Chris Hedges's Blog, page 150

Trump Singles Out California’s Homeless for Abuse

President Donald Trump, along with his father, Fred Trump, were the defendants in a 1973 lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, in which housing and civil rights activists laid bare the Trumps’ practices of turning away black renters. “It was front-page news,” The New York Times stated in 2016, “and for Donald, amounted to his debut in the public eye.”

Now, the man who began his real estate career being sued for discrimination has a new target: California’s homeless.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Trump is “threatening San Francisco with some type of violation notice for what he described as environmental pollution.” Trump claims this unspecified pollution is being caused by the city’s homeless population.

On Air Force One, he said that homeless people in San Francisco are contributing to ocean pollution “because of waste, including needles going through storm sewers.”

However, as LA Times reporters Benjamin Oreskes and Colleen Shalby explained, “It was unclear what Trump was referring to, and there was [no] clarification about what rules San Francisco supposedly violated.”

“It’s a terrible situation — that’s in Los Angeles and in San Francisco,” the president announced to reporters, adding, “And we’re going to be giving San Francisco — they’re in total violation — we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon.”

Trump also said the Environmental Protection Agency would be involved—in putting out the notice. But EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler would not elaborate on Trump’s comments when he addressed a press conference on Thursday. “I can’t comment on potential enforcement action,” he said.

Bloomberg reporters Jordan Fabian and Ryan Beene point out that Trump’s attacks on California’s homeless are part of a larger narrative, “casting the state as a cautionary tale for Democratic rule ahead of the 2020 election.”

Trump has, according to Fabian and Beene, “singled out California over its burgeoning homeless problems, moved to eviscerate its authority to regulate auto emissions, and stopped at the border wall, highlighting his disdain of its policy of offering sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.”

Trump also said, without evidence, that the homeless crisis was forcing people to leave California cities: “We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening.” He added, of California residents, “They can’t believe what’s happening.”

In response, San Francisco Mayor London Breed told the LA Times that Trump’s comments were “ridiculous” and that any detritus from the city’s storm drains go through a wastewater treatment plant, not “into the bay or ocean.”

Human waste and needles may be an issue for certain San Francisco neighborhoods, but, as The LA Times states, “The city set up public toilets and last year announced [the] formation of a special six-person ‘poop patrol’ team to clean up the human waste.”

Mayor Breed also noted that San Francisco is setting up a number of initiatives to alleviate homelessness, including adding 1,000 homeless shelter beds and a $600-million bond to finance the construction of affordable housing and provide support services for people with mental health and addiction issues.

During a press conference on Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsome mentioned Trump’s “assaults” on California, vowing, “We’re going to push back when he tries to go after our Dreamers, and go after access to reproductive rights, go after our diverse communities and we’re going to have the backs of people of the state and our values.”

It’s Time to Strike for the Climate

According to Bill McKibben, the internationally renowned climate activist, author and founder of 350.org, today’s record-breaking hurricanes should not be labeled with such innocuous names as “Dorian” or “Maria.” Rather, they should be named after Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP—major fossil fuel corporations that have been the driving force behind global warming and the subsequent supercharged storms.

In an interview, the author of the new book, “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?” explained to me that those corporations “have kept us for 30 years from dealing with the greatest crisis that we’ve ever faced.” Speaking just days before a climate strike set to take place around the world on Friday, the veteran environmentalist is correct to clearly identify just who the enemies of humanity are.

Climate activists have been laying the groundwork for Friday’s strike and the following week of actions for months now. The idea of a Friday strike was inspired by global youth-led “Fridays for Future,” in which young people skip school on Fridays to strike for climate action. The best-known leader of that movement, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg of Sweden, has traveled to the United States (by a climate-friendly boat) to lead Friday’s strike in New York City. But as McKibben notes, “She’s not alone. There are Gretas in every country, every city, every continent. There are young people around the world who are leading this fight, and often in the most vulnerable communities.”

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Thunberg has made it clear that she cares little for laudatory coverage. She’d rather have action. Addressing a Senate panel on the climate crisis, she told U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday, “Please save your praise. We don’t want it. Don’t invite us here to just tell us how inspiring we are without actually doing anything about it, because it doesn’t lead to anything.”

It is fitting that the world’s young people are leading the fight on climate change, because it is their survival that is most at stake. “They take it very seriously, because, of course, they’re going to be living with it their whole lives,” McKibben said. “I’m going to be dead before the absolute worst peak of climate crisis hits.”

Young people like Thunberg have been busy, even if the media or the public hasn’t noticed. Last spring, an estimated 1.4 million young people participated in a one-day classroom walkout all over the world, making it the biggest climate-related action in world history. McKibben said that Friday’s action is expected to be even bigger, because “people, after that last strike in the spring, said, ‘When this starts up again in the fall, we need adults in there too—not leading but helping, following, giving it as much weight as it needs.’ “

The climate crisis is not a partisan or ideological issue. It isn’t even an issue of science versus ignorance any more, as a strong majority of Americans are of the opinion that climate change is real. It is an issue of corporate greed and deliberate—even criminal—negligence. In that context, it makes perfect sense for New York City public schools to give students permission to skip school on Friday in order to attend a strike event. We don’t have the luxury of inaction anymore. Inaction means annihilation, and even the New York school system now understands that.

At precisely the time we need to be pulling back on our fossil fuel consumption, we are ratcheting up the carbon load on our saturated atmosphere. At the very moment when the world’s nations need to be collectively transitioning away from oil consumption, the country responsible for the greatest cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in history removed itself from the Paris Accord. President Donald Trump has instead promoted the coal industry, rolled back regulations on energy-efficient light bulbs because he doesn’t like the way they make him look on camera (really) and is on the verge of upending California’s authority to set fuel-efficiency standards. The timing couldn’t be worse.

That is why the global climate strike was organized just before a major United Nations climate meeting. At the U.N. headquarters in New York City on Monday, country representatives will make their pledges to curb carbon emissions. To his credit, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has decided to exclude from presentations those nations building new coal plants, such as Japan, South Korea and South Africa. Additionally, the U.S. will be left out because of its undermining of the Paris Accord, Brazil because of President Jair Bolsonaro’s assault on the Amazon rainforest, and Saudi Arabia for its relentless promotion of petroleum.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., despite Trump’s insistence on promoting fossil fuels at the expense of human safety, there is a growing realization among other politicians that something needs to be done. Climate change is shaping up to be a major election issue, thanks largely to the tireless work of grassroots, youth-led activist groups like the Sunrise Movement. It has promoted the ambitious piece of legislation called the Green New Deal (GND) that would rebuild the U.S. economy through green jobs and help the nation rapidly transition to renewable energy sources. The platforms of major presidential candidates include serious action on the climate, such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ambitious plan based on the GND.

