Chris Hedges's Blog, page 229

Will the World End in Fire or in Flood?

More and more, we look into our screens and gizmos. And this helps us — almost as if they were made for that purpose — not to think about the weather outside. Kept busy “curating” our own lives, we are regularly spared evidence of the coming catastrophe.

Long ago, in a memorable poem, Robert Frost guessed that there was a human need to bring the moods of the world into conformity with our moods:

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“Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawn

Between you and me.”

He says he has seen the “head” of the tree “taken and tossed” in rough weather, as his own head was “taken and swept” by a dream. This resemblance between the world and himself somehow added to his interest in life:

“That day she put our heads together,

Fate had her imagination about her,

Your head so much concerned with outer,

Mine with inner, weather.”

This sense of the human place in the fabric of nature — that there may be a deep connection between inner and outer weather — is starting to seem a thing of the past.

Can we still have inner weather when the outer weather changes so regularly and drastically? When 500 tornadoes rip through the country from Kansas to Pennsylvania in a matter of weeks? Or when 875,000 California acres burn down in the course of a summer? Rather than hear the message, we look into our smartphones or at our computer screens whose backgrounds may include breathtakingly lovely pictures of the planet — photos that show how beautiful a place it has been. As if we could have this Earth forever in reach, as if we could preserve it with a password or, by logging off, exchange it for another as lovely.

What Benjamin Franklin is rumored to have said about the American Republic is now true of the planet as well: we have a world, if we can keep it. But so much of our interest is directed elsewhere — to the work of “renaming,” for example. There are scholars who think that by christening our age the Anthropocene, they are putting the fires and floods under a microscope. But does this human-centered word do much more than carve a new channel for pride? (“Just look around! It’s all us!”) The world, it seems, has become but one more link in the cyber-human chain by which we exit our natural bodies and turn into something rich and strange.

Greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change, climate disruption. Think of the succession of words we’ve used to describe the gradual onset of catastrophe and you see at once how inadequate words can be. In our time, corporate lingo has even rendered “disruptive” an admiring adjective for tech innovations on a par with “transformative.” Think back to the way “creative destruction” was used in an age of trickle-down economics — the message was that the economic damage to so many people signaled a corporate creativity that would make the crooked places straight. Never mind the “destruction” part — the victims would find their recompense at a higher level.

The destruction always seems to be happening elsewhere. Of course we know better. The issue that should dwarf everything in sight today is planetary climate destruction. It’s happening in plain sight and all around us, and most of us clearly can’t bear to think about it. Why not? Because we are creatures of habit and immediacy, because the imagination can’t fix for long on a distant and unbearable future. Habit disposes us to normalize the abnormal. It’s a human propensity as natural as the protective mechanism that helps us not get stopped in our tracks by the painful things we did or suffered.

Lurking under the exhaustion, the unraveling, even the obliteration of nature is our awareness of another danger we have long grown used to denying. For there is a second way that organized society could be brought to an end: nuclear weapons, which require a kind of international control we haven’t begun to imagine. To make much headway there, the world’s sole remaining superpower would have to change its focus and drop all those other wars we’re in. Few people can remember how we got into them, and even fewer (National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, various Washington warriors and think-tank adepts) want them to continue, but these wars too have become a habit, a kind of addiction. Evidently we’ll keep on fighting them unless something very big stops us.

War Parties and Other Distractions

In another remarkable poem, Robert Frost wondered whether the world would end in fire or ice. Destruction by fire, the poem suggests, may be the offspring of desire — the desire, above all, for power of a sort that keeps nations on the uneasy brink of war. However, as the poem goes on to say, cold indifference or hate could also bring an end to life on this planet:

”But if it had to perish twice

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.”

There could hardly be a surer allegory of our moment. The fire of the poem can stand in for our multiple wars and the shadow of nuclear cataclysm. And ice? Arctic sea ice is melting more rapidly than expected, as are the Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers everywhere. As they do, the sea level rises. Think of the ice as a premonition of the flood. And yet (naturally enough) these matters are off-limits in polite conversation. We are kept on a steady course of avoidance by a wish for things to be normal. Perverse as it sounds, nothing is more normal than the next round of daily news about a bad man who is also big and crazy and (confess it) bizarrely fun to watch. The race to fetch and carry news about you-know-who helps us cling to a present that resembles the cartoons and comic books of the past.

Everyday politics is filled with distractions. On March 26th, for example, The Hill reported that Mitch McConnell had affirmed climate change is a human-caused phenomenon. Did he really believe that? “I do,” he insisted, but the problem ought to be attacked in a reasonable state of mind: “The way to do this consistent with American values and American capitalism is through technology and innovation.” So the Republican senate majority leader offered a Republican “solution” to global warming. Let the vested interests — Big Banks, Big Energy, Silicon Valley — join forces and solve it together. These things always get done eventually, don’t they? As if on cue, from the minority leader of the Senate, there emerged a classic Democratic solution. Chuck Schumer said that the Senate ought to form a committee and investigate.

Another day, another distraction: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, reported last month that Iran was engaged in an unprecedented “campaign” against the United States, a campaign revealed by his scrutiny of “multiple threat streams that were all perhaps coming together in time.” The evidence on which his estimates were based appeared to be of Israeli provenance — a source that (on this subject particularly) many Americans have learned to distrust. About the same time, former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan, who for the last half-year has served as acting secretary of defense, suggested that the president “doesn’t want a war with Iran.” Yet statements by Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Advisor Bolton can hardly be said to bear out that claim. In a 2017 speech to MEK, the Iranian insurgent-terrorist group, John Bolton confidently predicted that “regime change” in Iran was imminent. Last month, he promised a similar insurrection in Cuba. Bolton’s past behavior shows a consistent preference for war over other possible methods of undermining and destroying a foreign government.

Occasionally, a more hopeful distraction appears on the horizon. Just the other day, the Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted: “Our future is female. Intersectional. Powered by our belief in one another. And we’re just getting started.” In America, however, that prophecy is open to various interpretations. When it comes to the future and female leaders, consider the curriculum vitae of Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security advisor and later secretary of state for President George W. Bush and has since emerged as the leading name in the strategic consultancy firm RiceHadleyGates. It’s an upmarket outfit, all of whose partners had a role in creating, widening, or protracting the never-ending war on terror and none of whom has been chastened by her or his experience of disaster. RiceHadleyGates’s online bumpf assures you that the firm

“works with senior executives of major companies to develop and implement their strategic plans and help companies expand in major emerging markets, including Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. In addition, we assist companies dealing with the national security and foreign policy challenges associated with offering sophisticated technologies, products, and services in these overseas markets.”

So the apostles of destruction by fire, female or otherwise, continue to reap their reward in status as well as hard cash.

And they have plenty of company. In the age of Trump, the war party of 2003-2006 has been resurrected behind the scenes. It can claim both a neoconservative and a neoliberal wing. Though in different tones of voice, both promote a return to American world leadership by force of — the polite word is “democracy” but the reality is, of course, ever-advancing strategic and tactical weapons systems in a Washington where the Pentagon budget grows more swollen every year. The neoconservative wing of that party, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, has on its board former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, former Republican congressman and chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence Mike Rogers, and the neoconservative editor and columnist Bill Kristol. The neoliberal think tank, National Security Action, includes Barack Obama’s speechwriter Ben Rhodes, along with Obama’s national security advisors Tom Donilon and Susan Rice and the intervention strategist Anne-Marie Slaughter. Jake Sullivan, who was in line to be Hillary Clinton’s national security advisor, sits on the advisory council of the first group and serves as co-chair of the second.

All of these people are pushing for a full-scale global renewal of liberal hegemony, supervised by the United States. The neoconservatives may look for regimes to topple, the neoliberals may prefer trade deals, but count on one thing: former officials and retired generals have already created a fresh environment in which they can safely mingle, brainstorm, and divvy up the world.

These people are the spiritual descendants of Alden Pyle, the “innocent” protagonist and title character of Graham Greene’s 1955 Vietnam War novel, The Quiet American. “I hope to God you know what you are doing there,” the English narrator Thomas Fowler says to Pyle. “Oh, I know your motives are good; they always are. I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives; you might understand a little more about human beings. And that applies to your country too, Pyle.” After a plastic explosive goes off in a public place and kills the wrong people, Pyle says of the dead civilians: “They were only war casualties. It was a pity, but you can’t always hit your target. Anyway, they died in the right cause.” A little later he adds, “In a way you could say they died for democracy.”Fowler replies: “I wouldn’t know how to translate that into Vietnamese.”

