Chris Hedges's Blog, page 528

Putin Again Denies Interfering in U.S. Election

HELSINKI — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin (all times local):

2 a.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump is the beginning of Russia’s path back from Western isolation.

Putin spoke to Fox News after his summit Monday with Trump.

The Russian leader says the recent U.S. indictment against 12 Russian military officials accused of hacking crimes during the 2016 presidential election is part of an internal political game. He is denying state-sanctioned Russian interference in the election.

Putin also denies having compromising information on Trump and says he “was of no interest for us” before he announced his run for presidency,

When asked why so many of his critics wind up dead, Putin is blaming troubles with crime in Russia and noting the U.S. has struggled, too, citing John F. Kennedy’s assassination and clashes between police and civilians.

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10:45 p.m.

Facing withering bipartisan criticism over his refusal to publicly acknowledge Russian election meddling during his meeting with President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump says the two superpowers “must get along.”

In a Monday tweet sent as he is flying back to the U.S. aboard Air Force One, Trump says, “As I said today and many times before, ‘I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.'”

He adds, “However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past — as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along!”

Trump met with Putin for three hours Monday before participating in a joint press conference in which Trump did not contest the Russian leader’s election meddling denials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have unanimously concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign, most likely to help Trump’s campaign.

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7:25 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected allegations that Moscow has collected compromising materials on U.S. President Donald Trump or his family.

Asked during a joint news conference following their summit in Helsinki, the Russian leader dismissed the claims as “sheer nonsense.”

Putin said that he hadn’t been aware of Trump’s visit to Moscow a few years before his 2016 election, which has been stained by accusations that Russians hacked and interfered in the campaign to support Trump.

Putin, a former KGB agent, scoffed at the notion that the Russian security services try to gather incriminating materials on businessmen, saying: “Do you really believe that we try to shadow every businessman?”

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7:15 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he wanted Donald Trump to win the U.S. presidency, but strongly denied any Russian state meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Putin argued that Trump’s calls for better ties during the presidential election campaign “naturally” made him a preferred candidate for many Russians.

Asked if he personally favored Trump in the race, Putin responded: “Yes, I wanted him to win because he spoke of normalization of Russian-U.S. ties.”

At the same time, Putin rejected the allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia as “complete nonsense.”

The issue is a big concern for many U.S. voters.

Putin spoke during a joint news conference with Trump in Helsinki.

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7:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he sees no reason why Russia would interfere in the 2016 election.

Trump resisted when asked Monday to condemn Russian meddling in the election. Instead, he complained about a Democratic National Committee computer server and emails belonging to Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated to win the presidency.

At a joint appearance in Finland with Vladimir Putin, Trump repeated the Russian leader’s denials about involvement in the election.

Trump said of Putin: “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Trump commented after holding hours of private talks with Putin.

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7 p.m.

President Vladimir Putin says that Moscow and Washington could jointly conduct criminal investigations into Russian intelligence officials accused of hacking during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

Asked if Russia could extradite 12 Russian military intelligence officers indicted in the U.S. last week on charges of hacking into the Democratic election campaign, Putin challenged the U.S. to take advantage of a 1999 agreement envisaging mutual legal assistance.

He said the agreement would allow U.S. officials to request that Russian authorities interrogate the 12 suspects, adding that U.S. officials could request to be present in such interrogations.

Putin noted that Russia would expect the U.S. to return the favor and cooperate in the Russian probe against William Browder, a British investor charged of financial crimes in Russia. Browder was a driving force behind a U.S. law targeting Russian officials over human rights abuses.

Putin spoke after a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki on Monday.

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7 p.m.

President Donald Trump says Russian President Vladimir Putin made an “incredible offer” to allow Russian and U.S. investigators to work together on allegations of Russian cyber attacks.

Trump says Putin suggested the U.S. provide its intelligence to the Russian military so Russia can determine the truth of what happened.

Trump says he has “great confidence” in his intelligence agencies who have concluded Russia interfered in the election. But Trump says Putin was “incredibly strong and powerful today” in his contention that Russia had nothing to do with election interference.

The two presidents spoke during a joint news conference following talks in Helsinki.

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6:55 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the Russia investigation has been a “disaster” for the United States and has kept America and Russia “separated.”

Speaking during a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, he reiterates that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and the Russian government.

Trump says he ran a “clean campaign” and he beat his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton “easily.” The president says it’s a “shame” there is a cloud over his administration. He says he ran a “brilliant campaign and that’s why I’m president.”

Putin is pushing back against claims that his government interfered in the U.S. election. He says there’s “no evidence when it comes to the actual facts.”

Trump Official Lobbies for British Ultranationalist at Breitbart’s Request

Last month, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell made headlines when he suggested he aimed to empower the far right across Europe, drawing the ire of critics at home and abroad. Yet a new Reuters report reveals he’s hardly an outlier within the Trump administration.

According to the international news agency, Sam Brownback, a former Kansas senator and governor, who currently serves as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, lobbied Britain’s envoy to the U.S. to release infamous ultranationalist Tommy Robinson following the 13-month sentence he was given in May for contempt of court. What’s more, Brownback appears to have acted at the behest of Breitbart, the far-right news site whose former chairman, Steve Bannon, previously was Trump’s senior White House adviser.

“[Brownback] told British envoy Sir Kim Darroch at a meeting in June that Breitbart ‘people’ had contacted him about Robinson’s imprisonment,” writes Reuter’s Mark Hosenball, citing a British government source. “Brownback told Darroch that British authorities should be aware that the website was making noise about the case. … Three pro-Robinson campaigners said there were multiple direct contacts between Brownback, his aides, people connected to [Breitbart] and other groups protesting his imprisonment.”

Born Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Robinson is the founder of the English Defence League, a British organization whose mission statement claims it aims to “lead and inspire against global Islamification.” It also professes to “stand for the right of English people to their own country over and above people from elsewhere.”

Robinson, a self-styled journalist and activist, was arrested in May after shooting videos outside a courthouse in Leeds that related to a child molestation case. (The recordings were in violation of British law entitling the accused to a fair trial.) As the Guardian’s Owen Jones wrote at the time, “[Robinson] is no martyr to freedom of speech, just a career criminal with a history of mortgage fraud, football hooliganism and assault whose craving for publicity put a critical court case at risk.”

Brownback is not the only Trump official to come to Robinson’s defense. In an interview with British journalist Theo Usherwood, Bannon himself called the far-right demagogue a “good guy” who has “got to be released from prison.”

What the former White House aide had to say off camera was more revealing still. Usherwood, who was quick to point out that Robinson had broken the law, claims Bannon spat out the following upon the conclusion of their interview: “Fuck you. Don’t you fucking say you’re calling me out. You fucking liberal elite. Tommy Robinson is the backbone of this country.”

