Chris Hedges's Blog, page 640

Uber Suspends Self-Driving Tests After Pedestrian Is Killed

A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle — a crash that could have far-reaching consequences for the new technology.

The fatality Sunday night in Tempe was the event many in the auto and technology industries were dreading but knew was inevitable.

Uber immediately suspended all road-testing of such autos in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The testing has been going on for months as automakers and technology companies like the ride-hailing service compete to be the first with cars that operate on their own.

The Volvo was in self-driving mode with a human backup driver at the wheel when it hit 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she was walking a bicycle outside the lines of a crosswalk, police said. She died at a hospital.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed condolences on his Twitter account and said the company is working with local law enforcement on the investigation.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which makes recommendations for preventing crashes, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which can enact regulations, sent investigators.

Tempe police Sgt. Ronald Elcock said local authorities haven’t drawn any conclusions about who is at fault but urged people to use crosswalks. He told reporters at a news conference Monday the Uber vehicle was traveling around 40 mph when it hit Helzberg immediately as she stepped on to the street.

Neither she nor the backup driver showed signs of impairment, he said.

The public’s image of the vehicles will be defined by stories like the crash in Tempe, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies self-driving vehicles.

Although the Uber vehicle and its human backup could be at fault, it may turn out that there was nothing either could have done to stop the crash, he said.

Either way, the fatality could hurt the technology’s image and lead to a push for more regulations at the state and federal levels, Smith said.

Autonomous vehicles with laser, radar and camera sensors and sophisticated computers have been billed as the way to reduce the more than 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the U.S. alone. Ninety-four percent of crashes are caused by human error, the government says.

Autonomous vehicles don’t drive drunk, don’t get sleepy and aren’t easily distracted. But they do have faults.

“We should be concerned about automated driving,” Smith said. “We should be terrified about human driving.”

In 2016, the latest year available, more than 6,000 U.S. pedestrians were killed by vehicles.

The federal government has voluntary guidelines for companies that want to test autonomous vehicles, leaving much of the regulation up to states.

Many states, including Michigan and Arizona, have taken a largely hands-off approach, hoping to gain jobs from the new technology, while California and others have taken a harder line.

California is among states that require manufacturers to report any incidents during the testing phase. As of early March, the state’s motor vehicle agency had received 59 such reports.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey used light regulations to entice Uber to the state after the company had a shaky rollout of test cars in San Francisco. Arizona has no reporting requirements.

Hundreds of vehicles with automated driving systems have been on Arizona’s roads.

Ducey’s office expressed sympathy for Herzberg’s family and said safety is the top priority.

The crash in Arizona isn’t the first involving an Uber autonomous test vehicle. In March 2017, an Uber SUV flipped onto its side, also in Tempe. No serious injuries were reported, and the driver of the other car was cited for a violation.

Herzberg’s death is the first involving an autonomous test vehicle but not the first in a car with some self-driving features. The driver of a Tesla Model S was killed in 2016 when his car, operating on its Autopilot system, crashed into a tractor-trailer in Florida.

The NTSB said that driver inattention was to blame but that design limitations with the system played a major role in the crash.

The U.S. Transportation Department is considering further voluntary guidelines that it says would help foster innovation. Proposals also are pending in Congress, including one that would stop states from regulating autonomous vehicles, Smith said.

Peter Kurdock, director of regulatory affairs for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety in Washington, said the group sent a letter Monday to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao saying it is concerned about a lack of action and oversight by the department as autonomous vehicles are developed. That letter was planned before the crash.

Kurdock said the deadly crash should serve as a “startling reminder” to members of Congress that they need to “think through all the issues to put together the best bill they can to hopefully prevent more of these tragedies from occurring.”

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Krisher reported from Detroit, Fonseca reported from Flagstaff, Arizona. Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this story.

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This story has been corrected to show that federal investigators found Tesla’s Autopilot system was a factor in the deadly Florida crash.

Getting From Profits for a Few to Health Care for All

Democracy is a more radical idea than socialism. That has been noted by a fair number of democratic socialists, including one of the steady campaigners on the left wing of the British Labor Party, Tony Benn, who died in 2014. By stressing democracy first and foremost, he plainly did not abandon the full range of his socialist commitments. On the contrary, the extension of democracy into the workplace and the advance of workers into public life has been the real ground of social democracy. Without democracy in basic goods and services such as health care, housing and education, the ability of people to participate in public life and politics is deeply undermined.

We, the people, did not gain ground in civil and human rights simply through the Constitution. That notion is a Sunday school reading of our history. Only social movements finally persuaded politicians and legislators to acknowledge a new balance of power. In every period of open class struggle, both the reform bills passed by legislators and the restrictions enacted by corporate power are concurrent stories.

The New Deal under President Franklin Roosevelt was not a gift of the gods, but the hard-won new bill of rights extracted from the state by labor strikes and by the occupation of factories. Of course, that reform required allies from all classes, including writers, artists, teachers, doctors, scientists and principled members of other professions. But we must never forget the historical foundation of that legislation, including the migration of workers across oceans and continents to the farms, mills, mines and sweatshops of New York, West Virginia, Illinois, Arizona and California. Class consciousness was forged in the fire of class struggles, under the gunfire of police and hired strikebreakers, as well as in the actual fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City on March 25, 1911.

The fire began at the end of the working day and spread quickly. One of the doors on the ground floor was locked, and the ladders of the fire brigade only reached to the sixth floor, about 30 feet below the flames. There were few fire exits. From the first sound of the alarm until the fire was nearly extinguished, not more than a half hour passed, and 146 people died. Almost all of them were Italian or Jewish immigrants. Most were women, and many were in their teens. Some died on the factory floor, some died jumping from the windows, and some died when a fire escape collapsed.

Frances Perkins, who later became Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, was one of the witnesses. Among the many notable dates on the calendar of labor history, Perkins marked March 25, 1911, as the day the New Deal began.

The Vietnam War (or the American War, as the Vietnamese call it) has overshadowed the more populist programs introduced under President Lyndon Johnson. In 1965, both Medicaid and Medicare became the law of the land. This was a significant reform of national health care, but our class-divided system was spelled out in the two-track system. Medicaid was a kind of medical welfare system for people with the lowest incomes, whereas Medicare covered citizens over the age of 65 or those with severe disabilities, regardless of income. Thus, dual eligibility for both Medicaid and Medicare is possible for some people. This limited reform was attacked as “socialized medicine” by the most antisocial cheerleaders of capitalism. In fact, both corporate parties had no intention of confronting the many private interests that still compete to drive up the cost of drugs and medical care.

Much of the New Deal was later demolished. At a time when black single mothers were stigmatized on op-ed pages and in scholarly books, President Bill Clinton promised on the campaign trail in 1992 “to end welfare as we know it.” He later kept that promise, but first, he signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, with a budget of $10 billion for prison construction. The same bill ended federal funding for inmate education and expanded the death penalty.

In 1996, with Vice President Al Gore and Lillie Harden, a black mother and former welfare recipient, standing beside him at an outdoor White House ceremony, Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The law toppled one of the pillars of the New Deal’s Social Security Act, namely Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and it was replaced by a more meager program. As for Harden, she had a stroke in 2002 and died 12 years later, unable to qualify for Medicaid and or afford the monthly bills for her medications.

To their great honor, two assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services—Mary Jo Bane and Peter Edelman–resigned in protest shortly after Clinton signed the bill into law. Edelman wrote a last memorandum to his staff, stating, “I have devoted the last 30-plus years to doing whatever I could to help in reducing poverty in America. I believe the recently enacted bill goes in the opposite direction.”

