Chris Hedges's Blog, page 369

Home Items Are Getting Smarter and Creepier, Like It or Not

NEW YORK — One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you click between channels.

Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command.

With every additional smart device in your home, companies are able to gather more details about your daily life. Some of that can be used to help advertisers target you — more precisely than they could with just the smartphone you carry.

“It’s decentralized surveillance,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based digital privacy advocate. “We’re living in a world where we’re tethered to some online service stealthily gathering our information.”

Yet consumers so far seem to be welcoming these devices. The research firm IDC projects that 1.3 billion smart devices will ship worldwide in 2022, twice as many as 2018.

Companies say they are building these products not for snooping but for convenience, although Amazon, Google and other partners enabling the intelligence can use the details they collect to customize their services and ads.

Whirlpool, for instance, is testing an oven whose window doubles as a display. You’ll still be able to see what’s roasting inside, but the glass can now display animation pointing to where to place the turkey for optimal cooking.

The oven can sync with your digital calendar and recommend recipes based on how much time you have. It can help coordinate multiple recipes, so that you’re not undercooking the side dishes in focusing too much on the entree. A camera inside lets you zoom in to see if the cheese on the lasagna has browned enough, without opening the oven door.

As for that smart toilet, Kohler’s Numi will respond to voice commands to raise or lower the lid — or to flush. You can do it from an app, too. The company says it’s all about offering hands-free options in a setting that’s very personal for people. The toilet is also heated and can play music and the news through its speakers.

Kohler also has a tub that adjusts water temperature to your liking and a kitchen faucet that dispenses just the right amount of water for a recipe.

For the most part, consumers aren’t asking for these specific features. “We try to be innovative in ways that customers don’t think they need,” Samsung spokesman Louis Masses said.

Whirlpool said insights can come from something as simple as watching consumers open the oven door several times to check on the meal, losing heat in the process.

“They do not say to us, ‘Please tell me where to put (food) on the rack, or do algorithm-based cooking,’” said Doug Searles, general manager for Whirlpool’s research arm, WLabs. “They tell us the results that are most important to them.”

Samsung has several voice-enabled products, including a fridge that comes with an app that lets you check on its contents while you’re grocery shopping. New this year: Samsung’s washing machines can send alerts to its TVs — smart TVs, of course — so you know your laundry is ready while watching Netflix.

Other connected items at CES include:

— a fishing rod that tracks your location to build an online map of where you’ve made the most catches.

— a toothbrush that recommends where to brush more.

— a fragrance diffuser that lets you control how your home smells from a smartphone app.

These are poised to join internet-connected security cameras, door locks and thermostats that are already on the market. The latter can work with sensors to turn the heat down automatically when you leave home.

Chester said consumers feel the need to keep up with their neighbors when they buy appliances with the smartest smarts. He said all the conveniences can be “a powerful drug to help people forget the fact that they are also being spied on.”

Gadgets with voice controls typically aren’t transmitting any data back to company servers until you activate them with a trigger word, such as “Alexa” or “OK Google.” But devices have sometimes misheard innocuous words as legitimate commands to record and send private conversations.

Even when devices work properly, commands are usually stored indefinitely. Companies can use the data to personalize experiences — including ads. Beyond that, background conversations may be stored with the voice recordings and can resurface with hacking or as part of lawsuits or investigations.

Knowing what you cook or stock in your fridge might seem innocuous. But if insurers get hold of the data, they might charge you more for unhealthy diets, warned Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. He also said it might be possible to infer ethnicity based on food consumed.

Manufacturers are instead emphasizing the benefits: Data collection from the smart faucet, for instance, allows Kohler’s app to display how much water is dispensed. (Water bills typically show water use for the whole home, not individual taps.)

The market for smart devices is still small, but growing. Kohler estimates that in a few years, smart appliances will make up 10 percent of its revenue. Though the features are initially limited to premium models — such as the $7,000 toilet — they should eventually appear in entry-level products, too, as costs come down.

Consider the TV. “Dumb” TVs are rare these days, as the vast majority of TVs ship with internet connections and apps, like it or not.

“It becomes a check-box item for the TV manufacturer,” said Paul Gagnon, an analyst with IHS Markit. For a dumb one, he said, you have to search for an off-brand, entry-level model with smaller screens — or go to places in the world where streaming services aren’t common.

