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Farmhands and Maids Say #MeToo

“In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers”
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“In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers”

A book by Bernice Yeung

More than seven months since #MeToo was reignited, we’re still hearing an outpouring of stories from survivors of sexual harassment and rape—experiences that may or may not count as such according to technicalities of the law. How these stories are perceived and responded to—or not—reveals the long shadows cast by biases built into the legal system. Bernice Yeung’s new book, “In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers,” shines a light into these shadows to expose generations of sexual abuse suffered disproportionately by low-income immigrant women and the efforts to stop it.

The book updates and expands two major reporting projects. In 2013, Yeung, an investigative journalist for Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting, was part of a team that produced the award-winning report “Rape in the Fields,” which exposed rampant sexual assault of agricultural workers. In another exposé, “Rape on the Night Shift” (2015), Yeung and her team revealed that women cleaning empty buildings in the middle of the night were assaulted with little or no recourse.

Click here to read long excerpts from “In a Day’s Work” at Google Books.

For “In a Day’s Work,” Yeung widens her focus to include domestic workers who perform “the intimate and invisible work that happens in someone else’s bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen.” Domestic laborers typically share the same risk factors as women in the agricultural and janitorial industries, but they are even more vulnerable because in many cases they have been excluded from federal labor laws and often live with their abusers.

Yeung’s reporting achieves a balance rare in public interest journalism: She tells compelling stories that illustrate systemic problems without reducing people to mere players in a legal argument. She skillfully knits case studies into rigorous policy analysis. Most important, Yeung traces paths toward progress beyond merely raising awareness. For example, she highlights promising evidence-based efforts while acknowledging “the cottage industry” of ineffective workplace compliance training. She brings us to a training for workers at Pacific Tomato Growers in Florida focused on addressing domestic and sexual violence. The program was unique, Yeung writes, because instead of simply translating boilerplate materials, it was designed by farmworkers for farmworkers in their native tongue, using examples of sexual harassment fieldworkers can recognize. Yeung also describes the Fair Food Program, an effort that leverages consumer power by rewarding retailers that purchase produce from farms focused on preventing sexual harassment as part of workplace safety.

She also illustrates the high stakes her sources must consider before speaking about abuse. For example, the book begins with the story of a woman called Rosa, who has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit. A farm supervisor also raped Rosa’s sister while pressing gardening shears to her throat. He threatened to fire her sister and brother, and to have the children she works to support back in Mexico killed if she fought back or told. Rosa hesitantly talked to the reporters, then stopped, explaining her decision by showing the reporters photos of her children.

“This case exemplified the phenomenon our reporting team was seeking to uncover,” Yeung writes. “How immigration status and poverty are leveraged against female workers to hold them hostage in jobs where they are being sexually abused.  Because there is no assurance that speaking out will be met with protection from future or collateral harm, the only rational thing to do is say nothing. After meeting Rosa, I came to understand why so many sexually abused workers have for so long abided in silence.” Yeung’s book nonetheless helps break that silence.

We learn a lot from the women able to speak to Yeung. Georgina Hernández is an undocumented hotel cleaner who couldn’t read or write when her supervisor started trapping her in private spaces, where he would assault her, then threaten to hurt her and her daughter and have her deported if she dodged him or retaliated. “There’s no way to defend yourself,” Hernández said. “There’s no way to say no. When you need the job, you become the victim of others. … You deal with it because you need the job.” Hernández was eventually able to escape the abuse and file a successful lawsuit thanks to the help of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a California-based watchdog group devoted to workers rights in the janitorial industry.

Yeung writes of “a discordant reality” of domestic workers who, “in search of the American dream,” take on “one in only a handful of jobs in the United States that has been excluded from laws meant to shield workers from abuse.” As Yeung explains, agricultural and domestic laborers were excluded from federal protections as a way to avoid protecting black workers by proxy. Domestic labor was further devalued and degraded because black women disproportionately held those jobs.

