Chris Hedges's Blog, page 222

Supreme Court Tosses Man’s Murder Conviction Over Racial Bias

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the murder conviction and death sentence for a black man in Mississippi because of a prosecutor’s efforts to keep African Americans off the jury. The defendant already has been tried six times and now could face a seventh trial.

The removal of black prospective jurors deprived inmate Curtis Flowers of a fair trial, the court said in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The long record of Flowers’ trials stretching back more than 20 years shows District Attorney Doug Evans’ “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals,” with the goal of an all-white jury, Kavanaugh wrote.

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In Flowers’ sixth trial, the jury was made up of 11 whites and one African American. Prosecutor Evans struck five black prospective jurors.

In the earlier trials, three convictions were tossed out, including one when the prosecutor improperly excluded African Americans from the jury. In the second trial, the judge chided Evans for striking a juror based on race. Two other trials ended when jurors couldn’t reach unanimous verdicts.

“The numbers speak loudly,” Kavanaugh said in a summary of his opinion that he read in the courtroom, noting that Evans had removed 41 of the 42 prospective black jurors over the six trials. “We cannot ignore that history.”

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas called Kavanaugh’s opinion “manifestly incorrect” and wrote that Flowers “presented no evidence whatsoever of purposeful race discrimination.” Justice Neil Gorsuch joined most of Thomas’ opinion.

Thomas, the only African American on the court, said the decision may have one redeeming quality: “The state is perfectly free to convict Curtis Flowers again.”

Flowers has been in jail more than 22 years, since his arrest after four people were found shot to death in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, in July 1996.

Flowers was arrested several months later, described by prosecutors as a disgruntled former employee who sought revenge against the store’s owner because she fired him and withheld most of his pay to cover the cost of merchandise he damaged. Nearly $300 was found missing after the killings.

Defense lawyers have argued that witness statements and physical evidence against Flowers are too weak to convict him. A jailhouse informant who claimed Flowers had confessed to him recanted in recorded telephone conversations with American Public Media’s “In the Dark” podcast. A separate appeal is pending in state court questioning Flowers’ actual guilt, citing in part evidence that reporters for “In the Dark” detailed.

“A seventh trial would be unprecedented, and completely unwarranted given both the flimsiness of the evidence against him and the long trail of misconduct that has kept him wrongfully incarcerated all these years. We hope that the state of Mississippi will finally disavow Doug Evans’ misconduct, decline to pursue yet another trial and set Mr. Flowers free,” Sheri Lynn Johnson, who represented Flowers at the Supreme Court, said in an emailed statement.

Evans did not respond to email requests for comment and no one answered the phone in his office Friday.

In the course of selecting a jury, lawyers can excuse a juror merely because of a suspicion that a particular person would vote against their client. Those are called peremptory strikes, and they have been the focus of the complaints about discrimination.

The Supreme Court tried to stamp out discrimination in the composition of juries in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986. The court ruled then that jurors couldn’t be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the nation’s pre-eminent civil rights attorney, was part of the Batson case majority, but he said the only way to end discrimination in jury selection was to eliminate peremptory strikes.

Flowers’ case has been to the high court before. In 2016, the justices ordered Mississippi’s top court to re-examine racial bias issues in Flowers’ case following a high court ruling in favor of a Georgia inmate because of a racially discriminatory jury. But the Mississippi justices divided 5-4 in upholding the verdict against Flowers. The state, defending the conviction, said the justices must narrow the focus from Evans’ broader record to the case at hand.

But Kavanaugh said that even on the narrower basis, there is evidence that at least one prospective black juror for the sixth trial, Carolyn Wright, was similarly situated to white jurors and was improperly excused by Evans.

“The trial court clearly erred in ruling that the state’s peremptory strike of Wright was not motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent,” Kavanaugh wrote.

___

Associated Press writer Jeff Amy contributed to this report from Jackson, Mississippi.

Elon Musk Is Gaslighting America

Tesla, from the get-go, has sold itself as a green dream in our era of rapidly-worsening climate change. But there’s a lot about the electric car company that’s more nightmarish than many of its fans or even the California government, which heavily subsidizes Tesla’s operations with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax exemptions and other incentives, would like to admit.

Will Evans, an award-winning journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting, published a hard-hitting series about Tesla’s flagrant labor violations, exposing Elon Musk’s purportedly progressive business for what it truly is: a green mirage. In the series, Evans reports on the clash between the manufacturing elements of the company and the management that operates like a tech startup, and how this contradiction has created often dangerous conditions for Tesla factory workers. Rather than address these very real issues, however, Musk and his company have chosen to brush them off and hide reports of injuries in order to maintain the illusion its customers buy into when they purchase their luxurious Tesla cars.

“We started looking into Tesla because we were hearing that there was safety problems there, people getting hurt,” Evans tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.” “It has this great reputation for being this futuristic, forward-thinking, world-saving company that’s going to bring sustainable energy to transportation and revolutionize how we do things. And a lot of people go there because of that.

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“What we found was that, under pressure to meet its production goals, it was really leaving safety, worker safety, by the wayside, and had prioritized cranking out cars as fast as possible, and left its workers dealing with all kinds of serious injuries. And then was actually trying to hide those injuries in order to make its safety record look better.”

The revelations should have jolted Musk and California officials to take a deeper look into the company’s operations, but quite the opposite took place. While state officials did in fact grill Tesla after the investigative reports were published, according to Evans, they are mostly afraid regulating the company could push Tesla—with its factory and the jobs it creates—out of the state. As for the CEO, he had a response that anyone reading any news about the arrogant tech baron might expect.

“The company and its supporters, and Elon, sees this all as sort of an attack on him and on the company—that people want to see it fail,” Evans tells Scheer. “[Tesla] went as far as to say that [the Center for Investigative Reporting” is] an extremist organization … working on a disinformation campaign. [Musk] went on to attack journalists in general for being beholden to the fossil fuel industry because of advertisements, and gthat that’s why journalists are out to get Tesla.

“When someone pointed out that, hey, over here at the Center for Investigative Reporting we don’t even have advertisements, we’re a nonprofit, he went on Twitter and he called us just a bunch of rich kids from Berkeley who took their political science professor too seriously. That was his diss.”

Scheer points out how stories about Tesla aren’t so different from other troubling stories coming out of Silicon Valley.

“These companies have escaped serious regulation—antitrust, [accountability, occupational standards],” says the Truthdig editor in chief. “We’ve kind of anointed these new industrialists as somehow prophets of a future, whether it’s at Apple or Google or Tesla or Facebook. They’ve got the magic wand; they know where it’s all headed. What you have in Elon Musk is sort of the poster boy for that arrogance. He just shrugged it off. You could do investigative reporting, you had the facts, it’s solid as can be—and they just don’t have to care, because they’re the wave of the future, right?”

Listen to the full discussion between Scheer and Evans as they talk about the wider issue with Silicon Valley and green washing, as well as the hypocrisy behind tech barons’ libertarian approach to government. You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player and find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

—Introduction by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case, it’s Will Evans, a highly regarded investigative reporter with Reveal, which is basically a radio investigative program carried on, I think, 450 stations. And it’s part of the Center for Investigative [Reporting] in Emeryville, California, which has filled in for the void left by the weakening of mainstream newspapers and news organizations, and does terrific work. And what Will Evans does, and what I want to talk to him about, is basically he’s looked into the sausage of internet life and how that sausage is made. He evaluated Uber and got all sorts of prizes for it, and the question of Silicon Valley’s discrimination against different categories of employees. And the one that’s gotten the most recent attention is he dared to look into the inner workings of Tesla, the electric car company that has been celebrated widely. And found, you know what, it ain’t that different than horrible working conditions at lots of assembly-line businesses, no matter how nouveau the product. So why don’t you really tell us what you found in this investigative series?

