Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 665

Phyllis Schlafly and the global right: Conservatives who denounce globalism easily gloss over her influence in the movement

Phyllis Schlafly (Credit: AP/Cliff Owen)

In May 1983, an evangelical magazine in Australia reported that “seven talented and articulate Americans” had visited a leadership conference for conservatives near Melbourne. One of them was Phyllis Schlafly, who urged right-wing Australians to join with like-minded activists around the world in defense of “family values” — and against abortion, gay rights and sex education.

Schlafly was part of a global movement, which is a part of her identity that we tend to forget. When she died on Monday, obituaries dutifully reported her opposition to the United Nations, the Panama Canal treaties and the World Trade Organization. But most accounts ignored her efforts to unite with conservatives in other countries, which doesn’t fit our standard narrative about politics in the so-called age of globalization.

According to that story, liberals want to forge closer ties between different nations while conservatives want to protect national differences. One team celebrates the rapid movement of people and ideas across borders, and the other warns about the steady erosion of sovereignty inside them.

Yet even conservatives who denounce globalism have created their own global alliances, as Schlafly’s life illustrates. Just as Schlafly railed against working mothers while assuming new professional duties herself, she warned about the perils of international networks and created new ones at the same time.

Nearly a decade before her trip to Australia, for example, Schlafly was part of an American delegation that welcomed British sex-education opponent Mary Whitehouse to the United States. Denouncing school-based sex lessons for infringing upon parental rights, Whitehouse had become a fixture in the mass media and a thorn in the side of the education ministry in the United Kingdom. She even earned several mocking lines in Pink Floyd’s 1977 “Animals” album (“Hey you, Whitehouse/ Ha, ha, charade you are/ You gotta stem the evil tide/ And keep it all on the inside”), the only thing that most people remember about her today.

But like Schlafly, Whitehouse was a key figure in the rise of the global right. She came to America at the invitation of anti-pornography crusader Charles Keating, who would later gain notoriety for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. She met with Catholic archbishop Fulton Sheen and with Richard Nixon’s communications director, Herb Klein. And she flew to St. Louis, Phyllis Schlafly’s hometown, to meet with Schlafly and Republican congressman Robert Dornan, who led a televised roundtable discussion with Whitehouse.

In its early iterations, this international movement focused mainly on Christians in the West. But it took a truly global turn in the 1990s, when activists like Schlafly began to coordinate with conservatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They coalesced around opposition to the 1994 International Conference on Population Development in Cairo, which endorsed “reproductive rights,” including access to contraception and sex education, for all human beings.

Five majority-Muslim countries — including Egypt, host of the conference — dissented from that resolution, as did two mostly Catholic nations and the delegation from the Vatican. “This conference must not be viewed by the teeming masses of the world as a universal social charter seeking to impose adultery, abortion, sex education and other matters on individuals, societies, and religions which have their own social ethos,” warned Pakistan’s prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in a stinging speech to the Cairo conference. “The world needs consensus. It does not need a clash of cultures.”

It got one anyway, although not of the kind Bhutto imagined. Belying Samuel Huntington’s predicted battle royal between liberal and conservative societies, new configurations linked liberals — and conservatives —  across these societies. On questions like abortion and sex education, organizations like International Planned Parenthood united advocates for greater access and choice. But conservatives created their own global networks like the World Congress of Families, which brought together “the most orthodox” members of different nations, as one of its leaders boasted in 1999.

“You will work alongside Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, Muslims and Mormons,” another World Congress of Families activist told the group’s 2001 meeting. “We are the children of Abraham arising to fight for faith and family.” Other organizations in the global right reached out to Hindus in India, where conservatives blasted sex education as “a crime against the younger generation” and “a form of western aggression.” And they won the support of people in the West like Phyllis Schlafly, who blamed “radical feminists” in America and Europe for imposing their “secular agenda” upon the rest of the world.

Not surprisingly, today’s most famous anti-globalist moved quickly to claim Schlafly’s legacy. “Phyllis Schlafly is a conservative icon who led millions to action, reshaped the conservative movement, and fearlessly battled globalism,” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump declared, in a post on his campaign website. That’s only half true. Even as she reviled globalism, Schlafly helped connect religious conservatives around the globe.

Trump has his own internationalist ambitions, of course, as his entreaties to Vladimir Putin and other right-wing leaders illustrate. But he’s no religious conservative, his periodic sops to American evangelicals notwithstanding. So how can he unite nationalists in the West and beyond, creating a new global movement against globalism? Traditional faith bound global conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly, across borders and cultures. We’re about to find out if Donald Trump can find another way to do it.

How to be a man like Willy Wonka: Gene Wilder’s signature role was my role model of masculinity

Gene Wilder in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

When I learned Gene Wilder had died, I felt the loss of not just some admired celebrity but of something like a father figure. Or perhaps not exactly Gene Wilder the actor, but Wilder as Willy Wonka. And maybe not precisely a father figure so much as an unrealized ideal of masculinity. An unconventional claim, I guess, so let me explain.

At some point every boy wonders how one goes about being a man and what sort of man he’ll be. Our culture, American culture specifically, sends out some pretty weird signals to boys. I’d like to think we’re getting better at it, or at least more aware, and that toxic masculinity is becoming less prevalent than it used to be. Still, one only has to look at popular language for examples of how we encourage boys to deny their more whimsical natures: “Man up,” we say, meaning toughen up, don’t allow any emotion to get in the way of what needs doing. Set aside those softer, “feminine” emotions. Our heroes still tend to be rugged individuals who solve conflict via violence.

I’m no psychologist but I have always assumed the father’s presence is especially influential, especially needed, during those pre-adolescent years when the testosterone starts to kick in, when the question of what-makes-a-man stirs up into a kid’s mind as a conscious issue. Perhaps it seems to me “especially needed” at that age because during those years in my own life my father wasn’t there to provide guidance. He was incarcerated, and I had to seek examples on my own.

