Chris Hedges's Blog, page 420

Andrew Gillum Urges Officials to ‘Count Every Vote’ In Florida Recount

As his gubernatorial race headed for a recount, Florida Democrat Andrew Gillum withdrew his concession speech from last Tuesday, noting that while his fate in the election may not change after the votes are recounted, the integrity of the country’s democratic process will be severely undermined if Republicans succeed in ending the process of counting every vote cast by Floridians.

“I am replacing my earlier concession with an unapologetic and uncompromised call to count every vote,” Gillum said in a news conference Saturday afternoon. “We don’t just get the opportunity to stop counting votes because we don’t like the direction in which the vote tally is heading. That is not democratic and that is certainly not the American way.”

Andrew Gillum: "Let me say clearly: I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised, and unapologetic call that we count every single vote." (via ABC) pic.twitter.com/0yDZfotcNk

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 10, 2018

Secretary of State Ken Detzner officially called for recounts of Florida’s gubernatorial and Senate races after a noon deadline passed for all 67 of the state’s counties’ unofficial vote tallies, with both races deemed too close to call.

As of the noon deadline, Republican Rick Scott—currently the Florida governor—led Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by only .15 percent, with about 12,500 more votes in the race for Nelson’s seat. In the gubernatorial election, Republican Ron DeSantis led Gillum by .41 percent of the vote.

Both margins of victory triggered an automatic machine recount, to be completed by this coming Thursday. Should either race still have less than a .25 margin after the first recount, a manual recount will be completed.

The recounts follow Scott’s claim that “unethical liberals” were trying to “steal” the election. Scott as well as President Donald Trump called the continued tallying into question, with the governor telling sheriffs to “watch for any violations during the recount process.”

Republicans’ accusations of fraud by Broward County election officials come despite the fact that the state sent objective observers to supervise the vote-counting on election night. The supervisors have stated that no fraud or covering up of votes took place.

Gillum called the GOP’s allegations a form of voter intimidation, liable to keep new voters from taking part in the democratic process in future elections.

“The outcome of this election will have consequences beyond who wins and who loses,” the Tallahassee mayor said. “How we handle this election and this process will have reverberations for democracy for an entire generation of voters.”

“Voter suppression,” he added, “can show up in that first time voter, the one who entered this process so enthusiastic and so excited about the opportunity to go out there and participate in the democratic process, to let their voices be heard—only to hear their president, their governor, their United States senator throw out unsubstantiated claims of fraud and calls and choruses to stop the counting of the votes.”

At The Intercept on Saturday, Jon Schwartz urged Gillum and other Democrats locked in close, still-undetermined election races to fight Republican efforts to undercut the counting of votes — unlike presidential candidate Al Gore, who did not not ask for a statewide manual recount after a re-tallying of votes was halted in December 2000, stating his hope that his concession could help the country find “new common ground.”

Citing the National Opinion Research Center’s recount of Florida’s votes in November 2001, Schwartz wrote, “First, we know that Al Gore won Florida in 2000. If a full, fair statewide recount had taken place, he would have become president. Second, Gore lost largely because, unlike Bush, he refused to fight with all the tools available to him.”

Republican operative Roger Stone told the Daily Beast Friday, “many of my friends” are in Florida demonstrating against the vote counts, recalling the Trump associate’s organizing of the “Brooks Brothers riots” in 2000 in which Republicans violently protested the state’s recount.

“Already the GOP is gearing up for the same kind of direct, physical intimidation of vote counts in support of their legal strategy,” wrote Schwartz. “Staffers at the Broward County election headquarters have requested police protection from Republican activists who’ve shown up at their offices addled by Trumpian conspiracy theories about vote fraud.”

“Every house of faith, every synagogue, every church, needs to be out in the streets with serious, non-violent action, on a message of ‘don’t let them steal your vote’ … that we must have the right and freedom to vote,” union organizer and author Jane McAlevey told The Intercept.

The WWI Lessons We Haven’t Learned

Trump is in Paris to commemorate the end of World War I, about which he knows almost nothing.

