Chris Hedges's Blog, page 570

Unemployment Rate Hits 18-Year Low

WASHINGTON — U.S. employers extended a streak of solid hiring in May, adding 223,000 jobs and helping lower the unemployment rate to an 18-year low of 3.8 percent from 3.9 percent in April.

Average hourly pay rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier, a slightly faster annual rate than in April, the Labor Department reported Friday. But pay growth remains below levels that are typical when the unemployment rate is this low.

Still, the report shows that the nearly 9-year old economic expansion — the second-longest on record — remains on track. Employers appear to be shrugging off recent concerns about global trade disputes.

Roughly an hour before the employment data was released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, President Donald Trump appeared to hint on Twitter that a strong jobs report was coming. “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” he tweeted.

The president is normally briefed on the monthly jobs report the day before it is publicly released, and he and other administration officials are not supposed to comment on it beforehand.

Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, defended Trump’s tweet in an interview on CNBC, saying that it followed “law and custom.”

“I don’t think he gave anything away, incidentally,” Kudlow said.

Friday’s report showed that hiring in the United States is benefiting a wider range of Americans: The unemployment rate for high school graduates reached 3.9 percent, a 17-year low. For black Americans, it hit a record low of 5.9 percent.

“The economy and labor market appear to be firing on all cylinders, with all sectors showing strength,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

Investors applauded the report. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 221 points, or 0.9 percent. Other indexes also moved higher.

The healthy jobs data makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates this year — at least twice more and possibly three more times, after having raised its key rate in March. Traders now put the likelihood of four rate hikes for 2018 at about one-third, up from one-quarter on Thursday.

With the jobless rate so low, employers have complained for months about the difficulty of finding workers to fill jobs. The number of open positions reached a record high in March. Friday’s report suggests that some companies are making extra efforts to find people.

For example, the number of part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs declined slightly and is down 6 percent from a year ago. That may mean that businesses are converting some part-timers to full-time work.

Companies are also hiring the long-term unemployed — those who have been out of work for six months or longer. Their ranks have fallen by nearly one-third in the past year. That’s important because economists worry that people who are out of work for long periods can see their skills erode. Yet employers now seem more willing to hire them.

The unemployment rate, rounded to one decimal, is the lowest since April 2000. But the unrounded figure is 3.75 percent. That is the lowest since 1969, some economists notes.

Debbie Thomas, owner of Thomas Hill Organics, a restaurant in Paso Robles, California, said that finding enough qualified people to hire is her biggest challenge right now. She has raised pay by about a dollar an hour in the past year for cooks and dishwashers but is reluctant to boost wages much higher. The more-expensive organic food she uses also adds to her costs.

“You don’t want to price yourself out of the market,” Thomas said.

The job gains in May were broad-based: Professional and business services, which includes higher-paying fields such as accounting and engineering, added 31,000 jobs. Health care, a consistent job engine for the entire recovery, gained nearly 32,000.

Manufacturing, which is benefiting from increased business investment in machinery and other equipment, added 18,000 jobs, and construction 25,000.

Some economists remain concerned that the Trump administration’s aggressive actions on trade could hamper growth. The administration on Thursday imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from key allies in Europe, Canada and Mexico. Earlier in the week, it threatened to hit China with tariffs on $50 billion of its goods.

While the tariffs themselves would likely have only a scant direct impact on the economy, ongoing uncertainty about which trading partners and which goods might be hit next could disrupt some companies’ expansion plans.

For now, the solid hiring data coincides with other evidence that the economy is on firm footing after a brief slowdown in the first three months of the year. The economy grew at a modest 2.2 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter, after three quarters that had averaged roughly 3 percent.

But consumers have started to spend more freely, after having pulled back in the January-March quarter. That gain could reflect in part the effect of the Trump administration’s tax cuts, which might be encouraging more Americans to step up spending. Consumer spending rose in April at its fastest pace in five months.

Companies are spending more on industrial machinery, computers and software — signs that they’re optimistic enough about future growth to expand their capacity. A measure of business investment rose in the first quarter by the most in 3½ years. That investment growth has been spurred partly by higher oil prices, which have encouraged the construction of more drilling rigs.

Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm, says it now foresees the economy expanding at a robust 4 percent annual pace in the April-June quarter, which would be the fastest in nearly four years. That is up from its forecast last week of less than a 3 percent rate for the current quarter.

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A ‘Full Frontal’ Slur, and Then an Apology to Ivanka

NEW YORK—Comedian Samantha Bee apologized to Ivanka Trump and viewers on Thursday for using an obscenity to describe the president’s daughter, an incident that quickly thrust her into the middle of the nation’s political divide.

Her network, TBS, also said it was “our mistake, too,” in allowing the language on Bee’s show, “Full Frontal,” on Wednesday. Her show is taped and not aired live.

Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c—” toward the end of a segment about President Trump’s immigration policies. She used the slur in urging Ivanka Trump to speak to her father about policies that separate children from their parents.

“Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to f—ing stop it,” she said.

Bee, a former correspondent on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart whose own show has been one of TBS’ big successes since it started in 2016, said that her language was “inappropriate and inexcusable.

“I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it,” she said.

Before the apology, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called Bee’s language “vile and vicious” and said executives at TBS and corporate parent Time Warner needed to demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of the administration would not be condoned.

TBS said Bee had taken the right step in apologizing. The network made no mention of any disciplinary action.

The car company Autotrader said that it would pull its advertising sponsorship from “Full Frontal,” calling Bee’s language offensive and unacceptable. Bee’s show is being honored Thursday by the Television Academy as one of the most “meaningful and relevant” on the air; the academy said the controversy over her language won’t change that.

The academy said its event is “non-political” and that Bee’s recognition is for “her engagement in 2017 on the subject of sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement.”

Coming two days after ABC canceled “Roseanne” following a racist tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, Bee’s remark was immediately seized upon by culture warriors. Some conservatives upset about the “Roseanne” cancellation suggested Bee should meet the same fate, while liberals wondered whether Bee’s words were any worse than some used by President Trump, notably in the “Access Hollywood” tape.

“I dream of a life where we hold our president to a higher standard than we hold comedians,” said another comic, Marie Connor, on Twitter.

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush, said there was a double standard when you compare media reaction to Barr and Bee. He said the media would go “nuts” if a conservative Republican used the same slur that was used by Bee against Nancy Pelosi.

“The outrage would be instant and overwhelming,” Fleischer said online.

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore noted that President Trump and his aides had not condemned Barr’s racism and tried to “confuse the issue by going after Samantha Bee’s brilliant rant against Ivanka.”

Bee’s commentary had the potential to be a corporate headache. Time Warner, which owns channels including TBS, CNN and HBO, is in the process of being acquired by AT&T for $85 billion. The Justice Department has sued to block the deal, however, due to monopoly concerns, and a decision on whether or not it will proceed is expected June 12.

One of the sharpest attacks against Bee came on corporate cousin CNN. Bee is no better than the behavior she sought to criticize in her immigration segment, said CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin.

“To use that word from a woman to another woman is offensive,” Baldwin said. “Wrong is wrong, whether you’re on the left or the right.”

