Chris Hedges's Blog, page 64

The Devastation of the Australian Wildfires Almost Defies Belief

Ecologists at the University of Sydney are estimating that nearly half a billion animals have been killed in Australia’s unprecedented and catastrophic wildfires, which have sparked a continent-wide crisis and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in desperation.

News Corp Australia reported Wednesday that “there are real concerns entire species of plants and animals have been wiped out by bushfires following revelations almost 500 million animals have died since the crisis began.”

“Ecologists from the University of Sydney now estimate 480 million mammals, birds, and reptiles have been lost since September,” according to News Corp. “That figure is likely to soar following the devastating fires which have ripped through Victoria and the [New South Wales] South Coast over the past couple of days, leaving several people dead or unaccounted for, razing scores of homes and leaving thousands stranded.”

The horrifying figures come as images and videos of animals suffering severe burns and dehydration continue to circulate on social media.

Mark Graham, an ecologist with the National Conservation Council, told the Australian parliament that “the fires have burned so hot and so fast that there has been significant mortality of animals in the trees, but there is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies.”

Koalas in particular have been devastated by the fires, Graham noted, because they “really have no capacity to move fast enough to get away.”

As Reuters reported Tuesday, “Australia’s bushland is home to a range of indigenous fauna, including kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, possums, wombats, and echidnas. Officials fear that 30 percent of just one koala colony on the country’s northeast coast, or between 4,500 and 8,400, have been lost in the recent fires.”

I am mourning the loss of wildlife and of the irreparable changes that are happening on the Australian continent. Entire species are being wiped out. #vicfires #VicBushfires #AustralianFires #NSWfires #wildlife https://t.co/1i48whrDam

— Claire Gorman (@ClaireGorm) January 1, 2020

The new normal, except it isn’t.

It’s going to get much worse.

And the longer we delay climate action, the worse it will gethttps://t.co/Rk9FmBPaQs#AustraliaBushfires #ClimateEmegency #ClimateChangeIsReal #ausfires #australianBushfires

— Greenpeace NZ (@GreenpeaceNZ) January 1, 2020

Australia’s coal-touting Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced growing scrutiny for refusing to take sufficient action to confront the wildfires and the climate crisis that is driving them. Since September, the fires have burned over 10 million acres of land, destroyed more than a thousand homes, and killed at least 17 people—including 9 since Christmas Day.

On Thursday, the government of New South Wales (NSW) declared a state of emergency set to take effect Friday morning as the wildfires are expected to intensify over the weekend.

“We’ve got a lot of fire in the landscape that we will not contain,” said Rob Rogers, deputy commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service. “We need to make sure that people are not in the path of these fires.”

Residents in Wildfire-Ravaged Zone Confront Australian Prime Minister

PERTH, Australia — Prime Minister Scott Morrison was confronted by angry residents who cursed and insulted him Thursday as he visited a wildfire-ravaged corner of the country.

Locals in Cobargo, in New South Wales, yelled at him, made obscene gestures and called him an “idiot” and worse, criticizing him for the lack of equipment to deal with the fires in town. They jeered as his car left. In the New South Wales town of Quaama, a firefighter refused to shake hands with him.

“Every single time this area has a flood or a fire, we get nothing. If we were Sydney, if we were north coast, we would be flooded with donations with urgent emergency relief,” a resident said in Cobargo.

The outpouring of anger came as authorities said 381 homes had been destroyed on the New South Wales southern coast this week. At least eight people have died this week in New South Wales and the neighboring state of Victoria.

More than 200 fires are burning in Australia’s two most-populous states. Blazes have also been burning in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

“I’m not surprised people are feeling very raw at the moment. And that’s why I came today, to be here, to see it for myself, to offer what comfort I could,” Morrison said, adding, “There is still, you know, some very dangerous days ahead. And we understand that, and that’s why we’re going to do everything we can to ensure they have every support they will need.”

Morrison, who has also been criticized over his climate change policies and accused of putting the economy ahead of the environment, insisted that Australia is “meeting the challenge better than most countries” and “exceeding the targets we set out.”

Cooler weather since Tuesday has aided firefighting and allowed people to replenish supplies, with long lines of cars forming at gas stations and supermarkets. But high temperatures and strong winds are forecast to return on Saturday, and thousands of tourists fled the country’s eastern coast Thursday ahead of worsening conditions.

New South Wales authorities ordered tourists to leave a 250-kilometer (155-mile) zone. State Transport Minister Andrew Constance called it the “largest mass relocation of people out of the region that we’ve ever seen.”

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared a seven-day state of emergency starting Friday, which grants fire officials more authority. It’s the third state of emergency for New South Wales in the past two months.

“We don’t take these decisions lightly, but we also want to make sure we’re taking every single precaution to be prepared for what could be a horrible day on Saturday,” Berejiklian said.

The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has led authorities to rate this season the worst on record. About 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land have burned, at least 17 people have been killed, and more than 1,400 homes have been destroyed.

The crisis “will continue to go on until we can get some decent rain that can deal with some of the fires that have been burning for many, many months,” the prime minister said.

In Victoria, where 83 homes have burned this week, the military helped thousands of people who fled to the shoreline as a wildfire threatened their homes in the coastal town of Mallacoota. Food, water, fuel and medical expertise were being delivered, and about 500 people were going to be evacuated from the town by a naval ship.

“We think around 3,000 tourists and 1,000 locals are there. Not all of those will want to leave, not all can get on the vessel at one time,” Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Smoke from the wildfires made the air quality in the capital, Canberra, the worst in the world, according to a ranking Thursday.

