Chris Hedges's Blog, page 533

Trump Claims Germany ‘Controlled’ by Russia, Merkel Differs

BRUSSELS — President Donald Trump barreled into a NATO summit Wednesday with claims that a pipeline deal has left Germany “totally controlled” and “captive to Russia” as he lobbed fresh complaints about allies’ “delinquent” defense spending at the opening of what was expected to be a fraught two-day meeting.

Trump, in a testy exchange with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, took issue with the U.S. protecting Germany as it strikes deals with Russia.

“I have to say, I think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia,” Trump said at a breakfast with Stoltenberg. “We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but they’re paying billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate.”

Trump repeatedly described Germany as “captive to Russia” and urged NATO to look into the issue.

Drawing on her own background, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back sharply, insisting that Germany makes its own decisions.

“I’ve experienced myself a part of Germany controlled by the Soviet Union and I’m very happy today that we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany and can thus say that we can determine our own policies and make our own decisions and that’s very good,” she said.

The president appeared to be referring to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring gas from Russia to Germany’s northeastern Baltic coast, bypassing Eastern European nations like Poland and Ukraine and doubling the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany. The vast undersea pipeline is opposed by the U.S. and some other EU members, who warn it could give Moscow greater leverage over Western Europe.

In their back-and-forth, Stoltenberg stressed to Trump that NATO members have been able to work together despite their differences. “I think that two world wars and the Cold War taught us that we are stronger together than apart,” he told the president, trying to calm tensions.

Trump’s pipeline criticism was an unusual line of attack for a president who has appeared eager to improve relations with Putin and dismissed the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia tried to undermine Western democracy by meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help Trump win.

Back in the U.S., Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement describing Trump’s “brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany,” as “an embarrassment.”

“His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signal that the president is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies,” they wrote.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch also took issue with Trump, saying “I don’t agree with that. Germans wouldn’t agree with that. They are a very strong people.”

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, told CNN that Trump’s complaining about NATO was “like turning a family squabble into divorce proceedings.” He said the pipeline arrangement goes back to 2002 “when everybody viewed Russia in a benign way.”

“Now is not the time” to be alienating allies, he said.

But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, a strong supporter of the president, said the pipeline issue strikes at the “heart of NATO unity.”

“The pipeline gets cheap Russian gas to Germany while bypassing smaller Eastern European nations, allowing Russia to pressure them while Germany is held harmless,” he tweeted, adding: “No amount of preening in Berlin will cover this nakedly selfish policy.”

Despite Trump’s claims about Germany, Merkel served as a forceful advocate for imposing — and maintaining — sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea in 2014, arguing that it violated the principles of the international order established after World War II. The president is also not the first leader to point to the impact of Nord Stream 2 on Europe, echoing complaints from Eastern European allies who note it would cut out transit countries such as Poland and Ukraine.

Trump and Merkel met later Wednesday on the sidelines of the summit and kept their remarks polite during a photo opportunity with the press.

Trump told reporters during brief remarks at the end of the meeting that the two had a “very, very good relationship” and congratulated Merkel on her “tremendous success.” Asked if they had discussed the pipeline, he said, “Yes,” but declined to elaborate.

Merkel, for her part, called the two nations “good partners” and said “we wish to continue to cooperate in the future.”

Trump then met with French President Emmanuel Macron, who said he disagreed with Trump’s pipeline assessment.

Trump’s dramatic exchange with Stoltenberg set the tone for what was already expected to be a tense day of meetings with leaders of the military alliance as Trump presses jittery NATO allies about their military spending.

“The United States is paying far too much and other countries are not paying enough, especially some. So we’re going to have a meeting on that,” Trump said, describing the situation as “disproportionate and not fair to the taxpayers of the United States.”

“They will spend more,” he later predicted. “I have great confidence they’ll be spending more.”

Trump has been pushing NATO members to reach their agreed-to target of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic products on national defense by 2024 and has accused those who don’t of freeloading off the U.S.

“Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2% (which is low), but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made,” he tweeted Tuesday en route to Europe, asking: “Will they reimburse the U.S.?”

That’s not how the spending works. Two percent represents the amount each country aims to spend on its own defense, not some kind of direct payment to NATO or the U.S.

NATO estimates that 15 members, or just over half, will meet the benchmark by 2024 based on current trends.

During his campaign, Trump called NATO “obsolete” and suggested the U.S. might not come to the defense of members if they found themselves under attack — a shift that would represent a fundamental realignment of the modern world order. He also called Brussels a “hell hole” and “a mess.” Trump has moderated his language somewhat since taking office, but has continued to dwell on the issue, even as many NATO members have agreed to up their spending.

Stoltenberg, for his part, credited Trump for spurring NATO nations to spend more on defense.

“We all agree that we have to do more,” he said, describing last year as marking the biggest increase in defense spending across Europe and Canada in a generation.

Trump also took credit for the spending, telling the NATO chief that “because of me they’ve raised about $40 billion over the last year. So I think the secretary-general likes Trump. He may be the only one, but that’s OK with me.”

Brussels is the first leg of a weeklong European tour that will include stops in London and Scotland, as well as a highly anticipated meeting next week with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Trump predicted as he departed Washington that the “easiest” leg of the journey would be the sit-down with Putin — a comment that did little to reassure allies fretting over his potential embrace of a Russian leader they regard as hostile.

On the eve of the NATO summit, European Council President Donald Tusk pushed back against Trump’s constant criticism of European allies and urged him to remember who his friends are when he meets with Putin in Helsinki.

“Dear America, appreciate your allies, after all you don’t have all that many,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller in Washington and Maria Danilova in Moscow contributed to this report.

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Follow Colvin and Lemire on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj and https://twitter.com/JonLemire

Medical Experts Worry About Testing DNA to Reunite Families

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration’s use of DNA testing to match migrant children separated from their parents is justifiable as a last resort, medical experts say, but raises a host of ethical problems.

That includes the risk of damaging the family fabric by revealing that an adult thought to be the biological parent really is not.

A federal judge in California on Tuesday said DNA testing should be limited to cases in which the parent-child relationship can’t be established through documents such as birth certificates and passports.

The government had argued that DNA testing is faster than authenticating documents, and protects children—especially the youngest—from being handed to someone who may not be their biological parent.

Officials said testing on 102 migrant children under 5 years old revealed five cases in which adults claiming to be the parent actually were not, including two in which the results came as a surprise to the adults.

Ethicists say that’s just one situation where problems arise.

DNA testing “is one of the few tools to fix this miserable mess,” said Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine. “But it would be the height of irresponsibility to do it without competent counselors used to dealing with these kinds of genetic discoveries.”

Thomas Murray, president emeritus of the Hastings Center, said “misattributed” fatherhood, and even motherhood, is more common than most people realize.

DNA testing is ideal for determining biological parenthood, but “a direct genetic tie is not the only—or even in all cases the best way—of determining who is genuinely in caring parental relationship with a child,” Murray said. The Hastings Center is a bioethics research institute.

“This could actually hurt the child,” Murray added.

Nothing could be further from the government’s intent, said Chris Meekins, a senior Health and Human Services Department official helping to oversee the court-ordered reunification of more than 2,000 children separated from their parents at the border.

Not only is DNA testing fast, taking about a week, but Meekins said it also protects children from being returned to someone who may not be their parent, and could do them harm. Background checks on parents in immigration custody have turned up eight cases of people with serious criminal violations, and one credible allegation of child abuse, he said.

“HHS could have transferred every child out of their care to a parent currently in (immigration) custody if we did not take into account child safety,” said Meekins.

“Our process may not be as quick as some would like, but there is no question it is protecting children,” Meekins added.

But U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego said Tuesday the practice should be curtailed.

The judge said DNA testing needed to be done only when parent-child relationships can’t be proven through birth certificates or other ways, casting aside the government’s position that all parents and children should be tested.