Of course, media coverage of the solutions to climate change often echo pro-fossil fuel talking points, emphasizing the financial cost over the urgent need for action. Some media outlets are stepping up to the challenge of covering the climate crisis fairly. A collaboration of more than 250 news outlets worldwide, called “Covering Climate Now,” has pledged to increase the quantity and quality of their climate-related coverage. If we are to tackle this hugely important issue, we need an informed public. We especially need media coverage that closely scrutinizes climate denialists and those actively promoting greater greenhouse gas emissions.

Over and over, we hear naysayers complaining that the cost of taking action on the climate is far too high and would damage the economy. Trump has claimed that the Green New Deal resolution will cost $100 trillion and that it will “kill millions of jobs, it will crush the dreams of the poorest Americans and disproportionately harm minority communities” (as if Trump cares one bit about poor and minority Americans). “I think what people need to do is the full calculation,” McKibben said. “So on the one hand, you add up what it’s going to cost to get us to energy efficiency, and it costs us some money.”

Most important, McKibben said—and this is what most media outlets leave out—“You add up first the amount of money you save once you’ve got your solar panel up” and then “you have to start calculating how much we’re going to spend if we don’t do this.” Not only is the cost of inaction going to be astronomical, but so is the cost to the human race, in terms of livelihoods, homes, environments and lives.

Greta Thunberg Is Just Getting Warmed Up

Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has sparked a global movement with her “school strike for the climate.” Last year, she started skipping school on Fridays to stand outside the Swedish parliament demanding climate action. Since then, she has inspired millions around the world to join her. The final two Fridays of this month, Sept. 20 and 27, are expected to be some of the largest global protests in history. These two strike days fall on either side of the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit on Monday, Sept. 23.

Organized during the U.N.’s annual General Assembly meeting, which brings leaders from around the world to New York City, the Climate Action Summit aims to “spark the transformation that is urgently needed and propel action that will benefit everyone.” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the urgency of the moment this week:

“July was the hottest month ever. These five years will be the hottest five years on record. We see the rising level of the ocean taking place, the highest concentrations ever of CO2 in the atmosphere … we are really dealing with a very dramatic threat, not only to the future of the planet, but to the planet today.”

Greta arrived in New York City on Aug. 28 after a two-week voyage aboard a zero-emissions, high-speed sailboat. Since then, she has been on the go, joining youth school strikes at the United Nations and in front of the White House, giving scores of interviews and engaging with grassroots activists, politicians and others to demand urgent action. On Monday night, in recognition for her work linking the climate emergency to human rights, Amnesty International gave her its 2019 Ambassador of Conscience Award.

Speaking with members of the Senate Climate Change Task Force in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Greta said: “Don’t invite us here to tell us how inspiring we are without doing anything about it … I know you are trying, but just not hard enough. Sorry.”

The Paris climate agreement, signed by almost every nation in 2015, was supposed to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. President Donald Trump announced his intention to pull the United States out of the agreement on June 1, 2017 — failing to note that the earliest date the U.S. could leave would be November 2020. That is why the Trump administration has been sending low-level officials to the annual U.N. Climate Summits, where they spend their time promoting coal and other fossil fuels while energetically avoiding questions from the press.

Despite the Paris agreement, the planet as a whole continues to burn more fossil fuels. In a report issued just over a week ago, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that global petroleum consumption, for the first time ever, would surpass 100 million barrels per day in 2019. The International Energy Agency stated recently, “Despite legitimate concerns about air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, coal use will continue to be significant in the future,” and that coal comprises “27% of all energy used worldwide and … 38% of electricity generation.”

The rapid transition away from fossil fuels to a fully renewable energy economy will require a cooperative, global effort unprecedented in history. Several versions of this needed transformation for the United States have been articulated, first in the Green New Deal bill proposed by New York Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey. 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders has put forth a $16.3 trillion plan that he says would create 20 million jobs and pay for itself within 15 years. His plan also promotes environmental justice “in a truly inclusive movement that prioritizes young people, workers, indigenous peoples, communities of color, and other historically marginalized groups.”

Greta Thunberg’s words from last December’s U.N. Climate Summit in Katowice, Poland, bear repeating. The two-week ministerial meeting was almost over, and the plenary schedule was running late. At close to midnight, Greta, then 15 years old, gave a short, powerful address. She rocked the hall, and her words quickly resonated around the world:

“We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past, and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses, and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people.”

On Tuesday, after sustained protests for several years, the University of California announced it is divesting its $84 billion pension and endowment funds of all fossil fuel investments.

The storms that batter island nations from the Bahamas to the Philippines, and coastal communities from Florida to Newfoundland, are occurring with greater frequency and greater strength. In response, a rapidly growing global movement of climate activists, led by youth, is heating up as well.

Will Americans Let Trump Start a World War for Israel and Saudi Arabia?

On Saturday, September 14, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles, dramatically slashing Saudi Arabia’s oil production by half, from about 10 million to 5 million barrels per day. On September 18, the Trump administration, blaming Iran, announced it was imposing more sanctions on Iran, and voices close to Donald Trump are calling for military action. But this attack should lead to just the opposite response: urgent calls for an immediate end to the war in Yemen and an end to U.S. economic warfare against Iran.

The question of the origin of the attack is still under dispute. The Houthi government in Yemen immediately took responsibility. This is not the first time the Houthis have brought the conflict directly onto Saudi soil as they resist the constant Saudi bombardment of Yemen. Last year, Saudi officials said they had intercepted more than 100 missiles fired from Yemen.

This is, however, the most spectacular and sophisticated attack to date. The Houthis claim they got help from within Saudi Arabia itself, stating that this operation “came after an accurate intelligence operation and advance monitoring and cooperation of honorable and free men within the Kingdom.”

This most likely refers to Shia Saudis in the Eastern Province, where the bulk of Saudi oil facilities are located. Shia Muslims, who make up an estimated 15-20 percent of the population in this Sunni-dominated country, have faced discrimination for decades and have a history of uprisings against the regime. So it is plausible that some members of the Shia community inside the kingdom may have provided intelligence or logistical support for the Houthi attack, or even helped Houthi forces to launch missiles or drones from inside Saudi Arabia.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, immediately blamed Iran, noting that that the air strikes hit the west and northwest sides of the oil facilities, not the south side that faces toward Yemen. But Iran is not to the west or northwest either—it is to the northeast. In any case, which part of the facilities was hit does not necessarily have any bearing on which direction the missiles or drones were launched from. Iran strongly denies conducting the attack.

CNN reported that Saudi and U.S. investigators claim “with very high probability” that the attack was launched from an Iranian base in Iran close to the border with Iraq, but that neither the U.S. nor Saudi Arabia has produced any evidence to support these claims.