Though it was begun well before the latest wave of the Me Too movement, “In a Day’s Work” nonetheless lands at a perfect time to inform the conversation. In November, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, the national farmworker women’s alliance, wrote an open letter expressing solidarity with Hollywood actresses who spoke out about sexual abuse and harassment. “We wish that we could say we’re shocked to learn that this is such a pervasive problem in your industry,” they wrote. “Sadly, we’re not surprised because it’s a reality we know far too well.” A group of women working in film, television and theater responded with a letter announcing the launch of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund to help defray legal costs for women seeking help. Given that white women with privilege have all too often marginalized women of color in movements toward liberation, the letter was an astounding gesture.

So what’s next? The question is often asked as if #MeToo is some kind of runaway train. “In a Day’s Work” shows that in fact we are in control of what happens next: With vigorous reporting, we can parlay the momentum of #MeToo into real systemic change. To do that, it is urgently necessary to support the efforts of America’s most vulnerable workers, who are already leading the way, for the collective good.

Tara Murtha is a freelance writer, the author of the book “Ode to Billie Joe” and the director of communications at the Women’s Law Project, a nonprofit legal organization based in Pennsylvania.

©2018 Washington Post Book World

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Sessions Cites Bible to Defend Separating Families

WASHINGTON—Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the Bible on Thursday in his defense of his border policy that is resulting in hundreds of immigrant children being separated from their parents after they enter the U.S. illegally.

Sessions, speaking in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on immigration, pushed back against criticism he had received over the policy. On Wednesday, a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church said that separating mothers from their babies was “immoral.”

Sessions said many of the recent criticisms were not “fair or logical and some are contrary to law.”

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” he said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

Last month, the attorney general announced a “zero tolerance” policy that any adult who enters the country illegally is criminally prosecuted. U.S. protocol prohibits detaining children with their parents because the children are not charged with a crime and the parents are.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 650 children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border during a two-week period in May.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that she hadn’t seen Sessions’ comments but affirmed that the Bible did back up the administration’s actions.

“I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible,” she said. “It’s a moral policy to follow and enforce the law.”

In an unusually tense series of exchanges in the White House briefing room, Sanders wrongly blamed Democrats for the policy separating children from parents and insisted the administration had made no changes in increasing the use. Until the policy was announced in April, such families were usually referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation.

“The separation of illegal alien families is the product of the same legal loopholes that Democrats refuse to close, and these laws are the same that have been on the books for over a decade, and the president is simply enforcing them,” she said.

“We don’t want this to be a problem,” she said.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the archbishop of Galveston-Houston, told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Wednesday that he was joining other religious leaders in opposing the government’s border policy.

“Our government has the discretion in our laws to ensure that young children are not separated from their parents and exposed to irreparable harm and trauma,” DiNardo said in a statement.

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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Reporter Compares Children’s Immigration Detention Center to Jail

Reporters from multiple news organizations got their first glimpse of life inside a detention center for migrant children in Texas, and what they saw prompted one reporter to compare the facility to jail.

“Effectively, these kids are incarcerated,” MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff said Wednesday in an interview on “All In With Chris Hayes.”

Soboroff was reporting on his visit to Casa Padre, an immigration detention center in Brownsville, Texas, for boys ages 10 to 17. The center has seen a recent influx of residents as the Trump administration steps up its policy of separating undocumented parents and children, including those attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

The facility, which used to be a Walmart store, houses approximately 1,500 boys. It is run by Southwest Key Programs, a social services nonprofit under contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Newsweek previously reported that Casa Padre was one of 16 shelters run by Southwest that was cited by Texas inspectors for health violations. Newsweek said, “At that specific Casa Padre shelter, a child who tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease was not given medical treatment for two weeks.”

In response to those allegations, a Southwest Key Programs spokesperson told Newsweek that the most serious of the 150 health violations at the 16 shelters were self-reported. “After any reported medical error, Southwest Key investigates the situation as well as the relevant staff member(s) to determine appropriate next steps,” the spokesperson said, adding, “Staff are subject to discipline, up to and including employment termination, as a result of these such instances.”

Soboroff noted that children in the detention center are supposed to sleep four to a room but that since the increase in admissions, most rooms house five.

There are no windows, and the children get only two hours a day outside the facility. Lights go out at 9 p.m., and the children eat on rotating shifts. As Soboroff wrote on Twitter, although “there are no cells and no cages, and they get to go to classes about American history and watch Moana … they’re in custody.”

