Chris Hedges's Blog, page 272

Looming Sex Abuse Cases Put Boys Scouts in the Crosshairs

NEW YORK—The lawyers’ ads on the internet aggressively seeking clients to file sexual abuse lawsuits give a taste of what lies ahead this year for the Boy Scouts of America: potentially the most fateful chapter in its 109-year history.

Sexual abuse settlements have already strained the Boy Scouts’ finances to the point where the organization is exploring “all available options,” including Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But now the financial threats have intensified.

The reason: States have been moving in recent months to adjust their statute-of-limitations laws so that victims of long-ago sexual abuse can sue for damages. New York state has passed a law that will allow such lawsuits starting in August. A similar bill in New Jersey has reached the governor’s desk. Bills also are pending in Pennsylvania and California.

In New York and elsewhere, lawyers are hard at work recruiting clients to sue the Boy Scouts, alleging they were molested as youths by scoutmasters or other volunteers.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers “recognize that this is a very unique and lucrative opportunity,” said attorney Karen Bitar, who formerly handled sex-crime cases as a prosecutor in Brooklyn before going into private practice.

Attorney Tim Kosnoff, a veteran of major sexual abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church, said Tuesday that he and his team have signed up 186 clients from dozens of states in just the past few weeks who want to be part of litigation against the Boy Scouts. Kosnoff said 166 of them identified alleged abusers who have not been named in any of the Boy Scout files made public in past years.

Boy Scouts spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos said the organization continues to evaluate its financial situation, and she defended its current abuse-prevention policies. The organization serves more than 2.2 million youths.

A bankruptcy by the Boy Scouts could be unprecedented in its complexity, potentially involving plaintiffs in virtually every state, according to several lawyers. It would be national in scope, unlike the various Catholic Church bankruptcy cases in the U.S., which have unfolded diocese by diocese.

“A Boy Scout bankruptcy would be bigger in scale than any other sex abuse bankruptcy,” said Seattle-based attorney Mike Pfau, whose firm is representing more than 300 victims in New York state.

Jeffrey Schwartz, a New York-based bankruptcy expert with the firm McKool Smith, said the Boy Scouts don’t have a particularly large flow of cash and might be forced to sell off property in bankruptcy. The Boy Scouts have extensive land holdings, including camping and hiking terrain.

“They’ll play for time,” Schwartz said. “If their defense costs and settlement costs are greater than their membership fees, it could be a death spiral.”

However, Dallas-based trial attorney Michelle Simpson Tuegel, part of a team representing numerous sex abuse survivors, said bankruptcy might benefit the Boy Scouts and reduce any payouts to plaintiffs.

“It can be a tool that these institutions use to shield assets and avoid having to reveal some information,” she said. “In many ways, it’s a disservice to victims.”

Illustrating the depth of its problems, the Boy Scouts filed lawsuits last year against six of its own insurers, saying they have improperly refused to cover some of the sex abuse liabilities incurred by the organization. The insurers say the coverage obligation is voided because the Boy Scouts failed to take effective preventive measures such as warning parents that scouts might be abused. The suits are still pending.

The intensifying pressures on the Boy Scouts coincide with the mounting threats to the U.S. Catholic Church in regard to its own long-running sex abuse scandal. Catholic bishops will be meeting in Baltimore in June to discuss the next steps.

Both the church and the Boy Scouts are iconic, historically well-respected institutions now known as having been magnets for pedophiles trying to exploit the trust of boys and their parents.

“When you cloak people in badges of respect, you create the perfect opportunity for bad people to get access to children,” said Chris Hurley, whose Chicago law firm is representing 11 former scouts in sex abuse trials scheduled on a monthly basis this year.

Another common denominator for the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts: Both kept voluminous secret files with names of suspected abusers, yet balked at sharing the information with the public.

Since the 1920s, the Boy Scouts have been compiling “ineligible files,” which list adult volunteers considered to pose a risk of child molestation. About 5,000 of these files have been made public as a result of court action; others remain confidential.

Delimarkos said when any BSA volunteer is added to the database for suspected abuse, “they are reported to law enforcement, removed entirely from any Scouting program and prohibited from re-joining anywhere.”

Minnesota-based attorney Jeff Anderson, who had led many lawsuits against the Catholic Church, released a court deposition in New York on Tuesday in which an expert hired by the Boy Scouts said she tallied 7,819 individuals in the “ineligible files” as of January, as well as 12,254 victims.

Anderson expressed hope that litigation triggered by New York’s new Child Victims Act would increase pressure on the Boy Scouts to make public more of the still-confidential files.

Some of the files were ordered released after a 2010 sexual abuse case in Portland, Oregon, that led to a nearly $20 million judgment against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a man molested by a Scout leader in the 1980s.

Paul Mones, the plaintiff’s lawyer in that case, said there are no overall figures on Boy Scout abuse settlements because the details are kept confidential.

Both the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church say they now have policies in place to sharply curtail abuse that abounded in past decades. In the Boy Scouts ‘ case, the steps included requiring criminal background checks for all staff and volunteers, and requiring two or more adult leaders be present with youth at all times during scouting activities.

 

Mnuchin Defies Demand to Hand Over Trump Tax Returns

WASHINGTON—The struggle between House Democrats and the Trump administration over investigations intensified Tuesday as a former White House official defied a subpoena and the Treasury Department ignored a deadline for providing President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the White House has adopted the “untenable” position that it can ignore requests from the Democratic majority in the House.

“It appears that the president believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight,” Cummings said in a statement.

Cummings was specifically referring to Carl Kline, a former White House personnel security director, who was subpoenaed by Democrats.

Kline did not show up Tuesday for a scheduled deposition, and Cummings said he is consulting with other lawmakers and staff about scheduling a vote to hold Kline in contempt of Congress. The committee subpoenaed Kline after one of his former subordinates told the panel that dozens of people in Trump’s administration were granted security clearances despite “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.

Meanwhile, the administration on Tuesday defied a demand from Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., to turn over six years of Trump’s tax returns by the close of business — a strong signal that they intend to reject the request. In a letter to Neal, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin asked for more time and said he would give the panel a final decision by May 6.

Mnuchin wrote Neal that he is consulting with the Justice Department “due to the serious constitutional questions raised by this request and the serious consequences that a resolution of those questions could have for taxpayer privacy.”

Neal hasn’t announced next steps, but he could opt to issue a subpoena to enforce his demand, sent under a 1924 law that requires the Treasury secretary to furnish any tax return requested by a handful of lawmakers with responsibility over the IRS.

The fight over Kline’s appearance comes as the White House has stonewalled the oversight panel in several different investigations. On Monday, Trump and his business organization sued Cummings to block a subpoena that seeks years of the president’s financial records. The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, said a subpoena from Cummings “has no legitimate legislative purpose” and accused Democrats of harassing Trump.

Cummings said the White House “has refused to produce a single piece of paper or a single witness” in any of the panel’s investigations this year. Democrats took control of the House in January.

The back and forth over Kline’s testimony played out in a series of letters over the past month between the White House, the oversight committee and Kline’s lawyer. The White House demanded that one of its lawyers attend the deposition to ensure executive privilege was protected, but Cummings rejected that request. The White House then ordered Kline, who now works at the Pentagon, to defy the subpoena.

Cummings said the committee has for years required that witnesses are represented only by their own counsel.

