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S. Korean Leader ‘Very Perplexed’ Over Summit Cancellation

WASHINGTON—The Latest on President Donald Trump canceling his planned summit with North Korea (all times local):

7:05 p.m.

North Korea says it is still willing to sit down for talks with the United States “at any time, at any format” after President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his planned summit with Kim Jong Un.

Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan issued a statement Friday saying North Korea is “willing to give the U.S. time and opportunities” to reconsider talks.

Kim says North Korea’s “objective and resolve to do our best for the sake of peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and all humankind remain unchanged.”

Kim is calling Trump’s decision “unexpected” and “very regrettable,” and says the cancellation of the talks shows “how grave the status of historically deep-rooted hostile North Korea-U.S. relations is and how urgently a summit should be realized to improve ties.”

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5 p.m.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he’s “very perplexed” that the U.S.-North Korea summit won’t go ahead as planned.

Yonhap news agency cited Moon as urging direct talks between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Moon was speaking at an emergency meeting of his top security officials in Seoul after Trump announced he was canceling the summit because of North Korean “hostility.”

Moon was quoted as saying: “I am very perplexed and it is very regrettable that the North Korea-U.S. summit will not be held on June 12.”

He said, “Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of permanent peace are historic tasks that can neither be abandoned nor delayed.”

Moon met Trump in Washington on Tuesday, but appeared caught unawares by the president’s decision Thursday.

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4 p.m.

The White House is accusing North Korea of displaying a lack of judgment in dealing with the U.S. over the now-cancelled summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

A senior White House official says the North Korean government violated several promises to the U.S. and South Korea, stood up an American delegation seeking to plan the summit in Singapore last week and did not return messages from the U.S. seeking to discuss the meeting.

The official says the North also reneged on a pledge to allow international inspectors to monitor the supposed demolition of its nuclear test site Thursday. International journalists were present, but the U.S. government can’t verify the site’s destruction.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid overshadowing Trump’s comments Thursday.

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3:45 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says North Korea had fulfilled its promises ahead of the planned summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Trump canceled the summit on Thursday, citing “hostility” from North Korea.

But Putin said the North Korean leader “did everything that he had promised in advance, even blowing up the tunnels and shafts” of the country’s nuclear testing site. “After which, we heard about cancellation of the summit by the United States.”

Putin said: “In Russia, we took this news with regret, because we had very much counted on it being a significant step in sorting out the situation on the Korean peninsula and that it would be the beginning of the process of denuclearizing the whole Korean Peninsula.”

He spoke at a news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.

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2:10 p.m.

Donald Trump’s letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was dictated by the president to his national security adviser, John Bolton.

That’s according to Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, who met with Bolton at the White House on Thursday, hours after Trump announced he was withdrawing from a planned summit with Kim next month.

Gardner told The Associated press that Bolton described the letter as a “wake-up” to Kim, who had shown a change in attitude after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The senator cited the North Koreans’ refusal to return phone calls to the administration and turning down high-level talks with South Korea.

He said North Korea had shown a “lack of seriousness” in negotiating on denuclearization.

In the letter, Trump cited “hostility” from North Korea, but kept open the possibility for dialogue.

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1:25 p.m.

Pentagon officials say American forces on the Korean peninsula remain on a normal state of alert in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel his planned summit with North Korea’s leader.

Trump said he had spoken to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis about the cancellation and that the U.S. military is prepared for what he called a “foolish or reckless” act by the North.

A spokesman for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, told reporters the U.S. military will be ready for any North Korean provocation such as a missile launch. But he said the state of vigilance by the U.S. military in South Korea has not changed, with no new preparations or actions since Trump’s announcement. He said U.S. forces are in a “boxer’s stance,” prepared to defend themselves and South Korea.

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1:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he thinks Kim Jong Un wants to do “what’s right” but says it’s up to the North Korean leader to seize the opportunity.

Trump says the dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea was good until the North shifted back to its usual belligerent tone. The president says he understands why that happened, but declined to elaborate.

Trump has canceled a summit with Kim planned for June 12 in Singapore, but has left the door open to meeting on that or another date.

The president adds: “We’ll see whether or not that opportunity is seized by North Korea.”

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12:10 p.m.

President Donald Trump declares he is “waiting” to see if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will again “engage in constructive dialogue.”

Trump opened the door for diplomacy Thursday just hours after he canceled a summit with Kim scheduled for next month in Singapore.

But he insisted that Kim reach out, placing the blame on the North Korean leader for the collapse of negotiations.

He also said that until that happened, tough sanctions on Pyongyang would continue and the U.S.-led “maximum pressure campaign is continuing.”

Trump and Kim had been slated to meet June 12 for what White House officials had hoped would be a historic diplomatic breakthrough for the president.

They advised that the summit could be rescheduled.

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12:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. military is “ready if necessary” to respond to “foolish or reckless acts” by North Korea.

Trump also says he’s been in touch with South Korea and Japan and that both allies are willing to bear much of the financial burden “if such an unfortunate situation is forced upon us.”

Trump on Thursday announced he has called off a planned June 12 summit with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, citing recent hostile statements by Kim’s government.

North Korea overnight threatened nuclear confrontation with the U.S. and called Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy.”

Trump says hopefully “positive things” will take place with respect to North Korea’s future. But he adds “If they don’t we are more ready than we have ever been before.”

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11:30 a.m.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he was involved in discussions late Wednesday and early Thursday that led to President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But, he would not say exactly which, if any, other countries were given a head’s up on the decision, including South Korea.

“I don’t want to get into who all we notified,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding: “The White House will speak to that at the appropriate time.”

However, Pompeo, who met at the State Department on Wednesday with China’s foreign minister, did say that he had not spoken to Chinese officials since the decision was made.

Asked about a report that South Korea had not been informed before the president’s letter to Kim canceling the summit was made public, Pompeo maintained that Washington and Seoul were “in lockstep.”

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11:20 a.m.

A prominent Russian lawmaker says the cancellation of the planned summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is a serious setback.

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, is quoted by the news agency Interfax as saying: “The rejection by Trump of conducting the American-North Korean summit undoubtedly is a serious blow to peaceful settlement in the region.”

He adds that “it’s already the second blow, after the exit from the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, to global stability in general.”

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11:05 a.m.

A Republican senator often critical of Donald Trump says the president “made the right call” in canceling a summit with North Korea’s leader.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska says Kim Jong Un is a “murderous despot and habitual liar.” Sasse is often critical of Trump but is siding with the president on his decision Thursday to pull out of the summit that had been planned for June 12 in Singapore.

Trump cited recent aggressive statements from Kim’s government for his decision to cancel the meeting.

Sasse adds in a statement that if North Korea wants diplomacy, “it should know that half-measures and spin about its nuclear program won’t cut it.”

Sasse is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee,

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10:55 a.m.

The U.N. chief says he is “deeply concerned” by the cancellation of the planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.

Antonio Guterres told an audience at the University of Geneva on Thursday that he was urging the parties to keep working “to find a path to the peaceful and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Guterres’ comments came as he laid out his disarmament agenda, warning that nuclear agreements between states have been threatened like never before.

Trump announced Thursday that he was canceling the June 12 summit in Singapore with Kim following hostile comments. Overnight, Kim’s government threatened nuclear confrontation and called Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy.”

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10:45 a.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says achieving a peaceful resolution to the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula will require “a much greater degree of seriousness” from Kim Jong Un.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has canceled a June 12 summit in Singapore with the North Korean leader, citing hostile comments from Kim. Overnight, Kim’s government threatened nuclear confrontation and called Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy.”

Ryan says in a statement Thursday that Kim’s government has long given ample reason to question its commitment to stability.

The Republican says that, until a peaceful resolution is achieved, Congress has provided “significant tools” to hold North Korea accountable.