Sabraw, who ordered the reunification of families, said the government can use DNA testing but solely when necessary and with parental consent. Samples should be destroyed in seven days and not used for any other purpose.

Ethicists say the government’s DNA testing also raises questions of privacy, informed consent and whether counseling is provided to families when the tests reveal unexpected results.

“Non-paternity problems can play out in all kinds of ways,” said Caplan. Kids “may say, ‘You’re not my dad, but I want to find out who is my dad.'”

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said DNA testing in every case simply is not needed. What about adoptive parents, he asked?

“The DNA is not conclusive,” he said.

Seattle lawyer Janet Gwilym, who has long worked with refugees, said it’s not that unusual to find an adult caring for a child who is not theirs.

“In the chaos of war or unpredictable situations, other people will take a child in and raise them as their own,” said Gwilym, with Kids in Need of Defense.

She recalled a married couple from Ethiopia, whom she’d represented years ago. They took in and raised an infant, but when they became refugees they could not prove legal parentage, so the family was separated. Among the complications: The building where they’d tried to register legal papers burned down.

Gwilym said it took about a year of legal work to reunite that family.

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Spagat reported from San Diego.

U.S. Proposes Tariffs on $200 Billion More in Chinese Imports

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is readying tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, ranging from burglar alarms to mackerel, escalating a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative proposed 10 percent tariffs Tuesday on a list of 6,031 Chinese product lines.

The office will accept public comments and hold hearings on the plan Aug. 20-23 before reaching a decision after Aug. 31, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Last Friday, the U.S. imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese products, and Beijing responded by hitting the same amount of U.S. imports.

The administration said the new levies are a response to China’s decision to retaliate against the first round of U.S. tariffs.

President Donald Trump has threatened to tax as much as $550 billion in Chinese products—an amount that exceeds America’s total imports from China last year.

The United States complains that China uses predatory practices in a push to challenge American technological dominance. Chinese tactics, the administration says, include outright cybertheft and forcing U.S. companies to hand over technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.

The initial U.S. tariff list focused on Chinese industrial products in an attempt to limit the impact on American consumers. By expanding the list, the administration is beginning to hit products that U.S. households buy, including such things as electric lamps and fish sticks.

“Tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products amounts to another multibillion-dollar tax on American businesses and families,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade lawyer and senior policy analyst for the group Republicans Fighting Tariffs. “Given China’s likelihood of retaliation, it’s also billions worth of new tariffs on American exporters.”

Members of Congress are increasingly questioning Trump’s aggressive trade policies, warning that tariffs on imports raise prices for consumers and expose U.S. farmers and manufacturers to retaliation abroad.

“Tonight’s announcement appears reckless and is not a targeted approach,” Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement. “We cannot turn a blind eye to China’s mercantilist trade practices, but this action falls short of a strategy that will give the administration negotiating leverage with China while maintaining the long-term health and prosperity of the American economy.”

What Is Really Happening in Nicaragua?

There is a great deal of false and inaccurate information about Nicaragua in the media. Even on the left, some have simply repeated the dubious claims of CNN and Nicaragua’s oligarchic media to support the removal of President Ortega. The narrative of nonviolent protesters versus anti-riot squads and pro-government paramilitaries has not been questioned by international media.

This article seeks to correct the record, describe what is happening in Nicaragua and why. As we write this, the coup seems to be failing, people have rallied for peace (as this massive march for peace held Saturday, July 7, showed) and the truth is coming out (e.g., the weapons cache discovered in a Catholic Church on Tuesday, July 9). It is important to understand what is occurring because Nicaragua’s is an example of the types of violent coups the U.S. and the wealthy use to put in place business dominated, neoliberal governments. If people understand these tactics, they will become less effective.

Mixing Up the Class Interests

In part, U.S. pundits are getting their information from media outlets, such as Jaime Chamorro-Cardenal’s La Prensa, and the same oligarchical family’s Confidencial, that are the most active elements of the pro-coup media. Repeating and amplifying their narrative delegitimizes the Sandinista government and presents unconditional surrender by Daniel Ortega as the only acceptable option. These pundits provide cover for nefarious internal and external interests who have set their sights on controlling Central America’s poorest and yet resource-rich country.

The coup attempt brought the class divisions in Nicaragua into the open. Piero Coen, the richest man in Nicaragua, owner of all national Western Union operations and an agrochemical company, personally arrived on the first day of protests at the Polytechnical University in Managua, to encourage students to keep protesting, promising his continued support.

The traditional landed oligarchy of Nicaragua, politically led by the Chamorro family, publishes constant ultimatums to the government through its media outlets and finances the roadblocks that have paralyzed the country for the last eight weeks.

The Catholic Church, long allied with the oligarchs, has put its full weight behind creating and sustaining anti-government actions, including its universities, high schools, churches, bank accounts, vehicles, tweets, Sunday sermons and a one-sided effort to mediate the National Dialogue. Bishops have made death threats against the President and his family, and a priest has been filmed supervising the torture of Sandinistas. Pope Francis has called for a peace dialogue, and even called Cardinal Leonaldo Brenes and Bishop Rolando Alvarez to a private meeting in the Vatican, setting off rumors that the Nicaraguan monseñores were being scolded for their obvious involvement in the conflict they are officially mediating.  The church remains one of the few pillars keeping the coup alive.

A common claim is Ortega has cozied up to the traditional oligarchy, but the opposite is true. This is the first government since Nicaraguan independence that does not include the oligarchy. Since the 1830s through the 1990s, all Nicaraguan governments– even during the Sandinista Revolution– included people from the elite “last names,” of Chamorro, Cardenal, Belli, Pellas, Lacayo, Montealegre, Gurdián. The government since 2007 does not, which is why these families are supporting the coup.

Ortega detractors claim his three-part dialogue including labor unions, capitalists, and the State is an alliance with big business. In fact, that process has yielded the highest growth rate in Central America and annual minimum wage increases 5 percent to 7 percent above inflation, improving workers’ living conditions and lifting people out of poverty. The anti-poverty Borgen project reports poverty fell by 30 percent from 2005 to 2014.

The FSLN-led government has put into place an economic model based on public investment and strengthening the safety net for the poor. The government invests in infrastructure, transit, maintains water and electricity within the public sector and moved privatized services. e.g., health care and primary education into the public sector. This has ensured a stable economic structure that favors the real economy over the speculative economy. The lion’s share of infrastructure in Nicaragua has been built in the last 11 years, something comparable to the New Deal-era in the U.S., including renewable electricity plants across the country.

What liberal and even leftists commentators overlook is that unlike the Lula government in Brazil, which reduced poverty through cash payouts to poor families, Nicaragua has redistributed productive capital in order to develop a self-sufficient popular economy. The FSLN model is better understood as an emphasis on the popular economy over the State or capitalist spheres.

While the private sector employs about 15% of Nicaraguan workers, the informal sector employs over 60 percent. The informal sector has benefitted from $400 million in public investments, much of it coming from the ALBA alliance funds to finance micro loans for small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises. Policies to facilitate credit, equipment, training, animals, seeds and subsidized fuel further support these enterprises. The small and medium producers of Nicaragua have led the country to produce 80 percent to 90 percent of its food and end its dependence on IMF loans.

As such, workers and peasants– many of whom are self-employed and who accessed productive capital through the Sandinista Revolution and ensuing struggles– represent an important political subject of the stable, postwar social development of the last decade, including the hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers who have received land title and the nearly one-quarter of the national territory that has been given collective title as territory of indigenous nations. The social movements of workers, peasants, and indigenous groups were the base of popular support that brought the FSLN back into power.

Land titling and assistance to small businesses have also emphasized equality for women, resulting in Nicaragua having the lowest level of gender inequality in Latin America and ranked 12 out of 145 countries in the world, just behind Germany.

