Chris Hedges's Blog, page 497

U.N. Chief: New Force Could Protect Palestinians

UNITED NATIONS—Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a new report that options to protect Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation range from establishing an armed military or police force to deploying civilian observers or beefing up the U.N. presence on the ground.

The U.N. chief stressed in the report circulated Friday evening that every option would require the cooperation of Israelis and Palestinians, “a sustained cessation of hostilities and additional resources.”

But the prospect of getting Israel’s consent, especially for a U.N. or non-U.N. armed force, remains highly unlikely.

Guterres was responding to a request in a Palestinian-backed resolution adopted by the General Assembly in June that blamed Israel for violence in Gaza and deplored its “excessive use of force.” It asked the secretary-general for proposals to protect Palestinian civilians and recommendations “regarding an international protection mechanism.”

In the 14-page report, the secretary-general said the combination of more than 50 years of Israeli military occupation, “constant security threats, weak political institutions and a deadlocked peace process, provides for a protection challenge that is highly complex politically, legally and practically.”

Guterres stressed that the solution to protecting Palestinian civilians is a political settlement to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Until that is achieved, he called on the 193 nations in the General Assembly to explore “all practical and feasible measures that will significantly improve the protection of the Palestinian population,” adding that the measures “would also improve the security of Israeli civilians.”

Guterres focused on four options:

— A MORE ROBUST U.N. PRESENCE ON THE GROUND: He said additional U.N. human rights, political and coordination experts could strengthen U.N. prevention capabilities, increase the organization’s visibility and “demonstrate the international community’s attention and commitment” to protecting Palestinian civilians.

— ADDITIONAL RESOURCES AND BETTER ACCESS TO ENSURE THE WELL BEING OF CIVILIANS: He said expanding current U.N. programs and humanitarian and development assistance could more effectively address Palestinian needs. But he said the U.N. appeal for about $540 million for basic services and support to 1.9 million vulnerable Palestinians is currently only 24.5 percent funded. And he said major cuts in funding to the Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, “have created an increasingly complicated and desperate socio-economic environment.” This was a reference to the U.S. cut of around $300 million in funding for UNRWA earlier this year which has resulted in a $217 million budget shortfall.

— DEDICATED CIVILIAN OBSERVERS: He said establishing a U.N. or non-U.N. civilian observer mission with a mandate to report on the protection of Palestinian civilians and their well-being “would particularly be relevant in sensitive areas such as checkpoints, the Gaza fence, and areas near settlements.” He said the observers could provide local mediation.

— PHYSICAL PROTECTION: He said the U.N. could provide armed military or police forces, if given a mandate by the Security Council, “to deter and, if necessary, ensure the safety of the civilian population.” As an alternative, he said a group of “like-minded” countries operating under a U.N. mandate to provide physical protection rather than a U.N. mission.

Guterres stressed that a U.N. civilian observer mission or a new military or police mission established by the U.N., or operating under a U.N. mandate, would require Security Council approval. He also noted that U.N. missions currently operating in the region don’t provide for the protection of civilians and it would be up to council members to expand mandates to include protection.

Israeli Ambassador Danny Damon responded to the report by saying that “the only protection the Palestinian people need is from their own leadership.”

The Palestinian Authority “incites its people to demonize and attack Jews, and Hamas, a terrorist organization, exploits those under its control by intentionally putting them in harms way,” Danon said.

The Trump administration has been a strong defender of its close ally Israel in the council, and vehemently opposed the resolution approved by the General Assembly in June that called for Guterres’ proposals. So the chances of a U.S. veto in the council on any armed force to protect Palestinian civilians or a civilian observer mission are high.

In the report, Guterres sharply criticized Israel’s expansion of settlements saying the building “continues unabated and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” He said the high number of Palestinian casualties, including children, since protests began at the Gaza fence on March 30 “reflects an alarming trend of the use of lethal force by Israeli security forces against individuals who may not pose a threat of imminent death or serious injury.”

Guterres also criticized “the indiscriminate launching of rockets, mortars and incendiary devices from Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian militants towards Israel” and the building of tunnels into Israel, saying these acts threaten the lives of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

He added that “incitement, provocative rhetoric and the glorification of terror attacks by Palestinian factions perpetuate the conflict, breed mistrust and diminish hope for constructive dialogue.”

190 Dead, Thousands of Flood Victims Await Rescue in India

NEW DELHI—Thousands of stranded people were waiting to be rescued Saturday and officials pleaded for more help as relentless monsoon floods battered the southern Indian state of Kerala, where more than 190 have died in a little over a week and much of the state is partially submerged.

Heavy rains hit parts of the state again Saturday morning, slowing attempts to deploy rescuers and get relief supplies to isolated areas. Many have seen no help for days and can only be reached by boat or helicopter.

