Chris Hedges's Blog, page 85

House Impeachment Report Cites Abuse of Power, Bribery, Corruption

WASHINGTON—Previewing potential articles of impeachment, the House Democrats on Saturday issued a lengthy report drawing on history and the Founding Fathers to lay out the legal argument over the case against President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

The findings from the House Judiciary Committee do not spell out the formal charges against the president, which are being drafted ahead of votes, possibly as soon as next week. Instead, the report refutes Trump’s criticism of the impeachment proceedings, arguing that the Constitution created impeachment as a “safety valve” so Americans would not have to wait for the next election to remove a president. It refers to the writings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others to link Trump’s actions in his July phone call with Ukraine’s president seeking political investigations of his rivals to the kind of behavior that would “horrify” the framers.

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Are Democrats Blowing Trump's Impeachment?



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“Where the President uses his foreign affairs power in ways that betray the national interest for his own benefit, or harm national security for equally corrupt reasons, he is subject to impeachment by the House,” the Democrats wrote. “Indeed, foreign interference in the American political system was among the gravest dangers feared by the Founders of our Nation and the Framers of our Constitution.”

Democrats are working through the weekend as articles are being drafted and committee members are preparing for a hearing Monday. Democrats say Trump abused his power in the July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor and engaged in bribery by withholding nearly $400 million in military aide that Ukraine depends on to counter Russian aggression.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it’s part of a troubling pattern of behavior from Trump that benefits Russia and not the U.S.

Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong. “Witch Hunt!”the president tweeted Saturday morning.

The articles of impeachment are likely to encompass two major themes — abuse of office and obstruction — as Democrats strive to reach the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In releasing his report Saturday, Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the president’s actions are the framers’ “worst nightmare.”

“President Trump abused his power, betrayed our national security, and corrupted our elections, all for personal gain. The Constitution details only one remedy for this misconduct: impeachment,” Nadler said in a statement. “The safety and security of our nation, our democracy, and future generations hang in the balance if we do not address this misconduct. In America, no one is above the law, not even the President.”

The report released Saturday is an update of similar reports issued during the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachments and lays out the justification for articles under consideration, including abuse of power, bribery and obstruction.

It does not lay out the facts of the Ukraine case, but it hints at potential articles of impeachment and explains the thinking behind Democrats’ decision to draft them. Without frequently mentioning Trump, it alludes to his requests that Ukraine investigate Democrats, a move he believed would benefit him politically, by saying a president who “perverts his role as chief diplomat to serve private rather than public ends” has unquestionably engaged in the high crimes and misdemeanors laid out in the Constitution. That is true “especially” if he invited rather than opposed foreign interference, the report says.

The report examines treason, bribery, serious abuse of power, betrayal of the national interest through foreign entanglements and corruption of office and elections. Democrats have been focused on an overall abuse of power article, with the possibility of breaking out a separate, related article on bribery. They are also expected to draft at least one article on obstruction of Congress, or obstruction of justice.

In laying out the grounds for impeachable offenses, the report directly refutes several of the president’s claims in a section called “fallacies about impeachment,” including that the inquiry is based on secondhand evidence, that a president can do what he wants to do, and that Democrats’ motives are corrupt.

“The President’s honesty in an impeachment inquiry, or his lack thereof, can thus shed light on the underlying issue,” the report says.

In pushing ahead with the impeachment inquiry, Democrats are bringing the focus back to Russia.

Pelosi is connecting the dots — “all roads lead to Putin,” she says — and making the argument that Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine was not an isolated incident but part of a troubling bond with the Russian president reaching back to special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on the 2016 election interference.

“This isn’t about Ukraine,” she explained a day earlier. “‘It’s about Russia. Who benefited by our withholding of that military assistance? Russia.”

It’s an attempt to explain why Americans should care that Trump pushed Ukraine to investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding the military aid that Congress had approved.

At the same time, by tracing the arc of Trump’s behavior from the 2016 campaign to the present, it stitches it all together. And that helps the speaker balance her left-flank liberals, who want more charges brought against Trump, including from Mueller’s report, and centrist Democrats who prefer to keep the argument more narrowly focused on Ukraine.

Pelosi and her team are trying to convey a message that impeachment is indeed about Ukraine, but also about a pattern of behavior that could stoke renewed concern about his attitude toward Russia ahead of the 2020 election.

Trump pushed back on the Democrats’ message. “The people see that it’s just a continuation of this three-year witch hunt,” he told reporters as he left the White House on a trip to Florida.

Late Friday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone informed the Judiciary Committee that the administration would not be participating in upcoming hearings, decrying the proceedings as “completely baseless.”

And Trump’s campaign announced new rallies taking the case directly to voters — as well as a new email fundraising pitch that claims the Democrats have “gone absolutely insane.”

“The Democrats have NO impeachment case and are demeaning our great Country at YOUR expense,” Trump wrote in the email to supporters. “It’s US against THEM.”

Impeachment articles could include obstruction of Congress, as the White House ordered officials not to comply with House subpoenas for testimony or documents in the inquiry. They could also include obstruction of justice, based on Mueller’s report on the original Trump-Russia investigation.

There is still robust internal debate among House Democrats over how many articles to write and how much to include — and particularly whether there should be specific mention of Mueller’s findings from his two-year investigation into Trump’s possible role in Russia’s 2016 election interference.

The special counsel could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. However, Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine.

Los Angeles County’s District Attorney Must Go, and Here’s Why

All over the nation, organizers are calling attention to the tremendous power of prosecutors and demanding reforms that protect public safety and accountability for all communities, especially black people, people of color and poor people.

Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, who pressed charges against the officers who beat Freddie Gray to death, and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, who released a progressive values-based memo on how his office would conduct business shortly after his election, are just two examples of prosecutors who have made efforts to incorporate community demands. Other prosecutors have announced new efforts to investigate prior prosecutorial misconduct, rein in abusive policing practices and prioritize justice over convictions, although not without critique.

An increasing number of candidates also have run on progressive, community-driven platforms, including Tiffany Cabán in Queens, who lost narrowly in June under the banner of “People-Powered Justice” and Audia Jones, a progressive black candidate in Harris County, Texas (anchored by Houston), who is gaining steam in the same county where 19 black female judges recently were elected to the bench.

In stark contrast, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who oversees the largest prosecutorial office in the nation, continues to neglect black Angelenos, communities of color and poor people.

At age 21, Lacey told Seventeen magazine, “I’ve seen so many black people cheated by tradesmen or intimidated by the police because they have no knowledge of their legal rights. I’d like to help change that.” But as district attorney, Lacey has instead come to embody her own childhood demons. In her 33 years in the office, she has routinely failed to protect communities of color. Through discriminatory policies and practices, she perpetuates a two-tiered system of justice that lays bare the legal system’s foundational contempt toward black lives.

This pattern of neglect was on full display throughout Lacey’s handling of the Ed Buck case. Buck, a wealthy, white and well-connected political donor, was arrested in September in connection with the near-death of a black gay man who survived a methamphetamine attack by Buck in his apartment. Subsequent to that arrest, Buck was charged in two previous deaths of men in his apartment—that of Gemmel Moore, who was killed in 2017, and Timothy Dean, who died in January. Both Moore and Dead were black, gay and financially vulnerable to Buck’s sadism. But they weren’t the only ones.

At the time of Dean’s death, Lacey was already aware of Buck’s pattern of victimization. Most of Buck’s targets were impoverished gay men of color. But she did nothing to stop Buck. It wasn’t until a third black gay man nearly lost his life in September that Buck was finally arrested. Even then, she sought no accountability for the tragic deaths of Moore and Dean. The charges related to their deaths were brought in federal court.

After Moore’s death, other men fortunate enough to survive Buck’s abuse reported their trauma to county investigators. Their accounts were consistent with information contained in Moore’s journal, which detailed incidents of Buck stalking and preying upon other black gay men, sometimes enlisting victims to lure additional victims, much in the way sex traffickers coerce victims to aid them in their crimes. Throughout this ordeal, family members, local community groups and activists, including Moore’s mother and sister, Black Lives Matter and activist Jasmyne Cannick, implored Lacey to take the victims’ stories seriously. Considering the mounting evidence against Buck, they hoped L.A.’s top prosecutor would seek justice and prioritize their safety.

Instead, Lacey turned away from their pain, from their pleas and even from their deaths. In the year and a half between the deaths of Moore and Dean, Lacey refused to engage with victims, who said they were made to feel like criminals. Lacey neglected to warn their communities. She failed to protect the vulnerable, choosing instead to protect the wealthy donor with whom she had financial ties—Lacey has accepted multiple donations from Buck, including one after Moore’s death.

Lacey is now attempting to blame the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and coroner’s office for her inaction. The families of the victims in the Ed Buck case learned of this development through the media, and not directly from Lacey’s office.

Buck’s case is just the latest example of Lacey applying two different systems of justice. Long before she ran the office, Lacey was turning her back on black and brown lives. In 1998, she even sent a young man to prison for life over a stolen cellphone.

With Lacey as district attorney, black people in Los Angeles are incarcerated at five times the rate of white residents. She relies on racist gang databases used disproportionately to charge black and brown people, especially youths, with offenses that would otherwise be non-crimes, including crimes of association. Lacey has obtained death sentences exclusively for defendants of color. She stood in the way of efforts to expunge marijuana convictions, a measure that would  provide relief to countless black and brown people caught up in the racist war on drugs. She continues to rely on the testimonies of untrustworthy law enforcement officers. She oversees an office culture that, according to recent reports, enables sexual harassment and “punishes” victims who have the courage to speak out. And despite Lacey’s promises to seek alternatives to incarceration for people struggling with mental illness, she is responsible for incarcerating 3,000 people in mental health crisis who could safely be released but are instead languishing in Los Angeles County Jail, while touting her record on mental health. Like the rest of the county’s jail population, most are black, brown and poor.

Perhaps most notably, Lacey has refused to hold police officers responsible for the murders of hundreds of Angelenos, even when officers were found “out-of-policy,” were fired for their actions, or in instances in which the police chief requested prosecution. The lone exception came recently, when she decided to prosecute one sheriff’s deputy, an officer of color. Of more than 500 police killings since she took office, mostly involving black and brown victims, Lacey maintains that only one case involved impropriety. This shows a complete disregard for the lives of those victimized most frequently by law enforcement.

In September 2017, the families of Kisha Michael and Marquintan Sandlin stood on the steps of the Hall of Justice, where Lacey’s office is located. Hundreds of victims of police violence, Black Lives Matter activists and other community leaders gathered to deliver a Color of Change petition with more than 10,000 signatures urging Lacey to prosecute police who kill, beginning with the five Inglewood officers who killed Michael and Sandlin after approaching them in a parked car. This shooting left seven children without parents. Rather than greeting her constituents, Lacey reacted by locking them out of the building. Since October 2017, Black Lives Matter and allies have organized weekly protests outside Lacey’s office. After Lacey reneged on a promised town hall in January 2018, calls to #ProsecuteKillerCops shifted to #JackieLaceyMustGo.