Over time, the FSLN government has incorporated this massive self-employed sector, as well as maquiladora workers (i.e. textile workers in foreign-owned plants located in free trade zones created by previous neoliberal governments), into the health care and pension system, causing the financial commitments to grow which required a new formula to ensure fiscal stability. The proposed reforms to Social Security were the trigger for the private sector and student protests on April 18. The business lobby called for the protests when Ortega proposed increasing employer contributions by 3.5 percent to pension and health funds, while only slightly increasing worker contributions by 0.75 percent and shifting 5 percent of pensioners’ cash transfer into their health care fund. The reform also ended a loophole which allowed high-income individuals to claim a low income in order to access health benefits.

This was a counterproposal to the IMF proposal to raise the retirement age and more than double the number of weeks that workers would need to pay into the pension fund in order to access benefits. The fact the government felt strong enough to deny the IMF and business lobby’s austerity demands was a sign that the bargaining strength of private capital has declined, as Nicaragua’s impressive economic growth, a 38 percent increase in GDP from 2006-17, has been led by small-scale producers and public spending. However, the opposition used manipulative Facebook ads presenting the reform as an austerity measure, plus fake news of a student death on April 18th, to generate protests across the country on April 19th. Immediately, the regime change machine lurched into motion.

The National Dialogue shows the class interests in conflict. The opposition’s Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy has as its key figures: José Adan Aguirre, leader of the private business lobby; Maria Nelly Rivas, director of Cargill in Nicaragua and head of the US-Nicaragua Chamber of Commerce; the private university students of the April 19th Movement; Michael Healy, manager of a Colombian sugar corporation and head of the agribusiness lobby; Juan Sebastian Chamorro, who represents the oligarchy dressed as civil society; Carlos Tunnermann, 85-year-old ex-Sandinista minister and ex-chancellor of the National University; Azalea Solis, head of a US government-funded feminist organization; and Medardo Mairena, a “peasant leader” funded by the US government, who lived 17 years in Costa Rica before being deported in 2017 for human trafficking. Tunnermann, Solis and the April 19th students are all associated with the Movement for Renovation of Sandinismo (MRS), a tiny Sandinista offshoot party that nonetheless merits special attention.

In the 1980s, many of the Sandinista Front’s top-level cadre were, in fact, the children of some of the famous oligarchic families, such as the Cardenal brothers and part of the Chamorro family, in charge of the revolutionary government’s ministries of Culture and Education and its media, respectively. After FSLN’s election loss in 1990, the children of the oligarchy staged an exodus from the party. Along with them, some of the most notable intellectual, military and intelligence cadre left and formed, over time, the MRS. The new party renounced socialism, blamed all of the mistakes of the Revolution on Daniel Ortega and over time took over the sphere of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Nicaragua, including feminist, environmentalist, youth, media and human rights organizations.

Since 2007, the MRS has become increasingly close with the extreme right-wing of the U.S. Republican Party. Since the outbreak of violence in April, many if not most of the sources cited by Western media (including, disturbingly, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!), come from this party, which has the support of less than 2 percent of the Nicaraguan electorate. This allows the oligarchs to couch their violent attempt to reinstall neoliberalism in a leftist-sounding discourse of former Sandinistas critical of the Ortega government.

It is a farce to claim that workers and peasants are behind the unrest. La Vía Campesina, the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers, the Association of Rural Workers, the National Workers’ Front, the indigenous Mayangna Nation and other movements and organizations have been unequivocal in their demands for an end to the violence and their support for the Ortega government. This unrest is a full-scale regime change operation carried out by media oligarchs, a network of NGOs funded by the U.S. government, armed elements of elite landholding families and the Catholic Church, and has opened the window for drug cartels and organized crime to gain a foothold in Nicaragua.

The Elephant in the Room

Which brings us to U.S. government involvement in the violent coup.

As Tom Ricker reported early in this political crisis, several years ago the U.S. government decided that rather than finance opposition political parties, which have lost enormous legitimacy in Nicaragua, it would finance the NGO civil society sector. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) gave more than $700,000 to build the opposition to the government in 2017, and has granted more than $4.4 million since 2014. The overarching purpose of this funding was to “provide a coordinated strategy and media voice for opposition groups in Nicaragua.” Ricker continues:

“The result of this consistent building and funding of opposition resources has been to create an echo chamber that is amplified by commentators in the international media – most of whom have no presence in Nicaragua and rely on these secondary sources.”

NED founding father, Allen Weinstein, described NED as the overt CIA, saying, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” In Nicaragua, rather than the traditional right-wing, NED funds the MRS-affiliated organizations which pose left-sounding critiques of the Sandinista government. The regime change activists use Sandinista slogans, songs, and symbols even as they burn historic monuments, paint over the red-and-black markers of fallen martyrs, and physically attack members of the Sandinista party.

Of the opposition groups in the National Dialogue, the feminist organization of Azalea Solis and the peasant organization of Medardo Mairena are financed through NED grants, while the April 19 students stay in hotels and make trips paid for by Freedom House, another regime change organ funded by NED and USAID. NED also finances Confidencial, the Chamorro media organization. Grants from NED finance the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP), whose Executive Director, Felix Maradiaga, is another MRS cadre very close to the US Embassy. In June, Maradiaga was accused of leading a criminal network called Viper which, from the occupied UPOLI campus, organized carjackings, arsons and murders in order to create chaos and panic during the months of April and May.

Maradiaga grew up in the United States and became a fellow of the Aspen Leadership Institute, before studying public policy at Harvard. He was a secretary in the Ministry of Defense for the last liberal president, Enrique Bolaños. He is a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum and in 2015, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs gave him the Gus Hart Fellowship, past recipients of which include Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez and Henrique Capriles Radonski, the Venezuelan opposition leader who attacked the Cuban embassy during the coup attempt of 2002.

Remarkably, Maradiaga is not the only leader of the coup attempt who is part of the Aspen World Leadership Network. Maria Nelly Rivas, director in Nicaragua of US corporate giant Cargill, is one of the main spokespersons for the opposition Civic Alliance. Rivas, who currently also heads the US-Nicaragua Chamber of Commerce, is being groomed as a possible presidential candidate in the next elections. Beneath these U.S.-groomed leaders, there is a network of over 2,000 young people who have received training with NED funds on topics such as social media skills for democracy defense. This battalion of social media warriors was able to immediately shape and control public opinion in Facebook in the five days from April 18 to 22, leading to spontaneous violent protests across the country.

On the Violence

One of the ways in which reporting on Nicaragua has ventured farthest from the truth is calling the opposition “nonviolent.” The violence script, modeled on the 2014 and 2017 guarimba protests in Venezuela, is to organize armed attacks on government buildings, entice the police to send in anti-riot squads, engage in filmed confrontations and publish edited footage online claiming that the government is being violent against nonviolent protesters.

Over 60 government buildings have been burned down, schools, hospitals, health centers attacked, 55 ambulances damaged, at least $112 million in infrastructure damage, small businesses have been closed, and 200,000 jobs lost causing devastating economic impact during the protests. Violence has included, in addition to thousands of injuries, 15 students and 16 police officers killed, as well as over 200 Sandinistas kidnapped, many of them publicly tortured. Violent opposition atrocities were misreported as government repression. While it is important to defend the right of the public to protest, regardless of its political opinions, it is disingenuous to ignore that the opposition’s strategy requires and feeds upon violence and deaths.

National and international news claim deaths and injuries due to “repression” without explaining the context. The Molotov cocktails, mortar-launchers, pistols, and assault rifles used by opposition groups are ignored by the media, and when Sandinista sympathizers, police or passers-by are killed, they are falsely counted as victims of state repression. Explosive opposition claims like massacres of children and murders of women have been shown to be false, and the cases of torture, disappearances and extrajudicial executions by police forces have not been corroborated by evidence or due process.