Clinton also presided over a period of deregulation that might have made liberals howl under a Republican administration, but left most of them sleepwalking under the spell of a “centrist” Democrat. The repeal of the FDR-era Glass-Steagall legislation meant that insurers, retail banks and investment banks were free to merge again. And then, as Dan Roberts wrote in The Guardian on April 19, 2014, “A Financial Services Modernization Act was passed by Congress in 1999, giving retrospective clearance to the 1998 merger of Citigroup and Travelers Group and unleashing a wave of Wall Street consolidation that was later blamed for forcing taxpayers to spend billions bailing out the enlarged banks after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.”

The long, bipartisan war of attrition against labor unions had more dramatic episodes under President Ronald Reagan, but Clinton also was fully committed to the corporate state and the taming of wayward workers. Republicans were more willing to smash unions outright, whereas Democrats were more incremental in seeking to turn unions into an arm of management.

Barack Obama vaulted into the national limelight when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 National Democratic Convention. He spoke against gloom and naysayers, and for hope and unity. In fact, his message was as generic as a Hallmark greeting card, but he played his audience like a grand piano: “Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.”

The single truly signature piece of legislation under Obama’s administration, the law that we will remember in our sleep, was the Affordable Care Act. The ACA was promptly tagged “Obamacare” by Republicans, and many of them vowed to destroy it, thereby proving that actual class and political divisions do exist, and that racial animus is not so remote from the nationalism of the right wing. By partisan reflex, many Democrats made defense of the ACA the outer limit of what they were willing to promise in the realm of health care reform.

When “centrist” Democratic politicians face demands for expanded and improved “Medicare for all,” which is the practical path toward a single-payer system in this country, they also face a political dilemma. They cannot claim that the genius of the market will deliver the optimal health care program, or they will simply sound like their corporate cousins in the Republican Party. At the same time, they are unwilling to exclude the insurance companies from the poker game in Congress.

In California, for example, Sen. Dianne Feinstein prefers evasive maneuvers when her more liberal constituents press her to endorse health care bills they favor on the state and federal levels. She states on her website, “I am an original cosponsor of the Medicare-X Choice Act of 2017 (S. 1970), which was introduced by Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) on October 17, 2017.” Instead of a single-payer system, this bill tries to resurrect the “public option,” mimics the private options available on the ACA exchanges and involves a three-year rollout period beginning in rural areas. It’s a jalopy made of spare parts designed to break down in traffic. But it is also designed to distract the public from serious health care reform.

Feinstein is a zealous defender of the ACA against Republican attacks, which also entails a defense of private insurance plans offered through Medicaid. However, the more reform-minded members of her party believe a single-payer health care plan really should be a litmus test for the support of candidates, and they joined in the refusal to endorse Feinstein for a fifth term at the last state Democratic convention. Of course, her name, her donors, her personal wealth and the party machine are still in her favor.

In the May 2, 2017, issue of MapLight, a website “revealing money’s influence on politics,” Andrew Perez wrote that Feinstein had recently told her constituents at a San Francisco town hall meeting, “If single-payer health care is going to mean a complete takeover by the government of all health care, I am not there.”

Perez added, “A week later, Feinstein was even further from there, benefitting from a fundraising event at the Washington, DC office of Avenue Solutions, a lobbying firm that represents major health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and the primary trade association for doctors. The industries have historically opposed efforts to create a universal, government run health care system—an idea supported by 58 percent of U.S. adults. Feinstein supporters at the event were expected to kick in $1,000 to $5,000 for her re-election bid.”

Among the donors to Feinstein, Perez noted Tom Daschle, former Democratic Senate majority leader; a lobbyist for Blue Cross Blue Shield; Fred Greafe, a lobbyist for the Federation of American Hospitals; and political action committees run by pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co. and Amgen.

When we step away from the partisan pugilism over the ACA, we get a clearer picture of what the ACA does and does not mean for health care reform. The ACA did extend medical coverage, especially through Medicaid, though it left millions of Americans uninsured. This was a direct consequence of placing the profits of insurance companies once again before the care of patients. The ACA enshrined “the individual mandate,” a retrograde feature copied from a Republican health care program in Massachusetts, once known as “Romneycare.”

In plain language, a person seeking health care through the ACA is forced to buy a private insurance plan brokered through state and county agencies, or pay a fine. In the words of the HealthCare.gov website, “If you can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it, you may pay a fee called the individual shared responsibility payment. (The fee is sometimes called the ‘penalty,’ ‘fine,’ or ‘individual mandate.’)”

For many people, those plans remain only marginally affordable, or are still beyond their means, especially because insurance companies are gaming the new rules and jacking up rates even for the poor. For those below a defined poverty line, Medicaid is supposed to provide a subsidy, but ACA’s rules have allowed some states to opt out and refuse the federal funds that would benefit many of their citizens. The bureaucratic obstacles in coordinating care and funding do benefit the bureaucrats, of course. And insurance companies are still evolving as corporate predators, eating each other whenever given the opportunity.

A new study titled “Health Care Spending in the United States and Other High Income Countries,” published last week by the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Network, states:

“The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other nation, substantially outpacing even other very high-income countries. However, despite its higher spending, the United States performs poorly in areas such as health care coverage and health outcomes. Higher spending without commensurate improved health outcomes at the population level has been a strong impetus for health care reform in the United States.”

Health Care for All, Not Profits for a Few

Hillary Clinton, on the presidential campaign trail in January 2016, told voters in Iowa that the health care reform plan favored by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was pie in the sky: “People who have health emergencies can’t wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.” Beholden to her big donors and to the big insurance companies, she labored with zeal to put private profit above public health. As for “theoretical debate,” she has her own theories, of course. The Goldwater Girl refashioned herself as a New Democrat, and when Donald Trump took the White House, she announced during a TV interview that she had become “a member of the resistance.” In college, she briefly flirted with the radical ideas of the late community organizer Saul Alinsky, but her true and abiding passion is public service to the corporate state.

Sanders deserves credit for opening up a much wider public conversation on class inequities in this country, including in the provision of health care. The Democratic National Committee responded with wrath and sabotage toward his candidacy and presidential campaign. Sanders has an instrumental view of the Democratic Party, because it gives him more leverage in Congress. So when he bowed out of his presidential campaign, he advised his supporters to go knock on doors for Clinton. Anyone who expects Sanders to campaign in earnest for independent political action against both corporate parties has not been paying attention to his public record. Still, without illusions, we must acknowledge that Sanders remains one of the most trusted elected officials in the nation.

One third of Democrats in the Senate, eager to jump in front of a movement they rarely had the courage to lead, have now signed on to Sanders’ Medicare for All Act. Likewise, in the House of Representatives, half the Democrats signed on to the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, HR 676, first introduced by Rep. John Conyers. After Conyers’ resignation following charges of sexual harassment, Rep. Keith Ellison took the lead in sponsorship, and more than 60 percent of House Democrats are now cosponsors.

A moment comes in every social movement when career politicians steal the language of serious reform to introduce familiar regressive features into “progressive” legislation. This is such a moment. Above all, a comprehensive health care plan must include safeguards against the usual side deals with private insurers, pharmaceutical lobbyists and corporate consortiums of hospitals. If a reform is built on familiar quicksand, it will be more easily eroded by competing private interests.

