Chris Hedges's Blog, page 289

The Damage of Trump’s Judicial Appointments Is Already Done

As Senate Republicans rammed through a rules change enabling faster approval of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, two advocacy groups released reports on Wednesday showing the far-reaching and long-lasting damage his confirmed federal judges have already inflicted on the nation.

People for the American Way (PFAW) and Alliance for Justice (AFJ) both published studies Wednesday about Trump’s success in appointing 92 judges to district courts, federal appeals courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court—with PFAW writing that the president’s effort to remake the judicial branch in his own image could be disastrous for a number of marginalized groups.

“In just under two years on the bench, these narrow-minded elitist judges have already harmed workers, consumers, voters, immigrants, reproductive rights, and many more,” wrote the group in its report, “Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears.”

The report was published shortly before the GOP-controlled Senate triggered the so-called “nuclear option” by voting 51-48 to allow the approval of most executive nominations with a simple majority vote. Trump’s future judicial nominees will be subject to just two hours of debate instead of an additional 30 hours.

Trump’s two most high-profile appointments so far are those of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whose most recent pro-death penalty ruling was called “bloodthirsty” and “atrocious” by critics.

But the groups also highlighted the 37 judges who now have seats on the Circuit Courts of Appeals, which often has final say in federal cases that do not make it to the Supreme Court.

Trump’s influence has made its way into the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, where four of his appointees upheld an Ohio law barring funding to Planned Parenthood; and the 7th Circuit, where four judges appointed by Trump went against federal law when they ruled that older workers cannot claim discrimination by their employers.

“The record number of judges appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate to lifetime posts on the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals is by far the biggest impact thus far of the Trump presidency,” PFAW Senior Fellow Elliot Mincberg said in a statement.

During his time in office, Trump has rapidly remade the judiciary compared to his predecessor. Due to unprecedented levels of obstruction by the Republicans in the Senate—a minority party at the time—former President Barack Obama was only able to appoint 16 appellate judges to circuit courts two years into his presidency, while Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate have pushed through nearly twice as many.

PFAW and AFJ pointed to judges including Amy Coney Barrett, on the 7th Circuit appeals court, as an example of how Trump’s judiciary appointments—which often go largely unnoticed by the public and the corporate media—will have far-reaching effects on marginalized communities.

As detailed in AFJ’s report—titled “Trump’s Attacks on Our Justice System“ (pdf)—Barrett ruled in 2017 that a corporation should be permitted to racially segregate a workplace, has criticized proposed reforms for sentencing guidelines, and voted to overturn a law banning people convicted of felonies from buying firearms.

“Why do these appointments matter? Of our three branches of government, two and a half are now squarely in the control of the current conservative Republican party,” wrote former U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin in the Guardian Wednesday. “This is the party that seeks to roll back a hundred years of progress with respect to women’s rights, racial justice, equal opportunity, workers’ rights, environmental protection and, of course, voting rights. The federal courts will soon be the last place to go to seek justice. We can only hope that our state courts remain up to the task of ensuring justice for all. It is unlikely they will find comfort in the federal courts.”

AFJ noted that Trump’s rapid-fire remaking of the judicial branch of government also has implications for how he is treated by the courts. Trump faces investigations into his charity and business dealings as well as a number of cases regarding his possible violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause—and at least one of his Supreme Court appointees has indicated that he believes a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“President Trump sees two purposes for the federal judiciary,” said Nan Aron, President of Alliance for Justice. “One is as a tool to accomplish an anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-health care, anti-LGBTQ, anti-racial justice agenda that is too unpopular to pass through the legislative process. The other is to protect himself from legal jeopardy.”

“Both are undemocratic and unjust goals for a branch of our government that is supposed to uphold the rights of all Americans,” she added.

With Middle Eastern Allies Like These

This piece originally appeared on antiwar.com.

Pop quiz: name the two largest (by far) recipients of U.S. foreign military aid and one other country which recently negotiated the biggest American arms sale deal in world history. Let’s call them the Big three (beneficiaries of largesse, that is). Need some hints? One is ruled by a dictatorial general who came to power in a coup and subsequently ordered the slaughter of some one thousand civilian protesters. Another regularly defies international law, has annexed conquered territory, and boasts a military that has shot to death 250 civilian protesters along its border over just the last year. Finally, the last country fatally starved upwards of 85,000 foreign children and still decapitates women for the crimes of “witchcraft” and “sorcery.” By the way, all three are rather tight with old Uncle Sam – regularly described as “partners” in Washington. Which reminds me of the old saying: with friends like these, who needs…well, you get it.

Ready for the (not-so) shocking answers? So, the military dictatorship is Egypt – recipient of $1.3 billion in military aid per annum. The nation that conquered and annexed adjacent territory is Israel – the donee of some $3.1 billion in military aid each year; and, ironically, the state that US leaders regularly (if incorrectly) tout as the “only democracy in the Mideast.” And the charming, child-starving, woman-beheading regime: that’s the theocracy and absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia – future owner (maybe) of a record $110 billion in US military equipment. Now that’s a proud lot!

By backing this core of abusive regimes, Washington only rewards and encourages bad behavior. If the US didn’t cut funding when Egypt gunned down protesters, and Trump praises its President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as doing a “tremendous job,” what’s to stop repeat human rights abuses? If Washington barely blushed when the Saudis killed and dismembered a Washington Post journalist, and refuses to shutdown the Saudi terror war in Yemen, why should the crown prince – and Jared Kushner bro – behave? And, if Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can commit crimes at will, can the US really criticize Chinese human rights abuses of dissidents or Uighur Muslims? Finally, if the US unilaterally moves (as it did) its embassy to a “Jewish capital” in Jerusalem and recognizes (as it also has) Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, how can Washington protest when Russia annexes Crimea, or Eastern Ukraine?

Now there are different ways to view these staggering disconnects – perhaps even cognitive dissonances – between America’s public values and its (not-quite) private policy. Some view it as proof of US hypocrisy in the world – and it is that. Others see this as the realist nature of doing business in a complex, nasty world – perhaps this is also true; thought it rests on the assumption that the US should be meddling in the region to begin with, which seems to have less and less efficacy. Finally, another group of US imperial apologists trade in what-about-ism – pointing to (ostensibly) worse regimes in the Mideast to mitigate the ugly nature of America’s partners.