The outbreak of that war in 1914 took many contemporaries by surprise. That it would last four years, when leaders promised a quick victory, was another shock. That advanced machine guns and artillery would make mincemeat of formidable infantry and armor, killing some 11 million persons, was the biggest surprise of all. The casualty counts for the major battles are mind-boggling–nearly a quarter of a million dead and perhaps 700,000 wounded at Verdun alone, which was fought through 1916 in northeastern France.

We should draw the lesson that we should never credit politicians who promise us a short, glorious war. George W. Bush stood under a sign that said “mission accomplished” in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq. Some 6,000 U.S. troops are still in that country today, and ISIL, contrary to what Trump keeps saying, is not yet entirely defeated. As for glorious, surely you jest.

Another lesson is that small out of the way places can impel a war and should not be underestimated. Serbian nationalism and the attack by a Serbian nationalist on a high Austrian official, Grand Duke Ferdinand, helped provoke the war. Germany was aware that Russia backed the Serbs, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire rejected Serbian nationalism.

Germany could see a war coming, in which Russia would lash out at the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Germany was allied with Austria against Russia. Russia might well be able to count on its close diplomatic ally France. Since Austria-Germany was clearly going to war, willy-nilly, against Russia-France, Berlin thought it wise to neutralize France first with an invasion. The easy way was to go through Belgium, but Britain had warned that Belgium is a British sphere of influence. When German armies ignored London and invaded France through Belgium, the British felt obliged to come in on the side of France. (Though to be fair, letters of the British king at that time show he was eager to take on his cousin the Kaiser.)

Just as Serbia set events in chain then, so too could Iran today. Trump and Pompeo have spoken of crushing Iran. But Russia and China don’t want Iran to be erased. Neither do Syria (pro-Iran) or Iraq, which even Trump gave a waiver because trade with Iran is crucial to its future.

Technological innovations lengthened the war and made it dangerous. In Iraq, the US faced roadside bombs, which killed or wounded thousands.

War hasn’t been abolished, and the rise of hyper-nationalism in Hungary, Poland, India, Brazil and Russia and the U.S. makes the world more dangerous and potentially deadly.

Trump’s own American nationalism is destabilizing for the world. Let’s hope he doesn’t stumble, in Yemen, Iran, or in East Asia, into a debilitating and fruitless war.

The Horrors Humans Have Inflicted on the Planet’s Wilderness

Only 23% of the planet’s habitable terrestrial surface now remains as undisturbed wilderness, thanks to the spread of the human horde.

A century ago, as the human population explosion began, 85% of the world was undisturbed living space for all the other species. Yet between 1993 and 2009 – in the years that followed hard on the first global summit to consider the state of the planetary environment – an aggregation of areas of wilderness larger than India was delivered over to human exploitation, scientists warn in the journal Nature.

“These results are nothing short of a horror story for the planet’s last wild places,” said James Watson, a scientist at the University of Queensland and with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

“The loss of wilderness must be treated in the same way we treat extinction. There is no reversing, once the first cut enters. The decision is forever.”

Ocean impact

Professor Watson and colleagues argued in August that humans had in some way poisoned, polluted, exploited or disturbed almost all the planet’s oceans: only 13% could now be classified as undisturbed.

Now he and others have addressed the state of the wild terrestrial soils and rocks. Take Antarctica – essentially uninhabited, and with no terrestrial wildlife – out of the equation, and the scale of planetary devastation becomes more stark: humans have now left their mark on 77% of the world’s living space.

And the remaining wilderness is unevenly distributed: just 20 nations hold or govern 94% of the remaining marine and terrestrial wilderness areas. Russia, Canada, Australia, the US and Brazil host 70% of these unspoiled spaces.

Professor Watson and many others have repeatedly argued that humankind continues to put the world’s wildlife at risk. A new study by the World Wide Fund for Nature highlights the scale of destruction, but repeated surveys by teams of researchers on all continents have pointed up the same danger.

The combination of human intrusion into the wilderness and the spectre of climate change is a disaster for the 10 million or so species, most of them as yet unidentified, with which humans share the planet.

“These results are nothing short of a horror story for the planet’s last wild places”

“A century ago, only 15% of the Earth’s surface was used by humans to grow crops and raise livestock,” Professor Watson said.

