Chris Hedges's Blog, page 300

Washington Braces for Release of Mueller’s Key Findings

WASHINGTON—Attorney General William Barr spent Saturday reviewing the special counsel’s confidential report on the Trump-Russia investigation, but Barr’s “principal conclusions” summary for Congress was not coming for at least another day.

No summary for Judiciary Committee leaders — or the public — just yet, said a senior Justice Department official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the review process.

Barr has said he expected to send his version to the lawmakers as soon as this weekend after determining what should be made public. Special counsel Robert Mueller sent the attorney general the final report Friday on his 22-month investigation that cast a dark shadow of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Even with the details still under wraps, Friday’s end to the 22-month probe without additional indictments by Mueller was welcome news to some in Trump’s orbit who had feared a final round of charges could ensnare more Trump associates, including members of the president’s family.

The report was accessible to only a few Justice officials while Barr prepared to summarize the “principal conclusions.”

Trump, who has relentlessly criticized Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt,” was on the golf course in Florida on Saturday, and House Democrats were planning to gather by phone later in the day as they waited for the Justice Department to send details of Mueller’s findings. Barr, who was at the department’s headquarters on Saturday morning, said in a Friday letter to the House and Senate Judiciary committees that he would share Mueller’s main findings as soon as this weekend.

The Justice Department said the report was delivered by a security officer late Friday to the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and then it went to Barr. Word of the delivery triggered reactions across Washington, including Democrats’ demands that it be quickly released to the public and Republicans’ contentions that it ended two years of wasted time and money.

The next step was up to Barr, who declared he was committed to transparency and speed.

The White House sought to keep some distance, saying it had not seen or been briefed on the report. Trump, surrounded by advisers and political supporters at his resort in Florida, stayed uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter.

With no details released at this point, it was not known whether Mueller’s report answers the core questions of his investigation: Did Trump’s campaign collude with the Kremlin to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of the celebrity businessman? Also, did Trump take steps later, including by firing his FBI director, to obstruct the probe?

But the delivery of the report does mean the investigation has concluded without any public charges of a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, or of obstruction by the president. A Justice Department official confirmed that Mueller was not recommending any further indictments.

That person, who described the document as “comprehensive,” was not authorized to discuss the probe and asked for anonymity.

That was good news for a handful of Trump associates and family members dogged by speculation of possible wrongdoing. They include Donald Trump Jr., who had a role in arranging a Trump Tower meeting at the height of the 2016 campaign with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was interviewed at least twice by Mueller’s prosecutors. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Mueller might have referred additional investigations to the Justice Department.

All told, Mueller charged 34 people, including the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and three Russian companies. Twenty-five Russians were indicted on charges related to election interference, accused either of hacking Democratic email accounts during the campaign or of orchestrating a social media campaign that spread disinformation on the internet.

Five Trump aides pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller and a sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.

Justice Department legal opinions have held that sitting presidents may not be indicted.

The conclusion of Mueller’s investigation does not remove legal peril for the president. Trump faces a separate Justice Department investigation in New York into hush money payments during the campaign to two women who say they had sex with him years before the election. He’s also been implicated in a potential campaign finance violation by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who says Trump asked him to arrange the transactions. Federal prosecutors, also in New York, have been investigating foreign contributions made to the president’s inaugural committee.

In his letter to lawmakers, Barr noted the department had not denied any request from the special counsel, something Barr would have been required to disclose to ensure there was no political inference. Trump was never interviewed in person, but submitted answers to questions in writing.

The mere delivery of the confidential findings set off swift demands from Democrats for full release of Mueller’s report and the supporting evidence collected during the sweeping probe.

As Mueller’s probe has wound down, Democrats have increasingly shifted their focus to their own congressional investigations, ensuring the special counsel’s words would not be the last on the matter.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared it “imperative” to make the full report public, a call echoed by several Democrats vying to challenge Trump in 2020.

“The American people have a right to the truth,” Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement.

It was not clear whether Trump would have early access to Mueller’s findings. Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders suggested the White House would not interfere, saying “we look forward to the process taking its course.” But Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told The Associated Press Friday that the president’s legal team would seek to get “an early look” before the findings were made public.

Giuliani said it was “appropriate” for the White House to be able “to review matters of executive privilege.” He said had received no assurances from the Department of Justice on that front. He later softened his stance, saying the decision was “up to DOJ and we are confident it will be handled properly.”

The White House did receive a brief heads-up on the report’s arrival Friday. Barr’s chief of staff called White House Counsel Emmet Flood on Friday about 20 minutes before sending the letter to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary committees.

The chairman of the Senate panel, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, was keynote speaker Friday night at a Palm Beach County GOP fundraising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump made brief remarks to the group but did not mention the report, according to a person who attended the event, which was closed to the press.

Barr has said he wants to make as much public as possible, and any efforts to withhold details are sure to prompt a tussle with lawmakers who may subpoena Mueller and his investigators to testify before Congress. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House intelligence committee, threatened a subpoena Friday.

Such a move would likely be vigorously contested by the Trump administration.

No matter the findings in Mueller’s report, the investigation has already illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts.

The special counsel brought a sweeping indictment accusing Russian military intelligence officers of hacking Clinton’s campaign and other Democratic groups during the 2016 campaign. He charged another group of Russians with carrying out a large-scale social media disinformation campaign against the American political process that also sought to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

Mueller also initiated the investigation into Cohen, who pleaded guilty in New York to campaign finance violations arising from the hush money payments and in the Mueller probe to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal. Another Trump confidant, Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied about his pursuit of Russian-hacked emails ultimately released by WikiLeaks.

Mueller has also been investigating whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation. Since the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017, Trump has increasingly tried to undermine the probe by calling it a “witch hunt” and repeatedly proclaiming there was “NO COLLUSION” with Russia.

One week before Mueller’s appointment, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, later saying he was thinking of “this Russia thing” at the time.

