Chris Hedges's Blog, page 268

The Undeniable Link Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

One person is dead and three are wounded after a shooting at a synagogue in San Diego, which the mayor has branded a “hate crime.”

The attack came a day after an Iraq War veteran was arraigned in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the north of the state on suspicion of running over eight people, some of whom he incorrectly believed to be Muslims.

In Poway, a 19-year-old community college nursing student in the San Diego area turned himself into the police after confessing to shooting up the Chabad of Poway synagogue on Saturday as the congregation was commemorating Passover and preparing to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) on May 1.

The alleged shooter, John T. Earnest, had an AR-style semi-automatic rifle in his vehicle when police came to get him after he called them. After a shooter at two mosques in New Zealand killed 50 people and wounded 50 others with a semi-automatic rifle, the New Zealand government banned these military-style weapons. The National Rifle Association lobby, which has been promoted by the Russian government of Vladimir Putin in order to divide Americans, and the Republican Party, have prevented sensible gun safety laws in the United States.

Earnest claimed in a manifesto also to have attempted to set fire to the Islamic Center of Escondido (Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque) last month. Someone did pour gasoline and start a fire, but congregants were on site and put it out. He also left graffiti referring to the New Zealand massacre of Muslims in Christchurch. This behavior is further proof that promoting hatred toward any religious minority in the United States will spill over onto all of them.

The Islamophobia network who try to promote loathing of Muslims among white people is creating an atmosphere in which, inevitably, Jews will also be attacked. We have already seen in the case of Dylann Roof how Islamophobia bled over into hatred of African American Christians, since Roof saw both as a threat to the purity of the “white” body politic.

Earnest attended the fundamentalist Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the area, the pastor of which expressed his horror that a member of the congregation allegedly could commit this heinous crime.

Earnest had put up a manifesto online at 8chan (likely the forum where he was radicalized) full of hateful and false allegations against Jews, of being Christ killers, controlling the media, and having plotted genocide against the “European race.” He had bought into the vicious falsehood that Jewish businessmen are behind immigration by “non-white” workers into the United States in a bid to replace those of European heritage with cheaper brown and black labor. This conspiracy theory lies behind the slogan chanted by Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 that “Jews will not replace us.” These were the marchers Trump called “very fine people.”

The manifesto said, “Every Jew young and old has contributed to these. For these crimes they deserve nothing but hell. I will send them there.” He said he expected to be sprung from jail and hoped his murderous act would inspire copy cats. In this he adopted ISIL-type terrorist plotting, doing demonstration attacks to encourage other unbalanced or chronically angry persons to follow suit, a phenomenon some have called “stochastic” or random terrorism.

Despicable people on the U.S. right have attempted to blame the synagogue shooting on Human Rights Watch and other groups that critique Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians.

But Earnest is a man of the political Right, a fundamentalist Christian of the sort that the Israel lobbies and the Republican Party cultivate (though most are not violent people). He is not a leftist and his manifesto did not blame the Jews he allegedly shot for the wretched Israeli government treatment of Palestinians. Nor would it have made any sense to shoot up an American synagogue if you were actually concerned with more human rights for everyone, as the Left is, rather than concerned to keep minorities down, as the Right often is.

These odious acts of violence against Americans probably cannot be halted merely by leadership from the White House. But in the absence of that leadership and, on the contrary, with clear signals like the Muslim ban, targeting of George Soros for conspiracy theories, and coddling of bigots as “very fine people,” Trump’s political style de facto encourages hate groups.

The alleged shooter Earnest is an object lesson in the intersection of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, and those powerful voices on the Likudnik far right such as Adam Milstein, Pamela Gellar and Daniel Pipes should rethink whether it is a good idea for them to promote hatred of a religious minority among American white people.

 

The Dangers of Being a Woman in Trump’s America

We’re living in the most perilous time for abortion rights and reproductive freedom since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

While some erosion of abortion rights has occurred over the decades — parental consent laws, waiting periods, procedure curtailment — the fundamental right has largely been by ruled by the courts, and viewed by the public, as guaranteed under Roe. Around 60 percent of Americans support a legal right to the procedure.

Now state legislatures are escalating their assault on that right — and on the women who attempt to exercise it.

Since President Trump succeeded in elevating Brett Kavanaugh — an abortion foe, alleged sexual assailant, and mean drunk to boot — to the Supreme Court, his right-wing lynch mob has launched a laser-focused attack on reproductive freedom. They’ve been flooding the states with anti-abortion legislation in hopes of getting a case to the Supreme Court that will overturn Roe.

Republicans paved the way for Trump’s conservative hijack of the judiciary during Obama’s tenure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held the Supreme Court seat created by Justice Scalia’s death vacant for more than a year until the next election, along with 108 other federal judgeships that require only Senate approval. Trump is wasting no time filling the vacancies.

To grease the wheels, the Judiciary Committee has ended the decades-old practice of seeking advice from the American Bar Association on nominee qualifications and started holding hearings during congressional recesses. Recently the Senate voted to shortcut the process even more by reducing the time between final confirmation votes on district court judges from 30 hours to just two.

Currently, 85 percent of Trump’s circuit court nominees are members of the Federalist Society, an ultra-conservative legal network strongly connected to anti-abortion organizations.

Many of Trump’s nominees for lower courts are outspoken foes of abortion rights themselves. Case in point: In a ruling upholding the constitutionality of a Kentucky law requiring abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and make the fetal heartbeat audible to the patient, Judge John K. Bush referred to “unborn life” rather than “fetus.”

Packing the courts with anti-choice judges is a necessary precursor of the larger strategy taking aim squarely at Roe. Judges can’t decide until they have something to decide on — and arch-conservative zealots are serving up plenty of potential cases.

More than 250 bills restricting abortions have been filed in 41 states this year. At least a third have successfully passed 20-week abortion bans, based on the unfounded assertion that a fetus can feel pain 20 weeks after fertilization.

An even more frightening new trend has developed since the confirmation of Kavanaugh. “Fetal heartbeat bans,” which outlaw abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, have passed in at least six states and are being pushed in several more. Some of these laws, like Ohio’s, offer no exceptions for rape or incest.

