Chris Hedges's Blog, page 253

Border Wall to Go Up in National Monument, Wildlife Refuge

PHOENIX—The U.S. government plans on replacing barriers through 100 miles (161 kilometers) of the southern border in California and Arizona, including through a national monument and a wildlife refuge, according to documents and environmental advocates.

The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday again waived environmental and dozens of other laws to build more barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Funding will come from the Defense Department following the emergency declaration that President Donald Trump signed this year after Congress refused to approve the amount of border wall funding he requested.

Barriers will go up at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a vast park named after the unique cactus breed that decorates it, and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, which is largely a designed wilderness home to 275 wildlife species. The government will also build new roads and lighting in those areas in Arizona.

Environmental advocates who have sued to stop the construction of the wall say this latest plan will be detrimental to the wildlife and habitat in those areas.

“The Trump administration just ignored bedrock environmental and public health laws to plow a disastrous border wall through protected, spectacular wildlands,” said Laiken Jordahl, who works on border issues at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has typically not said much about construction plans.

At Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, row after row of cactuses decorate 516 square miles (1,336-square kilometers) of land that once saw so much drug smuggling that over half the park was closed to the public. But illegal crossings in that area dropped off significantly in the past several years, and the government in 2015 reopened the entire monument for the first time in 12 years.

While Arizona has seen an increase in border crossers over the last year, most are families who turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents. The number of drugs that agents seize in the state has also dropped significantly.

But the government is moving forward with more border infrastructure.

The waivers the department issued Tuesday are vague in their description of where and how many miles of fencing will be installed. The Center for Biological Diversity says the plans total about 100 miles (160 kilometers) of southern border in both Arizona and California, near Calexico and Tecate.

In Arizona, construction will focus on four areas of the border and will include the replacement of waist-high fencing meant to stop cars with 18- to 30-foot (9-meter) barriers that will be more efficient at stopping illegal crossings.

The government has already demolished refuge land in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and construction is set to begin any day. On one section of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, crews have used heavy construction equipment to destroy a mix of trees, including mesquite, mulberry and hackberry. Those trees protect birds during the ongoing nesting season.

According to plans published last year, the cleared land will be filled in and a concrete wall will be installed, with bollards measuring 18 feet (5.5 meters) installed on top.

After months of public outcry, Congress forbade U.S. Customs and Border Protection from building in the nearby Santa Ana wildlife refuge or the nonprofit National Butterfly Center. But it didn’t stop money from going to wall construction in other refuge lands, nor did it stop the government from building in otherwise exempted land due to the emergency declaration, said Marianna Trevino Wright, the butterfly center’s director.

“They’re going to have to protect us in every single spending bill going forward, and they have to protect us against the state of emergency,” Wright said. “And this administration has made it clear … that they don’t want any exemptions.”

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Merchant reported from Houston.

At Odds on Many Fronts, U.S. and Russia Hope for Better Ties

SOCHI, Russia—Russia and the United States voiced hope Tuesday that badly strained relations could begin to improve despite wide differences on multiple fronts and deep mutual suspicion exacerbated by Russian meddling in American elections.

With tensions running high over Iran, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed vindication from the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and said he thought it was time to move on. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo conveyed President Donald Trump’s interest in restoring better ties.

In the highest-level face-to-face contact between the two countries since special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released last month, Putin told Pompeo he hoped relations with the U.S. would now improve. Still, his claim of vindication covered only allegations that Russia and the Trump campaign colluded to hurt Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Putin did not address Mueller’s conclusion that Russia actively interfered in the election.

“However exotic the work of special counsel Mueller was, I have to say that on the whole he has had a very objective investigation and he confirmed that there were no traces whatsoever of collusion between Russia and the incumbent administration, which we said was absolutely fake,” Putin said as he opened the meeting with Pompeo in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“As we said before there was no collusion from our government officials and it could not be there. Still, that was one of the reasons for the certain break in our inter-state ties,” he said. “I’m hoping today that the situation is changing.”

Pompeo did not specifically mention election meddling in his brief reply to Putin, although he did say the Trump administration would “protect our nation’s interest.” Earlier, though, Pompeo made clear that any repeat of the 2016 meddling would not be tolerated.

“Interference in American elections is unacceptable,” Pompeo told reporters at a news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “If Russia were to engage in that in 2020, it would put our relationship in an even worse place than it is. We have encouraged them not to. We wouldn’t tolerate that. Our elections are important and sacred and they must be free and fair.”

After meeting with Putin, Pompeo told reporters: “So it’s not about moving on. It’s about trying to find solutions, compromises, places where there are overlapping interests you can make progress unlocking some of the most difficult problems that are facing us.”

Putin told Pompeo his recent telephone conversation with Trump raised hopes for an improvement in relations.

“As you know, not long ago, a few days ago, I had the pleasure of talking with the president of the United States by telephone,” he said. “For me, it created the impression that the president intends to restore Russian-American connections and contacts to resolve joint issues that present mutual interests.”