But in the same report, CNN reported that missile fragments found at the scene appeared to be from Quds-1 missiles, an Iranian model that the Houthis unveiled in July under the slogan, “The Coming Period of Surprises,” and which they may have used in a strike on Abha Airport in southern Saudi Arabia in June.

A Saudi Defense Ministry press briefing on Wednesday, September 18, told the world’s press that the wreckage of missiles based on Iranian designs proves Iranian involvement in the attack, and that the cruise missiles flew from the north, but the Saudis could not yet give details of where they were launched from.

Also on Wednesday, President Trump announced that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to “substantially” increase its sanctions against Iran. But existing U.S. sanctions already place such huge obstacles in the way of Iranian oil exports and imports of food, medicine, and other consumer products that it is hard to imagine what further pain these new sanctions can possibly inflict on the besieged people of Iran.

U.S. allies have been slow to accept the U.S. claims that Iran launched the attack. Japan’s defense minister told reporters “we believe the Houthis carried out the attack based on the statement claiming responsibility.” The United Arab Emirates (UAE) expressed frustration that the U.S. was so quick to point its finger at Iran.

Tragically, this is how U.S. administrations of both parties have responded to such incidents in recent years, seizing any pretext to demonize and threaten their enemies and keep the American public psychologically prepared for war.

If Iran provided the Houthis with weapons or logistical support for this attack, this would represent but a tiny fraction of the bottomless supply of weapons and logistical support that the U.S. and its European allies have provided to Saudi Arabia. In 2018 alone, the Saudi military budget was $67.6 billion, making it the world’s third-highest spender on weapons and military forces after the U.S. and China.

Under the laws of war, the Yemenis are perfectly entitled to defend themselves. That would include striking back at the oil facilities that produce the fuel for Saudi warplanes that have conducted over 17,000 air raids, dropping at least 50,000 mostly U.S.-made bombs and missiles, throughout more than four long years of war on Yemen. The resulting humanitarian crisis also kills a Yemeni child every 10 minutes from preventable diseases, starvation and malnutrition.

The Yemen Data Project has classified nearly a third of the Saudi air strikes as attacks on non-military sites, which ensure that a large proportion of at least 90,000 Yemenis reported killed in the war have been civilians. This makes the Saudi-led air campaign a flagrant and systematic war crime for which Saudi leaders and senior officials of every country in their “coalition” should be held criminally accountable.

That would include President Obama, who led the U.S. into the war in 2015, and President Trump, who has kept the U.S. in this coalition even as its systematic atrocities have been exposed and shocked the whole world.

The Houthis’ newfound ability to strike back at the heart of Saudi Arabia could be a catalyst for peace, if the world can seize this opportunity to convince the Saudis and the Trump administration that their horrific, failed war is not worth the price they will have to pay to keep fighting it. But if we fail to seize this moment, it could instead be the prelude to a much wider war.

So, for the sake of the starving and dying people of Yemen and the people of Iran suffering under the “maximum pressure” of U.S. economic sanctions, as well as the future of our own country and the world, this is a pivotal moment.

If the U.S. military, or Israel or Saudi Arabia, had a viable plan to attack Iran without triggering a wider war, they would have done so long ago. We must tell Trump, Congressional leaders, and all our elected representatives that we reject another war and that we understand how easily any U.S. attack on Iran could quickly spiral into an uncontainable and catastrophic regional or world war.

President Trump has said he is waiting for the Saudis to tell him who they hold responsible for these strikes, effectively placing the U.S. armed forces at the command of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has conducted U.S. foreign policy as a puppet of both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, making a mockery of his “America First” political rhetoric. As Rep. Tulsi Gabbard quipped, “Having our country act as Saudi Arabia’s bitch is not ‘America First.’”

Senator Bernie Sanders has issued a statement that Trump has no authorization from Congress for an attack on Iran, and at least 14 other members of Congress have made similar statements, including his fellow presidential candidates Senator Warren and Congresswoman Gabbard.

Congress already passed a War Powers Resolution to end U.S. complicity in the Saudi-led war on Yemen, but Trump vetoed it. The House has revived the resolution and attached it as an amendment to the FY2020 NDAA military budget bill. If the Senate agrees to keep that provision in the final bill, it will present Trump with a choice between ending the U.S. role in the war in Yemen or vetoing the entire 2020 U.S. military budget.

If Congress successfully reclaims its constitutional authority over the U.S. role in this conflict, it could be a critical turning point in ending the state of permanent war that the U.S. has inflicted on itself and the world since 2001.

If Americans fail to speak out now, we may discover too late that our failure to rein in our venal, warmongering ruling class has led us to the brink of World War III. We hope this crisis will instead awaken the sleeping giant, the too-silent majority of peace-loving Americans, to speak up decisively for peace and force Trump to put the interests and the will of the American people above those of his unscrupulous allies.

This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK, and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

The Washington Post Has an Uber Problem

A new California law threatens to upend Uber, but the Washington Post claimed the law doesn’t apply to the ride-hailing giant. This is convenient, since Post owner Jeff Bezos is not only a major Uber investor, but also founder and CEO of Amazon, which is likely to also be negatively impacted by the new law.

The recently passed legislation requires companies to classify workers as employees if their work is central to the business. Throughout its decade of lawbreaking and staggering growth, Uber has classified its drivers as independent contractors, not employees. This has allowed the ride-hailing giant to avoid providing benefits and job protections, creating huge savings for Uber and financial hardship for many drivers.

Despite California legislators’ clear intent that the new law applies to ride-hailing companies, the Post says it doesn’t. In a recent news story, Post reporter Faiz Siddiqui offered this questionable legal opinion as fact:

The law compels companies to prove that contractors are performing work that is outside the core function of the business. Uber can meet that standard because it’s a technology platform for several types of marketplaces, though legal challenges are likely.

That’s what appeared in the print version of the Post. The online version of the story (9/11/19) offers a similar legal opinion, only now attributed to Uber general counsel Tony West (who declared that Uber would defy California’s law):

The law, [West] said, compels companies to prove that contractors are performing work that is outside the core function of the business. Uber, he said, can meet that standard because it’s a technology platform for several types of marketplaces, though he expects legal challenges going forward.

Other news outlets appear less confident than the Post and Uber that the ride-hailing giant will prevail in court. (Elsewhere, the Post—9/17/19—was also skeptical that Uber would prevail.)

Uber’s central argument is that drivers aren’t performing a core function, because Uber is a tech platform, not a cab company. But it “could be hard for Uber to make such an argument” (Bloomberg, 4/11/19), since this is “a hard-to-believe sleight of hand” (American Prospect, 9/12/19), which is why the company is “unlikely to win” in court New York Times, 9/12/19).

