Chris Hedges's Blog, page 79

Fighting Rages Near Libya’s Capital Amid Push by Rebel Army

CAIRO — Just two days after rebel Libyan commander Khalifa Hifter declared a “final” and decisive battle for the capital Tripoli, heavy fighting raged for a 24-hour period between his troops and militias loosely allied with the internationally backed government based in the city, officials said Saturday.

The fighting came after Hifter, the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army, said Thursday that the “zero hour” of his battle for Tripoli had begun, nearly eight months after he began an offensive to take the city from the country’s Government of National accord supported by the U.N.

The LNA’s media office shared images of reinforcements arriving in Tripoli, including ground troops and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns and of clashes in southern parts of the city. Hifter’s forces took control of the town of al-Tawghaar, just south of Tripoli, the LNA said. But Tripoli-based forces disputed that claim.

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The fighting has threatened to plunge Libya into another bout of violence rivaling the scale of the 2011 conflict that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

In the chaos that followed Gadhafi’s death, the country was divided into two parts — a weak U.N.-supported administration in Tripoli and a rival government in the east aligned with the LNA.

The LNA’s media office said it shot down a Turkish-made drone over the town of Ain Zara south of the capital. Hifter forces captured a major military camp from the Tripoli-allied militias and clashes continued around the camp, officials from both sides said.

The LNA also launched airstrikes overnight against an air base at the Air Force Academy in the city of Misrata, targeting military warehouses allegedly housing Turkish-made drones used by Tripoli-allied militias, said LNA spokesman Ahmed al-Mesmari.

Misrata, in western Libya, is the country’s second largest city and is home to fierce militias who oppose Hifter and have been extremely important in the government’s defense of Tripoli.

There was heavy fighting elsewhere around Tripoli in the new push by Hifter’s forces and officials on both sides said the latest offensive has been more intense than Hifter’s other offensives over the past eight months.

Since his troops marched toward Tripoli in April, Hifter has only been able to lay siege to the city, failing to claim it from the government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.

In past months, battle lines have barely changed, with both sides dug in and shelling each other in the southern capital’s reaches. Both sides have also sought support from regional and international backers.

U.N. experts said in a 376-page report to the U.N. Security Council this week that Jordan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are supporting Libya’s warring sides and have “routinely and sometimes blatantly supplied weapons, with little effort to disguise the source” in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.

Hifter is backed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, France and Russia. The Tripoli-based government receives aid from Turkey, Qatar and Italy.

Libyan and U.S. officials have accused Russia of deploying fighters through a private security contractor, the Wagner Group, to key Libyan battleground areas in recent months.

While Moscow has repeatedly denied any role in the fighting in Libya, the Government of National Accord said it has documented between 600 and 800 Russian fighters in Libya fighting with Hifter forces.

“The Russian fighters’ toughness, lethal techniques and coordination discipline have instilled fear in the anti-Hifter forces,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert at The Netherlands Institute of International Relations. “Now, Hifter and all foreign states backing him have become dramatically more confident that Hifter’s brigades will enter Tripoli within the foreseeable future.”

The U.N. experts’ report also said the presence of Chadian and Sudanese fighters in Libya “has become more marked” in 2019 and said they represent “a direct threat” to the country’s security and stability.

Hifter’s declaration of his most recent offensive came after the signing of a security arrangement and maritime deal between Sarraj’s government and Turkey last month.

The maritime deal would give Turkey access to a Mediterranean Sea economic zone offshore from Libya. Cyprus, Egypt and Greece claim the accord violates international law.

The deal has also added tension to Turkey’s ongoing dispute with Greece, Cyprus and Egypt over oil and gas drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

Houses of Worship Attacked With Deadly Frequency in 2019

On Dec. 1, a band of assailants opened fire on worshippers at a small-town Protestant church in Burkina Faso, an impoverished West African country where the Christian minority is increasingly a target of attacks. The victims included the pastor and several teenage boys; regional authorities attributed the attack to “unidentified armed men” who, according to witnesses, got away on motorcycles.

The slaughter merited brief reports by international news outlets, then quickly faded from the spotlight — not surprising in a year where attacks on places of worship occurred with relentless frequency. Hundreds of worshippers and many clergy were killed at churches, mosques, synagogues and temples.

__

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A two-week span in January illustrated the scope of this somber phenomenon. In Thailand, a group of separatist insurgents attacked a Buddhist temple, killing the abbot and one of his fellow monks. In the Philippines, two suicide attackers detonated bombs during a Mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral on the largely Muslim island of Jolo, killing 23 and wounding about 100. Three days later, an attacker hurled a grenade into a mosque in a nearby city, killing two Muslim religion teachers.

The worst was yet to come.

On March 15, a gunman allegedly fueled by anti-Muslim hatred attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 people. The man arrested for the killings had earlier published a manifesto espousing a white supremacist philosophy and detailing his plans to attack the mosques.

At a national remembrance service two weeks later, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealanders had learned the stories of those impacted by the attacks — many of them recently arrived immigrants.

“They were stories of those who were born here, grew up here, or who had made New Zealand their home. Who had sought refuge or sought a better life for themselves or their families,” she said. “They will remain with us forever. They are us.”

___

On Easter Sunday — April 21 — bombs shattered the celebratory services at two Catholic churches and a Protestant church in Sri Lanka.

Other targets, in coordinated suicide attacks by local militants, included three luxury hotels. But Christian worshippers at the three churches — including dozens of children — accounted for a large majority of the roughly 260 people killed.

The victims at St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo included 11-month-old Avon Gomez, his two older brothers and his parents.

The day’s biggest death toll — more than 100 — was at St. Sebastian’s, a Catholic church in the seaside town of Negombo. It’s known as “Little Rome” due to its abundance of churches and its role as the hub of Sri Lanka’s small Catholic community.

