Chris Hedges's Blog, page 314

Chelsea Manning Jailed for Refusing to Testify on WikiLeaks

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning has been sent to jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton ordered Manning to jail for contempt of court on Friday after a brief hearing in which Manning confirmed she has no intention of testifying. She told the judge she “will accept whatever you bring upon me.”

Manning has said she objects to the secrecy of the grand jury process, and that she already revealed everything she knows at her court martial.

The judge said she will remain jailed until she testifies or until the grand jury concludes its work.

Manning’s lawyers had asked that she be sent to home confinement instead of the jail, because of medical complications she faces.

The judge said U.S. marshals can handle her medical care. Prosecutor Tracy McCormick said the jail and the marshals have assured the government that her medical needs can be met.

Manning anticipated being jailed. In a statement before Friday’s hearing, she said she invoked her First, Fourth and Sixth amendment protections when she appeared before the grand jury in Alexandria on Wednesday. She said she already answered every substantive question during her 2013 court-martial, and is prepared to face the consequences of refusing to answer again.

“In solidarity with many activists facing the odds, I will stand by my principles. I will exhaust every legal remedy available,” she said.

Manning served seven years of a 35-year military sentence for leaking a trove of military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website before then-President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

McCormick said Manning can easily end this incarceration on the civil charge simply by following the law and testifying.

“We hope she changes her mind now,” McCormick said.

Manning’s lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, said she believes jailing Manning is an act of cruelty given her medical issues, and said Manning’s one-bedroom apartment would be a sufficient manner of confinement.

Outside the courthouse, about 10 protesters rallied in her support.

“Obviously prison is a terrible place,” Meltzer-Cohen said. “I don’t see the purpose to incarcerate people.”

The WikiLeaks investigation has been ongoing for a long time. Last year, prosecutors in Alexandria inadvertently disclosed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is facing unspecified, sealed criminal charges in the district.

WikiLeaks also has emerged as an important part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian meddling into the 2016 presidential election, as investigators focus on whether President Donald Trump’s campaign knew Russian hackers were going to provide emails to WikiLeaks stolen from Democratic organizations, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Progressives Condemn U.S.-Backed Regime Change in Venezuela

Over a dozen progressive House Democrats on Thursday condemned the Trump administration’s “unacceptable” push for regime change in Venezuela.

The comments came in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and signed by Reps. Ro Khanna (Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), and 13 other House Democrats.

“President Donald Trump and other senior United States (U.S.) officials have generated alarm in Venezuela and throughout the region with actions and statements—such as the recent threat that ‘all options are on the table’—which indicate a pursuit of American military-led regime change,” reads the letter.

The progressives also slammed the Trump White House for “crippling” millions of ordinary Venezuelans with unilateral sanctions.

“[T]he president’s recent economic sanctions threaten to exacerbate the country’s grave economic crisis, causing immense suffering for the most vulnerable in society who bear no responsibility for the situation in the country,” the letter states.

Khanna, who spearheaded the letter, urged his Democratic colleagues to unite against U.S.-backed regime change and sanctions in an interview with HuffPost on Thursday.

“Here’s the mistake we make: We’re quiet when these interventions are happening,” said Khanna, who has been an outspoken opponent of U.S. interference in Venezuela. “That was a mistake in Iraq, that was a mistake in Libya. Then afterwards we say, ‘These interventions were a mistake and how do we rectify it?’ Instead, we need to speak up right in the beginning when we see signs of interventionism that are going to make situations worse.”

The progressives’ letter comes as Vice President Mike Pence and national security adviser John Bolton continue to lob threats at Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro.

In an interview with Telemundo Wednesday night, Pence reiterated the White House’s support for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, but said there is “no timeline” on the U.S. push for regime change.

Trump’s Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams—whose role in U.S.-backed massacres and genocide and Latin America during the 1980s has come under scrutiny since his appointment in January—said during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Thursday that the administration is planning to “expand the net” of sanctions against Venezuelan institutions.

While condemning the Maduro government for violence against protestors and “disregard of the rule of law,” House progressives said the Trump administration’s meddling is “making life worse for ordinary Venezuelans” and urged the White House to support peaceful negotiations.

“Unilateral measures and violent threats only threaten to stoke chaos and instability,” the letter concludes. “Instead, the U.S. must abide by its obligation under the Organization of American States (OAS) Charter to abstain from using armed force or ‘any other form of interference or attempted threat” against another state. We urge you to support efforts by Uruguay, Mexico, and the Vatican to promote dialogue and help Venezuelans resolve their own problems.”

