Chris Hedges's Blog, page 589

Merkel Decries Iran Deal Pullout as She Accepts Italian Peace Prize

ASSISI, Italy—German Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull his country out of the Iran nuclear accord was making the situation in the Middle East “even more difficult” and warned Europeans to be skeptical of “easy” solutions promised by populists.

Speaking while in Italy to receive a peace prize, Merkel cited the recent escalation of Israeli-Iranian hostility that quickly followed Trump’s announcement about the Iran accord as a reason for concern.

She said Germany was closely following the developments between Iran and Israel, saying that was “yet another reason for further effort to resolve the conflict.”

The German leader made her remarks at St. Francis’ Basilica, in Assisi, the saint’s hometown, where Franciscan friars awarded her the St. Francis Lamp for peace. Merkel was honored for the welcome Germany gave to Syrian war refugees, a decision that carried political risks for the chancellor and her party.

Addressing conflicts on her own continent, Merkel decried what she called “nightly violations” in Ukraine of cease-fire agreements reached in 2014 and 2015 to end the conflict between pro-Kiev forces and pro-Russia fighters in the country’s battered east.

Delivering a sweeping speech about challenges to a more peaceful world, the chancellor also cautioned against Europeans seeking easy solutions to their problems from populist politicians, whose clout has been on the rise across much of the continent.

“The harder the problem is, and the easier the solution is claimed to be, the more suspicious and critical everyone ….should be,” Merkel said.

Even as she spoke, two Italian populist leaders, from the euroskeptic 5-Star Movement and the anti-migrant League, were meeting in Milan to try to hammer out a deal for a coalition government.

Merkel stressed the importance of countering populist statements with facts and of speaking out when people make sweeping claims about entire sections of society.

“I think we should try to do two things at once: be European, but also regard our home countries as part of our identity. They don’t have to be opposites,” she said.

Introducing her at the ceremony was Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, who won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for dogged efforts to bring 50 years of violent conflict in his country to a peaceful end.

Santos praised Merkel for representing “those principles which ought to serve as antidotes in a world in which the ghosts of nationalism, of fundamentalism, of racism, of populism and of intolerance are surging with dangerous vigor.”

For her part, Merkel warned of the damage national stereotypes can pose for European understanding.

She recalled how during the Eurozone crisis of the last decade, Greeks were branded as lazy in German media.

“There are lazy Germans (too,)” Merkel said. “As soon as we fall into stereotypes, we destroy Europe.”

Addressing the divisions around the issue of migrants to Europe, Merkel said “tolerance must be always present in the European Union.” She cited her own Christian faith, hailing Francis as “perhaps the most famous saint.”

Francis, she noted, “broke the taboo of society. He embraced society’s poor, which was then forbidden.”

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Frances D’Emilio reported from Rome. Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

A Last-Ditch Battle for ‘Net Neutrality’

“Net neutrality” laws are set to expire June 11, the Federal Communications Commission announced Thursday, and now a number of senators, mainly Democrats, are staging a last-ditch effort to save them.

The Obama-era rules, enacted in 2015, aimed to create a free and open internet by preventing telecommunications companies from charging more for faster internet service, or otherwise privileging their own material or that of their advertisers online. If the rules are allowed to expire, companies will have “broad new power over how consumers can access the internet,” Reuters notes.

In repealing the rules, the government is favoring the interests of giant telecoms over those of American consumers, effectively limiting the information they can consume based on their ability to pay for it.

Multiple state and federal officials have spoken against repeal. Barbara Underwood, the acting attorney general for New York, told Reuters that “the repeal of net neutrality would allow internet service providers to put their profits before the consumers they serve and control what we see, do, and say online.”

New York is leading a group of 22 states in suing to block the changes from taking effect.

On Wednesday, the Senate Democrats announced they are calling for the reinstatement of what they see as critical consumer protections and are moving to force a vote on the proposal, as CNN reports. “This is the fight for the internet,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told reporters, saying that the group’s efforts put net neutrality rules “back on the books.”

Advocates, however, are not hopeful that this last-ditch action will work, despite its likelihood of passing the Senate.

Michael Fauscette, an expert in net neutrality and chief research officer of G2 Crowd, a software and services review company, said in a statement, “There is some momentum in the Senate, with two Republicans already defecting and promising to vote for the bill when it comes in the floor next week, which is only 1 vote shy of the simple majority required to pass.”

“Unfortunately,” he continues, “the attempt seems doomed either in the House or with the President, who would most certainly refuse to sign the bill.”

The best-case scenario, as Fauscette sees it, is that the bill “will at least serve as a roll call to put the representatives on record about their stance on net neutrality, something that could have repercussions in the upcoming midterm elections.”

CIA Torture Survivor Demands Answers From Gina Haspel

Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, told senators at her confirmation hearing Wednesday that she was “just following orders” while running a black site in Thailand during the George W. Bush administration, a site where terrorism suspects were tortured.

Many members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were unmoved by her explanation, asking her about her moral code and opinions on the effectiveness of torture and whether she would refuse an order from the president to waterboard a suspect. But as Adam Raymond wrote in New York Magazine, Haspel “didn’t bite,” giving vague and cagey responses.

Perhaps those who experienced “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as Fatima Boudchar, would have gotten better answers.

Boudchar was beaten by CIA agents at a Thai prison in 2004, one that sounds similar to the black site Haspel ran.

Boudchar and her husband, a leader of a group opposing Moammar Gadhafi, were fleeing the dictator’s regime in Libya and were on their way to Europe when she was seized in Malaysia by men who turned out to be with the CIA.

As Boudchar writes in a May 8 op-ed article in the New York Times, “I know what I’d ask her if I got the chance. … Did you know about my abduction and abuse? Were you involved with it? What will you say if President Trump asks you to do something like that again?

