Chris Hedges's Blog, page 402

Tariff Tensions Shadow U.S., Canada, Mexico Trade Pact Signing

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — President Donald Trump signed a revised North American trade pact with the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Friday, declaring the deal a major victory for workers. But tensions over tariffs, looming GM layoffs and questions about the pact’s prospects in Congress clouded the celebratory moment.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is meant to replace the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump has long denigrated as a “disaster.” The leaders signed the new deal on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires after two years of frequently blistering negotiations. Each country’s legislature still must approve.

“This has been a battle, and battles sometimes make great friendships, so it’s really terrific,” Trump said, before lining up next to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to sign three copies of the deal — Trump using a black marker for his signature scrawl.

The signing came at the beginning of a packed two days of diplomacy for the American president that will conclude with high-stakes talks Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping on ways to ease an escalating trade war between the two countries.

“There’s some good signs,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens.”

For the new North American trade deal, legislative approval is the next step. That could prove a difficult task in the United States, especially now that Democrats — instead of Trump’s Republicans — will control the House come January. Democrats and their allies in the labor movement are already demanding changes.

Within hours of the signing, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the deal must have stronger labor and environmental protections in order to get majority support in Congress and “must prove to be a net benefit to middle-class families and working people.”

Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — who is seeking to become House speaker in the new year — quipped, “The trade agreement formerly known as Prince — no, I mean, formerly known as NAFTA, is a work in progress.”

Still, Trump projected confidence, saying: “It’s been so well reviewed I don’t expect to have very much of a problem.”

Trump is describing USMCA as a landmark trade agreement. But most companies are just relieved that it largely preserves the status quo established by NAFTA: a regional trade bloc that allows most products to travel between the United States, Canada and Mexico duty free. During the negotiations, Trump repeatedly threatened to pull out, a move that would have disrupted businesses that have built complicated supply chains that straddle the borders of the three countries.

The new agreement does make some changes to the way business is done in North America. It updates the trade pact to reflect the rise of the digital economy since the original NAFTA took effect nearly a quarter century ago. It gives U.S. dairy farmers a bit more access to the protected Canadian market.

The biggest changes target the auto industry. The new deal encourages auto companies to invest or expand in the United States and Canada, not low-wage Mexico, by requiring that 40 percent of a car’s content be made where auto workers earn at least $16 an hour; otherwise, the cars won’t qualify for USMCA’s duty-free treatment.

Trudeau said the deal “lifts the risk of serious economic uncertainty” and said Canada worked hard for a “new, modernized agreement.” But he also used the ceremony to call on Trump to remove steel and aluminum tariffs the U.S. slapped on Canada and Mexico. Trudeau also referenced recent downsizing moves by GM in North America as a “heavy blow.”

Pena Nieto, who will hand off to his successor Saturday, said he was honored to be at the signing on the final day of his administration, calling it the culmination of a long process “that allow us to overcome differences and to conciliate our visions.”

Before Trump arrived in Argentina he injected additional drama into the proceedings by canceling a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Also of interest was whether Trump would have an encounter with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was attending amid global dismay over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump gathered with the leaders for a traditional group photo, but did not appear to acknowledge Putin or the crown prince as he walked by. A senior White House official said Trump and bin Salman exchanged pleasantries during a subsequent leaders’ session. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the crown prince’s situation.

Trump told reporters later: “We had no discussion. We might, but we had none.”

The president insisted he canceled his meeting with Putin because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine and not because of the federal investigation into Russian interference in his own election.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the same point: “On the basis of what took place with respect to the ships and the sailors, that was the sole reason.”

Trump announced via Twitter Thursday that he was canceling the planned meeting with Putin over Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian vessels. The abrupt announcement came not long after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted lying to Congress to cover up that he was negotiating a real estate deal in Moscow on Trump’s behalf during the Republican presidential primary in 2016. The news ensured any meeting with Putin would have put a spotlight on the U.S. special counsel’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow during the election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov called the cancellation a missed opportunity, saying in remarks from Buenos Aires that were carried by Russian state television that he doubted “this move would help settling a number of important international problems.” He added: “Love can’t be forced.”

Trump opened Friday with a cordial meeting at the Casa Rosada with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, a longtime business acquaintance. Posing for photos in the gilded Salon Blanco, Trump said they would discuss trade, military purchases and other issues.

The U.S. businessman-turned-politician noted he had worked with Macri’s father on real estate developments and joked that when he and Macri first met they’d never have imagined their future roles on the world stage.

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Associated Press writers Rob Gillies in Toronto and Deb Riechmann, Darlene Superville and Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

Powerful Quakes Buckle Alaska Roads, Trigger Tsunami Warning

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Back-to-back earthquakes measuring 7.0 and 5.8 rocked buildings and shattered roads Friday morning in Anchorage, sending people running into the streets and briefly triggering a warning to residents in Kodiak to flee to higher ground for fear of a tsunami.

The tsunami warning was lifted without incident a short time later. There were no immediate reports of any deaths or serious injuries.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the first and more powerful quake was centered about 7 miles (12 kilometers) north of Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, with a population of about 300,000. People ran from their offices or took cover under desks.

Cracks could be seen in a two-story downtown Anchorage building, and photographs posted to social media showed fractured roads, as well as fallen ceiling tiles at an Anchorage high school. A large section of an overpass near the Anchorage airport collapsed, marooning a car on a narrow island of pavement next to where the road gave way.

The quake also disrupted electrical service and knocked out traffic lights in Anchorage, snarling traffic.

Cereal boxes and packages of batteries littered the floor of a grocery store, and picture frames and mirrors were knocked from living room walls.

People went back inside after the first earthquake struck, but the 5.8 aftershock about five minutes later sent them running back into the streets.

A tsunami warning was issued for the southern Alaska coastal areas of Cook’s Inlet and part of the Kenai peninsula. Kodiak police on Kodiak Island warned people in the city of 6,100 to “evacuate to higher ground immediately” because of “wave estimated 10 minutes.”

Michael Burgy, a senior technician with the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, said the tsunami warning was automatically generated based on the quake’s size and proximity to shore. Scientists monitored gauges to see if the quake generated big waves. Because there were none, they canceled the warning.

In Kenai, southwest of Anchorage, Brandon Slaton was alone at home and soaking in the bathtub when the earthquake struck. Slaton, who weighs 209 pounds, said it created a powerful back-and-forth sloshing in the bath, and before he knew it, he was thrown out of the tub by the waves.

His 120-pound mastiff panicked and tried to run down the stairs, but the house was swaying so much that the dog was thrown off its feet and into a wall and tumbled to the base of the stairs, Slaton said.

Slaton ran into his son’s room after the shaking stopped and found his fish tank shattered and the fish on the floor, gasping for breath. He grabbed it and put it in another bowl.

