Chris Hedges's Blog, page 452

Collins, Manchin Back Kavanaugh; Confirmation Appears Certain

WASHINGTON — After weeks of shocking accusations, hardball politics and rowdy Capitol protests, a pair of wavering senators declared Friday they will back Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, all but guaranteeing the deeply riven Senate will elevate the conservative jurist to the nation’s highest court on Saturday.

The announcements by Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia ended most of the suspense over a political battle that has transfixed the nation — though die-hard Democrats insisted on arguing through the night to a mostly empty Senate chamber.

Some of them continued raising concerns that Kavanaugh would push the court further to the right, including with possible sympathetic rulings for President Donald Trump, the man who nominated him. But the case against Kavanaugh had long since been taken over by allegations that he sexually abused women decades ago — accusations he emphatically denied.

Collins told fellow senators that Christine Blasey Ford’s dramatic testimony last week describing Kavanaugh’s alleged 1982 assault was “sincere, painful and compelling.” But she said the FBI had found no corroborating evidence from witnesses whose names Ford had provided.

“We will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be,” she said. “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.”

Those passions were on full display this week. And the fight could well energize both parties’ voters in elections for control of Congress just five weeks away. The showdown drew raucous demonstrators — largely anti-Kavanaugh — to the Capitol, where they raised tensions by repeatedly confronting lawmakers despite an intensified police presence.

It’s all expected to conclude Saturday afternoon with a final roll call almost solidly along party lines. That would mark an anti-climactic finale to a tortuous clash that left Kavanaugh’s fate in doubt for weeks after accusations against him first emerged.

In the pivotal moment Friday, Collins, perhaps the chamber’s most moderate Republican, proclaimed her support for Kavanaugh at the end of a Senate floor speech that lasted nearly 45 minutes. While she was among a handful of Republicans who helped sink Trump’s quest to obliterate President Barack Obama’s health care law last year, this time she proved instrumental in Trump’s effort to send Kavanaugh to the court and cast it rightward.

Manchin, the only remaining undeclared lawmaker, used an emailed statement to announce his support for Kavanaugh moments after Collins finished talking, making him the only Democrat supporting the nominee. Manchin faces a competitive re-election race next month in a state Trump carried in 2016 by 42 percentage points.

“My heart goes out to anyone who has experienced any type of sexual assault in their life,” Manchin said. But he added that based on the FBI report, “I have found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him.”

Protesters chanted “Shame” at Manchin later when he talked to reporters outside his office.

Republicans control the Senate by a meager 51-49 margin. Support from Collins and Manchin would give Kavanaugh at least 51 votes. With the #MeToo movement and Trump’s unyielding support of the nominee as a backdrop, both parties hope the bitter struggle will bring their most loyal voters to the polls Nov. 6.

Three female GOP senators — Jodi Ernst of Iowa, West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, sat directly behind Collins as she spoke. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sat directly in front of Collins and pivoted his seat around to face her. A few Democrats sat stone-faced nearby.

When she finished, Collins received applause from the roughly two dozen GOP senators present.

Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a fellow moderate and a friend of Collins, is the only Republican who has indicated she will vote no. She told reporters that Kavanaugh is “a good man” but maybe “not the right man for the court at this time.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has repeatedly battled Trump and will retire in January, said he’d vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation “unless something big changes.”

Vice President Mike Pence planned to be available Saturday in case his tie-breaking vote was needed, which now seems unlikely.

In a procedural vote Friday that handed Republicans an initial victory, senators voted 51-49 to limit debate and send the nomination to the full Senate, defeating Democratic efforts to scuttle the nomination with endless delays.

That vote occurred amid smoldering resentment by partisans on both sides, on and off the Senate floor.

“What left wing groups and their Democratic allies have done to Judge Kavanaugh is nothing short of monstrous,” Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa declared before the vote. He accused Democrats of emboldening protesters: “They have encouraged mob rule.”

On the other side, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the fight “a sorry epilogue to the brazen theft of Justice Scalia’s seat.” That reflected Democrats’ lasting umbrage over Republicans’ 2016 refusal to even consider Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

When Trump nominated Kavanaugh in July, Democrats leapt to oppose him, saying that past statements and opinions showed he’d be a threat to the Roe v. Wade case that assured the right to abortion. They said he also seemed ready to rule for Trump if federal authorities probing his 2016 campaign’s alleged connections to Russia try to pursue him in court.

Yet Kavanaugh’s pathway to confirmation seemed unfettered until Ford accused him of drunkenly sexually assaulting her in a locked bedroom at a 1982 high school gathering. Two other women later emerged with sexual misconduct allegations from the 1980s.

Kavanaugh foes cast him as a product of a hard-drinking, male-dominated, private school culture in Washington’s upscale Maryland suburb of Bethesda. He and his defenders asserted that his high school and college focus was on academics, sports and church.

Democrats also challenged Kavanaugh’s honesty, temperament and ability to be nonpartisan after he fumed at last week’s Judiciary hearing that Democrats had launched a “search and destroy mission” against him fueled by their hatred of Trump.

Kavanaugh would replace the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was a swing vote on issues including abortion, campaign finance and same-sex marriage.

#CancelKavanaugh Protest Gives Platform for Sexual Assault Survivors

More than 3,000 protesters marched in Washington, D.C., on Thursday from the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse—where Brett Kavanaugh is a judge—to the Supreme Court, a journey the demonstrators pray Kavanaugh never takes.

The crowd gathered as a show of solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford as well as to demonstrate disapproval of Kavanaugh’s potential rise to the U.S. Supreme Court. The #CancelKavanaugh action culminated in the occupation of the Hart Senate Building, but not before sexual assault survivors and others made their voices heard.

About 300 protesters were arrested, including actress and comedian Amy Schumer.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., addressed the demonstration after reading a new FBI report on Kavanaugh earlier in the day:

This moment is about all of you. All of you are speaking truth to power because you care about the future, you care about children, you care about who is leading this country and who sits on the highest court in the land. I read the [FBI] report today. It was not intended to get to the bottom of this. It was not intended to find the truth. It was intended to be a cover.