Palestinians Decry Delay of Israel War Crimes Investigation

This story was originally published on Truthout. 

In a significant development for Israeli accountability, Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), seeks to launch an investigation into war crimes committed in Palestine. But she has established an unnecessary and politically suspect condition to slow down the process.

Following a five-year preliminary examination, Bensouda found a reasonable basis to mount an investigation of “.” She is “satisfied that (i) war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip . . . (ii) potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible; and (iii) there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”

Bensouda began the preliminary examination six months after Israel’s July 2014 “Operation Protective Edge,” during which Israeli military forces killed 2,200 Palestinians, nearly one-quarter of them children and more than 80 percent civilians.

In a preliminary examination, the Office of the Prosecutor decides whether: the crimes fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC; there are genuine national proceedings; and beginning an investigation would further the interests of justice and the victims.

In an investigation, the prosecutor develops evidence, identifies suspects, and applies for arrest warrants and summons to appear before the Court.

Bensouda Asks Court to Decide Whether It Has Jurisdiction

Bensouda filed a 112-page document with the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber. She found a reasonable basis to believe that Israeli forces committed the war crimes of willful killing, willfully causing serious injury to body or health, disproportionate use of force, transfer of Israeli civilians into the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and the killing of over 200 Palestinians during demonstrations at the Israel-Gaza fence. She also cited a reasonable basis to investigate possible war crimes by Palestinians, including intentional attacks against civilians, using civilians as human shields, and the commission of torture and willful killing.

The prosecutor could have commenced the investigation without asking the Court’s permission. Bensouda determined “that the Court does indeed have the necessary jurisdiction in this situation.” But given the “unique and highly contested legal and factual issues,” particularly the issue of “the territory within which the investigation may be conducted,” she asked the Pre-trial Chamber for a ruling on “the scope of the territorial jurisdiction” of the ICC under the Rome Statute. Bensouda wants confirmation that the “territory” subject to investigation “comprises the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.” She recommends that the jurisdictional issue be “resolved without undue delay.”

Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute. The ICC, however, can exercise jurisdiction over nationals of a non-party if they commit crimes in the “territory” of a state party. In 2012, Palestine was recognized as a non-member observer State to the United Nations under General Assembly Resolution 67/19. Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute and became a member of the States Parties of the International Criminal Court.

The State of Palestine, which welcomed Bensouda’s decision to start an investigation, noted that the ICC prosecutor “has jurisdiction over the occupied territory of the State of Palestine, given that Palestine is a State Party to the Rome Statute and that the State of Palestine granted the Prosecutor jurisdiction to look into crimes committed in its territory.”

The prosecutor could have commenced the investigation without asking the Court’s permission.

Israel contends that “a sovereign Palestinian State does not exist, and that the precondition to the Court’s jurisdiction thus cannot be fulfilled. This is because sovereignty over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remains in abeyance, and the Palestinian entity manifestly fails to meet the criteria for statehood under general international law.” In his legal opinion, Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit wrote, “the Palestinian Authority lacks effective control over the territory concerned (and in claiming that the territory is occupied by Israel, essentially concedes that that is so).” He claims that because there is no sovereign Palestinian state, there is no “territory” over which the Court can exercise jurisdiction.

However, Israel is occupying the Palestinian territories, which does not give Israel sovereignty over them. Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights (Al-Mezan) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) issued a joint statement saying, “Israel does not have sovereign authority, but de facto administrative authority premised on actual and potential effective control in terms of military presence and substitution of authority…” Moreover, “…Israel, the Occupying Power, exercises extra-territorial jurisdiction in the occupied Palestinian territory for purposes related to the protection of the occupied population due to the fact that the area is under its temporary control and military occupation. This does not in any way give Israel sovereign rights over the territory,” they wrote.

Why Did Bensouda Delay the Investigation?

The issue of territorial jurisdiction is “a redundant and moot point” that amounts “to an unnecessary delay in the progression of the situation to full investigation,” the Palestinian organizations noted. Since jurisdictional issues are usually decided during the preliminary examination, the groups asked why “the question of territorial jurisdiction has only now come to the fore?”

After Bensouda indicated she wished to open an investigation, she was lambasted by the Israeli press, which branded her “public enemy number one.”

Bensouda may fear additional repercussions if she proceeds with the investigation without a jurisdictional ruling from the Court. In April 2019, after she asked the Court to open an investigation into war crimes committed by Afghan and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the United States revoked her visa. The Court then denied Bensouda’s request to launch the investigation, citing the “interests of justice.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened to take further action against investigators who participate in an ICC investigation.

Although Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute, the United States never ratified it. In fact, George W. Bush withdrew the U.S.’s signature from the statute in 2002. Congress then enacted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act to prevent prosecution of U.S. armed forces in the ICC. One provision, called the “Hague Invasion Act,” authorized the use of force to extricate any U.S. or allied national detained by the ICC. The Bush administration blackmailed 100 countries that were parties to the statute by forcing them to sign bilateral immunity agreements pledging not to turn over U.S. persons to the ICC or the U.S. government would withhold foreign aid to them.

Bensouda’s term will expire in 2021 and the Court’s consideration of the jurisdictional issue could extend beyond her service. That may lessen any negative consequences she might suffer.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Bensouda for her intention to initiate an investigation, charging her with denying “the truth when she says that the very act of Jews living in their ancestral homeland, the land of the Bible, that this is a war crime.” Likewise, Netanyahu’s political rival Benny Gantz said that “the Israeli army is one of the most moral militaries in the world” and “the Israeli army and State of Israel do not commit war crimes.”

