Chris Hedges's Blog, page 510

Police Move to Clear Rowdy Protests in Portland, Ore.

PORTLAND, Ore.—Small scuffles broke out Saturday as police in Portland, Oregon, deployed “flash bang” devices and other means to disperse hundreds of right-wing and self-described anti-fascist protesters.

Just before 2 p.m., police in riot gear ordered people to leave an area downtown, saying demonstrators had thrown rocks and bottles at officers.

“Get out of the street,” police announced via loudspeaker.

There were arrests, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many. There was also debris left in the streets by various protesters.

Demonstrators aligned with Patriot Prayer and an affiliated group, the Proud Boys, gathered around mid-day in a riverfront park.

The hundreds of opposing demonstrators faced them from across the street, holding banners and signs. Many of them yelled out chants such as “Nazis go home.”

Officers stood in the middle of the four-lane boulevard, essentially forming a wall to keep the two sides separated.

The counter-protesters were made up of a coalition of labor unions, immigrant rights advocates, democratic socialists and other groups. They included people dressed as clowns and a brass band blaring music.

The rally organized by Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson was the third to roil Portland this summer. Two previous events ended in bloody fistfights and riots, and one counter-protester was sent to the hospital with a skull fracture.

This time, Gibson changed the venue from a federal plaza outside U.S. District Court to a waterfront park so some of his Oregon supporters could carry concealed weapons as they demonstrate.

Protesters saw a significant police presence that included bomb-sniffing dogs and weapons screening checkpoints. In a statement, police said weapons may be seized if there is a violation of law and added that it is illegal in Portland to carry a loaded firearm in public unless a person has a valid Oregon concealed handgun license. Many protesters are expected to be from out of state.

Gibson’s insistence on bringing his supporters repeatedly to this blue city has crystallized a debate about the limits of free speech in an era of stark political division. Patriot Prayer also has held rallies in many other cities around the U.S. West, including Berkeley, California, that have drawn violent reactions.

But the Portland events have taken on outsized significance after a Patriot Prayer sympathizer was charged with fatally stabbing two men who came to the defense of two young black women — one in a hijab — whom the attacker was accused of harassing on a light-rail train in May 2017.

A coalition of community organizations and a group representing more than 50 tribes warned of the potential for even greater violence than previous rallies if participants carry guns. It called on officials to denounce what it called “the racist and sexist violence of Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys” and protect the city.

Gibson, who is running a long-shot campaign to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, said in a live video on Facebook earlier this week that he won’t stop bringing his followers to Portland until they can express their right-wing views without interference.

“I refuse to do what Portland wants me to do because what Portland wants me to do is to shut up and never show up again. So yeah, I refuse to do that, but I will not stop going in, and I will not stop pushing, and I will not stop marching until the people of Portland realize that and realize that their methods do not work,” he said.

Self-described anti-fascists — or “antifa” — have been organizing anonymously online to confront Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys in the streets.

A broader counter-protest organized by a coalition of labor unions, immigrant rights groups and artists planned to gather at City Hall before the Patriot Prayer rally. Organizers say that while Patriot Prayer denies being a white supremacist group, it affiliates itself with known white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazi gangs.

“Patriot Prayer is continuing to commit violence in our city, and their events are becoming more and more violent,” said Effie Baum of Pop Mob, a coalition of community groups organizing the counter-demonstration. “Leaving them a small group to attack in the streets is only going to allow them to perpetuate their violence.”

Dueling protests a month ago ended with Portland police declaring a riot and arresting four people. A similar Patriot Prayer event on June 4 devolved into fistfights and assaults by both sides as police struggled to keep the groups apart.

Brown Asks Trump for Help as California Battles 17 Blazes

SAN FRANCISCO—Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday called on President Donald Trump to help California fight and recover from another devastating wildfire season.

Brown inspected neighborhoods wiped out by a wildfire in the Northern California city of Redding and the Democratic governor said he was confident the Republican president he has clashed with over immigration and pollution policies would send aid, which Trump did last year when California’s wine country was hit hard.

“The president has been pretty good on helping us in disasters so I’m hopeful,” Brown said. “Tragedies bring people together.”

Authorities said there are 17 major fires burning throughout California. In all, they have destroyed hundreds of homes, killed eight people and shut down Yosemite National Park.

“Fire season is really just beginning,” said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection chief Ken Pimlott.

The biggest blazes continue to burn north of San Francisco, including twin wildfires fueled by dry vegetation and hot, windy weather. Those fires destroyed 55 homes and forced thousands of residents to flee their neighborhoods about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of the city. They have grown to almost 250 square miles (648 kilometers).

