Chris Hedges's Blog, page 401

G-20 Agrees on Trade and Migration; U.S. Goes Own Way on Climate

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—Leaders of the world’s top economies agreed Saturday to repair the global trading system as they closed a Group of 20 summit that saw the Trump administration at odds with many allies over the Paris accord on climate change and issues like migration.

The joint statement signed by all 20 member nations said 19 of them reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate accord, with the United States, which withdrew from the pact under President Donald Trump, the lone holdout. The official communique acknowledged flaws in global commerce and called for reforming the World Trade Organization, but it didn’t mention the word “protectionism” after negotiators said that had met resistance from the United States.

Applause broke out in the convention center hall as the leaders, including Trump, signed off on the statement at the end of the two-day summit in the Argentine capital, the first time it has been held in South America.

The non-binding agreement was reached after marathon talks by diplomats stretched overnight and into daylight, amid deep divisions between member nations. European Union officials said the United States was the main holdout on nearly every issue. Trump has criticized the WTO and taken aggressive trade policies targeting China and the EU.

But China also pushed back in talks on steel, South Africa objected to language on trade, Australia didn’t want the statement to be too soft on migration and Turkey worried it would push too far on climate change, according to the officials.

A senior White House official said the joint statement meets many U.S. objectives and stressed that it includes language about WTO reform. The official also noted other elements such as language on workforce development and women’s economic development and a commitment by China to doing infrastructure financing on “transparent terms.”

According to the official, the unusual language on climate was necessary for Washington to sign on, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia had appeared sympathetic to the U.S. position but ultimately stayed with the other countries.

The final language of the statement says, regarding climate, that 19 nations that are signatories to the Paris accord reiterate their commitment to it while the U.S. reiterates its decision to withdraw. It also notes a recent U.N. report that warned damage from global warming will be much worse than previously feared, and expresses support for an upcoming U.N. climate meeting in Poland meant to nail down how countries will meet promises made in the Paris accord.

On global commerce, the statement says the 20 countries support multilateral trade but acknowledge that the current system doesn’t work and needs fixing, via “the necessary reform of the WTO to improve its functioning.”

On migration, European officials said the U.S. negotiator said too much talk about it would have been a “deal-breaker” for Trump. So they came up with “minimalist” language that acknowledges growing migrant flows and the importance of shared efforts to support refugees and solve the problems that drive them to flee.

The statement also shows a commitment to a “rules-based international order,” despite Trump’s rejection of many of those rules.

With trade tensions between the U.S and China dominating the summit, the Europeans sought to play mediator and also scaled back their expectations, cutting out mention of rising protectionism — mainly aimed at Trump.

French President Emmanuel Macron called it a victory that the U.S. signed on to the statement at all, given the tensions going into the talks. “With Trump, we reached an agreement,” Macron said. “The U.S. accepted a text.”

Thomas Bernes of the Canada-based Centre for International Governance Innovation, who has held leading roles with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Canadian government, said the G-20 had “veered all over the road” at the summit and failed to truly fix trade. The U.S. was out of step on migration and climate change and blocked meaningful agreement on those issues, he added.

“Instead, leaders buried their differences in obscure language and dropped language to fight protectionism, which had been included in every G-20 communique since the leaders’ first summit,” he said. “This is clearly a retrograde step forced by United States intransigence.”

“The question is whether we are burying the G-20 in the process,” Bernes added. “Certainly this is a big hit to the credibility of the G-20 to provide resolute leadership in addressing global problems.”

Perhaps surprisingly, one country that was seen as particularly constructive was Russia, the EU officials said. Despite tensions over its military actions on Ukraine and political interference abroad, Russia supports international efforts on trade and climate.

Summits like this “don’t take away contradictions” among G-20 leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. But he added that “these meetings are useful because countries that are fighting” can focus on problems they all agree on such as WTO reform.

The summit statement’s language on climate was welcomed by environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, the latter of which said in a statement: “The necessity of the U.S. being part of the effort to fight climate change cannot be denied, but this is a demonstration that the U.S. is still the odd one out.”

While a statement isn’t legally enforceable, the Europeans see it as proof that the G-20 is still relevant and that multilateralism still works.

“Everyone agrees that the WTO should be reformed,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “This is an important agreement.”

“We will send a clear signal — in any case, most of us” — for the success of global climate talks starting in Poland on Sunday, Merkel added.

Merkel’s spokesman said that during a meeting with Putin, she also voiced concern about rising tensions in the Kerch Strait off Crimea and pushed for “freedom of shipping into the Sea of Azov.”

Last weekend, Russia seized three Ukrainian naval vessels and their crews in an incident escalating a tug-of-war that began in 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and supported separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Germany and France have sought to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said she and Putin agreed that the four countries should hold further talks at the “adviser level.”

Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May both said they had pressed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for international involvement in investigating the October murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul.

May said she spoke to the crown prince about the importance of “a full, credible, transparent investigation that identifies those who are involved and that ensures that those involved are held to account.” Macron did similar, but said bin Salman only “took note” of his demands and expressed hope the prince would respond soon.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lamented that the issue of Khashoggi’s killing was not a part of the official agenda and said the only leader who brought it up was Trudeau. According to Erdogan the crown prince’s response was that Saudi Arabia cannot be blamed unless the crime is proven, something the Turkish leader called “unbelievable.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded bin Salman must have at least known about the plot to kill Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia denies he played a role. Trump has said there is no definitive evidence the crown prince is complicit.

“We want to know who ordered this assassination,” Erdogan said, accusing Saudi Arabia of a lack of cooperation.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met later over dinner after the summit’s close. Their countries have been embroiled in an escalating trade war with new U.S. tariffs on China goods set to take effect a month from now.

In closing remarks, the summit’s host, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, said the countries had overcome “a number of challenges” to reach the statement.

The next G-20 summit is to be held in Osaka, Japan, in June 2019.

Putin said that when Japan takes over, “there will be proposals on perfecting (the WTO). This is already something.”

___

Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey and Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Worst Riot in a Decade Engulfs Paris; Macron Vows Action

PARIS—France’s most violent urban riot in a decade engulfed central Paris on Saturday as “yellow jacket” activists torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti.

Protesters angry about rising taxes and the high cost of living clashed with French riot police, who closed off some of the city’s most popular tourist areas and fired tear gas and water cannon as they tried to quell the mayhem in the streets.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the violence from the G-20 summit in Argentina, saying those who attacked police and vandalized the Arc de Triomphe will be “held responsible for their acts.” He said he will hold an emergency government meeting Sunday on the protests.

“(Violence) has nothing to do with the peaceful expression of a legitimate anger” and “no cause justifies” attacks on police or pillaging stores and burning buildings, Macron said in Buenos Aires. He refused to answer any questions from journalists about the situation in Paris.

It was the third straight weekend of clashes in Paris with activists dressed in the fluorescent yellow vests of a new protest movement and the worst urban violence since at least 2005. The scene contrasted sharply with other protests in France, where demonstrations and road blockades elsewhere on Saturday were largely peaceful.

Thousands of French police were deployed to try to contain the violence, which began Saturday morning near the Arc de Triomphe and continued well after dark. Paris police said at least 110 people, including 20 police officers, were injured in the violent protests and 224 others were arrested.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, speaking on French television channel TF1, said one protester was in a life-threatening condition after being part of a group pulling down a metal fence at the Tuileries gardens. A video on social media shows the heavy fence falling on some protesters.

By the afternoon, clashed continued down several streets popular with tourists. Pockets of demonstrators built makeshift barricades in the middle of Paris streets, lit fires, torched cars and trash cans, threw rocks at police and smashed and looted stores.

Some demonstrators removed the barriers protecting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I under the Arc de Triomphe monument to pose near its eternal flame and sing the national anthem. They were dispersed by police.

Graffiti sprayed onto the Arc de Triomphe wrote: “yellow jackets will triumph.”

By Saturday afternoon, central Paris was locked down police, with all roads leading away from the Arc closed off as more police moved in. Over 20 downtown Paris metro stations were closed for security reasons and police ordered stores in nearby neighborhoods to close early Saturday evening.

Hours later, some cars still smoldered and law enforcement and protesters were still facing off elsewhere in the capital.

French television showed police leading a shaken woman away from the protesters, and loud bangs rang out near the famed Champs Elysees Avenue where the violence was centered.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted her “indignation” and “deep sadness” at the destruction and clashes with police, saying that violence is “not acceptable.”

In addition to rising taxes, the demonstrators are furious about Macron’s leadership, saying that his government does not care about the problems of ordinary people. The grassroots protests began with motorists upset over a fuel tax hike, but now involve a broad range of demands related to France’s high cost of living.

The violence in Paris, however, suggests that some protests appear to have been taken over by more radical far-right or far-left groups.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen urged the protesters to go home in a tweet.

French authorities said they counted 75,000 protesters Saturday across the country, including 5,500 in Paris, numbers that were less than last week’s protest but produced much more destruction.

Earlier Saturday, several hundred peaceful protesters in Paris passed through police checkpoints to reach the Champs-Elysees. They marched on the famed avenue behind a big banner that read “Macron, stop taking us for stupid people.”

Access to the Champs-Elysees was closed to cars and strictly monitored by police with identity checks and bag inspections.

