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The Ugly Truth About the U.S.-Saudi Arms Deals

What follows is a conversation between arms industry researcher Andrew Feinstein and Sharmini Peries of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

One of the reasons that President Donald Trump has been lenient about reining in the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is, apparently, that Saudi arms deals are good for the American economy and to create jobs in the United States, as is the war in Yemen. Trump has put himself at the center of the arms deals with Saudi Arabia, where he often talks about the number of jobs that these deals would create for the United States and he is primarily responsible for them, these jobs that would be created. Well, how many jobs will these arms deals create in the United States, according to Trump?

The president has said:

I worked very hard to get the order for the military’s 110 billion dollars. I believe it’s the largest order ever made. It’s 450,000 jobs.

They have a tremendous order, 110 billion dollars. Every country in the world wanted a piece of that order. It’s 500,000 jobs.

We have 450 billion dollars worth of things ordered from a very rich country, Saudi Arabia. 600,000 jobs, maybe more than that.

This is equipment and various things ordered from Saudi Arabia. 450 billion dollars. I think it’s over a million jobs.

I think that’s over a million jobs. A million to over a million jobs.

SHARMINI PERIES: Well, a recent exclusive report gathered by Reuters examines several internal reports of defense contractors, mainly Lockheed Martin in this particular report. They found that these huge, billion dollar, hundred and ten billion dollars that Trump quotes, may create perhaps a few hundred jobs, maybe a thousand. Well, what is Trump boasting about then? Well, let’s get to the bottom of this with filmmaker and author Andrew Feinstein. His film, Shadow World, is based on his book and Feinstein is a former ANC member of Parliament from South Africa. But his political career abruptly came to an end when he insisted on exposing a 10 billion dollar arms deal with BAE Systems, that’s British, BAE Systems and President Mbeki of South Africa to buy fighter planes for South Africa that they didn’t actually need.

Well, welcome Andrew. All right Andrew, let’s take up the Reuters report for us. What does it expose about the Saudi arms deals and the promised jobs that Trump is talking about.

ANDREW FEINSTEIN: As usual, what we’re seeing here is two things interacting. The first is the reality that throughout the world, defense contractors make these grandiose estimates of the number of jobs that arms deals are going to result in. And what I found through researching the global arms trade for almost 17 years now, what they reflect in the Shadow World, the book on the global arms trade is that these estimates are always way, way above the actual jobs produced. To give you an example, BAE Systems, the British company, when trying to get the Serious Fraud Office in the UK to close down a massive corruption investigation into BAE, said if the investigation continues, the Saudis won’t buy our typhoon jets and that’ll cost 55,000 jobs in the UK. Turned out, there were actually less than 7,000 jobs in the UK that would have been created by this deal.

Now, if we take that almost instinctive practice of the weapons makers around the world and we add to that President Trump’s usual dissonance with reality, you get some sense of where these absurd figures that he comes up with are coming from. So he’s saying anywhere between 450,000 and a million jobs from this deal. First of all, the deal in size, is nothing like the figures he’s talking about. He bandies around the figure of a deal of 110 billion. Then elsewhere, he talks about 450 billion dollars. The reality is the arms deal, most experts agree, will be between about 15 and 22 billion dollars. But in addition to that, most elements of this deal were actually negotiated under President Obama and even parts of it under President George W. Bush.

So what President Trump has brought to the table is virtually nothing new. But if we take that more realistic estimate of the size of the deal, you’re also going to get nothing near the sorts of job figures he’s talking about. In fact, what the Reuters report reflects is that Lockheed Martin, which would be the main contractor on the Saudi deal, would only add a thousand new jobs if this entire deal went through. It would, it should be mentioned, keep about 18 thousand people who are already in jobs, it would keep them busy as well. And if one thinks about the fact that economic think tanks argue that a deal of this sort will likely have a jobs multiplier effect of around three point two times, even if we combine the direct and indirect jobs of this deal, we’re talking in the 60 thousands rather than in the half a million type figures.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Andrew. These job numbers that Trump is talking about is really critical at this moment, given that we’re leading into, next Tuesday, a midterm election in the United States and jobs and economy is a big part of it. Now, give us a sense of who will actually benefit from these, if they are multibillion dollar contracts, and which pockets will be stuffed with the money that they may gain.

ANDREW FEINSTEIN: Well, this is not what President Trump would want the American people to hear. So point one, leading into the midterms Trump had very little, if anything, to do with any of these deals and even the small numbers of jobs that are being generated. So who will benefit? Well, as always, the defense companies; Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, Raytheon, who are producing a lot of the missiles and other ordnances being rained down on innocent Yemeni civilians, will be the primary beneficiaries of this contract. And if these defense contractors benefit, guess who else benefits? The politicians. Because these companies are huge contributors to the campaign of those people on Capitol Hill who support the defense contractors.

So it’s this circle of money that will circulate from the Saudis, through the defense contractors in the United States of America, and some of it will end up in the hands of political representatives who, in turn, will ensure that Congress votes more weapons projects to the very same companies who are giving them campaign contributions. In addition to that, we should bear in mind that the other biggest beneficiary will be Saudi Arabia. It’s estimated that the Saudis will probably create around 10,000 jobs in Saudi Arabia itself on the back of these deals. But more than that, they will be provided with weaponry; helicopters, tanks, ships, missiles, radars, software that they will use to continue to slaughter innocent civilians quite intentionally on the ground in Yemen.

So the real beneficiaries of this deal, which is nothing like the size that president Trump claims it’s going to be, are the American defense companies, the weapons makers, American politicians and the Saudi royal family. And as always, the losers will be the American tax payer who subsidizes the weapons makers in America and the tens of thousands of innocent civilians, in countries like Yemen, who are suffering the consequences of these American weapons being used by the Saudi-led coalition against them.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Andrew. And the obvious elephant in the room here is why is Saudi Arabia, and of course the United States, why is it supporting Saudi Arabia in bombarding Yemen in this way? It’s perhaps one of the smallest and the poorest countries in the world. What do they have to gain from this effort in Yemen?

ANDREW FEINSTEIN: I think that the intention of Saudi Arabia, by waging what is effectively a war on Yemen, they’re intending to take control of the country. And their reason for taking control of a country as poor and, you could argue, as insignificant as Yemen is twofold. The ultimate endgame here is supremacy in the Middle East. And that supremacy is in alliance with America and in alliance with Israel. And how does Yemen feature into that intention of supremacy? There’s a crucial dimension to it, and that is the real objective of the Saudis and the Israelis and, I would argue, the neoconservatives in the United States, is regime change in Iran.

And because of the location of Yemen and the relationship of some of those who the Saudis are opposing in Yemen, their interactions and relationships with Iran, the idea is that a Yemen controlled by Saudi Arabia could effectively be used as a launching pad for an attack on Iran. And in my opinion, that is the Saudi and the Israeli and the American intention in the Middle East, of which Yemen is just one small piece of the puzzle.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Andrew. I thank you so much for joining us today and presenting such a clear picture of what is going on in terms of these jobs, as well as the Saudi’s role in the region. I thank you so much.

