Chris Hedges's Blog, page 96

Michael Bloomberg Launches Democratic Presidential Bid

NEW YORK — Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the world’s richest men, has formally launched a Democratic bid for president.

Ending weeks of speculation, the 77-year-old former Republican announced his candidacy Sunday in a written statement posted on a campaign website describing himself as uniquely positioned to defeat President Donald Trump. He will quickly follow with a massive advertising campaign blanketing airways in key primary states across the U.S.

“I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America,” Bloomberg wrote.

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“We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions,” he continued. “He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.”

Bloomberg’s entrance comes just 10 weeks before primary voting begins, an unorthodox move that reflects anxiety within the Democratic Party about the strength of its current candidates.

As a centrist with deep ties to Wall Street, Bloomberg is expected to struggle among the party’s energized progressive base. He became a Democrat only last year. Yet his tremendous resources and moderate profile could be appealing in a primary contest that has become, above all, a quest to find the person best-positioned to deny Trump a second term next November.

Forbes ranked Bloomberg as the 11th-richest person in the world last year with a net worth of roughly $50 billion. Trump, by contrast, was ranked 259th with a net worth of just over $3 billion.

Already, Bloomberg has vowed to spend at least $150 million of his fortune on various pieces of a 2020 campaign, including more than $100 million for internet ads attacking Trump, between $15 million and $20 million on a voter registration drive largely targeting minority voters, and more than $30 million on an initial round of television ads.

He did not say how much he would be willing to spend overall on his presidential ambitions, but senior adviser Howard Wolfson did: “Whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump.”

Wolfson also said that Bloomberg would not accept a single political donation for his campaign or take a salary should he become president.

Even before the announcement was final, Democratic rivals like Bernie Sanders pounced on Bloomberg’s plans to rely on his personal fortune.

“I’m disgusted by the idea that Michael Bloomberg or any billionaire thinks they can circumvent the political process and spend tens of millions of dollars to buy elections,” Sanders tweeted on Friday.

Elizabeth Warren, another leading progressive candidate, also slammed Bloomberg on Saturday for trying to buy the presidency.

“I understand that rich people are going to have more shoes than the rest of us, they’re going to have more cars than the rest of us, they’re going to have more houses,” she said after a campaign stop in Manchester, New Hampshire. “But they don’t get a bigger share of democracy, especially in a Democratic primary. We need to be doing the face-to-face work that lifts every voice.”

Bloomberg does not speak in his announcement video, which casts him as a successful businessman who came from humble roots and ultimately “put his money where his heart is” to effect change on the top policy issues of the day — gun violence, climate change, immigration and equality, among them.

Bloomberg has devoted tens of millions of dollars to pursue his policy priorities in recent years, producing measurable progress in cities and states across America. He has helped shutter 282 coal plants in the United States and organized a coalition of American cities on track to cut 75 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2025.

But he is far from a left-wing ideologue.

Bloomberg has declined to embrace Medicare for All as a health care prescription or the “Green New Deal” to combat climate change, favoring a more pragmatic approach.

Still, he has endeared himself to many of the nation’s mayors, having made huge investments to help train local officials and encouraging them to take action on climate, guns and immigration in particular.

Ahead of Bloomberg’s presidential announcement, the mayors of Columbia, S.C., and Louisville, Ky., endorsed him. Despite that show of support from at least one prominent black leader, Bloomberg may have trouble building a multi-racial coalition early on given his turbulent record on race relations in New York.

He angered many minority voters during his 12 years in the New York City mayor’s office for embracing and defending the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police strategy, despite its disproportionate impact on people of color. Facing an African-American congregation this month in Brooklyn, Bloomberg apologized and acknowledged it often led to the detention of blacks and Latinos.

The apology was received skeptically by many prominent activists who noted that it was made as he was taking steps to enter the race.

The campaign will be headquartered in Manhattan and managed by longtime adviser Kevin Sheekey. Wolfson will also play a senior role.

Bloomberg’s team did not establish a super PAC before launching the campaign, preferring to run the primary campaign and a simultaneous set of general election-focused moves like the anti-Trump internet ads and voter registration drive out of the same office.

The path ahead may be decidedly uphill and unfamiliar.

Bloomberg plans to bypass the first four states on the primary calendar — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and focus instead on the crush of states that vote on Super Tuesday and beyond. It’s a strategy that acknowledges the limitations of entering the race at this late stage and the opportunities afforded by his vast personal wealth.

His team has noted that several candidates have devoted much of the year to building support on the ground in the earliest states, and Bloomberg needs to be realistic about where he can make up ground.

Nearly a quarter of primary delegates are up for grabs in the March 3 Super Tuesday contests, which have gotten far less attention so far.

Bloomberg has openly considered a presidential bid before, but as an independent. He declined to enter the 2016 contest only after deciding there was no path to victory without the backing of a major political party.

He explored a run earlier this year, too, but decided there was no path with establishment-favorite Joe Biden in the race. Biden’s perceived weakness, along with the rise of progressive firebrand Warren, convinced him to reconsider.

“We believe that voters are increasingly concerned that the field is not well positioned to defeat Donald Trump,” Wolfson said of Bloomberg’s decision to change his mind.

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway actually praised Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor when asked about his announcement Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” But she said his entrance into the 2020 race “means the Democratic field is underwhelming.”

Should Bloomberg ultimately become the nominee to take on Trump, she said, “We’re ready.”

Conway cast doubt on whether he’d be welcomed by Democratic voters.

Initially registered as a Democrat, Bloomberg, a Massachusetts native, filed paperwork to change his voter registration to Republican in 2000 before his first run for New York City mayor, according to a spokesman. In June 2007, he unenrolled from the GOP, having no formal party affiliation until he registered again as a Democrat this October.

While some will question his newfound commitment to Democrats, he vowed allegiance to the party in an Associated Press interview earlier in the year, saying, “I will be a Democrat for the rest of my life.”