Despite repeated attempts to address Lacey’s discriminatory treatment, she’s made a habit of simply rejecting demands and refusing to meet with constituents, including the families of Buck’s victims. After Buck’s arrest, Lacey had the audacity to give conflicting testimony about what her office knew, and what she could have done with that information. U.S. Rep. Karen Bass of California summed it up best when she said that Lacey’s “inaction” in the Buck case sent a message that “black gay lives obviously didn’t matter.” Lacey made an appearance at the Stonewall Democratic Club to address the issue and seek its endorsement. She was confronted by several of the families of those killed by police and challenged by the oldest LGBTQ Democratic club in the county to “restore trust or resign.”

As Lacey’s re-election draws near, she faces off with three challengers (up from none in 2016), all running on more progressive platforms. Former San Francisco D.A. George Gascon, who has publicly committed to decarceration, is widely hailed as the most viable challenger. Enthusiasm also surrounds Rachel Rossi, a comparatively young black woman and former federal public defender who has pledged a progressive platform. Lacey is also being challenged from within her own ranks by Richard Ceballos, a veteran prosecutor whose platform includes the creation of a separate unit to prosecute police. What is emerging in the Los Angeles race for district attorney perhaps stands as the starkest example of shifts in approach to the office. Despite her pledge as a young woman, Lacey is running on a pro-police platform that many more politically astute, justice-minded and progressive voters view as aiding and abetting police violence.

While Lacey, may be the first black and first woman to serve as the county’s district attorney, for many, identity is not enough. In the words of Zora Neale Hurston, “All my skinfolk ain’t my kinfolk;” Lacey’s support of systemic injustices and her unwillingness to protect the very people she vowed to help—including those who look like her—cannot be tolerated or ignored. We all deserve better. We deserve a district attorney who, like a growing number of prosecutors around the country, understands that she or he has the power to work against the systemic injustices that have torn apart our communities for generations. And until that day comes, we will not be silent.

Terror Links Probed in Florida Naval Base Shooting; 10 Saudi Students Held

PENSACOLA, Fla.—The Saudi student who fatally shot three people at a U.S. naval base in Florida hosted a dinner party earlier in the week where he and three others watched videos of mass shootings, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on Saturday.

One of the three students who attended the dinner party videotaped outside the building while the shooting was taking place at Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity after being briefed by federal authorities. Two other Saudi students watched from a car, the official said.

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The official said 10 Saudi students were being held on the base Saturday while several others were unaccounted for.

U.S. officials had previously told the AP they were investigating possible links to terrorism.

The student opened fire in a classroom at the base Friday morning, killing three people.

A U.S. official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Friday identified the shooter as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The official also said the FBI was examining social media posts and investigating whether he acted alone or was connected to any broader group.

The assault, which prompted a massive law enforcement response and base lockdown, ended when a sheriff’s deputy killed the attacker. Eight people were hurt in the attack, including the deputy and a second deputy who was with him.

Family members on Saturday identified one of the victims as a 23-year-old recent graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who alerted first responders to where the shooter was even after he had been shot several times.

“Joshua Kaleb Watson saved countless lives today with his own,” Adam Watson wrote on Facebook. “He died a hero and we are beyond proud but there is a hole in our hearts that can never be filled.”

Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott issued a scathing statement calling the shooting — the second on a U.S. Naval base this week — an act of terrorism “whether this individual was motivated by radical Islam or was simply mentally unstable.”

During a news conference Friday night, the FBI declined to release the shooter’s identity and wouldn’t comment on his possible motivations.

“There are many reports circulating, but the FBI deals only in facts,” said Rachel L. Rojas, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Jacksonville Field Office.

Earlier Friday, two U.S. officials identified the student as a second lieutenant in the Saudi Air Force, and said authorities were investigating whether the attack was terrorism-related. They spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose information that had not yet been made public.

President Donald Trump declined to say whether the shooting was terrorism-related. Trump tweeted his condolences to the families of the victims and noted that he had received a phone call from Saudi King Salman.

He said the king told him that “this person in no way shape or form represents the feelings of the Saudi people.”

The Saudi government offered condolences to the victims and their families and said it would provide “full support” to U.S. authorities.

The U.S. has long had a robust training program for Saudis, providing assistance in the U.S. and in the kingdom. The shooting, however, shined a spotlight on the two countries’ sometimes rocky relationship.

The kingdom is still trying to recover from the killing last year of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Saudi intelligence officials and a forensic doctor killed and dismembered Khashoggi on Oct. 2, 2018, just as his fiancée waited outside the diplomatic mission.

One of the Navy’s most historic and storied bases, Naval Air Station Pensacola sprawls along the waterfront southwest of the city’s downtown and dominates the economy of the surrounding area.

Part of the base resembles a college campus, with buildings where 60,000 members of the Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard train each year in multiple fields of aviation. A couple hundred students from countries outside the U.S. are also enrolled in training, said Base commander Capt. Tim Kinsella.

All of the shooting took place in one classroom and the shooter used a handgun, authorities said. Weapons are not allowed on the base, which Kinsella said would remain closed until further notice.

Adam Watson said his little brother was able to make it outside the classroom building to tell authorities where the shooter was after being shot “multiple” times. “Those details were invaluable,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Watson’s father, Benjamin Watson, was quoted by the Pensacola News Journal as saying that his son was a recent graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who dreamed of becoming a Navy pilot. He said he had reported to Pensacola two weeks ago to begin flight training. “He died serving his country,” Benjamin Watson said.

The shooting is the second at a U.S. naval base this week. A sailor whose submarine was docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, opened fire on three civilian employees Wednesday, killing two before taking his own life.

-—

Associated Press reporters Lolita Baldor, Ben Fox and Mike Balsamo in Washington; Jon Gambrell in Dubai; Tamara Lush in Tampa, Florida, and Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.

Bankrupt PG&E Makes $13.5 Billion Deal With California Wildfire Victims

LOS ANGELES—Pacific Gas and Electric announced Friday it has reached a tentative $13.5 billion settlement resolving all major claims related to the deadly, devastating Northern California wildfires of 2017-2018 that were blamed on its outdated equipment and negligence.

The utility says the deal, which still requires court approval, represents a key step in leading it out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The deal is expected to resolve all claims arising from a series of deadly 2017 Northern California wildfires and the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and all but incinerated the town of Paradise. It also resolves claims from the 2015 Butte Fire and Oakland’s 2016 Ghost Ship Fire.

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“From the beginning of the Chapter 11 process, getting wildfire victims fairly compensated, especially the individuals, has been our primary goal,” Bill Johnson, PG&E Corporation’s CEO and president, said in a statement Friday. “We want to help our customers, our neighbors and our friends in those impacted areas recover and rebuild after these tragic wildfires.”

In most cases the 2017 and 2018 fires were blamed on power lines, and two attorneys representing more than 5,000 Northern California fire victims hailed the settlement.

“I think it’s a fantastic result,” said attorney Rich Bridgford of Bridgford, Gleason & Artinian, adding it will not only compensate thousands of devastated fire victims but also require PG&E to put billions into overhauling its infrastructure to prevent future disasters.

“You have to be mindful of the fact that PG&E is in bankruptcy,” he added. “This means they are required to perform a delicate balancing act aimed at achieving dual goals of deterring bad past behavior on the one hand and on the other hand keeping the utility financially viable so that it can function and keep power flowing. We believe the settlement achieves this delicate balance.”

The 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest and destroyed nearly 18,000 structures. The series of wildfires that spread across a wide stretch of Northern California in 2017 killed dozens and burned tens of thousands of structures.

“The goal of the litigation from the very beginning has been to change their behavior, and that is their lack of safety standards and the way they manage and maintain their equipment,” attorney James Frantz said of PG&E.

The settlement is still subject to a number of conditions involving PG&E’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plans, which must be completed by June 30, 2020.

Friday’s proposal responds to pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom to give wildfire victims more than the utility originally offered, but it still relies on the bankruptcy judge’s approval as part of the proceedings. A February hearing at which an official estimation of losses will be made still looms for the utility and could upend any settlement deals.

“We appreciate all the hard work by many stakeholders that went into reaching this agreement,” PG&E’s Johnson said. “With this important milestone now accomplished, we are focused on emerging from Chapter 11 as the utility of the future that our customers and communities expect and deserve.”

PG&E said the proposed settlement is the third it has reached as it works through its Chapter 11 case. The utility previously reached a $1 billion settlement with cities, counties and other public utilities and an $11 billion agreement with insurance companies and other entities that have paid claims relating to the 2017 and 2018 fires.

Factory Farm Conditions Are Bad for People Too

In 2014, the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, commissioned by the UK government and Wellcome Trust, estimated that 700,000 people around the world die each year due to drug-resistant infections. A follow-up report two years later showed no change in this estimate of casualties. Without action, that number could grow to 10 million per year by 2050. A leading cause of antibiotic resistance? The misuse and overuse of antibiotics on factory farms.

Flourishing antibiotic resistance is just one of the many public health crises produced by factory farming. Other problems include foodborne illness, flu epidemics, the fallout from poor air and water quality, and chronic disease. All of it can be traced to the current industrial approach to raising animals for food, which puts a premium on “high stocking density,” wherein productivity is measured by how many animals are crammed into a feeding facility.

Oversight for the way factory farms operate and manage waste is minimal at best. No federal agency collects consistent and reliable information on the number, size and location of large-scale agricultural operations, nor the pollution they’re emitting. There are also no federal laws governing the conditions in which farm animals are raised, and most state anti-cruelty laws do not apply to farm animals.

For example, Texas, Iowa and Nebraska have excluded livestock from their animal cruelty statute and instead created specific legislation aimed at farm animal abuse that makes accepted or customary husbandry practices the animal welfare standard.

After New Jersey created similar legislation, the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sued the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, claiming that “routine husbandry practices” was too vague. The New Jersey Society won, and as a result, the state’s Department of Agriculture has created more specific regulations.

In North Carolina, any person or organization can file a lawsuit if they suspect animal cruelty, even if that person does not have “possessory or ownership rights in an animal.” In this way, the state has “a civil remedy” for farm animal cruelty.

Still, the general lack of governmental oversight of factory farms results in cramped and filthy conditions, stressed-out animals and workers, and an ideal setup for the rampant spread of disease among animals, between animals and workers, and into the surrounding environment through animal waste.

Antibiotic Resistance

The problem: In 2017, nearly 11 million kilograms of antibiotics—including 5.6 million kilograms of medically important antibiotics—were sold in the U.S. for factory-farmed animals. Factory farms use antibiotics to make livestock grow faster and control the spread of disease in cramped and unhealthy living conditions. While antibiotics do kill some bacteria in animals, resistant bacteria can, and often do, survive and multiply, contaminating meat and animal products during slaughter and processing.

What it means for you: People can be exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria by handling or eating contaminated animal products, coming into contact with contaminated water or touching farm animals, which of course makes a farmworker’s job especially hazardous. Even if you don’t eat much meat or dairy, you’re vulnerable: Resistant pathogens can enter water streams through animal manure and contaminate irrigated produce.

Developments: The European Union has been much more aggressive than the U.S. in regulating antibiotic use on factory farms, banning the use of all antibiotics for growth promotion in 2006. But the U.S. is making some progress, too. Under new rules issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which went into effect in January 2017, antibiotics that are important for human medicine can no longer be used for growth promotion or feed efficiency in cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and other animals raised for food.

