Chris Hedges's Blog, page 634

Illinois County Sues Facebook, Alleging Fraud

NEW YORK — The Latest on reports that millions of Facebook users’ data was used to target political ads (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

Cook County is suing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for fraud after revelations that the latter obtained data on millions of Facebook users.

The lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court alleges Trump-affiliated political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica deceived the millions of Illinois Facebook users whose information it collected. It says Facebook failed to protect its users’ privacy and misrepresented how their data would be used.

London-based Cambridge Analytica has been accused of using Facebook data to influence voter behavior in U.S. elections.

The Chicago Tribune reports the lawsuit filed by Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx on behalf of Illinois residents brings one consumer fraud count each against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. It seeks $50,000 fines for each violation of the law.

Neither company has commented on the lawsuit.

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2:20 p.m.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he’s invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify at a hearing next month on data privacy.

Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa says the April 10 hearing will cover how consumer data is collected, retained and distributed for commercial use. He says the hearing also will examine what steps companies like Facebook can do to better protect personal information.

Grassley’s committee is the third congressional panel to seek Zuckerberg’s testimony in the wake of a privacy scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-connected data-mining company.

Several Judiciary Committee members had pressed Grassley to hold the hearing.

Grassley says he’s also invited Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

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12:15 p.m.

The chief law enforcement officers for 37 U.S. states and territories are demanding to know when Facebook learned of a huge breach of privacy protections.

The officers say in a letter Monday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg that users’ trust in the social media platform is “broken.”

The attorneys general are asking how Facebook monitored what these developers did with all the data they collected and whether Facebook had safeguards to prevent misuse.

They also asked Zuckerberg for an update on how Facebook will allow users to more easily control the privacy of their accounts.

Cambridge Analytica, a political data-mining firm, is accused of lifting data from some 50 million Facebook users to influence voters in U.S. elections.

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11:55 a.m.

Germany’s justice minister says she wants closer oversight of companies such as Facebook, following a meeting with executives about the abuse of users’ private data.

Katarina Barley says Facebook representatives assured her Monday that such breaches wouldn’t occur again and pledged to inform those users who were affected.

She added that “promises aren’t enough, though. We will need to monitor companies such as Facebook much more strictly in future and also punish breaches of data protection strongly, swiftly and painfully.”

Barley said Facebook reacted “favorably” to her demand for greater transparency about the algorithms that underpin the company’s data collection.

She said campaigns such as “Delete Facebook” would likely make a strong impression on the company because “in the end the currency that Facebook works with is trust.”

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10:50 a.m.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Facebook’s privacy practices following a week of privacy scandals including whether the company engaged in “unfair acts” that cause “substantial injury” to consumers.

Facebook’s stock, which already took a big hit last week, plunged as a result.

Facebook said in a statement on Monday that the company remains “strongly committed” to protecting people’s information and that it welcomes the opportunity to answer the FTC’s questions.

News outlets have reported on the FTC investigation last week, but the FTC hadn’t confirmed it until Monday. Facebook reached a settlement with the FTC in 2011 offering privacy assurances.

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5 a.m.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is promising to do a better job protecting user data following reports that a political consultant misused the personal information of millions of the company’s subscribers. The fact is, European regulators are already forcing him to do so.

A similar data breach in the future could make Facebook liable for fines of more than $1.6 billion under the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation, which will be enforced from May 25. The rules, approved two years ago, also make it easier for consumers to give and withdraw consent for the use of their data and apply to any company that uses the data of EU residents, no matter where it is based.

Prosecutorial Misconduct Reaches Epidemic Proportions

In February 2010, the Justice Department published a long-awaited report prepared by its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) that found former Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee had engaged in professional misconduct by authoring two memorandums in 2002 and 2003 justifying the use of torture in the crackdown on suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

A full 260 pages long, the OPR report is formally titled the “Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel’s Memoranda Concerning Issues Relating to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’ on Suspected Terrorists.” Completed in July 2009, it concluded that Yoo and Bybee had failed to provide the George W. Bush administration, for which the torture memos had been written, with the “thorough, candid, and objective” legal analysis that is incumbent upon all lawyers working in the OLC. The report recommended that Yoo and Bybee be referred to their respective state bar associations to face disciplinary actions against their licenses to practice law. At the time, Bybee was a member of the District of Columbia bar, while Yoo was licensed in Pennsylvania.

Neither man, however, was ever referred for sanctions.

On the same day the Justice Department released the OPR’s report, it also disclosed a 69-page memo written by Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis that absolved Yoo and Bybee of misconduct. A career prosecutor who died in 2016, Margolis had been assigned since the 1990s to review adverse OPR findings entered against wayward Justice Department lawyers. Margolis determined that while the torture memos, which approved such brutal tactics as waterboarding, were “flawed,” they did not in the “context” of the nation’s post 9/11 emergency cross the line into formal misconduct or exhibit bad faith in violation of international human rights standards.

Today, Yoo is a tenured professor at the University of California School of Law at Berkeley. He holds an endowed chair, and teaches in the school’s program on public law and policy.

Bybee is a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was nominated to the bench by Bush in 2002. His appointment was confirmed by the Senate in 2003, well before the torture memos were made public, by a vote of 74-19.

If Yoo and Bybee’s transgressions were merely isolated instances of misconduct, they would have been bad enough. But they weren’t isolated.

Nor is prosecutorial misconduct confined to high-level federal lawyers responsible for setting the nation’s legal agenda. To the contrary, prosecutorial misconduct is endemic to nearly all jurisdictions of the American legal system. According to some observers, misconduct across the country has reached epidemic proportions.

Most often prosecutorial misconduct occurs at the state level in ordinary criminal cases. And it can take many forms—from the withholding of exculpatory evidence and overcharging defendants with more offenses than warranted to the destruction of evidence, subornation of perjury from government witnesses and pressuring defense witnesses not to testify.

