Chris Hedges's Blog, page 146

U.N. Chief Warns of a World Divided Between U.S. and China

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global leaders Tuesday of the looming risk of the world splitting in two, with the United States and China creating rival internets, currency, trade, financial rules “and their own zero-sum geopolitical and military strategies.”

In his annual “state of the world address” to the General Assembly’s gathering of heads of state and government, Guterres said the risk “may not yet be large, but it is real.”

“We must do everything possible to avert the great fracture and maintain a universal system, a universal economy with universal respect for international law; a multipolar world with strong multilateral institutions,” he told presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and ministers from the U.N.’s 193 member states.

Guterres painted a grim picture of a deeply divided and anxious planet facing a climate crisis, “the alarming possibility of armed conflict in the Gulf,” spreading terrorism, rising populism and “exploding” inequality.

His speech was followed by the traditional first speaker — Brazil, represented by its new president, Jair Bolsonaro — and the United States, represented by President Donald Trump.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is scheduled to speak later, said he was returning to London immediately afterward, where he will face the fallout of a court ruling against his decision to shut down Parliament over the is debating the U.K. in the crucial countdown to the country’s withdrawal from the European Union.

The United Nations, designed to promote a multilateral world, has struggled in the face of increasing unilateralism by the U.S. and other nations that favor going it alone.

Trump stressed in his speech that “love of our nations makes the world better for all nations.”

“The future does not belong to globalists,” he said. “The future belongs to patriots.”

Not so, said France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who disagreed with the American president and said the world’s problems cannot be solved by turning inwards.

True patriotism, Macron said, “combines a love of one’s nation” with a multilateralism “based on real cooperation that strives to produce concrete results.”

Said Guterres: “We are living in a world of disquiet.”

“A great many people fear getting trampled, thwarted, left behind. Machines take their jobs. Traffickers take their dignity. Demagogues take their rights. Warlords take their lives. Fossil fuels take their future,” he said.

Yet, the secretary-general said people still believe in “the spirit and ideas” of the United Nations and its foundation of multilateralism, of all countries working together.

But he asked the VIP crowd in the horseshoe-shaped assembly chamber: “Do they believe leaders will put people first?”

“We, the leaders must deliver for we, the peoples,” Guterres said.

The global meeting unfolds against the backdrop of flaring tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, backed by its longtime ally, the United States. The Saudis say Iran was responsible for an attack earlier this month on two oil facilities in the kingdom, which Iran denies.

The Trump administration has been engaged in an escalating series of harsh words and threats with Tehran. The U.S. has imposed increasingly crippling sanctions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to address world leaders on Wednesday.

Guterres gave a dire warning about the situation in the Gulf.

“Above all, we are facing the alarming possibility of armed conflict in the Gulf, the consequences of which the world cannot afford,” he said. “In a context where a minor miscalculation can lead to a major confrontation, we must do everything possible to push for reason and restraint.”

Trump said the U.S. “does not seek conflict with any other nation” and desires peace, but “I will never fail to defend America’s interests.”

He called Iran “the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism” and accused it of fueling wars in Syria and Yemen while squandering its wealth in a “fanatical quest” for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

“No responsible government should subsidize Iran’s bloodlust,” Trump said, warning that as long as Iran’s “menacing behavior” continues, U.S. sanctions will be tightened.

Guterres also warned that “outside interference” is making peace processes more difficult. And he pointed to unresolved conflicts from Yemen to Libya, Afghanistan and beyond.

“A succession of unilateral actions threatens to torpedo a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine,” Guterres said. “In Venezuela, 4 million people have fled the country — one of the largest displacements in the world. Tensions are elevated in South Asia, where differences need to be addressed through dialogue.”

France’s Macron appealed to world leaders to bring back the “courage” to make peace, especially in the Middle East.

He urged the United States, Iran and countries in the region to resume negotiations, and the target should be that Iran never develop or acquire nuclear weapons, a solution to the conflict in Yemen, a regional security plan that includes securing navigation, and finally the lifting of economic sanctions.

Tuesday’s opening session of the so-called General Debate followed three days of meetings focusing on the growing environmental threat to the planet.

Guterres told leaders “what once was called ‘climate change’ is now truly a ‘climate crisis’ . and what was once called ‘global warming’ has more accurately become ‘global heating’.”

While satellite data from the Brazilian Space Agency has shown a sharp increase in deforestation and forest fires in the past year, Bolsonaro told leaders: “The Amazon is not being devastated nor is it being consumed by fire as the media misleadingly says.”

This year’s General Assembly session, which ends Sept. 30, has attracted world leaders from 136 of the 193 U.N. member nations, according to figures it released Friday. That large turnout reflects a growing global focus on addressing climate change and the perilous state of peace and security.

Other countries will be represented by ministers and vice presidents — except Afghanistan, whose leaders are in a hotly contested presidential campaign ahead of Sept. 28 elections, and North Korea, which downgraded its representation from a minister to, likely, its U.N. ambassador. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled plans to attend and are sending ministers.

___

Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, has been covering world affairs for nearly a half-century.

Bernie Sanders: There Should Be No Billionaires

Even as Sen. Bernie Sanders’ progressive platform polls well among Democratic voters, consistently ranking second after Joe Biden, and even as he draws large crowds at rallies and lands 1 million donors (according to the Sanders campaign), his opponents respond with the same refrain: H0.ow is he going to pay for his plans like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal?

On Tuesday, Sanders answered, with “a tax on extreme wealth,” which CNN called “a hefty tax on the ultra-rich” which would cover many of the social welfare programs the Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont senator has proposed, including part of Medicare for All.

“I don’t think that billionaires should exist,” Sanders told The New York Times, adding that “This proposal does not eliminate billionaires, but it eliminates a lot of the wealth that billionaires have, and I think that’s exactly what we should be doing.” He was even more blunt on Twitter, writing, “there should be no billionaires.”

There should be no billionaires. We are going to tax their extreme wealth and invest in working people. Read the plan: https://t.co/RJDLvX5H4c

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 24, 2019

Fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as The New York Times points out, may have come out with a wealth tax before Sanders, but “Mr. Sanders is going bigger. His wealth tax would apply to a larger number of households, impose a higher top rate and raise more money.”

Per CNN:

married couples worth more than $32 million would pay a 1% tax on their wealth above that threshold. The rate would rise to 2% on net worth between $50 million and $250 million, climbing in increments to a 8% tax on wealth above $10 billion. The tax would be levied on single filers worth more than $16 million, with the top 8% rate assessed on their wealth above $5 billion.

