Chris Hedges's Blog, page 582

UAE Detains Campaigners for Women’s Right to Drive

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates—Just weeks before Saudi Arabia is set to lift its ban on women driving, the kingdom’s state security said Saturday it had detained seven people who are being accused of working with “foreign entities.” Rights activists say all those detained had worked in some capacity on women’s rights issues, with five of those detained among the most prominent and outspoken women’s rights campaigners in the country.

Pro-government media outlets have splashed their photos online and in newspapers, accusing them of betrayal and of being traitors.

The female activists had persistently called for the right to drive, but stressed that this was only the first step toward full rights. For years, they also called for an end to less visible forms of discrimination, such as lifting guardianship laws that give male relatives final say on whether a woman can travel abroad, obtain a passport or marry.

Their movement was seen as part of a larger democratic and civil rights push in the kingdom, which remains an absolute monarchy where protests are illegal and where all major decision-making rests with the king and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Some state-linked media outlets published the names of those detained, which include Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef and Eman al-Najfan.

Rights activists who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion say Madeha al-Ajroush and Aisha al-Manae are also among the seven detained. Both took part in the first women’s protest movement for the right to drive in 1990, in which 50 women were arrested for driving and lost their passports and their jobs.

All five women are well-known activists who agitated for greater women’s rights. Several of the women were professors at state-run universities and are mothers or grandmothers.

The Interior Ministry on Saturday did not name those arrested, but said the group is being investigated for communicating with “foreign entities,” working to recruit people in sensitive government positions and providing money to foreign circles with the aim of destabilizing and harming the kingdom.

The stunning arrests come just six weeks before Saudi Arabia is set to lift the world’s only ban on women driving next month.

When the kingdom issued its royal decree last year announcing that women would be allowed to drive in 2018, women’s rights activists were contacted by the royal court and warned against giving interviews to the media or speaking out on social media.

Following the warnings, some women left the country for a period of time and others stopped voicing their opinions on Twitter.

As activists were pressured into silence, Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old heir to the throne stepped forth, positioning himself as the force behind the kingdom’s reforms.

Human Rights Watch says, however, the crown prince’s so-called reform campaign “has been a frenzy of fear for genuine Saudi reformers who dare to advocate publicly for human rights or women’s empowerment.”

“The message is clear that anyone expressing skepticism about the crown prince’s rights agenda faces time in jail,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

Last year, Prince Mohammed oversaw the arrests of dozens of writers, intellectuals and moderate clerics who were perceived as critics of his foreign policies. He also led an unprecedented shakedown of top princes and businessmen, forcing them to hand over significant portions of their wealth in exchange for their freedom as part of a purported anti-corruption campaign.

In an interview with CBS in March, he said that he was “absolutely” sending a message through these arrests that there was a new sheriff in town.

Activists say writer Mohammed al-Rabea and lawyer Ibrahim al-Mudaimigh, two men who worked to support women’s rights campaigners, are also among the seven detained. Al-Mudaimigh defended al-Hathloul in court when she was arrested in late 2014 for more than 70 days for her online criticism of the government and for attempting to bring attention to the driving ban by driving from neighboring United Arab Emirates into Saudi Arabia.

Those familiar with the arrests say al-Hathloul was forcibly taken by security forces earlier this year from the UAE, where she was residing, and forced back to the kingdom.

In recent weeks, activists say several women’s rights campaigners were also banned from traveling abroad.

Immediately after news of the arrests broke, pro-government Twitter accounts were branding the group as treasonous under an Arabic hashtag describing them as traitors for foreign embassies.

The pro-government SaudiNews50 Twitter account, with its 11.5 million followers, splashed images of those arrested with red stamps over their face that read “traitor” and saying that “history spits in the face of the country’s traitors.”

The state-linked Al-Jazirah newspaper published on its front-page a photo of al-Hathloul and al-Yousef under a headline describing them as citizens who betrayed the nation.

Activists told the AP that some in the group were arrested on Tuesday and at least one person was arrested Thursday. They say the detainees were transferred from the capital, Riyadh, to the city of Jiddah for interrogations where the royal court has relocated for the month of Ramadan.

Activists say it’s not clear why the seven have been arrested now.

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Parkland Students Give Moving Responses to Texas Shooting

After 10 people were fatally shot Friday at Santa Fe High School in Texas, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.—among them the student survivors of the mass shooting there in February—reacted with grief and continued calls to fight for sensible gun control in America.

At least 8 students have been shot and killed at Santa Fe High School.

Prepare to watch the NRA boast about getting higher donations.

Prepare to see students rise up and be called ‘civil terrorists’ and crisis actors.

Prepare for the right-wing media to attack the survivors.

— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) May 18, 2018

Some of the Parkland students who survived the February massacre, in which 17 people were killed, have since become prominent voices in gun reform advocacy. They have released a policy platform, appeared on the cover of Time and founded March for Our Lives, a massive nationwide anti-gun violence protest.

