Chris Hedges's Blog, page 453

Benjamin Netanyahu Is No Friend to America

Benjamin Netanyahu is no stranger to the American spotlight. A career Israeli politician who attended school in the United States, he specializes in the kind of rhetoric that his American counterparts revel in—a kind of narcissism that’s more used car salesman than educator.

Netanyahu specializes in selling danger to the American people. This is an art he has practiced on numerous occasions, whether it be at the gatherings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), his many appearances before the U.S. Congress, at televised events or during the general debate in the United Nations General Assembly, an annual gathering of global leaders and diplomats where each nation’s representative is provided the opportunity to address counterparts and the world on issues he or she deems to be of particular import.

Bibi (as he is known, affectionately or otherwise) delivered his latest address to the General Assembly on Sept. 27. Like others he had delivered previously, this one was a tour de force of angst, fear and anger with a nearly singular focus on the issue that has seized Netanyahu for more than two decades—Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program.

In his 1995 campaign autobiography, “Fighting Terrorism,” Netanyahu, preparing to run for the office of prime minister of Israel, asserted that Iran was “three to five years” away from having a nuclear bomb. Bibi repeated this claim several times over the next 20-plus years, apparently unconcerned by the fact that his self-appointed timetable kept coming and going without the Iranian nuclear threat manifesting itself.

In September 2002, when he briefly found himself a private citizen, Netanyahu shifted his aim to Iraq, which he confidently asserted had a nuclear weapons program as he touted the benefits of removing Saddam Hussein from power—this during so-called “expert” testimony before the U.S. Congress. He was wrong on both counts, a fact that seems to slip the minds of those who continue to assign him a semblance of credibility given his proximity to Israel’s vaunted intelligence service.

As someone who spent four years (from 1994 to 1998) working closely with Israel’s intelligence service to uncover the truth about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs, I can attest that Israeli intelligence is better than most at what it does, but far from perfect. For every good lead the Israelis delivered to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), for which I was working at the time, they provided a dozen or more that did not pan out. Their detailed analysis about the alleged organization and structure of Iraq’s covert nuclear program proved to be far removed from the truth. They got names wrong, affiliations wrong, locations wrong—in short, the Israelis made the exact same mistakes as any other intelligence service.

Iraq was a denied area, made less so by the presence of UNSCOM weapons inspectors like me who had unprecedented access to the most sensitive national security sites in the country. And still the Israelis got it wrong. They did so not because of “bad intelligence,” but because they, like the CIA and other intelligence agencies around the world, were privy to the vast amount of information and data collected by UNSCOM inspectors about the true state of Iraq’s proscribed weapons and related programs. They suffered from the same lack of imagination as did the others that postulated a nuclear-armed Iraq circa 2002, unwilling to consider the possibility that Saddam Hussein might be telling the truth about not having retained any weapons and related capabilities prohibited by the Security Council resolution. This same lack of imagination appears to fuel Netanyahu’s increasingly wild claims about Iran.

It is no secret that Netanyahu has opposed the Iran nuclear deal—officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA—since the possibility of a negotiated solution to the stand-off between Iran and the rest of the world was put on the table by the Obama administration in 2012. He lobbied hard against the agreement, interjecting himself in American domestic politics in an unprecedented fashion to undermine the negotiations.

When Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Netanyahu found a kindred spirit whose intellectual curiosity would not permit any effective challenge to the narrative constructed by the Israeli prime minister. And when Trump faced resistance from his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, he simply replaced them with more compliant persons, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton respectively.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was facilitated not by any supporting brief from the U.S. intelligence community, which held fast to the assessment that Iran was fully compliant with its obligations under the JCPOA, but rather by intel provided by Israel that featured wild claims of an operation in the heart of Tehran; hundreds of thousands of documents purported to outline a nuclear program that Iran insisted did not exist. In April 2018, Bibi unveiled the existence of what he termed Iran’s “Atomic Archive” as he detailed some of its contents, allegedly recovered during an Israeli operation.

While Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation proved to be enough to help push Trump into withdrawing from the JCPOA the following month, it failed to convince the rest of the world that Iran was operating in bad faith when it came to declaring the totality of its nuclear program. One of the main reasons for this is that the tale put forward by Bibi simply didn’t add up. Documents he presented as being derived from the newly captured archive were recognized by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—which, along with supporting governments, is responsible for implementing the JCPOA—as matching those presented to the agency more than a decade ago. That cache of documents was allegedly recovered from a laptop computer sourced to an Iranian opposition group by Israeli intelligence.

At best, there is nothing new in these materials, and all the underlying issues alleged to have been “exposed” had already been discussed and rectified by the IAEA and Iran prior to the rectification of the JCPOA. At worst, Netanyahu was lying about the Israeli intelligence operation, and simply recycling old material—which may have been manufactured by Israel to begin with back in 2004—simply to provide political cover for Donald Trump.

Netanyahu spent much of his Sept. 27 address before the General Assembly detailing an alleged “Atomic Warehouse,” supposedly uncovered by Israeli intelligence in the heart of Tehran. As was the case with the “Atomic Archive” facility, Netanyahu made grand claims about Iranian malfeasance: The site contained “15 ship containers full of nuclear-related equipment and material,” along with “15 kilograms of radioactive material” that Iran allegedly evacuated from the site to evade detection. (Netanyahu seems to have overlooked the fact that the U.S. Department of Energy, prior to the JCPOA and in anticipation of such a scenario, “evacuated” nuclear material from one of its facilities during an exercise, only to have evidence of its existence uncovered by inspectors wielding the same detection capabilities as the IAEA.)

Netanyahu alleged that Iran was maintaining both an “Atomic Archive” and an “Atomic Warehouse” so that it could reconstitute its nuclear weapons program when the “time is right,” ostensibly when the sunset clauses of the JCPOA, which limit the number of centrifuges Iran can operate, expire. As with the “Atomic Archive” story, however, outside of Trump and his inner circle of anti-Iranian acolytes, informed American officials aren’t buying the Israeli leader’s tale, noting that Netanyahu has exaggerated the scope and scale of the warehouse in question. (These officials claim that the “material” being stored there is documentary in nature, a far cry from the “equipment” claimed by Netanyahu.)

Netanyahu bemoaned the fact that the world was promised “anywhere, anytime” inspections in Iran, and yet the IAEA has failed to take any steps to investigate the revelations provided by Israel. The reality is that the JCPOA promised no such thing. “Anywhere, anytime” was an artificial construct cobbled together by opponents of the deal by denigrating the investigatory capabilities of the IAEA. Moreover, the IAEA is intimately familiar with the quality of the intelligence information provided by Israel in the past, having spent months with Iran carefully deconstructing the claims contained within. The agency is hesitant to fall victim to Israeli exaggerations and falsifications again, and rightfully so.

