Chris Hedges's Blog, page 211

Putting the Warriors on Terror on Trial

“It is natural for mankind to set a higher value on courage then timidity, on activity than prudence, on strength than counsel.” —Montesquieu, “The Spirit of the Laws”

They are undoubtedly America’s favorite, most lauded shock troops. More, even, than the Marines or the Army’s Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs have captured America’s (and, certainly, Hollywood’s) attention. Despite their small ranks, they are nothing less than the face of the post-9/11 U.S. “war on terror.” It was the SEALs, after all, who killed Osama bin Laden, prompting spontaneous, nationwide chants of “USA! USA!” Sure, the Army and Marines do most of the fighting and dying, but there is something romantic in the collective American mind about those SEALs.

Yet currently, in the wake of a couple of major scandals and seemingly credible allegations of serious war crimes, it’s as though the entire organization is on trial. Maybe that’s for the best.

What unfolded in the increasingly absurd and always disturbing trial of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was nothing less than a war for the soul of the whole special operations community. Still, the minutiae and singularity of the individual case masked the larger questions and conclusions worth drawing from the entire spectacle: Why is the U.S. fighting abroad? Who, exactly, is doing that fighting? What happens when aggressive, highly trained commandos are repeatedly shipped abroad and given immense leeway and power over foreign lives and deaths?

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Was Ending the Draft a Grave Mistake?



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

These, to name only a few, are key queries to consider regarding the Gallagher case and a separate scandal in which another SEAL recently pleaded guilty to a 2017 hazing attack in Mali that resulted in the strangulation death of an Army Green Beret. In the second case, why were these special operators in remote West Africa in the first place? The answer is relevant to the tragic incident itself.

As for Gallagher, he was accused and acquitted of shooting an elderly civilian and a young girl without cause, and of killing a teenage Islamic State prisoner with his knife, then convicted of posing with the captive’s body as a trophy before texting out boastful photos. His war crimes trial increased in absurdity as Gallagher’s SEAL team divided into two camps (for and against the chief) and testified against each other. This marked a rare breach of a kind of special operations team code of silence, one that bears remarkable similarity to the domestic police “blue wall” of silence. That Gallagher was ultimately turned in by fellow SEALs, who proceeded to publicly testify against him, is telling, and uncommon, lending, I felt, weight to the prosecution’s case.

Look, I was a military man—though not a part of special operations tribe—and worked closely with both Green Berets and SEALs, particularly while undertaking village stability operations (forming government-friendly village militias, essentially) in Kandahar, Afghanistan. As such, I was perhaps less surprised when the testimony of the SEALs and some Marines in the Gallagher trial not only seemed to implicate the chief in war crimes but inadvertently exposed a prevailing culture of poor discipline and indecency among the team—particularly a widespread proclivity to take “cool guy” photos with enemy or civilian corpses. The practice is gruesome, disturbing and highly common—and, though I never partook in that particular morbidity, I’m certain most Iraq and Afghan war combat vets would agree with me regarding its banality.

Had he been convicted, Gallagher would certainly have represented an extreme case, but the fact that so many military comrades and armchair warriors at home backed him demonstrates that the problem runs deep. It raises certain questions, along with some disconcerting answers. For example, Gallagher was on his eighth—count them, eighth—deployment in a 19-year career. Special operators such as he and his team make up just 2% of the U.S. military, but since the troop reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan were enacted in 2011 and 2014, respectively, they increasingly the bear most of the burden for fighting an absurdly unwinnable fight that now stretches from West Africa to Central Asia.

Too many deployments, too much extended action and, critically, too much power have been entrusted to these men. There are bound to be excesses, the sort of wartime criminality that does the “terrorist” recruiting sergeant’s job for him. Just as too many of Gallagher’s—and other special operators’—leaders turned a blind eye to the inevitable murmurs about wrongdoing, too many folks at home have simply patted U.S. commandos on the back and then ignored what was done in America’s name. In such an atmosphere of citizen apathy and unwarranted military adulation, all during nearly two decades of ill-defined, indecisive wars, it’s amazing that there aren’t more (publicized) incidents of individual cruelty (leaving aside, for a moment, the inherent savagery of waging air and ground combat in unnecessary wars of choice).

Regardless of the verdict in the case, it’s a safe prediction that a shocking portion of the American populace felt a peculiar sympathy with Gallagher and the other accused special operators. That’s because, as Montesquieu astutely noted in the 18th century, mankind relishes warriors more than it should, more than almost any other profession. This military man, at least, thinks it a pity. Nonetheless, I’m in a tiny minority by taking such a position. And perhaps it should come as little surprise to me. After all, when Lt. William Calley ordered and enthusiastically took part in the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai, a staggering 77% of Americans polled thought he’d been railroaded by the military justice system.

President Trump is unlikely to know many details about the My Lai massacre or the ins and outs of the charges against Gallagher. But make no mistake: Trump and his hawkish cheerleaders have the pulse of the American people on these issues, on the dark side of patriotism. That’s why the president was reportedly considering a pre-conviction pardon for Gallagher. Trump knew he wouldn’t lose any political points defending a military man, even a potential monster. Trump is hardly sophisticated, but he’s got the street con’s intuition that Americans’ sense of exceptionalism and reflexive adulation of the military lacks complexity or nuance. Even an accused war criminal can be sympathetic, so long as he’s American—one of ours.

It is all a consequence of waging forever war; of what happens to the soul of an (ostensible) republic when a select minority—a Praetorian Guard of sorts—is trusted with the management of violence the world over while the populace proverbially sleeps.

This is far from a defense or apology for Gallagher. I’m fairly certain we’d loathe one another. Still, it must be said—the uncomfortable takeaway from all this barbarity: Boys will be boys (although they mostly are men in the special operations community), and they are capable of much evil when unrestrained and perpetually deployed into worldwide combat. Aggressive, highly trained and hypermasculine warriors like the SEALs ought to remain metaphorically sealed behind glass labeled “break only in case of emergency,” not utilized, as they have been, as the go-to tool for waging normalized and increasingly mundane global imperial war.

My gut tells me that Gallagher and a sizable portion of other special operators have run off the rails through repeatedly fighting in foreign locales. The SEAL community won’t like me weighing in, but more oversight and control over them seems necessary. What’s more vital is that American policymakers follow a basic adage: Don’t “break the glass” and unleash these highly trained killers unless there’s a damn good reason and a clear end state. Because once they’re unbridled, America owns all that unfolds, and it’s often ugly. It’s certainly far darker than the sanitized military Independence Day parade that Donald Trump has planned.