Will Evans: Sure, thanks for having me on here, appreciate that. We started looking into Tesla because we were hearing that there was safety problems there, people getting hurt. And it had this, as you say, it has this great reputation for being this futuristic, forward-thinking, world-saving company that’s going to, you know, bring sustainable energy to transportation and revolutionize how we do things. And a lot of people go there because of that. And what we found was that, under pressure to meet its production goals, it was really leaving safety, worker safety, by the wayside, and had prioritized cranking out cars as fast as possible, and left its workers dealing with all kinds of serious injuries. And then was actually trying to hide those injuries in order to make its safety record look better.

RS: You know, in a way, this sort of investigative series that you’re doing, and other people at the Center for Investigative [Reporting], really goes to the heart of how do we make things these days. And how does Apple make iPhones in China, and are people paid, what, two bucks an hour, or less or more, and what are the working conditions? And people are so enamored with the product, the slickness, the style. Tesla cars, you know, came in as high product, high quality and very expensive. They don’t want to look under the hood; they don’t want to look at how the sausage is made. And so give us the specifics. Because reading your series, it’s a guy gets his back busted when the, trying to assemble a car, or all sorts of bad products are consumed; paint destroys their health, and what have you. And we forget, it’s still–yes, robots are involved, but there are still human beings out there popping in and out of cars as they’re moving down an assembly line. And it has a lot of the downside of traditional manufacturing, and actually you pointed out Tesla had a worse record than the industry standard.

WE: Yeah, and what you see is, you know, all the–in manufacturing, you have a ton of manual labor, and a lot of heavy machinery and dangerous, potentially dangerous conditions. And a lot of, thousands of people working in that factory. And then you have the tech company operating almost like a startup that’s going very fast, growing very fast, changing things on the fly, as if it were as easy as to change some software. And you end up, those two things clash with each other, and people start getting hurt. And yeah, exactly, you have the guy who has the trunk of a Model X Tesla fall on his back when he’s inside, and he ends up getting sent back to work; you know, they tell him to just go back to work, he can barely walk. You have people, everything from getting your finger cut off, or they had an incident where people were sprayed with molten metal, electric explosions that burned people, breathing toxic fumes from chemical fires or from paint and adhesives, to just a lot of repetitive injuries.

RS: So you know, really what we’re talking about is a glamour industry of Silicon Valley in which very often they don’t even make money, but there’s a lot of venture capital goes into that. And then to justify it, they have to cut corners and squeeze. And in Tesla’s case, they’ve raised a lot of money, they’ve spent a lot of money, and they haven’t made a lot in the way of profits, and they’ve missed their production schedules. And so in a way, you have an old-fashioned assembly line speed-up, don’t you? Trying to get these workers to work harder, when in fact the conditions are not good. And then you rig the system: you have an in-house medical system that, as you documented, is involved in sort of cover-up and corruption of these injuries. Workers are not sent to care that they’re entitled to under workers’ comp. And then finally, a very aggressive medical practitioner, doctor, takes over this business, and he becomes complicit with their profit motives, rather than the health of the workers. Does that sort of summarize what you found?

WE: Yeah, that’s a good summary. I mean, I think they are under the gun to produce these incredible production goals that–I mean, it’s very difficult to meet those.

RS: You can say his name, you can say the name of the man who keeps promoting it.

WE: [Laughs] Well, right, so Elon Musk, right? He’s making a lot of promises, he’s got a lot riding on it. It’s a tremendously valuable company that’s not had a great record at actually making a profit, and has missed goal after goal after goal. And so, yeah, his future is riding on this, the future of the company is riding on this, and the answer has been to just work the hell out of these workers, and do things so fast that precautions aren’t being taken. And safety is not going to get in the way of something that–that’s what, we would talk to these safety professionals who worked in the factory, and they’re hired by Tesla to evaluate the–why people are getting hurt, and try to solve that. And they would come up with these fixes or make these warnings, and say hey, look, someone’s going to get really hurt, someone’s going to die. And they were told again and again that, look, we need to do this this way, Elon wants it, we need to keep the cars moving. And some of them left in disgust, and some of them were fired after raising concerns over and over again. And so, and these are people who, some of them come to Tesla because they really believe in the vision, and believe in Elon Musk. And then they’re disillusioned when they see, on the factory floor, people getting hurt in the name of progress.

RS: So really what it’s about is hype. And these events go unexamined. I mean, why did it remain for you to do this kind of investigation? You got wind of these things, but basically these people were rigging or undermining a system that is supposed to protect workers. If you’re injured, it’s supposed to be reported; you’re supposed to get treatment, right? You’re supposed to–what’d they do? They send people in a Lyft or an Uber to get care?

WE: [Laughs] Right, to the emergency room.

RS: And really, cover up–the whole thing reeks of kind of just old-fashioned cover up, you know. And yet using professionals, doctors and others, to look the other way. And the few people who object, the whistleblowers, they end up getting fired.

WE: Yeah. I mean that, I think that’s why it is hard to unearth this stuff, and some companies get away with it, is because the people who know what’s going on are very fearful that they will, their careers will be ruined if they speak up, that they’ll be sued. I mean, Tesla is very aggressive against whistleblowers. The people who worked for the medical clinic that I talked to have faced threats of legal action; they’ve been reported to the medical board; various forms of retaliation, really, for speaking up about what they saw. And many of them don’t want to talk at all–or will say I’ll talk, but don’t use my name. And so you need to find–you know, I need to find, like, those few courageous individuals who were so upset at what was going on that they’re just willing to risk it. That’s how you know that it really is extreme and serious, where you’d have this medical clinic that was seemingly designed to avoid having any record of these injuries, and a doctor who is operating under a lot of pressure to keep these injuries dismissed, or off the books, or not on workers’ comp. And you have this profit motive driving that. And a lot of people are afraid of both that doctor, they’re afraid of Elon Musk, they’re afraid of the power of Tesla. And so it’s hard to get that out.

RS: And they’re also afraid that it’s a lousy job market for good-paying jobs. You know, we have a lot of young people graduating now, getting out there in the field, and they can’t find–and here you have a glamour job. But let me ask you something about an old-fashioned check and balance that we used to have with labor unions. And that’s sort of not dealt with extensively in your articles, but there is a sort of subtext of keeping a strong union out. Now, it used to be if you were on the Ford assembly line, or General Motors or something, you had shop stewards; you had people, and if somebody was injured, they’d go to their shop steward and say, hey, you know, I just busted my arm, I got to go to emergency, they don’t want to send me. There was a check on the power of the people running the factory. Here, Elon Musk, according to your article, was able to say I don’t want yellow caution tape used around the scene of an accident, because it’s depressing. How do you get that kind of power? What kind of union, what kind of check and balance do they have within the Tesla plant?

WE: Well, so there is no union. That’s the short answer. The UAW was trying to organize, and the company was, fought that effort. And the union has claimed that a lot of its supporters were let go under the guise of layoffs and firings for, you know, production reasons. And then you have, I think there’s still some pending labor relations complaints in terms of how the company dealt with that. But the bottom line is that there is no union. The company and its supporters, and Elon, sees this all as sort of an attack on him and on the company, that people want to see it fail. He argues that, you know, the unionized plants don’t have better records for their workers, and that workers would be worse off with the union. And so far has gotten away with that, and has used the union as this sort of bogeyman–they tried to attack our reporting by saying it was part of some coordinated attack with the union. Which, I mean, we had nothing to do with that, but it’s a convenient excuse. They went as far as to say that we were an extremist organization when we came out with that first piece.

RS: “We” being the Center for Investigative Reporting?

WE: That’s right, yeah. They called Reveal an extremist organization.