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Associated Press writer Hunter Woodall in Manchester, N.H., contributed to this report.

Massive Turnout in Hong Kong Vote Seen as Pro-Democracy Test

HONG KONG — Vote counting was underway in Hong Kong early Monday after a massive turnout in district council elections seen as a barometer of public support for pro-democracy protests that have rocked the semi-autonomous Chinese territory for more than five months.

The Electoral Affairs Commission said 71% of the city’s 4.1 million registered voters had cast ballots when polls closed at 10:30 p.m. Sunday. That sharply exceeded the 47% turnout in the same election four years ago.

Early results showed at least a dozen pro-democracy candidates winning, including former student leaders. Among them was a candidate who replaced prominent activist Joshua Wong, the only person barred from running in the election.

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Rally organizer Jimmy Sham, one of the public faces of the protest movement who was bloodied in an attack by assailants with hammers last month, also triumphed. Pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho, who was stabbed by a knife-wielding man while campaigning this month, was among those who lost.

Voting was peaceful, with hardly anyone seen wearing protesters’ trademark black clothing or face masks as they went to the polls.

The normally low-key race for 452 seats in Hong Kong’s 18 district councils took on new importance in a city polarized by the protests. The councils are dominated by pro-establishment parties but a strong showing by the opposition would show that the public still supports the protesters, even as they resort to increasing violence.

“Symbolically, the message is clear. If the pan-democrats win, then it will be tantamount to a rejection of the hard-line policy of Beijing and the Hong Kong government,” said Dixon Sing, a political science lecturer with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The record turnout showed “a great groundswell in Hong Kong who believes in democracy,” said David Alton, a member of the British House of Lords who is among the international election observers invited by Hong Kong’s civil society groups.

During the months of demonstrations, protesters have smashed storefronts of businesses seen as sympathetic to China, torched toll booths, shut down a major tunnel and engaged in pitched battles with police, countering tear gas volleys and water cannons with torrents of gasoline bombs. More than 5,000 people have been arrested.

One voter, Christina Li, said it was important for older people like herself to support the youth who are at the forefront of the protests.

“Younger generations might not be able to enjoy the rights that we are enjoying now,” she said as she waited in line outside a polling station. “We cannot take it for granted.”

Many people in Hong Kong share the concern of protesters about growing Chinese influence over the former British colony, which was returned to China in 1997.

The protests started in June over a now-abandoned extradition bill that would send criminal suspects for trials in mainland China. But the movement has expanded to include demands for democratic elections for the city’s leader and legislature, and an independent probe into alleged police brutality in suppressing the protests.

Many voters turned up early to cast their ballots, leading to long lines that extended for blocks.

The vote is the only fully democratic one in Hong Kong. Members of the legislature are chosen partly by popular vote and partly by interest groups representing different sectors of society, and the city’s leader is picked by a 1,200-member body that is dominated by supporters of the central government in Beijing.

Both the ruling camp in Hong Kong and the Chinese central government were hoping that the unrest, which has disrupted daily life and contributed to the city’s first recession in a decade, would turn voters against the protesters.

Political analyst Sing said public opinion polls showed that many citizens blamed the violence on the government and police handling of the conflict.

A win would bolster the democrats’ influence and give them 117 seats in the panel that elects the city’s leader, but Beijing isn’t likely to soften its stance or make any concessions to the protesters, he said.

The district councils advocate for community interests and are given a small budget for local projects. Winning candidates will serve a four-year term beginning Jan. 1.

There has been a rare break in the violence in recent days as protesters, eager to validate their cause at the ballot box, hit the pause button to ensure the polls wouldn’t be postponed. Police were out in force near polling stations, but no major incidents were reported.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, who is reviled by the protesters, said after voting Sunday morning that the unrest made organizing the election extremely challenging.

“I hope that this stability and calm is not only for today’s election, and that the election will show that everyone doesn’t want Hong Kong to return to chaos again, that we want a way out of this crisis so that we can have a fresh start,” Lam said.

___

Associated Press videojournalists Dake Kang and Katie Tam contributed.

U.S. Judge Awards $180 Million to Post Reporter Held by Iran

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A U.S. federal judge has awarded a Washington Post journalist and his family nearly $180 million in their lawsuit against Iran over his 544 days in captivity and torture while being held on internationally criticized espionage charges.

The order in the case filed by Jason Rezaian came as Iranian officials appeared to begin restoring the internet after a weeklong shutdown amid a security crackdown on protesters angered by government-set gasoline prices sharply rising. The U.S. government has sanctioned Iran’s telecommunications minister in response to the internet shutdown.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington entered the judgment late Friday in Rezaian’s case, describing how authorities in Iran denied the journalist sleep, medical care and abused him during his imprisonment.

“Iran seized Jason, threatened to kill Jason, and did so with the goal of compelling the United States to free Iranian prisoners as a condition of Jason’s release,” Leon said in his ruling.

The judge later added: “Holding a man hostage and torturing him to gain leverage in negotiations with the United States is outrageous, deserving of punishment and surely in need of deterrence.”

Iran never responded to the lawsuit despite it being handed over to the government by the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which oversees U.S. interests in the country. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Rezaian and his lawyers did not respond to a request for comment. Martin Baron, the executive editor of the Post, said in a statement that Rezaian’s treatment by Iran was “horrifying.”

“We’ve seen our role as helping the Rezaians through their recovery,” Baron said. “Our satisfaction comes from seeing them enjoy their freedom and a peaceful life.”

Rezaian’s case, which began with his 2014 gunpoint arrest alongside his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, showed how the Islamic Republic can grab those with Western ties to use in negotiations. It’s a practice recounted by human rights groups, U.N. investigators and the families of those detained.

Despite being an accredited journalist for the Post with permission to live and work in Iran, Rezaian was taken to Tehran’s Evin prison and later convicted in a closed trial before a Revolutionary Court on still-unexplained espionage charges.