Another speaker was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat:  

I am angry on behalf of women who have been told to sit down and shut up one time too many. Yes, I am angry, but let me be clear: I have a plan. It is a three-part plan. Number one, take back the Senate. Number two, take back the House. Number three, return the power to the people where it belongs.

One particularly stirring moment occurred when sexual assault survivors took the stage.

“I am a rape survivor. I’m here from Maine. Sen. [Susan] Collins, do you believe survivors are important? Believe survivors. Believe me,” pleaded Bre Kidmen, a criminal defense lawyer.

Several more survivors followed in speaking, tearfully demanding that their congressional representatives act on their behalf. Republican Sens. Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona were called on repeatedly.

Representatives of the Be a Hero Fund urged the crowd to use monetary power to sway Sen. Collins. The fund says it has already raised $1.8 million of a $2 million goal, which will go to the campaign of Collins’ Democratic opponent in 2020 if the senator votes to confirm Kavanaugh.

While most of the action at the protest centered on urging senators to vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation, one member of the #MeToo movement commented on the cultural significance of the day’s events. Madison Thomas, a youth ambassador to the Women’s March and a sexual assault survivor, described herself to a reporter as “a young college student, not that much older than Christine Blasey Ford was at the time of her assault.” She went on to say:

I saw and felt a lot of pain last week—a resurgence of my own pain and the pain of thousands of women rocked by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. But I also saw a lot of hope. [Hope] in my male classmates expressing disgust in the way she was treated and in my fellow resisters here protesting.

Corporate Media Is Beating the Drum of War With Iran

Three years ago, as Americans debated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran—popularly known as “the Iran deal”—I highlighted a troubling media trend on FAIR.org (8/20/15): “For nearly all commentators, regardless of their position, war is the only alternative to that position.”

In the months since US President Donald Trump tore up the JCPOA agreement, his administration has been trying to make good on corporate media’s collective prediction. Last week, John Bolton (BBC,9/26/18), Trump’s national security advisor and chief warmonger, told Iran’s leaders and the world that there would be “hell to pay” if they dare to “cross us.”

That Bolton’s bellicose statements do not send shockwaves of pure horror across a debt-strapped and war-weary United States is thanks in large part to incessant priming for war, facilitated by corporate media across the entire political spectrum, with a particular focus on Iran.

Back in 2015, while current “resistance” stalwarts like the Washington Post (4/2/15) and Politico (8/11/15) warned us that war with Iran was the most likely alternative to the JCPOA, conservative standard-bearers such as Fox News (7/14/15) and the Washington Times (8/10/15) foretold that war with Iran was the agreement’s most likely outcome. Three years hence, this dynamic has not changed.

To experience the full menu of US media’s single-mindedness about Iran, one need only buy a subscription to the New York Times. After Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, the Times’ editorial board (5/8/18) wrote that his move would “lay conditions for a possible wider war in the Middle East.” Susan Rice (New York Times, 5/8/18), President Barack Obama’s national security advisor, agreed: “We could face the choice of going to war or acquiescing to a nuclear-armed Iran,” she warned. Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte (New York Times, 5/10/18) was characteristically more direct, penning an image of Trump alongside Bolton, holding a fictitious new agreement featuring the singular, ultimate word: “WAR.”

On the other hand, calling Trump’s turn against JCPOA a “courageous decision,” Times columnist Bret Stephens (5/8/18) explained that the move was meant to force the Iranian government to make a choice: Either accede to US demands or “pursue their nuclear ambitions at the cost of economic ruin and possible war.” (Hardly courageous, when we all know there is no chance that Trump or Stephens would enlist should war materialize.)

Trump’s latest antics at the United Nations have spurred a wave of similar reaction across corporate media. Describing his threat to “totally destroy North Korea” at the UN General Assembly last year as “pointed and sharp,” Fox Newsanchor Eric Shawn (9/23/18) asked Bill Richardson, an Obama ally and President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the UN, whether Trump would take the same approach toward Iran. “That aggressive policy we have with Iran is going to continue,” Richardson reassured the audience, “and I don’t think Iran is helping themselves.” In other words, if the United States starts a war with Iran, it’s totally Iran’s fault.

Politico (9/23/18), meanwhile, reported that Trump “is risking a potential war with Iran unless he engages the Islamist-led country using diplomacy.” In other words, if the United States starts a war with Iran, it’s totally Trump’s fault. Rice (New York Times, 9/26/18) reiterated her view that Trump’s rhetoric “presages the prospect of war in the Persian Gulf.” Whoever would be the responsible party is up for debate, but that war is in our future is apparently all but certain.

Politico’s article cited a statement signed by such esteemed US experts on war-making as Madeleine Albright, who presided over Clinton’s inhuman sanctionsagainst Iraq in the ’90s, and Ryan Crocker, former ambassador for presidents George W. Bush and Obama to some of America’s favorite killing fields: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.  James Clapper, Obama’s National Intelligence Director, who also signed the letter, played an important role in trumping up WMD evidence against Saddam Hussein before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. When it comes to US aggression, they’re the experts.

Vanity Fair (9/26/18) interviewed John Glaser of the Cato Institute, who called Trump’s strategy “pathetic,” and also warned that it forebodes war. In an effort to “one-up Obama,” Glaser explained, Trump’s plan is “to apply extreme economic pressure and explicit threats of war in order to get Iran to capitulate.” Sound familiar? As Glaser implies, this was exactly Obama’s strategy, only then it wasn’t seen as “pathetic,” but rather reasonable, and the sole means for preventing the war that every US pundit and politician saw around the corner (The Hill, 8/9/15).

When everyone decides that war is the only other possibility, it starts to look like an inevitability. But even when they aren’t overtly stoking war fever against Iran, corporate media prime the militaristic pump in more subtle yet equally disturbing ways.

First among these is the near-complete erasure of Iranian voices from US airwaves (FAIR.org, 7/24/15). Rather than ask Iranians directly, national outlets like CNN (9/29/18) prefer to invite the prime minister of Israel, serial Iran alarmist and regional pariah Benjamin Netanyahu, to speak for them. During a jovial discussion this weekend over whether regime change and/or economic collapse is Iran’s most likely fate, Netanyahu explained to the audience that, either way, “The ones who will be happiest if that happens are the people of Iran.” No people of Iran were on hand to confirm or deny this assessment.

