Chris Hedges's Blog, page 169

The Myth America Tells Itself About Afghanistan

This piece originally appeared on antiwar.com.

Here we go again. The typically underreported non-news of Orwellian America. This week, two more U.S. soldiers – Green Berets – were killed in a firefight with the Taliban in Faryab province, just another hopeless corner of rural Afghanistan. The two posthumously promoted Master Sergeants represented the 15th and 16th American deaths in the country so far this year. Sure, that’s a modest count compared to the bad old days when I and around 100,000 American troops were in-country (2010-12) and annual deaths were thirty times higher. Nonetheless, there are now only some 14,500 US servicemen in Afghanistan, and the indigenous troops are pulling most of the load, so context is relevant. Still, there’s reason for concern. Through just eight months of 2019, more American soldiers have been killed than in any year since 2014 (which was supposed to mark the end of the “combat” mission in Afghanistan).

The latest deaths occurred in the midst of ongoing, and reportedly productive peace talks between the US, the Taliban, and, to a lesser extent, the Kabul-based regime. To his credit, and based especially on his past tweets and public statements, President Donald Trump appears serious in his desire to end the more than eighteen year old indecisive American war in Afghanistan. The peace negotiations and attack resulting in the recent Green Beret deaths, demonstrate that the Taliban is working from a position of strength as they pursue a “talk-and-fight” strategy eerily reminiscent of that of the ultimately victorious North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong elements in America’s previous – and futile – longest war.

It’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, for the US military to “win” in any meaningful sense. That should be obvious as all the empirical evidence, from percentage of districts under government control, to the unsustainable level of Afghan security force casualties, to the record opium bumper crop, points to impending Taliban victory or perpetual stalemate. Nonetheless, by predictably ignoring these nasty, annoying facts, an array of Washington interventionists, ranging from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to retired General David Petraeus, have recently vocally opposed US military withdrawal and criticized Trump’s desire for peace. Two recurring problems best explain this: the establishment’s reflexively anti-anything-Trump bias and the stunning persistence of the interventionists’ tired, old, discredited ideas.

As a veteran of the Afghan War, and a student of that conflict’s trajectory and regional history more generally, I find the prevailing Washington consensus both insulting and intellectually bereft. Leaving aside all the high-level, macro analysis and wealth of available statistics bolstering my pro-withdrawal argument, consider one applicable survey of my own unit’s fruitless efforts – at the height of the Obama “surge” and topped out US troop levels – to pacify rural southern Afghanistan (home base of the Taliban) in 2011-12. Here, despite the best efforts of my own courageous, (mostly) well-intentioned band of some 120 cavalry scouts – and their sacrifice of three lives, several limbs, and dozens of wounds – we hardly moved the needle towards sustainable security, to say nothing of handing power over to the Kabul-based Afghan government.

Back in 2011, though our brigade had flooded in more troops and stationed them further south than the Soviets ever got back in the 1980s in the restive Arghandab Valley of rural Kandahar province, my troops actually controlled only the very square foot they stood upon. Our two tiny Alamo-like outposts were essentially under siege and daily attack. Our ubiquitous and mandated (by higher command) patrols were attacked numerous times daily, often within sight of the bases. Our Afghan Army partners – nearly all of whom hailed from the country’s northern, minority communities and couldn’t even speak the local Pashto language – were largely ineffective, immoral, and seen by the population as nearly as foreign and alien as my own American troopers.

Desperate to break the siege, protect my men, and hold just a bit more ground in the sub-district, I begged command to have my unit be the first conventional outfit to implement the nascent Special Forces program known as Village Stability Operations (VSO). That was army-speak for raising a local militia, arming and paying them, and positioning them (with American advisers) in local villages. Thing is, I, unlike many of my peers, had no illusions about this problematic program. I knew we were empowering local warlords, favoring some tribes over others, and probably even kicking some of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), as we called the militiamen, cash back to the very Taliban they were expected to fight but were often (literally) related to by blood.

Still, it worked. Only in a highly brief, short-term, and, for me, self-serving way. The ALP did help keep the Taliban fighters (usually) out of shooting distance of my bases, probably saved many of my troopers lives, and allowed the majority of my command to sneak out of Dodge with a draw in January 2012 – which, of course, my self-promoting colonel sold as a great “victory.”

Point is, the overall dynamics of power and security hardly changed during our year in the Pashmul sub-district. The ALP we left behind were ultimately just another warlord-led militia in a country littered with locally controlled armed bands. The ALP never reconciled with the distant Kabul regime they’d viewed as an illegitimate puppet government; never truly partnered with the equally foreign (to them) Afghan Army, and continued – in our absence – to strike deals with the local Taliban, with whom they had far more in common, culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and tribally.

In retrospect, B Troop, 4th Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division’s (our full unit name) efforts and sacrifice were essentially quixotic from the first. That we didn’t all realize this at the start reflected the built-in, can-do attitude of military culture and (just maybe) our own intellectual naivety. The whole charade of our tour of duty left me frustrated, angry, and, finally, deeply disoriented and militarily nihilistic. Which is why I find the whole debate over the U.S.-Taliban peace talks a little ridiculous, and very absurd.

The entire debate raging in Washington today, between a national majority exhausted by the war (including, it seems, President Trump) and bipartisan, beltway insider stay-the-course types is, at root, ever so futile. The US military cannot win, cannot even marginally alter the outcome in troubled Afghanistan. The current peace talks retain only the vague potential to save a bit of American bloodshed, which is admirable. Yet the very absurdity of the whole D.C. wrangling is precisely that it doesn’t matter a lick. Whether the rationalists for withdrawal, or chickenhawks for more-of-the-same, win out, the inconvenient truth is the outcomes will differ only negligibly.

Maybe Trump will actually be the one (ironically) to end America’s longest war; maybe he won’t. It’s a toss up, really. But as for life, and what passes for security, in rural Afghanistan, not much will change. The civil war will wage on, the medieval Taliban will generally emerge triumphant, a rather harsh form of sharia law will reign, and women will live like slaves. Thus, when the US military finally does pull out, whether soon or years from now, expect most Americans – and Afghans – to wonder just what it was all for. And they’ll likely find no satisfactory answers…

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

Oklahoma Judge Finds Johnson & Johnson Fueled Opioid Crisis

NORMAN, Okla.—An Oklahoma judge has found Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries helped fuel the state’s opioid drug crisis, ordering the consumer products giant to pay $572 million to help address the problem.