“Dumb” cars are also headed to the scrapyard. The research firm BI Intelligence estimates that by 2020, three out of every four cars sold worldwide will be models with connectivity. No serious incidents have occurred in the United States, Europe and Japan, but a red flag has already been raised in China, where automakers have been sharing location details of connected cars with the government.

As for TVs, Consumer Reports says many TV makers collect and share users’ viewing habits. Vizio agreed to $2.5 million in penalties in 2017 to settle cases with the Federal Trade Commission and New Jersey officials.

Consumers can decide not to enable these connections. They can also vote with their wallets, Stephens said.

“I’m a firm believer that simple is better. If you don’t need to have these so-called enhancements, don’t buy them,” he said. “Does one really need a refrigerator that keeps track of everything in it and tells you you are running out of milk?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Sums Up the Failures of the Democratic Party

In addition to calling for a 70 percent marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) explains during a “60 Minutes” interview why she believes Democrats have compromised away “too much” in recent years and have lost track of the party’s purpose and mission.

While telling journalist Anderson Cooper she is certainly willing to compromise in order to get things accomplished in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez, in a preview clip, says, “It’s just about what we choose to compromise.  My personal opinion, and I know that my district and my community feels this way as well, is that we as a party have compromised too much, and we’ve lost too much of who we’re supposed to be and who we are.”

Watch:

Agreeing with a posit by Cooper that the Democratic Party has already “lost too much” by compromising with the GOP on certain things, she explained: “I think we’ve compromised things that we shouldn’t have compromised, whether it’s judgeships with Mitch McConnell, whether it’s compromising on climate change. I think we’ve — there are some things that we’ve compromised a little bit too much on. But am I open to compromise on certain ways to get things done? Absolutely.”

A case in point, earlier on Sunday—and amid an ongoing standoff over a federal funding and President Donald Trump’s demand for $5.6 billion for his border wall—Ocasio-Cortez characterized Trump’s shutdown tactics as “hostage-taking,” in which the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and their families were under threat by the president. “No one,” she said, “can compromise or negotiate with that.”

If the GOP wants a wall so badly, they can try to propose and pass a bill like anybody else.

Instead, they are seizing gov operations + innocent people’s pay until they get what they want.

This is called hostage-taking. And no one can compromise or negotiate with that. https://t.co/utYLL1k8m9

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 6, 2019

Scientists Are Stumped by This Climate Puzzle

Two new studies have highlighted yet more unexpected findings in the epic story of the Earth’s carbon stores: how the world’s waters and soils accumulate and discharge them.

One team of researchers has found, to their surprise, that the meltwaters of Greenland are washing measurable quantities of carbon into the atmosphere in the form of the potent greenhouse gas methane.

And another has looked more closely at the way carbon is stored in the world’s soils, and come to the conclusion that even the minerals in the bedrock play a role: with help from rainwater, they can capture and hold potentially vast quantities of carbon in the soils of planet Earth.

Neither discovery changes the big picture of global warming driven by profligate human combustion of fossil fuels during the last two centuries. But both are reminders that climate scientists still have a lot to learn about precisely how the trafficking of carbon between life, rocks and atmosphere really happens.

“Before we can start thinking about storing carbon in the ground, we need to understand how it gets there and how likely it is to stick around.”

And both will prompt a fresh look at the great unresolved question facing climate science: how much of the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity can be absorbed naturally by the rocks and living things on the planet?

British, Canadian, US, German, Czech and Danish researchers report in the journal Nature that they camped for three summer months on Greenland to take continuous samples of meltwater from a 600-square-kilometer ice sheet.

They found what they term “a continuous export” of methane: six tons of it from this site alone, or roughly the equivalent of what might be belched from 100 cows. Busy microbes, at work below kilometers of ice, are producing a greenhouse gas many times more potent as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide.

“A key finding is that much of the methane produced beneath the ice likely escapes the Greenland Ice Sheet in large, fast-flowing rivers before it can be oxidized to CO2, a typical fate for methane gas which normally reduces its greenhouse potency,” said Jemma Wadham, of the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute for the Environment, who led the investigation.

Sizeable challenge

Climate scientists have been worrying for decades about the carbon locked − for the moment − in the Arctic permafrost. But the discovery that even the ice sheets are a source of atmospheric carbon accentuates the scale of the challenge facing those researchers who are trying to settle the great questions of the carbon budget: how much more fossil fuel can humans burn before planetary temperatures reach catastrophic levels, and how much of this build-up of greenhouse gases will be absorbed naturally by oceans, forests and soils?