While there is evidence to support the opposition claim of sniper fire killing protesters, there is no logical explanation for the State using snipers to add to the death toll, and counter-protesters have also been victims of sniper fire, suggesting a “third party” provocateur role in the destabilizing violence. When an entire Sandinista family was burned to death in Managua, the opposition media all cited a witness who claimed that the police had set fire to the home, despite the house being in a neighborhood barricaded off from police access.

The National Police of Nicaragua has been long-recognized for its model of community policing (in contrast to militarized police in most Central American countries), its relative lack of corruption, and its mostly female top brass. The coup strategy has sought to destroy public trust in the police through the egregious use of fake news, such as the many false claims of assassinations, beatings, torture, and disappearances in the week from April 17th to 23rd. Several young people whose photos were carried in opposition rallies as victims of police violence have turned out to be alive and well.

The police have been wholly inadequate and underprepared for armed confrontations. Attacks on several public buildings on the same night and the first major arson attacks led government workers to hold vigils with barrels of water and, often, sticks and stones, to fend off attackers. The opposition, frustrated at not achieving more police conflicts, began to build roadblocks across the country and burning the homes of Sandinistas, even shooting and burning Sandinista families in atrocious hate crimes. In contrast to La Prensa’s version of events, Nicaraguans have felt the distinct lack of police presence, and the loss of safety in their neighborhoods, while many were targeted by violence.

Since May, the strategy of the opposition has been to build armed roadblocks across the country, closing off transport and trapping people. The roadblocks, usually built with large paving stones, are manned by between 5 and 100 armed men with bandannas or masks. While the media reports on idealistic young people running roadblocks, the vast majority of roadblocks are maintained by paid men who come from a background of petty crime. Where large areas of cities and towns are blocked off from government and police forces, drug-related activities intensify, and drug gangs now control many of the roadblocks and pay the salaries.

These roadblocks have been the centers of violence, workers who need to pass through roadblocks are often robbed, punched, insulted, and, if suspected of being Sandinistas, tied up, stripped naked, tortured, painted in blue-and-white, and sometimes killed. There are three cases of people dying in ambulances unable to pass roadblocks, and one case of a 10-year-old girl being kidnapped and raped at the roadblock in Las Maderas. When organized neighbors or the police clear roadblocks, the armed groups run away and regroup to burn buildings, kidnap or injure people in revenge. All of the victims that this violence produces are counted by the mainstream media as victims of repression, a total falsehood.

The Nicaraguan government has confronted this situation by largely keeping police off the streets, to prevent encounters and accusations of repression. At the same time, rather than simply arrest violent protestors, which certainly would have given the opposition the battle deaths it craves, the government called for a National Dialogue, mediated by the Catholic Church, in which the opposition can bring forward any proposal for human rights and political reform. The government created a parliamentary Truth and Peace Commission and launched an independent Public Ministry query.

With the police out of the streets, opposition violence intensified throughout May and June. As a result, a process of neighborhood self-defense developed. Families who have been displaced, young people who have been beaten, robbed or tortured, and veterans of the 1979 insurrection and/or the Contra War, hold vigil around the Sandinista Front headquarters in each town. In many places, they built barricades against opposition attacks and have been falsely labeled paramilitary forces in the media. In the towns that do not have such community-organized barricades, the human toll from opposition violence is much greater. The National Union of Nicaraguan Students has been particularly targeted by opposition violence. A student delegate of the National Dialogue, Leonel Morales, was kidnapped, shot in the abdomen and thrown into a ditch to die in June, to sabotage the dialogue and punish him for challenging the April 19th students’ right to speak on behalf of all Nicaraguan students.

There have been four major opposition rallies since April, directed toward mobilizing the upper-middle class Nicaraguans who live in the suburbs between Managua and Masaya. These rallies featured a whos-who of high society, including beauty queens, business owners, and oligarchs, as well as university students of the April 19th Movement, the moral high-ground for the opposition.

Three months into the conflict, none of the mortal victims have been bourgeois. All have come from the popular classes of Nicaragua. Despite claims of total repression, the bourgeois feels perfectly safe to participate in public protests by day — although the last daytime rally ended in a chaotic attack by protesters against squatters on a property of, curiously enough, Piero Coen, Nicaragua’s richest man. The nighttime armed attacks have generally been carried out by people who come from poor neighborhoods, many of whom are paid two to four times the minimum daily wage for each night of destruction.

Unfortunately, most Nicaraguan human rights organizations are funded by NED and controlled by the Movement for Sandinista Renovation. These organizations have accused the Nicaraguan government of dictatorship and genocide throughout Ortega’s presidency. International human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have been criticized for their one-sided reports, which include none of the information provided by the government or individuals who identify as Sandinistas.

The government invited the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, a Washington-based entity notoriously unfriendly to leftist governments, to investigate the violent events of April and determine whether repression had occurred. The night of a controversial skirmish in the highway outside the Agrarian University in Managua ended a negotiated 48-hour truce, IACHR Director Paulo Abrao visited the site to declare his support for the opposition. The IACHR ignored the opposition’s widespread violence and only reported on the defensive violence of the government. Not only was it categorically rejected by Nicaraguan chancellor Denis Moncada as an “insult to the dignity of the Nicaraguan people,” a resolution approving the IACHR reportwas supported by only ten out of 34 countries.

Meanwhile, the April 19th Movement, made up of current or former university students in favor of regime change, sent a delegation to Washington and managed to alienate much of Nicaraguan society by grinning into the camera with far-right interventionist members of the U.S. Congress, including Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz. M19 leaders also cheered Vice President Mike Pence’s bellicose warnings that Nicaragua is on the short list of countries that will soon know the Trump Administration’s meaning of freedom, and met with the ARENA party of El Salvador, known for its links to the death squads that murdered liberation theologist Archbishop Oscar Romero. Within Nicaragua, the critical mass of students stopped demonstrating weeks ago, the large civic protests of April and May have dwindled, and the same-old familiar faces of Nicaraguan right-wing politics are left holding the bill for massive material damage and loss of life.

Why Nicaragua?

Ortega won his third term in 2016 with 72.4 percent of the vote with 66 percent turnout, very high compared to U.S. elections. Not only has Nicaragua put in place an economy that treats the poor as producers, with remarkable results raising their standard of living in 10 years, but it also has a government that consistently rejects U.S. imperialism, allying with Cuba, Venezuela, and Palestine, and voices support for Puerto Rican independence and a peaceful solution to Korean crisis. Nicaragua is a member of member of Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a Latin American alternative to the OAS, neither include the US or Canada. It has also allied with China for a proposed canal project and Russia for security cooperation. For all of these reasons, the US wants to install a U.S.-friendly Nicaraguan government.

More important is the example Nicaragua has set for a successful social and economic model outside the U.S. sphere of domination. Generating over 75 percent of its energy from renewable sources, Nicaragua was the only country with the moral authority to oppose the Paris Climate Agreement as being too weak  (it later joined the treaty one day after Trump pulled the U.S. out, stating “we opposed the Paris agreement out of responsibility, the U.S. opposes it out of irresponsibility”). The FMLN government of El Salvador, while less politically dominant than the Sandinista Front, has taken the example of good governance from Nicaragua, recently prohibiting mining and the privatization of water. Even Honduras, the eternal bastion of US power in Central America, showed signs of a leftward shift until the U.S.-supported military coup in 2009. Since then, there has been massive repression of social activists, a clearly stolen 2017 election, and Honduras has permitted the expansion of US military bases near the Nicaraguan border.

In 2017, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act (NICA Act), which if passed by the Senate will force the US government to veto loans from international institutions to the Nicaraguan government. This U.S. imperialism will cripple Nicaragua’s ability to build roads, update hospitals, construct renewable energy plants, and transition from extensive livestock raising to integrated animal-forestry systems, among other consequences. It may also signify the end of many popular social programs, such as subsidized electricity, stable bus fares, and free medical treatment of chronic diseases.