Iran still focuses on the case even today, as a recent television series sought to glorify the hard-liners behind the arrest.

It remains unclear how and if the money will be paid. It could come from the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which has distributed funds to those held and affected by Iran’s 1979 student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and subsequent hostage crisis. Rezaian named Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, this year designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump administration, as a defendant in the case.

The order comes a week after the Nov. 15 gasoline price hike, which sparked demonstrations that rapidly turned violent, seeing gas stations, banks and stores burned to the ground.

Amnesty International said it believes the unrest and the crackdown killed at least 106 people. Iran disputes that figure without offering its own. A U.N. office earlier said it feared the unrest may have killed “a significant number of people.”

Starting Nov. 16, Iran shut down the internet across the country, limiting communications with the outside world. That made determining the scale and longevity of the protests incredibly difficult.

Since Thursday, that outage began to slightly lift. By Saturday morning, internet connectivity stood below 20% of normal levels, according to the monitoring group NetBlocks. By Saturday afternoon, however, connectivity suddenly spiked to above 60% and was climbing as individuals in Iran began saying they could access the internet for the first time in a week.

“Internet access is being restored in #Iran after a weeklong internet shutdown amid widespread protests,” NetBlocks said on Twitter.

The U.S. Treasury on Friday sanctioned Iranian minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi over the internet shutdown.

Jahromi, the first government minister to be born after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, is widely believed to be considering a presidential run in 2021. In sanctioning him, the U.S. Treasury noted he once worked for the country’s Intelligence Ministry and “has advanced the Iranian regime’s policy of repressive internet censorship.”

Jahromi, known for his social media persona, has increasingly criticized President Donald Trump on Twitter, a service long blocked in Iran. Being sanctioned may raise his profile among hard-liners.

He dismissed the sanctions on Twitter as a “Trump’s fairytales.”

“I’ll continue advocating access to Internet & I won’t let US to prohibit Iran development,” he wrote.

Meanwhile Saturday, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Iranian intelligence officials claimed killing a leader of violent protesters in Iran’s western Kermanshah province. Iran’s top prosecutor, Mohammad Javad Montazeri, meanwhile visited a major prison in Tehran and promised that the fate of some of those arrested amid the protests would be decided soon, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Iran’s first Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri also issued a warning to regional countries over the unrest.

“If a clue is found that they have meddled in Iran’s domestic affairs to create unrest, they will not see another day without trouble in this region,” he warned. “Iran is not a country you can play such games with.”

Documents: Giuliani, Pompeo Had Contacts Before Yovanovitch Ouster

WASHINGTON — Newly released documents show Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in contact with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the months before the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was abruptly recalled.

The State Department released the documents Friday to the group American Oversight in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They show that Pompeo talked with Giuliani on March 26 and March 29.

Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said the documents reveal “a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.”

Last week, former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators she felt “kneecapped” by a “smear campaign” Giuliani led against her. She was withdrawn from her post in Ukraine in May.

The documents released Friday also include a report, that appears with Trump hotel stationery, that appears to summarize a Jan. 23 interview with a former Ukrainian prosecutor general, Victor Shokin. The summary says Giuliani and two business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were present.

Parnas and Fruman were arrested last month on a four-count indictment that includes charges of conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsification of records. The men had key roles in Giuliani’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

A second memo appears to be a summary of an interview with Yuri Lutsenko, another former prosecutor general of Ukraine, conducted in the presence of Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman. Lutsenko is quoted raising questions about compensation that Hunter Biden received from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In a Fox News interview, Giuliani was asked Saturday about the work that Parnas and Fruman did for him in Ukraine. The two men’s efforts included helping to arrange a January meeting in New York between Giuliani and Lutsenko, as well as other meetings with top government officials. Lutsenko, who replaced Shokhin in 2016, left the post in August of 2019.

“So, they helped me find people, and as I’ve said, they did a good job, but they weren’t investigators, and they weren’t James Bond, and they didn’t have personal communications with the president,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani allowed that he did introduce the two men to Trump at a Hanukkah party in December of 2018. But there was no extended meeting or conversations, he said.

“They took a one-minute picture. They walked away,” he said.

Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating the business dealings of Giuliani, including whether he failed to register as a foreign agent, according to people familiar with the probe. Giuliani was asked whether he was concerned about being indicted.

“Do you think I’m afraid. Do you think I get afraid? I did the right thing. I represented my client in a very, very effective way. I was so effective that I discovered a pattern of corruption that the Washington press has been covering up for three or four years,” Giuliani asserted.

Giuliani said he continues to have a good relationship with the president and that it can be assumed he talks to Trump “early and often.” Giuliani said he’s seen things written that Trump is intending to throw him under the bus. “When they say that, I say he isn’t, but I have insurance,” Giuliani said.

Brazil’s Lula Vows to Make Life ‘Hell’ for Bolsonaro Government

SAO PAULO — A fired-up former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, freshly out of jail, vowed to fight Brazil’s far-right government and the forces he says unjustly incarcerated him, saying he would make “their lives hell.”

“They don’t know what it is to face a 74-year-old passionate man,” said da Silva, who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010, and became one of the world’s most popular politicians before being ensnared in corruption scandals, before cheering supporters late Friday.

Da Silva was the unquestioned star of the conference of his Workers’ Party, which started Friday in Sao Paulo. Many still think he could be the leftist party’s standard-bearer once again in 2022 — when he’ll be a 77-year-old cancer survivor who is currently barred from seeking office due to a corruption conviction.

Da Silva left jail earlier this month after 19 months in a cell when the Supreme Court ruled that a person can be imprisoned only after all the appeals have been exhausted.

Brazil’s ex-president is still appealing two convictions for allegedly receiving favors from government contractors involving properties he used or was considering buying. If he loses his appeals in either conviction, he could be locked up again.