Neither Brownback nor the U.S. State Department has commented on the Reuters report as of this writing.

Condemnation From Both Major Parties Hits Trump After Summit With Putin

WASHINGTON — “Bizarre.” ”Shameful.” ”Disgraceful.”

That’s the swift and sweeping condemnation directed at President Donald Trump on Monday after he sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a stunning appearance in Helsinki — and that’s just from the Republicans.

Lawmakers in both major parties and former intelligence officials appeared shocked, dismayed and uneasy with Trump’s suggestion that he believes Putin’s denial of interfering in the 2016 elections. It was a remarkable break with U.S. intelligence officials and the Justice Department. And just as alarming for some, Trump also put the two countries on the same footing when casting blame for their strained relations.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., called it “bizarre.” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., called it “shameful.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted that it was a “bad day for the US.”

“This was a very good day for President Putin,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He said Trump’s refusal to condemn Russian interference in the 2016 election makes the U.S. “look like a pushover.”

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, said he’s seen Russian intelligence manipulate many people in his earlier career as a CIA officer. But, he tweeted, “I never would have thought that the US President would become one of the ones getting played by old KGB hands.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan weighed in to say there’s “no question” that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and “no moral equivalence” between the U.S. and Russia.

“The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally,” Ryan, R-Wis., said in a statement. Russia, he said, “remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals.”

Much of the Republican rebuke came from lawmakers who have been willing to openly criticize the president, a group that remains a minority in the GOP.

Many top Republicans remained on the sidelines after the Justice Department on Friday indicted 12 Russian intelligence officials for election-related hacking.

But several Republicans who don’t typically buck the president raised concerns, shocked by Monday’s performance.

Trump ally Newt Gingrich called it “the most serious mistake” of Trump’s presidency — and one that “must be corrected—immediately.”

Democrats pleaded with their GOP colleagues who have majority control of Congress to rein in the president and become a stronger legislative check on the executive branch.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, says never in the history of the country has an American president supported an adversary the way Trump sided with Putin. He challenged Republicans to move beyond words and confront the president directly by increasing sanctions on Russia and requesting testimony about the summit from Trump administration officials, among other things.

“We need our Republican colleagues to stand up for the good of this country,” he said.

And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump’s weakness in front of Putin wasn’t just “embarrassing” but also “proves that the Russians have something on the President, personally, financially or politically.”

Republicans have been hesitant to fully confront a president who remains popular among GOP voters back home. But Trump’s hold on the GOP is being put to the test by his willingness to align with Putin, a leader whom Republicans routinely describe as an enemy of the United States.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., repeated his earlier assessment that the Russians are “not our friends.” He said he has “complete confidence in our intelligence community and the findings.”

The second-ranking Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said Trump has a “delicate task” in dealing with Putin, but added that he supports the intelligence community’s assessment of election meddling.

Monday’s firestorm erupted when Trump, standing side by side with Putin in Helsinki, refused to say he believed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, or to publicly condemn it. Instead, he directed his ire at Democrats and U.S. officials, calling special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russia a “disaster.”

Asked if there was anything he thinks Russia should take responsibility for, Trump said, “We’re all to blame.”

McCain called the summit a “tragic mistake.”

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, said she is “deeply troubled” by Trump’s defense of Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies “and his suggestion of moral equivalence” between the two countries.

Even Graham, a sometime Trump ally, called the summit a “missed opportunity by President Trump to firmly hold Russia accountable for 2016 meddling and deliver a strong warning regarding future elections.”

While some GOP lawmakers were less strident in their criticism of Trump, their discomfort was clear.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he was “dismayed” by Trump’s stance. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., called it “unacceptable.”

Off Capitol Hill, former intelligence chiefs who served under President Barack Obama were scathing in their criticism. John Brennan, who served as CIA director, called Trump’s comments “treasonous.”

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???” Brennan tweeted.

James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence under Obama, described Trump’s comments as “very, very disturbing.”

“On the world stage in front of the entire globe the president of the United States essentially capitulated and seems intimidated by Vladimir Putin,” Clapper told CNN.

James Comey, the FBI director fired by Trump, tweeted, “This was the day an American president stood on foreign soil next to a murderous lying thug and refused to back his own country.”

At least one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, scoffed at both parties “beating their chests” on Russia and “dumbing down” the debate, saying it’s important for the U.S. to have diplomatic channels open with its adversaries if the country hopes to change behavior.

“They’re making a big mistake,” Paul said. He dismissed the president’s critics as those who hate the president. “It’s Trump derangement syndrome.”

Another key Republican echoed the president’s criticism of the special counsel probe.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California said he takes the charges filed by Mueller’s team seriously but questions the timing coming days before the Trump-Putin meeting. “I personally would neither rule in nor rule out the validity.”

But another Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, warned that while Trump may feel that he can achieve a better working relationship with Putin by being nice to him, that’s unlikely to work.

“The flaw in that is that President Putin is not interested in a better relationship,” Rubio said at a forum sponsored by the Atlantic. “He views politics as a battle between the strong and the weak. … He doesn’t believe in win-win scenarios. He believes in zero sum.”

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Alan Fram and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

Supreme Court Update: Kavanaugh Is No Kennedy, and Kennedy Was No Centrist

There is a growing consensus among legal commentators that D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh will move the Supreme Court sharply to the right should the Senate confirm his nomination. Kavanaugh is a loyal Republican operative who has championed conservative causes at every step of his professional career.

Ideologically, Kavanaugh is a product of the right-wing judicial counterrevolution that dates back to a 6,400-word confidential memorandum written in 1971 for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by the late Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell Jr. before his own ascension to the bench.

In the memo, which was titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” Powell urged the chamber and business leaders generally to get more involved in the legal system to reverse what he saw as a dangerous liberal drift in American constitutional law. Among other measures, Powell urged the recruitment of lawyers of “the greatest skill” to represent business interests before the Supreme Court, which, under the stewardship of Chief Justice Earl Warren, had moved steadily to the left. Powell wrote: “Under our constitutional system … the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”

It took a while for Powell’s message to sink in and for the counterrevolution to find its footing, but the right responded with the formation of the Business Roundtable and the Heritage, Koch, Castle Rock, Scaife, Bradley, and Olin foundations, among other organizations, to fund conservative legal causes; and groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation, The Cato Institute, The Federalist Society and the chamber’s own National Litigation Center to implement the causes in litigation. Eventually, the right embraced another goal: to place business-compliant judges on the courts.