Read the full letter, which was first obtained by HuffPost:

Trump’s Former Campaign Boss Manafort Sentenced to 47 Months

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison for tax and bank fraud related to his work advising Ukrainian politicians, a significant break from sentencing guidelines that called for a 20-year prison term.

Manafort, sitting in a wheelchair as he deals with complications from gout, showed no visible reaction as he heard the 47-month sentence.

The sentence caps the only jury trial following indictments stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. It was not related to Manafort’s role in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Before Judge T.S. Ellis III imposed the sentence, Manafort told him that “saying I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.” But he offered no explicit apology, something Ellis noted before issuing his sentence.

Manafort’s lawyers argued that their client had engaged in what amounted to a routine tax evasion case, and cited numerous past sentences in which defendants had hidden millions from the IRS and served less than a year in prison.

Prosecutors said Manafort’s conduct was egregious, but Ellis ultimately agreed more with defense attorneys. “These guidelines are quite high,” Ellis said.

A jury last year convicted Manafort on eight counts, concluding that he hid from the IRS millions of dollars he earned from his work in Ukraine.

Manafort still faces sentencing in the District of Columbia, where he pleaded guilty in a separate case connected to illegal lobbying.

We Are Being Lied Into War Again

I was 23 when we invaded Iraq, and I wasn’t sure it was based on lies, but something deep down in me—just behind the spleen—told me it was based on lies. Kinda like if your blind date shows up and you notice he has a 2004 flip phone. It seems vaguely worrisome, and no explanation he can haltingly supply will put you at ease. Plus, anyone else who acts like it’s normal also becomes suspect.

The invasion of Iraq just felt like it was a lie to me. And it turned out that I was right, that it was a lie, and that the entirety of the mainstream media and our government were either wrong or lying and, most of the time, both.

Now our government and our media are trying their damnedest to lie us into another war, this one with Venezuela. They tell us the Venezuelan people are desperate for necessities like toothpaste, while independent journalists show piles of affordable toothpaste in Caracas.

And even if they didn’t have toothpaste, that hardly seems like a good reason for America to be dropping our long-range bad decisions on the heads of innocent people. Turning a town into an impact crater for the sake of a battle to stop gingivitis seems a bit extreme.

The mainstream media and nearly the entirety of the U.S. government tell us Juan Guaido is the “interim president,” even though he was never elected to that position and the current president is still leading the Venezuelan government and military. So I guess this “interim” is the time between Guaido being a nobody and the time when he goes back to being nobody but now gets to tell women at parties, “You know, I used to be interim president.”

The mainstream media also inform us that the Venezuelan military set U.S. aid trucks on fire, when video shows opposition forces doing it. Furthermore, the idea of Venezuela taking “aid” from the country whose sanctions are crushing them would be like the Standing Rock Sioux accepting gift packages from the construction crews swiss-cheesing their land to lay down the Dakota Access pipeline. Unless the boxes are filled with industrial paper towels to help clean up oil spills, I fail to see how it would be beneficial. Sometimes you do indeed have to look a gift horse in the mouth (or should I say “gift dog”).

This is not the first time our government and our media have conspired to drag the American people into war with another country—or helped create a coup that will inevitably have disastrous results. So I thought this would be a prime moment to go through the top four greatest hits.

Number 4: The Spanish-American War

This is widely considered to be the birth of modern media propaganda, because it was the first war actually started by the media. Newspapers fabricated atrocities in the never-ending quest for more readers.

And as The New York Times noted, “[T]he sensationalistic reporting of the sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898 … and all the other egregious reporting leading up to the Spanish-American War might have been considered merely cartoonish if it hadn’t led to a major international conflict.”

I think maybe The New York Times got that quote confused with its mission statement: “Cartoonishly dragging America into major international conflict since 1851!”

Number 3: The Vietnam War

Sure, most everyone knows the catastrophic Vietnam War was precipitated by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which U.S. naval vessels were fired upon by villainous North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Following that skirmish, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recommended that President Johnson retaliate, and the full-force Vietnam War had begun. But most Americans still don’t know that there was no Gulf of Tonkin incident—unless you count U.S. naval ships literally firing their weapons at weather events they saw on the radar. The 2003 documentary “The Fog of War” finally revealed the truth. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed that the Gulf of Tonkin attack did not actually happen.

