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Seven signs that Trump is stumbling into a Mideast war

US President Donald Trump walks on his arrival accompanied by the Israeli President Rueben Rivlin, right, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Monday, May 22,2017. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty) (Credit: AP)

Listen carefully in Washington and you’ll hear the sound of a coming war in the Middle East.

“We must stop Iran and we will stop Iran,” declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday at the American Israeli Political Action Committee’s annual conference in Washington. Amid thunderous ovation, the prime minister said that “darkness is descending on our region,” adding that “Iran is building an aggressive empire.”

Coming from the man who told Americans in 2002, ”If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Netanyahu’s judgment about what the U.S. should do in the Middle East is defective, if not deceitful.

Yet the Trump administration has embraced him, even as he faces corruption charges at home.

Since the New Year, Trump has pledged to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, thrilling Netanyahu and alienating almost every country in the world. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has given a speech hyping the alleged menace of Iran’s ballistic missile program (U.S. allies were not convinced). Israel attacked Syria, and lost a fighter jet for the first time ever. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared the United States “will maintain a military presence in Syria,” where there are four times as many U.S. Special Operations forces as was previously acknowledged.

“We’ve seen this before: a campaign built on the politicization of intelligence and shortsighted policy decisions to make the case for war,” wrote Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell during the runup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The situation is “extremely alarming,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council, in an interview. “I hear the increasing sense among officials in the Middle East that the region is on the brink of war. And the more people think war is inevitable, the more likely it becomes.”

Here are seven signs of impending conflict.

1. Up for grabs.

The map of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, drawn in 1917, is now being redrawn a century later, thanks to the destabilizing impact of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“So this is much more than a dispute between two countries or a simple political uprising and demand for democracy,” says Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “This is really a fundamental reorganization of power in the region in a manner that we actually don’t know where the dust will settle.”

When Arabs complain about “Iranian meddling in the region,” Nasr told Frontline,“what they’re essentially saying is that the balance of power between Arabs and Iranians has been lost, not — I don’t think actually because the Iranians are doing any more, but because the Arabs have imploded,” he says.

Nasr points out that two of the most important Arab states, Syria and Iraq — the equivalent of Germany and France in Europe — barely exist as the nation-states they were in the year 2000. Today their governments only control their capital cities and their own ethnic sectarian constituencies.

 By contrast, Persian Iran, while it has a terrible human rights record and confronts popular domestic protests, is not at war or losing territory. Its allies dominate the government in Iraq, while in Syria, Iranian-backed forces have prevailed over ISIS and other fundamentalist militias funded by the Saudis.

2. Saudi-Israeli alliance.

The relative success of Iran since the U.S. invasion of Iraq alarms and unifies Saudi Arabia and Israel. The former is rich; the latter has the region’s most powerful military. Together they are seeking to bring the United States into conflict with their mutual enemy, Iran.

“The IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] are superior in every way to Iran’s army but they cannot overthrow the Iranian regime,” Wilkerson said in an interview with AlterNet. “Only the Americans can do that. So they want to get the Americans involved.”

Parsi agrees. The Israelis and the Saudis don’t want to start a war,” he said. “They want to spark something where the U.S. intervenes.”

3. Israel is mobilizing Congress.

The AIPAC conference in Washington was only one aspect of the Israeli campaign to persuade Washington war is inevitable. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) visited Israel last month and came away saying the chances of war are growing.

“Any time you leave a meeting where the major request is ‘ammunition, ammunition, ammunition,’ that’s probably not good,” Graham told reporters upon his return.

“This was the most unnerving trip I’ve had in a while,” he added.

Nonetheless, Graham and Coons both said the U.S. should support Israeli plans to confront Iranian influence in Syria.

4. ‘Silent surge.’

Trump has militarized U.S. foreign policy generally, noted Colin Kahl, foreign policy adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has mounted a “silent surge of troops & drone strikes across the globe,” Kahl tweets.

The Middle East Research and Information Project notes that:

“The United States has quietly increased the number of troops in the Middle East by 33 percent and there are plans for an ‘enduring presence’ in both Iraq and Syria. More troops and yet another supposedly new strategy are being deployed for the endless war in Afghanistan. US soldiers are fanning out across an archipelago of bases in Africa to conduct what they call ‘train, advise and assist’ missions with nearly 1,000 soldiers in Niger. In Somalia the numbers are also climbing: Troop levels are the highest since the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in 1993. The United States has even flown the flag in Europe, as 4,000 soldiers landed in Poland to demonstrate an ‘iron-clad commitment’ to NATO allies. Elsewhere, U.S. support for the Saudi-UAE bombing campaign on Yemen is drawing the United States deeper into that ongoing civil war…”

Militarized policy will lead to pursuit of military solutions, of which the U.S. has achieved none in the region since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.

5. Diplomacy deficit.

The gutting of the State Department means that the Trump administration has lost the capacity to negotiate with other countries, whether they are friendly or hostile. In this vacuum, Vladimir Putin is emerging as the region’s diplomatic kingmaker.

Next month Russian, Turkish and Iranian diplomats will hold a summit on the future of the region, where U.S. policy is controlled by military commanders, not diplomats. The Trump administration has no capacity to translate its battlefield position into political gains, even if it wanted to. Which it doesn’t.

6. U.S. journalists enlist.

About the only Trump action approved by his liberal critics was the cruise missile attack last April on an isolated Russian air base in response to reports of a chemical weapons attack.