___

Associated Press writer Mae Anderson contributed to this report.

People With Severe Mental Illness Die 15 to 30 Years Before Other Americans

There’s a hidden factor increasing American mortality rates, one that goes beyond race, ethnicity, location or even socio-economic class. It’s the presence of serious mental illness, Dhruv Khullar reports in The New York Times’ TheUpshot blog, and it’s killing more Americans than we think.

It’s a widening gap, and one, Khullar writes, “That has been growing, but it receives considerably less academic study or public attention.”

He continues, “The extraordinary life expectancy gains of the past half-century have left these patients behind, with the result that Americans with serious mental illness live shorter lives than those in many of the world’s poorest countries.”

Khullar also challenges claims that those with mental illness more frequently die by their own hand. In fact, he writes, “they’re much more likely to die of the same things as everyone else: cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and respiratory problems.”

In addition, they also tend to suffer from social isolation and poverty, and lack of access to treatment. Even when they do seek treatment, it’s often only after a long delay. Khullar believes that if the American health care system made it easier to access adequate mental health care, the mortality numbers would be much less severe.

He lays some of the blame on doctors, both for being too pessimistic that treatment will work, and also for attributing any physical systems to depression, a practice called “diagnostic overshadowing.” In that case, “when doctors know a patient has depression, for example, they’re less likely to think her headache or abdominal pain portends a serious illness.”

To alleviate the problem, Khullar points to programs that treat mental health care along with physical health care. He cites a weight loss program that taught behavioral solutions to overeating problems, and a clinic at the University of Texas at San Antonio that treats recently discharged patients with mental health issues and ensures they’re evaluated as soon as possible to avoid gaps in care.

As a doctor at the San Antonio clinic told Khullar, “With the right kind of care, people with serious mental illness can integrate back into society.” Early results from similar programs show they can live longer too.

California Senate Backs Strict Guarantees of ‘Net Neutrality’

On Wednesday, the California state Senate approved guarantees of net neutrality that are stricter than the ones the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented in 2015. Those federal rules prohibited blocking, throttling (intentionally limiting available bandwidth) and paid prioritization.

In December 2017, under Republican-controlled leadership, the FCC repealed the 2015 rules. The commission had received 23.5 million public comments, 98.5 percent of which contained requests that the FCC oppose the repeal. Polls at that time showed Americans favored the 2015 guarantees by 83 percent (75 percent of polled Republicans were in favor of net neutrality).

The telecommunications industry, with the help of its super PACs, made $101 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress between 1989 and 2017, with the largest contributions coming from AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

This week’s party-line vote in the California Senate was 23-12, Democrats over Republicans. The measure needs to be approved by the Democratic-majority California Assembly and then signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The Verge reports:

After the FCC moved to eliminate net neutrality rules, states began implementing their own measures. In January, over 20 attorneys general sued the commission before the order was even published. Some governors attempted to use executive orders, while others worked with legislators. California’s bill to restore protections in the state is one of the toughest responses to the FCC’s rollback.

The bill would reinstate rules similar to those in the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order. It forbids ISPs from throttling or blocking online content and requires them to treat all internet traffic equally.

But the bill also takes the original rules further by specifically banning providers from participating in some types of “zero-rating” programs, in which certain favored content doesn’t contribute to monthly data caps.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a statement on Tuesday that called the bill “a gold standard for states looking to protect net neutrality.”

Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who spearheaded the Obama-era regulations, supports the bill. In March, he wrote a letter to the California Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee with two other former chairmen approving of the measure.

“These protections are essential to our economy and democracy. SB 822 steps in to protect Californians and their economy by comprehensively restoring the protections put in place in the 2015 net neutrality order,” the chairmen said.

A concern for supporters of net neutrality is that the broadband industry might use the courts to stop states from implementing rules of the kind passed by the California Senate.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Gets Emotional When Child Asks About Gun Control

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, got emotional Wednesday when a child asked what the Trump administration is doing to combat school shootings. A video appears to show her holding back tears as she answers the boy’s question. While her sensitive response drew on her own experience as a parent, she did not give the boy a direct answer about what gun control policies the administration is considering.

Sanders becomes emotional when asked by student reporter what Trump was doing to prevent school shootings: “This administration takes it seriously.” pic.twitter.com/fVYs9I9tRo

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 30, 2018

“I think that as a kid and certainly as a parent, there is nothing that could be more terrifying for a kid to go to school and not feel safe. I’m sorry you feel that way,” Sanders replied to the boy, who described a recent lockdown drill at his school, and said that his and his friends’ mental health has been affected by their fear of a shooter attacking the school.

Sanders told him that a new school safety commission created by the White House will meet this week to discuss “the best ways forward and how we can do every single thing within our power to protect kids in our schools and to make them feel safe and make their parents feel good about dropping them off.”

When asked about school shootings in the past, Sanders has not always offered such a sensitive response.

“The president believes that all Americans deserve to be safe in their schools and their communities,” she said in a January press briefing. “We’ve had two years of increased violence prior to the president taking office. We’ve tried to crack down on crime throughout the country.”

When pressed by a questioner at the January meeting, she added, “The fact that you’re basically accusing the president of being complicit in a school shooting is outrageous.”

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Paul Ryan Critical of U.S. Tariff Actions

WASHINGTON — The Latest on trade tensions involving the United States, the European Union, Mexico and Canada (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says he disagrees with the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imports from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.

Ryan was among several leading Republicans in Congress critical of Thursday’s action.

Ryan says that the administration’s decision “targets America’s allies when we should be working with them to address the unfair trading practices of countries like China.”

Ryan says there are better ways than tariffs to help American workers and consumers. He does not specify those measures, but says he plans to work with Trump on “those better options.”

___

5 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron is calling the U.S. decision to levy tariffs on the European Union “illegal” and a “mistake.”

Macron said that he deplores the U.S. action and that he plans to speak with U.S. President Donald Trump later Thursday telling him just that.

The French president said the tariff move does not in line with international trade law that the United States, France and Europe have subscribed to. He stressed that there would be a European response.

Macron, who was the first foreign leader invited by Trump to a state visit, said the U.S. president’s decision is a mistake because it creates economic and commercial nationalism.

He ominously recalled the pre-World War II period saying, “Economic nationalism leads to war. This is exactly what happened in the 1930s.”

___

1:15 p.m.

The European Union says it plans to bring its case against new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum to the World Trade Organization on Friday.

If that happens, the 28-nation EU would join China and India in triggering the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism over the American trade penalties.

Turning to the WTO would give the EU a second response to the tariffs. It’s already prepared $1.6 billion in retaliation against U.S. goods including steel, orange juice, motorcycles and bourbon whiskey.

WTO proceedings could open the door to further penalties and increase pressure on Washington, though the process traditionally takes many months — and in some cases, years.

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1:10 p.m.

The head of the World Trade Organization is expressing “very real concern” about rising trade tensions and the risk of escalation.

The comments from Director-General Roberto Azevedo come in the wake of U.S. trade penalties on imported steel and aluminum.

But he says the global trading system “was built to resolve these problems in a way that prevents further escalation.”

___

12:25 p.m.

