Chris Hedges's Blog, page 648

The Empty Piety of the American Press

The press, giddy with its newfound sense of mission and purpose, is carrying out a moral crusade against Donald Trump. The airwaves and print have shed their traditional claims of “impartiality” and “objectivity.” They fulminate against Trump, charging—falsely—that he was elected because of Russian interference and calling him a liar, ignorant and incompetent. They give airtime to his bitterest critics and bizarre associates, such as Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a onetime star of “The Apprentice” and now a fired White House aide, and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had a sexual relationship with Trump. It is great entertainment. It is great for ratings. It is great for profits. But it is not moral, and it is not journalism.

The empty piety is a mask for self-interest. It is accompanied by the veneration of the establishment politicians, generals, intelligence chiefs, corporate heads and hired apologists who carried out the corporate coup d’état that created our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The corporate structures that have a stranglehold on the country and have overseen deindustrialization and the evisceration of democratic institutions, plunging over half the country into chronic poverty and misery, are unassailable. They are portrayed as forces of progress. The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom. Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy. Deference is paid to democratic processes, liberties, electoral politics and rights enshrined in our Constitution, from due process to privacy, that no longer exist. It is a vast game of deception under the cover of a vacuous morality.

Those cast aside by corporate capitalism—Noam Chomsky calls them “unpeople”—are  rendered invisible and reviled at the same time. The “experts” whose opinions are amplified on every issue, from economics to empire and politics, are drawn from corporate-funded think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, or are former military and intelligence officials or politicians who are responsible for the failure of our democracy and usually in the employ of corporations. Cable news also has the incestuous habit of interviewing its own news celebrities. Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of many former officials now on the airwaves, has morphed into a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Brennan was the architect of the disastrous attempt to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to arm “moderate” rebels in Syria, oversaw the huge expansion of our drone wars and instigated the canard that Russia stole the last U.S. presidential election. The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.

Where is the flood of stories about families being evicted or losing their homes because of foreclosures and bank repossessions? Where are the stories about the banks and lending agencies that prey on recent college graduates burdened with crippling loans and unable to find work? Where are the stories about families going into bankruptcy because they cannot pay medical bills and the soaring premiums of for-profit health care? Where are the stories about the despair that drives middle-aged white men to suicide and millions of Americans into the deadly embrace of opioid addiction? Where are the stories on the cruelty of mass incarceration, the collapse of our court system and the reign of terror by police in marginal communities? Where are the investigative pieces on the fraud and the tax boycott that have been legalized for Wall Street, the poisoning of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries? Why is climate change a forbidden subject, even as extreme weather devastates the nation and much of the rest of the planet? Why are the atrocities we commit or abet in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen ignored? Why are the war crimes carried out by Israel against the Palestinians erased from news coverage?

The relentless pillorying of Trump is news-as-reality-television. Trump fills in for Richard Hatch of the old “Survivor” show. Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, narcissism and incompetence are at once revolting and riveting. The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.

“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”

The stunts pulled during the last presidential election—Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wearing goggles as he chain-sawed the tax code in half, Trump inviting women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to a presidential debate and Ben Carson having to defend himself against allegations he lied when he wrote that as a child he attempted to stab another boy—will become staples of political campaigning. Voters, stripped of all meaningful power or control over their own destiny, used only as stage props in rallies and at party conventions, are permitted to vote only for a system they hate. And the winners are those who can give the best and most entertaining expression of that hatred. “Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”

If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.

CNN’s Jake Tapper, one of the high priests in the Trump Inquisition, was quite open about the narrowness of the assault. Being interviewed on “The Axe Files” podcast, hosted by former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, Tapper addressed charges that he opposes Trump’s policies by saying, “Whenever anybody says that to me, I say, you can’t find any evidence about what I think about his tax plan or repealing Obamacare or DACA or immigration or trade or any of these issues—terrorism or ISIS or Syria. I’m agnostic on that. I want to have full and interesting and provocative debates and call balls and strikes. But I’m not putting out there an immigration proposal.”

The corporate airwaves have a depressing habit of taking political hacks like Axelrod or the former Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos and transforming them into journalists. Even Chelsea Clinton got a shot at journalism, being paid $600,000 a year to do fluff pieces for NBC. The fusion of news and celebrity, with figures like Tapper appearing on late night talk shows, fits with the reality-television presidency the corporate press empowers.

The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game. It is banking, as Hillary Clinton did, on Trump being so repugnant he and those who support him will be replaced with Democrats. It relies on polls to guide its tactics and strategy, forgetting that every national poll offered assurance that Trump would lose in 2016. This gamble may work. But it may not. Policy issues accounted for only 10 percent of the media coverage during the 2016 presidential race. News reports concentrated on the latest polls, scandals, publicity stunts, campaign tactics and strategy as well as Trump’s bombastic remarks, according to a report issued by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. In short, there was little substance to the coverage. This will only get worse. The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.

Corporations that own the press look at news as a revenue stream. The news division competes against other revenue streams. If news does not produce comparable profits, its managers are replaced and its content is altered and distorted to draw in more viewers. Journalism is irrelevant. The disease of celebrity and greed, which warps and deforms the personality of Trump, warps and deforms celebrities in the media. They share Trump’s most distasteful characteristics. The consequences are ominous. An ignored, impoverished and frustrated underclass will turn to increasingly bizarre politicians and more outlandish con artists and purveyors of hate. Trump is only the beginning. The grotesque mutations to come, ones that will make Trump look reasonable, are being spawned in newsrooms across the country.