In an article titled “The Healthcare Bait-and-Switch,” Glen Ford wrote in the March 8 edition of Black Agenda Report: “Predictably, however, Hillary Clinton’s favorite think tank is still trying to make sure single payer health care never happens. The lavishly funded Center for American Progress (CAP) last week unveiled their counterfeit, sound-alike health care plan, dubbed Medicare Extra for All, whose sole purpose is to distract and confuse a public that is demonstrably ‘ready’ for single payer. The CAP scheme, like Obamacare, keeps the private insurance corporations at the center of the money-stream, doesn’t cover everyone, charges fees, co-pays and premiums, doesn’t save much money, and would fail to provide millions with adequate coverage.”

Dr. Margaret Flowers of Health Over Profit and many other health care activists favor National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA), and thus also favor HR 676 over the Sanders’ bill in the Senate, which Flowers has called “deeply flawed.” Readers further interested in the policy differences should consult the website of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Health Over Profit. The mission statement of Health Over Profit is clear: “We believe that we must have a healthcare system in the United States that has health for everyone as the bottom line, not profits for a few. We believe that a National Improved Medicare for All system, as embodied in HR 676, is the best way to achieve this goal.”

The Lessons of Canadian Health Care Reform

In both local and national efforts, voters and activists can learn lessons from the history of health care reform in Canada. No single nation offers a simple prescription for health care activists in the United States, but Canada achieved a true social democratic reform of its health care system. As we might expect, Canada also has been subject to the corporate erosion of health care and social values. Even so, our northern neighbor is closer to us than Scandinavia, and we should pay attention to the Canadian pioneers in health care.

As Lorne Brown and Doug Taylor wrote in the July 3, 2012, issue of Canadian Dimension, “Medicare was born in Saskatchewan on July 1, 1962. It would be the first government-controlled, universal, comprehensive single-payer medical insurance plan in North America. It was a difficult birth. The North American medical establishment and the entire insurance industry were determined to stop Medicare in its tracks. They feared it would become popular and spread, and they were right. Within 10 years all of Canada was covered by a medical insurance system based on the Saskatchewan plan, and no serious politician would openly oppose it.”

Saskatchewan, the home base of “agrarian socialism,” had been governed since 1944 by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) led by Tommy Douglas, who later served as Canada’s prime minister. Medical care had always been among the core issues of the CCF welfare state program. As early as 1947, universal hospital insurance had been introduced, and by 1958 it was adopted as a federal-provincial jointly funded program across Canada. This created the economic and political foundation for the universal medical insurance plan Douglas proposed for Saskatchewan in 1959. Despite storm and stress, basic social democracy in health care was established in Canada. And to this day, Douglas remains one of the most admired public figures among Canadians.

Without the workers and socialists of Canada, the Canadian public health care system would have remained a distant hope and a doomed ideal. Indeed, a majority of doctors in Saskatchewan went on strike for 23 days, but the social democratic government brought in doctors from Britain, the United States and other provinces. Those doctors were among the most class conscious within their profession. Their ethic of solidarity owed much to the labor movements of the United States and Britain. The British labor movement was strong enough to put a Labor Party government in power after World War II, and the British national health care system was a solid gain across all lines of work and class for the whole nation. Any system of medical care will have faults and failings, but there would be public uprisings in Canada and Britain if any party in power tried to steal away comprehensive public health care.

The ethic of solidarity is now so well established in Canadian health care that hundreds of doctors, nurses and medical students signed a recent public statement against pay raises for doctors, arguing that medical funds should be redistributed to improve the wages and working conditions of nurses, assistants and clerks. Nurses took the lead in this effort, joining earlier sit-ins to publicize worsening conditions in hospitals and the risks to both patients and staff. As they stated, “We also wish to remind the government that the current situation is far from normal or inevitable and is largely caused by the cuts it has imposed on the public network.”

One lesson we can draw from their experience is that nothing won through class-conscious movements can be taken for granted. Our gains do not stay won without vigilance and solidarity. In periods of reaction, these gains must be defended from business as usual by workers and citizens committed to public health and social values.

For reasons of outreach, organizing and legislative strategy, any reform in public policy will surely have a stronger base of support if it is not limited to left-wing groups, voters and parties. At the level of social movements and civic resistance, conversations across all party lines are always necessary. They also raise the general level of civic respect. But because the right wing will never give up redbaiting, honest socialists also must never follow any retrograde party line of “centrism.”

We Are Many, They Are Few

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many, they are few!

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

We, the people, will go on paying the price for police repression, imperial wars and the blowouts of high finance, so long as we vote by rote for the parties of corporate dictatorship. The flaming downward spiral of bipartisan “pragmatism” makes every big election a protection racket. Sure, one mafia boss will twist your arm, but the other mafia boss will break it. The lesser of two evils is the last word in “progressive” advice we can expect in every regressive campaign season.

The bipartisan candidates of hope and change only hope their con game will vault them to high office, where they prove willing and able to extend the reach of drone wars and state surveillance. This means you, Barack Obama. They may sometimes be glass-ceiling careerists, but they will not be class-conscious feminists. This means you, Hillary Clinton. They may be phony populists willing to hold a news conference with steelworkers, but they still treat the proles as extras in the spectacle of power. This means you, Donald Trump.

So where are we likeliest to find comrades and allies? Workers, students and younger people are likelier to teach us truly new lessons, and they may learn in turn from older allies if generational bridges have not been burned. Young people are far less influenced by redbaiting than many of their elders, because the old Cold War has receded into history. Red scares don’t affect them when they encounter socialists in public life or among friends and coworkers.

The early women’s health care movement proved to be a powerful influence on later movements, such as the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Women often were the living links between both movements. The history and practical achievements of such movements are being passed along through archives, video documentaries and public forums.

The Green New Deal of the Green Party is a practical program of basic social democracy, oriented to peace, economic democracy and ecological sanity. In the last presidential campaign, Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, was the most informed and eloquent advocate of comprehensive health care reform. She was slandered as an opponent of vaccines, but in fact, she advocates solid research and science. She has noted that Thiomersal, a mercury-related preservative in some childhood vaccines, was phased out in the European Union, the United States and in a few other countries. Hardly an alarmist statement.

Stein also was a strong opponent of the corporate bribery of Congress, and an equally strong advocate of reforms in the electoral system. So, of course, she was smeared as a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Why? Simply because she paid her own way to Russia to encourage dialogue on peace and democracy, and ended up seated with him at a public dinner. These charges against Stein were efforts to change the subject from the real issues of her campaign.

In Seattle, the labor campaign for a minimum wage of $15 an hour was central to the success of Kshama Sawant, a socialist, in gaining office in the City Council. And the Sanders campaign stirred up a wave of new recruits to the Democratic Socialists of America, though that group remains small and marginal in relation to the inner circles of the Democratic Party. Even if their numbers grow, its hope of reforming that party would mean a fight to the finish against the “centrist” old guard.

All of us owe a great moral and social debt to the good doctors who hold fast to the Hippocratic oath and who put the health of the public above private profit. The work of doctors and nurses is a living example of public values day by day, and in all the hours of the night shifts, and in all the emergency rooms and hospital wards of the world. Nurses have been my personal heroes in the times I was most sick and when so many friends and comrades were lost in the AIDS epidemic. Now nurses are on the front lines of the labor movement, and are among the most strategic and successful opponents of the corporate state. Forming councils of workers and neighbors, of doctors and nurses, of artists and writers, is not a utopian goal over the horizon. Any form of organization begins with a conversation among friends and comrades. Start small, and start now.

The power of the ruling class is not, finally, in its armies and firepower, nor in its police and prisons. Its power must first be disarmed in our own minds and hearts, and in the growing strength of our solidarity. We are many, they are few.

