Chris Hedges's Blog, page 435

Tim Cook’s Call for New Privacy Law Isn’t What It Seems

During his keynote address at the International Conference of Data Protection in Brussels on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook called on the federal government to follow Europe’s lead by adopting stringent privacy law, warning against the dangers of an emergent data-industrial complex. “Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” he said.

While he declined to mention them by name, Cook was almost certainly speaking of Facebook and Google, both of which have come under scrutiny for their willingness to sell users’ private information. Last May, The Guardian revealed that the former had harvested upward of 50 million profiles for Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked for the Trump and Brexit campaigns in the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively. “We … made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time.

Shortly thereafter, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR), which imposes transparency rules on all companies, but especially those that trade in such data. Cook contends the law, which targets tech behemoths and middlemen alike with fines for violations, represents a crucial step toward preserving our personal privacy in the digital age.

“We at Apple believe that privacy is a fundamental human right,” Cook inveighed. “But we also recognize that not everyone sees things as we do. … Every day, billions of dollars change hands, and countless decisions are made, on the basis of our likes and dislikes, our friends and families, our relationships and conversations, our wishes and fears, our hopes and dreams. These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded, and sold.”

Just don’t confuse the Apple head with consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader. As Russell Brandon notes in The Verge, “Cook’s stance isn’t as bold as it seems,” largely because every tech company has endorsed one privacy bill or another—sometimes directly to Congress. Indeed, both Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundai Pichar voiced their support for European-style regulation in separate addresses Wednesday. Writes Brandon:

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg treat regulation as a given, telling Congress the only question is how such a bill should be written. Google even went so far as laying out what a responsible data-privacy bill might look like, in advance of a Senate Commerce hearing in September. Microsoft has drawn less attention as a regulatory target, but CEO Satya Nadella has spoken in similar terms, endorsing the GDPR as ‘a good, sound regulation.’

Tech companies haven’t always been so blasé about new privacy laws — but at this point, regulations are coming whether they like it or not. If they want a say in how the rules are written, their best option is to get on board. That lets them steer the conversation toward a weaker version of the bill, much like the one put forward by Google. And with the GDPR already in place in Europe, the most serious damage has already been done.

Read more at The Verge.

Is America ‘Civilized’? Not as Long as It Sanctions the Death Penalty.

There is no place in a civilized society for capital punishment. That’s why actual civilized societies around the world do not have, use or endorse capital punishment. Twenty U.S. states ban capital punishment, the latest being Washington, whose Supreme Court ruled Oct. 11 that the ultimate penalty was “invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” A University of Washington study found that black defendants are about four times more likely to get the death penalty in Washington than white offenders. Racial disparity in sentencing is common throughout the criminal justice system nationwide.

People in the federal government and some U.S. states that endorse capital punishment, along with death penalty advocates, actually believe that they are civilized, even though they use an uncivilized method of murder. They have been historically fooled into believing that civilized people do not do uncivilized things to other people. However, no one should doubt that capital punishment and all of the mental, emotional, psychological and physical torture that is done to human beings using this form of killing is uncivilized.

Many people around the world and in this country are dumbfounded by the hypocrisy of this line of thinking, including me. In order to learn the true meaning of the word “civilized,” I had to go to my dictionary, because civilized people do not knowingly first torture and then murder their fellow man or woman; they just don’t. That’s uncivilized.

The death penalty by its very nature is meant to torture people, no matter what its form. This man-made evil, this torturous death, has everyone who is facing it, especially when they are strapped to a chair or a gurney, asking the same question that Jesus Christ asked when he was strapped and nailed to that cross: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

How do I know? Because I asked God that same question when I was being mentally, emotionally and psychologically tortured in 2004 by the prison guard executioner at the prison where I have been detained, when the next step for me was the last step, the actual physical torture by lethal injection. When a human being is put through a sick state ritual of legal murder by the staff of a prison—that is truly uncivilized.

I speak from experience, from suffering years of post-traumatic stress disorder from that agonizing, near-death experience I went through and survived. So when I looked up the word “civilized” in my dictionary to find its true meaning, I was surprised to discover that it means a different thing than what those death penalty supporters mean when they call themselves civilized. The hypocrisy that those people live with and get away with is unbelievable.

“Civilized,” according to my dictionary, means: 1) to rise from a primitive state to an advanced and ordered stage of cultural development; 2) polite and well mannered; and 3) having or showing a taste for fine arts and gracious living.

Why am I not surprised to see that nowhere in the description of “civilized” are the words “capital punishment” or “death penalty”? “Torture” is not part of the definition either, yet those people who love the death penalty so much that they have done everything humanly possible to keep it in use call themselves civilized.

The truth, in fact, is that capital punishment, torture and all of these man-made evils represent the complete opposite of being civilized. I guess that’s why both Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, spoke out against the death penalty during their walk on earth.

King said: “I do not think that God approves of the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”

Coretta Scott King said: “An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder.”

Morality and being civilized go hand in hand, just as immorality and being uncivilized go hand in glove.

The United States of America keeps strange company when it comes to the death penalty. It is in league with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as countries that execute the most prisoners. They say that this country is better or more enlightened or civilized than other countries that execute people—yet they all still have and use the death penalty.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 56 other countries still use the death penalty, including North Korea, Uganda, Botswana, Bangladesh, Somalia, Nigeria and Chad, to name a few (see the full list here).

