Chris Hedges's Blog, page 578

Truth and Ethics Are Under Siege in Pakistan’s Media

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 and here for Nisma Chauhan’s coverage of other aspects of Pakistan’s media, produced in conjunction with this story. 

Starting in late March, Pakistan’s biggest television channel, Geo (an Urdu word for Live), was forced off the air for several weeks.

Cable operators, who reportedly shut off Geo, would not disclose on whose orders this had been done. Geo has now been restored, but only after what a Reuters report described as a deal reached with the military that required the channel to alter its political coverage.

This episode created an international furor, which testifies to the growing power of the media in a globalized world. It also suggests that in some countries where the military still calls the shots, the notion of media freedom is only eyewash. Repeated calls by PEMRA (the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) had failed to get Geo back on the air.

In addition to having to skew news under pressure as in the Geo case, the media in Pakistan is not free of flaws itself. On several occasions, Pakistani media outlets have failed to follow simple codes of ethics.

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

Take the case of the 2011 murder of Salman Taseer, who was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. He was shot by his own bodyguard. The reason? A progressive, Taseer had expressed sympathy for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman accused of committing blasphemy. Taseer met with Bibi in the jail where she was detained. He also spoke of the need to amend the blasphemy laws.

Some conservative TV channel anchors stirred up a brouhaha over Taseer’s actions. This proved to be a spark that lit the tinder of prejudice and intolerance encouraged by the right-wing media since the late 1970s when Gen. Zia-ul-Haq seized power in a military coup in Islamabad. He launched an Islamization policy to sustain himself in power, with new blasphemy laws as an important element of that policy.

In 2011, the person who had easy access to Taseer—the man deputized to protect him—pulled the trigger. The assassination was a hate crime promoted by a section of the national media.

That was seven years ago. Today, the situation has further deteriorated. In the free-for-all atmosphere promoted mainly by television in a frenzy to get higher ratings, the major casualty is truth. Anchors, many of whom are not trained journalists, sensationalize news to the extent of presenting baseless reports as verified facts.

Take the recent case of Dr. Shahid Masood, a television commentator and a medical professional by training, who broadcast reports concerning the rape and murder of a 7-year-old child. Masood made outlandish charges against the defendant, Imran Ali, who has now been sentenced to death by the court. Masood’s list of charges against Ali was long—18 in all—and included allegations of the killer being linked to an international child pornography mafia, holding numerous bank accounts in the country and having connections with a federal minister. Mian Saqib Nisar, the chief justice of Pakistan, took notice and ordered investigations into the charges. Every charge was found to be wrong, causing the judge to impose a three-month ban on Masood’s program.

In a sense, these examples of rampant sensationalism reflect what a long way the media in Pakistan has come in the last several decades. The nation has experienced considerable loosening of the government’s grip on the press and the subsequent proliferation of numerous privately owned radio outlets and television channels.

Today the government has one television station, Pakistan Television, and one radio station, Radio Pakistan, but no affiliated newspaper. On the other hand, there are 45 campus radio stations, 140 licensed commercial private FM radio stations and 89 private satellite TV channels. The website of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society lists nearly 458 newspapers and magazines licensed in the country. Not all are being published; in some cases the owners keep their licenses valid to enable them to publish if they so choose.

This unregulated expansion of the media—especially of the electronic media—has had a profound impact on the political and social scene in Pakistan. Technology, particularly the introduction of 24/7 radio and TV, has brought the media within easy reach of the people. Even the remotest areas are connected by radio, and in the countryside you will see TV antennas on many small, dilapidated houses.

The plus side of this change is that the government’s traditionally rigorous control over the media has lessened (although the military still wields power, as evident from the Geo closure). In the past, military governments dominated the press, and the government held a monopoly on the electronic media. Gone are the days when a phone call from the Information Ministry to the newsroom could blank out even the most important news from the newspapers. It was termed “press advice.”

But today’s media freedom has a flip side as well. Any journalist who ventures to disclose the ugly secrets of the powerful must be prepared to face the music. This can take the form of “forced disappearance” by secret agencies or a mysterious death. The more fortunate are simply hounded out of the country. It’s a small wonder Pakistan has earned the dubious reputation of being one of the most dangerous countries  in the world for media workers.

Equally harmful is the insidious damage that some of Pakistan’s media is inflicting on society and the state itself. This reflects the emergence of neoliberal economics, the push toward commercialization and the prioritization of profits. Codes of conduct and sacred principles of journalism, such as truth and fairness, have been thrown to the winds, and commercialism is rife.

Adding to the media failures, some anchors and media owners are politically aligned and use their positions to promote one party or the other. This has muddied the political waters and stoked hatred and mass confusion.

Although the major newspapers still enjoy a degree of credibility and provide in-depth analysis, they cannot compete with the electronic media in the magnitude of their reach. The literacy rate in Pakistan is dismally low at 60 percent, which gives radio and TV pre-eminence over print.

In this bleak scenario, valiant efforts are being made to address the problems. A number of media studies schools have blossomed, and their programs are benefitting many journalists. Among these institutions are CEJ (Centre for Excellence in Journalism) and IoBM (Institute of Business Management), which has a strong media department.

Another endeavor is Uks, a monitoring nongovernmental organization that recently celebrated its 20th birthday. Uks is basically concerned with the coverage of women in the press and television, as well as the number and status of females working in the media. Tasneem Ahmar launched Uks because she was shocked at the poor reporting on women’s issues and at the glaring absence of women in decision-making positions in the media. Through her efforts to support the cause of women, she is working to improve the quality of journalism.

But will such efforts help make the media more professional? That, ultimately, is the question that affects producers and consumers alike in Pakistan’s media milieu.

Mike Pompeo’s 12-Step Plan for Disaster With Iran

In what The Washington Post—no friend of Iran—has labeled “a silly speech,” Donald Trump’s new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, provided an American answer to the charge made by French President Emmanuel Macron during his State visit last month that, when it came to the Iranian nuclear agreement (officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA), there was “no Plan B.” Macron’s observations were made in the context of President Trump’s threat to withdraw from that agreement, even though Iran had been determined by all parties (including the United States) to be in full compliance.

Trump made his decision to withdraw official on May 8, and since then the United States has been struggling to articulate a strategy to deal with the consequences of that action. Pompeo’s speech—titled “After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy”—was intended to provide America’s “Plan B.” Upon reflection, however, Pompeo’s speech failed to accomplish this. Worse, the unrealistic demands made upon Iran in Pompeo’s address, coupled by the absolute detachment from reality and historical fact and/or context these demands were made, made Pompeo’s speech far more dangerous than silly.

In his speech, Pompeo promised that, in the aftermath of the American decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, the United States would be seeking to impose “unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime” to compel change in its behavior. “Iran,” Pompeo declared, “will be forced to make a choice: either fight to keep its economy off life-support at home or keep squandering precious wealth on fights abroad. It will not have the resources to do both.”

Pompeo stated that the Department of Defense was being directed to work closely with America’s “regional allies to deter Iranian aggression” and prevent Iranian regional dominance. Moreover, Pompeo noted, “If [Iran] restarts their nuclear program, it will mean … bigger problems than they’d ever had before.” In the face of this aggressive posturing, Pompeo declared the Trump administration’s intent to “advocate tirelessly for the Iranian people.” But this was disingenuous, being little more than code for regime change.