Ryan says the U.S. must continue the “maximum pressure” campaign that Trump and others say brought North Korea to the table in the first place.

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10:35 a.m.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says North Korea did not respond to repeated requests from U.S. officials to discuss logistics for the now-canceled summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that the lack of response was an additional reason for Trump’s decision to call off the meeting. Trump cited recent bellicose comments from the North in a letter to Kim released by the White House.

Pompeo says: “We had received no response to our inquiries from them.”

Pompeo says the North’s attitude changed markedly since he returned from a trip to Pyongyang earlier this month, when he met with Kim and secured the release of three American prisoners being held there.

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10:30 a.m.

A senior Democratic senator says President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from a planned summit with North Korea shows the consequence of his failure to prepare properly.

Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey said Thursday that the withdrawal shows “the art of diplomacy is a lot harder than the art of the deal.”

The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says it’s “pretty amazing” that Trump’s Republican administration would be shocked that North Korea “is acting as North Korea might very well normally act.”

He adds: “I’m not sure that constantly quoting the Libya model is the diplomatic way to try to get to the results that we seek in North Korea because that didn’t work out too well for Gadhafi.”

Menendez was speaking Thursday at a committee hearing attended by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of Nuclear War

Peace will have to wait. Now that Donald Trump has canceled the June 12 summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the threat of a nuclear confrontation has increased.

Two young artists from Greece, Spiros Nobilakis and Eugenia Koumaki, created a graphic novel comic to show the interconnectedness of our world and how one small action can have disastrous consequences. The comic is called “Butterfly Effect” and can be viewed after our brief interview with Spiros and Eugenia.

What inspired you to create this graphic novel-type comic?

Nobilakis: Immigration has been an important topic in Europe during the past years. While traveling around, I noticed the lack of empathy most people showed toward Syrian refugees. A lot of these Syrian refugees used to belong to a thriving middle-class only a few years ago and could have never imagined their current situation. I wanted to have people around the world see that and make them understand that exactly the same thing could happen to them—to any one of us.

Koumaki: I was approached by Spiros and was immediately captivated by his script. This being his first comic script, I feel privileged to have worked with him on it and expect great things in the future.

Are you hopeful about the future?

Nobilakis: We have to be hopeful. Hope keeps us going. It is not the external signs that make me hopeful, but rather an internal need.

Koumaki: Have you read the comic? In all seriousness, I believe there are a few conflicting trends for the future. I see parts of society moving toward more tolerant and empathetic views, and I see others moving toward intolerance and cruelty. I hope that in the future the first fraction wins and is represented better in politics.

Is peace on earth possible?

Nobilakis: I doubt it. At least in our era. There seem to be strong forces against it.

Koumaki: On all levels? No. Conflict is part of the human nature, but we can and should learn to handle it productively. On national level? I sure hope so. But this will require a lot of changes I hope to see within my lifetime.

View the comic below.

Spiros Nobilakis was born and raised in Athens, Greece. He studied mechanical engineering. Before turning to writing, he experimented with a variety of things, from developing game apps to driving rally cars.

Eugenia Koumaki was born in 1990 and has an honors BA degree in comic and cartoon animation. She has published art for Devin Grayson’s story in IDW’s “Womanthology,” the “Mine!” anthology and Mike Carey’s story in the “Femme Magnifique” anthology. She also has created her own comic, “The Great Coffee Conspiracy,” for Comicdom Press and a science fiction existential thiller, “Hubris,” for Webcomics Publishing.

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Security Troops at U.S. Nuclear Missile Base Took LSD, Records Show

WASHINGTON — One airman said he felt paranoia. Another marveled at the vibrant colors. A third admitted, “I absolutely just loved altering my mind.”

Meet service members entrusted with guarding nuclear missiles that are among the most powerful in America’s arsenal. Air Force records obtained by The Associated Press show they bought, distributed and used the hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months on a highly secure military base in Wyoming. After investigators closed in, one airman deserted to Mexico.

“Although this sounds like something from a movie, it isn’t,” said Capt. Charles Grimsley, the lead prosecutor of one of several courts martial.

A slipup on social media by one airman enabled investigators to crack the drug ring at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in March 2016, details of which are reported here for the first time. Fourteen airmen were disciplined. Six of them were convicted in courts martial of LSD use or distribution or both.

None of the airmen was accused of using drugs on duty. Yet it’s another blow to the reputation of the Air Force’s nuclear missile corps, which is capable of unleashing hell in the form of Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. The corps has struggled at times with misbehavior, mismanagement and low morale.

Although seen by some as a backwater of the U.S. military, the missile force has returned to the spotlight as President Donald Trump has called for strengthening U.S. nuclear firepower and exchanged threats last year with North Korea. The administration’s nuclear strategy calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending in coming decades.

The service members accused of involvement in the LSD ring were from the 90th Missile Wing, which operates one-third of the 400 Minuteman 3 missiles that stand “on alert” 24/7 in underground silos scattered across the northern Great Plains.

Documents obtained by the AP over the past two years through the Freedom of Information Act tell a sordid tale of off-duty use of LSD, cocaine and other drugs in 2015 and 2016 by airmen who were supposed to be held to strict behavioral standards because of their role in securing the weapons.

“It’s another black eye for the Air Force — for the ICBM force in particular,” says Stephen Schwartz, an independent consultant and nuclear expert.

In response to AP inquiries, an Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Uriah L. Orland, said the drug activity took place during off-duty hours. “There are multiple checks to ensure airmen who report for duty are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs and are able to execute the mission safely, securely and effectively,” he said.

Airman 1st Class Tommy N. Ashworth was among those who used LSD supplied by colleagues with connections to civilian drug dealers.

“I felt paranoia, panic” for hours after taking a hit of acid, Ashworth said under oath at his court martial. He confessed to using LSD three times while off duty. The first time, in the summer of 2015, shook him up. “I didn’t know if I was going to die that night or not,” he said as a witness at another airman’s drug trial. Recalling another episode with LSD, he said it felt “almost as if I was going to have like a heart attack or a heat stroke.”

Airman Basic Kyle S. Morrison acknowledged at his court martial that under the influence of LSD he could not have responded if recalled to duty in a nuclear security emergency.

In prosecuting the cases at F.E. Warren, the Air Force asserted that LSD users can experience “profound effects” from even small amounts. It said common psychological effects include “paranoia, fear and panic, unwanted and overwhelming feelings, unwanted life-changing spiritual experiences, and flashbacks.”

It’s unclear how long before being on duty any of the airmen had taken LSD, which stands for lysergic acid diethylamide. The drug became popularized as “acid” in the 1960s, and views since then have been widely split on its mental health risks. Although illegal in the U.S., it had been showing up so infrequently in drug tests across the military that in December 2006 the Pentagon eliminated LSD screening from standard drug-testing procedures. An internal Pentagon memo at the time said that over the previous three years only four positive specimens had been identified in 2.1 million specimens screened for LSD.

Yet Air Force investigators found those implicated in the F.E. Warren drug ring used LSD on base and off, at least twice at outdoor gatherings. Some also snorted cocaine and used ecstasy. Civilians joined them in the LSD use, including some who had recently left Air Force service, according to two officials with knowledge of the investigation. The Air Force declined to discuss this.

Airman 1st Class Nickolos A. Harris, said to be the leader of the drug ring, testified that he had no trouble getting LSD and other drugs from civilian sources. He pleaded guilty to using and distributing LSD and using ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana.

He acknowledged using LSD eight times and distributing LSD multiple times to fellow airmen at parties in Denver and other locations from spring 2015 to early 2016.

“I absolutely just loved altering my mind,” he told the military judge, blaming his decisions to use hallucinogens and other drugs on his addictive personality.