That’s right. It never happened. Much like leprechauns or dragons or Simon Cowell’s talent, it was a figment of our national imagination.

The lies of our government, followed by the fawning, credulous reporting from our media, led to the death of 58,000 U.S. service members and as many as 3.8 million Vietnamese.

The United States government has one of the most powerful Departments of Fabrication and Falsification ever assembled. It’s a modern marvel on par with the Great Pyramid of Giza and Rafael Nadal’s down-the-line running forehand.

Number 2: The Iraq War

Of course, there’s the most obvious lie about Iraq, i.e., that Saddam Hussein had so many weapons of mass destruction that he would often use one to scrub hard-to-reach places while in the tub. But that wasn’t the only falsehood manifested to bring about our complete annihilation of the sovereign nation Saddam ruled over. There were others, such as the idea that Saddam was connected to al-Qaida and perhaps played a role in the 9/11 attacks. William Safire at The New York Times, in May 2002, wrote, “Mohamed Atta, destined to be the leading Sept. 11 suicide hijacker, was reported last fall by Czech intelligence to have met at least once with Saddam Hussein’s espionage chief in the Iraqi Embassy.”

Yes, Safire was able to polish a load of bullshit so thoroughly it would sparkle like a sapphire. And that column is still up on the Times’ website, without a correction or retraction. I would say the Times is only useful for covering the bottom of a birdcage, but I’d fear the paper would lie your pet cockatoo into an ill-advised invasion, killing millions.

But the propaganda didn’t even stop there. There was also the anthrax attacks following 9/11. Anthrax was mailed to press outlets and the offices of politicians. To this day, many people still believe it had something to do with Iraq or al-Qaida because of award-winning national embarrassments like Brian Ross.

“Brian Ross at ABC News wrote ‘the anthrax in the tainted letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was laced with bentonite’ and ‘bentonite is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program.’ ” As Salon so clearly put it, “All of those factual claims … were completely false, demonstrably and unquestionably so. … Yet neither ABC nor Ross have ever retracted, corrected, clarified, or explained these fraudulent reports.”

And, as you would expect, following that blatantly false reporting, Brian Ross did not lose his job. In fact, he wasn’t put out to pasture from ABC News until last year, when he “reported that fired national security adviser Michael Flynn was ready to testify that Trump told him to contact the Russians during the campaign.”

That report—much like the rumors of Brian Ross’s journalistic integrity—turned out to be absolutely false.

(In my professional opinion, anyone who had anything to do with the selling, perpetrating or planning of the Iraq War should never again hold a position higher than assistant trainee to the guy who picks up the shit of a dog that does not belong to anyone of any particular importance. If that position does not exist, we as a nation should create it just for this moment. Yet, despite my objections, Robert Mueller (head of the FBI at the time of the invasion and a big supporter of it) is leading the biggest investigation in the country. John Bolton, who advocated for the Iraq invasion as far back as the 1990s, is now national security adviser. Bill Kristol, who pushed for the war and said it would last two months, is now a regular panelist on MSNBC. And the list goes on.)

Unlike Defense Secretary McNamara, who admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, we don’t have a smoking gun showing that the Bush administration created these lies to get us into Iraq. … Oh, wait! Turns out the paper shredder at the Bush Oval Office was on strike for a higher minimum wage in 2002, and in fact, we do have a memo written by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, a year before U.S. forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Iraqi people. His memo about war with Iraq stated, “How start? US discovers Saddam connection to Sept 11 or to anthrax attacks? Or maybe a dispute over WMD inspections?”

I’m not sure what’s more striking—that this memo exists, or that it sounds like the Bush boys planned a massive international battle the same way a broke 35-year-old maps out his bad novel that he’s sure is the ticket out of his mom’s basement.

“How start horrible bloody war? Maybe Saddam found to moonlight as porn star?”

Point is, multiple completely false stories laid the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq that left well over 1 million people dead.

Number 1: The Bombing of Syria

President Bashar Assad gassed his own people, thereby guaranteeing more American involvement—and he did it just days after Donald Trump had told the Pentagon to begin withdrawing troops from Syria. At least, that’s the story the corporate media repeated on-loop for at least a month, only pausing every 10 minutes to try desperately to get us all to buy more things with “baconator” in the name or to seek out a harder penis.

So we are expected to believe Assad did the one thing that would ensure more U.S. involvement just as he was about to win his war? It’s kinda like how, when I’m about to win a fistfight, I often poke myself repeatedly in the eye. You know—just to keep it exciting.