ANDREW FEINSTEIN: Thank you.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

Scum vs. Scum

There is perhaps no better illustration of the deep decay of the American political system than the Senate race in New Jersey. Sen. Bob Menendez, running for re-election, was censured by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting bribes from the Florida businessman Salomon Melgen, who was convicted in 2017 of defrauding Medicare of $73 million. The senator had flown to the Dominican Republic with Melgen on the physician’s private jet and stayed in his private villa, where the men cavorted with young Dominican women who allegedly were prostitutes. Menendez performed numerous political favors for Melgen, including helping some of the Dominican women acquire visas to the United States. Menendez was indicted in a federal corruption trial but escaped sentencing because of a hung jury.

Menendez has a voting record as sordid as most Democrats’. He supported the $716 billion military spending bill, along with 85 percent of his fellow Senate Democrats. He signed a letter, along with other Democratic leaders, calling for steps to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial in the United States. The senator, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, is owned by the lobby for Israel—a country that routinely and massively interferes in our elections—and supported moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis by voting to revoke Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law enacted to create a firewall between commercial and investment banks.

His Republican rival in the Senate race that will be decided Tuesday is Bob Hugin, whose reported net worth is at least $84 million. With Hugin as its CEO, the pharmaceutical firm Celgene made $200 million by conspiring to keep generic cancer drugs off the market, according to its critics. Celgene, a model of everything that is wrong with our for-profit health care system, paid $280 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower who accused the firm of improperly marketing two drugs to treat several forms of cancer without getting Federal Drug Administration approval, thereby defrauding Medicare. Celgene, over seven years, also doubled the price of the cancer drug Revlimid to some $20,000 for a supply of 28 pills.

The Senate campaign in New Jersey has seen no discussion of substantive issues. It is dominated by both candidates’ nonstop personal attacks and negative ads, part of the typical burlesque of American politics.

Scum versus scum. That sums up this election season. Is it any wonder that 100 million Americans don’t bother to vote? When all you are offered is Bob One or Bob Two, why bother? One-fourth of Democratic challengers in competitive House districts in this week’s elections have backgrounds in the CIA, the military, the National Security Council or the State Department. Nearly all candidates on the ballots in House races are corporate-sponsored, with a few lonely exceptions such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, members of the Democratic Socialists of America who are running as Democrats. The securities and finance industry has backed Democratic congressional candidates 63 percent to 37 percent over Republicans, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. Democratic candidates and political action committees have received $56.8 million, compared with Republicans’ $33.4 million, the center reported. The broader sector of finance, insurance and real estate, it found, has given $174 million to Democratic candidates, against $157 million to Republicans. And Michael Bloomberg, weighing his own presidential run, has pledged $100 million to elect a Democratic Congress.

“In interviews with two dozen Wall Street executives, fund-raisers, donors and those who raise money from them, Democrats described an extraordinary level of investment and excitement from the finance sector … ,” The New York Times reported about current campaign contributions to the Democrats from the corporate oligarchs.

Our system of legalized bribery is an equal-opportunity employer.

Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man’s party of the president retain control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for it.

Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham. Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn’t vote for the Democratic scum, tools of the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.

The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics, Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill corporate fascism with a friendly face.

Bertram Gross (1912-1997) in “Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power” warned us that fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is embodied in the executioner’s sadistic leer. Janus-like, fascism seeks to present itself to a captive public as a force for good and moral renewal. It promises protection against enemies real and invented. But denounce its ideology, challenge its power, demand freedom from fascism’s iron grip, and you are mercilessly crushed. Gross knew that if the United States’ form of fascism, expressed through corporate tyranny, was able to effectively mask its true intentions behind its “friendly” face we would be stripped of power, shorn of our most cherished rights and impoverished. He has been proved correct.

“Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America,” Gross wrote. “Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion.”

No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are, at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment. Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.

You cannot use the word “liberty” when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You cannot use the word “liberty” when you are the most photographed and monitored population in human history. You cannot use the word “liberty” when it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word “liberty” when the state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word “liberty” when 2.3 million citizens, mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our chains—a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist. Either way we are shackled.

Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism. It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, refining Gross’ thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly fascism as “inverted totalitarianism.” It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally. Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that “a friendly fascist power structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today’s Japan would be far more sophisticated than the ‘caesarism’ of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no charismatic dictator nor even a titular head … it would require no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the Establishment.”

Gross foresaw that technological advances in the hands of corporations would be used to trap the public in what he called “cultural ghettoization” so that “almost every individual would get a personalized sequence of information injections at any time of the day—or night.” This is what, of course, television, our electronic devices and the internet have done. He warned that we would be mesmerized by the entertaining shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave as we were enslaved.

Gross knew that the most destructive force against the body politic would be the war profiteers and the militarists. He saw how they would siphon off the resources of the state to wage endless war, a sum that now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. And he grasped that warfare is the natural extension of corporatism. He wrote:

Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly glorified. It was applied regionally—by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.

The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. It is global in scope. It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders—such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze—tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style entrepreneurs who tend to operate—as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Savage have disclosed—in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole. Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism’s glorification of violence, the friendly fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind such “value-free” terms as “nuclear exchange,” “counterforce” and “flexible response,” behind the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through missiles or even on the “automated battlefield,” and the even greater psychological distances between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or slow death.

We no longer live in a functioning democracy. Self-styled liberals and progressives, as they do in every election cycle, are urging us to vote for the Democrats, although the Democratic Party in Europe would be classified as a right-wing party, and tell us to begin to build progressive movements the day after the election. Only no one ever builds these movements. The Democratic Party knows there is no price to pay for selling us out and its abject service to corporations. It knows the left and liberals become supplicants in every election cycle. And this is why the Democratic Party drifts further and further to the right and we become more and more irrelevant. If you stand for something, you have to be willing to fight for it. But there is no fight in us.

The elites, Republican and Democrat, belong to the same club. We are not in it. Take a look at the flight roster of the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of prostituting dozens of underage girls and ended up spending 13 months in prison on a single count. He flew political insiders from both parties and the business world to his secluded Caribbean island, known as “Orgy Island,” on his jet, which the press nicknamed “the Lolita Express.” Some of the names on his flight roster, which usually included unidentified women, were Bill Clinton, who took dozens of trips, Alan Dershowitz, former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers, the Candide-like Steven Pinker, whose fairy dust ensures we are getting better and better, and Britain’s Prince Andrew. Epstein was also a friend of Trump, whom he visited at Mar-a-Lago.

We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is “that people and governments never have learned anything from history.” We will not arrest the decline if the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will do its dirty work regardless of which face—the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the demented visage of the Trump Republicans—is pushed out front. If you want real change, change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.