“There are obvious reasons we need to conduct our investigations of agency malfeasance without representatives of the office under investigation,” Cummings said in a statement.

A spokesman for the top Republican on the oversight panel, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, said Cummings was choosing confrontation over cooperation.

“Chairman Cummings rushed to a subpoena in his insatiable quest to sully the White House,” said Russell Dye.

The oversight panel has been investigating security clearances issued to senior officials, including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former White House aide Rob Porter.

Tricia Newbold, an 18-year government employee who oversaw the issuance of clearances for some senior White House aides, told the committee earlier this year that she compiled a list of at least 25 officials who were initially denied security clearances last year because of their backgrounds. But she said senior Trump aides overturned those decisions, moves she said weren’t made “in the best interest of national security.”

According to a committee memo, Newbold said the disqualifying issues included foreign influence, conflicts of interest, financial problems, drug use, personal conduct and criminal conduct.

Newbold said she raised her concerns up the chain of command in the White House to no avail. Instead, she said, the White House retaliated, suspending her in January for 14 days without pay for not following a new policy requiring that documents be scanned as separate PDF files rather than one single PDF file. Kline was Newbold’s supervisor.

Newbold said when she returned to work in February, she was cut out of the security clearance process and removed from a supervisory responsibility.

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

An Alienated Culture Grooms Women for Cults

Maggie was born into a religious cult called the Christ Brotherhood. For the first 12 years of her life, the cult controlled her entire existence, including what she thought and knew, and how she was to behave. The precepts of Christianity and Judaism were both taught, and Christmas and Hanukkah were celebrated. Except for those holidays, however, life was a continuous struggle to get enough food to eat, and to avoid punishment for transgressions she never understood.

The community consisted of about 150 people spread throughout the country. Maggie recalls that when the cult leader, Thomas Paterson Brown, was incarcerated for raping and sodomizing a 14-year-old girl—the daughter of a cult member—the children of the community were put into foster care. When Brown was released, his parole conditions forbade him from contact with children under 18. To avoid those restrictions, the community moved to the Canary Islands, near Spain. Maggie is still not clear how the children were released from foster care and returned to the cult.

“My father was one of the founders, but the leader called the shots,” Maggie says. “Some of the girls were raped by the leader. While he was in prison, serving his time for having sex with underage girls, he invited some of the men he met in prison to come and join our church. One of the guys he brought home after his release molested the boys.”

Their world was built around punishment and disparagement. Maggie says that the cult’s children had to beg for food on the streets. Nuclear families were forbidden, so children were not protected by their parents. Violence against women was common. When Maggie’s mother was three months pregnant, she was gang-raped at gunpoint by several men in the community.

At age 11, Maggie was accused of being a whore. She was banished to the nearby forest in Tenerife. No one checked to see if she was safe.

“Being punished constantly was not unusual,” she says. “I just believed what I was told. I was taught never to question anything. I was used to being hungry all the time.”

When the group eventually petered out, Maggie was placed in school, although she had had no previous formal education. What she had learned about the world was primarily from reading any books she could find, as well as the Bible. There are still huge gaps in her education today. Her cult peers have serious drug problems, and there have been several suicides.

“We will never be able to function fully as adults,” Maggie says. “We have no frame of reference or understanding of social norms on how to function in society. I’m in group therapy, on medications, and I have a little job. Every day is a struggle. Still, I’m one of the lucky ones.”

For some who have been part of cults, their experiences may mirror Maggie’s, but cult relationships can also be defined more broadly.

Today, there are online cults, with followers strictly at a distance. Some cults consist of just a few people, who may or may not ever meet the cult leader. A cult may have several lieutenants on the ground who interact with followers. There are also cultlike experiences that involve just two people.

With alienation, stress and loneliness a fixture in our society, experts on cults say that people are increasingly susceptible to seeking a quick fix, to finding solace, to providing answers to the questions they have about life and their circumstances. They can fall prey to individuals whose charm and appeal mask narcissistic and sociopathic behaviors.

Such predators are a common element across the range of cults. They exercise control over other members of a group—or even a single person. That control can take the form of dictating the behavior of others, taking their money, and/or using others for sexual satisfaction. They often drip charisma, defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as a compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others.

“It is all about leaders,” according to Janja Lalich, a researcher, author and educator specializing in cults and extremist groups. She says that most people get recruited into a cult by friends, family or coworkers.

Women are particularly targeted for exploitation. They make up 70% of cults, vastly outnumbering men. The societal pressure for them to be compliant is far stronger than for men, and because of that, it is easier to recruit women who will form an attachment to a male leader.

“Women are expected to follow along and not make waves, not be assertive,” says Lalich, a sociology professor at California State University at Chico. “Women tend not to trust their gut, which has more to do with our culture and socialization than any fault of the women.

“Power and control are the objective, usually along with financial exploitation. And in many, many cults, sexual abuse is rampant,” Lalich says. “The sexual exploitation is a crucial factor in gaining power over women.”

Leaders and other charismatic recruiters often use “love-bombing” to hook a person into their cult.

Love-bombing was practiced by The Family International, a 1960s-era cult in Huntington Beach, Calif. Later, the founder of the Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon, used the technique to recruit members for his cult, who came to be identified as “Moonies.”

Love-bombing involves the use of intense flattery and praise directed by the predator to his prey. It works when a target is particularly vulnerable and unstable—if someone is lonely, in a period of change or loss, or at a new college or city.

Donna Andersen fell victim to this behavior. Although she was an educated and successful businesswoman, that didn’t protect her from the lures of her future husband, a man who had recently moved illegally to the United States from Sydney.

“He was very charming and had great ideas about starting a business together,” she recalls. “My husband used the ‘love bombing’ technique on me, and I fell for it big time. I had no reason to question him in the beginning.”

Andersen’s husband snared her with flattery and lies about his professional accomplishments and military honors, then committed adultery and stole from her.

“We were already married when his deception came to light,” she says. “He wanted my money, and when the money ran out, he was gone.”

Andersen established a company, Lovefraud.com, and has written books to help women recognize the sociopathic personality disorder her husband exhibited.

Other stories have more tragic endings.

Sharon Stern killed herself on April 25, 2012. She was a college student at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., studying for a master’s degree in dance and theater. It was there that she met Katsura Kan, a 70-year-old Butoh master. He was a guest teacher at Naropa.

Butoh is an avant-garde form of dance theater created in response to the horrors of World War II in Japan. It is described as a “dance of darkness” and involves grotesque, extreme movements, including graphic sexual allusions. Stern wanted to learn Butoh.

She became a teaching assistant to Kan. Soon after, her father, Tibor Stern, began to see dramatic changes in his daughter’s behavior.

“We entrusted our bright, happy daughter to this school and she came home in a casket,” he says.

Stern describes his daughter as totally exploited by Kan. She divorced her husband to show her devotion and love for the Butoh master.

“Katsura Kan convinced her to ask for money from us, her family and friends, that she would give to him. Our repeated attempts to get her to come home were ignored,” Stern recalls.

After her death, they found a disturbing email she had written to Kan:

“I AM MORE than imperfect. I am fat, ugly, stupid girl. I have nothing left but desire to connect with human race, escape time and subconscious. I guessing I must let go of attachment to KAN. KAN has wife and child. SHARONI has garbage, piles of garbage everywhere. I have only one very honest very sincere wish left. TO GO WITH KAN to some countryside and FAST, no food, no water. Need no bed. No shower. NO TIME. TO become empty. Want to shake this curse away.”