Bloomberg (9/30/18) similarly wanted to know, “What’s not to like about Trump’s Iran oil sanctions?” Julian Lee gleefully reported that “they are crippling exports from the Islamic Republic, at minimal cost to the US.” One might think the toll sanctions take on innocent Iranians would be something not to like, but Bloomberg merely worried that, notwithstanding the windfall for US refineries, “oil at $100 a barrel would be bad news for drivers everywhere—including those in the US.”

Another prized tactic is to whitewash Saudi Arabia, Iran’s chief geopolitical rival, whose genocidal destruction of Yemen is made possible by the United States, about which corporate media remain overwhelmingly silent (FAIR.org, 7/23/18). Iran’s involvement in Yemen, which both Trump and the New York Times(9/12/18) describe as “malign behavior,” is a principal justification for US support of Saudi Arabia, including the US-supplied bombs that recently ended the brief lives of over 40 Yemeni schoolchildren. Lockheed Martin’s stock is up 34 percentfrom Trump’s inauguration day.

Corporate media go beyond a simple coverup of Saudi crimes to evangelize their leadership as the liberal antidote to Iran’s “theocracy.” Who can forget Thomas Friedman’s revolting puff piece for the Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman? Extensively quoting Salman (New York Times, 11/23/17), who refers to Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as “the new Hitler of the Middle East,” Friedman nevertheless remains pessimistic about whether “MBS and his team” can see their stand against Iran through, as “dysfunction and rivalries within the Sunni Arab world generally have prevented forming a unified front.” Oh well, every team needs cheerleaders, and Friedman isn’t just a fair-weather fan.

While Friedman (New York Times, 5/15/18) believes that Trump has drawn “some needed attention to Iran’s bad behavior,” for him pivotal questions remain unanswered, such as “who is going to take over in Tehran if the current Islamic regime collapses?” One immediate fix he proposed was to censure Iran’s metaphorical “occupation” of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Isn’t this ironic coming from an unapologetic propagandist for Washington’s decades-long, non-metaphorical occupation of the two countries to the east and west of Iran (FAIR.org, 12/9/15)?

In a surprising break from corporate media convention, USA Today (9/26/18) published a column on US/Iran relations written by an actual Iranian. Reflecting on the CIA-orchestrated coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, Azadeh Shahshahani, who was born four days after the 1979 revolution there, wrote:

I often wonder what would have happened if that coup had not worked, if [Prime Minister] Mosaddeq had been allowed to govern, if democracy had been allowed to flourish.

“It is time for the US government to stop intervening in Iran and let the Iranian people determine their own destiny,” she beseeched readers.

Shahshahani’s call is supported by some who have rejected corporate media’s war propaganda and have gone to extreme lengths to have their perspectives heard. Anti-war activist and Code Pink  founder Medea Benjamin was recently forcibly removed after she upstaged Brian Hook, leader of Trump’s Iran Action Group, on live TV, calling his press conference “the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen” (Real News, 9/21/18). Benjamin implored the audience: “Let’s talk about Saudi Arabia. Is that who our allies are?”

“How dare you bring up the issue of Yemen,” admonished Benjamin as she was dragged from the room. “It’s the Saudi bombing that is killing most people in Yemen. So let’s get real. No more war! Peace with Iran!” Code Pink is currently petitioning the New York Times and Washington Post to stop propagandizing war.

Sadly, no matter whom you ask in corporate media, be they spokespeople for “Trump’s America” or “the resistance,” peace remains an elusive choice in the US political imagination. And while the public was focused last week on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s perjurious testimony, the Senate finalized a$674 billion “defense” budget. Every single Democrat in the chamber voted in favor of the bill, explicitly naming Iran as persona non grata in the United States’world-leading arms supply network, which has seen a 25 percent increase in exports since Obama took office in 2009.

The US government’s imperial ambitions are perhaps its only truly bipartisan project—what the New York Times euphemistically refers to as “globalism.” Nowhere was this on fuller display than at the funeral for Republican Sen. John McCain (FAIR.org, 9/11/18), where politicians of all stripes were tripping over themselves to produce the best accolades for a man who infamously sang“bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the tune of a Beach Boys song.

McCain’s bloodlust was nothing new. Nearly a hundred years ago, after the West’s imperial competition culminated in the most destructive war the world had ever seen, the brilliant American sociologist and anti-colonial author WEB Du Bois wrote, “This is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this is Europe.”

Iranian leaders have repeatedly said they do not want war with the US (AP, 9/27/18), but US corporate media, despite frequently characterizing Trump as a “mad king” (FAIR.org, 6/13/18), continue to play an instrumental role in rationalizing a future war with Iran. Should such an intentional catastrophe come to pass, we can hardly say that this would be America gone mad; war is not aberration, it is always presented as the next sane choice. This is America.

Ralph Nader: Advertising Is Destroying the Internet

In all the mounting media coverage of problems with the Internet, such as invasion of privacy, vulnerability to hacking, political manipulation, and user addiction, there is one constant: online advertising. Online advertising is the lifeblood of Google, Facebook, and many other Internet enterprises that profit by providing personal data to various vendors. Moreover, the move of tens of billions of dollars from conventional print and broadcast media continues, with devastating impacts, especially on print newspapers and magazines.

But does online advertising work for consumers? The Internet was once considered a less commercial medium. But today consumers are inundated with targeted ads, reviews, comments, friends’ reactions, and other digital data.  Unfortunately for advertisers, consumers are not intentionally clicking on online ads in big numbers.

Google’s search ads tackle people when they search for a product or service. A controlled study by eBay research labs in 2014 concluded that Google was greatly exaggerating the effectiveness of such ads—at least those bought by eBay. eBay’s researchers concluded that “More frequent users whose purchasing behavior is not influenced by ads account for most of the advertising expenses, resulting in average returns that are negative.” This is the “I-was-gonna-buy-it-anyway problem,” says an article in the Atlantic.

