Lily Salter's Blog, page 947

Under the cover of humanitarian aid: The U.S. military is all over Africa

In the shadows of what was once called the “dark continent," a scramble has come and gone. If you heard nothing about it, that was by design. But look hard enough and -- north to south, east to west -- you’ll find the fruits of that effort: a network of bases, compounds, and other sites whose sum total exceeds the number of nations on the continent. For a military that has stumbled from Iraq to Afghanistan and suffered setbacks from Libya to Syria, it’s a rare can-do triumph. In remote locales, behind fences and beyond the gaze of prying eyes, the U.S. military has built an extensive archipelago of African outposts, transforming the continent, experts say, into a laboratory for a new kind of war. So how many U.S. military bases are there in Africa?  It’s a simple question with a simple answer.  For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) gave a stock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in the tiny, sun-bleached nation of Djibouti was America’s only acknowledged “base” on the continent.  It wasn’t true, of course, because there were camps, compounds, installations, and facilities elsewhere, but the military leaned hard on semantics. Take a look at the Pentagon’s official list of bases, however, and the number grows.  The 2015 report on the Department of Defense’s global property portfolio lists Camp Lemonnier and three other deep-rooted sites on or near the continent: U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3, a medical research facility in Cairo, Egypt, that was established in 1946; Ascension Auxiliary Airfield, a spacecraft tracking station and airfield located 1,000 miles off the coast of West Africa that has been used by the U.S. since 1957; and warehouses at the airport and seaport in Mombasa, Kenya, that were built in the 1980s. That’s only the beginning, not the end of the matter.  For years, various reporters have shed light on hush-hush outposts -- most of them built, upgraded, or expanded since 9/11 -- dotting the continent, including so-called cooperative security locations (CSLs).  Earlier this year, AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez disclosed that there were actually 11 such sites.  Again, devoted AFRICOM-watchers knew that this, too, was just the start of a larger story, but when I asked Africa Command for a list of bases, camps and other sites, as I periodically have done, I was treated like a sap. “In all, AFRICOM has access to 11 CSLs across Africa. Of course, we have one major military facility on the continent: Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti,” Anthony Falvo, AFRICOM’s Public Affairs chief, told me.  Falvo was peddling numbers that both he and I know perfectly well are, at best, misleading.  “It’s one of the most troubling aspects of our military policy in Africa, and overseas generally, that the military can’t be, and seems totally resistant to being, honest and transparent about what it’s doing,” says David Vine, author of Base Nation : How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Research by TomDispatch indicates that in recent years the U.S. military has, in fact, developed a remarkably extensive network of more than 60 outposts and access points in Africa.  Some are currently being utilized, some are held in reserve, and some may be shuttered.  These bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, fuel bunkers, and other sites can be found in at least 34 countries -- more than 60% of the nations on the continent -- many of them corrupt, repressive states with poor human rights records.  The U.S. also operates “Offices of Security Cooperation and Defense Attaché Offices in approximately 38 [African] nations,” according to Falvo, and has struck close to 30 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers. There is no reason to believe that even this represents a complete accounting of America’s growing archipelago of African outposts.  Although it’s possible that a few sites are being counted twice due to AFRICOM’s failure to provide basic information or clarification, the list TomDispatch has developed indicates that the U.S. military has created a network of bases that goes far beyond what AFRICOM has disclosed to the American public, let alone to Africans.  AFRICOM’s Base Bonanza When AFRICOM became an independent command in 2008, Camp Lemonnier was reportedly still one of the few American outposts on the continent.  In the years since, the U.S. has embarked on nothing short of a building boom -- even if the command is loath to refer to it in those terms.  As a result, it’s now able to carry out increasing numbers of overt and covert missions, from training exercises to drone assassinations. “AFRICOM, as a new command, is basically a laboratory for a different kind of warfare and a different way of posturing forces,” says Richard Reeve, the director of the Sustainable Security Programme at the Oxford Research Group, a London-based think tank.  “Apart from Djibouti, there’s no significant stockpiling of troops, equipment, or even aircraft.  There are a myriad of ‘lily pads’ or small forward operating bases... so you can spread out even a small number of forces over a very large area and concentrate those forces quite quickly when necessary.” Indeed, U.S. staging areas, cooperative security locations, forward operating locations (FOLs), and other outposts -- many of them involved in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities and Special Operations missions -- have been built (or built up) in Burkina Faso,Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gabon,Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Senegal, the Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda.  A 2011 report by Lauren Ploch, an analyst in African affairs with the Congressional Research Service, also mentioned U.S. military access to locations in Algeria, Botswana, Namibia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, and Zambia.  AFRICOM failed to respond to scores of requests by this reporter for further information about its outposts and related matters, but an analysis of open source information, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and other records show a persistent, enduring, and growing U.S. presence on the continent. “A cooperative security location is just a small location where we can come in... It would be what you would call a very austere location with a couple of warehouses that has things like: tents, water, and things like that,” explained AFRICOM’s Rodriguez.  As he implies, the military doesn’t consider CSLs to be “bases,” but whatever they might be called, they are more than merely a few tents and cases of bottled water. Designed to accommodate about 200 personnel, with runways suitable for C-130 transport aircraft, the sites are primed for conversion from temporary, bare-bones facilities into something more enduring.  At least three of them in Senegal, Ghana, and Gabon are apparently designed to facilitate faster deployment for a rapid reaction unit with a mouthful of a moniker: Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Africa (SPMAGTF-CR-AF).  Its forces are based in Morón, Spain, and Sigonella, Italy, but are focused on Africa.  They rely heavily on MV-22 Ospreys, tilt-rotor aircraft that can take-off, land, and hover like helicopters, but fly with the speed and fuel efficiency of a turboprop plane. This combination of manpower, access, and technology has come to be known in the military by the moniker “New Normal.”  Birthed in the wake of the September 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the New Normal effectively allows the U.S. military quick access 400 miles inland from any CSL or, as Richard Reeve notes, gives it “a reach that extends to just about every country in West and Central Africa.” The concept was field-tested as South Sudan plunged into civil war and 160 Marines and sailors from Morón were forward deployed to Djibouti in late 2013.  Within hours, a contingent from that force was sent to Uganda and, in early 2014, in conjunction with another rapid reaction unit, dispatched to South Sudan to evacuate 20 people from the American embassy in Juba.  Earlier this year, SPMAGTF-CR-AF ran trials at its African staging areas including the CSL in Libreville, Gabon, deploying nearly 200 Marines and sailors along with four Ospreys, two C-130s, and more than 150,000 pounds of materiel. A similar test run was carried out at the Senegal CSL located at Dakar-Ouakam Air Base, which can also host 200 Marines and the support personnel necessary to sustain and transport them.  “What the CSL offers is the ability to forward-stage our forces to respond to any type of crisis,” Lorenzo Armijo, an operations officer with SPMAGTF-CR-AF, told a military reporter. “That crisis can range in the scope of military operations from embassy reinforcement to providing humanitarian assistance.” Another CSL, mentioned in a July 2012 briefing by U.S. Army Africa, is located in Entebbe, Uganda.  From there, according to a Washington Postinvestigation, U.S. contractors have flown surveillance missions using innocuous-looking turboprop airplanes.  “The AFRICOM strategy is to have a very light touch, a light footprint, but nevertheless facilitate special forces operations or ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] detachments over a very wide area,” Reeve says.  “To do that they don’t need very much basing infrastructure, they need an agreement to use a location, basic facilities on the ground, a stockpile of fuel, but they also can rely on private contractors to maintain a number of facilities so there aren’t U.S. troops on the ground.” The Outpost Archipelago AFRICOM ignored my requests for further information on CSLs and for the designations of other outposts on the continent, but according to a 2014 article in Army Sustainment on “Overcoming Logistics Challenges in East Africa,” there are also “at least nine forward operating locations, or FOLs.”  A 2007 Defense Department news release referred to an FOL in Charichcho, Ethiopia.  The U.S. military also utilizes “Forward Operating Location Kasenyi” in Kampala, Uganda.  A 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office mentioned forward operating locations in Isiolo and Manda Bay, both in Kenya. Camp Simba in Manda Bay has, in fact, seen significant expansion in recent years.  In 2013, Navy Seabees, for example, worked 24-hour shifts to extend its runway to enable larger aircraft like C-130s to land there, while other projects were initiated to accommodate greater numbers of troops in the future, including increased fuel and potable water storage, and more latrines.  The base serves as a home away from home for Navy personnel and Army Green Berets among other U.S. troops and, as recently revealed at theIntercept, plays an integral role in the secret drone assassination program aimed at militants in neighboring Somalia as well as in Yemen. Drones have played an increasingly large role in this post-9/11 build-up in Africa.  MQ-1 Predators have, for instance, been based in Chad’s capital,N’Djamena, while their newer, larger, more far-ranging cousins, MQ-9 Reapers, have been flown out of Seychelles International Airport.  As of June 2012, according to the Intercept, two contractor-operated drones, one Predator and one Reaper, were based in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, while a detachment with one Scan Eagle (a low-cost drone used by the Navy) and a remotely piloted helicopter known as an MQ-8 Fire Scout operated off the coast of East Africa.  The U.S. also recently began setting up a base in Cameroon for unarmed Predators to be used in the battle against Boko Haram militants. In February 2013, the U.S. also began flying Predator drones out of Niger’s capital, Niamey.  A year later, Captain Rick Cook, then chief of U.S. Africa Command’s Engineer Division, mentioned the potential for a new “base-like facility” that would be “semi-permanent” and “capable of air operations” in that country.  That September, the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlockexposed plans to base drones at a second location there, Agadez.  Within days, the U.S. Embassy in Niamey announced that AFRICOM was, indeed, “assessing the possibility of establishing a temporary, expeditionary contingency support location in Agadez, Niger.” Earlier this year, Captain Rodney Worden of AFRICOM’s Logistics and Support Division mentioned “a partnering and capacity-building project... for the Niger Air Force and Armed Forces in concert with USAFRICOM and [U.S.] Air Forces Africa to construct a runway and associated work/life support area for airfield operations.”  And when the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 was introduced in April, embedded in it was a $50 million

The GOP-ISIS nightmare coalition: Islamic extremists and the anti-immigrant right have the same goal — the death of democracy