Da Silva has denied any wrongdoing and accuses prosecutors and Sergio Moro, then a judge and now justice minister in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, of manipulating the case against him.

“Today I feel much stronger than the day I surrendered to the federal police,” da Silva said. “I am more willing to fight for this country than in any other moment. You will see me traveling around this country, not only making their lives hell, but also defending the Brazilian people who don’t deserve to experience what they are experiencing.”

Most analysts see da Silva as a potential kingmaker and strategist for the party he was instrumental in transforming — one who can appeal to a wide range of voters.

“Don’t expect narrow-minded politics to come from his head. Radicalism is not in his spirit,” his former chief-of-staff and senator, Jaques Wagner, told The Associated Press. He believes da Silva should open the way for a new generation of politicians from Brazil’s Northeast to take center stage in the next presidential election.

But Raul Pont, a member of the Workers’ Party and former mayor of Porto Alegre, thinks it is “too soon” to rule da Silva out of the presidential ticket.

“What he will start doing now is organizing a progressive movement, one that goes beyond our party. Then we will see (if he will run), in case he is eligible,” he said.

Da Silva is hoping the Supreme Court will deliver a ruling that could cancel the cases against him — and that would legally open the path to another presidential run.

The former union leader took a party some politicians once regarded as a radical fringe and brought it to power in 2003, winning adulation from millions for presiding over more than a decade of prosperity and reduced poverty with policies that were far more business-friendly than many foes had feared.

That record was increasingly stained by corruption scandals, and the 80% approval ratings he enjoyed on leaving office in 2010 have slipped to about 40% today — even so, better than those of Bolsonaro.

Still, many on the left still see him as the only politician who can today organize the opposition to Brazil’s current far-right president, who last year ended the Workers’ Party string of victory in four consecutive elections.

Da Silva seems to agree.

“I am the biggest polarizer of this country. What I want is to polarize,” he said.

The left came out weakened from the last election, and Bolsonaro, a former army captain who much like U.S. President Donald Trump has broken free from conventional ways of governing, has further destabilized the opposition, some analysts believe.

Others argue the opposition has remained quieter than expected because the Bolsonaro administration is often proving to be its own worst enemy.

The Workers’ Party remains the biggest party in the lower house, with 54 seats. But even under da Silva, it required alliances with smaller parties to govern.

Political analyst Fábio Kerche, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro state, said da Silva has already sent signals he would try to reach beyond the party, to the center and center right, possibly building a broader democratic front against Bolsonaro.

He noted that da Silva has shown the ability to attract a broad range of political allies and voters alike, and said, “Once again, this will be his mission.”

On Friday, da Silva indirectly acknowledged this, saying stopping Bolsonaro “is not a task for a single party.”

___

Diane Jeantet reported from Rio de Janeiro.

Pope Denounces ‘Evil’ of Nuclear Weapons in Japan Trip

TOKYO — Pope Francis denounced the “evil” of nuclear weapons on Saturday as he began a three-day visit to Japan and fulfilled a dream to be a missionary in a land with a rich but bloody Christian past.

The pope’s plane landed in the rain in Tokyo, where he received a small welcome at the airport before heading to the Vatican residence to meet with Japanese bishops. Streets near the residence were lined with smiling well-wishers holding umbrellas. One group held a banner that read: “Gracias! We love you.”

After a packed three days in Thailand, Francis has an even busier schedule in Japan, starting off with flights Sunday to Nagasaki and Hiroshima to appeal for total nuclear disarmament, and a meeting Monday with victims of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Those meetings come before he even meets with Emperor Naruhito and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a sign of his priorities for the trip.

Francis told the bishops upon arrival that he wanted to pay tribute to the victims of the atomic bombings and meet with survivors, “those who still bear the wounds of this tragic episode in human history.”

“Evil has no preferences; it does not care about people’s background or identity,” Francis said. “It simply bursts in with its destructive force.”

Francis has gone further than any other pope by saying that not only the use but the mere possession of nuclear weapons is “to be condemned.”

It’s a message he’s expected to repeat Sunday, and it’s one that has been welcomed by Japanese old enough to remember the bombings.

“I hope he will deliver the message of true peace to Japan and to the world,” said Ryohei Sakamoto, 71, a Catholic who was waiting for Francis outside the nunciature Saturday afternoon. “And I hope the world will listen to him and his message. That’s what I wish he could do on this visit.”

Francis told the bishops how as a young Jesuit in Argentina, he had longed to be a missionary in Japan, following in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier, the Jesuit who first brought Christianity to the archipelago in 1549.

While health reasons prevented Francis from realizing that dream, he said he nevertheless nurtured a continued affection for Japan and was inspired by the Christians who endured more than two centuries of persecution starting in the 16th century.

“Such self-sacrifice for the sake of keeping the faith alive amid persecution helped the small Christian community to develop, grow strong and bear fruit,” Francis told the bishops.

One of the highlights of the trip will be Francis’ prayer Sunday at the memorial of the 26 Nagasaki Martyrs, who were crucified in 1597 at the start of the wave of anti-Christian bloodshed by Japanese rulers.

Francis will also greet descendants of the “Hidden Christians,” who persevered in their faith for generations despite the threat of death and the absence of priests.

Francis’ other key aim in coming to Japan is to tend to today’s tiny Catholic flock, which has grown exponentially more diverse in recent years due to an influx of foreign workers. Today, these temporary workers make up more than half of Japan’s Catholic population of 440,000, according to the Archdiocese of Tokyo’s international center.

Overall, Catholics account for less than 0.5% of Japan’s 127 million people, most of them loosely affiliated with Buddhism or Shinto, or both.

Japan had long kept its door closed to immigrants, but the country last year adopted a new policy to open up unskilled jobs to temporary foreign workers, a major revision to the country’s policy to deal with its rapidly aging and declining population.