“Today, more than 77% of land – excluding Antarctica – and 87% of the ocean has been modified by the direct effects of human activities. It might be hard to believe, but between 1993 and 2009, an area of terrestrial wilderness larger than India – a staggering 3.3 million square kilometres – was lost to human settlement, farming, mining and other pressures.

“And in the ocean, the only regions that are free of industrial fishing, pollution and shipping are almost completely confined to the polar regions.”

This Country Is on Track to Be Run by Billionaires’ Kids

This year’s stock market saw high returns for month after month, as retirees and stock runners alike saw their portfolios rise. Then one day this fall, the market took a turn, and all of the increases of the past several months vanished.

That’s how it goes for the market. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down.

For the three wealthiest families in the country, however, the market only ever shoots skyward. The Waltons of Wal-Mart, the Kochs of Koch Industries, and the Mars of Mars chocolate own a combined $348.7 billion. Since 1982, their wealth has skyrocketed nearly 6,000 percent.

None of the living members of these families founded the companies from which their fortunes come — all were started by earlier generations.

In fact, more than a third of the Forbes 400 inherited the businesses that generated their wealth. These modern wealth dynasties exercise significant economic power in our current gilded age of extreme inequality.

A new report I co-authored with my colleague Chuck Collins at the Institute for Policy Studies, Billionaire Bonanza 2018, looks at the rise of these wealth dynasties. The Forbes 400 combined own $2.89 trillion, we found. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 64 percent of the United States.

The median family in the United States owns just over $80,000 in household wealth. The richest person in the United States (and the world), Jeff Bezos, has accumulated a fortune nearly 2 million times that amount.

These pictures paint a grim picture of wealth inequality in the United States in 2018.

Wealth is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands while the rest of the country struggles to get by. One in five families has zero or negative wealth. Two in five Americans couldn’t come up with $400 if they needed it in an emergency.

Previous generations tried to warn us about economic inequality. Former President Teddy Roosevelt said in 1913, “Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”

A generation later, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned in 1941, “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

And for a time, we heeded these warnings. Wealth and income inequality peaked in the 1920s before the passage of high personal income tax rates on the rich, a federal estate tax, and other inequality-fighting public policy measures took hold. Americans enjoyed a general flattening of the economic pyramid up until the 1980s when the modern period of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the rest of us begun.

It’s safe to say that a country in which three individuals own more wealth than half the country — as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett do now — is not what Brandeis or Roosevelt hoped for the direction of the country.

Without action, French economist Thomas Piketty warns, the United States will devolve into a “patrimonial capitalism” where the heirs of today’s billionaires dominate our politics, culture, and economy.

The good news is we have solutions to avoid this.

A smart step forward would be instituting a federal wealth tax on assets above $20 million, which would raise an estimated $1.9 trillion over 10 years that could be invested in generating economic opportunities for low-wealth families. Another good idea is to tax large inheritances — people’s genetic lottery winnings — as ordinary income.

There’s nothing natural or inevitable about wealth dynasties. Our ancestors recognized this and took action. We can too.

Death Toll Hits 25 From Wildfires at Both Ends of California

PARADISE, Calif. — Authorities called in a mobile DNA lab and anthropologists to help identify the dead as the search went on for victims of the most destructive wildfire in California history. The overall death toll from the outbreak of fires at both ends of the state stood at 25 Sunday and appeared likely to rise.

All told, more than 8,000 firefighters battled three large wildfires burning across nearly 400 square miles (1,040 square kilometers) in Northern and Southern California, with out-of-state crews continuing to arrive and gusty, blowtorch winds making their return.

The worst of the blazes was in Northern California, where flames reduced the town of Paradise, population 27,000, to a smoking ruin days ago and continued to rage in surrounding communities. The number of people killed in that fire alone, at least 23, made it the third-deadliest on record in the state.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the county was bringing in more rescue workers and consulted anthropologists from California State University at Chico because in some cases “the only remains we are able to find are bones or bone fragments.”

“This weighs heavy on all of us,” Honea said.