More than 300,000 people have taken shelter in over 1,500 state-run relief camps, officials said. But authorities and local media outlets said they were being inundated with calls for assistance.

“We are receiving multiple repetetitive rescue requests,” the office of the state’s top official, Pinarayi Vijayan, said in a Friday tweet, asking those in need to provide their exact location, landmarks and the number of stranded people when they call for help.

Heavy rains since Aug. 8 have triggered floods and landslides and caused homes and bridges to collapse across Kerala, a famously picturesque state known for its quiet tropical backwaters and beautiful beaches. Many roads and railways have been shut, and one of the state’s major airports, in the city of Kochi, has also closed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Saturday with the state’s top officials, promising more than $70 million in aid. While the central government has dispatched multiple military units to Kerala, state officials are pleading for additional help.

“Please ask Modi to give us helicopters, give us helicopters . please, please!” state legislator Saji Cherian said on a Kerala-based TV news channel, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Over 300 people have died in Kerala since the monsoon started in June, including more than 170 since torrential rains began in August.

More than 1,000 people have lost their lives in seven Indian states since the start of the monsoon season.

170 Dead, Thousands of Flood Victims Await Rescue in India

NEW DELHI — Thousands of stranded people were waiting for rescue Saturday as relentless monsoon floods batter the south Indian state of Kerala, where more than 170 have died in a little over a week and much of the state is at least partially submerged.

More than 300,000 people have taken shelter in over 1,500 state-run relief camps, officials said. But authorities and local media outlets said they were being inundated with calls for assistance.

“We are receiving multiple repetetitive rescue requests,” the office of the state’s top official, Pinarayi Vijayan, said in a Friday tweet, asking those in need to provide their exact location, landmarks and the number of stranded people when they call for help.

Heavy rains since Aug. 8 have triggered floods and landslides and caused homes and bridges to collapse across Kerala, a famously picturesque state known for its quiet tropical backwaters and beautiful beaches. Many roads and railways have been shut, and one of the state’s major airports, in the city of Kochi, has also closed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Saturday with the state’s top officials, promising more than $70 million in aid. While the central government has dispatched multiple military units to Kerala, state officials are pleading for additional help.

“Please ask Modi to give us helicopters, give us helicopters . please, please!” state legislator Saji Cherian said on a Kerala-based TV news channel, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Over 300 people have died in Kerala since the monsoon started in June, including more than 170 since torrential rains began in August.

More than 1,000 people have lost their lives in seven Indian states since the start of the monsoon season.

District of Columbia Shoots Back in Tiff on Parade Cancellation

WASHINGTON — The cancellation of President Donald Trump’s Veterans Day parade came swiftly when senior White House and Pentagon leaders saw the estimated $92 million price tag play out in public, setting off a chaotic volley of tweets and accusations between the president and the mayor of the nation’s capital.

The drama that unfolded Thursday and Friday also highlighted, not for the first time, a disconnect between the Pentagon and the White House when it comes to turning some of Trump’s more mercurial ideas into reality.

While Defense Secretary Jim Mattis dismissed the price estimate for the parade as fiction — likening the report of it as the work of someone who had been smoking pot — Trump wasn’t denying the projected costs. He was lashing out at Washington, D.C., politicians he claimed were to blame for the sky-high price.

“When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up!” Trump tweeted.

He held out hope of holding the parade next year instead, and said this year he would travel to Paris for events marking the centennial of the end of fighting in World War I, which falls on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. “Now we can buy some more jet fighters!” he added.

Despite Trump blaming municipal authorities for the high estimate, the bulk of the cost was the $50 million Pentagon portion that would cover military aircraft, equipment, personnel and other support. The remaining $42 million would cover costs borne by the city and other agencies and largely involved security costs.

The Republican president’s finger-pointing set off a social media spat with D.C.’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser. She shot back on Twitter Friday that she was the one who “finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).”

District of Columbia officials called the price-gouging charge by Trump “patently false.” A city official said the $21.6 million estimate of the costs the city would incur was their “best stab at it,” since they did not know what the exact route would be or how long it would last. The official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said there had been little interaction with the Pentagon and few details provided.

Trump decided he wanted a military parade in Washington after he attended France’s Bastille Day celebration in the center of Paris last year. Several months later Trump praised the French parade, saying, “We’re going to have to try and top it.”

It was a demand that drew criticism not just from Trump’s political opponents but some Republicans too. As the Pentagon began planning for the U.S. version, the cost became a politically charged issue — as did the prospect of streets in the nation’s capital being churned up by tank treads.

According to officials familiar with the unfolding events, senior Pentagon leaders were briefed Wednesday about the parade costs. But officials said the estimates were still preliminary and so were not submitted to Mattis or Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings and conversations.

