Chris Hedges's Blog, page 602

Jill Stein and the Troubling Direction of Russiagate

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has turned over a large tranche of emails and documents to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating unfounded rumors that Stein was part of a Russian plot to subvert the 2016 US presidential election.

However, she has refused to oblige a series of demand that that the Green Party hand over “all communications with Russian media organizations, their employees, or associates, from February 6, 2015.” The committee also insisted it turn over “all communications related to the campaign’s policy discussions related to Russia” and “all communications with Russian persons.”

These requests provide one of the most revealing examples to date of the government’s exploitation of Russia hysteria to suppress independent politics and alternative media in the US. In its demand for communications with “Russian persons,” the Senate committee has weaponized xenophobia to implicate Stein and intimidate other public figures against associating with anyone of Russian origin. With a few notable exceptions, this escalation of the Russiagate investigation has gone largely without notice by American media.

Suppressing RT and criminalizing diplomacy

In its reference to “Russian media,” the Senate committee was clearly referring to RT, which provided Stein with an occasional platform during the 2016 campaign. (She also appeared regularly on mainstream cable news programs and in a CNN town hall). By singling out Stein’s public appearances on RT, the committee painted the Russian-backed news network in essentially the same light that Mike Pompeo’s CIA cast Wikileaks: as a “hostile foreign intelligence agency.” Stein’s campaign is nevertheless cooperating on this front and providing all documents related to her RT interviews.

The Senate appeared to base its view of RT on the January 2017 DNI report on Russian interference. While failing to provide hard evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the 23 page DNI report contained seven pages of crude content analysis of two RT programs that are no longer on air, accusing both of fomenting “radical discontent.” The DNI report went on to frame a third party debate hosted by RT America as an act of Russian information warfare. (The national cable satellite industry funded outlet C-Span has hosted nationally televised forums for third party candidates during the past two presidential elections).

Jill Stein was a guest at RT’s 10th anniversary celebration, where she appeared at a gala dinner and public media forum in Moscow in 2015. I was also a guest at the event, and interviewed Stein this year about her participation. She emphasized that she paid her own way to Moscow and had no opportunity for any substantial discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin or any other high-level Russian official.

To the Senate committee, however, the mere presence of Stein at a banquet table with Putin for a total of two minutes indicated that a sinister plot was afoot. Its inquiry into Stein appears to have been based largely on allegations contained in the so-called Steele Dossier. That document was a collection of unverified claims cobbled together by a former MI5 agent named Christopher Steele, who was paid by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. According to journalist Howard Blum, Steele relied on “an army of sources whose loyalty and information he had bought and paid for over the years.” James Comey’s FBI attempted to fund the continuation of the dossier, but the arrangement fell apart after Steele’s identity was publicly exposed.

By demanding all Green Party policy communications related to Russia, the Senate committee has sent the message that independent parties risk official retribution for bucking the Washington consensus. Its request is only the latest blow to any hope for detente between Washington and Moscow, and another reason why serious discussions between officials of the two nuclear powers will likely have to take place through secret back channels until well into the foreseeable future.

Casting all “Russian persons” under suspicion

Throughout the saga of Russiagate, Americans have been indoctrinated to fear not only the Russian state, but “the Russians” as a whole. Once the narrative of Trump-Russian collusion formed in mid-2016, liberal media quickly filled with terrifying headlines about Russian anchor babies, scary lists of Russian people at Davos, warnings of Russian Jewish emigres in America, and horror stories about the brain-contaminating green meddling rays of RT projecting outwards from flatscreens. According to James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence and now part of CNN’s armada of on-air former intelligence contributors, Russians “typically are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.”

Now, the Senate Intelligence Committee has demanded that the Green Party fork over any and every document related to contacts with “Russian persons.” The request is the most disturbing reflection yet of the xenophobic politics of Russiagate. Imagine if the US government was investigating a third party politician for their contacts with “the Mexicans,” or “the Indians,” or any other foreign national group with a significant presence inside the US. An outcry would immediately ensue among liberal-minded Americans, protests by immigrant rights groups would likely erupt, and the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards would issue thunderous condemnation of the McCarthyite proceedings.

Oddly, the committee’s demand that Stein identify every Russian she spoke to in 2016 — apparently including Russian-Americans — has been greeted with almost total silence, if not the outright approval, of the national media. And ironically, those who have most heartily supported the investigation into Stein’s dealings with “Russian persons” are the Democrats who have united against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and slammed his nativist diatribes.

Invoking the Constitution

In a letter to the Senate, Stein’s lawyer, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, rebuffed the committee’s request, declaring that her campaign “will not participate in a hunt for the identification of persons based on nationality or descent.” Emphasizing the unconstitutional nature of the demand, Verheyden-Hilliard added that “in the United States there are millions of persons whose ancestry includes Russian heritage, rendering the request impossible to satisfy, aside from its impropriety and the chilling effect it would have on political speech and engagement in political activity.”

In refusing to oblige the Senate committee’s most heavy-handed demands, Verheyden-Hilliard has invoked “constitutional privilege arising from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Thus the Stein campaign has asserted constitutionally protected freedoms against an official inquisition driven by rumor, innuendo, and xenophobia. So who is undermining democracy here?

The full text of Verheyden-Hilliard’s letter can be viewed here.

California Killer Search Initially Led to Wrong Man

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Investigators hunting for the so-called Golden State Killer turned to searching genetic websites in 2017 but misidentified an Oregon man as a potential suspect. A year later, after using a similar technique, they are confident they’ve caught the serial rapist and killer who eluded capture for four decades.

In March 2017, an Oregon City police officer, working at the request of investigators in California, convinced a judge to order a 73-year-old man in a nursing home to provide a DNA sample.

Court documents obtained by The Associated Press said detectives used a genetic profile based off DNA from crime scenes linked to the serial killer and compared it to information on a free online genealogical site.

Investigators cited a rare genetic marker, which the Oregon man shared with the killer, to get the judge to issue the order. The Oregon City man is in extremely poor health in a rehabilitation facility and was unable to answer questions Friday.

His daughter said his family was not aware that authorities took a DNA sample from him while he was lying in bed at the rehabilitation center until she was contacted by the FBI in April 2017 and asked to help expand the family’s genetic tree in the search for suspects.

The woman, an amateur genealogist, cooperated, but ultimately investigators determined none of her relatives were viable suspects, she said. The woman spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because she did not want the family’s name publicly linked to the case.

“I don’t like that they thought that my dad was the bad guy, but the truth is they were able to rule out people in my dad’s (family) tree,” she said. “They didn’t have to look at those people anymore.”

The family was angry the FBI had not told them about the sample but felt better after reading an AP story that investigators obtained a warrant, she said.

“I mean, they go from California to Oregon to get my dad’s DNA? They clearly thought he was the bad guy,” she said. “I think DNA is amazing and if you’ve done something wrong you don’t deserve to be protected.”

Ultimately investigators turned to a different genealogical site and arrested a man who they say was one of California’s most feared and elusive serial killers.

On Friday, Joseph James DeAngelo appeared in court to face murder charges. Handcuffed to a wheelchair in orange jail scrubs, the 72-year-old looked dazed and spoke in a faint voice to acknowledge he was represented by a public defender. He did not enter a plea.

DeAngelo, a former police officer, has been charged with eight counts of murder, and additional charges are expected, authorities said.

“We have the law to suggest that he is innocent until he’s proven guilty,” said his attorney, Diane Howard.

Investigators arrested DeAngelo on Tuesday after matching crime-scene DNA with genetic material stored in an online database by a distant relative. They relied on a different website than in the Oregon search, and did not seek a warrant for his DNA. Instead, they waited for him to discard items and swabbed them for DNA, which proved a conclusive match to evidence from crimes more than 30 years ago, they said.

The co-founder of the genealogy website used by authorities to help identify DeAngelo said on Friday that he had no idea its database was tapped by law enforcement.

The free genealogy website, which pools DNA profiles that people upload and share publicly to find relatives, said it has always informed users its database can be used for other purposes.

But the site’s co-founder Curtis Rogers said the search was “done without our knowledge” and the company does not “hand out data.”

Officials did not need a court order to access GEDmatch ‘s large database of genetic blueprints, lead investigator Paul Holes told the Mercury News in San Jose, California. Major commercial DNA companies say they do not give law enforcement access to their genetic data without a court order.

But critics warned the method could jeopardize privacy rights.

“People who submit DNA for ancestors testing are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” said Steve Mercer, chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.

“It seems crazy to say a police officer investigating a very serious crime can’t do something your cousin can do,” said Erin Murphy, a DNA expert and professor at New York University School of Law. “If an ordinary person can do this, why can’t a cop? On the other hand, if an ordinary person had done this, we might think they shouldn’t.”

While most consumers would submit DNA to a commercial company such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe to create a genetic profile, the FBI did so for investigators, Holes told The New York Times.

The profile was then uploaded to GEDmatch using a fake profile and pseudonym, the Times reported. The site allows users to remain anonymous.

A year earlier, Holes had identified a rare genetic marker in the assailant’s DNA. He entered the information among 189,000 profiles at the genealogy website, YSearch.org, and the results led to a relative of the Oregon man.

A spokeswoman for YSearch.org, which is provided by FamilyTreeDNA.com, said the company was not contacted by law enforcement. The company said it takes the privacy of its customers very seriously but supports “ethically and legally justified uses” of scientific research in genetics and genealogy.

Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert told AP she was unaware of the Oregon misfire and didn’t believe genealogical sites were used before DeAngelo was identified.

___

Balsamo reported from Los Angeles and Flaccus reported from Oregon City, Oregon. Associated Press writers Brian Melley in Los Angeles and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

Oman’s Rocks Could Help the Fight Against Climate Change

Oman’s rocks are more than just scenery, a rugged backdrop for travel photos to show off to friends back home. In fact, as The New York Times reported Friday, the rocks of this small peninsula in the Persian Gulf could play a role in the fight against climate change.

They are quietly “hard at work,” as the Times notes, “naturally reacting with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turning it into stone.” The carbon forms what Times writer Henry Fountain describes as an “ice-like crust.”

The process of capturing and neutralizing harmful CO2 is called carbon mineralization, and scientists are seeking to determine whether the process can be reproduced inexpensively and on a wider scale. If it can, the rocks, according to the article, “could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the Industrial Age.”

“And,” Fountain continues, “by turning that CO2 into stone, the rocks in Oman—or in a number of other places around the world that have similar geological formations—would ensure that the gas stayed out of the atmosphere forever.”

It’s a promising opportunity, but it’s not yet known whether this kind of carbon mineralization can be reproduced on a mass scale. There are fewer than 20 projects to capture and store carbon currently underway, and all of these remove CO2 from fossil-fuel power plants and store it underground. The process the rocks are involved in is called direct air capture, absorbing and neutralizing CO2 that’s already in the air.

Some researchers dismiss direct air capture as too expensive or logistically cumbersome, but as the amount of greenhouse gases in the air rises, scientists will have to try anything they can to alleviate the harmful impacts of climate change. Two scientists quoted in Fountain’s piece have found a support from De Beers, the world’s largest diamond company, which says it’s going to conduct trials involving carbon dioxide absorption by mine waste.

“Relative to the global problem, [the De Beers experiment is] really just a drop in the bucket,” Dr. Evelyn Mervine, a scientist who works for De Beers, told The Times. “But it sets a really good precedent.”

Finding Calcutta in ‘The Heart of Nuba’

“Catman needs our help,” read the subject line from a former Brown University football teammate’s email. “Please consider donating to our brother, Dr. Tom Catena, in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. He is the only doctor for nearly a million people who have suffered for decades at the hands of President Omar al-Bashir. Timing is crucial!”

My adrenaline surged. I was transported back to my football-playing days when Tom and I fought side by side on the same defensive line for our beloved Bears. I thought about the bond I had with my former teammates. But what kind of assistance did he need? Was he personally in danger? How could I help?

It soon became clear that a truck heading to the Mother of Mercy Hospital, for which Tom was sole doctor and medical director, was carrying a year’s worth of medical supplies and food when it was hijacked and ransacked somewhere in South Sudan or Sudan. Without these critical provisions, many people would suffer and die, especially with only weeks remaining before the rainy season arrived and all forms of transportation would come to a screeching halt. This felt like the fourth quarter of a tense game, except this time it was fourth-and-one on the goal line and a matter of life and death.

Within three weeks, the Brown football community raised more than $102,000. A new truck was purchased, then filled with even more foodstuffs, vaccines and medical equipment than the original one. The truck made it to the hospital just two days before the heavy rains of Sudan began to fall. Dr. Tom had his patients’ backs, and we, in turn, still had his.

That’s the moment when the idea of making a film about my fellow teammate and classmate struck me. Several months later I met Tom in a small café located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was gaunt. The All-American, All-Ivy League, 240-pound nose guard was no more than 145 pounds, and that was being generous. He said he was blessed to have a choice of meals each day—rice and beans or beans and rice. He had half a biscuit with coffee while I had the farmer’s special loaded with calories.

“My stomach has shrunk down to the size of my fist,” Tom said, explaining his wafer-thin frame.

This was a rare occasion when Tom was away from the Nuba Mountains. We had been told that Tom made the arduous trip to the U.S. from Sudan to receive a prestigious award from the Ivy Football Association, but he eventually confessed that he was mainly back to petition the United Nations to return to its recently abandoned post in Nuba. I pitched him my documentary idea, and he swiftly declined, citing his banality as a character but, more importantly, not wanting to bring attention to himself. As we say on the gridiron, uphill sledding.

Dr. Tom Catena and Kenneth Carlson. (Kenneth Carlson)

This got me thinking: If not a film, what could I do to help? Tom said without hesitation: “Mother Teresa was asked what an ordinary person could do to help build a better world. She answered: Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are—in your own homes, in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have the eyes to see.”

Not the reply I was expecting from a former monster of the gridiron.

His rebuttal knocked me back. Those very words of Mother Teresa have deeply affected me since childhood, and although I’ve tried to use them as a guide for my life and my work, I didn’t realize until then how profound an impact they truly have had on my life.

A little background: I come from a family of ministers going back to my great-grandfather, so the idea of having a calling to help people is ingrained in my DNA. I learned empathy, and truth be told, I didn’t know there was any other way to live one’s life. My father taught my brother and me that helping others was the greatest calling one could have.

So when one of my wife’s family members was senselessly murdered in the early ’90s, I was prepared to counsel my loved ones through their grief. Though I was helping others get over her death, I’m not sure I ever did. I decided to channel my own grief and loss by taking a position with the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” where the host, John Walsh, used television to bring fugitives and murderers to justice.

I went from producing and directing TV episodes to making documentaries, always looking to make a significant impact. But honestly, none of my films changed the world. As I have learned, life can have a way of distracting us from “finding our own Calcutta.”

I was struck by this realization when I reconnected with Tom at that Manhattan café and became aware of just how different our lives had become. I moved to California to make movies. I married my college sweetheart, had three children and have done well in business. Tom went into the Navy, attended medical school, remained single and moved to Sudan, where for the last decade he has devoted his life to being a surgeon at the Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains. (I had no idea where the Nuba Mountains were located.)

It became clear that I needed to put aside Tom’s humility and move forward on making a film. The more research I did, the more I became inspired by Tom’s life, by the immense sacrifice he made by moving away from his family in upstate New York and his unwavering dedication to his work. I became convinced his story, and the story of the Nuban people, had to be told.

For more than five years, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been bombing civilians in his country’s Nuba Mountains, resulting in an indictment by the International Criminal Court on 10 counts of war crimes, including crimes against humanity, as well as genocide in Darfur.

He is a wanted criminal, yet he travels freely outside of Sudan, avoiding capture.

Nuba should be as familiar to people around the world as Darfur, but it is largely unnoticed. It is not of strategic value to the U.S.; it doesn’t export much oil and has very little gold. Part of the reason people aren’t aware of this genocide is because the government in Khartoum doesn’t permit visitors, including foreign humanitarian workers of any kind, and especially people like me—filmmakers and journalists.

These conditions present a huge challenge to Dr. Tom, as he is fondly called by his staff and patients. Tom does everything from training his staff to working seven days a week, from delivering babies to treating amputations and lacerations that result from the bombings. He is the only surgeon in that entire war-torn region; taking a day off can mean death for one or many patients.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times has reported that, in Sudan, Dr. Tom has been compared to Jesus Christ. This does not exaggerate how people feel about him.

The more I learned about what Tom was doing, the more determined I became to tell his thrilling, yet heart-wrenching story. I embarked upon my first journey to the Nuba Mountains to persuade Tom to allow me to make a feature-length film. He said if I made it all the way to him in southern Kordafan, he’d consider cooperating. No promises, though. Little did I know how difficult getting to him would be.

Since President al-Bashir doesn’t allow filmmakers or international journalists into Sudan, I had to be smuggled across the border from South Sudan. During my first trip, while I was standing next to the plane on a dusty airstrip in 115-degree heat, I was surrounded by boy soldiers, many of them around 12 to 16 years old, some even younger.

Robbed of their innocence, these child soldiers were not playing with toy guns. They were pointing fully automatic AK-47s directly at me. In a matter of seconds, but what seemed like an eternity, there was a flurry of shouting, shoving and spitting on me. These kids were close in age to my own kids, yet their reality was much different. They were hardened soldiers ready to take measures into their own hands.

I realized those moments might be my last. I could die on that airstrip in South Sudan. Finally, out of desperation, I mentioned Dr. Tom’s name and the mayhem stopped. Literally stopped.

“You know Dr. Tom?” one of the adult soldiers asked. I said “Yes! We are close friends. We attended university together, even played on the same American football team together!” After much discussion, miraculously, I was released, allowed back on my plane without further incident. The pilot asked if I knew how lucky I was, and I readily agreed.

“No,” he said. “Do you know how truly lucky you are? Two weeks ago, 26 people were taken off this very cargo plane, dragged to the corner of the airstrip,” he said, pointing, “and had their throats slit, left to bleed out, to be eaten by wild animals, the lowest form of death in Africa.”

At that moment I began to understand the meaning of the film I was hoping to make: Dr. Tom is so critically important to the survival of so many people—and so loved by them—that the mere mention of his name saved my life. Also at that moment, Tom’s words—“If you make it to me”—took on greater heft. On the hellish drive in mud-covered Land Cruisers into the remote Nuba Mountains, we dodged several barrel bombs dropped by Soviet-built Antonovs.

Upon arrival at Mother of Mercy Hospital, Tom gave me what I remembered as an All-American nose guard hug, although almost immediately, whatever excitement and optimism I felt on this quest was quickly “bombed out of existence.” Seventeen casualties arrived at the hospital, the latest victims of government bombings in the region. Dr. Tom, always on call, switched into scrubs and high gear. Cameras came out and we started to film. The “we” was just me and the only cameraman out of Nairobi I could find with enough courage, or perhaps stupidity, to accept the assignment.

Nine of those casualties were kids who had been sleeping in their tukul, a thatched hut, in a small village when an artillery shell exploded nearby. Three were burned to death immediately. Six traveled more than 25 miles on foot to the hospital with second- and third-degree burns. Three of them died within 24 hours.

A 7-year-old boy, Shanta, was one of the survivors. More than 70 percent of his body had third-degree burns, a burn so severe it penetrates deep tissue and chars the skin. I sat with him, prayed over him, talked to him about life. His only response was, “Omi, Omi”—which translates to “My mother, my mother.” It broke my heart.

 

This is Shanta, the young burn victim. (Kenneth Carlson)

Seeing my willingness to help, Tom eventually, although reluctantly, gave me clearance to make a film. Even with his approval, it took about a week of begging before he granted me an interview. I asked many questions. He offered articulate yet passionate answers. Our conversation continued to come back to the plight of Shanta and those like him. We both were devastated.

To see a child suffering like that, the life draining out of him, to think of your own children in that moment, is heartbreaking. Shanta had a will to live I have never witnessed, but Tom had seen it over and over. For close to a month, Tom daily cleaned Shanta’s maggot-ridden scabs (which hatched hourly) as the boy fought to survive. Ultimately, his will was not enough, and the resources of the hospital were too limited. After three weeks of shooting, I had to leave Tom and the Mother of Mercy Hospital. Shanta died the next day. His death affected me to my core. Here was a kid who was simply born in the wrong part of the world, killed by his own government. I would not let his story die. I couldn’t go back to my life in California and forget what I had experienced.

I knew, as a documentary filmmaker, that this was a life-changing experience, an opportunity to not just tell a true story but to help change the ending. The success of this movie would not be measured by its financial outcome or film critics’ reviews but by its potential to save lives.

That goal was aided just last year, when the former Sudanese ambassador to the United States and majority leader of the Sudanese Parliament, Mahdi Ibrahim, agreed to travel to California to meet me and to see my film in my home.

As the final credits ended, this impressive man, who struck me as a cross between Martin Luther King Jr. and James Earl Jones, wept uncontrollably. He said he had no idea the real effect the bombing by al-Bashir was having on his own people, that he was both “shocked and ashamed.” He promised to put an end to the death and destruction. He would make stopping the bombing of his brothers and sisters his number one priority.

A few days later, upon returning to Sudan, Mahdi told me that he brought the film directly to President al-Bashir and screened “The Heart of Nuba” for him to witness the real devastation of the bombings. Less than two weeks later, I received a call from Mahdi announcing that al-Bashir was deeply moved and had ordered a suspension of all bombing in the Nuba region, which has lasted over 14 months now. I don’t know if he was so moved by the film or if there were other motivations involved. In the end, I honestly don’t care why, only that it has stopped.

This I do know—there have many organizations, including Amnesty International, Enough Project, Act For Sudan and Catholic Medical Mission Board, and individuals like Dr. Tom and Ryan Boyette of Nuba Reports that have been tirelessly working to expose the conflict in this region and to ultimately improve the lives of the people living in the Nuba Mountains. “The Heart of Nuba” has stood on their broad shoulders to achieve a tipping point resulting in the cessation of the bombing.

Patients in Nuba. (Kenneth Carlson)

Contributing to the cease-fire, which could end at any moment, is very important, but accomplishing peace on a permanent basis and creating a humanitarian corridor to get aid into the people Nuba Mountains is another. So, through contacts I had made, I reached out to President al-Bashir and asked if he would allow me to interview him. Much to my surprise, and the dismay of my wife and three children, he agreed.

In September 2017, I found myself in the capital of Sudan, sitting face to face with the villainous antagonist of my film, in search of answers to the many questions that Dr. Tom, the people of the Nuba Mountains, and I had. What I discovered through this surreal interview process was, as Hitler once said, “If you are going to lie, lie big and lie all the time.” Al-Bashir denied all wrongdoing, blamed the carnage in the Nuba Mountains on “friendly fire,” and was greatly relieved when the interview concluded. As was I.

Safely back home in California, I was reminded that documentary filmmaking is always about discovery. In the research, in the field and in the editing room, one learns something every step of the way. In that sense, it’s a wonderful metaphor for life. Our lives are all about discovering our own purpose and committing to that final cut. In the heart of the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, I discovered my heart, that sense of purpose of my father the minister, though I realized his frustration in being able to reach from his pulpit only those who showed up in the pews on any given Sunday. A documentary can reach millions.

Through the course of this project, I made two harrowing trips to Nuba and one to Khartoum. The three trips totaled just under seven unforgettable weeks. In the end, I left the perilous region of Sudan having “gotten” the story. Tom, who is as close to a saint as anyone I could ever hope to meet, stays to assist others as they struggle to survive. My concern for Tom endures, but regardless of the hardship, Dr. Tom is exactly where he wants to be. He reminds me that his greatest compensation is the fulfillment and peace that comes from serving others in need—he found his Calcutta. There is a lesson in that for all of us.

‘Bobby Kennedy for President’ Shows All Sides of RFK

On the morning of June 6, 1968, 17-year-old Juan Romero left the Rampart Police Station in downtown Los Angeles and caught a bus to school. Along the way he looked down and noticed the dried blood between his fingers and under his nails. It belonged to Robert F. Kennedy, who had been gunned down hours earlier in the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel, where Romero worked as a busboy.

“Once they pulled us to the station, they told me don’t wash your hands, don’t take your coat off,” Romero tells Truthdig about that night. His story is one of many in the new Netflix series “Bobby Kennedy for President,” filmmaker Dawn Porter’s four-part chronology that begins April 27.

“When it first happened, I was waiting for him, to shake his hand,” Romero recalls about the encounter that occurred moments after RFK’s victory speech following his California primary win. “As soon as he grabbed my hand, I started to look up and I remember hearing those popping sounds that sounded like firecrackers.”

Romero felt the powder burn on his cheek from Sirhan Bishara Sirhan’s gun, only a few feet away. “A second later, I dropped down and could see him laying [sic] there on the concrete. I got, initially, no reaction from him. I could see that one eye was blinking and one of his legs was twitching. I kneeled down and I tried to protect his head.”

In an effort to clear Kennedy’s breathing passages, he slipped a hand behind his neck to elevate it. “I could feel his blood streaming between my fingers, warm,” he shudders. “Then I realized it was a lot more than I thought.”

Romero had come into the kitchen hoping the senator would recognize him from the night before when he and a waiter delivered room service. All he remembers of that interaction is standing and gawping as Kennedy turned to him and shook his hand. “I remember walking out of there feeling 10 feet tall,” remembers Romero. “That’s when I first started to put the Kennedy name together with being a fighter for social justice.”

Romero’s assessment fits the standard view of the New York senator and Democratic front-runner at the time. But filmmaker Porter focuses more on the candidate’s transition from his early days in 1952 working with Joseph McCarthy during the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, a position secured him by Kennedy’s powerful father, Joseph P. Kennedy.

In the late 1950s, while serving as chief counsel to the McClellan Committee investigating improper activities in labor and management, Kennedy famously faced off with teamster chief Jimmy Hoffa, incurring the wrath of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for grandstanding, as well as for deriding witnesses who exercised their Fifth Amendment rights.

“I think that was sincere. That wasn’t making the best of a situation,” Porter says of Kennedy’s early days. “I think that was what he believed at the heart of it. That extended. He authorized wiretapping on Martin Luther King. J. Edgar Hoover signs off on this. This wasn’t a person who easily shed those early beliefs. And that, to me, is why it’s all the more important and remarkable that he changes.”

Having successfully run JFK’s 1952 Senate campaign, he did the same for his brother’s presidential run in 1960. Needing votes in the South, the campaign wooed the African-American community while cautioning Martin Luther King Jr. to ease up on the civil rights marches. When King was jailed in Atlanta on spurious charges just weeks before Election Day, RFK discouraged his brother from placing a phone call to Coretta King, who was pregnant at the time. But the advice was ignored, and news of the call leaked to reporters. In the end, it was a second call, between RFK and the judge in the matter, that freed King.

Once in office, the Kennedy administration dragged its feet on civil rights issues, and even OK’d a wiretap on King’s phone. “He [RFK] certainly does not begin as a civil rights advocate,” Porter observes. “In fact, he views race relations at first completely in political terms. His embracing Martin Luther King could alienate the South and lose JFK the presidency. That’s what he believed, and there’s a lot of evidence to support that case.”

Over time, through interactions with figures like civil rights activist (now Congressman) John Lewis, activist/actor Harry Belafonte, Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez and others, RFK formed a more sophisticated understanding of the need for government involvement in confronting civil rights issues.

“We wanted to show that evolution rather than tell it. We tried to give you enough so you could judge for yourself,” Porter explains. “Certainly, Kennedy’s appeal to minority voters sealed his narrow victory. He inspired a devotion among those groups who had been ignored for so long. He was going to expand the electorate and make some fundamental changes to how elections proceeded. It’s a hugely important point in history and such a contrast to where we are today. What’s happening now are efforts to repress the vote. Demographics are changing in this country, and if you can’t win over people with policy, maybe you stop them from voting.”

If there’s a lesson in Porter’s film for today’s leadership, it’s this: Don’t be frightened of change. “You don’t have to dig in your heels on a position. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe there’s something for you to learn,” she suggests, noting how her subject appears to have come around to seeing people of color less as votes and more as fellow Americans. “I feel like he came at people and judged them for who they were and how they behaved, and that’s ultimately what we’re all asking.”

Romero has described meeting Kennedy as the moment in which he felt most American. As he knelt over the dying man that night he saw his lips move. “I put my ear next to him, and I remember him saying, ‘Is everybody OK?’ I say, ‘Yeah.’ He turned to his right and said, ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’ ”

Hours later, Robert Kennedy was dead.

Homeland Security Urged to Prosecute Parents Who Cross Border With Kids

According to a report from The Washington Post, some of the country’s top immigration chiefs are now urging Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen to begin detaining and criminally prosecuting undocumented adult border-crossers. The Post reports that the change is “a stark change in policy that would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together.”

Three top-level officials—Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan and Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna—signed off on the suggestion in a memo obtained by The Washington Post. The memo shows how uniformly Trump’s immigration officials want to prosecute undocumented immigrants.

In a statement, Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman said the agency “is looking at all options in conjunction with the Attorney General’s zero tolerance policy for those illegally crossing the border. We will not comment further on internal deliberations. Again, DHS does not have a policy of separating families at the border for deterrence purposes. DHS does, however, have a legal obligation to protect the best interests of the child whether that be from human smugglings, drug traffickers, or nefarious actors who knowingly break our immigration laws and put minor children at risk.”

The Washington Post continues:

Most immigrants caught crossing the border illegally have typically faced civil deportation hearings to determine whether they may stay in the United States. But border-crossers can be charged criminally as well.

Over the past two decades, in an attempt to deter illegal crossings, criminal prosecutions have increased sharply—from fewer than 10,000 in 1996 to a high of 90,000 in 2013, according to TRAC, a Syracuse University organization that monitors immigration prosecutions.

The most common criminal charge is “improper entry by alien”—or illegal entry—the charge recommended in the memo. For first offenders, it is typically a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison or fines. Repeat offenders can be fined or imprisoned for up to two years or charged with the more serious offense of “illegal reentry.”

The memo says that referring for prosecution all immigrants caught sneaking across the border “would likely have the most effective impact,” though it may also present an increased risk of legal challenges.

The officials who signed the memo also presented Nielsen with other options, including prosecuting all single adults, or working with prosecutors to charge as many adults as possible.

The Hill notes that typically, when an undocumented immigrant is caught crossing the border, he or she is released while awaiting their deportation hearing, meaning that they are able to stay with their families throughout the process. If adults were jailed while awaiting a hearing, the family will inevitably be pulled apart. Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown law professor, told The Washington Post that forcing separation between parents and children could cause severe harm to affected families.

“I think it’s absolutely wrenching psychologically and terrible for both the children and the parents,” he said. “What are we doing to those children psychologically that will haunt us years down the road if they become Americans?”

ICE Director Homan has been a controversial figure since taking over in January 2017. He has presided over a spike in immigration raids and arrests, and has drawn criticism and condemnation from immigrant advocates and civil rights organizations.

It is not yet clear whether Nielsen, who has led the Department of Homeland Security since late last year, will take the officials’ advice.

Jill Stein Breaks ‘Russiagate’ Silence, Gives Documents to Senate Committee

Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate, remains one of the targets of the “Russiagate” investigation. On Thursday, Stein broke her silence on the matter and announced that she has completed the handover of emails and other documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which requested information pertaining to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Stein reiterated her strong support for legitimate inquiry into corruption, quid pro quo deals, money laundering, obstruction of justice and other illegal activity in the 2016 election. She cautioned, however, against overreach and misuse of Russiagate to promote warmongering, censorship and suppression of opposition to the political establishment. To that effect, she warned, Russiagate is both a symptom and further cause of our current state of rampant militarism that is harming American democracy.

Stein cited the explosive conditions in Syria to illustrate the danger of Russiagate warmongering. She emphasized that United States-Russia dialogue is critical now, as it was during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, with diplomacy being the only effective pathway to solving the expanding crises of war, nuclear confrontation and climate catastrophe.

Stein observed that concerns about election interference—whether by foreign governments, criminal networks, domestic partisans, voter suppression schemes or other sources—are not diminishing as the 2018 midterms approach. The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal adds to growing concerns. As a result, she called for a nonpartisan Emergency Commission for Election Protection & Voting Justice to ensure the right of every American to “a vote we can trust—that is accurate, secure and just.”

Stein herself is overseeing the only known post-election investigation of potential voting machine hacking in 2016.

While providing documents responsive to the committee’s requests, Stein objected to requests for constitutionally protected materials, including the improper request by the bipartisan committee for internal policy deliberations of her campaign, the flagship for an opposition political party. She declined to provide this material, noting the request intrudes into the First Amendment rights of political and associational freedom that are vital to political liberty for all Americans. Such Constitutional threats add to the dangerous current climate in which progressive political opposition, social movements, and the anti-war community are being targeted with censorship, surveillance and political intimidation.

In a longer statement, Stein addressed her proposals to protect elections, civil liberties and democracy without resorting to warmongering, censorship or repression. Read Stein’s complete statement below:

We are facing a precarious historic moment. Democracy is threatened by interference in our elections, and by interference in our civil liberties. Likewise we are endangered by warmongering, rampant militarism, nuclear confrontation and accelerating climate change. To solve any of these interlinked problems, we need a functioning democracy and a voting system we can have confidence in.

As first steps to restore trust in that system, we are calling for a nonpartisan Emergency Commission for Election Protection & Voting Justice, as well as international negotiations for an election non-interference treaty. These should be stepping stones toward broader international dialogue to address other urgent looming threats that endanger not only our democracy, but our very survival.

Handing Over Materials to Senate Committee

Today, cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, our campaign has completed the handover of materials in response to the Committee’s request. The information provided includes documents regarding my 2015 visit to Russia to speak at RT’s 10th anniversary conference on media and international relations, an extension of my trip to the UN climate conference in Paris, where I also spoke with international leaders and activists. The materials include records of the campaign’s payment for my trip to Russia as well as longstanding Green Party policy objectives of promoting dialogue and diplomacy as essential alternatives to war, nuclear confrontation and climate catastrophe.

Interference in Our—or Any Country’s Elections–Is a Blow Against Democracy.

We take very seriously the issue of interference in our elections, as demonstrated by our continuing efforts to conduct the first and, according to public information, the only 2016 post-election examination of vulnerable U.S. voting machines, a critical cross check on election security that should be routine.

Interference in our—or any country’s—elections is a strike against democracy—whether the intruder is a foreign government, criminal network or domestic actor.

While Pursuing Concerns About Foreign Interference, We Should Not Ignore Domestic Interference in Plain Sight

Concerns about foreign interference should not distract us from interference in plain sight originating from within our own borders. That includes the actions of the Democratic National Committee, which biased its party’s own primaries, effectively disenfranchising millions of Bernie Sanders’ voters; corporate media that gave Donald Trump billions in extra free airtime because he was “damn good” for network profits, in the words of CBS’ CEO; or voter suppression schemes like voter ID laws, Interstate Crosscheck and felon disenfranchisement that systematically deny millions of Americans their constitutional right to vote.

New Election Threats Posed by Big Data/Microtargeting/Psyops Tower Over Primitive Russian Social Media Strategies

Recent revelations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal underscore the expanding scope of election interference. The scandal represents a disturbing convergence of a massive data privacy violation with a “military-style,” “full-scale propaganda machine,” as described by whistleblower Christopher Wiley.

The cutting-edge tactics of the Cambridge Analytica scandal make alleged Russian social media meddling look primitive and insignificant by comparison. Cambridge Analytica is accused of using without permission the private information of up to 87 million people, assembling thousands of data points on individuals to craft micro-targeted messages in a campaign of mass manipulation with the scale and sophistication of military-style psyops. The actions of the Russian Internet Research Agency, on the other hand, appear to be the opposite of sophisticated and strategic. The lack of targeting, timing and relevance of the vast majority of their Facebook ads underscores the doubts expressed by investigative reporters who’ve suggested the Internet Research Agency may in fact be a “click-bait” factory intended to generate advertising revenue, and not an election meddling operation. The insignificant numbers of the Internet Research Agency’s social media posts—compared to the vastness of the social media universe—further diminishes the claim that it had significant impact on the election outcome. Facebook posts from the Internet Research Agency amounted to a mere 0.0004 percent of total Facebook content; Russian-associated tweets accounted for 0.02 percent of election-related tweets, and Russian-linked YouTube videos had hit totals only in the hundreds, hardly the stuff of viral transmission.

While the full extent of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal is as yet unknown, the huge quantities of data harnessed for state-of-the-art microtargeting and manipulative messaging suggest that it is the Cambridge Analytica-type threats that truly endanger our elections and demand protections to safeguard our democracy.

We Call for Emergency Commission to Advance Many Urgently Needed Solutions

Cambridge Analytica is not alone in using this new, malignant form of election interference that combines big data, micro-targeting, and psyops. It adds yet another danger to the existing threats to secure and just elections. To restore confidence in our elections, each type of interference can and must be remedied, but time is short before the 2018 elections. Therefore, we are calling for a nonpartisan, Emergency Commission on Election Protection & Voting Justice to oversee urgently needed immediate as well as longer-term solutions to ensure a secure and just vote.

We must end voter suppression schemes and ensure the constitutional right to vote. Prior to the 2018 election, we need a rapid transition to paper ballots, especially in the 12 states that still use the most vulnerable electronic machines lacking any paper record whatsoever; cybersecurity best practices, universal rigorous post-election audits, and routine post-election recounts as warranted. Congress has provided substantial funding for cybersecurity in the March 2018 Congressional budget. The funding should prioritize paper ballots, and be expedited to ensure reforms are in place by the 2018 midterms.

To begin addressing the abuses of big data, micro-targeting and military-style psyops, privacy protections must be created for personal data and internet/social media communications. In the rush to guard against propaganda and “fake news,” however, we must ensure that the rights of free speech and political opposition—increasingly stifled in current social media and conventional press—are restored and protected.

We must also take on the fundamental corruption of our elections that has been so normalized that it’s rarely even discussed: the stranglehold of big money over the entire process. We can break this stranglehold by establishing public financing for political campaigns and free air time for ballot-qualified candidates, which would greatly diminish the cost of political campaigns. We can expand voter choice and end fear-based elections through Ranked Choice Voting, which liberates voters to vote for what they want, instead of against what they dislike. And we can ensure voters are informed about the greater range of choices that they are clamoring for—by creating a new presidential debate commission not controlled by the two establishment parties. For further details see www.votingjustice.us .

We Must Also End U.S. Interference in Other Countries’ Elections

To effectively deal with foreign election interference, we must address the fact that the U.S. is not only a victim of election interference, but a leading perpetrator of it as well, whether through nonviolent or violent means. Given our track record, it is simply unrealistic and unethical to expect other countries to respect the sovereignty of foreign elections unless we commit to doing so as well. Effectively ending election interference requires international diplomacy and treaties. The Emergency Commission would provide consistent long-term public education, advocacy and watch-dogging that will be required to overcome resistance to the reforms required to achieve truly fair elections.

We Support Corruption Probe but Decry Misuse of “Russiagate” for Warmongering, Censorship, Political Repression

We support the investigation of potential concrete crimes related to corruption, quid pro quo deals, money laundering, financial conflicts of interest, and obstruction of justice. Such investigations should not be tainted by misuse of “Russiagate” in broader political discourse for the purpose of promoting censorship, warmongering and politically motivated efforts to intimidate and silence political opposition to the bipartisan political establishment.

The letter we are releasing today from our lead attorney, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, to the Senate Intelligence Committee details how their bipartisan investigation into our campaign—the flagship of an independent opposition political party—intrudes into First Amendment rights protecting freedom of speech and political liberty for all Americans. While we provided documents responsive to the Committee’s requests, we declined to provide Constitutionally protected materials, including the internal policy deliberations of our campaign, the flagship for an opposition political party. This request intrudes into the First Amendment rights of political and associational freedom that are critical to political liberty for all Americans.

Such Constitutional threats add to the dangerous current climate in which progressive political opposition, social movements, and the anti-war community are being targeted with censorship, surveillance and political intimidation. This includes recent censoring of social media and the internet, blacklisting progressive and anti-war media, restricting the right to protest, expanding surveillance, and disparaging social movements like Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock water protectors, anti-pipeline activists, and the gun control movement as “tools” of “Russian interference.”

“Russiagate” is also being used to argue for aggressive foreign policies, disparage peace advocates and justify massive military expenditures. This is all the more alarming in the setting of the resurgent cold war, accelerating nuclear arms race, and 17 years of unbridled U.S. militarism that has proven disastrous abroad and devastating to human needs at home.

Emergency Commission and Treaty Can Restore Confidence in our Elections & Act As Stepping Stone to International Dialogue for Peace, Nuclear Weapons Ban & Climate Action.

In short, we are endangered by interference in our elections, interference in our civil liberties, by unbridled militarism and needless warmongering. On all these counts, we must defend our imperiled future and the democracy it depends on.

A military-industrial-surveillance complex is now deeply entrenched within the bipartisan political establishment and much of the corporate media. This dangerous juggernaut must not be allowed to twist legitimate concerns about election interference into support for political repression, censorship and warmongering. Instead, we can begin restoring confidence in our democracy right now with a nonpartisan Emergency Commission for Election Protection & Voting Justice and international negotiations for an election non-interference treaty. These should be stepping stones toward broader international dialogue for nuclear disarmament as called for in the recent U.N. treaty to ban nuclear weapons, for major reductions in military budgets, and for steeply accelerated climate action. These actions would go a long way to actually begin reducing dire threats that endanger not only our democracy, but civilization as we know it. Time is short. We must not be diverted from this task.

Read the letter from Stein’s attorney, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, to the Senate Committee below.

The Turning on Russia Series (Part 1)

Stanley Fischer, the 73-year-old vice chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, is familiar with the decline of the world’s rich. He spent his childhood and youth in the British protectorate of Rhodesia before going to London in the early 1960s for his university studies. There, he experienced first-hand the unravelling of the British Empire. Now an American citizen, Fischer is currently witnessing another major power taking its leave of the world stage. “The United States is losing its status as a global hegemonic power,” he said recently. “The U.S. political system could take the world in a very dangerous direction…”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the creation of the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine in 1992 during the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, the United States claimed the mantle of the world’s first and only Unipower [and stated] its intention to crush any nation or system that would oppose it in the future. The New World Order foreseen just a few short years ago becomes more disorderly by the day, made worse by varying degrees of incompetence and greed emanating from Berlin, London, Paris and Washington. As a further sign of the ongoing seismic shocks rocking America’s claim to leadership, by the time Stanley Fischer’s interview appeared in the online version of the conservative German magazine Der Spiegel, he had already announced his resignation as vice chair of the Federal Reserve; eight months ahead of schedule. If anyone knows about the decline and fall of empires it is the “globalist” and former Bank of Israel president, Stanley Fischer. Not only did he experience the unravelling of the British Empire as a young student in London, he actually assisted in the wholesale dismantling of the Soviet Empire during the 1990s.

As an admitted product of the British Empire and point man for its long-term imperial aims, that makes Stanley Fischer not just empire’s Angel of Death, but its rag and bone man.

Alongside a handful of Harvard economists led by Jonathan Hay, Larry Summers, Andrei Shleifer, Anatoly Chubais and Jeffry Sachs, (the Harvard Project) Fischer helped to throw 100 million Russians into poverty overnight – privatizing, or as some would say piratizing – the Russian economy. Yet, Americans never got the real story because a slanted anti-Russia narrative covered the true nature of the robbery from beginning to end. As described by public policy scholar and anthropologist Janine R. Wedel in her 2009 book Shadow Elite, “Presented in the West as a fight between enlightenment Reformers trying to move the economy forward through privatization, and retrograde Luddites who opposed them, this story misrepresented the facts. The idea or goal of privatization was not controversial, even among communists. The Russian Supreme Soviet, a communist body, passed two laws laying the groundwork for privatization. Opposition to privatization was rooted not in the idea itself but in the particular privatization program that was implemented, the opaque way in which it was put into place, and the use of executive authority to bypass the parliament.”

Intentionally set up to fail for Russia and the Russian people under the cover of a false narrative, she continues, “The outcome rendered privatization ‘a de facto fraud,’ as one economist put it, and the parliamentary committee that had judged the Chubais scheme to ‘offer fertile ground for criminal activity’ was proven right.”

If Stanley Fischer, a man who helped bring about a de facto criminal-privatization-fraud to post-empire Russia, says the U.S. is on a dangerous course, the time has arrived for post-empire Americans to ask what role Stanley Fischer played in putting the U.S. on that dangerous course. Unknown to Americans is the blunt force trauma Stanley Fischer and the “prestigious” Harvard Project delivered to Russia under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s. According to The American Conservative’s James Carden, “As the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted back in 2011″ ‘the IMF’s intervention in Russia during Fischer’s tenure led to one of the worst losses in output in history, in the absence of war or natural disaster.’ Indeed, one Russian observer compared the economic and social consequences of the IMF’s intervention to what one would see in the aftermath of a medium-level nuclear attack.”

Neither do most Americans know that it was President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1970s grand plan for the conquest of the Eurasian heartland that boomeranged back to terrorize Europe and America in the 21st century. Zbigniew Brzezinski spent much of his life undermining the Communist Soviet Union and then spent the rest of it worrying about its resurgence as a Czarist empire under Vladimir Putin. It might be unfair to say that hating Russia was his only obsession. But a common inside joke during his tenure as the President’s top intelligence officer was that he couldn’t find Nicaragua on a map. If anyone provided the blueprint for the United States to rule in a unipolar world following the Soviet Union’s collapse it was Zbigniew Brzezinski and if anyone could be said to represent the debt driven financial system that fueled America’s post-Vietnam Imperialism, it’s Stanley Fischer. His departure should have sent a chill down every neoconservative’s spine. Their dream of a New World Order has once again ground to a halt at the gates of Moscow.

Whenever the epitaph for the abbreviated American century is written it will be sure to feature the iconic role the neoconservatives played in hastening its demise. After emerging from their Marxist/Leninist cocoon after World War II their movement helped to establish the Cold War. And from the chaos created by Vietnam they set to work restructuring American politics, finance and foreign policy to their own purposes. Dominated at the beginning by Zionists and Trotskyists but directed by the Anglo/American establishment and their intelligence elites, the neoconservatives’ goal was to deconstruct the nation-state through cultural cooperation and financial subversion, and in that they have been overwhelmingly successful. From the end of World War II through the 1980s the focus of this pursuit was on the Soviet Union, but since the Soviet collapse in 1991, their focus has been on dismantling any and all opposition to their global dominion.

Shady finance, imperial misadventures and neoconservatism go hand in hand. The CIA’s founders saw themselves as partners in this enterprise and the defense industry welcomed them with open arms. McGill University economist R.T. Naylor, author of 1987’s Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, described how “Pentagon Capitalism” had made the Vietnam War possible by selling the Pentagon’s debt to the rest of the world. “In effect, the US Marines had replaced Meyer Lansky’s couriers, and the European central banks arranged the ‘loan-back'” Naylor writes. “When the mechanism was explained to the late [neoconservative] Herman Kahn — lifeguard of the era’s chief ‘think tank’ and a man who popularized the notion it was possible to emerge smiling from a global conflagration — he reacted with visible delight. Kahn exclaimed excitedly, ‘We’ve pulled off the biggest ripoff in history! We’ve run rings around the British Empire.'” In addition to their core of ex-Trotskyist intellectuals, early neoconservatives could count among their ranks such establishment figures as James Burnham, father of the Cold War Paul Nitze, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Zbigniew Brzezinski himself.

From the beginning of their entry into the American political mainstream in the 1970s it was known that their emergence could spell the end of democracy in America and yet Washington’s more moderate gatekeepers allowed them in without much of a fight. Peter Steinfels’ 1979 classic The Neoconservatives: The men who are changing America’s politics begins with these fateful words. “THE PREMISES OF THIS BOOK are simple. First, that a distinct and powerful political outlook has recently emerged in the United States. Second, that this outlook, preoccupied with certain aspects of American life and blind or complacent towards others, justifies a politics which, should it prevail, threatens to attenuate and diminish the promise of American democracy.”

But long before Steinfels’ 1979 account, the neoconservative’s agenda of inserting their own interests ahead of America’s was well underway attenuating American democracy, undermining détente and angering America’s NATO partners that supported it. According to the distinguished State Department Soviet specialist Raymond Garthoff, détente had been under attack by right-wing and military-industrial forces (led by Senator “Scoop” Jackson) from its inception. But America’s ownership of that policy underwent a shift following America’s intervention on behalf of Israel during the 1973 October war. Garthoff writes in his detailed volume on American-Soviet relations Détente and Confrontation, “To the allies the threat [to Israel] did not come from the Soviet Union, but from unwise actions by the United States, taken unilaterally and without consultation. The airlift [of arms] had been bad enough. The U.S. military alert of its forces in Europe was too much.”

In addition to the crippling Arab oil embargo that followed, the crisis of confidence in U.S. decision-making nearly produced a mutiny within NATO. Garthoff continues, “The United States had used the alert to convert an Arab-Israeli conflict, into which the United States had plunged, into a matter of East-West confrontation. Then it had used that tension as an excuse to demand that Europe subordinate its own policies to a manipulative American diplomatic gamble over which they had no control and to which they had not even been privy, all in the name of alliance unity.”

In the end the U.S. found common cause with its Cold War Soviet enemy by imposing a cease-fire accepted by both Egypt and Israel thereby confirming the usefulness of détente. But as related by Garthoff this success triggered an even greater effort by Israel’s “politically significant supporters” in the U.S. to begin opposing any cooperation with the Soviet Union, at all. Garthoff writes, “The United States had pressed Israel into doing precisely what the Soviet Union (as well as the United States) had wanted: to halt its advance short of complete encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army east of Suez.” Thus they [Israel’s politically significant supporters] saw the convergence of American-Soviet interests and effective cooperation in imposing a cease-fire as a harbinger of greater future cooperation by the two superpowers in working toward a resolution of the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian problem.”

The last installment of this two-part series will appear on Truthdig soon.

From Starbucks to Waffle House: American Society Devalues Black Lives

Every now and then seemingly disconnected incidents occur around the nation that, taken together, coalesce into a clear social pattern. Events of the past couple of weeks paint a deeply disturbing picture of the perils of being black in America, beginning with the now-infamous police arrest of two African-American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks and ending with two horrific incidents at separate branches of the Waffle House chain, one of them deadly. When people question the label adopted by the Black Lives Matter movement, countering, ‘Don’t all lives matter?’, they are seemingly blind to patterns of anti-black racism all around us.

The most violent of the series of recent events was the mass shooting at a Waffle House in Antioch, Tenn., last Sunday that claimed the lives of four young people of color. Clearly Black Lives did not Matter to Travis Reinking, the suspected shooter, most of whose victims from the April 22 incident were black. Reinking, like so many other white men suspected of causing horrific violence, managed to be captured alive and unhurt. In contrast to the care police showed this alleged mass murderer, law enforcement officers far too often demonstrate that Black Lives don’t Matter when they shoot black men in the back simply for carrying a cell phone, as was done to Stephon Clark in Sacramento, Calif., or when they fire a hail of bullets at a black man in a parked car, as was done on April 5 to Diante Yarber in a Walmart parking lot in Barstow, Calif.

Reinking roamed free for more than a day before he was found by police, who took him to a hospital before booking him at the police station on charges of massacring four people. Contrast that description with how police treated Yarber after they shot him: Yarber’s autopsy revealed that he “died from choking on his own blood as police delayed getting him medical help,” making clear just how little his Life Mattered compared to Reinking’s.

After Reinking was charged, the judge in his case showed a familiar disregard for the Black (and one Latino) Lives lost at the Antioch Waffle House when the suspect was initially booked on a $2 million bond—which meant he could have paid a portion of that bond and walked free. The judge in the case only revoked the bond following a public outcry.

Had the Waffle House shooting suspect been Muslim or black or both, we would likely have seen the word “terrorism” bandied about from the very start in both major media outlets and on President Trump’s Twitter feed. From Trump’s refusal to address the incident and considering how little speculation has occurred in the media questioning the motives of this white anti-government perpetrator in his targeting of black and brown folk, we can only conclude that there are racial double standards permeating our society, making necessary the assertion that Black Lives need to Matter.

Reinking would have slaughtered many more people had he not been stopped by James Shaw Jr., an African-American. Were Shaw an armed white man who used his gun to stop Reinking, there might have been no end to the political hay that Trump and the National Rifle Association would have made of the scenario. Instead, there has been a deafening silence from the outspoken president on Shaw, whose life-risking actions contradict the NRA’s favorite fantasy scenario of a “good guy with a gun.” But none of this should surprise us, as neither Trump nor the NRA have demonstrated any real respect for Black Lives.

The other Waffle House incident, which took place in the neighboring state of Alabama on the same day as the Antioch shooting, offered up yet more evidence of anti-black racism with the incredibly disturbing arrest of Chikesia Clemons by multiple male police officers late at night. As with the Starbucks episode, after Clemons complained about being charged extra for plastic utensils, she was deemed so dangerous by the establishment’s staff that the police were called. In the videotape of the incident, Clemons was seated, composed and clearly unarmed when an officer sat down next to her. Within seconds three male officers were tackling her to the ground, threatening to break her arm, exposing her breasts in a manner tantamount to sexual assault and even, at one point, choking her.

It is a scene so disturbing that it could come out of Jim Crow’s segregationist America. It is hard to imagine police officers ever treating an unarmed white woman with such savagery. And yet the police department in question has determined that its officers did no wrong and confirmed our collective suspicion that to them Clemons’ Life simply did not Matter.

The same weekend as the two Waffle House incidents, five black women playing golf in Pennsylvania found themselves at the receiving end of a situation similar to the Starbucks arrests. The women were golfing at a course in a mostly white town in York County when the club’s white owner, together with some white patrons, decided the women were not playing fast enough and called the police. Perhaps because it was broad daylight, or because there were five of them, none of the women was physically assaulted. But the black women got the message: Their Lives don’t Matter.

White America has been calling the cops on Black America for as long as there have been cops—and for as long as there has been a White America. American police are more than capable of becoming powerful and wielding explosive weapons against anyone considered too unruly, too uppity or simply too black. White Americans need to understand that when they call 9-1-1 on a black American, they may have just summoned that person’s judge, jury and executioner. They need to understand that police will not treat black Americans with the same courtesy that they treat white mass murderers.

Black Americans understand only too well that when they are massacred, there is great reluctance to address the racist motives of their murderers, whether police or vigilantes. Worse, there is little done to prevent such future crimes. The events of the past week have proved what we’ve all known all along—that in America, Black Lives still don’t Matter.

Men Without Women: China and India Face a Cultural Paradigm Shift

In China and India today, men outnumber women by a combined total of more than 70 million. The consequences are far-reaching and have begun to affect neighboring countries and economies, such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

According to a report in The Washington Post, four key aspects of society have been altered in China and India as a result of the gender imbalance: village life and mental health; housing prices and savings rates; human trafficking; and public safety.

China has 136 unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women born since the 1980s. Many Chinese men now find that to have a wife, they are expected to own an apartment and possess a large bank account. Pressure to meet these “standards” is heavy.

In some cases, such as that of 24-year-old Wang (whose first name is not given in a Washington Post report), men begin working at age 14 in order to accumulate the money they feel they need for marriage. Like many other males, Wang left his village for a city and works 11 to 12 hours a day, with only two days off each month. Although he has saved enough to buy a house, he says he feels financially inadequate and is struggling to find a wife.

China’s huge trade surplus with the U.S.—$375 billion in 2017—is caused in part by young men holding on to their money rather than buying consumer goods. Eventually they sink their savings into home purchases, while keeping the household savings rate extremely high. Housing prices in major cities have skyrocketed as a result of such buying trends.

Some single men must pass a “bride price” threshold in order to earn the approval of prospective in-laws. A decade or two ago, that sum was a few hundred dollars, but today it can reach nearly $30,000, according to a survey by the People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper.

Liu Hua, who lives with his wife in southeastern China, told The Washington Post that their village contains 50 to 60 bachelors but only one or two single women.

In 2010, a state-endorsed union that surveyed thousands of migrants across the country found that 70 percent of them who were construction workers reported loneliness to be the most painful aspect of their lives. That same year, 119 boys were born for every 100 girls in China.

In India, 112 boys are born for every 100 girls. Many Indian men in their mid-30s are facing the fact that they are considered too old for a wife and family. In some of the more traditional villages, once they miss out on marriage, they have no hope of female companionship. There are 7,000 villages in northern India that have surpluses of 150-200 men.

As The Washington Post reports:

The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations. …

“In the future, there will be millions of men who can’t marry, and that could pose a very big risk to society,” warns Li Shuzhuo, a leading demographer at Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Out of China’s population of 1.4 billion, there are nearly 34 million more males than females—the equivalent of almost the entire population of California, or Poland, who will never find wives and only rarely have sex. China’s official one-child policy, in effect from 1979 to 2015, was a huge factor in creating this imbalance, as millions of couples were determined that their child should be a son.

India, a country that has a deeply held preference for sons and male heirs, has an excess of 37 million males, according to its most recent census. The number of newborn female babies compared with males has continued to plummet, even as the country grows more developed and prosperous. The imbalance creates a surplus of bachelors and exacerbates human trafficking, both for brides and, possibly, prostitution. Officials attribute this to the advent of sex-selective technology in the last 30 years, which is now banned but still in widespread practice.

In 1979, in efforts to slow population growth, China implemented a policy that restricted families to one child. According to a report in Newsweek, this created a condition in which couples would abort a female once her gender had been determined. Sons are considered the bearers of family lines, and they also are meant to provide for parents once they get old, while women become part of someone else’s family.

By the mid-1980s, families in rural areas were allowed to have two children if the first one was a girl, although this did not stop many families from aborting their unborn child once they knew its gender. The one-child policy was phased out in 2016.

Although 12 to 15 percent of young Chinese adult males have no hopes of marrying their female counterparts, some are turning to women from other nations to find a spouse, Newsweek reports. Tens of thousands of foreign women who live in poverty in their home countries are pouring into China for marriage. Chinese websites, such as ZhongYueLove.com (China-Viet-Love), offer brides for a price—up to $8,000, in some cases, and websites assure potential buyers that the women won’t run away. Lured by promises of work and money, many women from Cambodia and Vietnam become trapped and sometimes are trafficked as prostitutes.

In January, the Indian government reported that more than 63 million women were “missing” from its population, estimating that 2 million had been removed from society by abortion of female fetuses, disease, neglect and inadequate nutrition.

The government’s chief economic adviser, Arvind Subramanian, said that Indians have a “meta” son preference, meaning that if a couple bears girls, they will continue having children till they have a boy. Subramanian says this has led to about 21 million unwanted girls in India, who often get less nourishment and schooling than their male siblings.

The northern state of Haryana, which has the worst sex ratio in the country, records the highest number of gang rapes in country.

According to The Guardian, Armenia is another country in which male babies are preferred. There are 120 boys born to every 100 girls in the Gavar region in the east of the nation.