The US Executive Branch has used the Global Magnitsky Act to target the finances of leaders of the Electoral Supreme Court, the National Police, the city government of Managua and the ALBA corporation in Nicaragua. Police officers and public health bureaucrats have been told their US visas have been revoked. The point, of course, is not whether these officials have or have not committed acts that merit their reprimand in Nicaragua, but whether the US government should have the jurisdiction to intimidate and corner public officials of Nicaragua.

While the sadistic violence continues, the strategy of the coup-mongers to force out the government has failed. The resolution of the political crisis will come through elections, and the FSLN is likely to win those elections, barring a dramatic and unlikely new offensive by the right-wing opposition.

An Upside-Down Class War

It is important to understand the nature of U.S. and oligarch coups in this era and the role of media and NGO deception because it is repeated in multiple Latin American and other countries. We can expect a similar attack on recently elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico if he seeks the changes he has promised.

The US has sought to dominate Nicaragua since the mid-1800s. The wealthy in Nicaragua have sought the return of US-allied governance since the Sandinistas rose to power. This failing coup does not mean the end of their efforts or the end of corporate media misinformation. Knowing what is really occurring and sharing that information is the antidote to defeating them in Nicaragua and around the world.

Nicaragua is a class war turned upside down. The government has raised the living standards of the impoverished majority through wealth redistribution. Oligarchs and the United States, unable to install neoliberalism through elections, created a political crisis, highlighted by false media coverage to force Ortega to resign. The coup is failing, the truth is coming out, and should not be forgotten.

‘Bad’ Jobs Don’t Have to Be That Way

So many policy proposals aimed at reducing economic inequality emphasize moving disadvantaged people into higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs, typically with more access to education and training.

We do need to invest far more in expanding opportunity for fellow citizens who have lost all hope for advancement, but there is a flaw in this thinking, as Steven Dawson argues in “Make Bad Jobs Better,” a compendium of his recent work published earlier this year by the Pinkerton Foundation. If we define success “solely as securing a middle-class job,” he writes, “then we will limit ourselves to helping only a narrow segment of low-income workers improve their lives.”

Dawson focuses on the tens of millions of Americans who do very necessary work in our society and receive little reward for their efforts. He challenges the idea that “bad jobs” are destined to be bad forever, and that little can be done to enhance them.

Consider that we mourn the decline of auto, steel and other manufacturing jobs that were seen in the past as at least as “bad” as the retail and service occupations of the new American working class. It took unions working to raise pay and benefits and social legislation limiting hours and protecting worker safety to make old economy blue-collar jobs “good.”

The lesson is that what constitutes good work is a matter of social and political decision-making—and choices by employers to see their workers as assets and not merely as costs.

Dawson is a pioneer in doing what he recommends. At the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, he helped create employee-owned cooperatives of home health care workers, thereby converting what were once poorly paid jobs into pathways to independence, entrepreneurship and respect.

Dawson is scathing about the way our employment markets treat large numbers of very hard-working people. “A bad job is not simply the absence of a good job,” he writes. “A bad job destabilizes the individual, her family and the community. A bad job not only fails to pay enough for decent food and shelter for a worker’s family, it can risk her health, disrupt any chance for a predictable family life, undermine her dignity, and deny her voice within the workplace.”

He notes that “the occupations that employ the largest numbers of low-income youth and adult workers … experienced higher than average real wage declines” in the years after the Great Recession. The pay drops were especially large for workers in retail, personal care and food preparation.

For many who find themselves at the bottom of the economy, the bane of their lives is instability: wage theft, part-time work, seasonal work, variable hours, and unpredictable schedules—the problem of “not knowing when you will be called to show up to your next part-time shift.” Low-wage jobs are also among the least safe.

Public policy has a role to play in making jobs better, starting with higher minimum wages, income supplements such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, universal family leave and health coverage for everyone. We should be building on the Affordable Care Act, not gutting it.

And many low-income jobs are supported indirectly by government money (Medicaid especially), so public programs should be consciously geared not just to providing essential services but also to offering platforms for the improvement of work life itself, for enriched training, and for more worker voice. These can, in turn, raise the standard of the services.

Dawson looks as well to private-sector employers as part of the solution. Especially when labor markets are tight, employers have an interest in satisfied, engaged and well-trained workers who welcome responsibility. This is one reason why the Federal Reserve should be wary of steps that would increase unemployment.

In another useful paper, “Restore the Promise of Work,” Dawson joins the Aspen Institute’s Maureen Conway to call for lifting up “high-road employers” who “offer concrete examples of how good jobs can be beneficial to all.” Tax policy can encourage high-road practices, and Conway and Dawson note that when governments contract for private-sector services, job quality should be part of the negotiations.

We should not allow the melodramas of the Trump presidency to overshadow the problems we need to solve or distract us from the reforms and innovations that could change the lives of a great many struggling people.

Dawson writes that “fear and insecurity will remain, and deepen, unless having a job once again means securing stability, dignity and self-worth for ourselves and our families.” When it comes to job quality, we need to get to work.

Judge Puts Blame on Trump, Congress for Immigration Crisis

LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration’s failed attempt to detain migrant families together indefinitely ran into a formidable obstacle in a judge whose upbringing was shaped as the daughter of immigrants and who previously rejected requests to allow the government to lock up children with their parents.

Judge Dolly Gee, the first Chinese-American woman appointed to the U.S. District Court, has joked that her mother was her first pro bono client because she had to translate for her at medical appointments and help her apply for jobs as a seamstress when she was just a girl.

“She in many ways inspired my desire to go to law school,” Gee said in a video produced by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. “I saw firsthand the difficulties she encountered as a non-English speaker and also as a garment worker. And I saw many of the abuses that take place in the workplace, and I decided at a fairly early age that I wanted to do some type of work that would address some of the inequities I saw as a child.”

On Monday, Gee rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to detain immigrant families in long-term facilities, calling it a “cynical attempt” to undo a longstanding court settlement.

The U.S. Justice Department said it disagreed with the ruling and was reviewing it further.

Gee, 59, worked for years as a labor lawyer and arbitrator before applying to be a judge in what she saw as a chance to diversify the court.

President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1999, but the GOP-controlled Senate dragged its feet and Gee never received a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. President Barack Obama nominated her a decade later, and she was confirmed and took her seat in Los Angeles in 2010.

Although Gee has handled hundreds of cases, she is best known for a series of decisions on immigration in which she has often ruled against the government.

Overseeing a longstanding settlement between the government and immigration advocates over the detention of minors, Gee ruled in 2015 that immigrant children should not be held for long periods — generally no longer than 20 days — even with their parents. She said they should be released as quickly as possible, typically to a relative.

In sharply worded rulings in the case, Gee scolded the Obama administration for holding children in “widespread and deplorable conditions,” and she dismissed a request to reconsider a decision at one point, noting the government had “reheated and repackaged” its arguments. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld her ruling but said its agreement didn’t require the release of parents with their children.

Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked Gee to modify her order so families that entered the country illegally could be held together indefinitely. The move followed the president’s reversal of a policy that created an uproar when children were taken from their parents in emotional scenes caught on camera.

The government said in court papers that Gee’s previous ruling made family detention unlikely and provided an incentive for immigrants to bring children with the expectation they wouldn’t be locked up.

“One reason those families ‘decide to make the dangerous journey to illegally enter the United States is that they expect to be released from custody,'” the government said, quoting an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gee described the government’s request as a “cynical attempt” to foist responsibility on her for the president’s “ill-considered” action and Congress’ failure to address the issue for over 20 years. She said it was “procedurally improper and wholly without merit.”

Gee made a landmark ruling in another case in 2013 that gave mentally disabled immigrants the right to legal representation if they were detained and facing deportation. It was the first time a court required legal assistance for any group, including children, in immigration courts.

And during the early days of President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, Gee ordered the return of an Iranian man who was removed from the U.S. upon his arrival despite having a valid visa.