Other airmen testified that it was easy to obtain LSD in a liquid form spread on small tabs of perforated white paper. Airmen ingested at least one tab by placing it on their tongue. In one episode summarized by a military judge at Harris’ court martial, he and other airmen watched YouTube videos and “then went longboarding on the streets of Denver while high on LSD.”

Harris was sentenced to 12 months in jail and other penalties, but under a pretrial agreement he avoided a punitive discharge. The lead prosecutor in that case, Air Force Capt. C. Rhodes Berry, had argued Harris should be locked up for 42 months, including nine months for the “aggravating circumstance” of undercutting public trust by using hallucinogens and other drugs on a nuclear weapons base.

“I cannot think of anything more aggravating than being the ringleader of a drug ring on F.E. Warren Air Force Base,” Berry said at the courts martial.

In all, the AP obtained transcripts of seven courts martial proceedings, plus related documents. They provide vivid descriptions of LSD trips.

“I’m dying!” one airman is quoted as exclaiming, followed by “When is this going to end?” during a “bad trip” on LSD in February 2016 at Curt Gowdy State Park, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Cheyenne, where F.E. Warren is located. A portion of that episode was video-recorded by one member of the group; a transcript of the audio was included in court records.

Others said they enjoyed the drug.

“Minutes felt like hours, colors seemed more vibrant and clear,” Morrison testified. “In general, I felt more alive.” He said he had used LSD in high school, which could have disqualified him from Air Force service; he said that his recruiter told him he should lie about it and that lying about prior drug use was “normal” in the Air Force.

At his court martial, Morrison acknowledged distributing LSD on the missile base in February 2016. A month later, when summoned for questioning by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Morrison confessed and became an informant for the agency, an arrangement the Air Force said yielded legally admissible evidence against 10 other airmen. Under a pretrial agreement, he agreed to testify against other airmen and avoided a punitive discharge. He was sentenced to five months’ confinement, 15 days of hard labor and loss of $5,200 in pay.

Most of the airmen involved were members of two related security units at F.E. Warren — the 790th Missile Security Forces Squadron and the 90th Security Forces Squadron. Together, they are responsible for the security and defense of the nuclear weapons there as well as the missile complex.

By coincidence, the No. 2 Pentagon official at the time, Robert Work, visited F.E. Warren one month before the drug investigation became public. Accompanied by an AP reporter, he watched as airmen of the 790th Missile Security Forces Squadron — whose members at the time included Harris, the accused leader of the drug ring — demonstrated how they would force their way into and regain control of a captured missile silo.

Work, the deputy defense secretary, was there to assess progress in fixing problems in the ICBM force identified by then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who ordered an investigation after the AP reported on personnel, resource, training and leadership problems in 2013-14. Those problems included the firing of the general in charge of the entire ICBM force for inappropriate behavior the Air Force said was linked to alcohol abuse. A month later the AP revealed that an unpublished study prepared for the Air Force found “burnout” among nuclear missile launch officers and evidence of broader behavioral problems, including sexual assaults and domestic violence. Air Force officials say the force has since rebounded.

In an interview, Work said he was not aware during his visit that anything was amiss. Nor was he briefed later on the investigation. He said he wouldn’t have expected to be briefed unless the Air Force found that LSD or other illegal drugs were a “systemic problem” for the nuclear force, beyond the security forces group at F.E. Warren.

Work said he had never heard of LSD use anywhere in the nuclear workforce.

For the inexperienced members of the drug ring, Harris, the ringleader, had set out several “rules” for LSD use at a gathering of several airmen in a Cheyenne apartment in late 2015 that was recorded on video. Rule No. 1: “No social media at all.” He added: “No bad trips. Everybody’s happy right now. Let’s keep it that way.”

But social media proved their undoing. In March 2016, one member posted a Snapchat video of himself smoking marijuana, setting Air Force investigators on their trail.

As the investigators closed in, one of the accused, Airman 1st Class Devin R. Hagarty, grabbed a backpack and cash, text-messaged his mother that he loved her, turned off his cellphone and fled to Mexico. “I started panicking,” he told a military judge after giving himself up and being charged with desertion.

The Air Force said Hagarty was the first convicted deserter from an ICBM base since January 2013. In court, he admitted using LSD four times in 2015-16 and distributing it once, and he said he had deserted with the intention of never returning. He also admitted to using cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana multiple times. He was sentenced to 13 months in a military jail.

In all, disciplinary action was taken against 14 airmen. In addition, two accused airmen were acquitted at courts martial, and three other suspects were not charged.

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Congressional Leaders to Get Classified Briefings on Russia Probe

WASHINGTON — House and Senate lawmakers from both parties are set to meet with top intelligence officials Thursday for classified briefings as President Donald Trump raises new suspicions about the federal investigation into his 2016 campaign.

Trump is calling his newest attempt at discrediting special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation “spygate.” In recent days, he has been zeroing in on — and at times embellishing — reports that a longtime U.S. government informant approached members of his campaign during the 2016 presidential election in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway the election.

Trump intensified his attacks Thursday, tweeting that it was “starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.”

Trump’s broadsides set the stage for the unusual decision by the White House to arrange a briefing about classified documents that will be attended by three Republican House members, including House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Ryan downplayed Trump’s attacks saying he doesn’t worry about any lasting damage to the agencies. “We have strong institutions in this country. They’re going to endure any kind of test,” Ryan told reporters Thursday.

After Democratic complaints and negotiations that went into the evening Wednesday, the Justice Department said it would hold a second classified briefing the same day and invite the Gang of Eight — a group that consists of the top Republicans and Democrats in each chamber and the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

There were two other late additions to the list — White House chief of staff John Kelly and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had originally said no one from the White House would attend the briefing, at which the investigation into Trump’s campaign will be discussed.

Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russia investigation, and is frequently criticized by Trump.

Two House lawmakers — Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy — were invited to attend both briefings, as were Kelly, Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, according to the Justice Department.

All were invited to the second briefing, as well, plus Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr was also invited, along with the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, Sen. Mark Warner, and the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, Rep. Adam Schiff.

The first briefing will take place at the Justice Department, the department said. The second briefing will take place on Capitol Hill, according to three people familiar with the meeting plans who were not authorized to publicly discuss them and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Ryan said he told the administration that whatever briefing is held for Republicans should also be given to Democrats.

Details about the meetings continued to shift Thursday morning. A spokeswoman for Ryan, AshLee Strong, said he would attend the first meeting instead of the second one. Ryan is attending fundraisers later Thursday in Houston. “They’re the same briefing,” he said. And Schumer called for the first meeting to be canceled.

“What is the point of the separate briefing if not to cause partisan trouble?” Schumer said in a statement.

Nunes, an ardent Trump supporter, had originally requested the information on an FBI source in the Russia investigation. And Trump took up the cause as the White House tried to combat the threat posed by Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference and possible obstruction of justice.

Trump escalated his efforts to discredit the investigation Wednesday, tweeting: “Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around!”

It remained unclear what, if any, spying was done. The White House gave no evidence to support Trump’s claim that the Obama administration was trying to spy on his 2016 campaign for political reasons. It’s long been known that the FBI was looking into Russian meddling during the campaign and that part of that inquiry touched on the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian figures. Mueller later took over the investigation when he was appointed in May 2017.

Trump has told confidants in recent days that the revelation of an informant was potential evidence that the upper echelon of federal law enforcement had conspired against him, according to the three people who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. Trump told one ally this week that he wanted “to brand” the informant a “spy,” believing the more nefarious term would resonate more in the media and with the public.

As Republicans worked to show a Justice Department conspiracy against Trump, Democrats and former law enforcement officials defended the agency. Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump last year, tweeted Wednesday that the agency’s use of secret informants was “tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country.”

“Attacks on the FBI and lying about its work will do lasting damage to our country,” Comey tweeted. “How will Republicans explain this to their grandchildren?”