“It’s difficult to reach the end of the month. People work and pay a lot of taxes and we are fed up,” said Rabah Mendez, a protester who came from a southern suburb to march peacefully in Paris.

“Our purchasing power is severely diminishing every day. And then: taxes, taxes and taxes,” said Paris resident Hedwige Lebrun. “The state is asking us to tighten our belts, but they, on the contrary, live totally above all standards with our money.”

Since the yellow jacket movement kicked off on Nov. 17, two people have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes or accidents stemming from the protests.

___

Chris Den Hond and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report. Angela Charlton contributed from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

George H.W. Bush’s Entitlement Cool

Editors’ note: The following is an excerpt from Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer’s book “Playing President,” featuring an essay about and interview with George H.W. Bush, who died Friday at the age of 94.

THERE WAS NEVER ANY LOVE LOST BETWEEN GEORGE Herbert Walker Bush and me. How’s that for presumption? As if the Skull-and-Crossbones, blueblooded captain of the Yale baseball team, who went on to become the Director of the CIA, would give much thought to the individual reporters who covered him. Trust me, I didn’t welcome the attention, certainly not after he called his good friend and my boss, Otis Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, to demand that I be fired.

Before I get too far ahead of my story here, let me explain that once again, as with Jimmy Carter four years earlier, I had managed to get myself embroiled with a leading candidate for President. This time, the controversy arose over a Republican who, like Carter, was threatening to leave the pack of his party’s presidential hopefuls behind.

By then I was no longer the gonzo journalist interviewing prominent people for the likes of Playboy; I was a national reporter for the Los Angeles Times, which at that point was still very staid; the very same paper that Richard Nixon always favored over the pinko mass media based on the East Coast. Those East Coast reporters were gutter snipes in Nixon’s mind, whereas when he called on a scribe from this West Coast publication at a press conference, he would turn to “the gentleman from the Los Angeles Times.”

George Bush was very much of that Nixonian school and shared the prejudice that while the New York Times and Washington Post were infected with a liberal New York virus, the Los Angeles Times reflected the purer Western-frontier virtues of that robber baron General Harrison Gray Otis, who had founded the paper now guided by his great-grandson, Otis Chandler. Like George, Otis was a straight-arrow, ruling class preppie who hobnobbed with all the right people, was competitive in business and sports, and could be found popping one at just the right watering hole. Little did anyone know then that Otis was to become the family’s enlightened rebel, fundamentally transforming the Times.

George was known as “Poppie” and married “Bar,” while Otis was the issue of “Buffy” Chandler, and both families mingled at the occasional African safari, tennis match at the Longwood Cricket Club outside Boston, or cocktail party at the Huntington before Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses parade. George was far more thin-skinned and exhibited a bit of the nervous twitching found often in overly inbred species, whereas Otis had a robust Western air to him but was no less primed for the power part. With his massive shoulders, thick blond hair, and chiseled features, Otis resembled a ruling-class god. At least that’s how I sometimes perceived my new boss when I went to work for the Times, hired in part due to the publicity from my 1976 Carter interview. The man had a presence even more overpowering than Nelson Rockefeller, another famous scion who shared Otis’s physical exuberance.

I mention Rockefeller because I had spent quite a few hours with him, and I thought of him often during those tempestuous spring weeks when I was trying to negotiate terrain dominated by the Bush-and-Chandler variant of the Rockefeller stock.

All three men were quite literally bred to lead, exposed to exactly the right thoughts, foods, contacts, and other stimulants of outlook and appearance geared to the carriage of ruling power. They were as painfully aware of their having been schooled for that purpose as was the mass media so studiously ignorant of the importance of elite grooming in what passed for representative democracy.

As opposed to next chapter’s “po white” President—and I offer that description affectionately—who overcame unbelievably bad odds, the blue-bloods we are focusing on here were always assured enormous success as long as they played by rules designed to favor their careers. Only when they abandoned those rules did reputations crash—as was the fate of Nelson Rockefeller, when he expired during a romantic dalliance with a woman roughly one-third his age. It was, if you will, what a future generation would come to regard as a Clintonian moment: An act that proper people knew to keep guarded was displayed for the eyes of those untutored in the legacy-lore that a sexual dalliance is one of the great perks of power, so long as it is discreet. Rockefeller did not have to fall into disgrace; this once colossal figure was rendered a nonperson to the current generation simply because his retainers weren’t on hand, and because his young lover was not well trained.

“That dumb girl called the 911 number,” Brooke Astor, one of Rocky’s buddies, told me in exasperation one evening at socialite Lally Weymouth’s Manhattan apartment. “You never call the 911 number!” she all but thundered, then added, “The Rockefellers had been chasing women around the table for a century, and they would stumble, but they had servants to clean up the mess.” A long digression, but not quite so, for Lady Astor’s point is highly relevant to my distressed encounters with George Bush. He, the candidate, thought that I, the reporter, was a house servant on the Chandler plantation, which he just happened to be visiting on his journey to the White House. He expected that he would be accorded all the privileges of his station, and that my servile status would ensure the cleanup of any rhetorical mess he made.

We first met in a small airplane carrying Bush to New Hampshire from his stunning victory over Ronald Reagan in the 1980 Iowa primary. An inevitable, if inconvenient, term or two in the White House represented Bush’s obligation, if not his favored avocation. He was basking in the glow of victory and I was a scribe handy to document his satisfaction— but that’s not what happened.

The problem with George Herbert Walker was that he had been performing splendidly for too long in high-minded activities that weren’t all that much fun. After doing all of those important adult things—from fighting a war to save his country to representing it as ambassador in Red Devil China—he was getting more than a bit weary of the endless homework. You have no idea of the number of thick, boring briefing books he had to study; unlike Reagan, Bush had actually felt compelled to read the table of contents and the summaries of those damn things.

At this point in his long successful life, while not yet having reached the peak of his father Prescott, George Herbert Walker was not so much tired—the Bushes and Rockefellers never permit themselves to tire—but damn it, couldn’t the country get along without him? How many decades of achievement must you rack up before you can get back to just having fun, like when he was a kid in Kennebunkport and Nelson was tooting around Seal Harbor?

But duty was calling, and Bush’s mission in life was obviously not yet complete. Jimmy Carter—a peanut farmer from some redneck Georgian gulch called Plains—had managed to become President and dreadfully screw things up. Chalk that up to the loss of societal standards: George would put quite a bit of the blame on the media, which made celebrities of people with no real training or accomplishment.

So Bush hadn’t had much of a choice but to enter the race, and just when things were going dashingly well, he encountered one of those media upstarts. How was he to know not to trust the fellow representing Otis Chandler’s paper? The reporter just came at him with those “nasty questions,” as he would later tell Otis during a meeting I attended with several other writers and editors from the Times. That meeting took place after candidate Bush found himself in the midst of a furor stirred up by my interview (reprinted on page 180), and Otis had invited Bush to the paper to give a fuller account of himself.

I was shocked and suddenly not quite sure why I was there. I knew that Bush had complained vehemently after publication of the interview, in which he had stated his conviction that “you can have a winner” in a nuclear war. It was an absurd and wildly irresponsible statement to make with U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons poised for Armageddon; the whole point of the arms control regime first introduced by Nixon was to convince the Soviets that we had a common interest in preventing our “mutually assured destruction.” Bush had obviously not bothered to read the details of his briefing books on this most important of subjects, and suddenly the best argument against Reagan—that he was too old or untutored or unstable to have his finger on the nuclear trigger—was wiped out. Reagan had been floundering as an outdated Cold War extremist, and now he was looking like the more reasonable of the two leading Republican candidates.

Bush’s campaign was in disarray and the candidate was fast losing his entitlement cool. “I want a copy of that tape!” he had ordered me weeks earlier—after his winnable-nuclear-war statement hit the media—at Chicago’s Midway Airport, where I was as one of the press covering his ailing campaign. I pointed out that he already had the tape since his press person had been sitting there during the entire interview with his very own tape recorder. His press aide nodded that it was true. Then Bush said something about his being misinterpreted and this conflict not being over.

That’s how I happened to be summoned by Otis Chandler to attend the meeting with Bush that morning in the Norman Chandler Pavilion at the Times. At first it all seemed to be going well, with Bush talking up his credentials, and then someone asked if he was planning to raise the issue of Reagan’s age in the campaign. Bush said he would not, though he expected the issue would still come up, and then he quite weirdly went off on a mini-rant against aggressive reporters that Reagan would have to contend with. Concluding his tirade, he asked, “Could Reagan deal with those nasty questions from Scheer?” There was some awkward shuffling in the room and a different line of questioning ensued. But again Bush snapped in anger and brought up my questions as a sort of unfair obstacle that might cause Reagan to stumble.

Of course, as I have confessed earlier in this book, Reagan handled me quite easily and I fell repeatedly for his Irish blarney. Bush’s problem, as would later become evident, had little to do with me and much to do with his being a thinskinned, over-protected politician who, despite his occupancy been forced to mix it up very much. Even though he was now running for President, he was neglecting his homework and winging it.

Faced with screwing up the test of an early campaign interview, he blamed the questions. But his ruse failed later, when he had an interview scheduled with television reporter Linda Douglass at the local CBS affiliate. Douglass called me to say that since Bush was still insisting that the interview had not been transcribed properly, she would like to play the relevant portion of the tape on the air and ask him about it during her interview. I successfully convinced my Times editor that the only way to defend the interview’s integrity in the face of this heavy-handed challenge was to make it available to the public.