The attacks surprised many in the predominantly Buddhist country, where the Christian community totals about 7% of the population and has long avoided involvement in bitter ethnic and religious divides.

__

Six days after Easter, more than 9,400 miles (15,000 kilometers) from Sri Lanka, a gunman opened fire inside a synagogue in Poway, California, as worshippers celebrated the last day of Passover. A 60-year-old woman was killed; an 8-year-old girl and two men, including the Chabad of Poway’s rabbi, were wounded.

Some congregation members said the slain woman, Lori Kaye, blocked the shooter by jumping in front of rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, whose two index fingers were injured.

The man charged with murder and attempted murder in the attack, John T. Earnest, could face the death penalty if he is convicted of murder, although prosecutors haven’t yet said whether they will pursue capital punishment.

At a court hearing in September, prosecutors played a 12-minute recording of Earnest calmly telling a 911 dispatcher that he had just shot up a synagogue to save white people from Jews.

The attack occurred exactly six months after 11 people were killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue in the deadliest assault on Jews in U.S. history.

An additional anti-Semitic bloodbath was narrowly averted in October when an armed assailant tried to blast his way into a synagogue in Halle, Germany, where scores of worshippers were attending services on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism.

Unable to break through a locked door, the gunman went on a rampage in nearby streets, killing two people and wounding two others.

Authorities said the 27-year-old German man who has confessed to the attack had posted an anti-Semitic screed before the assault and broadcast the shooting live on a popular video game site.

___

In contrast to the Poway and Halle attacks, where authorities have identified suspects and motives, some of the worst attacks on houses of worship unfold without arrests or claims of responsibility.

In October, for example, more than 60 people were killed in a bombing during Friday prayers at a mosque in the village of Jodari in eastern Afghanistan.

No group claimed responsibility and authorities offered conflicting explanations of how the bombing was carried out.

One common element of all the attacks: Dismay that many people of faith now have reason for apprehension as they gather for worship.

“No one should have to fear going to their place of worship,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom after the Poway attack. ”No one should be targeted for practicing the tenets of their faith.”

— Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

U.N. Climate Talks in Limbo as Chair Chile Bids for Compromise

MADRID — Chilean officials presiding over this year’s U.N. climate talks said Saturday they plan to propose a compromise to bridge yawning differences among countries that have been deadlocked on key issues for the past two weeks.

With the meeting already into extra time, draft documents presented overnight failed to achieve consensus. Observers and environmental groups warned that they risked undoing or stalling on commitments made in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Later Saturday, Chilean diplomat Andrés Landerretche told reporters that a fresh compromise would be circulated Saturday afternoon, but insisted that there would have to be trade-offs if there was to be a deal supported by all countries.

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“It’s impossible to have a consensus outcome if you don’t compromise,” he said.

Asked whether some decisions might be postponed until next year, Landerretche said: “We don’t foresee any suspension. We are working with a view toward finishing our work today.”

But observers said there were still huge obstacles to overcome.

“I’ve been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991, but never have I seen the almost total disconnection we’ve seen here (…) in Madrid between what the science requires and the people of the world demand, and what the climate negotiators are delivering,” said Alden Meyer, a climate policy special at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Meyer said the current drafts didn’t reflect urgent warnings from scientists that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall sharply, and soon.

“The planet is on fire and our window of escape is getting harder and harder to reach the longer we fail to act,” Meyer said.

Growing concern about climate change has been reflected in mass protests staged around the world over the past year, often by young activists concerned about the future they and their children might face as the planet heats up.

Demonstrations took place inside and outside the venue of the talks in the Spanish capital, with Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg one of the most prominent voices calling for urgent action to curb emissions.

Some countries said it was time to heed those demands.

“We have the science. We have the collective will to deliver enshrined in the Paris agreement. And now it is time to step up,” said Ola Elvestuen, Norway’s environment minister.

“A weak encouragement will not be understood by the outside world,” he said. “It will send a message that we are not listening to science.”

Senior European officials, including ministers from Spain, Germany and the EU’s top climate official, Frans Timmermans, were engaged in last-minute negotiations to prevent the talks from collapsing.

But among the countries pushing back against agreeing new measures to help poor countries and set new emissions cutting targets was the United States, which under President Donald Trump has announced it is pulling out of the Paris accord.

“I’ve just heard the comments of many others here today on the need to include an expansive additional language on gaps and needs,” Kimberly Carnahan, a State Department official representing the U.S., said during a morning debate.

“We don’t support such language and we would not think that it would lead to the balance of this text, but rather take us quite far in the other direction.”

Small island nations, which fear disappearing beneath the waves over the coming decades as global warming leads to sea level rise, bristled at the U.S. position.

“(Decisions) should be made by countries that are going to be bound by those decisions and not by parties who are not going to be bound by the Paris agreement,” said Ian Fry, ambassador for climate change of the Pacific state of Tuvalu.

Harjeet Singh of the humanitarian group Action Aid said the European Union would also shoulder blame if the talks in Madrid fail to make progress.

“It does a lot of sweet talking but it doesn’t really help people,” he said.

Among the main issues at stake are rules for international carbon markets and a system for channeling money to help poor countries cope with the economic impact of climate change.

Johnson’s Win May Deliver Brexit but Could Risk U.K.’s Breakup

LONDON — Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about.

Johnson’s commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to “get Brexit done,” but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn’t vote for Brexit, didn’t embrace this week’s Conservative electoral landslide — and now may be drifting permanently away from London.

In a victory speech Friday, Johnson said the election result proved that leaving the EU is “the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.”

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Arguably, though, it isn’t. It’s the will of the English, who make up 56 million of the U.K.’s 66 million people. During Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, England and much smaller Wales voted to leave bloc; Scotland and Ireland didn’t. In Thursday’s election, England elected 345 Conservative lawmakers — all but 20 of the 365 House of Commons seats Johnson’s party won across the U.K.