Many of the newcomers hail from the Philippines, Vietnam and Brazil and are Catholic, rejuvenating local churches that now offer Masses in English, Tagalog, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Francis has made welcoming migrants a hallmark of his papacy, and he told his bishops that their ministry to foreign workers was a precious demonstration of their commitment to spreading the faith.

He urged them also to look out for young Japanese, who he said were increasingly prone to “loneliness, despair and isolation.”

“The increase in the rates of suicide in your cities, as well as bullying and various kinds of neediness, are creating new forms of alienation and spiritual disorientation,” he warned. He urged them to encourage a shift from a “culture of efficiency, performance and success” to one of “generous and selfless love, capable of offering to everyone, and not only to those who have ‘made it,’ the possibility of a happy and successful life.”

Suicides in Japan have been on the decline for nearly a decade to just over 20,000 last year, but the number is on the rise among teenagers and the elderly.

Francis himself was offering some joy to the few people invited to welcome him at the Vatican residence Saturday night.

“I am so looking forward to seeing him and I cannot wait!” gushed Michiko Haramoto, a 71-year-old Catholic who traveled from southern Fukuoka, on Kyushu island, to greet the pope. She said she would be on the first flight to Nagasaki on Sunday to attend Francis’ Mass.

“I don’t know how and whether it’s possible. But if I get to talk to him directly at all, it will be so wonderful and I will surely tell him how grateful we all are here upon receiving him,” she said.

___

Associated Press videojournalist Kaori Hitomi contributed to this report.

Colombia President Orders Curfew in Capital Following Unrest

BOGOTA, Colombia—Colombian President Iván Duque ordered a curfew in the nation’s capital Friday amid continuing unrest following a massive march a day before that brought tens of thousands to the streets in a strong message of rejection against his conservative government.

The president announced on Twitter that he has requested that Bogota’s mayor enforce a curfew beginning at 9 p.m. in all of the city of 7 million after police pushed back thick crowds of protesters banging pots and pans in the storied Plaza Bolivar.

“They kicked us out with tear gas,” said Rogelio Martinez, 38, a construction worker. “They didn’t want the people to show their discontent.”

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The curfew comes one day after an estimated 250,000 people took to the streets in one of the nation’s biggest marches in recent history. While the protest started out peaceful, it ended with scattered clashes between protesters and police. Three people were killed in what authorities described as violent looting incidents overnight.

Clashes continued in part of Bogota and in the southwestern city of Cali on Friday as volunteers wiped graffiti off historic buildings and swept up shattered glass.

The upheaval comes as Latin America is experiencing a tide of discontent, with massive demonstrations in countries including Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador where citizens frustrated with their political leaders are taking to the streets.

The protests defy easy categorization and it remains unclear if Colombia’s will persist.

Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said that as of Friday morning, 98 people had been detained and 151 police and military officers injured, as well as 122 civilians, most of whom suffered minor injuries and tear gas inhalation.

The minister said two individuals were killed in the port city of Buenaventura after police were attacked while responding to looting at a mall. A third died in Candelaria after police said a group looting a supermarket shot at officers.

The names and cause of death of those killed were not released.

Duque convoked a special meeting with his ministers Friday but did not immediately respond to protesters’ demand for meeting. In an address after the protest, the president said he had heard the day’s outcry and supported talks with all sectors.

“Duque recognizes there is plenty to do,” his defense minister said.

Protest organizers urged Duque to establish a dialogue with indigenous, student and labor groups to discuss potential reforms and criticized him for not directly addressing demonstrator complaints in a late-night address.

“If they don’t decide to govern in favor of the majority, the discontent will continue accumulating,” student leader José Cárdenas said.

Recent polling indicates Duque has a 26% approval rating 15 months into his administration as the nation grapples with implementing a complicated peace process with leftist rebels, ongoing violence between illegal armed groups and long-simmering tensions over issues like corruption and inequality.

“Colombia is facing a set of complex problems that are as difficult as any in its recent history,” said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “I think any political leader faced with this array of problems would have a difficult time.”

The Future of Meat

“The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food”

A book by Josh Berson

In the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” Aunt Voula, played by Andrea Martin, learns that her niece’s fiance is a vegetarian. She says, “He don’t eat no meat?…WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DON’T EAT NO MEAT? Oh, that’s OK, that’s OK, I make lamb!”

It’s funny—or is it? For those of us who eschew consuming animals and their byproducts, it’s hard to understand why most people today still enjoy eating flesh, seeing meat as “something” rather than “someone.” In “The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food,” Josh Berson digs deep, literally, going back to the earliest times of human existence to find out when and how and why our relationship with animals as food began. The book considers three questions: 1) Did meat make us human? 2) Is growing affluence the cause of increased meat consumption? and 3) Will we see the end of meat?

As a vegan for 31 years and vegetarian for even longer, I rejoice with every new study or book published on the devasting impact that eating animals has on our health, quality of life and longevity. With hundreds and hundreds of scientific references, surely, I think, people will reduce or eliminate their meat consumption in order to reduce their risk of chronic disease.  So many people have shared their stories in films, books and websites on how they reversed their heart disease or diabetes, achieved a normal weight, and regained their lives, by discovering a healthy, plant-based diet.

And yet, the consumption of animal flesh and animal byproducts continues to rise. The world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 and people will be devouring more meat than ever before. There is no longer enough land mass on Earth to allow livestock to graze freely before slaughter. Today, the CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation, AKA the factory farm) is the answer, but for the individual animals being raised in a CAFO for food, it is hell on earth.

What about the environment? As stinking lagoons of untreated livestock excrement are piled higher and deeper, surely we would realize our folly of raising tens of billions of animals for food. But no, it seems no amount of air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, rainforest destruction, aquifer depletion, soil exhaustion, species extinction, etc. can curtail our desire for consuming flesh.

Click here to read long excerpts from “The Meat Question” at Google Books.