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

Mueller Concludes Russia Probe With No New Indictments

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday turned over his long-awaited final report on the contentious Russia investigation that has cast a dark shadow over Donald Trump’s presidency, entangled Trump’s family and resulted in criminal charges against some of the president’s closest associates.

The comprehensive report, still confidential, marks the end of Mueller’s probe but sets the stage for big public fights to come. The next steps are up to Trump’s attorney general, to Congress and, in all likelihood, federal courts.

The Justice Department said the report was delivered by a security officer Friday afternoon to the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and then it went to Attorney General William Barr. Word of the delivery triggered reactions across Washington, including Democrats’ demands that it be released publicly before long and Republicans’ contentions that it ended two years of wasted time and money.

Barr released a letter noting his plans to write his own account of Mueller’s findings. The White House released a statement saying it had not seen or been briefed on the special counsel’s document.

What happens next is “up to Attorney General Barr,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

Barr said he could send his account to Congress quickly.

“I am reviewing the report and anticipate that I may be in a position to advise you of the special counsel’s principal conclusions as soon as this weekend,” Barr said in his letter the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees. He pledged a commitment to transparency.

The attorney general said the Justice Department had not denied any request from the special counsel, something Barr would have been required to disclose to Congress to ensure there was no political inference in the independent probe.

With no details released at this point, it’s not known whether Mueller’s report answers the core questions of his investigation: Did Trump’s campaign collude with the Kremlin to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of the celebrity businessman? Also, did Trump take steps later, including by firing his FBI director, to obstruct the probe?

But the delivery of the report does mean the investigation has concluded without any public charges of a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia, or of obstruction by the president. Mueller is not recommending any further indictments in the Russia probe, a Justice Department official confirmed Friday. That person, who described the document as “comprehensive,” was not authorized to discuss the probe and asked for anonymity.

It’s unclear what steps Mueller will take if he uncovered what he believes to be criminal wrongdoing by Trump, in light of Justice Department legal opinions that have held that sitting presidents may not be indicted.

The mere delivery of a confidential report set off immediate demands from Democrats for full release of Mueller’s findings.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared it “imperative” to make the full report public.

The top congressional Democrats said, “The American people have a right to the truth.”

Democrats also expressed concern that Trump would try to get a “sneak preview” of the findings.

“The White House must not be allowed to interfere in decisions about what parts of those findings or evidence are made public,” they said in a joint statement.

Barr has said he wants to make as much public as possible, and any efforts to withhold details will prompt a tussle between the Justice Department and lawmakers who may subpoena Mueller and his investigators to testify before Congress. Such a move by Democrats would likely be vigorously contested by the Trump administration.

The conclusion of Mueller’s investigation does not remove legal peril for the president. Trump faces a separate Justice Department investigation in New York into hush money payments during the campaign to two women who say they had sex with him years before the election. He’s also been implicated in a potential campaign finance violation by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who says Trump asked him to arrange the transactions. Federal prosecutors, also in New York, have been investigating foreign contributions made to the president’s inaugural committee.

No matter the findings in Mueller’s report, the investigation has already illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts. Over the 21-month investigation, Mueller has brought charges against 34 people, including six aides and advisers to the president, and three companies.

The special counsel brought a sweeping indictment accusing Russian military intelligence officers of hacking Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democratic groups during the 2016 election. He charged another group of Russians with carrying out a large-scale social media disinformation campaign against the American political process that also sought to help Trump and hurt Clinton.

Closer to the president, Mueller secured convictions against a campaign chairman who cheated banks and dodged his taxes, a national security adviser who lied about his Russian contacts and a campaign aide who misled the FBI about his knowledge of stolen emails.

Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, pleaded guilty in New York to campaign finance violations arising from the hush money payments and in the Mueller probe to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal. Another Trump confidant, Roger Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied about his pursuit of Russian-hacked emails ultimately released by WikiLeaks. It’s unclear whether any of the aides who have been convicted, all of whom have pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigators, might angle for a pardon. Trump has left open the idea of pardons.

Along the way, Trump lawyers and advisers repeatedly evolved their public defenses to deal with the onslaught of allegations from the investigation. Where once Trump and his aides had maintained that there were no connections between the campaign and Russia, by the end of the probe Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was routinely making the argument that even if the two sides did collude, it wasn’t necessarily a crime. The goalpost shifting reflected the administration’s challenge in adopting a singular narrative to fend off allegations.

Equally central to Mueller’s work is his inquiry into whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation. Since the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017, Trump has increasingly tried to undermine the probe by calling it a “witch hunt” and repeatedly proclaiming there was “NO COLLUSION” with Russia. But Trump also took certain acts as president that caught Mueller’s attention and have been scrutinized for possible obstruction.

One week before Mueller’s appointment, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, later saying he was thinking of “this Russia thing” at the time.

He mercilessly harangued Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing from the Russia investigation two months before Mueller was named special counsel, a move that left the president without a perceived loyalist atop the probe. And he helped draft a misleading statement on Air Force One as a Trump Tower meeting between his eldest son and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was about to become public.

The meeting itself became part of Mueller’s investigation, entangling Donald Trump Jr. in the probe. Mueller’s team also interviewed the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, multiple times.

Even as Trump blasted Mueller’s team, his White House and campaign produced thousands of documents for the special counsel, and dozens of his aides were interviewed. The president submitted written answers to Mueller regarding the Russia investigation, but he refused to be interviewed

Boeing Values Profits Over Lives—By Design

The fatal crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft on March 10 shows us in stark terms just how deadly unfettered capitalism is. Boeing has pushed the legal limits of how far a corporation can manipulate a system to maximize its profits, even if it means risking lives.

Just a few months ago, another fatal airline crash of the same type of Boeing aircraft, operated by Lion Air, resulted in 189 lives lost. The New York Times reported that what the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air flights had in common was that both doomed planes lacked safety features linked to why the pilots were unable to recover from erratic dips after takeoff. Those safety features, rather than being built into the standard models, cost extra. Imagine being told that your car’s seat belts were an optional feature that cost more and then finding out in a deadly crash just how important those belts are.