The civilized countries that do not execute people number 141 and include Turkey, Croatia, Germany, France, Uzbekistan and Portugal.

This is an important point, because it truly speaks not only to the hypocrisy concerning the death penalty in this country, but also to how this hypocrisy is rationalized. I have learned that the three main ingredients that have made capital punishment a mainstay in this country are racism, fundamentalist religion and politics.

This is how certain racist, religious fundamentalists and political people, whether they are leaders or not, have fooled masses of people into believing in and supporting the death penalty. They use the victim factor—to support families of victims in seeking revenge against the accused and/or convicted. They don’t encourage the families to seek forgiveness or peace or anything of that nature. They fool them into believing that the only thing they need for closure is to torture and murder someone.

This line of argument has been preached to certain congregations and spoken to certain constituents throughout the history of this country. People have been fooled into believing and supporting a system that is against everything that humanity is about, and against everything for which their God stands.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. America, you have been fooled so many times that the shame is really on you! You don’t see that the death penalty is primitive, as in belonging to an early stage of human development.

One cannot call himself or herself civilized while practicing primitive behavior, and executing people, especially the innocent, is as primitive as one gets. Support for the death penalty within this country is lower now than it almost has ever been. I like to believe that’s because the truly civilized people in this country are standing up and speaking out against this horrific crime against humanity.

History doesn’t lie, nor does the truth. I believe that if Jesus Christ came back to this earth, as most death penalty-supporting Christians believe that he someday will, he would take those nails all over again after he saw what was being done to people in his name. He would die again to show people that in his dying, in his being tortured and murdered, no one else should have that happen to them.

When will the foolish, uncivilized death penalty advocates who say they believe in God start believing in what his crucifixion was really all about?

The Mainstream Media’s Disgraceful Saudi Revisionism

As FAIR has noted for years, one of the primary ideological functions of US corporate media is to maintain the mythology that the US is a noble protector of democracy and arbiter of human rights. When material facts—like wars of aggression, massive spying regimes, the funding and arming right-wing militias and the propping up of dictators—get in the way of this mythology the response by most pundits is to wave away these inconsistencies (FAIR.org, 2/1/09), ignore them altogether (FAIR.org, 8/31/18) or spin them as Things That Are Actually Good (FAIR.org, 5/31/18).

There is, however, another underappreciated trope used to prop up this mythology: that the US political class does bad things, not because bad things serve US imperial interests, but because they’re corrupted by sinister foreign actors.

As more information about Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s brazen murder at the hands of the Saudi government comes to light, some in the US press are positioning Saudi Arabia as having “corrupted” Washington—as Khashoggi’s own editor lamented on Twitter last week. It’s a reassuring narrative, and one that will likely grow increasingly popular in the coming weeks: The Saudis have “corrupted,” “played” or “captured” an otherwise benevolent, values-based US government.

While it’s refreshing that some are starting to challenge the United States’ grotesque alliance with the Saudi theocratic monarchy, it’s important to note that it’s not a product of a foreign boogeyman, but core to the US imperial project. Historically, the US hasn’t embraced despotic regimes despite their oppressive nature, but precisely because of it.

In a report on why Khashoggi’s killing was unlikely to fundamentally alter the US/Saudi relationship,  NBC News (10/17/18) casually threw out this highly contestable claim:

Adam Coogle, a Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch, said the longstanding economic and security ties with Saudi Arabia have forced the US to tolerate a lot of questionable Saudi behavior.

It’s difficult to tell if the words spoken are those of Coogle or NBC reporters Rachel Elbaum, Yuliya Talmazan and Dan De Luce, but the reader is left with the same net effect: Due to “economic and security ties” somehow outside of its control, the most powerful country in the history of the world is “forced” to “tolerate” what’s called “questionable” behavior—a phrase that sweeps together the wholesale destruction of Yemen, the beheading of dissidents, the disappearing of women drivers and the brutal murder of Khashoggi. (In the case of Yemen, to “tolerate” means, among many other forms of active support, providing targeting instructions for a vicious airstrike campaign.)

Can one imagine NBC News or a Human Rights Watch researcher ever saying, “The longstanding economic and security ties Russia has with Syria have forced Putin to tolerate a lot of questionable behavior from Assad”? It’s an agency-free, blameless construction, reserved only for the United States.  Similar to how the US never chooses to go to war, but is constantly “stumbling” into it (FAIR.org, 6/22/17), Washington always means well, but can’t help engaging in large-scale, highly sophisticated mechanized violence.

Vox’s Matt Yglesias (10/19/18) joined the revisionism, writing, “The realities of Cold War politics got us involved in deep, long-term cooperation with a Saudi state that is not otherwise a natural partner for the United States.” Never mind that the US/Saudi partnership predates the Cold War by about 15 years, the idea that dictators or sectarian regimes in the Middle East aren’t “natural partners of the United States”—especially during the Cold War—is a total fiction.

The trope of foreign corruption of the innocent empire, of course, predates Khashoggi’s death. Vox’s Max Fisher (3/21/16)  insisted in March 2016 that Saudi Arabia has “captured” Washington, and this was the reason “we” had strayed from “our values.”