When details came out publicly Thursday, senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff John Kelly, were angry about the $92 million amount, which was more than triple early estimates of $10 million to $30 million by the White House budget director. It’s not clear when Trump was told, but the order to cancel the parade came quickly and was made by the end of the work day. The Pentagon announced the decision just before 8 p.m.

Throughout the day, multiple U.S. officials had confirmed the $92 million estimate that was put together by the interagency parade planning group. And Pentagon officials did not push back or at any point suggest the reporting was wrong.

Still, when asked about the price Thursday evening, Mattis excoriated the media and said he had seen no such estimate.

“I’m not dignifying that number ($92 million) with a reply. I would discount that, and anybody who said (that number), I’ll almost guarantee you one thing: They probably said, ‘I need to stay anonymous.’ No kidding, because you look like an idiot. And No. 2, whoever wrote it needs to get better sources. I’ll just leave it at that,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him.

He said that whoever leaked the number to the press was “probably smoking something that is legal in my state but not in most” — a reference to his home state of Washington, where marijuana use is legal.

Mattis’ comments came hours after the estimate was made public, and not long after the cancellation decision was made — giving his staff plenty of time to ensure he was made aware of the planning estimate’s accuracy.

One reason for the political sensitivity was that Trump himself had boasted that the cancellation of a major military exercise with South Korea amid easing tensions with North Korea would save the U.S. “a tremendous amount of money.” The Pentagon later said the Korea drills, which typically take place every August, would have cost $14 million — an amount dwarfed by the estimated cost of the parade.

The cancellation of those drills, like Trump’s demand for a parade, initially caught the Defense Department unawares. Mattis was also widely viewed as being unenthusiastic about the president’s plans to set up a Space Force as a new branch of the military — but as in the other cases, he has toed the line of the commander in chief.

The parade was expected to include troops from all five armed services — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — as well as units in period uniforms representing earlier times in the nation’s history. It also was expected to involve a number of military aircraft flyovers, which can carry significant costs in personnel, aircraft and support.

A Pentagon planning memo released in March said the parade would feature a “heavy air component,” likely including older, vintage aircraft. It also said there would be “wheeled vehicles only, no tanks — consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.” Big, heavy tanks could tear up streets in the District of Columbia.

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Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.

Trump Targets Security Clearance of Justice Department Official

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he suspects he’ll “very quickly” revoke the security clearance for a Justice Department official whose wife worked for the firm involved in producing a dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia.

Signaling that his efforts to target clearances over his frustration with the Russia investigation were not over, Trump tweeted that it was a “disgrace” for Bruce Ohr to be in the Justice Department.

His comments came two days after he yanked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, saying he had to do “something” about the “rigged” federal probe of Russian election interference. Critics have cast it as an act of political vengeance.

Ohr has come under Republican scrutiny for his contacts to Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. The opposition research firm hired former British spy Christopher Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign to compile the dossier on Trump and his Russia ties.

Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS during the campaign — something Trump has tweeted about to highlight his assertions of political bias behind the Russia investigation.

Former U.S. security officials on Thursday issued scathing rebukes to Trump for moving against Brennan. Trump’s admission that he acted out of frustration with the Russia probe underscored his willingness to use his executive power to fight back against an investigation he sees as a threat to his presidency. Legal experts said the dispute may add to the evidence being reviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Brennan said Trump’s decision, announced Wednesday, to deny him access to classified information was a desperate attempt to end Mueller’s investigation. Brennan, who served under President Barack Obama and has become a vocal Trump critic, called Trump’s claims that he did not collude with Russia “hogwash.”

The only question remaining is whether the collusion amounts to a “constituted criminally liable conspiracy,” Brennan wrote.

Later Thursday, the retired Navy admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden called Trump’s moves “McCarthy-era tactics.” Writing in The Washington Post, William H. McRaven said he would “consider it an honor” if Trump would revoke his clearance, as well.

“Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation,” McRaven wrote.

That was followed late Thursday by a joint letter from 15 former senior intelligence officials calling Trump’s action “ill-considered and unprecedented.” They said it “has nothing to do with who should and should not hold security clearances — and everything to do with an attempt to stifle free speech.”

The signees included seven former CIA directors, six former CIA deputy directors and two former national intelligence directors, James Clapper and retired Navy Adm. Denny Blair. Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden have appeared on a White House list of people who may also have their security clearances revoked.

Then on Friday, 60 former CIA officials issued their own statement, joining a chorus of opposition from the intelligence community to Trump’s decisions to threaten to or actually pull clearances. They said former government officials have a right to express unclassified views on national security issues without fear of being punished for doing so.

They said they did not necessarily concur with all the opinions expressed by Brennan, or the way in which he expressed them. But they said they believe the “country will be weakened if there is a political litmus test applied before seasoned experts are allowed to share their views.”