Long before he became an appellate judge in 2006, Kavanaugh, now 53, had established himself as one of the counterrevolution’s young stalwarts. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1990, he worked as a clerk for 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom he is slated to replace on the nation’s most powerful judicial body. After his clerkships, Kavanaugh went on to become Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr’s right-hand assistant, helping to draft Starr’s 1998 report to Congress, which led to the impeachment of President Clinton. Following his stint with Starr, he joined George W. Bush’s White House, eventually becoming the president’s staff secretary.

In the coming months, as the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes its confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh’s judicial opinions, law review articles and public speeches will be parsed with a fine-toothed comb. We’ll learn in detail about his regressive views on a bevy of subjects, ranging from abortion rights, same-sex marriage, the Second Amendment, environmental regulation, consumer protection, voting rights, “religious liberty” and the separation of powers, to the exclusionary rule (the doctrine that bars prosecutors from introducing evidence seized by police in violation of the Fourth Amendment in criminal trials).

We’ll also hear—and with ample justification—that although he clerked for Justice Kennedy, Kavanaugh will be no Kennedy on the bench. Unlike the retiring Kennedy, we’ll be told, Kavanaugh will not be a “swing voter” on the high court, but an unflagging confederate of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme pick, who together occupy the court’s present extreme right-wing cohort.

What we won’t be told, however, is that Kennedy himself, considering his overall Supreme Court tenure and his unseemly ties to the Trump family, isn’t really a centrist. Yes, Kennedy sometimes joined the court’s liberals in high-profile cases. Undoubtedly, his foremost accomplishment as an occasional liberal was his 2015 majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, establishing the constitutional right of gay and lesbian couples to marry—a precedent that Kavanaugh’s elevation will jeopardize.

But Kennedy’s jurisprudence had a dark side as well. In 2000, he joined the court’s shameless 7-2 decision in Bush v. Gore, handing the presidential election to the GOP. In 2008, he joined Antonin Scalia’s 5-4 majority ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing an individual’s right to own firearms under the Second Amendment. The same year, he joined the majority to uphold Indiana’s voter ID law in Crawford v. Marion County. In 2013, he signed on to Chief Justice John Robert’s notorious decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted a major provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Worst of all, Kennedy wrote the court’s 2010 majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, holding that spending money on elections—even unlimited amounts by for-profit corporations—is a form of political speech and a right protected by the First Amendment that outweighs any public interest in regulating elections.

During the court’s most recent term, Kennedy returned to his conservative roots in a big way. In each of the 19 cases the court decided by a 5-4 margin, Kennedy voted with his Republican brethren. Such cases included the court’s decision upholding President Trump’s Muslim travel ban (Trump v. Hawaii) and its decision striking down the system that public-employee unions use to collect fees from nonunion members (Janus v. AFSCME).

And then there is Kennedy’s curious relationship with the president and his children. As reported by numerous outlets, Kennedy’s son Justin once held a high-ranking position in Deutsche Bank, Trump’s go-to financial institution for high-risk loans.

It also has been noted that both Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son Donald Jr. have long known Justin Kennedy from their work in New York real estate. In April 2017, Politico reported that after Trump’s first speech to Congress in February of that year, the president shook hands with Justice Kennedy and remarked, “Say hello to your boy. Special guy.”

“Your kids have been very nice to him,” Kennedy replied.

“Well,” Trump responded, “they love him, and they love him in New York.”

None of this means, as some have speculated, that Kennedy was actually in the tank for Trump. What it does mean—and this should be shouted from the rooftops, if not on cable news—is that even before Kennedy announced his retirement, the Supreme Court was hardly a liberal or even a centrist institution.

Now, barring a minor political miracle, the court is only going to get worse—much worse—as Kavanaugh moves up to the highest rung on the judicial ladder.

South Asia Islamophobia Burgeons in Sri Lanka

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 have been hailed for their courage in pursuit of truth within their countries and elsewhere.

On March 5, Shamsuddin Mohammad Fasal was as tense as the rest of his neighbors in Teldeniya, a village in Sri Lanka’s Central Province. A Buddhist crowd was advancing toward Digana, 5 miles away, to torch Muslim houses and shops.

The mob wanted to avenge the death of a Buddhist man who was allegedly beaten by three Muslim men a week before. Rampant anti-Muslim attacks ensued, killing three people, injuring dozens more and destroying hundreds of buildings in the Central Province. The mob violence reflected the burgeoning divide between Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority and Muslim minority, as well as the Islamophobia in other parts of South Asia, including nearby India.

PHOTO ESSAY | 6 photosClick here to see more Sri Lanka photos by Raksha Kumar.

As the mob attacked Digana, Shamsuddin and his neighbors received forwarded text messages reporting Muslim men being beaten and the burning of their houses. “We weren’t sure where those videos were shot,” Shamsuddin said.

Around 4 p.m., he received a video of a house on fire. “It took a few seconds to realize that it was my parents’ house in Digana,” he said.

The two-story house sat prominently on A-26, a highway that connects Teldeniya with the city of Kandy. A shoe shop used to be in the front of the home, the living quarters behind. The building was up against a cemetery, on a small elevation covered in grass. Now, the house is nothing but soot. And to its right stands the half-burned Digana Mosque.

Not only did Shamsuddin see his parents’ house go up in flames, he also later learned that his youngest brother was burned alive in it. “He was training to be a reporter,” said Shamsuddin Mohammad Raheem, the father of Shamsuddin Mohammad Fasal. “And [he] was reporting the looting, rioting and vandalism of the approaching Sinhala crowd from his bedroom on the first floor of the house.”

All through the week, anti-Muslim riots spread across several towns and villages of the Central Province. Four months later, the towns are limping back to normalcy. “But, it will never actually be completely normal again,” said Maulana Firdaus, the religious leader of Digana Mosque.

Violence in Digana took three lives and demolished property worth millions of rupees. In the larger city of Kandy, mob assaults injured more than 80 people and destroyed about 270 homes and businesses.

Islamophobia in South Asia

In many ways, anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka parallels the violence against Muslims in other parts of South Asia, notably India. In both countries, the minority Muslim population is feeling more alienated every day, according to Jayadeva Uyangoda, a Sri Lankan political scientist and constitutional expert. The divide between the majority communities and the minority Muslims is becoming so deep it may be impossible to bridge, Uyangoda said. But the most chilling similarity is that the state might be compliant in violence against Muslims in both countries.

The International Religious Freedom report for 2017 on Sri Lanka, released by the U.S. Department of State, says:

“Local government officials and police reportedly responded minimally or not at all to numerous incidents of religiously motivated violence against Muslim and Christian minorities. There were some reports of government officials being complicit in physical attacks on religious minorities and their places of worship.”