Authorities were also bringing in a DNA lab and encouraged people with missing relatives to submit samples to aid in identifying the dead after the blaze destroyed more than 6,700 buildings, nearly all of them homes.

The sheriff’s department compiled a list of 110 people unaccounted for, but officials held out hope that many were safe but had no cellphones or some other way to contact loved ones.

Firefighters gained modest ground overnight against the blaze, which grew slightly to 170 square miles (440 square kilometers) from the day before but was 25 percent contained, up from 20 percent, according to state fire agency, Cal Fire.

But Cal Fire spokesman Bill Murphy warned that gusty winds predicted into Monday morning could spark “explosive fire behavior.”

Two people were also found dead in a wildfire in Southern California, where flames tore through Malibu mansions and working-class Los Angeles suburbs alike. The severely burned bodies were discovered in a long residential driveway in celebrity-studded Malibu, where those forced out of homes included Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian West, Guillermo del Toro and Martin Sheen.

Flames also besieged Thousand Oaks, the Southern California city in mourning over the massacre of 12 people in a shooting rampage at a country music bar Wednesday night.

Fire officials said Sunday morning that the larger of the region’s two fires, the one burning in and around Malibu, grew to 130 square miles (337 square kilometers) and was 10 percent contained. But the strong, dry Santa Ana winds that blow from the interior toward the coast returned after a one-day lull, fanning the flames.

The count of lost structures in both Southern California fires climbed to nearly 180, authorities said.

All told, a quarter-million people were under evacuation orders up and down the state.

Gov. Jerry Brown said he is requesting a major-disaster declaration from President Donald Trump that would make victims eligible for crisis counseling, housing and unemployment help, and legal aid.

Drought, warmer weather attributed to climate change, and the building of homes deeper into forests have led to longer and more destructive wildfire seasons in California. While California officially emerged from a five-year drought last year, much of the northern two-thirds of the state is abnormally dry.

In Paradise, a town founded in the 1800s, residents who stayed behind to try to save their properties or who managed to return despite an evacuation order found incinerated cars and homes.

Wearing masks because the air was still heavy with smoke, people sidestepped metal that had melted off of cars or Jet-Skis as they surveyed their ravaged neighborhoods. Some cried when they saw nothing was left.

Jan McGregor, 81, got back to his small two-bedroom home in Paradise with the help of his firefighter grandson. He found his home leveled — a large metal safe and pipes from his septic system the only recognizable traces. The safe was punctured with bullet holes from guns inside that went off in the scorching heat.

He lived in Paradise for nearly 80 years, moving there in 1939, when the town had just 3,000 people and was nicknamed Poverty Ridge.

“We knew Paradise was a prime target for forest fire over the years,” he said. “We’ve had ’em come right up to the city limits — oh, yeah — but nothing like this.”

McGregor said he probably would not rebuild: “I have nothing here to go back to.”

___

Associated Press writers Daisy Nguyen, Olga R. Rodriguez and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco contributed to this report. Darlene Superville contributed from Paris.

Tensions Rise as Unprecedented Florida Recount Gets Underway

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The first election workers have begun the enormous task of recounting ballots in Florida’s bitterly close races for the U.S. Senate and governor, ramping up their efforts after the secretary of state ordered a review of the two nationally watched contests.

Miami-Dade County election officials began feeding ballots into scanning machines Saturday evening. The tedious work in that one South Florida county alone could take days, considering some 800,000 ballots were cast. Multiply that by 67 counties in the nation’s third most populous state, and the scope of the task was beginning to sink in Sunday.

The Florida secretary of state ordered the recounts Saturday, an unprecedented step for the two flagship races in a state that took five weeks to decide the 2000 presidential election. Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s office said it was unaware of any other time either a race for governor or U.S. Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.

Florida’s 67 counties can decide when to begin their recounts, but must complete them by Thursday. Elections officials in two large counties in the Tampa Bay area — Pinellas and Hillsborough — said they would begin recounts Sunday morning.

Unofficial results show that Republican former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by less than 0.5 percentage points, which will require a machine recount of ballots. In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is less than 0.25 percentage points, requiring a hand recount of ballots from tabulation machines that couldn’t determine which candidate got the vote.