Additionally, 95 percent of medically important antibiotics used in animal water and feed for therapeutic purposes were reclassified so they can no longer be purchased over the counter, and a veterinarian would have to sign off for their use in animals. As a result, domestic sales and distribution of medically important antimicrobials approved for use in factory farmed animals decreased by 43 percent from 2015 (the year of peak sales) through 2017, reports the FDA.

However, the agency still allows routine antibiotic use in factory farms for disease prevention in crowded and stressed animals, so these new rules aren’t nearly enough, says Matthew Wellington, antibiotics program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.

“The FDA should implement ambitious reduction targets for antibiotic use in the meat industry, and ensure that these medicines are used to treat sick animals or control a verified disease outbreak, not for routine disease prevention,” Wellington said in a statement, according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

National Resources Defense Council Senior Attorney Avinash Kar agrees. “Far more antibiotics important to humans still go to cows and pigs—usually when they’re not sick—than to people, putting the health of every single one of us in jeopardy.”

Water and Pollution

The problem: Livestock in this country produce between 3 and 20 times more waste than people in the U.S. produce, according to a 2005 report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That’s as much as 1.2-1.37 billion tons of manure a year. Some estimates are even higher.

Manure can contain “pathogens such as E. coli, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemicals used as additives to the manure or to clean equipment, animal blood, silage leachate from corn feed, or copper sulfate used in footbaths for cows,” according to a 2010 report by the National Association of Local Boards of Health. Though sewage treatment plants are required for human waste, no such treatment facility exists for livestock waste.

Since this amount far exceeds what can be used as fertilizer, animal waste from factory farms typically enters massive, open-air waste lagoons, which spread airborne pathogens to people who live nearby. If animal waste is applied as fertilizer and exceeds the soil’s capacity for absorption, or if there is a leak or break in the manure storage or containment unit, the animal waste runs off into oceans, lakes, rivers, streams and groundwater.

Extreme weather increases the possibility of such breaks. Hurricane Florence, for example, flooded at least 50 hog lagoons when it struck the Carolinas last year, and satellite photos captured the damage.

Whether or not the manure is contained or spread as fertilizer, it can release many different types of harmful gases, including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, as well as particulate matter comprised of fecal matter, feed materials, pollen, bacteria, fungi, skin cells and silicates, into the air.

What it means for you: Pathogens can cause diarrhea and severe illness or even death for those with weakened immune systems, and nitrates in drinking water have been connected to neural tube defects and limb deficiencies in newborns (among other things), as well as miscarriages and poor general health. For infants, it can mean blue baby syndrome and even death.

Gases like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide can cause dizziness, eye irritation, respiratory illness, nausea, sore throats, seizures, comas and death. Particulate matter in the air can lead to chronic bronchitis, chronic respiratory symptoms, declines in lung function and organic dust toxic syndrome. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that children raised in communities near factory farms are more likely to develop asthma or bronchitis, and that people who live near factory farms may experience mental health deterioration and increased sensitization to smells.

Developments: It is difficult to hold factory farms accountable for polluting surrounding air and water, largely for political reasons. The GOP-controlled Congress and the Trump administration excused big livestock farms from reporting air emissions, for instance, following a decade-long push for special treatment by the livestock industry.

The exemption indicates “further denial of the impact that these [emissions] are having, whether it’s on climate or whether it’s on public health,” says Carrie Apfel, an attorney for Earthjustice. In a 2017 report from the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, the agency admitted it has not found a good way to track emissions from factory farms and know whether the farms are complying with the Clean Air Act.

No federal agency even has reliable information on the number and locations of factory farms, which of course makes accountability even harder to establish.

Foodborne Illness

The problem: The United States has “shockingly high levels of foodborne illness,” according to an investigation jointly conducted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Guardian, and unsanitary conditions at factory farms are a leading contributor.

Studying 47 meat plants across the U.S., investigators found that hygiene incidents occur at rates experts described as “deeply worrying.” One dataset covered 13 large red meat and poultry plants between 2015 and 2017 and found an average of more than 150 violations a week, and 15,000 violations over the entire period. Violations included unsanitary factory conditions and meat contaminated with blood, septicemic disease and feces.

“The rates at which outbreaks of infectious food poisoning occur in the U.S. are significantly higher than in the UK, or the EU,” Erik Millstone, a food safety expert at Sussex University told The Guardian.

Poor sanitary practices allow bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella, which live in the intestinal tracts of infected livestock, to contaminate meat or animal products during slaughter or processing. Contamination occurs at higher rates on factory farms because crowded and unclean living conditions increase the likelihood of transmission between animals.

It also stresses out animals, which suppresses their immune response, making them more susceptible to disease. The grain-based diets used to fatten cattle can also quickly increase the risk of E. coli infection. In poultry, the practice of processing dead hens into “spent hen meal” to be fed to live hens has increased the spread of Salmonella.

What it means for you: According to the CDC, roughly 48 million people in the U.S. suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths each year. Salmonella accounts for approximately 11 percent of infections, and kills more people every year than any other bacterial foodborne illness.

Developments: In January 2011, President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the first major piece of federal legislation addressing food safety since 1938. FSMA grants the FDA new authority to regulate the way food is grown, harvested and processed, and new powers such as mandatory recall authority.

The FSMA “basically codified this principle that everybody responsible for producing food should be doing what the best science says is appropriate to prevent hazards and reduce the risk of illness,” according to Mike Taylor, co-chairman of Stop Foodborne Illness and a former deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the FDA. “So we’re moving in the right direction.”

However, almost a decade later, the FSMA is still being phased in, due to a shortage of trained food-inspectors and a lack of funding. “Congress has gotten about halfway to what it said was needed to successfully implement” the Act, Taylor said.

The Flu

The problem: Both the number and density of animals on factory farms increase the risk of new virulent pathogens, according to the U.S. Council for Agriculture, Science and Technology. In addition, transporting animals over long distances to processing facilities brings different influenza strains into contact with each other so they combine and spread quickly.

Pigs—susceptible to both avian and human flu viruses—can serve as ground zero for all sorts of new strains. Because of intensive pig farming practices, “the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fast track, churning out variants every year,” according to a report published in the journal Science.

What it means for you: These viruses can become pandemics. In fact, viral geneticists link the genetic lineage of H1N1, a kind of swine flu, to a strain that emerged in 1998 in U.S. factory pig farms. The CDC has estimated that between 151,700 and 575,400 people worldwide died from the 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated.

Breast, Prostate and Colon Cancer

The problem: Factory farms in the U.S. use hormones to stimulate growth in an estimated two-thirds of beef cattle. On dairy farms, around 54 percent of cows are injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a growth hormone that increases milk production.

What it means for you: The health effects of consuming animal products treated with these growth hormones is an ongoing international debate. Some studies have linked growth hormone residues in meat to reproductive issues and breast, prostate and colon cancer, and IGF-1, an insulin-like growth hormone, has been linked to colon and breast cancer. However, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization have independently found that dairy products and meat from cows treated with rBGH are safe for human consumption.

Because risk assessments vary, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel and Argentina have banned the use of rBGH as a precautionary measure. The EU has also banned the use of six hormones in cattle and imported beef.

Developments: U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines allow beef products to be labeled with “no hormones administered” and dairy products to be labeled “from cows not treated with rBST/rBGH” if the producer provides sufficient documentation that this is true. Consumers can use this information to make their own decisions about the risks associated with hormone-treated animal products.

What You Can Do

You can vote for local initiatives that establish health and welfare regulations for factory farms, but only a tiny number of states, including California and Massachusetts, are even putting relevant propositions on the ballot.

Another option is to support any of the nonprofits that are, in lieu of effective government action, taking these factory farms to task. The Environmental Working Group, Earthjustice and the Animal Legal Defense Fund are among those working hard to check the worst practices of these factory farms. Another good organization is the Socially Responsible Agricultural Project, which works with local residents to fight the development of factory farms in their own backyards.

Buying humanely raised animal products from farms and farmers you trust is another way to push back against factory farming. Sadly, products from these smaller farms make up only a fraction of the total. In the U.S., roughly 99 percent of chickens, turkeys, eggs and pork, and 70 percent of cows, are raised on factory farms.

You can support lab-grown “clean” burgers, chicken and pork by buying it once it becomes widely available. Made from animal cells, the process completely spares the animal and eliminates the factory farm. “The resulting product is 100 percent real meat, but without the antibiotics, E. coli, Salmonella, or waste contamination,” writes the Good Food Institute.

In the meantime, you can register your objection to factory farming by doing your bit to reduce demand for their products. In short, eat less meat and dairy, and more plant-based proteins.

More than $13 billion has been invested in plant-based meat, egg and dairy companies in 2017 and 2018 alone, according to the Good Food Institute, and Beyond Meat’s initial public offering debut in May marked the most successful one since the year 2000.

Lest you think that what you do on your own can’t possibly make a difference, consider one of the major drivers behind all this new investment: consumers are demanding change.

“Shifting consumer values have created a favorable market for alternatives to animal-based foods, and we have already seen fast-paced growth in this space across retail and foodservice markets,” says Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute.

This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced as part of a partnership between Stone Pier Press and Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. An earlier version appeared on Stone Pier Press.

Tia Schwab is a former Stone Pier Press news fellow who recently graduated from Stanford University where she studied human biology with a concentration in food systems and public health.

Uber Reports Over 3,000 Sexual Assaults on 2018 Rides

SAN FRANCISCO—Uber, as part of a long anticipated safety report, revealed that more than 3,000 sexual assaults were reported during its U.S. rides in 2018.

That figure includes 235 rapes across the company’s 1.3 billion rides last year. The ride-hailing company noted that drivers and riders were both attacked and that some assaults occurred between riders.

The Thursday report, which the company hailed as the first of its kind, provides a rare look into the traffic deaths, murders and reported sexual assaults that took place during billions of rides arranged in the U.S. using Uber’s service. It is part of the company’s effort to be more transparent after years of criticism over its safety record.

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In 2017, the company counted 2,936 reported sexual assaults — including 229 rapes — during 1 billion U.S. trips. Uber bases its numbers on reports from riders and drivers, meaning the actual numbers could be much higher. Sexual assaults commonly go unreported.

“I suspect many people will be surprised at how rare these incidents are; others will understandably think they’re still too common,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi tweeted about the report. “Some people will appreciate how much we’ve done on safety; others will say we have more work to do. They will all be right.”

Uber’s share price dropped more than 1% in after-hours trading.

Uber and competitor Lyft have faced harsh criticism for not doing enough to protect the safety of their riders and drivers. Dozens of women are suing Lyft, claiming the company should have done more to protect them from driver assaults. A Connecticut woman sued Uber last month, claiming she was sexually assaulted by her driver.

London refused to renew Uber’s license to operate in the city in November after the company was plagued with safety issues including concerns about impostor drivers. Uber said it will appeal the decision.

The companies have both formed partnerships with sexual assault prevention networks and other safety groups, and have touted their background check policies for drivers. But many say they haven’t gone far enough to protect passengers and drivers, who are contract workers for the companies.