Further Readings and References

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP)—California Capital Chapter—BLAST #15

Dr. Andrew Coates, in an Sun Magazine article by Tracy Frisch, explains why the ACA was “one step forward, two steps back.” Any reform plan that places private insurance as a foundation stone will also obstruct full provision of health care.

This video interview with Dr. Michael Rachlis of Canada, and is the most enlightening video presentation of Canadian health care history and current public policy I have yet found.

Facebook ‘Likes’ Could Profile Voters for Manipulation

NEW YORK—Facebook likes can tell a lot about a person. Maybe even enough to fuel a voter-manipulation effort like the one a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm stands accused of — and which Facebook may have enabled.

The social network is now under fire after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including user likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to influence elections.

Facebook’s stock plunged 7 percent Monday in its worst one-day decline since 2014. Officials in the EU and the U.S. sought answers, while Britain’s information commissioner said she will seek a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica’s servers because the British firm had been “uncooperative” in her investigation. After two years of failing to disclose the harvesting, Facebook said Monday that it hired an outside firm to audit Cambridge.

Researchers in a 2013 study found that Facebook likes on hobbies, interests and other attributes can predict personal attributes such as sexual orientation and political affiliation. Computers analyze such data to look for patterns that might not be obvious, such as a link between a preference for curly fries and higher intelligence.

Chris Wylie, a Cambridge co-founder who left in 2014, said the firm used such techniques to learn about individuals and create an information cocoon to change their perceptions. In doing so, he said, the firm “took fake news to the next level.”

“This is based on an idea called ‘informational dominance,’ which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of information around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what’s actually happening,” Wylie said Monday on NBC’s “Today.” It’s not yet clear exactly how the firm might have attempted to do that.

Late Friday, Facebook said Cambridge improperly obtained information from 270,000 people who downloaded an app described as a personality test. Those people agreed to share data with the app for research — not for political targeting. And the data included who their Facebook friends were and what they liked — even though those friends hadn’t downloaded the app or given explicit consent.

Cambridge got limited information on the friends, but machines can use detailed answers from smaller groups to make good inferences on the rest, said Kenneth Sanford of the data science company Dataiku.

Cambridge was backed by the conservative billionaire Richard Mercer, and at one point employed Stephen Bannon — later President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and White House adviser — as a vice president. The Trump campaign paid Cambridge roughly $6 million, according to federal election records, although officials have more recently played down that work.

The type of data mining reportedly used by Cambridge Analytica is fairly common, but is typically used to sell diapers and other products. Netflix, for instance, provides individualized recommendations based on how a person’s viewing behaviors fit with what other customers watch.

But that common technique can take on an ominous cast if it’s connected to possible elections meddling, said Robert Ricci, a marketing director at Blue Fountain Media.

Wylie said Cambridge Analytica aimed to “explore mental vulnerabilities of people.” He said the firm “works on creating a web of disinformation online so people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites etc. that make them think things are happening that may not be.”

Wylie told “Today” that while political ads are also targeted at specific voters, the Cambridge effort aimed to make sure people wouldn’t know they were getting messages aimed at influencing their views.

The Trump campaign has denied using Cambridge’s data. The firm itself denies wrongdoing, and says it didn’t retain any of the data pulled from Facebook and didn’t use it in its 2016 campaign work.

Yet Cambridge boasted of its work after another client, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, won the Iowa caucus in 2016.

Cambridge helped differentiate Cruz from similarly minded Republican rivals by identifying automated red light cameras as an issue of importance to residents upset with government intrusion. Potential voters living near the red light cameras were sent direct messages saying Cruz was against their use.

Even on mainstay issues such as gun rights, Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix said at the time, the firm used personality types to tailor its messages. For voters who care about tradition, it could push the importance of making sure grandfathers can offer family shooting lessons. For someone identified as introverted, a pitch might have described keeping guns for protection against crime.

It’s possible that Cambridge tapped other data sources, including what Cruz’s campaign app collected. Nix said during the Cruz campaign that it had five or six sources of data on each voter.

Facebook declined to provide officials for interview and didn’t immediately respond to requests for information beyond its statements Friday and Monday. Cambridge also didn’t immediately respond to emailed questions.

Facebook makes it easy for advertisers to target users based on nuanced information about them. Facebook’s mapping of the “social graph” — essentially the web of people’s real-life connections — is also invaluable for marketers.

For example, researchers can look at people’s clusters of friends and get good insight as to who is important and influential, said Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. People who bridge different friend networks, for example, can have more influence when they post something, making them prime for targeting.

Two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news on social media, according on Pew Research Center. While people don’t exist in a Facebook-only vacuum, it is possible that bogus information users saw on the site could later be reinforced by the “rabbit hole” of clicks and conspiracy sites on the broader internet, as Wylie described.

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An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the sum paid by the 2016 Trump campaign to Cambridge Analytica. It was $5.9 million according to federal election records.

Rulings Boost Democrats’ Chances of Retaking Congress

HARRISBURG, Pa.—Boosting the Democrats’ chances of retaking control of Congress in this fall’s midterm elections, the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal panel on Monday rejected Republican challenges to a newly redrawn congressional map imposed on Pennsylvania by the state’s high court.

The federal courts dismissed requests to throw out or halt use of the new district map, which the state court drafted after ruling that the preexisting map violated the state constitution’s guarantee of free and equal elections. That earlier map, drawn by the GOP in 2011, is considered among the most gerrymandered in the nation.

The pair of rulings Monday makes it highly likely that this year’s congressional elections in Pennsylvania will be conducted under district lines widely viewed as more favorable to Democrats than the 2011 map.

Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, 23 if Conor Lamb’s lead holds from last week’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th District.

Under the new map, Democrats have a good chance to pick up three seats in the Philadelphia suburbs, and a fighting chance of flipping Republican districts in Harrisburg, Allentown and outside Pittsburgh, said Franklin and Marshall College political scientist Terry Madonna.

“Now, the Democrats nationally will look at Pennsylvania as one of the top priorities, for the obvious reason that of the 24 seats that they need, Pennsylvania has a reasonable chance of putting three in their corner,” Madonna said.

Republicans drew the previous map to aid their candidates. It proved to be a campaign winner, leading the GOP to a 13-5 edge in the state’s congressional delegation for all three elections in which it was used. By contrast, Democrats have a 5-to-4 statewide advantage in voter registration and have won 18 of 24 statewide elections since the 2011 map was enacted.

The pair of court decisions came with just one day left for the state’s congressional candidates to circulate petitions to get on the May 15 primary ballot.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned down the request without comment. Separately, the panel of judges said it had no authority to act in the matter except to dismiss the case.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf called the federal judges’ ruling the right decision and said it will let the state move ahead with a fair map.

The Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court had ruled in January that the map Republicans crafted in 2011 amounted to an unconstitutional gerrymander.

After Wolf and lawmakers in the GOP-controlled General Assembly did not produce a replacement, the court enacted its own map last month and gave candidates extra time for petition gathering.

The federal judges’ decision was made in a case brought a month ago by eight sitting Republican congressmen and two GOP state senators. They argued the state justices infringed on the Legislature’s prerogative and did not give lawmakers enough time to come up with a replacement.

The panel said the senators have only two votes in their chamber, calling that “inadequate as a matter of law to allow a lawsuit premised on an institutional injury to the General Assembly.” The eight Republican congressmen, the judges wrote, may have wasted resources campaigning in their old districts, but they cannot prove that was caused by a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause.