Doctors say such bans could outlaw abortions as early as five weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. Though laws have been blocked from taking effect pending court challenges, abortion opponents are banking on at least one of these attempts being upheld by Trump’s anti-abortion Supreme Court majority, overturning Roe.

Merely banning abortion isn’t enough for some on the rabid right — they want to criminalize it altogether. One Alabama lawmaker proposed a bill that would make abortion a felony at any point during pregnancy, including in cases of rape and incest.

But the most horrific bill of all was recently debated in the Texas state legislature. It defines all abortions as murder, punishable by death in Texas

These extreme bills aren’t passing — yet. But the numbers are frightening: 446 people testified in favor the Texas measure, with only 54 standing against it.

Will burning at the stake be next? Be very afraid.

Deeply Divided, Spaniards Vote With Eye on Far-Right’s Rise

MADRID — A divided Spain is voting in its third general election in four years, with all eyes on whether a far-right party will enter Parliament for the first time in decades and potentially help unseat the Socialist government.

The incumbent prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, is set to win the most votes, but his Socialists seem far from scoring a majority in parliament to form a government on their own.

The fragmentation of the political landscape is the result of austerity that followed a recession, disenchantment with bipartisan politics and the recent rise of far-right populism.

Sánchez called Sunday’s ballot after a national budget proposal was rejected in the Lower Chamber by the center-right-conservative opposition and Catalan separatists pressing for self-determination in their northeastern region.

Polls a week ago found that about one third of the nearly 37 million eligible voters hadn’t decided how they would vote. Their decision, and the expected high turnout, could swing the result between the left and right wing blocs that have taken shape during the electoral race.

The anti-austerity Unidas Podemos (United We Can) party, has offered to enter a coalition with the Socialists, but they might need to rely on smaller parties, including the Catalan separatists.

On the splintered right, three parties are competing for leadership: the once-dominant conservative Popular Party, the center-right Citizens, and the nationalist and anti-migrant Vox party, which looks set to enter the lower house of Parliament for the first time. Its arrival would mark a big shift in Spain, where the far right has not played a significant role since the country’s transition to democracy following the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975.

Voting stations opened at 9 a.m. (0700GMT) Sunday and will close at 8 p.m. (1800GMT), with results expected a few hours later.

Speaking Sunday shortly after casting his ballot, Sánchez said he wanted the ballot to yield a parliamentary majority that can undertake social and political reforms in the country.

The prime minister said he wanted the lower house to support “a stable government that with calmness, serenity and resolution looks to the future and achieves the progress that our country needs in social justice, national harmony and political cleansing.”

Citizens leader Albert Rivera, who has focused his campaign on unseating the incumbent Socialist, told reporters in a town near Barcelona where he cast his ballot that a high turnout is needed for a government change and to “usher in a new era.”

United We Can party leader Pablo Iglesias also stressed the importance of voting on Sunday.

“My feeling is that in Spain there is an ample progressive majority, and when there is high participation that becomes very clear,” Iglesias told reporters at a public school in the residential suburb near Madrid where he lives.

Up for grabs are the 350 members of the Congress of Deputies, who then choose a government, and also 208 senators for the Upper House.

For the first time since Spain transitioned to democracy in the 1970s, more than 100,000 people with mental disabilities are allowed to vote in the general election.

4 Killed After Construction Crane Collapses Onto Seattle Street

SEATTLE—Four people were killed and three wounded when a construction crane collapsed Saturday in downtown Seattle, pinning five cars underneath.

The four were dead by the time firefighters got to the scene, the Seattle Fire Department said. Three people were transported to the hospital, the department said.

The crane collapsed near the intersection of Mercer Street and Fairview Avenue near Interstate 5 shortly after 3 p.m.

“It was terrifying,” Esther Nelson, a biotech researcher who was working in a building nearby, told The Seattle Times.

“The wind was blowing really strong,” she said, and added that the crane appeared to break in half.

The crane was atop an office building under construction in a densely populated area.

Tweets from the scene showed the crane collapsed on the street, with vehicles stopped in the vicinity.

All lanes were closed, and motorists were told to avoid the area.

With Amazon and other tech companies increasing their hiring in Seattle, the city has dozens of construction cranes building office towers and apartment buildings. As of January, there were about 60 construction cranes in Seattle, more than any other American city.

The President’s Executive Privilege Strategy Could Mean a Messy Fight

WASHINGTON — Since George Washington’s time, presidents have used executive privilege to resist congressional inquiries in the name of protecting the confidentiality of their decision-making.

President Donald Trump threatened this past week to broadly assert executive privilege to block a number of current and former aides from testifying, including some who have cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. It’s a strategy that could lead to a messy, protracted legal fight, but even if the White House is eventually defeated in court, the president and his allies could have the chance to run out the clock to the 2020 election.

“This is all about delaying things. The strategy of every administration is to drag it out,” said the University of Virginia’s Saikrishna Prakash, an expert on presidential power.

Trump in recent days has complained about House Democrats stepping up their investigations in the aftermath of the special counsel’s probe, which ended last month without concluding the president colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.

“With all of this transparency, we finished ‘no collusion, no obstruction,'” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. “Then I get out, the first the day they’re saying, ‘Let’s do it again.’ And I said, ‘That’s enough.'”

“So, if I’m guilty of anything, it’s that I’ve been a great president and the Democrats don’t like it, which is a shame,” he said.

Executive privilege is the president’s power to keep information from the courts, Congress and the public to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process.

The privilege to withhold documents and prohibit aides from testifying rests on the proposition that the president has an almost unparalleled need to protect the confidentiality of candid advice that goes into presidential judgments. There is no reference to executive privilege in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has held that it derives from the president’s ability to carry out the duties the commander in chief holds under the Constitution.

It has become a flashpoint after Trump’s administration signaled it was considering invoking the privilege to block Congress’ attempt to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn, an important figure in the Mueller investigation, to appear and provide documents.

That reflects a shift in legal tactics for Trump’s lawyers. At first, they cooperated with Mueller’s 22-month investigation, encouraging officials to testify and turning over more than a million documents. But starting last spring, the White House took a far more adversarial approach, publicly questioning the investigation’s integrity and resisting some requests.