Trump on Wednesday openly tied his decision to strip Brennan of his clearance — and threaten nearly a dozen other former and current officials — to the ongoing investigation into Russian election meddling and possible collusion with his campaign. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump again called the probe a “rigged witch hunt” and said “these people led it!”

“So I think it’s something that had to be done,” he said.

The president’s comments were a swift departure from the official explanation given by the White House earlier Wednesday that cited the “the risks” posed by Brennan’s supposed “erratic conduct and behavior.” It marked the latest example of the president contradicting a story his aides had put forward to explain his motivations.

Attorneys said the revocation appeared to be within the president’s authority. But they noted the power play also could be used to reinforce a case alleging obstruction of justice, following the president’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey and his repeated tweets calling for the investigation to end.

Patrick Cotter, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York and a longtime white-collar defense attorney, said that while a prosecutor could argue that Trump’s targeting of clearances was intended as a warning that “if you contribute to, participate in, support the Russia probe and I find out about it, I’m going to punish you,” it is likely not obstruction in itself.

But, he said the move would be a “powerful piece of evidence” for prosecutors as part of a pattern to demonstrate an intent to use presidential power in connection with the probe.

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor agreed.

“What it shows is that the president is fixated on the Russia investigation, he’s angry about it, and he wants to do everything he can to discourage or slow down the investigation,” he said.

Mueller and his team have been looking at Trump’s public statements and tweets as they investigate whether the president could be guilty of obstruction.

“I don’t think it advances the criminal obstruction case, but I think it’s factually relevant,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney. “I think it shows the state of mind and intent to interfere or impede any unfavorable discussion of his potential connection to Russia.”

Former CIA directors and other top national security officials are typically allowed to keep their clearances, at least for some period.

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Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann and Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.

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Follow Colvin and Lucey on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj and https://twitter.com/catherine_lucey

Why Won’t the Mainstream Media Tell the Truth About ‘Medicare for All’?

At the end of a segment posted Friday in conjunction with factcheck.org, CNN’s Jake Tapper issues a playful warning to the country’s politicians: “You’re perfectly entitled to your own opinions,” he quips, “not to your own facts.”

It’s a piece of advice the correspondent would be wise to heed himself. As a pair of essays published in Jacobin this week demonstrate, his comprehensive fact-check of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claims about the cost-efficiency of “Medicare for all” is misleading at best and willfully dishonest at worst.

The subject of Tapper’s report is a study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian think tank underwritten by the Koch brothers. More specifically, he focuses on Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s contention that the study’s findings indicate universal health care would save money over a 10-year period.

“Is that true?” Tapper asks incredulously. “Did a study funded by the Koch brothers indicate that Medicare for All would actually save the U.S. government trillions of dollars? No, it’s not true, at least not according to the author of the study.”

After carefully noting an Associated Press investigation that exposed the Koch brothers’ control over the hiring and firing of educators at George Mason University, Tapper then proceeds to quote at length from the Mercatus Center’s Charles Blahous, who refutes Sanders’ assertion that the proposed legislation would lower the projected cost of all health care expenditures by $2 trillion. From the segment:

It is likely that the actual cost of [Medicare for all] would be substantially greater than these estimates, which assume significant administrative and drug cost savings under the plan, and also assume that health care providers operating under [Medicare for all] will be reimbursed at rates more than 40 percent lower than those currently paid by private health insurance.

Put simply, this is false. What the Mercatus study actually indicates is that Medicare provider rates would come in 40 percent below private insurance rates, but the cuts in reimbursement would be considerably lower than the number provided by Blahous.

“This is because only 56 percent of Americans have private insurance,” writes Matt Bruenig in Jacobin. “So, while private insurance patients would see their payments reduced by 40 percent, Medicare patients would not see their payments reduced at all, and Medicaid and uninsured patients would actually see their payments increase.”

The $2 trillion in savings are not for the U.S. government, as Tapper erroneously suggests Sanders is arguing, but the American people overall.

Tapper’s segment appears to echo The Washington Post, which Bruenig notes has repeated such untruths in a separate fact-check of Ocasio-Cortez and a video segment accompanying an editorial titled “The cosmically huge ‘if’ of Medicare for all.” (Editor’s note: This video appears to have been removed subsequent to the publication of the Jacobin piece.) Incredibly, The Washington Post’s own Glen Kessler has acknowledged the 40 percent claim as false, yet both articles have gone uncorrected.

“In some ways, the undead nature of this falsehood is a perfect microcosm of the problems our society faces in dealing with fake news,” continues Bruenig. “Once a false report is out there, it is devilishly difficult to undo the damage it has caused because, even if it is corrected, few people ever recognize the correction and so many people wind up repeating the false report.”

