Chris Hedges's Blog, page 149
September 20, 2019
23 States Sue to Keep California’s Auto Emission Rules
SACRAMENTO, Calif.— California and 22 other states sued Friday to stop the Trump administration from revoking the authority of the nation’s most populous state to set emission standards for cars and trucks.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a day after it issued a regulation designed to pre-empt the state’s authority to set its own rules for how much pollution can come from cars and trucks.
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Becerra, a Democrat, said two other courts have already upheld California’s emission standards.
“The Oval Office is really not a place for on-the-job training. President Trump should have at least read the instruction manual he inherited when he assumed the presidency, in particular the chapter on respecting the rule of law,” Becerra said in a statement.
Federal law sets standards for how much pollution can come from cars and trucks. But since the 1970s, the federal government has given California permission to set its own rules because it has the most cars on the road of any state and struggles to meet air quality standards.
The Trump administration’s decision does not just affect California. Thirteen other states, plus the District of Columbia, have adopted California’s emission rules for cars and trucks.
Joining California in the lawsuit are attorneys general from Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
The cities of New York and Los Angeles also joined the lawsuit.
The lawsuit marks the latest battle between the federal government and California, whose Democratic leaders have prided themselves on heading a resistance to President Donald Trump and his policies, particularly those related to the environment.
“We will not let political agendas in a single state be forced upon the other 49,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said Thursday at a news conference in Washington.
The Trump administration has been working on setting new auto emission rules. But in July, Ford, BMW, Honda and Volkswagen announced they would voluntarily follow California’s rules, bypassing the Trump administration.
The Department of Justice then launched an antitrust investigation.
U.S., El Salvador Set to Sign Asylum Deal
NEW YORK—The United States planned to sign an agreement on Friday to help make one of Central America’s most violent countries, El Salvador, a haven for migrants seeking asylum, according to a senior Trump administration official.
The official said acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan would sign a “cooperative asylum agreement.”
The agreement could lead to migrants from third countries obtaining refuge in El Salvador even though many Salvadorans are fleeing their nation and seeking asylum in the United States. A Salvadoran delegation has been in the U.S. this week discussing the matter.
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It’s the latest effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to force asylum-seekers in Central America to seek refuge outside the United States. Immigration officials also are forcing more than 42,000 people to remain in Mexico as their cases play out and have changed policy to deny asylum to anyone who transited through a third country en route to the southern border of the U.S.
The senior administration official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The agreement would be another step by the Trump administration aimed at stopping the flow of migrants coming into the United States. McAleenan also signed a so-called “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala, but officials in that country are still working out how it would be implemented.
The arrangement with El Salvador was not described as a “safe third country” agreement, under which nations agree that their respective countries are safe enough and have robust enough asylum systems, so that if migrants transit through one of the countries they must remain there instead of moving on to another country.
The U.S. officially has only one such agreement in place, with Canada, but has been working toward others in Honduras and agreed to the one in Guatemala that has not yet been implemented.
The Trump administration this year threatened to withhold all federal assistance to three Central American countries unless they did more to end the migrant crisis. The move was met by stiff resistance in Congress as experts had said that the cuts would likely only exacerbate the number of migrants seeking to make the hazardous journey to the U.S. because of a further lack of resources.
In June, the State Department announced that the Trump administration was reversing some of the cuts but would not approve future aid to those nations. The State Department said then that some $370 million from the 2018 budget will not be spent and instead will be moved to other projects.
The gang-plagued El Salvador is among the world’s deadliest countries, with one of the highest homicide rates on the globe.
According to a 2018 State Department report, human rights issues included allegations of “unlawful killings of suspected gang members and others by security forces; forced disappearances by military personnel; torture by security forces; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of government respect for judicial independence.”
Many people who flee from El Salvador have said they and their families were threatened by gang members. Teenagers often are pressured to join gangs and have had their lives and their families threatened if they refuse. Some young women are forced to become the girlfriends of gang members, facing rape or murder if they refuse.
The two main street gangs in El Salvador are MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, both of which trace their origins to Los Angeles, where many Salvadorans sought refuge during their country’s civil war. Gang members arrested for crimes in the U.S. were deported back to El Salvador, taking their knowledge of gang culture with them. Trump frequently seizes on MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, as a reason to tighten U.S. immigration policy.
___
Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo and Zeke Miller contributed to this report from Washington.
America Keeps Getting China All Wrong
For decades, China has been an enigmatic foe and friend to the United States. From trade to immigration, the two international giants have been linked in inextricable ways in recent years. With Donald Trump’s current trade war with China and the Hong Kong protests hitting headlines, Americans are once again thinking about the Chinese in a more nuanced way. Yet there is still a lot of misinformation about the Asian nation circulating at all levels of American society, including within the Trump administration.
In the most recent installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Clayton Dube, director of the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute, speaks with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer about some of the reasons the U.S. keeps getting China wrong and the implications this has had for both countries.
“We got a lot wrong, especially in terms of kind of mass media,” Dube tells Scheer. “China is a large, complex, diverse country. And our understanding of it necessarily needs to be much more nuanced.”
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According to Scheer, part of the historical context that the West continually overlooks in its analysis of U.S.-China relations is the Western imperialism that has oppressed China ever since the 19th-century Opium Wars, through to the U.S. invasions of Korea and Vietnam. In terms of trade, an environmental price has been paid on both ends.
“The air in Los Angeles is influenced by the air coming out of northern China,” Dube explains by way of an example. “But of course, that bad air in China is produced by factories often producing for the American market. And so we have not only outsourced production, we’ve outsourced pollution.”
China, however, is now addressing the deadly pollution that has been exported there with heavy investment in renewable energy and increasingly efficient machinery.
As for the U.S. trade war with China and the recent protests in Hong Kong, a special administrative region belonging to China, Scheer notes that the reporting by U.S. media has once again lacked nuance, leading to further confusion about what is going on in China. In Scheer’s view, Trump’s tariffs can be seen as an effort to keep China a low-paid factory floor.
“I find a lot of mixed feelings about what’s happening in Hong Kong, which some of [my USC students from China] see as a privileged place with its own history,” he tells Dube. “And also about the tariff war with the United States, which they tend to think is quite punitive and one-sided. [In regard to the protests] I just wonder—recalling how Hong Kong was this outpost of English imperialism, and its special relation to China—are we not actually sticking our finger in their eye now, in a way?”
“What we have to first of all understand is: Beijing makes claims that the problems in Hong Kong have external origins and that the United States and United Kingdom are stirring that up as a way of weakening China, as a wedge into holding China back,” Dube responds. “And there’s no evidence of that. What’s driving the protests in Hong Kong are Hong Kong-specific issues, and Hong Kong-specific history.”
Listen to the full discussion between Dube and Scheer as they delve into the complicated and at times bloody history between China and the U.S. and try to come to an understanding about where this relationship is heading. 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 Clayton Dube, who is the director here at USC of the U.S.-China Institute, and who has been involved with China ever since he went there in ‘82. And learned the language, became a leading expert on it. And what’s so interesting about the location of your institute here at USC is I think we have here 7,000 Chinese students–from China, not–
Clayton Dube: Not quite 7,000, but last year 5,600. So a significant percentage.
RS: And I think it’s the largest–
CD: We’re in the top five. Yeah, we–some of the engineering schools in the Midwest top us.
RS: OK. So at any rate, one of the things that’s interesting about teaching at USC in the middle of all these demonstrations in Hong Kong, and now the tariff war that President Trump has going with China–I find–and it would be simplistic to say, oh, they’re just saying that because they come from an unfree country, and have to watch what they say. But I find that our students from China, just as our students from India or anywhere else, are quite independent. And some have been here a long time or what have you, but I don’t find them an intimidated population at all. And yet I find a lot of mixed feelings about what’s happening in Hong Kong, which some of them at least see as a privileged place with its own history. And also about the tariff war with the United States, which they tend to think is quite punitive and one-sided. So what I really wanted to get you in to talk about is something that I’ve had you talk [about] in my classes and so forth, is comprehending China. And just to put my own oar in the water here, I was in the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963, I believe–a long, long time ago. And trying to learn the language, and then I went to China during the Cultural Revolution; I have some familiarity with the history. And I am amazed at how often and consistently we get China wrong. And I just think back at that time, China had–this was ‘63, ‘64–about, what, 400 million to 500 million people. Is that correct?
CD: Ah, probably closer to 650. 650 million by the early 1960s. At the time that the communists came to power in ‘49, they did a survey, and the population was about 583 million.
RS: OK. 583 million. Now you have 1.3 billion people in China. And I remember at the time when I was a student, the conventional wisdom was that China had too big a population to be able to develop. They were resource-poor, the land was exhausted, they had no other source of fuel than coal, and that would clog the cities and so forth–which has turned out to be true, as far as coal. And just generally a very pessimistic view. It was Ehrlich who wrote The Population Bomb; I think he was down by Stanford or around there, Paul Ehrlich. And he talked about the world’s overpopulation, and it’s still a big problem. But the fact is China has probably, what, 800 million more people than it did then, and there’s no question that it’s a far more prosperous country. And they have found the wherewithal. And the other myth about China at that time was because it had had this Communist Revolution, which was assumed to be very radical, more so than the Soviet revolution–and that they would never change, and you had to be in constant war with them. After all, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were fought primarily against China, and these were just supposed to be the surrogates nearby. And yet China has gone through the most remarkable change. Still run by a Communist Party, you know; so you could say, well, they’re driven by their texts–but clearly they’re not. And they’ve been very pragmatic capitalists, and very successful, and hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. So kind of–you’ve been familiar with this, not quite as long as I have, but you’ve been more on the scene, living years and years in China. So just kind of give me your bird’s-eye view of the development of China in the post-revolutionary period.