In fact, there is overwhelming evidence of Israel’s commission of war crimes, including willful killing; willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; unlawful and wanton, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity; and intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population.

Moreover, by the end of 2018, Israel had unlawfully transferred 628,000 Israeli settlers to settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The Rome Statute lists as a war crime, “The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

“After 71 years of continuing Nakba and 52 years of military occupation, the time has come to end impunity for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the furtherance of its aggressive colonization of Palestinian territory,” the Palestinian human rights organizations declared. Nakba, which is Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as 750,00 Palestinians fled or were evicted from their homes from 1947 to 1949 during the creation of Israel. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian territories.

Accountability for Israeli war crimes is long overdue. The ICC should immediately ratify Bensouda’s investigation.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

A New Year’s Resolution For Democrats

This article originally appeared on Salon.

I spent some time away from social media over the holidays, and came back with a couple of observations. Or maybe just one. First of all, everybody should do that — perhaps permanently — because social media in general is kind of nuts. But political Twitter, in particular, is insane. Second of all, and I know this comes under the heading of “no sh*t, Sherlock,” Democrats on Twitter are tormenting themselves (and each other) by endlessly rehashing the 2016 election. They have simply got to get over it.

If you already spend too much time perusing other people’s political opinions on Twitter, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, you are definitely better off. I see no point in calling out specific individuals who should know better (cough cough, Neera Tanden and Joy Reid) or the most outrageous accusations of treason and war crimes and secret allegiance to Trump or Putin or the Bilderberg Society or whatever. But the amount of grudge and grievance and name-calling and recrimination and hive-mind clapback and paranoid mythology, nearly all of it rooted in the leftover bad feelings of the Hillary v. Bernie conflict of 2016, is astonishing. It’s damaging and dangerous and downright Trumpy, and yet more evidence that the virus that produced him has infected us all.

I don’t want to be all “both sides do it.” But in fact both sides do do it, while accusing the other of being the worst people in human history. And I’m not trying to pull some Jon Stewart “Rally for Normies” bullshit about the evils of polarization and division, because I know where that boat ride takes: Across the River Styx into the land where Joe Biden muses about picking a Republican running mate.

I’m definitely not suggesting there were no important differences between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in that campaign, or between Sanders and Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren and What’s His Name, the mayor of River City, in this one. There were and there are. I’m not lecturing anyone to Vote Blue No Matter Who, because it absolutely matters who wins the nomination, and that will clearly affect how many people Vote Blue. (You and I may well view that equation in different ways — isn’t that the point of a primary campaign?)

Apparently we will never stop hearing that Hillary Clinton is a soulless killer, the greatest war criminal since Attila the Hun, a toady to Big Capital and foe of economic justice, a mastermind of phony performative feminism and (simultaneously) the owner-operator of the most clueless and incompetent presidential campaign in media-age history. Or, on the other side of the ledger, that Bernie Sanders is a crypto-racist and crypto-sexist, a tool of the Russians and a fellow traveler of Donald Trump, a Stalinist, a Trotskyist, an agent of destruction and (simultaneously) the commander of an all-white online dude-bro army and the possessor of hypnotic powers over young women and latte-guzzling hipsters of color.

I’m here to offer both sides the terms of a truce that no one will like. (Which is kind of how it works with truces.) The first step is to recognize that all of this is the haunted legacy of an election cycle that, in case you need a little refresher, didn’t go so well. Sanders lost a close race to Clinton (that wasn’t supposed to be close), and then Clinton lost an even closer race to Donald Trump (ditto) — and ever since then, each side has never, even for a second, stopped blaming the other for what went wrong. Democrats have been gnawing on the bones of the 2016 election for three years now, and while they came out of their cave for the 2018 midterms, it honestly didn’t help that much.

Now the most online, most committed cadre of Democrats seem to be trying — only half-consciously, but with considerable dedication — to cast the 2020 election as a fanfic reboot of the 2016 election, with all of its least appealing ingredients on endless loop. It’s like a damaged child re-enacting an especially traumatic family drama, in search of — well, what exactly? Revenge or redemption or some form of sympathetic magic in which we roll back the clock and none of the bad stuff happened and we are all OK again? (Depending of course on your conception of who “we” are and what “OK” might look like.) Or just in search of another defeat that can be blamed on someone else? I have reflected on this and, to coin a phrase, I hate it.

On one level, I get it: The 2016 election was a galvanizing experience with a dreadful outcome. It exposed a generational and ideological third rail within the Democratic coalition that also touched race and gender and class and which, by its very nature, is not likely to heal anytime soon. Political parties have a known tendency to re-enact internal grudge matches over and over, and to ignore their own best advice. Consider the Republican Party, which announced after Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 that it would seek to build a broader coalition and reach out to Latinos, Asians, women and younger voters — and then proceeded to win the next election by going in precisely the opposite direction as hard as it possibly could.

Democrats came out of the grisly spectacle of 2016 with what seemed like an obvious vacancy: They needed to find a candidate and a message that could at least temporarily bridge the gulf between “progressives” and “moderates,” between class-based politics and representational politics, between the BernieBros and Pantsuit Nation. (If you feel the need to notify me that those are inaccurate and reductive stereotypes, please don’t. I am aware!)

That didn’t happen, as Kirsten Gillibrand, Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris could tell you. Instead we have been subjected to endless, pointless, airless debates about who is more “electable,” which all boil down to the Bernie-Hillary split in barely concealed form, and which all run aground on the great reef known as Nobody-Has-a-Solitary-Clue Land.