By contrast, Warren’s plan involves a 2% levy on wealth over $50 million, plus another 1% tax on net worth above $1 billion.

Sanders told the Times he believes if he is elected president, his plan “will reduce the outrageous and grotesque and immoral level of income and wealth inequality.” He added, “What we are trying to do is demand and implement a policy which significantly reduces income and wealth inequality in America by telling the wealthiest families in this country they cannot have so much wealth.”

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman from the University of California at Berkeley, who helped develop both the Sanders and Warren plans, estimate that Sanders’s plan would raise $4.35 trillion over a decade, where Warren’s would raise $2.6 trillion in the same period.

As Saez told the Times, “The Sanders plan is really pitched at the idea that we don’t want billionaires and deca-billionaires to be billionaires and deca-billionaires for as long as they currently are,” adding that “It’s going to erode their fortunes much faster than the Warren wealth tax.”

To enforce the plan, Sanders wants to create a “national wealth registry,” to track the ultra-rich, increase the budget for the Internal Revenue Service and require audits for anyone subject to his proposed taxes.

Read the entire plan here.

 

Pelosi Announces Impeachment Inquiry Into Trump

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, acquiescing to mounting pressure from fellow Democrats and plunging a deeply divided nation into an election year clash between Congress and the commander in chief.

The probe centers on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden and help his own reelection. Pelosi said such actions would mark a “betrayal of his oath of office” and declared: “No one is above the law.”

Pelosi’s brief statement, historic yet presented without dramatic flourish, capped a frenetic stretch on Capitol Hill as details of a classified whistleblower complaint about Trump have burst into the open and momentum has shifted swiftly toward an impeachment probe. The charge was led by several moderate Democratic lawmakers from political swing districts, many of them with national security backgrounds and serving in Congress for the first time.

After more than two and one-half years of sharp Democratic criticism of Trump, the formal impeachment quest sets up the party’s most urgent and consequential confrontation with a president who thrives on combat — and injects deep uncertainty in the 2020 White House race. Trump has all but dared Democrats to take this step, confident that the specter of impeachment led by the opposition party would bolster his political support

Trump, who was meeting with world leaders at the United Nations, previewed his defense in an all-caps tweet: “PRESIDENTIAL HARRASSMENT!”

Pelosi had barely finished speaking as he began a mini-blizzard of tweets assailing her announcement.

At issue are Trump’s actions with Ukraine. In a summer phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he is said to have asked for help investigating former Vice President Biden and his son Hunter. In the days before the call, Trump ordered advisers to freeze $400 million in military aid for Ukraine — prompting speculation that he was holding out the money as leverage for information on the Bidens. Trump has denied that charge, but acknowledged he blocked the funds, later released.

Biden said Tuesday, before Pelosi’s announcement, that if Trump doesn’t cooperate with lawmakers’ demands for documents and testimony in its investigations the president “will leave Congress … with no choice but to initiate impeachment.” He said that would be a tragedy of Trump’s “own making.”

The Trump-Ukraine phone call is part of the whistleblower’s complaint, though the administration has blocked Congress from getting other details of the report, citing presidential privilege. Trump has authorized the release of a transcript of the call, which is to be made public on Wednesday.

“You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call,” Trump said.

Trump has sought to implicate Biden and his son in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. 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.

While the specter of impeachment has hung over Trump for many months, the likelihood of a probe had faded after special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation ended without a clear directive for lawmakers. Democratic House committees launched new inquiries into Trump’s businesses and a variety of administration scandals, but all seemed likely to drag on for months.

But details of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine prompted Democrats to quickly shift course. By the time Pelosi addressed the nation on Tuesday, about two-thirds of House Democrats had announced moving toward impeachment probes.

The president has all but dared Democrats to take this step, repeatedly stonewalling requests for documents and witness interviews in the variety of ongoing investigations. Trump advisers say they are confident that an impeachment process led by the opposition party will bolster his political support heading into his reelection campaign.

After Pelosi’s Tuesday announcement, the president and his campaign team quickly released a series of tweets attacking Democrats, including a video of presidential critics like the speaker and Rep. Ilhan Omar discussing impeachment. It concluded with a message for the Trump faithful: “While Democrats ‘Sole Focus’ is fighting Trump, President Trump is fighting for you.”

Pelosi has for months resisted calls for impeachment from her restive caucus, warning that it would backfire against the party unless there was a groundswell of public support. That groundswell hasn’t occurred, but Pelosi suggested in comments earlier Tuesday that this new episode — examining whether a president abused his power for personal political gain — would be easier to explain to Americans than some of the issues that arose during the Mueller investigation and other congressional probes.

The speaker put the matter in stark terms on Tuesday: “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of his national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

U.S. Companies Are Taking Drastic Measures to Avoid Trump’s Tariffs

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A few weeks ago, signs went up in the parking lots and loading docks at Fluid Equipment Development Co., a small manufacturer in Monroe, Michigan, a lakeside town a bit south of Detroit.

“WARNING,” they read. “This bonded facility is under the custody and control of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and any person entering these premises must comply to the laws governed therein.”

FEDCO is a U.S. company operating on American soil. It makes sophisticated pumps that turn seawater into fresh water. But to protect itself against punishing new tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, it has turned to an obscure program that began 85 years ago — the last time tariffs soared as high as they are today.

Congress passed the Foreign Trade Zone Act of 1934 as an escape hatch to allow companies a safe harbor to bring in goods and warehouse them without tariffs as long as they weren’t meant for domestic consumption. With nearly 300 zones across the U.S, they help manufacturers compete — and preserve jobs — in a global economy where components often cross borders several times before coming together as a finished product.

Under the program, FEDCO will avoid paying tariffs on any imported parts that it manufactures into goods bound for sale abroad. Getting the government’s stamp of approval, with help from a consultant who knew the process, took about six months. Even though setting up the foreign trade zone will largely allow FEDCO to return to business as usual, having to do so has been a significant administrative burden — what one executive called “mental overhead” — that has distracted from other priorities like developing new products and finding new markets.

“As a small business, you’re so busy making your business profitable for the future,” said Lisa Leachman, the company’s vice president of finance and human resources. “For these types of things, you have to spend money to outsource that know-how, which costs you even more money. It’s a no-win situation.”

That’s the headache companies across America face as they struggle to cope with tariffs that have risen to 25% on top of regular duties. They are fitting their business models into a rapidly changing trade policy, sapping productivity and profits with little evidence that the effort is changing China’s practices one bit.