In an interview airing Thursday on “Fox & Friends,” Trump referred to Comey as one of the “rotten apples” in FBI leadership.

“How is he going to explain to his grandchildren all of the lies, the deceit, all of the problems he’s caused for this country?” Trump asked.

The back and forth between Congress and the Justice Department over the Nunes request — one of many over the course of the Russia investigation — has simmered for weeks.

The department originally rejected Nunes’ appeal, writing in a letter in April that his request for information “regarding a specific individual” could have severe consequences, including potential loss of human life. Negotiations restarted when Trump demanded Sunday that the Justice Department investigate “whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes.”

The Justice Department agreed to expand an internal investigation to determine whether there was any politically motivated surveillance. And the White House said Kelly would organize the meeting with House lawmakers to discuss the documents.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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Trump Cancels Summit, Citing ‘Open Hostility’ by North Korea

WASHINGTON — In a dramatic diplomatic turn, President Donald Trump canceled next month’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Thursday, citing the “tremendous anger and open hostility” in a recent statement by the North.

Trump said in a letter to Kim released by the White House that, based on the statement, he felt it was “inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.” Adding his own threat, he said that while the North Koreans talk about their nuclear capabilities, “ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”

In the Korean statement that Trump cited, the North referred to Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy” for his comments on the North and said it was just as ready to meet in a nuclear confrontation as at the negotiating table.

Trump said in his letter: “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.”

He said the world was losing a “great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth” now that their June 12 summit has been canceled. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo read the letter during a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.

The president had agreed to the historic sit-down in March after months of trading insults and nuclear threats with the North Korean leader. But after criticism from North Korea, Trump cast doubt this week on whether the meeting would happen.

A White House official said it was incorrect to focus on the “dummy comments” about Pence. The official said the North Koreans had threatened nuclear war in their statement released Wednesday night and no summit could be successful under these circumstances.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

White House officials have privately predicted for weeks that the summit could be canceled once or twice before actually taking place, owing to the hard-nosed style of the two leaders. Trump has seemed to welcome chatter of a Nobel Peace Prize, but that has yielded in recent weeks to the sobering prospect of ensuring a successful outcome with the Kim.

Trump’s allies in Congress applauded the president, saying he was justified in pulling out of the meeting.

“North Korea has a long history of demanding concessions merely to negotiate. While past administrations of both parties have fallen for this ruse, I commend the president for seeing through Kim Jong Un’s fraud,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who said the nation’s “maximum-pressure campaign on North Korea must continue.”

This spring, scoring a diplomatic win with Pyongyang had become Trump’s top focus.

That had been a far cry from his bellicose rhetoric, issued both on Twitter and from the rostrum of the United Nations last fall. Trump threw off ominous taunts of raining “fire and fury” on the North while belittling its leader as “Little Rocket Man, alarming many global capitals and much of Washington’s national security establishment and increasing worries about nuclear war. But Trump believed his outside-the-box behavior would bring Kim to the negotiating table.

Drawn to big moments and bigger headlines, Trump has viewed the North Korea summit as a legacy-maker for him, believing that the combustible combination of his bombast and charm already had led to warmer relations between North and South.

He immediately agreed to the proposed meeting, conveyed by South Korean officials, accepting it before consulting with many of his top national security advisers. And earlier this month, when welcoming home three Americans who had been detained in North Korea, Trump used a televised, middle-of-the-night ceremony to play up both his statecraft and stagecraft.

Some observers raised concerns that Trump was risking legitimizing Kim’s government by agreeing to meet him on the world stage without evidence of denuclearization or other concessions. But Trump had bet big on the summit, telling one confidant that he believed a deal with North Korea, rather than in the Middle East, could be his historic victory.

White House officials also believed that a triumph on the Korean Peninsula — something that has eluded the United States for generations — could bolster Trump’s approval ratings, help inoculate him against the investigations swirling around him and trickle down to help Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections.

___

Associated Press writers Ken Thomas, Darlene Superville and Jonathan Lemire contributed.

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Preserving the Positive Legacy of an Empire in Decline

Month by month, tweet by tweet, the events of the past two years have made it clearer than ever that Washington’s once-formidable global might is indeed fading. As the American empire unravels with previously unimagined speed, there are many across this country’s political spectrum who will not mourn its passing. Both peace activists and military veterans have grown tired of the country’s endless wars. Trade unionists and business owners have come to rue the job losses that accompanied Washington’s free-trade policies. Anti-globalization protesters and pro-Trump populists alike cheered the president’s cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The idea of focusing on America and rebuilding the country’s tattered infrastructure has a growing bipartisan appeal.

But before we join this potential chorus of “good riddance” to U.S. global power, it might be worth pausing briefly to ask whether the acceleration of the American decline by President Trump’s erratic foreign policy might not come with unanticipated and unpleasant costs. As Americans mobilize for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential contest, they might look beyond Washington’s mesmerizing celebrity scandals and consider instead the hidden consequences of the country’s ongoing withdrawal from the global arena. Indeed, this fitful, uncontrolled retreat carries with it such serious risks that it might be time for ordinary voters and political activists alike to put foreign policy, in the broadest sense, at the top of their electoral watch list.

First, let’s just admit the obvious. After 18 months in office, Trump’s one-man style of diplomacy, though potentially capable of a few “wins,” is clearly degrading American global stature. After surveying 134 countries, Gallup’s pollsters recently reported that worldwide approval of U.S. leadership has plunged from 48% in 2016 to a record low of 30%, a notch below China’s 31% and significantly under Germany’s 41%.

As Trump has abrogated one international accord after another, observers worldwide have struggled to find some rationale for decisions that seem questionable on their merits and have frayed relations with long-standing allies. Given his inordinate obsession with the “legacy” of Barack Obama, epitomized in a report, whether true or not, of his ritual “defiling” of his predecessor’s Moscow hotel bed via the “golden showers” of Russian prostitutes, there’s a curious yet coherent logic to his foreign policy. You might even think of it as Golden Shower diplomacy. Whatever Obama did, Trump seems determined to undo with a visceral vehemence: the Trans-Pacific trade pact (torn up), the Paris climate accord (withdrawn), the Iran nuclear freeze (voided), close relations with NATO allies (damaged), diplomatic relations with Cuba (frozen), Middle Eastern military withdrawal (reversed), ending the Afghan war (cancelled), the diplomatic pivot to Asia (forgotten), and so on into what already seems like an eternity.

As bizarre as all this might be, Trump’s four to eight years presiding over what still passes for U.S. foreign policy through such personal pique will have lasting consequences. The American presence on the global stage will be further reduced, potentially opening the way for the rise of those autocratic powers, Beijing and Moscow, hostile to the liberal international order that Washington promoted for the past 70 years, even as — thanks to Trump’s love of fossil fuels — the further degradation of the planetary environment occurs.

The Delicate Duality of American Global Power

To fully understand what’s at stake, you would need to reach back to the dawn of U.S. global dominion and try to grasp the elusive character of the power that went with it. In the closing months of World War II, when the United States stood astride a partially wrecked planet like a titan, Washington used its extraordinary clout to build a new world order grounded in a “delicate duality” that juxtaposed two contradictory attributes. It fostered an international community of sovereign nations governed by the rule of law, while also building its own superpower dominion through the raw Realpolitik of economic pressure, crushing military force, unrestrained covert action, and diplomatic leverage.

Keep in mind that America had emerged from the ashes of that world war as a behemoth of unprecedented power. With Europe, Japan, and Russia in ruins, the U.S. had the only intact industrial complex left and then accounted for about half of the world’s entire economic output. At war’s end, its military had swelled to more than 12 million troops, its Navy ruled the seas with more than 1,000 warships, and its air force commanded the skies with 41,000 combat aircraft. In the decade that followed, Washington would encircle Eurasia with hundreds of military bases, as well as bevies of strategic bombers and warships. In the process, it would also confine its Cold War enemies, China and Russia, behind that infamous Iron Curtain.