Le Pen Wants French Far-Right Party Renamed ‘National Rally’

LILLE, France — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Sunday proposed renaming the National Front party co-founded by her father 46 years ago to National Rally, opening a new era after her resounding defeat in last year’s presidential race.

Le Pen’s proposal culminated her closing speech at the party’s two-day congress in Lille, the capital of the National Front’s northern heartland.

The name National Rally must be approved by party members in a mail vote and it’s not clear whether they will accept the change.

In another decisive change, the party severed the final ties to firebrand founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, 89, by eliminating his title of honorary president-for-life. He was barred from attending the congress.

The moves were part of a makeover designed to revive the nationalist party’s fortunes after Marine Le Pen’s resounding loss in last year’s presidential election to Emmanuel Macron.

After her defeat, Le Pen had promised a “re-foundation” of the party. New faces appeared within the leadership and new bylaws were voted on. But the party’s foundation, notably its anti-immigration agenda, remained intact.

However, Le Pen’s party reset had an immediate setback when a young official who was appointed last fall as an “ambassador for the re-foundation” was suspended for allegedly using racial slurs.

Davy Rodriguez, also deputy director of the party’s youth wing, tweeted Sunday that he “formally denies racist remarks ascribed to me.”

Party spokesman Sebastien Chenu said on CNews that Rodriguez was being suspended “so light can be shed and he gives us his explanation.”

A video on social networks showed an agitated man identified as Rodriguez making a racial slur and being calmed. In another video, a black man recounts racial insults he said were proffered.

Since taking over in 2011, Le Pen has worked to remove the stigma of racism and anti-Semitism attached to the National Front under her father’s leadership. The party, she said, has moved from a protest movement to opposition. Now, she wants it to create alliances and be seen as a party that can govern.

However, she also had to assured members who fear the party is moving away from its core. She defended the French identity and what she painted as the dark forces that threaten it.

“Globalization and Islamization are two ideologies that want to dominate the world,” she said to cheers.

Le Pen hammered away at Macron, an upstart centrist and former investment banker, in her 80-minute speech as the incarnation of globalization that her party is battling.

“The model of Mr. Macron, doesn’t lead to liberation but to alienation,” she said, “an individual attached to nothing.”

The party leader touched the chord that has resonated with sympathizers for decades, protecting France’s secular values that she claimed are being destroyed by immigration, notably by Muslims.

“In France, when you’re a foreigner, you respect our laws … When you’re a foreigner and a delinquent, you must get on a plane,” she said, drawing cries of “On est chez nous” (We are in our land).

The National Front of the past has been a political force for decades, a kingmaker in numerous elections and a key player in others under Le Pen, notably for the European Parliament, where it won more seats than any French party.

But Marine Le Pen herself may have credibility issues. Her conservative niece popular with traditional Catholics, Marion Marechal-Le Pen — voted most popular at the previous congress — was heaped with praise by special guest Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former top strategist, during a surprise appearance Saturday.

Marine Le Pen said recently that she is not opposed to ceding her leadership but wants to stay on for at least three more years.

In a nod to the apparently large contingent of members opposed to a name change, Le Pen noted that the National Front name, which the party has had since its founding in 1972, is linked to a “glorious” past. However, she said it serves as a psychological barrier for potential new members and voters, notably the word “front,” which connotes opposition.

Despite her troubles, Marine Le Pen was re-elected to a new term as party president at the congress — the only candidate for the post.

___

Ganley reported from Paris.

Colombia’s Former Guerrillas Face First Electoral Test

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s former leftist guerrillas faced their first electoral challenge as a political party Sunday in congressional voting that also measured the strength of the country’s main political factions two months before presidential elections.

Analysts see the balloting for the Senate and House of Representatives as a test of the democratic viability of the political party that emerged from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which fought the state for 52 years until a historic peace deal in 2016. The new party has the same Spanish initials as the rebel group: the FARC.

“I think this is a crucial moment for Colombia,” said Pablo Catatumbo, a former rebel commander who is now a Senate candidate for the FARC, after casting his ballot in Bogota. “It’s the first time in my life that I have voted and I am doing so for the sake of peace,” the 64-year-old said.

But Leon Valencia, a former combatant who now directs the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation think tank, said, “The FARC are in a tough position.”

“If they get a low turnout, as is expected, their congressmen will be shunned. They will not be seen as true representatives of the people,” said Valencia, referring to the fact that the FARC is guaranteed 10 seats in congress under the terms of the peace deal that ended more than a half century of brutal conflict.

Casting a shadow over the FARC’s political ambitions is the recent withdrawal of its presidential candidate for health reasons. Former rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, more commonly known by nom-de-guerre Timochenko, underwent successful heart surgery last week and earlier suffered a stroke.

The ex-rebels have also expressed fears of irregularities in the electoral process and difficulties accessing campaign funds. Some of Londono’s campaign stops were met with protests. The FARC’s leaders have said that despite these “obstacles” they hope to prove they have a future in Colombia’s political landscape.

“There are parts of the country where people support us,” Catatumbo earlier told Colombia’s Caracol Radio. “In many regions of the country we have been received enthusiastically, with horse parades and motorcycle shows.”