One of the administration’s stated goals with the tariffs has been to reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing. But in FEDCO’s case — and many others — tariffs alone wouldn’t have moved the needle.

FEDCO does buy much of what it needs domestically. But when the company’s engineers designed a new pump with intricate channels to drive pressurized salt water into a filtering membrane, the products delivered by American foundries were expensive, arrived late and sprung leaks when put to use.

After months of disappointment, the company turned to China.

“It was more driven by quality, why we went to China, rather than cost,” said company founder and president Eli Oklejas. “We lost fundamental manufacturing skills, especially in the foundries, and castings. Those are things based on training and experience over decades. Those people retired, there’s no one coming up through those industries, and it’s gone.”

FEDCO had just implemented its new supply chain when tariffs hit. The company ponied up to air freight some of the new parts from China to beat the deadline, but it still ended up paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Customs. Desperate for a solution, Oklejas came across an article about foreign trade zones, and asked Leachman to find out more. It will save them from having to raise prices, which could have driven customers to competitors in the desalination industry that are larger and better able to absorb the costs.

“Plan B would have been to set up operations in China,” said Oklejas, who now employs 86 people in Monroe and has an overseas sales and maintenance facility in Dubai, which is close to many of FEDCO’s customers in the hotel, cruise ship, offshore drilling and municipal utility industries. “Expansion would not have occurred here.”

The popular notion of a “Free Trade Zone” is a border area in Mexico or other location where U.S. manufacturers have built plants to take advantage of tax breaks and lower wages. And there are plenty of those — 2,260 around the world, according to the World Free Zone Organization. But they can also exist anywhere in the U.S. where a company applies for a permit.

America’s foreign trade zone program was born in the early 1930s, after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods had throttled both imports and exports, helping to propel the United States into a deep depression.

After Congress set up the program, the rules for operating a free trade zone were so restrictive that they weren’t used much in the beginning. Other countries actually set up free trade zones first, starting with Ireland, which established a duty-free international business park near the Shannon Airport in 1959 as an experiment in job creation.

The law was amended in the 1950s to allow manufacturing in foreign trade zones, but not much happened until the 1980s, when the rules changed again to ensure that duties wouldn’t be assessed on domestic value added if the finished product was then sold in the U.S. That finally made the zone designation useful for companies like automakers, which increasingly outsourced parts production to compete with cheap Japanese imports.

The program then grew fairly steadily, with pauses after the passage of major trade deals — like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the accession of China to the World Trade Organization — that ratcheted down import duties and incentivized production overseas. Despite a global trade regime and technological advancements (like shipping goods in containers and computerized inventory management systems) that for decades had made it easier and cheaper for goods to cross borders, foreign trade zones remained useful in mitigating any remaining friction.

In 2017, according to the latest report by the Commerce Department’s Foreign Trade Zones Board, $669 billion worth of both foreign and domestic material entered into zones and $87 billion was exported from them. About 3,200 companies operate in foreign trade zones. The biggest users by far are oil and petrochemical companies, like Exxon and Valero, which import crude oil and refine it into duty-free petrochemicals. Then come export-focused automakers, like Mercedes-Benz and Tesla, followed by pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb.

That was all before Trump’s trade war.

Beginning with steel and aluminum tariffs imposed in early 2018 and continuing to a wider range of goods, companies have cast about for workarounds. Some seek exemptions, or route imports through other countries, or make small product adjustments that move them into a non-tariffed category, for example.

Foreign trade zones largely solve the tariff problem for companies that manufacture goods for export — ironically, bringing the program back to the purpose it had originally been created for and never fully served.

“Where we are today is in some ways similar to where we started in 1934, in that for many companies, the duty rates are really significant, and that changes the nature of their business completely,” said Marshall Miller, a principal with the Kansas City-based trade law firm Miller & Co. and general counsel for the nonprofit National Association of Foreign Trade Zones.

Unlike in 1934, the program is now relatively easy to use. Rather than having to locate in a designated area, a company can be anywhere and qualify as a foreign trade zone, with modest security precautions and tight controls over shipping and inventory that are reported to CBP. A 2012 rules overhaul cut the processing time for an approval from a year to about four months. Companies still must pay tariffs on components marketed domestically, but if the finished product has a different tariff rate than the parts, companies can pay whichever is lower. They are also able to better manage cash flow by paying only at the point of sale rather than as soon as the good arrives in the U.S.

An annual report to Congress with information about the dollar value transacted through foreign trade zones for 2018 has been delayed, and it’s difficult to parse the data available from the Foreign Trade Zones board for trends. But as a rough proxy for the year through August, the number of cases expanding activity in foreign trade zones has risen 37% since the same period in 2016 — the year before Trump took office — after staying relatively flat since the process was streamlined in 2012. Meanwhile, the public entities that administer the zones (known as “grantees”) say they’ve seen a surge in interest that will show up in official data by year’s end.

“About half of the growth you’ve seen is coming directly from the tariffs,” said David Panko, who manages a zone run by the City of El Paso, Texas. “We had started educating people on the FTZ program, and then the tariffs came, and we basically doubled the number of companies that were interested.”

The confluence of those factors has lured dozens of companies into the program, with more to come. Companies applying for foreign trade zone status over the past year — including Whirlpool, the fan maker Lasko, and the outdoor equipment manufacturer STIHL to name a few — frequently disclose that the materials to be imported are subject to the new tariffs. In recent months, companies that tried to avoid the time and expense of setting up a foreign trade zone are now biting the bullet.

“Each iteration of duties has really upped the urgency for people,” said Robert Stein, a vice president for regulatory compliance at Mohawk Global Logistics. “If you don’t sign up for an FTZ, you’re gambling that sometime in the next six months Trump is going to wake up and say ‘Hey let’s strike an agreement with Xi Jinping.’ Smart businesses really need to believe that this is the reality.”

Setting up a foreign trade zone, however, doesn’t entirely shield companies from trade policy chaos. Earlier this year, for example, new applications lagged when hundreds of customs agents were diverted to work on the southern border processing migrants. And the constantly changing tariff rates have created confusion about duties owed when a company’s products are sitting in a zone: Are they subject to the new tariff when they enter the stream of U.S. commerce, or the old one?

Erik Autor, president of the National Association of Foreign Trade Zones, said he’s gotten conflicting information about how the rules apply when new tariffs are instituted. “They’re like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “No time to adjust. You get a tweet on a weekend and the next weekend they’re in effect.”

