illegal. But the new ruling means Facebook would have to make such material inaccessible globally.

Facebook charged that the decision “undermines the longstanding principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country.”

While lawmakers in the U.S. are considering tighter regulation of Facebook and other tech giants, politicians in Europe have gone much further on a variety of fronts, including passing stricter data privacy laws in 2018.

“This shows a sharpening divide between the way the EU is handling privacy and data content versus the U.S.,” Wedbush’s Ives said. “It poses broader risks for the likes of Google and other big tech companies as the ‘Brussels versus tech’ battle continues to take hold.”

Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, former chairwoman of Austria’s Green Party, had sued Facebook in her home country to remove a news story that she considered libelous and insulting and could be viewed globally. An Austrian court ruled in her favor. The country’s top court then asked the EU to weigh in.

The same EU court ruled last month that the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” rules _ which allow people to ask search engines like Google to remove outdated or embossing links about themselves, even if they are true _ do not apply outside the 28-nation bloc.

Thursday’s ruling is likely to encourage internet platforms to step up their efforts to monitor user content.

Activists at the European Digital Rights organization said that instead of hiring more “content moderators,” companies like Facebook might have to rely on automatic filters. And those, they warned, might be unable to distinguish between legal and illegal content.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group that includes Amazon, Facebook and Google, said the ruling could infringe on the right to free speech.

“The ruling essentially allows one country or region to decide what Internet users around the world can say and what information they can access,” said CCIA Europe senior manager Victoria de Posson.

“What might be considered defamatory comments about someone in one country will likely be considered constitutional free speech in another. Few hosting platforms, especially startups, will have the resources to implement elaborate monitoring systems.”

David Carroll, a professor at Parsons School of Design in New York and a longtime critic of Facebook’s handling of data, said the social network could apply a content “fingerprint” for banned material in the same way it has automated the detection of pornography, child exploitation, terror groups and other things that violate its policies.

“It has plenty of money to spend on infrastructure to comply with international laws,” he said.

___

AP Technology Writer Mae Anderson in Atlanta contributed to this story.

Barr Seeks Police Access to Encrypted Facebook Messaging

NEW YORK—U.S. Attorney General William Barr wants Facebook to give law enforcement a way to read encrypted messages sent by users, re-igniting tensions between tech companies and law enforcement.

Facebook’s WhatsApp already has end-to-end encryption, meaning that even Facebook cannot read the text of messages. Facebook plans to extend that protection to Messenger and Instagram Direct.

While law enforcement wants a way to read messages analogous to wiretaps for phone calls, security experts say giving police such access makes messaging insecure for everyone.

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Barr will make the request to Facebook in a letter with counterparts from the U.K. and Australia as well as U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. A copy of the latter, dated this Friday, was obtained by The Associated Press.

BuzzFeed News reported on the letter earlier.

Trump Is Losing the Most Important Impeachment Battle

On Thursday, President Donald Trump stood before the White House press corps, an Air Force One helicopter whirring nearby, and committed the very offense that has triggered his impeachment investigation. Then he appeared to commit another impeachable offense for good measure. “I would think that if they were honest about it, [the Ukrainian government] would start a major investigation into the Bidens,” he said. “It’s a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens. Because how does a company that’s newly formed, and all these companies, if you look at it. … And by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens.”

If the president sounded panicked or otherwise out of it, he had good reason to be. According to a new poll from USA Today/Ipsos, 45% of the country now supports a House vote of impeachment, against 38% who do not. Perhaps more telling, 44% believe that if the Senate were to try the president, he should be convicted and removed from office. Just 35% believe he should be acquitted.

“The survey of 1,006 adults, taken Tuesday and Wednesday, underscores the perilous situation the president finds himself in as House committees subpoena documents and prepare to hear testimony into accusations that he pressured the leader of Ukraine to investigate a political rival, then tried to hide the account of their phone conversation,” writes Susan Page of USA Today. Page also offers this “warning sign” for the president:

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Nearly two-thirds of Republicans say there isn’t enough reliable information to decide whether he should be impeached. That leaves open the possibility that dramatic disclosures and persuasive evidence could convince some in Trump’s own party that impeachment is warranted.