The Atlantic notes:

Whether all advertising—online and off—is losing its persuasive punch…Think about how much you can learn about products today before seeing an ad. Comments, user reviews, friends’ opinions, price-comparison tools…they’re much more powerful than advertising because we consider them information rather than marketing. The difference is enormous: We seek information, so we’re more likely to trust it; marketing seeks us, so we’re more likely to distrust it.

Some companies like Coca-Cola have cooled on using online advertising. But advertising revenues keep growing for Google, Facebook, and the other giants of the Internet. These companies are racing to innovate, connecting ads to more tailored audiences, which tantalize and keeps hope springing eternal for the advertisers. The Internet ad sellers also provide detailed data to advertise themselves to the advertisers staying one step ahead of growing skepticism. This is especially a problem when there is inadequate government regulation of deceptive advertising. It is the Wild West! Online advertising revenues are the Achilles’ heel of these big Internet companies. Any decline will deflate them immensely; more than public and Congressional criticism of their intrusiveness, their massive allowed fakeries, their broken promises to reform, and their openings to unsavory political and commercial users. If they lose advertising revenue, a major revenue bubble will burst and there goes their business model, along with their funding for ventures from video hosting to global mapping.

After reviewing the many major negatives attributed to the Internet, the New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo writes, “So who is the central villain in this story, the driving force behind much of the chaos and disrepute online?… It’s the advertising business, stupid.” He adds, perhaps optimistically, “If you want to fix much of what ails the internet right now, the ad business would be the perfect perp to handcuff and restrain.”

Randall Rothenberg, who heads a trade association of companies in the digital ad business, urges advertisers “to take civic responsibility for our effect on the world.” Then he shows his frustration by saying that, “Technology has largely been outpacing the ability of individual companies to understand what is actually going on.”  All of this even before artificial intelligence (AI) takes root. Meanwhile, Facebook, Google, and Twitter keep announcing new tools to make their ads “safe and civil” (Facebook), open and protective of privacy. At the same time matters keep getting worse for consumers. The backers and abusers keep getting more skilled too (see Youtube Kids ).

In a recent report titled “Digital Deceit,” authors Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott wrote:

The Central problem of disinformation corrupting American political culture is not Russian spies or a particular media platform. The central problem is that the entire industry is built to leverage sophisticated technology to aggregate user attention and sell advertising.

If so, why isn’t more public attention being paid to this root cause? Not by the mass media which is obviously too compromised by the Congress, by academia, or by more of US before “We the People” become the conditioned responders that Ivan Pavlov warned about so many years ago.

Here’s a Reality-Based Battle Plan for the Midterms and Beyond

Many analysts of our current political landscape are seduced by the idea of a dichotomy of ideals, a polarized electorate neatly cleaved into two sides: conservatives versus liberals, as symbolized by the Republican-Democrat split. For progressives, that is supposed to translate into: “Everything that Donald Trump does is bad, and everything that his opposition does is good.” (For Trump supporters, it is reversed.) This works conveniently for both parties, and especially for Democrats who benefit from the wrath of Trump’s critics and revel in their position of representing the opposition against a deeply unpopular president and party. All that Democrats have to do is not be Trump and they can expect to sail to victory.

But every now and then, issues come up that jolt the good-versus-evil fantasy. North Korea is a case in point. For years there has been a bipartisan consensus on antagonizing North Korea through close military and economic cooperation with South Korea. Trump, taking advantage of the coincidental timing of peacemaker and South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s presidency (or perhaps because Trump truly “fell in love” with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un), has managed to usher in hope for Korean unity and peace between the U.S. and North Korea in a way no other recent president has managed to do.

Surely the Democrats would fall on the side of peace over war if their ascribed progressivism were sincere. Surely they would be urging Trump to do even better to ensure peace in the region instead of preserving the status quo of indefinite hostility. But some of the strongest howls of protest against peace with North Korea have come from Democrats. While there is much to criticize regarding Trump’s posturing with North Korea—chiefly, the whitewashing of a brutal dictator like Kim—the prize of cross-border peace and unity is seen by both Koreas as worth it.

Another issue is trade. Sensing deep dissatisfaction against the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trump made the renegotiation of the deal one of his central positions on trade. Indeed, he has just strong-armed a new trade deal—albeit one that is deeply flawed—to replace the decades-old NAFTA. Surely Democrats ought to have been front and center in the trade debate, demanding a renegotiation of NAFTA on the basis of better labor and environmental protections for all three member nations. Instead, we heard the loudest critiques of NAFTA coming from Trump—a man who appears to have at best a rudimentary understanding of trade and international finance—while Democrats largely stayed out of it. And there are many other examples of dissonance between progressive ideals and the Democratic Party.

Despite the enthusiasm that voters now have for Democrats over Republicans ahead of the midterms, we see little fire from many party leaders. Take the political spectacle of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week featuring Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a woman who accused him of sexual assault, Christine Blasey Ford. Republicans were bursting at the seams with aggression and anger. In contrast, Democrats—although they had the moral right to stand firm against Kavanaugh, and the force of grass-roots activists backing them inside and outside the hearing—appeared weak, insipid and lacking the courage to push back vociferously against their Republican rivals. The Democratic Party cannot even count on unified opposition to Kavanaugh within its own ranks, with so-called red state Democrats engaging in hand-wringing on the upcoming Senate vote instead of agreeing on a firm “no” against Kavanaugh at all costs.

In other words, Democrats lack the fighting spirit that is desperately needed to win back all the rights we have lost in the past year and a half. They don’t appear motivated by fierce ideals of equality and progressivism in the same way that Republicans appear driven by a near-religious fervor to destroy the modest gains that Barack Obama built and all that progressives hold dear.

All of this is to say that after peeling back the layers of our political landscape, we are not in a clearly defined arena of Democrats representing all progressives, even if party leaders would like for it to seem so. The pressure to identify with a major party is so great that many ordinary Americans who identify as progressive may not have noticed the fact that we allow party leaders to set an agenda based on their whims and not our demands. If the Democrats back a plan, we are expected, as liberals, to adopt those same positions. If the Democrats oppose North Korea at all costs, progressives are expected to toe the same line. If the Democrats never met a free trade deal they did not like, rank-and-file party members are expected to embrace the same position. All in the name of beating back Republicans and Trump.