Autor has sent letters and testified in hearings before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative asking for technical fixes in the tariff notices that result in duties being improperly assessed on imported goods. So far, he hasn’t had much luck. At the National Association of Foreign Trade Zones’s annual conference in Chicago earlier this month, the group pleaded with members to speak with their representatives in Congress about program changes — not to mention more funding for Customs and Border Patrol, which has been straining under its flat budget to meet the demands of volatile tariff policy.

Advocating for foreign trade zones is a delicate task. Although the program enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress, with Trump berating American companies on Twitter for sourcing goods abroad, companies are reluctant to publicly defend their ability to avoid tariffs.

“It can be misconstrued as companies taking advantage of the system,” said Torrey Chambliss, manager of the Port of Tampa Bay’s foreign trade zone.

In Monroe, workers at FEDCO had to be trained on compliance with new foreign trade zone rules, and their bosses have also had to explain why they were setting up a mechanism to shield their imports from tariffs. The long manufacturing decline in the Detroit area has made outsourcing a sensitive subject, so Leachman emphasizes the parts of the business that still happen locally.

“We’re proud to say that this is engineered, designed and built in the USA,” she said.

Even if the tariffs on China are rescinded, Leachman and Oklejas figure they’ll keep the foreign trade zone operational. They also import parts from countries like Germany and India, and in this new protectionist era, it’s worthwhile to have an insurance policy.

“They don’t have tariffs now,” Leachman said. “But everybody has learned a valuable lesson, that at a snap of a finger, everything can be tariffed significantly.”

Do you have access to information about the trade war that should be public? Email lydia.depillis@propublica.org. Here’s how to send tips and documents to ProPublica securely.

For more coverage, read ProPublica’s previous reporting on how tariffs are affecting America’s pastime.

Roger Waters: We’re Ignoring One of Humanity’s Biggest Threats

DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network from Harold Square in Manhattan.

I’m here today with legendary musician Roger Waters, also known widely around the world for his peace activism and his activism for human rights. We are here for the People’s Mobilization Against the U.S. War Machine and Save The Planet. Thank you very much for joining us, Roger.

ROGER WATERS: Not at all.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: So Roger, the relationship between one of the major existential threats of our time, climate change, and militarism is not as well-known as the relationship between militarism and another existential threat, nuclear weapons.

ROGER WATERS: Right.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Talk to us about how militarism is exacerbating the climate crisis.

ROGER WATERS: Well, one thing that the military does really, really efficiently is pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I believe the U.S. military is responsible for some enormous percentage of the emissions all over the world. So that’s one thing where the two things are connected. What’s cool about today, I think, is that there are people who are specifically devoted to the idea of convincing their fellow citizens that climate change is real and that it is going to destroy the planet if we all don’t act collectively to do something about it.

Ignoring climate change and encouraging militarism are disastrous, except for the people who are making money logging in the Amazon or the people who make money at Raytheon and the other armaments industries, which are legend and legion. And huge amounts of money are made. Good thing about weapons is they go bang and then you have to replace them with another one. A few people get killed; so what? So long as you make a profit out of it, they don’t care. But I care, and you care, and all the people here care. That lady shouting cares, which is good.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: So let’s talk about a brewing conflict which is really capturing the attention of the world at this particular moment. And that is the conflict between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and Iran and its allies on the other. We hear a lot about how Iran is the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. We hear a lot about how it’s a human rights abuser. Are you okay?

ROGER WATERS: I nearly spat out my water there.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Oh, OK. Well, I’m interested to know why. And really, what I’m particularly–

ROGER WATERS: Well, it’s nonsense, obviously. No, Iran isn’t. This is just a story that’s being made up by the Israelis and the Americans in order to create more confusion and conflict in the Middle East. And also, if possible, at the behest of the Israeli government, to get America to wage war upon Iran in order to blunt Iran’s influence in the Middle East. Because it’s a big country. Lots of people. It’s a very old ancient civilization, the Persian civilization, and the Israelis don’t want it there. They would prefer it was rubble. And so that’s why they’re encouraging the idea that it’s an enemy.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And what are your thoughts about how we in the West should engage with the country of Iran in order to avoid a war? What do you think the best path forward is to avoid bloodshed in the Middle East in a conflict with Iran?

ROGER WATERS: Talk, obviously. Reintroduce and re-ratify the nuclear agreement that Obama came to when he was still president of the United States. Encourage those groupings of governments who still believe that that was a good thing and a step in the right direction. Encourage the young people in Iran in their resistance to the official kind of dogma of the ruling clerics. I think that would be a good thing. I mean, we really… Whenever one talks about Iran, you sort of have to go back to 1953 when they had a progressive socialist government who wanted some of the profit that was coming from the oil.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: That was Mohammad Mosaddegh.

ROGER WATERS: Exactly. And he said, “Listen, can we have some of the profit?” And BP–it was I believe–it went, “Are you insane? No, of course you can’t. What are you talking about? It’s ours.” And he went, “Well, no, I’m nationalizing it.” So they had him removed and imposed the Shah. And however many years, ’53 to ’79… And 20-whatever-5 years later, there was a revolution and now we have this. I kind of slightly deplore any country that’s run by what I call “religious extremists.” And they’re not more extreme than evangelical Christians in this country. Rouhani, or whoever is now in charge, is no more extreme than Mike Pence. You can’t get any more extreme than that.

So there are two sides to this thing. But Iranians are ordinary human beings. And they are vilified by propaganda in the West, unfortunately. And it may be that, between them, the evangelicals here and Netanyahu and his crew may persuade somebody. You’d need to find somebody crazy to push the button and actually go to war with Iran, because it will not be in-out.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: So the last thing I’d like to ask you, Roger, is you travel around the world; you’ve been doing so much activism; you interact with so many people who are concerned about what’s happening to this planet. What seems to be different about this week, here in New York City and around the world, is the level of engagement from young people.

ROGER WATERS: Yeah.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And in your interactions with people around the world, and particularly young people, do you sense that there has been a sea change, a dramatic change in the level of consciousness of young people about what’s happening in this world, and the level of their engagement?

ROGER WATERS: Well, that’s sort of why I’m here today, is to find the answer to that question. I sense that what you say is true. Actually, at my concerts, the audience are predominantly young these days. And they care about what I have to say in my songs and what I have to say, period. And I care about what they have to say. But I will be very interested to see how many of us turn out this afternoon. I know when I was asked to come here today… I don’t do this. You say, “Yeah, you’re a peace activist.” I don’t go to meetings. I’m really not a good meeting kind of a guy. But I think, “No, you can’t sit at home and pontificate about these things. You’ve got to turn up on the street and be part of it,” because that’s the only thing that’s going to push us forward.