Throughout those early Cold War years, Washington’s diplomats walked tall in the corridors of power, deftly negotiating defense pacts and trade deals that gave the country a distinct advantage on the world stage. Meanwhile, its clandestine operatives maneuvered relentlessly in the shadow lands of global power to topple neutral or hostile governments via coups and covert operations. Washington, of course, eventually won the Cold War, but its tactics produced almost unimaginably dreadful costs — brutal military dictatorships across Asia and Latin America, millions of dead in Indochina, and devastated societies in Central Asia, Central America, and southern Africa.

Simultaneously, however, the U.S. victory in World War II also brought a surge of citizen idealism as millions of American veterans returned home, hopeful that their sacrifice had not only defeated fascism but also won a more peaceful world. To ensure that the ravaged planet would never again experience such global death and destruction, American diplomats also began working with their allies to build, step by step, nothing less than a novel architecture for global governance, grounded in the rule of international law.

At the Bretton Woods resort in New Hampshire in 1944, Washington convened 44 nations, large and small, to design a comprehensive economic regime for a prosperous post-war world. In the process, they formed the International Monetary Fund, or IMF (for financial stability); the World Bank (for postwar reconstruction); and, somewhat later, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (for free trade), the predecessor of the World Trade Organization.

A year after that, in San Francisco, Washington led 850 delegates from 50 allied nations in drafting the charter for a new organization, the United Nations, that aspired to a world order marked by inviolable sovereignty, avoidance of armed conflict, human rights, and shared prosperity. In addition to providing crisis management through peacekeeping and refugee relief, the U.N. also helped order a globalizing world by creating, over the next quarter century, 17 specialized organizations responsible for everything from food security (the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO) to public health (the World Health Organization, or WHO).

Starting with the $13 billion Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe, Washington also supplemented the U.N.’s work by providing billions of dollars in bilateral aid to fund reconstruction and economic development in nations old and new. President John F. Kennedy globalized that effort by establishing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that today has a budget of $27 billion and 4,000 employees who deliver humanitarian assistance worldwide by providing, for instance, $44 million in emergency relief for 700,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Washington was careful to weave this new world order into the web of international law it had been building assiduously since its debut on the world stage at the Second Hague Conference on peace in 1907. Under the U.N. charter of 1945, the General Assembly convened the International Court of Justice, which took its seat at the grandiose Peace Palace in The Hague built by steel baron Andrew Carnegie years before to promote the international rule of law.

Just months after its founding, the U.N. also formed its Human Rights Commission, chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to draft the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in Paris on December 10, 1948. In addition, instead of firing squads for the defeated Axis leaders, the U.S. led the Allies in convening tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokyo in 1945-1946 that tried their war crimes under international law. Three years later, Washington joined the international community in adopting the four modern Geneva conventions that laid down the laws of war for future conflicts to protect both captives and civilians.

During the 70 years that Washington led many of these international institutions, half the world won national independence, economic prosperity spread, poverty declined, hunger receded, diseases were defeated, world war was indeed avoided, and human rights advanced. No other empire in world history had presided over so much progress and prosperity for such a significant share of humanity.

Citizen Diplomats

Some scholars of international relations remain confident that the international institutions America has long promoted can survive its demise as the globe’s dominant power. But Trump’s control over foreign policy and his erratic leadership make that prospect at best uncertain. While scholars place their hopes on the internal resilience of the liberal world order, an equally important source for its potential survival lies with the millions of U.S. citizen-diplomats who have served, for the past 70 years, as adjuncts in its promotion and remain, as activists and voters, potential advocates for its preservation — and these even include one group that might normally be considered unlikely indeed: the very evangelicals who, in recent times, have backed Donald Trump in startling numbers.

Unlike the genteel elite exchanges and government programs that marked Europe’s old empires, America has influenced billions of people worldwide pervasively through mass communications and directly through citizen initiatives. While in Britain’s imperial heyday, elite circles communicated with each other via telegraph, newspaper, and radio, America has freed the flow of information for uncounted billions through television, the Internet, and cell phones — making grassroots activism a global reality and citizen diplomacy a major force in a changing world.

Although much less visible than those cellular towers lining rural roads and the computer screens dotting desktops in every city, the global impact of U.S. citizen initiatives has been no less profound. Despite a foreign policy that frequently retreated into isolationism or hyper-nationalism or brutal wars, since the end of World War II a surprising number of Americans have immersed themselves in the wider world, arguably far more deeply than any other people on the planet. The old European colonial empires were state enterprises, but the U.S. imperium has been, in significant ways, a people’s project (as well, of course, in Washington’s coups and wars, as an anti-people’s project).

If Europe’s missionary efforts were generally state-sponsored, the spirit has moved millions of individual American evangelicals to “go on mission,” often to the most remote, rugged parts of the planet. From the Civil War to World War II, mainline Protestant denominations sponsored small numbers of career missionaries who made the conversion of China the aspiration of the post-Civil War generation. But since the Boeing Corporation introduced cheap jet travel in the 1960s, countless millions of evangelicals have launched themselves on short-term missions. While religious conversion has certainly been their prime goal, providing medicine, food, and education to remote areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also been a key part of that endeavor.

As a way to count these countless evangels, in my own small family circle a cousin, a Harvard-trained pediatrician, has made several medical missions to West Africa; the real-estate agent for my mother’s house repeatedly slowed the sale by going on education missions to Cambodia; friends from my Anglican parish travel regularly to Haiti on a development mission to a sister church; and my father-in-law’s old army buddy for years flew his private plane down to Central America on gospel missions.

Whenever global disasters strike, the Mormons, along with the 5,000 employees of Catholic Relief and 46,000 workers of the Protestant World Vision, mobilize what has become billions of dollars annually to send massive shipments of relief goods to the farthest corners of the Earth.

America’s concern for the world beyond its borders also has a no-less-vital secular side. Paralleling the rise of Washington as a world power, the Chicago-based Rotary International, for instance, has grown into a global network of 33,000 clubs in 200 countries. Since 1985, its 1.2 million members have donated nearly two billion dollars to inoculate two billion children worldwide against polio. As someone who still limps from this childhood disease, I was delighted to learn a few years ago, when I spoke before my local Rotary Club in Madison, Wisconsin, that my speaker’s fee had been automatically donated to the worldwide fight against polio.

When I spoke to the local Kiwanis chapter, I found that they were crisscrossing the state collecting antique foot-pedal Singer sewing machines for shipment to rural co-ops in Central America without electricity — catalyzing this small city’s Sewing Machine Project that has sent 2,500 machines worldwide since 2005. In a similar fashion, recent immigrants to the U.S. have often sponsored schools and medical care in their former homelands; military veterans have promoted humanitarian efforts in old battlegrounds like Vietnam; the 230,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers have been voices for a people-oriented foreign policy; and the list only goes on.

Whether passing the plate down the pews or logging onto the Internet, millions of Americans send billions of dollars overseas every year through their churches or activist groups like Doctors Without Borders, CARE USA, and Save the Children USA, whether for the Ethiopian famine, Indonesia’s tsunami, or the Rohingya crisis.

This tradition of what might be thought of as citizen diplomacy and the ingrained internationalism that goes with it were manifest in the extraordinary eruption of mass protest that occurred when, in his first week in office, President Trump tried to ban travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations. Within a day, a small crowd of 30 people with placards at JFK international airport in New York swelled into impassioned protests by thousands attending demonstrations across the city. Over the next week, there would be parallel protests by tens of thousands in some 30 cities nationwide, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Portland, Maine. It is these ardent demonstrators and the millions more with their own international causes who seem mindful of what might be lost as America heads for the exits from the world stage.