More importantly, the JCPOA has a detailed mechanism in place to investigate claims such as those put forth by Israel. But by precipitously withdrawing from the JCPOA, the Trump administration has removed itself from that process. This means that Israel would need to turn to the Europeans, Russians or Chinese to plead its case. And the fact that neither France nor Germany nor the United Kingdom has picked up the mantle of Israel’s claims points to the inherent weakness of its intelligence. Netanyahu may be able to play siren to Trump’s Ulysses in order to crash America’s ship onto Iranian shoals, but the rest of the world is not following suit.

The American people should not tolerate this continued intrusion into their affairs by an outsider whose previous lies, prevarications and provocations helped get the United States entangled in one war, all the while advocating for our involvement in another. Bibi Netanyahu has a problem with telling the truth, and we give power to his words and deeds by not calling him out for what he truly is—a habitual liar with the blood of thousands of our fellow citizens on his hands. Netanyahu claims he is a friend of the American people. He is, in fact, the furthest thing from it.

Scott Ritter is the author of “Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal,” published by Clarity Press, October 2018.

Critics Blast FBI’s Kavanaugh Investigation as Utter Farce

Calling into question the entire probe, lawyers for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford issued a statement late Wednesday confirming their client, who herself offered credible testimony about Kavanaugh assaulting her while in high school, was never contacted or interviewed by the FBI nor were numerous witnesses they might have corroborated her claims.

“An FBI supplemental background investigation that did not include an interview of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — nor the witnesses who corroborate her testimony — cannot be called an investigation,” said the statement. “We are profoundly disappointed that after the tremendous sacrifice she made in coming forward, those directing the FBI investigation were not interested in seeking the truth.”

Interviewing the accuser & accused is Investigation 101. It is absolutely necessary to follow up on leads & corroborate details. The fact the FBI has not been authorized to take basic steps demonstrates the WH is turning this investigation into a sham & charade. https://t.co/OhviDS02OC

— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) October 3, 2018

While Kavanaugh’s freshman-year roommate James Roach came forth Wednesday night, both in an op-ed in Slate and with an interview on CNN, to say unequivocally that Kavanaugh lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee while under oath, he says the FBI refused to interview him.

“I saw him do the stuff that he said under oath that he didn’t do. I saw him use words in a different way than he said under oath they were used.”

Brett Kavanaugh’s Yale roommate, Jamie Roche, says he is in a “singular position” to speak to the integrity of his Senate testimony pic.twitter.com/asylQikkjM

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) October 4, 2018

Offering a widely-shared reaction, Joe Lockhart, a political commentator for CNN, said in response: “Kavanaugh’s college roommate tells CNN tonight that the FBI, over 6 separate background checks, never interviewed him. This is all a sham.”

In the dead of night, the White House announces that the FBI has completed its investigation. Dozens of people who could provide additional information weren’t contacted. Investigators weren’t even allowed to interview Kavanaugh or Ford. If this isn’t a sham I don’t know what is. https://t.co/l9k11vNZE7

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 4, 2018

Relatedly, in a follow-up reporting by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow published just before midnight on Wednesday, Debbie Ramirez—the Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who claimed that the nominee thrust his penis into her face while at a drunken party—said that while she was interviewed by federal agents, very few of the corroborating witnesses she provided, or that otherwise came forward, were contacted or deposed.

“I am very alarmed, first, that I was denied an F.B.I. investigation for five days, and then, when one was granted, that it was given on a short timeline and that the people who were key to corroborating my story have not been contacted,” Ramirez told The New Yorker. “I feel like I’m being silenced.”

According to Mayer and Farrow:

President Trump said that the Bureau should be able to interview “anybody they want within reason,” but the extent of the constraints placed on the investigating agents by the White House remained unclear. Late Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the F.B.I. probe was over and cleared the way for an important procedural vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to take place on Friday. NBC News reported that dozens of people who said that they had information about Kavanaugh had contacted F.B.I. field offices, but agents had not been permitted to talk to many of them. Several people interested in speaking to the F.B.I. expressed exasperation in interviews with The New Yorker at what they perceived to be a lack of interest in their accounts.

While the White House has already begun leaking its assessment of the FBI report, leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, will be the first members of the Senate to review it on Thursday morning followed by Republicans on the committee, then Democrats on the committee, and finally all Senate members. Despite their ability to read and review the documents, however, lawmakers are forbidden from releasing its contents to the public.

More troubling for critics is that even before Grassley received the report he went ahead and scheduled a procedural cloture vote for Kavanaugh, that is now set for Friday.

BREAKING: @SenateMajLdr McConnell just filed cloture on Kavanaugh’s #SCOTUS nomination before senators have had a chance to read and assess the FBI report. This power play demonstrates McConnell is more interested in hiding the truth than protecting the Supreme Court’s integrity.

— The Leadership Conference (@civilrightsorg) October 4, 2018

Amid all this, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving member from either party on the committee, issued an epic mega-thread on Wednesday evening that lays out all the ways in which Kavanaugh has a serious and documented “veracity problem” that cannot simply be swept under the rug.

“I’ve pulled it all together and summarized it here,” announced Leahy. “With so much at stake in this lifetime appointment, the American people, and the Senate, need to know.”

After laying out his case in great detail, Leahy concluded:

BOTTOM LINE: It’s not just “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” or minimizing his contemporaneous drinking or misogyny in his yearbook. On issues big and small, anytime Judge Kavanaugh is faced with an incriminating or difficult question under oath, he cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) October 3, 2018

As Gowri Ramachandran and James Sample, law professors at  Southwestern Law School and Hofstra Law School respectively, wrote in an op-ed for NBC News, “For a nominee to the nation’s highest court, an arms-length relationship with truth ought to be disqualifying in itself. Period.”

Period.

Who Gets to See the Kavanaugh FBI Report?

WASHINGTON — All 100 senators, and a handful of Senate staff, will be able to read the FBI’s new report on sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But it’s unclear if the public will see it.

Background checks are a routine part of any nominee’s vetting process and are generally delivered to the Senate without much fanfare. This background check, requested by a trio of senators who are undecided on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, will be different.

It’s expected that many senators will want to read or be briefed on the supplemental background check.

The report will review allegations from California professor Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when both were teenagers, and from Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez, who says he exposed himself to her at a party when both were freshmen. Kavanaugh has denied their accusations.

To accommodate the senators, and to guard the sensitive information, the FBI’s report is expected to be held in a secure room normally reserved only for classified matters. There are several of these rooms in the Capitol complex, but senators usually use one in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center just off the Senate side. The rooms are called SCIFs, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who tweeted early Thursday that he had received the report, is expected to read it first, followed by his colleagues either individually or possibly in groups.