From our continuing failures, we can always be distracted by the memory of past glory — even when we know that the memory is largely counterfeit. George Packer’s recent biography of the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, Our Man, offers a proof of the method. Holbrooke was the finest flower of the U.S. foreign policy elite in the late twentieth century. He worked on the pacification program in Vietnam for the Agency for International Development, served as assistant secretary of state under Jimmy Carter — where, among his other duties, he facilitated the Indonesian occupation of East Timor — broadened his credentials for a decade on Wall Street, returned to public service as the Clinton administration’s Balkan envoy and U.N. ambassador, and became at last a venerated but powerless authority on “global reach” as President Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: Holbrooke supported all three of those disastrous wars in public, while reserving any guilty doubts for his private conversations and his diary. In non-diplomatic language, he was a careerist and a serial dissimulator, but Our Man contrives to elevate and almost pardon him because he did it in an idealistic cause, while seeking to preserve the façade of benevolent motives on which the reputation of his country depended. And he had to his credit one celebrated achievement: the Dayton Accords of 1995, which temporarily settled the conflict between Serbia and Croatia. This led to the 11-week-long bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, which was said to have reasserted the “international norms” that NATO and the West stood for. The success of that mission would later be held up as a model for the anticipated success of the bombing, invasion, and occupation of Iraq.

Holbrooke politicked hard to get a Nobel Prize that never came his way for the Dayton Accords. As it turned out, the most lasting consequences of his actions in 1995 and his advice in 1999 have been the dismantling of Yugoslavia and the creation of Kosovo as a drug-warlord state. His biographer tells us that he was a charmer to some, an obnoxious self-promoter in the eyes of others. Even so, “our man” is praised in this account (with a touch of elegiac pathos) as one of the “almost great” American figures we ought to remember with respect and affection — the hero of a lost world of big ambitions and good intentions.

As Packer sees it (and many foreign-service and combat journalists would agree), America’s faults have only been Holbrooke’s faults, writ large. “After all,” he writes,

“we Americans have never been good at managing the internal business of other countries. We’re lousy imperialists. We’re too chaotic and distracted — too democratic. We don’t have the knowledge, the staying power, the public support, the class of elites with the desire and ability to run an empire. And we rarely have the moral standing we imagine.”

The last sentence is careful to guard the author against any imputation of nostalgia for American hegemony, but in a sense the caution is unnecessary: in this account, the evil that we wrought came from incompetence, not malignity.

Still, look at the words again: “we rarely have the moral standing we imagine.” It is the mildest of rebukes. Go to the back of the class, it says; get things right the next time. To see what is missing from such a judgment, compare the uninflected plainness of a sentence in John Mearsheimer’s book The Great Delusion on the consequences of U.S. actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. “Not only has the United States failed to protect human rights and promote liberal democracy in those countries,” Mearsheimer writes, “it has played a major role in spreading death and disorder across the greater Middle East.” Count Vietnam and Iraq alone and the death toll inflicted by U.S. militarism is upward of two million abroad in the years since the Second World War. No other country comes close. And none of those engagements in Southeast Asia and later across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa can be claimed as a war of self-defense. All were wars of choice. How much should it matter that we only wanted to help?

There is a thought that never enters the mind of well-meaning liberals like Holbrooke and his biographer. The reason we can’t teach others how to live is not that there is a good way of being an imperialist and Americans haven’t learned it. No, we can’t teach them because we don’t understand ourselves well enough to know what we would teach. Yet Packer is drawn to admire Holbrooke by the nagging thought that “he believed that power brought responsibilities, and if we failed to face them the world’s suffering would worsen, and eventually other people’s problems would be ours, and if we didn’t act no one else would… He was that rare American in the treetops who actually gave a shit about the dark places of the earth.”

Notice the familiar and hackneyed warning that if we didn’t venture out onto those distant battlefields of the planet, “other people’s problems would be ours.” In short, we must go to meet the enemy or he will come here.This has been the essential justification for every American war from Vietnam to the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq. That we could cause far worse problems by going to meet “the enemy” is the possibility invariably omitted under a haze of self-love and handsome regrets.

An Anything but Great World

When, in his essay “Perpetual Peace,” Immanuel Kant spoke for an enlightened understanding of justice and called the apologists for war and empire “sorry comforters,” he meant that they took the patterns of individual pride and fear as a collective rule for nations, and by doing so propagated a false idea of what action and suffering on a global scale could mean. Inseparably mixed with the cult of national self-love is the yearning to join the big boys who have made history. But where the fate of the world is at stake, the idea of “making history” through a struggle of great powers has been exposed as a cheat and a swindle.

Greatness in modern politics, in fact, has usually meant decisions that bring death to a great many unsuspecting people, most of whom have no connection to any problem the decisions were meant to solve. And yet this idea of greatness — or indispensability or exceptionalism — has so rooted itself in American electoral politics that a refusal to speak the comforting words may cause astonishment.

Senator Bernie Sanders was recently asked, “Do you feel you would be capable of using nuclear weapons in defense of the country?” He answered with bitter sarcasm, “Oh, yeah, anytime!” — and to make the meaning of “greatness” clear, he added: “Am I capable of blowing up the world?” The interviewer responded that he believed whether or not a politician would order a nuclear strike was “a great moral question.” To this Sanders responded, “It’s a great immoral question.”

There are questions that should never be answered, because they degrade anyone involved in answering or even listening to them. The overriding legitimate question for governments today is this: Will the world end in fire or in flood — in nuclear catastrophe or climate catastrophe? With the exception of scientists, a few politicians, and increasing numbers of school-age children, most citizens and most of our leaders are looking away from the flood while greeting the fire with clichés as familiar as lullabies.

And now for the name you haven’t heard but must somehow have expected, the subject of our favorite angry lullabies: Donald Trump. To mainstream journalists, he has become an object of unlimited enchantment and fascination. They treat him as if he were still the gonzo real-estate mogul and reality TV host it was impossible not to put on the front page because, in this age of social media, we’re all writing for tabloids, aren’t we? The symptomatic traits of a tabloid are no longer confined to journals like the National Enquirer. They encompass the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the major networks, not to mention the rest of us when the internet surf is up.

The reporters who build up Donald Trump as president — something they do with every smirk and gasp meant to show how much they want to take him down — surely believe in the reality of climate change (even if they seldom mention it) and they surely accept the dangers of a possible nuclear conflagration (though they mention it not at all). But the 24/7 journalism of the age of Trump has unfitted them to respond to the real dangers of this planet whose names are not Trump. To bring their reporting into line with the reality of climate change and the possibility that all our small wars could someday erupt into a world war, mainstream journalism would simply have to take him off the front page for weeks at a time.

Let us be optimists and suppose our luck holds out for another generation. Suppose we are spared destruction by fire. Climate change remains and its effects will be devastating, even though those effects are regularly dealt with as if they belonged to separate categories: immigration, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. There will be wars as a result of climate change; there will be mass migrations; there will be environmental destruction almost beyond imagining; and there will be increased inequality from all of those causes. Meeting the disruption that is already upon us will require kinds of planning and international arrangements that are foreign to our habits as the last superpower. Individuals, however powerful, however capricious, however destructive, in this context are never more than paltry symptoms. Paltry — that is to say, meager, sorry, anything but great.

House Panel Votes to Hold Top U.S. Officials in Contempt

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee voted Wednesday to hold two top Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for failing to bncomply with subpoenas for documents related to a decision adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The Democratic-controlled House Oversight Committee voted 24-15 to advance contempt measures against Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who has said he supports an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, was the sole Republican to join with Democrats.

The vote sends the contempt measures to the full House, although congressional leaders could go directly to court to try to force compliance with the subpoenas under a resolution approved earlier this week.

The committee’s action marks an escalation of Democratic efforts to use their House majority to aggressively investigate the inner workings of the Trump administration.

The vote came as the White House asserted executive privilege on the matter Wednesday. The Justice Department said officials had “engaged in good-faith efforts” to satisfy the committee’s oversight needs and labeled the contempt vote “unnecessary and premature.”

