Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 674
September 1, 2016
Look Again: The day’s most compelling images from around the globe
A man steers a wooden boat through dead fish in a breeding pond at the Maninjau Lake in Agam regency, West Sumatra province, Indonesia, August 31, 2016. Thousands of fish at the fish farm of the Maninjau Lake died suddenly due to lack of oxygen caused by a sudden change in water conditions. Antara Foto/Muhammad Arif Pribadi/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. MANDATORY CREDIT. INDONESIA OUT. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTX2NPOQ (Credit: Reuters)
Maninjau Lake, Indonesia, Muhammad Arif Pribad/Reuters
A man steers a wooden boat through dead fish in a breeding pond
No, they don’t fish with dynamite in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia — I hoped it was that, too. Instead, this idyllic lake in West Sumatra experienced a sudden change in water chemistry that left it lacking in oxygen, asphyxiating fish by the thousands. I’m struck by the seeming calm of the man paddling his dugout wooden canoe, perhaps he’s not surprised it’s because this is not the first mass die off in the lake. Or maybe he, too, is mesmerized by the disturbing beauty of a lake surface that’s been replaced by the shimmering scales of fish corpses floating on their sides.
–Alex Bhattacharji, executive editor
Jdeideh, Lebanon Anwar Amro/Getty
A woman holds her breath as she walks near a temporary garbage dump
I live in New York City and can barely take the stench on trash days in the summer, so it’s impossible to imagine what people in Beirut are enduring as political infighting has shut down access to landfills, forcing people to pile trash up in the streets. Though perhaps this will be us in 5 years, when Republicans get tired of simply stonewalling judicial appointments and start getting really serious about shutting down government to punish Democrats for winning elections.
–Amanda Marcotte, politics writer
Allahabad, India Sanjay Kanoja/Getty
An artisan puts the finishing touches on an idol of the Hindu God Ganesh
I spent some brief time in India during college and something that really moved me was Hinduism, specifically the use of idols which is very different from my Christian upbringing. I became enthralled with the creative and elaborate stories of the Gods, one in particular was Ganesh. He is known as the God of beginnings and in this photo an artist is putting the final touches on a Ganesh idol for the annual Ganesh Chaturthi. This is an annual festival celebrated in honor of the God with prayers focused on new activity being completed without obstacle. The festival begins on September 5th.
–Peter Cooper, Salon video staffer
Jarablus, Syria Hani Umit Bektas/Reuters
A member of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army
The war in Syria has gotten even more complex — if you didn’t think that was possible. Turkey launched a military incursion into northern Syria in late August, launching air strikes and other attacks on both ISIS and the U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels who have been the most effective force fighting ISIS. A Turkish official said this week that their goal is to “cleanse” the area. Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian right-wing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has played a kind of double game in Syria: Erdogan sees the leftist Kurds, who hope to create an independent state, as a bigger threat than ISIS, and has been accused of directly helping the so-called Islamic State to weaken them. The U.S., which supported Turkey’s intervention but claimed it was planned without its knowledge, is effectively supporting both sides as they fight each other. The Syrian government opposes Turkey’s military intervention. Erdogan has already been supporting Islamist rebels in Syria for years.
–Ben Norton, politics writer
August 31, 2016
“They don’t know it yet, but they’re gonna pay for the wall”: Trump hurls red meat to his base with intense immigration speech
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Phoenix Convention Center, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) (Credit: AP)
As was expected, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump readopted his outside-voice as he outlined his immigration policy during a speech in Phoenix on Wednesday night. This after a seemingly diplomatic closed-door meeting and joint news conference with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City just hours prior.
“We … have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it’s just not gonna work out,” Trump said, outlining a 10-point-plan to curb illegal immigration. “Then there is the issue of security. Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced.”
“We will build a great wall along the southern border,” he promised, inciting chants from the border state crowd. “And Mexico will pay for the wall. Hundred percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re gonna pay for the wall.” (President Peña Nieto, of course, unequivocally refuted this after his meeting with Trump earlier Wednesday.)
“On day one,” Trump reiterated, his administration would begin construction on an “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall.”
Trump — again reading of TelePrompTers — added that, “Thousands of Americans would be alive today if not for the open-border policies of this administration,” which he associated with his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who served for four years as Secretary of State under President Obama.
The real estate mogul promised to “suspend the issuance of visas to [Syrians and Libyans] where adequate screening cannot occur,” echoing the “extreme vetting” immigration plan Trump described earlier this month. Such “adequate screening” — presumably as it pertains to the Middle East — would include: “their views on honor killings,” on “respect for women, gays, and minorities,” “on radical Islam,” and “many other topics.”
Macy Gray turns back the clock: “I kind of learned how to sing listening to jazz albums”
Macy Gray (Credit: Getty/Matt Winkelmeyer)
There’s always been something old-school about Macy Gray, but the new album from the eccentric R&B singer makes her traditional roots more explicit. “Stripped” shows Gray singing a range of material in a intimate, after-midnight style, backed by an understated bass-drum-guitar jazz group. (Trumpeter Wallace Roney also plays on several tracks.) “Stripped,” which comes out next week, is the closest she’s come to making a Billie Holiday album.
Besides some new songs, the album contains a reworking of her biggest hit — “I Try” — as well as covers of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” and Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” The distinctiveness of her voice (which she was teased about as a kid) make these songs sound like hers.
Salon spoke to Gray, who lives in Los Angeles, from New York, where she was traveling.
To a lot of listeners, “Stripped” sounds like a change in direction. Does it seem that way to you?