“It was anarchy,” he said. “There’s no pictures left on the walls, there’s no power, there’s no fish tank left. Everything that’s not tied down is broke.”

Alaska averages 40,000 earthquakes per year, with more large quakes than the 49 other states combined. Southern Alaska has a high risk of earthquakes because of tectonic plates sliding past each other under the region.

Alaska has been hit by a number of powerful quakes over 7.0 magnitude in recent decades, including a 7.9 that hit last January southeast of Kodiak Island. But it is rare for a quake this big to strike so close such a heavily populated area.

David Harper was getting some coffee at a store when the low rumble began and intensified into something that sounded “like the building was just going to fall apart.” Harper ran to the exit with other patrons there.

“The main thought that was going through my head as I was trying to get out the door was, ‘I want this to stop,'” he said. Harper said the quake was “significant enough that the people who were outside were actively hugging each other. You could tell that it was a bad one.”

On March 27, 1964, Alaska was hit by a 9.2 earthquake, the strongest recorded in U.S. history, centered about 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Anchorage. The quake, which lasted about 4½ minutes, and the tsunami it triggered claimed about 130 lives.

Marriott Security Breach Exposed Data of Up to 500M Guests

NEW YORK — A security breach inside the Marriott hotel empire compromised the information of as many as 500 million guests worldwide, exposing their credit card numbers, passport numbers and birth dates for as long as four years, the company said Friday.

The crisis quickly emerged as one of the largest data breaches on record. By comparison, last year’s startling Equifax hack affected more than 145 million people.

Analysts were alarmed by the length of time the breach had been going on. Many security breaches span months, an average of 90 to 200 days, but this one began in 2014.

The affected hotel brands were operated by Starwood before it was acquired by Marriott in 2016. They include W Hotels, St. Regis, Sheraton, Westin, Element, Aloft, The Luxury Collection, Le Méridien and Four Points. Starwood-branded timeshare properties were also included.

None of the Marriott-branded chains were threatened.

For as many as two-thirds of those affected, the exposed data could include mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passport numbers. Also included might be Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure times and reservation dates.

Credit card numbers and expiration dates of some guests may have been taken, according to the company.

“We fell short of what our guests deserve and what we expect of ourselves,” CEO Arne Sorenson said in a statement. “We are doing everything we can to support our guests, and using lessons learned to be better moving forward.”

It isn’t common for passport numbers to be part of a hack, but it is not unheard of. Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific Airways said in October that 9.4 million passengers’ information had been breached, including passport numbers.

Passport numbers can be added to full sets of data about a person that bad actors sell on the black market, leading to identity theft. And while the credit card industry can cancel accounts and issue new cards within days, it is a much more difficult process, often steeped in government bureaucracy, to get a new passport.

But one redeeming factor about passports is that they are often required to be seen in person, said Ryan Wilk of NuData Security. “It’s a highly secure document with a lot of security features,” he said.

Email notifications for those who may have been affected begin rolling out Friday.

The 500 million figure includes the number of guests who made a reservation at one of the affected hotels. But it could also include a single person who booked multiple stays, the company said.

Asked for more details, Marriott spokesman Jeff Flaherty said Friday that the company has not finished identifying duplicate information in the database.

When the merger was first announced in 2015, Starwood had 21 million people in its loyalty program. The company manages more than 6,700 properties across the globe, most in North America.

While the first impulse for those potentially affected by the breach could be to check credit cards, security experts say other information in the database could be more damaging.

“The names, addresses, passport numbers and other sensitive personal information that was exposed is of greater concern than the payment info, which was encrypted,” said analyst Ted Rossman of CreditCards.com. “People should be concerned that criminals could use this info to open fraudulent accounts in their names.”

An internal security tool signaled a potential breach in early September, but the company was unable to decrypt the information that would define what data had possibly been exposed until last week.

Marriott, based in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a regulatory filing that it’s premature to estimate what financial impact the breach will have on the company. It noted that it does have cyber insurance, and is working with its insurance carriers to assess coverage.

The Starwood breach stands out among even the largest security hacks on record.

Yahoo had data breaches in 2013 and 2014 that affected about 3 billion accounts. Target also had an incident in 2013 that affected more than 41 million customer payment card accounts and exposed contact information for more than 60 million customers.

Elected officials were quick to call for action.

The New York attorney general opened an investigation. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, co-founder of the Senate cybersecurity caucus and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the U.S. needs laws that will limit the data companies can collect on its customers.

“It is past time we enact data security laws that ensure companies account for security costs rather than making their consumers shoulder the burden and harms resulting from these lapses,” Warner said in a prepared statement.

Marriott has had a rocky process of merging its computer system with Starwood computers. Members of both loyalty programs have complained about missing points, glitches with stays crediting to their accounts and problems with free nights earned from credit cards not appearing.

Sorenson said that Marriott is still trying to phase out Starwood systems.

Marriott has set up a website and call center for anyone who thinks that they are at risk.

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Chapman reported from Newark, New Jersey.

CNN Fires Analyst Following Defense of Palestine at United Nations

In a move decried by critics as blatant suppression of dissent and an attack on all who advocate for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people, CNN on Thursday fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for daring to denounce the oppression of Palestinians and endorse “a single secular democratic state for everyone” over the failed two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

CNN terminated Hill just 24 hours after he delivered a speech at a meeting of the U.N.’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in New York, in which he expressed support for Palestinians’ resistance against brutal Israeli occupation, denounced Israel for actively depriving Palestinians of basic human rights, and called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Slamming CNN for caving to right-wing defenders of Israel’s decades-long occupation by firing a commentator for the crime of doing political commentary, Intercept journalist Ryan Grim began circulating a petition calling on the network to apologize and reverse its decision.

We’re already close to 1,000 signatures on a petition to urge the cowards at CNN to re-hire @marclamonthill and apologize. I think it would take about 500k to get them to rethink, which should easily be doable https://t.co/RtipEds2tP

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 30, 2018

Everyone understands CNN wouldn’t fire a contributor who said they think Israel has a biblical right to the West Bank, yes? In fact they almost certainly have contributors who believe that. It’s straight-up discriminatory to fire @marclamonthill and that’s how it should be framed

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) November 30, 2018

Jewish Voice for Peace echoed the demand that CNN reverse course and praised Hill for speaking “powerfully” in defense of Palestinian rights.

.@marclamonthill spoke up powerfully to the UN in honor of the Intl. Day of Solidarity With Palestinians and CNN has fired him. Call on @CNN to reverse this decision. For justice, equality and dignity #IStandWithMLH

ht video @theIMEU pic.twitter.com/DFktBLsItK

— JewishVoiceForPeace (@jvplive) November 30, 2018

In a series of tweets after his firing on Thursday, Hill dismissed the notion that his remarks were anti-Semitic or that they amounted to a call for the destruction of Israel.