According to a preliminary schedule, Republicans will read the first hour, starting Thursday morning, and Democrats will read the hour after that, according to a person who was briefed on the plan. The person was not authorized to release the information and requested anonymity.

There are nine staff members — both Republicans and Democrats — who have access to the report and can brief members who don’t want to read it in detail.

No copies will be made of the report, as is standard, so senators will have to go to the room to learn what is in it. And because the report is confidential, they will be expected not to repeat what they learn.

“None of that stuff’s public,” Grassley, R-Iowa, told reporters on Wednesday. “If you want people to be candid when they talk to the FBI, you ain’t going to make that public.”

The rules for keeping investigations confidential and closely held were laid out in an agreement with the governing background checks dating from the Obama administration. It’s unclear whether there will be a public summary of the information, or whether the White House would be allowed to release portions of the report.

What Climate Change Activists Can Learn From Public Health Campaigns

The world’s growing urgency in protecting public health is an encouraging example of what we can do to slow planetary warming, a new group says.

Most climate scientists – and many politicians – agree that the time left for effective action to tackle climate change is frighteningly short. A report due out on 8 October from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is expected to say that only radical and systemic change now will avert disaster.

One of the report’s co-authors has said already that it will be “extraordinarily challenging” for the world to reach the target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and that governments are “nowhere near on track” to do so.

He urges “a real sea change” leading to “a massive, immediate transformation” of global production and use of energy, transport and agriculture.

The 1.5°C limit, agreed by 195 nations in Paris in 2015, is approaching fast: world temperatures have already risen by about 1°C over their historic level.

“We’ve shown in the past that surprising changes are possible … We now know more than ever about how to create the conditions for this kind of change”

But one group of researchers argues that we are not bound to breach it: there may still be time to save the day. In a report they say efforts to alter people’s behaviour so that they address climate change seriously must learn from the great public health campaigns of the past: on smoking, drink-driving and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Their report (sub-titled “Evidence-based hope”) reviews lessons from campaigns not only for public health but for disaster awareness and equality as well. It is the first publication of the Rapid Transition Alliance (RTA), a global initiative which aims to learn from rapid change to address urgent environmental problems.

It suggests that rapid change may now be more possible than ever. The authors say recent cultural shifts in diet and single-use plastics, sexism and attitudes to gender and identity are examples of accelerating change in society and culture, aided by the speed of new communication technologies and social media in spreading ideas.

The report finds that while measures focused on modifying behaviour have been sidelined in the mix of policies considered for tackling climate change, the past shows that people can change even the most ingrained and addictive behaviours.

Wider changes

Campaigns have succeeded especially when accompanied by transformations in finance, infrastructure and culture and to be effective, the report says, behavioural change campaigns must be linked to wider structural changes.

“The complexity of climate change means that to address it, we’ll need changes in areas ranging from food, to transport, manufacturing, water use, urban planning and finance. To be legitimate and effective, these need to be fair and democratic,” says Andrew Simms, the report’s lead author.

He and his colleagues say such changes are not simple to achieve. For example, cutting smoking in the UK needed legislation on age limits and workplace smoking, public awareness campaigns, taxation and information campaigns, and advertising. They say long-term support and helpful  pricing mechanisms will also be essential, even though these can never be enough on their own.

Pollution linked to climate change is already causing unprecedented concern, the report points out. In September the European Union Court of Auditors found that air pollution is responsible for an estimated 400,000 premature deaths a year across the EU. Climate, the report says, needs to be seen in the context of dementia, asthma and deaths from extreme weather.

Tipping point

“Climate now and into the future is set to be among our greatest public health challenges,” says Simms. And that is what encourages him to think that global society may be approaching a tipping point where radical change is possible.

“We’ve shown in the past that surprising changes are possible in how people behave, in smoking, driving, antibiotics, and sexual health. We now know more than ever about how to create the conditions for this kind of change.

“Past radical changes in behaviour are about inclusive cultural movements, not just government campaigns. In moving urgently to address climate change, we should ensure that the onus for change falls on those most responsible for it, and the benefits are shared by all.

“The climate is changing faster than we are”, says Simms. But we can change too. “First, we can’t imagine a situation being different. Then things change and we can’t imagine going back to how they were before.”

Spenser Rapone Tells Chris Hedges How He Escaped the Army’s ‘Cult of Death’

When mainstream news outlets caught wind of why West Point cadet Spenser Rapone had been discharged from the U.S. Army last summer, their coverage was as predictable as it was functional. With few exceptions, and with numerous headlines mocking him as the “Commie Cadet,” the media’s collective response performed a kind of double duty, at once disciplining Rapone for going public with his politics and making sure others who share similar views keep theirs strictly classified.

For those who missed that particular news cycle, the 26-year-old Army Ranger was reprimanded by superiors and, on June 18, 2018, he was given an “other-than-honorable” discharge, despite his having already tendered his resignation, after he posted a pair of images taken at his West Point graduation two years before. In one, he had unbuttoned his uniform jacket to reveal a Che Guevara T-shirt he wore underneath; in another, he stood with a fist and displayed the underside of his hat, on which a message that read “Communism will win” was written. Rapone tweeted out that last photo with the hashtag “#VeteransForKaepernick” in a show of solidarity with NFL quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick.

Below is a link to Rapone’s own account, published June 20 on Truthdig, of that series of events:

The West Point Soldier Who Called It as He Saw It

Rapone recently sat down for an in-depth discussion with Truthdig columnist and “On Contact” host Chris Hedges, in which they covered everything from the “military culture” made apparent in the Army’s indoctrination rituals and fetishization of weaponry to how, as Rapone put it, he “broke from a collective delusion.” Rapone also describes what happened when he chose Pat Tillman, who was killed in 2004 while serving an Army tour in Afghanistan, to be his so-called “Airborne Ranger in the Sky.”

As Hedges mentions in introducing this episode, “The soldier’s tale is the same war after war, generation after generation”—yet there are aspects of this particular soldier’s story that are remarkable. Watch the “On Contact With Chris Hedges” interview in full below:

Finally, along with his fellow anti-war Army veteran Mike Prysner, Rapone launched the podcast “Eyes Left” over the summer, taking on various issues “from a left-wing and socialist perspective,” according to their description. Listen to the debut episode here:

Dems Dispute Post on Kavanaugh Background Checks

WASHINGTON — The Latest on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and sexual misconduct allegations against him (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Senate Democrats are disputing Republicans’ suggestion that there’s been no “whiff” of any inappropriate sexual behavior or alcohol abuse in Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s previous background checks.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee tweeted that Kavanaugh’s six earlier background checks found no such issues.