We saw what happened with Occupy Wall Street back in 2011-12, or whatever. It was very quickly sidelined, crushed, vilified by the mainstream media, and sort of quelled quickly. But it hasn’t gone away. Neither have the protests that happened on February the 14, 2003; 30 days, approximately, before the invasion of Iraq. That, worldwide, was 20 million people in the streets saying, “No, we don’t want to do…” Saying this [people chanting “no war”]. And they haven’t gone away. But maybe they’ve been waiting to find meeting grounds between climate and anti-war movements, so this is important. Also because it comes on the back of a global massing of the unions and a strike about the denial of climate change. Workers of the world literally uniting, such as there are unions left anywhere in the world because the capitalist system has obviously tried to destroy them.

I wrote a new song recently, actually, which is about Standing Rock, because I had friends there. I didn’t go to Standing Rock, I’m slightly ashamed to say, but I had friends who were. And I mentioned the Pinkerton men. I then looked it up and saw that the Pinkerton agency survives to this day, and it does security and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the word “Pinkerton men” has become generic to mean armed thugs who crush unions and crush protests like this, and who were there. So I think it’s perfectly legitimate to refer to them as mercenaries, Erik Prince and his chaps who were the ones who crushed the protest at Standing Rock for protesting the pipeline.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Right. After doing his dirty work in Iraq.

ROGER WATERS: Yeah. Exactly.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Well, it’s always a pleasure to speak to you, Roger. Thank you for coming back. And this is Dimitri Lascaris reporting from Herald Square in Manhattan, with Roger Waters.

The Mainstream Media’s Warren Favoritism Is Showing

When the Washington Post‘s Paul Waldman (9/18/19) recently attempted to explain Elizabeth Warren’s rise in the Democratic primary polls, he attributed it in part to media:

Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she’s doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.

The resulting positive news coverage encourages more Democrats to feel favorably toward her, or at the very least give her a careful look. Which leads to poll numbers that continue to improve, which leads to more positive press coverage, and the cycle goes on.

It’s a logical path from enthusiastic crowds and rising poll numbers to news coverage about what a candidate is doing right. But it’s certainly not an inevitable one; media coverage is a product of editorial decisions, not laws of nature. And four years ago, when another Democratic primary candidate was drawing enthusiastic crowds and rising in the polls, it prompted a very different kind of coverage (e.g., FAIR.org, 7/1/15, 8/20/15, 8/21/15).

Why has Warren—who has positioned herself as Bernie Sanders’ closest ideological competitor, and a vocal crusader against corporate control over the political system—so far escaped the scathing and skeptical coverage Sanders has received? The answer has to do with both the differences in how the two candidates frame themselves, and the way major media cover elections.

As FAIR has shown over and over, corporate journalists’ rolodexes skew heavily toward establishment sources: party officials, strategists and operatives (Extra!, 7–8/14;  FAIR.org, 6/1/17), and centrist and right-leaning think tank analysts (FAIR.org, 7/1/13).

Those sources are almost uniformly and vehemently anti-Sanders, and have been at least since his run against Hillary Clinton in the last election provoked their deepest antipathy (FAIR.org, 6/28/19, 8/15/19). But—no doubt in part because Sanders has helped shift the center of the party so much in recent years—many see Warren as a more acceptable alternative.

Even Third Way, the pro-corporate think tank that in 2013 warned in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/13) that Warren was leading Democrats “off a populist cliff,”  has warmed up a bit to her (Politico, 6/19/19). Politico quoted an attendee at a Third Way conference—who says he likes Warren’s consumer protection policies and infrastructure plan—describing the shift: “People are taking a second look at her and saying, ‘Hmm. Some of her policies are good. Maybe she isn’t like Bernie.’”

“She isn’t like Bernie” seems to be the take thus far of much of the Democratic establishment, which, as the New York Times (8/26/19) reported recently, Warren has been working hard to convince she “is a team player who is seeking to lead the party—not stage a hostile takeover of it.”

By reassuring the kind of party insiders the media rely heavily on for framing their stories, Warren has largely avoided the kinds of aspersions—often —lobbed at Sanders. For instance, the Washington Post (6/24/19), under the headline “Sanders Faces a New Kind of Threat in Elizabeth Warren,” wrote that Sanders’ strategy of

doubling down on his ideological purity and socialist credentials carries risks for the senator from Vermont, other Democrats say. It’s enabled Warren to position herself as impassioned but reasonable, while Sanders holds down the leftward flank of the Democratic Party and serves as the ideological outlier in the race.

Later, in an article headlined “Bernie Sanders’ Supporters Find Anger Not as Compelling This Time Around,” the Post (8/30/19) wrote that Warren offered a new option for voters “who are turned off by his tenor.” After describing Warren and Sanders as “more similar than different when it comes to policy goals,” the Post explained that “where the candidates —Sanders a democratic socialist and Warren a proud capitalist—diverge is in the tenor of their campaigns.” To support this claim that “tenor” is the key difference between the “democratic socialist” and the “proud capitalist,” the paper turned to a Brookings Institution fellow who worked for Bill Clinton:

It’s not as though [Warren is] content to thunder against the evildoers like an Old Testament prophet. That’s much more his mode. Sanders sees [his campaign] as a revolutionary mass movement to upset the established order. While Senator Warren is obviously very dissatisfied with the status quo, she describes her campaign in very different terms, and terms that I think are less scary.

The question this raises, obviously, is who might be scared by those terms? Warren, who emphasizes that she is “a capitalist to my bones,” inspires less fear than Sanders, not just among the centrist party insiders who make up a large bulk of media sources, but also, no doubt, among the owners and sponsors of major news outlets.

Moreover, with Biden entering the race as the immediate frontrunner and Sanders as the clearest top rival, given his strong showing against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Warren has drawn less fire from competitors as well—which is beginning to change, as Politico (8/30/19) and the Post (9/18/19) have noted.

In opinion sections, Warren is accumulating a fan club among those meant to represent the left. (The right, unsurprisingly, is taking her as a serious threat—Vice, 9/12/19.) While it’s hard to find a columnist in a major newspaper who says positive things about Sanders, many have professed a fondness for Warren.