Advisers to the president, trying to depict the Democrats as guilty of partisan-fueled overreach, want to snarl the congressional investigations. They believe a drawn-out court fight could tire voters’ patience and shift public opinion their way. While they are hopeful that the courts support them, a legal battle that ends in defeat could stretch close to the 2020 election and make it easier for Republicans to claim the other party was predominantly interested in playing politics.

The haste with which House Democrats have issued subpoenas and promise more is itself a reflection that time is on Trump’s side, not Congress’, Prakash said. “The speed with which we’ve come to an impasse is different” from past fights over documents and testimony that involved at least a semblance of negotiations, he said.

Courts have not had much to say about executive privilege. But in the 1974 case over President Richard Nixon’s refusal to release Oval Office recordings as part of the Watergate investigation, the Supreme Court held that the privilege is not absolute. In other words, the case for turning over documents or allowing testimony may be more compelling than arguments for withholding them. In that context, the court ruled 8-0 that Nixon had to turn over the tapes.

When it came to the Watergate tapes, the Supreme Court said it had the final word, and lower courts have occasionally weighed in to resolve other disputes. But courts also have made clear they prefer that the White House and Congress resolve their disagreements without judicial intervention, when possible.

Court fights over documents and testimony can take years to resolve.

One potential roadblock for the White House: Trump already allowed McGahn to talk to Mueller’s team, and Attorney General William Barr has said the president did not invoke executive privilege to prevent release of any part of Mueller’s report.

“In view of that, the White House has waived a good portion of any privilege it might claim,” said Steven Schwinn, a constitutional law professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

Trump seems to be arguing that the risk that McGahn might reveal the substance of high-level conversations he had with the president or other high-level advisers is sufficiently high to keep him out of the witness chair in a House hearing, Schwinn said.

“But that’s not the way privileges work,” he said. “You don’t prevent someone from testifying entirely just because you think one of their answers may raise executive communications. You raise a privilege in response to a question.”

Recent presidents have leaned on the approach. President George W. Bush used it to shield some sensitive information from Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Clinton administration used it to try to keep private Hillary Clinton’s answers during the Monica Lewinsky investigation.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, backs the president’s efforts not to engage in what the senator called “a complete partisan thing now.”

Graham said he told the president when the two spoke earlier in the week that he wouldn’t have let “half these people” testify earlier. Now, with Muller’s work complete, the South Carolina senator said Democrats are acting like filmmaker Oliver Stone trying to get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination. Stone’s controversial 1991 film “JFK” dramatized allegations that several people conspired to kill the president.

“I think Congress is going crazy here,” Graham told The Associated Press.

Over just the past few days, the Trump White House has thrown up a series of hurdles for congressional investigators:

—The Trump Organization sued the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee to stop his efforts to obtain the company’s financial records.

—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin blew past Tuesday’s House deadline to turn over the president’s tax returns, saying he will decide next month.

—The administration instructed its former personnel security director, Carl Kline, not to testify before Congress over how some West Wing aides, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, obtained security clearances. That led the House to hold Kline in contempt.

One potential problem Schwinn identified is a lack of clarity in the White House’s claims that Trump aides, including Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, should not cooperate with Congress.

“In a regular administration, we expect the White House to make aggressive constitutional arguments,” Schwinn said. “But what President Trump is doing is something different. He’s making these assertions that are both overly broad, even ridiculously broad, and in a slippery way so that we can’t get our arms around what he is asserting.”

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Trump Offers Sympathies After Synagogue Shooting

POWAY, Calif. — The Latest on a shooting at a synagogue in Southern California (all times local):

4:15 p.m.

Pittsburgh officials hearing of the synagogue shooting in California are offering sympathy from the city that six months ago was the site of the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich said Saturday that their thoughts were with those in the San Diego area and “we understand this heartache all too well.”

Authorities say a 19-year-old man armed with a rifle opened fire inside a synagogue near San Diego on Saturday, the last day of Passover. A woman was killed and three other people were wounded.

The attack came exactly six months after 11 people were killed in the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

San Diego County Sheriff William Gore said at a news conference that he had no details on motive for Saturday’s shooting.

___

3:30 p.m.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Gov. Gavin Newsom offered their condolences to the Jewish community after a man opened fire Saturday at a synagogue outside San Diego.

Authorities say a 19-year-old man opened fire on Chabad of Poway on the last day of Passover, killing one woman and wounding three others, including a girl.

Newsom said “no one should have to fear going to their place of worship.”

Pelosi said on Twitter that she stands with the Jewish community against “this act of hate.”

San Diego County Sheriff William Gore said at a news conference that he had no details on motive.

The attack comes six months after 11 people were killed in the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

___

2:50 p.m.

President Donald Trump has offered “deepest sympathies to the families of those affected” by a shooting at a synagogue outside San Diego.

At the White House, Trump said Saturday that the shooting “looked like a hate crime” and called it “hard to believe.” He spoke from the South Lawn before flying to a rally in Wisconsin.

Authorities say a 19-year-old man opened fire on Chabad of Poway on the last day of Passover, killing one woman and wounding three others, including a girl.

They say he reported the shooting and surrendered without incident after an officer pulled him over.

San Diego County Sheriff William Gore said at a news conference that he had no details on motive. Authorities say they were reviewing copies of his social media posts.

___

2:40 p.m.

Authorities say a woman has died and three others are hospitalized in stable condition after a shooting at a synagogue outside San Diego.

San Diego County Sheriff William Gore said at a news conference that a white man entered Chabad of Poway on Saturday and opened fire on worshipers with an AR-type assault weapon.

Gore says an off-duty Border Patrol agent believed to be inside the synagogue shot at the suspect as he fled. The sheriff says the agent didn’t hit him but struck his car.

San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit says the 19-year-old suspect called police to report the shooting and a California Highway Patrol officer heard it on a police scanner, saw the suspect and pulled him over. Nisleit says the suspect got out of his car with his hands up and he was taken into custody without incident.

Gore says a woman died from her injuries, while a girl and two men are in the hospital.

___

1:30 p.m.