Amid all the terror and panic and xenophobic hysteria of the Paris aftermath — which seems to have set the dial on the political Way-Back Machine to about 2002, at least for now — Republicans actually have a point. Maybe it’s half a point, because when Donald Trump or Ted Cruz (or Marine Le Pen) raise the contested question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, they don’t really understand the basic terms of the question, let alone where it leads. I will jump ahead here and suggest that you don’t get to ask that leading question about Islam and democracy, which has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate, without asking a number of corollary questions. What do we mean by Islam, and what do we mean by democracy? Is “democracy,” as we currently understand it and experience it, actually compatible with the idea of democracy as it was handed down from antiquity and reconceived by the Enlightenment? But it does no good for people on the left who claim to stand for democracy, and for its associated values of human rights and civil liberties, to pretend that the questions about Islam and democracy do not exist or do not matter, or that they have been settled. The killings in the 11th arrondissement, and the reaction throughout the West, should be enough to tell us that isn’t so. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to insist that on this question, as on others, the Islamist militants of ISIS and the anti-Islamic Western right have reached the same conclusion. To put it more bluntly, every major Republican presidential candidate (excepting one or two of Jeb Bush’s multiple personalities) largely subscribes to the political and philosophical worldview of ISIS, except when it comes to final eschatological questions about who ends up in Paradise. Indeed, in both cases the idea that Islam and democracy are incompatible is more like an essential premise than a conclusion, and the kinship goes much deeper than that. Both sides begin with the same diagnosis, which is that Western civilization faces a fundamental, existential crisis, and arrive at closely allied prescriptions aimed at producing closely related outcomes. In one case, Western democracy is seen as a corrupt and decadent sham that will simply be destroyed (and perhaps, in some fantasy future, subjugated to Islamic rule). In the other, Western democracy is corrupt and decadent and so on, and it must be destroyed in order to save it. This meeting of minds and convergence of interests is not good news for the future of Islam or the future of Western democracy or the future of the human species. Personally, I’m not interested in the left-liberal tendency to use this for partisan political purposes: There are more important things at stake here than winning the next election, and in any event this issue feels like a lose-lose for everyone. It’s definitely not good news for those who want to resist both militant Islam and right-wing bigotry, as witness the political gymnastics performed in recent days by French President François Hollande and Hillary Clinton and even Bernie Sanders. Clinton’s post-Parisian lurch to the right is obviously a strategic maneuver designed to fend off charges that she’s a terrorist-coddling crypto-Muslim in the mold of Barack Hussein Obama. It should also serve to remind both Clinton’s fans and detractors who she really is: a classic “Cold War liberal,” progressive on domestic social issues (at least within the frame of neoliberal economic and fiscal policy) but supremely hawkish when it comes to foreign policy and national security. Whether that combination reflects genuine principle or sheer political calculation I couldn’t say, and with Hillary Clinton I’m not sure there’s a difference. In her best possible incarnation, she might be President Hubert Humphrey, albeit imprisoned by a political climate HHH could never have imagined. This point about the ideological marriage of ISIS and the Republicans has been made in various ways by various commentators since the Paris attacks — I made it myself in the immediate aftermath, even if I “buried the lede” — but I don’t think it can be restated often enough. Strategists of the Islamic State want Western regimes to persecute and marginalize Muslim citizens, crack down on immigration and squander their financial and political capital on a military response that is unlikely to produce a clear-cut victory and highly likely to harden anti-Western attitudes in the Islamic world. A similar approach worked brilliantly for Osama bin Laden in 2001 — better than he expected, I would guess — and ISIS possesses a far more sophisticated understanding of Western politics and culture than Osama and the old-school al-Qaida leadership ever did. ISIS has repeatedly made clear, in its own English-language publications, that it seeks to divide the world between the infidel Crusader West and the purifying force of radical Islam, and to destroy any “gray zone” of accommodation or détente that lies between those stereotypical extremes. As scholar Bernard Lewis explained in an extended discourse on this subject back in 1993 (long before he suckered himself into becoming a war cheerleader), the most important target of Islamic fundamentalism was not the West itself but “pseudo-Muslim apostates” who had abandoned the true faith and become corrupted by secular foreign ideologies like liberalism or socialism or nationalism. This also could not possibly be clearer in the case of ISIS, which has murdered many times more Muslims than Westerners and whose ideological outreach is all about providing unemployed and disaffected Muslim youth in Europe and North America (many from secular families) a renewed sense of identity and community. Some Republicans and European right-wingers are intelligent enough to understand all this, one must assume. It’s not some breathtaking new analysis to assert that the conflict between the West and violent Islamic extremism — and the conflict within the Muslim world itself — has more to do with ideology and economic conditions than with bombing sorties and “boots on the ground.” Either the leaders of the xenophobic right do not agree that they are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do or they don’t care, and both possibilities are equally puzzling. My conclusion is that some don’t know and others don’t care, and that none of them can help themselves. They are driven forward by larger forces they cannot resist or control — by the populist upsurge of fear and animosity that is driving the No Syrian Grandmas movement, and by their not-so-secret conviction that the Islamist militants are right about the decrepit condition of Western civilization and democracy. For at least the last 20 years and arguably closer to the last 50, the Republican Party has bet its future on appealing to a constantly shrinking electoral quadrant of exurban whites, largely in the South and Southwest. Throughout that period, the basis of that appeal has been the idea that America and Americanism (as core Republican voters understood those things) were in critical danger and under constant attack from within, from feminism and multiculturalism and the P.C. thought police, from Adam-and-Steve wedding cakes and the “war on Christmas” and white people who drove Volvos and wore funny glasses and drank chai lattes. Drive through any rural region of the United States — in my case, the impoverished hinterlands of central New York State, barely three hours from Manhattan — and you’ll encounter those “Take Back Our Country” lawn signs. No one on any side of the question needs to ask from whom. It’s glaringly obvious, or at least it should be, that those are exactly the same tendencies that the leaders of ISIS and Osama bin Laden and the Taliban perceive and despise in the West. Much of that derives from Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual godfather of modern Islamic extremism, who published his influential critique “The America That I Have Seen” after spending two years in various parts of the U.S. in the late 1940s. Qutb excoriated America for its “deviant chaos” and its focus on “animalistic desires, pleasures, and awful sins.” He probably never imagined the prospect of same-sex weddings, gender-neutral bathrooms or Kardashian-centric reality TV, but would have perceived such outrageous developments as logical results of America’s fundamental depravity. Some of Qutb’s complaints about materialism, consumerism and economic inequality, in fairness, are more redolent of left-wing moralizing, and those elements too can be found in contemporary Islamist rhetoric. But he was especially obsessed with the widespread secularism of American life, with the growing cultural influence of black people (whom he described as “bestial” and “noisy”) and with the sexual and intellectual freedom of women. Remember, this was 1949! He sounds like a horndog Baptist preacher out of some overcooked satirical novel when he inveighs against the “seductive capacity” of the American female, found in her “expressive eyes, and thirsty lips … in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs.” Whatever research Qutb may have undertaken on that subject during his time in Colorado and California was for the benefit of Islam, to be sure. My point is not merely that puritanism of all stripes has common roots and common goals, and always calls for a return to some bygone era of virtue that almost certainly never existed. That’s a point worth making, but here’s the real secret sauce that binds the insane doctrines of ISIS to the Republican Party madhouse of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz: They both perceive all this decadence and moral relativism and loss of faith as the consequence of 200-odd years of democratic malpractice. One side has the decency to say openly that the legacy of 1776 and 1789 was complete bullshit from the get-go, nothing more than a high-minded pretext for imperial conquest and endless self-indulgence. The other side — and I think you know the one I mean — must pretend that democracy is or was a good idea, at least until it was distorted by Communist mind control or the Black Panthers or the 14th Amendment, while doing everything possible to undermine it. I don’t suspect I need to lay out here all the ways that the American right, faced with an evident demographic disadvantage, has sought to disenfranchise its opponents, poison the political and legislative process and transfer power to the super-rich. As I and others have repeatedly observed, the great victory of the Koch brothers and the Republican brain trust in the 2014 midterm election lay not just in the GOP’s huge congressional majority but in the shocking 36.6 percent turnout, the lowest in any national election since World War II. The American right cannot return to a system where only property-owning white men are allowed to vote, at least not without visibly ripping up the Constitution. But it has gone a long way toward creating an environment that discourages and disheartens everyone else, and where the Angry White Male vote is coddled and inflamed and privileged in numerous ways. As strange as this may sound, I do not doubt the faith that lies behind the right-wing distaste for democracy, or at least no more than I doubt the conflicted zealotry that lies behind militant Islam. Both sides correctly observe that the various strains of post-Jeffersonian democracy in the Western world have been plagued with problems from the beginning, and now face a dire crisis. Both the Western right and fundamentalist Islam yearn to pull their societies back toward a purer distillation of faith and a collective sense of purpose, and what could serve that purpose better than an apocalyptic "clash of civilizations"? They see the salvation of their respective societies in the rejection of the flabby ideal of democracy, explicitly or otherwise, and its replacement with a more virile, more godly and more effective system. Is Islam compatible with democracy? Scholars have batted that one around for decades without arriving at a clear yes-or-no answer. Roughly 40 percent of the world's Muslims live in nominal democracies now, for whatever that's worth, and the popular appetite for democracy demonstrated by the Arab Spring was unmistakable, if also unfulfillable. But it strikes me as the wrong question. We might as well ask whether capitalism is compatible with democracy, or whether human nature is. As Justice Louis Brandeis may have said (like so many famous quotations, this one is tough to pin down), we can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. By that standard we have never had democracy, and quite likely never