Pompeo spoke of “truly overlapping interests” that the two countries “can build on, and most importantly, President Trump very much wants to do that.” He cited cooperation in Afghanistan and counterterrorism more broadly, but also a shared goal of getting North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons. But he also told Putin that “just as you will, we’ll protect our nation’s interest.”

Venezuela was a key point of discussion and difference, with the U.S. firm in its commitment to support opposition figure Juan Guaidó as the country’s legitimate leader and Russia equally firm in its backing of embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

Pompeo and Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton have repeatedly accused Russia, along with Cuba, of propping up Maduro and demanded that Russian and other foreign troops, intelligence officers and security forces leave the country.

“On Venezuela, we have disagreement,” Pompeo said. “We want every country that’s interfering in Venezuela to cease doing that.”

Lavrov defended Russia’s position and said the threats Maduro’s government is receiving from U.S. officials, coupled with Guaidó’s seeming support for a foreign military intervention, “bear no relation to democracy.”

Iran was another critical agenda item amid spiraling tension between Washington and Tehran that some fear could lead to conflict. The U.S. has accused Iran of threatening to attack American interests in the Middle East and suggested that Iran or Iranian proxies are behind incidents of alleged sabotage on Emirati, Norwegian and Saudi tankers in the Persian Gulf.

To deter those threats and counter any possible attack, the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East, heightening already high levels of unease caused by the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on Tehran following Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year.

Pompeo sought to alleviate some of the concern but made clear the U.S. would respond to attacks.

“We fundamentally don’t seek war with Iran,” Pompeo said. “But we’ve also made clear to the Iranians that if American interests are attacked, we will most certainly respond in an appropriate fashion.”

Lavrov said Russia is hoping for a positive response from the United States about extending the New START arms control treaty, which is due to expire in 2021, “but we really have some concerns which are related to the re-equipping of launchers of Trident submarines and heavy bombers announced by the United States.”

A day after Trump said he would meet with Putin at the Group of 20 summit of leaders in Japan in June, Lavrov said Russia has not received a formal proposal.

“If such a proposal is received, we will respond to it in a positive way,” he said.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said later that the Kremlin is prepared to agree to any format for a Putin-Trump meeting.

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Heintz reported from Moscow. Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Truthdig Nominated for Nine SoCal Journalism Awards

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Press Club released its list of finalists for the 61st Annual SoCal Journalism Awards, a contest that received more than 1,700 entries. Truthdig earned nine nominations, including for best blog (Ear to the Ground) and best news organization exclusive to the Internet.

“This year, more journalists entered the SoCal contest than ever before, breaking old records and setting new, higher standards!” read a message on the Los Angeles Press Club website.

Other Truthdig nominees include Chris Hedges for his searing meditation on modern capitalism, “The ‘Gig Economy’ Is the New Term for Serfdom” and economic and banking expert Ellen Brown for her column “Banks Are Becoming Obsolete in China—Could the U.S. Be Next?” Eunice Wong, editor of Truthdig’s book review section, landed a nomination for her own review of “The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family,” which was surely one of the more memorable book titles of the year as well.

Truthdig’s Managing Editor Jacob Sugarman figures among the finalists for his original reporting in “‘The G-20 Is Death,’ and Other Lessons in Global Capitalism,” as does Assistant Editor and Poetry Editor Natasha Hakimi Zapata for two separate pieces, “The Late, Great Ursula K. Le Guin” and “Conservatives Own the Ongoing Disaster That Is Brexit.” Truthdig Publisher Zuade Kaufman and Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer each received nominations as well.

The winners will be announced Jun. 30 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Conservative Dems’ Rural Voter Project Is All About Sinking Medicare-for-All

Two conservative former Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, have launched the One Country Project, a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization that aims to attract rural voters to the Democratic Party. However, according to Maplight’s Andrew Perez, working in partnership with The Intercept, the organization is also a “dark money” group, using the two former lawmakers to push an anti-Medicare-for-all agenda.

Perez found that “the One Country Project’s website is registered to an executive at Forbes Tate Partners, a lobbying and public relations firm founded by former Clinton administration officials.” Forbes Tate Partners is leading lobbying efforts for Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), which, according to Maplight, is a “health industry-backed nonprofit created to crush momentum for a comprehensive universal health care system.”

Heitkamp had previous ties to Forbes Tate Partners, hiring a subsidiary called Columbia Campaign Group for polling and media campaign consulting for her 2018 Senate bid. Her former chief of staff, Tessa Gould, is now a partner there. The Heitkamp campaign, Perez reports, paid Gould $35,000 for consulting in March, part of the over $6 million the campaign had left over from a last-minute infusion of donations after Heitkamp declined to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Heitkamp railed against Medicare-for-all in a May op-ed for The Washington Post, writing that “polling indicates that most Americans are satisfied with the health care they receive and do not want their coverage options taken away and replaced with a one-size-fits-all government program.” Both Heitkamp and Donnelly campaigned against such a proposal in their reelection bids, and both lost to Republicans.