“I didn’t understand why I was taken,” she says. “I hardly thought about the United States until I was chained to the wall in the CIA black site.” She was pregnant at the time of the kidnapping and later gave birth to a baby who weighed four pounds.

Boudchar, who was not allowed to sleep, says she has no idea how long she was in the prison. “Some of what they did to me in that prison was so awful I can’t talk about it. They hit me in the abdomen just where the baby was. To move me, they bound me to a stretcher from head to toe, like a mummy. I was sure I would shortly be killed.”

Boudchar, writing before Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, expresses hope that Haspel “will be questioned about my case and whether she condones it. If she played a part, she should apologize. If she didn’t, she should swear under oath that the CIA under her command will never again carry out abductions like mine.”

Boudchar points out that if Haspel’s supporters want to claim that she’s respected by U.S. allies around the world, that should include the Muslim world. “If it wants to regain lost trust, the CIA can’t ignore history in the hope that it will go away,” she writes.

Despite the horrors she suffered, Boudchar writes, “I don’t think badly of Americans.” She does, however, “think Americans deserve honesty from their intelligence officers. I don’t believe most ordinary people would have supported what the CIA did to me if they’d known.”

Latest Round of Climate Talks Didn’t Move the Needle Much, Delegates Say

The Bonn climate talks, a crucial round of UN negotiations on pumping up the muscle of the global treaty on tackling climate change, the Paris Agreement, has ended in Germany.

Participants heading for home know they have a daunting workload ahead, with too few solid outcomes achieved in the last 10 days. But despite the absence of the US government, described by some as “missing in action” after Donald Trump’s repudiation of the Paris treaty, many still hope that Bonn has proved a useful prelude to the next climate summit.

This dogged optimism apart, the organisers, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), alarmed at Bonn’s lack of progress, are arranging an unusual extra week of talks in Bangkok in  September to help the world leaders who will meet in Katowice in Poland in December to agree how to prevent the world from dangerously overheating.

One key sticking point so far is the failure of developed countries to produce the previously promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to allow poor and vulnerable countries to adapt to climate change. In some cases the survival of small island states depends on that help.

The purpose of this year’s round of UN climate talks is to finalise and implement the Paris Agreement, concluded in 2015, which aims to prevent global temperatures from increasing by more than 2°C over their pre-industrial levels, and if possible keep them below 1.5°C.

Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, is cautiously optimistic about progress, but says many voices at Bonn underlined the urgency of advancing more rapidly. She said the extra negotiating session in Bangkok had been arranged to speed things up.

To help to clarify the remaining issues the delegates in Bonn asked for a “reflection note” on progress so far, to help governments to prepare for Bangkok, which should help specifically  to finalise the texts to be signed off in December in Katowice.

Soon after the Bangkok meeting, on 8 October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to publish a special scientific report describing how critically close the world already is to a 1.5°C increase in temperature and outlining the drastic action governments need to take to avoid far exceeding it.

This is likely to further galvanise political action from many countries, including China and India, whose governments have already realised that climate change threatens food supplies and national stability.

Sharing Solutions

In parallel with the formal negotiations, the Bonn meeting hosted the long-awaited Fiji-led Talanoa Dialogue. This follows the tradition in the Pacific region, where the goal of a “talanoa” is to share stories to find solutions for the common good.

In this spirit, the dialogue in Bonn saw some 250 participants share their stories, providing fresh ideas on how to tackle climate change and renewing their determination to raise ambition.

Instead of only those governments which are parties to the Climate Change Convention talking to each other, the dialogue includes cities, businesses, investors and regions, all engaged for the first time in interactive story-telling.

This partly sidesteps the problem of the missing US government, allowing many American businesses and cities to ignore their president and continue to take part in the talks.

More Ambition

Frank Bainimarama, prime minister of Fiji and president of the last UN climate summit (COP23), said: “We must ensure that the Talanoa Dialogue leads to more ambition in our climate action plans. Now is the time for action. Now is the time to commit to making the decisions the world must make.”

At the end of the Bonn negotiations, the chair of the Least Developed Countries Group (LDC), Gebru Jember Endalew, said the Group had come to Bonn ready to shift gears and make concrete progress. He went on: “The Group is concerned by the lack of urgency we are seeing to move the negotiations forward. It is time to look at the bigger picture, see the severe impacts that climate change is having across the world, and rise to the challenge.

“Finance is key to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. In the face of climate change, poor and vulnerable countries are forced to address loss and damage and adapt to a changing climate, all while striving to lift their people out of poverty without repeating the mistakes of an economy built on fossil fuels. This is not possible without predictable and sustainable support. Countries have failed to deliver on pre-2020 commitments.”

On climate finance, Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at ActionAid International, said: “The issue of finance underpins so many different parts of the climate negotiations, because poor countries simply can’t cover the triple costs of loss and damage, adaptation and mitigation on their own.

“But with developed countries refusing to move on finance, lots of pieces are still unfinished. This is holding up the whole package, which is supposed to be finalised at the end of this year. Issues are piling up, and it’s a dangerous strategy to leave everything to the last minute.”

Sharp Differences

Also concerned about finance was Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He said: “While some headway was made in Bonn on several more technical topics, sharp political differences remain on a handful of issues, especially on climate finance and the amount of differentiation in the Paris Agreement rules for countries at varying stages of development.

“These issues are above the pay grade of negotiators in Bonn, and will require engaging ministers and national leaders to resolve them.”

A more cheerful note came from Camilla Born, of the environmental think tank E3G. She said: “Negotiations went better than expected. The next challenge is to mobilise the political will to get the COP24 outcomes over the line in Katowice.

“This won’t be easy but the Polish Presidency has the chance to up their game. The pressure is on the likes of the EU, China and Canada to come good on the universality of the Paris Agreement even whilst the US is for now missing in action.”