Only here, too, Trump is betting on a messy truth: that most Americans relish the patriotic spectacle over the dark reality of war and its consequences. And he’s right, once again.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

Family of Victim in Deadly Vegas Shooting Suing Gun-Makers

LAS VEGAS—The parents of a young woman killed in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre said Wednesday his family is blaming gun manufacturers for their daughter’s death.

“Someone murdered our daughter,” said James Parsons, whose 31-year-old daughter Carrie Parsons was one of 58 people killed when a gunman rained down gunfire from a high-rise hotel. “Someone should be held accountable for that.”

A wrongful death lawsuit filed Tuesday targets Colt and seven other gun manufacturers, along with gun shops in Nevada and Utah, arguing their weapons are designed to be easily modified to fire like automatic weapons.

“It was a horrifying, agonizing experience and we don’t want this to happen to other families,” Parsons told The Associated Press of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The lawsuit is the latest case to challenge a federal law shielding gun manufacturers from liability. It charges that gun makers marketed the ability of the AR-15-style weapons to be easily modified to mimic machine guns and fire continuously, violating both a state and federal ban on automatic weapons.

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Guns and Liberty



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Parsons and his wife Ann-Marie argue in the lawsuit that the firearms are “thinly disguised” machine guns that the manufacturers knew could be easily modified, even without the use of a “bump stock,” an attachment used by the Las Vegas gunman that allowed him to fire in rapid succession.

The Trump administration banned bump stocks this year, making it illegal to possess them under the same federal laws that prohibit machine guns.

“We understand this is an uphill battle,” Ann-Marie Parsons told the AP on Wednesday from their home in suburban Seattle. “But somebody has got to do something because the carnage continues.”

“Losing our daughter is the worst thing that ever happened to us. It is hurtful to us every time we see these things happen,” she said.

The lawsuit charges the manufacturers showed a “reckless lack of regard for public safety” by advertising the firearms “as military weapons and signaling the weapon’s ability to be simply modified.” It alleges there are dozens of videos online showing people how to install bump stocks.

“It was only a question of when – not if – a gunman would take advantage of the ease of modifying AR-15s to fire automatically in order to substantially increase the body count,” the lawsuit states.

Courts have typically rejected lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers in other high-profile shooting attacks, citing a 2005 federal law that shields gun makers from liability in most cases when their products are used in crimes.

Neither Colt nor any of the other manufacturers immediately responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The attorney for the Parsons family, Joshua Koskoff, is representing relatives of victims of the Newtown school massacre in a similar lawsuit. The Connecticut Supreme Court in March ruled that gun-maker Remington could be sued for the way it marketed an AR-15-style rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Remington plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Las Vegas shooter opened fire on the crowd of 22,000 from his suite in a tower of the Mandalay Bay casino-resort. Police and the FBI say the gunman acted alone and killed himself before officers reached his hotel room.

The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis unit later found the shooter sought notoriety in the attack on the open-air concert but cited no “single or clear motivating factor.”

The lawsuit is among more than a dozen filed since the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting, though it’s the first to target a gun maker.

Victims have sued MGM Resorts International, which operated the concert venue and owns the Mandalay Bay hotel, along with the concert promoter and others.

MGM Resorts then sued hundreds of victims in a bid to avoid liability. The company has been in settlement talks with the victims and their families.

___

Associated Press Reno correspondent Scott Sonner contributed to this report from Reno. Balsamo reported from New York.

Trump Facebook Ads Use Models to Portray Actual Supporters

NEW YORK—A series of Facebook video ads for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign shows what appears to be a young woman strolling on a beach in Florida, a Hispanic man on a city street in Texas and a bearded hipster in a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., all making glowing, voice-over endorsements of the president.

“I could not ask for a better president,” intones the voice during slow-motion footage of the smiling blonde called “Tracey from Florida.” A man labeled on another video as “AJ from Texas” stares into the camera as a voice says, “Although I am a lifelong Democrat, I sincerely believe that a nation must secure its borders.”

There’s just one problem: The people in the videos that ran in the past few months are all actually models in stock video footage produced far from the U.S. in France, Brazil and Turkey, and available to anyone online for a fee.

Though the 20-second videos include tiny disclaimers that say “actual testimonial, actor portrayal,” they raise the question why a campaign that can fill arenas with supporters would have to buy stock footage of models. It’s a practice that, under different circumstances, Trump himself would likely blast as “fake news.”

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Facebook Also Censoring the Left Isn’t Just a Worry—It’s a Reality



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Censoring Facebook Censors Us All



by Daniel Lazare

Trump campaign officials declined repeated requests for comment on Tuesday. Political experts say that, while it’s not unusual for stock footage to find its way into ads, a presidential campaign should have been more careful.

“As a producer, you want to control — you want people to look a certain way and you want them to sound a certain way,” said Jay Newell, a former cable TV executive who teaches advertising at Iowa State University. “The fact that the footage is from outside the U.S. makes it that much more embarrassing.”

There are plenty examples of such gaffes. In the last presidential primaries, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio ran an ad titled “Morning in America” with shots from Canada. A super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush put ads on TV with video reportedly from the English countryside and workers from Southeast Asia.

Trump himself has used video from abroad before. His 2016 TV ad vowing to build a wall to keep out immigrants from Mexico showed people streaming across the border — but the shots of refugees were taken in Morocco.

The existence of the stock footage in this series of Trump ads, reported last week by Judd Legum for his website Popular Information, underscores an increasingly aggressive, targeted approach by the Trump campaign to reach out to voters on Facebook.

The Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which was behind the testimonial videos, is by far the biggest spender on political Facebook advertising, shelling out more than $2.7 million on 27,735 ads in the last 90 days alone, according to the social network’s running database of campaign ad spending. That’s in addition to the more than $1 million spent on more than 14,500 ads in the same period by Donald J. Trump for President Inc.

Trump’s campaign gets to such totals by running the same ads numerous times, all at slightly different audiences.

“Thomas from Washington,” featuring the bearded young man behind a coffee shop counter, appeared aimed at evangelicals, with the voice-over quote saying the president and his family are “in our prayers for strength and wisdom from God almighty.” ″AJ from Texas” seemed focused on Hispanic men. And “Tracey in Florida” was aimed specifically at a demographic in which Trump is historically weak — young women.

