Chris Hedges's Blog, page 484

Trump’s Leaked Comment: Zero Concessions to Canada on Trade

WASHINGTON — Talks to keep Canada in a North American trade bloc broke up Friday and will resume next week with the two longtime allies divided over such issues as Canada’s dairy market and U.S. efforts to shield drug companies from generic competition.

President Donald Trump notified Congress on Friday that he plans to sign an agreement in 90 days with Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement — and hopes Canada can brought on board, too.

The U.S. and Mexico reached a deal on Monday that excluded Canada, the third NAFTA country. The top Canadian trade envoy, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, then hurried to Washington for talks aimed at preserving Canada’s membership in the regional trade agreement.

But Freeland couldn’t break an impasse in four days of negotiations with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. The U.S.-Canada talks will resume Wednesday.

The negotiations took an odd turn for the worse Friday over news that President Donald Trump had told Bloomberg News that he wasn’t willing to make any concessions to Canada. Trump wanted the remarks to remain off-the-record; otherwise, the president said, “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

The comments were leaked to the Toronto Star, and on Friday afternoon, Trump took to Twitter to angrily confirm the Star’s report:

“Wow, I made OFF THE RECORD COMMENTS to Bloomberg concerning Canada, and this powerful understanding was BLATANTLY VIOLATED. Oh well, just more dishonest reporting. I am used to it. At least Canada knows where I stand!”

Freeland tried to brush off the controversy in a news conference. “My negotiating counterparty is Ambassador Lighthizer,” she said. “He has brought good faith and good will to the table.”

“It is Trump’s bluster at best, but obviously he is not going to force anyone into a bad deal,” said Jerry Dias, president of the Canadian private-sector union Unifor. “It is clear the U.S. economy is much bigger than ours, but trying to embarrass the Canadian team, trying to insult Canadians, is not going to get him anywhere.”

Freeland expressed confidence that Canada could reach a deal with the United States on a revamped trade accord that could please all sides.

“We know a win-win-win agreement is within reach,” she said.

The 24-year-old NAFTA tore down most trade barriers between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Trade between the three countries surged. But many manufacturers responded to the agreement by moving factories south of the border to take advantage of low Mexican wages, then shipping goods north to the United States and Canada.

Trump has charged that the deal wiped out American factory jobs. He has vowed to negotiate a better deal — or withdraw from NAFTA altogether. Talks on a new trade deal started a year ago but bogged down over U.S. demands, including several meant to bring manufacturing back to the United States.

A few weeks ago, the United States began negotiating with Mexico, leaving Canada on the sidelines. Outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto wanted to sign a deal before he left office Dec. 1. The deal announced Monday would, among many other things, require that 40 percent to 45 percent of a car be made in a North American country where auto workers made at least $16 an hour — that is, not in Mexico — before qualifying for duty-free status.

Canada doesn’t have much of an objection to the auto provisions of the U.S.-Mexican deal, which would benefit Canadian workers too. Ottawa does have other complaints. Neither U.S. nor Canadian negotiators are talking publicly about the issues that divide them.

But Daniel Ujczo, a trade attorney of the law firm Dickinson Wright in Columbus, Ohio, and others say the flashpoints include trade barriers that protect Canadian dairy farmers and Ottawa’s insistence on NAFTA provisions for resolving disputes.

Also nettlesome is a provision in the U.S.-Mexico deal that shields U.S. makers of biologics — ultra-expensive drugs produced in living cells — from generic competition for 10 years instead of the eight Canada is willing to live with: The Canadians fear the protection will drive up drug prices and make its government health care system more costly.

The Trump administration had insisted that it wanted a deal by Friday, beginning a 90-day countdown that would let Mexico’s Nieto sign the pact before leaving office.

But under U.S. trade rules, the U.S. team doesn’t have to make public the text of the revamped agreement for 30 additional days, buying more time to reach a deal with the Canadians. Lighthizer’s statement Friday said Trump intends to sign a new trade deal with Mexico, whether or not Canada is part of it.

When the Trump administration notified Congress last year that it intended to renegotiate NAFTA, critics note, it said it would enter talks with both Canada and Mexico. It’s unclear whether the Trump team even has authority to reach a pact with just one of those countries. And Congress, which has to approve any NAFTA rewrite, might refuse to endorse a deal that excludes Canada.

Even while gripped in negotiations with Mexico and now Canada over a new North American trade pact, the administration has been fighting major trading partners on other fronts. The president has imposed wide-ranging tariffs that, he argues, will help protect American workers and force U.S. trading partners to stop exploiting trade deals that are unfair to the United States.

Since March, for example, Trump’s team has applied new tariffs of up to 25 percent on nearly $85 billion worth of steel and aluminum on the grounds that these imports pose a threat to America’s national security.