Once again, liberal interventionists in the press are warming to Trump’s desire to use force in Syria.

“It’s time for another red line,” say the editors at Bloomberg.“Trump should tell Assad and his Russian backers that any more proved use of any chemical weapon, including chlorine, will be met with even greater retaliation than what happened in April. It certainly won’t end the fighting, in Eastern Ghouta or across the country, but it may take away one of Assad’s most unconscionable methods of terrifying his citizens.”

The Washington Post advocates a “firm response” to Russia and Syria’s brutal attacks on civilian populations.

How more war in Syria will protect or advance any vital U.S. interest is not part of the editorial debate.

7. Jared lives.

As Israel and Saudi Arabia seek to isolate Iran, they have learned they don’t necessarily have to persuade the State Department, the Defense Department or the National Security Council of their preferred policies. They just need to wait for the president’s son-in-law to visit—which he did three times in 2017.

“They learned the U.S. inter-agency process can be sidestepped by one phone call to Jared Kushner or the president,” Parsi said. “They believe they have the capacity to manipulate Trump.”

So far, they’re right.

White House princeling Jared Kushner, stripped down and on the verge of exile

Jared Kushner (Credit: Getty/Mark Wilson)

There comes a time in the life of every young princeling when the robes fall away and his jammies are revealed. Such a time came for our White House princeling in chief recently when he was stripped of his Top Secret security clearance and downgraded to a Secret clearance. We are speaking here, naturally, of Jared Kushner, presidential son-in-law, husband of Ivanka, carrier on his broad back of the Great White House Portfolio charging him with solving peace in the Middle East, ending the opioid crisis, reforming the criminal justice system, reforming the veterans agencies, taking charge of diplomacy with Mexico and China, and reinventing the entire federal government so it works more like a business.

Solving all these problems will of course present something of a problem for our princeling, given the fact that pretty much everyone he meets with in carrying out all of those august tasks at the White House has at least a Top Secret clearance, and so will not be able to discuss with the Great Coordinator and Problem Solver any information above his security clearance grade, which as it currently stands is beneath that of a lowly second lieutenant. It was reported that even the White House calligrapher has a Top Secret clearance, so Prince Jared will no doubt be barred from discussing the place cards for any upcoming state dinners. Given the way the federal government works, pretty much everything in the princeling’s portfolio is classified Top Secret or above, save perhaps getting Mexico to pay for the wall, which has always been right out there in public and not a secret at all. Since the Mexican government has said there is no way it will pay for the wall, our princeling can scratch that particular problem off his docket anyway.

But in all his peregrinations about the White House, Prince Jared has never really been about dealing with his daunting portfolio, has he? When was the last time you read anything about our princeling traveling out of Washington to visit a drug treatment facility in Maine or West Virginia or Indiana, where opioids are hollowing out one small town after another? Or even taking a car over to the Washington V.A. hospital, only a few miles from the White House, where an inspector general reported problems with sterilization and surgical equipment shortfalls that caused operations to be terminated after patients were already under anesthesia?  

No, we’ve discovered lately that what has been on Prince Jared’s mind during his time in the White House has been the problem of his company back in New York. You’ve heard about the Kushner family business problems, haven’t you? Most of them derive from a big deal our princeling made when he got the Kushner Companies to buy the office building at 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, which at the time was twice as much per square foot as had ever been paid for a piece of Manhattan real estate in history.

It turned out that young Jared must have been studying closely his father-in-law’s business practices, because he bought the troubled building in 2007 at the very top of the market, the year before the real estate market crashed, causing banks to fail and sending international financial institutions into a tailspin and resulting in the great recession of 2008. It was a deal reminiscent of Donald Trump’s purchase of the Plaza Hotel in 1988 for $407 million. The hotel never covered its operating costs in room rentals, and seven years later the Plaza was sold out of bankruptcy for $325 million, not a dime of which ended up going to Trump. Today, our princeling and his Kushner Companies hold a $1.4 billion mortgage on 666 Fifth Avenue that comes due next year. They’re sitting on that kind of debt on a 41-story undistinguished midtown office building at a time when Manhattan is sprouting 1,000-foot-plus towers like weeds. JPMorganChase recently announced plans to tear down its 52-story headquarters building on Park Avenue and erect a 70-story monster in its place.

Two weeks ago, it was revealed that Prince Jared had lost no time turning his office in the West Wing into a waiting room for mortgage bankers. In the spring of 2017, he met with Michael L. Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup, to discuss “financial and trade policy,” according to the New York Times. In March, less than two months after Trump took office, Citigroup loaned the Kushner Companies and one of its partners $325 million to finance buildings in Brooklyn. Prince Jared also sat down several times in his West Wing office with Joshua Harris, a billionaire investor and founder of Apollo Global Management. Harris was said to be advising the White House on “infrastructure issues.” While no infrastructure proposals have been forthcoming from the White House, Apollo Global Management decided last November to loan the Kushner Companies $184 million on a skyscraper in Chicago. Presto! You get an office in the West Wing, and suddenly your moribund real estate company back in New York qualifies for more than a half a billion dollars in loans! What a country, huh?

Things really heated up Monday when NBC reported that special counsel Robert Mueller has begun looking into “Kushner’s attempts to secure financing for his family’s real estate ventures.” Mueller’s investigators have been questioning witnesses about Kushner’s talks with representatives of Russia, Qatar, Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates.