“I should be celebrating my last day of high school, but instead my heart is broken to hear of the tragedy at Santa Fe,” Delaney Tarr, a senior at Stoneman Douglas, wrote on Twitter.

I should be celebrating my last day of high school, but instead my heart is broken to hear of the tragedy at Santa Fe. We cannot let this continue to be the norm. We cannot.

— Delaney Tarr (@delaneytarr) May 18, 2018

“Santa Fe High, you didn’t deserve this,” wrote Emma Gonzales, a Parkland survivor who has been a leading voice in calling for gun control. “You deserve peace all your lives, not just after a tombstone saying that is put over you. You deserve more than Thoughts and Prayers, and after supporting us by walking out we will be there to support you by raising up your voices.”

Santa Fe High, you didn’t deserve this. You deserve peace all your lives, not just after a tombstone saying that is put over you. You deserve more than Thoughts and Prayers, and after supporting us by walking out we will be there to support you by raising up your voices.

— Emma González (@Emma4Change) May 18, 2018

Indeed, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said exactly that after the shooting, according to CNN: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those injured and killed.” But in a statement on Twitter, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told Congress to “spare us your thoughts and prayers and do your job.”

Other Parkland students tweeted:

To everyone at Santa Fe high school ,I hope youre safe, I’m so sorry this is happening, and I’m so sorry that it continues to https://t.co/zLRbrizYiD one should be in the situation that youre all currently in. Im not going to say thoughts and prayers but instead policy and action

— Sarah Chadwick (@Sarahchadwickk) May 18, 2018

Hoping things get better. Hoping things can change. Don’t tell me that there isn’t a shooting problem in this country. The perpetuating gun violence we face is ridiculous. https://t.co/dHeXH5Fo9B

— Alex Wind (@al3xw1nd) May 18, 2018

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Record Heat Means Hurricanes Gain Ferocity Faster

Hurricanes are becoming more violent, more rapidly, than they did 30 years ago. The cause may be entirely natural, scientists say.

But Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 assaulted the Gulf of Mexico and dumped unprecedented quantities of rain to cause devastating floods in Texas, happened because the waters of the Gulf were warmer than at any time on record. And they were warmer because of human-driven climate change, according to a second study.

Both studies examine the intricate machinery of a natural phenomenon, the tropical cyclone. Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory looked at how fast four of 2017’s hurricanes – Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria – intensified: episodes in which maximum wind speed rose by at least 25 knots, which is more than 46 kilometres, per hour within a 24-hour period. They report in Geophysical Research Letters that they combed through 30 years of satellite data from 1986 to 2015 to find a pattern.

Researchers have repeatedly warned that hurricane hazard must increase with global warming, driven by profligate human combustion of fossil fuels that dump greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Hurricanes will hit higher latitudes and deliver more damage within the Gulf of Mexico. But climate change is only part of the answer.

The latest study did not find that storms were intensifying rapidly more often than usual. But the researchers did find that when a storm grew at speed, it became much more powerful within a 24-hour period than such storms did 30 years ago: wind speeds had gained 3.8 knots or seven kilometres an hour for each of the three decades.

And although hurricanes are driven by the warmth of the upper ocean, the researchers decided that rather than overall ocean warming, in this case the biggest factor was a natural cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which in its present phase tends to make ocean waters warmer in the central and eastern Atlantic – the spawning ground for Irma, Jose and Maria.

Warmest on record

But when Harvey hammered the Texas coast in August 2017, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were warmer than they had ever been. And scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) report in the journal Earth’s Future that they calculated the rate of evaporation as the hurricane winds raced over the water and compared it with the levels of precipitation over the city of Houston.

To make a hurricane happen at all, ocean temperatures need to reach 26°C. When Harvey gathered its strength and its moisture, the Gulf waters had tipped 30°C.

“We show, for the first time, that the volume of rain over land corresponds to the amount of water evaporated from the unusually warm ocean,” said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist with NCAR. “As climate change continues, we can expect more supercharged storms like Harvey.”

Will U.S. Torturers Ever Be Held Accountable as War Criminals?

This piece was first published Wednesday, May 16, on Truthout. On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Gina Haspel as the first female CIA director.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to support Gina Haspel’s nomination today, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role of CIA director.

Next the full Senate will make a final decision on Haspel’s nomination in a vote that is expected to take place next week but could occur as early as tomorrow.

In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA’s interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated.

Haspel was chief of base at the secret CIA black site in Thailand when al-Qaida suspects, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were waterboarded and brutalized in 2002. Ten years later, Sondra Crosby said al-Nashiri was “one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.”

Waterboarding involves pouring water into prisoners’ noses and mouths to make them feel like they’re drowning.

The Bush administration claimed it only waterboarded three individuals: al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But a footnote in a memo written by Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Steven Bradbury says waterboarding was utilized “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than small quantities, as required by the CIA’s rules.

Waterboarding is illegal under all circumstances.