A hospital says it’s treating four people injured in a synagogue outside San Diego but didn’t know the extent of their injuries.

Derryl Acosta, a spokesman for Palomar Health Medical Center Hospital, says the four patients were admitted around 12:30 p.m. Saturday.

San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit said there was no known threat after a man was detained in the shooting. However, he said authorities stepped up patrol at places of worship in the area as a precaution.

The Chabad of Poway was worshipping on the last day of Passover, exactly six months since a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue killed 11 people.

___

1 p.m.

Authorities say a shooting at a synagogue outside San Diego has left people injured but the extent is unclear.

San Diego County sheriff’s office also said Saturday on Twitter that a man has been detained in connection with the shooting at the Chabad of Poway.

A handful of police cars were parked outside the synagogue in the city of Poway, just over 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of San Diego. Crime tape surrounded the street in front of the building.

Officials say deputies were called just before 11:30 a.m.

The shooting came on the last day of Passover and exactly six months since a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue killed 11 people.

Oliver North Out as NRA President After Leadership Dispute

INDIANAPOLIS — Retired Lt. Col. Oliver North announced Saturday that he won’t serve a second term as president of the National Rifle Association after he lost the support of the gun-rights group’s leadership.

North’s announcement came after his failed attempt to force out NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, who has been the public face of the group for decades. In a statement read to NRA members at the group’s annual convention, North made it clear he was pushed out by the NRA’s board of directors.

“Please know I hoped to be with you today as NRA president endorsed for reelection. I’m now informed that will not happen,” North said in his statement, which was read by Richard Childress, the NRA’s first vice president. North, who is nearing the end of his first one-year term, did not show up for the meeting, and his spot on the stage was left empty, with his nameplate still in its place.

The announcement came after LaPierre sent a letter to board members Thursday saying that North was trying to push him out by threatening to release “damaging” information about him to the board.

Taking the stage later Saturday, LaPierre got two standing ovations from the crowd of more than 1,000 NRA members before giving a scheduled speech in which he did not mention his feud with North, the Marine at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

Their dispute erupted after the NRA filed a lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen, the Oklahoma-based public relations firm that has earned tens of millions of dollars in the decades since it began shaping the gun lobby’s fierce talking points. The NRA’s lawsuit accuses Ackerman McQueen of refusing to hand over financial records to account for its billings. In 2017 alone, the NRA paid the firm $40 million.

North has a $1 million contract with Ackerman McQueen, raising alarm bells with the NRA about conflicts of interest.

He was at odds with LaPierre and some board members who believe the group’s media operation and messaging have strayed too far from the NRA’s original mission of gun safety and the outdoors. Of particular concern to some board members and rank-and-file is the fiery tone of NRATV, the media arm of the NRA created and operated by Ackerman McQueen.

The NRA has faced some financial struggles in recent years, prompting some to question whether the millions spent on public relations and NRATV is worth the money.

In his statement, North said a committee should be set up to review the NRA’s finances.

“There is a clear crisis and it needs to be dealt with” if the NRA is to survive, the statement said.

In his speech later Saturday, LaPierre discussed standard NRA talking points, going after the mainstream media and lawmakers who seek to restrict gun rights.

“Our enemies have sunk to new lows,” LaPierre said, blasting Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, where regulators have scrutinized NRA operations.

The NRA has sued the state, claiming its rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment are being violated. In an unusual pairing, the American Civil Liberties Union has joined the NRA in its fight.

NRA officials are concerned that regulators in New York — where its charter was filed — are attempting to strip the group of its nonprofit status.

LaPierre told the crowd that efforts to strip away the Second Amendment right to bear arms will fail.

“We won’t accept it. We will resist it. We won’t give an inch,” he said.

North, 75, was a military aide to the National Security Council during the Reagan administration in the 1980s when he entered the spotlight for his role in arranging the secret sale of weapons to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

He was convicted in 1989 of obstructing Congress during its investigation, destroying government documents and accepting an illegal gratuity. Those convictions were overturned in 1991. Embraced by many on the right, he went on to run for office, write several books and serve as a commentator on Fox News.

___

Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie contributed to this report from Richmond, Va.

Trump’s Torrent of Twisted Claims on Russia

WASHINGTON — Russia keeps reverberating even with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report now part of history.

As much as President Donald Trump says he wants the United States to move on, he’s found it hard to turn away himself, as seen in a torrent of tweets and remarks railing against Democrats, trashing Mueller and painting his own actions in a saintly light.

There is little truth to be found in these statements.

A review of a week of Russia-heavy rhetoric from Trump and his team, also touching on the census and the economy:

RUSSIA

TRUMP: “No Collusion, No Obstruction – there has NEVER been a President who has been more transparent. Millions of pages of documents were given to the Mueller Angry Dems, plus I allowed everyone to testify, including W.H. counsel.” — tweet Wednesday.

ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR: “The White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims.” — remarks at the Justice Department on April 18.

THE FACTS: It’s a huge stretch for them to cast the White House as being “fully” cooperative and open in the investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russian figures.

Trump declined to sit for an interview with Mueller’s team, gave written answers that investigators described as “inadequate” and “incomplete,” said more than 30 times that he could not remember something he was asked about in writing, and — according to the report — tried to get aides to fire Mueller or otherwise shut or limit the inquiry.

In the end, the Mueller report found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice.

Also on the matter of transparency, Trump is an outlier among presidents in refusing to release his tax returns. Providing tax information as a candidate in 2016 and as president is something party nominees have traditionally done for half a century.

___

TRUMP: “In the ‘old days’ if you were President and you had a good economy, you were basically immune from criticism. Remember, ‘It’s the economy stupid.’ Today I have, as President, perhaps the greatest economy in history.” — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: You can assume many previous presidents would beg to disagree that a good economy shielded them from criticism.

Under President Bill Clinton, whose top campaign staffer James Carville coined the phrase “the economy, stupid” to underscore what the campaign should be about, the unemployment rate fell to 3.8% and the nation’s economy grew 4% or more for four straight years.