The administration has also applied taxes to $50 billion in Chinese products, mostly goods used in manufacturing. And it’s considering slapping tariffs of up to 25 percent on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports after a public comment period ends Thursday. Unlike the previous Chinese imports subject to U.S. tariffs, this larger group of goods includes parts and materials that U.S. companies depend on, along with consumer goods.

These tariffs are the administration’s response to its charges that Beijing uses predatory tactics to try to supplant U.S. technological supremacy. Beijing’s tactics include cyber-theft and a requirement that American companies hand over trade secrets in exchange for access to China’s market.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto.

Bank of America Freezing Accounts of Suspected Non-Citizens, Report Finds

In recent months, the Trump administration has launched an unprecedented assault on the immigrant community, highlighted by a “zero tolerance” policy that has left as many as 500 children separated from their parents. But it’s not just the federal government that’s persecuting this vulnerable group. As the Miami Herald reports, Bank of America is freezing the account of customers whose U.S. citizenship it deems suspect.

One such customer is Saeed Moshfegh, a 36-year-old Iranian student working on his doctorate in physics at the University of Miami. In the past, Moshfegh simply had to present proof of legal residency every six months in order to keep his account open—a process he described as onerous but navigable. Yet when he appeared at his local branch near South Miami earlier this month, he was informed that his paperwork was suddenly invalid. His funds frozen, Moshfegh was unable to make his rent or credit card payments.

“This bank doesn’t know how the immigration system works,” he told the Herald, “so they didn’t accept my document.”

A Bank of America spokeswoman maintains that company policy has gone unchanged for at least a decade, issuing the following statement to HuffPost:

The regulations are not meant to determine immigration status. Like other banks, we ask for information about citizenship so that we can comply with country-specific sanctions as well as customer due diligence requirements imposed by the U.S. government. Citizenship status is not considered when it comes to establishing bank accounts and citizenship status of our customers is not shared with any other party. Like all globally active banks, our customers are citizens of many different countries. Over time, we ask all customers to verify their information is current. If we don’t hear back from a customer in response to our outreach, as a last resort, we may restrict the account until we can confirm it is in compliance with regulatory requirements. Our goal is to minimize customer inconvenience while ensuring we have strong controls in place to reduce the risk of financial crimes, and complying with the laws and regulations cited above.

But Moshfegh is not the only client to be locked out of his account. In July, The Washington Post spotlighted a couple from outside Kansas City whose debit cards were deactivated after they failed to return a mailer about their citizenship status. Paulina Gonzalez, the executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group that works on behalf of communities of color across the state, informs the Herald she has received several such complaints—virtually all of them from Bank of America clients.

“This is new,” Gonzalez tells the Post. “We have Bank of America customers who we’ve spoken to who have never been asked [about their citizenship status] before last year. If they have this asked of them before they can show us.”

While banks are obligated to report suspicious transactions, there’s no legal statute requiring they receive proof of citizenship from a client to open or maintain an account. And according to Stephanie Collins, a spokesperson for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, there have been no new directives to that effect.

The allegations leveled against Bank of America come at a time when federal officials are revoking passports of many U.S. citizens living along the border. Earlier this year, the Census Bureau announced that it would be adding a citizenship question to the 2020 form—a decision that could ultimately limit the funds distributed to immigrant communities for years if not decades to come.

Read more at The Miami Herald.

AP Sources: Lawyer Was Told Russia Had Trump ‘Over a Barrel’

WASHINGTON—A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump “over a barrel,” according to multiple people familiar with the encounter.

The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said.

The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this week in a private interview, reveal an exchange of potentially explosive information about Trump between two men the president has relentlessly sought to discredit.

They add to the public understanding of those pivotal summer months as the FBI and intelligence community scrambled to untangle possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. And they reflect the concern of Steele, a longtime FBI informant whose Democratic-funded research into Trump ties to Russia was compiled into a dossier, that the Republican presidential candidate was possibly compromised and his urgent efforts to convey that anxiety to contacts at the FBI and Justice Department.

The people who discussed Ohr’s interview were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the closed session and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Among the things Ohr said he learned from Steele during the breakfast was that an unnamed former Russian intelligence official had communicated that Russian intelligence believed “they had Trump over a barrel,” according to people familiar with the meeting.

It was not clear from Ohr’s interview whether Steele was directly told that or had picked that up through his contacts, but the broader sentiment is echoed in Steele’s dossier.

Steele and Ohr, at the time of the election a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, had first met a decade earlier and bonded over a shared interest in international organized crime. They met several times during the presidential campaign, a relationship that has exposed both men and federal law enforcement more generally to partisan criticism, including from Trump.

Republicans contend the FBI relied excessively on the dossier during its investigation and to obtain a secret wiretap application on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. They also say Ohr went outside his job description and chain of command by meeting with Steele, including after his termination as a FBI source, and then relaying information to the FBI.

Trump this month proposed stripping Ohr, who until this year had been largely anonymous during his decades-long Justice Department career, of his security clearance and has asked “how the hell” he remains employed. He has called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt” and denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow.