N.Y. Times Story on Pro-Trump Women Features Convicted Scammer

A recent New York Times piece on women who support Trump, which includes reporting by four journalists, fails to disclose the criminal record of one of the people featured in the article.

The article profiles several women who support the president, although it notes that “warmth toward the president is decidedly a minority view among women around the country” and that “women disproportionately opposed Mr. Trump’s election two years ago, and have turned against him in even greater numbers since.”

In 2015, Rachell Marks, a Montana woman who told the Times about her “love” for Trump, was found guilty of befriending two elderly men and then stealing money from them. She was sentenced to 10 years of probation on two counts of felony deceptive practices and one count of felony exploitation of an older person. The court ordered her not to have contact with elderly people. She paid more than $36,000 in restitution to the men and more than $1,100 in restitution to American Express.

“I have an infatuation and a love for this man that’s not normal,” she told the Times. “I give the highest respect when people are telling the truth and giving their political power. If anything, I have a deeper respect now.”

Lmao great pull by @flglmn here pic.twitter.com/QNyfcrSPYb

— Will

Democrat McCaskill Reaches Right in GOP-Leaning Missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill has approvingly evoked former President Ronald Reagan. She said she would back President Donald Trump if he stopped a migrant caravan at the border. And speaking on Fox News, she has decried “crazy Democrats.”

What is the Democratic senator up to?

The vulnerable incumbent is appealing to the right in a bid to win a third term in a state that Trump won by 19 percentage points in 2016.

She’s betting a more centrist message will resonate with independents and moderate Republican voters she desperately needs to beat Republican challenger Josh Hawley, who has relentlessly attacked her as too liberal for the conservative leaning state.

“For me, it’s not about fighting the president every day,” she told a group of supporters gathered at an iconic Missouri pizza parlor called Shakespeare’s Pizza in the college town of Columbia. “It’s about fighting for you every day.”

McCaskill’s messaging prompted Trump to say sarcastically during a Thursday rally in Columbia, Missouri, that: “I didn’t know she was a Republican.”

She’s among 10 Democratic Senate incumbents up for re-election in states the president won, and Republicans see Missouri as a prime opportunity to flip a seat and build on their now slim 51-49 majority in the Senate.

So, during a late October debate McCaskill praised Republican icon Reagan for working to unite the country when he was president in the 1980s.

She accepted an interview with Fox News, which in itself is unusual for a Democrat, and on Monday criticized “crazy Democrats” who “walk in restaurants and scream in elected officials’ faces.”

“I am not somebody who thinks that we should ever be uncivil,” McCaskill said. “I think what most Missourians want is for us to listen to each other, figure out where we can compromise, not scream in each other’s faces (and) not call each other names.”

She avoided calling any of her Senate Democratic colleagues crazy but noted that she has clashed with Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and disagrees with Sen. Bernie Sanders on a number of issues.

Asked in the same Fox interview about the caravan of migrants making its way through Mexico, McCaskill said:

“Stop it at the border. I think the president has to use every tool he has at his disposal and I’ll 100 percent back him up on that.”

Hawley scoffs at such talk from McCaskill, who he called a “liberal Democrat, for darn sure.”

“She votes with (Sen.) Chuck Schumer almost 90 percent of the time, she voted against Justice (Brett) Kavanaugh, against Justice (Neil) Gorsuch, against middle-class tax cuts, against border security,” Hawley said Saturday at a Columbia campaign stop. “She’s against standing up to China and trade cheaters. I mean any issue that’s important to Missourians, she’s with her party down the line.”

Hawley tied his campaign to Trump and has embraced the president throughout his campaign, although he’s been careful not to adopt Trump’s incendiary rhetoric.

He got some conservative backup from National Rifle Association President Oliver North, who campaigned for him Saturday in Imperial, Missouri, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of St. Louis. The NRA endorsed Hawley and aired ads against McCaskill, even as the organization nationally adopted a lower profile in this year’s high-stakes midterms as the dynamics shift in the gun debate.

A check of McCaskill’s record shows that she votes with the president about half the time, though she has opposed him on some of the biggest votes including both of his Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

Trump said that McCaskill had been “saying such nice things about me. But you know what? She’ll never vote with me. That’s the problem.”

Some voters don’t seem sold on McCaskill’s message, either.

“I’m a hardcore conservative, and she’s a hardcore liberal even though she’s trying to hide it,” said Jeff Ferry, a 50-year-old antique store owner from Perry, Missouri who traveled to Columbia to see the president speak. When asked who he will pick for Senate, he said “it sure won’t be Claire McCaskill.”

___

For AP’s complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics

Love vs. Hate: On the Pittsburgh Attack and Other Atrocities

Once in Iraq War days I was interviewed on PBS and I said, “I am alarmed.” A viewer wrote me and said, “It would have helped if you had *looked* like you were alarmed.” Sometimes I’m too Zen for the hot medium of television.

But I really am alarmed about the wave of hate crimes sweeping our country, and I think all human beings with a heart join Rabbi Jeffrey Myers in weeping at the senseless loss of life inflicted by irrational hate on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh last week.

We mourn our siblings, Joyce Fienberg, 75, Rich Gottfried, 65, Rose Mallinger, 97, Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, Cecil Rosenthal, 59, David Rosenthal, 54, Bernice Simon, 84, Sylvan Simon, 86, Daniel Stein, 71, Melvin Wax, 88, Irving Younger, 69. They were all way too young to check out like that.

I think any dispassionate observer will also agree with Rabbi Myers that the hateful rhetoric of our current president contributes to an atmosphere in which extremists and supremacists are emboldened to act.

It is incredible to me how the issue of semi-automatic weapons has been sidestepped by the reporting on this chilling attack. Our country has a big gun problem, which turbocharges extremism.

I am heartened by the efforts of Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue (including Mpowerchange and many others to raise money for the families of the victims.

They have led the way toward healing, by underlining our unity as Americans across religious and racial divides. As have the efforts to have more Americans of Christian heritage attend Jewish and Muslim religious services. All the social science shows that if people actually know someone from a minority group they are much less likely to have a poor opinion of the group.

The only way to defeat hate is love. Extremists are trying to polarize us and set us against one another. They only effective response is to refuse to be divided, to refuse to fear, to refuse to despise. The powerful negative emotions are the helpmeets of extremism, and only positive emotions, only reaching out and showing affection and compassion, can disrupt them.

But the other thing to say is that all this underscores how absolutely essential it is for every single one of us to vote on Tuesday.

This massacre did not take place in a vacuum. Informed Comment has been forced repeatedly to take up these issues. That is why I am alarmed. Here are some other such instances:

2. Trump-inspired felon allegedly torches Fort Pierce, Fla., Mosque, says “All Islam is radical”

09/15/2016

Joseph Michael Schreiber stands accused of having carried out an arson attack against a mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida, about an hour’s drive north from West Palm Beach.