The Bush Torture Program Was Unlawful

U.S. law has long considered waterboarding to be torture, which constitutes a war crime. After World War II, the U.S. government tried, convicted and hanged Japanese military leaders for the war crime of waterboarding.

Torture is prohibited under the U.S. Torture Statute; the U.S. War Crimes Act; the Geneva Conventions; and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (also known as the Convention Against Torture).

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,” the Convention Against Torture states unequivocally.

Last week, however, Haspel testified that the CIA’s actions in the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program were lawful. “The very important thing to know about CIA is, we follow the law,” she said. “We followed the law then, and we follow the law now.”

She was likely relying on memoranda written by lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, including John Yoo and Jay Bybee. Yoo and Bybee wrote memos with twisted reasoning purporting to justify torture, and advised high government officials on how to avoid criminal liability under the U.S. War Crimes Act.

According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, Bush’s secretary of state, the torture policy emanated from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

That makes Cheney—along with George W. Bush and other officials who authorized the torture—liable for war crimes. But since Barack Obama refused to hold the Bush war criminals accountable, Cheney continues to advocate torture with impunity.

In a recent appearance on Fox Business, Cheney supported Haspel’s nomination. He said he “wholeheartedly” favors “enhanced interrogation techniques”—a euphemism for torture. “I think the techniques we used were not torture,” Cheney claimed. “If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs,” Cheney said. “If it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Haspel’s Elusive Moral Compass

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 499-page executive summary of its 6,700-page classified torture report in 2014. It contains many disturbing revelations. The summary says several detainees were waterboarded. One detainee in CIA custody was waterboarded 183 times; another was subjected to the waterboard on 83 occasions.

Al-Nashiri was waterboarded on Haspel’s watch. A rag was placed over his forehead and eyes and water was poured into his nose and mouth until he began to choke and aspirate. The rag was lowered, suffocating him with the water still in his throat, sinuses and lungs. After he was allowed to take three to four breaths, the process was repeated.

A broomstick was wedged behind Al-Nashiri’s knees as he knelt and his body was forced backward, pulling his knee joints apart. CIA agents also cinched his elbows behind his back and hoisted him up to the ceiling, causing a physician’s assistant to fear they had dislocated his shoulders.

Al-Nashiri was placed in a coffin between interrogations. At other times, he was locked into a small box the size of an office safe. Agents used a rolled towel placed around Al-Nashiri’s neck to swing him into a plywood wall, so the towel became an object of fear.

Agents instilled in Al-Nashiri “learned helplessness” to render him passive and dependent. To induce sleep deprivation, he was shackled to a bar on the ceiling and forced to stand with his arms above his head.

While hooded, naked and shackled to the ceiling, agents racked a handgun near Al-Nashiri’s head, then substituted a revved-up power drill.

Al-Nashiri was subjected to “rectal feeding.” A mixture of pureed hummus, pasta and sauce, nuts and raisins was rammed into his rectum. He was also forcibly sodomized and a stiff brush was raked across his “ass and balls and then his mouth.”

The summary confirmed the CIA used “rectal feeding” without medical necessity on prisoners, saying “rectal rehydration” was used to establish the interrogator’s “total control over the detainee.”

Other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that the summary documented included being slammed into walls; deprived of sleep—sometimes with forced standing—for up to seven and one-half days; forced to stand on broken limbs for hours on end; kept in total darkness; confined in a coffin-like box for 11 days; dressed in diapers; and bathed in ice water. The summary said one detainee “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

When Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) asked Haspel, “Do you believe in hindsight that those techniques were immoral?” the nominee gave a non-responsive answer. Haspel said, “Senator, what I believe sitting here today is, I support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), vice-chairman of the committee, asked Haspel, “If this president asked you to do something that you find morally objectionable, even if there is an [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, what will you do? Will you carry out that order or not?”

She replied, “Senator, my moral compass is strong. I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral—even if it was technically legal,” Haspel explained.

Apparently Haspel has no moral objection to the torture techniques used on Al-Nashiri.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) inquired of Haspel, “If the CIA has a high-value terrorism suspect in its custody and the president gave you a direct order to waterboard that suspect, what would you do?”

Again, Haspel demurred with a non-responsive reply: “I do not believe the president would ask me to do that,” she testified.

Haspel is apparently unaware of Donald Trump’s declarations during the presidential campaign that he would “immediately” resume waterboarding and would “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” because the United States has a “barbaric” enemy. Trump called waterboarding a “minor form” of interrogation.

Torture Doesn’t Work

Trump said he would allow the use of waterboarding “in a heartbeat” because “only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.” But even “if it doesn’t work,” he added, “they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.”

When queried about Trump’s statement that “torture absolutely works,” Haspel said, “I don’t believe that torture works.” She then wavered, saying that valuable intelligence had been obtained from senior al-Qaida operatives “and I don’t think it’s knowable whether interrogation techniques played a role in that.”

The executive summary of the Senate report came to a contrary conclusion.