I have waited for decades for the discussion on climate change to heat up, for it to be considered for regulation in government policy and for it to headline mainstream news on a regular basis. Are we there yet? The late Robert Goodland, lead environmental adviser at the World Bank Group, wrote passionately and profusely about climate change and how we could all, simply and easily, prevent our demise by choosing plants instead of animals for food. Mitigating global warming by changing our diet was his plea, because it would buy us time to transition our factories and modes of transportation to sustainable energy sources.

Was his message heard? Do we have the capacity to hear this message?

Berson acknowledges the devastating impact on health, environment and animals due to meat consumption very briefly, early in his book’s prologue. He writes as if we all know this information already, no need to elaborate in detail—although he does paint the nightmarish image of current reality, transporting cattle from Australia to China by air! We use all our best inventions, concentrating cattle into airplanes to satisfy the gluttonous desire for flesh while making a nice profit. Is no thought made of the reckless use of energy resources or abundant release of greenhouse gas emissions in this scenario? We have created our own “little shop of horrors” at home on Earth, responding to the escalating cry, “Feed Me!”

Are we who we are—are we human—because we eat meat? To address the first question, Berson presents to us a dry and academic history of humankind. This is not easy reading. As we travel to periods 1 million to 5 million years ago, the text is riddled with archeological terms that even an above-average reader would not be familiar with. It takes patience to comprehend it all, moving back and forth through ancient and unfamiliar times.

Berson explains that our evolutionary history was a result of our diet versatility—being able to find and consume a variety of plant and animal-based foods, available in different periods and locations. Berson addresses the tenuous relationship between the consumption of meat and the evolution of human brains:

“Where do we get the energy to run our big brains? Over the past twenty-five years, this has been a key question in evolutionary anthropology. For many observers, our expensive brains represent exhibit A in the case for meat’s role in human evolution. Meat, the argument goes, supported encephalization [the evolution of large brains]… [But] the brain can’t do much with the energy in meat. The brain relies on glucose as its primary fuel… the energy in the lean meat of wild ungulates is mainly in the form of protein. The body has a limited capacity to convert amino acids into sugars. Protein does not represent a sustainable source of energy for the maintenance of nervous tissue.”

Berson goes on to explain that energy is not the sole expense of the human brain, which is 50% to 60% lipid by dry mass. DHA (omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid) is vital in supporting the high lipid content of our brains. DHA can be hard to find in human diets—its primary direct source is aquatic foods. It can, however, be synthesized from alpha-linolenic acid (LNA). “[C]linical evidence indicates dietary LNA represents a more-than-adequate source of DHA for the growth and maintenance of the central nervous system,” Berson writes. “Where are the terrestrial dietary sources of alpha-linolenic acid? It’s highly concentrated in chloroplast membranes, so leafy green plants represent a strong source, as do mosses, the fatty tissue of herbivores that consume these things, and the usual range of oilseeds, including flax, hemp, and walnuts.”

He concludes, “Meat may well have played a role in buffering the vagaries of access to a higher-quality diet in early humans. But it wasn’t because it was essential to brain development.” Nor is meat essential to how we eat in the future.

Later in the book, we arrive in the present day. Here, we can scrutinize our history more carefully as the abundance of evidence improves resolution. Question 2 is addressed: Is growing affluence the cause of increased meat consumption? To balance Western influence dominating the telling of human history, Berson writes, “I offer an Asia-Pacific perspective on the modern meat economy. My aim is to nudge the food systems literature away from the North Atlantic and toward those parts of the world whose tastes, expertise, and climate will dominate global patterns of change in diet over the next two or three generations.” We learn that affluence alone does not drive the demand for meat. Rather a complicated economic and political system has been created that forces those disempowered, impoverished individuals to choose the convenience of “cheap” meat because they have no access to affordable alternatives.

Berson writes, “Until we recognize that marginalized humans and animals raised under industrial conditions occupy coordinate roles in a single system of economic violence, we will make no progress unworking meat’s power.”

In the epilogue we learn that Berson has been a vegetarian for 25 years and a vegan for 19, except for a “handful of exceptions.” He admits his original motivation was unclear but over time it was about reducing his footprint: “I wanted to limit my claim on the Earth’s resources to levels that would allow the largest number of people to enjoy the quality of life that I took for granted.” He began to question his reasons for being vegan after about a decade, which became the motivation for this book. The dispassionate tone throughout is intentional; Berson desired to present information as objectively as possible, without judgment that might alienate the reader.

Will we ever see the end of meat? The author believes if humanity survives, it’s possible that few if any animals will be on our plate. After reading “The Meat Question,” I have a better understanding of why it is not effective to use single issue arguments like health, environment, climate change and animal cruelty to convince people to reduce or eliminate their animal consumption:

“To imagine a world in which humans no longer get any part of their subsistence from animals is to imagine a world where the bond of economic necessity, of precariousness, between humans and animals has been succeeded by a bond of mutual regard, among humans and on the part of humans for other living things. This is a more radical vision than that which underlies arguments for the cessation of meat eating on grounds of health, or carbon footprint, or animal sentience.”

Berson shows us how to think about eating animals in broader terms. Gambling on food prices with agricultural derivatives and investing in agricultural land acquisitions negatively impact the access to adequate food. Meat consumption is one piece of a complex and violent capitalist system.

There was one question I couldn’t help but ask myself while reading “The Meat Question”: Are humans naturally violent?  Berson concludes with this question as well, asking “whether human beings are fundamentally cruel, condemned to reduce one another to lumps of meat.” He acknowledges that if we don’t want to accept systemic violence as our reality, a divergence will be required, “in diet among other things, as radical as any we have experienced before.”

Mystery Grows Over Withholding of Aid to Lebanon

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is withholding more than $100 million in U.S. military assistance to Lebanon that has been approved by Congress and is favored by his national security team, an assertion of executive control of foreign aid that is similar to the delay in support for Ukraine at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday congratulated Lebanon as the country marked its independence day but made no mention of the hold-up in aid that State Department and Pentagon officials have complained about for weeks.