On and on the arguments – which are as old as the US republic itself – go as each side retreats into its comfortable ideological corner. Still, as a former devotee and servant of the American empire, and a reformed / concerned citizen, let me propose one rarely noted addition: that backing authoritarian and/or abusive regimes often proves both ethically and strategically destructive to US standing in the world, and, by extension, to the safety of otherwise disengaged American civilians.

Values, so to speak, cannot be separated from and are inextricably linked to strategy. As such, over the last 18 years the combination of American military hyper-interventionism and nefarious alliances has been utterly counterproductive – destabilizing the region, emboldening jihadis, and endangering the Homeland. And make no mistake: libertarians, “realists,” progressives, and (believe it or not) conventional national security hawks, should ultimately agree with this proposition; if, that is, each could set aside partisan tribal affiliations and do what’s right for the country they purport to love. So don’t bet on it.

Nevertheless, consider an historical analogy. In the Cold War – for which, oddly, many hawkish observers seem to pine – the United States set aside its values of liberty and democracy in favor of reflexive anti-communism. Thus, Washington would back, aid, fund, or place in power right-wing dictatorial regimes that abused their citizens and (sometimes) regional neighbors. The priority became promoting capitalism and (superficially) decreasing the zero-sum global influence of the Soviet Union. All this, of course, was based on the false assumption that worldwide communism was a monolith intent on world conquest. It wasn’t. The major communist powers – think Russia and China – went to war with each other just as often.

Worse still, the outcome of these odious partnerships was usually “blowback”– unintended consequences that left the world a more unstable and dangerous place. CIA-instigated coups and surreptitious military backing of autocracies increased the amount of intra-state and regional wars, ethnic cleansing, and jihadi terrorism worldwide – from South America to Africa and Asia. In North Africa and Southwest Asia in particular, the U.S.-backed (and in a sense birthed) Islamist insurgencies and terrorists, who, conveniently, were also anti-communist and anti-Soviet. Of course, once victorious, such groups turned their ire onto the United States and the rest, so they say, is history.

In the 21st century, the US strategic paradigm has shifted but remains equally obtuse and deficient. In place of anti-communism, the new enemy “monolith” is Islamism. And, true to its antiquated Cold War-thinking, Washington now backs anyone in the region that purports to fight “terror.” See there’s no room for nuance, for complexity, for parsing out the differences between local nationalists and global jihadists, internal and international threats, or manageable

versus existential threats to the US So here we go again. The answer to all vaguely Islamist challenges is always the same: US military intervention, raids, or foreign training; plus American support and arms for faintly anti-terror (but abusive) regimes.

The formula has never worked as designed – then or now. Cast aside delusions: there will be “Blowback” 2.0 as a result of American support for the Big Three and other vile regimes. It will go something like this: backing authoritarian Arab or apartheid Israeli leaders will radicalize regional (and international) Muslims against not only their governments but the West, more generally. Civilians will be wantonly slaughtered in the ensuing local wars – further substantiating the Islamist narrative and grievances. Global terror attacks will rise – as they have since 9/11 – and some of these horrific events will target the West, mainly the US In response to the ensuing public outrage, Washington will feel obliged (and pleased anyway) to militarily intervene and throw more cash at local strongmen “partners.” Which, ever so absurdly, serves to repeat the whole cycle of forever war.

Where does it all end? Violence begets violence. More arms don’t decrease conflict – they fuel it. Still the lumbering American hegemon either never learns, or, more disturbingly, craves a system that feeds the military-industrial corporate beast.

Hypocrisy can be contra-strategic in addition to ethically unseemly. Throwing arms, cash, support, and the American name behind a military dictatorship, a theocratic absolute monarchy, and a corrupt, apartheid-like government, shames our nation and subverts safety. It is as indefensible as it is counterproductive. That Washington is able to do so demonstrates that either the public is utterly apathetic or completely powerless in the face of the corporate arm’s industry.

It’s hard to say which is worse: a people who don’t care about their broken democracy or one that hardly exists at all.

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. 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.]

Harvard’s Tacit Endorsement of Slavery

The haunting gaze of Papa Renty peers from the 1850 daguerreotype. The enslaved man was forced to pose, naked, for a study being conducted by a racist Harvard anthropologist named Louis Agassiz. The Swiss-born scientist promoted “polygenism,” a theory that held that different races were separate species, and that the white race was far superior to the black race. To validate this, Agassiz traveled from Harvard to South Carolina seeking authentic, “pure” black slaves, those whose original, African racial makeup hadn’t been diluted, as all too often occurred, by the rape of slave women by their white masters. Agassiz commissioned these images of Renty, his daughter Delia and other slaves, and returned to Harvard. The images eventually ended up in a storage cabinet, forgotten, until they were discovered in 1976. Since then, Harvard has kept tight control over access to the collection, charging licensing fees to any seeking to use them. Now, Tamara Lanier, one of Renty’s direct descendants, is suing Harvard, demanding that the daguerreotypes of Renty and Delia be returned to the family.

“When will Harvard University finally free Renty?” Lanier’s lawyer, civil-rights attorney Benjamin Crump, asked on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “These daguerreotypes are very, very valuable. They are the earliest known photographs of American slaves and some of the earliest known photographs in America,” adding that they are “priceless to Tamara Lanier and her family, because they’re the linear descendants. … But Harvard is telling Ms. Lanier and her family: ‘No, no, Renty still belongs to us. He’s still our property.'”

Ownership of the daguerreotypes is a legal question that strikes at the heart of slavery, its history in building not only the United States but also institutions like Harvard, and what our society owes to descendants of slaves. “Make no mistake about it,” Crump said. The lawsuit “is landmark in its scope, because it will be the first time that descendants of African slaves in America have been compensated in any way, fashion or form from an American institution.” He says it could be as important as Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court case that desegregated schools nationally.

The riveting, 24-page complaint opens with a quote from Maya Angelou, also a descendant of slaves: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.” The lawsuit details Louis Agassiz’s racist theories and his meteoric rise in U.S. academic and elite circles. It recounts how his research describing the inferiority of blacks was funded by a Boston textile magnate whose business depended on a steady supply of cheap cotton from Southern slave plantations.