Opinion polls and political analysts, however, suggest the composition of Colombia’s congress will not change drastically with the former rebels receiving little support. Center-right parties, whose lists are stacked with regional electoral barons, are expected to take around 60 percent of the seats.

The Peace and Reconciliation Foundation says that 65 politicians tied to corruption scandals could win seats because of their ability to buy votes in rural and impoverished areas.

“This election will help us to measure just how much politics has changed in Colombia,” Valencia said.

Sunday’s election also included two presidential primaries, one for leftist candidates and another for candidates backed by conservative movements.

A shortage of primary ballots at some polling places led to protests in several cities, with some voters shouting that fraud was taking place.

Candidates urged their supporters to stay at voting centers until authorities fixed the ballot shortages. Colombia’s National Registrar Juan Carlos Galindo said the shortage was caused by funding problems and he said voting stations across the country had been authorized to use photocopies of ballots, to enable voters to cast their vote in the primaries.

Gustavo Petro, a former mayor of Bogota who was a guerrilla fighter in his youth, is widely expected to win the leftist primary. The conservative primary will likely be won by Ivan Duque, a pro-business candidate and close ally of former President Alvaro Uribe, who has criticized Colombia’s government for giving too many legal and political benefits to former rebels.

Petro is a fiery orator running on an anti-establishment platform and currently leads presidential polls with support hovering around 25 percent. He has promised to make Colombia less dependent on oil and mining exports. But polls in Colombia can be unreliable.

Presidential elections will take place in Colombia on May 27, but there is a crowded field of candidates and pollsters doubt that any of them will garner enough votes to win the race outright. The most likely scenario is a runoff in which Petro would face a conservative or centrist candidate.

Why Won’t the U.S. Give Peace a Chance?

Give peace a chance, the song urges.

But the United States won’t have it.

Olympic diplomacy seems to be working on the Korean peninsula. After a pair of South Korean envoys visited Pyongyang, they issued a promising communiqué. “The North Korean side clearly stated its willingness to denuclearize,” the statement said. Considering that the Korean crisis and a derpy emergency management official had Hawaiians jumping down manholes a few months ago, this news comes as a relief.

Then comes the rub. The South Korean statement continued: “[North Korea] made it clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security guaranteed [my emphasis].”

In other words, the DPRK is saying—reasonably—we’ll get rid of our nukes but only if you promise not to invade us. That guarantee would have to be issued by two countries: South Korea and the United States.

This would directly contradict long-standing U.S. foreign policy, which clearly and repeatedly states that the use of military force is always on the table when we don’t get our way in an international dispute.

Kim Jong-On has good reasons to be afraid of us. In a speech to the UN President Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. President George W. Bush declared them a member of the “Axis of Evil”; we invaded and currently occupy Iraq, one of the two other supposed Evildoers. After deposing and enabling the execution of Iraq’s president. Last week Bush’s UN ambassador John Bolton published a legal argument for nuking North Korea without provocation.

Believe it or not, this is the soft side of U.S. foreign policy.

For decades South Korea has tried to deescalate its relationship with the North, not infrequently expressing its desire to end formal hostilities, which legally never ended after the Korean War, and move toward the long-term goal of a united Korea under a single government. And for decades the United States has stood in the way, awkwardly trying to look reasonable as it opposes peace. “We do not seek to accelerate reunification,” a State Department spokesman said recently.

To say the least.

“South-North talks are inextricably related to North Korea-United States relations,” South Korean President Kim Dae Jung said in 2001, after Bush canceled dialogue with the North. The South, dependent on more than 20,000 U.S. troops stationed along its northern border, was forced to suspend reunification talks too.

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The Reagan Administration pressured its South Korean ally to break off reunification talks in 1985.

Nixon did the same thing in 1974. After Nixon’s resignation later that year, President Gerald Ford opposed a UN resolution to demilitarize the border by withdrawing U.S. troops.

Even Mr. Reasonable, Barack Obama, refused to listen to South Koreans who want peace (and to visit long-lost relatives in North Korea). Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, Obama threatened to loose the dogs of war: “The United States of America will maintain the strongest military the world has ever known, bar none, always. That is what we do.” What Obama would not do was allow North and South Korea to sit down and work out their differences. Before talks, Obama said, North Korea would have to denuclearize. After which, of course, there would be no need for talks because, hey, regime change is fun!

Why, a sane person might ask at this point, would U.S. policymakers want to risk World War III over two countries that repeatedly say they want to make peace and get back together?

For my money a 2007 analysis by the geopolitical thinktank Stratfor comes closest to explaining what’s really going on inside the Beltway: “The basic global situation can be described simply. The United States has overwhelming power. It is using that power to try to prevent the emergence of any competing powers. It is therefore constantly engaged in interventions on a political, economic and military level. The rest of the world is seeking to limit and control the United States. No nation can do it alone, and therefore there is a constant attempt to create coalitions to contain the United States. So far, these coalitions have tended to fail, because potential members can be leveraged out of the coalition by American threats or incentives.”