But Democrats in a letter Wednesday to Chairman Chuck Grassley said information in the GOP’s social media posting “is not accurate.”

The letter from Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin noted that, because the background checks are confidential, the Democrats are limited in what they can say publicly about them.

The FBI is expected to give the Senate a supplemental background report on Kavanaugh later Wednesday. Democrats want a briefing from the FBI about the investigation, but Republicans declined that request.

___

4:30 p.m.

Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers say they’ll turn over notes from her therapy sessions and any recordings of her taking a lie detector test to the FBI, if the bureau agrees to interview her.

Ford’s attorneys, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, said Wednesday they haven’t heard back from the FBI about scheduling an interview about Ford’s claim that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades ago.

The response came a day after Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley accused the attorneys of “withholding material evidence.”

The senator said he is requesting the recordings because the committee has obtained a letter that “raises specific concerns” about the reliability of Ford’s polygraph test.

A man identifying himself as Ford’s former boyfriend said in the letter he saw Ford coach a friend on how to be less nervous during a polygraph examination.

___

4:20 p.m.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is declining Democrats’ request for a briefing by FBI agents on the investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

McConnell said in a letter Wednesday to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he believes Democrats would only use such a briefing to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The GOP leader also said a briefing by FBI agents would be “unprecedented and irregular” and not in keeping with previous practice.

The FBI is expected to soon provide senators with the results of its investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh when he was in high school and college. Kavanaugh has denied the claims.

The FBI’s files are confidential. Only senators and authorized staff will be able to read them.

___

2:30 p.m.

Republican senators expect to receive the results of a new FBI background investigation into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as soon as Wednesday afternoon.

The second-ranking Senate Republican, Sen. John Cornyn, says he hopes “we’ll see it soon, perhaps as early as today.”

Republican Sen. Bob Corker cautioned that the timing was not certain. He says delivery of the final FBI report could be pushed to Thursday.

Once the FBI files are delivered, senators are expected to view them in a secure facility.

The senators say Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected later Wednesday to file cloture on Kavanaugh’s nomination. That would set up a key procedural vote on Friday.

A handful of Republicans and Democrats are undecided on Kavanaugh. Their votes will likely decide whether he is confirmed.

___

2:05 p.m.

Sen. Dick Durbin says there are “quite a few” people coming forward to tell the FBI what they know about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but he’s concerned they are not being heard.

The No. 2 Senate Democrat told The Associated Press that he understands the FBI might be overwhelmed in its investigation. But the Illinois senator said Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is “hell bent” on confirming Kavanaugh with votes this week.

Durbin said in the AP interview that he’s heard from “a lot of colleagues” who know people who want to speak to investigators about Kavanaugh. But they’re frustrated the calls are not being taken, he said.

The FBI is investigating existing allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh has denied the accusations. Senators expect to receive the FBI’s report soon.

___

1:40 p.m.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders is defending President Donald Trump’s decision to go after the woman who has claimed she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Sanders told reporters Wednesday at a rare White House briefing that: “The president was stating the facts” at a Mississippi rally Tuesday night.

Sanders is also blasting Democrats, accusing them of launching a “full scale assault on” Kavanaugh’s integrity. She’s calling it “a coordinated smear campaign.”

Three wavering Republican senators have lambasted Trump for going after Christine Blasey Ford. Just last week, Trump had described her testimony as “very credible.”

The FBI is conducting a revived background check into Ford’s accusation, which Kavanaugh denies.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the chamber will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination later this week.

___

1:30 p.m.

Some senators are using police escorts on Capitol Hill as protesters seek to confront them over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened the Senate on Wednesday saying senators would not be intimidated from doing their jobs. He says the vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation will be this week.

But GOP senators are expressing unease over protesters confronting them at their Senate offices, and at restaurants and airports. Republicans discussed security matters behind closed doors earlier this week at a private lunch.

Kavanaugh denies the allegations of sexual misconduct, including Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that he assaulted her in high school.

Last week women confronted Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona in an elevator. The exchange weighed on him, he said, as he forced Republicans to delay voting for further investigation.

___

1:25 p.m.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy is brushing off remarks from President Donald Trump that raised questions about the Democrat’s drinking habits. Trump slammed Leahy at a rally Tuesday night in a bid to turn the tables on Democrats who have gone after Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s beer drinking.

Trump told a crowd in Mississippi they should do an online search for “Patrick Leahy slash drink.”

Leahy, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday that he “must be doing something right” to draw fire from Trump. “By now just about everyone who stands up to this president has been targeted for his bogus attacks and smears,” Leahy said.

He said Trump’s “shameful mocking of a sexual assault victim is by far the biggest outrage.”

Trump mocked Kavanaugh’s chief accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her. Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

___

12:45 p.m.

A third Republican senator wavering on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is criticizing President Donald Trump’s mocking of a woman who accuses Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski says Trump’s remarks about accuser Christine Blasey (BLAH’-zee) Ford were “wholly inappropriate” and “unacceptable.”

The president on Tuesday mimicked Ford’s responses to questions at a Senate hearing last week when she described her allegations about Kavanaugh, who denies assaulting anyone.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins says Trump’s comments were “just plain wrong.” Arizona’s Jeff Flake tells NBC’s “Today” show Trump’s remarks were “kind of appalling.”

GOP leaders say an FBI report on Kavanaugh will be completed soon. They plan a Senate vote on him this week.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is defending Trump.

___

12:30 p.m.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley is calling for an end to “personal attacks & destruction” targeting Christine Blasey (BLAH’-zee) Ford, the California college professor who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers.

The Iowa Republican senator also calls for an end to personal attacks on Kavanaugh.

Grassley’s tweet comes after President Donald Trump mocked Ford at a political rally in Mississippi on Tuesday evening.

Grassley tweets he has a “long history” of respecting people with courage to step forward. He says his committee gave Ford “serious consideration” as soon as he learned about her.

Grassley says people can decide who to believe but he pleads with them to “stop personal attacks” of Ford, Kavanaugh and their families.

Kavanaugh has denied Ford’s accusation.

___

11 a.m.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is defending President Donald Trump after he mocked a woman who has accused his Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault.

Conway told reporters at the White House Wednesday that Christine Blasey Ford has “been treated like a Fabergé egg by all of us, beginning with me and the president.” She said Trump was “pointing out factual inconsistencies.”

The president, at a rally in Mississippi Tuesday night, mimicked Ford’s responses to questions at a Senate hearing last week when she described her allegations about nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

Conway argued that “those who pretend they are searching for truth are already voting against him.” She also said Democratic senators running for re-election in states Trump carried in 2016 should know that their voters “want him to be confirmed.”