CD: Well, there’s a lot to say. China–in fact, this year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. And people in the West, especially, tend to divide China into two big periods: first the Maoist period, and that’s 1949 until Mao dies in 1976. And this includes a lot of political upheaval, considerable movements, things like that, where you do have some economic changes that would set the stage for the dramatic rise that we’ve had since Mao’s death, but the big changes came after his death, and especially since 1978 and 1979, when the Communist Party embarked on significant reforms. And so this year, in fact, we’re marking three big anniversaries, this year and last. So in 1978 and 1979, you had first–and probably most important–the economic reforms. And this was not a big bang; they didn’t have it all figured out. They made some small steps, and over time advanced in terms of opening their economy and permitting greater flexibility for people to choose their own economic paths. And so that’s 1978. Also in 1978, you have the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States. And that’s, of course, important for the flow of capital, expertise, and the opening of the American market. So that’s–
RS: OK, let me put a little pizazz in this. Because really the critical figure was Richard Nixon, a man not held in high regard because of Watergate. He did some terrible things–the bombing of Cambodia and the expansion of the war in Vietnam, and so forth. I’m not forgiving his war crimes. But it’s one of those great contradictions of American foreign policy, of which we have many. At the same time we’re fighting in Vietnam, and we’re killing millions of people–a conservative estimate, I think, would be about 3 million were killed, and 59,000 Americans; we played havoc, we carpet-bombed the country–no one could ever claim that Vietnam represented a military threat to the United States. The whole claim was they were surrogates, somehow, of China. And then in the middle of this war, of Nixon’s war, he goes to China and makes peace with what was supposed to be the bloodiest communist leader of them all, Mao Zedong; he has drinks with him, and so forth. Still continues this war against the surrogate, supposedly, of China, in Vietnam–a totally irrational exercise. And we go through years of debate about “We can’t just get out of Vietnam, and if we get out of Vietnam they’ll fight us in San Diego, and we’ll have havoc and so forth.” We lose in Vietnam– “we” being the United States government, loses in Vietnam in the most ignominious defeat in American history, people lifted off the roof near the embassy and what have you. And what happens? The Vietnamese don’t turn on the United States, they turn on China. Communist China and communist Vietnam go to war after the defeat of the U.S., and have this big fight about their borders. And they’re still arguing about islands and so forth, two communist governments.
So there was nothing monolithic about communism; there was nothing really that they had much in common. They certainly were not an international movement to do us in. And both of them, still communist governments, have embraced a free-market model that is quite open and effective. And in fact, a big threat now is people are saying, well, if we can’t do business in China because they won’t accept our reasonable trade agreements, we’ll just swing it over to Vietnam and some other countries like that. But mostly Vietnam comes up in the discussion. And there is in fact a battle, not between Vietnam and the U.S. or China and the U.S., really, but between China and Vietnam, about who’s going to put more stuff into Costco or Walmart. So I want to ask you as an expert, and somebody who teaches this stuff and knows about it, how did we get China so wrong? I mean, again, going back to when I was in the Center for Chinese Studies, not only did they think physically China could not develop, but they thought that their ideology would prevent that from happening. And yet we look back on something–I happened to be there at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution in China. And you know, it was pretty clear to me that part of the Cultural Revolution created the basis for what came after, because it challenged the authority of the party, and so forth. So you might reflect on that–where is expertise on China? How did we get it wrong so long? And are we getting it wrong now?
CD: Oh, there’s so many questions there. To focus on the one that you conclude with–are we getting China wrong–I think that we definitely need greater expertise on China. And China’s not unique in, you know, America getting it wrong. I mean, we’ve gotten a lot wrong. But China is a large, complex, diverse country. And our understanding of it necessarily needs to be much more nuanced. And so to go back to something that you just brought up, and that’s Richard Nixon–Nixon, even before he became president, wrote this well-known article in Foreign Affairs where he said: we need to find a way to bring China in. China is too big to be outside, left to its own devices, scheming on its own. We need to engage China. Now, Richard Nixon had no illusions about changing China; that wasn’t his objective. And so some people today think that Nixon and everybody since then got China wrong, that they wanted to create a liberal, democratic China. But I assure you, Nixon had no expectation that that was going to be the result of his outreached hand.
RS: Let me tell you what Nixon expected. And [Laughs] it may shock you to know this, but I actually went and visited with Richard Nixon in 1984. He’d written a number of books after he was forced out of office, about détente, about peacemaking and so forth. And he traced his–he did it in his books, but also in the interview I had with him–and the reason he invited me to come talk to him is I’d written a kind of a revisionist article that Nixon did get something right. And mostly it was Eisenhower’s influence, and Eisenhower understood that the main construction of the Cold War was irrational. There was not an international communist movement; communism was a nationalist phenomenon. And so the Russians adopted it to their purpose, including a Georgian like Stalin, who suddenly decided he was all Russian. And they adopted it, the Chinese adopted it to their purpose; so did the Vietnamese. And there was never this bogeyman of the international communist movement with a timetable to take over the world. That was fraudulent. And the people in our government who were in the CIA, they knew it–they just didn’t talk about it very much. So there was this mythology.
And what Nixon argued in that–I’m really happy that you mentioned that article, because a lot of people credited Kissinger with the breakthrough with China. But you’re absolutely right, Nixon–and he told me that he hadn’t even met Kissinger when he wrote that article. But he was responding to–within the Council on Foreign Relations, they had a whole series of books about thinking about China. And it all had to do with getting China wrong. That in fact, it’s a nationalist movement, and it is capable of change and so forth. Right? And yet, again, I bring up–we’re still bombing, killing people in Vietnam because we say they’re communists and therefore the enemy. And the irony of Richard Nixon, who had made a career on his anti-communism and red-baiting and everything, being the person–no democrat would have dared to go over there and drink with Mao. And to remind people, you know, who grew up with this other view of China as kind of a producer of all these products and everything, we had a view of them as the little red ants and all that, and they were incapable of thought, and they were inherently violent. It’s all wrong, right?
CD: We got a lot wrong. And especially in terms of kind of mass media, this sort of thing. Conveying these complicated truths, that the world is much more nuanced. That Vietnamese communists have no great love for Chinese communists, and Chinese communist have no great love for Soviet communists. That sort of thing, that sort of nuance, was something that started to penetrate government in the late 1950s, but becomes more commonplace. And so you have some people who begin to see both the Chinese revolution, which had long since taken place, and the Vietnamese revolution, as being bottom-up. As being driven by domestic, by internal contradictions, internal tensions. And so those people were in a position to argue: look, we need to understand these as separate entities, as having distinct histories, distinct priorities. And while there might be something called the common turn, it doesn’t dominate what’s going on.
RS: Oh, it had no power whatsoever. You know what I think is interesting, that–because we have it now with Donald Trump. We always have a view of American innocence, Western innocence, and so forth, OK. Generally, you know, we make mistakes, but we’re not evil. So, killed a lot of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but you know, there were policy considerations. We actually tried to save lives, and yes, mostly children and innocent people got killed. We feel that way about everything. But the irony here is that it’s really a quite destructive view. And at the core of it is we deny everyone else’s history, OK. And that includes their own nationalist feelings. And I was reminded of that. I just went and didn’t do heavy research, I just looked up Wikipedia on the Opium Wars today, because I was going to–I’m writing something on the side, and I was going to come talk to you. And it seemed to me, this current issue with the tariffs and Trump is an echo of the Opium War. Only the Opium War, to remind people, started in the early 19th century, goes up to about, what–
CD: The Opium War is really central, certainly to understanding what’s going on in Hong Kong, but also to understanding China, and how China–how the Chinese government represents itself to its people, but also the image that it wants to project beyond the borders of China. It starts in 1839, it concludes in 1842. If you are Chinese, and you study history in school, modern Chinese history begins in 1839. That’s the intrusion of the West. And that period of Chinese history, according to the leaders in Beijing, comes to a conclusion only in 1949, when they take power. So you have 110 years of feudalism and imperialism, oppressing the Chinese people. And so in 1949, when Mao and the others come to power, they say: That’s over. And that’s going to be celebrated in just a couple of weeks, on October 1. Because they’re going to say, hey, for 70 years, no one has pushed us around.
RS: Well, it’s more than being pushed around. I mean everybody forgets, again, how evil we can be. “We” being England, you know, as well as the United States; it’s primarily England in this. But the reality is, we were drug pushers. Everybody forgets that. This is–you know, right? We were basically, wanted their silver and silk and things that they had, and we undermined their will to resist, and we tried to corrupt a population very deliberately, and our Western missionaries justified that as saving souls. And so you couldn’t have a more grotesque image–I don’t think you have to exaggerate it. I mean, here the Westerners came in with this drug to destroy the very fabric of the society, right. And they fought a war and were willing to kill people for their right to do that kind of commerce. What they really were doing was stealing.
And I want to bring it up to Trump’s tariff wars and everything now, because I think it’s a parallel. And basically what has happened is a deal was made with the Chinese communists that we can do business, we can live in the same world. And we, the United States, supplied ideas, investment capital, terms of trade, and so forth. And the Communist Party delivered a docile labor force. And that’s ironic, because they were supposed to be the party of the workers and peasants. But the fact is, China became a factory floor for the world because the communist government was able, basically, to prevent unions from being disruptive. And to keep, and to handle the enclosure movement as in England, in a more peaceful way of getting people from the countryside, and particularly women, to work in Apple plants and so forth. And then when some of them jumped out and committed suicide, that was papered over; you know, there wasn’t investigative journalism and all that. And so a pact was made that China became the basis of easily exploited labor that turned out to be quite skilled, in a lower level of skill.