The president and some of his supporters in Congress have also accused the FBI of launching the entire Russia counterintelligence investigation based on the dossier. But memos authored by Republicans and Democrats and declassified this year show the probe was triggered by information the U.S. government earlier received about the Russian contacts of then-Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.

The FBI’s investigation was already under way by the time it received Steele’s dossier. The investigation’s lead agent, Peter Strzok, told lawmakers last month that “it was not Mr. Ohr who provided the initial documents that I became aware of in mid-September.”

Ohr described his relationship with Steele during a House interview Tuesday.

One of the meetings he recounted was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, a Steele associate and Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, who worked for Fusion GPS, the political research firm that hired Steele, attended at least part of it.

Beside the “over a barrel” remark, Ohr also told Congress that Steele told him that Page, a Trump campaign aide who traveled to Moscow that same month and whose ties to Russia attracted FBI scrutiny, had met with more-senior Russian officials than he had acknowledged.

The breakfast took place amid ongoing FBI concerns about Russian election interference and possible communication with Trump associates.

By that point, Russian hackers had penetrated Democratic email accounts, including that of the Clinton campaign chairman, and Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign associate, was said to have revealed that Russians had “dirt” on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the form of emails, court papers say.

That revelation prompted the FBI to open the counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, one day after the breakfast but based on entirely different information.

Ohr told lawmakers he could not vouch for the accuracy of Steele’s information but has said he considered him a reliable FBI informant who delivered credible and actionable intelligence, including about corruption at FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.

In the interview, Ohr acknowledged that he had not told superiors in his office, including Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, about his meetings with Steele because he considered the information inflammatory raw source material.

He also provided new details about the department’s move to reassign him once his Steele ties were brought to light.

Ohr said he met in late 2017 with two senior Justice Department officials, Scott Schools and James Crowell, who told him they were unhappy he had not proactively disclosed his meetings with Steele. They said he was being stripped of his associate deputy attorney post as part of an internal reorganization that would have occurred anyway, people familiar with Ohr’s account say.

He met again soon after with one of the officials, who told him Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein didn’t believe he could remain in his current position as director of a law enforcement grant-distribution initiative known as the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces program because the position entailed White House meetings and interactions.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined comment.

U.S. Ends $300 Million Funding of U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees

WASHINGTON—The United States is ending its decades of funding for the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, the State Department announced Friday, a week after slashing bilateral U.S. aid for projects in the West Bank and Gaza.

The U.S. supplies nearly 30 percent of the total budget of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, and had been demanding reforms in the way it is run. The department said in a written statement that the United States “will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation.” The decision cuts nearly $300 million of planned support.

It comes as President Donald Trump and his Middle East pointmen, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, prepare for the rollout of a much-vaunted but as yet unclear peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians, and it could intensify Palestinian suspicions that Washington is using the humanitarian funding as leverage.

The Palestinian leadership has been openly hostile to any proposal from the administration, citing what it says is a pro-Israel bias, notably after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv in May. The Palestinian Authority broke off contact with the U.S. after the Jerusalem announcement.

In 2016, the U.S. donated $355 million to the UNRWA, which provides health care, education and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and it was set to make a similar contribution this year. In January the Trump administration released $60 million in funds but withheld a further $65 million it had been due to provide. The remaining amount — around $290 million — had yet to be allocated.

“When we made a U.S. contribution of $60 million in January, we made it clear that the United States was no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs that we had assumed for many years,” the statement said. “Several countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Sweden, Qatar, and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) have shown leadership in addressing this problem, but the overall international response has not been sufficient.”

The statement criticized the “fundamental business model and fiscal practices” of UNRWA, and what the department characterized as the “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries.”

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s establishment in 1948. Today, there are an estimated 5 million refugees and their descendants, mostly scattered across the region — a figure that has become a point of contention. Palestinian leaders assert the right of those refugees to return to land now under Israeli control.

Last Friday, the State Department announced the U.S. was cutting more than $200 million in bilateral aid to the Palestinians, following a review of the funding for projects in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman called that U.S. decision an attempt to force the Palestinians to abandon their claim to Jerusalem.

Speaking before the announcement on UNRWA, its representative in Washington, Elizabeth Campbell, said the withdrawal of U.S. funding would leave the agency facing a financial crisis, but noted that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and others have provided more than $200 million in new funding to help cover its budget this year.

In recent days, senior Trump administration officials publicly expressed dissatisfaction with UNRWA but stopped short of saying the U.S. would defund the agency.

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, complained that “Palestinians continue to bash America” although it’s the main donor for UNRWA. Speaking at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, Haley also said, “we have to look at right of return” of those classified as Palestinian refugees. She called on Middle East nations to increase aid.

There is deepening international concern over deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the West Bank and Gaza.