All are models for Turkish, Brazilian and French companies, respectively, that supply hundreds of photos and video to the popular site iStock run by Getty Images, which caters to publications, filmmakers and advertisers looking for professional, inexpensive imagery.

According to the site, licenses for the video clips used in the Trump ads can be had for as little as $170.

The blonde on the beach appears to be particularly prolific. Her photos and videos from the French company Tuto Photos in Roubaix, France, show her twirling in a wedding gown, walking spaniels in a meadow, getting her teeth checked at the dentist and working in a warehouse.

And the star of iStock’s “Bearded and tattooed hipster coffee shop owner posing” — also known as Trump’s “Thomas from Washington” — is a fixture on the videos and photos contributed by the company GM Stock out of Izmir, Turkey. His unmistakable beard and tats can be seen on the image site strolling with a woman on the beach, sitting by a campfire and pumping iron in the gym.

So what do these models think of being held up as model Trump supporters?

That’s not clear because none of the companies they’ve posed for would give a detailed comment to The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for Getty Images would not identify the models, citing privacy concerns.

Fred Davis, a campaign consultant who’s produced ads for George W. Bush and other Republican presidential candidates, said the Trump campaign’s use of such footage is not surprising, given the volume of political ads on the internet these days.

“Whoever did this is probably 22 years old, and they’re going through pictures and thought, ‘This is a great picture,’” Davis said.

“This is a great shot of Thomas from Washington. It’s a shame it’s not Thomas from Washington.”

Facebook Has Ignored Its Secret Hate Groups for Years

Facebook says its standards apply just as much in private groups as public posts, prohibiting most slurs and threats based on national origin, sex, race and immigration status.

But dozens of hateful posts in a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents raise questions about how well if at all the company is policing disturbing postings and comments made outside of public view.

Many of the posts ProPublica obtained from the 9,500-member “I’m 10-15” group (10-15 is Border Patrol code for “alien in custody”) include violent or dehumanizing speech that appears to violate Facebook’s standards. For example, a thread of comments before a visit to a troubled Border Patrol facility in Texas by Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, and Veronica Escobar, of Texas, included “fuck the hoes” and “No mames [fist].” Another post encouraged Border Patrol agents to respond to the Latina lawmakers visit by hurling a “burrito at these bitches.” And yet another mocked a video of a migrant man trying to carry a child through a rushing river in a plastic bag. A commenter joked, “At least it’s already in a trash bag” — all probable violations of the rules.

Facebook, citing an open federal investigation into the group’s activities, declined to answer questions about whether any posts in the 10-15 group violated its terms of service or had been removed, or whether the company had begun scrutinizing the group’s postings since ProPublica’s story was published. It also refused to say whether it had previously flagged posts by group members or had received complaints.

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Facebook’s only response, emailed by a spokeswoman who refused to let ProPublica use her name, was: “We want everyone using Facebook to feel safe. Our Community Standards apply across Facebook, including in secret Groups. We’re cooperating with federal authorities in their investigation.”

Since April, the company has been calling community groups “the center of Facebook.” It has put new emphasis on group activity in the newsfeed and has encouraged companies, communities and news organizations to shift resources into private messaging. These forums can give members a protected space to discuss painful topics like domestic violence, or to share a passion for cookbooks. Groups can be either private, which means they can be found in search results, or secret, which means they are hidden unless you have an invitation.

This is part of an intentional “pivot toward privacy.” In a March blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.”

But this pivot also fosters hidden forums where people can share offensive, potentially inflammatory viewpoints. “Secret” groups such as 10-15 are completely hidden from non-members. Would-be participants need an invitation to even find the landing page, and administrators of the groups have full jurisdiction to remove a person’s access at any time.

When such groups operate out of sight, like 10-15, the public has a more limited view into how people are using, or misusing, the platform. In a secret group, only members can flag or report content that might be in violation of Facebook’s policies. The administrators of the group can set stricter policies for members’ internal conversations. They cannot, however, relax broader Facebook standards. They also can’t support terrorist organizations, hate groups, murderers, criminals, sell drugs or attack individuals.

Civil rights groups say they have been noticing and raising the issue of hateful posts in hidden forums for years — with limited response from Facebook.

Henry Fernandez, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a member of Change the Terms, a coalition of civil rights groups pushing for better content moderation on Facebook, said the platform keeps creating features without “without vetting them for their implications for the use by hate groups or, in this case, Border Patrol agents acting in hateful ways.”

Posts in hidden groups have incited incidents of violence in the real world, most famously against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and at the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. The military launched an investigation of a secret Facebook group in 2017 after Marines shared naked pictures of female service members. Facebook has acknowledged the problem and has made some efforts to address it with new initiatives, such as a proposed independent review board and consultations with a group of 90 organizations, most focusing on civil rights.

ProPublica’s Border Patrol story came out the day after Facebook released an audit of civil rights issues on the platform. Recommendations included strengthening hate speech policies around national origin, enforcing a stricter ban on the promotion of white supremacy and removing an exemption that had allowed humorous posts that contained offensive content.

Facebook did not say whether it will make all of the recommended changes. But in a blog post, COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote, “We will continue listening to feedback from the civil rights community and address the important issues they’ve raised so Facebook can better protect and promote the civil rights of everyone who uses our services.”

Jessica Gonzalez, vice president of strategy and senior counsel at FreePress and co-founder of Change the Terms, said that even after the back and forth with auditors, she was not surprised that the hateful posts in 10-15 were not flagged.

“What Facebook released on Sunday is an improvement,” she said, “but I think Facebook has engaged in this all along in an appeasement strategy. They’ll do what they need to do to get the bad publicity off [their] backs.”

The civil rights audit also called for better transparency about civil rights issues on Facebook’s advertising portal, which became a priority for the company after multiple ProPublica investigations and lawsuits by civil rights groups.

Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Business, said the new emphasis on privacy is part of Facebook’s attempt to keep users on the platform, while reassuring investors.

“So to the extent that Facebook provides shelter to groups of all kinds — whether they are people who are sharing hateful messages or messages for the good of the world — it benefits their business model.”

Since we published our story, more people have gotten in touch to tell us about other secret groups that may warrant closer scrutiny.

We know there are members of groups who don’t agree with everything that is said in these forums. We need your guidance to do more reporting. We’d like to hear about what’s happening in your communities particularly from those of you who are concerned public servants. Fill out our questionnaire, or send an email to borderpatrol@propublica.org.