Now we find ourselves partway through an uncomfortable remake in which Bernie Sanders is playing himself (a bit older and with a slightly different voter base) and in which Hillary Clinton has, so far and by the skin of her teeth, avoided doing the same thing. You know she wanted to! She could pretty much taste it! I encountered a thread from wounded Hillary-stans urging her to run this week, well past the ballot deadlines for nearly all the early states right through Super Tuesday. It must have been a bitter disappointment for her to hear that between Biden, Warren and Pete Buttigieg, her issues, advisers, consultants and major donors were pretty much all spoken for. (Even so, after Harris dropped out I still thought Clinton might give it a whirl.)

As stated, I have a plan for a truce between the factions, because without one the Democrats are in danger of dying in their own bonfire once again. Like any true military truce, it does not require any final agreement on who is virtuous and who is evil. I had a whole list of terms drawn up, and then I realized they all flowed from one central principle, which is then divisible into two clear propositions. Accept these terms, Democrats, and you will be free. (For the record: Ha, no — I’m not kidding myself.)

The big thing: You lost! Deal with it.

Yeah, so that’s the central principle: You lost, Democrats! You fucking lost. Practice saying that in the mirror. Your candidate didn’t win the election, did s/he? And the thing that happens when you don’t win? That’s called losing. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Real Democrat who is Still With Her or a devoted Political Revolutionary ready to Burn It All Down. You lost. It’s time to put on the big-girl pants. Quit creating imaginary universes where it didn’t happen, and quit whining about how you actually won except that other people were mean and weird and totally cheated. You lost. Sanders lost to Clinton and Clinton lost to Trump. There were no consolation prizes or moral victories, only the taste of blood and ashes and broken teeth. It completely sucked. That’s reality.

From that reality emerge the two planks of our truce. I already warned you that you weren’t going to like them.

The 2016 Democratic campaign wasn’t rigged. Hillary Clinton won. Nobody says you have to like it.

Look, I wasn’t a fan of the Democrats’ 2016 nomination process either (and the revised version sucks too). But everybody understood the rules in advance, hinky as they were, and Hillary Clinton won more states and got more votes. The end. Yes, it was a much closer race than anyone expected, including Bernie Sanders, and I understand the yearning to believe that it coulda or shoulda been different. (If Sanders had won both Iowa and New Hampshire, or had won one more big state — maybe New York or California — or had kept the margins close in the South, it really might have been.) But Clinton won the nomination, approximately fair and square.

Sure, there’s a hypothetical argument that the existence of all those Clinton-committed superdelegates distorted the race from the outset and made her appear to have an insurmountable lead. There’s a more conspiratorial argument that the Democratic National Committee’s unmistakable Clinton lean depressed the Sanders vote and gave her an intangible advantage. Believe whatever you want about what might have happened under different circumstances, but to put it not-very-delicately, those are the kinds of excuses losers make.

There is no way to redeem or renew the Democratic Party without acknowledging that — at least as it was four years ago, and quite likely as it is now — Democratic voters are a lot more cautious than the party’s activist base. Which, come to think of it, makes a perfect segue to Plank No. 2:

Bernie didn’t give us Trump! Hate on him all you want, but Sanders and his supporters didn’t cause this.

Yeah, I’m aware of the arithmetic being waved around that purports to show that around 10 to 12 percent of Sanders’ primary voters actually voted for Trump in the general election, and that fully one in four Sanders voters didn’t turn out for Hillary Clinton. If those defectors had plugged their noses and yanked the lever for Team D, that would almost certainly have been enough to tip the scales in those three Trump states we’re all so sick of hearing about, right?

Sure. But that’s a deeply illogical, cherry-picking argument, whose only merit is that in an election that close and that flukish, you can point to any factor you want and claim it was definitive. There’s nothing special or unique about the Bernie-to-Trump voters — if you want to look at it this way, they were more than canceled out by the 10 percent of Marco Rubio supporters and the 32 percent of John Kasich supporters who wound up voting for Clinton. Perhaps more to the point, there is zero evidence that those people were ever going to vote for Hillary Clinton under any circumstances. The likeliest explanation for their voting behavior is that they hated her guts.

Those eager to blame the self-indulgent socialist BernieBros for electing Trump are deliberately ignoring data from the 2008 general election, when most sources agree that a larger proportion of Hillary Clinton’s primary supporters refused to vote for Barack Obama after their acrimonious primary combat. As many as 25 percent of Clinton’s supporters ended up voting for John McCain, but since Obama won easily, no one particularly noticed or cared.

Party-switching of that type isn’t uncommon, and after any contested primary election there will be defectors who simply can’t stand the nominee. It’s certainly legitimate to lament the existence of Bernie-to-Trump voters. But it’s not reasonable to claim that they were loyal Democrats who were turned into evil anarchist robots by some uniquely toxic quality of the Sanders campaign.

Here’s an even more important statistic: Between 3 million and 3.5 million registered Democrats or “Democrat-leaners” voted for Donald Trump in 2016. That’s more than twice as much as the most generous estimate of Bernie-to-Trump voters, yet for some reason you don’t encounter self-righteous online ire directed at those folks, who presumably were not a bunch of disgruntled leftists all het up about the oligarchy and Goldman Sachs.

Why is that, exactly? Because for the Democratic Party as currently constituted, voters who drift toward the Republicans out of racism or “economic anxiety” or culture-war issues are seen as tragic but unavoidable features of the landscape. They are mythologized and yearned after and obsessed over. Endless amounts of energy is expended on strategies meant to win them back. They are held up as compelling evidence that Democrats must “moderate” their policies in order to win elections. I probably don’t need to tell anybody reading this that the track record for that strategy isn’t all that great.