At the New York Times, the love has been particularly flowing. Nicholas Kristof calls her “serious” (6/26/19), Farhad Manjoo (6/6/19) finds her “impressive,” and Gail Collins (8/27/19), defending Warren against right-wing columnist Bret Stephens, pulled out the capitalist card: “Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist. She understands the economic system better than any other candidate.”

.

For the LA Times‘ Virginia Heffernan (9/20/19), Warren offered a stark contrast to Sanders (and Biden):

At a time when Bernie Sanders is, with few details, caterwauling about revolution, and Joe Biden is turning to incoherent sentimentalism, [Warren’s] logic is a breath of fresh air.

Heffernan sees Sanders as antagonistic toward the middle class (“the bourgeoisie, the dread middle class to Democratic socialist Bernie”), whereas “Warren makes it clear she believes that what’s greatest about America is the bourgeoisie, and those striving to join it.”

And yet, many of Warren’s famous plans are still deeply worrying to journalists’ main sources (not to mention those news media owners and sponsors). So while Warren is often favorably contrasted to Sanders, she is at the same time the target of “gotcha” articles like the New York Times piece (9/9/19) attempting to paint her as hypocritical for swearing off “big-money” donations for her presidential primary run while still using leftover funds from her Senate race that had made no such vows.

“Admirers and activists praised her stand—but few noted the fact that she had built a financial cushion by pocketing big checks the years before,” the Times‘ Shane Goldmacher wrote. Who were Goldmacher’s sources for the premise of the piece? Not any Warren supporters he talked to, who seemed pleased that she had renounced such donations, but “some donors and, privately, opponents” who “are chafing at her campaign’s purity claims.”

Piling on, the Washington Post gave an op-ed column (9/11/19) to one Times source who seemed to take her new position particularly personally—former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who fundraised for Warren’s Senate race and then for Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, and pouted that where he once got a “glowing hand-written letter from her for my hard work,” he’s now being demonized:

It’s one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grassroots fundraising, but it’s another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.

Likewise, while the op-ed pages might make room for Warren praise, at some of the big papers the editorial board’s own stance is decidedly more antagonistic. After the CNN primary debate—in which Warren sharply defended her positions with the widely quoted line, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for”—the Post (8/1/19) pushed back against her “ideological grandiosity” under the snide headline, “Why Go to the Trouble of Running for President to Promote Ideas That Can’t Work?”

And, unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal editorial board  (8/9/19) isn’t buying what Warren is selling: “She must have a strange definition of capitalism. Every policy she proposes would increase government control over the private economy.” (The New York Times editors have yet to weigh in directly on Warren.)

These kinds of takes heavily populate opinion pieces, news stories and debate questions that focus on the progressive policies Warren espouses, with an endless drumbeat of calls for “pragmatism” (FAIR.org, 8/21/19) and warnings against the “risk of political backlash” for moving too far to the left (FAIR.org, 7/2/19).

Moreover, Warren will unquestionably continue to face the same kinds of misogynistic coverage every prominent female politician has long faced about her looks (e.g., CBS This Morning, 7/31/19) and capability (Extra!, 3/01). “Is Elizabeth Warren a Serious Contender After All?” asked New York magazine (5/28/19). “Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her,” declared a front-page New York Times headline (8/15/19) over a lengthy article that, more than a year before the general election, highlighted “persistent questions and doubts” about whether Warren is electable, no matter her popularity.

But as long as Sanders is in the race, he will no doubt continue to draw the most intense fire. If Warren ever finds herself without media’s bête noire to draft off of—assuming her policy stances remain the same—the media headwinds can be expected to get much more intense for her.

Are Democrats Blowing It All Over Again?

You might ask what it takes to remember

When you know that you’ve seen it before

           —Jackson Browne, “Lives in the Balance”

Joe Biden is a throwback to an earlier time. Much of it could be called “the Clintonite era”— when Democratic presidential contenders openly cozied up to the wealthy by appearing at one high-dollar fundraising event after another. A time when they served up (consultant-approved) language about “feeling the pain” of “working families” . . . without identifying any corporate villains or transformative policies to fix the rigged system.

Donald Trump’s victory seemed to put a catastrophic end to that era in November 2016. Unfortunately, Biden and the Democratic establishment still haven’t gotten the memo.

Party leaders continue to believe that a Democrat can win the White House by catering to corporate donors and eagerly cashing their fat checks.  Leading Democrats keep throwing their endorsements at Biden—as he spends day and night glad-handing the 1 percent at top-dollar fundraisers.

Wake-up alert to Democrats: Donald Trump may well be the most effective faux-populist in our country’s history. He was that in 2016, when he won “Rust Belt” swing states. And he remains that today for millions of voters—despite his barrage of policies favoring the rich and powerful.

Like Hillary Clinton in 2016 (with her Wall Street connections and well-paid speeches), Biden would be a perfect target in 2020 for Trump’s pretend-populism. Steve Bannon is gone, but Trump’s campaign team will make sure every swing-state voter knows about Biden’s record in the Senate serving big banks and credit card companies, as well as his 1993 vote to approve the disastrous NAFTA trade deal.

If there’s a single word that explains why Clinton lost Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016, it’s not “Russia” or “Comey.” It’s probably not “misogyny.” Most likely, that word is “NAFTA.” Biden supported NAFTA, alongside most Republicans and a minority of Democrats in Congress.

In recent months, when I’ve publicly discussed Biden’s long record of corporatism, some Democrats have complained that I’m “helping the Trump campaign”—as if that campaign has not already cataloged every Biden vote and quote that a populist charlatan like Trump can exploit.

In continuing to rally behind Biden, Democratic leaders seem compelled to relive the tragic 2016 defeat—as if trapped in a recurring bad dream. In fairness to Hillary Clinton, she was a far more informed candidate in 2016 than Biden is now and a far better debater, with campaign rhetoric and policies far more substantive than Biden’s (a low bar).

The developing Biden nightmare became more vivid to me last week when I started tracking his series of high-dollar fundraisers, as described by individual pool reporters the Biden campaign allows into each “finance event.” Here’s the beginning of Thursday’s report by Tina Sfondeles of the Chicago Sun-Times on a lavish lunch gathering:

At the first of three Chicago fundraisers, Joe Biden stopped by a luncheon at the residence of billionaire real estate and casino magnate Neil Bluhm, also co-hosted by GCM Grosvenor CEO Michael Sacks—who was not present due to a death in the family—and real estate developer Elzie Higginbottom. The fundraiser was in a sprawling 65th floor residence full of original art, including a Lichtenstein in the kitchen. Biden was introduced by Bluhm, who told his high-profile guests that both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders “don’t represent the Democratic Party” that he supports. Bluhm said Biden “has the best chance of defeating Trump.”