The two fires have charred an area of the forested, rural area five times the size of San Francisco and were only 27 percent contained. Thousands of people remain evacuated.

The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings of critical fire weather conditions through Saturday night, saying a series of dry low-pressure systems passing through the region could bring wind gusts of up to 35 mph (56 kph) that could turn small fires or even sparks into racing walls of flames.

“This is a particularly dangerous situation with extremely low humidity and high winds. New fires will grow rapidly out of control, in some cases people may not be able to evacuate safely in time should a fire approach,” the weather service said in its bulletin for the Mendocino area north of San Francisco.

As a precaution, new evacuations were called Friday for an area of Mendocino and Lake counties where the week-old twin fires are threatening about 9,000 homes.

The fire remained several miles from the evacuated communities along the eastern shore of Clear Lake but “it looks like there’s dicey weather on the way,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Jane LaBoa said.

However, some days-old evacuations were lifted Friday in an area near Redding, where armies of firefighters and fleets of aircraft continue battling an immense blaze about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the Oregon line. Some areas on the fire’s southeastern flank were reopened to residents.

Cal Fire officials said the so-called Carr Fire, which killed six people and incinerated 1,067 homes, started two weeks ago with sparks from the steel wheel of a towed-trailer’s flat tire.

The blaze is currently 41 percent contained.

The fire burned slowly for days before winds suddenly whipped it up last week and drove it furiously through brush and timber.

It burned so furiously on July 26 that it created a “fire whirl.” The twirling tower of flame reached speeds of 143 mph (230 kph), which rivaled some of the most destructive Midwest tornados, National Weather Service meteorologist Duane Dykema said. The whirl uprooted trees and tore roofs from homes, Dykema said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which uses acres to describe fire size, said the blaze had blackened nearly 206 square miles (533 square kilometers).

In the Sierra Nevada, firefighters achieved 41 percent containment of a forest fire that has shut down Yosemite Valley and other adjacent portions of Yosemite National Park at what is normally the height of summer tourism.

The fire had reached into remote areas of the country’s third-oldest national park. Workers who live in Yosemite’s popular Valley region were ordered to leave Friday because of inaccessible roads.

The blaze has killed two firefighters.

A new report says the first firefighter, a California bulldozer operator, nearly slipped off a steep mountain trail three times before his vehicle finally rolled into a ravine and fatally crushed him.

Each earlier slip alone qualified as a “near miss” warning that the century-old mining trail could collapse, according to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s preliminary report.

Braden Varney, 36, was working alone overnight July 14 fighting the wildfire while his assistant went to get a new hydraulic hose. Varney’s radio wasn’t communicating with headquarters, so his assistant relayed messages — until they lost contact.

The report says the death of the 10-year veteran highlights the need for better risk assessment, communication and supervision.

___

Associated Press writer Don Thompson contributed to this report from Sacramento, California.

Speed-Tweeting Human ‘Bots’ Swept Up in Election Crackdown

CHICAGO—Nina Tomasieski logs on to Twitter before the sun rises. Seated at her dining room table with a nearby TV constantly tuned to Fox News, the 70-year-old grandmother spends up to 14 hours a day tweeting the praises of President Trump and his political allies, particularly those on the ballot this fall, and deriding their opponents.

She’s part of a dedicated band of Trump supporters who tweet and retweet Keep America Great messages thousands of times a day.

“Time to walk away Dems and vote RED in the primaries,” she declared in one of her voluminous tweets, adding, “Say NO to socialism & hate.”

While her goal is simply to advance the agenda of a president she adores, she and her friends have been swept up in an expanded effort by Twitter and other social media companies to crack down on nefarious tactics used to meddle in the 2016 election.

And without meaning to, the tweeters have demonstrated the difficulty such crackdowns face — particularly when it comes to telling a political die-hard from a surreptitious computer robot.

Last week, Facebook said it had removed 32 fake accounts apparently created to manipulate U.S. politics — efforts that may be linked to Russia.

Twitter and other sites also have targeted automated or robot-like accounts known as bots, which authorities say were used to cloak efforts by foreign governments and political bad actors in the 2016 elections.

But the screening has repeatedly and erroneously flagged Tomasieski and users like her.

Their accounts have been suspended or frozen for “suspicious” behavior — apparently because of the frequency and relentlessness of their messages. When they started tweeting support for a conservative lawmaker in the GOP primary for Illinois governor this spring, news stories warned that right-wing “propaganda bots” were trying to influence the election.

“Almost all of us are considered a bot,” says Tomasieski, who lives in Tennessee but is tweeting for GOP candidates across the U.S.