The U.S. is the Great Global Disruptor. “As powers emerge, the United States follows a three-stage program. First, provide aid to weaker powers to contain and undermine emerging hegemons. Second, create more formal arrangements with these powers. Finally, if necessary, send relatively small numbers of U.S. troops to Eurasia to block major powers and destabilize regions.” For example, Iran is the emerging hegemon in the Middle East. The U.S. undermines Iran with trade sanctions, props up rivals like Saudi Arabia with aid, and deploys U.S. troops next door in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similarly the U.S. keeps China off-balance by propping up Taiwan and setting up new U.S. bases in the region. We play India against Pakistan, Europe against Russia.

A united Korea would create a new power center, potentially a new economic rival, to the U.S. in the Pacific Rim. So the U.S. uses threats (“totally destroy”) against the North and incentivizes the South (free border security).

It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so sick. Here’s to the day the two Koreas see through us.

Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book “Snowden,” the biography of the NSA whistleblower.

War Traumatized Veteran in California Attack, Friends Say

YOUNTVILLE, Calif.—The Army veteran who killed three women after a siege in California had long dreamed of serving his country in the military, but his skill as a marksman led to dangerous missions in Afghanistan that left him anxious and wary when he came back home, according to people who knew him.

Authorities said 36-year-old Albert Wong, who served a year in Afghanistan and returned highly decorated, took the women hostage Friday at the Yountville veterans center where he had sought help.

Hours later, authorities found all four of their bodies in a room at the center that aids people with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries.

“We lost three beautiful people,” Yountville Mayor John Dunbar said. “We also lost one of our heroes who clearly had demons that resulted in the terrible tragedy that we all experienced here.”

As family and friends of the victims tried to make sense of the tragedy, authorities offered little information Saturday about why Wong attacked The Pathway Home and whether he targeted his victims.

Those who knew the women said they had dedicated their lives to helping those suffering like Wong, and they would’ve been in a good position to assist him if things had ended differently.

Authorities said Wong slipped into a going-away party for some employees of The Pathway Home. He let some people leave, but kept the three women.

Police said a Napa Valley sheriff’s deputy exchanged gunshots with Wong but nothing was heard from him after that. From a vet-center crafts building across the street from the PTSD center, Sandra Woodford said she saw lawmen with guns but the only shots she heard were inside Pathway.

“This rapid live-fire of rounds going on, at least 12,” Woodford said.

The victims were identified as The Pathway Home Executive Director Christine Loeber, 48; Clinical Director Jennifer Golick, 42; and Jennifer Gonzales Shushereba, 32, a clinical psychologist with the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

A family friend told The Associated Press that Gonzales was seven months pregnant.

“These brave women were accomplished professionals who dedicated their careers to serving our nation’s veterans, working closely with those in the greatest need of attention after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan,” The Pathway Home said in a statement.

Wong always wanted to join the Army and serve his country and was “soft-spoken and calm,” said Cissy Sherr, his legal guardian when he was a child.

Sherr and her husband became Wong’s guardians after his father died and his mother developed health problems, she said. He moved back in with them for a little while in 2013 after he returned from his deployment in Afghanistan and kept in touch online.

Wong thought the Pathway program would help him readjust after the Army, she said.

“I can’t imagine what happened. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said.

Dunbar, a member of The Pathway Home’s board of directors, said the program has served over 450 veterans in more than a decade.

The program is housed at the Veterans Home of California-Yountville in Napa Valley wine country. The largest veterans home in the nation cares for about 1,000 elderly and disabled vets.

Golick’s father-in-law, Mike Golick, said in an interview she had recently expelled Wong from the program.

After Wong entered the building, Golick called her husband to say she had been taken hostage by the former soldier, her father-in-law said.

He didn’t hear from his wife again.

Dunbar said veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come home with “a lot of need for special care.” But he did not answer questions about why Wong was removed from the program.

At the veterans home, people who served in earlier wars passed the building that houses The Pathway Home, which was surrounded by crime tape.

Muriel Zimmer, an 84-year-old Air Force veteran of the Korean War, said she feels badly for Wong, saying she “cannot blame him. It’s because of the war.”

Wong served in the Army Reserve from 1998 until 2002 and then enlisted for active duty in May 2010 and was deployed to Afghanistan in April 2011, according to military records.

He was a decorated soldier and was awarded the Expert Marksmanship Badge. But that meant that he was tasked with dangerous assignments, where he saw “really horrible things” that affected his mental well-being, Sherr said.

When Wong found the veterans program in Yountville, he told Sherr, “I think I’m going to get a lot of help from this program,” she said.

___

AP writers Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Frank Baker in Los Angeles also contributed to this report.

Schools Brace for National Walkout Over Gun Violence

RICHMOND, Va.—As schools around the country brace for student walkouts following the deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida, principals and superintendents are scrambling to perform a delicate balancing act: How to let thousands of students exercise their First Amendment rights while not disrupting school and not pulling administrators into the raging debate over gun control.

Some have taken a hard line, promising to suspend students who walk out, while others are using a softer approach, working with students to set up places on campus where they can remember the victims of the Florida shooting and express their views about school safety and gun control.

Since the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, demonstrations have sprung up on school campuses around the country. But the first large-scale, coordinated national demonstration is planned for Wednesday, when organizers of the Women’s March have called for a 17-minute walkout, one minute for each of the 17 students and staff members killed in Florida.

National demonstrations are also planned for March 24, with a march on Washington, D.C.; and on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado.

No matter how schools decide to deal with the demonstrations, students have been reassured by Harvard, Yale, MIT, the University of Connecticut, UCLA and dozens of other colleges and universities that their participation won’t affect their chances of getting admitted.