will.Amid all the terror and panic and xenophobic hysteria of the Paris aftermath — which seems to have set the dial on the political Way-Back Machine to about 2002, at least for now — Republicans actually have a point. Maybe it’s half a point, because when Donald Trump or Ted Cruz (or Marine Le Pen) raise the contested question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, they don’t really understand the basic terms of the question, let alone where it leads. I will jump ahead here and suggest that you don’t get to ask that leading question about Islam and democracy, which has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate, without asking a number of corollary questions. What do we mean by Islam, and what do we mean by democracy? Is “democracy,” as we currently understand it and experience it, actually compatible with the idea of democracy as it was handed down from antiquity and reconceived by the Enlightenment? But it does no good for people on the left who claim to stand for democracy, and for its associated values of human rights and civil liberties, to pretend that the questions about Islam and democracy do not exist or do not matter, or that they have been settled. The killings in the 11th arrondissement, and the reaction throughout the West, should be enough to tell us that isn’t so. It gives me absolutely no pleasure to insist that on this question, as on others, the Islamist militants of ISIS and the anti-Islamic Western right have reached the same conclusion. To put it more bluntly, every major Republican presidential candidate (excepting one or two of Jeb Bush’s multiple personalities) largely subscribes to the political and philosophical worldview of ISIS, except when it comes to final eschatological questions about who ends up in Paradise. Indeed, in both cases the idea that Islam and democracy are incompatible is more like an essential premise than a conclusion, and the kinship goes much deeper than that. Both sides begin with the same diagnosis, which is that Western civilization faces a fundamental, existential crisis, and arrive at closely allied prescriptions aimed at producing closely related outcomes. In one case, Western democracy is seen as a corrupt and decadent sham that will simply be destroyed (and perhaps, in some fantasy future, subjugated to Islamic rule). In the other, Western democracy is corrupt and decadent and so on, and it must be destroyed in order to save it. This meeting of minds and convergence of interests is not good news for the future of Islam or the future of Western democracy or the future of the human species. Personally, I’m not interested in the left-liberal tendency to use this for partisan political purposes: There are more important things at stake here than winning the next election, and in any event this issue feels like a lose-lose for everyone. It’s definitely not good news for those who want to resist both militant Islam and right-wing bigotry, as witness the political gymnastics performed in recent days by French President François Hollande and Hillary Clinton and even Bernie Sanders. Clinton’s post-Parisian lurch to the right is obviously a strategic maneuver designed to fend off charges that she’s a terrorist-coddling crypto-Muslim in the mold of Barack Hussein Obama. It should also serve to remind both Clinton’s fans and detractors who she really is: a classic “Cold War liberal,” progressive on domestic social issues (at least within the frame of neoliberal economic and fiscal policy) but supremely hawkish when it comes to foreign policy and national security. Whether that combination reflects genuine principle or sheer political calculation I couldn’t say, and with Hillary Clinton I’m not sure there’s a difference. In her best possible incarnation, she might be President Hubert Humphrey, albeit imprisoned by a political climate HHH could never have imagined. This point about the ideological marriage of ISIS and the Republicans has been made in various ways by various commentators since the Paris attacks — I made it myself in the immediate aftermath, even if I “buried the lede” — but I don’t think it can be restated often enough. Strategists of the Islamic State want Western regimes to persecute and marginalize Muslim citizens, crack down on immigration and squander their financial and political capital on a military response that is unlikely to produce a clear-cut victory and highly likely to harden anti-Western attitudes in the Islamic world. A similar approach worked brilliantly for Osama bin Laden in 2001 — better than he expected, I would guess — and ISIS possesses a far more sophisticated understanding of Western politics and culture than Osama and the old-school al-Qaida leadership ever did. ISIS has repeatedly made clear, in its own English-language publications, that it seeks to divide the world between the infidel Crusader West and the purifying force of radical Islam, and to destroy any “gray zone” of accommodation or détente that lies between those stereotypical extremes. As scholar Bernard Lewis explained in an extended discourse on this subject back in 1993 (long before he suckered himself into becoming a war cheerleader), the most important target of Islamic fundamentalism was not the West itself but “pseudo-Muslim apostates” who had abandoned the true faith and become corrupted by secular foreign ideologies like liberalism or socialism or nationalism. This also could not possibly be clearer in the case of ISIS, which has murdered many times more Muslims than Westerners and whose ideological outreach is all about providing unemployed and disaffected Muslim youth in Europe and North America (many from secular families) a renewed sense of identity and community. Some Republicans and European right-wingers are intelligent enough to understand all this, one must assume. It’s not some breathtaking new analysis to assert that the conflict between the West and violent Islamic extremism — and the conflict within the Muslim world itself — has more to do with ideology and economic conditions than with bombing sorties and “boots on the ground.” Either the leaders of the xenophobic right do not agree that they are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do or they don’t care, and both possibilities are equally puzzling. My conclusion is that some don’t know and others don’t care, and that none of them can help themselves. They are driven forward by larger forces they cannot resist or control — by the populist upsurge of fear and animosity that is driving the No Syrian Grandmas movement, and by their not-so-secret conviction that the Islamist militants are right about the decrepit condition of Western civilization and democracy. For at least the last 20 years and arguably closer to the last 50, the Republican Party has bet its future on appealing to a constantly shrinking electoral quadrant of exurban whites, largely in the South and Southwest. Throughout that period, the basis of that appeal has been the idea that America and Americanism (as core Republican voters understood those things) were in critical danger and under constant attack from within, from feminism and multiculturalism and the P.C. thought police, from Adam-and-Steve wedding cakes and the “war on Christmas” and white people who drove Volvos and wore funny glasses and drank chai lattes. Drive through any rural region of the United States — in my case, the impoverished hinterlands of central New York State, barely three hours from Manhattan — and you’ll encounter those “Take Back Our Country” lawn signs. No one on any side of the question needs to ask from whom. It’s glaringly obvious, or at least it should be, that those are exactly the same tendencies that the leaders of ISIS and Osama bin Laden and the Taliban perceive and despise in the West. Much of that derives from Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual godfather of modern Islamic extremism, who published his influential critique “The America That I Have Seen” after spending two years in various parts of the U.S. in the late 1940s. Qutb excoriated America for its “deviant chaos” and its focus on “animalistic desires, pleasures, and awful sins.” He probably never imagined the prospect of same-sex weddings, gender-neutral bathrooms or Kardashian-centric reality TV, but would have perceived such outrageous developments as logical results of America’s fundamental depravity. Some of Qutb’s complaints about materialism, consumerism and economic inequality, in fairness, are more redolent of left-wing moralizing, and those elements too can be found in contemporary Islamist rhetoric. But he was especially obsessed with the widespread secularism of American life, with the growing cultural influence of black people (whom he described as “bestial” and “noisy”) and with the sexual and intellectual freedom of women. Remember, this was 1949! He sounds like a horndog Baptist preacher out of some overcooked satirical novel when he inveighs against the “seductive capacity” of the American female, found in her “expressive eyes, and thirsty lips … in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs.” Whatever research Qutb may have undertaken on that subject during his time in Colorado and California was for the benefit of Islam, to be sure. My point is not merely that puritanism of all stripes has common roots and common goals, and always calls for a return to some bygone era of virtue that almost certainly never existed. That’s a point worth making, but here’s the real secret sauce that binds the insane doctrines of ISIS to the Republican Party madhouse of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz: They both perceive all this decadence and moral relativism and loss of faith as the consequence of 200-odd years of democratic malpractice. One side has the decency to say openly that the legacy of 1776 and 1789 was complete bullshit from the get-go, nothing more than a high-minded pretext for imperial conquest and endless self-indulgence. The other side — and I think you know the one I mean — must pretend that democracy is or was a good idea, at least until it was distorted by Communist mind control or the Black Panthers or the 14th Amendment, while doing everything possible to undermine it. I don’t suspect I need to lay out here all the ways that the American right, faced with an evident demographic disadvantage, has sought to disenfranchise its opponents, poison the political and legislative process and transfer power to the super-rich. As I and others have repeatedly observed, the great victory of the Koch brothers and the Republican brain trust in the 2014 midterm election lay not just in the GOP’s huge congressional majority but in the shocking 36.6 percent turnout, the lowest in any national election since World War II. The American right cannot return to a system where only property-owning white men are allowed to vote, at least not without visibly ripping up the Constitution. But it has gone a long way toward creating an environment that discourages and disheartens everyone else, and where the Angry White Male vote is coddled and inflamed and privileged in numerous ways. As strange as this may sound, I do not doubt the faith that lies behind the right-wing distaste for democracy, or at least no more than I doubt the conflicted zealotry that lies behind militant Islam. Both sides correctly observe that the various strains of post-Jeffersonian democracy in the Western world have been plagued with problems from the beginning, and now face a dire crisis. Both the Western right and fundamentalist Islam yearn to pull their societies back toward a purer distillation of faith and a collective sense of purpose, and what could serve that purpose better than an apocalyptic "clash of civilizations"? They see the salvation of their respective societies in the rejection of the flabby ideal of democracy, explicitly or otherwise, and its replacement with a more virile, more godly and more effective system. Is Islam compatible with democracy? Scholars have batted that one around for decades without arriving at a clear yes-or-no answer. Roughly 40 percent of the world's Muslims live in nominal democracies now, for whatever that's worth, and the popular appetite for democracy demonstrated by the Arab Spring was unmistakable, if also unfulfillable. But it strikes me as the wrong question. We might as well ask whether capitalism is compatible with democracy, or whether human nature is. As Justice Louis Brandeis may have said (like so many famous quotations, this one is tough to pin down), we can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. By that standard we have never had democracy, and quite likely never will.