Investors are responding to the White House’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports by selling U.S. companies that rely on the metals and bidding up domestic producers.

Century Aluminum is up 3.6 percent and U.S. Steel 2.3 percent.

Deere & Co., which makes farming equipment, is down 2.6 percent, and construction equipment maker Caterpillar is off 1.5 percent as investors anticipate that manufacturing costs could rise.

Other losers among U.S. companies are consumer products makers, which could be hurt by tariffs that might be imposed by the European Union on products including peanut butter and orange juice.

___

12:23 p.m.

The conservative network backed by the wealthy brothers Charles and David Koch is coming out in opposition to President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from U.S. allies.

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity say the tariffs are tax increases on all Americans and are warning that the penalties will undermine the nation’s economy and low unemployment rates.

___

12:20 p.m.

Ontario’s premier is calling President Donald Trump a “bully” and says the new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum are “ridiculous and unwarranted.”

Kathleen Wynne says Canada has to send a signal to Trump that Canada “will not be your doormat.”

She says the only way to stand up to a bully is to stand up and push back. She’s urging Canada take a swift and sharp retaliatory response.

Wynne says Trump’s actions will hurt jobs in the United States and Canada.

The premier has a week left in her election campaign.

___

12:10 p.m.

The German government has rejected the tariffs on steel and aluminum announced by the Trump administration as “unlawful.”

A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel refers in a statement to “the danger of spirals of escalations” that could hurt everyone.

___

11:55 a.m.

Germany’s foreign minister is condemning the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, and he says the European Union “is ready to react accordingly with counter measure.”

Heiko Maas has the support of German business associations that are rejecting the new trade penalties from the Trump administration.

The German Association of the Automotive Industry VDA calls the U.S. decision “incomprehensible.”

An a mechanical engineering industry group says Washington’s action is “a fatal signal for trans-Atlantic trade.”

___

11:15 a.m.

The European Union stands ready to retaliate immediately following new U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says “it’s totally unacceptable that a country is imposing unilateral measures when it comes to world trade.”

He says to expect “counterbalancing measures” from Europe soon.

___

11:10 a.m.

What does Germany’s BGA association of foreign and wholesale traders think of the new U.S. tariffs on European Union steel and aluminum?

“A black hour for the trans-Atlantic relations.”

The group says in a statement that “we deeply regret this unreasonable attitude by President Trump and its consequences.”

It’s calling on the EU to respond in accordance with the law in order “to not further weaken global trade.”

___

10:50 a.m.

U.S. businesses in Europe are dismayed by President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union.

They’re worried it could spark a trade war.

Susan Danger is CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU. She says U.S. companies in Europe are opposed to Washington’s trade move.

She says American businesses in Europe “are very concerned by the damage a tit-for-tat dispute would cause to the trans-Atlantic economy and its impact on jobs, investment and security across the Atlantic.”

___

10:45 a.m.

France says it’s working with Germany and European authorities for a “firm and united response” to new U.S. tariffs on European steel and aluminum.

An adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron tells The Associated Press that France is “extremely mobilized” for a response. But the adviser isn’t elaborating.

Macron argued against the tariffs when he met with Trump in Washington last month. Macron gave an impassioned speech on Wednesday against trade penalties and said they hurt jobs and consumers

___

10:40 a.m.

The European Union’s top trade official says it is “a bad day for world trade” after the U.S. went ahead with tariffs on imports of EU steel and aluminum.

Trade Commission Cecilia Malmstrom says the EU “did everything to avoid this outcome.”

She says that during talks with Washington, “the U.S. has sought to use the threat of trade restrictions as leverage to obtain concessions from the EU.”

And here’s how Malmstrom puts it: “This is not the way we do business, and certainly not between long-standing partners, friends and allies.”

She says the EU will now impose “rebalancing measures” on U.S. products.

___

10:35 a.m.

Britain says it’s “deeply disappointed” by the U.S. decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

The government says “the U.K. and other European Union countries are close allies of the U.S. and should be permanently and fully exempted” from the tariffs.

In a statement, the British government says it has “made clear to the U.S. government at the highest levels the importance of U.K. steel and aluminum to its businesses and defense projects.” It says it will work with the EU and U.S. administration to achieve a permanent exemption.

Britain voted in 2016 to leave the EU but remains a member until the official exit day of March 29, 2019.

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10:30 a.m.

Mexico says it will answer tariffs on steel and aluminum announced by the Trump administration with duties of its own on a variety of U.S. products.

Mexico says it will impose tariffs on U.S. imports including pork bellies, apples, grapes, cheeses and flat steel among other things.

A statement from Mexico’s economy ministry says the U.S. use of a national security justification is improper and that the tariffs affect strategic sectors for North America, including automotive, aerospace and electronics.

Trump announced the tariffs in March, but gave exemptions to the European Union, Mexico and Canada.

___

10:25 a.m.

“This is protectionism, pure and simple.”

That’s the reaction from the European Commission’s president to the U.S. decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union.

Jean-Claude Juncker says the EU will respond with countermeasures.

He says the U.S. action leaves the EU with no choice but to proceed with a case in the World Trade Organization. He says the EU will impose additional duties on a number of imports from the U.S.

___

9:45 a.m.

The Trump administration is announcing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada and Mexico. The move is sure to raise worries of a trade war with American allies.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says there will be a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum.

President Donald Trump announced the tariffs in March but the U.S. granted exemptions to the E.U., Canada, Mexico and other U.S. allies.

Ross says talks with Canada and Mexico over the North American Free Trade Agreement are “taking longer than we had hoped.” He says negotiations with Europe have “made some progress” but not enough to merit an exemption.

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8:40 a.m.

The foreign ministers of Germany and China are stressing the importance of global free trade — a plea that comes before the United States is expected to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas says “protectionism and isolation against free trade mustn’t regain the upper hand.”

And China’s Wang Yi says China will continue to open its markets for its trade partners.

___

8:35 a.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the European Union “will respond in an intelligent, decisive and joint way” if the United States imposes tariffs on imported European steel and aluminum.

Merkel says the 28-nation bloc has made plain to Washington its view that the planned tariffs are incompatible with World Trade Organization rules.

She’s not giving details of how the EU might respond.

___

4:40 a.m.

France’s finance minister says the U.S. shouldn’t see global trade like the Wild West or the “gunfight at the OK Corral.”

Bruno Le Maire calls looming U.S. tariffs on European steel and aluminum “unjustified, unjustifiable and dangerous.”

Ahead of a meeting Thursday in Paris with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Le Maire says: “Global trade is not a ‘gunfight at the OK Corral.’ It’s not about who attacks whom, and then wait and see who is still standing at the end.”

He says a trade war would hurt growth everywhere.

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How Do You Get Off the U.S. ‘Kill List’?

After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration created a secret “kill list” to step up the targeting of alleged terrorists for assassination. The criteria for inclusion on the list have apparently morphed over three presidential administrations, yet they remain elusive.

Last year, two journalists filed a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump and other high government officials, asking to be removed from the kill list until they have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their inclusion. Both men claim to have no association with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, to have no connection to the 9/11 attacks, and to pose no threat to the United States, its citizens, residents or national security.