In Scotland, 48 of the 59 seats were won by the Scottish National Party, which opposes Brexit and wants Scotland to become independent of the U.K.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said her party’s “emphatic” victory showed that “the kind of future desired by the majority in Scotland is different to that chosen by the rest of the U.K.”

The SNP has campaigned for decades to make Scotland independent and almost succeeded in 2014, when Scotland held a referendum on seceding from the U.K. The “remain” side won 55% to 45%.

At the time, the referendum was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision. But the SNP argues that Brexit has changed everything because Scotland now faces being dragged out of the EU against its will.

Sturgeon said Friday that Johnson “has no mandate whatsoever to take Scotland out of the EU” and Scotland must be able to decide its future in a new independence referendum.

Johnson insists he will not approve a referendum during the current term of Parliament, which is due to last until 2024. Johnson’s office said the prime minister told the Scottish leader on Friday that “the result of the 2014 referendum was decisive and should be respected.”

The Scotsman newspaper summed up the showdown Saturday with front page face-to-face images of Sturgeon and Johnson: “Two landslides. One collision course.”

“What we’ve got now is pretty close to a perfect storm,” said historian Tom Devine, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He said the U.K. is facing an “unprecedented constitutional crisis” as Johnson’s refusal to approve a referendum fuels growing momentum for Scottish independence.

Politically and legally, it’s a stalemate. Without the approval of the U.K. government, a referendum would not be legally binding. London could simply ignore the result, as the Spanish government did when Catalonia held an unauthorized independence vote in 2017.

Mark Diffley, an Edinburgh-based political analyst, said Sturgeon “has said that she doesn’t want a Catalonia-style referendum. She wants to do this properly.”

There’s no clear legal route to a second referendum if Johnson refuses, though Sturgeon can apply political and moral pressure. Diffley said the size of the SNP’s win allows Sturgeon to argue that a new referendum is “the will of the people.”

Sturgeon said that next week she will lay out a “detailed democratic case for a transfer of power to enable a referendum to be put beyond legal challenge.”

Devine said the administrations in Edinburgh and London “are in a completely uncompromising condition” and that will only make the crisis worse.

“The longer Johnson refuses to concede a referendum, the greater will the pro-independence momentum in Scotland accelerate,” he said. ”By refusing to concede it, Johnson has ironically become a recruiting sergeant for increased militant nationalism.”

Northern Ireland has its own set of political parties and structures largely split along British unionist/Irish nationalist lines. There, too, people feel cast adrift by Brexit, and the political plates are shifting.

For the first time this week, Northern Ireland elected more lawmakers who favor union with Ireland than want to remain part of the U.K.

The island of Ireland, which holds the U.K.’s only land border with the EU, has proved the most difficult issue in Brexit negotiations. Any customs checks or other obstacles along the currently invisible frontier between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland would undermine both the local economy and Northern Ireland’s peace process.

The divorce deal struck between Johnson and the EU seeks to avoid a hard border by keeping Northern Ireland closely aligned to EU rules, which means new checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

“Once you put a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland’s going to be part of a united Ireland for economic purposes,” Jonathan Powell, who helped negotiate Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord, told the BBC. “That will increase the tendency toward a united Ireland for political reasons, too.

“I think there is a good chance there will be a united Ireland within 10 years.”

In Scotland, Devine also thinks the days of the Union may be numbered.

“Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think it’s more likely than not that the U.K. will come to an end over the next 20 to 30 years.”

___

Renee Graham in Edinburgh contributed to this story.

Icy Silence, Connections Fray as Impeachment Takes a Toll

WASHINGTON—The most raucous committee in Congress sat stone-faced, barely speaking.

One by one, the members around the Judiciary Committee dais voted on the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Then they bolted for the doors and the airports, in more than one case without a word.

The all-business iciness during those eight gavel-to-gavel minutes reflected the gravity of advancing articles of impeachment to the House floor for only the third time in American history. But it also told much of the story about impeachment’s toll on Congress, Washington and beyond.

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Ever since Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president sparked official proceedings against the president, impeachment has been a force that’s bent congressional business around it, with severe strain.

No one feels sorry for Congress, and its members generally don’t feel sorry for themselves. But the wear-and-tear of impeachment is becoming clear in the emotional exchanges and frayed relationships left in its wake.

“I have a problem with this whole damn place. If you can figure out an exit strategy for me I’d appreciate that,” said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., a member of the Judiciary panel, on Friday. “This is crazy. The whole thing is crazy,” he added of impeachment. “It will take some time to get over.”

Tempers are short. Members show signs of being sick of each other, like any colleagues who spend too much time together. But they are operating under the glare of a global spotlight and the weight of history.

Trust, or what remained of it after years of obstruction and smashmouth Trump-era politics, appeared to be a casualty in the short-term.

Thursday’s grueling 14-hour Judiciary Committee markup of the abuse and obstruction charges against Trump ignited the smoldering tension. There was no expectation that the articles would be substantially changed, but Trump’s allies pushed for amendments, each of which took hours to consider. Democrats, meanwhile, did not want to take final votes too late for Americans to see.

Just before midnight, Chairman Jerrold Nadler announced that the committee would not be voting on the impeachment articles until Friday morning — and after he banged his gavel, the microphones were switched off. Livid, Republicans leapt to their feet, yelling “unbelievable” and “sneaky” and talking of a “kangaroo court.” Nadler walked out.

“Chairman Nadler’s integrity is zero. His staff is zero,” fumed ranking Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia. “This chairman has made himself irrelevant.”

The personal stab at the powerful New York House veteran was unusual, as even the most mismatched pairs atop committees typically refrain from attacking each other in personal terms.