It was not clear what would happen next. A resolution approved by the House on Tuesday empowers committee chairs to sue top Trump administration officials to force compliance with congressional subpoenas without a vote of the full House, as long as they have approval from a bipartisan group of House leaders.

Action to hold Barr and Ross in contempt on the census issue would be a political blow but would not necessarily result in real punishment since the men are unlikely to go to jail or be arrested.

Democrats fear the citizenship question will reduce census participation in immigrant-heavy communities and result in a severe undercount of minority voters. They say they want specific documents to determine why Ross added the question to the 2020 census and contend the administration has declined to provide the documents despite repeated requests.

The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said he was saddened by the vote, but called it an important step to assert Congress’ constitutional authority to serve as a check on executive power.

“The census is something that is so very, very important,” Cummings told reporters after the vote. “It goes to the bedrock of our very society and our democracy. We need to make sure the census is counted and counted accurately.”

A spokeswoman for Barr said the committee’s vote defied logic and undermined Congress’ credibility with the American people.

“Despite the committee’s political games, the department will remain focused on its critical work safeguarding the American people and upholding the rule of law,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said.

Ross said in a statement that the committee’s vote “demonstrated its scorn for the Constitution.” He accused Democrats of “continually refusing to engage in the constitutionally mandated accommodation process.”

The administration has turned over more than 17,000 of pages of documents and Ross testified for nearly seven hours in March. The Justice Department said two senior officials were interviewed by committee staff and said officials were working to produce tens of thousands of additional pages of relevant documentgft-yts.

Cummings disputed that account and said most of the documents turned over to the committee had already been made public.

“We must protect the integrity of the census and we must stand up for Congress’ authority under the Constitution to conduct meaningful oversight,” Cummings said before Wednesday’s vote.

The administration’s refusal to turn over requested documents “does not appear to be an effort to engage in good-faith negotiations or accommodations,” he said. “Instead, it appears to be another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress’ constitutionally mandated responsibilities.”

Trump has pledged to “fight all the subpoenas” issued by Congress and says he won’t work on legislative priorities, such as infrastructure, until Congress halts investigations of his administration.

Ross told the committee the March 2018 decision to add the question was based on a Justice Department request to help it enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Cummings disputed that, citing documents unearthed last week suggesting that the real reason the administration sought to add the citizenship question was to help officials gerrymander legislative districts in overtly partisan and racist ways.

Computer files from North Carolina redistricting expert Tom Hofeller include detailed calculations that lay out gains Republicans would see in Texas by basing legislative districts on the number of voting-age citizens rather than the total population.

Hofeller, a Republican operative who died last year, said in the documents that GOP gains would be possible only if the census asked every household about its members’ immigration status for the first time since 1950.

The Supreme Court is considering the citizenship question. A ruling is expected by the end of the month.

“I think it’s totally ridiculous that we would have a census without asking” about citizenship, Trump said Wednesday, “but the Supreme Court is going to be ruling on it soon. I think when the census goes out … you have the right to ask whether or not somebody is a citizen of the United States.”

Some of the documents the committee is seeking are protected by attorney-client privilege and other confidential processes, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said. The president has made a “protective assertion” of executive privilege so the administration can fully review all the documents, he added.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said the administration has thwarted congressional efforts to obtain key documents and exercise legitimate oversight. “All we get from the administration is a middle finger” of defiance, Raskin said. “And that’s not appropriate for the power of Congress.”

___

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

Hope Hicks Agrees to Judiciary Interview

WASHINGTON — Former White House communications director Hope Hicks has agreed to a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee, the panel announced Wednesday, a breakthrough for Democrats who have been frustrated by President Donald Trump’s broad stonewalling of their investigations.

The Judiciary panel subpoenaed Hicks, a close and trusted Trump aide who worked for the presidential campaign and in the White House, last month as part of its investigation into special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and obstruction of justice. Her June 19 interview will mark the first time a former Trump aide has testified before the panel as part of its probe.

Hicks was a key witness for Mueller, delivering important information to the special counsel’s office about multiple episodes involving the president. That includes the president’s role in the drafting of a misleading and incomplete statement about a 2016 Trump Tower meeting at which Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Hicks and another former White House aide, Annie Donaldson, both defied subpoenas last week to provide documents to the committee after the White House directed them not to cooperate. That came after former White House counsel Don McGahn also defied subpoenas for documents and testimony at the direction of the White House. McGahn was mentioned frequently in Mueller’s report, in addition to Donaldson, who was his aide.

It is unclear whether Hicks will decline to answer some questions related to her time in the White House. She has so far declined to release any documents related to that period after the White House said she had no legal right to provide them. But she has turned over documents related to her time on the Trump campaign.

While the interview will be behind closed doors, the committee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, said the interview transcript will be released to the public.

“It is important to hear from Ms. Hicks, who was a key witness for the special counsel,” Nadler said. “Ms. Hicks understands that the committee will be free to pose questions as it sees fit.”

Democrats hope that Hicks’ interview will be the first of many related to Mueller’s report. They are expected to go to court soon to enforce a subpoena against McGahn, and negotiations are ongoing for Mueller’s own testimony. Mueller has made it clear that he doesn’t want to testify and will not go beyond the substance of the report in any questioning, but Democrats want to talk to him anyway.

Nadler said Tuesday that he also hopes to call in Jody Hunt, who served as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, and former White House aide Rick Dearborn.

Absent key witnesses, Democrats have so far held hearings with issue experts to review Mueller’s report, which examined Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump obstructed justice as he tried to undermine the probe.

On Wednesday, the House intelligence panel heard from former FBI officials who told lawmakers that Russian meddling in the 2016 election bore some of the textbook tricks of the trade of Kremlin spycraft, including the volume and breadth of contacts with Trump associates.

After that hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., threatened to subpoena FBI Director Christopher Wray for information related to the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into the Russian interference.

Schiff said he has unsuccessfully sought more information about that investigation and any links to Trump’s campaign, including whether that probe is still active. The investigation was first disclosed by then-FBI Director James Comey at a committee hearing in March 2017, and Schiff said he has received few answers about it since Comey was fired by Trump two months later.

Schiff wants to know whether the FBI is still conducting any related counterintelligence investigations. Such inquiries can take years and extend far beyond a criminal probe.

“We are determined to get answers, and we are running out of patience,” Schiff said. “If necessary, we’ll subpoena the director and require him to come in and provide those answers under oath.”

The two witnesses at the hearing, Robert Anderson and Stephanie Douglas, highlighted aspects of the Mueller report they said showed Russian efforts to screen and test Trump campaign associates, to establish backchannels of communications and to spread their contacts around in hopes of maximizing their chances of getting what they wanted.

Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, but he did detail a series of interactions and outreach that has alarmed Democrats and accelerated calls from some in the party for impeachment proceedings and renewed investigations.

Also Wednesday, Trump Jr. spoke with the Senate Intelligence Committee for about three hours to clarify an interview with the committee’s staff in 2017. Senators wanted to talk to him again about the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer and a Trump real estate project in Moscow.

The president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, told a House committee in February that he had briefed Trump Jr. approximately 10 times about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow before the 2016 election. But Trump Jr. had told Congress he was only “peripherally aware” of the real estate proposal.

As he left the interview, Trump Jr. said he was happy to clarify his answers, but “I don’t think I changed any of what I said because there was nothing to change.”

___

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Laurie Kellman in Washington contributed to this report.

Bernie Sanders Makes Impassioned Case for Democratic Socialism

In a speech at George Washington University on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders laid out his vision of a democratic socialist society and made the case for why an ambitious agenda centered on economic rights for all is the only way to confront America’s deep inequities and defeat far-right authoritarianism.

“We must recognize that in the 21st century, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, economic rights are human rights,” said Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. “And that is what I mean by democratic socialism.”

Decrying an economic system that has left millions of families one accident or sickness away from complete “devastation” while billionaires thrive, Sanders said the Democratic Party must “take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion” by guaranteeing healthcare, education, housing, and a clean environment to all as a right.

In 1944, FDR proposed an economic bill of rights but died a year later and was never able to fulfill that vision. Our job, 75 years later, is to complete what Roosevelt started.

That is why today, I am proposing a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. #DemocraticSocialism. pic.twitter.com/VvEUjIyoNk

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 12, 2019

Sanders acknowledged that he and other progressives fighting for a bold transformation of American society will face relentless attacks from the oligarchs and corporate forces invested in upholding the status quo, from Wall Street to the military-industrial complex to the pharmaceutical industry.