The State Department statement said the U.S. will intensify dialogue with the United Nations, host governments and international stakeholders about new models and new approaches to help Palestinians, especially schoolchildren, which may include direct bilateral assistance from the U.S. and others.

____

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Al Sharpton Lets Trump Have It at Aretha Franklin’s Funeral

Much digital ink has been spilled over the lack of respect Donald Trump has shown the late Sen. John McCain, from his perfunctory Twitter tribute to his initial refusal to keep the White House flags lowered to half-staff. Considerably less has been devoted to the president’s condolences for Aretha Franklin, which may have captured him at his most pathologically narcissistic and mean-spirited. “I knew her well,” Trump said following her death Aug. 16.  “She worked for me on numerous occasions.”

On Friday, as the country’s pre-eminent performers and civil rights leaders gathered to say goodbye to the Queen of Soul, the Rev. Al Sharpton responded in no uncertain terms—by reminding the president that Franklin worked for nobody, least of all Donald Trump.

“You know the other Sunday on my show, I misspelled ‘respect,’ and a lot of y’all corrected me,” he quipped. “Now I want y’all to help me correct President Trump to teach him what it means.”

The line drew a raucous response from the crowd, and as HuffPost notes, many stood to applaud.

“And I say that because when word went out that Ms. Franklin passed, Trump said, ‘she used to work for me,’ ” he added. “No, she used to perform for you. She worked for us. Aretha never took orders from nobody but God.”

Watch Sharpton’s stirring address and listen to a statement he read on behalf of Barack Obama below.

Rev. Al Sharpton at Aretha Franklin’s funeral: “When word went out that Ms. Franklin passed, Trump said she used to work for me. No, she used to perform for you. She worked for us.” https://t.co/qSW5iZgtqR pic.twitter.com/QrvJrR4kw3

— ABC News (@ABC) August 31, 2018

“Aretha truly was one of a kind”: The Rev. Al Sharpton reads a letter from former President Barack Obama at Aretha Franklin’s funeral https://t.co/ZcN3c0ktDp pic.twitter.com/Cgp3KfltQZ

— CNN (@CNN) August 31, 2018

Marines Move to Tackle Racial Extremists in the Corps

This story was co-published with Frontline.

The United States Marine Corps has taken steps to combat racial extremists in its ranks, issuing an updated order emphasizing that participation in white supremacist and other groups is prohibited and encouraging service members to report fellow Marines involved with such groups.

The actions come after an active-duty Marine was documented taking part in last year’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and two others were arrested after hanging a racist banner off a building in North Carolina.

“The order reaffirms the Marine Corps’ commitment to maintaining a culture of dignity, respect and trust in which all members of the organization are afforded equal opportunity to achieve their full potential based solely upon individual merit, fitness, intellect and ability,” Maj. Brian Block, a Marine spokesman, said.

A ProPublica and Frontline investigation this year revealed that Vasillios G. Pistolis, a Marine based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, had engaged in a series of assaults during the Charlottesville rally. Pistolis, who had been a member of the white extremist group known as Atomwaffen Division, was subsequently subjected to a court-martial and forced from the Corps. Pistolis told ProPublica and Frontline that he had left the racist group and that he had not been present in Charlottesville. However, there are photographs, video and text messages that make clear he was indeed there.

Last year, the Marine Corps Times reported that Staff Sgt. Joseph Manning and Sgt. Michael Chesny pleaded guilty to trespassing charges for hanging a banner with a white power slogan from a building in Graham, North Carolina, in May 2017. The two Marines have since been “administratively separated” from the organization, Block confirmed.

Like every branch of service, the Marine Corps has regulations that bar its members from participating in racial extremist groups, but the updated policy clarifies language on prohibited conduct, chiefly by explicitly identifying “supremacist” activity as forbidden. It also consolidates many previous orders, a large number of which haven’t been updated in years, and aims to tighten accountability when rules of conduct are violated. The updated policy encourages service members who see their peers engaging in prohibited behavior to report them through various channels.

Pete Simi, co-author of the book “American Swastika” and an associate professor at Chapman University in California who has studied extremist groups for the last 20 years, said, “The order is significant only if there is a plan to both root out and prevent folks from taking part in extremist activity.”

The amended order isn’t part of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the federal law that defines criminal offenses under the U.S. military’s legal system.

“As an order, violation of the prohibited activities and conduct is punishable under the UCMJ, but this is not in and of itself a change to the UCMJ,” Block said.

 

A Long Road From Moenjodaro’s Lost Glory to Desolation in Southern Pakistan

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of its Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who are dedicated to pursuing truth within their countries and elsewhere.

The long road to Moenjodaro, a World Heritage site in southern Pakistan, is lined with smoking brick kilns and fields of ripened wheat. In one patch along the route, women pick tomatoes, tossing them onto small heaps. A little farther, hundreds of men congregate at a livestock market, tugging along their goats and buffaloes. A wiry old man sells petrol in Pepsi bottles lined up on a wooden bench. A young boy sets up his dusty cigarette stand for the day. Closer to the ruins, a group of children who should be in school are playing cricket in a barren field.