China Rising

Yes, CIA coups, the Vietnam War, and untold other horrors of empire will long remain troubling memories of U.S. hegemony, not to speak of the twenty-first-century war on terror, those CIA black sites, drone strikes, and so on, so why should anyone, liberal or conservative, who harbors doubts about America’s global power be concerned with its accelerating decline? At its core, the U.S. world order has rested, for the past 70 years, on that delicate duality — an idealistic community of sovereign nations and sovereign citizens equal under the rule of international law joined tensely, even tenuously, to an American imperium grounded in the grimmest aspects of U.S. military and economic power.

Now, consider the likely alternatives if Donald Trump succeeds in withdrawing the U.S. from any form of idealistic internationalism. While the downside of Washington’s harsh hegemony of the last almost three-quarters of a century was in some part balanced by its promotion of a liberal international order, both Beijing and Moscow seem inclined to the idea of hegemony without that international community and its rule of law. Beijing accepts the U.N. (where it has a seat on the Security Council) and the World Trade Organization (a convenient wedge into world markets), but it simply ignores inconvenient aspects of the international community like the Permanent Court of Arbitration, recently dismissing an adverse decision there over its claims to the South China Sea.

Beijing has quietly challenged what it views as pro-Western organizations by beginning to build its own parallel world order, which it naturally intends to dominate: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization instead of NATO, its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in lieu of the IMF, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to supplant the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. The trillions of dollars in trade and development agreements that Beijing has doled out across Asia, Africa, and Latin America in recent years are the epitome of commercial Realpolitik, devoid of any concern for the environment or for workers’ rights. Putin’s Russia is even more dismissive of the restraints of international law, expropriating sovereign territory, invading neighboring nations, assassinating domestic enemies abroad, and blatantly manipulating elections overseas (a subject in which, of course, the United States once showed a certain expertise).

Although overshadowed in recent years by its endless counterterror operations and its devastatingly destructive wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, the United States has nonetheless had a profound and often positive impact upon the world, in terms both of its high politics and its mass culture. Long after the damaging excesses of Washington’s hegemonic power — the CIA coups, the torture, the drone killings, and those never-ending wars— fade from memory, the world will still need the more benign dimension of its dominion, particularly the very idea of global governance through international organizations and the rule of law, especially as we face a planet similarly in decline. The loss of all of that would be a loss indeed.

If the world experiences a slow, relatively peaceful transition away from U.S. hegemony, then the subsequent global order just might maintain some of the liberal international institutions that still represent the best of American values. If, by contrast, the golden-shower diplomacy of Donald Trump continues, while the Chinese and Russian versions of hegemony only gain strength, then we will likely witness a harsher world order based on autocracy, Realpolitik, and commercial domination, with scant attention to human rights, women’s rights, or the rule of law. At this critical turning point in world history, the choice is still, to a surprising degree, ours to make. But not for long.

The Legacy of the Anti-Psychiatry Movement

Last week marked 40 years since Franco Basaglia’s revolutionary work in Trieste, Italy, led to the groundbreaking Legge 180 (Law 180, also known as “Basaglia Law”), which ended the practice of involuntary confinement in asylums throughout Italy. The anti-psychiatry movement was part of a larger intellectual and professional movement promoted through the efforts of Basaglia, Michel Foucault in France, R. D. Laing in Great Britain, Thomas Szasz in the United States and Erving Goffman in Canada. These thinkers critiqued the legal powers conferred on psychiatrists to detain and treat individuals with mental health disorders, which contributed to the medicalization of madness.

They also championed the notion that personal subjectivity is independent from any hegemonic mandate of normalcy imposed by organized psychiatric medicine. This movement even suggested that mental illness might not exist at all outside of the language to frame the other. Basaglia’s work in the asylum in Trieste became a model for radical psychiatrists internationally who had been laboring in their own countries to end the forced institutionalization of patients and attempting to forge a new model of mental health care.

Part of the post-war anti-psychiatry movement, Basaglia’s political ethos was born from his six-month internment in Venice’s Santa Maria Maggiore prison for his participation in the Italian resistance. Basaglia and other prisoners escaped in April 1945, months before the end of the Second World War.

After receiving his medical degree in 1949 from the University of Padua, where he trained in the school of psychiatry, his experience as director of a provincial asylum in Gorizia (now located in Slovenia) would affect his political and philosophical ideas. In was at this point, early in his career, that Basaglia was pushed from Padua to Italy’s border regions for having been critical of the medical profession’s confinement model. In Gorizia, shocked by use of chains, straitjackets, bars and other modes of confinement, Basaglia sought to understand why an institution that was ostensibly about helping people seemed very much to punish them.

Inspired by Goffman’s “Asylums: Essays on the Social Situations of Mental Patients and Other Inmates” (1961) and Foucault’s “Madness and Civilization: A History of Madness in the Classical Age” (1961), Basaglia became a fierce critic of what he referred to as the “total institution,” which turned people into “non-persons” and produced a discourse of deviance in which individuals were excluded from and broken down by society.

Basaglia viewed “mental illness” not as a disease, but as an expression of human needs. From Gorizia, he took a director role of the asylum in Trieste, where he would stay until 1979. In Trieste, 90 percent of the 1,182 patients in the psychiatric hospital were nonvoluntary, living in conditions similar to those in Gorizia. It was here that Basaglia’s work would become a beacon of change—one that would finally end psychiatric institutionalization in many parts of the world.

Basaglia instituted open staff meetings and involved the local community in cultural events outside the institution’s walls. The hospital staff, together with the patient-turned-subject, staged cultural performances, joining forces with actors, musicians, repertory companies and artists from around the world.

Basaglia transformed the “total institution,” from one built on hard-and-fast rules in which medical violence was kept from public view into an open, creative space in which freedom and participation by those inside and outside its walls served as a model for the new “anti-asylum.” By creating cultural events inside and outside the hospital that included performances by the likes of Ornette Coleman, as well as airplane excursions and art exhibits, the contained space of “mental illness” was demystified and opened to an inclusive model of society.

As a result of Law 180, Basaglia’s work became the basis for radical psychiatric reform around Europe and beyond—even extending to New Zealand and Australia—with hundreds of institutions closing over the next decade. With each closing, the abuses of power within these hospitals became better known—as did the reasons for confining individuals to them.

Anna Marchitelli and Annacarla Valeriano have documented how the mental hospital was used to contain women who had merely broken out of roles imposed by the patriarchy and were deemed “mentally ill” for their refusal to get married, stay home or have children, as were women who were labeled “nymphomaniacs” or deemed loquacious, incoherent and exhibitionistic. They also note that asylums have been used to lock up artists, people suffering from social exclusion and medical debt, those whose political ideas were viewed as dangerous, and even to contain and “cure” homosexuals. Yet the long-term effect of the movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill has had harsh consequences in countries where the absence of solid social structures and services have ushered in the liberalization of the mental-health market.

The theoretical roots of the anti-psychiatry movement in the United States date to the late 1950s. Szasz, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, first criticized the legitimacy of “mental illness” as a legal term in an article he wrote in 1958 for the Columbia Law Review. At the time “Psychiatry, Ethics, and the Criminal Law” was published, only five states in the U.S. barred involuntary commitment of people with “mental illness.”

Drawing parallels between the practice of committing patients to mental hospitals and the prison system, Szasz maintained that psychiatrists were given the power to command a sentence of “insanity” and to indefinitely intern patients who are suffering, all the while treating them like criminals. Szasz kicked off the anti-psychiatry movement in North America while foreshadowing the privatization of mental health care in the future: “All ‘hospitals’ should function essentially as private medical institutions do at present.” In response to what he saw as a dangerous collaboration between the state and psychiatry, Szasz was instrumental in forming the Libertarian Party in 1971, whose primary platform called for the end of government collaborations with psychiatry.