On this point, Sanders quoted a famous line from Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred.”

“I must say,” the Vermont senator added, “it does sound a little contemporary, doesn’t it?”

In speech on democratic socialism, Sen. Bernie Sanders quotes FDR: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred.” https://t.co/NkJuIoh4fP pic.twitter.com/RLH8LTrkKJ

— ABC News (@ABC) June 12, 2019

Sanders argued that the corporate forces standing in the way of necessary economic, political, and environmental change can only be overcome by a grassroots progressive movement committed to creating a just society.

The United States, Sanders said, must reject the “corporatist economics” and xenophobia of President Donald Trump and other far-right leaders and instead choose a “path of compassion, justice, and love.”

Watch Sanders’s speech, entitled “How Democratic Socialism Is the Only Way to Defeat Oligarchy and Authoritarianism”:

Sanders’s unwavering embrace of the “democratic socialist” label sets him apart from other 2020 presidential contenders, many of whom proudly tout their capitalist credentials and openly scoff at the Vermont senator for embracing an alternative economic vision.

During his State of the Union address in February, President Donald Trump took a shot at socialism and declared, “America will never be a socialist country.”

Sanders was one of the few lawmakers who remained seated as Republicans, and many Democrats, responded to the president’s line with a standing ovation.

“While President Trump and his fellow oligarchs attack us for our support of democratic socialism, they don’t really oppose all forms of socialism,” Sanders said. “They may hate democratic socialism because it benefits working people, but they absolutely love corporate socialism that enriches Trump and other billionaires.”

In an interview with The Nation ahead of his speech, Sanders detailed what he means by economic rights:

When we talk about that, we’re talking about the right to a decent job, a job that pays you at least a living wage. We’re talking about the right to quality healthcare for every man, woman, and child. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege. We’re talking about affordable housing…

We’re talking about education as a human right. That means quality pre-K and childcare. It means free public colleges and universities. It means doing away with much of the student debt that graduates or those who left school are now forced to assume.

We are talking about a decent retirement for our parents. Right now in America, you’ve got 20 percent of seniors trying to live on incomes of $13,500 a year, which is insane. And you’ve got millions and millions of seniors who can’t afford the prescription drugs that they need.

“And last, but certainly not least,” Sanders added, “we’re talking about the right to a clean environment… [All] over this country, you’ve got people who are turning on their water faucets today and the water that’s coming out is not drinkable. It’s toxic.”

Mauled by American Meritocracy

The news that Amy Chua, the semi-notorious author of the dual memoir and parenting self-help book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” secured her daughter a Supreme Court clerkship under the tutelage of Justice Brett Kavanaugh is many things, but it is not surprising. America’s meritocratic rulers have grown increasingly brazen in recent years, and using your celebrity to ensure your overachieving offspring ultimately enjoys a lucrative gig in the private sector is less objectionable than, say, the president dragging his progeny along on state visits to pimp their chintzy resorts and bad fashion brands.

Outrage over Chua’s shameless public sycophancy does, however, indicate just how deeply the myth of meritocracy remains ingrained in the ostensible American left. Yes, I am quite sure that there is a brilliant legal mind toiling away at a second-tier regional law school and burying herself beneath a mountain of student debt who is smarter, more perspicacious and more deserving. But isn’t this really just the lean-in fallacy popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, another psychotic celebrity of the ruling class?

The Supreme Court may be more clubby than ever before—two of our current justices went to the same private high school, at the same time—yet it has always been a profoundly anti-democratic artifact of our profoundly anti-democratic American system of government. Expanded individual access to these archaic institutions of inequality doesn’t solve a more fundamental problem: that they exist in the first place.

 At least Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld will have a job of some sort. It may consist of helping the court’s reactionary majority find ways to declare that hydrocarbons enjoy First Amendment protections and that indentured servitude is permissible and should be governed entirely through private arbitration, but it will surely involve more effort than the Trump clan’s various fake appointments and occupations or Chelsea Clinton getting $600,000 from NBC to interview the Geico Gecko or any number of less prominent scions of the rich and powerful who stumble into the best colleges and most coveted careers.

One of liberalism’s greatest weaknesses is its conviction that hypocrisy is the most devastating charge that can be leveled against you in public life. Ironically, the accusation is often misapplied. The Chua-Rubenfelds are not, after all, hypocrites; Amy Chua and her husband have been entirely up front about the whole scam. Prostrating oneself at the altar of power may be shameful and even repulsive, but it is perversely honest. You cannot call Chua a hypocrite for practicing what she’s preached for years.

As is so frequently the case, the question of who runs our most elite institutions distracts from the structural challenges posed by the institutions themselves. Getting more women seated on the Supreme Court is great—until it turns out they’re the children of reactionary aristocrats who are going to work for an archconservative. Appointing another Ruth Bader Ginsburg sounds terrific—until it turns out she’s, well, another Ruth Bader Ginsburg, doomed to disappoint and capable of genuine evil.

And here we arrive at liberalism’s other great weakness, its fixation on access—to health care, to education, to economic mobility. In focusing so monomaniacally on the occupants of the Supreme Court, the Senate, the White House or the board of Facebook, it has forgotten what it means to wield political power.

Access after all is just a narrow door; only a few will enter, most of whom already had a key to begin with.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Is the Focus of Latest Doctored Video

NEW YORK — Three weeks after Facebook refused to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words, Mark Zuckerberg is getting a taste of his own medicine: fake footage showing him gloating over his one-man domination of the world.

It’s the latest flap over deviously altered “deepfake” videos as Facebook and other social media services struggle to stop the spread of misinformation and “fake news” while also respecting free speech and fending off allegations of censorship.

The somewhat crude video of the Facebook CEO, circulating on Facebook-owned Instagram over the past few days, combines news footage of Zuckerberg with phony audio.

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Facebook Co-Founder Calls for Social Media Giant to Be Broken Up



by

















Worshipping the Electronic Image



by Chris Hedges

“Imagine this for a second, one man with total control over billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” Zuckerberg seemingly intones in a voice that does not sound very much like Zuckerberg’s. “I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data controls the future.” (Spectre is the evil organization in the James Bond movies.)

The video was created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe with help from artificial intelligence companies and displayed over the past week or so at an art show in Britain on the influence of technology. Posters also put the footage on Instagram and Vimeo.

Posters said he targeted Zuckerberg as “one person governing control of 2 billion people’s personal private data. He’s at the center of the debate that asks questions whether that is a safe place for our data to be.”

When the Pelosi video turned up on Facebook, the social network said it did not violate any of its policies. Pelosi criticized Facebook at the time for leaving the video up. Zuckerberg tried to reach out to her to explain the situation, but she did not take his call, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it and spoke on condition of anonymity. Facebook and Pelosi’s office declined to comment Wednesday.

Facebook said the Zuckerberg video likewise doesn’t violate its Instagram policies and will be left up.

“We will treat this content the same way we treat all misinformation on Instagram,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook does not prohibit false information from being shared on Instagram or its main Facebook service. If third-party fact checkers flag an item on the main service as false, the company “downranks” it to make it more difficult to find. Facebook has been testing a way to extend that approach to Instagram.

The Zuckerberg video uses a form of artificial intelligence in which a computer is fed image and audio files of a person to learn how to mimic his or her facial expressions. An actor supplies the voice, and the computer then syncs up the image with the sound.

Last year, in another case of altered footage, the White House tweeted what an expert determined was a speeded-up video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta that made him look more aggressive than he actually was when an intern tried to take his microphone away as he was asking President Donald Trump a question.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said that even though the Zuckerberg video is an art piece and not actual disinformation meant to deceive, it highlights the challenges of policing content on Facebook and Instagram.

“It just shows that it is still an uphill battle for the company as they try to rectify these issues that continue to plague the platform,” he said.

72 Sent to Hospitals in Hong Kong Protests

HONG KONG — Latest on the protests in Hong Kong over proposed extradition legislation (all times local):

3:30 a.m.

U.S. President Donald Trump is impressed with the number of protesters who took to the streets of Hong Kong, calling it as big a demonstration as he has ever seen but he’s avoiding picking a side.

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Massive Extradition Protest Fills Hong Kong Streets



by

The protesters are against a proposal allowing extradition to the Chinese mainland.