The article treated the US/Saudi alliance as some kind of mystery, rather than the logical outgrowth of a cynical empire that is not motivated by human rights but uses them for branding. “America’s foreign policy establishment has aligned itself with an ultra-conservative dictatorship that often acts counter to US values,” Fisher insisted. What “values” are those? He never really explained, but went on:

What explains the Washington consensus in favor of Wahhabist autocrats who often act counter to American values and interests? Some in the Obama administration, based on what they told the Atlantic (and on my own conversations with administration officials), seem to believe the answer is money: that Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Arab states have purchased loyalty and influence.

Obama administration officials who back Saudi crimes and sell them billions in arms aren’t to blame; it’s some nebulous Saudi lobby, Obama administration officials insist, with money that somehow they are powerless to resist.

Clearly Saudi money—like pro-Israel money—has influence around the margins (or else, one assumes, they wouldn’t spend it), but the idea that the US wouldn’t be backing violent dictatorships if it wasn’t corrupted by some sinister foreign actor has no historical or empirical basis. US backing of Saudi Arabia predates its current public relations machine by decades, a machine that exists largely to influence the scope and depth of the US/Saudi alliance, not the fact of it.

Fisher even vaguely acknowledges this (“no one is ordered by foreign funders to express a certain viewpoint. Rather, they described a subtler role, in which money amplifies preexisting norms and habits that favor a pro-Saudi consensus”), but this undercuts his thesis entirely—that Saudi Arabia somehow undermines America’s “values” rather than manifests them. But Fisher doesn’t appear to earnestly be trying to understand the nature of this alliance; he appears to be tasked, instead, with ameliorating cognitive dissonance, with preserving US human rights mythology by treating it as a foreign-contrived anomaly, rather than a natural extension of a largely violent and arbitrary global empire. Then comes the kicker:

US still provides direct support for Saudi actions that undermine the regional stability America desires, for example by backing the Yemen war against Americans’ better judgment.

What Americans? Where? The Obama White House at the time, as Fisher notes in the next paragraph, backed the war entirely. So who are these mysterious Americans whose “judgment” is against the Yemen war? He never says. These good, wholesome Americans who believe in US “values” are somehow never in charge, but are nonetheless always being corrupted by dastardly foreign actors.

Potential Explosive Devices Sent to Obama, Clintons, CNN Offices

WASHINGTON — Disrupting a rash of targeted attacks, the U.S. Secret Service intercepted a bomb that was addressed to Hillary Clinton and a possible explosive that was sent to former President Barack Obama.

Also Wednesday, a police bomb squad was sent to CNN’s offices in New York City and the newsroom was evacuated because of a suspicious package.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that investigators believe the explosive that was discovered near the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York, is linked to one found Monday at the compound of liberal billionaire George Soros.

The official wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said one of the packages had the return address of Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz, an ironic reference to the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

The package addressed to Obama was intercepted Wednesday by Secret Service agents in Washington.

Neither Clinton nor Obama received the packages, and neither was at risk of receiving them because of screening procedures, the Secret Service said in a statement.

The White House condemned “the attempted violent attacks recently made against President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and other public figures.”

“These terrorizing acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that that referred to the senders as “these cowards.”

Hillary Clinton was attending campaign events for Democrats in Florida on Tuesday and Wednesday and was not at the family’s New York residence at the time. She is headlining a fundraising reception on Wednesday for former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who is running for Congress in South Florida.

Bill Clinton was at the family’s Chappaqua home at the time the package was intercepted at a Westchester County facility, said a person familiar with his schedule. The person said the device was screened at the facility — not in proximity to their residence — and never reached the Clintons’ home.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the package discovered at Soros’ home appeared to be a pipe bomb and was in a package placed in a mailbox outside the gates of the compound. A Soros employee opened it just inside the gates, not near Soros’ quarters, the official said.

There’s a Growing International Alliance of Right-Wing Demagogues

This is what it has come to.

Lula in His Cell

Lula da Silva—Brazil’s former president—is sitting in his prison in Curitiba, a small town southwest of São Paulo. He should not be there. Evidence of corruption against him hangs on the words of a felon. Lula should have been on the ballot. But the oligarchy refused to allow this most popular man to run for the presidency. Lula is visited by Pastor Anete Roese of the Evangelical Lutheran Confessional Church of Brazil. The pastor steps outside the prison and makes a statement. She says that Lula is concerned about the escalation of violence in Brazil. People are being murdered when they express their political support for the Workers’ Party candidate for president—Fernando Haddad. “The gates of violence are opening,” said Pastor Roese. The election—on October 28—will signal an “unprecedented avalanche of violence,” warned the pastor. Lula, sitting in his cell, unjustly incarcerated, worried with her. It is the poor who will suffer. It is always the poor who suffer.

Bolsonaro’s Fraud

Jair Bolsonaro, the candidate of the far-right who is now the candidate of the oligarchy, leads in the polls. He is nostalgic for Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985) and wants to use unconstitutional force against those whom he sees are a problem for Brazil. His targets are the poor and the social minorities—Afro-Brazilians, Gays, Leftists. The oligarchy flooded the Bolsonaro camp with money. Democracy needs lubrication, and money does the trick. Some corporations used their money to create WhatsApp groups that carried fraudulent messages about Haddad, who is running against Bolsonaro. This is illegal. The hashtag #Caixa2doBolsonaro zipped across the internet. The whiff of fraud should have triggered an immediate investigation. It did not happen. It is Lula in prison. Bolsonaro hides his fangs behind his smile.