RS: OK–

WE: –working on a disinformation campaign. And then another point, he went on to attack journalists in general for being beholden to the fossil fuel industry because of advertisements, and that that’s why journalists are out to get Tesla. And there’s this sort of a complex of, like, that they’re being persecuted. And when someone pointed out that, hey, over here at the Center for Investigative Reporting we don’t even have advertisements, we’re a nonprofit, he went on Twitter and he called us just a bunch of rich kids from Berkeley who took their political science professor too seriously. That was his diss. [Laughs]

RS: So let me–I mean, I want to get at that. Because there’s an aspect of this that relates to green washing, PR, how you spin. And this is not the old Ford company, Henry Ford, and you know, he’ll break the union and call the National Guard out and have his own police force and so forth–no! These people are on the side of enlightenment. And in the enlightened state of California, which is supposed to be deep blue, and you have these progressive governors like Jerry Brown was there during this critical period–the question I want to ask, we’re going to take a break for a minute, but when I come back with Will Evans from the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Reveal series, you can get this on their website. But basically, this is not happening in the Deep South with runaway shops, you know. This is happening in California. And what about all the laws that exist to protect workers when they’re injured, and their rights, and so forth? [omission for station break] I’m back with Will Evans, and we’re talking about his incredible series, really, on how the sausage is made in Silicon Valley. In this case we’re talking about Tesla cars; they’re shiny, they’re wonderful, people like looking at them, they’re expensive, now there’s actually one that’s more reasonably priced. And as with Apple phones, as with all of these products from the new tech industry, they’re not examined very carefully. And when you read this series you understand, no, people get their backs broken, they inhale dangerous fumes, all sorts of bad stuff happens, and it’s covered up. So I want to ask you, what about the state? The state of California has been very pro-electric car. And they actually have given Tesla, through various breaks and so forth, in one of your articles I think it said a $200 million state subsidy. And there’s also federal subsidy. So this is not just free enterprise doing what it has to do; this is a highly subsidized government entity, on the one hand, and yet government is not doing its due diligence of protecting workers in these plants in terms of occupational health and safety. Is that not a big contradiction?

WE: Yeah, there’s a couple of things working here. One is the focus in California on combating climate change and wanting to incentivize sustainable energy, and having these programs to provide tax exemptions to encourage that. They’re using a lot of–you know, Tesla’s the biggest recipient of these tax exemptions. And it’s because it’s like the–you know, it’s this huge hope for electric transportation. And so I think there’s a reluctance to turn that off, because of what it means for–what it promises for sustainable energy, but also in terms of what it promises for jobs. It’s the only car maker here in the state; it provides a lot of jobs. And so it has a lot of support, and powerful support, because of that. And people don’t want to see it leave, and they don’t want to see it go to another state or country. And so you might see a little bit of a lighter touch there. You also have the issue of worker protections, in terms of health and safety protections. They’re not all that strong, here or anywhere else in the country, in terms of how much you get fined for a–you know, when a worker dies, or gets maimed, and it’s deemed the company’s fault and a safety violation. I mean, these are–at most, you’re talking about like over $100,000, or maybe you get tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe you get much less than that, and then it gets reduced because of other, you know, in settlement negotiations. And that’s just not enough to change a company’s practices, I don’t think.

RS: You know, there’s a kind of a, there’s an important cultural critique in your articles. This is a very important series on Tesla, but in the other articles that I’ve read by you, whether it’s Uber or just generally in Silicon Valley, there’s a conceit that they are enlightened. They’re not like the old, industrial barons, and they’re not the people who do strip mining and so forth. That they’re on the side of the angels. So when a lot of, when people were jumping, workers in China jumping out of the window of their dormitories and so forth in desperation, and when we read about the low salaries paid for most of these shiny gadgets–people love the Tesla, and you give fairly wealthy people a tax break to buy one. And let me just, full confession, I own an electric car. I even own a Chevy Bolt, I hope the working–maybe you should tell me about the working conditions, better there, do they still have some check and balance of unions? I don’t know. But the fact is, we’re intrigued–we have an aura of progress, and yet they’re these shiny toys, and we–it’s too good to check. We really don’t want to know how they’re made. Isn’t it–and the reaction to your series was not one that brought about major change or scrutiny. They kind of shrugged it off. And they attacked, they shot the messenger; they attacked you for doing the series, the Tesla folks.

WE: That’s true, and there’s a lot of Tesla supporters, and I don’t think this is unique to Tesla, although I think there is more of a sort of cult following and a belief in the inherent wonderfulness of its leader. But there is a lot of people who just don’t want to hear any criticism, and who see any criticism as an attack, and a cynical attack, and something that is trying–you know, from the forces of darkness that are trying to undermine this great, progressive company that’s going to, you know. And it’s certainly not the only Silicon Valley company that says it’s doing good. So I think it is interesting, and representative in some ways of these, the image, the sleek image of do-gooder companies with an underside that no one wants to hear about. I think you’re right about that.

RS: Well, and it’s also the modern economy. I mean, you know, this is how things are going to be made, and if you don’t like–if the company says well, you’re enforcing these–like you say, they’re afraid in California they’ll take the company elsewhere. They’ll take it overseas, and they’ll find a [workforce], they’ll find governments that look the other way. And that’s really the challenge here. No one denies that we should move to a different kind of transportation, and that electric cars are critical to that. And you can even applaud the effort put into that by different engineering groups, and what have you. But at the end of the day, your description is one that–I wouldn’t say quite comes out of Dickens [Laughter]. But it’s certainly, I mean, people get their bodies destroyed, and they’re told to what, take a Lyft or an Uber and go check it out, and it’s got nothing to do with us, and the government looks the other way? The same government that, I mean, the figure you used I think was $200 million California has given in subsidies? And that government says we’ll subsidize you, but we don’t really care how you make this thing, and the working conditions, and so forth? I mean, that–that’s a prescription for disaster if that becomes the norm in production. And Silicon Valley is certainly the trend center.

WE: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a–there’s probably people who think that, well, it’s better, even with the current conditions, it’s probably better that it’s being produced here in California than in China. So, you know, and these jobs do pay, and are seen as good jobs by many in the Central Valley. But that’s like only a good job until you get hurt and can’t work anymore, and you end up losing, sleeping in your car, as one of our, one of the people we talked to, had happened to him. I mean, it’s–you know, some people love it, but then, yeah, if you get destroyed by it, that–it’s not worth it.

RS: Well you know, just as a final point, we’ve kind of anointed these new industrialists as somehow prophets of a future, you know, whether it’s at Apple or Google or Tesla or Facebook. They’ve got the magic wand; they know where it’s all headed. And now, there’s sort of, there’s a pushback even from those same people. Tim Cook at Apple, for instance, has said look, we can’t exploit privacy, and we have to care about individual freedom, and we’re going too far. And what you have in Elon Musk is sort of the poster boy for that arrogance. He just shrugged it off. You could do investigative reporting, you had the facts, it’s solid as can be–and they just don’t have to care, because they’re the wave of the future, right?

WE: [Laughs] Yeah, I mean, he not only shrugged it off, but said it just wasn’t true. Said we were, you know, just basically lying, and that’s all. You know [Laughs], there was no, sort of–you know, you’re right, we could do better; it was just, ah, these guys are just lying, and don’t pay any attention to that. And that is scary. That is a scary thing, where there are so many people who are just willing to believe whatever he says on any subject. And I think it is a lesson for, you know, don’t believe the hype, for a lot of these tech leaders.

RS: Well, let me ask you a question structurally about the news business. You were honored by the Investigative Reporters and Editors with an award; your work is highly regarded. So in this case, the character assassination–attacking you, and challenging your motives–didn’t quite work. But I think what you do at Reveal, you know, goes out very wide. I know in fact the station that I’m doing this for, KCRW, carries Reveal; most of the NPR stations do. I think the figure is like 450 or something stations carry it. Do people care? Or is this just, you know, OK, nice, glad you called attention to it, but I want one of those shiny objects and I really don’t care how my iPhone is made or how my electric car is made. Is that what you’re getting?