And according to the International Religious Freedom report for 2017 on India:

“There were reports of religiously motivated killings, assaults, riots, discrimination, vandalism, and actions restricting the right of individuals to practice their religious beliefs and proselytize. There were several violent incidents by so-called ‘cow protection’ groups against mostly Muslim victims, including killings, mob violence, assaults, and intimidation. Authorities often failed to prosecute those committing the attacks.”

The acts of anti-Muslim violence in India and Sri Lanka share some important roots. “For one, they both rely on the majoritarian politics. … Both [have] majority communities perceiving a threat by a minority community,” said Uyangoda, who is currently a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. Hindus make up 80 percent of the population in India, and in Sri Lanka Buddhists make up 70 percent, but there is continual talk in both countries about minority Muslims taking over, Uyangoda said.

However, the two countries have different contexts for the religious discrimination that exists today. In Sri Lanka, the context is that of a bloody civil war.

The island nation still suffers the effects of that lengthy struggle, which started as a fight for linguistic equality and escalated into a war over separatism. A closer look at the war period reveals reasons for the depth of Sri Lanka’s religious conflicts.

Mixed Identities

A potpourri of identities defines Sri Lankan citizens. The 26-year-long civil war (1983-2009) primarily was based on a conflict over linguistic parity between the two largest ethnic groups—Sinhalese and Tamil—but an underlying issue of religion also existed. While most Sinhalese are Buddhists, Tamils are Hindus, Christians and Muslims.

The population of this island (about 25,000 square miles) is also divided geographically. The Sinhala-Buddhist majority resides mostly in the southern and western parts, and the northern and eastern parts have large populations of Hindu and Muslim Tamils.

During the war, linguistic identity was of prime importance to the Sri Lankan state, but within the Tamil-speaking populations, religion was also very prominent. “We were never fighting the Sri Lankan state like the [Hindus and Christians] were,” said Shahul Hasbullah, a Muslim and a professor at Sri Lanka’s University of Peradeniya.

Hasbullah was referring to the divide that occurred during the war between the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Tamil Muslim population. The Tigers supported separatism while many Muslims didn’t. So in 1990, the militant group drove out the entire Muslim population from the northern parts of Sri Lanka. Muslims of Jaffna, the largest city in the Northern Province, had to leave their homes within two hours after being ordered out.

Hasbullah, whose family was forced to leave Tiger-held areas, is now studying the religious fault lines that intensified during that period.

Shamsuddin Mohammad Fasal was studying in a madrasa (a college for Islamic instruction) in India when he heard of the rising Islamophobia in his country. “We were not accepted as ‘Tamils’ back then and were expelled from our houses. We are not being accepted as ‘Sri Lankan’ now,” he said.

During the war, Muslims were also on the receiving end of discrimination by members of Sri Lanka’s majority. In 2002, Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group, held a press conference on the increase in halal meat (prepared as prescribed by Muslim law) in grocery stories.

“Their first large-scale anti-Muslim campaign was against the labeling of food as halal, arguing that it was an imposition on the majority by a minority,” University of Colombo professor Farzana Haniffa wrote in her paper “Who Gave These Fellows This Strength? Muslims and the Bodu Bala Sena in Post War Sri Lanka.”

The pressure by the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group worked. Halal labels were removed from products on the shelves.

The BBS occupies the alt-right space in Sri Lankan politics. “They are the on-ground violent operatives of the sangha, the Buddhist monastic community,” said a professor at the University of Colombo who requested anonymity. The BBS says it works for the benefit of all Sri Lankans but maintains that the country belongs to the majority community.

A 2003 ruling by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court determined the state was constitutionally required to protect only Buddhism, and other religions did not have the same right to state protection. This ruling strengthened the BBS, according to Haniffa.

‘Muslim Takeover’

The late Gangodawila Soma Thero, a Buddhist monk, spent the years before his death in 2003 preaching to the Sinhalese about how Muslims were going to outnumber Buddhists. Thero gave fiery speeches about how Sri Lanka is following the path of Indonesia, a country that used to have a significant number of Buddhists but now has the world’s largest Muslim population.

Other right-wing leaders such as Champika Ranawaka joined with Thero in painstakingly discussing census figures to show it is merely a matter of time before the number of Muslims overtakes that of Buddhists.

The reality in Sri Lanka is that Muslims constitute less than 10 percent of the population.

The war ended in 2009, and almost immediately anti-Muslim rhetoric escalated, said Uyangoda, the political scientist. “The Sri Lankan state needed a new enemy. And they found a ready one in Muslims.”

When Shamsuddin returned to his homeland after the war ended, he felt a change in Sri Lankan society.

The first reported attack on Muslims came in September 2011, when a mob demolished a mosque in Anuradhapura, a town in the Central Province. “The photos of the Anuradhapura violence and mosque burning down came gushing back to us when our own mosque was burnt down in Digana in March,” Shamsuddin said.

Other incidents of violence included anti-Muslim riots in June 2014 in the southwestern towns of Aluthgama and Beruwala. Days before the riots broke out, the BBS held rallies in the region during which anti-Muslim slogans were chanted. Four Muslims were killed, more than 80 were wounded and a mosque was burned down. According to official figures, about 8,000 Muslims and 2,000 Sinhalese lost their homes in the riots.

Asserting Identity

Muneera Begum remembers the riots well. She was a postgraduate student when Aluthgama was burning. “I used to study in Kandy back then,” she said. “The riots were not our reality; we thought [they were] in some far-off town,” she said. It took only four years for the violence to reach Begum’s doorstep.

In the recent Digana riots, her house was burned down. Begum, her husband and their three children lost everything they owned. “We have become like the Buddhist monks, with no possessions,” she joked. But her sad eyes were a giveaway when her 2-year-old son asked for his toys.

Begum’s house was one of the two occupied by Muslims in a narrow lane filled with Buddhist and Christian houses. The mob that entered Digana pinpointed the Muslim homes for destruction.

The other Muslim house belonged to a young man who, along with his friends, allegedly killed a Sinhalese Buddhist lorry driver. That was the incident that incited the mob to enter Digana.

“The mob was angry at the [Muslim] boy who killed the Buddhist man, [but] why burn our house down?” Begum asked. “Therefore, now, we feel more secure if we live amidst ‘our own’ ” she said.

In some areas of Sri Lanka, including in the capital, Colombo, Muslim ghettos have been emerging. But before the March attacks, many Muslims in the Central Province seemed to be comfortable living among the Sinhalese and speaking both Sinhala and Tamil.

“We assimilated well,” said Shamsuddin Mohammad Fasal’s other brother, Shamsuddin Fayaz, whose legs were burned severely in the family’s deadly house fire in March. “But when you see your neighbor turn against you, I wonder why we should not assert our identity,” he said.