The recount opens against a backdrop of political tensions. President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted without evidence that the elections were being stolen. Angry protesters gathered at an elections office in Broward County on Saturday, waving signs and shouting with bullhorns.

Following the announcement of a recount, Gillum withdrew his concession in the governor’s race.

“Let me say clearly, I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote,” he said, adding that he would accept whatever outcome emerges.

In a video statement released Saturday, DeSantis said the election results were “clear and unambiguous” and that he was preparing to become the state’s next governor. He also thanked the state’s supervisors of elections, canvassing boards, and the staffs for “working hard to ensure that all lawful votes are counted.”

“It is important that everyone involved in the election process strictly adhere to the rule of law which is the foundation for our nation,” he said.

In the Senate recount, Scott implored the state’s sheriffs to “watch for any violations and take appropriate action” during the recount.

Scott and his supporters, including Trump, have alleged that voter fraud is underway in Democratic-leaning Broward County, where the Republican lead has narrowed since Election Day. There’s no evidence of voter fraud and the state’s election division, which Scott runs, said Saturday that its observers in Broward had seen “no evidence of criminal activity.”

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Friday it has not launched any investigation into election fraud.

The scene recalled the 2000 presidential recount, when it took more than five weeks for Florida to declare George W. Bush the victor over Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes, and thus giving Bush the presidency.

Florida was mocked for the way it handled the infamous 2000 recount, especially since there was no uniform process then on how to proceed. That has changed, with the Legislature passing a clear procedure on how a recount should be conducted.

Florida is also conducting a recount in a third statewide race. Democrat Nikki Fried had a 0.07 percentage point lead over Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell in the race for agriculture commissioner, one of Florida’s three Cabinet seats.

___

AP writer Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale and Tamara Lush in St. Petersburg contributed to this report.

11 Die in Fires Blazing in Both Ends of California

PARADISE, California—Devastating wildfires on both ends of California pushed into new territory Saturday, as fatigued firefighters worked to evacuate residents in harm’s way and contain blazes that already have claimed at least 11 lives, destroyed thousands of homes and other structures and scorched hundreds of square miles.

The three fires began Thursday — the largest in Northern California, where a Sierra Nevada town of 27,000 was destroyed by a fast moving-fire that quickly grew into the state’s most destructive on record. In Southern California, two fires were burning in the drought-stricken canyons and hills north and west of downtown Los Angeles.

Here’s a closer look:

Northern California

The fire that quickly overwhelmed and incinerated the historic Northern California town of Paradise grew to 156 square miles (404 square kilometers) and destroyed more than 6,700 buildings, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Saturday. More than 50,000 people evacuated the area, and at least nine were killed. One of those who died was found inside a home and the others inside cars and outside vehicles or homes.

Officials said better weather was helping them gain ground. Winds were expected to return Saturday night and drive the blaze south across Lake Oroville, threatening Oroville, a town of 19,000 people.

Residents of four small communities southeast of Paradise — Berry Creek, Bush Creek, Mountain House and Bloomer Hill — were ordered to evacuate Saturday.

Officials say more than 3,000 firefighters are battling the blaze, which began Thursday in the hills near Paradise, about 180 miles (289 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco. Pacific Gas & Electric Company told state regulators that it experienced a problem on an electrical transmission line near the site of the blaze minutes before the fire broke out. The company said it later observed damage to a transmission tower on the line.

The utility said it will cooperate with any investigations, though a spokeswoman said Friday the information was preliminary and the cause of the fire has not been determined.

Southern California

As winds subsided temporarily on Saturday, fire officials assessing damage from a wildfire that burned through wealthy enclaves and working-class suburbs near Los Angeles said two people were found dead in a fire zone that more than doubled in size overnight. Los Angeles county sheriff’s Chief John Benedict said the bodies were found in a sparsely populated stretch of Mulholland Highway in Malibu, but gave no other details.

Officials said 109 square miles (282 kilometers) had burned north and east of the city, including in Malibu, home to many Hollywood stars.

More than 250,000 people were ordered to evacuate as the Hill and Woolsey fires raged. Officials say at least 150 homes have been destroyed, though that number is expected to surge as firefighters search through cities including Thousand Oaks and Malibu.