But there is a reason so many voters were disaffected by the Democratic Party in 2016 and either did not vote in the presidential race or voted for Trump or a third-party candidate. They had had enough of inaction from both parties on important issues such as jobs, wages, health care, war and more. Now, with Trump’s horror show in full swing, Democrats are glibly implying, “Don’t you wish you had backed us,” and hoping mass Trump hatred will carry them to victory in the upcoming midterms.

There is a subconscious fantasy we are all carrying around inside our heads: that once the Democrats win the House, and maybe even the Senate, they will form a bulwark against all the efforts by Trump and the Republican Party to destroy the nation. The fantasy extends to the 2020 presidential race, when a Democrat will supposedly win the White House, and we will finally see every horrific undoing of our rights reversed. Departed federal staff will be reinstated, Environmental Protection Agency deregulations will be reversed, fuel-efficiency standards will be restrengthened, and the Paris Accord rejoined. Immigrants will be freed from detention, allowed to remain in the country safely, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will be abolished. Future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will be impeached (and maybe even Clarence Thomas!), and so on and so forth. Such fantasies are a coping mechanism for the despair we are feeling.

But given the lack of fiery conviction among Democrats, none of those things will come to pass, and at best we can expect a holding pattern against worse damage. Democrats want to ride to victory on the wave of Trump hatred and resume business as usual. But nothing will change unless we push them hard to be so much more than simply “not-Trump.” Not only does the party need to actively undo Trump’s damage once it takes power, it needs to go well beyond what Obama achieved and address the very ills that generated the rise of Trump in the first place. Yes, it is a tall order. But then again, so much of our safety and security is at stake.

We have (sort of) been here before. During the last months of George W. Bush’s presidency, liberal and progressive activists, horrified by his regressive policies, poured all their energy into replacing Bush with anybody but a Republican like him. Once progressives met Obama, we were enamored by just how different he was from Bush on the surface, and, like a handsome boyfriend who gets away with abusive behavior by virtue of his attractiveness, we let Obama get away with far too much because we were carried away by the romantic notion of progress he offered, simply by being so different from his predecessor—articulate, brilliant, seemingly empathetic and compassionate. Ultimately, Obama helped make some modest gains toward a progressive future but fell short in so many ways.

If the past two years has taught us anything, it is that we must remove Republicans from power and do so with aggression and righteous anger. If that means replacing them with Democrats (or independents or third-party candidates), then that is our immediate task, first and foremost. Our next task is to hold Democrats’ feet to the fire with as much fervor as we demanded an end to Trump and Trumpism. It is imperative that we remember Democrats are politicians, not activists. They want power and have adopted lip service to the ideals of liberalism to get it. They are not inherently compassionate and progressive. It is we who are and we who must keep the fire under them alive.

So much depends on the outcome of the November midterm elections for our short-term national outlook. It is imperative that Democrats win, and win big, in order to bring the Trump agenda to a screeching halt. In the longer term, we ought to view the Democrats as part of the problem.

Organized Labor Breaks New Ground on the Campaign Trail

In July, the Ohio Democratic Party became the first state party to recognize the Campaign Workers Guild (CWG), a new union for workers who do the essential, if taxing and unglamorous, work of getting candidates elected to local, state and national office.

The union is the first of its kind, CWG President Laura Reimers told Truthdig in an email, and represents an idea that campaign workers had discussed privately for years. “For decades, campaign workers have been whispering in their offices about organizing and forming a union. For too long, we’ve been underworked, overpaid and undervalued,” she says.

The specific demands vary across campaigns, but, Reimers says, “The types of issues we address are generally the same across contracts: compensation, hours, leave time, insurance, discipline.”

Among the congressional campaigns that have affiliated with the CWG are those of Randy Bryce, running to replace the retiring Rep. Paul Ryan in Wisconsin, and Max Rose, seeking the House seat currently occupied by Republican Dan Donovan in Staten Island, N.Y. Some state campaigns have joined as well.

Campaign workers say they are organizing because they are devoted to what they do but are concerned about the conditions under which they do it. “I love field [organizing] because it bridges the gap between candidate/party and volunteers/voters,” says Sarah Willenbrink-Sahin, a regional field director for the Ohio Democratic Party. “I want to work in [field operations] as a career because I see the positive change that can be made in communities by neighborhood teams and volunteers. Unfortunately, campaign work is absolutely not sustainable—the hours worked and the low pay sees workers burn out very quickly; that’s why I’m so passionate about CWG.”

In a political campaign, field organizing is the process by which staffers educate voters about their candidates. Often it involves door-to-door canvassing, contacting constituents by phone and addressing them at political rallies or other community events.

Campaign workers unaffiliated with the guild agree that the working conditions must be improved.

“It’s absolutely brutal,” says Noah Levinson, a strategist focusing on young candidates. Levinson previously worked on a variety of campaigns, including those of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, as well as on local and state races in New York City and Pittsburgh. “The hours are brutal … the pay is low,” and there is a general sentiment that ‘[t]he only way I know we’re going to win is if we outwork the competition,’ ” Levinson says.

Campaigns get away with overworking employees, he believes, by playing to workers’ sense of loyalty, along with their commitment to their country and political cause. “I think [campaign managers] could always pull this card where it’s like, ‘Are you in it or not? … Are you one of us or not?’ in terms of trying to make this country better.”

Recognition from a prominent state party is a major victory for the nascent union, a sign that even if the long, difficult work hours aren’t going away entirely, at least workers might be better compensated and better treated in the future.

But Ohio Democrats haven’t always been amenable to organizing. After they initially recognized the union, the Ohio Democratic Party hired a prominent anti-union law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, to represent them during contract negotiations.

“There is absolutely no way to sugarcoat this: I am incredibly disappointed by the [Ohio Democratic Party],” Willenbrink-Sahin said at the time.

The Ohio Democratic Party found itself in an uncomfortable position with the midterms fast approaching: fighting with a labor union that represents its own workers. After two weeks of intense negotiation, however, an agreement was reached the last week of September and ratified in October.

AND 2) Huge congratulations to our workers for the @ODP who ratified their first contract over the weekend! It was a tough fight but we came out the other side with a strong contract for workers. Congrats @saruniaw @Phurg and all the leaders on that campaign.