Yet Clinton was under independent counsel investigation for all but one year of his presidency, 1993. The House impeached him in December 1998, at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, though the Senate acquitted him in February 1999. In January 1998, Hillary Clinton alleged a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to take down her husband, a widely mocked complaint about the relentless criticism the Clintons faced from the right (which extended to ridicule over the title of Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, “It Takes a Village.”)

Under President Ronald Reagan, the economy expanded 3.5% or more for six years in a row, with growth rocketing to 7.2% in 1984. Yet Reagan was dogged in his second term by the Iran-Contra investigation, which focused on covert arm sales to Iran that financed aid to Nicaraguan rebels.

Both presidents saw much faster growth than Trump has presided over, despite Trump’s faulty claim to have “perhaps the greatest economy in history.” Growth reached 2.9% last year, the best in four years, but far below the levels achieved under Clinton or Reagan. The unemployment rate touched 3.7% last September and November, the lowest in five decades, but just one-tenth of a percentage point below the 3.8% in April 2000 under Clinton.

___

TRUMP: “Mueller was NOT fired and was respectfully allowed to finish his work on what I, and many others, say was an illegal investigation (there was no crime), headed by a Trump hater who was highly conflicted.” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong to suggest that the FBI acted illegally by investigating him. The FBI does not need to know if or have evidence that a crime occurred before it begins an investigation.

Many investigations that are properly conducted ultimately don’t find evidence of any crime. The FBI is empowered to open an investigation if there’s information it has received or uncovered that leads the bureau to think it might encounter a crime. Apart from that, the investigation into the Trump campaign was initially a counterintelligence investigation rather than a strictly criminal one, as agents sought to understand whether and why Russia was meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump also makes a baseless charge that Mueller was “highly conflicted.” Mueller, a longtime Republican, was cleared by the Justice Department’s ethics experts to lead the Russia investigation. Nothing in the public record makes him a “Trump hater.”

According to the special counsel’s report, when Trump previously complained privately to aides that Mueller would not be objective, the advisers, including then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, then-White House counsel Don McGahn and Reince Priebus, chief of staff at the time, rejected those complaints as not representing “true conflicts.” Bannon also called the claims “ridiculous.”

___

TRUMP: “I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court.” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: He’d have a tough hearing at the Supreme Court. Justices ruled 9-0 in 1993 that the Constitution grants sole power of impeachment to the House and Senate, not the judiciary.

Under the principle of separation of powers, Congress is a co-equal branch of government to the executive branch and judiciary. The House is afforded power to impeach a president by bringing formal charges and the Senate convenes the trial, with two-thirds of senators needed to convict and remove a president from office. The Constitution does not provide a role for the judiciary in the impeachment process, other than the chief justice of the United States presiding over the Senate trial.

In its 1993 ruling, the Supreme Court said framers of the Constitution didn’t intend for the court to have the power to review impeachment proceedings because they involve political questions that shouldn’t be resolved in the courts.

___

KELLYANNE CONWAY, White House counselor, saying there’s no need for Congress to continue investigating with the Mueller probe concluded: “We all know if Director Mueller and his investigators wanted to or felt that it was right to indict they would have done that. He had every opportunity to indict and declined to indict. Investigators investigate and they decide to indict, they refer indictment or they decline indictment. That’s the way the process works.” — remarks Wednesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: That’s not how Mueller’s process worked. According to the report, Mueller’s team declined to “make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” on whether to indict — that is, do what prosecutors typically do, as Conway describes it — because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. “Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought,” the report states.

As a result, the report factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter or for prosecutors to do so once Trump leaves office. Mueller’s team wrote that its investigation was conducted “in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh” and documentary material available.

“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the report states.

___

HOGAN GIDLEY, White House deputy press secretary: “He’s already denounced, multiple times, Russian involvement.” — remarks Tuesday to reporters.

THE FACTS: Trump has had it both ways, at times criticizing that involvement but more often equivocating, and long after U.S. intelligence agencies and other parts of his administration became convinced of Russian meddling. “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,'” Trump said of Putin in November 2017. “I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.” In February 2018, he tweeted: “I never said Russia did not meddle in the election, I said ‘it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.'”

Now he’s assailed the report by Mueller, whose investigation fleshed out the audacious Russian effort to shape the election in favor of Trump and resulted in indictments against 25 Russians accused either of hacking Democratic email accounts or sowing discord in America through social media, as well as Trump associates.

___

TRUMP: “Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller. The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!” — tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: Trump’s wrong to suggest that the people “closest” to him weren’t called to testify before Mueller’s team.

Plenty of people close to him, including in his own family, interviewed with the special counsel’s investigators or were at least asked to appear. And of those who did, some said not very good things about their interactions with the president.

Among the advisers and aides who spoke with Mueller was McGahn, who extensively detailed Trump’s outrage at the investigation and his efforts to curtail it. McGahn told Mueller’s team how Trump called him at home and urged him to press the Justice Department to fire the special counsel, then told him to deny that the entire episode had taken place once it became public.

Mueller also interviewed Priebus, Bannon, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former White House communications director Hope Hicks and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer who once said he was so close to the president that he’d “take a bullet” for him, also cooperated with Mueller and delivered unflattering details.

Mueller certainly wanted to hear from Trump’s family too, even if not all relatives were eager to cooperate. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., declined to be voluntarily interviewed by investigators, according to Mueller’s report. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, spoke multiple times to Mueller’s team. One of the president’s daughters, Ivanka Trump, provided information through an attorney.

___

GIDLEY: “It was Barack Obama who leaned over to Dmitry Medvedev in the Oval Office and said, ‘Listen, we’ll have more flexibility when the election’s over.'” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: First, the conversation was in South Korea, not the Oval Office. Gidley accurately recounted the gist of what Obama was heard telling the Russian president on a microphone they didn’t know was on. But Gidley did not explain the context of the remark.

Obama was suggesting he would have more flexibility postelection to address Russia’s concerns about a NATO missile defense system in Europe. The conversation with Medvedev, who was soon succeeded by Vladimir Putin, had nothing to do with Russian meddling that would be exposed in the U.S. election four years away.

___

CENSUS

TRUMP: “The American people deserve to know who is in this Country. Yesterday, the Supreme Court took up the Census Citizenship question, a really big deal.” — tweet Wednesday.

