Chris Hedges's Blog, page 350

The Roger Stone Indictment Poses a Major Legal Threat to Trump

It’s hard to see Roger Stone as the victim of prosecutorial overreach, as some on the right claim, even in the aftermath of Stone’s dramatic predawn arrest last Friday by a heavily armed FBI tactical response team.

Now white-haired and 66 years old, the longtime Republican political consultant, confidant to President Donald Trump and self-described “dirty trickster” was hauled into a Fort Lauderdale courtroom after being taken into custody. Shackled at the waist and wrists, he listened as a federal magistrate informed him he had been indicted by a grand jury under the direction of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to Congress.

Ever arrogant and defiant, Stone emerged later on the courthouse steps after posting bail of $250,000. Arms raised in a Nixon-style victory salute, he proclaimed his innocence and denounced the case against him as politically motivated. He maintained the charges “relate in no way to Russian collusion … or any other crime in connection with the 2016 [presidential] campaign.”

As the crowd that had gathered to hear Stone’s remarks chanted “Lock him up,” Stone vowed never to turn against the president, declaring, “There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself.”

Over the weekend, Stone took his defense to television and the internet, lambasting Mueller for what he termed are “manufactured process crimes.” In an interview on Sunday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, he called the indictment against him “thin as piss on a rock.”

Stone’s arraignment is set for Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C., where his trial will be held.

Donald Trump, for his part, has cheered Stone on from the safety of the sidelines. On Friday, after news of the indictment broke, he took to Twitter to condemn Stone’s prosecution as part of the “Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country!” and to insist once again that there was “NO COLLUSION!” On Saturday, he tweeted that if Stone can be prosecuted for lying, so too should Hillary Clinton, James Comey and “soooo many others.”

Unfortunately for both Stone and Trump, the indictment is a major milestone in the Mueller probe. It poses a substantial legal threat not only to Stone but to the president as well.

Here are six incriminating takeaways that explain why:

The indictment lays out an almost irrefutable case against Stone.

To understand the strength of Mueller’s position, it’s necessary to do something very un-Trumpian and read through the entire 24-page indictment filed against Stone.

The indictment sets forth in meticulous detail the many lies Stone told in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017.

Stone was called before the committee to discuss his contacts with WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange during the presidential campaign. The committee was especially interested in learning if Stone had attempted to get advance notice from Assange about WikiLeaks’ plans for releasing the emails that had been hacked from the accounts of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Among other false statements, according to the indictment, Stone told the committee he had no documents, emails or text messages related to those efforts.

In fact, Stone had dozens of emails and text messages stored on his phones and computers that confirmed his interactions with both conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi (referred to in the indictment as “Person 1”) and radio personality Randy Credico (“Person 2”), whom Stone believed had access to Assange.

Although Stone left his position as a Trump campaign adviser in August 2015, he remained a dedicated Trump loyalist. His purpose in pursuing Corsi and Credico was to establish himself as an indispensable intermediary between the campaign and WikiLeaks. According to the indictment, senior campaign officials welcomed and encouraged the undertaking.

Stone’s interactions with Credico, who had interviewed Assange in 2016, are particularly damning. Stone told the committee that while he had gotten information about WikiLeaks from Credico, he never asked Credico to contact Assange on his behalf.

The written communications between Stone and Credico tell a different story. In both texts and emails sent to Credico in September 2016, Stone explicitly requested Credico to reach out to Assange to get dirt on Clinton, including emails related to her tenure as secretary of state.

Worse still, when Credico was invited to appear before the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017, Stone pressured him not to contradict Stone’s own congressional testimony. Although Credico pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of the committee, he was eventually interviewed by the FBI in 2018. All the while, Stone kept urging Credico not to talk, calling him a “rat” and a “stoolie” and even threatening to steal Credico’s fluffy little therapy dog, Bianca, if he told the truth about their relationship.

The threats failed. In September 2018, Credico testified before Mueller’s grand jury, with Bianca by his side.

Unless Stone changes course and decides to strike a deal with Mueller, it’s hard to see him avoiding conviction and doing serious prison time.

The indictment is all about collusion.

The term “collusion” as used in connection with the Mueller probe is a broad catch-all that embraces both criminal acts amounting to a conspiracy with Russian agents as well as non-criminal acts aimed at forging working relationships and coordination. The term derives from the May 2017 Justice Department order that appointed Mueller to investigate “(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and (ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Like Stone’s protestations of innocence, the contention that the indictment has nothing to do with collusion is dubious at best.

In addition to cataloging Stone’s quest to set himself up as the bridge between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, the indictment describes the campaign’s enthusiastic endorsement and proactive encouragement of Stone’s efforts. As paragraph 12 of the indictment alleges:

“After the July 22, 2016, release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1 [WikiLeaks], a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.”

This is collusion and attempted coordination in black and white. It may also be part of a larger criminal conspiracy.

Last July, in a 29-page indictment, Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking the DNC’s and Podesta’s emails and conspiring “to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” Paragraph 44 of the July indictment alleges that as part of their scheme, the Russian agents wrote to a “U.S. person … who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump” to offer their assistance. As Stone acknowledged the day after the indictment was issued, he in all likelihood is that person.

That fact alone doesn’t make Stone a conspirator, either as a principal or as an accessory after the fact to the hacking, but it doesn’t mean he won’t be charged with conspiracy in the future, as Mueller’s case against him builds. The special prosecutor has a well-established track record of filing superseding indictments. Just ask Paul Manafort.

Stone will not be pardoned.

Asked by a reporter Friday whether he’s seeking a pardon from the president, Stone responded like a person auditioning for a reprieve,  remarking, “I am one of [Trump’s] oldest friends. I am a fervent supporter of the president. I think he is doing a great job of making America great again.”

Asked again if he expected a pardon, Stone was coy and evasive, quipping, “The only person I have advocated a pardon for is Marcus Garvey.”

Whatever his true expectations or hopes, it isn’t likely that Trump will pardon Stone, at least not preemptively in the fashion that President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in Watergate.

Although the president has the legal authority to pardon Stone and others accused of committing federal crimes, Trump has been devastated politically as a result of his gross mismanagement of the just-ended government shutdown. Not only have his approval ratings tanked, but his incompetence as a negotiator has been exposed after he was thoroughly humiliated by the Democrats and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. There may be more tweets and bombast but little concrete action to rescue Stone or anyone else indicted in the Russia investigation.