It came up in impeachment testimony by David Hale, the No. 3 official in the State Department, according to the transcript of the closed-door hearing released this week. He described growing consternation among diplomats as the administration would neither release the aid nor provide an explanation for the hold.

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“People started asking: What’s the problem?” Hale told the impeachment investigators.

The White House and the Office of Management and Budget have declined to comment on the matter.

The $105 million in Foreign Military Funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces has languished for months, awaiting approval from the Office of Management and Budget despite congressional approval, an early September notification to lawmakers that it would be spent and overwhelming support for it from the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council.

As with the Ukraine assistance, OMB has not explained the reason for the delay. However, unlike Ukraine, there is no suggestion that President Donald Trump is seeking “a favor” from Lebanon to release it, according to five officials familiar with the matter.

The mystery has only added to the consternation of the national security community, which believes the assistance that pays for American-made military equipment for the Lebanese army is essential, particularly as Lebanon reels in financial chaos and mass protests.

The aid is important to counter Iran’s influence in Lebanon, which is highlighted by the presence of the Iranian-supported Shiite Hezbollah movement in the government and the group’s militias, the officials said.

There is opposition to aid to the Lebanese army from outside the NSC. Pro-Israel hawks in Congress have long sought to de-fund the Lebanese military, arguing that it has been compromised by Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a “foreign terrorist organization.”

But the Pentagon and State Department reject that view, saying the army is the only independent Lebanese institution capable of resisting Hezbollah.

Outside experts agree.

Although there are some issues, Jeffrey Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, said this week that the assistance should be released.

“The U.S. has some legitimate concerns about the Lebanese Armed Forces’ performance, but the FMF should resume quickly and publicly: both because of the program’s merit in terms of improving the LAF’s counterterrorism performance but also to undermine the Hezbollah-Iranian-Syrian-Russian narrative that the U.S. is unreliable,” Feltman he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Hale told the impeachment inquiry there were parallels between the Lebanon and Ukraine aid in that the White House refused to offer an explanation for the delays.

He said inquiries into the Lebanon assistance since June have been met with silence.

“We just understand there are differences of opinion on this, or there had been,” he said. “And the matter now rests with OMB. I don’t think that the differences currently exist outside of OMB.”

The Lebanon aid was put into Trump’s budget last winter and the State Department notified Congress on Sept. 5 that it would be spent even though the OMB had not yet signed off on it.

The State Department has offered only a cryptic response to queries, defending the assistance but also calling for Lebanese authorities to implement economic reforms and rein in corruption.

“As the sole legitimate defense arm of the government of Lebanon, the United States remains committed to strengthening the capacity of the Lebanese Armed Forces to secure Lebanon’s borders, defend its sovereignty, and preserve its stability,” the department said. “The Lebanon FMF has been apportioned by the administration. No Lebanese expenditures or purchases of military materiel with FMF have been delayed.”

“Apportionment” is a technical term that refers to federal funds that have been appropriated by Congress and obligated by the administration but have not yet been released.

However, several officials said National Security Council staff had deliberately tried to run an end-around of the Pentagon and State Department by demanding a signed presidential determination to release the aid and then slow-walking delivery of the finding to the Oval Office for Trump’s signature. The officials who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“It’s beyond the pale,” said one official. “This is people at the NSC and OMB trying to insert their own personal ideologies into something that most everyone else supports as a national security interest.”

Will America’s Billionaires Start a Second Civil War?

The current issue of The Atlantic magazine, founded itself in the years just before the Civil War, is ominously titled, “How to Stop a Civil War.”

If we are, indeed, on the brink of a second Civil War, it’s already being waged as a “cold war,” with the occasional armed skirmish being provoked by the so-called alt-right movement. And, as in the past, this will be a war by the very, very rich against the rest of America.

This is not the first time we’ve faced such a crisis as a nation.

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Each time, forces of massive accumulated or inherited wealth have nearly succeeded in taking full control of our nation, replacing a democracy, where the will of the people is accomplished through their elected representatives, with a form of government where most government functions reinforce the power, wealth and control of the morbidly rich.

This system of government is among the most ancient, stretching back 7,000 years, and is known to political scientists as oligarchy. Aristotle put it in context: “Tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy…”

For oligarchy to totally take down democracy, only three things are initially needed:

Control of (or substantial influence over) a critical portion of the media
Legalization of bribery of public officials, so oligarchs can achieve majority control of the legislative process
Control of the most critical parts of the court system so they can control legal processes

A fourth element, once the oligarchy is well established, is the formation of a police state, principally using selective prosecution against those agitating for a return to democracy.

Arnold Toynbee is said to have noted that “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.” Most warriors are in their late teens or early 20s; by the time they’ve died, three more generations have come of age, suggesting, if Toynbee was right, a four-generation gap between “great wars.”

In their book The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous With Destiny, William Strauss and Neil Howe apply the theory to the United States. The Revolutionary War began in 1775; 86 years later in 1861, the Civil War began; 78 years later in 1939, America was combatting “the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II,” write Strauss and Howe, adding: “Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with” these crises.

The three crises did not simply come out of nowhere; cycles of events had been building for the preceding generations to create the context for each.

In the 1770s, foreign-aligned oligarchs controlled what we now call America; believers in democracy fought a war to overthrow that British oligarchy.

Four generations later, in the 1850s, massive wealth was controlled by a few thousand very large plantation oligarchs in the South. The South was politically and police-wise run as a full-blown oligarchy, while the North was still largely democratic (the “Gilded Age” Northern oligarchs wouldn’t fully emerge for another 30 years). The Civil War could thus be recast as a war between oligarchy and democracy, where democracy won by a whisker.

