Chris Hedges's Blog, page 281

What Makes an Immigrant Good?

“The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America”

A book edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman

Reviewed by Simon Lee / Los Angeles Review of Books

To say that debates about U.S. immigration have reached a boiling point seems trite. This is especially true in the wake of political mayhem that has set the country’s atmospheric standard to “boiling.” Despite driving the news cycle, policy debates on immigration rarely move past bids to mask the most flagrant deceits of campaign rhetoric. The current administration’s deception strategies would be farcical if they weren’t so obscene; a barrage of low-budget bigot-porn built around visions of disease-ridden caravans, feral-rapist job thieves, and brown-hued phantoms cloaked in Islamic garb. Such tactics are hardly a recent phenomenon, though, as engineered paranoia has long served as a tool of chicanery to enact power.

The use of “timely” in connection with a book like “The Good Immigrant” seems equally trite, yet here we are. This new collection of essays, edited and compiled by British writers Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman, responds to some of the more egregious rhetoric currently underway while offering a range of reflections and experiences associated with immigration. Several of the contributors are first-generation immigrants, others are second-generation, others have a status left ambiguous. As such, the collection grants access to a range of perspectives on assimilation, pluralism, appropriation, double-consciousness, and the tactical practice of “Othering” central to nationalist propaganda. While the shadow of British colonialism loomed over the first collection, the follow-up reflects the paradox of the United States’s imperialist inclinations and the way they contradict its mythical calling card as a nation comprised of immigrants.

Emphasis in this collection, though, is placed on the act of writing as a means to communicate experience as well as a method to reconcile the way such contradictions are internalized. In fact, the collection is framed by essays focusing on just that: writing as a tool by which to repair the kind of identity division that follows immigration.

Click here to read long excerpts from “The Good Immigrant” at Google Books.

Porochista Khakpour begins by outlining the implications of ethnic heritage on writing, specifically how identity fetishism in the industry pigeon-holes writers, casting them as inadvertent delegates of their culture. Written in second-person, a mode that reads like a memo to herself, Khakpour’s essay veers from the notion of writing as a therapeutic exercise to one that becomes an imposition in which the self is colonized by the implications of identity.

Jade Chang closes the collection with a piece that doubles down on the book’s intent to emphasize the lived reality of immigration. She implores her reader to center their own story, turning to narrative theory as a way to “form a healthy sense of self” by telling “a coherent story of our own lives.” For Chang, this involves embracing joy as a rebellious act, universalizing marginal experiences to decenter the norm, and a reminder to never feel compelled to perform or explain a prescribed social position. In doing so, idiosyncratic experience is converted into a form of currency that replaces the tacit assumption that an immigrant narrative must involve hardship, struggle, and pain. Khakpour’s and Chang’s accounts can be read in conversation, offering ways to rethink the function of identity and subvert narratives that, as Shukla and Suleyman note in relation to the initial volume, assume “that immigrants are ‘bad’ by default until they prove themselves otherwise.”

¤

The original 2016 collection published in Britain emerged in response to a reader comment on a Guardian article about British writers of color with the reader pondering why a “more prominent” author hadn’t been included. As Shukla noted in the original collection’s introduction, writers of color often feel pressure to justify their work in an environment in which assumptions about what constitutes “professional” still dominate. The original collection sought to promote writers who challenge such assumptions while also serving as “a document of what it means to be a person of color now.” The original contained 21 essays, all helping to shed light on the experience of people of color in 21st-century Britain. The follow-up builds on this model, but with a difference: the implicit expectation for U.S. immigrants to assimilate, a process that, in the eyes of the fervently intolerant, is what distinguishes the “good” immigrant from the “bad.” Of course, the rules are ill-defined, and the very concept of a monolithic assimilative model is both absurd and antithetical to the country’s roots. Yet, the more concerted the effort, the better the chances of being considered “one of the good ones.” Although indirect in their methods, several of the collection’s essays speak to this phenomenon by weighing assimilation against cultural pluralism.

For instance, Nicole Dennis-Benn frames assimilation as a kind of oceanic metaphor. In “Swimmer,” she explores her bad relationship with her family, but also with herself and her conflict over what it means to be a “good immigrant,” in her case, becoming a doctor. Still, Dennis-Benn allowed herself to drift away from medical school and to travel a different path: “I learned long ago, under the warmth of another sun, never to swim against a rip current, but to float, to conserve energy, to remain as calm as possible, drifting on the high seas of uncertainty.” She allows her cultural origins to inform the process of movement in a manner that both challenges and critiques the veracity of the assimilation narrative, inviting the reader to consider cultural pluralism as a more authentic way to contribute.

Jenny Zhang takes on the fetishization of Chinese culture, specifically in terms of the fashion that dominated American shopping malls in the ’80s and ’90s. Zhang underscores the irony of the way her ethnicity was maligned while signifiers of Chinese culture were commodified through Orientalist fantasy. Consequently, her own desire for such styles and their effect is rendered thorny: “a form-fitting brown rayon skirt with a dragon embroidered on one side and a less-than-demure slit on the other” that became her “most prized item of clothing,” landing her not just a boyfriend, but a boyfriend in a band and, by extension, assumed cultural capital. What Zhang’s essay reveals is the gap between celebrated signifiers and the culture itself, adding texture to the reality of systemic racism: “What I wanted to say was how it felt to grow up in a country where the consensus seemed to be that Chinese culture looked best as an accessory on a white person.”

However, it’s Maeve Higgins’s “Luck of the Irish” that sheds the most glaring light on the true nature of assimilation and the way the process is well greased if one’s visual markers reflect the nebulous prototype of the “good” immigrant. Higgins discusses her relative ease building a life in the United States, specifically emphasizing how the kind of risks encountered by other immigrants is largely reduced for her due to her skin color: “Your chance of being arrested or profiled by the police or by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is higher if you’re black or brown, and most Irish immigrants are white.”

Her ability to pass as a “good immigrant” is especially pronounced when weighed against experiences of other contributors such as narratives by Chigozie Obioma and Dani Fernandez. Obioma traces his journey from Nigeria to North Cypress to the United States by way of his novel, “The Fishermen.” The attention he received from the novel’s success positioned him as either “exotic” to those aware of his Nigerian history or “simply black” for those who didn’t. Obioma uses this dichotomy to unpack an Igbo proverb warning of “the naked man who offers you clothes” — immigration, in this case, falling short of its promise. Fernandez’s essay, “No Es Suficiente,” suggests the inverse, highlighting the way exoticization in Hollywood is mobilized through tokenism. The narrative touches on whiteness’s domination of the industry as well as the degree of code-switching required by passing nonwhites to succeed. She recounts anecdotes of others in the industry being told to be “more Mexican” or, in one case, the owner of an acting studio caught telling a struggling actress to “dye her hair, change her name to Rosa Ramirez, and start passing herself off as Latina in order to get more roles.” Good immigrants, it seems, must be attractive or suffer.

Another persistent theme is the notion of double consciousness and the pressure to reconcile one’s past life with the present. Several of the essays focus on this dilemma, highlighting the struggle of bifurcated identities. For example, Priya Minhas’s “How Not to Be” documents the experience of being raised with a diasporic Indian identity in London that’s further complicated by her family’s relocation to the New Jersey suburbs. For Minhas, cultural traditions clash with environmental shifts, resulting in two distinct encounters with adolescence.

Fatimah Asghar’s “On Loneliness” begins in a Los Angeles Uber in which a Muslim driver asks where she’s from. The question — one that provokes dread based on past incidents — opens up a chain of associations, revealing that Asghar was born and raised in the United States as an orphan following her parent’s death at a young age. For Asghar, her identity is rendered precarious by her mixed background and lack of direct lineage, often resulting in a special kind of loneliness that comes from feeling perennially displaced. Loneliness, in this regard, is less about being isolated from others and more of feeling separated from some grounded version of self, “[t]hat nagging feeling that you are not normal.”