Pompeo’s “advocacy” consisted of little more than citing ongoing economic mismanagement, corruption and political repression, and offering economic opportunity and “liberty” in exchange for mass demonstrations by the Iranian people—demonstrations designed to overthrow the theocratic regime in Tehran. But “regime change,” “Iran” and “the United States” are three terms that historically do not mix, as every Iranian knows. The example of the CIA-led coup of 1953 that replaced democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh with Reza Shah Pahlevi is deeply ingrained in the psyche of modern Iran.

History is not America’s friend when it comes to Iran, a fact that resonated in every fiber of Pompeo’s bombastic speech. In setting the conditions that must be met before the United States would consider engaging in negotiations for a “new deal,” Pompeo only further underscored how detached the Trump administration is from reality when it comes to Iran and its role in Middle East affairs. The 12-step plan outlined by Pompeo as representing the preconditions for any meaningful U.S.-Iranian engagement are little more than a road map toward disaster. What follows is a point-by-point breakdown of each of these conditions, put into context.

Iran must declare a full accounting of the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, and permanently and verifiably abandon such work in perpetuity.

Here Pompeo seeks to revive the Prior Military Dimension (PMD) issue that itself was derived from manufactured intelligence provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by Israel through an Iranian opposition group (the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, which is listed as a terrorist group by the Department of State) via German intelligence back in 2004. Many of the documents were subsequently shown to be crude forgeries that misrepresented the work of actual Iranian entities, and others were out-and-out fabrications.

The goal of the PMD issue was to create a red herring around which the United States could build support for the imposition of stringent economic sanctions targeting Iran. This plan reached fruition in 2011, when the U.S. prevailed upon the IAEA to publish the PMD allegations as part of an official report, which in turn was used to justify American sanctions targeting Iranian oil sales. In a tacit acknowledgement that the PMD issue was little more than smoke and mirrors, the United States agreed to have the entire issue resolved through discussions between Iran and the IAEA, discussions that exposed the fraudulent nature of most of the underlying accusations. The fact that both Pompeo and President Trump are compelled to rely upon Israeli intelligence of questionable provenance to bolster their case for continued interest in the PMD issue, and not on the product of the American intelligence services, is itself a cause of concern, since it points to a clear subordination of American national security to the interests of a foreign power.

Iran must stop enrichment and never pursue plutonium reprocessing.

Mike Pompeo and every other official in the Trump administration would do well to review the history of past American policies built around the notion of “not one spinning centrifuge” in Iran. The genesis of such a policy resides in Israeli—not American—concerns, driven by unrealistic expectations of regional exceptionalism that allow for unilateral reinterpretation of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) in a way that denies Iran the ability to pursue peaceful nuclear energy, inclusive of the ability to indigenously produce nuclear fuel.

Moreover, under the JCPOA, Iran had already agreed not to pursue plutonium reprocessing and had decommissioned its heavy water reactor under construction at Arak. Pompeo’s demands seemed geared toward warning Iran away from any post-JCPOA efforts to reconstitute a plutonium capability, a facial demonstration of the absurdity of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA in the first place.

Iran has already demonstrated that it has the resolve to take on the world in defense of its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes in conformity with the NPT. Pompeo’s demands—little more than window dressing of long-standing Israeli position—are non-starters, especially given the reality that the rest of the world has already agreed that Iran can enrich uranium.

Iran must provide the IAEA with “unqualified” access to all sites throughout the entire country.

Like many so-called American officials who dabble in arms control today, Pompeo seems to operate from a post-Gulf War mindset, where imposed disarmament along the lines of what occurred with Iraq from 1991-1998 (or Libya in 2002-2003) are the norm. Iran is not Iraq—it has not been defeated in battle and therefore compelled to accept stringent disarmament provisions as a condition for a cease-fire and national survival. As a sovereign nation, Iran has the same right as any other state to define what constitutes its own national security interests, and to determine what access it might provide to outside parties to capabilities that fall within this designation, and under what circumstances.

The JCPOA provides the IAEA with an unprecedented ability to access sites of interest and potential interest inside Iran. Pompeo’s notion of “unqualified” access to sites throughout the entirety of Iran brings to mind the “anytime, anywhere” approach undertaken by the United Nations in Iraq from 1991-2003. Such an approach was ultimately counterproductive, having been used by the United States and others for intelligence gathering outside the remit of disarmament—which, given Pompeo’s recent stint as director of the CIA, might be the underlying intent of this demand. The bottom line is that, as a member of the NPT, Iran’s relationship with the world regarding its peaceful nuclear program is based upon the letter of the law founded in that treaty, and not the unilateral dictate of the American government.

Iran must end its proliferation of ballistic missiles and halt further launching or development of nuclear-capable missile systems.

The irony of the world’s greatest proliferator of military weapons—including long-range strike aircraft and bunker-busting munitions sold to Iran’s regional foes, Israel and Saudi Arabia—calling on Iran to stop exporting ballistic missiles to its allies is mind-numbing. The United States, through a made-for-television exposé fronted by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has accused Iran of supplying ballistic missiles to Houthi rebels in Yemen that have been used to launch retaliatory attacks against Saudi Arabia, which has been using its American-supplied air force to pulverize Houthi civilian targets. Iran has not shipped any completed missiles to the Houthis, but rather provided kits that enabled the Houthi to upgrade Russian-made SCUD missiles to fly longer ranges.

Likewise, Iran continues to supply Hezbollah with long-range artillery rockets capable of striking targets inside Israel. Moreover, the definition of “nuclear capable missile systems,” as used by the United States, is so broad and encompassing that any missile capable of delivering a payload of 1,000 pounds or more—the weight of a small nuclear device—is by definition “nuclear capable.” This would preclude Iran from flight-testing virtually the totality of its ballistic missile arsenal. Once again, Pompeo, through his speech, has exposed the reality that the United States has become little more than the foreign policy arm of both Tel Aviv and Riyadh, a fact made even more ironic given that both Israel and Saudi Arabia maintain arsenals of long-range ballistic missiles that were designed to carry nuclear weapons (and in the case of Israel, actually do).

Iran must release all U.S. citizens in Iranian custody, as well as the citizens of our partners and allies.

The Trump administration’s precipitous decision to withdraw from the JCPOA has probably made it all but impossible for the five American citizens known to be in Iranian custody to be released anytime soon, let alone for America to have any positive influence on the fate of the citizens of allied nations held by Iran. The same holds true for getting Iran to assist in determining the fate of the retired FBI agent-cum-CIA asset, Bob Levinson, who disappeared inside Iran under murky circumstances in 2007. If the recent release by North Korea of three American citizens imprisoned in that nation demonstrates anything, it is that good intent begets good intent. Mike Pompeo’s speech reeked of nothing other than the Trump administration’s ill-intent for Iran, and we should expect nothing less than the same in return.

Iran must end its support to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

This demand is little more than an expression of Israeli policy. The best way to bring an end to the violence engendered by Israel’s military engagements with Hezbollah, Hamas and the PIJ is to resolve the outstanding issue of a viable independent Palestinian state. This is a tall order under any circumstance; in the aftermath of Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and related violence in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers have killed scores of Palestinian civilians, it is now a virtually unreachable objective. Pompeo’s demands reflect an arrogance and ignorance that is mind-boggling, much like an arsonist demanding that a fire put itself out after he’s ignited it.

Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and permit the disarming, demobilization and reintegration of Shi’a militias.

In the mind and imagination of Donald Trump, the United States is solely responsible for the defeat of the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. This not only misstates the role played by the United States military in that struggle, but also ignores the fact that it was the collapse of the American-trained and equipped Iraqi Army in 2014 that led to the establishment of the so-called Islamic State “Caliphate.”