The mosque was burned down on the first night of Eid al-Adha or the Festival of Sacrifice, a major Muslim holy day that in part commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command. The fire was set after midnight and it wasn’t until 5 am until the local firefighters could put the blaze out.

The small congregation of 100 vows to rebuild the edifice.

Those who want to contribute to the rebuilding can do so at this page by clicking on “support.”

The Fort Pierce Islamic Center had a web page that wished visitors “peace be upon you” and described itself this way:

“In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Most Compassionate,

The Islamic Center of Fort Pierce is the oldest mosque in the Treasure Coast area, located on West Midway Road in White City. The purpose of this mosque is to cater to the needs of the greater Muslim community by providing a wide range of services, activities, programs, and classes. Over the years, the mosque has been a central point for the Muslim community and the center has been used for events, lectures, meetings, classes, and much more. We strongly condemn all acts of terror and violence.”

It serviced a diverse community from 22 countries. Muslim-Americans in the Fort Pierce area have been living in fear and suffering from severe harassment for several years.

Schreiber, 32, is single and is likely to remain so. He has a history of petty theft and faces 30 years in prison if he is convicted of the arson as a hate crime.

He at one point posted to his Facebook page a GOP National Committee picture showing Trump/Spence and the words “The team that will make America great again!” . . .

3. Our reply to Dylann Roof’s Hate: Donate to “Mother Emanuel” AME Church (Excerpt):

06/19/2015

There are many essential responses to the racist terrorism that attacked Emanuel AME Church, which the state of South Carolina should take. It should stop flying the Confederate flag. It should undo the gerrymandering by the white Republican Establishment that keeps the one-third of the population that is African-American disenfranchised (hint: one third of its congressional seats are not held by African-Americans).

But those of us who don’t live in that state can also take action. The Emanuel AME Church webpage has a donation button. I just gave to it, and hope all of you will, too. If many give small sums each, we can further build up this essential institution of American life. Dylann Roof’s act of terrorism left behind family members who need our support, including the family of the pastor, the Reverend Honorable Clementa C. Pinckney, a South Carolina state senator who was executed in cold blood.

PBS NewsHour: “Rev. Clementa Pinckney talks about black political participation”

This from his webpage:

“Rev. Pinckney answered the call to preach at the age of thirteen and received his first appointment to pastor at the age of eighteen. . . He serves as the pastor of historic Mother Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston, South Carolina.

Rev. Pinckney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1996 at the age of twenty-three. In 2000, he was elected to the State Senate at the age of twenty-seven. He is one of the youngest persons and the youngest African-American in South Carolina to be elected to the State Legislature. He represents Jasper, Beaufort, Charleston, Colleton, and Hampton Counties. His committee assignments include Senate Finance, Banking and Insurance, Transportation, Medical Affairs and Corrections and Penology. Washington Post columnist, David Broder, called Rev. Pinckney a “political spirit lifter for suprisingly not becoming cynical about politics.”

Rev. Pinckney has served in other capacities in the state to include a college trustee and corporate board member. In May 2010, he delivered the Commencement Address for the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.

He and his wife Jennifer have two children – Eliana and Malana.”

All our hearts go out to Mrs. Pinckney, to Eliana and Malana. America gives them a hug of love and support. And to the families of the other victims: Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49, member of the church choir; Ethel Lance, 70, who worked for three decades at the church; Susie Jackson, 87 years old; Cynthia Hurd, 54, St. Andrews Regional Library branch manager; Tywanza Sanders, 26, a 2014 Allen University graduate (so young!); Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, a church pastor and high school coach; Myra Thompson, 59; Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a retired pastor from another Charleston church.

4. Juan Cole on America’s Terrorism Double Standard

(Excerpt):

August 16, 2012 by Lauren Feeney

From Billmoyers.com

On his oft-cited blog Informed Comment, author, scholar and historian Juan Cole writes about the Middle East and American politics. In the wake of the attack at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, Cole compared our nation’s response to what he calls “white terrorism” with its response to “other” (read: Islamic) terrorism. We reached him by phone to learn more.

Lauren Feeney: The two recent mass shootings at a movie theater in Colorado and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin — were they terrorism?

Juan Cole: The federal code contains a definition of terrorism — it’s the deployment of coercion or violence against civilians for the accomplishment of a political purpose. The movie theater incident wasn’t terrorism, as far as anybody can tell. That was mental illness. As for the Sikh temple shootings, I think there’s ample evidence that this individual was motivated by a political program of hatred for what he considered to be non-whites. The likelihood is that he thought he was targeting a Muslim congregation, because Sikhs wear turbans and beards and a lot of uneducated Americans mistake Sikhs for Muslims.

Feeney: CNN’s CNN’s Peter Bergen recently reported that militants linked to al-Qaida or inspired by the jihad-instilled ideology have carried out four terrorist attacks in the US since Sept. 11, while “right-wing extremists” like Wade Michael Page have committed at least eight. Why then do you think Americans still equate terror with Islam?

Cole: There is a certain amount of, frankly, latent racism in this issue. Sociologists have long remarked that there’s a kind of mainstream, who are unmarked, and minorities, who are marked. In other words, if a bank robber is white, the reporting on the bank robbery won’t mention that in its news. It’ll just say, “The bank was robbed.” If the bank robber is a member of a minority, then the ethnicity of the bank robber will typically be mentioned. I think the same thing, marked and unmarked identities, operates with regard to terrorism.

Feeney: What’s been in the difference in government response between mass shooting incidents carried out by white men, and the Fort Hood shootings for example, in which the perpetrator was Muslim?

Cole: With the Fort Hood shootings, there were very strong suspicions that the shooter acted as part of a plot, part of a network. Congressional hearings were held. The fact that he had ever read or viewed YouTube videos from Muslim radicals in Yemen was brought up. It was very difficult for investigators to see this person as a loner or as a mentally disturbed person. The instinct was to find the network, find the plot.

On the contrary, when a Department of Homeland Security employee, Daryl Johnson, in 2009, wrote a position paper on the need to track hate groups and white supremacists, there were congressmen who attacked him.

Some of the themes that are invoked by the white supremacists are themes that have become relatively mainstreamed in right-wing thinking in the United States. I’m not saying that the right wing is necessarily sympathetic to white supremacism, but I think that they don’t view it as being as alarming as it actually is.

Feeney: What about the killings that happen every day in our inner cities? How does the government reaction compare when the crime isn’t necessarily terrorism per se, but people are still losing there lives?

Cole: The use of a weapon or a device for the purposes of terrorism typically draws a very strong response from law enforcement. Ways are thought of to try to block the use that weapon. But the use of semiautomatic weapons by drug gangs, white supremacist terrorists, the mentally ill and so forth typically draws no law enforcement response. Occasionally police chiefs will say they wish the things were banned, but among the political establishment, because of the influence of the gun lobbies, there’s not a serious national dialogue on the banning of semiautomatic weapons . . .