“Keeping this information in the dark doesn’t make anyone safer,” Uber said in a statement announcing the report. It plans to release its safety report every two years going forward.

Lyft said last year it would also release a safety report. A company spokeswoman confirmed Thursday that it “remained committed” to releasing a report, but did not say when it would be released.

Mike Bomberger, a lawyer representing more than 100 victims of sexual assault in lawsuits against Uber and Lyft, applauded Uber for releasing the numbers. “One of the problems with both of these companies is that they have hidden and have tried to conceal the number of sexual assaults that occur in their vehicles,” he said.

In response, an Uber spokesperson pointed to the just-released report. Lyft called Bomberger’s charge “baseless.”

Bomberger said he believes 80% to 90% of the assaults in the Uber report could have been prevented by measures such as cameras in the cars recording rides and the companies reporting every assault they learn of to the police.

The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network said it appreciated Uber’s transparency.

“This is an issue that affects every institution in America,” RAINN press secretary Erinn Robinson said in a statement. She added that organizations in every industry, including education, should “make a similar effort to track and analyze sexual misconduct within their communities.”

The report stated that Uber rides were involved in 97 reported crashes in 2017 and 2018, resulting in 107 deaths. The company said the figure represents about half of the national rate for fatal crashes.

Sexual assault in the report is defined broadly into categories including non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part, attempted non-consensual sexual penetration, non-consensual touching of a sexual body part, non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part and non-consensual sexual penetration.

The company also said Uber rides were involved in nine murders during 2018, and 10 during 2017. Uber noted that the vast majority — 99.9% — of its rides had no reported safety issues.

The Plot to Discredit and Destroy Julian Assange

A day after dozens of doctors around the world released a statement about their mounting concerns regarding Julian Assange’s health as he’s detained in a British prison, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer spoke with Tariq Ali, a renowned British journalist and co-editor of a recent collection of essays titled “In Defense of Julian Assange.” To Scheer, Ali and the book’s many contributors, the case against the WikiLeaks founder boils down to an international effort to suppress press freedoms. Yet as Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States have co-authored Assange’s downfall, many journalists and publishers, including some at The Guardian and The New York Times—two publications that published work based on WikiLeaks—have refused to defend Assange.

“What we did in assembling ‘In Defense of Julian Assange’ was to take every single facet of the case and present it before a reading public. And one reason we had to do this is because the [liberal] press have given up on him, having used WikiLeaks, having got their scoops, having raised their own circulations,” Ali says in the latest installment of the “Scheer Intelligence” podcast.

Corporate media’s abandonment of Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning is no surprise to Scheer, who has spent much of his career defending and working with whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg, John Kiriakou, Edward Snowden and others.

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“Everyone likes a whistleblower, as long as he’s blowing the whistle on their opponent, or in some other regime, or so forth,” Scheer tells Ali.

A prime example of this hypocrisy can be seen in the treatment of the Ukraine scandal whistleblower, who has been touted by Democrats and much of the press as a hero. Manning and Assange, on the other hand, are vilified, discredited, ignored, jailed and, in Assange’s case, psychologically and possibly physically tortured.

“The British government [is] keeping [Assange] in Belmarsh prison, which is a high-security prison where he’s [surrounded] either by people who have committed unspeakable murders, or so-called terrorists charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts, with very high security; he’s been kept in isolation. [Doctors are] worried that he might die in prison.”

Listen to Ali and Scheer’s full conversation on the many facets of the persecution of Assange, a man who, both journalists agree, is solely guilty of exposing war crimes and uncomfortable truths the establishment wanted to keep hidden from the public. You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player and find past episodes of “Scheer Intelligence” here.

—Introduction by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case, Tariq Ali, a well-known British journalist born in Pakistan; educated, I think, largely in England; and who has written incredibly important books and analysis of U.S. foreign policy, generally critical of the tendency towards empire. And the reason for this interview is he’s assembled, along with Margaret Kunstler, a really important book. It’s called In Defense of Julian Assange, and it’s scores of people writing about different aspects of the case of Julian Assange.

Now, one reason I do these podcasts is it compels me to read a book that I might otherwise have skimmed. And that’s certainly the case of this book; its [publisher is OR Books], and In Defense of Julian Assange. I thought I knew a lot about this case. And I was surprised, in reading this book, that I fell for some of the traps set by the mass media and by governments–the U.S. government, the Swedish government; the Ecuadorian government, of late; and the British government, certainly, where Julian Assange is being held as a prisoner. I must say, much to my shame, had I not read this book carefully, I was falling for some of the personal attacks and attempts to dismiss the significance of Julian Assange.

Having read the book–and I think it’s 450, almost 500 pages–I was rewarded with an understanding, a very clear understanding, that Julian Assange is truly one of the most important journalists of, I don’t know what, the last 50 years. And I say this having been an active journalist, as Tariq has, and thought I knew quite a bit. But when I went through, really, what WikiLeaks revealed, and the universality of their concerns–including, by the way, documents unflattering for Putin’s Russia, since that’s at the key of the drama now, what was WikiLeaks’ connection with Russia–but, you know, throughout the world. And the very idea–I ended up sort of in a rage at the end of this, thinking, how dare anyone challenge Julian Assange’s role as a journalist? You don’t have to agree that he’s your kind of journalist, but the idea that he is a journalist, deserving of press freedom, acknowledgment–which is, you know, the whole attempt to justify his being held under the most brutal conditions in England–that, to my mind, is the value of your collection.

I defy anyone to spend even a few hours with this collection and have any doubts as to the significance of Julian Assange as a practicing journalist, as a publisher, deserving–as even lawyers who’ve worked for the New York Times recognize–the same consideration that the Washington Post or the New York Times had when they published the Pentagon Papers, when they publish other information uncomfortable to the U.S. government on national security terms, and so forth. And as they warned–some of these lawyers most effectively, who represented the New York Times–that if you can get these charges that are filed against Julian Assange right now by the U.S. government, basically concern the normal practices of journalists dealing with the national security state. And take it from there. I mean, but I think that is the power of this collection that you have assembled.

Tariq Ali: Well, thanks, Bob. I mean, it’s very good, especially as it comes from someone like you, who knows what investigative journalism is. It’s a sort of dying cause now, and very little of it goes on. But precisely what we did in assembling In Defense of Julian Assange was to take every single facet of the case and present it before a reading public. And one reason we had to do this is because the press have given up on him, having used WikiLeaks, having got their scoops, having raised their own circulations–the liberal press, The Guardian and the New York Times and others in Europe. It was El País, actually, to its credit, which carried on supporting the Assange. The others fell a bit silent and hoped that the case would go away, instead of defending him. Because in defending him, as The Guardian has now recognized, they were defending themselves. If Julian is found guilty of these absurd charges that have been laid against him of espionage, et cetera, then the same applies to the editor of the New York Times and the editor of The Guardian, who published these things. Why aren’t they being tried? And the reason they’re not being tried is because that would be going too far, and would raise a storm. And we did this, we put this collection together, precisely to raise a storm–saying Julian is not the editor of a mainstream liberal newspaper in the Western world, but he is the editor, and has been, of WikiLeaks, which has done an amazing job. You’re absolutely right, there’s been nothing like it over the last 50 years. Obviously there’s been whistleblowers, and some famous ones; the Pentagon Papers, you know, in the Vietnam days–

RS: And by the way–and by the way, Daniel Ellsberg has been very clear. Because nowadays, you know, he’s the favorite whistleblower for many establishment, and particularly democratic party, people. You know, they say well, Daniel Ellsberg–but at the time, I happened to be at his trial. I was then editing Ramparts, which had published quite a few whistleblowers. And at that trial, Daniel Ellsberg was facing, you know, 125 years in jail, facing the same espionage charge. Which was only, at that point had been used in, I think, three cases. It was Barack Obama who brought, I think, 11 cases under the Espionage Act, you know, and revived this 1917 legislation, which really had nothing to do with this sort of issue; it was giving secrets, military secrets to a real enemy that you would recognize.

But in this case, what is so appalling is that–and I want you to discuss the range of your book. Because you know, people are dismissing Julian Assange, or are hostile to him–as many democratic politicians, they call–can’t call him a traitor, since he’s not an American citizen. But they were really hostile because he inconvenienced or harmed Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. Which, after all, has never been the standard of judging the value of journalism. I mean, Daniel Ellsberg harmed Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign with the revelations of the Pentagon Papers–big deal. You know, that’s not the test of journalism, whether it’s inconvenient. But the fact is–and discuss the charges against Julian Assange; they predate anything to do with telling us what was in Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and others, or what was in the Podesta files about undermining Bernie Sanders’ campaign. This all relates these charges to journalism that he did in 2010–correct me if I’m wrong. And why don’t you tell us the kind of journalism–the range, the scope, you know, of powerful people [who have] been disturbed by this, which does range from Russia to the U.S. with stops along the way in Africa and the Mideast, and actually credit for fueling the Arab Spring reprisal against Mideast dictators.

TA: Well, exactly, Bob. I mean, the range of Assange’s journalism and publishing activities is quite unique in this world. The scale of it is pretty amazing; every continent covered, every report WikiLeaks considered was important, published, from Iraq–I mean, one of the things they did in the case of Iraq, which enraged the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Agency, was to release a video–a very, very notorious video now; it’s on YouTube, people can watch it–of a helicopter gunship killing innocent Iraqis for no bloody rhyme or reason. I mean, just killing them, celebrating their murder, saying ”we got them,” as if they were playing a video game.

RS: Yeah, they described that, ”Let them pick up the gun and then we can shoot”–and they killed two Reuters correspondents, because they confused the camera with some sort of weapon, right?

TA: Yeah. They did that. And they killed a lot of Iraqis like that. And the video released, sent on to WikiLeaks–

RS: Let me just say–I’m sorry–one little detail, a lot of Iraqis. One was a child, and the pilots actually made a joke about it–”Who told them to bring their child along to such an event?”

TA: Exactly, exactly.

RS: I mean, it was–the cynicism was ghoulish. It was creepy. And yet those pilots and the people who ordered them into this kind of activity–they’re not condemned. They’re not judged. Julian Assange is sitting in jail. So is, by the way, we should mention Chelsea Manning, who was then Bradley Manning, was a lower-level U.S. military person who had access to this and released it, because this was evidence of serious war crime. And if you take the Nuremberg principles, which the U.S. held up for the whole world, you’re not supposed to sit by when you’re witnessing a war crime. And there was no question, serious war crime. And Bradley Manning should have been rewarded with some kind of Medal of Freedom or something, and instead is now in jail. Let’s cut to the chase here. Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning, is in prison. Why? Because they want to break her to testify against Julian Assange, that somehow he was complicit. So he’s not just a publisher, he’s actually an activist or something. The same way Daniel Ellsberg–Daniel Ellsberg was not a publisher, Daniel Ellsberg was in the position that Chelsea Manning is in: seeing evidence of war crimes, and releasing them as a whistleblower. Julian Assange, as you pointed out, is in the position of the New York Times and the Washington Post, that published the Pentagon Papers.