Yann Demange illustrates how such displacement can result in an irreconcilable identity, but one that, for him, offers uniquely creative possibilities. The French-Algerian Londoner’s convoluted history renders him as a knot of cultural identities that he struggles to untie, resigning himself simply as “a Londoner.” Demange recalls a series of comedic attempts to derive a cultural identity through self-fashioning such as “shit” tattoos, but still struggles to articulate “a tribe” that he can belong to. The narrative is as tortuous as his lineage, but his conclusion is worthwhile: an embrace of placelessness and an identity that “isn’t something that can be truly squared up and resolved.’” The essay outlines the way identities shift over time, emphasizing how the spaces where identity formation takes place is simply one part of that equation. For Demange, a fragmented cultural identity is a resource to be harnessed and used as a creative tool.

¤The collection contains a number of responses to double consciousness in the form of reconciliation narratives told through the lens of both history and personal reflection. In this regard, the reader is introduced to the value of acknowledged disparity, itself a productive function of a pluralism.

Susanne Ramírez de Arrellano’s evocative “Return to Macondo” discusses the experience of growing up in Puerto Rico in relation to the perception of the island. In doing so, she juxtaposes the island’s sensual beauty and rich cultural history (which she links to Gabriel García Márquez’s mythical Macondo) against the degree of presidential ugliness required to malign unincorporated territories and foreign nations as “shitholes.” The author uses this contrast as a springboard to tell Puerto Rico’s history as a place ravaged by colonialism, critiquing the kind of forces that lead people to migrate. She describes her Puerto Rican childhood as one shaped by “coconut kisses. Guava and cheese pastries, tuberoses” and preparing mangos “[s]low and quiet — like a mantra.” Such images counter Puerto Rico’s historical subjugation, being “force fed four centuries of colonialism courtesy of the Spanish Crown and then shitkicked into modernity by the spit-shined boots of America.” The essay serves to provide clarity on the US position on Puerto Rico today, especially in light of the dire response to Hurricane Maria encapsulated in Trump’s gesture of goodwill: throwing absorbent paper towels into a crowd as if throwing a guitar pick to adoring fans.

While such essays veer from the kind of firsthand US immigrant narratives that dominate the collection, Jim St. Germain’s “Shithole Nation” and Daniel José Older’s “Dispatches from the Language Wars” bridge such perspectives, clarifying how the kind of bifurcated identity issues that permeate the text can be reconciled (at least partially) by connecting one’s cultural history to the present. St. Germain’s narrative is split between a life in La Plaine, Haiti, in which resources were meager and opportunities were nonexistent. Moving to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at the age of 11, Germain paints a comparable picture in which a lack of resources and opportunities is amplified by violence. In doing so, Germain also confronts Trump’s “shitholes” affront, designating his adopted Brooklyn neighborhood as one “surrounded by chronic poverty” with schools lacking basic resources and homes that were little more than “dilapidated buildings due to redlining — the federal government’s way of ghettoizing brown communities.” The critique rings loud: which is the true shithole, and who is responsible for its state? Germain’s narrative is one of true horror, but also one of hope in that, with the help of groups and individuals whose empathy and morals counter those responsible for true shitholes, he overcame a level of adversity far beyond that of his life in Haiti. The narrative is powerful and effective, providing a different perspective of immigration — a world in which the rich and the poor, the privileged and the underserved, could not be more pronounced. In doing so, the essay sheds light on the nature of crimes committed by some of the most powerful people in the country.

Daniel José Older’s terse meditation on language challenges a number of assumptions and cultural narratives with distinct brevity — appropriate given his topic. The essay hinges on the value of translation as it pertains to cultural identity, outlining how, as a child, he never felt connected to his use of Spanish or a need to embrace it: “When did I give up on Spanish? At some point, very early on, I must’ve looked out at the world, looked into my television set, looked to the non-Spanish-speaking people around me with the question: Is Spanish something I need in life?” Older’s essay describes the shift from not caring to caring about his mother’s native tongue and developing his Spanish-speaking skills in response to being “sick of simplifying myself.” To that end, he discusses the poetry contained within single words, demonstrating how translation opens up a mosaic of meaning that replicates identity itself:

The ghosts of a thousand other languages haunt the houses of each word we speak. Forged in the fires of oppression and resistance, we are and always have been a nation of complex identities, slowly gathering clouds, epic poems, and power plays, and so the question of national identity isn’t up for debate.

¤The diversity of perspectives in the collection is matched by the diversity of prose, and some of the essays hit their mark with greater impact than others. It’s worth noting, though, that several of these essays stand out in terms of their style as well as their substance, emphasizing Khakpour’s and Chang’s commentary on the value of writing as a way to process experience.

For example, Rahawa Haile’s “Sidra (in 12 Movements)” provides a reflection on family and lineage, telling the story of a “good immigrant’s” struggle to raise his daughter in the United States. The narrative centers on the immigrant’s bifurcated identity, apportioning himself out in a manner that recounts several of the narratives mentioned above: “This is how the Good Immigrant comes to give himself completely to the Immigrant’s Lament — an endless fight on two fronts: here and Home, where here is home now and Home is hope until it consumes him.” The narrative highlights the hardships of surviving in a new environment, from being “versed in many types of hunger,” to communicating with children in a manner that sustains hope. Midway through, the narration shifts focus from the father to the “good daughter,” the father gradually drifting from view. The narrative’s 11th movement underscores the melancholy of loss, with the “good immigrant” wondering whether he still exists or not, laying the groundwork for the “good daughter” to bid him farewell in Movement 12.

Teju Cole’s “On the Blackness of the Panther,” offers a vibrant recollection of how he “learned black” and “diversity in blackness” — a way of parsing representation and race as “multifarious and generative.” Beginning with the claim that he “began to become African a little more than twenty-five years ago,” Cole explores what it means to come into one’s blackness over time and through reflection — time and reflection that operate outside of the “instantaneous electronic recall” of the present when knowledge “was attended by a guesswork that fostered a different way of knowing, one that allowed for ranges rather than insisting on points.” Cole unpacks the overdetermined image of the Black Panther with delicacy, making links to Rainer Maria Rilke and Eusébio da Silva Ferreira over that of Ryan Coogler or Chadwick Boseman. Double consciousness takes center stage once more with Cole’s distinguishing between “African,” or “finding ourselves strangers in the strange American land, but also with our shared experience of the background radiation of colonialism” and “Black” which “was in a sense more inclusive. It took in all that colonial hangover and added to it the American experiences of slavery, slave rebellion, Jim Crow, and contemporary racism, as well as the connective tissue that bound the Black Atlantic into a single territory of pain.”

Whereas Haile and Cole refract immigration through negotiated identities, recent Vilcek Creative Promise Prize winner Tejal Rao turns to cuisine as one of the more prominent indexes of cultural discourse — a move that echoes collection editor Shukla’s own forceful writing on the cultural significance of food as well as his own encounters with racial abuse.

Reflecting on E. M. Forster’s account of time spent in India, Rao aligns Forster’s inability to articulate the flavor of native dishes with the more pernicious practice of reducing nonwhite cultures to types. Rao turns an on-the-job microaggression into an opportunity to explore the cultural heritage of Indian food as a mirror of identity. She offers a rich history of traditional dishes, how they are misinterpreted and distorted by time and distance, and how “curry” reflects inelegant generalizations of a range of plates as well as a range of regional histories:

Curry might have started as a kind of oversimplification, but it was transformed and reshaped over hundreds of years until the word spidered out to mean many things, and belong to many people, including Indians. What I wondered for the first time, when it was attached to me in the place where I worked, was if it belonged to me.

The essay is touching, elegant, and instructive, even offering a traditional recipe for kofta curry from the author’s grandfather as a kind of corrective and insight into gustatory tradition.

Chimene Suleyman’s “On Being Kim Kardashian” encapsulates the book’s clout as well as the opening editors’ note: to “illuminate a whole world of experience that is too often hidden from view.” Her narrative centers on a moment in which she is called “a white bitch” by a hostile stranger — a sentiment she finds puzzling as “[f]or thirty-two years I had been — to men like this — a brown bitch.” Similar to that of Rao, Suleyman’s essay hinges on a particular moment — one that allows her to explore the complexity of her identity and how much it differs in the United States from her identity in the United Kingdom. She outlines the challenge of enunciating her origins as a Turkish Cypriot, the way classed accents further complicate identity, the function of whiteness in Othering, and the way vacuous pop cultural icons dilute their own ethnicity in a manner that renders them “without race.” For Suleyman, perceptions of ethnicity shift in context, from her interaction with the abusive stranger to a friend referring to her as “‘spicy’ white.” What’s revealed is the degree of complication — both personal and otherwise — that arises when identity is distorted by movement. The essay is striking in its precision, its notably stoic tenor offering a powerful contrast to instances of racial aggression.