Cleveland County Judge Thad Balkman issued the decision Monday in the nation’s first state trial against the companies accused of contributing to the widespread use of the highly addictive painkillers.

An attorney for the company and its subsidiaries says they will appeal. Sabrina Strong called the judge’s decision “flawed.”

The ruling could help shape negotiations over roughly 1,500 similar lawsuits filed by state, local and tribal governments consolidated before a federal judge in Ohio.

“The opioid crisis has ravaged the state of Oklahoma,” Balkman said before announcing the judgment. “It must be abated immediately.”

Before Oklahoma’s trial began May 28, the state reached settlements with two other defendant groups — a $270 million deal with OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma and an $85 million settlement with Israeli-owned Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

Oklahoma argued the companies and their subsidiaries created a public nuisance by launching an aggressive and misleading marketing campaign that overstated how effective the drugs were for treating chronic pain and understated the risk of addiction. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter says opioid overdoses killed 4,653 people in the state from 2007 to 2017.

Hunter called Johnson & Johnson a “kingpin” company that was motivated by greed. He specifically pointed to two former Johnson & Johnson subsidiaries, Noramco and Tasmanian Alkaloids, which produced much of the raw opium used by other manufacturers to produce the drugs.

On Monday, Hunter said the Oklahoma case could provide a “road map” for other states to follow in holding drugmakers responsible for the opioid crisis.

“That’s the message to other states: We did it in Oklahoma. You can do it elsewhere,” Hunter said. “Johnson & Johnson will finally be held accountable for thousands of deaths and addictions caused by their activities.”

Among those seated in the courtroom on Monday were Craig and Gail Box, whose son Austin was a 22-year-old standout linebacker for the Oklahoma Sooners when he died of a prescription drug overdose in 2011.

One of the attorneys for the state, Reggie Whitten, said he also lost a son to opioid abuse.

“I feel like my boy is looking down,” Whitten said after the judge’s ruling, his voice cracking with emotion.

Oklahoma pursued the case under the state’s public nuisance statute and presented the judge with a plan to abate the crisis that would cost between $12.6 billion for 20 years and $17.5 billion over 30 years. Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson have said that estimate is wildly inflated. The judge’s award would cover the costs of one year of the state’s abatement plan, funding things like opioid use prevention and addiction treatment.

Attorneys for the company have maintained they were part of a lawful and heavily regulated industry subject to strict federal oversight, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, during every step of the supply chain. Lawyers for the company said the judgment was a misapplication of public nuisance law.

Sabrina Strong, an attorney for Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries, said the companies have sympathy for those who suffer from substance abuse but called the judge’s decision “flawed.”

“You can’t sue your way out of the opioid abuse crisis,” Strong said. “Litigation is not the answer.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the cases consolidated before a federal judge in Ohio called the Oklahoma judgment “a milestone amid the mounting evidence against the opioid pharmaceutical industry.”

“While public nuisance laws differ in every state, this decision is a critical step forward for the more than 2,000 cities, counties, and towns we represent in the consolidation of federal opioid cases,” they said in a statement.

Also on Monday, the Kentucky Supreme Court declined to review an earlier ruling, making previously secret testimony from former Purdue Pharma President Rickard Sackler and other documents public. The court record was sealed in 2015 as part of a $24 million settlement between Purdue and Kentucky.

The 17 million pages of documents were being shipped Monday from Frankfort to Pike County, where the case originated. The Pike County Circuit Court Clerk’s office could not immediately say how and when they would be available.

Dissent Is Being Criminalized Right Under Our Noses

Many of us are deeply concerned about the recent wave of mass shootings and hate crimes that have taken place across the United States. As the Department of Justice reported, in 2018 alone there were 25 race-based terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, each committed by an alleged white supremacist. Immediate action is needed to address this crisis and tragedies like the Aug. 3 shooting in El Paso, Texas.

So I read with interest a recent press release of Rep. Michael McCaul—the Republican incumbent in the Texas 10th Congressional District and my opponent in the 2018 election—in which he announced a new bill to respond to domestic terrorism.

My hopes for reasonable legislation were quickly dashed, however, and replaced by deep concern.

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The proposed bill would create a broad definition of “domestic terrorism” to include any attempt to “affect” or “influence” government policy or actions. And it would include property damage—even attempted property damage—as a terrorist act subject to a 25-year prison sentence.

In other words, if you opposed the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock and wanted the government to revoke the pipeline permit, you might be considered a terrorist.

If you painted “Black Lives Matter” on a wall to advocate against police violence, that could be terrorism, too.

And if you threw a rock at a bank window to take a stand against the 1% —even if you missed—you could spend half your life in a federal prison.

So far as I can tell, McCaul and his co-sponsors are taking advantage of a moment of profound insecurity to advance a bill that will criminalize dissent.

A Close Reading

The full bill is less than four pages, and would accomplish three main things: 1) define the “intent” necessary to commit a crime of domestic terrorism; 2) identify five sets of qualifying offenses; and 3) punish unsuccessful “attempts” and “conspiracies” to commit these offenses.

The definition of “intent” shows the bill’s sweeping impact, far beyond responding to recent mass shootings.

In regard to five criminal offenses, an act is “domestic terrorism” if is performed “with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence, affect, or retaliate against the policy or conduct of a government.”

As a civil rights lawyer, I’m trained to look for vague language, because that is often the gravest threat to constitutional rights. Here, federal prosecutors could charge terrorism if actions might “affect” or “influence” a government policy. This is an extremely broad definition of terroristic intent.

Five crimes are included in the bill’s broad definition of domestic terrorism: murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, simple assault and property damage. With respect to the crimes against people, these are already punishable under existing state and federal law, although the bill would impose longer sentences, such as 30 years for assault. Property damage would result in a 25-year sentence, far beyond the bounds of any state vandalism law.

The final key aspect of the bill has to do with how it treats unsuccessful attempts and conspiracies: “Attempts or conspiracies to commit an offense … shall be punished in the same manner as a completed act of such offense.” In other words, don’t even find yourself in the same room as someone contemplating political property damage—or you can be deemed a terrorist, too.

Context: Standing Rock and “Antifa”

The bill includes the word “conveyance” in its definition of property damage, which is a signal that the Standing Rock protests were likely a consideration.

On the same day as McCaul’s press release, The Intercept reported that American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers is lobbying to enact legislation that will enhance criminal penalties for any pipeline damage. With the support of the American Legislative Exchange Council, it has enacted laws in nine states. Oklahoma, for example, created a crime punishable by up to 10 years in jail for damage to a pipeline—again, far beyond existing federal penalties.