Not really — I kind of learned how to sing listening to jazz albums. I was in jazz bands starting out. And most of the singers I’m influenced by are jazz singers. So it was super-super natural for me — more natural than the records I’m known for. I could do jazz in my sleep.
It was weird to realize that, but it came more natural to me.
Besides liking the style, what made you want to go this direction and play with a jazz group?
It was just something I’d never done before. We did it at an old church in Brooklyn — live, with one mic. It was an interesting way to make a record. I’m a big music fan — it was another way to do it. I wanted to see what it was like.
Besides Billie Holiday, who are some of the other jazz singers you love?
I’m a big Sinatra fan, Nat “King” Cole, Nancy Wilson, Nina Simone — a ton of them. And back in the day Steely Dan was more jazz. I learned how to sing from all those people.. The way (Donald Fagen) sang was kinda jazzlike.
The group you have behind you is very understated and leaves a lot of space between the notes. What were you going for with the band you put together?
It was just me, a drummer, standup bass, and a guitar player. There were no overdubs, no one there but us. We had a trumpeter on a couple songs. But when you have records like that, that’s the whole point — just the song, just the chords, just the musicians. It’s not covered up with production. It’s sexy, it’s raw…. I really loved it; I had a ball doing it.
You’ve got two cover songs on this record, and you’ve made a covers record and an album that covers all of Stevie Wonder’s “Talking Book.” What makes you want to record someone else’s work — when do you know it’s right for you?
When you can sing it and it means the whole world to you — you can put your whole heart in it. You can hear it in your vocals. You can sing it like it’s your own. You can close your eyes… It’s like a song you wish you had written.
“Redemption Song” seems like a natural for you. But Metallica is a less obvious choice. What drew you to that one?
I remember it from back in the day, but never paid that much attention to it until I saw it at a club, and a singer was doing a lounge version of it. I listened the lyrics and said, “Wow — that’s a crazy song! That’s all me.” We jazzed it up — it’s a whole different song.
I’m wondering if you’ve ever sung anything of Prince’s. Was he a big influence on you?
Yeah — he was huge for me, definitely my biggest influence. I never really covered his songs, but I know all of them. I know more Prince songs that I do anybody else’s.
What makes him important to you?
He was so unleashed — he did his own thing, dressed his own way, had his own way of singing. A different way to sing about love. He always had songs about God and sex, and a different way to translate it. And it was always backed up by this awesome musicianship. I’ll still say he was one of the best guitarists who ever lived. If you just listen to him play, it’s crazy.
Do you have a favorite period for him, or favorite album?
Probably “Sign o’ The Times.”
It seems like as a nation we’re talking about race a lot more than we used to. Does the Black Lives Matter movement mean anything to you?
Back in the day, when we discussed race, we had Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, and we had real progress. But right now it’s mostly people who are upset and arguing — it’s a lot of rhetoric. Now everybody’s a racist, everybody’s mad at everybody else. Everybody wants to blame it on Donald Trump.
I’m not so cheered up about it at the moment. I don’t know if it’s so important to discuss it so much if there’s no real change. Now it’s a lot of people’s opinions.
Year of the Monkees: How the once-maligned “Pre-fab Four” came out on top — and cemented their legacy
The Monkees (Credit: AP)
The classic rock universe has celebrated some rather huge 50th anniversaries this year. A trio of legendary albums — The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds,” Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” and the Beatles’ “Revolver” — all hit the half-century mark. With a bit less fanfare, the Monkees are also celebrating 50 years in 2016, as the group’s titular TV show premiered on Sept. 12, 1966. In a nod to that momentous anniversary, Michael Nesmith — who has been hard at work on a memoir that’s due next April and not on the road in recent years — announced he is doing one last show with the band in Los Angeles on Sept. 16.
“I am bringing Gretsch, my beautiful, intelligent blonde to help me, and it looks like I’ll make it once again,” Nesmith wrote on Facebook. “I expect it will be fun, and a great way for me to sign out. I see the specter of the multiple Sinatra retirement/farewells — and this seems like the perfect time for me to step off, sit down and shut up.”
Even before Nesmith announced the appearance, however, it felt like 2016 has been the Year of the Monkees. In May, the band, which includes Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, released a stellar new album, “Good Times!,” featuring songs written by Andy Partridge, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller, Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo. On Aug. 26, a three-CD greatest hits package, “Monkees 50,” arrived in stores to provide an overview of the group’s jangly garage-pop, power-pop and a smattering of more outré moments. A week before that, avowed fans the Minus 5 released “Of Monkees and Men,” a lovingly crafted album featuring odes to the band, its history and universe: The ramshackle, rollicking “Micky’s A Cool Drummer,” for example, or the Stones-esque swoon “Boyce and Hart,” a tribute to the Monkees’ songwriting partners.
Die-hard fans — and there are many — won’t at all be surprised by the Monkees’ resurgence. Over the years, the TV show’s ongoing syndication deal kept the band relevant and in the public eye, which helped it amass a healthy fan base. (Rolling Stone notes, for example, that “Good Times!” producer Adam Schlesinger watched the show on MTV in the mid-’80s.) The lingering, negative idea that the Monkees are some prefabricated creation that rose to popularity in the 1960s has also dissipated. “I think that has disappeared,” Tork told Salon earlier this year. “The knives out, the prejudice, the disdain for the Monkees, that’s an old people’s trip, we’re not interested in that.”