___

10:55 a.m.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says President Donald Trump has reached a “new low” with his “outright mockery” of Brett Kavanaugh’s chief accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

The Democratic leader said Wednesday in a floor speech that Trump should apologize for mocking Ford at a rally Tuesday night in Mississippi. The president made fun of Ford’s inability to remember some details about the night she says she was assaulted by Kavanaugh.

Schumer said even those who doubt Ford’s allegations can refrain from the “nasty, vicious attacks.” He said Trump is “degrading” the way people are treating one another and doing “permanent damage” to the country with his comments.

Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh groped her in a bedroom at a high school party and tried to undress her. Kavanaugh denied the accusation.

___

10:50 a.m.

Democratic Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand says President Donald Trump’s comments about Brett Kavanaugh’s chief accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, are “disgraceful.”

The New York senator told reporters Wednesday that Trump’s remarks at a Mississippi campaign rally show “he has no empathy for survivors of sexual violence.”

Trump mocked Ford’s inability to remember specific aspects of the incident in which she alleges Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 35 years ago. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

Gillibrand, a potential presidential candidate in 2020, said she has turned over to the FBI information Wednesday from a constituent who wanted to testify about Kavanaugh’s behavior.

The FBI is conducting a background investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. Republicans plan to move to a vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination once the report is received.

___

10:40 a.m.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon is asking a federal judge to step in and order the release of more than 100,000 documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The motion is part of a long-shot lawsuit Merkley recently filed in federal court. He is requesting that records from Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White House be produced by the Trump administration before the Senate votes on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The Trump administration cited executive privilege in withholding about 100,000 pages of documents from Kavanaugh’s work as legal counsel. The administration said internal White House deliberations need to remain secret.

But Merkley says the Senate cannot fulfill its constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on the Supreme Court nominee without seeing Kavanaugh’s full record.

___

10:35 a.m.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the “far left” is trying to “bully” Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with a “mudslide” of sexual misconduct allegations.

McConnell in a floor speech Wednesday says the Senate will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination this week. He says senators will not be intimidated by the protesters opposed to Kavanaugh who have been confronting them in the hallways of the Capitol, at airports and at their homes.

McConnell says “there’s no chance in the world they’re going to scare us out of doing our duty.”

The FBI is nearing completion of its expanded investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanagh. Once the Senate receives the FBI’s report, Republicans are expected to move toward a vote.

A handful of senators are undecided on Kavanaugh. Their votes will likely decide whether he is confirmed.

___

10:05 a.m.

The FBI has finished an interview with Chris Garrett, a high school friend of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Garrett’s lawyer, William Sullivan, says Garrett has voluntarily cooperated with the FBI’s reopened background check of Kavanaugh and has finished his interview.

He declined to comment further.

Garrett is at least the fifth person known to have been interviewed by the FBI since last Friday, when the White House directed the FBI to look into allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to Kavanaugh’s high school and college years.

Other people questioned include people who were said to have been present at a high school party where California professor Christine Blasey Ford says she was assaulted as a teenager in the early 1980s. Kavanaugh denies the allegations.

___

9:50 a.m.

A second Republican senator wavering on Brett Kavanaugh is criticizing President Donald Trump’s mocking of a woman who’s accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually attacking her in the 1980s.

Susan Collins of Maine tells reporters that Trump’s remarks about Christine Blasey (BLAH’-zee) Ford were “just plain wrong.”

The president, at a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, mimicked Ford’s responses to questions at a Senate hearing last week when she described her allegations about Kavanaugh.

Another undecided GOP senator also has criticized Trump. Arizona’s Jeff Flake tells NBC’s “Today” show that Trump’s remarks were “kind of appalling.”

GOP leaders say an FBI report on Kavanaugh will be completed soon. They plan a Senate vote on him later this week. It is unclear whether he will be confirmed.

___

7:20 a.m.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake says President Donald Trump’s mocking of Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was “not right” and “kind of appalling.”

But Flake isn’t saying whether he’ll vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Ford alleges Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. He denies the accusation.

Trump mocked Ford at a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, listing what he described as holes in her account as his audience laughed.

Flake told NBC’s “Today” show Wednesday that mocking “something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right.” Flake added, “I wish he hadn’t done it. It’s kind of appalling.”

Flake, who is retiring from the Senate, said last week he would vote to confirm Kavanaugh, but then called for an expanded FBI investigation of the accusations, delaying the confirmation timetable. Flake said Wednesday he’d be concerned if the FBI only followed up on a few leads.

___

12:15 a.m.

The FBI investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is being questioned by lawyers for two of his accusers.

Attorneys for the woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh at a party when they were teenagers, Christine Blasey Ford, are asking the FBI why its agents haven’t contacted her.

A lawyer for the woman who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a college party, Deborah Ramirez, says he’s seen no indication that the FBI has reached out to any of the 20 people who Ramirez says may be able to corroborate her account.

In Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he is certain that the FBI’s report will be finished and the Senate will vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination this week.

Chemistry Nobel Given for Using Evolution to Create New Proteins

STOCKHOLM — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for using a sped-up version of evolution to create new proteins that have led to a best-selling drug and other products.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Science said their work has led to the development of medications, biofuels and a reduced environmental impact from some industrial processes.

Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena was awarded half of the 9-million-kronor ($1.01 million) prize, while the other half was shared by George Smith of the University of Missouri and Gregory Winter of the MRC molecular biology lab in Cambridge, England. Arnold is only the fifth woman to win a chemistry Nobel since the prizes began in 1901.

The winners “have taken control of evolution and used it for purposes that bring the greatest benefit to humankind,” the Nobel committee said.

In nature, evolution proceeds slowly as random genetic mutations generate variety in organisms and proteins, and those versions that work best in their environment persist for future generations. The research honored Wednesday mimicked that process by inducing mutations in proteins and selecting those that best met the goals of the research.

Smith, 77, and Winter, 67, worked with viruses called phages that infect bacteria. Smith showed in 1985 that inserting DNA into these viruses would make them display proteins linked to that DNA on their surfaces. It was a way to find an unknown gene for a known protein.

Winter adapted the approach to create useful antibodies, proteins that target and grab onto disease-related targets. Winter introduced mutations to make antibodies progressively better at binding to their targets. In 1994, for example, he developed antibodies that grab onto cancer cells.

The first pharmaceutical based on Winter’s work, AbbVie’s adalimumab, was approved for sale in 2002. It’s used to treat immune-system disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases, the academy said.

Sold as Humira in the U.S. and under other brand names elsewhere, it brought AbbVie $18.4 billion in revenue last year, in part because of its price: about $5,000 a month without insurance coverage in the U.S.