The ruins of the ancient city of Moenjodaro represent the metropolis of the Indus civilization that flourished along the Indus River between 2,500 and 1,500 B.C. The advanced urban society benefited from rich river floodplains and trade with the civilizations of Mesopotamia. Moenjodaro, a renowned brick-making center, included a great public bath, wells, covered drains and soak pits for the disposal of sewage. Every house appears to have had a bathing area, a toilet and a drainage system, and the ruins are framed by a grand citadel.

https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Video-1-Overall-Ruins.mp4

The ruins of the city of Moenjodaro represent the advanced urban society that flourished along the Indus River between 2500 and 1500 B.C. Critics accuse the Pakistani government of neglecting the historic site and the surrounding villages.

The city’s grid structure and public facilities speak of an organized and dynamic society. “[Moenjodaro] is an architectural memory to remind us of a rich and diverse cultural past beyond the aggravations of [today’s] Pakistan,” says Karachi architect Zain Mustafa. “It’s a validation of the value of our geographic role.”

Brick making is still an industry in the area, but beyond that, little remains of the heritage of that advanced Indus civilization. Today, villages near the ruins have overflowing open drains leading to huge sewage ponds that breed mosquitoes and disease. Residents say the Pakistani government has promised to improve sanitation in the impoverished villages around the historic site, but the promises have been broken. Critics also say the site itself isn’t being adequately protected and maintained.

PHOTO ESSAY | 8 photosClick here to see a photo essay by Naween Mangi about Moenjodaro and its environs.

Archaeologists first visited Moenjodaro, which means “mound of the dead,” in 1911, and excavations took place from 1920 to 1931, followed by subsequent digs in 1950 and 1964. The ruins are spread over 555 acres, and only about 10 percent of the civilization’s area has been excavated.

At the main entrance to the ruins, a chair tied to a table with a rope serves as a ticket counter. Inside the grounds, a man wearing a striped turban squats under a tree, waiting for customers to buy spiced chickpeas out of his steel platter. The pathways are strewn with empty candy wrappers, used water bottles, cigarette butts and dried leaves. Grass is overgrown, and paint is peeling from the benches. There are no visitors on this warm May morning. A dove’s cry rings out across the ruins.

“Folklore has it that doves call out like this in distress when they end up in barren, desolate places,” says Rahib Shah, a sculpture artist who specializes in creating replicas of relics excavated in Moenjodaro.

The visitors’ book at the museum in the ruins shows that only 50 people toured the area during the first three months of this year, including visitors from abroad. As the day wears on, a small group of schoolchildren troop through the gates with two teachers. The ruins haven’t been adequately promoted by the government as a historical tourism site, and there are no hotels or other facilities for visitors in the area. Also, Pakistan’s image in the international media as a hub of terrorism has led to a downturn in tourism at large over the last several years.

People who live near the ruins point out the vast discrepancy between the ancient civilization and the area at present. “It is remarkable to note that all those centuries ago, there were limestone paved drains and dustbins, and houses were made with windows and cross ventilation,” says Mohammad Ismail, a tour guide at the ruins. “Today, the villages in this immediate area have nothing, and the only reason is a lack of proper governance.”

Dhandh, about a half mile from the ruins, is the closest village to Moenjodaro and is home to 65 families. Ali Akbar, who sells shaved ice topped with syrup, says most residents live in abject poverty. “We live right in Moenjodaro, a site known all over the world, but not a single facility has been given to us,” he says. “There are no drains, no proper roads, no waste disposal.”

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A man draws water from one of a few scattered hand pumps in Dhandh, the village closest to the ruins of Moenjodaro. In contrast, the ancient city was renowned for its advanced waterworks.

As in other derelict villages across Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, in Dhandh the inhabitants live in mud huts held up by tree branches and draw water from a few scattered hand pumps. For most residents, toilets are little more than a hole in the ground. The government once planned to transform Dhandh into a model village because of its proximity to the ruins, but the plan was never executed.

“In 1922, our elders helped excavate the site, and my father was a cook for John Marshall [supervisor of the excavation for the Archaeological Survey of India],” says Saddardin Solgani, who worked at the ruins until he retired in 2015. “We were born here and have grown old here, but we haven’t got anything.”

Rehana, a mother of six, whose husband is a construction worker, ducks to protect the baby on her hip from a bamboo stick that comes loose from her roof and comes crashing down.

“We see the influential politicians only during voting season when they come to make promises they never keep,” she says. “This room of ours collapsed last year, and we rebuilt it to the extent we could, but when it rains all the water is inside. We don’t have a toilet, a kitchen or piped water.”