Famed journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Fisk have done great work showing that the chemical attacks never happened, but there’s a new update. Just two weeks ago, a BBC producer came forward and said the Douma, Syria, chemical attack footage was staged.

His tweet said that after six months of investigations, he can prove that no fatalities occurred in the hospital. Yet our breathlessly inept mainstream American media, with little to no evidence, ran around saying, “There was a chemical attack! Those poor people! And they don’t have toothpaste, either! We must bomb them to help them!”

The overarching point here is that we’ve replaced our media with stenographers to the ruling elite long ago. The ruling class comes up with a lie to manufacture American consent for its all-American war crimes, and that lie is then sprayed like laminate all over average American citizens. This goes on until such time as any average citizens who question said lie is looked at like they have two heads, and one of them is covered in rat shit.

For the “journalists” who hose the lies across the country the best, awards and private jets and rooftop drinks with midlevel celebrities like Chuck Norris await them. Now we’re getting to the point where the actual rulers—the Trump administration, etc.—are not even hiding their corruption. John Bolton stated on Fox News that the ultimate goal is to steal Venezuela’s oil. But our media continue to tout the propaganda line. Even after Bolton said that, you won’t see Anderson Cooper or one of Fox News’ grand wizards saying, “Venezuela is undergoing a U.S.-backed coup because we’d like to steal their oil.” It’s truly dizzying that the corporate media preserve the propaganda even after the “leaders” have revealed their true sinister intentions.

On the inside of Wolf Blitzer’s eyelids, the phrase, “Must Defend the Matrix” blinks in red.

The propaganda line for Venezuela right now is, “We want to help the poor Venezuelans.” Well, if you want to help them, then keep America out of their face. Don’t force them to have anything to do with the country that came up with drive-through fried food served in a bucket and opioid nasal sprays. At no point does anyone look at the Donald Trump presidency and think, “Wow, that country really has things figured out. I hope they bring some of their great decision-making to our doorstep.”

If you think this column is important, please share it. Also, you can join Lee Camp’s free email newsletter here .

This column is based on a monologue Lee Camp wrote and performed on his TV show, “ Redacted Tonight .”

The Trump Administration Is Secretly Tracking Journalists and Activists

In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, President Trump described the approximately 5,000 asylum seekers traveling largely on foot from Central America to the United States as an “invasion.” His description extended not only to the asylum seekers themselves, but to anyone even tangentially affiliated with them. As KNSD, an NBC affiliate in San Diego, reported Wednesday, leaked documents show the government has assembled a secret database of immigration activists, lawyers, journalists and even social media influencers who have reported on, assisted with or been otherwise connected to the so-called migrant caravan.

The report links the tracking to when migrants reached the U.S.-Mexico border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in November. NBC reports that “journalists who covered the caravan, as well as those who offered assistance to caravan members, said they felt they had become targets of intense inspections and scrutiny by border officials.”

Fifty-nine people, mostly Americans, are listed in the database, named the “San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019 Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media” and created by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

After Democrats won the House in November, Trump and the GOP as a whole grew quieter about the caravan, leading some pundits to believe the president had realized he’d made a mistake by turning it into an election issue.

“Trump hasn’t tweeted about the caravan in days,” Eugene Scott wrote in The Washington Post just after the midterm elections. “His unwillingness to bring it up himself since the election has led critics to suggest that even the president knew that his level of attention to the issue was overblown.” But although presidential tweeting about the caravan stopped, Trump and GOP leaders did not forget about it. In February, Trump used the issue in part to justify declaring a national emergency in order to build a border wall—and, as the documents NBC received shows, to justify going after activists, lawyers and journalists.

The documents were provided to NBC by a Department of Homeland Security staff member, on the condition of anonymity. As NBC reports, the database is quite detailed:

For each person, the documents show their photo, often from their passport but in some cases from their social media accounts, along with their personal information. That information includes the person’s date of birth, their “country of commencement,” and their alleged role tied to the migrant caravan. The information also includes whether officials placed an alert on the person’s passport.

Some individuals have a colored “X” over their photo, indicating whether they were arrested, interviewed, or had their visa or SENTRI pass revoked by officials.

Homeland Security had assembled dossiers on each person listed, even though, the source pointed out to NBC, “We are a criminal investigation agency, we’re not an intelligence agency.” The source added, “We can’t create dossiers on people, and they’re creating dossiers. This is an abuse of the Border Search Authority.”