Other antibodies produced by this approach fight cancer, neutralize the anthrax toxin and slow down lupus, the Swedish academy said.

Dr. Wayne Marasco of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said the lab technique developed by Smith and Winter was “revolutionary … and it’s used today, every day.”

Arnold, 62, was seeking ways to make improved enzymes, which are proteins that encourage chemical reactions to occur. In 1993, she showed the power of “directed evolution” for doing that.

First she created random mutations in DNA that lets cells produce an enzyme. Then she slipped these mutated genes into bacteria, which pumped out thousands of different variants of the enzyme.

One variant did a particularly good job at a certain task, so she made a new round of mutations in this variant. That produced another variant that worked better. When she made mutant versions of that variant, she got an even better version. It contained a combination of 10 mutations that nobody could have predicted would work so well, the Swedish academy said.

Techniques for directed evolution have improved since then and Arnold has been at the leading edge, the academy said. Her tailored enzymes have become important for making medications and other valuable substances like renewable fuels.

“Her work is incredible,” Matt Hartings, an associate chemistry professor at American University, told The Associated Press.

Arnold, reached by telephone at an airport in Dallas, told the AP, “I predict that we will see many more Nobel chemistry prizes for women.”

She learned she had won when she was “unceremoniously woken up” at 4 a.m. in her hotel room in Dallas.

“The phone rang and I was certain it was one of my kids or some emergency, but it wasn’t. First I was stunned, like somebody hit me over the head with something, and then I started to wake up,” she said.

Smith credited others for the work that led to his breakthrough, telling a news conference at the University of Missouri that he was simply a part of a “huge web” of science.

“Very few research breakthroughs are novel. Virtually all of them build on what went on before. It’s happenstance. That was certainly the case with my work,” he told the AP.

Of the pre-dawn phone call from Stockholm informing him of his win, Smith said: “It’s a standard joke that someone with a Swedish accent calls and says ‘You won!’ But there was so much static on the line, I knew it wasn’t any of my friends.”

Winter said an encounter with a cancer patient early in his career made him realize the importance of his work.

The woman was receiving his then-experimental antibody treatment. Even though Winter didn’t know whether it would work, the patient was grateful for whatever extra time the treatment would give her to spend with her husband.

Winter says he realized afterward there was a “moral imperative” to ensure “what was produced could be used for public benefit.”

In other Nobel prizes this year, the medicine prize went Monday to James Allison of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University, who developed an approach for unleashing the immune system on cancers, helping doctors fight many advanced-stage cancer tumors.

Scientists from the United States, Canada and France shared the physics prize Tuesday for revolutionizing the use of lasers in research.

Arthur Ashkin became the oldest Nobel Prize laureate at 96, while Donna Strickland of the University of Waterloo in Canada became only the third woman to win a physics Nobel. Strickland had worked with the third winner, Frenchman Gerard Mourou of the Ecole Polytechnique and the University of Michigan.

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is to be announced Friday and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be revealed on Monday.

No Nobel literature prize will be awarded this year due to a sex abuse scandal at the Swedish Academy, which choses the winner. The academy plans to announce both the 2018 and the 2019 winner next year — although the head of the Nobel Foundation has said the body must fix its tarnished reputation first.

The man at the center of the Swedish Academy scandal, Jean-Claude Arnault, was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for rape.

___

Heintz reported from Moscow, and Ritter and Chester from New York. Associated Press writers David Keyton in Stockholm, Danica Kirka in London and Linda Johnson in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report.

Chicago Will Burn if Laquan McDonald’s Killer Walks

My earliest memories of growing up in Chicago are steeped in racial tension and political violence: a street covered with Chicago police cars because Malcolm X was speaking under threat of assassination at a local mosque; Martin Luther King meeting a hail of rocks and bottles in a white-ethnic neighborhood on the city’s Southwest Side; and much of the city’s black West Side erupting in flames, with Mayor Richard J. Daley telling police to “shoot to kill” rioters in the wake of King’s assassination.

That was seven Chicago mayors and 11 U.S. presidents ago. In the intervening decades, Chicago has moved along with the rest of urban America into a neoliberal, post-civil rights era, in which persistent racial hypersegregation and inequality are cloaked, to a degree, by the rise of a black middle class and by the presence of black faces in high and visible places, be they among television news teams or state and federal officials.

Along the way, Chicago emerged as a global city—a prominent center of national and international finance, trade, real estate, tourism, culture and information technology. A corporate and financial growth machine steered the city past the postindustrial decline that plagued other Rust Belt cities.

Beneath the shine of a monied downtown (the Loop) and its ever-expanding zones of professional-class gentrification, however, the city remains militantly separate and unequal. Chicago is the most segregated city in the nation, with a black-white “residential dissimilarity index” of 82.5 (a rate of zero indicates complete integration and 100 means complete segregation) and a black-Latinx measure of 82.2.

The majority of the city’s black children grow up in poor neighborhoods that are 90 percent or more black. These community areas are shockingly bereft of basic opportunities, services and amenities, from job networks to good public schools, full-service grocery stores, doctors’ offices, green space and nonfast-food restaurants. They are deprived of public and private investment by a metropolitan order that grants massive tax breaks and other subsidies to rich and powerful commercial real estate developers in the more affluent, whiter parts of town.

“There’s been a huge depopulation of [blacks] south of the West Side,” Chicago anti-war and anti-racist activist Andy Thayer tells me. The city’s neoliberal mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has “made black neighborhoods unlivable,” Thayer says, by “starving them of public resources, closing public schools and mental health clinics.”

The results are not pretty. A University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) report last year found racial and ethnic inequality in the city so “pervasive, persistent, and consequential” as to make life for white, black and Latino Chicagoans “a tale of three cities.” Combing through census and other data, the UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy found that Chicago has “fail[ed] to address the long-term consequences of decades of formal and widespread private and public discrimination along with continuing forms of entrenched … institutional and interpersonal forms of discrimination.” Among its findings:

● At 18 percent, Chicago’s black unemployment rate is more than four times the city’s white unemployment rate (4 percent) and double the Latinx rate (9 percent).

● Nearly a third of Chicago’s black families, but less than a tenth of the city’s white families, live below the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty line.

● In 1960, the typical white Chicago family earned 1.6 times more than the typical black family. Today, the typical white family earns 2.2 times more than typical black families.

● Black and Latino households experience rampant mortgage interest rate and payment schedule discrimination.

● Home foreclosures are drastically overconcentrated in black and Latino communities, with as much as 25 percent of the housing stock abandoned in some all-black South Side neighborhoods.

● Nine out of 10 black and Latino students attend schools where 75 percent or more of the student population is eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches.

● Black students are suspended at four times the rate of Latinos and 23 times the rate of whites.