It also describes what is known of Papa Renty. A native of Congo, Renty somehow obtained a copy of Noah Webster’s “Blue Back Speller,” and managed to teach himself, and others, to read — a crime for slaves. It’s the same book legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass used when learning to read and write while still enslaved, working in Baltimore’s shipyards. Papa Renty’s son and grandson were also named Renty. They were forced to use the surname of their owner, Taylor. Renty Taylor III was sold to a slave owner named Thompson. Among his children was Frederick Douglass Thompson, Tamara Lanier’s grandfather.

“As a child, my mom often talked about her enslaved ancestors, particularly the man in the image, who she fondly referred to as Papa Renty,” Lanier said on “Democracy Now!” “She also talked about our lineage, how our family was broken apart by slavery.”

Along with Renty, and Delia, Harvard’s collection has images of other slaves, taken in the same Columbia, South Carolina, portrait studio. They are mugshot style, one image head-on, another from the side. Also from Taylor’s plantation is Jack, a native of Guinea, and his daughter, Drana. Drana, like Delia, is stripped to the waist, like the men. From the plantation of a Col. Wade Hamilton, also near Columbia, is a male named Fassena, a carpenter and slave.

Tamara Lanier hopes the images will expand the national dialogue on slavery. “It’s important for me that people know who Renty was and who Agassiz was,” she said. “I hope that there is a greater education or a reteaching of history, so that we can dispute the legacy that Agassiz has stained my family with.”

While her lawsuit proceeds, the images of Renty and the others remain at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, bearing the copyright, “President and Fellows of Harvard College.” On this, the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave ship to the shores of North America, it is high time for Harvard to give up its claimed copyright and just do what’s right, reuniting Renty and Delia with their descendants.

Researchers Find More Cases of Facebook App Data Exposure

SAN FRANCISCO—Security researchers have uncovered more instances of Facebook user data being publicly exposed on the internet, further underscoring its struggles as it deals with a slew of privacy and other problems.

The researchers from the firm UpGuard said in a blog post Wednesday that the data, which included user names and passwords, came from two different Facebook apps that stored their data publicly on Amazon’s cloud services. Facebook said the databases have been taken down.

But the episode illustrates Facebook’s issues with controlling its users’ data, especially once it is in the hands of third-party developers.

The databases were from a Mexico-based media company called Cultura Colectiva, which included more than 540 million records — like user comments and likes — and from an app called At the Pool. The researchers said passwords stored for At the Pool were “presumably” for the app and not for Facebook. Still, storing them publicly could put people at risk if they used the same passwords across different accounts.

While the At the Pool data collection was not as large as that for Cultura Colectiva, UpGuard said it included plain text passwords for 22,000 users. The app itself shut down in 2014, and UpGuard said it is not known how long the user details were exposed.

The discovery comes a little over a year after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the data mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump got personal data on millions of Facebook users.

“As Facebook faces scrutiny over its data stewardship practices, they have made efforts to reduce third-party access. But as these exposures show, the data genie cannot be put back in the bottle,” UpGuard wrote in its blog post. “Data about Facebook users has been spread far beyond the bounds of what Facebook can control today.”

House Chairman Asks IRS for 6 Years of Trump’s Tax Returns

WASHINGTON—A House committee chairman on Wednesday formally asked the IRS to provide six years of President Donald Trump’s personal tax returns and the returns for some of his businesses as Democrats try to shed light on his complex financial dealings and potential conflicts of interest.

The request by Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, who heads the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is the first such demand for a sitting president’s tax information in 45 years. The move is likely to set off a huge legal battle between Democrats controlling the House and the Trump administration.

Neal made the request in a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, asking for Trump’s personal and business returns for 2013 through 2018. He asked for the documents in seven days, setting an April 10 deadline.

Trump told reporters Wednesday he “would not be inclined” to provide his tax returns to the committee.

Three of the eight Trump businesses in Neal’s request are also among the 14 Trump legal entities that were subpoenaed by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., in a lawsuit now in a federal appeals court. That suit alleges that Trump is violating the Constitution by accepting profits through foreign and domestic officials who stay at his Washington hotel.

The Trump businesses in the new request — part of Trump’s global empire of some 500 entities — include the trust he set up to handle all his holdings during his presidency, making it the most important of the group.

Also included is Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

An IRS spokesman said the agency had no immediate comment on Neal’s request.

Democrats insist that obtaining Trump’s tax filings falls within their mandate of congressional oversight. Republicans have denounced it as a political witch hunt and invoked privacy concerns.

“We have completed the necessary groundwork for a request of this magnitude, and I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal and oversight rights,” Neal said in a statement Wednesday evening.

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the Ways and Means panel, denounced the move as “an abuse of the tax-writing committees’ statutory authority.”

“Weaponizing our nation’s tax code by targeting political foes sets a dangerous precedent and weakens Americans’ privacy rights,” Brady wrote in a letter Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS. “As you know, by law all Americans have a fundamental right to the privacy of the personal information found in their tax returns.”

The legal battle set to ensue could take years to resolve, possibly stretching beyond the 2020 presidential election.

Trump broke with decades of tradition for presidential candidates by refusing to release his income tax filings during his 2016 campaign. He has said he won’t release them because he is being audited, even though IRS officials have said taxpayers under audit are free to release their returns. Trump claimed at a news conference following the November election that the filings are too complex for people to understand.

The IRS has a policy of auditing the tax returns of all sitting presidents and vice presidents, “yet little is known about the effectiveness of this program,” Neal said in the statement. “On behalf of the American people, the Ways and Means Committee must determine if that policy is being followed, and if so, whether these audits are conducted fully and appropriately.”

Neal continued, “In order to fairly make that determination, we must obtain President Trump’s tax returns and review whether the IRS is carrying out its responsibilities.”

Neal is one of only three congressional officials authorized to make a written request to the Treasury secretary for anyone’s tax returns. The Internal Revenue Service is part of the Treasury Department. A rarely used 1924 law says the Treasury chief “shall furnish” the requested material to members of the Ways and Means Committee for them to examine behind closed doors.