But it’s Fatima Farheen Mirza’s essay that perhaps communicates the impact of racial aggression against immigrants most saliently. In a beautifully sustained voice, Mirza details the treatment that she and her family endured at the hands of their fellow Americans. The essay is no exercise in shock; instead, it provides insight into the way such families are made to reconcile their position in the eyes of others, to rationalize their own subjugation, and to make sense of national sentiments that contradict constitutional law and the fundamental principle of the country itself. Mirza recounts these events in relation to the 2016 election, especially the way that barely dormant racism was reenergized through discriminatory practices like the Muslim ban.

The essay’s innocuous title, “Skittles,” refers to Trump Jr.’s September 2016 dehumanization of Syrian refugees: “If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you that just three would kill you, would you take a handful? This is our Syrian refugee problem.” In the same week of Trump’s barbarism, a ziplock bag of Skittles was delivered to the family as a “welcome to the neighborhood” gift. Mirza’s essay is frightening in its implications, both in terms of newly emboldened hatred of nonwhite Americans stemming from state-sanctioned disinformation strategies and the use of nationalist rhetoric to gain power. “Skittles” is extraordinary in its attempt to make sense of the current moment, but it’s also devastating in its ability to coalesce the lived realities of nonwhite Americans and the impact of these acts.

¤The vastness of the United States is sublime, and anyone who has spent time between coasts can testify to the richness that immigrant communities bring to cities and states throughout. The new book is less generous in its geographic range and scope with the essays primarily coming from writers and media figures working in Manhattan and Brooklyn. While this doesn’t detract from the varied accounts present within the collection, it does reiterate the editors’ opening disclaimer that the contributors “cannot speak for all immigrants.”

The avowal that follows — “The time has come to reclaim the narrative” — is particularly germane given the current administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. While the book poses no solutions to such problems, it does add focus and texture to their impact, which is arguably more productive than the way current policies are discussed WWE-style on for-profit cable news networks. Empathy and sociopathy have long been considered incommensurate, so today’s demonstrations of incoherent nationalism, policies of disinformation, sadistic spectacles of cruelty, and the elevation of unabashed bigotry can be read less as a response to tangible security concerns and more as flailing gestures of trammeled and impotent power. Since narratives operate as engines of empathy, granting access to worlds and experiences often overlooked, the follow-up to “The Good Immigrant” helps counter some of today’s more toxic narratives. Hopefully we’ll read more of these kind of stories in the future.

Simon Lee is a British scholar and critic based in Los Angeles.

 

 

FCC to Hold Big 5G Auction, Spend $20 Billion for Rural Internet

WASHINGTON—The U.S. government will hold a massive auction later this year to bolster 5G service, the next generation of mobile networks. President Donald Trump showcased the announcement Friday, declaring that the race to set up these faster, more powerful networks is a competition “America must win.”

“We cannot allow any other country to outcompete the United States in this powerful industry of the future,” Trump said at the White House. “We are leading by so much in so many different industries of that type, and we just can’t let that happen.”

Trump also announced a $20 billion plan to expand broadband access to rural areas currently without it, a decade-long extension of an existing program.

5G will mean faster wireless speeds and has implications for technologies like self-driving cars and augmented reality. Trump said it will transform the way people work, learn, communicate and travel, making farms more productive, manufacturers more competitive and health care better and more accessible. But experts say it’s hard to know now how much life will actually change because of the much-hyped network upgrade.

It will take years to roll out, and the highest data speeds and capacities may not reach rural areas at all.

The rollout started last week in the U.S. and South Korea but will take years.

The Federal Communications Commission said Friday that it would hold the largest auction in U.S. history to boost wireless companies’ networks. The auction is set for Dec. 10, and will be the agency’s third for 5G, said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who joined Trump for the announcement.

“We want Americans to be the first to benefit from this new digital revolution,” Pai said.

The U.S. is jockeying for position with China over 5G. It has effectively banned Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei from most U.S. networks due to concerns that it might enable Chinese government spying, which Huawei denies. The U.S. has pushed its allies to do the same, with mixed results. Huawei is the world’s largest maker of such equipment.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, criticized the agency’s approach to 5G Friday. She said the U.S. has not auctioned off “midband” spectrum that is better suited to serve rural areas because of how far it can carry signals, and that the Trump administration’s actions on 5G have “set us back.” She cited tariffs on telecom equipment that have raised costs and said the administration has been “alienating allies” on the 5G security issue.

The FCC also said Friday that it will be renewing an existing $2 billion broadband subsidy program, for 10 years. It will provide about $20.4 billion over a decade to providers, with the goal of connecting up to 4 million rural homes and small businesses to high-speed internet.

The agency spent $34.5 billion on rural-broadband network subsidy programs from 2010 to 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office.

It’s more expensive for telecom companies to serve spread-out rural areas than cities and suburbs, so the government provides grants to encourage them to build internet networks in rural parts of the country. Some 24 million Americans lacked access to high-speed internet as of the end of 2016, by the FCC’s count.

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Arbel reported from New York. Associated Press writer Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.

Noam Chomsky: America’s Extraterritorial Reach Is Its Own Scandal

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman in Boston, as we sit down with Noam Chomsky for a public conversation. I asked him about the arrest of Julian Assange.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the Assange arrest is scandalous in several respects. One of them is just the effort of governments—and it’s not just the U.S. government. The British are cooperating. Ecuador, of course, is now cooperating. Sweden, before, had cooperated. The efforts to silence a journalist who was producing materials that people in power didn’t want the rascal multitude to know about—OK?—that’s basically what happened. WikiLeaks was producing things that people ought to know about those in power. People in power don’t like that, so therefore we have to silence it. OK? This is the kind of thing, the kind of scandal, that takes place, unfortunately, over and over.

To take another example, right next door to Ecuador, in Brazil, where the developments that have gone on are extremely important. This is the most important country in Latin America, one of the most important in the world. Under the Lula government early in this millennium, Brazil was the most—maybe the most respected country in the world. It was the voice for the Global South under the leadership of Lula da Silva. Notice what happened. There was a coup, soft coup, to eliminate the nefarious effects of the labor party, the Workers’ Party. These are described by the World Bank—not me, the World Bank—as the “golden decade” in Brazil’s history, with radical reduction of poverty, a massive extension of inclusion of marginalized populations, large parts of the population—Afro-Brazilian, indigenous—who were brought into the society, a sense of dignity and hope for the population. That couldn’t be tolerated.

After Lula’s—after he left office, a kind of a “soft coup” takes place—I won’t go through the details, but the last move, last September, was to take Lula da Silva, the leading, the most popular figure in Brazil, who was almost certain to win the forthcoming election, put him in jail, solitary confinement, essentially a death sentence, 25 years in jail, banned from reading press or books, and, crucially, barred from making a public statement—unlike mass murderers on death row. This, in order to silence the person who was likely to win the election. He’s the most important political prisoner in the world. Do you hear anything about it?

Well, Assange is a similar case: We’ve got to silence this voice. You go back to history. Some of you may recall when Mussolini’s fascist government put Antonio Gramsci in jail. The prosecutor said, “We have to silence this voice for 20 years. Can’t let it speak.” That’s Assange. That’s Lula. There are other cases. That’s one scandal.

The other scandal is just the extraterritorial reach of the United States, which is shocking. I mean, why should the United States—why should any—no other state could possibly do it. But why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? I mean, it’s an outlandish situation. It goes on all the time. We never even notice it. At least there’s no comment on it.

