Chris Hedges's Blog, page 592

Don’t Forget Michelle Wolf’s Important Message About Journalism and Truth

What you are about to read may seem counterintuitive. In fact, you might even wonder why I’m bringing up what could be considered old news. Surely, I should be writing about the latest Donald Trump outrage or the newest Kanye fiasco instead of focusing on what happened at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on April 28.

However, mainstream media’s incessant need to manufacture sensationalism and their occupation with yellow journalism necessitates a revisit of Michelle Wolf’s thesis that she nailed at the door of corporate media. There is a reason pundits and news personalities took to social media to protest and howl at Wolf’s performance. Their anger had nothing to do with her jokes and everything do with her devastating criticism of the media-politico complex.

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald tweeted that cable hosts are rated not for each show but for each segment. Personalities such as Wolf Blitzer, Joy Reid, Sean Hannity and the rest of the highly paid pundits on TV are incentivized to focus on the outlandish, rather than report on news that matters. This is why the bombing of a village in Syria or the ongoing poisoning of Flint, Mich., gets short shrift, but the musings of a rapper or the infantile tweets of Donald Trump get elevated to the level of breaking news.

What is true of cable news is truer still of the whole of mainstream media. News has become commodified, with the focus on enhancing revenues instead of speaking truth to power. This is what happens when a few companies hoard a vast majority of the media landscape. The rush to maximize corporate profits has superseded the ethos of journalism. The days of muckrakers are long gone. We live in the age of muckers who preen on TV, pretend to be truth-tellers and carry on incestuous relationships with the authorities they are supposed to keep in check.

In many ways, we are at the nadir of journalism. Courageous reporting has become the exception, and buffoonery for the sake of attention has become our new normal. Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges noted in a 2010 speech that mainstream media personalities are nothing more than corporate courtiers. They put on face powder and dance for their patrons as they divert our attention from the ongoing fleecing of society and the raping of our planet.

It is this vaudeville of lies that Wolf was torching. One of the most powerful statements she made was when she spoke of corporate journalists’ love/hate relationship with Trump.

“You pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him.”

This is why Mika Brzezinski, Andrea Mitchell, Sean Spicer and ivory tower punditry caught a collective aneurism. How dare someone walk into their circle jerk of self-adulation and expose their fraudulence? As Thoreau once said, truths and roses have thorns about them.

On an occasion in which the press royalty gathered to be treated to roses, they were instead greeted with the thorny truth about who they are. The society of corporate propagandists and government shills were in an uproar because someone reminded them of the souls they once had before they sold them to acquire status and fame.

“You guys love breaking news, and you did it—you broke it.”

The funniest jokes are always grounded in the truth. Corporate journalism is broken beyond repair. When people’s livelihood and a company’s existence are dependent on the largess of the powerful they are covering, rooting out corruption takes a back seat to self-interest. If you want proof of this, go to CNN’s website, and you’ll be bombarded with so many advertisements you will feel like you are walking in Times Square.

The Bill of Rights enshrined the independence of a free press and made a robust fourth estate a vital component of our collective freedoms for a reason. The founders realized that a government that goes unchecked quickly becomes the very tyranny they fought against.

What we are witnessing in our time is the nullification of the First Amendment. A corporate coup d’etat sponsored by the plutocracy has commandeered both government and the press. Wolf walked into this nexus of media and politics and breached decorum by having the audacity to hold a mirror to the conclave of corporate sycophants that was the White House Correspondents’ dinner.

There are five stages to grief. We saw denial and anger last week as corporate journalists reacted with vitriol to the truths Wolf spoke. They will never get to acceptance. Fortunes and being treated like demigods have a way of making people rationalize their immoralities and focus on the depravities of a greater clown in the White House. It is up to us, the consumers, to stop drinking from the poisoned chalice of corporate news and seek truth somewhere else.

Daniels’ Lawyer Says Cohen Received $500,000 From Russian

Truthdig editor’s note: The New York Times reported Tuesday: “A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.” Similar reports were published Tuesday by a number of other major news organizations.

WASHINGTON—Stormy Daniels’ lawyer said Tuesday he has information showing that Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, received $500,000 from a company associated with a Russian billionaire within months of paying hush money to Daniels, a porn star who claims she had an affair with Trump.

Lawyer Michael Avenatti also said hundreds of thousands of dollars streamed into Cohen’s account from companies, including pharmaceutical giant Novartis, AT&T and Korea Aerospace, with U.S. government business interests. AT&T confirmed its connection Tuesday evening.

Avenatti did not reveal the source of his information or release documentation. But in a seven-page memo, Avenatti detailed what he said were wire transfers going into and out of the account Cohen used to pay Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to stay silent about her alleged affair with the soon-to-be president. Trump denies having an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Financial documents reviewed Tuesday by The Associated Press appeared to back up Avenatti’s report.

The memo, containing highly specific dates and amounts, stated that Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire, and his cousin “routed” eight payments totaling approximately $500,000 to Cohen’s company, Essential Consultants, between January and August 2017. The reason for the payment was not known.

Speculating without offering proof, the Avenatti memo said, “It appears these funds may have replenished the account following the payment to Ms. Clifford.”

Avenatti’s memo said the deposits into the account controlled by Cohen were made by Columbus Nova, an American investment company affiliated with the Renova Group, which is controlled by Vekselberg.

Columbus Nova’s attorney Richard Owens stressed in a statement that the company is “solely owned and controlled by Americans” and said that, after Trump’s inauguration, the firm hired Cohen as a business consultant “regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures,” but that it had nothing to do with Vekselberg.

Owens said any suggestion that Vekselberg used Columbus Nova as a conduit for payments to Cohen was false. “Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else, other than Columbus Nova’s owners, were involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement,” he said.

Cohen and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Cohen is currently under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, but hasn’t been charged.

At the time of the payments, there was an active FBI counterintelligence investigation — which special counsel Robert Mueller took over last May — into Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates.

Vekselberg was targeted for U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration last month. He built his fortune, currently estimated by Forbes at $14.6 billion, by investing in the aluminum and oil industries. More recently, he has expanded his assets to include industrial equipment and high technology.

Offering confirmation for more of the payments, AT&T said in a statement that Essential Consultants was one of several firms it “engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration.”

Avenatti alleged that the company made four $50,000 payments to Cohen totaling $200,000 in late 2017 and early 2018.

AT&T said Cohen’s company “did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.” Cohen is not a registered lobbyist, according to public records.

Such a confidential relationship would not violate federal lobbying laws if Cohen did not seek to influence Trump on the companies’ behalf. But hiring the president’s personal attorney for advice on how to woo Trump would be highly unusual, especially given that Cohen was never formally involved in the campaign or Trump’s administration.

Making the arrangement even stranger, the blue-chip companies’ payments to Cohen were routed to Essential Consultants LLC — the same company Cohen used to buy Stormy Daniels’ silence about her alleged affair with the President.

Trump’s Justice Department has sued to block AT&T from an $85 billion merger with Time Warner, saying it would hurt competition and consumers would have to pay more to watch their favorite shows.

Korea Aerospace, which is alleged to have paid Cohen $150,000 in November 2017, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical company, could not confirm or deny the payment, but said any agreements with Essential Consultants were entered before the company’s current CEO took over in February of this year and have since expired.

The memo alleges the company paid Cohen $399,920 in late 2017 and early 2018 in four payments — each amounting to $99,980.

Trump had dinner with Novartis’ soon-to-be CEO Vasant Narasimhan, along with other European executives, at the World Economic Forum in Davos shortly after the date of the final payment.

Larry Noble, senior director of the Campaign Legal Center, said there’s nothing technically wrong with companies like Novartis and AT&T hiring people like Cohen to provide insight into the president’s thinking. But he said the arrangement described by Avenatti “certainly doesn’t look good.”

“Why would you go to the president’s private fixer?” he asked. “He’s not known for policy and he’s not in the administration. You’re going to someone who can get you access and tell you about the person of the president. That’s unusual.”

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Associated Press writers Chad Day and Jeff Horwitz in Washington, Jake Pearson in New York and Mike Balsamo in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

W. Va. GOP Voters Reject Ex-Convict in Senate Primary

WASHINGTON—The Latest on Tuesday’s primaries in four states (all times local):

1:20 a.m.

Republican voters have rejected ex-convict Don Blankenship in a West Virginia Senate primary in which he sold himself as “Trumpier than Trump” but was vigorously opposed by the president.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey claimed the nomination instead, promoting his record of challenging policies of the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, GOP voters in Indiana chose wealthy businessman Mike Braun over two sitting congressmen to lead the party’s charge against a vulnerable Democratic senator in the fall.

In a possible sign of party unrest, however, congressman Robert Pittenger lost in North Carolina to a Baptist pastor, the Rev. Mark Harris, he narrowly beat two years ago. Pittinger is the first incumbent to lose his seat this primary season.

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10:30 p.m.

U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger has lost a Republican primary for his seat in North Carolina to the Rev. Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor he only narrowly beat two years ago.

Both Pittinger and Harris campaigned as evangelical Christians who would outdo the other to support President Donald Trump, who did not endorse either candidate.

Harris won Tuesday among GOP voters and now must take on Democrat Dan McCready, a Marine veteran who has raised almost $2 million to compete in the 9th district, where Trump’s victory was narrower than elsewhere in North Carolina.

The district stretches from Charlotte through poorer areas close to Fort Bragg.

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10:20 p.m.

State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has won a contentious Republican primary for U.S. Senate in West Virginia, beating convicted ex-coal executive Don Blankenship.

Morrisey also outdistanced congressman Evan Jenkins and three others in Tuesday’s race.

Morrisey will face incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin in November. Both parties view the general election as key to Senate control for the next two years.

The primary became a test of President Donald Trump’s clout. He came out strongly against Blankenship, who served prison time for a deadly mine disaster.

A two-term attorney general, Morrisey promoted his record of challenging policies under the administration of former President Barack Obama.

Morrisey deflected criticism of his past lobbying ties to the pharmaceutical industry and his roots in New Jersey, where he lost a 2000 congressional race.

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10:15 p.m.

West Virginia Republican Don Blankenship is conceding the Republican Senate nomination but remaining defiant until the end.

Blankenship said Tuesday that he “didn’t get it done” and “failed West Virginians,” but he warned that “the Republican Party needs to be careful about being hijacked.”

Establishment Republicans and President Donald Trump warned voters not to back the former coal executive who spent time in federal prison for his role in a 2010 mine explosion that killed 29 miners.

Blankenship tells a group of supporters that he still believes he was railroaded and mistreated by federal prosecutors.

The nomination still hasn’t been called between Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

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9:55 p.m.

West Virginia Republican Don Blankenship isn’t yet conceding his Senate primary bid, but he’s talking like a defeated candidate.

Incomplete returns show the former coal executive and federal ex-con running third behind Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Rep. Evan Jenkins. Incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin won the Democratic primary for his seat.

Blankenship says he has “no idea” whether he lost votes because of President Donald Trump’s tweet on Monday urging West Virginians to back either Morrisey or Jenkins. He says he has no plans to call Morrisey if he wins because he doesn’t “know anything positive” he could say to him.

The retired coal executive was released from prison last year for his role in a mine explosion that killed 29 men. More recently, he attacked the Asian heritage of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife.

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9:25 p.m.

U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci (ruh-NAY’-see) has won the Republican primary to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio this fall.

Renacci had the backing of President Donald Trump ahead of Tuesday’s five-way contest. Also in the race were Cleveland investment banker Mike Gibbons, Marysville small-business owner Melissa Ackison, Cincinnati-area financial management company founder Daniel Kiley and retired public administrator Don Elijah Eckhart, from Galloway.

Renacci started out running for governor but said he switched to the Senate race with White House encouragement after Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel (man-DEL’) withdrew for personal reasons.

Gibbons is also a Trump supporter and already was in the Senate race when Renacci entered. Gibbons has sued the congressman alleging false and defamatory statements, including that Gibbons is anti-Trump.

Renacci’s campaign discounted that lawsuit as “sad and desperate.”

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8:45 p.m.

An independently wealthy businessman who largely self-financed his own campaign has beaten two sitting congressmen to become Indiana’s Republican nominee for Senate.

Republican primary voters picked Mike Braun to challenge Joe Donnelly, who is considered one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats.

Braun ran as an outsider, blasting Reps. Todd Rokita and Luke Messer as “career politicians” who failed to follow through on campaign promises.

The multimillionaire owns Meyer Distributing, a national auto parts distribution business.

Braun has campaigned on his business background and has pledged to bring back jobs that have been outsourced overseas.

But an Associated Press review of his business record found he regularly imports goods from foreign countries and has been sued by employees in three states over unpaid wages and poor working conditions

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8:35 p.m.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has won the Republican primary for governor, sending one of the state’s best-known politicians into the fall contest to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik).

DeWine’s victory Tuesday leaves him damaged from a bitter and nasty primary in which Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor likened him to Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and questioned his loyalty to President Donald Trump.

The 71-year-old DeWine is a moderate Republican who served two terms in the U.S. Senate. But Taylor forced him to tack to the right to win the GOP nomination.

DeWine was endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party and was bolstered by his partnership with Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted (HYOO’-sted), who dropped his own governor bid to become DeWine’s running mate.

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8:30 p.m.

Obama-era consumer agency head Richard Cordray has won the Democratic nomination for Ohio governor despite a surprisingly rigorous challenge from former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (koo-SIH’-nich).

Tuesday’s win by the former consumer watchdog under President Barack Obama buoys Democratic hopes of reclaiming control of a critical battleground state, where Republican Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik) is term-limited.

Cordray led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Obama and President Donald Trump. He featured Obama in his ads and campaigned with Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who created the bureau.

Kucinich is a feisty former nine-term congressman and Cleveland mayor who energized voters with an anti-gun, pro-environment platform. He attacked Cordray as an “establishment Democrat” willing to compromise his principles to special interests.

A state senator and a former Ohio Supreme Court justice also competed.

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8:25 p.m.

Incumbent Joe Manchin has won the Democratic Senate primary in West Virginia, easily defeating challenger Paula Jean Swearengin.

With Manchin’s win Tuesday, he’ll seek a second six-year term in November. He’ll try to hold onto his seat in a state that gave President Donald Trump his largest margin of victory in 2016.

Both Democrats and Republicans view November’s election as key to Senate control.

Former Gov. Manchin has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of three decades. He’s worked to cozy up to Trump and nurture a bipartisan brand.

Records show Manchin’s campaign raised $4.5 million since the start of 2017. That included more than $935,000 in the first three months this year, more than five times the cash raised by Swearengin during her campaign.

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7:30 p.m.

Polls have closed in West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina.

All four states voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, and their primary races Tuesday are offering some insight into Republican voters’ mood two years later.

In West Virginia, ex-coal mining executive Don Blankenship is running on a promise to upend the establishment, much like Trump. His bid is making Washington Republicans nervous. Blankenship served time in prison for his role in a 2010 mining explosion, and he has used racially charged language in his advertising. Republicans worry Blankenship would lose a race against Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in November.

Voters in Indiana will chose from three Republicans vying to take on Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly. In Ohio, voters will nominate candidates for governor and Senate.

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7:20 p.m.

Greg Pence has won the Republican primary for an Indiana congressional seat his younger brother, Vice President Mike Pence, once held for a dozen years.

He defeated four others Tuesday in the 6th District race, including Muncie businessman Jonathan Lamb. He’d argued that Greg Pence merely relied on his prominent name and dodged debates.

Pence raised nearly $1.2 million for his campaign thanks largely to the support of his brother, pro-Trump groups and top Republicans. Lamb has loaned himself $800,000.

Pence is a Marine veteran and owner of two antique malls who once ran the now-bankrupt chain of Tobacco Road convenience stores.

He’ll be the favorite to win in November for the seat left open after Republican Rep. Luke Messer decided to give it up to run for Senate.

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7:15 p.m.

West Virginia Senate hopeful Don Blankenship prefers not to speculate about how he’d handle the general election campaign if he falls short in the GOP primary.

He said Tuesday that “we’ll know in a few hours” whether he will be the standard-bearer this fall or have to decide whether to back one of his opponents.

The former coal executive is among the top three candidates but has drawn fire from President Donald Trump and Washington Republicans who say he is too damaged to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. Blankenship spent time in prison for his role in a 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.

Blankenship did say that he believes state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey would be the weakest Republican. He says congressman Evan Jenkins or himself would likely defeat Manchin.

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7:05 p.m.

West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship says that President Donald Trump is getting bad advice and that he and others are falling for “fake news” in their decisions to oppose him in his hotly contested GOP primary.

Blankenship is among the top three Republican candidates vying to take on Sen. Joe Manchin. The Democratic incumbent is expected to coast in his own primary Tuesday.

Blankenship is a former coal executive who spent time in federal prison for his role in a deadly mine explosion. Trump tweeted this week that there’s “no way” Blankenship can win in November, and national Republican groups have spent money trying to defeat him.

Blankenship says if Washington Republicans sat down with him for two hours, they would be doing everything they could to elect him.

___

6:55 p.m.

One precinct in a North Carolina county will accept voters past the statewide closing time for the polls after the location failed to open its doors on time for the primary.

The state elections board voted late Tuesday to extend voting hours at the Hoke County precinct until 7:45 p.m. Polls statewide close at 7:30 p.m. Election officials told the state board the poll location opened 45 minutes late Tuesday morning, and two people left during the delay.

The state board declined to extend time at a Franklin County precinct located at an elementary school that was locked down briefly because of a nearby shooting.

Voters in North Carolina are choosing their parties’ nominees for dozens of legislative and congressman primary races. There are also primary races in Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana on Tuesday.

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4:25 p.m.

Voters across four states that Donald Trump carried in 2016 are fanning out to decide primary elections.

In West Virginia, Tuesday’s primary includes races for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and the Legislature. The big race to watch is the Republican primary for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s seat. One of the candidates is Don Blankenship, who served prison time for a deadly mine accident.

Indiana voters are casting ballots in a three-way race for the Republican U.S. Senate seat nomination. Vice President Mike Pence’s brother Greg is hoping to get the Republican nod for an open congressional seat.

In Ohio, voters are choosing their gubernatorial nominees and a Republican U.S. Senate candidate.

And in North Carolina, voters are picking their parties’ nominees for dozens of legislative and congressional primary races.

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Noon

Donald Trump’s political action committee is airing ads in West Virginia urging Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin to support his pick to run the CIA.

The ads paid for by America First are running as Republican primary voters decide Tuesday who will face the second-term Democrat in a fall election both parties see as critical to Senate control.

In the ad, CIA director nominee Gina Haspel is described as “a decorated intelligence officer admired by allies around the globe with bipartisan support.”

Haspel is acting director and would be the first woman to be confirmed. She has faced questions about involvement in the intelligence agency’s past program of detaining and brutally interrogating terrorism suspects.

The ad concludes: “Call Sen. Manchin. Tell him to support Gina Haspel for CIA director.”

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12:10 a.m.

Voters in the heart of Trump country are ready to decide the fate of Don Blankenship, a brash businessman and GOP outsider with a checkered past who is testing the appeal of President Donald Trump’s outsider playbook in one of the nation’s premiere U.S. Senate contests.

Voters across four states Trump carried in 2016 are deciding primary elections Tuesday. The stakes are high as the GOP braces for potential major losses this fall.

Trump warned Monday that a Blankenship win in West Virginia’s Republican primary would destroy the party’s chance of defeating Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in November.

The retired coal executive was released from prison last year for his role in a mine explosion that killed 29 men. Blankenship says no one will tell West Virginians how to vote.

Trump Administration Wants to Cut $7 Billion From Children’s Health Program

The Trump administration is asking Congress to cancel $15 billion in government funds, including $7 billion for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides health insurance to 8 million children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid yet cannot afford health insurance for their children.

The money at risk was approved as part of a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March. Trump signed the bill, but only after asserting his opposition to it and threatening to shut down the government over it. Now it appears that Trump wishes to take back part of that bipartisan deal.

Time writes:

The proposal is a Republican effort to claim fiscal responsibility after a deficit-increasing tax cut and a massive fiscal 2018 spending bill.

It would cancel unspent money from previous years’ children’s health insurance and would have no effect on current programs, the official said. Other unspent funds that would be canceled include $4.3 billion for a vehicle technology program and funds for Obamacare, the 2015 Ebola outbreak and railroad benefits.

The administration aims to follow up with a spending-cut plan that would take money from the current year’s spending bill, the official added.

The $15 billion request is scaled back from the administration’s initial goal of cutting a larger amount of domestic funds from the 2018 bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending bill signed by Trump in March, which has proven unpopular with Republican voters. The goal is to keep Congress from tapping unspent money for new purposes as has happened in the past, the official said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a written statement that the proposal was evidence that Trump and congressional Republicans “are looking to tear apart the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program, hurting middle-class families and low-income children, to appease the most conservative special interests and feel better about blowing up the deficit to give the wealthiest few and biggest corporations huge tax breaks.”

In contrast to the effort to cut the funding, Melania Trump announced her new policy initiative for children, titled “Be Best,” on Monday at the White House. In her announcement, the first lady said, “[Children] deserve every opportunity to enjoy their innocence. Every child should know it is safe to make mistakes and that there are supportive adults and friends nearby to catch them if they fall.” She added that we should all “encourage children to dream big, think big and do all they can to be best in everything that they do.”

The initiative will help children born addicted to opioids, work to prevent cyberbullying and encourage mental and physical health among children.

Television commentator Rachel Maddow noted the bad timing of Melania Trump’s announcement, which was juxtaposed with another policy decision announced Monday. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said a goal of the administration will be for “100 percent” of illegal border crossers to be charged with “improper entry by an alien,” a misdemeanor offense that could result in six months in prison. And since the parents will be charged as criminals, the kids—including infants—will be taken away and sent to detention facilities for children, possibly hundreds of miles away, while their parents await trial.

“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law […] If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border,” Sessions said.

The Los Angeles Times notes:

The new policy is expected to send a flood of deportation cases—and legal challenges—into federal courts. It also could put thousands more immigrants in detention facilities and children in shelters, and is likely to strain an immigration system that has struggled to keep up with a surge in enforcement under President Trump. Until now, individuals apprehended while crossing illegally were often simply bused back over the border without charges. That was especially common for people without criminal records or previous immigration violations.

Pence: U.S. Can Work With Allies on New Iran Deal

WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Trump’s decision on the Iran nuclear deal (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Vice President Mike Pence says the United States can work with its allies to reach a new deal that “limits Iran’s malign activity and prevents Iran from ever becoming a nuclear power.”

Pence said Tuesday that the U.S. is withdrawing from the 2015 Iran agreement because it can’t allow the country to obtain a nuclear weapon. He says the deal “virtually guaranteed Iran’s ability to start producing nuclear weapons by 2025.”

The vice president says economic pressure brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. He says the U.S. and its allies can “combine tough-minded American diplomacy and strong economic pressure” to reach a new agreement.

President Donald Trump called the deal “defective at its core” when announcing earlier Tuesday that the U.S. would be pulling out.

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5:10 p.m.

Congressional leaders are split, but not neatly along party lines, over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Some are welcoming the pullout, believing the 2015 accord was unsound. But others are worried that the U.S. is now in the position of reneging on an international commitment and without a backup plan.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Iran deal “was flawed from the beginning” and that “we can do better.”

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says it appears the Trump White House has no plan going forward. The New York Democrat opposed the deal negotiated by President Barack Obama’s administration and world powers in 2015.

The administration — and even Trump himself — briefed leaders ahead of Tuesday’s announcement.

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4:50 p.m.

The Syrian government is strongly denouncing U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal.

In a statement Tuesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry says the decision confirms once again America’s lack of credibility and commitment to international accords and agreements.

The statement published by the official news agency SANA says the international outpouring of condemnation for Trump’s decision indicates America’s isolation and its mistaken policies, which will serve to increase tensions around the world.

Iran is Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chief regional ally and backer.

Trump called the agreement “a horrible, one-sided deal” based on a lie. The deal lifted most U.S. and international sanctions against Iran, which, in turn, agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program and rigorous inspections.

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4:05 p.m.

The new U.S. ambassador to Germany is advising German companies to stop doing business in Iran following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal.

In a tweet just hours after he officially took up his duties, Ambassador Richard Grenell noted Tuesday that Trump said American “sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy.”

He added: “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”

Germany has Europe’s biggest economy and is one of the countries that negotiated the 2015 agreement along with fellow European powers France and Britain.

Trump announced earlier Tuesday in Washington that the U.S. would be pulling out of the landmark nuclear deal. The deal lifted most U.S. and international sanctions against Iran, which, in turn, agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program and rigorous inspections.

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4 p.m.

Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations says he’s disappointed at the announcement that the U.S. is pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Dmitry Polyansky was asked whether the U.S. decision might heighten tensions in the Middle East. He responded with one word to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York on Tuesday: “Sure.”

Russia is one of the six signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, which has been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

Asked whether the council would meet to consider the U.S. announcement, Polyansky said: “All options are on the table.”

President Donald Trump announced earlier Tuesday that the U.S. would be vacating the Iran deal, which he called “a horrible, one-sided deal” based on a lie.

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3:55 p.m.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he is “deeply disappointed” at the U.S. decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and calls on the five other signatories “to abide fully” by their commitments.

The U.N. chief on Tuesday also called on all other U.N. member states to support the 2015 agreement.

Guterres reiterated that the deal “represents a major achievement in nuclear non-proliferation and diplomacy and has contributed to regional and international peace and security.”

He said it’s essential that “all concerns” about implementing the agreement be addressed through the mechanisms in the deal.

Earlier Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would be withdrawing from what he called “a horrible, one-sided deal” based on a lie. The deal was brokered during President Barack Obama’s administration.

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3:50 p.m.

Former President Barack Obama is calling President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal a “serious mistake” that will erode America’s global credibility.

Obama’s administration brokered the deal. He says Tuesday that Trump’s decision to withdraw is “misguided,” especially because Iran has been complying.

Obama also warned: “The consistent flouting of agreements that our country is a party to risks eroding America’s credibility, and puts us at odds with the world’s major powers.”

Obama says that without the deal, the U.S. “could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.”

He says the deal remains a model for what diplomacy can accomplish, including when it comes to North Korea.

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3:35 p.m.

The leaders of Britain, Germany and France are urging the United States to refrain from taking action that prevents other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal from continuing to implement it.

In a joint statement Tuesday after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal, British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron urged Iran to “show restraint” and continue fulfilling its own obligations such as cooperating with inspection requirements.

They called on Washington to “ensure that the structures of the (deal) can remain intact, and to avoid taking action which obstructs its full implementation by all other parties to the deal.”

Trump has said “any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.”

___

3:20 p.m.

Israel’s prime minister is praising President Donald Trump for withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Benjamin Netanyahu called Trump’s decision Tuesday a “historic move.” He says leaving the Iran deal unchanged would be “a recipe for disaster, a disaster for our region, a disaster for the peace of the world.”

Netanyahu is a leading critic of the deal, saying it did not contain sufficient safeguards to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear-weapons capability or address Iran’s other activities across the region.

He says Iran’s aggression has grown since the deal, especially in Syria, where he says it is “trying to establish military bases to attack Israel.”

Earlier, Israel’s military said forces were on high alert and ordered bomb shelters open in the Golan Heights after spotting “irregular activity of Iranian forces in Syria.”

___

3:15 p.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is hailing President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from a nuclear accord with Iran.

The Wisconsin Republican said Tuesday that “from the beginning, the Obama-era Iran deal was deeply flawed.”

Ryan says Iran’s hostile actions since the deal was signed have only reaffirmed that it remains dedicated to sowing instability in the Middle East.

Ryan says that he would have preferred to fix the agreement rather than abandon it and that it was “unfortunate that we could not reach an understanding with our European partners” to do that.

He said Trump is “right to insist that we hold Iran accountable both today and for the long-term,” adding that he hopes the U.S. will continue to work with allies to address actions by Iran to destabilize the Middle East.

___

3:10 p.m.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn says President Donald Trump did the right thing by abandoning the Obama administration’s “bad deal” with Iran.

The No. 2 Republican in the Senate said Tuesday that “Iran has long thumbed its nose at the international community” and may have violated what he called a one-sided agreement. He says any new agreement “must prevent Iran from obtaining and employing weapons of mass destruction and be subject to congressional scrutiny.”

In announcing the withdrawal earlier Tuesday, Trump called it a horrible deal based on a lie.

Trump’s decision means Iran’s government must now decide whether to follow the U.S. and withdraw or try to salvage what’s left of the deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron says his country, Britain and Germany all regretted Trump’s decision.

___

3:05 p.m.

Iran’s president is saying there’s a “short time” to negotiate with the countries remaining in the nuclear deal, warning his country could start enriching uranium more than ever in the coming weeks.

President Hassan Rouhani (hah-SAHN’ roh-HAH’-nee) made the statement Tuesday immediately after President Donald Trump said he was pulling the U.S. out of the nuclear deal.

Rouhani spoke live on Iranian state television. He says he will be sending Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to countries remaining in the accord.

He says, “I have ordered Iran’s atomic organization that whenever it is needed, we will start enriching uranium more than before.” He says Iran would start this “in the next weeks.”

___

3 p.m.

The French president’s office says France, Britain and Germany “regret” U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Iranian nuclear accord, calling it a threat to global efforts to contain nuclear weapons.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that the “nuclear non-proliferation regime is at stake” because of Trump’s announcement Tuesday.

Macron’s office says the French president spoke Tuesday evening with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May about the Iran accord and next steps after Trump’s decision.

The three European countries negotiated the 2015 deal with the U.S., Russia, China and Iran.

The European powers strongly support the accord as the best way to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Trump says it’s not tough enough on Iran.

___

2:55 p.m.

The European Union foreign policy chief says the Iran nuclear agreement is a pillar of international security and she is calling on its signatories to continue to respect it.

The comments by Federica Mogherini came shortly after President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the pact. Mogherini says, “The nuclear deal with Iran is crucial for the security of the region, of Europe and of the entire world.”

Mogherini helped supervise the implementation of the 2015 accord. She says she is particularly worried by the announcement of new sanctions.

She says she will consult with Europe’s partners about those sanctions suggested by Trump “to assess their implications.”

Addressing Iran, Mogherini said: “Do not let anyone dismantle this agreement.”

___

2:50 p.m.

The Trump administration says it will reimpose nuclear sanctions on Iran immediately but allow grace periods for businesses to wind down activity so they don’t violate the sanctions.

It comes after President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

The Treasury Department says there will be “certain 90-day and 180-day wind-down periods” but isn’t specifying which sanctions will fall under which timelines. Treasury says at the end of those periods, the sanctions will be in “full effect.”

The Treasury Department says that includes secondary sanctions, which punish even non-Americans if they do business with Iran.

National security adviser John Bolton says effective immediately, nobody should sign contracts for new business with Iran.

___

2:40 p.m.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, is calling the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal “a mistake of historic proportions.”

He said Tuesday that breaking the Iran deal increases the danger that Iran will restart its nuclear weapons program, which threatens Israel and “destabilizes the entire Middle East.”

Durbin says Trump’s action “isolates the United States from the world at a time when we need our allies to come together to address nuclear threats elsewhere, particularly in Korea.”

Trump said earlier Tuesday that “great things” can happen for the Iranian people because of the U.S. withdrawal. The Republican president predicted that Iranians would someday “want to make a new and lasting deal” and that “when they do, I am ready, willing and able.”

___

2:35 p.m.

President Donald Trump says “great things” can happen for the Iranian people following his announcement that the U.S. was withdrawing from a global nuclear agreement.

Trump predicted Tuesday that Iranians would someday “want to make a new and lasting deal” and that “when they do, I am ready, willing and able.”

He added that a new deal could lead to the “peace and stability we all want in the Middle East.”

Trump was speaking from the White House when he denounced the previous Iran deal as “defective at its core.”

Despite lobbying from European allies, Trump moved forward with his campaign promise to pull out of the President Barack Obama-era agreement.

The Iranians have been sharply critical of the Republican president’s plan to withdraw.

___

2:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which he is calling “defective at its core.”

Trump on Tuesday signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing from the 2015 agreement and he is planning to reinstall sanctions on the Iranian regime. He says in an address to the nation that he will be reinstituting the highest level of sanctions and warning any country not to help the Iranian government.

Trump says America “will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail” and will not allow “a regime that chants ‘Death to America'” to get access to nuclear weapons.

The president says he made the decision after consulting with U.S. allies.

___

2:20 p.m.

President Donald Trump is railing against the Iran nuclear agreement as “a horrible, one-sided deal” based on a lie.

Trump’s comments Tuesday come as he announces plans to follow through on his campaign threat to pull out of the landmark nuclear accord with Iran during a televised address at the White House.

Trump says that if he allowed the deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race.

He also says a constructive deal could easily have been struck at the time, but it wasn’t.

Trump is calling Iran a “regime of great terror.”

And he says that “no action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them.”

Is Trump Being ‘Played’ by Israel With Bogus Intel on Iran?

Editor’s note: Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will be withdrawing from its nuclear deal with Iran The following memo by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) was first published on Consortiumnews on Monday.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Being “Played” By Bogus Evidence on Iran

NOTE: The evidence presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 30 alleging a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program shows blatant signs of fabrication. That evidence is linked to documents presented by the Bush Administration more a decade earlier as proof of a covert Iran nuclear weapons program. Those documents were clearly fabricated as well

We sent President Bush a similar warning about bogus intelligence—much of it fabricated by Israel—six weeks before the U.S./UK attack on Iraq, but Bush paid us no heed. This time, we hope you will take note before things spin even further out of control in the Middle East. In short, Israel’s “new” damaging documents on Iran were fabricated by the Israelis themselves.

Executive Summary

The Bush administration account of how the documents on Iran got into the hands of the CIA is not true. We can prove that the actual documents originally came not from Iran but from Israel. And the documents were never authenticated by the CIA or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Two former Directors-General of the IAEA, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, have publicly expressed suspicion that the documents were fabricated. And forensic examination of the documents yielded multiple signs that they are fraudulent.

We urge you to insist on an independent inquiry into the actual origins of these documents. We believe that the renewed attention being given to claims that Iran is secretly working to develop nuclear weapons betokens a transparent attempt to stoke hostility toward Iran, with an eye toward helping “justify” pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

* * *

Mr. President,

We write you in the hope that you will be informed of our views before you decide whether to continue to adhere to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran. We fear that upcoming decisions may be based, in part, on unreliable documents alleging secret nuclear weapons activity in Iran.

On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu displayed some of those documents in his slide show on what he called the Iranian “atomic archive.” But those are precisely the same fraudulent documents that were acquired by the CIA in 2004.

The official accounts offered by the senior officials of the CIA about the provenance of these documents turned out be complete fabrication. Journalists were told variously that the documents (1) were taken from the laptop computer of an Iranian working in a secret research program; (2) were provided by a German spy; or (3) simply came from a “longtime contact in Iran.”

However, Karsten Voigt, the former German Foreign Office official in charge of German-North American cooperation, revealed in an on the record interview with historian/journalist Gareth Porter in 2013 that senior officials of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, told Voigt in November 2004 that the documents had been passed to the CIA by a BND source. That source, the senior BND official said, was not considered trustworthy, because he belonged to the Mujahideen-E-Khalq (MEK), the armed Iranian opposition group that was known to have served as a conduit for information that Israeli intelligence (Mossad) wanted to provide to the IAEA without having it attributed to Israel. (In 2012 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed MEK from the list of terrorist organizations.)

Voigt recalled that the senior BND officials told him of their worry that the Bush administration was going to repeat the error of using fraudulent intelligence, as was the case with the notorious “Curveball,” the Iraqi living in Germany, whom the BND had identified as unreliable. Nonetheless, Curveball’s fictions about mobile biological weapons laboratories in Iraq—with “artists renderings” by the CIA of those phantom labs—had been used by Colin Powell in his error-ridden presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, leading to war on Iraq.

As for the purported Iranian documents, the CIA never ruled out the possibility that they were fabricated, and the IAEA made no effort to verify their authenticity. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei recalled in his memoirs that he had believed the documents were not really from the Iranian government and that, as he put it, “it made more sense that this information originated in another country.” ElBaradei stated publicly from 2005 through 2009 that the documents had not been authenticated, and he refused to use them as “evidence” of a covert Iranian weapons research program. And ElBaradei’s predecessor as Director-General, Hans Blix, has said he is “somewhat more worried” about the intelligence on the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program than about the dubious intelligence he saw on Iraq, because “there is as much disinformation as there is information.”

Each of the documents mentioned by both Netanyahu and the IAEA reports bears tell-tale signs of fraud. The most widely reported document in the collection is a set of schematic drawings showing efforts to redesign the re-entry vehicle of Iran’s Shahab-3 missile to accommodate a nuclear weapon. But the slide that Netanyahu displayed on the screen in his slide show provides visual confirmation of fraud. The drawing shows clearly the “dunce cap” design of the Shahab-3 reentry vehicle. But Iran’s Defense Ministry had already discarded that “dunce cap” reentry vehicle when it began to develop a new improved missile. That redesign began in 2000, according to the Congressional testimony in September 2000 of CIA national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs Robert D. Walpole. But the earliest dates of any of the alleged Iranian nuclear weapon program documents on the project for redesign of the reentry vehicle in theMay 2008 IAEA report on the entire collection are from summer 2002 after the “dunce cap” was replaced. The “baby-bottle” shaped reentry vehicle on the redesigned missile was not known to the outside world until the first test of the new missile in mid-2004. So those drawings could not have been done by someone who was actually involved in the redesign of the original Shahab-3 reentry vehicle; it was clearly the work of a foreign intelligence agency seeking to incriminate Iran, but slipping up on one important detail and thus betraying its fraudulent character.

The second document from that same collection turned over to the IAEA that has been widely reported is the so-called “green salt project”—a plan for a bench-scale system of uranium conversion for enrichment given the code name “Project 5.13” and part of a larger “Project 5.” Other documents that had been provided by the MEK showed that “Project 5” also included a sub-project involving ore processing at a mine designated “Project 5.15,” according to a briefing by IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen in February 2008.

But when Iran turned over detailed documents to the IAEA in response to its questions about Project 5.15 in 2008, the IAEA learned the truth: there had been a real ore processing project called Project 5.15, but it was a civilian project of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran—not part of a covert nuclear weapons program—and the decision to create Project 5.15 had been made on August 25, 1999—more than two years before the initial date of the project found in the collection of supposedly secret nuclear weapons research documents. That fact gives away the ruse surrounding the numbering system of “Project 5” adopted by intelligence specialists who had fabricated the document.

A third document that purportedly shows Iranian nuclear weapons research is about what Netanyahu called “Multi-Point Initiation in hemispheric geometry” and the IAEA called “experimentation in connection with symmetrical initiation of a hemispherical high explosive charge suitable for an implosion type nuclear device.” Significantly, that document was not part of the original collection that the CIA had passed to the IAEA, but had been given to the IAEA years later, and officials from the IAEA, Europe and the United States refused to reveal which member country had provided the document. Former Director-General ElBaradei revealed in his memoirs, however, that Israel had passed a series of documents to the IAEA in 2008-09, in an effort to make the case that Iran had continued its nuclear weapons experiments until “at least 2007.”

The summary picture we offer above includes unusually clear evidence of the fraudulent nature of the documents that are advertised as hard evidence of Iran’s determination to obtain nuclear weapons. One remaining question is cui bono?—who stands to benefit from this kind of “evidence.” The state that had the most to gain from the fabrication of such documents was obviously Israel.

Completely absent from the usual discussion of this general problem is the reality that Israel already has a secret nuclear arsenal of more than a hundred nuclear weapons. To the extent Israel’s formidable deterrent is more widely understood, arguments that Israel genuinely fears an Iranian nuclear threat any time soon lose much of their power. Only an extreme few suggest that Iran’s leaders are bent on risking national suicide. What the Israelis are after is regime change in Tehran. And they have powerful allies with similar aims.

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by Scott Ritter

We therefore urge you, Mr. President, not to go along with these plans or to decide to pull the U.S. out of the six-nation nuclear deal with Iran based on fraudulent evidence.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Richard H. Black, Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) and Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Kathleen Christison, Senior Analyst on Middle East, CIA (ret.)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Michael S. Kearns, Captain,Wing Commander, RAAF (ret.); Intelligence Officer & ex-Master SERE Instructor

John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

David MacMichael, Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Gareth Porter, author/journalist (associate VIPS)

Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)

Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (ret.); also Foreign Service Officer who resigned in opposition to the US war on Iraq

This Memorandum was drafted by VIPS Associate Gareth Porter, author of “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,” 2014

More Variable Climate Means a Less Just World

Climate change threatens the world’s poorest people with greater injustice as a more variable climate compounds the effect of the warming itself.

Dramatic variations in temperature – that is, extremes of heat, or cold snaps – will hit the poorest nations hardest. The variability won’t hurt just because in relative terms the poorest are the most vulnerable. The thermometer will swing most wildly where the gross domestic product is lowest.

That is: the people who emitted the lowest levels of greenhouse gases because they could not afford the fossil fuels that powered the developed economies will once again be hardest hit by climate change as a consequence of global warming, which will follow the build-up of carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere.

For every degree of global warming, new research from European scientists suggests that temperature variability will increase by 15% in southern Africa and Amazonia, and up to 10% in the Sahel, India and south-east Asia. Those countries not in the tropics, many of them wealthy and highly developed, may see a decrease in temperature variability.

The scientists put their conclusion with more than usual clarity in the journal Science Advances: “The countries that have contributed least to climate change, and are most vulnerable to extreme events, are projected to experience the strongest increase in vulnerability.

“These changes would therefore amplify the inequality associated with the impacts of a changing climate.”

The researchers analysed 37 different climate models to pinpoint those “hotspots” where the temperature variations would be the most pronounced, as ever more carbon dioxide reaches the atmosphere and continues to push global average temperatures ever higher.

They then matched their maps of temperature anomalies and soil moisture change against maps of gross domestic product per head of population, and greenhouse gas emissions. Once again, the least developed nations would be the hardest hit.

Intensifying hardship

It has been a commonplace of climate science that the injustice is built-in: the poorest will pay most dearly, as sea levels rise and low-lying atolls and river deltas flood, as increasingly violent windstorms batter the shantytowns and jerry-built housing of the rapidly expanding cities in the developing world, and as poorer farmers are forced off marginal land that will become either increasingly parched as the thermometer goes up, or more vulnerable to flooding as the moisture-carrying capacity of the atmosphere increases with temperature.

The issue of climate justice has been repeatedly raised at international level by campaigners, by religious leaders and by academics.

But the latest study goes beyond the familiar generalities to identify the more precise locations of future tragedy. Climate extremes – droughts, floods, heatwaves and ice storms – can destroy harvests, claim lives and sweep away livelihoods, and the poorest economies take the longest to recover.

“It is not only the fact that they are poor that makes these countries vulnerable, but also the relatively large change in climate variability. This issue of variability is different from the problem of mean warming which is actually much larger in high latitudes than in the tropics,” Sebastian Bathiany, of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, who led the study, told Climate News Network.

Drying forest

One instance is Amazonia, terrain characterised by rainforest. “The Amazon is predicted to become substantially drier as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, and this is the main reason for the increased temperature variability predicted for that region. In the last years we observed developments that also point in that direction – for example there were strong droughts in 2005 and 2010.”

And on the other side of the Atlantic, the injustice continues. “More intense heatwaves in Africa will mean more direct deaths for people and livestock, will promote the spread of key diseases, and will hammer agricultural production,” Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter in the UK, a co-author, told the Network.

“The general trend of urbanisation is not going to help either, as urban heat islands can exacerbate the problem, and when people are concentrated social tensions can escalate. There’s a very lively academic debate going on over whether hot extremes trigger human conflict at all scales from individual to civil wars – my reading of the evidence is that the effect is real,” he said.

“It’s a pretty bleak story – I want readers in the countries affected to know that we stand with them – we are highlighting these injustices of climate change to trigger action to avoid the worst and to redress those injustices that cannot be avoided.”

Vote No on ‘Bloody Gina’

MEMORANDUM FOR: Members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Opposition to Gina Haspel as CIA Director

We, the undersigned intelligence, diplomatic, law enforcement, and military professionals, are writing to urge you to vote against Gina Haspel to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

Putting Haspel in charge of the CIA would undo attempts by the agency—and the nation—to repudiate torture. The message this would send to the CIA workforce is simple: Engage in war crimes, in crimes against humanity, and you’ll get promoted. Don’t worry about the law. Don’t worry about ethics. Don’t worry about morality or the fact that torture doesn’t even work. Go ahead and do it anyway. We’ll cover for you. And you can destroy the evidence, too.

Described in the media as a “seasoned intelligence veteran,” Haspel has been at the CIA for 33 years, both at headquarters and in senior positions overseas. Now the deputy director, she has tried hard to stay out of the public eye. Former CIA Director Michael Pompeo has lauded her “uncanny ability to get things done and inspire those around her.”

That is true for those of Haspel’s mindset. But many of the rest of us who knew and worked with Haspel at the CIA called her “Bloody Gina” because of her direct involvement in the CIA’s torture program.

The President’s appointment of Haspel hurts morale among CIA officers who recognize that torture is wrong, inefficient, and counterproductive. It comforts people at the agency who still believe that “enhanced interrogation” is somehow acceptable.

The message it sends to our friends and allies (and the countries we criticize in the State Department’s annual human rights reports) is this: We say we’re a shining city on a hill, a beacon of respect for human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. But that simply is not true. We say those things when it’s expedient. We say them to make ourselves feel good. But when push comes to shove, we do what we want, international law and the 8th Amendment to the Constitution be damned.

The meaning of Haspel’s nomination won’t be lost on our enemies, either. The torture program and similar abuses at military-run prisons in Iraq were among the greatest recruitment tools that al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other bad actors ever had, according to legal experts, U.S. lawmakers and even to the militants themselves. It energized them and gave them something to rally against. It sowed an even deeper hatred of the United States among militant groups. It swelled their ranks. It was no coincidence that the Islamic State paraded its prisoners in front of cameras wearing orange jumpsuits (like those worn by Guantanamo Bay detainees) before beheading them. Haspel and the others at the CIA who engineered and oversaw the torture program are at least partially responsible for that, because they showed the world how the United States sometimes treats captives.

Do we Americans want to be a rogue nation that tortures people, like North Korea? Do we want to be a nation whose CIA Director will not be able to visit the heads of counterpart services for fear of arrest under the principle of universal jurisdiction for the torture she is known to have led? Are we proud of the era when we snatched people from one country and sent them to another to be interrogated in secret prisons? Do we want to be the country that cynically preaches human rights and then violates those same rights when we think nobody is looking?

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Gina Haspel Debate Spotlights America's Soul Sickness



by John Kiriakou

Do we want to be a government that lies to its own people and then punishes the truth-tellers who have exposed official activities illegal, immoral, unacceptable, and incompatible with our values, even when classification of embarrassing or illegal conduct is expressly forbidden? (Full disclosure: The drafter of this memo, John Kiriakou, spent 23 months in federal prison for revealing that torture had been approved at the highest levels of government.)

Our country cannot afford that. We cannot look the other way. We cannot reward the torturers. Gina Haspel has no business running the CIA. Please vote against her nomination.

On March 25, 2018, we sent President Trump a Memorandum urging him to withdraw Haspel’s nomination, citing a long list of cogent, compelling reasons to do so. We have had no response. You and your staff may wish to review it.

Matthew Alexander, U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (retired)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (retired) and Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Bogdan Dzakovic, Former Team Leader, Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (retired)

Philip Giraldi, CIA Operations Officer (retired)

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, U.S. Air Force, Intelligence Officer, and former Master SERE Instructor (retired)

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and Former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Karen Kwiatkowski, LTC, U.S. Air Force (retired)

Clement J. Laniewski, LTC, U.S. Army (retired)

Ray McGovern, Army/Infantry Intelligence Officer and CIA Presidential Briefer (retired)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council (retired)

Diane Roark, Republican Professional Staff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (retired)

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (retired)

Greg Thielmann, Former Director, Office of Strategic, Political, and Military Affairs, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State and former staff member, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Peter Van Buren, former diplomat, U.S. Department of State

Sarah Wilton, Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve (retired) and Defense Intelligence Agency (retired)

Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel, U.S. Army (retired), former Chief of Staff for Secretary of State; Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary

Rudy Giuliani Takes Money From an Iranian Terrorist Cult

Editor’s note: Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will be withdrawing from its nuclear deal with Iran.

As FAIR (1/11/18) has noted before, U.S. media—in an effort to find images of Iranian “dissidents”—routinely normalize the fringe group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), despite the fact that it has virtually no support or legitimacy in Iran. This was seen again this past week when a number of major outlets reported on a speech Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani gave at an MEK conference; the outlets failed to note that the group is widely loathed inside Iran, and seen as an illegitimate cult by experts across ideological lines.

The MEK has next to no support in Iran itself, where it’s hated for working with Israeli intelligence and fighting alongside Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s that killed roughly 500,000 Iranians. The group—which was formerly disowned by the last major protest movement inside Iran, the Green Movement—has carried out several terrorist bombings in Iran, and was officially listed by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization for 16 years, until it was removed by then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, after a lobbying effort by pro–regime change groups inside the United States.

Members of the MEK cult cannot have sex. Nor, according to former member Masoud Banisadr, can they have “sexual thoughts.” “The idea was that we were in a war to take back Iran, so you cannot have a family until the war is won,” the ex–PR person for the MEK told Vice (9/2/14) in 2014:

This was the excuse the outside world would hear, but inside we were told your spouses are a barrier between you and the leadership. We were ordered to surrender our soul, heart and mind to [MEK leader Massoud] Rajavi and his wife.

Several outlets, apparently unfamiliar with the MEK or its assortment of front groups, like the “Organization of Iranian-American Communities,” casually referred to it as some type of generic dissident group:

“The speech was hosted by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a group that aims to promote democracy in the Islamic Republic and was supportive of the December protests there.”—Politico (5/5/18)
“Rudy Giuliani delivers the keynote speech at the annual Iran Freedom Convention.”—Fox News (5/5/18)
“The 2018 Iran Freedom Convention for Democracy and Human Rights is meant to voice support for the Iranian citizens who protested against their leadership in December.”—CBS News (5/5/18)
“At an Iranian freedom event in D.C., Giuliani, citing NSA Bolton, made the motion of ripping up a paper when talking about what the Trump administration will do with the Iran nuclear deal.”—ABC News reporter Tara Palmeri (5/5/18)

None of the above outlets bothered to mention the MEK’s cult-like nature when reporting on the so-called “Freedom Convention,” or the fact that Giuliani has been paid thousands of dollars by the group. According to Politico (in another article, from 2016):

The MEK has paid Giuliani handsomely for years—$20,000 or more, and possibly a lot more—for brief appearances before the group and for lobbying to have it removed from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), which occurred in 2012.

Shouldn’t this be mentioned? Isn’t this relevant to what purpose the “conference” serves, and why its voice is legitimized and boosted by Western media and Trump flacks?

Part of what makes the MEK’s strategy so effective is their rebranding themselves as  benign-sounding, Western-friendly democrats just fighting for “freedom.” That media play along with this fiction is evidence of 1) widespread ignorance of the most basic facts of Iranian politics, even among nominal foreign reporters, and 2) how desperate Western media are for images of pro-U.S., pro-Israel regime-change advocates—a cohort that is close to nonexistent in non-cult form.

Though it wasn’t in reference to Giuliani’s speech, HBO’s John Oliver (Last Week Tonight, 4/22/18) committed a similar oversight two weeks ago, describing footage of an MEK crowd as “a group of Iranian dissidents.” That’s true, in a very narrow, technical sense—in the same way the Westboro Baptist Church could be referred to as “U.S. dissidents,” which would be equally misleading in terms of the impression conveyed.

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One notable exception was the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor (5/7/18), who pointed out the MEK’s cult status, as well as their payoffs to Giuliani, in his breakdown of the event.

The fact that almost no one else brought up the cult-like nature of Giuliani’s associates indicates that most in U.S. media are entirely uninterested in conveying fundamental facts about what’s going on in Iran. A troubling gap in its own right, but doubly so when the present administration is mounting a well-documented and deliberate effort to undermine and overthrow that country’s government.

Gina Haspel Debate Spotlights America’s Soul Sickness

Editor’s note: John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will hold hearings Wednesday to decide if Gina Haspel should be the next CIA director. The vote in committee and on the floor of the Senate is going to be close. And if Haspel wins, we will have the Democrats to thank for it.

You remember “Bloody Gina” Haspel. She’s already the CIA’s acting director and has had just about every high-level job in the building. She’s the godmother of the CIA’s immoral, unethical and illegal George W. Bush-era torture program. She was the chief of a secret prison, where she oversaw the implementation of the torture program and was personally responsible for directing the torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Nashiri’s attorneys say the torture of their client was so severe that he has lost his mind and can no longer participate in his own defense.

I had personal experience with Haspel. She was my boss in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). She worked directly for the notorious Jose Rodriguez, the creator of the torture program, who trusted his protégé and confidante to implement it.

I chose to go another direction. In May 2002, a senior CTC officer asked me if I wanted to be “trained in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.” I declined. I’m sorry to say that I was the only one to decline out of 14 people approached. A few months later, the CIA began to torture Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee.

In December 2007, I decided to go public. I told ABC News that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy and that the torture had been personally approved by President Bush. Three years later, I was charged with five felonies coming out of that interview, including three counts of espionage. I later took a plea to a lesser charge and served 23 months in a federal prison. It was worth it.

The Trump administration wants you to forget the CIA’s sordid history of torture. It wants you to believe that the torture program was legal, that it was patriotic, that it was necessary to protect Americans—lies that were dispensed with before the Bush people even left office. The Trump administration wants you to believe that Haspel is the only perfect candidate for the job. And the Washington chattering class has jumped on the bandwagon.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, the CIA’s favorite journalist, said that, sure, Haspel may have overseen the torture program. But she’s a Russia expert. That’s why we need her. Apparently, there are no other people in Washington who are Russia experts and are qualified to lead the CIA. And White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted Monday that anybody who opposes Haspel’s nomination but supports women’s rights is a hypocrite. Let that sink in. Just because she’s a woman. No matter that she’s a torturer.

In my view, a decision on Haspel’s nomination is an easy one. She had the opportunity to say no when she was asked to head the secret prison. She didn’t. She had the opportunity to say no when asked to oversee Nashiri’s torture. She didn’t. She had the opportunity to say no when asked to destroy taped evidence of the torture sessions. She didn’t. I don’t care how smart she is, how friendly she is, what a good officer she is or how much she knows about Russia. Her actions on torture ought to be disqualifying.

But the lemmings on Capitol Hill don’t necessarily see it that way. Some Democrats, both on the Intelligence Committee and in the caucus as a whole, are publicly opposing Haspel. But many aren’t. Dianne Feinstein of California has said that she will decide on Haspel after she has heard the testimony. Mark Warner of Virginia has said the same thing.

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The real danger, though, is elsewhere. First, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said weeks ago that he would not “whip” votes on Haspel. That means that all Democrats are free to vote however they want. They will not be asked by party leaders to vote no. Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia has said only the most laudatory things about Haspel. She should expect him to vote in favor of her nomination. And there are other Democratic senators running for re-election in states Trump won in the general election who tremble at the thought of being called weak on national security. We probably should expect yes votes on Haspel from Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., John Tester, D-Mont., and perhaps Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

With that said, the Republicans aren’t necessarily unified either. Rand Paul of Kentucky announced that he will oppose Haspel. Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Maine’s Susan Collins and Tennessee’s Bob Corker are undecided. Arizona’s John McCain spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he was tortured mercilessly. He knows what it does to a person. He’s a likely no vote on Haspel, although he is so sick with brain cancer that he may not make the vote at all.

The bottom line is that we really don’t know what will happen with Haspel. I’m not optimistic, though. This is an uphill fight. A clear majority of Americans—nearly two-thirds—support torture. It makes me sick even to say it. I fear that we’re fighting for nothing. Is this really the country we want to be?