But the growing respect for the Monkees is also part of a larger trend toward ingrained musical biases falling away and fading, as newer generations take stock of what came before. Look no further than critics’ punching bags Journey and Toto becoming cool or the way the Yacht Rock phenomenon has transformed overly earnest ’70s and ’80s soft rock into a beloved cult fascination. The Monkees’ legacy is being shaped (or maybe it’s better to say continually reshaped) by fans who never thought any backlash or scorn had merit and newer loyalists who may not be aware of (or care about) the band’s baggage.
Without these expectations, what’s left — as Tork alluded to in the Salon piece, when he said, “The Monkees’ songbook is maybe the third-best songbook. You can’t beat Lennon/McCartney” — is the band’s catalog. The new “Good Times!” sounds remarkably modern, with standouts including Partridge’s effervescent, blue sky-pop gem “You Bring The Summer,” Gibbard’s elegiac, piano-driven “Me & Magdalena” and the Gallagher-Weller British Invasion homage “Birth Of An Accidental Hipster.” It’s a fantastic pop-rock record, no asterisk needed. But time has been kind to the group’s early work — something attributable to the songwriting by notable contributors (Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Carole Bayer Sager) and the band members themselves, as well as the attention to detail.
It’s a given that classics such as “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m A Believer” and “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” endure. But 1967’s “Headquarters,” the first album on which the Monkees “called the musical shots,” as Nesmith put it to Guitar World, shows off the group’s lovely harmonies, gift for arrangements and song selection. And then there’s the 1968 soundtrack “Head,” which not only stands as a landmark release in the realm of psychedelic and late-’60s rock music but also has toyed with the Monkees’ legacy and squeaky-clean reputation. (The “Head” movie itself is another, complicated story, as a 2011 Guardian interview revealed.) Perhaps because the band members initially were given no respect — and were figuring out how their disparate talents fit together once they had taken the reins — there was less pressure to conform to any one approach or sound.
And in hindsight, the TV show was ancillary to the music: Sure it was a way to promote LPs, but more of a parallel creative outlet that had its own unique, specific charms. Micky Dolenz agreed with one journalist’s characterization that there was a “big pop art aspect” to the Monkees. “There was, totally. It was almost like installation art. Performance art!” He also added, “The Beatles got us. John Lennon said, ‘It’s like The Marx Brothers.’ They got the whole dynamic, the whole sensibility. There were others. Frank Zappa, he was a huge fan. Lots of people in the business got it.”
The Beatles’ and Elvis Presley’ appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” certainly changed the lives of thousands of people and inspired just as many to become musicians. The Monkees on TV reinforced for legions of kids that being a musician was an accessible goal and didn’t necessarily require prior expertise.
But although the Monkees themselves could be goofy on TV, the band’s music was never lightweight; it had heft, both in approach and themes. “He took it seriously,” the Minus 5’s Scott McCaughey said of Dolenz‘s participation in the Monkees. “He learned how to play the drums. He had never played drums before, and they made him the drummer in the group, and, sure, he didn’t have to play immediately on the records, but he learned how to play drums. They toured live, and he played the drums. I love his drumming, maybe because he was sort of a novice. There’s something really exciting to me about the way he plays.”
Of course, the band members weren’t necessarily musical neophytes: Before learning drums, Dolenz played guitar, while Davy Jones was an accomplished singer, and Nesmith had his own songwriting style. But well before the concept of punk rock existed, the Monkees rebelled against the idea that musicians needed to be experts to play music — and pushed back against those who didn’t want to give them creative or musical control, as well as anyone who wanted to place limitations or project expectations onto the band. That iconoclastic spirit made the band even more endearing, especially once this history came to light.
Above all, there’s always been something mystifying about why the Monkees worked — first, because four strangers thrown together had such incredible musical chemistry and then why and how the group has endured for 50 years, despite plenty of internal friction. Plenty of other bubblegum-pop acts of yore petered out, while modern made-for-TV musical acts have relatively short shelf lives. Look no further than Big Time Rush, for example, or the Hannah Montana franchise. That glue that’s held the Monkees together through thick and thin is intangible and slippery to define; that ensures that the band is always intriguing.
“I’ll call it a band,” Nesmith told Rolling Stone in May. “But Micky, Peter and I talk about this all of the time because none of us really know. All three of us have our own ideas. This being, ‘What is this thing? What have we got here? What’s required of us? Is this a band? Is this a television show?’ When you go back to the genesis of this thing, it is a television show because it has all those traditional beats.”
Added Nesmith: “But something else was going on, and it struck a chord way out of proportion to the original swing of the hammer. You hit the gong and suddenly it’s huge.”
Donald Trump after meeting with Peña Nieto: “I happen to have a tremendous feeling for Mexican-Americans”
Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto and Donald Trump shake hands after a joint statement in Mexico City, Aug. 31, 2016. (Credit: AP/Marco Ugarte)
GOP nominee Donald Trump waxed diplomatic during a joint news conference with Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon.
“We had a very substantive, direct, and constructive exchange of ideas over quite a period of time,” Trump said. The U.S. and Mexico “are united by our support of democracy, a great love for our people and the contributions of millions of Mexican-Americans to the United States. And I happen to have a tremendous feeling for Mexican-Americans.”
Whether genuine or not, Trump on Wednesday diverged heavily from his hard-line primary rhetoric — about deporting 11 million illegal immigrants — and laid out a five-point plan for a hemispheric approach to U.S. relations with Mexico.
Trump called illegal immigration — from Central and South America to the U.S. — a “humanitarian disaster” for “the extreme physical dangers” that the “trek” poses.
“Having a secure border is a sovereign right and mutually beneficial,” he argued before alluding to his proposed wall along the southern border of the United States: “We recognize and respect the right of either country to build a physical barrier or wall on any of its borders to stop the illegal movement of people, drugs and weapons.”