Officials were taking advantage of calm conditions to try to contain the blaze before winds pick up again on Sunday.

By late Friday, the small Hill fire’s advance had halted, but the Woolsey fire kept growing, with flames raging from Thousand Oaks south through the northwestern San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, headed toward the Pacific Ocean.

Twin Tragedies

Just days after a gunman killed 12 people and himself at a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, many grieving residents were urged to evacuate as wildfires burning on both sides of the city shut down part of the main freeway to town.

Some evacuees sheltered at a teen center that just a day earlier was where grieving family members had gathered to receive news on the fate of loved ones who had been in the Borderline Bar and Grill, where 28-year-old former Marine Ian David Long carried out an attack that shook a city that had been considered one of the safest in the nation.

“It’s like ‘welcome to hell,’ ” resident Cynthia Ball said of the back-to-back disasters.

Three-quarters of residents in the city of 130,000, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Los Angeles, were under evacuation orders — and that likely included people affected by the shooting, Thousand Oaks Mayor Andy Fox said.

Celebrities Flee

Hollywood celebrities were forced to flee as a devastating Southern California wildfire tore through mansions in the coastal community of Malibu.

Actor Martin Sheen told Los Angeles Fox affiliate KTTV that the fire was the worst he has ever seen, and he expects that his house was destroyed.

The television station tracked down the “West Wing” actor after son Charlie Sheen tweeted Friday night that he had been unable to contact his parents. Martin Sheen gave a shoutout to his family to let them know he and his wife, Janet, were safe and planned to sleep in their car at the beach.

Alyssa Milano tweeted Saturday that she was waiting to hear of her home’s fate. On Friday she said she had gotten help to evacuate her horses and that her children were safe, but her house was “in jeopardy.”

“I’m so sorry and my heart is with each of those who are impacted by this awful disaster,” she tweeted Saturday.

Also left waiting was Caitlyn Jenner, whose hilltop home appeared intact when it was shot by a photographer for The Associated Press on Saturday morning. Jenner’s representative noted that the Olympic gold medalist wouldn’t know the extent of any damage to the home until she was allowed to return to it.

The entire coastal enclave of Malibu was ordered to flee, with Jenner’s former step-daughter Kim Kardashian West, Lady Gaga and Guillermo del Toro among the other celebrities forced to abandon their homes.

The Woolsey blaze also destroyed the home of “Dr. Strange” director Scott Derrickson and the historic Paramount Ranch where HBO’s “Westworld” and many other shows have been filmed.

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Associated Press writers contributing to this story include Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles; Jonathan J. Cooper in Malibu; Lynn Elber in Los Angeles; Paul Elias and Gillian Flaccus in Paradise; Don Thompson in Chico; Olga R. Rodriguez and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco; and Tammy Webber in Chicago.

Countries Selling Weapons to Saudi Arabia Weigh War Crimes Against Profits

The Trump administration announced Friday that it will stop refueling Saudi coalition aircraft, a move that will likely have little effect as the U.S. continues to carry out lucrative arms deals with the kingdom. Norway, meanwhile, announced Friday that it will suspend new licenses for export of arms and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

Global pressure is mounting for countries to stop sending arms and other assistance to Saudi Arabia, which is accused of facilitating the murder of Washington Post columnist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes on Yemen have killed 57,500 people since 2016, and its blockade has caused a deadly famine and cholera outbreak. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in October that Germany will no longer export arms to the kingdom and referred to Khashoggi’s murder as “the monstrosity there in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.”

“Coalition airstrikes must cease in all populated areas in Yemen,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month. In August, a coalition airstrike in Yemen hit a bus filled with children returning home from summer camp, killing more than 50 people.

Donald Trump has touted a $110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. An accurate estimate is closer to $4 billion, which is nevertheless a massive amount of money. Saudi Arabia, for its part, has spent millions lobbying Washington.

“There should have never been an execution or a cover-up, because it should have never happened,” Trump said of Khashoggi’s killing. “I would say it was a total fiasco from day one.”

