Chris Hedges's Blog, page 59

Prince Harry and Meghan to ‘Step Back’ as Senior British Royals

LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, say they plan “to step back” as senior members of Britain’s royal family, a stunning announcement that underscores the couple’s wish to forge a new path for royals in the modern world.

A statement issued Wednesday evening by Buckingham Palace said the royal couple intend to become financially independent, shunning funds from the Sovereign Grant, to underpin their work on charities and intend to “balance” their time between the U.K. and North America.

The 35-year-old Harry is Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson and is sixth in line to the British throne. With his ginger hair and beard, Harry is one of the royal family’s most recognizable and popular members and has spent his entire life in the glare of the public eye.

Before marrying Harry in a royal wedding watched around the world in 2018, the Duchess of Sussex was an American actress known as Meghan Markle and a star of the TV show “Suits.” The royal couple has a baby son Archie, who was born in May 2019.

“After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution,” the couple said in a statement. “We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the royal family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support her majesty the queen.”

The statement, described by the palace as a “personal message from the duke and duchess of Sussex” was also posted on their Instagram page.

It was not known exactly where in the Americas the couple would spend their time, but the 38-year-old duchess of Sussex grew up in Los Angeles and filmed TV shows in Toronto. Harry and his family skipped the queen’s traditional Christmas gathering at her Sandringham estate this year to visit Canada and see Markle’s mother Doria, who lives in California.

The royal pair described their new roles on a website. The site notes that the Sovereign Grant, which funds the monarchy, covers just 5% of the costs for the duke and duchess and is used for their official office expenses but they want to cut this financial tie.

As an actress and a human rights activist, the duchess was accustomed to media attention before her marriage, but she has made no secret of the fact that the transition to being a global celebrity and part of Britain’s royal family was difficult. The royal couple particularly took issue with their treatment at the hands of the British tabloids, whose aggressive coverage of all things royal is legendary.

The royal couple revealed their struggles with the media during an ITV documentary “Harry & Meghan: An African Journey,” which followed them on a recent tour of Southern Africa. Both said they had struggled with the spotlight, particularly because they say much of what is printed is untrue.

The duchess told ITV last year that her British friends warned her not to marry the prince because of the intense media scrutiny that would follow in his country. But the U.S. television star said she “naively” dismissed the warnings, because as an American she didn’t understand how the British press worked.

“I never thought this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair. And that is the part that is hard to reconcile,” she said. “But (I) just take each day as it comes.”

The duchess said the pressure was aggravated by the fact that she went quickly from being a newlywed to being pregnant and then a new mother.

The British media have also made much of an alleged rift between Harry and his older brother, Prince William, who is second in line to the throne. Harry and Meghan last year opted out of living at Kensington Palace in London, where William and his family lives, and moved to a Frogmore Cottage at Windsor.

In the ITV interview, Harry acknowledged there have been some differences between him and the 37-year-old William, although he said most of what has been printed about a rift between the two brothers has been “created out of nothing.”

“Part of this role and part of this job and this family being under the pressure that it’s under, inevitably stuff happens,” he said. “But, look, we’re brothers. We’ll always be brothers. We’re certainly on different paths at the moment, but I will always be there for him, as I know he’ll always be there for me.”

 

CEOs Are Already Raking in Millions From Iran Tensions

The prospect of war with Iran is terrifying.

Experts predict as many as a million people could die if the current tensions lead to a full-blown war. Millions more would become refugees across the Middle East, while working families across the U.S. would bear the brunt of our casualties.

But there is one set of people who stand to benefit from the escalation of the conflict: CEOs of major U.S. military contractors.

This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian military official on January 2. As soon as the news reached financial markets, these companies’ share prices spiked.

Wall Street traders know that a war with Iran would mean more lucrative contracts for U.S. weapons makers. Since top executives get much of their compensation in the form of stock, they benefit personally when the value of their company’s stock goes up.

I took a look at the stock holdings of the CEOs at the top five Pentagon contractors (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman).

Using the most recent available data, I calculated that these five executives held company stock worth approximately $319 million just before the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian leader Qasem Soleimani. By the stock market’s closing bell the following day, the value of their combined shares had increased to $326 million.

War profiteering is nothing new. Back in 2006, during the height of the Iraq War, I analyzed CEO pay at the 34 corporations that were the top military contractors at that time. I found that their pay had jumped considerably after the September 11 attacks.

Between 2001 and 2005, military contractor CEO pay jumped 108 percent on average, compared to a 6 percent increase for their counterparts at other large U.S. companies.

Congress needs to take action to prevent a catastrophic war on Iran. De-escalating the current tensions is the most immediate priority.

But Congress must also take action to end war profiteering. In 2008, John McCain, then a Republican presidential candidate, proposed capping CEO pay at companies receiving financial bailouts. He argued that CEOs relying on taxpayer funds should not earn more than $400,000 — the salary of the U.S. president.

That commonsense notion should be extended to all companies that rely on massive taxpayer-funded contracts. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, has a plan to deny federal contracts to companies that pay their CEOs excessively. He would set the CEO pay limit for major contractors at no more than 150 times the pay of the company’s typical worker.

Currently, the sky’s the limit for CEO pay at these companies — and the military contracting industry is a prime offender. The top five Pentagon contractors paid their top executives $22.5 million on average in 2018.

CEO pay restrictions should also apply to the leaders of privately held government contractors, which currently don’t even have to disclose the size of their top executives’ paychecks.

That’s the case for General Atomics, the manufacturer of the MQ-9 Reaper that carried out the assassination of Soleimani. Despite raking in $2.8 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts in 2018, the drone maker is allowed to keep executive compensation information secret.

We do know that General Atomics CEO Neal Blue has prospered quite a bit from taxpayer dollars. Forbes estimates his wealth at $4.1 billion.

War is bad for nearly everyone. But as long as we allow the leaders of our privatized war economy to reap unlimited rewards, their profit motive for war in Iran — or anywhere — will persist.