“I could feel it myself and I know the rest of us did,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, a new member from Pennsylvania, in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. “That really was sort of the apex of weeks and months of emotional and mental and intellectual toll.”

It turns out that impeachment is not the Democratic morale-booster that some might have thought in the heady first days of the party’s House takeover this year, when Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib vowed to “impeach the motherf—-er” on her first day in office.

One Democrat involved in the impeachment investigation was so dispirited by it all that he decided this term will be his last.

“The countless hours I have spent in the investigation of Russian election interference and the impeachment inquiry have rendered my soul weary,” said Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash., in his retirement announcement Dec. 4. “At times, it is as though there are no rules or boundaries. … Civility is out. Compromise is out. All or nothing is in.”

There’s a long way to go before knowing which party benefits and which pays for impeachment in the 2020 elections, let alone which fares better in the eyes of history. But trust — by Americans toward Congress — seems to be suffering. And it’s not clear the proceedings are changing minds. Recent polling shows that about half the country supports impeaching and removing Trump from office, fitting the pattern of a deeply polarized nation.

But the proceedings could be costly for both parties.

A plurality of Americans — 44 percent — said they had no trust at all in the House impeachment proceedings, according to a Monmouth University poll conducted in December.

The poll also found that about 6 in 10 Americans said Democrats in Congress are more interested in bringing down Trump than pursuing the facts. Likewise, about 6 in 10 said Republicans in Congress are more interested in defending Trump than pursuing the facts.

With the stakes so high, emotions are, too.

Dean, whose family has grown by two grandchildren since impeachment began in September, grew emotional Friday when she talked about the responsibility of weighing the president’s fate.

“I’ve been thinking about the broader horizon,” she said. The same week of Trump’s July phone call, she happened to talk on the floor of the House with Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the Oversight Committee Chairman who died in October.

Cummings, she said, reminded her that people will know she was here for what’s expected to be the third presidential impeachment in American history. “It will matter,” she said.

But it will not have come for free.

By the time Nadler gaveled the committee back into session Friday morning, the silences and swift proceedings suggested there was nothing left to say, let alone fight about.

Nadler sat down, pulled out his cellphone and turned it off. He gaveled in the meeting and launched votes on both articles. During the roll call, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., voted aye while holding up a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Collins delivered a scripted notice that he reserves the right to file dissenting views.

Nadler dropped the gavel. There was no celebrating or showboating from the Democrats.

“The House will act expeditiously,” he said. “Thank you.”

He took no questions.

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Hannah Fingerhut and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

The Wrong People Are Really Excited About Pete Buttigieg’s Campaign

A senator from California, a senator from New York, and a nationally known Texan congressman have all clocked out of the 2020 Democratic primary. Yet the little-known mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana is not only staying alive, but thriving.

At least he was, until early December. Pete Buttigieg is currently receiving the media scrutiny expected of a front-runner, and his multilingual Midwestern golden boy routine isn’t holding up very well. After a horrific ProPublica-New York Times expose put the spotlight squarely on Buttigieg’s old employer McKinsey, he has struggled to justify his silence on what exactly he did for the firm, and squirmed under broader scrutiny of his corporate funders and bundlers. That’s also brought his tight-lipped attitude toward his actual record in South Bend—as well as South Bend’s racist policing, and Buttigieg’s own dismissive politicking toward African Americans—back to the spotlight.

My organization, the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, was one of the first to call out this election cycle’s broad lack of bundler transparency, but there’s another, even simpler data point about the South Bend mayor that we’re surprised hasn’t penetrated the broader discourse. Just look at the actual figures lining up behind the South Bend mayor, and it becomes clear that he’s an actor for the well-connected.

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On December 5, while the McKinsey story was gaining steam, Buttigieg’s campaign triumphantly announced the endorsement of former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee. When former White House officials make early endorsements like these, they’re often overtures toward getting their former jobs back. Especially since Goolsbee isn’t backing Joe Biden, Obama’s natural heir, he’s likely angling for a senior position in the Buttigieg administration. Goolsbee said in his endorsement, “It has been a while since I have seen the kind of excitement on the ground in Iowa that Mayor Pete has generated, and the last time worked out pretty well.”

To hear Goolsbee recall Obama’s campaign promises should make all voters groan, and the Midwest seethe. On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama harshly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for hollowing out Rust Belt factories, and even agreed to consider withdrawing the United States in a debate with Hillary Clinton. Yet at the same time, Goolsbee sent a back-channel memo to the Canadian embassy that Obama’s criticisms of NAFTA were “more reflective of political maneuvering than policy.” Later in office, as the American auto industry crumpled under the recession, Goolsbee favored letting Chrysler fail rather than “siphon market-share from Ford and GM,” according to contemporaneous reports.

Goolsbee departed the White House in June 2011 to return to the University of Chicago. In January 2013—while Obama was still in office—he picked up a new job that should raise even louder alarm bells about his priorities and worldview. While ostensibly a full-time professor, Goolsbee now leads the Economic Intelligence practice at 32 Advisors, a firm founded by fellow Obama alum Robert Wolf. What does 32 Advisors do? It does the two things most revolving-door figures do to get rich: influencing and investing.

On influencing, 32 Advisors makes no effort to hide what it’s up to. While Obama was still in office, the 32 Advisors website advertised that it “helps companies navigate the intricacies of government regulations and develop strategies to build strong relationships.” Goolsbee’s Economic Advisory department advertised “unparalleled insights into the future of the economy and its influence on businesses,” including “Geo-Political Briefings & Ad-Hoc Email Insights.” It’s not your average consultant who can offer geopolitical insights from a former Cabinet adviser and longtime confidante of the then-sitting President of the United States. It also says something about a person’s character to offer that insider take to the highest bidder. (Goolsbee was unlikely to starve on his salary as a professor at the University of Chicago School of Business.)