Attention has repeatedly centered on the role of vegetation,  and in particular the great forests, in soaking up some of this carbon.

But huge questions remain about the roles played by flowing water and by soils as bankers of the planet’s atmospheric carbon. A second study in the journal Nature Climate Change offers a fresh insight into the obscurities of carbon storage underfoot.

Iron- and aluminum-bearing minerals in the soils cling to a lot of carbon. How much varies according to rainfall and evaporation, but it could be that between 3% and 72% of organic carbon found in soils is retained by reactive minerals. And, the researchers think, in all, this could add up to 600 billion metric tons worldwide, most of it in the rainforests.

Long-term uncertainty

“When plants photosynthesize, they draw carbon out of the atmosphere, then they die and their organic matter is incorporated in the soil,” said Oliver Chadwick of  UC Santa Barbara, one of the researchers. “Bacteria decompose that organic matter, releasing carbon that can either go right back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or can get held on the surface of soil minerals.”

What the finding means in the long term is not certain: as the researchers say, the capacity of mineral soils to cling to carbon suggests what they call “high sensitivity to future changes in climate.” That is, with yet more warming, the same mineral soils could release their imprisoned carbon. Nobody knows at what point this would happen.

So there is a need for further research. For more than a decade, scientists have debated the challenge of capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground, as a way of limiting climate change. The discovery seems to suggest it can be done. But it also suggests ways in which that entrapment could be undone.

“We know less about the soils on Earth than we do about the surface of Mars,” said Marc Kramer of Washington State University, as co-author.

“Before we can start thinking about storing carbon in the ground, we need to understand how it gets there and how likely it is to stick around. This finding highlights a major breakthrough in our understanding.”

Robert Reich: American Democracy Seems Rigged Because It Is

The most important thing we must do to save our democracy is get big money out of politics. It’s a prerequisite to accomplishing everything else.

Today, big money continues to corrupt American politics – creating a vicious cycle that funnels more wealth and power to those at the top and eroding our democracy.

In the 2018 midterm elections, wealthy donors and Super-PACs poured millions into the campaigns of the same lawmakers who voted to pass the 2017 tax cuts, which gave them huge windfalls.

Consider conservative donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, whose casino business received an estimated $700 million windfall, thanks to President Donald Trump and Republicans’ tax cuts. The couple then used some of this extra cash to plow more than $113 million into the 2018 election, breaking the record for political contributions by a single household.

That’s not a bad return on investment – for them.

All told, almost 40 percent of total contributions in the 2018 midterms came from people who donated $10,000 or more. Yet these mega-donors comprise a tiny 0.01 percent of the U.S. population.

It’s a worsening vicious cycle: Lawmakers cut taxes and slash regulations for their wealthy campaign donors. Mega-donors and corporations funnel some of that money back into our political system to keep their lackeys in power. Politicians then propose another round of tax cuts, subsidies or bailouts to secure even more donations.

If this isn’t corruption, I don’t know what is. It also breeds cynicism in our democracy. The game seems rigged because it is.  A 2015 poll found that the majority of Americans say lawmakers are corrupt, out of touch with their constituents, and beholden to special interests.

In the 2018 midterms, Americans demanded an end to the corruption. And there are signs lawmakers are finally getting message. House Democrats’ first piece of legislation aims to end the big-money takeover.

We must end this vicious cycle in order to reclaim our democracy. We must get big money out of politics. Now.

Jittery Wall Street Has a Lot to Be Nervous About

NEW YORK — Welcome to the brave new world of investing, where every day in the stock market can feel like bedlam.

Investors have been careening from fear to relief and back again as they react to morsels of news about the health of the economy and corporate profits, the global trade war and when the Federal Reserve will next raise interest rates.

With each mood shift, stock prices have swung wildly. Unusually big moves — both up and down — have come at a frequency not seen in years.

On Friday, the S&P 500 index soared 3.4 percent following a stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs report, news of trade talks between the United States and China and comments from the Fed seen as helpful for stocks.

It was a sharp reversal from just the day before when investors saw the glass decidedly half empty. On Thursday, the S&P 500 plunged 2.5 percent after a disappointing U.S. manufacturing report raised fears about a possible recession and Apple warned about weak iPhone sales in China. That two-day whiplash followed 2018, a year when the S&P 500 had 20 days where it swung by at least 2 percent, twice as many as any of the prior six years.

