Chris Hedges's Blog, page 198

Trump May Be a White Nationalist, but American Racism Is Bipartisan

The wealthy, white, establishment-Democrat Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, had no choice but to outwardly defend the House’s four leftish first-term women of color against the nation’s white nationalist president. Donald Trump had just used his Twitter account to launch a vicious nativist assault on Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. On the same day his administration had marked for a major round-up of undocumented immigrants, Boss Tweet weighed in on “the Squad’s” recent conflict with Pelosi over border security legislation:

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe … now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came? Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

This was worse than the usual eye-rolling filth out of the president’s Twitter feed. It was the malicious rant of a frothing white nationalist.

As liberals pointed out, with the exception of Omar, all the congresswomen were born and raised in the United States; Omar has lived here since age 10. Trump’s wife, Melania, who was born and raised in Slovenia, didn’t make it to the U.S. until her 26th year.

But the congresswomen’s lands of origin and naturalization were beside the point. For Trump and his supporters, the key facts are that, unlike Melania Trump, they aren’t white and are speaking up against racist, sexist and capitalist oppression in the United States. In the white nationalist worldview, the United States is a white country and citizenship here is a racial, not a civil, matter. People of nonwhite identity and ancestry are viewed as inherently broken and inadequate, incapable of civilized self-governance. If they want to be tolerated and taken seriously in “our country,” they need to play by rich and powerful white males’ rules and know their place. Those who get uppity need to “go back where they came from.” It’s a very old racist and nativist trope.

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Why I’m Glad About Trump's Latest Twitter Tirade



by Sonali Kolhatkar

Never mind that North America’s original inhabitants were brown-skinned people who were almost completely wiped out by European invaders between 1500 and 1900. Or that the genocidal white (un-)settlers—those Native American writer and activist Ward Churchill understandably labeled simply as “Predator”—brought black slaves in chains from Africa—people who never chose to come here in the first place.

American leftists will recognize the notion that people who criticize social and political arrangements and oppressive policies in this country should leave the country, as in “go to Russia,” or Cuba, “if you don’t like it here.” For good measure on that score, Trump’s Senate pet and golf buddy Lindsey Graham joined many of his Republican colleagues in defending Trump’s racist tweets and then added his neo-John Bircher opinion that Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley and Omar are “a bunch of communists.”

Pelosi was right to call Trump’s tirade “xenophobic” and, more importantly, to say something many of us have been saying since 2015: Trump’s slogan, “make America great again,” really means “make America white again.”

Of course, nobody who has followed Trump’s record over the years should have been surprised at the virulence of his outburst. His history as a vicious racist is well-documented, from his days as a discriminatory landlord through his opening campaign attacks on Mexicans as “rapists,” his embrace of the claim that Barack Obama was born outside the U.S., his vile mockery of Asians, his claim that a distinguished U.S.-born judge of Mexican ancestry could not be fair to him because of his ethnicity, his references to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocohantas,” his Muslim immigration ban, his reference to Haiti and some African nations as “shithole countries,” his defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., as “very fine people,” and his call for the execution of the falsely accused Central Park Five (whose exoneration he has disputed despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence). John O’Donnell, a former president of Trump Hotel and Casino, recently told The New York Times that Trump “has always been a racist,” adding that “anyone around him who denies it is lying.” White people, O’Donnell notes. “are Americans to Trump; everyone else is from somewhere else.”

At the same time, nobody who has paid attention to Trump’s Amerikaner base and his takeover of the Republican Party should be surprised that very few Republicans inside and outside of government have responded to his revolting harangue with the disgust it deserves. As Times columnist Charles Blow noted Monday: “We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time. We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens—possibly a third of them—reveal to us their open animus for [nonwhites] through their continued support of him.”

It may have been politically foolish for her to say it during her dismal and disastrous 2016 campaign, but Hillary Clinton was not wrong to call that third of the U.S. citizenry “deplorable.” Trump’s heartland base is a proto-fascistic cohort that poses grave threats to what’s left of democracy and decency in the U.S. today.

That said, what about the Democrats, the party Blow and his fellow Times and MSNBC liberals would have us support in 2020? It is worth recalling that many of the brown-skinned migrants and asylum-seekers currently penned up in Trump’s deadly concentration camps hail from Honduras, a Central American nation whose misery was deepened when the “liberal” Democratic president Barack Obama and Clinton, his secretary of state, aided and abetted a right-wing coup that removed Manuel Zelaya, the nation’s democratically elected, left-populist president, from power 10 years ago.

It is good that Pelosi and others atop her party had the elementary decency to uphold American civic nationalism in calling out the president and his party as racists. It’s good that Pelosi agreed to lead an unusual House vote condemning Trump for his racist comments. Still, the cold fact remains that Pelosi recently told the four assertive and proudly progressive first-term congresswomen of color to, essentially, keep their social media mouths shut after they had the greater decency to publicly oppose other House Democrats’ depressing, Pelosi-led vote to give Trump $450 billion for “border security,” even though the bill granting the White House the money contained no serious protections or high standards of care for detained migrants, including children in for-profit concentration camps—and despite the absence of any real way of stopping the Trump administration from diverting money marked for humanitarian aid to immigration enforcement.

The eloquent Omar found herself in Pelosi’s sights (not for the first time) after going on MSNBC, the Democrats’ cable news network, to tell some harsh truths about Pelosi’s deeply conservative party after the terrible vote:

“My colleagues decided that they were going to co-sign on this horrendous, cruel process that this administration has engaged in without really speaking on the kind of values that we have. … We said send [Democrats] into the majority so we can be a check and balance to the cruelty of this administration. Now that we are in the majority we are too busy appeasing this administration. …We have people in power who have forgotten the purpose and reason they were given that privilege. I am always surprised every time we are having a discussion in regard to policy how people will talk about the political reality and they don’t talk about the human reality of the policies that we are passing. We take an oath truly, to care for the American people and to make sure we are furthering policies that are in line with our values, and we often fall short. And I think with the Democratic Party we’re oftentimes so busy trying to appease everyone we end up appeasing no one.”

“Appeasement” was a widely used term to describe how much of the Western bourgeois establishment responded to the rise of the Nazi Third Reich in the 1930s. It is an appropriate description of how the Democratic Party—the organization that political theorist Sheldon Wolin aptly termed the “inauthentic opposition”—has responded to the pre-fascist Trump administration on numerous issues, from border security to the Pentagon budget, the surveillance state, the economic torture and demonization of Venezuela and Iran, the coddling of racist Israel and impeachment (or rather, the failure to undertake impeachment proceedings on any number of issues, including obstruction of justice, violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, the abrogation of international human rights laws, the destruction of environmental protections and more). It has spent most of the last two and a half years going after Trump on the dubious and absurdly complicated charge of Russian collusion, rather than  attacking his most egregious sins, including his vicious racism, nativism, sexism, classism, corruption and, last but not at all least, ecocidalism.

Now we see the Democratic Party establishment working with corporate funders and media to marginalize the candidate with the best chance of rallying the demobilized constituencies who need to be activated in order to defeat Trump in 2020. That candidate is Bernie Sanders, a sincerely and seriously antiracist (take it from author and activist Cornel West) democratic socialist who is unacceptable to the inauthentic opposition’s bankrollers, operatives, pundits and talking heads because he—alone among the party’s absurdly large candidate roster—is running in sincere, non-faked accord with the majority progressive, social-democratic public opinion.

Don’t like racial oppression? The establishment Democrats’ top contender to stop Sanders (the open aim of the party’s elite) is Joe Biden, a faltering and befuddled corporatist and imperialist who boasts of past legislative alliances with segregationist senators who “never called me [Biden] ‘boy’ ” (maybe because Biden is white?) and stood atop fascist Southern Jim Crow terror regimes.

The next Wall Street darling being promoted, in case Biden proves inadequate, is the fake-progressive Kamala Harris, a longtime prosecutor who went to the corporate Chicago Ideas conference six years ago to openly and viciously mock those who think the nation should pour less money into mass incarceration and more into education when it comes to dealing with poor people of color.

Next in line in “the Wall Street primary” is Pete Butiggieg of Indiana, a silver-tongued, Ivy League- and Oxford-vetted neoliberal mayor, a former military intelligence officer who worked for years for the corporate-globalist firm McKinsey & Co., which has been aptly described by one its former operatives as “the world’s most sinister and amoral management consulting company.” Buttigieg has spent years antagonizing South Bend’s extremely impoverished black community by advancing gentrification and backing a racist police department with an ongoing history of using excessive and deadly force against people of color. Butiggieg’s milquetoast Douglass Plan, offensively named after the great black civil rights and social justice champion, Frederick Douglass, is a tepid, technocratic scheme that promises to expand black entrepreneurship and minority business ownership while minimally reforming credit-scoring and lending practices in race-neutral ways.

The Republican Party is a horrific white nationalist, creeping fascist outfit at this point, but despite its rhetoric and appearance of diversity, the Democratic Party is heavily complicit in the nation’s deeply entrenched structural and institutional racism. Anyone who thinks that the not-so-leftmost of the two major parties offers any kind of meaningful solution to American racism is living in a dream world.

British Say Iran Seizes 2 Vessels in Strait of Hormuz

LONDON—Britain’s foreign secretary said Iranian authorities seized two vessels Friday in the Strait of Hormuz, actions signaling an escalation in the strategic waterway that has become a flashpoint in tensions between Tehran and the West.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said one of the seized ships was British-flagged and the other sailed under Liberia’s flag. The crew members comprise a range of nationalities but are not believed to include British citizens, he said.

“These seizures are unacceptable,” Hunt said entering an emergency government meeting to discuss securing the release of the two vessels and their crews. “It is essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region.”

Details of what took place remained sketchy. Iran said earlier Friday that it had seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

The tanker Stena Impero was taken to an Iranian port because it was not complying with “international maritime laws and regulations,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard declared.

A statement from Stena Bulk, which owns the tanker, said it was unable to contact the ship after it was approached by unidentified vessels and a helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz.

The company said the tanker, with 23 crew members aboard, was in international waters when it was approached but subsequently appeared to be heading toward Iran.

U.K. Chamber of Shipping chief executive Bob Sanguinetti said the seizure represented an escalation in tensions in the Persian Gulf and made it clear more protection for merchant vessels was urgently needed.

He claimed the action is “in violation of international regulations which protect ships and their crews as they go about their legitimate business in international waters.”

The British government should do “whatever is necessary” to ensure the safe and swift return of the ship’s crew, Sanguinetti said.

The incident came just two days after Washington claimed that a U.S. warship downed an Iranian drone in the Strait. Iran denied that it lost an aircraft in the area.

On June 20, Iran shot down an American drone in the same waterway, and Trump came close to retaliating but called off an airstrike at the last moment.

Tensions in the region have been growing since the Trump administration withdrew a year ago from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. After the withdrawal, the U.S. imposed harsh sanctions, including on Tehran’s oil trade, that have sent the Iranian economy into a tailspin.

Iran’s government has desperately tried to get out of the chokehold, appealing to the other partners in the deal, particularly Europe, to pressure the U.S. to lift the bruising sanctions. Europe wants to maintain the nuclear deal, but has not been able to address Iranian demands, particularly concerning the sale of oil, without violating U.S. sanctions.

On Friday, Iran and the United States emphatically disagreed over Washington’s claim that a U.S. warship downed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz. American officials said they used electronic jamming to bring down the unmanned aircraft, while Iran said it simply didn’t happen.

Neither side provided evidence to prove its claim.

At the White House, President Donald Trump said flatly of the Iranian drone: “We shot it down.” But Pentagon and other officials have said repeatedly that the USS Boxer, a Navy ship in the Strait of Hormuz, actually jammed the drone’s signal, causing it to crash, and did not fire a missile. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive technology.

Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said, “There is no question this was an Iranian drone, and the USS Boxer took it out as the president announced yesterday because it posed a threat to the ship and its crew. It’s entirely the right thing to do.”

In Tehran, the Iranian military said all its drones had returned safely to their bases and denied there was any confrontation with the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship.

“We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else,” tweeted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on its website Friday said the drone recorded three hours of video of the USS Boxer and five other vessels Thursday beginning when the ships first entered the Strait of Hormuz. There was no immediate explanation as to how the video was evidence that no Iranian drone was destroyed.

The strategically vital Strait of Hormuz is at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and serves as the passageway for one-fifth of all global crude exports.

Trump on Thursday said the USS Boxer took action after the Iranian drone closed to within 1,000 yards of the warship and ignored commands to stay away. The president accused Iran of “provocative and hostile” action and said the U.S. acted in self-defense.

The Revolutionary Guard said its forces continue to monitor all movements by foreigners — especially “the terrorist forces” of the U.S. and the British in the Strait and the Gulf.

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal with world powers last year and imposed economic sanctions against Tehran, the Iranians have pushed back on the military front in recent weeks, with Washington accusing Tehran of threatening American forces and interests in the region.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested in New York as he arrived for a meeting at the United Nations that Iran could immediately ratify an agreement to allow broader checks of its nuclear facilities by U.N. inspectors if the U.S. dropped its sanctions.

China urged Washington to consider the offer, calling it “a positive signal that Iran is willing to seek a compromise solution.”

The Pentagon said Thursday’s incident happened in international waters while the Boxer was entering the Gulf. The Boxer is among several U.S. Navy ships in the area, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been operating in the North Arabian Sea for weeks in response to rising tensions.

The Iranians and Americans have had close encounters in the Strait of Hormuz in the past, and it is not unprecedented for Iran to fly a drone near a U.S. warship.

Zarif blamed Washington for the escalation and accused the Trump administration of “trying to starve our people” and “deplete our treasury” through sanctions.

___

Jill Lawless in London and David Rising in Berlin contributed.

Why Can’t the Media Admit the Democratic Party Has a Right Wing?

The 2020 presidential candidacy race is in full (absurdly early) swing, and there is a clear and obvious internal battle currently raging for the soul of the Democratic Party. One faction is attempting to pull the party in a more populist, social-democratic direction, while another favors maintaining a neoliberal, pro-business course.

We all know the most prominent members of the first group: The likes of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and freshmen representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley are constantly referred to (accurately) as representing the left of the party (e.g., New York Post, 7/9/19; New York Times, 4/10/19; New Yorker, 6/18/19), but also as a cabal of “extremist” (Atlantic, 4/3/19; The Hill, 6/17/19), “far-left” revolutionaries (CNN, 7/7/19; CNBC, 7/5/19)  who have “contempt” for Americans (Fox News, 7/11/19). Given the broad overlap of their political positions with those of the public at large (FAIR.org, 1/23/19), those labels, popular as they are in the media, are pretty dubious.

But if there is a left wing of the party, there must, logically, be a right. And it is equally obvious to those paying attention who represents that right wing: figures like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar come to mind.

The media do report on the split, but they never identify the latter as representing the right at all. In fact, the phrase “right-wing Democrat” has not appeared in the New York Times for over 30 years.

Last week, the Boston Herald (7/11/19) decried Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Omar as far-left “bullies” who were undermining Pelosi, and “sowing division” at a time when the party “needs to project a unified—and more centrist—front to retain its majority and knock Donald Trump from office.” The piece did not, however, scrutinize Pelosi’s political positions—or even identify them at all.

This is a common occurrence in media, and has the effect of normalizing the right wing of the party as the default. Constantly reminders that Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and co. are leftists prime the news consumer to be on the defensive. “You are about to hear socialist propaganda,” is the subtle message delivered. But an analogous message is not transmitted if others are not identified as on the right. Understanding the power of this technique, in 2015, nearly 90,000 Britons signed a petition asking the BBC, in the interests of even-handedness, to start describing Prime Minister David Cameron as “right-wing,” just as it constantly called Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn “left-wing.”

On the US struggle, Buzzfeed News (7/10/19) reports Pelosi has been “publicly feuding” with “left-wing members of the caucus and their staff,” while the Washington Post (7/2/19) sympathetically portrayed her has being under attack from an “open rebellion” of “hard-liners” in the party, with neither suggesting she herself holds any particular political ideology. The effect is to present the battle between left and right as one between radical revolutionaries and the “mainstream,” “normal” or “default” position.

All this despite the fact that Medicare For All and free college tuition are very popular in the US, with even a majority of Republican voters supporting the former. Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez’s tax hike proposal for the super rich is more popular than Trump’s tax cuts, and a plurality of Americans support her supposedly radical leftist Green New Deal. When the public, not political parties, define the left/right spectrum, the landscape appears very different.

When any position is assigned to those who have controlled the party for many decades, it is often misleading. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times (7/6/19) describes Pelosi as “trying to keep the party center left” with the goal of ousting Trump from office by appealing to the American people, only for that to be “jeopardized” by the party’s supposed “lurch” to the “far left.”

As a senator from Delaware, he is a friend of large finance and tech corporations, and blocked student debt forgiveness. In this election cycle, he opposes Medicare for All and claimed that billionaires were being “demonized,” assuring them that if he were president, “nothing would change” about America. “I need you very badly,” he told a group of extremely wealthy donors. He also suggests moving the party to the right by working with the GOP. Another Democrat not only on the right of the party, but on the right side of the political spectrum more generally, is Joe Biden, a current frontrunner for the presidential nomination. Biden began his political career by opposing busing and maintained a very close friendship with arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond until his death, performing the eulogy at his funeral. Among the most hawkish of Democrats, he strongly supported the Iraq War and even boasted he was the true author of George W. Bush’s PATRIOT Act. He opposed immigration and suggested using troops against undocumented workers.

Despite this, Biden describes himself as “center-left,” as do media (e.g. Politico, 6/8/19; Real Clear Politics, 6/12/19; Wall Street Journal, 6/3/19). As the Washington Examiner (6/21/19) noted, the dilemma for the party was between picking a leftist like Sanders or steering a “center-left” course with Biden.

Successfully positioning yourself in the center is a powerful rhetorical and psychological tactic. Many people like to think of themselves as in the middle. The center is often considered (wrongly) as the default position, and therefore free of bias, as opposed to those on the extremes, which hold negative connotations.

As explored previously (FAIR.org, 3/23/19), every political organization Washington supports is presented as a moderate, centrist force. Indonesian military dictator General Suharto, who presided over genocides against ethnic Chinese and Timorese, was described as a moderate (Christian Science Monitor, 2/6/87). The New York Times (3/7/33) even described the “new moderation in the political atmosphere” in Germany as Hitler came to power, while the Philadelphia Daily Bulletin (1/30/33) praised his “indications of moderation” (cited in the Daily Beast, 12/20/15).

Even Donald Trump Jr., someone not noted for his high intellect and political wisdom, is in on this trick. Writing in The Hill (7/11/19), he “warns” us that if the Democrats undermine “centrist” “moderates” like Pelosi, allowing “radical left” “extremists” like Ocasio-Cortez to come to power, his father will be assured of winning the next election. This has to be the apotheosis of the “Inexplicable Republican Best Friend” trope (FAIR.org, 2/26/19), in which media conservatives offer supposedly good-faith advice to Democrats on how to beat them (which always entails surrendering progressive principles and embracing conservative policies).

Corporate Democrats have now begun to use the “this is why Trump won/will win” tactic on the left. The Washington Examiner (7/10/19) warns the “left-wing elites” that their single-minded charge towards is socialism will isolate and alienate them from “moderate Democrats” and the vast political center of America. Instead, they must be “pragmatic” and choose the best candidate: Joe Biden.

“Pragmatic”—meaning adapting sensibly and adopting realistic, fact-based positions—is another newspeak word media use to describe right-wing Democrats espousing pro-corporate policies, regardless of what the facts actually are. CNN(2/18/19), for example, applauds Klobuchar for being the “pragmatic” presidential candidate. Her pragmatism, according to the positive CNNportrait, was “resisting the urge to pander to the party’s progressive wing,” as shown by her strong opposition to Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and free college—all of which, we have seen, are distinctly popular with the public (Jacobin, 8/24/18; Atlantic, 6/21/19) and could be huge vote-winners.

That “pragmatic” is usually used as a euphemistic codeword for moving towards the right can be seen by glancing at recent headlines:

Pragmatic Pelosi Points Democratic Party Toward the Center (CBS SF Bay Area, 5/14/19)
Pelosi’s Pragmatic Approach to Balancing Democrats’ Leftward Shift (Christian Science Monitor, 2/11/19)
Idealism vs. Pragmatism: How Style Divides the Democratic Candidates (NPR, 1/27/16)

Even explicitly anti-left organizations are not described as right-wing. On a story covering the Democratic Majority for Israel, which it notes was set up by “major donors and Washington insiders” expressly to counter left criticisms of Israel in the party, the Huffington Post(7/11/19) did not describe it as “conservative” or any similar label, but framed the debate as being between the left and the “pro-Israel” wings of the party. If wealthy donors and “Washington insiders” don’t count as the right wing of the party, no one can.

Corporate media are funded by the same sources that fund both parties and broadly share the same ideology, hence the reluctance to critique them. By refusing to position them on the political scale, or falsely identifying them as left of center, they are attempting to close the Overton window and prevent a leftward shift in US politics. But that does not mean that we as news consumers have to accept these framings.

Ralph Nader: The GOP Is a Profile in Cowardice

In 1956, then-Sen. John F. Kennedy authored a best-selling book titled Profiles in Courage, in which he told the stories of senators in American history who, on principle, bucked the tides of power. Today, some Republican writer or conservative syndicated columnist – George Will or Max Boot – should write a book called Profiles in Cowardliness. It should cover Republican leadership’s near total cowardliness in the face of Donald Trump, whom they despise on many fronts. Many in Republican leadership believe he has hijacked their Grand Old Party (GOP).

Clearly the Republicans – except for Rep. Justin Amash, who recently quit the party after accusing Trump of impeachable crimes – are intimidated by this foul-mouthed president. Republican politicians are cowed by Trump’s bellicose personal rhetoric. We have seen this cycle repeat itself countless times, with the media boosting their ratings by recklessly repeating Trump’s insults.

Republicans remember what Trump did to Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio during the 2016 Republican primary. They observe how loud-mouthed Donald spews toxic falsehoods at Democrats and gets away with it. Why, Republicans ask themselves, should they take any chances provoking this unstable Twitter Emperor and his ditto-heads on social media whom he deliberately incites? The answer: because patriotism demands action.

Donald Trump acts as if he is above the law – coming off his career as a corporate criminal, he has become a government outlaw. He has always cheated justice. Trump flouts the Constitution, refuses to faithfully execute the laws preventing corporate crimes, and obstructs justice.  Just as bad are Trump’s ethical and personal failings; he has brought disgraceful personal behavior, serious daily lies, expensive nepotism, denials of grave realities facing the country, bigotry, violent incitement, and disrepute to the White House. All of these failings are why the Founding Fathers gave impeachment authority to the House of Representatives and the authority of open trial to the Senate.

There are many more indictable and impeachable offenses, but the focus here is on why the entire GOP has completely fallen in line.  Only former Republican governor of Massachusetts William Weld has dared to officially challenge Trump in the upcoming Republican primary.  This week, former Republican congressman and governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford announced he is testing the waters for a run against President Trump, emphasizing Trump’s huge expanding deficits. It is shocking that so few opponents have emerged considering Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and remains more consistently unfavorable in the polls than any president in modern times.