A study conducted by the Innocence Project of more than 4,000 cases decided by California appellate courts and the 9th Circuit from 1997 to 2009 found that prosecutorial misconduct had occurred 707 times, an average of more than once per week. Of the 707, however, only 159 guilty verdicts, about 20 percent, were reversed.

Even more tellingly, the Innocence Project found that of the 4,741 public disciplinary actions reported by the California State Bar during the same time period, only 10 involved prosecutors, and a scant six of those concerned misconduct committed during a criminal trial. No prosecutors were criminally charged for their misdeeds.

The project’s study did not examine misconduct committed in cases that were plea-bargained rather than taken to trial. Since some 97 percent of criminal cases are pleaded out, the study only scraped the surface of the misconduct epidemic.

Similar conclusions have been reached about misconduct in other jurisdictions by other researchers and news outlets. Among the most prominent are the compilations put together by:

● USA Today, which focused on 201 cases tried nationally in federal courts between 1997 and 2010 in which appellate judges later determined that some kind of prosecutorial conduct had taken place. The survey found that only one Justice Department prosecutor had been temporarily disbarred in all the cases reviewed.

● The Chicago Tribune, which examined 11,000 cases from around the U.S. from 1963 to 1999. Of this total, appellate courts reversed convictions in 381 cases, including 67 death penalty judgments. Yet not a single state disciplinary agency publicly sanctioned a single government lawyer.

● The Liman Prosecutorial Misconduct Research Project of Yale University, which in 2011 published the results of a detailed investigation of the ethical rules and disciplinary practices of all 50 states. All were found sorely lacking for holding prosecutors accountable.

From a legal standpoint, the Supreme Court bears a good deal of responsibility for the giant pass that prosecutors are given in our courts as a result of its ruling in the landmark 1976 case Imbler v. Pachtman.

Following his conviction of first-degree murder in Los Angeles, Paul Imbler filed a federal damages lawsuit under Title 42, section 1983, of the United States Code after newly discovered evidence revealed that the prosecutor, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Richard Pachtman, had knowingly used false testimony against Imbler at trial.

Section 1983 lawsuits are the principal means that wrongly convicted defendants and those subjected to false arrests use to sue state and local police in federal court for violating their constitutional rights. The key issue on Imbler’s appeal was whether the Supreme Court would extend section 1983 suits to state and local prosecutors as well as police.

The Supreme Court declined to do so. Instead, in an opinion authored by Justice Lewis Powell, the court unanimously held that prosecutors should be shielded with absolute immunity from section 1983 damage actions.

Although Powell recognized the awesome power prosecutors exercise, noting that they “stand perhaps unique, among officials whose acts could deprive persons of constitutional rights,” he insisted absolute immunity was required to protect them from the floodgate of litigation that might be initiated by disgruntled criminal defendants and arrestees.

As I have noted in this column before, prior to joining the Supreme Court, Powell wrote a historically important memo on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that urged the business community to become more proactive in its use of litigation to counteract the impact of progressive legal groups like the NAACP and the ACLU.

In his Imbler opinion, Powell recognized the potential chilling effect that absolute immunity would have on efforts to hold prosecutors accountable for their misdeeds. To mitigate that impact, he reasoned, in language that seems even more cynical and clueless today than in 1976, that truly bad prosecutors who willfully violate constitutional rights could be prosecuted criminally, or otherwise subjected to state bar discipline.

Last year, the Supreme Court closed yet another door for holding prosecutors accountable in a case dealing with civil damage actions against federal prosecutors—Ziglar v. Abbasi.

The Ziglar litigation was brought by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of six men of Arab and South Asian descent who were arrested in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and subsequently held and abused in a federal facility in Brooklyn for up to six months before being deported. The CCR sought to hold former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, among other officials, liable for the plaintiffs’ extended detention and mistreatment.

The litigation dragged on for years with the Justice Department seeking to dismiss the complaint, and the CCR contending the case should proceed under the authority of the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, which recognized the propriety of civil damages actions against federal law enforcement agents for Fourth Amendment violations.

Finally, in a fractured 4-2 decision in the Ziglar case issued last July (in which newly appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate, and from which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan recused themselves), the court declined to extend the Bivens remedy to federal supervisory personnel like Ashcroft and Mueller, particularly when the conduct complained of took place during a time of national crisis.

When Imbler and Ziglar are combined with laws in place throughout the country that immunize prosecutors against civil damage suits brought in state court, it’s hard to imagine putting an end to the misconduct epidemic.

Still, there are some corrective steps that can and should be taken.

First, states could follow the lead of California and get serious about criminally prosecuting bad prosecutors. In 2016, California enacted legislation making it a felony for prosecutors to knowingly withhold or falsify evidence.

In addition, state bar associations could adopt tougher disciplinary standards on prosecutorial misconduct. Last year, the State Bar of California amended its rules of professional responsibility to enhance disciplinary actions against prosecutors who withhold exculpatory material from defense attorneys.

The voting public can also act by electing district attorneys committed to changing the win-at-all-costs cultures that exist in many prosecution offices. The people of my home town of Philadelphia did that last November, when, against all odds, they elected longtime anti-police-abuse lawyer Larry Krasner as their new D.A. Krasner has pledged to make justice rather than convictions the highest priority of his tenure.

Finally, the Supreme Court could reverse the Imbler decision, and replace the absolute immunity prosecutors currently enjoy with what is known as “qualified immunity,” which would give prosecutors lesser, but still stringent, case-by-case protections from civil liability.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Being a prosecutor is hard, high-pressure work, even under the best of circumstances. Lawyers would never join the Justice Department or take a job as a deputy D.A. if they could be hauled into court for every discretionary decision they make. Some protections are warranted.