The market has gotten so topsy-turvy that when Friday’s jobs report first came out, about an hour before the New York Stock Exchange opened, some investors wondered if it would cause relief or panic. The numbers were strong, but were they so strong as to push the Fed to raise rates faster, which would be bad for stocks?

“I did find myself wondering how the market is going to react to this: Are people asking, ‘Is this good?’” said Ernie Cecilia, chief investment officer at Bryn Mawr Trust. “It just shows the environment we’re in. It’s uncertain how the market reacts, or overreacts.”

Expect the jitters to continue. Reports are coming that will give investors clues about whether their fears of a possible recession are warranted, as well as updates on interest rates and trade policy. Among the approaching milestones that could be the next to roil Wall Street:

— Earnings season

Starting next week, companies will begin reporting their profits for the last three months of 2018, and expectations are high. Analysts are forecasting 11.4 percent growth for S&P 500 companies, which would be the fifth straight quarter of gains topping 10 percent, according to FactSet.

Those numbers are key because stock prices tend to track corporate profits over the long term. But even more attention will likely be paid to what CEOs say about future profits.

“We’re going to have a nice, solid double-digit number” for fourth-quarter earnings growth, said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors. “I think the market’s bigger concern is how big the 2019 deceleration is.”

Executives generally talk with analysts and investors immediately after their companies’ quarterly earnings are released. Stock prices could swing depending on what they say about how moderating economic growth, U.S.-China trade tensions and interest rates could affect their upcoming results.

Apple’s warning last week about slow iPhone sales in China, the world’s second-largest economy, shocked the market and sent Apple’s stock down nearly 10 percent. On the same day, Delta Air Lines fell nearly 9 percent after it trimmed its forecast for fourth-quarter revenue.

Orlando said he expects earnings growth will remain positive in 2019, just slower than last year, much like the economy. He nevertheless expects stocks to claw back their recent losses and return to a record by the end of the year, though with a lot of volatility in between.

— U.S.-China trade talks

A U.S. delegation began talks in Beijing on Monday aimed at resolving a trade dispute that has alarmed global investors and threatens to drag down worldwide economic growth.

The world’s two biggest economies are battling over U.S. allegations that Beijing uses predatory tactics to acquire advanced technologies, potentially undermining American technological dominance. According to a March report by the U.S. trade representative, China hacks into American companies’ computer networks to steal trade secrets and forces foreign firms to share technology as the price of admission to the Chinese market.

The standoff will be difficult to resolve before a March 1 deadline. That is when U.S. tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports are scheduled to jump to 25 percent from 10 percent. Chinese leaders have signaled their willingness to address U.S. complaints about America’s massive trade deficit with China by buying more soybeans, natural gas and other U.S. products.

But they are likely to resist pressure from Washington to scrap or scale back technology policies they see as vital to China’s future prosperity and strength.

— Federal Reserve meeting

The next Fed meeting comes in the last week of January, but most economists don’t expect much action from it. The central bank is likely to leave rates alone after raising them four times last year.

Investors instead will be more interested to hear what Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says in his news conference following the meeting. Markets have parsed every word Powell has said in public, hoping to divine clues about the path of interest rates. Higher interest rates can forestall inflation, but they can also slow economic growth and drive buyers away from stocks.

After Powell’s news conference in December, for example, the S&P 500 slumped 1.5 percent on worries that the Fed seemed set on raising short-term rates three times into 2020 and letting its portfolio of bond purchases shrink on “automatic pilot.”

“The Street is looking for some definitive evidence that this (Fed) board of governors gets it, and that three more rate hikes and (an inflexible approach to) balance-sheet shrinkage is too aggressive,” Orlando said.

Investors heard some of that Thursday when Powell said the Fed will be patient in raising rates and flexible about unwinding the balance sheet. Starting this month, the Fed chairman will hold a news conference following each Fed meeting, so investors will have plenty more opportunities to parse Powell’s words.

China Upbeat Ahead of U.S. Trade Talks, but Differences Large

BEIJING—China sounded a positive note ahead of talks with Washington this week on a sprawling trade dispute that threatens to chill global economic growth, but the two sides face lengthy wrangling over technology and their future relationship.

Talks were due to start Monday but there was no word from the American Embassy or China’s Ministry of Commerce on whether they were underway or details of their agenda.