Unlike in Italy, in the U.S., the deinstitutionalization of mental health care took place in phases. The first occurred just after 1963, when President John Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act, which encouraged the shift of mental health care from large institutions back to the community. Later, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Social Security Act Amendments of 1965, which created Medicaid, which would pay for the health care of low-income families. But this had a detrimental effect on people in mental health care institutions who were transferred into nursing homes.

The 1966 U.S. Court of Appeals case Lake v. Cameron established that psychiatric care should take place in the least restrictive setting possible, and the following year, California’s Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act. While this law ended the practice of institutionalization, it resulted, in the following year, in the twofold increase of the mentally ill in California’s criminal justice system.

Later administrations were more conscious of the need for community-based centers, with President Jimmy Carter signing the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 to fund more community health centers. This still did not address chronic mental illness treatments. But this act was quickly repealed by President Reagan’s devastating Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, which moved funding to the state level through block grants. This forced mental health centers to compete with other public programs, including public housing, food banks and drug programs. As a result, mental health rarely received funds, and the 1980s was marked by an increase in homeless people who were mentally ill. This was particularly notable in metropolitan centers.

There were also some unlikely figures in the anti-psychiatry movement in the U.S. For instance, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, joined forces with Szasz in 1969 to create the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a watchdog for psychiatric human rights. And between the publication of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1962 and the release of its film adaptation in 1975, public opinion the U.S. shifted radically against the asylum model.

The U.S. anti-psychiatry framework differed slightly from Italy’s in how the long-term changes eventually took effect. After the asylum model was abandoned in most states by the late 1970s, with a shift to community-based care, it was not until the Reagan administration that the larger deinstitutionalization movement came into force in 1981.

This move accounted for the scenario in which approximately one-third of all homeless people in the U.S. had severe mental health issues, which had repercussions for how mental health care would be accessed in the future. First, for those who can afford it, mental health care is accessible in the private market. Of the 300,000 inmates in the U.S. prison system diagnosed with mental health problems, 30,000 receive treatment in psychiatric facilities. The remaining prisoners, like many homeless people with mental health problems, are left without any support.

Starting in 2009, as a result of the Great Recession, states cut $4.35 billion in public mental-health spending over the next three years. This was the largest reduction in funding since deinstitutionalization began. Today, there are approximately 37,679 psychiatric beds in the United States, which is about 12 beds for every 100,000 people, a lower ratio than in 1850. With increasing numbers of mental-health patients in American jails, there is a serious problem in how deinstitutionalization has been abandoned and replaced by the private model—or left unexamined.

We must revisit the ideals of the anti-psychiatry movement in the U.S., because it is clear that deinstitutionalization simply moved the furniture around. This left other institutions to take over the role of mental health care, leaving the most vulnerable with no treatment and no community.

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Rewriting the Second Amendment

A comprehensive account of the facts relating to our long history of firearm killings in the United States demands that a new second amendment to the Constitution be enacted that bans ownership of firearms.

As the original Second Amendment states, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, wrote this amendment more than 200 years ago. He and the Founding Fathers were all proficient in Latin rules of grammar. Madison, who also wrote prose in Latin, used the ablative absolute construction in writing the amendment. Under this rule, the first part—“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State”—is inseparably connected to the second part–“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” One part cannot exist without the other. Therefore, one has the right to keep and bear firearms if, and only if, one is a member of a well-regulated militia.

In 1975, the District of Columbia City Council passed a strict gun control law. In 2008, Dick Heller, a D.C. special police officer, applied for a registration certificate for a handgun he wished to keep at home. The 1975 statute prohibited possessing a handgun in the home without a license, and it also required any lawful handgun kept in the home to be rendered inoperable through use of a trigger lock. The District of Columbia denied Heller’s application based on its law. Heller then filed a lawsuit, arguing that the city’s bar on the registration of handguns, its prohibition on guns in the home without a license and its requirement of trigger locks for guns in the home all violated the Second Amendment. The district court dismissed Heller’s complaint, but the District of Columbia Circuit Court reversed the decision on the grounds that the Second Amendment grants an individual the right to bear arms. The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, granted a review of the decision.

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia completely violated the Latin rule of grammar by declaring that the first part of the Second Amendment was merely “introductory” and that it could be ignored, thereby leaving only the second part active. The full court voted 5-4 in favor of this blatantly erroneous interpretation.

Before I proceed, it is essential that every American know the following facts.

1. The number of firearms in the United States is between 412 and 600 million. This amount greatly exceeds the total small arms inventory of all U.S. military forces. (In what follows, I will use the 412 million figure).

2. In 2017, the Pew Research Center reported that within the country’s 251.4 million adult (18 and over) population:

(a) 42 percent (105.6 million) own at least one firearm;

(b) 3 percent (7.5 million) own half of all firearms;

(c) 39 percent (98.1 million) own the other half;

(d) 58 percent (145.8 million) own no guns, but 36 percent of them are considering getting one.

3. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the number of firearm killings in the 49-year period from 1968 to 2016 was 1,585,678. By contrast, the number of soldiers killed in all wars in the 240-year history of our nation is 1,396,733.

4. In 2015 and 2016, the number of firearm killings was 36,252 and 38,658 respectively. This exceeds the number of highway accident fatalities by nearly 6,000 per year.

5. The number of mass killings in which automatic assault rifles were used in the period from 1968 to 2017 is 7,956. This means that 99.5 percent of all firearm killings were not caused by the use of automatic assault rifles.

6. The Violence Policy Center’s latest study on the defensive use of a gun reveals that the number of defensive firearm killings is rare—less than 1 percent.

How should we characterize these shocking and scary facts? Are we lawless? Gun-crazed? Violence prone?

And what do we do now?

There appear to be two basic factions on this issue: One is for the creation of laws that would prevent the “wrong people” from owning a gun; the other would abolish the ownership of guns altogether.

There are hundreds of studies by dozens of professional organizations—such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association—that seek a foolproof methodology for identifying people likely to commit violence, but no definitive method has been found. Therefore, the quest for a gun control law that would accomplish the reduction in firearm killings to near zero is delusional.

Clearly, the only way to reduce the number of firearm killings to zero is to abolish gun ownership.

My proposal for a humane, revised second amendment would read: “No person may own, keep or use a firearm. Only members of well-regulated law enforcement organizations and the military may bear, but not own, firearms.”

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Using the Media to Empower Pakistani Women

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of its Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who have been hailed for their courage in pursuit of truth within their countries and elsewhere. Click here to read Chauhan’s related article about Pakistan’s media, and here for Zubeida Mustafa’s coverage, which the two journalists produced as a joint project for this series. 

Women are often ignored or portrayed negatively in Pakistan’s media. As one dire consequence, over the years media reports relating to women have reinforced Pakistan’s rape culture.

Twenty years ago, when women’s empowerment was not popular in the national discourse, one woman set out to change this approach. In 1997, Tasneem Ahmar started Uks, a nongovernmental organization that focused on reclaiming women’s narrative in the print media. She continues that work today with TV news channels, and she reaches out to a greater audience via Uks radio programs that boost awareness of women’s issues.

Her career in journalism and her newspaper reading made Ahmar realize that stories covering women were stereotypical and reflected the way Pakistan’s patriarchal society perceived women.

PHOTO ESSAY | 7 photosClick here to view a photo essay for this story and related stories about Pakistani media.

“I got a few friends together without any donor money initially,” Ahmar says. “What I would do each day [is] read a lot of newspapers, mark, cut and paste articles depicting the kind of coverage given to women. Then I started to reach out to editors with the clippings.”

She wanted to contact as many editors as she could, but she kept away from those reputed to blackmail critics and engage in other harmful practices. So she focused only on a few editors, and when they were persuaded to adopt a more woman-friendly approach, others followed suit.