Feeney: The Sikh temple shooter had been followed for years by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, but he still managed to carry out this attack. What can we do to end this sort of violence?

Cole: The man was a known member of hate groups and was able to easily buy a semiautomatic weapon and get it the second day. To my mind, there’s simply no excuse for semiautomatic weapons, which are military weapons, being available to civilians in the United States. You don’t need such a weapon to hunt or for self-defense. These things can be done with an ordinary rifle or pistol.

If someone wants to quickly kill large numbers of innocent civilians, a semiautomatic weapon is ideal for the purpose. With the rash of these incidents, the lesson should be drawn that it’s a very dangerous kind of weapon to have freely available in our society. And as long as these weapons are freely available, it seems to me that we have enough terrorist-minded individuals in the United States that we’re going to go on facing these massacres from time to time.

 

The Uncomfortable Truths Behind Bolsonaro’s Win

Why did the Brazilian people elect a neofascist? If you get your information from the newspapers, you might think that this happened because Brazilians are afraid of rising violence rates or fed up with corruption. These explanations sound great on paper because they function as what sociologist Pierre Bordieu called mind stopping cliches. When hearing something familiar and logical sounding, the brain stops and moves onto another subject.

Violence and corruption. Everyone hates that. What’s happening in sports? This is how the Anglo media wants people to process the issue of the arrival of fascism in Brazil, because if the public begins to scratch under the surface, it will find uncomfortable truths that implicate their own governments, think tanks, corporations and media institutions. That could lead to some difficult questions, so why not stick to the mind stopping cliches of violence and corruption? The problem is that, although both issues may have been used to manipulate the public, neither of them hold up to scrutiny.

Haddad had more support in the most violent regions

Like all countries that have to deal with the legacy of slavery and the fact that one segment of the population considers another segment to be sub-human, Brazil has always been a violent place. The image of Brazil as a land of violence has been burned into the minds of the Anglopublic through films like Pixote, City of God and Elite Squad. Only 6% of Brazilians live in favelas, and many favelas have more middle class residents than poor, but in the minds of many casual northern observers, most Brazilians live in desolate slums full of child soldiers. Could fears of violence have been the deciding factor in electing a military man to the presidency? Brazil certainly sounds scary to many Americans.

While it is true that violence has risen in Brazil in recent years – especially after the start of the austerity policies that began mildly during the last year of Dilma Rousseff’s presidency and were greatly exacerbated by the coup government which took power in 2016 – violence patterns have been marked by a geographical shift which does not strongly correspond with electoral support for Jair Bolsonaro. The case in point is São Paulo state, where Bolsonaro received over ¼ of his total number of votes. Although Brasil witnessed a 14% rise in homicides between 2006 and 2016, São Paulo saw a 46% drop in the same period, with an even greater drop from 2000-2006. São Paulo city has seen its homicide rate of 60/100,000 in the year 2000 drop to 7.8 in 2017, which is significantly lower than most big American cities. Likewise, statewide homicide rates have dropped from 26/100,000 to 9.5/100,000 in the same period. Although there was a slight increase in the statewide murder rate during 2017, murders actually dropped by 15% in São Paulo city.

The case of Rio de Janeiro, where 67% of voters supported Bolsonaro, is also telling. In 2002, Rio de Janeiro had a homicide rate of 60/100,000. By 2010 it had dropped to 26/100,000. Murder rates began rising again after the mega-events, reaching around 37/100,000 in 2017 – a disturbing statistic, but not one that places Rio de Janeiro among the ten most violent states in Brazil. As I have argued before, however, Rio has a unique political and criminal environment. For example, a report by Amnesty International shows that 25% of all murders committed in Rio de Janeiro last year were done by police officers. Neighboring Minas Gerais has violence issues of its own, but it’s police killed around 10 times fewer people per capita in 2017 that the police in Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, as Ben Anderson and I discovered while filming the HBO/Vice TV special, The Pacification of Rio, there is evidence that the Rio de Janeiro State government cooked the books, and shifted numbers between homicides, violent deaths of undetermined causes and disappearances to make crime rates appear lower during the lead up to the World Cup and Olympics. Therefore, although there is a recent rise in violence in Rio, the real numbers may be lower than they appear due to statistical manipulation by the government to build up support for the military occupation and, even if they are not, they don’t compare to the numbers from the early 2000s or rank Rio as one of the most violent places in Brazil.

If the homicide rate in Brazil has fallen so dramatically in the last 15 years in Rio and São Paulo, why did Brazil experience its highest murder toll ever last year? One reason is that the Brazilian northeast has been inundated with crack. Last year, 6 of the 10 most violent states in Brazil were located in the Northeast, the region where Fernando Haddad beat Bolsonaro in every state. In Ceará, for example, which has a homicide rate 8 times higher than that of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad received 71% of the vote.

Was fear of violence the reason people in São Paulo elected Bolsonaro, or was fear of violence the reason northeasterners elected Haddad? Let’s face it. Everyone is afraid of violence. But if 25% of the votes for an “anti-violence” candidate come from a region of Brazil that has crime rates comparable to places in Europe or Canada, one could come to the conclusion that either electorate was manipulated or there were other, more important issues at stake.

It’s only corruption when communists do it

The other reason commonly cited for supporting Bolsonaro is Brazilians frustration with corruption, which, for the last 5 years has been nearly exclusively associated in the national and international media with the PT. Like the issue of violence, this does not hold up to a minimal level of scrutiny. President Dilma Rousseff was never involved in personal enrichment through corruption. In fact, she herself is a victim of corruption. Impeached for committing a non-impeachable offense, a budgetary infraction that was systematically committed by all leaders of all levels of Brazilian government and legalized one week after she was removed from office, it has subsequently come out that congressmen were bribed to vote in favor of her impeachment. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was the one man generally believed powerful enough to block the privatization of Brazil’s massive offshore petroleum reserves, was arrested on charges that he committed “indeterminate acts of corruption” related to an apartment the courts were unable to prove he ever owned and thrown in jail before his appeals process played out, in a move which Glen Greenwald says was obviously done to keep him for running for president this year. Likewise, Fernando Haddad was a victim of corruption when US-backed judge and prosecutor Sergio Moro illegally leaked plea bargain testimony to the press during election season, alleging that it implicates him in a corruption scandal despite the fact that the testimony had already been thrown out by the public prosecutor’s office.

Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, spent 25 years affiliated with the most corrupt political party in Brazil, the Partido Progressista (PP), led by the most corrupt politician in Brazilian history, Paulo Maluf, who is on Interpol’s most wanted list and cannot leave Brazil or will be arrested. Furthermore, Bolsonaro is already inviting corrupt politicians to help run his government. These names include:

1) Alberto Fraga, Congressman from the DEM party and gun industry pitchman who Bolsonaro invited to lead his bloc in Congress. Three weeks before the first round elections, in September 2018, Fraga was sentenced to 4 years of semi-open imprisonment after being caught on tape charging and receiving bribes from a bus company;

2) Congressman Onyx Lazaroni, who has already confirmed as Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, who admitted to taking bribes from the JBS meat packing company to use in an illegal campaign slush fund in 2017;

3) Congressman Pauderny Avelino from the DEM party, who was convicted in 2016 of paying cronies millions of dollars above market rate in rents for buildings and used school furniture when he was education minister in Manaus; and

4) Paulo Guedes, a University of Chicago educated monetarist economist and former attache to Augusto Pinochet. Bolsonaro has invited him to be his Economic Minister, even though he is currently being investigated by the public prosecutors office, who want to know how he managed to pocket R$1 Billion in six years while managing pension funds.

If mind-stopping cliches of violence and corruption do not fully correspond with voting patterns and Bolsonaro’s governmental program, why did he win the election? My take is that the election was neither fair nor free. It was the result of a massive fraudulent campaign backed by the US government, Brazilian military and the judiciary to guarantee that the privatizations of the world’s largest offshore petroleum reserves implemented by the coup government of Michel Temer are not reversed, and that the US military has access to Brazilian bases for another possible future petroleum grab in Venezuela. The following events had a much bigger effect on Bolsonaro’s victory than  violence and corruption:

1) A joint US/Brazil operation imprisoned leading candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who promised to reverse petroleum privatizations and re-allocate state oil profits to public health and education. He was jailed before his appeals process was finished on trumped up charges with no material evidence, based on a single plea bargain testimony made by a convicted criminal in exchange for sentence reduction and partial asset retention;

2) Lula announced he would run for President anyway, as was his right according to Brazilian and international law. The electoral court allowed 1400 candidates with similar legal issues to run, but they made an exception for Lula. Still leading in all election polls from behind bars, with more support than all other candidates combined and double the support of Bolsonaro, the one man easily capable of defeating fascism was barred from running;

3) The UN Human Rights Committee issued a ruling ordering the Brazilian government to allow Lula to run for office. Brazil is a signatory to the UN Protocol on Civil and Political Rights and, according to MP 311/2009, UNHRC rulings are legally binding. The Supreme Electoral Court broke Brazilian law and disobeyed the UN when it refused to let Lula run;

4) In a country where TV crews regularly enter prisons to interview drug traffickers and mass murderers, the courts bared Lula from speaking to Journalists, illegally prohibiting him for communicating to the public why they should vote against fascism in the elections;

5) 3.3 million voters, most of whom were poor and Northeastern – essentially the demographic that most supports the PT party – were purged from the voter rolls two weeks before the elections; and

6) After Bolsonaro support surged in the first round election, Folha de São Paulo revealed that his campaign was using an illegal slush fund created by hundreds of businessmen paying up to $4 Million USD each, to hire tech firms to illegally acquire personal data from users of the WhatsApp social media app. According to the article, this was used to create thousands of demographically targeted groups of 256 uses each and bombard them with lies and slander against the PT party. These lies were not primarily based on fear mongering about violence and corruption, but on slander that the PT party is run by sexual perverts who want to make everyone’s children gay. After Supreme Electoral Court President Rosa Weber received death threats from Bolsonaro supporters and held a meeting with Bolsonaro supporter General Sergio Etchegoyen, she decided to hold off investigations until after the final round of the elections.

International capital and the US government now have exactly what they want in Brazil. All natural resources will be opened to exploitation from foreign capital. The US military will be able to use the Alcantara rocket launching base as a takeoff point for forays into Venezuela. Brazil’s participation in the BRICS is dead in the water and US Petroleum companies will be swimming in Brazilian oil. Regardless of the level of participation by the US and its institutions, these events fit a pattern of US interventions in Latin America over the past 100 years. If we are truly interested in defeating fascism it is important to move beyond cliches and work to identify the real actors at play, so that their power can be countered. In order to do this, we have to move beyond the idea that Brazil operates in a geopolitical vacuum and that the return to neofascism, which was previously installed with ample US government support from 1964-1985, can be explained by oversimplified generalizations on public opinion.

Trump Administration Attempt to Quash Youth Climate Suit Fails

The nation’s top court on Friday turned down the Trump administration’s latest attempt to put the brakes on a landmark lawsuit brought by a group of young people who charge that the federal government has violated their constitutional rights by actively causing climate instability.

“The youth of our nation won an important decision,” said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel of Our Children’s Trust and co-counsel for the youth plaintiffs. She said the finding by the U.S. Supreme Court “shows even the most powerful government in the world must follow the rules and process of litigation in our democracy.”

The plaintiffs, aged 11-22, assert (pdf) that the government “continued their policies and practices of allowing the exploitation of fossil fuels,” despite knowing, for 50 years, that doing so “would destabilize the climate system on which present and future generations of our nation depend for their well-being and survival.”

The trial did not begin on October 29 at the United States District Court in Oregon as they’d hoped because the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay while it weighed the federal government’s request for dismissal. In denying an extension of the temporary stay, the new order says the “government’s petition for a writ of mandamus does not have a ‘fair prospect’ of success in this Court because adequate relief may be available in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.” The three-page order also states that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have extended the stay.

While that appeals court previously rejected the government’s requests for a stay, its basis for doing so rested “in large part, on the early stage of the litigation, the likelihood that plaintiffs’ claims would narrow as the case progressed, and the possibility of attaining relief through ordinary dispositive motions. Those reasons are, to a large extent, no longer pertinent,” the order adds.

Still, for the plaintiffs, Friday marked “an important date,” said Philip Gregory, co-counsel for the youth in Juliana v. United States, which first starting winding its way through the courts three years ago. “We just filed a request with [U.S. District Court ] Judge Aiken, hoping the Court sets an immediate pre-trial conference and a prompt trial date. We are extremely pleased that the courthouse doors are re-opened. Plaintiffs are ready to start trial right away.”

Twenty-two-year-old plaintiff Kelsey Juliana says she wants “to trust that we are truly on track for trial without having further delays, but these defendants are treating this case, our democracy, and the security of mine and future generations like it’s a game. I’m tired of playing this game. These petitions for stay and dismissal are exhausting.”

“To everyone who has invested in this case, to those who’ve followed along our journey for the past three years and counting,” she added, “stay with us, in hope and in the pursuit of justice.”

BREAKING: United States Supreme Court Denies Trump Administration’s Request for Stay – ​​Juliana v. United States​​ Moves Forward, Again. Read full press release: https://t.co/KJ8WKF4N3l #youthvgov #TrialoftheCentury #LetTheYouthBeHeard pic.twitter.com/EyEg7QMuWj

— Our Children’s Trust (@youthvgov) November 3, 2018

According to Thanu Yakupitiyage, communications manager for climate group 350.org, “All of us have a responsibility to double down in supporting the young people holding the U.S. government responsible for perpetuating climate change and threatening our collective future.”