Kareem and Zaidan Try to Get Off Kill List

Bilal Abdul Kareem, a US citizen and freelance journalist, has survived five attempts on his life from targeted air-strikes. A Turkish intelligence official told Kareem that the U.S. government is trying to kill him.

Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, a citizen of Syria and Pakistan, is a senior journalist with Al Jazeera. He interviewed Osama bin Laden twice before the 9/11 attacks. Zaidan learned about his inclusion on the kill list from National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept.

The NSA zeroed in on Zaidan as a result of a program called SKYNET. Ars Technica revealed that SKYNET—which uses an algorithm to gather metadata in order to identify and target terrorist suspects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia—would result in 99,000 false positives.

In their complaint filed in March 2017, Zaidan and Kareem alleged they were included on the kill list as a result of algorithms used by the United States to identify terrorists.

At a May 1 hearing in the case, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia questioned the US government’s assertion of authority to unilaterally kill U.S. citizens abroad. Collyer repeatedly challenged government lawyers to explain why national security considerations outweigh a U.S. citizen’s inclusion on the kill list with no right to notice and an opportunity to respond.

“Are you saying a U.S. citizen in a war zone has no constitutional rights?” Collyer asked Stephen Elliott, a Justice Department attorney. “If a U.S. person is intentionally struck by a drone from the U.S., does that person have no constitutional rights to due process … no notice, anything?”

Anwar al-Aulaqi Placed on Kill List in 2010, Killed in 2011

Collyer is the same judge who, in 2014, dismissed a lawsuit filed by the families of Anwar al-Aulaqi, his son Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi and Samir Khan—all U.S. citizens who were killed in 2011 U.S. drone strikes. Their families were seeking to hold officials in the Obama administration personally liable for their roles in the strikes.

Nasser al-Aulaqi was the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, who was placed on the kill list maintained by the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command in 2010. Later that year, Nasser filed a lawsuit challenging the authorization for Anwar’s killing before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Nasser’s lawsuit sought clarification of the scope of the global battlefield, targeting standards and lack of transparency.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, also of the District of Columbia,dismissed Nasser’s suit, ruling that he lacked standing to challenge the violation of Anwar’s constitutional rights because Nasser’s constitutional rights were not violated by the government’s “alleged targeting of [Nasser’s] son” and the alleged targeting was “not designed to interfere with the father-adult son relationship.” Bates concluded, “[Nasser] cannot show that a parent suffers an injury in fact if his adult child is threatened with a future extrajudicial killing.”

Bates also held that the political question doctrine, based on separation of powers, prevented the judicial branch from reviewing military and foreign affairs decisions made by the executive and legislative branches.

“At its core, the suit sought to exercise a still much-needed check on a dangerous claim of executive power,” Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, who filed the 2010 lawsuit on behalf of Nasser, wrote in my collection, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

Like Kareem and Zaidan, Nasser claimed his son had a Fifth Amendment due process right to notice and an opportunity to be heard before being deprived of life, liberty or property.

In the 2014 al-Aulaqi/Khan lawsuit, Collyer considered the plaintiffs’ due process claims, but concluded the families had no remedy for their losses. Collyer noted that the US government had relied on the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and she found compelling considerations of national security, separation of powers and the risk of interfering with military decisions. Collyer wrote that reviewing those decisions would impermissibly insert the courts into “the heart of executive and military planning and deliberation.”

But on May 1, Collyer distinguished Kareem and Zaidan from al-Aulaqi. Collyer said al-Aulaqi’s case “was more clear to me because he was a terrorist and claimed to be one,” but, “I’m very concerned about the rights of a U.S. citizen who … asserts that he is not a combatant, that he has not taken sides. He is just a journalist doing his job.”

Inclusion of U.S. Citizens on No-Fly List Also Violates Due Process

In 2014, Judge Anna Brown of the US District Court for the District of Oregon held in Latif v. Holder that plaintiffs’ inclusion on the U.S. “no-fly list” violated their right to due process because it lacked “any meaningful procedures” for them to challenge their placement on the list. As those on the kill list, people on the no-fly list were given no notice or chance to contest the evidence used by the government to watchlist them.

Brown ordered defendants (former Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director James Comey and FBI Terrorist Screening Center Director Christopher Piehota) to “fashion new procedures that provide Plaintiffs with the requisite due process … without jeopardizing national security.”

But Brown limited her ruling to international, not domestic, travel. The government did not appeal Brown’s ruling, although there has been further litigation about what process is, in fact, due.

Attorney Steven Goldberg represented the plaintiff in Tarhuni v. Holder, a companion case to Latif. Goldberg told Truthout that when they asked why the government put Tarhuni on the no-fly list, they were informed it was classified. “National security is always their defense,” Goldberg said.

“The government uses the political question doctrine to avoid litigating these issues. But the cases implicate constitutional rights,” he added. Goldberg noted that while courts need to be mindful of national security concerns, there are means to address them while permitting litigation of constitutional claims. They are contained in the Classified Information Procedures Act and lawyers can get security clearances with protective orders limiting disclosure.

Regarding placement on the kill list, however, one surefire way to get off is to wait until they kill you. Short of that, litigation and lobbying members of Congress remain less draconian alternatives.

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1st State Lawmaker Expelled Since #MeToo Seeks Office in Arizona

A former Arizona lawmaker who became the first kicked out of a state Legislature since the #MeToo movement began because of a lengthy pattern of sexual misconduct is running for office again.

Don Shooter, a Republican expelled from the Arizona House in February, said he filed around 900 signatures Wednesday to seek the GOP nomination for a state Senate seat in the same southern Arizona district he used to serve.

He wouldn’t comment on the circumstances surrounding his expulsion, which came as lawmakers of both parties faced a national reckoning over sexual misconduct that began last fall.

Politicians accused of impropriety have resigned, been stripped of leadership posts and faced other repercussions. A Democratic state representative in Colorado also was expelled this year.

Sitting in the lobby of the Arizona secretary of state’s office waiting to file his signatures, Shooter said “Let’s dance.”

He said he wants to talk about policy issues, such as the water needs of the agricultural industry and public education. Arizona teachers launched an unprecedented statewide strike this year over a lack of education funding.

“That’s the only thing I miss about being away from here, was the ability to solve problems,” Shooter said.

Shooter was elected to the Senate in 2010 and moved to the House in 2017. The lawmaker was known as a politically incorrect jokester who threw booze-fueled parties in his office on the last day of legislative sessions.

A female lawmaker, Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, accused him in November of propositioning her for sex and repeatedly commenting on her breasts. House Speaker J.D. Mesnard ordered an investigation after Shooter accused Ugenti-Rita of having an inappropriate relationship with a staffer, but she was cleared.

Other women soon came forward to accuse Shooter of inappropriate sexual comments or actions.

Shooter eventually apologized for what he called his “jarring, insensitive and demeaning” comments but argued that he never sought to touch anyone or have a sexual relationship with them.

An investigative report released prior to his expulsion found he engaged in “repeated pervasive conduct (that) created a hostile work environment for his colleagues and those with business before the Legislature.”