Maybe you still believe that middle-ground blandness is the only way to save democracy from the Trump threat, and Joe Biden is right that enough of the “deplorables” have repented of their 2016 vote and will come skulking back to the Democratic Party as long as it’s not overly radical or woke and has no goals beyond calming things down a bit. OK then! That still doesn’t explain the fact that left-wing voters who reject the Democratic Party — which a pretty small group, let’s be honest — are invariably seen as irresponsible puritans or malicious saboteurs, and are singled out for blame and shame anytime Democrats lose.

Again, why is that? Every vote that your candidate or your party doesn’t get is equally damaging, no? Why are some treated differently from others?

Here’s why: Because mainstream Democrats define themselves almost entirely in negative terms, as the opposition to the increasingly scary Republicans and the far right, and see themselves as engaged in a reasonable, responsible contest for the middle ground of American politics. Rightward pressure, even if regrettable, nurtures Democrats’ self-image. It reassures them that they stand on one pole in a Manichaean conflict between good and evil. In such a conflict, to win back voters from the Republicans at virtually any price, in order to gain or hold power, is a noble cause.

Leftward pressure, on the other hand, is disorienting and destabilizing, and throws that moral equation into doubt. If there are more than two poles on the political compass, and if the Democratic Party has actual enemies to its left who would like to defeat it or conquer it or at least compel it to accommodate them for once, then the basic principles of America’s political duopoly and the party’s raison d’être — which foregrounds compromise, triangulation and an ideology of no-ideology — are under threat.

Right-wing rebellion is always understood (by Democrats) as legitimate and serious, an issue that must be addressed. Left-wing rebellion is always seen as illegitimate, perverse and contemptible, and must be crushed. Rescuing the Democratic Party from its current aimless drift — in the election year just ahead or in this new decade or just sometime in this century — is not a matter of embracing one side of that divide and rejecting the other. It’s about facing an altered political landscape with honesty and clarity, and leaving behind the realm of denial, delusion and fantasy that have rendered our politics so empty and so stupid for so long.

Democrat Julián Castro Drops Out of 2020 Presidential Race

AUSTIN, Texas — Former Obama housing secretary Julián Castro, the only Latino in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, on Thursday ended his campaign that had pushed the field on immigration and swung hard at rivals on the debate stage but never found a foothold to climb from the back of the pack.

“I’m so proud of the campaign we’ve run together. We’ve shaped the conversation on so many important issues in this race, stood up for the most vulnerable people and given a voice to those who are often forgotten,” Castro said in an online video. “But with only a month until the Iowa caucuses, and given the circumstances of this campaign season, I have determined that it simply isn’t our time.”

The video continues, “So today it’s with a heavy heart and with profound gratitude that I will suspend my campaign for president. To all who have been inspired by our campaign, especially our young people, keep reaching for your dreams — and keep fighting for what you believe in.”

Castro, who launched his campaign in January, dropped out after failing to garner enough support in the polls or donations to make recent Democratic debates. A former San Antonio mayor who later became President Barack Obama’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Castro had stalled for most of his campaign around 1% in polls and never came close to raising money like his better-known rivals.

He had not yet released his end-of-year fundraising totals, but by October he had raised less than $8 million total. As Castro exited the field, Bernie Sanders announced on Thursday that he brought in more than $34.5 million in the previous three months alone.

Castro’s exit reflects the increasing lack of color in a Democratic field that began as one of the most diverse in history. Between Sen. Kamala Harris of California dropping out and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey also lagging, the sixth and final Democratic debate of 2019 had no black or Latino candidates on stage.

Castro expressed disappointment and concern about the growing lack of diversity, and in Iowa he ran an ad arguing that the state should no longer go first in Democrats’ nominating process because it doesn’t reflect the diversity of the Democratic Party.

Castro, 45, was among the youngest in the running at a moment when the party’s ascendant left wing is demanding generational change. And as the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, Castro said he recognized the meaning of his candidacy in the face of President Donald Trump’s inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric and hardline policies on the U.S.-Mexico border.

But he labored not to be pigeonholed as a single-issue candidate. He made the attention-getting choice of Puerto Rico as his first campaign stop, recited the names of black victims killed in high-profile police shootings and was the first in the field to call for Trump’s impeachment. He also was a leading voice in he field on poverty and ending hunger.

But his sagging poll numbers never budged. Early on, he was often eclipsed by another Texan in the race who dropped out this fall, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and another young former mayor, Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. His campaign and supporters, meanwhile, grumbled that he didn’t get due credit for taking out-front positions.

Warren was among the first in the field to react to Castro’s departure, tweeting, “Thank you @JulianCastro for being a powerful voice, for proposing bold and progressive plans, and for using your campaign to help people who need it now.”

Trying to show he could go toe-to-toe with Trump, Castro swung for big moments on debate stages, and he flirted with a much-needed breakout in June after confronting O’Rourke over not supporting decriminalization of illegal border crossings.

But turning his sights on Biden on a later stage brought swift backlash. During the September debate in Houston, Castro appeared to touch on concerns about the age of the then-76-year-old former vice president and added a parting shot at him.

“I’m fulfilling the legacy of Barack Obama, and you’re not,” Castro said.

Castro, who was Obama’s housing secretary in his second term, denied taking a personal dig at Biden as others in the field condemned the exchange. Three days later, Castro lost one of his three backers in Congress, Rep. Vicente González of Texas, who switched his endorsement to Biden.