Ahmar conducted training courses for reporters and subeditors. Initially the training focused on a few basic questions: Why were negative headlines given to stories on women? For example, some headlines highlighted women’s smoking habits. Prominent women, such as the late lawyer and rights activist Asma Jahangir, were often shamed for smoking.

Attitudes in news stories also encouraged Pakistan’s rape culture. Newspapers sensationalized “honor killings,” as they reported on the murders of females by their own relatives, who felt the women—even if they had been raped—had brought dishonor to their families.

News articles blamed women for horrendous incidents as well. “When they [the Urdu press] would report on a body of a newborn found in a garbage dump, they would invariably dub it ‘the sin of an unwed mother lying in the garbage,’ and I would ask how did they know that it was an unwed mother,” Ahmar says. “Why didn’t they ask about the father? Why wasn’t the blame shared?”

The questions raised during training sessions gradually helped bring about change. “When we did a comparative analysis on what we were doing and if it had any impact, we saw that headlines in most newspapers would now read ‘a body of a newborn found,’ ” Ahmar says. “There would be no reference to an unwed mother. We considered that to be a big success. At least the level of understanding of journalists was changing.”

To be allowed to speak in male-dominated newsrooms to men who resisted such arguments was a mark of success in itself. A change in mindset was finding its way across Pakistan, as trainings were held in conservative cities such as Peshawar and Quetta. Every city brought its own challenges.

Some trainees would question Ahmar on her “agenda” and ask who was funding Uks. She would invite her critics—journalists and agencies—to check her records. “Being transparent is something not a lot of NGOs consider to be an asset,” Ahmar says. “That is why we have a bad reputation in the media, [but] they could just come and look through my office whenever they wished.”

While her credibility grew and the small team of Uks research associates and project coordinators was breaking barriers, Ahmar’s work was far from over. The launch of 24/7 channels in 2002 made her realize that she had to start from scratch again.

“By then we felt that the print media was easy to tame. But now this new monster called 24/7 news channels had emerged. There were people who had been unleashed to talk to millions of audience [members] without any training,” Ahmar says.

The insensitivity these channels promoted was doing more damage than the print could ever do, so Ahmar started monitoring news and talk shows. Uks noted the problems and shared them with PEMRA (the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) or with personnel at the channels themselves.

Uks recently launched the women’s media complaint cell, where viewers can lodge complaints of misogynistic content. Along with content monitored by Uks, complaints filed by the public are now presented to bureau chiefs or producers of channels.

Ahmad also reaches the public—especially people living in remote areas—through a series of radio programs. The goals of Uks Radio Projects are to raise women’s profile in broadcast journalism, create awareness of social issues with a gender perspective and bring about attitudinal change in men and women.

The transmissions air in Urdu, a language that a majority of Pakistanis understand. The programs advocate a pro-woman stance on issues such as honor killing, AIDS and the water crisis in rural Pakistan. For instance, the Uks team collected stories about women who travel far distances to fetch potable water for their families. These women face mental, emotional, physical and reproductive problems owing to a lack of clean water near their homes.

As she works to educate the public via radio, Ahmar is expanding her efforts with media sources. She has succeeded in entering into a discourse with the people behind the TV cameras, but she also wants to engage with anchorpersons. “I don’t think it is going to be easy because after [they] get this kind of fame and screen presence, it becomes difficult to bring them on board for any kind of sensitivity,” Ahmar says.

She is devising strategies to deal with all media platforms—for example, last year, Ahmar held a roundtable conference with members of the entertainment industry. While the response was positive, she knows she still has a long way to convince people that “a country’s media coverage is related to women’s status and development. Women are pushed back if the media doesn’t support them in a constructive manner,” she says.

Training Pakistani Reporters in an Uncertain Age

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of its Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who have been hailed for their courage in pursuit of truth within their countries and elsewhere. Click here to read Chauhan’s related article about Pakistan’s media, and here for Zubeida Mustafa’s coverage, which the two journalists produced as a joint project for this series.

Media outlets have mushroomed in Pakistan during the past three decades, but the standards of reporting and editing have plummeted. Today, enterprising journalists are stepping up to improve the situation.

Pakistani television channels and radio stations proliferated when Gen. Pervez Musharraf allowed private entrepreneurs to enter the media scene in 2000. Print publications had experienced similar growth in 1988 when laws were amended to make it easier to launch a newspaper.

PHOTO ESSAY | 7 photosClick here to view a photo essay for this story and related stories about Pakistani media.

As a result, many who were not formally trained in journalism turned to the media for work. In the past, senior news staff had been available to mentor their younger colleagues, and apprentices or cub reporters picked up skills on the job. But with the boom in media outlets and subsequent lack of professional training and guidance, journalistic quality eroded.

Concerned professionals now are developing programs to raise media standards and to help journalists succeed amid the pressures facing Pakistani media.

A Platform for Change

The Centre for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ), launched in Karachi in 2016, offers internationally informed journalistic training, as well as counseling to support journalists in a country where voices of dissent are still often brutally silenced.

The center began as a partnership with the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. Prior to 2014, Pakistani journalists who wanted training had traveled to America to receive it. “At some point, it was realized that Pakistan would benefit from an on-ground facility that would ensure long-term benefits cost effectively,” CEJ Director Kamal Siddiqi says.

CEJ’s training courses are taught by journalists with working experience in Pakistan’s media, along with lecturers from the Medill School and other foreign institutions. “It allows us to give our students world-class training,” Siddiqi says. The course subjects “are generally new to Pakistan and are tailored to our industry’s needs.”

CEJ courses also teach journalists to value the richness of diversity within their industry. Attendees hone their skills while interacting with colleagues from many different cities and environments. Back at work, this can pay dividends by helping bridge the gap between subeditors working at the news desk in big cities and reporters filing stories from rural areas.

In addition to shorter courses, the center offers a program in which students receive a master’s degree in journalism.

While trying to produce skilled journalists, CEJ is mindful of the pressures that come with working in Pakistan’s media. In collaboration with Deutsche-Welle Akademie, a German organization promoting international media development, the center has established free counseling services for Pakistani journalists. Pakistan is one of the “most dangerous” countries for journalists, according to the World Press Freedom Index. In this volatile environment, reporters risk attacks, kidnapping and even death. Perpetrators range from gangs and militant organizations to law enforcement agencies. “Though not one of its core activities, the [counseling] service is a spinoff from CEJ’s work with … journalists all over Pakistan,” Siddiqi says.

Campus Radio Stations

Along with other media outlets, university radio stations are expanding in Pakistan, with 45 operating today. Universities that teach media studies and mass communication begin their own FM stations to broaden their students’ learning experience.

One example is Ziauddin University’s FM station 98.2, launched in 2011. The university, in Karachi, aims at grooming students for the field of radio by introducing new trends in broadcasting. FM 98.2 produces a range of programs based on assignments given to students, including interviews, radiomentries (radio documentaries), music, lectures and coverage of campus activities. “Student participation not only helps them in their academics but also prepares them to face the challenges of the practical field,” says Ajnabi (who goes by this name alone), a visiting faculty member at the university.

Working at the station benefits students by “equipping them with professional knowledge for marketable programming as well as technical information that is required for sound quality transmission,” Ajnabi says. “Moreover, the campus radio has kept up with new creative ideas and technology. For instance, social media networks such as Whatsapp, Twitter and Instagram are also being used in different shows, [which is needed in] today’s communication world.”

Students learn to produce creative, out-of-the-box content ideas within parameters, including the guidelines set by PEMRA (the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority). For instance, one restriction prohibits campus radios from airing any commercial or paid material.

So far, university radio has steered clear of external pressures that commercial media outlets face in Pakistan. But with growing restrictions on the voice of dissent even in universities, we can only wonder how long this freedom will last.

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