“The use of the CIA’s interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee cooperation,” according to the summary. “Multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence … on critical intelligence issues including the terrorist threats which the CIA identified as its highest priorities.”

But the CIA continually lied in saying that the techniques “saved lives,” the summary said.

Haspel Facilitated Destruction of Torture Evidence

Haspel confirmed that there were tapes documenting 92 interrogations of a detainee. Although she denied giving the order to destroy the tapes, Haspel acknowledged that in 2005, she drafted a cable from Jose Rodriguez ordering the destruction of the tapes. Rodriguez was chief of the CIA clandestine program and Haspel was his chief of staff.

When asked if she supported the destruction of tapes depicting waterboarding, Haspel said, “I absolutely was an advocate” of erasing the tapes, citing security concerns. She claimed to rely on consistent advice from counsel that there was no legal requirement to retain the tapes, provided that the treatment conformed to U.S. law.

Bush’s legal mercenaries manipulated the law to conclude that the torture was lawful. The U.S. Torture Statute defines torture as an “act intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering upon another person within his custody or physical control.”

Yet in an August 2002 memo signed by Bybee, Yoo redefined torture so narrowly the torturer would have to nearly kill the torturee in order to run afoul of the legal prohibition against torture. The memo stated that in order to constitute torture, the pain caused by an interrogation must include injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions.

Yoo, a licensed attorney, made the astounding claim in an Esquire interview that “just because the statute says—that doesn’t mean you have to do it.” In a debate with Notre Dame Professor Doug Cassell, Yoo said there is no treaty that prohibits the president from torturing someone by crushing the testicles of the person’s child. It would be legal as long as the president acted with a proper motive, Yoo added, but he didn’t specify what that motive might be. Moreover, he ignored the absolute prohibition against torture enshrined in the Torture Convention.

And despite the Torture Convention’s categorical proscription against torture in all circumstances, Yoo wrote that self-defense or necessity could be defenses to war crimes prosecutions.

Haspel’s Participation in Torture Disqualifies Her

Haspel testified that, if confirmed, she would not allow torture. But she never admitted that Bush’s interrogation program included torture.

She denied participating in the creation of the CIA detention and interrogation program, claiming she had no knowledge of it until the system had been operational for one year.

In spite of her insistence that the CIA acted legally in the Bush interrogation program, Haspel denied she would restart it. “Having served in that tumultuous time,” Haspel testified, “I can offer you my personal commitment, clearly and without reservation, that under my leadership, CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation program.”

Senator Warner affirmed that Haspel is “among the most experienced people to be nominated” for CIA director. But, he added, “many people—and I include myself in that number—have questions about the message the Senate would be sending by confirming someone for this position who served as a supervisor in the counterterrorism center during the time of the [CIA’s] rendition, detention, and interrogation program.”

Warner changed his tune and pledged to support Haspel’s nomination after she wrote him a letter stating, “the enhanced interrogation program is not one the CIA should have undertaken.” But Haspel wrote that in the context of protecting the CIA’s reputation, not out of any moral or legal concern about the torture.

In a written statement, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) urged the Senate to reject Haspel’s nomination. “Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying,” McCain wrote.

Obama ensured the impunity of Bush officials for their war crimes. Shortly before his inauguration, the president-elect declared, “My view is also that nobody’s above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen.” He added, however, that “generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backward.”

In fall 2016, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court concluded there was a reasonable basis to open investigations into the war crime of torture in detention facilities run by the CIA and the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

If Haspel is confirmed as CIA director, it will send a message to future administrations that those who authorize and facilitate torture will escape liability. That is a dangerous message indeed.

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Trump’s Cruel Plan to Rip Kids Away From Parents

President Trump revealed exactly what he thinks of undocumented immigrants Wednesday when, during a conversation about the MS-13 gang, he said, “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.” Although Trump later said he was specifically referring to gang members, given that his administration has routinely dehumanized immigrants through inhumane policies—such as separating children from parents—his statement should have come as no surprise.

Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions formalized the government’s policy of separating immigrant parents from their children at the nation’s border. During his visit to the dividing line between Arizona and California, he said, “If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you.” Crucially, he added, “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally.”

In referring to “your child,” Sessions indicated that he knows full well that undocumented immigrants are not human traffickers but are in fact traveling with their own children to find a better life in the U.S. He made it clear that the government will consider them criminals and will literally take their children away if they travel together as a family. In other words, the Trump administration has officially adopted a policy of family separation at the border but has attempted to couch it in the language of saving kids from human traffickers. Who is potentially harming the child in such a scenario: the immigrant or the government?

To be sure, there are smugglers hired by parents to bring children to the U.S. for a better life. But as Sessions made clear, the government will not distinguish between smugglers and parents, as the case of Perla Morales-Luna recently showed. The mother of three was arrested in March by Border Patrol in front of her three daughters and accused of being a “human smuggling facilitator,” even though the children were her own, and she had been living in the U.S. since she was a teen.