They also continually see a mural of President Donald Trump and the words, “Sometimes losing a battle you find a new way to win the war,” a quote from his book “The Art of the Deal.”

Casa Padre is the same facility that Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, unsuccessfully attempted to visit June 3. As MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes pointed out on Twitter, its existence predates Trump, though the practice of family separations has increased its population and possibly made conditions worse.

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Minimum-Wage Earners Can’t Afford 2-Bedroom Rentals in U.S.

The same day the Federal Reserve raised interest rates—signaling confidence in a growing economy—and on the heels of a seemingly positive May jobs report, a new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) suggests that the economy isn’t as healthy as some might believe. That’s especially true for Americans working minimum-wage jobs who rent a home.

There is nowhere in the United States where a person working a full-time minimum-wage job can afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to Out of Reach, an annual report on housing affordability and the gap between wages and rent.

Using the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and national and statewide data on rental prices, researchers found that the average worker would have to put in 122 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at the national fair market rent, an estimate the government updates every year, usually based on the 40th percentile of the gross rent of a given area.

This is the case even in states with low rental prices. The Washington Post notes that in Arkansas, which has the least expensive housing market in the country, “One would need to earn $13.84 an hour—about $29,000 a year—to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. The minimum wage in Arkansas is $8.50 an hour.”

While the problem affects the poorest Americans most, even Americans earning above the federal minimum wage struggle to pay rent, including those earning the $15 hourly wage pushed by many Democrats.

In Hawaii, which has the nation’s most expensive rental market, prospective renters have to make $36.13 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment on their own. In major metropolitan areas, it gets worse. In San Francisco, for example, a renter would have to make $60.02.

As CityLab’s analysis of the report notes, “NLIHC estimates that the average renter’s hourly wage in the United States is $16.88. The average renter in each county makes enough to afford a two-bedroom in only 11 percent of U.S. counties, and a one-bedroom, in only 43 percent.”

But opting for a one-bedroom apartment may not help. There are only 22 counties in the entire nation where minimum-wage workers can afford even one-bedroom rentals on their salary alone.

Housing advocates aren’t optimistic that the situation will improve anytime soon. While demand for housing rose during the years of the Great Recession, the rental units built were often high-end, which the NLIHC report attributes to high development costs:

According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies (2017), the number of homes renting for $2,000 or more per month increased by 97% between 2005 and 2015 with the new development of high-end apartments and rising rents of existing apartments. During the same time, the number of homes renting for less than $800 declined by 2%. While the rental market added more than 6.7 million housing units during this period, the number of units renting for less than $800 declined by more than 260,000.

The authors also express concern that the Trump administration’s decision to cut housing subsidies will exacerbate the problem.

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Trump Helps the Cause of Peace in the Koreas, but What About Elsewhere?

Donald Trump is walking on sunshine this week, glowing in the aftermath of his successful, high-level photo-op meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The meeting marked the first time a sitting U.S. president has met with a North Korean leader. Despite the bizarre circumstances that preceded the meeting (overt and juvenile insults between the two leaders and a temporary cancellation of the summit), it was a major step in the right direction for the two countries and for the project of global peace.

The fact that it took a leader like Trump to get to even a preliminary place of negotiations with North Korea is telling and ought to shame his Democratic predecessors. Sadly, it does not mean Trump will land on the side of peace elsewhere.

Trump is blowing up the new world order, worrying establishment Democrats. Even his own party members are wary. While he is disrupting U.S. foreign policy from the right rather than the left—to the likely detriment of the nation and planet—he has made one thing clear: When desired, it is possible to swim upstream against the neoliberal consensus. Did Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama fail to usher in global peace and justice because they encountered internal opposition or simply because they chose to fail?

The most constructive lesson Trump may be inadvertently offering is that there is ample room for a future progressive executive to use his or her position for global good rather than in the service of American imperial ambitions.

Trump has already realigned U.S. foreign policy to a stunning extent. He has made stronger overtures to right-wing, dictatorial and/or less-than-democratic regimes like China, the Philippines, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia and, most recently, North Korea than earlier presidents from either party. He has deeply offended U.S. allies such as Mexico, Canada and the European Union and launched irrational trade wars against them. He has escalated the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria while paying a far lesser political price than his predecessors.