One expert explained that the optional features are “critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install,” and that “Boeing charges for them because it can. But they’re vital for safety.” Perhaps the airlines purchasing the Max 8 aircraft from Boeing didn’t realize the safety features would make the difference between life and mass death. Perhaps, like Boeing, they were trying to cut costs and maximize profits—no matter the consequences.

The other aspect of this tragic story is how Boeing has essentially been regulating itself. In a March 13 New York Times op-ed, James E. Hall, who served as chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001, blasted the Federal Aviation Administration’s 2005 decision to turn over regulation of passenger aircrafts to aircraft manufacturers. “Rather than naming and supervising its own ‘designated airworthiness representatives’ the agency decided to allow Boeing and other manufacturers who qualified under the revised procedures to select their own employees to certify the safety of their aircraft,” Hall wrote. He explained that the FAA’s rationale was that “It would save the aviation industry about $25 billion from 2006 to 2015.” Hall noted, “This is a worrying move toward industry self-certification.”

The deadly crashes and revelations about self-regulation come while Boeing has infiltrated the top echelons of government, with acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan having spent more than 30 years at the corporation. According to The Los Angeles Times, Shanahan worked “as general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems and of Boeing Rotocraft Systems, which made the Apache, Chinook and Osprey military aircraft.” In other words, he oversaw those parts of the company that had the greatest ties to government contracts for military hardware.

Now, just months into the job, Shanahan is facing accusations of improperly promoting his former employer to its biggest customer. According to a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to the Office of Inspector General, “Shanahan appears to have violated ethics rules by promoting Boeing in the scope of his official duties at the Department of Defense (DOD) and disparaging the company’s competitors to his subordinates.”

The company has long been a player in Washington politics, heavily lobbying lawmakers for lucrative government contracts to buy expensive military hardware. Last year Boeing spent more than $15 million on its lobbying efforts and, according to The Hill, has “31 in-house lobbyists and 16 lobbying firms on retainer.” It has spent millions on political campaigns for lawmakers from both parties, ensuring bipartisan allegiance.

To summarize, Boeing has managed to take inordinate advantage of a system that is already rigged to benefit corporations. Boeing has a lengthy and impressive rap sheet, which has seemingly not gotten in the way of the government’s preferential treatment toward it. But the recent airline crashes have finally made apparent how the company’s drive for profits places the worth of human life somewhere below the size of its corporate dividends.

This drive is baked into our current form of capitalism. The only instances in which corporations respect human life are when they are forced to do so by strong government regulations and legislation. Fines are not enough; many corporations have simply accounted for them as the cost of doing business and as an overhead that ought to be minimized.

If you apply Boeing’s logic to nearly any other major industry in the U.S. today, the same pattern emerges. Our modern health care system is one where pharmaceutical corporations place profit over human lives and insurance companies refuse to cover services that can save lives because it is not profitable. Gun manufacturers continue to sell automatic rifles of the kind used in deadly mass shootings because they are more profitable than non-automatic weapons. And our energy sector is one where fossil fuel companies have placed lucrative oil and gas extraction over the future of the human species despite decades of foreknowledge of climate change. Even Donald Trump appears to have gamed the presidency to market his personal brand and raise the value of his businesses—at the expense of our democracy. The thirst for ever-higher profits is a deadly zero-sum game we are all destined to lose.

From Boeing’s perspective, it makes sense why the company’s top executives have done all they can to maximize profits, even at the expense of hundreds of lives. But from our perspective—that of living, breathing human beings—how does it make sense for us to tolerate such a system? The lives lost to the supremacy of profits are simply folded into the cost of doing business. We are all just variables on the corporate spreadsheet where profits must reign supreme.

Is it any wonder then, that Americans are drawn toward democratic socialism these days? Unfettered capitalism demonstrates its true colors to us every single day. And once in a while, the blood-soaked profits flash right before our eyes when 157 lives are lost in an instant, showing us in the starkest terms how little we have allowed our lives to be worth.

In the world Boeing occupies, our lives are expendable. It is time that Boeing and other corporations began operating on our terms and in our world.

Potential Recession Signal: A Key ‘Yield Curve’ Has Inverted

NEW YORK — One of the most closely watched predictors of a potential recession just yelped even louder.

The signal lies within the bond market, through which investors show how confident they are about the economy by their level of demand for U.S. government bonds.

It’s called the “yield curve,” and a significant part of it flipped Friday for the first time since before the Great Recession: A Treasury bill that matures in three months is yielding 2.46 percent — 0.03 percentage points more than the yield on a Treasury that matures in 10 years.

It seems illogical. Economists call it an “inverted” yield curve. Normally, short-term debt yields less than a long-term debt, which requires investors to tie up their money for a prolonged period. When a short-term debt pays more than a long-term debt, the yield curve has inverted.

And when the yield curve is inverted, it shows that investors are losing confidence in the economy’s prospects. Fear about the inverted yield curve contributed to Friday’s 1.9 percent tumble in the S&P 500 index — its worst day since Jan. 3.

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WHY CARE?

This warning signal has a fairly accurate track record. A rule of thumb is that when the 10-month Treasury yield falls below the three-month yield, a recession may hit in about a year. Such an inversion has preceded each of the last seven recessions, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

The last time a three-month Treasury yielded less than a 10-year Treasury was in late 2006 and early 2007, before the Great Recession made landfall in December 2007.

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WHY DID THE YIELD CUVE INVERT?

Longer-term Treasury yields have been falling this year, in part on worries that economic growth is slowing around the world. When investors become nervous, they often abandon stocks and other risky assets and flock to Treasurys, which are among the world’s safest investments. High demand for bonds will, in turn, send yields falling. Accordingly, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has sunk to 2.43 percent from more than 3.20 percent late last year.