WE: I think, I actually think there’s a lot of people who care. I don’t know how to measure it, but there was a lot of interest in this story. You know, a lot of pickup, a lot of other publications, a lot of people wrote in. There–it’s partly because it’s one of those companies that is fascinating, and that people are paying attention to, and does represent in some way the future. And so even people who don’t, who aren’t in the market to buy a Tesla, are kind of intrigued and interested in it. And there was–I mean, I definitely hear from people who are upset about this, and who have had their opinions changed, either by this in conjunction with other stories, but just sort of–they have come around to the idea that maybe, maybe some of these tech leaders–and you see it with Facebook, too, right? They’ve had their bubble pierced. You know, that these tech leaders are no longer, should no longer be seen as invincible or that they can’t do, that they can do no wrong. I think that they’re, that people are sort of waking up to the idea that there are problems with even companies that you want to believe in.

RS: So that leaves us, finally, with the big idea that I got out of your series. And it’s not the only place, as you say, with the Facebook controversy now; with the, you know, controversy about how Google uses our data. But it goes to a larger question. These companies have escaped serious regulation–antitrust, you know; accountability. Whether it’s occupational standards on a state level, tax subsidies, communities have fallen all over themselves to attract these companies, and so forth. And there are two questions to raise about it. First of all, who’s going to buy these products if they’re not able to make a decent living, or if they’re not able to sustain their life, or they sacrifice their bodies to make it? I mean, what world are you creating? But also, they have actually, out of a kind of a libertarian ideology, denied the value of government. Assumed that government is something just old-fashioned, and regulation just gets in the way of progress. And yet, as you point out in your articles, without government subsidy we wouldn’t have had Tesla move to this point. And in fact, companies like Google came out of defense department research and, you know, a lot of government funding. And you really, at the end of the day, came up against the basic contradiction for Silicon Valley: is this thing too shiny, a distraction from the reality of life, of how things are produced, how people make a living, and how they can survive.

WE: Well, I think you hit on something that I think is interesting for a lot of the Silicon Valley industry, which is this idea that they’re–you know, it’s a cliché now, but that they’re disrupting this, and revolutionizing that. And a lot of it is new, and this disruption and this sort of “we’re breaking the rules” is seen as a good thing, and a driver of innovation. And the only way that many of these companies–Uber, or whatever it is–can, made it in the first place, and can survive, is by breaking a lot of rules. And some of those rules maybe we’re OK with breaking. And then when you start breaking labor regulations and things like that, then you know, are we still OK with it? I don’t know. And how do you regulate it? Now, when it’s something where you’re talking about gig workers, who aren’t, don’t have minimum wage or all kinds of other protections, or when you’re talking about autonomous vehicles, how do you, what do you do with that? When you’re talking about the tremendous power that Facebook has, that’s something we haven’t dealt with before. And I think there’s probably a lot of grappling that needs to be done with that. But in the meantime, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re thinking, like, I need to break things in order to succeed. And so the more things that get broken, you might see some troubling things come out sooner or later.

RS: And we seem to be on the cusp of that now, because actually there is, you know, the Federal Trade Commission is–there’s a lot of movement to take a second look at how these companies operate. And some–as I say, Tim Cook is one–have even suggested maybe that’s a good thing. So why don’t we leave it at that–maybe the long-run impact of this kind of reporting will be quite beneficial, hope so. If people want to follow this article, they should go to the Center for Investigative Reporting. What’s the quickest way to get it? Go to Reveal, CIR?

WE: Yeah, RevealNews.org.

RS: OK. RevealNews.org. Thanks again, Will Evans. And our producer for “Scheer Intelligence” is Joshua Scheer. Our engineers at KCRW are Mario Diaz and Kat Yore. Sebastian Grubaugh here at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism provided another exemplary engineering effort. See you next week with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence.”

 

 

Donald Trump Owns This Iran Crisis

The warmongers on Donald Trump’s national security team apparently convinced him to set in motion an aerial strike against Iran on Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. drone over waters claimed by Iran.

Then, at the last minute—according to reporting by Michael D. Shear, Eric Schmitt, Michael Crowley and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times—Trump seems to have listened to generals who warned him that things could spiral out of control, even into war. He issued a stand-down order. At least for now.

It isn’t even clear that there was a casus belli. On domestic issues, the U.S. press is locked into an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, disastrous, story-telling mode that has enormously benefited those pushing falsehoods, such as that cigarettes don’t cause cancer or putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere does not cause global heating.

Yet, when it comes to reporting on international security affairs, most U.S. reporting does not fall more than an inch from the Pentagon line of the day (often this dishonesty is the work of editors and publisher-owners rather than the fault of news-gathering reporters, as we saw at McClatchy during the Iraq War).

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John Bolton Is the World's Worst Nightmare



by

We heard all about the way Trump attempted to walk back his tough talk, saying that he was sure that Iran shot down the U.S. drone by accident. The statement, like his later stand-down order, is a clear sign of the division between him and his warmongering appointees, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.

Trump created this crisis by breaching the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Having pocketed Iran’s mothballing of 80 percent of its uranium enrichment program, Trump slapped the harshest sanctions ever seen against any country on Iran, unilaterally and in the teeth of opposition from NATO allies and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In other words, he screwed Iran over. Europe cannot stop the U.S. sanctions, because they are third-party sanctions and European firms that do business both in the U.S. and in Iran will be fined billions of dollars for their dealings with Tehran.

So Trump’s attempts to backpedal from his hard-liners are useless, as long as the U.S. has a financial blockade on Iran, preventing it from selling its petroleum. A naval blockade preventing a country from exporting a key commodity is considered an act of war in international law. It is hard to see the difference between that and an effective financial blockade. Same outcome.

The U.S. press almost never interviews non-U.S. world leaders, especially those to whom Washington is hostile. It is almost as though, when it comes to national security reporting, American news outlets go into war propaganda mode. Warmongers in high office know all about this phenomenon and use it to get the wars they crave.

So with regard to the shooting down of the U.S. drone by Iran, I think it is important to hear the Iranian side of the story. It may be false, it may be Iranian war propaganda. We can decide that once we’ve heard it.

BBC Monitoring translated from a Persian website the statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps:

”The Global Hawk surveillance drone took off from one the US bases in the south of the Persian Gulf at 0014 [1944 gmt] and disabled its identification system in a move contravening aviation regulations. It secretly flew from the Strait of Hormuz to Chabahar and on its way back travelling westward, the unmanned aerial vehicle violated the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the region of Strait of Hormuz and started collecting information and spying,” IRGC’s statement read. … “At 0405 [2335 gmt] and while the intrusive plane was inside our territories, the Guard’s aerospace defence unit shot it down.”

Source: Fars News Agency website, Tehran, in Persian 0919 gmt 20 Jun 19

In another report, Iran’s news service said that a 3 Khordad anti-aircraft missile was deployed against the drone.

If Iran is right that the drone flew into Iranian territory, the incident is still an unfortunate raising of tensions. But if it was over international waters, as the U.S. maintains, Iran was in the wrong.

One problem for these definitions is that the U.S., in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, recognizes only 12 nautical miles off the coast as belonging to the country, whereas many nations claim a much larger portion of the sea along their coasts than that. The U.S. Air Force says that the drone was never closer to the Iranian coast than 21 nautical miles. One of the unfortunate consequences of the hostility of Trump and his capos like Bolton toward the U.N. and international law is that it makes it harder for the U.S. to insist with a straight face that other countries take these things seriously. Bolton once denied that the U.N. even exists.