Jean Reisz, a law professor and co-director of the immigration law clinic at the University of Southern California, said what’s unusual about Gee’s rulings is that she’s waded into the thorny topic of immigration, where the government has broad authority.

“Her strong language was kind of a welcome reprieve in a climate where discretion’s largely left to the attorney general and not reviewed by the judiciary,” Reisz said. “Most judges weren’t taking those positions.”

Attorney Michael Steinberg, a lead lawyer on the case involving immigrants with mental disabilities, said Gee was careful, thoughtful and respectful but made her point clear, even when it was subtle.

Before she became a judge, Gee was known for her work fighting for underdogs. She investigated workplace and racial discrimination and sexual harassment and worked on behalf of labor unions, though she also represented employers in some cases.

“She has used her position as a prominent attorney in Los Angeles to promote racial tolerance and fight for justice for those who face discrimination,” former Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, said in a statement after the Senate confirmed Gee.

Gee said she was often underestimated early in her career because she looked much younger than she was and stood only 4-foot-11 (150 centimeters).

Her first assignment as a law firm associate sent her to a butcher’s union hall where the president was a “huge guy” who towered over her.

“He said, ‘So you’re the lawyer?'” she recalled in the interview with the bar association, part of a series on prominent members. “I said, ‘I sure as hell am.”

Once they got down to business, she said his “perceptions melted away.”

Emotions High as Kavanaugh Begins Fight for Confirmation

WASHINGTON — Conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh plunged into his confirmation battle Tuesday, meeting face-to-face with Senate leaders in what promises to be an intense debate over abortion rights, presidential power and other legal disputes that could reshape the court and roil this fall’s elections.

Kavanaugh is a favorite of the GOP legal establishment, and his arrival as President Donald Trump’s nominee was greeted on Capitol Hill with praise from Republicans and skepticism from Democrats. There were also pledges of open minds by key senators whose votes will most likely determine the outcome.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called Kavanagh “one of the most thoughtful jurists” in the country but warned of an onslaught of “fear mongering” from liberal groups trying to derail the nomination. He said it was clear that many Democrats “didn’t care who the nominee was at all. Whoever President Trump put up they were opposed to.”

Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, said his party’s lawmakers did indeed care who the nominee was — and what his views were on such thorny issues as abortion and Trump himself.

Trump “did exactly what he said he would do on the campaign trail — nominate someone who will overturn women’s reproductive rights,” the New York senator said.

He also argued that the president chose the man he thought would best protect him from the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Kavanaugh has written about a need to free the executive branch from intrusive criminal investigations.

“Not only did Mr. Kavanaugh say that a president should not be subpoenaed, he said a president shouldn’t be investigated,” Schumer said.

The confirmation marathon is expected to drag on for months, and no date has yet been set for hearings. GOP leaders, with a slim majority in the Senate, are anxious to have Kavanaugh in place for the start of the court’s session in October — and before the November congressional elections.

But that may be a tall order. His confirmation is complicated by an unusually long record as an appellate judge and as a George W. Bush administration official — and also his role as part of the Kenneth Starr investigation of President Bill Clinton.

Kavanaugh, just 53, could serve on the high court for decades.

As he arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday, he huddled with McConnell, Vice President Mike Pence and former Sen. Jon Kyl. He also met with Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which will determine whether to recommend him to the full Senate.

McConnell, who has been influential in shaping Trump’s remaking of the judiciary, said, “What we’d like to see is a few open minds about this extraordinary talent.”

Grassley said a speedy confirmation wasn’t necessarily the goal. The vetting process, he said, is “going to be thorough and going to be done right.” Pence told reporters that Kavanaugh was a “good man.”

Republicans have little margin of error for the final vote unless a few Democrats can be brought onboard. McConnell has a 51-49 Senate majority, narrowed further by the absence of ailing Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But they hope to gain support from a handful of Democrats who are up for re-election in states where Trump is popular.

So far, Democrats are uniting behind a strategy to turn the confirmation fight into a referendum on conservatives’ efforts to undo abortion access, chip away at health care protections under the Affordable Care Act and protect Trump from Mueller.

Senators will be seeking access to Kavanaugh’s writings and correspondence, reams of documents that will take weeks to compile and even longer to review, giving opponents ample opportunity to wage a political battle. Protesters filled the steps of the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

By fall, the nomination may turn on a handful of senators who will be under enormous pressure ahead of the midterm elections.

The Democrats are trying to pressure two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to oppose any nominee who threatens the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The two have supported access to abortion services, and activists have already begun sending wire coat hangers, as a symbol of an era when abortion was illegal, to Collins’ office.

She said that with Kavanaugh’s credentials, “it’s very difficult for anyone to tell me that he’s not qualified for the job.” But she added that other issues also would come into play for her, including “judicial temperament” and “judicial philosophy.”

Murkowski said, “We’ve got some due diligence that we’ve got to do.”

At the same time, Republicans are urging a half dozen Democratic senators, largely those who are up for re-election in Trump-won states, to back the president’s choice.

Among their targets are Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, as well as Doug Jones of Alabama, who is not up for re-election but represents a conservative state in the Deep South.

Kavanaugh in the past has made statements about respecting precedent that could help in winning over senators, particularly Murkowski and Collins.

In his 2006 confirmation hearing to become a federal judge, he said, “I would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully” because it’s “binding precedent” that has been “reaffirmed many times.”

Yet there’s little doubt that Kavanaugh, a solidly conservative, politically connected judge, would shift the nation’s highest court further to the right.

A product of the Republican legal establishment in Washington, Kavanaugh is a former law clerk for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Like Trump’s first nominee last year, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh would be a young addition who could help remake the court for decades with rulings that could restrict abortion, expand gun rights and roll back key parts of” Obamacare.”

Trump unveiled his pick showbiz style, in a suspense-filled prime-time televised announcement Monday evening. He called Kavanaugh “one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time.”

“Brett Kavanaugh has gotten rave reviews — rave reviews — actually, from both sides,” Trump said Tuesday, a stark mischaracterization of Democrats’ comments, as he left the White House for a weeklong overseas trip. “And I think it’s going to be a beautiful thing to watch over the next month.”

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman, Catherine Lucey, Mark Sherman, Zeke Miller and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

The No. 1 Cause of Climate Change the Media Don’t Mention

There are many issues the corporate media will debate in its standard, convoluted, manipulative manner. In fact, most issues will at some point get an hour of glowing fame on the mind-control box. Yet some topics are forbidden, banned from discussion on the mainstream news channels.

One of those issues just happens to be the No. 1 cause of man-made climate change, and a top cause of illness, sickness, torture and environmental destruction in the United States and around the world. So it’s concerning that corporate media avoid it as if it’s a highly unstable radioactive material being handed to them by Bill Cosby.

That topic is animal agriculture—the raising of the animals most of us eat.

Unlike the media, I do want to get into this topic—partially because it’s hugely important and partially because I enjoy doing things that piss off corporate propaganda networks. But first, I think it will behoove us to go through a brief history of the world:

1. Animal evolved into man.

2. Man realized he could eat animal.

3. Man caught and cooked animal.

4. Man began housing animal before eating it so that he could have dinner waiting around whenever he wanted it—“fast food” before cars existed.

5. Man realized he liked the way animal tasted when lightly fried and sprinkled on top of salads, pasta, soups, chocolate, anything. 

6. To keep up with demand, man began housing animal in smaller and smaller cages until man had millions of animals on top of each other living their entire lives in the most disgusting, immoral, vomit-inducing manner.

7. Man called anyone who pointed out how awful this is a “pussy.”

8. This was insulting to all animals and all women, and therefore only made man look like a damn idiot.

9. At that point we realized evolution doesn’t always go in a direct line. Sometimes, it forks off into “what the fuck” land.