Last week it was revealed that the government of Qatar is sitting on a passel of information about the meeting Prince Jared had in Trump Tower in December of 2016 with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, along with his pals Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.  Bringing the UAE’s prince together with the prince of Fifth Avenue was George Nader, a secretive “financial adviser” to the UAE who has been dragged before a grand jury by Mueller to spill everything he knows about the Trump Tower meeting, as well as the meeting he arranged in the Seychelles in January 2017 between Crown Prince Zayed, a Russian banker friendly to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who was representing the Trump transition team at the time.  

Lurking always in the background has been the shadow cast by 666 Fifth Avenue. The Qataris are said to be unhappy because soon after they rejected an entreaty to refinance the Kushner Companies’ mortgage on that building last June, Prince Jared helped convince his father-in-law to back Saudi Arabia and the UAE in a blockade of Qatar, allegedly for its support of terrorism. The United States has a military base with 10,000 soldiers and sailors in the allegedly pro-terrorist nation of Qatar, making the decision to back the blockade look questionable at best.

But then, that was back in the days when our princeling was reading the PDB — the President’s Daily Brief, the intelligence report from the director of national intelligence and the CIA that the president himself is said never to have cast his gaze upon. Those days of super-ultra-top-secret documents and briefings are behind him now.

At least Prince Jared can concentrate on the one task in his portfolio that doesn’t demand access to top-secret information: reinventing the federal government so that it functions more like a business. The question is, with the Kushner Companies staring bankruptcy in the face, which business will he use as a model?

Infighting tears apart a modern hate group, just as it did for the Klan

White nationalist Matthew Heimbach fights with demonstrators at Michigan State University as he and other alt-right advocates try to attend a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer, March 5, 2018. (Credit: Getty/Scott Olson)

Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the white nationalist organization Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP) who has been called “the next David Duke,” was arrested and charged with two counts of battery Tuesday in southern Indiana, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The incident, involving multiple white nationalists who are all members of the same extended family, revolves around an alleged act of infidelity.

Heimbach, who is accused of attacking his wife with their minor children present — a felony charge — was a key organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville last summer that left many counter-protesters injured and one dead after a man with white nationalist ties drove his car into a crowd.

Heimbach founded the Traditionalist Workers Party, which has been designated a hate group by the SPLC, with Matthew Parrott, the organization’s spokesman. Now Parrott is one of two people accusing Heimbach of violence, along with Heimbach’s own wife Brooke, who is Parrott’s stepdaughter.

According to the police report, the incident was sparked by an allegation of infidelity between Matthew Heimbach and Parrott’s wife Jessica Parrott (who is not Brooke’s mother, but is her landlord).

It’s not a surprise when white nationalists makes headlines involving violence — Charlottesville taught us that, at least. But the prurient nature of the private dispute surrounding Heimbach’s arrest offers a glimpse of how history could be repeating itself yet again when it comes to the rise and fall of hate groups in America.

So yes, there is a greater purpose to recounting the sordid details of Heimbach’s arrest. From the officer’s report:

Brooke advised me that Matthew Heimbach had been having an affair with Jessica Parrott and that she and [Matthew] Parrott had learned this last week. Both Jessica and Matthew [Heimbach] had stated they were done seeing each other after a 3 month affair. After this Brooke and Jessica made a plan to “set up” Matthew Heimbach to see if Matthew would in fact attempt to sleep with Jessica after they had stated they would end things.

Brooke and Matthew Parrott peered through a window into a trailer on Parrott’s property ostensibly to watch “my wife and her boyfriend preparing to have sex,” as Parrott wrote in his statement. The box Parrott stood on to peek through the window broke. Parrott then confronted Heimbach and told him to “get off my property” — presumably speaking of the actual land — and poked Heimbach in the chest.

Matthew [Heimbach] grabbed his hand and twisted down then got behind him and “choked him out” with his arm. [Matthew Parrott] stated that he lost consciousness briefly and that when he came to Jessica was standing over him.

This was followed by a second altercation between the two leaders: Parrott threw a chair, Heimbach “choked him out” again. Parrott called the police from a nearby Walmart. When the cops showed up at the property, according to Brooke’s affidavit, “my husband asked me to dismiss the police at my door. I refused, he kicked the wall, and then grabbed my cheeks, making them bleed, and threw me with the hand on my face onto the bed.” The police report stated that Brooke seemed nervous and upset. Brooke also told the police she recorded the incident on her phone.

“In the report,” says the SPLC article, and confirmed by the police paperwork, “all four people involved in the incident recorded their occupations as ‘White Nationalist.’”

Heimbach made national news for violence before when he was charged with “harassment with physical contact” of a protester at a 2016 Donald Trump rally in nearby Louisville, Kentucky. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was given a suspended sentence, provided he not re-offend within two years, which he may have now, albeit across state lines. That incident is named in a pending federal civil lawsuit against Trump for incitement of violence. Last week, Heimbach popped up at a speech that white nationalist figurehead Richard Spencer, creator of the term “alt-right,” was set to give at Michigan State University, where he and other members of the TWP physically fought with demonstrators, according to the SPLC.

The subject of a December 2016 “Nazi Next Door”–style New York Times profile, Heimbach has maintained a high profile for himself and his organization throughout media coverage of the recent resurgence in hate groups. Last month, a Washington Post profile of “a young neo-Nazi” in Columbus, Ohio detailed the young man’s membership in the Traditionalist Workers Party and quoted Matthew Parrott.