Like, take the trade agreements with China. OK? What are the trade agreements about? They’re an effort to prevent China’s economic development. It’s exactly what they are. Now, China has a development model. The Trump administration doesn’t like it. So, therefore, let’s undermine it. Ask yourself: What would happen if China did not observe the rules that the United States is trying to impose? China, for example, when Boeing or Microsoft, some other major company, invests in China, China wants to have some control over the nature of the investment. They want some degree of technology transfer. They should gain something from the technology. Is there something wrong with that? That’s how the United States developed, stealing—what we call stealing—technology from England. It’s how England developed, taking technology from more advanced countries—India, the Low Countries, even Ireland. That’s how every developed country has reached the stage of advanced development. If Boeing and Microsoft don’t like those arrangements, they don’t have to invest in China. Nobody has a gun to their heads. If anybody really believed in capitalism, they should be free to make any arrangement they want with China. If it involves technology transfer, OK. The United States wants to block that, so China can’t develop.

Take what are called intellectual property rights, exorbitant patent rights for medicines, for Windows, for example. Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems, through the World Trade Organization. Suppose China didn’t observe these. Who would benefit, and who would lose? Well, the fact of the matter is that consumers in the United States would benefit. It would mean that you’d get cheaper medicines. It would mean that when you get a computer, that you wouldn’t be stuck with Windows. You could get a better operating system. Bill Gates would have a little less money. The pharmaceutical corporations wouldn’t be as super-rich as they are, a little less rich. But the consumers would benefit. Is there something wrong with that? Is there a problem with that?

Well, you might ask yourself: What lies behind all of these discussions and negotiations? This is true across the board. Almost any issue you pick, you can ask yourself: Why is this accepted? So, in this case, why is it acceptable for the United States to have the power to even begin to give even a proposal to extradite somebody whose crime is to expose to the public materials that people in power don’t want them to see? That’s basically what’s happening.

Jeremy Corbyn Denounces Efforts to Extradite Assange

Key figures in the United Kingdom’s Labour Party are speaking out against the possible extradition of Julian Assange to the United States after British police arrested the WikiLeaks founder and forcibly dragged him out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London Thursday.

“The extradition of Julian Assange to the U.S. for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government,” tweeted Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition party’s leader.

Along with his concise comment, Corbyn posted a video in which Labour MP and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott says:

And we should recall what WikiLeaks actually disclosed: Who can forget the Pentagon video footage of a missile attack in 2007 in Iraq, which killed 18 civilians and two Reuters journalists? It is the monumental amount of leaks such as this that lifted the veil on U.S.-led military operation in a variety of theaters, none of which have produced a favorable outcome [for] the people of those countries. Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect U.S. national security. He is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by U.S. administrations and their military forces.

Abbott also shared the video and said on Twitter, “In this country we have protections for whistleblowers, those who take personal risk to disclose wrongdoing in the public interest.”

In this country we have protections for whistle-blowers, those who take personal risk to disclose wrongdoing in the public intrest. Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect US national security. He is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations pic.twitter.com/pFXds56ASD

— Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) April 11, 2019

In an interview on BBC Radio 4‘s “Today” program, Abbott said that “this is all about WikiLeaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public.”

Until Thursday, Assange had lived as a political asylee at the embassy since 2012, to avoid extradition to Sweden—which dropped its request in early 2018—or the United States. After a week of warnings from WikiLeaks and Assange’s attorneys, Ecuador revoked the journalist and publisher’s asylum protection and allowed British police into the embassy to arrest him—decisions that were widely condemned by political leaders, whistleblowers, journalists, and human rights advocates worldwide.

Assange now faces extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom, which fall under the jurisdiction of the country’s courts and Tory home secretary. The U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment after Assange’s arrest that reveals the extradition request officially comes “in connection with a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.”

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, some American reporters and talking heads on cable news shows suggested that because the charge is tied to an alleged “computer hacking conspiracy,” Assange’s possible extradition poses no threat to journalism.

However, critics argue the charge is part of a ploy by the Trump administration to punish Assange for publishing classified information about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—provided by Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who remains jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury—and that extraditing Assange “would set a dangerous precedent for journalists everywhere.”

Glenn Greenwald is among those arguing that the indictment “poses grave threats to press freedom.” In a piece for The Intercept Greenwald co-authored with Micah Lee, he also called out media outlets for misrepresenting the indictment in reports Thursday.

Linking to a Guardian column by Owen Jones, Greenwald pointed out on Twitter Friday that people on “the actual left” in the United Kingdom, the United States, Latin America, and Europe have denounced the extradition effort while “U.S. establishment liberals have largely cheered it.” As Greenwald put it, that shows “liberals are authoritarians who revere U.S. security institutions.”

The actual left in the UK, US, Latin America & Europe has largely denounced US Govt’s indictment & attempted extradition of Assange. US establishment liberals have largely cheered it. That shows a key difference: liberals are authoritarians who revere US security institutions: https://t.co/I800RvMQ8C

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 12, 2019

“Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the U.S. must be opposed,” Jones wrote in his column Friday. “Extraditing the founder of WikiLeaks is an attempt by the U.S. to intimidate anyone who exposes its crimes.”

Test Taker Pleads Guilty in College Admissions Bribery Scam

BOSTON—A former Florida prep school administrator pleaded guilty Friday to taking college entrance exams for students in exchange for cash to help wealthy parents get their kids into elite universities across the country.

Mark Riddell admitted to secretly taking the SAT and ACT for students, or correcting their answers, as part of a nationwide college admissions cheating scheme, which has ensnared celebrities, business executives and athletic coaches at sought-after schools such as Stanford and Yale.

Riddell, who has been cooperating with authorities since February in the hopes of getting a lesser sentence, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges.

The 36-year-old, wearing a dark suit and glasses, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Rosen explained that prosecutors will seek a sentence at the low end of the guidelines, which call for 33 to 41 months in prison. Riddell’s lawyer declined comment.

The Harvard graduate oversaw college entrance exam preparation at IMG Academy, a Bradenton school founded by renowned tennis coach Nick Bollettieri that bills itself as the world’s largest sports academy. Riddell has since been fired.

Authorities say the admissions consultant at the center of the scheme, Rick Singer, bribed test administrators to allow Riddell to pretend to proctor the exams for students so he could cheat on the tests. Singer typically paid Riddell $10,000 per test to rig the scores, prosecutors said.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling has said Riddell knew all the answers because he was “just a really smart guy.”

Riddell was among 50 people charged last month in the scam, which embroiled elite universities across the country and laid bare the lengths to which status-seeking parents will go to secure their children a coveted spot. Others arrested include actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin along with Loughlin’s fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli.

In addition to the exam-rigging scheme, prosecutors say parents paid Singer tens of thousands of dollars to bribe coaches into pretending that their kids were athletic recruits to boost their chances of getting accepted.

Huffman, the 56-year-old Emmy-winner who starred in ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” and 12 other parents have agreed to plead guilty. Huffman is scheduled to appear in Boston on May 21 to enter her plea.

Parents who are still fighting the allegations — including Loughlin, 54, who appeared in the 1980s and ’90s sitcom “Full House” — were hit this week with a money laundering conspiracy charge on top of the mail fraud conspiracy charge they were already facing.

Singer flipped on the parents and helped the FBI build the case against for a chance at a lenient sentence. He pleaded guilty last month to charges including racketeering conspiracy.

World Court Judges Reject Afghanistan War Crimes Probe

BRUSSELS—In a decision decried as “deeply flawed” and a “devastating blow for victims,” International Criminal Court judges on Friday rejected a request by the court’s prosecutor to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan and alleged crimes by U.S. forces linked to the conflict.

In a lengthy written ruling, judges said an investigation “would not serve the interests of justice” because an investigation and prosecution were unlikely to be successful, as those targeted, including the United States, Afghan authorities and the Taliban, are not expected to cooperate, the court said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch slammed the ruling, calling it “a devastating blow for victims who have suffered grave crimes without redress.”

In a statement released by the White House, the Trump administration hailed the decision not to investigate U.S. personnel as “a major international victory, not only for these patriots, but for the rule of law.”

The ICC decision does acknowledge that the November 2017 request from Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to open a probe “establishes a reasonable basis to consider that crimes within the ICC jurisdiction have been committed in Afghanistan and that potential cases would be admissible before the Court.”

In a written reaction, the court’s prosecution office said it “will further analyze the decision and its implications, and consider all available legal remedies.”

The decision comes a month after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would revoke or deny visas to ICC staff seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Bensouda’s U.S. visa already has been revoked.

In a written statement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointed out that the rejection followed those measures: “I am glad the Court reconsidered its actions.”

Rights groups were not.