I knew we were in good shape because I had listened to the interview very carefully after Bush first challenged it. I had been worried when the controversy initially arose since I had neither personally transcribed the tape nor edited the interview, as I was still on the road interviewing other candidates when it was going to press. Fortunately, the transcribers and editors at the Times got it perfectly right—not a word was misplaced—and when Douglass played Bush’s statement back to him after he once again denied making it, the future President, in a very dramatic moment, dissembled. However, this didn’t keep him from later resorting back to flat-out denial: In his vice-presidential debate with Geraldine Ferraro on October 11, 1984, NBC News correspondent Norma Quarles asked Bush if he still thought nuclear war was “winnable,” to which he replied, “I was quoted wrong, obviously, ’cause I never thought that.” The Los Angeles Times responded by reprinting the relevant portion of my original interview with him on its editorial page.

Not to make too much of this one event, but I do believe it highlighted the essential weakness of the first Bush presidency. Unlike his son, George W. Bush, George Herbert Walker was quite sharp and could master any skill or subject that interested him. But he seemed to be losing patience with matters of state. It was as if he had prepared his whole life for a role that he suddenly found so boring that it failed to engage him. Perhaps he no longer believed that the political game was one worth playing, yet felt obligated to go through the motions as a matter of training.

As for my job at the Times, when I walked out of the Norman Chandler Pavilion following Bush’s departure, Otis put his arm around me and said, “Look, I have known George all my life and you captured the guy I’ve known.”

___

“Bush Assails Carter Defense Strategy” was the headline above this interview with George H.W. Bush, published on the front page of the Los Angeles Times on January 24, 1980.

IN THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW WITH THE TIMES, FORMER U.N. Ambassador George Bush, the victor in Monday’s Iowa Republican caucuses, discusses the presidency and his candidacy for the GOP nomination.

SCHEER What changes could one expect in a Bush budget?

BUSH Generally speaking, President Carter was wrong to knock out of the [Gerald R.] Ford budget the main things he did, which were the MX [missile], the manned bomber, and the naval improvement—many of which he wakes up three years later and feels he now must restore.

SCHEER Don’t we reach a point with these strategic weapons where we can wipe each other out so many times and no one wants to use them or is willing to use them, that it really doesn’t matter whether we’re ten percent or two percent lower or higher?

BUSH Yes, if you believe there is no such thing as a winner in a nuclear exchange, that argument makes a little sense. I don’t believe that.

SCHEER How do you win in a nuclear exchange?

BUSH You have a survivability of command in control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have a capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict upon you. That’s the way you can have a winner, and the Soviets’ planning is based on the ugly concept of a winner in a nuclear exchange.

SCHEER Do you mean like five percent would survive? Two percent?

BUSH More than that—if everybody fired everything he had, you’d have more than that survive.

SCHEER So have we made a mistake, then, in not thinking of nuclear war as a possible option that we could survive?

BUSH Our strategic forces should be considered a deterrent, and that is the way I’d do it, and I think I would be able to—if we did what we needed to do to be sure the trend that set in doesn’t continue, the trend that makes them superior—I think what I’d be able to do would be to push away, plug away, and negotiate a reduction that can be verified.

SCHEER What is the connection between the possession of an MX missile system and being able to do something about problems like Afghanistan or Iran?

BUSH The direct linkage is rather remote, but in the overall linkage, as long as the United States is perceived to not be slipping behind the Soviets in strategic forces, the Soviets will be constrained from adventure.

SCHEER They were weaker in ’68 than they are now.

BUSH Much weaker.

SCHEER In ’68 they invaded Czechoslovakia. That was adventurism.

BUSH But it doesn’t follow that therefore if we’re weaker, that will constrain adventure. They’re stronger today and they invaded Afghanistan.

SCHEER Yes, but in the late ’40s, we were the only one who had nuclear weapons. Our superiority was total and awesome. It didn’t stop the Soviets in Berlin, [or] from the Korean War. Aren’t your ideas a throwback to the old massive-retaliation position of John Foster Dulles?

BUSH I’m going back to the fact that the United States should not be inferior to the Soviet Union in strategic balance.

SCHEER Going back to the criticism of massive retaliation, perhaps a huge MX missile system costing $55 billion would have no effect whatsoever on one’s ability to intervene.

BUSH See, what the MX does is give you an ability to retaliate against hardened sites, and does not make the President have the choice of killing people. That is the key to an MX system, because without a platform of that nature you are not going to be able to retaliate against their hardened sites. And the President’s choice would be at that time, if our retaliatory capacity were knocked out, his choice would be, “Sir, our retaliatory capabilities have been knocked out, but good news for you, we still have the Polaris boats, and you can destroy a third of Leningrad and a third of Moscow. Bad news, sir, is they can wipe out, because of their SS 18s, two-thirds of Washington,” etc.  A President shouldn’t be faced with only that kind of choice.

SCHEER You were critical of the return of the canal to Panama.

BUSH Yes, I was critical of it.

SCHEER Do you still remain a critic?

BUSH Yes, I think particularly at this time. I think one of our big problems is that our foreign policy is viewed as retreating and pulling back and unwilling to keep commitments. And my concern with the Panama solution was not the desire to make a change that would take care of the so-called colonial problem—that I can understand—but rather the overall view that as we did this, as we made the deal we did, that it added to the perception that the United States was going to pull back, unwilling to keep commitments.

SCHEER But, in fact, since we’ve done this, the government of Panama has seemed to be a strong ally of ours, they’ve accepted the Shah, took him off our hands. Has it really weakened the United States?

BUSH The jury is still out.

SCHEER Right now it would be fair to say that, in fact, they’ve assisted us in a very major way by taking the Shah, haven’t they? It got the Carter government off the hook on that one.

BUSH It was a helpful step, yes.

SCHEER One of the questions that was asked at the Iowa debate was, was there anything politically that you would take back, and I thought the answers were quite weak.

BUSH You’re in a political campaign. Who wants to point out his weaknesses? I mean, I thought the question was quite dumb in terms of everybody making a confession to Mary McGrory about one’s weaknesses. What kind of idiot is going to answer the question—“Wait a minute, these five things show that I’ve been wrong.” Come on.

SCHEER Could you summarize your differences with Carter in foreign policy?

BUSH Well, I think Jimmy Carter sees the world as he wishes it were, not as it is, and thus when he came in and cut way back on many of the things that the Ford budgets had projected in terms of defense, he sent out a signal around the world that caused concern among some of our allies. I think he’s—I can say this with the advantage of hindsight—that we made a mistake when we sent out a signal that we were going to pull out our troops from Korea, and then some of our allies and others begin to worry, “What commitments will the United States keep?” I think when we normalize relations with China on their terms and their terms alone, we further enhance the image of a country that was really not prepared to keep its commitments. I think when we indicated that Cubans were in Africa as a stabilizing influence, people around the world must have looked at us like we were nuts in foreign policy. Eventually, that statement was not permitted to stand, but it stood too long in my view before it was slapped down by the President. I think if we let our human rights policy appear to override everything, including our strategic interests, that the policy is wrong. Our application has often been selective, hypocritically so, in my view: Slap around Argentina and Brazil and move closer to Castro. I remember Mrs. Carter going down and meeting with the dissidents in Brazil. What would we have thought if Brazil’s President’s wife had come up and met with the person who bombed the laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin? I don’t think we’d like that.

SCHEER Do you feel it’s comparable?

BUSH I do, I do feel it’s comparable.

SCHEER That dissidents in Brazil have the same avenues for peaceful protests as dissidents in the U.S.?

BUSH No, I don’t, I don’t think they have.

SCHEER How is it a comparable situation?

BUSH One has violated the laws of the country and so have some of the others—I don’t believe that you can go out there and take the law into your own hands as guerrillas in Brazil and Argentina . . . Do they overreact? Yes, but I just wouldn’t use that style of diplomacy.

SCHEER I don’t understand—you don’t believe it’s ever—

BUSH Print it the way I’ve said it and you’ll understand it—read it.

SCHEER Take Hungary, in 1956, the people resisted the Soviets, the freedom fighters—you would say they should not have been supported? They took the law into their own hands?

BUSH That’s not what I said—I told you what I said.

SCHEER You don’t think that’s an example of people taking the law into their own hands?

BUSH I think that was an effort to overthrow a totalitarian regime that had violated everything in human rights. Certainly the difference between me and some others is that I see areas of gray. I don’t think everything is pure and impure, and I think we have been hypocritically selective in our indignation on human rights, and have diminished our strategic interests in the process. That’s what I believe.

SCHEER Let me switch to the CIA. You said in a speech that you participated [as CIA director] in President Ford’s new regulations concerning the CIA. Not all of them, as you implied, were ones which would have been restrictive on the CIA.

BUSH The executive order I was talking about . . .

SCHEER Some of them, for instance, increase the penalty for someone who leaks secrets or reveals information.

BUSH We should protect sources and methods of intelligence, yes.

SCHEER And in one example you offered, you said that the alternative plans of the Defense Department ought not to be made public. Do you feel that that regulation should have applied to the Pentagon Papers case?