My father wasn’t a violent man or a drug user or some burglar sporting poorly made tattoos so much as a country boy who came to the city in the ’60s to start a family and make good money. He found that a man willing to transport packages from one place to another without questioning people he considers friends could make some solid extra cash. When one of those friends found himself in trouble with the law he could lessen his punishment by pointing out all the other friends. Suffice to say that through my middle and half of high school years, my father became a voice on the phone every Sunday evening, a handmade gift card in the mailbox every birthday, and sometimes there in the flesh for an hour or two at a steel table in a large sad room surrounded by numerous other felons and their families, whose children looked as shy and uncertain and sometimes even bored as I felt. Even at that impressionable age I understood it was pointless to look around that room for suitable heroes; the Clyde Barrow-type has never held any romance for me.

Like most kids in the ’70s I’d seen “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory “several times on TV, usually around Christmas or Thanksgiving. And like most kids I thought the movie pure magic — probably the height of cinema, with the animated “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” running a close second. And my father left us a parting gift before he began his sentence: a rare piece of new technology called a VHS player. He had picked it up either by winning a golf tournament or a bet or by chancing upon a great deal. Its origins changed depending on his mood and my mother consistently asserted she didn’t know honestly and pointed out that “sometimes with your father it’s just pointless to ask.” The VCR came with a couple of tapes already: “Fantastic Voyage,” with Raquel Welch fascinating in a body suit for reasons I didn’t quite understand, and “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Also included was a blank cassette for recording, and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was our first. We could watch it as much as we liked. We could fast-forward past the commercials. My brother and I became so familiar with the movie that we could speak the lines with the inflections of the actors and sing along with the Oompa-Loompas.

But it was Wilder’s Wonka who demanded my full attention; he may well have been the most fascinating man on the planet. More than the wish to undergo the adventure as Charlie Bucket, I wanted to become like Willy Wonka. A wit and musical; clever as Odysseus; light on his feet, intelligent and knowing — a cultured man who never denies the opportunity for bedlam (“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest of men,” he pronounced, and the line steeped itself like an arrow to my heart). Perhaps most importantly, he is always in control, outwardly confident no matter what transpires. Every little thing he does, we learn, has purpose. That a full-grown man still possessed a boy’s dreamy mind, that a childlike imagination could be limitless when matched with adult know-how, made magic in my 10-, 12-, 13-year-old eyes. I was unaware of any other man like that.

As for his masculinity — as opposed to being merely entertaining — perhaps it’s worth recalling that there was a period in the ’70s and even early ’80s when male sexiness wobbled somewhat from the standard suave hunks, when Woody Allen and Steve Martin were considered sexually appealing, and even People magazine once identified Alan Alda as the Sexiest Man Alive.

Wilder as Wonka was playfully seductive. His own man and a man-with-a-plan, a plan his followers learned only on a need-to-know basis. From that opening scene in which he appears as a fumbling cripple, only to fall forward and somersault with the grace of a ballet dancer in greeting the crowd, reality is put into play, a funhouse in which nothing is as it seems. Wonka’s the pied piper to children and adults alike; his character echoes that of the philosopher-poet, the artist, not to mention the mythical trickster figure — simultaneously giving voice to convention and bourgeois norms even as he subverts them. This leads to some of his most worthy quotes, such as when Mrs. Gloop or Mrs. Teevee implore their host to take control of the latest moment of chaos, and he responds in that unenthusiastic deadpan tone, “Help. Police. Murder,” or “Stop. Don’t. Come back.” His rascal grasp of language inspired mimicry, and many times my brother and I tried for sentences that echoed his “So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.”

The rebel poet and pied piper; he’s like Jim Morrison, only with all the light let in. Or mid-’70s David Bowie, if you discard all the cocaine, exuding technicolor instead of the Thin White Duke’s monochromatic aesthetic.

But in retrospect maybe it’s worth asking: Is that light actually let in or does it merely bounce off a hard mirror surface? As a boy I took it for granted that each kid who failed his or her moral lesson suffered nothing more than shame: surely Veruca Salt luged down the garbage chute on one of the incinerator’s off-days, and Mike Teevee and Violet “You’re turning violet, Violet!” would be restored to their normal selves by the helpful Oompa Loompas. Yet when I reflect on their fates as an adult, it’s clear there’s no textual reason for assuming so. Maybe I’m wrong and those felons in the big house did manage their pull on me and Wonka is actually a dangerous lunatic, callously single-sighted in pursuit of his goal to identify an heir pure enough to deserve his ultimate gift at movie’s end. So long as we’re looking down this road why not question the entire role of those Oompa-Loompas: What’s going on there, Wonka? Are they the magical and mysterious Greek chorus that Wonka saved from the pernicious kinds? Or is this a prime example of the colonizer exploiting the natives, a stark portrait of the greedy capitalist taking advantage of disorganized labor? Wonka could be seen as an irredeemable megalomaniac, considering how he explains to Charlie his reasoning behind the entire thing:

Who can I trust to run the factory when I leave and take care of the Oompa-Loompas for me? Not a grown-up. A grown-up would want to do everything his own way, not mine.

Such ramifications never occurred to my boy-self watching. My eyes remained on Wonka and his wonder. Like Wonka, I wanted to be at ease in all situations; to pronounce lyric aphorisms, ready always with a clever line; I wanted to dance or dream or sing or indulge in nonsense whenever whim took hold. Through Willy Wonka I intuited what it meant “to be your own man,” one who doles out respect to men, women and children so far as they earn it. I even liked the funny hat.