Republicans must think “crooked Donald” is invincible. So why try? Plenty of Republican politicians consider Trump to be a clear and present danger to Party and country. They include former Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker; current Sen. Mitt Romney; former governor of Ohio John Kasich; former New Jersey governor and EPA head, under Reagan, Christine Todd Whitman; and former House Speaker Paul Ryan. All have spoken out about Trump’s dangerous ignorance and loutishness. All believe him to be unqualified and fear his reckless actions. On trade, immigration, climate crisis, and his open admiration of brutal dictators, they find him appalling.

Yet there are few signs of a serious challenge. In the 1990s, John Kasich was the chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee. At the time he was critical of the wasteful, unauditable Pentagon budget then (imagine now). Asked about 2020, Kasich told The Washington Post that he’s “never gotten involved in a race that [he] didn’t think [he] could win,” adding, “things are very volatile in this business and you just cannot predict what might change.” Such words hardly signal anything beyond extreme caution.

One would think, these people and others who could take on Trump (for example, the very popular former governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean) would want to stand up for traditional Republican principles and positions (think about Senator Robert Taft, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt and of course, Abraham Lincoln). In sharp contrast, current Republican leaders almost never criticize Trump publically apart from a mild op-ed (Romney) or the occasional public comments (Whitman).

It gets worse. Apart from William Kristol, Trump’s arch-critic, there doesn’t seem to be any activity among Republican kingmakers to find a challenger or even consider mounting a third party accountability challenge from the political right.

There is someone, were he younger, who would take on Trump. He is former Republican Senator from Connecticut, Lowell Weicker. He was known in the Senate as a ferocious defender of the Constitution and was prominent during the Watergate hearings that exposed Richard Nixon.

Apart from elected officials, what about those cabinet secretaries and White House chief of staff, whom Trump praised to the skies, before he drove them out with a frenzy of ruthless epithets (“dumb as a rock,” etc.)? They know the insides of mad Trump’s White House, which would receive media attention.

At the least, Republicans who challenged Trump in the primaries would put Trump on the defensive and hold him more accountable.

Time is passing on the road to November 2020. There are countless Republicans who deeply believe that Trump is a disgrace to his office and a threat to the Republic, as well as to the future of the Republican Party. Who amongst them will stand up and be counted?

Is their moral courage totally AWOL?

Iran Denies Trump Claim That U.S. Destroyed Iranian Drone

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Friday denied President Donald Trump’s claim that a U.S. warship destroyed an Iranian drone near the Persian Gulf in another escalation of tensions between the two countries less than a month after Trump nearly launched an airstrike.

The Iranian military said all its drones had returned safely to their bases and denied there was any confrontation with a U.S. vessel the previous day.

The country’s Revolutionary Guard said on its website it would release before-and-after images from the drone — it did not say when — to prove it was not destroyed.

“We have not lost any drone in the Strait of Hormuz nor anywhere else,” tweeted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The strategically vital strait is at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and serves as the passageway for one-fifth of all global crude exports, and oil prices ticked upward Friday on the news.

Trump on Thursday said the USS Boxer took action after an Iranian drone closed to within 1,000 yards of the warship and ignored commands to stay away. The president accused Iran of “provocative and hostile” action and said the U.S. acted in self-defense.

Neither Trump nor the Pentagon spelled out how the Boxer destroyed the drone. CNN reported that the ship used electronic jamming to bring it down rather than hitting it with a missile.

On June 20, Iran shot down an American drone in the same waterway, and Trump came close to retaliating but called off an airstrike at the last moment.

The Revolutionary Guard said the Iranian drone on Thursday had been carrying out regular surveillance when the USS Boxer arrived, and transmitted photos of the ship. The Guard said its forces continue to carefully monitor all movements of foreigners — especially “the terrorist forces” of the U.S. and the British in the strait and the Gulf.

After Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal with world powers last year and imposed economic sanctions against Tehran, the Iranians have pushed back on the military front in recent weeks, with Washington accusing Tehran of threatening American forces and interests in Iraq and in the Gulf.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested in New York as he arrived for a meeting at the United Nations that Iran could immediately ratify an agreement to allow broader inspections of its nuclear facilities by U.N. inspectors if the U.S. dropped its sanctions.

China urged Washington to consider the offer, calling it “a positive signal that Iran is willing to seek a compromise solution.”

The Pentagon said Thursday’s incident happened in international waters while the Boxer was entering the Gulf. The Boxer is among several U.S. Navy ships in the area, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been operating in the North Arabian Sea for weeks in response to rising tensions.

The Iranians and Americans have had close encounters in the Strait of Hormuz in the past, and it is not unprecedented for Iran to fly a drone near a U.S. warship.

Zarif blamed Washington for the escalation and accused the Trump administration of “trying to starve our people” and “deplete our treasury” through sanctions.

___

Rising reported from Berlin. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Robert Burns and Deb Riechmann in Washington, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Ian Phillips in New York, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Carlo Piovano in London contributed to this report.

The Nationwide Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight

Some investigative reports reveal such extreme levels of greed, immorality and abuse that they can seem inconceivable. Such is the case of the bombshell series by the Center for Investigative Reporting on the egregious exploitation of residential care home workers. Jennifer Gollan, the Emmy Award-winning journalist in this investigation published by Reveal, joins Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer to discuss her work on this week’s episode of his podcast “Scheer Intelligence.”

Below is an excerpt from the multimedia report by Gollan:

[The] burgeoning multibillion-dollar elder care industry … is enabling operators to become wealthy by treating workers as indentured servants. Across the country, legions of these caregivers earn a pittance to tend to the elderly in residential houses refurbished as care facilities, according to an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The profit margins can be huge and, for violators of labor laws, hinge on the widespread exploitation of thousands of caretakers, many of them poor immigrants effectively earning $2 to $3.50 an hour to work around the clock. The federal hourly minimum wage is $7.25.

Reveal interviewed more than 80 workers, care-home operators and government regulators and reviewed hundreds of wage theft cases handled by California and federal labor regulators, workers and local district attorneys. The investigation found rampant wage theft has pushed a vast majority of these caregivers into poverty.

While the investigation mostly focused on California care homes, what Gollan discovered is a nationwide problem hiding in plain sight, “blend[ing] in to neighborhoods. What’s worse is that the proliferation of these homes, made possible through lax regulations is leading people to join what many see as a get-rich-quick scheme by opening and operating an elderly care facility.

“[Operators] know they can suppress workers’ wages, and then take in $4,000 a month from seniors and make up the difference,” the journalist tells Scheer on the latest installment of his podcast. “There are many, many entrepreneurs on YouTube promoting this business in particular as a money-making machine, and a place where you can get into the business, the real estate end of the business, flip a house, make a few adjustments, and care for a bunch of seniors, open a care home and make a lot of money.”

The mistreatment and underpayment of workers, some of whom are undocumented and therefore unable or afraid to report the labor abuses to the authorities, don’t just affect their lives, however. It also leads to conditions where the health and safety of the senior citizens placed in the care of these facilities are neglected. As Scheer points out, this scandal may be indicative of a larger moral issue at play in wider American society.

“This has been going on for a long time,” Scheer tells Gollan. “And where are the other journalists? And where are the legislators? Why aren’t they more proactive? Why haven’t they been looking into it?”

According to Gollan, policymakers are at the very least beginning to wake up to the issue. This is in large part due to her valiant journalist efforts.

“We’ve heard from some state lawmakers that they’re mobilizing for the next session to write some legislation to clean up the industry and protect workers,” the Reveal reporter explains. “And we’re hearing from some federal lawmakers that they are taking a close look at this.”

Listen to the full discussion between Scheer and Gollan as they talk about the operators, exploited workers and regulators who have had a role to play in the rampant abuse of workers taking care of the most vulnerable members of American society.

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case, it’s Jennifer Gollan, a reporter, prize-winning reporter, for Reveal, the radio product of the Center for Investigative Reporting based in Emeryville, California. And this is a series about the shabby treatment of seniors in need, medically infirm; sometimes they pay a lot of money for this shabby treatment. But it is a mark of the moral insensitivity of current American society that we rely so heavily on the most exploited and insecure sector of our workforce to provide the primary care for the most vulnerable sectors in the population. I’m speaking of childcare, which often comes from undocumented workers who are very vulnerable, exhausted, and poorly paid. And a less-noticed area is the treatment of seniors, very often in advanced stages of illness or with signs of dementia and what have you. And a series that Jennifer Gollan did devoted to the treatment of the elderly, basically in makeshift homes or care centers where up to six people are cared for by basically vulnerable, undocumented workers; in the cases we’re going to be discussing, often from the Philippines. And there’s a fairly Wild West kind of scene where there isn’t regulation, and people are exhausted, and the care is not delivered of the sort that one would expect in a decent society. And we’re talking largely about California; I forget, there was a statistic in your story that–I mean, a lot of the–here’s a progressive state, deep blue and all that. And yet basically, people working in caretaking of others–just to set the stage, these are basically, were private residences; they have about eight people, seniors; a family is paying for this, or some program. And poorly paid people are washing, bathing, diapering, doing everything to keep them alive and secure. And they’re ripped off, generally, and a lot of them are Filipino immigrants. Do I recall that correctly?

Jennifer Gollan: That’s correct. So in states where there are large Filipino populations, including New York and California, many of these workers are taking these jobs basically in the shadows. And this is an underregulated industry, where they’re non-medical and they’re referred to as assisted living facilities, or board and care homes, or elder care facilities. And they provide this around-the-clock service for seniors, and help with daily living tasks. And they’re cheaper alternatives to nursing homes, so they’re really attractive. But the thing is, this industry is so diffuse, these homes blend into your neighborhood and mine, and you would never know that these care homes are actually employing many immigrant workers. And oftentimes, we found, are paying them just two to three dollars an hour to work around the clock for years on end.

RS: So wait a minute. Are these documented immigrants, or are they here without documentation, or–?

JG: It’s a mix. Some are undocumented, and some do have their papers, but it’s really difficult, you know, if you’re trying to support a family back home and you don’t have medical training to say go work in a nursing home or a hospital setting. These care homes provide, you know, a steady paycheck for so many workers. And for undocumented workers, what we’ve found is it really puts them in a very vulnerable position where they’re often underpaid, and they’re afraid to speak out, because they don’t want to lose their jobs. Their bosses often harass or threaten to fire them, or worse, report them to immigration authorities.

RS: You know, you’ve had so much experience with this that I just want to stretch the argument, if I can, or the discussion. Because we talk a lot about immigration, and Trump is obviously, you know, cracking down in very bad ways at the border. But of course he’s not the first; Barack Obama deported a lot of people. And the argument used to be an argument that even democratic politicians accepted, is that if you have people coming in without documentation, you undermine the wage structure. And you seem to have an example of that. If people are working for two, three bucks an hour, that’s what we’re paying–or the Chinese are being paid by Apple in China, right?–to assemble iPhones and so forth. And so we’re really talking about–for certain services which we can’t export, obviously, if you’re going to take care of the elderly, or a lot of the service industry, people cleaning houses and so forth. We have relied very heavily on an easily exploited workforce that does not even get paid the legally mandated minimum wage, whether it’s federal or state. And in California, it’s quite a bit better now than the federal. And if they complain, they can be turned over to authorities. So you really just reported on the, you know, the pre-Trump drama. It wasn’t so great in the old days. We had a lot of people working here who were being ripped off. No?

JG: That’s right. And we still do. And today, it’s even worse. And we notice this–I mean, it’s especially acute when you’re trying to report on a story like this, and you’re asking people to go on the record and recount how they were exploited. People are so afraid these days, and they’re–it’s just so much more unpredictable for workers in this industry. Because they know that if they put their name to their story, they could very well be putting themselves and their families at risk, and they’re afraid of immigration authorities. So it made it very difficult to report the story to begin with. And, ah–yeah.