BUSH I believe that if you take an oath to protect classified information, you ought to protect it—yes. I think you’ve got remedies, you have ways to declassify—and I believe that you ought to not be the final arbiter yourself of what is properly classified.

SCHEER Do you think the New York Times was correct in publishing it?

BUSH I haven’t thought about it, frankly. If everything the New York Times can get its hands on—no, I think there are some constraints, some legitimacy to the concept of national security.

SCHEER Well, do you think that should have applied in the Pentagon Papers case?

BUSH I told you, I don’t have a judgment; I don’t have—I don’t remember all that ancient history.

SCHEER Well, it isn’t so ancient.

BUSH I’ve told you my position and you’re not going to get an answer.

SCHEER It’s important because—

BUSH Well, it’s important to you and it’s not that important . . . I’ve told you my position.

SCHEER It was important to President Nixon, who you worked with, and he argued that the leak in the Pentagon Papers case was so severe that it threatened the foundations of our government, and that was the reason for the whole “Plumbers Unit” and Watergate—right?

BUSH I don’t recall what he argued on that—couldn’t be less interested.

SCHEER In Watergate?

BUSH Yes, in that whole area.

SCHEER Do you think there are any lessons to be learned—

BUSH Yes, some of them—don’t break the law and don’t lie.

SCHEER Nixon’s argument is that he was protecting national security.

BUSH Interesting.

SCHEER You said you didn’t want to explore Watergate again, but there’s one statement I want to ask you about. You once said, “I applaud President Nixon’s comprehensive statement which clearly demonstrates again that the President himself was not involved with the Watergate matter.”

BUSH It came out to the contrary—oh, come on.

SCHEER What I want to ask you is—

BUSH Go back and read the whole goddamn thing that happened after this. What kind of reporting are you doing?

SCHEER You said that there are lessons to be learned. Here’s a case—

BUSH Have you ever been lied to?

SCHEER That’s what I’m trying to get at.

BUSH Have you ever said something and then found out the person didn’t tell the truth? I’ve already said that publicly—if you’d get the rest of your file, you’d see it. I’m not going to go back and relive this for you. And I think it’s quite . . . appropriate for you to ask that. Ask any darn thing you want. It’s a free country and I can put the answer . . .

SCHEER No, you say there’s something invalid about bringing this up. Let me ask the question I wanted to ask.

BUSH I’ve dealt with many, many reporters for a year, and you’re the first guy that’s going into every—trying to go into a whole bunch of things that, obviously, others haven’t felt were particularly relevant to what I’m doing right now—and what I see you’re trying to do is a linkage to a lot of things over which I had no control, a period where I emerged with, hopefully, my own integrity intact, the integrity of the institution I was heading—the Republican Party—intact.

SCHEER OK, but I think it’s a legitimate question to ask a Republican candidate. And I asked Connally and I’ll ask anyone else I interview: What are the lessons of Watergate and what is to be learned?

BUSH And I gave you a good answer.

SCHEER When you were heading the CIA, were you aware that the Shah was in as much trouble as he turned out tobe, his base of support was as thin as it was?

BUSH No.

SCHEER Then was the CIA malfunctioning?

BUSH It had been weakened by a lot of things, yes, and sometimes you can’t accurately project or predict revolutionary change in intelligence—the CIA or any other intelligence service.

SCHEER It’s also been said that the CIA was relying too much for its information on Iran on people close to the Shah, his ruling circle, Ambassador Zahedi, etc.

BUSH Yes, I’ve heard that said.

SCHEER But you’re disinclined to believe it?

BUSH Disinclined to believe it.

SCHEER We, the American public, were told by our Administration, which presumably had the benefit of these intelligence reports, that the Shah, for better or worse, had the support of the people and was capable of continuing in that country. That’s what Jimmy Carter told us when he went to Tehran.

BUSH I don’t have access to the reports in the last three years, but in ’76 I don’t think there was any prediction that the Shah was about to be overthrown.

SCHEER What I’m asking is, how come the CIA didn’t have a glimmer of understanding of the shallow basis of support for the Shah?

BUSH I can’t answer your question about whether it had a glimmer of it. Sure there was. There were articles in 1973 from analysts showing up about lack of support for the Shah in some way, so—but how come one didn’t read accurately revolutionary change in this country? It’s because it’s very hard to do.

SCHEER Do you feel there’s a conflict of interest if David Rockefeller—whose bank has financial dealings with the Shah—was playing the role of a go-between between our government and the Shah in exile? Do you feel there are some serious questions raised by that?

BUSH No, no serious questions.

SCHEER Why not? You don’t feel there’s any problem?

BUSH He made his decisions to do what he wants to do. A government can take advice, or somebody can try to do something for a client or a friend, and the government makes it own decisions.

SCHEER But here’s a situation in which the former Republican Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was criticizing the Administration for not coming to the aid of an ally, the Shah. And at the same time he was acting in tandem with David Rockefeller to get the Shah into this country.

BUSH I just stand by what the President said about the decision on the Shah coming into this country. I don’t think he’s lying to the American people.

SCHEER You have promised a $20 billion tax cut, increasing military expenditures in real dollars, and curtailing inflation. Would that mean cutting back on certain social programs?

BUSH Might be.

SCHEER What programs would you cut back in terms of real dollars?

BUSH I’ll give you a list in about February.

SCHEER What about balancing the budget?

BUSH If Jimmy Carter continues on his merry way, the budget’s going to be in balance between ’82 and ’83, doing nothing different . . . The magic is not balance, it’s how you get there.

SCHEER So getting to social programs—the HEW budget, the HUD budget, the transportation budget—do you feel that there’ll be any need for a cut in those budgets?

BUSH I’d like to find ways to cut them all in real dollars, if I could. Don’t get me wrong—I think the budget is way too big, and I think there would be some ways in which you could have some real cuts. But the question is, when I say hold the growth, people think I’m saying cut—and that’s not what we’re talking about, we’re talking about something very different.

SCHEER The question is, do you cut any real programs?

BUSH . . . Revenue sharing, some of CETA . . .

SCHEER Are we talking about a decline in the delivery by the government in the area of non-military services?

BUSH I think we’ve gone way too far—when you look at the percentage of gross national product spent on social programs and the percentage spent on defense, it has almost reversed itself in terms of which one has gotten more of the spending attention . . . I want to stimulate the private sector and I want to have less emphasis on the public sector.

SCHEER A major theme in your campaign has been the issue of over-regulation. In a speech in Alabama, you said we’re over-regulated to death.

BUSH I used the example there of making everybody in the United States have an air bag, whether he wanted to or not, add $400 to the cost of the car because a handful of people in this country think that this is going to be what we need for ourselves.

SCHEER We’ve had a lot of regulation of auto safety—what about the things other than the air bag? We went through a period of trying to make cars safer, seat belts, moving the gas tanks, all this sort of thing. Do you feel in general we’ve had excessive regulation in auto safety?

BUSH Yes—the time that you couldn’t turn your car on because your seat belt wasn’t fastened, that went too far. And there was something we did something about, and the American people sighed a big, collective sigh of relief.

SCHEER But in your speech you didn’t say there’d been some excesses; you told this audience we’d been regulated to death. Now in the area of auto safety—

BUSH And did they respond, because they knew exactly what I was talking about. Nobody there felt that there was no role for this, but everyone knew what I meant when I talked about the excesses of regulation. I thought that was one of my more brilliant moments, frankly.

SCHEER You didn’t say excesses—you said regulated to death. But the problem when a politician says that, he doesn’t say exactly in which areas we’ve been over-regulated, because one person’s regulation may be another person’s emancipation. For instance, minimum wage, occupational health and safety regulations may be welcomed by workers and thought to be over-regulation by employers. Now, for example, do you think we’ve been regulated to death in the area of OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration]?

BUSH Yes.

SCHEER What, specifically, would you cut out?

BUSH It’s gone too far: The idea that you have to put an outhouse on so many acres of land in Montana, that they tried to put in there for a while—that’s too much. The idea that everybody has to have a stepladder that conforms to a design made by someone in Washington—that’s too much.

SCHEER In any program, you can find the silly examples. But I’m saying, is there room for serious improvement of occupational health and safety standards? Should we go further in that direction with federal guidelines or should we move back, or should we stand still?

BUSH Right now, in terms of protecting ourselves from ourselves, we’ve gone about as far as we need to go. Now, if there are exceptions out there that are endangering the lives of workers, of course you should have inspection, of course the laws should be followed. But we’ve gone too far is my point.

SCHEER Do you think we’ve gone too far in protecting the environment?

BUSH I don’t think you can ever go too far in the actual protection of it, but do you have some regulations that are so strong that you’re shutting down the chance for a person to get a job or have any growth and help people that need it the most? Yes.

SCHEER You have said we should help the handicapped, yet one of the regulations that has come down is that you have to have a certain number of parking spaces for the handicapped, you have to have ramps. Now, someone could say that’s excessive regulation . . . For the handicapped people, it’s been a breakthrough. Now would you cut that out?

BUSH . . . For the overall good—is it better to make every bus kneel at the curb for the handicapped when it might be cheaper and even better for them to have some kind of transit, some kind of delivery system that would not compel the public to pay for the changes in every mode of transportation to accommodate the handicapped? Maybe it would be better to have a more specific mode of transportation to serve the handicapped. You’ve got to sort it out.