A spokesman for Mnuchin didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mnuchin suggested in testimony to Congress last month that he would protect Trump’s privacy if the House Democrats requested his tax returns. “We will examine the request and we will follow the law … and we will protect the president as we would protect any taxpayer” regarding their right to privacy, Mnuchin said.

__

Associated Press writer Stephen Braun contributed to this report.

Was Ending the Draft a Grave Mistake?

I spent last week at Angelo State University in remote central Texas as a panelist for the annual All-Volunteer Force (AVF) Forum. It was a strange forum in many ways, but nonetheless instructive. I was the youngest (and most progressive) member, as well as the lowest-ranking veteran among a group of leaders and speakers that included two retired generals, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a few former colonels and several academics. Despite having remarkably diverse life experiences and political opinions, all concluded that America’s all-volunteer military is not equitable, efficient or sustainable. The inconvenient truth each of the panel participants had the courage to identify is that the end of the draft in the U.S. had many unintended—and ultimately tragic—consequences for the republic.

The oft-praised U.S. military is, disturbingly, the most trusted public institution in the country. These days, active service members and veterans are regularly paraded before an otherwise apathetic citizenry at nearly every sporting event. Public figures and private citizens alike fawn over and obsessively thank the troops at every possible opportunity. It seems strange, however, that Americans are so hyperproud of their military, seeing as it neither reflects society nor achieves national objectives overseas. After all, the military only accounts for about 0.5 % of Americans and, as  recent statistics indicate, the Army is falling well short of its recruiting goals. Not to mention that for all the vacuous pageantry and celebrations of a military that is increasingly divergent from civil society, few seem to ask an important question: When was the last time the AVF won a war?

The AVF is ultimately an unfair, ineffective and unsustainable organization charged with impossible, ill-advised missions by policymakers and a populace that actually care rather little for the nation’s soldiers. As the AVF nears its 50th anniversary, there’s no better time than now to assess the model’s flaws and its effect on American democracy.

Way back when the U.S. military was bogged down in an unwinnable, immoral and ill-advised war in Vietnam, newly elected President Nixon faced a serious problem. Tricky Dick, as he is sometimes known, wanted to prolong and escalate the war into Cambodia and Laos in order to achieve “peace with honor”—in other words, seem tough and save some American face. Only the growing domestic anti-war movement that was gaining influence in Congress stood in his way. No doubt cynically, but also astutely, Nixon surmised that fear of individual conscription largely motivated youthful anti-war activists. Thus, in a Faustian devil’s bargain, he helped end the draft and usher in a brand-new all-volunteer force. Surprisingly, his gambit worked, and the steam blew out of the anti-war movement over time. Today, it is with the same all-volunteer force Nixon left us with that the U.S. wages war across the breadth of the planet.

Terribly Unfair

Proponents of the volunteer military force promised equity. No longer would the poorest Americans be forced to serve in foreign wars. Rather, only those who truly wanted to serve the nation would do so. On the surface, this seemed intuitive. What actually happened was a different matter entirely. In a sort of economic draft, the military mostly began to draw servicemen from the third and fourth income quintiles. Those who needed the money the military offered and were lured by modest cash bonuses would serve, while the wealthiest, perhaps unsurprisingly, opted out. This meant the U.S. elites would no longer serve and, in fact, would become almost totally absent from the new AVF. The tiny percentage that would serve America’s neo-imperial war machine wouldn’t reflect U.S. society at all. Today, volunteers are far more rural, Southern and likely to hail from military families than their civilian peers. Thus, an unrepresentative warrior caste—not the citizens’ Army that won World War II—became the norm.

While most Americans and their political leaders seem completely fine with the glaring injustice inherent in such a system, those who serve have had to deal with the consequences. America’s soldiers have been subject to multiple combat tours, while reserve and National Guard troops have been activated for war at record rates. As a result, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide rates have skyrocketed, topping off recently at 22 self-inflicted veteran deaths per day. To keep these soldiers “in the fight,” damaged individual troopers were loaded up with psychotropic medications and sent back overseas. What’s more, a dangerous civil-military gap opened between the vast majority of Americans—who are rarely exposed to real soldiers—and a military that has learned to resent the populace. And when a military becomes so professionalized and distant as to resemble a Roman Praetorian Guard, the republic is undoubtedly in peril.

Wildly Inefficient

Contrary to early optimistic promises, the U.S. military since 1973 sports a poor efficiency record. Especially since 9/11—the real first test of the new system—American armed forces have produced exactly zero victories. Prior to the World Trade Center attack, it can be argued that a much larger AVF crushed Saddam Hussein’s poorly led and equipped Iraqi army in 1991, but it’s important to remember that that war was an anomaly—Saddam’s troops fought us in an open desert, without any air support, and according to the conventional tactics the U.S. military had been training against for years. I also refuse to count the imperial punishments inflicted on Panama (1989) and Grenada (1983) as victories, because neither was a necessary or even a fair fight. Besides, the invasion of the tiny island of Grenada was more fiasco than triumph.

Worst of all, the AVF is inefficient because it enables the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, ensuring high costs and much wear and tear on equipment and personnel. The lack of a draft means the loss of what the co-founder of the AVF Forum, retired Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, calls “skin in the game.” When the citizenry isn’t subjected to the possibility of military service, it becomes apathetic, ignores foreign affairs and fails to pressure Congress to check presidential war powers. Without this check, president after president—Democrats and Republicans—have centralized control of foreign affairs in what has resulted in increasingly imperial presidencies. With its huge budget, professional flexibility and can-do attitude, the military has become the primary—in some ways, the only—tool in America’s arsenal as presidents move living, breathing soldiers around the world like so many toy soldiers.

Completely Unsustainable

The AVF could also bankrupt us, or, at the very least, crash the economy. Thanks to the influence of the military-industrial complex and the militarization of foreign policy, U.S. defense budgets have soared into the stratosphere. At present, America spends more than $700 billion on defense—a figure greater than all domestic discretionary spending and larger than the combined budgets of the next seven largest militaries. As the Vietnam War should have taught us, skyrocketing military spending without concurrent tax increases often results in not only massive debt but crippling inflation. After 18 years of forever global war without any meaningful increase in taxation on the nation’s top earners, get ready for the next crash. Trying to stay a hegemon (a dubious proposition in the first place) with rising deficits and a paralyzing national debt is a recipe for failure and, ultimately, disaster.