TA: We live in a very debased world now, Bob, where double standards have prevailed for so long that very few citizens actually recognize what a norm is, or how people should behave. They’ve been swept into this mainstream media bubble. And you know, when the WikiLeaks papers were published by all these journalists, their readers were applauding them for doing it. But then memories are short. And I think what did play some part in sidelining Julian was the role of the Swedish government, which initially said–on the basis of very confused complaints, which many of us pointed out at the time–that in most countries of the world, what these two women who Julian had had relationships with were saying would not be considered rape. And in fact, three times the Swedish prosecutors said they had no case and dropped it, then were pushed into picking it up again. Now, just 10 days ago they’ve dropped it, hopefully finally, and said there is no case to answer. And the reason they gave was that he has no case to answer because memories are confused. It’s their phrase they’re using now.

The question is this, that the one thing we all know from the enormous amount of writing and coverage of rape, of men, young men and women in different parts of the world, that the one experience which is never confused–they never forget it; they might put it out of their minds for a while–is the day, the time, the hour they were raped. So if there was doubt right from the beginning, which has now become plain, some of the charges being made by Julian’s supporters when this case first went in that direction in Sweden was that this is a frame-up, that it’s a rigged trial. And the aim is to lock Julian up in a prison in Sweden till the United States can lift him from there somehow or the other, and take him back to the United States. When–

RS: Right, and–

TA: When Assange said this, they said he’s paranoid.

RS: No, but–yeah, but let me–let me just interrupt you for a second, because I earned the right, because I read the book [Laughs] very carefully. And one of the compelling points in the book that you edited is even if you took the worst case, this has nothing to do with why Julian Assange is sitting in a jail, in a prison, in England. And he’s there because the United States government has filed a complaint against him–complaints–that have nothing to do with what he did in Sweden. And had nothing to do, in fact, with what he did or did not do in relation to the 2016 election campaign. They specifically relate to the incident, and the incidents, of that time period that you described, where Julian Assange revealed very serious war crimes committed by the United States in Iraq. And that information–going back to 2010, preceding all this other stuff–is clearly information which Julian Assange, as a publishing journalist, revealed information that the world had a need and a right to know, OK.

And so we should, if we read the charge that the U.S. government has leveled now against Julian Assange–and against, even though Barack Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning, but they’re keeping Chelsea Manning now in jail to testify against Julian Assange–the issue here is a classic Nuremberg trial whistleblower issue. If you see war crimes, as Chelsea Manning, then Bradley Manning did, do you have an obligation to reveal that information? And should a publisher, within the standard that the U.S. has held up to the whole world with this First Amendment–does that fall under the protection of press freedom? Everything else–and that’s what I got from your book more than anything else–everything else is a distraction. Everything else is a distraction. The U.S. government has now asked the government of England to keep this man under horrible conditions, in prison, where he can’t even consult his notes, easily consult his lawyers. Why? For only one reason, according to their document, which is that he revealed information relating to war crimes committed by the United States government. And now they want to grab him, they want to extradite him, and they want to throw him in a maximum security prison somewhere in Colorado so no one can ever hear from him again. That’s the nut of this case, is it not?

TA: Absolutely right. And the British government organizing a dress rehearsal for this by keeping him in Belmarsh prison, which is a high-security prison where he’s [surrounded] either by people who have committed unspeakable murders, or so-called terrorists charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts, with very high security; he’s been kept in isolation. And just yesterday, Bob, 60 doctors signed a public statement saying that they were extremely concerned at Julian’s state of health, and they were worried that he might die in prison. And one reason why they’re worried, some have actually inspected him and done tests. The others are basing their judgments on how he was when he appeared before court, and found it very difficult to speak because of the conditions under which he’s being kept. We don’t know for sure whether he’s being given drugs, as well, as they used to do in the bad old hospitals to calm him down, et cetera, et cetera.

So it’s a very serious situation. And you’re right, the main charge against him, so-called espionage, is actually revealing war crimes. And even though, because of the human rights interventions, so-called, there was a court set up at The Hague in Holland to try politicians and leaders and military leaders for war crimes, this is only applied to countries which the United States regards as hostile. So Milosevic of Serbia was taken to prison, tried; he died during the trial, in bad health conditions. The same court has also dried Rwandans, et cetera. But this court cannot try the United States for war crimes, because the United States refused to accept any foreign jurisdiction or international jurisdiction on what they do. And if my memory serves me right, they actually passed in Congress a law which was like the invasion of Holland act–that if any U.S. soldier or officer was taken before this court, the U.S. reserved right to invade that country and get him or her released.

So, but leave aside the United States–I mean, in Britain, where I’m based, Tony Blair lied through his teeth to force this country to go to war against massive opposition, and they’ve committed war crimes. And Blair really should, Blair and Bush and Cheney should be tried as war criminals. But will they be touched? No. Instead, they have gone on the offensive against people who are now revealing systematically what war crimes took place, not just in Iraq, but also other parts of the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. And this is now a continuing problem.

So the case of Julian Assange is extremely important. Because they’re now–in the way they’re dealing with him, in trying to crush him–is I think, by and large, intended as a deterrent to stop any other whistleblowers in doing government jobs. Which Assange wasn’t; he’s just a publisher. But the people who he got the leaks from–Bradley, now Chelsea Manning, and others–were working in, you know, important positions. Important not in a hierarchical sense, but important in the sense that they were reading the information. It’s to frighten these people off–your Edward Snowdens, who’s a nice, decent, all-American kid, shocked by his bosses when they lied to the Senate committee and said that American citizens weren’t being spied on. And then it was revealed not only were American citizens being spied on, but European heads of states. And Angela Merkel, the German chancellor’s secret, private phone, was being tapped with the collaboration of the German secret service.

RS: Right, and let me just point out that–and which in your book is pointed out very clearly–that Julian Assange played a critical role in helping Edward Snowden avoid prosecution and being grabbed and silenced, which is what the U.S. government wanted to do at that point. And then they denied him the right to fly anywhere, and he ended up in Moscow not out of choice, but because his passport was pulled. But let me just cut to the key issue here. Because it’s interesting; at this very moment when we’re taping this, Donald Trump is now under attack by the same democrats that called Snowden a traitor, and attacked Julian Assange because he inconvenienced them. But Donald Trump has come, I think immorally, to the defense of a Navy SEAL who was involved in the death of innocents, or somebody they claimed was criminal, and was photographed with this person. It was the same kind of act that Bradley Manning was able to reveal on the part of U.S. pilots. They were gleefully killing civilians, and photographing it and everything else, you know. And so what was revealed by Julian Assange, which is the basic charge against him, is exactly the kind of activity that this Navy SEAL was convicted on, and that Donald Trump is now trying to release.

I also want to make one critical point here, which your book is a collection of essays by really quite authoritative voices, and it does range through all of the character assassination against Julian Assange, and it dissects it, and it’s important for that reason. Yes, and the character assassination, by the way, I didn’t mean to dismiss it; it’s quite effective. It’s why Julian Assange is not getting the support he deserves from the very news organizations that publish the information he revealed. They’re in this incredibly hypocritical position of saying he’s not a journalist, but they won prizes publishing the material that he gave them. That’s called journalism, OK. They endorsed his journalism by reprinting it all over the world, the most famous publications. But character assassination of a whistleblower is not new. It’s the norm.

And Daniel Ellsberg experienced it. Let me just make that point, because again, I was at that trial, and I’ve known Daniel for all these years; I admire him enormously. But he was the victim of very similar character assassination about his personal life and everything. And indeed, Watergate came unglued over the revelation it started that these same Watergate people had broken into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychologist’s office in Beverly Hills to get negative material about Daniel’s personal life. That was the whole–preceded Watergate, the break-in of–why were they there? Because they were out to smear Daniel Ellsberg, and say oh, he’s not really a serious person concerned about issues. he’s some kind of degenerate. And they do that with every whistleblower. They manage to effectively destroy their lives, they deny them their pensions, and they always try to break the whistleblowers. And in this case, Julian Assange is not the whistleblower, he is the publisher, very much like–exactly like–the New York Times or the Washington Post, that is printing someone else’s story.

Now, let’s talk about the US. charges against him. The reason some in the media are now changing their editorial tone is because the charges go to the very idea of investigative journalism. They say if you take any material that has been called classified on some level–and by the way, the material that Julian Assange revealed was a low level of classification, it should be pointed out, you know. But the fact of the matter is that every newspaper that publishes stories on the national security state, and what the military does, they’re printing material that generally have a higher level of classification than that revealed by Julian Assange. So it finally dawned on the editorial board of the New York Times, which first had attacked Julian Assange and the Washington Post, that wait a minute, this is setting a very dangerous precedent. Because Julian Assange didn’t do anything different than what the New York Times did.

TA: Well, this is absolutely correct. I mean, it’s the same here. The Guardian, which had ignored Julian for some years, and not been supportive, was forced to write an editorial in which they said that the–more or less what you’re saying, in a milder way. But–and said that under no circumstances should he be extradited to the United States. So they have come clean. And the last time I met Julian, just before he was transferred to Belmarsh prison, when we were about to commence work on the book, I went to see him to make sure he was OK with the idea of doing a book like this. And he was naturally very happy and pleased, since support for him had ebbed away. I said, Julian, tell me honestly, do you have any hope? And he said, in the judicial system of the West, no; but my one hope is that Jeremy Corbyn is elected and is in Downing Street; that is the only hope I have. And of course the Labour frontbenches in Parliament have defended Julian very strongly. Both Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, and his shadow Home Secretary–the woman who would be the Home Secretary if Corbyn won, Diane Abbott–made it very clear that they don’t accept these charges, that what Julian is really being charged for is exposing murder and war crimes in a number of countries which have been invaded, et cetera. So the other point, Bob, which is I think worth stressing, is that however much they used debased stuff to try and discredit Ellsberg, as you point out, which I have a vague memory of, and more recently Julian Assange–

RS: By the way–by the way–

TA: –it doesn’t work, because sooner or later someone else, someone decent, watching a war crime being committed, will do the same thing. They will not remember these things, of what was done to X or Y, or won’t let it influence them, and will reveal them. And the big difference between the Ellsberg phase and the world today is that the access to the web, the existence of the web, does make a huge difference. And the stuff can be transmitted, published, very quickly, without even appearing in a mainstream paper. So I think in a way–and they probably know it, which is why the stakes are so high–they’re fighting a losing battle.

RS: Well, except have you read your Orwell lately? Ah–

TA: Well, no. I mean–yes, that would of course be a question of making democracy purely a ritual. So no substance whatsoever.

RS: Let me just jump in on this thing with Ellsberg, because I think it’s important. The reason Daniel Ellsberg–and I’ve done a podcast with him, but I also know him quite well–the reason he speaks out so strongly is he knows, he felt the lash of this kind of character assassination, dismissal. Here was a guy who had been a Marine, he supported the war, he worked for the Pentagon, he was one of the real top, bright guys. And then he realized he had been lied to, and he revealed this history, which is what the Pentagon Papers showed: that the whole effort was a tissue of lies, and that they knew it in real time–the top people, McNamara and Johnson and then others. And what is at issue here, really, is political convenience and opportunism and power taking over logic, fact, decency, morality. That’s really what’s going on.