Shooter filed a $1.3 million claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, in April alleging that the governor’s office targeted him because he tried to expose widespread fraud in the state procurement system. It also accused Mesnard of changing House rules on harassment to remove Shooter from his committee chairmanship and ultimately to force the expulsion vote.

To get on the November ballot, Shooter will have to win the GOP primary. Incumbent state Sen. Sine Kerr, a dairy farmer who was appointed to fill the seat, has filed signatures along with Brent Backus, a conservative who owns a consulting business.

Democrat Michelle Harris, who served in the Air Force for 21 years, also is running for the seat.

Putin’s Big Economic Conference Is a Big Deal This Year

This year’s 22nd edition of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum was the largest ever, numbering 17,000 guests by the last tally. Among them were corporate CEOs and chairmen of the world’s largest companies, the top leaders of less famous multinational corporations, as well as of medium and small enterprises.

They came within national business delegations from around the globe led by senior government officials. There were sector and national round tables at which they met with their Russian counterparts. There were grand signing ceremonies for some of the 500 contracts and agreements concluded at the Forum, which had a combined value of 2.365 trillion rubles, or about 30 billion euros.

But diverse as the activities of the Forum may have been, none of the Forum venues, none of the Forum participants were as important to the success of the event as the four leaders who joined President Vladimir Putin on stage to address the Plenary Session Friday afternoon: President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, Chinese Vice President Wang Quishan and IMF General Director Christine Lagarde.

If we shift our consideration from protocol rankings to political bellwethers, there is no question that the man to watch from his arrival in St Petersburg on Thursday, 24 May through his departure on Friday evening the 25th was Emmanuel Macron. The close working relationship with Russia of the leaders of China and of Japan has developed incrementally over the past couple of decades, in the first case, and over the past several years in the second case.

France, by contrast, had since the ascent of Francois Hollande to the presidency in 2012 experienced ever more frosty if not conflictual relations with Russia, while it fell wholly in step with every policy position coming out of Washington. This alignment has continued under Emmanuel Macron straight up to French participation in the US-led military strike on Syria 13-14 April over alleged use of chemical weapons by the armed forces of Bashir Assad.

Therefore, in this essay, I will begin with a close examination of what Macron said in his two major addresses and what he may have achieved in negotiations with Vladimir Putin. We will then consider what the other featured guest of the Forum, Shinzo Abe, said, which contrasts sharply with Macron’s positions.

The principal source materials for this analysis were the live, complete and uncommented broadcasts of events within the Forum and on the sidelines by the Russian state television channel Vesti-Rossiya 1.

Emmanuel Macron presents a “sovereign” France with an “independent foreign policy”

Emmanuel Macron’s statements both at the press conference in the Constantine Palace on the 24th following his tête-à-tête talks with Vladimir Putin and at the Plenary Session of the Forum on the 25th oblige me to revise and refine my two previous appreciations of who he is and what he can achieve dating from the days immediately following his election a year ago and from his speech to the joint session of Congress in the USA a month or so ago.

To be specific, it now appears that Macron is delivering a strong, not the weak France on the international stage that I had supposed. It further appears that whatever assistance he may have received in his electoral campaign from the US intelligence services, and however much he has justified their wager on him as a committed globalist and as a person unlikely to relax sanctions on Russia anytime soon, he is a more complex personality, with greater ambition and greater determination to write his own roadmaps than they assumed. This affects his relations with Vladimir Putin in ways no one in Washington could foresee.

Every edition of the Forum has a theme or leitmotiv that is supposed to guide the addresses of the keynote speakers and the agendas of the round tables and working groups. This year the theme was “Building an Economy of Trust.” Of all Plenary Session speakers, apart from Vladimir Putin, who was after all the host and surely the author of the leitmotiv, Macron was the most focused on this topic, which he chose to approach from an unusual angle but one highly relevant to the thinking of his hosts: that the precondition for “trust” between nations building a shared global economy is national self-confidence and the assertion of national sovereignty.

We will explore this in a moment. But first I consider it important to go back a year to the days immediately after his assuming office as president when Emmanuel Macron invited Vladimir Putin to their first summit meeting. What Macron said then bears directly on what he has said these past few days in St Petersburg.

The pretext or rationale for inviting Putin to Versailles in May 2017 was to jointly commemorate the three hundredth anniversary of the visit to Paris by Peter the Great. In his speech at the joint press conference held in Versailles, Macron exhibited thinking processes which are evidently deep-set since they recur in his major addresses, such as before the joint session of Congress a month ago and during his speech at the press conference in the Constantine Palace, Petersburg on Thursday: namely a highly intellectual approach that searches out affinities with the country he is dealing with in their historical interconnections and shared cultural experiences going back centuries.

As he said on May 29, 2017:

Dialogue between France and Russia has never ceased since [1717] – a dialogue between our intellectuals, between our cultures sowed the roots of relationship that has endured to this day.

One other quote from his speech on that day is also worth repeating: “History is greater than us.” In the given context, the modesty implied by that statement is misleading. As we shall see, Macron uses history as a cloak of personal grandeur; he envisions himself as an historic personage, an agent of History, following in the footsteps of none other than Charles De Gaulle.

Macron’s interest in history does not mean that his reading is fastidious. In his speech to the U.S. Congress, he said that the United States and France fought World War I to defeat imperialism, which is utter nonsense. At the Versailles speech a year ago, he spoke of Peter the Great’s visit as a start of French-Russian relations. Putin, who must have known what was coming, reminded him that French-Russian relations could be traced back to the 11th century, when the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev and Prince of Novgorod gave his daughter Anne to the French king Henry I, so that the French royal line of Valois carried Russian genes for centuries.

At the end of the day, the Putin-Macron meeting a year ago may not have done much to improve trade relations or to resolve international conflicts including in Syria and Ukraine, but it did result in the launch what is now called the “Trianon Dialogue” which has as its mission to bring together thinkers, intellectuals, young people in exchanges that are expected to foster greater mutual understanding between French and Russian civil society. Though from his own short speech at Versailles, Putin was clearly more interested in trade figures, he went along with Macron’s initiative and invited him to a return visit, specifically to Moscow.

Who may have influenced the change in venue to St Petersburg is not clear. But both sides had much to gain. For Vladimir Putin, bringing Macron into the annual St Petersburg Economic Forum would be a great catch, raising by far the international visibility and interest of the event. And Macron could be delighted with the opportunity to indulge his passion for history by meeting Vladimir Putin for their private talks ahead of the Forum at the Constantine Palace originally built for Peter in the suburbs of the Northern Capital, replete with extensive gardens laid out in the French manner of Versailles.

The Russians needed no prompting to provide an historical setting worthy of their meeting quite apart from the Forum. They arranged a gala performance of the ballet Raymonda in the Mariinsky Theater on Thursday evening, 24 May to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great French-Russian choreographer Marius Petipa. The Marseilles-born Petipa was the author of the principal classical ballets that established the renown of the Russian imperial theaters in the last decade of the 19th century and are performed worldwide to this day. In another overlay of symbolism, the selected ballet just happens to deal with the uneasy relations of Christian (French and Hungarian) West and Saracen East played out at the level of their respective nobility.