Is The New York Times in the Tank for Pete Buttigieg?

On June 25, the day before the first Democratic presidential debates, Pete Buttigieg’s average in polls of the race stood at 7.0 percent. Today, after the attention and considerable positive media reaction that he got after the debates, he’s surged—to 5.2 percent.

Despite the fact that more people seeing him seems to have resulted in less people liking him, the media narrative about Buttigieg is that his is a campaign on the move—based almost entirely on his fundraising success. CNBC’s headline (7/1/19) was:

Pete Buttigieg Raises $24.8 Million in the Second Quarter as His White House Bid Gains Momentum

Bloomberg News (7/1/19) had:

Buttigieg Raises $24.8 Million in Quarter, Continuing 2020 Surge

The Guardian (7/1/19) didn’t put too fine a point on it:

Buttigieg Raises $24.8m, Eclipsing Sanders as Candidate Cull Looms

The thread running through these takes is that money, not public support, is what defines a candidate’s “momentum” or “surge,” and determines who is in “eclipse.” Voters are great, seems to be the thinking—but what really counts are donors.

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Impeach Trump? Most 2020 Democrats Tiptoe Past the Question



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Of course, from a voter’s point of view, what really matters is not how much financial support a candidate is getting, but who they’re getting it from—because those supporters may not have the same interests as the voter. In the case of Buttigieg, the two main sources of funds seem to be the tech industry—in part because of personal ties between the tech world and Buttigieg, who was one of the first 300 users of Facebook (American Prospect, 6/25/19)—and the financial industry, that traditional source of funds for corporate-oriented Democrats.

A New York Times headline (6/16/19) told the story: “Wall Street Donors Are Swooning for Mayor Pete. (They Like Biden and Harris, Too.)” “A Harvard graduate and veteran of the McKinsey consultancy, Mr. Buttigieg is fluent in the language of elite New York circles,” the story noted.

But being Wall Street’s favorite is not a good look, the financial industry being deeply unpopular with voters, particularly Democratic ones (Morning Consult, 12/7/18). So Buttigieg is being rebranded as a fundraiser who brings everyone together, rich and not so rich alike. And the Times(7/1/19) is happy to help out with that—with its gushing headline:

Big Donors, Small Donors: Pete Buttigieg Has Courted Them All — Successfully.

The piece, by Reid J. Epstein and Thomas Kaplan, reports:

During the second quarter, Mr. Buttigieg attended about 50 high-dollar fundraising events, for which ticket prices typically run $2,800, the maximum individual contribution allowed by federal law in the primary. But he also held 20 “grass-roots” fundraising events, for which ticket prices start as low as $15.

The piece claims that Buttigieg is relying on both of these revenue streams, the “big” and “small” donors of the headline, in contrast to the other leading candidates:

Mr. Buttigieg’s rivals have mostly favored one fundraising approach or the other. Mr. Biden has concentrated his efforts on the broad network of Obama donors in major cities, but the 76-year-old former vice president hasn’t energized the small-dollar grassroots world. Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren have sworn off closed-door big-donor events as a political strategy aimed at creating a wider universe of small donors.

But has Buttigieg, unlike Biden, really “energized the small-donor grassroots world”? The article notes, “The average contribution over the course of his campaign has been $47.42, according to his team.” That’s not all that different from the $55 average contribution that Biden says he’s been taking in (Washington Post, 6/18/19). In fact, Buttigieg a couple weeks ago was saying that $55 was the average contribution he was getting, too (Washington Post, 7/1/19).

This is a lot bigger than the average contributions reported by the other leading Democrats: $30 for Kamala Harris (Politico, 6/29/19), $28 for Elizabeth Warren (New York Times, 4/10/19), $18 for Bernie Sanders (Washington Examiner, 7/2/19). But if you look at the fundraising that Buttigieg has been doing lately, it looks like he’s jumped up to a new league: The Times reports that he “collected $24.8 million from more than 294,000 donors for the three-month period that ended Sunday.” The paper doesn’t do the math, but that’s $84.35 a donor—a big chunk of change for someone who supposedly “has married traditional high-dollar fund-raising with online small donations,” as the Times claims in the very same sentence.

Even that figure probably overstates how much support Buttigieg actually gets from small donors. As the Times (5/30/19) has noted, the fact that the Democratic National Committee has made number of donors a criterion for appearing in debates has led candidates to spend a great deal of money, often via social media ads, to attract small donors, who often contribute much less than they cost to find them—in effect laundering the money gotten from a handful of big money supporters to create the appearance of a broader base of support.

The big donor/small donor piece mentions that through the spring, “the Buttigieg campaign’s combined spending on digital advertising on Facebook and Google ($1.3 million) exceeded that of any other Democratic candidate except Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren.” But it doesn’t refer back to the earlier reporting that suggests that this spending in search of small online donors might not actually be netting any money.

Another Times story that seems to have gone down the memory hole is the piece about Wall Street “swooning” for Buttigieg. The July 1 piece mentions “tech executives in Silicon Valley,” “military veterans” and “educated liberals on the coasts” as sources he’s tapped for funds—but no whisper of his finance industry fans. I guess even when you’re trying to pitch your candidate as the unifier of all classes, it’s best not to mention them all.

Robert Reich: Moderates and Centrists Are No Safe Bet

Imagine an opposition political party in a land being taken over by an oligarchy, headed by a would-be tyrant.

The tyrant and the oligarchy behind him have convinced many voters that the reason they feel powerless and economically insecure isn’t because the oligarchy has taken most of the economic gains and overwhelmed the government with their money. It’s because the country has been taken over by undocumented immigrants, Latinos, African-Americans, and a “deep state” of coastal liberals, intelligence agencies, and mainstream media.

This is rubbish, of course, but the tyrant is masterful at telling big lies, and he is backed by the oligarchy’s big money.

Imagine further that the opposition party will soon face another election in which it could possibly depose the tyrant and overcome the oligarchy. But at the rate they are consolidating power – over the courts, politics, and the media – this could be the opposition’s last chance.

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What would it do?

Would it allow virtually anyone to seek to be the party’s candidate for president (and gain valuable brand recognition along the way) – including spiritual gurus, one-issue entrepreneurs, and minor elected officials who have never even run for state office?

I doubt it. The party would establish criteria to filter out those who had no real chance.

Would it let almost every one of them go on television to debate one other – thereby placing a premium on one-line zingers, fast talk, and rapid-fire putdowns? Would it assign them randomly to one of two nights, so several candidates with the most support wouldn’t even get to debate one other?