The government is showing the thinnest veneer of concern for the well-being of migrant children. Since the beginning of the president’s tenure, the Trump administration has made it clear that it would consider family separation as a means of deterrence. In March 2017, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman David Lapan said that his agency “continually explores options that may discourage those from even beginning the journey.” In an interview soon after, then-head of DHS John Kelly (currently the White House chief of staff) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “I would do almost anything to deter the people from Central America.” When Blitzer pressed Kelly on whether family separation would be a policy, he answered, “Yes, I’m considering [that], in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network. I am considering exactly that. They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents.”

What better leverage to use against parents than to take their child away? Indeed, even before Sessions’ formal announcement May 7, hundreds of people had already experienced the pain of losing their children. The New York Times reported that “more than 700 children have been taken from adults claiming to be their parents since October, including more than 100 children under the age of 4,” a number confirmed by federal officials.

It is not clear what the government is doing with children taken from parents. In a recent interview with NPR, Kelly agreed that family separation “could be a tough deterrent—would be a tough deterrent. A much faster turnaround on asylum seekers.” He flippantly added, “The children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever.”

Or whatever?

Our government has a dismal record of ensuring the safety of migrant children. In 2016, an Associated Press investigation uncovered stories about undocumented children who were placed in foster care and then abused and starved. Earlier this year, the government was found to have lost track of nearly 1,500 children placed in the care of adult sponsors. The Trump administration is now considering housing migrant children in military bases, as the Obama administration once did for emergency housing of children immigrating to the U.S. illegally without parents or relatives.

Meanwhile, Trump’s latest reference to immigrants as not people but animals will only fuel more everyday racism. Right-wing extremist shock jock Ann Coulter pointed to a report about the recent Israeli massacre of Palestinians at the Gaza border, tweeting, “Can we do that?” A viral video recently captured a racist white lawyer in Manhattan angry over two people speaking Spanish to one another at a restaurant and threatening to call U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on them. A Republican candidate for governor in Georgia is touring the nation on a “deportation bus” painted with racist slogans and a promise to “fill this bus with illegals, to send them back to where they came from.”

Despite the racist rhetoric and the focus on harshly punitive anti-immigrant policies, under Trump there has been an overall drop in arrests and deportations compared with the Obama years. Far fewer people are entering the U.S. since Trump took office—perhaps they are fearful of what awaits them in Trump’s America—and so border interactions with federal law enforcement have fallen. But arrests and deportations of those already living in the U.S. have risen. A 2017 ICE report buried an acknowledgement of this near the end of the document, saying, “The 17 percent decrease in border removals shows the deterrent effect of strong interior enforcement, while the increase in interior removals restores the integrity of our nation’s immigration system.”

One might expect Trump and his supporters to celebrate the apparent success of family separation and harsher enforcement. But if they do, the case for a border wall and more appropriations for Border Patrol and ICE would be weaker. The anti-immigrant rhetoric couched in racist stereotypes of criminal and dangerous foreigners might sound hollow. Trump needs Americans to believe there is an imminent threat to our collective safety and security in order to whip up his base and retain support. It is the dying gasp of a demographic that fears irrelevance and loss of privilege and power.

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Airliner With at Least 110 Aboard Crashes in Cuba

HAVANA — A Cuban-operated airliner with at least 110 people aboard crashed and burned in a cassava field just after takeoff from the Havana airport Friday. Cuban media reported three survivors.

The Boeing 737 went down just after noon a short distance from the end of the runway at Jose Marti International Airport while on a short-hop flight to the eastern city of Holguin. Firefighters rushed to extinguish the flames that engulfed the jet.

“There is a high number of people who appear to have died,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said from the scene. “Things have been organized, the fire has been put out, and the remains are being identified.”

Relatives of those aboard were ushered into a private area at the terminal to await word on their loved ones.

“My daughter is 24, my God, she’s only 24!” cried Beatriz Pantoja, whose daughter Leticia was on the plane.

The cause of the disaster was under investigation. State TV said the jet veered sharply to the right after takeoff.

Authorities said there were 104 passengers and nine crew members on the flight, operated by Cubana, the Cuban state airline. An employee who answered the phone at the Mexico City office of the charter business Aerolinea Global Air said the plane belonged to the company and had a six-person Mexican crew.

Cubana is notorious for delays and cancellations and has taken many of its planes out of service because of maintenance problems in recent months, prompting it to hire charter aircraft from other companies.

Four crash survivors were taken to a Havana hospital, and three remained alive as of mid-afternoon, hospital director Martinez Blanco told Cuban state TV.

State media reports stopped short of saying the rest were dead.

On Thursday, Cuban First Vice President Salvador Valdes Mesa met with Cubana officials to discuss improvements to its service. The airline blames its spotty record on a lack of parts and airplanes because of the U.S. trade embargo against the communist island.

It was Cuba’s third major aviation accident since 2010.

Last year a Cuban military plane crashed into a hillside in the western province of Artemisa, killing eight soldiers. In 2010, an AeroCaribbean flight from Santiago to Havana went down in bad weather, killing all 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners, in what was the country’s worst air disaster in more than two decades.