Lest we underestimate the power of one egotistical individual’s petulant whims and fantasies, a man who lacks a popular mandate has changed U.S. foreign policy more than we ever imagined possible, much to the dismay of the neoliberal establishment.

The critical lesson for those who want to see a leftward realignment away from militarism and war and toward global justice and peace is that perhaps a strong-willed individual with the backing of grass-roots movements and a popular mandate might be capable of opposing the collective will of the pro-military establishment in the future. For years we were told that Obama was unable to achieve much progress toward peace because presidents are mere figureheads who find out upon entering the Oval Office that the real power is held by military generals and career agency staffers.

Such assumptions have fomented apathy and cynicism about the nation’s foreign policy. But Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach has confirmed that if presidents want to, they can indeed do things differently. It also implies that Democrats like Obama and Clinton went along with the project of American militarism not because they were unable to defy it but because they were willing partners.

Overall, Trump’s disruption has moved the world in a dangerous direction. The Iran nuclear deal, which Trump tragically undid, was one of Obama’s few constructive foreign policy achievements that moved the U.S. in the direction of diplomacy between two historic enemies. That deal was vociferously opposed by the Republican Party as well as by some elements of the Democratic Party. And yet Obama persisted—likely because the deal kept intact Iran’s nuclear subservience to the U.S.

If preserving American dominance underpinned Obama’s approach to foreign policy, what drives Trump’s approach? In his approach to North Korea we have seen dangerous flip-flopping, from hurling public insults at Kim to lauding him like a new best friend. The summit was announced, then canceled, then was back on. Yet, miraculously, there was greater progress toward peace than we saw under the last two presidents.

It is hard to imagine that a president like Trump would help to usher in peace between the two Koreas and between the U.S. and North Korea. Perhaps he is motivated by wanting to please China or to build hotels in North Korea, or perhaps he simply wants a major win to stoke his enormous ego.

To be fair, Democrats and Republicans are often far more in alignment with one another internationally than they are domestically. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars were bipartisan affairs. Allegiance to the likes of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt has been jointly supported by both parties. But Trump’s foreign policy involves giving free rein to the military establishment in a way that even Obama did not, which could result in perpetual war everywhere but in the Koreas. Trump’s approach could embolden right-wing dictatorial regimes even more than the Democratic establishment did. It could free the Israeli government to unleash even more violence on Palestinians than before—indeed it has already done so. It could encourage Saudi Arabia to continue pummeling a weakened Yemen—as it is doing this week.

On the economic front, Trump is tossing out the rule book on trade, refusing to be bound by the dogma of pro-corporate, free-trade ideology (which ought to be welcomed by advocates for fair trade and global justice) and jeopardizing America’s military allies in the process. His actions have strengthened the hands of Russia and China especially. The Chinese government appears to have determined that financially bailing out the Trump business’ real estate projects, as it did in Indonesia, is a useful tool to bend U.S. policy toward Chinese will. Trump has also had an eye toward business ventures in Russia for decades. Perhaps he looked at the leaders of the G-7 countries at the recent annual summit and thought, “I have nothing to personally gain from keeping these people and their nations as friends.”

His base of support is gleeful at the circus he has made of the carefully crafted world order established over many decades. After all, they voted for Trump hoping he would blow up all expectations—and he is well on his way to doing so.

In this context, the North Korea summit may simply be a coincidental blip in the right direction. Regardless of Trump’s motivation, the result of his historic meeting with Kim this week in Singapore is likely to do more to defuse nuclear tensions regionally and globally than preserving the status quo. Similarly, regardless of Obama’s motivations, the Iran deal was a critical step toward diplomacy and away from war. Most progressives rightly cheered both deals and lamented the Iran deal’s demise.

But if we want systemic change in the direction of peace and justice, we must demand that U.S. foreign policy be coherently driven by progressive ideology rather than as incidental stops on the path toward American military dominance or the ego-driven ambitions of a businessman. There is simply too much at stake.

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White House Press Secretary Challenged on Immigration

Reporters at the White House press briefing on Thursday challenged Sarah Huckabee Sanders over the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border in a testy exchange that visibly rattled the White House press secretary.

CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Sanders about the morality of removing children brought illegally to the United States from their mother’s care, prompting Sanders to declare it “very biblical to enforce the law.”