In the absence of an agreement on the U.N. definition of territorial waters, some sort of U.S. Iran bilateral negotiations would be preferable to cowboying it.

Again, this crisis is of Trump’s making. His conviction that he could stiff Iran without consequences, all for the sake of looking tough with his MAGA base, was a serious miscalculation. It is the problem with having an ignorant and yet opinionated man at the helm of the U.S. government. He is guaranteed to make basic mistakes that put the U.S. on a war footing, even though that appears to be the last thing Trump wants.

Unfortunately, Iran will provoke again, and next time, the U.S. warmongers may win the argument.

U.S. Prepped for Iran Strike Before Calling It Off

WASHINGTON — The United States made preparations for a military strike against Iran on Thursday night in retaliation for the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, but the operation was abruptly called off with just hours to go, a U.S. official said.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the targets would have included radars and missile batteries. The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump had approved the strikes, but then called them off. The newspaper cited anonymous senior administration officials.

The White House on Thursday night declined requests for comment.

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War With Iran Is America's Endgame



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

Asked earlier in the day about a U.S. response to the attack, Trump said, “You’ll soon find out.”

The swift reversal was a stark reminder of the serious risk of military conflict between U.S. and Iranian forces as the Trump administration combines a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions with a buildup of American forces in the region. As tensions mounted in recent weeks, there have been growing fears that either side could make a dire miscalculation that led to war.

According to the official who spoke to The Associated Press, the strikes were recommended by the Pentagon and were among the options presented to senior administration officials.

It was unclear how far the preparations had gone, but no shots were fired or missiles launched, the official said.

The military operation was called off around 7:30 p.m. Washington time, after Trump had spent most of Thursday discussing Iran strategy with top national security advisers and congressional leaders.

The downing of the U.S. drone — a huge, unmanned aircraft — over the Strait of Hormuz prompted accusations from the U.S. and Iran about who was the aggressor. Iran insisted the drone violated Iranian airspace; Washington said it had been flying over international waters.

Trump’s initial comments on the attack were succinct. He declared in a tweet that “Iran made a very big mistake!” But he also suggested that shooting down the drone — which has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 737 — was a foolish error rather than an intentional escalation, suggesting he may have been looking for some way to avoid a crisis.

“I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at the White House. “I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.”

Trump, who has said he wants to avoid war and negotiate with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, cast the shootdown as “a new wrinkle … a new fly in the ointment.” Yet he also said “this country will not stand for it, that I can tell you.”

He said the American drone was unarmed and unmanned and “clearly over international waters.” It would have “made a big, big difference” if someone had been inside, he said.

But fears of open conflict shadowed much of the discourse in Washington. As the day wore on, Trump summoned his top national security advisers and congressional leaders to the White House for an hour-long briefing in the Situation Room. Attendees included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Army Secretary Mark Esper, whom Trump has said he’ll nominate as Pentagon chief.

Pompeo and Bolton have advocated hardline policies against Iran, but Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, said “the president certainly was listening” when congressional leaders at the meeting urged him to be cautious and not escalate the already tense situation.

On Capitol Hill, leaders urged caution, and some lawmakers insisted the White House must consult with Congress before taking any actions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said no specific options for a U.S. response were presented at the meeting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The administration is engaged in what I would call measured responses.” And late Thursday, House Republicans on the Foreign Affairs, intelligence and Armed Services committees issued a statement using the same word, saying, “There must be a measured response to these actions.”

The Trump administration has been putting increasing economic pressure on Iran for more than a year. It reinstated punishing sanctions following Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of an international agreement intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from earlier sanctions.

The other world powers who remain signed on to the nuclear deal have set a meeting to discuss the U.S. withdrawal and Iran’s announced plans to increase its uranium stockpile for June 28, a date far enough in the future to perhaps allow tensions to cool.

On Thursday, Iran called the sanctions “economic terrorism.”

Citing Iranian threats, the U.S. recently sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region and deployed additional troops alongside the tens of thousands already there. All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict 40 years after Tehran’s Islamic Revolution.

“We do not have any intention for war with any country, but we are fully ready for war,” Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Hossein Salami said in a televised address.

The paramilitary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it shot down the drone at 4:05 a.m. Thursday when it entered Iranian airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Kouhmobarak is about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of Tehran.

Taking issue with the U.S. version of where the attack occurred, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that his country had retrieved sections of the military drone “in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down.” He said, “We don’t seek war but will zealously defend our skies, land & waters.”

Air Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, commander of U.S. Central Command air forces in the region, disputed that contention, telling reporters that the aircraft was 34 kilometers (21 miles) from the nearest Iranian territory and flying at high altitude when struck by a surface-to-air missile. The U.S. military has not commented on the mission of the remotely piloted aircraft that can fly higher than 10 miles in altitude and stay in the air for over 24 hours at a time.

“This attack is an attempt to disrupt our ability to monitor the area following recent threats to international shipping and free flow of commerce,” he said.

Late Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration barred American-registered aircraft from flying over parts of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Democratic leaders in particular urged the president to work with U.S. allies and stressed the need for caution to avoid any unintended escalation.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he told Trump that conflicts have a way of escalating and “we’re worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war.”

House Democrats Repeal 9/11 Authority for Forever Wars

Three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), a law that gave the president the authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against “nations, organizations, or persons,” involved in the 9/11 attacks. The AUMF helped launch the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Wednesday, 18 years after it was passed, House Democrats passed an appropriations bill that includes a provision that would repeal the AUMF, HuffPost reports.

Reporters Matt Fuller and Amanda Terkel note that three presidents have invoked the AUMF for more than three dozen military engagements in 14 countries. While some House members, notably Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., oppose the bill, it took a Democratic majority in the House and the possibility of the Trump administration using it as a justification for war with Iran for the repeal vote to succeed.

The administration has launched attempts to demonstrate links between Iran and al-Qaida. As Charlie Savage writes in The New York Times, “In public remarks and classified briefings, Trump administration officials keep emphasizing purported ties between Iran and [al-Qaida].” They’ve done so “despite evidence showing their ties aren’t strong at all. In fact, even [al-Qaida’s] own documents detail the weak connection between the two,” Vox’s Alex Ward reports.

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The Sinister Reason the U.S. Persists in Waging Losing Wars



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On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that President Trump “does not want war” with Iran. On Wednesday, after Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone overnight, Trump tweeted that “Iran made a very big mistake,” before backtracking and suggesting to reporters that perhaps someone “loose and stupid” in Iran had screwed up, maybe accidentally. But while the president may be waffling in his rhetoric on Iran, his close advisers, including Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, have been much clearer.

Since Trump appointed Iran hawk Bolton and shortly afterward pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, observers have questioned whether his administration is preparing for another war in the Middle East. In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that the National Security Council, at Bolton’s direction, asked the Pentagon to provide military options for striking Iran.

A younger generation of House members may have been a factor in the AUMF repeal provision. Some of the newer members are up to three generations younger than the entrenched leadership, many of whom are in their 70s. That means, as Fuller and Terkel point out, that “some of the newest members of Congress grew up with the Iraq War in the background of their high school and college years. Many of them opposed the invasion and saw politicians ― many of whom are now colleagues ― send their friends off to war.”

But members of Congress who spoke to HuffPost reporters pushed back against the generation-divide explanation. Rep. John Yarmuth, a 71-year-old Kentucky Democrat, said, “Very few are on a different page.” Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., who is 48, echoed Yarmuth, saying, “I don’t think there’s any divide on that situation at all.” And Lee, who cast the lone dissenting vote when the AUMF passed in 2001, is 72.

The repeal of the AUMF consists of just 11 lines in a larger House appropriations bill, and would go into effect eight months after it passes—if it passes, that is. As Fuller and Terkel note, the law faces an uphill battle in the Senate:

This is the first serve in an appropriations pingpong match between the Democratic House and the Republican Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ― much less Trump ― is unlikely to accept such a repeal.