In the aftermath of this collapse, the only thing that saved the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, from falling to the Islamic State onslaught, was the creation of the so-called Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) within the Shi’a communities of Iraq, often (but not exclusively) with the support of Iran. The role played by Iran and the PMF in stabilizing Iraq in 2014-2015, and ultimately spearheading the counterattack that eventually defeated the Islamic State, has been ignored by the mainstream American media. The Trump administration, like the Obama administration, labors under the belief that, if left to its own volition, Iraq would turn its back on Iran and side exclusively with the United States. This flies in the face of history, including the experience of Iraqis under American military occupation between 2003 and 2011 (it was so bad that many Iraqi Shi’a were forced to admit that life was better under Saddam Hussein).

The PMF is a modern Iraqi reality, reflected by the decision of the Iraqi prime minister to integrate the PMF into the Iraqi Army by the end of 2018. The United States, having had exclusive control and influence over the Iraqi military for more than a decade, resents the loss of influence that has occurred since the creation of the PMF. Moreover, the integration of the PMF into the Iraqi army, and the rise in the political fortune of PMF leaders who led the fight against the Islamic State, are reflective of the reality of Iraqi sovereignty today, a fact that United States resents and, through Pompeo’s speech, actively resists. It is the United States, more than any other power, that operates in contravention to Iraqi sovereign interests.

Iran must end its military support of the Houthi militia.

This demand ignores the history of the Houthi movement and Saudi Arabia’s long history of intervention and interference in the internal affairs of Yemen. The Houthi movement is not the creation of Iran (indeed, it is derived from a branch of Shi’a ideology looked down on by Iran), but rather a reflection of indigenous Yemeni opposition to Saudi Arabian encroachments on Yemeni sovereignty. Meaningful Iranian military support for the Houthis began only after the initiation of Saudi-led military operations against Yemen in 2015. Any effort to terminate this support, void of a corresponding cessation of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirati military operations inside Yemen, and a comprehensive peace agreement reflective of Houthi concerns and desires, is a non-starter.

Like most of Pompeo’s Iran policy, the call for Iran to end its support of the Houthi is reflective of the subordinate role Pompeo has given legitimate U.S. national security interests, which should embrace a peaceful resolution of the Yemen conflict, in spite of the regional ambitions of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

All forces under Iranian command must be withdrawn from Syria.

Under the Obama administration, the United States was compelled to begrudgingly acknowledge the role played by Iran in helping the Syrian government confront and defeat the Islamic State (as well as facilitating, together with Russia and Hezbollah, an overall Syrian military victory on the battlefield against the various Syrian rebel factions backed by the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia). The Trump administration has ignored the underlying reason Iran is militarily committed inside Syria today—to ensure the survival of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Instead, the Trump administration has, at the behest of Israel and Saudi Arabia, breathed life into a failed policy by insisting not only that Assad must eventually relinquish political power inside Syria, but that those responsible for Assad’s recent ascendancy disengage.

The collapse of the American and Saudi Arabian-supported Syrian rebels has created a power vacuum that is rapidly being filled by the Syrian government, together with the assistance of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. The result is that Iran today has consolidated its influence—and by extension, extended its military influence—along an arc that extends from Afghanistan to its east, and into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in the west. The irony is that, while many in the Arab world have feared this outcome (witness the warning issue by Jordan’s King Abdullah in 2004), its manifestation occurred only as a result of Iranian reaction to American military misadventures in the Middle East since 2003. The consolidation of political power by Hezbollah in Lebanon and President Assad in Syria has panicked Israeli politicians and military leaders, who fear the consequences of a future war, given the abysmal performance of the Israeli Defense Force against Hezbollah in 2006. Pompeo’s demand for Iran’s unilateral withdrawal from Syria is not only unrealistic, but once again underscores the depth of America’s surrender of its foreign policy to interests in Israel.

Iran must end its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attack on the United States saw the Islamist government of the Taliban driven from power. At that time, the Taliban and Iran were on a near-war footing, and Iran viewed the American action in a positive light, offering military and political support. (Most Americans are ignorant of the fact that Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban President, Hamid Karzai, was able to obtain his position only due to Iran’s direct political intervention.) Since that time, however, the American presence in Afghanistan has, from the perspective of Iran, become increasingly malign.

The United States is engaged in a perpetual war in Afghanistan that has generated tens of millions of Afghan refugees, many of whom reside in camps inside Iran. The U.S. has also built up a permanent network of military bases inside Afghanistan, which are used to support covert operations inside Iran. It is no surprise, therefore, that Iran has undertaken to support, in a limited fashion, anti-American groups operating in western Afghanistan, including those affiliated with the Taliban.

Iran, however, is not alone in such support—the intelligence services of Russia and Pakistan are also involved in funneling money and arms to the Taliban in western Afghanistan. The United States has increasingly turned to regional allies such as India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to fund development projects inside Afghanistan that Iran, Russia and Pakistan find threatening. Pompeo’s demand for Iran to cease its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan is ignorant of reality and, like every one of his list of demands, not going to happen.

Iran must end the operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command (IRGC) Qods Force.

The Qods Force is the extraterritorial arm of the IRGC. It was formed during the Iran-Iraq war, during which it conducted military operations inside Iraq, as well as covert actions in Lebanon, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The Qods Force is a uniquely Iranian institution, combining the mission and capabilities of American Special Forces, Special Operations Forces and CIA Paramilitaries into a single organization. To the extent that Iran is involved in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon today, it does so through the Qods Force. While the United States has labeled the Qods Force as a terrorist organization, the reality is that it is as legitimate a facilitator of Iranian national security policy objectives in the Middle East as the Department of Defense and CIA are of American policy and interests. Asking the Iranians to end the operations of the Qods Force is like asking the United States to shut down the Department of Defense and the CIA—it simply isn’t going to happen, and Mike Pompeo knows this.

Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors (Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE), its threats against shipping, and cease its cyberattacks.

Iran is currently involved in a tense standoff with Israel in Syria and is actively opposed to what it deems to be malign action on the part of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen and elsewhere. Iranian supported proxies face off against the United States in Afghanistan and Syria. While the Trump administration claims that Iran took advantage of the JCPOA to advance its position throughout the Middle East, the fact is every hot spot where Iran faces off against the United States and its allies can trace its origins back to American policy mistakes that predate the JCPOA. Iran’s response to the aggressive and destabilizing policies of the United States and its regional allies (Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) is independent of the JCPOA. Indeed, if any party is to blame for the failure to diplomatically engage in the aftermath of the signing of the JCPOA, it is the United States and the very allies it accuses Iran of plotting against.

The United States continues to threaten Iranian oil production and sales through economic sanctions, naval blockade and direct military action; Iranian threats to shut down the transport of oil through the strategic Strait of Hormuz are made only in the context of a retaliation in the face of future American aggression against Iran. Likewise, Iran was the target of a major offensive cyberattack—Stuxnet—carried out by the United States; Iran’s own cyber activity targeting the United States and its regional allies must be viewed through a lens that considers the reality that it was the United Sates that initiated this cyberwar.

“The length of the list,” Mike Pompeo noted, “is simply a scope of the malign behavior of Iran. We didn’t create the list, they did.” This statement, however, is as disingenuous as it is wrong. In every one of his 12 points, the newly minted secretary of state seeks to put the Iranian cart before the American horse. The fact is, there is an American historical precursor action for every contemporary Iranian reaction. To ignore this reality is to court disaster. Demanding that Iran unilaterally surrender to American demands, which are detached from reality is little more than a prescription for war, a policy objective that John Bolton, President Trump’s new national security adviser, has made no secret of embracing in times past.