As recent recruitment shortfalls show, getting volunteers may not be a sustainable certainty either. This also increases costs—the military has had to train more full-time recruiters, pay cash bonuses for enlistment and retention, and hire extremely expensive civilian contractors to fill in operational gaps overseas. Nor can the AVF count on getting the best and brightest Americans in the long term. With elites opting out completely and fewer Americans possessing the combination of capacity—only 30 percent of the populace is physically/mentally qualified for the military—and propensity to serve, where will the military find the foot soldiers and cyberwarriors it needs in the 21st century?

In sum, throughout this century the U.S. military has won zero wars, achieved few, if any, “national goals” and cost Americans $5.9 trillion tax dollars, more than 7,000 troop deaths, and tens of thousands more wounded soldiers. It has cost the world  480,000 direct war-related deaths, including 244,000 civilians, and created 21 million refugees. Talk about unsustainable.

An Unpopular Proposal

At the recent forum, Laich proposed an alternative to the current volunteer system. To ensure fairness, efficiency and sustainability, the U.S. could create a lottery system (with no college or other elite deferments) that gives draftees three options: serve two years on active duty right after high school, serve six years in the reserves or go straight to college and enroll in the ROTC program. Whether or not one agrees with this idea, it would create a more egalitarian, representative, affordable and sustainable national defense tool. Furthermore, with the children of bankers, doctors, lawyers and members of Congress subject to service, the government might think twice before embarking on the next foolish, unwinnable military venture.

Few Americans, however, are likely to be comfortable delegating the power of conscription to a federal government they inherently distrust. Still, paradoxically, the move toward a no-deferment, equitable lottery draft might result in a nation less prone to militarism and adventurism than the optional AVF has. Parents whose children are subject to military service, as well as young adults themselves, might prove to be canny students of foreign policy who would actively oppose the next American war. Imagine that: an engaged citizenry that holds its legislators accountable and subsequently hits the streets to oppose unnecessary and unethical war. Ironic as it may seem, more military service may actually be the only workable formula for less war. Too bad returning to a citizens’ military is as unpopular as it is unlikely.

Is a Global Recession Looming on the Horizon?

What follows is a conversation between Economist Heiner Flassbeck and Paul Jay of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

PAUL JAY: If you listen to the business press, it won’t be long before we’re in recession, and perhaps globally something even more serious. That’s coming up next on The Real News Network.

[TRNN INTRO]

PAUL JAY: Well, as I said, if you listen to the gurus of finance that show up on Bloomberg Radio and other financial press and information, they are predicting a recession, perhaps before the end of 2019. And there is also lots of concern about the state of the global financial architecture, to use the kind of words they use in the financial and business press. One can see it in the stock market zooming up, and it doesn’t take a heck of a lot for it to zoom way down. There is tremendous volatility, and nobody quite knows what is coming next, I suppose, except if you’re in the know you can make a lot of money out of the volatility.

At any rate, now joining us to help make some sense of all this is Heiner Flassbeck. Heiner is director of Flassbeck Economics, a consultancy for global macro questions. Heiner is the former chief of macroeconomics and development of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Thanks for joining us, Heiner.

HEINER FLASSBECK: Thanks for inviting me.

PAUL JAY: Where are you coming today? Where are you today?

HEINER FLASSBECK: In Geneva, close to Geneva and France.

PAUL JAY: OK. So talk about, first of all, why are so many, it seems, in the business consultancy, predictors, predicting a slowdown and recession, perhaps by the end of 2019? And it will be very interesting timing, because if there is a recession it within that time frame, then it could well come, you know, leading up into the 2020 elections in the United States.

HEINER FLASSBECK: Well, you see, we have a number of signals all around the world that show that a recovery may be over. We have to look at different regions for different reasons. But in the United States where there was a long recovery, unemployment is down. There was not the kind of investment we had expected, that everybody had expected. But nevertheless, it was a long recovery. And the Fed has done what it normally does in the recovery, it increased interest rates. Not very much, again, because we are in a very special situation. I’ll explain later. But nevertheless, this is the usual cyclical pattern that we see in the United States.

In Europe it’s a bit different. In Europe we had more or less no recovery, only a very, very brief recovery of 1.5 years or so. And there are signs of a recession even stronger in Europe. In Japan, also, there was quite a bit of a recovery. In China we had 30 years of a boom, and at a certain point is a boom is coming to an end. And all this may come together now and create, indeed, a very dangerous situation for the global economy.

PAUL JAY: Start with talking about China, because again I’m reading in the business press there’s been a lot of state lending to create this boom. There’s been a lot of infrastructure spending. And there’s talk now in China of kind of pulling back, and that even though things may slow down they may not continue the same kind of stimulus. They’re talking about the cost of borrowing that’s happening. What do you make of the Chinese situation?

HEINER FLASSBECK: Well, I think China is still absolutely able to pump money into the economy if it does need it. And I’m sure they would do it. Maybe they let the growth rate come down. We still talk about very high growth rates of 6, 7 percent. They may let it come down to 5 percent, 4 percent, but not much lower than this. The government has the means and the government has the ability to stimulate the economy, and that is exactly what they would do. So I’m not too much afraid about China. But as I said, it’s it’s a normalization at a certain point. They have, indeed, an enormous amount of construction, all kinds of construction. And at a certain point you always get into a kind of public situation where this is going to be stopped, or this is going to stop automatically, more or less.

PAUL JAY: So if China has the capacity to kind of avoid a more serious downturn, then the more trigger points in terms of recession, and that’s a little different than a financial crisis as we saw in ’07-’08, although they’re often linked, then the triggers for something deeper are what? Europe?

HEINER FLASSBECK: Europe is the biggest problem. You see, the United States were quite pragmatic. They had fiscal policy, extremely expansionary fiscal policy all the time. in Europe the situation is really really dangerous, because we had, as I said, no recovery. Unemployment is still very high in many countries. In France is 9 percent, in Italy it’s more than 10 percent. So we had no investment boom in Europe, not even in Germany, which was the country that is best off of all of them. And so for now it just remained zero, and we’re going into recession. So there is no possibility to stimulate the economy from the monetary side. And on the fiscal side, and this is the worst thing, on the fiscal side there is this enormous dogma in Europe that you should not use fiscal policy. Which is crazy, which is absolutely crazy.