Democrats also may face obstacles within their own ranks. They weren’t able to repeal the AUMF when they had control of all three branches of government from 2009 to 2011. There’s also the question Fuller and Terkel raise: whether Democrats in either the House or Senate are willing to shut down the government over the issue. “If Democrats aren’t willing to risk a shutdown over repealing this 2001 military authorization,” they write, “then they’re almost already giving up the game.”

Lawyers Say 250 Migrant Children Being Held in Dangerous Conditions

EL PASO, Texas—A traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation, according to a legal team that interviewed dozens of children at a Border Patrol station in Texas.

The attorneys who recently visited the facility near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns watching over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

When the lawyers saw the boy, he wasn’t wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu, and some were kept in medical quarantine.

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Trump Instructed Border Patrol to Break the Law, Report Says



by

The children told lawyers that they were fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes at the facility in Clint, in the desert scrubland some 25 miles southeast of El Paso.

“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youth. “Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake up for this country to move toward change.”

in a legal settlement known as the Flores agreement that governs detention conditions for migrant children and families. The lawyers negotiated access to the facility with officials and said Border Patrol knew the dates of their visit three weeks in advance.

Many of the more than 60 children the lawyers interviewed had arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some had been separated from adult caregivers such as aunts and uncles, the attorneys said. Government rules call for the children to be held by the Border Patrol for no longer than 72 hours before they are transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses migrant youth in facilities around the country.

The allegations about the conditions inside the El Paso facility are the latest complaints about mistreatment of immigrants at a time when record numbers of migrant families from Central America have been arriving at the border.

Government facilities are overcrowded and five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by the U.S. government. A teenage mother with a premature baby was found last week in a Texas Border Patrol processing center after being held for nine days by the government.

In an interview this week with the AP, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders acknowledged that children need better medical care and a place to recover from their illnesses. He urged Congress to pass a $4.6 billion emergency funding package includes nearly $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrant children.

He said that the Border Patrol is holding 15,000 people, and the agency considers 4,000 to be at capacity.

“The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding … they can’t move the people out of our custody,” Sanders said.

The Trump administration has been scrambling to find new space to hold immigrants as it faces withering criticism from Democrats that it’s violating the human rights of migrant children by keeping so many of them detained.

The Last White House Press Secretary

It is a Washington, D.C., custom that a flak jacket be hung in the closet of the White House press secretary’s office. A relic of the Vietnam War era, the jacket is one of those Beltway affectations delightful to those in power’s orbit and largely incomprehensible to the rest of us slobs. Such is the battle the White House press secretary must wage each day, the jacket tells those who’d take the job; it’s like withstanding anti-aircraft fire over North Vietnam, dealing with these unceasing journalistic hacks who make your life hell just because they can’t do anything else for a living. What a scream.

Never mind that much of the press secretary’s job is spent doing things like lying about putting actual soldiers in real flak jackets over real enemy fire, to kill or be killed. That’s not so cute to think about. The tradition that an outgoing press secretary leave a note in one of the flak jacket’s pockets for the incoming press secretary is similarly and infuriatingly detached from reality. As with so many American political norms, it reveals that bipartisanship is alive and well, despite furious argument to the contrary—that the defining self-identification for successful political hacks is not “Republican versus Democrat,” but “us versus them.”

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been something of a relief. As odd as it is to admit, I will miss her after her departure as Trump’s press secretary at the end of June, ahead of a likely run for governor of Arkansas. But in the same way that surviving a near-death experience can foster great personal growth and a newfound appreciation for life, so too has Sanders done the country a great service. By being the very best press secretary a president has ever had, Sanders has revealed just how worthless the position is—and how unceasingly evil the job must be, by its very nature.

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White House Smears CNN Reporter With Doctored Video



by Jacob Sugarman

With the possible exception of Ari Fleischer, who served under George W. Bush, Sanders may be the single most loathsome human being to ever occupy the position. She possesses a fundamental disdain for the truth, an outright contempt for the journalists ranged before her and an uncanny ability to never break the character of a cold, uncaring cipher, bored with whatever question has been posed to her.

It is said that investigators who captured the so-called Golden State Killer, watching him await questioning in the interrogation room, marveled at how still he was—hardly moving at all, barely blinking, an apex predator who had keenly honed his capacities for violence and brutality. Sanders has a similarly reptilian gene. Clucking at some question—about her government’s detention camps, or about locking little kids in cages until they die, or whatever lunacy her president had been responsible for that week—she’d huff at first about how absurd it was to even suggest whatever issue the question raised. Then, rearing her head back like a cobra in its wind-up, she’d strike, hissing at the journalist’s competence, about how unfair he or she was, and how laughable journalism had become to arrive at this new low point in its practice.

Sanders has been  a minor hero to the far-right base of the leader she serves, and why wouldn’t she be? Every day she holds a press conference, she wins, humiliating a White House press corps that merely seeks to ask questions and record her answers.

Many journalists and politicos have argued that White House briefings of a more recent vintage serve an important purpose. Journalists need to be able to demand answers from the presidency, they contend, or, conversely, that the Oval Office needs a way of communicating directly with the press. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I have never found these arguments convincing.

White House press briefings are not really so different from watching sports reporters push in close to some sweaty jock after an overtime loss to ask him what went wrong. The best-case scenario is that the reporter will extract some truly profound insight, like “Both teams played hard,” or “We gave 110%.” The worst is that the athlete will threaten to beat a reporter’s ass or simply refuse to play along. Witness the industrywide freakout that occurred when NFL running back Marshawn Lynch adopted a code of silence in post-game interviews, despite league bylaws requiring players to be available for such questioning.

Everyone is supposed to go through the motions here; it’s pure public relations, and it’s transactional. The press flack is there to massage the course of human events, nipping and tucking at history as it happens to make his or her  boss look as good as possible. The assembled journalists, in theory, are there to hold truth to power, but that rarely seems to actually happen, in part because they feel the need to maintain some sort of equanimity in their dealings with the press flack. These are ornate ways of saying that the press secretary’s job is to lie, and the press corps’ job is to write the lie down.

It has always been an undignified and dirty job. Nixon’s guy, Ron Ziegler, who famously called Watergate a “third-rate burglary,” was literally pushed around in public by old Dick. Clinton’s hack, Mike McCurry, described his Lewinsky-era job as “telling the truth slowly,” which is another way of saying “not telling the truth.” Fleischer, a real thug, threatened the public, saying that it needed “to watch what they say” post-9/11. His successor, Scott McClellan, often didn’t even know when he was lying to the press, as he himself was being lied to by the likes of Karl Rove. And so it was in this grand tradition that a puffy-eyed vagrant in a suit two sizes too big staggered onto the podium, sputtering that the assembled journalists needed to stop lying about how few people had attended his boss’s inauguration. Sean Spicer may not have been a departure from the type of person who had previously held his post, but the president he served certainly was. It was between this rock and a hard place that Spicer called home, embarrassing himself every day trying to prevaricate, fudge and quibble according to standard operating procedure without angering the most unhinged president in recent history through some unmeant slight or unidentifiable failing.

To watch Spicer was to imagine what it was like for the generals of Saddam Hussein, who had been forbidden to retreat, even for tactical advantage, or risk summary execution. Spicer never inhabited the role comfortably, and so it was Sanders’ great fortune to show us how it was done. She has had no shame, no hesitation, mindlessly parroting whatever her crazed boss wants said, and she has done it with no indication that it troubled her or struck her as deranged.