Castro had warned supporters in a fundraising appeal that failing to make the November debate stage would spell the end of his campaign. He needed to hit at least 3% polling in four early state or national polls but didn’t get even one.

What is next for Castro is unclear. Back home in Texas, Democrats had long viewed Castro as their biggest star in waiting, and some have urged him to run for governor as the state trends more diverse and liberal.

Castro was pegged as a rising Democratic star after being elected as mayor of the nation’s seventh-largest city at age 34, and he was on the short list for Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016.

In the video announcing his exit, Castro concludes with “¡Ganaremos un día!” — which translates to “We will win one day!”

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Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pauljweber

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Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

Bernie Sanders Announces ‘Staggering’ Fourth-Quarter Haul

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign announced Thursday that it raised a “staggering” $34.5 million from an average donation of just $18.53 in the fourth quarter of 2019, the largest single-quarter fundraising haul of any candidate in the Democratic primary so far.

“Bernie Sanders is closing the year with the most donations of any candidate in history at this point in a presidential campaign,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, said in a statement, pointing to the 5 million individual contributions the senator amassed in 2019.

“He is proving each and every day that working-class Americans are ready and willing to fully fund a campaign that stands up for them and takes on the biggest corporations and the wealthy,” said Shakir. “You build a grassroots movement to beat Donald Trump and create a political revolution one $18 donation at a time, and that’s exactly why Bernie is going to win.”

The Sanders campaign said it has raised more than $96 million since launching in February, and 99.9 percent of donors have not maxed out—meaning they can continue to donate.

In the fourth quarter, “teacher” was the most common occupation of Sanders donors and Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, the United States Postal Service, and Target were the most common employers. The Sanders campaign said it received 40,000 new donors on the final day of the fourth quarter, and 300,000 new donors in the fourth quarter overall.

Just two other Democratic presidential candidates—Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang—have announced their fundraising totals for the fourth quarter. Buttigieg said Wednesday that his campaign raised $24.7 million in the fourth quarter and Yang announced a haul of $16.5 million.

Trump EPA Ignores Scientific Evidence as It Shreds Regulations

This article was first published on Common Dreams.

A federal panel of independent scientific experts says the EPA has flouted the panel’s guidance in its efforts to roll back a number of Obama-era regulations, resulting in an agency push that will affect public health for millions of Americans without the consideration of environmental science.

The EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) wrote in four draft reports published online Tuesday that the agency’s published revisions to at least four regulations “conflict with established science,” according to the Washington Post.

EPA's independent scientific advisers — most of whom were appointed under Trump — have warned that several of the agency's top regulatory rollbacks ignore "established science." https://t.co/SZCbGjrhLf

— Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) December 31, 2019

Although two-thirds of the SAB’s current members are Trump appointees, Juliet Eilperin wrote in the Post, the panel “found serious flaws” in the proposed changes to rules governing pollution, gas mileage, and how regulations are written.

The revisions and regulatory rollbacks in question include:

a reversal of a rule that limits the use of pesticides and other chemicals near waterways, which the SAB says “neglects established science” that has shown how contamination from such toxins can pollute drinking water
a reduction in mileage targets for vehicles, which was decided based on “implausible” economic analyses
the rollback of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which the EPA pushed after performing a flawed cost-benefit analysis, failing to consider the public health benefits and savings that would result from controlling mercury pollution
the EPA’s push to exclude certain scientific studies from policy-making, saying the change “could easily undercut the integrity of environmental laws, as it will allow systematic bias to be introduced.”

H. Christopher Frey, an environmental engineering professor at North Carolina State University who served on the board for six years, told the Post that EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is “sidelining the Scientific Advisory Board.”

“He obviously has an ideological agenda of pursuing regulatory rollbacks, and the science is not always going to be consistent with that ideological agenda,” Frey said.

The EPA’s marginalizing of the board as it rolls back regulations “looks like ideology trumping science,” tweeted Kathleen Rest, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

An #EPA advisory board — dominated by scientists appointed by Trump — found serious flaws in the science behind several of the agency’s proposed changes to our public health and environmental protections. Looks like ideology trumping science ⁦@EPA⁩. https://t.co/DNhWvEcTLQ

— kathleen rest (@kathleen_rest) December 31, 2019

The SAB’s new reports about the EPA’s rollbacks call into question “to what degree these suggested changes are fact-based as opposed to politically motivated,” Steven Hamburg of the Environmental Defense Fund, who served on the board until last September, told the Post.

Africa Starts Decade Battling Hunger, Extremism, Ebola

JOHANNESBURG—A tragic airline crash with far-reaching consequences, cataclysmic cyclones that may be a harbinger of the future, the death of an African icon and a new leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 — and look to influence events on the continent in 2020.

The battles against extremist violence and Ebola will also continue to be major campaigns in Africa in the coming year.

The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa in March killed all 157 passengers and crew. The disaster, which claimed the lives of a large number of U.N. officials, involved a Boeing 737 Max jet and came just five months after a similar crash in Indonesia of the same aircraft.

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Boeing was inundated with questions about the safety of its plane. After initially claiming that it was safe, the company was forced to ground the plane after many countries refused to let it fly in their airspace. In December Boeing announced that it would suspend production of the jet.

The air crash was a trial for Ethiopia’s reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who later in the year won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for achieving peace with neighboring Eritrea. But Abiy is challenged by often violent ethnic rivalries in his country and elections set for May 2020 will be crucial, analysts say.

Cyclone Idai ripped into Mozambique in March, killing more than 1,300 people, making it “one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the southern hemisphere,” according to the U.N. A month later Cyclone Kenneth roared into northern Mozambique, killing more than 50 people.