Both sides have expressed an interest in settling their tariff fight over Beijing’s technology ambitions. Yet neither has indicated its stance has changed since a Dec. 1 agreement by Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to postpone further increases.

Envoys will have “positive and constructive discussions,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, said on Friday.

The American side is led by a deputy U.S. trade representative, Jeffrey D. Gerrish, according to the U.S. government. The delegation includes agriculture, energy, commerce, treasury and State Department officials.

The Chinese government gave no details of who would represent Beijing.

The talks are going ahead despite tensions over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive in Canada on U.S. charges related to possible violations of trade sanctions against Iran.

Trump imposed tariff increases of up to 25 percent on $250 billion of Chinese imports over complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology. Beijing responded by imposing penalties on $110 billion of American goods, slowing customs clearance for U.S. companies and suspending issuing licenses in finance and other businesses.

Washington, Europe and other trading partners complain Beijing’s tactics violate its market-opening obligations.

The clash reflects American anxiety about China’s rise as a potential competitor in telecommunications and other technology. Trump wants Beijing to roll back initiatives like “Made in China 2025,” which calls for the state-led creation of global competitors in such fields as robotics and artificial intelligence. American officials worry those might erode U.S. industrial leadership.

The ruling Communist Party is reluctant to give up initiatives it sees as a path to prosperity and global influence.

China’s leaders have tried to defuse complaints by emphasizing its potential as an export market. Over the past year, they’ve promised to increase foreign access to their auto, finance and other industries.

Some Chinese officials suggest the technology initiatives might be opened to foreign companies. But they have given no details, leaving it unclear whether that will satisfy Washington.

Trump and Xi agreed to a 90-day postponement of additional tariff increases to take effect Jan. 1. But economists say that is too little time to settle all the disputes that bedevil U.S.-Chinese relations. They say Beijing’s goal probably is to show enough progress to persuade Trump to extend his deadline.

During that 90-day period, agreements “may not be reached until the last day,” said Tu Xinquan, director of the China Institute for World Trade Organization Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

This week’s talks will focus on technical details before higher-level leaders “make hard political decisions,” Tu said.

In the longer term, the final tariffs might “remain for several years,” Tu said. “I don’t think it will proceed that fast. It must take time.”

Cooling economic growth in both countries is turning up the pressure to reach a settlement.

Chinese growth fell to a post-global crisis low of 6.5 percent in the quarter ending in September. Auto sales tumbled 16 percent in November over a year earlier. Weak real estate sales are forcing developers to cut prices.

The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.4 percent in the third quarter, and unemployment is at a five-decade low. But surveys show consumer confidence is weakening because of concern that growth will slow this year.

Beijing has tried in vain to recruit France, Germany, South Korea and other governments as allies against Trump. They criticize his tactics but echo U.S. complaints about Chinese industrial policy and market barriers.

The European Union filed its own challenge in the World Trade Organization in June against Chinese rules that the 28-nation trade bloc said hamper the ability of foreign companies to protect and profit from their own technology.

For their part, Chinese officials are unhappy with U.S. curbs on exports of “dual use” technology with possible military applications. They complain China’s companies are treated unfairly in national security reviews of proposed corporate acquisitions, though almost all deals are approved unchanged.

Some manufacturers that serve the United States have shifted production to other countries to avoid Trump’s tariffs.

UBS said Friday that 37 percent of 200 manufacturers surveyed by the bank have shifted out of China over the past 12 months. The threat of U.S. tariff hikes was the “dominating factor” for nearly half, while others moved because of higher costs or tighter environmental regulation.

“Most firms expect [the] trade war to escalate,” the bank said.

National Park Service to Tap Into Entrance Fees to Keep Operating

WASHINGTON—The National Park Service says it is taking the extraordinary step of dipping into entrance fees to pay for staffing at its highly visited parks in the wake of the partial government shutdown.

P. Daniel Smith, deputy director of the service, said in a statement Sunday that the money would be used to bring in staff to maintain restrooms, clean up trash and patrol the parks. He acknowledged that the Trump administration’s decision to keep the parks open during the weekslong budget impasse was no longer workable and so more extreme measures were warranted.

Parks have been relying on outside help for security and upkeep.

“We are taking this extraordinary step to ensure that parks are protected, and that visitors can continue to access parks with limited basic services,” Smith said.

Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana warned Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Saturday of “significant risk to property and public health” without funding. Three Utah Republican congressmen also asked Bernhardt to restart regular operations.