Here’s the final paragraph:

Tickets to the fundraiser were $1,000 apiece, or $2,800 for a ticket which included a photo with Biden. There were less than 100 guests in attendance.

In between the first and last paragraphs, the Sun-Times reporter recounts that Biden served up 22 minutes of his standard stump speech, decrying “our standing in the world” and worrying about “the soul of this country.” It’s the kind of stale rhetoric guaranteed not to offend billionaires.

And unlikely to inspire many voters.

Lesson No. 1 from the 2016 catastrophe: In a time of anxiety, anger and rampant economic inequality, the candidate of status quo corporatism can be defeated by one spouting anti-elite populism, even a con artist like Trump.

Lesson No. 2: Without bold campaign proposals aimed at unrigging “the rigged economy,” a Democratic candidate will lose white working-class voters—and, more importantly, will fail to energize the base: voters of color and youth. For proof, check out Clinton’s low voter-turnout in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, and the number of young voters who stayed home or went third-party.

It’s no surprise that Neil Bluhm, one of Biden’s billionaire supporters, fears Warren and Sanders. They are the two candidates in the race with the most low-dollar donors and most energized activists, with crowds rallying behind their candidates’ specific plans to address inequality, college affordability, debt, health care and climate . . . with programs paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy.

Higher taxes on billionaires may mean fewer Lichtenstein paintings in Mr. Bluhm’s luxury condo.

As a throwback to the Clintonite 1990s, Biden says he feels the pain of victims but won’t name many villains. That approach no longer works—and actually plays into the hands of demagogues like Trump.

So do remarks like the one Biden made to the Brookings Institution last year: “I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble. . . The folks at the top aren’t bad guys.”

Let me be clear: Despite current polls showing Biden, Warren and Sanders each beating Trump in hypothetical match-ups, I can’t say for certain that the progressive populism of Warren or Sanders would defeat Trump in 2020.

But I’m convinced that either Warren or Sanders would fare better against Trump than a candidate like Biden, who is easily tied to moneyed elites and a blatantly unfair status quo. We’ve seen that movie before and it ended in the 2016 disaster.

The Impeachment Dam May Finally Be Bursting

As the Washington Post reported late Monday that President Donald Trump ordered a hold on U.S. military aid to Ukraine just days before he pressured that country’s leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden—a move critics described as a serious abuse of power and “extortion”—a slew of Democrats previously unsupportive of impeachment began speaking out in favor of removing the president from office.

“The dam has burst, folks,” tweeted progressive advocacy group Indivisible after over a dozen House Democrats voiced support for impeachment proceedings against Trump Monday night, adding to the majority of the House Democratic caucus that already backed impeachment.

The Post, citing three anonymous senior administration officials, reported that Trump ordered Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to “hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former vice president Joe Biden.”

“Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers that the delays were part of an ‘interagency process’ but to give them no additional information—a pattern that continued for nearly two months, until the White House released the funds on the night of Sept. 11,” according to the Post.

Some described the Post story, which was confirmed by other outlets, as a “smoking gun,” but Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday night that Trump himself is the smoking gun and impeachment is the only solution.

“Congress appropriated the aid. The president withheld the aid because he wanted to pressure a foreign power to investigate his political opponent. The only remedy for this is impeachment. Period,” tweeted Jayapal. “This is not the latest thing Trump has done. It is the latest thing we have found out about. Imagine what else he is doing? We should stop looking for a smoking gun. Trump is the smoking gun.”

Congress appropriated the aid. The president withheld the aid because he wanted to pressure a foreign power to investigate his political opponent. The only remedy for this is impeachment. Period. https://t.co/ECnykgPyUE

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) September 24, 2019

About two hours before the Post revelations were published, seven so-called moderate House Democrats penned an op-ed describing Trump’s alleged attempt to pressure a foreign government to investigate a political rival as “an impeachable offense.”

“We call on our colleagues in Congress to consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of ‘inherent contempt’ and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations,” wrote freshman Democratic Reps. Gil Cisneros (Calif.), Jason Crow (Colo.), Chrissy Houlahan (Penn.), Elaine Luria (Va.), Mikie Sherrill (N.J.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), and Abigail Spanberger (Va.).

“WHOA,” tweeted Indivisible co-executive director Ezra Levin. “These are about the last Dems I expected to come out for impeachment. Something’s changing folks.”

Joining the freshman Democrats in voicing support for impeachment hearings on Monday were Reps. Debbie Dingell (Mich.), Veronica Escobar (Texas) John Larson (Conn.), Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Dean Phillips (Minn.), and Angie Craig (Minn.).

“The corruption of this administration has no bottom,” Escobar said following the Post report. “The level of lawlessness is staggering. Our democracy needs defending, now more than ever. I’m ready to impeach.”

Speaking to Politico, one anonymous Democratic lawmaker described the flood of support for impeachment in just a few hours as a “seismic change” inside the House caucus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has been under pressure for months to drop her opposition to impeachment, is apparently beginning to feel the heat.

Following its story on Trump’s order to withhold aid to Ukraine, the Post reported late Monday that Pelosi “has been gauging the mood of her caucus members about whether they believe that allegations that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate a political foe are a tipping point.”

“She was making calls as late as Monday night,” according to the Post, “and many leadership aides who once thought Trump’s impeachment was unlikely now say they think it’s almost inevitable.”

UPDATED: Pelosi is privately talking to members abt impeaching Trump, a swath of moderate House Dems are coming out in favor of his ouster, & leadership folks think we’ve hit the tipping point.

The watershed moment. w/@mikedebonishttps://t.co/xwbW4J7efV

— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) September 24, 2019

With Pelosi set to meet with lawmakers on Tuesday, progressive advocacy groups urged the public to keep up the pressure on their representatives and continue building momentum in favor of impeachment.

“It’s going to be busy a day tomorrow for Congress,” tweeted MoveOn. “Let’s keep their phones ringing tomorrow and make impeachment happen. Call your reps. (877) 650-0039.”

The Near Future Could Be Hotter Than Anyone Expected

We could in the near future be experiencing much more heat than we now expect. As carbon dioxide levels rise, global warming could accelerate, rather than merely keep pace with the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

This is a lesson to be drawn from new computer simulations of the conditions that must have precipitated a dramatic shift in global climate 56 million years ago, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose at least 1000 parts per million (ppm) and perhaps substantially higher.