The tragedy is that the U.S.-Iranian march toward war initiated by Pompeo’s bombastic speech was inherently avoidable—Iran was willing to put many of the concerns outlined in Pompeo’s address up for negotiation so long as the JCPOA remained intact. With the United States out of that agreement, and the JCPOA itself on life support in the face of promised U.S. economic sanctions, there is no longer any hope for meaningful negotiations between the United States and Iran. Mike Pompeo may have put the possibility of such discussions on the table in his address, but the 12 steps Iran would be required to implement before such talks could occur are proof positive that the Trump administration is not serious about a diplomatic resolution to an Iranian problem that is largely of its own making.

For a man who ran on a platform highly critical of President Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq, Donald Trump seems hellbent to do his best to repeat the mistakes of the past. History will be his judge, and it will judge him harshly. Unfortunately, millions of innocent people—American, Iranian and others—are now condemned to pay the price of Trump’s folly.

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The NFL Kneels to Trump and His Supporters

Eight months after Donald Trump declared that any player who took a knee in protest was a “son of a bitch,” the National Football League has instituted a draconian new policy concerning those who refuse to stand for the national anthem.

According to new guidelines unveiled Wednesday, players will have the option to remain in the locker room, but their teams will be fined by the league if they elect to kneel during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The plan has the unanimous approval of the league’s owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

What punishment will be imposed against protesting players by either their teams or the league was not clear.

“We want people to be respectful of the national anthem,” Goodell told reporters. “We want people to stand—that’s all personnel—and make sure that they treat this moment in a respectful fashion. That’s something I think we owe. We’ve been very sensitive in making sure that we give players choices, but we do believe that that moment is an important moment and one that we are going to focus on.”

The National Football League Players Association—the labor union representing the league’s players—issued a withering response, denouncing the league’s policy and hinting at legal action.

“The NFL chose to not consult the union in the development of this new ‘policy,’ ” it said in a statement. “NFL players have shown their patriotism through their social activism, their community service, in support of our military and law enforcement and yes, through their protests to raise awareness about the issues they care about. … Our union will review the new ‘policy’ and challenge any aspect of it that is inconsistent with the collective bargaining agreement.”

The implications of this protest protocol have not been lost on the American Civil Liberties Union, which similarly decried the NFL’s actions as “un-American.” In a series of tweets Wednesday afternoon, the organization cautioned that the league risks setting a dangerous precedent for other prominent, private institutions.

Telling peaceful protesters to leave and do it behind closed doors is dangerous and un-American. #TakeAKnee https://t.co/CkKkxVE7dH

— ACLU (@ACLU) May 23, 2018

The NFL players’ protests have never been about the military or the flag. They’re about police brutality and white supremacy. Failing to protest injustice in America is not patriotic, it’s dangerous. #TakeAKnee

— ACLU (@ACLU) May 23, 2018

The timing of the NFL’s announcement is curious, to say the least. Earlier this week, multiple reports indicated that new evidence undermines the NFL’s defense against collusion charges made by Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who began the national anthem protest. ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio reveals that several teams viewed the one-time National Football Conference champion—who has been out of the league since 2016—as an NFL starter when he became a free agent last year. Kaepernick was set to try out for the Seattle Seahawks this spring, but his invitation was rescinded under vague circumstances related, at least in part, to his refusal to guarantee that he would not participate in future demonstrations.

When Kaepernick first knelt during the national anthem in 2016 he was not protesting Trump’s presidential candidacy, but rather police brutality and systemic racism. In fact, it was U.S. Army veteran Nate Boyer who originally persuaded him to take a knee—a detail willfully ignored or forgotten by the quarterback’s baying critics on the right.

The NFL’s latest decision exposes not just the lengths to which the league is willing to appease the president’s base but the corrosive effect his political rise has had on civil society.

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The Tired Trope of Blaming Trump on ‘Liberal Smugness’

In an attempt to understand the coalition that gave Trump his narrow victory, for the past year and a half the press has spun a whole new subgenre of stilted, tautological feature reporting on how Trump supporters support Trump.

And in their opinion sections, corporate media have fared no better. They have routinely given platforms to those who claim, with little to no firm evidence, that Trump’s election and his steady (though historically low) popularity (as well as his predicted eventual reelection) are all partly if not wholly the fault of liberal smugness and left-wing political correctness run amok.

Just last week, the Washington Post picked up the theme in a post with this matter-of-fact title: “Trump Voters Stay Loyal Because They Feel Disrespected.” Citing a small survey of voters in one county in Michigan by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, the Post simply repeats this conventional wisdom without skepticism. Of course, pollsters like Greenberg are in the business of getting more clients based on their purported insights into the electorate, no matter how tenuous or anecdotal their proclamations prove to be later. (Remember the pollster-cited “NASCAR Dads” and “Security Moms” in the 2004 election that nobody could actually find?)

But the proof presented in these arguments is routinely shot through with logical holes that go unaddressed. Neither Greenberg nor the Post seem to notice the massive lack of self-reflection, my-side bias, and obvious hypocrisy found in these anecdotal grievances. Consider this passage:

Trump voters complain that there is no respect for President Trump or for people like them who voted for him. One older white working class woman from Macomb recalled when she first started voting, “there was so much respect for the president. And I don’t care what he did, or what he said, there was always respect. It was always ‘Mr. President.’ And now, it disgusts me.”

Did Greenberg ask this woman her opinion of Trump’s years of Birther lies about President Obama? Who knows? Was there any specific inquiry as to what, if any, type of criticism of Trump from the left she or others like her would deem appropriate or respectful? Apparently not. Might “liberal condescension” just be a convenient fig leaf for hardened, motivated reasoning from an older, white demographic that is already heavily predisposed to like Trump, regardless of what liberals say? You won’t find any answers to legitimate questions like that here or elsewhere in these feckless claims. But that hasn’t stopped some of the most prestigious media outlets in the country from helping to perpetuate them.

The Washington Post is by no means alone. Politico ran its own essay targeting liberal “smugness” and blaming “the left” for Donald Trump’s victory right after it happened. Among many other examples over the past 18 months are op-eds in the Guardian (“With Every Sneer, Liberals Just Make Trump Stronger,”) CNN (“Democrats: The Party Who Cried Racist,”) and the Post yet again, when the paper’s resident columnist-cum-fossil fuel lobbyist, Ed Rogers, conveniently blamed conservative voter alienation on an old standby in right-wing grievance-mongering: “The Democrats’ Use of the Race Card Does Real Harm”).

Former New York Times columnist Josh Barro, in a column for Business Insider, zeroed in on the grave ills of left-wing cultural signaling with “Liberals Can Win if They Stop Being So Annoying and Fix Their ‘Hamburger Problem.’” (That problem is that they’re supposedly “too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices.”)

For her part, Caitlin Flanagan at The Atlantic fingered the “sneering hosts” and “liberal smugness” of the likes of Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee and Saturday Night Live. All their sarcasm and jokes at the expense of the president and conservatives were proof of “How Late Night Comedy Fueled the Rise of Trump” as well.

But perhaps nowhere among the ranks of the establishment press will you find this “liberal smugness” argument more frequently than in the New York Times. The paper began indulging this op-ed narrative before the voting even began. Ross Douthat’s late-September column, “Clinton’s Samantha Bee Problem,” presaged Flanagan’s by a full eight months, calling out liberal comics as “propagandists” and “indoctrinators” whose “hectoring” was pushing more people to embrace Trump.