Stern alleges that his daughter wasn’t the only one under Kan’s spell, and that Kan had created a cult filled with female dance students from around the world who were under his control.

Stern established an organization to help educate families about cults, Families Against Cult Teachings. He also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Kan, which he won, for undue influence on his daughter that caused her suicide.

Cult experiences can also take the form of workshops, seminars, advancement programs and training sessions that claim to bring self-awareness and transform participants’ personal lives or improve professional skills. These types of events, called Large Group Awareness Training. Some are noted for being unconventional and often take place over several days.

Some of these programs are not what they appear to be. Victoria Brauker attended such a program through her workplace. She loved her new job and had ambitions to progress. When her employer invited her to take part in a three-day “communication training,” it sounded great.

“My employer had been introduced to this company by the wife of a newly hired employee. I was looking forward to a new training for my job. Unfortunately, I got uncomfortable right away,” she says.

Brauker began to feel uneasy when the leader pointed out several women in the group and yelled that they had let the team down. He berated the women for wasting the team’s time when they asked to use the bathroom.

“Then he started screaming at us and pretended to cry,” she recalls. “He was uncomfortably loud. It was when he told us to look at the person to our right and left and tell them they had no meaning that my nerves were on high alert. I was alarmed when the room was darkened and a godlike voice was played on a [tape] recorder.”

The final straw for Brauker came when the leader told half the audience in the dark room to put their arms by their sides, close their eyes and allow themselves to be hugged by another participant, possibly a stranger.

“I did not attend the third day,” she say. “I find these instructions highly unethical, and I refused to participate in them. I texted my daughter that I had probably flushed my career by leaving early.

“What happened to me was dangerous and has made me anxious, fearful, nervous, unsettled and feeling extremely vulnerable. I lost five nights of sleep and more days of work than that,” she says.

Rachel Bernstein, a marriage and family therapist in Encino, Calif., warns that group awareness trainings can be damaging and even dangerous.

“They often have you sign a thick stack of documents,” she says. “You basically sign away your rights to sue if something goes very wrong. They will present them to you and give you no time to read them. While possibly not as dangerous as some other cultlike circumstances, some attendees have ended up in psych wards.”

Some groups pick names that imply association with a legitimate business or a university. The first session will usually not be expensive, but participants will be aggressively invited to sign up for the “advantages” they can get at the next level. The crowd is often peppered with people who work for the cult and claim the training is the best thing that has ever happened to them. When they break the crowd up into small groups, they expose participants to “manufactured closeness.” Participants may be pushed to publicly share their deepest fears or most traumatic experiences with people who are not mental health professionals. Bernstein says these confessions help establish a commonality of experience and identity, and are used as hooks.

Patrick Ryan, a Philadelphia cult mediation specialist, studies such issues as mind control, destructive groups, parental alienation, brainwashing, abusive relationships, multi-level marketing, gurus and forms of undue influence. His primary occupation is to help people leave groups, and he also helps families and friends discern and address a loved one’s cult involvement.

Ryan notes that “any good manipulator can make a person’s family look wrong.” His process involves helping families understand their loved one’s world view and establish the importance of family ties. Less emphasis is placed on getting the cult member to leave the group. “We help families start a dialogue. It’s not confrontational,” he says. “Would you want to go home if every conversation you have is harassment?”

 

 

France Falls Behind as #MeToo Goes Global

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of its Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who are dedicated to pursuing truth within their countries and elsewhere.

Yes, French women have begun to talk. Growing numbers are reporting sexual assault and sexual harassment to police, thanks in large part to the #MeToo movement. New legislation is addressing sexual harassment, and prominent campaigns are raising funds to support women’s rights groups.

On Friday, the verdict in a high-profile case involving sexual harassment reflected the progress being made. A court dismissed a defamation case filed by Denis Baupin, the former deputy mayor of Paris. Baupin had sued six women who accused him of sexually harassing them over many years, and he had also sued two journalists who reported the harassment. In addition to dismissing the case, the court ordered Baupin to pay $1,120 (U.S. dollars) to each person he had sued.

“This is a huge victory for us,” says Claire Moléon, an attorney who represented one of the women. “It’s a very important step for French law.”

But despite this verdict, France still lags in the global denunciation of sexual and gender-based violence. In the land of gallantry, boorishness prevails through denial, mockery and complaints of false accusation. The women who do speak out often pay a high price for saying what has always been kept quiet.

French culture is filled with historical references to women’s strength—Marianne, the symbol of the nation, represents freedom over oppression; “The Second Sex,” Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 book, is known as a founding treatise of feminism. However, these traditional symbols of empowerment have done little to protect French survivors of sexual harassment and assault.

For a year and a half, the #MeToo movement has shaken the world, but it has mostly come up against a wall in France—a wall shaped by the country’s sexual attitudes and tradition of seduction. French critics of #MeToo suggest it is an attempt to force priggish values on their country.

“The #MeToo movement has been widely seen as a campaign of anti-human denunciation by radical feminists accused of wanting to import the ‘puritanical mores’ of Americans into the country of gallantry,” Sandra Muller said in a 2018 interview. Muller is the journalist who created the hashtag for #BalanceTonPorc (Expose Your Pig), France’s version of #MeToo.

Sheltered behind such fallacious arguments, a number of public personalities who have been denounced by survivors haven’t really worried, let alone been condemned. A governmental minister accused of rape received a standing ovation in Parliament; film producer Luc Besson responded to an accusation of rape by tweeting about the difference between “affection” and “harassment.” (In February, that rape investigation was dismissed due to lack of evidence, but several other women have contacted police and media to report assault and harassment by Besson.)

The French media mocks and trivializes #MeToo—or worse, it supports tolerance and impunity for sexual violence. A TV host and his guests talked on air about their desire to “slap” a feminist activist; the actor Gerard Depardieu, accused of rape and sexual assault, was pictured on a magazine cover and labeled an “extravagant” man not bound by “taboos.” The word “extravagant” was meant to praise Depardieu; its translations into English include “wild” and “outrageous.”

It’s not only a battle of the sexes. Some French women as well as men have spoken out against #MeToo, saying the movement has become an accusation campaign that essentially puts flirting in the same category as rape. Actress Catherine Deneuve was one of 100 women who signed an open letter to that effect in the French newspaper Le Monde in January 2018. The message sent by the letter is unforgettable: Well-known female professionals stood up for men’s power to annoy, or bother, women. Former porn star Brigitte Layaie, who was one of the signatories, went so far as to say “that a woman can [have an orgasm] during a rape.”

The women’s open letter sparked outrage in many international quarters. Critics said the letter wasn’t surprising in France, which the German daily Die Welt called “a country whose culture and literature have been characterized for centuries by libertinage, gallantry and sexual freedom, and which has produced authors like the Marquis de Sade. …”

Speaking Out

Although anti-feminist attitudes remain widespread, positive action is taking place on some fronts. A prime example is a major campaign by the Women’s Foundation, an organization that provides financial and legal support to women’s rights groups. Called #MaintenantOnAgit (Now We Act), the campaign has raised US$280,000 to help with efforts such as fighting sexual harassment at work.