“The cost of shifting district boundaries — in terms of both campaign funding and constituent fealty — is surely appreciable,” the judges wrote. “But the federal congressional plaintiffs have identified no legal principle tethering that cost to a legally cognizable interest in the composition of their electoral districts under the Elections Clause.”

Matt Haverstick, a lawyer for the congressmen, said they were disappointed and considering their legal options.

“I think there was confusion last week in PA18’s special” election, Haverstick said. “And I don’t think, with today’s decisions, that that confusion goes away.”

In a separate case, two senior Republicans in the state Legislature who were on the losing end of the state Supreme Court decision had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a stay, which would have resulted in the use of the 2011 map for this year’s congressional elections. They wanted the new map put on hold while they pursued an appeal to the nation’s highest court.

More than 40 candidates had filed petition paperwork by midday Monday, according to state elections bureau data. The deadline to submit at least 1,000 voter signatures to get on the primary ballot is Tuesday.

Saudi Prince Is Cashing In on Media Hype

Saudi Arabia’s 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, heir to the Saudi throne after eliminating his rivals, is on a two-week whirlwind visit to the United States starting March 19. He plans to cement his ties to the Trump administration, shore up support for his war in Yemen while whipping up more opposition to Iran, and make lucrative business deals. From political meetings with Donald Trump and Congress to cultural events at DC’s Kennedy Center, a talk at MIT, gatherings with tech leaders in Silicon Valley and oil executives in Houston, the prince will be selling dolled-up versions of both his repressive kingdom and his favorite product from the House of Saud: himself. But don’t get sucked into the media hype, seeded by well-paid PR firms, that the prince is a reformer who is bringing substantive change to the kingdom.

MBS, as he is known from his initials, is really a brutal bully responsible for bombing and starving Yemenis. He’s also gunning for a war with Iran, blaming Iran for the Middle East turmoil. Meanwhile, he recklessly imposed a blockade of Qatar that has divided the Gulf States and tried to force a bizarre showdown with Hezbollah in Lebanon by holding Prime Minister Hariri hostage. Recent reports reveal that he has even been holding his own mother under house arrest, hidden from her husband King Salman, for fear she would stand in the way of her son’s ruthless power grab.

Yes, it is true that MBS is making some positive reforms. Women will soon be able to drive and the morality police are not as repressive. Movie theatres are opening, and more cultural events are allowed (although they must all pass government muster and most are gender-segregated). But these reforms are minor in the larger picture of a kingdom that brooks no dissent internally and is committing war crimes abroad. According to Human Rights Watch: “Mohammed bin Salman’s well-funded image as a reformist falls flat in the face of Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe and scores of activists and political dissidents languishing in Saudi prisons on spurious charges. Baby steps on women’s rights reforms don’t paper over Saudi Arabia’s systemic abuses.”

The prince’s most destructive policy is his war on Yemen (bin Salman is head of both the military and the economy). Started in March 2015 in what the prince thought would be a quick and dirty campaign to defeat the Houthi rebels, the relentless Saudi bombing campaign and restrictions on humanitarian aid have turned Yemen into the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster. The U.S. participation in this Yemen war includes selling the Saudis billions of dollars in weapons (Saudi Arabia is the number one purchaser of U.S. weapons) and providing in-air refueling of their bomber planes. Bin Salman’s visit is coming at precisely the time when the Senate is embroiled in a debate over Resolution 54, a bipartisan resolution that would end the unauthorized U.S. military participation in the Yemen conflict. The prince will certainly use his visit to shore up support for the war, painting it as a fight against the Iran-backed Houthis rather than Saudi interference in Yemen’s internal affairs.

To consolidate his power at home before the death of his father, King Salman, MBS has just pulled off a heist that would make bank robber Butch Cassidy green with envy. He rounded up hundreds of his rival elites and held them hostage in the gilded Ritz-Carlton Hotel until they turned over billions of dollars, real estate and shares of their companies to his control. According to a New York Times exposé, some detainees were subjected to such physical abuse that 17 were hospitalized and one died in custody, with a neck that appeared twisted, a badly swollen body and other signs of abuse.

The whole affair was framed as a fight against corruption, but all transactions were conducted in secret and outside the law. Those who  have been released are banned from travel and are afraid to denounce bin Salman for fear of further reprisals. Meanwhile, the prince who is portrayed as a Saudi Robin Hood taking from the elite to spread to the poor bought a $500 million yacht from a Russian vodka financier, a $300 million French chateau described as “the world’s most expensive home,” and a $450 million Leonardo da Vinci painting purchased at a Christie’s auction—the most expensive painting ever sold.

So don’t be fooled. Beneath the veneer of reform is a young man who believes that his bloodline gives him the right to become the next absolute monarch in a family that has ruled the nation with an iron fist since its founding in 1932. The Saudi kingdom is still governed by an intolerant version of Islam, Wahhabism, and spreads that ideology around the world. The government still represses the Shia minority and non-Muslims, and remains a country where atheism is a capital offense and all churches are banned. Free speech and free association are forbidden. There are no national elections and political parties are banned, as are unions and most civic organizations. Criticizing the Saudi regime can lead to flogging, harsh jail sentences or beheading.

While Saudi Arabia will soon lose the distinction of being the only country in the world where women can’t drive, the regime continues to be the world’s most misogynist, gender-segregated country. The guardianship system gives men authority over the most important decisions in women’s lives, and women are forced to be covered in black from head to toe when they are out in public.

A repressive kingdom ruled, de facto, by a cunning, 32-year-old strongman who has made hundreds of internal enemies among the elite and conducts foreign policy in a more impetuous manner than Donald Trump is a recipe for disaster. The United States should not be arming and abetting this regime, and investors dazzled by the prince’s charm offensive and gobs of money should take a second look. If Saudi Arabia is indeed to move into the 21st century, it must stop being governed by royalty.

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the peace group Code Pink and author of “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.

Turkish-Backed Forces Seize Syrian-Kurdish City of Afrin

Turkish-backed forces known as the Free Syrian Army took full control of the center of Afrin, a Syrian-Kurdish city, on Sunday. The attack was part of Operation Olive Branch, launched Jan. 20 in an effort to eliminate Kurdish militia on the Turkish-Syrian border.

According to activists, 280 civilians have been killed in the campaign.

To see an Associated Press report on Turkey and military activities in Syria, click here.

The BBC’s Mark Lowen reports from Turkey:

President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has achieved his twin objectives: to remove a key area under YPG control and to rally the vast majority of Turks behind their commander-in-chief. The jingoism here has been breathtaking. Targeting the Kurdish militants, Turkey’s age-old enemy, is a rare uniting force in a polarised country. Those who have spoken out—several hundred—have been detained for “terrorism propaganda”.

The question now is whether Turkey pushes on to other YPG-held areas, namely Manbij, which could put Turkish troops in direct conflict with US soldiers there who see the YPG as allies. That depends on talks between Ankara and Washington, and the sacking of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week removes an important interlocutor for Turkey.

The risk in Afrin is that many residents who will return are Kurdish and could see Turkey as the aggressor. Tearing down a Kurdish statue in the town centre doesn’t augur well. Will the Afrin operation actually push more local people into the arms of the YPG?

Turkish military spokesman Bekir Bozdag said the campaign would continue around Afrin until the area was fully secure.

The military operation stems from Turkey’s belief that the Kurdish militia known as People’s Protection Units (YPG) is an extension of the banned Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey for decades. The YPG denies any organizational links to the PKK.