● While crime is down in Chicago, incarceration rates have skyrocketed due to policy shifts, including aggressive policing strategies and mandatory-minimum sentencing. Illinois’ disproportionately (60 percent) black prisons are operating at 150 percent of maximum capacity, fueled largely by racially discriminatory policing and sentencing practices.

● Chicagoans of color are subject to far more police surveillance and intervention than whites. “Although blacks and Latinos have their vehicle searched at four times the rate of their white counterparts,” UIC researchers find, “they are half as likely to be in possession of illegal contraband or a controlled substance.”

● Blacks experience heart disease, stroke, infant mortality, low birth weight and mortality in general at far higher rates than whites.

Violence looms around every corner in much of black Chicago, and not just the violence of inner-city gangs. The “biggest gang of all,” many black residents will tell you, is the Chicago Police Department (CPD), a leading enforcer of the city’s durable and interrelated barriers of race, class and place. In a report on the CPD by the Department of Justice in the final days of the Obama administration, federal investigators painted an ugly picture of a major metropolitan gendarme force out of control in black and Latino neighborhoods:

Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers engage in a pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, that is unreasonable. … Officers engage in … unnecessary foot pursuits … [that] too often end with officers unreasonably shooting someone—including unarmed individuals. … Officers shoot at vehicles without justification. … Officers exhibit poor discipline when discharging their weapons …[and often] fail … to await backup when they safely could and should. … CPD officers shot at suspects who presented no immediate threat … and us[e] unreasonable retaliatory force and unreasonable force against children. …

CPD’s pattern or practice of unreasonable force … fall[s] heaviest on the predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods on the South and West Sides of Chicago, which are also experiencing higher crime. … CPD uses force almost ten times more often against blacks than against whites.

Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority received no less than 10,000 excessive-force complaints between 2008 and 2015, resulting in the dismissal of just four officers.

One of the many black people killed by Chicago police in recent years was Harith Augustus. A respected barber and dedicated father of a little girl, Augustus was gunned down by a white officer who shot him at least five times in the back as he ran away. The police initiated the incident by trying to apprehend him as he walked peacefully down a street in the black South Side neighborhood of South Shore.

The department absurdly justified the shooting by claiming that Augustus, 37, was “exhibiting the characteristics of an armed person.”

As the officer who killed Augustus was whisked away in a patrol car, protesters gathered at the scene, charging “murder.” A melee ensued between black community residents and 80 to 100 officers. By Chicago Sun-Times reporter Nader Issa’s account, “Dozens of officers were called to help control a tense scene as more than 100 people crowded around, chanting at police, ‘Who do you serve? Who do you protect?’ ”

Could the city explode in racial violence again, on a larger, 1968-level, in response to police violence and repression?

Yes, it could, thanks to how the case of Laquan McDonald and Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who killed him four years ago, is being handled by the authorities. Van Dyke is currently on trial for the shooting.

You can see the Oct. 20, 2014, incident online. The police dashcam video of the killing has been viewed millions of times since the public demanded its release in late 2015.

You watch the young victim walking away from his killer. You see 17-year-old Laquan’s body lying on the ground, curled up in a fetal position and jolted as Van Dyke pumps multiple bullets into him. Van Dyke drilled McDonald 16 times in 15 seconds, with the suspect on the ground for 13 of those seconds.

What sets Van Dyke’s shooting apart from the broad run of incidents in which black people are killed by police is its palpable and widely viewed heinousness, to say nothing of the outrage it elicited in Chicago’s black community and around the world.

The Van Dyke-McDonald shooting tape is certainly the most inflammatory and widely observed film evidence of racist police brutality to make its way into the mass media since the video that showed a large group Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King nearly three decades ago.

Chicago was roiled by protests that became national-headline news after the video came out in late 2015. But for those protests, Van Dyke would never have been charged with murder.

Nobody grasped the historic nature of the shooting when it occurred. “The McDonald killing,” Thayer recalls, “was just another blip.” But for an inside tip from an anonymous police officer to prominent Chicago activist Jamie Kalven, nobody would have learned about the horrific nature of Laquan’s shooting or the existence of the videotape. And but for the dedicated Freedom of Information activism of an Uber-driving, independent journalist named Brandon Smith, the tape would never been released. The city produced the tape only because it was legally compelled to by a county judge ruling in a lawsuit filed by Smith.

It wasn’t the tape alone that brought thousands into the streets and raised demands for Emanuel’s exit from City Hall. Emanuel added fuel to the fire by keeping the tape under wraps because he feared it would deep-six his chance of winning the black votes he needed after years of alienating the community by closing dozens of public schools in their neighborhoods and stonewalling on racist police abuse and misconduct (including the operation of a “black site” detention center on the city’s West Side).

Emanuel, it was ultimately revealed, had offered McDonald’s family a $5 million settlement to keep it quiet prior to the mayor’s re-election bid in the spring of 2015.

Emanuel claimed that he’d never seen the video prior to its release on Nov. 24, 2015—a preposterous story, given his approval of the settlement prior to the election.

Van Dyke, Laquan’s killer, was allowed to stay on the force, at full pay, for 13 months after conducting an extrajudicial killing that was clearly captured on tape.

Journalists later discovered that other Chicago officers on the scene threatened eyewitnesses with arrest and deleted more than an hour of footage from a fast-food restaurant near the shooting site. Numerous Chicago police officers who witnessed the killing protected Van Dyke (in accordance with “blue code”) by making abjectly counterfeit reports claiming that McDonald posed an imminent threat to his killer.

In a meeting with black ministers before the video’s release, Emanuel arrogantly warned them that he would withhold money for jobs programs in black neighborhoods if civil unrest ensued.

Emanuel has recently announced that he will not run for a third term in 2019, recognizing that his handling of the killing likely doomed him among black voters.

Emmanuel, the school privatization champion, “can’t even visit one of his inner-city charter schools,” Thayer reports, “without the kids all chanting ‘Sixteen Shots and a Cover-Up! Sixteen Shots and a Cover-Up!’ ”

Both the trial and its runup have been disquieting. Chicago media helped Van Dyke’s lawyer try to pollute the jury pool prior to jury selection by publishing interviews in which Van Dyke said, “You don’t ever want to shoot your gun. I never would have fired my gun if I didn’t think my life was in jeopardy or another citizen’s life was.”

A local television station broadcast a pre-jury-selection interview in which Van Dyke’s wife tearfully told viewers that she is “petrified” over the prospect of her husband going to prison for “doing the job for which he was trained.”

Van Dyke’s defense attorney, Daniel Herbert, failed to get the trial moved out of Chicago’s Cook County but succeeded in securing a 12-person jury composed of just one black person, seven white people and a Latina who is applying to be a Chicago Police Department officer. Chicago is 32.9 percent black.