But anatomy is destiny, as the saying goes, and you’re either clever and witty or you’re not; it can’t be faked. (I didn’t know then that most of Wonka’s great lines were quotations from Shakespeare, Wilde and poet Arthur O’Shaughnessy, among others.) It’s difficult to inhabit the Wonka ideal when nature has built you like a small-scale defensive end, picking up nicknames like “Lil’ Tank” and “Arnold Dwarfenegger.” (I topped out at 5 feet 8.) Most of my teens and early 20s passed on soccer fields, in swimming pools, in the gym and locker room. To quote poetry or sing hymns to pure imagination, to express sensitivity to the arts beyond Top 40 or classic rock wasn’t encouraged by my peers; to be articulate from the heart or on matters greater than sport or base instinct made your sexuality suspect (and thus your manhood), and quickly I learned that to be accepted I needed to temper such interests to time alone. I kept my personal Wonka-ness as just that — personal — and wouldn’t quite embrace my idiosyncrasies and feel comfortable in my own skin — to be my own man — until well into my 20s. A late bloomer.

Still, the ideal of Wilder’s Willy Wonka remained within me, and without the impression of his example at that uncertain age I have to wonder whether the 48-year-old man I am today would be profoundly different from who he has turned out to be. Gene Wilder made it to 83. That seems like a long life. So much time and so little of a man he made of himself. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.

Play the devil’s advocate: Why even “celebrity journalists” should be harder on their subjects

Matt Lauer (Credit: Getty/Justin Sullivan)

Last month, after reporting confirmed that Ryan Lochte had lied about being robbed at gunpoint during the Rio Olympics, the swimmer and reality television star sat down for an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer. When Lauer felt Lochte hadn’t expressed sufficient remorse for his actions, he piped in. “Let me play devil’s advocate for a second,” Lauer began.

The term “devil’s advocate” has its origins in Catholic tradition and has historically referred to appointees of the Church who challenge a proposed canonization. A devil’s advocate ensures that the Church isn’t too quick to credit someone with the making of miracles; he prevents the naming of false saints. It’s also an apt role for a journalist to play. Much has been made of the increasingly contentious relationship between the media and its political subjects, and that tension has led many to pronounce that the media’s bias has prevented it from fulfilling its function. On the contrary, in order for media figures to live up to their obligations as members of the fourth (and fifth) estates, their relationships with their subjects ought to be tense, if not downright hostile.

The take-away of Lauer’s disastrous forum performance this week, during which he failed to challenge Donald Trump on either his profoundly stupid and uninformed ramblings or his boldfaced lies, has largely been that you don’t send a celebrity journalist — one thought to be better-suited to interviewing members of One Direction than presidential candidates — to do a real journalist’s job. Where the gold standards of the latter camp have brought about massive political transformation, the best a celebrity journalist can hope for is to make his interviewee cry. (A feat, it’s worth noting, Lauer accomplished with one Ryan Lochte.)

Perhaps, however, the solution lies in holding our entertainment journalists to a higher standard than eliciting an emotional response from the celebrity he’s covering. To be clear, I do not deny that celebrity culture has gotten wildly out of hand. In an ideal world, our obsession with the characters who populate our television screens (for they are, in every sense of the world, characters constructed by massive public relations teams) would cease, and we would take a far more measured approach to our fandom. In an ideal world, Lauer, now a celebrity in his own right, wouldn’t be paid $28 million a year to interview his targets. But for now, a solid intermediate step might be to draw a sharper distinction, to reintroduce some of that healthy tension in the relationship, between the celebrity journalist and the celebrity.

It’s a change that’s long overdue, least of all because it produces good television. Watching Lochte get called out is infinitely more entertaining than watching sycophantic journalists kowtow to their subjects live on national television. But the marketplace only works when enough people reject the model. Why would any celebrity willfully subject herself to a tough, critical but fair interview when another outlet promises the fanboy-esque coverage to which she’d grown accustomed?

But more importantly, it’s a change that would have an important and immediate cultural impact. Currently, celebrities have to willfully take on — either through ignorant words and actions or an explicitly activist stance — a political role in order to be viewed as political figures. Often, this has the unfortunate effect of demonizing those who protest or speak out about social justice causes, who are, equally unfortunately, often members of the affected groups. Their far more privileged peers often skate past thorny issues scot-free. The responsibility to take on oppression then falls to those most affected by it rather than those most equipped to end it. Journalists, “political” or no, ought to recognize that celebrities, by virtue of their access to resources, are all political actors.

Part of the reason why celebrity culture has gotten out of hand, and the reason why the famous enjoy a disproportionately privileged status, is this troubling lack of accountability. Celebrities have long-enjoyed the benefits of wealth and fame without any of the traditional checks on their power and without an actual fourth estate to keep them in line. Some members of fourth estate are perhaps too preoccupied with joining the ranks of the rich and famous themselves, and their charmed lives are part of a self-reinforcing cycle.

And, increasingly, it is not just the lines between celebrity and political journalism that have blurred but the lines between celebrity and politics. Trump was crowned with the Republican nomination on the strength of his celebrity alone, with those complicit in the creation of his brand now expressing profound regret over its unforeseen consequences. If politicians treat voters like viewers who can’t tell the difference between celebrities and politicians, why should journalists treat them any differently?

“I reject the word ‘hoax'”: Laura Albert opens up about creating JT LeRoy

Savannah Knoop, who played JT Leroy in public, with Laura Albert, the author. (Credit: Magnolia Pictures)

The new documentary, “Author: The JT LeRoy Story,” recounts the career of JT (Jeremiah Terminator) LeRoy, a writer who stunned the literary world with his books, “Sarah” and “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.” LeRoy came complete with a remarkable personal history, too. He was the son of a truck stop prostitute who had him at 14. He didn’t show his face to the press. (“He’s shy” was the reason.) When he was 13, he was turning tricks and living on the street. He was a drug addict and a homeless HIV+ teen who wanted to change his gender. JT LeRoy was a sensation, attracting celebrities who would read his work at public events and filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Asia Argento who would collaborate with him on movies. Van Sant made LeRoy an associate producer on his film “Elephant,” while Argento directed the screen version of “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.”