On Twitter (9/12/19), New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber pointed out that Uber didn’t fare well when making this argument before a New York judge in 2017.

So, to recap: Yesterday Uber said it wouldn’t reclassify drivers as employees under California’s new law b/c it doesn’t believe drivers are part of its “usual course of business.” Here’s how that argument played when Uber tried it before a judge in NY in 2017. pic.twitter.com/dJQFrl3se9

— Noam Scheiber (@noamscheiber) September 12, 2019

Post columnist Megan McArdle (9/13/19) isn’t optimistic about Uber’s chances in court, nor is she happy about California’s new law, which she blames on lefties and predicts will lead to mass job losses. Also, McArdle says, it’s unfair to ask more of Uber and Lyft:

Yes, you in the back, wearing the Che Guevara T-shirt, I can hear you muttering about how they could “just take a little less in profits.” That might be fine for older companies that make heavy use of contractors and have old-fashioned things such as profits. But the gig-economy companies are still hemorrhaging cash.

Uber and Lyft are indeed hemorrhaging cash, even as they make their investors, including McArdle’s boss, unbelievably rich.

Bezos and Uber

Returning to Post reporter Siddiqui’s Uber-friendly legal opinion, which he later (accurately) attributed to Uber: This may have been an innocent mistake (albeit one the Post has yet to acknowledge, as no correction has been posted), but it looks less innocent when considering Bezos’ ties to Uber.

Bezos is a major Uber shareholder, whose stock in the company is worth an estimated $400 million (CBS News, 5/3/19), or possibly  a lot more. By comparison, Bezos paid $250 million to buy the Post in 2013.

On top of that, Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick—who remains on Uber’s board and is one of the company’s largest shareholders—is a Bezos fanboy. As CEO, Kalanick worked with a Bezos disciple to create 14 corporate principles for Uber, mimicking Amazon’s 14; although Kalanick’s list, which had “Always Be Hustlin’” at the top, read like it was “run through a bro-speak translation engine,” Mike Isaac writes in Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.

The love flowed both ways, as Bezos praised his mentee’s brash style. “Travis is a real entrepreneur,” Bezos said of Kalanick, according to Brad Stone’s The Upstarts: How Uber, AirBNB and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World.

Bezos’ and Kalanick’s companies share a lot in common, as both are known to bully competitors, cheat the government, mistreat workers and, crucially, rely on large numbers of independent contractors.

“By some estimates, nearly half of Amazon‘s packages in the US are now delivered” via third party vendors, according to a year-long BuzzFeed investigation (8/31/19). These vendors in turn hire drivers, appearing to place distance between them and Amazon, even though Amazon “dictates almost every aspect of that operation, down to what drivers wear, what vans they use, what routes they follow, and how many packages they must deliver each day.”

With California’s new law taking hold, and other states looking to follow suit, Bezos could end up the biggest loser if his holdings in Amazon and Uber take a hit.

‘I Have No Idea’

The Post’s recent pro-Uber reporting is not an anomaly, but part of a pattern at the paper (HuffPost, 6/21/16), which no longer bothers to inform readers of Bezos’ ties to the ride-hailing company.

“Conflicts this basic—as in, our boss stands to make a substantial fortune from the success of this company—typically require disclosure, if only to fend off the appearance of impropriety,” noted Adam Johnson (FAIR.org, 11/10/15).

Post executive editor Marty Baron wrote to me in a 2016 email: “We have frequently identified him [Bezos] as an investor” in Uber—even though, he added, it’s unnecessary to do so since Bezos is a passive rather than active investor.

But in 2017, as Uber hit turbulent waters, the Post stopped disclosing Bezos’ ties to the ride-hailing giant (Washington City Paper, 7/18/17). I followed up with Baron. “No,” there had been no change in policy, he wrote. “We knew he was an early investor. I have no idea if he remains an investor.”

This is strange coming from Baron, whose investigative prowess was heralded in the movie Spotlight. Apparently when it comes to his boss, Baron prefers to play dumb.

Even if Baron is reluctant to ask Bezos about his investment in Uber, he can still read about it in any number of media reports, and even find a passing mention of it in a Post story in April (4/4/19). But by maintaining a façade of ignorance, the Post evades having to disclose to readers about its owner’s ties to Uber.

Independent of Baron’s let-there-be-darkness edict, it’s understandable that Post reporters might ease up on companies closely tied to the guy cutting their checks. “I would say that I tend to do less critical thinking about Amazon than I do, say, about Facebook or Google or Walmart,” an anonymous Post employee told HuffPost (12/4/18). “The reason is fairly obvious: because I am thankful for the opportunity I have, which wouldn’t exist without [Jeff] Bezos.”

As Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi (8/16/19) writes, “Media companies run by the country’s richest people can’t help but project the mindset of their owners.”

Threatening Amazon as well as possibly being an “existential threat” to Uber (American Prospect, 9/12/19), California’s new law poses a potential two-fold hit to Bezos’ holdings. In light of this, it’d be surprising if Bezos’ newspaper didn’t take a skeptical view of the law.

Trump Officials: UNC-Duke Program Too Positive on Islam

The Trump administration is threatening to cut funding for a Middle East studies program run by the University of North Carolina and Duke University, arguing that it’s misusing a federal grant to advance “ideological priorities” and unfairly promote “the positive aspects of Islam” but not Christianity or Judaism.

An Aug. 29 letter from the U.S. Education Department orders the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies to revise its offerings by Sept. 22 or risk losing future funding from a federal grant that’s awarded to dozens of universities to support foreign language instruction. The consortium received $235,000 from the grant last year, according to Education Department data.

Officials at Duke and at UNC-Chapel Hill, which houses the consortium, declined to comment. The Education Department declined to say if it’s examining similar programs at other schools.

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Academic freedom advocates say the government could be setting a dangerous precedent if it injects politics into funding decisions. Some said they had never heard of the Education Department asserting control over such minute details of a program’s offerings.

“Is the government now going to judge funding programs based on the opinions of instructors or the approach of each course?” said Henry Reichman, chairman of a committee on academic freedom for the American Association of University Professors. “The odor of right wing political correctness that comes through this definitely could have a chilling effect.”

More than a dozen universities receive National Resource Center grants for their Middle East programs, including Columbia, Georgetown, Yale and the University of Texas. The Duke-UNC consortium was founded in 2005 and first received the grant nearly a decade ago.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ordered an investigation into the program in June after North Carolina Rep. George Holding, a Republican, complained that it hosted a taxpayer-funded conference with “severe anti-Israeli bias and anti-Semitic rhetoric.” In a response to Holding, DeVos said she was “troubled” by his letter and would take a closer look at the consortium.