Democrats want the parks fully opened. But Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the incoming chair of the subcommittee overseeing Interior appropriations, said Sunday that dipping into user fees was “not acceptable” in this situation, and likely violates the law.

Parks supporters called the administration’s move misguided.

“Instead of working to reopen the federal government, the administration is robbing money collected from entrance fees to operate our national parks during this shutdown,” said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association. “For those parks that don’t collect fees, they will now be in the position of competing for the same inadequate pot of money to protect their resources and visitors. Draining accounts dry is not the answer.”

A Tough Time to Be CIA, NPR Reports

Imagine, for a moment, that a prominent media outlet in Iran decided to produce a story about the trials of being an Iranian spy in this technological day and age—in which the all-pervasiveness of surveillance mechanisms and social media complicates slightly the process of entering other countries under false identities.

It’s safe to assume that the United States would find this less than entertaining, and that a fair amount of ruckus would ensue, with concerned politicians and other fearmongers bleating about terror attacks and the sanctity of US borders.

Of course, no Iranian media outlet has actually done this. NPR’s Morning Edition (1/3/19), on the other hand, has just run an upbeat segment on how violating other people’s borders is now a tad more challenging for American spies than it was in past decades: “CIA Chief Pushes For More Spies Abroad; Surveillance Makes That Harder,” reported by Greg Myre.

The “push,” in fact, came in September, when CIA Director Gina Haspel—herself a former longtime undercover officer abroad—announced her desire for a “larger foreign footprint” for the CIA. Four months later, it’s the hook for NPR’s human interest story on frustrating impediments to spying.

Myre brings in various characters to populate his narrative, all of them current or ex-CIA employees. First is Jonna Mendez, former CIA “chief of disguise,” whom Myre tells us will give us “a few key tips” for Americans trying to appear European:

[Europeans] wear their wedding rings on different fingers. They eat differently than we do. They don’t shuttle that fork back and forth…. They stand up straight.

Exciting stuff.

Then there’s retired CIA officer John Sipher, who “says it could be tough today to enter the same country twice with different sets of documents.” Things were much easier back in the 1980s, we’re told, when airports didn’t scan faces and fingerprints, and everyone wasn’t online.

Next up with some remarks on social media are Sheronda, the CIA’s chief of recruiting, and Mary, an undercover officer. Incidentally, Sheronda’s soundbite—“People here do use social media. And yes, specific guidelines are provided”—is the same one that appeared in Myre’s March 2018 NPR report “CIA Recruiting: The Rare Topic the Spy Agency Likes to Talk About” (3/26/18), which might as well have been titled “Hey Kids! Here’s How to Join the CIA.”

Myre’s latest pro bono public relations effort on behalf of the agency meanwhile ends on some thoughts about how all the technology in the world can’t replace “the human touch” when it comes to intelligence gathering. “It’s a job of human beings,” says Mendez.

Which brings us to the following question: Why is NPR trying so hard to humanize an organization that is downright anti-human? After all, it’s not like the CIA’s machinations abroad are restricted to wedding ring protocol, fork-shuttling and improved posture—and a few details from its sordid history might have helped to contextualize Haspel’s current CIA proliferation scheme.

Among the major milestones on the agency’s timeline are, of course, the 1953 coup d’état against Iran’s Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstatement of the brutal shah—an obsessive purchaser of US weapons—and the 1954 coup against Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz, which helped set the stage for a long and gruesome war that killed or disappeared over 200,000 Guatemalans. (The CIA’s training of Guatemalan death squads is still bearing consequences in the form of waves of refugees fleeing that country’s ongoing violence—The Nation, 1/3/19.)

Also in Central America, the CIA was instrumental in the bloody Contra campaign of the 1980s—what Noam Chomsky has referred to as “a large-scale terrorist war against Nicaragua.” The war effort was also aided by top Honduran drug lord Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, owner of the Contra supply airline SETCO—which, scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz recalls in her Contra war memoir, Blood on the Border, was known as the “CIA airline.” Around the same time, a CIA-trained elite death squad by the name of Battalion 316 “stalked, kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of Honduran men and women”—as the Baltimore Sun (6/13/95) put it—effectively “terroriz[ing] Honduras for much of the 1980s.”