GIDLEY, when asked whether Trump believes an accurate census count isn’t necessary: “He wants to know who’s in this country. I think as a sovereign nation we have that right. It’s been a question that’s been on the census for decades.” — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Not since 1950 has the census collected citizenship data from the whole population.

Moreover, Trump’s position that asking a citizenship question in the census is needed to “know who is in this country” ignores the judgment of the Census Bureau’s own researchers, who say that it would not result in the most accurate possible count of the U.S. population. The question is already asked in other government surveys.

According to January 2018 calculations by the Census Bureau, adding the question to the once-a-decade survey form would cause lower response rates among Hispanics and noncitizens. The government would have to spend at least $27.5 million for additional phone calls, home visits and other follow-up efforts to reach them.

Federal judges in California, Maryland and New York have blocked the administration from going forward with a citizenship question after crediting the analysis of agency experts. The experts said millions would go uncounted because Hispanics and immigrants might be reluctant to say if they or others in their households are not citizens.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has argued that a citizenship question is needed to help the government better comply with the Voting Rights Act. But the Justice Department has been enforcing the 1965 law, which was passed to help protect minority groups’ political rights, with citizenship data already available from other government surveys.

The count goes to the heart of the U.S. political system, determining the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House and how the electoral votes that decide presidential elections are distributed. It also shapes how 300 federal programs distribute more than $800 billion a year to local communities.

___

ECONOMY

TRUMP retweet of RONNA MCDANIEL, Republican National Committee chairwoman: “If Joe Biden wants to keep score: In 8 years, Biden & Obama had a net loss of 193,000 manufacturing jobs. In just over 2 years, @realDonaldTrump has created 453,000 manufacturing jobs.” — tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: McDaniel is right but presents a misleading portrait of economic growth during Barack Obama’s presidency, with Biden serving as vice president.

Obama’s eight years in office began with the final five months of the 17-month Great Recession, which began under his predecessor and included some of the worst stretches of job loss since World War II.

Manufacturing jobs bottomed out in February 2010, then grew steadily for the next six years before declining during Obama’s last year in office. Still, during that stretch the economy added 915,000 manufacturing jobs.

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Rugaber, Eric Tucker and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Sri Lanka Militants Set Off Bombs During Raid, Killing 15

AMPARA, Sri Lanka — Militants linked to Easter suicide bombings opened fire and set off explosives during a raid by Sri Lankan security forces on a house in the country’s east, leaving behind a grisly discovery Saturday: 15 bodies, including six children.

The gun battle that began Friday night and the carnage that followed come amid widespread fear of more attacks as officials hunt for militants with explosives believed to still be at large after the coordinated bombings of churches and luxury hotels that killed more than 250 people nearly a week ago.

Raids and police curfews have shut down areas of eastern Sri Lanka, and Catholic leaders have canceled Sunday Masses indefinitely. Officials also urged Muslims to stay home for prayers in an extraordinary call by the clergy to curtail worship.

The U.S. Department of State, citing terror groups plotting more possible attacks, also urged Americans to reconsider travel to Sri Lanka and ordered the school-age children of government workers to leave the country. The U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka has previously warned the public to stay away from places of worship over the weekend, a stark alert underlining that authorities believe some attackers remain at large.

The gunfight Friday came after police tipped off soldiers about a suspected safe house near the town of Sammanthurai in Sri Lanka’s Ampara District, where authorities said the militants set off three explosions and opened fire.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said some of the dead likely were militants who blew themselves up in suicide bombings. Earlier, the military said at least one civilian had been killed in the attack.

A girl and a woman survived the explosion at the suspected safe house but were critically injured and being treated at a hospital, Gunasekara said.

Photographs taken by The Associated Press show the charred remains of one child and the body of another wearing a green T-shirt with the words “good boy” written on the back. The bodies of an adult woman and man were found after the explosion with their clothes burned off.

Meanwhile, the military said security forces had recovered explosives, detonators, “suicide kits,” military uniforms and Islamic State group flags in the ongoing raids.

Gunasekara said officers acting on information from intelligence officials also found 150 sticks of blasting gelatin and 100,000 small metal balls, as well as a van and clothing suspected of being used by those involved in the Easter attacks. Suicide bomb vests often are packed with such balls to increase the shrapnel in the explosion, making them even deadlier.

Fear of more attacks has led to increased security at churches, shrines, temples and mosques across the multiethnic island nation of 21 million off the southern coast of India.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, told reporters Friday that church officials had seen a leaked security document describing Roman Catholic churches and other denominations as a major target. He asked the faithful across Sri Lanka to stay home for their own safety.

“We don’t want repetitions,” Ranjith said.

It was an extraordinary request for a Catholic clergyman to make, as churches often remain a refuge. Giovanni Maria Vian, a church historian and emeritus editor of the Vatican newspaper, said he believed it was the first time the church had canceled Masses across a country for security reasons.

In Galle Face, a normally crowded ocean side park in Colombo near some of the hotels that were bombed, only a few people could be seen Saturday. Kiosks were closed and traffic was lighter than usual, with security officials blocking streets and checking vehicles at barricades.

Yashwant Kumar Singh, 23, a worker from India, said he wants to go back to his homeland because he fears another attack. “If it only happened on one day, then that wouldn’t have been so difficult, but bombs are going off here every day. That is why there is an atmosphere of fear. We are feeling very scared,” he said.

Meanwhile, cleaning crews worked at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, the capital, where broken glass still littered a blood-stained floor, the remnants of one of the Easter attacks. They collected debris, tossing it into a truck parked outside as a heavy contingent of security forces stood guard.

Authorities told Muslims to worship at home rather than attend communal Friday prayers that are the most important religious service of the week, but several mosques held services anyway. At a mosque in Colombo, police armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles stood guard outside for hundreds of worshippers.

The Easter attackers are “not Muslims. This is not Islam. This is an animal,” said Akurana Muhandramlage Jamaldeen Mohamed Jayfer, the chairman of the mosque. “We don’t have a word (strong enough) to curse them.”

There were also reports by some Muslims of harassment because of their religion.