But I don’t want to make this column about how animal agriculture is the largest cause of greenhouse gas emissions (or No. 2, depending on whom you ask).

Or how it requires the use of more than 190 billion gallons of water daily. Yes, that’s per day.

Or how it takes up 55 percent of our fresh water, compared with the only 5 percent used in households.

Or the fact that according to the Georgetown Environmental Law Review, “Ocean dead zones. Fisheries depletion. Species extinction. Deforestation. World hunger. Food safety. Heart disease. Obesity. Diabetes. There is one issue at the heart of all these problems … our demand for and reliance on animal products.”

Or how it creates lagoons filled with millions of tons of feces that in North Carolina the Legislature made sure could legally be sprayed into the air, coating nearby townspeople.

I don’t want to talk about any of that, even though “shit lagoon” also was Mitch McConnell’s nickname in high school. Nope, don’t want to talk about it this time. Instead, let’s discuss how awful our factory farming is for the animals, because, yes, cows are people too.

But let’s start with hens—where most of our eggs come from. As The Intercept reported, “Nearly 280 million laying hens in the United States are confined in barren wire battery cages so restrictive the birds can’t even spread their wings.”

These hens have less room than the surface of an iPad to live their entire lives (which I guess makes them similar to humans, since we now live our entire existence on the surface of an iPad.) Point is, next time you’re looking for a good horror movie—something to really make you piss your pants—grab some popcorn, put your arm around your lover and watch undercover videos of factory farming. (Either that or watch Chuck Schumer give a speech and try to force fake compassion from his dead eyes.)

After videos of these mass-animal-torture farms started making the rounds on YouTube, Americans had an odd reaction—they stopped wanting to eat the gross brown flesh coming out of the little piggy Guantanamo Bays. Then the torture farm corporations did exactly what you think they would do—which is exactly the most horrible thing they could do.

They passed laws making filming factory farms a crime (because when something is morally reprehensible, beating up or arresting the camera guy usually solves the problem. Kind of like how murder is totally rad if you just don’t take a selfie next to the body). But it didn’t work, because videos still leaked out. So now the corporate goons moved on to the next step—in some states, poultry industry lobbyists are trying to force through legislation that would mandate that stores carry their products.

A couple months ago, Iowa’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that says that “if a grocery store carries an inventory of specialty eggs for retail sale, it must also carry an inventory of conventional eggs (shell eggs that are not considered specialty eggs).”

This begs the question, “What are specialty eggs? Do they have little knitted sweaters on or what?” Well, “specialty eggs” means eggs that were not obtained through horrific end-of-days medieval torture. So “specialty eggs” basically means free-range—shouldn’t that be called normal eggs? Eggs that come from a hen just standing out in a field—shouldn’t that be called a “conventional egg”? And then the other eggs should be called “holy-shit-what-a-sick-species-we-are” eggs?

Anyway, this law forces stores to sell eggs they and their customers find morally repulsive. That would be like a store owner saying, “Yeah, I’m not selling the supersonic, earthquake-level, vibrating triple dong at my adult toy store because people were getting injured and breaking hips and stuff.” And then the state coming in and going, “Sorry, we had a talk with the earthquake triple dong lobbyists, and they’re very powerful. So we’re going to make it illegal for you not to sell it in your store.”

I’m no free-market evangelist, but this sounds like the opposite of a free market.

By the way, our mainstream media won’t mention the gruesome way our meat and eggs are produced, but they’ll show ads endlessly telling you how awesome meat is. “Try our fluffy egg-wich with a bacon milk shake!” Those ads don’t mention that the World Health Organization says that processed meats cause cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease.

Eating torture-farmed meat doesn’t even make sense to most people who do it. If you show someone a bird trapped in an oil spill, most of us want to save it. We want to help it. We want to break out the Dawn soap and shine that mallard’s forehead until you can see your damn reflection in it.

But for some reason, if that were a tanker full of barbecue sauce that tipped over, we’d be fine with it. We’d be downright excited. It would be declared a delicious disaster.

There’s no logic in voraciously continuing a behavior that will kill us in both the short and long term and doesn’t add up with our views toward animals. We have laws against animal abuse—as long as it’s one of the animals we’ve been socially engineered to protect. If you see someone smack a Labrador retriever in public, you’ll dive in front of it like you’re the Secret Service taking a bullet for the president. But if you replace that dog with a pig or a lamb, then we all think, “Grill ’em up! What kind of sauce you got for that?”

If it wasn’t for aggressive cultural programming, our meat-eating habits would seem utterly crazy, like Groundhog Day or circumcision. You’ve got to have that weird stuff pounded into your head early, or you would never buy it. The truth is that we will look back on corporate torture farming as nearly as horrific as slavery or child brides or the sitcom “ALF.” We’ll be like, “What the actual fuck were we thinking?”

Granted, there was a time when we needed to eat the meat that was around or we would die. During horrible blizzards in the 1600s, many a trusted horse learned the hard way that we would bite into anything when push came to shove. But modern times are different. We have food. We have year-round ripe mangos that don’t even make natural sense. There’s no need to keep 280 million hens and 68 million pigs in a fucking “Saw” movie.

Most people knew deep down that slavery was wrong, but they were fed dozens of different reasons to keep it going. They were told all kinds of crap science, crap history and distorted Bible verses. Now imagine if—on top of that—in the 1800s there had been television commercials constantly inundating the public with how great slavery is. How it’s normal and wonderful and delicious and you can sprinkle slavery on top of your chocolate. Would it have lasted another 30 or 50 years? Maybe. (Oh crap, chocolate is still made with slavery. That kind of hurts my point, but I still think you get it.)

Our illogical, immoral meat consumption will kill our planet, kill our future and possibly kill your family. And some might say it’s probably not so good for your being, your energy, your life force, to fill your body with the tortured corpses of nonhuman sentient beings. Do you really want your body to be a Voltron made up of abused cows and beaten pigs? (I don’t buy that hippie stuff, but if it works for you, go with it.)

Look, you don’t have to quit meat. I know it’s hard. Just decrease the amount you eat a little each month. Or do what I do—I eat only meat that’s hard to get. Endangered species. That’s it. Just platypus, pygmy hippos and baby echidna puggles.

And I eat only free-range baby echidna puggles. I’m not a supervillain.

If you think this column is important, please share it. Also check out Lee Camp’s weekly TV show “Redacted Tonight” and weekly podcast “Common Censored.”

Mexico’s President-Elect Plans to End the Nation’s War on Drugs

On July 1, leftist politician Andres Manuel López Obrador—often referred to with the acronymic AMLO—won the Mexican presidency in a landslide. When he takes office in December, with his party in control of both houses of the Mexican Congress, Mexico’s drug policies are likely to see some radical changes.

Just what AMLO does will have significant consequences on both sides of the border. His policies will impact how much heroin and cocaine make it to the streets of America, as well as how many Mexicans flee north to escape prohibition-related violence, and how much drug money flows back into Mexico, corrupting politicians, police, and the military.

That AMLO—and Mexico—wants change is no surprise. A vigorous campaign against the country’s powerful and violent drug trafficking organizations—the so-called cartels—unleashed by rightist president Felipe Calderon in 2006 brought the Mexican military into the fight, but instead of defeating the cartels, the campaign, still ongoing under President Enrique Pena Nieto, has instead led to record levels of corruption and violence.

In 2012, when both the U.S. and Mexico had presidential elections and the drug war death toll was around 15,000, Mexico’s drug prohibition-related violence was big news north of the border. But in the years since then, as U.S. attention to Mexico’s drug wars wavered, it’s only gotten worse. Last year, Mexico saw more than 30,000 murders, and the cumulative drug war toll in the past dozen years is more than 200,000 dead and tens of thousands of “disappeared.”

But the toll runs deeper than just a count of the casualties. The relentless drug war violence and the endemic corruption of police forces, politicians, and even sectors of the military by cartels have had a deeply corrosive effect on the citizenry and its belief in the ability of the country’s political institutions to address the problem.