Robert Scheer: CIA ‘Gangster Element’ Is a Stain on America (Videos and Transcript)

Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer talked with Ben Norton of The Real News in a two-part interview about whistleblowers who have condemned Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director. Haspel oversaw the agency’s post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” program. Protesters, including former CIA veteran Ray McGovern, disrupted Haspel’s Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Describing Haspel as a “professional liar,” Scheer says, “This is a woman who is trained to lie. This is a woman who’s lied about most of the things in her professional life. To expect her to be accountable about the super-secret agency when she spent her life denying the value of truth, denying the value of logic, never being held accountable for their lives, including whether torture worked. … [and] here is someone who’s taken from that world of error and deceit, distortion, violence, and you’re making her in charge of the whole agency.”

Scheer says there is a destructive “gangster element” in the spy agency that condones assassination and torture.

Read the transcripts for parts 1 and 2 of the videos below.

Part 1

BEN NORTON: It’s the Real News. I’m Ben Norton.

Donald Trump’s nominee for the new director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, was grilled in a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, May 9. Haspel is notorious for overseeing a so-called black site, that is, an overseas prison where detainees were tortured by the CIA. Haspel also participated in the destruction of evidence documenting this torture at a black site in Thailand. On the day of her hearing, 115 former U.S. ambassadors sent a letter to the Senate expressing opposition to her nomination. The former diplomats wrote that the Senate should thoroughly investigate Haspel, and if she, quote, “played a role in torture or other forms of detainee abuse, or the destruction of evidence relating to such activities, we urge you to reject her nomination.” End quote.

In the Senate hearing, Haspel repeatedly refused to say whether or not the CIA’s past use of torture was immoral.

GINA HASPEL: Senator, I believe that CIA officers to whom you referred-.

SPEAKER: It’s a yes or no answer. Do you believe the previous interrogation techniques were immoral? I’m not asking do you believe they were legal. I’m asking do you believe they were immoral.

GINA HASPEL: Senator, I believe that CIA did extraordinary work to prevent another attack on this country given the legal tools that we were authorized to use.

SPEAKER: Please answer yes or no.

BEN NORTON: That is Gina Haspel, the CIA director nominee, at the Senate confirmation hearing. Numerous whistleblowers have spoken out against Haspel’s nomination. Former CIA officer Ray McGovern disrupted the Senate hearing in protest of Haspel’s nomination. Police violently brutalized the 84-year-old CIA whistleblower on camera. Ex-CIA analyst John Kiriakou, who was imprisoned for exposing the CIA’s use of torture, has also publicly opposed Hapel’s nomination. And NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden likewise tweeted, quote, “If the Congress confirms Gina Haspel, who admitted to participating in a torture program and personally writing the order to destroy evidence of that crime, is qualified to head the CIA it says more about our government than it does about her.”.

Joining us to discuss the CIA scandal is Robert Scheer. Scheer is a renowned journalist who has covered politics for more than 50 years. He is the former editor of the legendary magazine Ramparts, and is today the editor in chief of the website Truthdig, where he writes a regular column. Scheer is also the author of 10 books. Thanks for joining me. Bob.

ROBERT SCHEER: OK. Should we jump right in? Why don’t I just say something about that, because I know Ray. I also worked at the Los Angeles Times for 29 years covering a lot of these issues, and Ray McGovern was always a highly respected source. We should make it clear, there were two CIA. There is the analysis side, which was supposed to be the main purpose of the CIA. To gather information, to analyze, to figure out what was going on in the world. And Ray McGovern was a stellar member of that part of the CIA. And the information that they came up with, whether it was about the old Soviet Union or what was going on with terrorism and so forth, has generally been proven to be accurate.

The only problem is the government, different governments didn’t listen to what the analysis, analysts were saying. And Ray McGovern himself briefed the president of the United States on a number of occasions. He was a high-ranking expert on Russia, on what was happening in the world. And to have a man of that quality and that patriotism, that seriousness of purpose, be treated as if he was a bank robber on speed or something was obscene. And there are plenty of people around the world who know of Ray McGovern ‘ s work, of his writing, and the idea that he was treated in that way, it’s horrific. And at a hearing in which you’re investigating, really, the dark side. That’s what Gina Haspel comes from. These are the people who do all the mischief and that’s the side of the CIA that has basically gotten it wrong time after time. The Bay of Pigs, you know, figuring out what was happening with terrorism before 9/11. Not talking to the FBI. The torture program. You could go through one chapter after another. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And that’s the part of the CIA that’s a travesty, a stain, that dark stain on American history, and has misled us. And has misled us by using secrecy. They’re not accountable. So to take someone associated with the worst aspects, this is what Ray McGovern was trying to say. Someone that was associated with the worst aspects of the CIA and make them head of the whole thing after, after we have learned that she destroyed evidence needed to know whether crimes were committed, she destroyed evidence that we had a right to have. She was involved in torture. No one is even questioning that. And she was involved in the coverup. To take someone from that wing of the CIA, the dark, miserable, murderous, deceiving side, and put them in was particularly offensive to someone like Ray McGovern, who, after all, was trying to enlighten us.

And he knows how much damage that side of the CIA did. He spent a lot of time once he retired exposing their arrogance and, you know, how, and their embrace of violence as opposed to logic and fact.

BN: Yeah. On the subject of Ray, in fact, we have a video clip here. This is a shocking clip of former 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern disrupting the Senate hearing in protest of Gina Haspel’s nomination. And this, this video clip shows police violently pulling him out, he’s, again, 84 years old, and throwing him onto the ground. And Ray says that his arm has been dislocated in this. Please watch here.