But for middle-school and high-school administrators, figuring out how to allow the demonstrations during school hours has proven challenging. In some cases, it hasn’t gone smoothly.

In Needville, Texas, near Houston, Superintendent Curtis Rhodes was castigated on social media after he warned that students who leave class would be suspended for three days, even if they get parental permission.

“SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON YOU,” wrote one woman.

In Garretson, South Dakota, administrators canceled a student walkout planned for April 20 after a Facebook posting about the plan drew more than 300 negative comments from adults.

And in Arizona, dozens of students at Ingleside Middle School, near Phoenix, were given one-day suspensions after they left campus on Feb. 27.

Layla Defibaugh, an eighth-grade student at Ingleside, said she wanted to participate in the walkout, but didn’t because of the threatened suspensions. She does plan to join the March 14 walkout, even it means getting suspended.

“It’s important for me to speak my mind on this topic,” she said. “At the end of the day, they shouldn’t be able to punish us for exercising our First Amendment rights.”

AASA, The School Superintendents Association, has fielded dozens of calls and emails from school administrators asking for advice, while the American Civil Liberties Union has received hundreds of inquiries from students about what their rights are and if they can be disciplined for participating in the protests.

The answer depends on each school’s code of conduct and disciplinary policies. Generally, the ACLU has been advising students that because they are required to go to school by law, administrators can discipline them for unexcused absences. But the ACLU also told students in an online training video that administrators can’t punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their demonstrations.

The superintendents association — which is supporting the April 20 walkout— has drafted a list of suggestions for school administrators, including holding a teach-in, a school-led walkout to a spot on campus, or a session on bullying.

“There are ways to engage and harness the students in civic engagement without compromising policies in place on attendance, participation and student safety,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate director for policy and advocacy.

Some schools have embraced the walkouts.

In Mooresville, Indiana, administrators met with 10 high-school student leaders to work out a plan. Mooresville High School Principal Brian Disney said the students plan to use the school’s public address system to read short statements about mental illness, the importance of kindness and standing up against all school violence before inviting all students to gather in a school hallway for 17 minutes of silence.

In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, administrators are still talking with students about how they can participate without violating school rules.

“I think we all realize that for folks who are teenagers right now, this could well be a defining moment in their lives. We want to very much encourage and empower student voices. That said, it has to be done in ways that are safe and appropriate,” said spokesman Bob Mosier.

Some schools are taking a middle ground, neither encouraging nor discouraging students from participating. In Henrico County, Virginia, near Richmond, administrators sent an email to parents saying they are not sanctioning the March 14 walkout, but feel obligated to manage the event because of its heavy promotion on social media. Middle-school principals asked parents to sign a Google document stating whether they give their children permission to participate. Schools plan to provide campus locations for the walkout.

In Somerville, Massachusetts, students say they won’t stop after a single walkout. They’ve started a weekly movement they hope will keep public attention focused on school safety and put pressure on lawmakers to pass stricter gun control laws. The walkouts will be held every Wednesday, said Anika Nayak, 16, a student organizer.

“We’re really just fed up with the lack of action that’s been taken in our country,” Nayak said.

“We don’t think enough people are listening.”

Aping Trump, Local Lawmakers Use ‘Fake News’ as a Weapon

An Idaho state lawmaker urges her constituents to submit entries for her “fake news awards.” The Kentucky governor tweets #FAKENEWS to dismiss questions about his purchase of a home from a supporter. An aide to the Texas land commissioner uses the phrase to downplay the significance of his boss receiving donations from employees of a company that landed a multimillion-dollar contract.

President Donald Trump’s campaign to discredit the news media has spread to officials at all levels of government, who are echoing his use of the term “fake news” as a weapon against unflattering stories.

It’s become ubiquitous as a signal to a politician’s supporters to ignore legitimate reporting and hard questions, as a smear of the beleaguered and dwindling local press corps, and as a way for conservatives to push back against what they call biased stories.

“When Trump announced he was going to do his fake news awards, a group of us conservative legislators said, ‘We need to do that, too,'” said Idaho state Rep. Priscilla Giddings, who has urged supporters to send examples of “biased, misleading and fake news” and plans to announce her awards March 18. “We need people to wake up to the fact that just because it’s on the front page of the Boise newspaper doesn’t mean it’s 100 percent true.”

The winners of the contest, it turns out, will be announced at the end of Sunshine Week, an annual focus by the nation’s news media on government transparency and the importance of a free press.

Rhonda Prast, editor of the Idaho Statesman in Boise, said it was ridiculous for anyone to assert that it would publish a story it knew contained falsehoods.

“The Statesman has a longstanding reputation as a reliable paper of record — going back 154 years — and our standards for accuracy and fairness have never changed,” she said in a statement. “The allegations of ‘fake news’ are unjust attacks on a free press.”

Giddings used the term herself last year to dismiss a report from another newspaper suggesting she may have been unqualified to run for office because she was claiming a homeowner’s exemption outside of her district. She said she is submitting paperwork to prove the break was legitimate.

Experts on the press and democracy say the cries of “fake news” could do long-term damage by sowing confusion and contempt for journalists and by undermining the media’s role as a watchdog on government and politicians. They say it’s already exacerbated the lack of trust in media by conservatives and contributed to hostility that sometimes turns violent.