Meanwhile, 32 Advisors also runs its own investing arm called 32 Ventures. This has echoes of Bain and Company’s relationship with Bain Capital, a former Obama punching bag in the 2012 campaign. 32 Advisors’ relationship with 32 Ventures is even closer: instead of separate firms, the consultancy and investment wing are different divisions of the same company.

Nowadays, 32 Advisors’ consulting arm is called Strategic Worldviews, which offers—for the right price—insights from Goolsbee, Glenn Hubbard (a George W. Bush economic adviser who’s now on the board of private equity titan KKR), and others. Here’s the twist: Strategic Worldviews is “a joint venture between 32 Ventures and Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT Ventures.”

Yes, that Anthony Scaramucci.

Other highlights from the 32 Ventures portfolio: Blade, a “digitally powered short-distance aviation company” that puts more recreational planes in the air to gobble up our carbon budget; the cannabis-related companies 14th Round and High Beauty, both of which have white founders, and one of whom is previously wealthy (read about the race and class issues in the legal cannabis industry here); and Chanticleer Holdings, the parent company of … Hooters.

Yes, that Hooters.

So we have a man who wanted to let the Rust Belt collapse, who revolved out to the influence and investment industries, and who literally works with The Mooch, throwing his support behind the Midwestern mayor. And the mayor is proud of this endorsement! The whole thing speaks to a fundamental tension about Buttigieg.

He is an elitist’s idea of a small-town Indiana mayor. Buttigieg wants us to see his lack of national experience as an asset instead of a liability. Everyone hates Washington, after all. But if he is truly alien to the Washington way of doing things, why is a swamp figure like Goolsbee throwing support to Buttigieg instead of established moderates like Amy Klobuchar or Cory Booker? If Buttigieg actually is—to use a meaningless word D.C.-types love—“electable,” what will he say to an Ohio autoworker wondering why he’s cozying up to the forces who were ready to leave him out in the cold in the recession? Why is Buttigieg jet-setting between Wall Street and Silicon Valley for funding, instead of talking to the average voters (who hate both finance and tech) he supposedly represents? How can a Harvard and Oxford-educated ex-McKinseyite who has never taken up arms against corporate corruption credibly claim to be anything other than elitist in the first place?

And who better understands what a Buttigieg administration would actually do—MSNBC pundits impressed by Buttigieg’s down-to-earth persona, or revolving-door insider Austan Goolsbee?

This article was produced in partnership by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Max Moran is a research assistant at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which aims to increase scrutiny on executive branch appointments.

Supreme Court to Rule on Subpoenas Over Trump Tax Records

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court said Friday it will hear President Donald Trump’s pleas to keep his tax, bank and financial records private, a major confrontation between the president and Congress that also could affect the 2020 presidential campaign.

Arguments will take place in late March, and the justices are poised to issue decisions in June as Trump is campaigning for a second term. Rulings against the president could result in the quick release of personal financial information that Trump has sought strenuously to keep private. The court also will decide whether the Manhattan district attorney can obtain eight years of Trump’s tax returns as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

The subpoenas are separate from the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Trump, headed for a vote in the full House next week. Indeed, it’s almost certain the court won’t hear the cases until after a Senate trial over whether to remove Trump has ended.

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Trump sued to prevent banks and accounting firms from complying with subpoenas for his records from three committees of the House of Representatives and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

In three separate cases, he has so far lost at every step, but the records have not been turned over pending a final court ruling. Now it will be up to a court that includes two Trump appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, to decide in a case with significant implications reagrding a president’s power to refuse a formal request from Congress.

In two earlier cases over presidential power, the justices acted unanimously in requiring President Richard Nixon to turn over White House tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor and in allowing a sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton to go forward. In those cases, three Nixon appointees and two Clinton appointees, respectively, voted against the president who chose them for the high court. A fourth Nixon appointee, William Rehnquist, sat out the tapes case because he had worked closely as a Justice Department official with some of the Watergate conspirators whose upcoming trial spurred the subpoena for the Oval Office recordings.

In none of the cases are the subpoenas directed at Trump himself. Instead, House committees want records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, as well as the Mazars USA accounting firm. Mazars also is the recipient of Vance’s subpoena.

In each case, Vance and House Democrats have argued there is no compelling legal issue at stake, since they are seeking records from third parties, not Trump himself.

But Trump said in his appeals that the cases are the first time congressional and local criminal investigators have tried to pry free a president’s records to investigate wrongdoing. “This is a case of firsts,” Trump’s lawyers told the justices about congressional demands for Trump’s financial records from Mazars.

The Vance case represents the first time in American history that a “state or local prosecutor has launched a criminal investigation of the President,” the lawyers wrote.

Appellate courts in Washington, D.C., and New York brushed aside the Trump arguments in decisions that focused on the subpoenas being addressed to third parties and asking for records of Trump’s business and financial dealings as a private citizen, not as president.

Two congressional committees subpoenaed the bank documents as part their investigations into Trump and his businesses. Deutsche Bank has been one for the few banks willing to lend to Trump after a series of corporate bankruptcies and defaults starting in the early 1990s.

Vance and the House Oversight and Reform Committee sought records from Mazars concerning Trump and his businesses based on payments that Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged to keep two women from airing their claims of affairs with Trump during the presidential race.

FDA Gives Surprise Approval for Muscular Dystrophy Drug

WASHINGTON—U.S. health regulators approved a second drug for a debilitating form of muscular dystrophy, a surprise decision after the medication was rejected for safety concerns just four months ago.

The ruling marks the second time the Food and Drug Administration has granted preliminary approval for the disease based on early results and is likely to stoke questions about its standards for clearing largely unproven medications.

The FDA said late Thursday it approved Sarepta Therapeutics’ Vyondys 53 for patients with a form of Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. Duchenne’s affects about 1 in every 3,600 boys in the U.S., causing muscle weakness, loss of movement and early death, usually when patients are in their 20s or 30s. The drug is for a specific type that affects about 8 percent of boys with Duchenne’s.