Right after the election, the Times ran “Stop Shaming Trump Supporters.” Just weeks later, the Times’ Maureen Dowd generously gave her Thanksgiving column over to Kevin, a conservative family member who, without any sense of irony, condemned liberal condescension with a heavy dose of his own:

Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics.

Left unmentioned by Dowd’s relative: what a “proper understanding of civics” would say about the Republican congressional leadership planning from the very night of Obama’s first Inauguration to undertake unprecedented obstruction of his presidency, as well as eight straight years of likening him to everything from the “antichrist” to a “monkey” to an “Islamic terrorist.” But this kind of convenient historical omission is also typical fare for this flawed genre.

It didn’t stop there. A few months later, the Times re-framed this argument as a question, while ignoring the answer that Betteridge’s Law would offer for an op-ed with the loaded headline: “Are Liberals Helping Trump?”  Around the time of this year’s State of the Union, the paper published a conversation that included columnist Frank Bruni, headlined “Enough Trump Bashing, Democrats.”

This past March, Times readers were treated to “When Smug Liberals Met Conservative Trolls,”  a classic both-sides op-ed from Reason’s editor-in-chief that employed reductive false equivalence about the failed DACA compromise: “The left labeled the right racist; the right accused the left of hating America. No substantive policy change resulted.” Of note: the op-ed writer didn’t feel it germane enough to mention that in a bipartisan meeting on DACA and immigration, the president apparently called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, or that two prominent Republican senators then used legalistic excuses to provide him with political cover for his xenophobic remarks, or that right-wing pundits and supporters online also closed ranks around, if not openly endorsed, Trump’s reported racism.’

Then, this month, the paper ran its latest installment in this series: “Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think.” Written by Gerard Alexander, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia, the op-ed traffics in the same old tired tropes and one-sided examples as its predecessors. In a stroke of self-parody, Alexander literally begins his essay with the lazy rhetorical defense mechanism of “Some of my best friends are (X),” that has long been the go-to excuse for people who have just made or are about to make a specious, if not discriminatory point about people who are (X). True to form, in the next paragraph he follows with wild, completely unprovable speculation: a “backlash that most liberals don’t seem to realize they’re causing—is going to get President Trump re-elected.”

Blame-the-liberal is a time-honored tradition among conservatives and predates Trump’s rise by years, decades even. It has been the ethos of Fox News since its first day on the air, reaching back through the presidencies of Obama (“Why Are Liberals So Rude to the Right?”: Guardian) and Bush  (Mona Charen’s 2004 book Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help [and the Rest of Us]), all the way to the very origins of the modern conservative movement, when William F. Buckley expressed his infamous disgust with effete liberals by preferring governance by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book to the faculty of Harvard.

But Alexander’s shtick is literally repetitive. In fact, he made the exact same argument in the Washington Post eight years ago, in “Why Are Liberals So Condescending?” And while his cherry-picked instances of left-wing insufferability have been updated, mostly—Alexander couldn’t resist playing at least one Golden Oldie in both pieces, the favorite right-wing taunt about Obama’s “they cling to guns and religion” remarks from the 2008 campaign—the beats are nonetheless the same throughout. As is his bad-faith characterization when contrasting liberal vs. conservative rhetoric. (The racist Birther conspiracy theory and unparalleled GOP obstruction is again completely overlooked.) Recall the tsunami of bile spewing forth from Fox News and right-wing radio during Obama’s first term, and then decide for yourself if his description below matches reality:

Of course, plenty of conservatives are hardly above feeling superior. But the closest they come to portraying liberals as systematically mistaken in their worldview is when they try to identify ideological dogmatism in a narrow slice of the left (say, among Ivy League faculty members), in a particular moment (during the health-care debate, for instance) or in specific individuals (such as Obama or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom some conservatives accuse of being stealth ideologues). A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck.

This reading of history is patently preposterous to any sentient human. But even setting that aside, one might think that Alexander would feel compelled in his latest Times op-ed to acknowledge that  in the age of Trump, right-wing invective against the left (and the media, a common stand-in for the left ) really has intensified. Instead, he shrinks down Trump’s vast compendium of discriminatory and bigoted remarks to a mere two passing incidents, minimizes them with murky language, and then helpfully distances his supporters from even that tiny sliver of intellectual honesty:

Admittedly, the president doesn’t make it easy. As a candidate, Mr. Trump made derogatory comments about Mexicans, and as president described some African countries with a vulgar epithet. But it is an unjustified leap to conclude that anyone who supports him in any way is racist.

This is a thinly veiled shot at Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” comment about Trump supporters during the 2016 campaign. Which she apologized for, and which, if we’re being fair, was aimed at what she said were the “half” of Trump’s supporters that endorsed racism, sexism or other discriminatory policies.

Racism is obviously a bipartisan problem with deep, systemic roots and a long, toxic legacy in our country. But Alexander doesn’t even attempt to grapple with those broader issues, or deign to mention the racist “Southern strategy” that the Republican Party employed for decades—and that Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman apologized for. Rather than acknowledging that sexism and racism remain very real and pernicious phenomena in our society, these op-eds typically treat the words as mere insults that the left manipulatively and indiscriminately lobs at conservatives for almost every little thing they do.

That is a key point: It is the intense reaction among conservatives to being labeled racist or bigoted that is a through-line in this liberal-smugness-only-makes-conservatives-more-reactionary argument. Time and again, any underlying racism or discriminatory policies cited by liberals are treated as mere pretense to stigmatize those on the right. This manifests itself in almost absurdly reductive ways. Consider New York Times editorial page columnist Bari Weiss’ comment on Twitter this month:

When conservatives, classical liberals or libertarians are told by the progressive chattering class that they—or those they read—are alt-right, the very common response is to say: Screw it. They think everyone is alt-right. And then those people move further right.

There is a lot here to unpack. First off, how does this tetchy, spiteful backlash by conservatives that Weiss and others claim is a “common” phenomenon comport with the right-wing’s overwhelming disdain for thin-skinned “snowflakes,” or being “triggered,” in their sarcastic lexicon? (A Pew survey from July found that by a ratio of about five-to-one—83 percent to 16 percent—Trump supporters say too many people are easily offended.) And what does it say about the principles of conservatives if exposure to criticism by left-wing pundits makes them suddenly more sympathetic to rancid white nationalists or Nazi ideology?

Likewise, is there any reliable evidence that this widespread, liberal-triggered backlash behavior even exists? It is true, per a 2017 Cato survey, that

strong majorities of Republicans (73 percent) and independents (58 percent) say they keep some political beliefs to themselves…while a slim majority (53 percent) (of Democrats) do not feel the need to self-censor.

But being less likely to air one’s opinions—possibly out of shame or embarrassment—is not proof that conservatives are changing their opinions, or retrenching further to the right due to liberal hectoring (or, for that matter, that those opinions are worthy of sharing in the first place).

One might expect a political science professor like Alexander would be eager to cite professional research or an academic study or two to finally prove the liberal-smugness effect. Notably, neither he nor his fellow conservatives ever bother with this step—and the mainstream op-ed editors giving them a platform don’t seem to care. Instead, it is enough to simply state the claim as self-evident, or to quote a handful of random people who make sweeping claims about the abuse they face from unnamed liberals, as a way to justify what could just as easily be fairly predictable, baked-in support for Trump by Republicans.

Note this claim from the Times op-ed last February:

Conservatives have gotten vicious, too, sometimes with Mr. Trump’s encouragement. But if political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.