Watch Jake Tapper’s segment here.

Read Matt Bruenig’s articles here and here.

 

How Emotional Abuse Takes Its Toll

Nadine (not her real name) never thought she would fall into an abusive relationship. After all, she was well-educated, professional, strong and independent.

“I thought I had walked into a fairytale romance. I was overwhelmed with the glamour [of] hanging around with [a] powerful crowd,” she told me.

“He took me out to expensive dinners and high-class events. … He was smart and very successful, and he constantly complimented me, saying I was the most beautiful woman he had ever met.”

Before long, her new partner asked Nadine to move in with him, which she said was a surprise. “I really didn’t want to move in, but I was getting a new job and the lease on my apartment was expiring. … After about a month, things began to change … all the glamour and compliments began to disappear,” Nadine recalled.

“Instead of compliments, I was getting criticisms. It seemed I couldn’t do anything right. I challenged him early on and … he would apologize and back down. He said he thought he was helping me and didn’t mean to confuse me or be harsh.”

And things were fine—for a while. She thought they had worked through their problems, which she attributed to moving-in tensions.

Soon, however, the negative remarks resumed about her professional accomplishments, how she spent her money, how she did her hair and how she dressed.

Nadine began to find it difficult to make decisions. She came to feel that she wasn’t smart enough to have an opinion. She was walking on eggshells, fearful of her partner’s response to anything she said. She began to speak less and less.

Then he went too far. “The final thing that gave me the strength to leave was when he began criticizing my son for wanting to go to graduate school,” she said. “It was like, he was jealous of this 20-year-old kid? A light went off in my head, and my protective mother came out, and in a matter of days, I moved out.”

When she left, she put 3,000 miles between them. A course of therapy several years later helped her regain her professional and personal sense of self and understand the dynamics of that abusive relationship.

Nadine’s story is all too common. Many women suffer from devastating yet nonphysical abuse from their partners, which tends to take one of three forms: verbal abuse, involving constant belittling; emotional abuse, which involves manipulating the victim’s feelings of self-worth; and psychological abuse, which causes the victim to doubt her sense of reality.

Behavioral professionals are faced with the dual challenge of diagnosing the problem, which bears no physical evidence and is not easily identifiable, and then helping to bring the victim back to a healthy state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses this working definition of intimate-partner abuse: “A pattern of abusive behaviors exerted by one individual in order to control or exercise power and control over his/her partner in the context of an intimate relationship.”

In “When is it Emotional Abuse?,” an article on Psychology Today’s website, author and counselor Andrea Mathews writes, “Emotional abuse is an attempt to control, in just the same way that physical abuse is an attempt to control another person … the perpetrator of emotional abuse uses emotion as his/her weapon of choice.”

“We worry about women in this situation, as it is an actionable crime,” Protima Pandey, director of the Office of Women’s Policy in Santa Clara County, Calif., told me. “We have to inform a victim that verbal abuse is an act of domestic violence. It doesn’t matter if someone never lays a hand on the woman. Verbally abusing them is harmful and damaging.”

According to Pandey, power and control are the primary issues in such instances of abuse. The victim will often be ensnared in a strong psychological dependence on the abuser. As her self-esteem diminishes, she comes to accept the blame for the attacks against herself.

In a study conducted by Community Solutions of Santa Clara County, the emotional effects of intimate-partner violence are a factor in more than a quarter of female suicides or suicide attempts. They are also a leading cause of substance abuse in adult women.

Janice (not her real name) shared her story with me:

“For women who haven’t experienced abuse, it is hard to understand why someone would tolerate it,” she said. “Why not simply walk away? And there is no easy answer to this question.”

I experienced poverty and abuse as a child. I never met my father. My mother was shamed because of her illegitimate child. She was uneducated and lived on welfare with four kids besides me. My brother was alcoholic, violent. I witnessed my sister’s vicious, drunken brawls with her husband. I do not believe that a child who lives with violence will necessarily repeat that pattern as an adult. I do believe, though, that violence can become a way of life.

I married when I was in college, 19 years old. I wasn’t in love, but my soon-to-be husband was five years older and more confident of his feelings than I. He was needy, and I needed to be needed. The perfect couple. Our first child was born 11 months later, right before my senior year in college. Two years later, our second child was born. My husband suffered from a mental illness that I knew nothing about. Later, I found out he had been sexually abused as a child. We divorced, and he had a nervous breakdown shortly after. I felt alone, very much a failure. And I had no close relative or even a friend who could help.

I was professionally confident. I applied for and got a job teaching at a local community college. Yet my self-image was rock-bottom, or I could never have teamed up with my abuser.

I was a tenure-track college teacher, and he was a community college student in my accounting class. He was bold. Persistent. Handsome. I was lonely. Confused. Depressed.