Prominent figures in the entertainment industry have joined the campaign, according to Women’s Foundation President Anne-Cécile Mailfert. “Mobilizing actors and actresses is an effective way to get messages across,” she says. “The fact that known, admired actresses, [with] whom we women identify, take the floor to denounce violence against women has a cathartic effect.”

In another step forward, France passed legislation in August 2018 to reduce sexual harassment on streets and on public transportation. Under that law, men receive immediate fines for actions that make women feel uncomfortable, such as whistling or making degrading comments. Although it can be difficult to catch the perpetrators, more than 300 fines have been issued since the law took effect.

A number of women feel progress also has been made because survivors of sexual assault and harassment are speaking out more loudly and more often.

Participants in the Baupin trial celebrate Friday’s verdict. The sign at right says, “A historic trial.” (Nadya Charvet)

The Baupin lawsuit was notable for the number of women who stepped forward. “We had never seen so many female victims in the same courtroom,” Moléon says. “Political women like Isabelle Attard, my client; others who worked at the Paris City Hall with [Baupin]; journalists who interviewed him. … We also knew that many other victims were not present, because it takes a lot of courage to testify, to accept being in the spotlight.”

Survivors of sexual harassment and sexual violence in earlier decades appreciate this progress. When writer Virginie Lou was raped in a suburb of Paris in the 1990s, her mother advised her to “move on” instead of speaking out—to observe the law of silence that prevailed at the time. But Lou chose the harder path and told her story in court, and she is pleased that survivors today can speak out more readily. “We can only be glad that women’s speech has (now) been released,” she says.

Unfortunately, speaking out doesn’t eliminate rape culture in France. Speaking out doesn’t make rape less devastating to the victim—and doesn’t mean justice will be served. Only 1% of accused rapists currently are convicted, and 70% of rape accusations are dismissed.

Caroline, a Parisian who spoke to this reporter but chose not to use her last name, has seen the effects of France’s rape culture. In 2016 when her daughter was 16, a male friend at a party forced the girl to perform oral sex, on her knees, while he held her by the hair. He admired the abuse in the bathroom mirror. “No doubt [the fantasy that led to this] came from one of the porn films these teens are force-fed with—one that trivializes sexual violence and submission of women,” Caroline says.

A week after the crime, the teenage girl collapsed in class. She was taken to the hospital, where psychiatrists and police interviewed her. “[They were] all kind, but it was a nightmare for my daughter, who felt guilty, who still feels guilty and who did not want to file a complaint,” Caroline says. “I insisted that she do so, so as she could not one day blame me for looking the other way.”

A few weeks ago, Caroline received a letter that said her daughter’s complaint had been dismissed due to lack of sufficient evidence. The mother cried. “I couldn’t tell my daughter,” she says. “I was too ashamed [that I had urged my daughter to speak out and that the system had failed her].”

From Survivor to Victim

Those familiar with the French legal system say the trauma of the aftermath is almost as severe as the initial trauma experienced by survivors of sexual assault and harassment.

That aftermath can take place in the courtroom or in society at large, according to Moléon. “We send women to smash themselves against the jurisdictional wall … [or else the system] turns against them with complaints of false accusation,” she says.

The case of Sandra Muller illustrates the backlash facing those who reveal sexual harassment. In 2017, the creator of #BalanceTonPorc denounced Eric Brion, former director of a television channel, for making these inappropriate comments to her during a television festival: “You have big breasts. You are my type of woman. I’ll make you orgasm all night long.” Brion responded that his advances didn’t constitute sexual harassment and that Muller’s accusations had damaged him personally and professionally. He has since sued Muller for libel.

Survivors of sexual violence also have to painfully relive their assaults, as the French journalist known as Usul pointed out in a video that went viral. He said: “Here is the final injunction of the respectable bourgeois: You’ve been assaulted? Prove it, let the police search your lives, the justice probe your souls, and the doctors feel your flesh.”

Blaming victims perpetuates rape culture in France, according to Muriel Salmona, a psychiatrist and president of the Traumatic Memory and Victimology Association. A 2015 survey conducted by the association included interviews with 1,000 people. One-fourth of them said that if a woman walks in the streets wearing a very short skirt or a shirt that shows cleavage, that provides sufficient grounds to provoke a rape. In addition, “many people still believe that there is no rape if a person gives in when forced [to have sex],” Salmona wrote in an article on the association’s website.

Grassroots Work

On the grassroots level, supporters continue efforts to help survivors of sexual assault and harassment.

Organizations are working to change perspectives and to protect survivors. For instance, Traumatic Memory and Victimology has created a platform for women to report sexual and gender-based violence. The association also conducts research, organizes awareness campaigns and disseminates information to survivors, professionals and the public.

Among other signs of growing awareness: When Muller created #BalanceTonPorc in 2017, thousands of French women revealed they had been sexually harassed or assaulted, and the result was a revolutionary national discussion.

In contrast to the 100 women who signed the petition denouncing #MeToo, several well-known personalities support the movement. During February’s César Award ceremony (Césars are France’s national film awards), Léa Drucker was named best actress for her role as a divorced mother who denounces the violence she has endured. Upon receiving her award, Drucker paid tribute to women who reveal their abuse, and to the organizations and individual feminists working to change the culture. “They are the ones who allowed me to become the woman I am,” Drucker said.

Many young people share Drucker’s appreciation for those who have opposed the status quo.

“Standing up against abusive behavior toward women has resulted in us questioning attitudes and the statements we can [or can’t] accept to [build] a new relationship with men,” says Julie Horta, a 23-year-old philosophy student in Paris.

Horta says the #MeToo movement has radically increased her awareness of violence against women. She hopes that if women are vocal in public debate, it will “give women the security to fight in the private sphere.” Horta, whose course of study focuses on feminism, is currently working on a film about the issue of consent.

Women are making headway, but a radical change is needed in relationships, according to Manon Garcia, a French philosopher and professor at the University of Chicago. “This [change] requires [us] to stop thinking that gender equality concerns only women,” Garcia said in an interview with France Culture, a public radio station.

Some men already are aware of this. “What have we to lose by imagining a [male-female] relationship that would be based on something other than submission and domination?” Usul asks in a video called “How to Seduce After #BalanceTonPorc.”

At a time when events are giving French women new reason to fight, the country has the chance to shed a legacy of sexual harassment and violence. So one is tempted to reply to Usul: We have a lot to lose and so much to gain.

Conservative Justices Could Settle Census Citizenship Question

No citizenship question has been included in the U.S. census since 1950 but—as with multiple norm-breaking actions in the Trump era, such as revoking a former CIA director’s security clearance, refusal to disclose tax returns and installing close family members in positions of power—there is a good chance the Trump administration will get away with adding one.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in United States Department of Commerce v. New York, a case considering whether the administration should be permitted to include such a question on the 2020 census. As The New York Times’ Adam Liptak reports, “By the end of the arguments, which lasted 80 minutes instead of the usual hour, the justices seemed divided along the usual lines, suggesting that the conservative majority would allow the question.”

In March 2018, the Department of Commerce announced that a citizenship question would be added to the 2020 census, following a request by the Justice Department. The department claimed that citizenship data would improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross “determined that obtaining complete and accurate information to meet this legitimate government purpose outweighed the limited potential adverse impacts,” according to a statement issued by the department.