RS: But let me ask you–I don’t mean to interrupt you. But I mean, I just want to get sort of a handle on the bigger picture. Because this is a story that your organization, Reveal, at the Center for Investigative [Reporting] seems to repeat. This happens in the high-tech industry, it happens–in your case, you examined shipbuilding and, you know, traditional activity. And there’s a lot of the two-class system. We have an elite class; in a place like California, people getting the higher-end jobs at Google and other places like that. And then you have this mass service and–economy, and then some exploited industrialization, and some farm-working, where people are basically living in a Third World environment. And you could even extend that into the gig economy that you have reported on, where suddenly we have forgotten about all the gains of the labor movement, and operational safety, worker safety, and everything else. And we have, basically, a Third World workforce. And in reading and viewing, listening to your audio reports on it, you basically were describing an exploited Third World labor force. Was that not the takeaway?

JG: It’s true. A lot of these senior care homes just fly under the radar, because there are so many, they blend into neighborhoods. And you know, many lawyers and elder advocates will tell you that it’s just that the regulations are so lax. And it’s because the regulatory oversight regime is complaint-driven here; that is, state and federal regulators are really only responding to, for the large part, to complaints from workers or advocates. So the oversight here is the problem, is lax; and then driving this as well is operators. They know they can suppress workers’ wages, and then take in $4,000 a month from seniors and, you know, make up the difference. And there are many, many entrepreneurs on YouTube promoting this business in particular as a money-making machine. And a place where you can get into the business, the real estate end of the business, flip a house, make a few adjustments, and care for a bunch of seniors, open a care home and make a lot of money.

RS: Yeah. I mean, give us a sense of the reporting you did. Because I found it quite compelling. You had some, a woman in, I think she was in Beverly Hills, who runs a number of these things. And you tried to reach her, and she–and then you had some motivational speaker who told people how to rip off and how to do it. And it all basically had to do with, at the end of this food chain are people who are not getting the healthcare or the care they deserve, right? They’re not, they’re being abandoned, they’re being tended to by workers who are working very long shifts, and then they get resentful. So it’s not a successful system by any standard. And yet other people are willingly putting their grandparents in these places, or their parents, and then what, walking away from it? I mean, why did it take you, and the group that you work with on this story, to care? Why haven’t I heard about this before?

JG: Well, it’s a good question. I think a lot of these workers are, again, working in the shadows. And part of the issue is lax enforcement, and another part of the issue is greed. And I don’t think this industry has gotten the attention it really deserves. The data that we looked at goes back at least a decade, and we can see that there’s been rampant exploitation, record-keeping, overtime, minimum wage violations going back 10 years across the U.S., in nearly every state. And so the problem here is, you know, should there be–there are many questions that come up. Does it require stronger enforcement or oversight? Should maybe state attorneys general get involved, and crack down on the industry to clean it up? Or is it more legislation, to tighten up oversight of the industry? I should point out that to open up one of these care homes, you have to have more training to be a manicurist than you do to open up one of these senior facilities. And these facilities, because regulations have been relaxed over the last 15 years, are taking on increasingly ill patients. So we’re talking about hospice and dementia patients, which require 24-hour care and attention. And that’s what these senior facilities are promising, but it’s at the expense of these workers.

RS: Well, first of all, you mentioned the figure $4,000 a month. That–where does that come from? Is it a Social Security check? Is it, is there government money going into this, or–?

JG: Well, so that’s the median cost per resident to stay in one of these care homes per month. So these care homes can often make, from six residents, about $250,000 a year. And so you can see why it would be quite lucrative. And they’re basically promising to provide all of the care that many, you know, working parents cannot provide to their parents, because they’re caring for their children, for example. So they’re filling a need, and the industry has grown incredibly over the last decade, and they’re taking on these increasingly ill patients.

RS: It’s interesting, when you say lax regulations–so let’s take a place like California, which has been run during this period, I guess you said the last 15 years or so, by people who consider themselves progressive, right? I mean, Jerry Brown was a fairly enlightened governor in his third and fourth term; he’d run the state for another eight years. As I said before, a deep blue state. And why does this situation continue? First of all, why do the children of these parents put up with it? Do they know what’s going on? Why isn’t there more regulation? Kamala Harris, who’s running for president now, was the Attorney General during much of that period in California. Why didn’t they act on it?

JG: Yeah, there have been actually some quite serious cases. One, in fact, is a case that the California Department of Justice is currently prosecuting. It involves a chain of care homes and childcare facilities in South San Francisco where prosecutors allege that workers were working around the clock for just two dollars an hour. And in some cases, they had their passports withheld. And this is a human trafficking case. These workers were not allowed to leave these facilities. And so going back to the question of enforcement, there are laws on the books that would hold some of these operators accountable. For example, there’s the Fair Day’s Pay Act, which became effective in 2016. And it basically said the Department of Social Services, which oversees licensing of these senior care facilities, that it empowers them to revoke the licenses of operators that have outstanding wage theft judgments. But what we found is that there are at least 20 companies that are still operating despite outstanding wage theft judgments, and that means they’re operating illegally. But the Department of Social Services, when we took these findings to them, told us that their hands are tied. That they cannot do anything unless it’s a health and safety issue that poses a risk to a resident, let alone the workers. So this is an area where, you know, there are laws on the books, but regulators aren’t enforcing them.

RS: And the people don’t complain because of questionable status, immigration status?

JG: That’s often the case. And they can’t afford lawyers to hire, you know, to go after these operators that have basically stolen their wages. And these companies are still in business, often under the same names. And they still owe these workers tens of thousands of dollars in back wages.

RS: So you’re describing a Dickinsonian world. You’re–this is, two dollars an hour–you’re going to sink deeper into debt in California even if you work all the 24 hours. And in your reporting, you describe people just working around the clock, which is not good for their patients; they’re going to be irritable and not functioning well. But we, you know, we’re very critical of, say, the wage rate in a place like China, but what is two dollars an hour? That’s their wage rate, and our course of living is a lot higher. How do these people get by?

JG: I mean, in many cases, these, some of these workers are grateful to have a job. They’re grateful to be able to send a paycheck back home to support their children. But the way that this, that these operators conduct themselves and treat their workers is abysmal. These workers are often sleeping in garages, or on the living room floor, or next to their patients. And we spoke with at least two workers who had miscarriages because they had asked for time off, but they said their bosses refused. And they believe that they lost their fetuses because they were being overworked. And these are–this is just, you know, a small–these are but small examples of the kind of treatment these workers endure. And–

RS: Yeah, go ahead.

JG: And, you know, in many cases, they don’t feel like they can speak out.

RS: Because, what, they just lose the job, or they would get deported, or–?

JG: Exactly. They’re afraid of losing their jobs, and they’ve told us that their bosses have threatened to fire them. And in some cases, you know, when workers filed a wage theft claim, in one case we found the operator actually installed surveillance video cameras to keep an eye on the workers. And it’s not just the workers who are at the receiving end of some of this treatment; it’s labor investigators as well. In one case, we found labor investigators went in and, you know, the operator got on the telephone with the investigator and shouted at him to leave, and called the police.

RS: Against the state labor investigator?

JG: This was a federal labor regulator that had gone in to investigate. And the operator basically, you know, was incredibly confrontational.

RS: We’re going to take a break now for a minute, but I don’t want to lose the sort of moral tension here. You can’t live on two dollars an hour and still send money back to the Philippines, and still not go crazy, and take care of yourself and have medical–I mean, you just can’t do it. You couldn’t do it in Dickens’ England, and you can’t do it now in Southern California or anywhere else. And so the idea that this continues–it’s not covered, I guess, by television. Until you came along to do your series–right?–I had never heard of this. Has there been much response to it, is there a cry for new legislation, are there hearings?

JG: There has been. We’ve heard from some state lawmakers that they’re mobilizing for the next session to write some legislation to clean up the industry and protect workers. And we’re hearing from some federal lawmakers that they are taking a close look at this. So we’re just waiting to hear some details on what that’ll mean for workers.

RS: OK, well, let’s take a break now just for a minute, for stations that want to run this. And we’ll be right back with Jennifer Gollan, who’s done–who’s an Emmy Award-winning reporter, and now works with Reveal, and did an incredible–or was part of a team that she led doing an incredible job on something that’s just so far below our radar that we don’t even notice it, and maybe we don’t notice it even if our own grandparents are being victimized in this process. [omission for station break] We’re talking about the care of elderly people by exploited workers who seem to have no other choice. And I want to cut to the chase here, because we’re very self-righteous these days about immigration. And yet we’ve had this problem of people getting into the country without status, not having reasonable quotas of what workers we need, and giving them full legal rights, and until recently most people didn’t think about it much. Yet they got their cars washed at places where people were making miserable wages; they had people raising their children who, because they didn’t have documentation, had to put up with terrible working conditions. And in the case of this series that you’ve done on care of the elderly in these care homes, you know, it’s another example of that. And that’s not a problem that’s just post-Trump. That’s a problem that’s, I suspect, been–it’s been growing, but it’s been going on for what, 50 years, right?

JG: It’s true. It’s not just car washes or nannies; it’s restaurants, it’s so many low-wage industries. And these workers are basically relying on regulators, but the problem is when it comes to labor violations the oversight is really driven, and enforcement is really driven, by complaints. And so many of these workers, because they’re undocumented, don’t feel empowered to come forward. They’re afraid of being fired or reported to immigration authorities by their bosses. And so it’s a system of silence, and they’ve essentially, this industry in particular has worked out very creative ways of exploiting loopholes. And in the case of the senior care home industry and these smaller operators, we attended two workshops where we saw this in action. And they were essentially encouraging operators to get into the business, and basically walk up to the line of what’s legal. They told them they can use one caregiver for six residents, for example, and if you use one caregiver, then they’re not allowed to leave the facilities for breaks or rest times. And that essentially gives them full coverage for the 24 hours for their residents. And things like that, that they’re allowed to have them sleep in the garage, and you know, basically how to save money on payroll.

RS: OK, but what I’m asking is, where were the adults watching the store? I mean, you know, fortunately we have Jennifer Gollan, and we have Reveal, and we have people. And you do a great job, multimedia, you did a terrific radio report on this. It was picked up, right, by the AP, and they did a good job of getting it out. And but my question is, first of all, sadly, is anything going to happen as a result? But more, even more basic, this has been going on for a long time. And where are the other journalists? And where are the legislators? Why aren’t they more proactive, you know? Why haven’t they been looking into it? Did you challenge any of them about it?

JG: This is a really good question, Bob. I mean, these workers in this particular industry are not unionized. So they’re relying on worker advocacy groups to represent their interests. And these worker advocacy groups are so overburdened with cases where they’re representing workers who have been underpaid and overworked. And you know, it may be that those advocacy groups aren’t as powerful as lobbyists for industry. And the industry has very powerful, well-paid lobbyists and lawyers who are in Sacramento, and it’s just, it may be a case where they’re outgunned. Labor regulators tell us that they rely on complaints to go after exploitation, for the most part. And when we took our findings here to, say, the U.S. Department of Labor, there was no, at least public expression of plans to tackle this issue, even though this has persisted for at least a decade. So these are questions that we’re now posing to state and federal lawmakers, is you know, if the main front-line regulator isn’t taking on this issue, then who’s going to take charge of this?