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The last JFK assassination myth: Debunking the eerie prediction that won’t go away

Professional psychic Jeane Dixon rose to fame based on her reputation for predicting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination 52 years ago today. Dixon’s prediction — repeated in numerous news accounts and in her 1997 obituaries in national media — made her the best-known psychic in America. Did the prophetess really foresee the murder of a president? Well, kinda yes and kinda no. Dixon’s ominous foresight first appeared in a profile of the Washington socialite and seeress in Parade magazine on May 13, 1956, under the headline “Incredible Crystal Gazer.” Her prophesy appeared in the penultimate paragraph: “As for the 1960 election, Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office ‘though not necessarily in his first term.’” Okay, not too shabby. But the myth of Dixon’s prediction got inflated over time. When she died, CNN eulogized that Dixon had predicted that the fallen president would be “a tall young man with blue eyes and brown hair,” a reasonable enough resemblance to Kennedy (though his eyes were greenish-gray). But those physical details did not actually appear in her 1956 prediction. They came in Dixon’s, ahem, enhanced description of her forecast in her post-Kennedy authorized biography "A Gift of Prophecy" in 1965. Biographer Ruth Montgomery later complained that the publisher pressured her into cutting references to the psychic’s errors, such as Dixon’s election-eve reversal that Nixon would prevail over Kennedy. Dixon hedged on this, however, by warning that the Democrats could “steal the election” through ballot tampering, a hypothesis shared by some post-election observers. Back to the original prediction: Prophesizing a Democratic victory in 1960 was obviously a 50-50 gambit (since Orval Faubus of the States’ Rights Party wasn’t an odds-on favorite). Dixon’s foresight that unions would prove decisive in the post-war election was also a reasonable likelihood. And what about her statement that the executive would be “assassinated or die in office”? Eerie. But Dixon is on record making lots and lots (and lots) of predictions, most of which never came true. And, not infrequently, they were rather disturbing ones involving race riots, Communist conspiracies, terrorist attacks and military threats. Dixon’s political leanings made her popular with conservative politicians, such as Sen. Strom Thurmond (she became godmother to the South Carolina Republican’s son) and, in the 1960s, with California’s New Age-friendly governor, Ronald Reagan. As an actor and politician, Reagan freely professed an interest in astrology, another of Dixon’s specialties. In Reagan’s 1965 memoir, "Where’s the Rest of Me?," he also named Santa Monica astrologer Carroll Righter as a good friend. (Four years later the nattily dressed bachelor became the first – and only – astrologer to appear on the cover of Time magazine.) The Reagans were clearly comfortable around New Agers. But when Nancy was discovered consulting an astrologer during her husband’s second presidential term, it was not Dixon but San Francisco stargazer Joan Quigley from whom the first lady had been seeking guidance. Dixon had fallen from favor with the Reagans when she failed to predict, or encourage, Reagan’s ascendancy to the White House. During the summer of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, the candidate told a journalist: “I remember that Jeane Dixon … was always gung ho for me to be president — but in the foretelling part of her mind, she said back in ’68, ‘I don’t see you as president. I see you here at an official desk in California.'” Four months later Reagan was the president-elect. So, did Dixon predict Kennedy’s assassination? The final verdict is no. Dixon may have possessed some kind of sensitive or intuitive gift, but her fame rested on a process by which she scored an accurate hit or two out of thousands of public forecasts. Such was tragically the case with the Kennedy assassination. And, as in her 1965 biography, Dixon sometimes elaborated upon her prognostications after the fact. Although Dixon never became the seer to the White House, she did gain one documented entrance to the Oval Office. Dixon was friendly with Richard Nixon’s trusted secretary and gatekeeper, Rose Mary Woods. On at least one occasion, Woods told Nixon about terrorist threats prophesied by Dixon, which the president raised with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and other officials, according to White House tapes. In May of 1971, Woods persuaded the president to personally meet with Dixon. Nixon’s Oval Office session with “the soothsayer,” as he called Dixon, also got preserved on White House recordings. The prophetess told the president: “The Lord intended Nixon to be great …We’ll all get together and we’ll band united under the head of, actually, the father of our country — and that’s our president. And it happens to be Nixon.” Nixon was unmoved. He responded: “Yeah, well, I tell ya, y-you could sell almost anything.”Professional psychic Jeane Dixon rose to fame based on her reputation for predicting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination 52 years ago today. Dixon’s prediction — repeated in numerous news accounts and in her 1997 obituaries in national media — made her the best-known psychic in America. Did the prophetess really foresee the murder of a president? Well, kinda yes and kinda no. Dixon’s ominous foresight first appeared in a profile of the Washington socialite and seeress in Parade magazine on May 13, 1956, under the headline “Incredible Crystal Gazer.” Her prophesy appeared in the penultimate paragraph: “As for the 1960 election, Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office ‘though not necessarily in his first term.’” Okay, not too shabby. But the myth of Dixon’s prediction got inflated over time. When she died, CNN eulogized that Dixon had predicted that the fallen president would be “a tall young man with blue eyes and brown hair,” a reasonable enough resemblance to Kennedy (though his eyes were greenish-gray). But those physical details did not actually appear in her 1956 prediction. They came in Dixon’s, ahem, enhanced description of her forecast in her post-Kennedy authorized biography "A Gift of Prophecy" in 1965. Biographer Ruth Montgomery later complained that the publisher pressured her into cutting references to the psychic’s errors, such as Dixon’s election-eve reversal that Nixon would prevail over Kennedy. Dixon hedged on this, however, by warning that the Democrats could “steal the election” through ballot tampering, a hypothesis shared by some post-election observers. Back to the original prediction: Prophesizing a Democratic victory in 1960 was obviously a 50-50 gambit (since Orval Faubus of the States’ Rights Party wasn’t an odds-on favorite). Dixon’s foresight that unions would prove decisive in the post-war election was also a reasonable likelihood. And what about her statement that the executive would be “assassinated or die in office”? Eerie. But Dixon is on record making lots and lots (and lots) of predictions, most of which never came true. And, not infrequently, they were rather disturbing ones involving race riots, Communist conspiracies, terrorist attacks and military threats. Dixon’s political leanings made her popular with conservative politicians, such as Sen. Strom Thurmond (she became godmother to the South Carolina Republican’s son) and, in the 1960s, with California’s New Age-friendly governor, Ronald Reagan. As an actor and politician, Reagan freely professed an interest in astrology, another of Dixon’s specialties. In Reagan’s 1965 memoir, "Where’s the Rest of Me?," he also named Santa Monica astrologer Carroll Righter as a good friend. (Four years later the nattily dressed bachelor became the first – and only – astrologer to appear on the cover of Time magazine.) The Reagans were clearly comfortable around New Agers. But when Nancy was discovered consulting an astrologer during her husband’s second presidential term, it was not Dixon but San Francisco stargazer Joan Quigley from whom the first lady had been seeking guidance. Dixon had fallen from favor with the Reagans when she failed to predict, or encourage, Reagan’s ascendancy to the White House. During the summer of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, the candidate told a journalist: “I remember that Jeane Dixon … was always gung ho for me to be president — but in the foretelling part of her mind, she said back in ’68, ‘I don’t see you as president. I see you here at an official desk in California.'” Four months later Reagan was the president-elect. So, did Dixon predict Kennedy’s assassination? The final verdict is no. Dixon may have possessed some kind of sensitive or intuitive gift, but her fame rested on a process by which she scored an accurate hit or two out of thousands of public forecasts. Such was tragically the case with the Kennedy assassination. And, as in her 1965 biography, Dixon sometimes elaborated upon her prognostications after the fact. Although Dixon never became the seer to the White House, she did gain one documented entrance to the Oval Office. Dixon was friendly with Richard Nixon’s trusted secretary and gatekeeper, Rose Mary Woods. On at least one occasion, Woods told Nixon about terrorist threats prophesied by Dixon, which the president raised with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and other officials, according to White House tapes. In May of 1971, Woods persuaded the president to personally meet with Dixon. Nixon’s Oval Office session with “the soothsayer,” as he called Dixon, also got preserved on White House recordings. The prophetess told the president: “The Lord intended Nixon to be great …We’ll all get together and we’ll band united under the head of, actually, the father of our country — and that’s our president. And it happens to be Nixon.” Nixon was unmoved. He responded: “Yeah, well, I tell ya, y-you could sell almost anything.”Professional psychic Jeane Dixon rose to fame based on her reputation for predicting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination 52 years ago today. Dixon’s prediction — repeated in numerous news accounts and in her 1997 obituaries in national media — made her the best-known psychic in America. Did the prophetess really foresee the murder of a president? Well, kinda yes and kinda no. Dixon’s ominous foresight first appeared in a profile of the Washington socialite and seeress in Parade magazine on May 13, 1956, under the headline “Incredible Crystal Gazer.” Her prophesy appeared in the penultimate paragraph: “As for the 1960 election, Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office ‘though not necessarily in his first term.’” Okay, not too shabby. But the myth of Dixon’s prediction got inflated over time. When she died, CNN eulogized that Dixon had predicted that the fallen president would be “a tall young man with blue eyes and brown hair,” a reasonable enough resemblance to Kennedy (though his eyes were greenish-gray). But those physical details did not actually appear in her 1956 prediction. They came in Dixon’s, ahem, enhanced description of her forecast in her post-Kennedy authorized biography "A Gift of Prophecy" in 1965. Biographer Ruth Montgomery later complained that the publisher pressured her into cutting references to the psychic’s errors, such as Dixon’s election-eve reversal that Nixon would prevail over Kennedy. Dixon hedged on this, however, by warning that the Democrats could “steal the election” through ballot tampering, a hypothesis shared by some post-election observers. Back to the original prediction: Prophesizing a Democratic victory in 1960 was obviously a 50-50 gambit (since Orval Faubus of the States’ Rights Party wasn’t an odds-on favorite). Dixon’s foresight that unions would prove decisive in the post-war election was also a reasonable likelihood. And what about her statement that the executive would be “assassinated or die in office”? Eerie. But Dixon is on record making lots and lots (and lots) of predictions, most of which never came true. And, not infrequently, they were rather disturbing ones involving race riots, Communist conspiracies, terrorist attacks and military threats. Dixon’s political leanings made her popular with conservative politicians, such as Sen. Strom Thurmond (she became godmother to the South Carolina Republican’s son) and, in the 1960s, with California’s New Age-friendly governor, Ronald Reagan. As an actor and politician, Reagan freely professed an interest in astrology, another of Dixon’s specialties. In Reagan’s 1965 memoir, "Where’s the Rest of Me?," he also named Santa Monica astrologer Carroll Righter as a good friend. (Four years later the nattily dressed bachelor became the first – and only – astrologer to appear on the cover of Time magazine.) The Reagans were clearly comfortable around New Agers. But when Nancy was discovered consulting an astrologer during her husband’s second presidential term, it was not Dixon but San Francisco stargazer Joan Quigley from whom the first lady had been seeking guidance. Dixon had fallen from favor with the Reagans when she failed to predict, or encourage, Reagan’s ascendancy to the White House. During the summer of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, the candidate told a journalist: “I remember that Jeane Dixon … was always gung ho for me to be president — but in the foretelling part of her mind, she said back in ’68, ‘I don’t see you as president. I see you here at an official desk in California.'” Four months later Reagan was the president-elect. So, did Dixon predict Kennedy’s assassination? The final verdict is no. Dixon may have possessed some kind of sensitive or intuitive gift, but her fame rested on a process by which she scored an accurate hit or two out of thousands of public forecasts. Such was tragically the case with the Kennedy assassination. And, as in her 1965 biography, Dixon sometimes elaborated upon her prognostications after the fact. Although Dixon never became the seer to the White House, she did gain one documented entrance to the Oval Office. Dixon was friendly with Richard Nixon’s trusted secretary and gatekeeper, Rose Mary Woods. On at least one occasion, Woods told Nixon about terrorist threats prophesied by Dixon, which the president raised with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and other officials, according to White House tapes. In May of 1971, Woods persuaded the president to personally meet with Dixon. Nixon’s Oval Office session with “the soothsayer,” as he called Dixon, also got preserved on White House recordings. The prophetess told the president: “The Lord intended Nixon to be great …We’ll all get together and we’ll band united under the head of, actually, the father of our country — and that’s our president. And it happens to be Nixon.” Nixon was unmoved. He responded: “Yeah, well, I tell ya, y-you could sell almost anything.”Professional psychic Jeane Dixon rose to fame based on her reputation for predicting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination 52 years ago today. Dixon’s prediction — repeated in numerous news accounts and in her 1997 obituaries in national media — made her the best-known psychic in America. Did the prophetess really foresee the murder of a president? Well, kinda yes and kinda no. Dixon’s ominous foresight first appeared in a profile of the Washington socialite and seeress in Parade magazine on May 13, 1956, under the headline “Incredible Crystal Gazer.” Her prophesy appeared in the penultimate paragraph: “As for the 1960 election, Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office ‘though not necessarily in his first term.’” Okay, not too shabby. But the myth of Dixon’s prediction got inflated over time. When she died, CNN eulogized that Dixon had predicted that the fallen president would be “a tall young man with blue eyes and brown hair,” a reasonable enough resemblance to Kennedy (though his eyes were greenish-gray). But those physical details did not actually appear in her 1956 prediction. They came in Dixon’s, ahem, enhanced description of her forecast in her post-Kennedy authorized biography "A Gift of Prophecy" in 1965. Biographer Ruth Montgomery later complained that the publisher pressured her into cutting references to the psychic’s errors, such as Dixon’s election-eve reversal that Nixon would prevail over Kennedy. Dixon hedged on this, however, by warning that the Democrats could “steal the election” through ballot tampering, a hypothesis shared by some post-election observers. Back to the original prediction: Prophesizing a Democratic victory in 1960 was obviously a 50-50 gambit (since Orval Faubus of the States’ Rights Party wasn’t an odds-on favorite). Dixon’s foresight that unions would prove decisive in the post-war election was also a reasonable likelihood. And what about her statement that the executive would be “assassinated or die in office”? Eerie. But Dixon is on record making lots and lots (and lots) of predictions, most of which never came true. And, not infrequently, they were rather disturbing ones involving race riots, Communist conspiracies, terrorist attacks and military threats. Dixon’s political leanings made her popular with conservative politicians, such as Sen. Strom Thurmond (she became godmother to the South Carolina Republican’s son) and, in the 1960s, with California’s New Age-friendly governor, Ronald Reagan. As an actor and politician, Reagan freely professed an interest in astrology, another of Dixon’s specialties. In Reagan’s 1965 memoir, "Where’s the Rest of Me?," he also named Santa Monica astrologer Carroll Righter as a good friend. (Four years later the nattily dressed bachelor became the first – and only – astrologer to appear on the cover of Time magazine.) The Reagans were clearly comfortable around New Agers. But when Nancy was discovered consulting an astrologer during her husband’s second presidential term, it was not Dixon but San Francisco stargazer Joan Quigley from whom the first lady had been seeking guidance. Dixon had fallen from favor with the Reagans when she failed to predict, or encourage, Reagan’s ascendancy to the White House. During the summer of Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, the candidate told a journalist: “I remember that Jeane Dixon … was always gung ho for me to be president — but in the foretelling part of her mind, she said back in ’68, ‘I don’t see you as president. I see you here at an official desk in California.'” Four months later Reagan was the president-elect. So, did Dixon predict Kennedy’s assassination? The final verdict is no. Dixon may have possessed some kind of sensitive or intuitive gift, but her fame rested on a process by which she scored an accurate hit or two out of thousands of public forecasts. Such was tragically the case with the Kennedy assassination. And, as in her 1965 biography, Dixon sometimes elaborated upon her prognostications after the fact. Although Dixon never became the seer to the White House, she did gain one documented entrance to the Oval Office. Dixon was friendly with Richard Nixon’s trusted secretary and gatekeeper, Rose Mary Woods. On at least one occasion, Woods told Nixon about terrorist threats prophesied by Dixon, which the president raised with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and other officials, according to White House tapes. In May of 1971, Woods persuaded the president to personally meet with Dixon. Nixon’s Oval Office session with “the soothsayer,” as he called Dixon, also got preserved on White House recordings. The prophetess told the president: “The Lord intended Nixon to be great …We’ll all get together and we’ll band united under the head of, actually, the father of our country — and that’s our president. And it happens to be Nixon.” Nixon was unmoved. He responded: “Yeah, well, I tell ya, y-you could sell almost anything.”

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Privacy not included: Federal law lags far behind new tech