For most of human history, carbon dioxide levels stood at around 285ppm. They have now passed 400ppm. By the century’s end, if humans go on burning ever greater quantities of fossil fuels to drive global heating, then these could reach 1000 ppm.

The last time that happened, during a period known as the Early Eocene 56 million years ago, the surface temperatures became up to 9°C hotter than today. The period has been repeatedly explored as a lesson for the pattern of events that might follow from global heating by profligate combustion of fossil fuels.

“The temperature response to an increase in carbon dioxide in the future might be larger than the response to the same increase in CO2 now. This is not good news for us.”

The polar ice melted. Antarctic ocean temperatures reached 20°C. Sea levels rose dramatically, oceans became increasingly acidic, mammals evolved to smaller dimensions and crocodiles haunted the Arctic.

It is a principle of geology that the present is a key to the past – and it follows that the past must contain lessons for the future. So climate scientists have always taken a close interest in the Early Eocene.

US scientists report in the journal Science Advances that, for the first time, they were able to simulate the extreme surface warmth of the Early Eocene in a computer model. After decades of geological investigation, there is not much argument about the real conditions 56 million years ago, and the immensely high levels of carbon dioxide. What is not clear is quite how the link between atmosphere and temperature in that vanished era must have played out.

Research of this kind is based on mathematical simulation, which is only a tentative guide to what might actually happen on a rapidly changing planet, but the scientists count their results a success. Previous attempts have simply been built around the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Temperatures too low

This study managed to incorporate models of water vapour, cloud formation, atmospheric aerosols and other factors that would have set up a system of feedbacks that might lead to the sweltering tropics and the very warm polar regions of the era.

“For decades, the models have underestimated these temperatures, and the community has long assumed that the problem was with the geological data, or that there was a warming mechanism that had not been recognized,” said Christopher Poulsen, of the University of Michigan.

His co-author Jessica Tierney of the University of Arizona said: “For the first time a climate model matches the geological evidence out of the box − that is, without deliberate tweaks made to the model. It’s a breakthrough in our understanding of past climates.”

Other scientists have already predicted that what happened in the Early Eocene could turn out to be a lesson for what is happening now. The finding may play into the larger puzzle of something called “climate sensitivity”: that is, how so much extra carbon dioxide might lead to so much average global temperature rise?

Risk of underestimation

Researchers have assumed that one would be in step with the other. But the latest finding also raises the possibility that warming might indeed accelerate as carbon dioxide concentrations rise. So far, the world has warmed by around 1°C in the last century, with the planet perhaps on track to pass 3°C by 2100.

But more recent studies have warned that this could be a serious underestimate. The lesson of the Early Eocene, a period of change that played out over hundreds of thousands of years, is that the questions of climate sensitivity have yet to be settled.

“We were surprised that the climate sensitivity increased as much as it did with increasing carbon dioxide levels,” said Jiang Zhu, of the University of Michigan, who led the study.

“It is a scary finding because it indicates that the temperature response to an increase in carbon dioxide in the future might be larger than the response to the same increase in CO2 now. This is not good news for us.”

Trump at U.N. Attacks Globalism While Putting Pressure on Iran

UNITED NATIONS — Facing growing calls for his impeachment, President Donald Trump addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday and delivered a roaring defense of nationalism and American sovereignty even as he tried to rally a multinational response to Iran’s escalating aggression.

The president implored the world’s leaders to prioritize their own nations, with strong borders and one-on-one trade deals, rejecting sweeping transnational organizations and alliances.

“The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to strong, independent nations,” Trump told a murmuring crowd at the General Assembly. “Globalism exerted a religious pull over past leaders causing them to ignore their own national interests. Those days are over.”

Focusing on the United States’ self-interest, Trump said that the nation’s security was jeopardized by the threat posed by Iran and warned Tehran to stop its aggression toward Washington’s allies in the Middle East.

“As long as Iran’s menacing behavior continues sanctions will not be lifted. They will be tightened,” Trump warned. “The United States does not seek conflict with any other nation. We desire peace, cooperation, and mutual gain with all. But I will never fail to defend America’s interests.”

As speculation mounted that Trump could meet in New York with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the president raised the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough, saying “the United States has never believed in permanent enemies. We want partners, not adversaries.”

But while Trump commanded the global stage, momentum was building in Washington among Democrats to impeach the president after it was revealed that he ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before a phone call in which he pressured the Eastern European nation’s leader to investigate the family of political rival Joe Biden.

While Trump wants allies to join the U.S. in further isolating Iran, he also seems to be holding to his go-it-alone strategy of using economic sanctions to pressure Tehran to give up its nuclear program and stop attacks that are rattling the Middle East.

In the speech’s first moments, Trump did not explicitly blame Iran for recent strikes against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Iran has denied orchestrating the attack, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has deemed “an act of war.”

Britain, France and Germany joined the United States on Monday in blaming Iran for the attacks. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, for his part, pointed to claims of responsibility by Yemeni rebels and insisted: “If Iran were behind this attack, nothing would have been left of this refinery.”

Trump also addressed the ongoing standoff in Venezuela, denouncing the oppressive regime and vowing that the United States would “never be a socialist nation.”

The United States and more than a dozen Latin American countries agreed Monday to investigate and arrest associates and senior officials of the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro who are suspected of crimes like drug trafficking, money laundering and financing terrorism.

Trump praised his diplomatic efforts with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even though the autocrat continues to hold a tight grip on his nuclear weapons. Trump has met Kim for summits in Singapore and Hanoi, Vietnam, and orchestrated a surprise encounter with him in June at the Demilitarized Zone, where he became the first U.S. president to ever set foot in North Korea.

Trump said Monday that another meeting with the North Korean leader “could happen soon.” He provided few details, and it wasn’t clear what officials were doing behind the scenes to set up a meeting to break the diplomatic impasse over the North’s development of nuclear-armed missiles targeting the U.S. mainland.

Trump’s comments, even with few specifics backing them up, are tantalizing because there is extreme interest, especially in Japan and South Korea, in whether Trump and Kim can strike a deal on one of the world’s most pressing standoffs.

This was Trump’s third speech to the world body.

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last year, Trump expressed disdain for globalism and promoted his “America First” agenda. Like last year, Trump is expected to showcase strong U.S. economic numbers and talk about how he’s strengthened America’s military.

In his 2018 speech to the assembly, his self-adulation prompted chuckles from world leaders. That barely ruffled Trump, who shares a belief with his supporters that the United States has been asked to do too much for other countries and needs to focus on issues it faces at home.