And let’s not fool ourselves either about the essential role prosecutors play in the criminal justice system. Mueller and Ashcroft, for example, may have violated constitutional rights in the backlash against the 9/11 attacks, but as the Justice Department’s special counsel today, Mueller is the strongest check we have on the neofascism of the Trump administration.

Without prosecutors—and I say this as a former death penalty defense lawyer—we would have no justice system. The goal, therefore, should be to craft a system that encourages lawful prosecutorial behavior while punishing the worst instances.

We may never eliminate prosecutorial misconduct altogether, but no one should be considered above the law.

Frontier Gun Maker Remington Files for Bankruptcy

Remington, the storied gun maker that began turning out flintlock rifles when there were only 19 states in the Union, has filed for bankruptcy reorganization amid years of slumping sales and legal and financial pressure over the Sandy Hook school massacre.

In papers filed Sunday in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, Remington outlined a plan to turn over control to its creditors and continue operating with up to $100 million from lenders. It remains unclear what will happen to its 3,500 or so employees as it tries to put its finances in order.

Remington, whose roots go back to 1816, when the Western frontier beckoned, saw its debts mount with the election of President Donald Trump, who has called himself a “true friend” of the National Rifle Association but whose victory ended years of panic-buying by people afraid a Democrat in the White House would crack down on guns.

In 2017, firearm background checks, a good barometer of sales, declined faster than in any year since 1998, when the FBI first began compiling such data.

The Madison, North Carolina, company’s production of one of the best-known weapons in the world, the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, has also proved problematic. The young man who killed 20 first-graders and six educators in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut in 2012 used a Bushmaster.

An AR-15-style weapon made by a different manufacturer, Smith & Wesson, was used last month in the rampage at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 people dead. That attack has led to huge protests around the country and a new student-led movement to tighten gun laws.

Remington was sued by victims’ families after the Sandy Hook tragedy. That lawsuit was dismissed because of broad immunity granted to the gun industry, but the Connecticut Supreme Court is weighing whether to reinstate it.

Some investors decided after Sandy Hook that they wanted nothing to do with the Remington. Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that acquired Remington in 2007 as gun sales began to boom, tried to sell it less than a week after the shooting. There were no takers.

In filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, Remington Outdoor Co. said it would give holders of a $550 million loan to the company an 82.5 percent stake. Other creditors would get the rest.

The industry has been hurt by another trend: A large percentage of guns in the U.S. are owned by an increasingly small group of people.

A recent study by Harvard University and Northeastern University found that the number of privately owned guns in America grew by more than 70 million — to approximately 265 million — between 1994 and 2015. But half of those guns are owned by only 3 percent of the population. That small base of what are sometimes referred to as “super-owners” has made the industry more unstable.

In 2015, Colt Holdings Co., another storied gun maker, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Likewise, profits at Sturm, Ruger & Co. are under pressure, and its stock is down 18 percent this year.

Some of Wall Street’s heaviest hitters are stepping into the national debate on guns.

BlackRock — a major shareholder in Sturm Ruger, American Outdoor Brands and Vista Outdoor Brands — announced about a week after the Parkland shooting that it wanted to speak with the three firearms makers about their responses to the tragedy.

The firm is also looking into creating new investment funds that exclude gun makers and retailers.

U.S., Allies Punish Russia in U.K. Spy Case

WASHINGTON—The United States and more than a dozen European nations kicked out Russian diplomats on Monday and the Trump administration ordered Russia’s consulate in Seattle to close, as the West sought joint punishment for Moscow’s alleged role in poisoning an ex-spy in Britain.

Warning of an “unacceptably high” number of Russian spies in the U.S., the Trump administration said 60 diplomats would be expelled — all Russian intelligence agents working under diplomatic cover, the U.S. said. The group includes a dozen posted to Russia’s mission to the United Nations who the officials said were engaged in “aggressive collection” of intelligence on American soil.

The move was one of the most significant actions President Donald Trump’s administration has taken to date to push back on Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Less than a week ago, Trump congratulated Putin by phone for his re-election but didn’t raise the spy case, renewing questions about whether the U.S. president is too soft on the Kremlin.

The American penalties were echoed by announcements in European capitals across the continent, including those in Russia’s backyard.

Fourteen European Union nations were expelling Russian diplomats, EU chief Donald Tusk said, with more likely to follow. An EU official put the total from those countries at more than 30 Russians. Germany, Poland and France each planned to boot four, the Czech Republic three and Italy two.

Ukraine, a non-EU country with its own conflicts with Moscow, was expelling 13 Russians, President Petro Poroshenko said. All three Baltic states said they would kick diplomats out. Canada, too, said it was taking action, kicking out four and denying three who have applied to enter the country.

Almost all of the countries said publicly that the Russian diplomats they were expelling were actually spies.

The expulsions came with a chorus of condemnation for the Kremlin — for the poisoning, Russian spying and other Western grievances. Poland’s Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz called it “the right response to the unfriendly, aggressive actions of Russia.” In the Czech Republic, where Russian officials have claimed the poison may have originated, Prime Minister Andrej Babis dismissed that allegation as “an utter lie.”

“The United States and many of our friends are sending a clear message that we will not stand for Russia’s misconduct,” said U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s envoy to the U.N.

Russia’s Embassy in Washington responded to the decisions on Twitter by hinting at retaliation, asking its followers to vote which U.S. consulate should be shuttered: St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg or Vladivostok.

In Washington, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, was summoned early Friday to the State Department and told that the 60 diplomats would have one week to leave the country, a State Department official said. Antonov was later quoted by Russian news wire Tass as saying he “expressed resolute protest to the “illegal actions” and emphasized there’s no proof of Russian involvement in the poisoning.

