Chris Hedges's Blog, page 514

Trump Says Koch Brothers Are ‘a Total Joke’ in GOP

President Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at the Koch brothers, tweeting that the billionaire industrialists are a “total joke in real Republican circles” and that he is “a puppet for no one.”

It’s the latest salvo between the president and Charles and David Koch, who did not endorse Trump in his 2016 presidential bid and have lashed out at Trump’s spending plans and trade policies.

On Monday, the political advocacy network created by the billionaire industrialists announced it would not back the GOP candidate in the North Dakota Senate race. The decision was a warning shot to fellow Republicans that they should do more to elect candidates who challenge government spending.

“The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump tweeted. “I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas.”

He later added: “I’m for America First & the American Worker — a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas.”

Trump was expected to travel to Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday to express support for his preferred candidate for governor in a competitive primary. The president was planning a rally in support of Rep. Ron DeSantis, who faces off against state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the state’s Aug. 28 GOP primary.

Trump tweeted early in the day that DeSantis has “my Full & Total Endorsement!” He cited the congressman’s record on crime, border security, gun rights and taxes.

Another Trump ally, Gov. Rick Scott, is joining the president at an event earlier in the day. Scott is seeking to defeat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in a high-profile Senate race.

Trump has played a role in several Republican primaries, helping candidates in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina in recent weeks with endorsements that underscore his influence within the GOP.

But the president’s policies have been at odds with the Kochs’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity. The group says it still plans to focus its resources on helping Republican Senate candidates in Tennessee, Florida and Wisconsin.

But Charles Koch told reporters in recent days that he cared little for party affiliation and regretted supporting some Republicans in the past who only paid lip service to conservative principles.

Network leaders over the weekend repeatedly lashed out at the Republican-backed $1.3 trillion spending bill adopted in March, which represented the largest government spending plan in history. The Trump White House budget office now predicts that next year’s federal deficit will exceed $1 trillion, while reaching a combined $8 trillion over the next 10 years.

The Kochs were equally concerned about the Trump administration’s “protectionist” trade policies, which have sparked an international trade war and could trigger a U.S. recession, Koch said.

“We’re going to be much stricter if they say they’re for the principles we espouse and then they aren’t,” Koch vowed. “We’re going to more directly deal with that and hold people responsible for their commitments.”

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Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples contributed to this report from Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Threats Aside, Trump Says He’s Willing to Meet With Iranians

President Donald Trump said that he’d “certainly meet” with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and without preconditions, if the Iranian leader were willing.

Speaking Monday during a joint news conference with Italy’s premier, Trump said he would meet with the Iranians “anytime they want to.”

“I’ll meet with anybody,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with meeting.”

The overture comes as Trump and the Iranians have been escalating their rhetoric after Trump’s May withdrawal from the landmark nuclear accord. The United States has also vowed to boost sanctions until Iran changes its regional policies, including its support for regional militant groups. The first of those sanctions are to go into effect Monday.

Iranian officials reacted skeptically on Tuesday. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency quoted political adviser Hamid Aboutalebi as saying that for talks to happen, the U.S. needs to rejoin the nuclear deal.

It’s unclear whether Rouhani has any interest in meeting with Trump. Rouhani’s chief of staff claimed earlier this month in Iran’s state-owned newspaper that Rouhani had rejected eight requests from Trump for one-on-one talks last year.

Rouhani recently warned the U.S. that “war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” prompting an all-caps retort from Trump.

“To Iranian President Rouhani,” he wrote on Twitter. “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH.”

He ended the message with a warning: “BE CAUTIOUS!”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif fired back with his own message that began, “COLOR US UNIMPRESSED.”

Trump tempered his threatening rhetoric two days later when he said his administration stands ready for Iran to come back to the negotiating table.

“We’re ready to make a real deal, not the deal that was done by the previous administration, which was a disaster,” he said.

Trump has long cast himself as a master negotiator who is most effective when he meets with his counterparts face-to-face. He pointed to his recent one-on-ones with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin as examples of the benefits of such get-togethers.

“I believe in meeting,” he said, talking up the benefits of “speaking to other people, especially when you’re talking about potentials of war and death and famine and lots of other things.”

Asked whether he would set any preconditions for the meetings, Trump was clear.

“No preconditions, no. If they want to meet, I’ll meet anytime they want, anytime they want,” he said. “Good for the country, good for them, good for us and good for the world. No preconditions. If they want to meet, I’ll meet.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CNBC on Monday that he was onboard with the president’s invitation, saying Trump “wants to meet with folks to solve problems.”

But he appeared to add several qualifications: “If the Iranians demonstrate a commitment to make fundamental changes in how they treat their own people, reduce their maligned behavior, can agree that it’s worthwhile to enter in a nuclear agreement that actually prevents proliferation, then the president said he’s prepared to sit down and have a conversation with him.”

Early reaction on Capitol Hill was mixed, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who is often critical of Trump, telling reporters: “I actually think that’s a good idea.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., characterized the overture as “fine,” but only “as long as they are willing to talk about being a normal country in the future.”

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., a frequent Trump critic, was more skeptical, calling it “another recipe for bad outcomes.”

“It’s the same as North Korea,” he said. “No preconditions, no preparation. And what do we have? We have Kim Jong Un was elevated from an international pariah to someone who seems like a legitimate statesman.”

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

Generals From Rival Koreas End Talks With No Agreement

Rare general-level talks between the two Koreas ended with no agreement Tuesday, but the top delegates said they had a meaningful discussion on easing their countries’ decades-long military standoff.

Experts said it was still unclear whether the rivals can reach any breakthrough agreement on reducing tensions in the near future because South Korea, in close consultations with the United States, must link any expansion of ties to progress in North Korea’s nuclear disarmament.