U.K. Scientists Risk Prison to Urge Climate Action

A growing number of British academics, writers and activists say they are ready to go to prison in support of their demands for action on the environment.

Scientists are not normally renowned for their political activism, and the UK is hardly a hotbed of determined and risky protest against its rulers. But, if this group of nearly 100 British scientists and their backers is right, all that may be on the brink of changing.

Today sees the launch of ExtinctionRebellion, which describes itself as an international movement using mass civil disobedience to force governments to enter World War II-level mobilization mode, in response to climate breakdown and ecological crisis.

The group is launching a Declaration of Rebellion against the UK government “for criminal inaction in the face of climate change catastrophe and ecological collapse” at the Houses of Parliament in central London.

“Now is the time because we are out of time. There is nothing left to lose.”

The group’s demands include the declaration by the UK government of a state of emergency, action to create a zero carbon economy by 2025, and the establishment of a national assembly of “ordinary people” to decide what the zero carbon future will look like.

“We need ExtinctionRebellion as part of the mosaic of responses to the extremely precarious situation we now find ourselves in”

From today it promises “repeated acts of disruptive, non-violent civil disobedience” if the government does not respond seriously to its demands, and says “there will be mass arrests.”

Based on the science, it says, humans have ten years at the most to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero or the human race and most other species will be at high risk of extinction within decades.

“Children alive today in the UK will face unimaginable horrors as a result of floods, wildfires, extreme weather, crop failures and the inevitable breakdown of society when the pressures are so great. We are unprepared for the danger our future holds.”

Ecological crisis

On 30 October the Worldwide Fund for Nature reported that humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, something it says threatens the survival of civilization. ExtinctionRebellion says the loss of species shows that “the planet is in ecological crisis, and we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event this planet has experienced.”

Its members say they are willing to make personal sacrifices, to be arrested and to go to prison. They hope to inspire similar actions around the world and believe this global effort must begin in the UK, today, where the industrial revolution began.

Many of the Declaration’s signatories are well-known in the academic world. They include Danny Dorling, professor of geography at the University of Oxford, and Dr. Ian Gibson, who formerly chaired the Parliamentary science and technology select committee. Serving Members of Parliament who support ExtinctionRebellion include the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas.

Other backers are probably better-known for their achievements beyond science, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, now the Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, and the journalist George Monbiot.

Cry of desperation

Another supporter is Andrew Simms of the New Weather Institute. He told the Climate News Network: “This is almost a cry of desperation. People are bewildered. But almost every profound change in British society, from the abolition of slavery to the improvement of shipping safety, has involved people risking arrest.

“The signs I am getting from the UK government now are that it is a reckless administration putting its own people and others at risk by putting climate change virtually nowhere.

“The Declaration alone won’t bring about change: we’ll need people working practically to make change happen on the ground. But we need ExtinctionRebellion as part of the mosaic of responses to the extremely precarious situation we now find ourselves in.”

Simms, convinced that an entirely new potential for rapid societal change now exists, says: “We know what’s needed, and the resources to do it are there. ExtinctionRebellion is one example of how new ideas can spread quickly and rapid shift − and radical action − can come closer.”

Some State Election Servers Could Be Exposed to Hackers

As recently as Monday, computer servers that powered Kentucky’s online voter registration and Wisconsin’s reporting of election results ran software that could potentially expose information to hackers or enable access to sensitive files without a password.

The insecure service run by Wisconsin could be reached from internet addresses based in Russia, which has become notorious for seeking to influence U.S. elections. Kentucky’s was accessible from other Eastern European countries.

The service, known as FTP, provides public access to files — sometimes anonymously and without encryption. As a result, security experts say, it could act as a gateway for hackers to acquire key details of a server’s operating system and exploit its vulnerabilities. Some corporations and other institutions have dropped FTP in favor of more secure alternatives.

Officials in both states said that voter-registration data has not been compromised and that their states’ infrastructure was protected against infiltration. Still, Wisconsin said it turned off its FTP service following ProPublica’s inquiries. Kentucky left its password-free service running and said ProPublica didn’t understand its approach to security.

The states’ reliance on FTP highlights the uneven security practices in online election systems just days before the midterm elections. In September, ProPublica reported that more than one-third of counties overseeing closely contested elections for congressional seats ran email systems that could make it easy for hackers to log in and steal potentially sensitive information.

Some states remain hampered by bureaucratic disagreements, or regard other needs as more pressing. If intruders were able to gain access to election-related server files, for instance, they could prevent people from registering to vote, compromise unofficial tallies or direct voters to the wrong polling place. Those actions could potentially sow chaos on Election Day and raise questions as to whether the vote was legitimate.

“FTP is a 40-year-old protocol that is insecure and not being retired quickly enough,” said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, the chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., and an advocate for better voting security. “Every communication sent via FTP is not secure, meaning anyone in the hotel, airport or coffee shop on the same public Wi-Fi network that you are on can see everything sent and received. And malicious attackers can change the contents of a transmission without either side detecting the change.”

The mere presence of superfluous services on a public server, such as FTP, raises the risk of a hacker gaining access to sensitive configuration details about the server, Hall said. “Unnecessary services like FTP,” he said, can be used to cripple a server by bombarding it with traffic — known as a distributed denial of service attack — or allow hackers to break into other computers on the same network. Secure FTP services, or SFTP, which were introduced more recently, should be used instead, Hall said.

In March 2017, the FBI warned of “criminal actors” targeting FTP servers that allow access to anyone on the internet without a password. This year, the website DataBreaches.net said a security researcher discovered an FTP server was configured in a similar manner and accidentally exposed the details of more than 200,000 patients.

Using a list of internet addresses for websites run by each state’s election agency, ProPublica scanned them for open “ports,” or virtual doors, which allow any computer on the internet to access them. Those ports can reveal some of the software a server is running, such as a website or FTP.

The FTP server in Wisconsin required a password. Kentucky’s didn’t. In addition, ProPublica found Maine’s FTP service on the same internet address as a state website that directs voters to their local polling places. But Kristen Schulze Muszynski, a spokeswoman for the Maine secretary of state, said the FTP service ran on a computer server separately from the lookup tool. It “never jeopardized Maine’s election process, and at no time was voter data at risk of being manipulated,” she said.

Several other states appear to have open FTP ports that weren’t operating. In one of those states, West Virginia, Chief Information Officer David Tackett said FTP services are protected behind a firewall.

Cyberattacks on state election systems marred the 2016 campaign. For example, special counsel Robert Mueller charged 12 Russians this past July in connection with an unspecified breach that Illinois officials say was very likely an attack on its voter registration database that exposed the personal details of thousands of people. A hacker’s ability to alter unofficial or early voting results was “a very real threat” ahead of the 2016 election, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified in March before a Senate intelligence panel.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission revealed in September 2017 that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified it of an unsuccessful Russian hacking attempt the previous year that involved scanning for computer system vulnerabilities. Commission spokesman Reid Magney said the Russians did not scan the state’s “commercially-hosted agency websites,” including the commission’s site.