As the website 538 explains, critics are concerned that “if a large number of immigrants don’t respond or respond incorrectly, the results will be inaccurate, and as a result, certain areas of the country will lose funding or political representation.” That could affect both parties, “since an undercount of immigrants would likely hurt red states like Texas and blue states like California,” 538 writer Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux explains.

As Liptak notes, both legal and unauthorized immigrants might refuse to fill out the forms. “By one government estimate,” he writes, “about 6.5 million people might not be counted,” especially given the Trump administration’s vehemently anti-immigrant policies.

“There is no doubt that people will respond less,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. “That has been proven in study after study.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch argued last year that the question is merely being reinstated. “Most censuses in our history have asked about citizenship,” he wrote. He also brushed off Ross’ move as the rightful action of any new secretary in any new presidential administration, writing in 2018, “There’s nothing unusual about a new cabinet secretary coming to office inclined to favor a different policy direction, soliciting support from other agencies to bolster his views, disagreeing with staff or cutting through red tape.”

Margo Anderson, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor emeritus who studies the demographic history of the U.S., told Thomson-DeVeaux that Ross’ plan isn’t simply a matter of restoring an old census question.

As Thomson-DeVeaux summarizes, “Often the purpose was to determine how immigrants were being assimilated and whether they had started the naturalization process.”

Anderson said that, for the 2020 census, the difference is that “the question that’s being proposed by the Trump administration has an exclusionary function—are you a citizen, yes or no.”

Sotomayor believes Ross manufactured his argument that adding the citizenship question would improve the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, calling it “a solution in search of a problem,” Liptak reports.

The U.S. Is Blocking Investigations Into War Crimes in Afghanistan

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

On April 12, 2019, the International Criminal Court said that it would not pursue a war crimes investigation against the U.S. military for its actions in Afghanistan. A very thick file was closed in The Hague.

Almost a decade ago, on February 12, 2010, U.S. Special Operations Forces arrived at the home of Haji Sharabuddin in Khataba (Paktia Province, Afghanistan). The family of Sharabuddin was celebrating the birth of a grandson. Inside the home were close family members (including a police investigator and a government prosecutor) as well as the vice-chancellor of Gardez University, Sayed Mohammed Mal. At 3 a.m., the U.S. forces attacked the home, killing five members of the family including Sharabuddin’s son—Mohammed Dawood—who was the police investigator. After the killing, the soldiers carried the bodies into the house and removed the bullets with a knife. They did not want to leave evidence of their actions. They then ransacked the home—including stealing money—and left. The U.S. military said that those whom they killed were insurgents. Both the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Criminal Investigations Department of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior found this allegation to be false. A war crime had been committed here.

But, thanks to the withdrawal of the International Criminal Court, this crime—and hundreds of others—will neither be properly documented nor will there be justice for the victims and survivors. Thousands of family members, who know very well what happened in little villages like Khataba and Nangalam, will have no recourse either to an admission of guilt or punishment for the killers. The killing in Nangalam was by a U.S. helicopter on March 1, 2011. The pilots fired on nine boys, killing them all. “My son Wahidullah’s head was missing,” said Haji Bismillah. “I only recognized him from his clothes.” The U.S. apologized for the killing but did nothing other than that.

One village and one town after another has families with stories of such violent and senseless deaths. This U.S. war on Afghanistan, which has been ongoing since 2001, has produced an unknown death count with unknown numbers of war crimes (by the U.S. troops, by the Afghan armed forces and by the Taliban). Afghanistan remains an open sore of crime and impunity.

The International Criminal Court

It was for good reason that the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai became a member of the International Criminal Court in 2003. There was pressure on Karzai from the U.S. government not to join the ICC, but he prevailed. It was hardly a victory. The ICC came out of the Rome Statute, which was drafted in 1998 and which came into force in 2002. The United States signed the original treaty, but then refused to ratify it. Worse, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act of 2002 to discourage any cooperation with the ICC if the behavior of U.S. soldiers came under scrutiny. U.S. Senator Jesse Helms referred to the ICC as the International Kangaroo Court. Even if Afghanistan became a member of the ICC, no one in the U.S. establishment thought that this would have any consequences.

But prosecutors in the court had other ideas. In 2006, the ICC investigators opened a “preliminary investigation” into war crimes in Afghanistan. They were interested in war crimes committed by the U.S. forces, by Afghan forces and by the Taliban. An investigator, a few years later, told me that they had found “captivating evidence” of war crimes—mostly related to the torture centers run by the Central Intelligence Agency and by U.S. military intelligence. They sought more material evidence not only by interviewing former prisoners but also through access—which they did not get—to U.S. official documents.

In 2007, the Afghan parliament—a parliament of warlords—passed a law that gave immunity to all for war crimes committed in the country. This was a blanket—and shameful—immunity that was only in May 2017 amended to allow the country to be in compliance with the Rome Statute.

In 2010, WikiLeaks provided some of this evidence in the Afghan war logs, in whose 90,000 pages there was some—but not sufficient—documentation of various operations run by the U.S. forces. This did not shape the ICC investigation, which proceeded with deliberate intent with interviews and with scrutiny of whatever documentation was available.

On November 20, 2017, with almost a decade of careful investigation behind it, the ICC released a report with a bland title: “Situation in Afghanistan: Summary of the Prosecutor’s Request for authorization of an investigation pursuant to article 15.” The significant sentence of the brief report is the following: “Finally, the information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that members of the United States of America … armed forces and members of the Central Intelligence Agency … committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the 2003-2004 period.” This did not mean that the crimes of 2010 and 2011 would not be investigated—only that the focus was on this early period and would later expand to include the entire span of the ongoing war.

The ICC’s special prosecutor—Fatou Bensouda—asked the court to allow a full investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan. She received a green light.

Trump’s Men

A year later, on September 10, 2018, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said that if the ICC continues with its work on the U.S. war crimes docket, the U.S. government would place sanctions on the ICC and even criminally prosecute ICC officials in U.S. courts. This was not just for the ICC investigation of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, but also if the ICC persisted in its work on Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians.

Investigators at the ICC said, at that time, that gloom descended on their department. The sense was that the investigation would not be allowed to proceed. But, for the time being, there was no immediate attempt within the ICC to shut down the investigation. The process continued, with Bensouda’s team building up the case against the United States—and others—for war crimes in Afghanistan.

It is important to bear in mind that the evidence was in the plain light of day. In 2005, the New York Times published a 2,000-page U.S. army investigation on the killing of Habibullah and Dilawar at Bagram in December 2002. None of the soldiers charged with the murder of these two men were convicted. All charges were dropped. But the evidence against them was clear in the army report (please see Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” 2007).

The ICC’s special prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, who was in charge of this file, visits the UN Security Council in New York City to deliver her report to the member states of the UN. For this, Bensouda—like other foreign nationals who work in the UN—must get a U.S. visa. On March 15 of this year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States would deny a visa to ICC personnel if they continue to investigate U.S. war crimes. A few weeks later, on April 5, the United States revoked Bensouda’s visa. This was an act of immense hostility, little remarked in the press.

The pressure on the ICC from Trump’s men rose. It would have taken international outcry to prevent them from getting their way. The revocation of Bensouda’s visa was met with silence. The UN said nothing, nor did the member states. It was this silence that had a chilling effect on the ICC. On April 12, a three-judge panel rejected Bensouda’s request for the investigation. This pre-trial chamber comprised of Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua of the Congo, Tomoko Akane of Japan and Rosario Salvatore Aitala of Italy. They decided that an investigation into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan “would not serve the interests of justice.”