Membership and awareness of the organization has grown sharply over the last two years, according to the SPLC, likely in part because of Heimbach’s media-friendly profile and Parrott’s work as spokesperson. In addition, their marital family ties have served as a facsimile of a wholesome face on the brand of hate they promote. But this arrest might be the end of their work together, and that could also spell the beginning of the end for the organization, which has successfully recruited new members under the auspices of promoting “an independent white ethno-state” in America. Parrott, for his part, told the SPLC that he was “done,” stating, “SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y’all have a nice life.”

If allegations of violence sparked by a family dispute over infidelity ends up unraveling the organizing work Heimbach and Parrott have done to promote racist hate in America over the last few years, it won’t necessarily be an outlier. There are many parallels in this current wave of white-nationalist hate groups to the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan, which roared to prominence briefly in the 1920s, as detailed in Linda Gordon’s insightful 2017 history, “The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan and the American Political Tradition.” As I wrote in my review of Gordon’s book:

None of the success of the Klan’s recruitment schemes would have been possible without an emotional landscape ripe for exploitation. “As individual Klan writers and speakers elaborated their ideas imaginatively, one set of emotional tropes dominated: fear, humiliation, and victimization,” writes Gordon, emphasizing that Klansmen felt the America they knew and valued — “traditionally unified and virtuous” — was under siege by outside forces. This contradiction — that “real” Americans were both superior to others yet constantly threatened by outsiders who have the power to destroy said “real” America — is still in place today.

In a time in which the parallels to 1920s Klan recruitment are all there — a culture of white grievance; a patina of respectability around such an organization, such as that which university-educated, golf shirt-clad organizers like Heimbach put on their movement; a subculture built on memes; a hatred of racial minorities, targeted immigrant groups and Jews — it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the same forces that took down the Klan’s infrastructure might also crumble the TWP. When leaders turn on each other viciously, it tears apart the infrastructure of an organization, and punctures the absurd fantasy the rank-and-file cling to — of a group identity forged by a message of positivity, however warped, rather than outright hate.

Certainly, allegations of violence against Heimbach’s wife, with kids present, might dissuade other women from joining up. Organizations like the TWP rely on their messaging being received as aspirational by recruits, and much of that rides on the credibility of their leaders. That sad police report doesn’t portray Heimbach as a leader or a person of integrity, to say nothing of a family man concerned with taking care of “our people,” as he has claimed.

Here’s how it went down for the Klan in the ‘20s. Infighting split the national organization into rival factions; “rank-and-file resentment,” as Gordon writes, led to apathy among members, who stopped paying dues; and scandals exposed “its leaders’ crimes, hypocrisy, and misbehavior.” A propaganda newspaper editor was sentenced to life for killing his Klan rival, which an Imperial Wizard tried to brush off as a personal affair. Indiana Gov. Ed Jackson, a Klan member, was indicted for bribery. And again in Indiana, what Gordon calls “the Klan’s final undoing,” came when an Indiana Grand Dragon was convicted for kidnapping, raping, and murdering his secretary in a story that shocked the nation.

Now “Nazi Next Door” profiles have become de rigueur, along with the criticism of their utility — again, as I wrote back in October, sometimes sunlight is a disinfectant and sometimes it’s a growth agent. Yet it’s worth considering that while soft-focus, emphasis-on-understanding coverage can be turned into a recruitment tool for gullible readers, it can also be used against hate-group leaders when they are exposed as hypocritical frauds through routine follow-up reporting. In the end, a critical op-ed may be less damning than a simple local police report, detailing how the leadership of an up-and-coming white nationalist organization began to tear itself apart through allegations of violence and betrayal, all in their own words.

The truth about school closings: “Anatomy of a Snow Day” digs in

"Anatomy of a Snow Day" (Credit: Zachary Maxwell)

In kid filmmaker Zachary Maxwell’s delightful and quite informative “Anatomy of a Snow Day,” the documentarian, then 12, takes a Michael Moore approach to shoveling up the truth about how New York City decides to close schools because of weather conditions.

You can watch the full “Anatomy of a Snow Day” documentary on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Here’s how. 

Salon spoke recently with the grounded Maxwell, who is now 15.

How’d you get started making documentaries?

Ever since I was very young, my dad would follow me around with a camcorder and we made silly home movies together. I enjoyed showing off in front of the camera and then watching it on the TV. As time passed, we began telling short stories with film. I remember one of the first movies that we made with a story was about my sea monkeys. Spoiler: they died. We eventually became more ambitious and started telling stories about problems that bothered me as a kid, such as school lunches and snow days. When we realized that these little projects made in our living room were turning out pretty good, we started submitting stuff to film festivals.

Who are your cinematic inspirations?

I have always enjoyed first-person documentaries such as “Super Size Me” or “Bowling for Columbine.”  This style of non-fiction storytelling definitely influenced my earlier films like “Anatomy of a Snow Day” and “Yuck.” Today, I attend Frank Sinatra High School for the Arts here in New York City and I’m a sophomore in their film and media studio.  So I’m appreciating a broader range of filmmakers and styles. A big influence on me right now is Edgar Wright, whose style is so unique and fast-paced.  I love the dramatic writing in films by Christopher Nolan (“Memento” is my favorite film), Paul Haggis (“Crash” blew my mind), and Richard Linklater (“Boyhood,” enough said). I’m in awe of Kathleen Kennedy and all the amazing blockbusters produced under her leadership. Right now, I am taking an online class taught by Ron Howard and I’m learning a lot from him about the craft of directing.