At least one person wasn’t surprised to learn her information is in the database. Nicole Ramos, refugee director and attorney for Al Otro Lado, a legal organization for migrants and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico, told NBC, “The document appears to prove what we have assumed for some time, which is that we are on a law enforcement list designed to retaliate against human rights defenders who work with asylum seekers and who are critical of CBP practices that violate the rights of asylum seekers.”

Customs and Border Protection declined to answer specific questions from NBC, but instead responded with an emailed statement saying, “Criminal events, such as the breach of the border wall in San Diego, involving assaults on law enforcement and a risk to public safety, are routinely monitored and investigated by authorities.”

Read NBC’s full report, which includes photographs of the Homeland Security documents, here.

The Democratic Party Has Failed Ilhan Omar

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly still considering a symbolic “show vote” in Congress on an anti-Semitism and “hate” resolution—which would offer all the authenticity and honesty of a Soviet show trial. If she proceeds, it will prove Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s point about the inordinate influence wielded over Congress by the “Israel-right or-wrong”/AIPAC lobby and its power to stifle criticism of Israel.

The resolution was originated by two New York Democrats who are among Congress’s most longstanding pro-Israel diehards: Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey. Both endorsed  George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion. Both opposed Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Both supported Donald Trump’s move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

I’m a proud Jew who was raised in a liberal family that supported civil rights and human rights. My experience growing up during the 1950s and 1960s was typical of many Jewish Americans. Like many Jews with this background, I’ve grown increasingly ashamed of Israel.

For 40 years, Israel has been ruled mostly by a series of right-wing governments—more and more openly racist and abusive of Palestinian rights. It’s not the land of tree-planting, kibbutzim and “a country treating its Arab minority nicely” that we were sold as youngsters.

That’s why a large number of proud Jewish Americans—raised to believe in civil liberties and open discussion—are appalled by the campaign to muzzle Omar, as well as Pelosi’s role in it. We’re also appalled that human rights-abusing Israel is virtually off-limits to debate.

Most Jews—the likes of Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner excepted—empathize with the refugee experience. Only a rare few cannot be impressed by the life story of Omar, who fled civil war-torn Somalia and came to the U.S. as a refugee at age 12, knowing only two English phrases: “hello” and “shut up.” Now a Muslim congresswoman, she’s recently faced hateful bias and threats.

Omar has made a simple and undeniable point—that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the funding it influences exert extraordinary power over Congress. Disputing that point is flat-earther terrain. The Capitol Hill farce of an “anti-hate” resolution would provide still more evidence on behalf of her argument.

Unfortunately, all the vague media references to Omar’s “anti-Semitic remarks” obscure how truthful and nonhateful those comments were. You can see a series of her recent tweets here.

Progressive Jews are rushing to her defense because of tweets like this one that speak for us in a way few members of Congress ever have:  “Being opposed to Netanyahu and the occupation is not the same as being anti-Semitic. I am grateful to the many Jewish allies who have spoken out and said the same.”

In his Washington Post column titled, “The dishonest smearing of Ilhan Omar,” Paul Waldman devastatingly countered the recent attack on Omar over her comment at a town hall: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

The initial media frenzy in February over two of Omar’s tweets was so huge that it obscured the fact that the uproar was sparked by a total of seven words—and six of those words are the refrain of a famous Puff Daddy song.

It began when Omar retweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald’s comment about GOP congressional leader Kevin McCarthy’s “attacking the free speech rights” of Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib for criticizing Israel—to which Omar, a known critic of money in politics, simply added the Puff Daddy refrain:  “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.” (Benjamins refer to $100 bills.) When a tweeter asked her who Omar thinks is funding politicians to defend Israel, she responded with a one-word tweet: “AIPAC!”

The feeding frenzy over these two flippant but truthful tweets forced Omar to apologize (something Trump has not been forced to do over hundreds of dishonest, racist and/or threatening tweets).

Yet, if you spend a day on Capitol Hill and talk (off-the-record) with a member of Congress about this topic, you’ll hear plenty about AIPAC’s awesome clout and its ability to unleash “Benjamins”  to bully Congress.  Books and articles have documented this truism.

According to The New York Times, AIPAC allies now want to oust Omar from Congress and hope to “punish Ms. Omar … with a primary challenge in 2020.”