Proof Bernie Sanders Has the Billionaire Class’ Attention

Billionaire Jeff Gundlach told fellow wealthy investors late Tuesday that Sen. Bernie Sanders is the “odds-on favorite” to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination—and warned the senator’s potential general election victory could pose a serious threat to Wall Street profits.

“Bernie is stronger than people think,” Gundlach, who correctly predicted Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, said during his annual “Just Markets” webcast.

Gundlach, CEO of investment firm DoubleLine Capital,  said Sanders’ possible win over Trump in November represents the “biggest risk” to financial markets.

“I think it’s Bernie Sanders becoming more believed in as a real force, and we have to start taking him more seriously,” Gundlach said. “If people get more worried about Bernie Sanders and they start to price in his spending programs, then you could really start to see trouble in both [long-term Treasury] bonds and stocks, which could really be on a rough ride.”

Asked by CNN reporter Ryan Nobles about Gundlach’s assessment of the 2020 race, Sanders’ communications director Mike Casca offered a snappy response: “A stopped Rolex is right twice a day.”

Gundlach’s remarks came as the Democratic establishment is reportedly growing increasingly concerned about the prospect of a Sanders nomination as the Vermont senator outraises his primary opponents and gains ground in early-state polls.

“Bernie Sanders has just pulled even with Joe Biden in Iowa and is beating him in New Hampshire, giving Sanders a reasonable claim to being either the frontrunner or the co-frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic nomination,” Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, a vocal supporter of the Vermont senator, wrote Wednesday.

“Bernie has struck fear into the heart of the establishment, and even more moderate commentators like Chris Cillizza have noticed that Sanders is in a very good position now,” Robinson added. “Bernie Sanders also has a strong case to make that he is the most ‘electable’ candidate in a race against Donald Trump.”

Sanders attempted to make that case in an op-ed Wednesday in the Des Moines Register with less than a month to go before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucus.

“Iowans face a choice: Are we going to settle for a status quo that is leaving so many behind? Or are we going to come together to finally transform our country so that our government works for all of us?” Sanders wrote. “Our grassroots campaign clearly represents the latter—which is why polls consistently show us defeating Donald Trump, who is the most dangerous and corrupt president in modern history.”

Invoking his campaign’s “Not Me, Us” motto, Sanders said “to transform America, we cannot simply rely on a president alone—we must build a mass movement that fights for justice not just during an election, but once we are in office.”

“We are building that movement,” the senator wrote, “and with Iowans’ help on Feb. 3, we can start making this working-class agenda a reality.”

Time Is Running Out to Save Greenland

It’s still possible, but it’s far from certain: stopping Greenland’s melting can be done, but it must be done soon.

Norwegian and US scientists have taken a close look at the ice age history of Greenland and come to a grim conclusion. All it takes to set the island’s ice cap melting away is a mean sea surface temperature higher than seven degrees Celsius. And the present mean sea surface temperature is already 7.7°C.

Greenland is the northern hemisphere’s single richest store of frozen water: the island’s bedrock holds enough to raise global sea levels by seven metres and drown or wash away the world’s coastal communities, including the great cities of New York and Miami, Shanghai and Kolkata, Amsterdam and London.

And the pattern of geological evidence – outlined in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – combined with climate models suggests that any sustained temperature rise could trigger an irreversible melt of the entire southern Greenland ice sheet.

The scientists suggest that the threshold for this calamity could be between 0.8°C above the post-Ice Age norm, and 3.2°C.

“The critical temperature threshold for past Greenland ice sheet decay will likely be surpassed this century”

In fact, because of profligate use of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the planet has already warmed by around 1°C above the level for most of human history, and warming of at least 3.2°C by the end of this century now seems almost certain.

Researchers publish their conclusions with the intention that they should be examined, tested, challenged and perhaps overturned. But widespread alarm at the rate of melt and mass loss in Greenland has been consistent and increasing with the years.

Researchers have repeatedly established that melting each summer is increasing the rate at which glaciers flow and deliver ice to increasingly warmer northern seas, and that this rate of melting has itself begun to accelerate.

So Nil Irvali of the University of Bergen and colleagues took a closer look at the story told by microfossils within cores from the ice and the ocean floor during four interglacial periods over the last 450,000 years.

During those warm spells ocean levels rose dramatically, and in two episodes Greenland’s vanishing ice could have contributed more than five metres in one case, and up to seven metres of sea level rise in the other.

Triggers identified

And in all four of those interglacials, conditions reached temperatures higher than they are right now.

Concern about the stability of the Greenland icecap is no surprise: the Arctic is already warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, thanks to profligate use of fossil fuels and the destruction of the rainforests, and researchers worldwide have begun to identify triggers that feed back into further warming: rain, for instance, in winter; the loss of cloud cover in summer; and the deposits of soot from polar wildfires that darken the snows and enhance the absorption of the sun’s rays.

Years ago, the phrase “at a glacial pace” ceased to be a valid cliché: US scientists clocked one river of ice moving at a rate of 46 metres a day.

So the new study simply confirms fears that already are widespread. What remains to be settled is the point at which the decline of the ice sheet becomes irreversible, the Bergen scientists say. As the ocean warms, this feeds back into the process of melting and triggers longer-term feedbacks.

“The exact point at which these feedbacks are triggered remains equivocal,” say Dr Irvali and her co-authors. “Notably, the critical temperature threshold for past Greenland ice sheet decay will likely be surpassed this century. The duration for which this threshold is exceeded will determine Greenland’s fate.”

American Empire Completes Three Decades of Futility

Thirty years ago this month, President George H.W. Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address, the first post-Cold War observance of this annual ritual. Just weeks before, the Berlin Wall had fallen. That event, the president declared, “marks the beginning of a new era in the world’s affairs.” The Cold War, that “long twilight struggle” (as President John F. Kennedy so famously described it), had just come to an abrupt end. A new day was dawning. President Bush seized the opportunity to explain just what that dawning signified.