SCHEER What’s your position on abortions?

BUSH I oppose abortion.

SCHEER What does it mean to oppose it—that it should be illegal?

BUSH . . . No federal funding except in case of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I do not want to amend the Constitution to override the decision of the Supreme Court.

SCHEER When you say you’re opposed to abortion, you’re not for making it illegal?

BUSH Nope.

SCHEER So you’re just opposed to making it easier for poorer women to get abortions?

BUSH I’ve just told you—I do not favor federal funding—there are other ways that can be done, and I don’t favor federal funding for it. This is clear, concise, I can’t help you by fine-tuning it any. You can ask me more questions but I don’t have to answer—this is a free world, I’m protected under not having to exercise my First Amendment rights.

SCHEER So if I, as interviewer, would like to ask you whether this comes out of religious principles, what about the needs of the mother, what about economic implications—all of those questions that you’re not interested in answering, I should forget them?

BUSH You know, I’m one who finds these contentious single issues to be a trend in politics that I would rather not enhance by elaborating on; I know you’re fascinated by them and many of your readers are, but I’ve given you my position on it.

SCHEER The issue of homosexuality came up at the Iowa debate. You were asked about pornography and gay rights as an example of growing immorality. You said you were against the harassment of homosexuals but you are opposed to any codification of gay rights.

BUSH I think there’s protection under the law to see people aren’t abused. I don’t think we need a codification, kind of putting a stamp of approval on that lifestyle. That’s not what our society should be asked to do . . .

SCHEER But how do you prevent harassment unless people have rights codified in law?

BUSH I don’t think American society should be asked to accept that homosexuality is a standard which should be held up for acceptance. I just don’t believe that, and I’m not going to push for it.

SCHEER In the Iowa debate, you were asked about illegal immigration. You said, “I favor return to some kind of documentation.” What does that mean?

BUSH Well, you know, they used to have the green card, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.

SCHEER Well, they still have the green card—a legal resident has the green card. Do you favor some sort of amnesty for the illegal immigrants that are here?

BUSH I’d take a look at that, but I don’t know enough about—how many years, or how much time one would have to demonstrate he or she has been here before . . .

SCHEER What about increasing the quota for people coming from Mexico?

BUSH I don’t know what the magic number is, but I certainly would be looking at relations to Mexico, and I’d know how to be sensitive to their problems if we want to get something from them, and we do.

SCHEER Connally has offered his controversial Mideast plan. What is yours?

BUSH We should improve relations with the moderate Arab countries without diminishing our commitment to Israel. My view is it should not be thrown up for negotiation—in other words, we must never have the perception as a country of being willing to trade off an ally, which is a moral and strategic alliance, for a hoped-for economic gain.

SCHEER Do you feel in your reading of the Camp David accords that there was a commitment to a Palestinian state?

BUSH Solution to the Palestinian question, yes.

SCHEER Do you have any criticisms whatsoever of either the Begin or the Sadat governments in this process?

BUSH Yeah, I’ve been critical of the settlements—you know, the advance in moving forward, for example, in settlements by Begin’s government and Sadat . . .

SCHEER Could you be more explicit?

BUSH No, I couldn’t. I’ve given you that and that’s all I’ll give you.

Salaried Workers Beware: GM Cuts Are a Warning for All

DETROIT—For generations, the career path for smart kids around Detroit was to get an engineering or business degree and get hired by an automaker or parts supplier. If you worked hard and didn’t screw up, you had a job for life with enough money to raise a family, take vacations and buy a weekend cottage in northern Michigan.

Now that once-reliable route to prosperity appears to be vanishing, as evidenced by General Motors’ announcement this week that it plans to shed 8,000 white-collar jobs on top of 6,000 blue-collar ones.

It was a humbling warning that in this era of rapid and disruptive technological change, those with a college education are not necessarily insulated from the kind of layoffs factory workers know all too well.

The cutbacks reflect a transformation underway in both the auto industry and the broader U.S. economy, with nearly every type of business becoming oriented toward computers, software and automation.

“This is a big mega-trend pervading the whole economy,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has researched changes being caused by the digital age.

Cities that suffered manufacturing job losses decades ago are now grappling with the problem of fewer opportunities for white-collar employees such as managers, lawyers, bankers and accountants. Since 2008, The Associated Press found, roughly a third of major U.S. metro areas have lost a greater percentage of white-collar jobs than blue-collar jobs. It’s a phenomenon seen in such places as Wichita, Kansas, with its downsized aircraft industry, and towns in Wisconsin that have lost auto, industrial machinery or furniture-making jobs.

In GM’s case, the jobs that will be shed through buyouts and layoffs are held largely by people who are experts in the internal combustion engine — mechanical engineers and others who spent their careers working on fuel injectors, transmissions, exhaust systems and other components that won’t be needed for the electric cars that eventually will drive themselves. GM, the nation’s largest automaker, says those vehicles are its future.

“We’re talking about high-skilled people who have made a substantial investment in their education,” said Marina Whitman, a retired professor of business and public policy at the University of Michigan and a former GM chief economist. “The transitions can be extremely painful for a subset of people.”

GM is still hiring white-collar employees, but the new jobs are for those who can write software code, design laser sensors or develop batteries and other devices for future vehicles.

Those who are being thrown out of work might have to learn new skills if they hope to find new jobs, underscoring what Whitman said is another truism about the new economy: “You’ve got to regard education as a lifetime process. You probably are going to have multiple jobs in your lifetime. You’ve got to stay flexible.”

Whitman said mechanical engineers are smart people who could transfer their skills to software or batteries, but they’ll need training, and that takes time and money.

“In the past with these kinds of changes, eventually new jobs have been created,” she said. “Will it happen this time, or is the change taking place too fast for everybody to be absorbed? I don’t know.”

Although the job cuts took him and co-workers by surprise, Tracy Lucas, 54, a GM engine quality manager, decided to take the buyout and change careers. His children are grown and on their own, and with 33 years in at GM, he will get a pension and health care.

The buyout will also give him about eight months of pay, enough time to take his newly earned master’s degree in business administration and look for different work. He said he will be glad to leave some tedious management tasks behind but will miss seeing through a lot of work to reduce engine warranty claims.

He is leaving in part, he said, to save a job for younger co-workers. GM got 2,250 white-collar workers to take buyouts, and will have to complete the cutbacks by way of layoffs.

“I really hate that we have to go into the whole process of tapping people on the shoulder,” Lucas said. “I don’t think the second wave is going to be pretty at all. It’s going to be brutal.”

The white-collar cutbacks — combined with more to come at Ford, which is likewise making the transition from personal ownership of gasoline-burning vehicles to ride-sharing and self-driving electric cars — could hamper the renaissance underway in Detroit, which is emerging from bankruptcy and a long population decline.

Many of these automotive industry engineers and managers are pulling down six-figure salaries, and some may have to move out of the Detroit metro area for new jobs.

The Brookings Institution’s Muro wonders whether auto companies will bring more electrical engineers and software developers to Michigan or put them in places where such jobs are already clustered, such as San Francisco, Seattle, Boston or near major research universities.

“This is how regions change and labor markets change,” Muro said.

GM says it will hire in the Detroit area, but its autonomous-vehicle workforce has grown to over 1,000 at offices in San Francisco and Seattle.

Nearly all of the 8,000 white-collar cutbacks will be in metropolitan Detroit, largely at GM’s technical center in Warren, a suburb north of the city. That’s equal to about 4 percent of the managerial and engineering jobs in the Detroit-Warren area, according to the Labor Department. Managerial salaries in the area average $124,000.

Ford, which is just beginning its salaried workforce downsizing, hasn’t said how many will go. But even if it’s half of GM’s total, the white-collar losses around Detroit will approach those during the financial crisis of a decade ago, when the metro areas shed 14,450 managerial and engineering jobs. That was 8.9 percent of those types of jobs in the metro areas.

Layoffs are also likely to spread to auto parts suppliers, which won’t need to design and build as many parts for gas-powered cars.

While GM says cutting these positions is necessary to save money to invest in the new technology, there are possible long-term costs to shedding so many experienced workers in one swoop, especially if the switch to electric vehicles stalls, said Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, a management professor at Brandeis University. If that were to happen, the cutbacks could leave GM without the vital expertise it needs.

Even the most skilled white-collar workers need to spend less and be prepared to change jobs or locations to stay employed, said Rick Knoth, a retired GM industrial engineer who survived a 2008 downsizing by taking an early retirement package after 37 years with the company.

Knoth said he is confident most engineers are smart enough to turn their skills into a new career. But all white-collar employees need to be ready for change because it comes fast, he said.

“The world isn’t like it used to be, that’s for sure,” he said. “You can’t count on anything.”

____

Corey Williams contributed to this report from Warren, Michigan. Boak reported from Washington.

More Governments Opt to Phase Out Oil Production

A growing number of governments are choosing to phase out oil production, reasoning that cutting the availability of fossil fuels can help to cut the demand for them.

The world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible, yes? And one of the main causes of the emissions is the burning of fuels such as oil, gas and coal? Right again. So the simple and obvious answer, these governments are deciding, is to stop the drilling and mining which extract fossil fuels.