Patrick Baudouin, president of the International Federation for Human Rights, called the rejection a “dark day for justice” and a “shocking decision, which is based on a deeply flawed reasoning.”

Bensouda’s request to open an investigation said there is information that members of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies “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.”

She also said that the Taliban and other insurgent groups have killed more than 17,000 civilians since 2009, including some 7,000 targeted killings.

She alleged that Afghan security forces have tortured prisoners at government detention centers.

Sima Samar, the chair of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission who lobbied strongly for the investigation, said the decision was a disappointment for victims.

In a phone interview from Kabul, she told The Associated Press that it risks emboldening the perpetrators of crimes in Afghanistan, who were “at least a little fearful” of facing justice.

“With this decision, people will lose hope of getting justice and they might take revenge, fueling conflict in the country,” she said.

The court said in a statement that the shifting Afghan political scene since then, the lack of cooperation that prosecutors have received so far and the likelihood that cooperation would diminish further if a full-blown investigation is opened combine to hamper the chances of a successful investigation and prosecutions.

Judges said the court needs to “use its resources prioritizing activities that would have better chances to succeed,” according to an ICC press release.

Human Rights Watch said the ruling establishes a dangerous precedent.

“The judges’ logic effectively allows states to opt out on their obligation to cooperate with the court’s investigation,” said Param-Preet Singh, the group’s associate international justice director. “This sends a dangerous message to perpetrators that they can put themselves beyond the reach of the law just by being uncooperative.”

____

Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

Is ‘Dictator’ the Media’s Most Insidious Code Word?

Let’s start with a quiz: Quick! Name some dictators!

I’m willing to bet most of you responded with just a few of the same names: Assad, Putin, Castro, Kim Jong-un, Gaddafi, Maduro. This is not because they are the only dictators in the world (far from it), or that all of them even necessarily qualify for the title, but precisely because these are the figures most constantly labeled as such by our media.

“Dictator” is a very powerful moniker to give someone. There is a hard-to-define but very important distinction between a government with authoritarian tendencies or a poor human rights record, on the one hand, and a full-blown dictatorship. The very name implies that dictatorial governments should, nay, must be resisted and overthrown, while the same action is not appropriate or justifiable for the former.

Democracy is a supposedly sacred ideal for Americans. Politicians and media tell us that the United States “stands for” democracy and opposes dictatorships everywhere, one reason why the US must continue to involve itself diplomatically and militarily around the world.

However, Freedom House’s “Freedom in the World” studies find that 49 countries—over a quarter of the world’s governments—are “not free”, a designation they use interchangeably with “dictatorships” on their website and their reports. Why then, do most politically savvy people not know the names of all these dictators? Why are they not household names, like Assad and co.? Is it because the United States provides military assistance (training, sales and aid) to three-quarters of them, as Rich Whitney’s study (Truthout, 9/23/17) suggests?

How Free is Freedom House?

Defining and quantifying what does and does not constitute a dictatorship is a notoriously tricky business, and Freedom House’s strong conservative political bias makes its list and judgments all the more questionable. For one, the “non-governmental” organization is actually overwhelmingly funded by Washington, who employed Freedom House in 2006 to perform “clandestine activities”—i.e., regime change operations—in Iran.

The man in charge of compiling the freedom list, used by Whitney and many others, admitted his methodology consisted of “hunches and intuition.” And as many scholars have indicated, Freedom House also has a long history of supporting US client state dictatorships and attacking enemy states such as Nicaragua; the ratings have a strong conservative and pro-US ideological bias. Nevertheless, its index is useful, as it is the most commonly cited source on the matter, and one can assume that it is not going out of its way to falsely label US allies as dictators.

When you look at the governments that Freedom House describes as dictatorships, those that are also Official Enemies are frequently described as such in corporate media—for example, Russia (Washington Post, 5/8/18), Cuba (USA Today, 2/26/19), Syria (New York Times, 3/2/19), Belarus (ABC, 3/5/19),  North Korea (USA Today, 3/22/19) and Venezuela (New York Times, 4/10/19). Yet “our dictators”—that is, the “not free” governments that Washington supports—are rarely if ever labeled as dictatorships by the establishment press. In fact, there is very little coverage at all of those countries that are “behaving themselves” as far as the US State Department is concerned.

Let’s look at the press coverage of four of Freedom House’s “dictators” who receive US military aid, all of whom have been in the news recently: Paul Biya of Cameroon, Abdel el-Sisi of Egypt, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and Kazakhstan’ s Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Cameroon

The 86-year-old Paul Biya, the longest serving non-royal head of state in the world, has held office in Cameroon since Gerald Ford was president. He recently won a seventh term in office that Foreign Policy (10/22/18) described as a “farce.” Cameroon has been in the news of late, due to the government’s human rights abuses pushing the country to the brink of a civil war. Freedom House considers it to be one of the least free countries in the world.

However, when discussed at all, Biya was presented matter-of-factly by the media, without the need to add call him a “dictator.” The New York Times (10/6/18) presented him euphemistically as “one of the world’s longest-serving presidents.” From the coverage, readers would not know he is a dictator, even by Freedom House’s standards. In fact, going through fully 20 years of coverage in the Times, Biya was never once described as a “dictator,” “despot,” “tyrant” or any other similar designation.

When Biya was rebuked at all, the tone of the coverage was less condemnatory and more muted criticism. Voice of America (2/14/19) noted that Biya’s decision to remove presidential term limits (meaning he could rule for life) led some “critics” to call the move “authoritarian.”

Egypt

Gen. Abdel el-Sisi came to power in 2013 in  a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Mohamed Morsi. Sisi recently announced his plan to rule until 2034—effectively in perpetuity.

The New York Times’ article (2/14/19) on the subject noted that this would “further entrench his authoritarian rule,” and even noted he had jailed “tens of thousands” of opponents, muzzled the internet and taken over the courts. Nevertheless, it stopped well short of calling him a dictator. Indeed, it noted that he enjoyed strong support from around the world, and was seen as a “bulwark against Islamist militancy” in the region, endorsed by the US and France. Other media outlets followed this tendency. CNN (2/13/19) simply described him as “current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,” while NPR (2/14/19) likewise just referred to “Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.”

While accurately noting Sisi’s “unprecedented crackdown on dissent,” which imprisoned “tens of thousands of people,” the BBC’s report (2/15/19) labeled him neutrally as “president,” and only characterized his steps to rule virtually indefinitely as something “opponents of the proposal describe” as “a further step towards authoritarianism.” Thus, its strongest criticism of Egypt is that it’s accused of moving toward “authoritarianism”—a long way from being a full-fledged “dictator.”

Algeria

After he announced he intended to stand once again for president, massive protests broke out all around Algeria against 82-year-old Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The uprising has been serious enough that he has promised to stand down. Despite coming to power fraudulently and ruling with an iron fist for 20 years, media outlets (e.g., CNN, 3/11/19; Reuters, 4/2/19) have refrained from describing him as a dictator, with the BBC (3/6/19) simply referring to him as a “reclusive president.”

Indeed, reading the Guardian’s coverage  (4/1/19), one would have no idea he was not the epitome of a democrat. The New York Times(3/12/19) also praised Bouteflika for “bringing back stability” to the North African country, and “restoring the honor of the nation’s army.” As with Cameroon’s Biya, Bouteflika has never once been described as a “dictator” in the last 20 years of Times coverage.

Kazakhstan

Another ruler propped up with US military aid is Nursultan Nazarbayev. The 85-year-old, in power since 1989, recentlyannounced he would step down. It was also revealed that Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, would berenamed Nursultan in his honor (not a common occurrence in democracies—with Washington, named for the winner of an election that involved approximately 1 percent of the population, arguably not an exception).

The Washington Post editorial board (3/29/19) published a glowing appraisal of his tenure. It presented him as a visionary leader, an ex-steelworker “who led the former Soviet republic out of the empire’s chaotic implosion,” claiming he brought Kazakhstan into a peaceful, prosperous new era, while “building national identity” and stopping any ethnic conflict. While noting that he “ruled as a strongman” and “would have been wiser to view dissent and democracy with more tolerance,” the editorial implied his repression was justified, concluding “he won’t be soon forgotten” by his people.Nazarbayev has a long history of cracking down on freedom of speech, the press and  religion, and uses torture against his political opponents. Despite this, he was presented positively in the media, with the New York Times (3/19/19) simply referring to him as the “longtime president of Kazakhstan.” The Associated Press (3/19/19) called him “the only leader that independent Kazakhstan has ever known,” praising him for “maintaining stability.” Reuters (3/19/19) claimed he was a “widely popular” leader, with none of the above using the “dictator” moniker.