Before Donnelly left the Senate, he told CNN’s Dana Bash that “when you talk Medicare-for-all … you start losing the people in my state.” He added, “When we start talking about, ‘Hey, we’re going to work together with the insurance companies to lower premiums,’ that’s what connects.”

In addition to his work with the One Country Project, Donnelly joined lobbying Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, which also has ties to anti-Medicare-for-All efforts through its lobbying for health care industry clients, who have also donated to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

According to reporting by Alex Kotch in Sludge, “Vic Fazio, a senior advisor at lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and former California Democratic congressman, has raised nearly $130,000 for the DCCC this year. He has lobbied for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a PAHCF member and the nation’s largest pharmaceutical trade association.”

Support for broader health coverage is growing among Americans, though they remain divided on terminology, and on whether to abolish private insurance. According to an April 2019 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56% of Americans support a national health plan or Medicare-for-all.

“Yet,” the KFF report continues, “how politicians discuss these different proposals does affect public support.” The poll found 63% of respondents said they support Medicare-for-All or universal coverage, while 59% say they support a national health plan, and 46% support socialized medicine. The most common theme, researchers report, “is a desire for universal coverage.”

A February poll from The Hill-HarrisX found that just 13% of respondents favored a health care system controlled entirely by the government with no private insurance and 32% of respondents favored universal coverage, operated by the government, that still included room for supplemental private insurance. Another 26% want a public option that doesn’t compete with private insurance.

Mostly, there’s a lot of confusion. As Mohamed Younis, editor-in-chief of Gallup, told The Hill TV’s Krystal Ball, “Folks are clearly saying the system is still sort of broken to some degree, but there isn’t a lot of consensus around how to fix it in one way or another.”

Neither Heitkamp nor Donnelly responded to Maplight’s requests for comment.

Trump’s Election Has Boosted Israeli Settlement Construction

JERUSALEM — Israel’s government went on a spending binge in its West Bank settlements following the election of President Donald Trump, according to official data obtained by The Associated Press.

Both supporters and detractors of the settlement movement have previously referred to a “Trump effect,” claiming the president’s friendlier approach to the settlements is leading to additional West Bank construction.

While the new Israeli figures obtained in a freedom of information request do not prove a direct connection, they indicate this process may already be underway, showing a 39% increase in 2017 spending on roads, schools and public buildings across the West Bank.

Hagit Ofran, a researcher with the anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now, said it appears that Trump’s election has emboldened Israel’s pro-settler government.

“They are not shy anymore with what they are doing,” she said. “They feel more free to do whatever they want.”

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, offered even sharper criticism. “This proves that the current U.S. administration encouraged settlement activities,” he said.

Since capturing the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, Israel has settled some 700,000 of its citizens in the two areas, which are considered occupied territory by most of the world. The international community has objected to Israel’s moving people into settlements in those territories as both illegal and a deliberate obstacle to any future Palestinian state.

The Palestinians, who claim both the West Bank and east Jerusalem as parts of their future state, consider the settlements illegal land grabs. Scores of fast-growing settlements control strategic hilltops and swaths of the West Bank, making it increasingly difficult to partition the territory.

For decades, the international community and the U.S. have expressed concern over the settlements while doing little to halt their construction. But since taking office, Trump, whose inner circle of Mideast advisers have longstanding ties to the settler movement, has taken a different approach. The White House has urged restraint but refrained from the blanket condemnations of its Republican and Democratic predecessors.

“The Trump administration is undoubtedly the most friendly American administration of all time,” said Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers’ council. “In contrast, the Obama years were extremely hard for Israel. Now we are making up for lost ground.”

The government statistics, released by Israel’s Finance Ministry, showed Israeli spending in the West Bank in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, rose to 1.65 billion shekels, or $459.8 million, from 1.19 billion shekels in 2016.

The 2017 figures were the highest in the 15 years of data provided by the Finance Ministry, though spending also climbed in 2016. At the time, President Barack Obama, a vocal critic of the settlements, was a lame duck, and relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were cool.

In contrast, the lowest year of Israeli spending was 2009, when both Netanyahu and Obama took office, when it was 760.7 million shekels. The data included only the first half of 2018, so full-year comparisons were not available.

The ministry released the data after two years of requests from the AP, which received backing early this year from “The Movement for Freedom of Information,” a legal advocacy group that assists journalists.

The figures include only government spending, so construction and purchases of private homes are not included. Israel also does not include items like police, education, health and military spending, saying such services are provided to all Israelis regardless of where they live.

In addition, spending in east Jerusalem is excluded. Israel considers the area part of its capital, although the vast majority of the world does not recognize its annexation.