“I support Palestinian freedom. I support Palestinian self-determination. I am deeply critical of Israeli policy and practice,” Hill wrote. “I do not support anti-Semitism, killing Jewish people, or any of the other things attributed to my speech. I have spent my life fighting these things.”

“My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza. The speech very clearly and specifically said those things,” Hill added. “No amount of debate will change what I actually said or what I meant.”

This isn’t a case of throwing rocks and hiding hands. I genuinely believe in the arguments and principles that I shared in the speech. I also genuinely want peace, freedom, and security for everyone. These are not competing ideals and values.

— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) November 29, 2018

Yousef Munayyer—executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights—argued in a column for the Huffington Post that Hill was “targeted by what can only be described as an organized campaign to silence his principled and consistent advocacy against racism and for the equal treatment of all people, including Palestinians.”

“CNN fired him because he believes Palestinians, too, fit into a vision where all people deserve equal rights,” Munayyer continued. “For CNN, that was just too much.”

Marc was on of the most principled voices on CNN in opposing injustice. Because he dared to include Palestinians in this vision they trashed him. You can tell @CNN what you think of that here https://t.co/4Fcw3DN0RI or by calling 404-827-1700 https://t.co/WirAM9uWIP

— (((YousefMunayyer))) (@YousefMunayyer) November 29, 2018

Describing CNN‘s decision to terminate Hill as “shameful and cowardly,” The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald argued that Hill’s firing “is a major defeat for the right to advocate for Palestinian rights, to freely critique the Israeli government, and for the ability of journalism and public discourse in the U.S. generally to accommodate dissent.”

Greenwald added that Hill’s ouster lays bare the fact that in the boundaries of discourse established by the corporate media, “it’s forbidden” to acknowledge that the so-called “two-state solution” is unviable because “illegal Israeli settlements have grown so rapidly and have eaten up so much Palestinian land in the West Bank that such a solution is now essentially impossible.”

The only remaining options, Greenwald argues, are apartheid or a single state “in which both Israelis and Palestinians share full and equal political rights.”

“Professor Hill, like all morally decent people, opposes apartheid,” Greenwald continued. “Therefore, he advocates a single state in which both Palestinians and Israelis have equal political rights.”

The Center Is Not Holding, and Trump Is Our Proof

As the world’s pre-eminent heads of state gather in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this weekend for the annual G-20 summit, the postwar order has never looked more fragile. War threatens to break out at any moment between Russia and Ukraine, Britain is staring into the abyss of a failed Brexit negotiation and the U.S. faces a rising tide of ethno-nationalism, reinforced in no small part by Donald Trump’s presidency. Compounding this larger crisis, new research indicates we have just 12 years to radically reduce carbon emissions or risk climate catastrophe.

The center is not holding, and if a devastating new report from The New York Times is to be believed, the falconer’s falcon is but one of the innumerable creatures wiped off the planet just in the past 50 years. As Jonathan Aronson argues in his new book, “Digital DNA: Disruption and the Challenges for Global Governance,” we are living through a period of profound social and economic upheaval—one that threatens the very foundations of our political system.

“Last week, Sears declared bankruptcy,” Aronson tells Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.” “Sears, in many ways, was the Amazon of another age. They were the ones who distributed everything; they changed everything. So what has happened is the world has changed; the economies have changed; the companies have changed; but as usual, the rules have lagged behind.”

A professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Aronson examines what he refers to as a “hollowing out” of the working class and our elected officials. While the former has seen its jobs shipped overseas, the latter has grown increasingly beholden to multinationals, many of which now underwrite their campaigns. This, in turn, Aronson says, “pushes people left, it pushes people right. And at the same time you have an economic dearth in the middle. … The people who were in the middle in politics are also gone.”

That the United States and the West at large have arrived at an inflection point seems undeniable. Rather than give in to pessimism, however, Aronson argues we must view this historical moment as one of tremendous possibility.

“If we don’t get our act together and improve things for everybody—including your workers, your middle class, your poor, and not just the 1 percent—we could really descend into chaos,” he says. “But there is an opportunity, if we can get things right, which can only be done through bringing diverse groups with different interests together, and sort of finding ways to build a coalition among them, not against them—that there is still some hope.”

Listen to Aronson’s interview with Scheer or read a transcript of their conversation below:

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case, it’s Jonathan Aronson, who has written a book with Peter Cowhey called “Digital DNA: Disruption and the Challenges for Global Governance.” The interesting idea of this book is–it’s a contradictory idea; on the one hand, clearly, digital communication, the digital age, the age of the internet, has changed everything. On the other hand, we have a set of problems that have been with us forever–problems of accountability, truth-telling, democracy, representation, bias. Our politics seem to be as much of an irrational mishmash as ever. And the public seems to be, well, more divided and more confused than ever. So what is the great wonder of the digital age?

Jonathan Aronson: It’s two things. You’re right; it’s contradictory. On the one hand, what has changed a great deal is the internet changes everything. Now, that’s both true and meaningless, because what it means is that you have to break it down and look piece-by-piece at what’s going on. In the case of this book, what we’re saying is communication, information technology, has forced the change of supply [chains] and business models of every kind of business. From agriculture to mining, from manufacturing to high-tech. All of those are changing, and all of those companies are scrambling to figure out how to continue to make money. This week, Sears declared bankruptcy. Sears, in many ways, was the Amazon of another age. They were the ones who distributed everything; they changed everything. So what has happened is the world has changed; the economies have changed; the companies have changed; but as usual, the rules have lagged behind.

RS: So let me ask you a question about this, because you’re a professor here at the University of Southern California Annenberg School in communications, but you also have a joint appointment in international relations. And when I look at this whole international situation, you know, at first we thought, as you say, the internet changes everything–we thought we’d get smarter, we’d have more information, our lives would be more meaningful. But there was a lurking fear that our work models may be broken, robotics may change everything. It seems to me the unexpected consequence of the internet is that capitalism, in a fundamental way, may be at risk. And an old concern of social well-being, of social welfare, is asserting itself: if people are going to lose their jobs, or the jobs are going to go abroad, or if some, a number of people are going to become billionaires and the others are going to have stagnant wages. You have a great fear that life as we know it no longer exists. And here we’re teaching at a university, where people are going to graduate; they have to go out and work, and they’re probably as set up for the internet world as any group of students; our school is very good at that. But on the other hand, the good-paying jobs may not be there. Their parents already know that; they’ve gone through a housing crisis, a recession. So let me ask you, in terms of your book–and I read it very carefully–I actually found it quite depressing. Not because of your writing or anything, but because of its vision of the world: that the brave new world of the internet might not sustain meaningful, productive, and stable life.