So Bob, can you respond to this? I mean, you spoke a little bit about it. But specifically the irony that you have a veteran CIA analyst who is speaking out against the use of torture and violence by the CIA, who is in turn violently assaulted by police and thrown out of the room onto the floor.

RS: Well, I think you put it well. I just want to make a point here. The CIA is an agency that is out of control, and they are not doing the job that they were created to do. They’re not making us safer. They keep getting it wrong. And they get it wrong not because of their brilliant analysts like Ray McGovern, who generally develop an accurate view of the world, and it’s complex, and they try to inform the politicians. That’s not where the damage is coming from. The damage is coming from the gangster element. The, the people who believe assassination, and talk about meddling in elections, these people have meddled in almost every election that’s taken place in the post-World War II period. And they’ve they’ve engaged in assassinations and assassination plots at one time, whether it was in Cuba, whether it was Eastern Europe, whether it was the Middle East. There’s no question about that dark, horrible record. And so the torture is really, you know, sort of the ultimate evidence of how out of control and how much of a violation of everything a country is supposed to stand for, what they represent.

And to pick someone from, you can’t ask her any questions. You know, this is a professional liar, by the way. This is a woman who is trained to lie. This is a woman who’s lied about most of the things in her professional life. To expect her to be accountable about the super-secret agency when she spent her life denying the value of truth, denying the value of logic, never being held accountable for their lives including whether torture worked. You know, all of the evidence is clear that torture even though it just, aside from being profoundly immoral and a horrible example to the world, also didn’t produce any credible evidence. On the contrary it produced error. And at the same time, here is someone who’s taken from that world of error and deceit, distortion, violence, and you’re making her in charge of the whole agency.

You know, and that’s been presented as somehow a victory for women. If you’re against her, you’re against women breaking through the glass ceiling. I mean, it’s a nutty view. I think it was deliberately done by Donald Trump to burnish his reputation, because he’s known to have such a hostile attitude towards women. Oh, ok, I’ll show you a woman who’s even nastier than I am, you know. And that’s who you have now. And I mean, it’s really quite depressing.

BN: Well, unfortunately we’ll have to end our discussion there. But we were joined by Robert Scheer, who is a longtime award-winning journalist. He is the editor in chief of Truthdig, and also a longtime columnist. We were speaking about Gina Haspel who is the new nomination for CIA director. Thanks for joining us, Bob.

RS: Thank you.

BN: Reporting for the Real News, I’m Ben Norton.

Part 2

BN: It’s the Real News. I’m Ben Norton.

This is Part 2 of our discussion with Robert Scheer, who is the editor in chief of Truthdig, and a longtime award-winning journalist. We are discussing the Senate confirmation hearing for Gina Haspel, who is likely going to be the next CIA director. Under former president George W. Bush, Haspel oversaw the use of torture at a CIA black site in Thailand, and the destruction of evidence that proved that that torture happened. We’re going to continue our conversation where we left off last time, discussing the scandal of President Trump nominating a torturer for the next CIA chief.

RS: I want to say something about the Senate committee, also. They did, by the way, you mentioned that I was once the editor of Ramparts magazine. The reason that the Senate Intelligence Committee was formed to do the kind of surveillance of the CIA is that Ramparts magazine, followed by others and people like Sy Hersh, we were able to expose that the CIA was violating its charter, it was interfering in domestic politics, it was engaging in fundamentally anti-democratic activities, small d democracy. And so we did some prizewinning, wonderful journalism at Ramparts, and they went after us. And the response of some very good people in Congress, most notably Sen. Frank Church from Idaho, was to begin to try to control that agency and make them accountable.

So you have the Senate Intelligence Committee trying to do that around torture, and what happened has been forgotten here in these hearings. But the fact is that their operation and trying to assess what the CIA did was invaded by the CIA. Their files were broken into. They were denied. We were lied to while they were doing their own work. So the members of that committee are quite familiar with how devious and corrupt the CIA has been. And to now go along, and there will be Democrats going along, unfortunately. You know, and Leon Panetta, who covered for the CIA, was a Democrat. And Barack Obama, by the way, made the decision, Barack Obama sent John Kiriakou, who you mentioned, to prison. Two and a half years. They wanted to get him for 40 or 50 years. Because he told the truth about torture, he was going to be punished. They didn’t punish a single person who did the torture, who authorized the torture. They all got off scot-free thanks to Barack Obama.

Well, there are plenty of Democrats now, including some on the committee, who are going to give a pass to this woman. And they’ll justify, oh, she’s promised not to do it again. But this is a really depressing moment. It means we’ve lost the main idea of the U.S. constitutional experience, which is power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and accountability is the name of the game. And if you can hold your secret agencies accountable, you’ve lost it. And that’s why George Washington, in his farewell address, warned about the, you know, warned us against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

And what Ray McGovern represented, and John Kiriakou, is real patriotism. Defending their country for its values, and what is it, and the lives of its people. And these other people are pretended patriots. They believe violence and power and destroying people, and destroying others without justification, they think that’s their right. Their right, because they have power. And that’s what this woman has done in her life. She was put into a position of extreme power over other human beings. And she said, yeah, we can waterboard them, and we can torture them in every which way, and make them stand in stress positions. And you know what, she took it upon herself to follow the orders, like the good German. That’s her defense. She was following orders, instead of becoming a whistleblower and doing what Snowden, who worked for the CIA, doing what McGovern did, and Kiriakou, telling us the truth. No, she went along with what she had to know was an illegal order.

The Congress and the courts were trying to look into what happened with this torture. Her supporters said, destroy the tapes. She admits that, and she went ahead and destroyed it. And never told us that she disclosed them. She destroyed evidence of the most profound crime that’s happened in modern history.