Bannon’s Fascist International

Steve Bannon said as he left the White House that the shackles were off his hands. He was no longer imprisoned by propriety. He wanted to be in the trenches, building his white supremacist, fascist international. Bannon calls his group The Movement. One of Bolsonaro’s sons said that Bannon has advised his father’s campaign, that Bannon—in sum—has drawn Bolsonaro into The Movement. Bolsonaro hastily denied this claim. To be linked to Bannon is not an advantage. Nor to Bannon’s fascist international directly. Nothing Bolsonaro says is varnished. He called people from the African continent, from Haiti and from the Arab-speaking world the “scum of humanity.” Bolsonaro’s moral geography mirrors that of Donald Trump, who called many of these places “shithole countries.” Of Afro-Brazilians, Bolsonaro called them lazy and obese, saying, “I don’t think they’re even good for procreation anymore.” Another member of the fascist international—Marine Le Pen of France—said that Bolsonaro’s comments are “extremely unpleasant.” Bolsonaro distressed her. This is Bannon country. Precise and clearly articulated hatred and venom.

Gunmen

Bolsonaro has been proud to say that he is “Brazil’s Trump.” But this is not a good comparison. It is clearer to say that Bolsonaro is Brazil’s Duterte. Rodrigo Duterte is the president of the Philippines. He came to office with a gun in his hand. Duterte was the mayor of Davao, where he empowered death squads to kill anyone deemed to be a criminal. “Kill them all,” he said in 2015 in reference to criminals. “Kill a drug dealer and I’ll give you a medal,” he said. He likes to be photographed with a gun in his hand, preferably a machine gun. Duterte would like to give out 42,000 guns to deepen the civil war in his society. Violence is the antidote to social problems. No policy of economic and social reform is sufficient. Gunfire is Duterte’s solvent. It is the glue of the Bolsonaro family. Jair Bolsonaro’s son—Eduardo—won re-election to the Federal Assembly on October 7 with a massive margin. In a video from last year, Eduardo holds a 50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle and says of the school shootings in the United States, “Thanks to you who support gun-free zones and this initiative to disarm people—you are responsible for these massacres.” Duterte also likes high-caliber sniper rifles, the M-4 Armalite being a favorite. These are men with guns, men who believe that guns make good policy.

Money and Monsters

In August, Steve Bannon told New York magazine that the rise of Trump—and the other neo-fascists (or monsters)—can be directly linked to the financial crisis of 2008. “The legacy of the financial crisis is Donald J. Trump,” Bannon said. “You know why the deplorables are angry? They’re rational human beings. We took away the risk for the wealthy.” Wall Street dislikes this analysis. They would like to maintain a firewall between their shenanigans and the rise of what they like to call “populists.” Bannon is both right and wrong. He is right that the neoliberal “moderates” drove a policy from the 1980s onward that allowed the rich to avoid paying taxes and to avoid investment, while the working people failed to earn their share from the gains of productivity and technology. High inequality rates around the world drained the legitimacy of the neoliberal “moderates.” The neo-fascists that emerged with acid on their lips did speak clearly about the fraud of the system, the theft from ordinary people by the oligarchy. But they did not point their fingers at the oligarchy or at high finance. Instead, true to form, the neo-fascists pointed their guns at migrants and refugees, at the urban poor and the rural distressed. For them, social marginality is the crime. Under cover of the monsters’ corrosive rhetoric, the oligarchy and the bankers have continued their plunder. None of these neo-fascists wants to implement Basel-III, a framework to regulate banking by increasing capital holdings. Nor do they want to make sure that corporations bear the downside of risks, rather than take the profits and burden taxpayers with losses. None of these elementary reforms are on the lips of the neo-fascists. They are too busy oiling their guns.

Hunger and Illiteracy

Hunger hangs heavily over the Brazilian poor. In 1960, the Afro-Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus wrote in her diary, “What a surprising effect food has on our organisms. Before I ate, I saw the sky, the trees, the birds—all as yellow. But after I ate, everything became normal to my eyes.” Hunger is blistering. It is what Lula’s government focused upon with its Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program. According to the UN, hunger was almost eradicated by Lula’s government. Haddad was Lula’s education minister. They used public funds to expand Brazil’s public university system. Food and reading were at the heart of the Workers’ Party agenda. Poverty was reduced by 55 percent, while extreme poverty was reduced by 65 percent. No guns were needed. Lula’s agenda was to expand democracy. Bolsonaro’s agenda is to deepen neo-fascism.

No Neutrality

Five hundred people of good sense—from Bernie Sanders to Angela Davis, from Noam Chomsky to Pablo Iglesias—signed a short document, an international declaration against fascism in Brazil. The document calls upon the Brazilian population to reject Bolsonaro, whose presidency would be a “threat to any free, tolerant and just society.” Brazilians will have to choose between “liberty and pluralism” on one side and “retrograde authoritarianism” on the other. “There can be no neutrality,” the signatories write, “in the choice between democracy and fascism.” This is a document. It might have a small impact. But it will not be able to compete with fake news and with hatred. Hatred is a more powerful emotion than love. It is what so easily undermines democracy. If Bolsonaro wins, asks the Portuguese political theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, will Brazil still be a democracy?