A local television channel showed people on a bus asking a Muslim woman wearing a traditional burqa to either remove it or leave the bus. She later left the bus.

Abdul Azeez Abdul Sattar, 63, an auto-rickshaw driver, said a man in his neighborhood refused to hire him, telling him, “You are a terrorist; you have a bomb. I won’t take your auto.”

There were several armed police officers guarding the Holy Cross Church in Gampaha, a predominantly Buddhist town.

“People are shocked, because this came years after the war ended, and after all these years, we have been living in peace,” said Pradeep Kumara, 36, a clerk at a private company, referring to Sri Lanka’s long civil war, which ended in 2009. “This has disrupted our work, and our ordinary and normal life. We don’t want to go back to that troublesome period.”

Sri Lanka’s government, crippled from a long political crisis between the president and prime minister last year, promised swift action to capture militants still at large. President Maithripala Sirisena said about 140 people had been identified as having links to the Islamic State group.

A “major search operation has been undertaken,” Sirisena said. “Every household in the country will be checked.”

On Friday, police confirmed that the leader of the local militant group blamed for the attack, Mohamed Zahran, died in the suicide bombing at the Shangri-La Hotel, one of six hotels and churches attacked. Zahran appeared in an Islamic State video claiming responsibility for the coordinated assault, and authorities in both Sri Lanka and Australia confirmed links between IS and the attack.

___

Mallawarachi reported from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

___

Associated Press journalists Rishabh Jain, Emily Schmall and Foster Klug in Colombo, Sri Lanka, contributed to this report.

‘Nowhere to Run To’

Excerpted from the first chapter of “When All Else Fails,” Copyright 2019, Rayyan Al-Shawaf. Published by Interlink Books on April 23, 2019. This excerpt is reproduced with the permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

On the morning of September 12th, 2001, I set off by car from northeast Orlando, where I lived, for Winter Park, a suburb to the west, convinced I had to see Hashem—though I wasn’t sure why.

It had found me. The mini-Moloch that used to chase me around Lebanon had followed me to the States, except now it was all grown up and really pissed. How could this happen?

One minute, you’re taking a leak, your tendency toward idle contemplation in such instances leading you to ponder why James Earl Jones’s baritone voice is so often described as “commanding.” And the next minute, you’re sitting in front of the television watching CNN. Not because of James Earl Jones’s commanding way of saying “This…is CNN,” but because, while flipping through the channels, you come across a vaguely familiar high-rise building with a large hole in it, from which smoke is billowing.

I knew it was an attack as soon as I saw that building, despite the fact that the people on TV kept going on about a “tragic accident.” I also knew, instinctively, who―or pretty much who―had carried it out. The first thought to enter my mind concerned my former friend Khaled. You fool, if only you’d waited, you’d have found yourself in precisely the situation you longed for. How not, with Arabs and Muslims in the States surely about to enter an era in which the burden of proof would fall on them to prove their humanity?

When the second plane hit, thoughts of fleeing, of just grabbing a bag and jumping in the car and driving away like some sort of fugitive, invaded my mind. But I had nowhere to run to. No Ashrafieh if skirmishes broke out in Hamra, no Brummana if Ashrafieh blew up. America was thousands of times larger than Lebanon, but because it was a real country as opposed to a patchwork of distinct and feuding localities, and because the now giant Moloch, as ravenous for human life as ever, had devoured so many people with just one bite, someone like me, whose appearance betrayed a shared geographic if not ethnic origin with the bloodthirsty ogre, could not hide anywhere.

#

As it happened, I was a pretty jittery and suspicious guy to begin with. When my buddy Lewis and I had gone to the Korean restaurant on East Colonial Drive for dinner one night a few weeks earlier, he suggested we try the “Bi Bim Bap.” I convinced him otherwise, insisting that the dish didn’t actually exist. “Trust me, man, these Koreans only put ‘Bi Bim Bap’ on the menu so that we say it so that they laugh at us,” I explained.

Now, driving toward Winter Park, I consulted the rearview mirror every so often, as was my habit, so that if I glimpsed any sort of untoward developments, I could take appropriate action. However, the development I anticipated on this occasion was not the otherwise expected Mossad agent materializing in the backseat to assassinate me, but rather a police car with flashing lights indicating that I should pull over—which I desperately wanted to do, so that I could surrender (even though I hadn’t done anything) and put an end to this nightmare. Yet to my consternation, every time I checked, no police cars appeared in the mirror. In fact, the streets were virtually empty.

My wheels were new. A few months earlier, midway through my junior year, I had bought a used 1997 Geo Metro (a compact hatchback) with some money de Monet my parents had kindly wired me for the purpose. I made the acquisition for a simple reason. In olden times, a man had to slay a dragon to win a woman’s favor; today, he needed an automobile. My fortunes in the romance department hadn’t changed since I scored the car (which made me consider trying to get my folks to also spring for a sword, so that I could seek out any aged, doddering dragons busy foraging for leftovers in dumpsters behind fusion cuisine restaurants), but at least now I could zip over to the University of Central Florida campus and back to my apartment complex, rather than spend half an hour hoofing it each way, or waste time waiting for the shuttle bus. I could also go to Winter Park.

Normally, on a drive like this, I’d admire the scenery, a lush, verdant landscape stippled with shimmering teal blue lakes that exemplified Central Florida’s natural beauty. On the approach to Winter Park, I enjoyed trundling down one road in particular, the oak trees overhanging both sides forming an umbriferous canopy that shards of sunlight sliced through here and there, giving me the impression I had entered a tunnel haphazardly illuminated by jagged ceiling lamps.

As I’d roll into Winter Park itself, a town gobbled up by the ever-expanding metropolis of Orlando, my attention would shift to street scenes. Here you’d see people bustling about, ducking into and out of boutiques, restaurants, and coffee shops, infusing the place with a city vibe. Orlando was big but sprawling; outside the downtown area, you couldn’t find much building density, and the population was thinly spread. In fact, whole swaths of territory lay vacant save for the occasional strip mall, which usually included a Publix supermarket, a Blockbuster video store, and a few other assorted commercial establishments. (Oftentimes, you’d have two such malls on either side of the same stretch of an otherwise empty boulevard. For some reason, these always seemed to have drugstore giants CVS and Walgreens facing each other.) Surveying the ground below from the airplane when I first came over from Beirut via London, I couldn’t spot any signs of urban concentration.