The presence of a journalistic weasel word like “seemingly” should be a red flag for editors, a signal this “there, but for the disgrace of liberals, go I” premise is as ephemeral as the supposed snowflakes that conservatives claim liberals have become. Note how convenient it is that the conservatives in this formulation get to have it both ways: expressing personal remorse for some of Trump’s most egregious behavior, but then blaming their continuing support for his presidency on an external factor like culture war hectoring from liberal bullies. It’s easy to see why this idea has become almost an article of faith among some conservatives: It simultaneously offers self-righteousness and absolution.

In fact, however, a University of Maryland working paper that studied reactions to the 2016 election cast doubt on the premise of liberal shaming driving conservatives further toward the right. As it noted, there was no statistically significant evidence of a backlash by conservative voters when confronted with liberal critiques of Trump being racist. In fact, the paper found that conservative racial animus in response to liberal election messaging was rooted in pre-existing biases, which is why those same conservatives also rejected claims of Trump’s racism that came from Republicans. Or, as the paper concludes:

Racially conservative whites are resistant to a racialized counter-strategy. In other words, they are motivated to reject information critical of their preferred candidate because it is inconsistent with their existing racial attitudes and views about the candidate.

This study dovetails with an analysis done by The Nation of pre- and post-election surveys which found that racial resentment, not economic anxiety, played an instrumental—and consistent—role in support for Trump during the last presidential campaign.

Both racial resentment and black influence animosity are significant predictors of Trump support among white respondents, independent of partisanship, ideology, education levels and the other factors included in the model. The results indicate a probability of Trump support higher than 60 percent for an otherwise typical white voter who scores at the highest levels on either anti-black racial resentment or anti-black influence animosity. This compares to less than 30 percent chance for a typical white voter with below average scores on either of the two measures anti-black attitudes.

These inconvenient facts simply don’t register to those seeking to pin the blame for Trump on those who oppose him. Instead, the only academic argument that regularly appears in “liberal smugness” canon comes via social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has become a popular figure within the establishment media thanks to his hand-wringing, pox-on-both-houses rhetoric, which lines up neatly with the faux-objectivity of much of the press.

Haidt’s role in “liberal smugness” op-eds is typically to bemoan partisan invective, while also subtly endorsing conservative victimization. In the February 2017 New York Times op-ed, Times correspondent Sabrina Tavernise also cites a Haidt research study that found “extreme political protest”—defined as “inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, or damaging property”—by Black Lives Matter and anti-Trump supporters tended to result in lower public support. In that op-ed, his findings, along with a quote from a 72-year-old white female retiree who voted for Trump, is held up as de facto proof of the counterproductive nature of liberal scolding and political action.

But there’s a tell in that Trump voter’s quote about the 2017 Inauguration and Women’s March protests, which were overwhelmingly peaceful: “I don’t have a problem with protesting as long as it’s peaceful, but this is destroying the country.” So even when liberals meet the supposed criteria for acceptable dissent, they’re still doing it wrong.

We’ve seen this scenario play out many times before. Massive protests that criticize the status quo are routinely seen skeptically or even unfavorably by large portions of the public, regardless of party. And, as our history has shown, massive protests must often raise awareness of unpopular ideas in order for those ideas to become popular in the first place.

For example, a review of historical polling from the Civil Rights movement finds that strong majorities of the American public disapproved of both the Freedom Rides and lunch counter sit-ins in 1961. In 1963, 60 percent of Americans expressed unfavorable opinions about that year’s upcoming March on Washington. And just a month before the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, a Gallup poll found three out of four Americans thought “mass demonstrations” would hurt more than help the cause of racial equality.

Untold numbers of establishment politicians and pundits in that era likewise warned activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. and his liberal political allies that they too would face a backlash for daring to call out segregation and those who support it as favoring institutionalized racism. Refrains of those demands for patience from King and comity in his movement’s tactics echo through the op-eds that damn “liberal smugness”  today.

The reality is that these op-eds are little more than fig leaves masking a concerted effort to delegitimize, neuter and stifle even measured, serious liberal criticism. While there are certainly extremists on the left who abuse loaded terms like “racist,” “sexist” and “Nazi,” the liberal-smugness-backlash argument uses these fringe examples to paint with the same broad brush that it accuses the left of using.

Most notably, these editorial arguments betray an intellectual dishonesty about trying to solve the problem they are supposedly diagnosing. Time and again, they expend almost all their energy gnashing their teeth at the alleged sins of liberal smugness and its supposed impact of the right. And yet there is never a corresponding effort to explain how, exactly, those on the left can engage conservatives on deep political differences without inadvertently alienating them.

Consider this Guardian op-ed’s—typically ambiguous—advice for what liberals should do to express their displeasure or disagreement with Trump and those who enable his policies:

But Trump and his supporters thrive on the venom of their liberal tormentors. The old maxim should apply: Think what your enemy most wants you to do, and do the opposite. Tolerating Trump may stick in the craw, but it must be counter-productive to feed his paranoia, to behave exactly as his lieutenants want his critics to behave, like the liberal snobs that obsess him.

What does this “tolerating” entail, specifically? And how does it differ from a crude attempt at reverse psychology that is tantamount to getting liberals to voluntarily squelch their own dissent?  You won’t find out from these supposed analyses of conservative feelings.

Former Times columnist Josh Barro did make more of an effort than most in his Business Insider column, but it still reeks of incredibly vague platitudes, ripe for easy manipulation and misinterpretation:

Don’t tell people they should feel guilty…. Say when you think the liberal commentariat has gone overboard…. Offer an agenda that provides benefits people can see as mattering in their daily lives…. Don’t get distracted by shiny objects.

As for Alexander’s Times piece, this is the extent of his advice for how liberals can break through and reach on-the-fence moderate conservatives in the marketplace of ideas:

Champions of inclusion can watch what they say and explain what they’re doing without presuming to regulate what words come out of other people’s mouths. Campus activists can allow invited visitors to speak and then, after that event, hold a teach-in discussing what they disagree with. After the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that states had to allow same-sex marriage, the fight, in some quarters, turned to pizza places unwilling to cater such weddings. Maybe don’t pick that fight?

Boil it down, and you start to see the impossibly small needle liberal criticism and protest is being asked to thread by this argument: Carefully police your own rhetoric, but give those on the right the benefit of the doubt even when not policing theirs; assert your constitutional rights to free speech and against discrimination, but not in a disruptive way, and maybe not all the time.

This argument appeals to corporate media opinion editors because they almost universally fetishize calls for more respect and civility in politics, which have their own problematic history of abuse. But, in fact, this “liberal smugness” narrative is something much different and more insidious. It’s a zero-sum proposition that seeks to carve out special treatment for the beliefs of conservatives, while intentionally narrowing the acceptable tactics, voice and messaging of liberals. It’s a stealth closing of the Overton window from the left, positioned as an opening to give more fresh air to the right. It is not a new, insightful, or, at bottom, intellectually honest argument, and the op-ed editors who are willingly perpetuating it are doing both the public and the press a serious disservice.

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Kushner Said to Have Full Security Clearance

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been granted a permanent security clearance, allowing him access to the nation’s most closely held secrets, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday.

Kushner’s access was downgraded in February when White House Chief of Staff John Kelly ordered that officials with interim clearances be cut off if they hadn’t received permanent clearances. That meant Kushner was able to see information only at the lower “secret” level, but not highly classified information.

Kushner serves as a senior adviser on the Middle East and other issues. He is married to Ivanka Trump, the president’s oldest daughter.