Trump may be Mueller’s next target.

In a news conference on July 27, 2016, at his golf course in Doral, Fla., Trump shocked the world when he seemed to encourage the hacking of Clinton’s emails, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Later that same day, as Mueller subsequently alleged in the Russian hacking indictment, Russian agents tried to penetrate Clinton’s email server. Did they act at Trump’s behest, or just by coincidence?

Although we’re still a long way from receiving an answer to that question, paragraph 12 of the Stone indictment avers that someone at the top directed the Trump campaign to work with Stone on his outreach to WikiLeaks. That person is unnamed, but only for the time being. If the person turns out to be Trump himself, he could well be Mueller’s next target.

The Stone indictment will increase the calls for impeachment.

Under existing Justice Department policy, sitting presidents may not be indicted. Although it is likely that Mueller will follow this policy and refrain from charging Trump with a crime, he is free to recommend impeachment.

Impeachment is a political process, and it is not limited to indictable offenses. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper 65, impeachment extends to serious violations of “the public trust.”

In a column published last week, Tom McCarthy, the Guardian’s national affairs correspondent, highlighted a tweet by Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which would initiate any attempt to impeach Trump. Echoing the central inquiry of Watergate, Nadler asked: “Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn. … What did the President know and when did he know it?”

McCarthy also cited a tweet from former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti about the Stone indictment: “Today’s indictment makes clear that Roger Stone had something to hide. He desperately tried to hide his efforts to coordinate with WikiLeaks from Congress and the public. Why does Donald Trump care so much about ensuring that Stone doesn’t flip? What does *he* have to hide?”

An impeachment proceeding may be the only way to find out.

In the end, it’s all about the lies.

In the final analysis, we have to ask, along with Nadler and Mariotti, if there was no collusion or conspiracy, why have Trump and so many of his closest aides and advisers lied repeatedly about the 2016 campaign? The indictment of Roger Stone moves us one step closer to the truth.

 

 

U.S. Charges Chinese Tech Giant Huawei, Top Executive

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges Monday against Chinese tech giant Huawei, two of its subsidiaries and a top executive, who are accused of misleading banks about the company’s business and violating U.S. sanctions.

The company is also charged in a separate case with stealing trade secrets from T-Mobile, according to federal prosecutors.

Prosecutors are seeking to extradite the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, and allege she committed fraud by misleading banks about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran. She was arrested on Dec. 1 in Canada.

The criminal charges in Brooklyn and Seattle come as trade talks between China and the U.S. are scheduled for this week.

“As I told high-level Chinese law enforcement officials in August, we need more law enforcement cooperation with China,” acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker said at a news conference with other Cabinet officials, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “China should be concerned about criminal activities by Chinese companies, and China should take action.”

U.S. prosecutors charge that Huawei used a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. Huawei had done business in Iran through a Hong Kong company called Skycom and alleged that Meng misled U.S. banks into believing the two companies were separate, according to the Justice Department.

The announcement Monday includes a 10-count grand jury indictment in Seattle, and a separate 13-count case from prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York.

“As you can tell from the number and magnitude of the charges, Huawei and its senior executives repeatedly refused to respect U.S. law and standard international business practices,” said FBI Director Chris Wray.

A Huawei spokesman did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.

Huawei is the world’s biggest supplier of network gear used by phone and internet companies and has long been seen as a front for spying by the Chinese military or security services.

Prosecutors also allege that Huawei stole trade secrets, including the technology behind a robotic device that T-Mobile used to test smartphones, prosecutors said. A jury in Seattle ruled that Huawei had misappropriated the robotic technology from T-Mobile’s lab in Washington state.

The Huawei case has set off a diplomatic spat with the three nations, which has threatened to complicate ties between the U.S. and Canada. President Donald Trump said he would get involved in the Huawei case if it would help produce a trade agreement with China and told Reuters in an interview in December that he would “intervene if I thought it was necessary.”

The arrest of Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder at Vancouver’s airport, has in particular led to the worst relations between Canada and China since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. China detained two Canadians shortly after Meng’s arrest in an apparent attempt to pressure Canada to release her. A Chinese court also sentenced a third Canadian to death in a sudden retrial of a drug case, overturning a 15-year prison term handed down earlier.

David Martin, Meng’s lawyer in Canada, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Meng is out on bail in Vancouver and is due to back in court Feb. 6 as she awaits extradition proceedings to begin.

Canada arrested Meng at the request of the United States. The Chinese have been furious at Canada ever since and arrested Canadian ex-diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor on Dec. 10 on vague allegations of endangering national security.

___

Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

Washington’s Favorite Literal War Criminal Isn’t Done in Venezuela

On Dec. 10, 1981, as the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion arrived at the village of El Mozote in El Salvador to slaughter nearly 1,000 civilians, including children, President Ronald Reagan posed for a photo with Elliott Abrams and his parents, wife and son in honor of Human Rights Day. Then the U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, Abrams was distinguished in Washington as an expert at lying in the name of freedom.

At the United Nations on Saturday, Jorge Arreaza, the Venezuelan representative, called the U.S. “the vanguard of the coup d’état” when Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president with the support of the United States. Newly appointed by the State Department as the head of the “efforts to restore democracy” in Venezuela, Abrams responded by criticizing President Nicolás Maduro: “Democracy never needs to be imposed. It is tyranny that needs to be imposed.” At least 44 people have been killed by security forces in the past week, according to activists. Abrams was previously appointed to be deputy secretary of state, but Trump nixed the idea because Abrams wrote a negative piece about Trump in 2016 titled “When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate.”

Now, Abrams stands poised to revisit a playbook of distortion that has only grown in the 30 years since he left the State Department. The 70-year-old convicted war criminal has an extensive record of lies and policy ideas that prioritize secret U.S. military involvement, particularly in Latin America. In 2002, as senior director of the National Security Council in the George W. Bush White House, Abrams encouraged an attempted coup in Venezuela against then-President Hugo Chávez.

After the massacre at El Mozote, Abrams went to great lengths to convince a Senate Committee in February 1982 that reports “were not credible”—despite photos of the dead and eyewitness testimony. He argued that the front-page stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post, written by U.S. journalists guided by Salvadoran rebels, were propaganda. “It appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas,” Abrams said.