How much creative input does your father have in your films?

When I was younger, my dad and I wrote and shot everything together and then he would do the editing. Nowadays, since I’ve started working more with kids my own age, he’s been less involved in my work. As a teenager, it’s not really cool to have your dad hanging around the set. Also, filmmaking is now my actual homework so he tends to be more hands off when it comes to those projects. However, we are still working together on a few things outside of school and we are constantly pitching new ideas to each other.

What were the best narrative and feature documentary film (one or two of each) of 2017?

I think the best movie of last year without question was “Baby Driver,” written and directed by Edgar Wright. I loved everything about it: the writing, the editing, the cinematography, the pacing. It was just a huge adrenaline rush.  As for recent documentaries, I think “13th” by Ava DuVernay was really compelling and it challenged me to think about issues that I had never considered in my naive little teenage bubble. And also, not surprisingly, I enjoyed the Steven Spielberg documentary produced by HBO last year.

It’s been some time since you made “Anatomy of a Snow Day.” How would you say your work has evolved since then?

I’ve continued to be curious about problems that I see in the world and interested in turning them into fun stories that offer solutions from a kid’s perspective.  I recently made a short film with my little brother about traffic safety called “Dear Polly Trottenberg.” I also gave a TED talk about how kids can use creativity to make meaningful change in their own communities. I think this theme of empowering people, especially young people, is something I will continue to refine and I hope I can make stuff that inspires people to step up and become engaged in their community.

What else are you working on?

I’ve recently been studying dramatic structure and screenwriting in high school. Right now, I’m writing a short film about an irresponsible teenager that is thrown into an outlandish adventure when he has to babysit his little brother. My writing skills are coming along but I definitely have a long way to go before I’m writing stuff like “Back to the Future.”

My dad and I are also working on a feature-length documentary all about puberty and the awkwardness of teenagers. It’s a first-person chronicle that we’ve been shooting off-and-on over the past four years and we still have about three more years to go.  This is the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on and I’m starting to realize that it’s probably bigger than what I can handle on my own. So I’m hoping to start pitching it later this year to some production companies that might want to collaborate.

Assuming you’re looking to be a filmmaker, are you planning to go to film school, and what kind of films do you plan on making in ten years?

I’m not sure about studying film in college. I read something that J.J. Abrams once said about it being more important to know what you want to make films about before you study how to actually make them. I think I would probably want to major in some kind of mashup of politics, journalism, film and the entertainment business. I want to learn how to make films that inspire people to do good in the world. I want to tell stories that make you feel happy, sad, furious and thrilled, all at the same time. I want to make films that change the world.

But for right now, I just want to survive puberty . . . and have a really awesome movie to show for it on the other side.

Watch “Anatomy of a Snow Day” on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Reading this interview in the app already? Select “SalonTV” to find all of our films and shows.

Comedians, pundits weigh in on Trump’s “Space Force”

Donald Trump addresses troops at Miramar Marine Corp Air Station. (Credit: Getty/Sandy Huffaker)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… an American president suggested that a galactic military was needed to fight wars in space. He called it Space Force. It sounds like the opening crawl of a bad “Stars Wars” parody, but no; unfortunately, it’s another one of Donald Trump’s hare-brained ideas that the president semi-coherently name-dropped in a speech at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Tuesday.

“Space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea,” Trump said. “We may even have a Space Force, develop another one, Space Force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the Space Force.”

Trump told the crowd that the idea first started as a joke, but then he quickly realized it was “a great idea.”

“I said, ‘maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force,’ and I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘what a great idea,’ maybe we’ll have to do that,” he said.

“So think of that, Space Force,” Trump explained, “because we are spending a lot and we have a lot of private money coming in, tremendous. You saw what happened the other day, and tremendous success. From the very beginning, many of our astronauts have been soldiers and air men, coast guard men and marines. And our service members will be vital to ensuring America continues to lead the way into the stars.”

The remarks have elicited many comments on the internet — some from wise guys like Stephen Colbert, and others from skeptical pundits outraged at the absurdity of the idea.

"Luke, use the Space Force." — Darth "Space" Vader

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) March 14, 2018

Donald Trump is so far gone, he’s now talking about adding a military presence in outer space, and even he doesn’t seem to know if he’s joking. #SpaceForce

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) March 13, 2018

Tomorrow: Space Force commander Gary Busey to step down.

— Late Night with Seth Meyers (@LateNightSeth) March 13, 2018

President Trump offers first glimpse at proposed ‘Space Force’ pic.twitter.com/vhT90QtStg

— Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) March 14, 2018

LEAKED: Official Space Force uniform. pic.twitter.com/bXkXcmEk0O

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 13, 2018

“March for Science” organizers asked a good question: ”Instead of the #SpaceForce, maybe we can get some funding back for NASA’s education program?”

Instead of the #SpaceForce, maybe we can get some funding back for NASA's education program? https://t.co/CNjhqJ9Zyq

— March for Science (@ScienceMarchDC) March 13, 2018

As unintelligible as the “space force” is, Trump’s remarks illustrate how disordered his priorities appear to be: fighting nonexistent space wars rank higher in his consciousness than, say, combatting what’s more likely to destroy Earth — say, climate change.

Still, Trump is not alone in his desire to emulate science fiction. Indeed, this is not the first time politicians have brought up this idea. According to CNN, the idea of a Space Corps was proposed to be included in a $700 billion bipartisan defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. The proposal did not make it into the bill, but Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and former Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers released a joint statement advocating for it.