Of course not. Instead, it would take the half-dozen who had the best chance, and structure the debates so they could demonstrate their understanding of the issues and the forcefulness of their ideas in lengthy back-and-forth exchanges.

Would it encourage them to split the party over policy issues that almost no one understands, such as the meaning of “Medicare for all” – thereby causing some voters to become alarmed about a government takeover of the healthcare system, and others to worry the government won’t go far enough?

No. It would encourage the candidates to emphasize the larger goal – in this case, to provide health insurance to everyone, and have them explain that a so-called “public option” to buy into Medicare would eventually displace for-profit private insurers anyway, because it would be so much cheaper.

Would it let any of this deflect attention from the tyrant keeping children in cages at the border, coddling foreign dictators and inviting them to help him in the next election, shattering alliances with other democracies, using his office to make money for himself and his family,  lying non-stop, subsidizing fossil fuels and downplaying climate change, claiming the media is guilty of treason, and undermining other democratic institutions and norms?

Of course not. Although it would want its candidates to float some ambitious and sensible proposals that would get people hopeful about the future, it would also want them to keep attention on what the tyrant was doing and the dangers he posed.

Finally, given the extraordinarily high stakes in the upcoming election, would it decide on its candidate in much the same way it has done in the recent past – solely on the basis of who can attract the most primary voters and caucus attenders?

No. It would have its eye on the general election. It would be thinking strategically about how to attract voters in places the tyrant won in the last election but could swing back. In America, that would be Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and North Carolina.

This doesn’t mean it would support a “moderate” or “centrist” candidate. These terms mean little in land succumbing to tyranny and oligarchy.

It would do best with a candidate able to create a multiracial coalition to fight the tyrant and his oligarchy – a coalition combining poor, working class and middle class whites, blacks, and Latinos.

It needs a candidate who can explain how the tyrant uses racism and xenophobia to divide and conquer, turning the majority against each other. A candidate who helps people understand that a necessary part of fighting tyranny is fighting racism, and a requisite for fighting inequality is reversing climate change. A candidate who can unite the country around an agenda of robust democracy and shared prosperity.

This may sound fanciful, but the challenge is real, and America’s Democratic Party must meet it over the next seventeen months.

What may be fanciful is that today’s Democratic Party has the power to select its candidate in the ways I’ve suggested.

Yet the stakes in the 2020 election are larger than any election in living memory. The Democrats’ selection of a candidate therefore is no ordinary thing. In a very real sense, the fates of America and the world depend on it. The question is whether the Democratic Party is up to the task.

44 Migrants Die in Airstrike on Libyan Detention Center

BENGHAZI, Libya—An airstrike hit a detention center for migrants near the Libyan capital of Tripoli early Wednesday, killing at least 44 people and wounding dozens of others in an attack that the U.N. human rights chief said could amount to a war crime.

The Tripoli-based government blamed the attack on forces associated with Gen. Khalifa Hifter, whose Libyan National Army has been waging an offensive against rival militias in the capital of the war-torn North African country since April.

It refocused attention and raised questions about the European Union’s policy of cooperating with the militias that hold migrants in crowded and squalid detention centers to prevent them from crossing the Mediterranean to seek better lives in Europe. Most of them were apprehended by the Libyan coast guard, which is funded and trained by the EU to stem the flow of migrants.

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At the United Nations, the Security Council scheduled an emergency session for later Wednesday on the airstrike in Tripoli’s Tajoura neighborhood, and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an independent investigation.

Hifter’s forces said they were targeting a nearby military site, not the detention center. There also were suspicions of involvement by foreign countries allied with his forces. Countries assisting Hifter include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

Two migrants interviewed by The Associated Press said the airstrike hit a compound that houses a weapons warehouse and an adjacent detention center holding about 150 migrants, mostly Sudanese and Moroccans. The two spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Online video purported to be from inside the detention center showed blood and human remains mixed with rubble and the belongings of the victims.

The U.N. gave an initial figure of 44 dead and more than 130 wounded. But the two migrants told the AP that three or four escaped harm and about 20 were wounded. They said the rest were killed, indicating the final death toll could be much higher.

Prince Alfani, the Libya medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, visited the detention center hours before the airstrike and said it had held 126 migrants. Survivors fear for their lives, he said, calling for their immediate evacuation.

Charlie Yaxley, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said the detention center’s proximity to the weapons depot “made it a target for the airstrikes.”

“Coordinates of this detention center were well-known to both sides of the conflict,” Yaxley said. “It was known that there were 600 people living inside. So there can be no excuse for this center having been hit.”

He said the agency had warned less than two months ago that anyone in the complex could be caught in the fighting and an earlier airstrike nearby had wounded two migrants. The UNHCR is sending medical teams to the site, he added.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the attack “may, depending on the precise circumstances, amount to a war crime.”

The attack “killed by surprise innocent people whose dire conditions forced them to be in that shelter,” said U.N. envoy for Libya Ghassan Salame.

Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for Amnesty International, said the attack “must be investigated as a war crime” by the International Criminal Court. The deaths are the “consequences of Libya and Europe’s callous migration policies,” she said

The group said its research indicated a weapons storage warehouse was in the same compound as the detention center and some of the migrants were forced to work at the military site.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, which is backed by the U.N., called for an investigation by the world body.

Libya became a major crossing point for migrants to Europe after the overthrow and death of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, when the North African nation was thrown into chaos, armed militias proliferated and central authority collapsed.

At least 6,000 migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and other nations are locked in dozens of detention facilities in Libya run by militias accused of torture and other abuses. There is limited food and other supplies for the migrants, who often end up there after arduous journeys at the mercy of abusive traffickers who hold them for ransom from their families.

The U.N. refugee agency has said that more than 3,000 migrants are in danger because they are held in detention centers near the front lines.

“This incident underscores the urgency to provide all refugees and migrants with safe shelter until their asylum claims can be processed or they can be safely repatriated,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Gen. Khaled el-Mahjoub, a spokesman for Hifter’s LNA forces, denied targeting the detention center, saying it was the militia camp in the Tajoura neighborhood that was the target. He did not deny, however, that the migrant detention center was hit.

“We didn’t give orders to target the shelter,” he said.

The EU urged Libyan authorities to better protect migrants, with its top diplomat and two top policy commissioners deploring the “shocking and tragic attack” and saying it highlights “the dire and vulnerable situation of migrants caught up in the spiral of violence in the country.”