— Campaign Workers Guild (@CWG_Workers) October 3, 2018

The Collective Bargaining Agreement applies to more than 80 campaign workers, including field organizers, digital organizers and regional field directors. It also include a 5 percent pay raise, time off from work and stipends for out-of-pocket phone calls and cellphones—some of the many unreimbursed expenses that Willenbrink-Sahin says have become a reality of life in her profession.

In a statement to The Plain Dealer, David Pepper, Ohio Democratic Party chair, said the deal represents the party’s intentions to live “our Democratic values not just in whom we elect, but in how we operate. … With the positive and rapid resolution of this important process, Ohio Democrats are now focusing our complete attention on stopping Mike DeWine, Jim Renacci and the harmful and dangerous policies being introduced by the entire Republican ticket.”

With the latest hard-won victory in Ohio, Reimers, the union has made considerable progress. “In about six months, 22 campaigns have negotiated CBAs [collective bargaining agreements],” she says. “There’s been a surge of campaign workers across the country who are reaching out to organize their campaigns. We’re excited that two statewide coordinated campaigns won recognition just in the first year of organizing.”

Pooling state party money, staff and other resources, these campaigns conduct voter registration, voter outreach, canvassing and other operations for multiple candidates at once. The current Ohio Democratic Party coordinated campaign is working to elect Richard Cordray as governor and re-elect Sherrod Brown to the Senate, along with promoting other candidacies.

Coordinated campaigns are particularly important because, as Reimers explains, they are “the major organizing apparatus for the Democratic Party during midterms and generals. Hundreds of organizers work on coordinated campaigns every year; they are often workers’ introduction to campaign work, and, of course, impact working conditions across the industry.”

One of the challenges in organizing campaign workers is the transient nature of the industry. Campaigns are inherently time-limited to election cycles, and even within one cycle staffers may work on multiple campaigns leading up to both primary and general elections.

A deal covered under one campaign may not apply to another, and, as Reimers points out, not every campaign has the same needs.

The CWG aims to address this issue by having two levels of membership: working members and associate members. “Working members are currently covered under a contract,” Reimers says. “Associate members are folks who anticipate staying in the industry or are in between campaigns and are not currently covered under a contract.

“We have already had members leave primary campaigns, remain associate members, and lead the effort to organize their next campaign,” she adds. “Associate members have access to exclusive job postings from CWG positions covered under our CBAs.”

Levinson points out that all these campaigns are overseen by the Democratic Party, which could force accountability across different races: “Effectively, even though it’s transient, at the end of the day, their boss is still kind of the party. … If they win their primary, it’s the party’s responsibility.”

Beyond a transient workforce, Levinson cites the issue of money—which Democratic campaigns often lack—as a potential roadblock to unionization.

“I think unionization should be something that is a given right to anyone who’s a worker,” he explains, “but when you’re competing against a [Republican] Party that believes that people are just capital and has the funds to put that in action, it’s hard. It’s going to be really challenging.”

Even so, Levinson believes that unions, or at least collective action and organizing, have a future in the Democratic Party. “As freelancing and independent work like this becomes more common … there needs to be something new. And it might not be unions. It might just be the right to collective bargaining, the right to good working conditions.”

Reimers agrees: “Every time a worker is paid fairly, wins a day off or a fair discipline process, is a victory. This is the first time our industry is seeing a lot of these changes.”

Proposed Funding for Women’s Health Would Lead to ‘Contraception Deserts’

Religious conservatives, with the help of President Donald Trump’s administration, are working to ensure that the future of women’s sexual health care in America will not include contraceptives. The administration is proposing massive changes to Title X, a $280 million program that is currently the only source of federal funding for birth control for low-income women without health insurance.

If the changes are passed, Kaiser Health News reports, clinics receiving these funds can screen for sexually transmitted infections, HIV and cervical cancer and provide prenatal care, but they will not be able to provide birth control, contributing to what Kaiser calls “contraception deserts.”

For decades after Title X was passed, clinics were required to provide a full range of medically approved contraceptives, such as condoms, birth control pills, intrauterine devices and implants. The funding does cover abortion.

Contraception used to have widespread support across political parties, Kaiser explains, even as Americans remained fiercely divided on abortion. That changed in 2010 with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which mandated that all health care plans under the law must provide coverage for contraception. That energized religious conservatives, and, Kaiser observes, “the politics of abortion and birth control converged.”

Now, as Title X is under the control of Dr. Diane Foley, the former chief executive of Life Network, a conservative Christian organization that operates anti-abortion women’s health centers, the Trump administration is expected to adopt new rules that divert funding away from contraception.

The new restrictions, called Protect Life Rule, are, as Kaiser reports, “aimed at narrowing women’s access to clinics that discuss or refer patients to abortion providers.” Kaiser continues:

The Trump administration has worked quickly to shape women’s reproductive health care, rolling back an Obama-era rule that required employers to cover contraception in their health insurance plans and nominating to the Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who referred to common forms of contraception as ‘abortion-inducing drugs’ during his confirmation hearing.

The Protect Life Rule would support clinics whose sole form of pregnancy prevention are fertility planning methods that rely on women tracking their periods and refraining from sex at certain particularly fertile times of their menstrual cycle.

Similar rules are already in place in Texas, where in 2011 lawmakers cut funding for family planning clinics by 66 percent. Over 80 clinics closed, and the impact was swift. Kaiser observes that “the vast geography combined with widespread clinic closures means that some 10 million Texans live at least half an hour from a clinic, a common standard used to determine health care shortages. It’s a phenomenon some call ‘contraception deserts.’ ”

The operators of these anti-contraception clinics say they are simply offering an alternative to Planned Parenthood. “A woman needs choice, but you can’t have a choice if the only clinic that a woman can go to is Planned Parenthood,” Kathleen Bravo, chief executive of the Obria Group, a company in the midst of expanding its clinics. She added that women “don’t want to live every day having to take a carcinogen,” referring to hormonal birth control, which, as a Harvard study showed this year, has a “weak link” to cancer.