LeRoy also stunned the world when he was revealed to be the pen name of Laura Albert. She wrote the books; her sister-in-law Savannah, wearing a wig and sunglasses, posed as JT in public. As the documentary “Author: The JT LeRoy Story” recounts, Albert had a troubled life. She struggled with body image issues. She was the victim of abuse. She introduced herself as a young boy and became addicted to assuming that persona. She once pretended to be British to snag a skinhead boyfriend. She worked as a phone sex operator. She had been institutionalized twice as a teenager. She also performed in the band Thistle, and, under the pseudonym of a woman named Emily, she wrote for HBO’s “Deadwood.”

What is the truth? And does it matter if the story is as compelling as JT LeRoy/Laura Albert’s? Salon chatted with Albert, on the phone from San Francisco, about her life, her work and “Author: The JT LeRoy Story.”

In the film, there is “the Bono talk” about celebrity — where Bono tells JT backstage at a concert, “Remember who you are and where you come from.” JT was who you were and where you came from. What prompted you to create this literary persona?

There were many “boys” before JT. I can’t remember not having stories in my head. I’d put myself to sleep with different “boy” stories. It was like watching a TV channel. Sometimes they would die, and sometimes they’d be rescued. It was like a soap opera. My sister couldn’t sleep and I would tell her to listen to the “boys.” She didn’t hear them, and that blew my mind. Then I realized there was something very different about me. I didn’t tell anyone about it.

For the hoax to work, it was critical that you showed just enough of JT to get people interested. How did you determine what and when and how to reveal JT as you did?

I reject the word “hoax.” To me, a hoax is something you do for an opening weekend to get people into a movie. For me, it wasn’t like that. It was Jeremiah’s true story as told to me. When I was working on “Deadwood,” we’d follow the trajectory of the characters’ truth as if they were real people.

The thing is, I realized that JT’s world was so complete, it didn’t need me; it was self-sustaining. There were holes in it, but the emotional truth was so present that people stayed in that world. I was able to move into myself. A magician throws the light and hides an elephant in the dark. I was able to throw the attention.

The books are real. They may be fiction, “with a little extra,” as the film suggests, but people were inspired by them, even if they know they are “creations.” It’s like the Tinkerbell metaphor you give in the film, “If you believe . . .”

Yes, ultimately it doesn’t matter. I don’t judge other people when it comes to art.

What’s important to me is that I believed more than anybody. It is hard for people to wrap their head around. I was inside and outside the crazy. I needed to normalize it for other people, like my mother, who put me in an institution where I was molested right after my 14th birthday.

You worked as a phone sex operator, which involved creating fantasies to get men off. Can you discuss that experience?

I ran the mafia’s phone sex line in New York when I was 15. I was training other women because I was so fucking good. My mother put the line in. I wasn’t going to school and I was earning my keep and paying for my punk rock habit.

What did you mean when you told Billy Corgan, “JT was an accident?”

Dr. Owen [JT’s therapist] told Terminator to write. He was having a hard time holding on in sessions. He wrote “Balloon,” which is animated beautifully in the film. I was surprised because I thought he’d write about being on the street, but it was completely different. Even though Terminator — who became JT — got published, it was very organic. There was never a book agent. I was offered a book deal. It was an accident. I gave up the first book deal with Random House, because I thought the work wasn’t ready. I walked away from it. I read, studied and had a baby. I was going to be a mom and done with all the “boys.” I threw out a bunch of stuff. And yet, it wasn’t done with me. It wasn’t something I chose.

After I had my son, I wrote “Meteors” [a story in “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things”] and “Sarah,” and I had not written in three years. I sent it to Mary Gaitskill, and she told me to read Vladimir Nabokov and Flannery O’Connor, and that helped me see in a different way. I didn’t complete seventh grade because of an injury, and by eighth grade, I was a chronic truant. I had teachers come to my house. I was in special ed and had psychiatric [care]. I read a comic book version of “The Scarlet Letter.” I got a scholarship to The New School. I got in without SATs because they took a risk for a group home girl.

What makes a good story for you?

It’s interesting, I’ve been thinking about that. I thought it was a character I can care about. I’ve been reading Annie Proulx’s “Barkskins,” and I feel she hates people. The characters are people you care about, but the language and the way she takes you into the story, and how she creates this vessel to contain it, is compelling and absorbing, so it’s not just character. It’s “How do you take problems of soul and spirit and make them into issues of craft and technique?”

You were sued for signing contracts as JT LeRoy. How (or did) you make money from the books and film projects?

The money was so nominal. I got $24,000 for them, but I read about my millions. [Laughs.] I have a legal document saying that I’m a pauper in court. It’s Dickensian. There was no big swindle.

It’s important to remember people came to JT. There were artists. I came up in the punk scene. My mother was a musical playwright and she took me to meet Marvin Hamlisch and Sammy Cahn. I met Ian MacKaye. Artist to artist, you were their equal. I was doing journalism. It wasn’t about celebrity.

There were dozens of celebrities who admired your work, and defended JT . . .

I didn’t pursue them. I wasn’t interested in them except as artist to artist. [The work] resonated with them — or it didn’t. Once it reached the tipping point, people were coming to JT. Jeff [Feuerzeig, the director of “Author”] can tell you:

[Albert puts Feuerzeig on the line.]