In the last year, at least three political figures have been implicated in physical assaults on reporters asking questions, while journalists have been attacked in dozens of other incidents by protesters, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

“I worry about the ongoing attack on the legitimacy of the media by President Trump and some of his supporters. The press is hardly perfect, of course, but it is also an important mechanism of accountability for people in power,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. “This kind of rhetoric is potentially corrosive to trust in the media and to people’s willingness to accept information that is critical of politicians they support.”

Nyhan was among the authors of a recent study for the Poynter Institute that found partisan divisions in the public’s attitudes toward the press. More Democrats now have more faith in the press, while Republicans have far more negative views and are “more likely to endorse extreme claims about media fabrication, to describe journalists as an enemy of the people, and to support restrictions on press freedom,” the study found.

The routine labeling of factual reporting as “fake news” comes as actual fake news proliferates on the internet.

Media researcher Craig Silverman helped popularize the term in 2014 as a label for completely fabricated stories written and spread by individuals seeking profit. Now the news media editor at BuzzFeed, he wrote recently that he cringes when he hears anyone use the term, which he said became a partisan weapon after Trump’s election in 2016.

Silverman wrote that political figures are manipulating social media to “literally brand real things as fake” and manufacture reality for their followers.

The governor of Maine, the vice chairman of Trump’s now-disbanded voter fraud commission, a New Mexico congressional candidate and the Georgia secretary of state are among the many politicians who have used the term in recent months in response to news reporting. A California school board president repeatedly used the term to attack a journalist investigating the area’s high rate of teenage pregnancy and its sex education policies.

The cries of “fake news” create a quandary for reporters, who want to defend their stories while also not giving credence to the charge.

“Our members, many of whom work for small news outlets, are bearing the brunt of these unwarranted attacks, and it’s completely unfair. These are people who are serving the community,” said Rebecca Baker, president of the Society of Professional Journalists. “Some are just ignoring it, and some are fighting back.”

Baker suggests that journalists respond to the attacks by showing their work as much as possible — by sharing the audio, video and documents that back up their stories. She wonders whether the term is starting to lose its clout from overuse, but also worries that whichever party controls the White House, Congress and state governments in the future will continue to use the tactic.

“This is part and parcel of the polarization of our politics right now,” she said.

Women Are Poised to Change California’s Justice System

District attorneys can play a major role in reducing (or amplifying) race-based incarceration in America’s largest cities. Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King announced in February that he is launching a political action committee to help elect reform-minded DA candidates and draw national attention to the issue. “No position in America, no single individual has a bigger impact on the criminal justice system—including police brutality, but the whole crisis of mass incarceration in general—than your local district attorney,” King said. “They are the gatekeepers of America’s justice system.”

In the past several years, progressive newcomers have unseated conservative old-guard incumbents in places like Caddo Parish, Louisiana, Philadelphia, Houston, Denver and Jacksonville, to great effect.

The importance of diversifying the office of district attorney cannot be overstated. Across the country, 95 percent of district attorneys are white, and only 1 percent are women of color. Justice reform experts argue that the lack of representation for communities that are overpoliced, over-arrested and over-charged is a major factor in the mass incarceration of people of color. Across the U.S., grassroots efforts are underway to reshape the justice system by choosing new progressive leaders who reflect the communities they serve.

Women of color recently elected to the DA’s office have already made huge strides in ending mass incarceration in their cities. “Aramis Ayala, the state’s attorney in Orlando, has implemented policies that reduced the number of children tried in adult court,” said Jessica Brand, legal director of the Fair Punishment Project. “Kim Foxx, Cook County’s first African-American female prosecutor, has implemented major changes to her county’s bail practices.”

2018 could bring a handful of progressive black women to the DA’s office in California alone. Here are three of the most promising candidates.

1. Diana Becton

Credit: Diana Becton

Former judge Diana Becton made history in the Bay Area last fall when she became the first African American and the first female DA in Contra Costa County, California, just north of San Francisco. Becton was appointed to the position as interim after her predecessor was ousted for illegally spending $66,000 in campaign finance money on personal expenses. She has since launched her campaign to hold the position permanently. In January, one of her rivals pulled out of the race and threw his support behind Becton.

As interim DA, Becton has show dedication to progressive goals like reforming the broken bail system, deprioritizing low-level offenses, and pursuing alternatives to juvenile lockup. “Mass incarceration is expensive, and has proven ineffective for achieving the most important goal, which is public safety,” she has said.

2. Geneviéve Jones-Wright  

Credit: Geneviéve Jones-Wright

In San Diego County, in Southern California, Geneviéve Jones-Wright runs to outseat current DA Summer Stephan, whose politics the San Diego Free Press has said “enable a broken police culture placing the police first, not the victims, the defendants or justice.” The city has recently seen a rapid growth in its homeless population, many of whom have been targeted by police. In one highly publicized case, a police officer lied under oath about his reasons for arresting a homeless man last summer. Stephan’s critics say she has been reluctant to remove such officers.

Progressives in San Diego see Jones-Wright’s candidacy as a significant departure from the city’s current system of back-door dealing. She told the Times of San Diego that her supporters are, “People who see the need for a criminal justice system that is informed by scientific research into the human condition, people who understand that mass incarceration is as expensive as it is inhumane.”