Little Winter Park, on the other hand, was compact and overflowing with people. Park Avenue, the brick-cobbled main drag, brought to mind some of the streets of Rome, where I had lived before we moved to Beirut. Although I liked the chocolate-box look of this affluent town-cum-suburb, I hesitated to express this to other UCF students for fear of being seen as a bourgeois wannabe.

None of this was on my mind now, with horrifying images of desperate people flinging themselves out of the burning Twin Towers’ windows—exchanging one kind of certain death for another—having displaced almost everything else. Driving from northeast Orlando to Winter Park, I felt the impact of what had happened in New York City, Washington, DC, and rural Pennsylvania the day before more forcefully than anything that had taken place in Florida since my arrival nearly three years earlier. Nothing even came close.

Indeed, following the presidential election in 2000, I watched the news programs on the chaos unfolding in the Sunshine State as though it were occurring in another country. This was true of most UCF students, whose political apathy during the election predictably held firm in its aftermath.

And a year before that, when the cops arrested Khaled, I felt that they had surgically removed him from our midst without so much as grazing the rest of us, his (precious few) friends and acquaintances. We were left shocked both by what he had done and by the speed of his very much deserved punishment. But this thing yesterday hadn’t simply shocked me; it had vivified and broadened my consciousness, so that I became aware of the absence of any natural law governing societal reactions to disruptions large and small. Nothing had guaranteed that, with Khaled’s arrest and trial (a minor incident in the grand scheme of things), or the Supreme Court’s ruling on the presidential election (a pretty big deal whichever way you looked at it), hotheads emotionally invested in either case wouldn’t make trouble. That they didn’t in fact stir anything up made me complacent, so that I took it for granted that courtroom verdicts resolved conflicts and crises. Now, I was forced to think. What I came up with was hardly comforting: Even if the United States apprehended and tried the planners of these attacks, or went so far as to kill them, things still wouldn’t return to normal.And before any of that happened…well, who knew how bad it could get?

I needed to talk to Hashem, having convinced myself that he could help me make sense of the situation. Not that he proved especially insightful on the phone when I had called him the evening of the previous day—but I attributed that to the sense of dread that crept up on us at the same time. After we said our (awkward) hellos, the conversation went something like this:

Me: That was pretty bad, huh?

Hashem: Yes, terrible.

Me: Looks like it was…you know…terrorism.

Hashem: Oh, I’m sure of it.

(A pause pregnant with meaning—as well as a sudden shared suspicion of the presence of something nebulous and undefined, but very, very attentive.)

Me: You know, I condemn terrorism in the—

Hashem: I have always condemned terrorism very—

Me: Strongest terms.

Hashem: There are no terms stronger than the ones I have used.

Me: Unless you consider what I’ve said on the subject.

Et cetera.

#

In reality, Hashem, whom I had known for a couple of years, didn’t really fit the bill as the sort of reasonable guy able to provide the sober analysis I craved. He was too conflicted and captious. A Lebanese who had come to the States from his country to pursue an MA in liberal studies at Winter Park’s Rollins College (which the actor Michael Nouri, an Iraqi like me, had attended), he loved the freedom, security, easygoing culture, and physical vastness of America. But in addition to his many criticisms of US Middle East policy (some of which I shared), he also harbored a deep-seated urge to carp about unsavory aspects of American society, especially lesser-known ones, an activity from which he derived much satisfaction. He read up on the history of racism in Florida and enjoyed bringing its formerly prominent public role to the attention of those who didn’t regard the state as culturally Southern. Naturally, he knew all about the Rosewood race riot of 1923, the popularity of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan—which assassinated early Civil Rights activist Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriet Moore—in the 1940s and ’50s, and the decades-long career of notorious lawman Sheriff Willis V. McCall. In my view, this ugly history was important, but I cringed at Hashem’s claim that white Floridians were still racist even if they rarely translated their fanaticism into action, and that white American society (from which he drew most of his friends) remained sick to its core.

In general, I took Hashem’s anti-Americanism in stride, reasoning that people from our part of the world sometimes needed to suppress the vague but insistent feeling that we now lived in a land that, by its very tranquility and stability, mocked our countries’ lack thereof, and challenged us to find some—any—fault with it. Still, a couple of things about him did disturb me. The first admittedly became an issue only when I took an Introduction to Judaism class at UCF: How would Hashem explain his name when the fateful day arrived and he was faced with the righteous opprobrium of the exalted, hierarchy-obsessed, and hypersensitive HaShem?

The second matter concerned his reverence for Saddam Hussein. He was genuinely saddened that I, an Iraqi, didn’t share his esteem for the bloodthirsty dictator. Hashem maintained that, were Saddam to rule chaotic and unstable Lebanon, he’d turn it into an ordered and well-run country. I wondered if his preference for Iraq’s Saddam over Syria’s Hafez Al-Assad stemmed from sectarian reasons—Hashem, like Saddam, was a Sunni Muslim, while the Syrian dictator and his son/successor were Alawite—or because Assad had helped to destroy much of Lebanon during its ruinous civil war, which lasted from 1975 until 1990, and proceeded to make it a Syrian vassal state.

At any rate, my friend’s fantasy suffered from a major inconsistency. Hashem yearned for the Iraqi president precisely because the latter was iron-fisted and brutal, yet in his alternate reality, Saddam the president of Lebanon never deployed these signature traits against him or his family and friends. The chimerical Saddam, though endowed with his real-life counterpart’s murderousness and sadism, would unleash such savagery only on people who had wronged or taken advantage of Hashem in some petty dispute or other. This Saddam didn’t demand a cut of Hashem’s father’s business, never sided with anyone against him, and didn’t lead a political party some of whose local officials came knocking on his family’s door demanding to marry his unwed sisters or draft them as “secretaries.” He existed only to please Hashem and advance his interests.

#

When I arrived at the handsome white-brick Park Avenue building where Hashem lived, he was practicing getting deported…