The first of Emmanuel Macron’s two addresses during his visit to St Petersburg was at a press conference presenting the results of the private meetings of two presidents. It was delayed by two hours, given that their meeting lasted twice as long as planned and ended in key understandings on Syria and Iran that I will describe in a moment.

In fact the event resembled more an appearance before the joint session of Congress than a normal press conference. It was long on speeches and short on question time for journalists. And the audience consisted heavily of Russian ministers and leading members of the two houses of the Russian legislature. This is because in parallel with the meeting of presidents there were meetings of officials from the two governments discussing in particular the progress and future development of the Trianon Dialogues, with its people-to-people component.

Vladimir Putin’s introductory speech was relatively short. He said that they had discussed at length global issues, then he moved quickly to the issues that are close to his heart and to the Forum the next day: the economic relations between France and Russia, their bilateral trade and investment.

Putin characterized the talks as “business like” and held in “an atmosphere of openness.” In diplomatic code, this means that there were real differences in views on many points. Nonetheless, they reached agreement on coordination of efforts in Syria and over saving the Iran nuclear deal. Progress was made in a wholly new area: working together to regulate cyber space.

Emmanuel Macron may have been a Rothschild banker before moving into government but his speech at the Constantine Palace, on the day before an economic forum, was focused not on business and economics but on France’s international status as a world power with an identity quite apart from its membership in the European Union.

In effect, Macron’s programmatic statement was a well-considered response to Vladimir Putin’s insistence over the years that Russia is one of the very few genuinely sovereign nations in the world, whereas others, including the member states of the European Union are vassals of the United States with whom one cannot successfully negotiate anything of primary importance.

Macron said loudly and clearly that as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council France has the authority and the obligation to exercise its sovereignty and pursue an independent foreign policy. And in a very clever association with the leitmotiv of the Economic Forum, he explained that trust between nations necessary to build the global economy is possible only when nations are self-confident and assert their sovereignty.

Direct quotation here is worth the time:

France and Russia occupy a special place in relations as permanent members of the UN Security Council. We are obliged to defend grand multilateralism. We are obliged to maintain a permanent and independent dialogue.

As President Putin knows, the foreign policy of France under my direction is completely independent…We make our decision by ourselves and for ourselves. We believe in Europe to multiply the force…We take into account the interests of our partners. And our dialogue with Russia is an element of this independence…We speak to everyone. We do this frankly and directly, and this is the mark of our trustworthiness. …We must defend our collective security, defend our values everywhere, and must respect the sovereignty of the people….I respect the enhanced role which Russia assumes in its regional environment and in the world, in particular in the Middle, which entails heightened responsibility…..I hope Russia understands that France is its credible European partner, now and in the future. Our talks have been held in this sense.

These curious but valid formulations were meant to catch the attention of his hosts, which they surely did. But they also constituted a major claim by Macron addressed over the heads of those in the hall to the home audience in the European Union. Macron was unmistakably setting out his claim to take over the mantle of leadership of foreign policy in the EU that has been held unchallenged by Germany for the last six years due to the weak and witless government of François Hollande. Germany is not a member of the Security Council. Germany is essentially an occupied country given the large presence of US bases on its territory. And Angela Merkel would never say that Germany has a foreign policy of its own. For Merkel, only the EU can have a foreign policy, which she quietly manages from behind the scenes through her minions, the likes of Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker.

In fact, Macron’s vision of French leadership also has a military component, where, again, his country puts Germany to shame, raising questions about who should truly call the shots on European foreign policy. This came out on the second day of his visit during the Plenary Session, when Vladimir Putin playfully took up a remark by Macron that Europe has obligations to the United States in return for its securing the defense. Said Putin, teasingly: “Emmanuel, don’t worry, we are ready to help you with security.” Macron was taken aback by the Russian’s wit, but found his response: “We, France, have our own army to look after our security.” Germany, as we all know, does not have an army worthy of the name.

Otherwise, Macron’s speech included a large section devoted to historical patterns and continuities binding France and Russia together. It is more than curious that Macron chose to highlight the fact that when his predecessor Charles Charles De Gaulle decided to visit Russia in June 1966 he chose St Petersburg (Leningrad at the time) because of the city’s heroic resistance in the great siege of World War II. Macron announced that he would be visiting the Piskarevo cemetery where more than a million unidentified victims of the siege are buried to lay a wreath of remembrance.

Mention of his following in the footsteps of De Gaulle during this speech in Petersburg aligns perfectly with his mentioning one month ago in Washington De Gaulle’s address to the joint session of Congress in 1967, an honor that had been granted to no other French head of state in the intervening 51 years. It is remarkable that Macron, who started his government career as a Socialist and served under Hollande, has chosen De Gaulle, the iconic figure of the French Center Right, to be his avatar. The common denominator is surely national sovereignty, which De Gaulle went very far to promote.

Otherwise, Macron’s talk on continuities relied heavily on mutual cultural influences between Russia and France. Russian schoolchildren grow up with The Three Musketeers, he said. French schoolchildren grow up with Peter and the Wolf. But he went well beyond these commonplaces. He noted that French tourists traveling by boat down the Volga are known to ask where is the building that Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers, stayed in during his sojourn in Russia. And the bottom line of all these evocations of common cultural traditions was Macron’s overriding point that the countries are both European. Indeed, Macron’s explanation to journalists of his mission to Russia in separate interviews on the sidelines was to ensure that the country did not turn in upon itself or abandon Europe for its friends in Asia.

To anyone with a good knowledge of Vladimir Putin, that is a wholly artificial risk. But so be it, it reads well in Paris or Brussels. In any case, one of the concrete results of the discussions in the Constantine Palace was an initiative to drop all visa requirements for young people of both countries below age 18 who wish to visit the other country. If implemented, this will be a very important step forward in normalizing relations and preparing the grounds for mutual understanding.

For a Rothschild banker and for a participant in an Economic Forum, Macron’s preparation of remarks on the economy and trade relations was far weaker than his historical and cultural research. He was pleased to remind the audience that France is the largest foreign employer in the Russian Federation, which may well be a function of its particular activity in service industries including retailing (Auchan, Decathlon, Castorama), hospitality (Novotel) and banking (Société Générale-Rosbank) which employ large work forces as opposed to manufacturing industry. He boasted that notwithstanding the difficult times, meaning sanctions which France has supported and enforced, the 500 French companies active in Russia have stayed in place. He avoided entirely the question of trade turnover, which is only a fraction of that between Germany and Russia. He claimed that France is the second largest foreign investor in Russia, but here he was later corrected by Putin, who noted that first place is held by China, after which comes Germany. Putin went on to say that French investment has to be weighed in context: all French companies together have invested 15 billion euros while one Finnish company alone, Fortum, has invested 6 billion euros.