“We cannot incarcerate our way out of crime,” Jones-Wright says on her campaign website. “We must reduce incarceration and reallocate the resources spent on our prisons to our schools, treatment, and victim services.”

3. Pamela Price

Credit: Pamela Price

Pamela Price, a career civil rights attorney in Oakland’s Alameda County, is challenging current district attorney Nancy O’Malley. A self-described survivor of foster care, Price is a Yale and Berkeley Law graduate with a record of advocating on behalf of communities of color and women. In 2002, she successfully argued a racial discrimination case against Amtrak before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Her 10-Point Platform includes progressive stances like opposition to the death penalty, support of immigrant communities facing persecution by ICE, and ending stop-and-frisk practices.

Price supports eliminating the cash bail system, which she says “criminalizes poverty and disproportionately hurts communities of color.” If elected DA, she says she would expand alternatives to prosecution and access to probation programs, rather than incarceration for low-level crimes. She has also vowed to “implement policies to break the school-to-prison pipeline and will end the practice of prosecuting children as adults,” her campaign website says. As the Oakland Post explains, Price believes a young person who vandalizes a bus should have an opportunity to clean buses rather than go to jail. “My thing is put a kid to work,” she told the outlet.

Heart Attack Risk Rises During Heat Waves, Research Shows

Extremes of heat can break your heart. Climate change can kill. The risk of heart attack increases by every 5°C [9 F] leap in temperature differential, according to new research.

That is: on a baking summer day there could be nearly twice as many heart attacks on those days when the temperature swings by 35° to 40°C [95 to 104 F] than on days when there is no such wild fluctuation.

Studies of the link between heat and health matter, because the past decade in North America has now been confirmed as the hottest for 11,000 years.

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned of the dangers of ever more intense and frequent heat extremes as the global average temperatures creep up, and two new studies have identified different ways in which cities themselves can become danger zones for vulnerable people.

One is that, as regional climates change in response to ever-increasing combustion of fossil fuels, which then intensify the greenhouse gas ratios in the global atmosphere, cities in now-arid regions will suffer ever more severe heatwaves, even though their rural hinterlands may enjoy higher rainfall.

And the second is that, in some cities, urban planning may have already provided ways to intensify or mitigate the impact of summer heat waves. It’s a simple but unexpected outcome of atomic physics.

Increasing fluctuation

All four studies are evidence of the subtle and often intricate connections between human civilisation and climate, and of the consequences of the simple question: what happens to communities and landscapes as average temperatures go up?

“Global warming is expected to cause extreme weather events, which may, in turn, result in large day-to-day fluctuations in temperature,” said Hedvig Andersson, a cardiology researcher at the University of Michigan.

“Our study suggests that such fluctuations in outdoor temperature could potentially lead to an increased number of heart attacks and affect global cardiac health in the future.”

She told the American College of Cardiology 67th annual scientific session that she and colleagues looked at data from 30,000 patients treated in 45 Michigan hospitals between 2010 and 2016, and then matched the patients with temperature fluctuations on the day of the attack.

Such a study cannot prove that temperature swings actually cause attacks, but there is what scientists call an association: rapid and extreme fluctuations seem to be accompanied by more cases of myocardial infarction, a serious form of heart attack.

Urban vulnerability

That heat is dangerous is not a surprise: heatwaves in the last 30 years have risen three times faster than average temperatures as a whole, and one study has identified 27 different ways in which heat waves can kill. And the greatest concentrations of potential victims will be in the cities.

The crowded urban spaces of America and Europe spread across landscapes warmer than at any time since the end of the Ice Age. US researchers report in the journal Nature that they collected fossil pollens from 642 ponds and lake beds across Europe and North America, to provide a record of local temperature shifts in the last 11,700 years, to conclude that – without global warming as a consequence of profligate human use of fossil fuels – the world ought to be in a cool phase.

“It does show that what has happened in the last 30 years — a warming trend — puts us outside of all but the most extreme single years every 500 years since the Ice Age. The last 10 years have, on average, been as warm as a normal one year in 500 warm spell,” said Bryan Shuman, an earth scientist at the University of Wyoming, and one of the authors.

Whatever the average regional temperature, it’s hotter in the cities, because concentrations of traffic, business, heating, cooking, lighting and air conditioning generate what has become known as the urban heat island effect: what makes this worse is that the asphalt, tarmacadam, stone, brick, glass and tile of which cities are made absorb radiation but prevent ground evaporation as a natural cooling device.

Researchers from Princeton University report in the journal Environmental Research Letters that they considered how future heat waves will play into the urban heat island effect in 50 US cities.

For the rest of this century, cities in the east and southeast of the US will be more severely affected: less so the cities in the arid parts of the American west.

But by 2100, this could change dramatically. Rainfall and heat extremes will increase. Cities such as Phoenix, Arizona will continue to face water shortages – once again, all that impermeable concrete and sealed highway – but climate change could make the surrounding countryside somewhat moister.

The message, once again, is that what keeps a city cool is moisture: the vapour evaporated from canals and rivers or transpired through green parks and treelined boulevards.

“Given that 50% of the world’s population currently lives in cities, and that percentage is projected to increase to 70% by year 2050, there is a pressing need to understand how cities and landscapes are affected by heat waves,” said Lei Zhao of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

“Our study explains why cities suffer even more during extreme heat events and highlights the heat risks that urban residents face now and in the projected future.”