Military contractor Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson said that the decision to sell arms to Saudi Arabia is entirely up to the government. “We do business through the U.S. government. We take their lead on what we sell to 70 countries. That’s what we will do in this case; it’s a matter of following the government’s lead.” The company’s sales to the kingdom have totaled $900 million for 2019 and 2020.

The Norwegian government took “a broad assessment of recent developments in Saudi Arabia and the unclear situation in Yemen,” according to Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide. In 2017, the country exported defense equipment to Saudi Arabia worth $4.9 million, according to Norwegian news agency NTB.

Germany recently has been a major arms supplier for Saudi Arabia, approving weapons exports worth more than $472 million so far this year. According to Norbert Roettgen, head of the nation’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, “Even those deals that were already approved cannot happen now, as long as the case has not been resolved, and as long as there have been no substantial consequences in Riyadh. We would completely lose our credibility.”

Some members of the European Union have called for an arms embargo, noting that France and the United Kingdom are both major arms suppliers to Saudi Arabia. Spain initially halted a sale of 400 bombs to the kingdom over human rights concerns, but then went ahead with the deal in September.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced pressure to end a $15 billion arms agreement from 2014 with General Dynamics Corp. for armored vehicles. “The contract signed by the previous government … makes it very difficult to suspend or leave that contract,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Dennis Horak, Canada’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, also reduced the issue to one of economics:

Cancellation of the deal would only serve to punish the 3,000-plus Canadian workers in the London [Ontario] area who will see their high-skilled, middle class jobs disappear for a gesture with no consequences in Saudi Arabia. … The message they would hear would be, ‘So, you don’t want our $13 billion? Fine, someone else will.’ What does that achieve?

For those opposed to the war, though, it is clear that the issue is more complex than that of job protection for those who work at weapons companies. “Over the last three and a half years, Saudi-led forces have inflicted a terrible humanitarian catastrophe on Yemen,” said Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade, a nongovernmental organization based in the U.K. “We hope that the current pressure can serve as a turning point. For far too long, arms-dealing governments have prioritized arms company profits over the rights and lives of Yemeni people.”

“Now that it’s no longer a secret that the war in Yemen is a national security and humanitarian nightmare, we need to get all the way out,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.

Countries Selling Saudi Arabia Weapons Weigh War Crimes Against Profits

The Trump administration announced Friday that it will stop refueling Saudi coalition aircraft, a move that will likely have little effect as the U.S. continues to carry out lucrative arms deals with the kingdom. Norway, meanwhile, announced Friday that it will suspend new licenses for export of arms and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

Global pressure is mounting for countries to stop sending arms and other assistance to Saudi Arabia, which is accused of facilitating the murder of Washington Post columnist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes on Yemen have killed 57,500 people since 2016, and its blockade has caused a deadly famine and cholera outbreak. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in October that Germany will no longer export arms to the kingdom and referred to Khashoggi’s murder as “the monstrosity there in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.”

“Coalition airstrikes must cease in all populated areas in Yemen,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month. In August, a coalition airstrike in Yemen hit a bus filled with children returning home from summer camp, killing more than 50 people.

Donald Trump has touted a $110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. The more accurate estimate is closer to $4 billion, which is nevertheless a massive amount of money. Saudi Arabia, for its part, has spent millions lobbying Washington.

“There should have never been an execution or a cover-up, because it should have never happened,” Trump said of Khashoggi’s killing. “I would say it was a total fiasco from day one.”

Military contractor Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson said that the decision to sell arms to Saudi Arabia is entirely up to the government. “We do business through the U.S. government. We take their lead on what we sell to 70 countries. That’s what we will do in this case; it’s a matter of following the government’s lead.” The company’s sales to the kingdom have totaled $900 million for 2019 and 2020.

The Norwegian government took “a broad assessment of recent developments in Saudi Arabia and the unclear situation in Yemen,” according to Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide. In 2017, the country exported defense equipment to Saudi Arabia worth $4.9 million, according to Norwegian news agency NTB.

Germany recently has been a major arms supplier for Saudi Arabia, approving weapons exports worth more than $472 million so far this year. According to Norbert Roettgen, head of the nation’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, “Even those deals that were already approved cannot happen now, as long as the case has not been resolved, and as long as there have been no substantial consequences in Riyadh. We would completely lose our credibility.”