Cynthia Smith, who has been locked out of her account and “shadow banned”—meaning tweets aren’t as visible to others, because of suspected “automated behavior”—says of herself:

“I’m a gal in Southern California. I am no bot.”

The actions have drawn criticism from conservatives, who have accused Twitter, Facebook and other companies of having a liberal bias and censorship. It also raises a question: Can the companies outsmart the ever-evolving tactics of U.S. adversaries if they can’t be sure who’s a robot and who’s Nina?

“It’s going to take a really long time, I think years, before Twitter and Facebook and other platforms are able to deal with a lot of these issues,” said Timothy Carone, who teaches technology at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

The core problem is that people are coming up with new ways to use the platforms faster than the companies can manage them, he said.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. But the company has said it identified and challenged close to 10 million suspected bot or spam accounts in May, up from 3.2 million last September. It’s also trying to weed out “trolls,” or accounts that harass other users, pick fights or tweet material that’s considered inflammatory.

Twitter acknowledges that there will be some “false positives.”

“Our goal is to learn fast and make our processes and tools smarter,” Twitter executives said in a blog post earlier this year.

Tomasieski and her conservative friends use so-called Twitter “rooms” — which operate using the group messaging function — to amplify their voices.

She participates in about 10 rooms, each with 50 members who are invited in once they hit a certain number of followers. That number varies, but “newbies” might have around 3,000, Tomasieski says. Some have far more.

Everyone in the room tweets their own material and also retweets everyone else’s. So a tweet that Tomasieski sends may be seen by her roughly 51,000 followers, but then be retweeted by dozens more people, each of whom may have 50,000 or more followers.

She says she’s learned some tricks to avoid trouble with Twitter. She’s careful not to exceed limits of roughly 100 tweets or retweets an hour. She doesn’t use profanity and she tries to mix up her subjects to appear more human and less bot-like.

During a recent afternoon, Tomasieski retweeted messages criticizing immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Democratic socialists and the media. One noted an Associated Press story about an increase in the number of Muslims running for public office — news the user described as “alarming.”

Tomasieski says she loves to write. But most important is helping “my guy.”

“There is as much enthusiasm today as there was when Trump was elected. It’s very quiet, but it’s there. My job is to get them to the polls,” she said. “That’s rewarding. I go to bed feeling like I have accomplished something.”

‘Right-to-Work’ Battle Lines Drawn in Key Missouri Vote

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.—On the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakening public-sector unions, labor’s clout is being put to a new test by a referendum in Missouri over whether the state should ban compulsory union fees in all private-sector workplaces.

The statewide vote in Tuesday’s primary on a so-called right-to-work law could be a watershed moment for unions, if they can halt what has been a steady erosion of strength in states with historically deep-rooted support.

“The timing of this is essential. I think everyone wants to write the labor movement’s obituary,” national AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Liz Shuler said. But “it’s going to energize and activate us and show that we fight back.”

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The Devastating Implications of the High Court's 'Right to Work' Ruling



by Jacob Sugarman

If they lose that fight, Missouri will become the 28th state with a law that prohibits labor groups and employers from forcing workers to pay mandatory union fees.

The so-called “fair share fees,” which are less than full dues, are intended to cover unions’ nonpolitical costs such as collective bargaining because federal law requires unions to represent even employees who don’t join. Eliminating those fees is expected to reduce unions’ overall finances and potentially their influence.

That’s one reason why unions from across country are engaged in Tuesday’s vote. Heading into the final week of campaigning, a labor-led group already had spent over $15 million against Proposition A, outspending supporters by a more than 3-to-1 ratio.

The issue has become highly partisan in recent years.

Most state right-to-work laws were enacted shortly after they were permitted by the 1947 federal Taft-Hartley Act. But there’s been a recent surge of such laws as Republicans have strengthened their hold on state governments, starting with an Indiana law in 2012 and followed by ones in Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Labor unions typically support Democratic candidates. In states where they remain strong, such as California, they sometimes are seen as having undue influence over Democratic lawmakers and governors.

Missouri’s Republican-led legislature and governor enacted a right-to-work law in 2017, but it never took effect because unions gathered enough petition signatures to force a referendum — essentially giving voters a chance to veto it.

The vote originally was planned for November but was switched by GOP lawmakers to the August primary in a maneuver that prevented an anticipated heavy union turnout from coinciding with Republican efforts to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Tuesday’s vote comes amid uncertainty about the future of organized labor in the U.S. In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Illinois state government worker could not be forced to pay collective bargaining fees to a union, essentially establishing a right-to-work policy for public-sector workers in all states.