The campaign complicates U.S. plans in Syria. In the week before Operation Olive Branch began, the United States declared a military coalition with the Kurds against Islamic State in Syria. At the time, Turkish President Erdogan called that coalition a “terror army.”

Meanwhile, the Syrian army, with the support of Russian airstrikes, has pushed into eastern Ghouta, near Damascus. The government assault appears to have captured 80 percent of the enclave.

For Trump’s Opponents, Electability Is the Key Principle

Former Rep. Barney Frank and the writer William F. Buckley Jr. could hardly have been more at odds in their political views.

The Massachusetts Democrat remains a staunch liberal while Buckley was the intellectual founder of modern conservatism. But they had something important in common: Each wanted his side to win elections and could be thoroughly pragmatic about doing what victory required.

Frank said his “strategic approach” was “to always support the most electable liberal candidates, with an edge in close cases going to electability.”

From the other philosophical shore, Buckley said almost exactly the same: “I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win.”

What we’ll call the Frank-Buckley rule is a live issue as Democrats confront potentially divisive primary fights in House and Senate races. The debate over what price is worth paying to prevail in November was sharpened by Conor Lamb’s apparent triumph in a Pennsylvania congressional district that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016.

Contrary to Republican spin, Lamb is no conservative. He is a pro-labor Democrat who opposed the GOP tax cut, the repeal of Obamacare and reductions to Medicare and Social Security. He also denounced the role of big money in politics.

But he is no left-winger. He defended fracking, had doubts about the $15 minimum wage, criticized House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, and cast himself as a unifier decrying the failure of both parties to work together.

As the political analyst Amy Walter shrewdly pointed out, Lamb appealed simultaneously to Trump voters who still want to drain Washington’s swamp and to the president’s most ardent foes by running as an outsider and a “change candidate.”

Two things are striking: In the end, Lamb won the backing of all wings of his party; and he was picked by a party committee, not in a primary. The question is whether primaries will allow Lamb-like nominees to emerge in districts where profiles such as his offer Democrats their best chance of snatching seats.

At the outset, let’s admit that voters are not pundits, and that pundits themselves are often lousy at predicting election outcomes. Many Republicans saw Trump as a sure loser in 2016. They (along with lots of other people, including professional prognosticators) were wrong.

Internal party fights also mean less in very safe states or districts. Where one party is almost certain to prevail, primary voters don’t have to worry about the consequences of going with their hearts and their philosophies.

And there have been moments in history when primary voters had good reason to decide that taking a stand and making a point took precedence over winning an election.

Democrats opposed to the Vietnam War felt this way in 1968 and 1972. Buckley himself, whose loathing of liberal Republicans surpassed his dislike of Democrats, was an enthusiastic champion of Barry Goldwater in 1964, even though the late Arizona senator seemed the weakest electoral bet against President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Goldwater lost in a landslide, but transforming the GOP had greater significance for Buckley and other Goldwaterites than beating LBJ—and transform the party they did. That their bet paid off is a piece of history that those on the left end of the Democratic Party, with some justice, often point to.

But not every issue is Vietnam, and competing factions should beware of promiscuity in declaring this or that question as make-or-break. Moreover, the Goldwater analogy has limited utility since both parties have a degree of philosophical coherence now that they lacked 50 years ago. In the case of the Democrats, their center-left and left factions are much closer to each other than were the GOP’s liberal and conservative wings in 1964.

And in 2018, one priority truly outranks all others: Will Democrats take hold of at least one house of Congress to provide a real check on Trump’s abuses?

Partisanship is easy to criticize. But in the short run, removing a supine GOP from power in Congress is the one and only way voters can use the ballot box to hold the president accountable. Whatever their differences, Democrats will not allow Russia’s meddling or the many forms of Trump administration corruption to be buried.

There will be plenty of time before 2020 to argue over the Democratic Party’s direction. These discussions cannot be postponed forever. But between now and the fall, sorting out which candidate best fits a given state or district matters far more than it usually does. For Trump’s opponents, pragmatism is principle — because the stakes are so high.

Police Blame Austin Attacks on Serial Bomber

AUSTIN, Texas — The Latest on the bombings in Austin, Texas (all times local):

12:10 p.m.

An FBI investigator says he hopes the latest bombing in Texas’ capital city isn’t the bomber’s way of reaching out to law enforcement.

Authorities have been calling on the person or people behind this month’s string of bombings in Austin to let them know the reasons for the attacks.

Christopher Combs, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio division, told The Associated Press on Monday that investigators are looking for a dialogue with the bomber. He notes that the stakes “went up a lot” on Sunday with the bomber’s use of a tripwire. Two men were seriously injured.

Combs, who is investigating the Austin attacks, says, “The bomber has obviously shown us that he has the ability to make more complex devices, to hurt more people, to be more random. And that’s not good. That why we need to talk to the bomber about what is going on.”

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11:45 a.m.

Authorities say the latest bomb to go off in the Texas capital of Austin was anchored to a metal yard sign near a hiking trail and equipped with a fishing line-thin tripwire.

Frederick Milanowski, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said at a news conference Monday that the wire or filament that detonated the bomb Sunday night would have been very difficult to see.

Two men received significant injuries in the blast. Authorities say that although it is different from the three package bombings that killed two people and injured two others elsewhere in the city this month, they believe they are all the work of a serial bomber or bombers.

Milanowski says investigators have received more than 500 leads since the first bombing on March 2 and they are looking at several persons of interest.

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11:20 a.m.

Austin’s police chief says officers have completed a sweep of the neighborhood where the latest in a string of bombings occurred and deemed it safe, but he asked those who live there to remain indoors until 2 p.m.

Police Chief Brian Manley said at a news conference Monday that although officers didn’t find anything suspicious while canvassing the southwestern Austin residential neighborhood of Travis Country, investigators are still collecting evidence.

Authorities say that although Sunday night’s bombing differed from three earlier this month, they believe they were the work of a serial bomber or bombers. Two men received significant injuries in Sunday’s attack. It apparently involved a bomb placed alongside a fence and a tripwire that the men triggered while walking their bikes between the fence and a street.

The first three attacks used package bombs left on people’s doorsteps. Those attacks killed two people and injured two others.

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11 a.m.

Authorities are urging the public to provide surveillance video that could assist in the investigation into the string of bombings in the Texas capital of Austin.

During a news conference Monday, police Chief Brian Manley asked homeowners and others to forward video to investigators that might offer insight into the bombing Sunday night or three earlier this month.

The latest explosion injured two men in their 20s who were riding or walking their bicycles through a neighborhood in southwestern Austin. The earlier blasts killed two people and injured two others and happened in other parts of the city.

Authorities say the device that detonated Sunday featured a tripwire and was left near a road, while the prior bombings involved packages left on people’s doorsteps.

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10:50 a.m.

Austin’s police chief says the four bombings that have killed two people and injured four others in Texas’ capital city this month are believed to be the work of a serial bomber.

Police Chief Brian Manley said at a news conference Monday that Sunday night’s explosion that injured two men marks a “significant change” from the first three because it was triggered by a tripwire that would have hit any random person walking by it. The first three attacks were carried out with package bombs left on people’s doorsteps.

Manley says as investigators search for a pattern in the attacks, they will try to determine if there is a specific ideology motivating them.

The attack Sunday happened in a southwestern Austin residential neighborhood that isn’t close to the sites of the first three attacks.

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10:25 a.m.

Authorities have called on the person or people behind the bombings in Austin, Texas, to reach out to the police to let them know why they’re setting off the explosives.

Police Chief Brian Manley said Monday that it’s too soon to say whether Sunday night’s bombing that injured two men could have been a response to his call for those behind the bombings to reach out.