That’s the argument examined in a report by researchers from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). There’s already a growing movement to leave fossil fuels in the ground. But their study concentrates specifically on governments.

They say phasing out oil production could be the next big step in climate policy, thanks to an initial group of first-movers who’ve already taken the plunge.

One is Spain, which announced this month that it plans to completely decarbonise its electricity system by mid-century, a move which includes a total ban on all oil and gas exploration.

The SEI team outlines its findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. The authors will present their results in greater detail in the Polish city of Katowice on 5 December at this year’s UN global climate summit, COP24.

They focus on California as the possible next addition to this growing list of governments choosing to forego oil extraction. The study finds numerous benefits to restricting production, including not only reducing global emissions but also helping to revoke the “social licence” of fossil fuel producers – the public acceptance of their activities.

“Countries like France, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Belize and – just last week – Spain are sending a clear signal by phasing out oil production,” said Georgia Piggot, an SEI sociologist and co-author of the study. “The fossil fuel era needs to end soon, and governments need to have clear plans in place to ensure an orderly and fair transition.”

With California as a case study, the SEI report points to a resolution by the state’s Air Resources Board to “evaluate and explore” reducing the production of petroleum.

Boosting environmental justice

It finds that phasing out oil in California would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by roughly the same amount as many of the other climate policies currently planned by the state. And, because most oil drilling there happens in the most pollution-vulnerable communities, phasing it out would have important environmental justice benefits as well.

“Gradually phasing down oil production is a reasonable approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said SEI senior scientist Peter Erickson, the study’s lead author.

“California is one of the top oil-producing states in the US, but it is also a climate leader. Restricting oil production would complement the state’s flagship policies, such as strengthened standards for clean power or energy efficiency.”

The study’s lessons apply to other states too. It concludes that governments that aim to demonstrate leadership and meet the Paris Agreement goals have “a number of policy options that can limit future production of oil and other fossil fuels, while delivering important global emissions and local environmental benefits.”

Limiting temperature rise

The Paris Agreement settled on a target that global temperatures should increase by no more than 2°C above their pre-industrial levels, with governments striving to keep the rise to just 1.5°C.

Peter Erickson told the Climate News Network that the scenarios published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with its recent report Global Warming of 1.5°C provided guideposts to the SEI’s work.

He said: “The median results of those scenarios suggest that global oil production (and consumption) needs to decline more than 40% between 2020 and 2030 to meet a 1.5°C target, global coal production (and consumption) more than 80%, and global gas production (and consumption) by more than 40% (the declines are rather less for meeting a 2°C goal).

“These declines could be accomplished most effectively with both demand and supply-side measures. That is our central point – that limiting fossil fuel production is an important complement to limiting demand.”

America Is Headed for Military Defeat in Afghanistan

There’s a prevailing maxim, both inside the armed forces and around the Beltway, that goes something like this: “The U.S. can never be militarily defeated in any war,” certainly not by some third world country. Heck, I used to believe that myself. That’s why, in regard to Afghanistan, we’ve been told that while America could lose the war due to political factors (such as the lack of grit among “soft” liberals or defeatists), the military could never and will never lose on the battlefield.

That entire maxim is about to be turned on its head. Get ready, because we’re about to lose this war militarily.

Consider this: the U.S. military has advised, assisted, battled, and bombed in Afghanistan for 17-plus years. Ground troop levels have fluctuated from lows of some 10,000 to upwards of 100,000 servicemen and women. None of that has achieved more than a tie, a bloody stalemate. Now, in the 18th year of this conflict, the Kabul-Washington coalition’s military is outright losing.

Let’s begin with the broader measures. The Taliban controls or contests more districts—some 44 percent—than at any time since the 2001 invasion. Total combatant and civilian casualties are forecasted to top 20,000 this year—another dreadful broken record. What’s more, Afghan military casualties are frankly unsustainable: the Taliban are killing more than the government can recruit. The death rates are staggering, numbering 5,500 fatalities in 2015, 6,700 in 2016, and an estimate (the number is newly classified) of “about 10,000” in 2017. Well, some might ask, what about American airpower—can’t that help stem the Taliban tide? Hardly. In 2018, as security deteriorated and the Taliban made substantial gains, the U.S. actually dropped more bombs than in any other year of the war. It appears that nothing stands in the way of impending military defeat.

Then there are the very recent events on the ground—and these are telling. Insider attacks in which Afghan “allies” turn their guns on American advisors are back on the rise, most recently in an attack that wounded a U.S. Army general and threatened the top U.S. commander in the country. And while troop numbers are way down from the high in 2011, American troops deaths are rising. Over the Thanksgiving season alone, a U.S. Army Ranger was killed in a friendly fire incident and three other troopers died in a roadside bomb attack. And in what was perhaps only a (still disturbing) case of misunderstood optics, the top U.S. commander, General Miller, was filmed carrying his own M4 rifle around Afghanistan. That’s a long way from the days when then-General Petraeus (well protected by soldiers, of course) walked around the markets of Baghdad in a soft cap and without body armor.

More importantly, the Afghan army and police are getting hammered in larger and larger attacks and taking unsustainable casualties. Some 26 Afghan security forces were killed on Thanksgiving, 22 policemen  in an attack on Sunday, and on Tuesday 30 civilians were killed in Helmand province. And these were only the high-profile attacks, dwarfed by the countless other countrywide incidents. All this proves that no matter how hard the U.S. military worked, or how many years it committed to building an Afghan army in its own image, and no matter how much air and logistical support that army received, the Afghan Security Forces cannot win. The sooner Washington accepts this truth over the more comforting lie, the fewer of our adulated American soldiers will have to die. Who is honestly ready to be the last to die for a mistake, or at least a hopeless cause?

Now, admittedly, this author is asking for trouble—and fierce rebuttals—from both peers and superiors still serving on active duty. And that’s understandable. The old maxim of military invincibility soothes these men, mollifies their sense of personal loss, whether of personal friends or years away from home, in wars to which they’ve now dedicated their entire adult lives. Questioning whether there even is a military solution in Afghanistan, or, more specifically, predicting a military defeat, serves only to upend their mental framework surrounding the war.

Still, sober strategy and basic honesty demands a true assessment of the military situation in America’s longest war. The Pentagon loves metrics, data, and stats. Well, as demonstrated daily on the ground in Afghanistan, all the security (read: military) metrics point towards impending defeat. At best, the Afghan army, with ample U.S. advisory detachments and air support, can hold on to the northernmost and westernmost provinces of the country, while a Taliban coalition overruns the south and east. This will be messy, ugly, and discomfiting for military and civilian leaders alike. But unless Washington is prepared to redeploy 100,000 soldiers to Afghanistan (again)—and still only manage a tie, by the way—it is also all but inevitable.

The United States military did all it was asked during more than 17 years of warfare in Afghanistan. It raided, it bombed, it built, it surged, it advised, it…everything. Still, none of that was sufficient. Enough Afghans either support the Taliban or hate the occupation, and managed, through assorted conventional and unconventional operations, to fight on the ground. And “on the ground” is all that really matters. This war may well have been ill-advised and unwinnable from the start.

There’s no shame in defeat. But there is shame, and perfidy, in avoiding or covering up the truth. It’s what the whole military-political establishment did after Vietnam, and, I fear, it’s what they’re doing again.

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

Embattled Elections Official Suspended in Florida

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — An embattled county elections official at the center of Florida’s recall has been suspended.

Gov. Rick Scott issued an executive order Friday immediately suspending Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes from office for misfeasance, incompetence and neglect of duty.

Snipes has been the top elections official in the south Florida county since 2003 when then-Gov. Jeb Bush appointed her. She came under withering criticism for her handling of this year’s elections, as well as its legally required recount in close races for governor and U.S. Senate.

Snipes previously indicated she planned to step down in January. Scott said in a statement that taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay an official who has already announced her resignation.

Scott appointed Enterprise Florida President and CEO Peter Antonacci to replace Snipes. Voters will have a chance to elect a new supervisor in 2020.

Former President George H.W. Bush Dies at Age 94

HOUSTON — George H.W. Bush, a patrician New Englander whose presidency soared with the coalition victory over Iraq in Kuwait, but then plummeted in the throes of a weak economy that led voters to turn him out of office after a single term, has died. He was 94.

The World War II hero, who also presided during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the final months of the Cold War, died late Friday night at his Houston home, said family spokesman Jim McGrath. His wife of more than 70 years, Barbara Bush, died in April 2018.

The son of a senator and father of a president, Bush was the man with the golden resume who rose through the political ranks: from congressman to U.N. ambassador, Republican Party chairman to envoy to China, CIA director to two-term vice president under the hugely popular Ronald Reagan. The 1991 Gulf War stoked his popularity. But Bush would acknowledge that he had trouble articulating “the vision thing,” and he was haunted by his decision to break a stern, solemn vow he made to voters: “Read my lips. No new taxes.”

He lost his bid for re-election to Bill Clinton in a campaign in which businessman H. Ross Perot took almost 19 percent of the vote as an independent candidate. Still, he lived to see his son, George W., twice elected to the presidency — only the second father-and-son chief executives, following John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

The 43rd president issued a statement Friday following his father’s death, saying the elder Bush “was a man of the highest character.”