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In August, the FDA appeared to reject the injectable medication, sending a letter to the company that flagged risks of infections and cases of kidney injury in animal studies. But Sarepta disputed the decision, raising it to FDA’s drug center leadership. The company resubmitted its application and data, and the FDA reversed its decision, according to a Sarepta press release.

The FDA said Thursday doctors should monitor the kidney function of patients taking the drug. The drug’s most common side effects include headache, fever, abdominal pain and nausea. Other reactions include rash, fever, hives and skin irritation.

The surprise approval sent company shares rocketing more than 36% in trading Friday. But some Wall Street analysts said the approval suggests loosening standards at the agency.

“The abruptness of the decision making at the agency does not inspire confidence, in our view,” analyst Debjit Chattopadhyay wrote in a note to investors.

It’s the second time a Sarepta drug has followed an unusual path to approval. In 2016, FDA leaders cleared the company’s first muscular dystrophy drug, overruling agency reviewers who said there was little evidence it worked. The decision also followed an intense lobbying campaign by patients’ families, politicians and physicians. Agency critics suggested the FDA may have bowed to outside pressure.

Vyondys received “accelerated approval” based on preliminary results showing it boosts a protein that aids the growth of muscle fibers. But the drug has not yet been shown to improve patients’ mobility or health. The FDA is requiring Sarepta to conduct followup studies on those measures for both drugs. If the company fails to show the drugs help patients, the FDA can withdraw approval — though it rarely does so.

The follow-up study for Vyondys is due by 2024. The drug will cost $300,000 per year for the typical patient — a child weighing 44 pounds, the company said. That’s the same price as Sarepta’s earlier drug.

Analysts said the unexpected decision could bode well for other experimental drugs with questionable study results, including a closely watched drug Alzheimer’s drug that will soon come before the agency.

The drug’s developers reported results in October suggesting their medication could be the first to slow mental decline in Alzheimer’s. But many experts are skeptical, noting unusual study changes and analyses used during the drug’s development.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Generals’ Long Con on Afghanistan

So now we know that which many of us long surmised. The generals lied, repeatedly; in fact, the whole damn Afghan War was a lie. I wish I could take some pleasure in the vindication, but I can’t seem conjure any. Too many of my own boys died in, or took their own lives after, that ongoing nightmare of a war. Deep melancholy seems, for an Afghan veteran, the only appropriate response. No amount of “I-told-you-so’s” will bring back the 2,440 American soldiers, and more than 30,000 Afghan civilians who’ve perished (so far), in that aimless, endless conflict.

What, then, can one learn from The Washington Post’s recent release of the Afghanistan Papers? Perhaps this: Forever war is a bipartisan enterprise (the lies spanned three administrations) and more importantly, the time has come to stop trusting the generals—although I’m not sure we Americans ever will. The latest revelations most certainly count as the (remarkably similar) Vietnam-era, Pentagon Papers of my generation.

In 1971, there was a large, active antiwar movement in the streets, and Daniel Ellsberg’s leaked documents enflamed it. Today, in the absence of a broad military draft, and with President Trump’s impeachment-as-entertainment hearings dominating the media, I doubt the Afghanistan Papers will amount to much in the way of results.

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If, as an activist-writer, I felt a touch vindicated, and as a career soldier, I felt sad, then as a historian, I can’t say I was surprised by the Post’s disclosure. Back in the Vietnam War, successive commanding generals—most famously William Westmoreland just before the massive enemy Tet Offensive—had assured the White House and the American public that there was “light at the end” of the conflict’s “tunnel.”

Similarly, throughout the Afghan War, and across all the countless theaters of America’s expansive post-9/11 theaters, literally dozens of generals provided optimistic predictions that the U.S. military had “turned the corner.” For almost two decades, Washington insiders and an entertained-to-death public took the resplendently dressed, strong-jawed flag officers at their word. The Afghanistan Papers should, but probably won’t, break the spell.

In the wake of the revelations, the most famous Afghan War commander, former four-star general and CIA Director David Petraeus, couldn’t help but take the bait and self-righteously defend himself within a day. His defense made me want to vomit in my mouth a bit. “I stand by the assessments I provided as the commander in Afghanistan,” Petraeus said in a statement emailed to The Daily Beast. He said he believes “the security gains, while very hard fought and fragile, were indisputable. We clearly reversed the momentum the Taliban had on the battlefield.”

Is he serious?

The self-styled intellectual, “enlightened” general sounds, in this mea culpa, like a defensive, impetuous child. Just as “King David” never divined that his own stated purpose in the Iraq surge—to create space and time for an ethno-sectarian political settlement—hadn’t come to pass, he can’t seem to admit that a temporary lull in Taliban violence was irrelevant. Sorry, general, but if Afghanistan is worse off today than it was when you left, well then, your pet counterinsurgency strategy—by its very definition—failed. You lost … deal with it. The whole damn military, myself included, lost.

Sure, maybe I do have a vendetta, of sorts, against Petraeus. Why shouldn’t I? I met the prima donna general back in mid-2007 in Iraq. In preparation for his visit, my squadron set up for hours, repeatedly practiced our stock briefings, so he could proceed to pay no attention to us as he devoured the snacks we’d prepared—“the general loves fresh fruit,” one of his aides had told me—then treat us to one of his anodyne, canned lectures on counterinsurgency theory.

On a grander scale, Petraeus must stand as the biggest, most unapologetic villain of all. No one better personifies the gilded military culture of the “terror wars.” Under his carefully self-promoted veneer lay defeat in the two wars he led, his wrong-on-all-counts Vietnam War Ph.D., and a profound moral scandal—a criminal conviction for sharing classified data with his young mistress-come-biographer. Symbolically, at least, Petraeus is the forever war.