Sanders has served one master: Trump. There has been  no pretense of helping the Fourth Estate, an avowed enemy; every press briefing has been simply an opportunity to embarrass journalists. The eventual cancellation of such briefings, in a show of the White House’s animus for the press, was almost redundant; in terms of educating the public, there was scarcely any difference between having a briefing or not having one. In this, she boiled down the job to its barest essential: mindlessly burnish her superior, per his wishes.

And here we have finally reached the terminal point of spin, where silence is equivalent to hatching a lie. Sanders is the first post-modern spin doctor, the John Cage of press secretaries, and in her silence, the void is filled with a cacophony of other, grander, more insane lies. It feels more and more impossible these days to discern the truth. But perhaps therein lies an opportunity.

If the PR flacks of  powerful leaders are liars who don’t serve much of a purpose, maybe they don’t need that much attention. Maybe the fact that Obama White House press flunkies Jay Carney, Robert Gibbs, Josh Earnest and Bill Burton all quickly migrated to high-paying, soulless corporate PR gigs (for Amazon, McDonald’s, United Airlines and the odious Howard Schultz, respectively) speaks to what the skill set being employed here truly is. Maybe press secretaries only need to be asked for comment at the terminus of a journalist’s exposé on shady fundraising or some disastrous failing of health care in their boss’s district; plenty of journalists, despite the decimation of their industry, still do this.

Let’s get rid of the White House press secretary; we don’t need to talk. We don’t need spin, via some carefully orchestrated daily waltz, no matter how genteel it may be. Let’s fight back, whether journalists, readers or just citizens. If Sarah Huckabee Sanders hates you, it’s probably a good sign. If it’s a dirty fight she and her ilk want, two sides can play at that game. Let the silence begin!

There Are No Democratic Adults in the Room

“It’s 2016 All Over Again.” So claims the title of a recent column by Peter Nicholas in The Atlantic. By “2016 all over again,” Nicholas means that Donald Trump, now president, has expressed a willingness to accept campaign help from a foreign power in the 2020 election.

The president’s comments upset Nicholas. “A simple idea,” he writes, “underpins the nation’s democratic tradition: Americans elect America’s leaders. But that notion at times seems lost on Trump. His comments to ABC, for one, echoed remarks he made almost three years ago, when he famously called on Russia to help recover 30,000 emails deleted from Clinton’s private server.”

While Nicholas’s discomfort is understandable, what he refers to as the “democratic tradition” of “Americans elect[ing] America’s leaders” has been more compromised by domestic concentrations of wealth than by any foreign nation, Russia included. As the distinguished liberal political scientists Benjamin Page (Northwestern) and Martin Gilens (Princeton) showed in their expertly researched book “Democracy in America?” (2017):

The best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans actually have had little or no impact on the making of federal government policy. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups – especially business corporations – have had much more political clout. When they are taken into account, it becomes apparent that the general public has been virtually powerless. … Majorities of Americans favor … programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes. Most Americans also want to cut ‘corporate welfare.’ Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies.”

Which brings us to another way in which we are living “2016 all over again.”

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The Only Way Democrats Can Beat Trump in 2020



by Juan Cole

A yard sign that has popped up all over middle-class lawns in liberal Iowa City, Iowa, reads: “Any Functioning Adult in 2020.” The slogan’s meaning is clear: Vote for any corporate Democrat, so long as he or she isn’t Donald Trump. Fundamentally, it is the same message that was offered by Hillary Clinton, who ran as little more than an establishment-vetted “grown-up.” It didn’t work in 2016, and it may well fail again in 2020.

What got Trump elected that horrible year was neither interference from Russia (or any other foreign power) nor an electoral uprising of white nationalists (just over 1 in 4 adult Americans voted for Trump) but rather the neoliberal nothingness of the Democratic Party, aptly described as the “The Inauthentic Opposition” by the late political scientist Sheldon Wolin in his 2008 book, “Democracy, Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.”

“Should Democrats somehow, be elected,” Wolin predicted, they would do nothing “to alter significantly the direction of society” or “substantially revers[e] the drift rightwards. … The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities, the working class and anti-corporatists there is no opposition party working on their behalf.” Instead, the corporatist Democrats would work to “marginalize any possible threat to the corporate allies of the Republicans.”

That proved a decent forecast for the Obama administration. The party continued its drift rightward, Republicans exploited the public’s broader feelings of abandonment and betrayal, and Democrats managed to depress and demobilize their own base. Hillary Clinton’s listless 2016 campaign then added insult to the injury of financial globalization and deindustrialization by casting white, flyover voters as culturally backward “deplorables.” Clinton neglected public policy to a shocking degree, eschewing even the pretense of progressivism.

It was a doomed strategy in an anti-establishment election year shaped by widespread popular alienation and anger. The masses were in no mood for centrist equivocation amid a weak recovery from a Great Recession caused by financial sector culprits who were opulently bailed out by a Democratic administration that had little to offer the working-class majority. The progressive-populist Bernie Sanders, running in accord with majority progressive opinion, would have defeated Trump. But the Clinton machine and its allies in corporate media and the Democratic National Committee rigged the primary campaign against Sanders, the party’s best hope.

Two and a half years later, the Democrats and their backers in the corporate media are repeating the same mistakes all over again. They are already making the next quadrennial extravaganza all about the (undisputed) awfulness of Trump while working to block Sanders and other left-leaning Democratic forces who would dare challenge the establishment consensus with bold progressive policies. (Read my latest account of the Stop Sanders Democratic campaign here).  They are promoting dreary centrists who represent the same depressing “progressive neoliberal” formula that failed in 2000, 2004 and 2016. Joe Biden, a longstanding corporatist and imperialist, represents Democratic neoliberalism and militarism on steroids.

That an admitted plagiarist and gaffe-machine who struggles to keep his hands to himself is among his party’s top contenders suggests there are no actual adults in the room. Only Sanders and perhaps Elizabeth Warren (although to a significantly lesser degree) offer anything resembling a challenge to entrenched power. And that is why they can expect consistent criticism for being “too radical,” “pie-in-the-sky” and “socialist” from a putatively “liberal” establishment that prefers losing to a neofascist right than even a moderately social democratic left. Democrats have doubled down on their 2016 approach, gambling that it will work in the wake of an actual Trump presidency where it couldn’t against a candidate considered an unviable clown (albeit one the Clinton camp actively promoted).

Curiously enough, the Inauthentic Opposition may have ultimately sabotaged itself. Russiagate has provided Democrats with a lethal excuse for their egregious failure to mobilize enough voters to defeat the widely reviled Trump in 2016. It has allowed the reigning corporate wing of the party to pretend to fight Trump while working to marginalize genuine progressive voices like Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all while keeping the fire burning on a potentially deadly new Cold War between the United States and Russia—a conflict to which top Democrats have long been strongly committed. And in the process, they have diverted attention away from the most critical issues of the day, enhancing the chances of Trump’s re-election. As Allan Nairn told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! last May 23:

If you turn on CNN and MSNBC these days,  unless you’re someone who has been following these channels avidly, you’ll find a lot of what they’re talking about is incomprehensible gobbledygook, because they go on and on about Don McGhan and all these [other Russiagate] figures who most people don’t know why they are, rather than talking about the substantive issues of the atrocities that Trump is committing daily – the abduction and de facto murder of children on the border, the gutting of labor rights, the gutting of environmental protections. And instead, the Democrats are going off on a tangent, and they’re handing Trump a political gift. If you’re going to impeach him, impeach him on substance, not a Russia plot, which Mueller already concluded Trump didn’t criminally participate in.

Could someone as risible and frequently out of it as Joe Biden still prevail? It’s far too early to say. The next presidential election is anybody’s guess at this stage and may well hinge on the vagaries of the business cycle between now and November 2020. But even if a corporate Democrat were to fall into the White House, as one occasionally does, he or she can be counted on to deepen the nation’s rightward drift, setting the stage for somebody even worse than Trump at some point down the line.

Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson in Runoff for U.K. Prime Minister

LONDON — Britain’s next prime minister will be a man in his 50s who went to Oxford University — either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, the two finalists selected Thursday in a race to lead the governing Conservative Party.

Johnson, a flamboyant former foreign secretary and ex-mayor of London, topped a ballot of 313 Conservative lawmakers with 160 votes — more than half the total — and is runaway favorite to become the party’s next leader. He has led in all five voting rounds of a contest that began last week with 10 contenders.

Hunt, Britain’s current foreign secretary, came a distant second with 77 votes and will join Johnson in a runoff decided by 160,000 party members across the country. Hunt edged out Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who got 75 votes, after Home Secretary Sajid Javid was eliminated earlier in the day.

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The winner of the runoff, due to be announced the week of July 22, will become Conservative leader and prime minister, replacing Theresa May.

Many in the party doubt that anyone can beat Johnson, a quick-witted, Latin-spouting extrovert admired for his ability to connect with voters, but mistrusted for his erratic performance in high office and his long record of inaccurate, misleading and sometimes offensive comments.

“Boris will say absolutely anything in order to please an audience,” historian Max Hastings told the BBC on Thursday. “Boris would have told the passengers on the Titanic that rescue was imminent.”

Hunt, who has held several senior government posts including culture secretary and health secretary, is considered an experienced, competent minister, but unexciting. He has billed himself as the “serious” candidate, in implicit contrast to Johnson.

He will try to halt Johnson’s momentum by picking away at his plans for Brexit as the two speak to meetings of party members across the country over the next few weeks.

Both Johnson and Hunt vow they will lead Britain out of the European Union, a challenge that defeated May. She quit as Conservative leader earlier this month after failing to win Parliament’s backing for her Brexit deal.

Brexit, originally scheduled to take place on March 29, has been postponed twice amid political deadlock in London. The candidates differ on how they plan to end the impasse.

Johnson, a leading figure in the 2016 campaign to leave the European Union, has won backing from the party’s die-hard Brexiteers by insisting the U.K. must leave the bloc on the rescheduled date of Oct. 31, with or without a divorce deal to smooth the way.

He also is supported by some Tory moderates who claim he has the skills to unite the party and win back voters from rival parties on both the left and the right.

Hunt backed the losing “remain” side in the referendum, but now says he is determined to go through with Brexit. He says his past in business, running an educational publishing firm, gives him an edge in negotiations.

Hunt says he would seek another postponement of Brexit if needed to secure a deal, but only for a short time.

Critics say neither candidate has a realistic plan. The EU is adamant that it won’t reopen the Brexit agreement it struck with May’s government, which has been rejected three times by Britain’s Parliament.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Thursday that “the withdrawal agreement is not going to be reopened.”

He also said there was “enormous hostility to any further extension” of the Brexit deadline among the other 27 EU leaders.

Many economists and businesses warn that leaving the EU without a deal on divorce terms and future relations would cause economic turmoil as tariffs and other disruptions are imposed on trade between Britain and the EU.

U.K. Treasury chief Philip Hammond warned that a no-deal Brexit would put Britain’s prosperity at risk and leave the economy “permanently smaller.”

“The question to the candidates is not ‘What is your plan?’ but ‘What is your Plan B?'” Hammond said in extracts from a speech he is giving later Thursday.

Hope Hicks Rebuffs Questions on Trump White House

WASHINGTON — Former top White House adviser Hope Hicks refused to answer questions related to her time in the White House in a daylong interview with the House Judiciary Committee, dimming Democrats’ chances of obtaining new or substantive information about President Donald Trump in their first interview with a person linked to his inner circle.

Frustrated Democrats leaving the meeting Wednesday said Hicks and her lawyer rigidly followed White House orders to stay quiet about her time there and said they would be forced to go to court to obtain answers.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said Hicks’ lawyers asserted the White House’s principle that as one of Trump’s close advisers she is “absolutely immune” from talking about her time there because of separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. Nadler said that principle is “ridiculous” and Democrats intend to “destroy” it in court.

Nadler said the committee plans to take the administration to court on the immunity issue, and Hicks’ interview would be part of that litigation.

In a letter Tuesday to Nadler, White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote that Trump had directed Hicks not to answer questions “relating to the time of her service as a senior adviser to the president.” The White House has similarly cited broad executive privilege with respect to many of the Democrats’ other investigative demands, using the president’s power to withhold information to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process.

Hicks did answer some questions about her time on Trump’s campaign, the lawmakers said, but they said they learned little that was new.

“She’s objecting to stuff that’s already in the public record,” California Rep. Karen Bass said on a break from the interview. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., called her answers “a farce.”

California Rep. Ted Lieu tweeted about the meeting while it was ongoing, writing that Hicks refused to answer even innocuous questions such as whether she had previously testified before Congress and where her office was located in the White House.

In all, she was behind closed doors for eight hours, with an hourlong break for lunch.

Democrats pressed Hicks on episodes she might have witnessed as one of Trump’s closest advisers. During questioning about the campaign, Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., said she asked Hicks if she had been aware of any outreach from the Russians. After Hicks responded no, Dean named apparent contacts, such as emails, some of which are mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Hicks said she hadn’t thought those contacts were “relevant,” according to Dean.

Republicans had a different perspective, saying she was cooperative and the interview was a waste of time, especially in light of Mueller’s two-year investigation. The top Republican on the panel, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, said after the interview that the committee “took eight hours to find out what really most of us knew at the beginning.”

Hicks was a key witness for Mueller, delivering important information to the special counsel’s office about multiple episodes involving the president. Mueller wrote in his report released in April that there was not enough evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, but said he could not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice. The report examined several situations in which Trump attempted to influence or curtail Mueller’s investigation.

Democrats has planned to ask Hicks about several of those episodes, including efforts to remove Mueller from the investigation, pressure on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the firing of FBI Director James Comey. They also planned to ask about Hicks’ knowledge of hush-money payments orchestrated by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump — the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal. Trump has denied the allegations. Cohen is now serving three years in prison partly for campaign violations related to the payments.

One lawmaker who was in the room said Hicks would not answer many of those questions. The person requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door interview.

As Hicks spoke to the committee, Trump tweeted throughout the day. He said the interview was “extreme Presidential Harassment,” and wrote that Democrats “are very unhappy with the Mueller Report, so after almost 3 years, they want a Redo, or Do Over.”

He also tweeted that it was “so sad that the Democrats are putting wonderful Hope Hicks through hell.”

Trump has broadly stonewalled House Democrats’ investigations and said he will fight “all of the subpoenas.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is taking a methodical approach to investigating Trump. More than 60 lawmakers in her caucus — including around a dozen on the Judiciary Committee — have called for opening an impeachment inquiry, but she has said she wants committees to investigate first and come to a decision on impeachment later.

While Trump has continued to block their requests, Democrats have recently made some minor gains, such as the Justice Department’s agreement to make some underlying evidence from Mueller’s report available to committee members.

The Judiciary panel wanted a higher-profile interview with Hicks, subpoenaing her for public testimony. But they agreed to the private interview after negotiations. A transcript of the session will be released in the coming days.

The committee has also subpoenaed Hicks for documents, but she has only partially complied. She agreed to provide some information from her work on Trump’s campaign, but none from her time at the White House because of the administration’s objections.

Also Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Russia-born business executive Felix Sater will talk to House intelligence committee staff behind closed doors as part of its investigation into Russian election interference.

Schiff wouldn’t give a date for the interview, but another person familiar with the meeting said it will happen Friday. The person requested anonymity to discuss the private interview.

Sater worked with Cohen on a Trump Tower deal in Moscow before the 2016 election. The project was later abandoned.

Schiff said the committee will also talk to “other witnesses related to Moscow Trump Tower” in future interviews.