Only so much can be extrapolated about the national mood from a single poll, but these numbers are largely consistent with current trend lines. The latest data from Quinnipiac indicate an even split on impeachment, at 47%—good for a 10-point swing in favor over a five-day period—while a CBS poll released Sunday finds the public approves by a margin of 55% to 45%. FiveThirtyEight, which relies on a weighted average of dozens of polls, indicates that Trump’s approval rating has dipped from 43% to 41% since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry a little over a week ago.

It’s still early, and the Democrats’ latest gambit may yet backfire. Similarly, Hunter Biden’s involvement in a Ukrainian energy company, described aptly by Sarah Chayes in The Atlantic as a “perfectly legal, socially acceptable form of corruption,” could haunt them in the 2020 election. But right now, Trump is losing the impeachment battle that matters most for his political future—the one held in the court of public opinion.

U.S.-Europe Dispute Puts World Trade at Risk

BRUSSELS—The trade wars threatening to push the global economy into recession are entering a new phase, with the United States and European Union escalating a dispute that endangers the world’s biggest trade relationship.

After the Trump administration slapped steep tariffs on $7.5 billion in EU goods, mainly traditional produce like cheese and wine, the Europeans made clear they would retaliate in kind. Some fear the tariffs could ultimately lead to U.S. taxes on European cars, a big economic blow that Trump has been threatening to deliver for months.

The exchange echoes how the U.S. and China ratcheted up a tariffs fight in recent months that has bruised businesses around the world and stunted economic growth.

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“This step triggers fears of a new round of escalation of tariff wars,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, a financial analyst with brokerage FxPro. “The introduction of tariffs and fears of tit-for-tat steps could further suppress business sentiment, which is already at the lowest levels for years.”

The Trump administration’s latest tariffs target large aircraft but also many typical European products such as olives, whiskey, wine, cheese and yogurt. They will take effect Oct. 18 and amount to a 10% tax on EU aircraft and steep 25% rate on everything else.

The U.S. got the legal go-ahead Wednesday from the World Trade Organization in a case involving illegal EU subsidies for the plane maker Airbus and which predates the Trump administration.

But the EU is expecting a similar case involving U.S. subsidies for Boeing to go in its favor, with a ruling due in coming months. It has said it hopes the two sides can hold off new tariffs, which economically amount to taxes on domestic importers. Sometimes importers pass on the higher costs to consumers, making goods more expensive.

“If the U.S. imposes countermeasures it will be pushing the EU into a situation where we will have to do the same,” said the European Commission’s spokesman, Daniel Rosario, echoing the dark outlook expressed by many EU governments.

“This is a move that will first and foremost hit U.S. consumers and companies and will make efforts towards a negotiated settlement more complicated,” he said.

A group of American alcohol importers, wholesalers, distributors and others released an open letter this week urging an end to the tariffs. They say tariffs on Scotch whisky, liqueurs and wine would affect nearly $3.4 billion in imports and cost 13,000 U.S. jobs, including truckers and bartenders.

Mindful that the tariffs do not actually come into effect for a couple weeks, Rosario stressed that the EU is still open to talking.

The tariffs come on top of existing ones that the U.S. and EU exchanged last year and multiply the headaches for European businesses fretting over Brexit, which could see Britain leave the EU on Oct. 31 without a deal – meaning new tariffs overnight on the heavy flow of trade across the Channel.

More broadly, the tariffs add to uncertainty for the global economy, which has been hit particularly hard by the U.S.’s wide-ranging dispute with China over trade and technology.

The U.S. and European economies are more closely integrated than the U.S. and China, with companies heavily invested across borders, so the potential damage from an escalation could dwarf the dispute with China.

Total U.S. investment in the EU, for example, is three times higher than in all of Asia. And EU investment in the U.S. is eight times that invested in China and India combined. The two sides account for about half of the world economy.

Rising uncertainty over one of the oldest and biggest economic trade paths would further darken the outlook for exporters and manufacturers, which are already cutting down on investment.

The head of the Spanish Federation of Food and Beverage Industries, Mauricio García de Quevedo, said the new U.S. tariffs will make it harder for the companies he represents to compete internationally. And that will contribute to job losses, he said, without providing detail.

The United States is the Spanish sector’s second biggest food and beverage client after the EU, according to the federation. The sector exported 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) last year.

Miguel Blanco, the secretary-general of Spain’s farming sector umbrella group COAG, representing more than 15,000 Spanish farmers and livestock breeders, said the tariffs are “completely unfair and overblown.”

“Once again, the farming sector is going to pay for an EU trade war which has nothing to do with the Spanish countryside,” Blanco said, according to Europa Press.

The Federation of French wines and spirits exporters also deplored the U.S. decision.

Antoine Leccia, president of the federation, said “we don’t feel at all initially involved in this litigation so we feel we are a bit hostages of these retaliatory measures.”

“We regret that this country, the United States, a country we worked with for many years, a country that increased its wine consumption and French wine imports now adopts such measures,” he added.

In Germany, which has Europe’s largest economy and focuses heavily on exports, the federation of industry said the U.S. was using the WTO ruing to intensify trade disputes.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened in the past to impose tariffs on European cars, a huge sector in Germany, and some fear this week’s escalation could lead to that.

Joachim Lang, the head of the Federation of German Industries, said “there is a risk that many industries on both sides of the Atlantic will find themselves in a lose-lose situation.”

___

Piovano reported from London. David Rising in Berlin, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court Cases That Could Change the Course of History

Major cases this year address the immigration program for young people (“Dreamers”) known as DACA, the Affordable Care Act (again), and public money for religious schools.

Justices will also consider cases that involve several aspects of defendants’ rights: whether criminal convictions require a unanimous jury, minors can be given a life sentence and a state can abolish the insanity defense.

Some of the most important rulings will address the recognition of rights by the conservative court: gay rights, gun rights and Native rights.

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These cases focus on perhaps the deepest divide on the court: Should the justices base their rulings on the contemporary meaning of words in our laws (or in the Constitution itself) as the public understanding of those concepts changes over time?

Or should they insist that our laws can only be changed from their original meaning by the country’s democratic representatives, who are directly accountable to the people?

Gay Rights

The justices will consider three cases on LGBT employment rights.

Gerald Bostock was fired by Clayton County, Georgia, because he is gay. Donald Zarda was fired from his job as a tandem sky-dive instructor for being gay (before his death in a BASE-jumping accident). Aimee Stephens transitioned from male to female identity and was fired from her job as a funeral director.

These cases turn on one word’s meaning: the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Does “sex” mean what legislators thought it meant when the law was passed, barring discrimination against women? Or should it be interpreted more broadly now to mean discrimination against any aspect of sexuality?

Gun Rights

It has been almost a decade since the court recognized a fundamental right for individual citizens to bear arms. That case was MacDonald v. Chicago, from the city with the highest total number of gun deaths in the nation.

Since that time, the looming question has been what sort of restrictions would be considered constitutional.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. New York City puts this question to the test. Licensed gun owners were prevented from transporting firearms outside of their homes, even to a second home or to a shooting competition outside the city. The court must decide if this is a reasonable regulation that leaves the essential right to bear arms intact.

In the midst of growing concern over mass shootings, the ruling may have ramifications for future attempts at gun regulations.

To raise the political stakes even further, five U.S. senators in their now infamous “enemy-of-the-Court” brief threaten that if the court does not dismiss the case, the Senate will have to consider adding more justices to the court in an attempt to shift its partisan balance, known as “packing the Court.”

Native Rights

The least-known but potentially most important case of the year is not about widely-discussed gay rights or gun rights, but about Native rights.

Sharp v. Murphy began as a dispute over jurisdiction in a murder prosecution. But it has become a potentially influential case about who represents the rightful government of Eastern Oklahoma.

The historic reservations of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Nations comprise 40% of Oklahoma land. These tribes were forcibly removed from the eastern U.S. to the Oklahoma Territory in the 1830s, some making the journey along the infamous Trail of Tears.

Since then, parts of their reservation land have been seized by the state government or sold to private citizens, so they are no longer part of the reservation. This includes the city of Tulsa.

The argument in the case is that according to the original treaties the petitioners are asking the court to uphold, those lands are rightfully still under the government of the tribes. What exactly this means in terms of ownership and governance is unclear.