JA: We are in a period of dynamic change. I’m more optimistic about this. On the one hand, I see that the top-end students, people who are coming from here, people who know something about coding, people who are entrepreneurial, are probably going to do just fine. Even in an age of robots, I haven’t seen a student here in forty years who said, “I want to be on a manufacturing line.” We don’t produce students who will be displaced by robots. They may be involved with it. In addition, you have AI, artificial intelligence; you have 3-D printing, sometimes called advanced manufacturing. All of those are changing things, and it’s dynamically shifting very quickly. The other end of the scale, people who don’t have very much education at all–there are still going to be jobs there. The big problem is in the middle: what do we do with people who were making good money in steel factories, at automobile manufacturers, and those jobs are rapidly going away? Even in a place like a coal mine–President Trump is fond of saying “I’m going to bring back the coal mine.” Well, if that happens to be true, the miners are much more likely to be whizzing around–non-humans, robots of some sort that don’t get black lung disease, don’t unionize, and don’t demand pay. You’re never going to get the return of miners, and nobody much wants it.

RS: Well, let me tell you who wants it. When you’re a miner and you belong to the United Mine Workers union, or you’re an auto worker and you belong to the United Auto Workers, we had a mechanism for social justice in this society. We had a way of people getting decent wages, decent health care, decent opportunities, a prospect of sending their kids to the state university or somewhere else, where they would get ahead in life, and so forth. So we had the, for once, a modern economic component of equality, of opportunity, of a growing middle class. However, the internet has destroyed a model of sharing wealth. You see it with Amazon that doesn’t have unionized workers. You see it with the end of the journalism industry. We’re a school of communication and journalism; we now have more PR students than we have journalism students. So the business model of the internet begs for a new kind of socialism–or, on the right-wing side, a new kind of fascism.

JA: It’s a real serious problem. The book does not address employment directly, but what it acknowledges and what is embedded in it is that there is an extreme hollowing out in the middle. That the middle class are the ones who have not made the gains. It’s not just for themselves, because the coal miners may not have wanted to raise kids who were coal miners; they wanted to raise kids who could do well, and they’re losing that opportunity. So that’s where they are pushing it. At the same time, we have had the polarization and hollowing out of our elected officials. So it pushes people left, it pushes people right, and at the same time you have an economic dearth in the middle. You have–the people who were in the middle in politics are also gone.

RS: Well, but let’s take this disappearing middle class, or hollowing out of the middle class. Because the middle class was the great hope of democracy, economic democracy and stability. De Tocqueville, as a foreign observer, made a very important point: the saving grace of the American experiment was this ever-expanding middle class–of opportunity, of increasing skills, education, and so forth. If that has been hollowed out, what comes in its place? Maybe what comes in its place–and this is why I bring up Sanders and Trump–is either a regimented society, which rewards people who go along and march in lock-step, which is the neofascist model, and you keep your nose clean and OK, we’ll take care of you. Or a society which empowers people, aside from whether they have wealth or not, where you have meaningful elections without–with real campaign finance. Where you have guaranteed health care, so your job is not the ticket to your actual survival, right? Where you have guaranteed minimum wage, so people can live off their work. And it really seems to me a battle between a vision of fascism and a vision of social democracy.

JA: Or at least of authoritarianism. Doesn’t have to be a completely fascist state.

RS: Well, let me explain, because you’re a professor of international relations, I just want to defend the fascist label. Because the key to fascism really is an alliance between corporations, and a chauvinistic, jingoistic political message. And what I fear, and the reason I use the fascist element, it seems to me that one way you get stability is through this law-and-order, jingoistic, chauvinistic model. The other is by empowering–through unions, or through public education, or social services, or guaranteed health care–you empower, as maybe the Swedish model, the ordinary person to have a decent life, with or without wealth.

JA: Democratic socialism is the term that is sometimes being used. The problem is quite simple, which is those on that side, at this stage, are still losing, and losing consistently. So you take Sweden, for example; a right-wing party came in third, and has increasing power in Sweden in the election that happened last month. What you’re seeing over and over again is that those forces may win small pieces–individual elections–but they’re not winning the big elections. And the people who are afraid of immigrants, on the one hand, losing their own prosperity, are in the ascendant right now. I asked my students today what was the difference between strategy and tactics, and nobody knew. That catches us into the political side of this, because we have a president who doesn’t understand strategy, but who is a master tactician. He has a tactic, which he applies over and over and over again. And it works often enough that it attracts a stable base of supporters. But there’s no perception of where he wants to go with that.

RS: Tell us about the tactic.

JA: The tactic is pretty simple. And pretty well understood. One, President Trump believes that anything that he didn’t do, was wrong. So NAFTA was terrible, but the NAFTA revision, which was really an update, and quite incremental, was wonderful. Anything Obama did was terrible, by definition. Often anything a fellow republican did. So if it wasn’t his idea, it was a terrible thing. That’s part one. Part two, we all know he’s transactional. So that he is dealing in the moment, he is trying to think in terms of a zero-sum game; he plays what game theorists would call “chicken.” So he goes full-throttle ahead and hopes very much that the other side, being more rational than he, turns aside. Fourth, he is shameless. So it has been documented over and over and over again that he simply doesn’t tell the truth. He may not understand the difference between truth and lies, and he doesn’t care. And then fifth, he never apologizes.

RS: OK. So I got that, and I think that’s a pretty accurate description. But let me throw in another element, because this is true of any demagogue, effective demagogue. There has to be something they’re feeding on. There has to be angst, fear, a desperation–

JA: Anger.

RS: –anger, in the society. And we make a mistake if we minimize the significance of that. And I want to just throw in–and this does go to your book. And what we are seeing is a resurgence of a kind of nationalism, a jingoism. And Trump personifies that, but we’re seeing that in other countries. It seems to me we underestimate the Trump strategy and appeal if we don’t recognize that there is a big problem. And the big problem is that globalization doesn’t deliver back to the citizens of the nation-state. It actually begs the question, why do you need a nation-state? OK? When I look out at our students, the first thing I see are these open computers–every one of which, by the way, has been made in communist China. You know, now, if [Laughs] 20 years ago, when I first arrived here, or 25 years ago, if somebody had told me that communist China would represent the most successful capitalist model in this new economy, I would have thought they were crazy. But the fact of the matter is, an authoritarian state–China, still run by a communist party–has developed a model of catering to consumerism, of using this new technology, and so forth. OK. The big question for China or the United States really is, do you distribute the wealth? Really, your book begs the question, in the internet age, what is the significance of the nation-state?