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

West Point Can’t Hide Its Reverence for the Confederacy

Charlottesville, Va., triggered a movement. In the wake of a 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally that left one dead and several injured, activists across the country have worked diligently to exorcise the lingering ghosts of the Confederacy. Most recently, a coalition of anti-racist students at the University of North Carolina brought down a statue of “Silent Sam”—the latest in a series of victories over the chintzy reification of white supremacy.

And yet from Seattle to Pennsylvania, totems of racial violence can be found just around the corner. Take the nation’s pre-eminent military academy—and my alma mater—the U.S. Military Academy, or West Point.

Past the main entrance of Thayer Gate stands the hulking Lee Barracks, named for that most famous of slave-owning generals—and the school’s former superintendent—Robert E. Lee. Across the way, Reconciliation Plaza Memorial features a granite sculpture of Lee’s head and a wildly ahistorical placard (more on this later). Past that, Jefferson Hall prominently displays a nearly 6-foot-tall painting of the Confederate commander. But perhaps most egregious of all is the Lee painting located in the residence of the superintendent of West Point (Quarters 100), in plain sight, for all to see.

Travel in any direction on the campus and sooner or later you’ll be confronted with the Confederacy. And not just visually. The West Point Band routinely plays cadets into the mess hall to the tune of “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” an 1861 march celebrating the secessionists’ will to preserve slavery.

These are not simply historical flourishes. Each painting and monument raises urgent questions about the lessons we’ve taken from the Civil War.

The sordid legacy of the Confederacy cannot be tolerated. Whether or not Trump qualifies as a fascist himself, his presidency has unleashed a wave of authoritarianism across the country. Any public work that honors a soldier who sought to shackle human beings as personal property only emboldens these destructive forces. Of course, liberals and conservatives who fetishize an abstract idea of free speech plead that the removal and/or destruction of Confederate monuments constitutes an erasure of history. Their intellectual dishonesty is staggering. The United States Civil War was fought over slavery, full stop. Therefore, we must take down the structures that preserve a profoundly racist legacy, if we are to have any sense of history at all. This endeavor is not just a moral imperative but our collective duty as Americans.

There can be no reconciliation with the Confederate states of America. West Point’s Reconciliation Plaza evokes a white supremacist narrative that served as the climax of director D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”—one in which white males of the North and South reunited to carry out retributive violence against freed slaves. That white people desired revenge against blacks speaks to the film’s grotesque fantasy. This “reconciliation” mythology, alongside Jim Crow and the so-called Lost Cause of the Confederacy, helped enable the subjugation of black people in America for decades. We bear witness to the consequences of this destructive narrative every day. Is it any wonder that 16 of my classmates were viciously castigated, both in the press and at West Point itself, following the release of a photograph in which they displayed their pride as black women?

Historian Howard Zinn maintained that “you can’t be neutral on a moving train,” and his words have never rung truer. America’s Founding Fathers were white, slave-owning, propertied males. Where does that place the legacy of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? If you value liberty and human dignity, the answer should be clear.

Symbolic victories are important, and the toppling of Confederate statues are not mere optics. These victories, however fleeting, inspire others to continue the fight against racial injustice. By leveling these structures, we affirm our immovable presence in the minds of our subjugators. For years now, I and others have confronted the administrators of West Point about the school’s Confederate iconography. They continue to drag their feet.

Enough is enough. Whether you’re a soldier, a cadet or a civilian, clinging to an imagined objectivity or neutrality is an act of cowardice. It is high time we come together and dismantle these racist structures permanently, not just in word but in deed. As for how we might carry out our endeavors, we might look to another West Point graduate, William Tecumseh Sherman. Until our demands are met, we continue the long march.

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Fandom Grows With ‘Notorious RBG’ Show

Five years ago, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rose to internet fame as the Notorious RBG—a nod to the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.—when law student Shana Knizhnik created a Tumblr account dedicated to her favorite jurist.

“It was the same day a narrow majority of Supreme Court justices gutted the Voting Rights Act,” Knizhnik told Truthdig about her reasons for starting the Tumblr site. “They did so under a theory that racism was over.” Ginsburg dissented in the case. “In doing so she sent a message to her fellow colleagues but also to me about what was happening,” Knizhnik said. “I heard it loud and clear.

Knizhnik clung to Ginsburg’s hope for a better day. “That’s what I wanted to achieve with the Notorious RBG Tumblr. Two words, ‘I Dissent,’ started the phenomenon,” she said. “What better way … than to compare her to the late great rapper Biggie Smalls,” Knizhnik added, noting that both figures hailed from Brooklyn. Soon, the Notorious RBG idea launched a cottage industry, carving out a space in popular culture to celebrate the feminist justice who is small in stature and fierce in nature. Merchandising opportunities included coffee mugs, action figures, bobbleheads in black robes, even tattoos of her face (which baffled Ginsburg) and T-shirts emblazoned with the saying, “You can’t spell truth without Ruth.”