Ofelia Alonso, a 22-year-old community organizer living in Texas, is worried about her options for the future. “It’s like abstinence only, and then, crisis pregnancy centers, anti-abortion propaganda, defunding our family clinics. So what is left for us?” Alonso told Kaiser. “We’re going to have these weird centers where you can’t get anything?”

Read the entire article here.

 

Court Rules Against W.Va. Pipeline, Then an Effort to Change Rules

This article was produced in partnership with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

Time and again, opponents have tried to delay a natural gas pipeline that would stretch from Northern West Virginia to Southern Virginia, using lawsuits to stall permit approvals or construction.

And time and again, state and federal regulators have stepped in to remove such hurdles, even if it has meant rewriting their own rules.

Now, the process looks to be repeating itself.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court blocked a key permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile natural gas project that’s known as MVP. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrongly approved a permit that allowed MVP to temporarily dam four of West Virginia’s rivers so the pipeline can be buried beneath the streambeds.

But rather than pausing or rethinking the project, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has already been rewriting the state construction standards for pipeline river crossings that prompted the appeals court to block the plan.

Once that happens, MVP will apply for a new Clean Water Act permit, which it expects to secure in early 2019, said Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for the pipeline’s developers. Developers still expect the pipeline to be in service by the fourth quarter of 2019, she said.

“MVP is committed to the safety of its communities, to the preservation and protection of the environment, and to the continued responsible construction of this important natural gas infrastructure project that will serve homes and business in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast United States,” Cox said in a statement.

The ruling against the pipeline and the effort to change the rules mirrors a review by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, in collaboration with ProPublica, which found that, over the past two years, federal and state agencies tasked with enforcing the nation’s environmental laws have moved repeatedly to clear roadblocks and expedite the pipeline, even changing the rules at times to ease the project’s approvals.

The stakes are high for West Virginia’s natural gas industry, which is booming and needs pipelines to move its product to East Coast and Southern cities. The issues also loom large for state residents who worry that West Virginia’s drive to encourage natural gas growth poses threats to the environment and their communities.

Last month, MVP developers said the cost of the project had risen from $3.7 billion to $4.6 billion, and they blamed about half of that increase on litigation-related delays.

Projects like MVP require a variety of permits before they can be built. Developers and regulators are supposed to study alternatives, articulate a clear need for the project and outline steps to minimize damage to the environment. In numerous instances, though, officials have allowed the pipeline to go ahead despite serious unanswered questions, the Gazette-Mail and ProPublica found after examining government documents and court records.

Tuesday’s ruling by the 4th Circuit focused on one such move by regulators, a change in guidelines for river crossings needed for four significant West Virginia rivers: Elk, Greenbrier, Meadow and Gauley.

The river crossings involve each river being dammed and excavated — sometimes with blasting — so that the 42-inch-diameter pipeline can be buried beneath the streambed.

This work requires a Clean Water Act “dredge-and-fill” permit from the Corps of Engineers. If the construction isn’t handled properly, sediment can increase in the water, oxygen can decrease and aquatic habitat can be harmed.

Because of those concerns, state officials put in place a 72-hour limit for completing these kinds of stream crossings when they approved the use of a streamlined Corps review process that MVP used.

MVP developers said each stream crossing would take four to six weeks to complete. Nonetheless, despite the 72-hour limit set by the state, the Corps approved the pipeline permit anyway, using the streamlined process that saved the developers time, money and scrutiny.

The Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and other groups sued and, in June, the 4th Circuit issued a stay of the Corps-approved permit. The stay prompted a late-night news release from Gov. Jim Justice, who said his Department of Environmental Protection would “continue to monitor these proceedings closely to determine what role the state may play in expediting the construction of this pipeline.”

Then, in July, the Corps rewrote its approval of the pipeline to essentially waive the 72-hour limit imposed by the DEP on the river crossing construction. Agency lawyers said the alternative of digging a trench for the pipeline, without diverting water flow, would cause more environmental damage. Citizen groups said the agencies could instead push for MVP to use a more conventional method to bore under the rivers, perhaps reducing the effects.

Last Friday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court heard arguments in the case, and then, on Tuesday, issued a ruling. The unanimous panel said its reasons would be “more fully explained” in a forthcoming opinion, but in a three-page order offered some clues as to its thinking.

The order said the Corps “lacked authority to substitute” one construction method for the 72-hour restriction issued by the DEP. But the DEP is pushing to exempt the stream-crossing method proposed by Mountain Valley Pipeline developers from its 72-hour limit, essentially changing the conditions it had earlier attached to the Clean Water Act permit. The agency is now reviewing public comments submitted by a mid-September deadline.

Kelly Martin, director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign at the Sierra Club, which opposes the pipeline, urged the DEP not to follow through on those changes.

“This isn’t a goal-post-moving moment,” Martin said. “[The] DEP needs to end this game and do its job. Full stop.”

MVP developers submitted a letter in support of the changes. The West Virginia Rivers Coalition opposed the changes, and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that represents citizen groups, argued that the DEP’s move is illegal.

DEP spokesman Jake Glance said that, although his agency is not a party to the lawsuit before the appeals court, it is “evaluating the ruling and will review the court’s opinion when it is released and respond accordingly.”

Corps spokesman Brian Maka declined to comment until the full 4th Circuit opinion is released.

As the court case has played out, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been acting to keep MVP construction moving.

On July 27, a panel of judges on the 4th Circuit vacated two construction permits, from the federal Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, saying Americans “deserve more than silent acquiescence to a pipeline company’s justification for upending large swaths of national forestlands.” Environmental groups considered the decision a victory, and the FERC ordered construction to stop.

The next week, MVP developers asked for and received permission from the FERC to continue work on the first 77 miles in Northern West Virginia, with the exception of a 7-mile stretch near the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike Trail.

By the end of August, the FERC had granted MVP permission to work on the rest of the pipeline, except for near the Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike and Jefferson National Forest, over the objections of FERC Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick.

“We have significant concerns with today’s decision to allow construction to resume while required right-of-way and temporary use permits remain outstanding,” Glick and LaFleur wrote in a joint statement Aug. 29.

Study: Survivors of Sexual Assault Experience Real Health Consequences

A study published Wednesday suggests sexual harassment and assault can have extended health consequences, including depression, anxiety, poor sleep and high blood pressure.