It seems to me the big tension now is that the Chinese feel–well, we got a lot of people here. We have pent-up demand. They want to consume on a higher level and not work quite in the low level. And people got a lot invested in education, instead of they’re going over to Silicon Valley to work. People from India do, and China do. No–we’re going to get to the next stage, and we’re going to do 5G communication. And we’re going to do, you know, figure out driverless cars, and we’re going to have cities that are wired and all that. And ironically, again, they seem to be better at some aspects of it. Four of the top 10 internet companies or communication companies in the world are Chinese-owned. And in particular–and I’m going to mispronounced Huawei, maybe you could help me there–but this company that we’ve decided to demonize is really doing what major capitalist companies, particularly in the telecommunication industry, have done: try to carve out areas of some kind of cartel or monopoly power, try to get every bit of information by hiring people or what have you, to advance. And they are threatening now to some companies here because they are good at it. Right?
CD: Well there’s, again, in your narrative, you’ve highlighted a couple of vital points. And the first one that I would point to is what happens after Nixon. And more important, after the establishment of diplomatic relations, which really facilitates investment and trade and things like that in 1979. And so you have the opening of the American market to Chinese products, and the opening of the Chinese labor force to American companies, as well as Japanese and everybody else. And so because there was so much cheap labor–because there wasn’t competition for this labor. There wasn’t competition in the sense that you had a whole lot of places where you could go and get a better job. And so you accepted relatively low wages, you know, at the town nearby, and you stuck with that. But China today is being pushed–the Chinese government today is being pushed, first, as you highlighted, by its own people. That these people want to live, and expect to live better lives. They’re quite conscious that just because you produce products that are exported to the West, doesn’t mean you can afford to buy them. So they want that, but also the government itself recognizes that it has a problem.
And the problem is that China has actually topped out in terms of its population. It’s topped out in terms of its population, its labor force. And so what it needs now is to make people more productive. And that’s going to take innovation. And as you have already highlighted, some of the most innovative companies in China are in the internet sector. And this includes Huawei. And Huawei–someone once asked me, is Huawei the Apple of China? And I said, no, no, it’s much bigger than that. It’s not bigger in terms of market capitalization, but it’s much bigger in terms of its importance in the global internet economy, but also within China. It is the number one handset manufacturer, so in that way it’s a rival of Samsung and Apple and others. But it’s also the number one network provider. It’s the company that makes it all work. It produces the switches and the systems that make the internet function, including this next generation, this 5G communication that we hear so much about, where they’re a leading player. There’s no one–
RS: Well, the Wall Street Journal in one recent article said they are not a leading, they are the leading player. And I don’t know how you run that down completely, but they’re certainly right up there. And the fact is they are contributing in European [infrastructure], everywhere–not just in China, although the Chinese market is very big. It’s ironic that they are now challenged by Donald Trump as–not just that they steal things, which I would assume Donald Trump when he builds hotels steals a lot of ideas and technology; that’s what’s called capitalism. But the fact is, he says the Chinese government will have access to their information. Here, the U.S. government has set a model for the world, right? We have been the pioneers of using ostensibly private companies, right, like Apple and Google and so forth, to collect information, then grabbing that information whether they like it or not, hacking into their fiber-optic cables, and getting conversations of the German chancellor or the Brazilian leader or what have you. So we have set this model. And now we dare say–I mean, I’m still amazed at the arrogance of our culture. We dare, after the Snowden revelation and everything, say this Chinese company is suspect and should not be trusted, because their government might do what our government does.
CD: Well, and in fact in 2013, when Edward Snowden went first to Hong Kong and then subsequently to Russia, that was–that point was very clearly made. And the Chinese were aware of, you know, the power of American intelligence agencies being able to penetrate defenses, and this sort of thing. And Snowden just made this clear. And in fact, one of the things that came out is that the United States had been working to do to Huawei what we accuse Huawei of doing. So we were looking to place our own software within Huawei’s systems, that would allow us to monitor Huawei in the way that they are now being accused by some in the U.S. government of doing to everyone.
RS: Right. But what it is is a denial of the value of multinational corporations. It’s a denial of the strength of international capital flows and capitalism, because of what–and we are the ones that betrayed it more visibly than anyone. But if what you’re saying is that Apple has products that can be subverted by the U.S. government routinely, then why should anybody in China buy an Apple product? And yes, you know, and the fact is, most of these products which we say you should trust are manufactured in China. But we draw the line at a company that happens to be Chinese-owned, you know. And I just think we’re at, again, another one of these irrational moments in thinking about China. Because one could say–one could say from a humanitarian point of view, it’s a wonderful gift to humanity to have so many people in China who you had given up as they should, oh, it will always be poor, they’ll always be subject to the most wretched conditions. No–they’re finding more meaningful work. And in fact, you know, this communications–there was one story I read in the Wall Street Journal, they actually extended 5G on an experimental basis to a truly rural, ethnically based community. And here are these people who didn’t even have glass windows in their houses, nonetheless were watching the latest opera and ballet and sports spectacle and so forth on a rapid, you know, transmission of information. So you would think on a humanitarian basis, we should be thrilled that not just China but India or any other country is developing. And instead, we’re back in that narrow-minded view of the nation state, that their progress is to our detriment.
CD: I think zero-sum thinking is the great challenge of our day. And unfortunately, I see zero-sum thinking in many capitals, not just the United States. And so with regard to, you know, we should be happy that our fellow human beings are living better lives–absolutely, that’s true. But in fact, American business has found great pluses in Chinese consumption. And so many American companies produce in China–not just for the American market. They do that, but they’re mainly there because there are hundreds of millions of potential consumers in China. And so we see that from fast food, where Yum Brands has KFCs that earn–that have four times on average the revenue per store in China that they do in the United States, to giants like Procter & Gamble, which have half of the shampoo market in China. So American companies are in China primarily, now, to serve Chinese customers. And of course, in serving Chinese customers, that’s good for their bottom line. And so if you happen to be a shareholder of those companies, you benefit, too. And so in fact, the rise of living standards in China has been a boon not just for the Chinese, but for Americans and people all over the world. And we see that, certainly, in terms of the consumption of American-produced products that are sold in China and sold here to Chinese. And so we see it–for example, California is routinely the number one exporter of goods and services to China. And so we see that in terms of a company like Tesla: its number two market is in China. We see all sorts of things like this. And so improving conditions in China has been good for American business as well. And so thinking zero sum, that if China exports more to the United States than the United States exports to China, is–every economist will tell you, it’s not economically significant. But also, any political economist would see that there are big advantages in having these cross-border flows. And that we have profited. And certainly you began by mentioning how many students we have here from China in the United States. The opening of our two countries–
RS: Well, we have generally in the United States, but here at USC, yes, it’s one of the ways this university has become one of the more important universities in the country, because we are able to attract these students. You said 5,600, what is that–that’s probably one-sixth of our student population.
CD: Yeah, one-sixth, one-seventh. It’s a huge share. And at USC, the mantra is we want the best students wherever we can find them. And so it’s a good thing that we can have access to students from China. And that has improved the situation here, because it’s one way to globalize a campus. There are a lot of good ways to do this; sending more American students to China is something I’ve long advocated. We are lagging terribly in this regard. But by bringing students here, and having them meet with Americans from all 50 states–that’s a good thing, not just for the Chinese students, but for the American students. They have a chance to break down some of these barriers, and to begin to understand Chinese as human beings with wants, needs, desires, aspirations, fears, just like everybody else. They may not be identical in those spheres and identical in those aspirations, but they’re just people.
RS: Well, and you know, you point out a couple of areas where we are interconnected. I mean, for example, Tesla selling cars in China. One reason they’re able to is because China understands that they have to have electric cars, and other cars that are not as dependent upon, you know, fossil fuels. Because they can’t breathe. And yes, and so–and we also know that the air quality in China has a lot to do with the air quality in Los Angeles. So it is the same. I think what is happening–and then, you know, we’re going to run out of some time here. But I think it’s a really important subject, is that the best side of capitalism–capitalism has an ugly side, which is grabbing resources, exploiting labor all over the world, divide and conquer, cause wars and everything. I’m not going to whitewash that. But on the other hand, at its best, when you increase and satisfy the aspirations of people–you know, Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto, capitalism ended the idiocy of rural life, and build the big cities, and so forth. And that adds to the well-being of everyone in the world, right? I mean, if the Chinese can get the electric car, right–which they are, by far, the biggest electric car market–then that’s a benefit to us. That’s the only reason we have the Chevy Bolt here, which I happen to drive, an electric car, because it was made for the Chinese market.
So I want to ask you, as we conclude this, to what degree is Hong Kong–which we haven’t talked much about, haven’t talked about it at all. To what degree is the turmoil, the protest–as somebody who’s participated in protests in the United States for much of my life, I identify with the students and not with the police, who are coming at them with batons. But on the other hand, I know that in this country, if we ever went to an airport, or if you blocked a major–it’d be quite brutal in repression. So there’s a lot of, you know, people saying, oh, look how terrible Hong Kong is–and as I say, I applaud the students, young people who are objecting to, you know, authoritarian power and demanding more freedom. But it’s a double standard, I think, because first of all, we don’t address that in Saudi Arabia or any other place. And I just wonder, to what degree–recalling how Hong Kong was this outpost of English imperialism, and its special relation to China. Are we not actually sticking our finger in their eye now, in a way? These–you know, right now in the Congress there’s a bill that will penalize, you know, China, Hong Kong and so forth. I mean, have we no shame given the–what we’ve just been talking about, going back to the whole history of China, and the unnecessary wars and deprivation. How do you assess Hong Kong? I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but go for it.