The last deadly accident involving a Cubana-operated plane was in 1989, when a charter flight from Havana to Milan, Italy, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 126 people on board and at least two dozen on the ground.

Cubana’s director general, Capt. Hermes Hernandez Dumas, told state media last month that the airline’s domestic flights had carried 11,700 more passengers than planned between January and April.

It said 64 percent of flights took off on time, up from 59 percent the previous year.

___

Associated Press writer Amy Guthrie contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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Trump Nominates Acting VA Secretary for the Permanent Job

WASHINGTON — In a surprise announcement that caught the candidate off-guard, President Trump said Friday he’ll nominate acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie to permanently lead the beleaguered department.

Trump spilled the news about Wilkie at a White House event on prison reform as he introduced Cabinet members in attendance. When Trump got to Wilkie, he said, “I’ll be informing him in a little while — he doesn’t know this yet — that we’re going to be putting his name up for nomination to be secretary.”

Trump added, “I’m sorry that I ruined the surprise.”

The president had already appeared impressed with Wilkie, saying publicly last month that he’s been doing a “great job” at VA. On Friday, Trump upped his assessment of Wilkie’s job performance to “incredible job.”

Wilkie has led the VA since Trump fired David Shulkin in March amid an ethics scandal and mounting rebellion within the agency. Trump then turned to Ronny Jackson, the Navy doctor who had been his personal physician, but Jackson abruptly withdrew last month amid allegations about his professionalism.

Wilkie, 56, is a former Pentagon undersecretary for personnel and readiness who oversaw a new policy aimed at stemming harassment in the military after an online nude-photo sharing scandal rocked the Marine Corps. The Senate confirmed him unanimously for the post.

At the VA, Wilkie has sought to rebuild morale at a department beset with inner turmoil and rebellion over Trump’s push to expand access to private care. On Thursday, he announced a major $10 billion contract with Cerner Corp. to overhaul electronic health records for millions of veterans, a 10-year project that aims to improve mental health care and ease access to private providers.

Wilkie’s selection reflects Trump’s desire to have a steady hand leading the government’s second-largest department following the abrupt withdrawal by Jackson, who had never managed a large workforce. The Pentagon is the government’s largest department, with more than 700,000 employees.

Veterans groups expressed support for the nomination.

Garry Augustine, executive director of Disabled American Veterans’ Washington headquarters, said he considered it a “good sign” that Wilkie seemed receptive to hearing from veterans’ service organizations.

“We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to work with him and his staff,” Augustine said. “He’s doing what he needs to do to get up to speed.”

Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said veterans “need a committed, focused leader who will always put veterans above politics.” He said Wilkie “will have to prove to millions of veterans nationwide that he is up to this mammoth, sacred leadership task.”

Dan Caldwell, executive director of the conservative Concerned Veterans for America, called Wilkie an “outstanding choice.”

“He is somebody who has shown that he can manage the department in a time of immense change,” Caldwell said. “He unequivocally supports the president’s agenda for reforming the VA and we think that he will be on the same page as the White House.”

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said he enjoyed working with Wilkie in his acting capacity. He did not announce a date for Wilkie’s confirmation hearing.

Trump has sought an aggressive expansion of the Choice program to make it easier for veterans to see private doctors outside the VA system at government expense. A proposal is nearing passage in Congress, with a Senate voted slated for next week, but its scope will be determined in part on how the next VA secretary implements provisions that loosen restrictions on when a veteran can see a private doctor if he or she feels dissatisfied with VA health care.

The VA faces numerous problems demanding immediate attention, including a multibillion-dollar revamp of electronic medical records, now in limbo, that lawmakers fear will prove too costly and wasteful, and a pending budget shortfall in the Choice program.

Wilkie, an Air Force and Navy veteran, and son of an Army artillery commander, had strong backing from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine. He is seen as a skilled manager with more defense expertise than some other candidates with more political experience, such as former Rep. Jeff Miller, who chaired the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Wilkie served President George W. Bush as an assistant secretary of defense. He also served as senior adviser to Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., before becoming a Pentagon undersecretary in 2017.

Jackson, Trump’s previous nominee, is a career military doctor lacking significant management experience. While he was well-liked, even many Republicans questioned his ability to lead the VA.

After Jackson withdrew, White House officials said Trump planned to evaluate his next nominee more thoroughly. Wilkie was among several candidates White House staff interviewed.

Trump had indicated he intended to pick someone with a more political background, hoping such a person would better navigate the turbulent confirmation process in a narrowly divided Senate. Wilkie has experience shepherding two defense secretaries through Senate confirmation.

___

Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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A Survivor’s Haunting Reaction to the Santa Fe High School Massacre

Barely three months after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre that left 17 dead in Florida, a gunman believed to be a student at Santa Fe High School in southeast Texas opened fire on his teachers and classmates Friday, killing at least 10. Details are still emerging. According to CNN, explosive devices including pipe bombs and pressure-cooker bombs were found at the scene of the crime. The suspect, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, is in custody.