The Pakistan Peoples Party of slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has ruled Sindh province for the last 10 years, but the government has directed scant attention or resources toward the region’s most fundamental human needs. When the world’s sixth most populous country went to the polls in July, critics of Bhutto’s party said the lack of development in poverty-stricken areas would hurt its prospects. Yet, the party won 78 of the 130 lawmaker seats in the provincial vote, according to GEO News.

The government also has been criticized for failing to adequately preserve the historic site of Moenjodaro.

In 2014, the provincial government came under fire when it held a cultural festival on the fragile ruins. Hundreds attended, and scaffolding was put up to accommodate a large crowd for dancing, fireworks and a laser show. (A court order required “extreme care” to be taken during preparations for the event, and no damage was reported.)

Environmental threats to the area include saline seepage from the underground water table—salinity that is causing the brickwork to crumble. “A century of irrigating land without proper drainage is turning the Indus basin into a salty wasteland,” according to the Christian Science Monitor. Tube wells have been installed to protect the brick ruins, but constantly running the pumps is prohibitively expensive so they’re often turned off.

Flooding from the nearby Indus River dam is also an ongoing problem. Some berms and channels were designed to divert river water from the ruins during flooding, but all conservation work at Moenjodaro remains sporadic due to lack of funding.

Other issues include the stress of extreme heat. Temperatures sometimes exceed 122 degrees Fahrenheit, which can lead to crumbling and deformation of the structures. Because there currently is no way to protect the ruins from heat, some archeologists suggest keeping the uncovered parts of Moenjodaro buried until solutions are found.

https://www.truthdig.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Video-3-Covered-Drains.mp4

Moenjodaro included covered drains (pictured), as well as a great public bath, a well and soak pits for the disposal of sewage.

Properly maintaining Moenjodaro is critical for cultural and historical reasons, according to architectural experts.

“The most important thing about the Indus civilization was its governance systems that made it possible to have an identical system from Gujarat [now a state in western India] to the Jumna [a tributary of the Ganges in northern India],” says Arif Hasan, a Karachi-based architect and planner who specializes in heritage preservation and development. “Then there was the high quality of the brickwork [and] climate-friendly architecture of small windows and courtyards for ventilation. The population at that time was so small [that] sanitation was easy. The same manner of disposal cannot be applied today.”

Architect Mustafa leads educational tours to heritage sites across Pakistan and has taken several groups to Moenjodaro. “It is a fantastic study of urban design, how cities were and what we can learn from them to do or not to do,” Mustafa says.

Today’s governmental bodies can benefit from these lessons. Moenjodaro offers the clearest guidance on organized structure, basic amenities for the public and respect for health and hygiene—vital elements missing in the immediate surrounding area. All Pakistan needs to do is start learning.

Fabled Village Voice to Go Silent

NEW YORK—The publisher of The Village Voice says the venerable alternative weekly will cease publication.

Friday’s announcement by Voice owner Peter Barbey comes three years after Barbey bought the paper and one year after it ceased publishing in print.

Barbey called Friday “a sad day for The Village Voice and millions of readers.” He said the paper has been subject to “the increasingly harsh economic realities” facing those creating journalism.

He said staff members have been working to ensure that the print archive of the Voice is made digitally accessible.

The Village Voice was the country’s first alternative newsweekly, founded in 1955 by a group that included writer Norman Mailer.

It has received three Pulitzer Prizes and many other awards over the years.

From Academia to Art School: An ‘Old Black Woman’ Starts Anew

“Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over“

A book by Nell Painter

For many years, I have admired and recommended the works of the brilliant African-American historian Nell Painter. She joins such exemplary black historians as Darlene Clark Hine, Clayborne Carson, Peniel Joseph, David Levering Lewis, my UCLA colleagues Robin Kelley, Brenda Stevenson and Scot Brown, and many others who have revolutionized our understanding of American history. Their books and articles have brought African-American lives and struggles into the narrative of our nation’s past and present, and they have powerfully informed my own efforts as a teacher and writer.

Of all Painter’s scholarly works, I have found “Creating Black Americans” the most useful to offer my undergraduate students. This extraordinary book features the works of scores of African-American visual artists—the same creative women and men I have taught and written about for many decades. What makes her book so remarkable is that she uses these artworks effectively to augment and enrich her account of the African-American experience throughout the centuries. Not surprisingly, as she notes in her memoir, very few of these artists figured in the art history she studied when she returned to art school.

Click here to read long excerpts from “Old in Art School” at Google Books.

I learned some time ago that she had retired from her Princeton University position as the Edwards Professor of American History, deciding to “start over” by returning to school for systematic art training. Earning a BFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, Painter now “officially” joined the eminent artistic community she so effectively presented in “Creating Black Americans.”