The person who spoke about Kushner’s security clearance insisted on anonymity to discuss the process.

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Judge Rules That Trump Can’t Block Twitter Critics

NEW YORK—A federal judge ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump is violating the First Amendment when he blocks critics on Twitter because of their political views.

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan stopped short in her written decision of ordering Trump or a subordinate to stop the practice of blocking critics from viewing his Twitter account, saying it was enough to point out that it was unconstitutional.

“A declaratory judgment should be sufficient, as no government official — including the President — is above the law, and all government officials are presumed to follow the law as has been declared,” Buchwald wrote.

The judge did not issue an order against Trump, and the plaintiffs did not ask for one. But in cases like this, plaintiffs can, in theory, go back and ask for such an order, and if it is not obeyed, the violator can be held in contempt.

Buchwald said she rejected the assertion that an injunction can never be lodged against the president but “nonetheless conclude that it is unnecessary to enter that legal thicket at this time.”

The case was brought last July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and seven individuals blocked by Trump after criticizing the Republican president.

Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said in an email: “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and are considering our next steps.”

Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said in a release that his organization was pleased.

“The president’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter is pernicious and unconstitutional, and we hope this ruling will bring it to an end,” he said.

The lawsuit was filed after Trump blocked some individuals from @realDonaldTrump, a 9-year-old Twitter account with over 50 million followers, after each of them tweeted a message critical of Trump or his policies in reply to a tweet he had sent.

Justice Department lawyers had argued it was Trump’s prerogative to block followers, no different from the president deciding in a room filled with people not to listen to some.

Buchwald ruled that the tweets were “governmental in nature.”

“The President presents the @realDonaldTrump account as being a presidential account as opposed to a personal account and, more importantly, uses the account to take actions that can be taken only by the President as President,” the judge said.

The judge noted that another defendant, Daniel Scavino — the White House’s social media director and an assistant to the president — can unblock those followers without the president needing to do it himself. The judge dismissed Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a defendant in the case after it was established she does not have access to Trump’s account.

Buchwald also said she recognized the impact on the individuals by Trump’s action was not “of the highest magnitude.” She said the First Amendment protects people even from trivial harm.

After a hearing this year, the judge had suggested that Trump mute rather than block some of his critics. At the time, a Justice Department attorney agreed that muting would enable Trump to avoid a tweet he doesn’t want to read.

Twitter users can block people, which prevents them from seeing the user’s feed while logged in. Or they can mute the person, which keeps the user from seeing that person’s tweets and reply messages in their feed.

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Travel Ban Waivers Rarely Granted, Advocates Say

President Trump’s third version of a ban on travelers from eight countries remains in effect as legal challenges wind their way through the courts. One of the legal defenses for allowing it to stay in place was the option for citizens of those countries to apply for individual waivers, exceptions that would allow them into the United States. According to multiple reports, including from Reuters in March, and now The Washington Post, these waivers are nearly impossible to obtain.

“The ban,” a Reuters report explains, “contains a provision that those who do not qualify for exceptions can be considered for waivers in special circumstances, such as a need for urgent medical care or to accommodate adoptions.”

In the first month of the ban, Reuters reported, over 8,400 people from the eight countries—Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and Venezuela—had applied for visas. As of mid-February, only two people had been granted waivers.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake both requested information from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security in January, noting that they “received reports of the near uniform denial of waivers for visas.”

More than two months later, “The State Department says it has granted hundreds of waivers, but declined to say who received them and how,” according to an article Tuesday in The Washington Post.

The government says 655 people from the eight countries have been granted waivers, but as the Post notes, advocates believe that the number actually allowed into the U.S. is much lower. Even the State Department “acknowledged that a ‘cleared’ or ‘granted’ waiver does not mean the applicant actually has received a visa,” the Post reports. “A State Department official said many waiver recipients have received actual visas, but declined to give specifics.”

Lawyers for those seeking waivers have called it “window dressing” and “a sham.”

The Washington Post reached out to over 30 immigration attorneys and advocacy groups asking if they knew of anyone who had successfully obtained a waiver. The search turned up only 25 from the five Muslim-majority countries included in the ban.

For those seeking to be reunited with family, to escape war or to receive lifesaving medical treatment, the outlook is not promising. Many legal analysts expect the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to rule in favor of the ban in June.

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The Tragic Record of American Regime Change

We used to call him “Mookie.” God, we hated him. Back in 2006-07, while patrolling the streets of east Baghdad, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia was our sworn enemy. These impoverished, slum-dwelling Shiite youths hit us with sniper fire and deadly improvised explosive devices day after day. They killed and maimed American troops daily, including my boys—Alex Fuller and Mike Balsley—who died Jan. 25, 2007. We’d patch up our wounded, call in a medevac helicopter, then roll back into those city streets the very next day. As we patrolled, Sadr’s ubiquitous face would taunt us, plastered as it was on billboards, posters and flags throughout the neighborhood.

Now, in a truth stranger than fiction, Sadr’s political party has won the recent Iraqi elections. The former warlord and killer of Americans may now play kingmaker in Iraq. Of course, mine is only one—highly biased—side of the story. From Sadr’s perspective, we were occupiers, a foreign military force with no legitimacy in his country. Perhaps he had a point. Still, Sadr’s victory demonstrates just how far off the rails America’s project in Iraq has gone, and it epitomizes the unintended consequences of offensive war and regime change.

When the United States uses its impressive military machine to topple a tyrant—in this case, Saddam Hussein—it’s impossible to predict the course of the chaos that follows. Fracture a society, it seems, and the most nefarious (and well-armed) actors often rise to the top: militiamen, criminal elements, Islamists and sociopaths of various stripes. Sadr is just one example.

Still, Washington never seems to learn. Since October 2001, our military has been ordered to topple at least three sovereign governments—those of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—and is theoretically seeking to overthrow another regime in Syria. Republican and Democratic presidents alike have ordered these ill-advised operations, demonstrating the striking bipartisanship of American militarism. Let us, then, take a tour of the tragic outcomes unfolding today in each of these victims of U.S.-imposed regime change.

● Afghanistan was the “good war,” according to former President Barack Obama—the one we had to fight. After all, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida central were there. So, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, American bombs and paratroopers started falling on the Taliban regime throughout Afghanistan. It was all over pretty quick. The Taliban surrendered or fled, bin Laden escaped to Pakistan, and that was that. Only the U.S. military never left. What began as a kill-or-capture mission quickly morphed into a lengthy military occupation and an ill-fated attempt to remake Afghan society in America’s own image.

How’s that turned out? Well, the Taliban and anti-American insurgency never really ended. In fact, it’s worse than ever. Washington backed a highly corrupt, venal, Afghan government that lacked legitimacy and was chock full of former warlords. Peace is no closer today than it was in 2001.

Here matters stand in 2018, 17 years into America’s longest war. Consider the biggest story that no one is talking about in today’s Trump-obsessed mainstream media: the recently released report by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. According to this official watchdog agency:

• Afghan troop numbers are decreasing while casualties are increasing;

• more Afghan districts are contested by the Taliban than at any time in recent memory;

• civilian casualties are increasing;

• Afghanistan’s Taliban-funding opium crop just reached record levels;

• and, worst of all, Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is so reliant on foreign aid that it cannot sustain itself independently.

In Afghanistan, the United States turns out to have brought only chaos; to have worsened an already awful social situation. Rather than lessening extremism, U.S. occupation has only emboldened the Taliban and led to the creation of a local Islamic State franchise in Afghanistan’s mountainous east.