In an interview that has quickly gone viral on social media, a local ABC reporter asked a Santa Fe student named Paige if she ever expected to experience an atrocity like the one she just survived.

“Was there a part of you that was like ‘this isn’t real, this would not happen at my school?’ ” he says.

“Nope, there wasn’t,” the 17-year-old answers gravely. “It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too.”

Watch the telling exchange below:

Interviewer: “Was there a part of you that was like, ‘This could not happen at my school?’”

Santa Fe High School student: “No. It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always felt it would eventually happen here, too.” pic.twitter.com/MPxVScd3QE

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) May 18, 2018

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Israeli Apartheid Continues 500 Years of Nakbas, or ‘Catastrophes’

The great nakba, or “catastrophe,” began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus proclaimed the lands of the “Indies” for Spain. Within half a century of his voyage, 95 percent of the inhabitants of the America’s had been killed by European-borne diseases, war, famine and enslavement: 100 million dead, or one out of every five human beings on the planet, the most catastrophic loss of life in recorded history.

But, the nakba had just begun. For the next half a millennium, Europeans would inflict countless “catastrophes” on the world’s darker peoples. As Mumia Abu Jamal and Stephen Vittoria document in “Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny,” the Europeans killed or enslaved 60 million Africans, depopulating one continent, repopulating two others with captive peoples, and fantastically enriching the third, from which emerged “the white man,” an amalgam of “all the races of Europe” (“The Melting Pot,” 1908). Columbus’ voyage began a 500-year western European war against the rest of humanity, known more politely as “colonialism,” in which all other people’s economies and cultures were made subordinate to the master powers headquartered in London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid—and later, Washington.

With every expansion of European dominion, millions of darker peoples perished, until the whole of the planet was transformed by the unfolding, cumulative nakbas, catastrophes. Global plunder led to global trade, creating the basis for industrial capitalism. Global “white” rule codified racism, leading logically to Nazism, in its many manifestations.

Whole peoples were erased from existence. The King of one small European country, Leopold of Belgium, caused the deaths of 10 million Congolese during his reign. At least 6 million more Congolese have died as the result of U.S. policies in the region, since 1994. The subcontinent of Asia that became known as India suffered repeated mass murders during centuries of British rule. Ten million Indians died in the aftermath of a native revolt against foreign domination, in 1857. Less than a century later, three million Indians died from starvation and disease caused by British colonial policies during World War 2.

At the end of that war, the one-third of the world’s people’s that still remained under colonial rule were demanding self-determination. But the newly formed United Nations had one more duty to perform on behalf of the 500-year-long Euro-American colonial project. On May 14, 1948, the greater part of Palestine was given to the Zionist Jewish settler state-in-the-making that had been backed by Great Britain, the colonial power in the region.

The establishment of the state of Israel was like spitting in the face of humanity. The post-war period was supposed to be a time of national liberation for the colonized peoples. But before that process was allowed to proceed in earnest, European Jews—whose “whiteness” was the last to be recognized by other whites—were to be awarded their own colony. The act was justified as consolation for Jews having suffered murderous oppression by other Europeans—a logic that only makes sense on white supremacist terms. The resulting oppression of the Arab majority was of no consequence. The Palestinian nakba began, with the exile of 700,000 Arabs and an inferior, Jim Crow political status for those that remained in the new, Jewish state.

With the fall of white rule in South Africa in 1994, Israel is now the world’s last apartheid state, a government based on ethnic and racial supremacy. Its very existence is an insult to humanity. Israel is the antithesis of civilization. It is, by nature, racist barbarism. So, it is no wonder that the scenes from Gaza look like the movie “Schindler’s List,” where the Nazi concentration camp commander took sport in randomly shooting inmates from his window.

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We Are All Ahed Tamimi



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All the civilized peoples of the world are in solidarity with the Palestinians, who face the last bastion of legalized racial rule on the planet. Their catastrophe, their nakba, was among the last acts of a racist imperial order that must ultimately we swept away.

If not, then the final nakba is coming—for all of us.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.

Glen Ford is the executive editor of Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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‘Beyond the Streets,’ a Street Art Show, Ranges From Origins to Legacy

What began as tagging or graffiti art in the 1960s, from individuals with names like Cornbread and “Wicked” Gary Fritz, has since blossomed into street art, making stars of people like Banksy, Keith Haring and Shepard Fairey, all part of the comprehensive new show “Beyond the Streets,” featuring over 100 international artists in Los Angeles’ Chinatown through July 6.

Curator Roger Gastman, who co-curated MOCA’s popular “Art in the Streets” show in 2011, also advised on the Oscar-nominated Banksy documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” His movie “Wall Writers” is the definitive documentary on graffiti art of the 1960s and ’70s, and his connections throughout the street art community are vast and varied.