López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, campaigned heavily on the need for change, especially around drug policy, corruption, and public safety. “Abrazos, no balazos” (“hugs, not gunfights”) was one of his favorite campaign slogans. AMLO campaigned cautiously, hammering away at crime, corruption, and violence and mentioning different drug policy-related changes, but not coming out with specific policy proposals. Still, from his own remarks and those of people who will be assuming key positions in his administration, we can begin to sketch an outline of what those policies may look like.

Marijuana Legalization

Mexico is one of the world’s largest marijuana producers (although the local industry has been taking a hit in recent years from completion north of the border), it has decriminalized the possession of small amounts of the herb, and it has legalized medical marijuana.

AMLO’s pick for interior minister, former Supreme Court official Olga Sánchez Cordero, has made no secret of her plans to seek full legalization and said last week that AMLO may seek a public referendum to gauge popular support for it. Why maintain pot prohibition when Canada and U.S. states are legalizing it, she said. “What are we thinking? Tell me. Killing ourselves. Really, keep on killing when… North America is decriminalizing?”

Drug Legalization

The possession of personal use amounts of all drugs has been decriminalized in Mexico since 2009, but that hasn’t stopped the violence. AMLO and his advisers say he is open to considering taking the next step and legalizing all drugs.

“We’ll analyze everything and explore all the avenues that will let us achieve peace. I don’t rule out anything, not even legalization — nothing,” AMLO told the New Yorker during the campaign.

“The war on drugs has failed,” wrote Sánchez Cordero. “Nothing contributes to peace by legislating on the basis of more criminal punishment and permanent confrontation. Violence is not fought with violence, as López Obrador rightly points out.”

Drug legalization would be a radical step, indeed. It probably isn’t going to happen under AMLO, since that would pit Mexico not only against the U.S., but also against the international anti-drug treaties that serve as the legal backbone of global drug prohibition. But he is putting the idea squarely on the table.

Amnesty

As a candidate, AMLO floated the idea of amnesty for those involved in the drug trade, a notion that created huge controversy and forced his campaign to clarify that it did not mean cutting deals with bloody-handed cartel leaders or their henchmen. Instead, his campaign clarified, he was referring to peasants growing drug crops and other low-level, non-violent workers in the illicit business.

“Kidnappers? No,” said Sánchez Cordero about possible amnesty recipients. “Who? The people working in rural areas, who are criminals because they work in the illegal drug business, but haven’t committed crimes such as murder or kidnapping.”

Demilitarization and Policing Reforms

For the past 12 years, the Mexican military has been called on to fight the cartels and suppress the drug trade. But the level of violence has only increased, the military is implicated in massive human rights violations (as can only be expected when a government resorts to soldiers to do police work), and finds itself subject to the same corrupting influences that have turned state and local police forces into virtual arms of the competing cartels.

With regard to cartel violence, AMLO repeatedly said on the campaign trail that “you don’t fight fire with fire” and that what was needed was not soldiers on the streets, but social and economic assistance for the country’s poor and unemployed—to give them options other than going to work for drug gangs. Just this week, AMLO announced a $5 billion package of scholarships and job training support for the young.

Still, AMLO isn’t going to send the soldiers back to the barracks immediately. Instead, says one of his security advisers, his goal is to do it over the next three years. He has also proposed replacing the military presence in the drug war with a 300,000-person National Guard, composed of both military and police, a notion that has been bruited by earlier administrations as a means of effectively replacing tainted state and local police participation.

Here, AMLO is not nearly as radical as with some of his other drug policy proposals. He as much as concedes that the bloody drug wars will continue.

“I’m not overwhelmed by any of it,” Eric L. Olson, an expert on Mexico and security at the Wilson Center in Washington, told the Washington Post. “It falls well within the norm for what other politicians have been saying.”

The U.S.-Mexico Relationship

Over the past couple of Mexican administrations, Mexican security agencies have cooperated closely with their U.S. counterparts in the DEA and FBI. It’s not clear whether that level of cooperation will be sustained under AMLO. When he was running for president in 2012, he called for blocking U.S. intelligence work in Mexico, but during this campaign, he insisted he wanted a strong relationship with the U.S. on security and trade issues.

While Mexico may chafe under the continued threats and insults of President Trump, it benefits from security cooperation with the U.S. and would like to see the U.S. do more, especially about the flow of guns south across the border.

“We are going to ask for the cooperation of the United States” on gun trafficking, said Alfonso Durazo, one of AMLO’s security advisers, repeating an ongoing refrain from Mexican politicians.

Mexico has also benefited from DEA intelligence that allowed it to kill or capture numerous cartel figures. But AMLO is a much pricklier personality than his predecessor, and between Trump’s racist Mexico- and immigrant-bashing and his imposition of tariffs on Mexican exports, U.S.-Mexico relations could be in for a bumpy few years. AMLO’s moves on changing drug policies at home are also likely to sustain fire from the White House, further inflaming tensions.

“The bottom line is he’s not going to fight the drug war in the way that it’s been fought in the last few decades,” David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego who is an expert on security issues in Mexico, told the Post. “That is potentially a huge change.”

This article was produced by Drug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. It first appeared on AlterNet.

Israel Shuts Down Crucial Gaza Cargo Crossing

In a move condemned by human rights advocates as another of the Israeli government’s “genocidal policies of collective punishment” in Gaza, Israel has announced stringent new import rules for the territory’s main cargo crossing.

As Israel and Egypt have maintained a naval, aerial, and land blockade of the occupied territory for more than a decade, the Kerem Shalom crossing is how most commercial goods and foreign aid reach Gazans. Under the new restrictions, only food, medicine, and “humanitarian equipment” can come through the entry point.

The rules, Al Jazeera said, “will also affect Gaza’s exports, further straining an already crippled economy brought to its knees by the 12-year blockade.”

While the Israeli government claims the closure is aimed at curtailing militant activity in Gaza, human rights advocates such as Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, condemned the border closure as just the latest example of Israel’s “unlawful collective punishment” against the people imprisoned within the Gaza Strip.

No pretense: Israel openly acknowledges its unlawful motive in closing Gaza’s lone commercial crossing for 2 million Palestinians over the actions of small group. Unlawful collective punishment is Israel’s go-to tactic. https://t.co/6IofQvCzdY pic.twitter.com/h1dnSUhh3q

— Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir) July 10, 2018

Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah said on Twitter that the restrictions are among Israel’s “genocidal policies,” and emphasized that all other nations which back Israel should be held to account for the consequences of the closure:

Israel’s total ban on imports and exports from Gaza ghetto, and further restrictions on fishing are genocidal policies of collective punishment. But blame not on Israel alone. All @EUinIsrael /other states that aid and support this murderous regime are responsible for this crime.

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) July 9, 2018

The Hamas government in Gaza denounced the move as “a new Israeli crime against humanity.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that “the Defense Minister and I agree that we will be heavy-handed with the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip—immediately.”

Beyond the import rules, Netanyahu said, “there will be additional steps; I will not go into details.” Although he did not divulge whether such steps would include ending the recent expansion of Gaza’s fishing zone from six to nine nautical miles, which took effect nearly three months ago, according to Reuters, an Israeli military statement declared the fishing zone would revert to the lower limit.

Though frustrating for Gaza’s fisherman, who still struggle within the confines of the expanded zone, the decision was not surprising. While Israel occasionally allows such expansions to boost the Gazan economy, they typically only last for three months. Ahead of that statement, Nizar Ayash, the leader of Gaza’s fishermen’s union, had told Al Jazeera that members would be taking precautions.

“The latest retaliatory measure by Israel made no mention to the fishing limit in Gaza, but we expect to hear from them on Tuesday,” Ayash had said. “The three-month mark is about to end anyway… So we will be back to fishing at only six nautical miles soon.”