“There are singular moments in history, dates that divide all that goes before from all that comes after,” the president said. The end of World War II had been just such a moment. In the decades that followed, 1945 provided “the common frame of reference, the compass points of the postwar era we’ve relied upon to understand ourselves.” Yet the hopeful developments of the year just concluded — Bush referred to them collectively as “the Revolution of ’89” — had initiated “a new era in the world’s affairs.”

While many things were certain to change, the president felt sure that one element of continuity would persist: the United States would determine history’s onward course. “America, not just the nation but an idea,” he emphasized, is and was sure to remain “alive in the minds of people everywhere.”

“As this new world takes shape, America stands at the center of a widening circle of freedom — today, tomorrow, and into the next century. Our nation is the enduring dream of every immigrant who ever set foot on these shores and the millions still struggling to be free. This nation, this idea called America, was and always will be a new world — our new world.”

Bush had never shown himself to be a particularly original or imaginative thinker. Even so, during a long career in public service, he had at least mastered the art of packaging sentiments deemed appropriate for just about any occasion. The imagery he employed in this instance — America occupying the center of freedom’s widening circle — did not stake out a new claim devised for fresh circumstances. That history centered on what Americans professed or did expressed a hallowed proposition, one with which his listeners were both familiar and comfortable. Indeed, Bush’s description of America as a perpetually self-renewing enterprise engaged in perfecting freedom summarized the essence of the nation’s self-assigned purpose.

In his remarks to Congress, the president was asserting a prerogative that his predecessors had long ago appropriated: interpreting the zeitgeist in such a way as to merge past, present, and future into a seamless, self-congratulatory, and reassuring narrative of American power. He was describing history precisely as Americans — or at least privileged Americans — wished to see it. He was, in other words, speaking a language in which he was fluent: the idiom of the ruling class.

As the year 1990 began, duty — destiny, even — was summoning members of that ruling class to lead not just this country, but the planet itself and not just for a decade or two, or even for an “era,” but forever and a day. In January 1990, the way ahead for the last superpower on planet Earth — the Soviet Union would officially implode in 1991 but its fate already seemed obvious enough — was clear indeed.

So, How’d We Do?

Thirty years later, perhaps it’s time to assess just how well the United States has fulfilled the expectations President Bush articulated in 1990. Personally, I would rate the results somewhere between deeply disappointing and flat-out abysmal.

Bush’s “circle of freedom” invoked a planet divided between the free and the unfree. During the Cold War, this distinction had proven useful even if it was never particularly accurate. Today, it retains no value whatsoever as a description of the actually existing world, even though in Washington it persists, as does the conviction that the U.S. has a unique responsibility to expand that circle.

Encouraged by ambitious politicians and ideologically driven commentators, many (though not all) Americans bought into a militarized, Manichean, vastly oversimplified conception of the Cold War. Having misconstrued its meaning, they misconstrued the implications of its passing, leaving them ill-prepared to see through the claptrap in President Bush’s 1990 State of the Union Address.

Bush depicted the “Revolution of ‘89” as a transformative moment in world history. In fact, the legacy of that moment has proven far more modest than he imagined. As a turning point in the history of the modern world, the end of the Cold War ranks slightly above the invention of the machine gun (1884), but well below the fall of Russia’s Romanov dynasty (1917) or the discovery of penicillin (1928). Among the factors shaping the world in which we now live, the outcome of the Cold War barely registers.

Fairness obliges me to acknowledge two exceptions to that broad claim, one pertaining to Europe and the other to the United States.

First, the end of the Cold War led almost immediately to a Europe made “whole and free” thanks to the collapse of the Soviet empire. Yet while Poles, Lithuanians, the former citizens of the German Democratic Republic, and other Eastern Europeans are certainly better off today than they were under the Kremlin’s boot, Europe itself plays a significantly diminished role in world affairs. In healing its divisions, it shrank, losing political clout. Meanwhile, in very short order, new cleavages erupted in the Balkans, Spain, and even the United Kingdom, with the emergence of a populist right calling into question Europe’s assumed commitment to multicultural liberalism.

In many respects, the Cold War began as an argument over who would determine Europe’s destiny. In 1989, our side won that argument. Yet, by then, the payoff to which the United States laid claim had largely been depleted. Europe’s traditional great powers were no longer especially great. After several centuries in which global politics had centered on that continent, Europe had suddenly slipped to the periphery. In practice, “whole and free” turned out to mean “preoccupied and anemic,” with Europeans now engaging in their own acts of folly. Three decades after the “Revolution of ’89,” Europe remains an attractive tourist destination. Yet, from a geopolitical perspective, the action has long since moved elsewhere.

The second exception to the Cold War’s less than momentous results relates to U.S. attitudes toward military power. For the first time in its history, the onset of the Cold War had prompted the United States to create and maintain a powerful peacetime military establishment. The principal mission of that military was to defend, deter, and contain. While it would fight bitter wars in Korea and Vietnam, its advertised aim was to avert armed conflicts or, at least, keep them from getting out of hand. In that spirit, the billboard at the entrance to the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, the Pentagon’s principal Cold War nuclear strike force (which possessed the means to extinguish humankind), reassuringly announced that “peace is our profession.”

When the Cold War ended, however, despite the absence of any real threats to U.S. security, Washington policymakers decided to maintain the mightiest armed forces on the planet in perpetuity. Negligible debate preceded this decision, which even today remains minimally controversial. That the United States should retain military capabilities far greater than those of any other nation or even combination of numerous other nations seemed eminently sensible.

In appearance or configuration, the post-Cold War military differed little from what it had looked like between the 1950s and 1989. Yet the armed forces of the United States now took on a radically different, far more ambitious mission: to impose order and spread American values globally, while eliminating obstacles deemed to impede those efforts. During the Cold War, policymakers had placed a premium on holding U.S. forces in readiness. Now, the idea was to put “the troops” to work. Power projection became the name of the game.

Just a month prior to his State of the Union Address, President Bush himself had given this approach a test run, ordering U.S. forces to intervene in Panama, overthrow the existing government there, and install in its place one expected to be more compliant. The president now neatly summarized the outcome of that action in three crisp sentences. “One year ago,” he announced, “the people of Panama lived in fear, under the thumb of a dictator. Today democracy is restored; Panama is free. Operation Just Cause has achieved its objective.”