Now an exhibition in Los Angeles is taking the concept one step further. Through March 10, 2019, the Skirball Cultural Center is featuring “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” Based on the 2015 book by the same name, the show was created in partnership with its authors, Knizhnik and journalist Irin Carmon.

At 85 years old, Ginsburg, a two-time cancer survivor, has achieved her own version of the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards) with a documentary, best-selling book, the show at the Skirball and an upcoming feature film, “On the Basis of Sex,” starring British actress Felicity Jones.

Planned two years ago, the Skirball exhibit couldn’t have opened at a more apropos time in history, given the recent developments in women’s rights, from the Women’s March protests that launched in 2017 to the ongoing MeToo movement and, more specific to the Supreme Court context, the recent and controversial appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the court.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the 1993 appointment of Ginsburg, the second female to serve on the high court (the first was Sandra Day O’Connor), the exhibition explores the life and work of the trailblazing associate justice, starting with her early roles as a student, wife, mother, lawyer and civil rights pioneer. “Visitors are greeted by her beautiful black robe, on loan from the justice, her bow, trademark dissenting jabots (collars), which hold specific meanings, and official portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler,” curator Kate Thuston said.

Also on display are photographs, documents, artifacts, art and interactive media stations. Visitors can look inside a recreation of Ginsburg’s childhood living room in Brooklyn while listening to opera music playing on an antique radio (her favorite opera is “The Marriage of Figaro”) or try on a judge’s robe while sitting on a re-created version of her Supreme Court bench. They can also watch home movies of Ginsburg and her husband, Martin Ginsburg, who did his share of household chores while his wife worked late, or check out his recipes (he served as the amateur chef of the household). There’s even a letter from Ginsburg’s late husband on display that can move readers to tears.

Also of interest is information on how Ginsburg was not President Bill Clinton’s first choice for the Supreme Court position, and how watching McCarthyism affect members of her community influenced her decision to become a lawyer. As a new mom, Ginsburg was one of eight women at Harvard University, where female-only bathrooms were unavailable at the time. She went on to graduate first in her class from Columbia Law School in 1959.

Taught to be ladylike, Ginsburg was docile and impassive early in her career, but her struggles for female equality turned the native New Yorker into the firebrand she is today. That spirit is evident in famous cases, included in the Skirball show, from her America Civil Liberties Union Women’s Rights Project. In Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld from 1975, for example, Ginsburg effectively argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of a male widower who was denied Social Security survivor benefits typically given to widows, reasoning that gender-based distinctions violated the right to equal protection.

After its stint at the Skirball, “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” will be featured at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia; the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Ill.; and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the woman who inspired the show continues to rule from her spot on the bench in Washington, D.C.

Unequal Justice: Why Trump Picked Kavanaugh

When President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy at a televised ceremony in the East Room of the White House on July 9, both he and the nominee uttered a whopping pack of lies.

“In keeping with President Reagan’s legacy,” Trump said in perhaps his biggest prevarication, “I do not ask about a nominee’s personal opinions. What matters is not a judge’s political views, but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require. I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.”

Lauding Kavanaugh as a “judge’s judge,” Trump made no mention of his personal disdain for the principle of judicial independence. Instead, he declared, with nary a trace of conscience or candor: “The Rule of Law is our nation’s proud heritage. It is the cornerstone of our freedom. It is what guarantees equal justice. And the Senate now has the chance to protect this glorious heritage by sending Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.”

Taking the lectern to accept the nomination, a gushing Kavanaugh, his wife and two daughters looking on, thanked the president and proceeded to drop a massive whopper of his own:

Throughout this process, I’ve witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary. No President has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.

Behind the scenes, the administration was telling the truth about why Kavanaugh had been chosen from a list of twenty-five potential high-court candidates that had been compiled with input from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.

In an email obtained by Politico that was sent to a select group of industry and trade-group representatives immediately after the nomination ceremony, the administration touted Kavanaugh’s pro-business record during his twelve-year tenure as an appellate judge, asserting that the nominee had voted to “overrule federal regulators seventy-five times on cases involving clean air, consumer protections, net neutrality and other issues.”

Singled out for particular praise was a 2016 opinion Kavanaugh had penned for a three-judge panel in which he argued that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was “unconstitutionally structured” and should be dismantled. Although Kavanaugh’s opinion was later overturned by a ruling of the full circuit court, the email commended Kavanaugh as a judge who “protects American businesses from illegal job-killing regulation.”

But in fact, the email may have actually understated Kavanaugh’s ultra-conservative record and how he might further the president’s policy agenda as a member of the high court.

During the run-up to Kavanaugh’s confirmation, a number of public-interest groups took a deep dive into his record.

One of the most thorough analyses was prepared by Public Citizen, the liberal-progressive non-profit founded by Ralph Nader. Appraising Kavanaugh’s opinions in split-decision cases (which best reveal a judge’s views), Public Citizen found:

In 18 of 22 cases involving consumer and regulatory issues or matters of administrative law, Kavanaugh sided with corporations against agencies, or with agencies against public-interest challengers.

In 11 of 13 environmental cases, Kavanaugh sided with corporations or states challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or other federal agencies for being too protective of the environment, or against environmental groups seeking stronger environmental enforcement.

In 15 of 17 cases involving worker rights, Kavanaugh sided with employers against employees or employees’ unions, or with employers against the National Labor Relations Board.