RS: You know, I was working at the LA Times before you started there. And I covered some of these issues, and I agree there’s always a different twist to it. You know, in this case, you’ve got these sort of independent caregivers, and pick up a residence and put six people in or more, and can skirt around the law. But the basic issue is that many people who are more affluent are happy to have cheap labor, including when they park their parents or grandparents in some home–oh, it’s probably wonderful, they got dementia, who cares anyway, or something like that. There’s a heck of a lot of cynicism in all this. And what I loved about your reporting is you challenged it. You know, you knocked on the door of a woman who claimed she was doing something wonderful for ill, older people. Right? And then you attended a convention or a meeting where this motivational speaker talked about the proper way to frame this, and push it, and so forth. And I guess I’m asking a question–you know, because journalism is about searching for truth and accuracy. Do we have whole industries of PR people, and other people around, who are basically out to conceal immoral situations and exploitation, and get away with it? And politicians who take their funding and look the other way? Isn’t that really the big story here?

JG: I think one could draw those conclusions. I think for me as a journalist, it was difficult to square, you know, the operator’s expression of compassion for older people while their workers were not earning minimum wage and sleeping on the floor, for example. Or who were afraid to speak out–in some cases, afraid for their lives. And it was shocking to encounter conditions like this in America. And it just–it goes to this other, larger issue, which is, how are we going to care for the growing population of seniors that will soon outnumber children in this country? It’s something that we haven’t grappled with like many other countries have, as far as providing sound, basic care for our loved ones. I mean, when you speak with the industry, they said that maybe it’s just a few bad apples, and that they’re trying to do these workshops to educate care homeowners. But when we attended the workshops, they were encouraging them to exploit loopholes.

RS: Yeah, and you got that on tape. But I’m just–I want to cut to these legislators, because we’re letting, we tend to let them off the hook, and they always talk a good game. But if it requires more of a background check and testing to deal with someone’s nails, and a much lower level of expertise and knowledge to take care of people around the clock who have serious, you know, illness and aging, and you know, can’t control their bodily functions, and are maybe losing their sense of who they are and where they are. You know, so it’s not only the people who are taking care of them, and who get exhausted and angry or can’t deal with it, or are not equipped to deal with it. It’s the patients, it’s these people who are supposedly being given care. So regulation of such an industry would seem to be vital not just for the workers, but for the people that they’re taking care of. And there doesn’t seem to be any of that. Or am I exaggerating?

JG: It’s true. As you say, you know, when you speak with workers and worker advocates, one of the first things they say–and also senior advocacy groups–one of the first things they say is that if you have workers who are working around the clock, for a pittance, it will affect patient care. And there is some more reporting that we’re going to come out with where that is certainly the case. And it’s up to these lawmakers to sort out, how can we better protect both of these vulnerable populations–workers and seniors–to make this industry accountable to both its clients, but this whole cohort of workers who are propping up the industry. I mean, in many cases, when operators were questioned why they’re paying their workers two dollars an hour, they said that that’s the going rate, so that’s why they were, you know, violating minimum wage laws. And this is something that can be fixed by lawmakers.

RS: Well, it can! I mean, it should be a serious felony to pay someone two dollars an hour. What are we talking about? We have–we have minimum wage requirements. Obviously we don’t enforce it; obviously, there’s no punishment for it. And this has been going on a long time, but the idea that someone in, you know, a prosperous area of California is paid two dollars an hour–and that legislators don’t talk about it, do anything about it, there’s no pressure. I want to end this, because I’m always looking for role models, and I have such respect for the work that you did on this story and on others. And I’m talking to Jennifer Gollan, who is–I shouldn’t have to say it, Emmy Award-winning reporter for Reveal, Center for Investigative Reporting. But you know, there’s passion in this reporting. You meet these people, you care about them, you hear their voices. And so I’m here at the school where you got your master’s, at the University of Southern California. And I look around at what we teach and what we do, and we teach lots of things. We teach public relations; we teach writing, making apps; we teach all sorts of things. Are you the odd one out, or are you representative of a new generation of journalists who are going to care about what happens to the most vulnerable? Somebody once said the purpose of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Did you get that at school? Where did you get your moral conscience from in journalism?

JG: For me, I grew up with Australian parents in the U.S., and I always felt like I was, we were a little bit outside the norm. Because there was always, you know, my parents’ sort of traditions and cultural norms, and they were different. We came, my dad came over on an H-1B. So I think also, you know, because my folks were interested in news from abroad–from back home, from England where, you know, we had lived for a time as well–they’d discuss the news, and they cared passionately about how people who really came from very little, how they were being treated. And I think USC only accentuated that sort of experience for me; I really was so inspired by the professors there, and as far as, you know, chasing down revelatory information, informing the world and making the world a better place by exposing the truth. And I think it’s just those fundamentals that I have sort of held dear. And you know, it’s at the Center for Investigative Reporting that I’m so privileged to do this kind of work. And it’s something that, I think it is part of–you know, there’s a–it’s more important now than ever, because of, you know, our polarized society, our politics, the mass of information that’s available, not all of it truthful. And I think it’s our duty to expose the truth, to keep a level playing field, and for people to be informed about how the world works.

RS: Well, you’ve just made me feel a lot better about the place where I work for my day job. But I’m going to end on an editorial note. First of all, let’s tell people how to get your series. It’s at revealnews.org, right? Any more specific information?

JG: That’s right.

RS: And what I love is the–I just want to end on sort of a high-tech thing here. You guys have mastered, or you’re particularly good at radio, and you actually do video and so forth. But I thought, wow–for the first time I really believed in something we do teach here at USC, the whole multimedia approach, and using social networking, and getting the word out. And your series got that kind of attention, because you do have that skill set, right? This is a new kind of journalism, in a way.

JG: It’s true. It’s true, I feel like, you know, in today’s media landscape so many print reporters, or traditionally print reporters–I’m using quotes–or web reporters, are doing radio work, and also television. And there are so many different ways that those platforms can inform the reporting for the other one. And I think it’s just, it’s a great reflection on USC’s program, but also the changing landscape of journalism today. Just so many more reporters are multi-platform reporters who also do data. And it’s just a, it’s an incredible time to be a reporter.

RS: Yeah, and I hope you can make a living at it. [Laughs] Because I think the–

JG: I do, too.

RS: –the business model is in a bit of trouble. But I do want to end this with that quote, and it’s been attributed to many different people. But the role of the journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I don’t want to lose that second point. And your series does both. It tells us that there are people, both the workers in these care homes and the seniors that are being supposedly cared for–they’re the afflicted. And good journalism will bring comfort, will bring exposure, will bring assistance to them. But you also have to afflict the comfortable. And frankly, I felt considerable rage after reading and following your series. I couldn’t believe it, that people are making two, three bucks an hour, legally–or not legally, but they get away with it, being paid that–in California, you know. I don’t even know how they go to McDonald’s after, they probably can’t even pay for [it with] what they just earned. And it’s amazing to me that in a state–and I keep harping on this because it’s important–a state that prides itself on being progressive, enlightened, which has incredible wealth, incredible wealth, that we’re paying people and getting away with it, two dollars an hour to work around the clock, sleep on the floor, diaper these seniors, care about them, treat their skin wounds, surface wounds, all of which you described in this thing. And when they object that they’re not getting their pay that they’re entitled to, they get turned over to immigration, they get threatened. I mean, you know, in this discussion I think–people have got to check it out, because I think we’ve lost a little bit of the power of your series. And why don’t we close by you telling me what was most disturbing or moving that you encountered reporting this story?

JG: Well, there are two things. One just sparks shock, and that is when these operators are caught underpaying their workers or not paying the back wages, they just abandon the company name and start a new one. And it’s a matter of filing a quick form with the California Secretary of State’s Office, and they’re off to the races; they’re still in business, and the workers are just expendable. And I think the other shocking thing, and inspiring thing, is how compassionate these caregivers are. Even though they are way underpaid and overworked and mistreated, they care for the residents in such a deep, profound way. And it literally, I am guessing, extends the life of these residents, to have someone who cares for you like family. And in some cases, instead of their family members coming to visit them. These caregivers are so fond, and have such a deep bond, with their residents despite their terrible conditions, and I found that just incredibly moving.

RS: You know, that has been the story of racial exploitation, immigrant, exploiting immigrants, throughout American history. There was always, yes, in the Deep South, the nanny who raised the children, and you could count on her to do the right thing by those children even though she was a slave, or she was held in a Jim Crow society, and exploited in every which way. And you hear that a lot about our immigrant workforce, you know? Oh, good people, and they show up, and they work hard, and they raise children, and they take care of the old, and so forth. In this case, you feature mostly Filipino workers–oh, they’re legendary, they come from a culture where they really care about other people, and so forth. And then what happens is these cynical SOBs rip off all those good intentions, those good feelings, those good concerns, right? And they buy off politicians, and they turn this into a greed industry, and they get away with it. And it didn’t start with Donald Trump; we’ve been ripping off the good intentions and hard work of immigrants and others in our society for the longest time. And two bucks an hour–anybody listening to this, think about it. In America, you’re paying people two, three dollars an hour to sleep on the floor and go around the clock taking care of seniors that have to be diapered. Think about that and what that says about our culture at this time. I want to thank you, Jennifer Gollan, for doing the hard work and breaking through to get this story for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. And our engineers on our end at KCRW are Kat Yore and Mario Diaz. And here at USC–where I teach, and where Jennifer Gollan got her master’s, and I’m very proud of the fact that we had something to do with your education–it’s Sebastian Grubaugh who has been our engineer once again from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. And now I can say that with greater pride than I did coming in to do this show. So thank you again, Jennifer Gollan.

JG: Thank you very much, Bob. It’s been a great privilege.

The Best Civil War Movie Ever Made Gets Its Due

On Sunday and on July 24, Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events are presenting big-screen showings in theaters nationwide of “Glory,” in honor of the 30-year anniversary of its release. The greatest movie ever made about the American Civil War, “Glory” was the first and, with the exception of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” the only film that eschewed romanticism to reveal what the war was really about.

The story is told through the eyes of one of the first regiments of African American soldiers. Almost from the time the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, S.C., the issue of black soldiers in the Union army was hotly debated. On Jan. 1, 1863, as the country faced the third year of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, rapidly accelerating the process of putting black men into federal blue.

During the war, governors were empowered to raise regiments for federal service. On Jan. 26, 1863, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton issued an order giving Massachusetts Gov. John Albion Andrew the authority “to raise such numbers of volunteers, companies of artillery for duty in the forts of Massachusetts and elsewhere, and such corps of infantry for the volunteer military service as he may find convenient, such volunteers to be enlisted for three years, or until sooner discharged, and may include persons of African descent.”

Four days later, Andrew wrote to his old friend, Francis George Shaw, asking him to speak to his son, then-Capt. Robert Gould Shaw, about accepting command of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first regiment of black soldiers to be assembled in the North. Shaw’s father traveled to Stafford County Courthouse in Virginia, where Robert was serving in the Second Massachusetts. Shaw, 25 years old, accepted the command and the rank of colonel, which went with it.

Around mid-February, the following ad appeared in Boston newspapers: “To Colored Men; Wanted Good Men for the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers of African Descent, Col. Robert G. Shaw (Commanding). $100 Bounty at expiration of term of service. Pay $13 per month and State aid for families.” (The $13 monthly pay turned out to be a lie; black troops were actually given just $10 a month. Eventually, the pay was restored to $13, but not before many of them had died in combat earning it.)

Similar recruiting posters appeared in other cities. Frederick Douglass rallied to the cause in his newspaper with a headline none could ignore: “Men of Color to Arms!” He noted, “When the first rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumter and drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then and there inaugurated would not be fought out entirely by white men.” Douglass’ words cut through the storm of rhetoric about the cause of the war: “A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it.”