Trump says he understands the reason for the demonstration, adding “I hope it all works out for China and for Hong Kong.”

The issue has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the semiautonomous territory.

Trump gave his take Wednesday during a meeting at the White House with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

___

2:10 a.m.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam blamed protesters for a politically motivated riot marked by violence and police force that followed a demonstration over a proposal allowing extradition to the Chinese mainland.

Lam noted that some young people in the crowd had expressed their views peacefully, but she condemned protesters who resorted to “dangerous and life-threatening acts.”

Lam’s comments in a statement Thursday suggested the peaceful protests that flowed through the city’s streets on Sunday had devolved into a “blatant, organized riot.”

Opponents of the extradition proposal say it could lead to an erosion of civil liberties in the former British colony.

The clash between protesters and police on Wednesday marked a violent new phase in the protest movement sweeping the semiautonomous Chinese territory.

Police fired beanbag rounds and rubber bullets while some protesters threw rocks and metal barricades. At least 72 people were taken to hospitals.

___

1 a.m.

At least 72 people were taken to hospitals in Hong Kong after massive protests over a proposal allowing extradition to the Chinese mainland escalated with violence and police force.

The Hong Kong Hospital Authority said Wednesday that two of the people were in serious condition.

Those injured include 50 males and 22 females.

The authority said 10 remained in treatment, 19 were in stable condition, and 41 have been released.

Citing the public demonstrations and traffic conditions, the seven hospitals urged people to avoid clogging up emergency and ambulance services.

The clash between protesters and police marked a violent new phase in the protest movement sweeping the semiautonomous Chinese territory.

Police fired beanbag rounds and rubber bullets. and protesters threw rocks and metal barricades.

___

11:50 p.m.

Amnesty International has condemned what it called excessive force by Hong Kong police against largely peaceful protesters demonstrating against a proposed extradition bill, saying it violates international law and is likely to lead to worsening violence.

Amnesty International Hong Kong director Man-Kei Tam said tear gas and rubber bullets should never be used to disperse peaceful protesters because they are “notoriously inaccurate and indiscriminate, and can result in serious injury and even death.”

The group warned that the police action was “fueling tensions and is likely to contribute to worsening violence, rather than end it.”

A day of sit-ins and clashes between protesters and police on Wednesday marked a major escalation in the semi-autonomous city’s biggest political crisis in years, fueled by concerns over growing Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties.

___

8:30 p.m.

The German government says it is examining whether its existing extradition agreement with Hong Kong would be affected if a hotly contested extradition bill is approved in the territory.

The proposed bill would allow suspects in Hong Kong to be sent for trial in mainland China. It has prompted large demonstrations amid concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the semi-autonomous territory.

German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said Wednesday that Berlin and its European Union partners have expressed their concern to Hong Kong authorities. She said “we are also examining whether the existing bilateral extradition agreement between Germany and Hong Kong could continue to be implemented in its current form if the planned extradition bill is approved.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said it was a good sign that the majority of protesters have been peaceful “and we appeal to all concerned to ensure that things remain just as peaceful in Hong Kong.”

___

8:15 p.m.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has spoken tearfully about the sacrifices she has made for the city in response to questions about whether she is “selling out” the territory by trying to push through a controversial extradition bill.

But in an interview with news channel TVB on Wednesday, Lam dodged questions about whether she would withdraw the bill in the face of chaotic and sometimes violent demonstrations against it by tens of thousands of angry residents.

Critics say the bill, which would allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China, could lead to an erosion of civil liberties in the semi-autonomous territory.

“It’s time to let lawmakers with different opinions express their views under the legislative process,” Lam said. “On whether to retract or push it through … our consideration is this. There is no doubt this issue is controversial. Explanation and dialogue are useful but perhaps that has not entirely dispelled worries.”

Speaking about her commitment to her job, her voice cracked as she said: “They said I’m selling out Hong Kong. How could I do that? I grew up here with everyone else in the city.”

Lam added that she has never “felt guilty” over the issue and insisted she believed she was doing the right thing. She said she felt “worried and sad” about young protesters — many of them teenagers — on the streets, but said that as a parent to two sons, she believed it would be wrong to cave into young people’s “willful behavior.”

___

8 p.m.

Hong Kong’s legal community is urging the city’s leader to withdraw a controversial bill that would allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China.

The Hong Kong Bar Association also said Wednesday it wants to know what the government’s view is on principles underpinning the “surrender of fugitives” to the mainland following a New Zealand court case that stopped a man accused of killing a woman in Shanghai from being sent to China.

New Zealand doesn’t have a formal extradition agreement with China and the case is considered an important precedent for Hong Kong, with which it shares a common law system from its roots as a British colony.

The association urged the government to “withdraw the bill for a full and proper consultation.”

In a letter addressed to Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, Chairman Philip Dykes said the group wants to know whether the government took into account the human rights situation in mainland China before seeking assurances from Beijing on the matter.

A day of sit-ins and clashes between protesters and police on Wednesday marked a major escalation in the semi-autonomous city’s biggest political crisis in years.

___

7:40 p.m.

Britain’s foreign secretary has appealed for calm in Hong Kong and urged authorities there to listen to the concerns of protesters.

Jeremy Hunt says large protests Wednesday and in recent days show “a clear sign of significant public concern” about a contentious extradition bill, which has become a lightning rod for worries about the erosion of civil liberties in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.

Hunt urged the Hong Kong government “to pause and reflect on these controversial measures.”

He says upholding the principle of “one country, two systems,” as set out in the legally binding Sino-British Joint Declaration under which Britain returned Hong Kong to China, “is vital to Hong Kong’s future success.”

___

7:30 p.m.

The head of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council has announced that a meeting delayed by protests against proposed extradition legislation has been postponed until further notice.

Thousands of protesters blocked entry to Hong Kong’s government headquarters on Wednesday, delaying a hearing on a proposed extradition bill that has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the territory.

A notice posted on the Hong Kong government’s website Wednesday evening said an announcement would be made about when the session would be convened “once the president determines the time of the meeting.”

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Tourism Board said it has canceled a Dragon Boat Carnival planned for the nearby Central Harbourfront on Friday through Sunday.

It said the decision was made after “careful consideration” of the situation in the area.

___

6:20 p.m.

China has repeated its support for Hong Kong’s proposed extradition legislation, which has caused massive protests in the semiautonomous territory.

Appearing to reference the unrest, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang says “any act that undermines Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability is opposed by mainstream public opinion in Hong Kong.”

He also denied at his regular briefing Wednesday that China has been interfering in the city’s affairs in a way that violates agreements made when Hong Kong was handed back to China from British control.

He said: “Hong Kong people’s rights and freedoms have been fully guaranteed in accordance with law.”

The protests have forced the delay of legislative debate over the bill, which would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be sent for trial in mainland China.

___

5:50 p.m.

Hong Kong’s police commissioner says the scene around the city’s government headquarters was “chaotic” and is appealing for protesters to leave the area.

Commissioner Stephen Lo Wai-chung told reporters Wednesday that officers used batons, pepper spray, beanbag rounds, rubber bullets, water hoses and tear gas against the demonstrators.

He said police took action after a large group of masked protesters charged onto the roads surrounding the complex in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district and started throwing objects including metal barriers at officers. He called the situation a riot.

Lo said: “This is very dangerous action that could kill someone.”

He said several people including some officers had been injured.

Thousands of protesters have descended on the area to try to prevent Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed government from pushing through deeply unpopular extradition bill.

___

5 p.m.

Hong Kong police have been searching some protesters and their bags as the leave the scene of massive protests against widely unpopular extradition legislation.

Scores of protesters were leaving the area Wednesday, some with their hands held high, after police shot tear gas around the besieged city government headquarters near the waterfront.

Protesters threw rocks, bottles, metal barricades and other projectiles at police.

Livestreamed reports from local television stations showed protesters who remained at the scene putting plastic wrap around their arms, wetting face masks and tightening goggles they were using to protect themselves from tear gas and pepper spray.

The protesters are opposed to a bill that has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the semiautonomous territory.

___

4:30 p.m.

Police equipped with riot shields have pushed back against protesters attempting to storm past barricades to get into Hong Kong’s government headquarters.

Protesters scattered from some areas, using umbrellas to fend off pepper spray, tear gas and compressed water deployed by police trying to protect the besieged government building.