Double Standards

The double standard is highlighted by the constant media references to enemy states as dictatorships, whether the label is warranted or not. The Washington Post (1/4/19) describes leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales as “wishing to become a Venezuela-style dictator,” while the Guardian(12/3/18) carries warning of Bolivia becoming an “imminent ‘Venezuelan-Cuban-style’ dictatorship.”

The leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua is constantly called a “dictatorship” as well. The New York Times (8/2/18) published an opinion piece from a Nicaraguan headlined “A Dictatorship Is Rising in My Country Again.” Many other outlets describe him as a “dictator” (Economist, 7/12/18; Time, 3/18/19) carrying out a “terrifying crackdown” (National Review, 3/15/19)—language that is never used for US-backed dictatorships.

And it takes only a cursory glance at the headlines to see how Nicolas Maduro, “the child butcher of Venezuela” (Washington Examiner, 2/21/19), is portrayed:

“The Dictator of Venezuela Earns His Title” (New York Times, 2/27/19)
“Venezuela’s Dictator Maduro Survived a Tough Week, but His Problems Are About to Get Worse” (Miami Herald, 2/25/19)
“Why Are Progressives More Focused on Disagreeing With Trump Than Countering a Dictator [Maduro]?” ( Washington Post, 3/2/19)
“Newt Gingrich: Venezuela’s Dictator Maduro Must Go—Even if the Military Has to Intervene” (Fox News, 3/14/19)
“Maduro Really Didn’t Like Being Asked if He’s a ‘Dictator’” (New York Post, 2/26/19)
“Gen. Jack Keane, Hans Humes on Venezuela’s Socialist Dictator Maduro’s Potential Exit” (Fox Business, 3/7/19)

Is it truly a coincidence that these three countries with elected leftist heads of state are constantly labeled “dictatorships”? Bolivia is not even on Freedom House’s “not free” list—unlike Cameroon, Egypt, Algeria and Kazakhstan. Venezuela and Nicaragua were recently added to it, despite the fact that both countries’ latest elections were endorsed internationally.

While there are some clear shortcomings to Venezuela and Nicaragua’s political systems, the US-dominated Organization of American States observed the 2017 Nicaraguan municipal elections and declared that “the popular will [was] expressed through the vote in the vast majority of Nicaragua’s municipalities.” (With 53 percent turnout, the governing Sandinista party won in 135 out of 152 communities, with the Independent Liberal Party taking 12 of the remainder.)

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s 2018 elections were endorsed by 150 international observers, including foreign ex-heads of state like Spain’s Jose Zapatero and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, with three international election observation teams endorsing the result, despite the fact that US media wrote them off as a sham (FAIR.org, 5/23/18).

The same cannot be said for Kazakhstan, even by Freedom House, that notes that “none of the elections held in Kazakhstan since independence have been considered ‘free and fair’ by credible international observers.” Nursultan was declared to have won 98 percent of the vote in 2015.

Enemy states are covered far more and far more harshly in US corporate media than friendly ones. A search for Paul Biya in the NYTimes.com database elicits 97 results, compared to 1,135 for Maduro, 713 for Morales and 3,517 for Ortega, despite the fact that Biya has been in power as long as the other three combined. (Cameroon’s population is 24 million, three-fourths the size of Venezuela, more than twice as big as Bolivia and four times as populous as Nicaragua.)

In a recent article (FAIR.org, 3/23/19), I suggested that the term “moderate” or “centrist” has a tactical definition when used in the media. It does not refer to any political positions, but is used as a way of conveying legitimacy. Thus anyone the media approve of is, by definition, a moderate. FAIR (8/20/18) has also noted that a “regime,” in US media usage, is simply a government that is at odds with the US empire.

The “dictator” label is also a powerful cue, used by media to prime the reader to see a particular country or leader a certain way. Readers are invited to feel outraged at the misdeeds of Assad, Putin or other anti-US head of states, while authoritarian rulers that toe the US line are ignored or even praised. The choice of whether to use a word like “dictator” frames a country in a way conducive to elite US interests, conveying legitimacy or the lack thereof in a single label.

Beware Any Alternative to Medicare-for-All

Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2019. A companion bill of the same name has already been introduced in the House by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). That’s good news for the country. Unfortunately, these bills are facing opposition from what, for some people, will be an unexpected direction.

I don’t mean Republicans. They’ve already lost the health care debate, in one sense, now that large majorities of voters support Medicare for All. The real threat may well come from its Democratic friends. They’re the people who say they support Medicare for All’s “goals,” but claim to have found a better way to achieve them.

Intentionally or not, Medicare for All’s “frenemies” are sowing confusion about it. Among them is Ezekiel Emmanuel, who argues, “At least four different approaches to health reform could truthfully carry the Medicare for all label.”

When opponents like Ezekiel Emmanuel argue that Medicare for All is “the most politically impractical” of all the proposals on the table, it’s important to remember two things: First, they have no expertise in politics. They’re out of their lane. Secondly, their political track record isn’t very impressive.

Why would that be so? The term was crafted by Sanders, Jayapal, and their allies to describe a single-payer system, administered by the government, with no copayments or deductibles, and without the participation of private insurers.

To be sure, the idea’s frenemies have added to the chaos. A variety of watered-down alternatives to Medicare for All have been proposed, most with names that sound like “Medicare for All”: “Medicare X,” “Medicare Extra for All,” “Medicare for America” … (I’m still waiting for a proposal called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Medicare for All!”)

These plans are Medicare for All decoys. They claim to resemble Medicare for All, at least in their outcomes, but they’re not. Each depends on some naive combination of employer cooperation, insurance company goodwill, “smart shopping,” and Rube Goldberg-like fiscal contraptions. Each would continue to force working Americans to spend thousands of dollars on premiums, copays, and deductibles, at a time when most families say they’d have trouble finding $1,000 to cover an emergency.

Worst of all, each would allow insurance company cheating, preventable suffering, bankruptcies, and needless deaths to go on year after year.

“It turns out that most people don’t really know what Medicare for all means,” write Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll. They’re speaking, in large part, about health policy types. But health policy experts, of all people, should be able to distinguish between these proposals and the Sanders/Jayapal plan.

The Urban Institute’s Linda Blumberg even goes so far as to argue that the “Medicare for All” label is a “misnomer.” Speaking to Fierce Healthcare, an industry publication, Blumberg argues that the Sanders/Jayapal program would require a massive new administrative structure, adding: “The idea behind these bills is to eliminate the current Medicare program and put them in something new.”

Unfortunately, neither statement is defensible. Medicare’s administrative systems are, for the most part, already in place. And it’s misleading to argue that Medicare for All would “eliminate” the current Medicare system. It would keep and enhance its positive features, while eliminating the out-of-pocket costs and administrative challenges that bedevil so many of its current recipients. Worse, the word “eliminate” is likely to sow unfounded panic among fearful elders.

Medicare for All would eliminate private insurers from the current Medicare system, which is presumably part of Blumberg’s expressed concern. But that isn’t likely to be disruptive for enrollees, since the benefits they’ll receive under the new plan will be much better than those they currently receive through private insurers—without the complicated paperwork—eliminating the need for private add-ons.

Medicare for All’s Democratic opponents also attack it on political grounds. They argue that public support for Medicare for All is illusory. That argument largely relies on a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which found that support for the idea dropped when people learned more about how it would work.

But that poll was highly flawed, for reasons I discussed at length here, and inadvertently misled interviewees about the proposal. (To its credit, KFF has indicated to me and others that it intends to ask better and more detailed questions in the future.)

To many of Medicare for All’s frenemies, however, these flawed findings have taken on the quality of holy writ. Why? Confirmation bias, perhaps, or to win an argument?

There’s only one Medicare for All plan, and it deserves widespread support.