CD: Well, first, when you ask “have we no shame”–and the answer is obviously no. Your expectations of politicians may be misplaced if you expect them to be driven by that. But I think that what we have to first of all understand is, you know, Beijing makes claims that the problems in Hong Kong have external origins that the United States and United Kingdom are stirring that up as a way of weakening China, as a wedge into holding China back. And there’s no evidence of that. What’s driving the protests in Hong Kong are Hong Kong-specific issues, and Hong Kong-specific history. And again, that’s where a little bit of nuance, a little bit of knowledge, is really helpful. It’s important to keep in mind that many of those who are in the streets were not even alive when Hong Kong returned to Chinese control in 1997. And so what they are being–what is driving them is not some romantic idea of what British colonialism was like. Rather, it is a feeling that they’re being denied. That promises were made: universal suffrage, direct election for the chief executive; that Hong Kong’s government should represent Hong Kong, should serve the interests of Hong Kong. They’re anxious to preserve the civil liberties that they enjoy. They don’t enjoy–they do enjoy free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, all of these things, and they’re exercising these rights today. But they don’t have the ability to choose their government directly. And that’s what they’re now calling on. And that’s where the tensions are.
Underneath that are two other big issues. One is that increasing familiarity with the mainland has not brought love. In fact, increasing familiarity with the mainland in Hong Kong has resulted in young people in Hong Kong increasingly seeing themselves as distinct. And so they are identifying themselves as Hong Kongers, as opposed to first and foremost Chinese. And if you’re part of the 1.3 billion people in China, that’s seen as an offensive, an offensive take: you don’t want to associate yourself with us. And so there’s this kind of built-in identity resentment that is present. On top of that, you have economic tensions. And so housing in Los Angeles is incredibly expensive. And so by some estimates, the median house, single-family home requires something like nine times the median household income to buy it. I’m not sure that I believe that statistic, but in any case that is the one that’s given. In Hong Kong, it’s more than twice that. And so many people see shrinking economic opportunities as well.
So there’s a lot of anxiety. And as a consequence, when the Hong Kong government seems to be doing primarily Beijing’s bidding, and not the bidding of the local populace, there’s resentment. And that’s what brought people into the streets. Now, once they came into the streets, and they encountered the police, and there was violence, and violence was returned, and these sorts of things–now you have additional demands. For an independent inquiry, for relabeling these protests as protests, not as the government–and especially the government in Beijing does, calling it riot, calling them riots. These kinds of designations have power for the people in Hong Kong. This is a very difficult, difficult moment.
RS: But this is true everywhere. I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan called people at UC Berkeley rioters, and a couple of–one was killed, James Rector, and others were shot and so forth. And he justified that. And, you know, I–some of these scenes, like if people seized an airport in the United States–I mean, it would be martial law, or there would certainly be very strong response. But I’m not defending that. What I’m just wondering–there’s a lot to criticize in every society, and no question, you could criticize a lot in China. But it’s interesting how Tibet, or the treatment of Muslims in one area, and now Hong Kong–which also has been the recipient of a lot of development, and no question what would happen to the economy of Hong Kong if it’s cut off from China and so forth. You know, in some ways, it’s a gateway–not in some ways, basically it’s a gateway to the society. But it’s–that, I think that’s fine; we should call attention to any grievance that anybody has.
But I want to get back to the thing we began with, this 1.3 billion people who live in China, the real China, OK. And there are issues there that never get raised. So let’s take a little few minutes. For instance, with all the talk about trade and everything, we never talk about their right to be in a union as a human right. Their right to protest their economic, or what are the safe working conditions related to the production of products for the American market. There, we could have a lot of agency–“we” being American consumers, the American media. You know, OK, Apple came out with its new phones, it came out with new things, we’re all dazzled by them. Well, we have very little reporting, or I think concern–how do the people live who manufacture these products? What are their rights, OK? And you know, so it seems to me once again, the human rights standard is used in a very artificial way to support one narrative or another. But the real question is–and it oddly enough came up in the renegotiation of NAFTA. I don’t know whether Trump was even aware of it, President Trump, but the fact is for the first time, there’s an insistence on a minimum wage. That if you’re working on cars that are coming into the U.S. market, you have to make 16 bucks an hour, at least for 40% of the car. And also local courts have control over that, and so forth. These are two major–they’re not even mentioned in the trade discussions with China.
CD: They should be. And in fact, one of the important issues is the rights of labor. And in fact, there has been attention to this, but it’s been episodic and not sustained. And so when some workers at Foxconn commit suicide, we pay attention to that, we link that to the production of Apple products and everything else. And so we need to have a much more sustained look at China. And when we look at labor conditions, we have to be mindful of the limited rights of workers. And you have those limited rights primarily because the Communist Party insists on controlling every organization. And for the most part, it’s mostly concerned with increasing economic output, and it’s not primarily focused on improving labor conditions. But we do see worker protests, we do see worker actions for better labor conditions to ensure that the wages promised are paid, that sort of thing. And workers are very much focused on wanting to have legal protections in this regard. And so supporting that, and paying attention to that, is something that’s really important. We need also, of course, to be aware that there are factories in places using workers who are being coerced into it, and are not paid standard wages. We have to have an expectation as consumers to use the power of our consumption, to insist that Walmart make sure that its suppliers produce these goods in factories that are safe, factories that treat workers decently, that sort of thing. And there has been actually some back-and-forth with the American labor movement. SEIU actually sent representatives to participate in organizing Walmarts in China–in China–
RS: That’s the service employees union.
CD: Right, the–
RS: One of the more progressive unions. Well, this is encouraging. And maybe also because when you can breathe in Beijing, you care more about the environment, and hopefully there’ll be a more robust environmental movement in China. Yes.
CD: I just wanted to say one thing the air–OK, well, let me have just a couple of sentences here. And the first would be you’re absolutely right, that the air in Los Angeles is influenced by the air coming out of northern China. There are estimates that 25% of the particulate matter in the air in California has its origins in China. But of course, that bad air in China is produced by factories often producing for the American market. And so we have not only outsourced production, we’ve outsourced pollution. And this is important to keep in mind. Chinese are hyper-conscious of this. If today is an average day, more than 4,000 Chinese will die prematurely due to air pollution. So that’s why the government is responding. And that’s why the government’s making this big push into renewable energy technology, solar wind in the common. And that’s why they want to increase the efficiency of the machines that they use, so that they draw less power and pollute less. And that’s why they’ve made this big bet, this big investment in electric vehicles and that sort of thing. And that is absolutely, absolutely vital. But with regard to the United States, and you know, connections here, we have a tremendous opportunity going forward. And it’s important that we seize it. Working together, the United States and China–and we don’t want to be Pollyannaish about this–we have accomplished important things. And we have addressed the real needs of people on both sides of the Pacific. We have the capacity to work together for good, and we have the capacity–by talking past each other and not engaging each other–to miss tremendous opportunities. And that’s what I’m worried about today.
RS: Yeah, and we should keep in mind, the reason I began with the Opium War, we’re not the only people who have a sense of our own history and what we’ve suffered, you know. And we’re recording this on the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the radio I was listening to talked about it being, you know, this horrible tragedy. Well, the Chinese have their tragedies, and war is inflicted upon them in terrible ways. And you know, don’t forget, this trade issue was absolutely critical to a great human rights sacrifice in China, and the immobilizing of a whole population throughout much of its modern history. That is the note, important–I don’t know if it’s depressing or exhilarating. People do resist.
But I’ve been talking to Clayton Dube, who is the, here at USC, the head of the U.S.-China Institute. I know, I’ve heard him speak a number of times, and he’s a really interesting and honest observer. And I think we have a very exciting program here. Want to thank the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and particularly Sebastian Grubaugh, who is the engineer who brings these shows to us. Our producer is Josh Scheer. And we have a historian, Jim Mamer, who was once the social studies high school teacher of the year for the United States, who’s taking these broadcasts–we now have a podcast, we now have 170 or something of them–and putting them into a textbook. So hopefully, someone who doesn’t have access to Clayton Dube will be able to pull this up the next time China is big in the news, or these trade issues, or what happened with Hong Kong, and use this as a resource. So want to thank you for giving us your time, and hopefully this will help with education. See you next week with another edition of Scheer Intelligence.
The Fed Comes to Its Senses, Lowers Interest Rate
What follows is a conversation between Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research Mark Weisbrot and Greg Wilpert of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.
GREG WILPERT: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Greg Wilpert in Baltimore.
The US Federal Reserve lowered its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday to 2%. This is a second rate cut since last July. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made an announcement saying the following.
JEROME POWELL: Weakness in global growth and trade policy uncertainty have weighed on the economy and pose ongoing risks. These factors, in conjunction with muted inflation pressures, have led us to shift our views about appropriate monetary policy over time toward a lower path for the federal funds rate. And this shift has supported the outlook. Of course, this is the role of monetary policy, to adjust interest rates to maintain a strong labor market and keep inflation near our 2% objective.
GREG WILPERT: While the economy seems to be doing reasonably well, and it is expected to grow by 2.2% for this year, Powell also highlighted some of the problems that lie ahead.