So it goes.

Do You Prefer Your American Empire Coarse or Polite?

This piece originally appeared on anti-war.com.

It amounts to a matter of taste; how you prefer the emperor to behave. Such is political life in the late-stage American Empire. Both major parties offer nothing but the same – hyper-military interventionism and the quest for global hegemony – in the charade of choice each election cycle. The question, as 2020 approaches, is whether we can expect more of the same from the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. Of course, the use of this label, emperor, will undoubtedly make many a reader squirm and/or dismiss this piece.

Only let me explain myself. Ever since Congress abdicated its constitutional responsibility for declaring and providing oversight of wars, the U.S. president has had near dictatorial, limitless power over foreign affairs. Since the last time the US Congress declared war, during World War II, somewhere north of 100,000 American troops have died in foreign wars. Hundreds of thousands more have been injured, and, though it barely registers on Americans’ radar, several million foreigners have died during the unending cycle of US military intervention.

This should be a big story, the elephant in the room, the ultimate national scandal, but of course it is not. Precious few Americans bear the burden of waging Uncle Sam’s forever wars, and, as a result, the populace has quit caring what’s done in its name overseas. Consider this paradox: presidential elections are won based on domestic, “kitchen table” issues – not foreign policy – yet it is precisely in world affairs that the executive possesses the most influence. Congress can and does block presidents’ agendas at home, but hardly raise a peep about the minor matters of war and peace.

So let us consider the outcome of this apathy and presidential unilateralism here at the twilight of American Empire. Neither “liberal” Democratic or “conservative” Republican presidents take any real action to dismantle the imperial superstructure. Indeed, quite often, supposed “liberal” executives felt even more pressure to flex military muscle and avoid looking soft on whatever ism the US is supposedly threatened by – communism, Islamism, take your pick. Democrats started, or waged, the Korean War, Vietnam, the clandestine CIA war in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Syria, and Libya. These mostly ill-advised conflicts certainly account for the majority of American and foreign casualties inflicted by the US war machine. The Republicans are responsible for plenty of doozies too – Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq – but you sort of expect it from them.

The point is that mainstream figures and the leadership of both parties perpetually prop up the American Imperium. Take the “transformative,” “liberal,” and supposedly “socialist” Barack Obama. For all the fear-mongering of the Republicans, how did Obama actually run the empire? Like a polite, cultivated emperor, that’s how. Sure he got the US military out of Iraq, but he also sent it right back some three years later. He also doubled down in Afghanistan, toppled Ghadafi and thereby shattered Libya, exponentially increased drone strikes, sent troops into Syria, and loaded Africa up with US military “advisers.”

More telling is what he – and all other past supposed liberal executives didn’t do, or undo. Obama and his Democratic predecessors didn’t meaningfully trim the out-of-control US”Defense” – I prefer war – budget. Obama didn’t shrink America’s world record empire of bases, which now clocks in at some 800 military installations in 80 countries. He didn’t stop the worldwide bombing campaign; in fact, on any given day Obama’s military and CIA were bombing some seven countries. He didn’t (though he sort of tried) close the Guantanamo purgatory-like, extralegal detention center. He didn’t question the snake oil doctrine of American exceptionalism; he didn’t even repudiate America’s first-strike doctrine regarding the use of world-ending nuclear weapons.

Look, Obama spoke eloquently, was certainly preferable to George W. Bush or Donald Trump, and scored a few limited successes – one thinks of expanded healthcare and the hard-fought Iran nuclear deal, for starters. Nevertheless, Obama – just like Clinton, Carter, LBJ, and Truman before him – served as little more than a polite emperor. And, while Bush II was a buffoonish emperor, and Trump is a rather coarse – if not unhinged – emperor, the foreign policy differentiations were more about manners than substance. As a personal anecdote, consider this too: three of my soldiers were killed and one committed suicide under Bush II; three more were killed and two more took their own lives under Obama – now there’s a balanced scorecard!

As the 2020 presidential election approaches and candidate after candidate throws his or her hat in the ring, its important to keep bipartisan imperialism in mind and accept an inconvenient truth about the last hundred years: you’ve had no real choices. You have owners; a corporate, political, and media elite charged with maintaining the military-industrial behemoth. And your owners have only allowed you the illusion of choice, of democracy. For at least a century, Americans have only been exposed to candidates falling within the narrow bounds of a very imperial political spectrum.

So it is, has been, and will remain, until Americans take to the streets, demand a third-party, or hijack the Democratic primary – as George McGovern sort of managed to do in 1972 – and insist on a more radical, insurgent, nominee from the left (or libertarian right). Only that’s quite difficult to do, seeing as the Democratic Party machine responded to McGovern’s unorthodox candidacy by altering the primary rules in a less democratic direction. That’s how we got the now ubiquitous, if nefarious, “super delegates,” and how Democrats ended up with the uninspiring, hawkish Hillary Clinton instead of the genuine enthusiasm and energy of a Bernie Sanders. And more’s the pity.

So it is that America turned from Bush-the-ridiculous, to Obama-the-disappointer, to Trump-the-who knows what! In fact, Trump’s embrace of the empire, his imperial honesty – if not vaguely fascist – would be somewhat refreshing. Alas, its almost presidential primary time. What will it be America? More of the same or an insistence on someone transformative. God let it be the later…but I won’t be holding my breath.

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer and regular contributor to antiwar.com. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

How TurboTax Routinely Dupes Its Customers

Did you know that if you make less than $66,000 a year, you can prepare and file your taxes for free?

No? That’s no accident. Companies that make tax preparation software, like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, would rather you didn’t know.

Intuit and other tax software companies have spent millions lobbying to make sure that the IRS doesn’t offer its own tax preparation and filing service. In exchange, the companies have entered into an agreement with the IRS to offer a “Free File” product to most Americans — but good luck finding it.

Here’s what happened when we went looking.

Our first stop was Google. We searched for “irs free file taxes.”

And we thought we found what we were looking for: Ads from TurboTax and others directing us to free products.

The first link looked promising. It contained the word “free” five times! We clicked and were relieved to see that filing for free was guaranteed.

We started the process by creating the profile of a TaskRabbit house cleaner who took in $29,000. We entered extensive personal information. TurboTax asked us to click through more than a dozen questions and prompts about our finances.

After all of that, only then did we get the bad news: TurboTax revealed this wasn’t going to be free at all. Turns out the house cleaner didn’t qualify because he is a independent contractor. The charge? $119.99.

Then we tried with a second scenario. We went back to TurboTax.com and clicked on “FREE Guaranteed.” This time, we went through the process as a Walgreens cashier without health insurance, entering personal information and giving the company lots of sensitive data.

Again, TurboTax told us we had to pay — this time because there’s an extra form if you don’t have insurance. The charge? $59.99.

But wait. Are the house cleaner and the cashier not allowed to prepare and file their taxes for free because of their particular tax situations? No! According to the agreement between the IRS and the companies, anyone who makes less than $66,000 can prepare and file their taxes for free.

So how did we end up with a product that would make us pay?

We took a close look at the source code of the TurboTax website and noticed something strange. Even though we clicked on the “FREE Guaranteed” option and met all the requirements to file for free, the company had tagged us as a potential paying customer.