As for his previous promises to supporters that the Mexican government would for whatever reason pay for said wall, Trump said, “We didn’t discuss that.”
Beyond his discussion of immigration policy, the real estate mogul recommended “improving NAFTA,” a Bill Clinton-era globalized trade policy that Trump said ought to be “updated to reflect the realities of today.”
“There are many improvements that could be made that would make both Mexico and the United States stronger and keep industry in our hemisphere,” Trump said, warning of “tremendous competition” from the Eastern Hemisphere. “Improving pay standards and working conditions will create better results for all.”
“I call you a friend,” Trump told Peña Nieto at the conclusion of his written speech before taking questions from the press.
“Parliamentary coup”: Impeachment of Brazil’s President Rousseff hands power to corrupt, unelected right wing
Dilma Rousseff (Credit: AP/Eraldo Peres)
Brazil’s left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, has officially been impeached, in what critics are calling a “coup” and an attack on democracy.
The new right-wing president who will replace her until 2018 was not elected and is unable to run in the next election because he was found guilty of violating campaign-finance limits.
Members of Brazil’s Senate voted 61 to 20 on Wednesday to convict Rousseff of breaking budget laws. They accused Rousseff of corruption for manipulating government accounts in order to hide a budget shortfall. She has pointed out that previous governments did exactly the same thing.
Meanwhile, the majority of the lawmakers who impeached Rousseff face their own investigations for often extreme forms of corruption. Agence France‑Presse has referred to Brazil’s congress as a “den of corruption.”
According to corruption watchdog Transparencia Brasil, 59 percent of the 81 Senate members who voted on Rousseff’s impeachment have been convicted or investigated for crimes of their own. The lower house, which voted to impeach Rousseff in April, is equally corrupt.
Charges against the Brazilian lawmakers who impeached Rousseff include embezzlement, vote buying and even murder, AFP noted.
Salon reached out to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil and has been extensively reporting on the issue for months.
“It’s both sad and infuriating to watch a young, vibrant democracy abandon the fundamental principle — the people who decide who leads them — and install a right-wing faction that has been repeatedly rejected by voters, and which is both unelected and unelectable,” he said, responding to the impeachment.
“What just happened in Brazil is a warning to people throughout the democratic world about the ability of media barons and oligarchs to override democratic elections at will in order to impose a self-serving political agenda that they know has never been, and could never be, democratically ratified,” Greenwald added.
Michel Temer, who served as Brazil’s interim president when Rousseff was suspended from the government in May, will remain as the unelected president until 2018, at which point he will be ineligible to run for election.
A construction executive has testified that Temer received a $300,000 bribe, although he denies this. He is by no means the only one in his new government who faces serious corruption allegations.
As soon as Rousseff was suspended, Temer’s interim government was engulfed by a series of corruption scandals. In May, as Salon previously reported, two of the members of Brazil’s new cabinet, including the anticorruption minister, resigned in just two weeks. Leaked recordings proved they were impeaching the elected president on trumped-up, non-impeachable offenses in order to prevent her from investigating the actual corruption they are involved in.
Rousseff’s government had been carrying out an investigation known as Operation Car Wash, looking into widespread bribery at the state-controlled oil company Petrobras. Many of the members of Temer’s government are involved in this corruption scandal.
The United States, which has defended the corrupt impeachment process against Rousseff, characterizing it as democratic and constitutional, announced after her impeachment on Wednesday that it will maintain strong relations with Brazil’s new unelected government.
Rousseff herself has slammed the impeachment process as a “coup.” She has compared her impeachment to her imprisonment by the former U.S.-backed Brazilian dictatorship.
Former presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders released a statement this month “calling on the United States to take a definitive stand against efforts to remove Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office.” He wrote, “To many Brazilians and observers the controversial impeachment process more closely resembles a coup d’état.”
Other governments in the region condemned the impeachment on Wednesday. Ecuador and Venezuela withdrew their ambassadors from Brazil in protest. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said his government condemned the “right-wing oligarch’s coup.” Ecuadoran President Rafeal Correa called it an act of “betrayal/treason” that “reminds us of the darkest hours of our America.”
Bolivian President Evo Morales slammed what he called the “parliamentary coup against Brazilian democracy” and said he will withdraw his ambassador. Cuba also published a statement, blasting the move as a “parliamentary coup” meant at reversing the Workers’ Party’s leftist policies. Pan-Latin American news outlet TeleSUR, which is funded by these countries, has long referred to the impeachment as a “coup.”
When Rousseff was ousted from the government in May, she was not charged with a crime. Her use of budget maneuvers is a non-impeachable offense and is common practice for governments.
In May, renowned scholar Noam Chomsky called the impeachment process against Rousseff “a kind of soft coup.” He stressed that Rousseff is “the one leading politician who hasn’t stolen to enrich herself, who’s being impeached by a gang of thieves, who have done so.”
Chomsky accused members of the opposition of “exploiting an economic recession” and using the impeachment in order to topple the Workers’ Party government because they were unable to beat it in an election.
The left-wing Workers’ Party had been in power for 13 years. The right-wing opposition lost the past four elections but has now taken control of the government.
Senator Aecio Neves, the leader of the opposition and former presidential candidate from the centrist, but right-leaning Brazilian Social Democracy Party, lost the 2014 election to Rousseff by 3.5 million votes. He is under investigation for bribery, and his family runs secret bank accounts in Liechtenstein.
Longtime Senate president Renan Calheiros has likewise been accused of accepting millions of dollars’ worth of bribes. He has also been accused of tax evasion and having a lobbyist pay child support for a child he had in an extramarital affair.