BN: Yeah. Well, unfortunately we’re winding up here. We don’t have too much time left. But I’m wondering if you can briefly comment, you raised a few points. One, it’s interesting to see how the Democratic Party has begun portraying the CIA as part of the resistance, if you will, against Donald Trump. And now we see what the CIA represents is torture, extrajudicial violence, killings, et cetera. So there’s that aspect of it. And then additionally-.

RS: It’s true of the FBI, also. Remember, it was the FBI that tried to get Martin Luther King to commit suicide, and wanted to destroy him, OK. So you know, these are agencies that have a history of trying to destroy democracy. And yet you’re absolutely right. The Democrats are so angry about what happened the election, want to use the secret police agencies to go after anybody, on any basis.

You know, if we had time, we could go into the incredible contradiction of all of Russian hysteria, because we just had an example, on a related issue, where a foreign government, Israel, was able to dramatically influence our election. Netanyahu spoke to Congress, denounced this treaty of arms control with Iran, very dramatically influenced it. What happens, this guy gets to be president, Donald Trump. And he does he doesn’t do Russia’s bidding. He does Israel’s bidding, and Saudi Arabia’s bidding, and destroys this treaty. You know, if there was foreign meddling in this election, it doesn’t seem to have effectively come from Russia. It came from Israel, and I guess Saudi Arabia. And by the way, Saudi Arabia is where 15 of the 19 hijackers came, with legal documents, from Saudi Arabia to destroy the World Trade Center and to attack the Pentagon. Saudi Arabia, which is now in great favor with this president. And we don’t hear anything from the CIA or the FBI about their dangerous influence, or Israel’s, for that matter, in our politics.

BN: Yeah, and of course we have an e-mail released by WikiLeaks from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which a U.S. intelligence analyst acknowledges that Saudi Arabia, and also another U.S. ally, Qatar, supported ISIS, along with Al Qaeda. But unfortunately we don’t have too much time left here. I’m just curious, if you can comment, in the Senate confirmation hearing, Gina Haspel claimed that she will no longer use torture in the future under President Donald Trump, as she had previously done under President George W. Bush. Of course, during his presidential campaign Donald Trump not just joked but actually promised that he would use torture. He even pledged to kill the family members of suspected terrorists. Can you respond to her claim, Gina Haspel’s claim, that she suddenly she has a change of heart and will not use torture in the future?

RS: What you want from somebody running that agency is honesty and integrity. This woman has proven that she is a liar, by definition. Just first of all, Donald Trump is an idiot. He is saying torture is effective. Let’s have more of it. It will make us safer. Gina Haspel is somebody who knows from experience that they did not get any usable information. On the contrary, they got lies, they got garbage. And the good investigation of what happened on 9/11, to the degree that there has been one was done by, you know, an FBI agent who was mystified that torture didn’t work. By the way, the FBI refused to go along with the program, as John Kiriakou has pointed out, and withdrew, because they said, you’re, you’re not doing effective investigation.

So Gina Haspel was in a position to inform the American public, the American president, hey, this torture that we claim was effective and necessary, and in fact wasn’t really torture, was just enhanced interrogation, really was a monstrosity, and it gave us bad information. It didn’t give us any [inaudible]. She never told the president of the United States that. She never told the American public that. And she’s now going to be trusted, this proven liar, this proven master of deceit, is now going to be trusted to be head of the entire CIA? So even the people on the analysis side, who come up with, challenge this narrative and come up with the independent information that challenges the push towards more violence, they’ll be silenced by her, because she’s in charge of the whole agency, including potential critics. And we’re supposed to trust her?

What evidence is there in her 33 years in this agency that she ever acted with courage? Why wasn’t she a whistleblower? She witnessed torture. She witnessed violation of laws. She witnessed lying about it. She was in the agency when they lied to the people making Zero Dark Thirty that said torture, that movie told the American people, which is why, maybe, one of the reasons so many Americans, I think it’s two thirds, think torture is a great thing, and is necessary. But they were lied to by the CIA. She was in a high position. She was an expert on the torture. And when the CIA, with, by the way, a Democrat in [inaudible] lied to these filmmakers, to the screenwriters of Zero Dark Thirty, said torture was necessary to capturing bin Laden.

So that was a big lie. She went along with it. It was on a very high level. Knew they were lying. The report is lying to filmmakers, lying to the American public. She never said a word in opposition to it.

BN: Well, unfortunately we’ll have to end our discussion there. But we were joined by Robert Scheer, who is a longtime award-winning journalist. He is the editor in chief of Truthdig, and also a longtime columnist. We were speaking about Gina Haspel who is the new nomination for CIA director. Thanks for joining us, Bob.

RS: Thank you.

BN: Reporting for the Real News, I’m Ben Norton.

The Heartless Math of ‘Carsonomics’

I lived in one of London’s first council housing projects after World War II. That experience showed me how a country (the United Kingdom, in this case) could create affordable housing and maintain a nice aesthetic, using social architecture to benefit both society and building inhabitants.

In 1952, the architects Chamberlin, Powell & Bon built the Golden Lane Estate in London on top of a bombed-out site. They sought to imbue the city with an architectural model of social housing that was utilitarian, functional and beautiful. Influenced by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Hilberseimer, the modernism of this structure is to London what is to Marseille in France.

These estates in the U.K. have nothing in common with the American model of social housing—often called “projects”—which are, if anything, the nightmarish antithesis to the British ideal of social housing. The American model of social housing is related to the gentrification of cities. This keeps certain types of people outside of certain parts of town and makes land accessible/affordable for an elite class.