In the source code, TurboTax had branded us as “NONFFA.” That stands for “Non Free File Alliance.” In other words, we were not on track to file for free after all.

Here’s what it looks like behind the curtain:

ch: /personal—taxes/online/
cc: USD
c2: 2019-04-12T17:44:20.316Z
c5: NONFFA
c6: TT.com
c7: TTCamp
c9: 582c1659—f678-4316—a059-29ee9324cf4c
c14: performance|domComplete

Even though TurboTax could tell we were eligible to file for free, the company never told us about the truly free version.

It turns out that if you start the process from TurboTax.com, it’s impossible to find the truly free version. The company itself admits this.

This is a good time to remind you: Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, is one of the companies that has promised the IRS to offer free tax filing to lower-income Americans.

Is it called the Free Edition? No, that’s reserved for the widely advertised commercial products that are only free for people with the simplest taxes. The company calls the truly free version the Freedom Edition.

Once we realized that what we really wanted was TurboTax Freedom, we simply entered that into Google:

The first link was from TurboTax and said “Free File Program” right in the text. We clicked, and it brought us to this new page.

While the orange “See If You Qualify” link did take us to the real Free File program, the blue “Start for Free” link brought us back to the version of TurboTax where we ended up having to pay.

There’s a name for internet design tactics that get users to pay for products they don’t necessarily want: dark patterns.

Now, let’s go back to our original Google search.

The fifth link, a government site, looked like it would take us to the actual Free File program.

But not so fast! When we clicked, and then clicked through to a second page, we found a whole new set of choices and restrictions. Each of the 12 companies that have signed on to the deal with the IRS offer their own Free File product. But they all have different requirements based on age, income and location.

Finally! We clicked the “TurboTax Free File Program” link and found the actual homepage for TurboTax Freedom.

It’s not exactly a secret that this Free File program isn’t working well. The national taxpayer advocate recently said it “is failing to achieve its objectives and should be substantially improved or eliminated.” The IRS has been criticized for failing to oversee the program and the number of people using Free File has dropped by millions since it peaked in 2005.

Consumer groups have long argued that the IRS should offer its own free, online tax preparation and filing, as many other countries do.

But Congress is now moving to put the Free File program into law, including its restriction on the IRS creating its own free service. We wrote about that earlier this month and the opposition to this provision by freshman Democratic Reps. Katie Hill, Katie Porter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others. The House ultimately passed the bipartisan Taxpayer First Act, which also contains some provisions that consumer advocates support, such as restrictions on private debt collection of unpaid taxes.

Now the Senate is considering the bill. Its sponsors have argued that it doesn’t tie the IRS’ hands, but outside legal experts we’ve spoken to disagree. The text in the bill codifying the Free File program has long been sought by lobbyists for Intuit.

We asked TurboTax spokesman Rick Heineman why the company doesn’t automatically direct eligible taxpayers to the Free File product. He didn’t respond, but said in a statement that “TurboTax Free Edition is a free commercial tax preparation product that costs $0 for fed, $0 for state, $0 to file so 50 million users with ‘simple’ filings can file for absolutely no cost. Details for eligibility for this and other TurboTax products are stated on the Products & Pricing page.”

Heineman also directed us to Intuit’s annual corporate social responsibility report, which said that last year it “donated 2.3 million federal and state returns ($27 million in value) to lower-income taxpayers through the IRS and state Free File programs.”

Last year, Intuit’s consumer division, which includes TurboTax, reported $1.6 billion in operating income.

How to Ask for a Refund

If you made less than $34,000 last year and paid to file your taxes on TurboTax, you may be able to get a refund.

A reader who reported that TurboTax agreed to refund his money said he called the TurboTax customer service line at 888-777-3066.

Spokespeople for Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on its refund policy.

If you made less than $66,000 last year, you should have been able to prepare and file your taxes for free with one of the companies participating in the IRS’ Free File program. But each company has its own distinct eligibility requirements. It’s not clear if the other companies would offer refunds.

Robert Reich: Trump Has Been Exposed as a Thug

Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.

In addition, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

We’ll also have Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.

But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.

The practical question, then, is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.

Most Americans already hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.

Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40 percent who have held tight to Trump regardless.

So how to reach the 11 percent or 12 percent who may decide the outcome?

Reveal his moral loathsomeness.

Democrats and progressives tend to shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.

But that’s to ignore Americans’ deep sense of right and wrong. Character counts, and presidential character counts most of all.

Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.

Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it.

Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He lies to them. He yells at them. He instructs them to lie. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.

He’s a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.

Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller – threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.

In other words, Mueller makes it official: Trump is morally bankrupt.

We still don’t have the full story of Trump’s tax evasion and his business dealings with Russian financiers. But we know he has lied to business associates, stiffed contractors, cheated on his wife by having sex with a porn star, paid the porn star hush money, and boosted his wealth while in office with foreign cash.

It continues. In recent weeks he willfully endangered the life of a member of Congress by disseminating a propaganda video, similar to those historically used by extremist political groups, tying her to the 9/11 tragedy because she is a Muslim American speaking up for Muslim Americans. She has received death threats, including one by a supporter of Trump who was arrested.

He has also attacked the deceased senator John McCain, whom he falsely accused of leaking the Steele dossier and finishing last in his class at Annapolis. Then Trump retweeted a note from a supporter saying “millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain”. Americans know McCain was tortured in a prison camp for five years, in service to this country.

How many of Trump’s followers or those who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him in 2020 will recoil from this moral squalor?

Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins – pride, greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy and sloth – and he is the precise obverse of the seven virtues as enunciated by Pope Gregory in 590 AD: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Legal debates about obstruction of justice are fine. But no voter in 2020 should be allowed to overlook this basic reality: Donald Trump is a morally despicable human being.

U.S. Foreign Policy Is Unraveling in Real Time

What follows is a conversation between Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson and Marc Steiner of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you all with us. Trump is stepping up his campaign against Iran once again, announcing that he will end waivers that allowed eight countries to continue importing Iranian oil. He wants to drive Iranian oil exports to zero. All this comes on the heels of officially labeling the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization and of course, forcing the U.S. to unilaterally pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Well what course are we on? Are we inching toward a war with Iran? Are these intensified sanctions just an alternative to all-out war? How could the U.S. just unilaterally impose international sanctions? Doesn’t that violate international law? Can he do it because the U.S. has a vital role in the international system of finance? Both Turkey and China have already announced they will not abide by Trump’s unilateral declaration of sanctions. Does this intensify our trade war with China? We’ll see. Joining us here at The Real News once again is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Chief-of-staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, retired from U.S. Army, and is now Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the College of William and Mary where he teaches U.S. National Security. I welcome and good to have you back with us here on The Real News.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Good to be back again.

MARC STEINER So before we start, let’s run this short piece by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and what he had to say about the intensifying of sanctions.

MIKE POMPEO Today I am announcing that we will no longer grant any exemptions. We’re going to zero, going to zero across the board. We will continue to enforce sanctions and monitor compliance. Any nation or entity interacting with Iran should due it’s diligence and err on the side of caution. The risks are simply not going to be worth the benefits. We’ve made our demands very clear to the Ayatollah and his cronies: end your pursuit of nuclear weapons, stop testing and proliferating ballistic missiles, stop sponsoring and committing terrorism, halt the arbitrary detention of U.S. citizens. Our pressure is aimed at fulfilling these demands and others and I will continue to accelerate until Iran is willing to address them at the negotiating table.