“That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible,” she said as Acosta protested.

“You just said it’s in the Bible to follow the law,” Acosta remarked.

“That’s not what I said,” she replied. “I know it’s hard for you to understand even short sentences, I guess and please don’t take my word out of context.”

As some members of the press corp declared her remark a “cheap shot,” she continued: “The separation of an illegal family are the product of the same legal loopholes the Democrats refuse to close.”

“How is it a policy to take children away from their parents?” Acosta asked. “Can you imagine the horror these children must be going through? … Why is the government doing this?”

“Because it’s the law,” Sanders said before again blaming the Trump administration policy on Democrats.

“There is no law that requires families be separated at the border,” another reporter explained, noting it was “the administration’s choice” to prosecute immigration matters in criminal, as opposed to civil, court.

“Does the president take responsibility for his policy change?” the reporter later asked.

“It’s not a policy change to enforce the law,” Sanders said as the reporter explained the exact Trump administration policy that prompted the change.

“If Democrats want to get the serious about it instead of playing political games, they’re welcome to come here and do something about it,” she said.

“You’re a parent, don’t you have any empathy?” another reporter interjected. “Come on, Sarah, you’re a parent. Don’t you have any empathy for what these people are going through?”

Sanders demanded the reporter calm down.

“These people have nothing,” he continued. “Nothing.”

“I know you want to get more TV time,” Sanders replied.

“It’s not about that … honestly, answer the question,” the reporter pressed. “It’s a serious question. These people have nothing, they come to the border with nothing, and you throw children in cages, You’re a parent. You’re a parent of young children. Don’t you have any empathy for what they go through?”

“Jill, go ahead,” she replied, turning to another journalist in the room.

Watch the full exchange below:

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Report on Clinton E-Mail Probe Said to Fault Comey

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department’s watchdog faults former FBI Director James Comey for breaking with protocol in his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, but it says his decisions were not driven by political bias ahead of the 2016 election, according to two people familiar with the findings.

The report from the inspector general also criticizes Comey for not keeping his superiors at the Justice Department, including then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, properly informed about his handling of the investigation, said the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the report was not yet public.

The report’s findings are to be made public later Thursday. They represent the culmination of an 18-month review into one of the most consequential FBI investigations in recent history. Overall, the inspector general found problematic political discussions among FBI personnel but found none of the decisions in the Clinton email case were politically motivated.

“We found no evidence that the conclusions by department prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations, rather we concluded that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of facts, the law and past department practice,” the report said, according the people.

The report has long been expected to criticize the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe, stepping into a political minefield while examining how a nonpartisan law enforcement agency became entangled in the 2016 presidential race. The IG’s criticism of Comey’s actions was first reported by Bloomberg.

President Donald Trump is looking to the report to provide a fresh line of attack against Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, as he claims that a politically tainted bureau tried to undermine his campaign and, through the later Russia investigation, his presidency. Trump is certain to try to use the report to validate his firing of Comey last year.

But the report could do more to back Democratic claims that the FBI actually contributed to Trump’s victory, most notably by reopening in the final days of the race its investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information. That development unfolded as Trump’s own campaign — unbeknownst at the time to the American public — also came under FBI investigation for possible coordination with Russia.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz, a former federal prosecutor appointed by President Barack Obama, prepared the report. Supporters from both parties regard him as apolitical. His most significant report before this was the 2012 study of the botched Obama-era gun operation known as Fast and Furious.

The Clinton report will examine key actions by FBI leaders, including Comey’s decision to publicly announce in July 2016 his recommendation against criminal charges for Clinton, and his disclosure to Congress days before the election that the investigation was being revived because of newly discovered emails.

An earlier inspector general report criticized McCabe and led to his firing on allegations that he misled internal investigators about his role in a news media disclosure. He denies those charges.

Though Trump has repeatedly lambasted FBI leaders as politically biased against him, the inspector general’s report — no matter how critical — was unlikely to endorse that conclusion, especially since some of the actions being examined broke from protocol in ways that may have harmed Clinton.

Comey’s news conference in the summer of 2016 disclosing the investigation’s conclusion was unusual since charging announcements are normally made by the Justice Department, not the FBI. Cases that end without charges are rarely discussed publicly.