That decision turned the spotlight to Missouri as the first place where voters subsequently will decide whether to enact a similar ban for private-sector unions.

“It’s the next battle, if you will, in this ongoing fight to end compulsory unionism in America,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, which backed the Illinois lawsuit.

As of late July, the National Right to Work Committee had spent about $2.2 million on behalf of Missouri’s ballot measure, nearly half the total amount spent by supporters.

Proponents and opponents have combined to spend more than $20 million on Proposition A, even though union members comprised just 8.7 percent of Missouri’s workforce last year and 10.7 percent nationally. Missouri’s private-sector unionization rate of 7.5 percent was a percentage point higher than the national average.

Many of Missouri’s top unionized employers — including The Boeing Co. and Ford Motor Co. — have taken no position on Proposition A. But unions that represent their employees have helped canvass neighborhoods, put up yard signs and make phone calls in opposition to it.

“Prop A is nothing but a tool for the large corporations to be able to take away the power of the unions to negotiate fair, respectful wages,” said Stephen McDerman, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 837, which represents many Boeing employees.

K&S Wire Products Inc., a non-union manufacturer that employs about 110 people in Neosho, in the state’s southwest corner, is one of the few businesses to directly contribute to the campaign for the ballot measure.

“If you treat your employees right, just like if you treat your children right, they don’t need to go find somebody else to represent them as mommy and daddy,” said K&S President Gene Schwartz, whose company gave $7,500 to Missourians for Freedom to Work.

The advertising campaigns for and against the referendum have generally focused on economics, with supporters claiming that right-to-work policies lead to more jobs and opponents claiming they drive down wages.

Studies have found mixed and sometimes conflicting results.

The Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which opposes right-to-work, found that wages in right-to-work states average 3.1 percent less than elsewhere after accounting for other workforce differences such educational backgrounds, racial composition, the industrial makeup of employers and the cost of living. For someone earning $40,000 annually, that would mean $1,240 less per year.

“By deliberately creating a ‘free-rider’ problem for unions, right-to-work starves unions and thus starves their ability to boost wages for workers,” said Heidi Shierholz, the institute’s senior economist and policy director.

A study by economists Ozkan Eren of Louisiana State University and Serkan Ozbeklik of Claremont McKenna College in California used data from states with similar characteristics to analyze the effect of right-to-work in Oklahoma. It was the last state to adopt such a law by a statewide ballot measure, in 2001.

The researchers found the law resulted in a significant reduction in private-sector unionization rates but had no short-term effect on either the total unemployment rate or average private-sector wages.

The study noted that Oklahoma had comparatively low unionization rates even before right-to-work.

Nationwide union membership rates have been steadily falling for decades and are now less than half what they were in 1978, when Missouri voters last defeated a right-to-work proposal.

If unions help defeat it again, Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Dan Mehan said supporters simply would “come back and reload on it when the time is right.”

But labor leaders hope Missouri will become “like a wall” that reverses the direction of the right-to-work movement. Shuler, the AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, said unions have been discussing the potential of launching ballot initiatives in other states to repeal existing right-to-work laws.

“We should use that opportunity to actually get out of this crouch — or the defensive posture — and go on offense,” she said.

All Eyes on Rick Gates, ‘Right-Hand Man’ in Manafort Trial

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The bookkeeper said Paul Manafort submitted fake financial documents. The accountant testified he hid foreign bank accounts. And a series of businessmen said he used international wire transfers to pay for millions of dollars in luxury items.

On Friday, a tax preparer even admitted that she helped disguise $900,000 in foreign income as a sham loan to lower Manafort’s tax bill.

But the most critical moment in the former Trump campaign chairman’s financial fraud trial will likely arrive next week with the testimony of his longtime associate Rick Gates, whom witnesses have described as Manafort’s “right-hand man” and defense attorneys are looking to blame for any crimes.

Gates, who also served in a senior role in President Donald Trump’s campaign, has been a key cooperator for special counsel Robert Mueller’s team after he cut a plea deal earlier this year. During that process, he admitted to two felony charges, but when he testifies it will be the first time he’ll detail those crimes face-to-face with his former boss and mentor.

The trial, in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, is the first of Mueller’s prosecutions to reach a jury. But lawyers have made no mention of Trump or possible campaign coordination with the Kremlin, the central question behind the special counsel’s investigation. Still, Trump has made clear his interest in the case, suggesting in a tweet that Manafort was being treated worse than gangster Al Capone. And Manafort’s decision to stand trial instead of cooperate has raised speculation that he may be looking for a pardon.