In 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts for lying to Congress about using money from weapons sales to Iran to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Always insisting on his innocence, he called the legal proceedings “Kafkaesque” and “abysmally stupid.” Abrams was sentenced to two years of probation and 100 community service hours, only to be pardoned by President George H.W. Bush a year later.

It’s hard to quantify the extent of the destruction that the U.S. has facilitated in Latin America. While El Mozote is considered the worst massacre in Latin American history, it is hardly the only time Abrams covered for death squads. In Honduras from 1981-85, the CIA-trained Battalion 3-16 tortured and murdered activists, students and suspected guerrillas.

“Disappearing people—murdering people, was not the policy of the United States. Nor was it our policy to avert our eyes,” Abrams later said to defend the country’s intervention.

In 1981-83, the U.S. provided military aid to Guatemala as the de facto president, Efrain Rios Montt, carried out a genocide against the indigenous Ixil Mayan people. Rios Montt, who died last year, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced to 80 years in prison. But it was Abrams who argued that lifting an embargo on military aid to Guatemala would help: “The amount of killing of innocent civilians is being reduced step by step,” he said.

Investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who testified in the trial, said Abrams should be held accountable:

There would be hundreds of U.S. officials who were complicit in this and should be subpoenaed, called before a grand jury and subjected to indictment–including Elliott Abrams. And the U.S. should be ready to extradite them to Guatemala to face punishment, if the Guatemalan authorities are able to proceed with this.

In 2020, Wall Street Wants Anyone but Sanders or Warren

The first 2020 Democratic presidential primary is still over a year away, but Wall Street executives are reportedly already freaking out about two likely progressive candidates: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,” the CEO of a “giant bank” anonymously told Politico, which reported on Monday that Wall Street executives are “getting panicked” about the presidential prospects of the Senate’s two fiercest financial sector critics.

Warren launched an exploratory committee for president last month, vowing to take on the “corruption” that is “poisoning our democracy.” Sanders, for his part, has yet to publicly announce a bid for the White House—but Yahoo News reported on Friday that the Vermont senator plans to launch his campaign “imminently.”

Both progressive senators have placed scrutiny of Wall Street’s size, record of large-scale fraud, exorbitant CEO pay packages, enormous political influence, and lack of stringent regulations at the center of their political agendas for years, and deep-pocketed bankers who have profited immensely from President Donald Trump’s tenure are worried that one of the two could ascend to the White House and threaten their pocketbooks.

“Bankers’ biggest fear,” Politico reported, is that the 2020 Democratic presidential “nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader” like Warren or Sanders.

“The result is a kind of nervous paralysis of executives pining for a centrist nominee like Michael Bloomberg,” Politico noted, referring to the billionaire former New York City mayor, who is reportedly considering a self-funded presidential bid.

According to Politico, Wall Street executives who want Trump out of the White House mentioned “a consistent roster of appealing nominees” they would find acceptable outside of Bloomberg, who the outlet describes as Wall Street’s “platonic ideal.”

This “roster” reportedly included Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), and Kamala Harris (Calif.); former Vice President Joe Biden; and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas).

As CNBC reported earlier this month, Harris, Booker, and Gillibrand have all reached out to Wall Street to gauge support for 2020 campaigns. Harris announced that she is running for president last week, and Gillibrand launched an exploratory committee for president earlier this month.

If you’re on this list, you’re doing something wrong https://t.co/aX8U7EGPpV pic.twitter.com/C5NRmWxVpr

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 28, 2019

Wall Street likes Biden, Booker, Harris, Gillibrand, and Beto. Guess who they hate? Sanders and Warren. All the rest is commentary. https://t.co/DGdlGWJwl6

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) January 28, 2019

One executive—who Politico described as a hedge fund manager and a top Democratic donor—declared, “If it’s Biden and Beto or Biden and Harris, that might make a difference. The good news for Biden is everyone likes him. The bad news is there is not a lot of passion.”

Progressives were quick to argue on Twitter that Wall Street’s fear of a possible Sanders or Warren presidency constitutes a powerful endorsement of both candidates.

By coming out so strongly against the progressive senators, argued The Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick, Wall Street is “literally giving them a campaign slogan.”

In response to Wall Street’s largely anonymous attacks on Sanders and Warren, People for Bernie tweeted, “We bathe in your tears.”

“It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,” said the CEO of another giant bank. “It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.”

We bathe in their tears. https://t.co/KMkUdAoGxI

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) January 28, 2019

“The best indication of who you should vote for in the Democratic Primary if you actually want progressive policy is who Wall Street doesn’t like, which essentially means Bernie or Warren,” concluded journalist Josh Mound.

7 Racist Exclusions that Reveal America’s Ugly Side

The two-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s Muslim visa ban and Holocaust Remembrance Day have arrived more or less together, and it is worthwhile reviewing how they reveal an ugly side to America. US history is replete with racism as public policy. It has been more often our history than not, and the era since 1965 has been unusual inasmuch as there has been widespread public pushback against the use of race for policy purposes. Trump’s movement is an attempt to see whether that widespread US consensus of the past few decades can be reversed. Just as the Ku Klux Klan took over the Democratic Party in the 1920s, including the whole state of Indiana, so white nationalism has taken over the Republican Party today, including the GOP majority on SCOTUS.

There have been at least 7 major times in American history when people were excluded from the United States on the basis of race or religion (religion is tied up with race in the racialist imaginary).

1. Chinese Buddhists. Both racism and religious bigotry built up toward Chinese-Americans brought in from 1849 to build the trans-American railroad. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time a whole people were excluded from the United States. In the prejudiced language of the day, that Chinese were Buddhists, Confucianists or Taoists, i.e. “pagans” or “heathens” from an Evangelical point of view, was one of the reasons they should be kept out of the country. The total exclusion lasted until 1943, when 100 Chinese a year began being admitted, which was not much different from total exclusion. In 1965 the Immigration Act ended racial and religious exclusions based on racism and religious fanaticism, including of Chinese. Chinese-Americans have made enormous contributions to the United States, despite the long decades during which they were excluded or disrespected.

2. Japanese Buddhists. In 1907-08, the US and Japan concluded a “gentlemen’s agreement” whereby Japan would limit the number of passports it issued to Japanese wanting to come to the United States. In turn, the city of San Francisco agreed to end the legal segregation of Japanese-Americans in that city (yes, they had their very own Jim Crow). Not satisfied with the agreement, in 1924 racist Congressmen ended Japanese immigration completely. This action angered Japan and set the two countries on a path of enmity.