The McCaul bill mirrors this approach, and creates major federal crimes for property damage connected to a political cause.

For all of the crimes in question, from murder to vandalism, existing penal codes give prosecutors ample room to bring cases. Nothing is stopping federal authorities from charging mass shooters with hate crimes or crimes of violence and seeking sentences up to and including life in prison and the death penalty.

But there is currently no law that would empower federal prosecutors to charge protesters with major federal crimes for property damage caused during a protest.

While this bill is rolled out, President Trump is ranting daily against “antifa” (i.e., anti-fascists). Recent news footage showed clashes in Portland, Ore., between white supremacist groups and anti-fascist demonstrators. Were those confrontations tantamount to domestic terrorism? The McCaul bill would give federal prosecutors near blanket authority to charge either group with terrorist charges. And Trump has already made clear which group he would focus on.

There are countless examples of protest activity that McCaul would open to terrorism charges. As for Bree Newsome Bass, who scaled a flagpole in Charleston, S.C., to remove a Confederate flag? She’d be considered a terrorist. Students at Duke University who toppled a Confederate monument? Also terrorists.

Under this definition, the Boston Tea Party itself was a terrorist act: “Property damage, with the intent to influence a government policy.”

This is not the way we reduce mass shootings in America. This is not a tool to confront white supremacist attacks. Rather, this is an open invitation to trample the Constitution and give free reign to a dictatorial regime.

Mike Siegel is a former public school teacher and civil rights lawyer. He was the 2018 Democratic nominee in the Texas 10th Congressional District. He is running again in 2020.

Bolsonaro’s Horrific Plans for the Amazon Revealed in Leaked Presentation

Fires continue to engulf the Amazon rainforest at record-breaking rates. As Rosana Villar of Greenpeace, who toured the damage with reporters, told CNN, “This is not just a forest that is burning. This is almost a cemetery. Because all you can see is death.” When the Group of Seven countries pledged to send tens of millions of dollars to help fight the fires during their meeting Monday, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro scoffed at the $20 million from G-7, plus $11 million from Canada, and according to the Associated Press, accused the wealthy countries of treating his own like a “colony.”

But as leaked documents recently published by OpenDemocracy.org reveal, Bolsonaro may not be as angry about the damage to the region as he appears. Reporter Manuella Libardi wrote last week that a PowerPoint presentation, leaked by an unnamed source to Open Democracy’s Latin American arm democraciaAbierta, indicated Bolsonaro planned to use his hate speech to isolate minorities living in the region and “[revealed] plans to implement predatory projects that could have a devastating environmental impact.”

The administration, according to the document, wanted to use the developments to “occupy” the land and prevent planned conservation projects. As one slide reads:

Development projects must be implemented on the Amazon basin to integrate it into the rest of the national territory in order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of the so-called ‘Triple A’ project. To do this, it is necessary to build the Trombetas River hydroelectric plant, the Óbidos bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation of the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname.

Before the hydroelectric plant, the highway or the bridge are built, however, “the strategy begins with rhetoric,” according to another slide. Libardi adds that “Bolsonaro’s hate speech already shows that the plan is working. The Amazon is on fire. It’s been burning for weeks and not even those who live in Brazil were fully aware.”

The document also shows that Brazil’s plan to isolate the Amazon also included attacking nonprofit organizations, such as conservation groups. One slide references a globalist strategy that “relativizes the National Sovereignty in the Amazon Basin,” that uses both pressure from foreign governments and what the document calls “psychological oppression” by people within Brazil. As Libardi explains:

“The conspiracy also encourages minorities – mainly indigenous and quilombola (residents of settlements founded by people of African origin who escaped slavery) – to act with the support of public institutions at the federal, state and municipal levels. The result of this movement, they say in the presentation, restricts ‘the government’s freedom of action.’”

Libardi points out that given the tone of the PowerPoint, it’s not surprising that Bolsonaro has accused international non-governmental nonprofit organizations of starting the fires “to draw attention against me, against the government of Brazil.”

Read the presentation here.

 

The Amazon Fires Have Upended the Climate Fight as We Know It

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

Next month, California regulators will decide whether to support a plan for tropical forest carbon offsets, a controversial measure that could allow companies like Chevron, which is headquartered there, to write off some of their greenhouse gas emissions by paying people in countries like Brazil to preserve trees. The Amazon rainforest has long been viewed as a natural testing ground for this proposed Tropical Forest Standard, which, if approved, would likely expand to countries throughout the world.

Now that record fires are engulfing the Amazon, started by humans seeking to log, mine and farm on the land, supporters are using the international emergency to double down on their case for offsets. The Environmental Defense Fund posted a petition urging that state officials endorse the standard: “The people — and wildlife — who call the Amazon home are running for their lives,” it said. “The entire world is counting on [the board] taking action.” Ivaneide Bandeira Cardozo, who helped manage a Brazilian offset project that was derailed by illegal logging, said, “People who are against carbon credits are not suffering and don’t want to keep the forest standing.”

But the devastating blaze encapsulates a key weakness of offsets that scientists have been warning about for the past decade: that they are too vulnerable to political whims and disasters like wildfires. As a recent ProPublica investigation noted, if you give corporations a pass to pollute by saying their emissions are being canceled out somewhere else, you need a way to guarantee that continues to be the case.

Because carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for about 100 years, protected forests must remain intact for a century to offset the pollution; this requirement is written into the Tropical Forest Standard. That plan can go up in smoke the moment a country elects a president like Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in Brazil in January and de-funded environmental agencies, cut back on enforcement and encouraged the clearing of the Amazon for beef and soy production. Indigenous communities who live in the Amazon report a surge of intruders mining and logging on their land.

People have always exploited the forest illegally, “but in the last few months, it has increased significantly,” said Camões Boaventura, a federal prosecutor in the Brazilian state of Pará. Meanwhile, he said, environmental officials are struggling to pay for the gas they need to drive around enforcing regulations. Gisele Bleggi, a federal prosecutor in Rondônia, said Bolsonaro didn’t have to change a single environmental law to encourage deforestation. “Once you stop giving money for surveillance … the system it protects will collapse.”