The trial opened with a display of Manafort’s opulent lifestyle, then progressed into testimony about what prosecutors say were years of financial deception. In calling Gates, the government will present jurors with the first-hand account of a co-conspirator expected to say Manafort was knee-deep in an alleged scheme to hide millions of dollars from the IRS and defraud several banks.

Manafort’s defense team has already signaled that it will paint Gates as an embezzler and liar who took advantage of Manafort and flouted the law without his boss’s knowledge. Gates is expected to face bruising cross-examination, and his credibility is likely to be an important test of the prosecution’s case.

During the questioning, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III will be both referee and wild card. He has played those roles throughout the trial, repeatedly scolding prosecutors to rein in their depictions of Manafort’s lavish lifestyle and demanding that they “move it along.” It is not a crime, he has said several times, to be rich and to spend ostentatiously.

Nonetheless, jurors were told of more than $900,000 in expensive suits, a $15,000 ostrich jacket and lavish properties replete with expensive audio and video systems, a tennis court encircled by hundreds of flowers and, as one witness put it, “one of the bigger ponds in the Hamptons.”

One-by-one, a retired carpenter, a natty clothier and a high-end landscaper detailed how Manafort paid them in international wire transfers from offshore companies.

Prosecutors say Manafort used those companies to stash millions of dollars from his Ukrainian consulting work, proceeds he omitted year-after-year from his income tax returns. Later, they say, when that income dwindled, Manafort launched a different scheme, shoring up his struggling finances by using doctored documents to obtain millions more in bank loans.

On Friday, one of Manafort’s tax preparers admitted that she helped disguise $900,000 in foreign income as a loan in order to reduce his tax burden. Cindy Laporta, who testified under an immunity deal with the government, acknowledged that she agreed under pressure from Gates to alter a tax document for one of Manafort’s businesses.

All told, prosecutors allege that Manafort failed to report a “significant percentage” of the more than $60 million they say he received from Ukrainian oligarchs. They sought to show jurors how that money flowed from more than a dozen shell companies used to stash the income in Cyprus.

Though the names of those companies appeared on wire transfers and at times on his bookkeeper’s ledger, both Manafort’s accountants and his bookkeeper say they never knew the companies — and corresponding offshore bank accounts — were controlled by Manafort.

When they appeared, the bookkeeper and accountants said, they thought the companies were clients or, in some cases, lenders.

But defense lawyers are trying to convince the jury that Manafort was consumed by his consulting business and left the particulars of his finances to professionals and, in particular, to Gates.

“Money’s coming in fast,” Manafort’s lawyer, Thomas Zehnle, told jurors at the trial’s beginning. “It’s a lot, and Paul Manafort trusted that Rick Gates was keeping track of it.”

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Barakat and Stephen Braun contributed to this report.

Pompeo Warns Russia, China to Heed Sanctions Against North Korea

SINGAPORE — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Russia, China and other countries on Saturday against any violation of international sanctions on North Korea that could reduce pressure on the North to abandon its nuclear weapons. Pompeo’s comments came on the heels of a new United Nations report that found North Korea has not stopped its nuclear and missile programs and is violating U.N. sanctions, including through illicit ship-to-ship transfers of oil.

Speaking on the sidelines of an Asian security forum in Singapore, Pompeo told reporters that the U.S. has new, credible reports that Russia is violating U.N. sanctions by allowing joint ventures with North Korean companies and issuing new permits for North Korean guest workers. He said Washington would take “very seriously” any violations, and called for them to be roundly condemned and reversed.

“If these reports prove accurate, and we have every reason to believe that they are, that would be in violation,” Pompeo said, noting that the U.N. Security Council had voted unanimously in favor of the sanctions. “I want to remind every nation that has supported these resolutions that this is a serious issue and something we will discuss with Moscow.”

“We expect the Russians and all countries to abide to the U.N. Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea,” he said. “Any violation that detracts from the world’s goal of finally, fully denuclearizing North Korea would be something that America would take very seriously.”

Later Saturday, during a group photo of the ASEAN Regional Forum ministerial meeting, Pompeo went to greet North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho. They shook hands and briefly exchanged smiles and a few words. Pompeo then went back to his place.

At the United Nations, a summary of a report by experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against North Korea was sent to the Security Council on Friday that said North Korea is continuing with both its nuclear and missile programs. And, in addition to the oil transfers, it said the North was violating sanctions by transferring coal at sea and flouting an arms embargo and financial sanctions.