At trial, the opening statement by Van Dyke’s attorney was equally provocative. As the Chicago Tribune reported, “Herbert said Van Dyke paused to reassess after firing 14 of the 16 shots. He didn’t know if they were lethal gunshots. He didn’t know if Laquan McDonald had the ability to get back up and attack him,” he said. ‘McDonald holds on to his knife the whole time he’s on the ground. Despite being shot 14 times, he starts making movements.’ ”

In what bizarre universe was McDonald a threat to the gun-wielding Van Dyke as the bullet-riddled teenager lay dying?

On the second day of the trial, Herbert rolled out Van Dyke’s former partner, Officer Joe Walsh, who claimed that McDonald “raised [his] knife to shoulder height and swung it moments before Van Dyke opened fire.” The video shows Walsh’s testimony to be a bald-faced lie.

The defense has brought out an expert witness to perversely claim that the large number of shots Van Dyke pumped into Laquan didn’t matter because the 17-year-old was killed by an early bullet; presented a Cook County detention officer with stories of McDonald’s past “agitation,” as though that were justification for his killing; had a Chicago Police Department officer testify that McDonald “looked deranged” before he was killed; and presented evidence that the victim had taken PCP, a drug that can give users a feeling of “omnipotence.”

On Tuesday, Van Dyke’s attorney put him on the stand. “His [Laquan’s] face had no expression, his eyes were just bugging out of his head,” Van Dyke said. “He had these huge white eyes, just staring right through me,” he told the jury.

“Huge white eyes” that were “bugging out of his head”? At best, Van Dyke’s language is highly racialized. At worst, it’s overtly racist.

The irony is that Van Dyke, not McDonald, was the attacker, wielding a deadly, rapid-fire pistol. What kind of expression did Van Dyke have on his face while he launched a fusillade of bullets into the stricken youth?

A veteran black activist tells me he’s heard that “Van Dyke will be thrown to the mob” as “a kind of token” to pacify the city’s black population and take the heat off a racist police state.

Closing arguments are due no later than Friday, and a verdict could be handed down as early as next week. A rally is planned outside City Hall one hour after the decision, whatever its outcome.

Could Chicago explode if Van Dyke walks? Every activist and observer I’ve spoken to here says the chances of mass protest and disturbances are high, because the city’s black neighborhoods are full of young people fed up with brutal and racist policing and the savage inequality and segregation that it enforces.

That Emanuel, widely hated in the black community, is leaving could temper things. At the same time the fact that “Mayor Rhambo”—a great lover of the militarized police state—no longer has to worry about losing black votes could help entice him to order a harsh crackdown on protests.

My prediction: guilty on second- but not first-degree murder. If it’s “not guilty,” there will be hell to pay.

We Need to Talk About Masculinity

When we discuss sexual assault, we often talk about women. What should women do to stay safe?

When I was in school, girls were even trained in women’s self-defense. I don’t know what the boys did during those time periods. Study hall?

Ask any woman what she does to prevent sexual assault and she’ll have an answer. She uses the buddy system when walking at night, or she carries pepper spray, or she doesn’t leave her drink unattended when she’s out, and so on.

We look out for one another. In college I had a friend with an alcohol problem. We’d babysit her or take her home to keep her safe if she drank too much, to keep her from getting assaulted.

Ask a man what he does to keep himself from getting assaulted. At most, you’ll get a “don’t drop the soap” joke.

I think we need to change the discussion. Let’s talk about masculinity. Actually, gender scholars talk about masculinities, plural.

Men express their gender identities in a variety of ways. Some believe that “being a man” requires honesty, courage, hard work, and competence. Others express masculinity through physical prowess, toughness, and daring.

And some think it means sexual prowess with women.

Many gender scholars say that gender is something you do, not something you are. Your gender expression is something you achieve.

When men or boys express emotions other than anger, show vulnerability, or do anything that can be remotely construed as “feminine,” they’re linguistically kicked out of manhood, told to “man up” or “grow a pair.”

I saw my father socializing my brother into his future role as a man from a very young age. If my brother cried or expressed any weakness, my father told him to “be a tough hombre.” My brother suffered from severe anxiety and probably PTSD. He didn’t need to be told to man up. He needed hugs, empathy, love, and therapy.

For straight men who emphasize the performance of sexual prowess, sex with women is necessary to achieving masculinity—and women saying no puts a roadblock in their path to being a man. For these men, it’s inconvenient that they don’t have carte blanche access to our bodies.

It doesn’t help that vulnerability is “unmanly,” or that we socialize men to repress their emotions instead of feeling them, because those are necessary ingredients in a healthy intimate relationship.

Obviously, this doesn’t characterize all men. However, the pressure on men to achieve masculinity through sexual prowess, devoid of any emotional vulnerability or empathy, serves to create a toxic culture in which some men believe they have a right to women’s bodies.

So when women deny them access to their bodies, some men take it by force.

In fact, a Five Thirty Eight review of recent studies suggested that this kind of toxic masculinity, more so than alcohol, is what leads to sexual assault.

Maybe if we raised men to feel their full range of emotions, to feel confident in their manhood without violating women, and to respect the boundaries of others, we wouldn’t have to teach women to use the buddy system and watch their drinks.

The Death Penalty Is Part of Our Shared and Tortured History

The following speech was delivered via telephone at the Death Penalty Focus event held on September 23, 2018.

The late James Baldwin stated that history is far from a dead thing. “We carry it with us.”

We are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all we do.

It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frame of reference, our identities and our aspirations.

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I, Kevin Cooper, would like to add these following words to the above truthful statement from James Baldwin.

We must include the death penalty, and overall oppression of poor and minority peoples to this equation, in that we are taught—or certain people are taught—from history, how to hate, oppress, and execute other certain people who have historically been looked at and deemed different. This is especially true when throughout this country’s tortured history, and present-day reality, those poor and minority peoples who are deemed to be different are the only ones who this country’s leaders strap down to chairs and gurneys and torture and murder in the name of justice, god, and “the people.”

Our shared and tortured history and present-day reality must first be acknowledged and then brought to an end as other crimes against our collective humanity have been.

But, in order to do this, it’s going to take all of us!

Understanding our history in this country is important, especially in our present-day reality with Trump in the White House. He wants to make America great again—according to him that’s the mean history, the history that James Baldwin says is not dead, but is with us today.

In Trump’s reality, poor and minority people are worthless, and just like in real history, it is poor and minority people who Trump is against—those who historically have been oppressed, tortured and executed.

We can’t forget this history, or present-day reality, because if we do, America will stay as sick in these times as it was in those times!