Once I agreed to go out with him, I could see that he was abusive. I, for whatever reasons, ignored those warnings. Some young kid cut him off in traffic and he followed him, stopped his car, pulled him out of the car, beat him up, then drove away. He was living with a rich, much older woman, managing her bar and driving her car and, I assume, satisfying her sexual needs. He was divorced. “Extreme cruelty” was the reason mentioned on his divorce papers.

With me, he was affectionate. He treated my kids, then 4 and 6, well. But he was a drinker. I was familiar with the habits of alcoholics but wanted no part of that life. I tried more than once to leave him after a fight. … He came to my house, broke a window, climbed through and entered my bedroom. He was tearful, words of love poured from his mouth, he was full of remorse and promised to quit drinking.

And he did. This scene I now recognize as manipulation, but then I thought it was love. I agreed to marry him, and we went to Las Vegas. He flirted outrageously with various women in the casino the night before we wed. We fought but went ahead with the wedding. …

A fight I particularly remember happened early on. He had cooked dinner, which included green beans. My son was 5, my daughter 7. During dinner, my son dawdled, lining up his beans on his plate. This, for some reason, made my husband furious, and he began to yell at my son. I tried to protect my child. My husband then became abusive with me. He called me a whore, a bitch, a cunt. I threw plates at him; he ducked, pulled me from my chair, knocked me to the floor, sat on me and struck me in the face, producing an instant black eye that covered half my face. I had to teach with that black eye. I told my colleagues I was in an automobile accident. I realize now nobody believed that.

My husband was 6-foot-3, weighed 210 pounds. I was 132 pounds.

Such scenes happened often. After each, he would cry, beg forgiveness, promise to change. One time after I left him, he swallowed a handful of pills, then drove away, leaving me terrified. I called [emergency rooms] all over town, finally found him. He drove himself there to have his stomach pumped. …

When I again left him, he called me, with a cocked gun in his hand, threatening suicide. I persuaded my preacher to go to him. … Later, he drove to the coast where we had some charismatic Catholic friends. He “accepted Christ” and returned home a “changed man.”

Only he wasn’t. I’d leave for church and he’d throw my Bible at me as I went out the door. When I shared my marriage problems with our pastor, he brought my husband in to a meeting with the church elders (I was not included) to cast the demons out of him.

That didn’t work, either.

I suffered from his frequent jealous rages. I never knew what to expect. I was taking 60 milligrams of Valium a day. I had three kids by then, was working full time as a teacher, writing textbooks, keeping the books for our very successful 24-hour-a-day restaurant, and working a shift if a waitress didn’t show up. I had no free time. No time to think.

The thing that finally forced me out of the marriage was his infidelities. He lied repeatedly when I confronted him, but finally confessed, told me to “get over it,” and I would just have to accept it. After 13 years, I rented a house and moved out.

My greatest regret is the harm he did to my kids. To this day, they suffer the effects of living with violence in the home. He was not physically violent with them, but they had to live with his filthy mouth, his erratic behavior, knowledge of his frequent illicit love affairs, and the violence against their mother. And he hurt them by mentally abusing them, by being critical.

As any mother will attest, your children are the thing that matters more to you than anything else. To allow harm to come to them, even unintentionally, even if you yourself are confused and emotionally distraught, to not have put them first when that was obviously the thing to do, is the hardest thing to come to terms [with].

As Janice came to realize, the tactics used by an abuser to diminish the partner’s sense of self and even her sense of reality may include some combination of repeatedly referring to a person’s past mistakes; expressing negative expectations and distrust; or threatening violence against a person and/or her or his family members. Yelling, degrading, swearing and name-calling are also common, as is lying and withholding important information. Abusers may also show an approach-avoidance tendency with regard to intimacy.

If the abuse is continuous, repeated and vicious, leaving the relationship may be the only option. Sadly, by the time it becomes clear that leaving is the proper option, the abused person’s strength and ability to make clear decisions and carry them out has usually been significantly diminished by the abuse.

It is often not easy to leave, especially if the victim is financially dependent, has dependent children, or is in a work situation where the abuser is a colleague.

Three contexts in which nonphysical abuse can occur are on the internet, in stalking situations and within the home.

With the growth of the internet and social media, an added virtual context for verbal, emotional and psychological abuse has evolved.

A Pew Research Center study of online harassment, titled “Witnessing Harassment Online,” by Maeve Duggan, found that about three-quarters of internet users have witnessed online harassment. For example, one person might initiate an intense group barrage of comments attacking a person’s reputation, appearance, personality and/or behavior. In another type of attack, a threat is made to post personal, often intimate, pictures as a means of controlling someone. Name-calling and purposeful embarrassment are the most common types of harassment people witnessed against women. At the more extreme end, 24 percent of respondents said they had witnessed someone being physically threatened; 19 percent said they had witnessed someone being sexually harassed; and 18 percent said they had witnessed someone being stalked.