In Cuba, the CIA reportedly devised no fewer than 638 ways to kill Fidel Castro—one of them, recalled by the Guardian (8/2/06), was inspired  by Castro’s fondness for scuba diving and involved “invest[ment] in a large volume of Caribbean mollusks”: “The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colors lurid and bright enough to attract Castro’s attention when he was underwater.” An impressive allocation of time and resources, indeed.

Closer to home, the CIA conducted LSD experiments on unwitting US citizens in the 1950s—and, speaking of drugs, the agency has often been up to its ears in them (despite that whole drug war the US perennially professes to be waging). A 1993 article in the International Herald Tribune (12/3/93) observed that, while “CIA ties to international drug trafficking date to the Korean War,” nowhere was the organization “more closely tied to drug traffic than it was in Pakistan during the Afghan War.”

During the devastating US war on Vietnam and neighboring countries, the Herald Tribune article specified, heroin refined in Laos was “ferried out on the planes of the CIA’s front airline, Air America.” A 2009 post by historian John Prados at the National Security Archive (8/26/09) confirmed that the “agency’s broad span of activities reached into virtually every aspect of the Indochina war,” as the CIA “actually conducted a full-scale war in Laos and ran a variety of paramilitary programs in South Vietnam.”

The list goes on. But the point, in short, is that many global inhabitants would presumably not grieve too terribly if modern-day surveillance were to complicate the CIA’s drive for a “larger foreign footprint.”

Nor should we forget the CIA’s contemporary history of extraordinary rendition and torture—a track record that leads us to Haspel herself. As Lisa Hajjar, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights, wrote for The Nation (3/16/18): Haspel “played a leading role in the agency’s program of torture, kidnapping and forced disappearance during the [George W.] Bush administration.” Most specifically, Haspel “oversaw the interrogation and torture of a Saudi national named Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri” at a black site in Thailand in 2002.

But back to NPR—which, as it so happens, is not the hugest fan of the T-word. In 2009, then–NPR vice president for news Ellen Weiss denied reports that the outlet had banned the use of the word “torture” altogether:

We gave our journalists guidance about how to avoid loaded language about interrogation techniques, realizing that no matter what words are chosen, we risk the appearance of taking one side or another.

It’s doubtless thanks to these guidelines that we end up with, for example, an NPR dispatch (2/25/15) on the US Senate’s 2014 CIA torture report in which “torture” appears a total of two times. The first is in the introductory sentence: “For years in the military courtroom at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there’s been a subject no one could talk about: torture.” Lest anyone think that we’re now going to talk about it, the only other reference is to “what many call ‘the torture report.’” NPR did, however, manage to describe in less “loaded language” one Guantánamo defendant’s chronic bleeding on account of overzealous rectal examination by the CIA—but, again, it’s important not to take sides.

In Myre’s segment, Jonna Mendez says that one of her responsibilities as the former CIA chief of disguise was to “de-Americanize” spies. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, it seems torture and other misdeeds are as American as apple pie; ditto, apparently, for media whitewashing of nefarious intelligence agencies.

Researchers Say Companies Should Publicly Disclose Palm Oil Suppliers

Companies selling products that contain palm oil need to be upfront about where it comes from, so as to relieve consumers of the burden of making sustainable choices, a UK study says.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge say companies should not rely simply on purchasers’ own awareness of the need to make environmentally responsible decisions, but should publicly disclose the identities of their palm oil suppliers.

Palm oil production causes deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions from peatland conversion, and biodiversity loss, and the oil is found in many products, often without consumers’ knowledge. It is a common ingredient in foods, body products, detergents and biofuels.

Dr. Rosemary Ostfeld is the study’s lead author. She said: “The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has made efforts to improve the sustainability of palm oil production by creating an environmental certification system for palm oil.

Low Uptake

“But currently only 19% of palm oil is RSPO-certified. This means the majority that finds its way into products people buy daily is still produced using conventional practices.

“We wanted to find out if consumers were actively seeking to make a sustainable choice about palm oil. We also explored what extra efforts governments could make to ensure sustainable palm oil consumption.”

The researchers, whose study is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, surveyed 1,695 British consumers through the market research company YouGov.

Respondents were asked about their awareness of palm oil and its environmental impact; their recognition of “ecolabels” such as Fairtrade, the Soil Association and RSPO; and which ecolabelled products they included in their weekly household shopping.

The study found that UK consumer awareness of palm oil was high (77%), with 41% of those aware of it viewing it as “environmentally unfriendly”. Yet almost no consumers were aware of the RSPO label that showed a product contained sustainably-produced palm oil.