PAUL JAY: Explain for a second for viewers who don’t follow these things what you mean by fiscal policy.

HEINER FLASSBECK: Fiscal policy is stimulating demand by government debt. By more government debt. In the United States we have seen Trump was more than active. The government debt, US government debt, is according to European terms exploding. You’re reaching 100 percent of GDP, which is not really a big problem. But given the dogma in Europe it it would be close to disaster. In Europe they would say with 100 percent of GDP you don’t get money from the market anymore. Which is ridiculous and wrong, but it is exactly what they say. And that is why Europe is stuck in its own dogma. And this dogma prevents it from doing reasonable things, and that is why this situation is getting worse.

Italy, which is a country which was in a recession for more or less ten years, is now going again down. I think that I would not call it a recovery. It was just a little, little upswing for a year or so. And now it’s going down again. And the government was elected to change the economy, but it was not allowed to change the economy because it was blocked by the European dogma not going for government debt.

So this is all extremely crazy, and it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous. It’s politically extremely dangerous, because what are people going to do? The left is joining this dogma of having no debt and having this kind of solid government finances. And so the people are voting more to the right. In Italy the next election, if it will come soon, it may come sooner than expected because the government may break, then they would vote 30, 35 percent for the Lega. Lega is a right-wing rather nationalist party, but they are pragmatic in terms of economic policy. So this is the crazy thing, the situation that we are facing.

PAUL JAY: And what–if there is a hard Brexit, meaning if the United Kingdom leaves Europe with no deal whatsoever, what does that do to an already fragile European economic situation?

HEINER FLASSBECK: Yeah, it could end up in a disaster if no one reacts immediately in terms of sort of, say, giving a safety net to these economies that the uncertainty is dramatically increasing. Nobody knows what happens to the trade relations with the United Kingdom. So that could really trigger a deep, deep recession. And as I said, given the situation Europe is in, it would be politically a plain disaster, a huge disaster. And that would have definitely negative spillover to all of the world.

PAUL JAY: So why is Europe playing such hardball with the UK in terms of the negotiations, and the dates, and all of this?

HEINER FLASSBECK: I mean, the Brexiteers in the UK where extremely naive. I mean, if you want to go out of a club, and you have some obligation to that club, you better ask the people before in the club, the other members, what they think about Brexit, and not go out or say “I want to go out” without talking about my my obligation that I still have, and the rules that they have to change. All this, they were extremely naive. I mean, this Johnson guy and this Farage, they were kids. They were ridiculously stupid people, and they put the UK in this situation.

PAUL JAY: Well, I guess their agenda was just a far-right political kind of takeover, and this was a means to that end.

HEINER FLASSBECK: But I’m not sure what they get in the end. I mean, the first round they disappeared. Both of them disappeared, more or less. And they may come up again if the whole thing is going to collapse and is a no-deal Brexit. But nobody knows.

PAUL JAY: If Europe does, within a year or so, sink into a deep depression, recession–I shouldn’t use the word depression–recession, what does that mean to North America and the rest of the global economy?

HEINER FLASSBECK: Well, it would be to the United States where that the situation is getting more difficult than it is. It is not, as I said, it’s not really so difficult in the United States, because there was a long recovery. It was not made by Mr. Trump. It came from Obama. But Trump did everything to keep it. And even if it is slowing down now, I’m sure they will not shy away from again pumping money into the economy. And that is the only thing you can do. Because you see, the global dimension shows that we’re in a very, very strange situation. We’re in a strange situation because monetary policy, as I said, is no longer available, more or less, in the world, even in the United States. Cutting interest rates by 1 percent will not change very much. You have no other means to stimulate the economy than fiscal policy. This is this the paradox construction that we have inherited from neoliberalism.

PAUL JAY: Again, meaning creating more money, which creates more government debt. Which in the United Sates they want to spend most of it–they seem to want to spend most of it on military production here.

HEINER FLASSBECK: Yeah, that is true. They could do reasonable things. The US infrastructure is clearly looking for investment, needs investment. So you could do very many reasonable things. But it is not, it is not happening. And this is our main problem, that we have given up all other ways, we have given up all the instruments that we have had available in the past. You see, this is the resul–and this is very important to understand–the result of neoliberalism. The paradox is neoliberalism, which is putting pressure on the wages of the average people all the time for 30 years, and with creating a deflationary situation by this has taken our monetary policy out of the game.

So with monetary policy out of the game, with wages depressed, you cannot stimulate this economy anymore. Only with fiscal policy, with pump priming, with deficit spending. Call it whatever you want.

PAUL JAY: There’s got to be some limit to how much of that you can do before people start to wonder what is the currency worth.

HEINER FLASSBECK: Look at Japan. There’s a long way to go for the United States. Japan is close to 300 percent GDP; the US are now at 100 percent. So there is quite a way to go. And there are no limits. Definitely there are no limits. You have this discussion about MMT in the United States, the Modern Monetary Theory. Their point is right. One point is absolutely valid. There are hardly no limits for government debt in our kind of economies. You can go a very, very long way to stimulate the economy, as I said. But there is nothing else available. Nothing else is available. This is what neoliberalism has created.

PAUL JAY: Now, in ’07-’08 there was a bubble burst, subprime. The amount of speculation going on and the banks were participating in was such that the banks didn’t trust other banks in terms of interbanking lending. And the–it was a financial system meltdown, not just something within the more cyclical, normal cyclical goals of the economy. What’s the danger of that? Because they’ve gotten rid of regulatory things like Dodd Frank in the United States almost completely. Wall Street is kind of speculating at will. How fragile is the whole architecture of the financial system?

HEINER FLASSBECK: It is not as fragile as ’07-’08, because we do not have that many bubbles, so to say, blowing up this time than it was at that time. We do not have a construction bubble in United States. We have one in China, but nowhere else, I think. We do not have that kind of commodity speculation that we had at that time. And we do not have so crazy, crazy speculation in currency all around the world. The only thing we have, we still have overvalued stock market, that’s for sure, in many countries of the world, including the United States. But this is not such a big danger for the economy, even if the stock market would collapse at a certain point in time, would go down 10,000 points, it would not be a disaster for the economy.