One of the biggest sources of funding for the rainforest, the Amazon Fund, was suspended after Norway and Germany withdrew support worth $72 million. The fund has provided more than $1 billion over the past decade and is contingent on minimizing deforestation, but it doesn’t provide offsets that allow others to pollute. The countries suspended their payments amid a recent spike in deforestation and after Bolsonaro interfered with how the money would be used. In early August, Bolsonaro fired the head of the space agency after it released data showing rising deforestation.

The Amazon fires also showcase a second hurdle in making offsets work: For them to be a valid reflection of how much pollution is being canceled out, the math needs to be accurate. This accounting is especially hard to do after wildfires, because they stifle a forest’s regrowth far more than previously estimated. Scientists are just starting to understand this impact, which is hard to quantify and has led the Amazon’s carbon content to be overestimated, creating the potential to give offsets more credit than they’re worth.

This month, California state Sen. Bob Wieckowski urged the state’s Air Resources Board to reject the Tropical Forest Standard because it “risks producing a landslide of false credits.” His letter referenced ProPublica’s reporting and academic research that cited the challenges of ensuring credits are real. His letter followed an earlier one from California lawmakers who cautiously supported the standard but told the board to exercise “vigorous and proactive monitoring” to ensure offsets are valid.

Jeff Conant, who directs the international forests program at the advocacy group Friends of the Earth, said Brazil absolutely “should receive some money from the global north,” but not as offsets that give companies a “loophole” to continue emitting carbon. Conant said the offsets debate has been “a distraction” from what he considers the real solution: strong regulations and keeping fossil fuels in the ground. “We’ve been saying for over a decade that we need regulation, we need demand-side measures, we need to take responsibility for our own consumption up here in the north,” he said.

Both the Environmental Defense Fund and Conant support a California assembly bill designed to ensure the state government doesn’t buy paper, furniture or other forest products made from deforestation in the tropics. Companies with state contracts would need to certify that their products didn’t destroy sensitive ecosystems like the Amazon.

In Brazil, experts widely credit regulations as the driving force that brought deforestation to a record low in 2012; then, the federal government relaxed its stringent rules and enforcement, and it began to creep up, years before Bolsonaro took office. Brazil is “going backwards in the bigger picture,” said Matthew Hansen, a satellite and mapping expert at the University of Maryland. “I think that’s the bigger story.”

The wildfires have worsened fears that the Amazon is being pushed toward a tipping point where it will turn into a savanna, with devastating consequences for climate change and ecosystems. Luiz Aragão, who heads the remote sensing division at Brazil’s space agency, said 2019 has seen the highest number of fires since 2010, and it’s just the start of the fire season, which ends in November. He said the human-set fires — which were almost all started on agricultural or newly cleared land — will spread into healthy, intact areas of the rainforest, and it will take time to figure out how much of the forest is burned. There are no reports yet that any of the offset projects located in the Amazon are on fire.

Many supporters of offsets, including Cardozo, who runs an indigenous rights organization in Rondônia, also support more traditional conservation aid like the Amazon Fund, but they say offsets are necessary because rich countries aren’t willing to provide enough funding to preserve forests without getting something in return.

As global leaders discussed the Amazon over the weekend at the G7 meeting and pledged $22 million to help fight the fires, prosecutors in Brazil are eyeing measures they can take even in the face of a hostile presidential administration. Boaventura, who works for the Public Ministry, a powerful independent federal agency, said his team is investigating the role that Bolsonaro and national environmental agencies have had on increasing deforestation and fires.

“Once this link is proven, we want to hold the agencies and authorities that justified this destructive action against society accountable,” Boaventura said.

G-7 Pledges Funds to Fight Amazon Fires; Bolsonaro Questions Motives

PORTO VELHO, Brazil—The Group of Seven nations on Monday pledged tens of millions of dollars to help Amazon countries fight raging wildfires, even as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused rich countries of treating the region like a “colony.”

The pledge by rich countries included $20 million from the G-7 and a separate $11 million from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canada has also offered to send firefighting planes to Brazil.

The funds were widely seen as a relatively small amount for dealing with an environmental crisis of such scale, and it was unclear how exactly the money would be administered on the ground. Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, said the aid was welcome and that Brazil should decide how the resources are used.

The international pledges came despite tensions between European countries and the Brazilian president, who suggested the West was angling to exploit Brazil’s natural resources.

“Look, does anyone help anyone … without something in return? What have they wanted there for so long?” he said to journalists outside the presidential palace.

Bolsonaro has insulted adversaries and allies, disparaged women, black and gay people, and even praised his country’s 1964-1985 dictatorship. But nothing has rallied more anger at home and criticism from abroad than his response to the fires raging in parts of the Amazon region.

The populist Brazilian leader initially questioned whether activist groups might have started the fires in an effort to damage the credibility of his government. Bolsonaro has called for looser environmental regulations in the world’s largest rainforest to spur development.

In response, European leaders threatened to block a major trade deal with Brazil that would benefit the very agricultural interests accused of driving deforestation.

The impact of the fires and smoke has disrupted life for many in the Amazon region. The airport in Porto Velho, the capital of Rondonia state, was closed for more than an hour Monday morning because of poor visibility. On Sunday, a soccer match of a lower-tier national league was briefly suspended because of smoke in Rio Branco, capital of Acre state, as fire burned in a field outside the stadium.

In Para state, where fires have swept many areas, resident Moacir Cordeiro said he was worried about their impact on nature and his health. Smoke rose from nearby trees as he spoke.

“I don’t think there are enough people to extinguish the fires,” said Cordeiro, who lives in the Alvorada da Amazonia region. He said it was difficult to breath at night because of the smoke.

Another man, Antonio de Jesus, was also worried.

“Nature shouldn’t be killed off like that,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday continued his feud with Bolsonaro, who has endorsed a Facebook post insulting Macron’s wife. Macron accused the Brazilian leader of skipping a scheduled meeting with the French foreign minister in favor of a barber appointment and reiterated that Bolsonaro had lied to him.

“It’s sad. First for him and for the Brazilians,” Macron said.

Brazilian women “are doubtless ashamed to read that about their president,” he said, adding that he hoped the country would soon have a president who could behave according to the standards of the office.

Bolsonaro, in turn, referred to Macron’s “ludicrous and unnecessary attacks on the Amazon” and accused the French leader of treating the region “as if we were a colony.”

Thousands of people have demonstrated in cities across Brazil and outside Brazilian embassies around the world. #PrayforAmazonia has become a worldwide trending topic.