Russia’s Consulate General in Seattle must close by April 2. The facility is a particular counter-intelligence concern to the U.S. because of its proximity to a U.S. Navy base, said the senior U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to be identified by name.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the actions would make the U.S. safer by “reducing Russia’s ability to spy on Americans and to conduct covert operations” that threaten U.S. national security.

“With these steps, the United States and our allies and partners make clear to Russia that its actions have consequences,” Sanders said.

Britain has already expelled 23 Russian diplomats, accusing them of being undeclared intelligence agents, which led Russia to expel the same number of British diplomats. The European Union has already recalled its ambassador to Russia.

The steps on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean add to a serious escalation of tensions between Russia and the West that has been building since the March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer convicted of spying for the U.K., and his daughter, Yulia. The two remain in critical condition and unconscious. A policeman who responded to their home was also injured.

Britain has accused Moscow of perpetrating the attack using a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as Novichok. The U.S., France and Germany have agreed it’s highly likely Russia was responsible. Russia’s government has denied responsibility and has blasted Britain’s investigation into the poisoning.

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Associated Press writers Raf Casert in Brussels, Jill Lawless in London, Sylvia Corbett in Paris, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

Ravaged by Drought, Morocco Faces a Thirsty Future

RABAT, Morocco—Morocco, host of the 2016 United Nations conference on climate change and widely seen as one of the more enlightened among North African and Middle Eastern nations on environmental issues, is facing a range of problems associated with global warming, including ever-increasing water shortages.

In recent years drought in what is one of the most water-stressed regions of the world has caused severe damage to the economies of Morocco and neighbouring North African states.

In 2015/2016 a prolonged drought caused Morocco’s production of grain to plummet by more than 70%. In 2017 water shortages became acute and the country’s king, Muhammed VI, issued a decree calling on the faithful at mosques throughout the country to pray for rain.

The droughts have led to social unrest in what till now has been considered one of the more politically stable countries in the region.

Protests over what has been seen as government inaction and incompetence have broken out in several areas; in November last year 15 people were crushed to death as hungry farming families queued for supplies of flour.

A bad situation looks likely to become worse. Latest research by the Brookings Institution in the US predicts that climate change is going to result in average temperatures rising across the North African region by 3°C by 2050.

Rainfall over much of Morocco is anticipated to decline by 10% at the same time as water usage rates rise substantially.

“Higher temperatures, less rainfall and increased land salinity in a country that is already suffering from insufficient water resources do not augur well for the future of agriculture, unless urgent action is taken now,” says the Brookings research.

Desert spread

There is also concern that, along with warming, the Sahara desert could advance northwards, further threatening Morocco’s important agricultural sector, which accounts for 15% of gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 40% of the country’s workforce.

To meet the challenges of climate change and water shortages the government has brought in its Plan Maroc Vert.

This includes an ambitious renewable energy programme, with a target of producing more than 50% of electricity supply by 2030 through a combination of solar and wind power.

Near the town of Ouarzazate, on the edge of the Sahara desert, Morocco is building what’s billed as one of the world’s biggest solar installations.

Improving irrigation

To cope with water shortages the government is also constructing what is likely to be the world’s largest desalination plant – turning seawater into drinking water – near the tourist destination of Agadir on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

Officials have also promised to spend millions promoting more efficient irrigation systems, and they are encouraging farmers to plant fruit trees rather than water-hungry cereal crops, in an effort to promote water conservation and prevent further soil erosion.

Critics say the government’s approach is half-hearted: they say too much is being spent on mega-projects such as high-speed railways and constructing what will be Africa’s tallest building rather than repairing and expanding basic infrastructure.

Social Watch, an international network of citizens’ organisations fighting poverty around the world, says 35% of Morocco’s water is lost through bad piping.  Water is also polluted by industrial and urban waste.

‘The Gig Economy’ Is the New Term for Serfdom

A 65-year-old New York City cab driver from Queens, Nicanor Ochisor, hanged himself in his garage March 16, saying in a note he left behind that the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft had made it impossible for him to make a living. It was the fourth suicide by a cab driver in New York in the last four months, including one Feb. 5 in which livery driver Douglas Schifter, 61, killed himself with a shotgun outside City Hall.

“Due to the huge numbers of cars available with desperate drivers trying to feed their families,” wrote Schifter, “they squeeze rates to below operating costs and force professionals like me out of business. They count their money and we are driven down into the streets we drive becoming homeless and hungry. I will not be a slave working for chump change. I would rather be dead.” He said he had been working 100 to 120 hours a week for the past 14 years.

Schifter and Ochisor were two of the millions of victims of the new economy. Corporate capitalism is establishing a neofeudal serfdom in numerous occupations, a condition in which there are no labor laws, no minimum wage, no benefits, no job security and no regulations. Desperate and impoverished workers, forced to endure 16-hour days, are viciously pitted against each other. Uber drivers make about $13.25 an hour. In cities like Detroit this falls to $8.77. Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber and one of the founders, has a net worth of $4.8 billion. Logan Green, the CEO of Lyft, has a net worth of $300 million.

The corporate elites, which have seized control of ruling institutions including the government and destroyed labor unions, are re-establishing the inhumane labor conditions that characterized the 19th and early 20th centuries. When workers at General Motors carried out a 44-day sit-down strike in 1936, many were living in shacks that lacked heating and indoor plumbing; they could be laid off for weeks without compensation, had no medical or retirement benefits and often were fired without explanation. When they turned 40 their employment could be terminated. The average wage was about $900 a year at a time when the government determined that a family of four needed a minimum of $1,600 to live above the poverty line.

The managers at General Motors relentlessly persecuted union organizers. The company spent $839,000 on detective work in 1934 to spy on union organizers and infiltrate union meetings. GM employed the white terrorist group the Black Legion—the police chief of Detroit was suspected of being a member—to threaten and physically assault labor activists and assassinate union leaders including George Marchuk and John Bielak, both shot to death.

