Chris Hedges's Blog, page 616

The RNC Fundraiser, the Playboy Model—and Michael Cohen

WASHINGTON—A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump resigned from the Republican National Committee on Friday after it was revealed that he paid $1.6 million to a Playboy Playmate with whom he had an extramarital affair. The Playmate became pregnant and elected to have an abortion.

Elliott Broidy called RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Friday afternoon to say that he was resigning immediately.

“Elliott and I spoke today, we both had a long conversation and we both agreed that that was the right thing to do,” McDaniel said on MSNBC. “We don’t want to distract from our purpose, which is to elect Republicans.”

Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, helped negotiate the $1.6 million nondisclosure agreement between Broidy and the Playboy model last year, according to two people familiar with the agreement. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the payout Friday.

Broidy apologized to his wife and family for the affair with the Playmate, who discovered she was pregnant and chose to get an abortion.

“I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate. At the end of our relationship, this woman shared with me that she was pregnant. She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period,” Broidy said in a statement provided to the AP.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders deflected questions about Cohen and the Broidy payout Friday, saying she was “not sure” if Cohen was still Trump’s personal attorney and trying to turn the focus back to critiques of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

News of the payout knit together two of the biggest stories brewing over the past few weeks. Cohen’s lawyers were in court Friday arguing that federal agents violated attorney-client privilege when they raided Cohen’s office, home and hotel room Monday. The agents were seeking evidence that Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playmate Karen McDougal hush money after they allegedly slept with Trump more than a decade ago. Trump’s lawyer formerly intervened in the New York case, arguing for confidentiality.

Trump has denied the women’s allegations.

The lawyer for the Playboy model involved with Broidy said his client had no statement and clarified that she isn’t McDougal.

An attorney for Cohen did not return requests for comment Friday.

Broidy was a deputy finance chairman for the RNC until Friday. Cohen is still serving as a deputy finance chairman for the party. Asked if she was considering firing Cohen from the RNC over revelations of his payouts, McDaniel told MSNBC she wanted to talk to him first before making a decision.

Broidy, meanwhile, has been embroiled in controversy stemming from his work with George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who was confronted by agents working for Mueller in January and has since been cooperating with the Russia probe. The AP reported last month that Nader wired Broidy $2.5 million through a Canadian company to pay for a pair of Washington conferences blasting Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Broidy has blamed the government of Qatar and lobbyists working for Qatar for the hacking and leaking of his emails, but a federal judge in California wrote last week that he was unsure if Broidy could successfully sue the Middle East nation.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Under Criminal Probe

NEW YORK—Federal prosecutors said in a court filing Friday that the criminal probe that led them to raid the offices of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is focused on the attorney’s “personal business dealings” and has been going on for months.

In the filing with a court in New York, prosecutors blacked out a section describing what laws they believe Cohen has broken, but they said the “crimes being investigated involve acts of concealment” and suspected fraud.

They also made clear that investigators have been gathering extensive evidence for some time as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation. Agents, they wrote, had already searched multiple email accounts maintained by Cohen after securing an earlier search warrant.

None of those emails, they added, was exchanged with Trump.

In a footnote, the prosecutors wrote that although the investigation was referred to prosecutors in New York by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it was proceeding independently.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan made the filing after lawyers for Cohen and Trump asked a judge to block the Justice Department from reviewing records seized Monday in FBI raids on Cohen’s apartment, hotel room, office and safety deposit box.

In a court hearing before U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, Cohen’s lawyers asked to examine the seized documents and electronic devices. The lawyers said they should be allowed to identify which of the documents are protected by attorney-client privilege before prosecutors get to look at them.

An attorney for the president, Joanna Hendon, appeared as well, telling the judge that Trump has “an acute interest in these proceedings and the manner in which these materials are reviewed.”

“He is the president of the United States,” she said. “This is of most concern to him. I think the public is a close second. And anyone who has ever hired a lawyer a close third.”

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom McKay told the judge that he believed the proceedings were an attempt to delay the processing of materials seized in the search.

“The issues here are straightforward,” he said.

Of Trump, McKay said: “His attorney-client privilege is no greater than any other person who seeks legal advice.”

Federal agents seized records on a variety of subjects in raids Monday on Cohen’s Manhattan office, apartment and hotel room, including payments that were made in 2016 to women who might have damaging information about Trump.

The court hearing Friday didn’t provide new insight into why agents seized the items, but the judge, prosecutors and the attorneys all spoke openly about an investigation that previously has been shrouded in secrecy.

FBI and Justice Department officials have refused to say what crimes they are investigating, but people familiar with the investigation have told The Associated Press the search warrant used in the raids sought bank records, business records on Cohen’s dealing in the taxi industry, Cohen’s communications with the Trump campaign and information on payments made to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, and a porn actress, Stephanie Clifford, who performs under the name Stormy Daniels. Both women say they had affairs with Trump.

Ordinarily, documents or communications seized from a lawyer by FBI agents would be reviewed by a team of Justice Department lawyers not directly involved in the investigation to determine which documents were relevant to the probe, and which should be off-limits to investigators because of attorney-client privilege.

The judge said prosecutors believed either a special “taint team” of government lawyers should decide what evidence can be properly viewed by criminal prosecutors. Or, they said, the court could appoint a special master for that purpose.

Hendon asked for a delay in court proceedings until at least Monday, saying she needed to research the law.

Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was in the audience for the court session and asked the judge to be heard at 2 p.m.

“We have every reason to believe that some of the documents seized relate to my client,” he said.

Cohen has denied wrongdoing.

Trump has called the raids a “witch hunt,” ”an attack on our country,” and a violation of rules that ordinarily make attorney client communications confidential.

Those confidentiality rules can be set aside under certain circumstances if investigators have evidence that a crime has been committed.

Public corruption prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan are trying to determine, according to one person familiar with the investigation, if there was any fraud related to payments to McDougal and Clifford.

McDougal was paid $150,000 in the summer of 2016 by the parent company of the National Enquirer under an agreement that gave it the exclusive rights to her story, which it never published. Cohen said he paid Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence about her claim to have had a one-night-stand with Trump.

The White House has consistently said Trump denies either affair.

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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Los Angeles, Tom Hays in New York and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Teachers Triumph: Kentucky Lawmakers Defeat Tax Hike Veto

FRANKFORT, Ky.—With the chants of hundreds of teachers ringing in their ears, Kentucky lawmakers voted Friday to override the Republican governor’s veto of a more than $480 million tax increase meant to fuel increases in public education spending.

Lawmakers also moved closer to overriding Gov. Matt Bevin’s veto of a two-year operating budget, with a climactic vote still pending.

The votes came as thousands of teachers rallied inside and outside the Capitol, forcing more than 30 school districts to close as Kentucky continued the chorus of teacher protests across the country. The rally took on a festival-like atmosphere in Kentucky as some teachers sat in lawn chairs or sprawled out on blankets. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s hit “Teach Your Children” bellowed from the loud speakers.

“I don’t want to be out of my classroom. I want to be in my classroom instructing future citizens, but I’m afraid that spending at the state level is getting worse and worse, and we need those dollars for a 21st century education,” said Stephanie Ikanovic, who has been a teacher for 21 years.

The two-year state operating budget includes record new spending for public education, fueled by a 50-cent increase in the cigarette tax and a 6 percent sales tax on some services including home and auto repair. But Bevin vetoed both the budget and the money in it, calling the bills “sloppy” and “non-transparent.” He said they would not raise enough money to cover the new spending.

The veto put Republican lawmakers in a tough position, asking them to vote a second time on a tax increase in an election year. But 57 House Republicans, later joined by just enough Senate Republicans, voted to override, asserting their independence after a tumultuous year marred by a sexual harassment scandal.

“You can stand here all day and act like you are all for (education) until it comes time to pay for it. Well, that’s a coward,” said Republican Rep. Regina Huff, a middle school special education teacher. “We have to have this revenue to fund our schools.”

Democrats sided with the governor, but for different reasons. They said the tax increase disproportionately harms the poor while benefiting the wealthy. They wanted the vetoes to stand, forcing the governor to call a special session of the state legislature to pass a new budget.

The House voted 57-40 to override the veto of the tax increase and 66-28 to override the veto of the budget. Later, without a vote to spare, the Republican-controlled Senate voted 20-18 to override the tax increase veto. In a dramatic moment, Senate President Robert Stivers cast the decisive vote for the override.

The Senate was poised to take up the budget veto later.

Bevin followed the debate closely, responding to lawmakers’ speeches with tweets. He said he met with House and Senate leaders all week to propose a more “responsible way to pay for 100 percent of the requested education funding.”

“Crickets,” Bevin tweeted, adding he vowed to call a special session to pass a new budget if lawmakers approved his vetoes.

Republican Rep. Jeff Hoover told his colleagues not to trust Bevin, reminding them the governor promised to call a special session last year to change the state’s struggling pension system but never did.

“The only reason we did not have a special session last year is because Jeff Hoover, a married man, was sexually involved with a very young, single member of his staff and was paying hush money to hide his actions,” Bevin responded on Twitter.

Hoover resigned his leadership position in January. Tuesday, he agreed to pay a $1,000 fine and a public reprimand from the Legislative Ethics Commission.

The unrest comes amid teacher protests in Oklahoma and Arizona over low funding and teacher pay. The demonstrations were inspired by West Virginia teachers, whose nine-day walkout after many years without raises led to a 5 percent pay hike.

In Arizona, after weeks of teacher protests and walkout threats across the state, Gov. Doug Ducey promised a net 20 percent raise by 2020.

In Oklahoma, teachers ended two weeks of walkouts Thursday, shifting their focus to electing pro-education candidates in November. Gov. Mary Fallin signed legislation raising teacher salaries by about $6,100 and providing millions in new education funding, but many say schools need more money.

Kentucky teachers haven’t asked for a raise. They are instead focused on a battle over their pensions. Kentucky has one of the worst-funded pension systems in the country, with the state at least $41 billion short of what it needs to pay retirement benefits over the next 30 years. Earlier this month when lawmakers voted to pass a bill that preserves benefits or most workers but moves new hires into a hybrid plan.

Opponents worry this will discourage young people from becoming teachers. The pension changes have already drawn a court challenge.

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Associated Press writer Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

SUV Driver Was Drunk When Plunge Killed Her and Family

SAN FRANCISCO—A woman who drove off a Northern California cliff last month in an SUV carrying her wife and children was drunk, authorities said Friday.

Toxicology tests found Jennifer Hart had an alcohol level of 0.102, said California Patrol Capt. Bruce Carpenter. California drivers are considered drunk with a level of 0.08 or higher.

Toxicology tests also found that her wife Sarah Hart and two of their children had “a significant amount” of an ingredient commonly found in the allergy drug Benadryl, which can make people sleepy. Toxicology results for a third child killed are still pending, Carpenter said.

Carpenter said none of the car’s occupants were wearing seatbelts.

Sarah and Jennifer Hart and their six adopted children were believed to be in the family’s SUV when it plunged off a cliff in Mendocino County, more than 160 miles (250 kilometers) north of San Francisco.

Authorities have said that data from the vehicle’s software suggested the crash was deliberate, though the California Highway Patrol has not concluded why the vehicle went off an ocean overlook on a rugged part of coastline. A specialized team of accident investigators is trying to figure that out with help from the FBI, Carpenter said.

Five bodies were found March 26 near the small city of Mendocino, a few days after Washington state authorities began investigating the Harts for possible child neglect, but three of their children were not immediately recovered from the scene.

Two more are missing and another body has been found but not identified.

The 100-foot (31-meter) drop killed the women, both 39, and their children Markis Hart, 19; Jeremiah Hart, 14; and Abigail Hart, 14. Hannah Hart, 16; Devonte Hart, 15; and Sierra Hart, 12, have not been found.

A Message to Mueller? Trump Pardons Cheney Ex-Aide ‘Scooter’ Libby

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump issued a full pardon Friday to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, suggesting the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney had been “treated unfairly” by a special counsel at a moment when the president himself faces an escalating special counsel investigation.

Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, was convicted in 2007 of lying to investigators and obstruction of justice following the 2003 leak of the covert identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. President George W. Bush later commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence but didn’t issue a pardon despite intense pressure from Cheney.

“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Trump said in a statement issued by White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”

Trump pardoned Libby in a case that dealt with leaks to the press despite the fact that he has raged against press leaks and excoriated “leakers” throughout his presidency. No one was ever charged for the leak in Plame’s case.

The White House said a witness against Libby later changed her version of events and noted that he had a decade of public service and an “unblemished” record since. He had already been reinstated to the bar by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Libby’s case has been criticized by conservatives, who argue he was the victim of an overly zealous and politically motivated prosecution by a special counsel. Another twist is that the special counsel in Libby’s case, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed by James Comey, deputy attorney general at the time. Comey later became head of the FBI but was fired by Trump and has since written a book highly critical of the president.

The criticism echoes critiques of Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, possible coordination with Trump associates and potential obstruction of justice by the president. Trump has called that probe a “witch hunt.”

Libby’s attorneys, Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, issued a statement thanking Trump for “addressing a gross injustice” they said was inflicted by Fitzgerald and Comey. Trump knows the attorneys and had sought to add them to his legal team in the Russian investigation, but it was determined diGenova and Toensing had conflicts of interest that would prevent them from joining.

Toensing told the Associated Press that she submitted the pardon papers for Libby to the White House counsel’s office last summer. She said the president called her midday Friday to deliver the news.

“He said, ‘He got screwed,'” Toensing recalled.

A spokesman for Bush said Friday that the former president was “very pleased” for Libby and his family.

Critics questioned the timing of the pardon. Earlier in the day, amid reports that a pardon was planned, Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the timing was “suspect.”

“It hasn’t been done through the normal channels. He hasn’t gone through the pardon office. And there’s no particular reason to pardon Scooter Libby,” Nadler said. “So one certainly suspects there’s a message.”

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway earlier Friday said, “Many people think that Scooter Libby was the victim of a special counsel gone amok.” Asked if a pardon would effectively be sending a message to Comey, Conway said no.

Plame appeared on MSNBC on Friday morning and said a pardon would signal “that you can commit crimes against national security and you will be pardoned.”

The pardon was the third for Trump. He granted one last year for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was awaiting sentencing for contempt of court. Trump also pardoned a U.S. Navy sailor who was convicted of taking photos of classified portions of a submarine.

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Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

Pro-War Press, Not Cambridge Analytica, Is the Real Scandal

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal is simple. To understand what it means, all you have to do is take everything you’ve read about it in The Guardian, The New York Times or at CNN and stand it on its head—or, as Marx would say, on its feet.

Officially, the story concerns yet another band of Kremlin-linked evildoers seeking to overturn American democracy, in this instance by using some 87 million psychological profiles that Cambridge Analytica illegally “harvested” from Facebook to swing the 2016 United States presidential election. Since Aleksandr Kogan—a Cambridge University psychologist who worked with Cambridge Analytica—was born in the ex-Soviet republic of Moldova, grew up in Moscow, taught at St. Petersburg University and even “received grants from the Russian government to research ‘Stress, health and psychological wellbeing in social networks,’ ” as The Guardian breathlessly declares, the Russia connection seems clear. Since Cambridge Analytica once put together a briefing for Lukoil, the Russian energy firm that has been the subject of U.S. sanctions since 2014, it seems even more so.

All of which is red meat for liberals convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the root of all evil and that Donald Trump sneaked into office by virtue of “meddlesome tricks by foreign powers, data harvested from the unsuspecting, and cover-ups,” to quote CNN. As Hillary Clinton told Britain’s Channel 4 News, the big issue was whether Cambridge Analytica used its fearsome “micro-targeting” skills to enable the Kremlin’s famous election-busting internet trolls to focus their efforts most effectively.

“The real question is how did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania,” she said. “That is really the nub of the question. So if they were getting advice from, let’s say, Cambridge Analytica or someone else about, OK, here are the 12 voters in this town in Wisconsin, that’s whose Facebook pages you need to be on to send these messages, that indeed would be very disturbing.”

It would be disturbing—if true, that is. But it’s not. The real story is not about how Cambridge Analytica used dark arts to swing the 2016 election but how the press, led by an endlessly Russophobic Guardian, has exaggerated the firm’s skills in order to manipulate the public into believing that Putin is a latter-day Svengali who must be stopped by all means necessary. Although Americans may be too shellshocked by this point to notice, they are now the subject of an unparalleled propaganda blitz about nerve agents in Salisbury, poison gas in Syria and internet manipulation that is now threatening to lead to all-out war.

Christopher Wylie, the centerpiece of this effort, is a self-described “gay Canadian vegan” with oversized spectacles and a nose ring who dropped out of high school but somehow wound up working for the Canadian Liberal Party at age 17 under Michael Ignatieff. A decade later, in testimony before a British parliamentary committee or in a video interview with The Guardian, he comes across as wonkish, intelligent and articulate but also as shallow, unreflective and someone who is overly fond of the limelight.

A fervent believer that “big data” can be used to predict and influence individual behavior, Wylie experienced an epiphany of sorts when, as a graduate student, he came across a Cambridge University psychology paper showing how personality traits correlate with political beliefs. As a Cambridge researcher told The Guardian, the paper “showed these odd patterns; that, for example, people who liked ‘I hate Israel’ on Facebook also tended to like Nike shoes and KitKats.” It was a new way of breaking the electorate down into its component parts, thereby enabling campaign strategists to home in with laser-like accuracy on tinier and tinier voter subsets.

Wylie hooked up with a company known as the SCL group, which then joined forces with the pro-Trump American billionaire Robert Mercer and Breitbart Executive Chairman Stephen Bannon to form Cambridge Analytica, a firm dedicated to revolutionizing how election campaigns are run. Wylie told The Guardian that he clicked immediately with Bannon, Mercer and Mercer’s daughter Rebekah—even though Wylie considers himself a progressive, while the others couldn’t be more right wing. “She loved the gays,” he said of Rebekah Mercer. “So did Steve. He saw us as early adopters. He figured, if you can get the gays on board, everyone else will follow. It’s why he was so into the whole Milo [Yiannopoulos] thing.”

Cambridge Analytica gave him an opportunity to put his ideas into practice. In May 2017, an anonymous source—presumably Wylie himself, since he was still reluctant to go public—told Guardian reporter Carole Cadwalladr that the new technique was a variation on the old theme of “psyops … the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change.” Working at Cambridge Analytica, the source went on, “was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It’s not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit.”

Wylie continued to sing the micro-targeting tune even after parting ways with Cambridge Analytica in mid-2014. In January 2016, for instance, he approached Vote Leave, the London-based group heading up the Brexit campaign to leave the European Union, with a proposal to “harvest online and social data” in order “to predict personality and psychological traits of individual voters.” When the group turned him down, the ever-upbeat Wylie said he was “always happy to chat” about such techniques should similar circumstances ever arise.

That was the old Christopher Wylie. The new one is 180 degrees different. Rather than a new breed of campaign strategists, he now maintains, Cambridge Analytica is “a full-service propaganda machine” that believes that “if you can control all the streams of information around your opponent, you can influence how they perceive that battle space and you can then influence how they’re going to behave and react.” Rather than a way of fine-tuning political messaging, micro-targeting is now a means of destroying society by smashing it into bits.

“Instead of standing in the public square and saying what you think and then letting people come and listen to you and have that shared experience as to what that narrative is,” he said in his March video interview with The Guardian, “you are whispering into the ear of each and every voter. … We risk fragmenting society in a way where we don’t have any more shared experiences and we don’t have any more shared understanding. If we don’t have any more shared understanding, how can we be a functioning society?”

It’s a good question. But why would Wylie suddenly repudiate ideas that he had spent years advancing? Was it the shock of seeing Brexit pass in June 2016? Was it Donald Trump’s no less surprising victory five months later? Or was it his newfound alliance with the anti-Russian, anti-Brexit Guardian? As he told a parliamentary committee in London: “2016 was where I started looking at what this company was actually doing in the United States and, you know, coming to appreciate that the projects that I was working on may have had a much wider impact than I initially anticipated it would. And after Donald Trump got inaugurated, very shortly after that, that’s when I started working with Carole at The Guardian on reporting some of the things the company was doing. So for the spring on, I was one of her key sources anonymously until we could figure out a legal position that would allow me to come forward.”

Unable to drum up business with the Vote Leave campaign, in other words, he perked up when approached by Cadwalladr and adjusted his message accordingly.

The Guardian, for its part, touted the firm’s abilities in a way that would make the most gung-ho salesperson blush. Cambridge Analytica was not just another bunch of campaign advisers. No, Cadwalladr wrote, it was at the center of “one of the most profoundly unsettling” stories of our time, one involving Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants. “Brexit and Trump are entwined. The Trump administration’s links to Russia and Britain are entwined. And Cambridge Analytica is one point of focus through which we can see all these relationships in play[.]”

“There are three strands to this story,” Cadwalladr continued. “How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the U.S. How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a U.S. billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.”

Cue the ominous background music. Today, we have Cambridge Analytica. Tomorrow, the world.

The reality is a good deal more mundane. Before the story broke, Dave Karpf, an assistant professor at George Washington University, was pointing out that micro-targeting suffered from a fatal flaw: the need to craft ever more specialized messages for all those infinitesimal groups. Since such appeals are not cost free, any campaign that uses such techniques will find itself expending more and more energy to reach smaller and smaller audiences. As Karpf puts it:

The more segments a campaign creates within a voter universe, the more distinct messages that campaign has to develop, test, and refine. Even if Cambridge Analytica correctly assigned every American to one of its 32 psychographic categories AND linked those profiles to a national voter file, the data would only become useful if the Trump communications operation was crafting distinct messages for each of the categories.

Few campaigns have the resources to engage in such a massive operation, least of all the bare-bones and chaotic Trump campaign in 2016.

Indeed, Karpf notes that Cambridge Analytica now seems to be edging away from micro-targeting. As digital director Molly Schweikert observed in a post-election analysis, the company assisted the Trump campaign by “going into the field on a weekly basis to collect large amounts of direct hard ID responses.” This entailed “thousands of responses coming in from battleground states through which we were able to score individuals on a few key things … [such as] candidate preference … the particular issues they cared about … and also their likelihood to turn out.” [Quote begins at 18:25.]

Cambridge Analytica, in other words, was doing what campaigns have long done, which is to knock on doors and ask people what they think. These are techniques that the Obama campaign raised to new heights in 2008. Says Karpf: “Rather than bragging about a new leap forward in voter targeting, Schweickert is effectively boasting that the Republicans have caught up to the Democrats.”

“You get a lot of snake oil like this in data work,” one Trump campaign consultant observed. No less skeptical was Trump himself. “I’ve always felt it was overrated,” he said of such high-powered techniques.

So where does that leave us? The answer is with a “vaporware” salesman, to use Karpf’s term, locked in an illicit relationship with an equally vapid press—in other words, with old-fashioned hype raised to a new order of magnitude. The more Wylie and Cadwalladr take their horror show on the road, the more people will be persuaded that Facebook must be censored and Russia contained.

In the U.K., the immediate goal for anti-Brexiteers is to invalidate the 2016 referendum and pave the way for a new one. In the U.S., it’s to discredit the 2016 election by showing how it was distorted by outside manipulation and pave the way for ousting Trump.

As much as people might like to see Trump go, they should realize that the price is an increasingly distorted view of Russia as the new Nazi Germany and hence an increasingly feverish push for war.

Not so long ago, observers regarded the prospect of a U.S.-Russian military clash as far-fetched. But thanks to Syria, Salisbury, et al., it’s now all too real.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal pales in comparison to The Guardian scandal and that of the rest of the pro-war press, which is the scariest scandal of them all.

Norman Finkelstein: The End of Israeli Influence in America? (Audio)

Editor’s note: Thousands of Palestinians staged a mass protest along Gaza’s sealed border with Israel on Friday, some burning Israeli flags. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live bullets from across the border fence.

In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence,” host and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer welcomes controversial author Norman Finkelstein, a longtime critic of the “Holocaust Industry” and an outspoken commentator on the Arab-Israeli conflict. His most recent book, “Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom,” delves into the struggles of Palestinians in the region.

From the book description:

The Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated places in the world. More than two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more than half are under eighteen years of age. Since 2004, Israel has launched eight devastating “operations” against Gaza’s largely defenseless population. Thousands have perished, and tens of thousands have been left homeless. In the meantime, Israel has subjected Gaza to a merciless illegal blockade.

What has befallen Gaza is a man-made humanitarian disaster.

Based on scores of human rights reports, Norman G. Finkelstein’s new book presents a meticulously researched inquest into Gaza’s martyrdom. He shows that although Israel has justified its assaults in the name of self-defense, in fact these actions constituted flagrant violations of international law.

But Finkelstein also documents that the guardians of international law—from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to the UN Human Rights Council—ultimately failed Gaza. One of his most disturbing conclusions is that, after Judge Richard Goldstone’s humiliating retraction of his UN report, human rights organizations succumbed to the Israeli juggernaut.

Finkelstein’s magnum opus is both a monument to Gaza’s martyrs and an act of resistance against the forgetfulness of history.

Finkelstein, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, tells Scheer during their conversation that he purposely used “martyrdom” in his new book’s title, as his parents invoked the same term when discussing their own suffering during the Holocaust.

Finkelstein believes the younger generation of American Jews is growing estranged from Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians and will move toward dissociating itself from Israel’s policies.

And he says the human rights community has largely abandoned Gaza, where living conditions are extremely poor for its residents, half of whom are children.

Norman Finkelstein in 2013 at the Solidarity Youth Movement 10th anniversary conference in Calicut, India. (Zuhairali / Wikimedia)

Listen to the interview in the player above. Find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

—Posted by Eric Ortiz

Russia Accuses U.K. of Faking Chemical Attack in Syria

MOSCOW — The Russian Defense Ministry on Friday accused Britain of staging a fake chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma last weekend, a bold charge that comes amid Moscow’s stern warnings to the West against striking Syria.

A day before a team from the international chemical weapons watchdog was to arrive in Douma, just east of Damascus, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that images of victims of the purported attack were fakes staged with “Britain’s direct involvement,” without providing evidence.

White Helmets first-responder volunteer and activists claimed an alleged chemical attack on April 7 by the Syrian government killed over 40 people in the town of Douma, the allegations that drew international outrage and prompted Washington and its allies to consider a military response. Moscow warned against any strikes and threatened to retaliate.

Konashenkov released statements by medics from Douma’s hospital, who said a group of people toting video cameras entered the hospital, shouting that its patients were struck with chemical weapons, dousing them with water and causing panic. The medics, however, said none of the patients had any symptoms of chemical poisoning, according to the statements.

Konashenkov said that “powerful pressure from London was exerted on representatives of the so-called White Helmets to quickly stage the premeditated provocation.” He added that the Russian military has proof of British involvement, but didn’t immediately present it.

The accusations followed an earlier statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said that “intelligence agencies of a state that is now striving to spearhead a Russo-phobic campaign were involved in that fabrication.” He didn’t elaborate or name the state.

Last month Britain blamed Russia for a nerve agent attack on an ex-spy and his daughter, accusations Russia has vehemently denied.

As fears of a Russia confrontation with Western powers mount, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his “deep concerns” over the situation in Syria in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a statement by the French presidency, Macron called for dialogue between France and Russia to “continue and intensify” to bring peace and stability to Syria. The Kremlin readout said that Putin warned against rushing to blame the Syrian government before conducting a “thorough and objective probe.”

The Russian leader warned against “ill-considered and dangerous actions … that would have consequences beyond conjecture.” Putin and Macron instructed their foreign and defense ministers to maintain close contact to “de-escalate the situation,” the Kremlin said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called by Russia Friday that “there is no military solution to the conflict.” He said “the Cold War is back — with a vengeance but with a difference,” because safeguards that managed the risk of escalation in the past “no longer seem to be present.”

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said President Donald Trump “has not yet made a decision about possible actions in Syria.” She said of the alleged chemical attack that “Russia can complain all it wants about fake news, but no one is buying its lies and its cover-ups.”

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia insisted that there was “no credible confirmation of toxic substance use in Douma,” adding that “we have information to believe that what took place is a provocation with the participation of certain countries’ intelligence services.” ”We warned about this long ago,” he said.

Russian officials had said before the alleged attack in Douma that the rebels in Damascus suburbs were plotting chemical attacks to blame the Syrian government and set the stage for the U.S. strike. Moscow alleged quickly after Saturday’s suspected attack that the images of the victims in Douma are fake.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also said that following Syrian rebels’ withdrawal from the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, stockpiles of chemical agents were found there. The ministry additionally pointed to previous alleged use of chemicals by the rebels in fighting with Syrian government troops.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow, Lavrov reiterated a strong warning to the West against military action in Syria. “I hope no one would dare to launch such an adventure now,” Lavrov said.

He noted that Russian and U.S. militaries have a hotline to prevent incidents, adding that it’s not clear if it would be sufficient amid mounting tensions.

Russia has been a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and has helped turn the tide of war in his favor since entering the conflict in September 2015. Syria’s civil war, which began as a popular uprising against Assad, is now in its eighth year.

A fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is expected to head to Douma, the site of the suspected attack. Both the Russian military and the Syrian government said they would facilitate the mission and ensure the inspectors’ security.

Lavrov said Russia expects the OPCW team to quickly visit the site. The Russian military said its chemical experts visited Douma shortly after the alleged attack and found no trace of chemical agents in ground samples. It also said Russian officers found no patients with chemical attack symptoms at a local hospital, and no indication of any burials having taken place of the victims.

On Thursday, Russia’s military said Douma has been brought under full control of the Syrian government under a Russia-mediated deal that secured the evacuation of the rebels and thousands of civilians after it was recaptured by Syrian forces. The government, however, said evacuations from Douma were ongoing and no Syrian government forces had entered the town.

Douma and the sprawling eastern Ghouta region near the capital, Damascus, had been under rebel control since 2012 and was a thorn in the side of Assad’s government, threatening his seat of power with missiles and potential advances for years. The government’s capture of Douma, the last town held by the rebels in eastern Ghouta, marked a major victory for Assad.

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Zeina Karam in Beirut, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

Israeli Flags Burn, Live Rounds Fired in Gaza Border Protest

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Thousands of Palestinians staged a mass protest along Gaza’s sealed border with Israel on Friday, some burning large Israeli flags and torching tires while soldiers fired tear gas and live bullets from across the border fence.

Gaza health officials said 363 people were wounded by Israeli fire or treated for tear gas inhalation in the third large-scale protest in as many consecutive Fridays. Such weekly demonstrations are to continue to mid-May, keeping tensions high along the volatile border.

The health officials did not provide a breakdown of types of injuries, but said among those hurt Friday was a Gaza journalist who was in serious condition with a bullet wound in the abdomen. Since late March, 27 Palestinians, including a journalist, have been killed and hundreds wounded by army fire in such rallies.

Rights groups have described the Israeli military’s open-fire regulations as unlawful, saying they permit soldiers to use potentially lethal force against unarmed protesters. Israel has accused Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers of using the protests as a cover for attacks and says snipers only target the main “instigators.”

On Friday, most of the demonstrators assembled in five tent camps located several hundred meters (yards) from the border fence. Smaller groups moved closer to the fence, throwing stones, torching tires and burning large Israeli flags, as well as posters of Israel’s prime minister and defense minister. Large plumes of black smoke from burning tires rose into the sky.

Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber-coated steel pellets and live rounds. The military said that demonstrators hurled an explosive device and several fire bombs near the fence in what it said was an apparent attempt to damage it.

Footage distributed by the military showed an area of the fence made up of several layers of barbed wire coils. Protesters stuck a Palestinian flag into the fence and affixed a rope, using it to tug at the coils. One man threw a burning tire into the fence, while another was seen walking nearby with the help of a crutch.

The marches have been organized by Hamas, but large turnouts on two preceding Fridays were also driven by desperation among the territory’s 2 million residents. Gaza has endured a border blockade by Israel and Egypt since Hamas overran the territory in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliament elections.

The blockade has driven Gaza deeper into poverty, with unemployment approaching 50 percent and electricity available for less than five hours a day. The marchers are protesting against the blockade, but are also asserting what they say is a “right of return” of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to what is now Israel.

Several thousand people gathered Friday at a tent camp east of Gaza City. The camp was decked out in Palestinian flags. At the entrance, organizers had laid a large Israeli flag on the ground for protesters to step on.

In the camp, 37-year-old construction worker Omar Hamada said he is protesting to draw world attention to Gaza and get the border reopened.

“We want to live like everyone else in the world,” he said. “We came here so the world can see us and know that life here is miserable, and that there should be a solution.”

Hamada was critical of Hamas, saying the group has set back Gaza by decades, but added that “this is the reality and we have to deal with it.”

Critics argue that Hamas’ refusal to disarm is a key reason for the continued blockade. One path toward lifting the blockade would be to have Hamas’ political rival, West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, take over the Gaza government, but recent Egypt-led talks on such a deal appear to have run aground.

The debate over Israel’s open-fire regulations has intensified with a rising number of dead and wounded since the first protests on March 30.

In all, 34 Palestinians were killed in the past two weeks, 27 during protests. Seven were killed in other circumstances, including six militants engaged in apparent attempts to carry out attacks or infiltrate Israel.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 1,300 Palestinians were wounded by live fire in the past two weeks.

The Israeli military has argued that Gaza militant groups are trying to turn the border area into a combat zone, and said it has a right to defend its sovereign border. It has said that soldiers fire live bullets as a last resort, in a “precise and measured manner.”

Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid party, called Hamas a “despicable terror organization” and accused it of exploiting civilians. He said the Israeli military is “operating against it (Hamas) with determination and according to international law.”

Human rights groups have reiterated that soldiers can only use lethal force if they face an apparent imminent threat to their lives.

The Israeli rights group B’Tselem said Friday that open-fire policy must not be dictated by worst case scenarios, such as a feared mass breach of the border. “An order to open live fire at unarmed protesters is manifestly unlawful,” it said.

Another Israeli group, Breaking The Silence, published a statement by five former snipers in the Israeli military who said they were “filled with shame and sorrow” over the recent incidents in Gaza.

“Instructing snipers to shoot to kill unarmed demonstrators who pose no danger to human life, is another product of the occupation and military rule over millions of Palestinian people, as well as of our country’s callous leadership, and derailed moral path,” said the statement.

The group has been criticized in Israel for publishing often anonymous testimony by current or former Israeli soldiers who have misgivings about their military service and treatment of Palestinians.

The five ex-snipers in Friday’s statement were identified by name.

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Akram reported from Khuzaa, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writer Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

Count Germany Out if the U.S. Attacks Syria

BERLIN—Germany won’t participate in possible military action in Syria, but supports sending a message that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday.

Merkel stressed the importance of a united position in response to an alleged attack in Douma that the West is blaming on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

“Germany will not take part in possible military action — I want to make clear again that there are no decisions — but we see, and support this, that everything is being done to send a signal that this use of chemical weapons is not acceptable,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin after meeting Denmark’s prime minister.

The German leader said she spoke Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been talking regularly this week with U.S. President Donald Trump about the most effective response to the alleged chlorine gas attack.

Post-World War II Germany typically has been reluctant to engage in military action, and parliamentary approval is required for any military missions abroad. The country often has restricted itself to supporting roles, such as the participation of a German refueling plane and Jordan-based reconnaissance jets in the current international campaign against the Islamic State group.

“I think it is important to have a common line, without Germany participating militarily,” Merkel said. “If the permanent representatives in the (U.N.) Security Council were to initiate steps … going beyond the diplomatic dimension, then we will be supportive.”

She did not specify how Germany might be supportive. And Merkel avoided a question about whether she was concerned that a conflict between Russia and the United States could ignite following Trump’s tweet Wednesday announcing upcoming strikes against Syria with the words “Get ready Russia.”

The crisis over Syria is being handled “with caution,” Merkel said. But she added that the violation of international rules against chemical weapons is serious, and “the reactions will be appropriate.”