Among 304 women ages 40 to 60, 19 percent told the researchers they had experienced workplace sexual harassment, 22 percent said they had experienced sexual assault and 10 percent said they experienced both.

Those who had experienced harassment were twice as likely to have high blood pressure and poor sleep, according to the research, which was published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Those who had experienced sexual assault were three times as likely to show symptoms of depression and twice as likely to have anxiety. Women who said they survived a sexual assault also experienced poor sleep.

Insomnia, depression and anxiety have been shown in turn to have negative health implications. High blood pressure can lead to cardiovascular disease, a top cause of death among women.

Rebecca Thurston, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the lead author on the study, said predatory behavior can cast a long shadow. “Experiencing sexual harassment and/or assault not only has implications for your quality of life, social functioning and job performance, but also for your mental and physical health,” she said.

The researchers also examined the women’s socioeconomic status and level of education, finding that women who reported being sexually harassed were both highly educated and under financial duress:

Financially stressed women can lack the financial security to leave abusive work situations. Why more highly educated women in the present study were more likely to be harassed is unclear; these women may more often be employed in male-dominated settings, be more knowledgeable about what constitutes sexual harassment, or be perceived as threatening; sexual harassment is an assertion of hierarchical power relations.

This is not the first research into the correlation between sexual violence and health, although it makes an attempt to differentiate itself from past research by relying less on self-reporting and more on hard medical data.

A British study published in June found that four in five teenage girls who experienced sexual assault, many of whom were living in poverty, had depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder four to five months after the assault. A study published in 2012 established a link between women who experienced intimate partner violence and high blood pressure. A 2008 study that looked at low-income workplace abuse also found a correlation between women who had experienced sexual harassment and high blood pressure.

While women are often encouraged to move on emotionally from traumatic experiences, this research shows that sexual assault and harassment should be taken seriously by medical professionals—and everyone else.

“These are often events from long ago, but they are clinically important right now,” said JoAnn Pinkerton, executive director of the North American Menopause Society.

Saudis Insist Missing Washington Post Critic Left Turkey Consulate

Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul insisted Thursday that a missing Saudi contributor to The Washington Post left its building before disappearing, directly contradicting Turkish officials who say they believe the writer is still inside.

The comments further deepen the mystery surrounding what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, who had been living in self-imposed exile in the U.S. while writing columns critical of the kingdom and its policies under upstart Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Khashoggi’s disappearance also threatened to further harm relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which are on opposite sides of an ongoing four-nation boycott of Qatar and other regional crises. Turkey summoned the Saudi ambassador to its Foreign Ministry on Thursday over the writer’s disappearance, said an official who requested anonymity in line with government rules.

In a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the consulate did not challenge that Khashoggi, 59, had disappeared while on a visit to the diplomatic post.

“The consulate confirmed that it is carrying out follow-up procedures and coordination with the Turkish local authorities to uncover the circumstances of the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi after he left the consulate building,” the statement said, without elaborating.

A spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters Wednesday that authorities believed the journalist is still there.

“According to the information we have, this person who is a Saudi citizen is still at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul,” Ibrahim Kalin said. “We don’t have information to the contrary.”

On Tuesday, Khashoggi entered the consulate to get paperwork he needed in order to be married next week, said his fiancée Hatice, who gave only her first name for fear of retribution. He gave her his mobile phones for safekeeping, something common as embassies throughout the Middle East routinely require phones to be left outside as a security precaution.

Hours later, Hatice said she called Khashoggi’s friends in a panic when he never emerged.

“I don’t know what has happened to him. I can’t even guess how such a thing can happen to him,” his fiancée told The Associated Press. “There is no law or lawsuit against him. He is not a suspect, he has not been convicted. There is nothing against him. He is just a man whose country doesn’t like his writings or his opinions.”

The Post said it was “extremely concerned” about Khashoggi.

“We have reached out to anyone we think might be able to help locate him and assure his safety, including U.S., Turkish and Saudi officials,” the Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said in a statement.

The State Department said it was aware of Khashoggi’s disappearance and was seeking more information. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke by telephone Wednesday with Prince Mohammed, but it was unclear if the writer’s case came up in their conversation.

Khashoggi is a longtime Saudi journalist, foreign correspondent, editor and columnist whose work has been controversial in the past in the ultraconservative Sunni kingdom. He went into self-imposed exile in the United States following the ascension of Prince Mohammed, now next in line to succeed his father, the 82-year-old King Salman.

Khashoggi was known for his interviews and travels with Osama bin Laden between 1987 and 1995, including in Afghanistan, where he wrote about the battle against the Soviet occupation. In the early 1990s, he tried to persuade bin Laden to reconcile with the Saudi royal family and return home from his base in Sudan, but the al-Qaida leader refused.

Khashoggi maintained ties with Saudi elites and launched a satellite news channel, Al-Arab, from Bahrain in 2015 with the backing of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The channel was on air for less than 11 hours before it was shut down. Its billionaire backer was detained in the Ritz Carlton roundup overseen by Prince Mohammed in 2017.

As a contributor to the Post, Khashoggi has written extensively about Saudi Arabia, including criticizing its war in Yemen, its recent diplomatic spat with Canada and its arrest of women’s rights activists after the lifting of a ban on women driving.

The dispute over Khashoggi’s disappearance also threatens to reopen rifts between Ankara and Riyadh. Turkey has supported Qatar amid a yearlong boycott by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over a political dispute. Turkey’s support of political Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, also angers leaders in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which label the organization a “terrorist group” threatening their hereditarily ruled nations.

Press freedom groups have decried Khashoggi’s disappearance. The Vienna-based International Press Institute wrote a letter to Saudi King Salman calling on the monarch to ensure Khashoggi’s immediate release.

“If, as it claims, Saudi Arabia truly wishes to transition to a more open society, it will have to accept the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” wrote Ravi R. Prasad, the institute’s head of advocacy.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also expressed concern, saying “given the Saudi authorities’ pattern of quietly detaining critical journalists, Khashoggi’s failure to emerge from the Saudi consulate on the day he entered is a cause for alarm.”