Shorter-term rates, by contrast, are influenced less by investors and more by the Federal Reserve, which raised its benchmark short-term rate seven times over the past two years. Those rate hikes had been forcing up the three-month yield, to 2.46 percent from 1.71 percent a year ago. This momentum will likely slow now that the Fed foresees no rate hikes in 2019. But if longer-term Treasury yields continue to weaken, the curve could remain inverted.

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IS IT A PERFECT PREDICTOR?

No, an inverted yield curve has sent false positives before. The yield curve inverted in late 1966, for example, and a recession didn’t hit until the end of 1969.

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HAVEN’T WE HEARD THIS BEFORE?

Other parts of the yield curve inverted late last year, as when the five-year Treasury’s yield dropped below the three-year yield. Those parts of the yield curve, though, aren’t as closely watched.

And not every part of the yield curve is inverted. Many traders on Wall Street also pay close attention to the difference between two-year and 10-year Treasurys. That part of the curve is still not inverted. The 10-year yield of 2.43 percent is still above the two-year yield of 2.31 percent.

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SO IS A RECESSION COMING OR NOT?

It’s too soon to say. Economic growth is slowing around the world, but the U.S. job market remains relatively strong.

“This is a signal that we should take seriously,” said Frances Donald, head of macroeconomic strategy at Manulife Asset Management. “However, it’s too early to tell whether this is indeed a harbinger of a recession or a blip. For me to feel confident to say this is a predictor of recession, I would need to see it persist for at least one to two months.”

Potentially more concerning, Donald said, is how businesses and consumers react to the inverted yield curve. If they were to cut back on hiring or spending, that could trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to a recession.

“We’re so accustomed to this telling us a recession is ahead that my concern is businesses and households get so scared they effectively create one,” she said.

Trump Reversing New Sanctions on North Korea

PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump tweeted Friday that he has reversed his administration’s decision to slap new sanctions on North Korea, with his press secretary explaining that he “likes” leader Kim Jong Un and doesn’t think they’re necessary.

It’s unclear, however, which sanctions the president was referencing in his tweet, which took Treasury officials by surprise.

“It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” Trump wrote from his private club in Palm Beach.

“I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about which sanctions Trump was referring to. No new action against North Korea was announced by the Treasury Department on Friday, though Trump this week did threaten that new ones could be added.

On Thursday, his administration did sanction two Chinese shipping companies suspected of helping North Korea evade sanctions — the first targeted actions taken against Pyongyang since Trump and Kim met in Hanoi, Vietnam, last month for negotiations about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The summit ended without a deal.

It was the latest example of Trump’s unusual governance-by-tweet. Trump’s proclamations have often caught agency officials by surprise, leaving them scrambling to figure out what he’s directing and to implement his directives.

Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton had described that step as “Important” action, tweeting, “The maritime industry must do more to stop North Korea’s illicit shipping practices.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement Friday that Trump “likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.”

The White House had said Thursday’s sanctions were evidence the U.S. was maintaining pressure on North Korea in an effort to coax its leader to give up his nuclear weapons program.

The Treasury Department sanctioned Dalian Haibo International Freight Co. Ltd. and Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co. Ltd. for using deceptive methods to circumvent international and U.S. sanctions and the U.S. commitment to implementing existing U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Calls to the two companies rang without response Friday or were answered by people who immediately hung up the phone.

The Treasury Department, in coordination with the State Department and the U.S. Coast Guard, also updated a North Korea shipping advisory, adding dozens of vessels thought to be doing ship-to-ship transfers with North Korean tankers or exported North Korean coal in violation of sanctions.

Two senior administration officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. policy on North Korea, said that illegal ship-to-ship transfers that violate U.S. and international sanctions have increased and that not all countries, including China, are implementing the restrictions. They said the deceptive practices include disabling or manipulating ship identification systems, repainting the names on vessels and falsifying cargo documents.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement that fully implementing the U.N. resolutions is key to getting Kim to give up his nuclear weapons program. “Treasury will continue to enforce our sanctions, and we are making it explicitly clear that shipping companies employing deceptive tactics to mask illicit trade with North Korea expose themselves to great risk,” Mnuchin said.

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Colvin reported from Washington.

Billionaires May Pose the Single Greatest Threat to American Democracy

The union I lead, the United Steelworkers (USW), believes in unity, that “all working men and women, regardless of creed, color or nationality” are eligible for membership.

That was the guiding principle of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) when it formed in 1937.

I return to that statement in times like these, times when terrorists shoot up mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 worshipers; a synagogue in the USW’s hometown of Pittsburgh, killing 11; an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine; a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, killing six; a nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 mostly young gay people.

The USW membership eligibility statement is an assertion of inclusion. All working men and women qualify. They can all join. They can all attend local union meetings at which members call each other “brother” and “sister.” This practice creates artificial, but crucial, bonds between them. This solidarity gives the group strength when facing off against massive multinational corporations and demanding decent pay and dignified working conditions.

To erode that solidarity, some billionaire hedge fund owners and multinational CEOs work to divide workers. These wealthy .01 percenters separate people by cultivating hate. Some are the same billionaire sugar daddies of alt-right hate sites like Breitbart and more conventional hate media outlets like Fox News. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote a book about their efforts titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

This hate-mongering sets workaday people against each other. That weakens them politically. And it contributes to false-fear–provoked violence.

Look, the labor movement is far from perfect. A couple of decades ago, African-American USW members had to sue steel corporations and the union to secure equal opportunity. Clearly, we haven’t always lived up to our principles. But the goal of brotherhood and sisterhood among all workers is a noble one that must be strived for. We all sweat together to support ourselves and our families. We all come to each other’s aid when a fellow worker’s home burns down or child falls ill. We stand shoulder to shoulder to demand a just portion of the profits created by our labor.