And the power of your collection here–and by the way, OR Books, I guess, is a smaller publisher, but people–thanks again to the internet, yes, they can go online and get this book in Kindle form, or find some independent bookstore, or get it through Amazon or what have you. So they can have this book within 15 minutes of hearing this podcast. And I would really recommend it, because you may think you know a lot about this case–and every aspect is dealt with. Every single aspect–the indictment, the charges in Sweden, the slander–everything is dealt with, and I think in a ruthlessly honest way, by the way. Ruthlessly honest, you know. And yet at the heart of it is, this is a question of press freedom and the right of citizens to know the truth. That is the issue.

And you have really not talked about the range of Julian’s work. So I want to make that point. I was unaware of the, you know, the attack on Julian–which should be irrelevant anyway–is to say, oh, he’s got an axe to grind against the U.S. government or so forth. OK, even if that were true, shooting the messenger, the publisher of information–which is what Nixon did to Ellsberg, by the way. You know, challenge him, character assassination and so forth, weakening American security and all that. But the reality is that Julian Assange was an equal opportunity [Laughs] exposer of crimes. And he did so with dictators in Africa and the Middle East; he released a lot of information that was very inconvenient to Putin’s government in Russia. And your book makes very clear, in a number of these really detailed and important articles on every level–including from Women Against Rape and so forth, who attack that whole canard against him–that in fact the media has distorted this case, and until it realized that they were going to be the next target, were quite willing to have Julian Assange destroyed.

That is the ugly truth here. That here you have a guy who performed incredibly valuable journalism–and as I say, equal opportunity, and making powerful people around the world uncomfortable–uncomfortable, given a lot of credit for the Arab Spring, for example. And yet there’s a failure to support him. And particularly–I’m part of the liberal, so-called liberal or neoliberal community in the United States. I can tell you, I’m doing this from a university campus, the University of Southern California; I have colleagues here who have told me, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Julian Assange. Or they don’t care about him anymore, even though they may be journalism professors or what have you. It is appalling. And why? Because you know, they’re not–they’re saying if the information that came out was valuable, but it inconvenienced–and let’s cut to the chase here, even though it’s not the basis of the charges against him. What is the big crime that he released this information?

And let’s end on this. In your book, there are a lot of people who say, wait a minute, the Russian connection–there’s no evidence for a Russian connection. Which by the way, even if there was, if the information is information that should be out there, that should be the standard. But in your book, there’s really detailed discussion of the whole case here that is motivating a lot of liberal people, that somehow he came down on the side of Trump. Where on the contrary, first of all, the information that was revealed, we had a right to have. What did Hillary Clinton say in those speeches to Goldman Sachs? Which was, basically, she was going to take these same bankers who caused the Great Recession with her back to Washington. And also the evidence in the Podesta emails of the Democratic National Committee undermining Bernie Sanders’ campaign. You know, nobody ever talks about what was the information revealed; they talked about where did it come from. But in your book, there’s a pretty strong case made that the Russia connection is highly dubious.

TA: Well, it is very dubious. And you know, Julian Assange has denied it to me personally, and to lots of other people. But he’s not being taken seriously, because it doesn’t fit in with the liberal attack on Julian Assange. I mean, there are U.S. democrat senators, Bob–Senator Joe Manchin, for instance, who declared–and I just want to read out what this democrat senator said: ”It will be really good to get him back on United States soil. He is our property, and we can get the facts and the truth from him.” I mean, it’s just disgusting–

RS: How does he get to be their property?

TA: Exactly–

RS: That’s like kidnapping, because he’s not even–he’s not a US citizen.

TA: No. It’s sort of, it’s–it’s the use of gangster language, actually, both in relation to him and others, which has now got so common. And if, you know, if Americans want to know the honest truth, which many of them know, that the people who put Trump into power, I’m afraid, are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and their failures. That’s who put Trump into power, not the leaking of documents which just simply tell the truth. I mean, why should these documents be hidden from the U.S. public? The way the United States functions now, and many European countries as well, is that there are certain things which the public–should be kept from the public. It’s as though citizens were children, and as parents used to say, ”not in front of the children.” And that is how they treat their own citizens. They don’t want them to know. But it’s very difficult now to push this through and carry on behaving as they were decades ago, because of the web and the internet. A lot of rubbish and lies are published on the web, too, but it’s incredibly useful when it comes to revealing information. And this hatred for him, professed by Clinton supporters, don’t challenge what Clinton herself was doing. It was Goldman Sachs, it was the coup in Honduras, et cetera, et cetera. How the hell does that help the Russians in particular? I don’t even understand.

And in any event, any newspaper–serious newspaper with serious editors, and there are very few now, I agree–when handed a piece of information, and after they’ve convinced themselves that this piece of information is actually accurate, they never release, or they shouldn’t release, the name of the source. I mean, that is a golden rule of investigative journalism. If you are convinced by your source–I mean, Sy Hersh does it all the time. Publishes facts about massacres, war crimes all over the world; he carries on doing this; he will not reveal his source. He will say it was someone in intelligence; he will not go beyond that. Does that disqualify the information? I don’t think so. If the journalist in question, whether it’s Sy Hersh or Julian Assange, is proved right.

But Sy Hersh isn’t in prison–fortunately. Julian Assange is. And I think American journalism departments, and American journalists–people who actually believe in the ideology that the press should be free, and not like, as they say constantly in Putin’s Russia–they should do something about it. It’s time to take a stand on Julian, whatever you may think of his personal character or his personal habits–utterly irrelevant in this case. It’s the role he plays, the role he occupies, and why he is getting support from all of us. But we’re not enough to try and stop the extradition. And here the plans are being made for a big demonstration when the court trial begins in February, which could go on for some time. Unless there’s a Labour government, in which case the charges–they might find a way to, you know, challenge the extradition.

RS: Let me wrap this up by saying there’s a human drama here that is appalling. And we’ve talked a lot about Julian Assange, but the real victim here is Chelsea Manning. And here is an incredibly heroic figure. Not originally some famous person, not some highly educated person; not some, you know, person who could articulate a great deal about a lot of things. Sitting there as a low-ranking army personnel person, with access to this data. And says, ”My god, this stuff is horrible. My god, I just saw a video where”–and I’m, you know, I’m putting words in her–in his mouth, then, and Bradley Manning. But you know, my sense of it is this is a person looking at video and saying, ”They’re killing children, they’re killing innocent people, and they’re laughing about it. They are monsters, our own troops, my colleagues are acting as monsters. I have an obligation to get this out there.”

And let’s be clear about one thing that your book that you edited makes very clear. Bradley Manning did not take this material originally to Julian Assange. Bradley Manning took this material, originally tried to get the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others to print it. They were not interested, as I understand. And in the telling of the story in this book, In Defense of Julian Assange, he becomes the publisher of last resort. He’s the one that has the courage to reveal war crimes, which you would think would be the obligation of any publisher.

TA: Yeah. And then having, Julian having done it, these newspapers which refused to touch the material when it was provided directly to them by Manning, are only too happy to use a third party, a mediator, who has taken the risks, done everything, and then they can publish it. I mean, that itself is, in itself is a sad commentary, Bob, on the state of mainstream journalism today. I mean, it just is atrocious.

RS: Well, let’s really nail that one down. And there’s a side issue connected with it. Because first of all, you’ve written a lot about foreign policy, and about communism and everything else. And in fact, there’s a very interesting essay in your collection, I forget who wrote it. But really, this debate between Russia and the United States is not a debate between communism and capitalism. It’s a debate between the 1% in Russia–in post-communist Russia, capitalist Russia–the 1% against the 1% in the U.S., you know, fighting over leverage. And you know, and we have red-baiting without reds. I mean, Putin was elected–actually, Putin was working, you know, for the American-selected leader of Russia. And he was the candidate against the communists, and he was–when Boris Yeltsin was hopelessly drunk, Putin was the one that Yeltsin turned to, to be the candidate in that 2000 election against a communist.

But we have red-baiting without reds. We have red-baiting against a rival cartel economy. And the irony here is that the principle that should be driving everyone is freedom of information, right? Freedom, the right of the public to know. And no one can question that Julian Assange did more than any other single publisher that I know of. After all, the New York Times spread misinformation about the Gulf War; the New York Times spread misinformation about the Vietnam War. I mean, these other publishers don’t have these spotless records, after all, you know. But the irony here is that the character assassination against Julian Assange is used to disparage the importance of his journalism. You know, and the journalism is unquestionably excellent journalism.

You know, if you want to talk about fake news, if it had been fake speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs, you could say wait a minute, this guy fabricated, or those were fake videos of U.S. troops shooting innocent civilians. But no one has questioned the veracity. In fact, they have actually accused Julian of releasing too much of the information, because in the early release there were names and so forth. They wanted him, as most journalists of the establishment do, to redact it, so you don’t get into these security issues, and then Julian Assange and WikiLeaks performed differently. But the fact of the matter is, no one has questioned the veracity of the information, or said it was cherry-picked or distorted, or anything else. The mainstream media made a living off this information from this publisher, when they themselves didn’t have the guts to run it. And then they turned on him. That’s the reality.

And the crucifixion of Julian Assange–which is really what’s going on. Because if the man is driven mad, if he’s destroyed–and as I say, even more so–we haven’t spent time, because this book is not called “in defense of Chelsea Manning.” But for my money, the real hero here is Chelsea Manning. This is the person that is now sacrificing her freedom. So instead of just turning on Julian Assange–if she had turned on Julian Assange, she’d be a hero to the very people in the Democratic Party who are now, you know, trying to crucify Julian Assange. So Chelsea Manning has shown, from beginning to end, an incredible courage. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a more courageous person on the side of freedom of information than Chelsea Manning. And I don’t want that lost in this podcast, because that’s the thought I had in reading this book. Their effort now to get Julian Assange really depends on breaking Chelsea Manning, who as we speak is in prison.

TA: I couldn’t agree more, Bob. I mean, what Chelsea, then Bradley Manning, did as a very junior operative in signals in the U.S. military intelligence, working for the U.S. Army took a hell of a lot of guts and courage. And one can only imagine the impact of watching these crimes being committed day in and day out, and finally watching things he just–at that time, he–couldn’t simply accept anymore. That is when he broke, if you like, from the system and its pattern of lies and evasions and cover-ups, and came out. And then was locked up, kept in horrible conditions in the United States, finally released–the one useful, decent, halfway decent thing Obama did. And then captured again. Let’s not say ”arrested”; captured by the U.S. judicial system, and told to testify against Julian. And if she did so, obviously, she would have been–you know, she’s kept very strong, I mean very, very strong faith in what she did, and in what he did. And it is to their enormous credit that we are where we are in our knowledge of what happened in the case, particularly of war crimes in Iraq. No doubt in 25 years’ time everyone will be saying it like they never believed us when we said it about Vietnam till My Lai erupted; then they said the My Lai massacre was just, you know, a bad–a bad thing, it wasn’t like that. But we now know it was like that. And this wasn’t the only massacre that was carried out.