But this practice is not new. With the establishment of the National Housing Act of 1934, both the Federal Housing Administration and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board were created in the same year, and the abuse known as “redlining” was born. Redlining is the way key services (e.g., home loans, insurance) are denied or when costs are raised for residents of a specific geographical area. These actions resulted in black neighborhoods being deemed unsafe and unwise investments. Hence, it was next to impossible for African-Americans to get loans. This helped to concentrate poverty in certain neighborhoods. When social housing was constructed, these “projects” became pockets of poverty, segregation and forced underdevelopment. Growing impoverishment and large social housing blocks brought problems such as crime, degraded public education and decrepit—even nonexistent—public services.

While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was meant to tackle these problems of concentrated poverty and underdevelopment, there was little enforcement of this law, as Nikole Hannah-Jones documented for ProPublica. In essence, a law was created and purposefully allowed to be unenforced—to suit those who benefited from social and economic segregation at the time.

In this manner, the legacy of the American model of public housing, compared with countries like Austria, is an embarrassment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has 5 million low-income households (accounting for 10 million individuals) within HUD-subsidized housing in the U.S. And although America has been home to some architecturally beautiful housing projects, this is not the rule in the public housing history of the country. Most people in U.S. government-subsidized housing are not enjoying scenic views like the ones from Barbican or living in posh areas such as Hampstead.

Now, with the rising cost of living and increasing problems of employment in the U.S., the housing market is slowing down. This trend—and regulations that have been designed to inform consumers of their rights, while enforcing fairness with the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and the grass-roots bill S. 2155—makes getting home loans more difficult. With more Americans renting today than at any time over the past 50 years, the pressure on the public sector is mounting and is not aided by our own government officials. Even the National Low-Income Housing Coalition has stated that there are 7.2 million fewer “affordable and available” homes than needed for extremely low-income households.

If anything, the current administration’s interest in lower-income housing can be summed up with the recent proposal of U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has created the Make Affordable Housing Work Act.

Sit down for this one.

Carson’s plan would raise the rent of those in public housing to 35 percent of household income (from the current 30 percent) while eliminating all deductions that could in any way lower this rental contribution. This proposed bill would force low-income households to pay more—not less—of their earnings in rent, basically tripling the rent for the poorest. So the “affordable” part of this act must refer to the affordability for the state, not the individual or family.

Carson claims that these changes “would require adults who are able to work to shoulder more of their housing costs and provide an incentive to increase their earnings.” Not only does this kind of thinking contradict actual research which demonstrates that affordable housing improves economic self-sufficiency while increasing children’s future earnings, but such an approach flies in the face of basic mathematics, where paying more does not mean having more. It clearly means having less for the basic necessities of survival. Along with education and health care, housing is a human right, with many viable options for the government to implement.

Last month, Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper of the think tank People’s Policy Project (3P) suggested that municipal governments across the United States build millions of units of social housing. With their proposal, municipalities would use municipal bond markets, loans from the federal government and federal grants that replicated already existing grants (i.e., the low-income housing tax credit program) to finance the construction of new housing.

This plan proves to be advantageous from various perspectives. First, the costs would be kept to a minimum since the interest rates on government debt are lower than on any other type of financing. Second, this model of construction would be built with greater social cooperation and thus would be more efficiently undertaken. The consensus among those who support the anti-gentrification model of urban development is that short-term construction models would be better used if they focus on the middle, rather than the high end, of the market, where housing units can be constructed with smaller square footage per unit even if sacrificing certain amenities. The 3P plan suggests that the newly built housing units be managed through a public authority or a local property management company.

However, missing from 3P’s project is a green architecture perspective that is typically found in social housing units in other countries. Such considerations are necessary in an era where resources are limited and the means for processing energy can be easily integrated into building structure and planning. For example, Vo Trong Nghia introduced the S House and S House 3 for low-income residents in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, a social housing project that adapts to the landscape and in which the dwellings can be assembled in only three hours. The Astrolarbre in Paris is a 12-unit housing project designed around a single oak tree with rainwater harvesting and gardens incorporated into the architecture. The Poljane Community Housing in Maribor, Slovenia, incorporates roof gardens into its structure, while the housing project in Mieres, Spain, relies on solar power and passive solar energy. And, as architecture has changed to accommodate climate change, so have materials, with many architects returning to wood or mixtures of steel and wood.

What we can learn from social housing models in other countries is that housing can be made affordably and without being ugly. Embracing an ecological and aesthetic approach to social housing in the future will rely upon getting politicians like Ben Carson on board with basic math—and a pinch of humanity.

‘Bloody Gina’ Haspel’s Hearing Does Not Bode Well for Us

Instead of facing a judge to defend herself against prosecution for violating U.S. law prohibiting torture, 33-year CIA veteran Gina Haspel on Wednesday faced the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing to confirm her as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Haspel does not look like someone who would be associated with torture. Instead she would not be out of place as your next door neighbor or as a kindly grade-school teacher. “I think you will find me to be a typical middle-class American,” she said in her opening statement.

Haspel is the face of America. She not only looks harmless, but looks like she wants to help: perhaps to recommend a good gardener to hire or to spread democracy around the globe while upholding human rights wherever they are violated.

But this perfectly typical middle class American personally supervised a black site in Thailand where terrorism suspects were waterboarded. It remains unclear whether she had a direct role in the torture. The CIA said she arrived at the black site after the waterboarding of senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah had taken place. Some CIA officials disputed that to The New York Times. The newspaper also reported last year that Haspel ran the CIA Thai prison in 2002 when another suspect, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was waterboarded.

Even if she did not have a direct hand in overseeing the torture, she certainly acquiesced to it. And if that were not bad enough, Haspel urged the destruction of 92 videotaped CIA “enhanced interrogations,” conducted at the prison in Thailand, eliminating evidence in a clear-cut obstruction of justice to cover-up her own possible crimes.

At her public hearing Haspel refused to say that the torture was immoral. Instead she tried to romanticize her nefarious past in adolescent language about the spy trade, about going to secret meetings on “dark, moonless nights,” in the “dusty back alleys of Third World capitals.”