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JEROME POWELL: Business investment and exports have weakened amid falling manufacturing output. The main reasons appear to be slower growth abroad and trade policy developments, two sources of uncertainty that we’ve been monitoring all year. Since the middle of last year, the global growth outlook has weakened, notably in Europe and China. Additionally, a number of geopolitical risks including Brexit remain unresolved. Trade policy tensions have waxed and waned, and elevated uncertainty is weighing on US investment and exports. Our business contacts around the country have been telling us that uncertainty about trade policy has discouraged them from investing in their businesses.
GREG WILPERT: The quarter percent reduction in the interest rate is supposed to counter economic problems on the horizon. However, President Trump clearly felt the Fed’s move was far from what is needed. Trump tweeted in reaction to the announcement, “Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve fail again. No guts, no sense, no vision, a terrible communicator.”
Joining me now to discuss the Fed’s interest rate decision is Mark Weisbrot. He’s the Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the book Failed: What the Experts got Wrong on the Global Economy. Thanks for joining us again, Mark.
JEROME POWELL: Thanks, Gregory.
GREG WILPERT: For our viewers who don’t follow the Fed, why are the Fed meetings— that is, the meetings and decisions of the Fed’s open market committee where the state of the economy and the Fed’s interest rates are discussed— why they’re so important?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, they’re very important. I mean, the Fed meets every six weeks to make these decisions about short-term interest rates. The Fed is really, and I think very few people, relatively few people in the United States even know this, but the Fed is the main determinant of our economic growth and employment, which are very, very important, especially employment, unemployment. This is really – in recessions, for example, the Fed has actually triggered all of the recessions in the post-World War II period by raising interest rates except for the last two, which were caused by the bursting of giant asset bubbles. First, the stock market, and then the real estate bubble.
The Fed is extremely important really for anybody who cares about unemployment, and therefore anybody who cares about wages, or anybody who cares about the strength of unions and social movements because those also grow. Look at all the strikes we’ve had since unemployment hits a 50-year low, for example. If you care about inequality, whether it’s income inequality or inequality by race, because when unemployment drops, it drops almost twice as much for African Americans, for example, as it does for white workers. All of these things, it’s really the Fed more than any congressional official or even the president that has the most control over the economy in the way that anybody who is a progressive would care about.
GREG WILPERT: What do you think was most important about Powell’s announcement on Wednesday and this latest meeting?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, I think what’s most important is that they lowered interest rates. I think this is a change because first of all, as you mentioned, it’s the second time they’ve lowered interest rates since July. This is very unusual for the Fed at a time when unemployment is near a 50-year low, it’s at 3.7%. The Fed, they did raise interest rates nine times starting in December 2015, so this is a reversal. And it’s a very important one because again, the Fed could do what it did for almost all the other recessions of the post-World War II period and actually cause it. Instead, they’re going the other way, so this is a huge improvement in Fed policy.
GREG WILPERT: Now, Powell highlighted some of the risks that the global economy represents at the moment, and he especially mentioned the slowing of Germany’s and China’s economies, and then he also mentioned the uncertainty that Brexit is generating, and alluded to the US-China trade war. Do you think that these concerns are worth worrying about, and will the quarter percent rate reduction a stave off this risk and other possible risks?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, these risks are not trivial. I mean, some of them are always there. The US could always go to war with Iran. They’ve been threatening that for years, for example. I wouldn’t want to exaggerate the impact of the trade war. We’ve talked about that. It’s not something that by itself would cause a recession in the US. What’s really most important here is that the Fed is changing its policy. I don’t want to let them off the hook, by the way, for raising interest rates nine times since 2015. When they didn’t, they had no excuse for doing that. That’s very important for people to know. A lot of people don’t want to say it because Trump is hammering on the Feds, so you have a lot of people who just don’t want to criticize them, want to just pretend that they’re great because of that, but that was really bad.
There was no excuse for that. For that whole time, in fact, for the whole last a decade or more, the Fed’s target inflation rate has been virtually the entire time below their target of 2%. That’s their only real excuse for ever raising rates, is when the inflation rate rises, and it should rise considerably really for them to raise rates above their target. There wasn’t any reason to do that, and that’s very important because the Fed has a prejudice. They have a number of prejudices, but one thing is they tend to look at the world from the viewpoint of employers.
If you’re an employer, you’re fine with six or seven or even higher percent unemployment because it means you have more workers to choose from. I’m an employer. If that’s all I cared about, was having a big pool of people to choose when we hire here, I would be like them. Okay, so this is a major change. I think that’s the main thing is that they made a mistake, and they’re correcting it.
GREG WILPERT: Trump appointed the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell in 2017 after he decided not to give Obama’s appointee, Janet Yellen, a second term. Back then, Trump seemed to believe that Powell would be better for him. Why is the Fed Chair so important, and how has Powell’s position evolved during his tenure?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, this is again very important. If you look at what Powell said, it’s quite some remarkable things he’s been saying that I don’t think a Fed Chair has ever said in these kinds of circumstances. July 11th, in his testimony, he said, “There’s room for further improvement in the labor market.” Unemployment was 3.7%, and that’s remarkable right there, and it’s true of course, because if you look at employment for example, it’s still considerably lower than it was say in 2000. There is more room for people to get jobs, and he actually pointed out that you have people who are, I think he said less qualified, but he means people without college degrees. In many cases, they don’t need them to get these jobs, and they’re getting jobs. This is very good for the whole society that employers are hiring people and they’re training them.
He said that inflation wasn’t a threat, which is also true. He said that the share of labor in total income in the economy has actually fallen, and workers lost a lot of money from that since 2000. He said that they have to catch up. You need to keep this low unemployment rate. These are things that you would expect people who are much more progressive— he’s a Republican— much more progressive to say. To the extent that he would stick to this, that’s a real change in Fed policy for the United States. I’m not saying he will. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually asked him. She said, “Do you think it’s possible that the Fed’s estimates in the past of the lowest sustainable unemployment rate may have been too high?”
In other words, the Fed was wrong. It was saying you couldn’t go below a certain rate of unemployment when you actually could, and of course we discovered that. He said, “Yes.” He said yes to that, so he was admitting that the Fed was wrong in the past. That’s quite impressive for a Chair of the Federal Reserve. Again, we don’t know if he’s going to stick to it, but it’s good.
GREG WILPERT: Now, as we saw in the tweet from Trump earlier, Trump seems to be clearly concerned that the economy should be roaring by the time the 2020 presidential election comes around next year. Now, exactly how does Fed policy fit in with the 2020 election?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, this is important, and I think this is why you don’t see, first of all, more debate, more of the Democratic candidates saying what we’re talking about right here. The Fed was really wrong. I mean, Bernie has said this in his – he’s written op-eds in The New York Times about criticizing the Fed. Bernie Sanders has, but there’s not much talk about it at all because nobody really wants to be appearing to side with Trump.
This is a problem. Whenever Trump does says something that’s at least partly true, or when he wanted to pursue peace with North Korea for example, you have Democrats pushing back on him even. You have Democrats now in their race saying the Fed is right, and just denouncing his criticism. Now, it’s fair to denounce Trump for trying to manipulate the Fed for his own purposes. That is, he just wants to get re-elected. Of course, if he did get reelected, he’d be fine with the Fed causing unemployment and mass unemployment because that’s his last term.
The truth is that the Fed was wrong, and it’s very important to keep them on track. We don’t want a recession and some people will want a recession, and you can see this. They want a recession before the next election because it really would hurt Trump. That’s just the reversal of Trump. I think we have to stick to what’s really important and not change what we say just because of the election. Those of us who care about social justice, about unemployment and all the policies that really matter to people, that really affect all the things we care about, which is the Fed. Very importantly, we have to be honest about it. The Fed really should lower interest rates now, and there is no reason for them to have raised them.
GREG WILPERT: Okay, well, we’re going to leave it there for now. I’m speaking to Mark Weisbrot, Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Thanks again, Mark, for having joined us today.
MARK WEISBROT: Thank you.
GREG WILPERT: Thank you for joining The Real News Network.
Bernie Sanders Vows to Prosecute Fossil Fuel CEOs
During an MSNBC climate town hall at Georgetown University on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders said, if elected president in 2020, he would pursue criminal charges against fossil fuel executives for knowingly accelerating the ecological crisis while sowing doubt about the science to the American public.
“Duh, of course I would,” Sanders said when asked by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes if, as president, he would take legal action against fossil fuel companies.
“They knew that it was real,” Sanders said, referring to fossil fuel CEOs’ awareness of the climate crisis. “Their own scientists told them that it was real. What do you do to people who lied in a very bold-faced way, lied to the American people, lied to the media? How do you hold them accountable?”
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“What do you do if executives knew that the product they were producing was destroying the planet, and they continue to do it?” the senator continued. “Do you think that that might be subject to criminal charges? Well, I think it’s something we should look at.”
Sanders drew a comparison between the production of fossil fuels amid the climate crisis to the mass production of addictive opioids, which sparked a deadly nationwide epidemic:
You’re producing a product… and then you learn that the product you’re producing is killing people, right? Which is the case, say, with the Purdue and Johnson & Johnson opioid manufacturers.
The evidence is pretty clear that in terms of Purdue and Johnson & Johnson, they learned at a certain point that the opioids they were producing were causing an epidemic and people were dying. And you know what they did? They continued to produce it and hire more salesmen to go out and sell it. What do you do to those folks.