Although the attack could increase greater Western pressure on Hifter, Claudia Gazzini, a Libya expert at the International Crisis Group, said it was highly unlikely to change the course the fighting in and around Tripoli.

“For both Hifter-led forces and those loyal to the Tripoli-based government, this is an existential war that sees little room for compromise,” she said.

She did not expect any actions other than a “verbal condemnation” of Hifter’s forces if it is proven they were behind the airstrike.

Hifter, who receives support from Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, says he is determined to restore stability to the North African country. His rivals, mainly Islamists, are supported by Turkey and Qatar.

His forces control much of Libya’s east and south but suffered a significant blow last week when militias allied with the Tripoli government reclaimed Gharyan, a town about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the capital and a key LNA supply route.

On Monday, the LNA said it had begun an air campaign on rival forces in Tripoli.

Fathi Bashagha, interior minister of the Tripoli-based government, alleged that Hifter’s foreign allies were behind the airstrike and told the AP that they “went mad” after his forces lost Gharyan. He did not identify any countries or provide any supporting evidence. He also denied weapons were stored at the detention facility complex.

Security analyst Oded Berkowitz said the LNA has “a handful of obsolete aircraft” in poor condition. He said it has received spare parts and decommissioned aircraft from Egypt and possibly Russia.

“Egypt and the UAE have been conducting air operations on behalf of the LNA, but there are no indications that the UAE transferred aircraft to the LNA,” he said.

The fighting for Tripoli has threatened to plunge Libya into another bout of violence on the scale of the conflict that ousted Gadhafi.

Hifter’s campaign against Islamic militants across Libya since 2014 won him growing support from world leaders concerned that Libya has become a haven for armed groups and a major conduit for migrants. But critics view him as an aspiring autocrat and fear a return to one-man rule.

Prominent Libyan writer Mahmoud Shammam described the situation as “disastrous” and said Libya was headed for more “chaotic and hideous escalation” unless the international community takes strong action to stop the fighting.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Maggie Michael in Cairo, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed.

When Will Americans Realize We’re Not the Good Guys?

Headlined “U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War,” the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph:

“American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that could help deter Tehran without escalating tensions into a full-out conventional war, according to current and former officials.”

Note that “Iranian aggression.” The rest of the piece, fairly typical of the tone of American media coverage of the ongoing Iran crisis, included sentences like this: “The C.I.A. has longstanding secret plans for responding to Iranian provocations.” I’m sure I’ve read such things hundreds of times without ever really stopping to think much about them, but this time I did. And what struck me was this: rare is the moment in such mainstream news reports when Americans are the “provocative” ones (though the Iranians immediately accused the U.S. military of just that, a provocation, when it came to the U.S. drone its Revolutionary Guard recently shot down either over Iranian air space or the Strait of Hormuz). When it comes to Washington’s never-ending war on terror, I think I can say with reasonable confidence that, in the past, the present, and the future, the one phrase you’re not likely to find in such media coverage will be “American aggression.”

I mean, forget the history of the second half of the last century and all of this one so far. Forget that back in the Neolithic age of the 1980s, before Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein turned out to be the new Adolf Hitler and needed to be taken down by us (no aggression there), the administration of President Ronald Reagan actively backed his unprovoked invasion of, and war against, Iran. (That included his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troop concentrations that American military intelligence helped him target.) Forget that, in 2003, the administration of George W. Bush launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, based on false intelligence about Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and his supposed links to al-Qaeda. Forget that the Trump administration tore up a nuclear agreement with Iran to which that country was adhering and which would indeed have effectively prevented it from producing nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future. Forget that its supreme leader (in fatwas he issued) prohibited the creation or stockpiling of such weaponry in any case.

Forget that the Trump administration, in a completely unprovoked manner, imposed crippling sanctions on that country and its oil trade, causing genuine suffering, in hopes of toppling that regime economically as Saddam Hussein’s had been toppled militarily in neighboring Iraq in 2003, all in the name of preventing the atomic weapons that the Obama-negotiated pact had taken care of. Forget the fact that an American president, who, at the last moment, halted air strikes against Iranian missile bases (after one of their missiles shot down that American drone) is now promising that an attack on “anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force… In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

Provocations? Aggression? Perish the thought!

And yet, just ask yourself what Washington and the Pentagon might do if an Iranian drone were spotted off the East Coast of the United States (no less in actual U.S. air space).  No more need be said, right?

So here’s the strange thing, on a planet on which, in 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 149 countries, or approximately 75% of all nations; on which the U.S. has perhaps 800 military garrisons outside its own territory; on which the U.S. Navy patrols most of its oceans and seas; on which U.S. unmanned aerial drones conduct assassination strikes across a surprising range of countries; and on which the U.S. has been fighting wars, as well as more minor conflicts, for years on end from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria to Yemen, Iraq to Niger in a century in which it chose to launch full-scale invasions of two countries (Afghanistan and Iraq), is it truly reasonable never to identify the U.S. as an “aggressor” anywhere?

What you might say about the United States is that, as the self-proclaimed leading proponent of democracy and human rights (even if its president is now having a set of love affairs with autocrats and dictators), Americans consider ourselves at home just about anywhere we care to be on planet Earth.  It matters little how we may be armed and what we might do. Consequently, wherever Americans are bothered, harassed, threatened, attacked, we are always the ones being provoked and aggressed upon, never provoking and aggressing. I mean, how can you be the aggressor in your own house, even if that house happens to be temporarily located in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps soon enough in Iran?

A Planet of Aggressors and Provocateurs

To mine the same New York Times piece a little more, here’s another paragraph:

“Some officials believe the United States needs [to] be willing to master the kind of deniable, shadowy techniques Tehran has perfected in order to halt Iran’s aggressions. Others think that, while helpful, such clandestine attacks will not be enough to reassure American allies or deter Iran.”

Of course, such clandestine American attacks would, by definition, not be “aggression,” not given that they were directed against Iran. Forget the grim historical humor lurking in the above passage, since the present Iranian religious hard-liners probably wouldn’t be there if, back in 1953, the CIA hadn’t used just such techniques to overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government and install its own autocrat, the young Shah, in power.