The reign of the all-powerful capitalist class has returned with a vengeance. The job conditions of working men and women, thrust backward, will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular organizations that seized power from the capitalists. There are some 13,000 licensed cabs in New York City and 40,000 livery or town cars. The drivers should, as farmers did in 2015 with tractors in Paris, shut down the center of the city. And drivers in other cities should do the same. This is the only language our corporate masters understand.

The ruling capitalists will be as vicious as they were in the past. Nothing enrages the rich more than having to part with a fraction of their obscene wealth. Consumed by greed, rendered numb to human suffering by a life of hedonism and extravagance, devoid of empathy, incapable of self-criticism or self-sacrifice, surrounded by sycophants and leeches who cater to their wishes, appetites and demands, able to use their wealth to ignore the law and destroy critics and opponents, they are among the most repugnant of the human species. Don’t be fooled by the elites’ skillful public relations campaigns—we are watching Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth is $64.1 billion, mount a massive propaganda effort against charges that he and Facebook are focused on exploiting and selling our personal information—or by the fawning news celebrities on corporate media who act as courtiers and apologists for the oligarchs. These people are the enemy.

Ochisor, a Romanian immigrant, owned a New York City taxi medallion. (Medallions were once coveted by cab drivers because having them allowed the drivers to own their own cabs or lease the cabs to other drivers.) Ochisor drove the night shift, lasting 10 to 12 hours. His wife drove the day shift. But after Uber and Lyft flooded the city with cars and underpaid drivers about three years ago, the couple could barely meet expenses. Ochisor’s home was about to go into foreclosure. His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone.

The corporate architects of the new economy have no intention of halting the assault. They intend to turn everyone into temp workers trapped in demeaning, low-paying, part-time, service-sector jobs without job security or benefits, a reality they plaster over by inventing hip terms like “the gig economy.”

John McDonagh began driving a New York City cab 40 years ago. He, like most drivers, worked out of garages owned and operated by businesses. He was paid a percentage of what he earned each night.

“You could make a living [then],” he told me. “But everyone shared the burden. The garage shared it. The driver shared it. If you had a good night, the garage made money. If you had a bad night, you split it. That’s not the case anymore. Right now we’re leasing [cabs at the garages].”

Leasing requires a driver to pay $120 a day for the car and $30 for the gas. The drivers begin a shift $150 in debt. Because of Uber, Lyft and other smartphone ride apps, drivers’ incomes have been cut by half in many cases. Cab drivers can finish their 12-hour shifts owing the garages money. Drivers are facing bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions. Some are homeless.

“The TLC [New York City Transportation and Limousine Commission] wanted to limit yellow cab drivers to 12 hours a day,” he said, referring to the distinctive yellow cabs that have medallions and can pick up passengers anywhere in the five boroughs. “There was a protest. Yellow cab drivers were protesting that they have to work a 16-hour day in order to make a living. It’s cut everything. Everybody’s fighting for that extra fare. You would be at a light with two or three other yellow cabs. You saw someone up the street with luggage you would run the lights to get to them. Because that might be an airport job. You’re risking your own life, risking getting tickets, you’re doing things you would never have done before.”

“We don’t have any health care,” he said. “Sitting for those 12 to 16 hours a day, you are getting diabetes. There’s no blood circulation. You’re putting on weight. And then there’s that added stress you’re not making any money.”

Uber and Lyft in 2016 had 370 active lobbyists in 44 states, “dwarfing some of the largest business and technology companies,” according to the National Employment Law Project. “Together, Uber and Lyft lobbyists outnumbered Amazon, Microsoft, and Walmart combined.” The two companies, like many lobbying firms, also hire former government regulators. The former head of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, for example, is now on the board of Uber. The companies have used their money and their lobbyists, most of whom are members of the Democratic Party, to free themselves from the regulations and oversight imposed on the taxi industry. The companies using ride-hail apps have flooded New York City with about 100,000 unregulated cars in the past two years.

“The yellow cab has to be a certain vehicle,” said McDonagh. “It’s a Nissan. [Nissan won the bid to supply the city’s cabs.] Every yellow cab has to charge a certain price. When that drop goes down, that’s regulated by the city. They added on all these extra taxes, for the MTA and for the wheelchair [half of all yellow cabs are required to be wheelchair-accessible by 2020], a rush-hour tax. Uber comes in. No regulations at all. They could pick whatever type of car they want. Whatever color of car. They could change prices when it’s slow. They can lower the prices. When it’s busy they can do price surging. It can be two or three times. Whereas the yellow cab is just plowing along at the same rate at the same time. Going to Kennedy Airport from Manhattan is $52. No matter what the traffic is like, no matter how many hours it takes you to get there. Uber will jack up its prices two or three times. You might have to pay $100 to get to Kennedy Airport. While the yellow cab industry is almost regulated to death, Uber is coming in with new technology, figuring out different ways how [it is] going to make money. … It’s finished, with the yellow cabs.”

Life for Uber and Lyft drivers is as difficult. Uber and Lyft use bonuses to lure drivers into the business. Once the bonuses are gone, these drivers sink to the same economic desperation as those driving yellow cabs.

“Uber is leasing cars,” McDonagh said. “They have car dealerships that will sell. They advertise as, ‘Listen, you can have bad credit. Come down to Uber. We’ll get you the money or loan to buy this car.’ And what they do is they’ll take the money directly out of what you’re making that day to pay for the loan. They can’t lose. And if you go under, they’ll sell the car back to the dealership and then redo it for the next immigrant driver. There’s a whole scam going on.”

“As a yellow cab driver, you don’t see the world vision,” he said. “But there’s that famous term ‘the race to the bottom.’ You’re working more and more hours for less and less wages. This is the new gig economy. Someone will use an Uber to go to an Airbnb and get on his phone to order something from Amazon to eat in his house. All those shops are now gone. From cashiers to cab drivers. I feel like I’m a blacksmith or a typesetter at a newspaper business trying to explain to you what the yellow cab industry used to be. We’re becoming obsolete.”