Livestreamed reports from local television stations showed demonstrators overturning metal canopies and throwing objects as police cleared some streets that had been jammed with thousands of people hours before.

Some police carried compressed air-powered rifles that appeared to be equipped to fire non-lethal projectiles. It was unclear if they were shooting them.

___

3:50 p.m.

Hong Kong police have used tear gas, pepper spray and high-pressure water hoses against protesters who have laid siege to government buildings to oppose a contentious extradition bill.

Thousands of protesters blocked entry to Hong Kong’s government headquarters Wednesday, delaying a legislative session on a proposed extradition bill that has become a lightning rod for concerns over greater Chinese control and erosion of civil liberties in the territory.

The protesters overflowed onto a major downtown road as they overturned barriers and tussled with police outside the building that also houses the chambers where the legislature was to discuss the bill, which would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be sent for trial in mainland China.

A statement from a Hong Kong administrator earlier said, “I would also like to ask the people in this gathering to stay calm and leave the scene as soon as possible and not to commit any crime.”

Cheung gave no indication of when the delayed legislative debate would begin.

___

3:30 p.m.

Hong Kong officials are calling on protesters to leave the area where huge crowds are blocking streets to government headquarters and have delayed debate over a highly contentious extradition bill.

The second reading of the bill that would allow suspects to face trials in mainland China was due Wednesday. Protesters and police clashed intermittently, with protesters hurling traffic cones and other objects and police responding with pepper spray.

In a statement read to reporters, Chief Secretary for Administration Mathew Cheung said, “The Hong Kong government calls on people who are blocking roads to … go back to the pavement as soon as possible.”

He added, “I would also like to ask the people in this gathering to stay calm and leave the scene as soon as possible and not to commit any crime.”

Cheung gave no indication of when the legislative debate would begin.

___

2 p.m.

Dozens of people are protesting outside the Hong Kong Consulate in Taiwan to denounce proposed amendments to Hong Kong’s extradition laws.

Hong Kong students sitting outside the consulate in Taipei held posters reading “No extradition to China” and chanting “Hong Kong government, Shame on you.”

Ho Wing Tung, a Hong Kong student in Taiwan, said the rule of law won’t exist if the legislation passes and she is afraid the “one country, two systems” principle would become a joke.

Dissident Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee, who left Hong Kong for Taiwan over extradition fears, said the extradition law amendments go against human rights.

In Hong Kong, thousands of protesters were blocking entry to Hong Kong’s government headquarters. A legislative session to debate the bill has been delayed.

___

11 a.m.

The secretariat of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council says it has delayed the start of a legislative session on a contentious extradition bill as protesters massed outside to block entry to the chamber and government headquarters.

A statement from the government’s press service said the session scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Wednesday would be “changed to a later time to be determined” by the secretariat. Council members would be notified of the time of the meeting later, the statement said.

An overwhelmingly young crowd of demonstrators filled roads in the Wan Chai district to block access to the government offices. Many took the day off from work and classes to press their case that the amendments to the extradition bill would erode the semi-autonomous Chinese territory’s civil liberties.

___

10:30 a.m.

Hundreds of protesters have blocked access to Hong Kong’s legislature and government headquarters in a bid to block debate on a highly controversial extradition bill that would allow accused people to be sent to China for trial.

The overwhelmingly young crowd of demonstrators filled roads in the Wan Chai district. Many had taken the day off from work and classes Wednesday to press their case that the amendments to the extradition bill would erode the semi-autonomous Chinese territory’s civil liberties.

Under its “one country, two systems” framework, Hong Kong was guaranteed its own social, legal and political systems for 50 years following its handover from British rule in 1997. However, China’s ruling Communist Party has been seen as increasingly reneging on that agreement by forcing through unpopular legal changes.

___

8:50 a.m.

Hundreds of protesters have surrounded government headquarters in Hong Kong as the territory’s legislature prepare to open discussion on a highly controversial extradition law that would allow residents accused of wrongdoing to be sent to China for trial.

The overwhelmingly young crowd of demonstrators overturned barriers and tussled with police Wednesday morning as they sought to enter government headquarters and offices of the Legislative Council.

Under its “one country, two systems” framework, Hong Kong was guaranteed the right to retain its own social, legal and political systems for 50 years following its handover from British rule in 1997. However, China’s ruling Communist Party has been seen as increasingly reneging on that agreement by forcing through unpopular legal changes.

A vote on the amended laws is scheduled for June 20.

White House Asserts Executive Privilege in Census Fight

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over documents that were subpoenaed by Congress related to the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The claim comes as the House Oversight Committee considers whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to turn over the subpoenaed documents.

In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the Justice Department asserted that the Trump administration has “engaged in good-faith efforts” to satisfy the committee’s oversight needs and said the planned contempt vote was premature.

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Blacks, Latinos at Risk of Undercount in 2020 Census



by

Democrats fear the question will reduce census participation in immigrant-heavy communities. They say they want specific documents to determine why Ross added the citizenship question to the 2020 census and contend the Trump administration has declined to provide them despite repeated requests.

The administration has turned over more than 17,000 of pages of documents and Ross testified for nearly seven hours . The Justice Department has said two senior officials also sat for interviews with committee staff members and it was working to produce tens of thousands of additional pages of relevant documents.

Cummings disputed the Justice Department’s account and said most of the documents turned over to the committee had already been made public.

The administration’s refusal to turn over requested documents “does not appear to be an effort to engage in good faith efforts to comply” with congressional oversight, Cummings said. “Instead it appears to be part of a policy of defiance of congressional authority.”

Trump has vowed to “fight all the subpoenas” issued by Congress and has vowed to refuse to work on legislative priorities, such as infrastructure, until Congress halts investigations of his administration.

“The census is critical to our democracy and it is critical to every single one of our constituents,” Cummings said.

Cummings postponed a planned vote Wednesday morning to allow lawmakers time to read the Justice Department letters.

Ross told the committee the decision in March 2018 to add the question was based on a Justice Department request to help it enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Cummings disputed that, citing documents unearthed last week suggesting that the real reason the administration sought to add the citizenship question was to help officials gerrymander legislative districts in overtly partisan and racist ways.

The Supreme Court is considering the citizenship question in a ruling expected by the end of the month.

Some of the documents the committee is seeking are protected by attorney-client privileges and other confidential processes, Boyd said, adding that the president has made a “protective assertion” of executive privilege so the administration can fully review all of the documents.

“The president, the Department of Justice, has every right to do that,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on MSNBC. “They’re asking for documents that are privileged and I would hope that they can continue to negotiate and speak about what is appropriate and what is not, but the world is watching. This country sees that they’d rather continue to investigate than legislate.”

Democrats have accused the Trump administration of failing to comply with subpoenas in an effort to stonewall Congress’ oversight power.

The House Judiciary Committee voted last month to hold Barr in contempt of Congress after the department didn’t immediately comply with a subpoena to turn over an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia probe and underlying investigative documents.

Republicans have criticized such hearings as a waste of time and have called for Democrats to move on.

Microsoft and the Pentagon Are Quietly Hijacking U.S. Elections

Good news, folks! We have found the answer to the American election system!

Why do we need an answer? Well, our election system is … how do you say … a festering rancid corrupt needlessly complex rigged rotten infected putrid pus-covered diseased dog pile of stinking, dying cockroach-filled rat shit smelling like Mitch McConnell under a vat of pig farts. And that’s a quote from The Lancet medical journal (I think).

But have no fear: The most trustworthy of corporations recently announced it is going to selflessly and patriotically secure our elections. It’s a small company run by vegans and powered by love. It goes by the name “Microsoft.” (You’re forgiven for never having heard of it.)

The recent headlines were grandiose and thrilling:

“Microsoft offers software tools to secure elections.”

“Microsoft aims to modernize and secure voting with ElectionGuard.”

Could anything be safer than software christened “ElectionGuard”?! It has “guard” right there in the name. It’s as strong and trustworthy as the little-known Crotch Guard—an actual oil meant to be sprayed on one’s junk. I’m unclear as to why one sprays it on one’s junk, but perhaps it’s to secure your erections? (Because they’ve been micro-soft?)

Anyway, Microsoft is foisting its ElectionGuard software on us, but worry not that we Americans will be tied down by laborious public debate as to the effectiveness, efficiency and accountability of said software. According to MintPress, “The election technology is already set to be adopted by half of voting machine manufacturers and some state governments for the 2020 general election.” Hardly any public discussion will plague our media or tax our community discourse.