Late Friday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley raised the alarm, saying that “talk is cheap.” ”Russia cannot support sanctions with their words in the Security Council only to violate them with their actions,” she said in a statement. She made the remarks as the U.S. asked the Security Council to add a North Korean bank executive, a North Korean company, a Chinese company and a Russian bank to the U.N. sanctions blacklist.

In his discussions with Southeast Asian officials in Singapore, Pompeo said he had implored them all to “strictly enforce all sanctions,” including an end to ship-to-ship transfers of oil for North Korea, and had been encouraged by the response.

Despite the warning to Russia, Pompeo said he remained optimistic that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will follow through on his pledge to President Donald Trump to denuclearize. But he said the timeline for the North’s full and final denuclearization remains a work in progress.

Earlier, in an interview with a Singapore’s Channel News Asia, Pompeo had said the pace for the dismantlement of the North’s nuclear weapons program would rest with Kim. “The ultimate timeline for denuclearization will be set by Chairman Kim, at least in part,” he said. “The decision is his.”

At the news conference, however, Pompeo appeared to step back from that comment, noting that the timeline is subject to negotiation between Washington and Pyongyang. He recalled that Kim had committed to denuclearization at the historic summit with Trump on June 12 in Singapore and that both sides “have been working since then to develop the process through which that will be achieved.”

“The process of achieving denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is one that I think we have all known will take some time,” Pompeo said, adding later: “I am optimistic that we will get this done in a timeline and the world will celebrate what the U.N. Security Council has demanded.”

Pompeo said on Friday that while there’s “still a ways to go,” the United States remains “confident” in North Korea’s commitment to denuclearize.

On Thursday, the White House announced that Trump had received a new letter from Kim and had responded quickly with a letter of his own. The correspondence came amid fresh concerns over Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearization despite a rosy picture of progress painted by Trump.

___

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Trump Threatens Iran to Distract From Russia-Linked Criticism and Appease Israel

Editor’s note: This article first appeared on Truthout.

Donald Trump’s all-caps tweet threatening Iran with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” sounds much like his warning last fall that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Will Trump deliver on his threats against Iran, but not against North Korea? There is a striking disconnect between his policies toward the two countries.

“Trump has rejected a detailed pact that kept Iran out of the nuclear weapons business for a decade, while embracing a vague communiqué that allows North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons for years, and possibly forever,” said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, offering his assessment of Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal last May.

Under the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, Iran and five other countries, Iran had gotten rid of all of its highly enriched uranium, eliminated 99 percent of its low-enriched uranium and shut down a main nuclear reactor. Iran had fully complied with all of the requests of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, which had affirmed eight times that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear deal.

Trump is now desperate to deflect criticism away from his much-criticized summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump knows that a war—conducted with the right spin—could help the GOP in the midterm elections. And Israel, the United States’ closest ally, has been gunning for regime change in Iran, which Israel considers to be an existential threat.

“Other people who know Mr. Trump said his decision to respond [to Iran] in such fiery terms was driven almost entirely by his search for a distraction from questions about Russia,” according to New York Times reporter Mark Landler.

Moreover, Trump is playing to his base. Christopher R. Hill, who worked as a diplomat in both Republican and Democratic administrations, said Trump’s rhetoric against Iran is “raw meat” for his base, as well as “an effort to shift the subject” away from his summit with Putin. Landler identifies three reasons Trump will not likely follow the same strategy with North Korea and Iran: 1) Iran’s leadership is not as monolithic as North Korea’s, with Kim Jong Un as a one-man state; 2) the strong Israel lobby opposes diplomacy with Iran; and 3) Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal provides Iran with little incentive to negotiate, particularly because the other parties to the deal — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — continue to abide by the pact.

Trump Responds to Israeli Pressure on Iran

Although Israel has enjoyed the unwavering support of successive U.S. administrations, Trump has taken that support to a new and disturbing level.

Israel strongly opposed the Iran nuclear deal and pushed for the United States to bomb Iran. Trump pulled out of the deal, leaving Iran free to build its nuclear program.

Trump then capitulated to Israeli pressure, declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, in spite of Security Council resolutions mandating that the status of Jerusalem be agreed upon by the parties through negotiation. Trump’s declaration led to predictable outrage around the world.

A Full-Court Press Against Iran

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton have also been rattling the sabers against Iran.

In a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Pompeo listed 12 demands Iran must meet, including cessation of uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes, which is allowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“The demands would constitute a complete transformation by Iran’s government, and they hardened the perception that what Trump’s administration really seeks is a change in the Iranian regime,” according to the Associated Press.

Bolton, who has long advocated overthrowing Iran’s government, promises regime change in Iran by the end of 2018.