In this instance, Comey said that though the FBI found Clinton and her aides to be “extremely careless” in handling classified material, “no reasonable prosecutor” could have brought a case against her.

The watchdog report being released Tuesday said Comey was not motivated by bias at the news conference.

“We found no evidence that Comey’s public statement announcing the FBI’s decision to close the investigation was a result of bias or an effort to influence the election,” the report says.

At a congressional hearing last May, he said he was concerned that the Justice Department could not “credibly” announce the conclusion of its investigation, in part because Lynch had met aboard her plane with former President Bill Clinton.

Lynch described that meeting as a chance encounter unrelated to the case, but Clinton’s critics seized on it to question Lynch’s objectivity.

Also investigated by the IG was Comey’s decision, against the recommendation of the Justice Department, to reveal to Congress that the FBI was reopening the email investigation following the discovery of additional messages. The FBI obtained a warrant nine days before the presidential election to review those emails, found on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, but ultimately determined there was nothing in them that changed its original conclusion.

Officials from Justice and FBI are expected to testify about the report before congressional committees next week, including the House Judiciary Committee, which has been doing its own investigation into the Clinton probe.

Also Thursday, The AP obtained a document listing preliminary conclusions of that GOP-led investigation, which has been conducted jointly with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The document says the Republicans on the committee have “substantial questions about whether DOJ and FBI properly analyzed and interpreted the law surrounding mishandling of classified information.”

The partisan investigation charges that the FBI did not follow legal precedent and treated the Clinton probe differently from other cases.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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From ‘Dotard’ to ‘Supreme Leader’: N. Korea Rehabs Trump

PYONGYANG, North Korea—North Koreans are getting a new look at U.S. President Donald Trump. They see him shaking hands with Kim Jong Un at their historic summit in Singapore, and even awkwardly saluting a three-star general. It’s a far cry from the “dotard” label their government slapped on him last year.

Previously, even on a good day, the best he might get was “Trump.” No honorifics. No signs of respect. Now, he’s being called “the president of the United States of America.” Or “President Donald J. Trump.”

Even “supreme leader.”

The post-summit transformation of North Korea’s official version of Trump, who’s now being shown by state media looking serious and almost regal, underscores the carefully choreographed reality show the government has had to perform to keep its people, taught from childhood to hate and distrust the “American imperialists,” ideologically on board with the tectonic shifts underway in their country’s relationship with Washington.

With a time lag that suggests a great deal of care and thought went into the final product, the North’s state-run television aired its first videos and photos of the summit on Thursday, two days after the event and a full day after Kim returned home to Pyongyang, the capital.

To be sure, the star of the show was Kim. Trump’s first appearance and the now famous handshake didn’t come until almost 20 minutes into the 42-minute program.

To the dramatic, almost song-like intonations of the nation’s most famous newscaster, the program depicted Kim as statesmanlike beyond his years, confident and polite, quick to smile and firmly in control. He was shown allowing the older American — Trump, in his seventies, is more than twice Kim’s age — to lean in toward him to shake hands, or give a thumbs up, then walking a few steps ahead to a working lunch.

The program also showed an awkward moment of Trump reaching out to shake the hand of a North Korean general, Minister of the People’s Armed Forces No Kwang Chol, who instead saluted the American president. Trump saluted the officer in return, and the two then shook hands. In another scene, he moved a chair with his foot instead of his hands. Both elicited giggles from North Koreans watching the program.

Before showing Trump and Kim signing their joint statement, the newscaster said Trump made a point of giving Kim a look at his armored Cadillac limousine, and noted that it is known to Americans as “the Beast.” She also at one point called them the “two supreme leaders” of their countries.

The image-heavy news of Kim’s trip to Singapore was presented like a chronological documentary, starting with the red-carpet send off at the Pyongyang airport on, interestingly enough, a chartered Air China flight. That was followed by video of his motorcade making its way to the St. Regis Hotel in Singapore as throngs of well-wishers waved as though awaiting a rock star, and Kim’s night tour of the city-state on the summit’s eve.

The state media’s representation of the summit and Trump is extremely important because it gives the North Korean population, which has only limited access to other news sources, an idea not just of what’s going on but also of how the government expects them to respond.