Bolsonaro has announced he would send 44,000 soldiers to help battle the blazes, which mostly seem to be charring land deforested, perhaps illegally, for farming and ranching rather than burning through stands of trees.

The move was welcomed by many critics, but some say it’s not enough and comes too late.

In violating environmental agreements, Brazil has been discredited and “unable to exercise any type of leadership on the international stage,” said Mauricio Santoro, an international relations professor at Rio de Janeiro State University.

Brazilian military planes began dumping water on fires in the Amazon state of Rondonia over the weekend, and a few hundred of the promised troops were deployed into the fire zone. But many Brazilians again took to the streets in Rio de Janeiro and other cities Sunday to demand the administration do more.

Critics say the large number of fires this year has been stoked by Bolsonaro’s encouragement of farmers, loggers and ranchers to speed efforts to strip away forest. Although he has now vowed to protect the area, they say it is only out of fear of a diplomatic crisis and economic losses.

Meeting at a summit in France, the G-7 leaders announced they have agreed to an immediate $20 million fund to help Amazon countries fight wildfires and launch a long-term global initiative to protect the rainforest.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country and others will talk with Brazil about reforestation in the Amazon once the fires have been extinguished.

Even so, Germany and Norway recently cut tens of millions of dollars in donations to Brazilian forestry projects, saying Bolsonaro’s administration isn’t committed to curbing deforestation.

Fires are common during Brazil’s dry season, but the numbers surged this year. The country’s National Space Research Institute, which monitors deforestation, has recorded more than 77,000 wildfires in Brazil this year, a record since the institute began keeping track in 2013. That is an 85% rise over last year, and about half of the fires have been in the Amazon region — with more than half of those coming just in the past month.

“The government created a sense of impunity among farmers who were willing to commit illegal acts to deforest,” said Rómulo Batista, a member of Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazonia Campaign.

Batista said plant and animal species are under threat, people living in the Amazon region are suffering respiratory problems and “the rise in deforestation can completely alter the rain patterns by region and devastate agriculture, even in South America.”

Brazil’s federal police agency announced Sunday that it would investigate reports that farmers in Para state had called for “a day of fire” on Aug. 10 to ignite fires. Local media said a group organized the action over WhatsApp to show support for Bolsonaro’s efforts to loosen environmental regulations.

___

Associated Press journalists Anna Kaiser in Rio de Janeiro, Leo Correa in Alvorada da Amazonia, Brazil, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Sylvie Corbet and Lori Hinnant in Biarritz, France, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

What the Right Gets Embarrassingly Wrong About Slavery

Four hundred years after the event, the New York Times has published a special project focusing on the first Africans arriving in 1619 at Point Comfort, Virginia, and the legacy of slavery in the U.S.

“No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed,” the introduction said.

While there has been much praise for the project’s recasting of American history, it has been given a chilly reception by others. These critics, including former top GOP legislator Newt Gingrich, attempt to dismiss the significance of the “20 and odd” Africans who arrived in 1619 and the 12.5 million other African people who were sold into the transatlantic slave trade.

“The whole project is a lie,” Gingrich said.

Statements such as one in an article by Joshua Lawson – “By A.D. 1619, slavery had existed for more than 5,000 years, dating back at least to Mesopotamia” – are akin to the recurring social media mantra over recent years that America shouldn’t be blamed, it didn’t invent slavery, and that it’s been around forever.

Screenshot of John Birch Society tweet from Nov. 3, 2016.

Twitter

Similarly, social media comments often expresses ideas like: “Who captured them and sold them into slavery in the first place? It was their own people, black people.”

These arguments may sound reasonable because they have a sliver of truth. But as a historian of the African diaspora, I know these characterizations oversimplify the complex history of the slave trade and discourage important conversations about, and an understanding of, American history.

Selling the enemy

First, Africa was not, and is not, a country. Long before the Portuguese made their way to Angola in 1483, to start what became the transatlantic slave trade, African kingdoms, queendoms and empires had long occupied and ruled different parts of the continent, which is close to 12 million square miles.

These centuries-old civilizations were ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse. Wars were common, as in every other continent, and the people sold to European traders beginning in the 1490s were mostly prisoners of war, not allies.

Five generations of slaves on Smith’s Plantation, Beaufort, S.C., in 1862.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Timothy H. O’Sullivan photo

It is true that slavery has been around for thousands of years. But the chorus of social media commentary tries to remove any blame from the country’s forefathers for the American version of the institution and its devastating consequences.

They are correct in their statement that slavery has been around for millennia, and that America did not invent it. But it lacks context and substance that is critical to understanding our nation’s history.

Race-based slavery

Moreover, African traders were not aware of the distinct form of slavery that was to develop in the colonies – one that wed skin color to class in ways never seen before, as it became a distinct product of the trade. That form was drastically different from the African “Old World” models.

Old World slavery was characterized by a more fluid status. The enslaved could own property and legally marry, and their children were not automatically enslaved. Slaves were often criminals, or victims of religious wars. More specifically, slavery in Africa was not a life term, nor was it inherited. The Old World models were more like an indenture, where there was a term of labor to be paid, and then freedom would be granted.

This was nothing like the race-based chattel slavery that grew with the transatlantic trade, which guaranteed a lifetime term and the further enslavement of one’s children.

Almost the entire 12.5 million captured Africans were brought to the Americas as enslaved, not indentured people. Although there are a few exceptions, those few are not representative. European criminals and poor people often held indentured status, and most migrated to the Americas by choice. Those first “20 and odd” Africans were captives, and did not choose their destiny. These are some of the striking differences between European and African laborers.

The legacy of race-based chattel slavery produced distinct trauma over many generations. Its history and legacy of sustained inequality is exceptional.

Race was invented by European colonists to provide an excuse for the systematic oppression of African-descendant people. Race was used to categorize different groups of people based on skin color, and to stratify the different groups into distinct class structures.

The millions of enslaved men, women and children were sold into a land where their skin color became a brand that kept them, and all of their children, enslaved for generations.

“New World” slavery reflected nothing of Old World slavery, and everything of the racial caste system that took hold in the colonies, all in the effort to build both capitalism and colony.

Taking blame from the buyer of slaves, and placing it on the seller, distorts history. Similarly, the history and legacy of Old World slavery and race-based chattel slavery are not parallel.

The United States of America was built on grand ideas of freedom, equality and justice for all. It was also built mostly from the unpaid labor of enslaved African and African American people.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter. ]

Kelley Fanto Deetz, Lecturer in American Studies, University of Virginia

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

Harvey Weinstein Faces New Sex-Assault Charges, Delaying Trial

NEW YORK—Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty to a new indictment Monday that includes revised charges of predatory sexual assault, a development that caused the judge to delay the start of his trial until early next year.