As that Times piece also emphasizes, Iran now uses “proxy forces” throughout the region (indeed it does!) against U.S. (and Israeli) power, a tactic Americans evidently just hadn’t thought about employing themselves in this century — until now. Americans naturally have no proxy forces in the Greater Middle East. That’s a well-known fact. Just out of curiosity, however, what would you call the local forces our special ops guys are training and advising in so many of those 149 countries around the planet, since obviously they could never be proxy forces? And how about the Afghan and Iraqi militaries that the U.S. trained, supplied with weaponry, and advised in these years? (You know, the Iraqi army that collapsed in the face of ISIS in 2014 or the Afghan security forces that have been unable to staunch either the growth of the Taliban or of the Afghan branch of ISIS.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. Yes, the Iranians can (and sometimes do) provoke and aggress. It’s an ugly planet filled with aggression and provocation. (Take Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Crimea and Ukraine, for instance.) The Chinese are now aggressing in the South China Sea where the U.S. Navy regularly conducts “freedom of navigation” operations — though no provocation there, as the Pacific’s an American lake, isn’t it?

In short, when it comes to provocation and aggression, the world is our oyster. There are so many bad guys out there and then, of course, there’s us. We can make mistakes and missteps, we can kill staggering numbers of civilians, destroy cities, uproot populations, create hordes of refugees with our never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but aggression? What are you thinking?

One thing is obvious if you follow the mainstream media: in our world, no matter what we do, we’re still the good guys on a planet filled with provocateurs and aggressors of every sort.

War to the Horizon

Now let’s think for a moment about that remarkable American comfort level, that unprecedented sense of being at home practically anywhere on Earth we choose to send armed Americans — and while we’re at it, let’s consider a related subject: America’s wars.

If, in the early 1970s, you had told me or any other American that, in the nearly half-century to come, the U.S. would fight wars and other lesser conflicts of almost every imaginable sort in startling numbers of places thousands of miles from home, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, countries most Americans couldn’t then (or now) find on a map, I guarantee you one thing: we would have thought you were nuts. (Of course, if you had described Donald Trump’s White House to me then as our future reality, I would have considered you beyond delusional.)

And yet here we are. Think about Afghanistan for a moment. In those distant days of the last century, that country would undoubtedly have been known here only to small numbers of young adventurers eager to hike what was then called “the hippy trail.” There, in a still remarkably peaceful place, a young American might have been greeted with remarkable friendliness and then spaced out on drugs.

That, of course, was before Washington’s first (covert) Afghan War, the one the CIA oversaw, with the help of Saudi money (yes, even then!) and a major hand from the Pakistani intelligence services. Do you remember that conflict, which began in 1979 and ended a decade later with the Red Army limping out of Kabul in defeat, heading for a land, the Soviet Union, which would implode within two years? What a “victory” that proved to be for America, not to speak of the groups of extremist Islamic militants we helped to fund and support, including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden.

And keep in mind as well that that was our “short” war in Afghanistan, a mere decade long. In October 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks, instead of launching a police action against Osama bin Laden and crew, the administration of George W. Bush decided to invade that country. Almost 18 years later, the U.S. military is still fighting there (remarkably unsuccessfully) against a thoroughly rejuvenated Taliban and a new branch of ISIS. It now qualifies as the longest war in our history (without even adding in that first Afghan War of ours).

And then, of course, there’s Iraq. By my count, the U.S. has been involved in four conflicts involving that country, starting with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980 and the ensuing war, which the administration of President Ronald Reagan supported militarily (as the present one does the Saudi war in Yemen). Then there was President George H.W. Bush’s war against Saddam Hussein after his military invaded Kuwait in 1990, which resulted in a resounding (but by no means conclusive) victory and the kind of victory parade in Washington that Donald Trump can only dream of. Next, of course, was President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq (mission accomplished!), a grim and unsatisfying eight-year conflict from which President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops in 2011. The fourth war followed in 2014 when the U.S.-trained Iraqi military collapsed in the face of relatively small numbers of ISIS militants, a group that was an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which didn’t exist until the U.S. invaded that country. That September, President Obama loosed the U.S. air force on Iraq and Syria (so you can add a fifth war in a neighboring country to the mix) and sent U.S. troops back into Iraq and into Syria where they still remain.

Oh, yes, and don’t forget Somalia. U.S. troubles there began with the famed Black Hawk Down incident amid the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 and never, in a sense, really ended. Today, U.S. Special Operations forces are still on the ground there and U.S. air strikes against a Somali militant Islamic group, al-Shabaab, have actually been on the rise in the Trump era.

As for Yemen, from the first U.S. drone strike there in 2002, the U.S. had been in an on-again, off-again low-level conflict there that included commando raids, cruise missile attacks, air strikes, and drone strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, another offshoot of the original al-Qaeda. Since, in 2015, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates launched their war against Houthi rebels (backed by Iran) who had come to control significant parts of the country, the U.S. has been supporting them with weaponry, intelligence, and targeting, as well as (until late last year) mid-air refueling and other aid. Meanwhile, that brutal war of destruction has led to staggering numbers of Yemeni civilian casualties (and widespread starvation), but as with so many of the other campaigns the U.S. has involved itself in across the Greater Middle East and Africa it shows no sign of ending.

And don’t forget Libya, where the U.S. and NATO intervened in 2011 to help rebels take down Muammar Gaddafi, the local autocrat, and in the process managed to foster a failed state in a land now experiencing its own civil war. In the years since 2011, the U.S. has sometimes had commandos on the ground there, has launched hundreds of drone strikes (and air strikes), often against a branch of ISIS that grew up in that land. Once again, little is settled there, so we can all continue to sing the Marine Hymn (“…to the shores of Tripoli”) with a sense of appropriateness.

And I haven’t even mentioned Pakistan, Niger, and god knows where else. You should also note that the American forever war on terror has proven a remarkably effective war for terror, clearly helping to foster and spread such groups, aggressors and provocateurs all, around significant parts of the planet, from the Philippines to the Congo.

Addicted to war? Not us. Still, all in all, it’s quite a record and let’s not forget that looming on the horizon is another possible war, this time with Iran, a country that the men overseeing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (including present National Security Advisor John Bolton) were eager to go after even then. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad,” so the saying reputedly went in Washington at the time. “Real men want to go to Tehran.” And it’s just possible that, in 2019, Bolton and crew will be able to act on that much delayed urge. Considering the history of American wars in these years, what could possibly go wrong?

To sum up, no one should ever claim that we Americans aren’t “at home” in the world. We’re everywhere, remarkably well funded and well armed and ready to face off against the aggressors and provocateurs of this planet. Just one small suggestion: thank the troops for their service if you want, and then, as most Americans do, go about your business as if nothing were happening in those distant lands. As we head into election season 2020, however, just don’t imagine that we’re the good guys on Planet Earth. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many good guys left.