The department’s findings did not directly address any bias against Israel but instead evaluated whether the consortium’s proposed activities met the goals of the National Resource Center program, which was created in 1965 to support language and culture initiatives that prepare students for careers in diplomacy and national security.

Investigators concluded that the consortium intended to use federal money on offerings that are “plainly unqualified for taxpayer support,” adding that foreign language and national security instruction have “taken a back seat to other priorities.” The department cited several courses, conferences and academic papers that it says have “little or no relevance” to the grant’s goals.

“Although a conference focused on ‘Love and Desire in Modem Iran’ and one focused on Middle East film criticism may be relevant in academia, we do not see how these activities support the development of foreign language and international expertise for the benefit of U.S. national security and economic stability,” the letter said.

Investigators also saw a disconnect between the grant’s mission and some academic papers by scholars at the consortium. They objected to one paper titled “Performance, Gender-Bending and Subversion in the Early Modern Ottoman Intellectual History,” and another titled “Radical Love: Teachings from Islamic Mystical Tradition.”

The letter accused the consortium of failing to provide a “balance of perspectives” on religion. It said there is “a considerable emphasis” placed on “understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.”

It added that there are few offerings on discrimination faced by religious minorities in the Middle East, “including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze and others.” Department officials said the grant’s rules require programs to provide a “full understanding” of the regions they study.

Jay Smith, a history professor at UNC and vice president of its chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the letter amounts to “ideologically driven harassment.” He said the Education Department official who signed the letter, Robert King, “should stay in his lane and allow the experts to determine what constitutes a ‘full understanding’ of the Middle East.”

But Holding, the Republican who sparked the investigation, said it’s clear the consortium stepped outside the bounds of the grant. The Education Department has an obligation to ensure its funding is used as intended, he said, adding that other schools should make sure they’re following the rules.

“This has fallen through the cracks, and this could be going on at other educational institutions,” he said in an interview. “If the department’s providing the money and giving guidance on how the money is to be used, I think they can be as in the weeds as they need to be.”

The National Resource Center grant program provided a total of $22 million to language programs at about 40 universities last year. Of that total, about $3.5 million was for Middle East programs.

Along with its objection to the nature of the UNC-Duke offerings, the department also said it’s concerned that, out of 6,800 students enrolled in the consortium’s courses, just 960 were enrolled in Middle East language classes, and that only 11% of the program’s graduates pursue careers in government, while 35% takes jobs in academia.

Department officials instructed the consortium to provide a “revised schedule of activities” for the next year and to explain how each offering promotes foreign language learning and advances national security interest.

Russia Sees Its Reflection in the West

Consider them dispatches from a present with no future.

Earlier this month, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) made significant gains in two key state elections, finishing second in Saxony and Brandenburg, respectively. In 2017, it became the first far-right party to enter the Bundestag in nearly 60 years. According to a CNN report, AfD campaigned on a slogan of “Wir sind das volk” (“We are the people”)—a willful manipulation of the rallying cry that united demonstrators in the city of Leipzig on Oct. 9, 1989, one month before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Since the bombing of the Khurais oil field and Abqaiq processing plant early Saturday morning, U.S. intelligence and Saudi Arabia have insisted that Iran is to blame. (The Iranian government denies all involvement in the incident.) “Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked,” President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday. “There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!” 

White House officials, without a trace of irony, have described the attacks as the country’s “9/11.” Defending his willingness to engage militarily, Trump put things bluntly: “Saudi Arabia pays cash.” (The president has since announced that he will “substantially” increase sanctions on Iran.)

Finally, Axios revealed Tuesday that with billions of dollars and the future of U.S. diplomatic relations at stake, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia could all interfere in next year’s elections—this less than a week after Israel was accused of planting “mysterious spying devices near the White House.”

When White House adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway cited “alternative facts” to defend the president’s meager inauguration attendance, she appeared to trumpet a new post-truth era of American politics. In actuality, we’ve been living in this epoch for some time, and Trump’s rise was but one expression of a larger crisis that the emergence of parties like AfD, National Rally in France and Fidesz in Hungary suggests will continue to roil the West. As journalist and television producer Peter Pomerantsev writes in a recent essay adapted from his new book, “This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality,” we are living in an age of unreality:

Ideas replaced with feelings. A radical relativism that implies truth is unknowable. Politicians who revel in lying openly, shamelessly, as if being caught out is the point of politics. The notion of the people and the many redefined ceaselessly, words unmoored from meaning, ideas of the future dissolving into nasty nostalgias with enemies everywhere, conspiracy replacing ideology, facts equated to fibs, discussion collapsing into mutual accusations, where every argument is just another smear campaign, all information warfare … and the sense that everything under one’s feet is constantly moving, inherently unstable, liquid …

If the future has arrived, then Russia likely got there first. Pomerantsev argues that after the fall of the Soviet Union and the failures of the capitalist shock therapy that followed, the country grew increasingly amenable to a new form of politics—one that anticipated what was to emerge from the wreckage of the Iraq War and the Great Recession of 2008. Before Trump promised to “make America great again,” Vladimir Putin vowed to “bring Russia off its knees.”

“This Is Not Propaganda” explores not just the cutting-edge disinformation campaigns that are shaping our reality, but the ways our politics and information systems reinforce one another, creating a world in which “nothing is true and everything is possible.” It’s also a moving memoir about his parents’ flight from the Soviet Union in the in the 1970s and the evolving nature of censorship.

Over the phone, we discussed the future of free speech, the internet’s potential threats to liberal democracy and the meaning of Brexit, among other topics. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Jacob Sugarman: If I can speak for Truthdig, I’d say that the publication takes an absolutist position on free speech. How do you believe recent authoritarian regimes and right-wing movements have weaponized that basic principle?

Peter Pomerantsev: The U.S. is really at the vanguard of this particular species of exploitation, where the far right [routinely] claims its speech is being stifled because it’s not allowed to say that black people are genetically inferior to whites. But I think people are maybe less familiar with how authoritarian regimes employ the same tactics. Instead of trying to constrict speech, which was the whole idea of censorship in the 20th century, they now attempt to drown out through noise. This is a new form of control, less policing the space and more about flooding it with bullshit, whether through cybermilitias or troll armies.

Russia kind of pioneered this in 2010, and it’s something that authoritarian governments and liberal democracies have in common now. So when opposition journalists in the Philippines or Mexico say, “But, hold on. This is untrue,” the answer is always, “This is a new form of expression.” Putin, [to use one example], calls them “concerned citizens or concerned businessmen.” It’s a way to subvert genuine critics. [We like to tell ourselves] that in the marketplace of ideas, better information will win out against worse information. But like so many simplistic, market-based metaphors, it’s not necessarily true. Just as you can break the actual market with junk bonds, you can mess up the free speech market with junk news.