Feuerzeig: I came to learn — and the film shows — the deeper relationships of Gus van Sant and Asia Argento who collaborated with JT. They read the books and wanted to make the film(s). Bono sent backstage passes [stating], “I love your work.” Laura told me in our interview process that these were artist-to-artist connections. The other relationships — she felt them with Billy Corgan and David Milch — paid off. She reached out to them on their own. There were a lot of celebrities around. Clearly many people read these books and reached out to JT.

[Jeff hands the phone back to Laura.]

Laura, how many people, at the time of JT’s fame, actually knew you were writing the books, and that Savannah was JT [in public]?

The number grew. At first it was very small. I found out a lot more people knew. A friend of mine from college heard me on the radio. They knew I did this kind of thing — that I had different characters. It was a lie agreed upon. The authenticity of the work allowed people to suspend belief.

How long did the whole JT thing go on?

10 years. I wrote the books in my early 20s. “Sarah” when I was 32. So I was still a young author.

You felt shame when you were teased as a kid, and when JT was exposed. But you must have felt some form of pride seeing JT become a sensation beyond imagination. Can you describe your emotions?

It wasn’t me. I stared at pictures of JT. It took a long time until I saw Savannah.

Jeff [Feuerzeig] did a beautiful job with the complexity of the story. It’s easy to do: Is she bad? Is she crazy? Is it a hoax?

Did I lie? Yes. Did I know? Yes. Did I apologize? Yes. Do I feel bad? I do for some people. This whole process has allowed me to be in my own skin now. I couldn’t do that with an avatar. But I can do that now, and share what happened.

It’s hard to not have your name on the books I wrote. John Waters said it’s un-American to reject fame. I was un-American. It’s great to have my name and photo on the book now. And now, I’m writing my memoir. 

Feds delay Dakota Access pipeline construction in surprise announcement after court ruled against tribe

Protesters demonstrate against the Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016 (Credit: Reuters/Andrew Cullen)

Federal authorities unexpectedly announced on Friday that they will delay construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline in an area that has seen large protests.

This surprise announcement came mere moments after a federal court ruled that construction of the massive North Dakota oil pipeline could continue.

For weeks, environmental and social justice activists from around the country have joined demonstrations against the pipeline, led by indigenous groups that warn it will pollute their land and water.

The Dakota Access pipeline is a $3.7 billion project that will span at least 1,168 miles, from North Dakota to Illinois.

In July, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe filed a lawsuit arguing that when the Army Corps of Engineers authorized the Dallas-based  Energy Transfer Partners to build the pipeline, it did not follow proper procedures.

On Friday U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in favor of the pipeline. He said the Army Corps “likely complied” with its obligation to consult the tribe. Boasberg also claimed the tribe had “not shown it will suffer injury that would be prevented by any injunction the court could issue.”

Boasberg did concede, however, that “the United States’ relationship with the Indian tribes has been contentious and tragic.”

Immediately after the judge’s decision, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior responded with a joint statement saying that, while they “appreciate” the court’s opinion, the “Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other federal laws.”

The federal agencies requested that the company “voluntarily pause all construction activity” within 20 miles of Lake Oahe, a body of water that traverses the border of North and South Dakota.

The agencies added, “Important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and their members regarding the Dakota Access pipeline specifically, and pipeline-related decision-making generally, remain.”

In a statement, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe said the federal agencies’ “stunning move” is “a game changer for the tribe.”

“We are acting immediately on our legal options, including filing an appeal and a temporary injunction to force DAPL to stop construction,” the tribe wrote, referring to the pipeline by an acronym.

The protests against the oil pipeline have received little coverage in major media networks, despite a clampdown on the peaceful activists. Pipeline security has pepper sprayed protesters and sicced dogs on them.

As Salon previously reported, arrest warrants were issued on Wednesday for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, for participating in civil disobedience protests at the pipeline.

“I hope they take action against the Dakota Access Pipeline company that is endangering drinking water not only for the Standing Rock Sioux, but for millions of people downstream of the reservation who depend on the Missouri River,” Stein said in a campaign statement, responding to the arrest warrants.

“The pipeline will carry up to 570,000 barrels of highly polluting Bakken crude oil per day. This would be another deadly blow to a climate teetering on the brink. It cannot be allowed to go forward,” she added.

The federal agencies emphasized in their statement that they “fully support the rights of all Americans to assemble and speak freely.” But they also warned, “Anyone who commits violent or destructive acts may face criminal sanctions from federal, tribal, state or local authorities.”

Amnesty International, which sent human rights observers to the demonstrations, released a statement stressing that U.S. authorities must protect people’s right to protest.

“Authorities have a duty to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples, including their right to peacefully protest,” said Tarah Demant, a senior director with Amnesty International USA.

“It is the responsibility of the police to ensure the right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression,” Demant emphasized.

The Army, DOJ and Department of the Interior also noted in their joint statement that “this case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects.” The agencies said they will have consultations with the  tribes.

Muslim recruit called a “terrorist” and hazed commits suicide, now up to 20 Marines face discipline

Twenty year-old Pakistani-American Muslim Raheel Siddiqui left his robotics and engineering program at the University of Michigan and arrived at Parris Island as a U.S. Marine Corps recruit on March 7. By March 18, he had leapt 40 feet to his death after enduring anti-Muslim hazing and physical abuse. Now, up to 20 Marines face criminal charges or administrative action after three investigations found multiple violations of policies and procedures at the key recruiting outpost.

The young recruit from Taylor, Michigan, wanted to be a jet mechanic in the Marines, and eventually an F.B.I. agent. But Siddiqui had been just 11 days into his training with Kilo Company, known unofficially as “The Thumping Third” for its rough treatment of recruits and drill instructors alike, when he jumped to his death off the third floor of a Marine barrack on March 18. He death was ruled a suicide, but Siddiqui’s family insisted from the beginning that the former high-school valedictorian would not have taken his own life unless under extreme duress.