“The Air Force will no longer be able to treat space as a third-order priority after fighter jets and bombers,” the statement said. “We have consolidated leadership and coordination between operations, acquisition and training, and eliminated the decentralized and ineffective structure that for too long hampered our space capabilities and readiness.”

Pattern of Austin explosions raises hate crime suspicions

The scene near Galindo Street in Austin, Texas on March 12, 2018 where a woman was injured in an explosion. (Credit: Getty/Suzanne Cordeiro)

Three separate explosions from packages in Austin, Texas, in recent days have authorities and residents on high alert, and have raised suspicions that there is a connection behind the attacks that have left two dead and three injured, according to multiple news reports.

While the suspect or suspects and other surrounding details still remain unknown, whoever constructed the three parcel bombs in question was a skilled bomb-maker — suggesting that this wasn’t the first time they had done something like this.

The first explosion occurred on March 2, after 39-year-old Stephen House picked up a package on the front porch of his home. The second occurred on Monday and killed 17-year-old Draylen Mason, an aspiring classical musician, according to a New York Times profile. Mason’s mother was also injured by the blast.

Both victims knew each other, were African-American, and attended the same church, the local NAACP President Nelson Linder told NBC News.

NBC elaborated:

Linder said he hired House a decade ago to help build the NAACP website and knows his stepfather Freddie Dixon. He said Dixon and Mason’s grandparents, local dentist Norman Mason and Austin Area Urban League co-founder LaVonne Mason, are good friends.

The two victims are connected by families with “deep roots in the city’s black, religious and civil-rights groups,” The Times noted.

The third explosion also took place on Monday and injured Esperanza Herrera, 75, who is Hispanic. Linder said investigators believe she could have accidentally picked up the package, which may have been intended for another person.

“The intended target was another person who might be connected to the House and Mason families,” Linder told NBC.

Authorities have not ruled out that attacks may have been racially motivated, and have said the explosions are “related incidents.” None of the packages were delivered by the United States Postal Service, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said, but no other information on a relation between the three packages has been made public.

“We’re not jumping to conclusions, but based on what’s known, we’re on heightened alert,” Gary L. Bledsoe, the president of the Texas NAACP told the Times. “If it’s a package I’m not expecting, then I’m not going to open it.”

Bledsoe added, “And I’m telling everyone else to do the same thing. We don’t really know what’s happening, so the best thing to do is just not take possession of such a package.”

“We cannot ignore that,” Manley said. “That is something we have to pay attention to. That does not indicate that it’s a hate crime. But we’re not going to rule that out because we don’t want to limit anything that we’re considering.”

Austin police have so far received 265 calls of suspicious packages since asking the public to report suspicious packages not delivered by U.S. mail, the Times noted.

Authorities also believe the three bombs were made by someone with experience. “[T]here’s a certain level of skill and sophistication that whoever is doing this has, and … we are hoping to use the evidence we have to track them down based on what we are seeing on all three scenes that seem to be consistent,” Manley said, according to CNN.

Each package detonated after being picked up and opened, but not when the packages were placed by the suspect.

“That shows that the person who’s doing this, they know what they are doing and they’ve probably practiced a lot,” Ben West, a security analyst for Stratfor, told CNN. He added that people who make these bombs “are rarely this effective” in their first attempt.

More about #DraylenMason.

"An honor roll bass student at the East Austin College Prep, where he studied with William Dick, Mason was a member of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Austin Youth Orchestra and the Austin Soundwaves."https://t.co/dljbC59sAI

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) March 14, 2018

Just learned that #DraylenMason went by Dray.

Dray and his wonderful mother, Shamika, were workout buddies and were about to go running. Dray found the package in front of his door and brought it in to the kitchen to open it.

It exploded and killed him & wounded his mother. pic.twitter.com/SQhAjDdvAI

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) March 14, 2018

 

Meghan McCain makes gun reform debate about herself

Meghan McCain on "The View" (Credit: YouTube/The View)

As students across the nation took to the streets Wednesday for 17 minutes — in memory of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. and to demand common-sense gun reform — Meghan McCain found a way to make the debate about herself.

During a hot-topic conversation about gun violence and teenage America’s push for change, a majority of the women on “The View” were encouraging of a discussion on the Second Amendment, but McCain did not want to chime in since she supports the right to bear arms.

“Today is one of those days — I’m a big Second Amendment person, NRA member, proud NRA member — these are one of those moments that I don’t think it’s my turn to talk,” she explained on the show, which she co-hosts.

The daughter of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain continued: “I think we can listen to kids right now. I’ve said what I’ve had to say at length. Everyone knows where I stand. I don’t like the idea that somehow if you’re a Second Amendment person, that you’re for gun violence.”

McCain’s fellow co-hosts cut in to explain that today’s nationwide demonstration, one month after the tragic mass shooting, is not in opposition of the Second Amendment or the NRA; it’s a desperate, rallying cry for reform.

“No one is pointing fingers at the NRA. This is not about the NRA,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said. “These kids are saying, ‘Listen, we just want you to know there’s a lot of gun violence, and we want it to stop. And you’re the adult, and we expect you to fix this.'”

Despite Goldberg’s clarification, McCain steered the conversation back to herself. She then explained she’s having a difficult time saying, “I think that it sometimes gets mixed up, that maybe you’re less empathetic, you’re less hurt, you’re less somehow affected by school shootings in one way or another . . . And I felt it so much, especially being on this show, especially being the only person that I think comes from gun country.”