This may at first appear to be a small case about a piece of the American West. But if the Native rights claim is recognized by the court, it may also apply in later cases to a surprisingly large proportion of the United States that was once “Indian country” under official treaties. That is why 10 states filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing against the Native rights claim.

A map submitted as an exhibit in the Supreme Court case about the boundaries of tribal reservations in Oklahoma.

Supreme Court
Bigger Implications

The Native rights claims at issue are not individual rights of the type the U.S. Constitution generally contemplates. They are rights held by an ethnic group. The question of who belongs to the group – and hence has access to the group right – is a divisive one because any answer includes some members while excluding others who claim the same identity.

It also is reminiscent of another proposed group right that is being debated in American politics: reparations. This summer the U.S. Congress held contentious hearings to discuss possible payments as reparations for slavery.

But payments to whom? Both Native Americans and African Americans share a distinct problem yet to be solved: how to determine who is a member of the group.

So in the case of reparations: Would they be paid only to direct descendants of slaves? To all African American descendants no matter when their progenitors arrived in the U.S.? To all people who have any black ancestors regardless of their current status or wealth?

Many Native tribes use what’s called the “blood quantum” approach, which forces individuals to document their lineage and proportional ancestry to prove membership. But scholars in this area argue that this approach is fraught with complications in many contexts.

Election 2020

Democratic presidential hopefuls have already grappled with questions around tribal membership and the country’s history of racism. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has dealt with a damaging controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry. Former Vice President Joe Biden has come under fire for his earlier opposition to reparations.

In terms of both legal and political influence, Sharp v. Murphy is a case with potentially major ramifications. And with the combined focus on politically divisive issues like gay rights, gun rights and Native rights, this year’s docket is likely to have an unusually strong presence in the 2020 campaigns.

[ Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter. ]

Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Reaganism Must Be Defeated Once and for All

The destruction of the middle class is destroying democracies and paving the way for authoritarian rule.

In 2016, Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk published a paper in the Journal of Democracy showing how, in the era since Reagan led America out of classical economic policy and into neoliberalism (aka “trickle-down” and “supply-side” economics), many Americans have ceased to value democracy.

“In the United States,” they write, “among all age cohorts, the share of citizens who believe that it would be better to have a ‘strong leader’ who does not have to ‘bother with parliament and elections’ has also risen over time: In 1995, 24 percent of respondents held this view; by 2011, that figure had increased to 32 percent.” By the time the paper came out in 2016, fully 49 percent of Americans thought elites should make decisions, rather than “government.”

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And the growing disillusionment with democracy as a way to protect the interests of average voters doesn’t just push them toward solutions hatched by the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute; increasingly, Americans would even consider a military junta ruling America, something that would shock the founders.

“In the past three decades,” Foa and Mounk write, “the share of U.S. citizens who think that it would be a ‘good’ or ‘very good’ thing for the ‘army to rule’—a patently undemocratic stance—has steadily risen. In 1995, just one in sixteen respondents agreed with that position; today, one in six agree.”

And it’s not just in the United States; democracies across the world are falling to the power of right-wing strongman leaders. Just in the past few decades we’ve seen this happen in Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, India, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and, most recently, Brazil. Arguably, it has happened here in the United States with the Electoral College’s selection of Donald Trump as president. Meanwhile, hard-right groups seeking such autocracy are rising fast across Europe, particularly in France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In a recent article for the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria notes this trend, along with Foa and Mounk’s research, and tries to analyze its cause.

“Why is this?” Zakaria writes. “The best I can guess is that we are living in times of great change — economic, technological, demographic, cultural — and in this swirl, people feel insecure and anxious.”

But America and the world have been in the midst of “great change” many times before, including during and after two world wars, but this trend toward authoritarianism has been happening uniquely since the 1980s.

That decade saw the adoption of the radical economic and political ideologies of Thatcherism and Reaganism—neoliberalism—which have since swept the world’s democracies. Even the European Union (with the Maastricht Treaty in 1993) has adopted neoliberal “reforms” that benefitted wealthy elites while forcing austerity on its poorer member nations, inflicting massive pain and inciting right-wing movements in Greece, Spain and Italy, among others.