For months protesters have been holding demonstrations calling the ouster a “coup” and demanding that Temer step down. Other politicians, such as Brazilian Sen. Vanessa Grazziotin, have joined in condemning the impeachment as a “coup.”
Immediately after assuming the role of interim president, Michel Temer replaced Rousseff’s diverse, progressive cabinet with right-wing, all-white, all-male members. This marks the first time since 1979 that no women are serving in Brazil’s presidential cabinet.
Rousseff condemned the new cabinet, pointing out that just over half of Brazilians identify as being of African descent. She sat down for an interview with Greenwald in May, in which she argued the “interim and illegitimate government will be very conservative in every aspect.” Rousseff emphasized that “not having any women or black people in the government shows [a] certain lack of care for the country you are governing.”
Temer has made it clear that he wants to pursue a right-wing neoliberal agenda, privatizing state assets, gutting government programs and cutting social services.
As interim president, Temer first offered Brazil’s science minister position to a Christian fundamentalist who denies evolution — although Temer ended up appointing him as trade minister instead. He also immediately demoted Brazil’s science ministry and combined it with the telecommunications ministry.
The New York Times also noted that Temer chose “a soybean tycoon who has deforested large tracts of the Amazon rain forest to be his agriculture minister.”
Brazil’s media has been incredibly harsh on Rousseff. Most Brazilian media outlets are controlled by right-wing oligarchs. NPR reported in May that there had been “a lot of fake news” circulating in the country. In the days leading up to the lower house’s vote to impeach Rouseff, 60 percent of the most-shared articles on Facebook were false, according to a University of São Paulo study.
The U.S., which recently backed a military coup in Honduras, largely remained silent while the undemocratic process unfolded in Brazil. The State Department persistently refused to answer reporters’ questions.
Citing U.S. government documents, whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks said Temer previously served as “an embassy informant” for U.S. intelligence and the U.S. military. A cable shows that the U.S. considered Temer’s centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party as a possible counterforce against the left-wing Workers’ Party.
Leftist Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo faced a similar parliamentary coup in 2012. Several Latin American countries blasted the process as a coup, but the U.S. was largely silent, critics noted, much as it has been about the parliamentary coup in Brazil.
Wealthy Trump fundraiser lost in landmark EEOC sexual-abuse case
Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young/Shutterstock/Photo montage by Salon)
Donald Trump cleared some time in his busy tweeting schedule to attend a fundraiser on Tuesday in California’s Tulare County. The luncheon, which cost $2,700 a plate to attend and $25,000 for a meet-and-greet with the candidate, was a huge hit, raising $1.25 million, a reported record for the area.
The pricy fundraiser is also a reminder that, contrary to conventional media wisdom, Trump enjoys quite a bit of support from the wealthy elite of the Republican party. And many of these elite attendees have political opinions that sound just like those of the Breitbart News-reading base.
One of the co-hosts of the Tulare fundraiser was John Harris, the head of the Harris Ranch collection of businesses, which is one of the biggest family-owned agricultural companies in the country. He also owns a horse farm, where the 2014 Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome was raised.
Harris was also a prominent villain in a landmark case regarding sexual violence in the workplace. In 2005, Harris Farms lost a court case against the EEOC, after Harris employee Olivia Tamayo accused her employer of not protecting her against a supervisor whom she said repeatedly raped and sexually harassed her. Harris minimized Tamayo’s complaints and made nasty accusations about the motives of the EEOC in pursuing her case.
The facts of the case are simple: In 1999, Tamayo, a Mexican immigrant who had worked in the fields for Harris Farms since the 1980s, told her employer that her supervisor, Rene Rodriguez, had raped her three times and, on a separate occasion, punched her in the face.
“Instead of investigating and protecting Tamayo from further harm, company officials turned against her, according to EEOC attorneys,” Lawyers Weekly reported in 2005. “She said the company assigned her to work in isolated areas, putting her in danger of additional assaults from the supervisor, who continued to berate and threaten her.”
Tamayo quit in 2001, and the EEOC filed a suit on her behalf in 2002. Harris fought the EEOC tooth and nail over the charges, spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the lawsuit because it was convinced that the relationship between Ms. Tamayo and the supervisor had been consensual,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
In 2005, a jury ordered Harris Farms to pay almost $1 million to Tamayo for its failure to protect her and for retaliating when she reported the abuse. (The award was later reduced to $800,000 because of federal limits on punitive damages in these cases.)
Harris himself was livid, describing the case as “extortion” and telling The Wall Street Journal, “They considered us a deep-pocketed employer.” He appealed the case and lost again in 2008.
“Managerial agents criticized Tamayo for raising the issue of past harassment in a new complaint,” the Ninth Circuit Court wrote in the decision to uphold the decision, and “indicated that complaints like hers cost Harris Farms time and money, suggested to Tamayo that continuing with her complaint would be difficult, and recommended to the Human Resources Department that Tamayo be suspended in the wake of a complaint.”
Salon reached out to Harris, the Trump campaign and the Tulare County Republicans about this story, but received no response.
After the 2012 election, Republican officials put together an extensive “autopsy” report, interviewing more than 2,600 people about how to open the Republican Party up to more voters, especially women and people of color. One major concern was the public perception that Republicans were waging a “war on women,” after multiple Republican candidates lost races after making tone-deaf remarks about sexual assault. Most notable among those was Todd Akin, a U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri, who claimed that women rarely get pregnant after “legitimate rape,” the insinuation being that women who get abortions after rape are lying to conceal consensual sex. In 2013, Kellyanne Conway, who is now Trump’s campaign manager, put together a presentation begging Republican men to cut it out with the insensitive rape remarks.