The “frenemies” argue that people don’t picture the Sanders/Jayapal plan when they tell pollsters they support Medicare for All. But it seems unlikely that voters are picturing a system that still includes complicated forms, a “marketplace” of incomprehensible choices, supplemental insurance plans at extra cost, gaps in pharmaceutical coverage, high out-of-pocket costs, or the other encumbrances Medicare for All would eliminate.

Most of these concessions to the private sector are invisible to people until they enter the thicket of Medicare enrollment. What most people hear when they hear the word “Medicare”—its essential “Medicare-ness,” if you like—is almost certainly a government-run program that provides health care to everyone, with access to the providers of their choice.

When opponents like Emmanuel argue that Medicare for All is “the most politically impractical” of all the proposals on the table, it’s important to remember two things: First, they have no expertise in politics. They’re out of their lane. Secondly, their political track record isn’t very impressive. They misread the depth of opposition to the ACA, for example, and failed to predict the surge in support for Medicare for All.

Neither Medicare for All nor its alternatives will pass the current Senate, so we need a plan that will help shift political power. Medicare for All is compelling enough to do that in a way that the weaker alternatives aren’t. More importantly, it’s better policy.

There’s only one Medicare for All plan, and it deserves widespread support— from its friends, its current enemies, and all the people in between.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Daniel Ellsberg: Assange’s Arrest Is the Beginning of the End

What follows is a conversation between author and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and Sharmini Peries of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

SHARMINI PERIES It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

Whistleblower associated with WikiLeaks Julian Assange appeared to be making a statement as he was shuffled out in handcuffs from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He was carrying a book, a book published by The Real News Network with Gore Vidal on the history of the national security state. We gather Assange may have been trying to send the world a message, as did the Washington Post. And you can find an interview that Paul Jay, the senior editor here at The Real News Network, had done with The Washington Post in the link below.

On to talk about Assange and the reasons for his arrest is a man that is, perhaps, the most famous whistleblower in history that has experienced this type of arrests and state threats, is Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the famous Pentagon Papers. Daniel’s new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. You will find an interview series related to Daniel’s book here on The Real News Network, and we’ll put a link to that, as well. Daniel, good to have you here.

DANIEL ELLSBERG Glad to be back with you. Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES Daniel, your reaction to what has just happened to Julian Assange in London?

DANIEL ELLSBERG It’s a very serious assault on the First Amendment. A clear attempt to rescind the freedom of the press, essentially. Up till now we’ve had a dozen or so indictments of sources, of which my prosecution is the very first prosecution of an American for disclosing information to the American public. And that was ended a couple of years later by governmental misconduct. There were two others before President Obama, and nine or so under President Obama, of sources, none of these having been tested in the Supreme Court yet as to their relation to the First Amendment. Hasn’t gone to them.

This is the first indictment of a journalist and editor or publisher, Julian Assange. And if it’s successful it will not be the last. This is clearly is a part of President Trump’s war on the press, what he calls the enemy of the state. And if he succeeds in putting Julian Assange in prison, where I think he’ll be for life, if he goes there at all, probably the first charge against him is only a few years. But that’s probably just the first of many.

In my own case, my first indictment was for three counts, felony counts. That was later expanded to 12 felony counts by the end of the year, for a possible 115-year sentence. So I think this is a warning shot across the bow of every editor and publisher in the country.

If they make the connection of the Real News Network book that he was carrying with him into prison, which I think Gore Vidal would be very pleased to see, him associated with this incident in terms of defending Germany Assange’s rights, but they may connect you. You may be in the next conspiracy trial with Julian Assange. It may not take much more than that. I see on the indictment, which I’ve just read, that one of the charges is that he encouraged Chelsea Manning and Bradley Manning to give him documents, more documents, after she had already given him hundreds of thousands of files. Well, if that’s a crime, then journalism is a crime, because just on countless occasions I have been harassed by journalists for documents, or for more documents than I had yet given them. So they–none of them have been put on trial up till now. But in this case, if that’s all it takes, then no journalist is safe. The freedom of the press is not safe. It’s over. And I think our republic is in its last days, because unauthorized disclosures of this kind are the lifeblood of a republic.

SHARMINI PERIES Daniel, thank you for connecting that Chelsea Manning is currently sitting in prison, and after 28 days in solitary confinement for not cooperating and answering the questions related to the Julian Assange case, and the grand jury investigation that is underway. Now, it is very interesting that President Moreno of Ecuador withdrew the asylum that was protecting Julian Assange until today in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which led to all of this. And Jen Robinson, who is Julian Assange’s–one of his lawyers, tweeted as he was being arrested that she wanted to confirm that Assange had been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions, but also in relation to the U.S. extradition request. Now, in your assessment of having undergone this kind of allegations and arrests, and being under this kind of scrutiny by the state, what do you think the real intentions here is of the United States in forcing this revocation of his asylum from the Ecuadorian Embassy, as well as this request for extradition?

DANIEL ELLSBERG You know, I think the word ‘forcing’ may be misleading here, because it underrates the degree of choice here that Ecuador and the British had in both these cases. And for that matter, the Department of Justice. But they couldn’t really force Ecuador to break the norm of international asylum here by handing him over. They couldn’t force Britain. Obviously both of those were induced by various incentives. My guess would be in the case of Moreno that he’s involved in debt relief. And the U.S., the great creditor nation here–although it’s actually a debtor nation altogether. But they’re able to bring the kind of pressure on Ecuador that caused essentially a lawless action here which threatens everyone in asylum. Everyone in the world. The people in this country who have been granted political asylum, people in Britain, and certainly in Ecuador.

So that’s–that’s very ominous. The British have had a long history here of servility, basically, with respect to their ally the United States, and again, are not too concerned, I think, about law. There was an earlier indication that Ecuador might find an assurance from Britain that Assange was not facing a death penalty as sufficient excuse for revoking his asylum on the grounds that they had really only given asylum because of fear of the death penalty. I think that’s absurd. I think there was no mention of that seven years ago when he got the asylum. And of course you don’t have to be facing a death penalty to be seeking and being granted political asylum. So why exactly this moment is chosen for Ecuador and Britain to truckle to the United States, I’m not sure I notice that the indictment was signed a year ago in March 2018. Maybe they’ve, the price has been haggling between Ecuador and Britain as to what the price would be for handing him over.

As I say, though, it’s a threat not only to journalists, but to people in political status and political asylum everywhere. But the immediate threat, you say the significance of is for Trump, I have no doubt that he wants to define criminally in a courtroom the press as a an enemy of the people. When I say that Assange seeking documents–something that I’ve been asked countless times by a journalist to do, to give them documents–if that’s all it takes, then the First Amendment means very little. And without freedom of the press you have no–you have very little freedom in the country. I’m afraid that’s the direction we’re going.

So journalists in general, I think, should rally around this case, whatever they think of Julian himself. There’s a lot of people who don’t like Julian personally. I am not one of those. I do like him. There’s a lot of people who are very critical of his actions in the election of 2016, on various grounds. I’m not happy with the result to the extent that it in any way aided President Trump to become president. And Trump did, of course, state his love for Julian at one point. He said “I love WikiLeaks” when it seemed to be helping him. But of course a promise of love from Donald Trump is not terribly reliable. We knew that already. So he’s willing to make him the sacrificial goat here, I think, for journalists in general.

SHARMINI PERIES Now, Daniel, you said something very interesting, which is that all those who were interested in press freedom, and of course, defending our right to freedom of expression, and access to information, and knowledge that is critical for democracy, you in this situation was also assisted by various people on the outside. What are some of the pivotal things that happened in your case that might be a lesson for us today?

DANIEL ELLSBERG Well, something that was striking to me was that a dozen or so people helped my wife and I, Patricia and I, who was my–Tricia’s my unindicted coconspirator here, now–and a number of people helped us find lodging while we were eluding the FBI, putting out 17 different parts of the Pentagon Papers to different newspapers to keep the story going after the Times and the Post had both been enjoined, for the first time in our history. And none of those people was ever questioned by the FBI, because we stayed off the phone, basically, which at that time kind of paralyzed them, in the days before computers. In those days payphones were relatively safe. I don’t think that’s true anymore, if there are still payphones, as a matter of fact.