On April 4, the Siddiquis’ congresswoman, Debbie Dingell, wrote a letter to the Marine Corps commandant demanding answers, asking if hazing had been a factor in the young recruit’s death. On Thursday, the Marines released a redacted investigative report by Maj. Gen. James Lukeman of the service’s training and education command in Quantico, Virginia. Dingell released a statement saying she had met Thursday with Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller and learned that 20 personnel could face court proceedings or administrative discipline as a result of the internal investigations.

Investigators found Marines operating with impunity in an environment lacking in supervision and proper leadership, according to the Wall Street Journal, who spoke with Marine officials who described details of the completed investigations. Siddiqui had reportedly threatened to kill himself within a week of his arrival on Parris Island as part of the 3rd Recruit Training Battalion after enduring islamophobic hazing from one unnamed drill instructor in particular. The young recruit had no history of mental illness before joining the Marine Corps. The Washington Post summarized what the internal investigations found:

Siddiqui was set to speak to the mental-health unit on base and a recruit liaison service the day following his claims but recanted them before speaking to the unit. The next day, Siddiqui was evaluated by the mental-health unit and returned to training. According to officials, however, Siddiqui claimed sometime before returning to training that he had been abused by his drill instructors — a claim that was ignored by higher-ups in Kilo Company.

[…]

Siddiqui told his drill instructor that his throat hurt, officials said, and after failing to respond to the drill instructor, he fell to the floor, apparently in pain. When Siddiqui continued to not respond, the drill instructor “forcefully” slapped him between one and three times. Siddiqui then ran down the length of the barracks and vaulted a railing, falling to his death. It is against training regulations for a drill instructor to strike a recruit.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that the unnamed instructor had previously been accused of putting another Muslim recruit in a dryer:

At one point, he accused the recruit of helping perpetrate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and then switched on the machine, causing the 6-foot, 157-pound recruit to spin around inside, an investigation of the 2015 incident found.

[…]

According to those Marine officials, at least one other recruit heard the nearly two-hour episode from the nearby barracks quarters and recounted that the drill instructor could be heard asking that recruit: “Why are you even here? You’re gonna kill us the first chance you get, aren’t you, you terrorist? What are your plans, are you a terrorist?”

However, “poor investigative” techniques led the command to discount the allegations, allowing the drill instructor to stay on the job, according to the Marines’ latest report. The Marine Corps would not identify the drill instructor.

Marine officials fired the three most senior Marines in charge of Siddiqui’s unit and removed from duty each of the other commanders and senior enlisted leaders identified for possible charges or administrative punishment.

Salon Talks: Research shows a diverse boardroom is a boon to business — so why are there so few female execs?

“Salon Talks” host Carrie Sheffield sat down with Jeffery Tobias Halter, president of YWomen, a strategic consulting company, to discuss his latest book “WHY WOMEN – The Leadership Imperative to Advancing Women and Engaging Men,” the first business book written by a man on how companies can advance women to enhance the company.

“There is so much overwhelming data that every time you add women to the mix, you get incredible results,” Halter said. “Advancing women today sadly is like diet and exercise: every company knows they need to do it; it’s having the will and commitment to drive that change.”

Asked about the government’s role in advancing women, Halter, who formerly served as the director of diversity strategy at Coca-Cola, said, “It’s like any government mandate. It’s going to work in a few situations and it’s not going to work in a few situations.”

“We know that U.S. data shows that more women on [corporate] boards — three specifically or more — generates amazing economic return for the company,” he continued. “The problem is we also know it takes 10 to 15 years to develop senior leaders. And so, believe it or not, there is a time for mandating, because it gets you a jump start, but then if you do not have the programs and processes to be supportive, to create development opportunities, what you are doing is setting up women for failure.”

Texas prisoners work for no pay in system inmate calls “modern-day slavery”

(Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

Texas prisoners work in a variety of jobs for no pay, in what a prisoner has described as a form of “modern-day slavery.”

Jason Renard Walker, a man incarcerated in Amarillo, Texas, published a letter this week in Truthout titled “Unpaid Labor in Texas Prisons Is Modern-Day Slavery.”

Walker noted Texas prisoners work as electricians, maintenance workers, cooks, janitors, painters and dog trainers. They tend to more than 10,000 head of cattle, raising and processing beef, pork and chicken. They also grow 24 different crops, and manufacture soap and clothing.

Prisoners, Walker said, are “required” to do this labor for free. “If they refuse, they receive discriminatory punishment and thus longer stays in prison,” he wrote.

Some prisoners work up to 12 hours a day, without pay. “This is flat-out, modern-day slave labor and it will continue as long as society accepts the notion that prisoners deserve less,” Walker said.

Black Americans are very disproportionately affected by what Walker described as this system of modern-day slavery. The Texas prison population is roughly evenly split racially, with about one-third of its inmates black, one-third white and one-third Latino. According to the 2015 census, however, just about 13 percent of the Texas population is black, while 43 percent is non-Hispanic white and 39 percent is Latino.

Texas has the biggest prison population in the U.S. and more facilities than any other state, with more than 143,000 people incarcerated in 124 prison units.

“It is also known for being one of the most self-sufficient and profitable prison systems in the nation, thanks to prison labor,” Walker said.

This prison labor is overseen by Texas Correctional Industries, a department established in 1963 that’s within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s 2014 annual report (the most recent one available), Texas Correctional Industries made $88.9 million in sales in fiscal year 2014.

The report noted that Texas Correctional Industries operates 37 facilities, producing a variety of products, including mattresses, shoes, garments, brooms, license plates, printed materials, janitorial supplies, soaps, detergents, furniture, textile and steel products.