3. Indian Hindus & Sikhs and other Asians. Not satisfied with measures against Buddhists, white Christians next went after Hindus and Sikhs. The 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act excluded from immigration everyone from the continent of Asia– it was aimed at Indians, including especially Sikhs, but also Koreans, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesians, etc. The provision in the act barring “polygamists” was aimed at Muslims. Would-be Muslim immigrants were asked at their port of entry if they believed a man could have more than one wife, and if they said yes, were turned away. Japanese were not part of the act only because the Gentlemen’s Agreement already mostly excluded them. Filipinos were not excluded because the Philippines was then an American territory (i.e. colony).

4. Syrians-Lebanese. In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan reappeared on the national stage and agitated against immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. The Klan infiltrated the Democratic Party and took it over, and won the whole state of Indiana. The racist 1924 Immigration Act set country quotas based on the percentage of Americans from that country already present in 1890 . . . One consequence of basing the quotas on 1890 rather than, as was originally proposed, 1910, was that populations that came in big numbers during the Great Migration of 1880-1924 were often given low quotas. Populations that came in the eighteenth century or the mid-19th (e.g. in the latter case, Germans) had relatively large quotas. Syria-Lebanon (which were not separated until the French conquest of 1920) were given a quota of 100, even though tens of thousands of Lebanese came to the United States, 10% of them Muslim during the Great Migration. That community produced the great Lebanese-American writer and artist, Kahlil Gibran.

5. Other Middle Easterners, including Armenians. The 1924 Nazi-style quotas based on “race,” which mostly lasted until 1965, excluded most of the Middle East. The quota for Egypt? 100. Palestine? 100. Turkey? 100. Even the persecuted Armenians were given only 100 spaces annually. The racial hierarchies visible in the 1924 act fed into an increasing concern with eugenics, with fears of decadent races and a determination to strengthen the master race by forbidding intermarriage and even by experimenting on live human beings.

6. Jews. In the 1930s when it would have mattered, the US government excluded Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany from coming to America.

It turns out that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not responsible for America’s refusal to take more than a few thousand Jewish refugees during the 1930s. He wanted to spend $150 million to distribute millions of Jewish refugees among 10 democratic countries. His failures were imposed on him by a Congress that wouldn’t act and a foot-dragging State Department. By 1940 it was too late, as Europe became a fortress.

But the US in the 1930s did betray its ideals as a refuge for people yearning to be free. The episode of the SS St. Louis, a ship full of 900 Jewish refugees that got close enough to Miami to see its lights before being turned back to Europe, epitomized this failure. A third of the passengers were later murdered by the Nazis.

One Jewish refugee the US did take in was Albert Einstein. How would we not have been better off if we’d had more like him?

The bad economy of the Great Depression was one reason for fear of immigrants. Politicians and labor leaders worried that they would take jobs from workers already in the US. Racism was rampant. In 1924 Congress passed a basically Nazi immigration law that limited immigration on the basis of country — i.e. racial — quotas. The Semitic countries like Syria should, according to this law, keep their people (I recollect that the annual quota for Syrian immigrants was 100– even though tens of thousands of Syro-Lebanese had come from about 1880, including famed writer Kahlil Gibran. All the Norwegians could come who wanted to.)

So simple Aryan racism was partially responsible for the exclusion of the Jews. If the US had thrown open its doors, the 200,000 Jews who went to Palestine in the 30s would have come here and there never would have been Arab-Israeli wars or 7 million Palestinian refugees.

Jews were also seen by some US Neanderthals as having socialist tendencies and so were kept out as radicals. There was talk of the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. (Hatred of Jews was irrational, so that they were blamed for being bankers [they were less than 1 percent of bankers] at the same time they were excoriated for being Marxists). There was also the Society for the Defense of Christianity, so fundamentalists did their part.

All the same arguments against letting in the Jews are now being deployed to keep out the Syrians. Not Christian. Alien ideology. Would take jobs. Nobody is openly saying they aren’t Aryan but the Trumpists might as well be.

7. This past summer, the Roberts court added another star to America’s wall of shame, upholding Trump’s visa ban. The travel ban upheld by a narrow majority on the Supreme Court causes untold heartache to Iranian-Americans, Yemeni-Americans, Syrian-Americans and other groups designated for exclusion. It also injures the First Amendment of the US constitution, which forbids the state to take a position on good and bad religion. It is a sad day that the full court did not agree with the Federal court in Hawaii, which made cogent arguments for the policy having originated in an intention to discriminate on the basis of religion, which is unconstitutional.

I wrote about the ruling of Judge Derek Watson in Hawaii:

“Judge Watson notes, “The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982). To determine whether the Executive Order runs afoul of that command, the Court is guided by the three-part test for Establishment Clause claims set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971). According to Lemon, government action (1) must have a primary secular purpose, (2) may not have the principal effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, and (3) may not foster excessive entanglement with religion. Id. “Failure to satisfy any one of the three prongs of the Lemon test is sufficient to invalidate the challenged law or practice.” Newdow v. Rio Linda Union Sch. Dist., 597 F.3d 1007, 1076–77 (9th Cir. 2010).

The Lemon test was used to strike down blue laws that forbade businesses to operate on Sunday. The Supreme Court found that there was no secular purpose to a law that stopped everyone from working on a day of religious observance.

The Establishment Clause says that Congress shall make no law affecting the establishment of religion, which is 18th century English for “Congress shall make no law designating a particular religion as the state religion of the Federal Government.” The Clause mandates that the Government be neutral as between religions. Obviously, a Muslim ban is not religiously neutral.

Watson finds that the EO targets six countries with a Muslim population of between 90% and 97% and so obviously primarily targets Muslims. “

The ban has nothing to do with security–the nationalities banned haven’t engaged in terrorism on US soil in this century. Most terrorism in the US is committed by white nationalists (many of whom support Trump).

The only way to undo Trump’s Muslim ban, and to begin to undo the untold damage he’s done to the country, is to organize and canvass and publish and elect the opposition in 2020. The courts are not going to save us from Trumpism. The GOP Senate is not going to save us from Trumpism. Civility is not going to save us from Trumpism. We’re on our own, friends. The Blue Wave last November has shown the way.