Microsoft describes ElectionGuard as “a free open-source software development kit” that “will make voting secure, more accessible, and more efficient anywhere it’s used.” Wow, those are genuinely great words to hear—free and open source. The only words I like more than “open source” are “open bar,” but my dream of an open bar at every polling location remains elusive.

MintPress News’ Whitney Webb recently reported on ElectionGuard (and in fact much of the information in this column is coming from her impressive exposé). She spoke to journalist Yasha Levine, who said, “What open source does is give a veneer of openness that leads one to think that thousands of people have vetted the code and flagged any bugs. But, actually very few people have the time and ability to look at this code. So, this idea that open source code is more transparent isn’t really true.”

And as WikiLeaks proved when it revealed the CIA’s Vault 7, whenever the CIA discovers holes in important code, they don’t reveal it to the American people. They keep it to themselves to exploit secretly, which is what could be done with ElectionGuard, resulting in America’s continued descent into Banana Republic (in both senses of the phrase).

So while open source is better than not open source, it’s also not a silver bullet. It’s like saying that having 90 zombies chasing you is better than 100 zombies chasing you. Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to sit down and have a cold beer.

The press releases on ElectionGuard also touted a dizzying array of election security measures. I’ve reprinted the list of security measures, beginning with the most powerful measure and ending with the least powerful.

Homomorphic encryption
Waterproof keyboards

I imagine some of you are a bit overwhelmed by such an extensive and confusing list. Feel free to take a mental breather now and rejoin this column in a few minutes. Also, I made up number two.

I do acknowledge that “homomorphic encryption” sounds pretty freaking awesome. “Homomorphic” makes you think there might be a gay member of the X-Men. But in fact, it’s a malleable form of encryption, which apparently is not the most secure nor most sought-after form of encryption according to nerds who study the Crypto-verse (a term I conjured up just now to sound smarter). I won’t get into the details, but the experts seem to agree homomorphic encryption will not turn our elections into an impenetrable wall of democracy, renowned the world over.

On top of that, as Webb stated: “… there is an added layer of concern given Microsoft’s past, particularly their history of working with U.S. government agencies to bypass encryption.”

So, the company setting up the encryption for our elections is a company with a resumé of helping the U.S. government break encryption. This is like setting up a system to test for steroids in baseball and asking Sammy Sosa to help you do it.

Yet, the Microsoft takeover gets even worse because it’s not only Microsoft. They’re doing it in partnership with a cyber security firm called Galois. Whitney Webb again:

“Though it describes itself as “a privately held U.S.-owned and-operated company,” public records indicate that Galois’ only investors are DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Office of Naval Research, both of which are divisions of the Department of Defense.”

Did you catch that? Galois claims to be a private company, but its only investor is the fucking Pentagon. To rephrase something you already understood in another way so that you get mildly annoyed with me: Microsoft and our war machine are taking over the American election system.

Honestly, who would put election software in the hands of DARPA? DARPA’s the department that tries to put microchips in soldiers’ brains to create Terminators or Robocops or other dystopian hounds of hell. If your first response upon hearing about an invention is, “That’s fucking awful!”—DARPA came up with that.

I wouldn’t even let someone from DARPA look after my cat for the weekend. We all know I’d come home, the cat would have half a head and a Game Boy duct-taped to its ass. “Fuck you, DARPA! I don’t care if the Mario Kart theme song plays when it shits. Get out of my apartment!”

Now, imagine that scenario but replace the cat with our entire election system.

MintPress further revealed Galois has a spin-off company called “Free & Fair” that creates technology for elections and worked with Microsoft to make ElectionGuard.

Unfortunately, Free & Fair is connected to every form of neocon think tank, government agency and large corporation. They’re especially in bed with the Department of Homeland Security.

So what’s wrong with that?, you might ask.

As Webb details, “before, during and after the 2016 election, the Department of Homeland Security was caught attempting to hack into state electoral systems in at least three states — Georgia, Indiana, and Idaho — with similar accusations also made by Kentucky and West Virginia. … DHS, which initially denied it, later responded that the attempted breach was ‘legitimate business.’ ”

Legitimate business? Anytime someone from DHS says they’re involved in legitimate business, immediately duck and put your head between your knees.

Plus the fact that Microsoft wants to introduce this software to us for free should set off an alarm bell the size of Lake Michigan. Microsoft doesn’t do anything for free. Microsoft execs don’t say hello to their grandmas for free. Microsoft is one of the most powerful companies in America because of its predatory practices. If the Mafia offered you something for free, would you just say “Thanks!” and wander off? Or would you start appreciating your final days with knees that bend?

In this world free does not mean no ulterior motive. One motive could be to control or rig our entire government. But who would want that? A tiny little country like America? Please. Our country is so inconsequential that we have a third-rate game show host as president.

MintPress may have found another ulterior motive. “Microsoft President Brad Smith announced that the company ‘is going to provide the U.S. military with access to the best technology … all the technology we create. Full stop.’ ” A month prior to that, “Microsoft secured a $480 million contract with the Pentagon to provide the military with its HoloLens technology.”

So right after getting hundreds of millions of dollars from our military, Microsoft partners with Pentagon front companies to develop free software to safeguard our elections. It seems clear the real goal is to hand over our elections systems to the military industrial complex—your friendly neighborhood death machine—and bury the reality of our votes under enough encryption and complex technology that no average citizen really knows what’s happening.

Then, if (read: when) an election is rigged with this technology, we won’t be able to prove it because we don’t have reliable exit polls anymore.

There’s essentially only one remaining exit poll company, Edison Research, and they say outright that they manipulate the exit polls to fit the machine results, which is the opposite of a legitimate exit poll. That’s the same as a math teacher saying, “I give the kids an algebra test, and when I’m comparing their answers to the correct answers, I adjust their answers to better fit the correct ones.” That sounds lovely, but it means you’re going to have idiots getting into MIT on fake math scores. If you do it with elections, you have idiots getting into Congress. Won’t that be a sad day … when Congress is filled with idiots.

Election forensics analyst Jonathan Simon said, “The great irony, and tragedy, here … is that we could easily go the opposite direction and quickly solve all the problems of election security if we got the computers out of the process and were willing to invest the modicum of effort needed for humans to count votes observably in public as they once did.”

Jonathan Simon, god bless him, has used 55 words to say 11: We could easily fix our fraudulent election system, but we won’t.

The answer is not to hand it over to Microsoft and the Pentagon and the ass clowns who make robotic death machines. The Pentagon can’t keep track of $21 TRILLION DOLLARS over the past 20 years—what makes us think they can keep track of hundreds of millions of votes?

The ruling elite have no interest in making sure our voices are heard. They want that as much as they want nunchucks to the balls. If they sought to have our voices heard, we would have paper ballots, ranked choice voting, real exit polls and a president who doesn’t look and act like an over-cooked ham-and-cheese sandwich.

It’s time to demand real elections.

—

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This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV show “ Redacted Tonight .”

The Real Face of Prostitution

“I honestly believe it stops rape,” Benjamin told me. “It allows men to let off steam and have our natural urges met.” Benjamin was talking about the benefits of prostitution. It is good for women, he argued, because rather than rape, men can have sex how and when they want by paying for it with a prostituted woman. For men, it ensures their needs are met. In Benjamin’s view, everyone is happy.

But his assertions are as far from the reality of the sex trade as possible. Men are not programmed to rape if they cannot get immediate access to sex, and there is no such thing as a “right” to sex. “When men claim that prostitution reduces rape,” sex trade survivor Fiona Broadfoot says, “What they really mean is that it is OK to rape prostituted women, which is how we experience sex with johns. Prostitution is rape.”

Over the past two decades, I have interviewed scores of men who pay for sex—in legal brothels and illegal massage parlors, and on the street. I have heard every justification from these men, including one about helping women feed their kids with the money exchanged for sex. Although prostitution—both buying and selling sex—is illegal across most of the U.S., very few sex buyers are ever arrested. Prostituted women, however, are heavily and unjustly criminalized, despite evidence that the vast majority are coerced and exploited into the sex trade.