Haspel claimed to have a “strong moral compass.” We really can’t know because we only found out about what she did in Thailand in 2002 because of press reports. Just about everything else she did during her three decades at the agency remains shrouded in secrecy because she refused to declassify almost all of her record for the committee.

“Bloody Gina,” as some CIA colleagues called her, told the hearing she would not re-institute the “enhanced interrogation” program if she became director. One wonders if the US were attacked again like on 9/11 if she would keep her vow, especially as she admitted nothing wrong with “enhanced interrogation” the first time.

Haspel testified that the U.S. has a new legal framework that governs detentions and interrogations forbidding what she refused to call torture. But the U.S. already had a law on the books against it when the Senate ratified the international Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on October 21, 1994. Every time the U.S. “tortured some folks” after that, as Barack Obama put, it broke U.S. law.

In speaking about it in a folksy way, Obama was minimizing the enormity of the crime and justifying his decision to not prosecute any American who may have taken part in it. That includes Haspel. So instead of facing the law she’s facing a career promotion to one of the most powerful positions in the United States, if not the world.

McGovern Speaks Out

Haspel tried to wiggle out of relentless questioning about whether she thought torture was immoral, let alone illegal. Completely ignoring U.S. ratification of the Convention Against Torture, Haspel clung to the new Army Field Manual, which contains a loophole in an annex added after 9/11 that justifies cruel punishment, but not specifically torture.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was tortured in Vietnam, had no doubts about Haspel. After the hearing he issued a statement saying, “Ms. Haspel’s role in overseeing the use of torture by Americans is disturbing. Her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.”

Because she wasn’t giving any straight answers, Ray McGovern, a CIA veteran of 27 years and frequent contributor to Consortium News, stood up in the hearing room and began asking his own questions. Capitol police were immediately ordered by the chairman, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), to physically remove McGovern from the room. As he continued turning towards the committee to shout his questions, four officers hauled him out. They ominously accused him of resisting arrest. Once they got him into the hallway, rather than letting him go his way, four policemen wrestled him to the ground, re-injuring his dislocated left shoulder, as they attempted to cuff him.

After spending the night in jail, McGovern, 78, was to be arraigned on Thursday. He has not responded to several voice message left on his mobile phone. A police officer at Central Booking told Consortium News McGovern was no longer under their control and had been sent to court. According to DC Superior Court, he has been charged with Unlawful Disruption of Congress and Resisting Arrest. [He] returned home Thursday night.

McGovern was one of several people arrested before and during the hearing for speaking out. The spectacle of citizens of this country, and in Ray’s case a veteran CIA officer, having to resort to disrupting a travesty of a hearing to put an alleged torturer in charge of the most powerful spy agency in the world is a disturbing indicator of how far we have come.

A Different Kind of Hearing

In 1975, Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) conducted hearings that revealed a raft of criminality committed by the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation over a period of thirty years from the end of the Second World War. It has been more than 40 years since that Senate investigation. After the release of the CIA Torture Report by the Senate in 2014 and the revelations about the NSA by Edward Snowden, a new Church Committee-style expansive probe into the intelligence agencies is long overdue.

A central question it should ask is whether the CIA really serves the interests of the American people or rather the interests of its rulers, which the agency has done from its founding by Wall Street elites, such as its first director, Allen Dulles.

While the Republican-controlled intelligence committee may have partisan motives to launch such a new Church-like commission to look into the agencies’ shenanigans in the Russia-gate fiasco, the majority of Republicans are hawks on intelligence matters and many support torture and want Haspel to be the next CIA director. For instance, Burr told Haspel: “You are without a doubt the most qualified person the president could choose to lead the CIA and the most prepared nominee in the 70-year history of the agency. You have acted morally, ethically and legally over a distinguished 30-year career.”

None of this bodes well for the nation.

Trump Aide Mocks McCain View: ‘He’s Dying Anyway’

WASHINGTON—A White House official dismissed Sen. John McCain’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s CIA nominee, saying “it doesn’t matter” because “he’s dying anyway,” two people in the room told The Associated Press.

Kelly Sadler was discussing McCain’s opposition to Trump’s pick for CIA director, Gina Haspel, at a staff meeting on Thursday when she made the comment, according to the two people. They were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

The White House did not dispute the remark. In a statement, the administration said, “We respect Senator McCain’s service to our nation and he and his family are in our prayers during this difficult time.”

The Hill newspaper first reported the comment.

The 81-year-old Arizona Republican, who has spent three decades in the Senate, was diagnosed in July with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. He left Washington in December and underwent surgery last month for an infection.

Sadler is a special assistant to the president. She did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

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The incident came the same day a retired Air Force general called McCain “songbird John” during an appearance on Fox Business Network for allegedly providing information to the North Vietnamese while he was a prisoner of war. A Fox spokeswoman said Friday that retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney will no longer be allowed on the network.

McCain’s wife, Cindy, responded with a tweet tagged to Sadler, “May I remind you my husband has a family, 7 children and 5 grandchildren.”

And McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, weighed in on “The View.” Addressing the statements from both McInerney and Sadler, she said: “I don’t understand the kind of environment you’re working in where that would be acceptable and you can come to work the next day and still have a job.”

“My father’s legacy is going to be talked about for hundreds and hundreds of years,” she added. “These people? Nothingburgers.”

Sen. McCain, a Navy pilot who was beaten in captivity during the Vietnam War, has urged his fellow senators to reject Haspel. He said Wednesday that he believes she’s a patriot who loves the country but “her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality is disqualifying.”

Haspel faced grilling Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee about her role overseeing some CIA operations after the Sept. 11 attacks. She told senators that she doesn’t believe torture works as an interrogation technique.

As for the president, he and McCain have had a troubled relationship.