“In terms of label recognition versus action, 82% of people recognized the Fairtrade label, but only 29% actively buy Fairtrade products,” said Dr Ostfeld.

“Only five percent recognized the RSPO label – the same as a fictional label we put into the survey as a control. Of that small number, only one percent said they actively include products with the label in their shopping.”

The low recognition of the RSPO label could be caused by the scarcity of its use by consumer goods companies and retailers.

Action Not Guaranteed

Dr. Ostfeld said: “This may be due in part to reluctance to draw attention to their use of palm oil, or it may be because they fall short of the 95% physical certified palm oil content that used to be needed to use the label.

“Either way, we found that relying on consumers to consciously and regularly include certified products in their shopping has limitations. Our results show that even when consumer awareness of an ecolabel is high, action is not guaranteed.”

To address this problem, the researchers put forward several policy recommendations. Dr Ostfeld explained: “Palm oil is more efficient to produce than other vegetable oils and plays a vital role in the livelihoods of millions of people, so banning it is not plausible. Instead, the goal should be to encourage sustainable palm oil production.

“We recommend governments require consumer goods companies and retailers to buy identity-preserved certified palm oil, which can be traced back to the individual plantation. If national targets must be met with identity-preserved certified palm oil, demand for it will increase. It will also enable unsustainable practices to be uncovered more easily.

Disclosure Needed

“Companies should also publicly disclose their palm oil suppliers. This will help consumers know if they’re sourcing their palm oil from growers who use best practices.

“We believe these measures could promote a more rapid move towards sustainable palm oil consumption, and higher levels of accountability throughout the supply chain.”

Some campaigners argue that sustainability standards, including certification schemes, can have a wider effect by, for example, helping to shape governments’ policies and to steer investment into research.

A year ago one major US financial company, Dimensional, said it had divested two of its portfolios of all palm oil plantation companies.

Women March in France to Reclaim Yellow Vest Movement

“Macron your goose is cooked, the chicks are in the street!”

That was the chant by one large contingent of women marching in the French city of Toulouse on Sunday as female-led demonstrations took place across France to keep the pressure on President Emmanuel Macron while also pushing back against the increasing displays of violence some within the broader “Yellow Vest” (or Gilets Jaunes) movement argue is overshadowing the underlying political message.

“All the media ever reports is the violence, and we are forgetting the root of the problem,” which is the fight against austerity, one protester named Karen, a 42-year-old nurse, told Agence France Presse on the streets of Marseilles.

Sunday’s demonstrations followed a day of protests on Saturday during which violence broke out in Paris and other cities as those participating in “Act VIII” protests under the Yellow Vest banner clashed with French riot police, erected barricades, and started fires:

“The ‘yellow vest’ protest movement, which has now seen protests on eight consecutive Saturdays,” reports AFP, “was initially triggered by anger over an increase in fuel taxes.  But it has since morphed into a campaign against the high cost of living and the government of President Emmanuel Macron, seen by many as arrogant and beholden to big business.”

Laurent Berger, head of the reform-minded CFDT trade union, France’s largest by members, on Sunday accused Macron’s government of going it alone while ignoring the legitimate concerns of those who support the complaints, if not always the tactics, of the Yellow Vest protesters.  “We’re at an impasse. We have on the one side a violent movement … and on the other a government which thinks it can find the answers all on its own,” Berger told France Inter. According to polls, approximately 55 percent of the French public currently support the protests, though that is a smaller number compared to the 75 percent who registered approval in November when the movement began.

According to the BBC, the violence that broke out on Saturday included demonstrators in Paris using a construction vehicle to bash down the office door of government spokesperson Benjamin Griveaux, forcing him and others to flee out a back exit:

The march in Paris began peacefully but scuffles broke out in the afternoon, with protesters throwing projectiles at riot police who responded with tear gas.

Motorcycles and bins were set ablaze, and a river boat caught fire.

Mr Griveaux said around a dozen individuals – some wearing black, some in yellow vests – used a small construction vehicle they found in the street to break through the door into the government compound. They also broke some windows and damaged some cars.

“The gilets jaunes movement for those who are still mobilized have become agitators who want insurrection and, basically, to overthrow the government,” Griveaux later told reporters.  “They have engaged in a political battle to contest the legitimacy of the government and president. These people who call for debate don’t want to take part in our national debate.”