—–

Bonus video:

Here are the Americans who are affected by the Travel Ban

Filed Under: Featured, Immigration, Racism

There’s Only One Way to Win the ‘War on Terror’

One of the finest military memoirs of any generation is Defeat Into Victory, British Field Marshal Sir William Slim’s perceptive account of World War II’s torturous Burma campaign, which ended in a resounding victory over Japan. When America’s generals write their memoirs about their never-ending war on terror, they’d do well to choose a different title: Victory Into Defeat. That would certainly be more appropriate than those on already published accounts like Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez’s Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story (2008), or General Stanley McChrystal’s My Share of the Task (2013).

Think about it. America’s Afghan War began in 2001 with what was essentially a punitive raid against the Taliban, part of which was mythologized last year in 12 Strong, a Hollywood film with a cavalry charge that echoed the best of John Wayne. That victory, however, quickly turned first into quagmire and then, despite various “surges” and a seemingly endless series of U.S. commanders (17 so far), into a growing sense of inevitable defeat. Today, a resurgent Taliban exercises increasing influence over the hearts, minds, and territory of the Afghan people. The Trump administration’s response so far has been a mini-surge of several thousand troops, an increase in air and drone strikes, and an attempt to suppress accurate reports from the Pentagon’s special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction about America’s losing effort there.

Turn now to the invasion of Iraq: in May 2003, President George W. Bush cockily announced “Mission Accomplished” from the deck of an aircraft carrier, only to see victory in Baghdad degenerate into insurgency and a quagmire conflict that established conditions for the rise of the Islamic State. Gains in stability during a surge of U.S. forces orchestrated by General David Petraeus in 2007 and hailed in Washington as a fabulous success story proved fragile and reversible. An ignominious U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 was followed in 2014 by the collapse of that country’s American-trained and armed military in the face of modest numbers of Islamic State militants. A recommitment of U.S. troops and air power brought Stalingrad-style devastation to cities like Mosul and Ramadi, largely reduced to rubble, while up to 1.3 million children were displaced from their homes. All in all, not exactly the face of victory.

Nor, as it happened, was the Obama administration’s Libyan intervention of 2011. “We came, we saw, he died,” boasted a jubilant Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time. The “he” was Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s autocratic ruler whose reign of terror looked less horrible after that country collapsed into a failed state, while spreading both terror groups and weaponry throughout the region. That, in turn, led to wider and more costly U.S. interventions in Africa, including the infamous loss of four Green Berets to an ISIS franchise in Niger in 2017.

“We don’t win [wars] anymore,” said candidate Donald Trump in 2016 and he wasn’t wrong about that. In fact, that remarkable record of repeatedly turning initially advertised victory into something approximating defeat would be one reason candidate Trump could boast that he knew more about military matters than America’s generals. Yet for all his talk of winning, victories (large or small) have proved no less elusive for him as commander-in-chief. Recall the botched raid in Yemen early in 2017 that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL and many Yemeni innocents, which Trump blamed on his generals. Recall the president’s “beautiful” cruise missile attack against Syria in April of that same year, which resolved nothing. Or recall the way he recently “fired” retired general Jim Mattis (just after he resigned as secretary of defense) supposedly because he couldn’t bring the Afghan War to a victorious close.

The question is: What’s made America’s leaders, civilian and military, quite so proficient when it comes to turning victories into defeats? And what does that tell us about them and their wars?

A Sustained Record of Losing

During World War II, British civilians called the “Yanks” who would form the backbone of the Normandy invasion in June 1944 (the one that contributed to Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender less than a year later) “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” What can be said of today’s Yanks? Perhaps that they’re overfunded, overhyped, and always over there — “there” being unpromising places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Let’s start with always over there. As Nick Turse recently reported for TomDispatch, U.S. forces remain deployed on approximately 800 foreign bases across the globe. (No one knows the exact number, Turse notes, possibly not even the Pentagon.)  The cost: somewhere to the north of $100 billion a year simply to sustain that global “footprint.” At the same time, U.S. forces are engaged in an open-ended war on terror in 80 countries, a sprawling commitment that has cost nearly $6 trillion since the 9/11 attacks (as documented by the Costs of War Project at Brown University). This prodigious and prodigal global presence has not been lost on America’s Tweeter-in-Chief, who opined that the country’s military “cannot continue to be the policeman of the world.” Showing his usual sensitivity to others, he noted as well that “we are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.”

Yet Trump’s inconsistent calls to downsize Washington’s foreign commitments, including vows to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria and halve the number in Afghanistan, have encountered serious pushback from Washington’s bevy of war hawks like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and his own national security advisor, John Bolton. Contrary to the president’s tweets, U.S. troops in Syria are now destined to remain there for at least months, if not years, according to Bolton. Meanwhile, Trump-promised troop withdrawals from Afghanistan may be delayed considerablyin the (lost) cause of keeping the Taliban — clearly winning and having nothing but time — off-balance. What matters most, as retired General David Petraeus argued in 2017, is showing resolve, no matter how disappointing the results. For him, as for so many in the Pentagon high command, it’s perfectly acceptable for Americans to face a “generational struggle” in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) that could, he hinted, persist for as long as America’s ongoing commitment to South Korea — that is, almost 70 years.

Turning to overfunded, the unofficial motto of the Pentagon budgetary process might be “aim high” and in this they have succeeded admirably. For example, President Trump denounced a proposed Pentagon budget of $733 billion for fiscal year 2020 as “crazy” high. Then he demonstrated his art-of-the-deal skills by suggesting a modest cut to $700 billion, only to compromise with his national security chiefs on a new figure: $750 billion. That eternal flood of money into the Pentagon’s coffers — no matter the political party in power — ensures one thing: that no one in that five-sided building needs to think hard about the disastrous direction of U.S. strategy or the grim results of its wars. The only hard thinking is devoted to how to spend the gigabucks pouring in (and keep more coming).

Instead of getting the most bang for the buck, the Pentagon now gets the most bucks for the least bang. To justify them, America’s defense experts are placing their bets not only on their failing generational war on terror, but also on a revived cold war (now uncapitalized) with China and Russia. Such rivals are no longer simply to be “deterred,” to use a commonplace word from the old (capitalized) Cold War; they must now be “overmatched,” a new Pentagon buzzword that translates into unquestionable military superiority (including newly “usable” nuclear weapons) that may well bring the world closer to annihilation.