MARC STEINER So what’s your instant analysis of what we’ve just seen here, what we’re seeing, Larry?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON First, the dispute within the administration— much ballyhooed between Bolton and Pompeo and Brian Hook, Pompeo’s main man on Iran— is apparently over and Bolton won. Pompeo and Brian Hook were not in favor of going all the way on oil sanctions. They were in favor of continuing the waivers for countries like China and India, and so forth. So that means Bolton’s won. That’s an ominous victory in my mind. More ominous was Bolton and Pompeo and Pompeo in particular’s testimony to the Congress about the “connections between al-Qaeda and Iran.” I’ve been there done that. I remember when George Tenet very forcefully and powerfully in late January-early February of 2003, pointed out to Colin Powell who had just said, toss that stuff out of my presentation to the United Nations. It stinks. That stuff being, connections between al-Qaeda and Baghdad over 9/11. Pompeo essentially said to Rand Paul in questioning him in the Senate and elsewhere, that there were connections between al-Qaeda and Iran, and implied that those connections gave the president the right to go to war with Iran without having to go to the Congress of the United States. In other words, the original A.U.M.F. authorization for the use of military force issued after 9/11, pertained some seventeen to eighteen years later to Iran.

MARC STEINER And that’s where you skin yourself. Most people who know this arena, know that area, the contradiction of saying Iran and al-Qaeda are one or are working with one another, just on its face doesn’t make any sense.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Nonsense just as it was with Saddam Hussein. We all know now, but it was a very powerful thing for Colin Powell to tell the U.N. Security Council and even more powerful for him to tell the American people that. And that’s what Trump and Bolton and Pompeo now are trying to duplicate: another specious case for war.

MARC STEINER So do you think— speaking of that— are we inching our way towards war with Iran, or do you think what we’re seeing, these sanctions, are actually in lieu of war? What do you think the dynamic is here?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON I don’t think Trump wants war, but I know John Bolton does. So I have to imagine that there is going to be a come to Jesus meeting or some such resolution with Donald Trump if Bolton persists in wanting to use military force and Donald Trump doesn’t. On the side of all of this, is Trump’s new partner in crime, Bibi Netanyahu. We don’t know what Bibi promised Donald Trump when Donald Trump weighed in on Bibi’s election. I’m told by people who know these sorts of things in Israel, that had Trump not weighed in heavily for Bibi, that he might not have won, that it might have been a lot closer that it was, and it was pretty close anyway. So I don’t know what Bibi promised Trump in return. It might be that he conducts whatever military operation is conducted with respect to Iran. Anything’s possible here with these two characters.

MARC STEINER But the whole Bibi question is something we’ve spent a half-an-hour, hours just talking about what that relationship is, and who’s driving whose foreign policy when it comes to Iran especially.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Yes. Gideon Levy in Haaretz was right when he said U.S.-Middle East policy is not made in Washington. It’s made, he said Tel Aviv, but now he would say Jerusalem.

MARC STEINER So let me ask you another question. How can the United States just unilaterally impose international sanctions? I thought that’s something the Security Council would have to do and people are writing this as a violation of international law. So from your perch when you were the Secretary of State and now, how does that play into all this?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON I think it plays very dangerously. We are becoming— through our manipulation of the Swiss system and other means in the world for financial transactions— a pariah in the world. Very much despised and even hated in the world and increasingly, by our own friends and allies like Germany, France, Britain, and so forth. This manipulation of this system that we largely set up for tracking terrorist monies and so forth, has been turned into a very sophisticated weapon. It’s economic warfare in anybody’s book and the only reason we’re getting away from it, you just hinted at. We’re getting away with it because we are the most powerful country in the world— economically, financially, and militarily. That’s not always going to be the case and I suspect there are going to people like China, like Russia, like India, like other countries in the world, finally getting tired of this and start reciprocating and building other systems to go around ours.

MARC STEINER Stepping up the sanctions against Iran and saying nobody can buy any oil from Iran at all, zeroing them out— China and Turkey have already said we’re not abiding by this. You can’t tell us how to run our economy and what we’re doing. India is caught between a rock and a hard place. They don’t want to go with this. Ten percent of their crude oil comes from Iran, but they’re in a tough bind given who finances them as well. So how is this going to play out? This can lead to greater trade wars between China and the U.S. How do you see this all tumbling out, both in terms of Iran and our relationship with those other nations?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON I think we’re going to see other nations objecting in ways that we can’t really calculate right now. By that I mean, we’re going to have everything from the Chinese attempting to use other means of exchange than the dollar, to the Chinese and the Russians perhaps working together to build an entirely separate and functional financial network that will eventually supplant that of the United States. So this has enormous potential for backfiring, just like all the enemies we are creating in the world right now and the allies that we’re distancing ourselves from. These are not positive moves by the United States. If I were on Mars looking down at the United States right now, and I were some wise Martian statesmen, and I was trying to figure out what the United States— the current hegemon of the world— was trying to do, I would think we were trying to commit suicide. It’s as if we do not have any means of doing anything diplomatically or otherwise, that doesn’t rebound to our discredit. Look at what’s happened. We just lost badly in Syria and we lost to a triumvirate of Syria under Bashar al-Assad, Russia, and Iran. Look at what has happened in Iraq. We lost a lot of men and women there. We shed blood and treasure there for an utterly ill-conceived invasion, but nonetheless we did. Now Iraq is more or less under the influence of Iran. The only ally we have in the region that we can count on at any time is an authoritarian, brutal state under a boy-king who’s losing one war on one flank, and alienated Qatar on the other. Our latest NATO in the Middle East just lost its most formidable partner, Egypt. It’s all falling apart. We’re losing everywhere I look in the world and losing badly to that man in Moscow who picks up the pieces and goes to Cuba when Marco Rubio decides he doesn’t like Cuba. He goes to Venezuela when we decide we might have an option for Venezuela that would include military force. Putin is the strategist in the world right now, picking up on every piece we drop, and we’re dropping too many.

MARC STEINER So very quickly here before we run out of time, one quick question. If you were sitting in the halls of power at this moment, and your job is Chief-of-staff or the Secretary of State, I’m curious what you would be saying to a president that said we have to do this. What would you say is the alternative? What would you be saying at this moment?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Which one do you want to pick? [laughter] Kim Jong-un is going to fire a ballistic missile or he’s going to do a nuclear test or both sometime around Christmas.

MARC STEINER Right.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON This administration for all intents and purposes, in my view, is working against the interests of the United States. So the first thing I would do is sit down and say, Mr. President, please before I walk out of here and go back to Foggy Bottom and retire from my position because you are going to fire me, I want to know what you think the national interests of the United States are. You said you were going to “make America great again.” You are destroying America. You said you were going to bring jobs back. You have only brought the jobs back that the last three years of the Obama administration generated, because no president ever generates them instantly. So you haven’t done anything yet that looks like it’s in the interest of the United States and you’ve done a whole load of things that are clearly not in our interest, not the least of which is to drive our allies away and make many enemies whom you said all options are on the table confronting. Please, Mr. President. Tell me what you think our interests are.

MARC STEINER And with that, I want to say thank you once again. Colonel Larry Wilkerson, always a pleasure to have you here at The Real News. And thanks so much for your thoughts and wisdom.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON Thank you.

MARC STEINER And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Take care.