Stalking, in which there is sometimes no physical contact, is another form of psychological abuse. The victim’s sense of security is attacked when someone threatening continually shows up where the victim works, lives or attends school.

Stalking can include excessive text messaging, notices on social media platforms and constant phone calls. This is yet another attempt to demonstrate power and establish control.

But the most egregious setting for abuse is within the home.

A former client of Pandey’s was denied both food and the ability to leave home. Her abuser accused her of failing to contribute to the household and the children, so he emptied the refrigerator and pantry and forbade her to leave the house. At the same time, he told her that if she wanted food, she had to get a job. She believed she had to listen to him because she didn’t have any resources of her own. Help from the police was needed to resolve this situation.

Another example Pandey shared took place in a home in which the wife was deaf. The husband wouldn’t allow the children to learn sign language, isolating the mother from her children.

Often, the person committing the abuse has the financial power in the home. Victims may feel they have no ability or resources to counter the abuse. Threats can include physical harm, separation of children from their parent, isolation of the victim, “outing” a partner in a homosexual relationship, or, in the case of migrants, turning the victim in to immigration authorities.

Emerging Legal Help  

A recent change in California has expanded the statutory definition of “disturbing the peace” to “disturbing the peace of the other party.” “Conduct that destroys the mental or emotional calm of the other party” is a violation of the law.

The change in the definition now includes nonviolent behavior such as stalking; threatening; telephoning, including making annoying phone calls; unwanted contact, either directly or indirectly, by mail or otherwise; and coming closer than a specified distance to another person. Now that some courts are recognizing verbal, emotional and psychological abuse as being as destructive as physical abuse, victims are finally getting their day in court.

In one case, the court held that a husband’s actions of accessing, reading and publicly disclosing his wife’s emails without her permission destroyed her mental and emotional calm.

In another case, the court held that a victim’s peace was disturbed when her boyfriend emailed, sent text messages and showed up unannounced at his ex-girlfriend’s home after she made it clear that she wanted to cease all contact with him.

And in Evilsizor v. Sweeney, the court held that a husband destroyed his wife’s mental and emotional calm when he downloaded the contents her cellphone without her permission and threatened to disclose the personal information.

Often, it is a challenge to get victims to understand that what they are experiencing is not just a family squabble but an attack on their well-being and their ability to function as an equal in the relationship.

Dalena Powell, manager for a domestic  violence program in Southern California called Healthright 360, says it is important to let victims know there is hope.

“You can regain your self-esteem,” Powell says. “You can replace those negative thoughts. Recovery is possible for healthy communications.”

Powell says survivors must be prepared to give themselves the time they need to remove the negative narrative. “It didn’t happen overnight, and they won’t be back to themselves overnight. We care for survivors as long as is necessary, and that can be three months, three years or longer. But it can be done. They just need to reach out. We will get them back to normal.”

Judge Tells U.S. Officials, ACLU to Come Up With Asylum Plan

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge on Friday called on the U.S. government and the American Civil Liberties Union to come up with a plan to address the rights of parents and children to seek asylum.

During a hearing, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw asked the two sides to come to an agreement over whether some deported parents should be returned to the U.S. to pursue asylum with their children.

The hearing came a day after Sabraw extended a freeze on deportations, saying “hasty removal of these children and their parents at the expense of an ordered process provided by law” would go against the public’s interest and deprive the minors of their right to seek asylum.

The order gives a reprieve to hundreds of children and their parents who want to remain in the United States.

Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney representing separated families, said some deported parents should be allowed to return to accompany their children through the asylum process. He told the judge others should be let back in because they were misled into believing that if they agreed to be deported, they would be reunited with their children.

As many as 366 parents who were deported to their homelands have not yet been reunited with their children. Sabraw asked the government to provide a detailed report next week on the progress of its efforts to reunify those families.

The government has opposed delaying deportations, saying parents waived the rights of their children to pursue asylum claims after the adults signed deportation forms.

The order to extend the freeze, which Sabraw first put in place July 16, affects many of the more than 2,500 children who were separated from their parents.

Sabraw said delaying the deportations “would not unfairly or unduly tax available government resources.”

He said claims of people persecuted in their homelands should at least be heard as they seek asylum. Many families have said they were fleeing violence in their home countries in Central America and planned to seek asylum.

“The court is upholding the rights provided to all persons under the United States Constitution, rights that are particularly important to minor children seeking refuge through asylum,” Sabraw wrote.

In late June, Sabraw ordered that children under 5 be rejoined with their parents in 14 days and children 5 and older be rejoined in 30 days.