Now, because you have in this country… a corrupt criminal justice system, CEOs and millionaires don’t go to jail. People go to jail, kids go to jail, for selling marijuana, but if you kill hundreds of people, thousands of people, and you’re a CEO and a billionaire, you don’t go to jail. That’s the nature of the system in America. It’s a system I intend to change.
How do you hold fossil fuel executives who knew that they were destroying the planet but kept on doing it?
Watch:
In his comprehensive Green New Deal proposal unveiled last month, Sanders emphasized the need to hold fossil fuel companies and their executives accountable for the climate crisis.
“President Bernie Sanders will ensure that his Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission investigate these companies and bring suits—both criminal and civil—for any wrongdoing, just as the federal government did with the tobacco industry in the 1980s,” reads Sanders’s website. “These corporations and their executives should not get away with hiding the truth from the American people. They should also pay damages for the destruction they have knowingly caused.”
Jack Shapiro, senior climate campaigner with Greenpeace USA, said in response to the senator’s proposal, “If fossil fuel executives and lobbyists reading Sanders’ plan are scared, they should be.”
Greta Thunberg Leads Climate Strikes in 150 Countries (Live Blog)
Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg is leading a global climate strike Friday, ahead of Monday’s Climate Action Summit at the United Nations. The Swedish 16-year-old rose to fame a year ago when she inspired a global student climate protest. She has been in the U.S. since late August after traveling in a carbon-neutral yacht across the Atlantic, and she recently testified in Congress about the appalling consequences of our leaders’ climate inaction.
“I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists,” the activist told members of Congress as she presented them with the 2018 report by the U.S. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “I want you to unite behind the science and I want you to take real action.”
Friday’s actions in New York City, which are expected to take place from Foley Square to Battery Park in lower Manhattan, will be covered live by Truthdig photojournalist Michael Nigro, whose recent work for Truthdig documenting the lives of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border won him a Southern California Journalism Award. Nigro will livestream on Truthdig’s Facebook page throughout the New York protests, as well as during Thunberg’s speech, scheduled for 5 p.m. EST. New York City has given local public school students permission to attend the demonstrations, leading authorities to expect 1.1. million children to take to the streets in New York alone.
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If Our Planet Has a Future, It’s Thanks to Greta Thunberg
by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
Climate strikes involving both youths and adults are expected to take place in 150 countries in a massive collective effort to pressure global leaders at the upcoming U.N. General Assembly to address the climate crisis in meaningful, effective and urgent ways.
Follow our exclusive live coverage from New York City and updates from around the globe below.
Update: 7:33 p.m. EDT
The climate strike wasn’t just an event for those with access to cities like New York, of course. Here’s a snippet of a story on the day’s events in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“Save our future, save our future,” a class of second graders chanted Friday from their seats around the fountain near the North Point Tower in Milwaukee.
They raised Manila folders with colorful block-lettering with similar messages. Their cause: climate change.
The class from Greenfield Bilingual School was among a significant crowd that gathered Friday to call for immediate action to address the threat.
Despite being just 7 and 8 years old, they were anything but out of place. The crowd that gathered Friday included a significant number of students.
The rally was part of the Global Climate Strike that took place around the world. Students nationwide left school to attend.
“It’s really, really heartwarming to see that they care about this type of thing,” organizer Ayanna Lee, 17, herself a student at Rufus King International High School, said of the second graders. “But it’s also really sad that they had to leave their school day in elementary school to come out and tell their legislators and people who are supposed to be protecting them that they are destroying their lives and they need something done about it now.”
Oregon Live checked in with this dispatch from Portland:
Finally, Vox went globetrotting in a photo roundup showing alphabetically ordered snapshots of the event from Bangladesh, China, France, Pakistan, South Korea, Poland and other nations. Check back later this weekend to see Truthdig’s own photo essay featuring Michael Nigro’s memorable work.
Update: 5 p.m. EDT
Greta Thunberg updated followers on Twitter about the turnout in New York City, where she was preparing to give a speech:
The estimated number in New York is over 250’000! They closed the park because there were too many people… I’m speaking soon at Battery Park. #ClimateStrike pic.twitter.com/YOD80SxHaa
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) September 20, 2019
Earlier, Bill McKibben had also tweeted about big numbers in New York:
It is all but impossible to get pictures out of lower Manhattan this afternoon–the crowd, which we're estimating at 300k minimum, has overwhelmed the cellphone networks. It is big, and it is beautiful #ClimateStrike
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) September 20, 2019
Here’s a dynamic look at the scene in San Francisco around 1 p.m. PDT, with video footage from the local NBC station:
This day will go down in history.
This is the climate strike in San Francisco right now.
— Joshua Potash
September 19, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez: NYT’s Condescending Story Tries to ‘Gaslight’ the Left
By now, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has gone through more full-on political attacks than President Trump has gone through cabinet members.
Fox News’ abuse of power, and of Ocasio-Cortez, comes as no surprise, given the Murdochian media complex’s total commitment to making sure their audience sees Ocasio-Cortez and her peers — specifically, congressional “Squad”-mates Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley — as the socialist enemies of (white) America that President Trump insists they are. But a perhaps more remarkable, or at least more subtle, kind of critique came Wednesday from one of the nerve centers of center-left media, in the form of Catie Edmonson’s New York Times story, “How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Learned to Play by Washington’s Rules.”
This significant development apparently came as news to Ocasio-Cortez, who picked up on another narrative running throughout the article. Starting with that authoritative headline, which begs the question of who was doing the teaching, Edmonson’s piece reads like a disciplinary tool disguised as a straight report. A series of normative statements are passed off as givens.
We learn that AOC — pictured above the text in a thoughtful, reserved pose, hands folded, eyes fixed on a distant horizon — arrived on Capitol Hill as “a Bronx firebrand” with a “revolutionary reputation,” “social media fame” and a “brash, institution-be-damned style.” Cut to nine months into Ocasio-Cortez’s tenure in office, and according to Edmonson, AOC has purportedly Learned Her Lesson, having adopted “a careful political calculus that adheres more closely to the unwritten rules of Washington she once disdained.” In other words: She’s becoming part of the system.
The evidence for this newsworthy shift, which Edmonson was merely chronicling in her report, consists of a couple of quotes from AOC, a smattering of broad comments from others and a hearty dose of extrapolation based on the congresswoman’s recent staffing and scheduling choices.
Here are two excerpts from Edmonson’s piece containing Ocasio-Cortez’s own words about her evolution on the job, which don’t exactly amount to a slam-dunk confirmation of the article’s driving idea:
“I think I have more of a context of what it takes to do this job and survive on a day-to-day basis in a culture that is inherently hostile to people like me,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview.
… She said she has gone through a “loss of innocence and naïveté,” realizing that it was impossible to separate the legislative work of serving in Congress with the politics of re-election campaigns.
“They are frankly much closer in that dynamic and much closer in overlapping than a lot of people tend to realize,” she said.
Edmonson also pointed to Ocasio-Cortez’s apparent move away from the Justice Democrats, one of the sponsoring organizations that boosted her to victory at the polls in 2018. The congresswoman was not working so many co-branded activities into her upcoming slate; she had also sacked two key employees who were affiliated with the Justice Democrats, hired as her chief of staff Kamala Harris’ former aide — a “sober-minded replacement,” Edmonson notes. What’s more, she was opting to endorse less edgy Democrats like Marie Newman and Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse, for whom AOC has been blocking out time that, just a few months ago, she may have spent, say, helping Justice Democrats:
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has cut back on her appearances on behalf of Justice Democrats and has begun bolstering her fellow incumbent freshman lawmakers, like Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, a member of Democratic leadership whom she is joining at a fund-raiser this week for the Boulder County Democratic Party.
We also learn that certain of Ocasio-Cortez’s aides “continued to carry the Justice Democrats’ flag without restraint, tweeting out their support when the group challenged incumbents, to the dismay of Democratic aides and lawmakers,” which didn’t always work out so well for those aides.
In case it wasn’t already obvious, Justice Democrats, along with AOC, are being disciplined in and through the Times’ piece. Twice Edmonson characterizes the Justice Democrats’ and Ocasio-Cortez’s “brand of politics” as “divisive,” a term made all the more impactful when nestled between other fringey, pugnacious adjectives:
When she first arrived on Capitol Hill, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her team made it clear they planned to use their perch inside Congress as a platform for their divisive, outsider brand of politics. On her first day of orientation, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez joined protesters camped outside Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office agitating for the Green New Deal.
… Gone from her Washington office are her original chief of staff and her communications director, two Justice Democrats founders who were intent on waging their divisive brand of politics from their offices on Capitol Hill. No longer an unabashed ambassador of the combative group, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has carefully managed her involvement with it.
But now, Edmonson concluded, Ocasio-Cortez has finally gotten the message that Edmonson’s story works hard to reinforce, framed as a “reality on Capitol Hill that she and her team were slow to fully appreciate.” So that the reader may fully appreciate it, the lesson is spelled out as “the extent to which power and the ability to get things done in the House were dependent on personal relationships and respect for the hierarchy.”
For her part, Ocasio-Cortez disagreed with Edmonson’s take, calling out the subtext of the Times’ story in a Twitter exchange with actor and former New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon:
There will always be powerful interest in promoting the idea that the left is losing power 1 way or another.
The big way they try to dismantle the left isn’t to attack it, but to gaslight & deflate it.
Dripping condescension that I’m being “educated” should be a big red flag
Where Have the Wild Birds Gone? 3 Billion Fewer Than 1970
WASHINGTON — North America’s skies are lonelier and quieter as nearly 3 billion fewer wild birds soar in the air than in 1970, a comprehensive study shows.