JS: Do you believe that the internet is fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy, or do the threats it poses, if we want to call them threats, stem from the way the web is structured and regulated? In other words, do we have a crisis of disinformation or simply one of capitalism?

PP: That’s a very good point. Certainly the way the internet has been shaped, the basic logic of it, has summoned up a certain type of politics—let’s put it that way. The way social media works at the moment is that you are rewarded for polarization and scandalization—that’s what generates clicks for ads. This is already true of television and the media, let’s be honest, but the internet just takes it to a different level. It’s almost as though the web has summoned politicians like [Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo] Salvini. The lack of trust and polarization it produces is causing democracies to break down, and that’s kind of the big trend everywhere.

The people whose job it is to fix that, to create public discourse, are going to have to ignore financial gain. It’s got to be some kind of civic or public actor, but probably not a state actor because we don’t want states dictating what media can and can’t be published. As a European, I do not consider this an inherently anti-capitalist idea or rather one that can’t exist side by side with more ad-based approaches. Maybe for Americans it is, and that’s kind of sad, that irony. In Britain, we have the BBC, which doesn’t carry ads but can still compete with commercial television. But the internet is currently designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, a very crass idea of human desire. Clicks, shares, narcissism. Largely narcissism. It could be designed in a different way, and companies could reorient their algorithms.

JS: It’s just not clear to me that these companies ever will, short of the government breaking them up or making them public. I think we’ve seen that over the last couple of years with Facebook. Maybe you disagree.

PP: Well, it’s happening in Europe. The problem is a lot of nations have been very stupid and reactive so far. But they’re trying to make these companies more transparent, to [impact] how the algorithms work. It’s not very complicated. In Britain, we have a regulator whose job it is to make sure that there is enough fairness and balance on TV and the radio. So if the regulator sees there’s a lack of it, it will help support public service media. I wonder what that means in an Instagram age. I wonder whether that means supporting bodies in media whose aims are not just clicks [and] shares but to construct a dialogue. Maybe that’s a way in, to even up the pages. So I think we’ll get there in Europe; it’s just a question of not putting in bad regulation first. America is just, you know, mad. The problems are so obvious, and I don’t know exactly what’s going to fix them.

JS: Obviously the delivery systems have evolved, but are these disinformation campaigns themselves really anything new? What is the difference, to your mind, between manufacturing consent, which Noam Chomsky identified decades ago, and manufacturing consensus, which is something you explore in the book?

PP: They’re actually very similar things. So [German political scientist] Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, who’s a very important person in the study of media effects, came up with the [theory] of “the spiral of silence,” which is basically the idea that most people cleave to the majority and their attitudes to fit it. It’s a very glum view of humanity, and one that [makes more sense] when you go into her own story. She had sort of gone along with Nazi Germany, so in some ways, she was talking about herself. But her theory is one that has been borne out by a certain amount of social science and research. In a way, we’re kind of replicating that [on the internet]. This is [yet another] iteration of an old psychological principle.

What’s new is that where before the media was [used to exert] ideological dominance and control, now that’s impossible. It’s very hard to have full hegemony over the internet. Increasingly, the approach is to listen to people and sync your agenda [accordingly]. The more people talk on social media, the more they reveal about themselves and the easier they are to manipulate. During the 20th century, self-expression was a way of standing up to power. Now it isn’t necessarily, and I think that is a big change.

JS: But aren’t there certain limits to the efficacy of these influence operations? In Argentina, where I’m based, President Mauricio Macri just lost a primary election by 15 points amid a deep recession. And while his party has repeatedly denied the claim, Macri has been tied to Cambridge Analytica, the data-mining firm behind the Brexit and Trump campaigns. Jair Bolsonaro, who helped radicalize Brazil via WhatsApp, has similarly seen his approval ratings collapse following a series of corruption scandals. Don’t these governments eventually collide with physical reality?

PP: I confess I don’t know much about Latin America, so I don’t want to say something foolish, but the fall [of these governments] doesn’t mean the government that replaces them will be stable either. I think the nature of these campaigns is that they can’t hold very long. They’re situational. Take the Five Star party in Italy. In many ways, it was a digital movement; it galvanized [voters], and then it fell apart very quickly.

The Brexit campaign [in the U.K.] won because it was so heterogenous, and the Conservative Party made the false assumption that it was all about nationalism and immigration. That was one of the reasons [people voted leave], but it wasn’t the only one. They’ve focused on a single issue, and they haven’t done very well. We see the same thing with Trump in the U.S. Democrats are trying to trap him in that white nationalist space, and he’s [constantly] moving towards and away from it again, because he knows he can win if he holds onto suburban moms. That’s sort of the game.

JS: I’m glad you brought up Brexit, as one of its campaign’s central claims was an outright fiction. Where do you ultimately place it in this larger global crisis, and what do you think someone like [British political strategist] Dominic Cummings actually wants?

PP: Part of Brexit is Britain’s 500-year-old schizophrenic relationship with Europe, and its notion of its own exceptionalism. That goes all the way back to Henry VIII and maybe Henry V, to the Shakespeare we’re brought up with in school, so [in some ways] this is a very old story. But you’re right that the “leave” campaign was something new. Cummings, who led leave, is interesting, because he’s very focused on digital. He basically thinks everything from the 20th century, from our parties to our systems of governance, are completely [outdated], and that when the next big crisis hits, the British and European governments of slow, representative democracy and broadcast media are just not ready. He’s not so great at articulating what comes next, but he’s good at reminding everybody we’re not prepared. Silicon Valley people say very similar things, don’t they? That bureaucracies and the legacy media are ill-suited for the 21st century.

JS: In what ways has Putin’s rule anticipated the West’s own slide into authoritarianism? Why did the future arrive first in Russia, as you argue in the book?

PP: I left Russia in 2010 because I was exhausted of doing interviews in a post-democratic regime, where the idea of truth had been put into so much question that it took away the grounds of criticism. There was no idea of the future, just these weird nostalgias. It was a very liquid approach to ideology; if you weren’t part of an [ever-evolving] majority, then you were battered. I grew exhausted with this kind of politics, and I moved back to London. Several years later, I saw the same pathologies and propaganda come through here. It was both funny and worrying. So I wrote the book to understand why I was seeing various versions of what I saw in Russia. What was the pattern behind this?

Long story short, I don’t think it’s much of a mystery. The paradox is that by losing the Cold War, Russia arrived earlier to the place we’re all arriving now. The necessity for a fact-based political discourse existed in the 20th century because you had various types of enlightenment projects, communism and democratic capitalism, who were each competing over which version of the future was better and more attainable. They needed evidence to show that they were getting there. The Soviets lied all the time, and they had a warped attitude toward reality, but they still had to go through the motions of making themselves sound scientific and fact-based because Marxism-Leninism was a scientific theory of history. They had all these institutes trying to prove that they were doing well, to make their lies sound factual. And as long as [these economic systems] were in competition [with each other], you had a discourse you could engage with, more or less.