The rise of Trump has been widely interpreted in the political media as the conservative base rejecting these efforts to form a more welcoming Republican Party. In March, Politico ran a piece that pitted “members of the GOP establishment,” who supposedly want a friendlier party, against primary voters, who love this racist and sexist red meat.
But the example of Harris suggests this dichotomy may be more a product of wishful thinking than based in the evidence. Harris, who held a fundraiser for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in 2012 that raised a million dollars, is a classic example of a wealthy donor-class Republican.
And yet Harris’ behavior during the Tamayo case is tailored neatly to the political beliefs of the rabid Trump-loving Republican base: ugly and dismissive towards Mexican immigrants, quick to paint a rape accuser as a greedy liar, seeing rich, white men as the victims of politically correctness-crazed government officials.
These arguments have a lot of appeal not just in white working-class communities of America, but in the mansions and country clubs of the wealthy white men who run this country. Just because their Trump rallies are $2,700 a plate and held away from the cameras doesn’t mean their politics are any more enlightened than those of the ordinary Joe voters wearing anti-Clinton T-shirts at a Trump rally.
Salon Talks: Touré explains the two classifications of married people who cheat
Salon’s D. Watkins talked to celebrated journalist, novelist, and cultural critic Touré, whose latest book examines marital cheating.
Touré described two different classifications of cheaters: The people who are in what he calls a “dead bedroom situation” — in other words, a loveless marriage — and those for whom the quality of their marriage “doesn’t really matter to them. They’re out there, doing their thing, no matter what.”
Asked if modern culture encourages cheating in some way, Touré noted a popular trope that says “the big man has extra women.” And nurture, to some extent, plays a role.
“A lot of guys talk about having fathers or older brothers or just their friends who are encouraging of them screwing around,” he added. “It’s an interesting journey … people wanting to prove who they are to themselves and to other people by getting affirmation from [cheating], but then develop into learning that not doing it makes them stronger people.”
Trump sets off a right-wing media “holy war”: Sean Hannity goes on the warpath against #NeverTrump conservatives
Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh (Credit: AP/Dr. Scott M. Lieberman/Reuters/Chris Keane/Micah Walter)
Although the GOP primary effectively ended more than four months ago, the frosty relations between previously friendly right-wing media figures who had different preferred candidates is just now beginning to heat up into what Fox News Sean Hannity described as “holy war.”
Former Fox News host Glenn Beck, an ardent Ted Cruz backer, long ago questioned the values of his fellow conservative commentators, including Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, saying of his former Fox News colleague Hannity: “I don’t know how he sleeps at night.”
On Tuesday, Hannity struck back, slamming The Blaze founder and other prominent right-wing media figures who refuses to back the GOP nominee.
“So here’s what I say to all of you Never Trumpers — Glenn Beck, I hope you’re listening. You own Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court appointments. You own it! You are doing everything you can do to cast doubt in people’s minds!” Hannity said on his radio program.
“Yeah, I’m going to name names,” he threatened before continuing to berate his fellow conservative commentators. “I’m not sitting here and wimping out. I know there are people out there blaming me.”
“Well let me just say to all of you,” he continued, “and that includes the commentator class, that includes the Jonah Goldberg class, that includes radio hosts, you know, Glenn Beck, it’s a holy war for him at this point. I mean, he’s off the rails attacking me every day, blaming me for Trump.”
“You own Hillary Clinton. National Review, you own it. Glenn Beck, you own it. Ted Cruz, you own it … She wins, I’m blaming all of you,” Hannity, perhaps Trump’s most enthusiastic Fox News mouthpiece said. “You own all of her policies.”
For his part, Beck was quick to respond to Hannity’s assault with an attempt to calm the conservative waters, as it were, on his Blaze show Wednesday. Here is his full response from Business Insider:
“Here’s what I would like to say, because I agree with much of what has been said. I would like to say, so the alt-right wanted Donald Trump. And the alt-right got Donald Trump. And I don’t want to hear any belly aching like they are all doing. They are all bellyaching. They wanted him, they got him.
“However, I won’t echo the past of others. What I will say, and I want to have a conversation, and I want to share something that I wrote to Mark Levin this morning, and I won’t tell you our exchange back and forth. He is not picking sides. I encourage everyone — if you are a fan of mine — do not pick a side, please. Do not get involved in this. Please. Don’t condemn Sean or anyone else. I truly believe Sean is doing what he feels he needs to do. Just as I am.
“And I have told you for months that there are no more good choices. I am not happy with what I’m — what I believe I’m forced to do. But my principles dictate that where I stand. And you will understand that, as I read what I wrote this morning, and where my mind is. You can condemn if you want. That’s fine. I expect it. Don’t condemn him. Please. The pressure on this job, the pressure on him, is enormous. Enormous! I truly believe he is trying to do the right thing. We just strongly disagree.
“And if Hillary Clinton wins, if Donald Trump wins, you can kiss my ass goodbye. If Hillary Clinton wins, if we don’t reunite with everyone and have all hands on deck, there’s no chance of stopping Hillary Clinton. Zero. So do not divide any more. Please. Don’t divide anymore …
“First of all, I wish this show [had] the power to elect a president. Because President Cruz sounded very good to me. I couldn’t, and no one on this show, and Jonah Goldberg, and all of the things that he just listed — we could not get the most constitutionally minded conservative of perhaps the last 100 years, the guy we believe we waited for and prayed for, to get elected. But somehow or another we are going to be responsible for the defeat?