When the well-funded Israel-right-or-wrong lobby comes after her, we’ll likely see a massive countermovement of progressive Jews and non-Jews “Standing with Omar”—and, through the internet, matching the other side Benjamin for Benjamin.

Donald Trump’s Nuclear Doctrine Threatens Human Life on Earth

President Donald Trump has made some very significant policy decisions since entering office that have undermined nuclear non-proliferation on a global level. The two most notable examples include Trump’s withdrawal from a key bilateral nuclear weapons treaty with Russia and his decision to leave the Iranian nuclear deal.

Trump announced this January that he would initiate a six-month withdrawal process that would see the United States quitting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, claiming a number of violations by that country.

The United States has alleged that Russia has been violating the terms of the INF agreement for several years with the expansion and deployment of 2,000 km-range nuclear-capable ground-launched missiles, also referred to as SSC-8 by NATO.

These claims have been repeatedly rejected by Moscow.

In response to Trump’s announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin fired back by saying that the Kremlin would exit the Cold War-era treaty, which restricts both countries from deploying missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

The situation is compounded by the fact that the New START agreement, a separate bilateral treaty, which limits the stockpiles and launch platforms that both countries can deploy, is due to expire in 2021, with neither country is likely to renegotiate.

In light of these trends, during the 2019 UN Conference on Disarmament, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged the United States and Russia to extend the New START treaty, describing it as “one of the hallmarks of international security for 50 years.”

During his remarks, the Secretary-General went on to warn, “I will be blunt. Key components of the international arms control architecture are collapsing.”

Given the current policy direction, peace activists have been quick to point out that for the first time in half a century, U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals will not be bound to any bilaterally negotiated oversights.

This new terrain is of particular concern to disarmament experts who argue that the basis for global non-proliferation is contingent upon on the two nuclear superpowers’ (the United States and Russia) willingness to subject themselves to arms control and verification.

For the non-proliferation community, without proper rectification of the current trajectory, there is a real possibility that these two looming developments by themselves could provoke a new nuclear race.

However, the most serious threat to a renewed nuclear arms race is based on the unrivaled U.S. military hegemony, which seeks to modernize its nuclear weapons capacity by investing up to US$1 trillion over the next 30 years to build new nuclear bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

To make matters worse, the Trump administration took further steps to undermine nuclear non-proliferation with his decision to withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which represented the first major foreign policy reversal by his administration (aside from the Paris Climate Agreement).

Under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president was required to certify Iranian compliance with the JCPOA nuclear deal. As part of the deal, Iran was subject to the most robust nuclear-verification systems anywhere in the world.

Certification was required every 90 days, and Trump twice affirmed Tehran’s compliance, but in May 2018 he refused to recertify.

Trump’s refusal was hinged on the fact that the JCPOA was restricted to Iran’s nuclear program and did not address wider security issues such as Iranian missile tests. As a result, the Trump administration seems to be more focused on weakening Iran’s perceived regional military influence rather than constraining the country’s nuclear program.

Many of Trump’s supporters believe that the United States can force Iran to make additional weapons concessions through the use of sanctions.

However, even some of Washington’s more conservative analysts argue that this is an unattainable goal since ballistic missiles are a central feature of Iran’s regional defense posture and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

In short, these aggressive and short-sighted policy gestures by Donald Trump have sparked serious concern among nuclear non-proliferation advocates that such decisions could trigger a chain reaction of nuclear proliferation in various non-nuclear states, most notably Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Korea, and Japan.

The renewal of the nuclear arms race carries the threat of our extinction.

“We are one mechanical, electronic or human error away from a catastrophe that could eradicate entire cities from the map,” Guterres noted while speaking at a disarmament conference in Geneva.

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

Fewer Than Half of House Democrats Have Signed On to Medicare-for-All

A week after the introduction of comprehensive single-payer healthcare legislation, Congressional Democrats are split over the bill.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) unveiled the Medicare for All Act Feb. 27 in an outdoor press conference. On Wednesday morning, Jayapal appeared on Democracy Now! to tell hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez where the legislation stood a week in and stressed the universal popularity of the plan.

“This is a plan that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents,” said Jayapal. “It’s certainly what the polling shows, that people are with us on this.”

TODAY: Over 100 Democratic lawmakers are co-sponsoring a new House bill that would dramatically revamp U.S. healthcare by creating a Medicare for All system. We’ll speak with the bill’s chief sponsor, Congressmember @PramilaJayapal. 8-9AM ET: https://t.co/Xup8cdtnFB pic.twitter.com/OwrXOrp4v5

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) March 6, 2019

Despite the public support for the plan, however, Congress isn’t totally sold on the bill. Jayapal acknowledged that she’d have to work to convince her party on the merits of the legislation—even as other Democrats like Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) are introducing their own versions of healthcare legislation that would expand Medicare to people 50 and over.