But even with these caveats, the data provide a valuable snapshot of Israel’s priorities. The figures include spending on public construction projects, such as roads, schools, social centers, synagogues, shopping malls and industrial parks. They also include special development grants for local governments and mortgage subsidies.

The areas with the strongest growth in 2017 were in school construction, which jumped 68%, and road construction, which rose 54%.

Revivi, who is also mayor of the Efrat settlement near Jerusalem, said the spending was badly needed.

He said that school spending was legally required because of the fast-growing population. He also said that roads in the West Bank have been in “dire condition” for years, and there is a drastic need for improvements.

Netivei Yisrael, the public company that oversees road construction, said it carries out its projects at the instruction of the Transportation Ministry. In the West Bank, these projects often allow settlers to bypass Palestinian villages to minimize friction.

In a statement, the company said it is “proud to lead a long line of projects throughout Israel, including Judea and Samaria, with the goal of improving safety for travelers and saving lives.”

Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett declined to comment, while Transportation Minister Israel Katz did not respond to a query. Both men are strong supporters of the settlements. Netanyahu’s office also did not answer a request for comment.

But Peace Now’s Ofran said that road construction has deeper implications. She said new roads bring easier commutes and a better quality of life for settlers, drawing more people.

“We see it very immediately, after the opening of a road, a big boom in construction along the road,” she said. “I think the investments we have these years in the roads are dramatic and will allow the expansion of settlements dramatically. That is very much worrying.”

After winning re-election last month, Netanyahu is in the process of forming a new coalition that also is expected to have close ties with the settlers.

In recent months, both Peace Now and settler advocates have released reports claiming that Trump’s policies have laid the groundwork for a settlement boom in the near future.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem repeated the White House policy. “While the existence of settlements is not in itself an impediment to peace, further unrestrained settlement activity doesn’t help peace,” it said.

The new data added to Palestinian distrust of the U.S., boding poorly for a new peace plan the administration says it is preparing.

The Palestinian Authority cut off ties with the White House after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017 and subsequently moved the American Embassy to the contested city. U.S. cuts of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for the Palestinians have further poisoned the atmosphere.

Claiming the Trump administration is unfairly biased, the Palestinians already have said they will reject any U.S. peace plan.

Abu Rdeneh, the Palestinian spokesman, said the numbers are “another reason why we think that the U.S. plan is unfair.”

The Finance Ministry data is collected each year and shared with the U.S., which under a policy going back to President George H.W. Bush deducts the sum from loan guarantees for Israel.

It also includes a small, but unspecified sum spent in the Golan Heights. Just a few thousand Israeli settlers live in the Golan, and Peace Now said the sums spent there were “not significant.”

The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela Is Decades in the Making

Hugo Chávez knew that Venezuela was very vulnerable. Its oil revenues account for 98 percent of its export earnings. Chávez was familiar with the thinking of Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, Venezuela’s minister of mines and hydrocarbons in the early 1960s and one of the architects of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). In 1976, Pérez Alfonzo wrote, “Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see, oil will bring us ruin.” He called Venezuela’s oil the “devil’s excrement.” If oil prices remained high, as they were when Chávez came to power in 1999, then oil revenue could be used to finance a project for the landless workers. If oil prices collapsed, then the country—laden with debt—would face severe challenges.

Venezuela’s economy had not been diversified by the oligarchy that ruled the country before Chávez took office. By 1929, it had become apparent to the oligarchy that the flood of oil revenues had damaged the agricultural sector—which shrank in the decades to come. There was neither an attempt to enhance agricultural production (and make Venezuela food sovereign) nor was there any attempt to use oil profits for a wider industrialization program. Occasionally, presidents—such as Carlos Andrés Pérez in the 1970s—would pledge to use the influx of oil revenues to diversify the economy, but when oil prices would fall—as they did periodically—Venezuela went into punishing debt.

It would have taken Chávez a generation to pivot the economy away from its reliance upon oil revenues. But Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution simply did not have the time. In the 2000s, when oil prices remained high, the revenues were used to enhance the social lives of the landless workers, most of whom suffered high rates of malnutrition and illiteracy. Gripped by the need to deal with the social blight amongst the landless workers, Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution simply did not have the capacity to tackle reliance upon imports of food and of most consumer goods.

In 2009, a U.S. State Department cable from Caracas noted that the decline in oil prices had placed the Venezuelan government in great peril. The government’s oil company—PDVSA—had provided the revenues to fund the social missions, the programs to lift the low standard of social life for the landless workers. “Unless oil prices rise significantly,” wrote John Caulfield from Caracas, “we are increasingly certain that the game will be up, from an economic standpoint, by early to mid-2010, as no one will be willing to continue to finance PDVSA and a vicious cycle will be inevitable.” The June 2008 price was $163.52; by January 2009, it had collapsed to $50.43. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was in peril.