Manley says investigators see “similarities” between Sunday night’s bomb and three others this month that killed two people and injured two others. But he says Sunday’s differed in that it involved a tripwire whereas the others were package bombs left on people’s doorsteps.

Frederick Milanowski, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, says the latest bomb is “more sophisticated” because it used a tripwire.

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10:15 a.m.

Authorities say investigators see “similarities” between the latest bomb to detonate in Texas’ capital city and three bombs that went off earlier this month.

Police Chief Brian Manley said at a news conference Monday that although the bomb that injured two men Sunday night seems linked to the three previous ones, the latest bomb involved a tripwire and those three were package bombs left on people’s doorsteps.

Frederick Milanowski, the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, says the latest bomb is “more sophisticated” because it used a tripwire.

Manley says the two victims are men ages 22 and 23 and that they are hospitalized in stable condition with significant injuries.

Both men are white, as opposed to the victims of the three prior bombings, who were black or Hispanic. Those attacks killed two people and injured two others.

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9 a.m.

Austin’s mayor says growing anxieties are “legitimate and real” following the fourth bombing in the city this month.

Mayor Steve Adler told The Associated Press on Monday that residents shouldn’t think twice about calling 911 if they see anything suspicious. A blast occurred Sunday night in a neighborhood far from the sites of the three package bombings in Austin this month.

Police haven’t confirmed the latest explosion, which injured two men who were riding or pushing bikes, is related to the first three, but they’re looking into the possibility.

Authorities say Sunday’s explosion was detonated by a tripwire and showed a different level of skill from previous blasts. Adler says the concern now is that “the methodology has changed.”

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8:30 a.m.

Austin’s police chief says the two men injured in the most recent bombing in Austin were riding or pushing bicycles when the explosives detonated.

Police Chief Brian Manley told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that Sunday night’s explosion was detonated by a tripwire and showed “a different level of skill.” The attack differed from three earlier blasts in Austin this month, which were caused by package bombs left on people’s doorsteps.

The men injured in Sunday’s blast were white, unlike the victims of the first three bombings, who were black or Hispanic.

Authorities have cordoned off the neighborhood where the bomb went off Sunday night and have warned residents to remain indoors while officers check for anything suspicious.

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8:20 a.m.

The University of Texas’ campus police force is warning students returning from spring break to be aware of the four recent bombings to hit Austin, saying, “We must look out for one another.”

In a tweet Monday, UT Austin police said, “When you get on campus this morning ASK your friends if they’ve heard about the bombings. TELL them about the incidents.”

It also urged students to report suspicious items to the authorities. Classes were resuming Monday after a week off.

A blast triggered by a tripwire in a residential neighborhood Sunday night injured two men. Three previous package bombs detonated in different parts of the city since March 2, killing two people and injured two more.

None of those incidents were close to the university’s sprawling campus near the heart of Austin.

___

8 a.m.

Austin’s police chief says the latest bombing to hit the city was detonated by a tripwire, “showing a different level of skill.”

Police Chief Brian Manley told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that both of the men injured in Sunday night’s blast are white, unlike the victims in the city’s three previous bombings this month, who were black or Hispanic.

Sunday night’s explosion happened in the southwestern Austin residential neighborhood of Travis Country. The three previous bombings happened two-plus weeks in residential neighborhoods east of Interstate 35, which divides the city.

Authorities have warned Travis Country residents to remain indoors until 10 a.m. as police scour the area for anything suspicious.

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7:25 a.m.

Police have warned residents near the site of the latest explosion in Austin to remain indoors and to call 911 if they need to leave home before 10 a.m.

Authorities say Sunday night’s explosion in the Travis Country neighborhood in southwestern Austin injured two men and may have been triggered by a tripwire. The police chief repeated his warning to residents not to touch or approach suspicious packages.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the blast is related to three package bombings this month in other parts of the city that killed two people and injured two others.

Austin’s school district announced that buses wouldn’t be going into the Travis Country neighborhood.

Authorities had already offered $115,000 in rewards for information leading to an arrest in the first three bombings.

Trump Is Moving Into a New and More Dangerous Phase

Trump is moving into a new and more dangerous phase.

Before, he was constrained by a few “adults” – Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly – whom he appointed because he thought they had some expertise he lacked.

Now he’s either fired or is in the process of removing the adults. He’s replacing them with a Star Wars cantina of toadies and sycophants who will reflect back at him his own glorious view of himself, and help sell it on TV.

Narcissists are dangerous because they think only about themselves. Megalomaniacs are dangerous because they think only about their power and invincibility. A narcissistic megalomaniac who’s unconstrained – and who’s also president of the United States – is about as dangerous as they come.

The man who once said he could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue and still be elected president now openly boasts of lying to the Canadian Prime Minister, deciding on his own to negotiate mano a mano with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, unilaterally slapping tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, and demanding the death penalty for drug dealers.

For weeks, Trump has been pulling big policy pronouncements out of his derriere and then leaving it up to the White House to improvise explanations and implementation plans.

“Trump is increasingly flying solo,” report the Associated Press’ Catherine Lucey and Jonathan Lemire. “Trump has told confidants recently that he wants to be less reliant on his staff, believing they often give bad advice, and that he plans to follow his own instincts, which he credits with his stunning election.”

Trump has always had faith in his instincts. “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” he said on the campaign trail. “I’m a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right,“ he told Time Magazine last year.

But instincts aren’t facts, logic, or analysis. And it’s one thing for a business tycoon or even a presidential candidate to rely on instincts, quite another for the leader of the free world to rely solely on his gut.

Worse yet, the new Trump believes no one can lay a glove on him. He’s survived this far into his presidency despite lapses that would have done in most other presidents.

So what if he paid off a porn star to keep quiet about their affair? So what if he’s raking in money off his presidency? So what if there’s no evidence for his claims that three to five million fraudulent votes were cast for Hillary Clinton, or that Obama wiretapped him? There are no consequences.

The new Trump doesn’t worry that his approval ratings continue to be in the cellar. By his measure, he’s come out on top: His cable-TV ratings are huge. Fox News loves him. He dominates every news cycle. The pre-selected crowds at his rallies roar their approval.

He’s become the Mad King who says or does anything his gut tells him to, while his courtiers genuflect.

How will this end?

One outcome is Trump becomes irrelevant to the practical business of governing America. He gets all the attention he craves while decision makers in Washington and around the world mainly roll their eyes and ignore him.

There’s some evidence this is already happening. The Republican tax bill bore almost no resemblance to anything Trump had pushed for. Trump’s big infrastructure plan was dead on arrival in Congress. His surprise spending deal with “Chuck and Nancy” went nowhere. His momentary embrace of gun control measures in the wake of a Florida school shooting quickly evaporated.

Meanwhile, world leaders are now taking Trump’s braggadocio and ignorance for granted, acting as if America has no president.

But another possible outcome could be far worse.

Trump could become so enraged at anyone who seriously takes him on that he lashes out, with terrible consequences.

Furious that special counsel Robert Mueller has expanded his investigation, an unbridled Trump could fire him – precipitating a constitutional crisis and in effect a civil war between Trump supporters and the rest of America.

Feeling insulted and defied by Kim, an unconstrained Trump could  order an attack on North Korea – precipitating a nuclear war.

The mind boggles. Who knows what a mad king will do when no adults remain to supervise him?