Begum also supports asserting Muslim identity. She said she did not wear the burqa a few years ago, but that changed when her brothers took up religious education in nearby mosques.

“If I wear a burqa, it is my choice. I am not forcing anyone else to do it,” she said. “I don’t want my homeland to be taken away from me just because I chose to wear a burqa.”

7 Truths About Immigration the Trump Administration Will Never Acknowledge

1. A record high of 75 percent of Americans now say immigration is a “good thing” for the country.

2. America needs more immigrants, not fewer, because our population is rapidly aging.

3. Historically, new immigrants have contributed more to society in taxes than they have taken from society in terms of public assistance.

4. Most immigrants don’t take jobs away from native-born Americans. To the contrary, their spending creates more jobs.

5. Trump’s claim that undocumented immigrants generate more crime is dead wrong. Both legal and undocumented immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States.

6. Violent crime rates in America are actually at historical lows, with the homicide rate back to its level from the early 1960s.

7. Illegal border crossings have been declining since 2014 – long before Trump’s “crackdown.” There is no “surge” in illegal immigration.

Please spread the truth.

The War on Assange Is a War on Press Freedom

The failure on the part of establishment media to defend Julian Assange, who has been trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, has been denied communication with the outside world since March and appears to be facing imminent expulsion and arrest, is astonishing. The extradition of the publisher—the maniacal goal of the U.S. government—would set a legal precedent that would criminalize any journalistic oversight or investigation of the corporate state. It would turn leaks and whistleblowing into treason. It would shroud in total secrecy the actions of the ruling global elites. If Assange is extradited to the United States and sentenced, The New York Times, The Washington Post and every other media organization, no matter how tepid their coverage of the corporate state, would be subject to the same draconian censorship. Under the precedent set, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court would enthusiastically uphold the arrest and imprisonment of any publisher, editor or reporter in the name of national security.

There are growing signs that the Ecuadorean government of Lenín Moreno is preparing to evict Assange and turn him over to British police. Moreno and his foreign minister, José Valencia, have confirmed they are in negotiations with the British government to “resolve” the fate of Assange. Moreno, who will visit Britain in a few weeks, calls Assange an “inherited problem” and “a stone in the shoe” and has referred to him as a “hacker.” It appears that under a Moreno government Assange is no longer welcome in Ecuador. His only hope now is safe passage to his native Australia or another country willing to give him asylum.

“Ecuador has been looking for a solution to this problem,” Valencia commented on television. “The refuge is not forever, you cannot expect it to last for years without us reviewing this situation, including because this violates the rights of the refugee.”

Moreno’s predecessor as president, Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum in the embassy and made him an Ecuadorean citizen last year, warned that Assange’s “days were numbered.” He charged that Moreno—who cut off Assange’s communications the day after Moreno welcomed a delegation from the U.S. Southern Command—would “throw him out of the embassy at the first pressure from the United States.”

Assange, who reportedly is in ill health, took asylum in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer questions about sexual offense charges. He feared that once in Swedish custody for these charges, which he said were false, he would be extradited to the United States. The Swedish prosecutors’ office ended its “investigation” and extradition request to Britain in May 2017 and did not file sexual offense charges against Assange. But the British government said Assange would nevertheless be arrested and jailed for breaching his bail conditions.

The persecution of Assange is part of a broad assault against anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist news organizations. The ruling elites, who refuse to accept responsibility for profound social inequality or the crimes of empire, have no ideological veneer left to justify their greed, ineptitude and pillage. Global capitalism and its ideological justification, neoliberalism, are discredited as forces for democracy and the equitable distribution of wealth. The corporate-controlled economic and political system is as hated by right-wing populists as it is by the rest of the population. This makes the critics of corporatism and imperialism—journalists, writers, dissidents and intellectuals already pushed to the margins of the media landscape—dangerous and it makes them prime targets. Assange is at the top of the list.

I took part with dozens of others, including Daniel Ellsberg, William Binney, Craig Murray, Peter Van Buren, Slavoj Zizek, George Galloway and Cian Westmoreland, a week ago in a 36-hour international online vigil demanding freedom for the WikiLeaks publisher. The vigil was organized by the New Zealand Internet Party leader Suzie Dawson. It was the third Unity4J vigil since all of Assange’s communication with the outside world was severed by the Ecuadorean authorities and visits with him were suspended in March, part of the increased pressure the United States has brought on the Ecuadorean government. Assange has since March been allowed to meet only with his attorneys and consular officials from the Australian Embassy.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled Friday that those seeking political asylum have the right to take refuge in embassies and diplomatic compounds. The court stated that governments are obliged to provide safe passage out of the country to those granted asylum. The ruling did not name Assange, but it was a powerful rebuke to the British government, which has refused to allow the WikiLeaks co-founder safe passage to the airport.

The ruling elites no longer have a counterargument to their critics. They have resorted to cruder forms of control. These include censorship, slander and character assassination (which in the case of Assange has sadly been successful), blacklisting, financial strangulation, intimidation, imprisonment under the Espionage Act and branding critics and dissidents as agents of a foreign power and purveyors of fake news. The corporate media amplifies these charges, which have no credibility but which become part of the common vernacular through constant repetition. The blacklisting, imprisonment and deportation of tens of thousands of people of conscience during the Red Scares of the 1920s and 1950s are back with a vengeance. It is a New McCarthyism.

Did Russia attempt to influence the election? Undoubtedly. This is what governments do. The United States interfered in 81 elections between 1945 and 2000, according to professor Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. His statistics do not include the numerous coups we orchestrated in countries such as Greece, Iran, Guatemala and Chile or the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. We indirectly bankrolled the re-election campaign of Russia’s buffoonish Boris Yeltsin to the tune of $2.5 billion.

But did Russia, as the Democratic Party establishment claims, swing the election to Trump? No. Trump is not Vladimir Putin’s puppet. He is part of the wave of right-wing populists, from Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson in Britain to Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who have harnessed the rage and frustration born of an economic and political system dominated by global capitalism and under which the rights and aspirations of working men and women do not matter.

The Democratic Party establishment, like the liberal elites in most of the rest of the industrialized world, would be swept from power in an open political process devoid of corporate money. The party elite, including Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, is a creation of the corporate state. Campaign finance and electoral reform are the last things the party hierarchy intends to champion. It will not call for social and political programs that will alienate its corporate masters. This myopia and naked self-interest may ensure a second term for Donald Trump; it may further empower the lunatic fringe that is loyal to Trump; it may continue to erode the credibility of the political system. But the choice before the Democratic Party elites is clear: political oblivion or enduring the rule of a demagogue. They have chosen the latter. They are not interested in reform. They are determined to silence anyone, like Assange, who exposes the rot within the ruling class.