Texas Correctional Industries also provides numerous services, such as furniture refinishing, tire retreading and auditorium and school bus refurbishing.

It says one of its goals is to “reduce department cost by providing products and services to [the Texas Department of Criminal Justice] while selling products and services to other eligible entities on a for-profit basis.” Giving inmates “marketable job skills” and “help[in] reduce recidivism” are other goals.

Prisoners manufacture these goods and provide these services, Texas Correctional Industries says, for state and local government agencies, political subdivisions, public education systems and public and private institutions of higher education.

Salon contacted Texas Correctional Industries with a request for comment on Walker’s letter and was told to contact the Texas Department of Criminal Justice public information office.

Robert C. Hurst, the public information officer at the department, told Salon, “We’re not going to comment specifically on his letter.”

Hurst did, however, speak in general terms about Texas Correctional Industries: “Part of the core mission of the agency is to promote a positive change in their behavior and prepare them for re-entry into society. We believe having a job is critical to their long term success,” Hurst said.

“While inmates are not paid, they can acquire marketable job skills which could lead to meaningful employment upon their release,” Hurst added. “Offenders can also receive good conduct time for participating in work and self-improvement programs while incarcerated. For many — but not all — offenders, ‘good time’ credits may be added to calendar time served in calculating their eligibility for parole or mandatory supervision.”

In his letter, Walker pushed back against these claims. “Whenever TCI is scrutinized by the public for this practice, they note that prisoners receive other rewards for their labor, such as time credits called ‘Good Time’ or ‘Work Time,'” he said.

“On paper, these credits are supposed to cut down the prisoner’s sentence and allow them to be released on mandatory supervision — earlier than they would if these credits didn’t exist. But in reality, mandatory supervision is discretionary,” Walker said. “This means that the parole board doesn’t have to honor these credits. It can keep denying a prisoner’s release until they have served their entire sentence.”

In his statement to Salon, the public information officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice defended the work program as a way to train inmates.

“There are a wide variety of jobs within the prison system much like those beyond the perimeter fence,” Hurst said. “Offenders may be assigned to work in support positions, such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, and maintenance. The agency also has a one of the largest agricultural operations in Texas helping supply food and clothing to the offender population.”

Hurst said more than 5,000 inmates are assigned to Texas Correctional Industries, which “offers specialized training in a number of areas including braille transcription, warehouse operations, printing-graphic design and wielding.”

In his letter, Walker called this program a “money-making scheme.”

“Prisoners are human,” Walker wrote. “Prisoners deserve the same rights as people on the outside. We are more than the dregs of society and dead weight. In fact, we are actually keeping the prison system functioning with no pay.”

Walker concluded: “All work and no play is inhumane under any circumstances. And prisoners must be paid for their labor.”

The movement against prison labor is growing. Citing prison labor — along with problems like long-term solitary confinement, inadequate health care, overcrowding and attacks — incarcerated people throughout the U.S. organized a national prison strike that began this week, on the 45th anniversary of the uprising at Attica prison. Inmates in at least 40 facilities in 24 states are participating.

Look Again: The day’s most compelling images from around the globe

CHATSWORTH, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 09: The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire view Tear, by artist Richard Hudson, one of the many moumental sculptures on dispay at Chatsworth stately home as part of the Sotheby's Beyond Limits Monumental Outdoor Sculpture Show on September 9, 2016 in Chatsworth, England. Work by world-renowned artists including Zaha Hadid, Aristide Maillol, Bruce Munro, Richard Hudson, Cristina Iglesias and Joana Vasconcelos, are on display as part of the Sotheby's Beyond Limits Monumental Outdoor Sculpture Show in the gardens of Chatsworth between 10 September and 30 October 2016. Sotheby's Beyond Limits selling exhibition, has firmly established itself as one of the most prestigious platforms for the display and sale of modern and contemporary outdoor sculpture, and a key event in the art world calendar. The show brings together works by leading pioneers in this field, all situated in the historic garden of one of Europes greatest country estates, the ancestral seat of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images for Sotheby's) (Credit: Getty Images For Sotheby's)

 

Seoul, South Korea   Ahn Young-joon/AP

TV screens show a North Korean newscaster reading a statement from the North’s Nuclear Weapons Institute

It is often forgotten that the stark and terrifying fact that North Korea’s bellicose, erratic and authoritarian regime possesses nuclear weapons is in part the result of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, according to observers. U.S. invasions and military actions around the globe continue to make the world a more dangerous place.

–Daniel Denvir, staff reporter

 

Sanaa, Yemen   Mohammed Huwais/Getty

Yemeni children inspect the aftermath of two improvised explosive devices

Today marks the one year anniversary of Alan Kurdi’s death, the Syrian toddler immortalized in a chilling photograph on a Turkish beach — a symbol of the cost of the refugee crisis. His father said this week that he didn’t believe the international attention ultimately made any difference. This picture is the only hope I have to think he may be wrong.

–Sophia Tesfaye, deputy politics editor

 

Chatsworth, England   Christopher Furlong/Getty

The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire view “Tear,” by artist Richard Hudson

Who knew monuments of excess could be so simple? The eleventh edition of the Sotheby’s Beyond Limits Monumental Outdoor Sculpture Show opened Friday in Chatsworth, England. The exhibit attracts leading pioneers in contemporary outdoor sculpture and the most prominent buyers in the art world. The installations will be on display at the Chatsworth House until the end of October. In the meantime, the occupiers of the house, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, seen in the photo, have high-priced, oversized sculptures decorating their historic lawn.