The U.S. Doubles Down as Empire Declines

US empire is in decline. Reports of the end of the US being the unitary power in world affairs are common, as are predictions of the end of US empire. China surpassed the United States as the world economic leader, according to Purchasing Power Parity Gross National Product, and Russia announced new weapons that can overcome the US’ defense systems.

What is happening in the United States, in response, is to do more of what has been causing the decline. As the Pentagon outlined in its post-primacy report, the US’ plan is more money, more aggression and more surveillance. Congress voted nearly unanimously to give the Pentagon tens of billions more than it requested. Military spending will now consume 57% of federal discretionary spending, leaving less for basic necessities. The Trump administration’s new nominees to the State Department and CIA are a war hawk and a torturer. And the Democrat’s “Blue Wave” is composed of security state candidates.

The US is escalating an arms race with Russia and China. This may create the mirror image of President Reagan forcing Russia to spend so much on its military that it aided in the break-up of the Soviet Union. The US economy cannot handle more military spending, worsening austerity when most people in the US are in financial distress.

This is an urgent situation for all people in the world. In the US, we carry an extra burden as citizens of empire to do what we can to oppose US imperialism. We must be clear that it is time to end wars and other tools of regime change, to become a cooperative member of the world community and to prioritize the needs of people and protection of the planet.

There are a number of opportunities to mobilize against US empire: the April 14-15 days of action, the Women’s March on the Pentagon in October and the mass protest planned against the military parade in November.

Turmoil in Foreign Policy Leadership

This week, President Trump fired Secretary of State Tillerson, nominated CIA director Mike Pompeo for the State Department and chose Gina Haspel to replace Pompeo at the CIA. As we write this newsletter, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is on the verge of being fired. The deck chairs are being rearranged on the Titanic but this will not correct the course of a failing foreign policy.

The Pompeo and Haspel nominations are controversial. Pompeo believes torturers are patriots. He is a war hawk on every conflict and competing country, including Russia and especially Iran. And, unlike Tillerson, who stood up to Trump on occasion, Pompeo kisses-up to Trump, defending his every move. Haspel led a CIA black site torture center and ordered destruction of evidence to obstruct torture investigations.

The Democrat’s record on torture is not good. President Obama said he would not prosecute Bush era torturers, infamously saying, “we need to look forwards as opposed to looking backwards.” John Brennan who was complicit in Bush-era torture, withdrew under pressure from becoming CIA director in 2008, instead becoming Deputy National Security Adviser, which did not require confirmation. After Obama’s re-election, Brennan became Obama’s CIA director.

Brennan was inconsistent on whether torture worked. He tried to elevate Haspel, but the controversy around her prevented it. When the CIA spied on the US Senate Intelligence committee over their torture report, Brennan originally lied, denying the spying, but was later forced to admit it. He was not held accountable by either the Democrats or Obama.

Haspel headed a black site in Thailand where torture was carried out. She ordered the destruction of 92 secret tapes documenting torture even though the Senate Judiciary requested the tapes, as had a federal judge in a criminal trial. According to a federal court order, the tapes should have been turned over to comply with a FOIA request. Counsel for the White House and CIA said the tapes should have been preserved. Haspel’s actions should lead to prosecution, not to a promotion as head of the agency, as CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed torture and served time in prison for it, reminds us.

The Trump nominations leave the Democrats on the cusp of a complete surrender on torture in an election year. Caving on torture by approving Pompeo and Haspel will anger Democratic voters and risk the high turnout need for their anticipated 2018 “Blue Wave”.

Republican Senator Rand Paul says he will oppose both nominees. If all the Democrats oppose, the Senate will be split 50-50, requiring one more Republican to block the nominees. Fifteen Democrats supported Pompeo’s nomination as CIA director, so Democratic opposition is not ensured. Will Democrats oppose torture or be complicit in normalizing torture?

Democrat’s Security State Blue Wave

Militarism and war are bi-partisan. When Trump submitted a military budget, the Democrats almost unanimously joined with the Republicans to increase the budget by tens of billions of dollars. But, that is not all, a series of investigative reports by the World Socialist website reported the Democratic Party is becoming the party of military and intelligence candidates.

The series identifies more than 50 military-intelligence candidates seeking the Democratic nomination in 102 districts identified by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as targets for 2018. The result, as many as half of all new congressional Democrats could come from the national security apparatus. An example is the victory in Pennsylvania by Conor Lamb, an anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-drug war, ex-Marine, which is being celebrated by Democrats.

The Sanders-Democrats, working to make the Democratic Party a progressive people’s party, are being outflanked by the military-intelligence apparatus. In the end, Democratic Party leadership cares more about numbers than candidate’s policy positions.

Patrick Martin writes:

“If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.”

Just as Freedom Caucus Tea Party representatives hold power in the Republican Party, the military-intelligence officials will become the powerhouse for Democrats. This takeover will make the Democrats even more militarist at a dangerous time when threats of war are on the rise and the country needs an opposition party that says ‘no’ to war.

What does this mean? Kim Dotcom might be right when he tweeted, “The Deep State no longer wants to rely on unreliable puppets. They want to run politics directly now.” What does it mean politically? There is no two-party system on militarism and war. Those who oppose war are not represented and must build a political culture to oppose war at home and abroad.

US Foreign Policy Elites in Denial About Russia’s New Weapons

There is dangerous denial among US foreign policy elites about the Russian weapons systems announced by Putin in his state of the union speech last week. Military-intelligence analyst the Saker compares the US’ reaction to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. US elites are in the first two stages.

The US does not have an adequate defense to the weapons announced by Putin. As the Saker writes, “Not only does that mean that the entire ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] effort of the USA is now void and useless, but also that from now US aircraft carrier battle groups can only be used against small, defenseless, nations!” US leadership cannot believe that after spending trillions of dollars, Russia has outsmarted their military with ten percent of their budget.

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry exemplifies this denial, claiming Putin’s weapons are “phony,” exaggerated and do not really exist. Then he blames the Russians for starting an arms race. Of course, in both the National Security Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review, published before the Putin speech, the US announced an arms race.

US political and military leadership brought this on themselves. The US’ leaving the SALT treaty in 2002 and expanding NATO to cover the Russian border led to Russia’s development of these new weapons.

Further, Obama, and now Trump, support spending more than a trillion dollars to upgrade nuclear weapons. Perry falsifies history and blames Russia rather than looking in the mirror, since he was defense secretary during this era of errors.

The new Russian weapons systems do not have to lead to an unaffordable arms race. The US should re-evaluate its strategy and find a diplomatic path to a multi-polar world where the US does not waste money on militarism. We can divest from the military economy and convert it to civilian economic investment, as the US has many needs for infrastructure, energy transition, health care, education and more.

US global dominance is coming to an end. The issue is how will it end? Will the US hang on with an arms race and never-ending wars, or it will it wind down US empire in a sensible way. The Saker writes:

“The Russian end-goal is simple and obvious: to achieve a gradual and peaceful disintegration of the AngloZionist Empire combined with a gradual and peaceful replacement of a unipolar world ruled by one hegemon, by a multipolar world jointly administered by sovereign nations respectful of international law. Therefore, any catastrophic or violent outcomes are highly undesirable and must be avoided if at all possible. Patience and focus will be far more important in this war for the future of our planet than quick-fix reactions and hype. The ‘patient’ needs to be returned to reality one step at a time. Putin’s March 1st speech will go down in history as such a step, but many more such steps will be needed before the patient finally wakes up.”

As of now, the Pentagon and US leadership are in denial and not ready to face reality. The people of the United States, in solidarity with people of the world, must act now to end the war culture and convince US leadership that a new path is necessary.