“The entire Bush family is deeply grateful for 41’s life and love, for the compassion of those who have cared and prayed for Dad,” the statement read.

After his 1992 defeat, George H.W. Bush complained that media-created “myths” gave voters a mistaken impression that he did not identify with the lives of ordinary Americans. He decided he lost because he “just wasn’t a good enough communicator.”

Once out of office, Bush was content to remain on the sidelines, except for an occasional speech or paid appearance and visits abroad. He backed Clinton on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which had its genesis during his own presidency. He visited the Middle East, where he was revered for his defense of Kuwait. And he returned to China, where he was welcomed as “an old friend” from his days as the U.S. ambassador there.

He later teamed with Clinton to raise tens of millions of dollars for victims of a 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005. During their wide-ranging travels, the political odd couple grew close.

“Who would have thought that I would be working with Bill Clinton, of all people?” Bush quipped in October 2005.

In his post-presidency, Bush’s popularity rebounded with the growth of his reputation as a fundamentally decent and well-meaning leader who, although he was not a stirring orator or a dreamy visionary, was a steadfast humanitarian. Elected officials and celebrities of both parties publicly expressed their fondness.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bush quickly began building an international military coalition that included other Arab states. After liberating Kuwait, he rejected suggestions that the U.S. carry the offensive to Baghdad, choosing to end the hostilities a mere 100 hours after the start of the ground war.

“That wasn’t our objective,” he told The Associated Press in 2011 from his office just a few blocks from his Houston home. “The good thing about it is there was so much less loss of human life than had been predicted and indeed than we might have feared.”

But the decisive military defeat did not lead to the regime’s downfall, as many in the administration had hoped.

“I miscalculated,” acknowledged Bush. His legacy was dogged for years by doubts about the decision not to remove Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leader was eventually ousted in 2003, in the war led by Bush’s son that was followed by a long, bloody insurgency.

George H.W. Bush entered the White House in 1989 with a reputation as a man of indecision and indeterminate views. One newsmagazine suggested he was a “wimp.”

But his work-hard, play-hard approach to the presidency won broad public approval. He held more news conferences in most months than Reagan did in most years.

The Iraq crisis of 1990-91 brought out all the skills Bush had honed in a quarter-century of politics and public service.

After winning United Nations support and a green light from a reluctant Congress, Bush unleashed a punishing air war against Iraq and a five-day ground juggernaut that sent Iraqi forces reeling in disarray back to Baghdad. He basked in the biggest outpouring of patriotism and pride in America’s military since World War II, and his approval ratings soared to nearly 90 percent.

The other battles he fought as president, including a war on drugs and a crusade to make American children the best educated in the world, were not so decisively won.

He rode into office pledging to make the United States a “kinder, gentler” nation and calling on Americans to volunteer their time for good causes — an effort he said would create “a thousand points of light.”

It was Bush’s violation of a different pledge, the no-new-taxes promise, that helped sink his bid for a second term. He abandoned the idea in his second year, cutting a deficit-reduction deal that angered many congressional Republicans and contributed to GOP losses in the 1990 midterm elections.

An avid outdoorsman who took Theodore Roosevelt as a model, Bush sought to safeguard the environment and signed the first improvements to the Clean Air Act in more than a decade. It was activism with a Republican cast, allowing polluters to buy others’ clean-air credits and giving industry flexibility on how to meet tougher goals on smog.

He also signed the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act to ban workplace discrimination against people with disabilities and require improved access to public places and transportation.

Bush failed to rein in the deficit, which had tripled to $3 trillion under Reagan and galloped ahead by as much as $300 billion a year under Bush, who put his finger on it in his inauguration speech: “We have more will than wallet.”

Seven years of economic growth ended in mid-1990, just as the Gulf crisis began to unfold. Bush insisted the recession would be “short and shallow,” and lawmakers did not even try to pass a jobs bill or other relief measures.

Bush’s true interests lay elsewhere, outside the realm of nettlesome domestic politics. “I love coping with the problems in foreign affairs,” he told a child who asked what he liked best about being president.

He operated at times like a one-man State Department, on the phone at dawn with his peers — Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, Francois Mitterrand of France, Germany’s Helmut Kohl.

Communism began to crumble on his watch, with the Berlin Wall coming down, the Warsaw Pact disintegrating and the Soviet satellites falling out of orbit.

He seized leadership of the NATO alliance with a bold and ultimately successful proposal for deep troop and tank cuts in Europe. Huge crowds cheered him on a triumphal tour through Poland and Hungary.

Bush’s invasion of Panama in December 1989 was a military precursor of the Gulf War: a quick operation with a resoundingly superior American force. But in Panama, the troops seized dictator Manuel Noriega and brought him back to the United States in chains to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges.

Months after the Gulf War, Washington became engrossed in a different sort of confrontation over one of Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas, a little-known federal appeals court judge, was accused of sexual harassment by a former colleague named Anita Hill. His confirmation hearings exploded into a national spectacle, sparking an intense debate over race, gender and the modern workplace. Thomas was eventually confirmed.

In the closing days of the 1992 campaign, Bush fought the impression that he was distant and disconnected, and he seemed to struggle against the younger, more empathetic Clinton.

During a campaign visit to a grocers’ convention, Bush reportedly expressed amazement when shown an electronic checkout scanner. Critics seized on the moment, saying it indicated that the president had become disconnected from voters.

Later at a town-hall style debate, he paused to look at his wristwatch — a seemingly innocent glance that became freighted with deeper meaning because it seemed to reinforce the idea of a bored, impatient incumbent.

In the same debate, Bush became confused by a woman’s question about whether the deficit had affected him personally. Clinton, with apparent ease, left his seat, walked to the edge of the stage to address the woman and offered a sympathetic answer.

Bush said the pain of losing in 1992 was eased by the warm reception he received after leaving office.

“I lost in ’92 because people still thought the economy was in the tank, that I was out of touch and I didn’t understand that,” he said in an AP interview shortly before the dedication of his presidential library in 1997. “The economy wasn’t in the tank, and I wasn’t out of touch, but I lost. I couldn’t get through this hue and cry for ‘change, change, change’ and ‘The economy is horrible, still in recession.’

George Herbert Walker Bush was born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, into the New England elite, a world of prep schools, mansions and servants seemingly untouched by the Great Depression.

His father, Prescott Bush, the son of an Ohio steel magnate, made his fortune as an investment banker and later served 10 years as a senator from Connecticut.

George H.W. Bush enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday in 1942, right out of prep school. He returned home to marry his 19-year-old sweetheart, Barbara Pierce, daughter of the publisher of McCall’s magazine, in January 1945. They were the longest-married presidential couple in U.S. history. She died on April 17, 2018.

Lean and athletic at 6-foot-2, Bush became a war hero while still a teenager. One of the youngest pilots in the Navy, he flew 58 missions off the carrier USS San Jacinto.

He had to ditch one plane in the Pacific and was shot down on Sept. 2, 1944, while completing a bombing run against a Japanese radio tower. An American submarine rescued Bush. His two crewmates perished. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.

After the war, Bush took just 2½ years to graduate from Yale, then headed west in 1948 to the oil fields of West Texas. Bush and partners helped found Zapata Petroleum Corp. in 1953. Six years later, he moved to Houston and became active in the Republican Party.

In politics, he showed the same commitment he displayed in business, advancing his career through loyalty and subservience.

He was first elected to Congress in 1966 and served two terms. President Richard Nixon appointed him ambassador to the United Nations, and after the 1972 election, named him chairman of the Republican National Committee. Bush struggled to hold the party together as Watergate destroyed the Nixon presidency, then became ambassador to China and CIA chief in the Ford administration.

Bush made his first bid for president in 1980 and won the Iowa caucuses, but Reagan went on to win the nomination.

In the 1988 presidential race, Bush trailed the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, by as many as 17 points that summer. He did little to help himself by picking Dan Quayle, a lightly regarded junior senator from Indiana, as a running mate.

But Bush soon became an aggressor, stressing patriotic themes and flailing Dukakis as an out-of-touch liberal. He carried 40 states, becoming the first sitting vice president to be elected president since Martin Van Buren in 1836.

He took office with the humility that was his hallmark.

“Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that,” he said at his inauguration. “But I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds.”

Bush approached old age with gusto, celebrating his 75th and 80th birthdays by skydiving over College Station, Texas, the home of his presidential library. He did it again on his 85th birthday in 2009, parachuting near his oceanfront home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He used his presidential library at Texas A&M University as a base for keeping active in civic life.

He became the patriarch of one of the nation’s most prominent political families. In addition to George W. becoming president, another son, Jeb, was elected Florida governor in 1998 and made an unsuccessful run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

The other Bush children are sons Neil and Marvin and daughter Dorothy Bush LeBlond. Another daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953, a few weeks before her fourth birthday.

Naomi Klein on the Urgency of a ‘Green New Deal’ for Everyone

Progressive journalist and activist Naomi Klein urged sweeping change that tackles the climate crisis, capitalism, racism and economic inequality in tandem on Friday in Burlington, Vt. If that seems challenging, add the fact that the clock is ticking and there might not be another chance.

“We need to have started yesterday,” Klein said at the three-day Sanders Institute Gathering on a panel moderated by environmental activist Bill McKibben. “What all of us who follow the science know is that we just can’t lose these four years,” she said, referring to the presidency of climate change denier Donald Trump. The conference, organized by the think tank founded by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane, is aimed at forming bold progressive agendas for the future.