The new study focuses on the drop in sheer numbers of birds, not extinctions. The bird population in the United States and Canada was probably around 10.1 billion nearly half a century ago and has fallen 29% to about 7.2 billion birds, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.
“People need to pay attention to the birds around them because they are slowly disappearing,” said study lead author Kenneth Rosenberg, a Cornell University conservation scientist. “One of the scary things about the results is that it is happening right under our eyes. We might not even notice it until it’s too late.”
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Rosenberg and colleagues projected population data using weather radar, 13 different bird surveys going back to 1970 and computer modeling to come up with trends for 529 species of North American birds. That’s not all species, but more than three-quarters of them and most of the missed species are quite rare, Rosenberg said.
Using weather radar data, which captures flocks of migrating birds, is a new method, he said.
“This is a landmark paper. It’s put numbers to everyone’s fears about what’s going on,” said Joel Cracraft, curator-in-charge for ornithology of the American Museum of Natural History, who wasn’t part of the study.
“It’s even more stark than what many of us might have guessed,” Cracraft said.
Every year University of Connecticut’s Margaret Rubega, the state ornithologist, gets calls from people noticing fewer birds. And this study, which she wasn’t part of, highlights an important problem, she said.
“If you came out of your house one morning and noticed that a third of all the houses in your neighborhood were empty, you’d rightly conclude that something threatening was going on,” Rubega said in an email. “3 billion of our neighbors, the ones who eat the bugs that destroy our food plants and carry diseases like equine encephalitis, are gone. I think we all ought to think that’s threatening.”
Some of the most common and recognizable birds are taking the biggest hits, even though they are not near disappearing yet, Rosenberg said.
The common house sparrow was at the top of the list for losses, as were many other sparrows. The population of eastern meadowlarks has shriveled by more than three-quarters with the western meadowlark nearly as hard hit. Bobwhite quail numbers are down 80%, Rosenberg said.
Grassland birds in general are less than half what they used to be, he said.
Not all bird populations are shrinking. For example, bluebirds are increasing, mostly because people have worked hard to get their numbers up.
Rosenberg, a birdwatcher since he was 3, has seen this firsthand over more than 60 years. When he was younger there would be “invasions” of evening grosbeaks that his father would take him to see in Upstate New York with 200 to 300 birds around one feeder. Now, he said, people get excited when they see 10 grosbeaks.
The research only covered wild birds, not domesticated ones such as chickens.
Rosenberg’s study didn’t go into what’s making wild birds dwindle away, but he pointed to past studies that blame habitat loss, cats and windows.
“Every field you lose, you lose the birds from that field,” he said. “We know that so many things are killing birds in large numbers, like cats and windows.”
Experts say habitat loss was the No. 1 reason for bird loss. A 2015 study said cats kill 2.6 billion birds each year in the United States and Canada, while window collisions kill another 624 million and cars another 214 million.
That’s why people can do their part by keeping cats indoors, treating their home windows to reduce the likelihood that birds will crash into them, stopping pesticide and insecticide use at home and buying coffee grown on farms with forest-like habitat, said Sara Hallager, bird curator at the Smithsonian Institution.
“We can reverse that trend,” Hallager said. “We can turn the tide.”
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Indian Democracy Is Being Dismantled Piece by Piece
There were some notable differences between the swearing-in ceremonies of the Hindu-supremacist government of Narendra Modi in its first victory on May 26, 2014, and its re-election on May 30, 2019.
The 2014 victory was tentative yet triumphant. There were attempts to paint a narrative of the South Asian leaders who were invited, including Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and others. While Indian elite and stars from Bollywood dotted the forecourt of the president’s residence (Rashtrapati Bhawan, in New Delhi), the message to neighbors was that India is the Big Brother offering a hand to other nations. Modi, who touts the humble beginnings he overcame, has repeatedly shown a penchant for trying to make history and create a grand narrative. By the 2019 swearing-in ceremony, it seemed that Modi’s government had abandoned the pretense that India needed the approval of the outside world.
India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a celebrated internationalist. His firm belief in collaborations among the developing nations, fed on his socialist roots, led him, along with other legendary leaders, to the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). There was a major shift for India in the 1990s when the Indian National Congress, under a leadership committed to freeing India from a controlled economy, chose the path of neoliberal economics, drawing closer to the United States and Israel.
Then came the vitriol of the campaign that led to Modi’s first victory, his almost no-holds-barred unleashing of hatred, and his rhetoric of “us versus them” (where “us” can only mean “Hindu India”—never mind the segregations of caste complications that come with the term). His master stroke of inviting “enemy nation” Pakistan to share the glory of his electoral win was hailed by many as a strategic shift—one that never materialized.
Appealing to a vast section of India as the “tea seller” from a humble background, there was no shame for his followers that the man aspired to riches, wearing an outrageously expensive coat (when he met President Obama in Delhi months later) or using a luxe Mont Blanc pen as he signed documents to take his oath—crass expressions of personal wealth.
The first five years of the regime were signs of the time to come. An immediate centralization of power, an assault on university campuses (especially on student leaders who questioned this hegemonic and proto-fascist ideology that has groomed Modi since teenage years), cutbacks on workers’ and farmers’ rights, arrests on activists and lawyers and worst of all, lynchings of Indians who did not fit the definition of the ‘ideal’ Indian—that is, Muslims, Dalits, Christians and communists (read: dissenters) were brutally killed. The slaying of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh (only the first happened before 2014) by an extreme right-wing group was also something India has not seen. The ideology of this Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Founded in 1925, its core belief is that India should not be a democratic republic but a Hindu theocracy; it subscribes to unequal and discriminatory levels of citizenship (following both Mussolini and Hitler) and is wedded (in its own writings) to overthrow the Constitution. Propaganda around the glory of the nation and “development” subsumed the gory 2014-2019 reality of violence, fear and lynchings. The unilateral move to “liberalize” India’s legal currency crippled India’s flagging economy and virtually killed the informal sector. Reports of the aggrandizement of the ruling party’s coffers came in only to be snuffed out by men who led the party and were intolerant of media reporting reality. Those men are now in positions of unbridled power today.
I wrote some months ago that this government has all but declared a war against its own people. That was before the 2019 results that took the supremacist victory to even higher levels, making a mockery of parliamentary debate and all-party dialogue. The second Modi regime sworn in this year has demonstrated in just three months what we can expect.
Parliament, which met to pass the budget in July, has been used thereafter to push through legislation without even the show of referring them to parliamentary committees for consultation or feedback. Not only does this second regime seem in a particular hurry, but, as Modi’s swearing-in ceremony on May 30 showed—the number of guests at the same venue had doubled to 8,000—there was no need (nor inclination) this time for India to send any messages internationally. One-sixth of the world lives in India, and as sole spokespersons for those over whom they now rule, the Modi 2.0 regime felt no real need to assuage any foreign concerns.
The first session of Parliament in 2008 made rushed amendments to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) that perverted its meaning in a way that sanctioned the curbing of civil liberties of minorities, as well as nationalist violence against them under the guise of fighting vaguely defined terrorism. (Before that, the UAPA had last been amended by the 2004 Indian National Congress party-led regime with the intention of preventing terrorism—and, ironically, at the time, those amendments were supported by the supremacist BJP, with only the parliamentary left vociferously opposing validating laws that had serious questions for personal liberties.) Even during the previous 10 years of Congress rule—which had an otherwise decent record—of legislating on rights (be it the right to information, right to rural work, right to food, or rights of forest workers/Adivasis), these draconian provisions of the then-amended UAPA were used selectively in targeting youth from the minority on charges—often judged by courts to be fabricated—of “terrorism.” Now these aberrations have been taken a step further. And the Modi 2.0 regime has now passed an amendment that allows even an individual to be unilaterally declared a terrorist—without judicial scrutiny and only by the government’s executive decision—and his/her properties to be attached and seized. As if these amendments were not bad enough, the completely unilateral and unconstitutional abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and stripping the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its special status (a legal requirement under the state’s Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union) on August 5 are the worst examples of Modi 2.0 regime’s running roughshod over law, decency, morality and the Constitution.
The Kashmir Valley has been blocked in or blotted out, internet and communications shut down, even landline phone connections shut down. A fundamental decision that affects the very existential reality of the Kashmiri people has been taken without hearing their voice or representation. The state has been under the president’s rule for months. If the Modi 1.0 government will be recognized for subverting and perverting India’s institutions by appointing to crucial posts men and women who have no regard for notions of equality and non-discrimination, then the second time around, the regime will be known for targeting any opposition to Indian federalism. No Indian state is now safe from these rapacious hands.
How did the Modi 2.0 regime notch up its spectacular victory?
A realistic assessment before the results were out was that the BJP itself would get about 180-200 and the National Democratic Alliance party would notch up about 220 or 240 seats out of the total 542 seats that make up the Indian Parliament. It’s the 80-100 seats extra and the massive margins in some that appeared programmed (and even manipulated for some) to send out a message.
The manner in which the Election Commission of India (ECI) functioned through the entire seven-stage polling phase has raised eyebrows. There was clear effort neither to question the huge display of funds (beyond legal limits) used by the ruling party nor to check violation of election law, through misuse of official position or speech that violated constitutional norms (read: hate speech). More money was spent on the Indian 2019 election than on the American elections ($6 billion!), of which 80 percent was spent by the ruling BJP. They have, through their enactment of a non-transparent and opaque law (electoral bonds)—during the last term—ensured that they both have the money and do not need to disclose the source. Neither the ECI nor India’s Supreme Court has in any real sense questioned this abuse. This reflects on the erosion (if not complete takeover) of India’s institutions whom we expect to uphold foundational constitutional principles.