Sanctions

The United States government and the Venezuelan oligarchy first tried to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution in 2002. Great hope in Chávez prevented a discredited oligarchy from victory. Oil revenues then allowed Chávez to build up pillars of support for the revolution. But the depletion of the oil prices from 2009 threatened the Bolivarian process. Chávez died in 2013. The combination of low oil prices and the death of Chávez changed the political calculations.

Egged on by the United States, opposition leaders Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado called for demonstrations against the newly elected president Nicolás Maduro in 2014. It was clear that the protests were intended as a provocation, drawing a crackdown from the government forces, which allowed U.S. President Barack Obama to sign the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014. This act allowed Obama to sanction individuals in the Venezuelan government. It was extended in 2016 and will expire—unless extended again—at the end of 2019. The sanctions policy was to be the new lever to pressure a vulnerable Venezuela.

In March 2015, Obama declared Venezuela a “threat” to U.S. “national security,” an extreme step, and sanctioned a handful of Venezuelan government officials. The administration of Donald Trump only sharpened and deepened the policy. Obama sanctioned seven individuals, while Trump has—thus far—sanctioned 75 individuals. Obama forged the spear; Trump has thrown it at the heart of Venezuela.

Sanctioned Economy

These early sanctions went after individuals, offering an inconvenience for some Venezuelan politicians and for sections of the state. The U.S. government would soon move the sanctions from individual inconvenience to social collapse. Trump’s policy, from 2017, was to hit Venezuela’s petroleum industry very hard. The U.S. government prevented Venezuelan government bonds from trading in U.S. financial markets, and then it prevented the state’s energy company—PDVSA—from receiving payments for its export of petroleum products. The U.S. Treasury Department froze $7 billion in PDVSA assets, and it did not allow U.S. firms to export naphtha into Venezuela (a crucial input for the extraction of heavy crude oil).

The country relied on oil revenues to import food and medicines. The theft of the $7 billion in PDVSA assets, the seizure of the $1.2 billion in Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England, the transfer of ownership of the PDVSA subsidiary CITGO in the United States to the opposition and the pressure on oil exports squeezed Venezuela very hard. U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton estimated that the United States (and Canadian) sanctions had cost Venezuela about $11 billion.

When the United States began to put pressure on transportation firms to stop carrying Venezuelan oil, the schemes to export oil to the Caribbean (PetroCaribe) suffered, as did the fraternal delivery of oil to Cuba. This policy inflamed the situation in Haiti—which is in a long-term political crisis—and it has deepened the crisis in Cuba—which has now had to enforce rationing. The countries in the Caribbean, which relied upon Venezuelan oil, are now suffering deeply.

Impact of the Sanctions

Economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs calculate that the U.S. sanctions have resulted in the death of 40,000 Venezuelan civilians between 2017 and 2018. In their report—“Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela” (April 2019)—they point out that this death toll is merely the start of what is to come. An additional 300,000 Venezuelans are at risk “because of lack of access to medicines or treatment,” including 80,000 “with HIV who have not had antiretroviral treatment since 2017.” There are 4 million people with diabetes and hypertension, most of whom cannot access insulin or cardiovascular medicine. “These numbers,” they write, “by themselves virtually guarantee that the current sanctions, which are much more severe than those implemented before this year, are a death sentence for tens of thousands of Venezuelans.” If oil revenues drop by 67 percent in 2019—as has been projected—the death of tens of thousands of Venezuelans is guaranteed.

Venezuela has imported food goods worth only $2.46 billion in 2018 compared to $11.2 billion in 2013. If food imports remain low and Venezuela is unable to hastily grow enough food, then—as Weisbrot and Sachs argue—the situation will contribute to “malnutrition and stunting in children.”

In 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights—Michelle Bachelet—made the case that the cause of the deterioration of well-being in Venezuela predates the sanctions (a report from Human Rights Watch and Johns Hopkins University underlined this point). It is certainly true that the fall of oil prices had a marked impact on Venezuela’s external revenues and the reliance upon food imports—a century-old problem—had marked the country before Trump’s very harsh sanctions.

But, the next year, Bachelet told the UN Security Council that “although this pervasive and devastating economic and social crisis began before the imposition of the first economic sanctions in 2017, I am concerned that the recent sanctions on financial transfers related to the sale of Venezuelan oil within the United States may contribute to aggravating the economic crisis, with possible repercussions on people’s basic rights and wellbeing.” A debate over whether it is mismanagement and corruption by the Maduro government or the sanctions that are the author of the crisis is largely irrelevant. The point is that a combination of the reliance on oil revenues and the sanctions policy has crushed the policy space for any stability in the country.