As a GOP presidential candidate in 2015, Trump said McCain was “not a war hero” because he was captured in Vietnam, adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.”

Last July, McCain became the deciding vote against the GOP health care repeal with a dramatic thumbs-down. Trump later told the Conservative Political Action Conference that “except for one Senator, who came into a room at three o’clock in the morning and went like that”—Trump gave a thumbs-down—“we would have had health care (reform), too.”

The crowd booed, and Trump added, “I won’t use his name.”

___

Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

Latest Gaza Border Protest Turns Deadly

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip—Israeli troops fired live bullets and tear gas Friday across a border fence into Gaza where Palestinian protesters threw stones, burned tires and flew kites with burning rags attached. One protester was killed and 146 were wounded by Israeli fire, Gaza health officials said.

It was the seventh weekly protest aimed at shaking off a decade-old border blockade of Gaza, and a preview of what is expected to be a much larger border rally on Monday. On that day, protests are timed to coincide with the planned move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to contested Jerusalem, where Palestinians hope to establish a future capital.

Protester Ahmed Deifallah, 25, said that President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy there “is causing the volcano to spew.”

Deifallah, who is unemployed, said he is not afraid to die. “We are used to confronting the (Israeli) occupation with our bare chests,” he said, a Palestinian flag draped around his head. “We are used to wars and no one with us but Allah.”

Gaza’s Hamas leader, Yehiyeh Sinwawr, has said he expects tens of thousands to participate on Monday. He has raised the possibility of a mass border breach, comparing protesters to a “starving tiger,” unpredictable and full of pent-up anger.

Israel has said it will prevent any border breach and has stuck to its open-fire policies, such as targeting “main instigators” and those approaching the fence, despite growing international criticism.

There are growing concerns that if Israel and Hamas dig in, a widespread border breach in coming days could lead to large numbers of casualties.

Since the Hamas-led marches began in late March, 41 Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli fire, including a 40-year-old man shot dead Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 1,800 Palestinians have been shot and wounded, including 146 on Friday. Ten of the injured on Friday were in serious condition, among them a 16-year-old with a shot to the head.

Israel says it has a right to defend its border and has accused Hamas of using the protests as a cover for attacking the border. Rights groups say the use of potentially lethal force against unarmed protesters is unlawful.

The protests, driven by despair among Gaza’s 2 million people, are part of a campaign to break the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Islamic militant Hamas overran Gaza in 2007.

Monday’s inauguration of the U.S. Embassy comes five months after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that outraged Palestinians as blatantly pro-Israel.

The Israeli-annexed eastern sector of Jerusalem is sought as a future Palestinian capital — at least by those supporting Hamas’ political rival, West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas seeks an Islamic state in the entire historic Palestine, including what is now Israel, but has said it is ready for a long-term truce.

Another large-scale protest is planned for Tuesday, when Palestinians mark their “nakba,” or catastrophe, referring to their mass uprooting during the Mideast war over Israel’s 1948 creation. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven out or fled homes in what is now Israel. More than two-thirds of Gaza residents are descendants of refugees.

On Friday, thousands of protesters gathered in five tent camps set up weeks ago, each several hundred meters (yards) from the border.

From there, smaller groups moved closer to the border fence.

In an area east of Gaza City, protesters burned tires, releasing large plumes of black smoke, and threw stones. Some flew kites with burning rags attached. One of the kites was downed by a small Israeli drone.

Israeli soldiers fired live rounds and volleys of tear gas.

The Israeli military said about 15,000 people participated in the protests.

Meanwhile, Gaza government officials announced that Egypt will open its border with Gaza for four days starting Saturday. Helping reinforce the Israeli blockade, Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing point, Gaza’s main gate to the outside world, closed most of the time since the Hamas takeover.

Egypt opens the crossing from time to time, mainly to allow people in special categories, including medical patients and Gaza residents studying abroad, to leave the territory or return to it. The upcoming opening was framed as a humanitarian gesture ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins next week.

In Jordan, about 7,000 people participated in a “nakba” rally in an area close to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinian refugees and their descendants now number several million people in the region, including more than two million in Jordan.

Friday’s rally took place before a large stage with a view of the Dead Sea and the West Bank. Jordanian, Palestinian, and green Muslim Brotherhood flags flew over crowd.

One man walked onto the stage with an effigy of Trump dangling from a noose.

Meanwhile in the West Bank, Israel’s military said an assailant rammed his vehicle into a soldier, causing light injuries. Troops were searching for the driver who fled the scene, suspecting it was possibly a Palestinian, as they have used cars as weapons in recent years.

AT&T Top Lobbyist Out After Hiring Michael Cohen

NEW YORK—The chief lobbyist for AT&T is leaving the company after overseeing a $50,000-a-month contract for President Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen to serve as a political consultant.

In a memo to employees, AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson said that Bob Quinn, senior executive vice president of the external and legislative affairs group, will retire.

Stephenson said that the company made a “big mistake” in hiring Cohen as a political consultant. While everything the company did was legal, Stephenson said that the association with Cohen was “a serious misjudgment.”

Stephenson noted that the company’s reputation has been damaged and that the vetting process used by its team in Washington “clearly failed.” The Washington team had hired Cohen under a one-year contract that paid $50,000 a month.

The Justice Department is seeking to block AT&T’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner on the grounds that it would stifle competition. AT&T disagreed, sending the battle into a federal trial. U.S District Judge Richard Leon is expected to issue a ruling next month.

Cohen, according to AT&T, said that he was leaving the Trump organization to do consulting for a “select few” companies that wanted his opinion on the president and the administration.

The company was contacted by investigators with special counsel Robert Mueller, it provided “all information requested in November and December of 2017.

There has been no communication with Mueller’s office since then, the company said.