This story was co-published with the Washington Post. Jacqueline Stokes spotted the home paternity test at her local drugstore in Florida and knew she had to try it. She had no doubts for her own family, but as a cybersecurity consultant with an interest in genetics, she couldn’t resist the latest advance. At home, she carefully followed the instructions, swabbing inside the mouths of her husband and her daughter, placing the samples in the pouch provided and mailing them to a lab. Days later, Stokes went online to get the results. Part of the lab’s website address caught her attention, and her professional instincts kicked in. By tweaking the URL slightly, a sprawling directory appeared that gave her access to the test results of some 6,000 other people. The site was taken down after Stokescomplained on Twitter. But when she contacted the Department of Health and Human Services about the seemingly obvious violation of patient privacy, she got a surprising response: Officials couldn’t do anything about the breach. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a landmark 1996 patient-privacy law, only covers patient information kept by health providers, insurers and data clearinghouses, as well as their business partners. At-home paternity tests fall outside the law’s purview. For that matter, so do wearables like Fitbit that measure steps and sleep, testing companies like 23andMe, and online repositories where individuals can store their health records. In several instances, the privacy of people using these newer services has been compromised, causing embarrassment or legal repercussions. In 2011, for instance, an Australian company failed to properly secure details of hundreds of paternity and drug tests, making them accessible through a Google search. The company said that it quickly fixed the problem. That same year, some users of the Fitbit tracker found that data they entered in their online profiles about their sexual activity and its intensity — to help calculate calories burned — was accessible to anyone. Fitbit quickly hid the information. And last year, a publicly accessible genealogy database was used by police to look for possible suspects in a 1996 Idaho murder. After finding a “very good match” with the DNA of semen found at the crime scene, police obtained a search warrant to get the person’s name. After investigating further, authorities got another warrant ordering the man’s son to provide a DNA sample, which cleared him of involvement. The incident spooked genealogy aficionados; AncestryDNA, which ran the online database, pulled it this spring. “When you publicly make available your genetic information, you essentially are signing a waiver to your past and future medical records,” said Erin Murphy, a professor at New York University School of Law. The true extent of the problem is unclear because many companies don’t know when the health information they store has been accessed inappropriately, experts say. A range of potentially sensitive data is at risk, including medical diagnoses, disease markers in a person’s genes and children’s paternity. What is known is that the Office for Civil Rights, the HHS agency that enforces HIPAA, hasn’t taken action on 60 percent of the complaints it has received because they were filed too late or withdrawn or because the agency lacked authority over the entity that’s accused. The latter accounts for a growing proportion of complaints, an OCR spokeswoman said. A 2009 law called on HHS to work with the Federal Trade Commission — which targets unfair business practices and identity theft — and to submit recommendations to Congress within a year on how to deal with entities handling health information that falls outside of HIPAA. Six years later, however, no recommendations have been issued. The report is in “the final legs of being completed,” said Lucia Savage, chief privacy officer of the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. None of this was useful to the 30-year-old Stokes, a principal consultant at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Four months after she filed her complaint with OCR, it suggested she contact the FTC. At that point, she gave up. “It just kind of seems like a Wild West right now,” she said. Protection of Consumer-app Data Varies Advances in technology offer patients ways to monitor their own health that were impossible until recently: Internet-connected scales to track their weight; electrodes attached to their iPhones to monitor heart rhythms; virtual file cabinets to store their medical records. “Consumer-generated health information is proliferating,” FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said at a forum last year. But many users don’t realize that much of it is stored “outside of the HIPAA silo.” HIPAA seeks to facilitate the flow of electronic health information, while ensuring that privacy and security are protected along the way. It only applies to health providers that transmit information electronically; a 2009 law added business partners that handle health information on behalf of these entities. Violators can face fines and even prison time. “If you were trying to draft a privacy law from scratch, this is not the way you would do it,” said Adam Greene, a former OCR official who’s now a private-sector lawyer in Washington. In 2013, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse studied 43 free and paid health and fitness apps. The group found that some did not provide a link to a privacy policy and that many with a policy did not accurately describe how the apps transmitted information. For instance, many apps connected to third-party websites without users’ knowledge and sent data in unencrypted ways that potentially exposed personal information. “Consumers should not assume any of their data is private in the mobile app environment—even health data that they consider sensitive,” the group said. Consider a woman who is wearing a fetal monitor under her clothes that sends alerts to her phone. The device “talks” to her smartphone via wireless Bluetooth technology, and its presence on a network could be detected by others, alerting them to the fact that she’s pregnant or that she may have concerns about her baby’s health. “That is a fact that you may not want to share with others around you—co-workers or family members or strangers in a café,” said David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College who is principal investigator of a federally funded project that is developing secure technology for health and wellness. “We’ve seen this in the tech market over and over again,” he added. “What sells devices or applications are the features for the most part, and unless there’s a really strong business reason or consumer push or federal regulation, security and privacy are generally a secondary thought.” ‘Walking Through an Open Door’ In Florida, Stokes is one of those people enamored with emerging health technologies. Several years ago, she rushed to sign up for 23andMe to analyze her genetic profile. And when she was pregnant with her daughter, she purchased a test that said it could predict the sex of the fetus. (It was wrong.) The paternity test kit that piqued her interest earlier this year advertised “accuracy guaranteed” for “1 alleged father and 1 child.” She remembers the kit costing about $80 at a nearby Walgreens. Such tests sell for about $100 online. “It was kind of a nerdy thing that I was interested in doing,” Stokes said. The test was processed in New Mexico by GTLDNA Genetic Testing Laboratories, then a division of General Genetics Corp. Stokes was directed to log into a website and enter a unique code for her results. When they appeared, she noticed an unusual Web address on her screen, and she wondered what would happen if she modified it to remove the ID assigned to her. She tried that and saw a folder containing the results of thousands of other people. She was able to click through and read them. “You wouldn’t call that hacking,” she said. “You would call that walking through an open door.” Stokes downloaded those publicly accessible records so that she would have proof of the lax security. “There were no safeguards,” she said. She complained to the HHS Office for Civil Rights in early February. It answered in June,writing that the office “does not have authority to investigate your complaint, and therefore, is closing this matter.” Bud Thompson, who until last month was the chief executive of General Genetics, initially said he had not heard about Stokes’ discovery. A subsequent email provided an explanation. “There was a coding error in the software that resulted in the person being able to view results of other customers. The person notified the lab, and the website was immediately taken down to solve this problem,” he wrote. “Since this incident, we have sold this line of business and have effectively ceased all operations of the lab.” The DNA testing company 23andMe, which helps people learn about their genetic backgrounds and find relatives based on those profiles, had a highly publicized lab mix-up in which as many as 96 customers were given the wrong DNA test results, sometimes for people of a different gender. A spokeswoman for the California-based company said she was unaware of any privacy or security breaches since that 2010 incident. Kate Black, its privacy officer and corporate counsel, said that 23andMe tries to provide more protection than HIPAA would require. “No matter what, no law is ever going to be narrow enough or specific enough to appropriately protect each and every business model and consumer health company,” she said. California lawmakers have twice considered a measure to prohibit anyone from collecting, analyzing or sharing the genetic information of another person without written permission, with some exceptions. Then-Sen. Alex Padilla, who sponsored the bill, cited a California company that marketed DNA testing, including on samples collected from people without their knowledge. In a recent interview, he said that he was amazed state law did not protect “what’s arguably the most personal of our information and that’s our genetic makeup, our genetic profile.” The legislation failed. And Padilla, now California’s secretary of state, remains concerned: “I don’t think this issue is going away any time soon.”   While Stokes was troubled by her experience, she was particularly disheartened by the OCR’s response. “It was shocking to me to get that message back from the government saying this isn’t covered by the current legislation and, as a result, we don’t care about it,” she said. The agency’s deputy director for health information privacy says there is no lack of interest. While it refers certain cases to law enforcement, OCR can barely keep up with those complaints that fall within its jurisdiction. “I wish we had the bandwidth to do so,” Deven McGraw said. “We would love to be able to be a place where people can get personalized assistance on every complaint that comes in the door, but the resources just don’t allow us to do that.” For its part, the FTC has taken action against a few companies for failing to secure patients’ information, including a 2013 settlement with Cbr Systems Inc., a blood bank where parents store the umbilical cord blood of newborns in case it is ever needed to treat subsequent diseases in the children or relatives. That settlement requires Cbr to implement comprehensive security and submit to independent audits every other year for 20 years. It also bars the company from misrepresenting its privacy and security practices. But FTC officials say the number of complaints pursued hardly reflects the scope of the problem. Most consumers are never told when a company sells or otherwise shares their health information without their permission, said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the FTC’s division of privacy and identity protection. “It may be done behind the scenes, without consumers’ knowledge,” she noted. “Those are the cases where consumers may not even know to complain.” This story was co-published with the Washington Post. Jacqueline Stokes spotted the home paternity test at her local drugstore in Florida and knew she had to try it. She had no doubts for her own family, but as a cybersecurity consultant with an interest in genetics, she couldn’t resist the latest advance. At home, she carefully followed the instructions, swabbing inside the mouths of her husband and her daughter, placing the samples in the pouch provided and mailing them to a lab. Days later, Stokes went online to get the results. Part of the lab’s website address caught her attention, and her professional instincts kicked in. By tweaking the URL slightly, a sprawling directory appeared that gave her access to the test results of some 6,000 other people. The site was taken down after Stokescomplained on Twitter. But when she contacted the Department of Health and Human Services about the seemingly obvious violation of patient privacy, she got a surprising response: Officials couldn’t do anything about the breach. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a landmark 1996 patient-privacy law, only covers patient information kept by health providers, insurers and data clearinghouses, as well as their business partners. At-home paternity tests fall outside the law’s purview. For that matter, so do wearables like Fitbit that measure steps and sleep, testing companies like 23andMe, and online repositories where individuals can store their health records. In several instances, the privacy of people using these newer services has been compromised, causing embarrassment or legal repercussions. In 2011, for instance, an Australian company failed to properly secure details of hundreds of paternity and drug tests, making them accessible through a Google search. The company said that it quickly fixed the problem. That same year, some users of the Fitbit tracker found that data they entered in their online profiles about their sexual activity and its intensity — to help calculate calories burned — was accessible to anyone. Fitbit quickly hid the information. And last year, a publicly accessible genealogy database was used by police to look for possible suspects in a 1996 Idaho murder. After finding a “very good match” with the DNA of semen found at the crime scene, police obtained a search warrant to get the person’s name. After investigating further, authorities got another warrant ordering the man’s son to provide a DNA sample, which cleared him of involvement. The incident spooked genealogy aficionados; AncestryDNA, which ran the online database, pulled it this spring. “When you publicly make available your genetic information, you essentially are signing a waiver to your past and future medical records,” said Erin Murphy, a professor at New York University School of Law. The true extent of the problem is unclear because many companies don’t know when the health information they store has been accessed inappropriately, experts say. A range of potentially sensitive data is at risk, including medical diagnoses, disease markers in a person’s genes and children’s paternity. What is known is that the Office for Civil Rights, the HHS agency that enforces HIPAA, hasn’t taken action on 60 percent of the complaints it has received because they were filed too late or withdrawn or because the agency lacked authority over the entity that’s accused. The latter accounts for a growing proportion of complaints, an OCR spokeswoman said. A 2009 law called on HHS to work with the Federal Trade Commission — which targets unfair business practices and identity theft — and to submit recommendations to Congress within a year on how to deal with entities handling health information that falls outside of HIPAA. Six years later, however, no recommendations have been issued. The report is in “the final legs of being completed,” said Lucia Savage, chief privacy officer of the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. None of this was useful to the 30-year-old Stokes, a principal consultant at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Four months after she filed her complaint with OCR, it suggested she contact the FTC. At that point, she gave up. “It just kind of seems like a Wild West right now,” she said. Protection of Consumer-app Data Varies Advances in technology offer patients ways to monitor their own health that were impossible until recently: Internet-connected scales to track their weight; electrodes attached to their iPhones to monitor heart rhythms; virtual file cabinets to store their medical records. “Consumer-generated health information is proliferating,” FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said at a forum last year. But many users don’t realize that much of it is stored “outside of the HIPAA silo.” HIPAA seeks to facilitate the flow of electronic health information, while ensuring that privacy and security are protected along the way. It only applies to health providers that transmit information electronically; a 2009 law added business partners that handle health information on behalf of these entities. Violators can face fines and even prison time. “If you were trying to draft a privacy law from scratch, this is not the way you would do it,” said Adam Greene, a former OCR official who’s now a private-sector lawyer in Washington. In 2013, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse studied 43 free and paid health and fitness apps. The group found that some did not provide a link to a privacy policy and that many with a policy did not accurately describe how the apps transmitted information. For instance, many apps connected to third-party websites without users’ knowledge and sent data in unencrypted ways that potentially exposed personal information. “Consumers should not assume any of their data is private in the mobile app environment—even health data that they consider sensitive,” the group said. Consider a woman who is wearing a fetal monitor under her clothes that sends alerts to her phone. The device “talks” to her smartphone via wireless Bluetooth technology, and its presence on a network could be detected by others, alerting them to the fact that she’s pregnant or that she may have concerns about her baby’s health. “That is a fact that you may not want to share with others around you—co-workers or family members or strangers in a café,” said David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth College who is principal investigator of a federally funded project that is developing secure technology for health and wellness. “We’ve seen this in the tech market over and over again,” he added. “What sells devices or applications are the features for the most part, and unless there’s a really strong business reason or consumer push or federal regulation, security and privacy are generally a secondary thought.” ‘Walking Through an Open Door’ In Florida, Stokes is one of those people enamored with emerging health technologies. Several years ago, she rushed to sign up for 23andMe to analyze her genetic profile. And when she was pregnant with her daughter, she purchased a test that said it could predict the sex of the fetus. (It was wrong.) The paternity test kit that piqued her interest earlier this year advertised “accuracy guaranteed” for “1 alleged father and 1 child.” She remembers the kit costing about $80 at a nearby Walgreens. Such tests sell for about $100 online. “It was kind of a nerdy thing that I was interested in doing,” Stokes said. The test was processed in New Mexico by GTLDNA Genetic Testing Laboratories, then a division of General Genetics Corp. Stokes was directed to log into a website and enter a unique code for her results. When they appeared, she noticed an unusual Web address on her screen, and she wondered what would happen if she modified it to remove the ID assigned to her. She tried that and saw a folder containing the results of thousands of other people. She was able to click through and read them. “You wouldn’t call that hacking,” she said. “You would call that walking through an open door.” Stokes downloaded those publicly accessible records so that she would have proof of the lax security. “There were no safeguards,” she said. She complained to the HHS Office for Civil Rights in early February. It answered in June,writing that the office “does not have authority to investigate your complaint, and therefore, is closing this matter.” Bud Thompson, who until last month was the chief executive of General Genetics, initially said he had not heard about Stokes’ discovery. A subsequent email provided an explanation. “There was a coding error in the software that resulted in the person being able to view results of other customers. The person notified the lab, and the website was immediately taken down to solve this problem,” he wrote. “Since this incident, we have sold this line of business and have effectively ceased all operations of the lab.” The DNA testing company 23andMe, which helps people learn about their genetic backgrounds and find relatives based on those profiles, had a highly publicized lab mix-up in which as many as 96 customers were given the wrong DNA test results, sometimes for people of a different gender. A spokeswoman for the California-based company said she was unaware of any privacy or security breaches since that 2010 incident. Kate Black, its privacy officer and corporate counsel, said that 23andMe tries to provide more protection than HIPAA would require. “No matter what, no law is ever going to be narrow enough or specific enough to appropriately protect each and every business model and consumer health company,” she said. California lawmakers have twice considered a measure to prohibit anyone from collecting, analyzing or sharing the genetic information of another person without written permission, with some exceptions. Then-Sen. Alex Padilla, who sponsored the bill, cited a California company that marketed DNA testing, including on samples collected from people without their knowledge. In a recent interview, he said that he was amazed state law did not protect “what’s arguably the most personal of our information and that’s our genetic makeup, our genetic profile.” The legislation failed. And Padilla, now California’s secretary of state, remains concerned: “I don’t think this issue is going away any time soon.”   While Stokes was troubled by her experience, she was particularly disheartened by the OCR’s response. “It was shocking to me to get that message back from the government saying this isn’t covered by the current legislation and, as a result, we don’t care about it,” she said. The agency’s deputy director for health information privacy says there is no lack of interest. While it refers certain cases to law enforcement, OCR can barely keep up with those complaints that fall within its jurisdiction. “I wish we had the bandwidth to do so,” Deven McGraw said. “We would love to be able to be a place where people can get personalized assistance on every complaint that comes in the door, but the resources just don’t allow us to do that.” For its part, the FTC has taken action against a few companies for failing to secure patients’ information, including a 2013 settlement with Cbr Systems Inc., a blood bank where parents store the umbilical cord blood of newborns in case it is ever needed to treat subsequent diseases in the children or relatives. That settlement requires Cbr to implement comprehensive security and submit to independent audits every other year for 20 years. It also bars the company from misrepresenting its privacy and security practices. But FTC officials say the number of complaints pursued hardly reflects the scope of the problem. Most consumers are never told when a company sells or otherwise shares their health information without their permission, said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the FTC’s division of privacy and identity protection. “It may be done behind the scenes, without consumers’ knowledge,” she noted. “Those are the cases where consumers may not even know to complain.”