Illegal Sanctions

Weisbrot and Sachs say that these sanctions “would fit the definition of collective punishment,” as laid out in the Hague Convention (1899) and in the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). The United States is a signatory of both of these frameworks. “Collective penalties,” says the Fourth Geneva Convention, “are prohibited.” Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are dead. Tens of thousands more are under threat of death. Yet, no one has stood up against the grave breach of the convention in terms of collective punishment. There is not a whiff of interest in the UN Secretary General’s office to open a tribunal on the accusations of collective punishment against Venezuela. Allegations of this seriousness are brushed under the rug.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Jair Bolsonaro Poses a Legitimate Threat to Humankind

What follows is a conversation between journalist Alexander Zaitchick and Greg Wilpert of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

GREG WILPERT It’s The Real News Network and I’m Greg Wilpert in Baltimore. Eight Brazilian former ministers of the environment issued a warning last Wednesday that the government of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro is in the process of systematically destroying Brazil’s environmental protection policies. The ministers from across the political spectrum say that the environmental ministry’s powers are being stripped, and that after a period of slowing the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, it is now on the rise again. Marina Silva, who was Environmental Minister under President Lula da Silva called him “an exterminator of the future.” Joining me now to discuss what is happening with regard to Brazil’s environmental policies is Alexander Zaitchik. He is a freelance journalist who has been covering indigenous issues and land conflicts in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil. He recently returned from a trip to the western Amazon that was underwritten by the Pulitzer Center. Thanks for joining us today, Alex.

ALEXANDER ZAITCHICK Good to be here.

GREG WILPERT So last year, when Bolsonaro was running for president, we at The Real News Network covered his statements that he planned to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and that he planned to open indigenous lands to mining and reassign the environmental issues to the Agriculture Ministry, which is aligned with agribusiness. Bolsonaro has been in office for a little over four months now. What does his environmental record look like so far?

ALEXANDER ZAITCHICK It’s pretty bad, as you would imagine. There has been some pushback on some aspects of withdrawal from the Paris accord, which I haven’t gone through yet but there has been a trickle-down effect— even before you get to the actual policies and agency reorganizations that he’s been undertaking— where you have this massive wave of illegal incursions throughout the Amazon onto formerly-protected lands by loggers, miners, and agribusiness interests, who are emboldened by the rhetoric coming out of the government where they just feel like the laws won’t be enforced. In fact, that is exactly what’s happening. The agencies that have been empowered to protect what’s left of the Brazilian Amazon— and again, we’ve already lost a fifth of it— are being held back. They’re being defunded. They’re being reshuffled, put under hostile ministers, the environmental protection agency, IBAMA. I think the exact number is something around a quarter has been cut from its funds. The conservation agency, ICMBO, is being staffed by right-wing police officers from Sao Paulo. All of the scientists who were running that organization have been fired.

You know, the new Environmental Minister Ricardo Salles has basically just cleaned house. There’s a lot of regional offices that are sitting empty. And then, that’s before you even get to the Indian agency, FUNAI, which obviously plays a hugely important role in helping Brazil’s indigenous groups protect their lands, which account for no less than a quarter of the Brazilian Amazon. They are operating at something like ten percent of their funding right now. Ninety percent has been withheld since Bolsonaro came into office. That’s having a huge ripple effect across the Amazon where groups that formerly felt like they had some backing from the state to push back against illegal land incursions, are feeling completely abandoned and getting ready to mount their own defense with whatever allies they can cobble together, and do what they have to do to protect their lands without these agencies that have been built up over the last 30 years or so since the return of civilian government, which are being systematically dismantled pretty much across the board.

GREG WILPERT Now I understand one of the more recent developments the government is planning on replacing a, kind of, independent panel of experts of over 160 experts, I believe it is, with a more politically-appointed, much smaller group. Can you talk about that? What does that panel do and what would that change imply for the environment in Brazil?

ALEXANDER ZAITCHICK Yeah. Pretty much all of the scientific boards are being replaced with agribusiness hacks and the politicians from the [inaudible] bench. And, you know, it’s a sort of an echo of what’s happening in the US where the scientific community is, sort of, seen as a hostile force working against the development of the Brazilian economy and this authoritarian vision of development in the Amazon, which goes way back. It’s worth mentioning that this precedes Bolsonaro, it precedes the military junta that he is nostalgic for, that ran the country during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I mean, it’s a long strain in Brazilian history to see the Amazon as this wild territory that has to be settled and populated with “real Brazilians,” both as part of some modernization drive but also as a geopolitical imperative. There’s this paranoia that the Amazon will be taken over by Brazil’s neighbors, that it will be somehow internationalized as some sort of commons because it’s so crucial to the global climate. So it’s being militarized, and you have law and order figures moving in where scientists, ecologists, and conservationists used to provide crucial information to the government to manage the Amazon, which is sixty percent of the entire Amazon rainforest in Latin America.

GREG WILPERT Now, how are Brazil’s social movements, particularly the environmental and indigenous movements, reacting to the Bolsonaro government’s anti-preservation policies? What is happening in Brazil in this regard?