The change to the case was intended to open the door for an actress to testify against Weinstein in a rape and sexual assault trial that had been scheduled to start on Sept. 9.

Weinstein mostly kept quiet during a brief appearance in a Manhattan courtroom aside from some exchanges with Judge James Burke, who at one point scolded him for pulling out his cell phone during the proceeding.

After the judge agreed with defense lawyers that the trial needed to be put off so they could have time to respond to the revised charges, he told them the new trial date of Jan. 6 was firm. To make the point, he stared at the defendant and asked, “Mr. Weinstein, do you want to go to trial?”

“Not really,” Weinstein quipped.

Weinstein, 67, who’s free on $1 million bail, has denied all accusations of non-consensual sex.

After the hearing, his attorneys said they would ask the judge to dismiss the indictment, which they called a “desperate” attempt to salvage the case.

“I think the case itself is weak,” said his lawyer Donna Rotunno.

Weinstein previously pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of raping a woman in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006.

The case remains about those two women, but prosecutors said the new indictment was needed to allow a third woman, Annabella Sciorra, to testify. Sciorra, who is best known for her work on “The Sopranos,” says Weinstein raped her inside her Manhattan apartment after she starred in a film for his movie studio in 1993.

Prosecutors can’t charge Weinstein with the alleged attack on Sciorra because it took place too long ago to be prosecuted under state law, but they want to use her testimony to prove that Weinstein had a pattern of assaulting women. That’s necessary to prove the charge of predatory sexual assault.

Sciorra’s lawyer, Gloria Allred, said her client was willing to tell her story to bring Weinstein to justice. She criticized the defense team for saying they would try to get the testimony barred.

“Why are they so afraid of having additional witnesses testify?” she said.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but Sciorra went public with her story in a story in The New Yorker in October 2017.

Court papers unsealed on Monday indicate that, in addition to Sciorra, prosecutors plan to call three other women as witnesses to try to demonstrate a pattern of “prior bad acts” by Weinstein.

The papers don’t identify the women but cite a time and location — Feb. 19, 2013, at a Beverly Hills hotel — that appear to correspond to news accounts about an unnamed Italian actress and model who alleged in a 2017 interview that Weinstein raped her in her hotel room.

Separately, defense attorneys have asked an appeals court to move the trial out of New York City because a “circus-like atmosphere” there fueled by news reports and social media posts. It’s unclear when the court will take up the request.

America’s Water Crisis Goes Way Beyond Flint

What follows is a conversation between professor As`ad AbuKhalil and Sharmini Peries of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

BISHOP JETHRO JAMES: The Governor’s home, I’ve been there. If this was in his neighborhood, they’d be digging up the streets now, changing the pipes going in. To say to poor people, “Stand in the hot sun.” To say to poor people, “You’re going to get two cases with 24 bottles in it, and I’ll see you next week” is really asinine. Governor, your actions is speaking louder than your words.

MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you all with us.

Newark is the latest community to grab the headlines about the ravages of lead poisoning. Newark, Flint, Baltimore, South Bend, Indiana, across this nation, there are at least 3,000 communities with lead poisoning rates that double Flint’s, that match well beyond Newark’s, but they’re not in the headlines. Each time this comes to our attention, most state governments seem to understand that these are public health emergencies. Most of these communities are also ravaged by poverty, and most are communities of color. And as Reuters reported, there are communities like Goat Island, Texas where over 25% of the children had high levels of lead— to Warren, Pennsylvania on the Allegheny River, mostly white working-class community where 35% had levels too high. And in mostly African American communities, that are devastated by abandonment and poverty in cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, it can be as high as 50% of the people who have been poisoned by lead.

So what is to be done? We are joined by Charles Jackson from the Greater Baltimore Urban League. And Charles, welcome. Good to have you with us.

CHARLES JACKSON: Thank you, Marc. I appreciate you having me.

MARC STEINER: So let’s talk about what your first reactions to these are, I mean this is—We  keep seeing city after city. We’ve known about Baltimore’s fight for dozens of years, for decades, and people have been fighting that in this city as well. But then you had Flint that made the headlines and then it became part of the presidential debate, and Marianne Williamson made that great quote about, “It’s more than just—It’s a public health crisis because we don’t take care of things.” And now we have Newark where they give communities two cases of bottled water and expect people to survive with that, so how deep is this crisis? How would you paint it? Is this a public health emergency for our states, cities, and the nation to kind of wrestle with quickly?

CHARLES JACKSON: It is, and when I look at it from a public health standpoint, built environment is a specific indicator of all health disparities. So when we look at the social determinants of health, where you work, live and play, built environment is one of the major contributors of your wellbeing— of how well you will show up to work if you have a job, how well you will show up to school if you’re a child. And so we look at these things especially with prevention around children and lead paint. Well, if you have a cognitive issues, you can’t function. And we know this exacerbates issues as you get older. So it is, yes, it is a major public health issue.

MARC STEINER: I’m going to come to that. The clip I want to play you, but this is a clip from MSNBC with Brian Williams who was grilling Governor Murphy of New Jersey.

GOVERNOR PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): With an abundance of caution, we have gone aggressively to distributing bottled water, opening up testing to I believe many hundreds of different data points.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC: Do you believe this is a public health crisis?

GOVERNOR MURPHY: It’s a public health challenge for sure. And this notion that we’re doing something differently in Newark that we wouldn’t do elsewhere is completely baseless.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Are you telling me that the folks who are well off in Middletown would be waking up all of these mornings trying to have to scrounge for 16 ounces at a time of clean water for cooking and drinking and all of their daily needs, the same as the folks in Newark are?

GOVERNOR MURPHY: We do nothing different in Middletown that we’re doing in Newark. I promise you that. The other comment I would make is this is an American crisis. We have a big water infrastructure crisis and we need the federal government to step up in a big way.

MARC STEINER: So I mean, the question is when you watch a clip like this—I mean, I think he’s right, the governor. He said at the end of his statement, which is, “This is a national emergency and the government should step up and we shouldn’t hold our breath that this federal government will to step up to anything.” But the reality is that is a public health crisis. So how do – how should governments respond to this, whether it’s Maryland’s government or Missouri’s government or Indiana’s government or New Jersey’s government?