JA: Let me both agree and disagree with you. Agreeing that business models are now global, and not going to be turned around. If you look at why the NAFTA is at some level trying to chase something that’s already happened, if you look at an auto engine right now, we are worrying about whether it’s 70 percent American, what part of it, what do we do with Mexico, what do we do with Canada. And in fact, an auto engine, the average number of times it moves across one border or another in North America is eight. From the time they begin it to the time it is delivered to wherever it is. It is impossible to figure out, is this an American, Canadian, Mexican, or something else in terms of that. So the model is global, and that runs in stark contradiction to the nation-state. In that, you’re absolutely right. The book is trying to do something else. First, we are believers in patience. That the reason we think there’s going to be a need for some global agreements, is that the system will be much less efficient, it will be much less robust and productive, if you don’t get some principles and norms agreed among nations. Do we expect this in the next two years? No, we do not.

RS: Right. And the book is “Digital DNA: Disruption and Challenges for Global Governance.” I am talking to Jonathan Aronson, a professor at the University of Southern California in international relations and in communication. [omission for station break] And I want to pick up on the point you were just making about where cars are produced, and NAFTA. And I think you kind of minimized–dare I say it, I hope I don’t get fired over this–Trump’s achievement with NAFTA 2.0.

JA: Well, let me make a couple of quick notes. OK, first, I want to note for the audience that the book is written with Peter Cowhey, who is a professor at the University of California, San Diego. Two, the data on NAFTA is very mixed. What we know is that the extremes are wrong. It did not help people in any country as much as those who proclaimed that it would had promised. Two, it did not hurt people inordinately. The best data that has come out seems to suggest that what you got was–it’s marginally better overall; it caused some real job growth, but the jobs that were lost tended to be much more union jobs. So the unions were hurt, but not the overall employment, in terms of this.

RS: By the way, NAFTA 2.0, I don’t want to give Trump too much credit, there was a serious cave-in on pharmaceuticals, which undermines Canada’s example of being able to control the prices of pharmaceuticals. This was a surprisingly good improvement over NAFTA, coming as it did from Trump. The bottom line is that no one of significance speaks for ordinary people. That’s why they turn to outliers–a good one like Bernie Sanders, a bad one like Trump. The reality is–and I was at the Democratic [National] Convention, and this TPP for instance, the trade agreement, and NAFTA, were attacked by the union people there, and many of the delegates felt the party had betrayed them on this issue, OK. So the significance–and this is why I’m bringing it up in context to this globalization–is that the average person in this country, including many democrats, feels they’ve been betrayed by this shift in the economy. And I want to spend a little time on this view of the new tech world. Because, yes, there are people in Silicon Valley who make good wages. But the fact is that most of the jobs connected with those computers and everything else in the high-tech world are either done abroad, you know, where profits for Apple and others are basically earned, and from low-wage workers; or they’re created here. I mean, a company like Amazon is a national scandal. Think about it! I mean, here’s a company where people are running around warehouses, and they are low paid, have not had basic rights to organize, unions have been busted. So all of the progress–but the fact is, in all of these trade agreements, no one cared about the tenure for ordinary workers. They got screwed. OK? I know I’m bringing some anger to the thing–

JA: That’s good!

RS: –but I don’t want to lose the issue. And the reason I think we can’t lose it is we can’t understand this election. We can’t understand this dynamic in the world. And yes, you get a rise of the right-wing when you don’t have a rise of the progressive left. But the fact of the matter is, the status quo cannot hold if trade and financial decisions and deregulation are all made for the one percent. That’s the bottom line.

JA: I agree with that. My problem is, I don’t have a good answer of how to get from here to there, to where you’re talking about. And I don’t know anybody who really does. Should the taxes on the one percent be higher? Absolutely. Where should you go with this? How do you manage to do that? I don’t have a good answer. I don’t know very many people who even have the beginning of an answer. So what I try to do, in my modest but not too modest way, along with Professor Cowhey, is plot a path to help improve the overall situation, and hope to hell that people smarter than I am can figure out how to solve, or how to begin to solve, the kinds of problems you’re describing. How do you set the, reset the equilibrium so that you can begin to focus on issues like this? The one that’s gotten a lot more attention is climate; how do you reset this when we have people who deny science running the country? There is a climate problem right now. It should be obvious to pretty much everybody; it isn’t. There is an employment problem. How do you deal with it? It should be obvious that we have the problem, but then where do you go? I’m reasonably certain, in terms of the areas that I deal with; I’m not a labor economist.

RS: I think we can find common ground. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you about your book. I think the book is very powerful, very interesting, in that you grasp the significance of what the title of the book is, “Digital DNA: Disruption and Challenges for Global Governance.” It’s worth reading–let me just be on the record here–it’s worth reading this book to get the scope of the change. I agree that there’s disruption and challenges for global governance. What I’m trying to say is, your book is a launching pad–I’m trying to take you to the next stage. And so I would like to move this discussion to this area of what do we do. And I’m going to give you some answers that I think lie in our history, OK. And this is why I brought up these old-fashioned labels of social democracy–and I’m not the first one; we finally do have people in our political process now who call themselves social democrats and so forth. And that’s a very good rubric for people who say, government has to care about the least among us and about working people and ordinary people, and the wealth has to be shared, to a degree that we have stakeholders and people can live a good life–OK. There’s a program connected with that–meaningful public education that is free, and Bernie Sanders was not being a wild-eyed guy when he said you could go through college, and should. When I went to City College in New York, you know, it was a free university. So we had a model of meaningful, free education: the state universities, the land-grant colleges, here in California the community colleges; we dropped that. We went for elite education, we went for a meritocracy, and you know, what does industry want, and we’ll be a service, we’ll feed industry what it wants. OK. So, ah, raising the minimum wage to something significant goes a long way to giving people a sense of safety–OK, do what you want with the economy, do trade, make all the deals, but make sure that people working here can make a living wage so they can support their family, and they will not be responsible for their children’s education, and they will not be responsible for their health care. That in fact, this is a human right, OK? So we extend human rights, and we extend it in these trade agreements, and here’s my beef with your book. These trade agreements did not include environmental protections in any significant way; they certainly did not include labor protections; but most important, they didn’t contain guarantees of democratic decision-making. The problem with NAFTA, these courts–if you have a legal issue, you go into basically a private court controlled by the corporations, who then bring in their own lawyers, and the judges are their lawyers from their thing. And there was no–they didn’t even let people, in the latest trade agreements, they didn’t even let people in Congress share it with the media. They had to go into secret rooms to read these things. So what you really have lost is the most fundamental human right, which is the democratic right of individuals to know what’s going on and what’s supposedly being done in their name. Unfortunately, if you don’t have that, you end up with this fascistic model of–that it seems to me Donald Trump is pushing to–where you disenfranchise ordinary people, by appealing to jingoism, by scapegoating immigrants and others, by buying them off with trinkets like the Volkswagen. And you give them jobs working in a militarized economy, and that’s the alternative model. That’s the dilemma that this new DNA of technology has presented us with.