Mission accomplished: end of story. Here, it seemed, was a template for further application globally.

As it happened, however, Operation Just Cause proved to be the exception rather than the rule. Intervention in Panama did inaugurate a period of unprecedented American military activism. In the years that followed, U.S. forces invaded, occupied, bombed, or raided an astonishing array of countries. Rarely, however, was the outcome as tidy as it had been in Panama, where the fighting lasted a mere five days. Untidy and protracted conflicts proved more typical of the post-Cold War U.S. experience, with the Afghanistan War, a futile undertaking now in its 19th year, a notable example. The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places.

Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. From a military perspective — except perhaps in the eyes of the military-industrial complex — the legacy of the “Revolution of ‘89” turned out to be almost entirely negative.

A Broken Compass

So, contrary to President Bush’s prediction, the fall of the Berlin Wall did not inaugurate a “new era in world affairs” governed by “this idea called America.” It did, however, accelerate Europe’s drift toward geopolitical insignificance and induced in Washington a sharp turn toward reckless militarism — neither of which qualifies as cause for celebration.

Yet today, 30 years after Bush’s 1990 State of the Union, a “new era of world affairs” is indeed upon us, even if it bears scant resemblance to the order Bush expected to emerge. If his “idea called America” did not shape the contours of this new age, then what has?

Answer: all the things post-Cold War Washington policy elites misunderstood or relegated to the status of afterthought. Here are three examples of key factors that actually shaped the present era. Notably, each had its point of origin prior to the end of the Cold War. Each came to maturity while U.S. policymakers, hypnotized by the “Revolution of ’89,” were busily trying to reap the benefits they fancied to be this country’s for the taking. Each far surpasses in significance the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The “Rise” of China: The China that we know today emerged from reforms instituted by Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping, which transformed the People’s Republic into an economic powerhouse. No nation in history, including the United States, has ever come close to matching China’s spectacular ascent. In just three decades, its per capita gross domestic product skyrocketed from $156 in 1978 to $9,771 in 2017.

The post-Cold War assumption common among American elites that economic development would necessarily prompt political liberalization turned out to be wishful thinking. In Beijing today, the Communist Party remains firmly in control. Meanwhile, as illustrated by its “Belt and Road” initiative, China has begun to assert itself globally, while simultaneously enhancing the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army. In all of this, the United States — apart from borrowing from China to pay for an abundance of its imported products (now well over a half-trillion dollars of them annually) — has figured as little more than a bystander. As China radically alters the balance of power in twenty-first-century East Asia, the outcome of the Cold War has no more relevance than does Napoleon’s late-eighteenth-century expedition to Egypt.

A Resurgence of Religious Extremism: Like the poor, religious fanatics will always be with us. They come in all stripes: Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims. Yet implicit in the American idea that lay at the heart of Bush’s State of the Union Address was an expectation of modernity removing religion from politics. That the global advance of secularization would lead to the privatization of faith was accepted as a given in elite circles. After all, the end of the Cold War ostensibly left little to fight about. With the collapse of communism and the triumph of democratic capitalism, all the really big questions had been settled. That religiously inspired political violence would become a crucial factor in global politics therefore seemed inconceivable.

Yet a full decade before the “Revolution of ’89,” events were already shredding that expectation. In November 1979, radical Islamists shocked the House of Saud by seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Although local security forces regained control after a bloody gun battle, the Saudi royal family resolved to prevent any recurrence of such a disaster by demonstrating beyond the shadow of a doubt its own fealty to the teachings of Allah. It did so by expending staggering sums throughout the Ummah to promote a puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism.

In effect, Saudi Arabia became the principal underwriter of what would morph into Islamist terror. For Osama bin Laden and his militant followers, the American idea to which President Bush paid tribute that January in 1990 was blasphemous, intolerable, and a justification for war. Lulled by a belief that the end of the Cold War had yielded a definitive victory, the entire U.S. national security apparatus would be caught unawares in September 2001 when religious warriors assaulted New York and Washington. Nor was the political establishment prepared for the appearance of violence perpetrated by domestic religious extremists. During the Cold War, it had become fashionable to declare God dead. That verdict turned out to be premature.

The Assault on Nature: From its inception, the American idea so lavishly praised by President Bush in 1990 had allowed, even fostered, the exploitation of the natural world based on a belief in Planet Earth’s infinite capacity to absorb punishment. During the Cold War, critics like Rachel Carson, author of the pioneering environmental book Silent Spring, had warned against just such an assumption. While their warnings received respectful hearings, they elicited only modest corrective action.

Then, in 1988, a year prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, in testimony before Congress, NASA scientist James Hansen issued a far more alarming warning: human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, was inducing profound changes in the global climate with potentially catastrophic consequences. (Of course, a prestigious scientific advisory committee had offered just such a warning to President Lyndon Johnson more than two decades earlier, predicting the early twenty-first-century effects of climate change, to no effect whatsoever.)

To put it mildly, President Bush and other members of the political establishment did not welcome Hansen’s analysis. After all, to take him seriously meant admitting to the necessity of modifying a way of life centered on self-indulgence, rather than self-restraint. At some level, perpetuating the American penchant for material consumption and personal mobility had described the ultimate purpose of the Cold War. Bush could no more tell Americans to settle for less than he could imagine a world order in which the United States no longer occupied “the center of a widening circle of freedom.”

Some things were sacrosanct. As he put it on another occasion, “The American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period.”

So while President Bush was not an outright climate-change denier, he temporized. Talk took precedence over action. He thereby set a pattern to which his successors would adhere, at least until the Trump years. To thwart communism during the Cold War, Americans might have been willing to “pay any price, bear any burden.” Not so when it came to climate change. The Cold War itself had seemingly exhausted the nation’s capacity for collective sacrifice. So, on several fronts, the assault on nature continues and is even gaining greater momentum.