PAUL JAY: So in the immediate, meaning within the next year, year and a half, it’s not an ’07-’08 crash you’re seeing, but the possibility and even likelihood of a relatively deep recession is possible?

HEINER FLASSBECK: It depends on what policy does now. If policy is not reacting, say if in the United States Mr. Trump and the Republicans would come to the conviction that now government debt has reached the limit and you cannot do anything anymore, if in Europe they stick to their dogmatic position about fiscal policy, then everything can happen. That recession can become very deep. At the moment I do not see that, and you cannot forecast it. But the situation is fragile, because we’re still at the brink of a deflationary situation. So we could anyway, any time, slip into deflation again. We could anytime slip into, so to say, a depression of the expectations of the average people concerning their income, their future income, and that could deepen the whole thing. So vigilance on the side of policy is absolutely necessary, and the willingness to react immediately when the economy comes down.

PAUL JAY: All right. Thanks for joining us, Heiner.

HEINER FLASSBECK: You’re welcome.

PAUL JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

News Industry Fights Back on Claims by Trump

NEW YORK—News industry leaders are fighting back against the charge by President Donald Trump and his supporters that the administration’s summation of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report proved that journalists were “so wrong for so long” in their coverage of the Russia investigation.

The latest to weigh in was Steve Coll, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, who wrote in a New Yorker magazine essay this week that it’s wrong to conclude journalism failed because Mueller did not charge Trump with conspiring with Russians to influence the 2016 election. The New York Times and The Washington Post shared a Pulitzer Prize, awarded by Columbia in 2018, for their reporting on the issue, a prize Trump says should be taken away.

Complicating the issue is the broad definition of the news media circa 2019, encompassing everything from painstakingly sourced investigative stories to overheated tweets to opinionated pundits.

“It’s premature to pronounce this coverage as some kind of epic press failure,” said Nancy Gibbs, former Time magazine editor and a Harvard University professor of press, politics and public policy. People angered by the press’ role in investigating the president will use Mueller’s findings as a lever in any way they can, she said.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re right,” Gibbs said.

The phrase “so wrong for so long” was used by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney during a CNN appearance on Sunday. He said “we need to figure out” what happened with reporting on the story. Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist online magazine, said the same thing in the lead of a Wall Street Journal editorial earlier in the week that argued “America’s blue-chip journalists botched the entire story.” The president retweeted his story.

“I’m not sure what you’re saying the media got wrong,” replied CNN’s Jake Tapper. “The media reported the investigation was ongoing. Other than the people in the media on the left, not on this network, I don’t know anybody who got anything wrong. We didn’t say there was conspiracy. We said that Mueller was investigating conspiracy.”

Mulvaney, without offering specifics, said to Tapper that “if that’s your recollection of history, that’s great.

“Face it, the media got this wrong,” he said. “It’s OK, people get stuff wrong all the time. Just not at this level.”

There were obviously disputed individual stories along the way. ABC suspended Brian Ross for a story wrongly alleging that Trump had asked former national security adviser Michael Flynn to discuss foreign policy with the Russians before he was elected. Three CNN journalists resigned over a story falsely linking a Trump aide to a Russian investment fund. The special counsel’s office denied a Buzzfeed report that it had evidence Trump had directed lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress over a Moscow office project.

Yet much of what the public learned over the past two years on the story was the result of relentless digging by reporters.

In tweets over the past week, Trump repeated his contention that the mainstream media is the enemy of the people, and said the Times’ and Post’s Pulitzers should be stripped. The Times, in response, tweeted a picture of its Pulitzer winners and noted that every story cited in their prize-winning entry has been proven correct.

Top editors at the Times and Post, Dean Baquet and Marty Baron, and CNN chief Jeff Zucker offered similar statements noting it was their organizations’ job to show what people in power are doing, and prosecutors’ responsibility to determine what is legal or illegal.

“A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation,” Zucker said. “That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented.”

Not every top news executive was eager to get involved; representatives for news presidents at ABC, CBS and NBC either turned down or didn’t reply to interview requests. “We’re going to keep doing our job,” MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement.

“The coverage of the investigation did include embarrassments — specious chyrons, tendentious talking heads and retracted scoops, among them,” Columbia’s Coll wrote. “Yet it does not follow that American journalism failed because the best-resourced newsrooms in the nation chose to report assiduously on the Mueller investigation and its subjects, only to learn that Mueller did not prove that Trump had conspired with Russia.”

If there’s any media soul-searching to be done, it may involve cable news. In the Trump era, Fox News and MSNBC are frequently the most-watched cable networks in general, both appealing to different camps.

Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity has been Trump’s biggest advocate on cable news, making him a target for the president’s opponents. Yet MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was criticized this week by Slate’s Willa Paskin, who said turning on her show “was like discovering a Facebook friend is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” She said that while Maddow’s audience was not as malignant as Hannity’s, “more than one cable news host can disservice their audience at the same time.”

Harvard’s Gibbs recalls watching reporters and pundits sitting side-by-side on cable panels, with roles confused when pundits were asked what they were hearing and reporters questioned about what they thought.

Journalists have long believed that readers and viewers understand the difference between reporting and commentary, Coll said.

“It would be unrealistic to expect them to make such a distinction now,” he said.

Elizabeth Warren Unveils Sweeping Bill to Punish Criminal CEOs

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation Wednesday that would make it easier to imprison corporate executives whose companies commit crimes or “harm large numbers of Americans through civil violations.”

“Corporations don’t make decisions, people do, but for far too long, CEOs of giant corporations that break the law have been able to walk away, while consumers who are harmed are left picking up the pieces,” the 2020 Democratic presidential contender said in a statement.