JA: Let me answer in three parts. First, what I absolutely agree with is that what we created was a launching platform. But it is a multi-use launching platform. By describing the way the world economy exists today, it gives and opportunity for people to–and nations, and corporations, and civil society–to negotiate on a number of issues, from climate to environment to trade agreements. Second, something that hasn’t been mentioned here, but it’s gotten really messy and more complicated. To throw in three specific issues that have complicated matters, but make this really hard: one, we have the cloud; your data may be floating around anywhere. It’s not national anymore; you have no idea where it is. Two, and better known, we have all of the cybersecurity issues that have been raised. Trade people never dealt with those; they haven’t a clue how to deal with those, though they are trying hard to deal with it. And third, privacy issues are increasingly on the front page, are extremely important, from Facebook to Amazon. But in terms of what should be private–what do you think of “the right to be forgotten,” a European phrase? So those three things aren’t there. And finally, we haven’t talked about the way we suggest organizing the movement forward. And we are very strongly in favor of what are called multi-stakeholder organizations. We do not think that in this complicated, messy world, it is any longer possible for you to have states, to state, a big international institution, maybe a bank or two, do the negotiations. If civil society, if unions, if interested groups are not at the table, you’re not going to create the kinds of agreements that are going to hold going forward. So that in your sense of seeking a more democratic and transparent perspective, we’re all in.

RS: We’re in a total agreement on this. I think the–what we’re seeing with Trump is the center is not holding. The agreements don’t hold, whether it’s Iran or whether it’s NAFTA, or whatever. You can make agreements; if the public feels disenfranchised and left out and not attended to, these things are not going to hold. You’re going to have disruption, you’re going to have chaos; Donald Trump is a chaotic president. So we’re in agreement on that. Now, I want to end by taking the three points that you raised: the cloud–that it’s not national, it’s multinational–cybersecurity, and privacy. They’re all three interrelated, and the significance of the cloud not being national is, they’re basically talking about the collection of data worldwide, the commingling of data, the mining of data. And the reality is that you can think you’re giving your data over to a democratic society in England or the United States, but that data is circulating in Egypt, it’s circulating in Brazil, anywhere else–China, Russia, and so forth. And one of the ironies here is that Jeff Bezos, who now owns, personally owns the Washington Post–their main money that Amazon has made is not by selling you books or selling you articles of clothing–

JA: TWS, the cloud.

RS: Yes. The cloud. Amazon is, this money is coming–and they are a defense contractor. They are building the cloud for our intelligence agencies, right? They’re getting all the data that NSA has, CIA; they get to mine it, they get to work with it. So they are defense contractors. The contradiction for the people doing the cloud are the same as that go into cybersecurity, and the same that go into privacy. And this is the fundamental point I wanted to bring up with you: is nationalism dead? Because–and this is where Google and Apple and Facebook are all in trouble–you can cater to the CIA or the NSA or your own government’s congress, or what have you. But how are you going to enter the Chinese market, the Indian market? How are you going to be in Europe, the European Union and so forth? And it goes to the privacy question; you’re absolutely right, the European Union has pushed back on this invasion of privacy. But the dirty secret of the internet is that without invading privacy, you don’t have a profit model. For most of these companies. Their money-making model is by destroying your privacy. It is also opening up to cybersecurity questions, and it also has to do with the cloud; these three are joined. And they’re basically, the dirty secret of the new internet world is your private data, your most sacred, who you are, the definition of who you are, the thing that can be used to imprison you, to con you, to betray you–that is the stuff that is the source of profit, exploiting that. So I’m going to give you the last word on this: is this the brave new world that you’ve described in your book?

JA: I think very much that we are at an inflection point. If we don’t get our act together and improve things for everybody–including your workers, your middle class, your poor, and not just the one percent–we could really descend into chaos. But there is an opportunity, if we can get things right, which can only be done through bringing diverse groups with different interests together, and sort of finding ways to build a coalition among them, not against them–that there is still some hope. So I have spent a career trying to be an optimist. Sometimes it’s hard, but I prefer that way than to, trying to duck things that are falling from the sky.

RS: The book is “Digital DNA: Disruption and Challenges for Global Governance,” Oxford University Press. Came out last year. And I’ve been talking to Jonathan Aronson, who is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, as well as a professor in this school of international studies, here at USC. And we are grateful that they made this studio available. Our engineers at KCRW are Kat Yore and Mario Diaz. Our producers are Joshua Scheer and Isabel Carreon. And we’ll see you next week with another edition of Scheer Intelligence.

Love Reigns Supreme on ‘Beale Street’

Barry Jenkins is a filmmaker of eloquent silences, meaningful encounters and poetic dialogue. Like his first two films, “Medicine for Melancholy” and “Moonlight,” Jenkins’ third, the stirring melodrama “If Beale Street Could Talk,” is a tender romance. Also like them, it shows how love, in all these cases black love, takes root in inhospitable soil.

Despite the Memphis place name, “Beale Street” (which takes its title from a lyric in Louis Armstrong’s “Beale Street Blues”) is set in Manhattan in the early 1970s and based on the 1974 novel by James Baldwin.

Its narrator is Tish (KiKi Layne), 19, inseparable from Fonny (Stephan James), 22. Once childhood friends, they have matured along with their relationship. Jenkins’ camera soars above them as they walk along the Hudson. It’s as if they are kissing the joy as it flies — and are borne by it.

The film travels back and forth between two time frames. There is before and after, before Fonny is accused (falsely) of raping a woman and after he is jailed awaiting trial. In the Before, every color is vivid; in the After, colors seem desaturated. The contrast between their uninhibited love and the restraints of jail is acute. “I hope nobody has to look at anybody they love through glass,” says Trish ruefully, referring to the sheet glass that separates the lovers in the jail. Although their bond will be even further tested, it is powerful. And not only because Tish is pregnant.

The news brings joy and laughter to Fonny, who by this time is in jail awaiting trial, and to Tish’s parents (Regina King and Colman Domingo) and sister. It would be understatement to say Fonny’s mother and sisters are less than thrilled by Tish’s pregnancy.

This reaction would knock the wind out of most pregnant teens. But the resourceful Tish is not one of those. She is her mother’s daughter. And her mother, Sharon, has a spine stronger than titanium and a heart bigger than Harlem. (Good lord, is King fierce and supportive as Sharon.)

What I loved best about the movie is how Jenkins, who adapted the Baldwin novel as well as directing it, makes it clear where Tish gets her indomitable strength. Remember, Sharon tells her daughter, “Love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.”

Jenkins doesn’t characterize his lovers as pregnant girl and an incarcerated man who are victims of a racist system but as a couple who hold onto their dreams despite everything. This, even if it means at her department-store job Tish smiles until her back teeth hurt because her salary will support Fonny’s release and her unborn child. This, even if it means that Fonny, a woodworker and sculptor, survives by imagining the family table he will make when he is released.