The Washington Post reported Monday that U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained evidence that indicates North Korea is building new long-range missiles despite ongoing disarmament talks with the United States. It cited anonymous officials “familiar with the intelligence” as saying that work on at least one and possibly two intercontinental ballistic missiles was underway.

Tuesday’s meeting at the Koreas’ shared border village of Panmunjom was the second such high-level military contact since the two countries’ leaders held a landmark summit in April and pledged to reduce the danger of another war on the peninsula.

The chief South Korean delegate, Maj. Gen. Kim Do Gyun, said the two sides had a common view in principle on disarming a jointly controlled area at Panmunjom, removing some guard posts from the Demilitarized Zone that bisects the countries, halting hostile acts along their disputed sea boundary, and conducting joint searches for soldiers missing from the 1950-53 Korean War in DMZ areas. He said the Koreas will continue talks on details of the issues, according to Seoul’s Defense Ministry.

Kim described Tuesday’s talks as “sincere” and “candid,” saying he believes the two militaries could contribute to establishing a lasting peace between the countries. His North Korean counterpart, Lt. Gen. An Ik San, said the talks were “productive” and that he also believes many pending military issues can be resolved.

During the April summit and a June meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his commitment to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But there have been concerns that North Korea hasn’t taken any serious disarmament measures since then.

North Korea suspended its missile and nuclear tests and shut down its nuclear test site, and recent satellite photos indicate it also began dismantling key facilities at its main rocket launch site. But many foreign experts believe those are not enough to prove it’s serious about disarmament, saying the North must first submit a list of nuclear assets to be dismantled.

North Korea entered talks with the United States and South Korea earlier this year apparently because it urgently needs to revive an economy hit hard by American-led U.N. sanctions. Kim has made it clear that he prefers a step-by-step disarmament process that is matched by reciprocal outside rewards and concessions for each step. Many experts say North Korea merely intends to weaken the sanctions and has no intention of fully giving up its nuclear weapons.

Last Friday, North Korea returned what were said to be dozens of remains of American soldiers missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, something Kim promised during his summit with Trump. Trump thanked him for “fulfilling a promise” to send back U.S. remains and said it was a step in the right direction following their summit.

In exchange for returning the U.S. war dead, North Korea may demand that the United States agree on a declaration to end the Korean War as a U.S. security guarantee.

The Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula in a technical state of war. North Korea has long argued its nuclear weapons are a response to U.S. military threats, and that it wants to sign a peace treaty with the United States to formally end the war. That could then allow the North to demand the pullout of 28,500 U.S. troops deployed in South Korea.

The military talks are part of a number of recent steps toward reconciliation by the Koreas that began with North Korea’s participation in the February Winter Olympics in South Korea. The Koreas are to field combined teams in basketball, rowing and canoeing during the upcoming Asian Games in Indonesia. On Tuesday, North and South Korean athletes trained together in rowing and canoeing in southern South Korea.

After Trump’s Tax Bill, CEOs Rake In Millions in ‘Eye-Popping’ Stock Payouts, Politico Reports

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump bragged that if he became president, “everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class,” referring to his proposed 35 percent tax cut. President Trump’s actual tax bill, however, was vastly different from what candidate Trump mentioned in his campaign speeches. Seven months after the GOP tax bill went into effect, a Politico analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission data reveals that instead of enriching middle-class Americans, “Some of the biggest winners from President Donald Trump’s new tax law are corporate executives.”

These executives, Politico explains, “reaped gains as their companies buy back a record amount of stock, a practice that rewards shareholders by boosting the value of existing shares.” In addition to their salaries, many corporate CEOs and other high-ranking executives receive compensation in stock. Since the tax bill, which cut corporate tax rates to 21 percent, was passed on Dec. 22, 2017, these executives, according to Politico, “have been profiting handsomely by selling shares.”

Politico reports that “Wall Street analysts expect buyback activity to accelerate in the coming weeks.”

“It is going to be a parade of eye-popping numbers,” Pat McGurn, the head of strategic research and analysis at Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory firm, told Politico.

All this is in sharp contrast to Trump’s promises of a tax cut that would benefit the middle class. What’s more, reports of already wealthy executives getting even richer off stock sales following the tax cut could, Politico observes, “undercut the political messaging value of the tax cuts in the Republican campaign to maintain control of Congress in the midterm elections.”

Democratic congressional candidates could easily create campaign ads highlighting how Oracle Corp. CEO Safra Catz sold $250 million worth of Oracle shares, the most shares sold by any executive. Or they could mention Mastercard’s Ajay Banga, who sold $44.4 million worth of stock one day in May, which, according to Politico, is “the largest single cash-out by an executive of the company in at least 10 years, months after the company announced a $4 billion buyback of its own stock.”

Politico found similar stock sales by executives from cigarette maker Altria, Eastman Chemical, biopharmaceutical company AbbVie, and TJX Companies (the parent company of TJ Maxx).

This practice of insider sales, Politico says, “feed[s] the narrative that corporate tax cuts enrich executives in the short term while yielding less clear long-term benefits for workers and the broader economy.”

Politico found that following the passage of the tax cuts:

Roughly 28 percent of companies in the S&P 500 mentioned plans to return some of their tax savings to shareholders, according to Morgan Stanley. Public companies announced more than $600 billion in buybacks in the first half of this year—already toppling the previous annual record.

Critics are also concerned about the connection between buybacks and insider sales. SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson, a Democrat, said that the link is clear. Politico reports: “He [Jackson] studied 385 buybacks since the beginning of 2017 and found that after half of them, at least one executive sold shares within the next month.”

Companies told Politico that critics were falsely looking for connections where there were none, defended the legality of the buybacks, or declined to comment.