CHARLES JACKSON: So that is the million-dollar question. So it has two prongs. So you said there’s a local approach— and all politics are local— and then there’s the national approach.

MARC STEINER: Right.

CHARLES JACKSON: So one of the things that each jurisdiction has to think about is disaster preparedness before it happens. Prevention before these issues take place. So we for example, so yes, we already know in Baltimore that the lead paint issue is there. And luckily we have a government locally that has a child prevention task force that is specifically working on that. Our numbers have gone down drastically because they have put forth a concerted effort early to work on these issues. But every, every city is not like Baltimore. Every state is not like Maryland. And so if we’re not thinking about this as really a natural disaster waiting to happen, as certain areas are already happening, then we won’t tackle the issue as a crisis. I believe the governor said it’s a challenge. It’s definitely past a challenge in many of these issues, particularly because we’re dealing with people of color and not only people of color, but people who are also poor. And so it’s very interesting when he made the comment that we’re dealing with the issue the same in both places because unfortunately when we’re looking at equity, both places may not have the same exact issue. Both cities, Newark and the second city that he was discussing.

MARC STEINER: So when you look at this, do you see it as a challenge as the governor said, or do you see it as an emergency? I mean, when you’re talking – because what we’re facing here are communities, old communities that were built with lead paint that were built with lead pipes going into the house, and they’re still happening in places like Baltimore that kids are being poisoned by lead every day. So it hasn’t been resolved. So do you see this as a public health emergency?

CHARLES JACKSON: It is definitely a public health emergency because again, all of these things compound on top of each other. So if you’re in a built environment that is full of lead paint or water that’s full of lead, you’d send children to school, they have cognitive issues. Sometimes it’s been shown, studies talk about children who have lead issues also have disciplinary issues. This now affects possibly the political, justice issues that take place in the city. So it’s not just, again, I know he said the word challenge, but in my opinion it’s a crisis.

MARC STEINER: Let’s pick up on what you just said and we had this clip that was done in an interview here at The Real News with Dr. Lawrence Brown who’s come to The Real News numerous times, interviewed here about this lead crisis a little while back, and I think he pointed out some of what you’re saying here. Let’s watch what Lawrence Brown had to say. He’s Associate Professor of Health over at Morgan State University.

DR. LAWRENCE BROWN: You know, these impacts that have been mentioned are very disconcerting. You know, lead impacts everything from cognitive impairment, behavioral issues, and creates that – the propensity towards violence is elevated. It’s associated with ADD and ADHD. It’s even associated in some studies with elevated levels of depression disorder and panic disorder. And not only do we have that crisis, which is subsiding, but it’s the low-level lead poisoning below 10 micrograms per deciliter lead in their blood where we could have as many as 200,000 children who have been poisoned since 2000.

MARC STEINER: Which is a lot of children. And we saw – what he said earlier in this narrative was that Freddie Gray, who we all know, we’re all too aware of what that case was. And he had a 36% rate of lead in his blood. And he mentioned several other cases and like that. So I mean, this is so this calls to me. It says there’s a couple of levels here. Let’s talk to them. One has to do with specifically with this: if we know that a lot of the children who were poisoned by lead have cognitive issues, that leads to lower test scores and difficulty even in staying in school, leads to issues of violence and short tempers because you can’t control your tempers.

I’ve interviewed kids with lead poisoning almost crying because they can’t control when they were angry. They don’t want to be angry and they just, they know it’s going to happen to them. So how do we respond to this? I mean, this is—I mean, we have, what is it? Some people have said between 15% and 50% of the people in prisons are lead poisoned. So how do we respond to this socially and politically?

CHARLES JACKSON: Well—

MARC STEINER: Economically?

CHARLES JACKSON: And so, one of the things that I look at is, okay, there’s prevention, but now what do we do after the fact?

MARC STEINER: Right.

CHARLES JACKSON: And so, I look at the infrastructure. So what rules and regulations are put into place around testing, particularly for children. The second portion of that is, again, looking at the built environment around it. So we really have to look at the infrastructure of how cities are crafted. Where you’re living, this plays a big part, specifically for cities like Baltimore. So if you are in a food desert or healthy food impoverishment zone, as they’re now known as, and there—

MARC STEINER: Healthy food impoverishment [crosstalk]

CHARLES JACKSON: And I’m saying it incorrectly. So I’m sure someone will write in and tell you that, but it’s healthy food zones or something like that. That’s the new term that’s being said. But if in those zones, formerly known as food deserts, if there’s only a fast food restaurant around—

MARC STEINER: Right.

CHARLES JACKSON: That also is an issue because things like healthy foods, fruits and vegetables, leafy greens, actually help rid your system of the lead that’s there. But if you’re already in an older home that has lead issues, and then you’re in a built environment or neighborhood that has no healthy food, we have to look at these things in multiple ways of prevention, but also the built environment in order to work on these issues. And then, looking at the future and around what’s going to take place. We see in older cities that now water is an issue. Well, if the water and the infrastructure is an issue, if you’re not working on it, then you have issues that happened in Newark where bottles of water being passed out and you have to wait another week to get more.

MARC STEINER: So if you are responding to the crisis, let’s say in Newark—

CHARLES JACKSON: Yeah.

MARC STEINER: What should the response be? Two cases of water a week? That’s the response?

CHARLES JACKSON: Cases. Which, that—I’m sorry, I just have a visceral reaction to that because I think about, okay, that’s washing your body and that’s also being able to wash dishes and—

MARC STEINER: The clothes [crosstalk 00:10:41] and having water for you and your children.

CHARLES JACKSON: Exactly. So think about how much water we actually use—

MARC STEINER: Right.

CHARLES JACKSON: On a daily basis.

MARC STEINER: Right.

CHARLES JACKSON: I could go through two cases myself.

MARC STEINER: I’ve had two glasses here before we even started this interview.

CHARLES JACKSON: Exactly. I could go through two cases myself. So in cases like Newark, this is really where everyone will have to work together in order to be able to work on the issue. And sometimes that means also getting outside help. There’s organizations like Black Millennials for Flint. Will Smith’s son has literally put up water filtration systems or water systems in different cities where people can actually go to them. So this is sometimes where I know that cities oftentimes look within, but sometimes it may be a without look as well to be able to really get some of the needs met quickly because cities unfortunately can’t do everything themselves.