In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher led the way in 1978. She rejected government ownership of parts of the commons like railways, busted unions, and later argued that, “There is no such thing as society… [only] individual men and women, and… families.”

Reagan came to power in 1980 with the help of vast amounts of money from corporations and the morbidly rich, made possible by the twin 1976 and 1978 Supreme Court decisions of Buckley v. Valeo and First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which said that billionaires and corporations owning politicians was “free speech.”

With a nod to his oligarch funders, in his inaugural address, his first day on the job as president, Reagan famously said, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

When Reagan flipped our economic system on its head, rejecting two generations of classical Adam Smith economics and replacing it with the Laffer Curve and “supply-side” economics, almost a third of Americans had union jobs and around 60 percent of American families lived in the economic “middle class.” But starting in 2015, as NPR noted, reporting on a Pew study, “middle-income households have become the minority.”

Since David Koch’s failed 1980 run for VP on the Libertarian ticket, American oligarchs have invested billions of dollars in the message that government is bad and can’t be trusted. The most obvious example was the faux-grassroots Tea Party “movement” funded by Koch front groups, causing thousands of Americans to protest “government-run” health care with slogans like, “Keep your goddamn government hands off my Medicare!”

Koch and his oligarch friends suggested, through their surrogates and think tanks, that instead of a functioning democracy we should have a government both owned and run by them and their billionaire buddies.

And that’s largely what we have now, with the Trump administration. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently tweeted, “A corporate lawyer runs DOL, a pharma exec runs HHS, a coal lobbyist runs EPA, an oil lobbyist runs DOI, a Raytheon lobbyist runs DOD, a steel lobbyist is the US trade rep, and a banking exec runs USDT.” I’d add that a former Verizon lawyer runs the FCC, and midlevel positions across the federal government are now filled with lobbyists and lawyers from industry.

Prior to the Reagan Revolution, Americans usually got what they wanted from the government.

The successes of LBJ’s Great Society programs during the 1960s are a great example: Medicare, Medicaid, Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, cutting poverty in half, Head Start, the National Teacher Corps, hundreds of billions in student college aid, PBS and NPR, Air Quality Act, Water Quality Act, Wilderness Act, National Trails System Act, creating the Cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development, Community Action Agencies, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Child Safety Act, mandating warning labels on cigarettes, the Immigration Act that ended race-based immigration quotas, food stamps, and massive investments in public schools and hospitals… among other things.

In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter followed up by creating the Department of Energy and passing energy programs that would have moved 20 percent of America’s electricity generation to solar by 2000 (it was ended by Reagan), establishing the Department of Education, massively expanding Head Start, passing major laws to regulate coal mining and make it safer, forcing polluters to clean up superfund sites, and doubling our public lands in Alaska. Not to mention winning the Nobel Prize for working out a peace deal between Egypt and Israel that holds to this day.

Before the 1980s, Western Europe and other democracies saw similar expansions of people-based government programs. But nearly all of it came to a screeching halt—and much was even reversed—with the neoliberal Thatcher and Reagan Revolutions.

Today’s standard-bearers for neoliberalism are the Republicans (and a few corporate-owned Democrats), and, as Americans figure out that the probability today of legislation passing that’s supported by the majority of Americans is today equivalent to random chance, they’re revolting.

And the oligarch billionaires have been waiting for just this moment, funding massive voter suppression, right-wing media, politicians who tell us that up is down, and efforts to keep their colleague, billionaire Donald Trump, in office. While the outreach to “very fine people” in the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements is a bit less visible, it’s there, too.

So long as the governments of America and other countries are captives of oligarchs and big corporations, and hang onto anti-worker, anti-middle-class neoliberal policies, citizens will continue to drift toward hard-right “populist” politicians.

Democracies will only begin to revive when we reverse the Reagan Revolution and return to the classical economic and political systems that existed in the Western world before the neoliberal 1980s.

And if that reversal doesn’t happen soon, the trend toward autocratic oligarchy will continue to speed up. As Foa and Mounk note in the conclusion of their research paper, “[W]hat was once unthinkable should no longer be considered outside the realm of possibility.”

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.