Exclusion is self-defeating, whether workers belong to a labor union or not. Because every man and woman is needed on deck, we can’t let billionaire hate purveyors like the Mercers and Murdochs split us, in our workplaces or in our communities.

Robert Mercer, 72, who made his billions as a hedge fund manager, is a major funder—more than $10 million—of Breitbart, the website once run by former White House aide Stephen Bannon. This is what the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization devoted to monitoring and exposing domestic hate groups and extremists, wrote about the site:

“In April of 2016, the SPLC documented Breitbart’s embrace of extremist ideas and racist tropes such as black-on-white crime and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Further analyses showed how under executive chair Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s comment section became a safe space for anti-Semitic language.”

Bannon specifically told Mother Jones magazine that Breitbart was the platform for the alt-right, which has lifted anti-Semitic and white supremacist voices.

At the same time, the Mercers, Robert and his daughter Rebekah, were giving millions to right-wing anti-union groups through the Mercer Family Foundation. These include the virulent anti-union Heartland Institute ($6.68 million), Heritage Foundation ($2 million), CATO Institute ($1.2 million) and Manhattan Institute for Policy Research ($2.18 million).

It includes the Center for Union Facts ($900,000), a secretive group for corporations and wealthy individuals who oppose unions and who are willing to fund its lies about labor organizations, and the Freedom Partners Action Fund ($2.5 million), which, in turn, has given millions to anti-union groups like the National Right to Work Committee. And the Mercer Foundation gave $100,000 to the State Policy Network, the umbrella group for 100 state-level organizations devoted to destroying labor organizations.

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 88, is a slightly older version of Robert Mercer. He made his feelings about labor unions clear 30 years ago when he moved his London newspaper operations overnight to a barbed-wire–enclosed bunker in the neighborhood of Wapping and told unions he’d fire all workers who did not immediately transfer to the new building and use its new technology. When the print unions resisted, Murdoch fired 5,500 printers.

He also served on the board of directors of the anti-union CATO Institute. Murdoch, who is worth about $20 billion, is listed as chairman and president of a Murdoch Foundation, but it has no assets and has made no grants in more than a decade.

On Fox News, the television network controlled by Murdoch, numerous commentators, including the currently suspended Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro, are openly hostile to labor unions and are viciously anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for advertisers to boycott Fox News unless it fires Carlson and Pirro.

A former senior vice president at Murdoch’s News Corp, Joseph Azam, told National Public Radio this week he left his job in 2017 over the network’s coverage of Muslims, immigrants and race. The NPR story says, “the rhetoric coming from some of his corporate colleagues sickened him: Muslims derided as threats or less than human; immigrants depicted as invaders, dirty or criminal; African-Americans presented as menacing; Jewish figures characterized as playing roles in insidious conspiracies.”

Last weekend, a Muslim news producer, Rashna Farrukh, announced that she quit Fox’s corporate cousin, Sky News Australia, over its coverage of Muslims on the days after the massacre at the two Christchurch mosques. She wrote this in a post for ABC News:

“I compromised my values and beliefs to stand idly by as I watched commentators and pundits instill more and more fear into their viewers. I stood on the other side of the studio doors while they slammed every minority group in the country—mine included—increasing polarization and paranoia among their viewers.”

Billionaires such as Murdoch and Mercer wield immense power. Organizations they stealth-fund are dedicated to dividing and conquering workers. They’re dangerous because they breed, broadcast and promote hate.

The only way to deal with them is with solidarity. Workers must have each other’s backs. They must see each other as brothers and sisters. Their guiding principle must be that all working men and women, regardless of creed, color, nationality or sexual orientation are welcome.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute .

EU Takes Charge, Forces Brexit Deadlines on U.K.’s May

BRUSSELS — Isolated at home and abroad, British Prime Minister Theresa May was laboring against the odds Friday to win backers in Parliament for her unloved Brexit deal — to a timetable dictated by the European Union.

Almost three years after Britons voted to walk away from the EU, the bloc’s leaders seized control of the Brexit timetable from May to avert a chaotic departure at the end of this month that would be disruptive for the world’s biggest trading bloc and deeply damaging for Britain.

“We are prepared for the worst but hope for the best,” said European Council President Donald Tusk. “As you know, hope dies last.”

May’s mantra since Britain’s 2016 EU membership referendum in 2016 has always been about “taking back control” of U.K. affairs from the EU. But the process has seen her lose control — of the U.K. Parliament, which has twice rejected her Brexit deal, and now of the date of departure.

In a move that underlined their loss of confidence in May, EU leaders set two deadlines for Britain to leave the bloc of nearly half a billion people or to take an entirely new path in considering its EU future.

At marathon late night talks in Brussels, they rejected May’s request to extend the Brexit deadline from March 29 until June 30.

Instead, the leaders agreed to extend the Brexit date until May 22, on the eve of EU Parliament elections, if she can persuade the British Parliament to endorse the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

Failing that, May now has until April 12 to choose between leaving the bloc without a divorce deal and a radically new path, such as revoking Britain’s decision to leave, holding a new British referendum on Brexit or finding a cross-party consensus for a very different kind of Brexit.

Ending a two-day summit, Tusk said there was now nothing more the EU could do to help May.

“The fate of Brexit is in the hands of our British friends,” he said.

The EU’s choice of deadline aims to ensure that Britain doesn’t take part in the May 23-26 elections for the EU parliament if it is leaving. Britain is legally required to announce its intention of participating by April 12. As of now, Britain’s seats in the next EU Parliament have been redistributed to other nations.

The EU-wide elections are being held amid deep concerns that mainstream parties could lose seats to anti-immigrant groups and populists. EU leaders are also fearful that the contagion of Brexit — its chaos, populism, political instability and uncertainty— could spread to their nations.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Brexit offered a “political lesson” to all that trying to leave Europe without a plan “leads to an impasse.” Macron slammed the architects of Brexit, saying the referendum had been won by “lies.”

But he also said governments should listen to their people if they want to avoid a “disaster.”