And so Julian has reminded us of all that history in the publication of U.S. diplomatic documents. Now the irony here is, Bob, which we should just register, is that some of the stuff being sent by American embassies secretly, in classified encryptions back to DC and the State Department, contained some very useful information from some intelligent U.S. diplomats, contradicting the public stuff the politicians were coming up with, and giving an account privately, or in private documents, of what was actually going on in the country they were based in. I mean, very useful stuff for any investigative journalist. So even on that level, they shouldn’t have been victimizing him. And the later Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, saying that he’s running a privatized intelligence agency–now, think about that. What the hell is a privatized intelligence agency? I mean–

RS: I’ll tell you what it is, and we’re going to close with this. Everyone likes a whistleblower as long as he’s blowing the whistle on their opponent, or in some other regime, or so forth. And you know, [Laughs] Donald Trump–I don’t know why I’m laughing, but it’s such a bizarre situation–at one point praised Julian Assange, because he’s taking on the democrats. And now of course he’s the man that’s going to kill Julian Assange, one way or another; drive him mad, try to drag him to a maximum security prison in the United States and throw away the key until the guy’s a blithering idiot. And that’s what it’s all about. But that’s all the hypocrisy we can explore in this limited time. I’ve been talking to Tariq Ali, who along with Margaret Kunstler has collected an incredible book. I mean, you’ve got to get ahold of this book if you really want to understand. And In Defense of Julian Assange is really in defense of press freedom.

We recorded at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism where Bobby Prom was the engineer. We want to thank KCRW for hosting this show, and Christopher Ho is our editor there. And Joshua Scheer is the overall producer of Scheer Intelligence, and thank him for lining up our guests and setting the tone for this program. See you next week with another edition of Scheer Intelligence.

Are Democrats Blowing Trump’s Impeachment?

T his article o rigin ally appeared o n Salon.

Thursday’s announcement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Democrats are ready to vote articles of impeachment against President Trump — presumably on the narrowest possible terms, after a constrained and foreshortened process — is hardly surprising. It is, however, disheartening. Why they would even consider moving to a floor vote on impeachment without doing whatever is necessary to compel testimony from John Bolton, who is now a private citizen and has always been a blast-hardened neocon Republican, and who is clearly eager to roast Donald Trump’s gizzard on a fork and then eat it, is profoundly baffling.

Or maybe, sadly, it isn’t. So far, this spectacle confirms my sense that the Democratic Party is strikingly ill-prepared for the historical role it ought to play in this moment of small-d democratic crisis. Driven as usual by fear, excessive caution and a morbid fascination with identifying the middle of the middle of the political middle (and then veering slightly to its right), the Democrats are entirely likely to screw things up, whether morally or tactically or politically or all at once. (See also David Masciotra’s excellent Salon essay last weekend.)

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Actually, the Democrats have already screwed it up. Let’s be clear that the Republican defense of Trump is completely incoherent, because there is no defense for his actions. But on a generic or abstract level, Republicans have floated halfway-valid concerns about the process of the impeachment inquiry and the motivations behind it — which Democrats have done little to dispel.

Republicans claim that Democrats have been itching for a pretext to impeach Trump since before he took office, and finally landed on one. That’s at least partly true, although the Angry White People Party is too consumed by paranoid delusions to understand the ways in which it is both true and untrue, and how those reflect the deep and wide schism within the Democrats over how to respond to the Trump era. Sure, Rashida Tlaib got elected in Detroit vowing to “impeach the motherf***er,” but a whole lot of other Democrats got elected while not talking about that at all, and explicitly or otherwise espousing the “back to normal” politics that have made Joe Biden the 2020 frontrunner all year long.

In case you haven’t been keeping score, there is no “normal” to go back to, history never flows backward and that whole approach is a dangerous delusion, as we will all learn the hard way soon enough. Biden would be a disastrous nominee and a terrible president, which is not to say there’s an obvious alternative who inspires immense confidence. But for our present purposes all that is a side issue, even if it’s also a yawning abyss beneath our feet.

Speaking of delusions, Republicans’ elaborate conspiracy theories about how Ukraine and the Democrats (with the help of the CIA and FBI) faked the Russian hack of the DNC in order to launch an investigation of the Trump campaign add up to something like a masterful work of literary parody, out of an unwritten Don DeLillo or Colson Whitehead novel. It’s complete nonsense, of course, but it’s admirably creative nonsense, and you might say it gestures at something real, which is that the “Ukraine scandal” refers to deeply buried issues in U.S. foreign policy that are virtually never discussed in public.

Why exactly is the United States so deeply entangled in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, two bordering nations on the other side of the world — not to mention two nations with a long history of deeply fraught relations, none of which has anything to do with us? I don’t claim that there are no explanations, only that no one outside the national-security priesthood of people like John Bolton and Fiona Hill (or Nancy Pelosi, for that matter) really understands them. Furthermore, no one in either political party is particularly eager to debate such questions on TV, so that while the facts of the Trump-Biden-Giuliani-Zelensky morass have more or less come out, the deeper questions beneath them are never asked, let alone answered.

Before you get worked up to tweet at me about how I’m spewing Putin’s talking points or whatever, let me assure you that I don’t exactly know what those would be, but I’m pretty sure they’re crap also. Putin isn’t my problem! What I’m noticing here is Democrats’ eagerness to turn the impeachment inquiry into a display of flag-waving patriotism and unanimous agreement on what is essentially a neocon foreign-policy consensus.

Nothing about the Trump presidency is more deeply perverse (to me, anyway) than the Democratic Party’s abrupt rebranding as woke BFF of the national-security state. I hope people whose villages get droned in Afghanistan or Somalia are comforted by the increasing intersectionality of our WorldCop force. (People reference “Idiocracy” a lot to explain the Trump era, but I would also refer you to Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers,” in which the fascist dictator of Earth is a black woman.)

How many “liberals” of the so-called resistance even noticed the U.S.-endorsed coup in Venezuela (which failed) or the one in Bolivia (which was a glorious success), let alone raised any questions about them? Former CIA head John Brennan has become a resistance hero, which if you do even minimal research on the guy’s career is darkly hilarious. We have all, apparently, agreed to pretend that Abu Ghraib and the black sites are ancient, irrelevant historical footnotes or events in an alternate timeline.

Here’s a detour; it’s somewhat relevant, I believe. There was a lot I didn’t understand about the Senate Watergate hearings of 1973, which I watched as a child, pretty much gavel-to-gavel, perched on my dad’s moldering horsehair sofa and riveted to his black-and-white portable TV, which was normally shoved in the corner of his study like an unwelcome guest. (We had been one of those irritating no-TV families until he bought it to watch occasional baseball games and irritate my mother.)

I didn’t know much about the Democratic Party at that time, for one thing. I certainly didn’t grasp that it was going through a period of remarkable internal turmoil — arguably more severe than anything inflicted by Bernie Sanders or “the Squad” — even as it tried to drive a Republican president from office. I definitely didn’t know that Sen. Sam Ervin of North Carolina, the bourbon-voiced Southern gentleman who chaired that committee, was an old-line segregationist, then making an uneasy peace with the civil rights era. Ervin was a creature of that era and not this one, so the comparison may be nonsensical, but almost any white Southern man of his background and inclinations would be a Republican in 2019.

To be fair, my dad probably didn’t grasp those nuances either. He was an Irish immigrant who viewed the Democratic Party with an almost mystical veneration. He certainly supported some Democrats and opposed others, more on emotional grounds than ideological ones: Heartbroken by the death of Bobby Kennedy and the social schism of the Vietnam War, he had refused to vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. But an elected Democrat, for him, was something like a Roman Catholic priest: Whatever his (or, hypothetically, her) personal failings, he carried the authority of an institution that spoke for the people.

Republicans of that time absolutely argued that the Democrats’ Watergate investigation was an illegitimate attempt to undo an election defeat, one of many echoes from that era heard in this one. (And boy howdy, had the Democrats suffered an election defeat in 1972, when George McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, losing to Richard Nixon by almost 18 million votes.) In our household, that argument rang hollow, but then our partisan loyalty was not in question.

It never occurred to me to doubt that Democrats held the moral and political high ground when it came to Watergate (and pretty much everything else), or that they had gravely and soberly embarked on a search for the truth, taking no pleasure in unmasking a low-grade criminal scheme masterminded by the increasingly paranoid occupant of the Oval Office. In the end, of course, as we are repeatedly reminded, Republicans bowed before the irresistible logic of mounting evidence and shifting public opinion.

There were definitely some hard-line true believers who wanted to back Nixon to the end, and who felt their party had capitulated to the treasonous libtards and the New York Times. I think there’s no doubt that the bitter, half-remembered residue of that sentiment fuels Republican intransigence today, when the president they must defend makes Nixon look like Lorenzo de’ Medici.

In any event, a few GOP members even voted for articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee, and a bunch more waffled over it. Finally a delegation of Republican senators, led by conservative godfather Barry Goldwater, went to the White House to tell Nixon the jig was up: If he didn’t resign, he’d be convicted by the Senate and forced from office, something that, to date, has never happened in American history and probably never will.

Of course there are some striking similarities between that era and this one, but I think the differences — both grand and subtle — are more important. Any number of pundits have lamented that the Republican Party of 2019 isn’t remotely interested in facts or evidence, and will continue to defend Donald Trump up to and beyond a video of the president stuffing bundles of Vladimir Putin’s rubles down his pants. Fair enough: The “moderate,” statesmanlike Republicans of Nixon’s era, who thoughtfully crunched the ice cubes in their bourbon-and-soda at the country club, and who valued continuity and stability over raw power or loyalty to a noxious figurehead, are gone forever.

But the Democrats, as mentioned above, have been changed by history too. What we’re seeing now, to a significant extent, is a resurgence of the factional conflict that had been almost completely suppressed across 40-odd years of compromise, triangulation, recalibration and defeat. The actual left — meaning both the socialist Old Left and the 1960s-radical New Left — had either been purged or reduced to an irrelevant rump faction. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio ran for president a couple of times, made no serious impact and was treated with benign condescension — which was what nearly everyone in the party expected would happen with Bernie Sanders in 2016.

With the growth of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the election of the Squad — and scores or hundreds of allied office-holders at the state and local levels — a broader range of left and center-left positions is represented among Democratic elected officials than at any time since at least the “New Democrat” era of Bill Clinton. Much has been made of how diverse the House Democratic caucus is in terms of color, ethnicity and gender (which is surely important), but the renewed ideological diversity is every bit as striking.

This has clearly raised the temperature of internal dialogue within the party (and not just in the tedious Twitter wars between “stan” armies), which is sometimes visible — as in the public spat between Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez earlier this year — and sometimes not. It seems apparent that dynamic is playing out behind the scenes in the impeachment debate. If Tlaib became famous for promising she was going to Washington to impeach Trump, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, who took the House Judiciary Committee gavel last January — a CPC member who is ideologically closer to Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez than to Pelosi — was making similar promises, much more discreetly.