For the average North Korean, the state media’s coverage of Kim’s diplomatic blitz this year must seem nothing short of astonishing.

After sending a top-level delegation that included his own sister to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, Kim has met twice each with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping and the state media have splashed all of the meetings across its front pages and newscasts — though generally a day after the fact to allow time to make sure the ideological tone is right and the images as powerful as possible.

In the run-up to the summit, the North’s media softened its rhetoric so as not to spoil the atmosphere as Kim prepared to sit down with the leader of the country North Korea has maligned and lambasted for decades as the most evil place on Earth, other than perhaps Japan, its former colonial ruler.

It fired a few barrages against hard-line comments by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser John Bolton and has stood ever critical of “capitalist values,” but has kept direct references to Trump to a minimum. Bolton, who has been a target of Pyongyang’s ire since his service in the George W. Bush administration, was introduced in the Thursday program dead-pan and shown shaking Kim’s hand.

What this all means for the future is a complicated matter.

North Korea has presented Kim’s diplomatic strategy as a logical next step following what he has said is the completion of his plan to develop a credible nuclear deterrent to what Pyongyang has long claimed is a policy of hostility and “nuclear blackmail” by Washington.

That was its message through the news on Thursday, which stressed that the talks with Trump would be focused on forging a relationship that is more in tune with what it called changing times — most likely meaning North Korea’s new status as a nuclear weapons state — and its desire for a mechanism to ensure a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula and, finally, denuclearization.

Despite the respectful tone, there remains a clear undercurrent of caution.

Kim remains the hero in the official Pyongyang narrative. Whether Trump will be his co-star, or once again the villain, is fodder for another episode.

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Two Important International Votes Condemn Israeli Occupation

In a blow to the Trump administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted, by 120 votes in favor, a resolution introduced by Algeria and Turkey condemning Israel for deploying excessive force against Palestinians at rallies near the border of Gaza.

After a thorough investigation, Human Rights Watch concluded that there are credible grounds for charging Israeli officials with war crimes at the International Criminal Court over the tactic of sniping at unarmed civilians who posed no immediate danger to Israeli troops (while over 100 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured by live ammunition since March, no Israeli troops appear to have been so much as injured).

The resolution was backed by 12 European states, including France, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Portugal, and Greece. Sixteen European countries abstained, but none voted against the resolution.

 

Europeans divided at #UNGA vote today on condemning #Israel for #Gaza violence 12 #EU countries incl France & Spain voted yes 16 abstained incl UK, Italy & Poland pic.twitter.com/2zllLdrFM8

— Carole Landry (@carlandry_afp) June 14, 2018

Although the US and Israeli ambassadors to the UN attempted to deride the vote as mere anti-Semitism, in fact world leaders have been deeply disturbed by the naked Israeli violation of basic international legal norms in Tel Aviv’s response to the Gaza protests. For an Occupying power systematically to shoot down unarmed civilians in an occupied territory for mounting protests that posed no immediate danger to anyone is clearly a war crime under the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Indeed, repeated war crimes may amount to a crime against humanity.

The resolution instructed UN Secretary General António Guterres to institute some sort of protection for Palestinians from this use against them by Israel of indiscriminate and disproportionate force.

The resolution also condemned the firing from Gaza of rockets toward Israel.

The Israeli ambassador castigated the vote as tantamount to terrorism. “Instigation” has become right wing Israeli code for any condemnation of oppression of Palestinians, and is increasingly a thought crime in Israeli itself punishable by prison. Poets and bloggers are in jail for the same “crime” of which the UN General Assembly stands accused.

A similar resolution was supported by the UN Security Council, but the US cast the sole veto.

A US resolution condemning Hamas failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority to be voted on.

American pro-Israeli propaganda, prominent in the editorial pages of The New York Times, attempts to blame the Palestinian party-militia Hamas for the deaths and injuries of Palestinians at the border rallies. However, Hamas did not set the rules of engagement of the Israeli army or force snipers to shoot unarmed medics, journalists, children, and ordinary protesters. The US press almost never mentions that 70 percent of the families in Gaza are refugees deliberately chased out of their homes in what is now southern Israel, and kept cooped up in the world’s largest outdoor prison.