“We should respect what the British people have decided,” he said. “We need to hear our people, we need to address their fears. We can’t play with fears, or simply tear up pages without offering anything else.”

The EU leaders seized hold of the Brexit process when May — after repeated questioning — proved unwilling or unable to tell them what she planned to do next week if she fails yet again to convince a skeptical British Parliament to endorse her Brexit deal, EU officials said.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said some EU nations, especially those far from the U.K., were against giving Britain a Brexit delay because they “are sick of” the interminable Brexit process.

Varadkar said, after hours of discussion, the EU leaders reached a compromise that “gives a little breathing space” for Britain to decide among three options: “no deal, the withdrawal agreement or a much closer relationship with the EU.”

“I honestly don’t know what the most likely option is,” he told reporters. “Prime Minister May believes that there is a pathway to victory, to getting a majority in the House of Commons (for her deal), and I hope that she can achieve that.”

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said the EU hoped British lawmakers would make “a rational choice, that it will be a choice to maintain close economic and security links with the European Union.”

The legally binding Brexit agreement that May signed with her EU partners last November has been twice rejected by British legislators, once by a historic margin, and she angered lawmakers earlier this week by suggesting they are responsible the Brexit impasse.

May was more conciliatory Friday, saying that she had “expressed my frustration. I know that MPs are frustrated too. They have difficult jobs to do.”

“I hope we can all agree, we are now at the moment of decision,” May said.

The battle now shifts back to the British Parliament, where May plans to hold a third vote on her deal next week, though there are few signs of a big shift in opinion.

Pro-EU lawmakers said the bloc’s decision showed that May needed to change course and consider alternatives to her rejected Brexit deal. They plan an attempt starting Monday to force a change of direction by setting out a series of votes in Parliament on alternatives, including a plan to keep close economic ties with the EU.

“We need to open up this process because we have rejected her deal, we’ve rejected no-deal, the EU has decided to give us a little more time and we’ve really got to get on with it,” said Labour Party lawmaker Hilary Benn, who chairs the House of Commons Brexit committee.

“This won’t work if the prime minister is not prepared to move an inch,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s the story of the last two and three-quarter years.”

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Raf Casert and Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, and Danica Kirka in London, contributed to this report.

White House: Islamic State Territory in Syria Eliminated

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — All Islamic State-held territory in Syria has been eliminated, President Donald Trump announced Friday, though officials said sporadic fighting continued on the ground between coalition forces and the group’s holdouts.

The complete fall of the last IS stronghold in Baghouz, Syria, would mark the end of the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate, which at its height stretched across large parts of Syria and Iraq. Controlling territory gave the group room to launch attacks around the world.

President Donald Trump said Friday “it’s about time” that the group no longer controlled territory in the region, after a campaign by U.S. and coalition forces that spanned five years and two U.S. presidencies, unleashed more than 100,000 bombs and killed untold numbers of civilians.

The IS “territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One.

U.S. officials familiar with the situation in Syria said again Friday that the Syrian Democratic Forces were still battling the last remaining IS fighters who were holed up in tunnels along the river cliffs in Baghouz and have refused to surrender.

Officials said the SDF has not announced any declaration of victory, and there was no announcement planned for Friday.

Associated Press journalists in Baghouz, in eastern Syria, said coalition fighters were still conducting mop-up operations in the village after seizing an encampment Tuesday where the extremists had been holed up for months.

SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told AP earlier Friday that there were still IS fighters and women and children hiding in caves near Baghouz. He said final operations were ongoing and there appeared to be several hundred people still inside. Other SDF officials said the camp was full of corpses, and that some civilians and IS fighters were still handing themselves over.

At least two airstrikes were carried out on Baghouz earlier Friday, sending black smoke rising in the village.

According to the officials, the SDF is moving slowly and carefully, and is willing to wait out the IS fighters who are out of food and low on water. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss mission details.

Sanders told reporters that Trump was briefed about the development by acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan who was traveling with him to Florida. “We got the information from the DOD,” she added.

Trump showed reporters a map of Iraq and Syria that showed the terror group no longer controlled any territory in the region. “Here’s ISIS on Election Day,” he said, linking coalition gains since then to his presidency. He pointed to a swath of red area signifying the group’s previous territorial gains, and then to one without any red, “Here’s ISIS right now.”

But Trump appeared to be overstating his administration’s contribution to the anti-IS fight. A close-up of the map showed that Trump was displaying a depiction of the group’s footprint at a high-point in 2014, not Election Day 2016, by which point the U.S.-backed campaign was well underway.

Trump has been teasing the victory for days, most recently Wednesday when he said the milestone would be achieved by that night. But even after Baghouz’s fall, IS maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells that threaten to continue an insurgency.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking in Jerusalem, said Thursday the U.S.-led coalition had achieved “amazing” results in Syria.

“The threat from radical Islamic terrorism remains,” Pompeo said.

If history is a guide, the reconquering of IS-held territory may prove a short-lived victory unless Iraq and Syria fix the problem that gave rise to the extremist movement in the first place: governments that pit one ethnic or sectarian group against another.

The militants have been putting up a desperate fight, their propaganda machine working even on the brink of collapse. The battle for Baghouz has dragged on for weeks and the encampment had proven a major battleground, with tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels.

The siege has also been slowed by the unexpectedly large number of civilians in Baghouz, most of them families of IS members. Over past weeks they have been flowing out, exhausted, hungry and often wounded. The sheer number who emerged — nearly 30,000 since early January, according to Kurdish officials — took the Syrian Democratic Forces by surprise.

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Baldor reported from Washington. AP writers Philip Issa in Baghouz, Syria, Robert Burns, Zeke Miller and Kevin Freking in Washington and Matthew Lee in Jerusalem contributed.

Pompeo Is at Odds With Lebanese Officials Over Hezbollah

BEIRUT — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday blasted Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which he vowed the U.S. would continue to pressure, and called on the Lebanese people to stand up to the Iran-backed militant group he said was “committed to spreading destruction.”