● Iraq was a war of choice. Based on flawed—if not deceptive—intelligence, the invasion succeeded in toppling Saddam but ushered in looting, criminality, insurgency and a brutal civil war that has never really ended. By backing the once-oppressed Shiites, the U.S. empowered a chauvinist tyranny of the majority and alienated the country’s Kurdish and Sunni minorities. By 2004, both Sunni and Shiite insurgents (including Sadr’s gang) were attacking U.S. troops and murdering civilians in the streets.

Matters temporarily improved in 2009-12, when Washington made a desperate play—paying off former insurgents to turn on the most radical Islamists in their midst. Unfortunately, this was but a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, one that couldn’t staunch the chaos over the long term. When conventional U.S. forces left Iraq in December 2011, they left behind a Shiite autocrat who massacred protesters and oppressed minorities. The civil war again ran hot, Islamic State arose and captured one-third of the country, and the northern Kurds essentially declared de-facto independence. Iraq was fractured, divided and blood-soaked—again.

So it was that U.S. soldiers again re-entered the country. They are still there; fighting and sometimes dying on behalf of a government in Baghdad that will soon be led by one its sworn enemies—Muqtada al-Sadr.

● In Libya, “no-drama” Obama assured us, the U.S. could “lead from behind” and let the mostly European international community do much of the heavy lifting in the takedown of yet another dictator, Moammar Gadhafi. It didn’t turn out that way. U.S. airstrikes devastated the regime’s military and an assortment of tribal militias overturned the Libyan government. Gadhafi? Well, he never saw the inside of an international tribunal; instead he was captured and lynched, beaten, sodomized with a bayonet and shot to death. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton glowed in the aftermath of his murder, boasting that “we came, we saw, he died.”

Unfortunately, and ever so predictably, Libya never became the liberal, democratic paradise the Obama administration dreamed of. Instead, seven years of factional warfare have followed. Libya is now fractured, divided between the forces of an autocratic general in the east, a tumultuous “official” government in the west, and sprinkled with fiefdoms of numerous Islamist factions, including a new franchise of Islamic State. Unlike George W. Bush, Obama at least seemed to realize his mistake and the mission’s failure, calling the operation a “shit show” and the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

Libya remains a shit show.

So that’s the tortured record of American regime toppling and regime “building” in the post-9/11 era. Three unabashed failures; the cost: nearly 7,000 American troops killed, hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, millions of refugees, and trillions of dollar spent.

The United States, and the world, is no safer now than it was in 2001. Given the counterproductive and horrific results of the “war on terror,” Washington would have been better served had it dug a massive hole in the Mojave Desert, bulldozed in those trillions of dollars and buried them.

Nonetheless, here we stand, with war hawks atop the Trump administration—led by national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—who have repeatedly called for regime change in Iran and North Korea. It’s frightening.

Here’s a thought: When the war drums start beating again—and they will—let us remember the tragic record of the last three failed regime changes perpetrated by Washington and think long and hard before sleepwalking into the next catastrophe.

But don’t hold your breath.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

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Poor People’s Campaign: An American Movement Hidden in Plain Sight (Audio Photo Essay)

Editor’s note: Truthdig has launched a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us provide firsthand accounts of this activism by making a donation.

The Poor People’s Campaign remains invisible to much of America. Corporate media have chosen to dismiss this call for a national moral revival, but the establishment will not be able to ignore the growing community that is calling for it much longer.

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The theme for Week 2 of the campaign is “Linking Systemic Racism and Poverty: Voting Rights, Immigration, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the Mistreatment of Indigenous Communities.” Protest actions kicked off Monday in Chicago and Springfield, Ill., as members of the Poor People’s Campaign and the Fight for $15 movement joined forces to demand better working conditions from McDonald’s—the world’s second-biggest private employer—and occupy the Illinois Capitol to fight racism and inequality.

Truthdig correspondent Michael Nigro was on the ground to report on the acts of civil disobedience.

PHOTO ESSAY | 23 photosPoor People's Campaign: Everybody's Got a Right to Live

To see Truthdig’s multimedia coverage from Washington, D.C., during Week 1, click here. To hear and see Nigro’s audio photo essay, click here.

To cover the full six weeks of the movement, we rely on your contributions. To support continuing coverage such as this, please consider making a donation today.

World Temperature Rise Nears Danger Level

With world temperature rise already 1°C above pre-industrial levels, new research shows that there is only a 0.5°C safety margin left in the system before the most vulnerable groups of people suffer severely.

The current political target, agreed in Paris more than two years ago, of aiming to prevent temperature from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and certainly stopping a rise beyond 2°C, disguises the fact that we are already more than halfway to the danger point.

And scientists have now shown that there is a huge difference in the consequences to the human race if the 1.5°C limit is exceeded and temperatures allowed to reach 2°C.

Research to identify climate vulnerability hotspots has found that if the global temperature does rise by 2°C, then the number of people affected by multiple climate change risks could double the number affected by a rise of 1.5°C.

Because people living in poverty are much more vulnerable to climate change impacts, knowing where and how many of them are at high risk matters for developing policies to improve their lives.

The researchers investigated the overlap between socio-economic development and a range of climate change risks, to try to identify the vulnerability hotspots if the global mean temperature should rise by 1.5°C, 2°C or 3°C by 2050, compared with the pre-industrial baseline.

The researchers are from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the universities of Oxford (UK) and Washington (US).

They report in the journal Environmental Research Letters that they developed 14 impact indicators in three main sectors – water, energy, and food and environment. These indicators include a water stress index, water supply seasonality, clean cooking access, heat stress events, habitat degradation, and crop yield changes.

The team compared the potential risks at the three selected temperatures and in a range of socio-economic pathways, to let them compare more equitable and sustainable development with pathways marked by development failures and high inequality.

Intolerable risk

In 2011, an estimated 767 million people were living on less than US$1.90 per day, classed as extreme poverty, and the researchers estimated that 3.5 billion more people were “vulnerable to poverty”, living on less than US$10 per day.

The research was led by Edward Byers of IIASA’s energy programe. He said: “Few studies have consistently investigated so many overlapping climate and development challenges.”

The multi-sector risk he and his colleagues studied is one where the risk goes beyond tolerable in at least two of the three main sectors. At lower temperatures, hotspots occur primarily in south and east Asia, but with higher global temperatures hotspots spread further to Central America, west and east Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

At 1.5°C of warming, 16% of the probable population of the world in 2050, 1.5bn people, will have moderate-to-high levels of multi-sector risk. At 2°C this almost doubles to 29% of the global population, 2.7bn people. And at 3°C, that figure almost doubles again, to 50% of the global population: 4.6bn human beings.

Sustainability hopes

Depending on the scenario, 91-98% of the exposed and vulnerable population live in Asia and Africa. Around half of these live in south Asia alone, but Africa is likely to face greater risks as the least developed region with high social inequality.

The researchers say sustainable development in hotspot areas could reduce the number of people who are exposed and vulnerable by an order of magnitude, from 1.5bn to 100m, compared with the high inequality scenario.

“The research will be most relevant to policymakers and others looking to understand the benefits of keeping the average global temperature rise to 1.5°C rather than 2°C, as well as providing insights into the regions most at risk across different sectors”, said Astrid Hillers, senior environmental specialist at GEF.

Keywan Riahi, IIASA’s energy programme director, said: “The research indicates locations where meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is not only important but also very challenging, and shows the substantial importance of targeted poverty reduction that is required in some regions to reduce vulnerability.”