Many House progressives, Nadler likely included, wanted to pursue an impeachment of Trump on the widest possible terms: for the corrupt and unethical conduct exhaustively detailed in the Mueller report, for his many violations of the emoluments clause and blatant self-dealing, for his usurpation of congressional appropriations to build his stupid wall, for his campaign-finance violations, for his relentless efforts to undermine or defy the constitutional separation of powers. I mean, we could keep going. That approach would have had the obvious merit of seeking full transparency and exposing a widespread pattern of criminality that would be impossible to explain away, and would not have relied exclusively on anti-Russia hysteria or the contentious “collusion” questions surrounding the 2016 campaign.

It also, without doubt, would have taken a long time, quite possibly as long as the 16-month investigation of Sam Ervin’s Watergate committee. For Pelosi, whose primary goal was and is preserving the House majority in 2020, that looked like an unacceptable risk. No one disputes that she’s good at political arithmetic, but this kind of short-term calculus was precisely not what the moment required. As I’ve argued previously, a younger speaker who wasn’t so concerned with her legacy might have been more willing to roll the dice and stand up for a clear set of values.

Pelosi is eager to protect her supposedly vulnerable House freshmen, and a lot of them are centrists who want no part of the CPC, the Squad or the left. But it’s a mistake to perceive her tactics as purely pragmatic or strategic: Pelosi can call herself a “San Francisco progressive” all she likes, but ideologically she is strongly aligned with the liberal and/or neoliberal tradition that stretches from Hillary Clinton back to Hubert Humphrey, which favors incremental social-justice reforms at home (in fairness, sometimes quite significant reforms) coupled with unquestioned support for American exceptionalism, empire-building and military intervention abroad.

For Pelosi, the swing-district moderates, and especially the former military or intelligence professionals sometimes dubbed the “CIA Democrats” — a group that includes Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Andy Kim, Tom Malinowski and Mikie Sherrill, all of New Jersey — are much closer to the future she imagines for the Democratic Party than are AOC and Rashida Tlaib.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why Pelosi made the deal she made. But when the Ukraine scandal almost literally fell out of the sky in late summer, she seized upon it as the catalyst for a compromise within her caucus. The lefties were eager to impeach Trump, and Pelosi got the hawkish moderate freshmen to go along as long as it was a “clean,” narrowly focused process that was all wrapped up by Christmas and provided an opportunity to grandstand about national security, roll out a bunch of witnesses with impressive credentials of patriotic service and expose Republicans as a bunch of weaselly hypocrites who have taken a vow to love Sluglord Trump more than they love America. (Which is of course accurate.)

But the problem, as I’ve tried to explore in roundabout fashion, is that there’s nothing clean about the Ukraine scandal or this impeachment, which is why we all feel profoundly dissatisfied with it. Essentially, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are patting the left-progressive base on the head and sending it to bed with a hastily constructed impeachment-theater skit, full of high-flown rhetoric and largely drained of meaning.

I’m not excusing the gangsterish conduct of Trump and his minions in any way. But here’s what they did: They tried to pull a murky criminal scheme in a legendarily corrupt country where the U.S. has played a mysterious sponsorship role ever since the Ukrainian revolution and/or coup of 2014 (reports vary!) overthrew pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. We aren’t, of course, supposed to think too hard about that background, or about exactly why the U.S. is involved in this particular proxy war on the other side of the world. Why not, I guess? There are loads of others!

By the way, can we stop pretending that whatever Hunter Biden was doing in Ukraine was fine and squeaky-clean and totally above board? That’s all a parenthesis, of course, and there’s no evidence that his dad was directly involved, even if the optics were kind of un-good. But Hunter was getting paid a one-percenter salary to do absolutely nothing because he was the vice president’s son. If you are truly committed to constructing that as “well, he didn’t do anything wrong,” you’re either a shameless party hack or you’ve been thoroughly gaslit by end-stage capitalism. Probably both.

Trump’s Ukraine extortion campaign didn’t work. The Democrats’ quick and dirty impeachment won’t work either. Those things are metaphors, but what the hell for? Maybe for all the deeper, darker crimes we don’t know about, and all the hard questions we should ask ourselves but don’t. The impeachment of Donald Trump has just started, and now it’s almost over. Soon it will be just as if it never happened at all.

Pete Buttigieg Faces New Scrutiny for McKinsey Past

Days after reports surfaced about the global consulting firm McKinsey’s work advising the Trump administration on immigration policy, calls are growing louder for South Bend, Indiana mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to disclose details about the work he did for the company.

Political observers took notice Thursday evening when the New York Times editorial board joined ethics watchdogs in demanding that Buttigieg release the information, saying his claims that he is bound by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) create a situation that is “untenable.”

“Mr. Buttigieg owes voters a more complete account of his time at the company. Voters seeking an alternative to Mr. Trump should demand that candidates not only reject Mr. Trump’s positions, but also his behavior—including his refusal to share information about his health and his business dealings,” the editors wrote. “This standard requires Mr. Buttigieg to talk about his time at McKinsey.”

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Buttigieg worked for McKinsey from 2007 to 2010 and claims he worked in a junior position. He wrote briefly about his time at the company in his memoir, “Shortest Way Home,” acknowledging consulting work he did in Iraq and Afghanistan and in retail and corporate sectors.

The company, denounced by one critic as a “corporate greed machine,” has advised authoritarian regimes, including Saudi Arabia’s monarchy, state-owned companies in China, and the autocratic government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2017 McKinsey consultants advised President Donald Trump’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency on “detention savings opportunities,” recommending ways to reduce the amount of food and medical care immigrants were given while being detained by the U.S. government. The proposed cuts made “some career ICE workers uncomfortable” with the effects they would have on immigrants’ wellbeing, the New York Times and ProPublica reported.

Although Buttigieg no longer worked for McKinsey when the company advised CBP and ICE, Jeff Hauser of the government watchdog Revolving Door Project told the Huffington Post that Buttigieg must confirm whether his work was guided by the same worldview that led the company to recommend letting asylum-seekers go hungry to save money.

“We have plenty of experience that shows us how seeing the whole world in dollars and cents can be pretty harmful to vulnerable and poor people,” Hauser said. “Is that Pete Buttigieg’s approach to governance? If he can show he rebelled against that approach, that would be material to people, too.”

Hauser was among the critics who scoffed this week at the notion that McKinsey would take legal action against a high-profile presidential candidate who counts McKinsey employees among his top donors:

The NDA is about as legitimate an excuse as Donald Trump claiming an IRS audit is the reason he can’t release his tax returns to the public. There is no scenario whereby McKinsey would sue Pete Buttigieg, a rising political star and possible president of the United States, for violating a nondisclosure agreement.

The political risk is not that his former employer, a multibillion-dollar corporate entity that promotes fraud across the globe, will be mad at him. It’s what he would have to disclose.

On social media, journalist Irin Carmon agreed.

In the past 2-3 years, scores of women and men have broken their NDAs at great personal risk to inform the public interest. And anyway, what are the odds McKinsey goes after Buttigieg for disclosing client names and projects, in this political environment?

— Irin Carmon (@irin) December 6, 2019

“Looking afraid of a company that advised cutting food and medical services to immigrant detainees is a great look for a Democratic primary,” Carmon added sarcastically.

On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) demanded transparency from her opponent in the Democratic presidential primary, noting that aside from the secrecy surrounding Buttigieg’s work for McKinsey, the mayor should “open up the doors” to his private high-dollar fundraisers and let the media and the public know the names of his bundlers—major donors who solicit large contributions from others.

“Those doors shouldn’t be closed, and no one should be left to wonder what kind of promises are being made to the people that then pony up big bucks to be in the room,” Warren said.

Buttigieg’s campaign attempted to turn Warren’s comments back on her, with communications advisor Lis Smith calling on the senator to release her tax returns from her time as a corporate lawyer.

But unlike Buttigieg, Slate journalist Jordan Weissman wrote, Warren has a long, public record of fighting powerful corporations on behalf of working people. She has also released a list of clients she worked for in the private sector.

“This whataboutism might be more effective if Warren hadn’t gotten into politics by fighting the bankruptcy bill and creating the CFPB,” tweeted Weissman.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Buttigieg’s refusal to release information about his time at McKinsey could soon draw comparisons to President Donald Trump’s failure to disclose his tax returns.

“It’s a real fear of ours that Democrats and future Republican candidates for president will say, ‘Well, Trump got away with it, so we are going to, too,'” CREW communications director Jordan Libowitz told the Huffington Post. “Part of that is not letting Trump get away with it, part of that is holding Democrats to the same standard.”

Trump Fails Again to Bring Troops Home From the Middle East

Ann Arbor – Donald Trump’s Pentagon is allegedly mulling sending 14,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East to counter Iran.

Although the Pentagon pushed back against the initial report, that had only said they were considering the troop escalation, and the Pentagon did not deny considering it.

Trump has sent 14,000 troops to the Mideast since last May. Apparently the bulk of them are on an aircraft carrier. Some 3,000 are being sent to Saudi Arabia to help man new Patriot anti-missile batteries provided to the Kingdom after the September Iran-backed drone and rocket strikes on the Abqaiq oil facility, which temporarily took 5% of the world’s oil off the market.

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Only a Coalition of the Foolish Wants a War With Iran



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Trump made a big splash in October by claiming to bring home the 1,000 special operations personnel embedded with the Kurds in northern Syria. In fact, in the end he sent 500 of them to guard the Syrian oil fields in Deir al-Zor and repositioned the rest in Iraq.

So he didn’t actually bring any troops home, but has sent in 14,000 in the past half-year. There are some 60,000 US troops in the Greater Middle East, but their exact distribution is now hidden by the Pentagon.

A new contingent of 14,000 troops would double the extra total sent in 2019 alone and bring the over-all number to 74,000.

Aside from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, most US troops in the region are not war fighters. There are nearly 5,000 sailors at the HQ of the 5th Fleet at Manama, Bahrain. There are another 11,000 at al-Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, from which many air missions against ISIL in Iraq and Afghanistan and against the Taliban in the latter country are flown.

In June of 2017 Trump put the al-Udeid base in jeopardy by publicly backing the Saudi Arabian blockade of Qatar, but he was counter-acted by the Secretary of Defense James Mattis and then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

It is not clear to me how another 14,000 US troops would effectively do anything to block Iran. The 3,000 planned for Saudi Arabia to man the Patriot batteries make sense on the surface, at least, but that was part of the last 14,000-troop escalation. It is being reported that one Pentagon concern is Iranian missiles in Iraq. But Iraq currently doesn’t actually have a government and it is difficult to understand how Baghdad practically speaking could authorize an increase in 5,000 or so US troops stationed there (they largely advise the Iraqi Army on clean-up missions against the remnants of the ISIL terrorist group).

Iran does not have a significant number of Iranian troops outside the country. There may be a small contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps advisers in Iraq at the invitation of Baghdad, though their welcome among the protesting masses they and their proteges among the Shiite Iraqi militias is growing thin. There are about 2500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps advisers in Syria. At the height of the civil war back in 2016 there were estimated to be another 7500 or so conscripted Afghan and other foot soldiers, but it isn’t clear how many of those are still in country. I doubt there are more than a handful of IRGC personnel in Lebanon, though Iran funds the Shiite party-militia, the Hizbullah.

Iran has mainly benefited from soft power in the region, which can’t be countered easily by 14,000 US troops.