Seeking mitigation

The researchers say the hunt should be on for heat mitigation strategies. But a surprising study in the journal Physical Review Letters suggests that some of the problems – and the solution – may have already been built into the fabric of the modern metropolis.

A team of materials scientists and engineers simply considered the city as crystalline or glass-like: that is, was the city laid out on a planned, orderly grid system? Or did it just grow up, in an organic, disorderly fashion?

They applied the tools of classical physics normally used to analyse atomic structures. They looked at satellite images of 47 cities in the US and beyond, and graded them according to their order, or disorder. Grid cities absorbed heat compared to their surroundings far faster than the so-called glass-like cities.

Since urban populations are growing, and new cities springing up everywhere, classical physics can help in unexpected ways. “If you’re planning a new section of Phoenix,” said Roland Pellenq of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “you don’t want to build on a grid, since it’s already a very hot place. But somewhere in Canada, a mayor may say no, we’ll choose to use the grid, to keep the city warmer.”

The effects are significant. He and colleagues found, for example, that in the state of Florida alone urban heat island effects cause an estimated $400 million in excess costs for air conditioning. “This gives a strategy for urban planners,” he says.

With Little Scrutiny, U.S. Military Ramps Up in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is bolstering its military presence in Afghanistan, more than 16 years after the war started. Is anyone paying attention?

Consider this: At a Senate hearing this past week on top U.S. security threats, the word “Afghanistan” was spoken exactly four times, each during introductory remarks. In the ensuing two hours of questions for intelligence agency witnesses, no senator asked about Afghanistan, suggesting little interest in a war with nearly 15,000 U.S. troops supporting combat against the Taliban.

It’s not as if the war’s end is in sight.

Just last month the bulk of an Army training brigade of about 800 soldiers arrived to improve the advising of Afghan forces. Since January, attack planes and other aircraft have been added to U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

But it’s not clear that the war, which began in October 2001, is going as well as the U.S. had hoped seven months after President Donald Trump announced a new, more aggressive strategy. The picture may be clearer once the traditionally most intensive fighting season begins in April or May. Over the winter, American and Afghan warplanes have focused on attacking illicit drug facilities that are a source of Taliban revenue.

One of Washington’s closest watchers of the Afghanistan conflict, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote last month that the administration has made major improvements in military tactics and plans for developing Afghan forces but has “done nothing to deal with civil and political stability.” That challenge is expected to come into clearer focus with the approach of parliamentary elections planned for July.

The administration “not only faces a deteriorating security situation, it has no clear political, governance, or economic strategy to produce Afghan stability,” Cordesman said. In his view, the U.S. military has been assigned a “mission impossible” in Afghanistan.

The weak central government in Kabul and the resilient Taliban insurgency are not the U.S. military’s only problems there. It also faces what Gen. Joseph Votel, the top U.S. general overseeing the war, calls interference by Russia. He told a congressional panel last month that Moscow is seeking to undermine U.S. and NATO influence in Afghanistan by exaggerating the presence of Islamic State fighters there and portraying this as a U.S. failure.

When Trump announced in August that he was ordering a new approach to the war, he said he realized “the American people are weary of war without victory.” He said his instinct was to pull out, but that after consulting with aides, he decided to seek “an honorable and enduring outcome.” He said that meant committing more resources to the war, giving commanders in the field more authority and staying in Afghanistan for as long as it takes.

Stephen Biddle, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said Americans’ relative lack of interest in the war gives Trump political maneuver room to conduct the war as he wishes, but that dynamic is not necessarily a good one.

“The idea that a democracy is spending billions of dollars a year, killing people and sacrificing American lives waging war, and the elected representatives of the people aren’t paying attention I think is inappropriate,” Biddle said. “But to say it is inappropriate isn’t to say it’s surprising, because this is the way Congress has been behaving toward this war for a long, long time.”

Last November, the U.S. commander in Kabul, Gen. John Nicholson, said the Afghan army, with U.S. support, had “turned the corner” and captured momentum against the Taliban. Since then, the Taliban have conducted a series of high-profile attacks in Kabul and elsewhere that have killed scores of civilians. U.S. officials have portrayed this as desperation tactics by the Taliban, arguing that they are unable to make new territorial gains.

Dan Coats, the director of U.S. national intelligence, offered a less optimistic forecast when he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

“We assess the overall security picture will … modestly deteriorate in the coming year and Kabul will continue to bear the brunt of the Taliban-led insurgency,” Coats said. Afghan forces, while “unsteady,” probably will maintain control of most major population centers in 2018, he added.

Testifying at the same hearing, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, offered a mixed outlook. He forecast that Afghan forces this year will continue to develop offensive combat power. But he also predicted the Taliban will “threaten Afghan stability, undermine public confidence by conducting intermittent high-profile attacks in urban areas,” increase its influence in rural areas and threaten district centers.

The Defense Department’s special inspector general for Afghanistan said in January that Afghan government control or influence has declined and Taliban control or influence has increase since the U.S. watchdog began reporting this type of data in January 2016.

It said in a follow-up report last month that as of October 2017, about 20.9 million Afghans, or 64 percent of the total population of 32.5 million, lived in areas where the government has control or influence. The rest of the population was in areas under Taliban control or influence, or deemed “contested” by both sides.