In another important international vote, the 4-million-strong Indian Student Federation has voted to boycott Hewlett Packard computers and other equipment on the grounds that the company is involved in the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli occupiers. This step seems to me among the more significant victories for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement promoted by Palestinian civil society. BDS is not practiced by the State of Palestine itself.

The Indian student vote points to the significance of the UN General Assembly resolution, inasmuch as it will encourage more such civil society boycotts of Israel, which if they grow large enough could inflict substantial pain on the far right wing Likud government.

 

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Antarctica’s Melting Is Speeding Up

The speed of Antarctica’s melting has begun to gather pace. Between 1992 and 2017, the rate of loss of ice from West Antarctica has risen threefold, from 59 billion metric tons per year to 159bn. The West Antarctic peninsula, one of the fastest warming places on Earth, has seen ice loss soar from 7bn to 33bn tonnes a year in that timespan, as ice shelves have collapsed.

Altogether, in those 25 years, Antarctica has lost more than a trillion tonnes of ice. Since the southern continent is the biggest store of freshwater on the planet – if it all melted, the sea levels would rise by 58 metres – the news is ominous. It means that melting in Antarctica alone has raised global sea levels by 8mm, as global average temperatures rise, in response to ever-higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And if the world’s economies go on burning the fossil fuels that have driven rising levels of greenhouse gases, then by 2070 global sea levels will rise even faster – by a metre, with one fourth of that from Antarctic meltwater – and ever more ice will be lost from the Southern Ocean.

This in turn will drive big changes in the marine ecosystems of the Antarctic and for the first time permit invasive pests to colonise what was once a pristine, unspoiled landscape.

But such an outcome is not inevitable. “The future of Antarctica is tied to that of the rest of the planet and human society,” said Steve Rintoul, of the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research in Hobart, Tasmania, and one of the research team.

“Actions can be taken now that will slow the rate of environmental change, increase the resilience of Antarctica, and reduce the risk that we commit to irreversible changes with widespread impact.”

A series of research papers in the journal Nature tells a story of ice loss and global concern. A team of 84 scientists from 44 international organisations have amalgamated 24 satellite surveys of change in the farthest south with greater precision that any other study so far.

“According to our analysis, there has been a steep increase in ice losses from Antarctica during the last decade, and the continent is causing sea levels to rise faster today than at any time in the past 25 years,” said Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, UK, who led the assessment. “This has to be a concern for the governments we trust to protect our coastal cities and communities.”

None of this is a surprise: what is new about the latest research is the confidence with which the researchers speak. Human exploration of Antarctica began little more than a century ago, and systematic scientific observation began only in the mid-20th century.

Diminishing argument

Antarctic ice has retreated and advanced and retreated again many times over the millennia: there has always been argument about how much of the change is because of natural cycles, how much because of human-induced climate change. In the last few years, the contribution of warmer oceans and warmer atmosphere has begun to become obvious.

Researchers have warned that warmer seas make faster melting inevitable and that by 2050 the rate of loss could double.

Using both direct observation and remote sensing, they have watched fresh water running off the polar surface in the summer and recorded the first signs of invasive plants on rocks that were once all but barren.

And now data from satellites launched by the European Space Agency, Japan, Canada, NASA, Italy and Germany has been combined into something known as the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise, or IMBIE for short. And it has settled one of the great uncertainties.

Continent-wide picture

While the western Antarctica ice sheet has been steadily melting, there has been evidence that East Antarctica itself was stable, or even growing. The latest study settles an old argument: the combined evidence suggests that East Antarctica is more or less stable, gaining if anything 5bn tonnes a year on average, perhaps because of greater snowfall.

Overall, though, the continent is losing the mass of its ice, and if the world continues to warm, this loss can only accelerate.

“Unfortunately, we appear to be on a pathway to substantial ice-sheet loss in the decades ahead, with longer-term consequences for enhanced sea-level rise; something that has been predicted in models for some time.

“If we aren’t already alert to the dangers posed by climate change, this should be an enormous wake-up call,” said Martin Siegert, of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, and one of the authors.

“Antarctica is being affected by global warming, and unless we curtail our CO2 emissions within the next decade, and have a zero carbon economy within a few decades, we will be locked into substantial global changes, including those in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.”

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