–Taylor Link, editorial intern

 

US Open, New York   Julie Jacobson/AP

Caroline Wozniacki, of Denmark, kicks the ball after hitting a shot into the net

Julie Jacobson’s photograph is an exercise in frustration. The symmetry of the lines on the court and the net appear to box Caroline Wozniacki in, such that even though the viewer knows her frustration relates to a botched shot, it also seems more profound than that. Wozniacki’s kicking of the ball suggests an act of defiance against that symmetry, an attempt to break free from it — which only makes its result all the more disheartening, as the ball strikes and stretches the net without actually damaging it. Moreover, the extreme angle from which Jacobson shoots Wozniacki suggests an almost omniscient perspective, as if the viewer is somehow complicit in the act of trapping her, and perhaps even takes some small joy from her desperation.

–Scott Eric Kaufman, assistant editor

His long con: Trump’s lie about the Iraq War is just an excerpt of a greater deception

Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Gerald Herbert)

In the wake of the Commander-in-Chief forum on Wednesday night, Donald Trump is once again trying to double down on the lie that he opposed the Iraq War, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

As he did last month with his first major foreign policy speech, Trump pegged his claim to a 2004 Esquire interview. “I was an opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning – a major difference between me and my opponent,” Trump said before quoting at length from the Esquire interview.

In response, Esquire pushed back, noting first that “Trump’s big point throughout the speech and this entire campaign has been that he was always opposed to the war — even before it began,” then that “this claim has been debunked (over and over again), by multiple fact-checkers, magazines,  and newspapers,” and finally that “Trump came out against the war in Esquire almost a year and a half after the invasion began, when the situation on the ground had begun to deteriorate and popular support for the war was sinking.”  

When Trump cited the Esquire interview again in the forum, deputy editor John Hendrickson tweeted, “Because Donald Trump won’t stop lying, we’ve updated our 2004 story with an editor’s note,” which read:

“The following story was published in the August 2004 issue of Esquire. During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed to have been against the Iraq War from the beginning, and he has cited this story as proof. The Iraq War began in March 2003, more than a year before this story ran, thus nullifying Trump’s timeline.”

But invariably when Donald Trump lies there is more than one lie involved and it’s a mistake to just focus on one — especially since the balance-obsessed media will quickly assist him in excusing it, burying it and moving on. You have to recall the broader context in which his lies have been told because his lying is invariably a performance and can only be fully understood as such: The entire performance is a lie.

In the primaries, when Trump first rolled out his Iraq War lie, he was trying to position himself as the ultimate outsider, truth-teller and above all, anti-Bush candidate. So he didn’t just falsely posture as having always opposed the war but as having been a major force speaking out against it — one so important that the Bush Administration itself tried to silence him.

“I’ll give you 25 different stories” citing his opposition to the war, Trump falsely boasted during the September 2015 CNN debate, elbowing aside Rand Paul, who actually had been opposed to the war but could not get a word in edgewise. “In fact, a delegation was sent to my office to see me because I was so vocal about it,” Trump bragged. He elaborated further on Fox the next month. “I was visited by people from the White House asking me to sort of, could I be silenced because I seem to get a disproportionate amount of publicity,” he boasted.

At the time, The Washington Post gave Trump “Four Pinocchios” for his claim of a White House silencing effort, after talking to a dozen former top Bush advisers, including Karl Rove. As for the “25 stories” claim, Buzzfeed could find only two in 2003 with Trump comments on Iraq, neither vigorously opposing the war.

But facts be damned. Trump easily shoved aside Rand Paul, taking center stage as the No. 1 Iraq War critic. All sorts of folks have searched high and low for stories supporting Trump’s claims since. Yet, Trump himself has been able to come up with only a handful of stories when he expressed ideas all over the map, which he has cherry-picked his most negative comments from — but not anywhere close to his having generated “a disproportionate amount of publicity.”

The line he took back then was, in fact, the exact opposite of the line he’s taking now — when he’s claiming that he barely paid any attention to Iraq and that no one paid 

In the follow-up to the forum, in a campaign speech Thursday, Trump once again tried to make it seem like he’d been against the war from the beginning, quoting at some length once again from the Esquire article and falsely claiming repeatedly that it was “right at the beginning.”

But he also said about a Howard Stern interview, “It was the first time anybody had asked me about Iraq, and I said, “I don’t know.” In reality — as Buzzfeed first reported in February, Stern asked, “Are you for invading Iraq?” and Trump answered, “Yeah, I guess so,” adding, “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”  

In his speech on Thursday, Trump also said, “Nobody cared too much about what I said, I was doing business” — quite a turnabout from his primary debate claim that White House people tried to silence him “because I seem to get a disproportionate amount of publicity.” Now Trump says, “I don’t even know why I was asked the question. I guess because I was asked the question.”  

So, when Trump was shoving Rand Paul aside and running hard against Jeb Bush as leader of the GOP establishment that he alone could topple, Trump portrayed himself as such a prominent critic that the White House administration of Bush’s brother tried to silence him. But now that he’s running against Hillary Clinton, eh, not so much. He was just zis guy, you know?

There’s a crucial lesson here: It’s important to not focus exclusively on the specific lies that Trump is telling in the moment, without also taking note of the broader lies he’s telling about himself in how he’s presenting himself.  The fact that Trump continues to lie repeatedly about opposing the Iraq War, despite repeated debunking, exemplifies his trait of being a pathological liar. But the fact that he’s completely reversed his positioning speaks to his more fundamental nature as a bullshitter. In “On Bullshit,” Harry Frankfurt warns that “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are,” and explained:

“The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.”

And that is precisely what Donald Trump is up to: deceiving us. The precise nature of the deception may change dramatically — as it has in this case: from powerful, outspoken White House opponent to the businessman whom no one paid any attention to. But there’s always an angle, always a purpose, always a deception, always a con.

Ask not, “What’s Trump lying about now?” Ask, “Why is Trump telling this set of lies now? What is he really up to?”