So in Russia, communism crashes in ’89 and again in ’91. By ’93, people have lost faith in a caricature of democratic capitalism, but one that was the opposite of the communism they experienced. People are left with a sense that there is no future. They live in a world where all the old identities and certainties have gone, and a new breed of politician starts to find a way to negotiate, to win elections, to sway public opinion in this new place where facts don’t really matter. There’s this kind of liminal release in saying, “Fuck off to facts.” Populism becomes a strategy even before Putin gets on the scene. Politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky are constructing an idea of the people because all the old ideologies of left and right have [collapsed] and they need new ways of formulating coalitions. Conspiracy becomes the defining idiom to explain the world.

JS: Can you explain how the Iraq War and the economic crash of 2008 helped create the conditions for an American society in which “nothing is true and everything is possible,” to borrow you borrowing from Hannah Arendt?

PP: I think Iraq is important in so many ways. In the book, I talk about the power of metaphors and the sight of Lenin and Stalin’s statues being lifted up in ’89. They’re iconic images that say so much about how we’re all moving toward a more democratic world. Then we see Saddam Hussein’s statue torn down in Baghdad, and it doesn’t lead to prosperity and great democracy. It leads to horrific civil war, which kind of negates that imagery. Obama has spoken about the arc of history, but those words probably ring hollow now. And then the 2008 financial crisis undermined the idea [that] we were all moving to a utopia of market-driven globalization.

JS: I keep returning to the question of cause and effect. Is someone like Donald Trump really shaping our reality, or is he just a spectacular manifestation of what the documentarian Adam Curtis calls “hypernormalisation”—the notion that we’re already living in a fake world, where we know the people in power are lying to us, but we simply can’t imagine an alternative?

PP: In my first book, I didn’t use Putin’s name, I just called him “the president.” So I see these politicians as expressions of the structure of media and larger historical narratives. Now, I’m [sympathetic] to the arguments of journalists like Arkady Ostrovsky, who argue that Putin is uniquely talented. I don’t think you can discount these [different] personalities, but I still believe that they tell us something deeper about society and media, which I’m fascinated by, having been a TV producer for my sins.

I know it’s unfashionable to talk about in absolutist terms, but evil will always find a way of expressing itself. What’s interesting to me is the way it expresses itself now—why a Trump is possible rather than what Trump made possible. Let’s be honest: The people elected him. However dodgy his campaign was, there was a demand there. Part of that is because of his career in reality shows, but, as you say, we see variations of him in so many places. So it can’t just be him. There is something more structural going on.

JS: Finally, if words like peace and democracy are slowing being stripped of meaning, how do we begin to claw them back?

PP: That’s a great question. Listen, I think there’s a lot that we need to do. After the fall of communism, we told all these new democracies that to have a democratic information space, you needed freedom of expression, a pluralistic media and public service media. And I think we have to admit that they’ve all taken a bashing. Freedom of expression we’ve discussed; pluralism doesn’t always lead to better debate, it can tumble into hyperpartisan polarization where debate breaks down; while the the idea of the public service has taken a philosophical battering, where you have propagandists in both the U.S. and Russia saying, “Well, there’s no such thing as balance,” or that “objectivity is just a myth bestowed upon us,” in the words of Russia’s top current affairs presenter. This premise is then used to throw editorial standards into the bin.

I do believe there are things we can [achieve] through regulation, not of content but of the companies themselves. At the moment, we don’t understand if something is organic or part of a campaign, or who’s behind these different websites. But we don’t have to [sacrifice] our First Amendment ideals. If anything, I would argue that the closed nature of the means of production on social media is a form of censorship itself. And maybe with greater transparency and an understanding of the dynamics of echo chambers, can we start talking again to each other, rather than [to] somebody who may or may not be a bot.

The Climate Crisis Is Not Your Fault

A few years ago, I had a cupcake problem. I’d go to the cupcake store almost daily and I’d eat at least one cupcake, sometimes more.

At the same time, I wanted to lose weight, or at least stop gaining it. So I kept looking up information about diets and superfoods, just looking for some magical solution to present itself.

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Something like: “The key to weight loss is eating large quantities of parsley every day.” Or turmeric, maybe? Ginger? Garlic? Finally, I realized, there is no magical fix. The problem was the cupcakes.

It’s tempting to look for easy ways to fix big problems by trimming around the edges to avoid making the real changes you don’t want to make. Tempting, but not feasible.

That’s similar to what presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren just said about fixing climate change. She was asked about her position on small changes like banning plastic drinking straws or inefficient light bulbs.

“Give me a break,” she said. “This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to talk about… They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws” when “70 percent of the pollution” comes from “the building industry, the electric power industry, and the oil industry.”

Like my cupcakes, those three industries are the real problem. Banning straws while leaving those three industries in place will make about as much of a dent in the climate as eating two cups of parsley a day while continuing my cupcake habit would have made in my waistline: Not much.

My cupcake habit was a problem, but it was also a symptom of a larger problem. In the end, I got therapy for difficult feelings I was dealing with. Once I took care of my mental health, the emotional eating stopped, and I lost 30 pounds.

Carbon pollution is also a problem as well as a symptom of a larger problem. As Warren pointed out, fossil fuel companies exert too much influence on Washington, preventing us from regulating them in the ways we need to save our climate.

They also hire public relations firms to dupe the public into doubting that the climate crisis is caused by humans — or at least, not by them — and to convince us not to regulate them in a way that would save the planet but cost them money.

We should be looking for win-win solutions to the climate crisis: solutions that create jobs and preserve quality of life and individual freedoms while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.

In order to do that, we need to curb the corrupt influence of polluting industries that are profiting off of carbon emissions while harming the future of our planet. And, when they try to distract us with light bulbs and drinking straws, we can’t allow ourselves to be fooled.

Facebook Still Auto-Generates Islamic State, al-Qaida Pages

WASHINGTON—In the face of criticism that Facebook is not doing enough to combat extremist messaging, the company likes to say that its automated systems remove the vast majority of prohibited content glorifying the Islamic State group and al-Qaida before it’s reported.

But a whistleblower’s complaint shows that Facebook itself has inadvertently provided the two extremist groups with a networking and recruitment tool by producing dozens of pages in their names.

The social networking company appears to have made little progress on the issue in the four months since The Associated Press detailed how pages that Facebook auto-generates for businesses are aiding Middle East extremists and white supremacists in the United States.

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On Wednesday, U.S. senators on the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will be questioning representatives from social media companies, including Monika Bickert, who heads Facebooks efforts to stem extremist messaging.