“I do not think that you can really guarantee universal coverage to everybody and contain costs by nibbling around the edges,” Jayapal said. “And with lots of respect to my colleagues, who are, you know, just trying to expand Medicare, buy-in at 50, things like that, that is not going to accomplish [ending] the deep sickness of our for-profit healthcare system. We have to take that on, if we are going to provide universal coverage. And Medicare for All is really the only plan that does that.”

130 Democrats

Jayapal’s bill has the support of 106 other House Democrats, but there are still 130 members of the majority party who have yet to sign on. Those members, according to a study by Carl Gibson at GritPost, are recipients of over $43 million in donations from the healthcare industry over their careers.

Using campaign finance data made publicly available by the Center for Responsive Politics, Grit Post calculated that donors in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries gave a combined $43,740,947 in career campaign donations to the 130 House Democrats who have not yet signed on as co-sponsors to Rep. Jayapal’s bill. House Democrats received anywhere from $9,570 in financial support from pharma and insurance to $3.2 million, depending on the member.

“Additionally, not one member of House Democrats’ leadership has co-sponsored the bill,” wrote Gibson.

You can read the list of names—and their contributions—here.

On Tuesday, Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said in an interview that the legislation was “scary.”

As the leading Democratic presidential contenders unite around Medicare for all and the Green New Deal, I don’t understand why the DCCC chair is trying to divide Democrats with talking points from Republicans and insurance corporations.https://t.co/YoK1YvJoUU

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) March 6, 2019

Of the 130 Democrats not supporting the bill, 29 supported similar legislation in the last Congress, according to a separate study conducted by Alex Panagiotopoulos for Space Commune.

After the 2018 elections were over, we calculated that there were about 130 Democrats elected to Congress who either already were co-sponsors of Medicare for All (H.R. 676), or signaled clear support for Medicare for All during their campaigns.

Last week, when Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) introduced 2019’s version of Medicare for All (H.R. 1384), the bill had 106 co-sponsors, 103 of whom had votes that counted. It’s another painful but important lesson about the limits of politely pushing elected officials to the left; just because they co-sponsor or promise to support legislation doesn’t mean they’ll actually stick around or expend any political capital to make it happen.

Of the 29 drop offs, 26 co-sponsored H.R. 676, the precursor to this year’s legislation. The remaining three are freshmen who expressed support for Medicare for All on the campaign trail.

Pushing from the Left

Advocacy group National Nurses United, in a statement Tuesday, announced the organization’s intention to hold House Democrats accountable if they don’t support the bill. Executive director Bonnie Castillo said that her group takes its responsibility as healthcare professionals seriously, and that supporting Medicare for All was the right path forward for the country.

“Nurses take an oath to advocate for our patients,” said Castillo, “and we can think of no better way to advance the health and the health of our country than to be on the frontlines of organizing this nationwide social movement to win Medicare for All.”

A number of other high powered progressive organizations are throwing their weight behind the bill, Sarah Jones reported at New York:

Outside the House, a broad coalition of unions and advocacy groups has endorsed the bill. Some groups—the American Federation of Teachers, SEIU, and MoveOn—might be familiar. The Association of American Flight Attendants, which made headlines recently when its president, Sara Nelson, called for a general strike in response to the government shutdown, has endorsed the bill, too. That’s a lot of firepower, and Democrats who want the party’s nomination in 2020 will likely face pressure to run on a version of Medicare for All that at least resembles the bill.

Support isn’t limited to the left. At Crooked, which is part of the establishment Democratic media outlet that produces the Pod Save America podcast, Dr. Lisa Beutler wrote that despite her belief that there was some room for debate on the details, Medicare for All is the only option for the American healthcare system.

“I strongly believe,” wrote Beutler, “that in its essence Medicare for All is the only way to achieve truly universal healthcare.”

That sentiment was in line with Castillo’s view from Saturday. In a column for The Hill, Castillo argued that passing Medicare for All was more than the right thing to do for the nation’s health—it’s the right thing for the country’s future.

“A majority of the people in this country, regardless of party or background, are demanding real healthcare reform, now,” wrote Castillo. “In the name of democracy, our legislators must answer that demand by supporting the Medicare for All Act of 2019.”