In seven of seven cases involving victims suing for compensation over police or human rights abuses, Kavanaugh sided with the alleged abuser and against the victims.

Other advocacy organizations, such as the Alliance for Justice, also published analyses, stressing Kavanaugh’s restrictive views on Obamacare, abortion rights, and immigration, and his expansive positions on gun rights and presidential powers.

In 2009, for example, Kavanaugh authored an article for the University of Minnesota Law Review in which he argued that sitting presidents should be immune from both civil suits and criminal prosecutions. Who better than Kavanaugh (along with Samuel Alito, Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas) to protect Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller should issues involving the Russia investigation one day reach the Supreme Court?

Like Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas, Kavanaugh is also a self-described “originalist” and “textualist.” He believes questions involving fundamental rights should be resolved according to the “original meaning” of the Constitution’s terms and provisions, as understood by the Founding Fathers and those who ratified the national charter. Such an outlook, critics charge, will place a host of liberal court precedents in jeopardy, ranging from abortion and affirmative action to same-sex marriage and civil rights.

All of this helps explain why Trump, rather than desert Kavanaugh after he was credibly accused by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez of egregious sexual misconduct in his younger days, stuck by his man, praising Kavanaugh’s unhinged September 27 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During his testimony, Kavanaugh seemed to channel the president’s own thoughts as he ranted:

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.

The Senate’s subsequent vote to confirm Kavanaugh by the razor-thin margin of 50-48 wasn’t just a win for Trump in the near-term. It was a win for the far right well into the future.

The average retirement age for the last eleven justices who have served on the Supreme Court is eighty. The average tenure on the bench is twenty-seven years.

Kavanaugh is just fifty-three. Gorsuch is only fifty-one. Liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are eighty-five and eighty, respectively.

Even assuming Ginsburg and Breyer remain on the court for the duration of Trump’s presidency, this means, as White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted in a rare display of accuracy after Kavanaugh’s confirmation:

Instead of a 6-3 liberal Supreme Court under Hillary Clinton, we now have a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court under President @realDonaldTrump, cementing a tremendous legacy for the President and a better future for America.

As longtime GOP operative and Trump backer Roger Stone remarked in an interview with Politico in January 2017, after Trump had named Neil Gorsuch to replace the deceased Antonin Scalia: “If Trump is going to be a transformational president, not a transitional president, he needs a supportive court—a Trump court.”

With Gorsuch—and now Kavanaugh—in tow, Trump is well on his way to achieving that objective.

This article was originally published by The Progressive. 

Senate Slipping Away as Dems Fight to Save Blue Wave

NEW YORK—In the closing stretch of the 2018 campaign, the question is no longer the size of the Democratic wave. It’s whether there will be a wave at all.

Top operatives in both political parties concede that Democrats’ narrow path to the Senate majority has essentially disappeared, a casualty of surging Republican enthusiasm across GOP strongholds. At the same time, leading Democrats now fear the battle for the House majority will be decided by just a handful of seats.

“It’s always been an inside straight, and it still is,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said of Democrats’ outlook in the Senate, where they need to pick up two seats while holding on to several others in Republican-leaning states to seize the majority. “If it had been a different year, with a different map, we might have had a terrific sweep. That would be a long shot.”

While the trend may be troubling for Democrats, the evolving political landscape remains unsettled two weeks before Election Day, even with millions of votes already cast across 20 states.

There are signs that the Democrats’ position in the expanding House battlefield may actually be improving. Yet Republican candidates locked in tight races from New York to Nevada find themselves in stronger-than-expected positions because of a bump in President Donald Trump’s popularity, the aftermath of a divisive Supreme Court fight and the sudden focus on a caravan of Latin American immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border.

Democrats say they never assumed it would be easy.

“It’s still much closer than people think, with a surprise or two in the wings,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, told The Associated Press.

The midterm elections will decide whether Republicans maintain control of Congress for the final two years of Trump’s first term. Even if Democrats lose the Senate and win the House, they could block much of Trump’s agenda and use subpoena power to investigate his many scandals. Some in the party’s far-left wing have also vowed to impeach the president, while others promise to roll back the Republican tax overhaul and expand health care coverage for all Americans.

Democrats have enjoyed an overwhelming enthusiasm advantage for much of the Trump era. They hope an explosion of early voting across states like Florida, Texas and Nevada is further proof of their enthusiasm gap.

It took voters in the Houston area less than six hours Monday to set a new opening day record for early voting during a midterm election. And in some Florida counties, two and three times as many voters cast ballots on the first day of early voting Monday compared to four years ago.

Public and private polling, however, suggests the GOP is getting more excited as Nov. 6 approaches.

“Republican enthusiasm doesn’t quite equal the white-hot enthusiasm of Democratic voters, but the Kavanaugh hearings got it pretty close,” said GOP consultant Whit Ayres.

He also attributes the party’s strong position on an unusual Senate map. Democrats are defending 26 seats of the 35 seats in play, including 10 in states that Trump carried in 2016. Ayres calls it “maybe the most Republican-leaning map of our lifetimes.”

He expects the GOP to maintain the Senate majority, perhaps adding a seat or two to its current 51-49 edge. Others have begun to envision the GOP picking up as many as four or five new seats.