MARC STEINER: So, no they can’t. I mean, given where most cities are on this country, and I think that. So what is the – how do you respond to this? What I’m asking specifically is, A, it seems to me you have to do some massive rehabilitation in people’s neighborhoods to get rid of lead and lead paint and the lead pipes, and replace all of those and, and/or move people out into decent housing where they’re not worried about lead paint and lead poisoning. That’s A. And B, they’re the social consequences.

CHARLES JACKSON: Yeah.

MARC STEINER: How much – what do we have to do? What do we have to spend to ensure that young people who are poisoned by lead, as they become adults, are taken care of? I mean these are huge, massive amounts of money for both these things.

CHARLES JACKSON: And unfortunately, when you don’t take care of something beforehand, you have to take care of it afterward and you end up having to spend more money. So I don’t know what that exact number looks like. Each city is different, but you are 100% correct. Newark is going to have to do all of those things in conjunction with each other and governmental organizations and public health organizations and community organizations, faith-based organizations, are really going to have to work together in order to be able to get that information out around what is being done. Transparency, it’s needed. As we’ve seen, it was unfortunately was not the case in Newark. And then also getting—If it’s a public health issue, in my opinion, public health officials should be leading the charge, not those who are not subject matter experts on the issue.

MARC STEINER: So what lessons do you learn from the work you’ve done, for the rest of the country?

CHARLES JACKSON: Oh, goodness. So working around the country, awareness on the local end is key. Now, each disparity is different. I’ve worked— whether it’s been on HIV or immunizations or cancers— always the key has been awareness. Having – letting the public know what the issue is and how to change it. The second portion has always been, once you’ve made people aware of what’s going on, then giving them the opportunity or the space to be able to become healthier. And so in regard to lead, again, we look at, I keep on getting back to it, but that built environment is key. And I know you said something about, can we move people out of their locations—

MARC STEINER: Right.

CHARLES JACKSON: And bring them back? Unfortunately, if we do that, we’ve seen cases in certain cities that when you move people out, they’re not able to come back in once the issue has been fixed because that’s when the gentrification sometimes happens. Because when people see a vacant space and say, well, you know what? This is a space that’s in a nice area. It’s close to downtown. You know what? We need to revitalize this, or urban renewal. So it has to be looked at from an equity lens as well, as what are the needs of those people who are in need right now. And if it’s multiple cities or multiple neighborhoods that are affected, which neighborhood needs are met, excuse me, which neighborhoods have XYZ needs right now?

Because each neighborhood may be different. Again, for example, in Baltimore you may treat Roland Park a little bit differently than you treat Cherry Hill. Needs are not the same.

MARC STEINER: So, you know, just to mention those neighborhoods. It was like where they talked about the Governor of New Jersey. You talked about two Baltimore neighborhoods— Cherry Hill being poor and black, and Roland Park being mostly white and really wealthy— and how we treat these neighborhoods very differently. So are you – what about policy changes to address these issues? I mean, that seems to be the crux of the issue.

CHARLES JACKSON: Yes. I would really like to see, on the local level as well as the federal level, money set aside for research in regard to lead issues. But then also money set aside for implementation around how to make communities aware of the issue and also how to take care of the issue on the back end. Around after you get testing, what are your steps being able to take families through the process of getting their needs met? And each family may be different. So if that is some type of fund specifically for those who have an elevated lead level, then so be it. It has to be on the macro and the micro level in order to be able to take care of this issue. And of course, on the bigger end, cities are going to have to really build up their buildings as well as their water systems in order to stop the issue.

MARC STEINER: Charles Jackson, it’s good to see you. Thanks for dropping by the studio.

CHARLES JACKSON: Thank you.

MARC STEINER: And good to have you with us here at The Real News.

CHARLES JACKSON: Thank you, Marc.

MARC STEINER: And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you for joining us. Let us know what you think. Take care.

Both Democrats and Republicans Profit From Fueling Climate Change

Burning fossil fuels boils our planet — that much is generally well known.

But often these fuels do serious damage before they ever get to market. They spill out of pipelines, poison groundwater, or explode on trains. Even when they don’t, building new pipelines and export terminals helps companies sell more fuel — often of the dirtiest variety, like tar sands — which threatens our planet.

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That’s why strong grassroots movements have cropped up against transporting tar sands oil via the Keystone XL Pipeline and the TransMountain Pipeline.

With those pipelines still running into resistance, investors in Canada’s Athabasca tar sands region are scrambling to get their oil to market by any means necessary — including shipping crude oil by truck across the Canadian border, then transloading it to trains in North Dakota to get it to West Coast ports.

And as a new report produced by the Center for Sustainable Economy reveals, they’re getting some help from friends in high places.

The report examines two unlikely allies in this effort — former Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and billionaire Trump campaign donor Richard A. Kayne. Their intertwined financial interests are going to absurd lengths to get tar sands crude to export terminals in Oregon.

They’re financing two proposed Oregon crude oil terminals — one in the Port of Columbia County, owned by Global Partners, and the other in Portland, owned by Zenith Energy Management. Both terminals are situated in a region that is overdue for a major quake. The Zenith terminal in particular is situated in an earthquake subduction zone, putting it at special risk.

Kayne is a primary financier of both the Zenith and Global Partners operations sites. He’s also a major Republican Party campaign donor and closely aligned with the Koch brothers’ financial and political networks.

Significantly, he is also among the inner circle of super-wealthy donors contributing to President Donald Trump’s legal fees, which have run more than $8 million since taking office — the highest of any president.

The other financier, former Treasury Secretary Geithner, is widely credited with playing a major role in the Wall Street bailout following the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008.

Geithner is now director of Warburg Pincus investment company, which created Zenith Energy to facilitate the flow of crude oil by rail to Portland. Warburg Pincus is deeply invested in the Bakken and tar sands region and, together with Global Partners is a leading donor to Democratic candidates at all political levels.

Kayne and Warburg Pincus share directorships and investments in corporations that extract crude oil from the Bakken Formation of North Dakota and tar sands crude from Canada’s Athabasca tar sands region. These investments further overlap at transloading stations owned by Global Partners in North Dakota.

Both terminals and their backers provide proof that tackling climate change means tackling corruption at the highest levels of our democracy, regardless of party affiliation.

As the pipeline protesters have shown, it’s possible to resist these destructive projects even when big money — and powerful people in Washington — are behind them.

And as the 2020 campaign gets underway, there’s a huge opening for candidates — from presidential candidates down to local port commissioners — to take a real stand for the planet, and refuse to take campaign contributions from these industries threatening our future.