Voters may not care about the intricacies of securities law, buybacks or insider sales. They might, however, care that the CEOs of major corporations are getting wealthier—as their own paychecks decline.

After Trump’s Tax Bill, CEOs Rake In Millions in ‘Eye Popping’ Stock Payouts, Politico Reports

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump bragged that if he became president, “everybody is getting a tax cut, especially the middle class,” referring to his proposed 35 percent tax cut. President Trump’s actual tax bill, however, was vastly different from what candidate Trump mentioned in his campaign speeches. Seven months after the GOP tax bill went into effect, a Politico analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission data reveals that instead of enriching middle-class Americans, “Some of the biggest winners from President Donald Trump’s new tax law are corporate executives.”

These executives, Politico explains, “reaped gains as their companies buy back a record amount of stock, a practice that rewards shareholders by boosting the value of existing shares.” In addition to their salaries, many corporate CEOs and other high-ranking executives receive compensation in stock. Since the tax bill, which cut corporate tax rates to 21 percent, was passed on Dec. 22, 2017, these executives, according to Politico, “have been profiting handsomely by selling shares.”

Politico reports that “Wall Street analysts expect buyback activity to accelerate in the coming weeks.”

“It is going to be a parade of eye-popping numbers,” Pat McGurn, the head of strategic research and analysis at Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory firm, told Politico.

All this is in sharp contrast to Trump’s promises of a tax cut that would benefit the middle class. What’s more, reports of already wealthy executives getting even richer off stock sales following the tax cut could, Politico observes, “undercut the political messaging value of the tax cuts in the Republican campaign to maintain control of Congress in the midterm elections.”

Democratic congressional candidates could easily create campaign ads highlighting how Oracle Corp. CEO Safra Catz sold $250 million worth of Oracle shares, the most shares sold by any executive. Or they could mention Mastercard’s Ajay Banga, who sold $44.4 million worth of stock one day in May, which, according to Politico, is “the largest single cash-out by an executive of the company in at least 10 years, months after the company announced a $4 billion buyback of its own stock.”

Politico found similar stock sales by executives from cigarette maker Altria, Eastman Chemical, biopharmaceutical company AbbVie, and TJX Companies (the parent company of TJ Maxx).

This practice of insider sales, Politico says, “feed[s] the narrative that corporate tax cuts enrich executives in the short term while yielding less clear long-term benefits for workers and the broader economy.”

Politico found that following the passage of the tax cuts:

Roughly 28 percent of companies in the S&P 500 mentioned plans to return some of their tax savings to shareholders, according to Morgan Stanley. Public companies announced more than $600 billion in buybacks in the first half of this year—already toppling the previous annual record.

Critics are also concerned about the connection between buybacks and insider sales. SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson, a Democrat, said that the link is clear. Politico reports: “He [Jackson] studied 385 buybacks since the beginning of 2017 and found that after half of them, at least one executive sold shares within the next month.”

Companies told Politico that critics were falsely looking for connections where there were none, defended the legality of the buybacks, or declined to comment.

Voters may not care about the intricacies of securities law, buybacks or insider sales. They might, however, care that the CEOs of major corporations are getting wealthier—as their own paychecks decline.

Pakistan’s Elections Bring Hope and Uncertainty

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

Last week’s elections in Pakistan yielded predictable outcomes, which could take the country in an unanticipated direction. Preliminary results announced Friday by the Election Commission of Pakistan give the victory to Tehreek-e-Insaf (also known as the PTI, or Justice Party) of the cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan. Although his party missed a clear majority in the National Assembly, it should be able to easily woo a few independents to its side to form a stable government.

If there is an unpredictable factor, it is the reaction of the major mainstream parties after their emergence as the losers, especially the Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He and his daughter are now in prison after being found guilty of graft in a property case. A multiparty conference of the main losers (in which the Pakistan Peoples Party did not participate) has rejected the results of Wednesday’s voting and demanded new, transparent elections. Will they pay the PTI in its own coin by staging sit-ins to disrupt life in the country, as Imran Khan did in the years following the 2013 elections?

Even prior to last week’s elections, it was widely alleged that the “Miltablishment”—-the country’s military leadership—was creating conditions that improved the prospects of the PTI. Khan is viewed as the darling of the generals. The military establishment’s move to selectively push graft cases against his rivals on the pretext of accountability while turning a blind eye to the wrongdoings of Khan’s cronies was seen as a one-sided attack on the corruption pervasive in Pakistan’s politics.

In the weeks preceding the elections, there were protests from the media as well as from some members of the judiciary against interference from “hidden hands.” What seems to give credence to these charges now is the preliminary statement issued Friday by the EU Election Observation Mission. While praising the Election Commission’s role in the conduct of the polling, the statement categorically said that the “electoral process of 2018 was negatively affected by the political environment.” It spoke of the playing field not being level and of “lack of equality of opportunity” for all contestants.

The U.S. State Department shared the EU observers’ concerns and questioned the fairness of the voting. Pointing out flaws in the elections, the State Department spoke of constraints placed on freedom of expression and on association during the campaign period.

Meanwhile, the PTI’s Khan has promised the people a naya (new) Pakistan. His victory speech, delivered even before the results were officially confirmed, was widely hailed as a statesmanlike and conciliatory piece of oratory.

The 65-year-old prime-minister-to-be said all the right things in a calculatedly correct tone. This was refreshing after the vitriolic outbursts from all sides during the election campaign. Attributing Pakistan’s problems to corruption and the collapse of governance, Khan promised to rebuild all national institutions and root out graft. He assured the nation that he would create a welfare state to lift up the poor and the underprivileged. He promised to try corrupt officials and apply accountability across the board.