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Freedom fries and chicken hawks: The American history mosque-closers and chest-thumpers must learn

We’ve been here before. When terror strikes at the heart of a people, the immediate tendency is to talk tough and demand action. It feels good at first, but as often as not, the commitment leads to unnecessary expenditures and unsatisfactory results, not to mention an uptick in racist stereotyping. We’re not just talking about 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In reaction to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. established internment camps for Japanese-Americans. When legal instruments are invoked in this manner, we’re not merely talking about a “backlash”; we’re legalizing racism. In fact, there was a time, long gone by now, when the radical threat to American peace and social order and national religious life came from France itself. But as recently as 2003, France became something of a symbol of the sort of Western nation that was soft on terror: its government refused to jump on the bandwagon when the Bush-Cheney administration invaded Iraq. Remember freedom fries? There is more than a little historical irony to report. So, let’s first recall what we owe France. The American War for Independence would have been dead in its tracks had it not received substantial military and economic support from the French, when they could scarcely afford it. Yet barely a decade after the Treaty of Paris secured British recognition of American nationhood, the bloody course of the French Revolution — though it was initially conceived on American principles — drove the U.S. government to turn on its most reliable friend. After 1793, when the deposed King Louis XVI was guillotined, the French were generalized as “cannibals”; radical French ideas were believed so dangerous to America that words on the page would be enough to foment unrest and upset the social order. When Thomas Paine, the spirited propagandist of 1776, defended the French Revolution in his pamphlet “The Rights of Man” (1791), the emerging Federalist Party in America saw the tract as a defense of “mob justice” or “mobocracy.” Paine’s next, “The Age of Reason” (1794) questioned biblical authority and in the starkest terms demeaned organized Christianity. By the mid-1790s, the adjective “French” became virtually synonymous with “anarchist.” The pro-French political party that would shortly be known as Democratic-Republican, led by Madison and Jefferson, were dubbed “Jacobins” by their Federalist opponents, after the short-lived party in France that had brought on “the Terror.” The Federalists talked tough, in large part as a means to label Democratic-Republicans as soft on French extremism. You can see where this is going, right? The most militant critic of Revolutionary France was Alexander Hamilton. For him, honor was everything. Personal honor, national honor — he sometimes conflated the two. During John Adams’s presidency, representatives of the French Foreign Ministry snubbed three American envoys, and hardcore Federalists were convinced that the French government would shortly invade the United States. Hamilton regarded the issue as a matter of honor — the loss of national honor would be, in his precise words, “political suicide.” So, he proposed adding 50,000 men to the U.S. Army (with himself at the head, of course), and the U.S. and France engaged in what became known as the “Quasi-War.” It was a case of extreme overreaction. No French troops ever set foot on American soil; no acts of violence against a passive citizenry occurred because of the alleged French menace. But the Quasi-War raised Hamilton’s profile, which had been sagging somewhat. Nevertheless, French emigrés to America continued to be targeted in 1798-99 by those who feared their influence, those who spread fear, while the power of the military in national life increased. Hamilton wanted non-citizens of French origin to be deported. More tough talk ensued, and Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for an American citizen to write critically of the president or insult an officer of the federal government. Newspaper editors and others were tried, found guilty, and jailed for their “French principles.” National honor was twisted in other ways. The War of 1812 was declared over ostensible British insults to American honor, when merchant vessels were boarded by the Royal Navy and U.S. commerce disrupted. Congress’s reaction was to invade Canada, where British agents sat poised to incite western Indians to launch renewed attacks within the United States. A defensive war to redress grievances and buttress a sense of national pride quickly turned into a war to acquire millions more acres of North America. Though government borrowed heavily, the war was fought to a standstill: no territory was exchanged, and the White House and U.S. Capitol were torched in the process of reclaiming a few grams of lost honor. Okay, that was then, and not every lesson of history is entirely translatable to the present. Orchestrated terror is truly horrific. The French are attacking ISIS from the air in revenge for last week’s tragedy, and because we feel so deeply the Parisians’ pain, we understand and approve — without as yet knowing whether enough of the right bad guys are being blown up to justify the deaths of any innocents who might be caught in the crossfire. Perhaps such compromises of principle are to be expected when a center of civilization is terrorized. Who rightfully gets to pass judgment? But in the U.S., the reaction seems to be the same as it was at the time of the Ebola outbreak: some Syrian refugee, somewhere in the bunch, may be a Manchurian candidate, just ten years away from blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Oh, wait. That was a citizen, a Persian Gulf War veteran, who did that. Anyway, Paris may actually give some greater justification, in fearful minds, to candidate Trump’s ridiculous wall and the related deportation mania. The GOP candidates who fan the flames of intolerance whenever something like Paris occurs are doing nothing more than amplifying the hatred that naturally arises at such moments. Some who listen to these voices will be convinced that shutting down mosques or closing our borders will stop terror. But it won’t, of course, any more than duct-taped windows would have saved anyone from the chemical attack that didn’t happen after 9/11. No one wants to feel unsafe; but that doesn’t mean that the initial impulse at a time of crisis is going to be the optimal solution to a complex, long-term problem. President Obama may be criticized for his penchant for diplomacy and his lack of tough talk, but he proceeds always with eyes open. He may be remembered as an imperfect president, but also a prudent one. General Colin Powell had seen enough of war to want to avoid it in 2003, and was the voice of reason who, as secretary of state, was overruled — and remained loyal to the administration. We forget the rhetoric of democracy’s infectious virtue that drove “manifest destiny” as practiced by President Polk during the war with Mexico; Jeb Bush would prefer that we forget how it was re-engaged by Bush-Cheney in underestimating the scope of an Iraq invasion. But we haven’t yet forgotten General Powell’s prudence either. In the old days, a “Hamiltonian moment,” such as that which took us to war in 1812 and again in 1846, was accompanied by the enlistments of noteworthy political men. Congressmen entered the lists against the enemy they’d identified in their public speeches. George Washington was the first to sign up in 1775, and saw plenty of combat. Former Virginia governor James Monroe ached to put on a uniform during the War of 1812, even in his civilian role as President Madison’s secretary of state. Morgan Lewis had been governor of New York, and Andrew Jackson had been a member of both the House and Senate, prior to becoming generals during that war. Abraham Lincoln’s political mentor, Illinois congressman John J. Hardin, joined the fight in Mexico, and forfeited his life in battle, martyred in a questionable cause. And of course, Theodore Roosevelt, an architect of the Spanish-American War, left his comfortable post in Washington to lead troops up San Juan Hill in Cuba in 1898. Other than John McCain, whose interventionist position may be contested but whose knowledge of war cannot be, the tough talkers who are not war veterans do not possess the resolve of Washington, Monroe, Hardin or Roosevelt, who backed up their aggressive statements with a personal commitment to head for the front. Battlefield courage was never shown by warmongers Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney, nor will it be by tough talkers Cruz, Trump, Rubio, Huckabee et al. Be wary of what arises from tough talk. We also need to be reminded that the justifications given for war have the strong tendency to promote racism. In both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, Native Americans and African-American slaves were made more killable than usual when some of them joined the British side. That’s all it took to ramp up the rhetoric against “inferior” races whose proximity gave white folks pause. It will surprise no one that the racist reaction to perceived instability abroad has its own long history. To return to 1793, and the raging French Revolution, slaves in the colony of Haiti (then called St. Domingue) took seriously “liberté” and “égalité,” rose up and were pronounced free. Amid this confusion, the minority white planters fled the island for America, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson refused to provide government assistance to the refugees because of their past royalist/aristocratic affiliation and the Virginia legislature, fearing the mobility of former slaves, decreed that free blacks could not set foot in the state. Jefferson himself wrote to James Monroe that, with a Caribbean “in the hands of people of color,” America “should foresee the bloody scenes which our children, and possibly ourselves have to wade through.” He literally envisioned a devastating race war in the United States. The succeeding generation, fighting in Mexico in 1846-48, similarly decried the “mongrel” population of brown-skinned people south of the newly reconstituted border, a people tainted by their Catholicism. By incorporating too much of the Southwest, the ensuing racial imbalance would infect real American blood. Why was Texas annexed in 1845? Partly as payback for the insult to American honor symbolized by the well-remembered Alamo assault. On the eve of war with Mexico, former treasury secretary Levi Woodbury was harking back to 1836 when he recalled that “Saxon blood had been humiliated and enslaved to Moors, Indians and mongrels.” At the same time, future president James Buchanan dismissed the “imbecile and indolent Mexican race” when he recommended a war of conquest, and said that no white American should ever be under the thumb of a lesser race. Examples abound that show how fear of what lies in the mind of an unknown person or tribe results in dire assumptions, widespread antagonism and heightened propaganda. Those who held slaves (and many who didn’t) assumed that all dark-skinned people harbored ill intent. Jefferson, ingenious in other ways, could not imagine a different world than one in which racial conflict was a conquering force beyond human agency. These past actors were the victims of a fractured ideology, many unaware that genuine self-defense and cries of national honor are not the same thing. Chest-thumping does nothing to restore injured honor. Hyperbolic language only encourages hate. Yet the old ideology has not been entirely destroyed — it can be resurrected in desperate times. Sadly, today’s GOP is little different from their warmongering predecessors in this regard. Wall out bad Mexicans. Quarantine the asymptomatic who may have been exposed to the African disease Ebola. When the media feasts on grisly sensationalism, it unfortunately redounds to the advantage of a certain breed of politician. To caution against overreaction is not to oppose an appropriate reaction. Fourteen years ago, knowing the location of Osama Bin Laden and his supporters in Afghanistan made the attack on Tora Bora and related military actions a rational response to the 9/11 attacks. There is a time for vengeance. It feels right. But as we have learned since 2001, the full force of the U.S. military is not needed over the long haul (major side effect: it breeds resentment), if the goal is to pinpoint individual terror cells and stop them before it’s too late. In macro-historical terms, the presence of U.S. forces in the Islamic world will never win enough hearts and minds to extinguish the anti-Western idea as intended. We may regard our mission as humane, we may be well-intentioned occupiers; but we are occupiers nonetheless. The resentful point at us as aggressors; those most dominated by an insidious ideology are turned into terrorists. Jeb Bush now says U.S. ground troops should be fighting ISIS in Syria. More tough talk. But how is that to remove the danger to Paris or New York or anywhere else? ISIS is not confined within Syria’s borders. Republican candidates beat the drum of war. It’s what they do. But are they capitalizing on the moment to defeat a defeatable enemy, or capitalizing on fear to appear “stronger” than the deliberative leader in the White House or any other reasoning Democrat?