ALEXANDER ZAITCHICK Quite a lot. I mean, the indigenous movement is at the forefront of this because they’re on the front lines of what’s happening in the Amazon and they are very unified, very active right now. When I was traveling recently through the western Amazon in Rondonia, Acre, and the state of Amazonas in the south, there were assemblies being held pretty much every other day, villages coming together and talking about stepping up patrols, monitoring advocacy, alliance-building, both in Brazil and internationally. They are trying to rebuild something called the Forest Peoples Alliance, which was quite successful in the late 80s and early 90s to bring global attention to what was happening in Brazil and also put forth alternative development models. This alliance brings together indigenous groups, small-scale extractivists, rubber tappers, nut gatherers, and other traditional peoples of the Brazilian Amazon, of which the indigenous are the largest group, but they’re certainly not the only people there with an interest in preserving the state of things.

GREG WILPERT Now, as you mentioned earlier, Brazil is generally considered one of the most important countries with regard to environmental issues, particularly because most of the Amazon rainforest is located in Brazil with all of its biodiversity and its really crucial role in absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide. What role is the international community, can it play or is it playing, with regard to holding Bolsonaro back with regard to his environmental policies?

ALEXANDER ZAITCHICK Yeah. The international community and international alliances are absolutely crucial, just as they were in the 90s when the soy moratorium and some of the logging efforts had a huge impact to slowing and ultimately stopping and reversing the runaway deforestation that had resulted from the policies of the military dictatorship period, which Bolsonaro is trying to replicate now pretty much exactly. So yeah, it will again be crucial to stopping that. You know, a lot of the indigenous leaders are going abroad, trying to raise the alarm about what’s happening, and they’re meeting with government officials.

The governments of Asia, Europe and North America are going to be crucial in making sure that another twenty percent of the forest is not destroyed by the policies that Bolsonaro is putting in place right now because scientists tell us that another twenty percent risks triggering this feedback loop called dieback, in which the forest will simply collapse and its systems will no longer be able to sustain themselves. There will be a, sort of, domino effect of dry-out and burns, and then you’ll have this enormous release of carbon as well as an absorption of heat that is now being reflected back into space. And of course, the huge loss of biodiversity, which is just—we don’t even really know how great it is because so little of the rainforest has been studied. Something like one percent of all of the plants of the Amazon have been studied, and from that one percent, we’re getting a quarter of our pharmaceutical products. So the potential there that would be lost, would be as significant as the impact on the climate.

GREG WILPERT Wow. Well, we’re going to leave it there for now. I was speaking to Alex Zaitchik, freelance journalist. Thanks again, Alex, for joining us today.

ALEXANDER ZAITCHICK Great. Thank you.

GREG WILPERT And thank you for joining The Real News Network.

Robert Reich: America Urgently Needs a Wealth Tax

The crisis of income inequality in America is well-known, but there is another economic crisis developing much faster and with worse consequences. I’m talking about inequality of wealth.

The wealth gap is now staggering. In the 1970s, the wealthiest tenth of Americans owned about a third of the nation’s total household wealth. Now, the wealthiest 10 percent owns about 75 percent of total household wealth.

America’s richest one-tenth of one percent now owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Wealth isn’t like income.  Income is payment for work.  Wealth keeps growing automatically and exponentially because it’s parked in investments that generate even more wealth.

Wealth is also passed from generation to generation. An estimated 60 percent of the wealth in the United States is inherited. Many of today’s super-rich never did a day’s work in their lives.  The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.

America is now on the cusp of the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history. As wealthy boomers die, an estimated $30 trillion will go to their children over the next three decades.

Over time, this wealth will continue to grow even further – without these folks lifting a finger. This concentration of wealth will soon resemble the kind of dynasties common to European aristocracies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

It’s exactly what our Founding Fathers sought to combat by creating a system of government and economy grounded in meritocracy.

Dynastic wealth puts economic power into the hands of a relatively small number of people who make decisions about where and how to invest most of the nation’s capital, as well as which nonprofit enterprises and charities deserve support, and what politicians merit their campaign contributions.

That means their decisions have a disproportionately large effect on America’s future.

Dynastic wealth also magnifies race and gender disparities. Because of racism and sexism, women and people of color not only earn less. They have also saved less. Which is why the racial wealth gap and the gender wealth gap are huge and growing.

Today, government is financed almost entirely by income taxes and payroll taxes – totally ignoring the giant and growing wealth at the top.

So how do we address the crisis of wealth inequality?

A wealth tax, as proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, would begin to tackle all this by placing a 2 percent tax on to wealth in excess of 50 million dollars.

According to estimates, this tax would generate 2.75 trillion dollars over the next decade, which could be used for health care, education, infrastructure, and everything else we need.

Not only would a wealth tax raise revenue and help bring the economy back into balance, but it would also protect our democracy by reducing the influence of the super-rich on our political system.

We must demand an economy that works for the many, not one that concentrates wealth in the hands of a few. A wealth tax is a necessary first step.