The Democratic Party establishment benefits from our system of legalized bribery. It benefits from deregulating Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry. It benefits from the endless wars. It benefits from the curtailment of civil liberties including the right to privacy and due process. It benefits from militarized police. It benefits from austerity programs. It benefits from mass incarceration. It is an enabler of tyranny, not an impediment.

Demagogues like Trump, Farage and Johnson, of course, have no intention of altering the system of corporate pillage. Rather, they accelerate the pillage, which is what happened with the passage of the massive U.S. tax cut for corporations. They divert the public’s anger toward demonized groups such as Muslims, undocumented workers, people of color, liberals, intellectuals, artists, feminists, the LGBT community and the press. The demonized are blamed for the social and economic dysfunction, much as Jews were falsely blamed for Germany’s defeat in World War I and the economic collapse that followed. Corporations such as Goldman Sachs, in the midst of the decay, continue to make a financial killing.

The corporate titans, who often come out of elite universities and are groomed in institutions like Harvard Business School, find these demagogues crude and vulgar. They are embarrassed by their imbecility, megalomania and incompetence. But they endure their presence rather than permit socialists or leftist politicians to impede their profits and divert government spending to social programs and away from weapons manufacturers, the military, private prisons, big banks and hedge funds, the fossil fuel industry, charter schools, private paramilitary forces, private intelligence companies and other pet programs designed to allow corporations to cannibalize the state.

The irony is that there was serious meddling in the presidential election, but it did not come from Russia. The Democratic Party, outdoing any of the dirty tricks employed by Richard Nixon, purged hundreds of thousands of primary voters from the rolls, denied those registered as independents the right to vote in primaries, used superdelegates to swing the vote to Hillary Clinton, hijacked the Democratic National Committee to serve the Clinton campaign, controlled the message of media outlets such as MSNBC and The New York Times, stole the Nevada caucus, spent hundreds of millions of dollars of “dark” corporate money on the Clinton campaign and fixed the primary debates. This meddling, which stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, who probably could have defeated Trump, is unmentioned. The party hierarchy will do nothing to reform its corrupt nominating process.

WikiLeaks exposed much of this corruption when it published tens of thousands of messages hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email account. The messages brought to light the efforts by the Democratic Party leadership to thwart the nomination of Sanders, and they disclosed Clinton’s close ties with Wall Street, including her lucrative Wall Street speeches. They also raised serious questions about conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation and whether Clinton received advance information on primary-debate questions.

The Democratic National Committee, for this reason, is leading the Russia hysteria and the persecution of Assange. It filed a lawsuit that names WikiLeaks and Assange as co-conspirators with Russia and the Trump campaign in an alleged effort to steal the presidential election.

But it is not only Assange and WikiLeaks that are being attacked as Russian pawns. For example, The Washington Post, which has sided with the Democratic Party in the war against Trump, without critical analysis published a report on a blacklist posted by the anonymous website PropOrNot. The blacklist was composed of 199 sites that PropOrNot alleged, with no evidence, “reliably echo Russian propaganda.” More than half of those sites were far-right, conspiracy-driven ones. But about 20 of the sites were major progressive outlets including AlterNet, Black Agenda Report, Democracy Now!, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truthout, CounterPunch and the World Socialist Web Site. PropOrNot, short for Propaganda or Not, accused these sites of disseminating “fake news” on behalf of Russia. The Post’s headline was unequivocal: “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during the election, experts say.”

In addition to offering no evidence, PropOrNot never even disclosed who ran the website. Even so, its charge was used to justify the imposition of algorithms by Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon to direct traffic away from the targeted sites. These algorithms, or filters, overseen by thousands of “evaluators,” many hired from the military and security and surveillance apparatus, hunt for keywords such as “U.S. military,” “inequality” and “socialism,” along with personal names such as Julian Assange and Laura Poitras. These keywords are known as “impressions.” Before the imposition of the algorithms, a reader could type in the name Julian Assange and be directed to an article on one of these targeted sites. After the algorithms were put in place, these impressions directed readers only to mainstream sites such as The Washington Post. Referral traffic from these impressions at most of the targeted sites has plummeted, often by more than half. Challenged by these algorithms and the abolition of net neutrality, these sites will be pushed further and further to the outer reaches of the media.

Any news or media outlet that addresses the reality of our failed democracy and exposes the crimes of empire will be targeted. The January 2017 Director of National Intelligence Report spent seven pages on RT America, where I have a show, “On Contact.” The report does not accuse RT America of disseminating Russian propaganda, but it does allege the network exploits divisions within American society by giving airtime to dissidents and critics including whistleblowers, anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, Black Lives Matter activists, anti-fracking campaigners and the third-party candidates the establishment is seeking to mute.

If the United States had a public broadcasting system free from corporate money or a commercial press that was not under corporate control, these dissident voices would be included in the mainstream discourse. But we don’t. Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Malcolm X, Sheldon Wolin, Ralph Nader, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Angela Davis and Edward Said once appeared regularly on public broadcasting. Now critics like these are banned, replaced with vapid courtiers such as columnist David Brooks. RT America was forced to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). This act requires Americans who work for a foreign party to register as foreign agents. The FARA registration is part of the broader assault on all independent media, including the effort to silence Assange.

WikiLeak’s publication in 2017 of 8,761 CIA files, known as Vault 7, appeared to be the final indignity. Vault 7 included a description of the cyber tools used by the CIA to hack into computer systems and devices such as smartphones. Former CIA software engineer Joshua Adam Schulte was indicted on charges of violating the Espionage Act by allegedly leaking the documents.

The publication of Vault 7 saw the United States significantly increase its pressure on the Ecuadorean government to isolate and eject Assange from the embassy. Mike Pompeo, then the CIA director, said in response to the leaks that the U.S. government “can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Assange’s arrest was a “priority.”

It is up to us to mobilize to protect Assange. His life is in jeopardy. The Ecuadorean government, violating his fundamental rights, has transformed his asylum into a form of incarceration. By cutting off his access to the internet, it has deprived him of the ability to communicate and follow world events. The aim of this isolation is to pressure Assange out of the embassy so he can be seized by London police, thrown into a British jail and then delivered into the hands of Pompeo, John Bolton and the CIA’s torturer in chief, Gina Haspel.

Assange is a courageous and fearless publisher who is being persecuted for exposing the atrocities of the corporate state and imperialism. His defense is the cutting edge of the fight against government suppression of our most important and fundamental democratic rights. The government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, where Assange was born, must be pressured to provide him with the protection to which he is entitled as a citizen. It must intercede to stop the illegal persecution of the journalist by the British, American and Ecuadorean governments. It must secure his safe return to Australia. If we fail to protect Assange, we fail to protect ourselves.