“I am not going to blame Sean or anyone else for helping to nominate a GOP candidate that was a Democrat, I think, last week. If Sean is a believer, if he believes that Trump is a reliable conservative, he knows him, I don’t. I don’t believe him. Sean does. I don’t lay the blame at his feet. If Sean believes that he can ascribe a logical line through Trump’s positions and that even know what Trump’s positions are — OK. If Sean believes that Hillary Clinton believes anyone — and I do mean anyone is better, I don’t blame him. I would like him to say that. That anyone is better. Anyone.”
Listen below:
The godfather vs. the grandmother: How the 2016 election became a battle of “character” over substance
Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Matt Rourke/Reuters/Carlos Barria/Photo montage by Salon)
Even setting aside our explicitly corrupt, undemocratic money-buys-candidates campaign system under Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the political process today bears no resemblance to what the founders of this nation envisioned.If our system is palpably imperfect, their “more perfect Union” was not a democratic republic either — by intent. Only property owners voted for House members and the nation’s chief executive was put in office by those deemed prudent and discerning, the most highly informed and well-educated among the populace.
An elite Senate was chosen not by direct vote, but by local elites in state legislatures. The founders were not firm friends of popular election — what we call democracy — and James Madison saw danger to the republic coming from those who were able to persuade through charm or charisma but who were otherwise untrustworthy and empty of governing skill.
Future historians will look back in wonderment or perhaps disdain in their attempts to make sense of the voting public of 2016. How could so many have seen as fit for the presidency or as a representative of their aspirations a supremely self-indulgent, incurious, uncaring, name-calling showman (Republican Donald Trump)? In our quasi-democracy, fear-mongering platitudes form the centerpiece of a conspiracy-fed campaign that resonates with untold millions, whereas the other major party’s bright, competent, worldly alternative is the one popularly known for an inability to connect (Democrat Hillary Clinton). And somehow, it’s still up for grabs in polling samples as to who’s more trustworthy.
Professional politicians are implicitly power brokers. Problems involving varying degrees of ethical uncertainty arise with their interactions with power and money seekers. So let’s not be naive. Weigh the supposed moral failing attached to Clinton’s private email server against the showman’s shady history of raising funds for business ventures that serve a moneyed few (and mostly serve himself). His day is spent finding lawyers to pimp his deals, while exploiting honest labor for personal gain. Buoyed by encomiums from national security experts, his learned opponent has been calmly addressing policy specifics for many years. The knowledge gap alone sends up a multitude of red flags.
But the Democrat’s strategy of educating voters on issues hasn’t done enough to soften her supposedly “shrill” image, nor removed her “negatives.” Somehow this gives pause to voters and excites media commentary. As her biography put forward at the Democratic National Convention made clear, Hillary Clinton is trying to make herself more likable so as to win trust; presumably it’s Republican women she’s courting with this. We have to soften her up, they’re all saying. She’s doing better on late-night talk shows.
When meeting with Appalachian voters in southwestern Virginia recently, we were struck that decent folks, vaguely accepting of Trump, who say they would never, ever vote for Hillary, can’t quite put their finger on what it is about her that they dislike. “There’s just something about her” does not address any concrete matter or even admit an ideology. “She lies” is their convenient catechism, but really it’s just another way to avoid engagement.
What then is democracy? Campaigns managed by rich donors and savvy PR firms redefine the voter’s reality. More than ever, “character” is a matter of appearance elevated over substance. A detail-oriented, tough-minded progressive is asked to play the “grandmother card,” to show her devotion to innocents as proof of her humanity. She is advised to smile more and soothe voters for the broadest possible improvement in likability. Not so Trump. He won’t soothe anyone, except with his criminally vague, single-executive message of “I’ll fix it.”
His team now tells him to pull back from the recurrence to threats (whether veiled or direct). It turns off wavering voters. But who can forget a year’s worth of headline-grabbing nonsense? Without the showmanship, he’s nothing. Doubling down on the cocky, empty, unrestrained tough guy image he’s cultivated, he’s regularly said, “We’re gonna crush ISIS. Believe me.” When he says it under his breath, he steals something from Marlon Brando’s signature performance as Mario Puzo’s fictional godfather. In a sense then the image contest of election 2016 pits the would-be grandmother against the would-be godfather.
While Trump is not a trained actor, his boardroom tsar act on reality TV must have finally convinced him that he could advertise himself for the ultimate executive gig by taking his godfather act on the road. Combining a Putin-esque strongman persona, he cleverly, cynically donned the gaudy “Make America Great Again” Bubba cap in order to talk to “the people” as someone who is at once a billionaire and an outsider with the common touch. Somehow it worked on those who find refreshing his vague and absurd claims delivered in a third grader’s vocabulary. Like the angry guy on the adjacent barstool, he speaks in unscripted prose, the way construction workers used to get away barking at passing women.
So now the coarse city boy can claim he identifies with those whom socially liberal cosmopolitans don’t get, whom prim-and-proper Republicans don’t respect. Such people are known for their moralizing but hard-core Trumpeters prefer loudness to didacticism. What they detest the most is political correctness: It’s taken to be the worst kind of moralizing and is the language of the do-gooder Hillary Clinton. The Trumpeters’ economic standing matters less than their perception of the members of the social class who act superior to them. In short, dissing and being dissed is what today’s “democracy” is all about.