This was the first time in recorded history that Mozambique had two major cyclones, prompting some to worry that the country, with a 1,000-mile Indian Ocean coastline, may be prone to more storms as a result of climate change.

Across Mozambique more than 2.5 million people remain in urgent need of assistance, according to the U.N. Mozambique also starts 2020 troubled by ongoing attacks on vehicles in the country’s central area and by Islamic extremist attacks in the country’s north.

Extremist violence continues to vex Africa from the east to the west.

2019 began with extremist violence. In Kenya in January, insurgents launched an assault on a luxury hotel and shopping complex in Nairobi that killed at least 14 people.

The year came to an end with extremist attacks across the continent.

A bomb in Somalia killed 78 people, including many university students, in the capital, Mogadishu, on Dec. 28, the deadliest attack in years. Somalia’s al-Shabab, allied to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the bombing.

In Nigeria extremists linked to the Islamic State group circulated a video showing 11 hostages, most of them Christians, being executed. They were thought to be killed on Christmas Day. The extremist group, which calls itself the Islamic State West Africa Province, said the captives were executed as revenge for the killing of Islamic State group leaders in Iraq and Syria in October.

In northern Burkina Faso, jihadists killed 35 civilians, most of them women, and ensuing clashes with security forces left 80 jihadists dead, the West African nation’s president announced Dec. 24. That attack came weeks after an attack on a convoy carrying employees of a Canadian mining company in which at least 37 civilians were killed in the country’s east. Both attacks were by groups numbering close to 100, indicating the presence of relatively large, well-organized extremist groups.

“The startling deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso has been a major development in 2019,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House, the British think tank. ”There’s been a dramatic spike in extremist attacks.”

Frequent attacks in Burkina Faso’s north and east already have displaced more than a half million people, according to the United Nations. While Burkina Faso’s military has received training from both former colonizer France and the United States, it starts 2020 with little progress in halting the surge in extremist violence.

Congo starts the year waging a different kind of war — a campaign against Ebola, which has killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018. The medical effort to control the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has been severely hampered since the start by the presence of several armed groups in eastern Congo, the epicenter of the epidemic. It was hoped that new vaccines would help control the outbreak more quickly, but the violence has hampered those efforts.

Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, elected in 2019, said in November that he was optimistic that the Ebola outbreak would be ended before 2020, but the epidemic continues throughout eastern Congo.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, re-elected in 2019, said in a New Year’s statement that the need to boost his country’s ailing economy and create jobs is his biggest challenge for 2020. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, also re-elected, has said that his government has controlled the rebellion by Boko Haram extremists, but violence continues to plague the country’s northeast.

Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler, Robert Mugabe, died at age 95 in September. Mugabe, the guerrilla leader who fought to end white-minority rule in Rhodesia and then ruled independent Zimbabwe from 1980 until 2017, left a mixed legacy of liberation, repression and economic ruin.

Zimbabwe begins the new year with severe economic problems including inflation estimated at more than 300% and widespread hunger. In an emergency appeal at the end of December, the U.N.’s World Food Program said that even though the southern African country had suffered a drought, Zimbabwe’s food shortages are a “man-made” disaster, laying the blame squarely with President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.

The once-prosperous country staggered to 2020 with power shortages lasting up to 19 hours per day and large parts of the capital, Harare, a city of some 2 million people, going without running water.

As More Women Run for Office, Child Care Remains a Hurdle

SALT LAKE CITY—When Kimberly Dudik ran for her fourth term in the Montana House, state officials told her she could not use campaign money to pay for child care for her four young children.

She is now running for attorney general and is trying to visit a big chunk of the sprawling state, spending hours on the road. That means she needs even more help picking up her kids at school and day care when she’s away and her husband has a late night at the office.

“It just seems behind the times,” Dudik, whose family is living off her husband’s income and savings from her work as a lawyer. “When it was a man campaigning, the woman was traditionally the one to stay home and take care of the children. There is not someone home just taking care of the kids.”

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Experts predict a large number of women will again run for office in 2020 like they did in 2018, and child care remains a hurdle for many of them.

A congressional candidate in New York successfully petitioned the Federal Election Commission in 2018 to allow campaign money to help cover child care costs. But it applies only to those running for federal office.

That leaves women in many states who are running for the Legislature, statewide positions like attorney general or local offices to find another way to pay for child care as they campaign, which often requires night and weekend work.

Only six states have laws specifically allowing campaign money to be used for child care. Five states are considering it. In most states, including Montana, the law is silent on the issue and up to interpretation by agencies or boards. Agencies in at least nine states have allowed child care to be a campaign-related expense, but those decisions are not law and could be reversed.

Utah is among the states that passed a child care expense law, which went into effect last May.

Luz Escamilla was one of the first candidates to use it as she campaigned to become the first Latina mayor of Salt Lake City. Escamilla had to take time off from her full-time banking job to knock on doors and shake hands as she made her case to voters.

Without a paycheck, it was hard to cover the cost of child care for her two youngest daughters. After the law was passed, she used about $1,500 in campaign cash over two months to help pay for it. The extra time she could spend campaigning helped propel her to a spot in the general election, though she lost in November.

“Full-time campaigning during the summer with toddlers, it makes it really difficult,” Escamilla said, adding of the law: “It was a great tool in our toolbox.”

Lawmakers in Minnesota added child care as an allowable expense in 2018, while Colorado, New York, New Hampshire and California passed laws in 2019.