Some members of the European Union have called for an arms embargo, noting that France and the United Kingdom are both major arms suppliers to Saudi Arabia. Spain initially halted a sale of 400 bombs to the kingdom over human rights concerns, but then went ahead with the deal in September.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has faced pressure to end a $15 billion arms agreement from 2014 with General Dynamics Corp. for armored vehicles. “The contract signed by the previous government … makes it very difficult to suspend or leave that contract,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Dennis Horak, Canada’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, also reduced the issue to one of economics:

Cancellation of the deal would only serve to punish the 3,000-plus Canadian workers in the London [Ontario] area who will see their high-skilled, middle class jobs disappear for a gesture with no consequences in Saudi Arabia. … The message they would hear would be, ‘So, you don’t want our $13 billion? Fine, someone else will.’ What does that achieve?

For those opposed to the war, though, it is clear that the issue is more complex than that of job protection for those who work at weapons companies. “Over the last three and a half years, Saudi-led forces have inflicted a terrible humanitarian catastrophe on Yemen,” said Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade, an nongovernmental organization based in the U.K. “We hope that the current pressure can serve as a turning point. For far too long, arms-dealing governments have prioritized arms company profits over the rights and lives of Yemeni people.”

“Now that it’s no longer a secret that the war in Yemen is a national security and humanitarian nightmare, we need to get all the way out,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.

You Can’t Assume That Moderate Democrats Win Elections

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin (11/7/18) had some familiar-sounding advice for Democrats based on the results of the midterm elections:

“Be really wary of nominating a Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) type who is going to scare moderates.”
“In states where being ‘middle of the road’ is no insult, it’s a good idea to go with a moderate.”
“Moderates don’t have to be boring, and outside of deep-blue enclaves, it’s entirely logical to avoid overreaching.”

In case you didn’t get the message, Rubin had another column (11/8/18) the next day: “Three Cheers for the Moderates.”

“Move to the right” is always corporate media’s advice for Democrats—win or lose. But did the 2018 midterms really demonstrate the virtues of moderation?

Well, the worst news for Democrats on Tuesday was the loss of three Senate seats held by incumbent Dems: North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill. As it happens, these are the Democrats who vote second-, third- and fifth-most often in line with Donald Trump’s preferences.

Heitkamp ran an ad bragging that she “voted over half the time with President Trump.” A Donnelly spot featured Trump saying, “Sen. Donnelly, thank you very much.”  A McCaskill ad declared that she was “not one of those crazy Democrats.”

They sound pretty “moderate,” right? Yet they not only lost, they lost big—by 11-, 7- and 6-point margins, respectively.

Rubin didn’t mention any of these three senators, presumably because they greatly undercut the point she wants to make. Instead, she called attention to the defeat of Ohio Democratic  gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, whom she described as “a progressive darling” and “a ‘tax and spend’ progressive” that “moderates in the suburbs might shy away” from. (When Rubin warned Democrats against the “Sanders type,” Cordray was the example she offered.)

In fact, Cordray campaigned in 1992 for Ohio’s 15th congressional district on a platform of fiscal conservatism. As Ohio attorney general, Cordray was a fierce proponent of the death penalty, complaining that “Ohio’s appeal process for inmates sentenced to death is still too long and sometimes defeats the possibility of justice being served” (AP, 4/1/09). In this governor’s race, the headline of his economic platform was “Support for Small Businesses to Grow and Spread Economic Opportunity”—not exactly a line stolen from Eugene V. Debs.

There was another Democrat on Ohio ballots this election—Sen. Sherrod Brown—who’s more aptly described as a “progressive darling.” Brown’s reputation as a progressive maverick may be overstated—during the current administration, he’s voted on Trump’s side 28 percent of the time, which is about half as often as Heitkamp, but three times as often as New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand—but it’s unclear why Rubin saddled progressives with Cordray’s 4-point loss but didn’t give them credit for Brown’s 6-point victory.

Aside, that is, from the standard media assumption that moderation wins elections and any losses are to be blamed on being too far to the left.