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Trans resilience is more important to honor than ever — even in the year of Caitlyn Jenner

2015 was a history-making year for transgender people—with Caitlyn Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer bringing national visibility to trans lives. But while 20.7 million Americans watched a famous Olympian—known for that iconic Wheaties box—come out to millions of Americans, trans folks were being murdered at gruesome, historic rates. An estimate from Planet Transgender shows that a trans person is killed every 29 hours, and this year, the trans community lost women like Elisha Walker, Candis Capri, and Keyshia Blige, a 33-year-old living in Aurora, Ill., who was misgendered in news reports after being shot to death in a drive-by. These stark dichotomies—increasing acceptance during a time when trans women are the victims of hate crimes at unspeakable rates—is behind the dual meaning of the yearly observation of TDOR, often known as the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Started in 1998 following the death of Rita Hester, who unbelievably survived being stabbed 20 times before suffering a heart attack on the way to the hospital. According to the Daily Beast’s Samantha Allen, her murder was the catalyst “that started a movement.“ In the 17 years since, Hester’s shocking death has too often become the norm for women across the world. As the Advocate’s Sunnivie Brydum reports, 87 trans women have been murdered so far this year (remember, 2015 isn’t over), with disproportionate numbers of reports coming from the United States and Brazil. (Thus, these figures do not account for deaths that go unreported.) These statistics even more harshly affect women of color, who account for two-thirds of hate crimes motivated by gender identity, according to a 2013 survey from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP). In the face of this high risk of violence, the other meaning of TDOR shines a spotlight on a community that’s both mourning those who have passed and those who are persisting in the face of struggle and hardship: the Trans Day of Resilience. When it comes to the women were horrifically, brutally slaughtered, we should #SayHerName, as black people working for justice did following the death of Sandra Bland. But we should also say the names of the many transgender women and women of color who are alive—women like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who are possibility models showing trans folks can not only survive but thrive. Events like the yearly Trans 100 have long argued this by spotlighting community members doing inspiring work across the country. These aren’t just the well-known heroes but the activists and people working behind the scenes to create a better future for trans people everywhere. Co-founded by Jen Richards, creator of the upcoming Her Story webseries, and Antonia D’orsay, executive director of This Is How, the list honors non-profit workers, artists, and educators In 2013, its inductees included names from Matrix director Lana Wachowski and GLAAD’s Jenny Boylan to Andre Perez, the founder of Chicago’s Trans Oral History Project. As BuzzFeed’s Saaed Jones argued at the time, these are important names that every American should know. At that inaugural ceremony, Janet Mock—the host of MSNBC’s So Popular! and best-selling author of Redefining Realness—explained why: “I am here tonight because of the 99 other names on the inaugural Trans 100 list and the unrecognized thousands who are not on this list whose quiet acts are changing lives.” But for trans lives to be of value, transgender folks don’t have to be on the front lines of activism or creating a blockbuster film. Each of us should have the opportunity to say the names of the loved ones or friends who are transgender and inspire us to be more understanding, educated, and inclusive in our own lives. The simple act of visibility itself is important work that doesn’t go recognized enough, the trans people who are working for equality by being themselves in their daily lives—whether that’s riding the subway, going to a grocery store, or coming out to their friends and family. According to 2013 statistics from the Public Research Institute, just 9 percent of Americans say that they know someone who is transgender, but those numbers are changing. And there’s a reason for that: 2015 has faced numerous setbacks—like the failure of Houston’s Non-Discrimination Ordinance (HERO), which allowed for sweeping LGBT protections in public accommodations; the bill voted down over conservative hand-wringing that it would allow “gender-confused men” access to women’s restroom to spy on ladies using the toilet. However, there also continue to be numerous victories. But no matter how many roadblocks trans people face on their long fight for equality, increasing numbers of trans people come out every year, giving people to opportunity to know them. If research from the National Center for Transgender Equality suggested that 12 percent of trans individuals are not out to a single person, that’s a lot of closet doors waiting to be opened. While the world needs more people like Janet Mock and Caitlyn Jenner, we all need heroes in our daily lives—whether that’s showing other trans people it’s OK to come out or modeling what acceptance can look like outside of the trans community. We should say the names of the dead, but we should scream the names of the living right along with them. In a culture where murder and violence is too often the norm, the most important act of resilience is continuing to be yourself.2015 was a history-making year for transgender people—with Caitlyn Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer bringing national visibility to trans lives. But while 20.7 million Americans watched a famous Olympian—known for that iconic Wheaties box—come out to millions of Americans, trans folks were being murdered at gruesome, historic rates. An estimate from Planet Transgender shows that a trans person is killed every 29 hours, and this year, the trans community lost women like Elisha Walker, Candis Capri, and Keyshia Blige, a 33-year-old living in Aurora, Ill., who was misgendered in news reports after being shot to death in a drive-by. These stark dichotomies—increasing acceptance during a time when trans women are the victims of hate crimes at unspeakable rates—is behind the dual meaning of the yearly observation of TDOR, often known as the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Started in 1998 following the death of Rita Hester, who unbelievably survived being stabbed 20 times before suffering a heart attack on the way to the hospital. According to the Daily Beast’s Samantha Allen, her murder was the catalyst “that started a movement.“ In the 17 years since, Hester’s shocking death has too often become the norm for women across the world. As the Advocate’s Sunnivie Brydum reports, 87 trans women have been murdered so far this year (remember, 2015 isn’t over), with disproportionate numbers of reports coming from the United States and Brazil. (Thus, these figures do not account for deaths that go unreported.) These statistics even more harshly affect women of color, who account for two-thirds of hate crimes motivated by gender identity, according to a 2013 survey from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP). In the face of this high risk of violence, the other meaning of TDOR shines a spotlight on a community that’s both mourning those who have passed and those who are persisting in the face of struggle and hardship: the Trans Day of Resilience. When it comes to the women were horrifically, brutally slaughtered, we should #SayHerName, as black people working for justice did following the death of Sandra Bland. But we should also say the names of the many transgender women and women of color who are alive—women like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who are possibility models showing trans folks can not only survive but thrive. Events like the yearly Trans 100 have long argued this by spotlighting community members doing inspiring work across the country. These aren’t just the well-known heroes but the activists and people working behind the scenes to create a better future for trans people everywhere. Co-founded by Jen Richards, creator of the upcoming Her Story webseries, and Antonia D’orsay, executive director of This Is How, the list honors non-profit workers, artists, and educators In 2013, its inductees included names from Matrix director Lana Wachowski and GLAAD’s Jenny Boylan to Andre Perez, the founder of Chicago’s Trans Oral History Project. As BuzzFeed’s Saaed Jones argued at the time, these are important names that every American should know. At that inaugural ceremony, Janet Mock—the host of MSNBC’s So Popular! and best-selling author of Redefining Realness—explained why: “I am here tonight because of the 99 other names on the inaugural Trans 100 list and the unrecognized thousands who are not on this list whose quiet acts are changing lives.” But for trans lives to be of value, transgender folks don’t have to be on the front lines of activism or creating a blockbuster film. Each of us should have the opportunity to say the names of the loved ones or friends who are transgender and inspire us to be more understanding, educated, and inclusive in our own lives. The simple act of visibility itself is important work that doesn’t go recognized enough, the trans people who are working for equality by being themselves in their daily lives—whether that’s riding the subway, going to a grocery store, or coming out to their friends and family. According to 2013 statistics from the Public Research Institute, just 9 percent of Americans say that they know someone who is transgender, but those numbers are changing. And there’s a reason for that: 2015 has faced numerous setbacks—like the failure of Houston’s Non-Discrimination Ordinance (HERO), which allowed for sweeping LGBT protections in public accommodations; the bill voted down over conservative hand-wringing that it would allow “gender-confused men” access to women’s restroom to spy on ladies using the toilet. However, there also continue to be numerous victories. But no matter how many roadblocks trans people face on their long fight for equality, increasing numbers of trans people come out every year, giving people to opportunity to know them. If research from the National Center for Transgender Equality suggested that 12 percent of trans individuals are not out to a single person, that’s a lot of closet doors waiting to be opened. While the world needs more people like Janet Mock and Caitlyn Jenner, we all need heroes in our daily lives—whether that’s showing other trans people it’s OK to come out or modeling what acceptance can look like outside of the trans community. We should say the names of the dead, but we should scream the names of the living right along with them. In a culture where murder and violence is too often the norm, the most important act of resilience is continuing to be yourself.

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After Paris terror attacks, an amped up round of security state vitriol is directed at Edward Snowden

Current and former top officials in the United States surveillance command have come out with their sights curiously set on Edward Snowden following last Friday's terror attacks in Paris. Only three days after at least eight radicalized European nationals stormed the city of Paris in a series of terror attacks linked to ISIL, current CIA director John Brennan blamed the former federal contractor's leaks for allowing terrorist to practice more "operational security," making them harder to monitor -- although the CIA chief avoided explicitly mentioning Snowden by name:

In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.

Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, said Snowden's leaks helped contribute to the rise of ISIL and said that if Snowden hadn't leaked classified information on the United State's massive surveillance apparatus, the West would have had a "fighting chance" to prevent the Paris attacks. “We’ve had a public debate. That debate was defined by Edward Snowden, right, and the concern about privacy,”  Morell said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” “I think we're now going to have another debate about that. It's going to be defined by what happened in Paris.” The fresh new round of Snowden bashing wasn't just reserved for the intelligence community either. Fox's Dana Perino was out pointing the finger at Snowden only hours after the attacks: https://twitter.com/DanaPerino/status... London's Mayor Boris Johnson said that Snowden had effectively taught terrorists “how to avoid being caught”:

To some people the whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero; not to me. It is pretty clear that his bean-spilling has taught some of the nastiest people on the planet how to avoid being caught; and when the story of the Paris massacre is explained, I would like a better understanding of how so many operatives were able to conspire, and attack multiple locations, without some of their electronic chatter reaching the ears of the police.

Taking the fresh round of Snowden bashing to a shameful new low, former CIA director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Thursday that Snowden deserved to be "hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.” “I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands,” the former spy chief said. But as the New York Times Editorial board wrote, denouncing the intelligence community's ugly scapegoating of Snowden for the Paris attacks, despite the leaks, "intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before — only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public":

Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists. As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.

Current and former top officials in the United States surveillance command have come out with their sights curiously set on Edward Snowden following last Friday's terror attacks in Paris. Only three days after at least eight radicalized European nationals stormed the city of Paris in a series of terror attacks linked to ISIL, current CIA director John Brennan blamed the former federal contractor's leaks for allowing terrorist to practice more "operational security," making them harder to monitor -- although the CIA chief avoided explicitly mentioning Snowden by name:

In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.

Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, said Snowden's leaks helped contribute to the rise of ISIL and said that if Snowden hadn't leaked classified information on the United State's massive surveillance apparatus, the West would have had a "fighting chance" to prevent the Paris attacks. “We’ve had a public debate. That debate was defined by Edward Snowden, right, and the concern about privacy,”  Morell said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” “I think we're now going to have another debate about that. It's going to be defined by what happened in Paris.” The fresh new round of Snowden bashing wasn't just reserved for the intelligence community either. Fox's Dana Perino was out pointing the finger at Snowden only hours after the attacks: https://twitter.com/DanaPerino/status... London's Mayor Boris Johnson said that Snowden had effectively taught terrorists “how to avoid being caught”:

To some people the whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero; not to me. It is pretty clear that his bean-spilling has taught some of the nastiest people on the planet how to avoid being caught; and when the story of the Paris massacre is explained, I would like a better understanding of how so many operatives were able to conspire, and attack multiple locations, without some of their electronic chatter reaching the ears of the police.

Taking the fresh round of Snowden bashing to a shameful new low, former CIA director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Thursday that Snowden deserved to be "hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.” “I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands,” the former spy chief said. But as the New York Times Editorial board wrote, denouncing the intelligence community's ugly scapegoating of Snowden for the Paris attacks, despite the leaks, "intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before — only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public":

Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists. As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.

Current and former top officials in the United States surveillance command have come out with their sights curiously set on Edward Snowden following last Friday's terror attacks in Paris. Only three days after at least eight radicalized European nationals stormed the city of Paris in a series of terror attacks linked to ISIL, current CIA director John Brennan blamed the former federal contractor's leaks for allowing terrorist to practice more "operational security," making them harder to monitor -- although the CIA chief avoided explicitly mentioning Snowden by name:

In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.

Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, said Snowden's leaks helped contribute to the rise of ISIL and said that if Snowden hadn't leaked classified information on the United State's massive surveillance apparatus, the West would have had a "fighting chance" to prevent the Paris attacks. “We’ve had a public debate. That debate was defined by Edward Snowden, right, and the concern about privacy,”  Morell said Sunday on “Face the Nation.” “I think we're now going to have another debate about that. It's going to be defined by what happened in Paris.” The fresh new round of Snowden bashing wasn't just reserved for the intelligence community either. Fox's Dana Perino was out pointing the finger at Snowden only hours after the attacks: https://twitter.com/DanaPerino/status... London's Mayor Boris Johnson said that Snowden had effectively taught terrorists “how to avoid being caught”:

To some people the whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero; not to me. It is pretty clear that his bean-spilling has taught some of the nastiest people on the planet how to avoid being caught; and when the story of the Paris massacre is explained, I would like a better understanding of how so many operatives were able to conspire, and attack multiple locations, without some of their electronic chatter reaching the ears of the police.

Taking the fresh round of Snowden bashing to a shameful new low, former CIA director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Thursday that Snowden deserved to be "hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted.” “I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands,” the former spy chief said. But as the New York Times Editorial board wrote, denouncing the intelligence community's ugly scapegoating of Snowden for the Paris attacks, despite the leaks, "intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before — only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public":

Most of the men who carried out the Paris attacks were already on the radar of intelligence officials in France and Belgium, where several of the attackers lived only hundreds of yards from the main police station, in a neighborhood known as a haven for extremists. As one French counterterrorism expert and former defense official said, this shows that “our intelligence is actually pretty good, but our ability to act on it is limited by the sheer numbers.” In other words, the problem in this case was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.

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Happy 20th Anniversary Salon

The first edition of Salon went live twenty years ago, an early milestone in the now booming world of digital publishing. As one of the earliest online news sites, Salon’s approach to sparking dialogue by blending quality journalism with cutting-edge technology was truly pioneering. We continue that tradition today thanks to the dedication of our employees and our commitment to supporting an array of strong, progressive voices, whose uniqueness and courage vocalize important perspectives. Our amazing lineage of writers—past and present—contributed much to today’s political, cultural and media landscape. Salon’s revelations surrounding the Clinton impeachment scandals, the 2000 election debacle in Florida—or more recently, its agenda-setting discussion on racism in the United States, Charlie Hebdo, and the state of the Democratic Party—have driven the national conversation. Our Life section authors helped shape the memoir culture, while our "Mothers Who Think" series launched the myriad of "mommy" sites and blogs that are synonymous with the conversation surrounding motherhood in the twenty-first century. This is just the tip of the iceberg; today our writers continue to challenge conventional wisdom and dominant media paradigms. They bring insightful arguments to the table and encourage the public to engage, covering an array of topics from the intersection of politics and media, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Uber-ization of modern life, and so much more. Our peers recognize the continued excellence of Salon. In the past year, Heather "Digby" Parton was awarded the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis writing and Salon won a Folio Award for General Consumer Website “design and uncompromising journalism,” recent additions to Salon’s long list of accolades over the years. Salon enhanced its storytelling and launched original editorial video this year, a terrific complement to our brand of journalistic excellence and one that will grow. Our inventive sales team has forged new paths with their creative, bespoke ad solutions, and our tech and product teams constantly push new frontiers. Today, over half of our audience use and interact with Salon on their mobile devices, an important development, and we constantly work to improve our mobile technology. Salon was one of the apps available at the launch of the Apple Watch last April, underscoring our commitment to innovate on both a technological and editorial level to explore new trends in online content. Going forward, we’re thinking how to best harness the Internet of Things to broaden the Salon experience. Salon took its name from the Enlightenment-era salons where people with different points of view congregated to discuss changing opinions about society, politics, culture, science, innovation, and more. The salon culture of the eighteenth century’s intellectual revolution—informed and influenced by the scientific revolution—helped spread ideas and provoked re-examination of previously held norms. This inspiration shaped our earliest content, and continues to inform Salon’s fearless, award-winning journalism that cracks open a broader discussion and provides a high-profile platform for diverse voices that are often ignored by the mainstream media. Salon remains at the forefront thanks to its dedication to quality journalism, making the conversation smarter, and exploring emerging technology platforms to be where our readers are. We have come a long way from the tiny online media startup begun by David Talbot in November 1995—and we could not do it without the help and support of our terrific alumni, present-day staff and readers. I’m truly thankful for Salon, what it contributes to the world, and the opportunity to work every day with terrific, intelligent, and engaged colleagues. We will mark the anniversary year in several ways in the upcoming months. Stay tuned for further details closer to those events. In the meantime, we invite you to go back to the beginning and explore Salon’s first edition via the Internet Archive. Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving as we head into our twentieth anniversary.The first edition of Salon went live twenty years ago, an early milestone in the now booming world of digital publishing. As one of the earliest online news sites, Salon’s approach to sparking dialogue by blending quality journalism with cutting-edge technology was truly pioneering. We continue that tradition today thanks to the dedication of our employees and our commitment to supporting an array of strong, progressive voices, whose uniqueness and courage vocalize important perspectives. Our amazing lineage of writers—past and present—contributed much to today’s political, cultural and media landscape. Salon’s revelations surrounding the Clinton impeachment scandals, the 2000 election debacle in Florida—or more recently, its agenda-setting discussion on racism in the United States, Charlie Hebdo, and the state of the Democratic Party—have driven the national conversation. Our Life section authors helped shape the memoir culture, while our "Mothers Who Think" series launched the myriad of "mommy" sites and blogs that are synonymous with the conversation surrounding motherhood in the twenty-first century. This is just the tip of the iceberg; today our writers continue to challenge conventional wisdom and dominant media paradigms. They bring insightful arguments to the table and encourage the public to engage, covering an array of topics from the intersection of politics and media, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Uber-ization of modern life, and so much more. Our peers recognize the continued excellence of Salon. In the past year, Heather "Digby" Parton was awarded the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis writing and Salon won a Folio Award for General Consumer Website “design and uncompromising journalism,” recent additions to Salon’s long list of accolades over the years. Salon enhanced its storytelling and launched original editorial video this year, a terrific complement to our brand of journalistic excellence and one that will grow. Our inventive sales team has forged new paths with their creative, bespoke ad solutions, and our tech and product teams constantly push new frontiers. Today, over half of our audience use and interact with Salon on their mobile devices, an important development, and we constantly work to improve our mobile technology. Salon was one of the apps available at the launch of the Apple Watch last April, underscoring our commitment to innovate on both a technological and editorial level to explore new trends in online content. Going forward, we’re thinking how to best harness the Internet of Things to broaden the Salon experience. Salon took its name from the Enlightenment-era salons where people with different points of view congregated to discuss changing opinions about society, politics, culture, science, innovation, and more. The salon culture of the eighteenth century’s intellectual revolution—informed and influenced by the scientific revolution—helped spread ideas and provoked re-examination of previously held norms. This inspiration shaped our earliest content, and continues to inform Salon’s fearless, award-winning journalism that cracks open a broader discussion and provides a high-profile platform for diverse voices that are often ignored by the mainstream media. Salon remains at the forefront thanks to its dedication to quality journalism, making the conversation smarter, and exploring emerging technology platforms to be where our readers are. We have come a long way from the tiny online media startup begun by David Talbot in November 1995—and we could not do it without the help and support of our terrific alumni, present-day staff and readers. I’m truly thankful for Salon, what it contributes to the world, and the opportunity to work every day with terrific, intelligent, and engaged colleagues. We will mark the anniversary year in several ways in the upcoming months. Stay tuned for further details closer to those events. In the meantime, we invite you to go back to the beginning and explore Salon’s first edition via the Internet Archive. Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving as we head into our twentieth anniversary.

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Top Clinton donor and “Koch Brother of Israel” supports profiling and “intense” interrogation of refugees

"Profiling, listening in on anyone and everybody who looks suspicious, or interviewing Muslims in a more intense way than interviewing Christian refugees is all acceptable," according to top Hillary Clinton donor and prominent pro-Israel activist Haim Saban. The billionaire entertainment executive and media mogul, who is among the 500 richest people in the world, made these remarks in an interview with The Wrap. "I’m not suggesting we put Muslims through some kind of a torture room to get them to admit that they are or they’re not terrorists," Saban added. "But I am saying we should have more scrutiny." After this article was published, Saban's spokesperson contacted Salon with an updated statement, clarifying that Saban misspoke and actually defended harsher vetting practices for Syrian refugees, not all Muslims. "I misspoke. I believe that all refugees coming from Syria -- a war-torn country that ISIS calls home – regardless of religion require additional scrutiny before entering the United States," Saban said. "I regret making a religious distinction as opposed to a geographical one: it's about scrutinizing every single individual coming from a country with ISIS strongholds." Saban -- whom Clinton calls "a very good friend, supporter, and adviser" -- and his wife Cheryl have given $2 million to Clinton's Super PAC, Priorities USA Action. In May, he hosted a fundraiser for Clinton, earning her $2 million more. Those who hoped to dine with the Democratic presidential candidate at the event paid a minimum of $2,700 per person just to get in. The November 13 ISIS attacks on Paris, Saban argued in the interview, will help Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign. Clinton "has been in the trenches her whole life," Saban said. "She's also made of steel. She's absolutely made of steel and she will take no baloney from no ISIS." He described the Paris attacks as "a wake-up call," adding "I fully believe we're in a different kind of World War III." In the updated statement, Saban said that, "while in contradiction to our country's principles in time of peace, I'm comfortable with the government taking additional measures, including increased surveillance of individuals they deem suspicious." He also took several jabs at fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, criticizing the self-declared democratic socialist for his much less hawkish positions. Saban maintained that Hillary Clinton's support for the illegal Iraq War, which Sanders and most of the American Left strongly opposed, "was the right vote." "She apologized, but I don't think she should have," Saban continued. "But that's easy for me to say. I'm sitting in Beverly Park," he added, referring to the gated Los Angeles neighborhood Forbes describes as "Beverly Hills' mansion-packed billionaire community." "Koch Brother of Israel" Haim Saban is known for his diehard pro-Israel stance, and for putting his money where is mouth is. He and leading GOP funder Sheldon Adelson have been described by former AIPAC official M.J. Rosenberg as the Koch Brothers of Israel. Saban said the breakdown of negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians moved him "very far to the right," adding he is "sometimes to the right of [Avigdor] Lieberman," a far-right Israeli politician who called for the beheading of "disloyal" Palestinian citizens of Israel. Despite his extreme right-wing views, Saban is a leading supporter of the Democratic Party. He has donated many millions of dollars to the Clintons, in particular. In the 2008 presidential election, he also publicly supported Hillary, for whom he raised large sums of money and held fundraisers. The billionaire has founded several pro-Israel think tanks and organizations. "I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel," he told the New York Times. Clinton wrote a letter to Saban in July, in which she smeared and vilified Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), a nonviolent global grassroots movement called for by Palestinian civil society that seeks to pressure Israel, through peaceful economic measures, to comply with international law and end its illegal occupation and oppression of the indigenous Palestinian people. Clinton asked the billionaire for advice on how to undermine the BDS movement, emphasizing "how crucial it is for America to defend Israel at every turn." In her letter to Saban, Clinton also referred to U.N. resolutions calling on Israel to abide by international law and cease its illegal activity as "anti-Israel resolutions." Salon has exposed how, under Clinton's leadership, the U.S. State Department, in its own words, "deferred" U.N. action on Israeli war crimes, in hopes of "reframing the debate" about the atrocities and "moving away from the U.N." In an interview with the right-wing Israeli publication the Jerusalem Post, Saban characterized Clinton as the ideal U.S. presidential candidate for Israel.

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8 of the nuttiest things Jenny McCarthy has ever said (in public)

Jenny McCarthy's recent comment about Charlie Sheen's HIV diagnosis showed just how clueless she can be — but it wasn't the first time an absurd comment thrust her into the spotlight. Watch 8 of the nuttiest things she has ever said — in public that is: [jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/11/JennyM..." image="http://media.salon.com/2015/11/jenny_... McCarthy's recent comment about Charlie Sheen's HIV diagnosis showed just how clueless she can be — but it wasn't the first time an absurd comment thrust her into the spotlight. Watch 8 of the nuttiest things she has ever said — in public that is: [jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/11/JennyM..." image="http://media.salon.com/2015/11/jenny_...]

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