Sanders Shows Growing Strength With Latest Donation Numbers

Sen. Bernie Sanders raised $18 million for his Democratic presidential campaign in the second quarter, his campaign reported Tuesday, a number that, while shy of the high water mark set by rival South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, nonetheless showed the Vermont senator’s staying power in a crowded field.

The $18 million came from “nearly 1 million donations,” the Sanders campaign said in a statement announcing the numbers—at an average of around $18. Sanders transferred into his coffers an additional $6 million from other committees, the campaign said, bringing the total they reported for the second quarter to $24 million.

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“The Bernie grassroots machine chugs along,” tweeted BBC reporter Anthony Zurcher.

The campaign stressed the Sanders approach to raising money from grassroots, small-dollar donors and the campaign’s aversion to big money power players.

“This is a movement built by working people all across this country,” campaign manager Faiz Shakir said. “While other candidates court big money at fancy fundraisers, this campaign is supported by teachers, retail workers, and nurses who are putting what little money they have behind the one candidate who can bring about the transformative change this country needs.”

The top 10 most common donors were employees of conglomerate retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon. The most common profession of donors was a teacher.

“Our strength is in numbers and we have a million person movement committed to this campaign who can give over and over again,” said Shakir.

In the first quarter, Sanders raised $18.2 million. Another $18 million from donations in the second quarter, said Center for Public Integrity money in politics reporter Carrie Levine, “signals the campaign has stayed steady.”

Sanders is the second presidential candidate to share fundraising numbers for the second quarter. On Monday, Buttigieg’s campaign announced the mayor raised $24.8 million from 294,000 donations, an average of around $84. Shakir, in a Monday evening appearance on CBS News program “Red and Blue,” acknowledged the Buttigieg number was higher than what Sanders raised but claimed that “a lot of that has to do with the fact of how [Buttigieg] is raising his money,” citing the mayor’s reliance on big money donations.

On Tuesday, Shakir reinforced the message of small dollar donors making the difference in the campaign.

“By rejecting the influence of corporate money we have built a campaign that not only speaks to the working people and their issues but supports them in tangible ways,” said Shakir. “This is what a Bernie Sanders presidency would look like.”

Sanders and Buttigieg are the first two 2020 candidates to announce fundraising numbers for the second quarter. The deadline to report is July 15.

Truthdigger Tiffany Cabán Poses the Right Kind of Threat

Public defender-turned Queens district attorney candidate Tiffany Cabán’s remarkable rise has, just as quickly as she established herself as a bona fide contender, galvanized and polarized the American political scene far beyond her borough. And though nothing triggers a mass outbreak among the pundit class of sudden-onset prognostication quite like the kickoff of another presidential campaign season, those who’ve spotted in Cabán’s June 25 primary win the signs of a crucial shift already underway are clearly onto something.

As was the case for one of Cabán’s most prominent supporters, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, those who pick up this kind of traction in the current climate are sure to draw blowback from within their own party as well as more expected sources. (The intra-party trouble started immediately with Cabán’s Democratic rival Melinda Katz, a Queens borough president aligned closely with mainstream Democrats like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and who has still refused to concede to Cabán.) Cabán also shares with Ocasio-Cortez an unabashedly progressive approach to a number of issues; the proudly held distinction of being a young, queer Latina from working-class Queens; and the benefit and burden of becoming a walking, talking, potentially legislating symbol-slash-human lightning rod.

For a sizable group of younger voters — the same millennials who so perplex so many commentators over the age of 40 — as well as for supporters of AOC, the Justice Democrats and Democratic Socialists of America, the 31-year-old Cabán’s win appears as another welcome step toward short-circuiting the nation’s entrenched power centers. For establishment Democrats and just about anyone to the right of them, she’s a threat. For all of the above, regardless of affiliation, Cabán represents further confirmation that an agile and forceful coalition of progressive leaders is carving out a real stronghold in U.S. politics.

The range of responses, none of them mild, that Cabán’s conspicuous arrival on the national stage has provoked has played out in opinion columns and news channels around the country. The New York Times editorial board flouted tradition by endorsing Cabán, a definitively non-centrist candidate. It heralded her as a much-needed challenger — with regard to the powers that be in the Empire State as well as to the system of mass incarceration, which Cabán has taken on as one of her signature issues in her bid to become Queens D.A.:

… Ms. Cabán would come into office unencumbered by ties to the borough power structure and free to pursue her commitment to serve the community by doing more than just winning convictions. Her seven years as a public defender have given her insight into how the system works, and how it ought to be changed.

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… Ms. Cabán has said she would increase funding for programs that provide alternatives to incarceration, like drug treatment and mental health counseling, and stop prosecuting many minor, so-called broken-windows offenses, like fare beating, drug possession, welfare fraud and loitering.

Days later, Times editorial board member Mara Gay cast Cabán’s win as “no fluke” in a column titled “Why Tiffany Cabán May Be More Significant to Progressives Than Ocasio-Cortez.” Taking up the theme of a sea change within the Democratic Party, Gay wrote, “This election should put to rest the idea that the coalition isn’t a sustainable force,” and concluded that “the old kind of politics seems to be fading away.”

Chiming in with favorable coverage was The Nation, which got right to it in the first couple of paragraphs of the article, “Bold leftists are ascendant,” and The Intercept, which credited Cabán’s stances on reforming the criminal justice system and decriminalizing sex work as major clinchers for her supporters:

 … progressive groups coalesced around Cabán and brought the race national attention. Organizers pushing to end the construction of new jails, decriminalize sex work, and build relationships between the district attorney and the communities most impacted by choices the DA makes knocked on doors, organized rallies, and got out the word to propel Cabán’s campaign further than many expected it to go.

Meanwhile, one reliable gauge for how big a threat Cabán and the new guard poses to the right as well as to Democratic figures like Katz and Cuomo can be read into this June 26 New York Post headline, a call to action by that paper’s editorial board: “The Queens majority needs to unite to stop Tiffany Cabán.” Like Ocasio-Cortez, she can expect to become a go-to target for heat from the right in direct proportion to the support and power she gains — not just in the weeks leading up to this November’s general election.

Like AOC, Cabán can handle it — and like her political peer was before her, Cabán is our latest Truthdigger of the Month.