Despite all of the independence that Macron insisted is enjoyed by French foreign policy, in the key issue for his hosts of sanctions, the French President laid down the hard EU line: that no progress on sanctions is possible before progress is made on implementing the Minsk Accords on the Donbass. However, on other international issues where his hands are not bound by EU policy, Macron obviously showed flexibility and a keen interest in arriving at understandings with Putin. The following points of agreement which he laid out are worthy of note:

1. Iran

Macron re-stated the commitment of the 3 European signatories of the nuclear accord to remain in the Agreement, despite the withdrawal of the United States. Here their interests coincide with Russia’s. Macron made reference to the decision the week before at the European Summit in Sofia to activate mechanisms that will protect the Agreement and also European companies from extraterritorial application of the American law on sanctions. In answer to questions from reporters on both days of his visit, Macron explained that compensation against losses imposed the US applied only to companies which are not quoted on US exchanges or otherwise heavily invested in US operations which might be shut down. That would entail unacceptable expenses for the European taxpayers. Accordingly such very large companies will decide for themselves on how to respond to US sanctions while small and medium sized companies could be protected. It remains to be seen whether this approach will be sufficient to ensure that Iran continues to benefit commercially from the Agreement in a way that justifies its continued participation.

Macron noted that he and Vladimir Putin discussed the other issues surrounding Iran that Trump had raised to justify US withdrawal: namely Iran’s regional activities, its nuclear course after 2025 and its ballistic missile program. He said he has introduced these questions directly to Iranian prime minister Rouhani and assumes they are discussable on condition that all sides continue to observe the nuclear deal as concluded in 2015.

2. Syria

There is potential importance to the agreement Macron reached with Putin to put in place a coordination mechanism to arrive at a common agenda for the two current formats on a political solution in Syria with the objective of arriving at convergence. These are the Astana format overseen by Russia, Turkey and Iran, and the so-called “Small Group” initiated by the French and including the UK, Germany, Jordan, the United States and Saudi Arabia. The two groups both claim to seek an outcome that preserves the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria while not imposing solutions from the outside with respect to the future role of Bashar Assad. The main difference in approaches would appear to be which Syrians will participate in the political solution. The Astana process embraces only the Syrian forces and movements on the ground in the country today. The “Small Group” promotes also the Syrian population that has fled abroad. It will be an enormous challenge to finesse these differences, but better to start now.

Macron also used the opportunity to announce the start of French participation in humanitarian assistance for Syria. So far, the number he put out, 50 million euros, is just a drop in the bucket of the tens if not hundreds of billions needed to restore Syria to its situation before the civil war. But it is noteworthy that France’s funding of NGOs for humanitarian work will also include those operating on territory under the control of Damascus.

During the questioning on the first day of his visit, Emmanuel Macron confirmed that he would be acting on the wishes of his French intellectual supporters and meet representatives of Russian civil society working for human rights. Indeed, on that same day he met with the director of the iconic human rights organization Memorial. But he spent more time with the widow of the great dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom he invited to the gala ballet performance that evening.

The selection of Natalya for the purpose of talking with society is particularly significant because dissident that he had been before his exile and critical of modern Russia as he had become upon his return to his homeland, Solzhenitsyn was ultimately a sincere admirer of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president has met several times with Natalya Solzhenitsyn in recent years to discuss the use of her husband’s writings in Russian secondary schools among other issues. If this is what constitutes staying in touch with the Russian people as distinct from the Russian government, then Macron is performing it with sensitivity and realism, meaning that he is getting good advice, better than ever came the way of Barack Obama or of his ambassador Michael McFaul.

Of the four guest speakers at the Forum’s Plenary Session on Friday, Emmanuel Macron’s was by far the longest. There were no new directions in his speech compared to his address to the press conference on Thursday. He emphasized repeatedly his keen interest in maintaining an ongoing dialogue with Vladimir Putin and with Russia even if their respective positions were in contradiction.

He invoked once again the historic bonds between the countries in the cultural sphere. And he made an interesting detour into literature, specifically into Tolstoy’s War and Peace, with references to the meeting and exchanges of views between one of the novel’s main characters, Pierre Bezukhov, a complex personality who is widely taken to be a stand-in for Tolstoy himself, and the peasant Platon Karataev, a figure who makes a brief appearance and is the spokesman for Russian folk wisdom. Macron’s attraction to their philosophical dialogues is indicative of how strongly his own studies in philosophy in college shaped his intellectual interests to this day, as a complement to his work in finance and in government. One can be sure that none of this escaped the attention of his hosts, all the more so that Macron can keep straight the characters and the titles of Russian novels, unlike the Russophobe British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, for example. In this regard, Macron fits into the intellectual world of Vladimir Putin and Russian elites far better than he does in the casino culture world of Donald Trump.

Shinzo Abe: Japan’s regression to US vassal spoils chances for the much-desired peace treaty

Whereas Macron and France emerge from his visit to the Forum with potentially important progress in cooperation with Russia on two of the most important international security issues of the day, the timidity and lack of imagination which Shinzo Abe exhibited at the Forum and in his follow-on visit to the Kremlin for talks on Saturday render utterly unrealizable his hopes to reach a peace treaty with Russia more than 70 years after the end of WWII.

All of this was so precisely because Abe, unlike Macron, has gone backwards rather than forward and is pursuing a foreign policy heavily dependent on the United States. Macron was pushed to evoke French national interest and to oppose the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal because of the security risks failure of the Agreement poses to France and Europe. At the same time he had to scramble to find solutions to the likely threat of US sanctions against French and European companies which may persist in trading with Iran after the imposition of the US embargo. And his thinking was further defined by the trade war on Europe that Trump has threatened to unleash with imposition of tariffs on aluminum and steel, pending a fundamental review of terms of trade between the EU and the USA more favorable to the latter. As Macron’s Minister of Foreign Affairs had said with undiplomatic clarity, Europe refused to negotiate trade terms when being held hostage over steel tariffs.

Meanwhile, the crisis over the growing nuclear and missile delivery systems of North Korea has driven Abe in the opposite direction: straight into the waiting arms of the US administration as he pleads for more, not less protection from US weapons systems and personnel against a perceived threat from Pyongyang.

In his speeches to the Forum and at the press conference following his talks with Putin in Moscow, Prime Minister Abe noted that this is his 21st meeting with Putin and that the issue of a peace treaty remains high on the agenda. However, his determination to arrive at a peace treaty by first conditioning Japanese and Russian publics to the benefits from their joint cooperation through concrete deeds has not gone beyond his 8 identified areas of cooperation.

These projects to raise Russian labor productivity, improve health care and so extend the average life expectancy, all have relatively low budgets and low visibility. The additional joint cooperation over humanitarian measures facilitating visits of Japanese citizens to the Kuriles to visit the graves of their ancestors and projects to jointly improve housekeeping on the islands, including better waste disposal – are all still smaller, one might say insignificant steps.

In answer to a question from a Russian CEO already in business cooperation with Japanese partners on when Japan will raise the funding of an investment fund from its present one billion dollar level to something more in keeping with real demand, Abe made clear that absent a peace treaty he has no intention to allocate large sums of money to Russian projects.