The United States has also mounted a disinformation campaign intended to undermine Iran’s government. “The Trump administration has launched an offensive of speeches and online communications meant to foment unrest and help pressure Iran to end its nuclear program and its support of militant groups, US officials familiar with the matter said,” according to the Jerusalem Post. “The current and former officials said the campaign paints Iranian leaders in a harsh light, at times using information that is exaggerated or contradicts other official pronouncements, including comments by previous administrations.”

Trump Plans Air War Against Iran; House Says Not Without Our Consent

The Trump administration is moving toward war with Iran. Eric Margolis, a veteran war correspondent in the Middle East, reports that the Pentagon has drawn up plans for an air attack on Iran:

The Pentagon has planned a high-intensity air war against Iran that Israel and the Saudis might very well join. The plan calls for over 2,300 air strikes against Iranian strategic targets: airfields and naval bases, arms and petroleum, oil and lubricant depots, telecommunication nodes, radar, factories, military headquarters, ports, water works, airports, missile bases and units of the Revolutionary Guards.

Likewise, senior officials in the Australian government told ABC they think the United States plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, maybe as soon as next month.

But the House of Representatives just passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019, which includes an amendment stating that “nothing in this Act may be construed to authorize the use of forces against Iran” and an attached statement indicating “the conferees are not aware of any information that would justify the use of military force against Iran under any other statutory authority.”

Even if the Senate approves that amendment, Trump won’t necessarily follow Congress’s mandate. He might say he’s going after suspected Iranian “terrorists” inside Iran or anywhere on his global battlefield. We will then see if there is any congressional pushback.

Meanwhile, Russia is allied with Iran and would oppose U.S. military intervention. On July 12, Putin met with Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, outside Moscow.At the same time, however, Trump is talking about making a deal with Iran. “We’re ready to make a real deal,” he declared. Trump said he is willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with “no preconditions.” But the Iran deal Trump renounced took years of painstaking negotiations.

Feigning Concern for the Iranian People

Trump claims to care about the people in Iran, but the economic sanctions he reinstituted while pulling out of the Iran deal will hurt the Iranian people. As CODEPINK co-director Medea Benjamin wrote:

Many Iranians we talk to desperately want to change their government, but not with U.S. intervention. They look around the region in horror, seeing how U.S. militarism has contributed to massive chaos, misery, and death in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine. They believe their best option is internal reform.

There is another glaring difference between the situations in Iran and North Korea. While Iran does not have nuclear weapons, North Korea does. That is North Korea’s insurance policy against U.S. military aggression.

Trump Is Desperate to Change the Subject Away From Russia

Trump is likely threatening Iran to distract from the widespread outrage at his adoption of Putin’s denial that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. In siding with Putin, Trump rejected the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia tampered with the election.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Trump Commission Did Not Find Widespread Voter Fraud, Democrat Says

PORTLAND, Maine—The now-disbanded voting integrity commission launched by the Trump administration uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud, according to an analysis of administration documents released Friday.

In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap [, a Democrat and a former member of the commission,] said the documents show there was a “pre-ordained outcome” and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was “glaringly empty.”

“It’s calling into the darkness, looking for voter fraud,” Dunlap … told The Associated Press. “There’s no real evidence of it anywhere.”

Republican President Donald Trump convened the commission to investigate the 2016 presidential election after making unsubstantiated claims that from 3 million to 5 million ballots were illegally cast. Critics, including Dunlap, reject his claims of widespread voter fraud.

The Trump administration last month complied with a court order to turn over documents from the voting integrity commission to Dunlap. The commission met just twice and has not issued a report.

Dunlap’s findings received immediate pushback Friday from Kobach, who acted as vice chair of the commission while Pence served as chair.

“For some people, no matter how many cases of voter fraud you show them, there will never be enough for them to admit that there’s a problem,” said Kobach, who is running for Kansas governor and has a good chance of unseating the incumbent, Jeff Colyer, in the Republican primary Tuesday.

“It appears that Secretary Dunlap is willfully blind to the voter fraud in front of his nose,” Kobach said in a statement released by his spokesman.

Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states.

“Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher,” Kobach said.

In response, Dunlap said those figures were never brought before the commission, and that Kobach hasn’t presented any evidence for his claims of double voting. He said the commission was presented with a report claiming over 1,000 convictions for various forms of voter misconduct since 1948.

“The plural of anecdote is not data,” Dunlap said in his Friday letter to the shuttered commission’s leaders.

Pence’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Dunlap said he is unsure whether the administration has released all relevant documents, and said the matter is in litigation. He said he was repeatedly rebuffed when he sought access to commission records including meeting materials, witness invitations and correspondence.