By the end, “Beale Street” reveals itself as a movie focused equally on those moments of grace that lift the spirit in the face of injustice as it is on the injustice itself. And in those moments of a mother’s love, a lover’s pride in the beloved, a child linking hands with his parents and saying grace before eating, Jenkins gets to the pith and marrow of love and life.

Congo Suffering Second Largest Ebola Outbreak in History

JOHANNESBURG — Congo’s deadly Ebola outbreak is now the second largest in history, behind the devastating West Africa outbreak that killed thousands a few years ago, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Peter Salama, called it a “sad toll” as Congo’s health ministry announced the number of cases has reached 426. That includes 379 confirmed cases and 47 probable ones. So far this outbreak, declared on Aug. 1, has 198 confirmed deaths, with another 47 probable ones, Congo’s health ministry said.

Attacks by rebel groups and open hostility by some wary locals have posed serious challenges to health workers that Ebola experts say they’ve never been seen before. Many venture out on critical virus containment missions only accompanied by U.N. peacekeepers in areas where gunfire echoes daily.

Salama this month predicted that the outbreak in northeastern Congo will last at least another six months before it can be contained. West Africa’s Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 people from 2014 to 2016.

Day by day, reports by health organizations note one new difficulty after another in this latest outbreak, even as their work sets milestones that have given new hope in the fight against one of the world’s most notorious diseases.

More than 37,000 people have received Ebola vaccinations, and Congo has begun the first-ever trial to test the effectiveness and safety of four experimental Ebola drugs. And yet the risk of Ebola spreading in so-called “red zones” — areas that are virtually inaccessible because of the threat of rebel groups — is a major concern in containing this outbreak.

“This tragic milestone clearly demonstrates the complexity and severity of the outbreak. While the numbers are far from those from West Africa in 2014, we’re witnessing how the dynamics of conflict pose a different kind of threat,” said Michelle Gayer, senior director of emergency health at the International Rescue Committee.

In a major concern for health workers, many new cases have been unconnected to known infections as the insecurity complicates efforts to track contacts of those with the disease.

The alarmingly high number of infected newborns in this outbreak is another concern, and so far a mystery. In a separate statement on Thursday, WHO said so far 36 Ebola cases have been reported among newborn babies and children under 2.

As the need for help in containing the outbreak grows, two of the world’s most prominent medical journals this week published statements by global health experts urging the Trump administration to do more.

In the Journal of the American Medical Association, one group noted that the U.S. government weeks ago ordered all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention personnel — “some of the world’s most experienced outbreak experts” — from Congo’s outbreak zone because of security concerns.

A separate statement published in the New England Journal of Medicine said: “Given the worsening of the outbreak, we believe it’s essential that these security concerns be addressed and that CDC staff return to the field.”

This is the first time this turbulent part of northeastern Congo has had an Ebola outbreak. Congo’s health ministry has carried vivid accounts of residents, spurred by rumors, who have been trying to stop safe burial practices that halt the spread of Ebola from victims to relatives and friends.

On Thursday, the ministry said a group of youths broke into a morgue, stole the body of an Ebola victim and returned it to their family.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Trump Appeals to Men’s Deepest Insecurities, Research Finds

Donald Trump built his career by pretending he was a strong, successful man. He bragged in interviews about having a $9 billion fortune. He bragged in the 1980s, posing as his publicist, that Madonna wanted to go out with him. On “The Dr. Oz Show,” he claimed to have an unusually high testosterone level. All of this seems to have attracted male voters (53 percent in 2016), but, as researchers Eric Knowles and Sarah DiMuccio argue in The Washington Post, not because these voters are as confident as Trump appears to be. In fact, they say, “Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood.”

Knowles and DiMuccio call this the “fragile masculinity” hypothesis. They posit that this phenomenon occurs because men feel pressure to act in a certain way, to appear aggressive and strong, as far from feminine as possible. “This unforgiving standard of maleness,” Knowles and DiMuccio say, “makes some men worry that they’re falling short. These men are said to experience ‘fragile masculinity.’ ”

The researchers say that the political process provides an opportunity for such men to mask their insecurity “by supporting tough politicians and policies, men [who] can reassure others (and themselves) of their own manliness.”

Knowles and DiMuccio examined the effect that fragile masculinity had on the 2016 election. They used Google Trends to find popular search terms related to stereotypical masculinity. Among the terms were “erectile dysfunction,” “hair loss,” “how to get girls,” “penis enlargement,” “penis size,” “steroids,” “testosterone” and “Viagra.”

They then asked a sample of 300 men whether they had searched for any of these terms online:

We found that scoring high on a questionnaire measuring “masculine gender-role discrepancy stress”—concern that they aren’t as manly as their male friends—was strongly associated with interest in these search topics. Although these men were not a representative sample of American men, their responses suggest that these search terms are a valid way to capture fragile masculinity.

Knowles and DiMuccio then compared the popularity of the search terms and the results of their survey with a map of where the terms appeared in major media markets during the years before the last three presidential elections. They found that “support for Trump in the 2016 election was higher in areas that had more searches for topics such as erectile dysfunction.” More surprisingly, the researchers observed that “this relationship persisted after accounting for demographic attributes in media markets, such as education levels and racial composition, as well as searches for topics unrelated to fragile masculinity, such as ‘breast augmentation’ and ‘menopause.’ ”

The results, they report, did not occur with previous Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.

The researchers cautioned that their work is correlational. “We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way.” Still, they say, “given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.”

Read the full article here.

Researchers Explain How Trump Wins Men Over by Appealing to Their Insecurities

Donald Trump built his career by pretending he was a strong, successful man. He bragged in interviews about having a $9 billion fortune. He bragged in the 1980s, posing as his publicist, that Madonna wanted to go out with him. On “The Dr. Oz Show,” he claimed to have an unusually high testosterone level. All of this seems to have attracted male voters (53 percent in 2016), but, as researchers Eric Knowles and Sarah DiMuccio argue in The Washington Post, not because these voters are as confident as Trump appears to be. In fact, they say, “Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood.”

Knowles and DiMuccio call this the “fragile masculinity” hypothesis. They posit that this phenomenon occurs because men feel pressure to act in a certain way, to appear aggressive and strong, as far from feminine as possible. “This unforgiving standard of maleness,” Knowles and DiMuccio say, “makes some men worry that they’re falling short. These men are said to experience ‘fragile masculinity.’ ”

The researchers say that the political process provides an opportunity for such men to mask their insecurity “by supporting tough politicians and policies, men [who] can reassure others (and themselves) of their own manliness.”