This was music to the ears of the people of this country of 208 million, ruled for decades by status-quo forces that have failed to pull most of them out of poverty. But such promises have been made before. The only difference is that the PTI is at the helm for the first time.

What is significant is the refrain one hears from political observers and analysts: We must wait and see whether the promised reform will actually happen. Skeptics are abundant, but the young, savvy and educated who hold privileged positions are euphoric and say the new leadership should be given a chance.

Many people are tired of the turbulence and violence that often occur when political parties stage protests and rallies. Near the end of the campaign for this month’s elections, three suicide bombings killed three candidates and 180 people. Then came another bomb attack on election day, killing 31 people in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan.

What should interest foreign powers is the line the prime minister-elect will take on foreign policy. In his victory speech, Khan spoke about that policy ambiguously. He didn’t mention his views on defense and security, which could have stirred controversy. He was vocal about bringing peace to the region—without saying how he will treat militant elements, some of which he has expressed admiration for in the past.

Khan mentioned his goals regarding six other countries, but he adopted such an unspecific, broad stance that he succeeded in not stepping on any toes, including those of Pakistan’s defense establishment, which is firmly in control of foreign policy. He said he would seek to:

• Strengthen relations with China

• Bring peace in Afghanistan (to help bring peace in Pakistan) and have open borders between the two countries

• Develop mutually beneficial relations with the United States

• Build stronger ties with Iran

• Help Saudi Arabia resolve its internal tensions

• Improve relations with India, if its leadership agrees; end the blame game between Pakistan and India; stop human rights violations in Kashmir.

The speech was a safe statement of intent; it called for no specific commitments that might be controversial. But a closer look at some of Khan’s previous statements shows him to be anti-U.S., to have reservations about China’s economic practices, to be more pro-Saudi Arabia than many Pakistanis would prefer, to be a hard-liner on India, and to have a soft spot for militants—be they in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Kashmir. Weave into this narrative the military’s own concealed agenda and you will be left guessing as to what the future might hold.

Pakistan, especially its army, has had close ties with China since the 1950s. Islamabad and Beijing have provided each other with unequivocal support—military, diplomatic, economic and political. Sino-Pakistan friendship, said to be as high as the Himalayas and as deep as the Indian Ocean, has benefited both nations in their conflicts with India. Pakistan has used its relationship with China to neutralize the U.S. when the need arose. Today, a time when Pakistan is in deep economic crisis, China’s One Belt and One Road initiative, with its promise of $900 billion infrastructure aid for 65 nations, is a boon for Pakistan, which has yet to become self-reliant.

Pakistan’s relations with the U.S. have seen ups and downs since the war in Afghanistan began, but they have never before reached the current low, demonstrated by President Trump’s 2017 announcement of his “fight to win” policy in Afghanistan, a declaration in which he accused Pakistan of providing havens for terrorists. Then, in his first tweet of 2018, Trump said the U.S. “had given it [Pakistan] more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit.”

Trump also strengthened the hawks in the Pakistan army when he invited Pakistan’s historical enemy India to “help us more with Afghanistan.”

Islamabad’s relations with India have worsened since 2008 when terrorists suspected of coming from Pakistan attacked Mumbai. The previously intermittent dialogue between the two countries remains suspended.

Many believe that in the coming months the new government will make compromises to get everyone on the same page. Khan’s ex-wife, Reham Khan, a television presenter, said in an interview that Khan was known for his “U-turns.” Others—with less of a personal history—agree. Najam Sethi, the editor of The Friday Times, a political weekly published from Lahore, wrote, “Imran Khan … is a different kettle of fish. He may have embraced the Miltablishment as a tactical move but sooner rather than later he will begin to challenge the conventional wisdom of the national security state handed down to him. That’s when all bets will be off.”

The only conclusively reassuring feature of these elections is the failure of the numerous candidates from terrorist groups. Not one of them won. That was the people’s verdict.

A New Form of Torture in the Age of Xenophobic Cultural Warriors

As of Monday, 711 children who were effectively kidnapped and held hostage by the Trump administration remain in government custody, supposedly “ineligible” to be reunited with their families. What happens to them now? The government won’t say, apparently doesn’t know and evidently doesn’t care.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who had ordered that those children and nearly 2,000 others be returned to their loved ones by last week, summed up the administration’s cruel incompetence at a court hearing Friday: “What was lost in the process was the family. The parents didn’t know where the children were, and the children didn’t know where the parents were. And the government didn’t know either.”

That was, of course, the whole point of this sordid and unforgivable exercise. The xenophobic cultural warriors in the administration—President Trump, policy adviser Stephen Miller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions—sent a message to refugees fleeing rampant violence in Central America: If you show up at the border seeking asylum, as is your right, you might have your children taken away and never see them again.

The administration knew that child separations would be the inevitable result of a “zero tolerance” policy in which all undocumented border-crossers—most of them accused of nothing more than a misdemeanor offense—were jailed and put on trial. But officials did not care enough to implement a system for keeping track of parents and their children, some still in diapers.

If you have children, imagine how you would feel seeing them taken away like that. Hug your kids. Imagine not knowing where they are or whether you’ll ever get to hug them again.

Now imagine the terror and despair those 711 “ineligible” children must feel. It is monstrous to gratuitously inflict such pain. It is, in a word, torture.

In 120 cases, according to the government, a parent “waived” reunification with the child. This claim cannot be taken at face value, however, since immigration advocates cite widespread reports of parents being coerced or fooled into signing documents they did not understand.

Human nature binds parents with their children. It shocks and depresses me to have to write this, but I wonder whether Trump and his minions see these Central Americans—brown-skinned, with indigenous features—as fully human.