The new details come from an update of a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the National Whistleblower Center plans to file this week. The filing obtained by the AP identifies almost 200 auto-generated pages — some for businesses, others for schools or other categories — that directly reference the Islamic State group and dozens more representing al-Qaida and other known groups. One page listed as a “political ideology” is titled “I love Islamic state.” It features an IS logo inside the outlines of Facebook’s famous thumbs-up icon.

In response to a request for comment, a Facebook spokesperson told the AP: “Our priority is detecting and removing content posted by people that violates our policy against dangerous individuals and organizations to stay ahead of bad actors. Auto-generated pages are not like normal Facebook pages as people can’t comment or post on them and we remove any that violate our policies. While we cannot catch every one, we remain vigilant in this effort.”

Facebook has a number of functions that auto-generate pages from content posted by users. The updated complaint scrutinizes one function that is meant to help business networking. It scrapes employment information from users’ pages to create pages for businesses. In this case, it may be helping the extremist groups because it allows users to like the pages, potentially providing a list of sympathizers for recruiters.

The new filing also found that users’ pages promoting extremist groups remain easy to find with simple searches using their names. They uncovered one page for “Mohammed Atta” with an iconic photo of one of the al-Qaida adherents, who was a hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. The page lists the user’s work as “Al Qaidah” and education as “University Master Bin Laden” and “School Terrorist Afghanistan.”

Facebook has been working to limit the spread of extremist material on its service, so far with mixed success. In March, it expanded its definition of prohibited content to include U.S. white nationalist and white separatist material as well as that from international extremist groups. It says it has banned 200 white supremacist organizations and 26 million pieces of content related to global extremist groups like IS and al-Qaida.

It also expanded its definition of terrorism to include not just acts of violence attended to achieve a political or ideological aim, but also attempts at violence, especially when aimed at civilians with the intent to coerce and intimidate. It’s unclear, though, how well enforcement works if the company is still having trouble ridding its platform of well-known extremist organizations’ supporters.

But as the report shows, plenty of material gets through the cracks — and gets auto-generated.

The AP story in May highlighted the auto-generation problem, but the new content identified in the report suggests that Facebook has not solved it.

The report also says that researchers found that many of the pages referenced in the AP report were removed more than six weeks later on June 25, the day before Bickert was questioned for another congressional hearing.

The issue was flagged in the initial SEC complaint filed by the center’s executive director, John Kostyack, that alleges the social media company has exaggerated its success combatting extremist messaging.

“Facebook would like us to believe that its magical algorithms are somehow scrubbing its website of extremist content,” Kostyack said. “Yet those very same algorithms are auto-generating pages with titles like ‘I Love Islamic State,’ which are ideal for terrorists to use for networking and recruiting.”

___

Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

Not Everyone Should Stop Eating Meat to Fight Climate Change

Eating less meat is not the way everyone should aim to tackle the climate crisis, a new study says. It is an essential step for many of us, the researchers argue, but in a world racked by malnutrition and hunger it can be only part of the answer to rising temperatures.

But many people in high-income countries will need to make more ambitious cuts in the amount of meat, eggs and dairy products they consume. The reason? People who are under-nourished will need to eat more of these foods to have a hope of healthy lives.

Agriculture and food production produce significant quantities of global carbon emissions, which must fall if we are to meet the UN climate goal of no more than 1.5°C of warming. That means meat consumption must fall.

But US scientists warn that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to the twin challenges of diet and climate. They do not argue against reductions in overall meat consumption. They simply suggest that those who are already well-fed could make the biggest cuts.

Many scientists have concluded that vegetable-rich diets are the healthy option for the planet, although some doubt that the world can provide enough vegetables to feed a growing global population.  A lively debate is the probable outcome.

Martin Bloem is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) and co-author of a study it has produced, published in the journal Global Environmental Change.

For any diet-related climate change solution to be sustainable, he says, it must also address the problems of under-nutrition, obesity, poverty, and economic development. Different countries have different priorities and are at different stages of development, meaning they have different imperatives.

“In many low-and-middle-income countries, the imperative is to ensure people have adequate nutrition”, he writes. “Today, more than 820m people around the world don’t have enough to eat, a number that has risen in recent years (in part due to climate change, as well as conflict).

“Meanwhile, more than a third of all children under five in low-income countries such as India and Malawi are stunted. This means their physical and mental development are impaired because of poor nutrition, with consequences that stretch far into adulthood.”

The World Bank has shown that poor nutrition directly affects countries’ development prospects, not least as a result of the reduced capabilities of working populations, known as “human capital”.

Emissions Will Rise

Obviously poor countries also need to develop policies to tackle the climate emergency. But, Professor Bloem writes, “a top-down diktat that recommends a plant-based diet without taking into account the nutritional needs of vulnerable populations or the availability of certain foodstuffs is neither helpful nor appropriate.

“The fact is that in low-income countries, some people, especially young children, will need to eat more animal products, particularly dairy and eggs, to get adequate protein, vitamins, and minerals. Consequently the diet-related emissions and use of freshwater in these places will have to rise.

“This means that in high-income countries, where people generally have enough to eat (although are not necessarily healthy) the shift towards more plant-forward diets and away from carbon- and water-intensive consumption patterns has to happen faster.”

The authors of the CLF report say that, even in high-income countries, a “one-size-fits all” approach is not necessary. They modelled the climate and freshwater impact of the “typical” diet in 140 countries, and compared it to what they describe as a “healthy baseline” diet and nine “plant-forward” diets, including vegan, vegetarian, and a meat-free day.

They found that a diet where the animal protein comes mainly from low down the food chain, such as insects, small fish and molluscs, has as low an environmental impact as a vegan diet, but generally has more easily digestible micronutrients and proteins.

No Silver Bullet

And eating animal products only once a day (being a “two-thirds vegan”) is in most cases less carbon-intensive than following a traditional vegetarian diet involving dairy products.

The authors say a food’s country of origin can have enormous consequences for climate. For example, one pound of beef produced in Paraguay contributes nearly 17 times more greenhouse gases than one pound of beef produced in Denmark. Often, this disparity is a consequence of the deforestation of land for grazing.

Nutrition and climate change are the subject of two of the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals, which address the full spectrum of development challenges the world faces. Success in attaining these goals by 2030, Professor Bloem says, will require reconciling trade-offs, clashes and compromises.

“There is, sadly, no silver bullet, but our research gives policymakers a tool to address health, economic, and environmental challenges … for example, by setting national dietary guidelines that support efforts to tackle malnutrition, while also charting a sustainable course in terms of emissions and freshwater use.

“There will always be trade-offs. Environmental impact alone cannot be a guide for what people eat; countries need to consider the totality of the nutritional needs, access, and cultural preferences of their residents.”