According to a summary released by Warren’s office, the Corporate Executive Accountability Act would expand criminal liability to executives of companies that:

Are found guilty, plead guilty, or enter into a deferred or non-prosecution agreement for any crime;
Are found liable or enter a settlement with any state or federal regulator for the violation of any civil law if that violation affects the health, safety, finances, or personal data of 1% of the American population or 1% of the population of any state;
Are found liable or guilty of a second civil or criminal violation for a different activity while operating under a civil or criminal judgment of any court, a deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreement, or settlement with any state or Federal agency;

Under Warren’s bill, punishment for a first offense would be “up to one year” of jail-time. A second offense would carry up to three years in prison.

The Corporate Executive Accountability Act would apply to companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

“Our justice system should ensure that if you cheat working Americans, you’ll go to jail,” the Massachusetts senator tweeted.

Today, I’m proposing a new law that expands criminal liability to any corporate executive who negligently oversees a company that causes severe and widespread harm to families. Our justice system should ensure that if you cheat working Americans, you’ll go to jail.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 3, 2019

Warren also reintroduced the Ending Too Big to Jail Act on Wednesday, with the goal of holding executives of Wall Street banks accountable for financial crimes.

“These two bills would force executives to responsibly manage their companies, knowing that if they cheat their customers or crash the economy, they could go to jail,” said Warren.

It’s been 10 years since the financial crash cost millions of people their homes, jobs, and savings. But not one big bank CEO has gone to jail. It’s time to reform our laws to make sure that corporate executives face jail time for overseeing massive scams. https://t.co/r1KzgaX0Sr

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 3, 2019

Warren’s bills come just days after Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan abruptly announced his resignation amid numerous scandal surrounding his bank.

In an op-ed for the Washington Post Tuesday, Warren used Sloan and his predecessor, John Stumpf, as prime examples of executives who should be imprisoned for scamming consumers.

“I’m glad Sloan and Stumpf aren’t in charge anymore. But this isn’t real accountability, Warren wrote. “If top executives knew they would be hauled out in handcuffs for failing to reasonably oversee the companies they run, they would have a real incentive to better monitor their operations and snuff out any wrongdoing before it got out of hand.”

“Four words are engraved over the front door of the Supreme Court: ‘equal justice under law,'” the senator concluded. “It’s the fundamental principle that’s supposed to drive our legal system. But it’s not equal justice when a kid with an ounce of pot can get thrown in jail while a wealthy executive can walk away with a bonus after his company cheats millions of people.”

Brunei Laws Allow Stoning for Gay Sex, Adultery

SINGAPORE—New Islamic criminal laws that took effect in Brunei on Wednesday, punishing gay sex and adultery by stoning offenders to death, have triggered an outcry from countries, rights groups and celebrities far beyond the tiny Southeast Asian nation’s shores.

The penalties were provided for under new sections of Brunei’s Shariah Penal Code. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah instituted the code in 2014 to bolster the influence of Islam in the oil-rich monarchy of around 430,000 people, two-thirds of whom are Muslim.

Even before 2014, homosexuality was already punishable in Brunei by a jail term of up to 10 years. The first stage of the Shariah Penal Code included fines or jail for offenses such as pregnancy out of wedlock or failing to pray on Fridays.

But under the new laws — which also apply to children and foreigners, even if they are not Muslim — those found guilty of gay sex can be stoned to death or whipped. Adulterers risk death by stoning too, while thieves face amputation of a right hand on their first offense and a left foot on their second.

“Living in Brunei, we already knew that our sexual identity is taboo and should not be expressed. We already felt belittled before the law came to place,” said a 23-year-old member of the LGBTQ community who wanted to be identified only as Kun out of fear of reprisal from the authorities.

“Now with it, we feel even smaller and the ones who could potentially oppress us have more opportunity to harass us to say and do what they want,” he said.

Celebrities including George Clooney, Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres have voiced opposition to the new laws, and have rallied a boycott of nine hotels in the U.S. and Europe with ties to Hassanal, who is still sultan.

“Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens?” Clooney wrote Thursday on Deadline Hollywood.

Clooney said that while you can’t shame “murderous regimes,” you can shame “the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them.”

Customers at two prestigious Paris hotels owned by the sultan expressed their support for a boycott.

Outside the Le Meurice hotel, Philippe Ménager said he was no longer comfortable going to the spa after being a regular customer for 15 years.

“I can’t continue to be a frequent visitor of the hotels of this savage to preserve the jobs of the people who work at Le Meurice – who are very nice and I like them,” he said.

A tourist from Norway, Anja Anderson, said she would have stayed at a hotel other than the Plaza Athénée had she heard about the boycott before making her reservation.

There has been no vocal opposition to the new penalties in Brunei, where the sultan rules as head of state with full executive authority. Public criticism of his policies is extremely rare in the country.

Hassanal, who has reigned since 1967, has previously said the Penal Code should be regarded as a form of “special guidance” from God and would be “part of the great history” of Brunei.

On Tuesday, the United States joined the United Kingdom, Germany and France in urging Brunei to halt its plans.

“The United States strongly opposes violence, criminalization and discrimination targeting vulnerable groups, including women at risk of violence, religious and ethnic minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said in a statement.

Brunei’s Southeast Asian neighbors, some of whom have laws banning sex between men, were silent.

But LGBTQ citizens of other nearby Muslim-majority countries were concerned about the broad penalties.

“I am very worried that Indonesia or Malaysia may follow the lead,” said a 24-year-old man from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, who wanted to be identified only by his first name, Ludwig. “I think people nowadays, especially the younger generation, are quite OK with LGBT, but those who are not make the loudest noise and they are the reason why it seems like everyone is against it.”

Nearly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 32 million people are Muslim. They are governed by Islamic courts in family, marriage and personal issues. Last year, two Malaysian Muslim women were convicted under Islamic laws and caned for attempting to have sex with each other.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Brunei’s government to “stop the entry into force of this Draconian new penal code.”

“Any religion-based legislation must not violate human rights, including the rights of those belonging to the majority religion as well as of religious minorities and non-believers,” she said in a statement on Monday.

Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, called on the sultan to “immediately suspend amputations, stoning, and all other rights-abusing provisions and punishments.”

“Brunei’s new penal code is barbaric to the core, imposing archaic punishments for acts that shouldn’t even be crimes,” Robertson said in a statement Wednesday.

Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Brunei researcher at Amnesty International, decried the “vicious” laws and asked the international community to condemn them.