His harsh comments in Beirut were in strong contrast to those of Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil who minutes earlier, while standing next to Pompeo, insisted that Hezbollah is “a Lebanese group that is not a terrorist organization and was elected by the people.”

Pompeo, however, warned that “the Lebanese people face a choice: Bravely move forward or allow the dark ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah to dictate your future.”

He added that the U.S. would continue using “all peaceful means” to curb Hezbollah and Iran’s influence.

Pompeo highlighted U.S. concerns about Hezbollah’s “destabilizing activities” in Lebanon and the region in talks his with Lebanese leaders, amid strong regional condemnation of President Donald Trump’s declaration that it’s time the U.S. recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The abrupt pronouncement on the Golan Heights was likely to cloud Pompeo’s two-day visit during which he met with top officials, including some who are aligned with the Iran- and Syria-allied militant Hezbollah.

The visit is the last leg of a Mideast tour that took Pompeo to Kuwait and Israel, where he lauded warm ties with Israel, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on at least three separate occasions and promised to step up pressure on Iran.

From Israel, Pompeo’s plane travelled through Cypriot airspace, as Lebanon, which is technically in a state of war with Israel, bans direct flights from Israel.

Once on the ground, Pompeo was taken to the Interior Ministry for a brief meeting with Raya El-Hassan, who was named earlier this year as the Arab world’s first female minister in charge of security.

Pompeo also met with Lebanon’s powerful Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, before heading for a working lunch with Prime Minister Saad Hariri followed by a meeting with President Michel Aoun. The State Department’s deputy spokesman, Robert Palladino, said Pompeo highlighted in the meetings U.S. concerns about Hezbollah’s “destabilizing activities in Lebanon and the region” as well as the need to maintain calm along the border between Lebanon and Israel.

In his Lebanon visit, Pompeo hopes to step up pressure on the Shiite Hezbollah group, but could face resistance even from America’s local allies, who fear that pushing too hard could trigger a backlash and endanger the tiny country’s fragile peace. Hezbollah wields more power than ever in parliament and the government.

Aoun’s office said the president told Pompeo that the country’s priority is to preserve national unity and peace adding that “Hezbollah is a Lebanese party that has a popular base representing one of the main (religious) sects in the country.”

Pompeo later met with Bassil, the foreign minister. He, as well as Aoun and Berri, are close Hezbollah allies, while Hariri is a close Western ally who has been reluctant to confront Hezbollah.

“How does stockpiling tens of thousands of missiles in Lebanon territory for use against Israel make this country stronger?” asked Pompeo, referring to Hezbollah’s arsenal that the group boasts can strike any part of Israel.

“Hezbollah and its illegitimate militia put the entire country on the front lines of Iran’s misguided proxy campaign,” Pompeo added.

He said that Washington would continue to use “all peaceful means possible” to pressure Hezbollah, an apparent reference to the sanctions that the U.S. has imposed over the years and are drying up the militant group’s finances. Pompeo referred to comments made by Hezbollah’s leader earlier this month in which he urged supporters to donate money to the group.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV aired the comments made by Bassil live, but cut back to normal programming once Pompeo began reading his statement.

President Aoun, speaking to Russian journalists ahead of a visit to Moscow later this month, said that the sanctions imposed on Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are negatively impacting the already fragile Lebanese economy.

“The negative effect of the sanctions on Hezbollah is hitting all Lebanese people as well as Lebanese banks,” he said in remarks released later on Friday.

Earlier this week, Pompeo had said “we’ll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present.”

“Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. You ask how tough I am going to be? It is a terrorist organization. Period. Full stop,” Pompeo said in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Pompeo’s visit to Lebanon came as the Trump administration hit Iran with new sanctions on Friday.

The Treasury Department said the sanctions target 31 Iranian scientists, technicians and companies affiliated with Iran’s Organization for Defense Innovation and Research, which had been at the forefront of the country’s former nuclear weapons program. Officials said those targeted continue to work in Iran’s defense sector and form a core of experts who could reconstitute that program. Fourteen people, including the head of the organization and 17 subsidiary operations are covered by the sanctions.

The sanctions freeze any assets that those targeted may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from any transactions with them.

Trump’s statement about the Golan Heights on Thursday is a major shift in American policy. For some time, the administration has been considering recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the strategic highlands, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. In a tweet that appeared to catch many by surprise, Trump said the time had come for the United States to take the step.

The U.S. will be the first country to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, which the rest of the international community regards as territory occupied by Israel whose status should be determined by negotiations between Israel and Syria.

Syria, Iran and Turkey on Friday strongly denounced Trump’s statement.

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Lee reported from Jerusalem.

America Is Exceptional—in All the Wrong Ways

I was born and raised in an America far more Orwellian than many now remember. Matters have gone so far off the rails since 9/11 that few seem to recall the madness of the 1980s. The U.S. had a celebrity actor for president, who railed about America’s ostensibly existential adversary—the Soviet “evil empire.” Back then, Ronald Reagan nearly started a nuclear war during the all-too-real Able Archer war game. He also secretly sold missiles to Iran, and then laundered the windfall to the Contras’ Central American hit squads, resulting in some 100,000 dead.

Looking back from 2019, at least as the contemporary media tell it, those were the good old days. Heck, even Barack Obama—faux liberal that he was—proudly and publicly admired Reagan. Oh, and one of Reagan’s favorite campaign slogans: “Make America Great Again.”

Today, matters seem to be coming farcically full circle, what with Elliott Abrams—convicted in the aforementioned Iran-Contra scandal—being appointed special envoy to Venezuela, and Uncle Sam again bullying a Latin American country. Welcome to America’s own grisly ’80s foreign affairs theme party! Which all got me thinking, again, about the whole notion of American exceptionalism. Only a country that truly, deeply believes in its own special mission could repeat the hideous policies of the 1980s and hardly notice.