Knowles and DiMuccio examined the effect that fragile masculinity had on the 2016 election. They used Google Trends to find popular search terms related to stereotypical masculinity. Among the terms were “erectile dysfunction,” “hair loss,” “how to get girls,” “penis enlargement,” “penis size,” “steroids,” “testosterone” and “Viagra.”

They then asked a sample of 300 men whether they had searched for any of these terms online:

We found that scoring high on a questionnaire measuring “masculine gender-role discrepancy stress”—concern that they aren’t as manly as their male friends—was strongly associated with interest in these search topics. Although these men were not a representative sample of American men, their responses suggest that these search terms are a valid way to capture fragile masculinity.

Knowles and DiMuccio then compared the popularity of the search terms and the results of their survey with a map of where the terms appeared in major media markets during the years before the last three presidential elections. They found that “support for Trump in the 2016 election was higher in areas that had more searches for topics such as erectile dysfunction.” More surprisingly, the researchers observed that “this relationship persisted after accounting for demographic attributes in media markets, such as education levels and racial composition, as well as searches for topics unrelated to fragile masculinity, such as ‘breast augmentation’ and ‘menopause.’ ”

The results, they report, did not occur with previous Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.

The researchers cautioned that their work is correlational. “We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way.” Still, they say, “given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.”

Read the full article here.

Trump’s Tear-Gassing of Migrants Is the Next Step in a Cruel Dehumanization Campaign

The Trump administration’s use of tear gas at the U.S. border with Mexico over the weekend has rightfully generated outrage. Just as the photo of a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying at the border this summer became a symbol for Donald Trump’s family separation policy, a photo of a terrified mother dragging her screaming twin daughters away from tear gas fired by the U.S. Border Patrol last weekend embodies the latest Trumpian act of cruelty toward desperate refugees. Maria Lila Meza Castro and her five children had made the long and arduous journey from Honduras to the U.S. border with the refugee caravan only to find herself shut out by Trump’s troops and fleeing toxic fumes.

But where many of us see desperate refugees, Trump and his backers see invading hordes. The optics of the violence inflicted on people across the border has had a different effect, depending upon one’s politics. Liberal-minded Americans felt horror and rage at seeing parents and their children choke from the tear gas, while rabid nativists like Fox News’ Tomi Lahren reveled in the severity of Trump’s actions. Lahren tweeted, “Watching the USA FINALLY defend our borders was the HIGHLIGHT of my Thanksgiving weekend.”

The media attention at the border is part of Trump’s plan to highlight to his base just how well he is protecting the U.S. from an invasion of brown people determined to enter the nation. His goal is to dehumanize and demonize.

But thanks to his repeated focus on the border, we are now seeing in graphic detail the dynamics of our immigration enforcement machinery through the camera lenses of journalists and the social media feeds of activists. The photographer who captured the images of Castro and her children running away from tear-gas fumes would likely not have been present at the scene had Trump simply ignored the refugee crisis on his Twitter feed and at his political rallies. Most of us are not aware that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has routinely used tear gas at the U.S.-Mexico border, including under President Barack Obama. CBP responded to Newsweek’s request for information with details about how “its personnel have been using tear gas, or 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (CS), since 2010, deploying the substance a total of 126 times since fiscal year 2012.” The rate of tear-gas use has spiked under Trump, however. CBP also told the media outlet that it “routinely uses” pepper spray. Trump’s strategy to focus on the refugees as a midterm election campaign issue has backfired and inadvertently exposed the federal government’s cruelty toward immigrants.

Trump has tried hard to spin the weekend incident in his favor. On three occasions on Monday alone, the president dug in his heels about news from the border. During a rally in Mississippi for Republican Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith, Trump read a statement that said, “We will not tolerate any form of assault or attack upon our border agents … or any attempt to destroy federal property … or bring chaos and violence to American soil.” Later, speaking to reporters, Trump defended the use of tear gas, saying that Border Patrol forces “were being rushed by some very tough people,” repeating the claim that agents were acting in self-defense against violent invaders. At a roundtable the same day, Trump went as far as accusing people of being “grabbers,” saying people “grab a child because they think they’re going to have a certain status.” The claim is so ludicrous that had it come out of the mouth of any other president before Trump, it would have caused tremendous controversy.

Whether Trump’s base is buying his spin is arguable. After the president hammered on the “migrant caravan” issue for weeks before the midterm elections, going as far as deploying thousands of military troops and barbed wire along the border, Democrats won a large number of seats in the House and flipped an embarrassingly large number of red seats to blue. It might be that the anti-immigrant fearmongering has hit a wall.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is doing its usual job of casting itself as Republican-lite on immigration. Instead of distancing himself from Trump’s widely denounced cruelty, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has decided his party will indeed support the president’s xenophobic plan for a border wall—just not to the extent Trump wants. Rather than the $5 billion in funding that Trump is demanding, Schumer has offered to support a $1.6 billion appropriation—not exactly the type of bold thinking demanded by a blue-wave mandate. Schumer appears to be channeling the same sort of centrist appeasement of right-wing values that makes his party so unpopular.

Perhaps the Democratic leader was taking the advice of New York Times opinion writer Thomas Friedman, who penned a sanctimonious screed calling on Democrats “to be the adults” and assure the public “that they’re committed to securing our borders.” Friedman also flippantly referred to undocumented immigrants by  using the favored right-wing slur of “illegals.” Conservative outlets loved his proposal to build a “high wall with a big gate.”

Schumer and Friedman’s thinking reflects what former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said to The Guardian a week ago when she suggested that in order for European leaders to curb the right-wing populist wave across their continent, they must show that they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support.” She added, “I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration, because that is what lit the flame.” Nesrine Malik, a columnist for the paper, responded to the interview, saying aptly, “[T]he former presidential candidate illustrated how a certain brand of centrist politician has no rebuke or response to the far right other than to mimic their tactics.”

Politicians are presenting the public with a set of opposing ideas that they say characterizes the current debate on immigration: “open borders” versus “zero tolerance.” But that is a red herring. It does not address the fact that Central Americans who are fleeing violence in countries like Honduras (which the U.S. has had a hand in destabilizing) are seeking asylum. Asylum seekers have clear and tangible rights under both U.S. and international law. The Trump administration’s year-long effort to change existing asylum laws is a testament to this hard fact. Trump and his colleagues are trying to change the rules of the game because as the rules currently stand, refugees have a right to make a case for asylum within the U.S. (not Mexico).

The thousands of human beings currently camped out in Tijuana in desperate conditions, at the end of a long and arduous journey, are real people. Period. Their humanity should be the starting point of our conversations about immigration and asylum. As this journalist writing for Teen Vogue has done in her profile of seven young people traveling in the caravan, we need to see the faces and hear the stories of migrants’ lives before taking the word of our political leaders. Our responses need to be couched in compassion for our fellow human beings, rather than in political calculations based on the presumed intentions of a racist voting bloc.