Nonetheless, he’s not the only vacuous general or senior intelligence official to blow smoke up our proverbial you-know-what’s. Consider recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford. It wasn’t too long ago that this clown—in an impressively Orwellian stretch of the English language—claimed it was “premature” (after 18 years!) to discuss withdrawal from Afghanistan. Let that sink in. The hard truth is, all of us officers in that war were complicit—up and down the chain of command—by deceiving each other about the “progress” on the ground.

To please the bosses, keep them away from my outpost and protect my troopers, I, too, played the game.

Promotions, especially for general officer careers built on the terror wars, depended on the illusion of success. Senior colonels and budding flag officers had a status, and a pecuniary interest in reporting improvement in their sectors. The Afghanistan Papers prove, indisputably, that the generals lied to us. But it’s far more complicated (and unsettling) than all that. I truly believe they also lied to each other, to themselves. They had to believe, wanted to believe, needed to believe, that their wars could be won. A good number graduated from West Point, where we were forced to memorize General Douglas MacArthur’s famous mantra: “There is no substitute for victory.”

Seen in that light, the entire war was, for those who led it, one grand delusion. Thus, when the statistical measures of effectiveness—unsustainable Afghan Army casualties and the number of districts contested by the Taliban—proved inconvenient, the generals had them classified, or they simply quit counting. Perhaps that’s why it took The Washington Post so long to compile these documents; to force the U.S. government to release them.

Yet there’s something else at work here that society must grapple with: Why are Americans so apt to trust the generals when, throughout modern U.S. history, they’ve been wrong time and again? I, for one, blame the contemporary (post-Vietnam) penchant for—rather dangerous—public military adulation.

Take, for example, the charade that is generals’ testimony before Congress. Whether it’s Petraeus—who absolutely reveled in the spotlight—or another senior general, the military man shows up in an intimidating dress uniform replete with a “fruit salad” chest-full of superfluous medals. Frankly, they look sharper than the poor schlub legislators attired like country lawyers. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, when those congresspeople veritably kowtow before the generals–fawningly “thanking” them for their service both before and after they are questioned.

It is not supposed to be that way. Congresspeople are the bosses. The generals are supposed to answer to them, and by extension, to the People. Legislative oversight, hearings and questioning, are by design meant to be like legal trials, confrontational. So, assuming it’s the fancy uniforms intimidating the congresspeople, I’ve got a ready proposal: Until further notice, generals summoned to Capitol Hill must wear rumpled, ill-fitting, Bernie-style civilian suits. Let them win a few wars and speak some hard truths before they earn their snazzy attire back.

By the way, there’s precedent for this. In a far more modest era, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall—architect of victory in World War II—wore civilian clothes at government meetings in Washington, D.C., declaring: “I didn’t want to antagonize the public and the Congress with the easily aroused feelings toward the military that always existed.” Let us bring back a tad bit of that humility.

I, for one, doubt that I’ll ever again trust the assertions and promises of most generals. And I’m not in bad company. Recall that some 56 years ago, President John F. Kennedy, himself a heroic young officer in the Second World War, mistrusted his senior military advisers. After they, to a man, all recommended outrageously pugnacious policies almost certain to cause worldwide nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK flippantly—but correctly—reflected that “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we listen to them, and do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”

Will we never learn?

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Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

‘After Parkland’ and the Pervasive Toll of School Shootings

It took me a few days to RSVP to the screening of the documentary, “After Parkland.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see this important film; it was that the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., held a personal tie. My son’s preschool friend, C.J. Orr, was one of the students forced to hide while listening to the gunshots from the second-floor classroom next to his. After the gunfire stopped, the then-sophomore emerged from a classroom closet with others and had to step over the bodies of his friends. Fourteen students and three school staff members were killed on that Valentine’s Day in 2018 by a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle.

A few days after the shooting, journalists Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman, originally in town for ABC’s “Nightline,” began filming a documentary to chronicle what followed the tragedy. Produced by Kino Lorber and ABC Films, it focuses on student survivors and grieving parents, delving into how they were coping and what they planned to do to try to stop other school shootings.

Over several months, the filmmakers followed Parkland student survivors to school, their homes, basketball games, a prom and their graduation. They also talked to Andrew Pollack, whose only daughter, Meadow, was fatally shot at point-blank range while trying to shield a freshman, and to Manuel and Patricia Oliver, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was killed at Parkland.

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The story opens with Pollack. Shortly after the shooting, he was invited to the White House, along with senior Sam Zeif, who had been desperately texting his 14-year-old brother at the school while the gunman was still shooting. Zeif’s brother, who survived, was in a classroom in which a teacher and his best friend were killed. Also invited to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Donald Trump were some of the parents of victims of fatal school shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.

In the documentary, Zeif, sporting a goatee and clearly shaken, asks Trump, “How can this still happen? How is it that someone can still enter a store after Columbine and Sandy Hook and buy an assault rifle? … How can a 20-year-old walk into a gun store and purchase an AR-15 rifle in five minutes with an expired ID? In Australia, there was a shooting at a school in 1999. They put legislation together and they stopped it. So let’s be strong, and let’s never let this happen again. Please. Please.” Trump shakes his head yes, and then does nothing.

We see that Manuel Oliver has somehow managed to channel his pain in losing his son Joaquin into coaching basketball and painting. He coerced Joaquin’s best friend from elementary school, Dillon McCooty, to step up in his son’s spot for the team. The graphic artist also is seen in Chicago painting a mural of his slain son, as he quickly learns it’s harder to purchase spray paint than a gun.

Joaquin Oliver had moved to the U.S. from Venezuela when he was 3. He loved sports, R&B and his friends, who called him by the nickname “Guac.” His girlfriend, Victoria Gonzalez, prayed during the shooting that he’d be OK. “My whole future was wiped out,” she said. “Every day that passes I feel further from him.”