The Washington Post’s Anti-Left Bias Is Showing Again

A standard bias in news coverage in elite outlets (Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, etc.) is centrism—using an allegedly objective voice to warn against or critique “extremism” of left and right. Centrist bias sometimes takes the form of inaccurate critiques of broadly popular progressive policies that are quite defensible—such as Medicare-for-all or raising the minimum wage. Or it manifests itself in inaccurate claims about the impact of right-wing or progressive “extremism” on US elections.

The Washington Post (3/1/19) warns against young progressive representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.

A good example of this status quo bias was provided by the recent Washington Post “news” story (3/1/19) warning of the progressive upsurge in the Democratic Party—”Centrist Democrats Push Back Against Party’s Liberal Surge.” The bias was imparted with the help of “objective” phrases in the reporters’ voice, such as “shoot-the-moon policy ideas” and “hardball tactics of liberal firebrands.” And by quoting in the article a half-dozen sources from the corporate wing of the party, and none from the progressive wing. But more striking was the skewed history and numbers in this paragraph (emphasis added):

Some warned that imposing purity tests could lead to a Democratic version of the conservative Tea Party revolt that transformed the GOP in recent years. That surge has brought Republicans new energy and new voters, but it also cost the GOP some congressional races and legislative victories.

Let’s run the numbers: When the Tea Party revolt began in early 2009, Democrats had the White House and 59 or 60 Senators caucusing with them. Republicans now have the White House and 53 Senators. Democrats had a huge majority in the in the US House with 257 seats, but even after their big comeback win last November, Democrats now have 235 House seats. Democrats had 28 of 50 governorships in the country; the GOP now has 27 of 50. In 2009, Democratic state legislators outnumbered their Republican counterparts by 859 seats; now the GOP has an edge of 379 over Dems among state lawmakers.

The Tea Party upsurge might have “cost” the Republicans in morality and compassion, but not in seats or political power. Activists are hopeful that a solidly progressive platform can bring the Democratic Party a similar advantage. And while Post reporters casually dismiss them as “shoot-the-moon policy ideas,” progressives believe that a country as wealthy as ours can achieve such measures as Medicare for All, constraints on Wall Street and a Green New Deal.

Washington Post’s Anti-Left Bias Is Showing Again

A standard bias in news coverage in elite outlets (Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, etc.) is centrism—using an allegedly objective voice to warn against or critique “extremism” of left and right. Centrist bias sometimes takes the form of inaccurate critiques of broadly popular progressive policies that are quite defensible—such as Medicare for All or raising the minimum wage. Or it manifests itself in inaccurate claims about the impact of right-wing or progressive “extremism” on US elections.

Washington Post (3/1/19) warns against young progressive representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.

A good example of this status quo bias was provided by the recent Washington Post “news” story (3/1/19) warning of the progressive upsurge in the Democratic Party—”Centrist Democrats Push Back Against Party’s Liberal Surge.” The bias was imparted with the help of “objective” phrases in the reporters’ voice, such as “shoot-the-moon policy ideas” and “hardball tactics of liberal firebrands.” And by quoting in the article a half-dozen sources from the corporate wing of the party, and none from the progressive wing. But more striking was the skewed history and numbers in this paragraph (emphasis added):

Some warned that imposing purity tests could lead to a Democratic version of the conservative Tea Party revolt that transformed the GOP in recent years. That surge has brought Republicans new energy and new voters, but it also cost the GOP some congressional races and legislative victories.

Let’s run the numbers: When the Tea Party revolt began in early 2009, Democrats had the White House and 59 or 60 Senators caucusing with them. Republicans now have the White House and 53 Senators. Democrats had a huge majority in the in the US House with 257 seats, but even after their big comeback win last November, Democrats now have 235 House seats. Democrats had 28 of 50 governorships in the country; the GOP now has 27 of 50. In 2009, Democratic state legislators outnumbered their Republican counterparts by 859 seats; now the GOP has an edge of 379 over Dems among state lawmakers.

The Tea Party upsurge might have “cost” the Republicans in morality and compassion, but not in seats or political power. Activists are hopeful that a solidly progressive platform can bring the Democratic Party a similar advantage. And while Post reporters casually dismiss them as “shoot-the-moon policy ideas,” progressives believe that a country as wealthy as ours can achieve such measures as Medicare for All, constraints on Wall Street and a Green New Deal.