In 431 cases involving children between 5 and 17, officials reported, the parents have either been deported or have left the country voluntarily. Where are they now? How could the government let this happen? If these parents were going to be denied permission to stay in the United States, what was the big hurry to kick them out? Why couldn’t the administration wait until their children could be brought back from wherever they were being kept?

Even more incredibly, in 79 cases the children’s parents have been released into the United States. In other words, the parents have some legal status—but the government has their children.

And in 94 cases, according to Trump administration officials, the parents cannot be located. What are the odds, do you think, that these men and women will ever be found? Where do parents go to begin the process of tracking down their children? How do you tell a 5-year-old that she may never see her mother and father again?

That’s the reported situation for children 5 and older. The government is also still holding 46 children under 5 whom officials cannot or will not give back to their parents. Think of the trauma being inflicted on 2-year-olds—to make a political point.

All of this is happening because Trump has no respect for law or due process and no sense of empathy. He was reportedly upset this spring by a rise in border crossings by asylum-seekers, who by law had to be allowed to stay pending resolution of their claims. He and Sessions seized upon the pretext—for which they have not provided evidence—that children were being “trafficked” into the country for some reason.

“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law,” Sessions said in May. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally.”

Think, for a moment, of the millions of Irish, Italian, Eastern European and other immigrants who “smuggled” children into the United States—families such as Trump’s own. The only difference is that those earlier immigrants, though sometimes rejected at first, came to be seen as white.

Brown immigrants need not apply. Not if they want to see their kids again.

States Suing Administration, Company Over 3D-Printed Guns

Eight states are filing suit against the Trump administration over its decision to allow a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints for a 3D-printed gun, contending the hard-to-trace plastic weapons are a boon to terrorists and criminals and threaten public safety.

The suit, filed Monday in Seattle, asks a judge to block the federal government’s late-June settlement with Defense Distributed, which allowed the company to make the plans available online. Officials say that 1,000 people have already downloaded blueprints for AR-15 rifles.

“I have a question for the Trump Administration: Why are you allowing dangerous criminals easy access to weapons?” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday. “These downloadable guns are unregistered and very difficult to detect, even with metal detectors, and will be available to anyone regardless of age, mental health or criminal history.”

Joining the suit were Democratic attorneys general in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia. Separately, attorneys general in 21 states urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday to withdraw from the settlement with Defense Distributed, saying it “creates an imminent risk to public safety.”

People can use the blueprints to manufacture a plastic gun using a 3D printer. But gun industry experts have expressed doubt that criminals would go to the trouble, since the printers needed to make the guns are very expensive, the guns themselves tend to disintegrate quickly and traditional firearms are easy to come by.

Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed, first published downloadable designs for a 3D-printed firearm in 2013. It was downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were downloaded by people outside the United States.

The State Department reversed course in late June, agreeing to allow Wilson to resume posting the blueprints. The files were published on Friday.

The company filed its own suit in Texas on Sunday, asserting that it’s the victim of an “ideologically-fueled program of intimidation and harassment” that violates the company’s First Amendment rights.

The company’s attorney, Josh Blackman, called it an “easy case.”

States are free to enact gun control measures, but “what they can’t do is censor the speech of another citizen in another state, and they can’t regulate the commerce of another citizen in another state when that commerce is authorized by a federal government license,” Blackman said in an interview Monday. “It’s a violation of the First Amendment, it’s unconscionable and we’re going to fight it to the very end.”

Defense Distributed agreed to temporarily block Pennsylvania residents from downloading the plans after state officials went to federal court in Philadelphia on Sunday seeking an emergency order. The company said it has also blocked access to users in New Jersey and Los Angeles.

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Associated Press writer Lisa Marie Pane contributed to this story.

13 Takeaways From an Interview With Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega

Since the sudden outbreak of protests and violence last April, an uneasy calm had fallen over Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista government have claimed victory over what they call a coup attempt, but they now face condemnation from the US and its allies, who accuse them of unleashing lethal violence against peaceful protesters.

I spent much of July inside Nicaragua, speaking with supporters of the government and their opponents. I learned that Washington’s narrative of a despised dictator mowing down unarmed demonstrators wasn’t exactly accurate. Across the country, I observed widespread support for Ortega and the Sandinista movement. It also became apparent from the moment I arrived that Western media had covered up the brutality of the opposition, as well as its anti-democratic agenda.

In the midst of what seemed to be a misinformation campaign reinforced by right-wing members of Congress and the Organization of American States, I approached the Nicaraguan government for a chance to hear Ortega’s side of the story. He agreed, granting me one of his first interviews in eleven years.

Here are 13 takeaways from our wide-ranging discussion on July 25 in Managua:

Ortega and his government were shocked at the outbreak of coordinated violence that gripped the country on April 19. He said he had no advance intelligence warnings and that “it was well worked out.” Ortega blamed armed groups that had begun to form since he was inaugurated in 2007 and which were linked to criminal networks in Miami and Costa Rica, as well as to American intelligence services. He likened them to the Contras, detailing their campaign of lethal violence against Sandinista mayors, political secretaries, police officials, and average citizens. “They are presented as patriots” in Western media, Ortega lamented.
For perhaps the first time, Ortega acknowledged the presence of pro-Sandinista paramilitaries. He explained that he had ordered his national police to remain in their barracks as part of the national dialogue he initiated with the opposition. He had hoped that the Catholic bishops and his opponents would take the order as a good faith signal and lower the intensity of opposition attacks, but instead they exploited the security void to ratchet up the violence. This meant that for 55 days, while police were resigned to their stations, where they found themselves under siege, the opposition embarked on a campaign of blood vengeance against Sandinistas. “It was really a matter of defending their lives,” Ortega said of the pro-Sandinista paramilitaries, “because those armed elements staging the coup were on a Sandinista hunt, going into their homes, looting. … Sandinista families were victims of these attacks, citizens have a right to defend their lives when they are under attack.”
Ortega’s government was overwhelmed by the social media blitz that drove the protests in April and ultimately mobilized a full scale campaign for regime change. He recalled how the social security problem that he inherited from his predecessor, the neoliberal President Enrique Bolanos, became a pretext for an online campaign that he described as a testing ground for this year’s coup attempt. In 2010, following the sudden spread of a #OccupyINNS (referring to Nicaragua’s social security system) hashtag campaign, students descended on the social security building alongside Catholic priests, demanding reforms while building opposition to Sandinista rule. “We incorporated the changes they demanded but that weakened the system even more,” Ortega said. “That was the first social media attack we experienced.” The second attack occurred around the fire that raged in the Indio Maiz reserve, which the opposition accused Sandinistas of setting. “They internationalized the issue of this forest fire, claimed we set the fire,” Ortega said. “One could see that this was being articulated with other movements here in the cities. They were thinking in broader terms. But it didn’t occur to us that this would be an attempted coup d’etat. We thought this was just one battle to drag the government down. Firefighters told us it would take months to put it out and then it rained.” Even though the fire was doused, the political firestorm grew into a full scale regime change operation.
Ortega heaped scorn on the White House and international networks like CNN for blaming him and his government for 100% of the over three hundred deaths that have occurred in Nicaragua since April. He pointed out that victims of common crime, accidents and opposition violence were conflated with the deaths of protesters in reports by local human rights groups. He also referred to the scores of Sandinistas who had been murdered by armed opposition elements, including a 25-month-old baby, the child of Gabriella Maria Aguirre, who died on July 13 in Masatepe of bronchoaspiration when her ambulance was held up at an opposition roadblock. (Ortega’s analysis of the manipulated death toll is generally backed up by a meticulously detailed study by independent researcher Enrique Hendrix).
In response to my question about the meddling of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US government’s regime change funding apparatus, Ortega said his government was planning measures to limit the group’s influence, but he stopped short of vowing an absolute ban. He pointed to the role of Felix Maradiaga, the main channel for NED money into Nicaragua, and the group’s top trainer, recalling how Maradiaga was caught on camera plotting with armed thugs at UPOLI, the first public university occupied by the opposition in April. Noting that Maradiaga is currently in Washington to secure more funding for anti-Sandinista activity, Ortega warned he may face legal consequences if he returns to Nicaragua. He also described a new government task force, UAF, that will investigate the use of foreign money to finance “terrorism”: “The US protects itself from terror attacks and has laws [to protect itself]. … The US is careful to not let that happen, and we have the right to not let that happen too.”
Asked about the role of sanctions in driving opposition to his rule and preparations for a deepened US attack on the Nicaraguan economy, Ortega put Washington’s hostility in historic context. “US policy is the same as it ever was,” he said. “They want governments that are entirely submissive to their decisions. They’ve always rejected the possibility that we’d return to power. Colin Powell came down here to tell Nicaraguans not to vote for us, so before every election, some big shot from the US would come down and say not to vote for us. When we did win in 2006, we knew the US would do everything it could to degrade and wear down our government.” Ortega explained that Barack Obama imposed the first sanctions on his government, accusing him of ceding to pressure from the Miami lobby of right-wing Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exiles.
The sanctions have disrupted the tripartite alliance Ortega’s government forged with unions and the business community of Nicaragua. “It was not an ideological deal, but one to strengthen the economy and combat poverty,” he explained. “This alliance started to be torpedoed in Washington, with political parties and NGO’s involved in the coup lobbying in Washington to criticize the business sector for allying with Sandinistas. That is where the Nica Act was born. That was a very important element to create destabilization here for their coup attempt.” He said another set of sanctions, the Global Magnitsky Act, targeted businesses that worked with his government, and thereby generated a fracture in the tripartite agreement. Big business “was threatened by the Magnitsky Act, and it created conditions for the coup attempt by attacking the alliance. We know that a law like this would affect first and foremost the poor, campesinos, families, and laws like this one violates agreements and norms that us operates under with international organizations.”
Ortega emphasized Nicaragua’s role as a “stopper” of mass migration and drug trafficking to the north and warned that the US-backed campaign of destabilization his country has witnessed will change all that. “These terrorist activities have not only caused loss of life, but many people have lost their jobs. Economic growth that Nicaragua had, that was sustainable and impacted the fight against poverty, created conditions where there were less immigrants to the US. Now, with the unemployment caused by this crisis, people will flee to Costa Rica and also the US.” Ortega warned that if the US continues to undermine Nicaragua’s security, “then what they will have done to break open the borders and that will also mean the borders are open to organized crime, to drug trafficking… If that is broken down, then organized crime, youth gangs that are already penetrating Costa Rica will end up having an influence on the Panama Canal.”
Asked about allegations of corruption and nepotism, Ortega dismissed the charges. He highlighted the economic progress his government has made through the ALBA alliance of economic cooperation with Venezuela, pointing to poverty reductions programs like Zero Usury, which gives credits for small business people with a zero interest rate, and the Zero Hunger initiative, which has given the rural poor small plots of farm land and animals for free to make them productive economic subjects. Most of the participants in these programs have been women, Ortega emphasized. “People can’t understand these programs, so they mock them,” he said before ticking off further achievements like road building and public parks with funds from mayor’s offices and the ALBA program.
Despite being condemned by 21 members of the Organization of American States, an international body currently dominated by right-wing, US-allied governments, Ortega will not terminate Nicaragua’s membership.  “We need to continue the battle and defend our point of view,” he said. He accused the US of weakening institutions like the OAS by preaching human rights while refusing to sign on to binding human rights agreements. “What most weakens it is the revanchist attitude of right wing governments that are now a majority in Latin America and who have joined forces with the US and are guided by the US or the Miami lobby to fight those countries that favor relations of respect to sovereignty, non interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” he said. Ortega added that many of the governments that had condemned him were responsible for human rights violations that are scarcely discussed at the OAS: “If the practice of the OAS were to judge every country that has problems, death, disappearances, crushed uprisings, they’d be talking about every single Latin American country. But that doesn’t happen. Countries in these groups have terrible crimes and there is no oversight by the OAS or US.”
The relationship with the Catholic church, whose bishops participated directly in the effort to oust the Sandinistas this year, remains a source of bitterness. “They were saying they didn’t have experience as mediators,” Ortega recalled. “And in the end, the influence of the opposition and the pressure of the opposition and the media made it impossible to work [with the bishops] in the dialogue. He lamented that, “In the first day they would take the floor and clearly take the side of the opposition. And by doing so they undermined the authority of the Bishop’s Conference.” Ortega singled out Silvio Baez, the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, as a particularly bad actor, criticizing him for “[tweeting] on his cellphone in the middle of this serious dialogue in favor of the opposition and against the government.”
Ortega has no plans to launch a Twitter account of his own. “It would drive me nuts,” he said.
Asked about the fraying bonds of solidarity between the Western left and the Sandinista movement, Ortega thanked Nicaragua’s allies in the US and Europe for “sticking to your principles.” “Please look carefully at how your authorities behave,” he urged Americans and Europeans. “What right do your authorities have to punish a country in a way that they haven’t punished other countries and impose sanctions, putting into practice measures that interfere in their internal affairs?”