“Getting a group of artists like this together is, quite frankly, a huge pain in the butt,” Gastman sighs. “One thing I always have to remember is no matter how close a friend they are, or how long I’ve known them, all of these artists come out of an art form that is based on illegal activities. So they’re fucking paranoids and they’re always watching their back. That’s what they grew up learning to do ’cause they’re stealing spray paint, they’re climbing rooftops, they’re breaking into train yards and they’re making their marks.”

Photo Essay: “Beyond the Streets” Gallery

“Beyond the Streets” doesn’t just celebrate street art, a rebel format founded in vandalism that bypasses galleries, auction houses and museums to appeal directly to the public; the new show celebrates the format’s legacy, its roots and its fruits—direct from the artists’ studios.

“Nothing that’s in here is street art. Street art is on the street,” Fairey says about a format more defined by context than any other. Part of it dies when placed in a gallery, which is why a studio practice becomes essential to paying the bills. Some, like Fairey, maintain both a studio and street practice, taking commissions like his “RFK” and “Peace Tree” murals in Koreatown or “wheatpasting” the streets with his ubiquitous “Obey” posters.

“The idea that capitalism’s going to ruin everything—it’s one thing if the lure of money means somebody will no longer make public works because they could be spending time making canvases that will sell, but I think there are people who are deft at supporting themselves with their fine art and supporting their public art but without transitioning away from public art,” Fairey offers. “I know I’m one of those people. I have more and larger-scale public art because I’m not living hand-to-mouth anymore.”

For those who cannot afford to attend some fancy art school, street art can provide an avenue into a seemingly impenetrable profession. “The only barrier to entry is if you’re fearful. If you have courage, you’re in,” Fairey says. “In a way, that democratizes things.”

After 25 years of painting on walls, Jason Revok began a studio practice in 2010 and spent four years in Detroit making assemblages from items he found on the street. “That practice was a deliberate kind of move to distance myself from painting,” he says. Revok counts as a primary influence on 1970s painter of NYC subways, Futura, whose work hangs in the same gallery. “I was never interested in re-creating the work I did on the street in the studio,” Revok adds. “So that’s why I moved away from painting for a long time.”

Returning to L.A. marked a return to painting. Massive curvy-shaped canvases inspired by Robert Rauschenberg are the result. Revok hand-cranks an oversize Spirograph of his own invention, which applies a decorative border of pale blue, pink and white loops that overlap.

The husband-and-wife team of Dabs and Myla (DabsMyla) met in art school after Dabs spent most of his teen years running with a graffiti crew in Melbourne, Australia. Their installation consists of three whimsical, colorful pop murals surrounded by hundreds of artificial flowers. Placed in the street, such a work would quickly succumb to the elements, although the duo currently has two murals on display in Hollywood. For the past nine years their focus has been studio work as well as high-profile projects—like designing the logo and stage for the 2015 MTV Movie Awards. Though they frequently do street art abroad, they abstain in L.A. because a vandalism arrest would jeopardize their applications for citizenship.

A few steps away from their work is a massive mural by an artist who never worked in the street, Takashi Murakami, whose irreverent, playful cartoon figures are inspired by artists who did. A two-sided canvas, Murakami’s piece hangs in an open cylinder with a wall of flame consuming graffiti tags on the inside and the gaping maw of a psychedelic animal on the outside.

Banksy painted a piece especially for the show, in which a Basquiat-like figure is harassed by cops. Other artists in the show who were inspired by the movement include actor/photographer and Devo co-founder and film composer Mark Mothersbaugh.

In a gallery set off from an expansive and light-filled chamber, artist Randall Harrington stands in a shadowy space where a large bomb casing is laid out, part of his ironic comment on the aftermath of Hiroshima.

“If you put it on the back of a military truck and move it around in the street, it would be considered street art,” jokes Harrington, who has frequently collaborated with street artists but doesn’t identify as one. A look inside through the tail end of the bomb provides a glimpse at a diorama where an old-fashioned movie drive-in screens “Godzilla.” “I thought I’d love to look inside a bomb and see what’s in there, but to look in and see something different,” he says.

Something different is exactly what Southern California native Patrick Martinez had in mind when he started painting walls at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. He began by trying to only manipulate paint, and it blossomed into street art. “I don’t know about that word. I like ‘graffiti’ more ’cause I think the entry point for a lot of the guys, it was the medium,” says Martinez, whose neon art spells out phrases like “Brown Owned” and “America is for Dreamers.”

For Martinez, the term “street art” is “like what they did in the 2000s, with wheat pasting,” he says, grasping for a definition. “So that lives on the street. Whatever lives in the galleries and museums, I don’t know what you’d call that. For me, it is a buzzword in the 2000s and they used it like, ‘Oh yeah, this guy’s a street artist.’ And I think a lot of these people come from a pure place and that was graffiti, ’cause it was direct.” Reaching back even further, he adds, “It was like cave drawings. This is just an evolution of that. Everyone’s different, but I think a lot of people will tell you that they came from a pure place of marking things.”

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