In sum, from our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Restoring the American compass to working order won’t occur until we recognize those illusions for what they are. Step one might be to revise what “this idea called America” truly signifies.

Trump Has Been at War With Iran for More Than a Year

This piece originally appeared on Informed Comment.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The Iranian government replied to Trump’s assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani on Tuesday by firing some 15 ballistic missiles at Ain al-Assad base in al-Anbar Province and at another Iraqi base at Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The bases are Iraqi and mainly house members of the Iraqi military, but also host US troops. As of this writing very early Wednesday, there were no US deaths or casualties, but the Iranian press was claiming it had killed “80 terrorists.”

Notoriously flaky Sen. Lindsay Graham replied to the strikes saying that Iran had better “cut this crap out” or it would be “out of the oil business.” Rupert Murdoch-backed media poo-bah Sean Hannity also advocated striking Iran oil installations.

It is tragicomic that Graham and Hannity do not seem to realize that Trump already put Iran out of the oil business. Iran’s government feels that it has nothing to lose. Trump cut Iran’s exports from 2.5 million barrels a day in 2017 to a few hundred thousand barrels a day last fall. Petroleum receipts account for 70% of Iranian government revenue.

Iranian oil exports in barrels per day. h/t Federal Reserve Bank St. Louis

Trump began the war with Iran on May 8, 2018, when he breached the international treaty with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The treaty had forced Iran to mothball 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program, as a way of ensuring that the program was never militarized. In the three years leading up to the signing of the treaty, the Obama administration and the UN Security Council had put severe sanctions on Iran, which hurt the Iranian economy. In return for severely curtailing their enrichment program, the Iranians were promised that all sanctions would be lifted and that Iran would be integrated into the world economy. Trump breached the treaty even though the UN inspectors repeatedly certified that Iran was in full compliance with its obligations.

Trump then slapped the most severe economic sanctions on Iran ever applied to any country by another in peacetime. He strong-armed Japan, South Korea, Europe and India into not buying Iranian petroleum and threatened companies throughout the world with Treasury Department third-party sanctions if they traded with Iran. No one wants to be excluded from the $22 trillion a year American economy or to be forced to pay billions of dollars in fines, so everyone, including Europe, fell into line behind Trump’s “maximum pressure.”

These were no longer sanctions but a financial blockade. If you blockade a country and prevent its trade with naval ships, that is an act of war in international law. Trump blockaded Iran with financial instruments, but it comes to the same thing. Trump has been at war with Iran for 19 months. The Iranian economy is a shadow of its former self. Middle class families can’t afford needed medicines for loved ones.

Trump’s blockade on Iran has not the slightest legitimacy. It was not mandated by an act of Congress. There is no UN Security Council resolution preventing Iran from selling its oil on the international market. It is the caprice of a single person, and violates international laws and norms.

I have pacifist tendencies and wish countries could work out their differences nonviolently. But no country would accept this economic strangulation at the hands of another without striking back in some way, and Iran’s replies to Trump’s fingers around its windpipe have brought us to this pass.

It is puzzling that Iran would hit Iraqi military bases. Iran is an Iraqi ally and helped this same Iraqi army in its fight against the hyper-Sunni terrorist organizations, ISIL (ISIS). Are the troops at the base disproportionately Sunnis from al-Anbar province, and does Iran see them as Baath remnants or sympathetic to Sunni radicalism? Why call Iraqi soldiers “terrorists?” Iran has taken revenge on the US for declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a government institution, a “terrorist organization.” Tehran has in return branded the US military a “terrorist organization.” Perhaps the Iranian press was saying it had killed 80 US troops, but this allegation seems untrue. In fact, the Iranian missiles are quite precise and Iran has good intelligence on where US troops are, so the IRGC deliberately avoided killing Americans, which it easily could have.

The geography of the two bases hit may be politically significant. Al-Anbar is an almost entirely Sunni Arab province dominated by the Dulaim tribe. Erbil is the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The Sunni parties and the Kurdish parties boycotted last Sunday’s parliamentary vote to expel US troops. It is possible that Iran is sending these two blocs the message that it is not healthy for them to lobby to keep US troops in Iraq, and that if they do so they will be in the middle of a hot war. Hitting Erbil is otherwise hard to explain, since Iran and the Iraqi Kurds have generally good relations.

In any case, Iraqis are human beings as much as Americans and it is hard to feel much relief if in fact 80 of them were summarily blown away.

I was not expecting the Iranian government to hit out at the US so openly. Open conventional responses had not been its way of proceeding. My guess is that even the government of clerical leader Ali Khamenei was stunned at the magnitude of the public grief over the assassination of Gen. Soleimani, as millions came into the streets in the past couple of days. This fall there had been substantial unrest over a hike in gasoline prices, so the government may have liked the new solidarity of the people with it and become determined to capitalize on it by drawing out the conflict with Trump.

At the same time, the ayatollahs are riding a tiger. For the clerical government, having millions of angry people in the streets demanding revenge on the United States is a blessing and a curse. The newly-won solidarity could evaporate if the people felt as though they did not get a sufficiently harsh revenge. In fact, it isn’t clear that these missile strikes that did no real damage to the US will be sufficient to calm the Iranian masses down.

I think in the aftermath of these strikes, the government of Adil Abdulmahdi, Iraq’s prime minister, will be even more eager to expel US troops, lest Iran remain in the cross-fire between the US and Iran. Putting this pressure on Abdulmahdi is almost certainly one of the goals of the Iranian missile strikes.

There were 5,200 US troops in Iraq as the crisis began a week and a half ago, but several hundred appear to have been sent to Kuwait or will imminently be sent there. In a letter to the Iraqi government form the US military in Iraq, the American officers said that they wanted to “thin out” US troop presence in Baghdad, where they fear attacks by Iraqi Shiite militias, in preparation for leaving the country in accordance with last Sunday’s parliamentary vote. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on Tuesday disavowed the letter, calling it a “draft.” Iraqi government officials, however, maintain that it was official, and that they even followed up about the Arabic translation, and that they will treat it as valid.

Trump Says Iran Appears to Be ‘Standing Down’ After Airstrike

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Iran appears to be “standing down” and no Americans or Iraqis were harmed in Iran’s missile strike on two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops.

Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on de-escalating the crisis, indicating that he would not retaliate militarily for the strikes. Instead, he said the U.S. would immediately put in place new economic sanctions “until Iran changes its behavior” after that country’s most brazen direct assault on America since the 1979 seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The attack came days after Trump authorized the targeted killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Iran had pledged to retaliate, bringing the two countries closer to the brink of war.

Trump credited an early warning system “that worked very well” for the fact that no Americans or Iraqis were killed. He added that Americans should be “extremely grateful and happy” with the outcome.

He reiterated his position that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon” and called for new nuclear negotiations to replace the 2015 nuclear deal from which he withdrew the U.S.

Trump also announced he would ask NATO to become “much more involved in the Middle East process.”

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump faces one of the greatest tests of his presidency after Iran launched ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops and planned to address the nation on Wednesday. Iran’s attack was its most brazen direct assault on America since the 1979 seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The strikes pushed Tehran and Washington perilously close to war and put the world’s attention on Trump as he weighs whether to respond with more military force. The Republican president huddled with his national security advisers on Wednesday morning but offered no immediate indication of whether he would retaliate. “All is well!” he said in a Tuesday night tweet.

The White House said Trump would speak at 11 a.m. EST.

The Iranian strikes came days after Trump authorized the targeted killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Iran had pledged to retaliate, though its actions did not appear to result in any American casualties, according to a U.S. official. Its missiles targeted two bases — one in the northern Iraqi city in Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad in western Iraq.

The lack of U.S. casualties could signal that Iran is not interested in escalating the tension with Washington — at least not now — and could give Trump an opening to calm relations with Iran and pull the U.S. back from the brink of war. Trump, who is facing reelection in November, campaigned for president on a promise to keep the United States from engaging in “endless war.”

Sen. James Inhofe, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee told reporters Wednesday that he spoke with Trump Tuesday evening after the Iranian strike and said the president indicated his desire to reopen negotiations with Iran.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a joint statement after a closed-door meeting on Mideast security are warning that the further use of force “would lead to a new cycle of instability and would eventually damage everyone’s interests.”

In the hours before the missile strikes, U.S. officials said they expected some sort of response from Iran, and Trump warned the longtime U.S. foe against a disproportionate response. “If Iran does anything that they shouldn’t be doing, they’re going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.”

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defense.”

But speaking on Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the strike was not necessarily the totality of Iran’s response.

“Last night they received a slap,” Khamenei said in a speech. “These military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.”

Soleimani’s death last week in an American drone strike in Baghdad prompted angry calls for vengeance and drew massive crowds of Iranians to the streets to mourn him. Khamenei himself wept at the funeral in a sign of his bond with the commander.

The Iranians fired a total of 15 missiles in Wednesday’s strike, two U.S. officials said. Ten hit the Ain al-Asad air base in Iraq’s western Anbar province and one targeted a base in Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Four failed, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about a military operation.

According to a U.S. official, early warning systems detected the missile launches and alarms sounded, giving personnel at the bases time to get to shelter. Officials also said that the U.S. was closely watching the region and communicating with allies, and was aware of preparations for the attack. It’s unclear if any intelligence identified specific targets or was more general in the potential strike locations.

Two Iraqi security officials said a missile appeared to have struck a plane at Ain al-Asad, igniting a fire. There were no immediate reports of casualties from the attacks, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they had no permission to talk to journalists.

Ain al-Asad was first used by American forces after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, and it later was used by American troops in the fight against the Islamic State group. It houses about 1,500 U.S. and coalition forces. Trump visited it in December 2018, making his first presidential visit to troops in the region. Vice President Mike Pence visited both Ain al-Asad and Irbil in November.

Democrats called on Trump avoid military escalation with Iran.

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the administration needs to quickly “extricate us from what could lead into a full-fledged war with terrible casualties.” Engel said he feared the situation ”spirals out of control.”

The fallout for Trump’s order to kill Soleimani has been swift.

Iran announced that it would no longer be bound by the 2015 nuclear agreement and vowed to retaliate against the U.S., its allies and American interests. Iraq’s Parliament also voted to expel U.S. troops from Iraq, which would undermine efforts to fight Islamic State militants in the region and strengthen Iran’s influence in the Mideast.

The counterattack by Iran came as Trump and his top advisers were under pressure to disclose more details about the intelligence that led to the American strike that killed Soleimani.

Top Senate Democrats, citing “deep concern” about the lack of information coming from the Trump administration about the Iran operation, called on Defense Department officials to provide “regular briefings and documents” to Congress.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the senators said in a letter Wednesday that the White House’s classified War Powers notification to Congress was “generic, vague, and entirely inconsistent in its level of detail” compared with the norm.

“While recognizing the need for operations security, we similarly believe there is a requirement to be transparent with the American people about how many troops this Administration plans to deploy in support of contingency plans,” wrote Schumer, Sen. Dick Durbin and the Armed Services Committee’s Sen. Jack Reed to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

They also registered their “grave concern” with Trump’s comments on targeting Iranian cultural sites and asked for clarification. They said they expected a response by Friday.

Trump said Tuesday that his decision saved American lives. Members of Congress were to be briefed on the strike Wednesday afternoon in closed-door sessions on Capitol Hill.

Trump and top national security officials have justified the airstrike with general statements about the threat posed by Soleimani, who commanded proxy forces outside Iran and was responsible for the deaths of American troops in Iraq.

But the details have been scarce.

“He’s no longer a monster. He’s dead,” Trump said. “And that’s a good thing for a lot of countries. He was planning a very big attack and a very bad attack for us and other people, and we stopped him, and I don’t think anybody can complain about it.”

One lawmaker who has read the classified notification that Trump sent Congress after the U.S. air strike that killed Soleimani said the two-page document did not describe any imminent planned attacks or contain any new information. The lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the classified document, said the letter gave a historic account of attacks that have been reported publicly.

Soleimani was targeted while he was at an airport in Baghdad with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a veteran Iraqi militant, who also was killed.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Lolita Baldor, Darlene Superville Alan Fram and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

Iran Strikes Back at U.S. With Missile Attack on Bases in Iraq

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran struck back at the United States for the killing of a top Iranian general early Wednesday, firing a series of surface-to-surface missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops and warning the United States and its allies in the region not to retaliate.

U.S. officials confirmed the strikes, though Iran only initially acknowledged targeting one base. There was no immediate word on injuries.

Iranian state TV said the attack was in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, whose funeral procession Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman prompted angry calls to avenge his death, which drastically raised tensions in the Middle East.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned the U.S. and its regional allies against retaliating over the missile attack against the Ain Assad air base in Iraq’s western Anbar province. The Guard issued the warning via a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

“We are warning all American allies, who gave their bases to its terrorist army, that any territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted,” The Guard said. It also threatened Israel.

Ain Assad air base is in Iraq’s western Anbar province. It was first used by American forces after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, and later saw American troops stationed there amid the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. It houses about 1,500 U.S. and coalition forces.

State TV said the operation’s name was “Martyr Soleimani.” It said the Guard’s aerospace division that controls Iran’s missile program launched the attack. Iran said it would release more information later.

The U.S. also acknowledged another missile attack on a base in Irbil in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

A spokesperson for the Norwegian Armed Forces told AP in a phone interview that about 70 Norwegian troops were on the airbase, but no injuries have been reported, Brynjar Stordal, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Armed Forces told AP in a phone interview.”

Wednesday’s revenge attack came a mere few hours after crowds in Iran mourned Soleimani and as the U.S. continued to reinforce its own positions in the region and warned of an unspecified threat to shipping from Iran in the region’s waterways, crucial routes for global energy supplies. U.S. embassies and consulates from Asia to Africa and Europe issued security alerts for Americans. The U.S. Air Force launched a drill with 52 fighter jets in Utah, just days after President Donald Trump threatened to hit 52 sites in Iran.

A stampede broke out Tuesday at Soleimani’s funeral for a top Iranian general slain in a U.S. airstrike, and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession, Iranian news reports said.

Tuesday’s deadly stampede took place in Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman as his coffin was being borne through the city in southeastern Iran, said Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran’s emergency medical services.

There was no information about what set off the crush in the packed streets, and online videos showed only its aftermath: people lying apparently lifeless, their faces covered by clothing, emergency crews performing CPR on the fallen, and onlookers wailing and crying out to God.

“Unfortunately as a result of the stampede, some of our compatriots have been injured and some have been killed during the funeral processions,” Koulivand said, and state TV quoted him as saying that 56 had died and 213 had been injured.

Soleimani’s burial was delayed, with no new time given, because of concerns about the huge crowd at the cemetery, the semi-official ISNA news agency said.

A procession in Tehran on Monday drew over 1 million people in the Iranian capital, crowding both main avenues and side streets in Tehran. Such mass crowds can prove dangerous. A smaller stampede at the 1989 funeral for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini killed at least eight people and injured hundreds.

Hossein Salami, Soleimani’s successor as leader of the Revolutionary Guard, addressed a crowd of supporters gathered at the coffin in a central square in Kernan. He vowed to avenge Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike Friday near Baghdad’s airport.

“We tell our enemies that we will retaliate but if they take another action we will set ablaze the places that they like and are passionate about,” Salami said.

“Death to Israel!” the crowd shouted in response, referring to one of Iran’s longtime regional foes.

Salami praised Soleimani’s work, describing him as essential to backing Palestinian groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. As a martyr, Soleimani represented an even greater threat to Iran’s enemies, Salami said.

Soleimani will ultimately be laid to rest between the graves of Enayatollah Talebizadeh and Mohammad Hossein Yousef Elahi, two former Guard comrades killed in Iran’s 1980s war with Iraq. They died in Operation Dawn 8, in which Soleimani also took part. It was a 1986 amphibious assault that cut Iraq off from the Persian Gulf and led to the end of the war that killed 1 million.

The funeral processions in major cities over three days have been an unprecedented honor for Soleimani, seen by Iranians as a national hero for his work leading the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force.

The U.S. blames him for killing U.S. troops in Iraq and accused him of plotting new attacks just before he was killed. Soleimani also led forces supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country’s civil war, and he also served as the point man for Iranian proxies in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Assad in Syria on Tuesday amid the tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Soleimani’s slaying already has led Tehran to abandon the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as his successor and others vow to take revenge.

In Iraq, pro-Iranian factions in parliament have pushed to oust American troops from Iraqi soil following Soleimani’s killing. Germany and Canada announced plans to move some of their soldiers in Iraq to neighboring countries.

According to a report on Tuesday by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, Iran has worked up 13 sets of plans to avenge Soleimani’s death. The report quoted Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as saying that even the weakest among them would be a “historic nightmare” for the U.S. He declined to elaborate,

“If the U.S. troops do not leave our region voluntarily and upright, we will do something to carry their bodies horizontally out,” Shamkhani said.

The state-run IRNA news agency later published a statement from the Supreme National Security Council denying Shamkhani made the comment.

The U.S. Maritime Administration warned ships across the Mideast, citing the rising threats. “The Iranian response to this action, if any, is unknown, but there remains the possibility of Iranian action against U.S. maritime interests in the region,” it said.

Oil tankers were targeted in mine attacks last year that the U.S. blamed on Iran. Tehran denied responsibility, although it did seize oil tankers around the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s crude oil travels.

The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet said it would work with shippers in the region to minimize any possible threat.

The 5th Fleet “has and will continue to provide advice to merchant shipping as appropriate regarding recommended security precautions in light of the heightened tensions and threats in the region,” 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Joshua Frey told The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Iranian Gen. Alireza Tabgsiri, the chief of the Guard’s navy, issued his own warning.

“Our message to the enemies is to leave the region,” Tabgsiri said, according to ISNA. The Guard routinely has tense encounters with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf.

Separately, Iran summoned the British ambassador over comments by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the British defense minister about Soleimani’s killing, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

Iran’s parliament, meanwhile, has passed an urgent bill declaring the U.S. military’s command at the Pentagon and those acting on its behalf in Soleimani’s killing as “terrorists,” subject to Iranian sanctions. The measure appears to be in response to a decision by Trump in April to declare the Revolutionary Guard a “terrorist organization.”

The U.S. Defense Department used that terror designation to support the strike that killed Soleimani. The action by Iran’s parliament was done by a special procedure to speed it into law and also saw the lawmakers approve funding for the Quds Force with an additional 200 million euros, or about $224 million.

Also Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the U.S. had declined to issue him a visa to travel to New York for meetings at the United Nations. As the host of the U.N. headquarters, the U.S. is supposed to allow foreign officials to attend such meetings.

“This is because they fear someone will go there and tell the truth to the American people,” Zarif said. “But they are mistaken. The world is not limited to New York. You can speak with American people from Tehran too and we will do that.”

Asked about Zarif, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told journalists America would comply with its obligations under U.N. rules to grant visas. He then referred to the Iranian diplomat as “a propagandist of the first order.”

A U.S. official who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record said the application couldn’t be processed in time for Zarif’s travel although it wasn’t clear if his request had been formally denied. A formal rejection would trigger legal technicalities that could affect future visa applications and could violate the host country agreement the U.S. has with the U.N.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed.

‘Prozac Nation’ Author Elizabeth Wurtzel Dies of Breast Cancer

NEW YORK—Elizabeth Wurtzel, whose blunt and painful confessions of her struggles with addiction and depression in the best-selling “Prozac Nation” made her a voice and a target for an anxious generation, died Tuesday at age 52.

Wurtzel’s husband, Jim Freed, told The Associated Press that she died at a Manhattan hospital after a long battle with cancer.

“Prozac Nation” was published in 1994 when Wurtzel was in her mid-20s and set off a debate that lasted for much of her life. Critics praised her for her candor and accused her of self-pity and self-indulgence, vices she fully acknowledged. Wurtzel wrote of growing up in a home torn by divorce, of cutting herself when she was in her early teens, and of spending her adolescence in a storm of tears, drugs, bad love affairs and family fights.

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“I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled brat,” she wrote. “I know that into every sunny life a little rain must fall and all that, but in my case the crisis-level hysteria is an all-too-recurring theme.”

Wurtzel became a celebrity, a symbol and, for some, a punchline. Newsweek called her ”the famously depressed Elizabeth Wurtzel.” She was widely ridiculed after a 2002 interview with the The Toronto Globe and Mail in which she spoke dismissively of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from the year before.

”I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me,” she said, remarks that she later said were misrepresented.

But many readers embraced her story and would credit her with helping them face their own troubles. News of her death Tuesday was met with expressions of grief and gratitude. The writer Anne Theriault tweeted: “It’s hard for me to even articulate how important Prozac Nation was to me at a certain point in my life.” Author Sady Doyle lamented that Wurtzel was regarded as a “Sad Example Of Something — female memoir-writers, women who got famous for being themselves, young women generally.”

“And to see her gone so young is a harsh reminder of how cruel that was,” Doyle tweeted.

Wurtzel’s other books included “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women” and “More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction.” Her essays were published in The New York Times, New York magazine and other publications.

In a 2015 piece for the Times, she described her initial success in fighting her cancer diagnosis.

“I live in an age of miracles and wonders, when they cure cancer with viruses. If I ever meet cancer again, I will figure it out. You see, I am very Jewish, which is to say … I am undefeated by the worst,” she wrote. “But I would have preferred to skip this. That would have been much better.”

Even the IMF Is Calling for Higher Taxes on the Rich

Raising taxes on the world’s wealthiest people is crucial to combating income inequality around the globe, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a blog post Tuesday.

“Progressive taxation is a key component of effective fiscal policy,” she wrote. “[A]t the top of the income distribution, our research shows that marginal tax rates can be raised without sacrificing economic growth.”

The statement is a stark departure for an organization that, The Guardian writes, is best known for “a free-market approach to running economies that included the belief that tax cuts for the better off would have trickle down benefits through greater innovation and higher growth.”

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In another break with the IMF’s past, Georgieva argues for more government spending on social programs:

When done right [social programs] can play a fundamental role to mitigate income inequality and its detrimental effects on inequality of opportunity and social cohesion. Education, for example, prepares young people to become productive adults who contribute to society. Healthcare saves lives and can also improve the quality of life. Pension programmes can allow the elderly to preserve their dignity in old age.

The Council on Foreign Relations calls the 189-member IMF “the world’s controversial financial firefighter,” called upon when one of its member countries is in a financial crisis, unable to afford imports or pay back debt to its creditors. The IMF’s loans are known for coming with strings attached, including austerity, high interest rates and privatization of public services. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Nobel Prize-winning economist and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz blamed the fund’s policies for exacerbating inequality in Russia and East Asia.

If Tuesday’s blog post is any indication, however, the current IMF chief might be starting to come around to Stiglitz’s point of view. The Guardian points out that the IMF has been slowly changing its outlook for a few years “amid evidence of weak growth, a concentration of wealth among the top 0.1% of the population, and a falling share of national output going to workers.” The organization has even released research that reveals the negative impacts of its policies.

Georgieva’s post comes at a time when global wealth inequality has soared. At the beginning of 2019, Oxfam, an international charity, released a report revealing that just 26 people own as much wealth as the poorest half of the globe. According to a September report from the U.S. Census Bureau, income inequality in the United States is at a 50-year high.

“Inequality has become one of the most complex and vexing challenges in the global economy,” Georgieva says, noting that it takes many forms: “Inequality of opportunity. Inequality across generations. Inequality between women and men. And, of course, inequality of income and wealth. They are all present in our societies and—unfortunately—in many countries they are growing.”

Read Georgieva’s full post here.