The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of recruits from 22 states, the District of Columbia, Nova Scotia and the West Indies swarmed into Camp Meigs, the regimental base near Boston. Among them were Douglass’ own son, 22-year-old Lewis. Toussaint L’Ouverture Delaney, 17, came from Canada; his father, Martin R. Delaney, a physician and novelist, would become the first black officer commissioned in the Union army. The officers, handpicked from prominent abolitionist families, included Garth Wilkinson James, younger brother of William and Henry James.

Most of the regiment were free men, with a sprinkling of escaped slaves. Nearly 75% were laborers or farmers. Their officers thought that their educational level was higher than that of the average regiment in the Union army; one remarked that there was “less drunkenness in this regiment” than in others he had seen.

On May 28, Shaw and the men of the 54th marched down Beacon Street in Boston. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow recorded the moment in his diary as “[a]n imposing sight, with something wild and strange about it, like a dream. At last the North consents to let the Negro fight for freedom.” At the head of the regiment were four banners: a U.S. flag, the Massachusetts state flag, and another of white silk, with a figure representing the goddess of liberty and the motto “Liberty, Loyalty, and Unity.” There was also a blue flag with a white cross and a Latin inscription: “In Hoc Signo Vinces”—With This Sign Thou Shalt Conquer.”

Five days after leaving Boston, the transport ship De Molay slipped quietly by Fort Sumter and carried the men of the 54th into the war. After several frustrating weeks of guard duty and manual labor, they saw their first combat when three companies of the 54th helped save the 10th Connecticut Infantry from disaster after a Confederate charge. “They showed no sign of fear, but fought as if they were very angry and determined to have revenge,” a Boston reporter wrote. A soldier of the 10th Connecticut wrote home that the men of the 54th “fought like heroes.”

Two days later, Shaw volunteered his regiment to lead the assault on Fort Wagner, or Battery Wagner, as it was often called. Wagner was described by historian Peter Burchard as “[a] gigantic earthwork, perhaps the strongest ever built. Its position was formidable. It stretched from the Atlantic on the east to the marshes of deep, meandering Vincent’s Creek on the west, and could only be approached by direct assault along a spit of sand, narrow even at the low tide.”

Union commanders vastly overrated the effect of land and sea bombardment on the fort. (Confederate gunners buried their guns in sandbags to protect them.) They also badly underestimated Wagner’s garrison, thinking there were perhaps 300 men behind the walls—they were wrong by nearly 1,400.

Shaw had premonitions of death. Shortly before the assault, a friend asked him why he was so sad. “If I could only live a few weeks longer with my wife, and be home a little while, I think I might die happy, but it cannot be. I do not believe I will live through our next fight.” But on the day of the assault, July 18, the same friend recalled that “[h]e seemed happy and cheerful. All of the sadness had left him, and I am sure he felt ready to meet his fate.”

The day of the battle, the men of the 54th joined in song, “When This Cruel War Is Over.” More than 600 of them (with perhaps a quarter or more of the regiment back at camp, wounded or sick) marched into position. Soldiers in white regiments yelled out words of encouragement, “Hoorah, boys! You saved the 10th Connecticut!” and “Well done! We heard your guns!” Shaw called out to his men, “The eyes of thousands will look upon what you do tonight.” He had no idea.

At 7:45 p.m., Shaw ordered, “Move in quick time until within a hundred yards of the fort. Then double quick and charge!” All questions about where black soldiers should fight were then answered. By the time the other regiments were in position, the opportunity for victory, if it ever existed, was over. The 54th charged across the beach, in and out of ditches, past rows of wooden spikes and up the slope, their ranks bled by muskets and hand grenades every foot of the way. Shaw reached the top of the wall and yelled out, “Come, boys, come!” Then, apparently hit by a rifle shot, he fell into the fort, dead.

The 54th lost perhaps half its number, killed or captured. Overall, losses on the Union side were horrendous, with more than 1,500 casualties, most from white regiments. The Confederates suffered just 181. Battery Wagner was never taken by storm. On Dec. 7, the fort was found to be deserted and was then occupied by Union soldiers.

Historian James McPherson summed up the assault on Battery Wagner in “Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies”: “If the attack was a failure, in a more profound way it was a success of historical proportions. The unflinching behavior of the regiment in the face of an overwhelming hail of lead and iron answered the skeptics’ question, Will the Negro fight?”

Shaw was buried with his men in a field outside Fort Wagner. Company C’s Sgt. William Carney had picked up the Stars and Stripes from a fallen flag-bearer and carried it to the top, sustaining wounds in his chest, arms and legs. As he staggered back into camp after the retreat, his wounded comrades cheered him; he told them that he had done no more than his duty, and that “the dear old flag” had never touched the ground. Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor, but had to wait until 1897 to receive it, at the Memorial Day ceremony in Boston for the unveiling of a monument to Shaw and his men.

*****

“Can movies teach history?” asked McPherson. “For ‘Glory,’ the answer is yes. Not only is it the first feature film to treat the role of black soldiers in the American Civil War, but it is also one of the most powerful and historically accurate movies ever made about that war.”

The idea for the greatest Civil War film ever made came to producer Freddie Fields on a windy day in Boston, when he couldn’t get a cab to his hotel. He decided to walk, cutting across the Boston Common. About halfway, he stopped to stare at a monument he had scarcely noticed before, a bronze relief by the great New York sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, which depicted Shaw leading his black soldiers of the 54th Regiment down Beacon Street on May 28, 1863.

Fields had produced and worked on such films as “Crimes of the Heart,” “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” and “American Gigolo”; now the idea for something very different began to take shape in his head. “I knew the 125th anniversary of the war was coming up and thought right away that this would make a great movie, the unknown story finally told.”

As it turned out, the director Fields wanted for the project, Edward Zwick, also knew nothing about the subject. “In my case that was inexcusable,” Zwick said. “As a student at Harvard I must have crossed the Common and passed the monument several hundred times. I’m ashamed to confess that I had never heard of the 54th Mass until I got involved in making ‘Glory.’ ”

Neither had some of actors who emerged from “Glory” as stars. Andre Braugher, who played Thomas Searles, told me, “I had read a lot about American history and the Civil War, but I never came across anything about African American soldiers in the Civil War and the 54th Mass. When I read their story, I couldn’t wait to be in this film.”

Most of “Glory” was filmed at Sea Island, Ga., 60 miles south of Savannah, with the cooperation of the Georgia State Film Commission and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. It was the first feature film set in the Civil War to use thousands of re-enactors, nearly 6,000. Crews working with the natural resources department labored for three months to recreate Fort Wagner with 30-foot walls—or, rather, three sides of it, with the fourth side left open for cameras.

Fields was so concerned with authenticity that he invited Richard Snow, editor of American Heritage magazine at the time, to read the script and come on set to offer advice. Thirty years later, Snow recalls, “It was a great thing to be a consultant, in that you have no responsibility whatever and can quack away at your heart’s content. … But I did call for one change that I pride myself on. In the initial script, the 54th was simply hurled against Battery Wagner with no preparation, which made it seem as if Shaw’s men were deliberately being sent to be slaughtered. I protested that a Union fleet had been shelling the works for a good long time before the assault, and that the commanders truly felt that the guns had been silenced and the defenders demoralized, if not killed. They were wrong, of course, but similar mistakes have been made in every war since then.”

*****

“Glory” was a critical hit. Some writers, particularly the revered New Yorker film reviewer Pauline Kael, overlooked some minor faults and focused on the picture’s undeniable power. “Glory,” she wrote, “is based on fiery, spirit-stirring material that has never before been tapped for the movies.” She gave particular emphasis to “the three black powerhouse actors [who] get to display something besides dignity.” Kael also mentioned another important reason the film touched so many: “ ‘Glory’ shows the high cost of war, and yet finds meaning in the sacrifice.”

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning three—Denzel Washington for best supporting actor; cinematographer Freddie Francis for the lovely, elegiac tone of his color photography; and the best sound award. James Horner won a Grammy for his soulful, stirring score.

The unsung and forgotten hero of “Glory” was writer Kevin Jarre, whose screenplay got Golden Globes and Writers Guild of America nominations for best screenplay. Jarre, son of actress Laura Devon and stepson of composer Maurice Jarre, was, as he told me, “electrified” by the process of researching and writing the screenplay. “A subject like this falls into your lap once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. Imagine one of the most important moments in the Civil War, in all of American history, and it has been practically forgotten.”

Jarre started the project “almost in a fever. I jumped right in and absorbed every available source on black soldiers in the Civil War and on the 54th Mass in particular.” These included James McPherson’s history on the Union army’s black troops; the book “The Sable Arm”; Shaw’s letters, which are housed at Harvard’s Houghton Library; Lincoln Kirstein’s hugely affecting photo album of the Saint-Gaudens memorial, titled “Lay This Laurel”; and Peter Burchard’s history of Shaw and the 54th, “One Gallant Rush” (its title taken from an editorial by Frederick Douglass that urged young black men to join the regiment: “The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush … will fling it wide”).

He kept two poems, framed, on his office wall for inspiration. One was “The Unsung Heroes,” by 19th-century African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, which reads in part:

A song for the unsung heroes who rose in the country’s need,

When the life of the land was threatened by the slaver’s cruel greed.

The other framed poem included lines from Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead,” the poet’s reflections on Shaw and the monument: “He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely, peculiar power to choose life and die.”

Besides Shaw, Jarre’s three main characters were Private (and later Sergeant) Rollins, played by Morgan Freeman, a laborer who went from burying Union soldiers to fighting alongside them; Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher), an educated free man who grew up with Shaw; and Private Trip (Denzel Washington), an escaped slave who, finally, chooses to fight for his country.

Some historians noted that Jarre took liberties with the facts. For instance, his script depicts more of the former slaves than of the free men who composed most of the 54th’s roster; Shaw’s wife is not mentioned at all; and Shaw is killed in the charge up the hill to Fort Wagner, rather than at the top of the parapet, where he actually died.

Jarre defended his choices, explaining, “I thought we were obligated to represent all the black men who volunteered for service, both slave and free. There were Union regiments of blacks formed in the South comprised only of slaves, but who knew if anyone would ever make a movie about them? I figured this was the chance to tell their story.”

He chose to leave Shaw’s wife out of the story because “[w]e don’t know much about Anna Shaw. They had only been married a short time, so there wasn’t much correspondence to draw on. I felt it was more important to include Shaw’s mother, who was a big influence on him. We took a dramatic liberty with Shaw’s death because we wanted to impress that the men of the 54th were capable of motivating themselves up that hill.”

Jarre’s own story turned out to be one of unfulfilled promise. After “Glory,” he wrote only two other screenplays of significance: “Tombstone,” (1993) with Kurt Russell playing Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer playing Doc Holliday, and “The Devil’s Own,” about an Irish Republican Army gunman in America, starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. (Jarre was also hired to direct “Tombstone” but was fired after a few weeks, when producers decided the project was moving too slowly.)  He died of heart failure in 2011, at age 56.

He ensured, however, that future generations of moviegoers would remember his face, writing himself a small part in “Glory” as the white soldier who almost picks a racially charged fight with Denzel Washington, and then later, as the regiment marches off to assault Fort Wagner, yells out, “Give ‘em hell!”

What isn’t so well remembered is that “Glory,” in the year of its release, was far from the overwhelming box office smash that its later reputation would indicate. According to the internet movie database IMDb, “Glory” was 45th in box office receipts among 1989 films, taking in just under $27,000,000. The 1980s were a time for escapism in American movies, and among the year’s biggest hits were “Batman,” “Look Who’s  Talking” and a much more comfortable depiction of race in America, “Driving Miss Daisy,” for which Morgan Freeman was nominated for best actor for his role as a longtime chauffeur.