Perhaps one expects this absurd messianism from the likes of The Donald, but the real proof is that America’s supposed progressives—like Obama—also obediently pray at the temple of exceptionalism. “Orwellian” is the only word for a nation whose leaders and commentariat were absolutely aghast when candidate Obama was seen without (gasp!) an American flag pin on his lapel. Even more disturbing was how quickly he folded and dutifully adorned his mandatory flair. This sort of nonsense is dangerous, folks: It’s hypernationalism—the very philosophy that brought us World War I.

So it was this week, while sitting on a plane reading my oh-so-bourgeois Economist, and getting infuriated about seeing Elliott Abrams’ war-criminal face, that my thoughts again turned to good old American exceptionalism. My opinions on the topic have waxed and waned over the course of a career spent waging illegal war. First, as a young cadet at West Point, I bought it hook, line and sinker; then, as an Iraq War vet and dissenter, I rejected the entire notion. Only now, observing the world as it is, have I begun to think that America really is exceptional after all—only in all the wrong ways.

Humor me, please, while I run through a brief laundry list of the ways the US of A is wildly and disconcertingly different from all the other “big-boy countries” in the developed world. Let’s start with domestic policy:

The U.S. has been the site of exponentially more mass shootings than any other nation. And unlike in New Zealand—where officials took immediate steps to tighten gun control in the wake of its recent tragedy—American politicians won’t do a thing about it. We also own more guns per capita than any other country in the world. In second place is Yemen.
The U.S. is essentially alone in the Western world in not guaranteeing health care as a basic human right. It spends much more cash, yet achieves worse health outcomes than its near-peer countries.
America is home to some of the starkest income inequality on the globe—right up there with Turkey and South Africa.
The U.S. keeps migrant kids in cages at the border, or did until recently. Even more exceptional is that Washington is largely responsible for the very unrest in Central America that generates the refugees, all while American conservatives proudly wear their “Christianity” as badge of honor—but wasn’t Jesus a refugee child? Maybe I read the wrong Bible.
America is alone among 41 Western nations in not guaranteeing paid family leave. How’s that for “family values?”
As for representative democracy, only the U.S. has an Electoral College. This fun 18th-century gimmick ensures that here in America—in 40 percent of its elections since 2000—the presidential candidate with fewer votes actually won. Furthermore, our peculiar system ensures that a rural Wyoming resident has—proportionally—several times more representative power in Washington than someone who lives in California.
Similarly, America counts several non-state “territories”—think Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico—that don’t even get to vote for the president that it can legally send  to war. But hey, why should we grant them statehood? It’s not as though some of them have higher military enlistment rates than any U.S. state … oh, wait.
The U.S. is essentially solo in defining corporations as “people,” and thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, has lifted limits on money in politics. Buying elections is officially as American as apple pie.
The USA locks up its own people at the highest rate in the world and is nearly alone among developed nations in maintaining the death penalty. Last year, the U.S. was the only country in the Americas to conduct executions and the only Western democracy to do so. But our friends the Saudis still execute folks, so it’s got to be OK. Dostoyevsky famously claimed that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” How are we doing there?

Then there’s the foreign policy of the great American empire:

The U.S. spends exponentially more on military defense than anyone else, and more than the next seven competitors (most of which are allies) combined.
America’s bloated military is all by itself in dotting the globe with hundreds of foreign military bases—by some estimates more than any country or empire in world history. As for our two biggest rivals,  Russia has 21 (mostly close to home); China has maybe three.
Benevolent, peaceful, freedom-loving America is also the world’s top arms dealer—even selling death-dealing weapons to famous human rights abusers.
After Syria signed on, the U.S. became the last nation on earth not party to the Paris Climate Accord. Heck, the occupant of the Oval Office doesn’t even believe in man-made climate change.
Then there’s the discomfiting fact that the U.S.—along with Russia—won’t even make a “no-first-use” pledge regarding nuclear weapons. And that’s reality, not “Dr. Strangelove.”
The U.S. was first and, until recently, alone in flying its drone fleet through sovereign national airspace and executing “terrorists” from the sky at will. I wonder how Washington will respond when other countries cite that American precedent and do the same?
Only the U.S. Navy patrols all the world’s oceans in force and expects to maintain superiority everywhere. And only the U.S. boasts near total control of the goings-on in two whole continents—unflinchingly asserting that North and South America fall in its “sphere of influence.” Crimea abuts Russia and the people speak Russian—still, the U.S. denies Moscow any sphere of influence there or anywhere else. Ah, consistency.

Of course there is so, so much more, but let’s end our tour of American “exceptionalism” there in the interest of time.

What’s so staggeringly unique about the United States is ultimately this: It stands alone among historical hegemons in denying the very existence of its empire. This, truly, is something new. Kids in 19th-century Great Britain knew they had an empire—they even colored their colonies red on school maps. Not so here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. No, Washington seems to believe its own lie—and has its people convinced—that the U.S. is no empire at all, but rather a benevolent “democratic” gentle giant.

American colonies were founded from the outset as mini-empires wrested from the natives. Next, the nascent U.S. grew up enough to take what was left of the continent from the Mexicans. Since then, Washington has been trolling the world’s oceans and spreading the gospel of its own hyper-late-stage capitalism and bullying others in order to get its way. Sure, there are countries where worse human-rights abusers and worse authoritarian regimes are in power. But do we really want to be competing for last place? Especially if we’re supposedly so exceptional and indispensable?

Me, I’m sick of patriotism, of exceptionalism, of nationalism. I’ve seen where all those ideologies inevitably lead: to aggressive war, military occupations and, ultimately, dead children. So count me as over hegemony—it’s so 20th-century, anyway—and bring on the inevitable decline of U.S. pretense and power. Britain had to give up most of an empire to gain a social safety net. That was the humane thing to do.

Major Danny Sjursen, a Truthdig regular, is a retired U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris ‘Henri’ Henrikson.

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

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen