Chris Hedges's Blog, page 598

Reproductive Rights Groups Sue Administration Over Birth Control Access

Three reproductive rights groups are suing the Trump administration over changes to the federal Title X program—changes that restrict comprehensive health services for women. Two separate lawsuits were filed against the Department of Health and Human Services: one by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, and another by Planned Parenthood affiliate groups in Wisconsin, Ohio and Utah.

The suits take aim at a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)—a document containing all the official information about a federal grant—for Title X. The FOA did not cite contraception use as a legitimate means of family planning.

The groups hope to force the administration to refocus the family planning program on contraception, and Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit asks the court to block the FOA.

By focusing on fertility awareness (family planning) and abstinence, the funding guidance could pave the way for the Trump administration to favor organizations that prioritize those methods over contraception to receive funding. Providers like Planned Parenthood could lose their Title X funds and would potentially be unable to serve patients who rely on Title X coverage. Title X coverage affects more than birth control: It also includes STI (sexually transmitted infection) and STD (sexually transmitted disease) testing, annual health exams and screenings for cervical and breast cancer.

“This is a radical shift, and the way the FOA is written, it just flies in the face of the best medical practice,” said Tanya Atkinson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, one of the plaintiffs. “It … could have a big impact on people’s health.”

“These changes would mean using government funds to promote no-sex-outside-of-marriage ideology,” Ruth Harlow, senior staff attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said Wednesday. “Trading in FDA-approved contraceptive methods for shame- and abstinence-based programs that we know don’t work is wrong, it’s bad for public health, and it’s outside the law.”

Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, said in a statement to NPR that the administration’s approach to family planning is “disrespectful” to low-income patients and undermines Title X “by shifting to a narrow, ideological vision of how people should live their lives: no sex until marriage; family participation at all ages; and natural family planning methods first and foremost.”

NPR provides additional political context for the lawsuits:

The lawsuit comes amid continued efforts on multiple fronts by abortion-rights opponents and other social conservatives to make progress on a longtime goal of cutting federal funds to groups like Planned Parenthood that provide a range of reproductive health services, including abortion. So far, despite controlling both Congress and the White House, Republicans have been unable to do so. …

Under Trump, many anti-abortion rights activists see a renewed opportunity for states to make such moves. Guidance issued early this year rolled back an Obama-era rule that had forbidden states to exclude Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from the Medicaid program.

In an interview with NPR, Steve Aden, general counsel to Americans United for Life, called that change a “big deal” for states wishing to prevent public funds from going to organizations that provide abortions.

“We think that’s laudable. We think that’s appropriate. And we hope that the process will continue,” Aden added.

The lawsuits were announced the same day that Republican state legislators sent Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa a bill that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which often occurs before a woman knows she is pregnant.

Trump Hires Lawyer Who Represented Clinton in Impeachment

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday hired a veteran attorney who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment process as the White House shifted to a more aggressive approach to the Russia investigation, which has reached a critical stage.

The White House announced the hiring of lawyer Emmet Flood after disclosing the retirement of Ty Cobb, who for months has been the administration’s point person dealing with special counsel Robert Mueller.

It’s the latest shakeup for a legal team grappling with unresolved questions on how to protect the president from legal and political jeopardy in Mueller’s Russia probe, which is nearing the one-year mark.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Cobb had been discussing the decision for weeks and would retire at the end of May and that Flood would be joining the White House staff to “represent the president and the administration against the Russia witch hunt.”

The replacement of Cobb with Flood may herald a more adversarial stance toward the Mueller team as Trump’s lawyers debate whether to make the president available for an interview with the special counsel and brace for the prospect of a grand jury subpoena if they refuse.

Although Cobb did not personally represent the president, he functioned as a critical point person for Mueller’s document and interview requests, coordinated dealings with prosecutors and worked closely with Trump’s personal lawyers. He had repeatedly urged cooperation with the investigation in hopes of bringing it to a quick end, and he viewed his role as largely finished now that interviews with dozens of current and former White House officials have been completed.

Yet Flood, who was embroiled in the bitterly partisan Clinton impeachment fight 20 years ago, may well advocate a more confrontational approach. His law firm, Williams & Connolly, is one of Washington’s most prominent, with a reputation for aggressive advocacy for its clients and a history of tangling with the government. It has also represented senior White House officials, including presidents.

Flood, a former law clerk to the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, has defended former Vice President Dick Cheney in a lawsuit brought by former CIA official Valerie Plame and represented President George W. Bush in executive-privilege disputes with Congress — suggesting he is well-versed in the powers of the presidency and may invoke those authorities as the Mueller investigation moves forward.

Flood was always the top choice of White House counsel Don McGahn for the job Cobb was given last summer, according to a person familiar with the hiring decision who described Flood as a “fighter.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Cobb and McGahn had different views on how cooperative the White House should be with the special counsel investigation.

Cobb’s retirement, though not a surprise, was nonetheless the latest evolution for a legal team marked by turnover.

Trump’s lead personal lawyer, John Dowd, left in March. Another attorney whom Trump tried to bring on ultimately passed because of conflicts, and the president two weeks ago added former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a pair of former prosecutors, Martin and Jane Raskin, to work alongside mainstay lawyer Jay Sekulow.

Critical decisions lie ahead. The president’s legal team has not committed him to an interview with Mueller, who has dozens of questions on a broad array of topics he’d like to ask. Trump initially said he was eager for an interview, but he hasn’t said so recently. His view of Mueller soured further after raids last month that targeted one of his personal lawyers, Michael Cohen, in a separate investigation.

Those interview negotiations are hugely consequential, especially after Dowd confirmed to The Associated Press this week that Mueller’s team in March raised the prospect of issuing a grand jury subpoena for Trump, an extraordinary move that would seek to force a sitting president to testify under oath.

It was not immediately clear in what context the possibility of a subpoena was raised or how serious Mueller’s prosecutors were about such a move. Mueller is probing not only Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates but also possible obstruction of justice by Trump after he took office.

If Mueller’s team decides to subpoena Trump, the president could still fight it in court or refuse to answer questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination.

Trump lashed out against the investigation in familiar fashion Wednesday, tweeting: “There was no Collusion (it is a Hoax) and there is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap).”

Also Wednesday, Trump echoed the concerns of a small group of House conservatives who have been criticizing the Justice Department for not turning over certain investigation documents.

“What are they afraid of?” Trump tweeted. “At some point I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!”

It was unclear what Trump meant by “get involved.”

Several Republican House committee chairmen have recently negotiated deals with the Justice Department to turn over documents related to Russia investigations into Trump and to a 2016 investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The Justice Department says that “dozens of members and staff from both parties” have viewed thousands of classified documents and House staff members have temporary office space in the department to review additional materials.

But some lawmakers who sit on those committees remain unsatisfied, particularly members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Some of them have asked for an unredacted version of a Justice Department document that sets out the scope for Mueller’s probe, a request that the department immediately denied because it pertains to an ongoing investigation.

An Ode to Eugene V. Debs and the End of Capitalism

Once upon a time, the word “socialist” wasn’t considered a dirty word. In fact, in 1912, roughly a million people (6 percent of the popular vote), voted for a socialist for president. He is the subject of filmmaker Yale Strom’s new documentary, “American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs,” in limited release in New York from April 27 through May 3 and in Los Angeles from May 4 through May 10.

A straight chronology using archival photos and footage, Strom’s movie tells the story of the pioneering union leader and founding member of International Workers of the World (IWW). Early in his career, Debs was a member of the Democratic Party with a focus on union issues and workers’ rights. He co-founded the American Railway Union (ARU), which galvanized a wildcat strike over pay cuts into a nationwide Pullman Strike that landed him six months in prison. Emerging from incarceration, he was the founding member of the Socialist Party of America and ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920. The first political figure jailed for anti-war speech, Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for urging people to resist the military draft of World War I.

He told the court: “Your Honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Opening and closing the film are remarks by the prominent Marxian economist, professor Richard D. Wolff, who has taught at Yale University and City College of New York. He is currently visiting professor at The New School and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has written and co-authored numerous books, including “Democracy at Work,” “Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism” and “Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian,” all released in 2012.

Strom and Wolff spoke with Truthdig contributor Jordan Riefe, offering insights on the current resurgence of socialism.

Jordan Riefe: Are we seeing a widespread resurgence of socialist ideas? Or is it mainly contained to millennials?

Richard Wolff: I’m getting more inquiries about socialism than I have ever had before in my life. If you’re talking about people 35 and younger, it’s overwhelming. But I’m noticing older people are beginning to rethink, partly because their children are talking to them.

JR: Many of them are Bernie’s age.

RW: Bernie Sanders, a moderate kind of socialist, has to open it up. It takes a little time to discover that the scary thing isn’t scary, and a nice old man from Vermont helps you do that. He’s been the right guy at the moment. I have been told by people close to him that he is going to run again.

Yale Strom: If Bernie retired tomorrow, the one thing he did is he galvanized people. They know the word “socialism” is not a bad word. I am optimistic, even if the Vichy Republicans don’t have the cajones to say to Trump: “No, no, you’ve gone too far.”

JR: Bernie ignited a lot of fervor, but is it enough?

RW: Having a person like Trump as the president accelerates the process. People are so disgusted, so turned off, that when he says, “I’m the champion of our economic system,” most people go, “Oh my God, I got to find something else ’cause this is not good!” The joke among socialists is that the best recruiter for socialism in America today is Donald Trump.

JR: Is that why this is happening now?

RW: It’s the reality of what you call scorched-earth capitalism. I point to the crash of 2008. That was capitalism falling apart in front of our face. And the politicians who used to say government was the problem begged the government to come save the banks, save General Motors and AIG. A lot of people understood that the system collapsed, and the government saved it.

JR: You think that’s what caught the attention of millennials?

RW: And now, 10 years later, as nobody has really fixed this system, everyone’s discovering, particularly the young people in college, that there’s a disconnect between the debts they’re accumulating to get their degree and the jobs and income that degree will enable them to obtain. They’re saying: “This system doesn’t work for us.”

YS: If all you worry about is money, money, money, then we are in an avaricious system that creates sociopaths. There’s got to be more to the moral fiber of life than just to be a consumer at the highest level.

JR: What do you say to people who point to Stalinism and the gulags when you mention socialism?

RW: If you want to look for gulags, countries with capitalist economic systems have the same skeletons in their closets. Look at our overcrowded prisons. We’ve got nothing to be proud of in how this society is dealing with its problems.

JR: And what of those who say that a culture so grounded in individualism isn’t suited to socialism?

RW: I don’t like leaving it to the individual to decide. I think that’s why we have inheritance tax or estate tax. In a free and democratic society, everybody more or less starts their life with a level playing field. And fine, if some people want to do more work than others and earn more money, an inheritance tax is a way of saying, “Enjoy your money, enjoy the wealth you’ve accumulated. But when you die, we’re going to have everybody starting with an equal chance.” That way, the class differences of one generation don’t become cement-like constraints on future generations.

JR: Won’t you need greater cooperation from the wealthy?

RW: Jeff Bezos sits on $120 billion, the richest person on earth. But that obscenity is also something that led Warren Buffet to say that he shouldn’t be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. So even at other levels of society, there’s a recognition, not necessarily that socialism is the way to go, but that capitalism has worked its way into a dead end, and something fundamental has to change.

JR: Define “dead end.”

RW: Here’s the craziness of capitalism: The more successful the employers are in lowering the wages or automating jobs, the more problems the public will have in buying the crap they’re producing. They are shooting themselves in the foot. This is an internally contradictory system.

YS: I made this film to make people think: “You know what, here is something different and better.” Is it socialism? Is it something we don’t even know of? But for sure, we are not the most perfect system.

‘Tully’ Delivers a Welcome Postpartum Digression

Whenever film director Jason Reitman encounters a loaded social problem (i.e., teenage pregnancy in “Juno,” corporate downsizing in “Up in the Air”) he greets it with a hug of cockeyed absurdism, a pat of understanding melancholy and then unpacks it, carefully.

That consoling, if resigned, tone is evident in “Tully,” a ruefully funny movie centered on the perennially pregnant Margo (Charlize Theron). She is expecting a third child even though (it is implied) for the better part of the past decade she has dodged postpartum depression in the way a novice surfer dodges waves during a tsunami. That is to say, unsuccessfully.

While the script from Diablo Cody (who wrote “Juno” and “Young Adult” for Reitman) is not likely to win any Mother of the Year awards, the perceptive performances of Theron and of Mackenzie Davis as Tully, the “night nanny” hired by Margo’s wealthy brother to lighten his sister’s load, are beautifully played.

Gradually Margo comes into focus as a once-wild thing resisting domestication, a onetime beauty dissociating from a body that no longer belongs to her. By the time she gives birth for the third time, her older two children have sucked the life out of her. Then the newborn suckles what remains. Given Margo’s round-the-clock mothering, she has no time to recognize herself or space to recognize her anger. Maybe she pushes everyone (including her husband, played by Ron Livingston) away because she’s trying to re-establish her own physical and emotional boundaries?

When Tully arrives, radiating calm and resembling a younger, prenatal version of Margo, the older woman relaxes quicker than tense muscles in a hot bath. Tully, 26, fit and androgynously beautiful, asks Margo about herself—a subject Margo hasn’t considered since her 8-year-old daughter was born. Mourning her youth, Margo confides to Tully, “Your 20s are great, but then your 30s come around the corner like a garbage truck at 5 a.m.”

As Tully incrementally assumes Margo’s place at the assembly line of domestic duties—the meal-making, the laundry, the housecleaning—Margo achieves a needed critical distance. She can see colors again. She can see how the delayed development of her 6-year-old son—and her refusal to acknowledge his deficits—have put her on overload. She can see how a prior unresolved relationship (with a woman, it is implied) intrudes between her and her husband. None of these insights would be possible without the gentle questions and observations of Tully, whose earnestness and insight seem too good to be true. Just when Tully is indispensable, her month with Margo is over.

How can Margo internalize Tully, this young doula who gives her such needed emotional and physical support? How can she replace this patient nurse who reminds Margo that children and spouses aren’t chores to be checked off to-do lists but surprise packages to be opened and enjoyed?

The movie’s answer probably is different from mine or yours—or Margo’s, for that matter. But for a movie that announces itself a satire on how Americans outsource parenthood, I loved its implication that the birth of a baby can precipitate the rebirth of self as well as that of a marriage.

Data Firm at Center of Facebook Privacy Scandal to Close

NEW YORK — Cambridge Analytica, the Trump-affiliated data firm at the center of Facebook’s worst privacy scandal in history, is declaring bankruptcy and shutting down.

The London firm blamed “unfairly negative media coverage” and said it has been “vilified” for actions it says are both legal and widely accepted as part of online advertising.

Cambridge Analytica said it has filed papers to begin insolvency proceedings in the U.K. and will seek bankruptcy protection in a federal court in New York.

“The siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the company’s customers and suppliers,” Cambridge Analytica said in a statement. “As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business.”

Facebook said it will keep looking into data misuse by Cambridge Analytica even though the firm is closing down. And Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, a digital advocacy group in Washington, said criticisms of Facebook’s privacy practices won’t go away just because Cambridge Analytica has.

“Cambridge Analytica’s practices, although it crossed ethical boundaries, is really emblematic of how data-driven digital marketing occurs worldwide,” Chester said. “Rather than rejoicing that a bad actor has met its just reward, we should recognize that many more Cambridge Analytica-like companies are operating in the conjoined commercial and political marketplace.”

Cambridge Analytica, whose clients included Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, sought information on Facebook users to build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate.

The company was able to amass the database quickly with the help of an app that purported to be a personality test. The app collected data on tens of millions of people and their Facebook friends, even those who did not download the app themselves.

Facebook has since tightened its privacy restrictions, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress for the first time in two days of hearings. Facebook also has suspended other companies for using similar tactics. One is Cubeyou, which makes personality quizzes. That company has said it did nothing wrong and is seeking reinstatement.

Cambridge Analytica suspended CEO Alexander Nix in March pending an investigation after Nix boasted of various unsavory services to an undercover reporter for Britain’s Channel 4 News. Channel 4 News broadcast clips that showed Nix saying his data-mining firm played a major role in securing Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential elections.

Acting CEO Alexander Tayler also stepped down in April and returned to his previous post as chief data officer.

Cambridge has denied wrongdoing, and Trump’s campaign has said it didn’t use Cambridge’s data. On Wednesday, Cambridge Analytica said an outside investigation it commissioned concluded the allegations were not “borne out by the facts.”

Facebook’s audit of the firm has been suspended while U.K. regulators conduct their own probe. But Facebook says Cambridge Analytica’s decision to close “doesn’t change our commitment and determination to understand exactly what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Cambridge Analytica has said it is committed to helping the U.K. investigation. But the office of U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in March that the firm failed to meet a deadline to produce the information requested.

Denham said the prime allegation against Cambridge Analytica is that it acquired personal data in an unauthorized way, adding that the data provisions act requires services like Facebook to have strong safeguards against misuse of data.

Why Mueller’s Strategy to Lure Trump Into Perjury Makes Little Sense

After a year of investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has, in effect, admitted that he has hit a dry well. He is under strong pressure to keep the charade going until the November elections, however, so he and his high-priced legal brain trust have devised a new tactic.

One would think they could come up with something less transparent. After all, Mueller was FBI Director from 2001 to 2013 and knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak. But it does not appear likely that he is going to get his man this time. So, rather than throw in the towel, he is making a college try at cajoling President Donald Trump into helping him out.

The May 1 New York Times print-edition lede by Michael S. Schmidt, “Questions for President Show Depth of Inquiry Into Russian Meddling,” bespeaks an embarrassingly desperate attempt to get President Donald Trump to incriminate himself. And, given Trump’s temperament and his dismissive attitude toward his legal advisers, the President might just rise to the bait.

Schmidt reports that Mueller’s high-powered legal team has prepared over four dozen questions for Trump “on an exhaustive array of subjects.” Assuming the Times is correct and the questions indeed are Mueller’s, an earlier electronic Times headline would seem more to the point: “Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction.” Not depth, as in the earlier headline, but breadth. Deep dry well already dug. A “broad quest,” yep, now that could be the ticket! The questions leaked to the Times betoken a very wide quest, indeed, stopping just short of the proverbial, “When did you stop beating your wife?” Or, in Trump’s case, “What discussions did you have with Stormy Daniels during your dalliance with her?” Schmidt reports that “the open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers.”

Here’s one “open-ended” query as described by the Times: “[W]hat happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow.” That’s the trip about which an opposition-research investigator working for the Clinton campaign (through a cut-out) came up with the scurrilous “pee-tape” story about Trump consorting with prostitutes.

Also included in the “exhaustive array of subjects” are questions like this: “What discussions did you have with Reince Priebus in July 2017 about obtaining the Sessions resignation? With whom did you discuss it?” In an attempt to put some gravitas behind this question, the Times explains that “Mr. Priebus, who was Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, has said he raced out of the White House after Mr. Sessions and implored him not to resign. Mr. Mueller has interviewed Mr. Priebus and would be able to compare his answers with those of Mr. Trump.” Aha! Might this be a clue to Mueller’s approach? Something informally called The Flynn-Papadopoulos Playbook for Dummies? What if the President’s recollection does not exactly match that of Priebus? A gotcha moment? Perjury.

But does anyone really care if recollections don’t square on such trivia? Never before has it been clearer that the Mueller investigation is 90 percent charade. Often, lawyers are not very good at the game. This is no exception.

Theater of the Absurd

Mueller knows better than anyone, where and how to find the dirt on the Trump campaign, collusion with Russia, or anything else. That he has been able to come up with so little—and is trying to get some help from the President himself—speaks volumes.

Mueller does not need to send his team off on a “broad quest” with “open-ended” queries on an “exhaustive array of subjects.” If there were any tangible evidence of Trump campaign-Russia collusion, Mueller would almost certainly have known where to look and, in today’s world of blanket surveillance, would have found it by now. It beggars belief that he would have failed, in the course of his year-old investigation, to use all the levers at his disposal—the levers Edward Snowden called “turnkey tyranny”—to “get the goods” on Trump.

Here’s what the “mainstream” media keeps from most Americans: The National Security Agency (NSA) collects everything: all email, telephone calls, texts, faxes—everything, and stores it in giant databases. OK, we know that boggles the mind, but the technical capability is available, and the policy is to “collect it all.” All is collected and stored in vast warehouses. (The tools to properly analyze/evaluate this flood of information do not match the miraculous state of the art of collection, so the haystack keeps growing and the needles get harder and harder to find. But that is another story.)

How did collection go on steroids? You’ve heard it a thousand times—“After 9/11 everything changed.” In short, when Vice President Dick Cheney told NSA Director and Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to disregard the Fourth Amendment, Hayden saluted sharply.

And so, after 9/11, NSA’s erstwhile super-strict First Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Collect Information on Americans Without a Court Warrant,” went the way of the Fourth Amendment. (When this became public, former NSA Director Adm. Bobby Ray Inman stated openly that Hayden violated the law, and former NSA Director Army Gen. William Odom said Hayden ought to be courtmartialed. The timorous “mainstream” media suppressed what Inman and Odom said.)

Mischievous ‘Hops’

On January 17, 2014, when President Barack Obama directed the intelligence community to limit their warrantless data searches for analysis/evaluation to two “hops,” either he did not understand what he was authorizing or he was bowing, as was his custom, to what the intelligence community claimed was needed (lest anyone call him soft on terrorism).

Intelligence directors were quite happy with his decision because, basically, it authorized them to spy on anyone on the planet. To explain: “Hop” is a term used in Graph Theory for social network analysis. (In WW I, this activity was called net reconstruction. During and after WW II, it was labeled contact chaining. The general practice in the U.S. goes back at least as far as the Civil War. By watching who was visiting whom in Washington, the Pinkertons were able to uncover a Confederate spy ring.)

“Hop” refers to one connection in a series of connections in a social network. For example, I call you (that’s the first hop); then you call someone else (second hop).  Another term for hop is degree of separation, 2 hops = 2 degrees of separation.

Several of us NSA alumni/members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) tried, in vain, to warn the White House of the danger of allowing the second hop to apply to government departments or to businesses. The reason is straightforward; if you include “businesses” like Google, for example, which has up to a billion connections per day, it will not take very long before you have included everyone.

Small wonder, then, that leaders of NSA and the rest of the intelligence community were delighted with Obama’s January 2014 decision. It meant they could continue collecting and targeting anyone they wanted. In essence, this means that the FBI/NSA/CIA believe they have approval to surveil any US citizen without a court warrant.  And that is what they are doing.

Parallel Construction & ‘Wiretapping’

But when the FBI, for example, does find evidence enough to prosecute, it has to circumvent rules of criminal procedure by creating a “parallel construction.” This involves obtaining evidence similar to that in NSA-collected data and using the new “legal” evidence in court, without telling the judges, lawyers, or defendants where they originally got it from. This, of course, can amount to perjury and applies also to any warrant requests and sworn affidavits submitted to get the warrants. Former FBI Director Mueller has said he was comfortable with this process, which the Bureau has been using since 2001, right after 9/11.

In a 2011 interview by Barton Gellman for Time magazine, Mueller made it clear his FBI had been using the “Stellar Wind” program since late 2001. This is the program by which the NSA has been collecting and storing domestic data on virtually all U.S. citizens.

So, in essence, Mueller and his FBI were fine with deceiving court and defendant alike, denying defendants the right to proper and full discovery. Finally, performing surveillance on anyone in the Trump campaign or in his administration, would mean the NSA/FBI/CIA could “legally” (by their own warped standards) spy on everyone associated with the Trump administration even retroactively, going back to before the campaign began. That means Mueller could have access to all the answers before he even asks Trump the first question.

We do not know exactly what prompted Trump to claim a year ago that he had been “wiretapped” (“wiretapping” has gone the way of the Edsel Ford), but if he was told he had been surveilled, he was probably accurately informed. No doubt he was/is but one hop, skip, and a jump away from others under surveillance, without any requirement even for the skip and the jump—much less a warrant.

Ray McGovern (rrmcgovern@gmail.com) was a CIA analyst for 27 years. From 1981 to 1985, he briefed the President’s Daily Brief one-on-one to President Reagan’s most senior national security officials. William Binney (williambinney0802@comcast.net) worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting. He created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.

I Know Which Country the U.S. Will Invade Next

By the end of this column, it will be clear which country the United States will invade and topple next. Or failing that, it will be clear which country our military-intelligence-industrial complex will be aching to invade next.

We all want to know why America does what it does. And I don’t mean why Americans do what we do. I think that question still will be pondered eons from now by a future professor showing his students a video mind-meld of present-day UFC fighters booting each other in the head while thrilled onlookers cheer (not for either of the fighters but rather for more booting in the head).

But we all seem to assume that America—the entity, the corporation—has some sort of larger reasoning behind the actions it takes, the actions put forward by the ruling elite. And almost all of us know that the reasons we’re given by the press secretaries and caricature-shaped heads on the nightly news are the ripest, most fetid grade of bullshit.

We now know that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. We now know that the crushing of Libya had nothing to do with “stopping a bad man.” If one does even a cursory check of what dictators around the world are up to recently, you’ll find that the U.S. doesn’t care in the slightest whether they are bad or good, whether they’re using their free time to kill thousands of innocent people or to harmonize their rock garden. In fact, the U.S. gives military aid to 70 percent of the world’s dictators. (One would hope that’s only around the holidays though.)

So if it’s not for the stated reasons, why does the U.S. overrun, topple and sometimes occupy the countries it does? Obviously, there are oil resources or rare minerals to be had. But there’s something else that links almost all of our recent wars.

As The Guardian reported near the beginning of the Iraq War, “In October 2000, Iraq insisted on dumping the U.S. dollar—the currency of the enemy—for the more multilateral euro.”

However, one example does not make a trend. If it did, I would be a world-renowned beer pong champion rather than touting a 1-27 record. (I certainly can’t go pro with those numbers.)

But there’s more. Soon after Libya began moving toward an African gold-based currency—and lining up all its African neighbors to join it—we invaded it as well, with the help of NATO. Author Ellen Brown pointed this out at the time of the invasion:

[Moammar Gadhafi] initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar.

John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” also has said that the true reason for the attack on Libya was Gadhafi’s move away from the dollar and the euro.

This week, The Intercept reported that the ousting of Gadhafi, which was in many ways led by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, actually had to do with Sarkozy secretly receiving millions from Gadhafi, and it seemed that his corruption was about to be revealed. But, the article also noted, “[Sarkozy’s] real military zeal and desire for regime change came only after [Hillary] Clinton and the Arab League broadcasted their desire to see [Gadhafi] go.” And the fact that Gadhafi was planning to upend the petrodollar in Africa certainly provides the motivation necessary. (It doesn’t take much to get the U.S. excited about a new bombing campaign. I’m pretty sure we invaded Madagascar once in the 1970s because they smoked our good weed.)

Right now you may be thinking, “But, Lee, your theory is ridiculous. If these invasions were about the banking, then the rebels in Libya—getting help from NATO and the United States—would have set up a new banking system after bringing down Gadhafi.”

Actually, they didn’t wait that long. In the middle of the brutal war, the Libyan rebels formed their own central bank.

Brown said, “Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank—this before they even had a government.”

Wow, that sure does sound like it’s all about the banking.

Many of you know about Gen. Wesley Clark’s famous quote about seven countries in five years. Clark is a four-star general, the former head of NATO Supreme Allied Command, and he ran for president in 2008 (clearly he’s an underachiever). But it’s quite possible that 100 years from now, the one thing he’ll be remembered for is the fact that he told us that the Pentagon said to him in 2002: “We’re going to take down seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan. We’re going to come back and get Iran in five years.”

Most of this has happened. We have, of course, added some countries to the list, such as Yemen. We’re helping to destroy Yemen largely to make Saudi Arabia happy. Apparently our government/media care only about Syrian children (in order to justify regime change). We couldn’t care less about Yemeni children, Iraqi children, Afghan children, Palestinian children, North Korean children, Somali children, Flint (Michigan) children, Baltimore children, Native American children, Puerto Rican children, Na’vi children … oh wait, I think that’s from “Avatar.” Was that fiction? My memories and 3-D movies are starting to blur together.

Brown goes even further in her analysis of Clark’s bombshell:

What do these seven countries have in common? … [N]one of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked.

What I’m trying to say is: It’s all about the banking.

So right now you’re thinking, “But, Lee, then why is the U.S. so eager to turn Syria into a failed state if Syria never dropped the dollar? Your whole stupid theory falls apart right there.”

First, I don’t appreciate your tone. Second, in February 2006, Syria dropped the dollar as its primary hard currency.

I think I’m noticing a trend. In fact, on Jan. 4, it was reported that Pakistan was ditching the dollar in its trade with China, and that same day, the U.S. placed it on the watch list for religious freedom violations. The same day? Are we really supposed to believe that it just so happened that Pakistan stopped using the dollar with China on the same day it started punching Christians in the nose for no good reason? No, clearly Pakistan had violated our religion of cold hard cash.

This leaves only one question: Who will be next on the list of U.S. illegal invasions cloaked in bullshit justifications? Well, last week, Iran finally did it: It switched from the dollar to the euro. And sure enough, this week, the U.S. military-industrial complex, the corporate media and Israel all got together to claim that Iran is lying about its nuclear weapons development. What are the odds that this news would break within days of Iran dropping the dollar? What. Are. The. Odds?

The one nice thing about our corporate state’s manufacturing of consent is how predictable it is. We will now see the mainstream media running an increasing number of reports pushing the idea that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism and is trying to develop nuclear weapons (which are WMDs, but for some strange reason, our media are shying away from saying, “They have WMDs”). Here’s a 2017 PBS article claiming that Iran is the top state sponsor of terrorism. One must assume this list of terror sponsors does not include the country that made the arms that significantly enhanced Islamic State’s military capabilities. (It’s the U.S.)

Or the country that drops hundreds of bombs per day on the Middle East. (It’s the U.S.) But those bombs don’t cause any terror. Those are the happy bombs, clearly. Apparently, we just drop 1995 Richard Simmons down on unsuspecting people.

Point is, as we watch our pathetic corporate media continue their manufacturing of consent for war with Iran, don’t fall for it. These wars are all about the banking. And millions of innocent people are killed in them. Millions more have their lives destroyed.

You and I are just pawns in this game, and the last thing the ruling elite want are pawns who question the official narrative.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it, and check out Lee Camp’s free weekly podcast, “Common Censored.”

Iowa Lawmakers OK ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Ban

DES MOINES, Iowa—Republican legislators sent Iowa’s governor a bill early Wednesday that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy, propelling the state overnight to the front of a push among conservative statehouses jockeying to enact the nation’s most-restrictive regulations on the procedure.

Critics say the so-called “heartbeat” bill, which now awaits the signature of anti-abortion GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds, would ban the medical procedure before some women even know they’re pregnant. That could set up the state for a legal challenge over its constitutionality, including from the same federal appeals court that two years ago struck down similar legislation approved in Arkansas and North Dakota.

Backers of the legislation, which failed to get a single Democratic vote in either Iowa chamber, expressed hope it could challenge Roe vs. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established women have a right to terminate pregnancies until a fetus is viable. Conservatives say an influx of conservative judicial appointments under President Donald Trump could make it a possibility.

“Today we will begin this journey as Iowa becomes ground zero, now nationally, in the life movement,” Sen. Rick Bertrand, a Republican from Sioux City, said during the floor debate.

Erin Davison-Rippey, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, said in a statement that the legislation was an “embarrassment” for the state.

“By passing an intentionally unconstitutional bill, Iowa Republicans have declared that they do not care about the foundational values of our state, or Iowa’s future,” she said. “They do not care how much taxpayer money will be spent on a lawsuit, they don’t care how many women’s lives will be damaged because of inadequate access to care, or how many families may choose to go elsewhere because Iowa is no longer a state where they are safe to live and work.”

The House began debate over the measure early Tuesday afternoon, voting it out shortly before midnight with six Republicans there opposing it. The Senate then picked it up, with approval shortly after 2 a.m. Wednesday. The nearly back-to-back votes come as lawmakers seek to pass a state budget and tax cuts later this week.

Although Reynolds hasn’t said publicly if she’ll sign the bill into law, press secretary Brenna Smith said in an email the governor “is 100 percent pro-life and will never stop fighting for the unborn.”

Several states have attempted to advance abortion bans in recent years. Mississippi passed a law earlier this year banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but it’s on hold after a court challenge. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear similar heartbeat bills North Dakota and Arkansas approved in 2013 that were rejected by the appeals court.

The Iowa legislation contains some exemptions, including allowing abortions after a detectable heartbeat to save a pregnant woman’s life or in some cases of rape and incest. Another provision prohibits some uses of fetal tissue, with exemptions for research. A woman would have to report a rape within 45 days to law enforcement or a physician to qualify for an exemption to the abortion ban. Incest must be reported within 140 days to receive an exemption.

Rep. Mary Wolfe, a Democrat from Clinton, said that “absolutely nothing” would stop a “desperate” woman from lying to a physician, who cannot investigate whether a pregnancy is the result of incest and cannot report it to law enforcement. Conversely, she said a child who is raped but delays reporting it until showing signs of pregnancy could be denied an abortion.

“Children who have been brutally raped, who are scared to death, who have little tiny bones and maybe forcing their rapist’s baby out of there is not in their best interest — too bad for them under this law,” Wolfe said.

The bill provides immunity to women receiving abortions but not to doctors who perform them. Their licenses could be revoked for violations, and prosecutors could consider criminal charges against them. That’s not addressed by the bill.

Republicans at the Iowa Capitol have long sought to approve legislation that would further restrict abortion, and their flip of the state Senate chamber in the 2016 election gave them a trifecta of GOP power for the first time in nearly 20 years. Last session, they passed a bill banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which is in effect.

A provision in that legislation requiring a three-day waiting period for abortions — among the longest wait periods in the country — was challenged in court. It remains on hold amid litigation being considered by the state Supreme Court.

Iowa Republicans have long said the 20-week ban was just the start.

“A baby has become something we can throw away. This bill says it’s time to change the way we think about unborn life,” said Rep. Sandy Salmon, a Janesville Republican.

White House Lawyer Ty Cobb Stepping Down

WASHINGTON—White House lawyer Ty Cobb will retire at the end of the month, the White House said Wednesday, further shaking up President Donald Trump’s legal team as the president intensifies his attacks on the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

Cobb, the White House point person on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, informed White House chief of staff John Kelly last week that he would retire at the end of May. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Cobb had been discussing the decision for “several weeks.”

Cobb did not personally represent the president, but he was a key adviser, coordinating the administration’s dealings with Mueller. His retirement comes as the president’s personal legal team has been negotiating the terms of a possible sit-down between Trump and prosecutors.

It also comes a day after one of Trump’s former personal attorneys, John Dowd, confirmed to The Associated Press that Mueller’s team in March raised the prospect of issuing a grand jury subpoena for Trump, an extraordinary idea that would seek to force a sitting president to testify under oath.

Dowd said Mueller’s team broached the subject during a meeting with Trump’s legal team while they were negotiating the terms of the possible interview with the president.

Dowd himself left Trump’s legal team more than a month ago.

It was not immediately clear in what context the possibility of a subpoena was raised or how serious Mueller’s prosecutors were about such a move. Mueller is probing not only Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates but possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

Trump lashed out against the investigation in a familiar fashion Wednesday, saying on Twitter: “There was no Collusion (it is a Hoax) and there is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap).”

Even if Mueller’s team decided to subpoena Trump as part of the investigation, the president could still fight it in court or refuse to answer questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination.

Dowd’s comments provide a new window into the nature of the Trump lawyers’ interactions with the special counsel, whom the president has increasingly tried to undermine through public attacks.

On Tuesday, Trump said it was “disgraceful” that a list of proposed questions drafted in response to Mueller’s negotiations with the legal team was “leaked” to the news media.

The about four dozen questions were compiled by Trump’s lawyers during negotiations with Mueller’s investigators earlier this year over the prospect of a presidential interview.

A person familiar with the matter, who insisted on anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, told the AP that the president’s lawyers extrapolated the list of expected questions based on conversations with Mueller’s team about the topics prosecutors wanted to cover with Trump. The questions reflected what the defense lawyers anticipated Trump would be asked, rather than verbatim queries that Mueller’s team provided, the person said.

The Washington Post first reported that Mueller’s team raised the possibility of a subpoena for Trump. The New York Times first published the list of questions.

According to the list, the questions range from Trump’s motivations for firing FBI Director James Comey a year ago to contacts Trump’s campaign had with Russians. Although Mueller’s team has indicated to Trump’s lawyers that he’s not considered a target, investigators remain interested in whether the president’s actions constitute obstruction of justice and want to interview him about several episodes in office. They have not yet made a decision about an interview.

In his tweet, Trump said there were “no questions on Collusion” and, as he as many times before, called Mueller’s investigation a “Russian witch hunt.” He said collusion with the Russians “never existed.”

In a second tweet, Trump said: “It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened.”

The questions do appear to indicate that Mueller is looking into possible collusion. Some touch on Russian meddling and whether the Trump campaign coordinated in any way with the Kremlin. In one question, Mueller asks what Trump knew about campaign staff, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, reaching out to Moscow.

Mueller has brought several charges against Manafort already, including money laundering and bank fraud. None of the charges relates to allegations of Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates, and Manafort has denied having anything to do with such an effort.

The questions also involve key moments from the early months of the Trump administration, including his reaction to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the Russia investigation and Trump’s firing of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

One question asks whether there were any efforts to reach out to Flynn “about seeking immunity or possible pardon” ahead of his guilty plea last year. Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller.

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Guilty Verdict in Beating at Infamous Rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Click here to see a Greg Palast article about the attack on DeAndre Harris. It was posted on Truthdig on Aug. 14, 2017.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—A white Arkansas man charged in the beating of a black man during a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been found guilty of malicious wounding.

News outlets report 23-year-old Jacob Scott Goodwin was found guilty Tuesday for the August attack on 20-year-old DeAndre Harris.

The jury recommended a sentence of 10 years, with the option of suspending some time, and a $20,000 fine.

Harris suffered a spinal injury, a broken arm and head lacerations that required eight staples after the parking garage assault. Three others were arrested.

Goodwin claimed self-defense. However, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony says it was Goodwin who wanted to square off.

The rally was held to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a city park.