The Surest Sign Yet Trump Is Considering War With Iran

Observers warned the United States is hurtling down the same path that led to the disastrous invasion of Iraq 16 years ago following a report late Monday that President Donald Trump reviewed a plan to send 120,000 ground troops to the Middle East if Iran launches an “attack” on American forces or moves to develop nuclear weapons.

According to the New York Times, the military plan was crafted by national security adviser John Bolton—who has repeatedly expressed support for bombing Iran, including in the pages of the Times—and presented to the president last Thursday by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who Trump nominated last week to serve as permanent Pentagon chief.

“The size of the force involved has shocked some who have been briefed on [the plan],” the Timesreported, citing more than a half-dozen anonymous national security officials. “The 120,000 troops would approach the size of the American force that invaded Iraq in 2003.”

“The high-level review of the Pentagon’s plans was presented during a meeting about broader Iran policy,” according to the Times. “It was held days after what the Trump administration described, without evidence, as new intelligence indicating that Iran was mobilizing proxy groups in Iraq and Syria to attack American forces.”

The Times report on Bolton’s plan, which one critic described as “disturbing,” comes just over a week after the national security adviser used the routine deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier and bomber task force to threaten Iran with military action.

According to the Times, U.S. officials believe—without citing any evidence—that Iran was involved in reported attacks on UAE and Saudi oil tankers in the Persian Gulf over the weekend.

Trump seized upon the reported incident to threaten Iran.

“It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens,” the president told reporters on Monday.

“If you are worried about a new war in the Middle East, you are in good company,” tweeted Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund. “In fact, you are probably not worried enough.”

Others echoed Cirincione’s warning in response to the Times report:

John Bolton desperately wants war with Iran. He’s famous for cooking intelligence. This is deadly serious. Congress should make clear that there is no authorization. https://t.co/Z7w2HjMa1m

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) May 14, 2019

Does anyone still doubt the Trump WH is charting a course for war w/ #Iran? Bolton asked for plans that envision “sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons.” #NoWarWithIran https://t.co/RCYLwSK4nG

— Peace Action (@PeaceAction) May 14, 2019

Iran has responded to the Trump administration’s belligerence and repeated threats with what one commentator called “remarkable restraint.”

As Common Dreams reported last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged diplomacy in a speech detailing his nation’s plan to gradually reduce compliance with some of the terms of the nuclear deal to pressure European countries to uphold their side of the agreement.

Trump violated the nuclear accord last May, a move critics at the time warned would dramatically increase the possibility of a war with Iran.

Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement late Monday that Bolton “is methodically setting the stage for war with Iran—forcing Iran into a corner and then readying war plans for when Iran takes the bait.”

“There are two ways Bolton can be stopped: either Trump can fire him or Congress can pass legislation to block a war before it starts,” Abdi said. “It’s time for our leaders to stop sleepwalking and the public to speak out as an unrestrained Iraq war architect repeats the playbook from that generational catastrophe with Iran.”

Barr to Investigate Origins of Mueller Probe

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate,” according to a person familiar with the issue.

Barr appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry, the person said. The person could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke Monday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

With the appointment, Barr is addressing a rallying cry of President Donald Trump and his supporters, who have accused the Justice Department and FBI of unlawfully spying on his campaign.

Democrats have accused Trump of using the allegations to divert attention from special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings that Russia aided Trump’s 2016 campaign and that he could not exonerate the president on the question of whether he tried to impede Mueller’s investigation. Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and the Kremlin.

Durham’s appointment comes about a month after Barr told members of Congress he believed “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016. He later said he didn’t mean anything pejorative and was gathering a team to look into the origins of the special counsel’s investigation.

Barr provided no details about what “spying” may have taken place but appeared to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate, Carter Page, and the FBI’s use of an informant while the bureau was investigating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.

FBI Director Chris Wray said last week that he does not consider court-approved FBI surveillance to be “spying” and said he has no evidence the FBI illegally monitored Trump’s campaign.

Durham’s inquiry, which will focus on whether the government’s methods to collect intelligence relating to the Trump campaign were lawful and appropriate, is separate from an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The agency’s watchdog is also examining the Russia probe’s origins and Barr has said he expects the watchdog report to be done in May or June.

Congressional Republicans have also indicated they intend to examine how the investigation that shadowed Trump’s presidency for nearly two years began and whether there are any legal concerns.

Durham is a career prosecutor who was nominated for his post as U.S. attorney in Connecticut by Trump. He has previously investigated law enforcement corruption, the destruction of CIA videotapes and the Boston FBI office’s relationship with mobsters.

Durham was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2018. At the time, Connecticut’s two Democratic senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, called Durham a “fierce, fair prosecutor” who knows how to try tough cases.

In addition to conducting the inquiry, Durham will continue to serve as the chief federal prosecutor in Connecticut.