The reason “Glory” did not do better at the box office is hard to pin down, but according to professor Bruce Chadwick, author of “The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film,” “Few people knew the actual story of the 54th Massachusetts, so when the movie came out, they were quite surprised.” Chadwick adds that “Glory could never have been made prior to the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement. That was the foundation for movies about racism, and in Glory the filmmakers gave us both racism, redemption, and heroism at the same time.”

Andre Braugher says, “Frankly, I don’t know why ‘Glory’ wasn’t a bigger hit. But I can tell you this—everyone working on it always knew we were doing a very important film.”

Zwick went on to direct such feature films as “Legends of the Fall,” “Courage Under Fire,” “The Last Samurai” and “Blood Diamond,” and won an Oscar for producing “Shakespeare in Love.” “But no film I’ve been associated with made me prouder than ‘Glory.’ People still come up to me after all these years and say, ‘That movie gave me goose bumps.’ And that gives me goose bumps.”

 

Saving the Vaquita Porpoise

Crossing the border into Mexicali is like entering a mosh pit of battered vehicles. There are no lanes, no order, drivers seem to merge on faith. My friend Vero and I are searching for an address to pick up something that we are to deliver to the crew of Sea Shepherd, the notorious defenders of the world’s oceans. But our GPS is not up to speed; it’s only telling us where to go after we’ve passed our turnoff. A man pushing a food cart motions for me to back up—I’m going down a one-way street the wrong way!

After much circling, reversing and dropped phone calls, someone’s tio nods at us, then scans the sidewalk before slipping us a sealed envelope. We speed off down Highway 5 to San Felipe.

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Humans Have Damaged Most of the Seas, Apart From Climate Change



by

















The Madness Driving Climate Catastrophe



by H. Patricia Hynes

We drive through miles and miles of Baja California’s barren desert, bordered by plains of white salt flats, a remnant of when the Colorado River used to flow into the Gulf of California. Back then, it was a lush wetland, but in 1963, the U.S. stopped the flow with the Glen Canyon Dam. That was a big upset to the marine habitat, although not the biggest one.

The indigenous people of this area, the Cocopah, fished and lived sustainably for 3,000 years, but by the 1920s they were teetering on extinction from the ravages of war and disease. Around that time, Mexican laborers were venturing north in pursuit of the mighty totoaba drum fish, specifically it’s buche, a gas-filled swim bladder that regulates a fish’s buoyancy. There was a big Chinese market for that little organ—fish maw soup is made from it. Like other endangered species’ parts, such as rhino horn, shark fins and tiger testicles, the Chinese believe the totoaba maw has curative powers. But scientists and environmentalists call bullshit.

In 1940, fishermen accelerated their productivity by abandoning hook and line methods and implementing gill nets. The incidental capture—the “bycatch”—in these nets included rays, sharks, sea turtles, birds, corals and a certain cetacean local fishermen called vaquita, meaning “little cow.” I didn’t get a clear explanation on why it’s called that, but it is Mexico’s national marine animal and the most endangered sea mammal on earth. Not until 1958 did biologists officially recognize it as a species, endemic to the upper gulf. Vaquita have been around for 3.5 million years, but with the advent of gill nets, their numbers began declining at an alarming rate.

By 1975, the totoaba fishery was collapsing, so the Mexican government shut it down. Still, people kept on fishing. In 1986, the totoaba was listed as endangered, and in 1996, critically endangered. At that time, the first survey ever done revealed there were only 567 vaquita porpoises in existence. The vaquita is a shy little creature, not flashy like a dolphin. They don’t jump and play, so they are rarely seen. In fact, some people even deny their existence. When vaquita corpses are found, it’s always because they struggled and drowned in gill nets. In 1990, vaquita were listed as endangered, yet in 1991, 128 dead vaquita were pulled out of gill nets. They never survive that entanglement.

In 1993, a biosphere was established where the majority of vaquita have been sighted. Gill nets with a 10-inch or larger mesh were banned, but there was no serious enforcement. Laws don’t hold much power over the people’s will in this part of the world. The refuge is near San Felipe, a poor fishing village. What are they supposed to do? By 2008 the vaquita population had dropped to 245.

*****

On the outskirts of San Felipe, we whiz by a gated community called El Dorado Ranch—a benign haven for ex-pats drawn to cheap and sunny Mexico. But crime has diminished their quality of life and the value of their homes. I read that they are short on security guards because not enough locals can pass the drug tests.

San Felipe sits close to the top of the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. We pass burnt-out houses, junked cars in garbage-strewn lots, abandoned buildings and barbed wire barricades around concrete fences spiked with broken glass. The village center has beautiful bones, but the flesh is scorched and malnourished. On the surface, it seems like it wouldn’t take much to restore it to a wonderful seaside idyll, but there are big, systemic problems here.

The totoaba buche is referred to as the “cocaine of the sea,” and, like that drug, it has a serious criminal underbelly. In 2012, the Sinaloan cartel ramped up operations in the gulf. Because it is illicit, the buche’s price has skyrocketed, fetching up to $100,000 in China. The cartel was paying poachers—bucheros—anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 per bladder, a hell of a lot of money considering that one haul could bring in dozens of totoaba.

We arrive at our motel, grateful that there is an all-night security guard. The last time Vero was in town, she kept finding the tires on her car punctured. She warns me to be low-key and not talk too loudly about why we’re here. You can’t be sure where people’s allegiances lie. Sea Shepherd arrived in 2015 to patrol the vaquita refuge area, and the crew spends most of its time hauling up illegal gill nets and freeing any marine life that might still be alive. If crew members find a dead totoaba, they slice up the buche so it can’t be sold. Then they destroy the nets, which cost fishermen $3,000 apiece. Sea Shepherd’s confrontational methods have garnered some hostility in these parts. Shit happens on the frontline.

The town center of San Felipe. (Veronique Vial)

*****

In 2015, bending to pressure from conservationists, then-President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government started paying fishermen to switch their gear to “safer” gill nets and keep outside of the refuge. Some took a lump sum to get out of fishing altogether and started other businesses, with varying degrees of success. It was a windfall to those who were good at playing the system; others, not so much. Fishermen who work for owners of small, motorized boats called pangas were not compensated directly. Instead, their share often went to family members of the panga owners. Some fishermen received as little as $200 a month, while a handful of them were able to haul in up to $100,000 a month. And the poaching continues.

Many poachers conceal their totoaba nets with weights below the surface of the water and fish under the cover of night. This is a dangerous practice that has led to many mishaps and several drownings.

Fishermen come to shore in their pangas. (Veronique Vial)

*****

At the crack of dawn the next day, we make our way to the marina where the White Holly is docked. This 1944 U.S. Coast Guard cutter once served in Pearl Harbor and now flies Sea Shepherd’s skull-and-crossbones flag. It is one of the 12 ships in Sea Shepherd’s international fleet. The secret envelope that we intercepted back in Mexicali contains the key to a panga used for commuting back and forth to the White Holly when she’s anchored at sea.

When Vero was on the Sea Shepherd in February, the crew had to turn high-powered water hoses on angry fishermen who were throwing Molotov cocktails and trying to climb aboard to sabotage their equipment. Totoaba season is over, so there shouldn’t be any fireworks, but the crew has two Mexican marines and two federal police officers on board just in case.

Jack, the drone operator, says, “Today we’re just glorified garbagemen, picking up trash and hauling out ghost nets”—these are defunct nets that have broken loose or been abandoned but still threaten marine life. Jack is a charismatic 22-year-old who sports a mohawk and multiple tattoos. He tells me about the dead vaquita he found two months ago in a ghost net. “I can’t get the smell out of my shoes,” he says. It’s not surprising to learn that he’s from Northern Ireland: He’s used to conflict and has a take-no-prisoners attitude. He points out the 5- by 10-mile vaquita refuge on the radar. “This is where we get shot at; all the madness happens here.” Jack is featured in the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced documentary thriller, “Sea of Shadows,” which traces the black-market trail of the totoaba buche to China.

The only American on board—and the only person who has no visible tattoos—is Capt. Shannon, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard who gained his sea time working on luxury yachts. He’s a quiet man who seems to be most comfortable gazing over the sea’s horizon.

Per-Erik is the chief engineer. He and Shannon are the only paid crew members. He’s a tall, strong Swede who’s sailed many seas. When he’s not on the water, he splits his time between Sweden, where his seven children live, and Cuba. He reminds me a little of my dad, a salty dog with a million stories. He navigates the ship with an easy grace, occasionally barking out orders to the less experienced engineers.

The first mate, Blair, is a fit and trim practitioner of yoga who hails from Melbourne. He points out a little black blur on the radar screen—a ghost net. That will be the day’s catch.

A panga comes up starboard; one of the fishermen flips us the bird. Vero aims her camera and he pulls his hoodie over his face as the boat zooms off.

The rest of the crew consists of a cross section of dedicated volunteers. Elven, the media director, is in charge of producing the web series for Sea Shepherd’s “Milagro 5” campaign. Each of the five years they’ve been in the gulf has been a Milagro campaign. Elven is a cinematographer who gave up lucrative jobs to join this crew. “I’ve done many things I won’t put my name on,” he says, “but this I’m proud of.” His mother introduced him to Sea Shepherd. “You plant a seed and it grows.”

Like him, his assistant, Nina, is French. She tells me her family are travelers—her mother was born in the Congo and her grandfather lives in La Paz, Mexico. He always told her, “There is no worse fight than the one you don’t do.”

Richie grew up in a working-class family in Mexico City. Though his parents would have preferred he be a lawyer, they supported his studies in hydrobiology and his work with Sea Shepherd. He feels more indigenous than Spanish, because he strives to be in harmony with the earth. The normalization of corruption and the violence in his country are a source of shame and suffering for him. “People are exploited and have no options” he laments. He hopes to work with his fellow Mexicans to create, empathy, solidarity and respect. “I am a citizen of the world first, then a citizen of Mexico,” he says.

Lucas, the chef, is a fresh-faced Belgian who I guess to be in his 20s; turns out he’s 40. He became passionate about Sea Shepherd from watching “Whale Wars” and studied vegan cooking to gain entrance. Not everyone on board is strictly vegan, but they are when on the ship. Lucas believes the way to change the world is through diet. He doesn’t care if he’s paid or not. He says he is “paying his rent to the world.”

This is a sentiment shared by most of the crew. We are overfishing our oceans, and fisheries are in collapse in every part of the world. On the Sea Shepherd, limited food options and humble accommodations are not seen as a sacrifice, but as a righteous way to live.

Back on land, we go to a recommended restaurant. A baseball game is playing on several screens. A sun-withered American couple in flip-flops drink margaritas and argue out loud. We guiltily order fish tacos because nothing else on the menu appeals. It’s hard to give up old habits.

The next day is a placid one on board the ship, the highlight being the retrieval of a wayward birthday balloon. Nonetheless, the crew is hard at work, swabbing the deck, cutting up ghost nets, removing hooks and weights. Some of the booty gets recycled into Sea Shepherd bracelets and an upcoming line of sneakers—making a small dent in the mass of fishing gear that makes up half of the plastic that clogs the world’s oceans.

*****

Carolina is the chief of operations and the one everyone refers to as “the boss.” She is distressed. There is concern that the number of vaquita might have dropped to below six. If that is the case, this sweet little snub-nosed creature with coal black markings under its eyes might never recover.

While Sea Shepherd is the vaquitas’ only protector, the ship casts a big shadow, literally and figuratively. It repels their predators, but it also must disturb the vaquitas. In a few weeks, fishing season will end and the upper gulf will not be plagued with nets. The campaign will take a break, and hopefully the calm will encourage some porpoises to hook up and make babies.