“Guys are sleeping in the cab,” McDonagh said. “They’ll go out to Kennedy at 2 or 3 in the morning. They pull into the lot and go to sleep to catch [passengers off] the first flight that’s coming in from California a couple of hours later. You have guys who won’t go home for a couple of days. They’ll just stay out on the street. They roam the street to try to make money. It’s dangerous for the passenger. The amount of accidents will be going up because drivers are drowsy.”

McDonagh said Uber and Lyft cars must be regulated. All cars should have meters to guarantee an adequate income for drivers. And drivers should have health care and benefits. None of this will happen, he warned, as long as we live under a system of government where our political elites are dependent on campaign contributions from corporations and those who should be regulating the industry look to these corporations for future employment.

“We have to limit the amount of cabs, particularly here in New York City,” McDonagh said. “If we did it in the yellow cab industry for 50 years, why can’t we do it with Uber? They’re adding 100 cars a week through the streets of New York. This is insane. When you call an Uber, the biggest complaint people have now is, ‘The car is here too quick.’ They’re there within two or three minutes. I can’t even get dressed. … They’re rolling empty throughout the city, waiting for that hit.”

“Horses in Central Park are regulated,” he pointed out. “There’s 150 of them. They make a great living there, the guys on the horse and buggies. Say Uber comes in and says, ‘We want to bring in Uber horses. And we want to add 100,000.’ And let’s see how the market will handle it. We know what’s going to happen. No one will make money. They’re all around Central Park. And now no one can go anywhere because there are now 100,000 horses in Central Park. It would be considered madness to do that. They wouldn’t do it. Yet when it comes to the yellow cab industry, for 50 years all we could have was 13,000 cabs, and then within a year or two we’re going to add 100,000. Let’s see how the market works on that! We know how the market works.”

“They [the horses] work less hours [than cab drivers],” he said. “They don’t work in hot and cold temperatures. If you believe in reincarnation, you should come back as a horse in Central Park. And they all live on the West Side of Manhattan. We live in basements in Brooklyn and Queens. We haven’t upped our status in life, that’s for sure.”

Stormy Daniels Says She Got Chilling Warning in 2011 to ‘Leave Trump Alone’

WASHINGTON — Adult film star Stormy Daniels says she was threatened to keep silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006, telling her story in a highly anticipated interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” broadcast Sunday.

Daniels said she was threatened by an unidentified man in Las Vegas [in 2011] to keep quiet about her alleged relationship with Trump, an incident that she said also involved a threat to her young daughter. She said in the interview that she had one encounter of consensual sex with the future president.

“He knows I’m telling the truth,” said Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford.

The adult film actress provided little new evidence of her alleged 2006 affair with Trump but said she faced intimidation tactics aimed at ensuring her silence in 2011.

Daniels said in the incident, in a parking lot, the man told her: “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” She says he then looked at her daughter and said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”

Daniels received a $130,000 payment days before the 2016 presidential election for her silence and has sought to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement.

Trump, through his representatives, has denied the allegations. His attorney, Michael Cohen, has said Trump never had an affair with Daniels. Cohen has said he paid the $130,000 out of his pocket.

Cohen has said neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Clifford and he was not reimbursed for the payment.

Two Lawyers Not Joining Trump Legal Team After All

PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump will not be adding two new lawyers to the legal team defending him in the special counsel’s Russia investigation after all, one of the president’s attorneys said Sunday.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said in a statement that Washington lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing have conflicts that won’t allow them to represent the president regarding special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Sekulow had announced diGenova’s appointment last week.

Sunday’s announcement came just hours after Trump used Twitter to push back against reports that he’s having difficulty adding to his legal team, saying he was “very happy” with his current attorneys.

“Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case,” he wrote, adding: “Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted.”

Neither the president nor Sekulow specified the conflict regarding diGenova and Toensing, who are married to each other and law partners, but their firm has represented other clients in the special counsel’s investigation, including former Trump campaign adviser Sam Clovis.

Sekulow said Trump was “disappointed” that diGenova and Toensing won’t be defending him in the special counsel investigation, but “those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the President in other legal matters.”

“The President looks forward to working with them,” he added.

On Sunday, diGenova and Toensing released a joint statement, saying, “We thank the president for his confidence in us, and we look forward to working with him on other matters.” DiGenova, who provided the statement to The Associated Press, declined to answer additional questions about the nature of his and Toensing’s representation of the president.

DiGenova had been expected to usher in a new strategy for the president after Trump’s lead attorney, John Dowd, resigned last week. Dowd had touted the cooperation of the White House and Trump campaign with Mueller. DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney, has been a fierce defender of Trump on television and accused the FBI of trying to “frame” the president for nonexistent crimes.

Dowd was the primary negotiator and legal strategist who had been putting together the president’s legal defense in the Russia probe led by Mueller. The legal team shake-up also comes as Trump’s attorneys have been negotiating with Mueller over the scope and terms of an interview with the president. Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether there was any collusion with the Trump campaign.

The president tweeted Sunday, “there was NO COLLUSION with Russia,” pointing instead to his 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Russians hacked into the election and every one of the president’s top security advisers has said they’ll be back. But he said the White House is providing no direction on making election security a top priority.

Warner was asked if the president is acting like he has been “compromised” when it comes to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump congratulated Putin on his re-election last week and failed to bring up the U.S. election meddling or the poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil during the conversation.

“It’s more than bizarre that 14 months into this president’s administration, he has failed to ever call out Russia. He has failed to ever condemn Putin,” said Warner, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“There is something just strange about this, and I think it’s one of the reasons why Mueller’s investigation has to continue and why our investigation has to continue.”