But what struck me was that when I finally wrote an account of that many years later, in the first–about 2002, 30 years later–I had hoped to tell the story of all these other people 30 years later as part of the story that had never gotten into the news. It would be interesting to people. How they had helped us; carrying the papers to different newspapers, and communicating with them, and finding us places to stay. In those days it was quite easy to find people. They just had to be young, basically, with long hair, men or women, and said there’s something you could do here that might help shorten this war. But it might have a lot of legal risk. No one refused. However, 30 years later, not one was willing to let their name be used, because that was a time when John Ashcroft, our previous Confederate Attorney General, before Sessions was the attorney general. And they were afraid, in one case, of deportation; in other cases of indictment, even as late as that.

Now, just a couple of years ago one of–a key person in that process, Gar Alperovitz, did, after consulting his lawyers, decide to let me use his name. And that–there was a New Yorker story about that recently. But others, still cautious. And what it appears now is I think they were right to be cautious about that. I would have thought with all his time having elapsed that could be–and with it having been clear that the publication they’d aided in had served the American interest in helping end the Vietnam War and exposing a lot of lying, I would have thought that they would be not only proud of that, which I think they are, but are willing to take credit for that. Nope. That’s a credit they didn’t want, because it may come at the cost of an indictment. And I hope Gar is not caught up in that at this point.

But the conspiracy charge, I don’t know if there’s a conspiracy charge in this case yet. It’s Chelsea Manning who gave Julian the material has served seven and a half years in prison, and is in prison again right now, apparently because they want her to go beyond what she said, either falsely, which they would be happy with, to incriminate Julian Assange. After all, torture is mainly used for false confessions, to get them. And it’s usually successful at that. But not successful with Chelsea Manning. She was in solitary confinement for ten and a half months, until public pressure got her released into the general prison population years ago. And clearly she’s not a person who can be tortured into a false confession. Or they would want her to give new details of her dealings with Assange that would help them in their prosecution of Assange. And she is not cooperating with the grand jury on that. She objects to the grand jury as an undemocratic–unconstitutional, really–but an undemocratic process and its secrecy, its lack of legal defense, legal support in that process. And many people over the years have resisted that.

As a matter of fact, my codefendant, Tony Russo, refused to testify to the grand jury before–after I was indicted, but before the new indictment. And he spent about a month in jail before he himself was indicted and added to the indictment. So that’s the precedent for what Chelsea Manning is doing now. He didn’t want to be testifying against me in secret to a grand jury, no transcript of the proceedings, no publicity as to what he may have said. In fact, he offered to testify if he was given a transcript that he could publish of his testimony, and they refused to do that, and indicted him itself. I say again, that was Anthony Russo, who is no longer alive.

But Chelsea is doing that right now. She’s acting very courageously–again, I would say, which is not something I would ever demand of anyone. But I’m not at all surprised that she is doing that.

SHARMINI PERIES And Daniel, finally, while the U.S. has requested an extradition here, it is very possible that Julian Assange’s lawyers will resist this request. What are the chances of that succeeding? And if it doesn’t succeed, what awaits him at this end in the U.S. if he’s extradited?

DANIEL ELLSBERG I am doubtful that–but what do I know? My judgment is not worth much here, and it’s a fairly unprecedented case; in fact, totally unprecedented when we’re talking about extraditing him for committing journalism. They do charge him with aiding, or trying to aid Chelsea to conceal her identity on the leaks here. That’s something that the Freedom of the Press Foundation in a different way–and I’m on the board of that, along with Ed Snowden and Laura Poitras, and others. We’ve given out software to many journalist associations to enable people to give them information secretly, and cipher, to encipher it. That’s a little different from what he’s charged with here, but to the same effect, of concealing the source.

Incidentally, Chelsea told me that she intended to reveal herself eventually here to prevent other people from being wrongly accused. That was true of me, and true of Ed Snowden, as well, that we didn’t want other people to be accused of doing what we alone had done here.

So I do think that having induced the British to arrest him forcibly, as just happened, indicates that they will go the extra mile in violating, as I say, international norms by violating his immunity, and his asylum, and then shipping off to the U.S. In my day, his case would have been almost sure to be upheld by this–that is, the case dismissed by the Supreme Court on grounds of violating the First Amendment. But that was a different Supreme Court, 40 years ago. And this court I don’t think at all he could count on to defend the Supreme Court, or much else, in the Bill of Rights. I think a great deal is at risk nowadays, especially with the last couple of appointments that Trump has made. But before that, as well.

So it’s a very ominous situation, not only for Julian Assange, who’s been in one room for almost seven years now, something I suspect, by the way, has affected his judgment in some respects. I don’t endorse every choice he’s made in the last couple of years, in particular. I don’t know what kind of judgment I’d be showing after six years in one room. I think he has ahead of him, for having taken on the world’s mightiest empire and exposed its criminal secrets, in many cases, having to do with torture and assassination, he’s not going to get any breaks from them. I think he’ll be in one room, possibly in solitary confinement, on the excuse that he has further secrets that he might reveal; just as Ed Snowden would face that, I think, possibly for the rest of his life. And that will certainly be far, far more onerous than the room he’s had in the Ecuadorian Embassy, which already amounted to inhumane treatment and wrongful imprisonment. Well, the solitary he’s heading for now is much more serious.

I did notice, by the way, that he was being dragged down the steps. I’ve been arrested many times, and I have a bad back myself. I always walk when I get arrested to spare the backs of the police arresting me. But I think if I were being arrested under these circumstances, with the Constitution at stake here, being absolutely wrongfully arrested, I wouldn’t worry about their backs. I would do what Julian was apparently doing. And that was you’re going to have to drag me into prison.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Daniel. Any last thoughts you have on this case? And particularly, if Julian Assange gets charged with espionage on top of all of this?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It’s a day for journalists in general, especially, and everybody who values a free press, and not only in this country, to join ranks here now to expose and resist the wrongful–and in this country unconstitutional–abuse of our laws to silence journalists. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he is further indicted under the Espionage Act, as I was, the first person to do that. I suspect that will be added to his charges. And again, that’s a great danger to journalists in general. They have to inform themselves on it and begin to demand that the Espionage Act not be used against the free press as it has been under the last two presidents. Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: Daniel Ellsberg, I thank you so much for joining us on this very significant day that exposes the hand of the state that threatens our freedom of expression. Thank you so much.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

Trump Pushed to Release Detainees Into Sanctuary Cities, Report Finds

In what critics and rights groups condemned as further evidence that the Trump administration views asylum seekers as mere political pawns rather than vulnerable human beings, the White House reportedly considered dropping migrants off in Democratic districts as a supposed “punishment” for their opposition to the president’s anti-immigrant agenda.

“The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,” said Ashley Etienne, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose district was reportedly floated as a “target” by the White House. “Using human beings—including little children—as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.”

According to the Washington Post, which first reported on the White House plan late Thursday, “Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months—once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump’s border wall.”

Anna Griffin, news director at Oregon Public Broadcasting, pointed out that an “unmentioned irony” of the Trump administration’s cynical ploy is that, if it had been carried out, “folks in Portland and other sanctuary cities would have been very welcoming and probably looked for ways to make their guests feel at home.”

Unmentioned irony in this story — which is, to use a technical journalism term, an insane amazeballs scoop — is that folks in Portland & other sanctuary cities would have been very welcoming & probably looked for ways to make their guests feel at home. https://t.co/tqcoJNumXY

— Anna Griffin (@annargriff) April 12, 2019

President Donald Trump’s xenophobic senior adviser Stephen Miller—who has been quickly gaining power in the White House amid an ongoing “purge” of immigration staff—spearheaded discussions of the proposal, the Post reported, citing Department of Homeland Security officials and internal administration emails.

“White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused ‘to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,’ places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation,” according to the Post.

Progressives were appalled by the Trump administration’s proposal, which the White House downplayed as little more than a “suggestion” that was not carried out.

the White House doesn’t view migrants as human beingshttps://t.co/2ZXN3Rx6R3

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) April 12, 2019

As observers pointed out, the reported ploy lays bare once more the Trump administration’s xenophobic and false view of migrants as dangerous “invaders,” rather than people seeking refuge from violence and persecution in their home countries.

“These are people seeking safety, not political pawns,” tweeted the ACLU.