Trump shouts, “I’m really rich” at fans and foes alike, as an “in your face” to educated elites. Trump is so not “classy” that he is unafraid to put put his name on everything and constantly tout his classy life. But only those who identify with genteel behavior notice. He is giddily oblivious to the fact that he is a composite of bad American clichés. Throwing caution to the wind, he blithely steps into a low-class persona each time he descends the elevator from the penthouse of Trump Tower. He is the temperamental opposite of the charm experts Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, whose presidential smiles evinced a positive, confident outlook on the world that soothed voters. When Trump smiles, it is merely smug and most uninviting.
Why is it that millions clamor for more of this stuff? They see his smugness as unbridled confidence, which for them is a good thing. His “I love the poorly educated” has been received as an acceptance of simple, black-and-white solutions. It’s how a mature Michael Corleone might have interpreted his father’s method. Trump don’t need no script, and you won’t find in him any haughty disregard for the little people. The suckers respond to this new godfather on a gut level. But it’s a presidential campaign not a movie, so instead of mumbling orders, the reckless, undisciplined son of an outer-borough speculator shouts obscenities when he declares himself the leader of the disaffected. “We’re gonna give it to them,” he taunts. He doesn’t care who gets hurt, just so long as he can keep up appearances.
What makes Mario Puzo’s godfather character, as so poorly performed by Trump, appealing to millions? And how much must one hate Hillary to vote for the unctuous, twisted, remade mob boss?
We’ll supply a few answers by tracing two deeply rooted political traditions. The first is a style of rabble-rousing that goes all the way back to outsider Andrew Jackson, the first tough-talking, non-elite-identifying presidential candidate, the proven punisher of Native Americans (that is, some are good, but many are terrorists). “Retaliatory violence” was due them, Jackson insisted, because they were “inhumane bloody barbarians.” Like Trump, Jackson had a rudimentary vocabulary and reduced the world to simple dichotomies: One was either friend or foe.
When the hotheaded Tennessean arrived in the nation’s capital to take his seat in Congress in 1796, he was described as an “uncouth-looking personage, with long locks hanging over his face.” He was marked by his lack of scholarly deportment. One of his rivals said it best: “Boisterous in ordinary conversation, he makes up in oaths what he lacks in arguments.” Thin-skinned Jackson used threats of duels to rise politically, much as the oddly coiffed, equally outrageous (if less physically courageous) Trump responds with tweets and cleared the field of Republican rivals with juvenile name-calling.
His is a simulated form of violence, appropriated by someone who, as part of his act, talks as though he would love to join the mob he’s effectively organizing. The visceral nature of his antics mirror those of Jackson’s vocal supporters. They wanted to beat up the sedentary President John Quincy Adams and “blow” Jackson rival Henry Clay “in the mud.” Someone who ran for office as a Jackson man declared, “If so I’m elected, Gin’ral government shall wear the print of these five knuckles.” That’s a Trump rally attendee, circa 1828.
The other American tradition at play here is the amorphous quest for authenticity. The Jackson movement gained momentum by spreading the idea that professional politicians were dull men, mechanical puppets and simpering panderers — and that raw, untutored men like Jackson were better Americans. He possessed a “rude instinct of masculine liberty,” as a prominent supporter wrote. The uninhibited, unintimidated man continued to hold his own in politics. Theodore Roosevelt walked softly and carried a big stick.
The 20th century redoubled the search for models of masculine authenticity when fan magazines invented Hollywood heroes: John Wayne; the rebel without a cause, James Dean; and young Marlon Brando as a motorcycle gang leader in “The Wild One” of 1953. Admirers of “King” Elvis Presley saw something similar when this hip-shaking son of a sharecropper took to the stage and young girls started “pantin’ like mountain mules,” as one of the performer’s friends put it. Nearly 20 years later, the quietly seething Don Vito Corleone (the older Brando) barely controls the raw energy exhibited by his violent clan in “The Godfather.”
There was something perversely attractive in their dark vision of the world because once again it was undomesticated men who got the blood flowing, with rawness and rudeness. This is acceptable behavior for someone who shines as a rebel, an iconoclast. Why? Personal loyalty to an alpha male becomes a substitute for loyalty to the national good. And that’s how demagogues take control.
Trump’s constant display of the “rude instinct of masculine liberty” is what supporters find so appealing. They admire his “raw honesty,” by which is meant his crudeness and uncensored taunts, even as it concerned the Muslim parents of a dead soldier. For many of his followers, politeness is a class posture, a sign of political correctness, of elite snobbery. That Trump has little allegiance to the Republican hierarchy has worked in his favor: What many critics see as offensive narcissism, his fans see as autonomy from the party chiefs. It’s why he bragged about running in the primaries without big donor money.
Masculine bravado is deployed so as to erase his privileged childhood and pampered lifestyle. It makes him a “common man” for just long enough to attract a following that hears him saying “bitch,” even when he doesn’t use the word, in complaining about Hillary Clinton: She is not the grandmother her daughter Chelsea and Democratic image makers are highlighting but a dangerous, physically unfit elitist, a “corrupt,” “unstable” woman, “this lowlife,” “a total lightweight” who threatens the tradition of male authority. The man who spearheaded the movement to demand Barack Obama’s birth certificate is branding another demon candidate who dares to overturn the way things are meant to be done. Those of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ardent army who called Hillary backers “vagina voters” are being outdone by an angrier crowd.
So let’s not pretend that this election isn’t about class anger wrapped in “camo,” the garb of masculinity run amok. For Trump supporters, Hillary is the worst kind of grandmother: moralizing, politically correct and too opinionated. They don’t want her teaching them any lessons. They want Trump, the hard-ass, threat-delivering New York “don” to teach her a lesson — some version of waking to find a severed horse’s head in bed with her.