At the end of last year, as the project to build the Crimean Bridge was entering its final phase, there was considerable speculation in the Russian media that early in the new year 2018 an announcement would be made that the redoubtable bridge-building team assembled by Putin’s business ally Arkady Rotenberg for the Crimean Bridge would next be given a contract for rail bridge to connect Sakhalin Island with the mainland in the West and that agreement would be reached with Tokyo on an additional rail bridge connecting Sakhalin with the Japanese island of Hokkaido to the East. This vast project, it was said, could alter logistics of Japanese trade with Western Europe in a dramatic manner. It could capture the imagination of the Russian and Japanese peoples for a generation. In short, it could prepare the way for the hoped for peace treaty.

However, Shinzo Abe made no suggestion during his latest visit to Russia that his government is giving any thought to such a major joint infrastructure project with Russia, one which surely would not be welcomed by his American friends since it would work against the sea power that the US considers its own ace at the card table.

Shinzo Abe’s ambition for a peace treaty to be concluded with Russia during the time in power of his generation is entirely empty so long as he is unable to say what Emmanuel Macron said at the Forum: that he heads a sovereign country which has its own independent foreign policy.

There are many observers who shrug their shoulders and cannot comprehend why Russia, the world’s largest nation by far, with more than 10% of the world’s land mass, is unwilling to hand over four small islands to Japan which it took over under the terms of an agreement among the WWII Allies to bring Russia into the war in the Pacific in its final phase. However, it is not land greed or even concern over losing sovereignty over the related mineral rights for hydrocarbons on the bottom of the sea surrounding those islands.

For Russia, the sticking point is the security consideration of allowing these territories with their important location in the sea lanes giving the Russian navy access to the wider Pacific coming under possible control of the United States occupation forces in Japan. For Russia, Abe is an undependable partner precisely because he is not a sovereign party but subject to decisions taken in Washington.

The Japanese government’s reticence to invest in trade facilitation with Russia has results. As Vladimir Putin noted, bilateral Russian-Japanese trade falls far short of its potential. In the last year it came to just 15 billion dollars, and already fell behind Russian-South Korean trade figures, while Russian-German trade stood at 50 billion and Russian-Chinese trade reached 80 billion.

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Tariffs on EU, Mexico, Canada Rattle Markets

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration said Thursday it will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Mexico and Canada after failing to win concessions from the American allies. Europe and Mexico pledged to retaliate quickly, exacerbating trans-Atlantic and North American trade tensions. Financial markets fell amid fears of a trade war.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the tariffs would be 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, and go into effect on Friday, as the administration followed through on the penalties after earlier granting exemptions to buy time for negotiations. President Donald Trump had announced the tariffs in March, citing national security concerns.

The European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Trump’s decision amounted to trade protectionism and that Europe would respond with countermeasures. “This is protectionism, pure and simple,” Juncker said. Mexico said it would penalize U.S. imports including pork bellies, apples, grapes, cheeses and flat steel.

“Donald Trump is a bully. And the only way to do deal with a bully is to stand up and push back,” said Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s premier.

The U.S. action widens a rift with America’s closest allies, threatens to drive up prices for companies and consumers that buy steel and aluminum, heightens uncertainty for businesses and is already alarming investors in global financial markets.

Financial markets dipped amid concerns about the disputes among trading partners, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 200 points.

The tariffs directed at some of the U.S.’s most ardent allies represented the latest move in Trump’s “America First” agenda that has roiled financial markets and raised the specter of a trade war involving the U.S., China and some of the globe’s most dominant economies.

The trade actions have opened the U.S. to criticism that it’s burning bridges at a time when Trump is seeking to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons and help stabilize the Middle East.

“We are alienating all of our friends and partners at a time when we could really use their support,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator who is now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Ross told reporters that talks with Canada and Mexico over revising the North American Free Trade Agreement were “taking longer than we had hoped.” Talks with Europe had “made some progress” but not enough for additional exemptions, he said in a conference call from Paris.

“We continue to be quite willing and indeed eager to have further discussions,” Ross said. He said he planned to travel to China on Friday for trade talks between the world’s two biggest economies.

European officials, bracing for the tariffs, have threatened to retaliate against U.S. orange juice, peanut butter, kitchenware, clothing and footwear, washing machines, textiles, whiskey, motorcycles, boats and batteries. The EU will decide exact countermeasures in the coming weeks, according to the French officials.

In terms of the NAFTA talks, the tariffs could hinder the negotiations among the North American neighbors. Ross said there was “no longer a very precise date when they may be concluded and therefore (Canada and Mexico) were added into the list of those who will bear tariffs.”

Brazil, Argentina and Australia have agreed to limit steel shipments to the U.S. in exchange for being spared the tariffs, the Commerce Department said. Tariffs will remain on imports from Japan.

Fears of a global trade war are already weighing on investor confidence and could hinder the global economic upturn. European officials argue that tit-for-tat tariffs will hurt growth on both sides of the Atlantic and Canada said before the announcement that it would respond in kind.

“Canada considers it frankly absurd that we would in any way be considered to be a national security threat to the United States,” Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said before the tariffs were announced. “The government is absolutely prepared to and will defend Canadian industries and Canadian jobs. We will respond appropriately.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed her opposition even before the U.S. announcement, saying the looming tariffs were incompatible with World Trade Organization rules. She said if there were no exemptions, “We will respond in an intelligent, decisive and joint way.”

France’s finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, called the U.S. tariffs “unjustified, unjustifiable and dangerous.”

“This will only lead to the victory of those who want less growth, those who don’t think we can develop our economies across the world. We think on the contrary that global trade must have rules in a context of multilateralism. We are ready to rebuild this multilateralism with our American friends,” he said.

The EU trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, said the EU “did everything to avoid this outcome.” Noting her discussions with U.S. officials, she said. “I have argued for the EU and the US to engage in a positive trans-Atlantic trade agenda, and for the EU to be fully, permanently and unconditionally exempted from these tariffs.”

Even some Trump allies in Congress said the trade moves were misguided. “Tariffs on steel and aluminum imports are a tax hike on Americans and will have damaging consequences for consumers, manufacturers and workers,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. The conservative Koch brothers network’ also said it opposed the tariffs.

White House spokesman Raj Shah told Fox News: “The president’s actions are about protecting American steel, American aluminum. They’re critical for national security.”

Tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. can help local producers of the metals by making foreign products more expensive. But they can increase costs more broadly for U.S. manufacturers that cannot source all their needs locally and have to import the materials. That hurts the companies and can lead to more expensive consumer prices, economists say.

“Unilateral responses and threats over trade war will solve nothing of the serious imbalances in world trade. Nothing,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.

In a clear reference to Trump, Macron added: “These solutions might bring symbolic satisfaction in the short term. … One can think about making voters happy by saying, ‘I have a victory, I’ll change the rules, you’ll see.'”

But Macron said those “who waged bilateral trade wars … saw an increase in prices and an increase in unemployment.”

Besides the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, the U.S. is also investigating possible limits on foreign cars in the name of national security.

Ross criticized the EU for its tough negotiating position. But German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier insisted the Europeans were ready to negotiate special trade arrangements, notably for liquefied natural gas and industrial goods, including cars.

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Cook reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Angela Charlton and Alex Turnbull in Paris, Paul Wiseman, Jill Colvin and Kevin Freking in Washington, Raf Casert in Brussels, Christopher Sherman in Mexico City, Rob Gillies in Toronto and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed to this report.

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