Finally, there’s overhyped. Washington leaders of all stripes love to boast of a military that’s “second to none,” of a fighting force that’s the “finest” in history. Recently, Vice President Mike Pence reminded the troops that they are “the best of us.” Indeed you could argue that “support our troops” has become a new American mantra, a national motto as ubiquitous as (and synonymous with) “In God we trust.” But if America’s military truly is the finest fighting force since forever, someone should explain just why it’s failed to produce clear and enduring victories of any significance since World War II.

Despite endless deployments, bottomless funding, and breathless hype, the U.S. military loses — it’s politely called a “stalemate” — with remarkable consistency. America’s privates and lieutenants, the grunts at the bottom, are hardly to blame. The fish, as they say, rots from the head, which in this case means America’s most senior officers. Yet, according to them, often in testimony before Congress, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere, that military is always making progress. Victory, so they claim, is invariably around the next corner, which they’re constantly turning or getting ready to turn.

America’s post-9/11 crop of generals like Mattis, H.R. McMaster, John Kelly, and especially Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus have been much celebrated here in the mainstream media. And in their dress uniforms shimmering with colorful ribbons, badges, and medals, they certainly looked the part of victors.

Indeed, when three of them were still in Donald Trump’s administration, the pro-war mainstream media unabashedly saluted them as the “adults in the room,” allegedly curbing the worst of the president’s mad impulses. Yet consider the withering critique of veteran reporter William Arkin who recently resigned from NBC News to protest the media’s reflexive support of America’s wars and the warriors who have overseen them. “I find it disheartening,” he wrote, “that we do not report the failures of the generals and national security leaders. I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting.” NBC News, he concluded in his letter of resignation, has been “emulating the national security state itself — busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.”

Arkin couldn’t be more on target. Moreover, self-styled triumphalist warriors and a cheeringly complicit media are hardly the ideal tools with which to fix a tottering republic, one allegedly founded on the principle of rule by informed citizens, not the national security state.

Can America Turn Defeat Into Victory?

Like Field Marshal Slim and his coalition army in Burma, America must find a way to turn defeat into victory. Here’s the rub: Slim and his forgotten army knew that they were fighting a war of survival against a ruthless Japanese enemy. Under his results-oriented leadership, his forces proved willing to make the sacrifices necessary for victory. In the U.S. case, however, no such sacrifices would matter as there’s no way to win thoroughly misbegotten wars by finding the right general or defining a new strategy or throwing more money at the Pentagon. The only way to win such wars is by ending them and, at some gut level, candidate Trump seemed to recognize this. On occasion as president, he has indeed questioned both the high cost and disastrous results of those wars, but so far he has been more interventionist than isolationist, greatly expanding air and drone strikes across the Greater Middle East as well as committing, at the urging of “his” generals, more troops to Afghanistan and Syria.

Endless war for any purpose other than the literal preservation of the republic isn’t a measure of fortitude or toughness or foresight; however, it is the path to national suicide. And the “war on terror” has proven to be the very definition of endless war.

A quick recap: what started in 2001 as a punitive raid and blossomed into endless war against the Taliban and later other terrorist organizations in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating; a war to rid Saddam Hussein of (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction cratered in 2003 when none were found, the Iraqis did not greet their “liberators” with flowers, and no preparations had been made to stabilize an increasingly ethnically riven country after a massively destructive invasion; a shortsighted operation to overthrow a bothersome dictator in Libya in 2011 led to the spread of death, destruction, and weaponry throughout the region; efforts in Syria to train“moderate” Islamic forces to counter extremists and overthrow the country’s autocratic ruler Bashar al-Assad only aggravated a preexisting civil war. These and similar interventions are already lost causes. There is no way for better leaders, cleverer tactics, or booming defense budgets to win them today.

In the future, the surest way to turn defeat into victory would be to avoid such needless wars. On the other hand, a surefire way to defeat is to persist in them out of fear, greed, opportunism, careerism, or similar motives. These are lessons America’s gung-ho defense experts have little incentive to absorb, let alone act upon — and because they won’t, we must.

Brokaw Says He Feels Terrible Commentary Offended Hispanics

NEW YORK — NBC’s Tom Brokaw says he feels terrible that his comments on “Meet the Press” Sunday that Hispanics should work harder at assimilation “offended some members of that proud culture.”

The former “NBC Nightly News” anchor tweeted in response to a social media backlash to what he had said earlier in the day during a discussion of the proposed border wall.

On the show, Brokaw said that many Republicans fear the rise of a new constituency in American politics “who will come here and all be Democrats.

“Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, (people who say) ‘well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies,’” he said. “I mean, that’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other.”

The 78-year-old journalist said he’s been saying for a long time that Hispanics need to work harder at assimilation.

“They ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities,” he said. “And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.”

Brokaw received some immediate pushback from another panelist on the political talk show, Yamiche Alcindor of PBS. “I grew up in Miami, where people speak Spanish, but their kids speak English,” she said. “And the idea that we think Americans can only speak English, as if Spanish and other languages wasn’t always a part of America, is, in some ways, troubling.”

The web site Latino Rebels and its founder, Julio Ricardo Varela, pointed out online that a 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the United States were born in the U.S. Hispanics make up 18 percent of the nation’s population.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists also tweeted that it voiced its concerns about Brokaw’s “inaccurate commentary” to NBC.

Pew also found, in a 2016 survey of young Latino adults, that 41 percent say that English is their dominant language, 40 percent say they are bilingual and 19 percent speak Spanish primarily.

Brokaw’s comments are both xenophobic and factually incorrect, Varela said.

“We as a community are creating the new America right before your very eyes, Mr. Brokaw,” the Latino Rebels web site said. “Sorry if it doesn’t fit your perceptions of what America should be like. That future is bilingual, bicultural, at times in English, other times in Spanish. Our community is defining this future. Not you.”

NBC News had no comment Sunday on Brokaw, who has served in something of an emeritus role at the network since stepping down as lead anchor in 2004.

On Twitter, Brokaw said that he’s worked hard to knock down false stereotypes and pointed out that all sides need to work harder at finding common ground. He said he believes in “dialogue not division.”

Romania to Give Holocaust Survivors Top Honors

WARSAW, Poland — The Latest on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (all times local):

12:05 a.m.

Romania’s president is giving one of the country’s highest honors to eight Romanian Jews who survived the Holocaust and dedicated their lives to keeping the memory of Holocaust victims alive.