Democrats, meanwhile, have effectively protected their Senate candidates in states across the Midwest — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — that helped give Trump the presidency in 2016. They are increasingly pessimistic about picking up any seats, however.

The Tennessee Senate contest, in particular, has shifted sharply in Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s direction in recent weeks, while Democratic pickup opportunities in Arizona and Nevada are now considered toss-ups. In a measure of the deep uncertainty that has defined the Trump era, only one Democratic incumbent—North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp—is seen as most in danger of losing.

After Heitkamp, Democrats facing the greatest risk of defeat are Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and perhaps Bill Nelson of Florida. Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke has shattered fundraising records and developed a national following, but polls have consistently given Republican Sen. Ted Cruz a significant lead against him.

In the race for the House, both sides acknowledge the prospect of a wipeout-style wave is shrinking.

It’s not that Democrats won’t be able to wrestle the House majority. But Republican lawmakers are increasingly optimistic, in part because of Trump’s recent performance as the GOP’s campaigner in chief.

Republicans say the often-volatile president has been surprisingly on-message during his campaign events, touting the strong economy and doubling down on the Kavanaugh fight to promote his efforts to fill courts with conservative jurists. And while Trump has been criticized by members of his own party for his handling of the case of the death of a Saudi journalist working for The Washington Post, operatives say the matter appears to be having little impact on voters.

On a conference call last week, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., urged rank-and-file lawmakers to pony up extra cash and help for tough races. They see hopeful signs in Iowa, Florida and Kansas.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., emerged from the call saying it’s going to be a “dogfight” to the finish.

There are signs, however, that Democrats are expanding the House battlefield as Election Day approaches.

Republicans in recent days have pumped new money into House districts held by Republicans in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and New York, suggesting they’re on the defensive. Already, Democrats invested in nearly 80 races, including more than a dozen legitimate pickup opportunities in districts Trump carried by at least 9 points.

Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to claim the House majority.

The massive battlefield remains a problem for Republicans, who have struggled to match Democratic fundraising and face several first-time candidates not yet tainted by Washington.

Still, Dan Sena, the executive director of the House Democrats campaign arm, recently predicted Democrats would win the majority by only two seats.

The Republican shift is not playing out as planned.

The GOP hoped its tax cuts would fuel their midterm message. After they proved unpopular, Republicans largely abandoned their most significant policy achievement in the Trump era in favor of a more familiar message of anger and fear.

The super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, which is expected to spend $100 million before Election Day — most of it on attack ads — highlighted the shifting landscape in a memo to donors.

“The polling momentum that began with the Supreme Court confirmation hearings has continued, and the environment has continued to improve,” wrote Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund. Still, he wrote, “20 races that will decide the majority remain a coin-flip.”

___

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Mascaro reported from Washington. AP writers Alan Fram and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

The Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard of May Rival BP

In the world of major environmental disasters, the 2010 explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig grabbed a lot of media attention. It’s understandable; the explosion killed 11 people, spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and economically paralyzed communities along the Gulf Coast. However, as CNN reports Tuesday, another Gulf Coast spill, which started six years before Deepwater Horizon, may be brewing into something even worse.

The Taylor oil spill, caused by a leak from oil company Taylor Energy Co.’s platform, began pumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2004. “By some estimates,” CNN writes, “the chronic leak could soon be larger, cumulatively, than the Deepwater disaster, which dumped up to 176.4 million gallons (or 4.2 million barrels) of oil into the Gulf.” Worse, that amount “would also make the Taylor spill one of the largest offshore environmental disasters in U.S. history.”

A Department of Justice investigation in September revealed previous claims submitted by the Taylor Energy Co., which owns the platform, and compiled by the Coast Guard drastically underestimated the spill.

Investigators don’t know exactly how much oil has been spilled into the Gulf at the Taylor site. According to The Washington Post, “Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan.”

CNN adds that “an estimate from SkyTruth, a satellite watchdog organization, put the total at 855,000 to 4 million gallons by the end of 2017. If you do the math from the DOJ’s filing, the number comes out astronomically higher: More than 153 million gallons over 14 years.”

Residents and business owners in the area weren’t informed of the spill by government officials. Per CNN, “According to local activists, the warnings didn’t come from the Coast Guard, the government, or any oil company. They came from people around the Gulf community who simply saw it with their own eyes.”

The Post observes that the spill is largely unknown outside Louisiana because of Taylor’s efforts to keep it that way. In fact, “The spill was hidden for six years before environmental watchdog groups stumbled on oil slicks while monitoring the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster a few miles north of the Taylor site in 2010.” Environmental advocacy groups sued Taylor in 2012, in Apalachicola Riverkeeper v. Taylor, eventually settling in 2015.

The company declined to comment to both CNN and the Post, though it has previously disputed in court the amount of oil spilled.

There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight, and President Donald Trump’s plans may only make it worse. The Post explains:

As oil continues to spoil the Gulf, the Trump administration is proposing the largest expansion of leases for the oil and gas industry, with the potential to open nearly the entire outer continental shelf to offshore drilling. That includes the Atlantic coast, where drilling hasn’t happened in more than a half century and where hurricanes hit with double the regularity of the Gulf.

Read more on CNN and The Washington Post.