__

Day reported from Alexandria, Virginia. AP Writer Kevin Freking in Washington contributed.

On Election’s Eve, Portraits of Egypt’s Leader Fill Iconic Cairo Square

CAIRO — Seven years ago, Cairo’s Tahrir Square was filled with tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding change. Now it is plastered with portraits of the president, vowing continuity.

Almost all traces of the popular revolt that overthrew longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 are now gone. Instead there are banners and posters — dozens of them — showing a beaming Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the general-turned-president who’s running for re-election this week in a vote widely dismissed as a farce.

“What happened in Tahrir was the biggest threat to the network of corruption and theft throughout Egypt’s modern history,” said Wael Eskandar, a blogger and activist who took part in the protests that brought down Mubarak. “Tahrir symbolizes that threat and is a reminder that people can awaken and ask for their rights. That’s why el-Sissi and his regime insist on appropriating it to erase a nation’s memory.”

The election, which begins Monday with voting staggered over three days, nearly ended up as a one-man referendum, after all serious challengers were arrested or pressured into withdrawing. The only other candidate to make the ballot, Moussa Mustafa Moussa, is a little-known politician who supports el-Sissi and has made almost no effort to campaign against him.

Banners extolling el-Sissi, often bearing the names of local businessmen or organizations advertising their support, have proliferated across Egypt, prompting mockery from some critics. But it is in Tahrir Square, where mass protests raised hopes of democratic change in the Arab world’s most populous country, that the effect is most jarring.

In February 2011, protesters who had clashed with police and camped out in the square for 18 days erupted into cheers as the end of Mubarak’s 29-year-rule was announced on a giant screen. Now, a massive LCD monitor plays pro-Sissi videos on a perpetual loop.

“Everyone loves him,” said Hossam, as he left a store plastered with pro-el-Sissi posters. “Times are tight but we’re betting on him. He saved the country,” he said. He asked that his full name not be used, fearing reprisals for talking to foreign journalists, who are regularly vilified by Egypt’s pro-government media.

The 2011 uprising ushered in a period of instability, as Egypt’s military, the Muslim Brotherhood group and other Islamists, and a loose coalition of liberal parties vied for power. Egypt’s first freely elected president, the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, proved divisive, and in the summer of 2013 tens of thousands of people returned to Tahrir Square, demanding his resignation.

The military, under the leadership of el-Sissi, removed Morsi from power and launched a massive crackdown on the Brotherhood, which won a series of elections held after the 2011 uprising but is now outlawed as a terrorist group. Authorities have jailed thousands of Islamists as well as several well-known secular activists, including many who played a leading role in the 2011 uprising. The media is dominated by pro-government commentators, and hundreds of websites have been blocked.

El-Sissi has said such measures are necessary to restore stability and revive the economy in a country of 100 million, one that is grappling with widespread poverty and confronting an Islamic State-led insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

He has also enacted a series of long-overdue economic measures, such as cutting subsidies and floating the local currency, and has championed mega-projects aimed at improving infrastructure and providing jobs. The economy is showing signs of improvement, but the austerity measures have made it even harder for Egyptians to make ends meet in a country where more than a fourth of the population lives below the poverty line.

With heavy restrictions on public opinion polling and an absence of critical voices in the media, it’s impossible to know whether el-Sissi is as popular as the posters suggest. The best indication may come from turnout, which the government hopes will bolster the election’s legitimacy.

Mohammed, a deliveryman who asked that his full name not be published for fear of reprisal, didn’t know the name of the candidate running against el-Sissi and doesn’t plan on voting.

“Normal people don’t want (el-Sissi) to win. They would vote for any alternative, but there is no one,” he said. “People with money, of course, want him to stay. He defends their interests. That’s why they’re putting up all these posters.”

On Being Demonized in Your Own Country

Understand this: I’m an American veteran. I’m also a Muslim-American in a country in which, in these years, that hasn’t exactly been the happiest category to fall into. Now, let me tell you a little story.

Recently, I had an ominous dream. It was noon on a grey, cold January 20th, 2020, and Donald Trump was being sworn in for his second term as president. Massive inaugural crowds cheered him exuberantly as a gentle snow fell upon a sea of MAGA red-hats and TRUMP banners waving in front of the Capitol.

In my dream, however, the Capitol wasn’t quite the same as I remembered it from my days stationed there as a young Navy sailor. It seemed almost war-torn as clouds of dark smoke billowed up on the horizon and the sound of gunfire could be heard somewhere in the distance. In my dream — don’t ask me how — I could also hear the terror-filled voices of people screaming or crying out for help as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, clad in black uniforms, stormed local Washington homes and businesses, arresting people and loading them onto large unmarked cargo trucks.

Meanwhile, those inaugural crowds — I have no idea if they were the largest in the history of dreams — were flanked by military Humvees as heavily armed soldiers in unfamiliar camouflage uniforms stood behind the president while he delivered his second inaugural address. I could even hear his words eerily reverberating through the Capitol. “The enemy,” he exclaimed, “has infiltrated our great nation because of weak immigration laws allowed by treasonous politicians!”

At that very moment, he told the exuberant crowd, he was already singlehandedly purging “those terrorists and their enablers from our ranks.” The MAGA banners waved ever more frantically and the crowd roared as he declared, “Law and order are now being restored to our great nation once again!”

I awoke in a cold sweat. Unlike the sort of nightmare I’d normally shake off as a fantasy of slumber, the result perhaps of that late night dose of Ben and Jerry’s I had meant to resist, this one stuck with me and, I’m sorry to say, recurred.