Paul Manafort and the Five Stages of ‘Mueller Derangement Syndrome’

There’s one thing you can count on when the first of two scheduled trials involving former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort gets underway this week in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Va. No, it’s not that Manafort, who faces 18 felony counts of financial fraud and tax evasion, will be convicted. When it comes to jury trials, convictions are never a sure thing. Just ask Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, the Los Angeles deputy district attorneys who lost the O.J. Simpson case despite a mountain of evidence amassed against the football star.

The one sure thing is that Manafort’s trial will ignite a new outbreak of what I like to call, following the argot of the day, Mueller Derangement Syndrome (MDS). This is the paranoid belief that Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian meddling with the 2016 election is a neo-McCarthy witch hunt spearheaded by a globalist “deep state” Obama/Clinton conspiracy that stealthily pulls the strings of American political life.

The syndrome is most prevalent among Trump supporters, whose ranks range from off-the-hinge zealots like Alex Jones to the hacks on Fox News and, of course, the president’s biggest cheerleader—himself. The syndrome, too, has spread to some quarters of the left, where leeriness of purported Russian wrongdoing abounds because of the hypocrisy and lies the country has been fed for years about foreign policy.

It’s also true that the mainstream corporate media (MSM), led by cable TV giants CNN and MSNBC, has a syndrome of its own, which will kick into a higher gear with Manafort in the dock. The MSM has long been fixated on the Mueller probe, covering its every nuance at the expense of other important stories. The fixation is regrettable and misguided—and it does a disservice to viewers interested in learning more about Trump’s policies on immigration, the environment, health care, the economy and other substantive issues—but at least it isn’t divorced from reality.

Not so with the derangement syndrome.

Like the fabled five stages of grief that follow personal loss and tragedy—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—MDS is dynamic rather than static, consisting of phases rather than a single unchanging attitude or perspective. For many individuals and groups, there isn’t a neat movement from one step to the next. The stages often overlap, and just when it seems progress has been made, regression can occur.

Nonetheless, as with grief, the first foundational stage of MDS is denial. Those caught up in the syndrome deny both that Russia interfered with the American election, and that Mueller’s work is legitimate. The facts, unfortunately, indicate the contrary.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to the position of special counsel on May 17, 2017. The appointment was made eight days after Trump had fired former FBI Director James Comey and six days after Trump told NBC News anchor Lester Holt in a nationally televised interview that he had dismissed Comey, at least in part, because the FBI had opened an investigation into possible collusion between the president’s election campaign and Russia.

In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017, Comey revealed that the FBI’s investigation began in July 2016, after some 30,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails and attachments were published by WikiLeaks and DCLeaks, a now-shuttered website thought to have been a cyber-espionage front created by the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, the country’s principal intelligence agency (known as “GRU” for short).

Under the terms of his appointment, Mueller is authorized to examine “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and … any matters that … may arise directly from the investigation.”

So defined, Mueller’s mandate is quite broad. It applies not only to collusion and possible obstruction of justice by the president, but to any crimes committed by Trump campaign officials and associates revealed by the investigation, such as Manafort’s long history of questionable financial transactions.

To date, Mueller has filed more than 100 charges against 32 individuals and three companies. Five people have pleaded guilty, including retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, who has admitted lying to the FBI about conversations he had in December 2016 with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the lifting of U.S. sanctions. Rick Gates, Manafort’s former lobbying partner, also has entered a guilty plea to financial fraud and lying to the FBI and is acting as a cooperating prosecution witness against Manafort.

In Manafort’s case, the alleged malfeasance that Mueller’s team will try to prove this week dates back to 2006 and stretches forward to the middle of 2016, when Manafort negotiated a series of real estate loans totaling $16 million from the Federal Savings Bank (FSB) of Chicago as part of a to help FSB’s founder, Stephen Calk, land a position with the Trump administration. During the campaign, Calk was named to Trump’s economic advisory council, but thus far has not received a White House position. He has denied all wrongdoing in connection with Manafort. Two of his FSB associates, however, have been granted immunity to testify for the government in Manafort’s trial.