A little more than a month after the shooting, a group of Parkland students gathered to fight against gun violence. About 2 million people attended the student-led March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., and its 880-plus sister demonstrations across the country, making it one of the largest protests in American history.

Several students gave impassioned, heartbreaking speeches. A highlight was Emma Gonzalez, one of several founders of the “Never Again” movement created after the shooting, who gave a viral speech against gun violence that called “B.S.” in response to gun laws. At the rally, Gonzalez led a moment of silence for the victims of the massacre, then stood silent for more than six minutes—the length of the shooting spree.

Unfortunately, Gonzalez and other students in the movement had to deal with deniers. For example, Leslie Gibson, a Republican candidate for the Maine State House, described González as a “skinhead lesbian.” Gibson also insulted David Hogg, another founding member of “Never Again MSD” who became a high-profile gun-control advocate, as a “bald-faced liar.”

Hogg, who is seen frequently in the documentary and whose younger sister Lauren lost four of her friends in the shooting, became one of several Parkland students targeted and scapegoated on social media. Because his father was a former FBI agent, Hogg became the focus of conspiracy theorists claiming he was a fake, or “a crisis actor.”

“I’m someone who had to witness this [the shooting] and live through this and I continue to be having to deal with that,” Hogg told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.” “The fact that they’re calling me out as a witness of this horrifying incident, that I’m a crisis actor? … I feel for those people, honestly.”

The documentary continues on to prom time, showing several student survivors getting ready together. Dillon McCooty escorts Joaquin Oliver’s girlfriend, Victoria Gonzalez, knowing his best friend “Guac” would have wanted it that way.

Pollack stops by, but it appears it is too much for him to handle, knowing his daughter Meadow should have been there. He doesn’t attend the graduation either; Meadow had planned to attend Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., that fall. We last see Pollack walking his German shepherd into an empty playground. This gave him the idea to fix up the park in memory of his slain daughter.

For his part, Manuel Oliver is producing a one-man social justice theater tour of “Guac: My Son, My Hero.” Leading up to the November 2020 election, Oliver plans to take his show to key electoral states to fight for sensible gun reform.

“After Parkland” will be released in theaters across North America in early 2020 around the two-year anniversary. The accused Parkland shooter, a former student at the school, is in jail awaiting trial on murder and attempted murder charges.

Other Parkland Stories Told

What happened to the other students who survived and are left to remember that harrowing day? A teacher and a few students moved to other schools. In “Parkland: Birth of a Movement,” by Dave Cullen (who also wrote “Columbine“), the author notes how painful and frightening it can be to go back to a terrorized school. “The high school felt like a crime scene: Helicopters hovered, the chopper triggered anxiety and panic for some who heard the motors over their school on the shooting,” he writes. “One student noted he and his friends heard a car engine go pop pop pop, ‘and we all started hyperventilating.’ ”

Shortly after the shooting, teacher Diane Wolk-Rogers created a Mind Body Club. C.J. Orr, a sophomore who was forced to hide in the closet during the shooting and a longtime friend of my son, became involved in the club. “School can be overwhelming, especially dealing with trauma, stress and anxieties,” he said. Through tears and heartbreak came activism and new ways of healing. Many eventually felt they could be strong once again.

Nothing Has Been Done to Stop the Carnage

Five days before the screening of “After Parkland,” a gunman fatally shot two classmates at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., and injured three other students before shooting himself with an unregistered “ghost” handgun, which can be bought online and at gun shows.

Amanda Osler and her younger brother Brandon were in the library when they heard what sounded like a balloon popping. Multiple shots then rang out. They didn’t know where to go, so they ran out of the school, which is surrounded by homes. “We were told that there was an active shooter and to get out of school and find a house,” recalled Amanda. After knocking on a couple doors, two women pulled them inside their home. Amanda was given a comfort blanket. “Yes, I was nervous and scared, but I felt comforted.”

A poignant scene unfolded as the father of Gracie Muehlberger, one of the students killed, spoke about the loss of his only daughter—the girl he called “Sweet Pea”—as his two sons stood by his side. It brought to mind Andrew Pollack reflecting on the death of his daughter, Meadow, at Parkland.

A few days after the shootings at Saugus on Nov. 14, sisters Jaimee and Madi Roeschke appeared on CNN. Reporter Alisyn Camerota asked Jaimee if she thought there would ever be a shooting at her school. “Yes,” she calmly replied. “I always thought there’d be a shooting at our school.”

Students at Saugus had been among the many who joined nationwide walkouts in March 2018 in the wake of the Parkland shooting, leaving their classrooms for 15 minutes to protest gun violence, reported the Santa Clarita Valley Signal.

Administrators at Saugus immediately received phone calls from schools across the country that had experienced similarly horrific incidents. A school shooting expert, Dr. David Schonfeld, was brought in. The developmental-behavioral pediatrician and USC professor has held two presentations for parents, as well as meetings with administrators and trainings for staff. “It’s designed to help adults support and guide students navigating grief and trauma,” Schonfeld said.

“These are not trivial events, even for kids who weren’t directly involved. … I don’t think people realize all the ramifications and things you need to consider,” said Schonfeld, who has been involved with virtually every one of the incidents, from Sandy Hook Elementary to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Saugus High School classes resumed after Thanksgiving break for the first time since the shooting.

Support Remains High for Gun Control

To date, the Gun Violence Archive has recorded more than 370 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019, an average of eight mass shootings a week. A majority of Americans say gun laws should be stricter than they have been.

California has banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and prohibits high-risk individuals and domestic violence offenders from purchasing weapons. Universal background checks are also required. Connecticut, where the devastating Sandy Hook shooting occurred, enacted the same gun control laws.