Kushner Tenants Say They Were Ousted for Luxury Condo Buyers

NEW YORK—The hammering and drilling began just months after Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm bought a converted warehouse apartment building in the hip, Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

Tenants say it started early in the morning and went on until nightfall, so loud that it drowned out normal conversation, so violent it rattled pictures off the walls. So much dust wafted through ducts and under doorways that it coated beds and clothes in closets. Rats crawled through holes in the walls. Workers with passkeys barged in unannounced. Residents who begged for relief got a standard reply, “We have permits.”

More than a dozen current and former residents of the building told The Associated Press that they believe the Kushner Cos.’ relentless construction, along with rent hikes of $500 a month or more, was part of a campaign to push tenants out of rent-stabilized apartments and bring high-paying condo buyers in.

If so, it was a remarkably successful campaign. An AP investigation found that over the past three years, more than 250 rent-stabilized apartments — 75 percent of the building — were either emptied or sold as the Kushner Cos. was converting the building to luxury condos. Those sales so far have totaled more than $155 million, an average of $1.2 million per apartment.

“They won, they succeeded,” says Barth Bazyluk, who left apartment C606 with his wife and baby daughter in December. “You have to be ignorant or dumb to think this wasn’t deliberate.”

This up-close look at one of the Kushner Cos.’ largest residential buildings in New York illustrates what critics describe as the firm’s sharp-elbowed business practices while it was run by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and eventual White House adviser Jared Kushner.

The Kushner Cos. told the AP that it didn’t harass any tenants to get them out. But the data suggest turnover at the building known as the Austin Nichols House was significantly higher than city averages for coveted rent-stabilized buildings, leaving behind a trail of anger, disrupted lives and a lawsuit to be filed Monday in which tenants say they were harassed and exposed to high levels of cancer-causing dust.

“We’ve looked into hundreds of rent-stabilized buildings and this is one of the worst we’ve ever seen,” says Aaron Carr, head of tenant watchdog Housing Rights Initiative, whose investigation led to the pending lawsuit. “The scale and speed of tenants leaving, the conditions to which they were exposed, provides a window into the Kushner Cos.’ predatory business model.”

In a statement, the Kushner Cos. acknowledged it received some complaints about construction during major renovations, which ended in December 2017, but said that it responded to them immediately and that “tremendous care was taken to prevent dust and inconvenience to tenants.”

It said many tenants moved out when their rent was increased to the maximum allowed under rent-stabilization rules.

Those rules limit the amount that landlords can hike rent each year to protect tenants from getting pushed out, though in this building the rents weren’t cheap, with one-bedrooms going for more than $3,000 a month.

Also, the city’s building department says it sent inspectors to the building dozens of times since 2015 and uncovered no evidence that construction rules were being violated, a finding that some residents say doesn’t square with their experiences.

The landmarked Austin Nichols House at 184 Kent Avenue, for decades a warehouse for groceries and Wild Turkey bourbon, was gutted by a previous owner in 2010 to create sleek apartments that took advantage of the building’s high ceilings and waterfront views.

When Jared Kushner and two partners bought it for $275 million in April 2015, they made it clear they wanted to convert the building’s 338 apartments — all of them rent-stabilized — into condos. All but nine were occupied, and other than maxing out the rent, developers had few tools if they wanted to get tenants out.

Just months after the purchase, the Kushners began extensive renovations, ripping out appliances, floors and countertops that had been installed five years before.

“There were consistently people in the hallway early, 8 or so, banging on things, taking down walls. There was lots of dust. … They had fans, and they were blowing dust under the doors,” says tech salesman Marcus Carvalho, who left the building in December after six years, deciding the $1,000 or so increase in rent to renew his lease wasn’t worth it. “I didn’t want to spend another minute in that construction zone.”

His 679-square-foot (63-square-meter), one-room apartment, B502, sold the next month for $800,000.

A few weeks after Carvalho left, the woman in C405 couldn’t take the noise anymore either.

“It’s like having a root canal without the physical pain. … It was drilling from every direction,” says Jane Coxwell, a chef who works late nights and writes at home during the day. “It was impossible to take a call. You could never sit and read a book or get any work done.”

Then came the rats, including one she accosted with a tennis racket as it teetered on a curtain rod in her bathroom. She also had to contend with a flood after workers hit a pipe in the unit above her and with the constant fear workers would burst into her apartment at any moment after two with passkeys tried to do just that, once while she was in her underwear.

Coxwell says she sent dozens of emails to Kushner managers for more than a year asking for help, but got little relief.

One particularly noisy day she finally broke down, walked up to a construction manager and worker standing near her door and found herself forcing the words out through tears.

“I understand you have to work, but I don’t know how to ask anymore,” she pleaded. “Please, please, can you keep it down?”

She says the men just laughed.

Much of the work was done in 2016, and then the Kushners went on a selling spree. In 2017 alone, the company sold 99 apartments in the building, according to Jared Kushner’s federal financial disclosure forms. Brokerage data show an additional 16 apartments sold by early March 2018. That same month Kushner Cos. had 151 vacant apartments in the building, according to a court document.

The Kushner Cos. refused to confirm the numbers.

At the height of the construction, tenants fought back with three dozen complaints to the city’s 311 hotline about work after hours, banging and pounding, falling debris and rodents.

After people complained about dust, Kushner Cos. put plastic sheeting around doorways, though many say it didn’t help much. And after they complained about workers entering their apartments without permission, the company eventually posted guards in hallways.

“The banner says ‘Luxury Waterfront Homes For Sale,'” says Jeff Werner, a banker who’s lived in the building for eight years. “It doesn’t advertise ‘Live in a Construction Zone with White Toxic Dust Blowing.'”

Dust samples taken from nine apartments in May by consultants Olmsted Environmental Services turned up dangerously high levels of lead and crystalline silica. Breathing in tiny silica particles has been linked to lung cancer, liver disease and an incurable swelling of the lungs.

A draft of the pending $10 million lawsuit alleges Kushner Cos. and its partners attempted to push tenants out by creating unlivable conditions with construction noise and dust in violation of state and city rules and laws. It also alleges the Kushners, by failing to take proper precautions, exposed residents to a “cloud of toxic smoke and dust.”

The Kushner Cos. disputed the findings of the environmental report, alleging it appeared to be an updated version of a report prepared several years ago. The company didn’t immediately respond when asked for comment about the lawsuit.

Ronan Conroy says he complained to the Kushners several times, walking down to the sales office once to confront management in person.