It is not easy to return to school in later life. Painter became an undergraduate in studio art at age 64 after an astoundingly successful academic career. “Old in Art School” is a candid, engaging, insightful, critical and highly personal memoir of her studies both in undergraduate and graduate art school. I found it especially compelling because Painter is of my generation and because I have relatively close knowledge of art education due to my own long work in African-American art. Many of my students are undergraduates in studio art and several have gone on to MFA studies throughout the country. Moreover, three of the African-American artists I have written about, Toni Scott, Lili Bernard and Yrneh Brown, all returned to MFA studies in midlife, giving me similar insights to those in Painter’s odyssey.

Courage is the most pervasive and striking theme of the book. Becoming a student among peers who are mostly young and mostly white must be intimidating, even for a person with an international scholarly reputation like Painter. Early on at Mason Gross, Painter realized how much she stood out among the young, tattooed, smoking, often profoundly immature if talented young art students with different language styles, different musical tastes, and different clothing preferences. They saw her as, she acknowledges, “an old woman”—an old black woman. Returning to school, she encountered and overcame a triple marginalization. Her persistence and determination to become an artist was utterly remarkable.

As an undergraduate art student at Mason Gross, Painter also discovered the deep-seated biases of American art schools. As an accomplished intellectual, she was well acquainted with African-American and other figurative visual artists. Among her favorites were Alice Neel, Robert Colescott, Faith Ringgold and others who routinely combined outstanding technical skill with powerful social commentary. She hoped, at least in part, to follow in their footsteps using her own developing visual vocabulary and vision.

She expressed a desire to paint some of her older women scholar friends who wrote important books about serious subjects. Painter wanted to celebrate them in art, an entirely admirable objective for an “emerging” artist. As she perceptively writes, “[a]rt history offers relatively few depictions of old people, and very few of those are women.”

But teacher Stephen (respectfully, she identifies her instructors only with first names) emphatically objected: “Illustration! You can’t do that.” Painter understood what that really meant. She realized that art—good art included—can never be detached from the real world and its social, political and economic contexts. Teacher Stephen’s objection was sexist and ageist.

Even more deeply, his objection that her desire to paint her friends was “mere” illustration reflected the foolish elitism that often pervades formal art education in the United States. The appellation “illustration” is dismissive, suggesting that it is a lesser form than “real” art. Whether teacher Stephen realized it or not, that term has been used often to disparage many artists who depart from the formal and stylistic orthodoxy of the moment.

It reflects a view that the celebration of people who have been ignored or marginalized by the dominant art world, including women, is an inferior use of creativity, unworthy of art school expression. Ultimately, his comment repudiates the democratic view that all creative visual forms, including painting, sculpture, cartoons, comics, murals, book illustration, quilt making, video art, graffiti, even tattooing and body art, and other unorthodox forms, especially when done well, are legitimate forms of artistic expression. Painter’s desire to paint portraits of older women scholars may or may not be “mere” illustration. That designation is irrelevant; what matters is that she wanted to paint her friends. In the process, whether she was aware of it or not, she could use art to contest a social stereotype of older women by depicting them with dignity.

Painter finished undergraduate school and entered the Rhode Island School of Design. There, her understandable sense of insecurity heightened. That is a typical feeling among MFA students: All of them are trying their best to impress their teachers and peers. Being a new graduate student in any field is replete with personal anxiety.

One of her RISDE instructors, teacher Henry, made a devastating comment that temporarily threw her into a loop of insecurity, doubt, alienation and self-pity:

You may show your work.

You may have a gallery.

You may sell your work.

You may have collectors.

But you will never be an artist.

Painter recovered swiftly enough from this absurd assault: “Henry, that’s bullshit.”

Her long record of professional achievement and her personal maturity enabled her to reject Henry’s thorough unprofessionalism. Younger students might take longer to recover, if at all. In my experience, Henry’s remarks, while not the norm, are far from unique in art education. I have heard this story all too often, and even more so from students of color and women. I would speak more harshly: He is not a teacher spouting bullshit; he is an asshole.

Notwithstanding such barriers, Painter completed the RISDE curriculum and found the training useful in advancing her formal development as a visual artist.  There is no doubt that her ability to produce substantial work in many visual forms and to receive serious critical feedback from her instructors and peers enabled her to take her art to higher levels. Even the dreaded art school “crits” helped to push her to greater artistic achievement. In my experience, I have found that is invariably the case with artists who have sought and completed advanced formal training.  

The most compelling and poignant feature of “Old in Art School” has little to do with the author’s academic art training or her emotional reaction to returning to school in old age. Rather, like many people in middle age or older, she had to simultaneously attend to her aging and infirm parents who lived across the continent in Oakland, Calif. This story is a recurring theme in the book.

Painter’s parents had been married for 70 years. When her mother, Dona, became ill, Painter made repeated trips to the Bay Area. Her mother went first, a peaceful death surrounded by loved ones. It took Painter’s full emotional resources to attend to the memorial service, cremation and her grieving elderly father—all while continuing her work as a returning art student 3,000 miles away.