Sunshine Rodriguez, former leader of the local fishermen’s federation, would be happy to see the vaquita vanish. He blames the state of his community on the gill-netting ban and thinks the vaquitas’ demise is due to the loss of its breeding habitat in the wake of the diversion of the Colorado River. If the vaquita were finally gone, fishermen could go back to their old ways. But gill-netting is a hazard to all marine life in the Sea of Cortez. What Jacques Cousteau called “the aquarium of the world” is in dire peril.

Javier is a fisherman who has accepted that the old ways are unsustainable. He created a chango, a shrimp trawling net with safety features that prevents bycatch but, unfortunately, reduces the catch significantly. He took a lump sum to get out of the fishing business and is dedicated to finding alternative methods of fishing. But he gets no support from the government. Fishermen who use alternative gear have been shunned, maligned and intimidated. They have endured threats, burnt-up trucks, angry mobs in the night and fights at sea. In March, the government discontinued its compensation program, sparking a riot in San Felipe. The cartel exploited the fishermen’s desperation, slashing what it pays for a buche, while the price in China only goes up.

We are sitting on the beach, waiting to hear from Javier, who is traveling from La Paz, where he’s been at a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference. A mild breeze coming off the ocean makes the hot sun intoxicating. We lie back and try to luxuriate, in spite of the mounds of garbage along the tide line. But every few minutes, needy peddlers solicit us with their wares.

Javier’s son texts to say that Javier is tired and all talked out.

A toddler is chasing seagulls. His glee is infectious, and we laugh with his family, which is picnicking beside us. A mariachi band has started playing, and suddenly people are streaming down the malecón. The smell of grilled meat and sweet corn tortillas fills the air. Such a good life, if only the people could solve the fundamental problem their community faces.

Dr. Pablo Chee Rodriguez believes the solution is compromise. On our return from San Felipe, we stop by his hospital in Mexicali. He has a warm and humble demeanor, and is eager to share his ideas. “Compromise is conservation,” he says. His Chinese ancestors came to Mexico in 1905 as merchants. Though trained as an anesthesiologist, he is primarily a businessman, who founded this hospital and another here. He recently saved the life of a poacher who had been shot in the head while trying to flee with a totoaba. His hospital just co-sponsored a hook-and-line fishing tournament in San Felipe to attract tourists. All the proceeds went toward an aquaponic facility that is training locals how to raise fish for release into the wild. He wants to make the tournament an annual event. He wants to put totoaba on the menu of restaurants and private homes. He wants to create a trust for the fishermen of San Felipe. He wants to starve out the Mexican cartel and the Chinese mafia.

In an attempt to ease tensions and discuss options, he has brought together the poachers and the ocean defenders, but even if they find common ground, navigating the systemic corruption in Mexico is overwhelming. Nevertheless, he has made it his mission to bring health and prosperity to San Felipe.

Some scoff at his promotion of aquaculture. It takes seven years for totoaba to reach maturity, and the presence of hatchery fish will not only increase the craze for wild totoaba, but weaken the fish stocks. In the meantime, the vaquitas’ fate hangs in the balance.

A man considers his options from atop a border fence. (Barbara Williams)

On our approach to the border, there is a man straddling the top of the barbed wire fence that divides Mexico and the U.S. He gazes down sadly at the officials on either side, weighing his options. Like all the characters we met this week, he knows what he wants. He just can’t see a way to get it.

Warren Slams Wall Street ‘Vampires’ in New Economic Plan

In the runup to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released her vision for tackling college debt, reducing the cost of child care and reforming immigration, but her latest plan involves the issue that first brought her to national prominence: Wall Street.

In a post published Thursday on Medium, Warren calls for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law separating commercial banks from their investment divisions, thereby preventing banks from using consumer deposits for risky investments.

The law was partially repealed in 1999, which, as a 2015 NPR analysis explained, “opened the floodgates for giant mergers” and allowed commercial banks to engage in such previously banned activities as investments and insurance.

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7 Bold Elizabeth Warren Proposals That Would Remake America



by Kathie Bozanich

Warren calls her latest proposal part of her “economic patriotism agenda,” which, in addition to reinstating Glass-Steagall, includes plans for postal banking and reining in executive compensation by tying pay to companies’ performance, and new rules for private equity firms, which make money by buying failing companies, restructuring (often by cutting budgets and laying off workers), and then reselling the companies for a profit.

“Sometimes the companies do well,” Warren notes. “But far too often, the private equity firms are like vampires—bleeding the company dry and walking away enriched even as the company succumbs.”

CNN called Warren’s new proposal “red meat for the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which has zeroed in on Wall Street speculation as a root cause of growing economic inequality.”

But Drew Maloney, president and CEO of the American Investment Council, a group representing the private equity industry, sees the proposal as harmful. “Extreme political plans only hurt workers, investment, and our economy,” he told CNN, adding that “[p]rivate equity is an engine for American growth and innovation—especially in Senator Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.”

Warren has long championed constraining Wall Street. “In the lead-up to the 2008 crisis,” even before she was a senator, she writes, “I rang the alarm bell as I saw the same tricks and traps emerging in mortgages.”

She continues: “And after I proposed a new federal agency to protect consumers—and President Obama signed that agency into law in 2010—I spent nearly a year setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and helping write new rules to crack down on financial scams.”

During the last Democratic presidential primary, Warren pushed candidates to include a repeal of Glass-Steagall in their policy platforms. As CNN reported at the time, in a 2015 email, she warned supporters, “Wall Street spent decades—and millions of dollars—to repeal the original Glass-Steagall Act, and you can bet they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it from being reinstated. … We need grassroots support from all across the country if we’re going to fight back to make our financial institutions smaller and safer.”

Read Warren’s latest proposal here.

Why I’m Glad About Trump’s Latest Twitter Tirade

People of color in the U.S. have experienced many variations of the “go back to where you came from” sentiment. In the wake of President Donald Trump’s racist Twitter tirade aimed at “the Squad” of four recently elected women of color in Congress, the Los Angeles Times asked its readers to share their own stories. The anecdotes were painful to read and yet all too familiar to me. Social media threads are filled with similar stories, and, like the outpouring of shocking personal stories that marked the #MeToo movement, white Americans are hearing for perhaps the first time how widespread and deeply ingrained racism is in American culture and how much people of color have endured.

I remember my first experience on the receiving end of this type of hate. It was just a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks. While I was driving on the streets of Los Angeles, a man with a large American flag flying from his car screamed out of his window at me to “go back to my country.” I was shaken, but I was not surprised.

It was certainly not my last time being told to leave the U.S. It is an age-old American insult, a perfect encapsulation of xenophobic ideals about who belongs in this country and who doesn’t. It matters little if the targets of such attacks are natural born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal residents, undocumented immigrants or visitors to the U.S. All that matters is that they represent an “impurity” in the perceived whiteness of America. They need only be nonwhite, have an accent, speak a different language, have a foreign-sounding name or simply issue a criticism about the way things are.

On the one hand, Trump’s latest example of racism has done deep damage and likely traumatized his direct victims, Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. On the other hand, it has created an opportunity to do away with any lingering doubts about where he stands. Media outlets like The Associated Press have called out his racism using plain language and without resorting to euphemisms. “Trump digs in on racist tweets: ‘Many people agree with me,'” reads one headline, a refreshingly direct statement that did not use quotation marks around the word “racist,” or rely on phrases like “racially charged.”

In fact, the AP Stylebook announced a critical change earlier this year, advising journalists to call something racist if it appears so. Although some media outlets are chiding Democrats for falling for the president’s distraction, Trump’s words are actually a misstep on his part, as they have helped clarify claims of his racism in no uncertain terms. It is not a distraction—it is a direct symptom of his presidency. One can argue that it is better for a racist to show his or her true colors than to strongly hint at bigotry and thus preserve plausible deniability.

Trump’s words have also had the effect of uniting a Democratic Party that just last week appeared fractured along racial and political lines. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had openly criticized the Squad in a New York Times interview and was met with swift pushback from Ocasio-Cortez, who accused her of being “outright disrespectful” to the women of color.

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Nancy Pelosi Is Not on Your Side



by Jacob Sugarman

When Trump sided with Pelosi against the Squad, hoping to exploit the division to his advantage, the House speaker may have realized she needed to get on the right side of this battle and moved swiftly to condemn Trump. She rightly sided with her party members in a strongly worded message on Twitter saying Trump’s “plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again.”

Trump literally proved the Squad’s point and made clear that outspoken women of color in Congress were problematic to the white wealthy establishment, forcing Pelosi to adjust her liberal views to step in line and back her colleagues. The liberal leader who earlier this year condemned Representative Omar’s remarks in a resolution about anti-Semitism, was given the chance to prove to the Squad that she is on the side of congress members of color.

Even better, the president is now in the official record as being condemned as a racist by a leading lawmaker. In speaking to her resolution aimed at the president, Pelosi said on the floor of the House: “Every member of this institution, Democratic and Republican, should join us to condemn the president’s racist tweets.” Her use of the word “racist” to describe the president triggered a debate about long-standing rules based on colonial traditions to not insult the head of state—as if Trump has adhered to any reasonable standards of decorum in his relentless insults aimed at the country and its people. In the end, Pelosi’s words prevailed and went on record with the passage of the resolution.

What we can count on from a president like Trump is that when he makes an outrageous statement, he rarely, if ever, backtracks. His go-to tactic has been to double down on his extremism, because in Trump’s world, apologizing is a sign of weakness. And so he stepped even deeper into the morass of his own making by reiterating the sentiments of his offensive tweets in public a day after firing them off, saying, “If you are not happy here, then you can leave.” He said it not once or twice, but five times in the span of a few sentences.

He then proceeded to go even further in justifying his language, saying, “A lot of people love it by the way. A lot of people love it,” prompting responses from white supremacists who chorused that they did indeed love it. One person posted to the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, “This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for.” Trump waded so deeply into the rhetoric and imagery of white supremacist ideology that he has left no doubt in anyone’s mind.

Trump’s words have also helped draw attention to the culpability of the entire Republican Party. A very small handful of Republicans have mildly chastised him. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska issued criticisms that stopped short of calling Trump a racist, and four House Republicans voted alongside Democrats on Pelosi’s resolution condemning Trump’s racism. But the overwhelming majority of Republicans have not only stood by the president silently but have openly defended him.

House Minority Speaker Kevin McCarthy shamelessly turned the tables on the victims of Trump’s hate and claimed, “Let’s not be false about what is happening here today. This is all about politics and beliefs of ideologies.” He laughably added, “This is about socialism versus freedom,” as if a label of socialism—if that even applied in the cases of the four congresswomen—was a reason to deserve racist targeting. So Trump’s words have clarified not only his own racism but that of his party.

Hours after the House resolution passed, Democratic Congressman Al Green introduced articles of impeachment against Trump in the face of opposition from his party’s leadership. Coming so soon after Democrats passed the resolution sent a strong message that lawmakers’ patience is wearing thin. Even though the measure failed, the fact that 95 Democrats did vote to support it is a good sign.

Just as Pelosi had to make her choice, the Democratic Party as a whole has to decide which side it is on. Pursuing impeachment offers Democrats a clear path to prove their anti-racist credentials. Trump deserves impeachment on a list of issues so long that several books have been written describing his crimes and offenses. But if this incident is what it takes to push Democrats to act, so be it.

Trump’s defenders have got to know and understand that history will not judge this president kindly. He has drawn a very clear line in the sand that invites every American to choose a side. The clarity of his racism is a useful tool to measure where America stands. The closet racists who voted for him in droves in 2016 are more exposed than ever as the villains in this epic fight of good versus evil. While millions of Americans tacitly echo the “go back to where you came from” sentiment toward people of color, millions more boldly respond, saying, “We are here to stay and we will prevail.”