Dunlap released his findings on a website.

Emails released by Dunlap and promoted by the nonprofit American Oversight, which represented Dunlap, include examples of Republican voting integrity commissioners emailing each other as they worked on information requests without including Democrats.

“Indeed, a very few commissioners worked to buttress their pre-ordained conclusions shielded from dissent or dialogue from those commissioners not included in the discussions,” Dunlap said in his Friday letter.

In a June 2017 email, commissioner Christy McCormick unsuccessfully tried to suggest that the commission hire a statistician she knew. “When I was at DOJ, we had numerous discussions that made me pretty confident that he is conservative (and Christian, too),” said McCormick, in reference to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The emails also show some commission members had planned to ask for an interstate database used to identify duplicate voter registrations, as well as lists of individuals deemed ineligible for federal jury service due to death, relocation, convictions or lack of citizenship. It wasn’t clear in the emails whether or not such requests ended up being fulfilled, Dunlap said.

In two November 2017 emails, Republican commission member and election lawyer J. Christian Adams emailed all members and said there hadn’t been any prosecutions for double voting or any non-citizen voting in years. “Understanding the extent of un-prosecuted and known election crimes can inform the commission’s recommendations,” Adams said.

Adams also called for U.S. Customs and Immigration Services to obtain metadata from citizenship applications as well as a list of individuals removed from the U.S. due to their unlawful participation in elections.

“Many applicants note they have been registered to vote and are voting,” Adams said.

___

Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.

Judge Says Government Is Solely Responsible for Reuniting Families

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge on Friday said the Trump administration was solely responsible for reuniting hundreds of children who remain separated from the parents after being split at the U.S.-Mexico border, puncturing a government plan that put the onus on the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The reality is that for every parent that is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said.

His remarks in a conference call came a day after the administration and the American Civil Liberties Union submitted widely divergent plans on how to reunify more than 500 still-separated children, including 410 with parents outside the United States.

The government proposed Thursday that the ACLU, which represents parents, use its “considerable resources” to find parents in their home countries, predominantly Guatemala and Honduras. The Justice Department said in a court filing that the State Department has begun talks with foreign governments on how the administration may be able to aid the effort.

Sabraw said he was disappointed with the court filing “in the respect that there’s not a plan that has been proposed.” He said he would order the government to name someone to lead the effort.

“This is going to be a significant undertaking, and it’s clear that there has to be one person in charge,” he said.

Left unresolved Friday was a temporary halt on deporting reunified families that Sabraw imposed on July 16 to allow time to address another dispute. The ACLU has asked that families have at least a week to decide if they want to seek asylum after they are reunited with their children, a step that the administration opposes.

Sabraw said he wanted to wait to see how a federal judge in Washington, D. C., rules on a lawsuit that also seeks a temporary halt on deportations. If that judge transfers the case to San Diego, Sabraw said he planned to convene a hearing next week for oral arguments.

In late June, Sabraw ordered that more than 2,500 children rejoin their parents by July 26. Hundreds remain apart, however, mainly because their many of those parents are outside the country.

Texas Plant, 2 Top Staffers Indicted for Toxic Release After Hurricane

FORT WORTH, Texas—The North American subsidiary of a French chemical manufacturer and two senior staff members were indicted Friday in connection with last year’s explosion at the Crosby, Texas, plant in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

Arkema North America, its CEO Richard Rowe and plant manager Leslie Comardelle were charged in the Harris County indictment with “recklessly” releasing chemicals into the air. The charge carries up to $1 million in fines and five years’ imprisonment.

“Indictments against corporations are rare,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. “Those who poison our environment will be prosecuted when the evidence justifies it.”

After Arkema’s plant lost power, its organic peroxides began heating and decomposing. The compounds, used in a variety of products from plastics to paints, caught fire and partially exploded, sending plumes of smoke skyward.

First responders and neighbors said they were sickened after the incident at the plant near Houston.

Arkema spokeswoman Janet Smith on Friday said the corporation would fight the indictment, citing a U.S. Chemical Safety Board report released last May that credited it for having safeguards that likely would’ve worked in a low-level flood event.

Arkema officials have insisted since the incident last August that they planned as best they could but that the rainfall was unprecedented.

The agency’s lead investigator Mark Wingard said Arkema crews worked “to the best of their ability” to keep equipment that cooled and stabilized its organic peroxides from losing power as six feet of water engulfed the plant.

An internal watchdog at the Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it will audit the agency’s response following several high-profile accidents and spills after the historic storm, including the explosions and fire at the Arkema plant.