Progressives are looking to incoming Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for leadership as she galvanizes a grassroots effort by the youth-led climate change group Sunrise Movement to reduce fossil fuel dependence. Eighteen members of Congress support the idea of creating a House Select Committee to look at making a realistic plan by January 2020.

“This is not just about a Green New Deal, this is about a New Deal for the United States of America,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday. “Because in every moment when our country has reached the depths of darkness, in every moment when we were at the brink, at the cusp of an abyss and we did not know if we would be capable of saving ourselves, we have.”

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent report outlined what Klein called “a terrifying 12 years” to cut fossil fuel use nearly in half by 2030.

The climate crisis is embedded in nearly every aspect of the issues you see on the front page of the newspaper, but it is rarely framed that way. Mass migration is often fueled by climate instability and food insecurity, while experts predict rising sea levels will leave even more people unrooted in the future. Politicians who take campaign donations from oil and gas companies are more likely to push policies that support them. The sweeping military-industrial complex has a dependence on fossil fuels. And poor people, as we saw most recently in the devastating California fires, are less likely to be able to protect themselves from disaster or recover afterward

“Great policy does the work of solving problems for real people,” said panelist Abdul El-Sayed, a 2018 Michigan gubernatorial candidate. He mentioned a hypothetical example of a young girl living in Detroit who has asthma from pollution originating at nearby factories and petroleum refineries. Children with asthma are likely to miss school at least one school day every two weeks, he said.

“When we talk about the climate change epidemic let’s think about the roots, and the roots are in those communities where this climate is released and the consequences are babies who can’t go to school because they cannot breathe,” he added.

Klein cautioned against resting on the laurels of past progressive initiatives, which were often racist. “I think when we use the phrase ‘New Deal’ it reminds us there is a historical precedent for responding to collective crisis with transformational change. But it should also be a reminder that that first New Deal didn’t have enough justice embedded in the center by any means,” she said.

The New Deal was a series of programs and reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1939 that helped the country recover from the Great Depression, but it had serious flaws—particularly in terms of home ownership, an important way for the lower and middle classes to accumulate wealth. The Federal Housing Commission, created in 1934, facilitated racial segregation that persists today, more than 80 years later.

Activist Gus Newport, who was mayor of Berkeley, Calif., from 1979 to 1986, told the panelists that the name “Green New Deal” gives him concern because “redlining came out of the New Deal,” referring to the practice of racial discrimination in mortgage lending. Neighborhoods that were home to African-Americans, Asians, Jews, Catholics and other minorities that experienced unfair treatment by the Home Owners’ Loan Corp in the 1930s are likely to still be home to minority, low-income residents today. Newport said that black and Latino families targeted by predatory lending during the 2008 financial crisis saw their wealth demolished.

Klein emphasized that the problems of capitalism and the climate crisis are irreconcilably linked; rich people are invested in keeping the system the same, because it works for them. “The IPCC report is very clear … that what is required now is transformation of every aspect of society. In other words, a political revolution,” she said.

Native Voices Unite to Defend Sacred Lands

“Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears”
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“Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears”

A book edited by Jacqueline Keeler

In the final month of his administration, Barack Obama designated 1.35 million acres in Utah as the Bears Ears National Monument. A year later, Donald Trump slashed the expanse by 85 percent, leaving about 200,000 acres under federal protection.

Trump said he reduced the size of Bears Ears to combat government overreach, but critics claim the move opened the area to mining and drilling. The Washington Post discovered that a uranium company had conducted an intensive lobbying campaign to cut down the amount of protected land.

Native tribes, environmentalists and concerned businesses such as Patagonia have filed a lawsuit that claims the executive branch lacks authority to alter the size of national monuments. If the suit fails, no designated national monument is safe, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears,” edited by Jacqueline Keeler and featuring essays, interviews and poetry by Native American writers, addresses the issue at the heart of all the political and legal wrangling: For Native Americans, the Bears Ears land is an endangered, irreplaceable spiritual and cultural center. The book describes the unprecedented collaborative process that preceded the national monument designation. Even more importantly, it articulates the nature and depth of Native American ties to the land. We learn about the Bears Ears in particular, but the greater lesson deals with culture, identity and, as one writer says, “what it means to be human.”

Click here to read long excerpts from “Edge of Morning” at Google Books.

Thirteen Native tribes have cultural ties to the Bears Ears land, and leading up to Obama’s designation, five of those tribes joined forces to push for federal protection of the area. The Bears Ears was important enough for the tribes to bury their historical differences, according to “Edge of Morning” contributor Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk:

“The proposal we developed is absolutely unique because the five tribes that came together to organize this group really, truly represent a sense of healing within. When Navajos and Hopis can sit together in one room and have the same common goals—likewise, the Navajo and the Ute. These tribes on both sides have been traditionally great enemies for many generations. This is actually a phenomenal change—that we can come to see something in common instead of seeing our differences. …

“I recall the day that we came together and said we’re going to do this. I remember one of the discussions, specifically, was we would leave all other politics out of the ring when we gather to speak about Bears Ears.”

The result was a groundbreaking proposal that Native tribes and the U.S. government work collaboratively to manage the land within the Bears Ears National Monument. But in October 2017, as the Bears Ears Commission of Tribes prepared to meet with federal representatives to discuss implementing this joint management, Trump made his decision to decimate the national monument.

“Edge of Morning” contributors range from inter-tribal coalition members such as Lopez-Whiteskunk to seasoned writers including former Oregon Poet Laureate Elizabeth Woody. The contributors present different perspectives according to their interests and expertise, so the book provides a well-rounded look at the present and historical significance of the monument land.

Some writers concentrate on the importance of cultural preservation at Bears Ears. The area contains remains of ancient homes, artifacts of daily life and invaluable cliff drawings, all endangered without federal protection. A critical part of cultural preservation is allowing Native people to experience the natural setting of their forebears, archeologist Lyle Balenquah explains in the book:

“For millennia … ancestors of modern Hopi people lived in this region, refining the practical knowledge and spiritual energy that allowed them to not only exist, but thrive in a seemingly harsh environment. This knowledge and experience would be passed from generation to generation, ultimately culminating and expressed in the contemporary culture of Hopi people, reflecting a connection that spans thousands of years across hundreds of miles. …

“The Bears Ears movement is about more than just preservation for preservation’s sake. … It’s about the protection of Indigenous cultures so that we retain our ability to pass on our traditional knowledge to future generations.”

Several contributors address the spiritual significance of Bears Ears. “Bears Ears [is sacred land] to our people, a place where our Ancestors worshipped and were buried,” activist Wayland Gray writes.

Gray and Klee Benally, another activist who contributed to “Edge of Morning,” compare Bears Ears to other sacred sites that have come under attack, including Hickory Ground in Alabama, where a casino was built on a Native graveyard, and Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks, a historically spiritual area that was desecrated when a ski resort covered the area with fake snow made of treated sewage.

Benally describes a condition called “land trauma,” in which attacks on their lands cause Native Americans spiritual and emotional pain. The U.S. government has recognized the validity of this trauma in theory but not in practice, Benally says.

In a 2012 draft review of policy on Native sacred sites, the USDA and Forest Service agreed that protection of those sites is critical. “We … recognize that the continued existence of and access to Native American Sacred Sites is an important component of healing,” the document stated. “To disregard the value of Native American Sacred Sites would perpetrate the cycle of trauma.”

On the day this report came out, Benally and three others were arrested for peacefully protesting the Forest Service’s role in allowing treated-sewage snow on the San Francisco Peaks.

To the contributors in “Edge of Morning,” the fight to protect Bears Ears is critical because, as Gray says, every defeat makes it easier for other areas to be desecrated.

Gray writes, “Our connections to our ceremonial and burial grounds and sacred places make us who we are as Native People. … We must stand united and support each other to protect all of the sacred places of our nations.”

In addition to the cultural and spiritual value of Bears Ears, writers such as Lopez-Whiteskunk contribute personal reasons for the area to remain protected.

Lopez-Whiteskunk writes:

“And so, for my family, Bears Ears was a very central location for us. I’ve had … grandparents and family members who were raised in that area. Families that can show where their watermelon patch used to be or their orchards, where they grew up as children running and playing in the meadows and down near where the water was. They can tell of when they had to haul water from the waterways back to their camps where they were living. And my grandmother Stella Eyetoo can tell stories about their lives in Bears Ears right to the point where the federal government came and took them away to boarding school.”

“Edge of Morning” is written in a straightforward style, but the words are so passionate they border on poetry. Each chapter delivers a powerful message—usually one of continuity, spirituality and hope for the future in spite of a devastating past. I gained something from every passage—either new information or, more often, an expanded appreciation of Native American values and experiences.

Martie Simmons, another “Edge of Morning” contributor, adds a personalized plea to protect Native lands such as Bears Ears. Connecting history and humanity’s basic needs, she writes:

“Because of the resilience of my ancestors, I now have the capability to pass on stories, history, language, and culture to my children. I can show my children the land that their ancestors fought for and some even died to preserve. This is where they belong; this is where they will always have a home. At the end of the day, isn’t that where we all want to be?”