Nevada is the one state in which prostitution—including pimping, brothel owning and sex buying—is legalized. It is allowed in only seven of its counties, but research into the Nevada sex trade shows that legalization has resulted in prostitution becoming normalized across the entire state. The majority of visitors to Las Vegas believe that prostitution is completely legal in the city. That allows men to easily justify paying for sex.

With debate currently raging in Nevada about whether or not to close its legal brothels, and pro-prostitution lobbyists in New York City now pushing for its sex trade to be decriminalized, it is imperative that the focus shifts from the women selling sex to the men who drive the demand.

That is why recently published research on men who pay for sex, by Demand Abolition (DA), a U.S. group that campaigns against sexual exploitation, is both timely and vital.

Its research shows that the majority of men in the U.S. choose not to pay for sex, but that the “creeping normalization” of the sex trade leads to a prevailing view that prostitution is a victimless crime. And in countries and states with legalized prostitution, rates of sex trafficking increase.

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The Underbelly of the Sex-Trade Industry



by Julie Bindel

The DA research is based on the behavior and attitudes of johns. More than 8,000 adult men across the U.S. were interviewed, and a number of sex-trade survivors were asked to give their views on the research and make recommendations for change. One survivor involved in the research is Marian Hatcher. Hatcher, a victim advocate in the anti-trafficking division of Chicago’s Cook County Sheriff’s Office, was one of the peer reviewers.

“The report benefits survivors by acknowledging [that] the unequal playing field needs to be leveled, holding buyers accountable,” Hatcher says. “It provides victims and exited abolitionist sex-trade survivors [with] hope, hope that they will live in a society that provides exit opportunities and educates would-be buyers of the harms. I would like to see the policy recommendations in the report applied to both the illegal and legal sex trade. You cannot adequately impact one without the other. Together they promote the commodification of human beings, promoting violence against women and girls.”

The DA interviews focused on “push factors” (why men pay for sex) and potential deterrents. The group considers the act of paying for sex harmful, both to the women who are exploited and to wider society, because a global culture of misogyny is on the side of the john. There are some universal similarities about men who pay for sex. Research I conducted with Melissa Farley, a clinical psychologist and coordinator of the California nongovernmental organization Prostitution, Research & Education, found that among U.K. johns, one key push factor was peer pressure from other men, within the culture of acceptance that surrounds prostitution.

The U.K. research concluded that even the lightest of deterrents, such as the threat of arrest, the risk of family members or employers being informed of johns’ actions, or details being added to a police database, can be effective. Aside from entrenched buyers, such deterrents would usually make men think twice about paying for sex.

The DA findings tell us that only about 6% of American men who pay for sex (outside the legal zones in Nevada) report having been arrested for it. When buyers perceive that risk, it could lead them to alter their activities. About one-quarter of buyers “strongly agree” that “the risk of arrest is so high I might stop.”

The DA research found that what the group referred to as “high-frequency” buyers account for a disproportionately large share of the illegal sex trade. Around one quarter of active johns report paying for sex weekly or monthly, and these transactions account for almost three-quarters of the market. These buyers are more likely to have started at a young age, with the help or encouragement of others in their social networks.

There is a lot of money involved in the sex trade, with much of it going to pimps, brothel owners and drug dealers. On average, American sex buyers spend more than $100 per transaction. Prostitution generates vast profits—estimated at $1 billion a year in the U.K. and $186 billion globally. It is capitalism at its most ruthless and predatory, with human beings as the products.

How is it, then, that so many men consider the pinnacle of women’s freedom as being penetrated by multiple male strangers? And why have so many leftist individuals and organizations, such as the International Labour Organization and Amnesty International,  adopted the pro-prostitution line?

These so-called human rights organizations take the “sex work is work” line, despite the adoption of the Nordic Model, or, as it is increasingly referred to, the Abolitionist Model, by Sweden, Norway, Finland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Israel and France. Under this approach, prostituted people are decriminalized and given assistance in exiting the sex trade, but the buyers are criminalized. Although there is significant and growing support for the Abolitionist Model, those who believe in the inalienable right of men to buy sex consider it an abomination. When the law was being debated in France in 2013, a group of high-profile French intellectuals signed a petition that stated: “Some of us have gone, go, or will go to prostitutes—and we are not even ashamed.” They added, “Everyone should be free to sell their charms, and even to love doing it.”

A recent op-ed in Teen Vogue by a South African doctor, titled “Why Sex Work Is Real Work,” made the claim that “[t]he clients who seek sex workers vary, and they’re not just men. The idea of purchasing intimacy and paying for the services can be affirming for many people who need human connection, friendship, and emotional support. Some people may have fantasies and kink preferences that they are able to fulfill with the services of a sex worker.” Aside from the disgrace of a publication aimed at girls and young women promoting commercial sexual exploitation as a viable career option, such propaganda perpetuates feelings of male sexual entitlement.

The continued existence of the sex trade relies on misogyny, class prejudice, racism, colonialism and imperialism. “If leftists can’t see how harmful the sex trade is to women,” says Bridget Perrier, a Native Canadian survivor, “you would think they would give a damn about the racism and colonialism it is built upon.”

Many of the 50 sex-trade survivors with whom I spent time while researching my book on the global sex trade, “The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth,” told me about the racism, bigotry and prejudice they faced as women of color. Indeed, many black sex-trade survivors link their prostitution experience to that of slavery. Vednita Carter, an African American sex-trade abolitionist, says, “The slave-trade era is where sex trafficking began for African American women. Even after slaves were free, black women and girls were still being bought and sold. Today, there are too many poor urban areas that middle-class men drive through for the sole purpose of finding a woman or girl of color to buy or use.”

In the U.S., prostituted women are disproportionately young African Americans and other women of color. One john I interviewed in a legal Nevada brothel told me that the main reason he paid for sex was so he could “try out different colors of chicks without dating them.”

“I’m not going to take a black or Latino to meet my folks,” he told me, “but they sure are hot to fuck.”

According to the DA research, buyers and non-buyers hold strikingly different views on masculinity and sex buying. Non-buyers are much more likely than buyers to say that purchasing someone for sex involves treating females as objects, and that those actions exploit others. Active buyers are very likely to say they are “just guys being guys” or “taking care of their needs.” But the research also found that many men who have bought sex in the past wish to stop. About one-third of active buyers interviewed said that they do not want to do it again.

Nevertheless, the strongest support for legalizing the U.S. sex trade, aside from the pimps and brothel owners, comes from buyers.

Many active buyers believe that the women “enjoy the act of prostitution” and “choose it as a profession.” During a recent trip to Amsterdam, I met a young man in the notorious window brothel area who told me he had first paid for sex when he was 12. “My father took me to a brothel, and said I would learn to be a man,” he told me. “It is legal here, so there is no problem.”

Prostitution is, in fact, fraught with danger. A review of homicides of women in street prostitution found that they are 60 to 100 times more likely to be murdered than other women. Johns and pimps are the main perpetrators of homicide and other violent crimes toward prostituted women—in 2017, between 57% and 100 percent of homicides of prostituted women in the U.S. were committed by sex buyers.

Research by Farley has found that men’s acceptance of prostitution helps to encourage and justify violence against women; DA research reached a similar conclusion. When men feel entitled to rent the inside of a woman’s body for one-sided sexual pleasure knowing that she is consenting because of the cash, it is no wonder that these men consider women to be subservient to them—an attitude that breeds contempt.

“Look, men pay for women because he can have whatever and whoever he wants. Lots of men go to prostitutes so they can do things to them that real women would not put up with,” one john told me. I have heard countless men describe the act of prostitution as masturbation without the effort.

The DA report concludes with recommendations that are endorsed by the sex-trade survivors who helped analyze the findings. One is to roll out public education messages that challenge the normalization of sex buying, and to focus on education and public health sectors to spread the word about the realities of the sex trade. Another is to implement mandatory minimum fines for convicted johns, which would go toward exit services for the women, education programs aimed at johns, and the policing of sex buyers.

The research could make a difference, by providing more evidence of the harms of prostitution, and by helping those struggling with the polarized debate on whether we are talking about “sex workers’ rights” and “women’s agency,” or the commercial sexual exploitation of vulnerable, prostituted people. What is needed, alongside such research, is for every one of us to imagine a world without prostitution, and to ask the question, “Why does it exist?” In a world where women and girls were liberated from male supremacy, in which we could live as equal human beings, prostitution would be starved of oxygen.