The RSS, the ideological backbone of the BJP election machine, has always had a formidable cultural and social presence, again made easy with the free flow of funds from abroad to its various outfits. Whether the RSS works on charity or education, a core component is its ideological slant, bending or perverting Indian minds toward an unquestioning authoritarianism where a supremacist male Hindu hierarchy is both valorized and validated.
Through demonetization and election bonds, that access to funds has grown even further, and the BJP now has an election machine that can compete with the RSS’s octopus-like organization.
Propaganda, the key tool of any authoritarian protofascist regime, is run or fueled through the BJP’s paid saffron shirts. The party has put in place a formidable 24–hour–connected network that disseminates their message (read: propaganda), which is not one message but rather several layered messages: these praise the one strong leader willing to strike out for drastic change, vilify the opposition (the BJP since its last term has spoken of a “Congress-mukt [free] Bharat [India]”), “promote” every government scheme that they have introduced—its efficacy multiplied and glorified a thousand times over through this well-oiled propaganda—and all the while, layer this with a subconscious message of othering and “hatred.”
Months before the May 2019 elections, the poor economic conditions, farmers’ protests, a revived and belligerent opposition, and charges of corruption over the Rafale deal had started to bother the BJP’s dispensation of propaganda. Come February 2019 and the Pulwama terror attack on Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in the Kashmir Valley was quickly diverted away from the abysmal intelligence and governance failure that it was, and instead spun into a high-voltage, chest-thumping show of nationalistic machismo. Within a week, a staged “attack” on Pakistan at Balakot—even the efficacy, efficiency and truth behind this raises serious questions—provided the requisite miniscule and banal fodder to refurbish Modi as the man India needed, the man against evil.
Finally, serious questions of electronic voting machine (EVM) tampering have also been raised that cannot be wished away. The battle to be fought needs to factor in and deal with all of these things. The scarcely veiled and calibrated messages of Muslim-bashing/othering, aggressive pseudo-nationalism, and the “selling” of the government schemes need to be dealt with. As does the shameful belittling of the opposition that is also happening at alarming speed with little regard for facts or the truth. It is this formidable body of misinformation and meticulously well-organized and well-oiled/heeled organization that we collectively need to counter.
How, is the question? Who can do this? Political parties in the Opposition that look moribund need to be moved, shoved, and pushed by Indian citizens. Remember also that (unlike in 2014 when even if the results were more startling, they at least appeared believable) this time, state power has also been (illegally) used to garner data from Facebook and other platforms to the service of one party, to help further disseminate the propagandist message, through WhatsApp groups and Facebook messaging. There is also the structural issue of sections of voters who have been deliberately or otherwise disenfranchised (missing voters). The questions to address remain: How will we rectify those missing voters? And how will we bring voters out to the polls?
A hard and meticulous strategy for political education and cultural messaging that includes the history and relevance of principles of constitutionalism is as relevant today as ever before and needs to be not just created and disseminated but organized. Every space, school, college, office, and gram panchayat needs to be involved. The campaign needs to be sustained, layered, fun, historic, relevant, and aimed at building real perceptions away from heaps of propaganda-filled hate.
Two little instances give me hope. One is from last month, when left parties organized a protest at Azad Maidan in Mumbai against the dismantling of Article 370 of the Constitution. Many present felt that engaging with the Mumbai commuter was useful. There was curiosity in the midst of misinformation, that then can be our first lesson: how do we refurbish energies toward rebuilding a sense of resistance after first establishing our new sense of communities?
Second, our Opposition may be weak in Parliament. However, can Indians creatively work to show a strong united opposition on India’s streets?
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Teesta Setalvad is a writer, activist, and journalist living in India. She is a writing fellow for Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and the secretary of Citizens for Justice & Peace. She has been a longtime advocate for civil rights for all Indian citizens, especially minorities and women.
The Modern Machiavelli Who Predicted Trump’s Rise
Early in the Mueller investigation, President Trump rankled at then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ reluctance to circle the wagons on his behalf. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” the president asked, name-checking his unscrupulous mentor, lawyer and fixer.
Trump had been in cahoots with Cohn since they met in a Manhattan nightclub in 1973. By then, Cohn, prosecutor of the infamous Rosenberg trial and later assistant to Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, had earned his stripes as a notorious scoundrel. Perhaps he felt it was time to pass his villainous lessons to a new generation—or maybe he just wanted to sleep with the young real estate developer—but Cohn chose to mentor Trump for over a decade in Manhattan’s high-stakes world of media, money and power.
A clue to Cohn’s motivation can be found in filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer’s new documentary, “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” in theaters beginning Friday. In a vintage 1979 clip, Cohn is seated at home, reading a letter from Trump and mooning over a framed photo of the two of them. He calls it one of his dearest treasures and says that Trump will rise from New York and touch every part of the country, even extending his reach globally.
“He sort of Nostradamus-like predicts a world dominated by Donald Trump, which, in the late ’70s, was quite a stretch,” Tyrnauer, a former Vanity Fair writer, told Truthdig. “Roy Cohn would have been a small footnote to American history had Trump not won the Electoral College. After Trump did win, Cohn is elevated to a modern Machiavelli.”
From the beginning of his career, Cohn forged the way for sociopathic legal manipulations, his brilliance undercompensating for his moral turpitude. As far back as age 15, he used his family’s legal connections to fix parking tickets for teachers. Graduating from Columbia Law School at the age of 20, he had to wait until his 21st birthday before he could take the bar exam.
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Within two years, he was making international headlines working with prosecutors in the case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. While Julius was convicted of espionage under convincing evidence, the essentially blameless Ethel was also convicted in 1951, with Cohn pushing for the death penalty. Using predatory prosecutorial tactics, he pressured Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, into changing his testimony. Greenglass later said he was encouraged by the prosecution to lie in the courtroom in order to protect himself and his wife.
“Part of my goal in this film was to show his progression into this monster. There were some clues, especially the mother, Dora,” Tyrnauer said. Cohn’s mother was so shrewish, according to the movie, that her powerful family had to promise Cohn’s father a judgeship in order to get him to marry her.
According to Tyrnauer, Cohn sought the death penalty in the Rosenberg case in order to heighten the sensation around it and garner as much attention for himself as possible. If so, his tactic worked. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took notice, recommending that Cohn assist McCarthy on the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, as well as the so-called “Lavender Scare,” which persecuted homosexuals.
Drafted by Cohn as part of the team was David Schine, a tall, blond hotel heir for whom Cohn seems to pine. When Schine enlists to fight in Korea, Cohn’s attempts to land him a cushy position draw scrutiny. In the movie’s most emotional scene, a chamber full of heterosexual men laughingly wonder if the Pixie camera used to photograph evidence is in any way related to fairies. As they chuckle salaciously, Cohn, who was gay (despite his claims to the contrary), and McCarthy, who was rumored to be gay, sit stone-faced, humiliated, and, for a brief moment, sympathetic.
“Certainly Cohn seemed to have a type, and that was the tall blond rich kids. David Schine was the prototype of that. With Trump, there was a passing resemblance between the two, and they were the same kind of profile,” Tyrnauer observed.
In 1973, Trump Management Inc. was hit with a federal housing discrimination lawsuit based on overwhelming evidence that it had been shutting out nonwhite renters, going so far as to label applications with a “C” for “colored.” Cohn fought the suit to a settlement, which is not the same as an admission of guilt, a ploy that has become a mainstay in the Trump playbook. Years later, Trump settled to the tune of $25 million in the Trump University lawsuit, and has settled with plaintiffs in roughly 100 additional cases.
In those days, Cohn was working out of his East Side townhouse in Manhattan, a bachelor pad-turned-office overrun with stuffed toy frogs and handsome young assistants. He flitted to Studio 54 and all the right parties in his Rolls Royce limousine with his “fiance,” Barbara Walters, on his arm, a beard (and a pointless one at that). Andy Warhol, Mayor Ed Koch and gangster “Fat Tony” Salerno were all friends in his work-hard play-hard lifestyle. On one hand, he successfully fended off federal misconduct investigations into perjury and witness tampering (three times over 10 years, while also beating financial improprieties charges), and on the other, he shielded characters like Trump, media mogol Rupert Murdoch and mobsters John Gotti and Carlo Gambino from justice.
It wasn’t until 1986, three months before Cohn died of AIDS, that a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court finally disbarred him for unethical and unprofessional conduct, including misappropriation of clients’ funds, lying on a bar application and pressuring a client to amend his will. Speaking as character witnesses on Cohn’s behalf were New York Times columnist William Safire, Barbara Walters and William Buckley Jr. Trump, however, stayed clear of his disgraced and dying mentor, who helped secure a federal judgeship for Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, as a final favor. A widely circulated story at the time tells of Trump giving Cohn a pair of diamond cufflinks, which later turned out to be fake. “I can’t believe he’s doing this to me,” Cohn said. “Donald pisses ice water.”
“He occupies a unique place in the second half of the 20th century for his masterful villainy, but now, after the advent of the Trump presidency, more his posthumous significance in having created a president from beyond the grave,” Tyrnauer said, trailing off at the sheer unlikelihood of it all. “The paranoid style of American politics is very much alive. It’s embodied by Cohn, who passed it along to Trump. It’s an enormous endemic problem in our political culture. I think we thought we were over it, but we’re not.”
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