About four generations after that, in 1921, Warren Harding and his oligarch supporters took control of our federal government, leading to the “Roaring Twenties” (in which working people’s wages stagnated, but people at the top made out like bandits), and the Great Crash of 1929. The Republican Great Depression (what they called it until the 1950s) opened the door to Franklin Roosevelt’s “war” against the “economic royalists” (oligarchs), which succeeded in putting them, at least temporarily, in a box despite their explicit efforts, exposed by Marine General Smedley Butler, to overthrow him by force.

In 2019, it’s been about four generations since that battle—and the groundwork has been laid for another crisis.

In the 1970s, America’s oligarchs succeeded in getting enough of “their guys” placed on the Supreme Court to, in 1976 and 1978, legalize political bribery for the first time in American history. This opened the door to oligarchic control of all three branches of government via the Reagan Revolution.

All that was left was to get the populace to support a final transition to oligarchy, a task undertaken by oligarchs who controlled the media, largely Clear Channel/Rush Limbaugh and billionaire Rupert Murdoch with Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

As a result, we are no longer a functioning democratic republic; we are now operating as an oligarchy.

The argument for oligarchic control is the same argument that’s been made by “conservatives” through history, from Thomas Hobbes to Sir Edmund Burke to Warren Harding and Donald Trump:

“With us in charge, we will keep you safe and happy and you really don’t need to concern yourself with the complicated work of governance. You don’t want to ‘tear down’ or ‘shake up’ the system: having a stable group of very wealthy people control the government has always led to the greatest level of stability and peace—look how stable Europe was for a thousand years when royal families and their landed gentry ruled. We’re the ones chosen by God or a brilliant DNA lineage to lead. Just go shopping and leave things to us.”

Starting in the 1980s, oligarchy was sold to us by “conservative” religious figures (“Saint Reagan,” G.W. Bush was a godly man, Trump is King Cyrus, John Calvin was right that being rich is a sign of God’s blessing so nations are best run by rich people), as well as oligarch-owned media.

Starting in the past decade, this sales pitch has extended itself to a massive social media ecosystem majority-owned by a handful of American oligarchs, some of whom have expressed confusion about democratic governance and all of whom have directly or indirectly bought control of large numbers of local, state and federal legislators.

This led us from the “oligarch-friendly” President Reagan, to the conversion, in 1992, of the Democratic Party via the Democratic Leadership Council to become “oligarch-friendly” itself (a legacy it’s today struggling to undo). In 2016, oligarchs like Robert Mercer and Charles Koch finally put an oligarch himself, Donald Trump, in the White House.

When, in 2015, I asked former President Jimmy Carter what he thought the consequences were of Supreme Court decisions like Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United that made all this possible, he replied:

“It [the Citizens United decision] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and Congress members.

“So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”

That same year, then-Vice President Joe Biden said, “you have to go where the money is. Now where the money is, there’s almost always implicitly some string attached. … It’s awful hard to take a whole lot of money from a group you know has a particular position, then you conclude they’re wrong [and] vote no.”

As former Vice President Al Gore wrote in his 2013 book The Future: “American democracy has been hacked. … The United States Congress … is now incapable of passing laws without permission from the corporate lobbies and other special interests that control their campaign finances.”

And, in 2015 while campaigning for the Republican nomination for president, oligarch Donald Trump candidly said, “I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.”

In 2014, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page (Princeton, Northwestern) demonstrated that we ceased to be a functioning democracy by classical definitions sometime in the late 20th century, and have been, as President Carter said, an oligarchy (my term, not theirs: they call it “Economic-Elite Domination”) since then.

The difference between now and the 1860s is that the oligarchic control is no longer regional; it’s national. Instead of the North and the South fighting each other, it’s now Free Speech TV viewers facing off with their Fox News–viewing neighbors.

The Koch oligarchy machine, for example, has branches in every state, and pretty much every county. Oligarchy-supporting media are ubiquitous.

And now Very Serious People are talking about the possibility of a second Civil War.

What they’re not pointing out, though, is that it won’t just be a war of white supremacists and Trump cultists against the rest of us, as they generally narrate, but a war between those comfortable with oligarchy (indeed, embracing it, as it promises them safety and stability) versus those who believe in democracy.

This is a crisis point for our nation as real and critical as those we hit in 1776, 1861, and 1932. In each of those three cases—roughly four generations apart—the oligarchs lost the battle. This time they could win.

America needs an honest discussion of what’s really going on in this country right now, what the real conflict is, and who the real players are (and why they’re playing). The conflict is playing out on a series of meta-layers (race, class, religion, regionality), all designed to conceal the real war the oligarchs are waging against democracy itself, and those conflicts will continue to intensify until one side or the other has won what is now still a “cold war.”

Then comes the threat of a real Civil War breaking out, and an informed populace is the best defense against it.

If the forces of democracy can succeed in seizing enough power to temporarily hobble the oligarchs, then they need to immediately restore local control to the media (undoing the 1996 Telecommunications Act and breaking up the media conglomerates) and reinstate a ban on the “right” of oligarchs to own politicians and political parties by overturning several Supreme Court decisions since 1976. Repairing the damage done to our court systems will take longer, but needs to begin immediately.

On the other hand, if the oligarchs decide to promote an actual “hot” Civil War on the forces of democracy—as Southern oligarchs did in 1861—then parts of America that are still functioning democracies (California comes to mind—there has been discussion of various “compacts” between the three West Coast states, possibly joining with a few Eastern Seaboard states) must consider some form of independence, whether it be “soft independence” like California declared when they established their own air quality standards or some form of partial independence or succession.

This moment of oligarchy-caused crisis is a time of great danger to America, and, thus, also to still-functioning democracies all over the world.

As oligarchs reach out and extend their control over nation after nation (now having seized, in just the past few decades, either soft or hard control over Russia, India, the Philippines, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, and dozens of other nations) the battlegrounds are shifting to Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France.

Because the oligarch’s campaign is now international, a third world war is not impossible, particularly as China allies itself with the oligarch-controlled nations against those that are still functioning or nearly functioning democracies.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and more than 25 other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.