Her co-hosts then cut in to tell McCain that her assumption was not accurate. Goldberg revealed that she has been a gun owner — and has talked about that fact for years. Even progressive commentator Joy Behar said that she once considered owning a handgun when she lived in the woods with her children.

Co-host Sara Haines explained that there is enough room in the discussion about gun safety for everyone — even gun owners — and that there are probably many students walking out today who gun rights’ advocates. “This is more a general sense of, ‘We haven’t seen the needle move, even on things that we all agree on,'” she said.

But McCain pivoted back to the fact that gun reform was a challenging discussion for her. “I don’t think right now it’s a very interesting place for someone like me,” she said. “The CNN town hall was a huge step backwards. I felt bad for the way it was handled. I thought it was really inappropriate, and I want to have more conversations that are civil.”

“But that’s not what this is,” Goldberg interrupted. “Let’s stick to what this particular march is about today. It’s the students raising their voices and saying, ‘We need your help.'”

The discussion delved into one about assault weapons, and Haines pointed out that a call for gun reform is often interpreted as a tyrannical declaration to void the Second Amendment and take away guns from people who pose a threat. “Even my own father . . . He said that the problem is they’re going to take away the Second Amendment,” she said.

“I think the kids are saying, ‘We have an issue, and we want you to deal with it,” Goldberg reiterated.

McCain said the idea of arming teachers is complicated and gets muddled in the discourse. She went on to disagree with co-host Sunny Hostin who wants military-style weapons, like the AR-15 — the rifle used in mass shootings in Parkland, Orlando, Las Vegas and Newtown — banned. McCain claimed she knew people who hunted with them.

Goldberg cut in, with the last word, to say that banning assault weapons had nothing to do with what kids are saying. “That’s why they’re marching. They’re not marching against the NRA,” she said. “They’re not marching against — they’re just saying, ‘We got an issue, and nobody is dealing with it. And we’re tired of the BS.'”

In Brooklyn, National Walkout Day is about more than school shootings

Students from Harvest Collegiate High School form a circle around the fountain in Washington Square Park on March 14, 2018 in New York to take part in a national walkout to protest gun violence. (Credit: Getty/Timothy A. Clary)

At exactly 10 a.m. local time thousands of students across the country left their classrooms on Wednesday to mark the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school with a call to action. Part of a growing student movement against gun violence in America, the protests in various cities and neighborhoods lasted 17 minutes to honor the 17 victims gunned down in Parkland, Florida. In one Brooklyn neighborhood, the gathering lasted much longer.

Students as young as 12 described their constant fears at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, where students from middle school through law school from the Brooklyn Heights area gathered and spoke out against gun violence. While several students noted that their childhoods had been marred by a seemingly endless stream of mass shootings at a rate unmatched by any other country, the overarching message from the youth of Brooklyn was that the epidemic of school shootings is broader than school shootings.

“We have to address the issue of gun violence as a whole,” Sarah Desouza, 17, a senior from Packer Collegiate Institute and one of the organizers of the rally, told Salon. “We’re all out here today for gun violence that disproportionately affects black and brown communities and we’re out here today for the students at Parkland.”

Speakers and student organizers emphasized the importance of magnifying all those victimized by gun violence, from the suburbs of Florida to the south side of Chicago.

“We will be the generation to end gun violence!” was a common refrain chanted by many of the day’s speakers.

The walkouts, the students told Salon, are to demand action from lawmakers, and to end the routine of scapegoating individuals rather than the lax laws and loopholes that allow teenagers to purchase firearms before they are legally allowed to drink. Several student speakers called for the minimum age to purchase a firearm to be raised to 21 nationally, just as an amendment passed by lawmakers in Florida last week as part of a larger gun control bill mandated. The student activists also want a ban on military-style rifles and mandatory, universal background checks before every firearm purpose.

Many of the students who attended and spoke at the rally in Brooklyn are still too young to vote but they promised to stay engaged until they can vote those in Congress who failed to act out of office.

“America’s gun laws are abnormal relative to the rest of the world,” Bryson Wiese, 17 and co-founder of Coalition Z, a youth-led activist organization in New York City, told Salon, “And as such, we have an abnormal epidemic of gun violence. So taking time out of our daily routine, walking out of school, helps to de-normalize that uniquely American cycle of tragedy to which we are unfortunately becoming numb.”

Beyond the legislation and policy they are demanding, the act of mass walkouts demonstrates the power of grassroots organizing to a new generation — one determined to disrupt the normal order.

Students from Parkland and elsewhere will come together on March 24 for a mass demonstration called “March for Our Lives” in Washington D.C. The walkouts today were just the beginning of an ongoing movement, the students say, one they plan to sustain in the coming weeks and for the foreseeable future, especially given the shortcomings they see from the adults in power.

“People are always telling us ‘children our the future,'” Violet Kopp, 16 and a sophomore at Saint Ann’s School said, “well, it’s time they start acting like it.”

SEC charges Theranos executives with “massive fraud”

Elizabeth Holmes (Credit: AP/Jeff Chiu)

Two Silicon Valley executives have been indicted of massive fraud, bringing to light just how far executives will go to get investment capital in an infamously competitive industry.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on March 14 that it has charged Elizabeth Holmes, founder and chief executive of Theranos, and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the company’s former president, with raising more than $700 million from investors through an “elaborate, years-long fraud.” The SEC alleges the two made “exaggerated” or “false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

“Investors are entitled to nothing less than complete truth and candor from companies and their executives,” Steven Peikin, Co-Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division said in the SEC press release.  “The charges against Theranos, Holmes, and Balwani make clear that there is no exemption from the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws simply because a company is non-public, development-stage, or the subject of exuberant media attention.”