Major search engines like Google often prominently post voting results gathered automatically from state election commission sites. Magney said Wisconsin’s website ran an FTP service for years because the hosting provider, Cruiskeen Consulting, never turned it off. Cruiskeen is a mostly one-person operation that sometimes uses freelance consultants, according to its website.

Asked if Cruiskeen has ever alerted officials about suspicious activity or unauthorized access attempts, Magney said: “Cruiskeen does a lot of monitoring for unsuccessful login attempts and blocks them at the firewall. They also check the logs regularly for suspicious activity.” The same internet address previously hosted commercial websites like BoutiqueLiquidators.com.

Cruiskeen did not return phone calls or messages from ProPublica this week seeking comment. Magney said the owner is retiring soon, and the state plans to transfer the election-results website to a state-run computer system.

As of late Wednesday, Kentucky’s voter-registration server still allowed users to browse a list of files without a password. Even the names of the files contained clues that could conceivably help an intruder. For example, they indicated that Kentucky may use driver’s licenses on file in its motor vehicle software to verify voters’ identities.

Bradford Queen, a spokesman for Kentucky’s secretary of state, declined to say if running an FTP server was problematic. “We are constantly guarding against foreign and domestic bad actors and have confidence in the security measures deployed to protect our infrastructure,” he said.

“ProPublica’s claims regarding Kentucky’s website lack a complete understanding of the commonwealth’s full approach to security, which is multi-layered. Defenses exist within each layer to determine and block offending traffic.”

Mike Tigas and Ken Schwencke contributed to this report.

For Some, a Vibrant U.S. Economy Complicates Voting Decision

EXTON, Pennsylvania—For many voters in America’s affluent suburbs, a flourishing economy is forcing a thorny dilemma for the midterm elections.

Do they vote Democratic, in part to protest President Donald Trump for behavior some see as divisive and unpresidential? Or do they back Republicans in hopes that the economy will continue thriving under the majority party?

A healthy economy has at least complicated their decision and blurred the outcome of the midterm elections. On Friday, the government reported that employers added a robust 250,000 jobs in October. And the unemployment rate stayed at a five-decade low of 3.7 percent.

At stake Tuesday is control of the House and Senate, both now led by Republican majorities. Steady economic growth and a vigorous job market haven’t been the clincher in prosperous areas that were once seemingly safe Republican turf. Partly as a result, many analysts say Democrats stand a good chance of regaining control of the House even while Republicans maintain the Senate.

The ambivalence of many voters is evident in the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks and Chester counties. The landscape of rolling hills is dotted by shopping plazas and luxury car dealerships, by fieldstone and stucco houses that fill cul-de-sacs. Residents are likelier than the country as a whole to have college degrees, and the median family income is about $100,000.

Interviews with about a dozen people elicited a range of sentiments about whether and how the economy might affect their votes. For some, all that matters is the energized pace of job growth, which began under President Barack Obama and has continued under Trump.

Others, some of them lifelong Republicans, are finding their loyalties tested by a president who embraces tariffs, disparages refugees and attacks political opponents. With Pennsylvania also holding votes for governor and a Senate seat, many said they were willing to split their votes between the parties.

“I’m not a fan of Donald Trump,” said 85-year-old Ross Kershey. “He doesn’t respect checks and balances. But he’s certainly done well for the economy.”

A retired high school history teacher, Kershey is teaching a course on the Supreme Court at Immaculata University in Malvern, a suburb of Philadelphia. Those court cases were fresh in his mind as he sipped tea and ate pancakes at an IHOP on a recent afternoon. He objects to Trump’s recent threat to unilaterally suspend the constitutional protection of birthright citizenship as a way to control undocumented immigration.

Yet for all his antipathy toward the president, the strength of the economy is at least giving Kershey pause: “I’ll probably vote Democratic, but I’m not sure yet.”

Workers have been increasingly benefiting from the economy’s strength. Average pay growth for over the past 12 months has reached 3.1 percent, its best year-over-year increase since 2009, the government said Friday. Those gains have been concentrated among affluent Americans, though higher minimum wages have also helped raise the pay of many lower-income workers.

Among people earning at least $100,000, 60 percent approve of how Trump has handled the economy, according to a survey by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That is a relative advantage for a president whose tax cuts for corporations and individuals are credited with helping boost growth this year.

Jean Hoffman, a 53-year-old real estate agent in Chester County, is pondering the college costs ahead for her two teenage daughters. She said she thinks voting Republican might help extend the economy’s hot streak.

“I’m going to have two kids in college, and these are my earning years,” she said. “So for me, the economy is the No. 1 priority.”

Hoffman said she feels less concerned about Trump’s confrontational style or habit of assailing critics.

“It’s like white noise at this point,” she said.

Judging by the economy, the status of the House appears too close to call, said Ray Fair, a Yale economist. Using inflation and growth data, Fair developed a model to forecast electoral outcomes, which in 2016 correctly showed that that presidential election favored Republicans.

For 2018, Fair’s economy-based model is less favorable than most political surveys for Democratic prospects to win the House. But the gap isn’t sufficient to draw a firm conclusion about what will happen Tuesday. Because the party out of power — Democrats, in this case — generally enjoys an advantage in midterms, growth would have to be even stronger to decisively help Republicans this year.

“This time, the real uncertainty is turnout,” Fair said. “You can’t say anything with much confidence about who is going be on which side of 50 percent.”

To drive turnout, Pat Proprik, chair of the Bucks County Republicans, has been speaking to groups of voters nightly and knocking on doors. She said people in wealthier parts of the county tend to highlight the economy in explaining their intention to back Trump. Those in more modest areas tend to stress non-economic issues, at least at first.

“Economics isn’t the first thing out of their mouth,” Proprik said. “But when you bring it up, they jump on it.”

At 83, Dick Calef is a lifelong Republican. He attributes the economic gains in suburban Philadelphia to longer-term factors beyond Trump’s policies, like the growth of internet and health care companies. Calef is still unsure how he’ll vote.

“I find myself voting to keep a balance in the government,” he said. “I’m kind of fed up with the political environment.”

Jerry McNeff intends to split his ballot between the parties in Pennsylvania’s House, Senate and gubernatorial races.

“Trump had the right philosophy regarding the economy,” said McNeff, 72. “Taxes needed to be overhauled. Regulations had become obstructive to industry.”

But as he has aged, McNeff said, the economy has mattered less to him. He thinks more about his five grandchildren. Every report of a mass shooting at a school makes him wonder about what could happen to them. And it stuns him that the federal government has done little to prevent future shootings, like seriously considering a bill to expand background checks.

“If you say what is the No. 1 thing that keeps you up at night, that is it.”

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For AP’s complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics