Chris Hedges's Blog, page 619

U.S. Media Do Not Give Us All Sides of the Story

Editor’s note: Kevin Cooper was convicted of a 1983 quadruple murder and sentenced to death in a trial in which evidence that might have exonerated him was withheld from the defense. His case was scrutinized in a June 19 New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof. Visit savekevincooper.org for more information.

Death Row, San Quentin Prison—In 1964, the late Malcolm X told a crowd of people in Harlem, “This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. … You let the man maneuver you into thinking that it’s wrong to fight him when he’s fighting you. He’s fighting you in the morning, fighting you in the noon, fighting you at night and fighting you all in between, and you still think it’s wrong to fight him back. Why? The press. The newspapers make you look wrong.”

There is supposed to be freedom of speech and of the press here in America. That is in the Constitution. Malcolm X knew back then, as many of us know now, that freedom of speech, especially in the media in all of its various forms, from newspapers to radio to television, has had and still is having a very powerful effect on the way black people have been seen throughout the history of this country.

So for we who are darker than blue, freedom to others is not freedom to us. We have always paid a high price for any freedom, even that of speech or the press. By “we,” I mean the people of all races and classes and both sexes who fought hard throughout this country’s torturous and bloody history.

It was those people who made the powerful do what they said they would do when they put it on paper in the Constitution. Just as freedom is not always free, due to the high price many people had to pay for it, including death, the press is not always free, either. The press has, at times throughout its history, been the cause of great harm, including death to many a person.

This happens because the press is run and controlled by human beings—and corporations, I should say. Some of the human beings and corporations that control the press have proven to be biased, prejudiced, racist and sexist. They have religious hatred and other problems that have made their stories one-sided and have swayed the public because of how they report on people and events.

Many people have been told a lie: that death row inmates have cable TV. The only cable we have is a black cable that serves as the antenna so that we can get television reception that otherwise would be hard for us to receive because of all the steel and cement in this place.

For decades, people like me in places like this could only see TV news programs from the standard TV stations: ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. All but PBS had a uniform way of reporting the news, all seeming to tell the same story with every story they covered. This was before Fox. After Fox, the arc went the other direction. There seemed to be no middle ground when it came to the press on TV. That may or may not be true, but that is how it seems.

Telling the same story was especially true during the Iraq War. Throughout history, the media has sold or tried to sell every war to the people of that time. But when it came to listening to the words and voices of different people throughout this world and even contrary views in this country, there never seemed to be more than a token representative from the people affected by the events of the day.

Then something happened to change the way many people could see the news, and the media had to adapt to it: No. 1 was cable TV, No. 2 was the internet and No. 3 was free television and its hundreds of stations.

I cannot speak about cable TV or the internet because we inmates are not allowed to have either. But I can speak about free digital TV, which we are allowed to receive. Now, instead of getting just ABC, CBS, Fox and PBS, I receive televised news from around the world. I can hear the words and voices of an entire people, not just a token representation. I can see for myself the effects of poverty, war, oppression and other ills that are taking their toll on many poor people around this world.

This is true of people in this country—those oppressed by oppressors between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, from the Canadian to the Mexican borders.

Because of technology, all of us—if we care to see what is shown—can bear witness to all types of crimes by many different people, including the police.

I can now watch KBS News (South Korea), Telemundo and Univision (Latino), BBC World News, Hechos AM (Latino), Chinese Global Television Network, Central China Television, France 24, DW News (Germany), NHK Newsline (Japan), RT (Russia Today), Al-Jazeera (Arab, Muslim), NTD World News (Japan), NTD Taiwan News, Saigon TV News (Vietnam), Pan-African News and more. With closed captioning, Spanish words, for instance, are translated into English, and I can understand exactly how some Latinos really feel about their plight in this world—not just in this country.

Because I am able to watch, listen and learn from all these unique TV stations and news programs, I have learned to see the world and the people in it in a new and better way. I have learned to see this country and its government in a different way, too. Not the way that certain corporate media outlets want us to see it, but in the way that it really is. I am no longer restricted to listening to the same old news from the same old media in this country. My horizons have been expanded, and I now am able to see all sides of the story. This has helped me become a well-rounded person and a more informed human being.

Whenever I see a story on ABC, CBS, Fox or NBC, especially about war, and I find the same story on one or more of the different news program I watch, I can learn the other side of the story. In fact, whenever I hear something on the news, I often ask myself, “What aren’t they saying?” If I knew what they weren’t saying, then what they report may be entirely different in the context of telling the whole story, or the whole truth.

The more information one can learn about a given subject, the more informed and well-rounded that person becomes. Sometimes it seems that the mainstream news media are dumbing down their viewers, speaking to them as if they are dummies. They want news to be entertainment, but news isn’t entertainment. It’s news. Even a person like me—who has been banished to another world, this modern-day plantation—knows this.

The best thing to happen to the free press is that now people can get news from many different sources and no longer have to listen to the one-sided views of certain news media. With more information, we can now truly make up our own minds as to what and who to believe.

Fox News, the right-wing, conservative, Republican news station, has supported capital punishment. So do other news media, and if you think I am lying, I must ask you: What have you been smoking?

I was convicted of murders I did not commit with the help of the conservative, right-wing, Republican news media in 1985. This was long before Fox showed up on the scene. But those Republican news outlets in San Bernardino and San Diego counties helped seal my fate by what they didn’t report, as well as by what they did.

Now, in 2018, the different types of media—TV, print, radio, podcasts and websites—are learning, maybe for the first time, the truth about my case and wrongful conviction and are exposing it to the public. This is even true among some Republicans, because the truth about my plight is disturbing to them, too.

Here’s the thing that bothers me and should bother you, too: The news isn’t supposed to be conservative or liberal, or any other way. The news is the news is the news.

Still, the news media, as free and as powerful as they are, aren’t always trustworthy. So many people are doing what I had to learn to do: Get information from as many different news sources as possible, put it all together and see what makes the most sense. It’s not enough for someone to not like what is being reported and call it fake news. The real news is out there to be found, and it’s up to all of us to find it. There is no middle ground on this.

We all have to know, and need to know, and should want to know all sides of the story.

That’s why this new technology is so important. For the first time in history, it allows people all over the world to see and hear others just like them speak their truths in their own words. While many of these people don’t look alike or speak the same language, they are alike because of their class status. They speak the same language of the oppressed, because they all, to one degree or another, are saying the exact same thing to their oppressors.

They are all saying: Keep your bullets out of our bodies, and your bodies off of our land. Keep your knives out of our backs, and your foot off of our asses. Keep your cuffs off our wrist, and your shackles off our legs, and especially keep your hands out of our pockets.

In other words, stop oppressing us, and leave us the hell alone.

Where Are All the U.S. Oligarchs With Links to Washington?

TV news shows are good at getting viewers riled up. Day and night, I hear the anchors on CNN and MSNBC getting us riled up about the schemes of this or that “Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin.” I’ve heard that phrase incessantly in recent weeks.

And plenty of others have heard the “Russian oligarch” phrase. Merriam-Webster.com reported that “oligarch” was one of its most searched-for words on April 5 “following reports that Robert Mueller had questioned Russian businessmen to whom this descriptor applies.”

But here’s a phrase I haven’t heard from any of the purportedly progressive hosts on MSNBC: “A U.S. oligarch with links to Washington.”

That avoidance is revealing when one considers an indisputable fact: U.S. oligarchs have done far more to undermine U.S. democracy than any Russian.

Take, for example, Brian L. Roberts—who certainly fits the dictionary definition of “oligarch” as “one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.” As chair and CEO of Comcast, Roberts runs the company his dad founded and has sole voting rights over one-third of the corporation’s stock. His annual compensation last year of $28.6 million was less than what 14 other U.S. oligarchs—I mean, CEOs—“earned.” His net worth is estimated to be over $1.65 billion.

Does this oligarch have “links to Washington”? In one recent year, Comcast devoted nearly $19 million to lobbying, second only to military-industrial firm Northrop Grumman. Last year, Comcast spent more than $15 million. And oligarch Roberts has been a top D.C. power player for decades, having gotten his way with one president after another—from President Clinton’s deregulatory, anti-consumer Telecommunications Act of 1996 to President Trump’s current effort to end net neutrality on behalf of Comcast and other giant Internet providers.

Clinton’s pro-conglomeration Telcom Act and Trump’s net neutrality assault have both undermined U.S. democracy. No Russian had a hand in it. (You may have heard that the Trump-propagandist Sinclair Broadcast Group will soon own more than 200 local TV stations; until the Telcom Act, a company could legally own no more than 12.)

You’ve got to hand it to U.S. oligarchs. So many of them stay on top no matter which party runs Washington. They sure have greater staying power than Russian oligarchs—who, we’re constantly told, end up dead or in prison if they fall out of favor with President Putin.

Roberts certainly has the lifestyle of an oligarch. He maintains a seasonal dacha—I mean, second home—in Martha’s Vineyard where he keeps his custom-built Sparkman & Stephens sloops, and where he has hosted President Obama, including at an A-list cocktail party thrown for Obama in August 2013. And Roberts reportedly just built a sprawling mansion in North Palm Beach, not far from Trump’s Mar-a-lago.

But his primary residence is in Philadelphia. Obama has been a regular presence at Comcast mansions there as well. In 2013, speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in the Philadelphia home of Roberts’ top lobbyist, President Obama commented: “I have been here so much, the only thing I haven’t done in this house is have Seder dinner.”

While Russian oligarchs are often passionate game-hunters, Roberts is an avid golfer, carrying an impressive 8 handicap. Obama has famously golfed with him “on the lush fairways of the Vineyard Golf Club.”

There’s one last factoid I need to add about Roberts. As Comcast’s CEO, he is the ultimate boss of those allegedly progressive hosts on MSNBC. Which may help to explain their silence about U.S. oligarchs, since it would be difficult to bring up the topic without mentioning their boss.

I really shouldn’t single out Roberts. Nor the MSNBC hosts he employs. Because the problem goes way beyond this particular oligarch and that particular corporate news outlet.

Roberts is just one of dozens of powerful U.S. oligarchs. They compose a “U.S. ruling class” and preside over a “corporate state”—a couple more phrases one virtually never hears in mainstream U.S. media. One reason these oligarchs get little critical coverage and no systemic scrutiny is because—as in Russia—oligarchs are owners or major sponsors of mainstream media.

Let me be clear, so as to not overstate things: Fox News hosts are free to tarnish certain oligarchs, Democratic ones like George Soros—and MSNBC hosts gleefully go after Republican oligarchs like the Mercers and the Koch brothers.

But to get a clear and comprehensive view of the workings of the U.S. political system (aka “U.S. oligarchy”), I have a suggestion: Disconnect from MSNBC, CNN, Fox and other corporate news sources and turn instead to high-quality, independent progressive media.

If you do, you’ll see that the problems plaguing U.S. democracy and the U.S. economy are definitely the work of oligarchs. But they don’t speak Russian.

Polar Ice Is Melting Fast in Both Hemispheres

New studies have confirmed, once again, the rapid melting of the polar ice in both hemispheres.

A British team has used satellite data to reveal that the retreat of the all-important grounding line of many Antarctic glaciers has accelerated to five times the historic level. And US scientists have confirmed that in Arctic waters the West Greenland ice sheet is now melting faster than at any time in the last 450 years.

Both studies deliver ominous evidence of the long-term consequences of climate change due to profligate human use of fossil fuels. The Greenland icecap holds enough water to raise global sea levels by seven metres. The West Antarctic ice sheet – where the latest study has identified most of the change – holds enough water to raise sea levels by up to five metres.

The UK measure of Antarctic ice retreat is important because it confirms on a wider scale what individual measurements of glacier retreat have already shown: that increasingly warm southern ocean waters are melting the ice at depth.

Depth in this study is critical: glaciers move slowly because the frozen rivers are “anchored” or grounded in bedrock as they flow off the continent, and then grounded again up to a kilometre deep off the continental shelf.

This applies a brake to the flow towards the open sea. The further from the coast the grounding line, the slower the glacier’s flow, the more stable the ice shelf, and the slower the consequent sea level rise.

Hannes Konrad of the University of Leeds in the UK and colleagues report in the journal Nature Geoscience that they used the European Space Agency’s satellite Cryosat-2 data to track the changes in the grounding line along 16,000 kilometres of southern polar coastline.

Around West Antarctica, more than a fifth of the ice sheet has retreated faster than the 25 metres or so a year that has been normal since the end of the last ice age. In some cases the retreat of the grounding line has been five times that rate. The retreat has been extreme in eight of the ice sheet’s 65 biggest glaciers.

Clear evidence

“Our study provides clear evidence that retreat is happening across the ice sheet due to ocean melting at its base, and not just at the few spots that have been mapped before now,” Dr Konrad said.

“This retreat has had a huge impact on inland glaciers, because releasing them from the sea bed removes friction, causing them to speed up and contribute to global sea level rise.”

Far to the north, ice is also melting. Erich Osterberg of Dartmouth College in the US and colleagues report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that they collected seven ice cores from a remote zone in the West Greenland ice sheet where meltwater trickles down into the deeper snow and then freezes again: this “new” ice in the compacted snow provides scientists with a record of melting over time.

Longer record

Researchers have been watching the apparent acceleration of the summer melting of Greenland’s ice for decades: they have monitored ever faster rates of glacier flow and tried to identify direct influences on the surface of the ice sheet that might accelerate overall melting.

But direct observation of the northern hemisphere’s largest concentration of ice began only about five decades ago. The Dartmouth cores provide a total of almost five centuries of summer melt patterns.

“The ice core record ends about 450 years ago, so the modern melt rates in these cores are the highest of the whole record that we can see. The advantage of the ice cores is that they show us just how unusual it is for Greenland to be melting this fast,” Dr Osterberg said.

“We see that West Greenland melt really started accelerating about 20 years ago. Our study shows that the rapid rise in the West Greenland melt is a combination of specific weather patterns and an additional long-term warming trend over the last century.”

‘I Am Sorry’: Zuckerberg Faces Congressional Inquisition

WASHINGTON—After privately assuring senators that his company will do better, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is undergoing a two-day congressional inquisition that will be very public — and possibly pivotal for the massive social networking company he created.

Zuckerberg visited with senators in closed-door meetings Monday, previewing the public apology he planned to give Congress on Tuesday after revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gathered personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.

Zuckerberg has apologized many times already, to users and the public, but it is the first time in his career that he has gone before Congress. He will testify before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees on Tuesday and before a House panel on Wednesday.

In the hearings, Zuckerberg will not only try to restore public trust in his company but also to stave off federal regulation that some lawmakers have floated. In prepared testimony released Monday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which he is expected to deliver Wednesday, Zuckerberg apologizes for fake news, hate speech, a lack of data privacy and Russian social media interference in the 2016 elections.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” he says in the remarks. “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

Separately, the company also began alerting users that their data was gathered by Cambridge Analytica. A notification that appeared on Facebook for some users Tuesday told them that “one of your friends” used Facebook to log into a now-banned personality quiz app called “This Is Your Digital Life.” The notice says the app misused the information, including public profiles, page likes, birthdays and current cities, by sharing it with Cambridge Analytica.

After resisting previous calls to testify, Zuckerberg agreed to come to Capitol Hill this month after reports surfaced — and the company confirmed — that Cambridge Analytica had gathered Facebook users’ data. In the remarks, Zuckerberg said his company has a responsibility to make sure what happened with Cambridge Analytica doesn’t happen again.

Zuckerberg is also expected to be asked about Russia’s use of U.S. social media during the 2016 elections — a subject of several congressional investigations and special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference.

In the statement, Zuckerberg addresses Russian election interference and acknowledges, as he has in the past, that the company was too slow to respond and that it’s “working hard to get better.” The company has said that as many as 146 million people may have received information from a Russian agency that’s accused of orchestrating much of the cyber meddling in the election.

“We will continue working with the government to understand the full extent of Russian interference, and we will do our part not only to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy everywhere,” Zuckerberg continues.

In the testimony, Zuckerberg acknowledges that the questioning could be hostile.

“We face a number of important issues around privacy, safety, and democracy, and you will rightfully have some hard questions for me to answer,” Zuckerberg says.

The prepared remarks do not reveal new information about how data was shared or what Facebook will do. In addition to saying he is sorry, Zuckerberg outlines the steps the company has taken to restrict outsiders’ access to people’s personal information. He also says the company is investigating every app that had access to a large amount of information before the company moved to prevent such access in 2014 — something that came too late in the Cambridge Analytica case.

Zuckerberg met Monday with Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce panel, along with other senators. Nelson said afterward that Zuckerberg was “forthright and honest to the degree he could” be in the private, one-on-one meeting.

Nelson said he believes Zuckerberg is taking the congressional hearings seriously “because he knows there is going to be a hard look at regulation.”

Democrats like Nelson have argued that federal laws might be necessary to ensure user privacy. Republicans have yet to get behind any such legislation, but that could change.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Judiciary panel and the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, appeared open to regulation in a Tuesday floor speech ahead of the hearing. Cornyn said apologies are “not enough” and suggested that legislation could eventually be needed to give consumers more control over their own data privacy.

“This is a serious matter, and I think people expect us to take action,” Cornyn told reporters after his speech.

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Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report. Ortutay reported from New York.

Trump Cancels Latin America Trip to Focus on Syria

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday canceled plans to travel to South America this week, choosing to stay in the United States to manage the U.S. response to Syria’s apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that Trump will not attend the 8th Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru or travel to Bogota, Colombia, as planned, remaining in the United States to “oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world.”

The president’s new national security adviser, John Bolton, urged Trump to skip the trip, an official said. This reflects a view in the White House that deeper Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria have complicated calculations about a response to any U.S. military attack, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Moscow has cautioned the U.S. not to launch a military attack.

Trump’s decision to skip the South America trip marks the first time an American president has not attended the summit. Vice President Mike Pence will travel in Trump’s place, attending the summit in Lima but not traveling to Colombia.

The international chemical weapons watchdog said it will send “shortly” a fact-finding mission to the Syrian town where the suspected gas attack took place, after receiving a request from the Syrian government and its Russian backers to investigate the allegations. It was not immediately clear whether the announcement by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons would delay or avert U.S. military action against Syria.

In New York, U.N. Security Council diplomats said the United States called for a vote on a resolution that would condemn the continuing use of chemical weapons in Syria “in the strongest terms” and establish a new body to determine responsibility for chemical attacks. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement, said the U.S. asked for a midafternoon vote.

Trump on Monday promised a decision on Syria within hours, although he did not say when a decision would be implemented. He declared that Russia or any other nation found to share responsibility for Saturday’s apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians will “pay a price.”

Amid the tough talk from the White House, the U.S. military appeared to be in position to carry out any attack order. A Navy destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, got underway in the eastern Mediterranean on Monday after completing a port call in Cyprus. The guided missile destroyer is armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, the weapon of choice in a U.S. attack one year ago on an airfield in Syria following an alleged sarin gas attack on civilians.

Also, the Navy said the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and its strike group will depart Norfolk, Virginia, on Wednesday for a regularly scheduled deployment to Europe. The Navy does not currently have a carrier in the Persian Gulf.

The White House sharply rejected any suggestion that Trump’s own words about pulling U.S. troops out of Syria had opened the door for the attack, which killed more than 40 people, including children.

Trump, asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin bore any responsibility, responded, “He may, yeah, he may. And if he does it’s going to be very tough, very tough.” He added, “Everybody’s gonna pay a price. He will. Everybody will.”

The Russian military, which has a presence in Syria as a key Assad ally, said its officers had visited the weekend site in a suburb of Damascus, the Syrian capital, and found no evidence to back up reports of poison gas being used. Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused Washington of deliberately stoking international tensions by threatening Russia in a tone “beyond the threshold of what is acceptable, even during the Cold War.”

Trump said there was little question that Syria was responsible for the apparent weekend attack, although the government of President Bashar Assad denied it. “To me there’s not much of a doubt, but the generals will figure it out,” Trump said.

He promised a decision on a possible military response within 24 to 48 hours, “probably by the end of today.”

Emphatic in his condemnation of the apparent gas attack, Trump noted graphic pictures of the dead and sickened, calling the assault “heinous,” ”atrocious,” ”horrible” and “barbaric.”

Fielding questions at the White House on Monday, Trump press secretary Sarah Sanders said it would be “outrageous” to say that Trump’s recent announcement that he intends to remove all U.S. forces from Syria in the coming months had emboldened Assad. “I think that it is outrageous to say that the president of the United States green-lit something as atrocious as the actions that have taken place over the last several days,” she said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, in separate remarks at the Pentagon, also suggested Moscow bore some blame. He criticized Russia for what he suggested was its failure to ensure the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under terms of a 2013 agreement.

Trump said, “If it’s Russia, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out.”

An American official said the U.S. was discussing with allies whether they would participate in a retaliatory strike. If Trump decides to proceed quickly, the most likely partner would be France rather than Britain, because of concerns about obtaining permission from Parliament, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the planning publicly and requested anonymity.

As U.S. officials consider whether and how to respond, they are looking at what type of chemical agent might have been used. When Trump ordered airstrikes last year after a chemical weapons attack, it was a response to the use of sarin gas, which is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention that Syria has signed. An attack with chlorine, which can be used as a weapon but is not outright banned by the treaty, could raise precedent issues, as there have been numerous recent allegations of chlorine attacks in Syria that have drawn no response from the Trump administration.

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AP writers Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey, Josh Lederman, Edie Lederer and Jonathan Lemire contributed.

Xi Jinping Offers U.S. Possible Trade Concessions

BEIJING — President Xi Jinping promised Tuesday to cut China’s auto tariffs and improve intellectual property protection in possible concessions aimed at defusing a worsening dispute with Washington over trade and technology that investors worry could set back the global economic recovery.

Speaking at a business conference, Xi made no direct mention of his American counterpart, Donald Trump, or the dispute. He promised progress on areas that are U.S. priorities including opening China’s banking industry and boosting imports but didn’t address key irritants for Washington such as a requirement for foreign companies to work through joint ventures that require them to give technology to potential local competitors.

Private sector analysts saw Xi’s speech as an overture to help end the biggest trade dispute since World War II. It has fueled fears of a global economic chill if other nations respond with their own import barriers.

Markets surged in response in Asia, Europe and also in the U.S., where the Dow jumped 300 points before the opening bell Tuesday.

Xi tried to position China as a defender of free trade and cooperation, despite its status as the most-closed major economy, in response to Trump’s “America first” calls for import restrictions and trade deals that are more favorable to the United States.

“China’s door of opening up will not be closed and will only open wider,” said Xi at the Boao Forum for Asia on the southern island of Hainan.

Xi said Beijing will “significantly lower” tariffs on auto imports this year and ease restrictions on foreign ownership in the auto industry “as soon as possible.”

Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods worth $50 billion in response to complaints Beijing pressures foreign companies to hand over technology in violation of its World Trade Organization market-opening commitments. Beijing fired back with its own $50 billion list of U.S. goods for possible retaliation.

The Chinese leader promised to encourage “normal technological exchange” and to “protect the lawful ownership rights of foreign enterprises.”

“President Xi’s speech could create a very good platform to launch U.S.-China dialogue at the WTO to find a deal on intellectual property rights,” said economist Rajiv Biswas of IHS Markit in a report. “This would be a victory for the world trading system and an important step away from the abyss of rising global protectionism.”

The dispute is likely to end “with a concession from China,” said Larry Hu of Macquarie Group in a report.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, speaking at the Boao event, welcomed Xi’s promises on finance, investment, intellectual property and auto imports.

“We look forward to seeing these strategies elaborated, implemented and bearing fruit,” said Lee, according to a transcript issued by his office.

Also Tuesday, China filed a WTO challenge against Trump’s earlier tariff hike on steel and aluminum in a separate dispute.

Beijing, which has issued a $3 billion list of U.S. goods including pork and apples for possible retaliation, requested 60 days of consultations as a first step. If that fails, the Chinese government can ask for a ruling from a WTO panel of experts.

Chinese officials deny foreign companies are compelled to hand over technology, but business groups say joint venture and licensing rules make that unavoidable. The United States filed a WTO complaint last month accusing Beijing of violating its trade pledges by imposing unfair contract terms and allowing companies to use foreign-owned technology after licensing periods expire.

Foreign companies complain Beijing is squeezing them out of promising parts of the state-dominated economy to promote the ruling Communist Party’s plans to create Chinese global competitors in fields including robotics, electric cars and pharmaceuticals.

Xi gave no details on how those conditions might change, leaving it unclear whether that might mollify Washington.

Easing rules that limit global automakers to owning no more than 50 percent of a joint venture with a Chinese partner might help to address Trump’s complaints about technology as well as giving them more flexibility in their biggest global market.

Jake Parker, the vice president for China of the U.S.-China Business Council, which represents companies that deal with China, welcomed Xi’s announcement but expressed hope for additional steps such as ending requirements for joint ventures and technology licensing.

“Ultimately, U.S. industry will be looking for implementation of long-stalled economic reforms, but actions to date have greatly undermined the optimism of the U.S. business community,” Parker said in an email.

Xi repeated pledges to open China’s finance industries to foreign investors but gave no additional details.

Chinese regulators announced that intention in November, just after Trump ended a high-profile visit to Beijing, but gave no timeline or details. Business groups welcomed the commitment but said breaking into China’s state-dominated financial industries would be hard for new competitors and Beijing might impose restrictions that would make such an effort unprofitable.

The biggest beneficiaries of a cut in China’s 25 percent tariff on most auto imports will be the small number of automakers such as electric car brand Tesla that have no factory in China. Other automakers such as General Motors and Volkswagen that assemble vehicles in China with local partners could offer additional models.

More broadly, Xi repeated official promises to expand imports and to narrow China’s trade surplus, another irritant for Washington. China reported a global trade surplus of $423 billion last year — about two-thirds of that with the United States.

“China does not seek a trade surplus,” said Xi to an audience of Chinese and foreign businesspeople. “We have a genuine desire to increase imports and achieve a greater balance of international payments.”

The president promised to make faster progress toward joining the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement, which extends the WTO’s free-trading principles to purchases by governments. That can make a significant difference in developing countries, where the government often accounts for most sales of computer software, medical equipment and other high-value goods.

The bulk of Xi’s 40-minute speech was devoted to China’s vision for economic development and its global role following a ruling party congress in October that confirmed him as the most dominant Chinese leader since at least the 1980s.

Xi sounded a conciliatory note toward neighbors with which Beijing has territorial disputes, saying China wants to pursue peaceful cooperative development.

“We will not bully our neighbors,” the president said.

“Cold war thinking and zero-sum games are increasingly obsolete,” he said. “Arrogance or self-righteousness can only bump into walls at every turn.”

Former Colombian Rebels Blame U.S. for Leader’s Arrest

BOGOTA, Colombia — Leaders of Colombia’s disbanded FARC rebel army accused the U.S. on Tuesday of trapping a prominent rebel negotiator on a drug warrant in order to sabotage the country’s already struggling peace process.

The shock arrest Monday of Seuxis Hernandez, a blind former peace negotiator best known by his alias Jesus Santrich, played into fears that the former guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia haven’t cut ties to the country’s flourishing criminal underworld.

But his former comrades in arms have vehemently rejected the accusation, saying Santrich’s arrest on drug conspiracy charges was the result of a plot hatched during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ visit to Colombia in December and is intended to cover up for the failure of the war on drugs to stanch cocaine production that has skyrocketed since the singing of the peace deal in 2016. The FARC didn’t provide any evidence to back up the claim.

“In addition to being a shameful subordination of the Colombian justice system, it’s clear we’re witnessing another set up by the distorted American justice system,” the FARC said in a statement read Tuesday by Ivan Marquez, the rebels’ chief negotiator during the peace talks.

More than 100 former rebels and FARC sympathizers gathered late Monday outside the heavily guarded prosecutors’ bunker where the 51-year-old Santrich was being held.

Riot police flanked by a water cannon watched as former rebels shouted “freedom” and waved white flags emblazoned with the red rose symbol of their fledgling political movement, also known as FARC. Inside, Santrich was believed to have initiated a hunger strike to demand his release, according to his lawyer.

President Juan Manuel Santos defended the arrest on a U.S. warrant as necessary to maintain the credibility of the peace accord, which Colombians overwhelmingly consider too generous to rebels responsible for atrocities committed during five decades of bloody, armed conflict.

“My hand won’t tremble to authorize the extradition,” Santos said in a nationally televised address in which he tried to reassure demobilized fighters that they have nothing to fear as long as they uphold their commitments under the peace accord. “This is what the Colombian people demand. In this aspect, there can’t be any room for tolerance or weakness.”

Santrich, who joined the guerrilla movement in his 20s and gradually rose into its central command structure, was one of the first rebel leaders to bet on peace. He went to Norway in 2012 to begin negotiations with Colombia’s government and then participated in talks that continued the next four years in Cuba, where he earned a reputation as being a hard-line ideologue.

He was picked up Monday at a Bogota residence on charges filed in a New York federal court alleging he conspired with three others to smuggle several tons of cocaine into the U.S. with a wholesale value of $15 million, or $320 million when broken up and sold on American streets.

According to an Interpol notice, Santrich met with cocaine buyers at his residence on Nov. 2, 2017 — a day after one of his co-conspirators delivered a 5-kilogram sample of the narcotic to them at a hotel lobby in Bogota.

During the meeting and subsequent negotiations, he and his co-conspirators — one of them, Marlon Marin, reportedly a relative of Marquez — allegedly discussed plans for a 10-ton drug shipment to the U.S., boasting they had access to cocaine laboratories and U.S.-registered planes to produce and transport the drugs inside Colombia, the world’s largest producer of the illegal narcotic. It’s not clear if the drugs were ever sent.

Even before details of the arrest were known, FARC leaders said that it would undermine demobilized rebel fighters’ trust in the peace process.

“The peace process is in a critical moment and is in jeopardy of failing,” Marquez said, reaffirming that the FARC’s commitment to a process that has led to the demobilization of almost 7,000 fighters “has no return.”

The arrest took on added political significance because it came less than a week before President Donald Trump was set to visit Bogota for conversations with Santos partly expected to be about U.S. claims that Colombia’s longstanding support for the drug war flagged during peace talks.

Trump on Tuesday cancelled his visit, delegating Vice President Mike Pence to take his place. The FARC, speaking before Trump cancelled the trip, said Santrich shouldn’t be handed over as a “trophy” to Trump.

U.S. authorities have doubted the sincerity of the FARC leadership’s commitment to abandoning the drug trade as it enters politics, and last year named 21 suspected drug traffickers wanted for extradition who were on a list of former fighters and sympathizers entitled to benefits under the peace treaty.

Under terms of the accord, rebels who lay down their weapons and confess their war crimes are to be spared jail time and extradition. But they aren’t protected for crimes committed after the December 2016 signing.

A special tribunal set up by the accord will rule on whether Santrich’s alleged past crimes are covered by the agreement in what experts say is a major test for the peace process’ credibility.

The FARC long funded their insurgency by leveling a “war tax” on cocaine moving through territory the rebels dominated. Fifty members of its leadership structure — though not Santrich — were indicted in 2006 in the U.S. on charges of running the world’s largest drug cartel.

But the rebels always denied direct involvement in the business itself and rebel peace negotiators in 2013 denounced drug trafficking as a “scourge” that has “contaminated” the international financial system and generated a global health crisis.

“The senior leadership never cut ties to the cocaine production that earned them billions of dollars as an insurgence,” said Douglas Farrah, a senior visiting fellow at the National Defense University who has testified to U.S. Congress on the FARC’s criminal ties.

“Like addicts they just can’t quit the business,” he added.

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Associated Press writers Manuel Rueda, Cesar Garcia and Christine Armario contributed to this report.

Israel Blamed for Missile Strike in Syria That Killed 14

BEIRUT—International condemnation grew over a suspected poison gas attack in a rebel-held town near Damascus said to have been carried out by the Syrian government, while Syria and its main ally, Russia, blamed Israel for airstrikes on a Syrian air base Monday that reportedly killed 14 people, including four Iranians.

The timing of the airstrikes in central Homs province, hours after President Donald Trump said there would be “a big price to pay” for the chemical weapons attack, raised questions about whether Israel was acting alone or as a proxy for the United States.

Israel did not comment on Monday’s missile strike. The Jewish State typically does not comment on its airstrikes in Syria, which have been numerous in Syria’s civil war.

The fast-paced developments threatened to further hike tensions between the U.S. and Russia, which has in the past warned against any U.S. military action against President Bashar Assad’s government. Iran, a key ally of Assad, condemned the airstrikes, which it said killed four Iranians, including a colonel and a member of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace force.

Opposition activists said 40 people died in Saturday night’s chemical attack in the town of Douma, the last remaining rebel bastion in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, blaming Assad’s forces. The attack killed entire families in their homes and underground shelters, opposition activists and local rescuers said.

The Syrian government strongly denied it carried out a chemical weapons attack and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said it has opened an investigation. In a statement, it said a fact-finding mission was gathering information from all available sources to establish whether chemical weapons were used.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, urged inspectors from the watchdog agency to fly to Syria’s capital Tuesday and visit the site in a nearby rebel-held town. He denied any attack occurred, telling the U.N. Security Council that experts from Russia’s military radiological, biological and chemical unit went to the site and found no chemical substances on the ground, no dead, and no poisoned people in hospitals.

Trump on Monday condemned the “heinous attack” in Syria and said later at a Cabinet meeting that he would “forcefully” respond. “Nothing is off the table,” Trump warned.

He said that after conferring with his military advisers, he would soon decide on how to respond, and against whom. “If it’s Russia, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out,” Trump said. Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, he added: “Everybody’s going to pay a price — he will, everybody will.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Assad’s government and its backers, including Russia, “must be held to account” if it is found to have been responsible for the suspected poison gas attack. “Yes, this is about the actions, the brutal actions by Assad and his regime. But it also is about the backers of the regime, and of course Russia is one of those backers. … And they need to look very carefully at the position they have taken,” she said.

The European Union also laid the blame squarely on Assad’s government.

The U.N. Security Council was holding an emergency meeting Monday to discuss the chemical attack.

It was the second such airstrike this year on the Syrian air base, known as T4, where Iranian fighters are believed to be stationed. Israel hit the base in February, after it said an Iranian drone that violated Israeli airspace took off from it.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said two Israeli aircraft targeted the base Monday, firing eight missiles. It said Syria shot down five of them while the other three landed in the western part of the base. Syrian state TV quoted an unnamed military official as saying that Israeli F-15 warplanes fired several missiles at T4. It gave no further details.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry had no comment when asked about reports of the airstrikes.

Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli fighter pilot and ex-head of Israeli military intelligence, stopped short of saying Israel was responsible for the airstrike. But he suggested that the chemical attack had crossed a red line and prompted Israel to take action to send a message to Syria and arch-enemy Iran.

“The Iranians are determined to base themselves in Syria,” he told the Army Radio station. “Israel is determined not to let them do that. And there is a strategic collision that perhaps tonight may have come together because of the chemical issue.”

Since 2012, Israel has struck inside Syria more than 100 times, mostly targeting suspected weapons convoys destined for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has been fighting alongside Syrian government forces.

The base, which was used as a launching pad for attacks against Islamic State militants who were at one point stationed nearby, is near the Shayrat air base, which was targeted by U.S. missiles last year in response to a chemical weapons attack.

Syria’s state news agency SANA initially said the attack on the T4 air base was likely “an American aggression,” but the Pentagon denied involvement, and the agency then dropped the accusation, blaming Israel instead. SANA said the missile attack resulted in a number of casualties, but provided no specific figures.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war through a network of activists on the ground, said 14 died, including Iranians and three Syrian officers.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Monday that Israel had not notified Russia of the airstrike, even though there may have been Russian military advisers at the base, which he described as “a cause for concern for us.”

The U.S. launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base after a chemical attack in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun killed dozens of people almost exactly a year ago.

The Syrian government has denied the chemical weapons allegations, calling them fabrications. The Russian military said its officers visited the hospital in Douma and talked to the staff, and said they did not confirm reports of the assault.

First responders entering apartments in Douma late Saturday said they found bodies collapsed on floors, some foaming at the mouth. The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense rescue organization said the victims appeared to have suffocated.

The organization, also known as the White Helmets, and the Syrian American Medical Society, a medical relief organization, did not identify the substance used but said survivors treated at clinics smelled strongly of chlorine.

Those reports could not be independently verified because of a government blockade around the town. A Douma-based Syrian opposition activist, Haitham Bakkar, said most of those killed in the attack had been buried.

Hours after the attack, the Army of Islam rebel group agreed to surrender the town and evacuate its fighters to rebel-held northern Syria, Syrian state media reported. The group also agreed to release its prisoners, a key government demand.

More than 100 buses entered Douma Sunday night to take the fighters and their families to Jarablus, which is under the shared control of Turkish troops and allied Syrian forces, Syrian state-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV said.

Syrian state TV said two buses left early Monday and 11 more buses were getting ready to move.

Syrian state media said dozens of civilians who had been held for years by the rebels were set free.

The evacuations follow a pattern of departures around the capital and other major Syrian cities as the government reasserts its control after seven years of war.

In his tweets Sunday, Trump called Assad an “animal” and delivered a rare personal criticism of Putin for supporting him. Trump has declared his intent to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria in the coming months, despite resistance from many of his advisers.

More than 500 people, mostly women and children, were brought to medical centers complaining of difficulties breathing, foaming at the mouth and burning sensations in the eyes. Some had bluish skin, a sign of oxygen deprivation, according to a White Helmets statement. The symptoms are consistent with chemical exposure.

Douma is part of the eastern Ghouta suburbs, where a 2013 chemical attack killed hundreds of people and was widely blamed on the government. The U.S. threatened military action but later backed down.

Syria denies ever using chemical weapons during the war and says it eliminated its chemical arsenal under a 2013 agreement brokered by the U.S. and Russia.

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Associated Press writers Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, Tia Goldenberg and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Jonathan Lemire in Washington and Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

Apple Co-Founder Closes Facebook Account

PHILADELPHIA—Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is shutting down his Facebook account as the social media giant struggles to cope with the worst privacy crisis in its history.

In an email to USA Today, Wozniak said Facebook makes a lot of advertising money from personal details provided by users. He said the “profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back.”

Wozniak said he’d rather pay for Facebook.

“Apple makes money off of good products, not off of you,” he said.

In an interview late Monday in Philadelphia with The Associated Press, Wozniak said he had been thinking for a while of deleting his account and made the move after several of his trusted friends deleted their Facebook accounts last week.

It’s “a big hypocrisy not respecting my privacy when (Facebook CEO Mark) Zuckerberg buys all the houses around his and all the lots around his in Hawaii for his own privacy,” Wozniak said. “He knows the value of it, but he’s not looking after mine.”

A British data mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign gathered personal information from 87 million Facebook users to try to influence elections. Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, has announced technical changes intended to address privacy issues.

Zuckerberg has apologized, and Facebook’s No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, has said she’s sorry the company let so many people down.

Zuckerberg will testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday about the company’s ongoing data privacy scandal and how it failed to guard against other abuses of its service.

Wozniak said he doesn’t believe in the current system that Facebook can fix its privacy issues, saying he doesn’t think Facebook is going to change its policies “for decades.”

Wozniak said Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, California, has systems and policies that in many cases allow people to choose whether to share certain data. He said he doesn’t foresee Apple not allowing the Facebook app to be bought or downloaded on its phones but said he does not make those decisions for the company.

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Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer contributed to this report from Philadelphia.

The Best Thing to Happen to the Progressive Movement

President Trump doubled down last week on his repulsive charge that immigrants from south of our border are “rapists.” It was another sign of what an appalling man he is, but also an indication of how much political trouble he faces.

Trump is a demagogue who relies on the angry energy of his supporters. But he finds himself in an untenable position: No matter how many hot buttons he pushes, he cannot arouse the passion he needs on his own side to counter the determination and engagement of those who loathe him.

The upshot is a vicious cycle that could be disastrous for the Republican Party this fall. So far, Trump has failed to stir his base, but he has become, unintentionally, one of the most effective organizers of progressive activism and commitment in the country’s history.

Revulsion at Trump is now the driving force in American politics, and this petrifies the traditional GOP. Responding to the outcome of last week’s election in Wisconsin—a candidate backed by Democrats won an open state supreme court seat for the first time since 1995—the normally loyal Republicans at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page took off their gloves.

“If Mr. Trump is the main issue on Election Day in November,” the paper wrote “all the evidence now points to an electoral wipeout like [President] Obama’s in 2010—this time against Republicans.”

Trump’s latest rape comments illustrated his obsession with pushing issues that appeal to Fox News and conservative talk radio fans at the expense of building his standing with the broader electorate. His outburst came last Thursday at a West Virginia event where he was supposed to be touting the tax cut that Republicans in Congress hope to run on.

But after calling his planned speech “boring” and tossing the pages of his text into the audience, he proceeded to praise himself for his 2015 announcement speech in which he declared that Mexican immigrants were “rapists.”

Without offering any proof, he said that women coming to the United States in the so-called caravans he has been ranting about incessantly “are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before.”

Then came the effort to create an enemy. “They don’t want to mention that,” Trump said. But he is discovering that trashing a vaguely defined “they” is not as effective as deriding and abusing flesh-and-blood foes.

If there is a rational explanation for his seemingly erratic and often outrageous behavior in recent days, it involves a calculation that the coalition he built in 2016 lacks both a clear sense of who the adversary is and a set of causes around which it can rally.

While there is some conflict in the polling about Trump, a consistent finding is that those who strongly oppose him far outnumber those who are enthusiastically for him. A Morning Consult poll last week, for example, found that overall, 54 percent of registered voters disapproved of Trump’s performance while 41 approved. More important is the fact that 41 percent strongly disapproved of him while only 19 percent strongly approved.

Seen another way, the poll showed that three-quarters of those who disapprove of Trump hold intense feelings against him; less than half of those who approve are comparably fervent in their embrace. Trump’s opponents are deeply motivated to put a check on his presidency. His supporters are discouraged and demobilized.

A fifth of the country can provide an ample audience for a cable network and a lot of radio hosts. It is not enough to win an election. In the nominally nonpartisan Wisconsin judge’s race, as Michael Tomasky noted in The Daily Beast, several counties that had moved from Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 swung back to Rebecca Dallet, the choice strongly endorsed by Democrats. And this came in a low-turnout race. In the Obama years, small turnouts benefited Republicans. The energy gap means that this pattern is now reversed.

A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation Poll released Friday brought home additional concrete results of this imbalance. It found an astonishing one in five Americans reporting that they had joined protests and rallies since the beginning of 2016—and that 70 percent of them disapproved of Trump.

The dilemma for Republican politicians tempted to cut-and-run from Trump is that doing so might only further dispirit the party’s core and diminish Trump’s already parlous popularity. For his part, Trump knows only the politics of outrage. It is looking like a strategy with a very short shelf life.