President Klaus Iohannis said he is awarding the national “Order of Faithful Service” honor to the Holocaust survivors on Monday to “mark their suffering … and for … moral attitude they showed during their lives.”

One of the honorees, 94-year-old Rachel Davidovits was taken from her school in northern Romania and later deported to Auschwitz with her sister and parents.

Some 280,000 Romanian Jews and 11,000 Roma were deported and killed when the country was run by pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu.

During the communist era, hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews emigrated to Israel.

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11:25 p.m.

A peaceful walk to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day in central California was interrupted by a motorist shouting insults against Jews.

KSBW-TV reports about 100 people gathered in Salinas on Sunday for the event following a service at the Church of Jesus Christ Temple Philadelphia.

The news station reports a man in a black BMW SUV drove by and yelled obscenities and insults against Israel and the Jewish people. The man then circled back and harassed the walkers for a second time before driving off.

Nino Macias, who participated in the walk with his son, says days of remembrance are important to teach children about history and the importance of tolerance.

Temple Philadelphia says it has been building ties with the Jewish community in Salinas for decades.

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5:00 p.m.

Italy’s right-wing interior minister says it would be “squalor” to compare “serious control of immigration” to the horrors of the Holocaust.

League party leader Matteo Salvini tweeted a prayer on International Holocaust Remembrance Day for the “millions of victims of Nazism” so the “murderous folly doesn’t repeat itself.”

Salvini, who refuses to let private aid ships bring migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, also used Sunday’s observance to defend his government’s stance against allowing in more migrants, saying “all civilized countries” were seriously controlling illegal immigration.

His “squalor” reference likely was a response to Padua Mayor Sergio Giordani, who said at a remembrance ceremony for local Holocaust victims there was “bone-chilling similarity” between what happened then and the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean.

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3:40 p.m.

About 50 survivors of Auschwitz have marked the 74th anniversary of the Soviet army’s liberation of the notorious Nazi death camp, an event now observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Poland’s prime minister and the ambassadors of Israel and Russia attended Sunday’s official ceremonies at site of the former camp, where several survivors gave testimony from years of terror at Auschwitz. One recalled the smell of burning flesh upon arrival at the camp.

Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, prayed and read out the names of the Nazi German death camps where many of the 6 million Jews — a third of world Jewry — were killed by Adolf Hitler’s forces during the Nazi occupation of Europe.

Christian and Jewish leaders prayed together near the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria where Auschwitz prisoners were killed.

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2 p.m.

A new poll has found that one in 20 adults in Britain do not believe the Holocaust took place.

The poll of more than 2,000 people released Sunday also found that nearly two-thirds of those polled either did not know how many Jews had been murdered in World War II or greatly underestimated the number killed during the Holocaust.

The survey was carried out by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman called the results worrisome.

She says “the Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilization and has implications for us all … such widespread ignorance and even denial is shocking.”

Sunday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and events are scheduled throughout Britain as well as around the world. Organizers of a ceremony in London say the event also acknowledges the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and 40 years since the end of genocide in Cambodia.

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1:30 p.m.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is warning that the cruelties of the Holocaust shall never be forgotten.

Maas writes in an op-ed in weekly Welt am Sonntag that as the last survivors are passing away, the country’s youth doesn’t have any direct connections to the past and shows an alarming lack of knowledge about the Holocaust.

The foreign minister warns that across Europe populists are propagating nationalism and “far-right provocateurs are trying to downplay the Holocaust.”

Maas writes: “We shall never forget. We shall never be indifferent. We must stand up for our liberal democracy.”

Germany and many other countries are marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday — 74 years after the Soviet army liberated the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland.

Some six million European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

— This item corrects the anniversary to 74 years, not 75.

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12:10 p.m.

Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs says 2018 saw a record number of worldwide anti-Semitic attacks in the streets, online and in the political arena.

The ministry released its 2018 Global Antisemitism Report on Sunday to coincide with International Holocaust Memorial Day. Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett used the occasion to call on world leaders to “rid your societies of anti-Semitism and take harsh stance against the hatred of Jews.”

Among the key findings were that 13 Jews were murdered in fatal attacks in 2018, marking the highest number of Jews murdered since the wave of attacks on Argentinian Jews in the 1990s.

The report found that around 70 percent of anti-Jewish attacks were anti-Israel in nature and that most of the attacks were led by neo Nazis and white supremacists.

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10:30 a.m.

A far-right Polish activist is gathering with other nationalists outside the former Auschwitz death camp to protest Poland’s government.

The man, Piotr Rybak, and about 45 others carrying the national flag hope to enter the Holocaust memorial site to place a wreath on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.

Rybak accuses the government of remembering only Jews and not murdered Poles in yearly observances at the memorial site.

That accusation is incorrect. The Auschwitz observances are inclusive and ecumenical, paying homage to all of the camp’s victims.

The incident comes amid a surge of right-wing extremism in Poland.

Most of the 1.1 million people murdered by Nazi German forces at the camp during World War II were Jews. Other victims include Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

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9 a.m.

Former prisoners of Auschwitz have placed flowers at an execution wall at the former Nazi German death camp on the 74th anniversary of the camp’s liberation and what is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The survivors wore striped scarves that recalled their uniforms, some with the red letter “P,” the symbol the Germans used to mark them as Poles.

Early in World War II, most prisoners were Poles, rounded up by the occupying German forces. Later, Auschwitz was transformed into a mass killing site for Jews, Roma and others.

A ceremony is planned later Sunday near the ruins of the gas chambers to honor the 1.1 million people killed there and all Holocaust victims, one of several worldwide observances.

The camp was liberated by Soviet forces on Jan. 27, 1945.

Rivals Maduro and Guaido Vie for Venezuelan Military Backing

CARACAS, Venezuela — The struggle for control of Venezuela turned to the military Sunday, as supporters of opposition leader Juan Guaido handed leaflets to soldiers detailing a proposed amnesty law that would protect them for helping overthrow President Nicolas Maduro.

At the same time, Maduro demonstrated his might, wearing tan fatigues at military exercises. Flanked by his top brass, Maduro watched heavy artillery fired into a hillside and boarded an amphibious tank.

Addressing soldiers in an appearance on state TV, Maduro asked whether they were plotting with the “imperialist” United States, which he accused of openly leading a coup against him.