American Fear-scapes

Worse yet, these days I no longer have to drop into some deep, unnerving dream state to experience it. Though few of us are likely to admit it, some version of that dream of mine is, in fact, the secret daily nightmare of millions of my fellow Muslim-Americans. In a moment, when immigrants in this country live in a fear-scape all their own, believe me, so do we. In our living nightmare, an administration that can seem not just ineffective but hapless beyond imagining, plagued by scandal, and stocked with staff members heading for the exits (or being escorted off White House grounds) might nonetheless transform itself into something even more deeply threatening to Americans like us. It might sooner or later consolidate power and, eager to distract the public from its actual plutocratic and other grim policies, turn on us “bigly.” Without dropping into another dream state, I can easily enough imagine how, with the tacit endorsement of Trump’s base, that administration might prepare itself to use a future devastating terror attack, the next Orlando or San Bernardino, to skewer American Muslims or the immigrant community and so pave the way for a true living nightmare.

Such a crisis could take many forms, but imagine, for instance, a “dirty bomb” attack (the use of conventional explosives to spread radioactive nuclear waste materials across a wide area of some urban neighborhood). Just such an attack has certainly been a focus of concern in the U.S. intelligence community for years now. In fact, in 1999, while on active duty as a new member of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the first interagency briefing I attended at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, focused on that very issue.

Should that happen or anything like it, it’s easy enough to imagine how the Trump administration might use it to enhance its own power at our expense. With the public cowering in fear, martial law might be declared. Meanwhile, a Congress that, in the face of the imperial presidency, has already abdicated its constitutional duty to declare war, might grant Donald Trump far greater authority than he already possesses, thanks to the unprecedented post-9/11 powers any president now wields — and the American people (or enough of them, at least) would “rally ’round the chief.”

And then, or so I imagine (and, at least among American Muslims I know, I’m not alone in this), so much worse would begin to unfold and my recurring nightmare would become a nightmarish reality. In the aftermath of such an attack, so much in our world, from the Women’s March to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, would become distant and forgotten memories. Dissent would be denounced as unpatriotic, perhaps ultimately illegal, and basic human rights might be suspended.

By now, I’m sure you see where I’m going. In my nightmare at least — and I’m talking about the waking one now, the one I live with every day — countless immigrants and American Muslims are in camps awaiting who knows what. It’s not as if there is no precedent for anything like that in America, given the experience of Japanese-Americans rounded up and kept in just such camps during World War II.

In this moment of growing Islamophobia, at a time when a president has a desire to simply ban foreign Muslims and cast American ones as the worst of the worst, it’s just one more step into my fears of the future for me to imagine myself, an American veteran, as well as my family and other members of the Muslim community, sitting inside darkened train cars on our way to internment camps, while we desperately try to convince ourselves that surely the Supreme Court will overturn such an injustice.

And given our world, given the history of racism in this country, it’s not that hard to imagine scores of broken men, women, and children already at our destination as we hurtle down the tracks to join them. Nor is it that hard to imagine the Trump administration dismissing those who protest such treatment as disloyal co-conspirators, and then using militarized police raiders to hunt some of them down, too. I can even imagine mosques being set ablaze and synagogues and churches that attempted to protect citizens fleeing all of this being raided at the government’s orders.

Heading for a Dark Destination

In some dark corner of my mind, given what we know about what we human beings are capable of, I can almost imagine some kind of Muslim-American version of the Holocaust, the ultimate nightmare that immigrants and Muslim-Americans have dreaded since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2016, but dare not whisper. There’s nothing sadder to say than that such fears do not completely lack historical precedent: the world has, of course, been here before.

If the fate of the millions who perished during World War II, thanks to Adolf Hitler and his minions, doesn’t seem real enough to you, just pay a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There, you can witness the haunting images of our human brethren who, by virtue of their faith or background, were destroyed, some by their own countrymen.

Now, I know perfectly well that those of you who aren’t Muslim-Americans are likely to find such fantasies at best extreme; at worst, beyond conception. The reason isn’t hard to imagine, because of course Donald Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler; White House adviser Stephen Miller isn’t Joseph Goebbels; White House Chief of Staff John Kelly isn’t Hermann Göring; and former CIA Director and next Secretary of State Mike Pompeo isn’t Heinrich Himmler.  Yes — but Pompeo, a major Islamophobe in an administration filled with them, has insisted that all Muslims are potentially complicit in terrorism and that “people who deeply believe that Islam is the way” are a “threat to America.”  He has also received the “National Security Eagle Award” from a noted anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, and has been interviewed more than 20 times by Frank Gaffney, “the country’s most influential Islamophobe,” on his radio show.  And when it comes to Islamophobia (and Iranophobia as well), in this administration Pompeo is hardly alone.

Still, not even bans, insults, and a visible loathing for those of us who don’t look like and pray like the president and his men, not even torchlight parades by Trump-supporting American neo-Nazis, get you easily to anything like an American Holocaust.  But know, when you read this, that there are those of us out here who, in the dark of night, are indeed haunted by such thoughts anyway and by thoughts as well of those in the 1930s who dismissed the fears of the worst to come as so much hyperbole.

Speaking just for myself, I can’t help but believe that, in our 241-year history that includes a bitter civil war, two world wars, and the Great Depression, this could turn out to be the most crucial moment of all. I can’t help but wonder, at least in my bleaker moments, whether there will be any coming back from the dark destination, whatever it turns out to be, that we, as a nation, now seem headed for. And if not, just remember that no one will be able to say that we didn’t know what we were doing, that there were no warnings as people like me were demonized in our own country.

Whatever hell might still come, for this veteran at least, Donald Trump’s America is already hell enough.

Nate Terani is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and served in military intelligence with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is currently a spokesperson for  Common Defense PAC  and regional campaign organizer with  Veterans Challenge Islamophobia . He is a featured columnist with the  Arizona Muslim Voice  newspaper. This is his second  TomDispatch piece .  Follow him on Twitter at @NateTerani.