Her father, Frank, proved to be more difficult. After Dona’s death, he fell into a depression, accusing his daughter of abandoning him. This was devastating to Painter. Her father worsened, and he retreated from his circle of friends. He complained constantly and she became resentful. Eventually, Painter and her husband moved him back east after she completed her studies, so that he could live out his final days in relative comfort. It is always hard on adult children when a surviving parent becomes excessively needy. Painter’s new status as a returning student only increased the stress.

But she is a remarkably strong and resilient woman. She finished her studies and was invited to do a studio residency at Gallery Aferro, a nonprofit, artist-run institution in downtown Newark where she lives. And she received an artist-scholar residency at Yale, where ironically she was rejected when she applied for the MFA program. She had another residency at the Newark Public Library, and one in Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. In short, Painter is now a “real” artist, with an active professional life in her recently chosen field.

“Old in Art School” is richly illustrated with Painter’s artworks. At the age of 75, she will not be one of the “anointed,” like such African-American art stars as Kara Walker, Mark Bradford, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas and a few others, all of whom are first-rate visual artists with justifiable international reputations. Many other African-American artists, of equal stature and quality, remain marginalized from mainstream critical acceptance and recognition. But Painter is fully aware, from her art school experience, that artists of color still experience racism and sexism. She knows that the black art stars anointed by the elite, affluent world of privileged white critics and tastemakers reflect the tokenism concealing the deeper racism that has pervaded the art world for centuries in America.

Her own work is engaging and often intriguing. She has earned the status of a professional artist. I imagine that I will use a few of her works in some of my future presentations of African-American art.

Above all, her book reinforces the message that people who are “old” in America’s youth-obsessed culture are not always ready to be discarded into the abyss of the geriatric ward. Few people, to be sure, can discover and pursue an entirely new profession in their 60s or 70s, much less endure the rigors (and the humiliations) of formal training in a new technical field. But many hundreds of thousands or more can continue to work productively in their chosen fields, improving their skills and contributing even more in their senior years. Painter’s inspiring story is a profound lesson for people of all ages and races in this increasingly multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational society in the new century.

 

Koch Network Reveals List of Candidates It Is Backing

NEW YORK—The political network created by the billionaire Koch brothers announced plans to support eight House Republicans on Thursday, pledging financial resources and activists to help re-elect several vulnerable congressmen deemed “principled” conservatives.

The first wave of endorsements includes a handful of sometime-critics of President Donald Trump, particularly on immigration and spending.

The announcement comes a month after Trump assailed the Koch brothers as “a total joke in real Republican circles.” Days earlier, network patriarch Charles Koch had condemned the increased government spending under the Republican president’s leadership and Trump’s push for import tariffs.

Despite the clash with the White House, the Koch network remains one of the most powerful political organizations in the country. The sprawling organization is on pace to spend as much as $400 million on politics and policy ahead of November’s election. And its coalition of trained activists across 36 states has no rival.

The candidates backed by the network’s political arm, Americans for Prosperity, include eight men from seven states: Reps. Rod Blum and David Young of Iowa, Dave Brat of Virginia, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Steve Chabot of Ohio, Will Hurd of Texas, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Peter Roskam of Illinois.

For each of the candidates, Americans for Prosperity “will fully activate its grass-roots infrastructure through phone banks and neighborhood canvassing, as well as deploy targeted digital, mail and radio advertising,” according to a statement.

Absent from the list are some of the nation’s most vulnerable House Republicans including Reps. Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Mike Coffman of Colorado in addition to any Republicans from top House battleground states such as California, New Jersey or New York.

The Kochs, who devote substantial resources to pushing conservative policies at the state and national level, are active in New Jersey but do not have chapters in California or New York.

“While Americans for Prosperity is committed to opposing politicians who actively work to defeat good policies, we are proud to stand with lawmakers who champion legislation that helps improve people’s lives,” said AFP president Tim Phillips.

He added: “The candidates we are supporting this fall have each been strong, principled leaders.”

All but one of the endorsed candidates, Hurd, supported efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, including the popular provision that required insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.

All of them voted for the sweeping tax cuts and the GOP plan to ease banking regulations put in place after the 2007 financial collapse.

Most supported the White House-backed $1.3 trillion spending bill Congress adopted earlier in the year over the Koch network’s objections. The opponents included three people on the endorsement list: Freedom Caucus members Blum, Brat and Budd.

Some of the group also oppose Trump’s immigration policies. Hurd, in particular, has emerged as a vocal critic of the administration’s move to separate immigrant families at the border and spend tens of billions of dollars on a huge wall. Paulsen supports a law that would protect many young immigrants in the country illegally from deportation, while Roskam opposed Trump’s border separation policy as well.

The Koch network favors a more forgiving immigration policy in line with much of the business wing of the GOP.

“As we work to build progress in Washington, we will continue our pursuit of policy majorities that will move our country in the right direction by supporting leaders like these,” Phillips said.