Among collusion denialists, the most influential, hands down, has been Trump. During the first presidential debate in September 2016, the soon-to-be 45th commander in chief famously shouted: “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. [Hillary Clinton’s] saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t—maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”

Prior to the debate, both Trump and Clinton had received classified briefings by intelligence agencies that had implicated Russia in the hacking incidents. Trump, apparently, was unpersuaded.

He remains unconvinced today, despite the grand jury indictment filed by Mueller on July 13 against 12 Russian intelligence operatives, which lays out in painstaking detail exactly how the Democratic emails were hacked. In the news conference held after his July 16 summit with Vladimir Putin, Trump said without hesitation, all but genuflecting before the Russian leader, “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia that interfered with the election. After returning home, Trump offered a comical retraction, claiming he had meant to say he saw no reason “it wouldn’t be Russia,” but even then, he once again allowed for the possibility of other culprits. The president remains mired in denial.

Trump also illustrates the second stage of MDS: anger.

Between May 2017 and June 28 of this year, according to CNN reporter David Gelles, Trump condemned the Mueller investigation in outbursts on Twitter no less than 78 times.

He has attacked James Comey on Twitter and elsewhere as “incompetent,” “shady,” “slippery,” “corrupt,” “sanctimonious,” a “liar” and a “slimeball,” and tarred Mueller as “Comey’s best friend.” On Saturday, he added to the invective, tweeting the Mueller probe was a “witch hunt” and “an illegal scam.”

Long before Mueller came on the scene, Trump was prepared to aggressively discredit any attempt to link the DNC hacking to Russia and his campaign. As Wired reported on June 15, 2016, a day after The Washington Post noted that the DNC had been hacked and six days after the Trump Tower meeting between Russian operatives, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort and others, the Trump campaign issued a statement, declaring: “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”

As if taking a cue from the campaign, other denialists eventually pointed to a deceased DNC staffer named Seth Rich as the source of the email leaks. As I explained in a Truthdig column last August, Rich, who was murdered at the age of 27 on a Washington, D.C., street in the early morning hours of July 10, 2016, became a buzzword in right-wing media, which portrayed him as a disgruntled Bernie Sanders backer who gave WikiLeaks the DNC’s emails and was gunned down from behind in reprisal and to silence him.

The Rich conspiracy theory reached its apogee in May 2017, when Fox News posted a story online, claiming that law enforcement sources had verified Rich’s role in the email scandal. Within a week, however, Fox was forced to pull the story as unfounded. Since then, Fox and others responsible for promoting the conspiracy have been sued for defamation by a private investigator hired by Rich’s family and by the family itself.

While the litigation has for the time being quelled talk of the conspiracy, the more generalized anger among Trump supporters over the Mueller probe continues to seethe. Just last week, a group of 11 House Republicans, led by Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio, introduced five articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein, Mueller’s supervisor.

In addition to denial and anger, Mueller Derangement Syndrome has its parallel to the third stage of grief—bargaining.

Since Trump insisted in a Rose Garden news conference in June 2017 that he would be “100 percent” willing to testify about Russian meddling, negotiations have been ongoing between Mueller and Trump’s ever-changing cast of legal counsel as to how the president might deliver on that promise.

Since assuming the lead position as Trump’s attorney in April, Rudy Giuliani has flip-flopped more than a dying fish on whether the president should remain silent, agree only to answer written interrogatories, or submit to a limited oral deposition. On July 6, the former New York City mayor laid down a new precondition, demanding that Mueller prove the president had committed a crime before seeking any testimony. With the midterm elections approaching, the negotiations and bargaining no doubt will continue.

There is also evidence of the fourth stage of grief—depression—in Mueller Derangement Syndrome.

Although Trump personally seems impervious to such mood swings, other Republicans are showing telltale signs. At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee in early July, Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., his tie unfastened and his head propped up on his right hand, berated Rosenstein and current FBI Director Christopher Wray, imploring them to finish the Mueller probe:

Russia isn’t being hurt by this investigation right now. We are. This country is being hurt by it. … We need to see the evidence. If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury. If you have evidence that this president acted inappropriately, present it to the American people. There’s an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. I think right now all of us are being denied. Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart.

Sadly, for Gowdy and other Trump backers unhappy with the length of the Mueller investigation, the end is nowhere in sight. By historical standards, the investigation has proceeded at a rapid clip, and is still in its prime.

The Mueller probe is entering its 14th month. By contrast, the House Select Committee hearings on Benghazi spanned 25 months. The Whitewater investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment took 80 months, as did congressional inquiries into the Iran-Contra scandal. Richard Nixon was not called to testify before the Watergate grand jury until June 1975, a full three years after the infamous burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters. Criminal appeals in the case dragged on for another two years.

Unless Trump fires Mueller and gets away with it, the president’s supporters can expect additional phases of depression.

Thus far, few hardcore denialists have reached the final stage of MDS: acceptance.

A small number, however, have, but with a toxic twist. As recently reported by The Atlantic, some Trump voters in the aftermath of the Putin summit have publicly announced they believe the claims of Russian meddling, but think the meddling was a good thing because it helped block the election of Hillary Clinton. To illustrate the new phenomenon, The Atlantic quoted Cassandra Fairbanks, a writer at the right-wing news and conspiracy website Gateway Pundit, who remarked: “I mean, I would be cool with it. I’m already there. If Russia was involved, we should thank them.”

Hopefully, as the Manafort trial unfolds over the next two to three weeks, additional deniers will change their minds and begin to view the Mueller investigation more constructively. Mueller is far from being a savior of democracy, but right now, the inquiry he heads is the best vehicle we have to reveal the truth behind Trump’s improbable and disastrous rise to the presidency.

Then again, as with the stages of grief, regression is always a possibility.