Before Colorado allowed campaign cash to be used for child care, Amber McReynolds, a former chief elections official in Denver, was contemplating a bid for statewide office in 2017. The costs of child care were a considerable concern as a single mother of two young children.

For that and other reasons, McReynolds decided against running.

“When we look at the statistics in terms of representatives in Congress or statewide office and you don’t see single moms in that category, that’s why,” said McReynolds, who’s CEO of a nonprofit. “The circumstances are just that much more difficult when you are in politics.”

The policy also can help fathers running for office in families where both parents work.

Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said the record number of women who ran for office in 2018 has helped drive the issue. Still, lawmakers in a number of states have resisted the change.

In Tennessee, the sponsor of a measure to add child care to the list of approved campaign expenses faced a skeptical audience during a subcommittee hearing last spring.

“If they aren’t running for office because they can’t find child care, how are they going to do the job down here?” asked state Rep. John Crawford, a Republican from Kingsport, Tennessee.

The sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Jason Powell, said he introduced the proposal after people he tried to recruit to run for City Council in Nashville declined because child care needs kept them from campaigning.

“I hate that people in our state feel like they can’t run for office because they may or may not be able to use their campaign funds for a child care expense,” Powell said.

The measure failed to advance after a split vote of the all-male subcommittee.

In Louisiana, Democratic state House candidate Morgan Lamandre had her request denied by the state ethics board even though it allowed a Republican man to claim campaign-related child care expenses in 2000. Members, who were not on the panel two decades ago and didn’t have to follow the previous decision, said they were concerned it could be abused.

After a backlash, the board reversed itself.

While she’s used campaign funds to pay for child care a few times, Lamandre said it’s not a panacea for smaller races where candidates might have to choose between paying a baby-sitter or buying basics like lawn signs.

“It’s helpful, but it’s not a slam-dunk,” she said.

Liuba Grechen-Shirley, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress on eastern Long Island and whose FEC petition led to child care expenses being allowed for federal candidates, started a group called Vote Mama to help mothers running for public office and hopes one day the expense is allowed in every state.

States now considering proposals include New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Caitlin Clarkson Pereira tried a similar approach to Grechen-Shirley’s, but ended up suing Connecticut after a board denied her request. She was told she couldn’t use campaign money to pay for child care for her young daughter during her state House race in 2018, which she ultimately lost.

Connecticut officials cited a program that allows candidates to tap taxpayer money after they raise a certain amount on their own. With public money involved, the state says child care should be considered a personal expense.

Pereira argued that it should be considered as necessary as meals or travel.

“This is the time to remove the roadblocks that are clearly in the way of parents and families being able to run for office,” she said.

Despite an eleventh-hour push last year by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, lawmakers failed to pass the policy.

Dudik, the Montana candidate, said the lack of these laws shows the need to have more women in power so policies can be changed.

“If we want more women running for office, we need to make allowances to make that a reality and not just give lip service to it,” she said.

___

Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.

Robert Reich: Corporate Social Responsibility Is a Scam

Boeing recently fired CEO Dennis Muilenburg in order “to restore confidence in the Company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders.”

Restore confidence? Muilenburg’s successor will be David Calhoun who, as a long-standing member of Boeing’s board of directors, allowed Muilenburg to remain CEO for more than a year after the first 737 Max crash and after internal studies found that the jetliner posed an unacceptable risk of accident. It caused the deaths of 346 people.

Muilenburg raked in $30 million in 2018. He could walk away from Boeing with another $60 million.

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Last August, the Business Roundtable – an association of CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, of which Muilenburg is a director – announced with great fanfare a “fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” (emphasis in the original) and not just their shareholders.

Rubbish. Corporate social responsibility is a sham.

Another Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the Roundtable commitment, and despite GM’s hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers’ demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

Some 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn’t save any jobs. Meanwhile, GM’s stock has performed so well that Barra earned $22 million last year.

Another prominent Business Roundtable CEO who made the commitment to all his stakeholders is AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, who promised to invest in the company’s broadband network and create at least 7,000 new jobs with the billions the company received from the Trump tax cut.

Instead, AT&T has cut more than 30,000 jobs since the tax cut went into effect.

Let’s not forget Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary. Just weeks after Bezos made the Business Roundtable commitment to all his stakeholders, Whole Foods announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.

The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos – whose net worth is $110 billion – makes in two hours. (Bezos’s nearly-completed D.C. mansion will have 2 elevators, 25 bathrooms, 11 bedrooms, and a movie theater.)

GE’s CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. Culp raked in $15 million last year.

The list goes on. Just in time for the holidays, US Steel announced 1,545 layoffs at two plants in Michigan. Last year, five US Steel executives received an average compensation package of $4.8 million, a 53 percent increase over 2017.

Instead of a holiday bonus this year, Walmart offered its employees a 15 percent store discount. Oh, and did I say? Walmart saved $2.2 billion this year from the Trump tax cut.

The giant tax cut itself was a product of the Business Roundtable’s extensive lobbying, lubricated by its generous campaign donations. Several of its member corporations, including Amazon and General Motors, wound up paying no federal income taxes at all last year.

Not incidentally, the tax cut will result in less federal money for services on which Americans and their communities rely.

The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before, in order to further boost record profits and unprecedented CEO pay.

Americans know this. In the most recent Pew survey, a record 73 percent of U.S. adults (including 62 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Republicans earning less than $30,000 a year) believe major corporations have too much power. And 65 percent believe they make too much profit.

The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be – for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making, making corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day.

If the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they’d support such laws. Don’t hold your breath.

The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of politics.

The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the con it is.