“No, my commander-in-chief,” they shouted in unison, and Maduro responded: “We’re ready to defend our homeland — under any circumstance.”

The dueling appeals from the two rivals again put the military center stage in the global debate over who holds a legitimate claim to power in the South American nation.

The standoff has plunged troubled Venezuela into a new chapter of political turmoil that has already left more than two dozen dead as thousands took to the streets demanding Maduro step down.

It erupted when Guaido, the 35-year-old leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress, declared before masses of supporters last week that he has temporarily assumed presidential powers, vowing to hold free elections and end Maduro’s dictatorship.

President Donald Trump and several foreign leaders quickly recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, prompting Maduro to cut ties with the U.S. and order its diplomats from Caracas within 72 hours. The U.S. defied him, saying Maduro isn’t the legitimate president, and Maduro relented, suspending the deadline for 30 days for the sake of opening a dialogue.

Venezuela’s crisis came before the U.N. Security Council on Saturday, which took no formal action because of divisions among members. Russia and China back Maduro. But France and Britain joined Spain and Germany in turning up the pressure on Maduro, saying they would recognize Guaido as president unless Venezuela calls a new presidential election within eight days.

“Where do you get that you have the power to establish a deadline or an ultimatum to a sovereign people?” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza. “It’s almost childlike.”

Venezuela’s armed forces remain the key to Maduro’s hold on power, firing tear gas and bullets on protesters, killing more than two dozen since Wednesday.

Guaido’s supporters made their case directly to soldiers on Sunday, handing them leaflets that urged they reject the socialist leader and explaining how they could be eligible for amnesty if they help return Venezuela to democracy.

In Paraiso, an area of Caracas where residents and the National Guard violently clashed, opposition lawmaker Ivlev Silva, his hands raised over his head, walked up to a line of soldiers wearing riot gear and holding shields.

“The people of Venezuela believe in each one of you,” Silva said, handing them the leaflets. Their commander responded that they were defending the Bolivarian revolution and support Maduro.

Similar scenes took place at military bases across Caracas, where one soldier burned his leaflet and another man threw a stack of them out a door, rejecting the opposition’s plea.

In claiming residential powers, Guaido said he was acting in accordance with two articles of the constitution that give the National Assembly president the right to hold power temporarily and call new elections.

Emerging from Sunday Mass, where he honored those killed and arrested in the recent protests, Guaido called on the armed forces not to shoot fellow Venezuelans.

“We are waiting for you and the commitment you have to our constitution,” Guaido said. “Don’t shoot at those who have come out to defend your family, your work and livelihood.”

He also vowed to crack down on those responsible for the killings, which he called a “massacre,” saying in a Twitter post that he wanted to bring international attention to members of the armed forces, prosecutors and judges linked to the recent deaths.

The Trump administration has maintained that all options remain open if Maduro refuses to cede leadership, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I don’t think any president of any party who is doing his or her job would be doing the job properly if they took anything off the table,” he said. “So, I think the president of the United States is looking at this extraordinarily closely.”

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Associated Press reporter Manuel Rueda contributed to this story.

End of Shutdown Still Leaves Contract Workers Hanging

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Federal employees are turning on office lights and computers and reopening national parks and museums for the first time in weeks, but others employed by government contractors face still more uncertainty over when they’ll resume work or whether they’ll ever be paid for time lost to the stalemate over President Donald Trump’s border wall.

For the hundreds of thousands of people who work for private companies that support government, the future will be decided in part by how quickly federal agencies get running after the record 35-day shutdown, the fine print of contracts and the kindness of strangers.

Michelle Oler of St. Louis resorted to online fundraising to pay bills while sidelined from her contracting job processing rural development claims for the Agriculture Department, and she’s still unsure when she’ll resume work or receive money to compensate for missed paychecks.

“The estimate of what I’ve lost financially due to the shutdown is upwards of $3,500. The anxiety, sleeplessness and depression make it feel like much more,” Oler said Sunday in an interview by email. Her GoFundMe page has brought in only $50 so far.

Kevin Doyle, a father of three, estimated he’s out around $5,000 from his contracting job as an encryption specialist at Laughlin Air Force Base on the Texas-Mexico border. He said he didn’t sleep and lost weight during the shutdown as both the stress and the bills piled up.

Doyle said he will return to work on Monday, but he starts a new job Friday with another company that he hopes will be more stable if talks fail over Trump’s demand for money for a wall and another shutdown begins next month.

“We were scraping pennies and nickels together one day to get the baby a Happy Meal,” said Doyle, 40. “It’s just that bad.”

The partial government shutdown ended when Trump backed off his demand that Congress commit $5.7 billion for a U.S.-Mexico border wall before federal agencies could resume work. All or parts of multiple federal agencies were affected, with some employees furloughed and others forced to work without pay.

The 800,000 federal workers who were affected will receive back pay, but contractors don’t have the same guarantee.

Jack Lyons, who was furloughed from his contract job providing technical support at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in north Alabama, didn’t miss a paycheck during the shutdown. “I was one of the lucky ones,” he said.

But Lyons still wonders what will happen when he returns to work Monday in a building near towering stands built to test rockets at the NASA center.

“I’ll walk in, wipe the dust off the desk and see how management decides to catch up on what we missed,” he said Sunday. “Passwords expire and that sort of stuff, so it will just be a matter of making sure you can get in at first.”

NASA told workers in a message on its website to be patient with laptops, desktop computers and smartphones that haven’t been maintained or updated since last month when the shutdown began.

Doyle said it could take his family a long time to dig out from under the shutdown’s effect. The mortgage and power bills are both two months behind, Doyle said, and he doesn’t expect another paycheck before Feb. 28.

Doyle’s wife can’t work because of a back injury, he said, and the family wasn’t eligible for food assistance because of past wages. A food bank was out of items by the time they got there, he said.

“A worker there gave us a $50 Walmart gift card out of the kindness of her heart,” he said.

In Missouri, Oler is thankful she moved in with two roommates in early December before the shutdown began. The change dropped her expenses drastically from the $800 a month she was paying for rent, utilities, internet, phone, car insurance and food for her and her cat.

Even with smaller bills, though, Oler said she is still looking for a new job because she can’t take the stress of working with the government anymore.

“While I love being a contractor, I hate the uncertainty that’s come with it. This happened to us last year on a smaller scale, but this year’s shutdown has me concerned for my future and welfare,” she said.