The order came days after President Donald Trump, amid public outrage about children being taken from their parents, halted the “zero-tolerance” policy implemented in the spring that split up families at the border.

The government so far has reunified at least 2,089 children with their parents or others, including sponsors. Nearly 600 were still separated.

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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this story.

Palestinian Journalist Zeiad Abbas: ‘God Is Not a Real Estate Agent’

On this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” Palestinian journalist and filmmaker Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch tells of his childhood living in a refugee camp following what he refers to as the “Nakba,” or the “catastrophe.” That’s how Palestinians refer to the events of 1948, when 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled or fled from their homes, becoming second-class citizens in the process.

In his interview for the show, Abbas, himself a refugee from Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank, touches on the “birthright” movement, the Palestinian diaspora and U.S.-Israeli relations. “The moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, it’s like you erase the rights of the Palestinian people in East Jerusalem,” he says. Though American media outlets have focused closely on the Trump administration’s relations with Russia, many have overlooked or downplayed how Israel has influenced U.S. foreign policy.

Abbas questions the lack of media coverage of the Palestinian crisis and the continual suffering of his people. “We have one aquifer in Gaza,” he says, adding that, “according to all the human rights organizations … 95 percent of the water in the aquifer in Gaza is polluted … [and] 12 percent among the young deaths in Gaza [are caused by] diarrhea, related to the pollution.”

Abbas is a filmmaker, journalist and educator who has worked with Palestinian and international media organizations and has participated in the production of several documentary films. He is the manager for cross-cultural programs for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, as well as cofounder of the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh. Abbas also served as co-producer and production manager for the film “Promises,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002.

Listen to the episode in full below:

Kansas Independent Candidate Wants to Lure Votes From Kobach

WICHITA, Kan. — Kansas election officials certified independent Greg Orman as a candidate for Kansas governor on Friday, and the businessman immediately tried to appeal to disaffected Republicans, who he said view GOP hopeful Kris Kobach as “incompetent and corrupt.”

Orman’s entry into the race presents a major obstacle to Democrats, who had hoped to lure the same moderate Republicans away from Kobach, a favorite of President Trump because of his fervent support for tough immigration and voter ID laws.

The secretary of state’s office posted a short statement saying Orman had presented enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot in November.

Orman, 49, will face Democratic State Sen. Laura Kelly of Topeka and Kobach, whose nomination was only settled this week after Gov. Jeff Colyer conceded in a primary with a razor-thin margin of some 350 votes out of more than 316,000 cast.

“I think there are lots of Kansas Republicans who view Kris Kobach as not only extreme but incompetent and corrupt and I think those Republicans … will be very attracted to my background,” Orman told The Associated Press in an interview after the announcement.

Democrats were gearing up for a potential legal challenge to Orman’s certification. Many Democrats have worried that Orman will pull votes away from Kelly, 68, making it far easier for the 52-year-old Kobach to win with less than a majority of the vote.

The GOP began a clean sweep of statewide and congressional races in 2010. But the state also has a solid bloc of moderate GOP and independent voters and a history over the past 50 years of alternating between electing Republican and Democratic governors. Orman says he can build a coalition starting with voters upset with both parties, and he cites the value of having an independent governor who will lack “natural political enemies.”

The certification of Orman as a candidate was made by the same office Kobach heads as secretary of state. But officials said the 10,260 signatures submitted by Orman were reviewed by individual counties and Kobach did not participate.

Orman ran as an independent against U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts in 2014 and did so well in initial polling that the Democratic candidate dropped out to create a better chance of toppling the veteran Republican. Orman lost by 10.5 percentage points after Roberts got campaign help from several GOP stalwarts, including Sarah Palin, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul.

Orman made the ballot by submitting more than 10,000 signatures in early August. He needed 5,000 valid signatures to qualify.

On Orman’s website, he says he supports stronger background checks for gun buyers, ending the sale of bump stocks and high-capacity magazines, setting a minimum age of 21 to buy an AR-15 or other semi-automatic weapon and requiring training and licensing for a concealed-carry permit. Orman said he supports the Second Amendment but would like to revisit which types of arms Americans have a right to own,

During the 2014 Senate race, Orman described himself as “pro-choice” and said abortion policy was a matter of settled law and the nation should move on.

Orman’s running mate John Doll is from Garden City and left the Republican Party to run for lieutenant governor.

An independent candidate for governor last came close to winning in 1932.

Orman graduated from Princeton in 1991 and founded Environmental Light Concepts, a firm that designed and installed energy-efficient lighting systems for commercial and industrial use. The company had more than 120 employees when a majority of it was sold to Kansas City Power and Light in 1996.

After a stint with KCP&L, Orman co-founded Denali Partners, a private equity firm, and later became managing member of Exemplar Holdings LLC, which oversees several innovation companies.