“Your strategy is to get people out, right?” Conroy recalls asking a staffer at the desk. He says the man basically shrugged, offered no dispute, then said, “We can let you out of your lease.”

Frustrated and facing a big rent hike, Conroy left in early 2016.

“My strong impression is they made the building as unlivable as possible so they could get everyone out of there.”

___

Burke reported from San Francisco. AP researchers Jennifer Farrar and Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.

Farmers Hit Hard by Trade, Immigration, Biofuel Policies

DES MOINES, Iowa—Even before the specter of a trade war with China and other countries threatened to cost them billions of dollars, American farmers were feeling the squeeze from fluctuating crop prices and other factors that have halved their overall income in recent years.

The threat of counter-tariffs on U.S. farm goods and the impact of President Donald Trump’s other policies on immigration and biofuels, though, have some farmers more worried than ever about their ability to continue eking out an existence in agriculture.

“No matter where you look in ag right now, you see storm clouds on the horizon and some of those are a lot closer overhead than we’d care for,” said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist with Iowa State University.

Trump’s tariff threats earlier this year against China, Mexico, Canada and European Union elicited quick retaliatory measures that depressed the prices of certain U.S. agricultural products, including corn, soybeans, pork. When $34 billion worth of tariffs against China took effect July 6 and China responded with tariffs of its own, U.S. farmers were already feeling the squeeze from lower crop prices, higher land prices and other factors.

The Department of Agriculture predicted before the threat of tariffs and counter-tariffs that U.S. farm income would drop this year to $60 billion, or half the $120 billion of five years ago. That projection is likely high, given what’s transpired since.

Don Bloss, who grows corn, soybeans, sorghum and wheat on his farm in the southeastern Nebraska community of Pawnee City, said he’s already seen a few neighbors quit farming as they struggled to make a profit even before the tariff battle began this year.

“They aren’t making money. One has said the banker is giving up on them,” said Bloss.

John Weber, who raises pigs and grows corn and soybeans with his son about 100 miles northeast of Des Moines, near Dysart, said many farmers’ budgets were already tight going into this growing season and the impact of tariffs has made it worse.

“Some were given the go-ahead for another year, but boy, you start looking at these lower prices and the extra costs that are out there now it gets tough. It just doesn’t work,” he said.

Per-bushel soybean prices have fallen 19 percent since early May to a 10-year low and corn is down more than 15 percent. At current prices, most farmers lose money on corn, soybeans and pigs.

U.S. pork producers stand to lose more than $2 billion per year because of plunging hog futures prices, the result of the Chinese retaliatory tariffs, according to Iowa State University economists’ projections.

“That means less income for pork producers and, ultimately, some of them going out of business,” said Jim Heimerl, a pig farmer from Johnstown, Ohio, and president of the National Pork Producers Council, an industry trade group.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has promised that Trump will restore farmer profitability but he hasn’t specified how and some economists are skeptical that the administration can come up with the billions of dollars necessary to cover losses.

“If this continues and the USDA does not discover a way to helicopter in and drop buckets of cash into the corn belt this fall, then I would not be surprised if there are tractor parades going to DC at some point in the next year,” said Scott Irwin, University of Illinois agricultural economist.

There’s no sign of a quick resolution to the trade dispute. The U.S. and China have threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs next week on $16 billion of each other’s goods. And on Tuesday, Trump announced plans to impose 10 percent tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports by the end of August. China said it would retaliate, leaving even more U.S. farm products at risk.

Meanwhile, Trump’s hardline immigration policies have been making it even harder to recruit workers for pork producers, who have historically relied on immigrants for a third of their workforce. The industry had been planning a rapid expansion due to growing export demand from China and Mexico, but the trade dispute and raids spring immigration raids on a Tennessee meatpacking plant and an Iowa concrete plant have worried pork producers.

“Skilled and unskilled foreign workers have been crucial to maintaining and growing the workforce and revitalizing rural communities across the United States. We need more of them, not less,” Heimerl said.

The Trump administration’s willingness to issue waivers exempting petroleum refineries from having to blend ethanol into their fuels has led to an estimated 250 million bushels of corn going unused, which contributed to lower corn prices.

“There’s potential here for this to turn into the worst farm financial crisis since the 1980s,” Irwin said.

Croatian Leader Says Trump, Putin Are Key to World’s Stability

MOSCOW—Croatia’s president hopes her American and Russian counterparts show “responsibility” and remember they are the guarantors of the whole world’s stability when they hold their first summit Monday.

In an interview Sunday with The Associated Press, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic also shrugged off U.S. President Donald Trump’s aggressive behavior with NATO allies at a meeting on Wednesday and Thursday.

“It’s about his personality. I don’t take it against him,” she said.

Grabar-Kitarovic, who lived through Croatia’s 1991 independence war and governs in a region that has been caught up in larger geopolitical battles, said Trump’s meeting Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin could calm international tensions instead of inflame them.

“I’m really hopeful that the two state leaders will show enough … responsibility for global stability and the trans-Atlantic relationship,” said Grabar-Kitarovic, who met Putin at the Kremlin on Sunday before her country’s team played in the World Cup final.

She expressed concern about Russian interference in southeast Europe, where Moscow has sought to use its economic influence and powerful energy sector to counter EU and NATO outreach.

But Grabar-Kitarovic insisted on the importance of talking to Russia instead of isolating it.

“We want to have a dialogue about common threats to our security,” she said. “We have to work together.”

Grabar-Kitarovic steered clear of sensitive issues, such as the pro-Ukrainian sentiment among some Croatian soccer players at the World Cup that has angered the tournament’s Russian hosts.

“Sports brings people together. People in all of our countries are tired of ideological differences, of going back into the past all the time,” she said.

Grabar-Kitarovic’s country of 4 million confounded expectations to make it to the World Cup final, and drew increasing support for its hard-working, underdog narrative as richer, higher-profile teams flamed out.

She noted that one reason the Russia-U.S. relationship is of “utmost importance” to her region and the broader world is so “we never ever see again” massacres like the ones carried out during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

From Montenegro and Serbia in the east and Slovenia in the west, Croatia’s neighbors were split over whether to support Croatia or France in the soccer tournament, reflecting the persisting rifts stemming from the 1990s conflict.

Grabar-Kitarovic used Croatia’s surprise success on the soccer field to raise her country’s profile, posing in a red-and-white checkered team jersey on social media posts at every opportunity — and giving a team T-shirt to Trump when they met at NATO last week.

She expressed empathy for Trump’s assailing European allies at the Brussels summit for not spending enough on weapons and their own defense.

“Certainly, it’s not fair that the United States is carrying the burden for the defense of Europe,” Grabar-Kitarovic said. “We’re first and foremost responsible for our own security.”