Specifically, Holmes and Balwani are alleged to have falsely represented Theranos in investor presentations, product demonstrations, and in media coverage. Theranos had marketed itself as a healthcare company that could make “comprehensive” laboratory tests from samples of a few finger blood drops — a Silicon Valley–style attempt to “disrupt” the blood testing industry.

“In truth, according to the SEC’s complaint, Theranos’ proprietary analyzer could complete only a small number of tests, and the company conducted the vast majority of patient tests on modified and industry-standard commercial analyzers manufactured by others,” the SEC press release alleges.

Additional complaints allege that Holmes and Balwani falsely claimed the Theranos technology was “deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense on the battlefield in Afghanistan and on medevac helicopters.” According to the complaint, the technology was never deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense. The company and its indicted executives also allegedly claimed Theranos would make more than $100 million in revenue in 2014.  The SEC claims it only generated slightly more than $100,000.

According to Crunchbase, a website that maintain investment reports on tech companies, Theranos raised $1.4 billion in 10 rounds of funding. Elizabeth Holmes, whom Forbes once named “the world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire,” founded the company after she dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 at the age of 19.

Jina Choi, Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office, said this is an “important lesson” for Silicon Valley.

“Innovators who seek to revolutionize and disrupt an industry must tell investors the truth about what their technology can do today, not just what they hope it might do someday,” Choi said.

According to the SEC statement, Holmes and Theranos have agreed to “resolve the charges,” but haven’t denied or admitted to them.

“Holmes is ceding her voting control of the company and reducing her equity stake in Theranos,” the SEC explains.

Holmes has also agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty. She will reportedly be prohibited from serving as “an officer or director of a public company for 10 years” and returning her 18.9 million shares.

However, the SEC notes the settlements are subject to court approval. The SEC “will litigate its claims against Balwani in federal district court in the Northern District of California,” according to the statement.

The Pentagon’s new partner for building drones should make us all nervous

(Credit: Getty/koto_feja)

On Tuesday, a privacy and security report published by Gizmodo revealed that Google and the Pentagon are collaborating on developing drones. Known as Project Maven, the Department of Defense pilot project involves analyzing, combing through, defining, and categorizing visual data amassed by aerial drones. It wouldn’t be too far off to say the project would function as the Pentagon’s all-seeing eye.

According to Greg Allen, a Center for a New American Society adjunct fellow, the current amount of obtained footage is so vast it isn’t possible for human analysts at the defense agency to sift through it and correctly define objects in the footage. As it stands, the United States’ drone strike program is already criticized by human rights groups like Reprieve for reportedly killing hundreds of civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and beyond in spite of claims of “surgical” precision from former CIA director John Brennan in 2011. With the help of Google’s artificial intelligence resources, the Defense Department will apparently have the opportunity to correctly process the footage obtained by drones. Think vehicles, buildings and human beings.

 Project Maven was first initiated last year in April and is also known by the more tech-y title, Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT). According to Air Force Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, the project aims to be the “spark that kindles the flame front of artificial intelligence across the rest of the [Defense] Department.”

Through Project Maven, the Pentagon is able to follow the movement of people in the crosshairs of the aerial drones. And it’s apparently gearing up to attack ISIS enclaves in the Middle East. The purpose of allocating Google resources to a security apparatus like that of the Pentagon’s is apparently to optimize and streamline the agency’s processing of drone footage; in other words, to minimize the possibility of error.

But there’s no guarantee machine learning will always correctly identify the objects it is tasked with seeing. In mathematician Cathy O’Neil’s book, “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy” and investigative reports from ProPublica on algorithms used in American police departments to supposedly “predict” recidivism, it becomes distressingly clear that relying on machine learning for security purposes can be more harmful than beneficial to vulnerable people.

Technically, the collaboration is reportedly based on APIs (application program interfaces). A Google spokesperson told Gizmodo that the company would be allocating TensorFlow APIs for the Department of Defense’s Project Maven. TensorFlow APIs are meant to optimize machine learning by correctly receiving and processing input like basic requests from users. The spokesperson noted that Google was working on developing “policies and safeguards” with concern to possible military use.

In the statement, the Google spokesperson noted, “We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions. This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense, to provide open source TensorFlow APIs that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data. The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only. Military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns. We’re actively discussing this important topic internally and with others as we continue to develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine learning technologies.”

While observers outside of Google and the Pentagon seem to be concerned about the nexus of tech and the American military industrial complex, Gizmodo reported that a few anonymous employees within Google also had qualms about the collaboration first revealed in an “internal mailing list.”

That said, it won’t be the first time Google came under scrutiny for offering services to a federal agency. A 2017 report in Quartz shed light on the origins of Google and how a significant amount of funding for the company came from the CIA and NSA for mass surveillance purposes. Time and again, Google’s funding raises questions. In 2013, a Guardian report highlighted Google’s acquisition of the robotics company Boston Dynamics, and noted that most of the projects were funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

As the Pentagon sits atop a $700 billion 2018 budget approved by the Trump administration, using up more resources than any other agency, concerns about its collaboration with Google have been abundant on social media. As several Twitter users cynically asked, “What could possibly go wrong?”